Ten Thousand
by wisteria

9. The Balkans



There were bad times. So many of them, but oh, so many good times too. In his hopeful moments, he liked to think that she remembered them too.

Transylvania sped past outside the window. Spike wanted to see it, mostly because of the ironic humor of a vampire returning to where it had supposedly all began. He knew better, but the idea amused him. Less amusing, however, was the glow of the midday sun behind the burnt-orange sheet he'd stretched over the window blind.

Every few hours, a knock would startle him, and with a glare and a growl, he'd pull open the door just enough to see out. Yanking it open had a better dramatic impact, but burning to ashes in the sunlight beyond was the kind of drama he didn't care to experience. Most times it was an EU customs official who would glance at his fake passport then move along. Sometimes it would be a clueless tourist thinking Spike's private couchette was up for grabs, but a pointed glance and a look of "you fool" usually set the tourist straight. It was lonely, but he almost welcomed the distractions. No dining car, no way to view the scenery except at dusk and dawn. Just Spike, alone.

Forty-three hours on a train, and he had little to do but read, sleep, and remember.

The train rumbled underneath him. It was a workers' train, not posh by any stretch of the imagination, and it soldiered onward through Bulgaria, Romania, Hungary. He'd been there before, a century ago, when everything changed for Angelus and psychically scattered their little family bonds – if they could be called that – to ashes. Past glories were only worth remembering if you could look upon them with fondness, and those hadn't been the best of times.

His senses were attuned to each movement, each shake of wheel on rail, even more than his vampire senses usually afforded him. The feeling of being cocooned in this couchette enhanced them. Nothing to see, so his ears and muscles picked up each sound and shiver. Every so often, it would shudder around him like an earthquake.

As the train approached Pleven, he remembered another earthquake. It had been one of the good times.


She was so soft that night, and it had surprised him, but not really. He'd seen it coming in the week since her birthday. She acted mostly cheerful at the party, but when he saw her on patrol the next week, her eyes had been darker than usual. "I feel older," she'd said, "and I don't know what to do about it."

They'd fought together instead of against one another, and took out three demons and a fledgling vampire. When the dust had settled, she followed him back to his crypt but stopped at the door, her palm against the wood. He watched her from a few feet away, and he wondered if she was remembering that night when it all went to hell. Sensing her was second nature, and as they'd stood, palm-to-palm then, he'd felt her at war with herself. He wanted to ask if she was still at war, but he knew the answer.

He stood there, waiting to see whether she would push the door open to strip down and forget with him, or if she'd run away like she so often did. But she surprised him by turning her back to the door and sliding down it until she was crumpled like a rag doll. Wouldn't ask for it, of course, but he slithered down next to her and was shocked when she leaned her head on his shoulder.

"How do you live forever?" she whispered. When he didn't respond because he didn't know what to say, she continued, "My life – it just keeps going on, and I don't know when the end is going to come again." A hollow laugh, then, "Again. How warped is that? I die, and I'm pulled back. That's happened twice now. We dusted that fledgling tonight, right when she'd been brought back, and I can't help but think that it's over for her but it's never going to be over for me."

If she had told him at that moment that shoving a stake into his chest would make her feel even a little bit better, he would have handed her the wood. Instead, she turned her face and pressed a kiss to the side of his neck. He closed his eyes and absorbed the touch, as soft as air and as piercing as the way Drusilla had bitten him and brought him to death and back again.

Then the earth moved beneath them. It was a small quake as ones in California went, but it broke the quiet and sent her tumbling into him. Reflexes made him grab her and hold her close; she was so strong, but he had to protect her, and he didn't know if it was protection from the quake or from herself. All he wanted was for her to be happy, safe from herself. She began to cry, and he soothed her with soughs of breath and the rhythm of his hand stroking her cheek.

Through her tears, she whispered, "Bring me back to life, Spike." His heart broke for her, and he remembered singing that if his heart could beat, it would break his chest. She shattered and rebuilt him on a daily basis.

