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West of the Moon, East of the Sun by KnifeEdge
 
Chapter 20: What You Wish For
 
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Author's Notes: This chapter is one of my favorites. It’s all thick and gooey, like really rich fudge brownies. Enjoy.

Disclaimer: Buffy the Vampire Slayer and all recognizable characters, locations, and dialogue belong to Joss Whedon, Mutant Enemy, and the various writers. Show writers and any other quoted authors have been credited in individual chapters. I'm making no money from this—it is purely in the name of fun.

Betaed by Phuriedae

Betaed by Phuriedae

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Chapter 20

What You Wish For



Birthday Buffy still has to go to class, but Giles lets me out of training in the afternoon. Willow and Tara and I grab lunch, then I head home to get ready for my party. With any luck there will be no demons, no vampires, no weirdness of any kind.

But I'm not going to get my hopes up.

Spike's offer to patrol is still wigging me, and I've got a feeling that something might be going down tonight. I have full intentions of patrolling once my party is over. Freezing in graveyards isn't exactly my ideal birthday, but I'm not going to let Spike get away with something evil just because I want a night off.

Still, I'm in a good mood when people start to arrive, especially since they're all carrying boxes of various sizes, all wrapped in shiny paper. Shiny paper makes me happy.

Anya, clearly, still doesn’t quite grasp the concept of birthdays and gifts, but it’s getting easier to shrug off her ruder or more outrageous remarks. She must be starting to grow on me. Willow still looks irritated with her when she says she wishes that my pretty new dress was hers, and Xander and Giles look embarrassed, but it’s no big. I’m just enjoying having my Me Day.

After presents I count it up and am happy to note that there’s a pretty even ratio of girly Buffy gifts to weaponry (most of which came from the guys). One of my favorite gifts comes from Tara, and I just have to pick it back up to look at it. The box is plain, but what’s inside is beautiful. The little pendant on its delicate chain is no bigger than my thumbnail, and the design is gorgeous.

“It’s sort of a yin-yang,” she tells me, sitting down beside me on the couch. Only instead of the traditional half-black, half-white circle, this one is made of entwined silver and gold. The gold side is embossed to look like half a sun, and the silver side like the moon. There is a tiny silver dot on the gold, and a matching bit of gold on the silver. Tara blushes. “It seemed sort of appropriate, you know, for a Slayer.”

“It is,” I tell her. “It’s beautiful. Thank you so much.”

All in all, it’s been an almost perfect birthday so far. The only thing that feels missing is… well, the only thing that is. Last year Riley was here for my birthday. And for the two years before that, it was Angel, although I try hard not to think about how those birthdays went. This is my first single birthday since just after I was called, and I kinda miss having a boyfriend at my side.

Mom brings out the cake, then, with Giles helping. Twenty pretty candles burning against all that chocolate frosting. We all gather around. “Make a wish,” Mom tells me. I start to lean over.

But Anya reaches out a hand and touches my arm, frowning. “Be careful,” she says solemnly. “You never know who’s paying attention.”

“It’s just a silly tradition,” Xander tells her, but Anya meets my eyes, serious.

“I know,” she says. “That’s what makes it dangerous.”

“I’ll be careful,” I tell her, meaning it.

For a moment I close my eyes and think about what to wish for, but in the end I keep coming back to Tara’s gift and Riley missing…

When I blow out the candles, it’s kinda with the hope that someone up there is paying attention.

***


Giles is the last to leave.

“Are you certain you want to patrol tonight?” he asks.

I just give him a look.

“Yes, well, admittedly your birthday hasn’t always gone… smoothly,” he says. “But that’s hardly your fault. Last year it was entirely Ethan’s doing, and the year before it was…was…”

“Yours,” I remind him.

“Well, yes… and the Council’s! And the year before that was…”

“Mine,” I tell him. “That one was all mine. And maybe Spike and Drusilla, too, with their stupid Judge.”

“Quite,” he says. “In any case, history says that if something bad is going to happen it will happen to one of us.”

