Fic: Touching the Fire Chapter 4
Still a little on the not entirely cheerful side, but I have at least avoided one notorious scene.
Touching the Fire - Chapter 4
When somebody you’ve always considered feeble damages you, it makes you think. On his way back to his mausoleum home, Spike had plenty to think about. The unexpected strength of Tool-Box Boy was one of those things. There were others, but just now, like his ribs, shoulders and abdomen, they hurt too much to consider properly. Stupid carpenter, however - just where did he get that strength from?
Spike sighed. The answer was bleeding obvious, of course. Love made him do the whacking. Perverted love, twisted into anger by a sense of betrayal. None of these emotions were exactly alien to Spike currently, and it was a pity he’d aroused them in someone else.
Not that much a pity, mind you. As the demon bint had pointed out, Harris had left her at the altar, not the other way round. He had no right to dictate what she did with her body, none at all. Just as nobody now had any right to dictate to Spike what he did with his own body, whatever they thought they might have.
Once in his cosy little crypt he flumped into his chair, a survivor of that nasty soldier raid. No, certain people bloody well did not have any right to tell him what to do. Not after they’d well and truly dumped him after that horrid little incident. Right after they’d come to him begging him to repeat that he loved them and wanted them. Oh, bugger it, not them. Her. Her face had been so devastated back there outside the shop. Not that he cared now. No way.
But she had rushed to stop Harris from using that axe on him. She must have seen what he’d seen, or she wouldn’t have said that. Didn't take long, did it?
He looked for something to hurl at the wall. Bugger all left except his bottle of Jack and he needed that too much. The last lot was wearing off, and he needed to keep his alcohol stream high. Sober meant serious, meant thinking about stuff, meant realising his how hurt she had been, must have been, to have said that. OK, so he’d been hurt. That didn’t matter. Her hurting, now, that was serious.
There was a bang on the door. Buffy coming to chide him some more? He looked up, wary but hopeful. No, it wasn’t her.
It was Dawn. A flaming Dawn, all rage and self-righteousness. “What have you done? Spike! Look at me. What on earth have you done?”
He shook his head. “What are you on about, Little Bit? Not done a lot this evening. Been right here in front of the telly, that’s all.”
“Don’t give me that garbage. I saw. With my own teenage eyes. You and Anya. Getting all wriggly together on the table.”
“What? How?” Spike stood up. It was bad enough Buffy knowing, but Dawn? How in hell had she got to know about his X-rated activities with demon girl? Who had let her see? “Now, petal, calm down a bit, hey? Some things are supposed to be private and stay private, you know?”
Dawn rolled her eyes. “Not when they are on all-singing all-acting sexogram computer screens they’re not.”
Ah. Yes. That was how Buffy and the Tool knew. Made sense the Platelet would be in the know too. Everyone queuing up to share Spike’s shameful sexing. Bet some of her crowd had tried to stop her looking, but you can’t stop a teenager when she’s determined to see.
“Did you want to hurt her? Hurt Buffy, I mean? Because if you did, you found the right way to go about it. You now what she’s doing right now?”
“Out looking for something to kill, I’d wager.”
“You might have thought that. But no. She’s walking round the house. Outside the house. Kicking things sometimes. Mostly just staring at the ground. I haven’t seen her looking that miserable for months.”
“She told you? About us, I mean?”
“Didn’t really have to - it was all over her face when she was watching your shenanigans. It was like someone had cut into her.”
“Did she tell you it was over? Between us? She put a stop to it?”
“Yes, she told me that. She tried to pretend she wasn’t crying when she said it, too.”
She was crying? She looked hurt outside the magic shop and she was crying at home. That had to mean something, right? But it was definitely over. She said so, weeks ago. Spike needed to explain.
“Look, Bit. It’s not as simple as you think. After her ex blew up my crypt she told me we had to stop. She said she was using me and it was killing her. Have to say, I wasn’t the happiest vamp in town. Cut up real bad I was. But she made it clear that I needed to move on. So I did.”
“With Anya? How could you? You know how long she’d been with Xander.”
"Was, pet. Past tense. He dumped her at the altar, remember? Kinda changes things."
Dawn screwed up her face, trying to work it out in her head. She knew he was right in theory, but wrong, wrong, wrong in practice. Grown up stuff like this was hard, but she knew how unhappy Xander was about what had happened. “He still loves her, you know.”
