Trial by Fire  

It was only about two and a half hours to Newcastle, they should be in before nine--plus missing the rush hour traffic so maybe sooner.  He hoped it was enough time. Enough time for Buffy to cool down.

By the time they got to Leeds, she was shaking, Xander noticed it first when she smoothed her hair back with trembling fingers.  And he heard positively, yes it was her teeth rattling she was shaking so bad he was afraid she would bite her tongue.

He reached around in the space between the front seats pulled a bottle of water form his stash and handed it to her.

Oddly he recognized the symptoms as some stage of the grief he had gone through after Anya had been killed.  Body so confused it went into shock.

“Please, Buffy, drink the water...”

She obeyed and after a couple of swallows she twisted the cap back and then very, very calmly started to crumple up and cry.  Just quiet and soundless.  She wiped tears away and gripped herself hard enough to squeak out:

“He’s alive?  You saw him last night right...hiding but alive right?”

“If it’s him Buffy...can’t be sure...”

“That’s right, that’s right...can’t be sure...”then she stopped remembering the touch, the kiss...and the car was still. 

“It’s him.”              

She sounded so sure Xander didn’t dare ask how she knew just drove the car.

By the time they got to Darlington Buffy appeared to have calmed considerably, certainly enough to form at least one coherent sentence.

“Why did he do it Xander?”

“Don’t know Buffy...but...just take it slow...I...I know he loved you...”

Buffy turned away from him and looked out the window.  Loved; was that the key word--past tense of love, is loved.

“Just ask him, o.k. just...ask...”

Buffy continued looking out the window--but he took her silence as assent.

*

So he was unprepared to have his best slayer friend jump from the car when they were within three blocks of Spike’s well (potential Spike) store.  And Xander realized she had been planning that.  He was stuck with the car in the street and would never be able to catch her on foot as she raced ahead.

Shit.  Oh god he hoped she would stay cool, and he realized he was feeling sorry for Spike.

*

Store was closed windows boarded up, door shut.  Solid oak huh?  Buffy looked up at the second floor and saw the light on.  She didn’t even bother to knock. 

She stepped back a few feet and then with a running jump landed both feet solidly in the middle of the door like, well maybe she’d done this kind of thing before.

She stepped off the door and into the dimly lit shop and stopped when she heard someone walking across the floor upstairs.  She looked up and then crossed to the middle doors separating the duplex, opening them easily and then took the stairs two at a time, when she reached the landing she saw him waiting for her in the doorway leading to his flat.

He was a silhouette really, lit from behind, but his body, the shadow shape of it resembled Spike, but wasn’t--and how do you change your bone structure?  So for a moment she was unsure and then he said.

“Hello Buffy.”

And it was him. It was.  It wasn’t Spike’s voice, it sounded like Willem, but it was him what he sounded like from the inside.

“Spike.” She said softly.

And she heard an intake of breath and then a soft.

“Come on in...”

And he disappeared into the dark of his flat.

She followed him through the door.

He seemed so sad it deflated her anger somewhat, he didn’t seem like he was gloating, or spiteful...just so sad...

She only had one question. Well for now.

“Why?”

He was sitting on the arm of an easy chair, like his legs wouldn’t be strong enough to support him through this.

“You want the short answer?”

“I want the real one.”

Spike looked inside and saw, all, all the incredible long list of reasons but in the end spoke the truth.

“Angel.”

Buffy started a little.  It...it wasn’t what she had expected to hear, she half expected to hear something about how it was best for her, or la da...but here it was simple.  Angel.

“You were my friend, Spike, you have been the best friend to me that I’ve ever had or could hope to have, I trusted you more than I’ve ever trusted anyone.  I believed in you.  I loved you...”

He looked down at this.  The room was in shadows--just a single light by the window so it was hard to see what he was feeling.  She moved around to get a better look at him.

