Title: Vanilla Suicide
Author: Juliet DeMarcus
Rating: R
Spoilers: Buffy up to and including "Entropy." Angel up to and including "Double or Nothing."
Summary: Will the events of "Entropy" lead to a tragedy of near-Shakespearean proportions?
Disclaimer: "Buffy the Vampire Slayer" and "Angel" are not mine. (But I can dream, right?) I'm not making any money, so don't sue me.





Thursday night


He stopped dead in his tracks, startled by an unanticipated commotion that came from behind him. Mere feet from where he had just been standing at Joyce's grave, a tussle was now taking place. His mind swirled with the implications. Shame was followed up almost instantaneously by anger.

Spike's immediate urge was to just keep walking -- let whoever had stumbled upon his divulgence die before they went on to tell the tale of stumbling across the sight of William the Bloody crying over the slayer's mum's grave...

But then there were also the vampires to worry about. They could surely sully his name worse than any human that was stupid enough to eavesdrop on the confessions of the undead. Without a doubt, the vamps would be around longer to spread the word. He wondered vaguely why he was still worried about his reputation. He had already signed, sealed and delivered the end of that...

Still,...a good old spot of violence didn't sound too bad after the night he'd had so far. He was sick of crying, sick of hearing himself whine...now, he just wanted to rip into something.

Not to mention that, if the vamps got the word out about what a pathetic waste he had become and ruined his rep now, then the gift he'd sent wouldn't mean as much... He almost laughed at his own thoughts. Wishing he could be there to see the look on Rupert's face when the delivery came. 'Can't believe I actually had the stones to...' No, couldn't let the stupid vamps waste it. It was important. A gesture of...understanding, or...something. Besides, whatever was back there...he was ready to take it's head off, and then some!

All at once he turned and ran back to the sound. He had stood still, trying to decide on a course of action for too long -- the sound was weaker now. No kicking, no struggle. 'Might as well save one more nice, little human morsel before I leave,' he thought. 'Confession and then a good deed...maybe there's a lesser hell where the soul-less things who happened to have died on the 'good' side of the moral divider get to go...,' he dryly humored the idea, almost smiling -- trying to figure out what the lesser hell would be like. 'Like hell...but less. About like being here, most like...'

Coming up on the scene he was struck motionless, with horror. Two vampires bending over the boy, who know lay, only half conscious on the damp earth. Pulled up almost into a sitting position by the one clamped onto his neck, while the other sucked the life-giving liquid from his wrist. The boy was pale, deathly pale, his dark eyes wide and wild in his head.

"Xander!," he cried out, from complete shock more than anything else. So many thoughts flew through his mind at once that he didn't know how to sort them. And he didn't try as he made his move on the vamp who had left Xander's neck for an instant to look up in annoyance at the intruding vampire.

"Hey, get you're own -- this one's ours!," he cried indignantly at Spike just seconds before he was crushed to the ground. Spike staked him before he had a chance to say anything more. The other one stared on -- still holding onto Xander's wrist but no longer drinking. He looked dazed, drunk off the bricklayer's blood. A series of expressions crossed his features now -- confusion, anger, fear and confusion again. Spike felt the need to explain himself, to offer up some excusable reason for taking part in this...*incomprehensible* act, of saving Xander Harris.

"I won't have the git taken out by a couple of upstart fledglings! If he goes, I had bloody well better get to do it myself!," he raged at the remaining vampire.

Still confused and newly filled with terror, the vamp dropped Xander's arm and Spike watched it fall limply to the ground.

Spike gazed a moment, hypnotized by blood seeping from the wound on the wrist. After a moment's hesitation, the remaining vampire used Spike's distraction with the bleeding boy on the ground to allow him a chance to escape into the night. Spike did not follow. He found he could not tear his eyes away from the blood.

Xander's blood...

Spike stared at the familiar figure in shock.

He didn't know why he felt the way he did -- about anything. And every time he allowed himself to accept it, that he was some freak of a vampire born into darkness to be a laughing stock, his feelings changed and he was thrown for yet another loop.

Like now -- on the one hand, he wanted to stand there and gloat, tell the boy he should've never spied on him and make him apologize for the things he'd said about Anya -- tell him about the things she said about him, make him good and sorry for how he treated her that night outside the Magic Box. He wanted to ask him if he ever remembered those days in the summer...all the times 'the soul-less thing' he now so despised had saved him, the times they had played pool together and talked at the Bronze. He wanted to ask if it had all been just a ploy just to keep him around to save all their sorry lives and take care of the bit... As if he wouldn't have volunteered to do that anyway! As if he wouldn't have willingly died for his Nibblet... for any of them! He needed to know...

