#never love anything fr i have the most wicked crying headache.

[distraughtlesbian]

fuck christianity but when psalms 84:6 called earth the vale of tears they were so right for that

[whatdoyouthinkmyjobis]

Hunters on the Hellmouth

masterlist

first chapter

previous chapter

AN: Inspired by events in BTVS 7.11 “Showtime.” Links to character sheets at the bottom of the story.

Warnings: Torture. Gore. FEELS!

Chapter 32: The Demon Inside

The body landed in the alley with a sickening crunch. Dani, Grace, and Wook heaved their blanketed package into Giles’ trunk. From Dean’s broken bedroom window, Buffy watched them pull away with the last Bringer corpse.

“I’m going to need you to repeat what you just said,” Xander requested. He and the rest of the Scoobies had spent the better part of an hour listening to Buffy tell Dean’s story while the Potentials helped unbloody the Winchesters’ apartment.

“About how Sam and Dean don’t know of anything that can kill Lucifer?” Buffy asked.

“About all of it.”

“For the record,” said Anya as she scrubbed the splatter off the wall, “this whole angel thing scares the crap out me. It’s not natural!”

“I’m more stuck on the Satan part,” said Xander.

“Angel. Devil. It’s all the same apparently!” Anya had been practically green since Buffy shared the news.

“And Giles has nothing?” asked Willow, hope still in her eyes.

“I think Giles has a splitting headache.” By the time he’d left Dean’s hospital room, Giles had taken on the glassy gaze of a wandering Alzheimer’s patient.

“At least that explains why they’re so strong and manly and ridiculously good looking.”

Xander’s relief brought a smile to Buffy’s lips. “Strong yes, but I think the rest is just genetics. I’ve seen the family photos.”

“Damn it!”

“Imagine keeping a secret like that,” Willow wondered aloud.

Xander shrugged. “‘Hello, I’m an angel in disguise,’ sounds like a great pickup line.”

“No, it doesn’t,” Anya argued. “And that’s not what they are.”

“I meant Sam,” Willow clarified. “Having something like that done to you as a child, an infant. Being terrified of latent evil inside of you.”

“You get used to it,” said Dawn.

A cough from the doorway alerted them to Cloé with her arms full of books. “I don’t know how to get the blood out,” she said meekly.

Willow relived the girl of her burden. “I'll handle these, and you go get yourself a snack in the kitchen, okay?”

“Terrifying Lucifer part aside, this is a good thing, right?”

“How could you even think that, Xander?” Anya whined.

“Hear me out,” he continued. “The angels want Dean, and they don't want the bad guys to have Sam. Let's just tell them Sam was abducted. They saved Dean’s life, after all. What's the worst that could happen?”

According to Dean, a lot of bad could happen when angels were involved, but Castiel was his friend. “We could try--”

Anya tossed her bloody rag in the bucket of water and stormed out of the room.

“For once, I'm with Anya,” said Willow. “Angels sound kind of cosmically selfish. They helped Dean, but who’s to say helping Sam wouldn't take the form of killing him? Or, hey, now that they’re here and noticing things, how about they burn the witch?”

“I get where you’re coming from. I do,” Buffy said. “Dean told me the angels are bad news, but Castiel is on their side. He’s the only angel on their side, and it’s cost him. If we pray to him, maybe we can at least get some guidance.”

“You pray. I’ll be hiding. Dawn, you staying?”

The girl shrugged and settled onto the bed. “Pretty sure angels can smite me no matter what room I’m in. I’ll stay for the fireworks.”

“Do we need to hold hands or confess our sins or something?” Xander asked after Willow left.

“I don’t really know.” Buffy felt heat in her cheeks. The prayer thing still felt weirder than angels existing. “But we have to address Castiel specifically or the other angels will hear.”

