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We Will Remember Them by Lilachigh
 
Chp 9 The Pact
 
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We Will Remember Them…










They shall grow not old, as we that are left grow old:
Age shall not weary them, nor the years condemn.
At the going down of the sun and in the morning
We will remember them.
Laurence Binyon


Chapter 9

The Pact



William the Bloody had been standing in the dark woods, leaning against a tree, smoking foul French cigarettes for an hour now. He wasn’t quite sure why he was watching the cave entrance so intently, except that you should always know where your enemy was, especially if that enemy was a Slayer.

It was bad planning to have her at your back, even if she had said she was going home to wherever she’d come from. Yes, that was the reason; it had nothing to do with the oddest feeling he had that this mission was something the two of them should be doing together, not separately. That in some odd way there was more going on than he could work out on his own.

He was puzzled that she was taking so long to make her move. Perhaps she’d fallen asleep in there. Should he go in and – and what? Get a stake right through your sodding heart? Great idea, Spike.

Impatiently, he threw the cigarette away, wondering how the frog eaters managed to smoke the stinking things. It wasn’t that he was anti-French; he and Dru had had some great times in Paris before the war started. And before the Great War, too, he remembered. They’d feasted for days at the Folies Bergere and no one had noticed in all the excitement and chaos.

Spike sighed. The chances of rescuing Dru were getting slimmer with every passing second. So what the bloody hell was he doing standing here, waiting to see what a certain Slayer was doing? He was ashamed of himself. Deeply ashamed.

Just then his senses fired into life and there, crawling out of the cave tunnel was the girl uppermost in his thoughts. Spike frowned: she looked – different, paler, almost as if she’d had some sort of shock.

Standing up, brushing the dirt from those odd Yankee clothes she was wearing, she tucked the gold locket that swung from her neck back inside the tight vest thingy that clung to her body.
Almost as if she’d known he would be there – which was ridiculous – she walked across the clearing to where he was standing.

“You haven’t got very far, Spike! Lost the will to fight?”

“Thought you were going home? Been having a nice nap in your comfy cave while I’m out here – “

“Smoking! I can smell them. Ugggh.”

Spike stirred uneasily. What was it with some females and cigarettes? Dru didn’t care but Darla was twitchy about it and here was this Slayer, acting as if her opinion was important to him. He stared at her face; there was an odd expression in her eyes, as if someone had given her bad news.

“I – I – I won’t be heading home just yet.” Buffy tried to keep her voice steady. She had a shameful, overwhelming desire to throw herself into the vampire’s arms and cry her eyes out. Jeez, was she was getting weak and silly in her old age! On a whim, she pulled the glass vial out of her pocket and handed it to Spike. “What does that smell like to you?”

Spike pulled his hand away. “If that’s had some sort of holy water in it – ”

Buffy glared at him and reluctantly he took the bottle and sniffed cautiously. Then he ran a finger round the rim and sucked it. “Crème de menthe, Slayer. Best crème de menthe. What, you becoming a secret drinker now? Great, that’s all I need, a drunk Slayer on my hands.” He leered at her. “Although, I’ve always heard that Slayers get really randy when they’ve had a few bevvies!”

Buffy hardly heard him. She stood, one hand holding the lowest branch of the tree, staring up through the leaves into the starry sky above them. “Have you ever been betrayed?” she asked, her voice thin and distant.

Spike shot her a nervous look, making sure she wasn’t holding a stake in her other hand. “No – well, maybe before I was turned – but no, not even then, really. I was a stupid wanker who deserved the treatment he got. I was just plain lucky that my Princess came along and saved me.”

Once again Buffy didn’t seem to hear him. “You know, it isn’t just the hurt you have to deal with, the sense of loss, but you have to cope with feeling really, really stupid!”

Spike stared at her. How could she have been betrayed in the hour she’d spent inside the cave. Slayers were bloody weird creatures. No wonder the best thing to do to them was kill them. “I believe you, Slayer. But then you have all the fun of revenge and getting even to look forward to, don’t you?”

Buffy blinked, her thoughts spiralling back from an elderly Englishman who had brutally torn her away from her friends and family and sent her back in time without anyway of getting home. Dawn was going to have to face losing her sister all over again.

And what was worse, Buffy had trusted him; that was what was eating into her soul. She’d been stupid enough to trust Quentin Travers! God, dying and coming back from heaven must have addled her brain in more ways than one and because of her idiocy, she was now stuck in 1943 with no way of getting home.

