Title: Spike Multiplied
Author: Queen Boadicea
Email: queenboadiceaoftheiceni@yahoo.com
Spoiler Warning: BtVS seasons one through seven
Disclaimer: This belongs to Joss Whedon and the usual gang of idi…uh, geniuses
Feedback: Do your worst—it can't compare to my worst ;)
A/N: This is being written for the National Novel Writing Month challenge. That's right: a 50,000-word-or- more novella written in one month. This isn't going to be good but it's going to be fast!
"I turned my back on suffering,
but it shone through my chest
like light through melted wax.
Puzzled I looked down
to see my breasts
glowing, felt an unnatural heat
struggle with my heart." – Susan Fantl Spivack, "I Turned My Back"
The energy streaming from the amulet around his neck was consuming him inside and out. He could feel it licking up his skin and bones, torching him alive. It was insane; consciousness should have fled ages ago. But he was still intensely aware of what was happening to him, locked in place like a statue while the smoldering flames reduced his body to ash.
His wild laughter rang through the space in spite of the falling debris as he thumbed his nose as always at the invisible powers, at his fate. He had saved the world. More importantly, he had saved Buffy. Who gave a flying fart about destiny?
Suddenly he was falling from a great height and crash-landed on the floor. As his head smacked into the hard surface, he clutched his skull and ground out, "What the fuck!" What had just happened? He'd been dying; he was sure of that. That kind of pain only came before you bit the big one and he'd been certain that was his grand finale. If the magic pendant hadn't been enough to do him in, the way the cavern had been shaking and the roof collapsing should have finished the job. So why wasn't he dust and where was he?
Rolling onto his hands and knees, Spike glanced down at his body. He was whole and apparently unharmed. Brushing his hands down himself cautiously, he couldn't detect any wounds or injuries. He felt as good as he ever had. "Well, that's a plus at any rate."
He stood up and took stock of his surroundings. He was in a room along with whole host of other creatures. Some stared curiously at him; others were apparently too apathetic to pay any attention either to his appearance or the unconventional manner of his arrival.
He turned and surveyed the area, trying to take it all in. The chamber was huge, seeming to stretch upwards and outwards almost into infinity. The walls were a bland, inoffensive off white and loomed up into a vast overhead space that made him dizzy to contemplate it. The denizens of the room were literally without number, a wall-to-wall bewildering assortment of humans and non-humans, all perched on chairs, floating in the air or pacing the floor. Some of the species he recognized. A lot were foreign to him. "If this is the afterlife, I gotta say it's been really overrated," he muttered to himself.
One bluish creature with greenish spots mottling his skin and twelve horns arranged in a crownlike pattern on his head gave a series of unintelligible grunts and pointed one ragged claw to the wall behind him. He stared at the creature. "What's your bloody problem, mate?"
"He said you have to take a number." That explanation came from a meek-looking man in a lime green business suit seated three chairs away from Spike's position. He pointed in the same direction as Blue Boy.
Spike turned to look and noticed a dispenser attached to the wall. It looked like one of those things you saw in deli shops that gave out numbers to show your turn. He walked up to it and pulled out a ticket with an obscenely long number printed on it. Squinting at the tag, he looked up to the wilting pansy in the chair and waved the strip at him. "What's this supposed to be, then?"
"Um, well, that's your number. When it's called, you go up to one of the desks."
Spike turned and saw glass-walled cubicles several rows ahead of him with what appeared to be an empty chair in front of each of them. As he peered in bafflement, a figure appeared in one seat, vaguely humanoid and female. She lifted her head and cried out, "NEXT!" followed by a string of numbers. At that point, a tiny, dwarf-like figure trotted up to her and presented its ticket.
"The monitor up there lets you know what number is up. It changes to the next number in sequence. Simple and effective, no?" The man beamed as if he himself were personally responsible for the system.
Spike looked at the monitor and saw the number flashing on it in bright numerals. His ticket was nowhere near that. The vampire threw his ticket on the floor, muttered, "Sod this," and strode up to the desk. Ignoring the dwarf, he planted his hands on the flat surface and leaned his face into the grilled speaker. "Are you the one in charge here?" he said to the female squatting behind the enclosed desk.
She gazed at him with a deceptively mild look from her three eyes. "I'm sorry, sir. It's not your turn. Please have a seat and wait for your number to come up."
"Yeah, well, I'm not much of one for waiting, luv. So why don't we forget about the midget and tell me where here is and what I'm doing here."
The woman's face didn't twitch by so much as a muscle. But suddenly Spike found himself in a cavern with gouts of flames shooting out of the ground. One fiery geyser took off his foot and he screamed, falling to the burning ground, clutching his ragged stump.
The next moment he was back in the huge room, lying on the floor in front of the stall, and bawling his lungs out. The woman looked down on him from behind the safety of the enclosure and said with exaggerated patience, "I told you, SIR, you have to wait your turn. You can do it here or in the Flaming Pits of Agony and we can send you there as often as needed for you to learn your lesson. Your choice."
