InsaneJournal

Fic: DISTANCE (pt 48 of ?) - redacted
This section of the fic has been redacted. I've left it here as an out-take.



Previously

"I know how he makes you feel, I know how hard this is for you."

"It isn't hard for me, it's hard for him. He's the one who's suffering, and I just make it worse."

"We're doing everything we can to help him. We'll go to L.A. today—in a little while."

"He was agitated and out of it but when he took me in his arms, he was happy too. But he was so out of it, he was like ... like a little kid. Just trusting me. I knew I should leave him be, but I thought this might be the last time I'd have him. The one who's mine. Because when he's back in control of himself ... he made it clear. I'm nowhere."

Hundreds of slayers crammed in, stinking up the place with their girlsweat and their menstrual blood and their clashing perfumes. All this big power, and bloody Rupert had let sweet little Fred die because he had no imagination ... he was prejudiced ... heartless ... ruthless. Spike couldn't make up his mind which, but the man was grade A shite.

Yeah, Faith had taken it on herself to ride over the hill with her cavalry at the last moment ... if he was to believe that.

He'd told them he believed it; Faith sounded true enough on the phone. Except that nothing here could be trusted.

He had to get back to the scene.

And he'd overslept—the sun was out again. Unless it was always out here. Maybe that was part of the place, this Wolfram & Hart construct, a Scotland where it was always sunny, 24/7. That would be one for the books.

In the kitchen, all of the girls looked at him, like he'd just strode into their locker room. Most said hello. Some smiled.

A tall older woman appeared, apron on over a green cardigan, wooden spoon in hand. "You don't look like you're reportin' for work." She had the accent of the Orkneys, the ruddy cheeks to match.

"Guess I'm not, today."

Her lip curled a little. "I'm Mrs Ambler. This'll be about the fourth time I've introduced myself to you in the last—"

"Yeah, things're tough all over. Any chance of a hot cuppa blood?"

She gave him a marked once-over. "If you're not going to work, I'm not going to feed you!"

Before he could protest, she waved the spoon at the ceiling. "It's your bonnie lass up in the tower keeps your blood! Go ask her for your breakfast an' get out of my way if you're not goin' to be useful!"

"Bonnie? Who's Bonnie?"

Behind him, Dawn said, "That would be Buffy."

Buffy.

"She's no lass of mine."

"Spike, you've got to talk to her." Dawn gave out the patented Snacksize Eye-Candy Stare. The one she'd used to get him to spend his own beer and cigarette money on pizza and soda and trinkets for her, the one that she'd used to wheedle him into letting her stay up all night or doing her French homework so she could just copy it in her own writing. "I mean, c'mon, this is getting really stupid. Ancient history or not—you have amnesia, Spike. You don't know what you don't know. You have to see her."

None of this mattered. It was a waste of time, but then he knew what happened when the victim struggled in the trap—it got tighter and tighter. Stay relaxed, and one might get free.

He shrugged. "As you like, Bit."

The part about her being the lass in the tower came clear when, having followed the Bit through what felt like a mile of drafty reception halls and corridors, she delivered him to the base of a steep winding stone stair. "Her apartment is at the top. She's in there. Just go in."

"How can I?"

"You're already invited. Just go talk to her."

He started up the stairs, but only—only, you Wolfram & Hart bastards—because he was hungry.

She'd managed a sort of cat-nap, a couple of hours of self-conscious, shallow sleep. Then given up and come into the kitchen to brew coffee. She was drinking it by the window, letting the sun warm her bare, aching body, when a light tap behind her turned her around.

"Spike! Oh my God, what are you—"

He was blocking the doorway, so she couldn't get out without encountering him. The pair of dishtowels hanging from the oven door handle were too small to cover her and she'd just look foolish if she snatched them up.

He'd seen her naked before. "You should've knocked."

"Sis said it wasn't necessary." He was cool, distant. She couldn't remember him acting so disinterested in her, never, never. An uncanny chill shimmered through her; it was as if something alien was animating his body. Something that walked it and talked it and didn't know her at all.

"She wasn't supposed to send you up here."

"No? I guess you'd say that."

"You guess I'd—?"

"Was told you had some blood. Could I have some?"

Far from ogling her, he only took her in in little glimpses, as if the sight of her might burn his eyes. His whole manner was vague, smoldering.

Paranoid.

"Oh, you're hungry?" She went to lean against the refrigerator. Crossed her arms. "The blood is in the freezer. Why don't you come and take some?"

He was keeping out of the way of the big parallelogram of sunlight spilling in through the window. Though it didn't reach where she was standing. The refrigerator was outside its border.

He didn't move from his stance just inside the doorway. Hands thrust in his pockets, head low.

Like a stranger.

"Come on. It's right here. Plenty of it."

"Don't mean to have anythin' to do with you."

"You need to feed."

"Need to get out of this! You—you're the honey trap they put at the middle of this snare. They think all they need to do is show me Buffy's tits an' they'll have me."

"They? Who's this they?"

He rolled his eyes. "You belong to 'em!"

"Do I? Who? Who do I belong to?"

