Disclaimer: If you made it this far into the website, chances are you know durned well who owns the copyright on Buffy, Spike and the rest of the gang, and that it ain’t me. No copyright infringement intended. This is, as ever, fanfic impure and simple, or, as I like to think of it (due to the parallels to romance novel fiction) femfanfic. It is one (somewhat deranged and obsessed) femfan’s vision of the possibilities of the Buffyverse created by Joss Whedon.
Rating: NC-17. Completely and absolutely. If you somehow made it pass the screens and buffers while underage, you should STOP NOW! If you want something exciting to read, try Poe, Lovecraft, Mary Shelly’s Frankenstein or Bram Stoker’s Dracula, and learn how really good, scary horror fiction is done. That’s what I was doing at your age, and odds are that’s what Joss was doing, too. Come back when you’re legal.
All Too Human
part 5
She enticed him by breathing, by being. She enticed him with the unconscious sway of her hips, and the mere beating of her heart. She had but to drift across the room in one of her silk gowns, had but to glance at him from under her long lashes, had but to part her full, ripe lips, and he was instantly hard and ready for her, instantly impatient to leave whatever meeting, or party, or obligation he endured to take her back to their bed and make her shatter for him. He loved her surrender. He loved her heat and her blood and her breath and her life.
He loved her, it one day occurred to him. But telling himself the thought was too fantastic to consider seriously, he turned his attention to other matters.
"Viceroy," Spike said to Willow as he handed her the scroll. It was the demon equivalent of an appointment, though it was more about spells and power than about legal niceties. Demons weren't big on legal niceties, but they understood power.
"Not consort?" Willow said coolly.
"Look, it comes with the title of Princess. You rule the court in my absence, your word is law next to mine...and Lilith's of course. And you don't have to sleep with me, or be faithful or any of that crap."
"Perhaps I like sleeping with you, Spike," Willow said, but she was clearly satisfied with what he was giving her.
"Between Xander, and Rayne and the dozen others you've got dangling after you, I very much doubt it." Spike rejoined. She looked at him soberly.
"You'd be wrong. But time means nothing in Hell. I'm patient. You'll learn, eventually. Buffy will never, ever give you what you need," she said with conviction.
But in this she erred.
****************
Buffy had tried so hard. She had done her duty as a Slayer, however unorthodoxly. She had saved the world repeatedly. She had tried to be not only the Slayer, but a good friend, a good daughter. And when evil had triumphed over good, she tried to survive it with her own will, her own integrity, her own resistance, intact. It had all been useless.
She tried not to love Spike, but somehow, she failed.
It began with the dreams. She had fallen asleep in his arms --did he ever allow her not to?-- and the black fire came again. But this time, instead of absorbing her dreams, it seemed to reflect them, to lead her, in fact, to a particular scene.
The blond haired boy gave the stolen piece of bread to his sister, to quiet her weeping. Letty's cries would only disturb their mother, and William knew their mother was too weak to do anything about their hunger. He was afraid she was dying, but he didn't dare let her die. What could an eight year old boy possibly do to support his six year old sister in 19th century London? They needed their mother, especially now that their father was gone, and with him, the funds that had kept a roof over their heads and food in their bellies. They had lost the roof, having to give up their small cottage for one dismal room in the slums. William's mother had taken in sewing, earning enough, until her illness, to keep them in food. Her stitches were fine, and ladylike, but then, she had been a lady, though impoverished, when their father, whose station was somewhat higher than hers, had seen her, and wanted her, and set her up in her own house. Marriage was out of the question, and William had learned at an early age the disadvantages to being a bastard, even a noble one. Still, they were happy enough. Until Letty's birth had somehow ruined their father's pleasure in their mother, and he had found other amusements.
Tight-fisted, the sum he had settled on them was paltry. Still, it might have been enough, had it been invested wisely by an honorable man of business. Her man of business proved to have no honor, and her funds had quickly been sapped away.
As had her strength.