She sat cross-legged on the floor, her hands upturned on her knees, and began. “Castiel, it’s Buffy Summers again. We need your help. It sounds like Lucifer followed the Winchesters here, and now he has Sam --”

The unbroken window exploded as the squealing roar of a freight train filled the room. Xander and Dawn huddled into balls screaming, their voices unable to overpower the sound. “Castiel, make it stop!” Buffy cried.

Silence.

“What was that?” someone shouted above the crying in the other room.

“He could have just told us he was washing his hair,” Xander said, shaking his head as he checked on Dawn.

Buffy stood and gently shook the glass from her hair. “Plan B. Gather the girls. We needed an army yesterday.”

 It had either been hours or days since the Turok-Han bit off his fingers. Though the slightest movement made him want to scream, Spike held up his hand to look at the tattered stubs. They’d stopped oozing blood, but they weren’t any longer. Hours then.

Vampires were semi-immortal. As long as they avoided sunlight, few humans were strong or fast enough to stake or decapitate them. But, as Spike had discovered years before under the torturous knife of Glory, they don’t pass out from pain either. His entire body felt like a lit wick being eaten up by burn and sizzle.

Laying on the floor a few feet below him, Sam looked worse for wear. The bandage over his stomach was brown with dried blood; infection would set in soon. He was pale with sunken eyes and a confused gaze. Wearing only pajama pants in the drafty old church in December, his shivering had unnervingly diminished. No one had fed Sam or given him water since he’d arrived. If the goal was to see who could endure torture the longest, Spike would be the grim winner.

“Sam, you like poetry?” Spike asked.

Wearily, Sam lifted his head from the cold stone floor. “Poetry? Uh, kinda. It-it’s okay.”

“Fftt! Americans! No sense of romance.”

“I dunno. B-Bobby’s really into poetry,” Sam mumbled.

“Who’s Bobby?”

“Kinda like our, um, adopt-a-dad when Dad w-wasn’t around.”

“Oh, what’d ‘e like?” Spike asked.

“Uh, Fr-Frost and the Scottish guy. Auld Lang Syne.”

“Burns! Not bad. I like the romantics myself. You ever read any Keats?”

Sam shook his head.

A new twinge of pain shot through Spike’s hand, but he bit his tongue. They were going to talk about poetry until one of them died. “Most of ‘em are love poems. Now, don’t start thinking I fancy you. Like my hair a little longer and my heads a bit more fucked up. One of ‘is most famous goes:

        O what can ail thee, knight-at-arms,   

        Alone and palely loitering?

        The sedge has wither’d from the lake,   

        And no birds sing.”

 There was a dark splatter and smear at the sewer entrance to the caves. Sam’s blood. Buffy hoped that would be all for blood. How much damage could The First -- could Lucifer -- have done to his chosen one in less than twelve hours? She knew she didn’t want an answer, that the Devil’s desire for a body was Sam’s only hope.

The footsteps behind her provided no comfort.

She had no idea if her theory was correct, but the clock was ticking on Sam, and she couldn’t waste time hoping a clue would land in her lap. The Turok-Han had acted like guard dogs. They knew Spike was being kept in a church, but Willow didn’t recognize any of the windows the Winchesters had snapped. Because the church wasn’t above ground. Buffy was all in that Spike and hopefully Sam were in the church where she’d faced The Master.

As Buffy arrived at the spot of her last battle, a blood-curdling scream echoed off the ruins. She’d never been so happy to hear someone in pain.

One of the Potentials whimpered.

“You’re okay. Remember, The First doesn’t have a body. It can’t hurt you.”

“Now, Buffy,” said a soft voice that made Buffy’s heart skip a beat, “it’s not fair to give the girls a false sense of hope.” Standing where she’d last seen It as Angel, last seen It as The Master, was her mother in a long white dress. If she had to watch this near immortal dress up as her mother, she was going to give it more than hell. “After all, what I may lack in vessel, I more than make up for in followers. It was considerate of you to bring the girls. Saves me the trip.” It snapped its fingers, and a dozen Bringers stepped out of the dark, blades ready.