Spike glared up at her, loathing clear in every line of his face. He wanted nothing more than to smash through the partition separating them and rip her lungs out. But his recent brush with burning told him he'd better mind his manners. He staggered up and noticed that his foot was back on his leg. Stepping on it tentatively, he concluded that wherever he was, he had been reconstituted from his death in Sunnydale and they—whoever had brought him here—could do it whenever they wanted. Whether it was so he'd be fit for more punishment, he wasn't sure and he didn't intend to find out.
Flipping the triple-eyed woman behind the grill the bird, he sauntered back over to the business suit, snatched his number off the floor and seated himself. While he was there, he saw various other beings, for want of a better word, popping in and out of the other desks. They all called out numbers causing the monitor overhead to blink rapidly from one numeral to the next. He would still be a long time waiting, judging by the number on his ticket.
With nothing better to do, he decided on questioning the suit. On second glance, it turned out the guy wasn't really human. He had four ears instead of the usual complement of two and they wagged and fluttered faintly as if possessing a life of their own. He also seemed to possess more than the human complement of teeth, judging by the way his lips bulged over them.
Spike shoved the little ponce roughly with his elbow and asked him, "So what the hell are we doing here, anyways? And where's here 'zackly?"
The man, thing, whatever it was, appeared to speak fairly serviceable English, although with a strange accent Spike couldn't place. "This is the Waiting Room. Those of us here are waiting to be sent to whatever comes next."
Well, that was a lot of information that really didn't go anywhere. Spike scowled when nothing more was forthcoming and questioned the guy again. "The Waiting Room? You mean, like Purgatory or summat?"
Mr. Business Suit screwed up his brows as he tried to understand the word. "Oh, is that what they call it in your dimension? I seem to have heard that term before," the little man mused. "But there are so many creatures of different faiths, credos and beliefs coming through here, it's tough to keep track of all the different catchphrases. I just call it the Waiting Room and leave it at that."
Spike shifted on the uncomfortable seat. It was unyielding, hard and an industrial deadening gray like what you'd expect in an airplane waiting area or bus depot. Guess bureaucracies didn't really change much no matter where you were. "Yeah, whatever. You telling me this is where all the dead end up?"
"Um, not exactly. In most dimensions, the gods, powers, ruling deities or whatever you call them have their own setups for dealing with their departed. But sometimes you have somebody who really doesn't fit into any easy category of good or evil. The really thorny cases—like you and me—get sent here and then other people decide what happens to us."
"Thorny, eh? Guess I always was a bit of a rebel," Spike smirked. He peered sideways at the meek and mild specimen beside him. The putrid color of his clothes forbade looking at the bloke dead on. Spike wondered what world this being was from. You didn't see too many people from Earth wearing lime green business suits no matter what race they were. "So what are you in for, mate?"
The little man perked up as if pleased that somebody was interested enough to ask and his ears flapped with delight. "Oh, I went berserk after my wife and children died in a fire. I blamed the owner for not keeping the building codes up to spec. I'm afraid I rather lost my head and I started committing arson and torched several of the owner's other buildings before I was caught. I was sent in for psychiatric care and I became truly appalled at what I'd done. I discovered through some curious circumstances far too convoluted to get into here that I had a talent for sorcery and became a humble aide for powerful warriors in another dimension I was accidentally sucked into." He chuckled at a private joke. "At least I thought it was an accident at the time. You see, these powers—"
Spike cut him off before he could continue. "Yeah, that's fascinating in a way that's not." If he didn't stop this guy right now, the little twit would jaw his bloody ear off. The man was either a natural chatterbox or just starved for attention. "So the gist of it was, you did some good to make up for the evil you'd done and now you're here to get your final reward."
The little man stared at him as if Spike had grown two heads and a set of horns. "Reward? Oh, dear me, no. Did I give you the impression I was being compensated? I killed hundreds of people. No amount of do-gooding really makes up for that. I'm certainly not going to get a reward just because I think I deserve one. Redemption doesn't work that way." He leaned towards Spike and lowered his voice as if afraid of being overheard. "Just between you and me, even though I've been here a tedious length of time, I'm not particularly eager to see what they've got in store for me. With my record, chances are it's going to be rather unpleasant."
Spike felt a chill as he heard those words. No redemption even when you tried to do good? What was the damned point then? "You mean you might get punished for all those lives you took? Even though you were off your nut at the time?"
Four Ears nodded sadly, ear flapping accompanying the motion. "I'm afraid so. I was never really punished for that, you see. I was just caught, sentenced to mental care and then sucked into an alien dimension to act as a force for good. True, my life was then spent saving people and my death was prolonged, painful and extremely gruesome. But that doesn't balance the scales as far as they…" he waved his hands upward in a vague way to indicate mysterious, unseen others "…are concerned."
He sighed, a wet, whistling sound as if water had collected in his lungs. "No, I'm afraid I have a lengthy and rough row to hoe. I may be sent to any dimension to continue serving the greater good or I might simply wind up in any one of a number of disagreeable hellish worlds in eternal penance."
Icy slivers of panic went down Spike's spine as the implications of these statements hit him. Four Ears had killed hundreds of people. He'd killed literally hundreds of thousands in his 120-odd year career and that didn't even take into account the various other atrocities he'd committed throughout his illustrious career as a fearsome member of the undead and part of Angelus's crew. What if saving the world as he'd done didn't count as enough to redeem himself? He might spend an eternity being torched alive or some other equally grisly punishment. He remembered the demons he'd had to fight in that cave in Africa and his recent brush with burning dismemberment and his stomach roiled. He had to get out of here and pronto.
