Reward, Chapter 5
Chapter Five: Return
"This is it?" Mandy whispered.
"This is it," Spike answered grimly.
Mandy leaned over and looked down into the hole that used to be Sunnydale. "How do we get in? That is a deep crater. And it's even darker down there than it is up here. I thought there was supposed to be a moon tonight."
"I think we climb in. Walls are rough, looks like plenty of handholds."
"Ugh. Good thing I'm not afraid of heights. This might take awhile."
The sides of the pit had a slight slope to them, and there were several ledges that allowed them to rest. Just over an hour later, they reached the bottom. They dropped their backpacks full of weapons and provisions and sat down for awhile. "What's next?" Mandy asked.
"Well, 'He must journey to the Abyss of the Sun and seek the Counsel of the Guardian.'"
"Who's the Guardian?"
"I dunno, pet. But since the Powers have seen fit to send me back here, we might as well start at the High School as anywhere else. That's where the bloody Hellmouth was."
Spike could hardly get his bearings as they started towards the center of the little city. The entire town was destroyed. All the houses had collapsed; here and there a chimney was still standing, or a rusted-out car lay on its back like a big dead beetle, but mostly it was just piles of unrecognizable rubble. He'd expected to see, oh, trees and grass and maybe some wild animals, but nothing had grown during the time he had left, and the landscape was blasted and deserted.
Or, maybe not so deserted. Mandy picked up on it before Spike did. She unsheathed her sword and elbowed him with her free arm. "Spike! I think something's following us."
He looked where she pointed. "I think you're right, poodle. Shall we let it come to us, or shall we go to it?"
"Why wait?" She shrugged out of the backpack and ran toward whatever it was that was stalking them.
"Well, because..." Spike said, struggling out of his own and grabbing a crossbow, but she was already halfway to the collapsed building where she'd seen their follower. "Bloody hell." He scooped up the backpacks in case whatever they were tackling required more than a sword or a crossbow, and followed her.
When he caught up, he found her engaged with a seven-foot-tall, doughy-looking creature with enormous arms, short legs, and big pointy teeth in a long snout. It was clumsy but powerful, while Mandy was all grace and speed. As Spike watched, she performed a perfect spinning jump and kicked the demon right in the jaw. She followed up with a sword slash to its torso, a backslash to the hand that was reaching for her, and another spin that ended with its head hitting the ground as the blade cut cleanly through its neck. "And that," Mandy said, wiping the steel off with the cloth that Spike handed to her, "is how we handle things that go bump in the night where I come from."
Spike was in awe. He reached out to brush her hair back behind her ear, but pulled back. "You...are beautiful," he said softly. And I'm beneath you, he thought to himself, stepping away and looking at the ground.
He was shocked when she grabbed him and kissed him solidly on the mouth. He was even more shocked when, as he started to respond, she shoved him violently backwards and brought the sword up. For a split second he thought, Oh, God, she's going to kill me...Then another demon head hit the ground at about the same time he did, and she was back in his arms on top of him. "You're beautiful too," she said when they came up for air.
Spike closed his eyes, then steeled himself and did one of the hardest things he'd ever done in his unlife. "No," he said.
Mandy was puzzled. "No, you're not beautiful?" She traced the scar over his left eyebrow. "Yes. You are."
He grabbed her hand--gently--and moved it away. "I mean, no, we can't do this. You Slayer, me vampire. These things never end well and usually end disastrously. Besides, I'm your Watcher. Now, I've never been a Watcher before, but I'm pretty sure that a 'relationship' between a Watcher and his Slayer is a big no-no. So..." He took a deep, unneeded breath, moved her off him, and stood up, hunting his pockets for his cigarettes. "...No."
Mandy looked down, chin trembling slightly. Then she took a deep breath as well, cramming her emotions into a dark recess where she wouldn't have to deal with them. "Well then," she said, getting to her feet and brushing off her jeans, "where's this Hellmouth we're supposed to go see?"
***
The Hellmouth crater was even deeper than the Sunnydale crater. Even with vampiric vision, Spike couldn't see to the bottom. "I'm not going down there," Mandy declared.
"You won't need to," said a voice that sent chills down Spike's spine. They turned around to see an impossibility.
"Rupert?" Spike said in a very small voice.
