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Unlike most vampires, Spike enjoyed the occasional meal from the non-haemoglobin food groups. A burger here and a plate of buffalo wings there, savouring the smell and texture even though the taste itself was a mere shadow of what his sensory memory still remembered from his human days. Ashes compared to the sharp tang of blood on his tongue.
Cooking was nevertheless a skill he had never acquired.
Back when he had been human, there had been servants and maids and a cook - all well paid by Mother - to make sure there was food on the table, and after being turned the closest he'd ever come to preparing a meal had been buying someone a drink before killing them.
Usually when he cooked, it was meat. He would buy it by the pound from the same butcher he bought his blood from and then fry it, watching the delicious crimson flesh waste into a dull brown lump that to him had the general appeal of a piece of cardboard. He had sometimes considered leaving the meat uncooked - it probably wouldn't have made a difference - but several decades of daytime television had left him with a vague idea that raw meat was bad for humans, and also that they could not survive on meat alone but needed other things too. Things like bread and vegetables and cereals and milk and apples.
He was quite certain about the apples. He remembered apples and he remembered that they were important, and so he made sure he bought them every time from the supermarket. Apples and cigarettes and wheetabix. Doritos, beer, bread, cereals and chocolate bars. Disposable cups, plates, and cutlery, because of all the things he was willing to do for Buffy, doing the dishes was not one.
He hated supermarkets. He hated the enormous concrete coffins filled with mindless happymeal-people fighting for that last packet of instant coffee 20% off with a coupon (he absentmindedly patted his pockets to make sure he had remembered the coupons), hated the muzak and the fluorescent lighting, hated his lack of reflection in the mirrors behind the fruit counter.
Of course, these days there weren't that many things left in his life in general that he didn't hate.
In the old days he had loved shopping. Prowling the aisles with Dru by his side, the supermarket their very own all-you-can eat buffet. All the flavours of the human existence to choose from; take-away dinners marinated in middle-class despair.
You're a killer, Spike. Born to slash and bash and bleed like beautiful poetry.
He still often entertained himself by imagining what he would do should the chip suddenly stop working. Pictured how he'd rip open the throat of the man blocking way between beverages and the snack foods aisle; snap the necks of the little brats whinging by the confectionaries; gouge out the eyes of the zombiefied check-out girl.
He sighed and looked up from his shopping list to meet the disapproving eyes of Count Chockula staring at him from the shelf.
"Spike?"
The voice had barely reached his brain when he was already running. He abandoned the cart, weaving through the crowds and knocking people over as he headed towards the registers. Pushing and shoving his way through the aisles, swearing and growling at the twinges of pain from his chip as he collided with the other customers.
"Spike, please wait!"
He could hear Tara's voice calling after him with a sincerely distressed note to her voice. He'd always considered her to be the sanest of the scoobies, and if he ever had to talk to any one of them, she'd be the one he'd pick, but even her pleading couldn't make him slow down. He ran, struggling to keep his balance when he crashed into a shopping cart, ran as fast as he could because you didn't get one without the other.
When he reached the check-out lines, he found a security guard blocking his way, but he didn't stop, throwing the man against the wall like a ragdoll as he passed. The pain came immediately, just as he had expected; white hot knives searing into his brain. He stumbled for a few steps but managed to keep his balance, crashing through the glass doors and into the night.
Once outside he headed straight towards his car - that is, the car he had stolen because he hadn't felt like carrying the groceries home - and he was so very close to getting away when he suddenly heard another familiar voice from behind him.
"Not so fast, Spike."
He stopped - not so much because of the voice itself as the small sound after it, the almost inaudible wooden click of a crossbow being cocked - and turned around to face Giles. The watcher was standing just a few yards away, pointing the weapon at him like a modern day Willem Tell.
"Where is she?"
"That's none-" Spike started, but his words became a scream of pain when an arrow pierced his left shoulder.
"I assure you," Giles said, his voice cold and hard, as he reloaded the crossbow, "The next one will go straight through your heart. Now, let's try this again. Where is she?"
"She's safe," Spike replied.
"Safe? She's safe? With you?"
Spike risked another arrow and took a few steps to lean to the concrete wall surrounding the parking lot. "Safer than with Wiley E. Wicca and her merry helpers."
