InsaneJournal

THE PROPER SLAYER (pt 19 of ?)
Abandoned by Buffy, Spike sets out on his own.

Story set in an AU that branches off after BtVS s2.

A coda, more than a sequel, to Let's Get Lost.

Previously ...

"You don't fucking care if I'm safe!" He shouted at reddish black darkness where she no longer was.

You don't fucking care.

When he went back to their room it was just coming on for dawn, and he was sloppily, blearily soused. Sure enough, all her things were gone, and she'd taken some—but not all—of his spare dosh.

There wasn't a trucker on earth who wouldn't stop for a girl like Buffy, thumbing it on the side of the road. She was long gone by now.

Burrowing his face into the pillow, he passed out with all she'd left him, her scent on the scratchy linens.

He'd been drunk so long it didn't even feel like being drunk anymore, just like being out of his mind on a high thin kind of lonesomeness, and hunger. Rolling back into Sunnydale weeks after he'd left it was like a dream, an inside-out replay of the first time he'd arrived here, and nothing like the second one, when he'd been so coolly certain he was going to torment the slayer to the edge of despair, then kill her.

Now she'd tormented him to that edge, and maybe over it, and the only thing he wanted to kill was himself.

But not quite yet.

The last miniscule spark of harrowing idiot hope wasn't yet extinguished. Hope, his affliction.

He'd looked for the slayer in so many places, it only now occurred to him that she might've just gone to ground where she'd believe he wouldn't look again.

Through the kitchen window, Joyce was sipping something from a mug at the counter island, paging through the newspaper. He could hear the radio playing low, the kind of over-produced contemporary jazz that sounded like a betrayal of everything jazz was supposed to be about.

He listened out for other sounds in the house. He was pretty sure Faith was on the other side of town—he could smell her departure a little while ago in the aroma of bubble gum and the cheap lipstick she favored hanging in the outdoor air.

He didn't smell Buffy, but he wasn't going to let that convince him of anything.

Taking a swig from his hip flask, he tapped on the door glass.

Joyce started. When she saw him her eyes went wide.

Slipping the flask back into his hip pocket, he held his hands up, open and innocent.

Joyce came to the door. Didn't open it. "What are you doing here? Go away!"

"Just want to talk to you."

"What are you doing here? Where's Buffy?"

"She's not here?"

At this question, Joyce's face fell. Like her daughter, Spike thought, she was a beauty. But the dischord of the last year had taken its toll on her. Beneath her make-up and her bouncily-coiffed hair, she was pale and drawn.

She opened the door.

When he stepped over the lintel, she slapped him.

A gasp escaped her. Her hand hovered in the air.

Then she slapped him again.

Her blows barely stung, but they left his head a little clearer.

"She left me nearly a month ago. Been lookin' for her ever since."

Joyce stared at him, but there was more of defeat than curiosity in her eyes.

Like him, she was on the teetering edge of giving up on her daughter altogether.

"Thought she might've come back here."

"I had one note, when she left with you, then nothing. How dare you come back here? I ought to—"

Spike plucked a wooden spoon out of the jug of utensils near the stove and offered it to her. "You'll have to put all your weight into it, an' aim here," he said, tapping his chest. "But the handle end oughta do it."

"Oh. Oh my God. This is insane. What is going on here?" She trembled, staring at the spoon, glancing around, looking at everything but him. "What did you do to her?"

"Nothing. Never could hurt a hair of her head."

"I don't understand. You're a vampire. You were enemies."

"It's a long story. Look, I just wanted to—"

"I have time. I have nothing but time. You explain it to me."

She was gesturing at one of the stools, and now her eyes blazed. So that was where Buffy got it from. He moved to obey. She closed the door, and leaned against it. "Every evening I hope she'll come back. Or at least call. I don't know if she's alive. I don't know ... her."

"Girl won't know herself, that's her bloody problem!" Spike's shout filled the kitchen, made Joyce jump. He dipped his head. "Sorry. Makes me mental, she does."

"You're drunk. ... I didn't know vampires could get drunk."

"I'm beyond drunk. An' sure they can."

Joyce put a kettle on to boil, took down a pot and filled it with loose tea. In a little while the comforting, sobering smell of strong English Breakfast steeping filled the kitchen. Spike sagged on the stool. This felt like the first rest he'd had in forever—if you could rest on a high stool under the sharp eye of one's beloved's mother. He barely slept, and was existing on the thin gruel of humans too drunk or high to fight him off, or whatever animal blood he could obtain. He'd tried killing—killing his victims, killing fellows he picked fights with in bars—but every time he got close to doing something really large and satisfying, he'd see her in his mind's eye, and all the strength drained out of him.

The only reason why he didn't have a black eye to show Joyce was because he'd barely stopped for the last couple of days to do more than gas up his car.

When she poured a cup of tea for him, he almost burst into tears.

"I don't know why I'm doing this. Why I invited you in."

"Didn't invite me in. Was already invited, you couldn't keep me out."

"Do you take sugar?"

"Ta." He added heaping spoonfuls. "You're a good woman."

"I'm waiting for my explanation. Why are you here? Why can't you leave us alone?"

"I'm in love with your daughter. Want to cherish an' look after her. She's got all that power, but the burden on her's enormous. She tried to quit, but she can't quit. Can't an' won't, not really. An' then there's the other thing that comes with bein' a slayer."

"I don't know anything about this slayer business. Not really. What thing?"

He turned the hot cup around and around in his hands. "That would be the death-wish."

