Crossing into unchipped country (19/22) by dutchbuffy2305
Rating: R
Timeline: At the start, around AtS 5.09 or 5.10.
Author's note: Thanks to my dear betas, Ayinhara, meko00 and mommanerd.
Author's website: http:home.planet.nl/dutchbuffy2305
Feedback: Yes, please, to dutchbuffy2305yahoo.co.uk
Spike stumbles through a thick stringy veil like cheese sauce that has cooled too much. He falls into a tube of pearly nothingness that stretches away on both sides and disappears into slow curves. How the hell can he know if he's in the right place? He checks his pocket for Willow's device, which will get him out if need be. The smooth wall stuff yields under the pressure of his fingers. When he keeps pushing his hand slowly disappears in it. Creepy.
He walks cautiously to the left, not because he detects anything different from the right hand side but on principle. After going on for what seems like several miles, and why he didn't borrow someone's watch he doesn't know, the air seems to be getting warmer and the tunnel slopes downward slightly. He looks back at the stretch of relatively straight tunneling he's just walked and he gets the notion that it looks very much like an intestinal tract would look from the inside out if you cleaned it out and hung it up to dry. Hopefully Meerna hasn't sent him into the guts of one of the Gatekeepers. Or maybe the universe is a giant beast anyway and his own reality just one of the cells of its body. He'll never know, and it will most likely not help him gain his objective. Onwards, Spike. Save the girl.
Suddenly he hears voices coming from behind.
"Shut your trap, you pillock! I can't believe one of us is actually a council member. Selling out to the establishment!"
Other voices sigh and murmur answers.
There is no way for Spike to hide; there is only one tunnel. In desperation he throws himself at the tunnel wall and it reluctantly allows him in, enveloping him in a membrane like tough aspic. He can even see out a bit through the grayish murk. The stuff quests at his nose and eyes with tiny slimy fingers and he clamps his lips shut tightly, blinking furiously to be able to keep on watching.
Four people troop by, one in a wheel chair and one with bound arms, propelled by two others.
They don't say anything enlightening as they pass by at a good clip. The moment they're out of sight Spike fights free of the intestinal wall or whatever it is and follows them. His hands and face tingel from the fluid the wall was trying to digest him with.
He almost goes too fast, nearly running into the unexpected space that opens up, and manages to draw back just in time. The group of four is clearly visible in the painfully bright white light that shines into the round space. The walls are rounded the inside of a pearl, although he can't quite see the ceiling. Three of the men bear an uncanny resemblance to each other, although they're dressed quite differently. The one in handcuffs wears conservative suit with a flashy shirt and tie and shoes that strongly remind Spike think of the obsolete word 'bounder', the two others are in casual gear. Their dark blond hair is cut into various lengths, but the color is identical. The man in the wheelchair could be their father, he has the same features only he looks much older, ravaged and destroyed by time.
The captive man in the suit is set apart from the other three. He looks around wildly and tries to break into a run, but from above a tentacle as thick as Godzilla's tail comes from above and easily plucks him from the floor in mid-run. He screams a high gurgling scream, and Spike sees him become limp and resigned. Another tentacle descends from the ceiling. He can't see its origin, but the beastie it belongs to must be as big as an apartment block if the size of the tentacle is any indication. The second tentacle opens up the lid of one of the bottles and drops the blubbering man inside.
The three look on in satisfaction. "Council flunky. Sold out like Ripper," the one in the ponytail says bitterly.
"Lady Drusilla will make short work of him," the one in the wheel chair says.
The others fall silent to listen to him. Interesting that the oldest and weakest seems to be the boss.
"At least we made the giant Inklings happy," the old man says. "We'll have free rein across the worlds, and some enjoyable moments when the Slayer and her scrub stand trial."
