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Author's Chapter Notes:
No love for this fic. *le sigh*
Chapter 5: The Long Way Down

Spike slept through the next night and day, waking up bleary eyed, head pounding. He felt like he had the worst hangover in history but couldn’t remember what the hell he’d done to deserve it. He tried to push himself up into a sitting position, but his arms collapsed weakly on the bed, unable to support his full weight. His eyes focused on a pair of blue balls sitting on the unfamiliar bedside table. He felt a rising surge of hysteria. Blue balls. Ha. The tide of emotions threatened to carry him away, deeper into that dark place he could feel within him. Closing his eyes, he took deep breaths, trying to center himself. He was alright. He wasn't weak. He could do this. Spike gritted his teeth. He may not be able to walk, but he sure as hell should be able to sit up by himself. That shouldn’t take much effort. He had no idea how incredibly wrong he was.

Twenty minutes later, Spike lay exhausted on the bed, a light sheen of sweat coating his body. What kind of person couldn't even sit up in bed without help? The exhaustion that overwhelmed him, sinking heavily into to every part of his body, wasn’t like anything he’d ever felt; not even when he’d been teaching himself to walk the last time. He felt like he’d just gone two rounds with the best slayer that had ever walked the earth and barely lived to tell the tale.

But a least you're alive, a voice whispered. He picked one tired, heavy arm up, and growled his anger when it started to shake. He didn't even realize the tears had broken loose until one splashed on his uncontrollable limb. He looked around frantically for something to throw, but realized all he had were his pillows...which he doubted he could lift at this point anyways.

The reality of his situation hit him with the force of a Mac truck. He was completely and utterly dependent on these people for his well being. If they wanted to, they could just leave him to rot here on this bed, and he wouldn’t be able to do a thing about it. And Spike HATED to be dependent on anyone.

Let it out, that same voice whispered to him. Spike threw his head back a screamed with rage, frustration, anger, and all of his other pent-up emotions. He screamed until his already-raw throat refused to work anymore, and screamed silently after that, body tense and unyielding. He felt better.

With renewed determination, he tried again, but he barely had enough energy to weakly lift his head. The insidious voice of Angelus whispered at him, he was weak, helpless, and worthless.

He remembered his years under Angelus’ brutal tutelage, when he could never be good enough for the sadistic elder vampire. Spike was always lacking in something, whether it be his flare for the kill or his inability to claim Dru as his own. Angelus had spent years telling looking down at the younger vamp, so much weaker than he. Angelus was a sadistic fuck, using Spike's love of words against him, knowing just where to hit to make the most impact; and he always punctuated his words with some pointedly painful physical lesson. Then, as now, Spike had sworn to overcome the obstacles in his path: to take Dru from Angelus once and for all, to sit the bloody fuck up. Only he always failed. Not once in his life had he managed to truly one up Angelus. There had been that one time, with Acathla...but no. In the end, that had been Angel.
Sure, he'd tried to spin the whole soul-thing, tried to convince himself Angel was Angelus, that he'd still won. Spike snorted. Couldn't even convince himself of that one. He'd failed then, and now he was failing again. Just on a grander scale. Maybe there was something to Angelus' words.

Spike simmered in his misery, the overwhelming task looming ahead of him.

************* ******** *************

“This sucks,” Alanna muttered. “Why did they do this to him?”

“Because the price for saving him wasn’t one you could pay,” Leto said gently. Alanna glanced sharply at him to see if he was kidding, but Leto was quite serious. They’d been watching this particular vampire for a while now, and for all Spike had been though, the young vamp been dealt one hell of a raw deal by the PTBs. And Alanna was PISSED. He could feel her emotions raging beneath the controlled exterior she was presenting. Internally she was a maelstrom of emotions, seething at the Powers who refused to help Spike. Great reward for someone who had sacrificed everything to save the world.

“Ma Petite,” he murmured, wrapping her in his arms. She relaxed into him, tbut he could smell the rage pouring off of her. “Stop acting your age. It scares me when you’re mature.” He was rewarded with a curt laugh. They held each other, commiserating in their charge’s plight and seemingly needless suffering.

