Title: Done to Death
Author: Anne Hedonia
Rating: PG-13ish to start, revving up to more, but don't tell FF.net that.
Pairing: Spike/Tara
Summary: "You could always leave Tara unattended, without much worry about her catching anything on fire...except tonight."
Disclaimer: He is Joss Whedon, millionaire. He owns a mansion and a yacht.
Archive: all you want. Just let me know where it goes - I love to visit.
Spoilers: Season 6 in general, "Seeing Red" and "Graves" in particular, and a tiny little reference from that brand spankin' new Season 7. They start in the next paragraph, so virgins, turn back now.
AU = Anne's Universe!
This happens after "Graves", but assumes that Tara didn't die from her bullet wound -- Willow mistakenly thought she did, and went on her rampage anyway. Spike did try to rape Buffy, but didn't go to get his soul. So basically, it's a few months after The Time Things Got Way Fucked Up.
Author's note: Beta thanks to the illustrious Herself, who provided bitchin', accurate suggestions, and Lovesbitca, who did the same with a much-appreciated side of cheerleading.
Website: http://annehedonia.populli.net
Feedback: Ya, you betcha. [email protected]
++++++++++++++++
Done to Death
by Anne Hedonia
++++++++++++++++
Chapter 1
Spike didn't know why he was following her, he just knew he was, a fact that neatly summed up his relationship with every woman he had ever found important in his entire life.
He knew a million ways to follow, a thousand instinctual moves to ensure his non-detection while doing so, but it was patently obvious that none of them were necessary just now. His target -- quite unwisely -- paid no heed to her surroundings, which probably had something to do with Spike's interest in her. Something about her tonight was...familiar.
It wasn't like Spike had made any sort of habit of watching Tara. If asked, he would have said she was like the furniture: reliably there, and comfortable, and something you wanted to keep around, but it wasn't like it took undue effort on your part to do so. She seemed utterly trustworthy, and so, to a predator like Spike, utterly unremarkable. In general, his instincts only alerted him to threats, and people who'd make interesting playthings. Tara was neither of these -- too literal, too earnest, too likely to be just plain hurt and disappointed if she found out you were messing with her head, instead of being entertainingly livid. Yeah, there was that whole thing at Buffy's birthday party when she kept snarking on about his crotch -- showed a little promise there, she did. But Buffy's presence, as always, had been a burning supernova to Tara's tealight candle. You could always leave Tara unattended, without much worry about her catching anything on fire.
Except tonight.
What *was* tickling his brain about her? His eyes clocked the metronome swing of her long skirt as he followed her down the sidewalk through the cool night air, right out in the open, pretty as you please.
Before this, he'd been counting the boundless number of fag ends he'd accumulated in the dirt under Buffy's tree. He had been earnestly considering cleaning them up, before angering at the thought of paying for the privilege of his exile under her window. At the back of his head, though, his anger felt hollow. He was mentally pushing this piece of insight away when Tara and the Bit had come home from whatever it was they'd done.
It was not an option for him to stay where there was even a remote chance of his being seen, a fact which pissed him off. Nevertheless he moved, silent and fluid, to stand behind a different tree a block or so down. Dawn, out of all of them, had been perhaps the most vociferous about hating him now. Something about what he'd been to her before - combination bad boy, big brother and rock star - evidently made the loss of trust sting her more than it did the others. Well, something about the loss of her unwavering acceptance made it sting more for him, too.
Worked both ways, Bit.
He'd been watching the two say goodnight and stewing in his own tangled thoughts when the feeling had first struck him. Dawn seemed herself, but something about Tara had made him take another look. The way she gazed at Dawn too intently at first, hugged her goodbye just a fraction of a second too long, then couldn't quite look her in the eye. Tara was often awkward, certainly, but not this way - this way was too...weighty.
He didn't know yet why he cared. But it didn't stop his feet from setting the course, and just assuming his brain would catch up. If there was one thing Spike was used to, it was acting first, and sorting it later.
He followed her all the way to her dorm and watched her go inside, then climbed a tree to watch through the window that had to be hers. He settled himself on a branch and watched her going about her business, watched her go into the bathroom and come out in her pajamas. She'd scrubbed her face clean and pink, but somehow the color was all but undone by a pallid gloom hanging around her, a kind of nothingness in her eyes. Spike's brow furrowed as he peered harder.
He watched her take a new bottle of peach Schnapps from the cupboard, crack the seal and pour a substantial amount into a battered mug. What was this, then? Tara and booze did not usually find themselves combined - even if he hadn't known her well enough to say so, he'd have known from the Schnapps - drink of amateurs. She drank it quickly, more of it than he would expect, and she downed it like a duty. She continued until she seemed to ease into her new hobby, her shoulders falling if not relaxing, her hand diffidently clasping the bottle and taking it with her as she left the small kitchen.
He kept watching for what seemed like hours, eventually growing bored as she wandered, like she was putting off some chore that she knew she had to do eventually. She would trundle listlessly from place to place inside the small room, as though she couldn't decide what corner of it was best. They're all the same, ducks, the place is a damn crackerbox, just light somewhere. Sometimes the whole thing seemed to overwhelm her and she would stop to cry. She sipped more from the bottle then, as if trying to dull whatever wave was cresting. He felt for her, on a certain level, but it wasn't exactly Must See Viewing, either. If it weren't for that damn tickling, he'd have left.
