20. Revelations
Buffy did not release her firm grip on
Spike's
arm the entire way back to Giles' apartment. He did not struggle, did
not offer any resistance whatsoever, and he seemed rather subdued, lost
in whatever troubled thoughts were echoing through his mind; Buffy
highly doubted that he was going to try anything at this point.
Still – she was taking no chances.
She knocked lightly on Giles' door, before opening it cautiously,
walking ahead of Spike into the living room.
Willow and Jenny were sitting on the sofa, Giles sitting in a chair
across from them, the three of them talking quietly, seriously,
probably about the spell they had just done, or possibly about the
mysterious spell that had been done on Spike. They looked up in
surprise when Buffy entered with Spike, none of them moving for a few
moments.
"I, um – I found him," Buffy informed them unnecessarily with a
slightly sheepish shrug.
"Yes, I see," Giles remarked coolly, his eyes narrowed suspiciously on
the blond vampire. "And opted against slaying him, as well. Why is
that, exactly?"
"Don't you think we'd better find out what happened out there first?"
Buffy pointed out a bit defensively. "I mean – we don't know who cast
what spell, if it was just Spike that was affected or others too, or –
or anything! I just thought..."
"Quite right, Buffy," Giles cut her off with a relenting sigh, shaking
his head. "I suppose I just got a bit – ahead of schedule, in my
eagerness to be rid of this filthy, lying little menace." He bit the
words off clearly and pointedly, his eyes focused on Spike while he
spoke to Buffy.
Spike did not meet his eyes, his expression darker and more troubled by
the moment.
Buffy did not respond to Giles' comment, as she steered Spike toward a
chair on the opposite side of the room from the Watcher and the others,
pushing him firmly down into it, while gesturing for Willow to bring
her the chains that had been discarded on the floor
by the sofa.
Spike looked up at her sharply. "You're going to chain me up again?"
"Come on. You didn't really expect anything else, did you?" Buffy held
his gaze without
backing down, one eyebrow raised in mild surprise.
Spike sighed, looking down again, and again Buffy was startled at how
easily he seemed to just accept her decision, without arguing or making
any attempt to stop her. She tensed as she crouched down behind him to
chain his wrists together around the back of the chair, but was
relieved -- as well as vaguely troubled -- to find that Spike did not
resist, allowing himself to be bound without a fight.
As she finished, another thought crossed her mind, and she rose to her
feet, looking around the room uncertainly. "Xander went home?" she
asked, feeling momentarily bad for the hopefulness she felt at that
idea.
Xander was one of her best friends, but she somehow knew that he was
not going to be very helpful in this particular situation.
"Ah, no," Giles replied, a bit regretfully, meeting her eyes. "In fact..."
At that moment, his words trailed off, as Buffy heard the kitchen door
swing open, and Xander walked in, balancing four glasses filled with
iced tea in his hands.
"I've got the nummy icy cold goodness, right..."
He froze, staring at the bound vampire, his eyes widening in shock.
Then, he calmly finished walking across the room, carefully setting
each of the four glasses on the coffee table in front of Giles, Jenny,
and Willow, leaving his own there as well. Then, he stood up and turned
toward Buffy with a strange smile on his face as he casually approached.
No one said a word, everyone waiting apprehensively for his inevitably
bad reaction to the present undustiness of Spike.
"Buffy," he asked sweetly, "do you want me to get you some, too?"
"Um – sure," she replied, a bit uncertainly, glancing between her
friend and her Watcher with a silent question in her eyes. "Thanks,
Xand." She exchanged another nervous look with Giles once Xander had
left the room, wondering if he was going to absolutely lose it when he
came back.
But he didn't. The explosion they had expected from the most
anti-vampire member of their generally speaking anti-vampire club,
never came. In fact, Xander stayed perfectly calm when he walked back
into the living room, sitting down on one arm of the couch and quietly
listening to the others talk.
It made Buffy nervous.
It was sort of like sitting next to a ticking bomb, and having no idea
how many seconds were left on the timer.
"Okay," Buffy said quietly once they were all seated, looking
expectantly in the direction of her and Spike. She felt rather
self-conscious, being the focus of their attention, but knew that their
curious looks were only natural. "Let's start at the beginning, Spike.
Only this time, let's start with the truth."
***********************************
"Okay, so let me get this straight..." The Slayer's voice sounded more
tired than skeptical, as she paced slowly in front of the chair to
which Spike was bound, recounting what he had told them already.
"Those military guys picked you up at the church and put some kind of
computer chip in your head that keep you from hurting humans without
massive pain. Then Drusilla came and broke you out and took you to the
mansion -- and that's the first you knew of Angel's losing his soul?"
"Right," Spike affirmed, nodding, his serious eyes fastened on the
Slayer's questioning face, willing her to see that he was telling the
truth. "That had nothing to do with my ritual to restore Dru, Slayer --
I swear it. If it did, I didn't know it."
