dragonyphoenix | Fic: The Thin Line Between Hell and Heaven 8/9

Title: The Thin Line Between Hell and Heaven
Fandom: BtVS
Characters/Pairing: Spike/Xander
Rating: R eventually, for sex, but PG for adult themes in this chapter
Concrit: Please, in comments
Disclaimer: They aren't mine, not yet, but the will be once I've taken over the world. Bwah-ha-ha.
Summary: There's a thin line between love and hate...
Notes: This is a reworking of my drabble, Don't Get Caught, which was inspired by forsaken2003's Weekend Stuck Together.
Notes: This story came out very Season 4 episode heavy: this chapter, "Primeval"
Masterlist

Spike stepped silently across the stone floor, heading for Adam's lair, when he heard Riley's voice. “Not really wanting a lecture right now.”

Spike listened as Adam rambled on about demons and humans. Peering around the stone, he watched Riley stand at Adam's command. Spike wasn't sure what was going on, but if Riley had turned traitor, the Slayer would need to know. Not that he cared so much for her, but it'd put Xander in danger. “Warms the cockles of my non-beating heart, seeing you lads together.”

“I didn't send for you, Spike.” Adam was nothing if not an authoritative ass.

Resting his hands on his belt buckle, Spike put on a show of strength as he strode over. “Yeah, well, I'm not much the being sent for type. I'm much more the I did my part now get this chip out of my head kind of guy.” When Adam didn't reply with anything more than a look, Spike turned his attention to Riley, who stood ramrod straight and still. “Slightly stiffer than usual.” He snapped his fingers before Riley's eyes. The lad was aware but not talking. “Subtle but I like it.” He poked Riley, sending him rocking back and forth. “What's up with him?”

“I activated his chip.”

“So it's chips all around, is it? Someone must have bought the party pack.” Spike wondered how much the soldier had said. Riley had seen him with the Scoobies, but Adam didn't seem to realize that Spike had been working both sides.

“You get yours removed when the Slayer is where I want her.”

“She's separated from her friends.” Spike wandered toward a set of computers, figuring they'd be something to throw at Adam if it came to that. Plus it put him closer to the door. “They want nothing to do with her. She's all alone.”

“That's how I want her. Where I want her is down in the Initiative. She will ensure that as many demons die as humans. She will achieve maximum carnage before she's too weak to go on.”

“No, you can't,” Riley started before Adam shut him up.

“Right, the Initiative,” Spike said, working on more info before he headed out. “But getting her there, that's what the bleeding disks are for, isn't it? Our little witch gives her the info and pop – Alice heads back down the rabbit hole.”

“The witch?”

Spike wasn't about to give him anything else. “Uh, Darla,” he improvised. “About so high,” he added, holding his hand up. “As big a bitch as you'd ever want to meet, good with computers though.”

Adam turned toward Riley. “You know him, don't you?” When Riley agreed that he did, Adam asked, “What isn't he telling me?”

“There is no Darla, not that I'm aware of,” Riley said. “Her best friend is Willow. She'd be working on the disks.”

“You know the Slayer?”

“Yes.” Riley left it at that.

“And this vampire?”

Riley kept his words to a minimum, but they were the most damning thing he could have said. “They've been protecting him, hiding him since the Initiative put the chip in.”

“So he'd be on their side.”

“He's on his own side,” Riley replied.

“Better than you,” Spike said, running for the door. “At least I haven't turned traitor.”

“It doesn't matter,” Spike heard as he raced through the caves. “She can't touch me. If she doesn't come, I'll have more human bodies than demon, a less efficient starting point, but it won't affect my overall plan.”

At Giles' place, when Spike burst through the door, Xander was standing to one side of the couch, next to where Willow and Tara were sitting, while Buffy was on the floor, a tome in her lap, and Giles, at the other end of the couch, was looking at Xander as if the lad had surprised him. “Adam's got Riley,” Spike said, catching them all off guard.

Buffy leaped to her feet. “What do you mean?”

“Seems soldier boy had a chip in him the whole time. He just spilled the beans to Adam, who now knows I've been working with you.”

Willow started babbling. “But what does he want with Riley? I mean, yeah I can see Adam turning him into a big demon-hybrid with the rest of the soldiers but why now? Why Riley?”

“He's following some master plan,” Spike said, crossing the room to stand next to Xander. “Something laid down by someone he's calling mother, and you already knew about the monster mash he's got planned? Could have filled me in.”

“We just figured it out,” Xander said. Good of his lad to make him feel like he hadn't been left out of the loop on purpose. “When Willow, when the disks decrypted themselves.”

“Hey,” Willow said. “I was this close to getting it.”

“This doesn't change anything,” Buffy said. “Giles, Willow, Tara, you three work on that spell. Xander, you and I are going shopping.”

“What about me?” Spike asked.

“I can't trust you to be here,” Buffy said.

“Can't trust me?” Spike shouted. “Soldier boy spilled the beans, but I'm the one who can't be trusted?”

“He's coming with us,” Xander said.

“Huh?”

“Whatever this shopping is we're doing, Spike is coming along,” Xander added.

Buffy thought for a minute. “Fine. Let's go.”

Giles looked up. “Where are you all going?”

“Getting supplies to get us into the Initiative.”

Spike wasn't sure how rappelling ropes were going to get them anywhere, but he didn't have much time to think on it, what with the grilling Buffy was giving him. How did Riley look? What did he say? He didn't move at all? Tell me again what he'd said. Did he volunteer information or only respond to Adam's questions? Spike was glad to get back to Giles' although not so much when Willow asked him to escort Tara home.

“You're not going in without me.”

“Spike,” Buffy started.