“Right funny way he has of showing it, then. Not that I’d have expected much else from him. Always was about as bright as a half-brick, that one. Couldn’t see what he’d got when he had it. Now he’s just playing dog in the manger.”
Dawn started roaming around the mausoleum. She righted a candle on its holder and thought furiously. This wasn’t supposed to be her job, telling people so much older than herself what feelings were about. It looked like it was going to have to be.
“I don’t get what a dog has to do with it. But can’t you see? He made a mistake. Haven’t you ever done that? He loves her. Can’t you see that? He’s hurt and bruised and angry with her.”
“Yeah. It was more about me, wasn’t it. Letting a disgusting thing like yours truly so much as touch her. Feeling all the feelings. Disgust, loathing, the whole gamut from X to Z. I’ve even got the bruises to show for it. Couldn’t hit back, didn’t really want to. He wasn’t so much with the restraint.”
“Did he say that? It’s not what he meant. He was hurt. Badly hurt. Lashing out. Don’t you see?” Dawn flinched as Spike pulled loose his shirt to reveal the wide purple mark across his ribs. It would heal quickly enough, him being a vampire and all, but it got him the sympathy vote right now. She turned her head, a sick expression on her face, and moved further away.
She had reached the other side of the space now, and was looking intensely at the points on the railings. She stroked the cold iron with a fingertip, trying to find some sensible way to explain yourself. “Spike, you have to understand. He’s hurt. Buffy’s hurt. You and Anya are hurt too. But all this pain? It won’t go away until you try sorting it out.”
Trigger point finally reached, the bottle flew from Spike’s hand in an arc and shattered noisily against the wall. Eyes more than a little level, eyebrow ridges swelling, Spike stood up. “Just tell me. Tell me, Dawn. How in all the fucking hells there are do I go about doing that?”
It was very rare that Spike used that sort of language to her. She knew vaguely that some of the cute little Britishisms he was so fond of had rather worse meanings than he usually let on, but this, a familiar word that was rare enough in her hearing to be still shocking, especially used by people who cared about her, this was extreme.
The alarm in her face brought a little sense back. He buried his face in his hands, trying to smooth the ridges back down, hide the evidence of his naked fury. Leaning his forehead, taking the weight on his wrists seemed to help, just a little. When he looked back up at her the familiar blue eyes, welling up with tears, had returned to an almost normal face.
“Dawn, Little Bit. Honestly. I don’t know what to do. She junked me. It was pretty brutal. Now you’re saying I hurt her and I have to do something about it? I don’t get it, I really don’t.”
All the wisdom coming from a girl barely into her mid-teens. Who would have thought it? “Spike, you have to look deep into yourself. Find what’s right. Think it through and you’ll see.”
Deep into himself. What would he find there? A whole lot of sod all. He knew he was hollow inside. Had to be, to have done what he did over more than a century. He’d never felt the loss before.
“Look, love. I need to explain. Inside me? There’s a demon fighting all the time to get out. Without this chip being in my head I can’t even promise you would be safe around me. Beside the demon? Nada. Zilch. Rien. I am a hollow shell, full of anger and fight and instinct, but nothing else. I’m not human. I remember a pathetic jerk who was human, and I wouldn’t want to be him again for anything.”
Dawn furrowed her forehead. She looked adorable, did she but know it. Spike knew with certainty there was one other part of himself he hadn’t mentioned - love. But love without the rest of the humanity was next to worthless, wasn’t it? His face was covered by his hands again. Cold fingers touched cold flesh that was at least smooth again now. He pressed them into his skull till they started to hurt. The pain took away the other pain, the inside pain.
As if he was a cartoon animal, he saw, almost literally saw, a lightbulb going on over his head. He was dead. As a bloody doornail. No changing that. Heartbeats and body temperatures above room level were never going to be an option for him. Never again. But there was one thing he could do something about. What a bleeding fool he’d been not to think of it before.
“Right, Dawn. Time to skip off now, sweetheart. I’m sorry and all that, and you can tell Big Sis as much if you like. But I have demons to do, things to see. Off you go now.”
Almost twisted a knife in his unbeating heart to see her bewilderment and the confusion on her face. He strode over to her, gave her a big, two-armed hug. Kissed the top of her head so lightly she didn’t feel it. Then gently walked her to the door, opened it and pushed her, even more gently, outside.