"Hello, Spike. What are you doing back here? Still mooning over Buffy? Well, you weren't good enough for her then, and you still aren't now that she's dead. Who's this with you? Another toy like Harmony was?"
Something wasn't right. Spike looked more closely at the apparition in front of them. Tweed, glasses, stick up his arse--that was the Watcher all right. Something about the eyes, though...Giles' eyes hadn't been yellow...
Mandy wasn't about to take that kind of guff from a dead guy. Rejected or not, Spike was still her Watcher, and she felt a responsibility to protect him even while she was learning from him. "I'm Mandy the Vampire Slayer. And I bet I could put paid to you if I had to," she said, her voice hard.
"Good Lord." Giles took his glasses off and began furiously cleaning them. "Just what is it with you and Slayers, Spike? Did you go hunting for a new one right away after Buffy was gone, or did you at least wait a day?"
"Bloody hell, Rupe, you are still a heartless bastard," Spike ground out. "Here, let me find a bigger club for you to beat me with. Kick the Spike always was your favorite game."
"Yeah, well, what about me, Spike?"
Spike would have blanched if he could have. "Lil Bit?"
Dawn stepped out of the shadows. "I thought you were going to protect me. But you blew it with Glory and then you blew it again with this one." She looked at him with complete contempt. "Why you're still alive is beyond me. You were never good at anything."
"Well, except covering his ass. He was always good at that, weren't you, dead boy?" Xander said, coming out and putting his arm around Dawn.
"Now, Xander, that's not fair," said Anya. "He was also very good at doing the wrong thing at the wrong time."
"Or the stupid thing at the wrong time," put in Willow. "He did that a lot too."
Spike was breathing in little short gasps, looking from one to the other and back again.. Mandy was getting more and more furious. How dare they? Maybe Spike wasn't perfect, but who was? Hadn't both Giles and Willow killed people? Didn't Dawn shoplift? Hadn't Xander left Anya--an ex-vengeance demon!--at the altar? Oh, yes, Spike had told her much more during their late nights on patrol. So, who were they to judge him? At least Spike had tried to make up for the bad things he had done. And if anyone asked Mandy, she would say he was overcompensating.
"You were a soulless, evil thing, Spike. I never should have let you touch me." Spike actually took a few steps backwards when he heard that voice. Her voice. Buffy strode out of the gloom and took her place beside the others, drilling him with her stare. "I have no idea what I ever thought I saw in you. Even after the soul you were just pathetic. You never did anything right. You weren't fit to tie my shoes. I should have staked you a long time ago."
Spike seemed to get smaller with every venomous word Buffy spat. "Spike. Spike? William!" Mandy hissed.
That jolted him. And made him realize that, while Buffy had always held him in deep disdain--until she needed him, that is--there was someone in his life now, who wasn't crazy, and who wasn't a bubblehead, who actually liked him for who and what he was. His shoulders went back, and his chin came up. Who did that bloody bint think she was, anyway? "You know, Buffy," he said softly, "I really did love you. I loved you so much it hurt. And all you ever gave me in return was scorn and abuse. You used me as a punching bag, not because I deserved it, but because you enjoyed it. And you treated me like that for over two years. Even after I got tortured nearly to death for you and the Nibblit. Well, Slayer, it stops here. I'm not going to melt into a puddle just because you hate me again. It's too old hat and it's been too long for you to be able to affect me like that anymore." He took Mandy's hand. "C'mon, luv. I think we've gotten what we came here for."
"I'm not finished with you yet," Buffy snapped.
"You may not be, but I'm done with you lot. Let's go, Mandy."
Mandy unsheathed her sword. "I don't think this is over, Spike..."
The Scoobies had surrounded them, and their shapes were changing. Hands formed into claws, teeth elongated into fangs, noses became snouts, and bodies grew taller and leaner and hunched over. "I should have known," Spike said, shedding his duster, drawing his own blade, and standing ready.
"Known what?"
"It's a pack of Pangarja demons. They take the form of your insecurities and beat you over the head with them 'til you're weak, then move in for the kill."
"And how do we slay them?"
"Decapitation usually works pretty well. Stabbing them through the heart...which is located in the stomach region. But the ribs go all the way down, and they're thick. Cutting their heads off would probably be easier."
