40. Future Secrets
Thanks to my
wonderful, amazing beta,
Eowyn315!!! And thanks to all my wonderful readers for being so patient
with me throughout the last few hectic weeks :) *hugs to all*
“So…these visions of yours. Pretty much useless at this point, right?”
Spike looked up at the glum tone of the Slayer’s voice, her eyes
downcast as she sat beside him on the couch. It was mid-afternoon, and
the Watcher and the gypsy teacher were outside the house, setting up a
protection spell in an attempt to prevent Willow’s magic from affecting
them inside Giles’ house. Neither of them being particularly magically
inclined, Buffy and Spike had opted to stay inside.
“Come again, love?”
“Well, so many things have changed, and you said you only saw what
would have happened before you started changing things…right?”
Spike nodded slowly. “Right.”
“Then…from this point on, we should kind of…disregard the visions and
just…just deal with Willow from here on out the best we can,” Buffy
concluded, though there was still a note of uncertainty in her voice.
“I mean…if everything’s changed…”
“But…not *everything’s* changed, love,” Spike pointed out with a
thoughtful frown. “Seems like a lot of stuff is still happening, ’s
just…happening a lot sooner, yeah? All out of order and such.”
Buffy looked up at him, her brow furrowed in confusion. “What do you
mean? Willow did this in the visions you saw?”
“Well…not exactly *just* this.” Spike shrugged as he looked away.
“But…sort of…”
Buffy raised a single brow, irritation beginning to show on her face.
“Okay, and you are *so* not helpful right now, Spike…”
“Well, it’s bloody confusing to me, too, love!” he exclaimed, a bit
defensively, as he rose to his feet abruptly, his arms crossed over his
chest as he began to pace the floor, his eyes carefully averted when
she tried to catch his gaze. “What I saw versus what’s actually
happenin’, and all points in between…’s gettin’ so I’m not even sure
what’s actually happened and what I just *saw* anymore!”
Buffy blinked at him in surprise at his outburst, considering the
question for a moment before she asked in a low, solemn voice that
stopped his pacing.
“Spike…what *did* you see?”
Spike was silent for so long that Buffy really did not expect him to
reply at all, his eyes lowered and his back turned to her, before he
finally answered quietly.
“Not gonna happen now, is it? So it doesn’t matter, then.”
“It matters to me.”
Spike hesitated before voicing another objection. “It’d only hurt you
to know, Slayer. You don’t need to know.”
“Spike…I *want* to know.”
The blond vampire jumped, startled, when he felt the soft warmth of her
hand on his arm, turning to face her in a motion that seemed more than
a little defensive. As he processed the fact that she had actually
crossed the room to his side, actually *touched* him in a gesture of
something strongly resembling compassion, Spike’s tense stance
gradually relaxed, the expression in his eyes softening with a sort of
awe.
The moment Buffy saw it there on his face, she self-consciously dropped
her hand from his arm, taking a step back and crossing her arms over
her chest. She casually averted her eyes as she insisted softly, “I
just…I just want to know. Come on, if it’s not going to happen anymore,
then what’s the harm in telling me?”
Spike drew in a weary breath, letting it out with a sigh as he turned
and slowly walked back to the sofa, sitting down and looking up at her
expectantly, waiting for her to join him. Buffy swallowed back her
irrational nervousness, trying to put Miss Calendar’s words out of her
mind and simply allow herself to listen to the story Spike had to tell.
But now that the idea had taken root in her mind, it was not all that
easy to dismiss it…especially not when faced with the strange
tenderness and vulnerability that was present in Spike’s eyes.
Had it always been there? Had she simply never noticed it before? Or
was it a result of his recently restored soul?
“If I tell you,” Spike spoke quietly, his deep voice tearing through
the confusion of her thoughts and drawing her attention back to him.
“Will you bloody well let it go and not talk about it again?”
Buffy considered for just a moment before shrugging. “It’s not going to
happen. No reason to talk about it again. I just wanna know.”
Spike nodded his acceptance of her words, staring at the floor, leaning
forward, his hands folded together in front of his knees as he prepared
himself to speak, apparently trying to find the right words.
*Or trying to decide how much to tell me?* Buffy wondered, her eyes
narrowly skeptically.
“Right. The future…the way I saw it. Well, I got that soddin’ chip…and
it *didn’t* come out in a matter of a day or so, love, not in that
world. It…it never came out.”
Spike hesitated, and Buffy felt a strange pulse of sympathetic emotion
in the pit of her stomach as she watched his jaw working with the
effort to repress his own feelings enough to continue the story. She
momentarily chided herself for actually feeling bad about the fact that
in his visions, Spike never regained the ability to kill humans again.
After all, in his visions, he hadn’t had a soul…had he?
*And ask Angel again what good a soul is?*
She frowned, forcing the traitorous thought out of her mind as she
asked, “Did you…did you have a soul in that future, Spike?”
