Chapter Seven:

Something cool and wet, lapping down her throat to the tender valley between her breasts.

Buffy shifted a little on the cold, smooth surface she was lying against, then settled back with a barely perceptible sigh. The wet thing continued its journey, grazing over her collarbone, caressing her shoulders, working its way down first her left and then her right arm in easy strokes. It felt good, so very good, soothing her fevered skin like rain on parched earth. It moved downwards, skimming across the slender arcs of her ribs, smoothing over her belly, leaving a trail of shivery gooseflesh in its wake. She lay very still, feeling utterly blank and peaceful, the greyness twirling before her eyes like tranquil mist.

Then the wetness reached her left hand, and suddenly it wasn't so soothing, its slightly rough texture setting the abraded flesh there prickling and itching. The calm nothingness started to dissolve, grey morphing into a dim yellow glow, and Buffy turned her head away with a slight frown. The wet moved over to her right hand, the sorer of the two, and the prickling grew deeper, harder, verging on actual pain. The hateful yellowness grew, spreading across the dimness like brushfire. She tried to pull her hand away, but something had her by the wrist and was holding her fast. Instinctively, Buffy started to struggle, her free hand scrabbling for purchase on the slick surface, legs tensing to kick out at the source of the hurt, when all at once she was pinned down by an extremely powerful grip.

"Easy now, none of that," a familiar voice said from somewhere above her. "Don't think you're up to any more fighty-flighty this evening."

Buffy's vision abruptly cleared, and she saw Spike bending over her, wearing only his jeans and a wary expression. Glancing past him into the amber gloom, she realized she was back in the crypt, being pressed against the cold, hard stone of the central sarcophagus by his equally cold, hard hands.

"Wh-what are you doing?" she demanded shakily.

"Trying to keep you from getting the Hellmouth version of cat-scratch fever."

Buffy just looked at him, confusion and anger warring for dominance in her still-cloudy brain.

"You've got Polgara goo ground into those gashes on your hands," Spike explained, his voice calm, almost casual, though the iron grip on her arms never slackened for an instant. "Unless you want to spend the next week fighting off fever and chills and watching giant pink beetles crawl up and down the wallpaper, I suggest letting me work, here."

The Polgara. Oh God.

Buffy sagged back against the cold stone, her recent slaughter flooding over her murky consciousness in vivid fast-edit replay. It all came back--the shrieks of agony, the metallic stench of blood, the hot, greasy feel of torn flesh sliding between her fingers. And overlaying it all, that deadly red rapture, painting the night in shades of scarlet.

It hadn't been like any of the thousand other kills she'd made. She hadn't slain the monster. She'd butchered it, with a smile on her face and a buzz in her brain, gleefully ripped it to shreds and tattooed herself with its lifeblood. If her fugue had lasted any longer, she probably would have scavenged the remains for trophies like some mad primitive thing.

The First Slayer, crouched spiderlike on the scorching sands, a being so primal and ferocious she seems scarcely less bestial than the night creatures she hunts.

I live in the action of death. The blood cry. The penetrating wound.

I am destruction. Absolute. Alone.

Buffy could feel a terrible dark heaviness pooling in her gut like some viscous black oil, weighing her down more surely than the vampire's hold. Her paralyzed dread must have been evident, because Spike released her arms and backed away, fumbling for something at the foot of the sarcophagus. Buffy lay there staring at the cobwebbed ceiling, too soulsick to move. After a moment he was back, slipping one hand under her shoulders and easing her up.

"C'mon, love," he said quietly. "This'll be easier if you're upright."

Buffy followed dumbly, allowing him to settle her on the edge of the coffin, where she sat as slumped and limp as a rag doll. Blinking owlishly in the uncertain light, she noticed a motley assortment next to her--a large silver basin full of reddish water, a jumbo roll of gauze, and a damp, stained towel that looked suspiciously like one missing from her best bathroom set. Spike reached over, picked up the gauze and the towel, and raised one eyebrow in silent question. She shrugged carelessly, the darkness still roiling in her stomach like cold nausea, making all other concerns seem very far away.

