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To Un-Live and Die in LA
Chapter Seven Chapter 1 2 3 4 5 6
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Bruised and bloody, Spike triumphantly made his way back to his apartment. Nothin’ like a decent spot of violence to banish grief and depression. Well, temporarily, at least. He paused outside his door and felt a pleasant awareness of anticipation as he sensed Illyria’s presence. He decided he liked having her here. He had lost so much over the past several years, and Illyria filled a need for companionship that he hadn’t allowed himself to admit he needed. Also, there was no insurmountable baggage in his relationship with Illyria. Definitely a plus.
Her humanity was currently a work in progress and Spike could help her—no one understood what she was going through better than he. He was a master of adaptation; he rolled with the punches. If he could give her that, she could survive in this world, and he discovered that he very much wanted her to survive.
He opened the door and saw her sitting motionless on the couch, ice-blue eyes fixed on the door.
He grinned. “Hi, honey, I’m home.”
She tilted her head. “I awoke and you were gone. I did not know if you wished me to remain.”
Spike was instantly contrite. “Sorry, luv, had somethin’ I needed to get out of my system. Should’ve left you a note. And, yeah, I wish you to remain. Stay as long as you want, pet.”
“You are inviting me to co-habit with you?”
“See, pet, it’s like this. Neither of us has anywhere else to go, an’ it looks like we’re both back to square one in figurin’ out what to do with our lives, so we can help each other, if you’d like.”
“Yes. I would like that.”
“Right, then. I guess first thing on the agenda is grocery shopping. We’ll need to get some food in for you. Then, I guess we work out a schedule for patrollin’, an’ I should prob’ly check in with Gunn and Wes, but that can wait till tomorrow. You got any suggestions?”
“Your friend Willow called while you were gone. She has requested my permission to speak with me about my experiences to document for the Watcher’s Council.”
“This something you want to do, Blue?”
“I find her interesting. She controls powerful magicks. I wish to learn more of this and the Coven she mentioned.”
“Just be careful, pet. ‘S not always a good thing havin’ official types knowin’ too much about you.”
“This is why you did not tell her I was responsible for the deaths of Winifred Burkle and Angel? Because she is an 'official type' as well as your friend?”
“Yeah.”
“I shall be circumspect, but I think I would like to speak with her.”
Spike nodded. “Set it up, then. For now, how ‘bout a stroll to the local convenience mart to see what comestibles you fancy.”
“I do not ‘stroll’.”
“Figure of speech, pet. We’ll make it a brisk walk.”
**********
Spike hung up the phone. Still no answer at Wes’ apartment and he had no idea where they could be. Well, they knew where to find him.
Illyria had gone to Willow’s hotel and Red had promised to provide her with a decent lunch. She’d only been staying with him for a few days, so it was surprising how empty the place felt without her.
At loose ends, Spike went into the kitchen and heated up a mug of blood. He drank it down and rinsed the mug then decided he might as well take a shower until the soaps came on.
Spike had just finished drying off and was brushing his teeth when there was a knock on the door. Illyria was with Red, but maybe Wes and Gunn had finally come around. He grabbed a pair of clean jeans. The knocking became more insistent.
“Hold your horses! I’m coming,” he called.
Pulling a T-shirt over his head, he flung open the door and froze.
“Buffy?”
Her right hook came out of nowhere and knocked him back into the apartment. She stalked in after him, hands on hips.
“How could you, Spike? How could you do this to me? You’ve been back for, what, a year? And never once felt the need to let me know you were alive? You . . . you . . .”
She drew back to hit him again, but his hand snaked out and caught her fist.
“Not your whipping boy any longer, Slayer. You want to talk, we’ll sit down and talk. You want to pummel something, there’s a gym two blocks over.”
Letting out her breath in an explosive rush, she tamped down her anger.
“Spike, why? Why didn’t you tell me?”
“Oh, Buffy . . . I couldn’t.”
There was such pain and longing in his voice that she flinched. Raking her hands through her hair, she took a deep breath. Looking deeply into those incredible blue eyes that she had never thought to see again, she asked quietly, “Can you tell me now?”
He tilted his head and gave a quick nod.
“Yeah, love. I think I can.”
Reaching for her hand, he led her to the couch, where they sat facing each other. Spike took both her hands in his and began to speak.
Buffy tightly grasped his hands and never took her eyes from his, listening with all her being.
“I did die in the Hellmouth, Buffy. I burned up from the inside out. The pain was incredible, and then there was . . . peace. I felt like I was just floating somewhere . . . It felt like I imagine being in the womb would feel like. There was no time, no pain, no . . . sense of awareness. Just peace. And then . . . it felt like I was swept up in a hurricane, buffeted to and fro, and there was a ‘whoosh’ and I found myself in Angel’s office.” Spike grinned. “I was sure then that I’d gone to hell!”
A ghost of a smile touched her lips as she silently waited for him to continue.
“I was non-corporeal . . . a ghost. Couldn’t touch anything, fading in and out. I couldn’t understand why I was back. I wanted to come find you, but I couldn’t leave. I was tied to Los Angeles, and then I thought I was being sucked into hell. I was terrified. I was confused and lost and if I was goin’ to hell, I figured it would be better if you never knew I’d come back at all. Somebody worked some mojo and I got recorporealized and there was a lot going on . . . and, I don’t know, Buffy . . . I just thought it would be better for you to live your life.