He said nothing of his apprehension to the chatty bloke beside him. For all he knew, this guy could be some sort of informant for whoever was running this place. Casually he asked, "Hey, mate. Where's the loo?"
The little man blinked and his face went blank as if the question had no meaning. "The what?"
"The loo. The john. The WC. You know, the damn facilities. I have to go flush myself out, if you catch my drift."
Again Spike was favored with an uncomprehending look. "No, you don't. You couldn't possibly."
"Hey, it's my bowels, mate, not yours. And, if I say I've got to go, I've got to go. Unless you want me to piss myself right here," he threatened.
The little man looked him up and down. Then he began making a high-pitched keening sound that set the vampire's teeth on edge. It took a moment for Spike to realize the bloke was laughing at him. "Eeeeeeeeeee! Oh, that's a good one! I've been here a long time and have heard a lot of jokes but it's really refreshing to be with a true comic!" He cut loose with another shrill peal of laughter.
"What's so flippin' hilarious, you berk?" Spike growled. He was this close to ripping this bloke's ears off and using them as napkins.
Mr. Business Suit stopped laughing to wipe his eyes. "You're dead. As in stiff, expired, pushing up phloxes, waving to the Big Guy, kissing the Goddess…"
Spike snapped, "Right. I get that. I'm a bleedin' extinct parrot. I still don't see what the funny is."
The man paused and his eyes widened as he realized Spike hadn't been joking. "You really don't get it, do you? There are no facilities here because no one needs them. You don't need to go, as you put it. You don't really need to do anything. You don't need to eat, sleep, drink, air out your mouth sacs, crack your kneecaps or stretch your legs. That's a good thing, too. You wouldn't want to be in the…loo when your number comes up, would you? Nope, you're a spirit and whatever pains and needs afflicted your flesh are all gone."
That didn't make any sense. "But, a moment ago, I was being charred alive in the Flaming Bog of Eternal Stench. It took my foot clean off. That hurt like hell, mate, and don't try to tell me different."
"Well, of course! What's the point of damnation if you can't experience torture and suffering? If you're shunted out of the Waiting Room to any other kind of dimension, you'll be given a physical body that will experience pain and probably plenty of it if you're a really vicious creature at heart. But, while you're here, there's no sensation at all. That's why humor is really appreciated. Laughter is one of the few things you can actually experience. Most creatures here are rather lacking in a sense of humor. Stay here too long and the urge for laughter goes right out of you." Four Ear's mouth stretched and all his teeth flashed as if to show his appreciation of Spike's unintended joke.
"Or maybe you're going insane, mate? You think of that? 'Cause you've got to be pretty daft to think jokes about urine are funny," Spike jeered.
The man blinked again and appeared to consider the statement soberly. "Yes, that could be it. Insanity is very much a possibility if you're here too long." Then he grinned again. "Still, urine jokes can be very amusing if told right."
Spike scowled and he bared his fangs in return. "Well, you won't be laughing if you're licking up a puddle of my piss," he threatened.
The ponce in the suit shrugged. "Okay. Try pissing yourself, as you said earlier. See what, if anything, comes out."
Spike concentrated. After a moment, he realized nothing was happening. Checking himself internally, he realized the suit was right; since he'd gotten here, he hadn't felt hungry, tired or any physical sensation other than the pain of losing his foot. It was as if his carcass was simply that—dead meat he was hauling around with no accompanying feeling.
The implications were deeply troubling. It meant there'd be nothing to take his mind off the waiting. No trips to the loo, no food breaks, no naps…nothing but an endless stretch of waiting with pathetic berks like Chuckles beside him for company. That was an even worse prospect than the pit of burning. He stood a good chance of going insane from boredom. He patted his pockets and then went rooting around them in a panic. They were completely empty. Shit. He didn't even have any fags.
He licked his lips as the terror welled up. Then he forcibly pushed it back down inside him. He was William the Bloody and he wasn't afraid of anything. He'd never been afraid of Angelus though the ponce would often beat him senseless. He hadn't been scared of the Master, Buffy or Glory, even when the bitch had tortured him. He'd been right there at the center of the Hellmouth in the worst battle of his existence. He hadn't flinched from his duty or removed that sodding amulet when the pain was ripping him to pieces. What was a little waiting compared to all that?
The inner pep talk served to bolster his flagging spirits. "Right then." He settled himself in the chair and looked at the guy beside him. "Want to play 20 Questions?"
He didn't know how much time had elapsed since he'd come to this wretched hole between universes. He'd lost track of the number of people who'd come and gone. Business Suit had long since vanished and been replaced by a less-than-pleasant Mowpertyl demon who'd gotten into a vicious fight with the vampire before disappearing. When the demon had reappeared, there had been missing chunks from his flesh before they'd magically healed themselves. After that he'd been properly subdued and had kept far away from the vampire. Too bad; the fight had actually been rather entertaining and had helped to relieve the crushing boredom—for awhile, anyways.
But such diversions were far and few between. Most of the creatures that came and went were too tired, worn-out, dispirited or disoriented from their sojourns in whatever worlds they came from to pay him or each other much attention.
