The Cost of Butterfly Kisses
Aug. 24th, 2010 05:23 pm![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
lit_gal
The Cost of Butterfly Kisses, Part 24Fandom/Pairing: BtVS, Spike/Xander
Rated: ADULT
Summary: Okay, a couple of days ago, I gave you 3,000 words showing Spike back with the full Scooby gang, soul in place. However, the chapter wasn't done. This is the full chapter (about 4,300 words) and the conversation between Spike and Xander got added back in. A thunderstorm made me post without it.
(Chapter One... ) ( Chapter Two... ) ( Chapter Three... ) ( Chapter Four... ) ( Chapter Five ) ( Chapter Six ) ( Chapter 7 ) ( Chapter 8 ) ( Chapter Nine ) ( Chapter Ten ) ( Chapter Eleven ) ( Chapter Twelve ) ( Chapter Thirteen ) ( Chapter 14 . ) ( Chapter 15 ) ( Chapter 16 ) ( Chapter 17 ) ( Chapter 18 ) ( Chapter 19 ) ( Chapter 20 ) ( Chapter 21 ) ( Chapter 22 ) ( Chapter 23 )
Xander looked at Spike who was not sprawled out in a chair like nothing had changed and he was still the big bad, only now he was the souled big bad, and Xander was shocked at how much that bothered him. He thought he’d hated the vampire. Oh, he'd gotten used to him, but a week ago, Xander would have said that he still hated Spike. The idiot had blackmailed him and threatened him and hit him on the head with a microscope in an attempted to get back his psychotic girlfriend, but the idea of him turning into some brooding Angel-clone was pretty much nauseating.
“Do vampires sleep?” Dawn asked. She was sitting on a kitchen chair Xander had pulled into the living room, and she had her arms crossed in a good imitation of a pissed off slayer.
Spike looked over with an expression of confusion. “Yeah.”
“I know you're stronger than me, but if you ever hurt my sister again, I’ll find you when you’re asleep and stake you,” Dawn threatened.
“Dawn!” Buffy had been withdrawn and silent up to this point, but that pulled her out of her funk. “Let’s avoid death threats.”
Sighing, Xander just patted Bonnie on the back. She was clinging to him. When Spike had first come home, she’d thrown herself at him with such joy that the trembling Spike who was clearly hallucinating had vanished and he turned into the demon she knew. He’d swung her up and for one brilliant second, things felt normal. Then Buffy had followed, and Spike had accidentally brushed against her as he spun with Bonnie in his arms.
The moment that happened, Xander could see Buffy recoil, the fear and desperation etched on her face. If she’d been planning on telling the rest of them that the attack hadn’t been any big deal, she’d lost her chance. In one second, all of them realized just how much Spike had frightened her. Even Spike. He’d put Bonnie down and retreated to his chair. Even now, his body language was big bad, but he was silent, his eyes focused on the knee of his jeans.
“He tried to rape you.”
“Ixnay on the ape-ray,” Xander said desperately as he felt a need to put his hands over Bonnie’s ears.
“But if he wasn’t strong enough to win, does that still count?” Bonnie asked. The whole room fell silent. Tara and Willow hovered in the arch to the kitchen, Dawn’s back went even stiffer, and Buffy, who was sitting on the couch with Xander, turned ghost-white.
“Honey, it does count,” Xander said softly. “It’s not okay to hurt people or even try to hurt people.”
“Unless you’re Spike and then you get a free pass,” Dawn muttered. Bonnie’s cheeks darkened in distress, and Xander could understand why. Dawn was the closest she’d ever had to a friend her own age, and Dawn had always been a big Spike fan, but now Dawn was pissed. Dawn was rightfully pissed because attempted rape wasn't like putting your elbows on the table at dinner, and Bonnie was having to choose between her friend and her family. Xander held her tighter.
Xander wanted to just sit in a corner and maybe throw a few jokes around, but Bonnie was looking at him with bright green eyes that reflected nearly as much pain and confusion as Spike’s blue ones. “He made a mistake, and part of that was the fact that he didn’t have a soul or a sense of right and wrong. He had more of a sense of strong and weak, and the strong-versus-weak thinking is not exactly moral." Xander struggled to find the right words to make his daughter understand this. "I mean, using that rule we’re all screwed because no matter how big we are, there will always be something bigger out there. But part of that was the whole not having a soul, and hey, he fixed that.”
"What does that mean exactly—that Spike is all soul-having?" Dawn demanded. When she got going, she really was about as stubborn as Buffy.
