"The Waiting Season (3/3)"
By: Annie Sewell-Jennings (anniesj@comcast.net)
*****
Chapter Three: All the Waves Breaking
*****
"All around me are familiar faces
Worn out places, worn out faces
Bright and early for the daily races
Going nowhere, going nowhere
The tears are filling up their glasses
No expression, no expression
Hang my head, I want to drown my sorrow
No tomorrow, no tomorrow"
--Gary Jules, "Mad World"
*****
Spike is beginning to wonder if perhaps regaining his soul has cost him his sanity.
Why else would he be running down the beach naked as a jaybird, a bottle of whiskey in one hand and his boots in the other, giggling like a madman? He can't think of any reason other than utter craziness. "Lost the plot, old man," he titters to himself, lips numbed from too much whiskey and blood running too fast through his veins. "Bollixed it all up right and proper... Right and..."
He forgets the rest, and that does not matter either because damned if Spike does not remember everything else. Remembers it all, bugger it to hell and back, from that first moment in the alley to that bloody bathroom with those cold, cold tiles. All of these things just keep rushing at him from all sides, and the only way to deal with the sheer speed and lunacy of it all is to get and stay pissed beyond all belief.
//"You look tired as hell, honey," the woman at the bar says, cocking her pierced eyebrow at him as he desperately downs another shot of tequila. He doesn't reply, doesn't bother because everything that would come out of his mouth will be totally useless anyway. Just ignores her and pounds his fist on the table for another drink, because he'll start thinking about that waitress in Calgary with the nice big tits and the pretty throat he slit...
"Yeah," he croaks as she pours him another shot. "Real tired."//
Not now, of course; now, Spike's bursting at the seams with alcoholic energy, giggling and stumbling along the rocks without any certainty whatsoever to his steps. The night's so hot along the Pacific, unusually hot, and he's fine with that as long as it doesn't bother him on the ride home. Just a two hundred miles north of Sunnydale, he is, and he's nowhere near ready to go back. Nope, not a bit, and that's why he's been staying in Rosetta for the past seventeen days.
Cause if he goes home like this, he'll kill himself.
The waves and wind howls at him, stripping him of his bare skin and throwing him to the sand, where the world turns upside down and spins unpleasantly around him while Spike scowls and clutches his suddenly throbbing head. They're everywhere again, surrounding him on all sides, attacking from the ocean like fucking soldiers of Bad Choices Past. All of these bloody ghosts, right bastards that they are, whispering in his ear about everything that he's done to them and their precious families. It's madness, he thinks, schizophrenic delusions that must be ignored completely...
//"Do you remember me, William? The mother that you left behind when you decided to become a man of ill nature? Do you recall the family that you abandoned in favor of massacring the populace and destroying your good name? Oh, the future you might have had, my boy, if you were not such a pigheaded fuck-up..."//
"Stop it!" Spike yells into the wind, throwing a sloppy handful of sand at the mocking stars. Woozily, he pulls himself to a splayed but sitting position, one bare foot submerged ankle deep in a tidal pool, and his head spins with the force of the whiskey and too many regrets.
It's been like this since that blasted cave, ever since he woke up from his haze and felt the weight slam down on his heart. Stumbling, fumbling, staggering, Spike made his way from the cavern and into the moonlight, abandoned and disoriented, collapsing on the sand much like now. Sand stuck to his wounds, stinging and blistering, and it was nothing compared to the slicing, burning fury inside of his newfound soul. All that he'd done, all that he'd damaged and destroyed, and that massacred Atlantis was rising in his mind. Dreamboat history, ship of nightmares.
And he sees her all the time.
//The back of her neck, bent forward and exposed by her upswept hair, beaded with sweat as he pulses inside of her, pushing and thrusting while she shudders and moans under her breath. All the while, he tells her nasty things, tells her how she's just a thing of shadows like him, a dead thing like him, a monster like him, and she takes it all like it's medicine. Swallows the bitter pill of her desire, lets her knees tremble and her body sing, and the whole time her head dips lower and her heart sinks...//
Pained, Spike twists and turns on the sand, covering his eyes from the memory of her sweat-laden neck, the muted whimpers and hopeless sighs, all of her fading into nothing because of his stupid, thoughtless words.
