Title: SAMARITAN Author: Ivytree Rating: PG-13 Disclaimer: All characters belong to Joss Whedon, UPN, Mutant Enemy, etc. Except Mrs. C, Eddie, Zevra, Grak, Garg, and the rest of the demon gang.
Feedback: Please!
Summary: Sequel to Grandpa; A soul takes Spike places no one expected him to go.
Setting: Hey, it's the Samaritan-verse!
A/N: Okay, just one more chapter after this… really, I mean it this time! Honest!
SAMARITAN Pt. 24 Gorgeous Things
- - - - - - - - - - - -
"Oh, my God!" Willow sagged against Giles, hands over her eyes.
"Willow, what is it?" he demanded. When she didn't reply, he half carried her into the living room and lowered her to the sofa. "What is it, my dear? Did you… see something? Are you in pain?"
She looked up, her features lit by an ecstatic expression.
"It's glorious, Giles!" she exclaimed. "So bright! Doesn't anybody see—is it just me?"
Giles met Buffy's worried eyes over Willow's head.
"There have been a number of changes in Willow's magical abilities," he explained. "Sometimes she can see what others cannot. I suspect this is manifesting itself now because of her long journey—exhaustion tends to lessen the bonds of reality, in certain adepts…"
"So she's got, like, leg cramp, stale air, and salted-nut visions?" Xander said. "A jet-lag high?"
"They're not visions, but a kind of sight that most of us don't…" Giles began.
"Oh, Spike!" Willow cried. "Why didn't anybody tell me? I see it shining! It's so beautiful!"
"Uh…" Spike fell back a pace, looking guilt-stricken.
"What is?" Giles demanded.
"His soul! It's all silver, shining silver!"
There was a moment of stunned silence. Willow held out both hands to Spike. Slowly he approached and took them in his.
"Sorry, Red," he said, perching beside her on the sofa. "Nobody's ever had quite that reaction—as a rule, they just sputter and gasp like landed fish. I would've warned you if I'd known…"
"I think it's something Tara gave me." She smiled at him shyly. "She could see things sometimes—spirits, and auras, and, well, souls—and now I can, too. Not all the time, because, hey, that would get wiggy, not to mention distracting. But sometimes. First it was scary, but now it's sorta cool!"
Xander raised his hand. "Um, excuse me! But—WHAT are you people talking about?"
"Just what I was going to ask," Giles said.
"Apparently, Willow can see Spike's soul," Anya offered.
"Spike's WHAT?" Xander's voice squeaked up about an octave.
"I beg your pardon?" Giles stared hard at Anya. "I don't think I can have heard you correctly."
"Spike's soul. She can see it."
"Anya—you knew about this?"
"Well, he asked me not to tell. I could see it, too, before I renounced being a demon for all eternity and embraced true love."
"Buffy! Surely…" Words failed him.
"Giles…" Buffy returned a frank look. "If I told you, would you have believed me?"
"I imagine not," he admitted. "As a matter of fact, I'm having great difficulty believing it at all. How on earth… The whole idea is preposterous. And you know his how, exactly? Can you sense it in some way? Or did he tell you?" He tried to keep the suspicion out of his tone.
"Actually, neither." Buffy chuckled. Giles was quite sure she enjoyed his perplexity. "I was the last to know, as a matter of fact; Spike was too shy to tell me. So Angel did." She grinned. "I know exactly how you feel; I nearly passed out from the shock."
"ANGEL?" Giles ran a hand over his face. Even after all these years, hearing that name still made his gut tighten. "Angel is here? How? Why? When?"
"Good questions. Sooner or later, everyone asks them," Spike observed. He had settled back in the corner of the sofa beside Willow, legs stretched out, ankles crossed. Giles noticed with some resentment that he seemed very much at home lounging about Buffy's living room.
"Make a long, tedious yarn short 'n' sweet, all right? Short, anyway," Spike went on. "Decided I wasn't good enough to be 'round the girl. Found this demon geezer giving out rewards for going through trials and that. So I went out there to see 'im, I won, and I got my reward. End of story. Oh, and Angel WAS here, helping us out a bit, but he buggered off back to LA; got his own problems to deal with. Sends his regards."
"Well, ruffle my hair and call me Frankie!" Xander exclaimed. "It's all beginning to make sense! I knew ONE of us had lost his grip on what we laughingly call reality in this land of Sunny Dee. At least it's not me."
"Are you telling me you deliberately regained your soul?" Giles demanded hotly. This was too much. "You're a bloody vampire!"
