Third Time's the Charm

Chapter Eight: The Witch, the Key and the Harem

Buffy woke feeling rested, a sensation she hadn’t had in many years. Usually her nights were torn by nightmares or spent staring at the television, computer screen, or pages of a book. Last night there had been none of that. She’d slept deeply, as deeply as a child secure in the knowledge that she was protected.

The curtains were still pulled and the room was dark and a glance at the clock told her that she’d slept well past noon.

She was alone.

Buffy crawled from the bed and headed for the shower and a change of clothes. Afterwards she headed downstairs, looking for Spike. She knew that he had to be in the house. The bright sun, a rarity in Buffalo in January, was shinning. He was stuck here with them until dusk at least.

The hallways were draped in shadow, with only splashes of sunlight spilling through the Victorian stain glass. The parlor and living room were bathed in light; he definitely hadn’t been there. She headed for the kitchen, convinced that’s where she would find him. Second to the bedroom, the kitchen had always been his favorite room.

Sure enough, the curtains were drawn and the kitchen light was on, bathing the scene in a cheerful glow. And what a scene it was. Spike was holding court with a witch, a key, and a harem of slayers. It was, Buffy decided, like a spoof of a CS Lewis novel and she wondered if somewhere in the house there was an old wardrobe they could all disappear into. There were times when she really wished they would all disappear. When she wished that she was the only one. But how could she ever voice that thought out loud, to any of them?

Only Spike would understand. And it had always been like that. He’d been the only one to ever understand her. That had been his gift and her downfall.

He knew the moment she entered the room. His entire face lit up and there was no way anyone in that room didn’t know exactly how he felt about her.

“Good morning pet, sleep well?”

She nodded.

“Good to see you Buffy,” Chantal said with a smile. “Have a seat, we’re just helping Spike get caught up.”

Buffy pulled up a chair and grabbed a mug.

Spike held up a red Ipod and raised his eyebrows at her. “This – this is cracker! You can put over 600 songs on it!”

She smiled at his enthusiasm. “You don’t know 600 songs.”

“Ahh.. been around for decades. I know 600 songs!” he pointed out.

Dawn laughed at him. “Yeah, but Spike, I’m not sure if those ancient songs are available for download.”

He looked puzzled, his scarred eyebrow cocked in bewilderment. “What? Download? What’s download?”

“It’s how you get the music.”

“From albums, tapes and cds, aye,” he stated matter-of-factly.

Dawn chuckled. “Not anymore. Now you get it from the computer and transfer it to the Ipod.”

He looked dumbfounded. “So that’s how you get all those songs on it?”

She nodded. “The music’s converted to files and the files-“

Willow held up her hands. “Enough! Leave him be Dawn. Chantal has hundreds of songs already loaded on the Ipod, he can learn to love that music.”

Spike looked relieved. “I do,” he said eagerly. “That Mobile song was bang on.”

Dawn rolled her eyes. “Frenchie here has him listening to all her Canadian crap.”

“Hey! Don’t knock it!” Chantal protested, she patted Spike’s hand, as if he were some harmless puppy. “You can have it. It’s loaded and it’s good stuff. I’ll get another one and just reload it, all the stuff’s on my laptop.”

He smiled and popped the Ipod into his pocket and slung the ear buds around his shoulders. They dangled there and Buffy was amazed at how natural he looked. It was like he’d never been gone. The slayers sat around him and already she could see how much they hung on his every word, how they stared at him with those slumberous come and get me looks. And he was completely unaware of it. He’d always been confident in that way – he knew he was attractive, but he never set out to attract a woman. It simply happened.

Even Chantal, who was into girls and in love with Willow, was looking at him as if he was first prize at a boxing match. Sam hung on his every word, her dreadlocks bobbing as she agreed to everything he said. The African twins, Maia and Asia, stared at him in silence, but Buffy could practically see their thoughts as they sized him up, wondering what he was like beneath the clothes, what he was like in bed. The only ones missing were Zoe and Erica. They had had the last patrol so were still asleep in their respective rooms.

But why should she be surprised? She’d pretty much given the go ahead for slayer/vamp pairings when she’d fallen in love with Angel and then followed that up by falling into trouble with Spike. There were no taboos left and she had no one else but herself to blame for the worshiping that was currently happening at her kitchen table.