Sighing, Spike slipped the gauze over one arm like a chunky bracelet and began cleaning the rest of the dried gore from her wounded hands, moving with the skill and swiftness of a battlefield medic. As he worked, Buffy let her gaze drift vacantly around the room, finally focusing on the bank of candles still flickering on the window ledge, watching them wink and shimmer and weep wax in thick, white tears. It was so quiet here, so still, her breathing the only sound in the dim, hushed space. But it was an ominous sort of stillness, like the fatal calm before something awful happens.

"How long was I out?" she asked finally, more to break the terrible stillness than because she cared anything about time anymore.

"About half-an-hour," he replied absently, measuring off gauze and tearing it into long, even strips. "Would've tried to bring you to sooner, but it looked like you needed the nap." Cobalt eyes flicked to hers for just a second, their expression unreadable, before returning to the task at hand. As she watched, he began wrapping her injured knuckles in the gauze, agile fingers as gentle on her abused skin as a mother swaddling an infant. Something about the sight bothered her, made the heavy darkness spread, flow upwards into the center of her chest and settle there. Buffy looked away and tried to focus again on the candles, observing the flames flutter and dance and then nearly gutter as a sudden draft blew through the uninsulated walls. She shivered, and looking down noticed for the first time that she was clad only in her bra and panties--the rest of her clothing seemed to have disappeared along with the last thirty minutes. Her head jerked up, distrust swirling into the dark matter already churning inside her.

"What the hell is this?" she said, her voice sharp with suspicion.

Spike's mouth quirked in something like his usual sly smirk, though she noticed the expression never touched his eyes, which remained inscrutable. "Sorry about the deshabille," he said easily. "You were covered in that horrible filth. Nasty stuff--leaves welts even on unbroken skin if you don't get it off quick." He glanced down at his own semi-nudity, and his smirk widened. "And it stains everything--you owe me a shirt."

Realization swept over Buffy in an icy shower. The towel was the cold, wet thing traveling over her. He'd been washing the blood off her while she slept. The awful heaviness increased, massing thick and black around her heart, and her suspicious glare faded into a remorseful grimace. Focused on tying off the gauze bandage on her right hand so it wouldn't come undone, Spike missed her change in expression. Finally getting it knotted to his satisfaction, his hasty first aid complete, he turned to set the gauze and soiled towel on the far edge of the sarcophagus.

That's when she saw it. And the heaviness became unbearable, threatening to crush her with its unforgiving weight.

High up on his temple, a large, dark, crusted patch, streaking down to his ear in dried rivulets.

Never stopped, even for a minute. . . Buffy thought dazedly. She clutched at the sharp edge of the coffin for support, not sure for a second if she was going to pass out again or just be sick all over the dusty stone floor.

Still oblivious, Spike reached for the basin of tainted water to dispose of it. "Wait," Buffy gasped faintly, somehow finding her voice in the midst of the suffocating blackness. He froze, and looked at her questioningly. Reaching blindly, never taking her eyes from that dreadful blemish, she grabbed the damp towel and dipped it in the water. Carefully, gingerly, she wiped the dried blood from his temple, revealing a truly spectacular purplish-black bruise, blooming like a dark rose on his pallid skin. Dropping the towel, she gently grazed the mottled, swollen flesh with two shaking fingers. Their eyes met, and held for a long moment.

It was strange. Looking up close, there was none of the anger or accusation she'd anticipated in his steady blue gaze. Just weariness, and a kind of grim patience, like he was waiting for something he never expected to get. Or as if he were getting exactly what he deserved. Slowly, almost against her will, Buffy's fingers traced down over the cool, living marble of his face and chest, until they found the half-healed wound just over his heart. She placed her palm over the small, ruddy mark, as if checking for a heartbeat where none could be. She saw something ignite in his eyes then, like a light far under the surface of deep, dark water. And that was somehow worse than everything else.

"Poor Spike," she whispered sadly. "You really are in love with pain."