He’d rigged a sort of bolt bar after the sodding soldiers had been through wrecking his joint. He eased it into position and started rummaging around. There was a small backpack in the corner by the fridge. The freezer compartment had some cold blocks, designed to keep a chill on stuff. There was an insulated box too. He lifted the remaining blood bags from the fridge, and the last remaining beer, and packed them into the box. From the battered chest he took a spare t-shirt, black like all the rest, and wrapped it round the box, then placed the lot into the backpack. There wasn’t a whole lot of space left.
The velvet bag was where he’d hidden it. No room for that lot. No room for anything else, much. He brought it out into the light, regardless, and saw just how faded and bare the thing was in places. Nah, that wouldn’t survive much of a journey. He slipped his hand inside, reaching for the soft plush, his fingers sinking into the pile and the stuffing. There was room for that, perhaps?
He came to an abrupt decision. Behind the fridge, like most of his few treasures now, was something not treasured, but useful. A shovel. It had come in handy in numerous ways, and it did so again. He pulled another shirt from the drawer, to wrap the silk velvet in, and dug into the dry, friable earthen floor. He placed the little bag, minus the pig, reverently into the space he’d created, then covered it with enough soil to make the area look undisturbed. Just to make sure he stacked a few bits of junk on top of it.
Right. When you don’t have many possessions packing doesn’t take long. His bike was outside. There was at least an hour left before daybreak. He could drop in on Clem, who would be thrilled to be invited to house-sit, and be on his way.
House-sit indeed. He gazed round at the dust and just plain dirt, the battered few bits of furniture, the chipped stone sarcophagus. How low did you have to sink to be fond of a place like this and call it “home”? Only a thing, with nothing good or clean in him, dead inside, unable to feel anything real. He had it on the very best authority that’s what he was. An evil, soulless thing
Well, some of that he could do sod all about. But some he could at least make an effort to sort out.
He pulled his stuffed mascot out of his pack and looked at it. Eye to black, beady eye. “Come on pal. You and me, going places. Fancy seeing Africa?”
The pig, being a stuffed toy, did not answer. But Spike grinned and stuffed it back where it belonged. He pulled the door to behind him and swung a leg over the bike. He was going to get what the girl needed.
Comments are my drug of choice, as ever. Now up to Chapter 7 on Elysian Fields.
Touching the Fire - Chapter 4
When somebody you’ve always considered feeble damages you, it makes you think. On his way back to his mausoleum home, Spike had plenty to think about. The unexpected strength of Tool-Box Boy was one of those things. There were others, but just now, like his ribs, shoulders and abdomen, they hurt too much to consider properly. Stupid carpenter, however - just where did he get that strength from?
Spike sighed. The answer was bleeding obvious, of course. Love made him do the whacking. Perverted love, twisted into anger by a sense of betrayal. None of these emotions were exactly alien to Spike currently, and it was a pity he’d aroused them in someone else.
Not that much a pity, mind you. As the demon bint had pointed out, Harris had left her at the altar, not the other way round. He had no right to dictate what she did with her body, none at all. Just as nobody now had any right to dictate to Spike what he did with his own body, whatever they thought they might have.
Once in his cosy little crypt he flumped into his chair, a survivor of that nasty soldier raid. No, certain people bloody well did not have any right to tell him what to do. Not after they’d well and truly dumped him after that horrid little incident. Right after they’d come to him begging him to repeat that he loved them and wanted them. Oh, bugger it, not them. Her. Her face had been so devastated back there outside the shop. Not that he cared now. No way.
But she had rushed to stop Harris from using that axe on him. She must have seen what he’d seen, or she wouldn’t have said that. Didn't take long, did it?
He looked for something to hurl at the wall. Bugger all left except his bottle of Jack and he needed that too much. The last lot was wearing off, and he needed to keep his alcohol stream high. Sober meant serious, meant thinking about stuff, meant realising his how hurt she had been, must have been, to have said that. OK, so he’d been hurt. That didn’t matter. Her hurting, now, that was serious.
There was a bang on the door. Buffy coming to chide him some more? He looked up, wary but hopeful. No, it wasn’t her.
It was Dawn. A flaming Dawn, all rage and self-righteousness. “What have you done? Spike! Look at me. What on earth have you done?”
He shook his head. “What are you on about, Little Bit? Not done a lot this evening. Been right here in front of the telly, that’s all.”
