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Love Awakened by slaymesoftly
 
three
 
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Chapter Three

It now being much too late in the day to return to school, Buffy headed towards her watcher’s apartment and the inevitable discussion of the previous day’s events. She cringed at the idea of providing any details of her treatment at the hands of the two vampires and wondered how much Giles would guess. The second video tape that Ethan had been making with such care had melted in the heat from the fire and she couldn’t recall whether or not Angelus’ humiliating fondling of her body had occurred while the original tape was still running.

Taking a deep breath and blowing it out explosively, she entered the Watcher’s apartment to find Willow and Xander already there and she favored them with a quick smile before sitting quietly and waiting for the anticipated questioning to begin.

Giles surprised her by declaring that, while he was there for her if she chose to talk to him, he was more than willing to respect her privacy if she chose not to go into details about her time spent in the old house. As she thought about what he said, she realized that he somehow knew exactly what had happened to her and was telling her that she need not discuss it if it made her uncomfortable. He must have made Ethan tell him what he did. she realized with a flash of insight.

Suddenly the fact that he’d left Ethan to die at the fangs of vampires was not so shocking, and she flashed him a grateful look saying with a shrug and a blush, “You pretty much saw it on the tape- they bit me just enough to make me weak from bleeding and to hurt like hell, but not enough to kill me. Your buddy, Ethan, made very sure they knew they had to keep me alive,” she growled, her look becoming less grateful as she remembered whose old friend Ethan had been.

Giles’ eyes were cold as he replied, “For which he has paid, or will shortly,” he added, glancing out the window at the advancing twilight.

“I’m pretty sure he already has,” Buffy said quietly, but with chilling certainty.

“You found him?” There was no indication of how the older man felt about that in his voice and Buffy had a moment’s hesitation before she admitted to the man who sent her out every night to slay vampires, “I did. And I made sure he was left where he could do the most good.”

Having not seen Buffy’s impulsive rescue of the blond vampire, the watcher frowned in confusion; a condition which increased with Willow’s sudden gasp of understanding. Xander was slower to figure out what she was implying and then bellowed in outrage, “You left him for that bleached killer?”

Buffy watched as Giles’ eyes widened in sudden understanding. “You didn’t stake William the Bloody, then?” he asked quietly.

Buffy shook her head “no” and hastened to explain. “Spike was the only pers- vamp- creature in that room who wasn’t enjoying what was happening to me. He fed me, he helped my wounds stop bleeding, he gave me water—“

“And the shirt off his back,” her watcher added dryly.

“And his shirt so I wouldn’t be naked in front of everybody. Yes. He did.” Buffy’s lip came out stubbornly. “He had lost everything that mattered to him; he was starving, he’s crippled – which I did to him, and he could so hate me for – and he was still trying to make me feel better. I owe him.”

“So, you what? Fed him the bad guy? Buffy, that man was HUMAN!”

Xander’s horror and disgust was palpable.

Buffy turned to her friend wearing an expression he’d never before seen her direct towards him.

“That human set me up for Angelus; he made it impossible for me to fight back; he encouraged them to abuse me; he filmed it and sent it to Giles to make him rush into a trap. He was working on making me the star of a pornographic snuff film when Giles got there…stop me when we get to the ‘he deserves to live because he’s human’ part, Xander!’”

Her friend stared at her with his mouth open and his eyes wide. He truly had not thought about why Buffy might have been wearing nothing but Spike’s tee shirt, and they were so used to seeing her with the occasional bruise or wound that he hadn’t really thought about what she must have gone through to have been cut up the way she was when she fled the burning mansion. He made one last attempt to protest, but had only managed to say, “But, Buffy, it’s Spi-“ when she cut him off with an abrupt motion of her hand.

“Yes. It’s Spike. Spike who came here to kill my boyfriend to save his…the woman he loved. Who trashed our school and tried to kill me. I know who he is. I’ve been fighting with him for months; we’ve…we’ve fought a lot. You two don’t even know about all the times I’ve fought Spike because sometimes nobody else was around and I didn’t get hurt.”

Buffy stopped to consider what she wanted to say next. She knew that, with the exception of hiring the Order of Taraka to keep her busy when he got worried that she was going to be able to keep him from doing the ritual, the vampire had wanted to kill her himself in a fair fight. He could have brought minions with him to help, he could have done as Angelus did and had a witch or a sorcerer make her immobile so that he could kill her easily. She faced her friends and watcher and tried to explain why she bore so little animosity towards the vampire.

