Disclaimer: Not my characters, Joss Whedon’s. Never owned ‘em, never will. No copyright infringement intended. This is, as ever, femfanfic, impure and simple. I should note this was written in the early summer of 1998 after the events of Becoming, Part II but well before the premier ep of season three, Anne aired.
Warning: Not only is this not for those under 18, this is not for the fainthearted. "We’re talking…adult content here," as Buffy said in WTTHM. The warnings are meant to keep the underaged and those who might be offended from this page. If you somehow managed to circumvent the warnings before your 18th birthday, or if you are uncomfortable with explicit material, Turn Back Now!
****************
..on the Highway of...
of
Buffy and Spike Redux
part 6
It was August when things changed. Xander had already grown restless, knowing that nothing had been resolved, even though school would be starting again in a matter of weeks, and that his uncle would be back in L.A. even sooner. Buffy was still adamant about not returning to school, or Sunnydale. Even Spike, surprisingly weighing in on Xander's side of the argument, had been unable to persuade her.
"You are the only one strong enough to handle whatever the Hellmouth comes up with," the vampire pointed out reluctantly.
"They seemed to manage just fine without me, before," Buffy retorted. "I mean, the place has been around since the Spaniards first got here. That's like, what? Two centuries?"
"Two and a half," Spike said wryly. " not counting exploration. But you're missing the point. Whatever it came up with, whatever alerted the original settlers to what they were dealing with, the Hellmouth wasn't nearly as active in the past as it is now. Things didn't start to accelerate until recently.
"He's right, Buffy," Xander added. "I mean, I've lived there my whole life. I know."
"And I seem to remember your telling me that last summer was kinda quiet. Remember? No monsters? The first vampire you saw was the one that showed itself the day I got back from my father's."
"Well, yeah," Xander said uneasily. "But that could've been a coincidence."
"Or it could have been the fact that the vampire population was a bit cowed by the way you turned the prophecies on their heads and took out the Master," Spike added bracingly. "Even when I got there, they were still trying to work up the courage to come out of their strong hold."
"And they won't be cowed by the way I stopped Acathla?" she said.
"Um, darling, Acathla wasn't exactly common knowledge. Only a few of Angel's boys knew what he was up to, and they're dead. So most of the vampires in Sunnydale are blissfully unaware that the Slayer did another world saving gig back in May."
"At last. Something they have in common with the living," Buffy couldn't help the bitterness that tinged her voice. Xander spoke up again.
"If I thought I could make you stop hurting --even a little, even for a minute-- by telling the idiots in Sunnydale what you've done," he said, his voice low, "I'd blow my college fund on billboards, and newspaper adds and planes doing skywriting. But the truth is, nothing the world could do could ever pay you back. Or could ever make it easier."
"No. I know," she said quietly. "You're right, and I really don't want everyone to know what I do, or just how much danger there is out there. But even you told me nothing wiggy happened in the weeks between my leaving and your following me out here. Maybe if I don't go back, they'll stay quiet."
Further argument did not persuade her, and they gave up. For the moment. But that night, she got news that would, ultimately, change everything.
Gita was an unlikely harbinger of destiny. The hairdresser responsible for Buffy's new look was at once very streetwise, and very naive. She knew her clients were tough, deadly even. Catering to them was, after all, how she made a slightly better than average living. She knew they kept late hours, never, ever making appointments in daylight. They all joked about their liquid diets, which they sometimes poured from thermos containers into plastic cups right in front of her. But the idea that they were vampires never crossed her mind, although they seemed to leave clues that would give the most logical minded skeptic pause.
So when she showed up in the bar where Buffy worked, seemingly looking for Buffy herself, it gave the Slayer pause.
Their conversation was brief. Gita said everything that needed saying in a few sentences. But Buffy told her boss she needed the rest of the night off, and went back to the loft to collect Xander and Spike for an unexpected raid.
The vampires they took out that night did not go quietly into the night, good or otherwise. They put up fierce resistance and a vicious battle. Xander, fighting the weaker ones on the perimeter was hard put to keep up the pace. Spike, fighting grimly beside him, saved his life more than once.
Buffy, he supposed, was too busy to help him herself. How she had located a nest of
some thirty vampires, Xander didn't know. Why she had blithely told them she was going to raid it, and that they didn't have to come along if they didn't want to, he couldn't guess. And how she was moving amongst more than half the nest in an unending ballet of grace and speed and deadly force he didn't want to imagine. But there were at least twenty of them ranged against her, the remaining ten keeping Spike and himself too busy to interfere.
But she didn't seem to need their interference. The glimpses Xander caught of her face, when he could spare his attention, seemed to show that she was smiling, enjoying her dance with death. Vamp after vamp went down before her, exploding into dust at the end of her stake. He had seen her outnumbered before, seen her win against seemingly impossible odds, but always, always on those occasions, she had been reluctant, determined, desperate. These were odds she had sought herself.
The only thing that came close was after she had killed the Master, and withdrawn from her friends. He remembered standing beside Angel, both of them watching uncomfortably while she tortured a female vamp into revealing where the Anointed One and his minions had taken Cordellia. But this was different. Buffy wasn't deliberately shutting her friends out because of a fear that she couldn't protect them. She was truly changing. Xander was unhappily aware that she had grown yet further away from the girl he had known in Sunnydale, and that somehow, he himself was responsible.
