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Forward to Time Past by Unbridled_Brunette
 
Chapter Fifty
 
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Chapter Fifty







One hand was on his cheek, her thumb skimming lightly over the bruises and the swollen places, gently wiping at the streaks of blood. His eyes were closed, his full bottom lip trembling, and even though a part of her was thinking, “This isn’t the way it happened,” she couldn’t quite stop herself. She leaned up and kissed him.

“Tell me what happened,” she whispered as her mouth grazed across his. “It was Archer, wasn’t it?”

“He would not have dared if Havisham had not been there; Charles was there to meet him off the train. It was a cowardly thing.”

His voice was husky, his battered face beautiful in the strangest way. She wanted to kiss him again; she wanted to unbutton his wrinkled shirt and touch his warm, soft skin. She wanted to make love with him right there on the foyer rug.

Instead, she whispered, “Come into the parlor and we’ll fix you up.”

He did, and sat in an armchair while she lowered herself onto the ottoman at his feet. And although the handkerchief full of ice was suddenly in her hand, she had no idea how it had gotten there. Somehow, it didn’t matter. His head was bowed. She stroked his chest with her free hand, rested it on his thumping heart so that he suddenly looked up. The ice was still cold and dripping on her palm, but she didn’t even need it now, because his face was no longer bruised.

He looked at her with eyes the color of topaz, and in a voice slightly slurred by his descending fangs, he whispered hoarsely, “I should kill him.”


~*~ ~*~ ~*~





Buffy woke with a start, her heart pounding in her throat and one fist gripping at the bed sheet.

It was just a dream.

She swallowed and sat up slowly, reaching to switch on the small lamp on the nightstand beside her bed. She had returned to her room once Giles dropped her off after her doctor’s appointment. That had been just after noon, and she must have fallen asleep, because it was dark outside now. A quick glance at her clock radio told her that it was just after seven o’clock.

Her heartbeat was beginning to slow now, but a certain sense of unease remained: the odd feeling that it was not just a dream. That she had stepped inside something real, something separate from the memory of what had actually happened that night with William.

Just because I’m the slayer, it doesn’t mean my dreams always have a deeper meaning, she told herself stubbornly. Giles once said—

But Giles had been wrong then. And this morning, in the car, he had seemed as if he were—

He wasn’t lying. Giles wouldn’t do that.

Even as she tried to convince herself, a part of her knew that it wasn’t true. Because Giles did lie. He’d lied to her many times, although he always justified it later on as being “for her own good.” Did he consider it for her own good now? Was he trying to protect her from something disturbing? Like maybe that she was spending every night killing beings that, if not exactly human, had retained some spark of humanity in them?

His hesitation had been so very brief; perhaps she had only imagined it.

But then there was the dream. Aside from the demon face, he had still been William in the dream. His hair and his heartbeat—his soft voice—they were all William’s. And all hers. Every inch of him belonged to her.

What if it did mean something?

Acting on a sudden impulse, she dove off her bed and onto the floor. The amount of clutter that had accumulated in her bedroom since she arrived home was amazing, and it took her a few minutes to locate what she was looking for. Giles had found her picture of William; he had found the book Dawn had stolen from the Magic Box. But he hadn’t found the page she had torn out of it. It had been of little consequence to her at the time; she hadn’t wanted to read grisly accounts of Spike’s murderous rampage through London. After clipping the picture from it, she had carelessly tossed it aside. Now, she found herself crawling beneath her bed, groping through dirty clothes and dust bunnies until finally her fingers closed over the thick, wrinkled paper. She sat on the floor, leaning against the side of the bed as she read it. Her breath hitched a little as the sentences jumped out at her.

The body of David Havisham was discovered—torture by railway spike—Mr. Charles Archer’s body was found in a similar manner—following the abrupt disappearance of his mistress—William the Bloody—

And, abruptly, her dream came back to her, hopelessly tangled with the memory that had inspired it.

“It was them. Charles and David Havisham—”

“I should kill him—”


No, Buffy’s mind insisted. Spike killed them because—because they were convenient. They were William’s acquaintances; he would have come across them when he traveled around London. It had nothing to do with me—

But what about Spike’s eyes? Those blue eyes watching her dazedly, worshipfully, as he drew her up onto his lap. Half-closed as he murmured in a voice that was almost desperate, telling her that he loved her.

God, those were his eyes—and the way he moved against me—the way he spoke—it was almost exactly like—

What if it was? Jesus, what if it was him? How could he have done those things? How could he have hurt Anne, when all his life, he had done everything in his power to protect her?

Moreover, how could she even begin to find out the truth?

In a daze, she found herself standing up and slowly walking to the door. Although the hallway was dark, there was a dim light at the foot of the stairs, and she could hear voices coming from the living room. When she reached the foyer, Buffy could see them in there, standing in a small cluster near the sofa. They must have only just arrived: Xander and Anya still had their coats on, and Giles’ car keys were in his hand. Xander was speaking in a hushed whisper when Buffy reached the doorway.