"Well, since you put it that way, yeah." Spike said. "Sorry to shatter your worldview, gramps, but that's how it went down."
Giles rounded on Buffy. "Surely you don't believe this farrago!"
"Giles." Willow's voice was hushed. He paused, looking at her. "He wouldn't lie."
"He wouldn't…?" Giles strove for control.
Willow shook her head. "It's unsullied, Giles." Her green eyes were enormous. "More than anyone else in this room. Unstained. That's why it's so beautiful."
Deflated, Giles sat down suddenly. "Good lord."
Seeing Willow's awed face, Spike gave a crack of laughter. "Be fair, pet. After all, there's no wonder it's in fairly good nick—hardly been used, has it? Give us a year or two…"
- - - -
Giles sagged in his armchair. Somehow the evening had gotten away from him after Willow's big revelation about Spike, and exhaustion weighted his shoulders. He supposed jet lag was catching up with him—at any rate, he hoped it was jet lag, rather than advancing years.
"AMY?!?" he heard Willow squeal. Across the room, the children—for that was how he thought of them, even now—were gathered around her, chattering excitedly about the customary world-shaking events that had roiled Sunnydale in her absence.
Sitting on the arm of the sofa, Dawn bounced excitedly, as Xander held his hands up behind his head, fingers spread and waggling. What on earth could that mean? Antlers? Mouse ears? Antennae? By now Giles was finding it all rather difficult to follow. The bright, youthful voices ran together in his head.
Of course, that might have something to do with the brimming glass Spike had pressed into his hand.
"Sorry, Rupes, forgot to lay on your preferred corpse reviver, what with all the rumpus," the vampire said, "but Jack will do in a pinch, right? It's either that, or peach brandy, or that foul Irish cream swill the girls like."
"Any port in a storm," Giles rejoined, clutching the tumbler (which was, to his utter lack of surprise, a jelly-glass imprinted with a pink cartoon dog) with unbecoming avidity. Suppressing a shudder at the very thought of Irish cream, he took a hefty pull. As he'd always expected, the rich, burnt-vanilla infused bourbon tasted quite vile; but still, it did the trick. A sensation of warmth began to trickle through his weary limbs, and he let out a sigh.
Without being obtrusive about it, he examined Spike. It had not escaped his notice that when the vampire apologized, he had actually sounded sorry. This was, he bluntly admitted to himself, spine-tingling. He couldn't detect many outward changes; Spike's hair was longer, and a bit darker at the roots, and fine lines gathered around his eyes and the corners of his mouth. Frankly, if he were an ordinary man, Giles would have said he looked tired. But that was all; no "silvery glow" was detectable to the normal human eye, as it were. On the other hand, he had learned to trust Willow's occult sight, which had turned out to be quite powerful. Thoughtfully, he stared at the bottom of his glass. "Why peach brandy?"
"They put it on ice cream," Spike explained equably, sipping from his own aqua dog-decorated jelly glass (Buffy and Dawn had probably collected the whole set, Giles decided irrelevantly). "Don't look so glum, Rupert; not the end of the world, y'know."
"As a matter of fact," Giles replied, "it is."
Couldn't anyone see that it was indeed, at least in a sense, the end of HIS world?
The very concept of a soulless vampire seeking his soul's return eviscerated the venerable belief structure supporting the Council of Watchers, thoroughly and permanently. In opposing the Council, Giles had willingly assumed the role of the iconoclast, the renegade—but this went beyond procedural disagreements. This shook the bedrock.
A wave of vertigo swept over him; he felt as if he were balanced on a precipice, knowing as in a nightmare that he was bound to go over at any moment. Everything was changed. He felt a wrenching combination of fear that all he had ever known was, in a word, false, and the gut-level thrill with which he always began a new research project.
For mustn't this prove to be the research project of the millennium? How many hundreds—thousands—of years of history must now be rethought, reinterpreted, rewritten? How many bloodstained victories were now shown unnecessary? How many lives had been wasted? What might it mean in the eternal fight against evil?
"A bit daunting, is it?" Spike quirked an eyebrow and then, startlingly, echoed Giles' own thoughts. "You're a gentleman and a scholar, aren't you? Seeker after truth? Here's your opportunity to spend happy hours scouring obscure, crumbling texts in the dear old Bodleian. Should think you'd jump at it."
"Texts in the Bodleian receive the most advanced conservation techniques available nowadays, thank you very much; they haven't crumbled for years. But that's not really the point, is it?" Giles swallowed more bourbon. He was getting quite used to the flavor now, and it was… restorative. "If you can do this astonishing thing, how many others might have been capable of it, over the years?"
