Chapter Text
I walked into such a sad time at the station
-Cream, “White Room”
****
The sun was shining bright and cheerily in the sky, but the weather still wasn’t really warm. Scotland was never warm. She missed California and the balmy weather. Buffy missed a lot of things: Mr. Gordo, the Espresso Pump, In n’ Out Burger, her house, her mom. Spike. Oh, nope. She wasn’t supposed to think about him. Couldn’t. Shouldn’t. Wouldn’t.
She sat down on the dirt track with a rush of breath. Her hands squeezed into fists in her lap. The other Slayers, who she’d just led through a training exercise, stopped their babble and stared at her. One squatted down in front of her and laid a concerned hand on her knee. Buffy couldn’t remember the brunette girl’s name. Sally? Shelly? The girl was new and didn’t know how things worked.
“You okay?” Sally-or-maybe-Shelly asked.
“No!” Buffy snarled.
The girl gave an exasperated sigh. “I was just asking. No need to get all snotty.”
Buffy glared. One more word and the girl would be sporting a nice, new black eye. Another one of the Slayers grabbed Sally-or-maybe-Shelly’s shirt and pulled her away from Buffy.
In a not-very-quiet whisper the girl updated the newbie. “Give it up, Sara. When Buffy gets mopey like this we just go away. Destroying the Hellmouth in California made her all weird or something.”
Buffy bit her lip. She hadn’t destroyed anything. That’d been… She jammed the heels of her hands into her eyes until she saw bright flashes of light.
“We’ll see you back at the castle, okay?’ Another one of the girls asked.
Buffy nodded. She sat hunched up until they were gone, and then she started crying. The tears were for everyone and everything because they couldn’t just be for him. So much lost and gone and she was mourning a vampire that she wasn’t even sure had known how much she’d cared about him at the end. How much she’d loved him.
Eventually, she ran out of tears and they were replaced by white-hot anger directed squarely at herself. Buffy jumped to her feet and started walking, back ramrod straight, towards the Slayer base. She’d been so stupid. Sure, that last night sleeping wrapped up in Spike’s arms had been nice. But why hadn’t she rolled over and kissed him? Or put her hands down his pants? She could have shown him he was loved. Only, god, would he have thought he was nothing but a comfort screw? That she was just using him again?
How had she messed up being with Spike? It should have been easy.
She was so angry and hurt and…and…sad. Tears threatened again as the gloomy castle loomed closer.
Buffy knew her whole body was radiating anger. Damn it! She should have made love to him. Then fucked his brains out while screaming ‘I love you’ the entire night. Stupid soul-having idiot couldn’t have denied her then. In fact, screw the entire world. Spike and she should have stayed in that basement and done nothing but hump while the Turok-Han and the First Evil had taken over and destroyed the world. Jeez, she and Spike could still be there, making with the happy, while the world went all to hell.
Not that her vampire champion would have remotely let that happen.
Ugh!
The heavy wood door separating the courtyard of the castle from the heart of the command center slammed against the stone wall as she stormed into the room’s dark interior. Blue light from the numerous screens and monitors lit everything with a ghastly glow.
“Buffy!” It was Willow, someone Buffy couldn’t ignore.
“What?” she snapped. Buffy had been trying to decide if it’d be more productive to head to the training room and beat the snot out of a punching bag, or to lock herself in her room and finally make use of that dildo she’d bought on a dare from Dawn two months ago. She’d been leaning towards relieving the sexual frustration, even if her fingers and indifferent plastic were a poor substitute for what she could never have again.
“Erm. It’s Angel.” Willow held out the silver cell phone in her hand like it was about to bite her. “He’s saying it’s really important.”
Oh, Christ-on-a-stick, Angel was the last person she wanted to be thinking about right now. Why couldn’t she have told him to wear the damned amulet? Probably because Angel burning from the inside out with perfect love was something that would happen exactly never. At least in that scenario they’d all be equally dead. Though, if the world had to have ended, she rather preferred her screwing Spike endlessly in the basement scenario much better.
She put the phone to her ear. “This had better be good,” she barked into the receiver.
“Uh, Hello. Hi. Ah, Buffy, we have a problem here.” His voice sounded tinny and far away.
“So I gather. Spill.”
“Well, you see. Um.”
She was going to kill him. The first transatlantic vampire dusting by phone. “Out with it.”
“Spike. He’s here, and…”
The cell phone hit the stone floor. Buffy whirled and grabbed Willow. “Angel’s office. Now.”
Willow’s eye went wide. “Sure,” she breathed and wrapped her arms securely around Buffy before grabbing the bracelet on her wrist and activating the emergency teleportation spell she carried on her at all times.
There was a sickening spinning, lurching feeling and Buffy and Willow were standing in the obnoxiously expensive offices of Wolfram and Hart in L.A.
Buffy’s eyes darted around the room before settling venomously on Angel. The vampire still had his phone in his hand and was gaping at her.
“Where is he?” she demanded. Her voice was icy cold.
Angel closed his cell phone with a snap and set it on his desk. “There was a problem-“
“Where.”
“Look, Buffy, let me update you with what’s going on.”
She was bristling. “Fast.”
“Here’s the thing. Someone sent the amulet Spike was wearing when he died to our offices. We have no idea who sent it or how they got ahold of it. I opened the envelope containing the amulet and Spike reformed right in front of me. Only he was a ghost, more or less.”
“When?” Air. There wasn’t enough air in the room and she couldn’t breathe.
“About nineteen days after the destruction of Sunnydale.” Angel said it like it was irrelevant. A trivial fact.