Willow gave Dawn and Buffy matching sympathetic looks. “Now he has a soul, so he’s more like—” Halfway through that thought, Spike turned to give her a yellow-eyed glare that made Xander wonder just how well pinned on his soul might be. She fell silent.
“Not anything like the poof,” Spike snapped. Clearly there was still a whole lot of big bad in there. "I should just bugger off." Spike sat up, his posture oddly formal, and Xander could feel Bonnie's fingers digging into his arms.
"Hey, no one is looking for any buggering." Xander blushed as his brain processed that statement about one second slower than his mouth. Spike actually managed to smirk.
"Why were you in the school?" Tara asked softly. When the rest of them flailed like emotionally headless chickens, they could count on Tara to keep her cool.
Spike shrugged. "Something called me. Kept saying that it was coming from below--that I belonged in hell, but since I wasn't coming down, hell was rising up to meet me."
"Well, that's sounding un-cheerful. I thought we had that fight and won it." Xander didn't specifically mention Glorificus' hell-dimension door, not when Buffy was looking so breakable.
"Things are strange in the magical world, too," Tara said. She glanced over at Willow. "Rack is gathering magical powers faster than ever, and it feels like magic is tipping somehow." Willow's eyes slid down to the ground.
"Which I would feel if I hadn't done so much tipping myself," Willow whispered.
Buffy sat up a little straighter on the couch. "Hey, we are not keeping score here. We've all done some pretty stupid things in this last year." When Buffy's eyes found him, Xander flashed on an image of Warren sprawled in an obscene pool of blood. She would probably always think he'd been stupid and just following Spike, but Xander believed in his heart that he'd done what had to be done. Period. However, he'd always regret doing it, anyway. Yeah, if they kept score, Xander figured all of them would have some pretty sad numbers right now. "But if something's coming, then we do what we've always done--we pull together." Buffy had on her firm voice, the one that just dared anyone to disagree with her.
"I feel a need to say 'amen' which is weird with the whole Jewish/wiccan thing," Willow said. She was still timid and quiet, but Xander could feel the clinging wisps of their friendship pulling at him.
"Hey, we've kicked hell's a--" Xander coughed, "tush. We've kicked hell's tush lots of time, as long as two counts as lots. But hey, that's two more times than anyone else has managed, as far as I know. So, what's the plan?"
"We could see what Rack knows," Tara offered. "I don't think Willow or I should go, though. There's a new darkness in that part of town, so he might be killing witches or maybe even stripping their powers." Tara made a face.
"Um, you're making it sound like stripping powers is worse than killing. Personally, I'm way more okay with being powerless, but then I have a lot of experience with powerlessness," Xander said with a goofy grin that got a matching smile out of Willow.
Buffy was still looking like a glass version of herself—pale and on the verge of shattering into a million little pieces. It was weird to think that Spike had managed to do so much damage accidentally when he'd spent years intentionally trying to hurt her without making a dent in her defense. Of course, the problem was that she had let him in. She'd trusted him. As much as Xander had railed and complained and privately thought Buffy was losing her mind, he'd never been blind enough to miss the fact that something in her had pretty much trusted Spike since she'd let him out of Giles' bathtub. Now that Xander had spent time around Bonnie and Spike, he suspected that something deep down in Buffy was just a little demonic—enough that she'd expected to be able to control Spike by proving her dominance over him. It was like Bonnie expecting Spike to come back because he was the strong one in the house so of course he couldn’t leave. That wasn't the way it worked in with demonic logic. The dominant one took control and told other people what to do, at least until the dominant one got tossed on his ass. Spike and Buffy had discovered that pretty much on the same night.
"Xander?" Willow sounded concerned and Xander blinked at her.
"Huh?"
"You're being all weirdly spacey," Willow said. Xander blinked as he realized that people were looking at him. Clearly he'd missed part of the conversation.
"Um, could we back up to where I was saying that dead is worse than powerless?"
Spike snorted, and Xander found himself oddly reassured by the fact that Spike still thought he was an idiot.
Tara studied Xander for a second, and Xander squirmed a bit. "I said that if Rack rips the magic out of a natural witch, someone born with powers, it might rip the soul out too."
Xander's mouth fell open. "I vote no to any and all soul-ripping. I mean, body ripping is bad, but it does not seem fair for someone to go ripping your soul."
