The Phonecall

This is my first foray into fanfiction
My pre-emptive strike on how Buffy finds out that Spike is Alive. Set just after You’re Welcome (Angel Season 5). Written 15/04/07
Knowing the history of Spike and Buffy I just can’t fathom that he wouldn’t have called her after becoming corporeal again. In The Girl in Question Spike never says that he hasn’t spoken to Buffy. He doesn’t even seem that anxious about seeing her. He said to Andrew in Damage that he would ‘take care’ of telling Buffy about his being alive. We know enough about Spike to know that he would do exactly what he says he will do which means, in my view Spike would have actually known that the ‘Buffy” they were chasing in The Girl in Question was not the really real Buffy. I’ve always thought this and just wanted to get this idea out of me before the Comic completely change my perspective.
Rated: PG
Discalaimer: no, I don't own any of the characters depicted in this story.


The Phone-Call by Tranquillity

Buffy sat at her desk knowing that she really should be doing some of the god-awful administration work that came with the gig of managing an army of Vampire Slayers. She wished she could palm it off on somebody else, well Giles actually, but hey, that wouldn’t be fair – he had enough to deal with and she was, after all, Head Honcho, the Big Banana, the Supreme Slayer. The job wasn’t all imparting words of wisdom and physical training – too bad for her.

She hears the phone in her outer office ring. She hears Rachel answer the phone (at least she thinks its Rachel – so many slayers each doing a tour of duty as her administrative assistant, it’s easy to get them confused). It will be Giles, of course. The phone number is like, a national secret. Giles and Willow and Xander are the only ones who know it, oh and Andrew, he knows it too.

The phone on her desk rings and even though Buffy was expecting it, the sound still makes her jump. She snatches up the receiver.

“Hello”

Long pause.

“Hello?”

Another shorter pause then,

“Buffy.”

Buffy’s heart stops beating for a moment.

“Who is this?” she demands her voice low with suspicion and anger. Only her worst enemy would dare imitate that voice, that person.

“Buffy, it’s me.” The voice is quiet, yet tense and she’d know it anywhere – that plumy English accent, the way it says her name…

Yet it can’t be him, she knows that for a fact!

“Sorry, try again. He’s dead.’ Her words are cold, like a steel knife cutting the damned pretender to shreds.

“Yeah, um, the thing of it is, I was. But I’m not now. Hard to keep us hero types down, you should know that. Buffy?”

The voice is spot on perfect! It’s uncanny. She wishes it was him, wants it to be him. Maybe…

“Spike?”

“Yeah love, it’s me.’

God she wants to believe.

“Hold on” she orders, and takes the phone away from her ear then trying to sound normal, casual, nonchalant even, she calls to Rachel (if that’s her name) to shut the office door. Oh, and also, no interruptions.
Rachel does as she’s told and now Buffy is safely cocooned in her office, hands shaking, heart pounding. Wondering what on earth to say now.

“Are you still there?”

“Yep.”

“Okay, if you’re Spike, and I’m not saying I believe you, because well…, well you’re going to have to prove it.”

“Okay. How?”

“Tell me something that only Spike and I know.”

Heartbeat.

There’s an amused snort on the other end of the line. “Good god, where do I start?”

Okay too broad Buffy realises. A question? And then it comes to her in a blinding flash…

“What was the last thing I said to you down in the hell mouth then?”

She swore she heard her mysterious caller swallow hard on the other end of the line.

“You said… you told me that you loved me.”

“Lucky guess. What did Spike say to me?”

“I said… I said that you didn’t but I thanked you for saying it and then I told you to push off.”

Buffy could hear the blood pounding in her ears and felt her heart beating thunderously against her chest, felt her eyes fill with warm water.

“Idiot!”

“Excuse me?”

“Why would you have said that? I never understood why. It’s plagued me for…, well, it’s still plaguing me.”

“Buffy, are you all right?”

Typical. How like him to be concerned about her when she was kind of pissed off with him! Damn tears!

“Buffy?”
“I’m fine,” she quickly replies then manages, “Just… just a bit emotional on this end”

“Not just your end love,” he admits.

