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A.M.L, Annie.



Something New



“Where are we, then?”

“You’re asking me?”

“Oh, so you’re there.”

“Yes, I’m here. Who did you expect to answer? Santa Clause?”

“Lay off with the bloody attitude, Slayer, we’re in this together.”

“God, it’s been five seconds and I already wanna wake up.”

There was a small silence and she tried to see through the darkness, but there was nothing. No speck of light to lend her keen sight any help.

“Are we supposed to be blind?” he then asked.

“We’re not blind,” she answered.

“Can you see?”

She didn’t want to reply, but finally said:

“No.”

“Right. We must be inside your head. I’ve never known anyone who pulls down the blinds so bloody often.”

“What’s that supposed to mean?”

“Your Slayer face. Putting yourself on a different track. Not liking to show your softer side. Hey, I get it.”

“I’m just not soft around you,” she shot. “You make me all prickly and only-square-edges-y.”

There was a click and then the space flooded with light.

Spike was standing to her right, his hand still resting on the light switch. She raised her eyebrows.

“Bizarre,” she said, looking around at the whiteness of the walls.

They were in a corridor and it looked as though it stretched on forever ahead. As well as behind.

“Like I said – your head.”

“My head’s not bizarre,” she protested, an unintentional hand touching her cheek, forehead.

He smirked.

“I wasn’t talking about the shape, love.”

She brought her arm down with a jerk, scowling at him.

Then he frowned, and her attention was elsewhere as his gaze turned back to the light switch.

“What?” she asked.

“I don’t know,” he murmured. “I think... I remember this place.”

“Hah! Your head!”

But he didn’t respond; he was too involved with what he felt he should have a clearer picture of. And then, with a click resembling the light switch, it all fell into place. And with an astonishing speed their surroundings changed. Doors appeared in the walls. They were heavy, painted gray, and had small windows at eye level. He turned his head to look down the corridor, and Buffy followed his gaze.

Her eyes widened slightly as she saw an apparition of him rounding an invisible corner up ahead.

Everything shifted into slow motion as she began to take a step forward.

The apparition was a Spike with the black leather duster flying about him as he moved down the corridor with clear sense of purpose, his eyes yellow from his demon, blood coloring his lips deep crimson.

The only thing that wasn’t sluggishly down-paced was Buffy’s heart. It was wildly racing within her at the sight of the vampire so vicious in appearance.

Another form passed beside her and for a second she thought it was the Spike she knew, but it was an orderly, dressed in white and rushing to try and stop the intruder. Everything sped up again, and Buffy’s step was finally finished just as the apparition met the orderly and without blinking grabbed his neck, twisting it forcefully to the side.

Buffy’s hand went to her mouth.

“Can’t believe I’d almost forgotten,” Spike murmured at her side.

She didn’t take her eyes off the other one, as he stopped in front of the door closest to them, braced himself and kicked it down. He disappeared inside.

Buffy’s brow was deeply furrowed. She wasn’t sure how to process this. She was about to turn her head to the vampire, when the apparition stepped through the door again, this time he was holding something in his arms. Something wearing a pretty white dress, stained with red.

“Spike,” Drusilla said, voice just barely audible.

“Hush, love,” Spike murmured softly, both the one standing in front of the Slayer, and the one standing beside her. “I’m here. It’ll be alright.”

The apparition began moving the same way he had come, once more out of sight as he rounded the corner again.

“Can’t believe I’d almost forgotten,” Spike repeated.

He looked absolutely flabbergasted, but it didn’t make Buffy go the big weepy. She found herself staring at him with her loathing for him rising like chilled mist through her.

“I wish you hadn’t remembered,” she said and he seemed to finally realize she was still there, turning his head to her with a dazed expression in his blue eyes.

“She was sick,” he said, not even knowing himself why he did. Buffy’s face grew stale. “I thought she was dying. And the buggers locked her up in here. Took her away from me. Couldn’t have that.”

“No, of course not,” she scoffed, voice cold, unforgiving. “Kill them all. That’ll make her better.”

“I didn’t...!” he said, a flash of anger in his gaze. “I had to bloody get in! Had to get her out. Would you have done anything less if someone you loved was in that position? If Dawn was?”

She slapped him hard.

“Don’t talk about my sister. Especially not like that.”

He took a step closer.

