Domino Effect, Chapter 1
Something else... this is really ragged. I'll probably go back and fix it all. But here's the first segment---
Domino Effect
Spike/Buffy
PG-13
AU after End of Days
Don't own them. Wish I did. I'd treat them so nice. Really.
Chapter 1
In the crypt, at the End of End of Days
Spike 1.0
Buffy hadn't kissed him since- well. Okay. Point taken. Didn't deserve kisses or kindness, and he'd gotten kindness, so more than he deserved.
But there she was, hanging on Angel. Kissing him like she'd been wanting this for months. Like she'd been waiting for years.
Spike waited around, lurking in the shadows of the temple, watching as the loony knocked Angel out- pillock wasn't worth the Italian shoes he wore, considering he had vampire strength- he shoulda at least made a show of it. But now, he went over like a side of beef when the loon hit him. Spike waited to make sure Buffy'd defeat the crazy priest, which she did with a dispatch that made him wonder. The First Evil must have wanted that to happen, wanted his vessel or his prophet or whatever the hell the loon was, to die so quickly and ignominiously, because Spike had reason to know how powerful the loon could be. So the First must have sapped that power right out, and that meant he had plans for Buffy.
Well. Not if Spike had anything to say about it.
The First Prat, First Evil, whatever it called itself, was hovering beside Spike, buzzing around like a gnat, and just as hard to swat. "That bitch....Yeah, she needs you real bad." It was Buffy's light, lilting voice, and he wanted to lean into it, listen to it- not the message, which was maybe true but irrelevant. But the voice. That low, seductive, we're-buddies voice. Buffy's voice, only sounding more intimate than Buffy sounded when she was holding his-
Long time ago. Over now.
He turned up his collar and headed out of the temple, the First trailing behind him, whispering sedition in Buffy's voice all the way, and he might have given in, because he liked sedition, and loved Buffy's voice. But then-
"Spike?"
A wavering Buffy voice. Not the First. He looked behind him and the apparition vanished with a kind of visual pop. So the Buffy ahead of him, standing there in the shadow of the Peabody crypt, wasn't the First. Wasn't Buffy either- he could still hear her, her voice increasingly desperate, as she tried to get Angel to stay or notice her or love her back.
No. This wasn't his Buffy. Couldn't be her. This one was coming to him, dressed in a simple brown frock, her face streaked with tears, her hands out to him.
"Buffy," he said, because she was a Buffy, some kind of Buffy, because her hands on his were warm and imperative, and her eyes were so longing... not his Buffy. Not the First either.
"Who are you?" he demanded. But he didn't let go of her hands.
"From the future," she replied, and he looked down into her eyes. She was crying. For him. Well, that was new.
"I guess I didn't make it, huh?"
She pursed her lips and looked annoyed, and that was more what he was used to, and it made him smile.
She said, "You're supposed to ask how I got back here from the future. Willow won't be happy if I tell her you didn't even care about her very cool high-tech spell."
He ought to care. But time-travel always gave him a headache, even when Mr. Spock explained it in that long-suffering Vulcan way of his on the Sci-fi Channel. And he didn't believe in it anyway. There was one direction of time, and that was forward, and it went just the pace of the human heartbeat. Not too slow and not too fast. She was an illusion, a Buffy who cried for him and held out her hands like that. But she was a pleasing illusion. He preferred it to the First's insinuating holograms. "How long you got?"
She swallowed hard. "Maybe an hour. Then Willow's going to grab me back. Spike, I want to tell you-"
"I know. I have to wear the amulet Angel gave you. And it's going to kill me. Already factored that in, pet."
Her face went bleak. "I- I haven't been doing so well. I mean, with you gone. I keep wishing I'd -"
"What?" he asked.
Her hands tightened in his. "Made love to you. While I had the chance."
