Author: Stolen Childe
Disclaimer: I don't own, not mine, belong to people who actually are somebody.
Rating: PG-13
Pairing: A/S, S/B
Warnings: slashy subtext
Author's Notes: Wow. This is the first time ever I wrote S/B it's not super Spuffy, I don't think I'd be able to write that, I'm a slasher through and through. This is actually the second part of a three part series, but you don't need the first to find out what's going on. The largest chunk of this story actually happens before the first part Confusion. So please, please enjoy and send pretty feedback. This is kind of odd, odd for me anyways.
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Clarity
Sunnydale, 2002
Buffy lay ensconced in his arms. He still revelled in the feeling of her slight form pressed against him. Her warm body heating his cold dead flesh. Manicured nails tracing random patterns on his pale chest, sending little pleasure shocks rippling through his body. She was perfect, gorgeous, beautiful. He loved her as much as he could a human and she in return, didn't love him. Never had and Spike was beginning to suspect she never would. But for now, the vampire was content with being able to be with her, hold her in his arms as she slept. As she used him for her needs then left to go about her life. That was fine with him.
"Spike." her voice was soft, her breath tickling his chest.
"Hmm." he acknowledged.
"How come you can do it?" Buffy questioned, rising up slightly to be able to see into his eyes. Blue met blue and for a moment, time stopped for Spike.
"Do what?" he asked, once the moment had faded.
"Love." Buffy replied, "How come you can love? Angel could never, never until he had his soul."
Spike sighed, running his hands over his face and into his tousled hair after pushing himself up to lean against the wall at the head of the bed, "Angelus hated everything that made him weak, and Angel hated everything that made him strong. The one thing he hated the most was love. It made him human, made him real, made him a little less demon. Liam had loved and Liam had lost and Liam turned to a life of squalor, scandal and dangerous liaisons. Darla had seen his ferocity and had moulded it into her ideal image. Her own Adonis. Darla made Liam Angelus, Darla made Angelus strong. And Angelus revelled in his new found strength. He was by no means weak as a mortal, but his heart was. It had been stomped and broken. Those he sought, saw him as something less than themselves. Liam was the only and eldest son of a merchant family close to destitute. His father still ran in the circles but he was never fully accepted again. You had to have money to mean something back then. Not much has changed really, has it?
"I had money, I loved a woman who hated me. I was accepted because of who my father had been. But I never belonged. Liam was shunned because of who his father was and he had fallen into a spiral constantly down and never rising. That is until Darla came along and made him strong. For near a hundred years Angelus ruled vampire society. He was marvelled and praised, but most importantly he was feared. Fear is a vampire's greatest tool, fear is what vampires use to get what they want.
"Then his greatest achievement ran into a little rich lad from London. A little rich lad who never worked a day in his life. A lad who had family money behind him and a lad completely opposite of everything Liam had become. For weeks Angelus stocked this lad hating him with each passing day. A shy meek thing he was, wrapped up in fantasy. Mother's perfect boy and head over heels in love with someone he couldn't hope to have. That was the only link that connected them, that one little thing."
"Were you afraid?" Buffy interrupted.
"Hold on Luv." Spike said, more defensive than he had intended, "Wot makes you think this story is about me? I thought you wanted to know about Angelus." Buffy just looked at him and Spike sighed, running a hand through his hair once again.
"No." he replied at last, "I wasn't afraid. Then the fateful night happened. Finally deciding that he would gather his spine up off the floor and confront the woman. Well... you know how that turned out." Spike was slightly uncomfortable, "I was going to die that night. Drusilla tasted me, drank me dry and pranced away to buy a new doll. That's when he found me, lying in a pool of what little blood remained in my body. Big hulking thing he was, with eyes like coal and all malicious intent. He told me he saw something in me. He told me he saw something he hated, something he suffered for everyday. Weakness. That's when he did it. He took me by the scruff slit his wrist with his teeth and told me to drink told me that I wasn't getting out of it that easily. Told me that if he had to suffer for eternity I would be right along there with him.
"I was reborn that night and woke up on a bed of silk with a beautiful dark goddess gazing down at me. She said that I was her boy now and that I would be her boy forever. I was her Sweet William. That day I went down to the parlour, led by my dark goddess and beheld my sire for the first time. Stunning and masculine silhouetted against the large window, standing just out of the pool of sunshine. He took me near him, ran a hand along my cheek and told me that he wanted to hunt with a man. He took my wrist in his master hand, the fledge in me easily overpowered and held my hand in the pool of sunlight. God it burned. It hurt so much. But I didn't cry out. Know what I did? I stuck my hand right back in that pool and we laughed. Laughed at the deviations we had become.
"He took me on my first hunt that night. My first real hunt that is. He taught me how to stock my prey. Which ones to go after and which to stay away from. Then he took me home and on the carriage ride back he asked me why I hadn't been afraid. I told him I was too enthralled to be afraid. He was the perfect embodiment of righteous darkness. He was regal, he was glorious and he was so purely evil that it boiled my blood. Then I told him it seemed I was the deviant. Good little Protestant boy head over heels, no longer with the unattainable, but a demon of a man who had been wicked, Catholic and Irish when he was a human. Mother would have been so proud."
"Okay, the history lesson is good. But you haven't really told me what I want to know." Buffy pointed out, pushing herself up and looking pointedly down at him where he sat angled on the bed.
