Chapter Text
Darkness seemed so much darker than Buffy remembered. Like the ocean, but not because although she floated in it, on it, there weren’t any waves, because there wasn’t any wind, because there wasn’t any sun, and she could just listen to the whoosh of her blood in her ears, her heart beating at every pulse point, the soft steady sound of her breath in and out. She even thought she could hear her hair growing—
“What- what wasn’t that?” Somewhere in this liquid darkness, Tara was also floating.
“What?”
“What didn’t-didn’t just happen?”
“Huh?”
“If this is non-existence, how come I can hear two silly bints asking nonsensical questions?”
“Maybe we’re all non-existing together.” It sounded dreamy.
A beat. “Yeeaahh. Slayer…perhaps you should consider going back to university before that brain of yours turns to utter mush.”
“Hey. A little disoriented here.”
“I-I think we’re just … on the floor. In the dark.”
A creaking noise. Narrow beam of light sweeping across the black. Xander’s voice, shaky with hope and dread. “Hello? Anybody alive in here?”
“I’m not.”
“Oh thank God.” Shouting. “They’re okay!”
Tara started laughing, a low, sweet rumble.
***
~Apoca-lite~
“Okay.” Xander plunked his beer down on the table, his gaze catching Tara’s eyes, leaping over Spike’s out of habit, and continuing onto Buffy’s where it stayed fixed, also out of habit. “How long are you three gonna play this ‘buddies back from Nam’ routine?”
“What are you talking about?” Buffy said.
She wasn’t fooling him with that mildly exasperated look. Not fooling him one iota. She knew exactly what he was talking about. The three of them sitting there, all Deerhunter and Platoon-ish. And yeah, sure, probably lots of mutual sustained abject terror while they were locked in that room together with big scary things. But the people outside that room were experiencing plenty of abject terror themselves. To a lesser degree, he’d give them that much. And he’d concede that it might be hard to explain what happened if you hadn’t been there. But jeez, it had been over a week since they stumbled out the door, looking beat and bloodied, hair standing on end – literally standing on end which he thought only happened after wacky comedy electrocutions – trying to hold each other upright but failing because they were laughing so freaking hard they kept falling down. Which anxious friends could only pray was cathartic in nature despite it being deeply disturbing to witness. Like the current buddy buddy routine, which Xander was now drunk enough to comment upon.
“This,” he said unfurling one finger from those still curled around the bottle. He wagged it back and forth at the three sat across from him. “This thing. This, we’ve shared something none of you can understand, thing.” Three pairs of eyes were on him, steady, calm, blinking in eerie tandem. “That! That’s what I’m talking about! Plus, Dead Boy Slim is way too introspective—“
“Not…inordinately so. I don’t think. Considering.”
“See, see? What he just said there? It’s not natural.” He lifted the bottle to his lips and took three long swallows. Anya was still in the little girls’ room doing whatever it was little girls did after they peed.
“Stop talking around him, Xander,” Buffy said. “It’s impolite.”
“There. Another indication of wrongness. I have to be polite to him now.”
“Needn’t be polite on my account, Harris. Feel free to insult me regularly and I’ll happily do the same for you.”
Buffy thumped at Xander’s fingers locked around the sweating beer bottle. “How many of those have you had?”
“A couple or three. Five. I dunno. We’re celebrating averting another apocalypse, aren’t we?”
“Wasn’t exactly apocalyptic proportions,” Tara said.
“How d’you figure that?”
“Well, we were the only ones who were going to die…probably.”
“And probably not me,” Buffy chimed in, “on account of I have Chosen One stamped on my butt.” She glanced obliquely at Spike and grinned. “I haven’t seen it myself so must defer to those in the know.” Spike also grinned, sly and smug, and Buffy lowered her batting eyelashes to concentrate on slurping up dregs of Diet Coke by vigorously churning the straw in the ice.
Xander shuddered, partly from the noisy ice sounds, partly to shake the curtain of denial over that particular “place Xander must never go.” He could go a lot of places in his head, but Spike and Buffyland wasn’t one of them. It had been hard enough to leave them be that first night when they all three fell asleep on the sofa together and he’d just wanted to thrust pillows between those he considered his womenfolk and the undead guy in the middle. But there weren’t enough pillows in the world to accomplish the task, and Anya had insisted he quit trying. More distressing the next day, when he came by at lunch and none of them were on the sofa. He’d even checked for a coating of dust on the sunlit cushions, relieved when he found none, and berating himself for being worried he might. Then watching Tara coming down the stairs, looking serene and … resolved. As she left the house he heard Willow crying softly upstairs. He didn’t know why, exactly, though he suspected it had something to do with the magic tsunami she’d unleashed at their heads, and since he was still kind of mad about that he didn’t go upstairs to find out why she was crying. So he’d gone into the kitchen instead to chat with Dawn while she made a sandwich. And standing there, commenting on the gross-factor of refried beans and salsa on Wonder bread, was when he heard the rhythmic creaking and groaning coming from the basement. That haunting, familiar protest of faulty springs, and the grunts and sighs of carnal comfort. Dawn had glanced at his face, whatever expression was on it, cranked up the radio on a battered boombox, and looked out the kitchen window, thoughtfully munching her sandwich. She offered to make him a sandwich. He’d declined and fled out the backdoor.
