Disclaimer: All the characters and dialog that I borrow belong to Joss Whedon. All hail, Mr. Whedon.

Thank you so much, kind reviewers. Only a few more chapters to go!


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Chapter 14 – End of the Road
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About ten minutes after Buffy left him Spike sensed that the sun was nearly down. Cautiously he peered out. The street was narrow and crowded, and already engulfed in shadow, despite the fading daylight. Perfect neighborhood for vamps, he mused. He sat up, glad to be out of his cramped position on the floor. Hope I didn’t drain her too much last night, he worried. His eyes stayed riveted to the black door, willing Buffy to come out. The minutes ticked by interminably slowly, and he found his foot tapping with nervous impatience. She’s taking too long. As he watched out the car window a figure slipped out of an alley down the block, carefully walking near the buildings to keep to the shadows. Spike’s senses told him that it was a vampire, although from the cautious fearfulness that he exhibited as he looked up at the sky he had not been a vampire long. Spike shrank down a bit so as not to be noticed and studied the vampire’s blond hair and fair skin. Spike watched as he entered the house through the black door.
 
Spike growled as he sat up and ran his hand through his hair. Not good. He couldn’t shake the feeling that something was wrong, and finally he decided that he couldn’t take it any longer. Checking once more to make sure it was all shadows between the car and the door, he opened the car door and pulled himself out. He leaned on the car heavily, making his way to the front bumper, which was closest to the front steps of the house. After resting there for a few seconds and gathering his strength he tottered upright and lunged across the narrow sidewalk, barely snagging the porch railing to prevent himself from completely hitting the ground. Painfully he pulled himself up the four stairs one at a time, then rested again, feeling like he had just scaled a mountain. This might turn out to be one of your worst ideas yet, William, he thought. He leaned on the wall and opened the door as silently as he could.
 
The door opened into a hallway with several doors off it and he could hear a familiar voice from the last room on the right. “You’ve ruined my prince, with your sunshine and the little pieces of lightning in his brain, shock, shock shocking him all the time.”
 
“That w…wasn’t… me.” Buffy’s voice sounded thick and strangled. She was fighting the thrall, and losing the battle. Spike steadied himself on the doorframe and lurched over to the wall, nearly sliding down it. A chair rail molding gave him something to hold on to as he heaved himself from doorframe to doorframe down the hallway, his legs threatening to give out completely on every step.
 
“He went back to kill the Slayer,” Drusilla hissed. She was walking slowly toward Buffy, who had backed up against the wall. Buffy found the stake slipping unheeded from her fingers to clatter on the floor as she stood transfixed by the low voice and the dark eyes before her. “And the little tin soldiers broke him. The sunshine catches him like a spider web and he struggles and writhes and can’t get free.” Drusilla advanced further, her eyes riveted on the Slayer’s as she morphed into her vampire guise. “But I will free him. You’ll see.” Buffy’s face drained of color as Drusilla stopped, inches from her face. “What does sunshine taste like?”
 
Spike heard Drusilla’s hypnotic monologue and redoubled his efforts to reach the room. With a last heave he made it to the doorway. Panting with exertion he looked up then cried, “Dru! Don’t!”
 
Drusilla pulled her fangs out of the Slayer’s neck and turned to look at Spike, holding the half conscious Buffy up by the lapels of her denim jacket. Rivulets of Slayer blood trickled down from the corners of her mouth as her eyes grew wide in pleasurable surprise. “William,” she purred. “You’ve come back to me. I knew you would, if I could get you out of the sticky golden web.”
 
“Dru, please, let her go,” Spike pleaded. “You’ve got to listen to me, pet.” He tried to step slowly toward her but stumbled, barely catching himself on the edge of the bed as he went to his knees.
 
“She’s made you ill, my Spike,” Drusilla said. “Let me finish her. Then we’ll dance together again, you and I, in the Slayer’s blood.” She smiled broadly, her bloodstained fangs gleaming in the light before she turned back to her kill.
 
“NO!” Spike roared. He vamped out, and with his last remaining strength launched himself at Dru’s back. Even in his sorry state he had enough mass to jar her into dropping Buffy. Clinging desperately he tore into her neck as she hissed and struggled, clawing at his arms as they clutched her to him. He latched on and drank, trying to hold on as his legs buckled and his weakened arms shook with the effort. But suddenly his legs buckled once more – then straightened. He felt a surge through him as his Sire’s blood slipped down his throat and his strength started to come back, like water filling a dry pool. As Drusilla’s struggles weakened from the loss of blood, Spike grew stronger and stronger, and his fangs sank even more deeply into her neck. He swallowed great draughts of Drusilla’s blood as her clawing grew feebler, until at last he wrenched his neck free with a shout, panting, with blood smeared across his lips.
 