"Wolfram an' Hart."

"The evil law firm? That Angel was heading up?"

She didn't know which of her apprehensions was worse—that he'd avoided her because he hated her, or that he was convinced of the unreality of everything here.

One theory didn't preclude the other, anyhow.

She settled herself more firmly against the refrigerator door, which was cool against her sticky skin. Its vibration hummed through her frame.

"Was more to that than met the eye. But got no time to stand around tellin' you your own business. I'll have nothing to do with it. You might as well cover yourself up. Not interested."

"Really?" She cocked a hip. "I will, when you get out of the way."

Still he didn't move.

"I'm a honey trap, huh? I wish they'd told me. I'd have combed my hair. Maybe put on some concealer."

That roused his attention. He stared at her now—furtively, out of half-lidded eyes, but fully. It was hard to just stand there, naked in the morning glow, and absorb this Spike's hostile gaze. But she tipped up her chin and took it.

They didn't know their information on him—on what would move him, what would fuck him up—was obsolete.

And did they imagine she made an attractive sight for him? With her hair scraped back in a sloppy ponytail, two black eyes and a purpled swollen nose? She was too thin, too pale, with black-and-blues dotting her flesh all over. Her chest and breasts and arms covered in gooseflesh, blotchy with blushes.

There were recent bite scars on her neck.

She was a mess.

Not at all a good likeness of the Buffy Summers who'd once obsessed him. They should've made her golden and tawny, with that little touch of puppyish roundness she'd had when he first knew her. Unblemished, inviolate, not beautiful but so stunningly pretty. That would've been a temptation. Not that he'd have succumbed, because he was onto their game. But he'd have been more interested in a good look.

"I guess they were just counting on you being attracted to the power. To the Buffy-essence. The form not mattering so much? Right? Except you don't seem to think I really am Buffy. I don't interest you. I don't even worry you. So why not just come over here and get the blood?"

"You're a slayer."

"You're afraid of some random slayer? You?"

Something prickled through him as he looked at her, something that began at the base of his spine and radiated up and down all through him. An airy dangling sensation, like when he'd been in The Deeper Well, confronting that massive absence.

Formidable.

Dreadful.

But this woman wasn't an absence. She was the entire opposite of that.

"You're not ... not random."

He blinked, tried to clear his head, to grasp again the firm feeling he'd come in with, that this was all a sham, a trick, a puzzle he could outfox to escape from this limbo.

But it wasn't working. Doubt crept in, an infection eating away at the edges of his certainty. Confused images, voices, bled into the extremities of his consciousness. He refused them, but they boiled away there, just beyond comprehension.

"No, I'm not random, Spike. I'm very specific. We both are. I've met more of your specifics in the last few weeks than I ever dreamed of. I've met up with aspects of you that you've kept hidden even from yourself. You've made your impression on me."

She stepped forward then, closing half the distance between them. In the clear morning light she was so distinct. He couldn't avert his eyes now.

"Let me show you." She pointed to her face. "Here's where you broke my nose. I let it happen because I wanted you to know that I have no more defenses against you. And here," she turned her head, pushing back the loose hair from her neck, "Here's where you bit and fed from me. I wanted you to have me that way too. No defenses. And these marks," she held out her arms, showing off hickies in the turn of her elbows, in the soft curve of her armpits, along her breasts, "these are your kisses. You devour me. And look," She thrust out her hips, so he could see not just her curly mons but the insides of her thighs, spotted with bruises, and the pinky-red inner pooch of her swollen sex. "We fucked last night so hard, so ... magnificently ... I'm still wearing it." She turned, showed him her behind, the violet imprints of his fingers. "All of this you see on me, it's you. Look at me, Spike. I'm not hiding anything from you anymore."

There she stood, pallid and contused, delicate, wounded, a flush bridling her chest. She'd never been so bold with him about her body, when they weren't in the midst of a bout. Never stood before him like this, not immodest but honest. He stared at each place she pointed, stymied with wonder, and the voices and faces and sensations bubbled like acid at the edges of his mind.

There she stood, all undefended. All that strength shining off her. All that strength and surety that he remembered.

"We've become lovers since our reunion. Finally. I was afraid to take you, with amnesia. I had doubts about it, because I didn't know if you'd still want me when all your memories returned. But ... I couldn't refuse you anymore. I couldn't refuse us. I love you, I loved you in Sunnydale and I love you now. I hope when this ordeal is over for you that you'll want me too. But more than that, I just want you to be all right."

She tipped up her chin, stared him back. Her eyes were full of everything he'd ever known about her.

Inside him, something cracked, began to collapse. He tried to preserve it—it was what composed his righteous purpose.

He told himself this was nothing, she was nothing, that couldn't be counterfeited, faked. Wolfram & Hart could do anything.

But the conviction wouldn't hold. The cracks strained against the voices, the great population of forgotten things.

It all came thundering down. Every surety he was clinging to, engulfed in a firestorm of comprehension that left him stripped.

The battle was over.

Angel was dead.

And Wolfram & Hart weren't in this place.

This was Buffy.

He fell at her feet.

Next-->