TITLE:
Darkest Before Dawn #15 "Prayer"
AUTHOR:
Nmissi
PART: 15/?
DISCLAIMER: I own Nothing and No one. Especially not Spike. If I did,
what makes you think I'd share him with you?
DISTRIBUTION: Anybody, just credit me and let me know where it's
going.
Feedback: Please. Nmissi@aol.com
SUMMARY: The way the world would work if I wrote the Buffyverse.
She looked deceptively healthy lying
in the bed. Her skin had pinked up with transfusions, and the drugs in her IV
kept her in an unnatural sleep that looked restful. She was Sleeping Beauty,
reclining amid green blankets. The only light present was above and behind her,
bathing her in its iridescent glow, like a spotlight.
Next to the bed, the machinery
beeped and whirred, marking time. In a chair alongside of her sat the vampire,
head slumped forward into his hands. He wore her blood like a souvenir, marking
his clothes with her scent, her humanity.
It was close to sunrise, but he had
not left. Instead he'd pulled one of the chairs in the room over as far from
the window as he could, and had not moved from that spot in hours.
Across
the room, under the window, Buffy slept. A nurse had her brought pillows, a
blanket. Spike had rejected the offer of these amenities.
He was too busy castigating himself
to care if the room was chill, or the chair uncomfortable. He slept in a Crypt,
for chrissakes; he wasn't some soft human. And he wished to God all the nurses
would quit looking at him the way they did. Their sad, soft looks, their gentle
voices…They all thought it sweet, his devotion to the little girl. It was a
sick joke.
He wanted to shout at them, to seize
them by their stubby necks and shake them til their big doe eyes rolled back in
their skulls. He neither needed nor wanted their sympathies.
While he'd been dancing with her
sister, his head full of filthy thoughts; while he was brawling on the floor
with his grandsire, someone had been readying the weapon that fired the bullet
that hit the Nibblet.
He thought of Joyce, and for the
first time, he was glad she wasn't alive to see this.He wondered if she could
see them up there, wherever "Heaven" was, and was ashamed of himself. He'd
failed her. The one person in a century to treat him like a human being, the
first person to care about him since he died- and he'd repaid her trust, her
faith in him, so badly.
He'd been thinking with his dick and
his wounded pride, and he'd let her baby get shot in the back.
Buffy stirred, waking to the early
morning gloom.
"What time is it?" she asked.
"Seven something."
She sat up, shucking off the thin
hospital blankets.
"Ben should be here by two o'clock,
if his shift ended on time."
He regarded her doubtfully.
"How d'you even know 'e's coming?"
She looked out the window, her
thoughts elsewhere.
"He'll come. It's Dawn- He'll come."
Spike shrugged.
"Whatever. Don't know what
good another doctor'll do, though."
He looked hopelessly at the figure
in the bed.
"Is he some sort of specialist or
something?"
Buffy stood up, stretching. The
blood had dried her clothes stiff, and her shirt moved oddly with her.
"No. He's not a specialist."
She looked at him again, walking
over to the bed.
"Spike, how much do you remember
about the night I brought you home from Glory's?"
He shuddered involuntarily when he
heard the name, and a panicked tightness began in his chest.
He struggled to answer her without
looking as frightened as he felt.
"Not much, love; I was rather unconscious for most of
it."
She stood across from him now, stroking Dawn's cheek with
her hand. Her eyes raised up to meet his, as she explained further.
"Ben is special, Spike. He's- Well, he's sort of Glory's
brother."
His stomach turned over, and it felt like a living thing
was trying to claw its way out of his throat. He gasped for breath he didn't
need.
"You're bringing that mad twit's BROTHER here? Oh My God.
Buffy, are you DAFT? What if he tells her about Bite size, what if he-"
She soothed him in soft, reassuring tones.
"Spike, He helped me get you and the Bot into the car
that night. He helped get us out of her house. Believe me, no one wants Glory
gone more than Ben does."
