Ballad for Eurydice
irishais
4. Cosmic Dare
Ophelia refused to give him answers to anything. "It was necessary" was the only answer that Spike could pry out of her, and he wanted to cry bullshit. He didn't want them back in his life, at least not like this. It was an unwanted invasion.
He wanted to get them back on his own terms.
Mars was too damn crowded, Spike decided. Was good enough for him for a while, when he could hide and no one knew where he was. Now that Faye had found him, it was too friggin' small for him. Whole damn galaxy out there and he had to come to Mars, stay in some shithole apartment and attempt to escape his demons by trapping them in bottle after bottle.
She wouldn't even tell him what she gave him.
Was more than likely trying to kill him, since at this rate it seemed like everyone had gotten wind of some rumor that he wanted to be dead. He still hurt from whatever she had stuck in his arm, hurt so bad he had actually taken pills with water and avoided the bars like the plague. Locked himself in his apartment and had spent most of the three days after Faye had left hunched over his toilet. Ophelia had shown up on the third day, slipping into his place like smoke--here one minute, gone the next. She'd left a note. "Forget yet?"
Wasn't so much that he'd forgotten, he just couldn't remember what happened.
Julia. Hadn't forgotten her yet, and she had been making her presence more and more known over the past few days. Spike blamed Faye for triggering her, his own personal Eurydice, the woman he'd lost after going so far to save her.
His fallen angel, his Juliet, his nightmare and his dream all at once.
The angel-devil that had led him on this ghost hunt.
This is Hell.
Was it really slumming, he mused, to sup with demons and wayward spirits?
She didn't understand. He didn't get her. Hell, he didn't understand women, period.
He was starting to think that this debate over women was a regular occurrence in his life.
Spike took another bite of his cold burger. Did he really care? At all?
No.
Maybe.
You don't give a damn.
Maybe not.
Space cowboy, lonely in the stars.
How the hell had he gotten here?
Hard luck women. That was all of it. Women. Faye. Julia. Ophelia. Women. Tragedy and despair in beautiful bodies. Insanity and desire, lunacy and lust. Women. He lit a cigarette.
He found Ophelia on the steps of a church.
"Do you seek salvation, Spike?" she asked,
exhaling a cloud of smoke in his face. "Or do you want
damnation?"
He shrugged. "It's all the same to me."
Ophelia patted the cold concrete step. "Take a load off."
It was weird, sitting on the stoop of an empty church on Mars with a prostitute.
Damnation or salvation?
Spike's lighter flared. "What a pair," he commented quietly. Ophelia threw her head back and laughed loudly and freely. "You're nuts," he added.
"Yeah, well. You spend your free time hanging out with hookers, so I wouldn't really be talking." She stubbed out her cigarette on the stoop and stood, pulling her thin sweater around her. "No sense in wasting a perfectly good night just sitting," she added.
"Not in the mood."
He thought she pouted. It was hard to tell in the dim light. Didn't matter. He got to his feet, knees cracking and making him feel like he was a hundred years old.
Too old to live, too young to die.
"C'mon." Ophelia strode off toward the cemetery. "Let's go visit friends."
Friends?
He felt the first few drops of cool rain.
He didn't know why he followed her, only that he did and it all went to hell.
Flash.
Men in dark coats. Knew they were bad news. Knew something was off about them, never seen 'em, but Ophelia knew them. So it seemed, anyway. Told her to give them money, lots of money.
Flash.
Screaming, yelling, tripping over stones that jutted like bad teeth. Cursing.
Flash
"Spike!"
Flash
Reaching for a gun that wasn't there. Slow. Too slow.
Flash.
A shot. No more screams. They ran. He moved in slow motion, didn't know how he'd catch her before she fell.
"...of a bitch..." Red bubbles on her lips. He pulled her up into his arms and knew that it was over. Big brown eyes closing slowly. "Always knew I'd...drown."
Numb.
Gotta be dead.
Can't carry all this weight and feel nothing.
Gotta be dead.