"Gotcha."
The Xander Pangarja rushed Spike, and he said, "Do you know how long I've wanted to do this?" He landed a kick to its jaw and sliced its head cleanly off as it fell. "Always knew the whelp would go down eas...Oof!" He was tackled from behind by the Anya Pangarja, who was enraged that her mate had just been killed. Mandy was having her own problems with the Dawn and Willow demons, who had attacked in concert. She finally dropped her sword, got the Dawn demon in a headlock, and used her as a battering ram against the Willow demon, breaking Dawn's neck with a satisfying crunch as she did so. She dropped Dawn, scooped up her sword in one fluid motion, and stabbed Willow through the heart as the creature charged her.
Mandy didn't even wait for Willow to fall as she turned her attention to the battle between Anya and Spike, who was getting his face whaled on by the angry demon sitting on his chest. He kneed her hard in the back, and she had time to look surprised as she fell forward onto Mandy's blade. Spike scrambled to his feet, and together they faced the Buffy and Giles Pangarjas, only to find that Giles was trading blows with a complete stranger, a shirtless, muscular young man with wild brown hair, torn jeans, and a huge scimitar. "The Buffy demon's mine," Spike said, wiping the blood out of his eyes; "you go help him with Giles."
"You've earned it, Spike," Mandy answered grimly. "Kick her butt." She then ran toward the conflict between Giles and the newcomer, who seemed to be pretty evenly matched. Both were wounded in several places, but neither was giving ground. This Pangarja demon was quite a bit stronger than the others she'd dispatched. The running kick she delivered to its back, just as it nailed the stranger across the head, barely fazed it, and its return swipe nearly caught her across the stomach. She rolled out of the way just in time, then had to parry again as it followed through and booted at her. However, in dealing with Mandy, it had forgotten about the stranger. Its memory was abruptly jogged--if only for an instant--when the stranger's scimitar separated its head from its body while it was trying to stomp her. "Thanks," Mandy said, as the young man offered her his hand and pulled her to her feet.
"You're welcome," he replied. "Shouldn't take much for all three of us to kill the last one."
"No. That one's for Spike alone to deal with."
"O--kay." The stranger watched the vampire and the demon trade blows and barbs back and forth for a minute. "You say so," he said dubiously. "Are you sure?"
"This isn't just about killing a monster," she answered. "Yes!" she cheered when Spike landed a particularly hard punch on Buffy's nose.
"He dropped his sword. On purpose. Was that a smart thing to do?"
"He can handle himself." The demon took a swipe at Spike's face with her claws. He dodged back, but not quite enough, and a line of red marks appeared on his cheek.
"Oh. That's good to know..." The young man's eyes rolled up into the back of his head and he fell to the ground.
"What the? Spike! Hurry up and kill it already!" Mandy yelled as she knelt down next to the stranger. He had a couple of nasty wounds that were leaking blood pretty steadily and a large bump on his head as well.
"Bit busy right now, pet. Bloody hell!" Spike roared as the Buffy Pangarja took advantage of his momentary distraction and kicked him in the stomach. He grabbed it by the throat and began raining blows on its face. "I'm" punch "sick" punch "and bloody tired" punch "of your" punch "crap." punch "I'm not" punch "going to be" punch "your bloody" punch "punching bag" punch "any" punch "bloody" punch "more!" By this time the demon was trying frantically to get away from the enraged vampire, but he had a death grip on its throat. Spike's blood was flying everywhere as Buffy clawed his arm in a desperate attempt to get him to let go, but he was relentless. He lifted it high in the air and screamed at it. "I'm not bloody beneath you! I did everything I bloody could to be worthy of you, and it was never bloody good enough! Well, it stops now." He spun and flung the Pangarja into the Hellmouth crater. It shrieked as it disappeared into the darkness, and they never heard it hit the bottom.
Emotionally exhausted, Spike sank to his knees and put his hands in his face for a moment. Mandy, who had removed her outer shirt and torn it into strips to bandage the stranger, left him and knelt down next to her vampire. She put her arm across his shoulders and whispered, "You'll always be good enough for me." He lost it completely then. She held him and stroked his hair while he leaned into her and cried.
TBC...
Chapter Six
*cringes* Gads, I made Spike cry.