Buffy is everywhere, haunting him as he drives home. He sees her as a ghostly hitchhiker on the road, wearing the dress that she was buried in and sticking out her thumb, trying to get a ride back to heaven. She's the nameless girl in the bar who takes shots of hard liquor that she can't handle, giving him eyes like she can't handle him, either. And always, always his companion for dreams.
//Lying naked on her belly, back exposed and covered in ink. Shorn hair flying away from her face in a crown of stubbly blonde, scalp bleeding from where the scissors cut too close. "You're killing me," she says in a dull, empty voice. "You're destroying me with every passing moment, and do you care? Oh, so what that you got a soul? It's not like it's going to help me now. I'm too far gone for you. Bye-bye, Buffy. Thanks for murdering me. It's all I wanted from you in the first place."
And then he sees that the ink is not black; it's red, and it's coming from her because his paintbrush is a scalpel and he's just cutting out chunks of her flesh. All for the sake of the four words written over and over into her skin, and as she turns to glare over her shoulder with dead, corpse's eyes, he reads it aloud:
"You'll feel it again."//
Another swig of whiskey, bracing and blistering, and Spike's falling back on his elbows, his head all sore and heavy from too much booze and brooding. He's not supposed to be like this, disoriented and dismal, weeping over spilled milk like a right nance. That is Angel's lot in life, to mope about atoning for the sins of the world and being wretched, and Spike's not having any of that. At least when he's grieving, he's messy and loud about it, screaming his outrage and torment into the night sky with a bottle of Jack in one hand and a fist for the other.
"It's not supposed to be like this!" he yells, stomping his foot in the sand with indignation. "Fucking..." He falters for a moment; who's he yelling at again? God? No, not that. Spike is an atheist in the truest sense of the world, because God's not any fun and life isn't the same without a spot of pleasure every now and, well, now. Oh, right then. The soul. He's yelling at himself. "Stupid bloody me! And stupid... Stupid fucking *Buffy*!"
Yeah, that's right. That's more like it, Spike. It's all her fault anyway, what with her undying goodness and her stupid, vapid virtue. All of her damn morals, trampling his undead body with her high horse as she rides off into the sunlight, taking everything that he loves about himself with her. If it wasn't for her, he'd be happily slitting throats and slaughtering the innocents, right alongside his princess, and not longing for the reigning Queen of Pain.
"Should kill you," he slurs, groaning as he pulls himself to his feet. He sways for a moment, then takes another bracing gulp of whiskey and starts to stumble down the beach. "Yeah... Should just go ahead and do it, do it good..."
//She screams, her arms flailing and her eyes filling up with tears, and she's shaking her head and trying to wrench herself away from him. Always fighting, stupid bint, fighting what's got to be inside of her. Love, this kind of love, this kind that eats up everything else and then destroys, destroys, destroys...//
A wretched moan slips out of his mouth and he's back on the sand again, his face crumpling up as drunken tears spill out of his eyes. He's always doing this, going mad with memory and then sobbing like a right wanker. Always crying, because he can't keep the balance between what he is now and what he used to be. Because he does not know what this soul will make of him, what it will change him into, and there is nothing scarier than change like that.
The waves continue to pound at his naked body, lapping at his skin and stinging the lingering wounds from Africa, and Spike doesn't care. He merely wants to sleep, to let it go, sink into the abyss of unconsciousness and not wake up ever again.
But of course, he dreams.
The desert stretches out as far as his eyes can see, brilliant and scorching, the winds creating absent and meaningless patterns in the glass landscape as it shifts and moves around him. The sun is high in the sky, but his skin does not burn in his dreaming daylight, and he swears that he can hear Jim Morrison crooning drug-addled insanity in the background.
"This is the end... My only friend, the end..."
In a billowing sweep of white linen, she descends from the middle of the desert and into the sands, her hair flying on the wings of the wind, all pale skin and hair, bleached out by the ivory gown. Midriff exposed, voluptuous breasts enticingly insinuated by the low cut of the garment, diamonds and stones embedded into her skin so that she shimmers as she walks. The Doors continue to play on, and when Morrison hits the crescendo, an explosion of white feathers bursts from where she stands, and she's before him suddenly.
Tara, lady of the desert sand.
Confused, Spike gives her a deadpan expression as she dully looks back at him, and when it is clear that she offers nothing, he shrugs and reaches for his pockets. Oh, of course. He doesn't have any because he's naked. Rolling his eyes, he arches his scarred eyebrow at her and sighs. "Got a fag?" he asks, and she does not respond. Frustrated, Spike grunts and plops down on the sand, scowling at her in disgust. "Well, was worth a shot, right?"
