InsaneJournal

Fic: DISTANCE (pt 49 of ?) - redacted
This section of the fic has been redacted. I've left it here as an out-take.




Previously

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.

He shook, his head down, hands curled around his skull, teeth clacking together in his mouth like they were out on some windy tundra.

Questions unutterable piled up on her tongue, she tried to raise him, but he only buried his face against her belly, his body shaking, expelling sobs. The grip of his hands on her hips, the pressure and jerking of his body, the harsh crying, filled her with awe and fear.

She sank down to face him. Taking his head in her hands, she pressed her lips to his flooded eyelids, his forehead, the sharp points of his cheeks. Spike's cool skin was papery, his gaze unfocused. The air rattled in his throat.

She gathered him in tight. They rocked slowly together. He keened softly, and she didn't know if what was happening to him was good or bad.

He kept his head down, arms lashed around her; permitted her to hold him, but made no sign of recognition, and for moments that seemed endless, she thought he'd fallen back inside himself, out of her reach, out of his own.

It was a long time before he quieted.

At last he shifted, wiped roughly at his eyes with the heel of his hand, coughed. When he met her gaze, his eyes were bloodshot, strangely sunken.

But clear. Clearer than she'd seen them yet.

"Buffy." He put up a hand, fingers ghosting over her bruised cheek, her scarred neck. "Slayer."

It drew her heart up into her throat, to be called that way. She saw him at last, the man she'd had to part from too soon. This was him, all of him. His gaze. His voice.

She whispered, lest too much noise disturb the fragile return. "Here I am. I missed you, so much. Welcome back, Spike."

His gaze searched hers, incredulity, awe, expressions she recognized. "You came for me."

"I did."

He winced, a sharp sob that curled him like a blow. "No one came for Angel. Not in time. He's dead."

She'd known it, and still wasn't ready to know it. Not with Spike before her in such extremis.

"You were with him. You fought, you were so badly hurt, burned, but you survived. You remember that now, don't you?"

"I shouldn't be here. Angel went through. They all went through, no backwards glances. I couldn't get to him."

"Spike, that doesn't matter."

"Nothing matters more." His eyes closed. He might've been falling away, though he was right there with her.

Taking his face in her hands, she said, "Spike, I love you."

"Know you do." He smoothed her hair back from her face. A gesture that made her nervous; it was almost avuncular, almost distancing.

"You remember everything now."

"Know you've been so good to me these weeks while I been mad. Poor sweet girl."

"You're back now. It'll be all right."

"This won't hold. Can feel it. Practically see it, the madness, it's hurtlin' back towards me. Pieces can't stay together. Somethin' in me's shattered, an' stands to reason."

"That can't be. You're good now, and we'll figure out how to keep you that way."

He shook his head. "There's no end to this. I'm not meant to be here. Was supposed to go with him. Was too slow. Failed in my courage."

"What? No! What are you saying?"

He was trembling all over, wracked with a cold fever. His pupils had gone so wide that the blue was nothing but a thin ring around each one, and the whites had gone filmy. "Failed, me. Lost him. He'll never come back to you."

"He wasn't going to. He's not the one I was waiting for. Anyway, it's not your fault."

"I'm no hero, an' not fit for any of this."

"That is not true. It's not true."

She could see it happen, the confusion stealing back over him.

He was letting it happen.

"Spike—stay with me! I'll help you—we'll help you."

"Do what you like with me, Slayer. Put me away somewhere, or keep me, whatever I'm good for, that'll please you best. Just don't let me hurt you anymore." With a visible effort that pulled his features into a grimace, he focused on her again. As she watched, he slipped in and out of game face three times in rapid succession, each time with a low hoarse cry. "Don't have to prove anythin' more to me with your body."

"Spike, what's happening to you? You're not even fighting it."

She didn't know if he heard this, or anything else. He slipped out of her grip, flopped sideways on the floor, convulsed like a caught fish. Then he was still, game-faced, the golden eyes open, blank.

"Spike? Oh God. Spike?"

At the same time, a knock at the flat door. She hesitated. Then shouted, "In here!"

Willow appeared; taking in the sight of them, she rushed forward. "What happened?"

He ... he was back, for a few minutes. Wholly here. At least, I think he was whole. But he said it wouldn't last, that he was broken." Anger churned up, she wanted to grab and shake him until he woke up, so she could shake him some more. "He said he'd been a coward. Will, for the first time, in any of his ... varieties. He didn't try."

She knew it couldn't be true. He would never have been a coward. If that was what he believed he remembered, then the amnesia couldn't have fully lifted.

Spike, the real one, her Spike, would never succumb to despair.

Willow had been examining him, as if he was a man and she was a doctor. Buffy couldn't imagine what was to be learned that way; you couldn't exactly take a vampire's pulse. She straightened up now. "Get dressed, Buffy. We need to take him to the alley now. It's the only chance."

"You know what's wrong with him?"

"Not exactly. But I feel ... something I can't describe. Because it's literally undescribable. We've got to go."

"I'll phone for the plane."

"No time for the plane. I'll get us there."


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