Her family had no interest in a fallen woman and her illegitimate brats. Her former protector had left London for India, on a bride trip to investigate the tea plantations that had been his new wife's dowry. Now, Lady Margaret was coughing up blood in a cold, miserable tenement room, while her little boy tried to reassure her, and promised to fetch the doctor. The doctor who would never come unless given the last bit of silver she possessed. The doctor who could not possibly save her life.
"No, William, my sweet boy" she told him. "I'll be all right. Take the coin and buy a hot pie for dinner. Letty must be hungry."
Letitia had fallen asleep crying in hunger, but William did not tell his mother that. He
obediently took the coin. But he went for the doctor, convinced that it was his best hope.
But she was dead when he returned, and the silver coin went to pay for a cheap wooden coffin, and a bare wooden cross...
Buffy didn't know what to make of the first dream, but it was followed by others, dreams in which William and his sister were forced to live in the deadly warrens of London's streets. Dreams in which he had to steal to keep them both fed. Dreams in which Letitia was abducted and sold into one of the brothels that specialized in young virgins, until her fourteen year old brother found her, and killed the man who was raping her. Buffy dreamt of their escape, which proved transient when Letitia died giving birth to the stillborn product of her rape. She saw William's despair, and his rage and his defiance when he was finally forced into one of the hated workhouses that were the bane of London. She watched him grow up too hard, too young, too fast…
He learned survival in a merciless school, and ruthlessness as well. But he was smart, and cunning, and he learned other things. Perhaps, he could have made something of himself. One elderly merchant became interested in the dynamic young man's potential, and considered hiring him as a clerk. But then, a dark haired, slender girl with madness in her eyes and crimson on her lips found him. She was vulnerable and needy, as his mother and sister had been. It was this vulnerability that, perhaps, most appealed to him. Here was a chance to redeem himself, to take on again the duty of protector. But this time, he vowed, he would not fail.
She was a dream of beauty, and she offered him the world if he would only give her his soul. Not knowing what it meant, enchanted, lonely, entranced by what seemed to him the one good, pure thing that had ever happened in his cruelly bitter life, William accepted Drusilla's kiss.
And paid for it in his own blood.
And then he made others pay. The demon who had been William tracked down his father, with his plump wife and pampered, legitimate children, a girl of sixteen, a boy one year older. Angelus made a meal of the girl, while Darla seduced and devoured the boy. Dru fed on the mother, leaving his father to William's mercies.
He had none. Instead, he found that railroad ties could be used to stunning effect, and he acquired the nickname that he would carry forever after.
Sweet William was gone for good, and there was only Spike...
Buffy woke weeping from the final dream. She was alone. Spike had gone off to hold court again. Buffy rarely chose to join him. She preferred the loneliness of her own company to the companionship of demons, and Spike never forced the issue. She spent her time wandering the bleak and blasted gardens, or exploring the uninhabited portions of the citadel that was her prison and her home.
The garden, though, was what drew her. The garden where Spike had placed Angel's ashes.
They were on a pedestal, surrounded by black flame. Buffy could see the porcelain bowl, but the flames prevented her from touching it. Sometimes, she would simply sit, looking at the bowl, weeping for everything she had lost. Once, Spike had found her there, weeping, and had grown unaccountably angry. He had pushed her down into the grass, raised her skirts, and buried himself inside her with brutal force.
"He can hear us, Slayer." Spike told her cruelly. "Did you know that? I want him to hear you again. Shatter for me, love."
And she had.
Today, she spent only a few moments with Angel's ashes. Another sorrow haunted her. She walked the gardens for hours, eventually turning back to her rooms. Spike was there before her, stretched out on the bed, seemingly asleep.
If she looked, she could see the boy William had been, the vulnerable, almost noble fighter. It was true, it wasn't William's fault that he had become a demon. It seemed that every cruel chance in his life had forced him down an inevitable pathway. She knew she wasn't looking at William, really, that William had been resting in the aether long before her birth. But there were memories of William's life within Spike, and somehow they colored the actions and perceptions of the demon he had become. Buffy hurt for that lost boy, and knew, logically, that he was beyond her reach, beyond her comfort. But some part of him survived in Spike, and she yearned toward that part right now.
