Buffy/Spike: Nightfall Coming Soon
Mar. 10th, 2005 03:36 am![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
doyleTitle: Nightfall Coming Soon
Author: Doyle
Pairing: Buffy/Spike
Rating: PG-13
Notes: Spuffy Kinkathon entry for![[livejournal.com profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/external/lj-userinfo.gif)
buffyx, who wanted an AU where Spike lost his soul in season 7, at least a kiss, “make it hurt”. I hope this is painful enough to please. AU from Lies My Parents Told Me.
The summer she ran away, those months after she shoved a sword through Angel’s chest and let Hell swallow him whole, she dreamed of running. Heart pounding, legs aching, the mansion getting farther and farther away and Xander cheering her on and the sword in her hand getting heavier - every night, until she didn’t want to sleep at all and sat up drinking unsweetened coffee and listening to her neighbours yell at each other through the walls.
Years later, Spike held her hands, lacerated with splinters, fingernails ripped away and filthy with grave dirt , and he told her how long she’d been gone; in the dark of his crypt he talked about dreams of saving her. Raw from heaven, she didn’t speak, and she wonders now if that was when they set the pattern of not talking about what matters, Spike saying enough for both of them when she couldn’t find words.
She never said the words he wanted; doesn’t regret that, because they hurt each other enough that year without offering him lies, but she regrets that he said every night I save you and she said nothing, didn’t even think till much later Spike, we can’t save each other.
He came back from Africa changed. Played at sameness, insisted he wasn’t Angel, and she let herself relax, ease into comfortable silences in the basement, casual brushes of hands that didn’t make her flinch away any more because he was different now. It was in his eyes, she told Giles, and she assumed that if it was so obvious to her then everyone could see it. Only she didn’t see anything, so focussed on Spike she wasn’t watching everyone else, and Robin told her about his mother but the connection didn’t click in her brain till she realized Giles was stalling.
And she runs.
This is the difference between them, she realizes as the air burns in her lungs and she reaches Robin’s block; in Spike’s dreams he always saved her. But in all her dreams, all that summer, she never made it to Angel in time, not once.
**
The room was designed for torture, walls covered in crosses, and for a second, just a second, she persuades herself that it was self-defence.
Spike wipes his mouth, licking the blood from his hand without taking his eyes off Robin’s body, and she knows the soul is gone.
“You in on this?” he says.
“How can you…” He gives her a look that strips her down to her bones, as if he hasn’t really seen her in months. In a way, she guesses he hasn’t. “No. I didn’t know he was going to do this.”
“Trigger’s gone,” he says, almost chatty, like the friends she thought they were halfway to becoming. “Soul went with it. One of the First’s little tricks, I reckon. No use to its grand scheme without the song and dance routine, so it takes me out of the picture.”
There’s no way he could have posed Robin to mirror her mother’s body on the couch – he couldn’t have known. Just a painful twist of coincidence, and it doesn’t matter because Robin’s still dead and Spike’s still soulless and he doesn’t have the chip muzzling him now.
She says, “Spike, you have to run,” and the calm of her own voice surprises her. “Giles was right behind me.” And when he just stares at her, not seeming to get it, she closes the distance between them and pushes him, hard. “Spike, go.”
He pulls his coat around his shoulders, gives one last glance at Wood’s body, and disappears.
Surrounded by crosses, she sinks to her knees and waits for Giles to tell her what she already knows needs to be done.
**
Back home, she gives the girls a speech about sacrifice and loss, barely even listening to the half-hearted eulogy coming out of her mouth, words for Robin she wishes she’d said for Chloe. Amanda cries, curled beside Dawn on the couch. Buffy can’t look her sister or Xander in the eyes.
Willow takes her aside to the kitchen and says, “I’m so sorry. It must have been so hard to,” hands moving in a fluttery jab that might be a mime of staking; Buffy thinks that things would have been very different if Willow had been the Slayer.
“I didn’t stake him.”
“…oh.”
She looks at Giles, quiet in the doorway, and says, “not yet.”
For a moment, she thinks Willow’s going to hug her, but something in her eyes must scare her away, because she makes an excuse about checking on Dawn and leaves.
Giles says, “It doesn’t have to be you.”
She says, “It really does.”
**
The Bronze is the third place she tries, after the old crypt and the abandoned house on Worth Street. He’s in a corner, hunched over his beer, and she wants to kill him for looking so normal. If she found him in the alley standing over a drained corpse – a girl, she thinks, Dawn’s age, pale and pretty and tragic – and he threw it all in her face about the chip, the soul, how happy he was to have all the leashes gone, then this would be easy.
He looks up at her, and nods, and follows her outside without a word.
“Seems fitting,” he finally says, out in the alley. “Started here, remember?”
“I remember.” Spike walking out of the shadows with casual threats and golf claps and that way of looking through her; it puzzled her for years why she was so afraid of him when half the world tried to kill her on a regular basis and it took until the night they brought the house down around them for her to figure it out.