Unbeknownst to him, Spike felt exactly the same way. It was more, now than just her sexuality that fed Buffy's Slaying abilities. Somehow, in taking her blood, Spike had tapped into her unconscious memories of their time together in Hell, when her mortality had been burned away by Lilith. It was as if she knew herself more invincible than any other Slayer before her, and knew that she must make the most of her abilities.
Because she wouldn't remain invincible forever.
Spike and Xander finished off the last of the stragglers, but as they turned to help Buffy, they found her pulling her stake free of the last shower of dust and ash, as the remaining vampire met its end at her hands.
"Um, darling," Spike began wryly, "if you want us to step up your combat training, there are easier ways..."
She didn't crack wise, as she usually would, although she did flash him a brief smile. "No, Spike. I needed to take this group out for a reason."
"That being...?" it was Xander who prompted her.
"That being a rumor I heard in the bar tonight. Your hairdressing friend, Gita?" she turned to Spike. "She came by for a drink and told me that she'd heard something you might want to know about."
"Vampire hairdressers?" Xander intoned, shaking his head. "Oh, man, this town really sucks." The others ignored him, neither bothering to correct his assumption about Gita.
"Really?" Spike said to Buffy. "And of course you just passed the message right along." Irritation showed in his voice.
"I didn't want to pass it along until I had proof," Buffy said placatingly. "Which should be here. So right now, the three of us should go through things and see what we can find."
"Buff, this place is like, Vampire Central Station," Xander said, a wave of his hand indicating the number of floors above them, the vast stretch of space in which they were standing. "I'm thinking it might help if you told us what we're supposed to be looking for."
"Books. Large, old and dusty."
"Like the stuff Giles has?" Xander asked. "I'm on it."
"I'm not," Spike said, moving toward Buffy. "You don't get off that easy, pet. If Gita said something that decided you to do a dress rehearsal for Armageddon, I bloody well want to know what it was. Right now."
She took a deep breath and faced him. "It's about Drusilla."
Spike closed his eyes against the pain. "Ah."
"Gita said some of her, uh, customers were asking about you. Said that your old girlfriend had heard you'd taken up with someone else and that she didn't much like it. They didn't tell Gita exactly what she plans to do, but they told her who was helping, and they did make it clear that, well, she's up to something."
"Surprise, surprise," Xander muttered.
"Yeah. Well. That's my girl," Spike said. "Always up to something." Lilith's words blazed across his mind. Damn it! It was too soon. How could he bear to lose her again, so soon?
Buffy misunderstood his anguish, having no clue to, no memory of, the real cause. "I won't kill her if I don't have to," she promised him. "If you still want to take her out of the country..."
"I hear Antarctica is lovely this time of year," Xander drawled. Spike spared him a withering glance before turning his attention back to Buffy.
"What I want and what I can have are two different things," he said, not meaning Dru at all. "But don't worry. Whatever Dru is up to, I'll help you stop her. And I'll make damned sure none of us dies." Buffy nodded, and the three of them split up to search different portions of the nest.
It was Xander who found it; a thin leather volume that looked more like a child's sketch pad than a book of secrets. But the drawings within were of hidden, deadly things, and Buffy recognized that as soon as she saw the first one.
"This is it," she told Xander.
"What, precisely?" he asked. Spike, though he drew closer said nothing. Lilith had already told him how this would go down.
"The drawings are pentagrams," Buffy explained as she continued to leaf through the book. "Protective diagrams. See? These have the names of specific demons inscribed in the design. You stand outside the pentagram, summon the demon into it, and the pentagram traps it, keeping it from harming you."
"Summon?" Xander echoed.
"Yeah. Incantations have that effect on the demons in Hell," Spike contributed. "Not that they're happy about it. We demons tend to get brassed off if you pull us away from our card parties."
"So, like, Drusilla is planning on summoning yet another demon from Hell?" Xander said in exasperation. "And let me guess. She needs their help to end the world. That makes like, what? The third time in eight months?"
Spike said nothing, watching Buffy. He could tell the moment she found it, the way she went utterly still, and pale.
"No, Xander. She's not trying to end the world this time," Buffy said, staring down at the name inscribed in fresh, red ink on the pentagram illustrated in the book. She looked up at them. "Drusilla is going to try to summon Angel."
*************
It didn't take them long to figure things out. Spike, forewarned by Lilith, was able to drop the necessary hints.
"So, if she can't free Angel's human body from Hell with this, what is she up to?" Buffy asked as she paced the floor in their living space back at the loft.
"She just wants to find him," Spike said.
"Didn't think he was lost," Xander said. "I thought he was right where Buffy put him: Hell."
"Yeah, well it's a big dimension," Spike retorted.
"So she's planning to use this to summon Angelus's spirit, and then what?" Buffy demanded.
"And then she gets the demon she summons to tell her exactly where he is, and together, they bring his body out of Hell," Spike said. He waited for her to make the connection.
"She summons the demon's spirit...and brings his body... Oh, God." Her eyes opened wide in horror. "And she leaves Angel's soul in Hell."
"It isn't his soul she wants," Spike agreed gently.
"No. No. I can't let that happen."
"How can we stop it?" Xander countered. "We don't know where Drusilla is. We don't know how far along in her plans she is. We don't know how powerful her magic is, now that she has these spells."
"Then we find out," Buffy said coldly.
"We've been looking for weeks," Xander said.
"Not hard," she told him. "Not as hard as we're going to look now."
