Becoming Me

Disclaimer: see chapter 1

A/N: Thanks for the reviews guys, esp. to those of you who have been reviewing since this story was a little baby over a year ago. They really make me happy. However, I’m very sad that I forgot to celebrate the 1st birthday of Becoming Me (which was in May) : ( Anyway, on with the story. For those you who have been waiting on the edge of your seat to hear from Spike, here he is…


23: REGRESSION


The brunette cocked her head, angling her ear towards the entrance. Footsteps, thudding, heavy-booted footsteps, echoed somewhere above her. “Shh, my Miss Edith,” she whispered to the small doll in her arms. “A shining knight draws nearer.”

“Mornin’, Dru.” Spike descended the creaky wooden steps. “M’not interrupting a party, am I luv?” He smiled seductively as he approached.

Dru stood up, Miss Edith tumbling from her lap. “Ooh! I love parties, Spike!”

“Know you do, pet. And now as I’m back, there will be loads of parties.”

Drusilla giggled excitedly and leaned into Spike’s hungry embrace. “With mummies and daddies and baby…fishes?” Her voice purred close to Spike’s ear.

“That’s…right, Dru,” replied Spike evenly, a small grimace twisting his smile. “Mummies and daddies and babies.”

Suddenly Drusilla pulled back with a hiss. She fixed Spike’s blue eyes with a penetrating gaze that he felt left his soul quivering from the confrontation. That’s bollocks, he reminded himself. Haven’t got a soul to be quiverin’… He could hear Drusilla’s anguished moan reverberate in the basement like an eerie song. “Ohhhh….” she cried. “Now does ‘e feel ‘is secret murders sticking on ‘is hands…What ‘ave they done to you, dearest?”

“Nothing…They haven’t - what are you goin’ on about, Dru?”

“It’s slowly arranging inside ‘ere…” she placed a long-nailed hand over his chest, “Making an army, to shatter my world…” her moans lapsed into intermittent sobs.

The volume of Spike’s voice raised in alarm. “No. No, Dru, you’re wrong! Dru…” Suddenly he slammed her up against a wall, trapping her with his own body. For a moment, there was only the sound of his heavy, wound-up breathing, but then Drusilla giggled darkly and finished with heavy, desirous pants. “I’m back, Dru,” Spike growled, grinding his hips against the eager body in front of his.

“Spike!” Dru gasped, and Spike grabbed her long hair and dragged her to the floor, dropping down above her and ripping away clothes. The surge of desire he felt when he watched a naked Drusilla writhe between his knees was encouraging.

Spike pinned Drusilla’s arms beside her shoulders and slammed into her as roughly as he could. She screamed in wild delight. Spike growled as his face morphed and he buried his fangs in the soft skin of Drusilla’s neck, liquid gushing into his mouth. The blood tasted empty, cold and flat, but it was still salty and wet.

Drusilla clawed stinging furrows down his back with her nails as their sticky skin met and ripped away in a hurried, uncontrollable rhythm. The concrete floor was dirty and his back throbbed as it bled, and Drusilla’s aroused screeching was very loud and very close to his ear, but over all, it was good.

It was good to be home.

* * * * *

“Mom, you know I love you, but I really don’t need any more hot chocolate.”

Joyce smiled, abashed. “I’m sorry, Buffy. I’m just so glad you’re home.”

Buffy hugged her mother from behind. “I know. I’m so sorry I…I’m glad I’m back.”

Joyce nodded. “We don’t need to talk about it right now.” She looked over at the kitchen counter and noticed a Blockbuster card. “Buffy? Would you like us to rent a movie? We can stay up late,” she suggested with obvious excitement, “And eat ice cream and lots of other tasty things that will rot our teeth and make us fat.”

“Sounds great.” Buffy grinned wider than she felt, because the thought of lots of sugary ice cream actually made her feel rather ill. “And it’s summer, I don’t have school early tomorrow…Or ever, really, since Snyder kicked me out.”

The mention of school seemed to dampen Joyce’s spirits somewhat, because she lightly frowned and added, “We’ll start taking care of the whole school thing tomorrow. I’ll meet with your principal and then if I can’t knock any sense into him, I’ll call the school board.”

Buffy smiled gracefully and grabbed the car keys. “Thanks. But now, movies.” She jingled the keys and tossed them to her mom.

“Does Mr. Giles know you’re back yet?”

“I think Willow and Oz told everyone when we got back. But I should go see them tomorrow, right?”