Her fingers pulled at the buttons of his shirt, and he took her inside and down the stairs, then laid her out on his bed like a tapestry. His hands, his lips, his whole body worshipped hers, each inch of his dead flesh sparking life in hers. When she finally cried out under him, she felt so alive that he almost felt like he'd succeeded. She clutched at him and he thought, 'I can do this for you. It's all I have to give, and all you'll want from me.' But it was still so much more than he'd ever dreamed of having, and in that moment, it was enough.



Spike opened his eyes and shivered, even in the stuffy couchette. So good, that night had been. He treasured it selfishly, a small tingle of guilt at feeling such happiness when she was so low.

Each one of those times they made love, had sex, whatever it could be called – they were good memories. It had been so black-and-white for him. If they were good, then how could she see them as anything different? He didn't really notice it until that night in her bathroom when he did that to her – he still couldn't bear to put the legal term to it – but now he thought he understood.

Maybe she had been right when she said it was killing her. He'd hated her with a blinding fury for a day after she called it off. How could she possibly think that? Those nights had been so good, damn it!

Yet he remembered the night of the earthquake. Bring me back, Spike. Make me feel again. Back then, he thought he was making her feel love. Now he realized he was just making her feel alive. He still believed that she loved him, but it wasn't enough. When he brought her to climax, he could help her to feel alive and vibrant, but he couldn't break through to her heart. She wouldn't let herself give that power to him.

Buffy was still a fledgling, dying and coming back time and again, both in body and spirit. And now he wasn't there to bring her back.

He stared at the orange glow of the sun behind the curtains. He hoped like hell that, whatever was happening in Sunnydale right now, if she was dying then someone else was there to bring her back.

Tonight, thousands of miles away from her, all he had were memories. Though he knew many were bad, some of them were so good that they still made him shiver.

The train rocked side-to-side underneath him, and he remembered.





Someone pounded at the door, and Spike yelled, "Occupied!" in English or one of the few fragments of Romanian squirreled away in his head; he didn't know which. Brain wasn't cooperating well at present, skittering off into a dozen different directions, a hundred different memories.

That was when he realized that he was brooding.

Brooding. Imagine that.

Best not to imagine it, though. The one thing he'd vowed to himself when he stepped on the plane in Los Angeles was that whatever might happen, he would not turn into Angel. He refused to become mired in remorse and guilt, longing to change things that could never be changed.

As the sun behind the heavy shades shifted from afternoon to dusk, Spike pondered this problem. What was brooding, anyway? He'd always avoided people who did that sort of thing. The vampires and demons with whom he spent the past century were wild and hardly introspective. They reveled in the kill, the sheer exhilaration of being on the cusp of forever. Too many things to do, too much fun to be had to spend any time moping and regretting. He never saw them regret, nor did he think twice about anything he did. The idea was foreign, incomprehensible.

He remembered all the times that Buffy told him he was incapable of love because he didn't have a soul. Such an assertion was completely daft. Loving was what he did. It filled his body. It was his soul. Drusilla took the soul away the night she killed him, and the hollow space it left was filled with an overwhelming passion for everything she gave him. All the new colors of the world, the tang of blood that danced through him as he inhaled and drank. The way she touched him, let him love her.

The train rocked underneath him and he thought about Buffy's mantra. Realizing that he understood her now surprised him. Oh, he still thought she was completely wrong, but he knew now why she said what she did. It was what she had to believe to do her job. If the soulless were incapable of having true feelings, then they were expendable in the name of saving humanity.

Okay, I'll grant her that, he thought. Easier to dust a vampire if she believed that it was merely a killing machine. God knows he was damned lucky to have escaped dusting all those times before the chip.

The problem was that he had been so good for her ever since that night of his dream epiphany. Loving her was motivation enough to turn his back on it all. She couldn't love a killer, so he wouldn't be a killer, even if he could.

Spike thought about all the people who had banged on the couchette door over the past fifteen hours, and how they'd irritated the hell out of him. If he could kill them for daring to disturb him, would he? Wouldn't have given it a second thought six years ago. If Drusilla were around, she'd have taken out half the train by now. He'd seen her do that enough times, and he'd gleefully joined in.

If he could kill again, would he?

No.

Each official who knocked on the door to check Spike's passport was just doing a job. The tourists who barged in were looking for a place to stay. The idiots didn't bother to notice the "occupied" tag on the door latch, but that didn't make them worthy of dying.

