Give Me Three Steps (The "Better Part of Valour" Remix)
Round 5 of the Circle of Friends Remix is now open for reading at cof_remix.
Title: Give Me Three Steps (The “Better Part of Valour” Remix)
Author: sroni
Fandom: Buffy the Vampire Slayer
Rating: PG-13? Nothing stronger than would have been on the show, really.
Disclaimer: Characters from Buffy the Vampire Slayer are property of Joss Whedon, Mutant Enemy, Kuzui Enterprises, Sandollar Television, the WB, and UPN.
Original story: “Empathy” by eilandesq
Notes: This is actually a pinch-hit, simply to meet the deadline. The real remix should be along sometime later on the 6th, possibly as late as the 7th, though hopefully not. So, yay, Eiland gets two stories!
Give Me Three Steps (the “Better Part of Valour” Remix)
Spike was exceedingly glad to be out of the Summers house, ecstatic to a degree that even the budding poet that William had considered himself to be - way back when he breathed air without having to think about it - would have been hard pressed to put into words. Considering that Spike lived in a crypt, it was really hard to make him feel claustrophobic. It just wasn’t a thing he really felt very often.
Please. Spike, afraid of enclosed spaces? No. He wasn’t afraid of being locked in with anyone or anything. They should all be afraid of being locked in with him. Especially when they were fragile little Happy Meals on legs. If it weren’t for the chip, he could have (and would have, don’t think he wouldn’t) killed them all and laughed at the blood. Angelus was all about the artistry, the poncy poof, but Spike? Spike was all about the blood and the guts and the pain, and don’t you forget it, either.
Unfortunately, Glinda didn’t seem to get the memo very well, because she’d insisted that, since they were heading in mostly the same direction, he should walk her back to her dorm room. Spike didn’t really have a good reason why not, other than “I don’t want to”, but that would have made Buffy - Slayer, couldn’t forget what she was, because it wasn’t likely that she’d ever let herself be Buffy with him - give him the disappointed look that always seemed to make everyone around her jump to do whatever she wanted.
She didn’t even have to actually give the look for Spike to do it. He was already doing it simply because he didn’t want her to have a reason to have that look on her face.
If that wasn’t proof that he’d gone ass over teakettle for her, he didn’t know what was.
He wasn’t a cat. He couldn’t very well bring her headless demons to show his affection for her. Even if he could, that wasn’t likely to impress her much at all.
Glinda broke him out of his … he was not going to say brooding, because that belonged entirely to The Poof. Musings. He could go with musings. Whatever it was he decided to call them, though, she broke him out of them, with a rather odd question, but, then, she’d always been a bit of an odd duck. “Why don’t you have any nicknames for me?”
Rather than answer the question, he responded with one of his own. “What do you mean?”
“Well,” she’d long since lost her stammering around him, and normally Spike neither noticed nor cared, but right then, he did both. Why wasn’t she afraid of him anymore? He wasn’t a bloody house pet, docile and fed table scraps. He was William the Bloody. They didn’t just give names like that out will-he-nil-he. Blissfully unaware of his imaginings of ripping out her entrails and spreading them around the tree branches like crepe paper at a party, she kept going. “You call Buffy ‘Slayer’, which isn’t hard to figure out. Giles is ‘Watcher’, Willow -” he just barely heard the catch in her voice before she continued on without a pause, “- is ‘Red’, and I think you get a kick out of calling Xander ‘Droopy Boy’. Dawn gets all the snacks for names, and even Anya gets ‘Demon Girl’. Why don’t I have a nickname?”
“You do,” Spike lit his cigarette, taking a long inhale of the tobacco smoke. “It’s ‘Lunch’.”
The blonde shook her head. “No, it’s not. You keep talking a big game, but somewhere along the line, you actually started caring about us.”
Spike snarled at her, his game face coming in without him even thinking about it.