The band started their next set – lots of verve and raucous guitar. Xander had something to say, something important on the tip of his tongue, and he knew it would wend its way from brain to tongue tip to tirade as soon as he started talking. He took a deep breath to compensate for the noise level and opened his mouth—
“Harris.” The vampire leaned across the table, and for some reason, Xander tilted his head to make his ear more accessible. “Your woman’s out there on the dance floor about to become the creamy middle in a hunk sandwich.”
Xander’s head shot around. Anya had, in fact, been waylaid on her return from the facilities by two hunky youngsters and was now happily jerking and gyrating between them. The conversation, as well as the half empty beer, was abandoned in favour of territorial imperatives.
“Ooh, look,” Tara hissed, “Bad Poets Couch is open. Hurry.” Her fingers grasped both the sleeves and skin of her companions’ arms in a pinchy little tug, jerking them in the direction of the tatty sofa sprawled in bohemian grandeur against the wall beneath the stairs to the catwalk. Her eyes were fixed on her target with the kind of unabashed avarice Buffy thought of as “Anya’s look,” and when another group moved in on the coveted sofa – upscale versions of disaffected youth and dreadlocked vegetarianism – Tara let go their arms and sailed forward with a gesture and a whispered word that both repelled encroachers and cleared a path. The two girls took up positions at either end of massive couch, stretching their legs out to the middle to save Spike’s spot while he went off to fetch another beer for himself, and beverages for the ladies.
“I thought you were against using magic for non-important stuff.”
“Getting a good seat isn’t important?” Tara asked with a pawky grin. “Nothing wrong with a little magic to grease the wheels of opportunity, as you long as don’t hurt anyone in the process. Like… invoking the parking space deities so you can get a spot close to the student loan office before they close the week of Thanksgiving.”
“You can do that? Wow…wait, does it have to be parallel parking?”
“Besides,” Tara went on, “the Bad Poets Couch is very rarely open. You’ll notice I didn’t compel the people sitting here to leave, I just made sure we got here before anyone else.”
“How come I didn’t even know this couch had a name? I’ve been coming here forever.”
“You don’t come here poetry nights, pet,” Spike said, tossing little cans of apricot nectar to each of them. He jerked his chin at the photocopied poster taped to the wall over her head, announcing Wednesday Nights Poetry Open Mike.
“And you do?”
“Hell no. What kind of a ponce do you take me for?”
She gave the question no consideration, being too busy examining her beverage with wrinkled nose of displeasure. “Wanted Diet Coke. With lots of ice. Wah.”
“I’m not your tavern wench, wench. Little tins. Easy to carry.”
“We call them cans in this country. Jeez you’ve been here for how long now?” But her eyes were teasing him. He smiled menacingly at the two pairs of legs taking up the middle portion of Bad Poets Couch. Tara sat up with a squeak of apology, but Buffy was still playing at snotty brat, daring him to move her. So he did. Quick as the preternatural beast he was, he’d grabbed both her ankles in one hand and flung her legs to the floor. Didn’t even spill his beer. As soon as he sat down she put her feet in his lap. He seemed fine by that.
They sat a while, two drinking thick juice with a tinny aftertaste, and the other working on his second bottled beer, each lost in their own thoughts, which Buffy was pretty sure revolved around the same subject.
Well, somebody sure as heck ought to start talking about it. She sighed. Might as well be the superhero.
“So … why aren’t we dead?” She glanced at Spike. “Or deader. I mean, why did they stop? Why did they just go poof like that?”
Spike turned his head and stared. Tara leaned out to stare. Both wore similar expressions of astonishment.
“You’re kidding, right?” he said. And she felt anxiety fluttering in her gut, that sense of being out of a loop you were so sure you were in. They knew something she didn’t. They shared something she didn’t.
“No,” she said, aware of how tiny her voice sounded. “I don’t know what happened at the end. Pretty sure we were done for. Weren’t you guys?”
“Well, yeah, until you stopped them.”
“I didn’t stop them.”
Tara and Spike looked at each other.
“I suppose it makes sense,” Spike said to Tara, making no sense at all.
Tara smiled. “Yeah. She wouldn’t see it the same way.”
Suddenly, inexplicably ticked off, Buffy dragged her feet off Spike’s lap and scrunched down into Bad Poets cushions, arms folded, glaring out at the noisy dance floor. “I feel like I’m nine years old and you guys had a slumber party and didn’t invite me.”
“Slumber party, eh?” The smirk was back. “You two in babydoll jammies, jumping up and down on the bed, pillow fight, feathers flying everywhere. Me with a camcorder.”
Tara snorted. Buffy was not amused.
“Okay, you need to close the Pervert Funhouse in your mind now and get back to what I don’t seem to know or understand. Which, may I just say, totally sucks, because we were all there together, about to be incinerated or whatever. Together.” She sank deeper into the sofa, wishing it would swallow her, because she felt so little and alone and she wanted to cry, and it pissed her off. “So, clearly I don’t get it, and you’re both much smarter than me, so why don’t you just tell me what happened? And talk slowly and don’t use too many big words.”
