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Nothing Simple

"I passed?" Angel asked, confused but hopeful.

The demon took his hand and led him out of the room. "You are able to now enter this part of your journey."

Angel looked at the dirt floor and shook his head at himself. Of course, it wasn't that simple.

The first test, apparently, had been a lesson. One where he had to discover Buffy was no longer his guide. She really hadn't been for at least three years. Not since he moved to LA.

He walked slowly behind the demon. Following her back through and out into the cavern.

She turned to him once they traveled to the point he had found himself when he first arrived with his Buffy copy, now demon. "Your path has always been your own. She gave you your purpose, but this...your life, has always been your own. You have so much more to do before you will be gifted. Trials will befall you and those close to you." She gazed into him to be sure he understood. He seemed to accept her words as fact, so she continued.

"I want you to think about your experiences, all of them." The Vampire eyed the demon as she spoke.

"You began your life as the spoiled rich son of a wealthy man. With those circumstances, and the opportunities open to you, you chose to waste you father's money, impregnate a young woman and ignore any true responsibilities. You were a drunken child in a man's body. You were a demon in human visage."

Angel listened, trying to understand clearly, what this demon was leading up to. It was going to be a long conversation.

~~`~~

Spike watched himself walk up behind the woman on the docks of New York. He watched her speak to him. And he watched as he walked away after speaking with the woman.

"You remember this, don'cha, Spike?" the Buffy clone asked.

Spike remembered. After that day, he was confused for months.

Until his meeting with that Slayer, he really hadn't believed in the whole Akoshta deal. It was a fairy tale. The Slayer he'd always believed in, but you could see a Slayer. Could fight a Slayer. And if you happened to be Spike, you could kill a Slayer. But Akoshta…?

Until that moment, it was all unreal.

Then the world he knew once more slapped him across the face.

Two years of his unlife searching for the woman who had been killing his kind with a strength he had not seen in the other Slayer. Then it was over, and he didn't even get to battle the woman. At that moment in time, a large part of him felt as though his existance was pointless.

Spike watched as the scene continued on the screen.

There was the man he had picked out the crowd for a meal complete with boarding pass onto a ship headed for England. He might not be able to munch on his originally selected morsel, but there was no reason to starve because of it.

He stalked the man. Followed quietly as the man headed into an ally. Then his eye caught a red head with those cute sausage curls bouncing around her face, also holding a boarding pass and headed for the same area of the dock. He smiled, he was in the mood for a female...a female had been his original prey. Spike walked away from the ally, and went after the young woman instead.

The screen no longer held what Spike remembered. Instead, it seemed that whatever was running the show had something to show him in the ally. The man wearing a derby and a black jacket turned to look behind him down the now empty ally. The man seemed disappointed.


"Who's the bloke?"

"That," the look-alike Buffy began, "is Whistler." She walked towards the screen as

Whistler walked out of the ally looking for something and obviously cursing while passersby turned to give him dirty looks for his language. "He was supposed to help you to find a new path. This was the best, and, quite frankly, only opportunity we had to try to get you on our side at the time."

Spike stared at her for a moment, then broke into a laughter that could only be described as demonic.

"You thought that I would fight the good fight...back then?" His laughter picked up and he bent over to try to calm the cramping in his stomach. "Not a chance, luv. No chance in Hell." The tears on his face were streaming down his cheeks and dripping off his chin from hysterical laughter.

"The Slayer... Akoshta... you were in shock for a few moments. Only running on instinct to eat, and go home to your sire. We thought it was the best time we would get to convince you. Whistler caught hell because of this mistake."

The demon explained how Whistler helped to keep the balance so that evil could not overtake good. That it was Whistler who first showed Angel his path. "It took us nearly 50 years to find another way to introduce you to the good in yourself, and correct the mistake."

" 'The good in me?' 'Correct the mistake?' " Anger slowly rose in Spike as he quickly added 2 and 2. "You made sure I was chipped?" he growled. He stood as still as he could. Demanding his body not lunge at this...this...thing who had trapped him. His life wasn't his own, and they had planned it. His fists clenched and unclenched at his side.

The demon wearing the appearance of the Slayer began her explanation, noting the tone in Spike's now very gruff, deep voice. "Drusilla. We helped her to see your mind. Just enough so that she would know what you craved, and that it wasn't her."

Spike was still angry. He had hated that Dru knew what he wanted, and he had no idea.