“So, you’re saying that the results were…?”

“As negative as her attitude,” answered Giles. He sighed. “Although the doctor did say that, early as it is, the HCG might not be accurate; he advised Buffy to return if her—if she—well, if it did not arrive on time.”

“But they think it’s all right?” Willow pressed. “I mean, of course there’s a chance that she might be. But they think—”

“They believe it is quite unlikely,” Giles said. “The PPD results will take longer…up to seventy-two hours. However, a positive result of that seems highly unlikely as well.”

“We—well, it was the pregnancy test we were most concerned about, right?” Tara asked.

“I think—” began Giles. But before he could tell them what he thought, Buffy suddenly cleared her throat, and suddenly all eyes turned to the doorway.

She was staring at them impassively, as if politely waiting for her turn to speak. Her shoulder bag and coat were hooked over one arm.

“I’m going to LA,” she said calmly. “I just thought you should know.”

~*~ ~*~ ~*~




They tried to stop her, of course, as they always tried to stop her from doing anything that wasn’t their idea. She had expected as much, and she was prepared for it; oddly numb to all their threats and entreaties. Not even Dawn’s arrival, midway through the tirade, would dissuade her.

She walked to the bus station, but before she bought her ticket, she used some spare change to call Angel. The payphone receiver smelled like moldy cheese; she tried not to breathe in too heavily. He answered on the fourth ring.

“I need to talk to you,” she said. No preliminaries. He was momentarily silent, maybe from surprise at hearing her voice. Or, maybe because he thought that she was going to berate him for outing her to Giles and her friends. At any rate, once his answer came, it was characteristically careful.

“Buffy, things are a little crazy here. I really don’t think I can leave just now—”

“You don’t have to leave; I’m coming to you. Today. Right now. I’m at the bus station.”

“It’s that important?” He sounded stunned. “Can’t you just talk to me over the phone?”

“No, I really can’t.” She paused. Then, “I’m going to go out on a limb and assume that you’ll be home tomorrow morning. After sunrise and all that. You’ve never really seemed like one to run around with a blanket on your head.”

“What?”

“Never mind. So, you’ll be home?”

He cleared his throat. For a moment, she wondered if he was trying to come up with some excuse as to why he wouldn’t be.

“You’re coming on the bus?” he asked eventually.

“Yes.”

“It will still be dark, but I’m not going anywhere tonight anyway. I’ll wait for you.”

In spite of her sudden suspicion toward him, Buffy couldn’t help but feel warmed by that. When she thanked him, it was in a friendlier tone.

Before they said goodbye, he asked her hesitantly, in a voice that said he already knew the answer: “Buffy…this is about Spike, isn’t it?”

“Yes,” she said briefly. “It is.”

~*~ ~*~ ~*~





Angel had offered to pick her up from the bus station in Los Angeles, but Buffy refused. She knew him well enough to know that he would start badgering her to talk the moment they got into the car, and for some reason, she couldn’t bear the thought of it. Maybe it was because, in a car, she would be trapped to hear the things she wasn’t entirely sure she wanted to hear. In his apartment, she would be free to leave at any time. She asked him to give her directions instead, and she called a taxi.

When she reached his suite at the Hyperion Hotel, he opened the door before she even had time to knock.

“Wow,” she said. “Good timing.”

He smiled slightly as he stepped aside to let her in the door.

“Not really,” he said. “Just vamp hearing.”

The first few minutes after she entered were painfully awkward. He offered her something to drink. Of course, he didn’t really drink anything but blood these days, he said. But after he hung up the phone earlier, he had run to the corner market, bought some soda and juice in case she arrived thirsty. If she would like a glass—

Buffy shook her head.

“Thanks anyway, but I really think that I’d rather just get down to the talking.”

He nodded uneasily. And, although he motioned to the sofa and chairs on the other side of the room, neither of them sat down.

“Did you lie to me, Angel?”

Buffy didn’t mean to put it so baldly, but there was no use in beating around the bush, and she had to know. He winced slightly.

“Did I lie to you about…?”

“You know what about. About the soul. About your being a different person without it. Did you lie?”

Angel sighed heavily; he looked like a man ascending the steps of a gallows. But his dark eyes met hers steadily when he said, “Yes, I did.”

She could have hit him for that; she could have felt rage. But she didn’t. Instead, there was sadness, disappointment, and the dimmest, slightest spark of something that might have been hope.

But there was also a sense of betrayal, and for the moment, it was the strongest of all. She felt the sting of tears behind her eyes, and her voice quivered when she stammered almost incoherently, “How could you do that? It was you all the time…four years ago when you lost it…and you killed…”

“Jenny Calendar,” Angel finished quietly. “And I tried to kill Giles; I tortured him. I tried to kill you. Buffy...if I weren’t in some way responsible for those things…didn’t you ever wonder why I felt guilty for them afterward?”