She poured herself a cup of coffee.

“Seems like you’re fitting in,” she murmured.

He tipped his mug of blood and grinned. “The Bit went and got me some blood for my morning cuppa.”

Buffy shot her sister an inscrutable look. “How nice of her.”

He grinned again. “I thought so.” He glanced up at the clock and drained his mug. “You ready for some training slayer?”

She froze and stared at him. “What?”

“I understand you have a top notch training facility here?”

She nodded.

He shrugged and stood. “Then show me. Show me what you’ve got.”

Awkward silence fell as several sets of eyes turned in her direction.

She glared at him and slammed her own mug down. “Fine, I’ll show you the facilities.” She glanced over at the other slayers. “Perhaps one of the girls would want to take you on?”

Maia finally seemed to feel the need to contribute to the conversation, but a warning look from her sister stopped her and she kept her mouth shut.

Spike walked over to the hallway and looked back. “Well then pet, let’s go and fight.”

She cursed under her breath and followed. But not after sending a warning look to the ones left behind, ensuring that they staid exactly where they were. If they weren’t going to be doing the fighting, then they definitely weren’t going to be doing the watching!

She passed him in the hall, watching as he carefully skirted the pockets of sunlight that spilled in through the window in the front door. She opened the door beneath the stairs and flipped a switch. “We practice down in the basement.”

“How very dungeons and dragons pet,” he murmured with a smile and then bounded gracefully downstairs. He came to the bottom and circled, whistling as he took in their training quarters. “Lovely, just lovely.”

There were two padded walls, one mirrored one and the other was mounted with an impressive assortment of weapons. There were punching bags, treadmills, elliptical and rowing machines. Charts on the doors tracked the slayers’ training schedules and progress reports and there was a fridge stocked with water and protein bars.

Spike nodded and turned to smile at her. “You’ve got yourself a great set up here Buffy,” he said. Then he stopped smiling. “When was the last time you were down here?”

“Last year,” she said before she could stop herself. She was grateful he was already pale and she didn’t notice a visible reaction to her words.

He simply nodded. “Well, glad I could remedy that then.” He stepped toward her and smiled. “That’s all about to change isn’t it?”

And then he punched her in the face.

Buffy flew back against the padded wall and slid down to the floor. She held a hand to her cheek and stared up at him, panting, her eyes glazed in shock and some pain.

“What the hell?”

“Get up,” he bit out. “Get up and fight.”

She pulled herself to her feet, shaking with anger as the adrenaline began pulsing through her veins. “I don’t fight anymore. There are others to do the fighting now. I’m – I’m retired.”

Spike’s eyebrows shot up and his tongue curled behind his teeth. “Now that is bloody ridiculous. Slayers don’t retire, they die.” He leapt towards her and before she knew what hit her, he’d kicked her in the gut and followed it up with a punch to her upper shoulder. Buffy spun away and smacked back into the wall and bounced back, right into an upper cut to her jaw.

She gasped and saw stars as she slumped against the wall and tried to catch her breath.

“Do you feel any pain?” he asked.

She shook her head. “Some.”

“Only some?” He asked. “Good. Now fight me.”

She closed her eyes and drew in a deep breath. Then she turned and went at him.

Spike grinned. It wasn’t the best shot. And those girls upstairs, Dawn included, could have bested her. But as Buffy began punching and kicking and blocking, he saw some of the old fighter in the smoothness of her moves, if not in the speed or accuracy.

He let her get a few kicks and punches in and when they were both covered in a light layer of sweat, he called it to an end. She immediately collapsed into a chair and Spike went over to the fridge and grabbed two bottles of water. He handed one to her and sat down at her feet, staring up at her as she gulped it down.

“How do you feel?”

“Stupid,” she muttered, not looking at him.

“Why?”

She shook her head. “I haven’t forgotten what I used to be. And now I can literally feel how far from that I’ve gotten.”

“I’m here to help you fix all that,” he murmured.

She looked at him. “Why?”

He shrugged. “Hell if I know. Those pillocks, the PTB sent me here.”

She looked at him closely. “Did you want to come?”

Spike froze, staring at her. How could he explain the choice he’d made; that for him there had been no choice? That she had always been his only choice. But he couldn’t tell her that without explaining what had happened to Angel.

