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Nunc scio quid sit Amor -- by Kismet
Rating: NC-17
Description: Falling through a wormhole takes Buffy back to the 18th century, where she must face up to issues she dare not face in the present.
Note: Graphic, if romantic. Not much violence, but people with delicate sensibilities are NOT encouraged to send rude messages to me.
Disclaimer: All characters belong to Joss Whedon, but author retains rights over story, which can only be used with author's permission. A work of amateur fiction and no copyright infringement is intended.
'At last I know what Love is….' (VIRGIL)
'You're the same as me,
You breathe the air I breathe,
But you don't understand,
You don't understand…..
…Pray for them and pray for us,
Pray one day we can live as one,
Pray for our children whose Time is to come,
Pray they forgive us for the stupid things we've done….' (TINA COUSINS: PRAY)
She had fallen into a river, in the middle of what felt like winter in Antarctica.
Cursing every deity she knew by name, Buffy struck out blindly in the darkness, figuring that if she swam in one direction long enough eventually she would reach shore. The water was freezing enough to make her teeth chatter, but it wasn't salty so at least she knew she wasn't in the middle of the ocean.
A girl's life just can't get any better, she thought with heavy sarcasm, feeling her jeans drag her down on her. Her teeth were chattering together like castanets so she couldn't have spoken if she wanted to. At least she had been wearing jeans instead of her usual Bronzing clothes.
It had been a great, balmy night in Sunnydale, with drinking, music and dancing at the Bronze. Well, other people had danced. Willow and Oz had disappeared somewhere together, Spike was out of town and Xander and Anya had decided to take a quiet moment. The idea of Bronzing with Giles alone had been way freaky. So she had decided to go on patrol early.
Which was very smart, Buffy. Very smart..... "Ow !" The last was said aloud as her foot hit something hard. Then her other foot sank into something squishy and soft.
"Ugh !" But at least she had reached the bank,
As she pulled herself up squelching out of the water, the moon at last deigned to come out from behind its blanket of clouds. To her intense relief she saw the outlines of small boats, a pier and buildings. There should be a town or something close by. There had better be. She hadn't thought it possible but it was colder out of the water than in.
"This is just not your night, is it, Slayer ?" she asked herself rhetorically, the shivering beginning.
First you find that all your friends have disappeared because they're bonk-happy while you are on patrol alone because of the lack of a bonkable-other in your life. You spend a beautiful summer night sitting on a gravestone waiting for a vamp who doesn't show, then you fall through a wormhole into ice water.
"Ungh !" Her foot caught in a loop of frayed rope and she fell facedown into dark ooze.
Minutes later, she was staggering down a darkly tree-lined path. The wind had picked up, and her shivering was becoming rather violent. Her fingers and toes were numb. Buffy began to feel some real panic. As the oldest Slayer ever, she was tough and had met and vanquished her fair share of opponents, but this paralysing cold was something she could not fight.
Then she heard the sound of hoofbeats and her heart leapt.
By the glimmer of lanterns and the cold moonlight she could make out a carriage of some sort coming towards her. A carriage ! With horses ! Right now she would even have climbed into the back of a dump-truck, but a carriage....
Waving her arms, she ran out into the road. "Hie ! hie ! Stop !"
The horses were big, sweaty, steaming, smelly creatures. They were wearing blinkers and looked like giant monsters in the night, bearing down on her. She heard the snap of a whip as the carriage loomed up in front of her, coming inorexibly onwards.
At the last minute she managed to leap aside, rolling into the mercifully dry, leaf-filled ditch by the side of the road. The carriage went on as if nothing had happened, and all she had was a glimpse of the coachman's face, lit up eerily by the lanterns on either side of him, peering into the darkness from under what looked like a short top hat, the collar of his plain grey cape up around his face.
"T....th...the jerk !" He would have run her down, she knew it even as she crawled out of the ditch, wiching she had not worn the thin, rust-red halter-neck top with the keyhole neckline. She might as well have been naked. "W..wh...what hap...happened to th...the concept of hosp..pit..pitality ?"
All she had on her was $1.75 in loose change, three stakes, the clothes and boots she was wearing. She was covered with a layer of already-drying mud and her hair was matted to her skull. She must have looked like The Return of the Swamp Thing. Maybe that was why the jerk in the 18th-century costume had dashed off like that.
There was nothing for it but to get up and continue walking, forcing her mind to work to take the edge off the painful cold. She suddenly wished that Spike had not been out of town. Annoying though he might be, sarcastic though he might be, he would have been a comfort. Funny why he was the first one to pop up in her head and not Giles of Willow What time would it be back in Sunnydale ? Her watch face read 9.20. She had taken most of an hour to get out of the river.
Her thoughts were whirling disjointedly, she knew, and her knees gave out, dropping her into the middle of the path as she shivered, trying to stave off the slow, killing cold...
And she saw a glimmer of light through the trees.
With superhuman effort she lifted herself. Where there was light there was warmth, and warmth meant life. But this profound lethargy was coming over her along with the chill. There was ice in the puddles on the rough track onto which she turned and voices were whispering in her head.
Her mother telling her that if she left she could never come home again.
Oh my God, my baby. What does this mean...how could this be the truth and why...
Faith.
She's such a chirpy, high-morale little twit of a Slayer. And yet, she has all this: friends, support...does she know what it feels like to be lonely ? To be utterly alone ?
Staggering, another fall as the house came into view. Pain in numbed limbs. Breath coming fast and shallow and lungs burning. Dark carriage, horses.
Xander, after she had used him to make Angel jealous, watching her leave the dance-floor.
I knew it, I just knew it couldn't be true. You are who you are, and there wasn't a snowflake's chance in hell that she'd want you...
