Title: All the Small Things
Disclaimer: Still not mine. Joss's, M.E.'s. Playing purely for my own amusement with no money offered or taken.
Warning: Angst and darkish themes
So, Angel had stolen Shanshu.
They had fought side by side.
Through the heat of the battle they had stayed together, screaming out their defiance through the blood and the smoke and the stench.
And then the sickening sound of wood striking flesh. Followed by that moment when the wind dropped, silence fell and all combatants held still… or maybe all that had merely happened in Spike's imagination, a stunned millisecond that stretched into aeons before the moment exploded to dust and the battle crashed and broke around him.
Spike had lived. Angel had died.
Except that wasn't quite right, because when you came right on down to it, it was Spike who was still dead, whilst Angel now lived. Lived and breathed. Had a heart that pulsed blood, blood that delicately burnished pale skin, soft skin that was warm to the touch.
"What do you want, Spike?"
"Are you enjoying it then?"
"What?"
The one word sounded almost petulant and Spike raised an eyebrow and then shrugged and humoured him.
"Life."
Angel grunted and Spike fell into step beside him.
"Wasn't sure if you would still remember me, thought maybe you'd been wiped clean, what with rebirth and all."
"No." Angel remembered everything. He wished he didn't.
The monosyllabic replies began to grate on the vampire.
"You've put on weight."
If that didn't earn a few words then this was no longer the Angel that he knew.
"Yeah well, what d'you expect? Had to build up my strength. Human now."
The way he said the word human sounded weird, but his face stayed neutral and Spike let it lie.
"You still go out fighting demons?"
"It's not a question of going out and fighting. They know who I am, Spike. Who I was…. Anyway, I don't have any choice in the matter. No point regretting anything, it's about working with what I've been given."
Despite protestations to the contrary, regret was palpable. Spike frowned. There was something odd here.
"Yeah, and you've been given life."
The words almost caught in his throat they were so goddamned painful.
Hunching his shoulders he lit a cigarette and used the seconds to compose himself. Life. Spike had wanted it so much, yearned for it. To walk the streets in the bright light of day, to see blood and know pity instead of lust, to be innocent once more. But, as usual, he'd been found wanting and Angel had been blessed with it instead. Yeah that one had been more than a body blow. What did he have to hope for? What was there to strive for? There was just the never ending task of saving all he could, giving hope to others and holding none for himself.
He narrowed his eyes against the stream of smoke and self-pity.
"Yes. Life," Angel confirmed. "And I intend to live it. I don't belong with the dead things any more."
Spike blinked at the spite in the words and then left without looking back, ignoring the call that followed him as he melted away.
Angel wondered why he'd lied. Somehow fighting demons seemed the easy bit, the threat of death bringing him spinning to life. It was all the small things that weighed him down with their sheer pettiness and stupidity. Not belong with dead things? He had never felt so heavy and lifeless.
He stared blankly at the empty space that Spike had occupied only seconds before. Breathed in the lingering smoke and wished.
It was another five years before they met again. The change in Angel was shocking.
He looked gaunt. His eyes were bright and dilated, flickering restlessly over the never changing figure.
"What the bloody hell are you on?"
Angel giggled, "Spike did you know you have skin like snow?"
"Huh?"
"It sparkles like the morning frosts we used to get in the old days. York in January, the Minster gleaming like a fairytale palace, you remember? Your laugh would ring out clearer than the bells. You said it was our city, we belonged. We were the evil that haunts the fairytale."
"Christ, how long have you been doing this shit?"
"Who cares? I'm living the way I choose. I want to swallow up life. Die from too much living!"
"You got the dying bit right." Spike had never seen a death wish burn so bright.
He grabbed at Angel's arm and tore back the sleeve.
The tracks flared angrily down the veins.
"Why? Why the hell…."
He was so enraged, he wanted to bite and ravage and kill. He'd had to come to terms with losing Shanshu, took it heroically, harboured no resentment… but now to see it squandered!
Angel put a hand to Spike's face forcing him to look into his eyes, willing him to understand.
"I'm weak. It makes me powerful again."
Spike ducked away from the warm hand, took him by the shoulders and shook him like a puppet. Angel, helpless in his grasp, began to laugh as Spike neatly illustrated the point.
"Stop! Listen to me. When it first happened I thought the process had made me ill, disabled me in some way. I'd lost half my senses, my eyesight, my hearing, my sense of smell were all so inadequate. I was frail, I was breakable …. Who the hell are you to judge? You can't begin to imagine it!"
