Not Invincible
by
Princess McPhee
Disclaimer: Not mine. Joss Whedon and David Greenwalt aren't me. Not even the right gender. So, therefore, I don't own.
Author's Note: Ideas from just about every Angel or Spike fic on the planet. So, if an idea very closely resembles yours, please don't take offense.
Chapter Note: I know it's been forever. I've been fanning the flames of a new Smallville obsession, but here it is! Finally!
Summary: Spike goes to Angel, after Buffy beats up on him the latest time. AU from there.
Rating: R
Chapter Six
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Dumbfounded, I stand before my childe's door in shock for long moments, that one short kiss going through my head over and over again, at nearly supersonic speeds. It takes nearly five minutes before I regain enough will and presence of mind to make my feet move.
When I once again control my body, I start towards the stairs. My brain is racing, and I'm having this kind of heady, out-of-body experience. I'm thinking so hard that my physical form is on total autopilot. I totally do not notice giving it any commands of any kind, but then there I am, in my room.
Slowly, I change out of my clothes and check on Conner. Then I climb in bed, pull the covers to a respectable level, and proceed to lie there for the rest of the night.
Vampires are nocturnal creatures, you know, and I've never felt it more than tonight.
I have no clue why Spike did that. Other than the obvious, of course. We feel something for each other that's more than a century old, I've always known that. We've been apart most of that century, and the first blood-bond between sire and childe in a hundred years is a powerful thing. It probably sparked old feelings like a match to dry brush.
But what am I going to do about it? The way I see it, I really only have two options. I can rebuff Spike and he'll leave, because I know he will, or I can dive headlong into something I have no clue about, and hope it all turns out for the best.
And after lying in bed thinking about these options for two hours, the second one is starting to look more and more pleasant, despite the obvious drawback: that I have no idea what I'd be getting into.
I'm not sure I'm ready to lose Spike. I was forced to kill Darla and Penn, and I've effectively exiled Dru. He's the last of my line that I'm allowed to be around, and I don't think I could lose that right now. The pull of blood is a powerful thing, and with no others left to bond with, I need him. More than I'm willing to admit.
At five am, Conner wakes me from a light doze, the best I've managed all night. Yawning and stumbling, I rise, feed him his bottle, and put him back to bed, not expecting him to actually fall asleep again. But there's always hope, right?
Surprisingly enough, he conks out immediately, and I stumble back to my own bed, managing three more hours of sleep on the principal of utter exhaustion. My mind is still a whirlwind, but my body's too tired to care, so I'm asleep nearly as soon as my head hits the pillow.
At eight, Cordelia arrives and wakes me up. "Wow, you're a sleepyhead today, Angel!" She chirps cheerfully. "C'mon, get up!"
I groan and roll over. "Cordy, I have gotten less than four hours of sleep this entire night, I've been chasing my idiot childe all over LA for the past week, and there are absolutely no cases whatsoever in the 'open' file, so there's nothing I can possibly need to get up for!"
I don't open my eyes, but I can see her in my mind, standing there with her hands on her hips, glaring down at me. I'm sprawled in my bed on my stomach, my head under a pillow, the sheet twisted around my waist and my left foot hanging off the edge of the bed. I'm fairly certain I look soundly exhausted.
"Wrong-o, buster!" She says. "Vision-city in my head, first thing this morning. Why do you think I'm here this early?"
I groan again, but this time I throw the pillow off my head and heave myself into a sitting position. Rubbing my eyes, I look up at her slightly blurry image, and curse the Powers That Be. "I'm up."
Satisfied, she nods and leaves the room. Muttering to myself about the evils of god-like beings, I dress quickly, grab Conner from his crib, and head downstairs. Cordy's writing on a pad of paper, Wesley's on the phone, and Fred and Gunn look like they were woken from the same state of sleep that I was. My childe is nowhere in sight.
Plopping my son in his high-chair, which I've discovered he likes a lot more than the bassinet when we're around, I watch him out of the corner of my eye as I turn most of my attention back to Cordelia. He giggles and coos and pounds his fists on the tray, clearly happy to be in the middle of everything. I send him a quick smile before I get back to business.
"What'd you see?" I ask Cordy.
She looks up at me, the piece of paper finished. "2034 Alcott Drive. Some dead body crawling with tiny spiders. Looked like a human, female more than likely." She shudders. "Ugh."