But there it was.
He still didn't realize what he was watching, even as she pulled the bottle of sleeping pills from a cabinet, forced her fingers under the little sealed edges of the cardboard box. It was when she produced the second bottle of them from a small paper bag and then was pouring them out, as many as she could hold in one hand, that it all fell into place.
As he threw himself from the tree branch toward the tiny thin sill of her window, he tried to assign a name to what he'd sensed, felt, almost smelled earlier. It was the recklessness of someone who'd made a drastic decision, one that was so far off from the rest of society's reckoning that he or she knew it'd never be understood, and so didn't bother to tell anyone. The silent, screaming openness of a person who wanted to end the cosmic clusterfuck called life, to cease being among the living players.
Just before his boots hit the ledge, the thought occurred to him that of all of Sunnydale's predators, she was lucky that it was him who'd heard that screaming. He thought of how quickly Dru had rushed to respond to it, all that time ago.
Spike's boots slammed hard against the window's frame, rattling the pane and seeming to shudder the entire building. He watched Tara startle so hard that the bottle didn't just drop from her hands, it flew in an arc across the room as the pills went airborne and she whirled to show her saucer eyes to him. He grimaced as gravity pulled him back, and dug his fingers ruthlessly for purchase in the small wooden ledge above, raking up paint and splinters under his nails, but managing to hang on. He was considering how tough it might be to get invited in, considering the situation, but determined that it would bloody well happen nonetheless.
++++++++
Spike ducked in under the raised window pane. As his feet hit the floor, a few of the scattered pills crunched under his boots. His first bit of business was to shut the window and the blinds. He grinned faintly. They'd need privacy for this little chat, the former peeping Tom thought ironically.
Tara was breathing hard and looking miserable, shocked and embarrassed. One of her first moves was to put the Schnapps into a nearby drawer. Spike felt an amused affection at the gesture, like he was watching a child.
He assumed the proper stern air. "So...mind tellin' me what's goin' on here, pet?"
The curtain of Tara's hair was working double time, both sides vying for the privilege of hiding her flaming cheeks. "I-i-it's...it's..."
"Complicated? A long story? Not what I think?"
"...none of y-y-your..." She seemed to have to gasp for air. "...b-b-business." Suddenly she turned and made her way toward the bathroom, apparently rethinking her decision to let him enter and deciding instead to shut herself in.
Nonono, pet. Not how we do things.
Spike beat her easily to the door, blocking her path with a bitter grin and the lazy drape of his body. "Oh, but I've made it my business, haven't I? You've gotten my attention and taken up most of my evening, so now you're going to make it worth my while, aren't you?"
Tara backed away from him, looking everywhere else. "I-I-I don't h-h-have to-"
"You have to if I say so." As he advanced on her, he reflected that he could never pull this shit with the Slayer. He felt a quick flare of rage - hell, so much of Sunnydale was so very over him that he was little more than an old joke. But he could certainly intimidate Wicca here, and he planned to.
In a remote, ugly part of him, it felt good to be back.
"Spike, j-j-just d-d-rop..."
"You know I'm not going anywhere."
"Spike!"
She was almost against the wall. "You and me..." His face was nearing hers, and his voice dropped to a menacing whisper. "...are gonna have a talk."
She looked around in a panic. "REPEL!"
Suddenly Spike flew across the room and slammed hard into the far wall, rattling the window pane a second time before he slid down to sit on the floor. He shook his head hard, and looked up to find Tara yelling down at him.
"It's obvious what I'm doing, isn't it?" she shrieked, abruptly stutterless. "Have you become suddenly slow or something?"
Spike kept his face grim. He couldn't tip the hand he was playing, but he experienced a little mental swagger that he was still the unchallenged king of pestering for information. He was also a little surprised at what a fierce pleasure it gave him to hear this timid thing before him so unleashed.
"Just makin' sure you were clear on the concept, ducks," he said, picking himself up. "Doin' somethin' quite serious, you were. Didn't look like you were givin' it the proper weight."
Tara's anger melded with abject hopelessness in her ruined expression. "What the hell," she breathed through fresh tears, "do you know about *weight*?"
Spike's expression softened, despite all attempts to maintain toughness. "How 'bout you enlighten me?"
She looked confused, glanced away as she wiped her nose on the wrist of her long-sleeved pajama top. "No, it's...no."
He shrugged. "I'm not leaving."
She turned back to look at him as if for the first time. "Tell you about it? You? "
Spike considered reversing his opinion of her Schnapps-fueled behavior. "Yeah, me! Whass wrong with me?" It hit him quite suddenly what might be wrong with him - in the heat of the moment he'd forgotten.
But Tara's plaintive look didn't seem concerned with that. As she pinned him with her amateur drunkard's gaze, she seemed bereft of a very specific knowledge. Spike decided to go fishing.
"I mean...if you've gotten this far you must not have too many people to talk to. Why haven't you turned to one of the Scoobies before now?"
She frowned, sunk to perch on the arm of a large chair. "I just...I've kind of...pulled away from them lately." She picked aimlessly at her cuticles, her voice regaining more of its usual tentative softness. "They just...they don't talk to me about anything...real anymore, not since Willow..."
