From The Ashes (Chapter 10/?)
When she emerged from the bathroom, a towel wrapped around her wet hair, the pull was too strong. Angel had to look, his eyes skimming the curves of her body, intent on knowing every inch of the new Buffy with the same intimacy he had known the previous incarnation of her. She smelled fresh and clean, like fruit and mist and sunshine. He smelled like death. He reeked of it, infecting others with his affliction. Suddenly, he didn’t want to look at her anymore, didn’t deserve to, and wished she were not there to remind him of what he could never have. To remind him of what he’d had once. He couldn’t say the words though; asking her to leave required more strength than he was capable of at the moment.
Buffy came to his side and sat quietly. She was waiting for something, he realized, but couldn’t quite grasp what. For him to speak? To tell her… what? Why he’d done it? How he felt? What Wes’s letter had stirred up in him? He couldn’t find the words, and so said nothing. The silence spoke volumes.
The minutes trickled by. Faith and Connor appeared, loitering in the doorway, unsure whether he needed company or to be left alone. He wasn’t sure either. Buffy didn’t give him a choice. She stayed by his side relentlessly, and it called to something so deeply within him that he would almost have rather had Spike haunting him again. Annoyance was better than undeserved affection. He managed it once, building the courage to tear himself apart.
“Buffy, you don’t have to-”
“I’m staying.” Categorical. Her face was infused with the same determination as when there was something to slay. The intensity was so startling, he could say nothing more.
***
She fidgeted in the chair across from the bed, trying to read a book she’d found that was in actual English. He found irony in the selection, more than she could ever imagine. Fate, predestination- what did they matter to him now? Paradise Lost. Oh yes. So much had been lost.
“Long is the way- And hard, that out of Hell leads up to light.”
An absentminded whisper, more for his own benefit than for hers. She smiled sadly, stared at him until he was forced to return her gaze.
“The strongest and the fiercest spirit- That fought in Heaven, now fiercer by despair.”
His face must have betrayed his shock, and she pouted in affronted indignation.
“You could look a little less stunned. I went to college, you know.”
“Milton all the collegiate rage these days?”
Buffy went for nonchalance, shrugging mildly.
“No wiggle room when it comes to taking English Lit.”
The look on her face was almost enough to make him feel something other than anguish.
“You actually did the assigned readings?”
“More or less.”
“If I were a betting man, I’d put a hefty sum on ‘less’.”
She winked, obviously pleased at still having the ability to surprise him. It didn’t matter that she had only read the Cliff’s Notes, or that the entire premise of fate and redemption was just so tragically Angel. It only mattered that something had resonated. That she had a means by which to reach him, even if it was the words of a man dead longer than Angel himself that allowed her to breach the wall of pain and silence.
“I’ve never been to Heaven, Buffy.” The knowledge that it was the last place he’d ever end up went upspoken.
“I have.”
He flinched, just as he had the first time she had said it, on that off-limits-to-discussion day. When he’d thought he might lose his soul from the elation at the sight of her alive, only to be brought back to Earth by the haunted look in her eyes. She had been changed, not like his Buffy at all, and he had known it. Why hadn’t he done more to help her? So much could have been saved or spared, so much prevented. It was just one more entry in the long list of misdeeds he would never forgive himself for.
“I have, Angel,” she repeated, as if she thought he hadn’t heard. “I know what it’s like to think you’re sacrificing yourself for the greater good. Doing the only thing you can. I know how it feels when your big heroic deed doesn’t turn out the way you expected it to.”
He nodded, accepting the fact that, on some level, she understood. He wouldn’t voice the knowledge that this was different; that while she at least now had confirmation that her final rest would bring her peace, his peace would never come. His name scrawled on a piece of parchment had eradicated any hope of that. Something like him would never wind up in the same place as Buffy, and such futile hopes had never been his driving force. It was his journey that mattered, and that path was now hidden from him, any sense of purpose forever vanquished with the stroke of a bloodied pen. That fact he couldn’t share with her, no more than he could explain how it felt to have taunted death and had it take those closest to you in your stead. Wes had written for him not to blame himself. That they knew what they were walking into. But how could they have known? How could he think he had prepared them?
“Stupid.”