Buffy slipped out of her gown, letting it fall in a rustle of satin to the floor. She unfastened the laces of her corset and petticoat, but left the silk stockings with their garters tied about her thighs. They wouldn't be in the way. Quietly, so as not to wake him, she slipped onto the bed, kneeling beside him, gently drawing the covers away from Spike's body. He was naked as she had hoped, naked and beautiful. For once, his cock was quiescent, not the rampant, forbidding instrument of her pleasure and torment, but vulnerable flesh. Buffy leant forward, and placed a kiss on the tip of his shaft. He stirred in his sleep, a slight growl coming from his lips as his subconscious took note of the caress. She smiled and opened her mouth above him, licking out with her moist, pink tongue, gently swirling it over the head. He would wake in a moment, she knew. Buffy opened her mouth wider, gently sucking him into the wet cave of her throat, wanting to taste him as he had so often tasted her. Her hands came up to hold the base of his shaft, and caress the vulnerable flesh beneath it.
He grew hard for her quickly, as she moved her head forward, taking him deeper. She heard his startled, indrawn breath, as he finally woke, to find himself engulfed in her willing mouth. She angled her head slightly, as she drew up on his shaft, trying to glance at his face. His eyes were open, staring at her, his expression one close to torment. She smiled and sucked him back down again. He groaned, reaching forward to bury his hands in her hair.
"Do you know what you're doing to me, baby?" he whispered. Buffy answered him without words.
God, this was sweet, he thought as he fell back against the pillows. Almost as sweet as when he made her come. Lust burst through his brain, and he tried to tug her legs forward, to get her to move over him so he could lick and nibble at her wet center. But she wouldn't move, and after a moment, he gave up the battle and just let her give him a pleasure he had never expected her to volunteer. He fleetingly wondered what had made her do this, then decided he didn't care. She burned him like liquid fire, her mouth impossibly hot, her tongue impossibly skilled. She took occasional light, nipping, playful bites and he thought he would crest and spill in her then and there. But she seemed to know when he was close, and slowed her pace, dropping him back down, making him wait. Spike decided that eternity could end right then and there, for all he cared. He wanted to die with the feel of her lips and tongue and teeth gloving him, savoring him, bringing him selfless, unlooked for rapture.
Buffy let go of her memories, of the knowledge of who and what she was. She freed herself, for the moment, from the strictures of duty, the burden of vengeance, and became what Spike would have her be; his lover, his mate.
His wife.
She became nothing more than sensation, and movement, heat and moisture. She became a vortex created solely for his gratification, which somehow became her own. She could feel how hard he was, how helpless, vulnerable beneath her lips and tongue and caressing hands. The most powerful being in Hell, ruler of what was left of the world, and he was helpless beneath her, utterly at her mercy.
She decided to show him no more than he ever showed her. He buried his hands in her hair again, trying to force her to move to an acceptable rhythm, one that would rapidly end his torment. She resisted his pull, keeping to the pace she chose, slowly sliding her lips to the top of his cock, sending her tongue in caressing swirls about the pulsing head, waiting until she could feel him straining for release before plunging back down, taking him to the root. He convulsed upward in a spasm of satisfaction, but he hadn't spilled for her yet. She pulled back again. Her hands, meanwhile, enhanced the caress, moving over flesh damp from her mouth, squeezing, fondling, stroking. Buffy heard Spike's breath come in panting gasps, and increased her rhythm just a little.
For once, it was Spike who begged.
She ignored him, for the moment, reveling in her power over him, in how good it felt to be able to swallow even his mighty flesh all the way down to the root. But she knew it would only be sweeter when she finished, when she had him as helplessly shattered by pleasure as he so often shattered her. So she began to move more quickly, more forcefully, driving him toward the very precipice he had taught her to crave.
