full 3/4 1/2   skin light dark       
 
Future Sins Past by DreamsofSpike
 
Unwanted Help
 
<<     >>
 
“And how exactly would you propose that we help him, Buffy?”

Giles’ voice was impatient, and just a little bit bewildered -- and Buffy suddenly realized that she did not really have an answer for his question. As she had watched the clear evidence of Spike’s painful emotions play across his expressive features, Buffy had felt an undeniable sympathy and compassion for the injured vampire, clearly confused and tormented by the soul that had been inflicted on him, followed by his lover’s betrayal -- but what could they really do for him, after all?

Of course, they could tend to his wounds and make sure that he got blood enough to heal, and well -- *survive*. But -- beyond that - Buffy had to admit that she was at a loss.

“Are you suggesting that we help him rid himself of the soul?” Giles asked, echoing her own thoughts as she frowned in confusion, not quite looking at him. “Clearly he doesn’t want it, but as that is the only thing standing between Spike and mass murder, then it’s just as clearly out of the question.”

Buffy’s frown deepened with troubled understanding, as she shook her head and reminded her Watcher, “But -- if we *don’t* get the soul out of Spike -- then Angel can’t be restored at all…and if we *do* take the soul out of Spike, then I’ll just have to…”

Her voice trailed off with a weary sigh, as she realized that there just didn’t seem to be a very positive option.

“*No*!” the vampire objected from across the room, rising weakly to his feet from the spot where he sat on the sofa.

Buffy looked up at him in surprise -- and then suspicion, as she realized that he had been listening to their entire conversation thus far. But before the suspicion could really take root in her mind, she found herself captivated by his wide, tearful blue eyes full of a beseeching desperation.

“No, to which part exactly?” she asked in a flat tone of voice, crossing her arms over her chest as she turned to face him fully, moving slowly across the room toward him. “Which part of our personal, private, and completely eavesdropped-on conversation do you have an objection with, Spike?”

“You can’t take it away from me! Please, Slayer, you can’t!”

The vampire’s words, spoken in a low, hushed, trembling tone of earnest desperation, caught the Slayer off guard.

“Can’t -- take -- the soul?” she had to ask for clarification, frowning in confusion at the thought that Spike might actually want to *keep* Angel’s soul, after he had already made it very clear how much suffering having it had caused him.

“Please,” Spike repeated, shaking his head as his piercing blue eyes met hers imploringly. “I can’t…I can’t imagine…going back to what I was…doing the things I did…again. I just bloody well can’t, Slayer, you can’t take it out of me now!”

“You -- actually *want* to keep it?” Giles asked, sounding even more bewildered now.

“Well, yeah,” Spike stated softly, in an isn’t-it-obvious sort of tone. “Lose it -- and I’ll go back to doing the same things I’ve always done -- and I couldn’t take it. Couldn’t take the guilt of knowing what a bad,,,evil…vampire I am…would be…again…”

Fortunately for Spike, the surprise caused by his words kept the Slayer and her Watcher from noticing his awkward, slightly forced phrasing. Buffy opened her mouth as if to speak, but was promptly cut off by her friend’s sarcastic comment.

“Well, see that works out for everyone, then,” Xander sneered. “Because when they give that soul back to Angel, you won’t *have* the guilt to deal with -- you won’t care anymore -- and Buffy will get to stake you -- and everybody’s happy.”

Buffy’s frown deepened at those words, and her eyes narrowed slightly as she gave the vampire a skeptical look, stepping closer to him until she stood only a couple of feet in front of him.

“Hadn’t actually thought of that,” she remarked in a dangerously soft voice, her emerald eyes boring into his so intently that it was all Spike could do not to look away -- but he didn’t look away. “You’re not just saying all this, about how you want to keep the soul and all -- just to keep us from staking you -- are you?”

Spike tensed slightly at her nearness, as well as at the sudden, subtle threat in her posture and her words, but held himself steady with an effort, not breaking eye contact, resisting the instinct to take on a fighting posture of his own -- not that he could have actually fought her, anyway, he reminded himself cautiously.

That was the whole soddin’ problem.

“No,” he replied softly, shaking his head slowly but firmly. “No, I wouldn’t -- I’m telling you the truth, Slayer. I -- I didn’t ask for this bloody thing to get stuck in me -- but I’ve got it -- and I can’t go back to what I was before it. Please. Don’t -- don’t make me.”

Buffy studied his expression for a long, terrifying moment, in which the vampire was almost certain that she had seen straight through his lies -- until finally she seemed to think that she had seen what she sought, and looked away with a sigh, visibly easing her intimidating stance as she took a step backward away from him, rolling her eyes in irritated frustration.

“What a quandary,” Giles remarked quietly, his eyes wide with wonder, and a strange sort of excitement at the novelty of it all. “We’ve got two vampires, each with somewhat of a claim to a single soul…can‘t leave it in one without leaving the other a soulless killer…”

Buffy drew in a deep breath, lowering her head and raising one hand to her eyes, as she muttered under her breath, “Looks like we‘ve got a problem.”