"Rot," he returned fiercely, his chill hand closing over her fevered one. "This is more than that. You are more than that."

"Once, maybe," Buffy said in that same mournful voice. In her mind's eye she saw the girl she had been, that sweet, stupid fifteen-year-old with the sunlit hair and lollipop smile, gazing out at the world with clear eyes that had never looked on darkness. She had liked that girl. She was sorry she'd had to kill her. And that it had taken five years for the poor thing to die.

"Not now. Not ever again."

"Why not now?" he said exasperatedly, clenching her sore hand hard enough to hurt in his agitation. She just shook her head, looking away so she wouldn't have to see the pleading in his eyes.

"Buffy, talk to me," Spike said softly, loosening his hold slightly but still clutching her hand to his chest like a drowning man holding a lifeline. "Tell me what's wrong, please."

"I'm what's wrong. You know that."

"That's not. . . I'm sorry I said that. I didn't mean it."

"Yes, you did," she said, her voice barely a whisper. "And you were right. I knew I wasn't the same, even then. I just didn't know why."

"And now you do?" He said, his tone still soft but with an edge of quiet desperation underneath. With his free hand Spike tilted her face up, his electric blue gaze lasering into her, as if he could read the answer in her eyes if he just looked hard enough. In that moment she could feel the force of all his relentless focus pressing down on her, that endless, somehow terrible attention that never wavered and never rested, never stopped looking for a way in, even after everything that had happened. She was so tired of fighting it, fighting him. What was the point in holding out any longer? He'd earned his all-access pass, hadn't he? Paid for it in blood, twice over.

"The resurrection spell--it went too far," she began slowly, and then stopped, another surge of choking darkness rising in her gorge. Gathering all of her remaining nerve, she pushed it back and tried to concentrate on just getting the words out. "It didn't just bring me back, it brought me back, permanently. I'm not human anymore. I don't know what I am." She looked up at him despairingly, all of her sorrow and horror bleeding out of her eyes.

"You mean you're. . .that you won't. . .my God, Buffy. . ." Spike sputtered. His face had gone blank with shock, pale features so perfectly vacant that for an instant he looked like the corpse he was. Then all at once the blankness broke, and an expression she'd only seen once before came rushing over him like a wave. It was the same look he'd had the night of her return, gazing up at her from the bottom of the stairs.

Absolute, overwhelmed, thunderstruck joy.

In that moment Buffy hated him, really hated him, disappointment as sharp and bitter as lye welling up in her throat. Ripping her hand out of his, she rolled back over the edge of the coffin and stood. "I knew you couldn't understand," she said coldly, feeling her features harden into the contemptuous scorn she'd so often flung at him in the past. She turned her back on him, unable to bear that euphoric glow on his face a second longer.

Almost instantly a steely hand clasped her shoulder, spinning her around and forcing her to face him. The rapt light in Spike's eyes had been replaced by a hard, angry glitter, and his entire form was rigid, as if her contempt had turned him to stone.

"No, you're the one not understanding," he said, his tone as flinty as his expression. "While you were all cozy up in heaven, you've no idea what a hell it was here on earth. Everything ended with you, Buffy, everything just stopped. You can't know what it was like, trying to go on after that. Every endless night after that." His voice broke a little on the last sentence, and he stopped, jaw clenching as he fought for control. When he spoke again, his words were oddly strangled, like he was choking them into submission.

"Don't ask me to be sorry you're back. And don't ask me to be sorry that I won't ever have to watch you die again."

"You may have to," Buffy shot back. "The spell grants immortality, not invulnerability. Tara told me tonight, that with enough serious trauma. . ." She trailed off, suddenly realizing the dire implications of her words.