He wondered what made someone worthy of dying. What did it take? Spike remembered sitting in Giles' house watching television in those ghastly days just after the chip. Some blokes were debating capital punishment on CNN, and the whole idea of it grated on his nerves. "Oh, please," he'd sneered. "You humans think killing is wrong. Whatever. But you're going to kill some git just to prove that it was wrong for him to kill someone else? That's a bloody stupid idea."

Giles had stared at him for nearly ten minutes, until Spike finally growled and said, "What?" The subject was dropped. It was all just logic to him. The demon inside may have sloughed away his soul, but it didn't throw out his intellect.

Now Spike realized that logic was to him what humans called a soul.

Huh. Imagine that.

His mind went back to Angel. Bloody fool, with his furrowed brow and "woe is me" attitude. Never gonna be like him, Spike reminded himself. Then he remembered that the attitude and brow were what Buffy held up as proof of Angel's worth.

Shit.

Spike began to pace around the tiny compartment, though it was barely more than two steps back and forth. What the bloody hell was he supposed to do? Go back to Sunnydale and say, "I'm so sorry that I killed all those people, Buffy. I shall cry and furrow my brow and beat my chest to show you how much I regret it?"

Bugger that.

Then he realized the scope of the problem. What's done was done. Yes, he killed. No getting around that. It was what vampires did. Bloodlust, the demon imperative, and all that. Mourning and brooding wouldn't bring them back, would it?

Spike scrunched up his face, pouted his lips, and looked down at the floor. Damned good Angel impersonation, he had to admit.

He couldn't see himself in the reflection of the glass, but he just knew how ridiculous he looked. The mental image made him burst into laughter. He could just see himself whining "sorry this" and "forgive me that" like an idiot.

God, he was in a mess. If he wanted the girl back, he'd have to brood. Spike grinned. Yeah, and if he did that, she'd take one look at him and fall down laughing at how stupid he looked.

"This is me," he proclaimed to the imaginary Buffy standing in front of him. "Got a soul. Not going to kill. Don't even want to anymore. But don't expect me to brood. Never gonna happen."

His shoulders felt lighter, and his chest puffed up.

It didn't even begin to solve his problems, but as the train rumbled under his feet, he thought just maybe he was on the right track.





Even the stale air inside the train felt fresh as he made his way along the corridor. The train refused to give him any allowances; he jerked side to side like a drunken sailor. Best thing about lack of circulation was that he wouldn't be sporting any bruises from getting tossed into a wall when the train bounced along the tracks.

He jangled through car after car, trying to find the source of the loud laughter that had finally beckoned him out of the awful couchette. When he finally found it, he had to stop and stare.

"I'll be damned," he muttered to himself. He didn't think the train had a dining car, but there it was. If he hadn't given up Christianity when he was turned, he would've fallen to his knees and prayed.

Suddenly he felt like a git as he stood there, trying to find a decent place to sit. Too many memories of standing at the front of the dining hall all those decades ago, terrified of being rejected by classmates. Bugger that, Spike thought. He sprawled out on an unoccupied bench. Go where I please, do what I want, and if you don't want me around, tough.

Calling it a "dining car" did it a disservice. A dozen or so picnic table-ish benches were crammed into the car, and a man in a ratty uniform sat at one end, smoking with one hand and holding onto a cart handle with another. Spike didn't bother going over to see what was for sale. He'd had Hungarian food before, and didn't care to repeat the experience, though not for lack of taste. No matter how gloriously spicy the paprika was, he wasn't in the mood to have it sloshing around inside him.

He surveyed the occupants and found himself wanting to talk to somebody local. Didn't know why, except that most everyone he'd talked to in the past two weeks spoke English, and the idea of trying to carry on a conversation using the approximately twenty-seven Hungarian words he knew was appealing. Unfortunately, all the locals were busy conversing in groups and didn't look like they wanted company.

Spike shrugged and pulled a flask of blood out of the pocket of the jacket he'd bought when the train stopped in Sofia, Bulgaria, and he'd ventured across the street from the station at dusk. It was ugly, practically military-looking, but at least it was a change of pace.