She was consuming him in fire and he had no desire to do anything but burn. Her mouth gave him suction and heat and glory and just when he thought he couldn't take any more, just when he thought he would die of exquisite torment, she moved that crucial bit more and he spilled for her at last, roaring his satisfaction, hips bucking against her mouth. He spilled and spilled, and she drew him further in, giving him a satisfaction he had never imagined he would find. The earth went down in fire and flame, day blazed out of unending night, and he didn't care, didn't care because she was sweet solace and the only paradise he would ever crave.
It was long moments before he recovered himself. He opened his eyes to see Buffy, her head nestled against his thighs, her eyes slumberous as if it was she who had received such soul-stealing pleasure, and not himself. He had no words for her, only tenderness. Spike reached for her, drawing her up and over his body, burying his face in her breasts, planting slow, unhurried kisses on the soft, plump mounds. She gave a moan of satisfaction, but there was no urgency to it. Buffy couldn't imagine that he would be ready to do more than caress her for a good while.
She was wrong.
This was the first time, he realized, that she had made love to him. The first time when it hadn't been ravishment, and battle, and unwilling surrender. The first time when it hadn't been vengeance and desire on his part, and resistance and craving on hers. And he wanted her, now, like this, when she was not only willing, but something else, something it took him a moment to identify. Something that stunned him when he recognized it.
Loving.
Spike pulled her beneath him, settled between her willingly parted thighs, and stared down at her. She smiled slightly up at him, her green eyes open, honest, tender. And still haunted by that unquenchable sadness, a sadness that suddenly cut him like a knife.
"You're beautiful, you know," he said to her. "So beautiful. You break my heart." He bent his head and kissed her, and tasted his own salt essence on her tongue. Lust stirred in him slowly, but more, the need to cherish her, to give back to her what she gave him.
To love her.
He spent long moments just kissing her, just tasting her mouth, and drinking in the scent and flavor of her skin and hair. He licked at the tender flesh of her neck, allowing himself to vamp out and take just a little of the vital wine she gave him. Buffy held his head closer, offering herself, soft sighs of pleasure drawn from her as he drew out her blood. Spike pulled back, licking the tiny wounds closed and kissed his way down to her breasts. They peaked for him, and he gently teased the nipples, one with his lips and tongue, the other with caressing fingers. She began to squirm, deliciously, pressing herself closer, offering him more. He went back to her mouth, the full lips he could never resist, never leave alone for long. Buffy spread her thighs invitingly wider, fitting her hips to his, but he didn't want to rush things. Spike kissed her shoulders, her throat, her breasts. He kissed her ribs, her belly, the dip of her navel, the point of her hipbones. He settled himself between her thighs and began the play of his mouth and tongue that he knew she craved, devouring the succulent pearl of her flesh, piercing the honeyed entrance to her body with his tongue. She began to move for him, rhythmically, her enjoyment clear, but he wanted more from her than simple pleasure this time.
Spike spent the next hour driving her slowly mad with gentle caresses and languorous kisses. There wasn't an inch of her body that he didn't worship with lips and hands and tongue. She was calling his name, begging him, long before he was ready to take her, and when, at last, he acceded to her pleas and pushed slowly into her liquescent depths, she came for him as soon as he was fully engulfed, breaking in sweet, deep spasms around him, welcoming him into her flesh with unreserved, uninhibited joy.
He held himself still, kissing her as she came back to herself, letting her recover, giving her the space to calm.
Giving them both the chance to start again, once more.
It was like nothing they had ever experienced before. Their battle had, by unspoken agreement, been set aside. There was nothing between them, not Drusilla's death, or Angel's torture, not his murder of innocents, or her sacred duty. Who they were, what they were had been reduced to this; essential female, essential male, tender passion, sweetest rapture...
Unlooked for, inevitable, unexpected love.
Buffy smiled at Spike, lifting her hips in an invitation he couldn't deny, and he moved within her, kissing her mouth, drinking in her soft sighs. It was as if they couldn't tell where their bodies were separate, individual. Conjoined, Buffy knew how she felt to him, as he knew the pleasure he gave her. It was slow, sweet, and they savored every moment, no longer engaged in a contest of wills, but a harmony of desire. Buffy wanted to offer herself to him with nothing held back, as if she could reach out to the boy William had been, offer him comfort and surcease from bitter loneliness, and the cruel deception that had lead to his death. Spike wanted to wipe the sadness from her eyes, he wanted to make up to her for taking away her world and her love, he wanted to give her the love he had never, until now, realized himself capable of giving. Even what he felt for Dru, he finally understood, was affection and lust, possessiveness and need. It wasn't the love he unaccountably felt for the woman in his arms.