Oh. Well. "Is that why you-"
"Yeah." And she lifted up her face and kissed him, and he tasted the salt of her tears on her mouth- on his tongue, and he didn't care if this was an illusion, because it was Buffy, and she wept for him, and wanted him, and that was worth everything. Everything that had come, and was to come in the future too.
They found their way - blindly, kissing, touching- to a house so recently abandoned the sheets on the bed smelled right off the clothesline fresh.
She'd said she wanted to make love, and now he understood what she meant. It was the first time for them. All this time, he'd been longing for what they'd once had- the passion, the fever- but now, as she lay beneath him, her hand reaching up to touch his face, her eyes filled with....
It was the first time they'd ever made love.
And they only had a stolen moment or two before Willow grabbed her back- or before his common sense overcame his desire and he accepted reality again- that this wasn't her, that she wasn't with him.
"Buffy," he said, as they dressed again- a hard enough task, with all those stops for kisses- and then he couldn't remember what he was going to say.
She stopped with her hand on the top button of her dress. She was starting to shimmer. Willow, common sense, be damned to them both- "Spike," she said, her voice harsh now. She gripped his hand. "Listen. When I tell you, please. Think of me. I mean, me me. This one. The one to come- please. Don't tell me I don't. Okay? Just... don't."
And her hand dissolved in his. It felt like a vampire dusting. But it was only time-travel. Or reality. Or something that dissolved her and left him alone.
He found his way back to the Revello house and down the steps to the basement. And Buffy- the real Buffy, his Buffy, only of course she wasn't his, and he knew this incontrovertibly now... she wasn't his, not yet anyway, maybe never, or maybe only too late- came down later, her hand in her pocket.
He saw her face, tense and pale, and he let it go. She didn't need him to be- oh, whatever he was now that he'd felt her tears on his tongue and heard her voice saying his name the way she never really said it. She didn't need him to be lost in a dream. So he shook the mist out of his mind and focused on the here-and-now. What would he be, if he hadn't held her a half hour ago? He would be stupid and stubborn and pleading. Begging for her crumbs - just pretending to demand them. Still crumbs, no matter what.
So he went through the motions she would expect of him, made a bit of a jealous show about Angel, then demanded the amulet that would kill him. And she gave it to him like it was some sort of honor, and it was, and he would have known that and felt at an hour ago. And he would have been honored that once again she wanted to stay the night with him, even if she didn't mean what that other Buffy had meant, even if she didn't kiss him or touch his face or make love to him.
It was an honor. And it was all she could give him, and he should be glad to get it.
But- but he thought of her, that other her. She would be her in a couple weeks (well, if Mr. Spock was right, and you could never count on that), and she would regret this night.
Until she came back, and -
Time travel always gave him a headache. It didn't make any sense. It was too disorienting, to imagine an endless arc of Buffies, a mirror sequence of Buffies, each coming back to get what she'd lost, forever and ever, never settling, never stopping, one Buffy after another.
Better to think what he really thought- that he'd imagined that other Buffy (even though her cream was on his thighs, and her tears were still on his tongue), and this was the only Buffy, and that very soon she'd let him go, and he'd let her go, and whatever would happen would happen.
So he held her, that night and the next, and he let the other dissolve. There was only here, and only now, and only this one, stalwart and untouching and all she had to be.
He had to focus. Had to concentrate.
So that last day, when they were standing in the fire with the shrieks of the dying all around, he felt the heat of the amulet, the answering heat of his soul. He should be feeling at peace. But he felt a thumping in him like the thump of a heart, like the thump of African drums, and he could hardly be still, so filled was he with power. Restless with it. And he wanted to tell her, but his throat was tight, and what he did manage to say didn't make much sense. But she smiled into his eyes, like she knew what he meant, and she took his hand, lacing her fingers with his.
There was fire, but it didn't burn. The fire all around them burned, but not the fire in their hands. He held her gaze- there was no time. He had to make her go. But her fingers tightened, and her face went intent, and she said it. "I love you."