"Everything's worth a shot for you," she then says, and her voice is calm and serene, evoking images of placid Pacific waters and calm, soothing skies studded with starlight. It occurs to him that this is a dream, a strange and silly dream full of gratuitous nudity and blatant _Apocalypse Now_ rip-offs. He thinks that if he can just find the jukebox blaring this Morrison crap, he'll turn it to something especially vicious from The Clash and dig up some smokes. Yeah, that would be about right. "There is no jukebox. Do not look for it."
Spike rolls his eyes and wishes that the dream had also transported his whiskey. Precognitive dreaming requires a good pint of solid Irish liquor. "Right," he says flatly, and then he drums his fingertips on his knees, sitting Indian-style on the uncomfortable desert floor. "So, let's just cut to the chase, pet. What sort of nasty event are you giving me the eye for? Another apocalypse? Some more murders from the good old days? Oh, wait. Let me guess. Another image of Her Lowness suffering her pretty little head over me. That's always a good one. Chart-topper and all that, but I usually don't get such a choice soundtrack."
Sighing, Tara's blank and blunt demeanor is suddenly stripped away from her along with her billowing white robes, and she's suddenly sitting before him in plainclothes, looking more like herself with her blonde hair loose around her shoulders and a blue shirt and jeans. She's more comfortable and accessible in denim, and she sits down across from him, holding a yard of the white fabric in her hands. "Here," she offers in that tentative Tara- way of hers, giving him the white linen. "You're kind of naked. Do you...?"
The wind picks up the edge of the fine fabric, tossing it every which way, and Spike stares at it blankly for a moment, seeing something interwoven with the tiny white threads. It's the story of his life, from infancy in the hands of the nanny to the darkness of the cave, and he sees every etching come alive with the perfection of memory. His mother scolding him and ripping apart his poetry, the look of disinterest on Cecily's china features, the sound of bone snapping as he twists the Slayer's neck, the smell of his only great love as he lowers his head between her thighs, and the way that she cries as he tries to destroy her...
Beyond him, in the desert, there are things rustling and moving with insect noises, skittering and scampering in the dust to escape his watching eyes. There is a boy in a sandbox far larger than the landscape, holding a plastic shovel and glaring at him sullenly, his head bald and his breath reeking of radiation. He sees Willow in the far distance, draped in jewels that threaten to drown her, and she is weeping because she is sinking underneath the weight of rubies and emeralds. Beyond them all is the sound of calculating, velveteen laughter, wrapping around his brain stem and controlling his actions.
"No," Tara says sharply, and she quickly drapes the cloth over his eyes, over his naked body, fashioning some sort of garment out of the fine, snowy linen. "Don't look in the desert. There are things that you can't control out there. Time and destiny are not for you to see. Let the seers see them."
"Am I not a seer?" he asks in a strange, clipped voice. Culture sometimes seems to flow out of him at odd moments, ruining his rebellion against high society with awakenings of his own boyhood of wealth and fine education. Gruffly, Spike clears his throat and tries to leer at her, arching his eyebrow and pouting his lips. "Can see 'bout everything you've got to offer... Forget the old bra this morning, witchlet?"
Cocking her head to the side, Tara seems amused by his efforts, but not in the manner that he was aiming for. "It's hard, isn't it?" she asks. "Hard to try and see where you end and the soul begins. But it's okay, Spike. You don't have to try. It's all so easy if you just... Let... *Go*."
She brings her palms to her mouth and blows sand in his face, but it is not sand. It's just dust, the ashes of some sacrificed vampire, and Spike recoils briefly underneath the scent of his own self, destroyed by the Slayer's stake. All of his history scatters on the arrogant planes of his face, and he sees all of his sins unfurled before him like an ashen rose in bloody bloom. All the faces of those he has murdered, those he has raped, those he has shattered and ruined.
They are all around him in the desert, surrounding him and astonishing them in their sheer mass. Hundreds of thousands of people, standing in the desert in utter silence and desolation, dressed in the bloodied clothes he'd killed them in. Ghosts, phantoms, transparent and gray, filmy figments of history undone. Gasping, Spike recoils and swallows hard, looking around him in horror. "All of them," he whispers, feeling sick to his stomach. He had no idea that there were this many, so many people, more than a million and they are all staring at him, their killer, while the Beatles sing along with their misery.