"What do you mean?"
There was a look of confusion on Giles' face and Spike smiled inwardly.
He didn't answer immediately, just wrapped his fingers around the arrow in his shoulder and pulled it out with a small hiss of pain. A needless macho-vamp gesture that did, however, successfully inspire a sympathetic wince from Giles. The scent of his own blood reminded Spike of the fact that it had been days since he had last fed, but he ignored the pangs of hunger and fished a pack of cigarettes from his pocket instead. He didn't really want a smoke, but he hoped that the everydayness of the gesture might distract Giles, might buy him a few moments to come up with an escape plan. Who would deny a dead man his last cigarette?
Besides, he might not be able to put people under a thrall like Dru, but if there was one thing he could do, it was talking his way out of any situation. True, back when he'd still been a big bad he had usually preferred to slaughter his way out, but he had not forgotten the power of simple words. He knew Giles and the bloody Scoobies, knew how to get under their skins. He could be a better Yoko than the bitch herself had ever been.
"They didn't tell you then, did they?" He asked casually, lighting the cigarette. "Didn't tell you what really happened?"
Giles remained silent, but his finger twitched on the trigger of the crossbow.
"Do you know how she came back?" Spike edged on. "Did they tell you that she just fell from the sky, released from hell after hundred years of community service? 'Thanks for the loaner, but we really don't have the storage space'. She came back and all was well until big bad evil Spike came and stole her away. Is that what they told you?"
"Well, no, not in those exact words, but-"
"So they told you about the Urn of Osiris, then, and the spell they did to summon her soul back into her body?"
"They, uh, they must have-" Giles stammered. He took off his glasses to clean them, but then put them back when he realised he couldn't as he was still holding the crossbow. "They must have had their reasons, they wouldn't have-"
When Giles reached for his glasses for the second time, Spike ran out of patience.
"They brought her back wrong, you bloody idiot!" He snarled and grabbed Giles by the lapels. "They pulled her away from heaven and they got her all wrong."
Giles didn't even flinch, only stood still and waited until the chip kicked in. Spike held on as long as he could, but finally his knees buckled, bringing him to the ground.
"I'm not afraid of you, Spike," Giles said, and pointed the crossbow at him again. "And I have no quarrels in killing you. So let's try this one last time. Where are you keeping her?"
"Not keeping her," Spike muttered, pushing himself up. "She came with me willingly."
He was beginning to get desperate. Tara and Willow could not be far away and he knew they would be far more difficult to deal with than the watcher alone. His only hope was that if he got Giles flustered enough, he might be able to knock the crossbow from him and get away even if it meant risking activating the chip again.
"Has a thing for vampires, she does," he hissed, forcing himself to leer, leaning closer until his face was just inches away from Giles'. "First Angel, now me, can't get enough of us. You should hear the way she beg-"
Giles moved faster than Spike had anticipated, catching him by surprise as he slammed him into the wall. Spike could feel his skull crack as the back of his head hit the bricks, but he hardly noticed the pain when to his horror he realised that Giles had discarded the crossbow, and was now holding a stake. He tried to struggle free, but he was still dazed from the concussion and could only watch as Giles brought the stake down in one elegant movement.
"Giles, don't!" Willow's voice echoed across the parking lot. "We need him to tell us where Buffy is."
The stake stopped a hair's breadth from Spike's chest, and from the look on Giles' face, he could tell it wasn't so much because the watcher had changed his mind as because Willow had used her powers to stop it.
"Now, now, Rupert," Spike leered, desperately trying to hide his trembling, not wanting to give Giles the satisfaction of showing his relief at the sudden amnesty. "You don't want to go pissing off the witch. Might turn you into something unnatural."
Giles gave Spike a violent shove and then kneeled down to pick up the discarded crossbow, his eyes never leaving Spike.
A few seconds later Willow and Tara appeared, running and out of breath, and from the corner of his eye Spike could see Anya and Xander following in their wake. Xander had his right hand in an off angle behind his back as if he was hiding something. A stake, perhaps, or a tranq gun more likely. Maybe even a real one. Lead wouldn't kill a vampire but it would smash his kneecaps just as easily as those of a human.