She sent Spike back to Gita, had him drop the hint that things weren't that good between himself and his new girl, that he was more than willing for a reconciliation with Dru. Meanwhile, Buffy poured over the book taken from the lair. There were enough notes in the margins for her to realize that this wasn't exactly the book Drusilla was working from, but a copy maintained by one of the vampires in the nest, someone with a bit of skill in sorcery, who had been helping her. That gave them a slight edge. Drusilla's Latin was as non-existent as Buffy's. Without Spike to help her, and with her other allies wiped out, it might take her a while to get everything she needed to perform this particular ritual.
Drusilla was mad, not stupid. No matter how badly she wanted Angel, she wouldn't risk a premature spell that would end up destroying her, when a little patience would ensure that she got back the lover she wanted, with no danger of his ever betraying her, ever leaving her, again.
After all, she was immortal, and had all the time in the world...
Buffy didn't want to give her a moment longer. She needed to stop the spell. More: she needed to turn it to her own purposes. If Drusilla could call the demon inside Angel out of Hell, if she could release his body from that dimension, then so, too, could Buffy. And Buffy would see to it that Angel's soul wasn't left behind.
Drusilla had been too careful, though. The vampires dropping hints to Gita knew nothing more than what they had already told her. If she had been seriously inconvenienced by Buffy's raid on the nest helping her, no hint of her anger or chagrin made its way to the streets. At length, Spike was forced to use another means to find out what they needed.
He told Buffy and Xander to go on patrol without him, that he had one more lead to check. That it would be better for the humans not to be with him. They took the hint and left him to his own devices.
As soon as he was sure they were gone, Spike performed the ritual that would summon Lilith.
"Are you willing to lose her again, so soon?" came the voice inside his mind.
"I'm unwilling to add to her pain," he told her. "And I'm surprised you want to stop me. Once she gets him back, you can enjoy my torment again."
"Oh, beloved child, you are still in torment. Did you think you could hide that from me? As long as she does not remember that she once loved you, there will be a knife in your heart that I can twist at my leisure. Setting Angelus free of my torment adds little to that pleasure."
"Do you think I believe for one minute that getting Angel out of Hell would end your hold on him?" Spike countered. "I think I know better than that."
"Perhaps," she conceded. And told him what he needed to know.
Later, Spike told Buffy and Xander that his lead had panned out, that Dru had made herself at home --alone-- in an estate abandoned since the suspicious drowning of its most recent socialite owner. And that she was rumored to be planning something big for Saturday night --the night of the full moon. The drive out to the estate wouldn't take more than an hour. The next night was Friday. Buffy could arrange to get the night off, and they could leave as soon as the sun went down.
That night, Buffy was restless. The possibility that she was close to rescuing Angel made getting to sleep impossible. So she did not object when Spike pulled her into his arms for a long, deep kiss, and when Xander moved behind her to drop other kisses along her shoulder and spine. She made heated, desperate love to both of them, aware that it might be one of the last times she shared herself with either of them.
Hoping it would be. At length, they exhausted her, and she fell into a deep sleep.
But not a dreamless one.
"Don't," she said with aching, vulnerable need, pressing her fingers to his lips, stopping him from finishing the sentence. Buffy knew Angel meant they shouldn't make love. But she refused to acknowledge it. Not after all that had happened that evening. "Just kiss me." Buffy moved closer in his embrace, and sank with him onto the cool red silk of the sheets of his bed.
For long moments they did no more than kiss, but these kisses were different from any kisses they had ever shared. There was more than hunger in these kisses, more than desire, or even love. Buffy was desperately afraid. The Judge had been assembled, the Judge whom it had taken an entire army to defeat before. Maybe, just maybe, she could survive this. But maybe she wouldn't.
She had almost died that night. Several times. Angel had almost died. They had been threatened by a long separation, and she had known with a gut deep instinct that if they were parted, they would never be reunited.
Angel had finally declared his love, a thing he had made plain, but never come out and said in so many words. And as ever, he was so tender, so concerned for her welfare, so intent on putting her needs before his own, that he felt they should take their time, be cautious, not go on to the inevitable intimacy that love led to.
But the one thing Buffy feared more desperately than the loss of her own life, or even Angel's, was that she might never have the fulfillment of her love for him.
So she kissed Angel with all of her love, her desire, her need and her fear. She kissed him with everything her full heart held, everything she was and knew she could be for him.
And Angel, too long alone, too long penitent and suffering, was not proof against her unvoiced plea. Outside the walls of his room, Dru and Spike's men hunted for them. Outside the walls of his room, Giles, Willow, Xander, Jenny and Cordellia worked desperately to find a way to stop the Judge. And outside the walls of his room, the world might be headed for Armageddon, with Buffy the only warrior capable of leading the forces of good. He knew that she could fall in that battle, that he might fall at her side.
But inside his room, the woman he loved was warm and vital in his arms, and she kissed him in a way that called to him, heart and soul, binding him to her with ties that would last past either of their lives.
He had given her the claddagh, telling her that it meant she belonged to him. He had not told her that its other name was the Irish Wedding Band, or that by giving it to her, he had made her, at least in his own heart, his wife.
She was so young, it hurt him to think of the burdens she bore for the sake of an unknowing world. It hurt him that he was so vastly older than she. He knew he should never have allowed himself to love her. But it had never really been a matter of what he allowed, never really a matter of choice.
He loved her. Completely. Unequivocally. Without hope for the future, or question of the past.
Too much to refuse the silent demand she made of him, with her heart, her mouth, her body. Angel drowned in her kisses, and gently began to pull her damp shirt away from her chilled body.