Spike was beginning to wonder if she was going to pick her fingers to the point of bleeding. He hoped she wouldn't - not cricket to tease a bloke, you know.
She gave up on her hand, letting it fall to her lap. "I just couldn't make any more conversation about the weather."
Spike pressed a bit further, just to be sure. "What about you and the Bit tonight?"
Tara looked up indignantly, before evidently deciding that *of course* Spike had been snooping, being Spike and all, and that it wasn't the sin she'd first assumed. "We just talked about...school and clothes and boys she likes. Nothing terribly important. No one seems to want to rattle me." Her eyes filled as her voice got wavery. "No one will even tell me how she's doing, or if she's even ever coming back." She sniffed loudly, cleared her throat. "Not that it matters."
"So this is about Red, then?"
Tara smiled bitterly. "Isn't everything?"
"No," Spike retorted flatly. It's all about the Slayer, or hadn't you gotten the memo? Spike sat on Tara's bed, considering her with a frown. "Why is this botherin' you so much now? You've made it through this sort of thing before."
Tara's face was bewildered; Spike realized his gaffe: "I meant your girlfriend being gone, or...*troubled*, or whatever, not the girlfriend-turns-into-world-destroying-demon situation, but bloody hell - that sort of thing's par for the sodding course 'round here."
Tara's eyes grew faraway with pain. "She was just...ripped away from me. I finally had her back...we finally had each *other* back, and then..." She winced, as though mentally watching the replay. "Suddenly my girlfriend's the Devil himself. She couldn't keep it away - life wouldn't let her. It was all for nothing. And now things will never be the same." Her head sunk even lower, and her voice lilted with an atypical venom: "Should've known it was too good to be true."
Tara's words landed on Spike's heart with a familiarity he didn't want to think about. He grew angry instead.
"If you're in love then fight for it." Her head raised to meet his glare. "You got out of that fucked up family of yours. You made Red straighten up and fly right one time already. You just survived a bleedin' *gunshot wound*. Sorry you don't like it, Glinda, but your secret's out: you're a survivor, masqueradin' as a quitter. Your chance to die's gone by already. This bloody givin' up don't wash."
Tara's eyes narrowed in hurt and anger. Spike was perfectly satisfied - anger was fuel for living, where he came from.
"How do you know what *I* am?" she accused. "You've never even looked at me long enough to do anything but punch me."
Spike sat forward, challenged. "How do you know where *I* look? I was lookin' at you tonight, *all* bloody night, and you'd no idea. All this time you've been tucked in tight with your precious Scoobies, safe as houses, I've been on the outside, where the view is best. Fact is, I'd wager nobody in the world sees more than the unwanted." He paused, trying to regain his track, reign in the snarl that curled his lip. He sat back, faintly self-conscious. "I've seen enough to know this kinda ending don't suit you."
Tara looked away petulantly. "It was good enough for my mother."
She turned back a moment later to meet the slight rise of Spike's eyebrows. The sulk in her face softened. "It wasn't exactly like...this. It wasn't sudden, "she amended. "She-she was sick for a long time, and everybody thought she'd just tried to take her meds on her own and that the overdose was accidental, but...I was the one who looked after her. I knew better." She briefly closed her eyes against a memory. "They knew better too," she said wryly.
Spike was at a momentary loss. "Somethin' else you survived," he said finally.
Tara looked suddenly fervent. "That's exactly it, in a way," she said. "I'm tired of life being something to *survive*. I don't want to stick around to find out what the next kick in the head will be."
Spike found himself growing impatient. "Kicks in the head are life in a nutshell," he said. "Nothing for it but to kick back."
"I don't want to kick anybody. I just want to *be*, without feeling miserable. And evidently I can't." Her face dissolved into a self-pity that Spike thought looked terrible on her. "I've come to believe that I'm just...inherently bad."
"Oh, come *on*..." Spike fought the urge to shake her where she sat. "Consider your audience."
She shook her head. "Everywhere I've been in my life, people go mean or freak out. First they just took it out on *me* - now if they can't have me to abuse they'll apparently just go after the whole world."
Spike sat back against the wall. "Well, look at that. Earth really does revolve 'round you."
Tara glared at him sullenly, then reached for the drawer where she'd deposited the Schnapps. Spike's long arms beat her to it. He plucked it from the drawer, opened the bottle and took a generous swig, then wiped it on his sleeve and presented it to her chivalrously. She looked at the proffered bottle suspiciously, but her need for comfort evidently beat out any concern over vampire cooties.
He leaned forward as she sipped. "You are not the reason fucked up people act fucked up," he told her. "Hate to burst your center-of-the-universe theory, but it's true. Not with your family, and not with Red."
She grimaced faintly as her last sip went down. "So what if I'm not? The outcome's the same."
"Look, you're a gambler, you are, and you need to own up to it." The chipped nail polish on his pointing finger waved accusingly. "You went after Big Love With A Troubled Person, and that's never tidy. Big Love costs big - you pay with your soul. You want Nice Neat Tidy Love, you can do that too - cost is much lower, but so is the payoff. But in any case, that's not what you did."
"I just want Healthy Love," she sniffed.