“William,” she said, turning in his arms to look at him with a lost and confused expression. She started to collapse, and Spike bore her gently down to the ground. “I didn’t know you were coming. You got lost in the stars. What have you done to your wicked plum?” Her voice was plaintive, and it made Spike felt like his unbeating heart was being squeezed in his chest. He was always undone by the damaged, hurt, rejected little girl that was at her core, and for a moment he thought, I can’t do it. She’s like a child, she can’t help it. But then he caught sight of Buffy lying there, still breathing, but only just, and his love for the Slayer welled up like a spring. Tears ran from his eyes as he reached out and picked up the fallen stake. He looked back down on the pale face of this woman whom he had loved for more than a lifetime. He memorized her dark eyes, her black hair, her slender white neck. Bending down he planted a final, gentle kiss on her lips and whispered, “I’m sorry, love. Forgive me.” Then with a small cry of anguish, he plunged the stake into her heart and watched her fall to dust in his arms.
 
There was a dreadful tug at his mind, as the bond with his Sire severed forever, but he hardly had time to register it before he was bending over Buffy. He looked around wildly and found one of Drusilla’s scarves, which he wrapped quickly around Buffy’s still bleeding throat. “Hang on, love, please hang on,” he muttered as he scooped her up. Even in his distress he was relieved to find that his strength had returned, his body was his own, and his abilities were undimmed by the experience. He wasted no time, but sprinted out the door and down the street, heading for Mass General Hospital.
 
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The intake nurse at Mass General had been flipping through a magazine when the door burst open and a man in a black leather coat came barreling through with a girl lying limp in his arms. “Someone help her! She’s lost a lot of blood!”
 
Doctors and nurses came running, a gurney appeared, and Spike carefully laid her down. “What happened?” said an intern as they rushed toward a treatment room.
 
“She was attacked. Some madwoman attacked her, bit her in the throat. She went after me after that, clawed me something fierce. Then she ran away. Please, her neck, she’ll die if she doesn’t get blood…”
 
“Sir, we’ll take care of it,” said a nurse, firmly pushing him back toward the waiting room. “Just stay here and let us help her.” She turned and said something to another doctor, who hurried after her into the room.
 
Spike swallowed and set his jaw as he watched the door swing shut behind the doctor. Every fiber of his being screamed to go in there and rip things apart until someone saved her. Don’t you know who she is? Fucking saved your little world ten times over you officious pricks. With an effort he clamped down on his violent urges, and whirled, stomping outside for a cigarette. He walked a distance from the door of the ER and leaned against the corner of the building, fishing a battered pack out of his pocket and lighting the cigarette with shaking hands. One hand ran nervously through his hair as he smoked. He literally didn’t know what he was going to do if she died. He mentally kicked himself again and again for not ridding the world of Drusilla years ago.
 
At the same time, he felt a twinge for the loss of his sire, his lover for more than a century. His mind kept bringing up her huge dark eyes, set into that ivory skin and framed by her ebony hair. He knew every inch of that face, could draw the tiniest details of her body from memory. He had loved her once, although that love seemed a shadow of what he felt for the Slayer. Drusilla had been beautiful and deadly and completely mad. Part of his reason for never hunting her down had been pity. She had never had a chance to be sane after Angelus had worked her over. Angelus had raped her and terrorized her and turned her, and then had done it all again when she was a vampire before leaving her. He had made her dependent on his approval, coming and going on his say-so, and Spike had never fully been able to fill the hole left by her sire’s departure. Even though Spike had been dumped by her, even though she had nearly killed the love of his life, he felt like some small part of who he was had been lost forever.
 
With a sigh he finished his cigarette, ground it out with his foot, and went back into the waiting room. He inquired about her progress to the nurse at the desk, but was told that there was no word yet. He sat down and leaned his head against the wall, closing his eyes for a moment. If she dies I’ll have to tell Dawn, he thought despairingly. His stomach clenched at the idea of having to inform Dawn that she was an orphan, again. He didn’t know if he could go back to Sunnydale without Buffy. The Scoobies, aside from Tara and Dawn, were clearly not going to welcome him with open arms. If she died saving him, how could even Tara and Dawn forgive him? Without her there was no reason to go back to Sunnydale ever again. Best thing he could do would be to disappear from their lives entirely.
 
