Spike swung hard, the huge cross in his hands coming around connecting with a loud crunch. Angel’s body flew backwards through the air. He impacted with a wall and fell to the floor. Angel struggled to get up and then collapsed at the foot of the wall under the weight of his own exhaustion.
Spike looked down at the vampire with distaste, “You never knew the real me.”
The cross he bore burned him. Smoke sizzled from his hands.
Spike absently tossed the cross aside and approached, speaking to Angel scornfully, “Too busy trying to see your own reflection. Praying . . . that there was someone as disgusting as you in the world . . . so that you could stand to live with yourself. Take a long look hero . . . I’m nothing like you!”
“No,” Angel said derisively. His face was bloodied and bruised. “You’re less. That’s why Buffy never really loved you . . . ‘cause you weren’t me.”
Blue eyes opened in the darkness.
Spike threw back the blanket and slipped off the small bed. His bare feet carefully settled on the floor, avoiding the empty bottles that littered area around the bed. He walked slowly across the dim apartment.
Spike opened the fridge. The light was cruel. He let the door slip closed, popped the cap on a brown beer bottle and took a swig. He then put the half-empty bottle on top of the fridge and wandered lifelessly into a near corner of the room and into the bathroom, flipping on the light.
Spike turned on the faucet. The clear, colorless water spiraled down the drain of the empty white porcelain bowl.
He lowered his head, cupped water in his hands and splashed it in his face.
Looked up into the reflection in the mirror. The vampire was bleary eyed. His eyes were a little bit bloodshot. His hair chaotic and mussed. Spike’s expression was tired, empty, and hopeless.
None of which was reflected in the mirror. His lack of reflection stared back at him.
Spike walked out of the bathroom and shut off the light.
“. . . it must be hard . . . to live like that. Surrounded by people, yet destined to be alone. Hope . . . is what drives a man, Buffy. It’s what gets him through the day. We all have our hopes, Buffy . . . you and I . . . some simpler than others. If we’re honest with ourselves what did he ever have?” Giles asked truthfully. “A pie in the sky dream for a miracle. I’m not sure it was ever really enough . . .”
Buffy looked at her Watcher, dumbfounded. “Stop trying to defend him. He made his own choices . . . just like I did. We’ve all had our hopes and dreams shattered in pieces on the ground . . . more times than we could have possibly imagined.” She shrugged, “To use a phrase my mother used to be fond of ‘that’s just the way the cookie crumbles’.” Buffy couldn’t help her stilted grin. “What makes or breaks us is what we do afterwards. Angel made the choice. He joined up with Wolfram & Hart. We’re the ones who are going to have to deal with it . . . ‘cause, from where I’m sitting, he sure as hell won’t.”
Giles sighed. He removed his glasses and began to clean them with a soft cloth. “You’re right of course. I’m just trying to understand.”
Buffy smiled kindly at her Watcher. “Me too,” she admitted softly. “And I really wish I could . . . but any way I try to look at it the risk is just too much. I don’t know exactly what we should do, but most anything would likely be better than nothing.”
Giles looked down at the table . . . exhaled softly . . . finally looked back at her.
He asked, “So . . . how are you . . . I mean, beyond the platitudes? How have you and Dawn really been? What have you been doing?”
“Dawn has school. She goes to a private English school I found that she really likes. She has to wear a uniform though, skirts and field hockey knees and all,” the girl chuckled good-heartedly, “but she likes it anyway, weird girl that she is. She has some really nice friends that aren’t vampires or witches or werewolves and who don’t have any idea about those things except what they see in the crappy movies they like to laugh at, and I have no problems letting her go off on her own with them to hang out.”
“What about you?”
“Me? I don’t know. I read a lot. Spend some of my time down at the beach. I do a bit to train Slayers when they come through. I keep in touch with everyone on the computer, help them solve whatever problems they have, and sometimes they have quite a few. Give them direction if they need it. I just sit around and try to relax when I get the chance, still absently craving the simpler life. I mean is there really a such thing as a simpler life ‘cause I’m beginning to doubt it.” She giggled. “But, the way it looks from here, I doubt I’ll be getting that anytime soon anyway.”
Giles smiled wryly, “Probably not.”