There weren't any humans around either. Humans he thought were from Earth always turned out to be different species altogether. Most couldn't speak any language he understood. He actually found himself missing Four Ears; at least he'd had some type of conversational skill.
He tried to wrench up the chairs from the floor in order to destroy them but they appeared to be welded or bolted to the surface. He couldn't so much as budge them or dent them. He tried battering them with his fists but there wasn't even any accompanying pain. He was rapidly losing it from the tedium and he remembered the business suit's warning about insanity.
"It is a part of damnation to experience desires that we can no longer gratify." – Thomas Stearns Eliot, "The Sacred Wood: Dante"
The passage of things like hours and days ceased to have any meaning so he found himself passing the time by reminiscing about Buffy. He went over every sigh, word, comment, quip, glance, blow and touch she'd ever given him. Funny thing was, he couldn't get excited over any of the memories. Oh, he got the feelings, all right; no problems there. He just couldn't get an erection or any kind of excitement going below the waist. He wanted to beat off but there was no privacy in this place and no way of going elsewhere.
Finally he got fed up with it and decided to stroke himself anyway. What did he care what these creatures thought? The other beings seemed completely indifferent to his actions so, after a little hesitation, he went to it with his customary gusto. No dice. Nothing happened even when he pawed himself like a sex maniac. His member remained a limp and useless piece of wilted flesh in his hand. He simply couldn't get any action going. Then he understood the full extent of what Four Ears had told him and shivered in terror. This place may not have been Purgatory but it really was a kind of hell.
And there was evidently no way of escaping it before his turn. He'd seen whirlpools open for the other applicants when their numbers came up…doors or portals, he wasn't sure which. He'd taken a chance and darted at one of them only to have it snap shut in his face and hurl him across the room into the wall. That had engendered sniggers from quite a lot of people as well as a reprimand and warning from the three-eyed bint.
"You're not going to get out before your turn so you might as well relax. Besides, you really wouldn't want to go to some of those places. They're not—compatible to one of your kind," she told him primly.
"What's that supposed to mean?" He didn't really care about the answer; getting her to talk was just another way of relieving the crushing monotony. He would have dearly loved to needle and prove a nuisance to her the way he had to the librarian when he'd been staying at his house. But when she wasn't needed, the woman simply disappeared like all the others and he was left with the other losers in this godforsaken hellhole.
"A lot of those dimensions would be pretty rough on a vampire. No blood—nothing you could drink, anyway—perpetual sunlight or water worlds with no land. That sort of thing. Bye now!"
"Wait! What about—?" Sod it. Too late. She'd disappeared again and he was stuck with people who didn't care to talk to him. He'd wanted to know about Earth, his world. Was there any chance he could get back there? Would Buffy still be alive if he did? Just how long had he been gone?
Finally, after an eternity of waiting, his number came up. The bint called him up to the desk and he tried to restrain himself from any unmanly show of haste as he swaggered to the desk. "About bloody time. So where'm I headed?"
She looked down at a monitor behind the partition without bothering to meet his eyes. "You take this disk to room 246132B. You're going to see Xorkkandeelieanderwitz." She slid him the item in question through the slot.
He turned the disk over in his hand carefully and gave it a curious glance. On the surface it bore a vague resemblance to a computer disk. Other than that, there were no identifying marks of any kind. He pocketed it and asked, "Xorkkan-bloody who? And what do you mean I'm going to another room? I thought I was going to be sent onwards to, you know, an alternate dimension."
"In due time, sir. First you have to report to your caseworker. He'll evaluate your file and decide what your ultimate destination/destiny will be. Don't lose that disk and have a nice trip. NEXT!" She pressed a button on her desk and his own personal vortex opened under him, swallowing up the vampire in an instant.
"Wait a bloody—!" The room vanished as the vortex caught and spun him helplessly in its eddy. He was battered by the howl of turbulent winds and a kind of grinding shriek that rose in volume and intensity until it hurt his ears. After who knew how long, he was hurtled from the mystical whirlpool to land sprawling on another hard floor.
"Shit, what's with the crazy comings and goings? Can't I just walk anyplace like normal people?" He groused. Taking a quick look around, he saw the four walls of a cramped room and a low desk with a computer atop it. The walls were stacked to the roof with filing cabinets labeled with indecipherable symbols. But it was the being behind the desk that caught Spike's attention.
The small, dwarflike figure perched on a high chair behind it was barefoot with six toes on each foot and each hand. The hands or paws were covered with a reddish gold fur and the unhuman creature was completely bald except for weird tufts of hair that sprouted in random patterns all over his head and the fur that covered his face except for his eyes and nose. There were two tufted ears on the top of its head that swiveled constantly in every direction as if it suffered from perpetual agitation. It resembled nothing so much as a mangy pygmy marmoset crossed with a koala bear.
It was working feverishly, tapping on a keyboard, peering into the computer screen and muttering to itself. "Oy." Spike spoke up, getting irritated when the creature appeared not to notice his presence. "OY!"
The hairy midget looked up at last, irritation drifting across its furry face, and blinked its red eyes. "Oh. You must be my one o'clock. Have a seat." It waved a paw at the empty space in front of the desk.