“It’d be a good thing to do. But don’t feel pressed to do anything right away, Buffy. You’ve had a hard time lately and it’s ok to slowly ease yourself back into the flow of things.”

Buffy shrugged and donned her coat. “Nah…Buffy’s ready for the whole flow.”

* * * * *

Buffy waited for the door to open. She felt nervous – almost as nervous as those times, screwing Spike, when she hadn’t known what to do. Only this was a worse kind of nervous, because however stupid it might have been, she had felt more or less sure that she could trust Spike to still be there despite whatever she said or did. And Buffy knew her friends would be glad to see her…but they didn’t know exactly what had gone on in LA. Even Willow didn’t know everything.

Buffy hated that it was obviously the wrong thing to do, but she’d already decided to lie to her friends. There was no way in hell she was going to tell Giles, Xander, or Cordelia about what had happened with Spike, and she wasn’t doing cartwheels over the idea of telling Oz or the fact that Willow already knew. She’d just gloss over the dirtier details.

And that, really, was what made her so nervous. She knew it was wrong to lie to people she trusted. And she also knew she was a terrible liar. And she knew that everyone would be hurt that she’d tried to lie. So all in all, she wasn’t exactly looking forward to the imminent confrontation.
Giles’s apartment door opened to reveal the meticulously made-up face of Cordelia, which melted into an expression of surprise. “Oh my god…”

“Buff!” exclaimed Xander. “You’re really back!”

“Yup,” replied Buffy cheerily.

Willow fought through the crowd of Buffy-welcomers and told the Slayer, “I – I told them, but they didn’t believe me. I…”

“Easy Wil,” Xander advised her as he patted her red hair. The entire group broke into laughter, relieving the room of some of its tension. Buffy and her friends seated themselves upon Giles’s furniture and the Watcher placed six tea cups down on the table amongst everyone.

“So Buffy,” Cordelia began, “Why’d you come back? Not…that we’re upset that you did, because that would be ungrateful and just – weird…But generally when someone runs away, they stay away for longer than a week or two.”

Noticing Xander’s apologetic face and smiling slightly, Buffy responded. “Uh, well…I just sort of realized that…what I’d done was kind of stupid, and I missed you guys, and I wanted to come home. It was sort of lonely.”

“Were you all by yourself out there?” Giles inquired.

Buffy took a while to reply and felt like the silence stretched onward for hours. “Uh…no.” Buffy could feel five sets of eyes on her, and imagined that Willow’s in particular would be surprised and curious about what followed. “I, uh…I was there with Spike. He…drove me. There.” Buffy finished with a shrug.

Again there was silence.

“Spike?!” exclaimed Xander, sounding scandalized. “Spike? As in, William the Bloody? As in, ‘I-spent-most-of-last-year-trying-to-kill-you’ Spike?”

Buffy stared at her knees. “I know. I know it was mental. I know that, okay?”

“Buffy.” Giles leaned forward solemnly. “How long did you stay with Spike?”

“Um…most of the…time. Until Willow came.”

“Oh my god. Did he bite you?”

Buffy turned to look at Cordelia, but her vision was assaulted by scenes from the past week.

A hungry kiss, a battle of tongues…Mouths filled with saltysweet, delicious…

Hot breath on her cheek, on her skin…moist closeness, and then the gentle tug, his arms wrapped around her body and his mouth latched on to one spot on her neck…

”Slayer…”

“No.”

Suddenly Xander stood up and came forward, peering at Buffy’s neck. “Xander, what are you –“ she shouted as she tried to twist away.”

“Aha! He – Spike has you under some sort of spell, doesn’t he? Saying what he tells you to say, doing whatever he wants –“

“What? No! That’s ridiculous!”

“Buffy?” Giles’s voice.

“Look!” Xander, showing people her neck.

“Oh my god!”

Buffy caught Willow’s sympathetic and fearful glance.

“Buffy?”

She stood up. “Listen, okay? It’s not…Spike does not, and never did, have me under a spell. It’s…it’s complicated, but I’ll explain. Spike didn’t bite me. I bit me. There was…Somebody put a spell on us, and not Spike, and it switched our bodies. So, I was in Spike’s body, and he was in mine, and…Xander, it wasn’t that gross. But anyway, I was a vampire and I bit me, only Spike was me at the time. That’s why there are marks still. But it wasn’t anything bad, or serious, or anything.