“We doing this, then?”
“I guess so.” Her fingers are numb around the stake.
Spike gives her a small smile, and however much she tells herself that she could see the difference when the soul was there, he looks so much like he did yesterday that she almost breaks. “Not like you can let me walk away.”
“I’m not.”
“Starting to get hungry, pet. And no more Jiminy Cricket chirping in my brain.”
“I know.” It hurts too much to talk. She kisses him instead. Always worked before when there were too many things she couldn’t say. He tastes of blood, and she knows it’s Robin’s and she wishes that revolted her and she wishes it hadn’t ended this way and she wishes she could tell Spike she loves him.
She doesn’t think he’d believe her, anyway.
He rests his forehead against hers, and she expects some kind of words because that’s what he does; barbs and taunts and declarations of love. Any of the above. Something else.
He pulls silently away from her, as if they finally have nothing left to say.
**
It’s a short fight.
She doesn’t tell him to close his eyes.
Author: Doyle
Pairing: Buffy/Spike
Rating: PG-13
Notes: Spuffy Kinkathon entry for
buffyx, who wanted an AU where Spike lost his soul in season 7, at least a kiss, “make it hurt”. I hope this is painful enough to please. AU from Lies My Parents Told Me.The summer she ran away, those months after she shoved a sword through Angel’s chest and let Hell swallow him whole, she dreamed of running. Heart pounding, legs aching, the mansion getting farther and farther away and Xander cheering her on and the sword in her hand getting heavier - every night, until she didn’t want to sleep at all and sat up drinking unsweetened coffee and listening to her neighbours yell at each other through the walls.
Years later, Spike held her hands, lacerated with splinters, fingernails ripped away and filthy with grave dirt , and he told her how long she’d been gone; in the dark of his crypt he talked about dreams of saving her. Raw from heaven, she didn’t speak, and she wonders now if that was when they set the pattern of not talking about what matters, Spike saying enough for both of them when she couldn’t find words.
She never said the words he wanted; doesn’t regret that, because they hurt each other enough that year without offering him lies, but she regrets that he said every night I save you and she said nothing, didn’t even think till much later Spike, we can’t save each other.
He came back from Africa changed. Played at sameness, insisted he wasn’t Angel, and she let herself relax, ease into comfortable silences in the basement, casual brushes of hands that didn’t make her flinch away any more because he was different now. It was in his eyes, she told Giles, and she assumed that if it was so obvious to her then everyone could see it. Only she didn’t see anything, so focussed on Spike she wasn’t watching everyone else, and Robin told her about his mother but the connection didn’t click in her brain till she realized Giles was stalling.
And she runs.
This is the difference between them, she realizes as the air burns in her lungs and she reaches Robin’s block; in Spike’s dreams he always saved her. But in all her dreams, all that summer, she never made it to Angel in time, not once.
**
The room was designed for torture, walls covered in crosses, and for a second, just a second, she persuades herself that it was self-defence.
Spike wipes his mouth, licking the blood from his hand without taking his eyes off Robin’s body, and she knows the soul is gone.
“You in on this?” he says.
“How can you…” He gives her a look that strips her down to her bones, as if he hasn’t really seen her in months. In a way, she guesses he hasn’t. “No. I didn’t know he was going to do this.”
“Trigger’s gone,” he says, almost chatty, like the friends she thought they were halfway to becoming. “Soul went with it. One of the First’s little tricks, I reckon. No use to its grand scheme without the song and dance routine, so it takes me out of the picture.”
There’s no way he could have posed Robin to mirror her mother’s body on the couch – he couldn’t have known. Just a painful twist of coincidence, and it doesn’t matter because Robin’s still dead and Spike’s still soulless and he doesn’t have the chip muzzling him now.
She says, “Spike, you have to run,” and the calm of her own voice surprises her. “Giles was right behind me.” And when he just stares at her, not seeming to get it, she closes the distance between them and pushes him, hard. “Spike, go.”
He pulls his coat around his shoulders, gives one last glance at Wood’s body, and disappears.
Surrounded by crosses, she sinks to her knees and waits for Giles to tell her what she already knows needs to be done.
**
Back home, she gives the girls a speech about sacrifice and loss, barely even listening to the half-hearted eulogy coming out of her mouth, words for Robin she wishes she’d said for Chloe. Amanda cries, curled beside Dawn on the couch. Buffy can’t look her sister or Xander in the eyes.
Willow takes her aside to the kitchen and says, “I’m so sorry. It must have been so hard to,” hands moving in a fluttery jab that might be a mime of staking; Buffy thinks that things would have been very different if Willow had been the Slayer.
“I didn’t stake him.”
“…oh.”
She looks at Giles, quiet in the doorway, and says, “not yet.”
For a moment, she thinks Willow’s going to hug her, but something in her eyes must scare her away, because she makes an excuse about checking on Dawn and leaves.