"My grandmother saw a lot," Tara said softly and slowly. She was feeling her way around the words, and Xander waited for her to figure out how to say what she was trying to. "She said some demons and warlocks could..." she stopped and swallowed. The something shifted and she straightened up, her determination shining out of her. "She said they could trap the soul. She said the women of my family were cursed because the demon that had stolen my great-great-great-great-grandfather's soul had raped the wife and left a changling child. She said we were the children of that evil—that the demon's blood travelled through the female line and that as long as one drop of the demon's blood walked the earth, the soul of our ancestor was held prisoner inside the demon's heart."
"But that doesn't make sense," Buffy said. Xander was glad he wasn't the only one a little confused. "If your grandmother thought her blood was keeping someone's soul trapped, why would she have children?" Buffy asked. "No children, no demon blood left."
Tara gave a small shrug. "She did what her husband told her. The women of my line had an obligation to have female children who could carry the demon's power. The men wanted... they wanted us to track down other witches with the blood of the demon and kill them. It was our obligation to destroy all the other descendants and then when the line was down to one, she would have to destroy herself to free the ancestor's soul." Tara's voice had lost all emotion, but Xander could feel enough disgust for both of them.
"Your family are complete and utter tit-heads, pet," Spike offered. "How old were you when they started in with that rot?"
Tara shrugged. "From as early as I can remember. But my grandmother used to slip me books, make me translate Latin spells and magic history, and the books said that soul-trapping was a skill of the old gods and the most powerful chaos mages and practitioners of nigromancy and ya sang. Those types of magic users usually sacrifice the ability to have children because they redirect their life-giving forces into prolonging their own lives."
"So they lied. Big surprise." Buffy frowned. "I wish I'd hit your father really, really hard when he was in town."
Tara shrugged like it didn't matter, but Xander noticed that everyone else in the room looked more than a little bothered, including Spike. The last time Tara's family had come up, Spike had congratulated them on being manipulative bastards. Then again, he'd fried his own brain by hitting Tara just to prove to her that she was human. Xander wished he could fit Spike neatly into one box so that he could stop giving himself a headache by trying to figure the vamp out. And now with the soul, Spike was even harder to understand.
"But if Rack is practicing nigromancy or ya sang, he might catch my soul or Willow's. Our soul would be trapped inside him until he died. It would become part of him, like... like a battery in a toy."
"Ick," Bonnie said. Xander flinched as he realized that his daughter was hearing all this. Her cheeks were dark and she was clearly upset, but she still looked calmly around the room with bright eyes.
"Seconding that," Buffy said with a disgusted expression of her own. "So, you two will be staying as far away from him as possible. I'll go and find out what he knows about hell rising." Buffy stood up.
"You can't go alone," Dawn blurted about a second before Xander said the same thing.
"I'll go with," Spike offered as he stood. Buffy flinched back, her foot catching the leg of the coffee table and kicking it hard enough to made Bonnie's pile of books tumble to the floor.
"Sorry. Buffy, I'm sorry," Spike said, backing away.
"No, it's me. I—I just—" She stopped. Xander could fill in the rest. She was just scared. She was just freaked out being in the same room with the vampire who had tried to rape her after she had put her trust in him. Actually, Spike was looking freaked out, too.
"Bloody hell. This can't work. I should just leave town."
"It will," Buffy blurted out quickly, and now she looked desperate. "It already is. Hey, you've been out of the basement for less than an hour and you've already given up talking to invisible people. Give us some time and we can get back where we were."
Spike just stared at her.
"Well, maybe not exactly where we were," Buffy said with a pained frown. Yeah, she was still hurting him about as much as he was hurting her.
"Buff, no offense, but you tend to inspire either running and flailing or the firing of big magical balls of flame," Xander said. "Maybe Spike and I should try talking to Rack."
"You?" Maybe Buffy didn't mean to be insulting, but Xander had to clench his teeth to keep from saying something pretty unkind. Bonnie's darkened cheeks puffed up like little balloons so that Xander could see K'wana's face in their daughter.
"Boy is good at playing helpless and putting people off their defenses. You go in there, and you and Rack are going to end up trying to kill each other. You don't get much information out of a dead body, luv." Spike had been sounding like his old, confident self until the 'luv' slipped out. He visibly flinched.
"That might be the best way to get information. Rack wouldn't hurt Xander. He doesn't have magic and hurting him would make us come after him," Tara said. "But he m-might take you hostage," she added after a heartbeat.
"Great. I get to be bait. There's nothing like feeling like my life has purpose." Xander patted Bonnie on the back and started urging her to move the couch seat. She was getting so big that his legs went to sleep when she sat in his lap too much, and he could feel the pins and needles start when she shifted.
