Chapter 6 - Therapy

Spike had risen from the bed when the voices downstairs had become clearer. Restful sleep wouldn't come to him, hadn't come to him since his goddess had fallen. The shouting from downstairs had pulled him from his torment, he had heard the Texan's - //Fred's// voice and her argument with the watcher and was compelled to wonder himself why she had been so nice to him. He was shocked and warmed when he heard her reasons. She trusted him. The little waif of a girl, who had taken him into the shelter of her arms, when all others were ready to hate him, trusted him. She didn't know why, and neither did he, but it was nice. Nice to feel something. anything, but all encompassing guilt...

As he looked around the room, he saw the writing on the walls. Memories of the hell that Fred had lived through scattered in poetry, in numbers, equations, and pictures. She was haunted, like him, by the past. Her emotion seeped through the pen on the walls and drowned the room in sadness.

~oOo~

Fred stood silently at the top of the stairs, berating herself for losing her temper with Wesley. She had no idea she could be that forceful, but hearing him say that she was weak hit home, and reminded her of the past she was trying so hard to overcome. She was pretty certain that issues of the past were the reason she felt she had something in common with the blond vampire that had caused her to take her defensive stance against Wesley. Spike was complicated, and she was still uncertain of him to an extent, but something inside her pulled her towards the vampire. He was like gravity, and she couldn't resist him. He was also in trouble, and no one else, it seemed, was willing to help him with whatever it was that was causing him distress. So much distress that it was slowly killing him... Fred shuddered at the thought of wasting away to nothing but dust. Was it possible to die from sheer agony of an event so strong and powerful that nothing could right it? It was pretty obvious from Spikes mantras about failure when he had arrived at the hotel, or rather when he had woken from Angel's bash over the head, that it was an event that had caused Spike to withdraw into himself; that had made him come home to Angel.

Home. How much meaning in such a small word, Fred thought to herself, as she wiped the tears from her cheek with the back of her hand. When she had been trapped in Pylea, she had resigned herself to the fact that she would never see 'home' again, that she would be a 'woman-cow' with a price on her head for the rest of her natural life. Her cave had been her dwelling, a place where she desperately tried to remember who she had been; a place where she had tried to live with what she had become. And Angel had saved her from that. Rescued her, and brought her back to life, and given her reason to have a home again - in the Hyperion. her parents knew she was there, and were happy she had found her place in the world, as weird a place as it was, and she was happy too, and thankful. Thankful for Angel taking her home with him, thankful to Wesley for praising her talent, as useless as her neuroticism over technology and invention may seem on occasion, she still gained appreciation in some small part from the others around her. They were slowly helping her come to terms with what had happened in Pylea. Helping her return to 'normal.' Perhaps Spike thought that by coming home, he could come to terms with whatever had happened. That he could become normal again, instead of the shell of a vampire he was turning into.

So Fred once more made a decision about her life, and resigned herself to helping Spike, no matter what problems she would inevitably face by doing so. Angel had been her saviour. She had thought there was a reason that he was sent to rescue her by the Powers, that perhaps she had an important part to play in the world, and now she believed she did. She would be Spike's saviour, as Angel had been hers. Helping him was the reason she had been saved from hell. And maybe they could work with each other to overcome the past that haunted both of them.

She opened the door to her room silently, and entered, a little shocked by what she saw. Spike was tracing his fingers across the walls where she had written her inner most thoughts and fears. Across the words that she had deemed "therapy". He had a look on his face, an almost understanding sadness, etched across his features as he read, she snuck up beside him, knowing he knew she was there, and listened as he read the words aloud.

~oOo~

'The shadows chase me through the darkness

As they escape from the mist.

Like ghosts; beyond time

They chase,

To devour my soul into their eternity.

Of hell.

They are Evil:

Choice is non-existent.

Only shadows. Chasing humanity.'

He sighed.

"Y'know pet, that's quite a talent you have there." Spike spoke to the room. "Sneak all you want round me sweets, won't make any difference. I'll still hear. I'll still know." He looked at her as menacingly as he could manage, before he recognised the look on her face. Hurt. He had hurt her delicacy and gentleness with only a few tainted words. How fragile she was. His demeanour shifted almost immediately. "Sorry Fred. I shouldn't have." He trailed off.

"S'ok. You're the big bad vamp. You're allowed to be mean. Hell why not? Everyone else thinks I'm stupid. Why not go prove them right?"

"I... I didn't mean. Oh heck, look, I'm sorry. I heard what you said. What you did, means a lot." Spike sighed and shifted back to the bed, where he hung his head and raised his hands to clutch at it. "I just want it to go away. The pain. The loss. You couldn't understand. Wouldn't know where to start telling you."

"I got time. All the time in the world as a matter o' fact. You'd think five years in a hell dimension would make a gal less trustin'. Pfft!" Fred walked to the wall that Spike had been reading from and traced her hand delicately across the pen that marred it. "This is my torment. Dunno if you get what I'm sayin' but this it what it is. It's not talent. It's just me." Spike scanned the rooms' walls seeing only one was free of the Texan's writing. Fred sighed. "I don't expect you to get it. Just sayin' is all. What this is, this is me. You don't get much more to me than, well, what you get. All I'm tryin' to say is I'm here. If you want to talk, about anythin'... Well, I'll leave you be. It's not even noon yet. You should be sleepin'. I'll go sort your room out."

Spike looked at the girl before him, and realised that she was much more than he originally thought. Just before she left the room, he spoke to her.

"Fred?" She looked back at him, the brown curls of her long hair floating through the air as she turned her head.

"Yeah?"

"I do get it. Understand it, I mean. I shouldn't have been nosy, I shouldn't have read."

"Spike." he looked up at her, and she smiled. "It's ok. Honest. You can read it all if you want. I just wanted you to know it's not jus' writin', if that makes sense." She scoffed at her own comment, and grinned again. "'Sides," she continued, "I like that you read it. You have a nice voice."

And as quickly as her cheeks flushed pink, she left the room.