"What kind of demon involvement?" I ask.
She shrugs. "Don't know. The spidery kind, I guess."
"I'll start getting the stuff ready."
She looks at me. "Uh, Angel?"
"Yeah?"
"I'm afraid you're going to have to stay back on this one. It's in their backyard, 'bout noon. You know, when the sun's at it's brightest?"
"Today?"
She shrugs. "I think. That sounds about the right amount of warning to get from the Powers That Be. You know, none."
I nod, slowly. "Okay. I'll get everything ready for you guys while you go over anything important with them." I gesture towards the sitting group of half-asleep people that are my co-workers. Cordelia follows my gaze, and cuts a clean sweep over them with her piercing eyes.
"Angel?"
"Yeah?"
"They won't hear anything I say."
I shrug. "Possibly. But you'll need their help."
"How do I wake them up?"
I'm about to shrug again when the door to Spike's bedroom creaks open. He pokes his head out, looking exhausted, but not like he's been sleeping. So, the insomnia wasn't just my problem last night. "I'll get them some coffee and donuts. You start... filling their minds with vision-stuff." He takes off out the back entrance, his thick brown sun-blanket in hand.
I sigh, sit down, and join Wes, Gunn and Fred in getting debriefed as to the events of the vision.
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Cordelia's in her element, telling us what happened to the woman, where she is, all the subtle clues around her. Sometimes, I know, she worries that she isn't important to us, and as much as we tell her that she's important regardless, there's nothing like a vision that sparks the start of a new case to make her feel useful.
"So, she looks like she's only been dead a little while. Nothing's... rotting... or decomposing or anything." She wrinkles her nose. "And she's lying in her backyard, on the grass. She's on her back, and she's got spiders crawling all over her. Hundreds, maybe thousands. Like ants when there's something dead, or dog poop or something."
Wesley's taking notes, and he looks up when she pauses. "What do she look like?" He asks.
"Don't know how tall, there's nothing to measure her against. Blond hair, her eyes are closed so I can't tell. Lanky, kind of long and thin-looking. Young. Maybe in her twenties."
"Anything else?"
Cordy frowns. "There's an empty bottle next to her. It says..." She squeezes her eyes shut, trying to see the mental picture again. " 'Midtown Pharmacy'."
"A prescription bottle?"
Cordelia nods. "But I can't see the name or the prescription." She shakes her head. "Damn."
Wesley finishes a note with a flourish, and looks up at her. "I'm sure we'll find out more when we get there," He says.
I cut in. "So, this isn't one of the ones we're supposed to save?" I ask.
Cordy shakes her head. "No. This one is most definitely dead. It's of the investigate-after-the-fact kind."
I hate these cases. Too damn many people die.
I'm mulling over my thoughts and Cordy is briefing the others on what they're going to find when they get to the house, when the back door flies open and Spike catapults himself into the room, smoking slightly and slamming the door behind him. Conner grins and claps messily, thinking it's all incredibly entertaining.
Spike throws the blanket on the floor and puts the donut box on the table. Before Cordelia can yell at the guys about sitting still and listening, they're up and out of the room, heading for the food.
The coffee my childe managed to bring back is delicious and seems to be wakening the tired and bedraggled rest of the group. How he managed to carry a box of donuts and a cardboard drink carrier with six hot coffees in it and dash home from the bakery, two blocks away, with a blanket over him is beyond me, but I've learned not to question the Feats of Spike.
I'm spoon-feeding Conner his cereal as Wes, Cordy and Gunn go off to check out the sight of the dead woman. Fred is typing madly on the computer in the other room, checking out something Wesley remembered about demons with a larval form like a spider. There's more rice-cereal goop on me than in my son's mouth, as usual, but he's in an unusually good mood, and I'm not going to ruin it.
Spike, as per his usual manner, has retreated into his bedroom to sleep away the day. I wish I could do the same.
Vampires need less sleep than humans, but we still do appreciate getting four or five hours of solid shut-eye a night. I dozed for maybe three hours last night, but I don't feel rested at all. It could have to do with the lack of sleep I've been accumulating during quite a significant period recently, chasing my crazy childe all over Hell.
Or rather, LA. Pretty much the same thing.