“I suffered, thinking you were dead, knowing how you died; I suffered for years, and years and years.”  She stopped for a moment to take a breath.    “You had it in your power, with one phone call, just one, to take me out of that hell.”

He put his head in his hands, but said nothing.

“Even if you believed I didn’t love you...even if you believed that in your bones...you knew...you knew I was your friend, that I would back you and be your friend come whatever.  And a friend deserves...one phone call...”

Buffy heard a squeak on the stairs and she knew Xander had arrived but was waiting out of sight but within earshot--for who, for her, for him?

Spike was speaking now.

“Don’t you get it Buffy? Don’t you see?  Not everything in this sodding bloody world is about you.”  When he spoke his voice was calm but his words cut.

“This was about me, what I needed,  that night, before it all happened, you came to me, you pinned me down until I confessed what I was feeling, how much I loved you, what being with you, just holding you meant to me...do you remember what you said?”

Buffy looked down at her feet.

“You said  something like, don’t worry, or you got nothing to be scared about and the next thing I see is you locking lips with the vamp what left you years before, and had barely kept tabs--and you drop everything, really to kiss him, in  way, frankly you’ve never kissed me...and I realized right then that you never would.  Something broke in me then Buffy that’s never been put to rights...I could never call you, ask you for help, not ever again...believe it or not I am a survivor...and just being around, loving you like that would kill me slow but sure...”

Buffy was confused and at a loss and struggled to find her way into the argument...

“You’re talking about a conversation, about something I did, just before the biggest battle of our lives--emotions run high...you can’t bring that up unless you also remember the night before...don’t...do...do you remember, that last night in the basement?”

And here she moved in close to him and laid a hand on his shoulder--and then was suddenly shocked by it--he was alive she was touching Spike.  Her words stopped as she just touched and stroked his shoulder and arm like a little girl being taught how to touch a pup.  Just be gentle, see? Feel how soft...

“Oh god Spike...I’ve missed you so much...you’ve been the best friend to me...” 

He felt her need to hold him and if he didn’t do something quick she would exercise slayer strength on his ass and if he felt her body up against his--he pushed her roughly away and stepped around her.

The words burst from him:  “God slayer, are you trying to kill me?  And what about now?  Remember what brought you back into my life...your little quest?  So you and Angel can be together--“

Her brow pulled together as she struggled to remember how it was put to Willem that night.  This was more about helping Angel find peace than about setting him free for her, (but hasn’t that been at the back of your mind--a tiny hope?)

Instead of an answer she went on the attack.

“Is that why you won’t help him?  You have it in your power to help someone and you won’t cuz, what?  It’s payback time?  Angel has spent the last fifteen years dedicating his life to helping the world, saving the world and just what have you been doing all that time?  Hiding away--“

“--You wanna know how I help save the world? We write stories Buffy.  Some of us have found that the only way to be in  this bloody world is to rewrite it.  Just us we small little atoms of nothing...not big like you or holy or royal or working with the presidential seal just a handful of dreamers.  And what of your world that...is so...completely insane we have rebuild it daily and save it story by story until it resembles something, anything like what’s going on in our hearts, like anything that feels real...until your world feels good enough to go on living in... Until love does what it supposed to!”

“I never asked you to love me!”

The words burst from her, tore from her really and it must have hurt to say, to reach inside her and speak something that was hurting so.  And he respected for it.  He did.  Voice softer he stepped in closer.

“You did luv...you did...you do all the time, not just me but everyone...you ask everyone to love you, and we do, we do haven’t you ever noticed how everyone loves you?  But it’s all right luv...”

He wanted to stroke her hair so bad...had to stop his hand.  But he stepped in closer.

“It’s all right, I’m not complaining about that, it just...is...and it’s all right to know it cuz that’s THE way.  You’re like a small goddess on earth what needs our love to do your job.  You turn our love into the light that cuts up the monsters.  Your love cut up the monster in me and that’s a fact, so it’s not bad but it is true...it is the way of things, the way it all works.”

