Small feet.
Sneakers pounding the cracked pavement in a regular rhythm.
A girl, medium length blond hair streaming behind her, running at a terrified sprint down a dark ally.
Shadows. Darkness and occasional shades of lighter shadow moving like a veil across the soft features of her face.
Something caught her from behind. Grabbed her. A slight push. The girl tumbled to the pavement. She turned herself over, ended up looking back the way she had come, at the figure barely hidden in the shadows.
“I would have given you anything,” said the shadowed figure standing over her. “Everything I had. Everything I am. I would have turned the world upside down for you. Ran the gamut of heaven and hell. Even killed for you. Anything, if it would have even just earned me a smile.”
The figure took a step closer, emerging into the light. He had the face of a vampire before it melted away. A somewhat small man, unassuming, but with a depth of emotion behind the facade. The man cocked his head slightly, looking down at her with patently soulful eyes, “I loved you.”
The girl’s face turned hard. “What makes you think that I could ever love you.” She looked him up and down derisively. “Look at you. It’s disgusting . . . what you’ve made of yourself. What kind of life could we . . .”
“And that’s reason enough to stomp on my heart,” asked the man angrily, taking another step closer. “To rip out whatever shreds of dignity I can still claim as my own.” He looked at her with bitter accusation. “Why would you . . .” He visibly swallowed. “Better that you had just left me be, than to leave me like . . . this.
“You think I didn’t want to be with you. You think something inside of didn’t scream at me to hold on and never let go.”
“I love you. Shouldn’t that be enough.”
She gave the man a sad look. Her face trembled. A tear rolled down her cheek. “It just won’t work. I’m sorry.”
His face thinned. “You’re sorry all right,” said the embittered man. His closed fist crashed down on her cheek. She let out a pained squeal. The man reached out, grabbed her by the shoulders, and tossed her off to the side. Her body flew through the air and hit the painted brick wall at one side of the ally before falling to the ground.
The man turned toward her, then looked down suddenly to see something that had just punched out through his chest. The splintery and bloody tip of a piece of wood stuck out of his breast. A moment later his body crumbled into a gray cloud of falling ash, revealing the platinum haired man standing behind where he once stood, holding a long shaft of wood in his hands.
The man turned and looked for the girl.
The girl lay sprawled uncomfortably on a pile of loose brick and abandoned scraps of lumber. She was completely still. Her blond hair lay elegantly around her shoulders. There was blood high up across her forehead.
Spike lowered his eyes. Released an unnecessary breath. Turned and walked away, disappearing up the dark ally. A few moments later he tossed the shaft of wood in his hands carelessly aside.
“Buffy?”
Giles looked through the door. The darker shape of a small figure could be seen sitting quietly on the large bed in the dark room.
“Buffy, there you are. I was getting worried.”
He fumbled with the switch by the door and turned on the lights.
“You’ve been up here a while,” said Giles. He came over and sat beside her on the bed. “I know it’s a lot to handle.”
“You have no idea.”
Giles released a breath. “I wasn’t sure if I should even tell you. But, you at least deserve to know. I remember what happened between us in Sunnydale, and I don’t wish to see anything ever come between us like that again.”
“I feel like I’m walking in a dream. This can’t be real. None of this. These past months. I’ve been walking around in a sea of smiling faces. There was a hole in the world. You would have thought that someone else would have noticed.”
“He asked Andrew not to even tell you.”
“What?!” She looked at Giles with dark, shiny eyes. “He wouldn’t do that! He . . .” She lowered her face to her hands and cried.
“You’ve made a life for yourself here,” Giles told her finally, in a soft reasonable voice, “in spite of all of the challenges that you’ve faced. A good life, and Spike . . . from what Andrew tells me, is beginning to make a go at creating a life for himself in Los Angeles. A life without you. Just . . . let him go, Buffy. What the two of you had wasn’t healthy. It wasn’t good for you. And it wasn’t good for Spike.”
Buffy looked up at the watcher desperately, “But it doesn’t have to be . . .”