Buffy hit the floor on her hands and knees. She’d been mourning Spike for months and he’d been here? There wasn’t much in her stomach but it all came up anyway, right onto the stupidly expensive rug.
Willow knelt beside her and put a hand on her back. “Keep talking,” the witch told a stunned Angel.
“Uh, he was tied to the amulet and couldn’t leave the building. He also couldn’t touch anything, or do much besides annoy us by talking. He’s pretty good at that, as I’m sure you know.”
Willow helped Buffy to her feet. The room reeled again. Spike had been here for months. She’d cried oceans of tears over him and no one had picked up a phone to say he was still around? Big whoop that all he could do was talk. She’d have cut her own heart out for the chance to sit and chat with him. Her anger doubled, then tripled. Her baleful gaze made Angel flinch. She was going to make him so much dust in a second.
“Yesterday we got a second package,” Angel continued, not meeting Buffy’s eyes. “When it was opened there was a flash of light and then Spike was corporal, but with a problem.” Angel hesitated, frowning.
“Talk,” Buffy commanded. She didn’t care what the problem was, because she loved Spike and they’d overcome it.
“He wasn’t exactly himself, anymore,” Angel hedged and Buffy wondered if she’d feel anything at all if she staked him, or if she’d just be mad at getting his dust on her new boots. Beside her, Willow nudged her hand and passed her a tissue. She wiped her lips and gratefully accepted the mint the witch gave her.
The candy cracking between her teeth had Angel wincing and taking a step away from her. What could be so bad that he didn’t want to tell her? Had Spike switched genders? It’d be weird but she could totally be gay for him…her…whatever.
Angel swallowed hard. “Somehow he ended up split.”
“Huh?” She shared a confused look with Willow.
“When the light was gone he was two separate beings: the demon and a soul-having human.”
“What did you do?” Willow asked. Buffy was grateful. Talking was nearly impossible for her around the emotions caught in her throat.
“The demon side seems feral. It can’t speak or hide its fangs and ridges. But we couldn’t stake it as we don’t actually know that doing so wouldn’t kill the human part of him as well. And…” Angel shuffled his feet. “The human part is refusing to talk to anyone expect you, Buffy.”
It was all very overwhelming. Her heart had thawed and was beating a mile a minute over the fact that Spike wanted to see her.
“And this happened yesterday?” Willow narrowed her gaze at Angel. “And you’re just now calling Buffy?”
“We’d…I’d hope he might see reason but this morning he finally just started begging: ’Please, let me see her. Please, let me see Buffy.’ I was out of other options.”
Willow’s soft hand on Buffy’s arm was all that was keeping her from pulling Angel’s head off barehanded. Spike had been pleading for her? “Where?” she managed to grate out around her clenched teeth.
“Because of the feral nature of the demon we had to cage it, and the human part as well as it didn’t want to be separated from its other half.” Angel crossed his arms over his chest as if he was protecting his heart. “Follow me.” He edged his way out from behind the desk and ushered the two women out of his office.
Buffy was barely able to contain her need to hit something. Or someone.
As they waited for the elevator Angel put his hand on her shoulder. “It’s good to see you,” he whispered in her ear. In one smooth motion she grabbed his hand off her shoulder, pivoted to face him, and very calmly broke the fingers that’d touched her. The crack was audible and Angel snarled in shock.
“No,” Buffy calmly said before walking onto the waiting elevator car. Angel followed. He was grimacing and shaking his broken hand while awkwardly using the other to press the button and type in a code for the floor they needed. There was silence as the elevator descended. Willow was nervously biting on her lip and kept looking back and forth between Buffy and Angel. Buffy tried to give her friend a reassuring smile since most likely Willow wouldn’t have to resort to magic to keep her from killing Angel. Maybe.
They exited into a cold room filled with monitors and buzzing florescent lights.
“We have him in this containment area.” Angel waved them over to where a bored looking tech watched grainy black and white monitors that rested on a table next to a huge metal door. The thing probably could keep King Kong contained, let alone a single vampire. Buffy’s eyes were glued to the monitors. There were two figures, neither one moving, inside clear-walled cages in a stark white room. Her heart jumped into her throat.
With a wail, she turned and snapped her fist into Angel’s face. The bones of his nose shattered satisfyingly under her knuckles. “How dare you!” she screamed. The techs and guards around the room had stood up and started drawing weapons. Angel had one hand over his nose trying to stem the flow of blood, but he held the other up in a clear gesture for everyone else to wait. Buffy was shaking. “That room! Spike was tortured by the Initiative. Starved. Drugged. He was held in clear-fronted cells in endless white hallways and you, his family, put him back in one!”
Angel looked ghoulish with the blood pouring down his chin. “I didn’t know.”
Buffy turned away from him. She’d kill him later, at her leisure. Maybe while eating cookies in front of him.
Knocking the tech out of the way she punched the screens out of the monitors. The thick cables running from the wall snapped like twigs in her hands. She didn’t want anyone to see her reunion with Spike. It would be private. Just her and him. It didn’t matter that he was split. Buffy had zero doubt that both the demon and man loved her.
She grabbed the tech by the collar of his shirt and shook him. “Open the door.”
“I can’t,” the scrawny guy blubbered.
“I’ll get it.” Angel sighed, flipping open the plastic cover to a keypad that was next to the door. There was a pause while he entered a long string of numbers. “You sure about this, Buffy?” There was a hiss as the door swung slowly outwards.
“Chocolate chip.” She breezed past Angel. “Close it behind me. And Willow, make sure he behaves.”
The heavy security door thumped shut as she took a deep breath of the recycled air. Buffy smiled. It was time to fix the sad.