“I don’t know, Giles. There’s a peroxided pest out there who seemed really anxious about me not patrolling tonight. I just want to make sure that he’s not up to something. With any luck, I’ll catch him and dust him and be back before midnight.”

He sighs. “You’re probably correct. Just… be careful, Buffy. And keep warm.”

***


It’s snowing again by the time I finish changing and bundling up in my warmest patrol gear. My feet crunch in it as I make my way down the walk. I take the longer patrol route, just to be sure, detouring through every cemetery, past all the demon bars, even doing a sweep through the burnt out high school just to be sure that the Hellmouth is quiet, even though it gives me the heebie-jeebies.

But it is quiet. Almost too quiet. I don’t stake any vamps or run into any demons. It’s like everything in town has taken the night off and stayed in, and I’m the only one dumb enough to be out trudging through the snow at two in the morning.

I finish up with one last stop in Restfield, to check Spike’s crypt. As I approach my Slayer sense goes off for the first time all night, and I’m not surprised when I recognize the signature. Spike doesn’t even bother lurking, in fact he’s not even looking my way. I must be downwind of him. He’s moving strangely, and it takes me a second to realize that he’s limping a little. When he steps into the moonlight, he bends his head and licks at his knuckles, like a cat licking an injured paw.

Weird.

“Spike, what are you doing?” I ask. He jumps a little, then glares at me.

“Bloody hell,” he says, then sighs. “Don’t you have better things to do than lurk about my crypt, Slayer?”

“Not at the moment,” I tell him. “Why are you limping?”

“I’m not,” he says, straightening indignantly and stalking forward a few steps to prove me wrong.

“Fine,” I say. “What’s with your hand?”

He looks at it and shrugs. This close I can see that his knuckles are split and bruised, but the bleeding has already stopped and they’re starting to heal. By morning the damage will probably be gone. Lucky I caught him tonight then.

“Got in a scuffle,” he says. “Nothing to fret over, Slayer. Not unless you want to kiss it and make it better?” He gives me a cocky smirk.

“You’re a pig, Spike.”

He gives me a strange look. “Running out of insults, Summers?” he says, finally.

“No, I just don’t bother wasting the good ones on you,” I tell him. “Whatever. Look, save us both some time, okay? Just tell me whatever it is you’re up to, so I can dust you and go home and defrost.”

“Well,” he says, eyes narrowing. “Let's see. I took a stroll down to the shops, bought some smokes, fought a demon or two, and now I’m knackered and hungry. Thought I’d go back to my crypt, have myself a cup of blood, and watch the telly. SNL reruns are on in half an hour. It’s not Monty Python, but Spade and Farley aren’t half bad.”

“Spike—,” I start to say, warningly.

“I’m not doing anything evil,” he says. “‘Less you want to count nicking some cable TV. If you’re gonna dust me over that, Slayer, get it over with. I’m beat and I really don’t feature standing about all night getting the third degree.”

Stupid cranky vampire.

“I’m checking your crypt,” I tell him.

“Suit yourself,” he says and leads the way. He yanks the door open for me with a smirk, then slides past me to light a few candles when I realize that it’s pitch black inside. While I look around he wanders over to the fridge, gets out a Styrofoam cup of blood and pops the plastic lid off. He takes a swig, his eyes watching me over the rim with amusement.

“Ew,” I tell him, wondering why he doesn’t vamp when he drinks.

"Oh, like Mac n' Cheese is so appetizing," he says with a snort. With a shrug he saunters over to his decrepit old TV, cranking the knob on it to turn it on. He pulls off his duster and tosses it over the back of his chair, then drops into the seat, deliberately drinking and watching me watch him. I roll my eyes and turn away, scanning the rest of his crypt for anything evil or out of place.

Candles, candles, more candles. For someone so flammable, he seems to have a weird aversion to electric lighting. Bottles of alcohol along the window ledge and by the fridge. Stack of books beside his chair. Scraps of paper on top of one of the crypts and a small battered journal. Good place to keep evil plans, maybe? Absently I pick it up and run my fingers over the worn leather cover.