They didn't want him dead. Not yet, at least, but they wouldn't just let him go either.
Spike leaned to the wall and closed his eyes. The scoobies were all talking to him now, but he was too tired to listen, too tired to do anything anymore. He was weak from hunger, exhausted from not having slept for weeks, the back of his head throbbed from Giles' earlier manhandling, and all he wanted was to go back home, back to Buffy and pretend that everything was fine and that she loved him back and that he was something more than just the Slayer's glorified housekeeper.
"Are you even listening?" He heard Xander say, the boy's voice rising above the nattering of the other scoobies, but before he could react, something hard hit the side of his head, knocking him off balance. Spike looked up and saw Xander standing above him, and absentmindedly noted it was indeed a gun he had been hiding, now slightly stained with his own blood from having been used as a club.
"Piss off," he muttered and not for the first time wondered if it would be easier just to let them dust him. At least then he might finally be able to rest for a moment. But there was no rest for the wicked, not as long as he had Buffy to look after.
Xander was about to hit him again, but Willow pushed his hand gently away and then kneeled down next to Spike.
"Look, Spike," she said, her voice soft and compassionate. "We don't want to hurt you or Buffy. We just need to know where she is. We need to know that she's okay."
Good cop, bad cop, Spike thought, and made sure he didn't look her in the eyes in case she was the bad cop. He ignored her and pulled himself up back to his feet, taking support from the wall behind him.
"You don't care if she's okay," he growled, too tired to play the game anymore. "You just want to kill her. You brought her back, and when it didn't go like you thought it would, you're just going to get rid of her. And then what? Bring her back again? And again?"
"If you let us see her, we- we could do something to fix it," Willow said. "A- a spell, we could do another spell, I've been doing some more research and there is this thing called the ritual of Ask-"
"You didn't even bother to dig her up from her bloody coffin before you brought her back!"
He hadn't meant to shout, but the memory of her bloodied hands - the memory of his own bloodied hands and the suffocating darkness and confusion of waking up in a coffin - called to his demon, and it took all his willpower to keep himself from shifting to game face right then and there.
"We didn't think-"
"That's the problem, innit? You didn't think. Didn't think what you were doing, and sure as hell didn't think about her." He looked Willow straight in the eyes. "All you thought about was yourselves. How you needed the Slayer back."
Willow blinked, and for a second her eyes were a black abyss of dark magic that seemed to drain what little light there was on the parking lot. Spike shivered, her power forcing him to look away and he noticed that Tara was doing the same.
"No," he said after a moment, making himself look her in the eyes again. "No more spells, Red. Magic ain't some bleeding krazy glue that can fix everything. There is a price to magic, and you know it."
"Not for me," she whispered, her voice so quiet that Spike was certain he was the only one who had heard it.
There was an echo in her voice that sent shivers down his spine, a suggestion of a madness so terrible that it made Dru look sane, and suddenly Spike realised that it was too late for Yoko. The band had already broken up. The bulge in Giles' jacket that was shaped like a flask, the ring missing from the finger of the demon girl, the dark bags under Harris' eyes, the barely contained raw power crackling between Willow's fingers, and the terrified look on Tara's face. They were all falling apart without Buffy as their centre, and Spike didn't know whether to laugh or cry.
"What's going on here?"
They were suddenly enveloped in bright white light, and with the security guard and his maglite providing a brief distraction, Spike turned around and ran, hoping that the Scoobies would be hesitant of using magic and weapons with a civilian around, and that his running away and the all the weaponry Giles and the others were carrying would look suspicious enough for the guard to want to question them.
He knew that he wouldn't get too long of a head start, though; knew that Willow would soon grow impatient and use her powers to take the guard out in some way. He needed to get away as fast as he could, but he was barely out of the parking lot when he heard a small voice call after him.
"Is she alright?"
His first instinct was to keep running, to get back to Buffy before the witches could put a tracking spell on him, and if it had been anyone else asking the question he would have. He stopped and turned back to face Dawn.
She was standing in the shadows between the wall around the parking lot. She looked younger than when he had last seen her - smaller, somehow - and for a second Spike wondered if perhaps there was something wrong with Dawn, too, some mistake the monks had made that caused her to grow younger instead older. Or maybe it was just the rest of the world that had gone wrong.