I gulp coffee and down two donuts, barely chewing them as they go past my lips. Sometimes eating human food makes me feel more human... makes my problems seem smaller and the worries in my head recede. It can make me feel closer to my son, as well. Knowing that someday he'll eat these same foods, and I can compare with him how good they are, or how terrible Cordelia's coffee is.
Not just any coffee gets Spike to go out in the daylight with only a blanket, to avoid. It took a special brand.
It's not working.
Remember when I said Spike and I never did anything about the feelings we had? Well, I guess it's not quite true. Because it's coming back to me in stark detail right now. And it feels as if it was yesterday, the gypsies cursed Angelus and brought forth me.
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Romania, 1898
The soul rips through my body, and for long hours, all I can do is curl myself into a ball and sob, barely able to wrap my mind around the things in my head, things I did, people I killed, with my own hands. I stare at them, seeing them awash in blood, feeling the guts and brains and body fluids that have covered them so many times in the past hundred and fifty some-odd years.
My body is filthy. I feel the stain of the impurity Darla visited upon me when I so foolishly told her that I would do anything to see the world. Anything to get out of little Galway. Now, it has seen every continent, but it has also delighted in so many torturous things. So much... blood.
The shelter I've found is barely two walls, barely enough to keep me from burning into char in the rising sun. It won't be, in another hour or so. I don't care. The only thing I know is that death will deliver me from this agony, from this creeping pain within my flesh, from this anger and hate and these tears and memories...
I remember torturing Drusilla into insanity, and the tears wash down my cheeks, and suddenly I feel it crawling under my skin again, and I can't get it out can't get it out CAN'T GET IT OUT! I tear savagely at my own flesh, my nails long enough that, coupled with my vampiric strength, they cause half-inch deep trenches in skin and muscle. Rivers of blood flow from them, more sluggish than a human's would be, but pulsing slowly in the unnatural way of the undead. I tear at my arms, my legs, my chest, my belly, but I can't find the thing that makes me so wrong!
The ground below me starts to soak up the blood, thick and more brownish than red, seeing as how it hasn't been in a mortal's veins for nearly a day. Yet I don't stop ripping, can't stop shredding, have to exorcise the beast. The blood flows until it only dribbles and my strength is gone, all the meals I've eaten in an eternity of Hell flushed from my veins and returned to the earth I stole it from.
A shadow in a blanket crosses my eyesight, but I'm barely strong enough to raise my head and look at him. He curses fluently, mostly in English and gestures to another figure waiting in the woods. This is Spike, and with him, Drusilla.
I want to tell them to leave me here, to let me go and wash my sins from this place, but I don't have the strength to speak. Though I'm a head taller and fifty pounds heavier, even voided of my life-fluid as now, Spike gathers me effortlessly into his arms, looking confused and a little scared. I've never been weak like this, not in front of him or Dru. Not in front of anybody.
Rushing into the woods, he finds a place where the trees are thick enough that they shade our immortal flesh from the burning of the sun. Laying me down, he looks over me, looking still like a frightened child.
Drusilla creeps to my face and starts to cry, caressing my cheeks and singing softly through her tears. "Spike... Spike," She pleads.
"Yeah, pet?"
"He's gone, Spike, Daddy's gone..." She trails off, sobbing but still singing.
"No, he's bloody well not!" Spike curses, tearing fabric from the ruffles of his elaborate outfit. He starts to press them to my self-inflicted wounds, but I thrash about and tear myself away from him, re-opening the gashes with long strokes.
Grabbing me, Spike easily holds me down in my weak state. His expression says he's terrified; a childe is never allowed to act in this manner towards his sire. But his determination shines bright, and he ties my hands firmly together before proceeding.
The bandaging finished, Spike looks me over, clearly not sure what to do next. I've lost so much blood... I'll die soon. I smile slightly at the thought, and my childer look more frightened, as if they know what I'm thinking.
Vamping his countenance quickly, Spike tears into his wrist. Forcing it to my lips, he pushes it down my throat, despite my resistance. With no blood in my veins, the hunger in my body is comparable to the one that seized me in its grip when Darla changed me, and I have no recourse with which to resist. I suckle heartily at my childe's wrist, hating myself every moment of it, but unable to stop.
When Spike is pale and woozy, he pulls himself away. Grabbing Dru, he tears open her wrist, and presses it to my lips. A startled cry came from her when he jumped at her, but now she sits back and closes her eyes, rocking slightly on her knees and moaning in pleasure.
