The world was upside-down…spinning…burning baby fishes all 'round your 'ead…
Nine paces from one stone wall to the other. Turn on one heel, almost military…a peacock's plume of worn black leather splayed out behind.
The Herald's words resounded hollowly in his memory, slicing a little deeper with every echo.
"Sorry, buddy, but like I said before, there's lots of different Powers. Even though they're really just opposite sides of the same coin, there's the 'good' ones, and the…well, 'not-so-good' ones. Demons don't exactly come from the good ones—you know what I'm saying? So when everything ends, you go back to the not-so-good Powers…and she goes back to the good ones, the ones that made her. Tough luck for you, I guess…"
Nine more paces. Long, stiff ones…hard desperation screaming from the tense contour of every muscle. Every movement screaming…screaming with a human voice…a warm, red rush of adrenaline and spicy fear, rich and cloying…
Nine more paces…and nine more. Back and forth, a single path. Like a panther in a cage.
And nine more.
Always comes down t' the numbers in the end, don' it?
Nine tortured paces across a cold stone floor…twenty-two years of humanity followed by one hundred twenty-one of unlife…six dollars and ninety-five cents for a pack of cigarettes…uncounted strands of silicon tangled into a chunk of plastic no bigger than a fingernail…two dead Slayers…one hundred forty-seven days of walking death until the return of the third…a sky full of stars whispering thousands of thoughts into the ears of a black goddess…a continued unlife measured occasionally in millimeters of flesh or air between a stake and an unbeating heart…
One love.
One day left to live.
One imminent eternity in hell…without her.
And nine more paces.
It's not supposed t' be this way…
Spike had never given any thought to death. Not really. Sure, after a hundred and twenty years of murder and mayhem, he knew his way around the physical aspects of mortality well enough…but it had never been real. It was just feeding, and they were just humans—Happy Meals with legs, right? Not exactly the kind of thing that would keep him up nights, wondering about it.
He'd been so young when his humanity had died…William's head had been too full of rhymes and artistic fervor and shy, desperate affection to have any room left for contemplation of the hereafter. And then Drusilla, in the alley…and it all happened so fast, he barely had time to realize that he was about to die before he woke again and felt alive for the first time, wriggling upward through the newly-turned earth toward the black goddess awaiting him in a shaft of silver moonlight.
A vampire can bring sweet death to a thousand souls each day for hundreds of years, and never stop to consider the reality. The panic and despair of the prey, realizing the end is upon them…the slow, creeping weakness and chill as their blood seeps away…the drowsy darkness that rises up with agonizing sluggishness to engulf them…
To a vampire, it's just another meal.
Most living creatures would consider eternal unlife a curse…but it brought with it two blessings. No conscience…and the promise of a quick, painless death. No need to waste away from some disease or cancer, or to look Death in the eye as he makes his slow, deliberate advance. No need to fear the pain or the darkness, either…for the darkness is home, and dust feels no pain.
Instead, I'm the lucky bloke who gets an engraved invitation to the Apocalypse—front row seat at the biggest show of all time. Watch it all go swirlin' down th' drain…right before they hand me my very own one-way ticket to forever, in a place without Buffy.
Best way to define my Hell, I suppose. Anyplace that doesn't have her in it.
What hope was there for him? He didn't have—or want!—a poncey soul like Angelus. No pretty baubles to break that would make him human, like Anyanka. He'd been rebelling against the world for over a century…and now, Spike knew he was, finally, completely, cosmically screwed.
Dammit, it's not supposed to be like this!
With a roar of anger and anguish, Spike paused his frenzied pacing to pound one fist against the rough-hewn rock wall. The sight of the blood on his abraded knuckles made him giggle, and the sudden sense of déjà vu that pulsed through him only made the world spin faster. He paused for a moment, straining to hear…would she be wandering around upstairs, like before…looking so much like an orphan that he couldn't decide whether to kiss her or drink her…?
Lost in his spinning world, he shuffled over to the bed as if in a daze, sitting lightly on the rumpled sheets as the bloodied hand reached under the pillow as if of its own accord. It reappeared a moment later, clutching a thin, lethal-looking stake—a carefully-preserved memento of a recent patrol with Buffy.
It would be easier…simpler…
The coward's way out.
The blood trickled thinly across his knuckles, into the gap between his palm and his thumb. It ran over the sharp wood and soaked into the grain, dying it a deep maroon. The stake was thirsty for him…for the old blood sitting stagnant in his dead heart.
But even as he yearned for the simplicity of dust, he knew he wouldn't do it. It really was a nancy-boy's way out. The world might finally be about to get the best of him, but he'd be damned if he didn't make the Fates fight to earn every speck of dust in his undead body.
Bugger.
The worst of all was the realization that it hadn't even occurred to any of the others to wonder about his fate. True, he couldn't consider any of the Scoobies real friends—except for Buffy, of course—but when you got right down to it, they were sort of all he had.
She never even thought about it…about me…
Or she did, and just didn't care.
He couldn't blame her, of course. The pain she felt from being torn out of heaven and forced back into the mortal realm was still a gaping wound…every day, he could look at her and see the strain. The struggle to be everything for everyone, all the while clutching desperately at the frayed edges of her shredded soul, trying to keep from falling apart. There was an expression of weary resignation permanently etched behind her eyes…and every time those eyes met his own, his gut ached for her and yearned for her, all at once.
I may be an evil, soulless bastard…but I'm not *that* cruel.
She would be happy, back in her shiny heaven…no need to trouble her last mortal hours with his own plight. Happiness was, in the end, all he'd ever wished for her.
But for himself…
He was greedy. One of his few remaining concessions to the demon slavering rabidly within. He wanted—needed—to find her, see her again…just once more, before the end. To hear her voice, even if she yelled at him…to touch her…kiss her, maybe—if she would let him. To bask in her warmth, if only for a moment, so he could take that memory with him into the eternal darkness…and know that, if nothing else, she had thought of him as a friend.
It would have to be enough.
The world wasn't spinning so violently anymore. He'd made his choice a hundred years ago, when Drusilla offered him something effulgent, and he accepted…and now he would simply have to live with it.
Just not for very much longer.
Spike sat forlornly on his bed, still clutching the bloody stake, and
waited for the sun to set.
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