If she only knew how much he cared for the Nibblet, the bloody bint wouldn’t act so high and mighty, would she? But then he shied away, taking a step back and bringing his eyes out of hers. He didn’t want her insight. He would’ve rather turned the lights out again than have the Slayer shine her way further into his being.

“I don’t know how this works,” he said. “I don’t know how to get the information we need,” he elaborated at her cocked eyebrow.

“Try and concentrate on memories of Sunnydale,” she said bitingly. “Might be a start.”

He wanted to strangle her, he honest to God did in that moment, but simply closed his eyes and made himself steady his thoughts. Tried to find something that would take them to a place they had shared, a memory they’d have in common.

Buffy didn’t enjoy this feeling of being torn from place to place without any warning of what was to come, or even any clue. It was unsettling. Even more, it was eerie. Mostly she thought it was a huge mistake that she would never be able to rectify, but partially she considered the possibility it entailed. Getting a front seat view of this constant dark blur in her life might help with making it out, with filing it away once and for all. Not that she had any high hopes.

The scenery bled into the shadowed corners of the Bronze.

At least they were taking steps in the right direction.

But her eyes fastened on herself, on the slowly dancing form of her standing in the middle of the otherwise empty dance floor. There was no music. There was no one else around. The club was deserted. And then she noticed them. The shapes of Spike. All around. Sitting on a chair, smoking, standing leaned against a wall, against the stairs, against a table, standing, watching. Her. There was only one with the gameface of his demon on, but it was enough for goose bumps to spread their caution through her.

All eyes were on her other self, there wasn’t even a whisper disturbing the silence.

Buffy stared at the faces of the duplicates. They were hungry, waiting, impatient.

“Stop it,” she finally demanded, looking at the Spike she assumed was the actual one.

“I’m not doing anything,” they all replied.

Then, as though given a cue, they began to move forward, approaching the dancer. Buffy took a step forward as well, but it was too late to stop it. They encircled her image, standing closer until she wasn’t visible any longer. Buffy felt panic tear through her, her mind not able to process the fact that it wasn’t real. A sudden pain rushed through her neck and she realized she had been delivered a bite.

He was feeding!

Her hand went to the spot to the left of her throat.

His fingers ran through her hair and though he really wasn’t anywhere near her, she brought her locks tightly into one hand, staring at the scene before her.

“Stop,” she repeated.

But when she felt his tongue slip over her upper lip she drew a tight breath, her throat constricting with outraged surprise at the soft rush in an angled corner inside her.

Suddenly the image of the vampires crowding her was wrought around, swiftly turning into a dimmed spectrum before brightly folding in on itself and becoming something small and round and silvery which hung in the air.

She blinked, hand still at her throat.

What had just happened?

She didn’t think as she carefully approached the hovering orb. Reaching it she put out her hand, and it softly landed in the middle of her palm. How full of wonder was this? Before her eyes the sphere turned black and she frowned. It looked just like... She rubbed it with one thumb and concluded that it was coal. Wrapping her fingers around it she squeezed it tightly, and when she splayed her hand open again the coal broke apart, revealing its sparkling core.

A diamond.

She was absolutely enchanted by the perfectly shaped gem. It glittered seductively, larger than life, splendid in its simplicity, awesome in its rareness.

Then Spike was standing before her, and she wasn’t taken aback.

He reached out and took the diamond from her, holding it up to the light.

“Nothing good can come of this,” he grumbled.

“What’d you mean?”

“You’re not supposed to see what’s inside,” he said, giving the stone one last look before drawing his arm back and throwing it.

It went like a projectile straight through the wall.

She began to snap out of whatever weird state of mind she had slipped into, and her gaze met his with questions tentatively beginning to form.

They were torn from the Bronze straight into calamity.

Buffy ducked as a large demon swung one paw at her head. She herself wasn’t instigating the movements; she was being remembered doing them. She was the memory this time.

The demon came at her again and she jumped up, delivering a double kick – one foot to its head, one to its stomach. It flew backwards and landed in the dirt with a hard thud. She looked up and her gaze met Spike’s. He had a cigarette dangling in the corner of his mouth, his thumbs hooked into his belt, and he wasn’t lifting a finger to help.

She rolled her eyes at him, bringing an axe forward and suddenly she began to recall this particular fight. She raised the axe and sunk it through the stomach of the demon. Before she knew what had happened it lay, split in two, before her on the ground. She hadn’t expected that much damage.

She looked at the vampire with disdain.