Buffy’s sharp look made him realize that the word had slipped unbidden from his lips.
“You can be sometimes,” she said. “But not about this, Angel.”
She held his eyes for a moment, then added, “Plus, you’re a guy. Stupidity comes with the choromosome. Learn to deal.”
He smiled at her then, and it felt good, something long buried stirring deep within.
***
There was nothing to do but wait it out. She knew that with the clarity of an experience harshly and painfully acquired. Problem was, patience had never been Faith’s strongsuit. She was a leap-into-action kind of girl, usually without thinking, and often with dire consequences. It had been Angel who had taught her to think things through, to breathe deep and meditate and plan ahead. It had been Angel who had taught her to survive prison. Not the lock-up, (she was more than capable of handling a bunch of psychotic estrogen rejects) but the prison she had constructed around herself with her mind. Repaying him, or starting to, had been easy when the currency was battle, when the exchange had been fighting her way out of Hell to help him escape. But this…What she saw in him now was a war no one could wage but himself, defeated and guilt-ridden as he was. She wanted to fight it for him, for a vampire who was, if no longer her only friend, certainly the best one she’d ever had. But she couldn’t, and that made her antsy and pissed. There were other ways she could think of to help him take the edge off, but none Buffy wouldn’t stab her for. Again. Besides, she’d accepted long ago that those kinds of thoughts about Angel were best left just that: thoughts. No matter what had happened over the years, Buffy still had a claim on him, and from what Faith could tell, he was more than content to let her.
Problem was, the obvious desire to jump his hot bod notwithstanding, she wasn’t sure that Buffy could ever understand what tormented Angel’s soul. She wished that the other slayer could pull him out of his bottomless despair, by whatever means necessary. But Faith had walked in his memories, down in the deepest shame of him, and with that brain tour had come a knowledge that Buffy didn’t possess. If guilt for the deaths of strangers had reduced him to eating rats and boycotting hygiene, she shuddered to think how he would punish himself for the deaths of friends if left to his own devices.
Faith wondered what her role was destined to be in all of this, what part she had yet to play in Angel and Buffy’s lives. Maybe, if she actually managed to be patient like he taught her, the redemption Angel had spoken of with such conviction would be finally within her reach.
***
“Bloody hell!” he growled, picking himself up off the ground. The vampire smirked and lunged again, disintegrating into dust as the blade cleanly separated neck from shoulders. Spike swiped a hand over his jacket to wipe away the offending residue. He swung as he heard a growl behind him, the sword again finding its mark.
“Is that all you got?” he asked the rain of ash as it dissolved.
It had been over far too quickly and, muttering softly to himself, he headed for the closest demon bar he could find. There was bound to be a demon to kill, evil to vanquish. If there wasn’t, he would just have to get piss drunk. He was already more than halfway there.
Spike sniffed the air, picked an alley that seemed promising. This was how he dealt with his grief, potent and stifling. Overcome the toxin by purging it. Try not to think of it; an alley like this one, awash in rivers of blood. He wondered how Angel could stand it, knowing how very wrong it had all gone…
He could smell it before any other sense registered. Pungent, dizzying. His insides quivered in anticipation before the soul regained control again. Human fear. The sounds came next, a symphony of hisses and grunts punctuated by frightened cries. Then sight emerged, as the alley’s dead end revealed a group of five Lei-Ach demons and their terrified prey.
“Hey,” Spike called out to the closest demon as he sauntered down the alley, “why don’t you go a round with someone your own size?”
Five sets of dark sunken eyes fixed on him with hatred, five black forked tongues snaking out with a hiss. The human couple, cornered against a brick wall, had the presence of mind to link hands and make their escape with nearly demonic speed.
“You’ll pay for that, vampire.”
They began to maneouver themselves to surround him, and Spike silently wished that it would at least amount to a decent
brawl. He decided against getting his hopes up.
“Pay? I seem to be short on funds right now, mate. Take a raincheck?”
He anticipated the attack before it came, and deflected the arm coming towards him. Grabbing it, he swung the attached body into its approaching bretheren. They toppled like a stack of dominoes, and he was in the midst of it all, kicking out with booted feet until he heard the satisfying crunch of bone. He knew he’d lost his focus though, and suddenly someone swept out his leg from under him. Landing on his backside in the pile of demons, he laughed. This was going to be more fun than he thought.
