Quid Pro Quo

A/N: Thanks again to Megan for beta-ing this story.


Chapter 6 – A Little Brimstone With Your Breakfast

“The hellmouth awaits.” Spike was ready for the challenge and exuded so much energy that those around him could feel it.

This morning, promptly at eleven o’clock, Spike, Illyria, Angel and Nina, were met at the door of the Tinkercreek Mansion by Giles. Behind him hovered Dawn, Willow, and Xander. Last, in the very back, stood Buffy. Spike stole a quick glance that she didn’t see. He wanted to laugh at her, but he couldn’t. She had her hurt face on. Her arms were crossed over her chest, and her head was tilted over to the side, displaying her pain. However, she just didn’t know yet that her attitude, no matter what, was going to get her nowhere. Certainly not sympathy.

Giles opened the door to the Tinkercreek Mansion wider. “Welcome. I trust that you had a good night’s rest.”

“If you mean if the hotel was up to par, it was better than expected.” Angel thought he would drive that little point home a little more.

“Quite.” Giles cleared his throat. He had already heard from Dawn how posh the hotel was.

It appeared that Giles was going to go through some formal greeting. Spike decided to head off any of the rubbish. “This is Illyria, and this is Nina. Rupes, where’s the hellmouth?”

Angel was relieved at Spike’s tact and led their group inside and down the hall. Giles had to run to catch up.

No one greeted Buffy, and Buffy didn’t try to greet anyone. Actually, she had been expecting some type of acknowledgement. This was Angel and Spike after all. Only Illyria had served her with a stare before she moved on to the next person. The last time she had seen the two vampires separately in Sunnydale, they had shown their love for her. Angel in a kiss and words. Spike in a grasp of their hands that burned with fire. Now the pair acted like she didn’t exist, and she could feel it tightening around her heart.

Angel…in a way, she was happy for him if he was happy with this Nina. Months before, Buffy had already come to terms that her window of opportunity with Angel had past.

But Spike…she didn’t understand him at all. He had loved her so deeply, and he hadn’t even told her that he was back. With that thought, her heart constricted more. She wanted to know, but for her, talking and emotions weren’t mixy things. Besides, how did you talk to someone that didn’t even acknowledge your presence? When Spike had stepped into the hall with the rest of his gang, she started to open her mouth to say something? anything. After all, this was her Spike that couldn’t get enough of her. But no, this wasn’t her Spike. He passed her by without even a glance. She, however, looked her fill. This was the Spike of days of old, down with eye liner and black fingernail polish. This was Spike of the pre-chipped days. All attitude, air of danger around him, and most painful to Buffy, this was the vampire that hadn’t loved the Slayer.

Giles led the way downstairs into their basement where the concrete was cracked with an approximately fifteen feet opening. Gold light like from a fire shone up.

Spike was the first to approach it. “Oh, you’ll just love this house. Lots of space and ten bedrooms upstairs, just don’t mind the Hellmouth in the basement. Just throw a rug over it.”

“Spike!” Angel rolled his eyes as they approached the hole.

“Looks like this opening goes twenty feet down,” Angel estimated. Out of instinct he wrapped an arm around Nina’s waist when she moved a little too close to the opening for his comfort.

Illyria walked up and looked down. “That looks familiar.”

“Good,” Spike slapped her on the back, which put him on the receiving end of a glare, “You can show us around. Maybe a vacation spot, Blue?” As the other three were doing, Spike was peering down. “Why are these kind of places always lit. It’s not like they’ll get an electricity bill at the end of the month.”

“When I had my little jaunt to hell, the walls there glowed. A little darker than this, but it was the walls giving off light. I’m guessing it’s the same here.” Buffy flinched at Angel’s comment on the time she had sent him to hell.

“If I may interrupt?” Giles was just replacing his glasses on his nose. “We have a limited amount of time. This Hellmouth opens and closes on its own schedule and has moved twice so far. Once two blocks away and then the second time it moved back here. It has been here for the past three days, and it stays open for only about two hours.”

Angel stepped up closer and looked down. “So since we just got here, how long do we have?”

Willow spoke up. “You were lucky arriving when you did. It has only been open for about fifteen minutes.”

“Explore time, ladies and gents.” Spike rubbed his hands together. “Chickies, that looks to be a twenty foot drop. The ladder was a nice touch to the décor, Watcher, but you didn’t have anything in red?” Spike held out a hand for Illyria. “Ok, puss, you said that you knew your way around, so you first.”