“Here you go all demon-killing-happy and you just stand there?” she asked.

“You expecting my help, or you asking for it, Slayer?”

“I’m just saying,” she muttered, picking the axe up and beginning to walk away.

“Maybe,” Spike said, and she heard a strange cracking noise behind her, making her slow her step. “Just maybe I didn’t get into the fight ‘cause I was waiting for it to get better.”

“Adding insult to very near injury, what a nice way to wrap up my...” she began, turning around to find herself facing the demon she had just slain. Only there was two of it. Her eyes widened. “You didn’t tell me you could do that,” she remarked, bringing her axe into fighting position. “You should come with a serious warning tag.”

“Yeah, cut in two – will multiply,” Spike smirked.

“So, you gonna jump in now or what?” she asked.

“If you lend me that big, shiny weapon you’re swinging,” he said.

She hesitated, then grumbled and threw him the thing.

“Fine,” she said, “I brought this,” she added, reaching back and pulling out a sword from the sheath she had slung on her back. “How do I kill it?”

“Cut off its head,” Spike answered as he blocked a punch from his demon.

“Why is it always its head?” she wondered, parrying a blow from hers, ducking and kicking out a foot again, this time hitting it on the shin. “Why couldn’t it be its arm, or its bellybutton? Its heel?”

“Because that doesn’t even bloody kill a human, you expect a supernatural being to get killed by having its heel sliced off?” Spike asked, kicking his demon in the head and then punching it in a series of quick hits to its nose.

“Being sliced in the stomach kills humans,” Buffy remarked, putting a hook to the chin of her assailant. “So why not bellybuttons?”

“Can we not have this sodding conversation during the battle?”

“Can’t concentrate?”

“Can’t bloody remember where to put my blade!” he growled, swinging the axe and chopping the demon’s head off. “Then again,” the vampire added.

Buffy sunk the sword into the stomach of her demon. It staggered backwards and landed on the ground facing the stars, but didn’t stop trying to pull the sword out and she walked up to it, eyebrows raised as she looked down at it.

“Well,” she said, grabbing the handle and pulling the weapon out again. “That didn’t work,” she shrugged, bringing the blade down hard and having it run through the demon’s neck easy as pie.

The demon stopped moving.

“I know what you’re feeling,” Spike said and she turned to look at him.

This was new.

“Right now,” he continued. “The adrenaline pumping. How is it different from the rush I feel?”

“It’s not the same,” she gritted out.

“Why? I kill your kind, you kill mine.”

“Your kind doesn’t have a soul.”

He smiled a little.

“Really?” he asked. “And what does that mean?”

“You want me to tell you what it means?”

“Yes.”

“It means you can’t feel. Anything.”

“Mh. That Watcher git drill that into you?”

“There was no drilling needed, I get to see it, everyday.”

“You get to see demons attacking you. You think every demon is without a soul ‘cause you bleeding well stomp into their hard earned territory and claim it for the human kind? Bloody hell, what you don’t seem to understand is most demons in Sunnydale aren’t there to be a pain up your cute behind, they’re there to live, to make a living, to bloody retire, even. There’s a reason the Hellmouth is so attractive to demons, sure, but it bloody well doesn’t mean they’re all evil.”

“I’ve yet to meet a good-natured one,” she pointed out.

“Have you tried putting your stake away for five seconds?”

“I’d do that, but I’m afraid I’d end up with it sticking out between my shoulder blades.”

“See, that’s your problem. No trust. No letting go.”

“I have plenty of letting go,” she said and he smirked.

“I’ll believe it when I see it.”

“Don’t hold your breath,” she huffed, walking past him and pushing open the door taking them into her bedroom.

She halted, considering where she was, then shrugged it off and continued up to her bed. She sat down on it and he followed her, standing by her window. He was more offended by her actually thinking this way than he wanted to lead on. Who the hell did she think she was, passing out judgment in this sodding manner? He turned to her.

“I know I shouldn’t be surprised,” he said, “but this is bloody rich, even for you.”

“We’re not exactly on friendly terms even on a good day, so I don’t really get why...”

“Not that. This demon-only-bad-chop-to-bleeding-bits thing.”

“It’s not a thing,” she said. “And ew. And it’s a conviction. The deeply rooted kind.”

“Formed through years of experience and observing and careful consideration of what complex a society the demon world actually is, yeah?”