She remained unimpressed. “You’re still evil. Not about to forget that. You only remind us as often as you can. But you haven’t worked against us or tried to have us killed since Adam. You could have sided against us a lot. Or you could go off on your own, go to Europe or somewhere. Just because you can’t hurt people doesn’t mean you can’t still be a scary vampire. But you don’t. You keep staying here and you keep helping us out, and you even broke my nose to prove that I wasn’t a demon.”
“That doesn’t mean that I like any of you lot.” Spike inspected his black nails for chips in the polish.
“No, it doesn’t,” the witch agreed carefully. “But you like Buffy. After all, she helped you with that … muscle cramp.” She glanced at him from the corner of her eye.
And that was enough for it to click with Spike that she knew. He didn’t even have to ask. “What exactly do you think you know?”
“Well,” she answered carefully, “she asked me to run some tests to figure out why you can hurt her, and her reaction made me figure out what was going on.”
“Damn it!” He burst out in anger. “You stupid, careless chit! You’re the gentle one! You’re supposed to be the sensitive one! Couldn’t you have figured out some way to break the news to her without making her fall to pieces?” Spike advanced on her slowly, not even caring how much the chip would hurt him.
Tara thrust her hand out, and a wall of air stopped him in his tracks. “Shut. Up.” Her magic wouldn’t hold him, and they both knew it. Out of the witches, she wasn’t the powerhouse. The fact that she’d managed that much, though, surprised him, and her words made him stop where he was even more than her magic had. “She’s not a demon, Spike. That’s what the tests showed. One hundred percent bona fide human. She didn’t fall apart because she’s a demon. She broke because she isn’t one.”
The anger left in a rush, leaving him feeling oddly boneless and bereft, and he could swear that he felt himself collapsing in on himself. “But … if she’s not a demon …”
“I don’t know why the chip stopped working for her, Spike,” Tara’s voice was soft and gentle. “It’s science, and science and magic don’t always mix. Who knows why the chip doesn’t recognize her as human? It’s wrong, though, because she is.”
“But if she’s not a demon -” he started again, before she interrupted again.
“She was upset because she’s not a demon and she’s still doing things that she hates herself for,” Tara explained sympathetically, her hand on his arm just barely touching his jacket. “Being a demon would have been easier for her, because she’d have that to blame.”
“You know, it’s funny.” Spike spoke almost wistfully. “I don’t even know when exactly it started, but it started and kept going, and I don’t mean to hurt her. It’s not all about getting our jollies on. We work together, and work well, and there are times that she looks at me and the world melts away and I think that maybe I can make her happy.” He let out a sigh, the words seeming to pour out of him now that he had someone he could talk to about it all. “But the world always comes back, and I realize that I can’t. I tear her down and I hurt her and I hate myself for doing it but I just can’t seem to stop myself from doing it. I love her,” he added on quietly. “Whether she believes it or not, I do.” But not enough to walk away from her and let her be happy on her own.
“I know, Spike. But Love isn’t always enough. We’ve gotten along pretty well, since I got my mind back.” She was quiet for a long moment, and then something in her changed. She straightened up, her stance more assured, but that wasn’t the only change. She got that look in her eye, the same kind of look that Harris got when the only way to protect one of his girls would be to kill everything he could get his hands on and plenty he couldn’t, and he’d do it, regardless of cost to him or anything around him.
Neither she nor Droopy Boy were people that he would single out as being scary, or people that you should even watch out for. When he was still a hunter, he would have picked them as the easy pickings that you could save for last because they wouldn’t matter while you took out the real threats.
But when they got that look in their eyes, everything shifted, the world tilted on its axis and if you were smart, you would realize that they were quite possibly the most dangerous people on the planet, if you gave them reason to be.
Spike was smart. He realized.
So when she got that look in her eyes and leaned towards him, Spike did the only thing he could: he shut up and listened, and hoped that she wouldn’t decide he was a threat.