"I knew it, I bloody well knew it!" Spike shouted. "Is that how you see me? Serious trauma? Is that all we've been about for you?" His hand on her shoulder had tightened into a bone-crushing pinch, vise-like fingers grinding into her with such cruel force that for a moment she was sure he was going to snap her neck. Then all at once he turned her loose, and with a growl of inarticulate wrath picked up the heavy silver basin and flung it towards the far window. It smashed into the dense iron casing, bending the latticework and breaking out half the panes with a deafening clang. A shower of gory water and pulverized glass rained down on the candles below, dousing them instantly and plunging the room into near-blackness. He began to pace rapidly in front of the shattered window, spare form bristling with a wounded rage so intense it set her slayer senses pinging. But his face remained resolutely, reproachfully human.

"You have me at the end of my tether, Buffy," he cried, not even bothering to control the tremble in his voice this time. "I've turned myself inside out for you, been sidekick, sparring partner, fuck toy and father confessor, but nothing seems to get through. You hate the monster in me, and you despise the man. Yet you keep coming back. What the hell do you want from me?" He stopped his restless circuit and looked at her, and even in the almost-darkness she could see the agony underneath his anger, the impossible torment of a creature being torn apart by irresistible forces and immovable objects.

For once in her life Buffy was speechless, robbed of the quick responses and flip rejoinders she always relied on to break the tension, to distance her from the pain she felt or the pain she inflicted. She had no answer for such anguished fury, didn't know if the words even existed that could begin to describe the dark spectrum of feelings he aroused in her, or explain the mad compulsion that brought her to him time and again, even when it savaged them both. She stared back at him in mute misery, knowing that he deserved some kind of response, but anger and grief and guilt and a hundred other clashing passions striking her dumb.

At her silence, most of Spike's furious urgency seemed to fade, leaving him looking exhausted and somehow sad. "I've begun to think that you're the one in love with pain," he said tiredly. "You are the one seducing your own destruction. And you've wasted your time, here. I won't be the sword you throw yourself on." He began to move towards her again, the moonlight flowing in through the twisted lattices painting weird, snaky bars on his burnished skin. His face was ancient in the wan light, as if 120 years of cheated time had descended on him all at once.

"But I know you. If self-slaughter is your goal, you'll make a proper job of it, and sooner rather than later." He stopped kissing-distance close to her, his pupils so dilated with darkness and pain that it was like looking into two deep, black wells. "But you know this. You're gonna be destroying more than just yourself. The day they put you back in the ground is the day I sit right there on your grave and commit sodding suttee."

Buffy's eyes widened, a cold, creeping terror gripping her vitals, blotting out every other emotion.

Sunrise flowing over his face like radiation, the flesh rolling off his bones as he roasts char-black in the toxic light. . .

"No," she whispered hoarsely. It felt like her insides were freezing to ice.

"Yes. Promise or no promise, I won't exist without you again. Not for 147 days, not for 147 seconds." There was a flat, scary gleam in his eyes, the look of someone peering into the abyss and just aching to jump.

Is that what a death wish looks like? Buffy thought, horrified. My God.

Our love isn't like that of humans, Slayer.

Buffy shook her head desperately, as if she could jar loose the terrifying images flashing before her.

Those sorrowful, eternal eyes reflecting the fires of his own doom, before the world explodes and he is lost, lost forever. . .

The tip of the stake slicing through pale flesh, inked with his dark heart's blood. She's close, so fucking close. . .

"N-no," she said weakly. "You couldn't. . .I can't . . ."

"Why not? Isn't that what you want? Isn't this your perfect martyr's end? Even rotting in the grave, you're still death to one more evil, disgusting, th--"

"I DON'T WANT TO BE DEATH!" Buffy screamed, a ragged cry of anguish that seemed to come from the depths of her being. It was all sweeping over her again, the terrible knowledge she'd been pushing back since her awakening, the devastating certainty that had brought her to her knees on the bloody cemetery ground. She sank down onto the sarcophagus, feeling as if the earth were suddenly crumbling beneath her, and she was falling into unimaginable darkness below.

I am destruction.

"Not to you," she said, her voice so low that only a vampire could have understood. "You're the only thing that's real anymore."

Buffy looked down at her hands, those small, ill-manicured instruments of torture he'd bandaged so carefully. "But that's all I have left for you," she whispered brokenly. "Death and pain and destruction. That's all I am, now."