"For what it's worth, nobody's ever heard of any others tryin' it. Least that's what they tell me."
"Yes, but how can we be sure?"
Despite the ancient tenets of the Council, any Watcher with field experience knew quite well that all demons weren't evil. Some were harmless, and some were positively helpful. But Giles had never considered vampires as even potentially harmless. Had they—the Good Guys, as Xander would undoubtedly put it—been denying sentient creatures the opportunity for redemption all this time? What, exactly, had they done?
He took off his glasses, and rubbed his eyelids. Even his fingers felt leaden. The party would break up soon, he imagined, and they could all get a good night's sleep. Perhaps things would look more manageable in the morning. He really didn't feel able to cope right now. The room seemed to wobble and recede, and he let his head fall against the back of the chair.
"Giles!" Buffy's cheerful voice rang in his ear, and he jumped. "Wake up!"
"I was just resting my eyes for a moment, that's all," he protested, blinking. Spike was across the room chatting easily with Willow, whose expression still held irritating elements of wonder.
"Well, there's somebody coming over I want you to meet, so perk up," she said, adding, with heartless pragmatism, "Want some coffee? You look like you could use it."
"Someone coming over? I thought this was a family gathering, so to speak," he replied, surreptitiously wiping drool from the corner of his mouth and sitting up straight.
"Well, it is—the family got a little bigger while you were gone, that's all." She shook his knee. "Hurry up, she'll be here any minute."
She? Who could Buffy mean? Surely not that Doris Kroger person from Social Services; as he recalled, neither Buffy nor Dawn had cared for the woman much. He glanced up at Spike, who had risen and was looking toward the hallway with eager anticipation. In fact, surprisingly, all of the young people had risen.
The doorbell rang.
TBC
- - - -
MY soul goes clad in gorgeous things,
Scarlet and gold and blue.
And at her shoulder sudden wings
Like long flames flicker through.
And she is swallow-fleet, and free
From mortal bonds and bars.
She laughs, because eternity
Blossoms for her with stars!
O folk who scorn my stiff gray gown,
My dull and foolish face,
Can ye not see my soul flash down,
A singing flame through space?
And folk, whose earth-stained looks I hate,
Why may I not divine
Your souls, that must be passionate,
Shining and swift, as mine?
Harriet Monroe
Feedback: Please!
Summary: Sequel to Grandpa; A soul takes Spike places no one expected him to go.
Setting: Hey, it's the Samaritan-verse!
A/N: Okay, just one more chapter after this… really, I mean it this time! Honest!
SAMARITAN Pt. 24 Gorgeous Things
- - - - - - - - - - - -
"Oh, my God!" Willow sagged against Giles, hands over her eyes.
"Willow, what is it?" he demanded. When she didn't reply, he half carried her into the living room and lowered her to the sofa. "What is it, my dear? Did you… see something? Are you in pain?"
She looked up, her features lit by an ecstatic expression.
"It's glorious, Giles!" she exclaimed. "So bright! Doesn't anybody see—is it just me?"
Giles met Buffy's worried eyes over Willow's head.
"There have been a number of changes in Willow's magical abilities," he explained. "Sometimes she can see what others cannot. I suspect this is manifesting itself now because of her long journey—exhaustion tends to lessen the bonds of reality, in certain adepts…"
"So she's got, like, leg cramp, stale air, and salted-nut visions?" Xander said. "A jet-lag high?"
"They're not visions, but a kind of sight that most of us don't…" Giles began.
"Oh, Spike!" Willow cried. "Why didn't anybody tell me? I see it shining! It's so beautiful!"
"Uh…" Spike fell back a pace, looking guilt-stricken.
"What is?" Giles demanded.
"His soul! It's all silver, shining silver!"
There was a moment of stunned silence. Willow held out both hands to Spike. Slowly he approached and took them in his.
"Sorry, Red," he said, perching beside her on the sofa. "Nobody's ever had quite that reaction—as a rule, they just sputter and gasp like landed fish. I would've warned you if I'd known…"
"I think it's something Tara gave me." She smiled at him shyly. "She could see things sometimes—spirits, and auras, and, well, souls—and now I can, too. Not all the time, because, hey, that would get wiggy, not to mention distracting. But sometimes. First it was scary, but now it's sorta cool!"
Xander raised his hand. "Um, excuse me! But—WHAT are you people talking about?"
"Just what I was going to ask," Giles said.
