InsaneJournal

Fic: DISTANCE (pt 52 of ?)- redacted
This section of the fic has been redacted. I've left it here as an out-take.




Previously

"How's my sister?"

Xander made a face. "The same. Same as she was when you were back over spring break. Same as she's been since last fall."

"She doesn't really talk to me anymore. I call her, she texts me back. I email, she texts me back. OK, OK, OK. All I get out of her is OK. She's not okay."

"She's K-O-ed," Xander said. He squeezed her hand. "You get hungry while you were waiting for me?" He pulled his car keys from his pocket.

Dawn plucked them out of his hand and tossed them after the duffel. "Uh-huh. I'm ravenous." She went up on tip-toe, her mouth closing in on his. "Better feed me."

There were places where, as she had casually warned him, the thin little tissue of a half-breed psyche, of a human soul, had no meaning. Would be broken like an egg yolk, like that.

The notion didn't seem to amuse her so much as bore her. He'd worked hard to get her bored enough with him.

On the trek, he directed all his fierceness beyond mere survival, difficult enough, but into keeping that meaning alive, remaining the self that those he was fighting towards would recognize. Because if he wasn't Spike when he arrived, there was no point to returning.

Time worked differently in different realities. He couldn't keep track of it. That was another thing that had no meaning.

But the benefit, the curse, of immortality, was that it taught patience and resignation both. Taught the reality of infinite possibility—and infinite suffering.

Each jump brought him closer, or so he told himself, though the notion of near or far was as empty as the notion of time's passing. He kept focused on where it was he needed to go. Not so much on her—she could be hard to stay fixed on, too large, too bright, too important, like staring into a star—but on the other things that he could strive towards without intolerable pain as he negotiated his way.

The bloody-minded urge for a cigarette, for instance, got him through Quor'toth.

But in the last place—he didn't know it was going to be the last place, except in the sense that it could be the one where she'd be proven right about his puny little self and soul—there was no blood, at least none that would nourish him.

No blood, but a mage who exacted his large price for passage nonetheless.

He'd be proud of her. She's gone out on every op she could, on six continents—who knew there'd be demons on Antarctica? Had found and recruited new slayers in nine different countries. And she'd only played the phone video twice in the last month, and didn't cry either time. She'd cut way back.

She had certain routines, even in the midst of all the travel. Times she thought about him and times she didn't let herself think about him, because the most important thing of all was to do her job, to keep going.

She didn't want to die. She wasn't even depressed. She was full of purpose. She was the longest-lived slayer, the most accomplished slayer. She was living up to her full potential, her purpose in life. Because of her, the world ticked on. Other people were free to be happy. Xander had finally made a move on another girl, and it turned out to be her sister, which was a little startling at first, but cool. They were good together. Willow was good with her new girl too. Even Giles seemed to be involved with someone—she didn't know who, but all summer he'd been disappearing every weekend to return in a soberly tipsy state, full of unexpected jokes and wry glances. Someone was hauling his ashes.

Her own ashes remained in heaps, and she was okay with that. It wouldn't be forever. When she was older, if she made it to, say, thirty ... or thirty-two ... she might retire from the slaying. Go to college for real this time, start some other career, find someone to give her a baby, maybe marry her too if she really liked him. That was a ways in the future, something vaguely nice and bright to vaguely look forward to, to mention to the others when the subject of her social life came up. Which it didn't much. Most of her time was spent with other slayers, and those girls talked shop around her almost exclusively. When they did talk about their relationships, about sex, someone in the group would do a significant shush, or else Buffy would just get up and leave them to it.

She herself had gone through a half dozen vibrators since ... since the last time she'd been with Spike.

Everyone knew slayers were highly sexed, after all, that was part of the package. None of the other slayers were bedding demons, so their problems in love ... Buffy sympathized, but nobody else's lovelife seemed quite so complicated, quite so fraught. Mostly she felt like she was well out of all that—what other man could be worth it to her, after Spike? There would never be another one like him.