‘An hour ago, you thought you’d quite enjoy that,’ a little voice whispered inside her head but she blocked it out.

“Revenge? So not an option at the moment, Spike.” Wearily she sat on the ground soft with centuries of lead mould and leant her back against the tree trunk. She was here and here she would have to stay. This was her mission; perhaps this was what she’d always been meant to do. Slayer – mission – never query why and where, just do it. “Why didn’t you go and find Joy? That was your plan.”

Spike flung himself down on the ground next to her. “And it was a good plan, Slayer! A great plan. Except - I’ve got a nasty feeling I’m being played for an idiot somewhere along the line. For all I know, my Princess could have been dusted by now back in England and I’m sodding well running around after a Slayer who doesn’t want to go home to Blighty at all!”

Buffy turned her head away from him, resting it on her clasped knees. Of course Dru wasn’t dusted because hey, look, there they both were in Sunnydale, killing the Anointed One in nearly sixty years time! Suddenly she began to realise something she should have seen a long time ago.

“Spike – how did you expect to get back to England with Joy? I mean, you flew here, didn’t you? No one knew you were coming. The Resistance weren’t involved, so there was no one to help you hide the plane. So – how did the guys who sent you expect you to escape? They must have known the Germans would spot the plane.”

The vampire frowned and tapped his boots together as he thought. “Everything you say links back to what I was feeling about this whole bloody scheme, Slayer. No one in the Army makes promises to a vamp. Dru could be long gone; they could have dusted her the minute I walked out the door. Must admit, I never thought about the plane. Reckoned the Slayer would have some red-hot plan once I got her out of the chateau.”

Buffy cast him a sideways glance and found her lips twitching. He sounded so like Spike. The brown curls might make him look different, but the eyes and expression were the same. It was so tempting to think this was her Spike but – he wasn’t. Although his hatred of Slayers might have been put on hold to save Dru, she knew he would go on to kill another one in New York and probably hundreds more people in the future. So was that why she’d really been sent back to 1943? Pehaps saving Joy was just a smokescreen to put her here, in a position to kill William the Bloody.

Her head hurt. Well, it obviously hadn’t worked – because she hadn’t killed him. And – the thought crept into her mind – she never would. She pushed that aside. She’d killed Angel to save the world. Why shouldn’t she kill Spike? She refused to think about that now.

“So, you feel betrayed, I feel betrayed, it’s a betrayal party. What I need to know is have you got a red-hot plan up your sleeve, Slayer?” Spike jeered.

Buffy shrugged and stood up in one smooth movement. “I’m getting tired of being the pawn in someone else’s game,” she said tersely. “We rescued Joy from the chateau and the Germans. I reckon no one knew about the baby when they sent us here. Aurore throws a completely different slant on everything. I can’t see how we can force Joy to return with us to England against her will, even if we did have some way of getting her there.”

Spike got to his feet. “So we’re done here! I’ll get out of France in some way and see if I can rescue Dru – if she’s still there. And if she isn’t – ” He vamped out and Buffy’s hand flew instinctively to the stakes in her belt. “There won’t be many of those soldier guys left alive.”

“One question, Mr Action Guy, how are you going to get home? Plane guarded by half the German Army, remember?”

“We need a diversion. If we can get the guards away, it might give me time to start the plane. Then, if you want, you can come with me. Really, Slayer, I don’t much care what you do. All I know is, I’m going back for Dru!”

Buffy flinched. How weird that words like that could cause a physical pain in her chest. Almost like jealousy, which was, of course, ridiculous. Not my Spike, she kept repeating under her breath. Not my Spike. Evil, unchipped vampire who will try to kill me as soon as look at me when it suits his purpose.

“OK, a diversion. I’ll go along with that. Any ideas?”

Spike looked blank. Buffy bit her lip. “What we need is our own army. A gang of people who are willing to die for us, because that’s what we’ll be asking them to do. And I’d say the chances of finding such an army around here is pretty thin, wouldn’t you? I suppose we could try and contact the Resistance, but I reckon Joy will have told them to have nothing to do with us.”

Suddenly Spike grinned and in the moonlight, his eyes sparkled. “Don’t know about finding people ready to die for us, Slayer, but I know where to find a group who would be ready to fight the Germans.”

“Where?” But as soon as the word was out of her mouth, she guessed. “No! No way! No, Spike. You are not going to set free a whole pack of vampires and demons. You’ll do that over my dead body!”

tbc












 
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