Title: New Coat
Author: kbk
Disclaimer: "Buffy the Vampire Slayer", "Angel" and all characters are owned by Joss Whedon, Mutant Enemy and various other people and companies. Not me. I make no money from this.
Rating: PG-13
Summary: Dru POV. 1977. Spike, Angel, slayers, stars. Beta'd by the incomparable nostalgia.
My Spike got a new coat. It flows like the wings of an angel... my Angel, oh… but Spike will not be happy if I tell him so; even though he has wings and a bright, shiny halo, all white and bright and light he burns so prettily, mmm, my Spike is an angel but not my Angel: he is my Spike, my prince, my dear... He took her coat but he left her blood, left it as a prize for her because she danced so prettily, not like the last one; and besides all that there was nobody to share it with him, nobody to use his energy up, nobody to be there with him in his victory glee, because I was a-dreaming, taking my rest to make me strong again though I so wished to be there – my William does so love to share.
He gives me all sorts of things, and only takes a little back, only keeps a small part for himself to be happy; for I, you see, am his precious, his princess, his goddess, his saviour, his love – oh, he gives, and gives, and ever more he gives; but you must not try to take, oh no, for he will guard what is his with mighty valour and green in his pretty eyes.
Daddy never understood – I tried to tell him, I did, but he thought he knew better, better than the Seeing, thought he knew how to break my childe to his will, to be his Will – all he had to do was ask the right way, with a smile and a touch, to wear away the stone with a drip drip drip and not a whack crack smack. But he had not the patience, nor the time; and he was taken away from us, left us behind and all alone, children that we were: but I have had nigh on a whole hundred years to make my Spike mine, and is he not perfectly glorious now in the night?
I would I could have seen him, all strength and glory, but I had to stay home and dream of a night of fire and rage, and everything filled with smoke and panic and mmm, splendid fear, and the swish and gleam and clash of swords; and when I woke I knew that he had killed her again, and I clapped and danced and sang my thanks to the moon. The moon didn’t care. I danced a dream of China instead, danced a memory of a girl who was a ghost before she died, for all she fought so well. I almost could feel her still on my tongue, so sweet and yummy... She tasted of lotus flowers and rice paper and the death of a hundred demons, and it felt so good in my tummy, made me all tingly...
Miss Edith told me long ago that my Spikey would dance with a chocolate girl, and bring none home for me; but when I said to my sweet boy, he brought me back some cocoa, for he didn’t understand. He understands better than anyone else, though, and he is sweet, my Spike, and sometimes he can almost hear the stars singing...
It’s not fair! They sing so loudly and nobody else hears them to take the noise away! And some days I think I must go deaf from their music: and those are the days I bring out the whips and the chains and the pretty, pretty water. Spike doesn’t like those days – my poor boy doesn’t hear them, and so he doesn’t know that the only screams loud enough are mine own: for he was born to bleed and I was born to scream; but only one of two can hurt, and so... and so...
My Angel would have understood, he always loved to hurt me: for he always wanted to hear the song but he never, ever could, and so he made his own song out of me: and a pretty song it was, it was, but my Spikey never liked it. He makes it, from me, for me, only because it is me: but he cannot make it the way it used to be, and that squirms around in the bottom of his brain and makes him all cranky, all not happy, gives him a headache so we must hush!
If only he could hear the stars, my poor dear boy, if only he could hear them then maybe he would know what it is they are singing, my clever darling boy, my sweetness with the poetry running in his head even as he runs the streets red with blood, blood, blood... Mmm.
I’m hungry.