“You know how we're getting in. Meet us at the frat house,” Xander said.

While Buffy lit into Xander, Spike rushed Tara back to her dorm, still afraid they'd head on in without him. He beat them there by ten minutes. “Well, come on. It's not like we have all night.”

Gazing past the broken mirror, the one Buffy had kicked out, and down the concrete shaft behind it, Spike finally got what the rappelling ropes were for. The hugfest down at the bottom broke up as soon as Spike, the last to join them, made it down to the floor. They pried open the elevator doors to find a bunch of soldier boys pointing guns straight at them. “Bloody brilliant plan,” Spike muttered as they were being marched through the halls, surrounded by gun-toting goons. “You know Adam's watching us through those cameras, right?”

“Not my biggest worry right now,” Buffy replied.

The soldiers took them to what seemed to be a command center, a large white room with a bunch of computers and a huge map of the world that took up one wall, where the head honcho didn't-make-general guy started berating them. Spike, not in on the plan, looked on with interest as the soldier started going through bags, pulling out assorted stakes and what Giles called a magic gourd. When the lights went out, soldier guy took a bunch of his goons with him, leaving only two behind. Buffy kicked the shit out of them and then Willow, clever girl, figured out where Adam was while Giles went on about the enjoining spell. Apparently that was the big plan that Spike wasn't supposed to know about, not that he knew what Giles meant.

Spike brought up the rear, covering their asses, as the Scoobies made their way through a beauty of a fight to something called 314, which turned out to be a lab, one that Spike didn't have an invite for. Buffy gave it to him bluntly while Willow apologized behind her. “It's not that we don't trust you, except I guess that we maybe kinda don't, but the spell is fragile. If anything disrupts it...”

Spike kept the hurt out of his eyes. “You barricade the door,” he staid, stepping into the anteroom “Nothing'll get through.”

A Fyarl made its way to him, giving Spike a bit of a fight, followed by a vampire, obviously a Fledge, easy to take out, and then a blue demon, hairy with horns that curled upward, that went down after Spike snapped its neck. When the tentacles started working their way through the door, Spike wished that someone had thought to leave him an ax. The beast was a dead pile of goo at his feet by the time the door to the lab opened. “Spike?” Xander called out. “You all right?”

Spike let out a whoop of victory. “Yeah, I'm good. You lot?”

“We're coming out. Gonna help the soldiers escape.”

Great, time to save the soldier boys. At least they'd be too busy not dying to come after Spike. It took less time than Spike had expected to rappel them up the elevator. Army training turned out to be useful, in emergency escapes at least. After they'd cut the ropes so none of the demons could climb them, Riley left about a dozen guards at the top of the shaft to takes out those demons that could climb without ropes.

Spike didn't relax until they were out and away from the frat house. Riley didn't look happy. Made sense. A bunch of his guys had just died. “You sure you want to do this?” he asked Buffy.

“She's sure,” Xander replied, laying a hand on Spike's shoulder. “Eww,” he added, pulling a goo covered hand away.

“Come on, Spike,” Buffy said as Xander started wiping his hand on a tree.

“Where?” Surely they weren't about to take one more demon out, not after he'd helped them. Didn't make sense. They could have left him down in the lab.

Xander, returning from the tree as he wiped the last of the gunk on his jeans, said, “To the back entrance, the shortcut into the secret labs.”

That didn't sound good. “Look, if you're gonna kill me, do it now. Don't drag it out.” Not that he was about to stand still and let them off him.

“We're not. Unlikely I know, and while I don't completely agree,” Giles glanced at Xander, “well, I'll just say it's not as idiotic an idea as it seems at first glance.”

“And besides we're doing a spell, to make sure none of the demons get out the back entrance, which I guess we wouldn't need you for,” Willow added.

Riley led them through the tunnels, behind some huge slab of circular stone that rolled out of their way, and into a lab. There was a woman there, sprawled out on the floor, not alive, but moving. Riley helped her up. “Dr. Walsh.” His tone said he cared about her, or had when she'd been alive.

“Riley,” she said. She had tubes running from front to back. One was dripping something red, not quite blood, while the other's liquid was spurting through the tube.

Riley pointed toward Spike. “We want you to remove the chip from Hostile 17.” Spike looked up at that. “Can you do it?”

“Yes,” she replied.

“This will probably hurt,” Buffy said, almost apologetically.

“Hurt?” Spike scoffed, “Pain I can deal with. Let's get this show on the road.”

Xander stood nearby, watching over the creepy doctor woman as if to make sure she didn't harm Spike. The operation didn't hurt much at all, just a bit of a pinch, OK a bit more than a pinch as she cut open his skull but mostly it was boring after that. Spike kept his gaze on Xander.

When Spike was up again, Xander tossed him a gun. Spike turned it around in his hand, looking it over. “What's this for?”

“To test if you're dechipped.”

Spike aimed the gun at the dead doctor. Not certain that aiming at a dead woman was a good test, he targeted Riley next. Soldier boy didn't even flinch as he looked down the barrel. Lowering the gun, Spike said, “I'm good.”

Turning toward Riley, he glanced at the dead woman. “It'd be a mercy.”

Riley's face was grim. “I'll do it.”

“Know that,” Spike said, tossing the gun back to Xander.

“Do what?” Willow asked.

“Come on,” Giles said, putting an arm around Willow and leading her into the caverns. “You don't want to see this.”

“See what?” she asked as they moved to the caves, leaving Buffy and Riley alone in the lab with the dead doctor. They heard one gunshot. “Oh,” Willow said, finally getting it. “You were right. I didn't want to see that.”

Fic: The Thin Line Between Hell and Heaven 8/9

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