Buffy realized what he was doing and eagerly helped.
"Shhh," he soothed her. "Gently, love. Let me." His tenderness was stunning. She relaxed and let him do as he willed, allowing him to draw off her damp clothing slowly, reverently. She had imagined she would feel embarrassed the first time her body was revealed to a man, but she wasn't, not with Angel. She knew only joy because she could tell that he took joy in her. Buffy closed her eyes, savoring the feel of his strong, sure hands on her garments, and then, moments later, on her bared flesh. She opened her eyes and looked up at him, smiling.
"I love you," he said. And kissed her throat. Buffy sighed and arched up toward him. His cool lips traced a deliberate path down her throat to her collarbone to her chest. He moved his hands from her waist to her breasts. He had never touched her so intimately, and the pleasure she felt now was so new, so sweet. Then he bent his head to her breasts and the sweetness turned to fire, as he opened his mouth to draw one budding peak into his mouth, his tongue tracing sensuous circles around the aureole, before laving the nipple. Buffy buried her hands in his hair, pressing him to her breasts.
"Oh, God, Angel," she whispered, "I love you so much."
"I love you, too," he stopped long enough to whisper back. "And I don't want to hurt you."
"The only way you could hurt me is if you stop," she told him fiercely.
"I can't stop, Buffy," he said, his voice carrying a hint of anguish she could not understand. "Don't you know that?" He turned his attention to her other breast. Buffy moaned aloud. She could feel something building inside her, could feel moisture gather between her thighs, something she had noticed before when she kissed Angel. Instinctively, she parted her thighs for him now.
"I can't stop loving you," he lifted his head to continue, and the gaze he turned to her was filled not only with love and tenderness, but with the sorrow that always shadowed him. "And, God help me, I can't stop making love to you." He moved upward once more, taking her mouth with his. He was settled between her now-parted thighs, and she could feel the hardness of his male flesh against her body, through the barrier of his clothes. Virgin she might be, but innocent rather than ignorant. Unlike the protected girls of his time, Buffy understood what this meant. And she looked at him without fear. Rather, she answered his passion with her own, moving her hips against his, opening her lips beneath his, drawing his tongue into the warm sweet cavern of her own mouth, letting him explore there, and taste her to his fill.
Angel couldn't get his fill of her, knew that he never would. He broke the kiss to let her breath, nibbled lightly on her lower lip, rained kisses on her cheeks and temple. And then he drew back, though she lifted her arms to prevent him. But he soothed her until she let go and he could kneel above her. She looked at him questioningly. Then, smiling down at her reassuringly, he pulled his shirt over his head and tossed it away. Her answering smile contained no fear, only radiant joy. He undid the buckle of his pants, left the bed just long enough to strip himself naked, then turned back to her, still determined to give her the chance to change her mind.
Buffy began to tremble. She had never seen a man naked before, and knew she would never see one as beautiful as Angel, ever again. He was hard for her, large and thick, and she ought to be afraid that, virginal as she was, he really was going to hurt her. But she loved him too much for fear. Buffy opened her arms to him.
"Come to me, please, Angel," she said softly, and he did, stretching out beside her and drawing the covers over them both.
"I love you so much," he said again, between kisses. Buffy had spread her thighs wider, and he settled between them. The feel of his naked flesh against her own was something she had no words for. But he wasn't inside her, and she was aching for him so.
"Please, Angel," she begged, words that would haunt her for months after, "I'll die if you don't."
"I don't want to hurt you," he said again. "You have to let me do this the right way."
"The only thing wrong is that you haven't made me yours yet." More words for bitter regret.
"Shh, love. I will. I am." And then he bent to give her another kiss, and to move that kiss as well down her throat and chest to her breasts. But this time he continued lower, along her belly, setting his hands on her hips and raising them off the bed and toward his mouth. Buffy realized what he intended, something she had heard of but couldn't imagine anyone actually wanting to do.
"Angel, you can't--" then his tongue found her and her breath caught in wonder that he would give her such exquisite, selfless pleasure. She moaned and yielded against him, moisture drenching her called forth from her most secret flesh as he adored her body with his skilled lips and mouth, and she discovered the entrancing reality behind the sly whispers heard from others with no more experience than she.
God, she was sweet. He didn't deserve such sweetness, Angel knew, didn't deserve to have this warm, responsive, loving gift of a girl in his arms, didn't deserve to be allowed the privilege of making love to her. But he was helpless to stop himself, had been for months. The only thing he could do was love her.
He had been, he remembered with regret, something of what had been called in his day a cocksman; a man who loved women and was good at making love to them. But every time he had bedded a woman, it had been in sport. Love had never, ever entered into the matter. From the first saucy servant wench who thought tumbling the young master a way to easier duties, to the fateful encounter with Darla that had stolen his humanity, each woman had craved physical solace only. And he had learned, very quickly, to excel at the physical aspect of lovemaking.
Once he became a vampire, the physical aspect had turned darker, involving pain and torture, dark deeds that he shuddered to recall. And then he had gotten his soul back, and with it remorse and penitence, and a consuming guilt that had ultimately driven him to life as one of the homeless on the unforgiving streets of New York.
Until Whistler had found him, and shown him Buffy, and Angel had learned that, just maybe, there was a way to redeem himself. Looking back on it, he realized that he had fallen in love with her the moment he saw her; a slightly dippy, incomparably beautiful, innocent waif, with no idea what her destiny was. He had watched from afar as she learned that destiny, and lost just a little of her innocence. He told himself that he could help her without revealing himself, without getting too close. But he realized now that loving her had been inevitable. He could no more quench his love for her than he could quench his need for blood.