"But there's no—" At that moment, a chair magically appeared in front of the desk. "Oh. Right." Spike walked over with his customary swagger and plopped down.
The creature continued to tap on the keyboard for another moment before stopping. Finally it folded its paws, stared at Spike and then grimaced. "Well?" Even the marmoset's voice was furry, making its words sound as if it'd swallowed cotton balls.
"Well, what?" Belatedly he remembered what the bird at the desk told him. Fishing his disk out of his pocket, he handed it over to What's-His-Face and leaned back as the creature inserted it into the A drive.
"Hmmm. Hmmm." The animal didn't appear too impressed by what it was seeing and the piercing, scrutinizing look it gave Spike wasn't particularly reassuring.
After awhile the vampire couldn't stand the silent inspection any longer. "What's the verdict then, Mork? Do I get to join the holy choir or what?"
"That's Mr. Xorkkandeelieanderwitz. But you can call me Xork (pronounced ZORK) or sir if that's too difficult for you to manage. As for where you go from here…well, that all depends on you. According to your file, you went out and got a soul last year. Is that correct, Mr….Spike, is it?" The creature pronounced it as SPECK.
The vampire frowned. Was the furball trying to insult him? He couldn't tell from its facial expression. "It's Spike, actually."
"That's what I said. Speck."
"No, you…" Spike huffed in irritation before deciding to let it go. "Never mind. And about the other thing. You're right. Got me my soul back. Can't say there's too many vampires could make that claim." He preened himself slightly on that knowledge.
"No, nor that they'd get one for such selfish reasons," the creature replied with a snort, clearly unimpressed with Spike's feeble boast.
The vampire scowled, immediately on his mettle. "Selfish? 'Ere now, none of that! I got mine for the woman I loved. Thought it'd make me into a better man, the kind of man she'd want!"
"Hmmm. So you didn't do it for personal redemption but simply to win a girl. That's why you ran back to her hometown after you got your soul instead of, say, wandering the world helping others and doing good deeds. Am I correct in this assumption?" All twelve fingers fluttered and then laced together as the creature awaited his answer.
The flippant brushing aside of his actions from last year outraged Spike. He decided to point out to the animal the errors of his thinking. "Oy, I couldn't waste time traveling around the world like a David Carridine character. I was needed on the Hellmouth. Does 'from beneath you it devours' ring any bells between those furry ears of yours, mate?"
"You only heard that message after you crawled back to Sunnydale and hid yourself in a basement over the Hellmouth. Then you promptly started going crazy, hearing voices and getting your mind played with by the First…Evil, was it?" Xork scanned the screen as if checking his facts. "Yes, that's what they called it in your world. That's where you heard that particular message. Until then, the only reason for your return had been that female—the Slayer."
Damn, when the creature put it that way, his actions didn't seem so noble, did they? But Spike was sick of people judging him. Nobody back in Sunnydale but Buffy had been willing to give him the benefit of the doubt and now it looked like he was being assessed by beings in other dimensions as well. Frankly, he was bloody fed up with it. "Look, you can't judge me by what you think of me. You don't know me, do you, Mork?"
"On the contrary. Thanks to that disk, I know everything about you, Mr. Speck." Xork turned the monitor so the vampire could see it and Spike got a look at the screen.
Squiggles re-shaped themselves into words and he saw written down, as if from a passage in a book, a scene from his early youth. There he was, sitting under a tree (not because it was comfortable but because he thought that was the sort of thing that poets did), cudgeling his brains for a good rhyme for the word "butterfly." Spike sat back from the computer, swallowing hard. "Bloody hell," he muttered. If he'd still been human there would have been a fiery blush all over his face.
"That's right, Mr. Speck," the creature replied with a faint hint of relish in its voice. "Not only your deeds but every word you ever spoke, every tiny little thought that ever crossed your mind are in your file. So we know not only your actions but also the reasons behind them. Your motivations are pretty lousy, by the way," Xork finished with a contemptuous squint.
Spike wasn't about to relive his miserable life as a useless human. That would be simply too degrading for words. He could just see this Xork character sifting through his humiliating rejection from Cecily. He'd prefer that the beastie skip over that period of his existence.
"Listen, I went back to Sunnydale 'cause that's where I knew I would be of use. I was the best and strongest part of Buffy's crew. I was the only real fighter of the lot and she knew it. When I was fighting alongside them after Buffy died, they were mostly dead weight."
Xork's tufted ears twitched, whether in amusement or disdain, Spike wasn't certain. "Well, that would be what you think. You have an enormous ego. But, underneath all that swagger, you know better." Xork touched a few keys and brought up a small inset window entitled "Sunnydale 1996-2003." "According to this, you weren't there when the Hellmouth Slayer fought the Master."
Spike rolled his eyes. What did that have to do with anything? "Wasn't in Sunnydale that year, was I?"
The creature gave a sniff, the gesture evidently conveying the same disdain it did in Spike's world. "No, you were wreaking murderous havoc in Prague with Drusilla. The Slayer had her valiant friends aiding her in her struggles—quite ably, I might add. Then when the Slayer fought Angelus you were less than useful."