Beside him, Joyce sagged. He watched her out of the corners of his eyes. "Girl wants to die. They all do, the slayers. But yours, she thinks she's earned it. Thinks she's made a big hash of everythin' and ought to be punished." An' I'd like to punish her myself, like to spank her 'til she screams her lungs out. If I could just get my hands on her.

"A death wish. So is that where you come in?"

"Was at the start. Won't lie to you, missus, I came here to kill her."

"I saw you."

"Lot's changed since then." He began to tell her, and after the first halting sentences—the story seemed enormous and unrelatable, shaming and bizarre—he was somehow drawn in by Joyce's listening attention, her failure to interrupt, and told it all. More tea was brewed, food offered and refused, the radio sang on, ignored. Joyce's gaze seemed to weave a spell on him, so that he could say everything that was in his heart. And as it all poured out, he felt her sympathies engage, felt her soften, and that made it even more necessary, to relate everything he could, about his affair with Buffy, about Buffy herself. He kept back only the explicit news that he'd killed two slayers already. No point frightening her with that when he was in no state to kill anything right now.

"... she told me I ought to piss off back to Europe where I'd be safe. Safe. Ha. She doesn't give a toss."

Joyce shook herself, as if coming out of a trance. Hours had passed. "I think you're wrong there, Spike."

"Eh?"

"If it's like you say, that she ... that she ... is in such a bad way ... and I guess it is ... she shook you off because she wanted to protect you."

"Don't think so."

"Isn't it exactly what she's done to me? Whatever's gone wrong between us, no matter how mixed up she is, I know Buffy loves me."

"You, sure."

"Why would she fall for you?"

"Apparently she never did!"

Joyce was giving him the squint-eye. "She always liked good-looking, athletic boys. Who doesn't? You're nothing like that other one, Angel. He never seemed to have much to say for himself."

This change in the conversational direction made him squirm. " Guess I'd better be gettin' on then, since she's not here. Shouldn't've taken up so much of your time, I guess. Thanks for all the tea, an' listenin'."

"Don't you move!" Her hand came down on his arm. "You're just like her! You don't want to listen to anything you think you don't already know!"

"Look Missus, 'm sorry ...."

"You really believe she doesn't care for you? Not that I want her to care for you, another monster, but that's another story. You stay put, I'm going to get something I want you to see."

When she left the kitchen and went upstairs, he went to the door. He'd been wrong, Buffy hadn't returned home, and probably never would.

The catharsis of telling his story was giving way now to fatigue and bewilderment—he wasn't sure why Joyce had been so kind. He wasn't used to kindness.

Perhaps what she'd gone upstairs to fetch was a real stake from her daughter's room.

Or a flame-thrower.

He opened the door. The early-morning breeze bathed his face. There were still a couple of hours until dawn, he could go and find somewhere to lay low and make some plans for where to head next.

"Wait."

Joyce was back. In her hand a piece of loose leaf paper. "I think you should read this."

The note Buffy had left before taking off with him. Apologies to her mother, assurances that she loved her, that she wished she could be the way she used to be. Repeated pleas for understanding and foregiveness.

And then at the end, a few lines that froze him. Finally, Mom, please don't blame Spike. He didn't force me to leave, or corrupt me, or do anything bad to make me go. I love him so much. I know you probably think this is just like when I loved Angel, and that it's wrong for me and I'm too young to know my mind, but if you could only understand what I feel, what I NEED. I wish I could explain it right. He knows me. He knows me, the girl me and the warrior me, the way no one ever has. You probably don't get it—it's a slayer thing and I can barely explain it to MYSELF. He just ... understands. When I'm with him I can breathe. When I'm with him I'm happy.

I will miss you every single hour. I promise I'll call.

xxxxxxxxoooooooooooooooBuffy

Looking up, he found Joyce watching him with an intense almost triumphant attention.

"I've read this note so many times I could recite it backwards. And I may not know all my daughter's secrets, but I know her. She wouldn't tell me she was in love with some man she knew I'd hate for her to be in love with if it wasn't completely true."

The paper slid from his fingers, fluttered to the floor. They both bent for it, and almost bumped heads. "Missus ... Joyce, look—"

"Leaving home with you was certainly foolish and it makes me crazy that I don't know where she is, but obviously she wanted in her misguided way to keep you safe." Tears started from her eyes. "Oh why couldn't you look after her better? Why did you have to quarrel with her?"

"Didn't quarrel with her. Like I told you, she was determined to go off on her own. She couldn't ... she didn't seem to know how to ... to let me make her happy, like she writes here."

"Spike, do you think she's still alive?"

"Wish I could say I'd know it if she wasn't. I dunno. Can't stop lookin' for her, though."

"How? How will we find her?"

She was crying now, and it felt natural that she moved close to him, that he took her in his arms. A powerful emotion moved him—it was the first time he'd had a chance to share his grief, and that Joyce accepted it as on par with her own—overwhelmed him. He rocked her softly until her tears ran out. She sounded like Buffy when she cried.

"They just seem to go on without her. Mr Giles and Faith and the others."

"What did Giles say about all this?"

"I don't know. I didn't consult him. He didn't consult me."

"Faith's still stayin' here."

"I wasn't going to throw her out. I barely see her. Some weeks I wouldn't know she was here except for the grocery bills."

"Huh." He pictured them all, the so-called Scoobies, going about their dopey teenaged lives as if Buffy had never been, and hatred filled his heart.

But then an idea began to form.

"Tell you who we ought to see."

"Not Mr Giles?"

"No. Our Miss Rosenberg. Rosenberg who doesn't know her own strength. She got us into this mess an' she just may be able to get us out."

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