“I know you love her.” She stated it simply, but iron rang underneath her words as a ball of fire formed above her open palm, as though it were meant to be there, as much a part of her as her own hand. “But that’s not enough, so I’m letting you know right now: I’m looking out for her now. I helped tear her away from heaven, and I’m going to have to live with that. The least I can do is watch out for her and help keep her safe, and that includes her emotional well being. She is under my protection now, William, and if that means that I have to do something I don’t want to do in order to keep you from hurting her anymore, I will. If you hurt her again, I will deal with you.” She threw the fireball like a baseball at a large rock that wasn’t quite big enough to be called a boulder. It exploded against the rock in a flash of bright light that hurt Spike’s eyes to look at, and when his vision cleared, the exterior of the rock had melted.
Spike was much more flammable than a rock, and he knew that he wouldn’t get off with just being a little melted.
“Are we clear?” Her voice was soft, but her expression had no give in it, and Spike was in no doubt that she would follow through with her threat if he gave her reason.
“Don’t hurt the Slayer, got it.” He forced some brevity into his voice. “You know, when I met Joyce, she hit me on the head with a fire-axe. Just the flat side, mind you. I don’t think she was trying to kill me then, but I don’t think she would have cried too much if she had, and delivered a threat very similar to yours, though much simpler said: ‘Get the hell away from my daughter.’ There are worse people to emulate than her.”
“She didn’t have a nickname, either,” Tara noted with some amusement. “I meant what I said, Spike. I like you. I consider you a friend. But you’re still evil, and the others … they let themselves forget it sometimes, and think of you as harmless. But you’re not. You weren’t even before you discovered that you could hit Buffy. You’ve gotten used to not having consequences or repercussions. I don’t want to be your repercussions, but I will if I have to be. I’d much rather be your conscience.”
“Oh, goody, my own Jiminy Cricket on my shoulder.” He lit up another cigarette. “We’ve come to an understanding. Don’t push it further than that.”
At the very least, he now knew that he’d need to take the witch out if he hurt any of her friends, and preferably do it before she found out about it.
He wasn’t a house cat. He couldn’t leave headless demons on her doorstep to instill fear in her. But the idea held more allure than it had for doing it for Buffy.
END
Title: Give Me Three Steps (The “Better Part of Valour” Remix)
Author: sroni
Fandom: Buffy the Vampire Slayer
Rating: PG-13? Nothing stronger than would have been on the show, really.
Disclaimer: Characters from Buffy the Vampire Slayer are property of Joss Whedon, Mutant Enemy, Kuzui Enterprises, Sandollar Television, the WB, and UPN.
Original story: “Empathy” by eilandesq
Notes: This is actually a pinch-hit, simply to meet the deadline. The real remix should be along sometime later on the 6th, possibly as late as the 7th, though hopefully not. So, yay, Eiland gets two stories!
Give Me Three Steps (the “Better Part of Valour” Remix)
Spike was exceedingly glad to be out of the Summers house, ecstatic to a degree that even the budding poet that William had considered himself to be - way back when he breathed air without having to think about it - would have been hard pressed to put into words. Considering that Spike lived in a crypt, it was really hard to make him feel claustrophobic. It just wasn’t a thing he really felt very often.
Please. Spike, afraid of enclosed spaces? No. He wasn’t afraid of being locked in with anyone or anything. They should all be afraid of being locked in with him. Especially when they were fragile little Happy Meals on legs. If it weren’t for the chip, he could have (and would have, don’t think he wouldn’t) killed them all and laughed at the blood. Angelus was all about the artistry, the poncy poof, but Spike? Spike was all about the blood and the guts and the pain, and don’t you forget it, either.
Unfortunately, Glinda didn’t seem to get the memo very well, because she’d insisted that, since they were heading in mostly the same direction, he should walk her back to her dorm room. Spike didn’t really have a good reason why not, other than “I don’t want to”, but that would have made Buffy - Slayer, couldn’t forget what she was, because it wasn’t likely that she’d ever let herself be Buffy with him - give him the disappointed look that always seemed to make everyone around her jump to do whatever she wanted.