Both Buffy and Giles looked up as Andrew strolled back into the room. The boy seemed jaunty, energetic, lost in his own world and momentarily oblivious to anyone around him. Andrew saw a decorative bowl on the counter and smiled brightly.
“Oh, cool . . . M&Ms!” Andrew grabbed a sloppy handful and threw some into his mouth. He looked back and forth at the Slayer and the Watcher sitting awkwardly opposite each-other at Buffy’s kitchen table and sighed sadly as Buffy took a sip from her cup of coffee.
“I take it I missed some fireworks, huh?!” He couldn’t hide his disappointment. “So . . . fess up. Give me the details . . . how did Buffy take the news about Spike being back?”
Buffy sprayed a mouthful of coffee all over Giles.
Giles wrinkled his nose and looked down at himself disgustedly.
Andrew smiled sheepishly, “Oops!”
“Feel my wrath . . . gorilla throwin’ barrels.”
A playful electronic noise wound down and died.
Sitting on the couch in his apartment, Spike frowned at the television on the stand close in front of him. “Bloody hell!” He leaned forward, reaching above the tv and flipped the reset switch before settling back on the couch and staring intently at the screen.
He abruptly spoke aloud a few moments later, never looking away from the screen, “Really should knock on a bloke’s door . . . especially one who’s got no qualms about killin’ trespassers.”
Doyle stood just inside the apartment near the door.
“Come on,” Doyle said with a friendly tease as he approached. “Is that any way to talk to your benefactor?”
Spike rolled his eyes.
Doyle stopped and looked toward the television. “What is that? An Atari 2600?!” Crouching down to look at the machine balanced on top of the tv Doyle smiled to himself faintly. A black cord snaked from the machine to the joystick in Spike’s hands. “You know I had one of these when I was a kid. Didn’t have much, but . . . I had one of these.”
Spike raised an eyebrow. “Yeah?! When I was a kid we had playin’ cards. I can’t help but think that one of us got gypped.”
Doyle shrugged, “You’re makin’ up for it now. Never too late to account for a deprived childhood.” He settled down on the couch next to Spike. “I’m just a little concerned about you. You haven’t exactly been out in the field lately.”
Spike frowned at the man disbelievingly, “In case you haven’t been keepin’ up with the sports page I got my bloody hands cut off by that deranged Slayer you sent me after.”
Doyle lowered his eyes, “Yeah, I’m sorry bout that.” He smiled half-heartedly, “But hey . . . your good old buddies at Wolfram & Hart managed to reattach them just fine. You can still sit around here and . . . play video games.”
“Rehab mate.” Spike held up a hand and wiggled his fingers, “Workin’ out the digits.”
Spike stood up and went to the fridge fetched two beers. When he sat back down on the couch he handed one to Doyle. Spike took a drink and looked down at the fingers holding the brown bottle. He said, “You’ve got no idea how rotten this feels.”
Doyle laughed, “Amazingly enough I do. Yeah, got my hand cut off a few years back. Line of duty kind of thing. So believe me when I tell you I can feel your pain.”
Spike looked at the man and raised an eyebrow. “Half of it anyway. Give ya that!”
“Just, you know . . . don’t forget you’ve got a job to do. The Powers-That-Be are countin’ on their champion. So are all the other helpless people . . .”
“Don’t need a pep talk, Doyle. Already planning on goin’ out,” Spike said, taking the time to look at the other man seriously. “Just as soon as you get one of your fancy visions and tell me when and where.”
“Right,” Doyle said awkwardly. “Good.”
Spike’s blue eyes narrowed, “You don’t get visions, do you?”
Doyle swallowed, “Actually . . . no.”
Spike smirked. “I didn’t think so.”
“You knew!?”
“Had an inkling.”
“Then . . . why’d you play along? Why’d you act like . . .”
Spike shrugged, “Got nothin’ better to do. You know, aside from sitting here and playing with my bloody joystick all day.” Spike smirked slightly. “It was a distraction is all. Gave me time to get out of my head for a little while and suss out the mystery that was you.” Spike huffed, “ ‘sides, I was still out there savin’ lives, and that’s no small thing.”
“Wow. You amaze me. All that planning and all that effort and you go and see right through it from the start. Teach me to think I’m smarter than I really am.”
“So how’d you do it?” asked Spike. “I mean how’d you know where to send me an’ all if you weren’t exactly gettin’ the Technicolor visions.”