Here he did stroke her cheek.

“But I could never be like Xander, I could never bury it somewhere so’s I could still stay nearby...can’t live that way...I want it all...I always want it all...thas’ who I am...so let me go Buffy...”

He stroked her cheekbone his thumb...little warm trembles raced each other toward her heart.

“I knew...somewhere...I knew it felt like you...” suddenly she needed to see him, his face his blue eyes

“Let me your face Spike, let me hear your voice, please...put away this glamour or charm or whatever...don’t say these things to me looking like a stranger...”

Immediately he stepped back and involuntarily his hand slipped to the amulet he wore under cover of clothes.

Too late he had given himself away.

With slayer speed she snatched at his shirt grabbing the amulet ripping both off his body in one tearing rent.

Willem was gone.  Image of a healthy man with brown hair, brown eyes was gone and in his place stood a...monster.

It crouched as if it made to run and then froze and slowly straightened to face her down.

She stared baffled and involuntarily checked her inside jacket for the concealed weapons she always carried.

The monster noted it and chuffed.

“Well...it’s done, didn’t want you to find out--just remember that, before you scream yourself silly--“

That voice...it was horse, like he had been shouting or talking with the scarred tissue of laryngitis...but that voice...it was Spike.

It was Spike.

Buffy stepped in closer and she could see his protective reflexes told him to back up, find a dark corner don’t let her see you like this--but he stood his ground.  He stayed still under her scrutiny; he waited until she saw it.

Burns.  Massive, massive tissue damage, one third of his face almost melted from burns and this was the scar tissue that covered the burns the damage, but also showed the extremity of the problem.  The bones over his right eye pushed downward almost obscuring his vision.  In contrast the left side of face was by comparison, fine...there was scar tissue but it was still him, she could recognize him.  She could see him in his eye.

“Spike.”  She whispered.

“Yeah...”

She couldn’t hold it any longer, backed up a few feet and vomited on his rug.

“Bloody Hell.”

Xander came through the open doorway at a bit of a rush at the sound of the vomiting and froze in mid stride

“Hey Harris...”  Spike said dimly.

Xander just stared, the face was horrible...but the body too...Spike’s chest was covered in scar tissue, the muscle on his right pectoral had been consumed by fire, the flesh on his right arm reduced to almost half his normal volume...the fingers on his right hand were missing but the thumb, index finger and palm were still in tact. 

He was a car wreck it was horrible, horrible something horrible that happened to someone you knew but he couldn’t look away...whereas Buffy could not look at him at all. 

Her head was between her knees, and she had finished emptying her stomach...but she couldn’t look at him.

Spike looked at Xander and quipped “Say where you get the great glass eye mate?  Who’d ever thought we would be able to talk shop, eh?”

Xander started to cry.  Just small manly weepy water...but still it was there...pity.

Well that just made Spike mad.

“I didn’t go looking for you!  Didn’t ask you to come, you just remember that!  You sods!  You blithering blubbering idiots!  You think this is something to cry about?  I’ll give you something to cry about.  The pain for one--not even on the scale, not even a word, or a hundred, or a hundred thousand would be adequate to describe those first two years.”

“Stop...”  Buff breathed “Please...”

“Stop, as in stop living?  Or stop as in stop talking, stop expressing meself--cuz that would be fairly the same I expect.  Well let me say this, one: stop with the pity, cuz I’m ‘god’s masterpiece, I’m god’s bloody pet project, a masterpiece of irony and why not?  Why not?  What’s more difficult, more hideous to contemplate--what I did to the world?  Or what the world did to me? Or has it just finally come up even?”

He took a deep breath and when he spoke again, his voice lost some of its harsh bravado. He was talking mad and that was no good for his own sake--that kind of anger just sent him on a downward spiral.   He tried again; he tried to talk to them, his old battle companions, he tried to talk to them...and not at them.