Spike rubbed the back of his neck. "Yeah, well, I've never seen that particular brand. Don't know if they still make it."
Tara studied the bottle, peeling an edge of the label. Spike could smell its syrupy tang all the way across the room. "I just feel like I've done everything I set out to do when I was little, and it's all been unsatisfying. I don't want to try anything else. I understand how life works, I really do." She looked at Spike earnestly. "I understand the 'it kicks you, you kick back' thing. The rules are the way they are. I just don't want to play. I'm just done."
Spike, out of the billions of creatures roaming the earth right then, truly knew what death was. He knew just as certainly that she was not of it. She was nothing but life, a radiantly lovely woman sitting there, flimsy nightclothes hiding none of her womanly assets, while she miserably, obliviously thought she was worthless. He found himself suddenly, alarmingly aware of the thin drape of the cloth over her curves, of how obvious it was that she wasn't wearing a bra. Not the time, Spike ol' boy, not the time.
For distraction, he turned to scan a nearby bookshelf. Bingo. He grabbed the proper volume, flipped through it and read out loud the Wiccan Rede: "'Do what ever you want to, as long as it harms no one, including yourself. This belief constantly reminds us that there are many consequences to our actions and we must consider all possible outcomes before acting. The Wiccan Rede thereby binds Wiccans to do the right thing.'" He shut the book with a satisfying snap. "Gonna argue with the witch code?"
"No," she said simply. "Just going against it."
Bugger. Spike was starting to realize he'd gotten invested in winning this argument. "Don't care what it does to your friends?"
A thick moment settled over them both. Without meaning to, he'd invoked a specter: *What would Willow do if this happened?* Spike frowned - he hadn't meant to make her feel responsible for the whole damn world.
"I've thought of that," she said, with a quiet dignity, "but...living just to keep from hurting someone else is enough reason to pause, to consider, but ultimately...not enough reason to stay. It wasn't enough for my-" the word caught at her lips "-mother, and now I see why, in a way. I can't live someone else's reasons."
Spike sat back in faint surprise. Tara watched him curiously. "You're right," he announced. "Then that's what we'll fix."
"How do you mean?"
Spike rose from the bed and thought a minute, then paced back and forth distractedly. His duster flared behind his knees as he did, like a dangerous, living thing among her cozy furnishings. He stopped suddenly and pointed at her, his bearings apparently found. "I'm offering you a deal - every day, I'll show you one reason to live, one reason to stay here. Every day, if you don't agree that whatever I've shown you is a good reason, you're free to do as you please. But if you agree with it," he smiled sympathetically, "you have to remain a member of the lowly living for one more day."
Tara stared at him, mouth open. She closed her mouth momentarily, only to have it fall open again.
"What've you got to lose? You're in control, aren't you? The pressure is all on me to produce. You don't have to do a thing except not do one specific thing." Spike found himself liking his own plan more and more.
***
Tara smiled in embarrassment and looked around the room, squirming under the laser focus of Spike's stare, but eventually finding herself drawn back to it. There didn't seem to be anywhere else to go, anything else in the room, nothing but those black clothes, those sharp features, that sleek blond hair.
It made no sense whatsoever - a deal offered by a former killer to keep her alive. The nonsensical nature of it made it somewhat of a relief - it meant it required total abandon to go along with it, no thinking. And if there was one thing Tara was tired of, it was thinking...
And Spike could teach a bulldog about tenacity. He certainly wasn't going anywhere.
"Um...okay, yeah. You have a d-d-deal."
Spike's face relaxed into a pleased smile.
"B-b-but...why are you doing this?"
The smile fell off his face as if greased. Tara hurried to soften her question. "I mean, it's kind of an amazing thing for anyone to offer, but from you...you're a *vampire* who's proposing a lot of work to make sure a human goes on living." She offered her shy smile as a peace token for asking. "I'm just curious."
He didn't mention Buffy, or his own aimless nights since the...incident. He hadn't examined his feelings too closely since it had happened, and he didn't want to. He told another truth instead.
"I've been you," he confessed simply. The quiet, obedient one, he thought, who doesn't make a fuss, never asks for anything more than he's given? He understood what a person had to hold in to keep himself like that. "I'm not you anymore," he explained patiently, unnecessarily, and paused while hundred year-old events passed by his faraway eyes. "...but I've not forgotten."
Tara nodded, not really understanding. The liquor and the excitement caught up with her in a sudden wave, and she felt herself almost sleepwalking through the next few minutes as Spike made her get into bed.
She suddenly realized he was making himself comfortable in her chair. "Um...what are you doing?"
Spike was rifling through potential reading material. "Stayin' here tonight, ain't I? Make sure nothin' goes on that I wouldn't approve of." He picked up a magazine and waved a hand at her. "Off you go then, get some shut-eye. I'd wager you need it."
Tara blinked, nonplussed. "I - I can't sleep with you sitting there, watching me."
Spike didn't even look away from his copy of Wiccan Weekly. "Just going to have to, now, aren't you?" He glanced over at her and breezily repeated his hand wave, then reached up and extinguished the light.
Tara settled down under the covers, deciding not to ask about how much light vampires needed for reading. A second's more reflection about vampire super-senses and she rolled over with her back to him, the better to hide the tears of relief in her eyes.