“Spike could have told the Order of Taraka to kidnap my mother to get to me, he could have kidnapped one of you, he could have sired a bunch of minions to just keep after me until they wore me down; he could have done a lot of things if all he’d wanted was for me to be dead. But he wanted to fight me – vampire to slayer –or he didn’t want to win. He wanted me out of his way so that he could make Drusilla better; but he didn’t want to torture me, or r…ra-“ Buffy took a deep breath.

“Except for hiring the Order when he got frustrated that Dru was going to get worse before he could get me out of the way, he never did anything except try to kill me fair and square. He has every right to hate me. I put him in that wheelchair and then I didn’t do my job. I didn’t go after Angelus as soon as I should have and that led to what happened the other night; not to mention to his ho-bag of a girl friend screwing Angelus right in front of him.”

She looked back at the three astonished people staring at her with varying degrees of surprise and dismay.

“I gave him an evil man to eat. I did. And if that makes me a bad Slayer…well, I don’t care. I haven’t had a real good last few days and that vampire was the only one who cared that I was being…and then he stopped… and he could have…but he didn’t…and he tried to help me…and he really loved…and I killed her…and….” To her own dismay, the Slayer burst into tears for the second time since she’d been rescued and sank to the floor of her Watcher’s house sobbing without let up.

Recognizing a delayed reaction when he saw one, Giles quickly ushered the curious teenagers out the door, bidding them to, “Hasten home before night falls. I do not believe Buffy will be patrolling this evening.”

After he had sent Willow and Xander home, Giles walked to a cupboard and poured a small glass half-full of his best scotch. He walked over to where Buffy was now sitting in a chair and wiping her eyes; he held the glass out to her with a “take it” gesture. She sniffed at it cautiously, wrinkling up her nose in disgust.

“Giles! I’m not old enough to drink!”

“I suspect you are not old enough for a good many of the events of the past two days, and yet, you have survived them. I feel certain you will survive this and it may help settle your nerves.”

Wearing her most dubious expression, Buffy downed the fiery liquid as if it was medicine, shuddering all over as her eyes began to water.

“Oh my god,” she gasped. “You actually drink that stuff for FUN?”

“It’s an acquired taste,” her watcher answered wryly.

Buffy set her glass down carefully and took stock of how she felt. She had to admit, now that the taste was gone from her mouth and no longer burning her throat, that the warmth spreading through her stomach was mildly pleasant and she could actually feel herself relaxing. Until she felt her muscles beginning to loosen, she had not realized how tightly she had been clenching her teeth, or how stretched taut every muscle and nerve in her body had been.

“Feel better?” Giles inquired mildly as he removed the glass and walked to the kitchen.

“A little,” she said with a smile at his back. To have said any more would have been to admit to herself how deeply she had been affected by her experiences and that was just not somewhere she wanted to go.

“Thank you,” she offered softly.

“You’re welcome,” he answered, sitting down across from her. They rested quietly for a few minutes until he interrupted her pleasant buzz to ask, “What are your plans for William the Bloody, once he is able to get about again?”

“I don’t know,” she admitted quietly. “I’m hoping he will just leave. Go back to wherever they came from and stay away from Sunnydale.”

“And if he doesn’t?”

“I’ll worry about that when it happens,” she replied with a sigh in her voice. “Right now I don’t even know if he’ll live. He can’t hunt yet, so unless I bring him—“

“You are not planning to continue to feed him?” Giles’ voice took on more of an edge as he followed her train of thought. “Buffy, it is one thing to use his obvious need for sustenance as a means of disposing of an enemy; it is quite something else to assist him in becoming dangerous again.”

“If I think he’s dangerous, I’ll stake him,” she said, her lower lip coming out slightly to hint at the emerging stubbornness he could hear in her voice.

“If I think he is becoming dangerous, I will stake him,” her watcher responded, reminding her of who was theoretically in charge in their relationship.

“No!” she replied forcefully. “If he has to be staked, I’ll do it. He…he would want me to,” she added softly. “He has that right. To be killed by a Slayer.”

Shaking his head at the twisted sense of honor that his slayer seemed to share with one of the most notorious vampires of modern times, the older man tacitly agreed to her conditions and changed the subject. When, after some desultory conversation about school and the unlikelihood of Synder’s overlooking her absences, Buffy rose to leave, he did not argue with her but just suggested gently that she go directly home and have dinner with her mother.

Buffy nodded her compliance, but when she left his apartment complex she turned her feet towards the nearest butcher shop and spent what little money she had on several containers of pig’s blood. Holding the bag of cold blood, she resolutely set out for Crawford Street and the burned house in which she’d left two enemies – one an evil human and one a strangely honor-bound vampire.

