eachdraidh | First Stanza - [Video] (both courts)

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First Stanza - [Video] (both courts)

[The locket opens up to showing him in a bar. It's a well run place that seems fairly busy. Spike can be heard over the conversations in the background, but only just. Behind him is a pig-faced bartender who is probably less than pleased by a locket conversation in his bar, but hasn't gone to the trouble of turning it off. Spike hasn't been causing much trouble in Daonna since he arrived weeks ago to start living medieval style. He patrolled with the Slayer and though beasties weren't always common, there was no shortage of crime. It was work that didn't always pay well, but they'd collected one bounty that was keeping them fed and a roof over their head at the Sweet Sow.

And when he was peckish... well, the town was full of people that would never be missed, so long as they were never found. Spike was glad to be back on human blood again.]

This boon business is a big load of bollocks and I can't be the only one who thinks it. Collecting feathers for the king and queen? Here we are, shards rammed into our chests, and this is the best use they have for us? Bugger that and bugger them as well. Bootlicking might suit others, but it's never been the life for me, no matter what Crackerjack prizes they're offering.

So what I want to know is where we can get our goods without kissing their royal asses? There's got to be some witch or demon or the like handing out discount boons for a fee. Anything will do: it's got to be better than the cheap shite they threw at me last time. [A pouch of tobacco! For dealing with shadow beasties! Is it any wonder he didn't bother bending down to pick any feathers up?]

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Oh, there's gotta be a price alright. And I'm doubting there's anything bargain about it. [ ... ] They don't have anything to give me that I'd wanna ask for. Done. We're not all existential window shoppers like you, Spike.

[ here bleated the hypocritical lamb. ]

Is it a pony? I bet it's a pony. You'd ask for one, but you won't because I'm here.

[He chirped his disappointment at her: tsk tsk tsk!]

[ because who needs a pony when there's a perfectly serviceable vamp around? buffy draws a deep and disappointed breath. she is herself so unhappy with the winding twists of her thoughts -- the darkness hiding between the jokes. ]

I don't have to ask for a pony. I'm pretty sure they were handing horses out like Halloween candy back at Caer Scuttlebut.

Only we're not going back there anytime soon, are we? We missed our chance there playing at champions.

[He does not make the accusation directly, but there is a subtle accusation at her playing the champion. He tagged along.]

-- Nothing about what they offered was champion-like

[ she walks faster down the narrow daonna street -- modern boots leaving light impressions in the city mud. buffy had taken what she could from the station. bartered for it with strength and clean-up help. and even out here in the wilds she wears jeans and her leather jacket zipped almost up to her chin.

frankly, she's a little disappointed that the get-up didn't turn heads. apparently modern clothing wasn't super popular outside the station. but it wasn't a rare eight either. ]

That was drudgework. Mercenary's work. [ ... ] I don't swing that way.

You signed up for it all the same.

[And it had ended badly. Oh so so badly. They'd escaped! But that was about the only good thing that had come out of that mess.]

Yeah. Well. Turns out I don't always make the best decisions--

[ case in point: spike. a bad decision she keeps on making again and again, and she's nearing him -- or, at least, the inn's front porch. ]

[He could hear the noise of the tavern doubled through her locket. So he snaps it closed and turns around in his seat to face her. Short she might be, but she's not hard to spot in the thick of it. He raises a solitary hand to invite her over.

Once she was near:] Home sweet home.

Don't.

[ even as a crass joke, she didn't like the word attributed to this weird world. home. she doesn't have one of those any longer -- a fact she'd failed to share with the vampire. buffy grabs onto the bar's edge and pulled herself up onto a stool. it isn't the seat immediately next to him -- it's one whole seat away. but close enough to see and close enough to talk and close enough to prop her elbow up on the counter and twist her neck to look at him. ]

This place is neither homey nor sweet.

What, you don't find Hoss here endearing?

[He gives a petulant smile at the barkeep. He gets an unimpressed snort in turn. Spike turns back to Buffy, pleased with himself.]

So, did you score us a job?

"Maybe," she answered in a tone of voice that most likely meant no. "Turns out you could have as many glowing shards embedded in your body as you want, some people just don't their hired guns short and feminine."

It meant she would have to wait for dusk and take Spike out to the same farm. Or so she had assured the man. The prospect was humiliating.

"Did you try lifting his horse? That usually impresses the locals."