Spike grits his teeth and counts to ten. The men walk off into the opposite direction into another tunnel. Spike waits until he thinks it's safe and then ventures out towards the three bottles. If Drusilla is captive in one of them, chances are that Buffy is in another. He looks up cautiously, aware that he wouldn't be able to do much more against the giant tentacle than the man in the suit had, vampire strength or not. There is nothing to see, nothing but the impenetrable pearly glare, infinity, but in spite of that his neck prickles with warning. Willow's account of Buffy's fight with the Gatekeepers made them seem like ordinary demons, fightable, beatable. He's not so sure about that now he's seen them here.
He raps his knuckles on the dead black stuff of the middle bottle. "Buffy?" Sound is flat here, and he gets no resonance from the bottle, nor an answer. He tries the other one, with the same result. At last he taps on Dru's bottle. Nothing. He concludes the inmates can't hear anything from the outside. He gets back to the middle bottle and jumps up to the top. The lid is much bigger than it seemed from below, and there is a neat handle, about twice his body size. It appears impossible to move. He can't even see a seam where it fits into the bottleneck. He stamps on it for good measure. Jumps up twenty feet or so to land back on it, but produces so little sound that he concludes it would never work.
Maybe he can capsize it? The bottles look to have rounded bottoms, they can't be that stable. After half an hour of trying he gives up that venue as well. His body mass is simply not sufficient to topple one of the giant things, no matter how much vampire speed he adds to the equation.
There is one other option. He gingerly brings out Willow's device and tries to program it the way she showed him. He does the best he can, takes a deep breath and activates it.
He finds himself in a space so deadening to all his senses that he sways on his feet for a moment. A vampire normally knows everything there is to know in a big circle all around him, getting input from his ears, his nose, his eyes, all preternaturally sharp, not to mention his sense for the magic and the demonic. Now all this is muted, cut off sharply by the walls of the bottle prison. Where he can normally read by starlight his eyes sense nothing at all, his nose smells only a vampire, and his ears hear nothing but a faint scrabbling like the nail of a mouse trying to get out of a trap. His magic senses tell him there is a demonic creature in there, but weakened and faint.
He walks the two paces to where the vampire is curled up on the floor. During those few seconds the life force flames up abruptly, followed by the vamp hurling itself at Spike. It's not precisely an attack, although it's rough and uncontrolled, it tries to touch Spike everywhere, with its hands, its fangs and its cock. Spike rebuffs him with a blow, but that doesn't seem to matter, the acknowledgment of his existence seems to focus the vamp and shake him out of his mindless state.
"Who're you? How did you get in here and why would you bleeding want to?" the vamp says.
Spike tries to pry off the grasping fingers and hungry teeth.
"Name's Spike," he says tersely. "Not interested in you, actually. I'll be off, then."
The vamp clamps on even tighter. "Bloody hell. You again? I'm Spike, you ponce. You the souled creep that's dangling after the Slayer?"
Spike's anger flares up like a rocket and he punches the other man in the nose. "Mind your own business. Slayer's mine."
"You're hers, you mean," his alter ego says, joyfully, retaliating with a blow to Spike's chin. The tension in his body has loosened and Spike can feel him bounce a bit on the balls of his feet. Itching for a fight, just like Spike himself.
"Shut up," Spike says, determined not to get into pointless scrapping. "Mine. What have you done with her? Where is she?"
The other calms down, but keeps his hand fastened on the lapels of Spike's coat. "Wish I knew, mate. If her and me were together we'd get ourselves out in a jiffy. Tried to exchange her for Dru, but that bastard Rayne double crossed me."
"Bastard who?"
"Rayne. Ethan Rayne. 'S the Magician programmed the magic portal device for us. Hey, which one do you have? The witch's?"
Spike can't let that 'we' and 'us' pass. He slams his double up against the curved wall of the bottle and rams his head against the wall once or twice for good measure.
"Mind this, you arse hole. There is no us where you and the Slayer are concerned. There is only me and the Slayer, got that?"
"Didn't seem like that when I was putting it to her, mate."
Spike hits him on his filthy mouth.
The other goes on gleefully. "Never heard a woman scream like that. She was insatiable, wrung me out..."
By now Spike is punching the other Spike wildly and uncontrollably, making the other giggle and flail back, helpless with laughter. This only makes Spike angrier but he can't get a grip on the slack laughing body. They end up on the floor together.
