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“Ow!” Spike comes to with a howl as someone jostles his bad leg. “Bloody hell!” He is torn violently from his dream and for an absolutely torturous couple of seconds there is nothing to him but burned skin and the grin of his bisected tibia as it grinds against itself. His vision is black and he doesn’t know where he is.
And then it passes, reduces down to just a regular level of agony, and he wakes up proper to see Giles has wrenched open the passenger side door and is staring down at him with his miserable, stodgy Watcher face.
The pain pulses steadily through Spike’s body, compelled like by the heartbeat he hasn’t had in a century, sharp and cutting a clean line through the fog of his unconsciousness. He regains his bearings and immediately wishes he hadn’t. He’s still lying back in the seat of a stranger’s stolen van in the Sunnydale Memorial parking structure, the world is still going on all un-ended like, and Buffy is still dead.
He can smell her without even looking for the dusty tarp spread across the seats in the back. The rot hasn’t set in yet, it’s been a few hours now best he can tell, so she still smells like Buffy . Pricey shampoo and demon blood. Intoxicating. But she’s cold and her blood is still as his. Her heart is stopped.
“You were meant to be guarding the… body.” Good ol’ Rupert gets the word out eventually but he stumbles over it and it still hits Spike’s gut like spoiled pig’s blood: congealed and rancid and makes him wish he was dead too.
“Give a vamp a break,” he says. “Creature of the night , remember? I’m up past my bedtime.”
Giles sighs. “It is eight o’clock in the morning, Spike. And I’ll remind you I was on my deathbed not ten hours ago. And while I would very much prefer to return to my flat and my extensive collection of scotch and not have anything to do with you for the foreseeable future, we do have work to do. Let me see your leg.”
“You must be kidding.” His voice cracks, still rough from the crying, and his head pounds as he sits up properly in the seat.
“If you’d prefer to set it yourself, Spike, by all means, be my guest.”
He had tried, actually. After the gaggle of Scoobies limped off into the emergency room and left him to guard the car like the family dog. He’d barely applied any pressure and the pain that had seared through him was so white hot, cutting nearly as deep as the agony of the loss, that black spots had bloomed around the edge of his vision. If he’d thought he’d been in pain in Glory’s hands, he’d been mistaken.
Spike pats through his jacket, finds his smokes, and lights up. Whiskey’s all gone by now. Finished that before they even made it to the hospital. Would’ve finished it earlier if they hadn’t needed his help hotwiring the minivan. Tough business, trying to finish off a flask while crying out your guts but he’d managed it.
Giles leans back against the open door. He shuts his eyes and ages ten years and says, “You might at the very least share.”
“Well, all right then,” Spike says in surprise. He passes over the lit cigarette, strikes up a new one for himself. The world’s still coming back into perspective but the smoke in his mouth, the act of breathing, is bringing him round.
He’d been dreaming.
He didn’t realize he was dreaming at first. He was clinging to the grate at the top of the tower and he waited there for the weaselly turncoat to look away. The knife in his back was only something to push through and he’d leapt up, heroic-like, and flung dear ol’ Doc to the ground in his stead.
He’d kept his promise. He’d protected the girl. He’d saved them both.
Or maybe he’d started earlier. Never planted in her head anything about a bloody death wish. Never let her think of taking that way out. He’s lied plenty before, why not another one then? Why not the one that mattered?
He lies, he doesn’t tell her why they died. Tells her it was just luck. Tells her something about him was so special. And when the moment comes on the bridge, it doesn’t come to her. She thinks of something else, something brilliant and clever and creative like she always does, and he saves her.
But in the van, he’s failed. His leg and the knife through his spine are proof enough of that.
They keep their heads down and smoke in silence until Giles says, “If it’s all the same to you, I’d prefer not to leave a dead body in the back of a stolen vehicle in a hot parking structure.” He sighs and huffs out a good lungful of smoke, not even savoring it. He turns and looks through the next line of cars to the thin strip of early daylight that doesn’t reach the windshield and stares out in disappointment at the cloudless day ahead of them. “California. It’s not even June.”
“Good old sunny Sunnydale.” All that sunshine’s suddenly a whole lot less bearable and a whole lot more tempting without Buffy.