He stilled his nerves. Relax, Spike, Relax. The Slayer is
a bright girl, she knows what she's doing.
"I still don't understand, slayer- So the bitch Goddess
has a brother- what's he going to do for the Nibblet?"
She reached across the bed, taking his hand in hers.
"Well, the way he explains it, Glory's is a Goddess of
the moon, she inflicts Moon madness- she makes people crazy. But Ben, he's a
God of Healing. That's why he works as a doctor, here in our world- He can heal
people. I'm going to see if he can heal Dawn."
She took in their disarray, and finally noticed what they
smelled like.
"Spike, maybe we should go home, get changed, before he
gets here."
He finally realized they still looked like they'd been to
a charnel house. His vampiric senses should have been repulsed by the scents of
drying blood, rancid beer, and gunpowder residue. But only now that she pointed
these things out to him, did he notice them.
"I'll go move the car around, into the garage."
They were parked out on the street, in the daylight. At
least the garage was dark, it should afford him some protection.
"Give me about fifteen minutes, then come downstairs.
I'll try to park by the elevators."
He flipped her his carkeys wordlessly, and watched her
leave.
He was alone now, with the girl.
His mind raced through images of her, as he'd known her
in her short life. Laughing in her mother's kitchen, needling him while they
broke into the magic shop. He could see her eyes, round like saucers, as he
told her his stories and scared the bejesus out of her.
He remembered the confusion and anguish in her eyes when
she'd come to tell him about Joyce, and his heart hurt.
Long, thin fingers dug through his hair, finally meeting
in his lap where he twisted them, wringing them nervously in his lap. Joyce. It
always came back to Joyce.
She should be here. If she were alive, this would never
have happened, the Nibblet would have been safe at home, snug in her bedroom,
instead of in a Los Angeles bar depending upon the protection of Monsters.
It had been over a hundred years since last he'd felt the
urge to pray, to anything. But this morning, in a hospital room in the city of
Angels, William Walthrop, Spike the Vampire, bowed his head and stumbled over
his words.
"Er. A-hem. You up there- Whoever you are. This is Spike.
Umm, William, Walthrop. We haven't talked in a good long while."
He broke off his impromptu prayer and wished for the days
of rosary beads and rote recitation. It had been a damn sight easier than this.
" Listen, I know you don't owe me a damn thing, evil
sonofabitch that I am. I'm not one of your creatures and I haven't been for a
long time. And I have no right to come asking you for favors."
He
looked at the child on the bed, her dark hair spread like a silk curtain
beneath her, so young, so lovely. The sight of her emboldened his nerve, and he
continued.
"
But She's innocent, Lord. She's good and sweet and her sister needs her. I need
her. Okay, scratch that- My needs aren't exactly your problem anymore. But
little bit here, she's special. Not just because she's some sort of
supernatural entity. Like you give a bloodydamn about that, anyway. But because she's a wonderful girl, God.
She's got such potential… I want to see what she grows up to be, want to see
what she can do for the rest of the damn world. It'd be tragic if you take her
out of it, really. S'not like humanity's got all that much going for it anyway,
why d'you want to take the best ones? I mean, you already took Joyce. Wasn't
that enough?"
The
sun light was filtering in through the window, and outside he could hear the
noise of the street. The world went on outside, but for him, the world stopped
inside this room.
"
So I'm making a one-time offer, here. You give her back to us, whole and
healthy, and I'll do anything you ask me to. Anything you want. You want me to
take a noonday stroll? Done. Go vegetarian? No problem. I'll live on cowblood
til I dry up and blow away. You want me to go all poofy, don the cape and
hairgel and go work for Angel? In a second. Just don't take her away, God,
please. Don't take her, and don't punish her any more."
He was weeping now that there was no one to hide it from.
Just God, well, and maybe Joyce, but she'd seen it before. He prayed with a
fervor his mortal self had never known, prayed with human desperation and human
love. And hope came to him, amid his fevered promises, beating in his breast like a heartbeat.
He was too busy praying to notice it was his own.