Hurt… Everything hurt. Why did everything hurt. He tried to remember what had happened but couldn't think. There was an alley… The woman… She had bit him. That didn't make any sense. He gasped as memories suddenly crowded his mind. Thousands of screams and blood down his throat. Fist and fangs tearing through the masses. That couldn't have been him could it. He was a good man. Not a monster.
He cried. "Tsk tsk tsk. Crying William." His eyes flew open and fell on the monster in front of him. He tried to shift away from the other vampire as he brushed his tears away in a parody of sympathy. "Poor William. Always getting in such messes. But then you always were a pathetic vampire. Really, a soul of all things." A dark chuckle echoed in his ear. He could barely withhold a whimper. He tugged at the chains he was hanging from by his wrists.
"Not to worry William." Angelus continued, raking his nails over the bleeding wounds in his back. "We'll take care of you." The older vampire leaned in, letting his breath brush along the younger vampire's ears. "After all, we wouldn't abandon our family." Spike shivered and did something he hadn't done in a very long time. He prayed…
He flew up with a gasp, throwing the blankets of his naked body with the motion. It had been a while since he had that nightmare. He could still feel the whip on his skin, the jagged broken glass and spikes imbedded in it cutting his skin open with every strike. The stickiness of the blood running from open wounds. Three long weeks he had been stuck in that basement. Tortured and starved only to have a child shoved under his nose. The thought of feeding from them had turned his stomach and made him turn away. His hunger had begged for him to take it.
In the end he hadn't. Dru, his beloved Dru had freed him before his hunger drove him too it. He had taken the first train he had come across. Away from wherever he had been holed up. He first found the gypsies that had cursed him. After talking to them, still weak and bleeding, he had convinced them to anchor the soul. He had stayed with them a while to recover and had taken off.
From there on he had wandered the world for a long time. Loneliness eating away at him. He had always been a pack animal and the solitude was enough to drive him to near madness some days. The guilt hadn't made things easier to handle. After a while he had ventured back into society. Loneliness urging him to seek human companions. He'd stay somewhere for a decade before his lack of aging urged him onwards. It made things more bearable though loneliness had shadowed his every foot step.
Until finally in Prague she found him. His princess. She had left the others and had come for him. To be with him. She had agreed to bond with him. To be his, forever. They had found an old abandoned church to bond in. Angelus had found them however. In the middle of the ceremony as he was taking Drusilla in to be his he walked up and staked her. Leaving him with nothing but a mouthful of ashes and blood.
Half mad in pain, grief and hate he had attacked Angelus. In the end it was he that was left broken and bloody on the old rotting floor boards. Darla had glided up to mock him, laughing all the way. Angelus himself had bend over and told him he wasn't worth the effort to stake him and left him. He had wanted to die, would have, if it hadn't been for the searing hatred in his gut. He wasn't a quitter and he would not give Angelus the satisfaction of beating him. He had gathered up his beloved's ashes and released them over the sea to dance in the wind. Two years later his beloved's death was still a gaping bleeding wound that would not close.
Silent tears rolled over his cheeks. Brushing them away angrily he got up and moved into the bathroom. Putting the water to hot he stood under the spray, letting the heat beat into the skin. "You mustn't fret so sweetheart. The sunshine will brighten your world again." He grabbed the shower curtain as a vision almost knocked him off his feet. Images of a young women being drained by the master floated in front of his mind's eye.
"Hurry my knight. Or the sun will be extinguished before it has a chance to shine." He looked up to Drusilla standing before him. He longed to reach out and touch her but refrained, knowing she wasn't real. "Where, love? Show me where." A giant gaping maw swallowed up the image, sucking it in a whirlpool of fire and agony. He smiled. "To the hell mouth it is."