Limbo
{ PG | Buffy/Spike }
*
| 1 |
It’s dark. He isn’t sure how long it’s been that way, but knows it hadn’t always been. He can remember light, and warmth. Not everything is bleak. And lonely.
He tries to blink. Can’t tell if he has, ‘cause his view never changes. Black is black. Tries to move, but there’s nothing to touch, nothing to reference from. Can’t really feel, granted, so moving is a little pointless. Nowhere to go anyway.
No sound. No smell. There’s nothing here. He exists in nothing. But if there is nowhere to exist in, can he really be existing?
Ping.
Ping? Was that a ping? He tries to turn to the sound, but can’t move. Besides, it’s so echoey in the vast dark that he can’t tell where it came from.
There it goes again, louder now. Definitely a sound, not something he imagined he could hear to pass the time.
Not like those voices. The never ending cacophony that he knows, yet can’t place.
Don’t worry. Everything’s switching. Outside to inside.
I’m in a band.
What kind of band?
A rock band.
You’ll do what, lick me to death?
She’s a god. Let’s think outside the box.
Til the end of the world. Even if that happens to be tonight.
I could never trust you enough to love you.
I believe in you.
I spy with my little eye something that starts with ‘T’.
I love you.
They don’t make sense. Nothing makes sense. But the sound, it’s real. Now there’s light. A pinprick in the dark. He frowns. Or he tries to.
It gets bigger, and warmer, and suddenly he realizes that he’s feeling the heat. He can feel the sun poking through the gaping hole. Larger, larger still. He reaches for it, or he thinks he does, because a breeze touches him.
He can see his hand - white, thin. It moves out of the dark and into the light. The light pulls him, tugs him through the hole.
‘Damn, I don’t remember grass being this itchy.’
When he opens his eyes, truly opens his eyes, it’s dark again. Not the all-encompassing, suffocating dark of before, but the kind of dark that still has light to it. The dark of a room, the dark where the edges are black but the middle is grey.
He sits up. Looks around. Bed? No, too scratchy. Couch. He swings his legs around, puts his feet tentatively on the floor. Cool, textured. Wood. He sniffs the air, catches a whiff of chicken broth and fresh-baked bread. Dying fire. Woman.
She comes into the room. Looks surprised to find him awake. She walks toward him.
“Hello, William.”
He frowns momentarily, then his confusion clears.
“‘S not my name,” he replies. Gives a small smile. “They call me Spike.”
“Who does?” she asks. He frowns again.
“Them. The ones I remember. The ones from before.”
She turns from him. Walks out of the room. He follows.
“Cynthia.”
“What?”
“My name.”
She puts a plate of food in front of him. The food he’d smelt before. He stares at it, then at her.
“Where am I?”
She laughs, a true laugh. Like it’s the funniest thing she’s ever heard.
“Well, I suppose that’s the question of the century.”
–
He rolls over in his sleep. Reaches out for the woman who isn’t there.
–
“Don’t take it personally,” she says over breakfast. He glances at her before choosing to ignore her altogether.
“It’s just that I don’t get many visitors. Haven’t for years. I’m sorry if I’m rude. Or obnoxious. Or -”
“Actually, I find you quite irritating. You don’t know where we are, or why I’m here, or where I was before I was here. You won’t tell me how I know you. Or even if I know you. So what good is it to talk to you?”
“None.”
He glares at her over his oatmeal. She stares out the window.
“You should go for a walk,” she says. “It’s a beautiful day.”
–
A few hours later, he storms into the cottage. She looks up from her quilting and regards him quizzically.
“I think you know more than you’re letting on!” he yells. She raises her eyebrows, but remains silent. “There are graves out there. In the forest. Thousands of them.”
He looks like he’s going to be sick. She puts aside her needle and thread and folds her hands demurely in her lap.
“They’re children, aren’t they?” he whispers. She tilts her head slightly, but still does not answer him.
“God damn it, Cynthia! Those graves are marked dates only three or four years apart, sometimes only months. What the fuck is going on?!”
“Did you read them?”
“What?”
“Did. You. Read. Them.”
His lips press together and he turns an interesting shade of red. “There were a few hundred too many for me to read them all.”
“I suggest starting with the most recent ones.”
She picks up her work and continues it like the interruption never occurred. He stands there, waiting for her to continue. Realizing she won’t say another word to him, he slams out the door.
–
All of them are the same dull grey, the same slab of stone with names and dates carved into them. The same memoriam for some three thousand girls.
All girls, all dead. Except one.
He stands before the empty grave. It isn’t freshly dug - he can tell because the dirt is packed and there is moss growing on the headstone.
But she should be dead. The inscription reads: December 1996 - May 1997. That was six years ago. Six long years ago.
“Buffy,” he whispers, as he traces her name with the tips of his fingers. “Buffy.”
