Disclaimer: I own nothing. The post-apocalypse universe and the Hunger Games belong to Suzanne Collins, Spike and other Buffy/Angel characters (and the pre- apocalypse universe) mentioned belong to Joss Whedon. I'm just playing around with them.
A/N: The story takes place sometime during the first book, although I wrote it when I was half way through the second book because I was furiously angry at the unfairness of the Quarter Quell. So I set Spike loose in the Capitol. Made me feel better, but it put Spike in an interesting place, morally speaking - which, frankly, is where I like him. A nice shade of gray.
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Of Monsters
There was a sound, somewhere in the bright night of the city streets. Spike closed his eyes and turned, inhaling sharply. There.
A door in a back alley burst open, and a human staggered out. Smelled of alcohol and sweat and sex. Spike's eyes opened, narrowed and fixed on the brightly colored clothes, the disheveled hair. It was hard to lurk on such bright streets, but he was very old and very clever, and there were shadows even here, in this artificial place. He melted into them, meager though they were.
The shop windows were teeming with life here. Huge, flat screen televisions blared out their messages, twenty four hours, seven days a week. Bullshit, bullshit, bullshit. It was Spike's least favorite time of the year: sodding Hunger Games, which would be funny if he didn't have a soul, but as it stood, they made him sick. Even at this time of night, the televisions were playing.
A girl and a boy—about sixteen, both, and how young that seemed—huddled together, hiding in a cave. You couldn't avoid the Hunger Games, not even in the Capitol, not even if you tried, and damn but Spike tried. The girl in the television was the girl on fire – her name was Parsnip or something, some kind of plant – and Spike liked her, in as much as he could like her while trying not to participate in the whole stupid spectacle.
The human in the alley was giggling. Spike's predator senses sharpened and he swung his face away from the brutal television in the shop window. There. Patter-pat, pretty little heartbeat. It was a woman, and that made Spike cringe, so he almost turned back. He didn't like even the suggestion of hurting women these days, though they'd been the prime target once upon a time, when he had no soul. Stalking was one thing—satisfied some predator instinct in him without bloodshed—but he only finished the job when—
And then he saw her face.
His eyes went furious yellow with recognition. Ah. Well then. That changed the game, didn't it? Drunk on a night like this? Even Capitol streets weren't always safe.
Not even for demons, he reminded himself, taking care to flit shadow to shadow as the woman staggered home, giggling. There were Slayers in this city, too, although the art had long been lost, after the last apocalypse. Most of them did not even know what they were. Still, if Spike was on the prowl, he might run into one. Best be careful.
Spike used to fight for the people. Sometimes, he thought he still did, in his own small way. It was just different people he was fighting for, because the demons were gone and the monsters were human, now.
Sodding apocalypse. The real one, not that rubbish one in the alleyway, so long ago, in those days before Angel went and Shanshued. God only knew what happened to Illyria. Spike was the last demon in the world, seemed like, unless you counted the mutts.
Of course, one man's apocalypse is another man's opportunity. Humanity rose from the ashes, as it always did. Like roaches.
Buffy had had a clear definition of good and evil. Demons bad—people good. And when the people started killing, you left it to the government to sort out. Spike had thought that once, because Buffy, long dead, was still his moral compass, even with the soul. Right?
That was before Panem. He'd lived in District 8, with its warehouses and shadows, where a vampire might be able to do some good, except when he couldn't. People starving, people shot and beaten like the old days of slavery, while Peacekeepers walked among them in their pale uniforms like white, white ghouls. Spike had had friends and a family there, people he'd watched over for generations. Dawn's line, they were, intermarried generations later with the children of the long dead Xander Harris. He'd laughed himself silly the day he realized the truth about Mike's lady love, Nessa. He'd been a good lad, Mike. He'd died during the first war, when the Capitol had taken over—made Spike promise to take care of Nessa and the boys. As though he'd do anything different.
And the family had continued, generation after generation: people who knew what he was and loved him anyway. People who starved and died of exhaustion, whose children went to the Games, no matter how hard Spike fought to keep them safe.
When they had finally gone, the last of them, thirteen-year old Shiv who wouldn't learn to fight from Spike because he was such a gentle hearted boy—killed in the Games and then his mother Molly gunned down, something in him had cracked. He'd killed the Peacekeeper who had shot sweet Molly, his first human in longer than he cared to remember, and he found that he didn't particularly give a damn. There was no guilt, none at all, but his soul was still weeping for his dead family, so it hadn't gone anywhere. He just hadn't cared. The white uniform had fit, the Peacekeeper's blood had been sweet, and he wasn't guilty. He was just blindingly, bitterly angry. Spike took a train to the Capitol after that.
What did you do when the government started killing?
The drunk woman—who was a particularly bloodthirsty Gamemaker, who designed the little, nasty details in the Arena, whose barbed wire trap had, nine years ago, wounded gentle Shiv on live television, cutting him so that Finnick Fucking Odair could follow the blood trail—on the street tripped. Spike grinned with his fangs. He looked left down the empty street, he looked right down the empty street, he struck a security camera with his fist, and then he was upon her.
The Gamemaker's gargled scream cut off when his teeth slid into her voice box and tore. There was blood, of course—he was a vampire, after all, but he drank it down without savoring it. It tasted of chemicals, anyway. She was drunk too, but as it turned out she was a lightweight, so when Spike dropped her dead and drained body with a thunk, he felt pleasantly tipsy.
Only right, really. It was the week of the Hunger Games, after all. He owed it to them.
"Cheers, President Snow," Spike told the nearest television, which had flashed to two brawny boys grappling for a knife. Neither could be more than seventeen. As he watched, the smaller one stabbed the larger one in the eye, and he toppled like a house of cards.
Funny how that made him sick, but the dead woman in the alley just made him satisfied. Maybe Gamemakers and Peacekeepers weren't human, after all. The fullness of his belly begged to differ—only a human could make such a nice meal. He licked his lips. The Capitol truly was a place of indulgence.
A little drunk, Spike wove his way back to his home, a little cellar just off the main pipes that ran throughout the city. All in a night's work.
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