Willow kept up the search. She'd set up a spell that probed adjacent dimensions, watching for sign of him. It was a very very long shot, she told Buffy, because the other dimensions were infinite. But maybe ....

Buffy had decided—she'd decided it that night in the alley—that Spike was dead. That he'd refused to be a pet, a slave, and had either been killed by Illyria, or killed himself after she took him back to wherever she'd disappeared to. There was no other way she could bear to picture him: not in endless subjugation. He wouldn't submit to that.

She treasured his last act of defiance.

It was more comforting, to think of him as being at rest.

The last time he'd come to this Kings Cross address, there'd been no security gate, no intercom with a little TV screen. He leaned on the button until the screen lit up. Behind him the sky drained rain. He could barely stand.

At last the little screen lit up. "Go 'way, you."

"It's Spike."

The person on the other end wasn't letting himself be seen; the interior camera showed part of a hat stand, looking unreal in distorted tones of grey. But then all of London looked unreal and grey to him. He was half-convinced he didn't fit here anymore, that his molecules were too altered for this world.

Long pause. Then: "Feck ... thought you wuz dead."

"Lemme in, Cruikshank."

"You look dead."

"An' yet I can still fuck you up, so let me in."

Another pause. "Run a tight shop—can't be 'avin' no funny business in 'ere."

"Callin' in my favor, you buggerin' shit. When we're square, you'll never see me again."

The buzzer sounded on the metal gate; Spike pushed—fell—through.








The coffee bar, the only one in St Andrews that stayed open this late, was packed with newly-returned students and punters who wanted to follow beer with caffeine; Dawn waited in a crowd five deep for her skinny latte, hoping she'd be able to snag a seat somewhere when she finally got it. She read while she waited, turning down the volume on her iPod so she'd hear her name when her drink came up.

What she didn't expect to hear, so close and personal she jumped and staggered, was a low clear voice in her ear. "Harris? Really? Well well well. Guess you're all grown up now."

The people just behind caught her in a sort of mosh-pit move, righting her as she tore the buds from her ears, craned around to see—

"Oh my God.S-S-Spike?"

"Hullo Niblet."

Had she been thinking about him at all, she'd have sworn this was some kind of neurological phenomenon, a projection of her unconscious mind—the image of ur-Spike, meta-Spike, bleach, leather, scuffed boots.

But she hadn't been thinking about him, not since she'd said goodbye to Buffy at the castle last week and headed back here for the fall semester. And as he leaned in a little closer to her she could smell the cool rainy night on him. His coat and hair were misted with droplets. A cigarette burned between his fingers, and he was thin—thinner even than that summer when her sister was dead.

There was also the matter of the still-raw scar that ringed his neck from ear to ear. Which didn't feel like the kind of detail a hallucination of hers would have.

"Don't look so scared. It's really me."

"I—I'm not—you startled me. We thought you were dead."

"So I reckoned. Sorry. Came soon's I could. Here's your hot pap." He reached through the press of people, scooped her latte off the counter, and handed it to her. "Dunno how you drink that swill, an' at three quid a go."

"It's you, all right."

At that a smile—or the ghost of one—flitted across his lips. "Good to see you, Bit."

"What are you doing here?" It made her more than a little dizzy, this sudden same-old same-old rackety exchange, as if he hadn't been dead and gone.

He was moving through the throng; she followed in his wake to the back room. He glanced around, homed in on a table in a corner where two young men sat with four empty mugs and some balled-up paper napkins between them, and stalked up. "You lot—sling yer hooks."

Their protests died on their lips as they glanced up and got a look at him.

"An' take your rubbish," Spike said. He held a chair out for Dawn before sliding in opposite.

"I can't believe it. Spike. Does Buffy know?"

He froze, a thousand yard stare taking in nothing. Like she'd pressed his pause button.