************************************

“Gone…gone…my sweet William is gone away from me forever…”

The mad, dark vampiress wept and moaned the same words over and over, lying across the bed where Spike had spent so many hours alone in the past few days while she had been otherwise occupied with Angelus, sobbing and wailing and thrashing about in a torment of grief and despair. As unexpected as the sudden loss of Drusilla’s childe had been, Angelus was still rather surprised at how deepy she seemed to feel the loss of the insolent boy, especially after how thoroughly she had ignored Spike since her sire had returned.

It was driving him freaking insane.

“Dru…Sweetheart…” he said in a soft, overly patient voice, his last words gradually rising until they became a violent roar of frustrated rage, “…would you kindly get a hold of yourself and *shut up*!”

Dru flinched on the bed, but her moaning only quieted some, did not cease completely.

“The nasty stars all lied to me…played cruel tricks with my head…got me all muddled up to let the sunshine take my William…he was mine, mine he was, and now she’s got him! Stolen him away from me! My William is gone, gone from me…”

Angelus ignored her words, as he was used to do, a dark mood stealing over him as he walked around the room, half-heartedly searching for any sign of what exactly had taken place here the night before.

It seemed fairly obvious.

The Slayer’s scent still lingered in the room.

“How’d she manage to get in here without anyone noticing her?” Angelus growled softly with anger, staring moodily at the wall, before suddenly snatching up the candlestick from the bedside table and hurling it furiously at the wall with a vicious snarl. “I’ll kill our minions,” he declared in a low, dangerous voice. “Every last one of them. How did she get past them so easily? Why didn’t we even hear…?”

His voice suddenly trailed off, his eyes widening slightly as a memory dimmed by the lust that had nearly consumed him during the actual event returned to him, and he turned narrowed, slightly suspicious eyes on the keening vampiress on the bed.

“We *did* hear her,” he stated softly. “At least -- I heard her. You said you didn’t hear anything. That must have been when she was here.”

Dru wasn’t really paying attention to him, still sobbing inconsolably over the loss of her insufferable childe. “The stars deceived me…told me he was hers…he’s hers already, he’s been hers since long before now…never mine at all…and now my William is all gone, all gone away from me…”

“Dru, will you *shut up* and listen to me!” Angelus snarled, suddenly right by the bed and snatching her up by the shoulders with cruel, bruising hands, as he shook her and accused her furiously, “You knew she was here, didn’t you? You knew, and you just let her go, and take Spike with her! We’ve said things, in this room, Dru -- we’ve talked about important things! And I didn’t worry about Spike hearing them, because he wasn’t ever supposed to go anywhere again!”

As he spoke, Angelus’ voice vacillated madly between blind, uncontrolled rage, and that soft veiled menace that was so much more frightening, his golden eyes glinting with fury as he shook her, snarling in her face until she whimpered and cowered away from his touch.

“Now who knows what he might have told her? Who knows what he might have heard, about our plans, about what we’re going to do?” Angelus seethed, dropping her roughly back onto the bed and beginning to pace the floor at an almost manic speed.

“Gotta get him back,” he muttered. “Stake the little bastard before she gets anything out of him…”

Dru just kept on moaning and crying about the lying stars and her missing childe and how badly she missed him, wanted him, and Angelus was trying to *think*, and it was just too hard with her incessant, meaningless, incoherent *noise*…!

He crossed the room to her again in an instant, jerking her up by the hair and delivering a sharp, resounding backhand across her face, as he screamed at her, “*Shut up*!”

She looked up at him through fathomless dark eyes, wide with stunned hurt and betrayal, one hand rising to her swiftly bruising cheek, as she shook her head slightly.

“Bad, hateful Daddy,” she whispered reproachfully. “Mummy hadn’t any choice…hadn’t any choice…the stars…”

Angelus couldn’t stand another word about the damned stars.

He was furious -- but Dru was not either of the two he wanted to take it out on.

Without another word or a backward glance, he stormed out of the room, slamming the door behind him -- and a few minutes later Dru felt his absence, as he stalked out of the mansion completely and into the night.

As her tears slowly ebbed away, she rose up from the bed, her wide eyes distant as she listened to the things the stars were speaking to her again -- quickly forgetting their earlier deceptions. She nodded slowly as a rapturous smile came across her darkly beautiful face, and a sense of hope and expectancy rose up within her.

“Yes,” she murmured, heading toward the door out into the rest of the mansion. “Yes -- Mummy shall have her boy back -- put all back like it should be -- all back as it’s meant to be -- and my Spike shall return to me…and be mine again…forever…”

********************************

“Okay…I think we’ve got something here!”

Willow’s voice sounded excited for the first time since he’d been there, and Spike was fairly certain that that was a bad thing as far as he was concerned. In fact, progress of any kind on the part of these White Hats was probably not to his benefit, considering that at the moment he was simply playing a stalling game with them all.

He was healing quickly as a result of the potent Slayer’s blood they had given him -- and wasn’t *that* a bloody kick in the head? He certainly hadn’t expected *that*! -- but he was still weak from the torture he had undergone that had gone unmended for so long, and the starvation that Angelus had inflicted upon him -- not to mention the bloody chip in his head, that would keep him from defending himself against these pathetic human children.

