Rating: PG for some language
Feedback: Thank you. Melpomenethalia@aol.com
Spoilers: Through season seven's "Help," episode four.
Distribution: The Warren and Fanfiction.net. If you're interested, please let me know.
Summary: Spike asked Buffy to sit with him to keep the monsters at bay. Here's my take on what might happen if someone stayed with him.
Disclaimer: All characters are owned by Mutant Enemy (Joss Whedon), a wonderfully creative company whose characters I have borrowed for a completely profit-free flight of fancy. Kindly do not sue me, please, as I am terrified of you. Thank you.
Author's Note: This is the sixth in a series of vignettes, all occuring on the same day. Also, for the purposes of this fic, as Joss Whedon has stated in interviews, the term "sire" refers to any vampire higher up in the bloodline, not just the one who actually turned the vampire.
10:48 p.m.
I never thought I'd be back here.
When Willow called this morning and explained everything that had happened, I didn't say anything. I just thanked her for letting me know and then hung up. I suppose it wasn't really polite, but it was either that or have a complete emotional meltdown, running the whole range of emotions from dumbfounded to irate to self-loathing in front of her, and she really doesn't need to hear that right now. She has enough to deal with.
I'm not sure why I got in the car a few hours later and came here. It wasn't a conscious choice. When you walk, you move one foot in front of the other without actually thinking about it, and that's what this was like. Left foot, get in the car, right foot, drive to Sunnydale, left foot, don't let anyone know I'm here, right foot, find him.
It's dark as pitch down here, but I can still see him, and he can see me. Even if he couldn't, he'd know I was here. I'm not sure what exactly I'm supposed to do. There are at least fifty scenarios running through my head, and I can't do all of them at once.
Part of me wants to slam his head into the cement until he looks like Willow's brother. The idea that he touched her is bad enough in itself, but that he even tried to do it against her will… well, Angelus is alive and kicking after all, isn't he? There are torture scenarios running through my brain that are so horrendous I think my demon is getting sick over some of them.
But there's another part of me. It's the part that remembers being alone and frightened in a dark forest over a hundred years ago, and I can still taste the bile that rose in my throat that night. It's also the part of me that remembers William: a complete idealist, never been in a scrape in his life, waking up to a load of fresh earth atop his coffin and screaming for two straight days in horror at what he'd become. Darla and I thought we'd wound up with another Drusilla at first. He was so innocent.
And we corrupted him so thoroughly.
Of all my childer, he's the only one to know what I went through, and I'm the only one on earth who can understand that he's in hell now. I don't use that word lightly.
What stuns me is that he did this to himself. That's where the self-loathing comes in. Angelus wouldn't have done it, but Spike? Spike was either stupid enough or brash enough to do it. Or maybe, just maybe, he was still human enough.
For the first time in a century, I'm truly his sire again. The demon and I both agree. I walk towards him and kneel beside his shivering body. The scent is powerful. He hasn't fed in almost three days, and then nothing but rats. Those things taste terrible. Okay, not as bad as yogurt, but still bad. He doesn't react when I open up a tub of fresh AB+ from Willie's and wave it under his nose, nor does he do a thing when I tip it carefully into his mouth and watch him swallow instinctively. I do the same with the second and third containers, and the mere fact that he's letting me feed him this way convinces me of how far he's broken.
"Spike," I start to say, and then it just drifts away.
What do you say to someone who's in as much agony as he is? What could anyone have said to me? I remember Darla throwing me out of the house and the pain of being alone, and for a moment, I'm overcome with tenderness for this lost child who has lived in hell. In spite of myself, I press one brief kiss against his forehead.
"You're stronger than you know, my boy."
Then, before I can think too much about all of this, I do what I do best; I disappear into the shadows again.