The blond vampire shook his head silently, pausing for a moment before
he went on.
“Just the chip, love. Kept me good and leashed well enough; couldn’t
harm a living thing. Turns out, couldn’t harm a thing with a soul,
either, as a matter of fact, living or not…”
Buffy’s eyes widened with recognition as she realized what he was
talking about.
“Angel.”
Spike nodded again. “Couldn’t hurt him, either, unfortunately. Bloody
pillock. Could have made things a lot easier on you…a lot easier on
everybody…if I could have just staked him to begin with, long before
things got so…” His voice trailed off, and he shook his head, unable to
find the words to finish that remark.
Buffy bit her lower lip, a frown of confusion creasing her forehead as
she tried not to think too closely about Spike’s careless admission of
concern for her. It was not like it was the first time he had said or
done something to indicate that he cared what happened to her, but it
was the first time since Miss Calendar’s perception, and Buffy found
that every fragment of evidence to support the teacher’s theory was
resonating with her, despite her best attempts to ignore it.
“So…Angel went bad, like he did here,” she pressed gently, trying to
focus them both back onto the subject at hand. “Did he lose his soul,
or just…?”
“He lost it, but he got it back…a lot like what happened here. Not that
it made any difference,” Spike replied, a note of disgust in his voice,
though Buffy thought it seemed directed at Angel rather than at her.
“He was perfectly capable of giving in to his own darkness with the
precious soul intact, Slayer. And he did. He just…hid it, for a while.”
Buffy felt a cold sensation in the pit of her stomach, as she asked in
a whisper, “How long?”
“A…a few years. None of you…not a one of you had a bloody clue! He kept
Dru all chained up in that mansion for months, and let you lot think
she’d left town, before he finally got tired of her and staked her.
Just…on a whim.”
Spike shook his head, his eyes wide and stricken with the trauma of the
false memory, and once again Buffy felt the urge to reach out to him,
to offer him some kind of comfort. Her own chest was constricted with
the shock of hearing what Angel’s future had held, before it had been
changed, how badly he had deceived and betrayed them all…but she knew
that the pain she felt over those offenses paled in comparison to
Spike’s sense of loss over his love of over a century.
“He just…killed her, without a second thought. Then went to you lot and
made out like he was the big bloody hero. Claimed she’d come back to
town again, and he’d dusted her in a fight. I…I was the only one who
knew the truth.”
Buffy frowned. “How did you know?”
Spike’s smile was sad and bitter as he replied, “How could I not? He
was my bleedin’ *sire*, love. That…that means something. I…I knew when
he killed Dru…even *before* I saw that she was gone…”
“Wait,” Buffy objected, holding up a hand to halt him, shaking her head
in confusion. “Okay, so…where were you during all this, while Angel’s
pretending to still be one of us, and all the time keeping his ex
chained up in the mansion?”
Spike laughed softly, his eyes dark and haunted as he looked down at
the floor at his feet. “Half the time…chained up right beside her,” he
admitted, his voice low and hoarse with emotion. “Rest of the
time…well, just trying to avoid you lot. And…and Angel.” Spike paused
for a moment, swallowing hard as he added, “Not succeeding very well.
You didn’t exactly make it easy. It was all I could do just…just trying
to survive.”
“How *did* you survive?” Buffy asked, her voice gentle and holding more
concern than she had really intended. She did not quite understand
everything that Spike was telling her – not yet – but she knew that the
future they had already averted had been a terrible time for him, and
it was a fresh agony reliving it. Still…there were some things she had
to know. “I mean…you couldn’t bite anyone, with that chip in your head.
So…how did you get…?”
“Blood?” Spike finished for her, a single eyebrow raised at her
discomfort at speaking the word, at facing the thought of what he
needed for sustenance. When she nodded, he looked away again, his
expression inscrutable to her eyes. “Butchers. At first. Until Angel
decided it’d be a good laugh to scare them all out of selling to me.”
Buffy frowned, unsure why the idea of what Spike was telling her made
her feel so indignant. “Why would Angel do that?” she asked. “What good
would it do him to do that, just to make it harder on you?”
“Making things harder on me was a bloody end in itself to him,” Spike
scoffed. “He just did it for kicks, love.”
Buffy opened her mouth to protest, but Spike went on before she could
speak.
“I…I knew what he was up to…what he was hiding…but…but he…he made sure
I couldn’t say anything to you about it…”
When he stopped, unwilling or unable to go on, Buffy tried to suppress
her impatience as she pressed, “How? How did he do that?”
Spike was very quiet for a long moment, before he finally replied in a
voice that was carefully calm, “He…renewed his sire’s rights, and
that…well, it bloody well *forced* me to keep quiet. To…to do whatever
the soddin’ hell he told me to do. Double life he was living for a bit,
there. Keeping Dru all chained up at the mansion to do whatever he
wanted with her, and…and keeping me at his bloody beck and call as
well…and all the while pretending that he was your dotin’ lover, all
good and noble and such rot. I…I *wanted* so badly to tell you,
Buffy…but…but I couldn’t…”
Buffy’s heart was smote with compassion at the sorrow and anguish in
his voice, and she realized with a shock that Spike was speaking about
the events he had foreseen as if he had actually experienced them…and
it sounded as if whatever he had been through at Angel’s hands had been
truly terrible.