"What the hell are you talking about? I helped pull Drusilla out of the running. If the Slayer had had to face the bloody poof and Dru on her own, she would have gotten killed. The whole world would have gone to hell in a handbasket. If it didn't, it's 'cause of me, innit?" He propped his feet on the desk and rocked back in his chair, satisfied he'd made his point.
Xork read off the screen in a bored voice. "Drusilla attacked me! Faithless bitch, always preferring the giant poofster over me. Still, I was able to fight her off and knock her unconscious. She was never the fighter I am, poor lamb. 'Sorry, baby. Wish there was another way.' I scoop her up and see Angelus slashing and fighting the Slayer for all he's worth. He's managed to get her sword away from her and got her pinned to the wall good and proper. Doesn't look like the bitch has much fight left in her. 'God. He's gonna kill her.' Well, not my problem. I got what I came for. Let the two of 'em sort it out."
Xork tapped his fingers on the screen. "At that point, you thought Angelus was going to finish off the Slayer. Acathla would have opened, human beings would have been tortured for eternity and you didn't care. You got Drusilla and that's all that mattered. So much for saving the world, Mr. Speck."
Spike shuffled his feet. His so-called caseworker didn't seem interested in helping him as much as going over past misdemeanors and foul-ups. "Well, it all turned out all right in the end, didn't it? Wouldn't have if I hadn't helped."
"That's more due to the Slayer's willingness to use available resources and ability to call upon inner strength not your intentions or actual assistance, Mr. Speck. Your participation, in the end, was not what enabled her to win that battle, especially since you were driving out of town with your paramour." Xork stated. "Then there's the matter of your aid in the fight against Mayor Wilkins."
Now that was uncalled for. "Why you bringing that up? I wasn't there for that either." He stopped speaking when he realized that was the hairball's point.
The creature's toothsome grin was without mirth. "Precisely. You were in South America with your leman. You only returned to Sunnydale because you were once again fixated on the Slayer. Then, in the struggle against Adam, well, you tried to betray the Slayer and her friends only turning to their side again when it proved more beneficial to you. Again, selfishness before and after betrayal." He shook his head sadly. "Not exactly stirring examples in your favor."
Spike had had enough of the play-by-play descriptions of his failures. It was time to get this furry troll back on track. "Okay, so I stumbled a bit in the do-gooding arena along the way. What could you expect? I was still evil back then, weren't I?" He saw the pointed stare and realized that argument might not exactly win him any points in his favor. "Could we just skip over all that and get to the year after I won my soul?"
"It's all part and parcel of your file, Mr. Speck. I can't overlook it simply because it makes you uncomfortable, it's not convenient to the way you see yourself or because you think it doesn't matter. You didn't get your soul in a vacuum, after all. I have to look at the events leading up to that decision and after its retrieval. It's one big, rich tapestry and every thread counts." He squinted at the screen again. "Now as to the fight against Glory…"
Spike leaned forward, eager to show what an asset he'd been. "That's right. I was there, shoulder to shoulder with Buffy, scrapping away like I always did. She knew she could count on me more than the others. I mean, I was the only other one with the super strength there."
"I suppose that explains why you were knifed in the ribs and thrown off the tower by a demon that was almost a head shorter than you," Xork finished dryly, smirking at Spike's embarrassed and guilty expression. "That was rather a poor showing on your part as opposed to the 'dead weight' members of the team. There was the construction worker, who knocked the goddess through a wall with a wrecking ball, the two witches who parted the crowd with only a thought, the librarian/Watcher who was actually the one to kill the goddess by murdering her human half and the Slayer who saved the world yet again by sacrificing her own life." Xork gave him a level stare. "A terrible sacrifice that would not have been necessary, by the way, if you had protected the Key as you promised. Your aid to the champion of light hasn't been as great as you would like to believe and it was never selfless."
Spike said nothing in reply. He couldn't. Xork wasn't telling him anything he hadn't said to himself, over and over again, the summer after Buffy's death in the battle against Glory. He had failed her. He knew it even if he never said so in front of her friends. Some hero he had been. The grief he'd known during the summer following her death briefly rose up to strangle him and he blinked hard as his vision swam.
The furball didn't see or didn't care about the vampire's anguish as he continued reciting from the screen. "In the year after she was resurrected, the Slayer was afflicted with a particularly severe case of soul trauma, a situation which you did nothing to remedy…"
Spike interrupted, "Soul trauma? What the hell is that?"
Xork's eyebrows twitched along with his ears. "Oh, that's right. You didn't bother to find out what was wrong with the Slayer. You only went to that triad of mortal children in order to find out if something was wrong with you. She suffered from soul trauma, a condition quite as devastating and dangerous as mental and physical damage. The explanation for it is long and complicated and it's her problem not yours so there's no point in getting into it here."
Xork carried on relentlessly. "Since you want to focus on your last year, let's just pull that up, shall we? Let's encapsulate your fight against the First—a non-corporeal being, incidentally, so you couldn't provide much in the way of real support if physical prowess was all you brought to the table. Your main help consisted of being captured by Bringers, tortured by a Turok Han, getting rescued, housed and handfed by the Slayer, brainwashed into killing people by the First Evil, getting thoroughly beaten by the First's agent in a pivotal battle and wearing a magical artifact that destroyed a town. Oh my." He turned towards Spike. "Do you have anything to say about this sad tale of appalling uselessness and tragic ineptitude?"