"She's fine, pet," he said, hoping that his voice wouldn't betray him. "She just needs some time alone, what with having been dead and all." He glanced quickly towards the parking lot before going to her. "What are you doing here? A bit too late for a tasty little morsel like you to be out alone."
Dawn stepped out of the shadows and into the flickering glare of the large billboard rising above them. Her hair was flat and tangled, her clothes rumpled, and her socks mismatched. When Spike looked her in the eyes, he could see the same emptiness he had seen in the eyes of the other scoobies, almost as if Buffy in her death and rebirth had used up the lifeforce in the rest of them, leaving nothing but empty shells.
"I- They told me to wait in the car but I had to- I wanted..." She looked up at him, searching his eyes for answers he knew he didn't have. "Xander said that you... But I didn't believe, I didn't believe that you would... She's alright, isn't she? You haven't- You haven't..."
"Eaten her? Chained her up in a crypt somewhere?" He tried to laugh but couldn't. "No, pet, she's alright. She just needed some time away from everything, from being a slayer."
Dawn looked away, but as she turned Spike caught the glimmer of tears in her eyes.
"From me?"
He shook his head. "No, Niblet, not from you."
And then suddenly she was hugging him, crying, holding onto him as if she was never going to let go. He wrapped his arms around her even though a voice at the back of his head was clamouring to remind him that the scoobies were still after him, and waited until her sobs subsided into a quiet sniffle.
"Promise you'll take care of her," she whispered finally, wiping her eyes with her sleeve.
"Yeah," he replied hoarsely, and pulled himself away from her so that he was able to look her in the eyes again, "I promise."
"Wh- when will she come back?"
He hesitated for a fraction of a second, and she must have noticed it because her lower lip was trembling again.
"It's not-," he started, trying to think some way to dodge the question. "I have to go, the others are coming."
He could sense strong magics about, Willow and Tara trying to find him, so it wasn't really lying, and why would he have even cared if it was. But he did care, and when he looked at Dawn, still on the verge of tears, he just wanted to be able to tell her that everything was going to be alright.
Few seconds more and he could hear the scoobies approach, but he still didn't want to go, didn't want to leave Dawn in the care of people who let her roam the streets alone at night. He had promised Buffy to keep her safe.
But now he had Buffy to look after, too, and she needed him more.
"Sorry Bit, have to go now," he said, and escaped into the night.
He was almost home when he remembered that he hadn't bought any food.
It was too late to go back even if he had dared to risk running into the scoobies again, but he knew there must still be some food left from the last time he'd dared to venture outside to do shopping. Enough to last for a few more days at least. There was no blood, though, but that was nothing new. He knew a butcher in town who sold blood to vamps after hours, but even that place had been closed for the night. He'd been meaning to go there after the supermarket, just how he had been meaning to go there the day before, and the day before that, but somehow something always seemed to come up.
He could live with the hunger one more day.
He did stop by at an all-night convenience store that might not have stocked any proper food but did stock whiskey and beer. He was low on money and contemplated putting on his game face to scare the clerk so that he could then empty the register, but he decided against it, knowing that Buffy would have disapproved.
Stealing candy bars from a corner shop, Spike? That's so not evil nemesis business.
But neither was washing and cooking and shopping for groceries.
He gave the clerk his second to last twenty dollar bill and endured her inane prattle about some reality show she'd been watching in the back room. When she turned her back for a second he pocketed a pack of cigarettes; partly just for the principle, partly because he couldn't spare the cash for smokes but needed them because the nicotine kept him from remembering just how hungry he was.
It was almost four in the morning when Spike stopped in front of the condemned apartment building where he and Buffy had been living for the past few months and said a few magic words to find his way to the right apartment. Just to be sure he had paid some second-rate sorcerer - a friend of the tosser who had built him the buffybot - to put a hiding spell on the place that made sure that no-one who didn't know the magic words could enter it, or even find it, and then another spell to keep Buffy from leaving the place without him. The spells had cost him all the money he'd had at the time plus 200 dollars borrowed from Clem, and keeping them updated meant having to pay the half-pint wanker to come back every two weeks to wave his magic bone about.