"You don't have to," Buffy said.
"Hey, I don't have to do a lot of stupid things that I do anyway," Xander pointed out. "Besides, Spike still doesn't know how to work the washing machine without shrinking all his clothes, so he'll bring me back safe and sound."
"Bloody right. Houseboys are expensive to replace," Spike said before he headed for the door with long strides.
"See? I feel safer already," Xander joked as he followed him before the girls could launch any sort of counter-attack on his manly ego and ability to not get killed. Hopefully Dawn would distract Buffy with the verbal attack Xander could see just below the surface. Buffy had jerked Dawn around about as much as Spike. Socializing with demons was bad when Dawn wanted to do it, but at the same time she was busy explaining why Dawn shouldn't date Halvard, she'd been sleeping with Spike. Yep. If they were keeping score, they'd all fail at life. "Be good for Tara," Xander said to Bonnie before he closed the door after him.
Xander stood looking at the door. Shit. In all his planning to escape the house, he'd forgotten that he'd be alone with Spike. He wasn't prepared to deal with this new vampire when he couldn't figure out what he thought about the old version.
Sighing, Xander realized he had to face Spike eventually. He plastered a smile on his face and turned around. Spike was standing by the front gate smoking as he scanned he quiet street.
"Are we going to go after Rack, or do you want a chance to take a shot at me?"
"Me?" Xander asked. Spike turned his head just enough to give Xander a cold look. "I was just making sure you weren't talking to any more of your invisible friends." Xander started toward Spike. "I had an invisible friend when I was four. He talked me into eating a mud pie. Looking back, I'm pretty sure I just thought it looked like chocolate."
Spike's eyebrow twitched.
"So... Rack? I don't actually know where he lives, so I'm really hoping you do. If we have to go back in with the girls, our egos will take more damage."
"I know," Spike said. He gave Xander a long look and then dropped the cigarette to the sidewalk before grinding it under his heel. The turned and headed down the sidewalk. Xander realized that Spike's coat was gone. He'd been a lot more dramatic with it, but maybe he was tired of the 'batman with the cape' look he had going when he walked fast in that coat.
"So, any chance we're going to be taking the van to the other side of town? You know, the van that disappeared when you did?" Xander asked. "Wait. You didn't trade my van for a soul, did you?"
Spike stopped and spun around to glare at Xander.
"Not that you could because your soul is worth way more than my van. My missing van," Xander added. Shit. He really was an idiot. He was an idiot who was kicking a vampire when he was down. Oddly, that didn't feel as good as Xander might have assumed.
Spike turned back toward the north and started walking again. This was going to be a long night.
"Did the van even survive?" Xander asked.
"If it didn't? Spike didn't seem too concerned. Xander sighed, but hey, before Spike was ripping through his money, Anya was doing the same thing. They walked in silence for a time, neat little houses giving way to small apartment buildings and stores. "Right then, if you're planning on saying something, just say it."
"What am I planning to say?" Xander asked. Spike stopped again, this time staring at Xander until Xander started to squirm. "What?"
"I figured you'd be the one voting to stake me."
"Me? Why me?"
Spike's eyebrows went up. Some days I think you got dropped on your head as a tyke."
"Considering my mother's parenting skills, that's possible." Xander gave a goofy grin and just waited for Spike to say something that actually made sense.
The silence continued as Spike just stared at him, but Xander was a whole lot better at outwaiting people than he had been as a teenager. Sure, he still wanted to make an inappropriate joke about his mother versus Spike's crazy sire, but he had grown up enough to keep his mouth shut. Usually. Sometimes.
"Bloody hell. I really thought you'd be saying I couldn't be trusted around the women and children."
"Okay, the women in my life are scarier than me. I don't worry too much about them, although I tend to worry a lot about their budgeting and plumbing skills. As far as the children, the only one I know is Bonnie, and she pretty much adores you."
"More than Dawn," Spike said, pressing his lips together unhappily.
"There is the whole attempted rape thing. It tends to make sisters cranky."
Spike gave him a cold glare. "I wasn't trying to hurt her. You, though.... you, I'll hurt.”
"First, thank god for the chip because I do know that. Second, I know you weren't trying to hurt Buffy. Okay, I will never again admit this, but I remember what it felt like when I had the hyena--Buffy was so strong, and I just wanted to either dominate her or let her dominate me, but I wanted to be in the same pack with her, and I didn't care if I hurt Buffy the girl because I wanted to be close to Buffy the slayer.” Xander grimaced. “Okay, I think I just heard hell freeze over because sympathizing with you over our mutual habit of trying to rape my best friend... this is officially the weirdest conversation I've ever had."