He nodded instead. “Aye pet, I wanted to come. I always wanted to come.”

And as her eyes darkened in pain, he knew it had been the wrong thing to say. “Then why didn’t you come before?”

In the words was all the loss and abandonment she had felt from the moment he’d sacrificed himself to close the hellmouth, to when she’d heard about his return to L.A and then his death. Like when Angel left, then her mother left, everyone was always leaving.

Buffy looked away.

Spike took a deep breath. It was time to explain...

“Pet, when I showed up in L.A, I was a ghost.”

She nodded. “Andrew eventually told us.” She looked up at him. “But you regained your form.”

“Aye, and when I was able to leave L.A, I went to Rome.”

The rest was left unsaid, because Buffy knew exactly what had happened. That was when she’d hooked up with the Immortal. A short lived but extremely foolish decision in a series of foolish decisions. God, if she’d known he was alive, would she have done what she’d done?

“Why did you make Andrew promise he wouldn’t tell me? Why did you go through so much effort to ensure that I didn’t know you were alive?” she asked.

He looked away, unable to stare into those vulnerable, green eyes. Funny that, he thought to himself, he’d always wished for her to be softer, kinder, and more vulnerable with him. But this slayer, all broken and torn, he didn’t know what to do with her.

“As much as I wanted you,” he began, trying to explain, “I knew that what we’d had was over. There was nothing more I could have done to redeem myself for all the things I’d done to you, than to die trying to save you and your friends and close the hellmouth. I’d gone down in a blaze of glory! A glorious, blazing death with the girl telling me she loved me. Remember Buffy? What was the one thing I ever wanted from you?”

She stared at him, remembering that night in the church, his tears, the smoke rising from his pale, scarred flesh as he’d embraced the crucifix.

“She will look upon him with forgiveness and everybody will forgive and love. He will be loved,” she whispered.

He cocked his head and grinned. “I got that, you gave me that in those moments in the hellmouth. What would all that have been worth, if I were back? Nothing. So I staid dead and fought the good fight with Angel’s gang, until I died again trying to save the world. Apparently it’s something I’m not very good at, yeah?”
Buffy tried a smile. It felt strange, but strangely good.

“You didn’t believe me did you?” she asked.

He looked haunted at her words. He knew what she was asking. “I believe I saw the forgiveness in your eyes. I believed that, in that moment, you forgave me my sins. I wanted to believe the words,” he said. Then he shook his head. “But the rest? How could I have? How could you have? Forgiveness is one thing pet, but love?” It was why it had been so easy for Angel to convince him that she was better off without him.

“That’s why you didn’t find me after, why you made sure I never discovered you were still alive.”

His slayer had apparently not lost her deductive skills, he thought sourly. He looked away.

“You’d died saving the world for a girl you thought didn’t love you,” she said. “Why then, try and find her? You’d done enough; she’d put you through enough.”

“And then there was the Immortal,” he muttered. He wasn’t going down without a fight, or at least without an attempt at the last word.

“And Angel,” she whispered.

Spike shot her a nervous look, wondering why she’d brought the poofter up.

“Yeah,” he said quickly. “You have a thing for the dark and brooding types.”

“Always Angel,” she said. “You didn’t believe me in the end when I said I was over Angel.”

He shook his head. He still didn’t believe it was over with Angel and he didn’t think he ever would. Which is why certain secret deals and decisions would stay locked tight in the vault.

“So why would I think you’d love me? It’s easy to love and fondly remember a dead hero. But how could you have lived happily ever after with an evil, disgusting thing? How did you put it? ‘Ask me again how I could love you?’ I did, and I couldn’t come up with an answer.” He hadn’t meant to throw her words back at him, but there were some hurts that never went away. Some arrows were still embedded too deep.

She flinched.

Then she stood up. “I’m going to shower,” she said.

Spike guessed the conversation was over. And he realized that while he’d explained his side of his story, she had somehow managed to avoid explaining hers. He still didn’t know the full bit about the Immortal git.

She looked him over. “You’re going to need some clothes,” she said.

He shook his head. “I’ve got some over at the crypt.”

“Will you be staying here?”

He looked at her closely. “Will I?”

She stared at him, then looked away. “Dawn will insist.”

It wasn’t really what he was asking, but then, it would have to do. He nodded. “Then I’ll go and get some of my stuff.”