God, how many times had they seen each other cry? Not that they could see each other at the moment. She wondered how he was, what he looked like.

Well, duh – vampire. Eternal youth. Same old Spike.

Questions suddenly attack the dominating feeling of relief. Weird, relief is what she’s feeling, like she’s just found the very thing she’d been looking for, like she’d just been given her right arm back.

“Where are you?”

Easy question first.

“LA.”

“What? Why? No, wait, how are you alive?”

“Long story.”
“I’m not going anywhere.”

So the next fifteen, twenty minutes are filled with a long and entertaining tale of a bloody amulet, (something more we have in common love, being bought back when you’re good and done), life as a ghost, being the reluctant spectral intern at an evil law firm, which is, as she knows all too well, run by her old sweetie bear. Then there was the amusing flash-in-a-box that got him back to being a solid citizen. There’s also some stuff about a bit of a tussle between Spike and his ol’ grand sire and no, it didn’t involve oil of any kind just a lot of blood thank you very much and then there’s the part how he doesn’t like being used, specially when the git who does the string pulling is some old nemesis of Angel’s, and oh, yeah, did he mention that he really, really hates it when he’s being used as a pawn in someone else’s game? And he did run into Andrew recently – that’s where he got her direct number and how is that crazy slayer doing anyway? Oh, and by the way, Cordelia’s dead.

“Dead?”
“Yeah, not to clear on the details. Just that she’d been in hospital for a while. Angel’s pretty cut up about it though. I think. Pretty hard to tell. Not overly free with his emotions is the old geezer. He’s uptight. Ageing him bad. What about your end. What happened after, you know, Sunnydale came crashing down?”

So Buffy returns the favour and tells Spike about the adventures that she and the others have been having since Sunnydale went kaboom. Seems weird he doesn’t know. Actually, not all that fun really. Lot of hard work, lot of confused girls, lot of problems – Dana’s just one example of what they term a ‘problem slayer’, just the tip of the iceberg. And now they’re all stuck living in a foreign land – Scotland is cold and wet don’t you know. It’s nothing like California. She really misses Home. And she really misses the Sex but she doesn’t actually mention that, just thinks it. Hard not to while she’s talking to him. And it’s pretty shitty being wanted as a terrorist, especially when technically it was his fault that Sunnydale now resembles a crater! But she’s got enemies of, supernatural and well, natural varieties. Oh, oh, she’s got body doubles – one living it up in Rome and the other well, somewhere else entirely. Oops, that supposed to be a secret. Not to worry, he always was very good at keeping secrets. The one other person Spike asks after is Dawn. She’s alright, she thinks. So little time to spend with her. Tells him she knows she’s a crap sister, feels guilty, wishes she didn’t have so many other ‘sisters’ to look after. Is it wrong to say that they don’t whine as much as Dawn? Disloyal, she knows it. It’s nice to tell someone what she’s really thinking and feeling. It’s been so long. Oh, and Anya was killed, just thought he might want to know.

“That’s sad. How’s the boy?”

“He’s okay. Doing well, now.”

“And the girls, how many, um, survived.”

“Not many, eight. Vi, and Rona and Kennedy all survived. They got the most training. Actually, I could use another teacher, you know, fighting skills, insider vampire knowledge…interested?’

“I am, but…”

“But?”

“I think I’m needed here. In LA.”

He sounds kind of surprised.

“Why?”

Damn it I need you here!!!

“I think your old beau has got himself into a spot of bother.”

“You mean Angel and this whole deal with Wolfram and Hart?”

“Yeah.”

“What’s he doing there anyway? Giles says it’s like…organised evil incorporated.”

“As usual, Rupert’s not far wrong. I have no idea why the great deluded one decided to branch out into the law. Not like he’d tell me anything.”

“Yet you want to help him?”

“He’s got good people. His team. Good, deluded people. Think they can fight evil from within or some such rot. I’m thinking that things are gonna go pear shaped any minute now and then, I don’t know, maybe I can help.”