"Oh God," she rasped incoherently. "I'm sorry, I'm sorry." Tears pooled in her exhausted eyes.
Giles, uncomfortable on his first night at the Bronze.
They're all so young, so vital. It really makes one feel one's age again. A silly thought, they don't really want me here, but somehow I feel still obligated to protect her the way I failed to protect Jenny...
Spike.
Dru's gone. She's really gone. No point living anymore, mate, so why continue the charade ? In an ironic way that soddin' toff Angelus was right. What is the point of trying to make amends when forgiveness is not forthcoming ? Dru, I miss you so much....even your whining. The Slayer would like nothing better than to stick a stake in me, I know that, pet. I'm afraid, Dru. I'm flawed now, I'm something that can't do what it was made to do well. I'm weakened and I'm scared, love, and there's no one to listen...
"Spike," she murmured, dragging herself to the rough steps as the horses snorted from their makeshift shelter.
Then a scene in the kitchen where she was holding a dark-haired man, sobbing as though her heart would break. A man who had been human for a day, a memory she was not supposed to have.
"How can I continue, knowing what I know, knowing what we had and what we could have had ? I feel your heartbeat," she pressed her palm over his heart. "There's not enough time, there's not enough time..."
"You won't." There were tears in his brown eyes, clear tears. "No one will. This day never happened and only I will remember."
I do not know if I have the strength to carry this burden, but I do it because I love you. I love you more than life itself or sunlight that I've felt again after more than 200 years. The pain, the memory and the hard road shall be mine because life would be meaningless if I lost you, even human life. I love you, always remember this.
Her hand fell from rapping the door as the tears flooded down her cheeks. She was falling, falling down into the darkness that reached its claws up to her and would never let go.
The door swung wide open and she could still see the face of the man who stood there in breeches and hose, a black coat making his shirt's white stand out starkly in the night.
"Angel," she said, and fainted.
The man stood there for a moment, his shadow falling large and dark over the fallen girl.
"Who is it, Angelus ?" came the accented voice from the interior of the hallway, sounding irritated. "I smell..."
"Fresh meat. " The first man's human face receded to that of the demon's as he bent forward to pick up the fallen girl. "You were complaining of boredom, Spike ? The Devil's heard your prayers."
He lay on the bed in his shirtsleeves, shirt undone over his pale, blood-smeared chest. It had dried thick on his breeches as well.
It had been a good game this time, he thought as he took the pipe from his mouth. Little had the coachman and his son known that the two rich young gentlemen who had hired them for the trip to the let house had chosen them the way a man chooses a meal. He and Angelus could handle the carriage themselves till they reached the ports where the ships waited to take them to Ireland. One of Angelus' whims again, to return to his homeland for a visit, and to try out virgin 'vintages'. It was a short trip, not like the one to France where they had been forced to rely on bottled animal blood, and even than ran out when the mess clotted. That had been painful.
The son had screamed very satisfyingly even without his tongue, or his eyes. His mistake had been to babble something about Christ dying crucified when the railroad spikes had been driven into his hands and feet. Ordinarily, William preferred to listen to the outrageous things that his victims would spout when he administered his trademark coup dé etat.
The whipcord slender young man smiled, his blue eyes narrowing under thick dark brows. His emphasised cheekbones increased the resemblance to a hunting panther. He was pleasantly full now, as was his sire who was in the other room reading. He could not understand Angelus' fascination with books even when there was no pressing information to be gained from them. It was at his insistence and with his teaching that William himself had learned to write and improved his reading. As a vampire, it was relatively easy to grasp. Yet Angelus' habit irritated the hell out of him, as sometimes he preferred to stay home and read when his Child was itching to go out.
Plenty of things about his Sire were beginning to irritate him. He wanted out, wanted his say, but Angelus liked to be in control. When he said no he meant no, and could very well enforce his will onto his relative newborn, no matter how strong William was for his age.
William shivered slightly. Angelus teased him about his liking for torturing his victims, but Angelus could do far, far worse. That was exactly what kept him enthralled to his Sire, he suspected. The raw power. They fought more and more often now, mostly with himself on the losing end, but not tonight. Not with the warm sleeping body lying next to him.
Angelus had offered him a choice: get rid of the mutilated bodies or lug in hot water and bathe the girl. No prizes for guessing which he had chosen, though he doubted the neccessity of getting rid of the bodies. Even if this small town was a retreat for the rich, two servants could scarcely be missed, especially if they looked like they had been savaged by wolves. Humans never figured out that a wolf would rather eat rotting meat than the flesh of a man.
He let out a puff of smoke as he trailed one hand down the seductive curve of the girl's smooth shoulder. He could not have guessed that such a delectable little morsel had been hidden under all that mud and mire. She had been as cold as ice when he slipped her into the steaming water, but she had gradually warmed.
Undressing her had been a titillating experience. And the clothes...here was a mystery. Expensive, obviously well made, they had been stranger than anything in his experience. Tight thick trousers and a top that might as well have left her naked. No layers of cloth or stays or whalebone. And there had been the stakes.
Oh, they would have fun with this one ! Maybe not even mark her too much. He had had his violence for the night . A Slayer, Angelus thought, but he would not know for sure till he tasted her. It was a large thrill. She would be the first he had ever come across.
Putting his pipe away, William leaned over and inhaled her musky, blood-filled scent.
"Yes, little Slayer. You chose the wrong bloody door to come to tonight."
Slayer.....
She heard it in her mind, and like a fish seeing light through the murky water, she turned in the darkness of her sleep and swam towards the familiar voice.
