Fic: Arriving Somewhere Not Here - Chapter 3

[shipperx]

TITLE: Arriving Somewhere | Not Here
RATING: R
PAIRING: Spike/Buffy
ENSEMBLE: Lindsey, Dawn, Eve, and Others
DISCLAIMER: We all know that they aren't mine. They belong to Joss. Consider me disclaimed.

SUMMARY: In the year 2021, the world has gone to hell. When Spike assists a Watcher on a quest to retrieve a stolen artifact, he crosses paths with Buffy for the first time since "Chosen." Post-"Not Fade Away"

Previous chapters here


Chapter Three


Buffy tapped her nails against the Hummer’s armrest. To her the clicking said, “Something is wrong. Something is wrong.” But as she waited for Spike to return to the car, she couldn’t place her finger on what.

An unhappy-looking Berris leaned forward from the back seat. “You don’t object to this?”

Why did Berris act like he hadn’t been in the car listening when the decision had been made?

“I objected. I just, you know—“ she grimaced “ –stopped.”

“I never would have suspected that you would support abduction.”

She laughed in an uncomfortable ‘please don’t call me on this’ way as she rolled down the window, hoping to catch a breeze. It felt like a sauna in the car. “I guess it’s how you define ‘abduction’.”

“I define it as capturing someone, taking them somewhere against their will, and using them as a hostage.”

“Oh.” A glint of light caught Buffy’s attention, and she bent to retrieve the ‘grail’ from the floorboard. “Well, if you’re gonna put it like that...” She turned the cup, watching the plastic jewels wink in the moonlight. What about this pissed Spike off? He’d glared at her when she’d carried the cup to the car.

She glanced at Berris. “You know what this is?”

Berris took the cup and examined it for three seconds before dismissing it. “It’s a stage prop.”

She got it. No distractions for Buffy. He looked determined to talk about the ‘abduction’ thing.

Buffy sighed. “Look, I know it’s not something covered in the Watcher Handbook.“

“It may be.”

“What?”

He said, “Hostage taking is a very old practice dating back to the Crusades. Eastern European knights adopted the practice when battling the Ottoman-Turks. ” At her look, he regrouped. “I’m sure The Watchers have protocol for it.”

“Okay.” She hadn’t been looking for a history lesson. “So you get it. To avoid an ambush, we changed locations. The old Wolfram and Hart office instead of the new one in Beverly Hills.”

Spike had looked so proud of himself when he’d explained that he hadn’t slashed Lindsey’s tires solely for the malicious glee of it. That had been a fringe benefit. He’d done it to gain a head start on Lindsey.

“Can’t exactly call ahead to relocate the demon hordes, now can he?” Spike had said.

“Uh, actually…” She’d held up her cell phone, and then slid it open so that the LED screen brightened and glowed.

Spike had done a double-take. “What the—“

“Magic,” she’d said.

“Bugger.”

So he’d hatched Plan B.

“It’s insurance,” she said to Berris. “Lindsey is less likely to lead us to the slaughter if we’re with someone he cares about.”

“I understand the plan,” Berris said, looking offended. “I’m simply surprised that the Slayer—“

“A Slayer,” she said. She hadn’t been the Slayer in a very long time.

She rubbed her side. That was one of the things they didn’t tell you when you were young, or maybe it was just that no Slayer had lived long enough to know, but as Buffy had grown older she’d learned that even if injuries healed, they never entirely went away. Sometimes, they ached.

“You’re freaking,” she said, and she wasn’t only speaking about Berris. “That’s okay, but sometimes you have to break the rules.”

“I’m not—“ Berris appeared to force himself to say the word “ –‘freaking’.” He set his jaw, causing Buffy to notice that it looked surprisingly square and well-defined. “It’s for Dawn.”

Fierce determination could be heard in his words and, for the first time, Buffy thought she saw a hint of what had attracted her sister.

Berris sat back, half-shrouded in shadow. “If I am honest. I have to tell you that I would countenance virtually anything that would save Dawn.”

Buffy nodded. She felt the same way.

With his forearms resting on his thighs and his hands clasped, Berris leaned forward again. “Would you mind if I asked a question?”

Inner alarm bells went off but Buffy said, “Sure.”

“Did you ever regret it?”

She froze. “Regret what?” She had a million regrets. “You might want to narrow it down.”

“When you walked away from the Slayers, was it painful?”

Buffy felt trapped.

“God, it’s hot in here,” she said, throwing open the Hummer’s door to jump onto the street. It wasn’t any cooler outside the SUV, but it didn’t feel as claustrophobic.