She entered the building quietly, peering through the dimness and wishing the street lamps outside were closer and brighter. It occurred to her that after dark was not, perhaps, the best time to be visiting a vampire; even one who was unable to chase her if she should feel the need to run. Her slayer senses were on full alert as she walked carefully into the room in which she had last seen Spike. She fumbled around wishing she had thought to bring a flashlight until she heard Spike’s unmistakable accent.

“Best stop there, Slayer, if you don’t want to be stepping on my last meal.”

She froze, staring hard in the direction of his voice but unable to see through the gloom. Having no desire to step on Ethan’s undoubtedly drained and dead body, she waited quietly until the flare of Spike’s lighter showed her his puzzled face.

“Spike?” Her surprise at finding him alert showed in her voice and he smiled tightly at her.

“Amazing what a good, hot meal can do, isn’t it, pet? Just stay there until I get some light in here,” he ordered, not waiting to see if she would comply. He re-lit his lighter and then used it to light several partially-melted, but still usable candles. Once the candles provided enough light for her to see, Buffy realized that she had, in fact, come very close to stepping on Ethan’s body. She made a small face and stepped carefully over the pale drained man, then, with a sudden thought she whirled and pulled a stake from her waistband.

“Give me credit for a little common sense, Slayer,” the vampire growled in disgust. “You think I’m going to turn a miserable wanker like that after the way he….not to mention, he’s a bloody sorcerer. Nobody wants to see a vamp with that kind of power and knowledge; not even other vamps.”

Eyeing the corpse dubiously, she turned back toward the vampire and saw with some surprise that he was sitting up and leaning against the wall – near, but not under the table. She studied him in the flickering light, finally saying softly, “You look a lot better.”

He shrugged and responded, “That was the first real meal I’ve had since you—in a couple of months. Made a big difference, it did.”

“Can you walk yet?”

He gave a smothered laugh that ended in a cough. “Wasn’t THAT good of a meal, pet. The little bit of your blood I got the other night did as much to make that happen as his did. It’ll be a while longer before I can walk out of here. That’s assuming I can find something else to eat.”

“Oh! I almost forgot. Here.” She held out the bag to the puzzled vampire and then realized that he couldn’t move towards her to take it. With a wary look at him, she moved closer and carefully set the bag of pig’s blood down on the floor within easy reach.

“And this is…?”

“Pig’s blood. I guess it won’t be as good for you as human, but it’s not like I can go around Sunnydale grabbing up bad guys and feeding them to you.”

The blond vampire was staring at her with complete awe. “You brought me blood? You’re feeding me?”

“Well, what did you think I was doing here?” she demanded. “It’s not like I don’t have a nice dinner waiting for me at home.”

He cocked his head and looked at her without answering for few seconds, then said quietly, “I thought you’d had second thoughts about savin’ me and had come back to do your duty.”

“Oh.” His calm acceptance of what he’d thought would be his fate was unsettling to her and she reacted with anger. “I didn’t drag your skinny ass out of here just to let you starve to death,” she snapped. “And I didn’t drag that thing,” she gestured to the cold corpse behind her, “all the way down the street for you just so I could stake you while you were feeling better. What do you think I am?”

“I think you’re an amazing woman,” he said quietly and sincerely. “I doubt there’s ever been another slayer like you.”

Buffy blushed at both the praise and at the expression on his face, mumbling, “Well, you have to promise to leave town when you’re all better. Will you do that?” Her worried eyes suddenly flew up to meet his anxiously. “You’ll leave, won’t you, Spike? You won’t make me have to stake you?”

“No, pet. If you want me to leave, I’m as good as gone. I promise you. As soon as I can drive.”

“Okay, then,” she sighed with relief. She stood there uncomfortably for a few minutes, shuffling her feet and trying to avoid looking at the dead body behind her. Finally, as much to avoid trying to make conversation with someone she had to admit she barely knew - in spite of the forced intimacy they’d shared - as it was to be helpful, she grabbed Ethan’s feet with a shudder and dragged him out of the building and into some bushes in the overgrown yard.

She came back in to find Spike draining the second of two containers he’d taken from the bag. He looked up at her with blood smeared on his upper lip and she was reminded of exactly who and what she was helping. As though reading her mind, he quickly ran his tongue around his lips and licked off the blood, wiping his mouth with the back of his hand in case he’d missed any.

“Sorry, luv,” he said gruffly. “Thought I’d be done before you got back from doing my house-cleaning for me.”

“It’s okay,” she said, not looking at him. “It’s what you are. I haven’t forgotten that.”

“No,” he almost sighed. “I suppose not.”

“I’ve got to get home,” she said abruptly. “Will you be all right until tomorrow afternoon?”

