Okay, so this one is incredibly super long (for me, anyway). To everyone, once again, thanks for following my story!
*K
"Buffy, there you are!" "Where did you go?" "We were looking all over for you!" She was surrounded by the words of twenty different worried friends and family members, all speaking to her at once, only adding to the headache the discovery of her letter had planted in her brain.
She held up her hands, silencing everyone at once. "It's… Nothing guys. I guess I just went for a walk. Thought I told somebody. Sorry you were worried," she soothed them, shaking her head. "Angel, Xander, Willow… Can I talk to you guys in Angel's office? Like, now-ish?"
With puzzled looks on their faces and confused glances towards each other, all three followed Buffy willingly enough into the closed off room and shut the door, cutting off the stares of the similarly worried faces of everyone else in the hotel's lobby. At her nod, Willow walked over and pulled down the shades. When this was down, the vampire, the witch, and the… Xander, each turned to the slayer expectantly, looking for a real explanation telling them where she went, why she went there, and best of all, had she found anything?
Sitting at Angel's desk, she sighed and placed her head in her hands, blonde curls sliding forward over her face. The four oldest survivors of the Sunnydale apocalypse stood in silence for a moment, three still waiting for Buffy to tell them what was going on even as she tried to figure it out herself. Finally, she broke the silence.
"Well…" the lead slayer began. "I – Angel, guys. You really don't remember?" They shook their heads somberly, and she sighed again, trying to decide how to explain. "Okay, then. Well, Angel, I came down this morning, and you got a call about a giant demon downtown."
"No, I did –" he began, and she cut him off.
"Yes, you did, Angel. At least, that's what I remember… Anyway, so I brought the team out, and we went to take it down. And I swear, guys, it was, like, mega tall, bigger than a skyscraper, and all scary-like. But we attacked, and it just went down, like, poof! Then it was gone, and everything was normal, and I was the only one there. And the only thing left was this."
Quietly, she lay the note down on the back edge of Angel's desk so the others could see, and read, it. They each took it in, the office filled with silence once more. No one spoke for a while as everyone concentrated on the mysterious words, thinking of their meaning, what the letter could possibly be doing there. It's purpose, and who sent it.
Finally, Willow spoke up. "Return to us?" she questioned in a worried voice. "What… What do they mean?" She frowned, turned to the blonde. "Buffy?"
The slayer shook her head, brow furrowed. "No idea who I'd return to. Half the people I know are dead." She forced a laugh, attempting to lighten the mood.
"Maybe –" Xander began, but Angel beat him to it.
"I know that handwriting," he stared at the sheet of paper, wearing the look that everyone knew to be his thinking face.
Everyone else looked at him, snapping up their heads. "What?" Buffy asked softly, "Angel… Whose?"
He answered slowly but surely, knowing his answer exactly. "It's Spike's. Spike wrote that."
"There," he laughed as he cut off the head of the final hell-beast with his axe, wearing his signature smirk, tongue curled behind his teeth. "Tried telling 'em it was gonna hurt, but no, they just had to fight. Bloody fun, anyway. Glad they didn't take me seriously."
Comfortable in his black T-shirt, jeans, boots, and long leather jacket, the bleach-blonde vampire stepped over the already dissolving bodies of his victims and swaggered past his just-ended war zone and onward beside the bright, radioactively steaming river of lava. To anyone standing ahead of him, his lean form appeared black against the orange, red, and yellow of his fiery background.
The hero marched on, killing any demons in his way, searching for the door to the next dimension, looking for a way to be one dimension closer to his love, the slayer. So far he had only traveled the one, ignited hell, and had already killed hundreds of beasts.
He spit, attempting to rid himself of the burnt taste in his mouth. The taste of fire and ashes, of life, but mostly death. It wasn't completely bad – even though the taste and texture included human death, it also stood for the death of the demons Spike had just killed. And that made him proud. He plastered his smirk onto his face once more, and continued on, still trying to find the edge of the world. Sure, Earth was round – but if Spike knew one thing, it was hell dimensions. And they definitely ended.
