InsaneJournal

Fic: DISTANCE (pt 63 of ?) - redacted
This section of the fic has been redacted. I've left it here as an out-take.




Previously

The study door open, and Spike slipped through.

He was kitted out again as in the old days, which now jarred Giles' eye—he'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."

They were going to leave Scotland, in a couple of days. Buffy had already begun to pack. But tonight, he was doing what he'd never done before: taking her for an evening out.

He drove her car. She was all dressed up in the seat beside him, slinky jersey dress, boots, her hair pinned up above the collar of a motorcycle jacket; so beautiful. Her voice came back to him, an echo across years: You think this is a DATE? Her disgust, disdain. Looking at him like he was absurd, a joke. Yet now she was all his; he could reach across and take her hand and put it on his groin, and she wouldn't pull away. She'd probably unbutton him and take him out. He wouldn't even have to ask.

She'd danced with him last year, in that bar in L.A., when he didn't know her, just liked her despite how she buzzed the air around him, buzzed his spine in that supernatural way.

Buffy said, "When was the last time you were in Edinburgh?"

"During the war. Moved about quite a bit in those years."

"The second world war. What was that like?"

"Lovely time to be a vampire. All that chaos. In a city bein' bombed, could do just exactly what you fancied. People disappeared all the time anyhow. Almost got fat."

"Who was the slayer then? Was she in America?"

"No. Was an English girl, a little Jewess. She was a sweet little thing, an' talented too. Came to a bad end, poor darling—her watcher turned out to be a Nazi sympathizer an' did her a dirty."

"Her watcher?"

"Does that really surprise you so very much? You always did think watchers were a bunch of fascists."

"But literally ... You knew her?"

"Were a bit mixed up together, yeah. Dru got snatched by Jerry while we were separated. The Reich had an idea 'bout makin' up an army of demons. Did experiments on those they could catch. They fancied Dru because she had the sight—thought they could make somethin' of that. I made a pact with Esme that I'd help her if she'd help me rescue Dru."

"Well, I know Dru got out all right. What happened to the slayer?"

"I betrayed her when I had what I wanted, an' the Nazis killed her."

Buffy's hands formed into fists in her lap.

"You know what I was. Am."

"I do." She closed her eyes, screwed them up tight, like she wanted to expel the images in her head. "You left her to them like you left me to fight Angelus by myself. Or was it worse than that? Did you leave her defenseless?"

"No slayer is ever defenseless."

"Fuck you Spike."

"All right. I traded her for Drusilla's freedom."

"Oh God. You traded her. That sounds like you'd made her trust you."

"You prefer I lie about it?"

"No. I guess I just ... shouldn't ask things I don't really want to hear the answers to." She unclenched her hands. "Tell me something else. Tell me something about William Pratt. Who were you then?"

He let the question hang. She'd just stirred up quite the muddy pond; events and people long dormant swirled around in his head. He'd never claimed Esme as a slayer kill, but really he might as well have killed her; he might've gotten her and Dru out together, if he'd tried. But of course he didn't try, didn't even consider trying, because the girl was a slayer, and because he'd gone too far with her, gotten her not just to trust him, but to confide in him, and maybe even to love him, and he didn't want Dru to know any of that. Didn't want to feel what he'd begun to feel about her.

He'd barely thought of her since.

Buffy said, "Spike."

"Eh?"

"I don't hold you responsible for what you did when you had no soul. We settled that between us long ago."

"It's neat, isn't it?" The lights of the city illuminated the sky ahead. Rain began to pelt down against the windscreen. "Except that you loved me before that, an' you don't like to admit it."

"I've stopped pretending it isn't true."

"I still feel like the same fellow who did all that evil. There's before an' after, yeah, but it's all me."

"You wouldn't have felt sorry before. You'd have bragged about it."

Barely thought of her since. He wondered now, was that out of shame? What sort of shame had he been capable of, without a soul? He'd have said: none. But that must've been false, or else why did he conceal from Drusilla, how far he'd gone with the little slayer? Beyond seduction, manipulation, into ....

Buffy said, "Let's not let this spoil our evening."

He laughed then. Such a banal remark, as if they'd had a little tiff about which restaurant or club, instead of a confrontation about the inherent ugliness of him.

"You want to know William Pratt was. Became a vampire because I was disappointed in love. Had my eggy little heart smashed, an' went right out an' got turned."

"Did you look for it? Ask for it?"

"No. But it—she, Drusilla—found me on account of my despair. We can smell it. It calls to us. She was right there jolly as you please, to deliver me. I didn't resist her. She had me, an' then I had her—my first, if you'll believe it, though if you'd known me then, you'd have no trouble believin' a weak sister like me was a virgin at thirty. An' then I took her home to my mother."

"You gave your mother to Drusilla?"

"I turned her myself. So I wouldn't ever have to part with her. Couldn't imagine existence without my dear mater, even changed as I was. But then first thing she wanted was to part from me. So I staked her."

"Women always disappoint you, is that your story?"

"No." The suggestion surprised him. "Nothin' wrong with women. I'm the one who's never quite the thing."

"Ah." Buffy looked at him then. "I don't see it like that. You had to make a journey. A very long one. This girl back in 1880 who wouldn't have you—I'm grateful to her!—passed you on to Drusilla, who started you on your long path to me. I'm the one you were aimed at all along. I'm the one who finds you completely satisfactory. I'm going to keep you, sweetheart, because we're each other's destiny."

He'd have flushed all over if he was capable of it. No matter how thoroughly he thought he knew her, she still retained the ability to astonish him. That she apparently believed that he was meant for her—had somehow been made for her ... even if it was only a momentary fancy, the suggestion from her lips filled him with a powerful charge.

Buffy said, "Our exit's coming up. There."

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."


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Author's Note: Esme The Vampire Slayer comes to you courtesy of the artist formerly known as Lovesbitca, who though she's left the fandom, graciously consented to the mention of her character—one of the great unwritten fic characters of BtVS—in this fic. I'm very grateful.