"This is it?" Mandy whispered.
"This is it," Spike answered grimly.
Mandy leaned over and looked down into the hole that used to be Sunnydale. "How do we get in? That is a deep crater. And it's even darker down there than it is up here. I thought there was supposed to be a moon tonight."
"I think we climb in. Walls are rough, looks like plenty of handholds."
"Ugh. Good thing I'm not afraid of heights. This might take awhile."
The sides of the pit had a slight slope to them, and there were several ledges that allowed them to rest. Just over an hour later, they reached the bottom. They dropped their backpacks full of weapons and provisions and sat down for awhile. "What's next?" Mandy asked.
"Well, 'He must journey to the Abyss of the Sun and seek the Counsel of the Guardian.'"
"Who's the Guardian?"
"I dunno, pet. But since the Powers have seen fit to send me back here, we might as well start at the High School as anywhere else. That's where the bloody Hellmouth was."
Spike could hardly get his bearings as they started towards the center of the little city. The entire town was destroyed. All the houses had collapsed; here and there a chimney was still standing, or a rusted-out car lay on its back like a big dead beetle, but mostly it was just piles of unrecognizable rubble. He'd expected to see, oh, trees and grass and maybe some wild animals, but nothing had grown during the time he had left, and the landscape was blasted and deserted.
Or, maybe not so deserted. Mandy picked up on it before Spike did. She unsheathed her sword and elbowed him with her free arm. "Spike! I think something's following us."
He looked where she pointed. "I think you're right, poodle. Shall we let it come to us, or shall we go to it?"
"Why wait?" She shrugged out of the backpack and ran toward whatever it was that was stalking them.
"Well, because..." Spike said, struggling out of his own and grabbing a crossbow, but she was already halfway to the collapsed building where she'd seen their follower. "Bloody hell." He scooped up the backpacks in case whatever they were tackling required more than a sword or a crossbow, and followed her.
When he caught up, he found her engaged with a seven-foot-tall, doughy-looking creature with enormous arms, short legs, and big pointy teeth in a long snout. It was clumsy but powerful, while Mandy was all grace and speed. As Spike watched, she performed a perfect spinning jump and kicked the demon right in the jaw. She followed up with a sword slash to its torso, a backslash to the hand that was reaching for her, and another spin that ended with its head hitting the ground as the blade cut cleanly through its neck. "And that," Mandy said, wiping the steel off with the cloth that Spike handed to her, "is how we handle things that go bump in the night where I come from."
Spike was in awe. He reached out to brush her hair back behind her ear, but pulled back. "You...are beautiful," he said softly. And I'm beneath you, he thought to himself, stepping away and looking at the ground.
He was shocked when she grabbed him and kissed him solidly on the mouth. He was even more shocked when, as he started to respond, she shoved him violently backwards and brought the sword up. For a split second he thought, Oh, God, she's going to kill me...Then another demon head hit the ground at about the same time he did, and she was back in his arms on top of him. "You're beautiful too," she said when they came up for air.
Spike closed his eyes, then steeled himself and did one of the hardest things he'd ever done in his unlife. "No," he said.
Mandy was puzzled. "No, you're not beautiful?" She traced the scar over his left eyebrow. "Yes. You are."
He grabbed her hand--gently--and moved it away. "I mean, no, we can't do this. You Slayer, me vampire. These things never end well and usually end disastrously. Besides, I'm your Watcher. Now, I've never been a Watcher before, but I'm pretty sure that a 'relationship' between a Watcher and his Slayer is a big no-no. So..." He took a deep, unneeded breath, moved her off him, and stood up, hunting his pockets for his cigarettes. "...No."
Mandy looked down, chin trembling slightly. Then she took a deep breath as well, cramming her emotions into a dark recess where she wouldn't have to deal with them. "Well then," she said, getting to her feet and brushing off her jeans, "where's this Hellmouth we're supposed to go see?"
***
The Hellmouth crater was even deeper than the Sunnydale crater. Even with vampiric vision, Spike couldn't see to the bottom. "I'm not going down there," Mandy declared.
"You won't need to," said a voice that sent chills down Spike's spine. They turned around to see an impossibility.
"Rupert?" Spike said in a very small voice.
