herself_nyc (herself_nyc) wrote in herself_nyc_fic, @ 2008-02-19 10:14:00 |
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Entry tags: | distance: redacted part |
Fic: DISTANCE (pt 62 of ?) - redacted
This section of the fic has been redacted. I've left it here as an out-take.
Previously
"Are you all right?"
It was, seemingly, the question du jour.
"For the moment. Need to get out of this place soon though. As I was just tellin' the very concerned an' conscientious Harris. Who's promised to look us out some hell-hole appropriate to our talents."
"Good. I want to get out of here too. I'm really not the type who should lurk in her mountain fastness, y'know?"
He laughed, and she picked herself up and pounced on him.
Before he could roll her over, she said. "So you really remember everything?"
"Reckon so."
"Is it weird? I mean, you remember that you didn't remember? Did I seem different, like a different person? Without that background? Do you even know what I'm talking about?"
"Yeah, I know. An' yeah, you were different. So was I."
"We got to be two people who met and fell in love."
"Suppose we did. You like that."
"I do like it."
"Opened my eyes on you in that alley, an' knew you were somehow for me, before I even learned your name."
He could feel how she thrilled to this. She still wasn't used to love talk. Her pleasure at it made her gooey. She smiled, and her eyelashes dipped and trembled.
"And you really ... you really never forgot me? After Illyria took you away. How long was it, for you?"
"I don't really know, Buffy. Was a time with the god while she made wars in far-off places with me at her side. An' then I was able to get away, an' there was the journey. But couldn't keep count of the days."
She went solemn then. He knew this would bother her for a long time, that he couldn't tell her more, couldn't make it all clear and transparent. Funny, because back in Sunnydale, she'd never cared to know anything about him. Even when he returned with his soul, she'd never asked him exactly how he got it.
But love had made her curious, and anxious. Love made her need to be reassured.
"You thinkin' I couldn't possibly hold onto you through all of it? But you held onto me."
"My memory of you. I never thought I'd ever see you again. And it's been fourteen months here. Which is a long time, but also no time at all. Whereas for you, it's been years, hasn't it? I mean, one way or the other, it's been"
"Pet. Didn't you tell me the other day that you are me? Don't you think that works both ways? Know me well enough by now to realize that once I start in to love, I don't quit."
She sat up then, separating him from her warmth, her sticky delicious flesh. "I just want to know ...." She stopped. "I shouldn't be thinking this. I really shouldn't."
"What?"
"I mean, there are no guarantees, are there?" She looked at him, the blaze banked in her eyes. "What if we're just going through the motions? What if we really just think we're still ready for each other, but ... too much time has gone by? You're trying to fit yourself in because you have nowhere else. And I'm trying ... because I have no one else."
He didn't know right away how to take this. He supposed it shouldn't surprise him, that they should both cycle out of loving certainty into these spasms of agony. He was accustomed to loving, but less to being loved in return. And Buffy was schooled in disappointment and abandonment. "That what you really think?"
"No. Maybe. I'm crazy! Because when I start to feel happy, I'm afraid." She flailed. "It's so much easier to be alone, lonelyto mourn! I'm really really good at that!"
At least she was talking. Her way was usually to bottle up. To go with the fists option. "You forgotten already, how I told you to have a care with my heart?"
She stilled. "Wh-what?"
"We talked about that, didn't we, before I got taken?"
"... yes."
"You're so worried that I'm too far gone to remember you, but here you are forgettin' how we fixed things between us before. Don't you remember you bared your whole self to me, skin an' heart an' soul? How could you forget that? An' yet you have, if you can think for a minute that you're not so good at lovin' me as at mourning me. Come here, you silly little bitch. Could thrash you for a little fool." He pulled her into his arms, and she went like melting.
He wasn't sure if the vibration she made against him was laughter or sobs.
"You know I've got a prodigious memory for everythin' about you, everythin' you ever said or did or looked at me, goin' right back to the beginning. I know your tricks an' your manners."
She nodded into his throat.
"An' I recall that I promised to say you another sonnet, after Willow's spell. Didn't I?"
She lifted her face. Cloudy and bemused, wondering. Wonderful. He kissed her. "You mind this now, because it's for us, yeah?"
"I'm listening."
He closed his eyes, to summon it up, but couldn't bear not to look at her as he murmured the lines he'd told over to himself so often in the dark places. "O, never say that I was false of heart,
Though absence seem'd my flame to qualify.
