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* * * *
Chapter Five
Out of the Bottle
* * * *
Buffy was sitting on the
fountain’s edge in the courtyard of the Hyperion, her back to the water.
Angel had stayed with her the rest of the night, talking to her and
walking with her up and down the hallways, trying anything to make the
voices and the visions go away. The more she was with Angel, though, the
worse it seemed to get, and when he finally left her to catch some sleep
of his own the voices stopped. Except it wasn’t voices, it was voice.
Spike’s voice. Whatever was using it against her kept saying things that
Spike would never say and things he’d never said.
It did say things she’d always feared Spike had thought, voicing feelings
she feared he’d felt. His voice was in her head, bitter that she never
loved him and angry that she’d changed him. It said Spike wished he’d
never gotten his soul back for someone who didn’t even deserve him. Before
it hadn’t mattered what this figment said to her, it had only used cruel
words and frightened her with a violence she thought was behind her.
Then it had started speaking the truth, and it hurt. Buffy never had
deserved him, even though he was undead and evil and soulless until a
certain point. Why was that all she had seen when he’d actually been
there? Why couldn’t she see past what he was to his heart?
Buffy shook her head, drawing her knees up to the stone surface where she
sat and propping her chin on them. Spike hadn’t been dead for a week and
already she was painting pretty pictures of him. Spike had flaws. Before
the soul he’d only cared about things that had affected him. Even after
the soul he’d been selfish, but at least he’d cared when he hurt other
people, which he had done.
No, she growled inwardly at herself. She’d gone from seeing only
the good and deserving of Spike to looking at all of his badness. Even
people with souls are self-centered; she was a prime example. People with
souls also hurt other people, no matter how hard they tried not to. Buffy
was determined to remember him as he was, good and bad, so to remember the
monster she thought of him in as objective a way as possible. Spike had
been a vampire. She thought of the ordinary, run-of-the-mill vamp and its
lack of morals, its greed and gluttony, and she lined Spike up with her
stereotype. But the more she thought about it, the higher Spike rose above
the creature until he’d moved onto a higher pinnacle in her mind.
Spike had never been an ordinary vampire. He’d tried to kill her, true,
and he’d killed thousands before she had ever known him, but even when
he’d come to Sunnydale she’d been amazed by him. He’d truly been in love
with Drusilla, a feeling that even Angelus had found revolting. Ordinary
vampires didn’t love, nor did they act on love like he did. Vampires
followed their craving for blood and death and any kind of destruction.
While she didn’t doubt that Spike had followed the average Vampiric
instincts, she knew better than to think that was all there was to him.
Why did he have to go away, and leave behind something so harsh yet so
real that the word “haunting” couldn’t properly describe it?
She turned in her seat and looked down in the water, not surprised to see
his angry face staring back at her. Spike’s voice may not be in her head
anymore, but his image was reflected in everything. Water, mirrors,
spoons, windows… everywhere. Every time she saw him he was standing behind
her, glaring patiently. He appeared to be waiting for her to fall asleep
so he could unleash new levels of torture upon her soul. At least his
hauntings were consistent.
“Have you slept at all?”
She looked up from Spike’s face in the water to see Giles walking towards
her, glasses in hand. He was wearing sweatpants and a black t-shirt with
the word “Caritas” written across it in bold letters. He must’ve borrowed
them from Angel.
“Yesterday,” she replied, unfolding her arms and placing her feet back
down on the ground. She might have gotten enough sleep the day before, but
a night filled with voices and shocking images was enough to tire one out
for days.
Giles sighed and sat down beside her. “Wesley informed me of your
situation. May I ask why you didn’t come to me about this?”
Buffy looked him in the eye. “What would you have done?”
Giles opened his mouth to tell her exactly what he would’ve done for her
but he couldn’t think of a thing. All of his resources were either at the
bottom of a crater or back home in England, and any help he might’ve given
her would’ve been purely speculation. Except for comfort. “Is being there
for you not enough?”
Buffy’s gaze softened. “It’s everything. But this… thing happened
so fast and I didn’t exactly want to shout to the world that I was being
haunted by some kind of evil spirit.”
“Are you sure it isn’t…”
“No,” she replied firmly before he could finish the question, effectively
shutting him up. “That’s another reason I didn’t come to you. Spike was
important to me. He still is. You never saw that.”