Long used to his ways, she took his hand and let him lead her to the edge. She looked down. Ignoring the ladder completely, she stepped into the opening and sailed down to land in a crouched position. Leaving Nina with Spike, Angel was next to follow in the same manner. Once down he looked back up and held onto the ladder to make it more secure while Nina was climbing down. When Nina moved to step on the first rung, Spike swept her up into his arms. With laughter in his voice, he called down below, “Peaches, catch!” and dropped her into a surprised Angel’s arms.

“Damnit, Spike!!” floated back up, causing Dawn to giggle and combine with Nina’s.

When Spike looked over his shoulder to grin at Dawn, he caught sight of Buffy moving towards the Hellmouth out of the corner of his eye. He turned to confront her. “No, no, missy. You stay top side.”

Buffy stopped in her tracks, shocked. She had already been thrown off guard in Spike’s treatment of Illyria, and now this. “Of course I go. I always go.”

She again tried to step up to the opening, but Spike stepped in her way. When she still tried to advance, he stuck a finger in her face. He wasn’t playing around. “The only people that go with us are people we trust.” She slapped the offending digit away, but he stuck it right back in front of her nose. “Besides, we are tainted by Wolfram & Hart, so you had better not trust us with your life down there. And…if you come down with us? the contaminated? we’re out of here. Don’t push us. You wouldn’t like the results.” With that threat and a cocky salute, Spike took a step back and dropped down. “WhooHooo!”

Buffy wanted to scream and strangle that vampire at the same time. She wasn’t sure which first, but she didn’t want to show her feelings now because she could feel everyone’s eyes on her. Instead, she moved so that she could look down into the hole and try to tell what was going on.

Down below, the gang broke up into the two natural pairs. Angel and Nina went to search the left as Spike and Illyria moved to the right. They soon disappeared from the view of those above.

The wait was boring. Xander, Willow and Dawn had left the watching to Buffy and Giles and were talking quietly, discussing the change in Spike and Angel. Dawn led the talk, telling them what Spike had told her. Buffy tried not to listen but couldn’t help it. Every time they mentioned the Immortal, she felt like such an idiot. She had been sucked right in by the sneaky mega creep, and she let herself.

Just as Buffy thought she saw Giles doze off, Angel came into view. He jogged towards the direction Spike and Illyria had gone and was calling Spike’s name. For a moment or two, he was out of view and then Spike and Illyria followed Angel back towards where he must have left Nina. Next, Spike appeared again. He looked up towards the hole.

“Watcher, we need a hammer, a chisel, and a sturdy rope down here. A long one.” He was talking to Giles, but his gaze caught with Buffy’s. He looked a moment longer before looking away. “And hurry it up, Rupes.” Damn, that was the kind of thing he was trying to avoid. There can be no eye locks, Spike reminded himself.

Buffy, however, tried to catch his gaze again. He had only directly looked at her two other times, once in the library when he had first arrived and earlier when refusing to let her go below. This time she saw a glimmer of the vampire she had known, and she wanted to see that, know that again. She would keep trying. It just wasn’t in her to quit, not on Spike. She had ruined all of her other chances in Sunnydale, but she wouldn’t now.

When Giles returned with the rope he dropped it down to Spike, who then disappeared out of view again. Their wait wasn’t long. Illyria and Nina came up first. Then Spike came up with one end of the rope. Once on the top, he started hauling up what looked to be a large flat stone, a tablet. Giles and Willow were on it as soon as it cleared the opening. Spike had trouble carrying it to the research room without stumbling on one of the two of them.

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Once everyone was out of the Hellmouth and the basement, they reconvened in the Watcher’s library. Angel seated Nina at the end of the u-shaped table, but he stayed standing in a position of dominance. In fact, everyone was seated except himself, Illyria, and Spike, who was pacing in the stacks of books in the raised area above the tables, appearing to inspect the books. He had too much energy flowing through his body to sit in a chair. And he would never admit it, but in his wanderings, he was able to catch glances here and there of Buffy when she wasn’t looking. Nope, no admitting that, but damn, she looked good.

Angel kicked off the debriefing. “The area below was a twisting and turning maze.”

From her spot near Giles, inspecting him, Illyria spoke up. “On purpose, so you get lost and stay until someone eats you or makes you a pet.”

“Nice. Home sweet home.” Angel nodded and continued. “If or when we go back down, we will have to have some kind of system to keep from getting lost.”

“Get out the yummy bread crumbs, missy.” Spike gave Nina a wink and she smiled back.