The only thing he could do was give her that love without question and without reserve, and right now, that meant making sure that he took her virginity like the sacred gift it was, making it as painless for her as he possibly could. So he tasted her with his tongue, laving her sweet clit and her honeyed depths until her hips rose and fell beneath him in untutored, ancient rhythms, and her head tossed from side to side as she uttered small, breathless cries. Angel eased a finger inside her untried passage, finding how tightly she was lodged. Her silken sheath tightened around his finger, and he groaned, knowing that it would be even better when she tightened around his cock.
She was lodged securely. He was going to have to go slowly to spare her pain. With a last loving caress of his tongue, he moved upward once more, kissing his way over her belly and ribs and breasts until he was back at her mouth. He didn't want to startle her with the taste of her own desire, so he merely dropped a light kiss against her lips, then pulled back to look at her.
Buffy looked at him with absolute love and trust and tenderness. Once again, she parted her thighs for him. This time, he gently guided himself to the sacred center of her body, but he did not enter her. Instead he looked at her steadily, offering her a final chance to reconsider. She met his eyes unflinchingly, and raised her arms to pull him closer. Angel sank into her embrace, easing inside her just a little way.
She stiffened momentarily as he began to intrude inside the virgin passage, then relaxed, but he knew there was far worse to come.
"If you want me to stop, if it becomes too much--"
"I need you too much to let you stop," she told him.
He eased in a little farther, and she tightened her arms around his neck. He allowed her to pull him toward her, and into another sweet, lingering kiss. If she tasted herself on him, she didn't care, and she soon made him uncaring as well. He kissed her fiercely, with all the possessiveness he felt, but had felt no right to. She responded with her own fierce passion. Angel continued to press forward, until he felt the barrier inside her, and tried to push against it gently.
She broke their kiss, with a startled exclamation.
"Did I hurt you?" he asked, instantly forcing himself to stillness.
"You could never hurt me," she whispered, "Don't you know that? But I feel," she shook her head, trying to put her thoughts into words. "I feel like I'm dying and only you can save me."
"Buffy," he moaned and pushed slowly forward once more. She gasped, he couldn't tell if in pain or in pleasure, but then her hips lifted toward him, drawing him further inside her silken sheath.
"Please," she said. "Please, Angel."
He bent toward her mouth once more taking it in a deep kiss, and pushed into her further, still desperately trying to be gentle. Then Buffy surged against him, raising her hips to meet his thrust, and he felt the barrier yield before him, felt the soft cry she gave against his mouth, felt her inner core yield around him until he was deeply embedded within her, one with her flesh, joined inextricably with the one woman he had ever, would ever, love. He broke their kiss, needing to look down at her, to make sure that she was all right.
She looked up at him, and her face showed a woman's passion. "I love you," she said. He moved his hand tenderly over her face, caressing her. She closed her eyes and pressed his fingers to her lips. She was the most beautiful creature he had ever seen. His heart was achingly full for her. Slowly, Angel began to move inside her, still wary of causing her pain. But her answering movements, the flooding, wet heat of her inner flesh swiftly assured him that that particular danger was over. Her sheath tightened and released around his shaft, making the most exquisite pleasure he had ever taken in 242 years that much more exquisite.
Buffy moved against her beloved, taking fierce joy in every movement, every touch, every caress. She had never imagined such sweetness and fire existed, and knew that only the depth of their love permitted its existence now. Angel's love was the one gift that had come to her with her destiny, the one thing that made her destiny bearable. If she could be in his arms, it didn't matter if the world never acknowledged the risks she took to save it. It didn't matter that she was something of an outcast at school, that her parents barely understood her, and had no knowledge of her true life. The grades that had slipped didn't matter, the friends she had lost didn't matter, the small pleasures most girls took for granted and that she was now denied didn't matter.
And the fact that she might die in hours or in days, that even if she survived the Judge, something else would rise up to threaten the innocents under her protection, ensuring her life would be mercilessly brief didn't matter either. She would give her soul for the sake of Angel's love, would, she thought, happily trade it for this one night in his arms. And on that thought Buffy yielded herself even further to her beloved, welcoming him into her body, telling him in a language that was spoken not in words but in flesh and bone and blood and sinew, in soul and in spirit, that she loved him, until she became her love for him, limitless and unconditional, boundless and unquestioning.
Angel felt her yielding sweetness, and was overcome by tenderness. He had no words, because words could never do justice to what was in his heart and soul for her. He had only his body with which to worship her, to cherish her and complete her. She moved against him, drawing him to her like a glimpse of paradise offered a prodigal, and wasn't that exactly what she was? He took the gift of her love and returned it with the gift of his own, his pleasure only in the pleasure he could give her, and Angel knew, not with pride, but with absolute humility, and deep joy that he was pleasing her. He could hear it in her uneven breathing, feel it in the sweet contractions of her inner muscles, the faultless rhythm of her hips meeting and matching the rhythm of his own.
Angel moved inside her and she was sweet, consuming fire. He understood with absolute clarity that the torments of Hell itself, through which he believed he had already passed, were worth it if it meant he could have this one night in her arms. That if everything in his short, thoughtless life and his long, bitter death had lead to this one moment in time, he could only regret the pain he had caused others, but no longer the pain he himself had endured.