Dawn waved at him. "Uh—Spike?"

Slowly, he shook his head. "Come to you first. Didn't want to just show up 'round hers if she's ... if she's otherwise situated."

"Otherwise—?"

"S'been a while. P'raps she's walkin' out with someone."

"Walking out?" Dawn guffawed. Sometimes he came out with these old-fashioned locutions that .... "Spike, where the fuck have you been for the last year?"

"Gettin' back here."

He sounded like himself, but there was something hollow in his voice, noticeable to her not as he spoke, but in the little silences between. As if he was doing an impression.

An imitation of Spike.

It scared her. He seemed to know it, know she was holding tight to her calm, her reason. So was he. He sat stiff in his chair, head angled, hands folded, trying to project benignity, sanity.

Trying so hard she could feel it.

"From where? How? Even if you were traveling by tramp steamer, it wouldn't take—"

His lip curled. "Tramp steamer? That would've been a doddle. Came across dimensions, Bit. Across an' through. Lost track of how many or how long. Traveled rough."

She glanced at the scar, which was hard to look at—like someone had tried to garotte him, or saw his head off, or maybe hang him; if she watched CSI more often she'd probably be able to tell which it was, but whatever, it was nasty.

He put a hand up to it. "See you're lookin' at my most recent souvenir. Truth is, been laid up a while in London healin' an' gettin' in fettle. Didn't want to frighten you or your sis with sight of me when I first come through—figured another few days wouldn't make much difference, after all this time."

"Where in London?" She hated being suspicious, but she had to ask. This was so strange, even in a lifetime of strange. For him to just drop in on her like this, in a Caffe Nero off campus late on a wet October night, long after they'd all, yes, written him off for dead.

Even Buffy. Especially Buffy.

"Went first to a punter who's owed me a favor since the Blitz. He took me in for a couple days so I could get presentable. But I don't care much for the society of my own kind any more, so after that I went to a quiet little hotel in Bloomsbury, the Fowlers Arms in Muse Street." He reached into his pocket, flipped something onto the table.

A matchbook. Fowlers Arms. Muse Street. She turned it in her fingers. He took it from her, and lit a fresh cigarette.

She had to be imagining it, that slight tremor of his hands.

"Known it off an' on for more'n a century. The sort of place where they cater to all sorts, includin' a fellow laid up in bed who needs blood sent in."

"How did you pay?"

"Always have kept a bit of dosh squirreled away in London 'gainst a rainy night. How's your sister, pet?"

"How do you think?"

He flinched. Turned the cigarette end slowly on the ashtray, shaping it to a gray point. "Had no choice when Illyria took me. Didn't let on that Buffy was much cop to me, or else old Blue might've taken a bit of an interest in her. Couldn't have that. God enslaves whom she pleases."

"So she really did take you for her pet? Willow told me, that's what she wanted you for. Buffy's been sure you were dead, because ... because you wouldn't let yourself be a slave."

"Wasn't quite ready to top myself before I tried gettin' out." Spike sighed. "Sometimes bein' immortal's a burden, an' other times ... it's an advantage. Or anyroad, a bargainin' chip." He smiled suddenly, one of his shit-eating grins, but the gaunt bravado of it was painful to see.

She grasped his hand. "What did you bargain? Your immortality? Your soul? Not your soul!"

"Neither one, Sweet Bit." He drew his hand gently out from under hers, and gave hers a pat. "Just made a promise to the blue lady, to be kept at a later date. An' for it, she let me go. But she wouldn't help me get from her place to here, so ... had to manage that on my own."

"How does one ... get across dimensions?"

"Through portals, pet. An' you know a bit about what it can take to get a portal opened."

She did. It was a memory that still resurged in anxious dreams. She decided not to ask him anymore about that, or for the story of the scar, or why he was so thin. Maybe later, when things were better, he'd tell her.

"Please tell me you're going to go to Buffy. Please tell me there's nothing keeping you from doing that."