She heard Berris’s door open, and she fought the urge to run. Instead of looking at him, she gazed at the bonfires down the street, wondering what motivated people to light such fires in temperatures like this. Were they that desperate for light? For protection?

Berris came to stand beside her, but he didn’t say anything. If he had, she could have made some joke or thought of some evasion, but he was smart. He left her with silence to fill.

“I didn’t just ‘walk away’,” she said.

No, she’d quit first.

“There were Slayers to spare.” She winced as she realized that it sounded like she thought that Slayers were disposable. When the truth was…

She glanced at Berris. “Faith was there. She was good at it. She made a good leader.“

How was that for irony? The Black Sheep Slayer had turned out to be the best option for General-slash-mother-hen.

“I wasn’t needed,” Buffy said. “The world hadn’t gone pear-shaped yet, so I retired. I got a life.”

There. A simple explanation. It made even made sense. Sort of. But it wasn’t the whole truth.

Her mind obediently skittered past most things that she didn’t want to remember, but the hours leading to her ‘quitting’ unwillingly sprang to mind.

She’d been in Giles’s office when Andrew had returned from a ‘secret mission,’ inspiring her to bitch about Andrew having a ‘secret mission’ in the first place. And, no, a busload of Slayers accompanying him hadn’t made the concept of using ‘Andrew’ and ‘mission’ in the same sentence any more acceptable.

Andrew had returned with a new Slayer in tow, and that Slayer had been crazy, Drusilla kind of crazy. She’d had dark, lank hair and an almost dead look in her eyes. She’d also been in a straight-jacket, leaving Buffy slack-jawed and saying ‘Wha--?’

Giles had explained that the girl had endured the kind of abuse that caused Buffy to look back at her divorced parents and absentee father and think that her childhood sounded like an endless string of chocolate chip cookies and sunny Christmas mornings by comparison. The Slayer – her name was Dana – had been captured and tortured by a serial killer who had driven her insane.

“But why the straight-jacket?” Buffy had asked. “We should be helping her, not locking her up.”

As Buffy moved to release Dana, Giles had said not to.

Too late. Dana had tackled Buffy.

“Heart and head,” Dana had said as she’d thrown Buffy to the ground. “Stake through the heart and cut off the head. Keep cutting until you see dust.”

Buffy had struggled from under Dana, stunned by girl’s strength and ferocity. Giles and two Slayers, whose names Buffy had forgotten but she thought one of them might be named Rowena or Rona or… something. The one she thought was Rona had pulled Dana off Buffy and restrained the madwoman until Buffy could stand.

Dana had screamed. “There’s blood on your hands!”

There wasn’t. Not literally. Buffy had known that even as she’d brushed her hands against her jeans trying to wipe it off. She’d felt scared, and not just because Dana had knocked her down.

Dana had been strong, but it hadn’t been strength that had overwhelmed Buffy. She’d taken Buffy by surprise.

Buffy hadn’t expected this, not the rage or the pain or the bitter snarl on Dana’s face. Dana had twisted with feral, desperate effort, trying to pull away from the Slayers that held her. She had reminded Buffy of a stray cat that she’d once seen cornered by a pack of dogs in an alley in Sunnydale. The dogs had salivated with eagerness tear the cat to pieces and, knowing that it was doomed, the cat had stared back with equal parts terror and fury in its eyes.

As Dana had struggled, her hair falling over her face like a deranged Cousin It, she had yelled at Buffy. “There is nothing good or clean inside you! You’re dead inside! You can’t feel anything real!”

The words, shocking in their familiarity, had hit Buffy like a punch. She had stepped back, feeling disoriented, flushing with shame, and glancing at Giles and the girls to see whether they had understood.

While the younger Slayers had preoccupied themselves with dragging Dana from of the room, Dana’s gaze had remained trained on Buffy. “Hands that held yours,” Dana had said. “I cut them off. There’s blood on my hands now!”

There had been a bump and a thud as one of the Slayers had kicked the office door closed behind them before they dragged Dana to God knows where.

What did you do with someone like that?

Buffy had felt sick. Even through the thick slab of oak she had heard Dana scream. Not with accusations. Not with words. Just an incoherent wail—deep, primal, and tortured.

After a moment of anguished silence, Giles had adopted a business-like tone as he explained about Dana while placing books on shelves and shuffling though papers. He’d told her that Dana had been in a psychiatric hospital and that she was unstable.

The last part had been obvious.

He’d also explained that, like Buffy, Dana had Slayer dreams.

