|
* * * *
Chapter Seven
Arise
* * * *
Buffy looked up when Angel entered
the room she’d slept in the night before. She’d sought solace there
earlier when Wes and the others had started looking into what they needed
for the ritual, and if it was even possible for them to do it. Buffy had
needed some time to think, so she sat by the window, not staring out into
the world beyond it but instead looking at the face that was reflected in
the glass. This time the face was her own.
“I’ve got good news and bad news,” Angel announced, standing about five
feet from her. “Which do you want first?”
“Bad news,” she replied. She might as well get it out of the way.
“The ritual calls for the blood of the living,” he replied. “We’re
thinking we can get around it with animal blood, but these things usually
require fresh human blood. Especially since…”
Especially since it’s supposed to make Spike human. Angel didn’t
need to say the words; they were loud enough already.
“That’s not so bad,” Buffy replied, fingering the collar of another one of
Cordelia’s t-shirts that she was wearing. “How much blood?”
“Enough to smear along the base of the box,” he replied.
“The box?”
“It’s what he’ll appear in.”
“Oh.”
A long silence followed that as she contemplated his words.
“I’ll do it,” she said softly. Buffy looked up to see a surprised look on
his face. “It’s not the first time I’ve given up my blood for someone
else. Besides, it wouldn’t be too much.”
Angel sighed but nodded.
“What’s the good news?” she asked.
“We seem to have everything else. Aside from blood, the ritual calls for
five vampire sacrifices, which we can easily come up with in this town.
We’ve got the scroll and the location. They used a demon named Voca for
the raising last time, but I think that was more for ceremony than out of
necessity. Willow will be good. Hell, Xander could do it if Lindsey
managed to pull it off.”
“What?” Buffy replied in confusion.
Angel gave her a small smile. “Nothing.” His smile disappeared as he
stepped closer to her chair and knelt beside it, looking her in the eye
with complete seriousness. “Are you sure you want to do this? It’s your
call, but I want you to know what you’re doing. Spike won’t be the same,
Buffy. Where he’s at… I’m not sure it’ll even work. The last vampire they
raised, she was in hell.”
Buffy turned her eyes back to the window where Spike was staring back at
her. She wanted to know why he was so angry, and why he was blaming her
for his death. More importantly she wanted him to be safe, and apparently
there was only one way to do that.
“I can’t leave him behind,” she replied, tearing her eyes away from
Spike’s image and settling them on Angel. “So the last time this happened
they brought back Darla? I heard Wes mention it,” she added in response to
Angel’s confused look.
“Yeah.”
“Was she different, aside from being human? She didn’t come back w-wrong,
did she?”
Buffy couldn’t hold back the emotion in her voice. She knew firsthand the
trauma of being brought back from the dead, but this was a little
different. Then again, it wasn’t.
Angel touched her hand soothingly. “She was sick, actually. Before she was
turned she was dying of syphilis, and when she came back the disease
didn’t go away. I don’t know what shape William was in before Dru turned
him, but… he could be a mess. Then again, he could be fine.”
“So, other than the chance that he’s dying of syphilis, I won’t have to
worry about him eating my brain, will I?” she asked, unable to suppress a
shaky smile.
Angel shrugged. “Darla never tried to eat my brain, no. But she did haunt
me in my dreams. Kind of a problem you’re already having, isn’t it?”
Buffy curled her arms closer to her chest and looked away.
“Don’t worry,” Angel assured her. “Darla…”
His eyes filled with an unreadable emotion, but Buffy could tell that
whatever he was feeling had hit him in a huge wave. Angel blinked and it
was gone.
“She wasn’t exactly the same as when she was turned, though. She had all
her memories of her life as a vampire. She was still Darla,” he said with
a fond laugh as he recalled the memory of his Sire. “We can do this,
Buffy. It’s risky, but it can be done. We’ll do it for you.”
Buffy turned back to the window, taking Angel’s hand in hers and giving it
a squeeze. “Do it for Spike.”
* * * *
She didn’t fear sleep that night, nor did she feel the need for a bedside
vigil. Buffy was ready to confront Spike so that she could tell them their
plan, if he didn’t somehow know it already.
He was sitting in the chair by the window when she awoke. Well,
dream-awoke. “Spike,” she greeted.
“So, you finally figured it out,” he replied bitterly, tapping the tips of
his fingers together in front of his face.
“I know what’s happened to you,” Buffy told him, sitting up in the bed.
