Little snippet of Inner Turmoil from our dear little Spike. Does not take into account specific plot stuffs like (close your eyes if you hate spoilers) attempted rape, the Buffbot (sp?) and getting his soul back. Actually, this could just happen before that. What do I know, I just wrote the stupid thing.
Anyway – DISCLAIMER – I do not, in any way, shape, or form support the delusion that I could ever actually own these characters, universe(s), or anything. Joss Whedon and his people get that delusion all to themselves. I only own the plot. And Spike, if they'll let me have him. p
Rated PG-13 for language.
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Leaving
She is my everything. It sounds cliché, I know, but I am hers for the taking – but she will not have me.
She doesn't love me. Seems odd, doesn't it, that a monster, a soulless beast loves one so pure, so…good…I am her very antithesis, and yet…
I sit here, bottle in hand. Doing what? Brooding, increasingly drunkenly lamenting centuries' worth of errors that led me here, to her.
She will never know her beauty. It is not all physical, though she is a cat, a lioness. It is this feline grace, her care in movement, even when she fights – she flows. But more than even that, it is her soul. It is the spark of her life that flies, burning, from her eyes when she loves or angers or hates. Maybe it is simply that she has what I have lost - a soul, a fire, a passion. My only passion is for her.
The hard, brutal liquor sears a path down my throat, warming, burning. But not as she warms me. My pulseless, cold body thaws when she enters a room. Sometimes I actually feel my heart just – existing – It is there as it has not been in – what is it now – six hundred years.
What scares me most, after losing her, is forgetting. I do not fear death, because it has already happened. I do not fear pain, or sleep, or the dark, because they are harmless, escapes from the torture of her indifference. I fear the past. I fear what I used to know, but no longer do. I fear it is slipping – my mother; I would no more know her face than that of last month's wench. I remember the subway – the one night I killed the One. Broke her neck like a twig. I remember the graffiti on the walls, the smell of her leather jacket, still warm with life-force. But I forget my life. Forget what it's like to have blood in my veins – my own blood, unadulterated, warm, flowing. I forget the music, the sounds, the poetry. Oh, I remember it was awful. Bloody awful stuff. But I don't remember a single phrase, line, not even one particularly witty comparison.
I live now - if anyone could call it living - a mere half-life, torn between my love and my nature. We are opposites, and would never have.
A dark cloud settles in over me, and it is only partially alcohol-induced. If I had any courage, guts, whatever you want to call it, O would end the whole thing. There is a stake in the front hall, dulled to cause pain but sharp enough to…
I love how she smells, faintly strawberry and grapefruit – mixed with her own scent. I can only just barely catch that which makes her different. Pheromones, maybe, detectable only by animals. Maybe I'm making all this up, imagining. Delusions of a fool, I suppose.
Someone once made the genius-arsed comment that love was the irresistible desire to be irresistibly desired. What do they know? My love isn't like that. I love her with all my half-dead being, but I don't want her to love me. It would break her. Damn it all. The world would lose control without her, but it is all I want to take her – us – away from its horrors. Life is fucking cruel. The glass isn't half empty, it's fucking dry. So is the bottle. The glass flies, shattering on impact, showering the floor with fragmented fury. It's not fucking fair. I don't have the tears to shed for her. Never fucking will. She doesn't give a shit. Never fucking will.
The shards break under my feet. I can't fucking live here any more. She won't miss me. She is all I will regret leaving behind. At least until I forget. Love is supposed to bring happiness. Fuck love. Ignorance is bliss. Fuck whatever fragment of soul I'm left with that makes me love. I'm leaving.