He looks to his left, down a long line of graves. He’s read them all, all their names, all their lives, on these cold stones. That’s where he found Cynthia.
She died when this girl was born. Or the other way around. Something in the back of his mind was nagging at him. He’s supposed to know this. Supposed to know the significance here.
To his right lies only one grave. Kendra, May 1997 - May 1998. But why did she die, and this girl live? This Buffy?
“It wasn’t supposed to be this way,” comes a voice from behind him.
Spike turns and sees Cynthia approaching through the trees. She walks gracefully, with a confidence he recognizes. Cynthia looks up at the canopy and smiles into the sunlight.
“There was a time when I thought I would never see the sun again,” she says. He looks up as well, as if noticing for the first time that it’s day. “I suppose,” she continues, “that you could say the same.”
“I don’t understand,” he mumbles, eyes returning to the name on the stone before him. Buffy.
“You will, in time.”
She holds her hand out to him. He regards it warily, and uses the headstone to pull himself up. Buffy.
Cynthia turns and begins moving away from the graves, away from what should have been her final resting place.
Spike follows her out of the make-shift cemetery. He only looks back once.
Buffy.
| 2 |
“I knew her, I think.”
Cynthia looks up from their game of rummy. Spike has a faraway look in his eyes, like he’s trying to recall something buried so deep in the past he has to step out of time to find it.
As she waits for him to continue, she shuffles her cards around, fanning them, un-fanning them, turning them over. But she’s patient.
“I think maybe…we were friends? Her name is so familiar to me, I must have known her before.”
“When was ‘before’, William?” she asks. He focuses his confused gaze on her a moment before replying.
“Before I was here,” he says, as if it’s the most obvious answer. Cynthia puts her cards on the table and leans back in her chair.
“You need to remember,” she coaxes. “You’re not supposed to be here. There must be a reason you are.”
He frowns, concentrating. He tries to call up the voices he had heard, but they seem to have faded. Spike focuses on Buffy’s name and tries to conjure an image of her, something for him to grasp. But he can’t.
“I - I can’t remember!” he spits. He jumps out of his seat and begins pacing back and forth, like a caged animal. “I don’t remember a thing. I only have these…feelings! Like - I know this Buffy girl meant something to me. I knew her. But I can’t remember her.”
“What about yourself,” Cynthia pushes. “Do you remember who you are? Anything? Like, what you like to do, what’s your favourite colour, that sort of thing?”
He plops himself down on the couch and leans forward, propping his elbows on his knees and pressing his eyes with the heels of his hands. “I didn’t fit in. I always felt like an outsider. I was - was ridiculed, a lot. I remember fear, and anger, embarrassment, loathing…and…an intense desire for…something.”
Cynthia rises then and sits stiffly on the couch beside him. He can feel her eyes boring into his back, but he makes no move to acknowledge her presence. So she grips his shoulder firmly and forces him to turn to her.
“I’m going to say some words to you, and I want you to say the first thing that comes to your mind.”
“I don’t want a psychological evaluation, thank you very much!”
“Just - just do it, okay?”
Spike can see the curiosity and anticipation behind her eyes, so he decides to humour her.
“Fine, okay. Let’s get this bloody show on the road.”
Cynthia makes herself more comfortable, and rivets her attention on him. She’s silent for a moment before beginning the test.
“Night.”
“Dark.”
“Moon.”
“Sun.”
“Demon.”
He frowns. “God.”
“Witch.”
“…Tree.”
“Tree? Any specific tree?”
He frowns even harder now. “A, uh, a willow tree.”
Now Cynthia frowns. “One.”
“Only.”
“Chosen.”
“Picked.”
“Slayer.”
Spike’s eyes practically pop out of his skull. “I know that word!”
“What is it?” Cynthia asks, clearly on the edge of a breakthrough.
“It’s a title. Like, a job. There’s only one. The…chosen…one!”
She gets up and assumes the same pattern of pacing that Spike had earlier.
“Watcher.”
“…Knowledge.” Her eyebrows raise.
“Vampire.”
He stiffens. “Evil.”
“…Master.”
“Leader.” He know looks perplexed.
“I’m going to go out on a limb here and suggest ‘Hellmouth’.”
“Sunny…no, that can’t be right.”
“Yes, yes it is!” she cries, rushing to him. She kneels on the floor before him and grasps him by his upper arms. “The Hellmouth is in Sunnydale! My God, you must have lived there. With - with Buffy!”
“I lived with Buffy?”
“Maybe not in the strictest sense, but that’s where she worked, that’s where she fought!”
“She’s a Slayer, isn’t she.”
Cynthia’s exuberant expression becomes a little clouded. “The best.”
“You know her?”
“Oh, no. We never met. Well, she never met me. That’s - that’s why my grave is out there. I was the Slayer before her. My death called her. She is my successor. And she’s the best damn Slayer there’s ever been.”
“I don’t think I understand.”
