Angel(us) Is On Your Side

Buffy, Spike, warring emotions regarding Angel(us)

Bloody embarrassing is what it is. Spike prides himself on being bad ass, a killer, and feared by slayers and their watchers, even vampires who could blink and all the time he's lived and killed in will have passed them by, give pause to cross him. There is only one thing Spike wants, and it is his sire, his Angelus.

In one night everything Spike had and hadn't known was what he wanted, was gone. Angelus had abandoned him, and Spike told himself that, well, that was well and good, because now he can prove he's worthy of Angelus without his sire's maker hovering about. He ignores the whimpering human heart who says he's been abandoned, and worse, he's forgotten and ashamed of.

It's Dru that made him what he is, and he clings to her, because she is his maker, yet it was Angelus that made her, tormented her in ways that Spike can only sooth Dru out of her nightmares of. Surely, because of that torture, that care that Angelus lavished on Dru for years, he'll come back for his childe, and Spike will be there, at her side – and, at least, Angelus might be grateful for his watching over Dru, might tolerate Spike about and around him for it.

Spike longs for that day as much as he fears it, because there is always the lingering yammering human in him that says that Angelus doesn't feel anything for him, that he'd sooner get staked then thanked. But, Spike is a pathetic brute, and he wants that too, wants Angelus so badly that he's willing to risk his undead life for Angelus to just come back and let Spike stand beside him.

If Angelus comes back, Spike knows, things will be just the same – it's what he hopes. He thinks and worries though, that it won't. What if the gypsy curse did more then sever the human from the vampire…that is bad enough, but every vampire needs a little bit of that human who they used to be to keep them sane.

When his legs are broke and Angelus is raving about ending the world, killing all the humans, its suicide. Spike had always hated Angel… that human half of Angelus who found Spike so revolting that he'd run from Spike and the family, ashamed and filled with self loathing. It's sickening then, when Spike realizes he has to kill Angel – Angelus – to save the world, but his sire's maker, his sire in heart, is sick, insane, and maybe it's not having the blood he's craved for centuries, or being souled and human, that's done it, but it's done, and Spike has to do it. Has to end it, he has to kill Angelus to save the world, and he hates Buffy for that, for killing Angelus and as good as sending him to hell.

So when he finds out that Angel is back, Spike knows he'll eventually follow, because Angel is his sire and isn't dead though Spike as good as killed him, and Spike goes, following after, knowing he wants that justice, that redemption – and only Angel can give it to him by showing that in Angel there is a bit of Angelus, just as Spike had seen that bit of Angel in Angelus.

The soul though, that was mostly an accident. Though Angel looks at him with understanding, Spike knows that Angelus is laughing at him on the other side of those dark eyes, and underneath it all, his sire is a little bit amused (with him) and proud (of him), and wars with himself daily just as Spike, his self-declared childe, does.

Spike doesn't mind a bit, in the end, because he's got what he wanted, and Angel is standing at his side and paying attention to him again. The rest of the world is at war.