"She's mine," Spike growls. "Mine, mine, mine."
He accompanies the words by banging his opponent's head on the floor. "You ever lay your filthy hands on her again and I'll personally twist your stupid head off."
"Feisty!" the other Spike carols. "She'd like that, you know. Thought you'd gone soft, the things she told me about you. Getting a soul. Getting chipped. There must be something wrong with you, mate, big bad turned big softie, no proper vamp would ever let something like that happen to him."
Spike punches his elbow into that annoying blabby mouth. "Shut up. Apologize. Say you'll never ever touch her again."
He's sitting on the other Spike's hips and realizes the annoying sod is getting off on the fight, and so is he. Aw hell. Aching for a fight or a fuck, idiot that he is. Should have made love to Buffy, angry or not, get the edge of this appetite. Only he can't ever do that again. What's right and proper between vamps is all wrong between vamp and Slayer, and it's this which led to him getting a soul.
He drives his knees in the other's side, but the zest's gone out of him.
"Come on, mate," the other Spike complains. "You can't just stop fighting like that? Where's your passion, where's you fire? It's like stopping mid fuck when the girl hasn't come yet! You can't do that to me!"
"Shut up, you berk, it's just a scrap, not a holy mission."
"There's no difference. What happened to you? You gotta live life to the brim, not stop halfway and start rationalizing and weighing options like a bloody merchant. We're vampires, we fight, we fuck, we live until it kills us, that's the fun of it. All out or nothing. Remind me to never to get a soul if it changes you into a civil servant, thinking of the cost first and the feeling never. No, stop, I don't need reminding, I would never ever do it."
"Not even for Dru?"Spike asks.
The other Spike stops his kicking and struggling and thinks deeply. "No love, not even for Dru. Because what came back wouldn't be me anymore and so it wouldn't be any good anyway. She wouldn't want me afterwards."
Hearing it from his own mouth, as it were, makes it worse somehow. The other Spike is right. He isn't the same. Most of who he was is still there, but he has changed, as he meant to. Because he thought it was what Buffy would have wanted. Turns out she didn't, right? Only got interested in him again after she met the original version, to remind her of who he used to be. Which is too bad, because he likes who and what he is now, and he's not going back or pretend to.
He falls back on his haunches and sighs. It's galling to have to admit defeat. "You're right. She doesn't want me like this. She wants the old Spike with fire in his guts, who went all out for her, never mind the obstacles. She wants you."
"Well, I don't want her like that," the other says matter of factly. "Grand lay, mind you, wonderful mate in a fight, guards your back, but she's nothing like my Dru. Bit melancholy and subdued. I like 'em crazier."
"Huh."
The other Spike slaps his face. "Oh, wake up, you stupid sod! She does want you. Kept crying and sniveling and remembering you every time she saw me. She didn't fuck me, she fucked your memory. Big difference. Huge difference. Now let's get out of here and find our women."
Spike doesn't react.
His alter ego stands over him and kicks him in the balls. "All right, you wanker, if you're not going to rescue her, I will. And she'll be so sodding grateful she'll fuck me into smithereens and won't be thinking of you ever again."
Spike jumps up and backhands him savagely. "Let's just stop," he says. "Let's get our women out, you immature idiot, instead of wasting our time with this."
His alter ago grabs his cock and gives it a squeeze, a mixed pleasure at best when his balls are still sore form the punch. "As long as you enjoyed it, eh? Let's do this again where we can see each other."
Spike doesn't agree. Fighting is fun, sure, but not just with anyone. There has to be a point to a fight or he can't quite rouse himself to do it anymore. He has become a wanker, from his earlier point of view. He remembers meeting Angel when he realized for the first time the sod had a soul, the betrayal and disgust he felt. He hauls up his other self and holds on to him tightly while he fingers the controls of the device.
They stumble out in the brightly lit space and Spike pushes the other vampire off of him.
"Neat trick," the Spike says admiringly. "Let's get Dru."
