Title: the sunshine does not love you
Genre: Romance/Angst/some Humor… an emotional roller coaster!
Pairings: Spike/Buffy
Warnings: AU
Disclaimer: Two words: "I" and "wish". All credit goes to Our Lord Whedon and the Temptations for the song.
Summary: Spike returns to Sunnydale utterly defeated after years of searching for a soul, only to find the town in ruins. There are no signs of life – only a girl who may be Spike's last hope for redemption. post-Seeing Red AU
Author's Note: This is sort of the most ambitious fanfiction project I've ever taken on. It'll have chapters! And quotations from literature! But be not daunted – although you can't really tell from this cheery little prologue, there will be some light moments. Also, some really not light moments. Anyway, go forth and be entertained!
PS: The song was because, I don't know, it seems like the kind of song Spike would sing while wallowing in his pit of self-deprecation.
"There is a fatality, a feeling so irresistible and inevitable that it has the force of doom, which almost invariably compels human beings to linger around and haunt, ghostlike, the spot where some great and marked event has given the colour to their lifetime; and, still the more irresistibly, the darker the tinge that saddens it."
-Hawthorne, "The Scarlet Letter"
Flaming spears of orange pierce the darkening sky, the very sunset reflecting the violence it looks down upon. There is little in the way of noise. Somehow, this makes the scene even more ominous. No police siren promises salvation, no gunshots hint resistance. Sunnydale has succumbed, finally, to the Hell that devours from beneath.
A street, lined with houses that suggested decaying charm. Sturdy, suburban trees, once filled with leaves and treehouses, now scorched and diseased, their twisted limbs and oozing trunks mirroring the illness that plagued the city. Most houses are plundered and rotting, but retain a semblance of normality. Only one is smashed entirely to rubble, a single supporting wall remaining improbably balanced upright.
Suddenly, an intermittent humming noise breaks the silence. Someone standing by the destroyed house could make out, if they squinted, a figure walking up the hill at the bottom of the street. He is humming tunelessly, seemingly lost in thought. He is the only thing that moves on the street.
His meaningless humming seamlessly transitions into words, his low baritone portraying no joy or even recognition that the song is coming from inside of him.
"Why do you build me up," he murmurs unconsciously "Buttercup, baby, just to let me down?"
He pauses at the apex of the hill. Frowning, he looks to the left and right, as though trying to remember something, or maybe just a half-instinctual inspection for trouble. With a shrug, he starts on again, hands deep in his pockets, the words devolving back into hums.
A warm, Southern Californian breeze (perhaps the only thing unchanged) tousles his messy, white-blonde hair as he stops humming to say three, nearly inaudible words.
"Home… sweet home,"