“Listen guys, I’m not totally distraught and weird like I was when I left, but…I’m still not perfect, either. And what happened while I was gone, with – with Spike and everything, was weird…and I’m not sure I’m really up to talking about all of it now. Later. Now, can’t we do something, like…drinking our tea? And not worrying? Anything new happen since I left?”

Oz, to everyone’s surprise, took it upon himself to answer. “Well…school finished.”

Willow’s eyes lit up. “Ooh! Oooh! Oz, he – he flunked senior year – and, he’s gonna take it again, with us!” Oz rubbed Willow’s arm gently and nodded to show that what she’d excitedly spluttered was indeed the case.

“Neat,” commented Buffy, trying not to associate the boyfriendliness of the scene with painful memories of Angel. “And my mom’s gonna force Snyder into letting me come back, so all will be good. She smiled at everyone, but felt like the warmth of the smile failed to extend past her lips. She didn’t really feel overjoyed to be back. She felt overwhelmed.

* * * * *

It was perplexing and perturbing.

After she had been walking beside Amber for several minutes and analyzing all of the vampire’s movements and expressions, Val could tell that something was up. The job they’d just done with the Slayer’s hang out the previous night had been fucking fantastic – any creature of the night would have agreed wholeheartedly.

Yet Amber was pissed off. They had come across a couple, sucking face on the hood of their car, and Amber had snapped their necks but not wanted any blood. She “wasn’t hungry,” apparently, and Val and the others had treated themselves.

She also wasn’t reliving the moments of glory, when they’d ripped into the men’s skin, when they’d smeared the wall with warm and fresh blood…Amber had said nothing longer than a few syllables.

Suddenly Amber’s head whipped up as they passed a records store. She squinted, and then sniffed and looked away into the surrounding shadows. “You guys keep going. I’ll meet you back at the House. I just spied some little vamps who think they can take a stroll in our territory.”

The other girls nodded and some growled, but Val smiled to cover her suspicion. She was older than a lot of the other girls, and her vampiric senses were more honed. As smart and cunning as Amber was, she was wrong in thinking that there were any non-Revolver vamps anywhere in the area. Something was up, Val was even more sure of it.

She even had an idea. It was awful to think, the next worst thing after “pulling an Angelus” and suddenly acquiring a soul…but Val suspected that Amber might be going soft and feeling a little grossed out by the first-rate carnage at Mr. Brown’s. If this was indeed the case, things had gotten really serious, and Val knew that Amber, once she was feeling more like her evil old self, would thank Val for setting everything back to normal.

Amber prowled the dark alleys until she was sure the girls had left. Too much was at stake to risk being careless. Finally she stalked into the record store and stuffed three Spice Girls CDs into her jacket, making a face as she did so. Those idiots made such disgustingly terrible music, why didn’t one of them just take a gun and blast all their brains out? It’d be doing themselves and the rest of the world a humongous favor.

Amber added a Dead Kennedys CD to her collection, smirking. Think of it as educational. Welcome to quality music. Feeling pleased with herself (and uncharacteristically and alarmingly bouncy), Amber strolled out of the store, and with four more CDs and short no cash at all, she started back to the House.

* * * * *

“Donde vas, Lilia?” the mother called from another room.

“Just the door, mama,” Lilia shouted back. Her mother was so weird. Amber called it “over-protective.” Whoever it was knocked on the door three more times. “Who is it?” Lilia asked.

“Amber. Is now a good time? Can I come in?”

“Yeah. Mama’s all covered in purple bubbles, ‘cos your tights bled in the wash!” Lilia giggled.

The vampire began to open the door, and Lilia grinned up in expectance. But when she saw a ridged forehead on a vampire who was way taller and way fatter than Amber, she screamed as loud as she could.

“Thanks for inviting me, brat,” spat Val as she pulled the small child up into her arms, ignoring a woman’s shouts coming from a few rooms away. She clapped a strong hand over the young girl’s mouth. “And for fuck’s sake, shut up.”


A/N: Mua ha ha, CLIFFHANGER!

And the quote “Now does he feel his secret murders sticking on his hands” is from Macbeth by Shakespeare. (Watch me NOT plagiarize…woot!)

Ok fine, I admit it, I’ve run out of wacky things for Dru to say and now I have to steal quotes from other people. But whatever, it fits. Hope everyone liked the update; please REVIEW to tell me what you thought, and have fun waiting for the next chapter!