“Don’t give me that garbage. I saw. With my own teenage eyes. You and Anya. Getting all wriggly together on the table.”
“What? How?” Spike stood up. It was bad enough Buffy knowing, but Dawn? How in hell had she got to know about his X-rated activities with demon girl? Who had let her see? “Now, petal, calm down a bit, hey? Some things are supposed to be private and stay private, you know?”
Dawn rolled her eyes. “Not when they are on all-singing all-acting sexogram computer screens they’re not.”
Ah. Yes. That was how Buffy and the Tool knew. Made sense the Platelet would be in the know too. Everyone queuing up to share Spike’s shameful sexing. Bet some of her crowd had tried to stop her looking, but you can’t stop a teenager when she’s determined to see.
“Did you want to hurt her? Hurt Buffy, I mean? Because if you did, you found the right way to go about it. You now what she’s doing right now?”
“Out looking for something to kill, I’d wager.”
“You might have thought that. But no. She’s walking round the house. Outside the house. Kicking things sometimes. Mostly just staring at the ground. I haven’t seen her looking that miserable for months.”
“She told you? About us, I mean?”
“Didn’t really have to - it was all over her face when she was watching your shenanigans. It was like someone had cut into her.”
“Did she tell you it was over? Between us? She put a stop to it?”
“Yes, she told me that. She tried to pretend she wasn’t crying when she said it, too.”
She was crying? She looked hurt outside the magic shop and she was crying at home. That had to mean something, right? But it was definitely over. She said so, weeks ago. Spike needed to explain.
“Look, Bit. It’s not as simple as you think. After her ex blew up my crypt she told me we had to stop. She said she was using me and it was killing her. Have to say, I wasn’t the happiest vamp in town. Cut up real bad I was. But she made it clear that I needed to move on. So I did.”
“With Anya? How could you? You know how long she’d been with Xander.”
"Was, pet. Past tense. He dumped her at the altar, remember? Kinda changes things."
Dawn screwed up her face, trying to work it out in her head. She knew he was right in theory, but wrong, wrong, wrong in practice. Grown up stuff like this was hard, but she knew how unhappy Xander was about what had happened. “He still loves her, you know.”
“Right funny way he has of showing it, then. Not that I’d have expected much else from him. Always was about as bright as a half-brick, that one. Couldn’t see what he’d got when he had it. Now he’s just playing dog in the manger.”
Dawn started roaming around the mausoleum. She righted a candle on its holder and thought furiously. This wasn’t supposed to be her job, telling people so much older than herself what feelings were about. It looked like it was going to have to be.
“I don’t get what a dog has to do with it. But can’t you see? He made a mistake. Haven’t you ever done that? He loves her. Can’t you see that? He’s hurt and bruised and angry with her.”
“Yeah. It was more about me, wasn’t it. Letting a disgusting thing like yours truly so much as touch her. Feeling all the feelings. Disgust, loathing, the whole gamut from X to Z. I’ve even got the bruises to show for it. Couldn’t hit back, didn’t really want to. He wasn’t so much with the restraint.”
“Did he say that? It’s not what he meant. He was hurt. Badly hurt. Lashing out. Don’t you see?” Dawn flinched as Spike pulled loose his shirt to reveal the wide purple mark across his ribs. It would heal quickly enough, him being a vampire and all, but it got him the sympathy vote right now. She turned her head, a sick expression on her face, and moved further away.
She had reached the other side of the space now, and was looking intensely at the points on the railings. She stroked the cold iron with a fingertip, trying to find some sensible way to explain yourself. “Spike, you have to understand. He’s hurt. Buffy’s hurt. You and Anya are hurt too. But all this pain? It won’t go away until you try sorting it out.”
Trigger point finally reached, the bottle flew from Spike’s hand in an arc and shattered noisily against the wall. Eyes more than a little level, eyebrow ridges swelling, Spike stood up. “Just tell me. Tell me, Dawn. How in all the fucking hells there are do I go about doing that?”
It was very rare that Spike used that sort of language to her. She knew vaguely that some of the cute little Britishisms he was so fond of had rather worse meanings than he usually let on, but this, a familiar word that was rare enough in her hearing to be still shocking, especially used by people who cared about her, this was extreme.
The alarm in her face brought a little sense back. He buried his face in his hands, trying to smooth the ridges back down, hide the evidence of his naked fury. Leaning his forehead, taking the weight on his wrists seemed to help, just a little. When he looked back up at her the familiar blue eyes, welling up with tears, had returned to an almost normal face.