As they’d practiced, the girls formed an outward facing ring. “Bring it!” Dani yelled. As the Bringers rushed forward, Molly fired on them with a water pistol.

“I have to admit, I didn’t see that coming,” said The First.

Lys, Wook and Kate stepped forward with blowtorches raised, engulfing the gas-soaked Bringers in flame. The girls stepped aside, letting the monster-torches run past screaming.

“Next?” taunted Buffy. The Turok-Han, dark blood up to its elbows, slunk out from a crumbled doorway and snarled at them. Giles’ research had confirmed her experience, they couldn’t be staked. Gripping the handle of her machete, Buffy smiled recalling Dean’s philosophy: everything can be beheaded, which provides distraction if nothing else. “Hey there, short, grey and ugly. Ready for round two?”

They circled each other, Buffy acutely aware of the barely trained girls watching behind her. If it killed her, they’d be next. They’d done well against the Bringers. It was her turn to make them proud.

The vampire swiped, nicking her skin. She kicked it in the chest. It barely moved. They grappled and rolled, Buffy’s machete falling in the tumble. She bashed its head against the stone floor. The vampire started to push her off, so she jammed her thumb in its eye. It howled and released her arms. She rushed to her machete as it lunged at her. Using its speed and weight to throw it off balance, she swung her blade and lopped off its head. It sputtered and hissed before turning to dust a moment later.

The visage of her mother offered a tight-lipped smile. “Don’t get comfortable, sweetheart. I’ll be back, and you’ll be so grounded.” In a flash of blue light, Lucifer disappeared.

Buffy and the Potentials entered the torch-lit corridor the Turok-Han had come from. Most of the windows had been shattered from earthquakes, but the shape implied this was part of the buried church where Buffy had faced The Master. At the end of the corridor, they found a mostly collapsed chapel, one window still intact behind the bloody, meat-covered altar. Sam was chained in a kneeling position at the base of the altar steps. With one firm kick, she was able to release him from the floor. He was pale, his eyes hollow. Collapsing onto Grace and Keisha, he wheezed, “Get Spike.”

“Where is he?”

“Don’t recognize me, love?” Spike’s voice came from the bloody altar.

Ascending the stairs, Buffy started to see a human form in the meat. Spike’s skin was taut on his ribs, his cheeks more gaunt than usual. He was missing his legs and fingers. His naked body was covered in hundreds of puncture marks. The blood oozing from his wounds was nearly black and thick. “Not my best look, but my heart’s still intact. Head’s still on. Do a bloke a favor, and kill me, eh?”

 Buffy didn’t kill him. She wrapped him in her coat and carried Spike out of his hell. The voices of dozens of girls asked what he was, but she didn’t answer. He rested his head on her chest and, despite his pain, fell asleep to the thumping of her heart.

He awoke when someone removed the coat, exposing his naked, maimed body. It was quiet where he was, but many feet were moving above him. He opened his eyes just enough to see that he was back in Buffy’s basement, and she stood over him examining his body. “Enjoying the view?”

“No,” said Buffy. “Even when I wanted you dead, I never wanted this.”    

“Funny thing, all-encompassing evils don’t take kindly when you tell ‘em to sod off.”

Her small hand, gentle and warm, rested on his arm before she began to clean the punctures  from the Turok-Han’s claws on his torso.

“How’s the giant?”

“Sam’s not great, but he’s doing a hell of a lot better than you.” Her voice was distant. No doubt, she’d rather be attending to her friend, but with a full house, Spike couldn’t imagine why she’d deigned to care for him.

“What happened to you?” she asked.

“I didn’t want to play anymore.”

“So It had a tantrum? What did It want from you?”

The night Spike returned to Sunnydale after his soul trials, he ran into a light. It was terrifying and comforting at the same time. The most beautiful thing he had ever seen. It went through him like his pockets were being rifled by supernovas. Then the light turned into Buffy, but more the Buffy of his dreams than the real thing.