And although Buffy seemed to believe his story about somehow getting Angel’s soul, the others did not trust him one little bit -- certainly not enough to leave the exits to the room they were all in unguarded. Spike could not take the chance of accidentally hurting one of them in an attempt to shove past them, setting off his chip, and then suffering the painful consequences -- *twice* -- for his deception and duplicity.

So, making a mad dash for the door from his seat on the sofa didn’t exactly seem to be an option.

Yet.

“What have you got?” Buffy asked, her voice sharp and all business, sounding very much more the Slayer than the 17-year-old high school girl, as she turned to face her friend.

“Well, this almost looks as if it could be the spell that was originally used on Angel,” Willow explained, gesturing to a place in the huge, dusty book she held, though Buffy didn’t even glance at it. “I mean -- we have no way of knowing for sure, but it seems like it could be -- basically, it requires something that’s belonged to the vampire -- something he’s had a lot of contact with -- and it locates the vampire’s former soul, wherever it might be, and returns it to them.”

Spike swallowed hard, trying not to look as sick as he suddenly felt.

Locating Angel’s soul would not be a good thing at this point -- because the Slayer’s finding out that it was anywhere but here would surely result in his getting promptly staked.

“So -- okay -- so we return Angel’s soul to him,” Buffy said softly, thinking aloud, a pensive frown on her face. “But then -- where does that leave Spike? I mean -- if he wants to keep the soul -- wants to do good -- it seems wrong to take it…”

“I thought of that,” Jenny remarked from beside Willow, and Spike was almost certain there was an almost malicious glint in her dark eyes as she glanced at him over the Slayer’s shoulder. “See -- we can return Angel’s soul to him -- from -- out of Spike…”

Spike glanced around anxiously, certain that the others had to have caught the skeptical note in her voice -- though apparently they hadn’t.

“…and then,” Jenny went on, “we can locate *Spike’s* original soul, and return it to him. So everyone’s happy, and you have not one but *two* souled vampires to fight on the side of good. How does that sound?”

Buffy was nodding eagerly, a slow smile forming on her lips -- oblivious to Spike’s wide-eyed expression of horror behind her.

“That sounds perfect,” she agreed.

“Spike?” Jenny asked innocently, looking at Spike with an encouraging smile, drawing the attention of the others to him as well. “How does that sound to you?”

Spike swallowed back the bile rising in his throat at the thought, and forced his shocked, stricken expression to turn into a brilliant, grateful smile that he hoped did not appear as forced as it was.

“Sounds bloody brilliant, love,” he replied in a quiet, slightly trembling voice. He allowed the smile to fade a bit, as he added regretfully, “There’s only -- one slight problem…”

Buffy frowned in anticipation of his words, and he could not quite meet her eyes as he went on, “Once the soul’s out of me and back in Angelus -- Angel -- well, I’m not likely to be as willing as I am at the moment to get my own soul shoved back in me, yeah?”

Buffy’s frown faded, and Spike felt his heart sink with the smile of relief that came over her face, even before she spoke.

“Oh, that’s easy,” she said with a dismissive wave of her hand. “*You* want the soul back, right?”

Spike forced a nod and a brittle smile.

“Well, the will of a souled person with a conscience means more than the will of an evil vampire to me any day,” she declared. “You want it now, so what you want once you lose the soul doesn’t matter.”

“Might matter to me.” Spike’s voice was low and a bit ominous, and he quickly cleared his throat at the strange looks they were beginning to give him, adding in a more casual tone, “Then, I mean. Once I’m all -- soulless and evil and all.”

“Well -- I guess we could chain you up again,” the Slayer shrugged, and Spike looked at her sharply in alarm -- but her voice was still completely sincere, and she was looking at him for his acceptance of that idea, which she obviously fully expected. “I mean, before we take Angel’s soul out. So then while we’re putting yours in, it won’t be a problem. You wouldn’t mind, would you?”

Weakly, feeling as if he would be physically sick for the first time in nearly a hundred years, Spike shook his head to indicate he had no objections.

The dark-haired boy picked up the shackles from beside the chair he was sitting in, standing up with a nasty smile.

“Not yet, Xander,” Buffy stopped him, a frown of disapproval on her face at his malicious pleasure in the vampire’s situation -- and again, Spike found himself feeling a strange, heavy sensation at her obvious concern for him. “There’s no need to chain him back up until it’s time for the ritual. He’s got a soul, he’s not gonna try to get away.”

As Xander sat back down, looking clearly disappointed, Spike breathed a sigh of relief.

“Er -- if I might ask,” he said, hoping they didn’t notice that his voice sounded a bit faint and quavery, “how -- how long do you think it might be? Before the ritual is ready?”

Willow glanced down at the book in her hands thoughtfully, shrugging as she looked up and guessed, “A few hours?”

Spike nodded, his forced smile widening slightly. “Right,” he agreed. “Sounds great.”

*A few hours…a few hours to get the bloody hell out of here before they turn me into a carbon copy of the soddin’ pouf!*
 
<<     >>