by Riven
Notes: Excerpts from the poem "Death of a Salesman" by Mainecoon (or rather, all verses except one) are used here with her permission and my gratitude. Thanks, M!
Also, although this is a "post-Gift" fic, I have not actually seen that episode. HOWEVER, I have read enough fanfiction and episode summaries to give what I believe is an acceptible piece of writing. If anybody has thoughts on whether I've managed to pull it off or not, a simple "yes" or "no" would suffice at least to let me know I'm on the right track.
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When there's time to sing of sorrow
And all hopes and fears denied
Are brought forth for your tomorrow,
When the tears that have been cried
All splash down among the lightening
In the dawn of some new day,
There'll be time for other strangers
To wipe every tear away.
Lines of gravestones, all cuddled in the shadows, being held, rocked, comforted. Did the gravestones mourn the dead?
Spike paced slowly, sauntering through the lines of graves. His friends. His companions, these stones. Death was his familiar ground.
It must have been approaching three o'clock in the morning. Spike paused a moment, stood still and silent as the death that engulfed both him and the ground under his boots. His eyes landed on a nearby grave marker. Marble, with green lines twisting in graceful veins until they sunk into the uneven grass and dissappeared. It seemed to glow, this marble... though that in itself may just as well have been a trick of his tears. Raindrops, he told himself. The damned rain tonight.... kept falling in his eyes and...
He shook his head in a movement so subtle it was nearly imperceptable... but then, who was watching? Reluctantly, the vampire pulled a death-cold hand from his pocket. He shook the sleeve over it before pulling it over his eyes.
"Fuck," he murmured. "Bloody... buggering.... fuck." He sniffed and continued to stare at the marble stone.
We are all forgotten children,
We are all lost in the night.
Everyone has tasted teardrops,
Everyone has lost a fight.
We are struggling for dependence
When we want to let it go.
Though we battle to deny it,
We know all we need to know.
"I won't ask why again," Spike continued miserably, addressing nobody in particular. His voice was choked, hollow yet at the same time thick with tears he tried to swallow. "But goddamn, it feels like there's just too many questions in the world... and never enough answers."
The lines in the marble held him, mesmerized him. A maze of shades of gray. The darkness hid any true color.
There is no surprising finish,
No tap number at your death.
There will be no witty musings
As you draw your final breath.
And you won't know that it's coming,
And you won't see darkness fall;
But when death comes, you will notice
That you never lived at all.
Death had been her "gift". Spike tilted his head slightly as if to question the fact. Another tear escaped from the corner of his eye. He brushed it away angrily. "Look, I don't mean to sound ungrateful," he said, "But would it be too much to ask if I requested that my heart was as cold as my body? You'd think..." At this point his voice broke. He squeezed his eyes shut, breaking visual contact with the lines on the marble gravestone for the first time. With a single, shuddering sob he let himself sink to the rain-dampened grass. Not that it mattered -- he was already soaked to the skin. "You'd think," he tried again, "That I'd have learned by now..."
As the cold sank into him, he began to tremble. The lines in the marble still weaved their wavering dance before him, moving and blending and changing even as he watched. "But you didn't want it, did you, pet? You wanted life, but you never got it, did you?"
He began to sway to the imagined rhythem of the marble dance. "You... didn't... get... it..." he sang. His voice sounded terrible, but he didn't hear it. "And now... maybe... you know... what... it's like..." To live in death. To be cold, but to be still able to feel. Ah, what a divine torture that was!
There will be no flying banners,
No champagne and caviar.
There will be no crown of thorns
Or sudden faith in Who You Are.
Death is only a transition,
Like a dream into a dream.
And no matter how you face it,
That is all it's ever been.
As the minutes passed, the only sound the raindrops hurling themselves into the earth and Spike's haggared breath, stifled sobs... Eventually he returned to the world of the living. A world forever shut off from him. A world he had only ever seen through tear-dampened lashes.
He stood. He looked at the marble. Suddenly, he was very tired. Sleep. Sleep, and dreams. This was not Her grave, but it was someone's.
"Well," he sighed. "Here's hoping your death has been better than mine."
And with that, he trudged off to his crypt, with the rain at his heels and the wind rustling his coat.
...