"Honey, I'm home," he muttered to himself as he entered the apartment, and then set down his shopping on the counter. He turned around and peered into the bedroom. "Buffy?"
There was a clink of chains from the living room, and before Spike could react, Buffy slammed into him. They crashed into a table, the cheap plastic smashing into pieces under their weight.
What happened to her?
He managed to push her away from him and then roll them around until she was the one lying on the floor with him pinning her hands down.
S-she... I don't... we didn't...
He tried to think of a way to knock her unconscious without letting go of her hands, but before he could come up with anything, she kicked him in the stomach, sending him flying across the room.
Spit it out, Red, what did you do?
Spike tried to get up, but his head was still spinning from hitting the wall and he fell back down on his knees. He didn't have a chance for a second try when she lunged at him again, pinning him to the floor and straddling him.
I summoned her spirit back from hell, but the spell must have failed when the urn broke and... she didn't...
As he struggled to push her away, something sharp cut into his arm and he realised that she was holding a knife.
What did you do to her?
"What are you doing, Buffy?" He asked as calmly as he could, trying to find even the slightest glimmer of humanity and understanding in her eyes.
I'm sorry, Spike
"Buffy?" He repeated, but she only growled in reply and lifted the knife.
It was the spirit of the first slayer, Willow had told him, summoned by the spell into Buffy's body, and driven mad by the shock. When they had found out how wrong their spell had gone, they had wanted to kill her, to put her out her misery like a lame dog. Their mistake had been in their cowardice, in asking Spike to kill her when they couldn't do it themselves
She's not Buffy, Spike, she's not even human anymore. Your chip won't stop you. It's the merciful thing to do.
in assuming that his demon would welcome the chance to kill his third slayer, in forgetting that he loved her more than they ever could.
There was a flash of metal when Buffy brought the knife down, plunging the blade deep into his chest. He bucked and howled in pain, half glad that he had made sure that there was nothing in the apartment that could be turned into a stake, half cursing that he hadn't thought of putting away the knives too. He squirmed under her, trying to push her away from him, grinding his teeth as the knife sunk deeper into his flesh with every movement. Finally he managed to get his left arm free and using it to keep Buffy away from him, he reached to pull out the knife and then threw it away as far as he could before she thought of using it to decapitate him. Her eyes reflexily followed the knife like a dog chasing after a stick, but she made no move to go after it and instead just punched him in the face.
She was unarmed now, but not harmless, and her punch had incapacitated Spike long enough for her to get her hands around his throat while she again pinned his arms down with her legs. Spike wasn't afraid of suffocating, but her grip was strong enough for her to snap his neck if she wanted, or at the very least break his spine as she pushed him down against the sharp edge of the broken bookshelf beneath him. Through the pain Spike felt a wave of panic when he realised that if she broke his spine, this time there would be no Dru to nurse him back to health, that they would simply starve to death, both of them, imprisoned in the small room that did not exist to anyone else.
He could hear sirens outside, suggesting that one of the neighbours had called the police again. They did that, every time he and Buffy fought, and every time the police left without finding the lost room where the insane slayer tried to kill the vampire tending to her.
Invigorated by the panic, Spike managed to slip his fingers underneath Buffy's, and forced her hands off his throat. He pushed her off himself, and then planted his feet on the floor and used the leverage to throw her backwards. She landed next to the knife, and immediately grabbed it and lunged at him again.
This time he knew to expect it, however, and easily dodged her, grabbing her arm as she passed her and using her inertia to throw her against the wall. As she hit it shoulder first, the blade of the knife cut into her flesh and she gave a small yelp like a wounded animal before dropping it. The intoxicating scent of a Slayer's blood filled Spike's mind, calling the demon inside him, and he bit through his lip in an effort to keep himself from vamping because he knew that would only enrage her further.
He braced for another attack, but instead she just stood there, staring at the knife on the floor, her face a mask of empty confusion. He took the opportunity to push her towards her bed, and slip the chains back on her.
As he closed the heavy metal band around her wrist, Spike met her eyes and for a second he was looking at Buffy again, and not the creature that she had become.
