Story Notes

This story is something a bit different. It explores, via drabbles, the interlude between Spike's death in the Hellmouth in Buffy S7 Chosen and his restoration to unlife in early Angel Season 5, where events diverge from canon. (Tip: Buffy comes to L.A. because of course she would.)

Amidst original content, Spike remembers and/or experiences things from various episodes of both shows. Plot elements, characters, and occasional snippets of dialogue have been adapted into this story with gratitude to the writers who contributed to both BtVS and AtS.

This story leverages prompts from Bingo Board Two of the Elysian Fields July 2023 Drabblemania Event, completing all prompts on that board. The title of each drabble names its prompt. These are mostly EF-style, super-sized drabbles with a side of fries, which means many push up to that site's 1,000 word guidepost. The banner is by me. The story is unbetaed and all errors are mine.

Disclaimer: All publicly recognizable characters, settings, etc. are the property of their respective owners. The original characters and plot are the property of the author. The author is in no way associated with the owners, creators, or producers of any media franchise. No copyright infringement is intended.

.

Chapter 1: Consciousness Dissolves into Dream

This is the start, where Spike's after-death journey begins. (Each drabble's title is the prompt on which it's based. A brief introduction to each drabble gives a bit of context.)

Memory Loss

Confusion and garbled memories accompany one's sudden, unexpected entry into the afterlife.

-oo-00-oo-

In that moment, all he knew—and it was literally all he knew—was that his nerves were on fire, an agony so great that there were no words. They'd etched flaming fissures into his bones, expanding them beyond his earthly form. They'd burst like vines and flowers exploding from his flesh in the exultation of a million cells, a billion atoms ripping apart to rejoin the dance of the universe.

Pyre to purification. Memory to dreams. Beginning to end. Or was it… end to the beginning?

He recalled his voice giving out well before his inexplicable urge to breathe. His eyes, he thought, were the last to go. In that final moment, all around he saw burning, a cavern collapsed, evil beaten back at the end of a battle beyond his understanding. It was a gyre centered on him, like how the ancients saw the universe surrounding the earth. He had done this. He had won… something big. Something that mattered. He'd set the world back to balance.

And they were safe. Those who mattered to him were safe, escaped on a different road than he was about to follow. For a moment before the end, he saw them cocooned in what his mind told him was a "school bus" and an "escape capsule." Like yin and yang, he saw the other half of his spirit curled around itself as it split away from him. Life leaving death behind. There were tears, there was regret. He wanted to reach out in comfort but was tugged back, away from them.

And then there was nothing. The pain was extinguished. He was done.

But yet… his eyesight had returned, revealing that he was now floating in a featureless, gray space. Hints of light flickered and wavered in the darkness. Forms that hinted at human shapes coalesced like heavy clouds, like nebulas forming in the vastness of dark space.

Was he one of those forms? He gazed around for a while before he thought to ask: "Who am I? Why am I here?"

Perhaps his eyes hadn't been the last to leave him; perhaps it had been his memory.

But no… a familiar woman's voice urged him. "Here William, look through this. It's a kaleidoscope that rearranges what you see into the most beautiful patterns. Your father brought it back from his business trip over the ocean."

A man's voice, equally known yet unexpected, wove into the conversation. "It's the newest fad in Boston, my son." Rough from the coughing that would eventually take his life, the man's voice yet betrayed a sense of shared wonder.

Lights, patterns, colors spun and remade themselves. A vase on the mantle expanded into a twelve-lobed star made from shards of color. A book's leather cover unfolded into a mystery of untapped, overlapping covers for burgeoning stories. "It's a miracle," a young, reedy voice replied. "Everything is different. Beautiful."

His consciousness slipped momentarily, and he could see through those youthful eyes. Had that been him? Was this all he remembered?

With that question, his focus changed. Images, thoughts, sounds, and so much more crowded his senses like pieces of an immense jigsaw puzzle strewn without order. It was all him: truths he'd known, things he'd seen, people he'd met. He had no idea how to perceive them.

But then one memory surfaced and steadied him.

At the end, her palm had been together with his like the wick to a fire. In the conflagration, they'd seemed to forge together into one hand. The yin and the yang. He remembered this. Buffy, he thought. A word, a name as clear as a bell that rang in his head. She was his anchor; the other half of his spirit.

He remembered this. The look of humanity had shown from her eyes like salvation. "I love you."

She'd said those words, although he hadn't known whether he dared to believe them. But now he knew it had the ring of truth, a harmonic chime that meant she'd completed a yearning that had lasted since his first moment of consciousness.

Maybe he was here because, with that, he was finished.

Spirit Realm

In this realm of spirits, beyond our earthly senses, events and memories become dreamlike.

-oo-00-oo-

He wasn't sure time existed anymore. What he did know was that he was William. He also knew he wasn't alone.