And here it was. He gazed up in rare awe at the tall, jagged, gray stone wall. It seemed to go on forever – the vampire couldn't see the top. He'd seen most of the world, including Mount Everest, and this single dimensional wall seemed to go on even higher than that. Luckily, it was only a couple hundred feet wide.
Spike strode along the edge of a wall, searching and rapping on every inch of the wall in an attempt to find the hidden doorway. "Bloody hell," he snarled, "where the hell is it?" Usually magical doorways could be found when they were most needed, or summoned with words in ancient languages. He was in great need, and he sure as hell didn't have any bloody ancient portal-summoning books. He growled, still scouring every inch of the wall to no avail. In defeat, he gazed upwards at the towering barrier. "Damn it, I'm not supposed to climb this bloody thing, am I?" He sighed, ran his hands through his hair, scratching his head. "I guess am, aren't I?" He frowned.
He ran his eyes over the stone once again, this time searching not for a door, but for convenient hand and foot holds. Then he shook his head and sneered. "Wait, I don't need to climb. I'm a bloody vampire!" He backed up about a hundred yards, then took of running toward the barricade, sprinting up the rock, perpendicular to the wall and parallel to the ground.
Suddenly, he felt his momentum slow, and he pushed forward harder and faster, not wanting to fall the thousands of meters back to ground level. Even as a creature of the night, he was stressing his muscles, pushing, pushing, hurting, and sweating. Finally, he reached the top of the wall. Spike wasn't afraid of heights, but when he peeked down over the side of the barrier he had just scaled, he could barely see the ground. He quickly pulled himself back to the level top of the wall, still breathing hard as a habit, as he technically didn't need breath. Taking advantage of an old trick, he kicked a small stone over the side and held his unneeded breath, beginning to furrow his brow when a full five minutes passed and he heard nothing. Double that time later, he heard the tiny but steadily echoing louder click of stone hitting rock. "Whoa," he breathed. "This is a bloody tall wall."
Snickering slightly at his triumph, the vampire turned on his leather boot-clad heel, only to be assailed by a violent burst of white light, which he had to shield himself from. Head turned to the side, hands and arms covering his face, he tried spitting out words as they stuck in his mouth, "Holy, b-bloody hell! W-what the hell is that!"
A flowing, angelic, feminine voice answered him. "Sorry, William. Is that too bright?" The light dimmed to a bearable level, and Spike turned his head back to face the second most beautiful woman he had ever seen, bathed in a shimmering white light. She was very tall, though she may have seemed more so given she was floating a foot in the air, and still slender as a twig. She had white-blonde, straight locks cascading almost to her waist, large, sky-blue eyes, and was garbed in the same toga-like robes and wings that Spike himself had been wearing only days before. The woman smiled, "Ah, I see that's better. Well, hello, William. Honored to finally meet you. I've been sent by the Divine One."
Spike blinked, still adjusting to the heavenly glow. "Uh… Hi. About time, I haven't heard from him in days."
The angelic being's smile widened, "The Creator is neither a him nor a her, William. The Creator is simply an omniscient, all-knowing being that is neither – "
"Male nor female, yeah, yeah, I've heard the speech," he grumbled, interrupting.
"Well, yes, I suppose you have, haven't you, William?" The woman answered with a small smirk. "Anyway. As I was saying, I've been sent from the Greater Being to congratulate you on your success in making it through the first dimension. He is quite impressed, really. You have only three to go before you make it to your home dimension. So we wish to present to you the door to the next plane, and bid you good luck, and fare well." She gestured, a luminescent triangle appearing behind her at the same time as she disappeared.
Spike grinned and walked forward, into the door, enveloped and disappearing into a triangle of bright white radiance very similar to the one the angel had appeared to him in.
There! Thanks very much for reading. So, again, I thankfully accept both compliments and constructive criticism, if you have any to give.
For those following this story, I'll probably update again any time between three days to one week from now.
'Til then,
*K