She thought she would be less afraid of him, but knowing that it really
was Spike who was doing and saying all the awful things to her in her
dreams made the whole ordeal more frightening. “We’re going to try and
bring you back.”
He was across the room and on the bed in front of her so fast that she
attributed it to some unnatural dream-speed. He looked at her with fire in
his eyes, but she saw something else, even though she was nearly paralyzed
with fear. Now that she knew who was in front of her, she saw his pain for
what it really was.
“You really want this back?” he asked. “Don’t like what you see, pet?”
“I know,” she began, her voice shakier than she intended it to be. “I know
that you’re confused… a-and in pain. I can’t leave you like this, Spike.
This isn’t who you are.”
“Oh, so all of a sudden you know who I am? Took you long enough.”
“Spike, stop,” she pleaded as he pulled her against him. Her knees were
against her chest and he tried to pry them apart.
“C’mon, love,” he whined as he slid his hand between her knees. “Aren’t
you going to fight back?”
“No. Because you’re going to stop.”
She really believed that he would. If this was Spike’s soul she was
seeing, she believed that he would realize what he was doing and stop. But
he didn’t. Buffy cried out in pain as her head hit the headboard. Spike
pinned her arms on either side of her head and he hovered between her
legs.
“Why would I stop?” he asked, and from his tone she could tell that he
really wanted an answer. “This is who I am. I’m a murderer, and a rapist,
and I don’t give a piss about anyone but myself.”
Spike bent his head down and brushed his lips against her neck, his grip
tightening on her wrist. She felt his face transform and soon felt his
fangs grazing her skin.
“Tell me again,” he requested, pressing the points of his incisors into
her neck. “Why would you want ol’ Spike back?”
Buffy whimpered in pain as he slowly broke through skin, deliberately
drawing out her pain. She wanted to fight back, but she knew it was just a
dream, and that he wasn’t really hurting her. Buffy wanted to see how far
he’d go, to see if his soul was really so distorted that he couldn’t see
and remember what she felt for him.
“Spi-ike,” she gasped, her fingers curling as he drew blood. “Why…”
Her heart was beating so fast that she almost forgot everything. Who she
was, where they were, what she was going to say. “Why are you here?”
He answered by pressing his body harder against hers and piercing the
jugular vein in her neck. Buffy felt a heady rush of dizziness as he
slowly drank from her, but she also felt something else. Spike was shaking
against her, and not from blood-lust. He was crying.
She finally gave up on the sit-back-and-get-bitten approach and pushed
Spike off of her. He didn’t put up much of a fight. Instead he slid to the
side of the bed and placed his head in his hands as he wept. Buffy winced
and touched her neck, but the wound was gone. She felt her heart break as
she watched huge, surprisingly quiet sobs wrack Spike’s body. Buffy
crawled across the bed and wrapped her arms around his shoulders, laying
her head against the back of his neck and closing her eyes.
“I don’t want that,” Spike told her, but made no effort to push her off of
him. “Can’t you see that I hate you?”
He said the words with very little conviction but they hurt nonetheless.
“No, you don’t.”
“Yes, I bloody well do. It’s all I can feel is hate. I hate you, I hate
myself…” Sob. “ Hate.”
“Why have you been contacting me? You haven’t asked for help,” she pointed
out with concern. “Don’t you want it?”
“I don’t know,” he replied, lifting his head from his hands and looking
around the room in confusion. “Wait… this isn’t home.”
Buffy moved to the edge of the bed beside him. “Where is home, Spike?”
He turned to her with watery eyes. “Hell,” he whispered in shame, his face
contorting slightly in misery.
She shook her head and touched his cheek reassuringly. “No, you’re not in
hell. Wherever you are, we’re getting you out. Tomorrow we’re bringing you
home.”
Spike started laughing, and Buffy pulled away from him when his laughter
grew louder. “H-Home? Haven’t you been listening?”
He turned to her, fully vamped, and suddenly she felt the wound on her
neck return, the pain at full-scale.
“I am home.”
She was alone when she awoke. Buffy felt relief in knowing that what they
were doing was right, that getting Spike out of the hell he was in was the
only way to save him, and she knew without a doubt that he needed to be
saved. They both did.