"Buffy," he whispered, but then she was already gone, the fury of the First Slayer again the only thing reflecting from her eyes. He sometimes wondered where she went, and hoped that wherever it was, that she was happy there.
She struggled against the chains for a while before accepting her fate, and then just curled into a ball in the corner of the bed, watching Spike suspiciously.
There were apples all over the floor, some still red and shiny, others half-decomposed. He picked up one of the better ones, polished it against the leg of his jeans, and then tossed it to her. She sniffed the apple experimentally before taking a bite.
"Apple a day keeps the doctor away," he muttered, absentmindedly rubbing his sore throat. Of course, if he had kept the Doc away, there wouldn't be any need for the apples.
It was only now that Spike realised that all the drapes were gone and the windows broken. He had spent their first night in the apartment making it light-proof - covering the windows with heavy dark canvas and stapling it to the frames to make sure she couldn't open the curtains during the day.
She must have torn them off while he was away, and for a moment he wondered if it had been intentional - if she had hoped he wouldn't notice the missing drapes until the sun rose, if she had tried to escape her prison - or if it had been just a random act of destruction.
He stared out the window, looking for the first suggestion of morning's light in the horizon, and he thought about Prague and Dru and hiding in the cellar of an old bookshop with the mob and the blazing sun waiting outside, and he thought about the pact that she'd made with her. To burn together rather than be staked or captured - to bleed and bash and then burn. Embracing each other as they embraced the sun, going out in a blaze that would burn the world. The thought of the flames engulfing the old wooden buildings in their wake had kept them entertained until they had been able to escape the city.
Take it off me this way, we both burn.
He had almost done it after Buffy died. Holding her mangled body in the ruins of Glory's tower, with the first light of dawn creeping closer across the broken walls, he had wanted to burn with her like the women he'd once seen in India. She would have been his death and he would have been her pyre and it wasn't until Dawn - the other Dawn, the one that did not burn - had pulled him into the shade, screaming and crying, reminding him of his promise to Buffy, that he had let the dawn pass him by.
The window faced east, something he had not realised before, and for the longest time he stared at the window and the blue husk of the closing dawn behind the glass. Idly wondering if insanity was hereditary for vampires; if Dru had passed her madness on to him in her blood and it had just taken this long to reach his brain.
When he turned back into the room, he found that Buffy had fallen asleep. He could still smell her blood, a scent that filled his mind like a deafening red scream when he leaned closer to her, making his whole body ache with hunger. He could touch her, hurt her, press his teeth to her neck and bite down as she lay defenceless on the bed in front of him. He could drink her, let her fill him until they were one creature of living blood and dead flesh, and then he could let the sun burn them both. They would burn and the light of their fire would be glorious.
The chip wouldn't stop him; she was now just as much a demon as he was.
He touched her hair, carefully, and when she did not stir he pulled the pillow from under her head and then stopped dead. He could hear the birds outside, harbingers of the approaching dawn, could almost feel the sun behind the window, could imagine it climbing higher towards the zenith and the rays slowly crawling across the floor, closer, closer, until the morning would take him in an explosion of white light.
It's the merciful thing to do.
He had rarely wondered what it would feel like to die for good, his demon revelling in the now, heedless of past and future. But now he thought of all those times he'd been trapped in sunlight, and wondered what it would feel like to reach that point beyond the fire and the burn. If it would be like falling asleep without ever waking up.
Promise you'll take care of her
"I promise," he whispered, and put down the pillow.
His feet failing him, he fell back to his knees and rested his head on the bed. He absentmindedly licked his hand, still red with his own blood, and simply watched Buffy sleep until his own eyes grew heavy. He would rest, just for a moment, and then he would fix the apartment and go find a new place to shop for groceries. Apples and bread, cereal and chocolate bars. Disposable cups, plates and cutlery because of all the things he was willing to do for Buffy, washing the dishes was not one. And then, if he still had enough money left, he could go to the butcher's and buy some blood for himself. He closed his eyes, too tired to even feel hungry anymore.
Buffy shifted in her sleep and when he looked at her again, for a moment she was real-Buffy, not the mindless imitation she had been. He smiled.
As the sun rose outside the window, Spike pulled a blanket over his head to shield himself from the light and let the dawn pass him by.