Disclaimer: None of the characters are mine… If they were this wouldn't be fanfiction --- and I'd be the one making money. sigh
Author Notes: FEEDBACK APPRECIATED. Heck, maybe it'll help me get out of my melancholic rut.
KINDRED SPIRITS
I was finishing some paperwork (long overdue…) when I sensed something familiar: Vampire. Casually drawing a stake from the desk drawer, I pretended not to notice. Let him come to me.
He'd waited until I was alone. Must have been a reason. I had to know what it was.
My senses were running so high that I was startled when he actually knocked on the door. And then I heard him say, "Angel". Not "Peaches". Not "Poofter". Not even "Angelus". Angel. What was he after? Why had he come here? Now? Needless to say, I was suspicious but then I looked at him as he cautiously stepped into the light of my office.
Standing there, he looked so pale and thin. Even for him. His skin: almost fragile, like porcelain or rice paper. His hair has grown, and but for the tips, gone is the platinum blond. Perhaps it's the contrast between the now tawny hair and his ivory skin that made him seem so pale. That wasn't it though. He probably hadn't eaten in days… maybe longer.
He was hesitant about getting too close --- and I, about having him much closer than he was --- and that's when it struck me that it wasn't just his appearance that had changed. His demeanour… He's lost the old bravado, the posturing. This was a side of Spike I've never seen… and I thought I'd seen it all. Angry and spiteful. Mocking and playful. Proud and joyful. Scheming, deceitful. Excited. Fearful. Even tender. But this was different. His spirit (for lack of a better word) had been broken.
I invited him to sit, offered him some blood, and after a few moments, he began to open up. He told me the tale of his past few years --- Sunnydale, the government chip, Buffy, leaving, going to Africa --- and tried to explain, as best he could, why he'd come to me.
We had been in the office for hours. I knew that soon the others would be arriving for work and that it would probably be best all around if Spike, well… wasn't. So I offered him a room upstairs where he could rest for the day. Quietly he accepted my offer with a "Thank you" and I left him.
***
Now I sit here, trying to work but I can't stop thinking about him. My knuckles are still sore from the moments when he stopped talking because I started hitting… before letting him continue.
I know he didn't want to come to me. He said he had nowhere else to go. But I know the truth: he needs me. He needs my help. I am the only one in the world who could possibly have any idea what he's going through… I've lived through it myself. Hell. I live it everyday.
It's rough: regaining a soul after more than a century of murder and mayhem. That he would CHOOSE such a thing to me seems unfathomable. God knows, I didn't choose this. It was far easier to live without the conscience… Being a vampire who can't bring himself to feed off the living makes "life" a challenge. But I suppose he's had a few years to adjust to that at least.
Part of me wants to help him. Maybe that's the part that feels the blood bond we share. He is, after all, my Childe. I feel some sort of obligation to him because I am in some way responsible for what he is. I made Drusilla for my own amusement then cast her aside. She made him so she'd have something of her own.
Maybe it's the part of me that empathizes with his plight. I know things have been hard for him these past few months and that this burden will weigh on him for a long time. Forever, perhaps. I know because like him, before I was cursed with this soul, I had spent more than 100 years committing all manner of heinous crimes. Perhaps some I can write off as necessity. I am, after all, a vampire and I did have to eat. Self-preservation… But a lot of what I did before the soul had nothing to do with survival. It still shames me to think about it now, but I tortured, and raped, and slaughtered as entertainment. For sport, for God's sake! I can't say for sure what Spike got up to over the decades after I left him, but I can imagine… and I dare say, he relives those memories every day. That they haunt him.
Maybe I find some kind of comfort in knowing I'm not alone in the world anymore. I'm not so unusual. There IS another of my kind. Another vampire with a soul. And in that respect too, he's family.
But for all the reasons there may be to help him, part of me simply can't forget what he tried to do to me. Having a soul doesn't mean you automatically "turn the other cheek". He had me tortured! Chained up. Run through with fiery hot pokers. Burned by the sun… Yeah… part of me would just as soon toss him out on his ass.
***
We have a lot in common, he and I. Of course, we are both vampires. Both sons of Aurelius. Both struggling with our souls. Both yearning for the glorious comfort that comes from the warming taste and sensation of fresh flowing human blood. Something… SOMEONE to sink our teeth into… and both full of self-loathing for it.
Being souled vampires and enduring the daily struggle because of those souls, our blood-line, our shared past… that's not all we have in common. We've both loved the wrong woman. The SAME wrong woman. WRONG. How could it have been anything else? WE are vampires. SHE is the Vampire Slayer, the killer of our kind. Yet here we are, two old masters having loved that golden dangerous beauty that is Buffy Summers. Both having chosen some path to redemption… for her.
I don't really know the details, when or why Spike fell in love with her. I don't know whether his motives for doing good were genuine. I don't think it really matters… What I do know is that from the moment I first saw her she saved me from myself. Maybe it was the same for him… and maybe that will make his journey to find balance with his soul easier… or quicker at least.
Funny… that part of what we have in common is also what most separates us: Buffy. I'm jealous of him. I had only one night and one day with her --- a day she can't even remember and a night that I wish she could forget. I know the aftermath of that night scarred her… the hurtful things I said to her after we made love. I tell myself it wasn't really ME, but I hurt her all the same: I saw the heartbroken look on her face when the cruel words came out of MY mouth. With Buffy, Spike had months. Months spent kissing her, holding her, being with her…
But I know, he's jealous --- maybe resentful is a better word –- of me because I've heard from her lips words of which he's only dreamed: I love you.