"Hello, Spike. What are you doing back here? Still mooning over Buffy? Well, you weren't good enough for her then, and you still aren't now that she's dead. Who's this with you? Another toy like Harmony was?"
Something wasn't right. Spike looked more closely at the apparition in front of them. Tweed, glasses, stick up his arse--that was the Watcher all right. Something about the eyes, though...Giles' eyes hadn't been yellow...
Mandy wasn't about to take that kind of guff from a dead guy. Rejected or not, Spike was still her Watcher, and she felt a responsibility to protect him even while she was learning from him. "I'm Mandy the Vampire Slayer. And I bet I could put paid to you if I had to," she said, her voice hard.
"Good Lord." Giles took his glasses off and began furiously cleaning them. "Just what is it with you and Slayers, Spike? Did you go hunting for a new one right away after Buffy was gone, or did you at least wait a day?"
"Bloody hell, Rupe, you are still a heartless bastard," Spike ground out. "Here, let me find a bigger club for you to beat me with. Kick the Spike always was your favorite game."
"Yeah, well, what about me, Spike?"
Spike would have blanched if he could have. "Lil Bit?"
Dawn stepped out of the shadows. "I thought you were going to protect me. But you blew it with Glory and then you blew it again with this one." She looked at him with complete contempt. "Why you're still alive is beyond me. You were never good at anything."
"Well, except covering his ass. He was always good at that, weren't you, dead boy?" Xander said, coming out and putting his arm around Dawn.
"Now, Xander, that's not fair," said Anya. "He was also very good at doing the wrong thing at the wrong time."
"Or the stupid thing at the wrong time," put in Willow. "He did that a lot too."
Spike was breathing in little short gasps, looking from one to the other and back again.. Mandy was getting more and more furious. How dare they? Maybe Spike wasn't perfect, but who was? Hadn't both Giles and Willow killed people? Didn't Dawn shoplift? Hadn't Xander left Anya--an ex-vengeance demon!--at the altar? Oh, yes, Spike had told her much more during their late nights on patrol. So, who were they to judge him? At least Spike had tried to make up for the bad things he had done. And if anyone asked Mandy, she would say he was overcompensating.
"You were a soulless, evil thing, Spike. I never should have let you touch me." Spike actually took a few steps backwards when he heard that voice. Her voice. Buffy strode out of the gloom and took her place beside the others, drilling him with her stare. "I have no idea what I ever thought I saw in you. Even after the soul you were just pathetic. You never did anything right. You weren't fit to tie my shoes. I should have staked you a long time ago."
Spike seemed to get smaller with every venomous word Buffy spat. "Spike. Spike? William!" Mandy hissed.
That jolted him. And made him realize that, while Buffy had always held him in deep disdain--until she needed him, that is--there was someone in his life now, who wasn't crazy, and who wasn't a bubblehead, who actually liked him for who and what he was. His shoulders went back, and his chin came up. Who did that bloody bint think she was, anyway? "You know, Buffy," he said softly, "I really did love you. I loved you so much it hurt. And all you ever gave me in return was scorn and abuse. You used me as a punching bag, not because I deserved it, but because you enjoyed it. And you treated me like that for over two years. Even after I got tortured nearly to death for you and the Nibblit. Well, Slayer, it stops here. I'm not going to melt into a puddle just because you hate me again. It's too old hat and it's been too long for you to be able to affect me like that anymore." He took Mandy's hand. "C'mon, luv. I think we've gotten what we came here for."
"I'm not finished with you yet," Buffy snapped.
"You may not be, but I'm done with you lot. Let's go, Mandy."
Mandy unsheathed her sword. "I don't think this is over, Spike..."
The Scoobies had surrounded them, and their shapes were changing. Hands formed into claws, teeth elongated into fangs, noses became snouts, and bodies grew taller and leaner and hunched over. "I should have known," Spike said, shedding his duster, drawing his own blade, and standing ready.
"Known what?"
"It's a pack of Pangarja demons. They take the form of your insecurities and beat you over the head with them 'til you're weak, then move in for the kill."
"And how do we slay them?"
"Decapitation usually works pretty well. Stabbing them through the heart...which is located in the stomach region. But the ribs go all the way down, and they're thick. Cutting their heads off would probably be easier."
