Chapter Text
As soon as Buffy opened the door, Xander could tell there was some new problem. Her smile for him was perfunctory, and she headed back towards the kitchen without a word, leaving him to follow.
That was a good Sunnydale practice, come to think of it - never invite anyone in, just see if they can cross the threshold on their own.
"What's up this time?" he asked as he followed. He noticed the papers spread out on the coffee table; it looked like Dawn had been working on homework there, but she was nowhere in sight now. "Just tell me it's not something else at the school. Our construction schedule's already far enough behind..."
He met up with Buffy in the kitchen. "Listen," she said, and pressed a button on the answering machine.
'Hello, Buffy.' Xander felt a chill run down his spine. He hadn't heard that particular voice in a good four months, 'good' being the operative word. The voice was tinny and a bit strange - distorted by the machine, and maybe the connection hadn't been great on the other end - but Xander would never mistake it for another.
Spike.
'I - I was going to come back to you, but now I can't,' the message went on. 'So I'm just ringing to say... I'm sorry.' There was a weird noise, like Spike was choking or something. 'Bloody hell,' it went on, the words muffled as though they'd been spoken away from the receiver. Then, loud and clear again: 'I'm sorry for everything.' With a sharp click, the message ended.
Buffy just stood there, frowning at the answering machine and running her fingers lightly over its buttons.
"So the evil dead thing's back in town," Xander said, feeling his voice get cold and protective all at once. "I swear to God, Buffy, I will stake him this time."
Buffy shook herself, like she was waking from a daydream, and looked at Xander. "I star-sixty-nined it. He's not in Sunnydale. The call came from a pay phone in London."
"Okaaay." Xander frowned. "He's on the other side of the world. That's my second-favorite place for him to be. Close runner-up to blowing on the wind in the form of dust. So what's the crisis?"
"You heard the message. Spike's in trouble."
"Okay, whoa, slow down." Xander let a bit of a laugh creep into his voice, because this had to be a joke. "First, he didn't say that. Second, why the hell would we care if he is?"
"He didn't say he was in trouble, but he sounded..." Buffy shook her head, searching for a word. "Desperate. Forlorn. I think he was crying." At least she seemed to be having as much trouble associating that last word with Spike as Xander was. "That's not the Spike we know."
"Yeah, the Spike we know is more into laughing at the pain of others. Or possibly causing it. So again I say: what's the problem?"
Buffy took Xander's hand and squeezed it. Looking him straight in the eye, she said "Xander, I need you to go to London and find out what's going on with Spike."
"Oh, hell no, you did not just say that." Xander pulled his hand away from Buffy's so abruptly he whacked his elbow against the kitchen island. Buffy winced, but didn't say anything else. Xander rubbed his elbow and tried to stay calm. "Buffy, please tell me you didn't just tell me to fly to fucking England to see why Mr. Date Rape is having a bad day."
"I owe him-" Buffy started, but Xander cut in.
"No, no, and again I say no. If he's in trouble, I'm cheering on the trouble."
"I'm not asking you to do it for him. I'm asking you to do it for me."
"And I'm saying no for your own good."
Buffy glared at Xander, and Xander glared right back.
She blinked first. Sighing, she went and sat down at the table. "Come on, sit," she urged Xander quietly.
He joined her, and plucked an orange from the bowl on the table. He'd come here straight from work; he hadn't had dinner yet.
"Look, I know you don't like him," she said. "But you've fought alongside him lots of times. He helped out while I was dead. All that's got to count for something."
"Not enough to cancel out the times he tried to kill us." Xander ripped at the orange's peel.
"He's got the chip now. He can't hurt anyone."
"Except you. And he sure took advantage of that." Xander would never forget it, it was seared into his memory: Buffy on the bathroom floor, with her robe torn and her thigh bruised and her eyes full of tears. Spike's coat hanging on the stair post.
Buffy grimaced. "That was...a low point. But you don't really understand what it was like between Spike and me."
"Maybe because you never told me," Xander said, a little too harshly. It was still a sore point. "Buffy, I know the two of you had had sex before, but nothing excuses what he did."
"Tried to do," Buffy corrected him.
"That's not the point."
"Yes it is. I wasn't some poor defenseless little girl getting jumped by a big strong man, Xander. I'm stronger than Spike, and he knows it. On some level he must have known I could stop him if I wanted to."
Xander shook his head. "Still no excuse."
"Maybe not." Buffy looked sad. Xander wished she'd be angry, instead. He wished she'd stop trying to justify Spike's attack on her. "But I did some inexcusable things to him, too." She glanced over her shoulder, making sure they were still alone in the kitchen, and she lowered her voice. "I was hating life, Xander, and I was hurting in ways I couldn't explain, and I took it out on him. I used him. God, there were a couple times when I went to him for sex and he said no, but I kept going - and he always changed to 'yes' pretty fast, but I don't know if I would have stopped if he hadn't."
"That's different," Xander insisted. He didn't want to hear this. "You weren't doing anything he didn't want, and besides, he's a monster."
Buffy went on as though she hadn't heard. "He told me once that you always hurt the one you love."
"Did he say that while he was sexually assaulting you?"
"No, he said it right after I finished pounding the crap out of him for trying to stop me from turning myself in over Katrina." She gave a choked little laugh.
"You don't love him," Xander said. It wasn't a question.
"No," Buffy agreed after the briefest hesitation. "But if he's in trouble, I owe him some help. I'd go myself, but I can't leave Dawn..."
"I'd go myself before I'd let you go," Xander said, realizing as he did that his defenses were crumbling, that what he'd just said was a short logical leap away from actually agreeing to go. "Spike's the one vampire in the world who's more dangerous to you than to me. But what about Giles? He's already in England. Why don't you ask him to pop over to London and check up on Spike, if it's that important to you?"
"He's busy with Willow, and all that Watcher Council stuff." Buffy didn't quite meet Xander's eye.
"You think he's even less likely to go along with this plan than I am."
Buffy looked poised to argue that point, but after a second she gave it up with an apologetic nod. "That, and I don't want him to get in more trouble with the Council."
"And what about money? Neither of us is exactly rolling in the dough, Buffy. Plane tickets to London cost, I don't know, a lot."
"We'll manage it," Buffy said firmly, and Xander knew he'd lost. Buffy was smiling with such tangible relief Xander couldn't back down now.
She was the Slayer, he was the last remaining Slayerette, and no matter how much he didn't like this plan of hers, he was going to do it for her.
He was going to London.