“I don’t expect you to. Why don’t we give up the stroll down memory lane until tomorrow. I’m feeling kind of tired.”
Spike looks her over and sees not only the weariness in her body, but in her spirit as well. She looks haunted, as if she’s seen a ghost. Perhaps the ghost is her.
“All right. My brain’s feeling a little sodomized right now anyway.”
She laughs lightly, and he can’t help but smile at the way she laughs so easily at his lame and rude joke. He gets the feeling that he never got to create laughter before. At least, not often.
–
He rolls over in his sleep and reaches for the woman who isn’t there. But now she has a name.
“Buffy.”
–
“Where are my clothes?”
“Excuse me?”
Spike walks into the kitchen wearing only the drawstring pants he found in the closet. Somehow, he knows he would never wear this.
“The clothes I came here in. Where are they?”
“Oh, you mean those ratty old jeans and that black shirt and that ancient leather jacket?” She shrugs. “I tossed them in a box. They should be around here somewhere.”
“Can you be more specific?” he asks slowly, obviously becoming agitated. Cynthia notices this and gives him her full attention.
“Try the front closet.” Spike turns on his heel and heads out of the room. She gets up and follows him. “What is it? What’s wrong?”
“Nothing, I just…have a feeling.”
“Wow, you’re really getting good at describing these feelings of yours. I think our therapy session worked like a charm.”
He glares at her as he yanks the accordion-style door open and begins to rummage for the box.
“Why the bleedin’ hell do you have skis in here?”
She shrugs. “Makes me feel athletic.”
As he continues to search for the box, he tosses things over his shoulder. A soccer ball, a Time magazine, one blue sock, ‘Monopoly’, a pair of broken sandals, one red sock, a die (which lands on 2), a baseball cap, three tennis balls (all in succession), a waffle maker, a Snoopy tie, the other blue sock, a King of Hearts (“That’s where that went!” Cynthia cries), and a pair of fuzzy pink bunny slippers.
“It’s not in here,” he says.
“Obviously. I mean, it would have been right on top, since you only got here two days ago.”
Spike gives her the glare of death before getting to his feet and stalking into the living room.
“Hey, aren’t you going to find my other red sock for me?” she yells after him. He slams the back door in answer.
She sighs at the mess he made and kicks everything back into the closet, including the now complete pair of blue socks. The die lands on 6.
The back door slams again and she hears Spike cursing up a storm. She giggles a little at his sudden change in persona - he’s definitely going to keep her guessing. Cynthia saunters nonchalantly towards him, trying her best to look uninterested.
“How did you manage to lose the only things that I actually own?” he demands as he begins to search the house for his missing clothes. He opens every cupboard, every drawer, lifts every seat cushion, and looks under every table and chair. She watches all this from afar.
“Oh, Cynthia, you’re doing a wonderful job holding up that wall for me,” he snaps at her.
“God, why don’t you save yourself the frustration, Spike, and use your brain for once.”
He looks up sharply from underneath the table cloth. “What the hell is that supposed to mean?”
“Duh! Where do dirty clothes usually go?”
He frowns. “The laundry?” She taps her nose.
Spike clenches his jaw and heads out the back door once more. Cynthia follows close behind him, not wanting to miss a moment of the entertainment. The box comes into view as they approach the water pump, and Spike curses himself as he picks up the pace.
When he gets there, he dumps the box onto the grass and begins combing through it. She watches him, puzzled.
“What are you doing?” she asks.
“When you said I didn’t belong here, you said there must be a reason I’m here.”
“Yeah, I recall saying something along those lines.”
He grins triumphantly and pulls something sparkly from the heap of clothes.
“Might it have something to do with this?” He holds up a necklace by the clasp, and it twirls slightly, enough for it to give off little flashes of light as it moves.
Cynthia reaches out and he hands it to her. She holds it up to her face and squints, as if doing so will make it clearer in the already-broad daylight.
“Well, I’ll be damned,” she mutters.
| 3 |
“I’m dead?” he asks for the seventh time, though now it seems as if he’s trying to process the information rather than expecting Cynthia to confirm it. She smiles sympathetically at him.
“I knew you were dead the moment I saw you.” Her smile fades. “You can’t be in Limbo unless you’re dead,” she whispers. Spike can hear the sorrow in her voice, but he doesn’t much care about that.
“Why didn’t you tell me?” he implores. She casts her eyes down, unable to look him in the eye. “I’m dead, and you didn’t tell me.”
“I’m sorry,” she mutters. As her tears threaten to spill over, she presses her palms against her eyes so he won’t see. But she can’t hide the hitching of her shoulders.
“Ah, pet, I’m sorry,” he says. He rises from the table and tenderly pulls the crying woman into his arms. “Shh, I didn’t mean to make you cry. I’m not mad at you, I’m just…confused, I guess.”