"Let me take you down, cause I'm going to strawberry fields... Nothing is real..."
He cannot take it. He cannot take their eyes on him, their dead eyes and bloodied wounds. Whores he's fucked and then destroyed, the crotches of their revealing dresses all stained from the horrible death he gave them, little children missing fingers and heads, and their mothers holding their amputated hands and cocking his head at him. //Why us? What did we do that earned us this death? We are mothers, wives, husbands, fathers, sisters, brothers, and we are human like you once were. Why?//
As Spike lowers his head and covers it with his hands, he starts to weep like always, like his tears are going to turn back time and take back the killings. Like crying will magically revoke all of his errors and mistakes and give these people their lives back. It does nothing, and he does nothing but sob.
Gentle, loving fingers twine through his hair briefly, and Tara is soothing him, murmuring into his ear and embracing him with her warm arms. "It's okay," she murmurs into his ear, brushing her cheek against his. "Let it go, Spike. There is nothing that you can do for them. What's done is done, and you can't bring them back. Death... It's like that. It's kind of permanent. That's how things should be."
"You don't understand," he pleads, burying his face into her neck as she rocks him. "It's not... I did these things, these terrible *things*, and I didn't know it was going to be like this and God, Tara, what Buffy... What the others..."
"The others don't know things like this," Tara murmurs into his hair, stroking his back and pressing kisses on his skin. "It's over. What happened to them, what happened to... It's over. There is nothing that can be done about it now. Death is inevitable. It's final, no matter how badly... No matter. It's over. Let it go."
There is an immeasurable sadness in her gestures, in her very state of being, but there is enlightenment, too. She's always been like that, the wise little sorceress with her scented candles and magic eyes. Likes her, he does, and he wants to hold her and comfort her because there's something warm and brilliant within her. He wants to give her all of the love that he knows he's capable of, shelter and protect her, and when he wraps his arms around her body, she smiles.
"Yes," she encourages, letting him hug her, letting him comfort her. "That's it, Spike. Let go of the past. It's done, and it's over. There are things in the desert that you can't see, but you have to go home and fight them. You are full of love. Love will lead you to your gift."
She pulls away then, and oh, Tara is bleeding. There is a blossom of blood on her left breast, spreading and dripping, and he stares at her with a shattered feeling inside of him as she smiles tearfully at him. "You're bleeding," he says, reaching his hand out to add pressure to the wound, to try and save her life, but she shakes her head, stilling his hand with hers.
"Don't worry about it," she says, but her voice is shaking. "I... It's not important. What's done is done, and what shall be shall be. You're going to go home, Spike, where she needs you, and you'll love her. It's why you did this to yourself, right? So that you could love her?"
Yes. He forgot about that somewhere in the middle of grief and alcohol, that shady and necessary mission statement that he'd tried to hold onto when he left the crypt on his bike. Was doing this for her. So that she could be loved and not hurt, cherished and not destroyed. A smile spreads across his face, and he nods his head. "Yeah. That's right. So that she could be loved."
The desert is suddenly empty again, and the music is gone, leaving only the austere sound of wind and sand as Tara stands in front of him, draped in white linen like before. No more denim and cloth, just this ethereal beauty and diamonds in her skin. She smiles down at him, and then bows down to kiss the top of his head. "You'll be fine," she whispers. "She's waiting. Go home."
When he wakes up, he finds himself dressed and lying beside the motorcycle, though he does not remember ever grabbing his scattered clothing or carrying his drunken ass back to the bike. Doesn't matter. He's got plans now, got a purpose, and he's got just two hundred and fifty miles back to Sunnydale before he sees her face again.
Grinning that mad-dog, feral smile that Spike loves best, he looks up at the sky and sees the stars blinking above him. He hops on the motorcycle with a jaunt in his step that's been missing ever since Africa, and smirks at the horizon.
"Spike's coming home, baby," he smiles. "Wait for me."
*****
"And I find it kind of funny
I find it kind of sad
The dreams in which I'm dying
Are the best I've ever had
I find it hard to tell you
I find it hard to take
When people run in circles
It's a very, very mad world"
--Gary Jules, "Mad World"
*****
(end)
*****
Next up -- "Waking the Dead". Feedback would be lovely. And thanks muchly again to Devil Piglet and to those great writers and readers over at Television Without Pity.