“Are you a demon?” It had asked.

Spike said he was a vampire, but It was excited about the demon in him. Spike was certain It was a siren, but any port in a storm.

“It wanted a friend at first,” Spike confessed. Unflinchingly, Buffy started to clean the tattered remains of his fingers; he wanted to recoil from her touch. She didn’t deserve this gruesome sight. “No bandages, alright? Gotta leave room for me to grow back.”

“You’re going to grow back?” There was a hint of happiness behind her surprise, a softening of her mouth, and Spike wondered if caring for him had perhaps been her choice.

“Short story, this isn’t the first time those primordial vampires snacked on me.”

“That’s good news, I guess. Although, I’m not into this whole chapter on your best buddy The First Evil.”

“Pfft! That’s what It calls itself? Weak. And do I look like we’re on good terms?” He wouldn’t admit it, but It had kept him from climbing the walls when his soul was driving him mad, asking him questions about Sunnydale, the Hellmouth, demons, Buffy. “It was a distraction ‘til It started asking me to do things.”

“Things like kill people?”

“That was later. At first, it just wanted to know about you, and I painted a warts-and-all picture. Then it wanted me to follow you, spy on you. I did a little, but seeing you with Dean was torture.” Spike paused to mourn again what could have been if he’d ever gained full control of the demon inside. “Then It wanted me to kill you.”

Buffy turned away. He thought she left, disgusted by the sight of him, disturbed by what he’d done, but he heard her rummaging through some boxes. She returned with oven mitts -- one with pink and white flowers stained brown, the other red and printed with a festive black buckle and white trim.

“But you started killing other people, building it an army,” she said as she gently wrapped Spike’s maimed hands in gauze and slipped the oven mitts over them.

“Wot can I say? The Devil made me do it.”

Buffy’s cool, interrogator’s mask melted in surprise.

“Yeah, I know,” Spike said. Between torture sessions, Sam had filled him in on the true nature of The First.

Quietly, Buffy moved on to cleaning the stumps of his legs. She tore a sheet in two, gently folding each half around a leg before covering him with a downy blanket. “How does that feel?”

“Better,” he said with a small smile.

A single tear rolled down her cheek. “I--I haven’t been a good friend to you.”

What could he say? Ever since he’d regained his soul, he’d needed someone to talk to; but unfortunately, he and Buffy had been better friends when he was evil. Buffy had been so caught up in her new boyfriend, Spike’s only option for friendship had been the Devil himself.

But what choice did she have? Besouled vampires hadn’t exactly gone well for her in the past. And she had spent months flinching when he got near, the memory of what he -- what his demon -- had tried to do still clawing at her.

“I wish I could change things between us,” he said. “Rearranging the timing and all. We could ‘ave been great together under the right circumstances.”

She smiled as the tears fell.

“But I’m ‘appy for you,” he continued. “You found someone who understands you. I’m not jealous you didn’t pick me, but the loneliness stings. Love-sick vampire with a soul doesn’t ‘ave a lot of places he can go. No singles mixers or one-nine-hundred hotlines.”

“So when Lucifer appeared to you as me…”

“I took comfort in it, though I knew it wasn’t you. All that time, It was working me out, figuring out how to operate me. It kept complaining about how my soul and the demon were getting in the way. I think it figured out how to talk to each separately. So when I was killing--”

“The demon was in charge.”

“Gold star for the lady. So you see, Buffy, you have to kill me. Otherwise, It’s going to come back, going to make the demon in me do things again.”

 The fight had gone smoother than they’d expected, bringing some cheer to the girls’ faces. But the confused aftermath -- watching Buffy expertly fight the Turok-han, finding Sam hurt and half naked in the chapel, Buffy’s mysterious package -- had driven a group of them to the backyard to talk in private.

“Did you see what she was carrying?” asked Vi while biting her nails.

“I think it was a body,” said Keisha more calmly than the statement justified.

