herself_nyc (herself_nyc) wrote in herself_nyc_fic, @ 2007-11-05 13:16:00 |
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Entry tags: | s/b fic, the proper slayer |
THE PROPER SLAYER (pt 18 of ?)
Buffy's fled Sunnydale again, this time with her lover, Spike.
Story set in an AU that branches off after BtVS s2.
A coda, more than a sequel, to Let's Get Lost.
Previously ....
Twin jets of hostility and a weird relief flared up in her. In his grasp she was capable of forgetting everything but her love, but that condition wasn't permanent. She remembered herself now, that she was a slayer. Changed as she was since the end of Angel, she couldn't change enough to overlook certain facts.
This would make it easier, to do what she'd intended to, coming here with him.
Before Spike could answer, the waitress arrived with the steaks, swimming in buttery blood.
She started in without waiting.
He was more interested in watching her eat than eating himself. For such a little slip of a thing, the slayer had an admirable appetite, when she let herself unleash it. She wasn't being shy now.
He waited for her to pause and reach for her glass before he said, "Double standard."
"Huh?"
"I mean, I'm not the first notorious vamp you've been involved with."
"Reminding me of that isn't helping your case."
"I'm not a bloody case. You don't give me enough credit, Miss Anne. Who convinced you it was no good you tryin' to quit your sacred calling? I did. An' who means to help you do the job? Angel didn't help you so much as dither 'round droppin' cryptic warnings, I suspect. Me, don't care what I kill long's I get to kill something. I'm perfectly willing to plow down every vamp an' demon between here and Constantinople if it'll keep you happy."
"Istanbul."
"You hearin' me?"
She ducked her head, picked up the knife and fork again. "Yes, I hear you."
"So what does it matter if I've got a soul or not?"
She sliced off a piece of steak, lifted it half to her mouth, and stopped.
He pressed her. "It's important to you that I suffer mental torments, an' horrid dreams that rip up my sleep? Because if it's that"
Her cutlery clattered down. "Do I want you explicitly to suffer? Not especially. But I need to be able to trust you. With Angel, I could trust him as much as ... as anyone who was on my side. With you, your default setting is evil mischief. How do I know what you'll do if you're hungry enough? Bored enough? If you and I have a quarrel and are on the outs? If you decide you're not in love with me after all?"
"Seems to me you could ask all those questions of Xander Bloody Harris just the same. What's stoppin' him from going on the spree with a chain-saw? Plenty of fellows, born an' christened, do."
"Not plenty. And I don't have to ask those questions about Xander because Xander isn't like that. You are."
"Wait a tick." He pushed his plate back. "What's really goin' on here?"
"We're eating supper."
"This mornin' you come to me an' say you're ready for us to go away an' be together. An' now here we are, but you're still needling me because I'm not what I'm not." He could've laughed. She was smart, and not a bad little actress, but she didn't realize that her perpetual worrying at certain topicslike a loose toothwas giving her away.
"You've convinced yourself that I'm no good, no matter how good I am for you."
Her sudden flush radiated across the table. "That isn't true! I came away with you today, doesn't that show"
"No, it doesn't. Because I just sussed something elsethe truth is you're running away from me. You've lured me out of Sunnydale to get me away from Faith and the watchers. An' now you're countin' on me believing we're on our way, an' being so happy an' off my guard that I'll get drunk now and be sleeping so deep I won't know it when you slip off at first light."
He could see, by how she folded her arms over her chest and stuck out her stubborn lipanother sure tellthat he'd got it in one.
"You keep sniping at mereally you're psyching yourself up to leave. You think you've got to atone for the rest of your brief life for what happened last spring, by cutting yourself off forever from everything you love."
"No."
"You think you're supposed to be alone. That you're not supposed to be lovedat least, not as a woman an' a slayer."
"No no no."
He leaned in closer to her. "You think you deserve nothing else but to die alone in battle. An' you mean to let that happen soon."
Her glassy stare showed him how right he was, on every point.
Not that there was a lick of satisfaction in it. It made him feel sick, how love always failed him, betrayed him. Always just out of reach whenever he thought he really had it in his grip. He'd never come first to any of the women who came first for him.
And this one, who more than Cecily or Drusilla, felt like the one, his true match, his destiny. If she couldn't accept his love ....
He slid out of the booth, stepped back from the table. "You want to keep on running an' running, go. I won't stop you."
She glanced up, her face chalky, the corners of her mouth trembling.
"Go on. Walk away from me in the open at least, 'stead of sneaking off." The anger rushed in on him with a whoosh, like a gas jet igniting. His hands tingled with it. "Go!"
She glanced around. The restaurant was still substantially empty. It would be a good place for a knock-down drag outlots of furniture to throw, wood and glass to smash, while the help cowered back in the kitchen and the few patrons fled into the night.
But he didn't want to just get beaten up, and he knew for sure that if she threw a punch at him right now, he would bring his absolute A game to kill her.
He would kill her.
He squeezed his fists tight, thrust them behind his back.
Something of this must've reached her, because she kept her hands close to her sides as she slid out of the booth. She wasn't looking at him. He couldn't believe this was happening, as he watched her every move. Halfway hoping this confrontation would make her change her mind, but no there she went, towards the exit. She might as well have had one end of his guts gripped in her tiny fist, so tight and seized did they feel.
In the arch leading to the exit, she paused, and he thought maybe this was it, the relenting.
"Please go back to Europe, Spike. There's no slayer there, you'll be safe."
"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 somebut not at allof 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.
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