++++++++++++++++
Author: Anne Hedonia
Rating: PG-13ish to start, revving up to more, but don't tell FF.net that.
Pairing: Spike/Tara
Summary: "You could always leave Tara unattended, without much worry about her catching anything on fire...except tonight."
Disclaimer: He is Joss Whedon, millionaire. He owns a mansion and a yacht.
Archive: all you want. Just let me know where it goes - I love to visit.
Spoilers: Season 6 in general, "Seeing Red" and "Graves" in particular, and a tiny little reference from that brand spankin' new Season 7. They start in the next paragraph, so virgins, turn back now.
AU = Anne's Universe!
This happens after "Graves", but assumes that Tara didn't die from her bullet wound -- Willow mistakenly thought she did, and went on her rampage anyway. Spike did try to rape Buffy, but didn't go to get his soul. So basically, it's a few months after The Time Things Got Way Fucked Up.
Author's note: Beta thanks to the illustrious Herself, who provided bitchin', accurate suggestions, and Lovesbitca, who did the same with a much-appreciated side of cheerleading.
Website: http://annehedonia.populli.net
Feedback: Ya, you betcha. [email protected]
++++++++++++++++
Done to Death
by Anne Hedonia
++++++++++++++++
Chapter 1
Spike didn't know why he was following her, he just knew he was, a fact that neatly summed up his relationship with every woman he had ever found important in his entire life.
He knew a million ways to follow, a thousand instinctual moves to ensure his non-detection while doing so, but it was patently obvious that none of them were necessary just now. His target -- quite unwisely -- paid no heed to her surroundings, which probably had something to do with Spike's interest in her. Something about her tonight was...familiar.
It wasn't like Spike had made any sort of habit of watching Tara. If asked, he would have said she was like the furniture: reliably there, and comfortable, and something you wanted to keep around, but it wasn't like it took undue effort on your part to do so. She seemed utterly trustworthy, and so, to a predator like Spike, utterly unremarkable. In general, his instincts only alerted him to threats, and people who'd make interesting playthings. Tara was neither of these -- too literal, too earnest, too likely to be just plain hurt and disappointed if she found out you were messing with her head, instead of being entertainingly livid. Yeah, there was that whole thing at Buffy's birthday party when she kept snarking on about his crotch -- showed a little promise there, she did. But Buffy's presence, as always, had been a burning supernova to Tara's tealight candle. You could always leave Tara unattended, without much worry about her catching anything on fire.
Except tonight.
What *was* tickling his brain about her? His eyes clocked the metronome swing of her long skirt as he followed her down the sidewalk through the cool night air, right out in the open, pretty as you please.
Before this, he'd been counting the boundless number of fag ends he'd accumulated in the dirt under Buffy's tree. He had been earnestly considering cleaning them up, before angering at the thought of paying for the privilege of his exile under her window. At the back of his head, though, his anger felt hollow. He was mentally pushing this piece of insight away when Tara and the Bit had come home from whatever it was they'd done.
It was not an option for him to stay where there was even a remote chance of his being seen, a fact which pissed him off. Nevertheless he moved, silent and fluid, to stand behind a different tree a block or so down. Dawn, out of all of them, had been perhaps the most vociferous about hating him now. Something about what he'd been to her before - combination bad boy, big brother and rock star - evidently made the loss of trust sting her more than it did the others. Well, something about the loss of her unwavering acceptance made it sting more for him, too.
Worked both ways, Bit.
He'd been watching the two say goodnight and stewing in his own tangled thoughts when the feeling had first struck him. Dawn seemed herself, but something about Tara had made him take another look. The way she gazed at Dawn too intently at first, hugged her goodbye just a fraction of a second too long, then couldn't quite look her in the eye. Tara was often awkward, certainly, but not this way - this way was too...weighty.
He didn't know yet why he cared. But it didn't stop his feet from setting the course, and just assuming his brain would catch up. If there was one thing Spike was used to, it was acting first, and sorting it later.
He followed her all the way to her dorm and watched her go inside, then climbed a tree to watch through the window that had to be hers. He settled himself on a branch and watched her going about her business, watched her go into the bathroom and come out in her pajamas. She'd scrubbed her face clean and pink, but somehow the color was all but undone by a pallid gloom hanging around her, a kind of nothingness in her eyes. Spike's brow furrowed as he peered harder.
He watched her take a new bottle of peach Schnapps from the cupboard, crack the seal and pour a substantial amount into a battered mug. What was this, then? Tara and booze did not usually find themselves combined - even if he hadn't known her well enough to say so, he'd have known from the Schnapps - drink of amateurs. She drank it quickly, more of it than he would expect, and she downed it like a duty. She continued until she seemed to ease into her new hobby, her shoulders falling if not relaxing, her hand diffidently clasping the bottle and taking it with her as she left the small kitchen.
He kept watching for what seemed like hours, eventually growing bored as she wandered, like she was putting off some chore that she knew she had to do eventually. She would trundle listlessly from place to place inside the small room, as though she couldn't decide what corner of it was best. They're all the same, ducks, the place is a damn crackerbox, just light somewhere. Sometimes the whole thing seemed to overwhelm her and she would stop to cry. She sipped more from the bottle then, as if trying to dull whatever wave was cresting. He felt for her, on a certain level, but it wasn't exactly Must See Viewing, either. If it weren't for that damn tickling, he'd have left.
