Deep Purple
Part Eleven
The mystery might have continued if an
eagle-eyed Willow had never
looked up at the love of her friend's life. Guilt had never been such a
pure shade until Anya wore it on her face.
"She knows something."
Willow didn't often interject when Giles was on a spiel about research
and hypotheses, but she'd been long on the look-out for Anya's perks
and quirks and this looked like quite a substantial one. She'd known
all along—one day the ex-demon would betray how truly twisted she was;
right now her patience was finally being rewarded. And really, now that
she knew—now that Anya looked guilty as hell—it was more than obvious.
The room stopped to look at Willow in surprise, waiting expectantly for
an explanation of her outburst, as almost all her observations were
worthwhile in the information sense.
"Anya. She's got 'uh-oh' face." She grinned in complete confidence.
This moment was hers and she was going to expose Anya for the unstable,
psychotic and incompatible-for-Xander girl she truly was.
It took slow seconds for the Scoobies to process her claim and attempt
a connection to the problem at hand, then laugh and reject it. They
turned away, interested again in Giles's theories that were so not even
close to the real answers to this whacked out mystery, and Willow's
satisfied grin faded.
Did she have to have all the brains around here?
Having Spike as an ally had never entered the redhead's mind as a
possibility, but she smiled triumphantly anyway.
"Oi. I've said from the start that the demongirl must know something.
You remember, Harris. When we saw the first carrot."
Xander didn't jump straight away to reject Spike's claim, instead
screwing up his face as if trying to remember something that had
happened two days after his birth.
"Hmmm, I'm thinking no. Definitely not coming to me. I remember you
wailing about the carrot and how Buffy should be told—" Xander stopped
suddenly, a wayward deer caught in too many incredulous gazes to escape
collision safely. "Did I say that Spike said we should let
Buffy know? I meant I said we should let Buffy know."
"So how come the Slayer didn't know then, Whelp? And you're bypassing
the point, as usual. Your brain too puffy to stay focused? Your bird's
escaping out the back, by the way." Spike smirked, linked his hands
behind his head and rocked back on his chair as Willow, Buffy, Giles
and Xander darted surprised glances to the back of the Magic Box just
in time to catch Anya as disappeared into the training room. He looked
up and saw Tara smiling at him shyly. Wasn't it nice to see he had
support in some quarters of this group?
"Ahn!" Xander yelped, finding it difficult to think of an excuse for
his girlfriend over their current bunny crisis when she was skipping
out the back door.
Buffy caught her before the door could shut. And with a firm yet guided
arm across the other girl's shoulders, she led her back into the main
research part of the shop.
With too many expectant gazes searching for some reason for her sudden
defection, Anya seemed to inwardly collapse, resignation making her
eyes dark and watery.
"You know, the fact that Buffy has been dreaming about killer
bunnies—and that Anya's most feared creature is the rabbit—and the fact
that she's not wigged out even once, despite the alarming evidence to
support the existence of giant bunnies on the Hellmouth...I'm thinking
the ex-vengeance demon might have the skinny on our friendly
not-so-neighbourly giant carrot grower." Willow stared the girl down
with her patented trying-to-be-tough glare and waited for the girl to
crack.
"All right!" Anya shouted, her hands doing an abrupt wave in the air
before banging down on the table as she slumped dramatically into a
seat. "The little man is here for me. I cursed him to be the caretaker
of the giant werebunnies for eternity. But I swear, there were only two
of them then," the blonde appealed pathetically.
"Oh my Lord, but these are rabbits. How many are there now?" Giles
balked at the numbers flitting through his head. The savagery visited
on a dimension once a month...why, it bordered on catastrophic.
Anya wept. She blew her nose and cried out a number that made Giles's
jaw drop. "But that was over two hundred years ago. It could have
dropped by now."
"Good God woman!" Everyone jumped at the violence of the Watcher's
uncharacteristic explosion. "Dropped? Unless your caretaker was lacing
those bloody carrots with mixamotosis, there is every chance the
dimension has been over-run by giant murderous rabbits. How could you
have been so careless?"
"Hey, and don't forget cruel!" exclaimed Willow, liking the colour that
leached from the ex-demon girl's cheeks. "That poor old man must be
terrified out of his mind."
"But it's his fault!" Anya exploded from her chair, the legs scraping
like chalk on a blackboard.
