Title: Stroll
Author: kbk
Rating: PG-13
Disclaimer: Joss, not me.
Warning: Deals with rape.
Notes: I was going through my files because it felt vaguely useful, and I found a few things that just needed a little polishing, and also this fic, which was Jossed by Seeing Red and is all Spike-redemptionista and Spuffyish and suchlike. And a bit, um, on the side of "I can't believe I wrote this" with some "omg the cliche" but not that bad. That is, there are a couple of bits I like. And I feel like posting it, so there. And IIRC I wrote it straight off, only revision has been to tidy up punctuation and spacing.

He was taking a stroll, that was all. Get out for a bit, clear his head - not patrolling, no way in hell. That was what the Slayer was for. He'd patrol with her, sure, stop her getting skewered on the odd occasion, have it lead to something else maybe, but patrolling on his own was too close to being one of the good guys. He was just taking a gentle stroll past the danger spots of Sunnydale, and the reason he started running when he heard a scream? To watch the mayhem, of course.

He rounded the corner to see what he had expected, a girl held down while the man on top... unzipped his pants. Damn. Without a thought, he kicked the guy in the face - and staggered backwards as the chip fired. Human scum. The pain in his head was joined by one in his ribs, and another, and another. Then he heard another stifled scream. Shit. Daft bint didn't even run for it. So now... No. That was not going to happen.

He struggled up and tackled the guy, pinning him to the ground and beating him. The chip fired with every punch but he didn't care. This guy was dead meat. Rage and frustration and pain a century old came boiling up from the depths of his mind, flooding out the pain with pure emotion. He felt himself lifted, flying through the air. And the pain struck.

"Fight me, Spike. I can't stop you if you don't fight me." Buffy could hardly believe it, but she had seen it. Spike had always been evil and she had always known it, and if she'd allowed herself to forget, and to... Well, now she was remembering.

She still couldn't stake him in his current state though, curled up whimpering against the wall. She nearly bent to help him, but she caught herself in time.

"You were going to kill that person. You're evil. I'm ending this" she stated, trying to convince herself more than him, still out of it in the corner.

"No," a voice trembled behind her. "He was helping." Buffy whipped round to face this new threat: and stopped dead as she took in the dishevelled state of the woman, a little older than she was.

She looked, for the first time, at Spike's victim, and saw the open fly. Her gaze turned back to the woman, who nodded slightly. "He... tried to..."

"Yeah," Buffy acknowledged, wondering what good it did to fight the monsters when people were like this. "I'll get you home."

The woman looked like being led, but then stopped. "Shouldn't we... call the police, or something?" Police. Huh. Concept. "And what about your friend?" Friend? Oh shit.

Abandoning the woman for the time being, she knelt beside her... whatever he was, who had stopped whimpering but still vibrated with... something, trying to huddle into a ball without damaging himself further. "Come on, Spike" she murmured, "not like I haven't thrown you into a wall before."

He glanced up at her, blue eyes horrendously shadowed, before replying, "Chip". One word answers from Spike? This was not good.

She heard the woman talking in the background, and realised that she had called the police on her mobile. Police. "Spike, you gotta go. Police are on the way."

She pulled him to his feet, most definitely not wincing along with him. The woman came over and stood in front of him, waiting for him to meet her eyes before she thanked him. He dropped his head, staring at his boots as he muttered, "Nobody deserves that."

Buffy didn't understand his tone of voice, but she would find out later, when the strange woman was gone. "Spike, go. I'll wait till the police get here, then I'll find you, OK?" Her expression brooked no argument, and she was surprised to see him turn away without even glancing at her again. What have I done? she thought despairingly. He hates me. And... I don't want that. But that had to wait, as she took the woman by the arm and tried to explain the need for lying to the police, without mentioning any of the reasons.

Spike had barely noticed anything that happened after he hit the wall. The pain he'd been feeling from the chip as he battered the man into a bloody mess had finally communicated its presence; and, weak from the hellish migraine, he had been unable to suppress the memories welling up from the hole in his defences from where all the emotion had broken out during the fight.