They moved against each other, within each other, upon each other, attuned to each other’s slightest need. He pulsed and stroked within her, she tightened and released around him. They kissed, and licked and caressed each other as pleasure mounted around them and flesh and blood sang with ecstasy. And all the while the driving rhythms of their bodies carried them higher, and higher to a building peak.
For Buffy, all sensation was ultimately reduced to the essential fact of Spike moving within her, no longer cold, but burning hot. She yielded around him, taking him deeper, opening herself fully, giving herself unreservedly, letting him take her, possess her, brand her...yield to her.
His life had been based on lies. Paradise did not lie in some distant, cloud filled realm, it was here in the warm sweet flesh of the woman beneath him, the woman who gloved him, held him, rocked him. Spike plunged into her honeyed depths, kissing her, drowning in her. Sweet rapture coiled around them once more, and he drove into her, taking them both higher.
The climax, when it came, rocked them both, binding them together, and again they could not distinguish their separate pleasures, so attuned were they to each other's needs. Hell burned around them and it didn't matter, the world was undone and that was less than nothing. They burned in fires that gave birth to stars and furnished the raw stuff of the universe, and the burning was glorious, joyous, rapturous ecstasy. They trembled and released, trembled and released, and all the universe was reduced to that one moment in time when they came together in pleasure and gave each other to each other, bodies and souls.
And in that one moment of time, unutterably fulfilled, taken beyond himself, Spike whispered into her ear, "I love you."
Afterward, there were no words. Only tender kisses and sweet peace. He withdrew from her only to cradle her body close, wrapping them both in the silk sheets and bedclothes. She smiled, and kissed him, and drifted off to sleep.
And she had not said that she loved him, and he was achingly conscious of the lack.
Spike turned his duties over to Willow for an indeterminate amount of time, and stayed by Buffy's side. They made tender love or indulged in white-hot passion. Her resistance was done for good and all, but he could not wipe the sadness from her eyes.
And she had not said she loved him.
One day, she woke before him and went into the garden, sitting on the grass before Angel's ashes. She wasn't crying. This was a sorrow she had borne too long. She didn't realize, right away, that Spike had followed her, that he was watching her. Remembering his anger last time he had found her in this place, she stood, facing him, wondering if he would change again toward her.
"Do you want to scatter them, love?" he asked her gently.
It took Buffy a moment to allow herself to believe that he had said it. "You would let me do that? You would free him?" she asked. In answer, he smiled ruefully, walked past her, and reached into the black flames. Since they burned at his behest, they did not hinder him. The spell was his to invoke or revoke at will. He picked up the porcelain bowl, and gave a turn to the lid, making sure that she could easily lift it off. Then he handed her the bowl, still without saying a word.
Buffy's eyes were luminous with tears. It seemed an impossible blessing that she would, at long last, be able to give peace to her beloved Angel. Gently, she lifted the lid, staring down at the gathered remnants of mortality, the ashes that were all that remained of his flesh, and that yet imprisoned his soul. Slowly, she shook them out around the garden, letting them drift over the night blooming jasmine, across the unearthly trees and into the black and blasted grass. A slight breeze sprang up, helping her in her goal. She knew that Spike had commanded it, as he commanded all else in that place. The breeze lifted the ashes, and for a moment they swirled around her, gently, like a benediction, and she could almost, almost feel the remembered touch of Angel’s mouth on hers, almost hear him call her name. Then the ashes scattered away. Buffy dropped the empty bowl to the ground and collapsed weeping. Spike sat beside her on the grass, pulling her into his arms, offering a solace she had no wish to refuse. He didn't try to stop her tears, but held her, stroking her hair back from her face, gently kissing the tracks her tears had taken.