“You were right, some of the things you said back in Sunnydale. Spike is a good man. I had just never allowed myself to see it. A great man. But now you have the opportunity for something more. A life Spike could never give you, no matter how much he might hope he could. Are you sure you want to give all of that up?”
The body flew backwards and crashed through the boarded up window. Pieces of shattered wood fell to the floor. Some still barely clung to the window frame, dangling there precariously from rusty nails.
The vampire lay where he landed for the briefest moment before settling to the ground in a ripple of dust.
Inside the house, Spike turned his attention away from the shattered window, to the three other vampires standing across from him. He faced them, calm and expressionless.
Standing beside him, holding a ready stake, Doyle grinned, “Who’s next?”
Doyle dropped low as the vampire came at him, grabbed hold of its jacket as best he could in the last moment, and twisted his body around with the impact of it hitting him. The motion tossed the stronger vampire through the air over Doyle’s shoulder, it hit the floor hard, raising up a cloud of dust. Doyle scrambled over to where the vampire lay, and before it had time to do anything to stop him, drove his stake down through its chest.
Doyle turned, and in the light of one of the kerosene lanterns that lit the abandoned building, saw Spike fight the other two vampires. Spike moved between the two like he was dancing. They struck out at him but never quite managed to touch him. Doyle watched as Spike grabbed one vampire, turned its head and snapped its neck, and then drove his stake through the body as it fell, before it even had a chance to hit the floor.
The other vampire came at him. Spike reached over his shoulder, pulled a short wooden staff from a sleeve on his back. Stabbed out into the vampire’s chest even as he raised it, arcing the vampire up and over him, still impaled on the end of the staff. The vampire flew through the air and slammed hard into the wall, then dusted as it tumbled to the floor.
Doyle stood up, brushing the dust off his clothes.
“Is there anyone actually alive in here?”
Spike looked at the stairs at one side of the room and then closed his eyes for a moment. Cocked his head slightly. Opened his eyes, looked at Doyle and shook his head.
Doyle let out a breath, “So what now?”
Spike silently grabbed one of the kerosene lanterns that lit the room and threw it at the stairs. The glass globe shattered. The flames spread.
Giles got up and left the room.
Buffy sat quietly on the bed. Staring quietly out into space.
A single tear rolled down her cheek.
Spike stood by the corner of a building, quietly smoking a cigarette.
Across the street and further down the block a building burned. Bright light bathing the street in a muted glow. Huge orange flames rising up to consume it.
Spike lingered. Smoking his cigarette. Light flickering in his eyes as he watched the building burn.
Spike took the cigarette from his mouth with two fingers and silently exhaled a breath of smoke. Lowered his hand to his side and dropped it. He turned and walked away.
Author's note: You didn't think I'd make it easy, did you. I won't be too bad, but I thought that some things needed to be said.
The title of this chapter is from a song by "Linkin Park" that applies perfectly to Spike.
I've gotten a few reviews criticising my grammar. I'm well aware that my use of the language would give an English teacher fits. I sometimes manage sentences without even using a verb. I don't care. I write it to flow. I try to keep a certain poetry to the words. I'm particularly proud of the transition between Spike and Giles in the previous chapter. Yes, Giles was talking about Angel, but the transition applied many of those things to Spike as well. Poetry. This fic has been something of an experiment. I've never told you what anyone is thinking, with the exception of a single word by Angel in the first chapter. I've never just stated anything that isn't happening in the moment, with the exception of where I couldn't help it, namely Buffy's history in Europe in ch. 2, and even then I was very careful about what I wrote, trying to keep it brief and add a certain sense of poetry to the words. I may not always be successful, but I try to let the images speak for themselves. The style is a little different, but I like it.
If you like this I'd love it if you'd check out another fic I've recently written. It's a Buffy/Lord of the Rings crossover called "So Lost, Too Far From Home". I know Buffy/LotR crossover is a term that often normally means crap-tacular but I'm trying to do something cool. It's Spuffy, if that helps any. The next chapter of that should be out as early as tomorrow if I can polish up the last details. Check it out.
As always, please review.