It burned worse than the flames, worse than the amulet. She said it now. Like this is what it took to get those words from her. Like he had to die to hear them. And that meant that it wasn't true. If those words were true, she would have said them before this.
He opened his mouth, and started to deny it. He was going to say it in some polite way, something that acknowledged her words and the effort it must have taken to speak them, but didn't bind her to them- or let her think that he was so pathetic he could be fooled like this.
Then he remembered her. The other one. The one with tears in her eyes. Don't tell me I don't.
So he bit off the front part of what he was going to say, and spit out the last part. "Thanks for saying it."
Her face lightened, and she stared up at him. Then, as another earthquake struck the cave, she wrenched her hand away. He said, "Now go-"
And before he finished what he meant to say (something jaunty and Titus-Oatesish), Buffy had reached up and grabbed the amulet. He tried to dodge away- it was burning her hand, but she was too quick. She yanked it over his head and flung it into the pit, and started at a run to the stairs. "Come on!" she called back.
He started after her. But the amulet was reflecting up from wherever it landed in the crater, and it pierced a hole in the roof. A wall of golden sunlight separated them.
"Go on," he said. "I'll find another way out."
She cast him an agonized look back.
"I promise," he said, and smiled at her, and turned to see that the earthquake had opened up a fissure in the stone right in front of him. "I promise."
She shouldn't have been able to hear him over the roar of the fire and the screams of shifting rock. But she did, and her relieved laughter floated through the shaft of sunlight. "Meet you on the other side."
He waited till she was up the stairs, then he plunged into the crevasse ahead. He could do it. He could get through. He could meet her-
And then the earth shook, and the way behind him filled with rock. And the way ahead- the sunlight poured in and moved like a freight train towards him as the roof collapsed. He stood there, his arms out. At the last second, he looked down at his hands, saw the burn mark on one palm, and the silver ring on his thumb. A moment was all he had. He wrenched off the ring and threw it forward, into the full sun. And then the light came to him, and over him, and through him. There was fire, but it didn't burn.
But he did.
Domino Effect
Spike/Buffy
PG-13
AU after End of Days
Don't own them. Wish I did. I'd treat them so nice. Really.
Chapter 1
In the crypt, at the End of End of Days
Spike 1.0
Buffy hadn't kissed him since- well. Okay. Point taken. Didn't deserve kisses or kindness, and he'd gotten kindness, so more than he deserved.
But there she was, hanging on Angel. Kissing him like she'd been wanting this for months. Like she'd been waiting for years.
Spike waited around, lurking in the shadows of the temple, watching as the loony knocked Angel out- pillock wasn't worth the Italian shoes he wore, considering he had vampire strength- he shoulda at least made a show of it. But now, he went over like a side of beef when the loon hit him. Spike waited to make sure Buffy'd defeat the crazy priest, which she did with a dispatch that made him wonder. The First Evil must have wanted that to happen, wanted his vessel or his prophet or whatever the hell the loon was, to die so quickly and ignominiously, because Spike had reason to know how powerful the loon could be. So the First must have sapped that power right out, and that meant he had plans for Buffy.
Well. Not if Spike had anything to say about it.
The First Prat, First Evil, whatever it called itself, was hovering beside Spike, buzzing around like a gnat, and just as hard to swat. "That bitch....Yeah, she needs you real bad." It was Buffy's light, lilting voice, and he wanted to lean into it, listen to it- not the message, which was maybe true but irrelevant. But the voice. That low, seductive, we're-buddies voice. Buffy's voice, only sounding more intimate than Buffy sounded when she was holding his-
Long time ago. Over now.
He turned up his collar and headed out of the temple, the First trailing behind him, whispering sedition in Buffy's voice all the way, and he might have given in, because he liked sedition, and loved Buffy's voice. But then-
"Spike?"