Jumping up, he swung a fist at the face closest to him. Saw Angels’s eyes as reality overwhelmed his elder back at the Hyperion, the moment when Spike himself had needed to make an escape. The eyes disappeared as his fist connected, another angry red welt forming on the pale skin that was already riddled with them.
Snaking his arm around the creature’s neck, Spike wished he could forget the whole sodding mess of ‘em.
He twisted, hearing the satisfying crack of severed bone.
Saw in his mind’s eye the former Watcher, nodding the silent farewell that would be his last.
The next Lei- Ach got in one punch before his sword found its heart, blood spurting black and unnatural. Blood the wrong color.
Gunn, the red stuff that really did belong on the inside marring his outside.
The third demon restrained his arms behind his back as the forth tore into him, pummeling the muscle stretched taut and molded to his bones.
Illyria’s granite fists connecting with his ribs, Fred whispering a promise of help.
He used the muscles in his belly to lift both legs off the ground, arms still grasped by the demon. Kicked out at the one in front. Sent it sprawling down the alley. Twisted out of the grip that held him tight.
The dark Slayer, accidentally chosen, with whom he’d once shared a cigarette and a heart-to-heart.
Sword, kicked up from the ground with a booted foot, was in his hand again. He struck backwards without looking, feeling the yield of muscle and bone to metal. Pulled the sword out with flourish, a smile curling his lips.
The strange kid that smelled not quite human, and somehow oddly familiar.
He ran to the one who was still on the ground, stood on his throat to crush it. Shoved the sword through its eye, and didn’t wait to witness the death throes.
The vampire he’d followed faithfully into battle, after having despised him for over a century.
He saw the last one, or the first one maybe, not so cocky anymore.
“What was that you mentioned about me paying?”
The wise-crack was perfunctory, and didn’t serve to make him feel any better. He didn’t bother with any more pleasantries and decapitated the Lei-Ach in one forceful stroke, death passing, like a gift, from him to the demon. This last kill, like the others before it, was dulled by pain.
Her. The Slayer with green eyes and sharp tongue, who still had him firmly by the short-hairs.
He growled in frustration. Of all the things to fixate on, again. She had saved them both, or damned them both. Either way, she wasn’t ignoring them the way she had in Rome. That had to mean something. Everything had changed. And yet nothing had. She still wasn’t his. Would never be his. Despite having had her in every way imaginable (and he could be very imaginative) there had never been any illusions about that.
Some part of him had always known that there were times when another’s name echoed inside her heart as he moved inside her body. On those nights, she would squeeze her eyes shut tightly, and her movements would slow and deepen, and he could feel the energy around her change. On those nights, she wouldn’t ask him to hurt her, and he would know that she wasn’t in his crypt or her town, but in another city, wrapped in the arms of another vampire.
His rival. His creator, his tormentor. That was different too. The same too. Hell and back, together. All they had in common was a soul and a slayer, yet they had come to understand one another better in one year than they had in the one hundred and twenty three that came before.
As the demon, Angelus had been both endlessly cruel and utterly captivating. Men, women, demons, the very world itself would spread like a cheap whore before him by the sheer power of his will. Spike had despised him, yes, but his price was no higher than any other’s. Entranced by this unparalleled malice, he spread before Angelus too. The gypsy curse took from him a tyrant, a father, a tutor in the beauty of destruction and death. Dru may have turned him into a vampire, but it had been Angelus who had been his truest sire. That was irrelevant now, the days of craving gratification and approval at the feet of his monstrous idol a century gone. And yet…
In the last year, he had called him boss and big guy instead of just ponce and peaches. He had stolen his favorite cars and weapons, picked fights and even won a few. He had haunted him and driven swords through his chest for fun. He had traveled to the ends of the earth with him, stared down a hole in the world, gotten drunk and mourned the fallen.
Which one of them did he need now? Her golden hair, with its promise of light, or his eyes, dark with knowing anguish? The bite of her sacrasm, or the stillness of his silence? Spike didn’t know. But he didn’t want to be out here any longer, alone with the ghosts.
Next: Chapter 11~ Constant