She was lying in what felt like a soft bed. The warm glow of mellow light played on her eyelids. Then she moved and it slowly dawned on her that her hands were restrained above her head and there was nothing separating her skin from the sheets.
Buffy opened her eyes.
She was staring up at an open-beamed ceiling. There was a fire in the room, and she was warm. There was also someone sharing the bed with her.
She turned her head and nearly screamed in shock and relief when she saw a familiar face.
"Spike ! What have you done to your hair ?!" She stared incredulously. His hair was chin length, black and wavy as if it had been braided when wet and left to dry. With his pale skin and this new darkness, his blue eyes were even more intense.
He was stunned. How had she known the name that only Angelus called him sometimes ?
She tried to reach out and the chains jangled. She wriggled and flushed in embarrassment.
"This is not a funny game, Spike ! You'd better get up, unchain me and give me back my clothes before I kick your sorry ass into next week, and WHY are you covered with blood ?!" He had said once that he was going after Drucilla to 'torture her into loving him again', but she had not wanted to know about vampire sexual habits. S&M did NOT grab her.
Buffy gasped when his fingers closed around her upper neck, forcing her head back as he purred in her ear, "First of all, my name is William. And second, have a care with your tongue, love. It can be removed." Then his cold, wet tongue licked along her ear.
It stunned her into immobility. His Cockney accent was thick, very thick. And he had undressed her and licked her, and right now his tongue was tracing little circles in her ear...
"Starting without me ?" came a lazy voice from the doorway. It was so familiar she kicked out, scrabbling to sit up before remembering she had no clothes on under the sheet. "Angel !"
The older vampire started for a moment. "It wasn't a mistake then."
Spike rolled off the bed like a cat. "She knows our names, though why she would call you an angel is beyond me."
"So," Angel said silkily as he came towards the bed. "Have you been hunting us, sweeting ? For how long ?"
"Angel, I don't know what you're talking about," Buffy said a little shakily. This was freaking her out. Angel and Spike in the same room without trying to tear each other's throats out. "And I don't know where you got that wig," she tried to joke feebly. "Let me go, guys, or you're going to be sorry about this..."
"And why is that ?" He leaned over her, grasping her chin in his cold, strong fingers. Buffy looked into his eyes and stiffened with shock. Angel was not in them, which meant...
"Angelus." Angelus and Spi..William. With long hair and eighteenth century clothes. The oil lamps. The carriage that had nearly run her down. The cold. The wormhole.
Not only was she not in Sunnydale, she was not even in the 20th century. Which meant that she was in serious trouble.
Shocked into action, she kicked out suddenly, the sheets flying off as she struck Angelus squarely in the belly, driving him backwards across the room. She twisted up into a sitting position, desperately trying to free her hands which were shackled too close to the headboard for her to move properly. She felt the iron bite into her wrists as she saw to her despair that the headboard was not wood, but iron, twisted into pretty designs. Designs that would kill her.
Hands clutched her, making her strike her head on the bedpost and forcing her back down onto the bed, rolling her over onto her back even as she fought. Spike hissed at her, fangs distended in his game face as Angelus came up on the other side of the huge bed. Almost casually, barely winded by her blow, he stripped off his coat and began undoing the lacings of his white shirt.
"No." She shook her head wildly as it came to her. "No !" She thrashed and flailed, but with Spike holding down her legs there was little she could do as Angelus' cold, hard body came down over hers, his great weight forcing her into the mattress as Spike let go. The only other time she had been this close to him had been in tenderness, and he had always been careful to hold his weight off her, knowing that being head and shoulders taller as well as almost twice her breadth he would crush her. As he was doing now. She could hardly breathe.
He laughed at her struggling, moments before his human mask slipped away and he snarled at her with wild golden eyes. Moments before he sank his teeth into her neck.
The sucking was a powerful pull, drawing a torrent of her into him, making her head swim. Though it lasted only a few seconds it felt like forever and when he raised his head, gasping, she was dazed.
"Slayer blood," he rasped in a husky tone to his Child, who had settled beside them on the huge bed. "The Elixir of the Damned, and all the sweeter for being forbidden." He bent again and took a mouthful from the trickling bite, then leaned over and kissed Spike, letting the gush into his mouth.
This is not happening, her mind cried. The two men were sharing a heated kiss over her head, connected by her blood. She would die tonight. And even as this thought passed through her head, Buffy could still feel the strange sensation, part pleasure and part pain, that Angelus' drinking had raised in her.
Spike gasped. This compared to normal blood was like bloody whisky compared to gutter-water ! He sighed involuntarily as his sire broke the kiss, both their mouths smeared with blood. Then he looked down at her. She was beautifully golden against the pillows, not pale as was the fashion. He could feel the softness of her body against his side, smell the heated scent of her. Another lust rose in him.
Obviously Angelus had the same idea. He guided William's head to the softness of her inner arm as he undid his breeches, slipping out of them as easily as he had done the rest. Then he kissed her brutally, forcing her head back and her back to arch up, forcing her mouth open.
Then he reared back. Buffy had bitten him.
"You little termagent." Anger forced his desire higher as he pushed himself up on his forearms to meet her glare. He smelled blood and knew Spike had broken the skin and was drinking greedily. "Bitch," he said hotly as he stroked his hands down her tossing body, relishing the feel as she tried to heave him off. Then he kissed her again violently, his fingers digging into her shoulders so hard she gasped into his mouth and the tears rose into her eyes as he roughly drove his knee between her legs. "Let's see how strong you are now, Slayer."
She bit into her lip till she tasted blood as he roughly caressed her breast, his tongue licking around the nipple of the other one before he bit down, making her cry out incoherently. At the sound he came up again, his tongue sweeping into her mouth tasting of the coppery tang of her own blood as he thrust into her full-length, his pelvis pushing hers down hard into the bed. There was little resistance, because she was wet, making her hate herself with all her heart. It was not the same soul, but it was the same body and hers was responding.