Slayer memories, Buffy had thought and had turned away, unwilling for Giles to glimpse the look of mortification that must have been on her face. Even if Dana had only glimpsed Buffy’s past, that had been too much.

Buffy had asked, “Did I cause her to be like this?”

Again Giles had reminded Buffy that Dana’s mental problems were long standing. Nothing that Buffy had done had caused Dana to go insane.

But that wasn’t all that Buffy had meant.

“Is she dangerous?” Buffy had asked, remembering her own bout of demon-induced insanity. She had tried to kill her sister and her friends.

Giles had looked grave and had said that Dana had harmed several people.

“How many?” Buffy had asked. How many injured? How many dead?

“A few.” He’d grimaced. “Several. We know of at least seven that she’s killed. And she maimed S—“ he had closed his eyes and taken a breath “—some who attempted to aid her.”

Buffy hadn’t physically staggered when she’d heard the words, but inside it had felt like she had. “ Seven. Because of me.”

Giles had seen no reason for Buffy to feel responsible and had stated that fact quite forcefully.

In contrast, Buffy’s voice had been soft and uncertain. “How many people would Dana have killed if she hadn’t been super strong? If she didn’t have a Slayer’s instincts?”

Heart and head. Stake through the heart. Cut off the head. Keep cutting until there is dust.

Giles had looked away and, as answers went, that had been enough.

It was strange what made breaking points. That morning in Giles’s office had not been the worst day of her life. She had faced worse consequences, had suffered greater losses, had been more fatally disillusioned in the past. But that had been the one. She hadn’t even consciously formed the words before they had popped out.

“I quit,” she’d said and had walked away.

Buffy glanced at Berris, his face lit by the flickering amber light of the fires burning up the street. He wanted to know whether leaving Giles and the Slayers had hurt.

Hell, yes, it had hurt. But leaving hadn’t hurt as much as the alternative. It hadn’t hurt like watching her friends be maimed or die. It hadn’t hurt like killing someone you loved or knowing that you’d sent him to his death ‘for a good cause.’

Looking back, Buffy suspected that the Shadowmen had known what they were doing – high-handed and a little evil, but they had been competent. They’d chosen young girls, conditioned to do what they were told, to please people, to not question too deeply what they were doing. And, before her, Slayers had always lived lives too short to have too many regrets.

Maybe that had been merciful.

Slayers hadn’t lived to question their choices a thousand times or to rethink battle tactics of an army of young girls, most of whose names she had never bothered to learn. What if she’d blown off the roof of Sunnydale High, cracked open the Hellmouth, and exposed it to the sun? They could have at least stood on the upper side of the bottleneck playing the Ubie version of Whack-A-Mole.

Would that have saved one girl? Ten? Would Anya still be around to hector Xander?

And shouldn’t she have had Willow do the empowerment spell before they’d gone into the fight? Why hadn’t she? It was stupid.

There was the question of whether they should have done the empowerment spell at all. Look at what it had done to Dana, a girl who was already tortured, but who had only been tortured more by being given power that she could neither understand nor control. And for what? To save the world?

Buffy looked up the garbage-strewn street and breathed the stench of burning tires. The smoke remained trapped close to the ground due to the heat haze blanketing the city.

This was saved? And had she even done the saving? Angel had given her the amulet and Spike had been the one to use it, destroying the vampire army even as he had destroyed himself.

And the tattoo rhythm of ‘something is wrong, something is wrong’ that had been knocking around the back of Buffy’s head finally clicked into place.

“Idiot,” she said, standing bolt straight. “He’s got a price on his head.”

She started in the direction that Spike had gone, only to have Berris yell, “Wait!” He jogged to catch up with her. “Shouldn’t I go with you?”

She looked up the street, but the light of the bonfires made it impossible to see anything beyond them. Then, she glanced back at the SUV, remembering that Spike had said that they might need a quick getaway.

“You should stay,” she said. “Keep an eye on the car. Spike and I can handle whatever needs handling.”

Berris gave her a look that had doubt written all over it, but he didn’t protest when Buffy tossed him the keys to the Hummer before heading towards the fires. They were pretty, if burning piles of trash could ever be called anything as prosaic as ‘pretty.’ Still, there was something to be said for the way that tiny flecks of glowing red embers wafted upward mixing with and becoming soft gray ashes that fell to the ground like snowflakes. It was kind of dreamlike and remained dreamlike as Spike strode out of the darkness.

She felt strange. She was used to thinking of Spike as being dead.

“Plan won’t work,” he said as he passed her, heading towards the car. She thought she heard him mutter, “Plans never work. Bloody waste of time.”

