Disclaimers: In part one.
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Note: This chapter is a little weird; only cause its kind-of hard to
write the mind and thoughts of a Vampire who, at this point, is as "mad
as a hatter."
* * * * * * *
These are the times that try men's souls.
--- Thomas Paine, The Crisis
* * *
To blame it mainly on the faces would be overstating the matter.
The faces did run though his mind. Every life he had taken. Like a roundabout, neither beginning, nor ending. Continuous.
However, many of them were very abstract. Blurry. Many of them he had noticed out of their looks, be it either for their beauty, or lack there of. A handful he had felt a desire for, right before he'd taken their life. Like Nikki.
I could have danced all night with that one.
However, a large majority of them he had hardly glanced at twice. They were either food, or enemies who were a threat his unlife. Not people one took the time to notice anything about.
He'd never played with his prey . . . the way he had.
No, it wasn't the faces.
* * *
The actual acts of killing
murder
which came with the faces would be more accurate to focus the blame of it on, though again, not completely. During the times he would come back to himself, like now, he could
try to
rationalize it. He was a Vampire. He had had no soul. He was a creature whose very nature was evil, was to kill. One killed to feed, to do what had to be done to survive.
You know what I am.
Yes, he could rationalize it. He'd always been good at that. It didn't take the pain of it away from his dead heart. However, it could ease his mind when he could feel his control slipping again; feel the emotions of guilt and remorse washing over him, being to rack his body.
Some level of control.
* * *
The voices, however.
Yeah.
They were a different matter.
They were everything.
They were always there.
Always there.
Different accents, different languages. Some of which he understood, learned fluently by the time he was a young man and Dru had come and claimed his human life.
Voices of the dead. Long dead. His victims.
Sometimes they came in whispers, like a warning in the dark,
. . . don't, please don't . . .
. . . I'm sorry, I'm sorry . . .
. . . please, I'll do anything . . .
. . . don't hurt me . . .
sometimes, so loud his ears felt as if they would bleed
. . . stop, stop, please stop . . .
. . . don't kill me . . .
. . . please don't kill me . . .
. . . please, Please, PLEASE! . . .
In his mind, ringing in his ears. Pleading. Crying, begging, in pain.
Screaming. Always, screaming.
And this time, he could not help but listen. Here, now, never giving him a moment's peace. A cacophony of humanity. Thousands of voices, in various degrees of suffering.
As a human, he had believed in the power of words.
As a vampire, he had known the advantage of using the right words against those he hated.
And now, with his soul now returned to him, it was the words of his victims that haunted him night and day. Drove him again, now, to the floor of his new home, against the far wall, sobbing. Knees to his chest, hands over his ears, as if trying to drown out the sounds of the people whose lives he had taken, calling to him for help, for mercy.
. . . I'll do anything . . .
. . . don't do this, please . . .
…. have mercy, have mercy . . .
"Please, stop," Spike whispered, talking again to the thousands no longer there, except in his memory of them. "Please leave me alone."
They never listened.
And why should they? He hadn't, when he'd killed them.
He had done things, punished himself for what he had done for over a century in trying to appease the voices, to make them leave him alone. Forms of penance, as he saw them. The first day in Africa, the morning after he had gotten what he had gone to seek, he had purposely set his skin on fire from the rising sun.
He had spent two weeks in a small hut, in the small village near the restoration demon's cave, recovering from that incident.
His chest and hands were still recovering from the incident with the cross from about a week ago. Buffy had been there for that act of penance. He had finally sought her out, after their first accidental meeting, which he'd hardly been lucid for. However, he knew that he was going to have to, sooner or later, start doing what he had gone and gotten the soul for. What he had finally come back to Sunnydale for.
To take care of Buffy.
Even though he now understood why she could never love him.
Even though, deep down, he didn't want her to have anything to do with him.
He would help her because he had made a promise to himself that he always would. And, if one thing remained constant from before and after his trip to Africa, it was his ability to try and keep a promise.
It was the only think that kept him from staying outside that first morning and having the sun finish the job it had started.
He hadn't told her about his acquisition. Didn't want her to know.
Didn't matter. After the incident with Wrom-now-human Ronnie, and what had happened in the church afterwards, she had figured it out. Still made him say it, tell her himself, but he could see that she knew anyway.
And he couldn't lie to her. She'd always seen though them before. And the truth was in his eyes, in his burnt flesh, from the cross she had pulled him away from.
Thought of Buffy always took him where he never wanted to go. Back to that night, to the bathroom upstairs, in her house. The thing that had brought about his new transformation, to the voices ever
whispering-crying-screaming
in his head.
He knew he could never make up what he had done to her.
Even more, he didn't know if he even wanted her to forgive him.
Ever.
Yes, he understood now. Clarity still, in moments. He truly was beneath her, just as she has always acted. Had said as much.
It would never be you Spike.
. . . you're a killer . . .
. . . you're nothing . . .
. . . you're not human . . .
. . . you're just a thing . . .
. . . you're and evil, disgusting thing . . .
You're beneath me.
Yes, beneath her, beneath them, beneath them all. He'd always had been, whether he was a human and a bloody awful poet, or a pathetic excuse for a Vampire.
He was nothing.
The soul only made him feel it more keenly than he had before.
The dim light of the high school basement enveloped him, his thought, his mind, his sanity, in a cocoon of bitter refection and remorse. The voices his only company, the voice of the woman he had loved -
- no, still love. Still loved, and had betrayed –
above all the others now. Louder, and louder and –
"Spike?"
Spike raised his haggard face, and looked up into the one of the woman who he was enduring this for, would endure anything for.
Whom he could never make anything up to.
"Buffy?" he choked.
She smiled at him. A small, gentle smile. Quiet. "Hey. I brought you some food."
* * * * *
End chapter two
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