Finally, Spike pulls Dru away from me as well. She cries out in indignity, but he soothes her against his chest. Watching me, they wait all day, wondering what happened and what's going to occur next.
Around midnight, Darla arrives on horseback, leading two others. She allows Spike to untie me, then tosses the reins to him. He catches the leather strips and puts Dru on one, then swinging himself easily onto the other. My sire spares a withering glance for me, and they ride off, leaving me alone. None of them look back, though I know by Spike's fidgeting that he desperately wants to.
All through the night, I lie on the forest floor. A coyote skulks nearby in case I die, but won't come close. He knows I am dangerous, and won't risk my wrath simply for a meal.
A rabbit comes close and I snatch it, fully intending to feed upon it. But now that a little blood is in my veins and I am no longer under the influence of the Bloodlust, the thought of the red fluid of life sickens me, and I let the little creature go. I notice her swollen teats as I do so, and know that I would have killed a mother had I fed upon her. It nearly makes me vomit, but my body won't allow itself to give up the small amount of blood in my veins, that it so desperately needs.
Two nights later, Spike comes back. He's alone this time, but he brings two horses and a bag of blood. I throw it away when he offers, and now that I don't look quite so weak, he doesn't argue. Instead, he simply hands me the reins to the other horse, and I take off into the night alone.
I don't see him again until two years later, when I attempted to rejoin the pack in China.
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Los Angeles, 2002
Spike has always cared for me. He's an odd one, a vampire who craves violence, needs human blood to make him truly happy, but can still love. I've never met another like him.
Perhaps it was the creature he was when Dru turned him that has caused such a vampire to emerge? I don't know. All I know is that the Spike I know today is a crazy thing, with a bloodlust strong enough to drink the whole of LA dry, but at the same time, with a surprisingly shiny heart nestled under the facade he hopes to make us believe.
And his soul... well, technically, he hasn't got one, but he's got something. Some spark of humanity left in him.
But, anyway, back to the LA crisis of the day. Wes, Gunn and Cordy will take care of this one, but with our luck, it'll be more complicated than just the body in the backyard. It will stretch on for days and days, and people will die, and Spike will leave in the middle of it all, because I won't have time to talk to him and deal with... whatever it is we're trying to deal with.
Sometimes I hate being a detective agency.
But love waits for nothing, and every minute I let Spike go on believing that I don't share his affection, is another mile that belief gets rooted into his psyche. Oh, I know he didn't say he didn't think I shared his feelings, but Spike is rather insecure when it comes to love. Or emotion of any type, actually, other than lust and anger. The gentler emotions freeze him instantly.
Of course, that was me six months ago, so I have to be careful not to let myself become to hypocritical.
Leaving Conner in his chair where I can see him, I knock softly on Spike's door. Like all vampires, he has what humans would call a 'sixth sense', a mental ability to keep track of things going on around him. Even while he sleeps, it functions. If there's nothing dangerous around, he doesn't wake. The second he feels something important, it will jerk him out of a sound sleep.
Buffy called it her 'spidey-sense'. Giles called it her 'Slayer sense'. I never pointed out the fact that it can't be either, because it is limited to neither spiders nor slayers. Most creatures possess an innate ability to sense their surroundings, but amongst some demons, vampires being one of them, it's so strong that it cannot be ignored like humans do so often. Of course, it's also much weaker in a human, and though many, with training, can effectively utilize their sixth sense, some will just never be able to.
Spike is attuned to my presence by now, and he doesn't wake, or even stir, as I slide the door open. Conner bangs a spoon on his tray and laughs, but still my childe doesn't twitch or show any signs of coming back to life.
Keeping an eye on my human son, I sit down on the edge of the blanket next to my vampire childe, and watch him. It's something that I used to crave in the past, and though I was only with Spike, Dru and Darla for a little while in China, I spent much of that time simply watching William sleep. Of course, he wanted to be called Spike back then, too, but he was still more William than the creature he would later become, so I've always thought of him like that.
My childe is in a deep sleep, I can tell because his body doesn't twitch with dream-images. Spike is a very physical dreamer, no matter what the images in his head, his body is always moving. It is only when he's beyond that place of dreaming and in where only quiet solitude keeps him company, that he is still like this.