She didn’t even have to actually give the look for Spike to do it. He was already doing it simply because he didn’t want her to have a reason to have that look on her face.
If that wasn’t proof that he’d gone ass over teakettle for her, he didn’t know what was.
He wasn’t a cat. He couldn’t very well bring her headless demons to show his affection for her. Even if he could, that wasn’t likely to impress her much at all.
Glinda broke him out of his … he was not going to say brooding, because that belonged entirely to The Poof. Musings. He could go with musings. Whatever it was he decided to call them, though, she broke him out of them, with a rather odd question, but, then, she’d always been a bit of an odd duck. “Why don’t you have any nicknames for me?”
Rather than answer the question, he responded with one of his own. “What do you mean?”
“Well,” she’d long since lost her stammering around him, and normally Spike neither noticed nor cared, but right then, he did both. Why wasn’t she afraid of him anymore? He wasn’t a bloody house pet, docile and fed table scraps. He was William the Bloody. They didn’t just give names like that out will-he-nil-he. Blissfully unaware of his imaginings of ripping out her entrails and spreading them around the tree branches like crepe paper at a party, she kept going. “You call Buffy ‘Slayer’, which isn’t hard to figure out. Giles is ‘Watcher’, Willow -” he just barely heard the catch in her voice before she continued on without a pause, “- is ‘Red’, and I think you get a kick out of calling Xander ‘Droopy Boy’. Dawn gets all the snacks for names, and even Anya gets ‘Demon Girl’. Why don’t I have a nickname?”
“You do,” Spike lit his cigarette, taking a long inhale of the tobacco smoke. “It’s ‘Lunch’.”
The blonde shook her head. “No, it’s not. You keep talking a big game, but somewhere along the line, you actually started caring about us.”
Spike snarled at her, his game face coming in without him even thinking about it.
She remained unimpressed. “You’re still evil. Not about to forget that. You only remind us as often as you can. But you haven’t worked against us or tried to have us killed since Adam. You could have sided against us a lot. Or you could go off on your own, go to Europe or somewhere. Just because you can’t hurt people doesn’t mean you can’t still be a scary vampire. But you don’t. You keep staying here and you keep helping us out, and you even broke my nose to prove that I wasn’t a demon.”
“That doesn’t mean that I like any of you lot.” Spike inspected his black nails for chips in the polish.
“No, it doesn’t,” the witch agreed carefully. “But you like Buffy. After all, she helped you with that … muscle cramp.” She glanced at him from the corner of her eye.
And that was enough for it to click with Spike that she knew. He didn’t even have to ask. “What exactly do you think you know?”
“Well,” she answered carefully, “she asked me to run some tests to figure out why you can hurt her, and her reaction made me figure out what was going on.”
“Damn it!” He burst out in anger. “You stupid, careless chit! You’re the gentle one! You’re supposed to be the sensitive one! Couldn’t you have figured out some way to break the news to her without making her fall to pieces?” Spike advanced on her slowly, not even caring how much the chip would hurt him.
Tara thrust her hand out, and a wall of air stopped him in his tracks. “Shut. Up.” Her magic wouldn’t hold him, and they both knew it. Out of the witches, she wasn’t the powerhouse. The fact that she’d managed that much, though, surprised him, and her words made him stop where he was even more than her magic had. “She’s not a demon, Spike. That’s what the tests showed. One hundred percent bona fide human. She didn’t fall apart because she’s a demon. She broke because she isn’t one.”
The anger left in a rush, leaving him feeling oddly boneless and bereft, and he could swear that he felt himself collapsing in on himself. “But … if she’s not a demon …”
“I don’t know why the chip stopped working for her, Spike,” Tara’s voice was soft and gentle. “It’s science, and science and magic don’t always mix. Who knows why the chip doesn’t recognize her as human? It’s wrong, though, because she is.”
“But if she’s not a demon -” he started again, before she interrupted again.