“Andrew said you were happy . . . that you had moved on . . . and, by then, knowing I was alive would only complicate your life. I was a part of your past, but you had your whole future ahead of you. You were involved with the Immortal and he may be an insufferable ponce, but Andrew said he made you happy . . . and that’s something I never managed to do, so I just . . . I was already dead to you, Buffy, I just decided to leave it that way.”
Spike closed his eyes in exhaustion.
“Spike . . .”
His eyes flickered open to look at her.
“Do you still love me?”
“Always . . .” His voice was barely a whisper of sound.
Buffy felt relief wash over her and she let out the breath she didn’t realize she had been holding.
“You didn’t believe me when I said I loved you in the Hellmouth, did you?”
He silently shook his head “no”.
“Why not?”
Spike took a deep breath. “I was dyin', Buffy. You knew it. Thought you were bein’ kind to ease my passing. Giving me the one gift that you knew I had wanted more than anything, for years. And I appreciated it. Knew you didn’t really mean it, but it meant something that you cared enough to want me to die . . . not alone.”
“So . . . you believed that I only told you I loved you because you were dying and I knew there wouldn’t be any consequences?”
“Well . . . yeah.”
“And you never thought for a minute that I actually meant it?”
Spike stood and began to pace. He jammed his hands in the pockets of his jeans and wished desperately for a cigarette. When had he stopped smoking? He’d come back as a ghost and by the time he was corporeal, he just never thought to start up again. Maybe it was seeing Buffy after all this time. There was something about being in her presence that made him long for a smoke . . . and a good, stiff drink wouldn’t hurt, either. He took a deep breath into his lungs and slowly let it out.
“I believe at that moment you felt love for me. Mixed in with some gratitude, and I’d like to think, some sorrow at my passing. But I knew you weren’t in love with me. Saw you with Angel, remember? It was always Angel you were in love with. I was just convenient.”
Buffy flinched as if he had struck her.
Spike sighed. “When I first loved you, I thought . . . I hoped that you would someday love me back. But it didn’t happen. You were quite clear that you could never love an ‘evil, soulless thing’. Thought maybe if I got my soul I could be worthy of you, but a funny thing happened. Once I had my soul, I finally realized that I wasn’t worthy of you . . . would never be.”
“That’s not true.”
“Isn’t it?”
“I just . . . there was so much we had to deal with. The Potentials, the First and . . .”
“An' I had been killing again. You tried to help me, and I’m grateful, but I was there, Buffy. Know you felt pity for me, bein’ used by the First like that, and revulsion, and some guilt. You figured if I hadn’t gotten my soul and gone round the bend, the First couldn’t have gotten its hooks into me. Ironic, innit? The First Evil had no hold over an ‘evil, soulless thing’, but guilt-ridden, crazy, souled Spike was easy pickings.”
“But it wasn’t really you doing those things, Spike.”
“Yeah, it was, pet. The demon . . . the killer is a part of me. Will always be. ‘S always there, underneath the surface. Not a separate personality, not an alter-ego, but an aspect of the entity that is Spike . . . or Angel.”
“No! That can’t be true. I met Angelus and he was a completely different person than Angel!”
“Not gonna argue with you. Believe what you want.”
“But you don’t believe it?”
“Doesn’t matter now. You saw one facet of Angel and fell in love with it. Hold on to that, remember your lost love the way you want, cause he’s gone. You’ll never get to see him now as a complete, complicated, ambiguous, stubborn, pigheaded, frequently insufferable, conflicted, but occasionally shining, totality of a person. It’s too late for that, so remember him as you knew him.”
“You’re saying I idealized him? That I never really knew him?”
“Buffy. Let it go. Mourn him as you remember him an’ I’ll do the same.”
“You’ll mourn him? I thought you hated him.”
Spike gave her a long, steady look, but remained silent.
Buffy looked down at her hands. “It’s too late for us, isn’t it? When I learned that Angel was dead and you were alive, I thought . . . I came to tell you that I loved you and if you still loved me, maybe we could start over, but now you’ll always wonder if I only decided I loved you because Angel was dead. It’s too soon . . . or, maybe not soon enough to . . . I’d better go. But . . . maybe someday?”
Spike reached out and touched her hair with infinite gentleness.
“Maybe someday, love. I’ll be around. And, I’m not gettin’ any older, y’know.”
With a stricken look, Buffy grabbed her bag and rushed out of his apartment.
Spike let her go.
He sank down on the couch and dropped his head in his hands. He had loved Buffy with every fiber of his being—still did love her. But now was not their moment. The shadow of Angel loomed too large over both of them. Buffy would go back to her life and he would try to forge one for himself. A life without Buffy or Angel. But he wasn’t alone.
He had a mission . . . a purpose. There’d always be the helpless that need saving, ‘specially in LA, and he could do that. Let someone else deal with the world-shattering apocalypses for a change. He was always at his best on a smaller scale . . . up close and personal. He’d work his way through the underbelly of LA, savin’ one soul at a time. And the next night, he’d be out there doin’ it again.
And . . . Blue would be coming home any time now. Spike smiled. He had his whole future before him. He couldn’t wait to find out what happened next.
THE END
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