“Hey,” she said, catching his arm and tugging him to a stop. “What do you mean? And where have you been? You’ve been gone a half hour. Oh, and did you forget that you have a price on your head?”

Spike stood, a black-clad silhouette outlined by red-orange firelight. He said, “One, meant what I said. Plan won’t work. Second, only been gone ten minutes; don’t exaggerate. Third, no one is looking for me.”

“Right, because ‘price on your head’ totally translates to ‘no one is interested.”

“It was a long time ago. A group thing. Pissed off the Circle of Whatsit. It wasn’t about me.”

“And they made that clear by posting ‘Wanted: Dead or More Dead’ posters?”

“No posters.” Behind him, one of the fires collapsed, sending a spray of sparks into the air where they flared then disappeared without a trace. “Look, it’s been over sixteen years. Wasn’t hiding. Anyone wanting to find me, could’ve.” He started towards the car.

“Hey,” she said softly, stopping him again. “Why won’t the plan work?”

Spike didn’t turn around. “He doesn’t care.”

She was reasonably certain that ‘he’ was Lindsey. “You thought he cared before,” she said.

“I was wrong.”

“But you seemed so certain. What changed your mind?”

“He left her there. You love someone, you don’t leave ‘em when they’re in trouble.”

Buffy tried to piece things together. She was reasonably certain that ‘he’ was Lindsey. “You thought he cared before,” she said.

“I was wrong.”

“But you seemed so certain. What changed your mind?”

“He left her there. You love someone, you don’t leave ‘em when they’re in trouble.”

A sense of unease crept over Buffy. Just breathe, she told herself, filling her nose, throat and lungs with hot, dry air.

“What kind of trouble?” she asked. She sounded calm, right? She thought that she sounded calm.

Spike began to pace, crossing from one side of the street to the other. “Thought it was a business. Part of Wolfram and Hart.”

“It’s not?” What’s not?

“Oh, it’s a business, alright. And owned by Wolfram and Hart, but behind the façade, it’s a den of iniquity.”

“Den of—“ She frowned. “Are you being literal or British euphemisticky?“

He gave her a look of ‘huh?’

“I mean, aren’t all evil businesses ‘den of iniquities’?” she asked. “They’re evil. What does this one do? Have executions for entertainment?”

“It’s a brothel.”

Oh. “That’s Victorian sounding.”

“Then call it a Pay-per-fuck,” he said. “‘S the same thing. And if he loved her, he wouldn’t’ve left her there, being passed around like a slab of meat. No decent man would.” He stopped pacing, closed his eyes, and said, “Bollocks.”

“We’re re-writing the plan, y'know.”

Spike tilted his head to crack his neck as he muttered, “Don’t even like the bint.”

The two of them headed down the street, walking side by side for almost a half mile before coming to a nightclub named Hyde. She thought it looked like ‘Night of the Living Dead’ meets ‘Studio 54.’ Or maybe it just looked like ‘Studio 54.’ Buffy was too young to know. But she did know that the place looked like a freak show, and, though there was a smattering of demons milling behind the velvet ropes begging bouncers to let them inside, most of the crowd were vampires.

How old school, she thought.

The vampires’ enthusiasm to pass some nebulous coolness test and be admitted to the club made Buffy wonder whether this place was ‘the’ Hyde, infamous hang-out of pantiless pop stars and anorexic socialites in the days before the apocalypse had hit L.A.… Although maybe pantiless pop stars and anorexic socialites had been a sign of the apocalypse.

Spike touched Buffy’s arm and directed his head in a silent ‘this way.’

“But I thought…” She indicated Hyde.

He caught her hand, his cool palm pressing against her hot one, his long fingers lacing with her own, as he led her to an alley.

Of course it would be an alley.

He said, “There’s a VIP room ‘round back.”

She arched a brow. “Where they offer special services?”

Headlights flashed up the street, and Spike pulled her so that they melted into the shadows between the entrance of the alley and the dumpster sitting just inside it. The long, black limousine turned the corner to park in front of the VIP entrance, and a burly chauffeur, who looked like an extra from The Sopranos but who caused Buffy’s Slayer senses to itch, got out of the car as Hyde’s nondescript back door swung open allowing two beefy bouncers holding clipboards to come outside.

Buffy looked at Spike and mouthed a silent ‘now what?’ as the bouncers checked their admittance list.

What was Spike's plan? She suspecting that the answer would involve the words ‘kicking’ and ‘ass’ – or, for Spike, ‘arse.’

Behind them, there was noise on the main street. A voice said, “Dude, I’ve had it with the losers at the door.”

