Title: Spike Diaries
Author: TKodami
Fandom: Buffy the Vampire Slayer
Rating: PG
Disclaimer: Neither the series, nor the characters belong to me. I'm only mucking about in the Whedon sandbox.
Summary: Spike keeps a diary! He reflects on moments before and after those key moments in his (un)life. We also see a little more about William's life before he was turned. There will be bad poetry contained within. You have been warned.
Notes: Spoilers up to S5, "Fool for Love."

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20 January 1880

Ho hum, diary. It looks like this year is shaping up to be as dreary as a London winter that lingers in the cracks and joints of our parlor, chilling the air even long into summer. I haven't found occasion to write since I ducked out of the DOWNINGS' New Years celebration to nurse some choice verses of Southey under the green grocer's awning. You couldn't possibly believe the frivolous nonsense that the so-called ladies and gentilhommes discuss. Sensational patter is the only thing that seems to hold their scrabbling minds for more than a minute before it races on to the next slip gossip. It can be so likened unto watching mice scratch for cheese in the poorer shopkeeps that I can't keep from laughing under my breath whilest they prattle.

All the while, I keep a vain vigil for Clarissa--the student of Natural Philosophy and Ancient Literatures from Sheffield with whom you are no doubt acquainted. The radiant flaxen-haired fille! In her visage, one plainly sees old Breton blood. Noble blood. Her of the slender hand that drew supple curves suitable for the most sinuous French. Clarissa: my pupil. Clarissa: my muse. Can I count the words that I've spilled for her on the pages of my old notebook? My mind hungers to give an exact number, but having the other day flung the notebook from the London Bridge in such a fit of passion and sublimity that would have given even Percy Shelly a pang of remorse. After some thought, I fished the sodden workbook from such an ignoble, viscous grave. Good thing the Thames offers a good enough foothold--sludge in summer, cold icy sludge in winter--to walk halfway twixt the banks. --Still, it is a bit tricky to pick out words, all runny and blurry on the page. Which, knowing my fits of writerly incompetence when in a passion, I'm sure 'twas an improvement on the general tenor of the prose.

Clarissa--such a gem! And bright too, here excelling at Virgil, Horace, and Livy before we barely finished with Aristotle's Ars Poetica. But her six months have passed and she has departed for Naples for finishing school. It has been three months since she last rang herself in to my study. And these vigils at the Downings' New Years party or the DULLESDALES salons are vestiges of Clarissa and nothing more. That I think I'll glimpse her young, fresh face amongst the crush of stuffy English aristocracy is--a sweet delusion, but a delusion nonetheless.

It has been my curse to only love smart girls. Without such high mental contemplation, society is simply tedious. I think I shall never love but a whip-sharp girl who can as easily quote SHAKESPEARE as she can recite Latin treatises. I tell myself I will not have children except to raise fat, winsome poet-scholars.

I don't know why I bother attending these functions at all, except for Mother's sake. She worries, you know. She says I've grown pale and introverted since Clarissa and I've refused to take on new pupils. To which, I quote her the Immortal Words of SOUTHEY:

Oh he is worn with toil! the big drops run Down his dark cheek; hold--hold thy merciless hand, Pale tyrant! for beneath thy hard command O'erwearied Nature sinks. The scorching Sun, As pityless as proud Prosperity, Darts on him his full beams; gasping he lies Arraigning with his looks the patient skies, While that inhuman trader lifts on high The mangling scourge. Oh ye who at your ease Sip the blood-sweeten'd beverage! thoughts like these Haply ye scorn: I thank thee Gracious God! That I do feel upon my cheek the glow Of indignation, when beneath the rod A sable brother writhes in silent woe. --"Sonnet III" SOUTHEY 1797

But I think she hears them not as well as she hears my own. BLOOD, INHUMANITY and SCORN aren't fit subjects for such public contemplation. And, wouldn't you mark it, I've since promised to attend the UNDERWOODS' Winter Ball in three day's time. The elder Underwoods are illiterate, humourless people--and their smell of damp moulding and straw does nothing for their nearby surroundings--but I hear their daughter is returned from a lengthy stay in Istanbul. There's not a personage so completely dull that the mystery and allure of Constantinople couldn't have rubbed something off--though if such a creature were to exist, I'm sure they would take on the guise of such the Underwoods. Their spawned creature, if altogether lacking, should at least have trinkets and books from the Crusaders' city. The evening cannot be a complete loss, then. And should worse come to worse, at least the Underwood parlor has recessed windows which make for fine reading if the affair turns dreadful.

And now I feel I am suffiently moved to compose my own verse. It is a New Year, and all of my old verse, whenst compared to the venerable Southey, is lower than trash. This poem marks afresh my poetic effort. It shall be numbered "one" in my grand poetic endeavor. Poem dedicated to Clarissa of the Flaxen Hair, Southey the Best British Poet in the History of the Empire, and my Dear Old Mum On the Occasion of Writing in My Journal and Meditating Upon Constantinople.

Birds and Angels Singing of Beauty on a Dreary London Afternoon,
As Observed from the Window of a Drafty London Flat
Hereafter Known Simply As Poem 1

Golden veins of lightening light!
Shining down of heaven's o'erweening Flight
of Angels; the clouds of the New
Year Part, and down through the True
Annals of the Heavenly Host,
the name "Clarissa" is boast--!
Hark! Thy mark! Upon The High Highted Lark! Upon scented ramparts!
The scratching of feet through the Halls
The whirling of bustles and corsets Balls
Heaven writes the name of LOVE
As though with FIRE on my heart:
Clarissa, CLARISSA, Cla-RISSA, CLA-rissa, Clarissa! Clarissa!
O Hark, my heart overflowth with woe.
CLARISSA!

Oh stunning of stunning developments! It's raining again. I think I'll crawl into the Iliad while I wait for the Doctor to arrive. Mother's cough has worsened and it paralyzes me that I can do nothing but spin her verses and tales of a man that I am not.