‘How outrageous,’ Buffy huffed to herself. ‘She’s Angel’s girlfriend. He can’t flirt with her.’ She didn’t realize that she was thinking like a child.

Angel continued. “Now, about the tablet…”

“It will be, as you would say, a road map. Where to go and what to do,” Illyria stated matter-of-factly. She had moved on to inspecting Xander, who reacted with nervous squirming.

“A road map.” Angel gazed directly at the Watcher. “Giles, get your Watchers on it. We need the translation by tomorrow.”

Bristling at the obvious order, Giles responded. “They will get right on it. Now, about the information I sent you yesterday. I trust you…”

“Tsk, tsk, tsk, tsk. I wouldn’t just throw around that “t” word, Watcher.” Spike wagged his finger at Giles. “We might make a mistake and think you mean it.” His words sounded playful on the surface, but his boiling anger hovered below.

Willow was troubled over the obvious tension building in the room. What did he mean, T word? “Trust?”

Spike tapped the side of his nose. “Got it in one, Red.”

Interrupting before Spike could get them sidetracked anymore than they already were, Angel plunged on. “Let’s get back to the topic, shall we? We did look over the papers. You have a hellgod, Zornerah, who is trying to come to our dimension through the Hellmouth. No surprise there. Our job is to retrieve something from somewhere, and that object will be used to block the hellgod from coming through. Got it. No surprise there, either.” Angel was looking forward to this next part of the meeting. “We have chosen our team.”

That brought Giles to his feet. “What? You’ve chosen? Giving you that information wasn’t meant…”

“I have saved the world eight times, and Spike six times – one of which when he was still evil. We are champions in our own right. What we are not are your flunkies. We won’t be taking orders anymore.”

Hands to his throat, Spike looked like he was gagging. “And we are NOT bloody Scoobies. Ugh!”

“We are capable of calling the shots. Giles, we need you for research only. Otherwise, it’s only our people.” Angel lowered his voice and enunciated every word carefully. “It’s all a matter of trust. Which by your own words, we no longer share.”

Spike stepped down level with the table. “Your research said we need a monarch demon and a witch to guard the Hellmouth while a vampire with a soul, a werewolf, and a nonspecified supernatural go after the Vessel of Catarh, which will be used to block the hellgod. We found some mistakes in your research, but let’s see. Who has the text?” Giles found the correct volume. “Now, let a lowly layman ask a question. What are these three words here?” He pointed in a text.

Giles adjusted his glasses. “Monarch demon. We are trying to figure out exactly where to find this particular demon, who is directed to guard the hellmouth.”

Spike gave a dramatic eye roll. “Not a cutesy little butterfly, laddie. You missed a word. What’s this middle one?”

Giles looked closely at the text. “What…uh…it’s ‘of.’

“So what we are actually looking for is a monarch of demons.” Spike indicated Illyria with a grand sweep of arm.

Puffing up, Illyria stepped forward. “I ruled the world when demons ruled the planet. Now you humans are infesting it. My world. My army…”

Angel broke in before she got a full head of steam. “There you have it. She is a demon of demons…”

“And has no hesitancy to tell you,” Spike finished for Angel. “Illyria is our monarch of demons. Next off, we need a werewolf and peaches’ sweet meat fits the bill nicely. Now, kiddies, we have the mention of a souled vampire.”

“Giles, on the phone you said you needed a vampire with a soul.” Angel tapped a couple of books on the table. “Actually, in reading your direct translation, I noticed reference to Shanshu.”

The watcher nodded his head. “Yes, quite. It did actually say past and future Shanshu, which would be you since Shanshu is only for a vampire with a soul. Of course we didn’t know that Spike was back, making there two souled vampires in existence. But which one of you it applies to is now the question.”

Spike slapped his hands together, starling everyone. “Hate to burst your bubble, Rupes, but that is in reference to both of us. Angel is the future part.” Spike held his hand up when Angel opened his mouth to talk. “Now before we get into it, Peaches, you are the future Shanshu. I don’t care if you signed the Shanshu away. That was my Shanshu. Yours is coming. It’s in this bloody text. Enough already.” Spike stepped over and opened a window and let light in without burning Angel. He stepped where the sun bathed him. “You’d think somebody would have noticed my tan by now.”

Buffy was half way across the room to knock him out of the light before it registered in her brain that he wasn’t going up in flames.

Spike, however, was enjoying himself and hamming it up, especially seeing Buffy’s reaction. “I’m melting.” Then he stopped and inspected his hand illuminated in the sun’s rays. “Interesting.”