“Like a dead one?” asked Cloé in breathless horror.

“No, it moved,” whispered Naomi, checking over her shoulder to see if anyone in the house was watching.

“No way! I was in the chapel when we got Sam. Whatever it was couldn’t have been alive,” said Gabi.

“It spoke,” insisted Naomi, who had been no closer to Buffy post-fight than the rest of them.

“No!”

“Guys, you’re ignoring the obvious,” said Kate, brushing her heavy black bangs from her eyes. “We ‘ad to remove the anti-demon symbol to get it through the door.”

Gabi shook her head and looked directly at Cloé to calm her. “It can’t be a demon! Buffy wouldn’t bring a demon in the house. She wouldn’t put us in danger like that.”

“Maybe it’s a vampire?” asked Lys, clearly delighted by the idea.

“Like the Slayer would be friends with a vampire,” said Keisha, her eyebrows raised in speculation.

“But she is!” Lys insisted. She pulled a cigarette from her pack and handed it to an expectant looking Kate before pinching another between her lips. “My Watcher said she was friends with a notorious vampire named Angel. I guess he turned his back on his kind or something.”

“I’ve heard them whispering about Angel!” added Naomi.

“My Watcher said she had a fling with Angel,” Vi added. “It was, like, this huge scandal, a Slayer and a vampire. Also, total ew.”

“I dunno,” Lys shrugged. “Sex with a vampire could be hot.”

Keisha curled her lip in disgust. “You are broken and gross.”

 Sam remembered being rescued, but the next twenty-four hours was a blur of sleep, hospital noise, and gorging himself on chicken broth. The cold stone floor of the chapel had made his already damaged body ache, and he’d missed several rounds of meds. The exhaustion forced his reeling mind to rest. The nurses came in and out making sure he wasn’t lacking for anything, but mostly he wanted to hide.

Three words. Three words said in Xander’s casual, joking style as he helped him into his car after the rescue: “So Satan, huh?”

They knew. Maybe Dean had told them. Maybe they figured it out. Either way, his secret was out.

When Willow had said she saw darkness in him -- something evil like what was in the vampires -- he wanted to hide, but Willow knew what it was like to wrestle with her inner demons, to quell her dark powers. Even so, there was a difference between one’s own dark side and an evil planted inside.

I am the vessel of Lucifer. Sam couldn’t say the words.

The pain woke him. He’d slept long enough that the sun was dim through the blinds. Blinds? He barely remembered being discharged, yet he’d been returned to Buffy’s house and was laying in Willow’s bed. Reaching for his meds on the night stand, he saw Dawn curled on a trunk at the end of the bed staring at him like a he was an exhibit at a traveling freak show.

“I’m not going to hurt you,” he said.

“I know,” she said brightly.

She dashed out of the room only to return with a glass of water for him. She perched on the edge of the bed. “Buffy always tells me that my choices are what define me. Screw fate and prophecy.”

He offered her a faint smile. “Sounds like Dean.”

“Maybe that’s why they like each other. They’re just a couple of narcissists.”

Sam laughed, which hurt, but the unexpected joy made his whole body tingle.

“I’m sorry about what happened to you,” Dawn said. “I’m sorry you’re being chased. It was smart of your angel friend to bring you here. If anyone can stop Lucifer, it’s Buffy.”

Her innocent faith broke his heart. He nodded. “Yeah, I’m sure that’s what he was hoping.”

Dawn squeezed his hand. “Get some rest. Running for your life is super exhausting.”

Sam woke in the morning to find Dean on a cot beside him, his hand stretched out toward him as it always was when they shared a motel room.

“Jerk.”

“Bitch,” his brother replied without opening his eyes.

“Your girlfriend saved my ass.”

“She’s fucking awesome.”

 After a few days, Sam felt he would go crazy if he had to lie in bed a moment longer. Willow’s soft mattress spawned knots in his back, and he felt bad that she was sleeping on the floor. In the still hours before dawn, he tiptoed around Dean sleeping on a cot and slipped downstairs for some space.