"Gotcha."
The Xander Pangarja rushed Spike, and he said, "Do you know how long I've wanted to do this?" He landed a kick to its jaw and sliced its head cleanly off as it fell. "Always knew the whelp would go down eas...Oof!" He was tackled from behind by the Anya Pangarja, who was enraged that her mate had just been killed. Mandy was having her own problems with the Dawn and Willow demons, who had attacked in concert. She finally dropped her sword, got the Dawn demon in a headlock, and used her as a battering ram against the Willow demon, breaking Dawn's neck with a satisfying crunch as she did so. She dropped Dawn, scooped up her sword in one fluid motion, and stabbed Willow through the heart as the creature charged her.
Mandy didn't even wait for Willow to fall as she turned her attention to the battle between Anya and Spike, who was getting his face whaled on by the angry demon sitting on his chest. He kneed her hard in the back, and she had time to look surprised as she fell forward onto Mandy's blade. Spike scrambled to his feet, and together they faced the Buffy and Giles Pangarjas, only to find that Giles was trading blows with a complete stranger, a shirtless, muscular young man with wild brown hair, torn jeans, and a huge scimitar. "The Buffy demon's mine," Spike said, wiping the blood out of his eyes; "you go help him with Giles."
"You've earned it, Spike," Mandy answered grimly. "Kick her butt." She then ran toward the conflict between Giles and the newcomer, who seemed to be pretty evenly matched. Both were wounded in several places, but neither was giving ground. This Pangarja demon was quite a bit stronger than the others she'd dispatched. The running kick she delivered to its back, just as it nailed the stranger across the head, barely fazed it, and its return swipe nearly caught her across the stomach. She rolled out of the way just in time, then had to parry again as it followed through and booted at her. However, in dealing with Mandy, it had forgotten about the stranger. Its memory was abruptly jogged--if only for an instant--when the stranger's scimitar separated its head from its body while it was trying to stomp her. "Thanks," Mandy said, as the young man offered her his hand and pulled her to her feet.
"You're welcome," he replied. "Shouldn't take much for all three of us to kill the last one."
"No. That one's for Spike alone to deal with."
"O--kay." The stranger watched the vampire and the demon trade blows and barbs back and forth for a minute. "You say so," he said dubiously. "Are you sure?"
"This isn't just about killing a monster," she answered. "Yes!" she cheered when Spike landed a particularly hard punch on Buffy's nose.
"He dropped his sword. On purpose. Was that a smart thing to do?"
"He can handle himself." The demon took a swipe at Spike's face with her claws. He dodged back, but not quite enough, and a line of red marks appeared on his cheek.
"Oh. That's good to know..." The young man's eyes rolled up into the back of his head and he fell to the ground.
"What the? Spike! Hurry up and kill it already!" Mandy yelled as she knelt down next to the stranger. He had a couple of nasty wounds that were leaking blood pretty steadily and a large bump on his head as well.
"Bit busy right now, pet. Bloody hell!" Spike roared as the Buffy Pangarja took advantage of his momentary distraction and kicked him in the stomach. He grabbed it by the throat and began raining blows on its face. "I'm" punch "sick" punch "and bloody tired" punch "of your" punch "crap." punch "I'm not" punch "going to be" punch "your bloody" punch "punching bag" punch "any" punch "bloody" punch "more!" By this time the demon was trying frantically to get away from the enraged vampire, but he had a death grip on its throat. Spike's blood was flying everywhere as Buffy clawed his arm in a desperate attempt to get him to let go, but he was relentless. He lifted it high in the air and screamed at it. "I'm not bloody beneath you! I did everything I bloody could to be worthy of you, and it was never bloody good enough! Well, it stops now." He spun and flung the Pangarja into the Hellmouth crater. It shrieked as it disappeared into the darkness, and they never heard it hit the bottom.
Emotionally exhausted, Spike sank to his knees and put his hands in his face for a moment. Mandy, who had removed her outer shirt and torn it into strips to bandage the stranger, left him and knelt down next to her vampire. She put her arm across his shoulders and whispered, "You'll always be good enough for me." He lost it completely then. She held him and stroked his hair while he leaned into her and cried.
TBC...
Chapter Six
*cringes* Gads, I made Spike cry.