He was not gentle as he slammed into her, taking her body in one way as Spike took her in another. She whimpered as he nuzzled her neck, opening a new wound there and lapping at the blood, making her vaginal muscles clamp involuntarily. Her head was whirling, stretching away out of her body...
By all the Devil in hell, this is Life, this is Blood, this is lust and hunger and craving....this is bloody sodding Blood of Christ ! Slayer blood, slayer blood, her blood....its like drowning and I don't want to save myself. Angelus, good God, do you know how it feels ?
I do. Like heat and warmth and excruciating, beautiful agony. The smell and the taste and the softness of her body with the dark red blood whizzing through all her veins and arteries, under this perfumed skin...like heaven.
Angelus gasped at the mental contact, foundering in his driving rhythm before he climaxed and spent himself in her. Spike reared up from the running wound in her arm, blood spilling down onto the pristine pillows as his blue eyes widened in shock. Buffy's body spasmed as a wave of hot, fulfilled pleasure washed through her and her mind collapsed back into her body.
"What the bloody hell was that?" Spike whispered.
Angel rolled off the girl, whose eyelids were fluttering slightly over her eyes as if she was dreaming in sleep. She gave a soft sigh. "I don't know, but it was...."
"Powerful," his Child finished for him. "Is this what Slayers do?"
"No." Angelus gazed at her in puzzlement. Then he felt her pulse and stilled. "She's still got a normal pulse rate. It's even stronger than usual."
"That can't be right, mate. We took enough to drop a horse!" Spike reached over and felt below her neck. "Bloody hell, you're right ! What in the devil is going on?!" He watched in amazement as her wounds sealed over again. Her head turned, and hazel eyes looked up at them.
"History can't be changed." Buffy gave a funny little laugh as it hit home. "Giles was right after all." She laughed again at the looks on their faces. "I can't die, and nothing you do tonight will change the future. Nothing. Nothing." It was all nothing, she thought with a sudden sob. Nothing.
Angelus rolled off the bed. "I'm going to check in the books about this." If Spike wasn't mistaken, he actually was shaken.
When he left the room the girl began to sob. Not pretty tears and soft little feminine noises. This was real and hard, so strong that it shook her shoulders and crumpled up her face. It was the sound of real grief, a sound he had thought women incapable of making, a sound he had not heard since his drunken father finally killed his mother in a beating one night.
Suddenly awkward as the memories came back to him, nothing felt more natural to Spike than putting out a hand to stroke her hair away from her face. He was totally unprepared for her to roll over against him, burying her face against the cold skin of his chest between the flaps of his open shirt. Actually seeking solace from him.
And it didn't seem so strange at the moment for him to hold her, resting his cheek on the top of her head amid her fragrant hair and soothing her as he would a horse. He loved horses, and she reminded him of a restive mare. "It's all right," he found himself saying inanely. "It's all right, love."
"No matter what I do," she sobbed, hot tears washing the blood off his skin. "I'll lose him in the future. I can't change what can't be changed ! It's not fair, it's not fair..." Her body heaved, choking on her own tears. "And I can't reach out to you even if I want to...bb..because you love Drucilla. You'll love her even if she doesn't love you....and I can't...I can't..."
Her words did not make sense, but her pain was real enough. He kissed her cheek and tasted hot tears, tears which made the lower part of him stir painfully to life. "Who says I don't love you, pet ?"
"I can't stand the loneliness any more. I can't be alone for the rest of my life while everyone else has someone...."
His demon's heart ached for her. He knew loneliness. He had known it as a child fighting to survive on the streets, seeing nothing but hostile faces all around him, people who would hurt him for no reason. He had known it with the rejection of his father. He knew it when Angelus lost himself in his books for days on end and he was desperate for contact, for reassurance...and he was speaking the truth. At this moment, he loved her.
He kissed her on the mouth this time, his tongue stealing past her lips and stroking hers languorously until she returned his kiss, tongue tangling with his and making him groan as his fingers traced the outline of her breast, marvelling at the soft, velvety feel of its heavy warmth. She arched her back to fill his palm with its heat, her warm body melting against the cold planes of his. He could smell her, thick and spiced and rich, and smell the different, musky scent of her arousal.
His fingers stroked lightly over her flushed skin, refusing to give more contact even as she writhed, pleading sweetly. He would make this long and slow and exquisite till they forgot everything but this. This and only this.
He nipped a trail down the sensitive column of her neck, delighting in her moans and whispered, fevered words before he opened a cut, sucking, lapping, licking at the blood that sent explosions of pleasure through his system. Such raw power, he thought, fingers trembling as he stroked her soft folds, making her gasp and bite his shoulder in the grip of her pleasure. She gave a half-sob as his fingers slipped deep inside her, stroking still, turning in her heat.
Pushing her over onto her back he parted her legs and slipped deep inside her, hearing her moan his name. A fount which could not die....something impossible which made his excitement unbearable. He circled his hips against hers, liking the whimpers and mewls she was making, the way she gasped his name. It struck him that they sounded much better than screams of agony. He felt powerful to be able to give this to her, to be able to bring her comfort.
Buffy's body strained, the pleasure so intense she felt that it would kill her as Spike bit down in the hollow of her neck and began suckling, a deep purr of pleasure coming from in his chest as they moved together.