A man in a suit staggered into view. "Where am I? Do you know me?" he asked, catching William with his eyes. For a second, the man had a deep, bloody gash from his forehead to a gore-filled hole in his chest. Then, blink, he was a harried but average businessman.

"I don't know you," William answered. "Nor where we are."

The man ran a hand through his hair. "I remember my Corvette, the highway, the Eagles on my stereo. I was on that 'dark desert highway' but then everything screeched and tumbled into headlights and trees. It hurt." He whined as though he'd never felt pain before.

Incongruously, he began humming the Eagles song. "Mmm, mmm, I drink champagne on ice; we are all just prisoners here…." He stopped, swiveling his head as he looked around the vastness of gray around them. "But where is here?"

Hotel California, William's mind supplied. But before he could speak, the man had drifted back into the gray. "Hello," he called, having remembered this was something people said. There was no reply.

No matter. William felt a rush of pleasure realizing that he knew what a Corvette was; he'd even driven one. A presence within his mind jostled him, reminding him he'd stolen the car, but that infraction didn't seem to matter. More importantly, he pulsed with the certainty that he knew California. That's where he'd been before coming here. Where he'd freed the other half of his spirit, his Buffy, to leave while he remained to see how everything ended.

Which was with fire, sunlight, death, and life. And boulders crashing from above. There were no boulders around, so he wasn't in that place any longer.

Disembodied voices rumbled nearby. Or maybe he simply felt them like subsonic tones vibrating from within.

One said, "Unprecedented. This demon smells of humanity."

Another rumbled, "This spirit is not one of Sineya's children. It's… stuck. The soul and demon both remain."

"Not stuck," a third voice interjected. "Sorcery tethers the spirit from the earthly realm. Until it's freed there, it follows the soul's path here."

"Hello," William called, increasingly baffled. "Can you please tell me where this is? Why I'm here?" He cast his hand out to indicate the formless gray all around him.

No reply came, leaving him to wonder why he'd thought his soul had burned away. And also: I'm a vampire. He wasn't sure what all that meant. He just felt like William.

A lumbering humanoid bearing ram's horns interrupted him. It growled "kill, smash." Fyarl his mind supplied. I know Fyarl. By the time he realized that, the creature was gone.

Another figure emerged from the surrounding gray. Tall and thin with long straight hair, she met his gaze. "I know you," they exclaimed at the same time.

Her smile was toothy and awkward. No extra weight softened the angles of sinew and elbows. Holding a wooden staff, she was like an ancient tribeswoman, defender of the clan. It was at odds with her sneakers, jeans, and midriff baring top.

"Amanda," he said. It meant she who is worthy of love in Latin, another language he seemed to understand. He was oddly sure it wasn't a language many spoke.

"Spike. You're the vampire who helped teach us to fight demons. I remember," the teen-almost-woman said. "I think I died in the fight. Amazing, huh? I helped save the world but never left Sunnydale. Didn't quite make it to prom. Now I'm here. Wherever this is."

It flooded back. The girls he'd trained and considered "his" had become slayers. They'd fought as warriors. "You were magnificent," he said with genuine affection.

"I did okay." She shrugged, gathering herself behind a drape of hair. "People always thought I was strange, but I finally got to kill something. It was good. I wasn't the evil one, after all."

"You were never evil," he said with certainty.

"Hmm, maybe. I miss people but I don't think they'll miss me."

"They do, Amanda. You are worthy of love."

"So are you, Spike." A shy grin pulled at her lips as she faded out of sight.

His name had been William. And also Spike. He was worthy of love.

A thin, demonic form with yellow eyes and bristling teeth scuttled toward him. As gray as their surroundings, it was a vampire demon without a human shell, neither male nor female. Suddenly, it stopped and leaned forward with a deep sniff. Then it raised a hand whose long fingers were little more than exposed bones tipped in thick claws. It growled, "A soul. Foul abomination. Human dross. You can't feed and bathe in blood while laced with that."

In matching growls, Spike replied, "But both demon and soul are me." Wasn't that what the voices had implied earlier?

"You are mewling and weak. You should have immediately ejected that filthy soul to skitter off wherever those things go. It holds you like corpse hands. It keeps you from the celestial, fiery, wheel-within-wheels that pours our formlessness into bodies for all the unholy pleasures of which we dream."

William had a sudden image of an infernal Ferris wheel with bucket cars scooping up vampire essences from a gray, soupy pool. Spinning and crossing other wheels like a gyroscope, it paused whenever a cart reached the earthly destination for its eager vampire wraith. Not a circle of rebirth, but perhaps a circle of siring.

In his imagination, the vampire essence in front of him stepped into a bobbing bucket cart. With a cadaverous, toothy leer, it waved its bony hand goodbye like they were chums saying goodbye before a road trip.

And then, he was alone again in the heavy gray of… here. It was like floating, like being rocked in ocean waves deep as the ocean's pulse.

.

To be continued…