“You could always ask them.”

“I did. I got the crytpic runaround. Nedra is more forthcoming about her predictions and she doesn't even know what she's talking about half the time.” She pulled away so she could look at him. “How do you feel about it?”

Her brown eyes shown with concern and Leto felt a genuine smile tug at his lips. He brushed her flaming hair aside, savoring the soft curls and the sharp scent of her.

“I couldn’t help but be involved,” he said softly, “he’s family.”

************* ******** *************

Buffy stared over the shimmering lights of Rome, noting absently that most people would have found this view beautiful and tranquil. Buffy felt...nothing. Well, that wasn’t true. She felt something. She felt a lot of something. But she would rather feel nothing.

She felt him, felt his intent long before he got to her.

Her friends had told her to move on, that she had been moping around for long enough. Willow had started bringing over ‘co-workers’ a few months after The Day. Buffy really had no idea where Willow was dredging up such a steady stream of prospective suitors in Rome; regardless, she had no interest in any of them. There was only one person she wanted, and he only haunted her dreams.

A few months A.S. (After Sunnydale or After Spike, Buffy thought with a small smile that lacked anything approaching amusement), Buffy’s distressed, heart-broken cries had woken Dawn and a visiting Willow. They’d found her huddled on the bed almost incoherent. She’d managed a mangled telling of the dream about him, in a clearing with a pond, the story gasped out between gut-wrenching sobs. Willow had called Giles, who had promptly flown to Rome to cosonle his charge and to make sure she didn't do anything...drastic. Wills and Giles had both counseled Buffy about holding on to the impossible and how, for her own sake, she needed to let him go. They’d both refused to listen to her when she’d tried to explain that she needed to remember. Remember everything.

How he smelled, of cigarettes and whisky and leather and man. How he’d almost given up his life for Dawn. How he smirked his way through life. The clear, earnest blue of his eyes when he was telling her things about herself she'd tried to ignore. How he’s shown her life was worth living. How he walked, all jaunty and devil-may-care. How his bleached shock of hair disappeared when he became a stealthy predator. The languid, rolling gait he adopted right before a fight, and the power in his movements when they danced.

They told her that he would want her to move on, to find someone that could make her happy. They didn’t listen when she said that she couldn’t, that there was no one else. It was like coming out of Heaven all over again; they wanted the shiny happy Buffy back. Six months was more than enough time to stop having nightmares, to stop waking up in tears every morning for something she could never have. But it wasn’t. Not for her. Eternity wouldn't be long enough.

Only Dawn understood, so Dawn was the only one who got to see the real Buffy these days. Not that the other Scoobies looked deep enough to uncover her facade. (Not that they were really the Scoobies anymore; Xander had disappeared shortly after Sunnydale collapsed and hadn’t been heard from since.) She’d long since learned that they only saw what they wanted to, only acknowledged that which they needed to see to convince themselves she was OK. But they knew, on some small, hidden level, that Buffy had drawn away from them and the world, despite all signs to the contrary. And after endless weeks of convincing, coaxing, and lecturing, Buffy was going to ‘move on.’

“Are you ready, cara mia?” Buffy turned to him with a small smile, ready for her date.

************* ******** *************

Lounging in his pent house overlooking L.A., Angel turned his pensive gaze towards the east, as he had been doing for almost a week. He'd been minding his own business when suddenly the bond of family had stirred within him, signaling the awakening of his most annoying childe. Well, technically Dru’s most annoy childe, though the sire bond was far stronger with Angelus, who had trained and molded Spike since Dru was a less than capable sire. For all intents and purposes, Spike was his childe, marked and claimed as such. His childe who was supposed to be buried beneath the rubble of Sunnydale and out of his life for good. Only he wasn’t. So Angel had used his considerable influence as C.E.O. of Wolfram and Hart to track him down.

And come up completely empty.

According to every one of his sources--legitimate, illegitimate, and Senior Partner level--Spike was well and truly dead. Only Angel knew he wasn’t. And that was very disturbing, because Spike could ruin everything. It was time to start keeping a closer watch on Buffy.





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