“I’ve got a connection . . . inside Wolfram & Hart.” Doyle smiled shyly, “A girl. She feeds me the information. I pass it along to you.”
“A girl!” Spike laughed, “Of course you do! Let me take a wild guess as to the bird’s name . . . Eve.” He watched the man’s reaction and shook his head. “Figures. I take it that idiot ex-Watcher Sirk was yours too.”
Doyle smiled, “We were just trying to get the hero concept into your turns out not so thick head. And if you had killed Angel . . . Oo, bonus.”
Spike grinned, “You really don’t like Angel do you?”
“Who do you think chopped off my hand?! I spent . . . almost a year trying to live without it. Every time I had trouble opening a bottle or stopped and looked at the guitar in the back of my closet I couldn’t help but think of him. So . . . yeah, I’ve got a bit of a grudge.”
Doyle sighed, “But . . . that doesn’t change the essential truth. Every time I had a problem with Wolfram & Hart . . . hell, when I tried to find the impossible way out, it was Angel that I turned to, Angel that helped me despite everything else. When I heard that they had bought Angel I couldn’t help but think ‘Who would the next guy turn to?’ Who would they have now that Angel was gone?”
“So you turned to me.”
Doyle smiled, “You’d be amazed how easy it almost was. With my connection on the inside and some major luck things almost seemed to fall into place all on their own. Making you corporeal took a little longer, but . . . we knew we could do it with enough time. Presto, the people had a new champion. And maybe I’m just a little bit along the way of making up for some of the bad things I’ve done.”
Doyle sighed and ran his fingers through his hair, “I thought really hard about a lot of things after I quit Wolfram & Hart. Why things happened the way the did. Why I was who I was. And I came to a rather simple revelation. It’s not all about providence or prophecy . . . much as certain people would like to believe. There’s prophecies sure, I’ve seen enough of ‘em, but . . . in the end, I think it’s mostly about people. The decisions that they make and the direction they choose. I made bad decisions and people got hurt along the way. Angel made a bad decision and who knows what will happen. Maybe you’ll go a bit into balancing out Angel. Maybe not.” Doyle smiled at the vampire slyly, “At the least you’ll at least piss ‘im off.”
"I do that all right!" Spike looked at the man sharply, “So I ask why you? Who the hell drafted you into reenlisting this bloody dusted vampire in the good fight?”
Doyle, still calm, “I’m just a guy, trying to find a way to do what’s right. Everyone has to play their part, don’t ya think.” He looked at the expression Spike was giving him and had sense enough to looked slightly rebuked. “Hey, we all got things to atone for.”
After a few moments Doyle leaned forward on the couch slightly.
“If I could make a suggestion to you, Spike, it would be just this,” said Doyle seriously, “don’t put all of your faith in prophecies. In the end, you’ll likely only end up disappointed. Just be the guy you are. The guy you’ve slowly changed yourself into. The one you’ve tried so hard to be. Be yourself. Play your part, do the right thing as much as you can, and hopefully the rest of the crap will work itself out on its own.”
“Yeah,” Spike responded softly. “Hopefully.”
Buffy sobbed out loud, lowered her head, her blond hair falling down to obscure her face. Her small hands coming up under her hanging hair so that she could bury her face in her palms.
Giles and Andrew were still and watched her silently.
Her sobs suddenly shifted into the sounds of hysterical laughter. She curled up on herself with the force of it, her face nearly buried in the table.
She finally raised herself from the table, brushed back her hair with her fingers, and looked at both of them with big, shiny eyes. Her lip and chin trembled.
Fear and hope mingled in her voice as well as her eyes.
“Spike’s alive?!”
Author's note: Boy, this chapter was a pain in the ass. Trying to sort the whole mess out in my head, all the dialogue, the choice of tone, and the transitions. Pain in the ass! It certainly took a hell of a lot longer to get out compared to the others. Hopefully the next chapter will be easier. I hope it turned out okay. Review and tell me what you think. It was the best I could do.
Again I'm stealing a bit of dialogue from episodes, but i'm trying to go someplace completely different. Before the 100th episode nothing Doyle/Lindsey did struck me as completely evil. Morally ambiguious maybe, but not evil. I decided to go with that.
Spike also never struck me as particularly nieve or stupid. He always seemed quite smart actually. I like him my way.