A wavering Buffy voice. Not the First. He looked behind him and the apparition vanished with a kind of visual pop. So the Buffy ahead of him, standing there in the shadow of the Peabody crypt, wasn't the First. Wasn't Buffy either- he could still hear her, her voice increasingly desperate, as she tried to get Angel to stay or notice her or love her back.
No. This wasn't his Buffy. Couldn't be her. This one was coming to him, dressed in a simple brown frock, her face streaked with tears, her hands out to him.
"Buffy," he said, because she was a Buffy, some kind of Buffy, because her hands on his were warm and imperative, and her eyes were so longing... not his Buffy. Not the First either.
"Who are you?" he demanded. But he didn't let go of her hands.
"From the future," she replied, and he looked down into her eyes. She was crying. For him. Well, that was new.
"I guess I didn't make it, huh?"
She pursed her lips and looked annoyed, and that was more what he was used to, and it made him smile.
She said, "You're supposed to ask how I got back here from the future. Willow won't be happy if I tell her you didn't even care about her very cool high-tech spell."
He ought to care. But time-travel always gave him a headache, even when Mr. Spock explained it in that long-suffering Vulcan way of his on the Sci-fi Channel. And he didn't believe in it anyway. There was one direction of time, and that was forward, and it went just the pace of the human heartbeat. Not too slow and not too fast. She was an illusion, a Buffy who cried for him and held out her hands like that. But she was a pleasing illusion. He preferred it to the First's insinuating holograms. "How long you got?"
She swallowed hard. "Maybe an hour. Then Willow's going to grab me back. Spike, I want to tell you-"
"I know. I have to wear the amulet Angel gave you. And it's going to kill me. Already factored that in, pet."
Her face went bleak. "I- I haven't been doing so well. I mean, with you gone. I keep wishing I'd -"
"What?" he asked.
Her hands tightened in his. "Made love to you. While I had the chance."
Oh. Well. "Is that why you-"
"Yeah." And she lifted up her face and kissed him, and he tasted the salt of her tears on her mouth- on his tongue, and he didn't care if this was an illusion, because it was Buffy, and she wept for him, and wanted him, and that was worth everything. Everything that had come, and was to come in the future too.
They found their way - blindly, kissing, touching- to a house so recently abandoned the sheets on the bed smelled right off the clothesline fresh.
She'd said she wanted to make love, and now he understood what she meant. It was the first time for them. All this time, he'd been longing for what they'd once had- the passion, the fever- but now, as she lay beneath him, her hand reaching up to touch his face, her eyes filled with....
It was the first time they'd ever made love.
And they only had a stolen moment or two before Willow grabbed her back- or before his common sense overcame his desire and he accepted reality again- that this wasn't her, that she wasn't with him.
"Buffy," he said, as they dressed again- a hard enough task, with all those stops for kisses- and then he couldn't remember what he was going to say.
She stopped with her hand on the top button of her dress. She was starting to shimmer. Willow, common sense, be damned to them both- "Spike," she said, her voice harsh now. She gripped his hand. "Listen. When I tell you, please. Think of me. I mean, me me. This one. The one to come- please. Don't tell me I don't. Okay? Just... don't."
And her hand dissolved in his. It felt like a vampire dusting. But it was only time-travel. Or reality. Or something that dissolved her and left him alone.
He found his way back to the Revello house and down the steps to the basement. And Buffy- the real Buffy, his Buffy, only of course she wasn't his, and he knew this incontrovertibly now... she wasn't his, not yet anyway, maybe never, or maybe only too late- came down later, her hand in her pocket.
He saw her face, tense and pale, and he let it go. She didn't need him to be- oh, whatever he was now that he'd felt her tears on his tongue and heard her voice saying his name the way she never really said it. She didn't need him to be lost in a dream. So he shook the mist out of his mind and focused on the here-and-now. What would he be, if he hadn't held her a half hour ago? He would be stupid and stubborn and pleading. Begging for her crumbs - just pretending to demand them. Still crumbs, no matter what.
