Author's Note: Set, somewhat nebulously, between The Girl in Question and Power Play. Purely self indulgent. Including the excess of Macbeth references. I'm a little sorry.
It will be rain tonight. –Banquo
Let it come down. –First Murderer
Macbeth, Act III, Scene III
Angels are bright still, though the brightest fell. –Macbeth, Act IV, Scene III
Eight years of fighting, and it would always come to nothing.
He'd known that for a while, or known it, but when it was staring you in the face just how little you'd done in eight years… Nothing matters but the lives we destroyed. He'd said that, hadn't he? To Spike. Cordelia would have objected to that, or Wesley.
But Angel knew the right of it. Those were the ones he remembered.
He'd done this for a reason. Made the sacrifice, paid the price, gained his son a new life. And he had meant it, about turning this place around and doing some good with it.
Although now some part of him wondered if that hadn't been just a platitude to make himself feel better for his devil's bargain, and he hadn't always known that this was going to fail.
All the sacrifice, and this was where it led. Who cared about sacrifice, after all? Who cared about giving up love, giving up his son, his friends. What did any of that mean? What had it ever meant?
Eight years, and Angel wondered if he'd ever not been losing ground. Fighting to remain distant from Buffy. Failure. Fighting to keep Buffy safe from himself. Failure. Fighting to give her a normal life and love…
Buffy gyrating with the Immortal in Italy.
Failure. He'd left a mark on her too deep to forget, and then another in abandoning her, and what good had it done? She'd still died. She'd still suffered. She'd never cared for normal.
And then Doyle, and then Darla, and then Cordelia and Connor and Fred. He was losing Wesley. Maybe had already lost.
"Quiet night."
Angel didn't turn. "Spike." His. His offspring, his mirror, his rival, his fellow warrior. Sometimes Angel thought about telling Spike that he was worthy, that he reminded Angel of what he had been once, before the losses and the pain and disbelief had ground him down to nothing. He thought he knew, now, which vampire-with-a-soul would be rewarded. Maybe he had always known. "What is it?"
"Nothing important. Just thought I'd come see the office. Old time's sake."
"Ah."
"Quite the response you've got there. Clever, yet subtle. I'm impressed."
Tomorrow, he thought, and tomorrow and tomorrow, creeps in this petty pace from day to day. "I'm afraid I'm not in the bantering mood, Spike."
"Haven't been, lately. If I weren't me, I'd be worried."
"Good thing you're you."
The first line of Macbeth's soliloquy, Angel remembered. She should have died hereafter. He thought of Fred. Handsome man saved me from the monsters. Hadn't he warned her? Hadn't he warned them all? (They never listen. They never learn. All their misplaced trust.)
"Angel…" Spike sounded uncertain. Angel glanced at him, finally. Wondering what Spike saw. I hope you get what you deserve someday, Angel thought, and there was no rancor in it.
"Be quick, Spike. I'm going to sleep."
"Yeah, sure," Spike's voice was caustic. "If by 'sleep' you mean 'brood.'"
She should have died hereafter. Cordelia. Cordelia who had been so full of life and verve and energy, who'd slipped quietly into death with hardly even a sound. If he had known earlier, realized earlier what had happened…
Would she have survived? Maybe, maybe not. There was still more he should have done.
"You going off the deep end?" Angel blinked, briefly puzzled by the question, startled out of his gloom for a moment.
"What?"
"Always was a bad sign when Angelus got quiet. Quieter. Haven't forgotten that."
"Then perhaps you should go." It wasn't Spike he wanted. He wanted Buffy and her warm embrace, her sweet smell and her heartbeat. You can do this, he wanted her to say. You're a champion. A warrior. You can bring them down.
Spike was standing next to him now. "Nah," he said. "I'm not too worried. Always weathered it before, and I don't think you're going to kill me. Whatever you're planning, I'm betting I'm part of it."
Angel let his eyes fall half closed, and said nothing. His redemption. A trail of dead bodies. He wouldn't lose Connor, though, and everything else he'd already lost. Spike was very still.
"You're not going to do something stupid and go off on your lonesome, are you?" He asked, suddenly, brash and harsh but still recognizably concerned, and Angel turned his head just enough to stare. "Cause you've kind of got that look on."
Angel breathed out through his nose. "Spike," he started to say, and heard the note of brittle glass in his own voice.
"It's not worthless," said the younger vampire, suddenly, in a rush. Angel turned his head just enough to stare at him, and Spike looked back, the set of his jaw stubborn and determined. He remembered that expression well. Angelus had hated it.
"What are you talking about, Spike?"
"What you're doing – did. Here. Not too shabby, all things considered."
Does that include the bodies? Suppose we asked them. "Mm," Angel said instead, noncommittally. Not worthless, perhaps, but worth the price? Perhaps, perhaps not. They hadn't been his lives to lose.
"You managed some real things, even from here. Would have thought that was impossible."
It'll all come to nothing. Like everything else. Like all my fighting. "Your expectations are low." It just slipped out, heavy with rank bitterness and anger, and Angel turned his head away, back at the window, back at nothing. Life's but a walking shadow. Out, out! brief candle.
Will all great Neptune's ocean wash this blood clean from my hand?
Spike snorted. "Maybe yours are too high. Always were, even when you were evil."
"Spike," Angel said, and heard the snarl without having summoned it. "I don't want - -not now."
His childe's voice softened, ever so slightly. "I'm not here to bother you. Well, only a little. Mostly to talk. Thought we might. Wanted to see what you were doing."
"Who put you up to this?"
"No one put me up to this. No one puts me up to anything. Can have my own mind, can't I?" Spike moved away, even his booted feet muffled in the thick carpet. "Want to know something I never told anyone?"