A noise from Spike’s direction has me putting it down and turning back in his direction. “What?” I ask.

He’s staring hard at me, his eyes weirdly intense, the muscles in his jaw twitching. “Didn’t say anything,” he says. At some point he must have taken off his boots, and the sight of his bare feet distracts me. “You gonna read that?” he asks, nodding at the book I’d just put down. He seems a little too eager, and if there’s one thing I’ve learned it’s never do what Spike wants me to do. It only leads to badness.

“Your diary?”

“Journal,” he says with a little growl in his voice.

“No,” I tell him, exasperated and cold and tired and just wanting to go home. Clearly, if he was up to something evil, he’s already done with it. “It’s probably nothing more than ‘dear diary, bloody hell, today I didn’t get to bite anyone.’ No thanks.”

“It’s not,” he says, indignant. “And your accent is crap, Slayer.”

“I’m leaving,” I tell him and head for the door. “If I find out you were doing something evil…”

“You’ll stake me, right and proper,” he says, flopping back in his chair. “Yeah, yeah.”

***


When I get home, I’m surprised to see that there are lights on, and mom throws the door open almost as soon as I come up the walk. Giles is right behind her.

“Mom? What’s wrong?” I ask, hurrying.

“Look!” She points at the yard. Puzzled I turn to see.

There are dead demons in my yard. Those little dwarf guys from the other night, a good half dozen of them, are scattered across the lawn like toppled gnomes.

“There are more, in the back,” Giles says, coming down the walk, a crossbow in his hands.

“What happened?” I ask.

“I’m not sure,” he says. “I just got here myself.”

“Then who killed them?” I ask, although my mind is already flashing back and thinking of battered knuckles and limping vampires.

“Spike, apparently,” Giles says.

***


It takes more than an hour to pick up all the bodies and move them into the backyard and out of sight of the neighbors. With any luck they’ll melt or something by morning. Demon bodies tend to do that around here. Giles studies them for a while, clearly taking mental notes so he can identify them later.

After, we gather in the kitchen for hot cocoa and to find out from mom what exactly happened.

“Well,” she says, “it was about an hour after you left, honey. I was in here, cleaning up the dishes, and I heard noises outside. When I went to look out the window… It was Spike. He was fighting those creatures, in the backyard.”

“Were they trying to get in the house?” Giles asks.

“I think so. They kept rushing the porch, but… he’d stop them,” she frowns. “They didn’t seem to want to fight him. It was almost as if they were afraid of him. I can see why. He’s a very good fighter, Buffy. Very scary.”

“Why would Spike stop them from attacking the house?” I wonder out loud. “Did he say anything?”

“He yelled at me to stay inside when he saw me watching out of the window,” Mom says. “Oh. And at the end, when it was over and I opened the door to thank him, he just shrugged and said something about telling you that you could discuss price per head tomorrow. Are you paying him again, Buffy? I thought he was helping you now?”

Giles and I exchange a glance.

Seems like that’s the question of the week.

Mom doesn’t seem all that shaken, despite the small army in the backyard. After she goes up to bed, Giles and I step out on the porch to take stock.

“Did you find anything on patrol?” he asks.

“Not at thing, unless you count a bruised and cranky Spike. He must’ve just come from here, but… why didn’t he say anything, Giles? You’d think Spike would want to rub it in my face that he was here killing demons while I was off trying to find him.”

Giles mulls that over. “Unless that was the plan all along,” he says. “He might have tricked you into taking a longer patrol in order to arrange this attack.”

“But why? Why attack the house? And why fight them off?”

“Perhaps to look heroic? He does seem to be going out of his way to get into your good graces lately,” Giles says, staring out at the scuffed up snow.

I think about that for a bit. “He is around a lot whenever new demons crop up. He was there for the attack last night. He was at the mall when we found the Krampus and he was the first…okay, the only one to actually see it. He was hiding in my basement the night the Mara demon attacked. And he came in in the middle of the fight with the Lei-Achs. Hell, he was at the Bronze when the troll showed up, too. And he was the one who pointed out that the crystal might have been planted there. Does that seem a little… too much to you?”