Cynthia sniffs loudly against his bare chest and he rubs his hands in soothing circles on her back. “I’m not crying because you’re mad at me, and I know you are, so don’t deny it,” she argues. He sighs but doesn’t say anything, because, as always, she’s right.
“You’re a horrible liar, by the way,” she mutters, and is rewarded with a chest-rumbling laugh. Cynthia looks up at him and gives Spike a weak smile.
“So, explain this to me one more time.” She sighs and tucks her hair behind her ears before hopping up on the table.
“Okay, so this necklace you have was created by the original Watchers Council, these crazy African monk guys, thousands of years ago. It was to be worn by the Slayer’s Champion in what was supposed to be the Final Battle with the forces of darkness.
“The way I understand it, the Watchers wove a spell into the necklace that would draw out the wearer’s soul and turn it’s purity against the evil, effectively destroying everything impure, but also killing the host.” Cynthia rubs at her temples.
“But what I don’t understand is why, if you did indeed wear it, the First Evil’s army wasn’t destroyed. Because if it was, then theoretically I would be released from my duties here. I mean, without any evil threatening the world, there’s no need for a Slayer, and if there are no Slayers, I won’t be obligated to do the whole meet-and-greet.
“Maybe something went wrong, and that’s why you’re here. Maybe it wasn’t the Final Battle yet, but the necklace was given to you anyway. Or maybe there’s something else we need to figure out.”
Spike stares at her for a long time. He looks at her, really looks at her, and realizes she hadn’t been telling him the whole truth. Aside from the part where she had known all along that he was dead.
It wasn’t supposed to be this way…That’s why my grave is out there. I was the Slayer before her…If there are no Slayers, I won’t be obligated to do the whole meet-and-greet…
“What is it that you do here, exactly?” he asks her. She looks out the window at the setting sun, as if trying to decide something.
“I wait,” she answers. “I wait for the day the Powers That Be tell me I’ve paid for my mistake and I can move on to the Higher Plain.”
“What mistake?” he asks.
She takes a deep breath and lets it out slowly. “When a Slayer dies, she comes here, to Limbo. Her job is to dig the grave of the next Slayer and wait here until her death so that she can teach them what to do.
“Rachel, the Slayer before me, she told me that when Buffy died, I would have to recite an incantation that would bind her to this plane and release me to the next. But…Buffy didn’t stay dead. I had dug her grave, and her body appeared in it. I began the incantation and started to cover her body with dirt. I was doing everything right, but then…”
“Then what?” he asks.
“She disappeared. Somehow, she was brought back to life. And I was trapped here, having performed half the spell. She was bound to Limbo, sure, but she was no longer here to take my place. And I didn’t have the chance to finish it, so I couldn’t ascend. I should have waited, made sure she was truly dead… I was later contacted by a mouthpiece for the Powers. Whistler explained what went wrong, and that for my mistake, I’d be trapped here until they decided I could go. Until they decided I had truly repented.
“I was pretty angry, and more than a little upset. What did I do to deserve this, you know? I mean, it was bad enough when this strange woman showed up at my house and told me that I was the Slayer and turned my life upside down. And you can’t help but blame the Slayer before you, because if they hadn’t died, you wouldn’t be called, right? So I was angry at Rachel. I didn’t know her name back then, but I hated her anyway.
“I fought for three years before I got in a battle with a few too many vamps and my Slayer days ended. But that was okay, I was ready for it. I knew it was coming. What I wasn’t ready for was to be trapped in the middle of cosmic nowhere for seven years and counting. That was definitely not in the brochure.
“So here I’ve been, doing nothing but play solitaire and tend my vegetable garden. Nothing here actually exists, so I suppose I don’t even need to eat, but it keeps me sane.
“And then you showed up. At first I thought you were here to relieve me of my duties, but then I realized you were a guy, and Slayers are always girls, so that wasn’t it. Then I realized that you were obviously part of something - you knew Buffy. So since you got here all I’ve had are questions, and no one to answer them.”
She gives a little shrug, as if what she’d just told him isn’t a big deal. But it is. They’re both dead, both trapped here in Limbo, and neither of them have a clue what’s happened in Life. But there’s something else that’s bothering him.
“When I first woke up here, you called me William. How did you know my name?”
“Oh, that’s easy!” she answers. “When I was alive, you were infamous. Lots of entries in the Watchers Journals about William the Bloody.”
He frowns. “What do you mean?”
She looks at him quizzically. “From when you were the Scourge of Europe. You know, when you were all ‘grrr!’” Cynthia makes a scary face and crooks her fingers like claws.
“I still don’t get it,” he replies. Then all of a sudden she gasps and a look of complete shock crosses her face.
“Oh my gosh, I just assumed - I mean, I thought you knew…”
“Knew what?” he demands, becoming visibly shaken and sounding more than a little irate.
“You’re a vampire,” she answers. His eyes go wide for a moment, and then he clutches his head in agony before falling to the ground, unconscious.