“Dawn, Little Bit. Honestly. I don’t know what to do. She junked me. It was pretty brutal. Now you’re saying I hurt her and I have to do something about it? I don’t get it, I really don’t.”
All the wisdom coming from a girl barely into her mid-teens. Who would have thought it? “Spike, you have to look deep into yourself. Find what’s right. Think it through and you’ll see.”
Deep into himself. What would he find there? A whole lot of sod all. He knew he was hollow inside. Had to be, to have done what he did over more than a century. He’d never felt the loss before.
“Look, love. I need to explain. Inside me? There’s a demon fighting all the time to get out. Without this chip being in my head I can’t even promise you would be safe around me. Beside the demon? Nada. Zilch. Rien. I am a hollow shell, full of anger and fight and instinct, but nothing else. I’m not human. I remember a pathetic jerk who was human, and I wouldn’t want to be him again for anything.”
Dawn furrowed her forehead. She looked adorable, did she but know it. Spike knew with certainty there was one other part of himself he hadn’t mentioned - love. But love without the rest of the humanity was next to worthless, wasn’t it? His face was covered by his hands again. Cold fingers touched cold flesh that was at least smooth again now. He pressed them into his skull till they started to hurt. The pain took away the other pain, the inside pain.
As if he was a cartoon animal, he saw, almost literally saw, a lightbulb going on over his head. He was dead. As a bloody doornail. No changing that. Heartbeats and body temperatures above room level were never going to be an option for him. Never again. But there was one thing he could do something about. What a bleeding fool he’d been not to think of it before.
“Right, Dawn. Time to skip off now, sweetheart. I’m sorry and all that, and you can tell Big Sis as much if you like. But I have demons to do, things to see. Off you go now.”
Almost twisted a knife in his unbeating heart to see her bewilderment and the confusion on her face. He strode over to her, gave her a big, two-armed hug. Kissed the top of her head so lightly she didn’t feel it. Then gently walked her to the door, opened it and pushed her, even more gently, outside.
He’d rigged a sort of bolt bar after the sodding soldiers had been through wrecking his joint. He eased it into position and started rummaging around. There was a small backpack in the corner by the fridge. The freezer compartment had some cold blocks, designed to keep a chill on stuff. There was an insulated box too. He lifted the remaining blood bags from the fridge, and the last remaining beer, and packed them into the box. From the battered chest he took a spare t-shirt, black like all the rest, and wrapped it round the box, then placed the lot into the backpack. There wasn’t a whole lot of space left.
The velvet bag was where he’d hidden it. No room for that lot. No room for anything else, much. He brought it out into the light, regardless, and saw just how faded and bare the thing was in places. Nah, that wouldn’t survive much of a journey. He slipped his hand inside, reaching for the soft plush, his fingers sinking into the pile and the stuffing. There was room for that, perhaps?
He came to an abrupt decision. Behind the fridge, like most of his few treasures now, was something not treasured, but useful. A shovel. It had come in handy in numerous ways, and it did so again. He pulled another shirt from the drawer, to wrap the silk velvet in, and dug into the dry, friable earthen floor. He placed the little bag, minus the pig, reverently into the space he’d created, then covered it with enough soil to make the area look undisturbed. Just to make sure he stacked a few bits of junk on top of it.
Right. When you don’t have many possessions packing doesn’t take long. His bike was outside. There was at least an hour left before daybreak. He could drop in on Clem, who would be thrilled to be invited to house-sit, and be on his way.
House-sit indeed. He gazed round at the dust and just plain dirt, the battered few bits of furniture, the chipped stone sarcophagus. How low did you have to sink to be fond of a place like this and call it “home”? Only a thing, with nothing good or clean in him, dead inside, unable to feel anything real. He had it on the very best authority that’s what he was. An evil, soulless thing
Well, some of that he could do sod all about. But some he could at least make an effort to sort out.
He pulled his stuffed mascot out of his pack and looked at it. Eye to black, beady eye. “Come on pal. You and me, going places. Fancy seeing Africa?”
The pig, being a stuffed toy, did not answer. But Spike grinned and stuffed it back where it belonged. He pulled the door to behind him and swung a leg over the bike. He was going to get what the girl needed.
Comments are my drug of choice, as ever. Now up to Chapter 7 on Elysian Fields.