Spike's fists flexed. He dearly wished he had a fag. It would have given him something to do with his hands and stifled the urge to choke Xork until he turned blue. "That's one-sided and slanted and you know it! I helped train those girls…"
"Which the Watcher could have done and which they did on their own during daylight hours when you couldn't be there," Xork replied, dismissal clear in its voice and attitude.
"I fought and killed that demon when Buffy went into that vortex." Spike recalled that brawl with particular relish. He'd gotten his stones back and proven to everyone the Big Bad was back and no one's punching bag. The other Scoobies certainly had made a poor showing by comparison.
Xork's next words promptly punctured his ego. "That was after it threw you through the ceiling, wasn't it? And killing demons? Pretty much what you've been doing for the last three years. Not much in the way of anything new there." Xork yawned, revealing a purplish, ridged interior and a double row of tiny, razor-tipped incisors running along the upper and lower jaw.
What the bloody hell was going on here? Was he with a social worker or defending himself in front of a jury? "Once again—fighting the good fight here. Big difference in terms of motivation. I didn't just go out looking for demons to work over when I got my soul, did I?"
"No, that is true. When the Slayer's Watcher was turned into a demon, you were happy at the idea that here was another demon for you to punch and kill. Back then, you were just hanging around for the booze, blood and barfights, weren't you? Makes me wonder why the others tolerated you so much." The furred one scratched his belly.
"They could tell I was useful—unlike some others I could name," Spike muttered with a scowl.
Xork ignored the swipe. "What passes for law enforcement on many worlds is useful too but you don't invite them over to dinner when they're not related to you. Well, no matter. That's all in the past. Now we have to discuss the future. Precisely, your future, Mr. Speck." He leaned forward, resting his elbows on the desk, and Spike found himself holding his non-existent breath.
"The fact that you willingly retrieved your soul counts in your favor. Not by much, you understand, but it does give you a bargaining chip with the folks higher up. So you have a choice. You can go to a hell dimension. There are any number of harsh, disagreeable worlds that would suit a creature of your temperament perfectly. In the one that's been selected for you, you'll meet up with many of the deceased demons you killed. They should be very happy to see you again. A lot of them have scores to settle. Among the others, there are a few who have a, shall we say, predilection, for vampires?" A raised eyebrow and swift appraising glance over Spike's form made the vampire's skin crawl.
Once again he found himself pushing down feelings of panic. "Sod it. I'm not having any of that! Come on, I don't get this. I saved the world. I put myself out there and the world is saved because of me. Why're you talking about making me some demon's whore?"
"You didn't save the world, Mr. Speck. You saved a world." Xork corrected. "And we're not talking just one demon. A lot of them would like to bend you over in uncomfortable positions and have their naughty way with you."
A muscle twitching in Spike's jaw was the only sign of his growing apprehension. "Why is that even an option? Shouldn't I be getting some kind of reward?"
Xork's eyebrows shot halfway up to his hairline. "After 120-odd years of murder, massacres, rape, torture, mayhem and impalement with long, sharp, pointy instruments? Noooooo, I don't think so. Besides, you had to destroy an entire town to save your world and took 259 lives with you. I believe the phrase for that in your dimension is Pyrrhic victory."
"It couldn't be helped! You think it was my idea to pop off and have the whole of Sunnyhell become another Grand Canyon?" Something else the creature said registered and Spike's eyes narrowed. "What do you mean, 259 lives?"
"Did you and the Slayer do a final check of the town before implementing her plan?" Seeing the dawning comprehension in his eyes, Xork sighed. "No, of course not. Mr. Speck, this wasn't an evacuation ordered by the government. People left the hamlet of Sunnydale in droves because many of them saw the writing on the wall. But there were people who refused to leave their homes either out of stubbornness, pride, madness, illness or simply because they had nowhere else to go. Many were willfully blind, hoping that whatever catastrophe was striking the town this time would blow over the way it had in the past."
The being that looked like a balding Furby leaned back in his chair and directed a cold stare at the demon opposite him. "Those 259 people are dead, Mr. Speck. And it's your fault."
"But I saved the world! Doesn't that count for anything?" Spike yelled back and now he didn't care if this creature saw him as being desperate. "Yeah, we lost lives and that's a bloody shame and all. But we were in a war. We lost people on our side, too! Those potentials were dying left, right and center. Civilians die in war. That's the sad truth of it, Mork, and blaming me for it is just damned stupid."
Xork's teeth chattered and the buzzing sound managed to convey both annoyance and boredom at once. "It's not stupidity. It's the truth in plain black and white. Along with those dozen people you murdered with your soul, you were responsible for an additional 259 lives lost in the destruction of that town. And it needn't have happened. Why, in other alternate realities, Sunnydale still stands, bustling and thriving. Well, as bustling and thriving as it can be situated over a Hellmouth as it is. What you did resulted in considerable property loss and cost lives. So this is where your other option comes in."
He leaned back over the desk directing his crimson gaze on the vampire. "You've got the choice of going back and fixing that mess."
"Back? I can go back to Earth?" He could get to see Buffy again. For a moment, wild hope surged up in his soul along with the fierce desire to renew his love affair with the blonde beauty whose image haunted him even now.