Buffy peeked around the corner to see a half dozen game-faced vampires that dressed and acted like drunk frat-boys staggering down the street.

“I know,” said one dressed in khakis, pink oxford shirt, and striped tie. “We’re cool. Cool like ice.”

“Cool like glaciers,” another one said. “If there were any left.”

“There are glaciers left. They are melting, but they haven’t all melted already.” In the face of his frat brothers synchronized glares, the vamp chimed, “Cool like…”

Spike tapped oxford vamp on the shoulder. The vampire turned and Spike punched him in the jaw, sending oxford vamp stumbling into frat-vamp number two, who didn’t take it very well.

There was yelling, then wrestling, then a full-scale brawl. The crowd at the front door yelled “Fight!” and gleefully joined the mayhem, which caught the attention of the bouncers at the VIP door. Loathe to miss the opportunity to bash together frat-vamp heads, the bouncers shoved their clip boards at the chauffer and jumped into the bone-breaking fray.

Buffy and Spike looked at each other, quite satisfied with the mess that Spike had made, and then they slipped through the VIP door.

The place didn’t look brothel-y, at least not the way that brothels appeared in Buffy’s imagination. There was no flocked red wallpaper or girls lounging in transparent lingerie. Instead, Buffy found a room where a pounded copper ceiling shimmered with the light of dozens of candle sconces mounted above leather-upholstered banquets surrounding wood tables. Overall, the look of the VIP lounge was upscale yet earthy. It felt almost cozy.

“Pfft,” she said. “Overrated.”

Spike pointed to a woman in a carnelian red silk dress sitting in a booth on the opposite side of the room. “That’s her,” he said.

And Buffy couldn’t say why the scene in the corner her reminded her of Star Wars’—specifically, the scene where Princess Leia was stuck being Jabba the Hutt’s concubine— but it did. There was no chain around the woman's neck and her silk dress didn’t resemble a leather and metal bikini, but...

Okay, there was the fact that the guy…um… demon with the woman looked a lot like Jabba, mucus green and gray-colored with something distinctly slug-like about him.

He (it?) laid a fin-like hand on the woman’s shoulder. “Geir-Kerr want nuk-nuk,” it said, before leaning to press slimy lips to the woman’s throat.

Revulsion flashed across the woman’s face and the word that leapt to Buffy’s mind was “ew ” as oxford vamp, followed by the bouncers, barreled through the back door yelling, “Woohoo!”

Oxford didn’t see the tackle coming. While he pumped his fists in the air in a gesture of victory, the bouncers slammed him, face first, into the floor.

Chaos erupted.

The rest of the frat crew arrived, took offense at the ass-kicking being dealt to their brother, and started beat-downs of their own, challenging anyone that crossed their path.

Spike then made the situation worse by ripping open the partition separating the VIP lounge from the rest of the club before bounding outside and yelling at everyone behind the velvet ropes. "Don't stand there, you gits. Pub's open. Strap up and get stonkered!"

Taking Spike’s action as a cue, Buffy jumped on the polished wood bar and kicked the bar tender in the chin, sending the guy flying into the rack of liquor. And, if there had been chaos before, shattering dozens of bottles of Grey Goose, Patron, Maker's Mark, and something that looked like (and probably was) blood inspired the crowd to paroxysms of pandemonium.

Spike headed towards the silk-clad woman, and Buffy jumped behind the bar to face the pissed-off bartender.

"You're human," the bartender said, going yellow-eyed and growling. "And dinner."

“Ever think about a diet?" she asked. "You really don’t want to mess with me.”

She blinked with surprise as a wood table came flying over the bar, causing both Buffy and the vamptender to duck.

Unfortunately for vamptender, he chose that moment to attack. Buffy easily eluded him, reached over a sea of shattered glass, and grabbed a convenient table leg.

Somewhere in the crowd, Spike yelled, “Buffy, what’s taking so long?”

“I’ll be right there,” she said as she shoved the makeshift stake through the vamptender’s heart.

A little damp and smelling of tequila, she rubbed her dusty hands against her jeans as the fire alarm caught her eye. Not knowing whether it would work, she decided ‘what the hell’ and pulled the red lever.

She yelled, “Fire!”

And, because vamps and fire weren’t traditionally mixy, vampires stampeded towards the exits while Spike slammed into the bar, hauling the woman in silk behind him. “Are we done yet?” he asked.

Buffy felt light and free and almost laughed when she said, “Sure.”

As the three of them retreated to the alley through the VIP door, Buffy realized that she felt different. She felt whole. She felt like this was who she had once been and who she was supposed to be.

TBC