He managed to return a little more closely to functioning as he stumbled down the street, hoping to avoid any confrontations. He had to go somewhere, rest up, go somewhere safe. His crypt was halfway across town, he thought, though he wasn't all that sure. But there, three or four streets over, was a sanctuary. He knew it.

Buffy, having watched from the shadows as the woman, Kirsty, told the police of the tall dark man who had viciously beaten her attacker over some private vendetta, was roaming the streets of Sunnydale looking for Spike. She had told him she would find him, and she didn't intend to let him down again.

His crypt was empty, and he hadn't been seen in any of the bars she had tried, so her best guess was that he had fallen in a ditch somewhere. She stopped for a moment, realising that she had little chance of effectively scouring Sunnydale by herself. If she wanted to find him before sunrise... She would need help. She rationalised it to herself as she ran for home, but she couldn't help feeling that somehow she had failed.

The shortcuts she took led her to the back garden of her house, and she pounded desperately towards the house, only registering the presence on the porch as she started to open the door.

Typical. She searched all over, panicking, fearing for his safety, and he was sleeping outside her house. Sleeping with his eyes open. He was ignoring her, she thought, and something twisted inside. Two could play at that game. She walked into the house, hesitated, and turned into the kitchen where she could watch him from the window. He would leave before the dawn.

Two hours later, light was creeping over the horizon, and as far as Buffy could tell, Spike hadn't moved a muscle. He hadn't even reacted to the deadly sun. Perhaps... Buffy nearly screamed at herself for an idiot. She had been catatonic not all that long ago, and the fact that a guy sat without even twitching for more than a few minutes didn't clue her in?

No, she was too busy being annoyed at him for daring to be hurt at the fact that she had thought he was evil again, when in fact he'd been... putting himself through terrible pain to save a woman from rape. She could wake Willow, try to... but no, Willow had woken her through magic, and still couldn't be trusted with it after all that had happened. She would do this by herself.

Spike felt rather than heard or saw the figure returning to the porch. He knew he should look at her, talk to her, leave maybe... There was some reason he couldn't go home right now but he couldn't really remember and he was safe here. He was safe with her. He allowed himself to be guided into the house, upstairs into a room that smelt faintly of something... something he didn't like...

The blow that snapped his head round barely registered in comparison to the agony that had overwhelmed him when he found his safety and allowed himself to rest. Rest. That was a good idea. He sat. Gentle hands pulled him up again and set him down on a soft surface, pushed him until he toppled to lie on the bed. The presence receded, and he was bereft.

Buffy went back to the kitchen, trying to think of a way to make Spike listen. There had to be something... She stared into her mug of cocoa, jumping violently as Dawn yawned her way towards the fridge. "Long night?" the girl asked.

Buffy looked up, screwing up her face. "Kinda".

Dawn looked at her with all the wisdom of a teenager. "You should get some sleep. Go to bed. Don't worry, I'll go to school and everything."

Only some remnant of self-preservation stopped Buffy from answering that her bed was already occupied - misunderstandings now would lead to awkwardness and possible revelations, something she had no desire for. She gestured to the mug in her hand. "I'll finish this, see you off, then I'll rest."

Dawn packed safely off to school, Willow leaving a little later with a minimum of conversation, Buffy returned to her room to find Spike sitting on the floor with his back against her bed. It looked like mojo on her part was off the cards - something she was heartily glad of. She sat on the bed, beside him but not touching. "So?" she asked.

"Chip. I ignored it while I punched that bastard's face in, and it caught up with me."

She reached out a hand to his shoulder, startled when he flinched away. "Spike, I... I'm sorry. I shouldn't have jumped to conclusions like that. Please don't hate me."

Spike looked round at her. He shook his head. "Love you. Told you often enough."

Buffy grimaced slightly at the truth of his statement - his second statement, that was, she still couldn't accept... "So why are you all jumpy? I'm not going to hurt you."

He looked guiltily away, staring at his boots again. What had he said in the alley? 'Nobody deserves that'. His voice had sounded so... pained. Like it really meant something to him, like the one thing that he truly could not abide was rape. She came to a decision.

"I've been wondering," she said, voice deliberately light. "Why didn't you take your chance when I was unconscious?"

He turned to her aghast, issuing a denial before he realised and stopped. She could practically see the mask sliding over his face before he amended his answer. "Thought you'd say yes when you saw how much I would do".