So he moved inside her, deeply, strongly, passionately, gazing tenderly down at her, attentive to each nuance of her expression, each internal contraction that would tell him what felt good to her, what would bring her to a rapture he longed to reveal to her, share with her. Buffy moved in harmony with him, lost in unimaginable ecstasy, her body no more than a poem of love, a vessel to express her love for Angel. Sweet rapture sang along every nerve, thrumming through her, building to some unguessable completion, so overwhelming and all consuming that she would have feared it had her love for Angel allowed any room for fear. Her breathing grew yet more labored, she began to utter tiny helpless cries. Angel caressed her face again, with utmost gentleness, savoring her expression of newly awakened passion. He could feel her crisis building, and it triggered his own. His pace increased, he drove into her forcefully, long past any fear of harming her because she met him so sweetly, so fearlessly, so raptly.
They moved together, in fire and passion and love, in rapturous harmony, two made into one, moving from an earth bound fire to something more primal and celestial; a fire that rivaled the heart of the sun. Buffy and Angel moved toward the final consummation of their love, letting the fire consume them, indeed. Pleasure built to rapture, became ecstasy, became unending.
And then it built yet higher, and Buffy surged against Angel who held her reverently in his arms as she cried out in completion and release, climaxing in deep, ecstatic waves of pleasure that shook him to his soul, and forced his own answering climax. Angel poured himself into her welcoming depths, experiencing one instant's regret that his seed could not take root in her, that he could not offer her new life. But as he revealed to her and shared with her the ultimate physical rapture of their consummated love, as they set the seal on the union of their spirits with the harmony of their flesh, the regret was fleeting.
Insane, really, he chided himself a few moments later as he returned from the heights to which passion had taken him. At the end of the twentieth century, the last thing a seventeen-year-old girl needed was motherhood, Buffy even less than any other girl her age. And yet, there had been something so bittersweet in the thought of being able to give her a child. Angel shook off the thought. Spent, he sank down on her warm, sated body, into her waiting arms. He kissed her again.
"Are you all right?" he asked her. She answered with a soft laugh.
"Better than all right," she said drowsily. "I'm...perfect. You were perfect."
"I love you," he said, as she smiled and dropped off to sleep. Angel smiled down gently at the woman he loved, withdrawing regretfully from her body. He wrapped the covers about her, keeping her warm, and pulled her into his arms. Buffy snuggled trustingly next to him, her hands coming up to settle over his arm, in an unconscious gesture not so much of possessiveness as of belonging, as if even in sleep, she knew where she was, and that this was where she was meant to be; beside Angel. Angel's heart, already full, overflowed at this, and he felt, for the first time in a hundred years, one moment of absolute peace...
And for the first time in that hundred years, he closed his eyes for slumber without seeing a thousand slaughtered souls in his mind's eye, each of them pointing dead, cold fingers at him in accusation. All he saw was Buffy, the memory of her face as she said she loved him. Angel smiled as he himself drifted into sleep.
She was the Slayer, and her dreams were prophetic. So she knew, had her own memory not been enough to confirm it, that what she dreamed of Angel was not a dream, but what he had felt in her arms. Buffy woke to find tears falling silently down her cheeks. She impatiently wiped them away. She didn't have time for tears. If they could get to Drusilla, if they could find the spell books she was working from, Buffy had a chance to rescue Angel. She would have a chance to tell him she was sorry she hadn't listened to him, hadn't been cautious. Sorry that her impetuosity had cost him his soul, and lead to the series of events which had climaxed in her having to send him into Hell. And once he had forgiven her, if he could forgive her, she might be able to put the pieces of her life back together again.
*********************
They took Spike's car, rather than Xander's. If Dru spotted it, she would simply assume that her ex really was trying for a reconciliation. An illusion Spike would encourage by approaching her directly.
"Won't she know that you're trying to fool her?" Buffy asked. "I mean, those psychic visions you told us she has could blow us right out of the water."
"They're not exactly predictable," Spike pointed out. "And she could never see anything directly related to you. She once said it was dark where you were."
"What about where I am?" Xander wondered uneasily. Spike grinned at him unpleasantly.
"Oh, she's been a bit off about you ever since Valentine's Day. Some residual effect of that love spell your friend tried."
"Why do I get a feeling this is not of the good?" Xander muttered.
"Don't sweat it," Spike told them. "Chances are damned good she won't pick up a thing, especially if she's focused her energies on the spell she wants to try." And especially with Lilith throwing a damper on her psychic abilities. "Let's get out there and see what we can do."
The estate looked as deserted as everyone believed it to be. No vampire sentries challenged their entrance to the grounds. No undead bodyguard waited at the doorway. Spike went first, openly, calling her name, leaving Buffy and Xander to sneak in behind him.
Dru wasn't pleased to have company.
"What do you want here?" she demanded, coming down a circular stair that ended in the center of a rather extravagant living room. She wore a dress of black silk, her hair twisted into a cascade of curls held back by a few red silk roses. Her pale skin looked pure as milk, transparent as glass. For one aching minute, Spike remembered the first time he had ever seen her, similarly dressed, in Victorian England. Remembered why he had fallen instantly in love with her.
And then he remembered why he was here.
"I want what I've always wanted, baby," he said to her. "I want us to be together."
"You broke up our happy home," she accused him, reaching the bottom stair, looking him in the eye. Her own glinted with the wild light of madness. "You didn't need that nasty chair anymore, but you didn't tell us, did you? No, you were tricksy."