“Sir?” Spike opened his eyes and sat up, unaware of how long he had been sitting there thinking dark thoughts. The receptionist was calling to him from her post. “The doctor said that you can come in and see her now. She’s awake and talking.”
 
“She’s… she’s alright?” he asked, hardly daring to believe.
 
“That’s what Dr. Carter said,” the nurse said with a little shrug. Spike’s face broke out in a relieved grin, with small tears of joy appearing in the corners of his eyes. He followed her instructions down the hall to a room near the end and slowly opened the door to behold Buffy, looking pale and tired in the hospital bed with a bandage around her neck.
 
“Spike,” she said softly with half opened eyes. “You’re okay.”
 
“So’re you,” he said with undisguised joy. “Had me worried there for a while, Slayer.”
 
“I’ve been chewed on by worse vamps,” Buffy said. Spike smirked at her attempt at humor and sat down next to her, taking her hand. “Where’s…”
 
“Drusilla’s dust,” Spike said quietly.
 
Buffy noticed the slight note of sadness in his voice. “You okay? I know that the sire bond thing is pretty intense.”
 
“I’ll live. Or approximate living,” he replied. “But yeah, it’s a little unsettling.”
 
“You were with her for a long time,” Buffy observed, rubbing her thumb soothingly along the back of his hand.
 
“Yeah,” Spike said. They sat for a few minutes holding hands, looking into each other’s eyes. “Seems like I’m back to my old self,” he said after the silence stretched out too long.
 
“Glad it worked,” Buffy said with a smile. “Hate to have to come all this way for nothing.” She closed her eyes, exhausted.
 
Spike took that as his cue to go for a while, so he stood up. “You get some sleep, love,” he said, kissing her forehead gently.
 
Her eyes fluttered open again. “Spike? Will you stay with me?”
 
With a smile, Spike settled himself back down and took her hand again. “Always,” he whispered.
 
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“How are you feeling today?” a nurse asked the next morning as she brought Buffy her breakfast. Her ID tag labeled her as Caryn Baines, RN.
 
“Much better, thank you,” Buffy replied.
 
“Where did your boyfriend go?” Caryn wondered. “He seemed really worried about you.”
 
“He’s not…” Buffy began. Then she stopped. She had been about to say that Spike wasn’t her boyfriend, but she wasn’t sure that was true anymore. “I mean, he had to go move our car before it got towed, and I told him to go get some sleep.”
 
“Good thinking,” agreed the nurse. “I got towed last month, and getting to the impound lot is a chore. He seems like a keeper, that one. I thought he was going to pull all of his hair out waiting to hear if you were okay.” Nurse Baines smiled, then looked down as her pager went off. “Excuse me,” she said as she bustled out the door.
 
Buffy ate her breakfast, thinking about what the nurse had said. He’s a keeper. But how will this work? She thought about her options. As she saw it, she could break it off completely again, somehow have a relationship where they were friends and only friends, or go all the way and actually be a couple. Plan A was out of the question. She knew him now, and he knew her, and when she thought about not having him at her back she shuddered. Something vital would be missing from her life without him. Plan B was possible, she supposed. They had become friends, and they could leave it at that. But that would mean she would have to find some other way to fulfill her physical needs. She had finally admitted to herself that she couldn’t live without some sort of physical relationship. Even without the sex, just having someone to hold her when she needed to be held was necessary to keep her sane, keep her grounded. Besides, to try to be friends with Spike while sleeping with someone else would complicate matters all around. By process of elimination, that meant they needed to be a couple.
 
Sipping at her coffee, Buffy leaned back to ponder that further. Her forays into couplehood had ended disastrously in the past. How much of it was me? If she was honest, her behavior had a lot to do with the whole Riley situation. But then he had issues too. Parker was an ass, and Angel… was complicated. In some ways, Spike was easy to be with. No balance of physical power issue like Riley had. No losing your soul issues. No ‘you’re just a notch in the headboard’ issues. They were matched physically, mentally, and sexually. Ok, maybe not mentally. For all his posturing, he’s pretty freaking smart. Spike clearly loved her, even after all the abuse she had dished out on him. He would keep her and Dawn safe, and he would never leave her.
 
But then there’s the downsides, she thought with a sigh. She ran down the mental list of Scoobie objections. No soul. No guarantee that the chip would keep working. Vampire. Did we mention vampire? Tried to kill us once. Probably a bad influence to boot. Giles would rub his glasses into oblivion. Xander would freak and probably try to stake him. Willow would either wring her hands right off or try some magic fix, or both. Tara would deal. Dawn would deal. Anya would deal. Angel would probably join Xander in the staking party if he were to find out. Do I really want to set myself up for months of fighting with Xander, Willow, and Giles? The thought of having to have all these arguments again and again exhausted her. Her brain turned everything around and around, trying to reconcile I like being with Spike and I like not having to fight the others.
 