She wept herself to sleep, in his arms, in the garden, and that was where Willow found them. She had apparently been watching for some time.
"Did you know that human tears, chemically, cleanse the system of the physical manifestations of grief?" Willow asked him as she moved toward them. Her voice was pitched low, so as not to wake Buffy. "When you drink her human tears, are you drinking her humanity, Spike? Are you drinking her grief?"
"What do you want, pet?" Spike growled. "Because if this is a social call, your timing is bloody well off."
"It's not a social call. I thought you should know that Ethan Rayne has convinced Xander to join him and try to overthrow you." She smiled slightly, sure that this would enrage him, stir him to action. Her smile faltered when he merely looked at her and shook his head.
"How appallingly predictable. I suppose you know what's going on?" She raised a brow at him questioningly. "We're demons, love. We torment things. It's what we do. With all the humans gone, we've got no one left to torment but each other. This sort of thing is going to happen. I suppose Cordy told you?"
"She confirmed it."
"Should I bother to stop them, or do you just want to let them run things until they get so bollixed up there'll be a counter-revolution?"
"And what will you do while they're in power?"
"Take a damned vacation. What else?"
"It would be a possibility," Willow conceded. Too easily, he thought. There had to be more. There was. "But there's one problem. Xander wants the slayer. He won't rest until he takes her from you."
Spike glanced down at the sleeping woman in his arms.
"Not bloody likely," he said fiercely. Willow smiled.
There were torments even demons feared, and Spike subjected Ethan Rayne and Xander to them all. He let Cordellia and Willow have Xander, knowing that they would derive particular pleasure from his suffering, and wanting to reward them for their help in staving off a palace revolution. Eventually, he would release the offenders. They would not have learned their lessons, and would doubtless scheme against him again. It was the sort of thing that kept eternity interesting.
Buffy knew nothing about any of it, and after a while of making his presence felt, Spike turned things back over to Willow --and her new favorite, Cordelia-- and returned to the Slayer. She came to him willingly, now, offering passion and tenderness in one small, fragile package. He buried himself inside her, was transported to rapture, and forgot everything he was, everything he had done, everything he would be forced to do.
And one day, when she shattered for him, when he was drunk on her blood and she gave herself without limits and drew down his very soul, she whispered into his ear, "I love you."
But there was still sorrow in her eyes.
"I love you," she said again, as they sat in the garden by the pedestal that once held Angel's ashes. He had drawn her into his lap, and she sat with her head resting against his shoulder, looking up at him with her guileless green-brown eyes. "I love you, but it doesn't matter. I still killed Drusilla, and you still killed Angel and destroyed the world." She raised her face for his kiss, and they made love and as close as she brought him to paradise, he understood, finally, that he was indeed in Hell.
Much later, long after they had returned to the bed they shared, he left her sleeping and went into one of the parts of the palace that was largely left alone. He lit the fire in the brazier, gave the invocation, and spilled his own blood. This time, Lilith had the decency to appear in person.
She was not merely black flame, but utter darkness, swallowing the light. She still had the form of a young girl, a voluptuous Sumerian princess. He ought to fear her, but he did not. She was the most powerful being he had ever met, and she had given him his heart’s desire and, most likely, laughed as it turned to ashes in his mouth.
"Did you know this would happen?" Spike asked conversationally.
"Oh, my most beloved child, of course," she said. This time her voice was all around him.
"Ah. Let me guess. Since the humans are all gone, you have to have someone to torment, and you decided to torment me."
"The stronger the demon, the sweeter their discomfiture," she explained. "And I have made you very strong indeed. And I have given you your heart's desire, have I not?"
He laughed bitterly. "Yeah. My heart's desire. You do keep your bargains. But I'd like to know...how?"
"You've figured it out then?"
"Demons don't love. I thought Dru loved me, but she didn't. She lusted for Angel, and when he tired of her, she needed someone to take care of her. I was a besotted young idiot, perfect for the job. Of course I loved her when I was human. But once I was a demon, why didn't I despise her weakness, like I despised the weakness of every other lesser vamp?"