Needed to know if they had laughed... Laughed at how bloody pathetic he was... How even after Buffy was gone he was their Scooby dog on a leash.

Finally, he wanted to stay there and lap the blood from the wounds, knowing his chip wouldn't zap him. He wanted to talk to Xander...keep him awake with rage to bear witness to his end. He wanted to torture him, in the only way open to him, of course.
"Look what we have here...," he would speak slowly, seductively, getting right down to Xander's ear, just like Angelus had done... "You told me not to forget, you're moist and delicious...and like a good dog I did everything I was told." Then he would torment him, lapping up the blood, making cracks intermediately about how great the sex with Buffy was and how good his little demon girl had been, until the boy's last breath. Then he would rip his throat out and guzzle the rest of the blood down before it got too cold. Drink every last drop. Savor it. But at the same time...

There was something else, coming from deep inside of himself, like a disease, an intruder from within. He felt the sensation growing there, in his chest, deep inside his stomach, the flesh of his legs -- making them wobbly. Panic.

Rising panic as he watched the dying boy struggle to hold on to a life that was quickly seeping away in two lovely crimson streams... It sickened him, both the panic and the sight of Xander's body lying on the damp earth.

'*Why do I feel like this*!?'

There was also fear. There was regret. And... He felt almost like... He felt as if Xander was...a friend.

'He's not your bloody friend, you pathetic - sodding - wanker!,' he thought, incredulous that even *he* could feel something so outrageous.

Then in turn, he heard an answering voice to the thoughts of his mind -- only it was different than the thoughts he'd just had, more real. As if someone were right next to him, actually speaking into his ear.
"He's your brother...," this voice was his, yet not. It was not the voice that narrated his brain's activities, in the form of his thoughts. It was not the one he was accustomed to. It was softer, calmer...off. And he hated it immediately. He spun around, preternatural eyes piercing into the night, trying to determine where exactly the sound had come from.

"Who's there?!," he demanded in a roar. He kept turning, trying to spot anyone, anything to indicate where the voice had come from. 'It's not...Not *him*... I'm not going insane... It can't be... It's not... It can't be me...'

"Whoever you are! I'll find you! I hope you're getting a good bloody laugh out of this...," he sensed nothing. No one. "Cause messing with my fucking mind's gonna get you killed!' He slurred the words, drenched in fury, feeling suddenly like a trapped animal. He turned to see Xander's chest heaving irregular gulps of air.

"He's your brother...can't you feel it, my William?" He sucked in a violent, deep breath at this, turning again. Tears filling his eyes at the sound of the new voice sounding inside his mind, this one more familiar.

A female voice this time. Sweet, child-like.

"Drusilla?" His eyes desperately combed the deeper shadows of the graves and the cemetery trees in darkness lit only by a waning moon and the insane stars.

"You will not find me. I'm gone... Three is your lucky number."

"What!? What is this!?," he demanded of her, looking to the stars this time, as she had done during her own mad ramblings.

"No," she said, voice taking on a dark tone. "Not lucky. Not lucky. Cursed. Cursed like daddy... You left me. You left your family and took another one. Your third one ... Miss Edith wants to know,...was it worth it? ... Abandoning us. Was it worth betraying me?," her voice had that small, frail sound to it as she asked the question. The voice he'd known so well over the course of a century -- longer, in fact. The voice was...hurt, as well. He held his head. It suddenly hurt too. There was all that sound inside. It was like static, so loud, and her voice was the only thing that cut through. Somewhere within the chaos of it all, he wished that Joyce was there.

"Your new family doesn't want you, though," Dru's voice becoming more agitated as she continued. "But you won't see it. I wanted you. I was your princess, you said so! And I wanted you! But you left. And for what? Miss Edith wants to know..."

He cried out, screaming -- in pain and frustration, gripping his head all the while as if he might be able to tear into it. Stop all the static-whispering, stop the words Drusilla was speaking.

"Your new family doesn't want you. They could *never* want you. They don't even see you!," she was relentless.

"Why are you doing this?," he asked, resigned to the torment, as he had been so many times in the past, but just seeking the reason for it.

He didn't know to whom he spoke. He didn't know if Drusilla was dead and haunting him or if she was using her powers. He'd never really understood her "powers," other than the fact that they were obviously rooted in insanity. But he'd never seen any evidence before, that her ... abilities, as they were, would allow her to speak to him through thin air. He didn't know if it were his Drusilla at all... 'Maybe it's just me... Maybe this is what happens when you go on too long and you're wrong like me.'