But there it was.
He still didn't realize what he was watching, even as she pulled the bottle of sleeping pills from a cabinet, forced her fingers under the little sealed edges of the cardboard box. It was when she produced the second bottle of them from a small paper bag and then was pouring them out, as many as she could hold in one hand, that it all fell into place.
As he threw himself from the tree branch toward the tiny thin sill of her window, he tried to assign a name to what he'd sensed, felt, almost smelled earlier. It was the recklessness of someone who'd made a drastic decision, one that was so far off from the rest of society's reckoning that he or she knew it'd never be understood, and so didn't bother to tell anyone. The silent, screaming openness of a person who wanted to end the cosmic clusterfuck called life, to cease being among the living players.
Just before his boots hit the ledge, the thought occurred to him that of all of Sunnydale's predators, she was lucky that it was him who'd heard that screaming. He thought of how quickly Dru had rushed to respond to it, all that time ago.
Spike's boots slammed hard against the window's frame, rattling the pane and seeming to shudder the entire building. He watched Tara startle so hard that the bottle didn't just drop from her hands, it flew in an arc across the room as the pills went airborne and she whirled to show her saucer eyes to him. He grimaced as gravity pulled him back, and dug his fingers ruthlessly for purchase in the small wooden ledge above, raking up paint and splinters under his nails, but managing to hang on. He was considering how tough it might be to get invited in, considering the situation, but determined that it would bloody well happen nonetheless.
++++++++
Spike ducked in under the raised window pane. As his feet hit the floor, a few of the scattered pills crunched under his boots. His first bit of business was to shut the window and the blinds. He grinned faintly. They'd need privacy for this little chat, the former peeping Tom thought ironically.
Tara was breathing hard and looking miserable, shocked and embarrassed. One of her first moves was to put the Schnapps into a nearby drawer. Spike felt an amused affection at the gesture, like he was watching a child.
He assumed the proper stern air. "So...mind tellin' me what's goin' on here, pet?"
The curtain of Tara's hair was working double time, both sides vying for the privilege of hiding her flaming cheeks. "I-i-it's...it's..."
"Complicated? A long story? Not what I think?"
"...none of y-y-your..." She seemed to have to gasp for air. "...b-b-business." Suddenly she turned and made her way toward the bathroom, apparently rethinking her decision to let him enter and deciding instead to shut herself in.
Nonono, pet. Not how we do things.
Spike beat her easily to the door, blocking her path with a bitter grin and the lazy drape of his body. "Oh, but I've made it my business, haven't I? You've gotten my attention and taken up most of my evening, so now you're going to make it worth my while, aren't you?"
Tara backed away from him, looking everywhere else. "I-I-I don't h-h-have to-"
"You have to if I say so." As he advanced on her, he reflected that he could never pull this shit with the Slayer. He felt a quick flare of rage - hell, so much of Sunnydale was so very over him that he was little more than an old joke. But he could certainly intimidate Wicca here, and he planned to.
In a remote, ugly part of him, it felt good to be back.
"Spike, j-j-just d-d-rop..."
"You know I'm not going anywhere."
"Spike!"
She was almost against the wall. "You and me..." His face was nearing hers, and his voice dropped to a menacing whisper. "...are gonna have a talk."
She looked around in a panic. "REPEL!"
Suddenly Spike flew across the room and slammed hard into the far wall, rattling the window pane a second time before he slid down to sit on the floor. He shook his head hard, and looked up to find Tara yelling down at him.
"It's obvious what I'm doing, isn't it?" she shrieked, abruptly stutterless. "Have you become suddenly slow or something?"
Spike kept his face grim. He couldn't tip the hand he was playing, but he experienced a little mental swagger that he was still the unchallenged king of pestering for information. He was also a little surprised at what a fierce pleasure it gave him to hear this timid thing before him so unleashed.
"Just makin' sure you were clear on the concept, ducks," he said, picking himself up. "Doin' somethin' quite serious, you were. Didn't look like you were givin' it the proper weight."
Tara's anger melded with abject hopelessness in her ruined expression. "What the hell," she breathed through fresh tears, "do you know about *weight*?"
Spike's expression softened, despite all attempts to maintain toughness. "How 'bout you enlighten me?"
She looked confused, glanced away as she wiped her nose on the wrist of her long-sleeved pajama top. "No, it's...no."
He shrugged. "I'm not leaving."
She turned back to look at him as if for the first time. "Tell you about it? You? "
Spike considered reversing his opinion of her Schnapps-fueled behavior. "Yeah, me! Whass wrong with me?" It hit him quite suddenly what might be wrong with him - in the heat of the moment he'd forgotten.
But Tara's plaintive look didn't seem concerned with that. As she pinned him with her amateur drunkard's gaze, she seemed bereft of a very specific knowledge. Spike decided to go fishing.
"I mean...if you've gotten this far you must not have too many people to talk to. Why haven't you turned to one of the Scoobies before now?"
She frowned, sunk to perch on the arm of a large chair. "I just...I've kind of...pulled away from them lately." She picked aimlessly at her cuticles, her voice regaining more of its usual tentative softness. "They just...they don't talk to me about anything...real anymore, not since Willow..."