By: Annie Sewell-Jennings (anniesj@comcast.net)
*****
Chapter Three: All the Waves Breaking
*****
"All around me are familiar faces
Worn out places, worn out faces
Bright and early for the daily races
Going nowhere, going nowhere
The tears are filling up their glasses
No expression, no expression
Hang my head, I want to drown my sorrow
No tomorrow, no tomorrow"
--Gary Jules, "Mad World"
*****
Spike is beginning to wonder if perhaps regaining his soul has cost him his sanity.
Why else would he be running down the beach naked as a jaybird, a bottle of whiskey in one hand and his boots in the other, giggling like a madman? He can't think of any reason other than utter craziness. "Lost the plot, old man," he titters to himself, lips numbed from too much whiskey and blood running too fast through his veins. "Bollixed it all up right and proper... Right and..."
He forgets the rest, and that does not matter either because damned if Spike does not remember everything else. Remembers it all, bugger it to hell and back, from that first moment in the alley to that bloody bathroom with those cold, cold tiles. All of these things just keep rushing at him from all sides, and the only way to deal with the sheer speed and lunacy of it all is to get and stay pissed beyond all belief.
//"You look tired as hell, honey," the woman at the bar says, cocking her pierced eyebrow at him as he desperately downs another shot of tequila. He doesn't reply, doesn't bother because everything that would come out of his mouth will be totally useless anyway. Just ignores her and pounds his fist on the table for another drink, because he'll start thinking about that waitress in Calgary with the nice big tits and the pretty throat he slit...
"Yeah," he croaks as she pours him another shot. "Real tired."//
Not now, of course; now, Spike's bursting at the seams with alcoholic energy, giggling and stumbling along the rocks without any certainty whatsoever to his steps. The night's so hot along the Pacific, unusually hot, and he's fine with that as long as it doesn't bother him on the ride home. Just a two hundred miles north of Sunnydale, he is, and he's nowhere near ready to go back. Nope, not a bit, and that's why he's been staying in Rosetta for the past seventeen days.
Cause if he goes home like this, he'll kill himself.
The waves and wind howls at him, stripping him of his bare skin and throwing him to the sand, where the world turns upside down and spins unpleasantly around him while Spike scowls and clutches his suddenly throbbing head. They're everywhere again, surrounding him on all sides, attacking from the ocean like fucking soldiers of Bad Choices Past. All of these bloody ghosts, right bastards that they are, whispering in his ear about everything that he's done to them and their precious families. It's madness, he thinks, schizophrenic delusions that must be ignored completely...
//"Do you remember me, William? The mother that you left behind when you decided to become a man of ill nature? Do you recall the family that you abandoned in favor of massacring the populace and destroying your good name? Oh, the future you might have had, my boy, if you were not such a pigheaded fuck-up..."//
"Stop it!" Spike yells into the wind, throwing a sloppy handful of sand at the mocking stars. Woozily, he pulls himself to a splayed but sitting position, one bare foot submerged ankle deep in a tidal pool, and his head spins with the force of the whiskey and too many regrets.
It's been like this since that blasted cave, ever since he woke up from his haze and felt the weight slam down on his heart. Stumbling, fumbling, staggering, Spike made his way from the cavern and into the moonlight, abandoned and disoriented, collapsing on the sand much like now. Sand stuck to his wounds, stinging and blistering, and it was nothing compared to the slicing, burning fury inside of his newfound soul. All that he'd done, all that he'd damaged and destroyed, and that massacred Atlantis was rising in his mind. Dreamboat history, ship of nightmares.
And he sees her all the time.
//The back of her neck, bent forward and exposed by her upswept hair, beaded with sweat as he pulses inside of her, pushing and thrusting while she shudders and moans under her breath. All the while, he tells her nasty things, tells her how she's just a thing of shadows like him, a dead thing like him, a monster like him, and she takes it all like it's medicine. Swallows the bitter pill of her desire, lets her knees tremble and her body sing, and the whole time her head dips lower and her heart sinks...//
Pained, Spike twists and turns on the sand, covering his eyes from the memory of her sweat-laden neck, the muted whimpers and hopeless sighs, all of her fading into nothing because of his stupid, thoughtless words.