Except Spike didn't mind that he would be expected to turn up. Spike was fairly compact himself, but he certainly generated a persona that made people think he could get a job done. So long as he wasn't opposing the Slayer, that was generally accurate. It certainly worked better than Buffy's casual everyday girl vibe.

"I figured I'd spare the horse the humiliation. Y'know?"

No. Maybe Spike was right. Maybe she ought to have made a bigger stink. A bigger show. But Buffy had spent the last seven years maintaining something of a secret identity -- albeit poorly. It was difficult to now stride about in this world as though she wasn't pretending to be Generic Valley Girl.

"Anyway. We both know how movies work. Big displays of strength and spectacle are usually reserved for the big bads."

"So you're saying you want me to go down there and renegotiate."

He was, after all, a Big Bad in his own right. Less so of late, but he'd found his teeth again. Spike was only too glad to step in as the hero (or big bad) and steal the show.

"Good cop," she pointed a thumb at herself. "And bad cop." Buffy indicated him.

It might be the only time she would so openly and flagrantly give him this one thing: the adjective -- bad -- so easily ascribed. But her rhetoric was telling. Buffy could not be a travelling mercenary. She could not cajole or convince or talk a farmer into giving her some kind of mission. She treated the world as a place filled with obstacles and the farmer had just made himself a kind of mid-quest enemy. Someone to be defeated rather than convinced.

"Suits me just fine."

One of the barmaids arrived to give him a plate of sauce-drenched chicken wings. The sauce was not really sauce so much as it was a thick and gloopy gravy with bits of more chicken meat in it. He poked a fork at it unhappily.

"Well. That settles that."

"--Doesn't look much like a winner."

But what did Buffy care? She was not near so invested in this narrative of chicken wings as he was. She had other bees in her bonnet: indoor plumbing; hair dryers; diet coke. As it was, the proprietor saw fit to put a squat tankard of something by Buffy's elbow and she pulled a face before she even sipped. And he informed her with a snorting laugh that it would be generously added to their tab.

They were haemorrhaging coin.

But! On the subject of food: "Find a town butcher yet?"

Spike had relented to fork a piece of the food and try it out. While it was certainly not what he asked for it, the food wasn't bad. They had gone heavy on the pepper to add spice, but it not ruin the taste. Indeed served as it was (and not under the pretense of hot wings), it would make for a good dish.

He did not look at her as he answered. "Already taken care of. I've got a nice steady supply now."

"Good," she answered with a firm and certain nod.

The trust was heartbreaking, really. It was given thoughtlessly and naively. Buffy questioned a lot about his placement here at her side but not (it seemed) this. She believed too strongly in his desire to change. In his would-be aim to be a man instead of a monster. And although that faith manifested itself as a cool and detached affirmative, the mere lack of suspicion was telling enough.

"Let's just hope it's not pig, huh?" A smile that did not reach her eyes.

"Trust me, love. I was sick of pig before we found this town."

The pig-faced man shot him a look and Spike greeted it with a cheeky smile and gave his mouthed praise of the meal as sarcastically as he could manage. He then went back to eating his meal, having decided to forgo any effort to have them try again.

Her gaze swung from Spike to the pig-faced man. And back again.

"Cool it on the swine snark." She said, though she'd kicked off the event with a (admittedly slightly more harmless remark). "Or Wilbur here is gonna find creative new ways to add charges to our tab."

Buffy was not as brave as Spike. Culinarily-speaking. She took one look at the 'wings' and thought even the beer might be preferable. She gave it a sniff -- noted it did smell weaker than even the cheapest of cheap canned beers -- and had to remind herself that the beer was cleaner than the water on offer.

Spike shook his head. "Snowball's not the type. The bloke is fond of me, whether he shows it or not."

He washed his food down with his own tankard of beer. Fortunately he hadn't been drinking enough to get drunk, but that could perhaps be credited to a growing tolerance for the stuff thanks to adopting it as standard beverage (besides blood).

"You've got a funny way of measuring fondness."

Understatement of the century. Buffy let the words sink in and then she took a mid-sized drink. Ugh.

"It's all those cold shoulders you give me. Easy to mistake those for fondness, isn't it?"

"Puhlease," her voice dropped down to a tense whisper. Not because she had a secret to share, but because she didn't want the rest of the bar hearing her little drama. "If I was in the business of giving you cold shoulders, do you really think I'd have let you tag-along this far?"

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