Spike had hated her words. "I look at you, and all I see is the Slayer."

After her declaration, he had sworn to dispose of the problem, namely the Slayer. Instead he was chipped. He never would have even gone back to Sunnydale if Dru hadn't said anything. And that had been the point. To send him back just so that he would be 'impotent.'

"Lemme see if I got all this right in my 'ead. You...or whoever is running this sodding ride, wanted me to...what...save the world? Fight for good? I mean, why not just stick me with a soul?"

"Because, Spike, we wanted you...not William. William was not...how can I say this?“ The facsimile of the slayer paused looking for the right words. “Tough enough."

He had to agree. William was, and always would be, a ponce. "You, Spike, are the best of both. The lover and the fighter all in one. You actually want to keep this little blue marble turning."

"Despite your little speech," she began as the screen changed scenes. There was Buffy dressed in black, complete with ski cap. The police car was in the background with an unconscious officer sprawled out on the hood. "Most Vampires wouldn't mind the world ending. The only reason it would be a bother would be the lack of, how did you put it? Oh yes, 'happy meals with legs.' No people, no one to eat. Funny how no one else trying to end the world ever really adds that into the equation," she giggled.

"So that's what this is all about. You're gonna try to talk me into being the good guy. Not gonna happen. Might as well tell you that now."

The copy cocked her head to the side and decided on what words would give him an answer without really telling him anything.

"We are not here to tell you to do anything. You are now on the path that was set out for you originally." The demon took a deep breath before continuing. "Whether you like it or not, her love," she pointed to the screen holding onto the image of Buffy the night he made a truce with his worst enemy, "along with a little incentive from the modern world," she reached up and tapped a finger on his forehead, "have all shown you what you are. The truth is in you, but you fight it.

Your demon, the darkest part of it, doesn't want to admit what he knows. Your demon is old Spike. He has gone to the surface more times than could be counted. Always stealing a piece of the human he has taken. The feelings, the emotions, the appreciation. It is all in you now whether you want it there, or however hard you try to ignore it."

Spike's face took on a look of disdain. He was not what she said. The only thing holding him back was a chip. He knew it.

"You are wrong, Spike. You are you. You have become something the Powers have been watching for, for millennia. You have to accept it. Think back to the moment Dru killed the couple on the catwalk."

Again the screen changed. And there was his sire, handing him the limp body of a newly dead woman. The blood was still warm. He looked over to Dru, looked at the woman...took a moment, then drank.

"You knew you shouldn't. You knew, but still..."

"I had reasons, instinct...I had the reason standing in front of me. A plan. I could prove to Buffy what it was. What I felt. Then Harmony screwed up that little plan by...well, bein' undead an' in my crypt."

She let his ramble go on until he finished. "Then why the hesitation?" The question hung unanswered.

"Then there is this." The screen shifted again into the night he hit Buffy after the security guard popsicle was discovered, and nothing happened with his chip. He decided to fetch himself a fresh meal. "You can't hear it, but you know what you were doing, don't you?"

Spike saw himself, talking to himself. Or, to be more accurate, convincing himself to have a bite. He remembered the words. "Yeah, I AM evil. I'm the Big Bad."


In the end, it had all been fruitless. Buffy had been the key. She was the only one he could harm, and the one person he didn't want to hurt...much. "It was bloody irritatin', I'll tell you that much. All hyped up for a meal. Bollocks!" Spike was pacing now. "You could have at least let me have something palatable, pig's blood, it's like drinking from a cold body, even after its heated."

She began to laugh again. "You never pay attention. Too distracted to see what's right in front of you." Her hand filled suddenly with marshmallows.

"Do you know how many Vampires can taste human food as a human can?" He shook his head no. "Exactly one...and you are it."

Shock filled the Vampire's eyes as she emptied the contents of her hand into his cupped hands. He quickly popped one into his mouth. He loved marshmallows.

"The Powers let you keep that of William. If their plan worked out...when their plan worked out, they thought you should at least have this."
Spike let the last marshmallow melt on his tongue, then wondered. "If I got this cuz I'm so bleedin' special, then what did Peaches get?"

She thought, closed her eyes and communicated with the Powers a moment, then answered. "I am afraid I can't tell you. I will tell you this much. He has something also, that no other Vampire, save one that died in giving, has ever had before."

"Oh. Well, that clears it up nicely," he spat back sarcastically.


Chapter End Notes:
I loved Whistler and just had to include him.



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