“After all these thousands of years of history it’s still all about royalty isn’t it?  About who is on World’s short list.  Punish the peasant, the bloody upstart and the chosen ones get off with the guarantee of true love and punish anyone who makes up their own mind.  Or...or more frightening...is this my reward?  I’ve been round and round every scenario but the bottom line is, here I am,  I’m still alive, got the demon burned to bright along with a goodly bit of flesh and here I am brought back as what I truly fear and truly despise, respectively.  Being human... and being a monster.  And this world, the tough task master that it is--pulled it off.”

He sat down on the arm of the chair and spoke low to them so they knew it was the truth.

“But I wouldn’t even be alive, if I didn’t want to be, I never, ever would have made it out of the mud slide I ended up in that day--don’t doubt it, cuz if I wanted to be dead, believe me I’d be dead...no I’m still alive cuz it’s better. Alive is better.  

Oh it’s hard, let me tell you...and some days is very, very hard but I am not sorry; not in the long end.  It’s better than hell.”

And here Spike addressed Buffy kneeling now on the floor but still not looking at him.  She was crying, he knew, but she was tough, didn’t her hand pull back the curtain on the wizard? Something he would have never done.  But now it felt o.k. to have the mask off.  Well...not o.k....never was much good at subterfuge.  But he talked to her, like parts of it were o.k.

“Cuz I’m not sorry, not in the long end, I’m not sorry I loved you or that I still do--it got me out of hell Buffy, and even living here like this...this is better than that, you have no idea, and never should.  Cuz as happy an’ whole as you an’ Angel are--I would never want to be you.  I would never want to be a slave.  Cuz tha’s how you both act most times, tied to the illusion that your life’s not your own.  Destiny.  Chosen.  Chosen for special pleasures, special pains.  Royal.  You could have love right there, right on your plate and you would say it nay--wrong color.  Like that sad story of the bloke on the roof of his house during a flood praying for rescue, all kinds of craft come by to keep him safe and holds off--cuz...he’s waiting for...what? A helicopter painted pink and nothing other will do?  So What?  So love comes by and I take it--I do, in whatever color or shape and that’s what’s brought me here...but...it was...what I wanted to do...” 

Spike sighed

“See, and here’s the thing; I know you love me.  I know it.  We touch each other and we scream for each other body and soul.  I know you love me. But it’s like the princess accidentally grazing the hand of the lowly...you love me; you just don’t want to love me.  Your head tells you to stick to the blue blood and your soul and body begs for me.  It took me years to figure out why I got so many confused messages--it’s cuz you’re confused.  You’re just ashamed to love me...cuz I’m not a...pink helicopter...”

He stopped, a little taken with the imagery then shook it off saying--

“I know you love me.  Hell, you love everybody...thas’ not it.  The thing is...will you let me love you...”

Buffy stared at the floor, at the red carpet, vomit, twirls of colors a mixed message--what was he saying?  No, no, it was complicated...it...it...

Then Spike was talking again and he sounded so tired.

“You get it.  I need a drink.  You want a drink? 

Buffy says nothing

“Harris..”

“Wouldn’t mind a beer.”

“Good for you.”

Spike smiled, but it was twisted by the scarring and now a double negative and did an ironic smile in the ironic mask made it sincere?

He stopped to finish his thought before getting the drinks.

“So the world, and the energy in it may try to dust me daily for using my free will and standing up to storm the castle, but I still say it’s my right to do it.”

Buffy finally, finally looked at him, and he had to look down for a moment until he could control himself, to look past her look of woe...to look inside, to be inside her just one more time.               

 “Buffy, don’t feel sorry for me.  I’m free.  No demon.  It’s gone, or....here but blended in.  I’m free...I feel what I want, when I want...my feelings are my own, may be squashed like a bug but...free.”

Buffy ran. 

Wasn’t even aware of how she got to her feet or out the door, or down the steps just suddenly found her self running in St. James Park.

*