Yes, she had. But it was one of the many things she had pushed aside, hidden away in that dark compartment of her brain where she didn’t have to think about it. Now, she had forced open that door; she had let out the horrors within.

“It was you all along.” She couldn’t say anything else, but she could tell from his change in expression that her eyes must be accusing, or angry. His voice became almost desperate.

“Yes, it was. And, Buffy, I won’t try to pretend otherwise, but just…let me try to explain.”

“So, explain,” she answered.

“When I was turned, something left me…the soul or the conscience, whatever you want to call it…and something else came to take over. I was me, but only in part—”

“What part?” she interrupted. He looked at her with a mixture of regret and bitter amusement.

“The part that hated. The part that remembered all the bad things that had ever been done to me and all the bad people who had done them.”

I should call him out for his ungentlemanly behavior. To insult a lady, to accuse her of such terrible, vulgar things; it is unlawful. I should kill him—

The memory of William’s words came back to her, more powerful than any dream. She felt almost sickened by the recollection. The part that had hated. Yet, at the same time, it wasn’t just hate was it? Not that night. Not when William had threatened to—

“What about the part that loved?” she demanded. “What about that? Did it leave?”

Angel turned his face to the wall then, and punched it with his fists so that chunks of plaster gave way and crumbled onto the floor. “Damn it, Buffy. I don’t know! It was all so tangled back then. There was something in my head…something that wanted not just the blood, but the violence as well. I’m not going to blame Darla, but she encouraged me in it. And I wanted to please her. I lo—”

He stopped.

“You loved Darla,” Buffy finished softly. Now, she was crying. “Then, you could love. You could—”

“Yes, I loved her,” he spat. “But I also loved the kill! I loved the ability to control life and death, the power to make people beg for both. That thing inside me—the more brutal I became, the better it made me feel. And whatever it is that makes a person lie awake at night and regret hurting others…that part of me was gone.”

“And when you got your soul back?”

“Then, the guilt I should have felt all along suddenly came back to me. But that thing—the demon, the evil part—it’s still in there. It’s still sleeping and waiting. Sometimes, it surfaces; but with the soul, it’s too weak to do anything.”

Buffy wiped her eyes with the back of her hand. “Why her?”

He looked over his shoulder at her, clearly confused.

“Why who?”

“Darla. Why could you love her when you didn’t have a soul…and you couldn’t love me?”

Buffy didn’t think she had ever seen Angel look so ashamed before. He ducked his head, rested his forehead against the wall, and choked out his answer so quietly that she had to draw closer in order to hear him.

“You were the only love I ever had that was pure, Buffy. When the soul left…when the demon took over…the memory of that love threatened it.”

“And it wanted to kill me.”

“And it wanted to kill you,” he said.

Suddenly, Buffy wasn’t sure she wanted to go any further. It was too confusing, too painful. The things Angel was telling her seemed almost contradictory, but at the same time, they made almost too much sense. Part of her wanted to run out of the apartment; part of her wished she had never come.

But the part of her that had compelled her to come—the part that had made William hers—wouldn’t let her give up so easily. Because, that part of her was not a coward. She forced the question out.

“If you had wanted to…could you have subdued it? The demon? Could you have pushed it aside and not done all those things you wanted to do? Even if they felt good…even if there wasn’t any guilt afterward…could you have stopped?”

Angel spun to face her then. He grabbed her by her shoulders and turned her so that her back was now against the wall. His face leaned into hers, his dark eyes searching and frantic.

“Buffy, don’t do it. Don’t even think about it—”

“What?” she asked baffled. Although his grip on her shoulders bordered on painful, it never even occurred to her to push him away.

“Maybe it was wrong of me to lie to you. But damn it, I wouldn’t have told you the truth even now, if I didn’t know what you were considering, how confused you are and what you might do because of it. Whatever you had with him—whatever happened with William in 1880—Spike isn’t that man now.”

“You said he’s the same person,” she argued, and shoved him away. “You said that you are.”

“I said that part of me remained behind. For God’s sake, Buffy, you saw me without the soul; you saw all the things I was capable of doing. All the things I was capable of enjoying while I was doing them. Do you think Spike is any different? Willow told me about that chip in his head. But do you think he would be any good without it to hold him back? I guarantee you, he would go right back to his old ways. He’s a killer, Buffy. So am I—but at least I can feel sorry for it now. He can’t, and he doesn’t.”

Buffy nodded slowly, acknowledging everything he had said. Even agreeing with it. Still, that single small part of her mind whispered insistently: But he’s still mine. Whatever part of him that’s still William belongs to me. I can have him if I want him.

If she wanted him…

~*~ ~*~ ~*~

 
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