Forgetting her self-conscious uncertainty, Buffy found herself leaning
toward him on the sofa, one hand reaching out to rest on his arm in a
comforting gesture, though she had no words to offer him. What could
one *say* in a situation like this, anyway?
Spike looked up at her sharply through startled blue eyes, glancing
down at the place where her soft, warm hand touched his cool, trembling
flesh, swallowing hard as he struggled to keep control of his own
emotions.
After a moment, he appeared to win the struggle, his jaw setting as he
went on in a steady, even voice.
“Dru lasted nearly a year…half bloody starved, in constant pain…he used
her as nothing but a soddin’ toy. I tried my best to help her, in
between helpin’ you lot sometimes. Found out demons were the only thing
that bloody chip would let me kill, so when I could…when you’d let
me…I’d fight with you. That is, when Angel…when Angel didn’t have me…”
His voice broke off as he shook his head and continued abruptly, “Dru
lasted nearly a year before he killed her. And it was two years after
that when he killed Red.”
Despite her sympathy for the blond vampire, Buffy couldn’t help her
surprised curiosity at that. “So…Angel managed to pull off the ‘good
vampire’ act for three years in that future?”
Spike nodded as he continued with an apologetic grimace, aware that his
words would be hard for the Slayer to hear. “Seems all along he had a…a
bit of a thing for Willow…tainted innocence and all that…’s just in
that version of the future, he held out longer. Seems some small events
we changed must have served to push them together a bit sooner than was
supposed to happen, and make it all happen faster.”
Buffy was quiet, struggling with her own emotions as she tried to
process what he was saying.
It seemed there was just too much pain these days to even sort it out.
“Once he…he turned her,” Spike continued, a grim smile rising to his
lips, though his blue eyes were still solemn and haunted, “he didn’t
last a soddin’ week. She was too powerful by then, yeah? As a human, in
that version of things, she’d become a right smart little witch, and
she didn’t lose that power when he turned her. ’S why I assumed that it
wouldn’t be that way this time around…’cause she hasn’t had time to
develop the skills she was supposed to eventually have, yeah?”
Buffy nodded slowly, her eyes wide as she took in the story.
“But she managed to drain him, do the resiring ritual, and gain control
of him in a week’s time. I thought things would be better for you…for
all of us…with Angelus out of control. Red always seemed a bit sweeter
than Angel, with or without the soul, yeah? So how could it be anything
but better with her in charge, even as a vamp?”
Spike was quiet for a moment before adding grimly, “I was wrong.”
After a moment, Buffy spoke up in a voice that was trembling
dangerously. “So…so if everything just…just happened faster…do you
maybe know…what she was planning then? What she might be going to do?”
“No telling, love,” Spike sighed, giving her an apologetic look.
“See….there’s no telling if she’s even heard of the things she did in
the visions. By the time she got turned in the visions, she’d had years
to study magic and such, and had all kinds of dangerous knowledge in
her hands…”
“Except now, she doesn’t need it,” Buffy pointed out with a frown,
alarm rising in her eyes. “Because if what Giles said is true…her very
essence *is* magical…and she might not even *need* a spell to do
whatever she wants to do magically, you know?”
Spike nodded. “Yeah. I know.”
After a long, tense moment, Buffy stated softly in a voice of practiced
calm, “You’re right, Spike. I need to stake her.”
“’S going to be hard getting to her at this point, love,” Spike pointed
out. “We’re going to have to try to come up with some way of…of
incapacitating her long enough to take her out.” He paused, his head
lowered sadly as he added in a low voice thick with emotion. “I’m
sorry, love. Wish I could…could be more helpful…’s just…”
“Why?”
Spike blinked, looking up at her in surprise at the softly spoken
question, and his unneeded breath was stolen away by the softness, the
question in her eyes. “Come again, love?”
“Why, Spike?” Buffy repeated, searching his gaze intently. “Why…are you
sorry? Why do you want to help me, when a week ago you wanted me dead?”
When he started to respond, she cut him off with a raised finger of
warning, “And *don’t* say it’s the soul, because I know that’s not
true. Angel has a soul, too. Doesn’t make him care. And besides…you
said you cared in the visions…when you didn’t *have* a soul.”
Spike looked away abruptly. His prepared answer, designed to appease
her without revealing too much, having failed, he had no idea how to
answer her.
“Spike,” Buffy whispered, leaning in closer, her hand shifting slightly
on his arm, and drawing his focus reluctantly back to her. “In…in the
future that’s never going to happen now…did you…I mean…were we…were we
in love?”