Spike was beginning to wonder if she was going to pick her fingers to the point of bleeding. He hoped she wouldn't - not cricket to tease a bloke, you know.
She gave up on her hand, letting it fall to her lap. "I just couldn't make any more conversation about the weather."
Spike pressed a bit further, just to be sure. "What about you and the Bit tonight?"
Tara looked up indignantly, before evidently deciding that *of course* Spike had been snooping, being Spike and all, and that it wasn't the sin she'd first assumed. "We just talked about...school and clothes and boys she likes. Nothing terribly important. No one seems to want to rattle me." Her eyes filled as her voice got wavery. "No one will even tell me how she's doing, or if she's even ever coming back." She sniffed loudly, cleared her throat. "Not that it matters."
"So this is about Red, then?"
Tara smiled bitterly. "Isn't everything?"
"No," Spike retorted flatly. It's all about the Slayer, or hadn't you gotten the memo? Spike sat on Tara's bed, considering her with a frown. "Why is this botherin' you so much now? You've made it through this sort of thing before."
Tara's face was bewildered; Spike realized his gaffe: "I meant your girlfriend being gone, or...*troubled*, or whatever, not the girlfriend-turns-into-world-destroying-demon situation, but bloody hell - that sort of thing's par for the sodding course 'round here."
Tara's eyes grew faraway with pain. "She was just...ripped away from me. I finally had her back...we finally had each *other* back, and then..." She winced, as though mentally watching the replay. "Suddenly my girlfriend's the Devil himself. She couldn't keep it away - life wouldn't let her. It was all for nothing. And now things will never be the same." Her head sunk even lower, and her voice lilted with an atypical venom: "Should've known it was too good to be true."
Tara's words landed on Spike's heart with a familiarity he didn't want to think about. He grew angry instead.
"If you're in love then fight for it." Her head raised to meet his glare. "You got out of that fucked up family of yours. You made Red straighten up and fly right one time already. You just survived a bleedin' *gunshot wound*. Sorry you don't like it, Glinda, but your secret's out: you're a survivor, masqueradin' as a quitter. Your chance to die's gone by already. This bloody givin' up don't wash."
Tara's eyes narrowed in hurt and anger. Spike was perfectly satisfied - anger was fuel for living, where he came from.
"How do you know what *I* am?" she accused. "You've never even looked at me long enough to do anything but punch me."
Spike sat forward, challenged. "How do you know where *I* look? I was lookin' at you tonight, *all* bloody night, and you'd no idea. All this time you've been tucked in tight with your precious Scoobies, safe as houses, I've been on the outside, where the view is best. Fact is, I'd wager nobody in the world sees more than the unwanted." He paused, trying to regain his track, reign in the snarl that curled his lip. He sat back, faintly self-conscious. "I've seen enough to know this kinda ending don't suit you."
Tara looked away petulantly. "It was good enough for my mother."
She turned back a moment later to meet the slight rise of Spike's eyebrows. The sulk in her face softened. "It wasn't exactly like...this. It wasn't sudden, "she amended. "She-she was sick for a long time, and everybody thought she'd just tried to take her meds on her own and that the overdose was accidental, but...I was the one who looked after her. I knew better." She briefly closed her eyes against a memory. "They knew better too," she said wryly.
Spike was at a momentary loss. "Somethin' else you survived," he said finally.
Tara looked suddenly fervent. "That's exactly it, in a way," she said. "I'm tired of life being something to *survive*. I don't want to stick around to find out what the next kick in the head will be."
Spike found himself growing impatient. "Kicks in the head are life in a nutshell," he said. "Nothing for it but to kick back."
"I don't want to kick anybody. I just want to *be*, without feeling miserable. And evidently I can't." Her face dissolved into a self-pity that Spike thought looked terrible on her. "I've come to believe that I'm just...inherently bad."
"Oh, come *on*..." Spike fought the urge to shake her where she sat. "Consider your audience."
She shook her head. "Everywhere I've been in my life, people go mean or freak out. First they just took it out on *me* - now if they can't have me to abuse they'll apparently just go after the whole world."
Spike sat back against the wall. "Well, look at that. Earth really does revolve 'round you."
Tara glared at him sullenly, then reached for the drawer where she'd deposited the Schnapps. Spike's long arms beat her to it. He plucked it from the drawer, opened the bottle and took a generous swig, then wiped it on his sleeve and presented it to her chivalrously. She looked at the proffered bottle suspiciously, but her need for comfort evidently beat out any concern over vampire cooties.
He leaned forward as she sipped. "You are not the reason fucked up people act fucked up," he told her. "Hate to burst your center-of-the-universe theory, but it's true. Not with your family, and not with Red."
She grimaced faintly as her last sip went down. "So what if I'm not? The outcome's the same."
"Look, you're a gambler, you are, and you need to own up to it." The chipped nail polish on his pointing finger waved accusingly. "You went after Big Love With A Troubled Person, and that's never tidy. Big Love costs big - you pay with your soul. You want Nice Neat Tidy Love, you can do that too - cost is much lower, but so is the payoff. But in any case, that's not what you did."
"I just want Healthy Love," she sniffed.