‘He’s gonna be pissed when he wakes up,’ she thinks to herself before hefting him over her shoulder and taking him to his room.
–
In his dream, he’s at the beach with Buffy and Dawn. They’re playing Frisbee in the water, splashing around and laughing. He can feel the hot sun on his body and knows that his fair skin will be burnt in a few hours. But he doesn’t care; he’s spending an afternoon with his girls.
Dawn bows out, wanting to get an ice cream cone. She wades out of the water and leaves Spike and Buffy tossing the bright orange disc between them. Buffy grins mischievously at him before racing towards him and jumping into his arms.
“Oof!” he says as he catches her. She wraps her legs around his waist and kisses him soundly on the lips. He tingles where their skin touches, and he wants to touch of all of her, memorize every curve of her body with his hands.
They fall in the water together and she giggles, a high-pitched trill that causes his heart to sing. “I love you,” he whispers in her ear. She pushes his wet hair out of his eyes, his unruly curls made straight by the water.
“I love you more,” Buffy murmurs against his mouth as she steals another kiss.
‘I must be dead,’ Spike thinks to himself, ‘because I think I’m in Heaven.’ Waves start rolling in from the ocean, rocking their bodies to and fro as they kiss and touch in the water. But soon the waves are too large and begin crashing over their heads.
The lovers pulled away from each other and see storm clouds rolling in unnaturally quickly. Spike pulls Buffy to her feet and begins to lead her back to shore. But she pulls against him and tries to head back out to sea.
“What are you doing?” he asks her, but his question is lost over the howling of the wind and the crashing of the waves. She yanks her arm from his grasp and begins walking towards the oncoming storm.
“Buffy, no!” he cries and lunges after her. Spike watches in horror as his hand passes right through Buffy’s shoulder. She continues her death walk and there’s nothing he could do to stop her.
The waves pull at her body, and the clouds tear apart to reveal an evil so dark, so sinister, that even Buffy quails at the sight. A flaming hand reaches out of the sky and scoops her up. She begins burning, but that doesn’t stop her from fighting.
Buffy kicks and punches and bites the hand, trying to get it to free her. Spike stands knee-deep in the water and cries; she’ll never make it.
“Don’t worry William, this isn’t real.” The voice comes from beside him and he turns.
“Tara?” he asks. She smiles and nods shyly. Then she touches his hand and the world disappears.
–
He’s back in the nothingness he had lived in before arriving in Limbo. But this time he’s not alone. Tara is still holding his hand and he can feel magic pulsing from her palm to his. It travels up his arm and as it does he becomes visible.
“How are you doing that?” he asks, watching in awe as his legs and feet slowly appear below him.
She gives a little Tara shrug. “Magic,” she whispers. He nods. He understands; not everything can be explained.
“What’s going on?”
“The Powers sent me with a message for you,” she replies. She waves her free hand and it leaves a trail of tiny sparkles in its wake that congeal into Technicolor images of a raging battle.
“This is the future - about three hundred years from now. It’s the Final Battle between the First Evil and the Slayer and her Champion. As you can see, you’re not present. It was not the time for the necklace, for Mi’iha’s Strand; a group of people that have been trying to initiate the apocalypse tricked Angel into believing it was. Wolfram & Hart thought that by activating Mi’iha’s Strand, they would move up the end of days. But they were wrong. All they did was ensure that another prophecy came to pass - the Shanshu.
“When a vampire achieves a certain level of repentance, they are given the gift of life and become human. However, the Shanshu was meant for Angel, and Buffy threw a wrench in the Powers’ plans when she gave the Strand to you to wear, which caused you to sacrifice yourself to save the world, qualifying for Shanshu. You’ve been stuck in Limbo because the Powers can’t decide what to do with you.
“They could send you to Judgment, which is where normal people go after Life. However, you’re not a normal person. Vampires usually go straight to Hell, but you are the only one to ever seek a soul. The Powers wanted to reward you somehow, but I believe they were thinking along the lines of freeing you from the emotional turmoil your soul has left you in.”
Spike doesn’t know what to say. He doesn’t like being told what to do, especially by the self-righteous Powers That Be. But he certainly doesn’t like the prospect of Hell either. There are definitely worse places to be stuck indefinitely - Limbo has been pretty good to him so far.
And now that he has his memories back he can talk to Cynthia and maybe they can figure out a way for her to be released…wait.
“They don’t know how to repay me?” Spike asks. He glances over at Tara, who is studying him intently. “Can I make a suggestion?”
“By all means,” she nods.
He lifts his hand and stares at it for a moment. How strange it is to see it, recognize it, know what it has done. The blood he’s spilt, the necks he’s snapped. The lives he’s destroyed.
“Let Cynthia go,” he says finally. “She made a mistake, that’s all. And it’s Xander’s fault anyhow, bringing Buffy back to life that first time. She’s been in Limbo seven years - it’s time for her to move on.”