Only there wasn’t any space. Two dozen or so girls, double what he’d remembered before going to the hospital, filled the living room with cots, blankets, and bags.

A mousy redhead by the stairs stirred. She squinted at him with sleepy concern and poked him in the ankle. “Real,” she muttered, before laying down and adjusting her blankets.

A dark-skinned girl wearing what looked liked a dingy hand-me-down Catholic school uniform, complete with small wooden cross, stood at the kitchen counter peeling an orange.

“Good morning,” Sam whispered.

She nodded with a shy smile.

“Just an orange for breakfast?” he asked. She was thin, not sickly, but she would need to add some muscle for training.

The girl nodded, taking a bite of fruit.

“English?”

She pointed at herself. “Jabulela.”

It took a moment before Sam realized that must be her name, not a language he hadn’t heard of. “Sam.”

“Sam,” she repeated, holding the a in the back of her throat.

“Jabulela, parlez-vous français?” he asked, pulling up the six weeks of French he’d taken Freshman year.

Her face lit up. “Je remercie le Seigneur! Quelqu'un à qui parler.”

Sam shook his head. “I don’t understand. Ne comprends. Enchanté.”

Jabulela’s shoulders slumped, but she smiled again before returning to her orange.

No doubt, in a few weeks, Buffy would have him and Dean training Potentials. They’d find a translator soon.

Sam slipped two oranges into his sweatshirt pocket and headed for the basement -- the only place they could have possibly tucked Spike in this packed house. The basement was so dark, Sam gripped the rail and felt the steps out with this eyes closed. One step. Two steps. Though Spike didn’t need to sleep, Sam didn’t want to wake him with a light if he’d opted to.

“What are you doing ‘ere, Samuel?” Spike’s voice, though soft, carried a hint of threat.

“It’s just Sam. I brought you an orange.”

“Worried about my vitamin C?” Spike was laying on a cot underneath the manacles they’d locked him in weeks before. A blanket covered his lap, but it was too dark to tell if his legs had regrown to fill the space.

Sam approached him, but as he crossed the demon trap surrounding him, Spike jolted upright and raised a mitted hand in warning. “You should stay back! My pet demon is rearing up you just being ‘ere. Wants me to take you back.”

“Did you recently grow some sporty peglegs I need to worry about?” Sam sat on the end of Spike’s cot. “I’m not afraid of you.”

“I thought you were supposed to be smart,” Spike said earnestly as he watched Sam peel the orange.

“Sometimes I think it’s better to trust people. Want a slice?”

Spike pinned one mitt between his arm and chest, pulling out a bare hand with gnarled, small fingers that clasped around the orange slice. “I don’t need to eat, you know.”

“I know, but it’s nice isn’t it?”

Spike nodded. “Going to need ‘elp getting that mitt back on.”

“What’s up with those?” Sam asked.

“Growing back itches,” Spike paused to suck on his orange. “I don’t want to look at ‘em either.”

They ate a few more slices in silence as the house above them began to buzz with activity. When the first orange was gone, Sam said, “You didn’t have to save me.”

“But who’d peel my oranges?”

Sam chuckled quietly. Spike, or at least the man inside him, couldn’t help but be a hero though he wouldn’t take credit. Had Spike not kept Sam awake, kept the Turok-Han’s attention, stoked Lucifer’s hatred, Sam would have died or been in pieces or both. “I’m sure one of the Potentials would have helped you.”

“Potentials?” said Spike with surprise. “Is that all the ruckus upstairs? Slayer niblets?”

It was Sam’s turn to be surprised. “Have none of them been down to see you?”

Spike shook his head. “Mostly Buffy brings me blood. Willow a few times. Giles popped down once to ask me a bunch of questions. Didn’t even know ‘e was back in town.”