"Spike" Buffy said, her voice both warm and warning. She slid to the floor, careful to stay out of contact with him. "Tell me what's wrong," she said, in the same tone. There was no reason for her to know, other than maybe it would mess him up and then he wouldn't help her out any more. And maybe he did mean a little to her. She was going to find out.

Spike, now almost fully awake, recognised the determination in her eyes; but he was a stubborn bastard. He would leave, do this by himself as he had before; but now he had no victims to take out his helplessness on, no dark princess to coddle and protect the way he wished to have been protected, nothing to do but stew and gamble and drink and maybe kill some demons.

"I want to know," she said, and he nearly grabbed her and yelled at her, poured out everything that had happened, all the filth and the pain; she wanted to know, did she? But he wasn't crazy, and it didn't matter that he was hurting; there was no way he would do that to her, the woman he loved. But she kept pushing, kept asking, and he broke.

"It happened to..." shit, nearly said it, "someone I know. Well, more than one, but... And..." to hell with loving her, if he hurt her she'd stop asking, "and it was never my style. More what dear old daddy would do."

He waited for the blow, for her to gasp and run when she realised who he meant; but it didn't come. "Angelus," she nodded. Damn. So she'd finally straightened out the difference. He'd already said too much, so that was her lot. She started pushing again, of course. "Who was it?"

Spike snorted. "Pretty much every victim for all the years we were a family."

Buffy nodded again, slowly. "But you didn't care about the victims. You still don't. Except..." Go, Slayer! Display that amazing mind of yours! "one of his victims was Drusilla." Spike smiled bitterly. Oh yeah. Dru had been a victim, but by the time he met her she was more than happy to join in. He hoped the Slayer would misinterpret - and it seemed she had, for the next words out of her mouth were, "You really loved her, didn't you?" Spike shrugged and stood. The garlic was really starting to get to him.

Buffy watched as he moved wearily out of the door. She wasn't as good at reading Spike as he was at reading her, but she had the feeling that there was more to it than that. That Dru had been hurt, that he would hate that, she could understand: but he couldn't have been there. And the way he was flinching, anyone would think... For the second time, she cursed her brain for not clueing her in earlier.

She jumped up and caught him halfway down the stairs, holding back from touching him at the last second. "That's not all," she said, with a certainty she was far from feeling. He looked her in the eyes, a deep hurt blue, and she had to restrain herself from reaching out and kissing the pain away. "You said pretty much everyone. Everyone except the ones older than him, right? All the victims except the ones he didn't think were pretty enough. All the others he needed to dominate." Spike's face tightened. He swallowed, dropping his gaze again. "Even you."

He shook inside at her words, at the memories attempting to overwhelm him again... and nodded. "Even me." He walked down the stairs, to the door: and was pulled back. He lashed out, realising too late that it was Buffy, and she was stopping him from going into the sun. He sank to the ground, hugging his arms around himself. Now he'd hurt her too. Maybe it would be best to give up, to tell her that he couldn't forgive her for believing the worst of him... but now, of course, now she knew she would think that he was having 'issues'. An arm was laid tentatively across his shoulders - her arm, he knew, because there was nobody else here, because nobody could feel quite like she did. So because it was her arm, he let it stay there. He made no protest as she gathered him close to her warmth, didn't try to struggle away from her strong but loose grip.

Eventually, the cramp in Buffy's leg grew too much to bear and she had to release him. He stood with her, appearing much calmer now than he had been. She nerved herself to start again, and told him, "You have to tell someone about it."

He gazed at her solemnly. "No, I don't. No more than I have." She opened her mouth to speak again and he laid a cool finger across her lips. "I dealt with it for a hundred years without any help. I think I can manage from now on." She tried to speak again but still he wouldn't allow it. "Buffy, love, it was a long time ago. And yeah, it needed... dealt with, but now it has been. I said it. It's... Just gimme a few days and I'll be back to normal."

She smiled, though she was sure he really did need the help. "Normal? You? You must be kidding."

His lips quirked, and his voice as he quipped back at her was almost his usual blend of sarcasm and mockery. It was a start, Buffy thought. It was a start.