"Apparently, Willow can see Spike's soul," Anya offered.
"Spike's WHAT?" Xander's voice squeaked up about an octave.
"I beg your pardon?" Giles stared hard at Anya. "I don't think I can have heard you correctly."
"Spike's soul. She can see it."
"Anya—you knew about this?"
"Well, he asked me not to tell. I could see it, too, before I renounced being a demon for all eternity and embraced true love."
"Buffy! Surely…" Words failed him.
"Giles…" Buffy returned a frank look. "If I told you, would you have believed me?"
"I imagine not," he admitted. "As a matter of fact, I'm having great difficulty believing it at all. How on earth… The whole idea is preposterous. And you know his how, exactly? Can you sense it in some way? Or did he tell you?" He tried to keep the suspicion out of his tone.
"Actually, neither." Buffy chuckled. Giles was quite sure she enjoyed his perplexity. "I was the last to know, as a matter of fact; Spike was too shy to tell me. So Angel did." She grinned. "I know exactly how you feel; I nearly passed out from the shock."
"ANGEL?" Giles ran a hand over his face. Even after all these years, hearing that name still made his gut tighten. "Angel is here? How? Why? When?"
"Good questions. Sooner or later, everyone asks them," Spike observed. He had settled back in the corner of the sofa beside Willow, legs stretched out, ankles crossed. Giles noticed with some resentment that he seemed very much at home lounging about Buffy's living room.
"Make a long, tedious yarn short 'n' sweet, all right? Short, anyway," Spike went on. "Decided I wasn't good enough to be 'round the girl. Found this demon geezer giving out rewards for going through trials and that. So I went out there to see 'im, I won, and I got my reward. End of story. Oh, and Angel WAS here, helping us out a bit, but he buggered off back to LA; got his own problems to deal with. Sends his regards."
"Well, ruffle my hair and call me Frankie!" Xander exclaimed. "It's all beginning to make sense! I knew ONE of us had lost his grip on what we laughingly call reality in this land of Sunny Dee. At least it's not me."
"Are you telling me you deliberately regained your soul?" Giles demanded hotly. This was too much. "You're a bloody vampire!"
"Well, since you put it that way, yeah." Spike said. "Sorry to shatter your worldview, gramps, but that's how it went down."
Giles rounded on Buffy. "Surely you don't believe this farrago!"
"Giles." Willow's voice was hushed. He paused, looking at her. "He wouldn't lie."
"He wouldn't…?" Giles strove for control.
Willow shook her head. "It's unsullied, Giles." Her green eyes were enormous. "More than anyone else in this room. Unstained. That's why it's so beautiful."
Deflated, Giles sat down suddenly. "Good lord."
Seeing Willow's awed face, Spike gave a crack of laughter. "Be fair, pet. After all, there's no wonder it's in fairly good nick—hardly been used, has it? Give us a year or two…"
- - - -
Giles sagged in his armchair. Somehow the evening had gotten away from him after Willow's big revelation about Spike, and exhaustion weighted his shoulders. He supposed jet lag was catching up with him—at any rate, he hoped it was jet lag, rather than advancing years.
"AMY?!?" he heard Willow squeal. Across the room, the children—for that was how he thought of them, even now—were gathered around her, chattering excitedly about the customary world-shaking events that had roiled Sunnydale in her absence.
Sitting on the arm of the sofa, Dawn bounced excitedly, as Xander held his hands up behind his head, fingers spread and waggling. What on earth could that mean? Antlers? Mouse ears? Antennae? By now Giles was finding it all rather difficult to follow. The bright, youthful voices ran together in his head.
Of course, that might have something to do with the brimming glass Spike had pressed into his hand.
"Sorry, Rupes, forgot to lay on your preferred corpse reviver, what with all the rumpus," the vampire said, "but Jack will do in a pinch, right? It's either that, or peach brandy, or that foul Irish cream swill the girls like."
"Any port in a storm," Giles rejoined, clutching the tumbler (which was, to his utter lack of surprise, a jelly-glass imprinted with a pink cartoon dog) with unbecoming avidity. Suppressing a shudder at the very thought of Irish cream, he took a hefty pull. As he'd always expected, the rich, burnt-vanilla infused bourbon tasted quite vile; but still, it did the trick. A sensation of warmth began to trickle through his weary limbs, and he let out a sigh.