And this was how Angelus found them when he came back, unable to find anything in the books he had brought that would explain it. The sensuality and intimacy of the scene made his breath hiss between his teeth as he watched his Child. His most beautiful get, and his strongest. What he felt was pride. The demon in him loved Spike with all his dark being. And the girl, the Slayer. There was something strange about her, something almost familiar as if he had known her well in a past life. Slipping into her had been like coming home.
The muscles in the girl's legs were delineated sharply under her golden skin as she clutched at Spike, a low cry coming from her as she was swept away only to be followed by him a few moments later. They collapsed into a tangle of arms and legs as Spike rolled partially off her, already half-drowsy with sleep.
He had no idea how long he stood there, watching them. Both so beautiful in different ways.
Then, silently, he went to the drawer and took out a key, unlocking the shackles around the girl's wrists. He would think about what to do tomorrow. They were safe enough from the sun in this house.
Taking the sheets up, he covered the sleeping pair, then slipped in on the other side of the girl, marginally surprised when she turned to lie against him. Two cold creatures on either side of a warm, living being, all falling into Sleep where they were equal.
She woke before they did, and somehow knew that the sun was up.
She could have gotten out of the bed and gone to get the stakes. She could have tried opening the shuttered windows. She could have turned two of the deadliest killers in modern vampire time to dust , or at least tried to even if History would not permit. Buffy did nothing.
They lay on either side of her, at different ends of an extreme. Dark prince and light prince. Even though Spike's hair was black, in her mind she always saw him as white-blond. One large, strongly and solidly built, the other whipcord slender and leanly muscled. One by nature quiet, brooding, a man of thought and books even now without a soul. The other full of repressed energy, always needing to go somewhere and do something. To challenge some boundary. The two men she loved and could not have in the future. Her vampire princes, lying on either side of her, keeping her safe.
It was poignant, being able to map their future. Their strong bond was palpable even if they did not like to show it, and it hurt her to know that time and their own headstrong characters would force them apart in the future, sow hate and resentment in with the love. Sire and Child, brother and brother. Lover and lover.
She closed her eyes and wished that this would never end. That they could stay here in the bed, together. Sooner or later, she knew, their inner demons would rise. She was not stupid enough to misle herself into thinking that they would turn good overnight because of her. They were dark by nature, and would not change till their time came. She loved them, darkness or not, for what they were.
There were many things which could happen short of their killing her. The danger came from them as much as anything else.
She reached up and touched Angel's face. She had never had the chance to experience this before, waking up with him in the morning to see his sleeping face. In sleep he was Angel, Angelus shuttered behind the loose mask of rest. And Spike, with his wavy dark hair and perfect bones. How young he looked in sleep.
She had to go back to the river. She had to find a way to get back home somehow, no matter how much some crazy part of her wanted to stay.
She peeled away the tangled sheets slowly, flushing as bare skin was uncovered and nerves jumping every time one of them moved or a breathing pattern altered. Sliding down between them like a fish, at last she gained the foot of the bed and crawled away, careful not to let the mattress shift too much with her weight.
It was cold. Very cold. Her clothes were also somewhere outside.
She picked up Spike's clothes, thinking them to be smaller and therefore a better fit, but they were stiff and unnatural feeling, and when she took her hand away it was covered with flaking dried blood. Buffy dropped the armful as if it could bite her. He had killed last night, they both had, and by the looks of it violently. She did not necessarily have to use stakes. Anything to pierce the centre of the torso would do.
Her fingers trembled as she picked up Angelus' coat and slipped into it, tiptoeing over the icy floor towards the door. Gingerly wrapping her fingers around the knob, she pulled the heavy door opened by degrees, willing it not to squeak or make a sound to give her away.
Obligingly, it swung open in perfect silence, and she turned to take a last look behind.
Spike was sitting up against the cushions, arms folded behind his head. His blue eyes glittered at her even in the gloom.
"Morning, pet. Going somewhere ?"
It had rained the whole day. Now it was evening and it was still raining.
She sat huddled up in a chair by the fire, one of Angelus' cloaks wrapped around her shoulders. Pride would have insisted that she not accept it, but Bronzing clothes had not been meant to withstand late autumn in England. The chains had been attached to a longer one anchored to a ring in the wall.
"I could turn you, whether you want it or not."
"You wouldn't succeed even if you tried." She stared into the fire, unwilling to put herself through more mental agony by looking at him. Not knowing what she knew. Not after remembering against all odds the Day that Never Was only to look up and see Angel missing from those brown eyes, only flashing through now and then behind the eyes of a stranger. "I need to go back, for all our sakes. I'm not supposed to be here."
"We're all not supposed to be here." His laugh was mockingly sinister as he rose and came over the floor towards her. "I don't even have to turn you, actually, to keep you with us. You can't die, do you know what that means ?" He knelt on one knee behind her, his hands heavy on her shoulders as he whispered in her ear seductively, "Do you know what eternal life means ? It can mean eternal pain, added in increments every day till the screams dry out and you can make no sound. All you can do is live with it, and suffer it, and beg to be released. There are even methods that would not even mark your lovely skin, sweeting." He curled a lock of her hair around his finger, resting his chin on her shoulder.
"You were never meant to know me at this time in your life." With supreme effort she controlled the shiver that wanted to go through her. He had sounded so very like Angel.... "Why do you want me anyway ?" she whispered. "A few moments of novelty is not worth snarling up Time for."
"You are a seer, sweeting. A prophetess. Do you know how much power you wield ? Even if I do believe your tale and take you for an unwilling visitor from the future, it would mean that you know what happens before it occurs. It may snarl up Time for others, but for me it would be another matter altogether." He chuckled low in her ear as he got up, thankfully, and moved away. "But I know this does not sound very tempting to you. You don't thirst after power, do you, Slayer ? Or maybe you do. All killers love power."