“The evidence does seem to be stacked against him,” Giles says, frowning.

But something about it seems wrong… and not in the usual ‘Spike is being evil‘ sort of way.

“It’s just…” I start.

“It doesn’t seem like Spike?” Giles guesses.

“Pretty much. He’s not really the long, involved plan type. He’s more of the ‘I’ve got a plan, but I got bored’ type. He doesn’t do so well with the waiting. I mean, I still think he’s up to something but… I’m not sure he’s our mastermind, you know?”

“Agreed,” Giles leans back against the railing. “What do you propose to do, Buffy?”

I sigh and square my shoulders. “It’s late, and I’m tired. I think I’ll get some sleep, then go by tomorrow in the daylight and see if I can pound some answers out of him.”

“Take Lydia with you,” Giles suggests. “She’s been wanting some time in the field, and it’s… possible that an outsider’s view might be… clearer than ours.”

***


I fill Mr. Gordo in while we spar later that night, but I still don’t have any brilliant ideas on what Spike’s up to by the time I fall asleep.

And dream.

I’m standing in a subway, and the lights are flickering a little as they go past the windows. The car is full, packed with people in all kinds of costumes. A woman in an old fashioned dress talks to a man in a soldier’s uniform. A tall guy dressed like a… reindeer in a suit? is delivering drinks to a tiny old woman and Harmony. My friends are here, too. Xander is dressed like a pirate, complete with eyepatch, and Anya is in her bunny costume from last year only she’s got her demon face back.

“What’s going on?” I ask. “Where are we going?”

“Not sure,” Xander says. “I’m just along for the ride.”

“I think it depends on the track,” Anya says. “Which one did you get on?”

“I… don’t know,” I say. Something ahead of me catches my eye: a glimpse of a black leather coat, a flash of white hair. “I have to go,” I tell them.

“We’ll be here, when you get back,” Xander promises.

I push through the crowd. Giles is down a little further, wearing a sombrero and a poncho. Lydia and Olivia stand on either side of him. He holds out a blindfold and a wooden bat. “Hello, Buffy,” he says. “Would you like to take a swing at the piñata?” Above his head is a paper machè vampire piñata, complete with crepe paper cape. “There aren’t any souls in it, though.”

I frown. “Not right now. I’ve got to…” I look around. People press on all sides, but ahead, disappearing through the doors into the next car, I catch a flash of white hair again. I push on.

Willow and Tara stop me next. Willow is dressed like the Wicked Witch of the West and Tara like Glinda.

“I don’t think all this black and green goes with my hair,” Willow complains.

“You can take it off, honey,” Tara assures her. “You’ve only misunderstood the metaphor.”

“What metaphor?” I ask.

Tara looks at me seriously. “You’re still in the woods, Buffy. It’s not time to step into the light.”

“But it’s so dark,” I tell her.

“He can see,” she tells me. “He’ll lead you there.”

She hands me my stuffed pig, it wears my yin-yang necklace around its neck. The lights flicker, gleaming off white hair up ahead.

“I have to go,” I tell Tara.

The next car is full of girls, and somehow I know that they’re Slayers. Kendra waits for me just inside, flanked on one side by another black girl in a long black duster, and on the other by a small Chinese girl.

“We been waitin’ for you,” Kendra says. The other two look sad. “You’ve got a long ways to go, yet.”

“Does this subway go there? I don’t know what track I’m on,” I explain, confused.

“It goes part of the de way,” Kendra tells me. “But we’ve switched trains.”

I’m not sure how I got to the end of the car, but I’m there now, and the First Slayer waits for me at the door.

It’s crossed over with yellow ribbons, like crime scene tape.

“Your gift,” she tells me, without opening her mouth. “Happy Birthday.”

I reach out and pull the ribbons away. The door opens and I go through.

“See you later, B,” Faith says, stepping into the doorway behind me. “You’re gonna need lots of shoes, you know.” She pulls something and the cars disconnect. The one with her and the Slayers goes rattling off into the darkness, along another track. I shut the door.

