Spike was in a terrible mood, and his head and face still ached from the beating the Slayer had given him the night before. He felt like Hell. And although he didn't have a mirror, and couldn't have seen himself in it if he did have one, he was pretty sure he looked like Hell, too.
He was sitting in front of the telly, watching something but not really paying attention to it, when he heard something.
Knock, knock, knock.
He froze a moment, not quite believing his ears, then turned the sound down and listened.
Then he heard it again. Knock, knock, knock.
He was so surprised that he forgot to growl in pain as he got up to answer the door. For as long as he'd used the crypt as his home, everyone who'd ever come to see him had just opened the door and barged right in, usually as a prelude to beating him up or trying to bribe the latest demon gossip out of him. Even his Li'l Bit, who treated him more like a human being than anyone else he knew, never bothered to knock on his door before coming in.
When he opened the door, he was greeted by the back of someone's head, covered in blond hair, whose owner was nervously scanning the surrounding cemetery before turning back to the door. As he saw her face he gasped, "Tara?" The shy witch was the last person on Earth he expected to pay him a visit.
Tara took one look at the vampire she had come to visit, and blurted out "Good God, Spike, what happened to you?"
Too bemused to think up a grandiose tale of a loose Kampanak demon or a mob of rampaging vampires, he found himself shouting, "The bloody Slayer happened to me, that's what!" As Tara stared blankly at him, he waved his hand dismissively and muttered, "Never mind. Just tell me the stupid bird isn't in the clink over that soddin' accident."
Tara's eyes widened as she figured out what Spike was talking about. "Oh, no! It wasn't an accident! Um . . . " She faltered for a moment, then visibly tried to pull herself together and asked, "M-may I c-come in, please?"
Struck again by the non sequitur and her (un)common courtesy, he stood frozen in the doorway for a moment before stepping aside and gesturing for her to enter. "Come on in."
Tara walked through the door, peering about her in dazed horror and fascination. She still didn't believe she was really here, in Spike's crypt, and she hoped she would have the nerve to say what she had come here to say. As she looked around for a place to sit down that wasn't covered in dust, dirt, and God knows what else, Spike asked her, "Well? So what's with this 'not an accident' business?"
Still feeling nervous, she tried to answer, cursing inwardly as her old stutter came back to bedevil her. "Sh-she said that wh-when she heard that the d-dead g-g-girl had been identified as Warren's ex-g-girlfriend-"
"Warren? The geek who built the 'bots?" Spike interrupted, looking surprised and angry.
Tara nodded. "A-anyway, she figured that there had to be a co-connection, and that she'd been set up."
Spike cocked his head to the side. "When did all this happen? Sorry, luv, but nobody's been keeping me in the loop lately, since . . ." he broke off.
Tara could guess what he'd been about to say, and figuring this was as good an opening as any, she screwed up her nerve and finished his thought ". . . since B-buffy has been coming to you for s-s-s-sex, not help or advice."
Spike managed to turn even paler than usual, and she wondered idly if vampires could faint. She had to bite back hysterical laughter at the thought, then continued, not thinking about what she was saying in order to keep from stuttering again. "She told me. About you, and her. Not just the sex, but about the chip, too. She asked me to look into the spell that brought her back, and how she might have come back wrong. When I told her she wasn't wrong, she broke down and confessed everything . . . and then begged me not to forgive her," she quietly added, silently praying to every god and goddess she knew.
Spike just continued to look at her dumbly for a moment. Then he spoke slowly. "She begged you . . . not to forgive her?"
Tara sighed. She'd been hoping and praying that Spike would be more concerned about Buffy than curious about the state of her humanity. She could fill him in on the details of her magical research later, but if he was really concerned about Buffy, if he really loved her enough to do the right thing for her. . .
Everything she'd been waiting to say came pouring out at once. "Spike, she's falling apart. She's using the sex like a drug, trying to make the pain go away, but she's only feeling it more afterwards." She took a deep breath. "She's wasting away. Not physically, but emotionally, spiritually. If she doesn't get help soon, there won't be anything left of her:"
One more breath.
"Spike, I need your help to save her."
At this point, Spike's mind was reeling. None of what he'd heard made any sense. Buffy, falling apart? His Slayer, wasting away? Then, all the pieces began to fit together in his head, and he squeezed his eyes shut in grief as he realized what he'd done to his lover. He'd thought Buffy was stronger than this. It was her strength that he'd been attracted to in the first place, and he'd assumed that she'd managed to put herself back together in the past few months since her resurrection.
Yeah, he'd taken a few verbal jabs at her, but he was just waiting for her to start returning in kind; to him, bantering with the blonde Slayer was almost as fun as fighting her -- or shagging her. But if what Tara was saying was correct, Buffy had probably been taking all his jibes to heart. She was on a downward spiral . . . and he'd been greasing the wheels for her.
All at once, a voice came to him from out of the past. To kill this girl, you've gotta love her. "Goddamn you, Angelus," he whispered. "Why did you have to be right for once?"
When he looked back up at Tara, his eyes were shining with tears. "Whatever you need, luv, you've got it. Just tell me what I can do."
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