"Look, baby, I--"
"You hurt Angel," she went on, coming down to the floor, beginning to walk around Spike, circling him like the predator she was. "You let the Slayer have my sweet boy, and then you stopped me from getting him back."
"Because he wasn't good enough for you," Spike said desperately. "Because he loved the Slayer more than he loved you." Which was true, of course. The fact that Spike was in exactly the same position didn't mean he couldn't point out Angel's failings.
"My Angel had come back to me, and you didn't like that."
"I didn't come here to fight, baby."
"You shouldn't have come here at all," she said, coming closer, stopping just in front of him.
"Don't say that, Dru," Spike said quietly. And then he reached for her, pulling her into his arms and into the sort of demanding, savage kiss he knew she preferred. After a moment, her arms came up to fasten around his neck, and she returned the kiss with all the bloodlust he remembered. Out of the corner of his eye, he saw Buffy and Xander slip past the doorway, heading deeper into the mansion. Spike turned Dru in his arms, keeping her back to the doorway, and her attention fixed on other things.
While Spike played the attentive lover with the psychic psycho in the living room, Buffy and Xander headed upstairs toward the master bedroom, the place where Drusilla was most likely to have set up shop. They got it on the first try, finding her books and notes scattered in an untidy heap across a dresser pushed against one wall. A massive bed, probably normally centered under the room's skylight, had been pushed against the opposite wall, and blackout curtains, currently drawn aside, were ready to shut out the least hint of sunlight.
The floor in the center of the room had been swept clean, and someone had drawn a huge circle there, in white chalk.
"She's doing a test run," Buffy told Xander. "This is where she plans on drawing the pentagram."
"Which she won't be able to do if we swipe her spell books. So, what do you say we make with the swiping and get the hell out of here?"
"As soon as I'm sure I have everything," Buffy told him grimly. She riffled through the stacks of papers, gathered up the better part of them, and slipped them into the backpack brought along for that purpose. The went back into the hall. The sound of murmured conversation warned them Spike's distraction hadn't been quite as successful as they'd hoped.
"--get Angel out," Drusilla was saying. "I don't want any distractions until then. And you are so distracting, my sweet William." A small silence, followed by a feline sigh of contentment. "Mummy needs to keep a clear head." Buffy and Xander exchanged glances. She shrugged out of her backpack, gave him the sign to stay still, took out a cross, and began stealthily descending the stairs.
"I'm sure Angel is perfectly happy where he is," Spike tried telling Dru. "I mean, he was trying to get to Hell, wasn't he?"
"Ummm you don't fool me," Dru said with a laugh that had Xander breaking into a cold sweat. "You know Angel will be so displeased about your tricksyness. And that nasty game with the andiron. But don't worry, pet. We'll be a happy family again. You'll see. Tomorrow."
It was at that moment that Buffy launched herself from the top of the stairs onto Drusilla, knocking her forward into the arms of a startled Spike.
"You!" Drusilla screamed.
"What the hell are you--" Spike began furiously at the same time. Buffy pulled Dru out his arms and knocked her out with one well-aimed punch.
"--doing?" Spike concluded.
"She'd have figured out what was up as soon as she got back to her room," Buffy explained. "And she might have had a way of stopping us. This way, it's simple. We tie her up," Noting his growing rage, she added placatingly, "Comfortably. We do the ritual, tonight if we can, tomorrow if we need the full moon. And then we come back and untie her."
"Right," Spike said sarcastically. "Assuming we live to come back." Buffy rolled her eyes in exasperation.
"We'll leave a note for Gita, or something. Some of your buddies can come rescue her if we're out of action. But we can't take the chance of her stopping us." As Spike continued to look uncomfortable Buffy reminded him. "It's better than my making sure she's out of the way by driving a stake through her heart, isn't it?" He glared at her, but took the point. Then he scooped up his erstwhile paramour and carried her up the stairs.
"Where's her room?" he asked. Spike bound her to the bed, knocking her out again when she started to come to. As Buffy double-checked her bonds, Spike and Xander made sure the skylight was completely covered, and the blackout curtains arranged so that no sunlight could enter the room in the morning. A final check through Drusilla's papers to make sure nothing had been overlooked, and they were done.
They were home by midnight. Buffy forced herself to do a quick patrol, while Spike began to look over the texts and Xander returned to his uncle's house for a change of clothes. When she got back, Buffy joined Spike in pouring over the texts and drawings she had taken, until she was absolutely sure she understood everything. Xander had returned not long after she had, and helped go over things.
They would need the full moon to work the spell. But summoning the demon Angelus into the pentagram wouldn't get Buffy what she wanted. Instead, they would have to go into the pentagram, and from there, open a gateway into Hell, a gateway that would be limited to the confines of the pentagram, keeping the world safe, and that would open close to the entity whose name was inscribed in the pentagram; Angel.
But would they be close enough? That was her one worry. Spike, using a Latin dictionary to clarify the texts where needed, assured her that it would be okay.
"Though if we wanted to cinch it, it would help if we had something personal of his, something that meant something to him. Even if he hadn't handled it much," Spike wondered if he could possibly drop her a bigger hint.
"Something that...meant something to him?" Buffy said softly.
"Yeah. Sort of a focus. There's a spell or two in here that would help us make our own homing device. So to speak."
"Like the spell Amy used on the ring," Xander said, to Spike’s relief.
Buffy pulled her claddagh, still on it's chain, out from beneath her blouse.
"Nice Irish Wedding Band," Spike commented.
"Irish what?" Xander said, as implications began to come clear to him.