The car I’m in now is full of demons, vampires, and the dead. They stand silently, as I pass. At the other end Angel waits, with Darla and Drusilla beside him. They’re all three in vamp face, but Angel’s is painted to look like a sad clown, complete with droopy red mouth and blue tears running down his ridged cheeks. The whole effect is pretty grotesque.

“It might have been different,” he tells me. “But it just comes off too easily.”

Drusilla holds up a china doll that’s been gagged with a length of cloth. “Miss Edith whispered you were coming,” she says. “She said you’d take our boy away.”

“That’s okay,” Darla says. I realize she’s dressed in maternity clothes, and her stomach is swollen and pregnant. “We can always make another one.”

“Not the same,” Drusilla whimpers. “He was so lovely and broken.”

None of them try to stop me as I open the door to the next car.

My mom waits for me, alone.

“Mom? What’s going on?” I ask.

“We’re almost at the end of the line,” she tells me. “I have to get off at the next stop, but you go on ahead.”

“Will you wait for me?” I ask.

“Oh, honey,” she says. “I wish I could. But you’ve got a long ways to go yet.”

“I don’t want to go if you’re not,” I tell her.

“I’ll be there,” she promises. “When you finally get there, I’ll be there. I promise. I love you, sweetie. Now you hurry up, okay? Your gift is getting cold.”

She opens up the last door and I go through.

I’m no longer on the subway. Instead I’m standing on a vast desert plain, only it’s covered in snow and studded with statues as far as I can see. At least, they look like statues till I get up close. Then I see that they’re people, frozen into ice sculptures. Hundreds of thousands of people.

To my left, the sun is setting, and to my right the moon is rising. Far, far ahead, a tall white tower juts up over the horizon. I make my way toward it, past the rows and rows of frozen people. I stop looking at their faces when I start to recognize them. Giles and Xander, Anya and Willow and Tara… they’re all here, somewhere, I know. I can feel it.

Time passes and I keep moving. The sun and moon hover on either side of me, and only the nearness of that tower ahead and my footprints stretching in a straight line behind me in the snow mark my passage.

When I reach the base of the tower, a huge pair of doors swings open. Inside, everything is made of ice. At the far end of the room is a dais, with an empty throne. Three figures wait in front of it as I approach, one of them still as stone.

As I get closer I see that the middle one is Spike, dressed as usual in his uniform of black and leather. He’s covered in ice, and under it, his eyes are closed as if he’s sleeping. To one side of him paces another Spike. This one is punked out in torn jeans, a black sleeveless shirt held together with safety pins, and his white hair stands straight up in rock star clumps. He’s in vamp face. To the other side of statue Spike is a brown haired man dressed in old-fashioned clothes. His hair flops over his forehead, and he pushes a wire-rimmed pair of glasses up on his nose. He looks familiar, but I can’t quite place him. He’s also kinda transparent; I can see the room through him.

They stare at me as I approach.

“What took so long, Slayer?” says vamp Spike, exasperated. “I was getting bored.”

“I was looking for my gift,” I tell him. “It’s my birthday.”

The old-fashioned guy opens his mouth, and starts talking, but no sound comes out. When I look at him closer, he seems even more familiar. Something about his cheekbones, and that pouty lower lip.

“William?” I ask, blinking.

“Ponce,” says vamp Spike, sneering. William gives him a dirty look. Vamp Spike growls, then turns back to me. He rakes me with a look that makes my blood start to boil, in spite of the game face. “I’m bloody starving, here, Slayer. Got any poetry?”

“Huh?”

Suddenly they both go very still, almost as rigid as statue Spike in the middle. Vamp Spike growls, angry and feral, and William goes even more transparent, looking afraid. Between them, under the ice, Spike’s eyes open wide, incredibly blue.

“She’s coming,” they all three say, but the only one I can hear is vamp Spike.

“Who’s coming?” I ask.

“The Cold One,” they say through vamp Spike.

I turn and what I see makes me—


—wake up with a gasp.

I sit up in my bed for a long time, shivering under the blankets, trying to get warm.





 
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