Title: Ghost (Give Me Anything)
Author: longerthanwedo
Pairing: Spike/Angel, with other past pairings mentioned.
Rating: PG-13
Summary: He was a dead man on death's door, and all Spike could see was the one who had killed him.
Disclaimer: I don't own the characters.
Author's Note: This is a very short fic describing Spike's thoughts as he's dying. It's my first Buffyverse fic, so feedback is greatly appreciated.
Yes, he laughed.
Spike laughed while he burned, while his body crumbled, while his eyes stung. He laughed until his mouth was gone, his vocal chords dust, his bones fallen to the ground. He laughed until he couldn't anymore.
This laughter was odd music, even to Spike's own ears.
His hand had clasped that of the girl he had loved. It had burned and scorched her flesh, yet she wasn't the thought in his mind as he disintegrated. She'd confessed her feelings, and Spike had believed her. He'd believed, but he'd disagreed, watching her eyes fill with tears, watching her run as the walls came down.
And he laughed.
It was odd music. Odd, because he'd loved Buffy. He had loved her, wanted her, dreamed, dreamed, dreamed about her.
Yet Spike laughed because the eyes he saw as the heat in his chest grew weren't hers. They weren't hazel and framed with long lashes. They were brown, dark, cold brown, and they morphed into gold as his vision swam.
He was a dead man on death's door, and all Spike could see was the one who had killed him.
Gold and piercing, the eyes of an angel.
Yes, Drusilla's was the blood that ran in his veins. She was the one who had turned him, but she wasn't the one who had loved him. He was never anything but a pet to her, someone to play with, push and pull, until she tired of the game.
She was never his true sire.
Spike laughed, because with Angel it had been a game as well. A game, well played and sometimes cruel, but mutual, always mutual. He'd reveled in these games, messing with Angel's mind and letting Angel under his skin. It had been a façade, always a façade, smokescreen, but Spike could smell something deeper.
Something in his blood, in his still dry heart. He could feel that Angel was the one, not Drusilla; Angel was the one who had brought him here. Angel was the reason he was dead, the reason for the demon's existence.
Angel had killed him; Angel had made him live.
So long, he laughed, so long it took him to notice this, to really acknowledge this feeling, this burning.
As he burned, as layers were stripped away from him, the golden eyes became brighter. His skin peeled, floated off in the air, and as his heart drew nearer to the surface it screamed for those eyes.
Yes, Spike had hated Angel. He'd hated him when Angelus was taken away, when he'd deserted them, but then it was only the idea. He hated to think that Angel had abandoned him, and maybe, if he let himself feel the truth, it was because he wanted what Angel had.
He could see the humanity in Angel, and he wanted to join him. He wanted to feel the way his sire felt, he wanted to walk alongside him, looking down, scorning the lower creatures, the vampires whose existences were pale compared to his.
He wanted Angel, that was all.
He'd hated Angel because he had Buffy. Yes, he'd wanted Buffy, but more than that he'd wanted the chance. Buffy couldn't love him, but Angel loved Buffy. Spike had thought, gripping his hair, that surely that meant Angel could never love him.
Soulless, laughing, dirty. He wasn't enough.
Burning, burning, he was burning, and now it was because he did have a soul. That shining bright spark, stinging all the while, buried inside him. It tormented him, drove him insane, and he was proud of it. Now he was an equal, Angel's equal, something worthy.
He laughed and thought, it was a shame. A shame he had to die before he could find out what that meant.
He had wanted to speak to Angel, face to face, away from Buffy and the ghost of their love. He wanted to show Angel, say, look, this is who I am. Is it enough? It was all he wanted, and then he could give himself up to the flames.
Spike laughed at the irony of it all. His soul had caused him pain, cost him love, cost him life, and he never got to use it, not really.
Yes, he was saving the world. He was saving all those he'd come to like, love even, over the past years, and he laughed because that should be enough. For someone with a soul, with that piece of humanity, saving lives should be enough.
But the only life he cared about was one already gone. Those golden eyes.
Spike felt his very core crumbling apart, and he reached out with arms that were no longer there. Look at me, look, this is who I am, this is what I'm doing for you.
There was no answer, and Spike laughed because he didn't expect one. He didn't expect one, but oh, how he longed.
Angel, Angel, and Spike faded. He faded, falling back into the flames, into whispers and something insubstantial. He felt his soul too, it spread, spread like a gas and his mind stretched with it, drawing his dust into separate corners of the city, of the world.
Each one, each tiny grain, each one longed.
Angel.