His hair is slicked down, once again that white-blond it was when I met him in Sunnydale for the first time. William had lovely, golden-blond locks, but false blond doesn't look good on him. I'm glad that he decided, after coming here to LA, to stop keeping it that sickly yellow that is all the fad right now. And even more glad that he's started to slick it back down. I used to love the feel of William's silky tresses, but I didn't enjoy those spikes sticking up all over his head, stiff with gel.
I really wish he'd forgo dye altogether, but since that isn't going to happen, I have to try and play favorites with colors I really don't think should exist, never mind being in my childe's hair.
I love watching him sleep, but I came in here for a reason. Reluctantly, I reach out and run my fingers gently over his cheek, the caress barely felt on my own sensitive fingertips. "William," I whisper. "Awake."
The slight undertone of command-voice I've laid into the words brings Will slowly into the world, but he's too tired to protest me ordering him around right now, and by the time he's fully awakened, he'll have forgotten about it. "Huh?" He murmurs sleepily. "Wha'?"
I smile, and lean down to press a kiss to his forehead. "I need to talk t' ye, William." The Irish brogue isn't as thick as it used to be when I was human, but it's as strong as Spike remembers it, I'm sure.
Seemingly involuntarily, a tiny smile creeps onto his face, and he sits up. "Well?"
Without asking permission, without prefacing it, without anything, really, I lean over and kiss him. Softly, passion being tied down and kept on the back burner, but with lazy affection that is what I know he's seeking. Surprise renders him still for only a moment, before he begins to respond, stroking my lips with his own, running his tongue over mine.
A sharp point pricks my tongue, and I realize Spike has long control of the change. It's been so long since that happened... I can't remember how long ago it was. But vampires are long-lived creatures, and a pair bond is almost always formed in anything that is more than a dalliance. It's a lot different than a human bond, but in some ways, stronger. It rarely dies until one of the vampires themselves, dies. If Spike has been feeling and ignoring the bond for all these years, his body, to make no mention of his mind, is pretty stressed.
Confidently, I press my tongue against the fang, until it draws the first tiny bit of blood. Spike hisses and pulls back slightly, just enough to swallow it. It's not the blood that makes him react this way- he had my blood last night. It's the raw emotion of this kiss, the feelings that we both know are nearly tangible around us.
Slowly, he pulls away, after what seems like forever. Dazed, his eyelids droop, covering most of the sleepy, yet passion-drenched blue eyes. "Angel?" He murmurs, and I smile.
"William."
He doesn't protest the name, only pulls me close to him, and I give in without a fight. Conner is still in my line of sight, but he seems happy playing with his utensils, and I don't think twice about laying back against my other childe. He curls himself around me so that I can see his face out of the corner of my eye, and we simply sit there for long moments.
Eventually, he speaks again. "Thank you."
"For what?" My voice is soft.
"Showing me you feel the same way."
I smile gently. "William, I have always loved you. I will always love you."
"But not like this." It isn't a question, it's a statement.
I shrug, not willing to lie to him. "You were too young for a long time. I didn't see you for an even longer time, and when I did, you were too disappointed in me to be interested in me. But now is now, and who knows what the future will bring?"
He seems content with the answer, and we let it rest.
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Fred comes to get Conner when he starts crying and I don't immediately respond. I feel a little guilty, but I was going. It was just, untangling myself from Spike was proving harder than expected. He may be small, but he has a death-grip, especially when he's asleep, which was how he was when Conner started to yell.
A little concerned herself, knowing how quickly I usually respond to my child's cries of distress, Fred comes to check on us. Her eyes widen a little, but she doesn't comment on how she finds me, just tells me, her voice calm enough, that she's taking Conner with her to join her in the office. I nod my ascent, not really having wanted to get up anyway, and lay back down.
Somehow, before we lay down on the couch, we managed to get ourselves face to face, and Spike's head is curled into my shoulder, his arms around my chest and his body pressed length-wise against mine. Which, while an extremely comfortable position for the moment, is rapidly becoming uncomfortable. I've had sex twice in the past hundred years, not counting my brief reign as Angelus in Sunnydale, and I think I'm allowed to become rather... rapidly aroused.