When he clued into the conversation at the next table, he nearly groaned. Bloody American backpackers. He'd seen tons of them back when Drusilla and he were there five years ago. They all tasted of stale beer and the bread and fruit they squirreled away in their backpacks because they were too cheap to spring for decent meals.

And they were loud too. He could smell the red wine on one of the kids' breath as she said, "You know what I miss most? James Earl Jones saying 'This is CNN.' I don't even like CNN, but for some stupid reason, all I have to do is hear that in my head and suddenly I'm ready to hop the first plane back to Georgia."

Spike laughed in spite of himself. When he looked up, the kids were staring at him.

"You American?" one of them asked.

He stopped and thought about that for a second. "Yeah, from California."

"No you're not. You're from, like, England or something, aren't you?" Spike would've dismissed the kid as an utter imbecile if he didn't know that the boy was probably too drunk to form coherent thought.

"Is that a problem?" Spike taunted, but he found himself turning around to face them, drawn into the conversation.

The girl's face broke into a grin. "Nah, it's cool. You can talk to us if you want."

"Thanks ever so," he muttered in response, but they didn't seem to pick up on the sarcasm.

"What's your name?" the girl asked.

Might as well play the Englishman to the hilt. "Alistair."

Her smile grew wider. "Nice to meet you! I'm Heather, and this idiot who thinks he's my boyfriend is Trey."

They started talking again, laughing at some obscure joke, but Spike tuned out the conversation. He examined the girl's face. Must be about twenty-two or so, same age as Buffy and her cartoon pals. But there was something different about them. He could feel the souls inside their bodies, all airy and carefree. The whole world in front of them. Stealing away for a few months to travel Europe before going back home and starting office jobs or starting a rock band, whatever. No worries at all beyond whether they could find a cheap youth hostel in Prague, and if Daddy would yell at them for maxing out the credit card.

Spike drank blood from his flask while they downed red wine and what was probably cheap vodka in tacky souvenir shot glasses. Heather and Trey were caught in the glories of reminiscence, and he found himself drawn into the conversation when they began debating which of two crap rock bands was better. Spike spoke up in defense of the Ramones, and they just rolled their eyes at the old guy who wasn't "with it."

Once that would've angered him, but now it was just amusing. Something about the blitheness of their youth was endearing, but he couldn't pinpoint why.

As the train rumbled through Hungary in the wee hours of the morning, he let himself get caught up in that ephemeral sense of youth and glee.

He'd felt this way before – at the Bronze, shooting the shit with the Scoobs last summer, playing poker at Buffy's birthday party – but it just felt different now. Maybe that was the soul too. It helped him see these drunken, foolish kids for what they were, not as a meal or an annoyance. And he could see them: the mistakes and triumphs of their pasts, and the glittery thread of their futures unspooling before him. They reminded him of Buffy, Xander, Willow, even Dawn, if all of them hadn't gotten so damned caught up in Hellmouths and vampires. Things would be so different in a world like that. Spike wouldn't have Buffy, but she could be normal. Happier.

Heather lit a cigarette and offered Spike one. He took it from her, then he was surprised when she leaned forward, assuming that she would just light it as he inhaled. When he did so, they made eye contact and he saw the innocence, the life in her gaze.

The moment snapped back like a rubber band, and she smiled at Trey as if nothing had happened. Maybe nothing had, but the look of her eyes filled Spike's mind.

He remembered the sound of Buffy's voice as she whispered, "How do you live forever? Bring me back to life, Spike."

Life was all around him in this rickety dining car coasting along the Trans-Balkan railway. It was in the way the two backpackers couldn't stop laughing, and in the way everyone was waiting to get to their destinations so they could leave the train and go on with the business of living.

In that moment, he wanted more than anything to see that look of innocence and life in Buffy's eyes. He knew it would never be in his, and he felt a sudden fear that she was too far gone, too hopeless for that. How could a girl who begged him to bring her back to life ever feel innocent?

Alhough he knew better on an intellectual level, something in his soul gave him a surge of hope. It made anything seem possible.

He wanted to be the one to put that look in her eyes.

He wondered if he could.




END, Chapter Nine

wisteria@smyrnacable.net