Buffy raised a brow. It figured. Here they had a sitch where there was
a guy, and Anya did something not only vengeful but morally wrong, and
she was still blaming it on the poor fool that was probably totally
traumatised. And let's not overlook the sympathetic hug that Xander was
giving her, his big chunky hands rubbing loving circles on her back
while she shuddered melodramatically. If she even tried to offer the
same comfort to Spike about some family he'd slaughtered when he was
first vamped but had found a way to come back and haunt him, Xander
would be the first to jump on her back with the murderous, evil vampire
rhetoric. She needed to contact someone about fixing the dictionary.
Hypocrisy obviously started with an X.
Carefully turning away from the show, Buffy had to reiterate the real
worry. "No matter whose fault it is, these things seem to be here and
the scared, weird little guy seems to be making this his home. Unless
we do something, those things are probably going to dust Spike."
Xander interrupted Buffy with a smug, "So Ahn did a good thing, then?"
Buffy glared, but then a glint of wicked glee lit up her eyes. "I think
we can safely assume the guy brought the bad bunnies here to deal with
the demon that ruined his life in the first place. What do you say I
drop by the crypt tonight and give him directions to your place, Xan? I
know I'm not known as Artistic Buffy, but I bet I could draw a map."
Her eyes glittered with fun as she turned to her redheaded friend.
"How's that full moon looking for tonight, Will?" she asked, still
staring at her male-shaped friend as he hugged Anya even tighter.
"We'll be good," Anya squeaked, shocking everyone in the room with her
almost flawless cooperation. It didn't take much for them to see the
little shop-keeper was shaking so hard that she was teetering on her
practical work heels. "Won't we, Xander? No more Spike jokes." She
laughed nervously, a tinge of hysteria bubbling up before she turned
and tugged urgently on his arm. "It wouldn't do to make the Slayer
angry."
The return of her title made Buffy raise a brow and she turned toward
Spike, who merely shrugged his confusion. Whatever this was, Anya
believed she needed Slayer protection.
"It's okay," Buffy snickered. "I'm not really going to give your home
address to some guy who's feeding the homicidal rabbits to their giant,
feral best."
"Oh, thank God." Anya shuddered, and sounded another nervous giggle
before she slumped, emotionally exhausted, into a chair.
"So, what is your plan then, Buffy? Poison them? Attack with blades?
Blow up the crypt that has their food supply? Perhaps the rabbits
themselves are beneath it?" Giles's enthusiasm for the solution had him
grinning madly and eyeing a new sword that he'd been busily polishing.
"Actually," Buffy started slowly, surprised at this suddenly
blood-thirsty side of Giles. "I was thinking I could go talk to this
farmer guy. See if I can talk to him about the Anya sitch. And then if
he's unreasonable, cut his head off."
The room came to an ear-shattering silence. It was so quiet that even
the almost imperceptible hum of the light fixtures seemed like they
were irritatingly loud. Minutes ticked by while everyone stared at
Buffy, expressions varying only by the choice of mouth hanging open or
eyes as wide as pizza dishes.
"So, you want the broadsword or the axe, luv?" Spike smirked as he got
to his feet and strutted his way to Buffy's side.
"I was kind of eyeing Giles's new toy. It's shiny. I like shiny
things." Buffy leaned over and snatched the handle out of Giles's loose
grip and gave it an experimental twirl, barely missing a tuft of
Spike's bleached hair as the blade whizzed past his ear.
"Much more of that and you'll be left admiring my shiny pile of dust."
Spike looked indignant, but the look of horror on Buffy's face and the
shimmer of tears in her eyes undid him. He gave her a hug, loving the
way the weight of her body against his made his coat creak in all the
good ways and doing his best to ignore the faux-wretch that was Harris
doing his usual immature tricks.
"I don't think you should go to this man alone, Buffy." Giles ignored
Spike's offended frown and growl, ploughing on regardless of the
vampire's hurt feelings. "I think it might be best if you have the
strength of numbers on your side."
Buffy looked thoughtful, then nodded. "Sounds good. Let's arm up and
head out." Like a girl, the Slayer seized her boyfriend's hand and
tugged him toward the door. Willow, Tara and Giles grabbed what they
could, preceding Xander and a struggling, less-than-eager Anya to the
door. The group halted just long enough to lock the shop up behind them
and then they were off, a strange collection of people heading straight
to Spike's cemetery and crypt.
Buffy walked beside Spike in the cool night, her hand feeling the
warmth of his touch and her body tingling from his closeness. It was
strange how their togetherness had just happened and that she felt less
guilt at sharing her relationship with Spike in front of her friends.