“How many movies are you going to rip off?” Nina laughed at his antics. “The Wizard of Oz and The Pirates of the Caribbean. Besides, it would be better if you were holding a gold coin for that last one.”

Spike dug around in his pocket and pulled out a coin. “How about a quarter?”

Dawn was just as off the subject of the meeting as he was. “And Johnny Depp is so gorgeous.”

”And I’m not?” Spike looked horrified. Buffy thought he looked better, and that was saying something.

Dawn wasn’t done yet. “Show off.”

“Damn straight, Nibblet.” Spike with arms wide open spun in the sunlight. “But before we get too far, I am a hybrid. A mixture of vampire and human. A vampire with all the benefits of a human, but still needing blood.”

Buffy grabbed hold of Dawn’s arm and whispered fiercely. “You knew?”

“Sure.” Dawn wanted to laugh at her sister, Miss ‘I don’t know everything’ but settled for a smile. Buffy was in such a bad spot, Dawn felt kinda sorry for her. “One hug, a little light, and I knew.”

As much as he envied Spike’s metamorphosis to part-human, Angel wanted to laugh at all the stunned faces in the room, especially Buffy’s. But back to business. “We have one supernatural of our choice. Spike and I will think that one over tonight. And last, the witch to help guard the Hellmouth and then unleash this Vessel of Catah. Spike?”

“I’m thinking of that bonnie lass, Krista. She can be here in a couple of hours.”

Angel considered and nodded. “Sounds good.”

Giles leapt to his feet again. “We already have people for…”

“No.” No one in the room questioned the firmness of Angel’s answer. “We’ve been over this before. Since you no longer trust us, we will pick the people that we can trust. It’s that way, or we leave you to your Hellmouth.”

Giles looked like he was going to dispute the announcement.

Spike spoke to Giles, but looked at Buffy. “Remember in Rome? Andrew does, ask him, and so do we. Summed up in six words, kiddies. Get over it and move on.”

Before Giles could ask about Rome, Angel laid down the law. “Giles, we are in the driver’s seat…”

“And mine is a viper. Try catching that,” Spike threw in.

Angel gave Spike a long-suffering glare, then looked back at Giles. “…Unless you have a vampire with a soul of your own.”

As they left, Spike volleyed the parting shot. “Trust goes both ways. You brainiacs shouldn’t have burned that proverbial bridge.”

“You were in Rome and didn’t …” Buffy was talking to closed doors. She looked at all the others in the room. Everyone looked just as confused as she was about the reference to Rome. Oh, but one person didn’t look confused. Her sister.

Buffy slowly turned to her sister as pain ripped through her. Rome. Had Spike been in Rome and didn’t try to see her? Or did he? That wasn’t like her Spike to not be more persistent. Or she guessed that was the point now, he was no longer hers. Regardless, she wanted him which means she wanted to make things right. What she needed now was information. “Dawn, what do you know?”

“I know that you need to ask Andrew.” Dawn could tell and she was dying to, but she thought Andrew deserved to suffer for the Rome debacle. Buffy looked furious, but Dawn felt no pity for the rat.


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Buffy had Andrew pinned against a wall on the second floor of the mansion with his feet dangling a foot off the floor. “All right, Andrew, let’s have it. What happened in Rome concerning Spike and Angel?”

Andrew’s eyes were wide, and his voice squeaked when he talked. “It wasn’t my fault. I was just trying to do the right thing.”

Buffy had her best Slayer glaring face firmly in place. Something had happened to turn Spike and Angel away from her, and she demanded to know what it was. “How come I doubt that? Spill.”

Andrew’s gulp was audible down the long hall. “They came to see you.”

Buffy was so stunned that she let Andrew slide down so that his feet were on the ground. “You knew about Spike? They came to see me, and you didn’t tell me?”

“Well, I meant to but just…forgot.” He started squirming, trying to get away.

Her shock wore off and then came the fury. Andrew’s feet were dangling again. “What did you do to make them so mad?”

“I…”

“Stop stalling. Tell me.” Buffy had had enough.

“The Immortal. They thought it was a spell, but I told them that it wasn’t and that you were happy with the Immortal and for them to move on.”

Letting him down, Buffy was dazed. She wanted to wring Andrew’s neck but settled for shoving him down the hall. No wonder Spike and Angel were so mad, and so was she. The two men that had loved her most in her life had been sent packing. First they were told that they were no longer trusted, and then they were turned away. She had a lot to make up for…if they let her. No, she would make them let her.

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TBC

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