Sam’s experience had been completely different since the rescue. He could only get a moment alone in the bathroom. Dean, Willow, Dawn and Xander were constantly by his side anticipating his every need. It was nice to know they were still his friends even though he was a freak, but the way they treated Spike felt unjust. “What have you been doing down here?”

“Daydreaming. Sleeping. Buffy brought me some books, but--” Spike held up his twisted hand.

Turning on a light and grabbing the book on the top of the pile, Sam began to read, “Chapter one: The Boy Who Lived…”

The sun was up by the time Buffy came down with a happy-faced mug full of warm blood. If she was surprised to find Sam reading Harry Potter to an enthralled vampire, she didn’t show it.

“We’re all crammed in my room,” she said as she absent-mindedly watched Spike drink his blood. “It would be great if you could join us, Sam.”

“‘It would be great if you could join us?’ Way to make a sentencing sound like a birthday party,” Spike grumbled.

Deeply confused, Sam asked, “Why? What’s going on.”

Coldy, Spike said, “They’re sorting out what to do with me, more specifically, who gets to kill me.”

“No one is killing you, Spike,” Buffy said, taking back the blood-stained mug. “I won’t let that happen.”

“Appreciated, but I’m not sure you have a choice.”

“You’re in my house, under my protection. I won’t let anything happen to you,” she promised.

“I’m not sure you have a choice,” Spike repeated slowly.

“Why doesn’t everyone come down here?” Sam asked, as memories of being locked in Bobby’s panic room flooded back. “Spike should get a say.”

Spike shook his head and smiled sadly, “Thanks, mate, but I don’t need to ‘ear exactly ‘ow much some of ‘em want me dead.”

“You’re not dying.” Sam hoped his determination combined with Buffy’s would be enough.

“When you can...” Buffy slipped up the stairs, leaving them in the basement’s uncomfortable quiet.

In the name of the greater good, Sam had killed many people, and he couldn’t blame demon possession for most of them. If Spike was guilty and out of control, then so was he.

By the time he caught up to her, Buffy was by the bathroom arguing with Lys. “I don’t care if you like her or not, French is the only common language Jabulela speaks. Show her around. Explain things.”

“But she’s some sort of religious nut!” Lys exclaimed, waving her hands as if that could hammer the point home.

“She’s a nun and less likely to bite than other people in this house, including me. Go. Do intros.”

Lys squinted at Buffy. “Fine, but you owe me!”

“I’ll get on that,” Buffy muttered as the girl stomped downstairs. “Like I’m not doing enough already.”

“Hey, can we talk?” Sam asked, leaning against the wall for support. “About Spike?”

Buffy raised her eyebrows and sighed. “He is the theme of the day.”

“Spike saved my life down there.”

“He probably did,” she said.

“So would it kill anyone in this house to spend a little time with him?”

Buffy leaned against the wall beside Sam, her head resting on his shoulder. She whispered, “I’m glad you care. Spike’s been through so much and tried so hard to better himself, but I know Dawn and Xander and the others just see the monster who--” He could almost hear her biting her tongue.

“I’ve tried, you know,” she continued. “I went down there the first day and cleaned him up; we talked for hours. But the First tripped something in him. I can see it in his eyes. The demon in him wants to hurt me even if the man doesn’t. I want him to live. Hell, I want him to win, but how can that happen with a time bomb in his chest?”

“So what we need is a way to separate the demon and the man?”

She sighed, the weight of her task pressing the air from her lungs. “We’ve been hitting the books for days, but I can’t find a spell that would help.”

“I know one,” Sam said.

Spike wiggled his toes in his newly tied boots. It had taken nearly two weeks to regrow his body. He stood by his cot and stretched before walking slow laps around his circular cage. He pressed on the air, but nothing he did could get him past the line painted on the floor.

The basement door opened and new footsteps, one of which was thunkingly uneven, descended the stairs. Spike sniffed the air. Engine grease.

“Winchesters!” He turned to see Sam, Dean in a cast, Buffy and Giles standing at the bottom of the stairs. “Come to gloat? Maybe poke the bear a bit?”