“You’d work for Angel?”

“I don’t work for him! I help out when it suites me.” He sounds affronted. He pauses then adds with candour, “Besides, we’ve had a few issues to sort out and no, not just you. Hundred years of baggage between us.”

“And how’s that going?”

“Slowly.”

“How come you didn’t call sooner?”

‘Well, ghost – couldn’t pick up the phone.”

“Then?”

Long Pause….

“Told the little boy, Andrew, I’d take care of it………I was…nervous.”

“About talking to me?” She’s pretty incredulous. This is, after all, the guy who admitted he loved her even though he knew she despised him, hell, he chained her up for goodness sake, just so she’d listen to him!

“Well, Yeah.” He’s defensive. “You know, I die this great, noble death, better than anything I ever deserved and then wham bam, 19 days later, I’m back. Last place I want to be. So, you see it means nothing.”

“How can you say that?”

Spike doesn’t answer.

“I died. I came back. Did that diminish my sacrifice?”

“No, but that’s different. You shouldn’t have died, you are…good. I was evil, I needed the redemption.”

“And you’ve still got it. You’re not diminished.”

“Thanks, good of you to say so.” He doesn’t sound entirely convinced.

“So, when are you coming to see m- us?”

She’s sure she can hear him smile. She knows that look. She knows he knows that she wants to see him. But he doesn’t tease her about it.

“I think it might be too dangerous. I mean you with your body doubles and being America’s Most Wanted and all. It wouldn’t take your enemies too long to figure out that you are the real Buffy if I were hanging about like a bad smell, a blind idiot could figure it.”

Buffy’s pouty frown appeared.

“When did you acquire common sense?”

He’s not supposed to be the rational one! He’s supposed to be mad and impetuous.

“I think it came with the soul. Course, I don’t use it all the time but …”

“So you’re staying in LA., with Angel?”

“Not with! I have my own place. He lives in a posh penthouse. I live in a cruddy basement apartment. Some things never change”

“I have a castle and there’s always room for you.”

‘Thanks”

Buffy looks at the clock, god, they’ve been talking for hours. She’s supposed to be out with the girls. She’s needed. She doesn’t even have to tell him, he just knows.

“I’d better let you go, you must be busy. Just thought I’d say cheers.’

The tears fill her eyes again. The g-word is coming.

“I’m glad you did. Finally.”

There’s a pause, quite long. It’s not awkward though. They are comfortable with silence. They can almost hear each others thoughts. They are thinking the same things.

“Call me, if you need any… just call me. Often.”

“Okay.”

She gets his number. He has a cell phone. Weird, but she’ll be able to call him too.

“Well, alright…um…well… I…”

“No need to get mushy Slayer.” He’s laughing at her. She doesn’t mind “I’ll talk to you soon.”

“Spike,”

Heartbeat

“I love you.”

She can hear him smile again.

“Thanks. I love you too.”

Then the phone goes dead. He’s hung up first. Buffy sits at her desk feeling…what? Shell-shocked, elated, whole…all of the above? She wants to run and tell someone, tell everyone this incredible news.

Spike is alive!

She gets up and is halfway to the door when she freezes. She anticipates the reactions. Willow’s look of ill-comprehension, Dawn’s of distrust, Xander, well he thought they’d finally managed to get rid of the guy so, there was no way he’d share her happiness.

Deflated.

She could ring Giles but he would be no more pleased than Xander. None of them understood her and Spike – they just didn’t get it. But she is so happy and the last thing she wants is to see disgust or false platitudes etched on their faces and in their voices…

She almost wants to pick up the phone and call Spike, share the good news with the one person who’ll appreciate it. But that would be ridiculous. Utterly….

Yet it’s tempting.

And then she remembers Andrew. The little runt knew about Spike and didn’t tell her! Audacious. But he kept the secret because Spike had asked him to. Buffy smiles and picks up the phone, dialling the number for their Italian contingent. First she’ll tear strips off him, second she’ll remind him who’s boss and then, finally…finally, she’ll be able to share her joy with someone who’ll understand.

The End