"Okay," Buffy waved his explanations off dismissively, shaking her head
as she went on, "let's assume I believe that for a little while...Angelus
pretty much just left you to starve, and Dru went along with what he
wanted, because..." Her voice trailed off, and she looked at him for the
answer to the unspoken question.
Spike swallowed hard, barely concealing a slight wince at the pain of
the memories brought back by this part of the story, and opened his
mouth to respond.
"Because Spikey's not man enough for her," Xander finished the
statement with a smirk, leaning back against the wall behind the arm of
the sofa he was seated on. "She moved on. As any sane woman would. Oh,
wait..."
Spike could not help the soft growl that rose in his throat, until he
looked away from the boy to see the Slayer leaning down in front of
him, her face inches from his.
"I wouldn't do that if I were you," she advised him simply, her tone
not threatening, but her eyes deadly serious.
Spike sighed, relenting and pointedly focusing his attention back on
her. "He's her sire, Slayer. That means a lot to vamps. She's pretty
much gonna do whatever he soddin' tells her to do..."
It was not the whole truth -- but it was all of the truth that he could
bear to face at the moment.
Buffy nodded, accepting that, as she spoke calmly, in a sort of
detached voice, clearly an attempt to mask her own emotions as she
reached a part of the story that was more painful for her. Spike found
his eyes arrested by her intent gaze, as he realized that she was
trying to tell him something, something she did not want the others to
hear.
"So now we're at the part of the story where I found you in the
mansion, brought you here..."
The look in her eyes was almost pleading, and suddenly Spike understood.
She did not want the others to know what she had seen there, between
Angel and Drusilla -- the devastating truth that would bring forth the
pity of her friends, and with it her humiliation.
*Silly bint,* he thought with a sort of sympathy for her in spite of
himself. *Doesn't she get that it's the last thing *I* want to bring
up, too?*
"And you basically made with the big lies," Buffy was going on now,
hurriedly moving past the details of the encounter at the mansion.
"Right?"
"Right," Spike admitted wearily, lowering his head in defeat. "I didn't
want you to know that I couldn't fight back -- makes a bloke feel
bloody vulnerable, having his mortal enemies knowing that sort of thing
about him. But I knew that if I didn't give you some reason not to, you
lot were going to stake me. Didn't have much of a bloody choice."
"Again," Buffy replied flatly, her expression not giving anything of
her true feelings on the matter away, "assuming I don't argue with that
for the sake of not having all night here -- so you tell us what you
think will make us not stake you -- that you have a soul -- when you
didn't have one -- and you're just looking for your first chance to get
out of here. Right?"
"Right."
"So you get it, bash my friend in the head and all that...we catch up to
you in the alley, and the spell -- someone's spell, no clue whose...takes
the chip out of your head and miraculously gives you the soul that you
said you already had. Is that about it?"
Spike stared up at her, silent for a long moment as he tried to decide
where to go from here. That was all he had told them so far, and the
way Buffy put it, he had to admit that as stories go it sounded fairly
far-fetched, although it was the truth.
Add in that he now had bloody visions of their disastrous future to
come -- and she just might stake him on principle.
*Still,* the soul within him reminded him softly, *what you've seen
might be their only hope to keep it from happening...you can't just let
them go through that, when you might have the power to stop it...*
*I hate you,* Spike inwardly replied to the soul.
With a heavy sigh he said aloud, "No, Slayer -- that's not about it."
**********************************
"You actually expect us to believe that *you* -- an evil, soulless
vampire – have been gifted with vision of our futures?" the Watcher
finally interrupted the heavy silence that followed Spike's hesitant
admission.
Spike replied, a bit weakly he had to admit, "I've got my bloody soul
back, Watcher, I already..."
"So say you," Giles shot back angrily. "I'm not so sure this isn't all
an elaborate ruse you just concocted in the alley, when you realized
that you were caught!"
"No!" Spike objected hotly. "I'm telling the truth!"
"For once," Xander muttered under his breath.
"Maybe," Willow reminded them all in a quietly pointed voice.
"Okay," Buffy raised her hands in a halting gesture, raising her voice
as well, enough to be heard over the rising murmur of tension in the
room, "okay, there has to be a way to prove this, one way or the other.
Spike – what exactly did you see?"
Spike hesitated, unsure what to tell her.
There was so much to choose from – and yet, so little that he was
actually willing to tell
her just now.
"Lots of things," he answered vaguely, trying to find a way to explain
it to her, without revealing too much. "Slayer, it's like – like the
whole future is just a bloody open book in my mind. Just soddin' turn
to the page I need, and it's there."
"Oh, please!" Xander scoffed. "You think you're some kind of psychic
now? Like you can tell everybody their life stores before they happen."
"Not everybody," Spike corrected softly. "Just you lot. And only so far
as I experienced it – or would have experienced it – if that spell had
never happened."
"Right," Xander scoffed, his eyes narrowing angrily as he rose from the
couch and strode menacingly toward the bound vampire. Standing in front
of him, his fists balled and trembling at his sides, he asked coldly,
"Can you tell us what's gonna happen in about five seconds?"