“She was upset because she’s not a demon and she’s still doing things that she hates herself for,” Tara explained sympathetically, her hand on his arm just barely touching his jacket. “Being a demon would have been easier for her, because she’d have that to blame.”
“You know, it’s funny.” Spike spoke almost wistfully. “I don’t even know when exactly it started, but it started and kept going, and I don’t mean to hurt her. It’s not all about getting our jollies on. We work together, and work well, and there are times that she looks at me and the world melts away and I think that maybe I can make her happy.” He let out a sigh, the words seeming to pour out of him now that he had someone he could talk to about it all. “But the world always comes back, and I realize that I can’t. I tear her down and I hurt her and I hate myself for doing it but I just can’t seem to stop myself from doing it. I love her,” he added on quietly. “Whether she believes it or not, I do.” But not enough to walk away from her and let her be happy on her own.
“I know, Spike. But Love isn’t always enough. We’ve gotten along pretty well, since I got my mind back.” She was quiet for a long moment, and then something in her changed. She straightened up, her stance more assured, but that wasn’t the only change. She got that look in her eye, the same kind of look that Harris got when the only way to protect one of his girls would be to kill everything he could get his hands on and plenty he couldn’t, and he’d do it, regardless of cost to him or anything around him.
Neither she nor Droopy Boy were people that he would single out as being scary, or people that you should even watch out for. When he was still a hunter, he would have picked them as the easy pickings that you could save for last because they wouldn’t matter while you took out the real threats.
But when they got that look in their eyes, everything shifted, the world tilted on its axis and if you were smart, you would realize that they were quite possibly the most dangerous people on the planet, if you gave them reason to be.
Spike was smart. He realized.
So when she got that look in her eyes and leaned towards him, Spike did the only thing he could: he shut up and listened, and hoped that she wouldn’t decide he was a threat.
“I know you love her.” She stated it simply, but iron rang underneath her words as a ball of fire formed above her open palm, as though it were meant to be there, as much a part of her as her own hand. “But that’s not enough, so I’m letting you know right now: I’m looking out for her now. I helped tear her away from heaven, and I’m going to have to live with that. The least I can do is watch out for her and help keep her safe, and that includes her emotional well being. She is under my protection now, William, and if that means that I have to do something I don’t want to do in order to keep you from hurting her anymore, I will. If you hurt her again, I will deal with you.” She threw the fireball like a baseball at a large rock that wasn’t quite big enough to be called a boulder. It exploded against the rock in a flash of bright light that hurt Spike’s eyes to look at, and when his vision cleared, the exterior of the rock had melted.
Spike was much more flammable than a rock, and he knew that he wouldn’t get off with just being a little melted.
“Are we clear?” Her voice was soft, but her expression had no give in it, and Spike was in no doubt that she would follow through with her threat if he gave her reason.
“Don’t hurt the Slayer, got it.” He forced some brevity into his voice. “You know, when I met Joyce, she hit me on the head with a fire-axe. Just the flat side, mind you. I don’t think she was trying to kill me then, but I don’t think she would have cried too much if she had, and delivered a threat very similar to yours, though much simpler said: ‘Get the hell away from my daughter.’ There are worse people to emulate than her.”
“She didn’t have a nickname, either,” Tara noted with some amusement. “I meant what I said, Spike. I like you. I consider you a friend. But you’re still evil, and the others … they let themselves forget it sometimes, and think of you as harmless. But you’re not. You weren’t even before you discovered that you could hit Buffy. You’ve gotten used to not having consequences or repercussions. I don’t want to be your repercussions, but I will if I have to be. I’d much rather be your conscience.”
“Oh, goody, my own Jiminy Cricket on my shoulder.” He lit up another cigarette. “We’ve come to an understanding. Don’t push it further than that.”
At the very least, he now knew that he’d need to take the witch out if he hurt any of her friends, and preferably do it before she found out about it.
He wasn’t a house cat. He couldn’t leave headless demons on her doorstep to instill fear in her. But the idea held more allure than it had for doing it for Buffy.
END