Tara meeets his eyes and sees everything she needs to know. Gently she eases them back into his dream and releases his hand.
“But what about you?” she asks. “What should we do with you?”
Spike looks out onto the still water of his frozen dream, seeing Buffy clenched in the flaming hand, unmoving, trapped. Though her hair is lifted into the air, the wind is paused like everything else. Stop-motion theatre.
“I’ll watch over Limbo. Bury the girls.” He turns to her. “I killed two of them, loved a third. Shared a smoke with another. Knew one only in death. I know Slayers. It’s the least I can do.”
Tara smiles broadly at him and steps forward. She cups his face in both her hands and looks him straight in the eye. He stares back at her, unblinking, memorizing her face the way he wished he had done before she died.
“Tell Willow I will always love her,” she whispers, unshed tears brightening her eyes.
He frowns. “What do you mean? I’m not gonna see -”
There is an incredible weight on his chest. He can’t breathe, and though he knows he doesn’t need to, it’s distressing all the same. Panicking, he opens his eyes, but he can see nothing.
Spike thrashes his arms and hits something solid, metal. He grasps it and pushes. The sound of it bending screeches in his ears, echoing cacophonously. Dirt dislodges from somewhere above him and falls in his mouth and eyes.
He blinks through the falling debris and sees stone, cement, girders, and bodies. Lots of bodies.
‘I’m in the Hellmouth’, he realizes.
Spike pulls himself out of the wreckage inch by agonizing inch, summoning up reserves of energy he didn’t think existed. He’s no longer wearing the Strand, he notices, and remembers his meeting with Tara.
Has he done something wrong? Has he screwed it up somehow?
Finally on his own two feet, he takes in his surroundings. The school basement is now a gaping crater, big enough for its own zip code. Through the jagged maw of the collapsed cavern he can see the sky - it’s barely sundown, pink and purple along the horizon.
Carefully he picks his away across the battlefield, turning over bodies to see if they are anyone he knows. Had known.
He sees a mane of long brown hair and he cries out. Not Dawn, please not Dawn! Roughly Spike turns the girl over and sighs with relief, and then in sorrow. It’s Amanda. Not Dawn, no, but Amanda.
But Vi isn’t there. Nor Rona, nor Faith, nor Kennedy or Willow. He can only hope they escaped safely.
Exhausted, he somehow manages to climb the rock face and hauls himself into what had once been the school’s main hallway. Spike can still see lockers and fluorescent lighting among the rubble, but the entire structure has collapsed. He wanders over the uneven hills of rubble, stumbling, sliding, falling.
By the time he finds Anya’s body he’s too tired to dig it out.
He leaves it and moves on.
Three hours later the moon is high in the sky and Spike is still trudging through the remains of Sunnydale. Normally, he could make it from one end of town to the other in the same amount of time, but the irregularity of the rubble makes walking difficult and tiresome.
He’s cold, hungry, tired, filthy, lonely, and - he reluctantly admits - a little scared. He’s worried about Cynthia. He’s worried about Tara. He’s worried his dream was real. He’s worried Limbo wasn’t.
He’s worried about Buffy and Dawn, about the new Slayers, about what’s going to happen now. But his greatest worry is that he’ll find the bus among the destruction, battered, burnt. He’s afraid they too will be dead.
When the first drops of rain begin to fall, Spike decides it’s time to rest. He finds an alcove of rock and hunkers down in it, pulling his leather duster tighter around himself.
As the rain becomes torrential and his body completely soaked and muddy, he gives up on consciousness and falls into a fitful sleep.
–
Buffy watches Cordelia’s sleeping form. From the gentle rise and fall of her chest she knows the other woman is still alive. The coma is deep, she knows, but her old friend looks so utterly dead.
In the building around her, various people are moving about. Giles is making numerous phone calls to his colleagues in England, Fred is chattering away to Willow as they catalogue the weapons from Sunnydale, and Angel is ordering movers around, take this couch there, get rid of that coat stand. The new Slayers are trying to sleep through it, but most of them are wide awake, tossing and turning in their beds.
They’d arrived at the Hyperion just two days earlier after driving all day, with only a stop to deliver their wounded to Memorial Hospital. Angel had welcomed them to the hotel, though it was in a state of disarray from the devoted supporters of Jasmine.
Now that he’s acquired Wolfram & Hart, Angel has the money to restore the Hyperion to its original glory. The Scoobies and their extended family are to be its first occupants.
Though the constant babble in the building is keeping everyone else up, Buffy is awake for other reasons. Primarily, because sleep will not come.
She had tried on the bus, she had tried in her bed, she had tried after a warm bath - nothing. Nada. It didn’t matter that she was exhausted beyond reason, sleep kept eluding her.