“No one’s saying you’re stupid, luv.”
“No, no, Buffy, that’s not— I guess we assumed you knew because you did it.”
“Did what? Oh. Oh no. No! It wasn’t me. I didn’t do anything—“
“We’re both pretty sure the Luminati left this dimension because you made them leave.”
“No I didn’t. Did I? How’d I do that?”
Again, vampire and witch exchanged looks. Tara smiled at him, inclined her head in what was very nearly a regal nod. Spike looked at the bottle in his hands. Didn’t bring it to his lips. He seemed almost…embarrassed.
“’Cos you loved us,” he said.
A jolt. Hot and white and aching and true. That moment when she’d loved him.
His voice went from soft to gruff. “Me and Glinda here were under the protection of your banner, Slayer. And a thing of beauty it was too. Glorious.” Again they exchanged looks, smiles. “They tested you on it, of course. Right up to the last. But, you being cut from the same cloth as them and all, well, in the end they had to respect what you felt was true. Even…even if it was mostly a proprietary love in my case.”
“Like you belonged to me, you mean?”
“Yeah.” He took a swallow of beer, didn’t look at her. “Yours to kiss or kill.”
Tara was sitting sideways now, one leg drawn up beneath the satiny blue of her skirt. Her elbow was propped on the backrest, hair bunched around her hand where her head leaned on it. She gazed at him with heavy lidded, catlike contentment, a little half-smile still playing with her lips. Then she gave his knee a pat. His knee jerked a little, and he blinked at her, bemused, before the default mode smirk settled in.
“I’m going to see if I can catch a ride from Xander and Anya,” Tara announced, unfolding herself from the sultry comfort of Bad Poets Couch. She smoothed her skirt, grabbed her bag and slung it over her shoulder, then stood in a moment of uncertainty. Like there was something she should do or say. Buffy found herself folded into a quick, tight hug.
“Thanks for loving us,” Tara whispered in her ear.
“Not a problem,” Buffy murmured as she squeezed back. Her throat was tight with an emotion she couldn’t quite identify. Or many. Lots and lots of emotions.
She barely registered her friends even as she watched them leaving – not Xander’s belligerent glower, nor Anya spinning him about and shoving him towards the door that Tara was holding open. Anya and Tara both gave little waves. Buffy kind of waved back. Anya mouthed “call me” and did the hand gesture. Then they were gone. And she was left alone in a room full of people. Alone with him.
“That’s not it, you know,” she said.
“What’s that, pet?” He had his cigarettes out and was patting his pockets for his lighter, dots and dashes that telegraphed his nicotine addiction to the world.
“It wasn’t proprietary. It wasn’t about how you belonged to me. Mine to kill or save. Not that.”
He stopped the frantic search, one hand frozen as it reached for the breast pocket inside his jacket. Poised over his heart. “Oh?” he said. Oh. And oh god, too much hope in that little word. Too much. “What was it then?”
“Something else.”
He sighed, resigned to never knowing. And it wasn’t fair. She knew it.
“Look. Spike. I can’t ignore your past. And I wish I could say – I mean, I wish that I were truly righteous enough, or noble enough to say that I can’t ignore your past on this earth, your history with other people, the deaths you caused, but it’s much less honourable than that. What I can’t ignore, can’t forget is your history with me. I will never be able to look at you and say it wasn’t you who did those things to me, who said those – those horrible things to me. You aren’t a different person. Wait, let me finish—“ She’d held up her hand as if he’d been about to protest before realising he hadn’t. “And apparently I’ve seen too many made-for-television movies on Lifetime.” That got no reaction so she plunged on. “I’m not saying you haven’t changed, but-but, see... with Angel, I could think of him as two different people, the one who hated me and the one who loved me. You are the same person who hated me. You understand?”
He wasn’t looking at her, but he was listening intently, and he nodded.
“You said those things to me. You. Said them in such a way as to cause the greatest pain, to cut to the bone and make me feel miserable and worthless before you killed me. And even after, when you were all chipped up and full of rage about it, when you didn’t have the power to take my life with your own hands anymore – not that you could have, ever,” she added just to remind him who was boss. Saw his mouth quirk. Almost a smile. “You could still get under my skin. You’ve always been able to find the stuff I don’t want anybody to see and rub my face in it, like it was all this broken glass on the pavement. And it hurt. It hurt me bad. Just telling you this is really hard for me, because it acknowledges the power you still have. So even if I’m thinking we have a some kind of destiny together now, I can’t forget the past, and I can’t promise you any kind of future. I don’t know what you’ll do in the future, do I? I can’t promise love knowing it’s possible I might have to take you out someday. But I can offer you right now. This moment. I love you this very moment.”
He closed his eyes briefly, and all the tension in his face fell away. “Moments have a tendency to string themselves together.”
“That they do.” She stood up, held out her hand. “So, you wanna dance or what?”
~:~ fin ~:~