He blinked at her in surprise. “I’ll be just fine, pet. I’m just going to sit here and…” He paused and looked at her hopefully. “Unless you think you could bring me my chair? If I had it, I could get into the back of the building away from the wide-open-spaces here.” He gestured at the gaping hole where the roof used to be.

Buffy looked around, then taking one of the sputtering candles, she walked toward the area where she’d been manacled to the floor. Spike’s wheel chair being mostly made of metal, had not suffered much damage in the fire; although the seat and back both reeked of smoke and were slightly charred. She silently wheeled it back to where he was watching her expectantly, stopping beside him. She watched impassively as he grabbed the arms and attempted to lever himself up without tipping it over. As he struggled to drag his still-immobile lower body into the seat, Buffy suddenly leaned over and grabbed his legs, easily lifting them up and holding them while he turned his body and lowered himself into the seat. As soon as he was seated, she gently lowered his legs to the floor and stepped back slightly.

“Thank you, Slayer,” he said quietly. “Don’t quite know why you’re doing this for me, but I appreciate it.”

“You helped me,” she said simply, turning and walking out without glancing back.

Remembering what Spike had said about being fine by himself, she did not go back the next afternoon as she’d said she would, instead hanging out with her friends and trying to get back to feeling like a teenager again. She did a quick patrol after dark, staking a larger-than-usual number of newly-risen fledglings which she blamed on her having been otherwise occupied for three nights in a row. She found a surprisingly cathartic relief in turning the vampires to dust and went home and slept well for the first time since her kidnapping.

She did not go back to check on Spike for two days, partially because she had no money with which to buy more blood for him. Eventually, after an uncomfortable conversation with her mother in which she gave her a sanitized version of the things that happened to her while she was a prisoner, she admitted that she was feeding the vampire who had tried to take care of her and asked Joyce for some money to buy blood for him. After getting a promise from Buffy that she would be careful and that she would allow Joyce to meet Spike at some point, the woman gave her a few bills from her purse.

Immediately after school, Buffy went by the butcher and bought as much pig blood as she could afford before heading directly to the Crawford street mansion. She walked quickly into the big room, glancing at the table that had sheltered the vampire when she was last there and seeing no sign of Spike. She cautiously continued into the big house, calling out softly until she got an answering growl.

“ ‘M in here, Slayer. Was just catching a little kip.”

She found him in a back bedroom, one that still had some roof left and was sheltered from the sun by the overgrown shrubbery and vines outside the windows. He was lying on an unmade bed, and made no attempt to get up when she walked in. She set the bag of blood containers down on the nightstand beside him and then stepped back quickly. He looked at her for the first time since she came in the room, his expression unreadable.

“What’s the matter, Slayer? Are you afraid I’ll eat you?”

Buffy flushed, forcing down memories of his tongue caressing her under the urging of Angelus and Drusilla, knowing that he hadn’t meant to make a crude remark and ashamed of herself for where her mind had gone. One look at her face and the vampire smirked to himself, although he managed to keep his face immobile.

Well, that was an interesting reaction. Would have thought she would avoid those thoughts like the plague.

“No, Spike,” she said quickly, “I’m not afraid of you.”

“Should be, you know,” he said quietly, his gaze going back up to the ceiling. “If I drained you right now, I could be on my feet and out of here by midnight.”

Unconsciously stepping back, Buffy was surprised when the vampire turned his head towards her, his expressive face showing an emotion she could only identify as pain.

“I said ‘if’, Slayer. Didn’t say I was thinkin’ about doin’ it.”

“Didn’t say you weren’t either,” she said stubbornly. “And you’re acting like you’re mad at me.”

He sighed and sat up slowly. “I’m sorry, pet. You’re right. You’re here to bring me food and I’m being a right git about it.”

“ARE you mad at me?” she asked somewhat timidly, as she moved closer. When he gestured at his wheelchair beside the bed, she sat down without thinking about it.

He shook his head, reluctant to admit that his feelings were hurt because she hadn’t kept her promise to return the following day, leaving him with little to do but wallow in his unhappiness and helplessness.

“No, luv. I’m not mad at you. Jus’ having myself a bit of a pity party and was looking for you to liven it up a touch. Bit disappointed when you didn’t show the next day.”

“Oh.” Guilt for not coming back when she’d said she would had her leaning towards him apologetically until she remembered what he was and pushed herself back. “I’m sorry, Spike. I didn’t think…I thought you probably wouldn’t want to see me any more than you had to. That I would remind you—“

“Don’t worry yourself about it, Slayer. I’m just not used to being alone and I don’t handle it very well. I guess I need to get used to it, don’t I?”