So now she sits with Cordelia, keeping her company. She reads to her from various books she pulls off Angel’s bookshelf. She tells her about what she’d missed while she’d been living in LA. She has braided her short black hair, then un-braided it, then braided it again.
And that’s just today.
Buffy likes being with Cordelia because she doesn’t ask any difficult questions, like ‘Why did you leave him?’ and ‘Did you really mean what you said?’ Cordy doesn’t remind her of Spike or Anya or any of the other dead they’ve left behind. She is neutral. She is beige.
Laying her head against the back of the chair Buffy tries to push the painful memories aside. Practicing one of Willow’s breathing techniques she begins centering herself, regaining control. Breathe in for three, hold for three, breathe out for three. In for three, hold for three, out for three. In, hold, out. In…out. In…
For the first time in days, she falls asleep.
–
She is standing in the high school. One of the hallways, though she can’t place which one. School is in session, but the building is quiet. Like death.
Buffy walks down the hall, her heels tapping out a patient rhythm on the tiles.
“This isn’t right,” she says. She continues walking.
Rounding a corner, a girl comes into view. She is standing in front of the office, staring through the glass at the desks and offices beyond. Her hand is pressed against it. Buffy doesn’t know her.
“Can I help you?” Buffy asks. The girl jumps in surprise and looks at her, frightened. She squints, mutters something to herself, tucks her hair behind her ears.
“I’m looking for someone,” the girl replies. Her voice is gentle, like silk, but she exudes a familiar confidence. She cocks her head, squints again. “Do I know you?” she asks.
“I don’t think so,” Buffy replies.
“You look real familiar,” the girl insists, but Buffy shrugs.
“There’s a lot of girls that look like me,” she replies. “My name’s Buffy, by the way.”
The girl looks shocked, confused, and her mouth hangs open. Hesitantly, she extends a hand. “Cynthia,” she whispers. “I’m Cynthia.”
Buffy grasps her hand and smiles brightly.
–
Spike wakes to a loud clap of thunder. It shakes the ground and rattles his teeth. The rain has not let up. He groans as he tries to shift positions.
“Bloody buggering Powers That Be!” he yells into the open air. It doesn’t do him any good, but it makes him feel marginally better.
Rolling over he closes his eyes and forces himself to rest. His body aches, his fingers and toes are numb, and he’s hungry enough to start eating rats. If there were any rats around, that is.
As he begins to shiver he wonders what Cynthia is doing and if she’s all right.
–
“Who are you looking for?” Buffy asks. Cynthia glances around the school.
“Spike.”
“Spike?”
“Is he here?” she demands.
Buffy frowns. “He was. But he’s gone now. I lost him.”
“Are you dreaming?” Cynthia asks.
Slowly Buffy nods. “Yes. I’m dreaming. I haven’t slept since I lost him. No wonder this dream is weird.”
Cynthia shifts from foot to foot in agitation. “What the hell is going on here?” she asks herself.
“Why are you looking for him?” Buffy asks.
Cynthia sighs and rubs her face. “He disappeared. One minute I was dumping him on his bed, the next he was gone and I was here.”
“You lost him too.”
She looks hard at Buffy. “He’s not gone.”
Buffy doesn’t reply, doesn’t move.
“He’s not gone. And if there’s one thing I’ve learned from him, it’s that there’s a reason for everything.”
She steps away from the office and glances down the hall. “Where did you last see him?”
“In the basement,” Buffy replies, heading in that direction.
She opens the door and the two Slayers walk down the steps. They wander through the maze-like basement before coming to a large metal door.
“We were in here,” Buffy whispers. She places her hand on the door, mimicking Cynthia’s movement from before. “I left him. I couldn’t stay any longer. He made me go.”
She glances at the other girl. “But I wish he hadn’t.”
Cynthia reaches forward and pulls the door open. Both girls peer inside. They are assaulted by the sights and sounds of a raging battle. Spike is there, fighting the Turok-Han alone. He is one man against thousands.
“This isn’t right,” Buffy whispers. Cynthia takes her by the arm and leads her into the fray.
“This isn’t how it happened?” she asks. Buffy shakes her head.
“We had won, but he was trapped. His soul was being torn from him, he was burning up, and he wouldn’t come with me!” Buffy chokes back a sob. “He wanted to see the end.”
“But it’s not over,” Cynthia replies.
“What?”
“The world didn’t end, evil wasn’t vanquished - it’s not over.”
Buffy watches as Spike spins and plunges and dodges and punches. He is liquid death. He is winning.
“He’s a survivor,” she whispers.
“Yes,” Cynthia agrees. “He survived.”
He survived.
–
Buffy jolts awake, falling off her chair. Sweat has plastered her hair to her forehead, her hands are clammy, her breathing erratic.
A Slayer dream.
He survived.
She rises shakily to her feet, stumbles across the room and out the door. Racing down the hallway she speeds past her friends, her family. She practically leaps down the stairs in her panic and arrives disheveled and wild at her Watcher’s feet.