Buffy is everywhere, haunting him as he drives home. He sees her as a ghostly hitchhiker on the road, wearing the dress that she was buried in and sticking out her thumb, trying to get a ride back to heaven. She's the nameless girl in the bar who takes shots of hard liquor that she can't handle, giving him eyes like she can't handle him, either. And always, always his companion for dreams.
//Lying naked on her belly, back exposed and covered in ink. Shorn hair flying away from her face in a crown of stubbly blonde, scalp bleeding from where the scissors cut too close. "You're killing me," she says in a dull, empty voice. "You're destroying me with every passing moment, and do you care? Oh, so what that you got a soul? It's not like it's going to help me now. I'm too far gone for you. Bye-bye, Buffy. Thanks for murdering me. It's all I wanted from you in the first place."
And then he sees that the ink is not black; it's red, and it's coming from her because his paintbrush is a scalpel and he's just cutting out chunks of her flesh. All for the sake of the four words written over and over into her skin, and as she turns to glare over her shoulder with dead, corpse's eyes, he reads it aloud:
"You'll feel it again."//
Another swig of whiskey, bracing and blistering, and Spike's falling back on his elbows, his head all sore and heavy from too much booze and brooding. He's not supposed to be like this, disoriented and dismal, weeping over spilled milk like a right nance. That is Angel's lot in life, to mope about atoning for the sins of the world and being wretched, and Spike's not having any of that. At least when he's grieving, he's messy and loud about it, screaming his outrage and torment into the night sky with a bottle of Jack in one hand and a fist for the other.
"It's not supposed to be like this!" he yells, stomping his foot in the sand with indignation. "Fucking..." He falters for a moment; who's he yelling at again? God? No, not that. Spike is an atheist in the truest sense of the world, because God's not any fun and life isn't the same without a spot of pleasure every now and, well, now. Oh, right then. The soul. He's yelling at himself. "Stupid bloody me! And stupid... Stupid fucking *Buffy*!"
Yeah, that's right. That's more like it, Spike. It's all her fault anyway, what with her undying goodness and her stupid, vapid virtue. All of her damn morals, trampling his undead body with her high horse as she rides off into the sunlight, taking everything that he loves about himself with her. If it wasn't for her, he'd be happily slitting throats and slaughtering the innocents, right alongside his princess, and not longing for the reigning Queen of Pain.
"Should kill you," he slurs, groaning as he pulls himself to his feet. He sways for a moment, then takes another bracing gulp of whiskey and starts to stumble down the beach. "Yeah... Should just go ahead and do it, do it good..."
//She screams, her arms flailing and her eyes filling up with tears, and she's shaking her head and trying to wrench herself away from him. Always fighting, stupid bint, fighting what's got to be inside of her. Love, this kind of love, this kind that eats up everything else and then destroys, destroys, destroys...//
A wretched moan slips out of his mouth and he's back on the sand again, his face crumpling up as drunken tears spill out of his eyes. He's always doing this, going mad with memory and then sobbing like a right wanker. Always crying, because he can't keep the balance between what he is now and what he used to be. Because he does not know what this soul will make of him, what it will change him into, and there is nothing scarier than change like that.
The waves continue to pound at his naked body, lapping at his skin and stinging the lingering wounds from Africa, and Spike doesn't care. He merely wants to sleep, to let it go, sink into the abyss of unconsciousness and not wake up ever again.
But of course, he dreams.
The desert stretches out as far as his eyes can see, brilliant and scorching, the winds creating absent and meaningless patterns in the glass landscape as it shifts and moves around him. The sun is high in the sky, but his skin does not burn in his dreaming daylight, and he swears that he can hear Jim Morrison crooning drug-addled insanity in the background.
"This is the end... My only friend, the end..."
In a billowing sweep of white linen, she descends from the middle of the desert and into the sands, her hair flying on the wings of the wind, all pale skin and hair, bleached out by the ivory gown. Midriff exposed, voluptuous breasts enticingly insinuated by the low cut of the garment, diamonds and stones embedded into her skin so that she shimmers as she walks. The Doors continue to play on, and when Morrison hits the crescendo, an explosion of white feathers bursts from where she stands, and she's before him suddenly.
Tara, lady of the desert sand.
Confused, Spike gives her a deadpan expression as she dully looks back at him, and when it is clear that she offers nothing, he shrugs and reaches for his pockets. Oh, of course. He doesn't have any because he's naked. Rolling his eyes, he arches his scarred eyebrow at her and sighs. "Got a fag?" he asks, and she does not respond. Frustrated, Spike grunts and plops down on the sand, scowling at her in disgust. "Well, was worth a shot, right?"
