And to *pout*master Mary B

He looked at her, startled. He understood her feelings about literacy, but in his opinion, they had a much more pressing problem. “They can’t defend themselves either, luv.”

“But—” Buffy began only to have Spike to cut her off with a swift kiss.

“Love? They need to eat properly for a while to get their strength up. They need weapons training, and they need to learn to read and write,” he said, adding the last to appease Buffy. “Every demon we meet wants them dead. What the bloody hell can we do?”

In that moment, Spike seemed helpless when faced with the need to defend these humans, and that look of vulnerability made her fall just a little bit more. Helpless was something that she had never attributed to the Big Bad, and Spike feeling this way scared the hell out of her.

“We hide,” Buffy told him, her voice sounding more confident than she felt. “And we try farming goodness and…maybe classes?”

“Yeah?” He looked up at her, seemingly bewildered. “And where the bloody hell do we do that?”

Buffy turned and climbed back into the saddle. Spike covered her hand on the saddle horn with his own when she finally answered. “We’ll ask the women from the train.”

Spike caught himself smiling up at her, before shaking his head briskly and giving her a ferocious frown. “What the hell are you doing to me? I’m not supposed to feel like this.”

Buffy smirked down at him. “You wanna hear a story, Spike?” At his reluctant nod, she continued, “Before I was called, I was the most vapid, self-centered person alive. I knew kids were starving all over the world, and that in third world countries there were kids as young as eight or nine fighting and dying in wars, but it didn’t affect me, so who cared?”

Spike shot her a look so full of sarcasm that she thought seriously about kicking him, but she had a better way to get him and pressed on. “Not long after I was called, I was flipping channels on TV and saw one of those commercials. You know the ones; ‘kids starving in Africa. Please send money’. I couldn’t turn it off. I couldn’t change channels. I just sat there crying and watching. The next morning I skipped school. I snuck down to the bank and withdrew all of the money in my college fund. Then I stole my dad’s credit cards and bought all kinds of clothes and toys. I maxed them out, all to help those kids. I couldn’t get them out of my mind. I was ready to do anything to feed them—give up clothes, shoes, ever eating again—just to help them. My dad went ballistic, my mom thought I was insane, and my so-called friends called me a freak. The only person that understood was Merrick, my first watcher. When I told him, he just sat there and nodded. Then he told me that what I was feeling was the true nature of Slayers. We give and give until we have nothing left. That is the only way we know how to live. He said that was fine, but I needed to distance myself from non-demon things, because I couldn’t really help there. That I must try to save as many lives as I could by fighting demons, because that’s what a Slayer does. He died two days later.”

Spike gave her a bewildered look. “And what the bloody hell does that have to do with me Slayer?”

“You ever wonder why they call us vampire slayers, Spike?”

Spike’s expression clearly implied he thought her insane. “Because you kill vampires.”

“Maybe,” she replied. “But on an average night, I kill two…maybe three times more demons than vampires. So why not ‘demon slayer’? After all, that would cover vampires too.”

“Then why, pray tell, do they call you a vampire slayer, Slayer?” Spike asked as he stepped back and pulled out his pipe. It was obvious that he was only humoring her, which annoyed her to no end.

One swift kick to the head, Buffy thought as he blew an insolent cloud of smoke in her face. It isn’t a stake through the heart, so he’ll live.

“Vampires are dead bodies with a demon in them,” she reminded him with forced patience. “So what if a slayer is the same thing? Same demon, but in a live, human body?”

“You… are… bloody… insane,” Spike answered through clenched teeth. “I’m not a soddin’ slayer! I’m an evil vampire, I kill Slayers!”

“Hmm…” Buffy put her hand to her chin and pretended to be in deep thought. “You keep everyone fed. You protect them from demons. Oh, and let’s not forget you don’t seem to need blood anymore. And …” Buffy paused dramatically, as if an idea had suddenly occurred to her. “Last night your heart was actually beating for a few minutes. Sounds like a slayer to me.”

“You take that back,” Spike yelled in outrage. “My heart did not beat! It must have been your daft imagination, you stupid bint!”

“You’re also standing in the sunlight.”

“It’s a fluke,” he sputtered. “I’m bloody evil to the core, dammit! An Aurelian vampire, baddest of the bad!”

“Then why haven’t you killed me?” Buffy asked, green eyes wide and her sweet, girly voice practically dripping with faux innocence.

Spike looked to be one step away from a full-blown tantrum. “I—you—it’s—Look, I just made a promise to your mum, that’s all.” When she arched a skeptical brow, he threw his arms in the air, the perfect picture of frustration. “This conversation is over!” he bellowed before thundering off in rage.

Buffy ran her eyes ran down her lover’s body as he stormed away. They came to rest on his tight backside and suddenly her mind seemed to scream out, ‘Buffy spank!’

Spike skidded to a halt and whipped around to face her, his mouth agape. “Buffy what?”

Blushing furiously, she tossed her head and replied haughtily, “I have no idea what you’re talking about.”

With a look of shock on his face Spike turned and walked off muttering darkly to himself.

Regaining her composure, the Slayer couldn’t help the small grin that spread across her face. It wasn’t often that she got the better of Spike during one of their verbal sparring matches, but she was pretty certain her current argument would keep him off balance for a while at least. She turned her mount and rode out to join her escort.

***

From a safe distance, Spike watched Buffy ride off. Bloody evil bint! Slayer, my lily-white arse!

So what if he didn’t need blood anymore. So what if his heart had beat a few times last night (and hadn’t that nearly scared his goolies off!). So what if he was protecting a rag-tag band of Humans. It was her fault anyway! Her and her tight little slayer quim…shagged the wanna-bloody-kill right out of an honest vamp, it did!

Spike walked off mumbling darkly about Jezebel and Cleopatra and the evils of smart mouthed slayers who were getting too big for their tight little britches. He moved quickly but silently towards where the women had led the Brakuri into the farm cabin.

He hated this. All of this! Shagging the slayer? Fine, he could learn to deal with it. Protecting humans? Yeah, wasn’t the first time; vamps had done it before. And teaching children to fight wasn’t any worse than teaching minions to hunt…

…There he went again, justifying everything that was happening. “Rotten little Slayer!” he growled under his breath.

Stopping just outside the door, he listened for a moment, swearing to himself that he was eavesdropping because he was evil. He refused to admit that it might be so he could learn of any problems ‘his’ people might be having, problems they might not feel they could share with him.

“Child?” It was the woman Nia speaking. “You need to learn to guard that wicked tongue of yours. Lord William is a kind and forgiving master and yet you push him o’er much,” she chided.

“This I do know, Mother,” Charena answered. “And yet I cannot help but push. I must know if this ‘freedom’ he has given us is real or just another pretty lie from a demon. I have been watching him closely, and his actions often contradict each other. He is kind and loving one moment, angry and vengeful the next.”

“It is often so, Daughter,” Nia explained. “While he is a man of honor and integrity, his temper doth truly rage often. You see, the many facets of our lordships nature do battle constantly within him. Such men are to be respected and loved, yet also feared.”

Slipping silently away without drawing their attention, Spike refused to acknowledge how much her use of the word ‘fear’ bothered him.

TBC
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