"Because, beloved, you never truly were a demon." Spike closed his eyes, as the pieces of the puzzle started falling into place.
"Come again?" he asked, needing the details.
"There are rules about these things, you know. Human victims are always consecrated to some god or other, even some demon. They've been baptized, or initiated, or circumcised, all in the name of some power beyond themselves, some power that assures their soul a place in the aether once they die."
"Are you trying to tell me that in 19th century London, someone forgot to baptize me, and that left me open for....this?"
"Oh, they didn't forget," Lilith assured him. "They planned to do their duty. But they were...distracted."
"By you," he guessed. She bowed her head in acknowledgement. As ever, the irony was too much for him. His own laughter echoed in the cavernous room. It made so much sense, now that he understood. His ability to love Dru, the need to be the biggest, baddest vamp of them all. He had merely been trying to deny what he had, in fact, known all along; that although he had been made a vampire, he still retained his human soul. Spike, William the Bloody, vampire extraordinaire and Prince Infernal of Hell on Earth was, in truth, all too human.
"Well, this is rich," he admitted. "What now?"
She shrugged. "Whatever you like. Within limits, of course."
"Yeah, well, there's always limits."
"And there's always a price," she reminded him. "But you can do as you will. You can do anything but become fully human, and have her love become unconditional." Spike smiled, because, of course, that was all that was left for him to want.
"I think I'll take her love, conditional or not," Spike said.
"As you like," Lilith responded. "For the time being. But you should remember exactly what time means in Hell." And on those words, she left.
He took Buffy's love. And gave it back. But no matter how sweet their passion, no matter the brief moments of respite, when nothing intruded between them, the knowledge of who and what they were always surfaced, sooner or later, and he could never fully erase the sorrow from her eyes. It was a tiny seed of pain and loss within him, easy to ignore, for a while. But in Hell, there was too much time for it to grow, and blossom, and bear bitter fruit.
Until he couldn't endure her sorrow anymore, until he would sell his bartered soul to change everything, and make it right for her.
Until he remembered that, in Hell, time had no meaning.
He did it after he made love to her one final time, after he drowned himself in the wine of her blood and melted into the heat of her body and held her as she shattered for him unendingly. After she called out his name in passion, and whispered that she loved him. Spike picked Buffy up in his arms and carried her out to the garden, to the empty pedestal beneath the red-black sky.
And then he took meaningless time, and bent it to his will and it ran backward at his command. He held her close as the earth spun counter to its wonted path, and time unraveled around them, and because he held her she was apart from it, aware of it. She looked at him, knowing what he did, and could only offer one comfort. "I love you," she said again.
"Yes, pet," he said, as sulfurous clouds were sucked behind the moon, and the palace crumbled around them and the church in Sunnydale was rebuilt in the blink of an eye. "And I love you." The dungeon was before them and the spear was back in its catapult, and Angel dangled from his chains. "With all my heart," he went on, and they were in her living room, as her mother rose from where she would fall if the vampires succeeded in draining her dry. And Cordy and Xander were back in class, worried about Willow, but that faded too as Willow closed the door she was unwisely about to open, and Giles came out of the car which had not yet crashed and Angel was back in his apartment, getting ready for bed.
"And with all my soul," Spike finished, and pulled her close for a kiss. A last kiss, and she thought she could never forget it, that the cold, sweet taste of his lips was forever branded on her soul. Then he set her aside, and because he no longer held her, she went into the world again, and into forgetfulness, and...
For one instant, Spike was vulnerable, so overcome by pain and despair that he made an easy target for the stake Buffy held scant inches from his heart. But his face was, in that instant, so human in it's anguish, so eloquent of raw, inconsolable suffering that Buffy was held immobile by a hideously unexpected and inopportune pity.
One instant.
And then, oddly, his face changed again, becoming calm and somehow...gentle. He smiled at her. And inexplicably, even as he reached for her, Buffy could not bring herself to drive home the stake. She didn't know why she tilted her head toward his. Why she let him press his lips on hers, let her mouth part beneath his, why she kissed him with a tenderness she had only ever felt, could only ever imagine feeling, for Angel. She didn't know what held her rapt in his embrace...
