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Chapter 17:

Spike leaned back wearily against the wall. Who knew cleaning could be so tiring? And the damn bloodstains didn't want to come up.

As soon as the sun had gone down, he had spirited the wounded Slayer to the nearest hospital. He'd been delighted to discover that the Watchers had arrived in a black van that they had conveniently left parked on the street in front of the house.

At the hospital he'd been forced to leave Buffy like an abandoned kitten. It wasn't as if he could answer questions about health insurance anyway. Besides, if she showed up as a Jane Doe, it would take longer for the Council to track her down.

So Spike had returned to the house they had appropriated. He had things to do, people to torture, and bodies to get rid of.

Torturing the woman, who did in fact turn out to be Ms. Post, turned out to be very unsatisfying. The woman had a very low tolerance for pain, and spending the afternoon chained in a dark basement by a vampire had not helped her courage. She had told him everything he wanted to know very quickly. Not that information was the main reason for the torture. It was because she deserved it, and because he'd thought it would make him feel better and make him forget about the Slayer he'd abandoned at the hospital.

It didn't. More than that, the things she did tell him turned his stomach. It's not that they were excessive in their evilness. He'd known human beings to do things to each other a thousand times worse. But Ms. Post was supposed to be one of the white hats, and it shook Spike's convictions to the core.

From the moment Angelus had first told him about slayers, Spike had seen himself as a player in an epic battle of good versus evil, and Spike was proud to be on the side of evil. It wasn't about winning. After all, if you killed one slayer, another one was sure to pop up. You fought because the battle was its own reward. You fought because someone had to–good vs. evil–what would the world be without that? The secret Spike had learned in death was that true beauty came from its contrast with ugliness. It was why he'd always been a bad poet as a man; he refused to see the dark ugly side of life.

But if the Watchers Council treaded so close to the dark side, what was the point of being evil? At least he could cling to the knowledge that the slayer was good. He'd faced three of them, and their goodness had been so clear you could almost taste it. It wasn't that they were saints–no, they were human enough–but they tried their best to do the right thing, and fought as hard as they could.

Something was wrong with the very nature of the world if these beautiful warriors were controlled by something as corrupt as the Council. It was almost more than he could stand.

That's why once he was done with Gwendolyn Post, he had desperately looked for something else to occupy his body and mind. He had started to clean, as if scrubbing away the bloodstains could scrub away the past. Besides, Buffy had worked hard to clean the place the first time. It hurt him to think they had come and messed up all her work.

Spike just hadn't expected it to be so difficult. In fact, he had spent most of the rest of the night trying to make the house seem normal again. The sun would be up soon, and he'd meant to return to the hospital to check on the Slayer, but now there was no time. So a hungry, tired Spike decided there was nothing to do but sleep.

That was easier said than done, however. Normally Spike had no trouble falling asleep, but now he was haunted by a hundred things he could have done differently. He wished he'd gone back to the hospital. If he had, he could have haunted the hallways, popping in and out of Buffy's room when the nurses and doctors were gone. He'd be there in case anything happened. Instead he was stuck here, in this horrible house where he'd been so happy just a short time before. Finally, exhaustion won over and he fell asleep.

When he was shaken awake, he first thought he was still dreaming and that the ghost of the Slayer had come to haunt him, wearing hospital scrubs.

"You killed Ms. Post," she accused.

"Yeah," he admitted, still trying to sort out whether he was awake or asleep. He finally decided he felt too physically miserable to be asleep. "She was trying to kill you," he explained.

The Slayer sank down on the bed next to him. She looked awful. She'd always been pale, because she'd been imprisoned away from the sun for months, but now her paleness had a deathly cast to it. There were bags under her eyes, and she looked as if nothing but pure will was keeping her going. Not to mention the fact that the hospital scrubs, which he supposed she'd stolen, weren't all that flattering.

"She wouldn't do that," she insisted weakly, but she didn't sound very sure.

"She shot you didn't she? And she's a Watcher, so why would she try and stop a vampire with a gun. Just pisses us off, you know?" He took a deep, unneeded breath and gently brushed a stray lock of hair from Buffy's face. "Listen to me, pet. I know this is hard for you to hear, but you need to understand the Council's going to keep trying to kill you."

"No, they-"

He interrupted her. "Look, I talked to your Ms. Post before she di– I killed her." There was no point in being anything but blunt and honest. The Slayer was going to need to confront some hard facts. "They sent her, and the two blokes with her to check on you. They realized you escaped from the Master, and they sent your Watcher to evaluate you. To decide if you were still able to slay. They thought you might be too wounded, or maybe you'd gone crazy from being tortured or something. If you were no good as a slayer anymore, Ms. Post and the goons she brought with her were supposed to kill you so another slayer would be called."

He paused, carefully watching her features. She seemed frozen, as if she wasn't willing to react yet.

He continued, "When she saw us, she thought. . ." Despite the seriousness of the whole thing he couldn't help but laugh softly at the irony. "She thought you'd found some nice bloke and gotten married. She thought you'd given up slaying and were trying to hide from the Council and were no good to them any more. That's why she tried to kill you. You can't trust the Council any more."

She whimpered slightly, fighting to keep the tears from running down her face. "It's not true!" she insisted. But Spike was fairly sure she was trying to convince herself more than him.

"Look, I can show you what they really are, what they really did to you. But not now. Not till the sun goes down. Will you just. . . can you trust me until then?"

The tears were flowing freely down her face. "You're wrong," she said weakly. "But you can show me, tonight. You're wrong though."

He nodded. It wasn't much, but it was something. And when you looked at the big picture, she was alive, awake, and not trying to kill him. He only hoped the proof he needed was still out there after all these years.





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