* * * *
A large group assembled for the hunt the next night, consisting of Angel,
Faith, Willow, Kennedy, Giles, Xander and Gunn. It was weird, since Buffy
was used to patrolling alone or with one or two companions, but seven
other people? This was definitely a first. Unless she counted that group
patrol she’d taken a handful of the Potentials on a few months ago. Of
course, the only vampire around at that time had been Spike.
Oh god, he wasn’t going to be a vampire anymore. When they’d first met
that’s all he’d been to her, and it taken years before he became something
more than that. Buffy cleared her head of any Spike thoughts and
concentrated on the task at hand. Their aim was to knock out and restrain
five vampires. They sought them out in the dark alleys behind bars and
nightclubs, even managing to save a young woman in the process.
Once they’d met their quota they hauled the vampires to a mausoleum
located in a nearby cemetery, where Wesley, Willow and Fred were busy
setting up everything needed for the ritual. As they chained the vampires
to the box, Buffy couldn’t help but see them and wonder what they would be
like if they were given a second chance, like Spike or Angel. You can’t
save them all, she reminded herself, punching the growling vampire in
the face that she’d just fettered to one of the bars on the box. She
looked inside, a deep blackish feeling growing in her stomach. Buffy
didn’t know when she’d started coloring her feelings, but this was
definitely black.
Spike was going to wake up in a box. He wouldn’t have to claw his way out
this time, and most importantly he’d be alive. It formed part of a strange
cycle somehow, a thought she became lost in before she realized that Wes
was calling her name. Right, time for the blood.
Buffy walked over to where Wes and Fred were standing and took the knife
that Wesley offered her. She inhaled deeply and closed her eyes in
anticipation of the blade before she slit her wrist. Her eyes snapped open
and a little gasp of pain escaped her lips as she watched the blood flow
into the jar Wes held beneath her wrist. Tears burned in the corners of
her eyes as she realized that she was giving Spike life with her blood.
This must be what it’s like to become a mother, although being Spike’s
mother was a disturbing thought. She’d deal with that later.
Wes pulled the jar away right as she started feeling dizzy, and Fred took
Buffy’s wrist and began wrapping it with gauze. Buffy watched Wesley take
the jar and approach the box while the others held onto the snarling
vampires so that he could move freely beneath their chains. Wesley walked
around the perimeter of the box, pouring a thin line of blood around it as
he did so. Once the box was fully enclosed in a circle of blood he stood
and nodded at Willow, who was holding an ancient piece of parchment in her
hands. The scroll of Aberjian.
Buffy’s eyes widened as it hit her. Sometimes it took awhile; sometimes
she would become so detached that when she snapped back to reality it was
like being hit in the face with a bucket of cold water. They were really
doing it. They were bringing Spike back. She couldn’t hear the words
Willow was speaking or understand them when Wes and Fred repeated them
back to her, but their meaning was clear. Soon Spike would be back, and
everything could go back to normal. Except she’d never been to normal, so
she couldn’t exactly go back there. Willow paused, and it was then that
Buffy felt a desire to hear the words that would bring Spike back to her.
Unfortunately they were in Latin.
“Et illi quinque sacrificum est et illi que est mortuus vivet.”
As she spoke Buffy could feel the earth rumbling beneath them. She looked
around at the others, who were either looking at the box or at Willow as
she fervently recited the incantation.
“Dum vita et mors non duas res sed unas sunt. In tenebris lux est, in
luge tenebrae sunt. Serge! Serge! Serge!”
The five vampires chained to the box turned to bone and dust as the earth
shook beneath them and a whirlwind began to spin around the box. The
whirlwind picked up the vampire dust and bones and brought it into the
box, and then a ring of light exploded outward, dying out as it reached
the end of the circle inlaid on the floor. It was done.
“Spike?” Buffy called weakly before sprinting towards the box. She pulled
on the latch and yanked off a side of the box. Inside, Spike sat naked
with his arms wrapped around his legs, rocking back and forth with wild
and unfocused eyes. He didn’t turn to her when she called his name again.
“Someone hand me the blanket,” Buffy managed to squeak out; her eyes never
leaving Spike’s rocking form. A hand passed the requested blanket to her,
and she slowly made her way inside the box, eager to touch him but afraid
of doing so at the same time.
Angel said he would have his memories. Would he remember her dreams?
“Spike?” she called again. He continued to rock as she wrapped the blanket
around him. “Do you know where you are?” she asked him.
He stopped rocking and turned to her, as if noticing her for the first
time. “This isn’t home.”
Buffy smiled tearfully. “No, but it’s close.”
|