“We left him!” she cries out. Giles and Angel exchange concerned glances.
“What are you talking about?” Giles asks.
Buffy shakes her head in dismay. “He’s not dead. We left him behind! We have to go back, Giles. We have to!”
“Who? Spike?” Angel takes hold of her arms and makes her look him in the eye.
“I had a Slayer dream,” she whispers. “He survived.”
“Are you quite sure it was a Slayer dream?” Giles asks. He has taken off his glasses and is practically cleaning a hole through them.
“I haven’t slept in days, I thought it was just weird, but…there was someone there. Someone real. She told me he survived.”
By now Willow, Xander, Faith and Dawn have been summoned by the witnesses to Buffy’s slight breakdown. They gather around the trio in the lobby and listen in.
“Angel, I have to go back. I have to make sure. You know I do. And I’ll go alone if I have to, but -”
“I’ll go,” Faith says. Buffy turns and noticed her friends for the first time.
“Me too,” Willow adds and takes one of Buffy’s hands in her own.
“Really?” she asks. Willow squeezes her hand and Faith shrugs.
The witch begins pushing the two Slayers out the door, Angel and Dawn close on their heels.
“I’ll drive,” he insists as Buffy reaches for the key hook. “I don’t want to take that bus of yours anywhere.”
–
When Spike awakens once more it’s to the sound of his name being spoken by a familiar voice. He blinks the sleep from his eyes and squints into the dark.
“Spike?”
He rolls over quickly and grabs her arms. “Cynthia?!”
She grins at him and throws her arms around his body. He presses her against his chest and cups the back of her head, her drenched hair dripping down his collar.
“What happened?” he asks as she finally pulls away.
“You did it,” she whispers, tears streaming down her face.
“What did I do?”
“You set me free.”
He sighs in relief and hugsd her to him again. “I wasn’t sure if it worked! I was supposed to take your place, but next thing I knew I was back in Sunnydale.”
She nods. “You made a decision that proved to the Powers that your sacrifice wasn’t just to save those you cared about, but was for the good of all and in repentance for your sins.”
Spike raises his scarred eyebrow. “Really?”
“Yep. I got a visit from a girl named Tara and she explained the whole thing. Then she told me that I could go as long as I did one last thing.”
“What was it?” he asks.
“Spike!”
He turns his head and sees flashlight beams bouncing across the rubble. It’s Angel. Faith is a few metres further back, sweeping her light in a steady search pattern.
They call his name again.
“I brought her to you,” Cynthia answers.
Another voice calls his name and he feels something inside him warm.
Buffy.
“I have to go now,” Cynthia tells him. He turns his attention back to her and notices that her form has begun to fade. “I want to give you something before I do.”
She reaches into her pocket and withdraws the die that he’d uncovered in her closet. With a wistful smile she places it in his palm and closes his fist around it.
“Thank you,” she says.
“You’re welcome,” he replies. And then she’s gone.
“Spike! Are you here?”
He stands up, die clenched firmly in his hand. He feels strong again. Whole. He has survived.
“Over here!” he calls out and climbs atop a large boulder.
About ten feet away, Buffy whips around, flashlight focusing on his face just long enough to blind him before dropping it to the ground and yelling in shock and excitement. With Slayer speed she crosses the precarious distance between them and leaps into his arms.
The rain is still pouring down on them, but neither notices or cares as her warm body wraps around his, her wet hair still smelling of her shampoo. Her fingers ghost his face as she stares at him in wonder.
He smiles. She laughs.
She kisses him in a desperate declaration of life and love. Their hands frantically roam each other’s bodies, haunted by the loss they’d endured. Spike trails a line of kisses down her neck, all the while she whispers to him how she’s missed him, thought him dead, hadn’t been sleeping, and that she loves him.
When she says those three words again he pulls back and stares into her eyes. The others have finally caught up, dancing their lights across the couple. He glances at them, pausing on Dawn, remembering the body of Amanda and how afraid he’d been that it was his precious Nibblet.
Buffy holds his face and turns it towards her once more. “I love you,” she says, loud enough for everyone to hear. Then she kisses him again, gentle and undemanding.
Faith clears her throat in mock disgust and Spike pulls away from Buffy sheepishly. He sets her down on the ground but keeps one arm firmly around her waist. Buffy smiles up at him, practically glowing.
“What do you have there?” Willow asks, pointing to his closed fist. Everyone watches as he holds out his palm to reveal Cynthia’s die. It’s resting on one.
“A die?” Buffy questions, leaning her head against his chest. Her heart is beating wildly - he can feel it through her chest. She is relaxed, cheerful, bright.
All at once it seems to Spike that everything will be fine. Life will be perfect with her in his life. And he knows now that what Cynthia has given him is not this cube of plastic, but something much, much more important.
“No,” he replies, placing a loving kiss across her brow. “I have The One.”