She looked up at him, standing before her silent and still in the wavering shadows. He had gone so pale that he seemed almost transparent, a glass phantom fragile and fleeting as a dream, something that would shatter to dust at her slightest touch. It was at that moment she saw with painful, piercing clarity what truly terrified her. Not that he could take her but that she could take him, would break him with her rage and her silence and her mortal melancholy, the way she had broken everyone else. Then she would be alone, facing the future. And the thought of that was like looking down a stark black corridor, one with no beginning and no ending, where the only sound was that mad, insectile keening in her ears.

Buffy could feel the tears coming again, hot and desperate, pricking at the back of her eyes like scalding needles. She blinked them back furiously, afraid if she started crying now she might never stop. But despite her frantic efforts her vision began to blur, the room dissolving into a chiaroscuro jumble of blacks and whites, the ghostly form before her dimming into puddles of light and shadow.

"It's true. You are all those things." he said quietly, finally breaking his silence. "That's what every slayer's been, since the First."

Absolute. Alone.

She began to cry in earnest then, all her reserves of care or control exhausted at last. She collapsed onto the coffin, burying her face in her hands, chest heaving with the slow, wracking sobs of utter desolation. She could feel the tears seeping through the bandages, making them cling to the damaged skin, but she didn't care about that, didn't care if she lay half-naked and ashamed on this tomb and wept till doomsday. None of that mattered now. Nothing mattered.

Except it must have mattered to Spike, because suddenly he was right beside her, lifting her up and settling her against him, his chest only slightly less cold and hard than the sarcophagus. But that was right--his chill solidness was the one thing that could have comforted her at that moment. He felt so substantial as he held her in his arms, so there. Not fragile or ghostly at all but stable, sheltering, sure. For a few minutes Buffy was too strung out to do anything but continue to cry, burying her face in the safe, dark harbor of his neck and sobbing out all the ghastly blackness that had been choking her. After a little while, the terrible pressure inside began to ease, her frantic sobs dying away into more isolate tears. When she was more or less quiet again, he spoke.

"You didn't let me finish. That's not all you are."

Buffy pulled away a little, peering up at him bewilderedly from behind a cloudy scrim of tears. He smiled down at her, but for once there was no mockery in it, just bemused affection, as if he were explaining something elemental, a common fact he couldn't quite believe she didn't already know, like fact that the Earth went round the Sun.

"If it were, there'd be no difference between you and the damned things you stalk in the dark. And we both know that isn't so." His voice was softer than she'd ever heard it, and slower, all the sarcasm and clipped defensiveness ebbed away, leaving only tenderness behind. Reaching up, he carefully brushed the wetness from her flushed cheeks, his touch as soothing as snow on her overheated skin.

"The Slayer is a creature of the light as well. The only being who truly walks in both worlds. Death and life, pain and bliss, destruction and creation--that's you, honey. All that's best of dark and bleeding bright." He cradled her face in his hands, holding it like some rare, brittle, precious thing. "And the feel of that, the feel of you, is glorious."

Spike leaned in closer, and for a second she thought he was going to kiss her, but he merely touched his forehead to hers, a simple, intimate gesture that kindled a vital spark deep inside her, in a place she'd thought dark and blighted forever. His hands were sliding down, lissome fingers moving slowly, almost reverently, sending sparkling frissons of sensation over her shoulders and down her arms. The rapt look was back in his eyes, that tender, amazed, implacable gaze that saw everything she was, everything she would be, and welcomed it, wanted it, worshiped it.

"You are glorious. Even now. Especially now."

And he did kiss her then, or maybe she kissed him, Buffy was never sure afterwards. All she knew was that suddenly it was like the world had tilted and they were falling into each other, mouths meeting in a long, slow, liquid collision that stoked the spark inside her to something fervent and glowing.

I've finally found the real difference in my demons, she thought dizzily, as her hands clutched his shoulders to pull him closer. When Angel kissed me, I wanted to die.

When Spike kisses me, I want to live.

********

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