She stared into the fire, taking refuge in the ever-shifting patterns of the flames.
The front door slammed. Spike was back.
They heard his footsteps in the hallway, the pause and the soft sounds of him removing his cape and replacing his muddy boots. The footsteps came nearer and nearer until he was standing in the doorway, looking first at Angelus as if in some silent communication.
"You may like William's suggestion better." Angelus crossed his arms casually over his chest and gestured to his Child. "He wants you to stay for a far simpler reason."
"Bugger off," Angelus' cub growled. "The same reason you yourself want her for, among other things."
"You see," the master vampire said silkily. "We've realised that our lives are somewhat wanting, being devoid of female companionship. And there is something I will point out to you that might just change your stubborn little mind." His eyes gleamed with pleasure at this baiting, and the mental anguish he knew he was going to cause her. There were many types of pain.
Spike drew up a chair behind Buffy with a frown of concentration as he touched her tangled hair.
What on earth is he doing ? Buffy twitched away only to hear him growl again and feel him jerk her back to her former position. A trace of panic touched her. They can't be about to torture me...are they ?
Her eyes widened when she felt the comb parting the strands of her hair. Spike parted the honey-streaked mass into two sections and began combing in earnest. It calmed the itch in him to do something wonderfully. Something for his hands to do, and a very pleasant activity it was too.
"You are the impossible," Angelus told her. "A Living Fount. A never-ending source of blood."
"I'll bet you had all the ladies falling at your feet," she said sarcastically. "You're so good with compliments." The feeling of having her hair combed was something she remembered from childhood, and it was soothing at the same time that Spike's touch, little airy brushes and soft pulls at the more stubborn knots, was disconcerting. There was a pause as he put away the comb, then he brought down the brush through her hair, the sheer sensation of it making her scalp tingle and nearly making her moan. His fingertips massaged her scalp gently, teasingly as he continued pulling downwards with the brush. He was making love to her hair.
"You will never die." Angelus' voice blended almost hypnotically with the brushing. "With your gift, you could sustain the both of us for the rest of our lives."
"Which would be forever," she said distractedly, feeling the skin on her forearms prickle when Spike blew the fine hairs off her nape. He combed and teased and parted the corn-silk strands, transforming her hair into a drift of shaded gold and brown. It was as if he was unravelling her body from the tips of her hair right down to the soles of her feet. She had never dreamed the scalp could be an erogenous zone.
"And with your contribution, we would not have to feed outside so often."
Buffy's eyes snapped open. "Are you saying you'll give up killing ?" Her shoulders shuddered involuntarily when Spike began winding the hair on one side, forming intricate little braids in random places.
"Don't overestimate your importance, sweeting. We will kill for the sheer joy of killing, of course." His eyes glinted gold at her for a moment, fangs extending in a wolfish grin and brow ridges rippling before everything returned to normal. "But without the driving hunger, when we're sated with your rich blood, less will die." The boards creaked slightly as he came over to her, his smile compelling, wicked, seductive. Buffy gulped when he paused close to her. Her eyes were exactly on a level with his hip and groin, and in those breeches it was hard to miss anything. She turned her gaze away, cheeks flaming.
Bad Buffy, the little voice said sternly. Bad, bad Buffy. This is not the time to get horny, not with these two anyway. Crazy much ?
"Imagine," he said softly, looking down into the fire. "Even if you only save one life every week, in the years that come, how many lives would that add up to ? Will you turn away from them, from all those people crying for you to help them, to save them from these two vicious monsters ? Will you sacrifice all of them just so you can go back to your insipid little life ?"
"And becoming your glorified blood-doll would be better ?" Her breath hissed between her teeth as Spike cupped a hand to her head gently to hold up his work, his nails scraping ever so lightly over the upper ridge of her ear. The heat from the fire seemed to have transferred into her and she was dizzy from an unaccustomed lack of food, having refused to eat most of what Angelus had put before her earlier.
"History will not change, that is what you said, is it not ?" He knelt down on one knee in front of her, looking into her face, one of his hands settling on her knee and making the flesh burn. "It will not change no matter what you do, even if you never go back. Even if you stayed here forever. Then all those people will get to live their lives which would otherwise be so tragically cut short." He bent close to her. "All those children, Slayer. Do you hear their little voices ?"
"Stop it," she gasped, head teeming with his caressing, insidious voice, with the heat and with the sensations crawling over her skin. Spike was doing something to her hair, lifting it, fastening it, pulling some down. Patting it. She felt things being wound through, clipped, bound, every touch travelling through her very bones. Angelus' cold hand on her knee burned and made her want to rub her legs together against the ache even as her mind screamed out at her. She was hearing little voices, light children's laughter. This was how he had driven Drucilla so skilfully, exquisitely mad.
"Ah, but I don't think you want me to stop, do you, Slayer ?" His hand lifted to her shoulder, one finger trailing up and down her collarbone, dipping to trace patterns over the skin of her upper chest, going lower and lower till he was playfully pushing at the fabric of her top. She bit her lip but some of the moan still escaped and he laughed in victory as the hand cupped her breast. "Just tell me to stop, and I will stop."
Spike's hands came to rest on her shoulders and she shivered. "Beautiful," he pronounced.
Angelus looked up and his brown eyes gleamed in the firelight. "Where did you get the jewels ?"
"I decided to go to a dinner party some gentry were holding. One of the ladies had a strange urge to go out on the balcony for some cold, fresh air." Spike's grin showed teeth.
"It merely needs one finishing touch." Angelus looked at his Child for a few moments. No words were needed.
