Title: The Souvenir/The Seed
Author: mahaliem
Rating: PG-13
Summary: The Souvenir - When does Spike start to fall in love with Buffy? End of Season 2. Spike Returns to the Crawford Street mansion
The Seed - Why does Spike fall in love with Buffy? Through "Crush" - Season 5
Disclaimer: The characters are the property of Mutant Enemy and Joss Whedon
This story has been nominated at Precious Illusions for Best Short Fic http://www.precious-illusion.tk/ and Best Short Fiction at the Immortal Moonlight Awards
The Souvenir
The DeSoto barreled down the highway, a smear of anger on the happy Californian landscape. In the darkened compartment I clutched my black goddess to my side as she lay unconscious. I wanted to get away as fast and as far as possible.
South America might do. Brazil. Never been to Mardi Gras before. Not the real, uncensored one of Rio de Janeiro with the naked breasts bobbling at you and the debauchery of a crowd gone wild. Dru and I could have a grand time there. She'd laugh and smile at me again as she twirled in a shower of blood. She'd love me again. It would be just like it was before Angelus came back.
Damn Angelus. If the Slayer didn't kill him, if that demon didn't swallow the world, he'd come after us. The prat would hunt us down. Steal Dru from me. What he'd do to me, his betrayer, didn't bear thinking about.
With a violent wrench of the steering wheel, I turned the car across the road. Tearing through the median strip, massacring the neat rows of shrubbery, leaving them in tangled tatters behind me, I headed back towards Sunnydale. I'd once been told not ever to leave enemies behind me alive and I wouldn't. Angelus had taught me that.
Pulling into the wreckage of the garage, I reparked the car where it had sat not long before. Dru was still unconscious, but to be sure she stayed that way, I gently lifted up my love's head and slammed it into the dashboard.
I grabbed one of the shattered wooden boards lying about and slunk around the sides of the building. Hiding from the sun and any occupant remaining inside the decaying mansion, I clung to the shadows. Damn it all. The chirping of the sodding birds in the trees and the incessant humming of bugs and whatnot scurrying in the dank earth and decomposing leaves at my feet muffled any sounds that might come from inside.
The fight must be over by now. If Angelus had won, then he'd failed at destroying the world because it still shimmered and shone about, threatening our kind. Knew the git wasn't worthy. Now if the girl had won, then I didn't need to worry about Angelus any longer. I'd kill her instead. She'd imprisoned me in that bloody chair for months. Torturing me just by breathing, by bouncing around with that Colgate smile of hers. Was her own fault if she died, if she was daft enough to believe I'd actually stick to my side of the truce. Dru and I would rule this town yet.
I could barely make out the sound of footsteps coming towards the door. Raising my weapon above my head I prepared to attack, my senses straining in anticipation. The footsteps puzzled me, though. They were too light to be my sire's, but didn't sound quite like the Slayer's. They were slow, plodding as if the very act of movement was burdensome. As they neared, my muscles quivered, aching to pounce, to smash the board down shredding flesh and spurting blood, to gleefully tear the life from my prey. But for a split second I saw the face of my quarry as it passed by. The Slayer lived, but there was no life in her. The eyes were dull, the face devoid of animation.
Staying hidden, I watched as she stumbled into the light, rejecting the brightness, but still moving onward. A contrast to that tantalizing girl I'd prowled around and studied scant months before. A mockery of the proud warrior who'd clashed and brawled with me. I felt a prick, a splinter of feeling slipping into my dead heart. Startled, I looked down at my chest. Hadn't felt anything from that region in an eon. Watching the Slayer trudge away I tossed my makeshift weapon to the side. It would be a mercy killing now and I wasn't known for my mercy.
Returning to my car, I found Dru stirring as I slipped into the seat next to her. Should've hit her harder, I thought. As I started the motor and headed once more away from Sunnydale, Dru murmured nonsense about her dolls. I placated her, crooning promises that we would get a whole slew of new dolls for her. A roomful of dolls, a whole bloody cemetery full of dolls to bury and dig back up if that's what she wanted. I wanted no memories of this accursed place. No souvenirs.
But unbeknown to me at the time, I already had one.
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The Seed
He had been a bad dog. He'd taken Daddy away, he and that nasty Slayer. He deserved to be tortured until he tore open his own flesh in frenzied agony. But he enjoys the whips and the chains and the pain, so how to punish my wicked boy? A moment's hesitation showed me and I became dizzy with the knowledge.
It was in Parati. We'd feasted along the coast causing delicious waves of suffering to crash down upon the residents. One night we spied two tourists out for a moonlit drenched walk. The cobblestones laughed with glee as we stepped into the shadows behind the couple and then ate their screams as a band drummed in the distance. Mine was a strapping fellow whose blood warmed me as it pulsed and throbbed into my throat making me sing. His victim was a little thing. Later he claimed that her blonde tresses had gotten caught in his teeth. That he'd only stopped to brush them aside, but I knew better. He didn't. He didn't know about the seed.
It was a seed that easily could've dried and blown away from the hard, parched ground in which it had landed. Instead I planted it deeply and watered it diligently. Using it, I'd destroy my Spike for what he did to our family.
He hated the alliance he'd sought to save the world. Spike hated it more as I twisted the history of it, making it less about him wanting me and more about him being with her. Soon, mentioning her would cause him to flinch. He writhed from the constant flailing of my tongue. It made him weak. Then I turned from him, seeking my comfort elsewhere.
He was angry with me, but he let the Chaos Demon live. In days gone by he would've slaughtered his rival and gently made love to me among the blood and slime. Only months before he had slammed an iron poker against Angelus with such lovely jealous viciousness. Now he only fumed and ranted. I let the seed take root. I told him he was covered in the Slayer. She was laughing. The Chaos Demon stayed, Spike didn't.
For a short while after Spike returned, he caused me such sweet torment that I forgot my vengeance. Then he told me that Daddy was back from hell. That Daddy was again loathsome Angel. It was all Spike's fault and he had to suffer. Taunting Spike, I told him the pixies whispered that the Slayer flew around him. I then found an obliging Fungus demon and left. The seed flourished.
Time passed and when I visited him in Sunnydale, in his cold, dead home he thought it was only the chip I saw threading through his brain. He thought it was the electricity controlling his actions, but it was the seed. It'd sprouted into a twisty vine, wrapping itself around his arms and limbs, making them jerk in undesired marionette movements. The tendrils clung to him, burrowing into his brain and filling his undead heart. Now every day caused a growing anguish. Every hour produced a new bloom of misery. Every minute caused pain to ripen in his chest. He was oh so perfectly damned. He was in love with the Slayer.
Not everything I plant dies.
The End
Thank you to my beta readers.