Giles says, “It doesn’t have to be you.”
She says, “It really does.”
**
The Bronze is the third place she tries, after the old crypt and the abandoned house on Worth Street. He’s in a corner, hunched over his beer, and she wants to kill him for looking so normal. If she found him in the alley standing over a drained corpse – a girl, she thinks, Dawn’s age, pale and pretty and tragic – and he threw it all in her face about the chip, the soul, how happy he was to have all the leashes gone, then this would be easy.
He looks up at her, and nods, and follows her outside without a word.
“Seems fitting,” he finally says, out in the alley. “Started here, remember?”
“I remember.” Spike walking out of the shadows with casual threats and golf claps and that way of looking through her; it puzzled her for years why she was so afraid of him when half the world tried to kill her on a regular basis and it took until the night they brought the house down around them for her to figure it out.
“We doing this, then?”
“I guess so.” Her fingers are numb around the stake.
Spike gives her a small smile, and however much she tells herself that she could see the difference when the soul was there, he looks so much like he did yesterday that she almost breaks. “Not like you can let me walk away.”
“I’m not.”
“Starting to get hungry, pet. And no more Jiminy Cricket chirping in my brain.”
“I know.” It hurts too much to talk. She kisses him instead. Always worked before when there were too many things she couldn’t say. He tastes of blood, and she knows it’s Robin’s and she wishes that revolted her and she wishes it hadn’t ended this way and she wishes she could tell Spike she loves him.
She doesn’t think he’d believe her, anyway.
He rests his forehead against hers, and she expects some kind of words because that’s what he does; barbs and taunts and declarations of love. Any of the above. Something else.
He pulls silently away from her, as if they finally have nothing left to say.
**
It’s a short fight.
She doesn’t tell him to close his eyes.
![[identity profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/openid.png){kind=small}
no subject
on 2005-03-10 03:43 am (UTC)no subject
on 2005-03-10 03:47 am (UTC)God, that was painful in the best way!!
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on 2005-03-10 03:55 am (UTC)Those last two lines make it even more powerful. This was just amazing.
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on 2005-03-10 03:58 am (UTC)Every time you parallel something in your fic to something else that happened to the character, it breaks me. I'M BROKEN! Bah.
It was fantastic, by the way.
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on 2005-03-10 04:00 am (UTC)YESPLZ! ^_^;
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on 2005-03-10 04:02 am (UTC)no subject
on 2005-03-10 04:02 am (UTC)no subject
on 2005-03-10 04:02 am (UTC)no subject
on 2005-03-10 04:03 am (UTC)No, really, ow.
no subject
on 2005-03-10 04:03 am (UTC)no subject
on 2005-03-10 04:03 am (UTC)no subject
on 2005-03-10 04:12 am (UTC)no subject
on 2005-03-10 04:24 am (UTC)no subject
on 2005-03-10 04:32 am (UTC)no subject
on 2005-03-10 06:06 am (UTC)no subject
on 2005-03-10 06:22 am (UTC)no subject
on 2005-03-10 10:29 am (UTC)no subject
on 2005-03-10 11:13 am (UTC)She doesn’t tell him to close his eyes. Owww....yes, painful. Painful but very good.
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on 2005-03-10 02:51 pm (UTC)no subject
on 2005-03-10 08:56 pm (UTC)::dies of broken heart::
::carries on loving you anyway::
no subject
on 2005-03-10 10:19 pm (UTC)no subject
on 2005-03-10 11:59 pm (UTC)I've always loved the idea of what would happen if Spike lost his soul, if Buffy would be able to kill him after having had to kill Angel, and I think that if she did there would be even more of a shift of her going into Slayer mode, cutting herself off after losing one more thing. You took the concept and rocked it, made it painful and gorgeous and, yeah. The parallel with Angel was perfect.
It’s a short fight.
She doesn’t tell him to close his eyes.
Those final lines were such a kick to the stomach; I loved them.
no subject
on 2005-03-11 03:35 am (UTC)Beautifully done.
no subject
on 2005-03-12 03:43 am (UTC)no subject
on 2005-03-12 10:33 am (UTC)no subject
on 2005-03-12 04:22 pm (UTC)no subject
on 2005-03-14 07:39 pm (UTC)(Great story)
no subject
on 2005-03-16 06:40 am (UTC)no subject
on 2005-06-05 01:30 pm (UTC)But in all her dreams, all that summer, she never made it to Angel in time, not once.
That line especially killed me. Excellent work.
Hmm
on 2005-07-11 10:11 pm (UTC)no subject
on 2005-10-01 03:39 pm (UTC)But that just tells you, that you did a good job on it, so yes great fic
no subject
on 2006-02-18 03:09 am (UTC)Oh that's just brutal. *wincing* So you believe it was the chip keeping him good, prior to the soul? (or just using the concept to write a wonderfully painful story?)
Wow.