Buffy tried to put up an initial resistance, but it felt as if her bones had turned to jelly. Spike lifted her to her feet easily, wrapping his arms around her so she felt him pressed up behind her even as his Sire began feathering little kisses down her belly through her top. Her head tossed back on Spike's shoulder, and she was lost as deft fingers unbuttoned her jeans.
Angelus undressed her as he would a fine china figurine, enjoying the sweep of her skin and the warm softness of her flesh. He could rend that flesh later if he wanted to, mar the beauty of the skin with a knife or with his nails and teeth. But tonight he felt no need for violence. Spike's fingers did not fumble with the zip-fastening of her top even though it was strange to him, the satiny material slipping easily off her. As a finishing touch, Angelus removed the shackles.
Between them they turned her in the firelight, breath catching involuntarily. The firelight outlined her in profile, touching the clean lines of her body with red and gold. She was a heathen goddess of summer and the harvest, gilded in the light. Her hair was caught up almost carelessly on top of her head with chains of aquamarines and diamonds set in exquisitely tooled silver discs, half of it in loose little braids and the other part gloriously loose, spilling down her shoulders and upper back, soft curls and waves falling to frame her face, and the dark gold of its rich colour was repeated all down her body. Her eyes were heavy and half-lidded, her lips slightly parted as she breathed. The light picked out a light dusting of fine down on her body, otherwise invisible.
It was this down that made Spike reach out and draw the silver-backed brush he had been using gently across her flank. Her sharp, indrawn breath woke them from their reverie.
Buffy mewled in her throat as the brush moved up her body, caressing its curves and hollows, outlining a circled around her neck before moving down her back. Angelus' cold fingers were on her thighs, parting her legs a little way, then they were parting the very core of her. She cried out incoherently, catching hold of his head, pressing him to her.
Spike kissed her long and insolently as the brush stopped its merciless teasing and clattered unheeded to the floor. He was very young. His passions were fierce and simple and he fulfilled their demands with a child's ruthlessness, loving and hating with his whole being. He was not the man he would become given time. Not yet. There was a tender core to him still. His bloody games were a child's games of curiosity, but now as he kissed her he felt the stirrings of an emotion that would be the basis of his true adulthood.
They brought her down onto the floor, moving over her, tasting her as delicately as if she was a fine wine. Holding back for that moment they both hungered for.
She gasped when they broke the skin, each on one side, and when the blood flowed the blurring and melding began again.
Stripped of all the passions, hidden resentments and power-play, the two vampires met each other through the medium of her blood, rediscovering each other wonderingly and speaking without the cumbersome burden of words. It was a connection of the purest sort, filtering everything away till only Love showed through so strongly that even when decades put themselves between the two, they would always have a hazy image and a strong sense of this moment.
"I love you," Buffy whispered achingly to the both of them as her hands tangled in black hair and brown. "God help me, I love you." She didn't speak another word for a long time after, not even when someone lifted her and carried her into the bedroom where it all began over again.
The hands of her watch moved slowly, unnoticed, on Angelus' desk, winding their way upwards as the stars shone faintly in the cold winter sky.
In the bedroom, Buffy was falling asleep, knowing that Angelus had won.
The hands moved into place. 9.20.
And in the bed there was suddenly a vacuum of empty space.
"It is done safely," said the voice, strange in tone and inflection, inhuman and yet definitely male. "But will the effects be as we predicted ?"
"She is unharmed," the female voice replied as they watched the girl climb out of the hole, dragging her clothes out with her moments before the ground rippled and the hole was no more. They watched, unmoving, as she turned around wildly and began ripping at the grass, tearing at the ground as if she would claw through the earth with her bare hands.
"Will she survive the trauma ?" asked the male voice, a little doubt making itself heard. "I agreed to this to strengthen our standing, not to lose a valuable warrior to the ravages of the mind. Lower beings are notoriously fragile in that way." The girl was crumpled up on the grass, sobbing.
"Patience," said the woman. "We must use what we have and this was what we had to do. We can add a third warrior to this particular duo. The little incident will see to it. Lower beings are weak in that way, I agree. It makes things easy if one knows how to play the right keys."
"We must be careful," warned the male voice. "Love, anger and hate are things not even we or the Powers-That-Be can control. We can merely guide, and if we step wrongly they could spiral out of control. History can be molded, not by actions but by subtle seeds in the mind."
"You should have more faith." The female sounded somewhat tart. "They are the most powerful of all our fighters, and now they will be more powerful still. They are irrevocably tied to each other now, and as all know, the bonds that Love makes will survive even the fires of Hell, or the emptiness of Nothing." She broke off. "There is a supplicant at our door."
"The duties never cease." The male shifted. "Some other poor being come to seek the advice of the Oracles."
"I hope they brought me a nice gift."
Time rewound itself and replayed in planes never meant for the sight of any living spark.
Two shadows lurked in the trees around the path. In the distance the walls of the convent could be seen. The bells had stopped ringing hours ago and dark was on the path.
The novice hurried, clutching the modest hems of her skirts in her worried haste. She was late, very late. The abbess would not be pleased.
One of the shadows licked its lips in the dark. She was a Seer. He had to have a Seer. And an innocent. A lovely, guileless innocent. What a Daughter of Darkness she would make. A Black Queen.
Images flitted through his head. Once, his hazy memory whispered, the Queen had been Gold. Then his head lowered as all thought passed from him. The predator came to the fore, and he stepped out of the trees, knowing the other shadow had gone to block off the road.
The stream ran on, gurgling as usual, surface barely touched by the appearance of hidden stones in the depths.
She was mad. Insanely, irrevocably mad.
He knew something had gone seriously wrong somewhere without him intending it to, but he loved her anyway. Loved her to distraction.