His leg hurts, but it’ll carry him that far. He’s been burning for her for months, and now she’s gone. Might as well do it for real.
Spike’s been around over a century. He’s watched a lot of lives end, mostly at his own hand. Last person he lost was his mum, not counting Angelus getting all gooey inside or how he’d lose Dru when she lifted her skirt for every oversized forehead and slimy rack. He didn’t expect it to still hurt so much, being soulless and all. Think that’d take the sting out. But he’s love’s bitch, through and through. He could be tortured by that tarty god and her crusty toadies a hundred times over and it would hurt half as bad as he’s hurting now. His still, dead heart feels like it’s been squeezed out of whatever little pitiable life might have been leftover all these years.
Giles turns back. “You understand I’m making this offer to help you out of respect. Not for you, for her. I understand her choice even if I don’t agree with it. She asked for your help in the fight and you gave it, so I will help you walk free from it but know that you do not have my trust or my friendship. The sooner we get you back on your feet, the sooner we’re done with one another for good.”
“Well, now I want my fag back.”
Giles drops the cigarette to the ground, only half smoked, and stomps it out.
Like Spike’s got no better options for companionship than a washed-out librarian and his gaggle of plucky sidekicks who’ve lost their leader. He showed up in Sunnyhell for just a little fun, to add another Slayer to his body count and to get Dru a bit of rest, and this group’s been nothing but a pain in his undead arse ever since.
The man’s right. The quicker he’s patched up, the quicker he's done with the groupies. Not like there’s any reason to stick around them anyway, without the Slayer. No reason for anything now, really. He’d been adrift after Dru and worse after the chip and then he’d really seen her. Fight as he had, in the end, he’d fallen all the same. He’s spent months consumed by her, intoxicated by her and her perfect golden hair and her ass in those tight leather pants and the crack of her right fist into his nose. She was strong and clever and hot and she was disappointed in him.
She thought he could be a better man than he is.
Now she’s gone and he’s free to drown his sorrows and get out of this miserable town and free himself from Xander’s eye-bleedingly garish shirts and Anya’s incessant prattle and Wil’s slapdash magic. Dawn’s nosiness. Always turning up, always cramping his style. Blood creature of the night, big bad, and he’s been playing babysitter for months. Keeping the kidlet out of trouble or keeping her a tad bit safer when the trouble found her like it always did. Comforting her about her poor little feelings.
“How’s the lil’ bit?”
“Cleaned and bandaged. They’ve given her something for the pain, I believe.”
“Not much they can do about the real pain.”
“I imagine not. Anya’s been taken in. Tara’s still waiting. Xander and Willow will stay until they’re released.”
With their girls, he imagines. Which puts them back to their old roles, him and Niblet, the two on the outside.
She wasn’t even crying when they packed up and scurried out of the site. Limping on her cut-up feet and hollow-seeming through the whole process but not crying.
She’d been so relieved to see him up there. Big blue eyes, full of trust. Hardly looks a thing like mum or big sis but there’s no arguing she’s a Summers. Fiery, forceful, quick with the eyeroll. When’s the last time someone looked at him like that? So long he’s relished the opposite, delighted in it, thrilled to see them frightened and trembling. But she’d been scared and crying out for him , not the other way around. Wanted him to be the hero, to save the day, to protect her.
He failed.
Buffy is dead.
He’d saved her in the dream, but this is no dream. Months ago, he’d laid it out in front of her. Every Slayer he’s met was looking for a way to die. He’d said she was no different, but he hadn’t understood then. ‘Course she was looking for her way out, but she wouldn’t have taken any one but this one. She protected Dawn, because he couldn’t.
And now Dawn’s alive. And the world isn’t over yet.
“Sorry to disappoint,” says Spike. He sniffs and wipes his face on the sleeve of his coat. “But I’m not going anywhere.” He swings his leg out of the car, between them where they can work on it, and the pain flares and runs screaming agony up the whole side of him. Spike closes his fist over the grab handle and tears it away in his hand but he pushes through, survives again. “I made a promise to a lady. And I plan to keep it.”
Till the end of the world.