"You were always wrong, my love... I'm sorry. I'm sorry." She sounded as if she were in tears. He looked helplessly up at the sky, scanning it right and left, looking for her beautiful face, trying to see within it and understand...like he had always done in those first days. Let the need to love and be loved conquer everything else inside and find...sense there. All the sense that could lie in his world, after that night... "It's my fault. I should've never taken you that night, to him, to us...I'm sorry. I'm so sorry, my sweet William. I didn't know then."

Spike swallowed, feeling a thickness in his throat.

He turned back to Xander, to see the desperate struggle between life and death progressing. A wave of utter fear gripped him.

"I'm not his brother!" His screamed, as if to counteract the gut-wrenching feeling. 'I'd *never* be related to that git!,' his mind continued the rant silently. But his thoughts seemed to be battling with the voice of Drusilla, which he now was unable to hear, but he still *felt* the resonance of her words it within him.

He picked Xander up effortlessly. The boy's body was cooler to the touch than normal -- too cool. The faces of Buffy, Dawn, Willow, Tara and Anya blurred through his mind. Each face was stained with tears.

He began to run.

Never had he known such sick desperation. What was happening to him? What was he doing?! Xander could lay there and bleed, no one would know he had anything to do with it! It was the perfect opportunity! Why was he throwing it away!?

His mind ran back in time to the moment when he had first taken in the scene -- the vampires feeding of the whelp who looked already half way to death's door. He singled out something from his memory he had not been able to process before amidst the chaos. A stake. Lying on the ground next to Xander's nearly lifeless form, there had been a stake.

'He was going to kill you, you worthless ponce! He was going to kill you and now you're saving his life!?'

"Shut-up! Bloody stop!," he screamed to his own thoughts and the voices... He felt like he was screaming over those *so many* voices now -- yet the ones that sounded like Dru and William were all he could make out.

"He's your brother." William's stuffy Victorian accent pervaded...

"Stop it!"

"You nearly died when you lost your first family...Poor William. He always loses. But then you had us. We were so happy. One big happy family...Then daddy left, then you left...just like daddy. Why does everyone leave me?," Drusilla pouted.

"Stop," Spike pleaded now, nearly falling as he ran with the boy awkwardly positioned in his arms. Not able to move fast enough. Not nearly fast enough to get away from them.

"We're family." Buffy's strong voice echoed through his mind now. In a flash he saw them all standing there, facing Tara's family, when they had come to take her away. Buffy, Dawn, Giles, Willow, Anya, Xander... and himself. He had stood there with them. For a moment he was blinded by the vision in his mind as he ran.

"But I'm not their family!"

'Then whose are you?," Drusilla disembodied voice asked innocently.


Spike got to black DeSoto after what seemed like ages, tossing the boy in the passenger side.

"*Whose - Are - You*?," Drusilla demanded.

Xander's vitals were starting to slow down. He didn't even know how he could seek them out and hear them over the voices... He jumped in the car and floored it. Tires screeching. He hoped he could leave them behind.

"You're my boy aren't you?," the bold Irish accent boomed in his head.

"God...,"

Laughter. Angelus' laughter. The sound that had once sent chills down his spine, back then...and now once again.

'Why?' The desperate question from before echoed through the deafening chambers of his mind.

"You call on 'God'?," Angelus' voice was incredulous, filled with humor. Spike hated that laughter. If only he could take his hands off the steering wheel and cover his ears...

"Boy, didn't they teach you in church? ...," Spike could feel Angelus' cold breath moving up his neck, then right behind his ear. The voice was so clear. "God doesn't answer the prayers of a devil."

Spike's head jerked around, sure beyond all reality, all sanity, that Angelus himself was in the DeSoto's back-seat, a sadistic grin plastered on his face. The car swerved to the left as Spike's eyes surveyed the darkness of the empty back-seat, causing Xander to fall against him. Dead weight...the boy was barely alive...

And there was nothing..., no one else in the entire car. Just him and the boy. He faced forward again, pushing the car to it's limits, barely making it around the turns.

Then there was the voice of a little girl cut in over the screeching of the tires. He could see a flash inside his mind's eye -- the chubby, little fingers on the piano keys.

"No...Please," he was begging now.

"William! ... William, come play with me!" She called to him. Her voice sounded like a song.

'Hospital...' He was there. Thank God, he was there. He jumped out of the car. Exceedingly grateful that Sunnyhell wasn't that large and the hospital was easy to get to from the cemetery -- with good reason.
He hauled Xander out of the passenger side, medical personnel were running up to help.

"What happened to him?," one asked, taking in the wounds on his neck and wrist then taking him from Spike. Another was bringing out a gurney.