Spike's gaze dropped to his hands clasped on the table. In the low mood-light of this back room, his lashes cast a shadow below his eyes, making his expression almost flirtatious. When he looked at her again, a wistful smile played at his lips. "Wanted your advice. D'you think it'll be any good, for me to see her?"

"To see her? I don't know. But to go to her and be with her as long as you both shall live—shit yes. Yes, it would be any good. I can't believe you have to ask me that. You do remember everything this time, don't you?"

He sat back, laughed a little. "Was nothin' else to get me through my journey, but memories." He brought the cigarette to his lips, took a long deep drag, his eyes falling shut like a doll's.

Dawn could count the seconds that he sat like that, paused again. As she was reaching for his wrist once more, he shook himself, and fixed on her. His eyes widened, as if she was an unexpected sight, and his mouth opened. She waited, but he didn't speak.

"Spike, you have to go to her. Tonight. I'll take you right now, c'mon, I'll get my car and—"

She was up, gathering her books and bag, but he hadn't moved. "Am I the same?"

"Are you—what?"

"You think I'm ... I'm Spike, aren't I?"

She sank back into her chair. Her heart hammered, the question, his expression, dragging through her like a sharp rake. "What do you mean?"

"Tried to keep it, but it's been a long .... Don't want to hurt her, is the thing."

"How would you hurt her? How could you going to her possibly hurt her more than staying away another minute? Spike, we should leave now, she's supposed to fly to Montevideo tomorrow night."

"How could I hurt her—?" A dreamy look glassed his eyes. For a second Dawn thought she was getting a glimpse of some old old Spike, the one who'd done the horrible things he related in those crypt-side chats they used to have when she was a kid.

He frowned. "See I spook you, so suppose you don't really need to ask."

"No! No, I'm not afraid of you, never, it's just that ...."

"Sweet girl, don't fib. I'm strange. A stranger, anymore." He was still sitting right across the little table, but there was an absence around him that was uncanny.

Dawn told herself not to be stupid. "This is strange. Please Spike, let me drive you back to the castle. It'll only take a couple of hours, this time of night. Please."

He lit a fresh cigarette. "Sis won't like this, will she? Me smellin' of fags. Lovely they are, though. Can't get enough." That dreamy little smile again. "Dunno how I ever gave up."

"She won't care."

"You in love with Harris then, or just enjoyin' his considerable love muscle?"

"Spike!"

"Have lived with him, know what he's packin'. Not in the biblical sense of know. But seen it a time or two. If you're like your sis, you're a girl who needs—"

Dawn made a T of her hands. "Not going there with you!"

He exhaled, smiled. "Ah, look at you. You are in love. Congratulations. Nothin's more important. Isn't that right?"

"Spike. Please."

"Suppose we'd better go. Can't really burden you with knowin' I'm here, an' keeping it from her, can I?"

"You cannot."

He got up. They were halfway to the door when he stopped, glanced back at her. "'Cept ... would be harder on you, wouldn't it, than keepin' a secret, if it was all for the worst?"

"You're being an idiot." She thumped him, and instantly regretted it. He was just bone beneath the leather. "You wouldn't have come to me if you didn't mean to come home, so quit fooling, Spike."

"Foolin'? That what I'm doin'?" He let his cigarette drop to the floor, crushed it with his boot. "I'd forgotten how."

People pushed past them, going in, going out. A song by Belle & Sebastian played, a group of girls laughed, and in front of her Spike was spectral. Doubt and pity lapped and overlapped in her. How could he really imagine he could return here and not see Buffy?

But there was that scar, which told her there were imponderable factors behind his strangeness.

Still, was this for her to judge? No. It couldn't be.

Spike said, "Don't want to make her unhappy. Couldn't bear that, Bit."

She took his arm and steered him, gently and firmly, out the door. "Don't you know Buffy would rather be unhappy with you than happy anywhere else?"

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