The sadness on his face and in his voice reached into the piece of her heart that was holding the pain of having lost her first love and she found herself with brimming eyes as she touched his hand where it was lying on the bed.

“I’m sorry, Spike. I guess we both have some changes to get used to.”

“Got no one to blame but myself. If I hadn’t come here and tried to use sire’s blood to cure her…”

“You did it because you loved her. You couldn’t have known she would go all ho-bag on you with Angel.”

He smiled at her ruefully, leaving his hand in the awkward position it was in and enjoying the warmth of the small hand still resting on it.

“Actually, pet, that’s the one thing I could have predicted. I never was as important to her as her precious ‘daddy’. Jus’ forgot about it – what with having her to myself for the last hundred years.”

Buffy straightened up, removing her hand from his, and shaking her head. “I don’t understand…” she began, then let her voice trail off.

“What’s that, Slayer? What don’t you understand?”

She turned aching eyes on his and asked plaintively, “How can you love Dru for over a hundred years… and she obviously loved Angel--us and she must have cared about you to stay around that long….”

“I ‘spect she just counted on me to take care of her, more than anythin’, luv; but I’d like to think she felt something – just not what she had for the poof. I never got that from her.” His attention drifted for a few seconds as he contemplated the truth of the relationship he was mourning. A movement from Buffy reminded him that she had been asking him something and he quickly turned his attention back to her. “I’m sorry, luv. You were askin’ me something about lovin’ Dru?”

“I just…” Her voice was so low he would not have been able to hear her without his vampire hearing. “I just don’t understand why Angel didn’t still love me after he lost his soul.” Tears threatened again as she continued, “You don’t have a soul, Dru didn’t have a soul. What’s wrong with me that he couldn’t still love me?”

Spike’s eyes flashed amber and his forehead began to wrinkle as his face tried to shift. “The only thing wrong with you is that you showed bleedin’ awful taste in men when you decided to fall in love for the first time,” he growled angrily. “Angelus was a self-centered bastard and having the soul didn’t change that. He doesn’t love anyone or anything but himself. Maybe havin’ that soul and being told he could be redeemed if he helped you made him think you were part of his redemption, but losing it just meant you got to see the real Liam.”

His face shifted back and he touched her cheek with his hand, using his thumb to catch the single tear that was making its way down her face. “There’s nothing wrong with you, luv. You are strong and beautiful, kind and brave and someday you’re going to meet a man who appreciates the woman you are. Then you’ll realize that losing that git was the best thing that ever happened to you. I promise you.”

Great! Here we go again. The person who is trying to make me feel better is my worst enemy.

When she found herself leaning into his comforting hand, she pulled away abruptly, embarrassed at her tears in front of the vampire.

“I…I should go,” she whispered, trying not to see the disappointment on his face. “I promise to come back tomorrow.”

“Sure, pet. Your mum will be worried about you…”

“Oh!” Her eyes widened in sudden remembrance. “My mom. She wants to meet you. I had to promise her she could before she would give me any money for the blood.”

“Your MUM bought my blood?” Spike couldn’t take his eyes off the girl in front of him.

“Well, um, yeah. I mean, I ran out of money and I had to ask her…and then she wanted to know what I was going to buy…and I said…and she screamed…and I had to explain, you know?”

Instead of responding to her babbling, the vampire reached into the drawer of the nightstand and pulled out a wad of bills. He peeled off several twenty-dollar bills and pressed them into her hand.

“Pay your mum back, Slayer. And thank her for me. I can buy my own food.”

“Are you mad again?” Buffy frowned at his tight face in confusion.

Spike sighed and squeezed his eyes shut, then opened them and looked into hers, responding honestly, “No, luv, I’m not mad. Not at you. Bit unhappy with myself that I didn’t think to give you money the other night; but mostly I’m just trying not to cry like some kind of Nancy-boy. I’m not sure you realize how rarely in my life – or my unlife – that anyone has been kind to me. And here is my sworn enemy…” He gave a ragged laugh and shrugged. “Sound like a complete Nance anyway, don’t I?”

“Well, if I knew what a ‘Nance’ was, I might be able to answer that,” she said with a small smile.

Standing up and stretching, she asked, “Can I get you anything else before I go?”

“No thank you, pet. As long as I’ve got my chair, I can get around pretty well. Not much I need that isn’t right here.” He gestured at the bag of blood and the rest of the room, which Buffy discovered was filled with boxes and shelves of books.

“Okay, then. See you tomorrow.”

“See you tomorrow,” he echoed as she walked out into the sunlit part of the house. “See you tomorrow.”




 
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