"What do you think bloody happened!?," Spike snapped. Jerking away impulsively, defensively from the people that seemed to surround him in an instant. "Stupid wanker!" He ground out the words, giving the young looking boy with the mop of disheveled light brown hair a look that would've made anyone's blood run cold. 'Blood...' He smelled blood on himself. Xander's blood. It made him feel faint. The boy he had addressed was now staring at him in shock as the others loaded Xander onto the gurney. The whelp looked dead, but Spike sensed he wasn't quite. Not yet anyway. He felt out of his head, so he wasn't sure...but it seemed as if everyone was just standing there, staring at him like some sodding sideshow freak.

"Just...," he closed his eyes tightly, struggling, it was hard to form words, hard to think coherently. Everything seemed so loud. "Just get him in there and save him! That's what you people do, right!?" Spike demon fought to emerge through his anger, his eyes flashing yellow for a moment, before he gained control over himself again. As Xander was wheeled rapidly away into the ER's double doors, the young horrified medic ran after. Spike sighed.

In a split second the tension returned to his body, tenfold, as another voice echoed inside his head.

"Where's mummy?" A little boy's voice. William's. Again.

"No," he moaned, taking hold of his head again and sinking slowly to the ground.

"Sir, is something wrong?" Another medic ran up, eyeing him with uncertainty.

Then the next voice came. He already had known it would come.

"She's in there!," an angry man yelled. Obviously drunk. "She nearly died because of you, you stupid --"

"Mummy?!," the boy cried out, running to the door and trying to pull it open, desperately. "Mummy!" The boy screamed as the man took hold of him, pulling him back away by his hair.

"You stay away from there! You hear me, boy!?," with one hand he pushed the boy back, but even that was enough to send the slight sickly child back against the wall, hard. "She just lost the baby. Last thing the doctor needs is *you* underfoot!"

"Wh- *Why*? What d-did I do wrong?" The boy was crying, in silence. He knew very well what would come if he made a sound. The tears streamed, his lips trembled.

"You cause her so much stress with all your prattle, ridiculous, good for nothing! ... *You* should be the one that's dead. Not my son!"

"Stop!," Spike cried, wondering in desperation how to make the voices incessant hammering cease.

"He's hysterical...," the medic standing next to him said slowly and quietly, taking a few steps back.

"Jesus, what's he on?," another asked warily.

A young nurse came up next to Spike. Apparently, the only one of the surrounding group brave enough to approach. She tried to take his hand as a signal of reassurance, but he jerked it away as if he'd been burned. In the brief moment of contact the nurse noted it's lack of heat.

"Sir? Sir, I think you're in shock," she tried gently.

There's was a shattering in Spike's head now. Glass shattering. His hands flew over his ears at the sound. The man's voice was not to be shut out however.

"What's wrong with you!?," the drunk man bellowed.

"Help me get him up!," the young nurse instructed. After a moment's hesitation two men came at Spike from each side. Grabbing his arms to lift him.

"No!," he stood suddenly, throwing them off. Then he stopped, listening hard...through the static sound, he heard Dru again, whispering...

"They're fighting in you? Can you feel it? They're fighting, fighting, fighting... Does it hurt? Do they break the skin?"

"They-...They who?," he asked, confused. Looking around, still seeking out the face that had once answered all his questions. He could love her. She would let him. All of this would go away...

"They what sir?," a medic asked. The others were staring at him with varying mixtures of genuine concern, fear and morbid fascination.

Suddenly he found he couldn't see any of the faces of the medics that surrounded him. Instead, he was blinded by the face of his second slayer, on the New York subway. He saw his own hands on her head and her eyes staring up at him. He saw those same hands brake her neck.

"The darkness and the light, the darkness and the light, the darkness is dancing with the light...," Dru was singing.

Then he wasn't on the subway anymore. He was beneath the tower. The was holding Buffy's head in his hands -- her dead eyes staring off with no expression. Her neck was broken.

"No...God, please no...," a sob escaped him. He put his hand helplessly over his eyes trying to block it out.

"Sir, please, let us help you," the nurse implored, obviously moved by the pain she saw inside the man in front of her.

Then Spike heard his own voice in his head. Not William, but Spike...

"You came back *wrong*!" The exact words he had spoken to Buffy the night they had... Then his voice came again. "You were always wrong!"

Was there no escape from this? Spike made it back to the door of his car that was still open before falling to his knees again. Then, through the confusion and the static he gripped the small thread of hope. He remembered. The 'vanilla suicide'... It was in his duster pocket. He reached in and fingered the small bottle. 'Not how I wanted it, but...' He started to pull it out. A few from the medical staff were making their way to him again.

Then, silence.

The voices, the static, stopped. Dead. As if they never were.





TBC...