"Xander," the Slayer said in a softly warning tone, her hand on her
friend's arm – but he shook it off angrily, just glaring down at the
vampire in front of him.
"Relax, Buffy," he said irritably. "I'm not doing anything but
talking."
His entire demeanor, however, made it very clear that he wanted to do
much worse.
Spike was not particularly afraid of the boy, knowing that a mere blow
from his fist would not be likely to do too much damage, but he could
tell that the entire situation was swiftly becoming more volatile. For
some reason, the Slayer seemed to be the only one who seemed at all
inclined to believe him – so he would have to say *something* to prove
that he was telling the truth.
Closing his eyes for a moment, he replied in a low, soft voice, making
it clear that he was not trying to further antagonize the boy.
"Phone's gonna ring. But might as well not answer it 'cause it's just
one of those soddin' telemarketing blokes."
Giles scoffed quietly at that, retorting with a dark laugh, probably
intended to dispel some of the rising tension, "Nothing mystic about
that prediction. The blasted pillocks call here every day, just to..."
The ringing of the telephone still silenced him, despite his insistence
that it was an obvious guess. His eyes focused intently on the vampire
as he lifted the receiver and spoke quietly, "Hello?" After a momentary
pause, he said, "I'm sorry, I'm not interested, thank you." Hanging up
the phone, he turned toward the others with a serious expression on his
face, as he informed them softly, "Insurance salesman."
"You see there?" Spike demanded without hesitation, but his triumph was
tinged with a sense of urgency. "You all had better listen to me, or..."
With surprising speed and force, Xander's fist came down across Spike's
mouth, silencing his words, and the Slayer quickly grabbed her friend's
arms from behind, pulling him back away from the bound vampire.
"Xander!" she cried out in alarm and indignation. "What are you doing,
he can't fight back!"
Xander ignored her, demanding furiously, "Or what, Spike? Are you
threatening us, now? We'd better listen to you or *what*?"
"Or you're all going to die!" Spike declared, loudly and forcefully,
straining against the bonds that held him back as he leaned as near as
he could to the boy, meeting his eyes boldly, defiantly. "And don't get
your knickers in a twist, I'm not bloody threatening you! I'm just
telling you that if you don't listen to what I have to say, and
*change* what's going to happen -- every last one of you is going. To
die."
Buffy froze, still holding Xander back from going after Spike again,
her eyes widening on the blond vampire's furious, intent expression,
stunned by what he had said. Silence filled the room in the wake of
Spike's bombshell, as everyone took in the impact of what he had said.
Buffy studied his face, wondering with alarm if it could be true, or if
it was all just another elaborate lie composed by Spike for the purpose
of saving his undead butt.
Just then, the doorbell rang.
Giles glanced toward it, unsure whether or not he should bother to
answer it, as all the people who really mattered to him were gathered
in this room, and the information Spike had just announced to them
*was* rather important. He was tempted to simply let whoever it was go
away, anyway, when Spike spoke again.
"Oh, bloody hell! The soddin' poof's got such bleedin' perfect timing!"
Buffy's eyes widened further, turning toward the door as she released
Xander and took an unintentional step toward the door -- but not too
quickly for Spike to see the sudden flash of hope as she realized who
he was talking about.
"Angel?" She looked hopefully toward Willow, taking another anxious
step toward the door. "It worked, right? The restoration spell for
Angel's soul? It worked?"
Willow did not seem capable of answering at the moment. Her own
wide-eyed gaze kept wandering between Buffy's face and the door, an
expression of barely concealed dread in her eyes as she opened her
mouth to speak, but couldn't seem to make the words come out.
"We can't be sure, Buffy," Jenny spoke up for her, coming to her side,
and her rescue. She looked at Giles as she slipped a supportive arm
around Willow's waist and said anxiously, "Rupert, don't let him in --
not until we know for sure..."
"Really, Jenny, what kind of fool do you think I am?" Giles gave her a
mildly offended look, as he went to open the door. "I wouldn't dream of
it."
"Willow?" Buffy frowned with concern, though she still could not seem
to pull most of her attention away from the door. "What's wrong?" When
Willow just shook her head, looking away, Buffy moved closer to her
friend, with an effort focusing her gaze on her face. "Willow, it
wasn't Angel. If Angel's back...he's not the same person that..."
"Buffy, don't -- okay?" Willow whispered, not looking at her. "Just --
don't."
"Willow..."
But at that moment, Giles opened the front door, and Buffy's attention
was torn away from Willow's dilemma, as she turned hopeful, anxious
eyes on her lost love, desperate to know if he had indeed been returned
to her.
The dark vampire stood just outside the door, his hands in his pockets,
his head lowered humbly, looking up at her through wide, soft brown
eyes filled with regret. Buffy started toward him slowly, as if in a
trance -- Willow, Spike, the spell, all forgotten for the moment. She
stopped a few feet away from him, beside her rather guarded Watcher,
her voice coming out as a barely audible whisper of hope and fear.
"*Angel*?"