"No." Angel thought of the liquor cabinet. Thought about getting pitifully drunk. But no, he needed to be lucid now more than ever, vigilant, alert. There wasn't any time for wallowing. No time for anything. Certainly not time for this…whatever Spike was doing.
"Didn't actually go through the trials to get my soul, you know. Or at least, didn't think that's why I was doing it. Wanted to go back to what I was before the chip. Didn't work out that way, of course, and maybe they just saw something in me I didn't realize was there. Dunno how that thing works."
Angel turned his head enough to see Spike sitting on his desk, swinging his legs. "I wasn't all that surprised when I heard, you know," he said, finally, not sure why. "You were always more human than the rest of us. In your way."
Spike seemed taken aback. "That's all? I tell you the soul I lorded over you wasn't something I asked for any more than you and…what?"
"What do you want, Spike?" Angel asked, feeling heavy and tired. "You did ask for it, after a fashion, or you wouldn't have it. Like you said, someone saw something. What you could be. Something. It doesn't matter anymore, anyway."
He could almost hear the frown in Spike's voice. "Does anything?"
Angel rubbed his forehead, feeling a twinge of both annoyance and sorrow. Of course not. "Of course things matter. What kind of a question is that?"
"Yeah?" There was a strange note to Spike's voice that Angel didn't recognize. "Say we win. What would you do then?"
We're not going to win. Angel blinked, slightly, and realized he didn't have an answer. Go to Buffy? Buffy had moved on. Move to a new city and fight on? Maybe. He didn't really think so. There would be no redemption, no Shanshu, no future. Just this. All his friends, dead or dying. The only thing he could see ahead was death. Sooner rather than later, even his own.
I have liv'd long enough. He'd liked that play, once. Darla had liked it more. It seemed to be in his head today, and Angel wondered why.
He realized too late that he'd delayed too long. "Uh huh," Spike said, and there was derision in his voice, but maybe with a touch of compassion. "That's kind of what I thought. Not looking much ahead, are you?"
"Living day to day. That's me."
"No," Spike corrected, "That's me, actually. You were always the planner, always looking ahead for your next big trick. Got nothing left, though, have you? That how you're thinking?"
"Don't pretend to analyze me," Angel snapped, but the hollow space in his chest knew that Spike was right.
"Fine, I won't." Spike shoved his hands in his pockets. "Just…" His expression spasmed. "Nah. Never mind. You look tired."
I am tired. Deathly tired, Angel thought. Liv'd long enough. "I don't see why it-"
"Matters?" Spike interrupted, and Angel turned to see a gleam in his eyes, like he'd just proven a point. Perhaps he had. Angel couldn't care. "If you're planning to go out in a flash-bang, Angel, I'd like to know."
It took him a moment to realize that Spike had addressed him by name. Not even Angelus, by name. The thought confused him. "You'll know as soon as everyone else," he said, and then Spike was right in his face.
"I'm not everyone else, you ponce. What aren't you telling me?"
Angel gritted his teeth and took a step back to get some distance. "Nothing important. Spike…" he took a breath through his nose, a longstanding habit when he needed to gather his thoughts, himself. "I'll tell you. Soon, all right? I'll tell you everything, soon."
"You git," Spike said, with a touch of savagery. "As good as a 'yes, I am planning to go down in flames' that is."
He raised his eyes and looked at Spike, willed him to understand. "Spike," he said, half desperately, and the younger vampire finally lowered his eyes.
"Don't want you dead anymore," he said, suddenly, like it was a revelation. Maybe it was.
"I'm glad to hear that," Angel said, only a touch sardonically, and thought for a moment that Spike would start a brawl with him. He would have welcomed it. Maybe he even would have won. Spike snorted again.
"You're a piece of work. And a wreck. Don't think I can't tell. The others would know too if they weren't so busy with themselves."
"And you're not?"
"Course I am. But I know you better, too." Spike rocked forward on his toes. "Been a wreck for months now, I think. Getting sick of balancing on that edge?"
I'm just tired, Angel imagined saying. I'm sick of all the grey, sick of all the fighting when it's all useless. Sick of all the dying. I need it to be over. Flash-bang. He imagined telling Spike his plan now. Maybe letting himself be talked out of it. Maybe coming up with a better idea.
"I'm getting along fine."
"You used to be a good liar." Spike found a chair, sprawled in it. "What happened?"
"A lot." Angel left it at that. He wasn't sure what had happened, anymore, sometimes spent days or nights trying to map out the road that had led him here, and where he might have turned to stop it. Maybe he never should have let Doyle creep into his heart in the first place, or Cordelia. He certainly should have staked Darla rather than letting her into his bed, and spared them all the pain, Connor included. Maybe he never should have followed Whistler out of the alleys in New York.
Become someone. Ha! He didn't like the someone he was now any more than he had back then.
"Fine," Spike said, "Don't answer questions. Or just answer one." He leaned down. "Are you planning something?"
Spike was very close. He smelled like – well, Spike. Cigarette smoke and leather and maybe motorcycle oil. Maybe a little of sweat and alcohol. For a moment, Angel thought about grabbing him, pulling Spike down on his lap and screwing them both into oblivion. A moment later the thought was gone, though a piece of it lingered like a smell. Like Spike. "Yes," he breathed.
Spike's mouth flickered. He could probably smell Angel's lust, no matter how flickering. "Don't leave me out of it," he said, voice husky. And then smirked. "One for the road," he said, and his lips mashed against Angel's, his tongue flickering along his lips, and gone before he could part them or make a sound, only watch as Spike sauntered for the door.
It is a tale, told by an idiot, full of sound and fury-
He sat down slowly, thought about Spike, and regret, and Buffy, and loss.
-signifying nothing.