Without being obtrusive about it, he examined Spike. It had not escaped his notice that when the vampire apologized, he had actually sounded sorry. This was, he bluntly admitted to himself, spine-tingling. He couldn't detect many outward changes; Spike's hair was longer, and a bit darker at the roots, and fine lines gathered around his eyes and the corners of his mouth. Frankly, if he were an ordinary man, Giles would have said he looked tired. But that was all; no "silvery glow" was detectable to the normal human eye, as it were. On the other hand, he had learned to trust Willow's occult sight, which had turned out to be quite powerful. Thoughtfully, he stared at the bottom of his glass. "Why peach brandy?"
"They put it on ice cream," Spike explained equably, sipping from his own aqua dog-decorated jelly glass (Buffy and Dawn had probably collected the whole set, Giles decided irrelevantly). "Don't look so glum, Rupert; not the end of the world, y'know."
"As a matter of fact," Giles replied, "it is."
Couldn't anyone see that it was indeed, at least in a sense, the end of HIS world?
The very concept of a soulless vampire seeking his soul's return eviscerated the venerable belief structure supporting the Council of Watchers, thoroughly and permanently. In opposing the Council, Giles had willingly assumed the role of the iconoclast, the renegade—but this went beyond procedural disagreements. This shook the bedrock.
A wave of vertigo swept over him; he felt as if he were balanced on a precipice, knowing as in a nightmare that he was bound to go over at any moment. Everything was changed. He felt a wrenching combination of fear that all he had ever known was, in a word, false, and the gut-level thrill with which he always began a new research project.
For mustn't this prove to be the research project of the millennium? How many hundreds—thousands—of years of history must now be rethought, reinterpreted, rewritten? How many bloodstained victories were now shown unnecessary? How many lives had been wasted? What might it mean in the eternal fight against evil?
"A bit daunting, is it?" Spike quirked an eyebrow and then, startlingly, echoed Giles' own thoughts. "You're a gentleman and a scholar, aren't you? Seeker after truth? Here's your opportunity to spend happy hours scouring obscure, crumbling texts in the dear old Bodleian. Should think you'd jump at it."
"Texts in the Bodleian receive the most advanced conservation techniques available nowadays, thank you very much; they haven't crumbled for years. But that's not really the point, is it?" Giles swallowed more bourbon. He was getting quite used to the flavor now, and it was… restorative. "If you can do this astonishing thing, how many others might have been capable of it, over the years?"
"For what it's worth, nobody's ever heard of any others tryin' it. Least that's what they tell me."
"Yes, but how can we be sure?"
Despite the ancient tenets of the Council, any Watcher with field experience knew quite well that all demons weren't evil. Some were harmless, and some were positively helpful. But Giles had never considered vampires as even potentially harmless. Had they—the Good Guys, as Xander would undoubtedly put it—been denying sentient creatures the opportunity for redemption all this time? What, exactly, had they done?
He took off his glasses, and rubbed his eyelids. Even his fingers felt leaden. The party would break up soon, he imagined, and they could all get a good night's sleep. Perhaps things would look more manageable in the morning. He really didn't feel able to cope right now. The room seemed to wobble and recede, and he let his head fall against the back of the chair.
"Giles!" Buffy's cheerful voice rang in his ear, and he jumped. "Wake up!"
"I was just resting my eyes for a moment, that's all," he protested, blinking. Spike was across the room chatting easily with Willow, whose expression still held irritating elements of wonder.
"Well, there's somebody coming over I want you to meet, so perk up," she said, adding, with heartless pragmatism, "Want some coffee? You look like you could use it."
"Someone coming over? I thought this was a family gathering, so to speak," he replied, surreptitiously wiping drool from the corner of his mouth and sitting up straight.
"Well, it is—the family got a little bigger while you were gone, that's all." She shook his knee. "Hurry up, she'll be here any minute."
She? Who could Buffy mean? Surely not that Doris Kroger person from Social Services; as he recalled, neither Buffy nor Dawn had cared for the woman much. He glanced up at Spike, who had risen and was looking toward the hallway with eager anticipation. In fact, surprisingly, all of the young people had risen.
The doorbell rang.
TBC
- - - -
MY soul goes clad in gorgeous things,
Scarlet and gold and blue.
And at her shoulder sudden wings
Like long flames flicker through.
And she is swallow-fleet, and free
From mortal bonds and bars.
She laughs, because eternity
Blossoms for her with stars!
O folk who scorn my stiff gray gown,
My dull and foolish face,
Can ye not see my soul flash down,
A singing flame through space?
And folk, whose earth-stained looks I hate,
Why may I not divine
Your souls, that must be passionate,
Shining and swift, as mine?
Harriet Monroe