"I'm getting to it Luv." Spike answered. He was lost in thought for a moment, thoughts that he didn't think he'd have to dredge up again. Thoughts of hot-cold days, cold-hot nights and wonderfully warm points in between. Darkness, Light and Shadow. They were his guides, his masters his saviours. Drusilla, Darla and the magnificent Angelus.
"He grew to hate me. Hate me with every ounce he could. Oh I was evil all right, I was right wicked, I was. But that is why he hated me, he hated me even though I made him strong, even though I attested to his power. He hated me because I made him love me. He could love all right Pet. Love with all the reckless abandon any of us can. But to Angelus, love made you human. Love was a human weakness, love was what he hated. Love was what I embodied, so hate is what I inspired. He only loved one thing in his entire undead existence before he got the soul and you're in bed with him. Remember Pet? Angelus hated everything that made him weak, and Angel hated everything that made him strong." he quoted his own words, "When Angelus came back, on your birthday." Buffy winced and Spike paused for a moment to allow her to collect herself, but she wanted to hear this and he would tell her.
"When Angelus came back. I was everything Angelus hated and everything Angel hated. I was his weakness and his strength. I was blasphemy. His demon had loved me, his soul had craved me. His anger towards me gave him strength. Vampires can love Pet, they can love magnificently but as Dru told you, never wisely. I loved him right back, I wanted him, I needed him, I hated him, I revelled in him I reviled him. He was my judge, jury, executioner, saviour, teacher, master and god. He was everything he could be." He concluded.
"So Angel without a soul cannot love, because he can't stand the thought of it? Because when he does love he hates the humanity of it?" Buffy confirmed.
"You were Angelus's obsession because for the first time in over two hundred years he felt human, he forgot he was a demon, he forgot all the wicked things he had done and he was happy. The only time Angelus was ever happy Pet, the only time he was ever truly happy and it wasn't tainted by obsession, or anger, or bloodlust was when he was buried inside me. Just like the only time Angel was ever happy when it wasn't tainted by grief, or guilt, or sadness was when he was with you. So the demon though loved me hated me and the man though loved you hated you. What you saw, all those years ago, was not my sire, what you saw was..." Spike drifted, "Was what burnt Darla and Drusilla with a cigarette and gasoline. What locked twenty lawyers in a room and let his greatest achievement and his greatest gift savage them. Not Angel, and not Angelus, not Liam. He wore the mask, but he was never them. What you saw was the demon. The true demon." Buffy by this time had laid down next to him once more and was tracing patterns on his chest again. She was listening, of that Spike was sure but she was also lost in dark thoughts of a time when the first great love of her life had terrorized her family and friends all because of her.
"Thank-you Spike." Buffy said, and Spike heard the gratitude in her tone, "For telling me those things." After a moment, when Spike thought she would once more succumb to sleep, she spoke up, "D... Do you still love him? Angel and Angelus?"
Spike chuckled but it was bitter and pain laden, "You speak of them as two separate entities Luv."
"Spike." it was slightly warning, belaying her tiredness. She wanted to know, but she didn't want to play games.
"Yes Buffy." Spike answered, "I never stopped loving him. When he beat be, and tortured me and tore me down, I loved him. Because I knew that the thing that did those things to me, didn't really exist. That the thing that hurt me like that was crazed. And when I taunted him and I tortured him and I strung him up, I loved him. Because I knew I was just angry. That he was the closest thing for me to lash out at and that he had something I wanted. Several things. When he stroked me, and comforted me and took me to heights and places I could not imagine in waking hours I fell in love with him because I knew that, that was him. That the creature who made me suffer because he hated the parallels between us did it to dissuade his own loneliness and anger at his sire. When she kissed him and he kissed me it was full of love, fiery passion and desperation. He sought solace in what he could and in return I sought sanctuary in what he offered. He was mine, he made me but he was mine. My sire, my teacher, my father, my friend, my confidant and my lover. I was his precious boy. His favoured. He hated me because he loved me but he couldn't not love me. I hated him because he stole from me what little life I had. He made the memory of that fatal night burned permanently in my mind. I loved him because he somehow managed to make it all better. We shared our pain." Spike sighed, "And I sound like a Halmark card."
"A very twisted, morbid Halmark card." Buffy teased gently, already halfway to dreamland.
"A very twisted, morbid Halmark card." Spike agreed, "I love you." Buffy didn't reply, Spike knew she wasn't asleep yet and he also knew that even if she were wide awake, she would not have replied. Spike looked out of the window, through the gossamer curtains that he would have to avoid the following day and he sought out the brightest star.
"I love you Sire." he whispered, "Never stopped."
Los Angeles, 2003
Angel looked to his quietly slumbering childe, seemingly lost in pleasant dreams or pleasant memories. He was curled up like a boy in the centre of Angel's large bed, heavy sheets up to his chin. It had taken three weeks, but Angel had managed to help Spike once again glean some semblance of clarity. Spike would not be like he was. Angel vowed, Spike would have him here to help through this. To hold him in the night when the guilt became to much, to soothe him and feed him to just take care of him. To be the sire he wasn't able to for an entire century. He had hated William, he had hated Spike. He had hated without the soul everything that made him weak and with the soul everything he that had made him strong. There had been two constants in his impressive lifetime. His hate of all of his childe's incarnations and his undying, undeniable love for all his incarnations. From gentle poet, to firecracker fledgling, to impudent wayward progeny.
"God Will." Angel whispered, walking over with preternatural stealth to the bed and sitting gently on the dark sheets, "I love you. Never stopped."
End