"You've been given a second chance you bloody moron! You're vibrant and alive!"
"I only seem so to you because you look me with heightened senses. I have a pulse, a heartbeat, I breathe, I sweat, I shit. It's overrated."
"You're an ungrateful prick, Angel. How dare you? How dare you piss it away! I'd have given anything…." Spike was almost incoherent with anger and disappointment. He took a deep breath. "You stole it from me, sire and then you…."
Angel's eyes softened.
"That's the one thing I'm thankful for. At least I saved you from this."
Spike stilled and cocked his head. Blue eyes focused intently on brown, drilled through the surface until finally striking the dark well of truth that Angel held in his heart.
"It's that bad?" he asked quietly.
"Yes."
Spike shook his head at how shot to pieces everything was. But what did he know, Angel was right, who was he to judge?
"So this is it, yeah? This is how you want to be? Living life on the point of a needle?"
"No. I want to be Angel, and I find him briefly when I stab into my vein."
Spike knew then that he wouldn't leave his sire by himself to dwindle to nothing; he'd been too glorious for such ignominy. He gave a sigh.
"What do you want from me?"
"You already know."
Spike nodded.
"You want to become Angel one more time?"
The only response was the human taking his hand and pulling him close, holding him. Spike shivered to his warmth.
They ended up in Spike's apartment. Angel looked around and found remnants of his old life littering the corners. Carefully collected, maybe even treasured, and each of them triggered recollections of who he had once been and what he had stood for. A card with something that looked like a squiggle, Angel Investigations, the Hyperion, we help the helpless, Cordelia and Doyle… he blinked away memories.
A bit of masonry was being used as a doorstop, Spike saw him look at it.
"Yeah, all that remains of the LA branch of W&H."
Oh god. Fred, Wesley, Gunn. It was too much.
Spike watched the clouds pass through his eyes.
"They're safe now, in whatever heaven humans go to."
Guilt and misery hung heavy in Angel's gut as he remembered all those he had cared for and lost. Guilt because they had wanted to live, and he was casting aside what they so desperately tried to cling to.
"Don't fret it, Pet."
"I've not made a good human. Where will I go when I die?"
He had his hands in his pocket and his gaze to the floor. Defeat was sketched in every line of his posture but still he held it together and Spike felt a flare of pride for him.
"I don't know. Hey, maybe if it's hell, we'll meet again."
Angel nodded and then pulled down his collar. "Do it now."
Spike turned on some music and it rolled through the apartment.
"Come to me then, Luv."
The pierce of the needle, he now realized, had been nothing but a poor substitute for the real thing. The fangs penetrated him and he could have cried at the rightness, and now, as the blood flowed, Spike bombarded him with images of his Sire, how he'd looked when he was fighting, the mischievous grin that tugged at his lips, the powerful body moving on adrenaline and rage. Angel was high again, on the life that had once been his.
More tender images followed. Himself sleeping, waking, stretching, smiling, hair tousled and eyes languid with sleep. Then the feel of Spike's body covering his, worshipping, whispering words of adoration, which in reality had never been spoken….
"Love you, Sire."
He tried to say the words back, "Love you. Love you, Childe," but was uncertain if they'd been heard.
Spike's mouth suckled against his heated skin. This was the feeling Angel had spent five years looking for, and here in this place, in this moment, he was Angel once more, soaring high on life, with his childe at his side. He felt powerful again, in a way no drug could ever replicate.
"If you stayed with me maybe I could do this, maybe I could live…" he thought.
"You'd resent me, you'd hate me, you'd beg me to…."
It was true, one day he would have given in and demanded that Spike give him back his old life, needing the power more than he needed his soul. How well this childe understood his weaknesses.
"Are you sure you want this?"
"Please."
The tempo changed, and Spike's feeding began in earnest. Angel could feel cold tears on his neck as the music played on, but it was Spike's farewell he heard in his head, reflecting the mournful words of the song.
He managed to find the strength to bring one hand up to cradle the blonde head for one last time, and gently echo Spike's words back to him, where they reverberated long after the body had gone cold, lingered until nighttime was eaten away by dawn, and with the glint of sunlight shearing the horizon so their last shared memories drifted to ash.
All the moments known only to them were lost and gone.
And as dust swirled around them, people would hear the strains of immeasurable sadness carried on the breeze and hold tighter to those they loved as words of love and loss gusted around them, mere ghosts of the emotions that spawned them.