Spike rubbed the back of his neck. "Yeah, well, I've never seen that particular brand. Don't know if they still make it."
Tara studied the bottle, peeling an edge of the label. Spike could smell its syrupy tang all the way across the room. "I just feel like I've done everything I set out to do when I was little, and it's all been unsatisfying. I don't want to try anything else. I understand how life works, I really do." She looked at Spike earnestly. "I understand the 'it kicks you, you kick back' thing. The rules are the way they are. I just don't want to play. I'm just done."
Spike, out of the billions of creatures roaming the earth right then, truly knew what death was. He knew just as certainly that she was not of it. She was nothing but life, a radiantly lovely woman sitting there, flimsy nightclothes hiding none of her womanly assets, while she miserably, obliviously thought she was worthless. He found himself suddenly, alarmingly aware of the thin drape of the cloth over her curves, of how obvious it was that she wasn't wearing a bra. Not the time, Spike ol' boy, not the time.
For distraction, he turned to scan a nearby bookshelf. Bingo. He grabbed the proper volume, flipped through it and read out loud the Wiccan Rede: "'Do what ever you want to, as long as it harms no one, including yourself. This belief constantly reminds us that there are many consequences to our actions and we must consider all possible outcomes before acting. The Wiccan Rede thereby binds Wiccans to do the right thing.'" He shut the book with a satisfying snap. "Gonna argue with the witch code?"
"No," she said simply. "Just going against it."
Bugger. Spike was starting to realize he'd gotten invested in winning this argument. "Don't care what it does to your friends?"
A thick moment settled over them both. Without meaning to, he'd invoked a specter: *What would Willow do if this happened?* Spike frowned - he hadn't meant to make her feel responsible for the whole damn world.
"I've thought of that," she said, with a quiet dignity, "but...living just to keep from hurting someone else is enough reason to pause, to consider, but ultimately...not enough reason to stay. It wasn't enough for my-" the word caught at her lips "-mother, and now I see why, in a way. I can't live someone else's reasons."
Spike sat back in faint surprise. Tara watched him curiously. "You're right," he announced. "Then that's what we'll fix."
"How do you mean?"
Spike rose from the bed and thought a minute, then paced back and forth distractedly. His duster flared behind his knees as he did, like a dangerous, living thing among her cozy furnishings. He stopped suddenly and pointed at her, his bearings apparently found. "I'm offering you a deal - every day, I'll show you one reason to live, one reason to stay here. Every day, if you don't agree that whatever I've shown you is a good reason, you're free to do as you please. But if you agree with it," he smiled sympathetically, "you have to remain a member of the lowly living for one more day."
Tara stared at him, mouth open. She closed her mouth momentarily, only to have it fall open again.
"What've you got to lose? You're in control, aren't you? The pressure is all on me to produce. You don't have to do a thing except not do one specific thing." Spike found himself liking his own plan more and more.
***
Tara smiled in embarrassment and looked around the room, squirming under the laser focus of Spike's stare, but eventually finding herself drawn back to it. There didn't seem to be anywhere else to go, anything else in the room, nothing but those black clothes, those sharp features, that sleek blond hair.
It made no sense whatsoever - a deal offered by a former killer to keep her alive. The nonsensical nature of it made it somewhat of a relief - it meant it required total abandon to go along with it, no thinking. And if there was one thing Tara was tired of, it was thinking...
And Spike could teach a bulldog about tenacity. He certainly wasn't going anywhere.
"Um...okay, yeah. You have a d-d-deal."
Spike's face relaxed into a pleased smile.
"B-b-but...why are you doing this?"
The smile fell off his face as if greased. Tara hurried to soften her question. "I mean, it's kind of an amazing thing for anyone to offer, but from you...you're a *vampire* who's proposing a lot of work to make sure a human goes on living." She offered her shy smile as a peace token for asking. "I'm just curious."
He didn't mention Buffy, or his own aimless nights since the...incident. He hadn't examined his feelings too closely since it had happened, and he didn't want to. He told another truth instead.
"I've been you," he confessed simply. The quiet, obedient one, he thought, who doesn't make a fuss, never asks for anything more than he's given? He understood what a person had to hold in to keep himself like that. "I'm not you anymore," he explained patiently, unnecessarily, and paused while hundred year-old events passed by his faraway eyes. "...but I've not forgotten."
Tara nodded, not really understanding. The liquor and the excitement caught up with her in a sudden wave, and she felt herself almost sleepwalking through the next few minutes as Spike made her get into bed.
She suddenly realized he was making himself comfortable in her chair. "Um...what are you doing?"
Spike was rifling through potential reading material. "Stayin' here tonight, ain't I? Make sure nothin' goes on that I wouldn't approve of." He picked up a magazine and waved a hand at her. "Off you go then, get some shut-eye. I'd wager you need it."
Tara blinked, nonplussed. "I - I can't sleep with you sitting there, watching me."
Spike didn't even look away from his copy of Wiccan Weekly. "Just going to have to, now, aren't you?" He glanced over at her and breezily repeated his hand wave, then reached up and extinguished the light.
Tara settled down under the covers, deciding not to ask about how much light vampires needed for reading. A second's more reflection about vampire super-senses and she rolled over with her back to him, the better to hide the tears of relief in her eyes.
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