Memories
Buffy knocked on the door to Spike’s
crypt the next night. Angel had gone
back to LA after finding what he was looking for at the mansion.Buffy
had
promised him she would give back what Angelus had stolen from
Spike’s house.
He couldn’t give him back his family, but he could give back
a piece of
Spike’s life as a human man. The only thing
left after two hundred years.
“Go ‘way,” Spike slurred,
obviously well and truly drunk.
Buffy ignored his words and walked in,
carrying the large plastic covered
portrait under one arm. “Spike.”
Spike looked up at her blearily. “Wha’
you want,Slayer? Come to rub it
in? Tell me what a pathetic waste of shkin I am?” he slurred
drunkenly.
“Cryin’ like a sissy girl, screamin’ ‘it’s
not fair’?”
Buffy shook her head. “No,Spike. I have
something for you.”
Spike grinned. “Come to end my misery,eh,
Slayer?”
Buffy sighed. “Spike, shut up.”
He blinked,frowned, and took a big gulp of
whatever hard alcohol he was
drinking.
Buffy looked at the scattered bottles of Rum,
Jack Daniels, Vodka and
Southern Comfort, all empty. “Spike, don’t do this to
yourself.”
“Why the bloody ‘ell not?”
Spike demanded. “S’bett’r than listenin’ to
Angel’s ‘holier than thou, oh I’m so tortured’
routine.”
Buffy’d had enough. She walked forward
and snatched the bottle of liquor
out of Spike’s hand, noting distractedly that it was Skyy
vodka, and dumping
its contents onto the floor of the crypt. “That’s
enough,” she snapped,
tired of seeing her one time worst enemy reduced to a shell of
the strong,
cocky vampire he once was.
Spike’s face fell into its demonic visage
and he flung himself at
Buffy’s legs, taking them both to the ground. Once there, he
didn’t seem to
be sober enough to follow through, perching atop Buffy’s
lithe form instead
of ripping her throat out.
Buffy’s mouth hung slightly open as she
fought to regain the breath that
Spike had knocked out of her.
Spike spied the plastic-wrapped square half-way
trapped underneath the
Slayer’s body, one edge of plastic ripped so that there was
the faintest
glimpse of sky-blue paint.
He rose to his knees,straddling Buffy’s
hips as she relearned to breathe.
“What’s that?” he asked,pointing.
Buffy coughed a little, glaring at him. “Present
from Angel.”
Spike growled.
Buffy sat up and slapped him hard across the
face. “Come off it,Spike.
You can’t live in the past.”
Spike blinked at her, stunned, then got up and
turned away from her. “Do
you have any idea what it’s like to see your entire family
butchered?”
Buffy shook her head, even though he couldn’t
see it. “No. Why do you
care, Spike? You’re a demon.”
Spike let out a choked laugh. “You have
no idea what I am. When Angelus
made me, he didn’t realize how much I hated him. How much I
wanted him dead.
I fought that sick bastard to my last breath. Angelus was cursed
by gypsies,
Slayer. You know the whole gut-wrenching story. I wasn’t
cursed. I’ve always
had my soul. Every person I ever killed was revenge on Angelus,
for what he
did to me. All that rage, every ounce of fury I had at him, and
my utter
helplessness to stop him from doing what he did, I took out on my
victims.”
Buffy stared at him in shock, speechless. What
could she possibly say to
something like that?
Spike turned to face her, his eyes slightly
glazed with unshed tears.
“What’s his bloody present?”
Buffy took a deep, shaky breath and leaned the
plastic covered square
against the concrete wall, unwrapping it from the plastic
packaging.
Angel had made her promise not to look at it
before she gave it to Spike.
And, as much as she was dying to see, she’d kept the promise,
so she
couldn’t stop the gasp that came from her throat as the
portrait of Spike
when he’d still been human was unveiled.
Spike’s hair was shoulder length and a
deep, mahogany brown in the
painting, his eyes a shocking contrast. A woman leaned casually
against him,
clad in the flowing dresses with a tight bodice of the time,
smiling, looking
truly happy. Spike held a little boy of no more than two years in
his lap,
the boy bearing a strong resemblance to his father. A little girl
of five or
six sat at her mother’s feet, clutching the woman’s
skirt, big blue eyes looking at the painter, maybe, not sure what
to make of him. Spike’s wife was holding a baby in her lap,
the baby was smiling toothlessly,
looking up at his mother, a tress of her long, dark hair clenched
in one tiny
fist.
Buffy was so awed by the obvious time and care
with which the portrait
had been painted that she didn’t recognize the harsh,broken
sound for what it
was at first.
Snapping out of her daze, she looked at Spike
to see him crumpled
helplessly on the floor, head buried in his knees which were
pulled up to his
chest, sobbing as if pieces of him were breaking and cutting him
up inside.
Feeling her own tears come to her eyes, Buffy
knelt beside Spike and put
her arms around him, ignoring the wetness of his tears as he
buried his head
in her chest and his body shook with the force of his crying. If
what he was
feeling had been an actual wound, Buffy was sure that he’d
be bleeding to
death.
For a second, she thought of the
ridiculousness of what she was doing.
She, the Slayer, scourge of the undead, was holding her worst
enemy and
rocking him like a small child as he cried tears of pain and
helpless anger
into her shirt. Forcefully, she shoved those thoughts away.
When Spike had finally cried himself out and
was laying limply in her
arms, one hand gripping the back of her shirt, Buffy rested her
chin on his
head. “You survived,” she said gently. “That has
to mean something.”
Spike said nothing, but she felt his head move
slightly as he nodded.
Buffy leaned back against the stone casket in the crypt, still
holding him,
until they both drifted off to sleep.