Extricating myself from my sleeping brethren is not an easy task. However, I manage, and Spike stays miraculously asleep through all of it. I don't think he actually would have minded to find me... shall we say, up and ready? but I'm not really ready to find out.
And even if he hadn't minded, I don't think I'm ready for that. Plus, there's always the issue of my soul, though I'm fairly sure it's staying right where those gypsies put it. But that doesn't amount to being willing to risk anyone's life on that bet, and that's something I would be doing if I risked it.
Sigh. Me and my right hand are going to be friends forever, I think. And not out of mutual desire.
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Spike doesn't awaken until much later. The sun is already set, dinner is on the table and Conner is whining about not being fed when he finally stumbles out of his room.
Wes and Fred are in up to their elbows with the research in the living room. Wesley has surrounded himself with many huge, expensive tomes, and Fred is still clacking away at the keyboard. Gunn is off with his crowd, spending the small amount of time that he still does with them, and Cordelia is taking yet another shower, claiming that the smell of demon may never come out of her hair. Since I was fixing dinner, there wasn't anyone to feed Conner, and he got a little loud.
As soon as he gets his bearings, Spike heads for the noise-maker himself. Pulling him out of his high-chair settles him down for a minute, but then he starts to protest again. Spike enters the kitchen, grabs a jar of baby food and a tiny spoon, goes to the table and starts to feed it to Conner.
"Spike!"
He looks up, his eyes oddly dull. "What, Peaches?"
I was going to tell him not to feed Conner before dinner, but I forgo it for a concerned "What's wrong?" He looks sick. But vampires don't get sick, at least not unless they're poisoned, or stupid enough to drug themselves with cocaine.
He shrugs. "Just thinking."
I'm not about to believe that, but I think I have to, for now. I can't pry too deeply, or he'll run again, and that's the last thing I want. "Okay," I tell him, making sure plenty of doubt suffuses my voice.
He gives me a look, and for a moment seems a little more like the Spike I know. "I'm fine."
I nod, my face carefully neutral. "Okay. Don't feed Conner too much of that before dinner, okay? I don't want him needing a diaper change while we're all trying to eat."
Spike nods. "Sure, Peaches."
Something is definitely wrong. Spike never agrees with me like that, not on the first try.
Dinner is uneventful. The humans eat heartily and Spike digs into his plate, piling it high with everything I made. I chew on a bread-stick, not really interested in eating, but having learned that your mouth being full is the best excuse not to talk at the dinner table. And right now, I really need to think.
The bonds that connect sire and childe are strong, but there are never two alike. Darla changed me to gain a companion, and treated me as a fledgling for two years, maybe three at most. By the time I had twenty years under my immortal belt, I was almost her equal, provided I did nothing to piss her off. And weren't visiting the Master. But that's a different story.
Drusilla was a different kind of childe. She was actually just meant to be an amusement, but her insanity, though annoying at times, made her who she was, and she grew on me. It took longer for Darla, but by the time she turned Spike, even my sire had developed a rather soft spot for Dru. Our bond however, was totally forged on being sire and childe.
When Spike came along... everything was different. He was one of the most rebellious fledges I'd ever met, and for every way I could think of to tame him, he'd think of another to drive me crazy. Drusilla, he had a soft spot for, and Darla, he didn't dare annoy, because she would just as soon stake him as have him around, but as soon as he was sure I wasn't going to turn him into a pile of dust, I became fair game.
So, for a long while, Spike and I had what I would have termed a love-hate relationship. He drove me crazy, the rules I constantly enforced drove him crazy, but whenever he was vulnerable, I'd look out for him, and if he felt like it, he could be sweet. Plus, he was only looking for attention. I had an insane vampiress and a rather demanding sire taking my time away from him, he had to resort to obscene behavior to make me even take notice of him sometimes.
Because Spike and I are not immediate blood, the bond within our veins is different than if we were. It's stronger, and yet, not. The blood in my veins doesn't flow with attachment, like that of a sire's, and the blood of Spike's veins doesn't have the compelling need to obey me that accompanies the change. That is reserved only for the immediate sire.
Therefore, the bond that William and I made was one of work. Of sweat, and affection and comfort. It wasn't a bond of blood-family- though we were- it was a bond of love-family. Though vampires don't feel love like humans do, as a species, they are most certainly capable of it. However, like humans, there are individuals who don't love, who can't. Because the hunter's blood is stronger in our veins, there are more of us who are incapable of love than there are humans. Spike has never been one, though, nor Dru, and in my own twisted way, I loved both of them even before I got my soul.