So he went through the motions she would expect of him, made a bit of a jealous show about Angel, then demanded the amulet that would kill him. And she gave it to him like it was some sort of honor, and it was, and he would have known that and felt at an hour ago. And he would have been honored that once again she wanted to stay the night with him, even if she didn't mean what that other Buffy had meant, even if she didn't kiss him or touch his face or make love to him.
It was an honor. And it was all she could give him, and he should be glad to get it.
But- but he thought of her, that other her. She would be her in a couple weeks (well, if Mr. Spock was right, and you could never count on that), and she would regret this night.
Until she came back, and -
Time travel always gave him a headache. It didn't make any sense. It was too disorienting, to imagine an endless arc of Buffies, a mirror sequence of Buffies, each coming back to get what she'd lost, forever and ever, never settling, never stopping, one Buffy after another.
Better to think what he really thought- that he'd imagined that other Buffy (even though her cream was on his thighs, and her tears were still on his tongue), and this was the only Buffy, and that very soon she'd let him go, and he'd let her go, and whatever would happen would happen.
So he held her, that night and the next, and he let the other dissolve. There was only here, and only now, and only this one, stalwart and untouching and all she had to be.
He had to focus. Had to concentrate.
So that last day, when they were standing in the fire with the shrieks of the dying all around, he felt the heat of the amulet, the answering heat of his soul. He should be feeling at peace. But he felt a thumping in him like the thump of a heart, like the thump of African drums, and he could hardly be still, so filled was he with power. Restless with it. And he wanted to tell her, but his throat was tight, and what he did manage to say didn't make much sense. But she smiled into his eyes, like she knew what he meant, and she took his hand, lacing her fingers with his.
There was fire, but it didn't burn. The fire all around them burned, but not the fire in their hands. He held her gaze- there was no time. He had to make her go. But her fingers tightened, and her face went intent, and she said it. "I love you."
It burned worse than the flames, worse than the amulet. She said it now. Like this is what it took to get those words from her. Like he had to die to hear them. And that meant that it wasn't true. If those words were true, she would have said them before this.
He opened his mouth, and started to deny it. He was going to say it in some polite way, something that acknowledged her words and the effort it must have taken to speak them, but didn't bind her to them- or let her think that he was so pathetic he could be fooled like this.
Then he remembered her. The other one. The one with tears in her eyes. Don't tell me I don't.
So he bit off the front part of what he was going to say, and spit out the last part. "Thanks for saying it."
Her face lightened, and she stared up at him. Then, as another earthquake struck the cave, she wrenched her hand away. He said, "Now go-"
And before he finished what he meant to say (something jaunty and Titus-Oatesish), Buffy had reached up and grabbed the amulet. He tried to dodge away- it was burning her hand, but she was too quick. She yanked it over his head and flung it into the pit, and started at a run to the stairs. "Come on!" she called back.
He started after her. But the amulet was reflecting up from wherever it landed in the crater, and it pierced a hole in the roof. A wall of golden sunlight separated them.
"Go on," he said. "I'll find another way out."
She cast him an agonized look back.
"I promise," he said, and smiled at her, and turned to see that the earthquake had opened up a fissure in the stone right in front of him. "I promise."
She shouldn't have been able to hear him over the roar of the fire and the screams of shifting rock. But she did, and her relieved laughter floated through the shaft of sunlight. "Meet you on the other side."
He waited till she was up the stairs, then he plunged into the crevasse ahead. He could do it. He could get through. He could meet her-
And then the earth shook, and the way behind him filled with rock. And the way ahead- the sunlight poured in and moved like a freight train towards him as the roof collapsed. He stood there, his arms out. At the last second, he looked down at his hands, saw the burn mark on one palm, and the silver ring on his thumb. A moment was all he had. He wrenched off the ring and threw it forward, into the full sun. And then the light came to him, and over him, and through him. There was fire, but it didn't burn.
But he did.