“No, we’re here to save your sorry ass,” said Dean.”

Spike pressed his tongue against his teeth and chuckled. “‘Course you are. Gotta fulfill that hero complex.”

“Spike.” How did Buffy fit so much exasperation into one syllable? “Dean and Sam have a plan to help you, maybe.”

Unable to suppress the smirk, he crossed his arms. “Maybe? Maybe if I’m a good boy or maybe it won’t work? Neither sound appealing.”

Leaning against the railing, Giles said, “You yourself said The First has been able to activate the demon within you, use you as a puppet. Do you feel any of its influence now?”

The smirk faded from his face. The demon’s voice was strong and pushy; usually when it was ravenous, Spike felt due for a good slaughter. “It’s like a dog, barking away in my ‘ead.”

“What’s it barking?” Dean asked.

“To kill you. Then turn ‘er,” Spike said, pointing at Buffy. “I - I don’t want to do either.”

“And what’s your plan to deal?” Buffy asked. “Yoga?”

Spike rubbed his tongue on the inside of his teeth, waiting.

Dean began, “So here’s the deal--”

“Not you,” Spike said, locking his eyes on Sam. “Can barely tolerate you. Sam, ‘e’s on my Christmas card list. You wouldn’t lie to a poor devil, would you, Sam?”

With a little color back in his cheeks but his eyes still darkly circled, Sam gazed at the floor as he thought. “It’s a theory, really. If it doesn’t work...you die.”

Spike shrugged.

Sam eased himself to the floor to sit cross-legged just outside of the painted trap. “Vampires are different where we’re from; it’s more like a genetic mutation, but here it’s a form of demon possession. Where we’re from, we would say you, William Pratt, are a vessel, and all we need to do to empty you is an exorcism.”

“Exorcism? Wot with the spinning ‘ead and pea soup?”

Dean and Giles busied themselves looking anywhere but at Spike, yet Buffy stared at him with tears rimming her eyes.

“Kinda? Demons don’t go quietly,” Sam said. “But the bigger problem is that to become a vessel at all, you had to be killed by a vampire. We’ve exorcised a few people who were already dead; they didn’t come to life once the demon was gone.”

Spike nodded. Was there a man inside him able to be saved? He wanted to think so. With the demon gone, would he return to his Victorian self? Sniveling, timid, desperate to please. Spike had never liked William Pratt, which is why he never fought to save him.

But the demon’s voice was getting so loud, filling his head with a thousand horrible things to do to Buffy, to Dean, to everyone in the house. Lucifer’s hooks were in him, and he wanted to be free.

“Do it,” Spike said.

Sam began, “Exorcizamus te, omnis immundus spiritus--”

Spike’s body slammed to the ground and pushed back to the other side of the circle, sending his cot flying across the room.

“--et omnis legio diabolica--”

Buffy and Giles rushed to the edge of his cage.

“--Cessa decipere humanas creaturas--”

The demon, furious Buffy didn’t have the balls to kill him, lashed out, “You fucking bitch!”

“--hostis humanae salutis--”

Spike clutched his throat. It felt like his heart was trying to claw its way out.

“--contremisce et effuge--”

Buffy held back tears.

The younger Winchester’s spell was replaced with a deafening roar, like drowning in a tidal wave. Blackness crept into Spike’s vision. He stared at Buffy until the darkness won out.

“--Benedictus deus. Gloria patri.”

Spike coughed and opened his eyes. Cold air rushed into his lungs as his entire body began to tingle. A strange pressure filled his chest as he bounded up the stairs in twos. Rushing past the startled girls in the kitchen, he burst into the backyard where, for the first time in over one hundred and twenty years, the sun glowed warm on his skin.

Read Giles’ dossiers on:  Dani    Vi    Cloé      Molly     Lys     Grace    Wook    Keisha    Leticia     Naomi    Kate    Gabi    Jabulela

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