She shifted a little in her seat, slight pout appearing on her mouth as she frowned.

“Yeah,” she then confirmed, though it wasn’t as self-assured as she would’ve wanted.

“You’ve realized not all demons are hatched from eggs or a bite to the neck,” Spike continued mercilessly. “You’ve understood that there are hierarchies, certain rules not even the lowest demon will break, that there’s ordered chaos which surrounds you everyday. That there’s a reason certain demonic species never cross each others path. That there are families, lovers, feelings in motion rather similar to the human condition. All this you’ve discovered through all those years of analyzing the world around you. The two realities you live in. You’ve compared them and come to the conclusion that the one you were actually born into is the superior one because you... what?”

Her frown deepened.

She didn’t want to hear this. She didn’t want to think about it. It was ridiculous. More than that, it was stupid.

“This is so stupid,” she grumbled and she absolutely detested the smirk appearing on his mouth.

“Sometimes I forget,” he said. She gave him a look and his smirk turned into a smile as he came up to her, proceeding passed her to her nightstand, beginning to look at the things she kept there. “How young you are,” he finished his thought, almost as in passing, but the aggravation which flared up in her made her rise and walk in his footsteps, taking the book he held in his hands.

Then she paused, staring at it before looking back at him.

“How did you...?” she began and he took a step back.

He obviously didn’t want to look guilty, because the expression only lasted about one second, but she could see the busted written across his forehead for part of that second as clearly as though it had been burned into his skin and she didn’t know if she was disgusted or staggered or infuriated or all at once, but she finally added to her former sentence with:

“How did you know this was there?”

“I’ve seen it.”

“You’ve seen it? When? When have you been in my room?”

He clenched his jaws together. His thoughts racing for the proper answer.

“That night.”

“That night?”

“With Riley. With the blood-sucking and the... waking you...”

He trailed off at the look on her face and then she turned around and put the diary back in the nightstand drawer, slamming it shut and not turning back around, her arms tightly crossed over her chest.

“I never keep it in plain sight,” she murmured. “Dawn... could find it. I never leave it out...”

She wondered what was happening. What was this place, really? Who was he? Why was he?
Then she swirled around, took the step parting them and delivered a hard blow right to his chin, making him stumble backwards and into her closet door. He looked quite astonished. She thoroughly liked that expression on him.

“You’ve been in here when I wasn’t here?!” she exclaimed. “Have you lost your mind? Trying to find new ways of creeping into my life, of destroying it, of getting rid of me?! What sort of perverted, twisted, weird kind of a low-life scum-bag are you?!”

“Didn’t you just define me?”

She drew her arm back again and he put his hands up.

“Buffy,” he said. “Just...”

“There’s no just with you!” she yelled. “You’ve read my diary?! Have you?!”

“No!” he exclaimed. “I may have peeked...”

She shoved him harshly back as he started to straighten himself up.

“And you can stand there and try to moralize the demon society I’ve had to deal with since I was fifteen?! How the hell dare you talk to me like I don’t know exactly why they even needed a Slayer in the first place? You’re a murderous, lying, callous, demolishing breed that care about nothing and no one but yourselves, so don’t preach right and wrong to me. You try and draw the line, but you keep crossing it, don’t you, and soon there’s no space left to etch it on and you’ll have gone way too far and not even that chip in your head can keep you safe from meeting a very dusty ending!”

The rage in her eyes made their green fierce and bold and he felt as though he was crumbling. As though he was a nothing about to finally be filled up or completely blown apart.

He knew he could never make her see him the way he wished to be seen. He knew she would never understand him, or take him for anything but the monster he had willingly been turned into. And she would never believe him if he told her what she had forced into his heart, what life had spurred in mockery and defiance, what edge she had put his entire existence on and how, now, all he could do was watch it slowly turn to shreds.

He tried standing up again and this time she let him.

He straightened out his duster, meeting her gaze.

Then a soft wind grabbed a few of her locks, toying with them gently and she blinked. She looked down and saw white sand blowing carefully around her feet, beginning to collect on the floor and quickly making a carpet for it, a blanket for the bed, covering the room in delicate curves, obliterating any sharpness.

“Great,” she sighed, her eyes not leaving his as she observed him with intensity, which only came from a newfound distrust for what his next move might be. “What now?”

He glanced around, the backdrop of the room falling away with every new grain of sand and they found themselves in the middle of a vast desert.

Yes, he thought. What now?