InsaneJournal

Fic: DISTANCE (pt 64 of ?) - redacted
This section of the fic has been redacted. I've left it here as an out-take.



Previously

When he'd parked, as she was springing her seatbeat, Buffy said, "Well, that was quite a ride."

She wasn't talking about the drive down from the castle. "Learned a few things, you did."

"I'll be digesting. There might be further questions." She laid a hand on his leg. "This stuff is never going to lie perfectly smooth, Spike. It can't. Not for either of us. But nothing you tell me about your past changes our right now. You—your heart—are safe with me."

"Aren't you a sentimental bit of skirt, Slayer."

"I'm lucky. No other slayer has what I do."

Lucky. He was going to open his mouth and say that assertion was a bit much, but thought better of it. If he said so, she'd dispute it, and the next thing would an argument on the pavement outside the restaurant where he meant to see her eat a big hearty dinner.

Still, it needled him, when she talked like that, about his heroism, about their destiny. It was one thing for him to feel like she was his destiny, but for her to buy the argument, to turn around and own it and be selling it to everybody else ....

Somehow she should be a little above that. He just wanted to keep his head down, get on with the mission, and look after her. Face forward. Too much backwards-looking, and like Lot's wife, he'd become a feature of the landscape, useless. The only time in his whole existence, life and unlife both, when he'd been any damn use was when she'd called him to her service. And that was late.

They went inside—this high-end Indian restaurant was Giles' suggestion—and he got her to eat a good deal of the big spread he ordered. They talked about the new post, and about packing. She was dispassionate about that; he could see that she didn't care about things, because she was taking everything that was important along with her.

When she swore she'd eaten all she could hold, he took her dancing. They'd danced that once in L.A., but he hadn't known her then, so this was novel. More than novel, amazing, that the same Buffy who'd been dancing when he first clapped eyes on her, should do so now—the same moves, her moves—right up close to him. For him. Of course he had to follow her into the girls' loo and fuck her in a stall, and of course after that she wanted to go out into the street and slay. This was her hour, between two and three in the morning, when she was mighty, ruling the night. It took him a while, keeping up with her, to feel how tired he was. How he lagged. A piercing pain in his chest caught him like a blow. He staggered, and when he looked up, he didn't see Buffy.

The alley he stood in wasn't the same alley.

The streets at either end were dark. He heard a scuffling, a muttering.

Then he heard a voice. Not Buffy's. The voice of another girl. "The least you could do is show yourself. I know you're there."

He couldn't see her. He could barely see anything; it was dark, but he felt as if his own sight was dim too. He seemed to be crumpled on the ground; when he tried to move, his body was heavy, and somehow amorphous, as if he had more than the usual one trunk and four limbs, as if he was something else altogether, a beached octopus kind of thing.

It hurt.

"The least you could do. Since I've lost my torch." More muttering. Now he wasn't so sure she was talking to him.

Esme. It was Esme's voice. The recognition prickled him all over his unfamiliar skin.

At the mouth of the alley, he heard footsteps hastening. Then away across the late night streets, a siren began to sound the all clear. He heard her again then, when it cut out, closer now, humming a little, still muttering. He ought to be able to reach out and seize her by the ankle, if he still had hands.

He didn't. But she did, and they were patting him all over; he couldn't move, couldn't see her, but there was a faint aroma, Pears soap and wool that she'd perspired in. "Oh do help, I know you've got matches for those endless filthy cigarettes." He struggled, but nothing happened. Then she made a triumphant sound, and suddenly there was a flare, a golden glow in which her face loomed, black shadows thrown up to make her eerie, to double the lenses of her spectacles, lashes making a jagged crown above each eye. "You're good for something after all, William The Bloody. Ah, there's my torch." The match died. "That's it," she said, "I'm off."

He tried to speak, to cry, to move. Don't leave me here.

She was gone.

A long time elapsed; it felt longer than any possible night. He heard the scuffling of rats, cats, the burrowing of beetles. He wasn't sure where he was anymore, if he'd ever been anywhere.

Then there was another presence, cool and slim, alongside his. A sharp little face pressing up into his neck. Bu--

Hands again on his person, burrowing into his clothes, inspecting, handling him. Cold little fingers. Spreading fear, plucking at his fear, plucking at his cock. Girlish sing-song, "You'll do, you'll do, you'll do" as the hand rifled him. He could smell hay and manure and something terribly cold. "My best new toy. My best new toy."

He tried to speak to her, Drusilla, love, set me upright, I can't move, but nothing happened. He was in the body she handled, but it had nothing to do with him. He could only watch and feel.

Feel the great traffic in his slender frail little frame, what rushed out, what rushed in.

The transformation.

Had it really been like this? He hadn't known. Hadn't remembered.

All of memory was stark, white, a blinding burning searing light. He curled away from it, straining to regain the dark. To evade those possessive cold hands.

Couldn't tarry here.

Buffy would be looking for him.

Buffy would be looking for ....

Buffy would be looking ....

Buffy would be.







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