This time it had worked, his mind whispered to him. This time there had been no waking up to find something gone.... He shook his head, faintly puzzled by images he could not grasp nor understand. Angelus had broken through to her. They had played the game out, and now she would stay. Together in sickness and in health, through all the nights that would follow.
Tick-tock tick-tock. Time running non-stop.
He had left them, the bloody bastard ! Disappeared into the night and left them adrift, without an anchor to hold them down.
He felt the panic bite at him. He felt betrayed, abandoned. The worry stiffened his body and preyed on his mind. Was he dead ? Had he been caught and killed by others...by humans ? He envisioned a mob as he had seen it at a witch burning once. Mad cries and insane eyes, torches and pitchforks held aloft, soft beings turned into monsters with steel claws and burning brands, from which there was no escape, no escape...
The glass smashed under his hand. Wood splintered and crunched. His roar of rage echoed in the dark damp of the basement. "You soddin' bastard !" His eyes glowed cold yellow in the dark. "Where the bloody hell are you ?!"
She called to him, then, singing in a child's voice in the dark. And he went to her, gathering her up fiercely, protectively. She was all he had left. They had love, they would survive.
That was the reason why he feared. Because he loved him. That's why it hurt. Because he had left.
Don't go out once midnight has struck, for that is the Witching Hour....
The Seventies. Free love had passed. Wars had passed. Modern kingdoms and aristocracies had risen and fallen. Society as we knew it had been irrevocably changed. The world was bright and wild and full of colour, yet with none of the desperation and the tearing towards destruction that had marred the Sixties.
It was a beautiful time to be a vampire. If one did not have a soul.
He had nightmares now. Horrible dark dreams of atrocities and chilling laughter, of death and needless carnage. And he was the starring character. He was afraid to sleep. He was afraid of the loneliness. He was cut off, a killer of his own kind.
And he knew that his love was out there somewhere in the great wide world. Wandering somewhere, living still with the tenacity that he always had. He longed sometimes to search for him, to see him again in his lean, vicious beauty and to crush him in an embrace. He couldn't.
Sometimes he did not have nightmares. He had dreams instead of a sweet voice, the smell of blood and honey and vanilla and the strange, great freedom of knowing that he could drink at a fount that would never die. He saw a flash of hazel eyes and a silhouette before a roaring fire. He had no inkling where the images came from.
Ding-dong Bell.......
"You were my Sire....you were my Yoda !" He felt a tearing grief and an immense sense of betrayal. Anger and Love are a potent combination which put strength he did not know he had into the blow......
Shift.
I know this, his mind said. I know this feeling, this joy, this melding.
Her small arms tightened around his neck as he whispered her name, moving faster, their bodies sliding smoothly against each other in the bower of her bed. In her, a place he had never been yet which felt like home.
When his back arched and his body jerked at the peak, it was the happiest moment he could remember having.
Shift.
He watched his Child through narrow eyes as he nuzzled her neck, hearing her mad laughter and feeling the soft mass of her black hair. The flare of jealousy that rose in the blue eyes made his own jealousy rise as if oil had been thrown on the flame. He was jealous because that love was, in a way, meant to belong only to him.
Shift.
He stared at her across the dark room. Both of them were tense, both ready to spring at each other to fight to the death, the only thing stopping them being their mutual desperation and their need for each other's help, unlikely as it was. He needed her help to rid himself of the one who twisted and confused him so. Hate and Love and memories of happy times along with betrayal.
He could not understand why he reacted to her so. Something about her drew him irresistibly even though they were enemies in the truest sense of the word, as if he had known her and wanted her with this hunger before. Her smell was all things rich and sweet and spicy to him.
"OK." Her chin came up stubbornly. "Truce."
Spike stood in the old mansion, wondering what on earth he was doing here. Unsigned notes were sure signs of a trap, yet he was standing here like a bloody nonce.
His fingers itching for something to do, he pulled out a pack of cigarettes from the pocket of his sleek duster, putting one white cylinder to his lips. His hands were steady as he held the lighter flame to its end.
The crunch of a shifting footfall made him whirl around, ready in case of an attack. Preternatural eyes saw immediately the form in the shadows.
"If you know what's bloody good for you, you'll come out," he snarled. He wanted to kill tonight, to tear and to rend to cure this jumpiness in him.
There was a pause, then the figure walked out into the shaft of moonlight. "Hello, Spike."
He took the cigarette from his lips before astonishment could make him drop it. "Why, if it isn't the bloody wanker himself, come all the way from the City of Angels to bug the hell out of me." He felt the frission as he always did when he set eyes on Angel. Damn the sod ! He shouldn't be having this effect on him any more, not since he became a master vampire. Spike had to admit he looked better in these modern fashions. Except for the poufy hair, but anything was better than the long mops they had had in the old days.
There was a flicker in the shaded brown eyes. So, he still had it in him, did he ? The glint of the killer. Well, well.
"Did you send me the note ?" Angel said. The white-blond hair never failed to shock him for the first minute. Spike was hard-edged now, with mature assurance that the newborn cub had lacked. He had made his own way in the world, even if it was on the wrong side of the tracks.
Spike swore. "I didn't send a note, I got one ! Will someone please tell me what the bloody 'ell is goin' on 'ere ?"
"I sent the notes."
Both heads turned in shock as the slight girl stepped out of the shadows.
"Buffy !" said Angel, his heart tearing at the memories of one Perfect Day.
"Slayer !" said Spike, his heart leaping ridiculously the way it always did when she was near. It had increased the height of its leaps since Drucilla's absence.
Buffy felt choked as she looked from one to the other, knowing what she knew. "Angel, Spike. I sent you the notes. I called you here. Things have been, strange lately, and I think we need to talk."
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