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| Bring On The Day, cont'd |
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| "Bring a thing from where it belongs to where it doesn't - things don't do well in strange places." Buffy felt relief flood her as Spike spoke from behind her shoulder. "I thought you were lost. I was looking for you. You should have been here." "Sorry, luv. Had to give blood." She turned to look at him, and saw the bruises and cuts on his face and torso. She trailed her fingers over the scars on his chest, tracing the signs of the zodiac that had been cut into his flesh. She left fresh blood, and Spike took her hand, turning it palm up to the light. He touched his fingertip to hers. "You cut yourself." "It was just the tree." "Tree doesn't like being here. It wants to go back where it belongs. Back where it's friends are. But it stays until someone comes for it. Maybe it will die here...." "I tried to come for you. But I don't know where. And I'm not strong enough to open the door." "I opened a door. Din't mean to. It made me fly over the door, and pour myself out on it, and it opened. Tried to stop it, I did...but the ugly evil crawled up anyway." He let go of her hand then, and shoved his own hands into the pockets of his jeans. "You tried to stop it, too...it left marks on you." He pointed to the shirt she wore, where the bloodstains had begun to move again. She looked down at the pentagram on the sleeve that spun in circles and then turned into a pyramid. It made a sharp clicking sound as it moved. "I should put some seltzer on the stains. That takes stains out, doesn't it?" She looked back up at Spike, and saw that he was staring at his hand as he passed it in and out of the beam of late afternoon sunlight that flooded the room. "Warm," he said in wonder. "Warm. That's how it feels to be a man. Been cold a long time, Buffy." He held his hand steady in the sun, marveling at how the light shone on his pale skin, making it tingle pleasantly. "It's cold here..." Buffy clasped his hand in both of hers. "I want you to be warm. How can I help you?" "Cold here..." Spike repeated. Cold. With a deep, reflexive breath, Spike woke, feeling his aching chest expand. Bloody hell, that hurts!!! How many ribs is that? Four or five? More? Damned hard to tell.... He lay for long moments remembering the warmth of the sunlight and of Buffy's hands...the dream had felt so real, being in her house and feeling safe. Safe in her belief in him. Not hard to see what that dream meant. Fine, he'd hold on to that as long as he had to. He knew she'd try to find him; even if he was utterly destroyed by the shapeshifter or that insensate thing that IT called a "real" vampire, he knew she was looking for him, and that was enough. Spike closed his eyes again as the Turuk-han returned to the cavern. ~ / ~ She swam back up through the darkness of sleep as Willow shook her shoulder gently. "Time to get up, Buffy...I let you sleep as long as I could, but now...." Willow stepped back as Buffy woke and sat up much more quickly than she'd expected. "Will, the seal was opened. That's where that Uber-...the Turuk-han came from. Andrew said they needed blood to open it...I think they used Spike...." Willow blinked in confusion as Buffy painfully stood up and made her way to the dresser. "But, Buffy...how do you --" "I had a dream. There was a lot in it that didn't make sense, but there was a lot that did." She rummaged in a drawer, pulling out a change of clothes. "I'm pretty sure Spike is still alive." Her voice wavered almost imperceptibly, then steadied. "If he can hang on, he'll be able to tell us a lot about what we're dealing with." She was pulling on jeans now, trying to ignore the all-over ache, punctuated as it was by isolated sharp reminders of the punishment her body had taken. "Okay, then...I guess we're in full problem-solving, search-and-rescue mode, then. Thing is, the girls seem pretty down about our ability to do anything.... But-but, Anya's making breakfast and I'm looking up spells that might help us get some information...if I can get up the gumption to try it again, that is." Buffy pulled a sweater down over her t-shirt, and looking into the mirror to brush her hair out of her eyes, caught sight of her friend's downcast face. She turned to look at her directly. "Will, I don't know what's coming next. This may kill us all, no matter what we do. But the biggest mistake we can make is to do nothing -- to let our fear of what might happen paralyze us. I feel like I was given a hint for a reason. Something to hold onto, or -- or a clue to what we should do next. I can't really explain it. I just know that we have to move forward, wherever that is." The redhead took a deep breath and gave her friend a lopsided grin that didn't entirely reach her eyes, but did help to steady her nerves. Then, the girls turned together to go downstairs and inspire their meager army, rescue the improbable knight, and try to save the world. Again. fin |
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| Acknowledgements ~ The dialog from Bring on The Night was copied from www.buffyworld.com. |
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