"Everything's worth a shot for you," she then says, and her voice is calm and serene, evoking images of placid Pacific waters and calm, soothing skies studded with starlight. It occurs to him that this is a dream, a strange and silly dream full of gratuitous nudity and blatant _Apocalypse Now_ rip-offs. He thinks that if he can just find the jukebox blaring this Morrison crap, he'll turn it to something especially vicious from The Clash and dig up some smokes. Yeah, that would be about right. "There is no jukebox. Do not look for it."
Spike rolls his eyes and wishes that the dream had also transported his whiskey. Precognitive dreaming requires a good pint of solid Irish liquor. "Right," he says flatly, and then he drums his fingertips on his knees, sitting Indian-style on the uncomfortable desert floor. "So, let's just cut to the chase, pet. What sort of nasty event are you giving me the eye for? Another apocalypse? Some more murders from the good old days? Oh, wait. Let me guess. Another image of Her Lowness suffering her pretty little head over me. That's always a good one. Chart-topper and all that, but I usually don't get such a choice soundtrack."
Sighing, Tara's blank and blunt demeanor is suddenly stripped away from her along with her billowing white robes, and she's suddenly sitting before him in plainclothes, looking more like herself with her blonde hair loose around her shoulders and a blue shirt and jeans. She's more comfortable and accessible in denim, and she sits down across from him, holding a yard of the white fabric in her hands. "Here," she offers in that tentative Tara- way of hers, giving him the white linen. "You're kind of naked. Do you...?"
The wind picks up the edge of the fine fabric, tossing it every which way, and Spike stares at it blankly for a moment, seeing something interwoven with the tiny white threads. It's the story of his life, from infancy in the hands of the nanny to the darkness of the cave, and he sees every etching come alive with the perfection of memory. His mother scolding him and ripping apart his poetry, the look of disinterest on Cecily's china features, the sound of bone snapping as he twists the Slayer's neck, the smell of his only great love as he lowers his head between her thighs, and the way that she cries as he tries to destroy her...
Beyond him, in the desert, there are things rustling and moving with insect noises, skittering and scampering in the dust to escape his watching eyes. There is a boy in a sandbox far larger than the landscape, holding a plastic shovel and glaring at him sullenly, his head bald and his breath reeking of radiation. He sees Willow in the far distance, draped in jewels that threaten to drown her, and she is weeping because she is sinking underneath the weight of rubies and emeralds. Beyond them all is the sound of calculating, velveteen laughter, wrapping around his brain stem and controlling his actions.
"No," Tara says sharply, and she quickly drapes the cloth over his eyes, over his naked body, fashioning some sort of garment out of the fine, snowy linen. "Don't look in the desert. There are things that you can't control out there. Time and destiny are not for you to see. Let the seers see them."
"Am I not a seer?" he asks in a strange, clipped voice. Culture sometimes seems to flow out of him at odd moments, ruining his rebellion against high society with awakenings of his own boyhood of wealth and fine education. Gruffly, Spike clears his throat and tries to leer at her, arching his eyebrow and pouting his lips. "Can see 'bout everything you've got to offer... Forget the old bra this morning, witchlet?"
Cocking her head to the side, Tara seems amused by his efforts, but not in the manner that he was aiming for. "It's hard, isn't it?" she asks. "Hard to try and see where you end and the soul begins. But it's okay, Spike. You don't have to try. It's all so easy if you just... Let... *Go*."
She brings her palms to her mouth and blows sand in his face, but it is not sand. It's just dust, the ashes of some sacrificed vampire, and Spike recoils briefly underneath the scent of his own self, destroyed by the Slayer's stake. All of his history scatters on the arrogant planes of his face, and he sees all of his sins unfurled before him like an ashen rose in bloody bloom. All the faces of those he has murdered, those he has raped, those he has shattered and ruined.
They are all around him in the desert, surrounding him and astonishing them in their sheer mass. Hundreds of thousands of people, standing in the desert in utter silence and desolation, dressed in the bloodied clothes he'd killed them in. Ghosts, phantoms, transparent and gray, filmy figments of history undone. Gasping, Spike recoils and swallows hard, looking around him in horror. "All of them," he whispers, feeling sick to his stomach. He had no idea that there were this many, so many people, more than a million and they are all staring at him, their killer, while the Beatles sing along with their misery.