The fuzzy creature shook its head as if surmising his thought. "Sorry, I'm not talking about your going back to start a romance with the Slayer. I'm talking about going back in time, back to prevent all this from happening."
"Me? You want me to keep the town from collapsing?" That sounded like a staggeringly monumental task. If that's what he had to do to redeem his soul, he was in serious trouble.
The creature nodded. "That's entirely correct. You see, there's something you never knew, something the former vengeance demon and the Slayer's Watcher hid from you. According to reports, the First Evil was able to implement its plans to overrun your dimension by taking advantage of an imbalance caused by the Slayer's forced re-entry back into your world. If that hadn't happened, the First would never have been able to put his plan into action. No plan, no last-ditch attempt at preventing the apocalypse. No standoff against all the Turok Hans, no town collapsing into the dirt. You get my meaning?"
"That's it? That's what I need to do? Prevent Buffy from being brought back?" His jaw clenched as he considered what that would mean. If he prevented that, the time he'd spent with Buffy would disappear. There'd be no sex with her, no chance of him getting close to her or being with her. They'd go back to being reluctant allies again.
He looked up to see Xork staring at the screen. The beast snorted and glared at him. "I'm offering you a chance at redemption, to be a real hero instead of a destructive martyr, and this is the only thing that's on your tiny mind? Getting back into the Slayer's unmentionables? No wonder you're teetering on the edge of damnation."
Spike glanced uneasily at the computer. "Hang on. That thing's recording what I'm thinking and feeling…right now?"
"That's right, Mr. Speck. I told you, everything about you is being recorded in your file. Your history didn't stop getting written just because your supposed exit from Sunnydale." He flicked a glance at the screen and his eyes narrowed. "And you can forget about smashing the computer or stealing the disk. We've got backups and your file on hard copy. If you attack me, you'll simply be given another case worker and that one will shunt you off to the hell dimension immediately after you've been labeled as an 'Incorrigible.' You'd be better off thinking about your assignment."
"Shit, I'm on assignment now? What am I, a bleedin' cop?" Spike muttered.
"No, what you are is a bleedin' time traveler, Mr. Speck," Xork snapped, crudely mimicking Spike's coarse accent. "Here are the rules. You can pick any time in your past. You will go back there and be exactly as you were at that particular moment and place in your history. If you choose to be human and in England, then that's who and where you'll be."
Spike dismissed that option right away. "You can forget that. There was nothing for me in England. I'll stick with my vampire existence if you don't mind."
Xork rocked from side to side. "Very well. There are other stipulations. You can visit each temporal window only once. You fail in your task and that moment will not be open to you again. You cannot try again one month prior or succeeding to your attempt. We are not responsible for any mishaps, dangers or demises that you encounter while fulfilling your task."
That sounded ominous. "What does that mean? Demises?"
"Exactly what I said. You have only 24 hours of your dimension's time from the moment of your re-entry to make the necessary change that will prevent the Slayer's resurrection. But, if you expire in the course of your duties before the 24 hours are up, you'll be brought back immediately and lose that temporal window."
That didn't sound the least bit fair or particularly helpful. The vampire tried to negotiate. "Twenty-four hours? That don't give me a hell of a lot of time to make a dent, if you ask me."
"I didn't ask you. A great deal may be done in twenty-four hours by someone who's clever and resourceful," Xork stated bluntly. "Finally, you are forbidden to tell anybody about the timeline you mean to change. Believe me, you don't need that kind of attention. It would only distract you from your mission. You can warn them about existing problems but not the future. You cannot tell them about your predicament or that you're doing this to save your own soul. This isn't just about you and your redemption, Mr. Speck. It's about saving an entire town."
Spike wasn't completely satisfied with this. "So say I do this. Say I manage to rescue good old Sunnyhell. What's my reward? Another round in that Waiting Room or somewhere else?"
"Your reward, as it were, would be to stay in the world that you helped to create by means of your actions. You could stay in Sunnydale," noting Spike's excited look, "or leave and travel the world. It would be up to you. I hope this will be incentive enough for you to do your best."
The creature leaned over the desk as if to place special emphasis on what he had to say next. "You see, you receive only five chances to make this right. If you fail…" He let his voice trail off and a long tongue came out and suggestively licked his lips—and cheek and eyes. Damn, the creature had a long tongue. Make that a combo of pygmy marmoset, koala bear and gecko.
"Why only five chances? Why not six or twelve? You know—one for each finger," he added as he gestured at Xork's paws.
"I don't make the rules, Mr. Speck. The higher ups decided you get only five tries. I don't know why it is so don't ask me. As your caseworker, I'm here to lay down the rules and see you follow them. If five is the allotted amount, then that's all you get. It's that or the hell dimension."
Spike subsided, not without a muttered obscenity about officious hobbits under his breath. "Fine. When do I start?"
"There's no time like the present…and no present like time." The creature grinned at its own humor and ignored Spike's contemptuous snort. "When's your first port of call?" Xork's fingers poised over the keyboard.
Spike pursed his lips. Then he brightened and smiled a feral grin. "Oh wait. I know. This is gonna be sweet."
"That's the greatest torture souls feel in hell:
In hell, that they must live and cannot die." – John Webster, Duchess of Malfi
TBC