"Are you nuts? Dru would only be extra trouble, which we really don't need. We'll get her after we find Buffy."
Spike stares at his other self. It's not like looking into the mirror, looking at the pale face gives him the same sense of estrangement a photograph does. He's a handsome fellow, if he says so himself, if still as weak chinned as when William stared into the looking-glass. The white hair, neatly kept in place, because the world certainly doesn't need to know he has curls. His mother's nose. Pink sensual lips, now stretched in a grimace from effort. The is the face Buffy professes to love. His Beauty reacted to the inner Beast at first; would she think the spirit matches the fair outside now?
The other grabs his arm and tries to work his hand inside his pocket. "Gimme the device and I'll get Dru. Which bottle is she in?"
"Not telling you unless you let go," Spike says and shakes him off.
"I'm serious," the other Spike says and vamps out. "Hand me that thing, you pansy, or I'll give your lily white ass a licking it won't recover from!"
The other launches himself at Spike with a roar and Spike feels a thrill race up and down his spine. It makes him hard, he feels alive, and his game face slams down without volition. He bares his teeth in an answering growl. They've only been playing so far, he's not even really mad at the other Spike for sleeping with Buffy, because who could blame him? He blames Buffy.
Now the stakes are real. He's not going to let that git come between him and Buffy. In spite of himself he breaks through a barrier he's set for himself, like a glass ceiling in the house of his violence and as he bursts through the shards are flying. He shoots up into the stratosphere and it's so liberating to let go of himself again, to lose those self-imposed boundaries. This isn't Angel, or Dana, who he didn't really want to hurt, this is himself, his bad half, who deserves a whole lot of punishment, and who better to dole it out and have a ball while he's doing it?
The world narrows to this precise moment in time and place, where there isn't even a Buffy anymore. He smells blood, he hears panting and grunting, maybe his own. There's growing tension, an expectation growing to the bursting point. At the last possible moment, he draws back from the release, which would be the tearing off someone's head.
They land with a crunch of bones and leather against the nacreous wall, which first rebuffs them and then starts sucking actively, trying to draw them in. Spike doesn't care. There is just his fists and his fangs and if his cock gets slammed against the other's now and then that's all the better. He bangs his head forward, hears the satisfying crunch of a cheekbone, feels the incongruous softness when he gets a handful of curls for a moment. Wetness, blood slicking the skin over tense muscles, grunts and the scrape of nails. His teeth tear into skin and gristle, cold unappetizing blood crawls into his mouth. It tastes familiar. He'd rather be tasting Buffy.
Something gives under his thumb and he pushes hard. When he feels a wet globe under his fingers and hears a yell of pain from the other Spike he retreats slightly. Might need him able to see well enough to fight later on. Spike marvels at himself, while his hands go on raining blows on the other's exposed belly, the amount of control he still has while at the same time going all out. He has changed, even if he's doing something as basic to his vampire nature as fighting a rival. It might as easily change to fucking and many times has, in his long and wasted life.
Sensation is everything to an immortal being, the search for it is worth every drop of energy, every amount of effort. Without change and strong sensations there is only endless sameness and joylessness. Without joy eternity is nothing but a grind, without it eternity is hell. Not for him the oblivion of the eternal now any longer. There's always a past and a future now, the world has sadly changed. He has changed and he'll never be the same.
He stares in furious blue eyes, which aren't thinking at all. The knee in his groin takes him unawares. He doubles over and while he's trying to regain his balance he falls to his hands and knees. Rough hands yank off his duster. While he's rolling over and jumping to his feet the other is already yards away, sprinting as fast as he can with his trophy in his hands. Spike launches himself after his quarry with a roar of fury that surprises him and spurs him on to greater speed. He has to get the device back, he needs it for Buffy. Complacent fool, thinking about eternal life while fighting is inviting trouble. He cannons into the other Spike's back. They land heavily on the floor and slide on for while he tries frantically to get a grip on his duster. The other tries as hard and curses with frustration. Spike hangs on tenaciously but they are evenly matched.
TBC