“No, Buffy, I did see that, and it concerned me.”
Their voices were rising, repressed anger from the past few months
bubbling to the surface.
“Well, it shouldn’t have. You should’ve trusted my judgment and my
feelings and not tried to have killed the one person I could rely on!”
“That’s just it, Buffy. You were putting all your trust in this man, in
this creature that had been unreliable in the past and a danger to us all!
You were shutting us all out and depending on him fully for support!”
“Because he gave it to me!” she retorted, rising to her feet. “Spike was
my constant, Giles. He didn’t try to murder people behind my back or kick
me out of my own house. He loved me.”
“Buffy—”
“And now I have this thing that looks and sounds like him, telling me that
everything I felt was a lie and it’s ruining my memory of him.” Her voice
softened. “And I just want him back.”
“Buffy,” he sighed. “I love you. I care about you more deeply than
I think you realize. None of my actions in the past few months have been
to hurt you.”
She closed her eyes and exhaled slowly, wishing the pain would stop for
just five seconds. “I know,” she replied.
Buffy felt him take her hand in his and opened her eyes to see him
standing in front of her. “I’m sorry I was too afraid to trust you about
Spike. I didn’t see my Slayer making the right call, I saw a young girl
overlooking the dangers of her boyfriend.”
“Spike wasn’t my boyfriend.”
“But you loved him,” he replied knowingly.
Buffy laughed bitterly. “Why was I the last person to figure that out?”
Giles drew her into a hug and she let him hold her, reassuring her that
all was not lost. She knew in her head that there were several people who
loved and cared about her, but it felt good to actually feel it.
“For the record,” he said, “I’m sorry I tried to have him killed.”
Buffy chuckled into his shoulder. Great timing on that one, Giles.
“He turned out to be a good man. I must attribute that to you, you know.”
“Don’t,” she replied with a grateful smile at his words as she pulled away
from him. “Spike always had good in him. Maybe that’s why I’d overlook the
evil in him.”
* * * *
Buffy was surprised to find Dawn, Willow and Xander in the hotel lobby
leafing through large books when she reentered with Giles. Wes and Fred
were there, too, but she remembered asking for their help.
“Hey Buffy,” Xander greeted softly, offering her a smile. “How’re you
feeling?”
“Like I’ve been left out of the research party,” she replied with a mock
pout.
“Willow filled us in on the whole Spike haunting thing and we’re helping
Wes and Fred research the possible causes,” Dawn informed her.
Watcher Junior, to the rescue, Buffy thought with a smile.
“You want to help?” Willow asked.
Buffy wrapped her arms around herself, suddenly feeling very cold. “Um,
sure. It is my problem, isn’t it?”
“Oh, I didn’t mean it like that,” Willow replied as Buffy took a seat
beside her, grabbing a book from one of the boxes and reading its title.
“It’s just, you know, staying active’ll prevent you from sitting around
and thinking too much.”
“Isn’t that what research is?” Buffy asked. “Sitting around and thinking
too much?”
Buffy turned her head when she heard a little cough come from Wesley that
was obviously a disguised laugh. Buffy blushed. I guess some things
never change.
“Well, sure,” Willow replied uncertainly.
“Hey,” Buffy asked, looking at the box she’d gotten her book from. “Why
are all these books in boxes?”
Wes looked up from whatever it was he was reading and exchanged a nervous
glance with Fred.
“We’re changing our base of operations,” Angel answered as he appeared on
the stairwell.
Buffy frowned. He was starting to sound like Riley.
“Don’t vampires usually sleep during the day?” Dawn asked.
Angel glanced at Buffy. “Not when there’s something important to deal
with.”
“Uh-oh,” Fred muttered suddenly, standing up from her seat. Her eyes were
wide and fixated on the book she was holding in her hands.
“What?” Angel and Wesley asked simultaneously.
“Well, I’m not sure,” she drawled, scanning the words before her as she
spoke. “But if this is correct, then I may have found an answer to Buffy’s
problem. Or, more like pinpointed the source of her problem.
Buffy stood quickly and made her way across the room.
“What is it?”
Large brown eyes met Buffy’s. “It’s Spike.”
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