"Let me take you down, cause I'm going to strawberry fields... Nothing is real..."
He cannot take it. He cannot take their eyes on him, their dead eyes and bloodied wounds. Whores he's fucked and then destroyed, the crotches of their revealing dresses all stained from the horrible death he gave them, little children missing fingers and heads, and their mothers holding their amputated hands and cocking his head at him. //Why us? What did we do that earned us this death? We are mothers, wives, husbands, fathers, sisters, brothers, and we are human like you once were. Why?//
As Spike lowers his head and covers it with his hands, he starts to weep like always, like his tears are going to turn back time and take back the killings. Like crying will magically revoke all of his errors and mistakes and give these people their lives back. It does nothing, and he does nothing but sob.
Gentle, loving fingers twine through his hair briefly, and Tara is soothing him, murmuring into his ear and embracing him with her warm arms. "It's okay," she murmurs into his ear, brushing her cheek against his. "Let it go, Spike. There is nothing that you can do for them. What's done is done, and you can't bring them back. Death... It's like that. It's kind of permanent. That's how things should be."
"You don't understand," he pleads, burying his face into her neck as she rocks him. "It's not... I did these things, these terrible *things*, and I didn't know it was going to be like this and God, Tara, what Buffy... What the others..."
"The others don't know things like this," Tara murmurs into his hair, stroking his back and pressing kisses on his skin. "It's over. What happened to them, what happened to... It's over. There is nothing that can be done about it now. Death is inevitable. It's final, no matter how badly... No matter. It's over. Let it go."
There is an immeasurable sadness in her gestures, in her very state of being, but there is enlightenment, too. She's always been like that, the wise little sorceress with her scented candles and magic eyes. Likes her, he does, and he wants to hold her and comfort her because there's something warm and brilliant within her. He wants to give her all of the love that he knows he's capable of, shelter and protect her, and when he wraps his arms around her body, she smiles.
"Yes," she encourages, letting him hug her, letting him comfort her. "That's it, Spike. Let go of the past. It's done, and it's over. There are things in the desert that you can't see, but you have to go home and fight them. You are full of love. Love will lead you to your gift."
She pulls away then, and oh, Tara is bleeding. There is a blossom of blood on her left breast, spreading and dripping, and he stares at her with a shattered feeling inside of him as she smiles tearfully at him. "You're bleeding," he says, reaching his hand out to add pressure to the wound, to try and save her life, but she shakes her head, stilling his hand with hers.
"Don't worry about it," she says, but her voice is shaking. "I... It's not important. What's done is done, and what shall be shall be. You're going to go home, Spike, where she needs you, and you'll love her. It's why you did this to yourself, right? So that you could love her?"
Yes. He forgot about that somewhere in the middle of grief and alcohol, that shady and necessary mission statement that he'd tried to hold onto when he left the crypt on his bike. Was doing this for her. So that she could be loved and not hurt, cherished and not destroyed. A smile spreads across his face, and he nods his head. "Yeah. That's right. So that she could be loved."
The desert is suddenly empty again, and the music is gone, leaving only the austere sound of wind and sand as Tara stands in front of him, draped in white linen like before. No more denim and cloth, just this ethereal beauty and diamonds in her skin. She smiles down at him, and then bows down to kiss the top of his head. "You'll be fine," she whispers. "She's waiting. Go home."
When he wakes up, he finds himself dressed and lying beside the motorcycle, though he does not remember ever grabbing his scattered clothing or carrying his drunken ass back to the bike. Doesn't matter. He's got plans now, got a purpose, and he's got just two hundred and fifty miles back to Sunnydale before he sees her face again.
Grinning that mad-dog, feral smile that Spike loves best, he looks up at the sky and sees the stars blinking above him. He hops on the motorcycle with a jaunt in his step that's been missing ever since Africa, and smirks at the horizon.
"Spike's coming home, baby," he smiles. "Wait for me."
*****
"And I find it kind of funny
I find it kind of sad
The dreams in which I'm dying
Are the best I've ever had
I find it hard to tell you
I find it hard to take
When people run in circles
It's a very, very mad world"
--Gary Jules, "Mad World"
*****
(end)
*****
Next up -- "Waking the Dead". Feedback would be lovely. And thanks muchly again to Devil Piglet and to those great writers and readers over at Television Without Pity.