"You? You tried to soddin' rape Buffy?" Spike's mouth was practically hanging open.
Xander shrugged and started down the sidewalk. Hopefully, if he picked the wrong direction, Spike would stop him. "I told you about K'wani.”
“Trust me, that wasn’t rape, mate. Hell, the bird still smelled of soddin’ lust even when I met her four years after the fact. When Anya called you a Viking, she couldn’t have been too far off the mark.” Spike gave Xander a look that was just plain creepy. It was an odd cross between admiration and curiosity, and Xander’s arm hair stood up on end.
“Way to be creepy guy,” Xander complained. “But I wasn’t talking about K’wani. I was talking about when the hyena took over. I actually missed out on eating Principal Flutie because I was busy trying to rape Buffy. She kicked my ass, but I tried. And I am going to deny ever having this conversation, but maybe looking at Bonnie every day and thinking about K’wani has made me realize something.” Xander looked over, but Spike was walking beside him without comment. If this had been soulless Spike, he would have made any number of comments by now. This patience was actually as creepy as Spike’s weird looks. Xander chewed on his lower lip for a second as he tried to figure out how to say this. If Spike would just interrupt him, he could change the subject and forget the whole mess, but Xander figured Spike had earned some honesty. “What Warren did…” Xander stopped. Now Spike was looking at him, but he was still staying weirdly quiet. Maybe he was listening to the voices in his head. Xander verbally plowed ahead. “Warren wanted power. He was a sad little man who raped someone because he wanted to feel unpathetic for one moment.”
“Soddin’ right,” Spike agreed. Xander expected Spike to go off on the righteousness of killing people who threatened the family, but Spike just sniffed and went back to silently studying the street they were walking. Maybe Xander should have brought Bonnie. His daughter had the good or bad habit of showing brutal honesty She must have gotten that from her mother because Xander was more the sort to avoid the uncomfortable parts. Like now. He’d pay good money for a vampire attack to just avoid this conversation he’d started. He was clearly an idiot.
“When I attacked Buffy and K’wani, I wasn’t trying to be unpathetic, although looking back, it was slightly pathetic, but I mostly just wanted the fight. I wanted to dominate them or for them to dominate me, and I was totally okay with either one. It was more about finding pack. So, I’m not saying that vampire are anything like primals--”
“They are,” Spike cut him off. Xander looked over, searching for some sort of emotion, but Spike was watching the street with the same predatory gaze he always seemed to have when they were hunting. Xander nodded and just walked through the pools of yellow light at Spike’s side. If vampires were like primals, Xander knew why Spike had done it. It was wrong. Flat out it was wrong. And Xander didn’t regret throwing Spike out of the house. Without a soul, Spike wasn’t going to understand the danger he was putting people in, and Xander knew that because he’d been a danger to everyone when he had the primal in him. And Xander knew he never would have been able to talk Spike or Buffy out of boffing until they wrecked each other’s lives. Nope, the whole ugly mess had been totally out of his control. But if vampires were like primals, Xander could feel a little sympathy for a subordinate pack member who found himself without a pack to run with.
They’d walked in silence for a good mile, the sounds of distant traffic and chirping bugs filling the night, before Spike spoke. “So, you’re not planning on staking me the minute I have my back turned?” he asked.
“Nope,” Xander said, “just as long as you promise to not turn into Angel. Seriously, one good brood or speech on redemption and spiritual torture or snowstorm and I’m reserving my right to dust you.”
Spike snorted. “Like I’d turn into that nancy-boy wanker. If I start whining about redemption, I’d want someone to put me out of my soddin’ misery.”
“Exactly. It would be a mercy killing. I know I’d way rather be dead than turn into Angel.”
“I’ll make sure to drain ya and leave your rotting corpse in some nice quiet place if you ever start abusing the leather and hair gel,” Spike offered with an expression that came close to a smile. Maybe things were going to be okay. All they had to deal with was something evil rising from below, and face it--they were all way better at fighting demons than confronting personal issues.
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Great chapter
Date: 2010-08-25 03:31 am (UTC)Its really great how Xander is wishing for some sort of minor disaster so that he and Spike can get out of talking about important personal issues.
The comparisons between primal Xander's and Spike's behavior was great. Xander understood how the Spike Buffy disaster was an unstoppable mess, and Spike's motives.
Re: Great chapter
Date: 2010-08-29 12:00 am (UTC)