It was almost as if the enforced joining of their bodies had cleansed
her mind of all her mortal hang ups. Suddenly it didn't matter if
Xander was jealous or if Giles was disappointed in her. It didn't
matter if they thought she was risking their lives by choosing to be
with another vampire, because she knew she wasn't. In the matter of
days and over the course of several nights of erotic yet terrifying
dreams, Buffy had changed. She'd grown and accepted what her future
looked like, and she couldn't see herself at thirty with friends
married with kids, or stretching out under the umbrella of careers
while she remained lonely with only the monsters of the night to keep
her company. They may have wanted love and happiness for her, but when
it came down to it, they only wanted it so long as they could pick and
choose who she was happy with.
I should be grateful the first slayer had tried to kill me,
Buffy thought with a sudden smile. How else would she have ever let go
of the prejudices that she held regarding Spike? She might never have
seen him as anything but an irritating pest that just might kill her if
he ever worked out how to get rid of the chip. She may have ridiculed
him every chance she or Xander got, but Buffy never forgot the
potential simmering under his patient forbearance. Never allowed the
threat of him to diminish in her heart. Somehow, whenever she thought
of him loose and free, killing again as he made up for lost time and
attempted to prove he was still the evil Big Bad his family thought he
was, she was filled with sadness. It hurt to consider Spike leaving
Sunnydale now. Leaving her. One vengeance bound slayer later and Buffy
was reconciled to living the rest of her life at the side of Spike and
being protected by his care rather than destroyed by it. There was
nothing to hate about that, and yet everything to love.
Love.
That was a word that filled her with awe. It was a word that she felt
Spike could re-define. She had a feeling it had nothing to do with
pedestals in Spike's mind. Had nothing to do with how often and how
successfully she could save the world. She was positive he wasn't
thinking about how perfect it was to have sex with her, and she had no
illusions that a creature needed a soul to love. Not anymore.
Buffy could smell things on the night that was probably non-existent to
her friends and watcher behind her. She could smell death as it crawled
out of the ground. She could smell the frenzy of the newly birthed
being as it hunted down its prey, and she could scent the fear of the
ripe flesh that it was her job to protect. She didn't kid herself.
Buffy knew that she was largely successful in her town, but that there
was more out there than just one slayer could deal with. She felt
things, too. She could feel the apprehension of those following her as
they geared up for a possible furry fight to the death. She could feel
the excitement that buzzed through Spike as he held himself to the
walking pace she'd set. His body was always in a hurry, but if things
were going to be bad, Buffy wasn't in any rush to meet their target.
But most of all, she could feel the concern that radiated from each and
every one of those she called friend as they bore holes in her back and
wished they could set Spike alight. It was wrong, but she understood
it. Unfortunately for them, Spike's continuance on the outer edge of
the gang was at a very definite end.
"Spike?"
"Yeah, luv."
"I love you." Buffy grinned as he lost step and almost tripped over a
clump of grass.
"Oh. Righteo then." A gentle squeeze of her hand and they continued
walking, only stopping a minute later to wonder at the loss of their
back-up.
"You guys planning on being there when I confront the carrot guy or
not?" Buffy watched as the stunned Scoobies gathered their wits and
jogged to catch up, staring at Buffy in such a way she wondered briefly
if she might be orange again. Not that it mattered—not when she was
royalty on Spike's arm.
"We're right behind you, Buff. Good thing too. Wouldn't want your honey
to slip on our collective disgust." Xander shook his head, but Buffy
shrugged and his face twisted up in surprise. Heh, it wasn't her fault
if he couldn't intimidate her into the Spike-hate anymore.
They continued on in silence, Buffy's and Spike's companionable, the
others in shock. Despite heading into a potentially dangerous
situation, Buffy felt relaxed and happy. She let go of Spike's hand and
moved closer, feeling all gooey with the girlish crush as she slipped
under Spike's arm and was cradled against his body. It felt so
carefree, and yet burned her with excitement. She never could
have expected to feel like this with Spike at her side. It just made
the surprise so much sweeter.
The moment couldn't last, however. Not when there was danger to
curtail, and badness to eradicate before vampires were turned to not so
pretty dust particles. Spike's crypt loomed ahead, and it seemed far
more sinister and scary this night in the dark than it had on any
other. It glowed with a moon looking very close to full, making Buffy
shiver with what she hoped wasn't foreboding.
And then Carrot Man stepped out, his eyes darting around and back
again. Amidst the bodies he focused on one, his face turning purple as
he held in rage and then exploded in a gush of hatred that must have
been stored for centuries.
"Anyanka!!"