"Angel called it a claddagh," Buffy said.
"Angel gave it to you, then?" Spike asked casually.
"Angel gave you a wedding band?" This from Xander.
"He just told me his people exchanged them as a sign of devotion." She looked at Spike. "Will this work?" she wanted to know. "Can we use this for the spells?"
"This should be just about perfect," Spike assured her.
"Okay," Xander said. "So now we have the homing device, and our door into Hell. We can find Angel. So what?"
"What do you mean?" Buffy asked.
"I mean how do we get him out of there. Even Drusilla couldn't do that without conjuring his demon. I don't think that's going to work for us. So what do we do?"
"Sympathetic magic," Spike surprised them both by replying.
"Huh?" Xander replied.
"I'm with Xander on this one," Buffy said.
"It's really very simple. Drusilla couldn't do it, because while Angel cares for her, he doesn't love her. You, however, he loves."
"What's that got to do with getting him out of Hell?" Buffy demanded.
"You have to think in symbolic terms. Remember, we're talking a whole other dimension. Forget the natural laws of the universe, they won't apply. Think in terms of magic, of mysticism, of symbols. What is Hell? A place of unending torment. What is the opposite of Hell? A place of unending delight. So. What you do, is, you go to Angel, and you love him. Simple as that. You take him out of Hell by brining him as close to heaven as you can. Which, in my guess, should be exactly where he finds himself as soon as he opens his eyes and sees you standing in front of him."
"It can't be that simple," Buffy worried.
"Well, there is the bit about walking into hell yourself that will be difficult, sweet. I mean, it will only be simple if we survive that part. Which isn't a sure thing."
"I know," she said softly. "But it is something I have to do."
They finished making their preparations for the next night, then turned in. Buffy knew she needed rest to be at her best for that evening, but as before, she was much to anxious to fall asleep immediately. Once again, Xander and Spike pulled her into a sensuous embrace that both exhausted and soothed her.
As happened so often, Buffy woke first. She eased herself out of the embrace of the two men who loved her and whose love she would never return, and left the bed. She turned to look down at them. When had she realized that Spike felt more for her than he admitted? she wondered. It seemed that she had known it for a long, long time. And that Xander knew it as well. She shook her head. Such questions were unimportant now. Buffy turned away from them and headed for the windows.
At this hour, direct sunlight would not enter the room far enough to harm Spike, so she drew back the curtains, loosened a shutter and stared out at the war-zone of a street, empty in the early morning daylight. She blinked against the sunlight, realized it had been weeks since she had actually endured its brilliance, its warmth. That this might be the last time she felt it's warming rays.
Because while she knew she could walk into Hell, she had no way of knowing if she would survive to walk out. But it didn't matter. If she could release Angel from Hell, nothing mattered. Not even the loss of her own life.
***********
They had planned as many details as possible, knowing that for each one foreseen, a thousand unexpected possibilities could arise. But the road they were on passed outside the known world, and no one could predict where that highway would take them.
Xander was the anchor. Spike would walk with Buffy into Hell, lending her as much protection as one demon could against a dimension full of others. It was Xander's job to chant the invocation that would open a small, controlled window onto Hell, and to make sure it stayed open until the others were back. If he failed, and if Buffy failed to find Angel, she and Spike might be eternally trapped in the demon dimension as well. Knowing their success might hinge on the smallest things, Spike spent most of the day drilling Xander in Latin pronunciation. The lessons were unrelenting, and Xander grumbled that after Spike's tutorial, he might try to enter the priesthood. Those qualifying exams couldn't be any harder than what the vampire was putting him through. He stopped grumbling when Spike reminded him that a mispronounced word could well cost Buffy her life.
While Xander studied, Buffy read over the charm Spike said would enable her to use the claddagh to find Angel. They had to find him quickly. The nature of Hell was to be unstable and inconstant. Even if they opened the window near him, if they didn't find him right away, their relative positions could shift by the equivalent of a thousand miles in no more than an hour.
But locating him wasn't the hard part. Buffy had driven a sword through Angel, spilling his blood to close the gate that would have engulfed the world. Now, she would have to figure out how to remove that sword in a way that wouldn't open the gate once more. Dru hadn't been particularly concerned with that issue. It was all one to her if Hell stayed where it was or came calling. For Buffy, however, the matter was paramount.
It was her dreams that gave her the key, her prophetic, Slayer's dreams. Spike had insisted that she try to rest, so that she’d be in top form for that night. Buffy had protested, but he was insistent. Expecting to spend the next hour tossing restlessly, Buffy was asleep as soon as she closed her eyes.
She walked through a land of burning red mists, her path illuminated by a wisp of light that moved before her. Eventually, it lit a scene that was too familiar: Angel, his expression revealing his emotional anguish as he reached a hand to her while the gate of Hell opened to swallow him. But now, the gate was nowhere in evidence. Now Angel was not reaching toward her, but standing immobile. And his features were contorted by physical as much as emotional agony, tears of blood falling from beneath the lids of his closed eyes.
Buffy watched herself do what had to be done to free Angel of the sword. Yes, she thought. It was fitting. She knew she could do that.
The image faded, shifted, as images will in dreams. It became something different. The red mists disappeared. Buffy was in a room she had never seen before, lying in a bed she had never known. Someone drew her into a tender embrace and she raised her mouth for a sweet, familiar kiss. Angel was lying next to her, and she knew that the bed belonged to them, and that they shared it without fear of the price they had once paid.
Buffy was smiling when she awoke.