As easy might I from myself depart
As from my soul, which in thy breast doth lie:
That is my home of love: if I have ranged,
Like him that travels I return again,
Just to the time, not with the time exchanged,
So that myself bring water for my stain.
Never believe, though in my nature reign'd
All frailties that besiege all kinds of blood,
That it could so preposterously be stain'd,
To leave for nothing all thy sum of good;
For nothing this wide universe I call,
Save thou, my rose; in it thou art my all."
Her heart beat faster now, the throb of it against his own body somehow beating time to the lines. When she sighed he knew she'd been giving him such total attention that she'd held her breath.
"Been savin' that one up for you. My one rose in all the universe."
"That really is about us, isn't it?"
"Reckon so."
"I reckon so too. I want you to teach it to me, I want to memorize it."
"All right."
"Your soul, in my breast, your home of love." She wriggled closer, taking hold of him. "There's something else of yours I'd like to have in something else of mine."
In the wing chair opposite his desk, Buffy flexed her hand and wrist, newly freed from the cast. She was looking, Giles had no choice but to admit, beautiful: lighter, happier, younger than he'd seen her in some time.
Than, all right, yes, than the last time Spike had been here in her bed.
Giles had hopedhe'd hoped it often before, but never more than in the last yearthat Buffy might find happiness, real off-time happiness, somehow. Through new love, or failing that, new friendships, new interests. But none of those came easily to her; she'd done some of her best work in the last year, but when not working, she became shadowy. She lived her ordinary life on stand-by.
She had no ordinary life.
He was inured to it: his slayer would never be like other people. She loved her vampire, and that was all there was to it. So it was just as well that Spike had found his way to return, even if, as Giles suspected, he was more altered than Buffy yet realized.
It would be nothing but cruel to try to deny her anymore, to talk her out of it. Cruel and pointless. Spike was so much a part of her.
And how could he not respect a fellow who had done all Spike had done? Most recently this Hadean journey back. They'd spoken about it, two days ago when Xander was taking Buffy to get her bone set. Spike had confessed to breaking her wrist, confessed to the impulse to fight her that had been outside his control. His honesty wasn't the only thing that lent him gravitas; when they were together, Giles couldn't escape the sense of Spike's great age and experience. In the old days he'd felt that Spike was a child, just as much of a child as the Scoobies, wild and irresponsible and no use communicating with. No longer. Now he could make Giles feel young and foolish. He'd spokennot very easilyof his journey, keeping it vague, never boasting. Been more forthcoming in answer to Giles' questions about Illyria, and about the situation in L.A., the one he'd apparently so misjudged. Spike wasn't much more of a fan of Angel's decisions in that time than Giles himself. But at least it was all clearer now.
Clearer too Giles' sense that Spike was trying very very hard just to be recognizably Spike. He didn't have the shakes, not literally, but there was something of uncertainty in his outline, and Giles had lived long enough among warriors to pick out the signs of insecurity and repression.
For the last fifteen minutes Buffy had listened, twisting her freshly-healed wrist, while he'd outlined his concerns about Spike. She hadn't interrupted or objected or made a face. Xander listened tooGiles was speaking for him as well. She crossed and recrossed her legs, smoothing her skirther bare knees over her boot tops were, Giles noticed, rather red, as if she'd been kneeling recently, and no, he didn't want to go there in his mind. It was hard not to, because Buffy wore sex like a perfume, like a pretty frock; she couldn't help showing it off a bit. And she'd gone so long without, of course she was gorging on it now.
She sat forward a little. "Look, I hear what you're saying. You two think I'm in cloud cuckoo-land, and maybe I am, but I do see it. I'm not going la la la about Spike. Yes, he's more dangerous than he's ever been since the chip came out. Yes, he's potentially a danger to others and to even to me. But I can deal. He needs to work. Once we're working, we'll cope just fine."
"We're not saying otherwise, Buff," Xander said. "We just want to make sure you've got your eyes open. He can't really go to rehab or therapy, right? So he needs usyouto look after him."
The study door open, and Spike slipped through.
He was kitted out again as in the old days, which now jarred Giles' eyehe'd been better able to take him as he came, during that brief time when he'd remade his appearance. Giles wondered if the return to form was for himself, or for Buffy. To meet her expectations. He nodded to them all and took a chair.
"Had your fill of talkin' 'bout me?"
"Yes," Buffy said, before the others could reply. "We're done. Giles is going to tell us about our new posting."
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