She was still lost in thought when the nurse came back to fetch her empty tray. “You certainly were hungry,” she said approvingly.
 
“Guess so,” Buffy replied as Caryn brought the tray out to a cart in the hallway. When she returned to take Buffy’s vitals and check her bandages, Buffy said, “Can I ask you a question?”
 
“Certainly,” the nurse replied affably.
 
“You’ve met my… my boyfriend,” she began. “I’ve got a few close friends who really, really don’t like him because of some stuff that happened a couple years ago. We haven’t really told them we’re dating, because I just don’t feel like fighting with them all the time. I’m afraid if we tell them they’ll freak out. What would you do?” Buffy had no idea what led her to pour out her heart to this random stranger, but she was desperate for advice.
 
“Does he treat you good?” Caryn asked.
 
“Yes,” Buffy said. “He puts up with a lot of crap from me.”
 
“Do you want to break up with him?”
 
“No… no I don’t. He… things are better when he’s around.”
 
“Then you need to tell your friends to go pound sand in the desert,” said the nurse decisively. “He seems like a good guy. Don’t make yourself miserable trying to make the naysayers happy. Once they break you guys up, you won’t have him, and you’ll resent them, so you won’t have them either. Stand your ground, that’s my advice.” She stood up and gathered up a few more odds and ends.
 
“Thanks,” said Buffy with a small smile. “That… that actually made a lot of sense.”
 
“You’re welcome,” she replied warmly. “Now, sit tight. I think Dr. Carter will be discharging you very shortly.” The nurse left, leaving a much less troubled Slayer in her wake.
 
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Spike had indeed fetched the car and gone back to the hotel. He had noted with some degree of amusement that the car had managed to gather a parking ticket during the night. Don’t the parking police ever sleep around here? he had wondered. He dropped the ticket on top of the battered ‘For Rent’ sign in the gutter and drove back to the hotel. He hunted around on the radio until he found something suitably loud and violent and tapped his fingers to the beat as he drove. It felt amazingly good to be, well, if not alive, then at least restored to his usual unlife. To be able to walk, and drive, and function unaided seemed an unimaginable gift. All this and the girl too, he thought happily.
 
He found his way back to the Motel 6 with little difficulty. Once inside he stripped and showered for the first time since this whole nightmare had started. He practically purred as the hot water poured down, warming his tepid body. His thoughts turned to Buffy, lying in his arms, vibrating with pleasure as he drank from her. The thought made his erection spring up, bobbing in front of him and he grinned and thought Welcome back, old man, as he threw his head back into the spray and pleasured himself. His orgasm felt like a sort of rebirth, a confirmation that everything was operational and ready to rumble again. He turned off the water and toweled off, unable to wipe the grin from his face for even a moment.
 
He padded naked into the other room and rummaged around in the bags, locating a change of clothes that Buffy had thrown in for him. Washed, changed, and content, he lay back on the bed with his hands behind his head, thinking about his Slayer. He was still somewhat astonished that she would undertake all this for him. Few weeks back I would’ve sworn she would be willing to make some popcorn and sit around to watch me starve. Instead, she had brought him to her house, cared for him, given him her blood, driven him across the country, and nearly died to get him the cure he needed. I knew you felt something for me. Knew it.
 
The smugness that his thought brought him lasted for a good ten minutes until reality started creeping back into his mind. This was all well and good when it was just the two of them driving and talking, and even sharing the same bed. But he was pretty damn sure he wanted more than that. He wanted her, her body and her mind and her whole being, and he wasn’t sure he could settle for less. What’s it to be then, Slayer? It was all going to come down to her friends. Will she be willing to face the Scoobie scorn, or not? For all that he was incredibly annoyed at how her friends seemed to run her life, Spike did understand how important they were to Buffy. Her support structure was what made her a Slayer he couldn’t defeat. He wanted to be hers. Wanted it so bad that he ached with the thought of not having her. But he wasn’t going to be her dirty little secret any more. Fuck that. Either she’s with me openly, or we part ways. No other way this could work. For all that he was grateful to her, and for all that he loved her, he couldn’t put either of them through that again. He lay there, turning these thoughts over and over in his mind as the day wore on.

TBC