Until Spike himself set his hand on her wrist and pushed the stake through his own heart and his ashes exploded around her, leaving her with the taste of bitter regret on her mouth.
"Buffy!" Angel called out as he finished his race across the cemetery. He had been desperately afraid, for a moment, that he would be too late, and that Spike would kill her. Thank God she was unhurt.
But she was crying. She moved into Angel's arms, and it felt, not as if she were being held by him for the second time that night, but as if she were returning home after an absence of uncountable years. As if, in remembering how it felt to be in his embrace, she was relearning something once familiar, but forgotten in the passage of time. Buffy didn't understand her feelings, or what had happened with Spike, or the sorrow which threatened to overwhelm her. She only knew that there was one rock in her universe, and she must cling to it now.
"Hold me," she asked Angel, and bringing his arms around her, cradling her head to his chest and burying his face in her hair, he did.
*****************
In the abandoned warehouse where Spike had made his headquarters, in the room he had taken for himself and Dru, a black fire burned. It burned without heat, and it burned without fuel. It burned for its own purpose, and it had the shape and beauty of a Princess of ancient Sumer. The shape of fire reclined on a bed, and when Spike opened his eyes, he found his head cradled tenderly in the black flame of her lap, a scent of myrrh surrounding him. Dru, he could see, was sleeping.
"This isn't exactly what I expected," he said to Lilith. "I mean, I did turn into ashes, didn't I?"
"Twice that I know of," she agreed.
"Then why the hell am I here?" She said nothing. She didn't have to. He made the connection himself.
"...'through all the courses of time'..." he repeated the words of his oath to her. And laughed. He had bound his soul, his immortality to Lilith. His unlife and death were entirely in her keeping. And of course she wouldn't allow him the release of death. Not when his eternal torment would give her such amusement. And it was his torment, not conquest of the earth, which had been her aim, all along. After all, if Hell did come to earth, and all the humans were killed, she wouldn't be able to watch, and enjoy, their suffering from her infernal throne.
"You always had such a fine understanding of these things," her voice whispered inside his mind, confirming his thoughts. "And that is why you are, indeed, my most beloved child."
"I suppose they'll all forget this by the morning? Everyone but me. Even the bit about me and Dru being staked?"
"Of course. Dru herself will have no memory of it. And life will go on as it was meant to go, before my little diversion."
For the first time since he had been an eight-year old boy, standing by his mother's coffin, Spike felt tears gather in his own eyes. He smiled bitterly, ever conscious of the humor of the situation, this time finding humor an inadequate shield against pain.
"Then, what we had, what we were, it was...never meant to be?"
"Buffy and Angel were born for each other, created for each other. They are doomed to experience a perfect, unobtainable love, a love that will either save, or destroy, the world. She wasn't meant for you to have forever.
"But you, my beloved, were indeed born to love her."
"I suppose it would be redundant to say, 'damn you'?" Spike said tiredly. The laughter of black flames crackled across his mind. Then Lilith leaned closer to him, gently stroking his hair back from his face.
"If I tell you that your time together in Hell lasted longer than any mortal span of years, longer than she can hope to have, mortal, with Angel...will you be comforted?"
"When our time together was spent in Hell, and therefore has no meaning?" Spike said wryly. "Isn't that what Hell is? Comfortless?"
"Perhaps," she said, and placed a black-flame kiss on his mouth. "And perhaps," she continued long moments later, "your continued suffering will someday bore me, and I will allow you forgetfulness as well."
"Don't you bloody dare," he said softly, violently. He felt her amusement...and her agreement. Lilith would not deprive him of the comforting pain of his memories. Spike closed his eyes, letting the sorrow take him.
Never knowing that, in all the courses of time, Buffy would wake, sometimes, from dreams she could never remember, a taste of cold, sweet lips on hers, her pillow wet with tears.
The End…for the moment.
Story arc continues in "…on the Highway of…"