Cordelia clears her throat, abruptly pulling me from my reverie, some of my more pleasant memories still flitting through my mind. "Angel?"
I turn my head sharply to look at her. "Huh? Oh. Yes?"
"Everyone's done eating."
I look around the table, and notice it's true. Cordy is cleaning up Conner, Fred and Wesley are clearing the table and doing the dishes, and Spike is nowhere to be seen. "Oh. Sorry."
Cordy just shrugs. "S'okay. You looked like you were off somewhere pretty far away."
I nod. "Yeah. It was... a long time ago."
She looks concerned. "Are you okay?"
I smile gently. "Actually, yes. Though most of the things I did as Angelus were horrific... I do have a few fond memories."
My Seer smiles knowingly. "Spike?"
"William, back then. But, yes." I move to take Conner, but she waves me away.
"I haven't seen him all day. Go find something to do, and let me and little Conner bond." Her voice is firm, and I smile, knowing what she's doing.
"Thanks, Cordy."
She just raises her eyebrows from where she's blurbling Conner's belly button. Laughing slightly, I walk out of the dining room, making a mental note to thank everyone for the help after dinner, and get the update on the demon they were chasing after. But right now, I need to corral my childe, and find out what's bothering him.
The door to his room is open, so I knock softly on the frame before peering in. "Spike..."
My voice dies off as I see what he's doing. Shoving everything he owns into the pockets of his duster, which he's wearing, and cleaning the couch of the things he's dropped on it in the past few days, he turns to face me. "Hey." He's trying for casual, but there's a hint of tension in his voice.
"What are you doing?"
"Packin'."
"You're leaving?"
He looks at me like I'm a small child. "Yeah. We talked 'bout it, remember, Peaches? Or are you just gettin' senile in your old age?"
My brain is struggling to keep up. "We... we talked about it... but then you kissed me..."
The hurt shines harder in Spike's eyes, but the determination matches it. "And you told me you felt the same way. But it still doesn't change anything."
"Why not?"
He sighs. "Because you're still goody-two-shoes vampire-with-a-soul, and I'm Spike. William the Bloody, slayer of Slayers, and blood-thirsty beast, remember?" He stalks past me towards the front door, and I follow him at a quick clip.
"Spike!"
He doesn't turn, but he stops, and his voice falls to something that could almost be angst-y. "Please, don't make this harder than it is."
"William, don't go."
He does turn to face me then. "I can't stay."
"Why not?"
"You know why not."
I raise my shoulders and my eyebrows. "No. I don't. So tell me, Will. Why can't you stay? Is it my friends? The fact that we share a common and equally doomed love for a Slayer? That I'm a savior of people, and you're... only a savior of the ones you like? Tell me, William." I know I'm pleading.
He sighs, hard. "It's all of that. And more. Now, can you please let me go?"
I step in-between him and the door. "No."
"Angel..."
"Look me in the eye and tell me you want to go."
He stares at me, piercing blue eyes shut off from his emotions. "I want to go. Now get out of the way."
"Liar." My voice is soft.
He's getting angry. "I did what you wanted! What more do you need?"
I ignore his little outburst. "If you wanted to leave, I wouldn't still be standing here, would I, Will?"
He reaches out to shove me out of the way, then, but I'm ready, and stand my ground. "Goddamnit, Angel, this will backfire on everybody if I stay!"
I shrug. "Maybe. But it's no more likely than if it were someone else. Now, do you want to tell me the real reason you're leaving?"
His body slumps a little, but he raises his eyes to mine, still full of pride. "I don't think... I don't think I can resist if I stay here," he says. "And I don't want to see Angelus again." He laughs bitterly. "You may be one messed-up vampire, but that fucker wants me dead."
"Believe me, I want nothing more than to never see Angelus again," I tell him. "But anything good is worth fighting for, right? You always employed that principle, Will. And... we're getting a second chance. Not many do."
I put a hand on his shoulder, and he meets my eyes, starting to waver. "Angel..."
I shush him with a finger to his lips. "Don't. You can always leave later. But don't leave now... please?"
There's a long moment of silence before he nods his ascent, quickly and without emotion. "Okay."
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