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17. Becoming I.


Screams. Screams like burning arrows piercing his brain…Spike woke up suddenly, dismayed. Was there really somebody screaming, or had he just dreamt it?
Yeah….yes…It was Drusilla. Of course. Again. What was up this time, damn it!
The vampire rubbed his eyes and looked over at her. She was crouched on the edge of the bed, her triangular face wet with tears and melted make–up, her mouth wide in a now silent scream, apparently prey to an unmeasurable pain.
“Dru…luv…what’s up?” he asked, suddenly frightened, leaning over to her.
She didn’t answer. From the bottom of her throat a long, unending whine escaped as she gazed at…Spike followed with astonishment the direction of her glance.
Angelus was lying on the floor, on his side, his head in his hands. And he was crying. Oh, yes…Christ. Angelus cried.
Spike jumped down off the bed and tried to touch him. “Hey…what’s happ…”
But the other vampire didn’t let him finish. He jumped up and ran …ran desperately towards the window which led to the garden. Open to the daylight. To the sun.
« No! » Spike shouted, grabbing him. “Stop, what the hell are you doing!?”
They both fell to the ground, a few centimeters from the lethal blade of light. A light veil of smoke rose from Angelus’ skin, the nearest of the two to the sun, and Spike pulled him back, even as the other was resisting.
God, if he was resisting. He was bigger, stronger. And he was terrified of something. Crazy with fear.
Yet, I’m not giving up on you, Spike thought, I’m not allowing you to burn, my handsome…
To restrain him, he hit him, twice, with all his strength, but Angelus wasn’t reacting to pain. Not to physical pain, at least. He seemed to be listening to…something, and obviously what he heard was horrible beyond any imagination. His eyes, shining with tears, were so strangely wide. And full. So full of bubbling emotions, running across them like clouds in a stormy sky.
“What happened? What has got to you?” Spike asked. Inside him, in a well–hidden place, he had the truth, clear and adamantine; but he refused to admit its existence, because that…was inconceivable. And he persisted in pretending not to understand. Yes, it was better to pretend.
And, Hell’s blood, those eyes…so immense and deep…He believed he never had seen them so beautiful and lively as they were at that moment…a deep, deaf and blind rage took him. Once again, uselessly, he kicked his grandsire’s ribs. “Fuck! Tell me! What is wrong with you!”
His voice died in a sort of sob, while the other, again, tried to escape him. Eventually, with an unpleasant and inopportune gulp, he was obliged to stun him, and to use the old chains that hung from a wall to bind his wrists. Here we are, he told himself, still groggy from disbelief, Europe’s Scourge enchained like a rabid dog.
“…the blonde and the red…” Dru murmured, sing-song, in a nearly catatonic state, half lying on the bed. “..the Witch and the Chosen One have played with the marbles of the universe…all at his place…all upside down”
The truth was in front of him. Impossible for Spike to avoid it, even if it was a mad and incredible one. He finally got it, digested it, and followed his gut instinct. The only certainty he had left.



It had happened. Angelus had a soul. Buffy slowly closed her front door, incapable of calming the quaking of her hands and her furious heartbeat. She knew it. She knew she had done something …blasphemous, disrupted a balance that had lasted for centuries, gone where more powerful creatures than herself had feared to go…She knew it, but she didn’t care. At all.
Even now, while she was going up the stairs, so tired and yet so full of adrenalin, all she could remember was Angelus’ body next to hers, his expression when he reached his peak of pleasure and became, if possible, even more beautiful, those intriguing, mysterious whispers, his human sweetness, so uncharacteristic for a vampire…She felt him in her blood, she felt him everywhere. And the idea of losing him, not being able to touch or even look at him anymore, suffocated her, took her breath away…
No, she didn’t care about anything or anybody. Angelus had won. He had won against the Slayer, he had effectively killed the Slayer. Only vague memories remained of her, within the shell of a little girl, totally, cruelly in love. A little girl who wanted her man. And who, in order to have him, was ready to destroy him. And to rebuild him.
He will suffer, she thought, going down the small corridor, he will suffer, surely, but I’ll help him. I’ll always be with him. And he will love me. He will have to love me.
Lost in her thoughts, she entered her room, still so redolent of Angelus’ persistent musky perfume. And she jumped out of her skin with surprise. Spike was there.
He sat on the floor, back against the wall, waiting. Seeing her, he stood up and his duster slowly flared from his shoulders. His shirt was open, burnt, several other burns stained the white, marble skin of his chest.
That was because he had gone out during the day, without reflecting, without caring about the danger, the pain. Following his instinct.
“Why?” he asked. “Why?” His eyes looked like water, still water. Void of life.
“Where is he?” Buffy replied, a step forward. ”Is he at the Crawford Street Mansion? Is he…in a bad state?”
Spike shook his blonde head. “What an idiot…I was there, babbling, warning you to stay away from him…that he was dangerous…” He smiled, an empty, bewildered smile. “And all the time, the real dangerous one was you…so dangerous that you couldn’t just kill him…”
“You don’t understand!” Buffy exclaimed, hastily. “He loves me. I know it. But he wasn’t ready…his demonic nature prevented him from…So, I had to find a way to force him to accept his feelings…I had to”
On Spike’s face several conflicting emotions showed. “You’re telling me you gave him his soul back…just to make him love you?”
“As I love him” was Buffy’s passionate answer.
The vampire stepped back against the wall, with a wary look in his eyes, opening his hands in the sign of yielding. “Wait a minute, I’m not sure…should I laugh? Or should I cry? I…I…” He burst into a bout of hysterical laughter … Yes, it was better to laugh. If he cried, probably, he wouldn’t stop. Ever. But that vent didn’t give him any release. He sobered, setting his jaw. “Angelus was Evil. Pure, perfect Evil. There was no rage or hate in his actions. Only the pain and pleasure of hunting, the beauty of the predator. And I envied him. I detested him. And I desired him…” He stepped towards her. “The world could crumble, but Angelus was unchanging, our shining star, our landmark, and for you…that was not enough…”
He raised a fist, and Buffy assumed her defensive stance. “Spike, you don’t know what you’re saying…”
“No, he was not enough” he went on, ignoring her. “Angelus gave you more than he gave to any of us…he really couldn’t give you more…he really wasn’t able to. I tried to explain this to you…I warned you about…but, no. You couldn’t content yourself with seducing and weakening him…You had to change him, didn’t you?”
He laughed again, icy cold and furious. “I bet I couldn’t satisfy your standards, either…could I? No, obviously. Buffy Summers demands passion, dark romance, but she also wants the right, sensitive words with it, right? You’re a politically correct bitch, Slayer…”
“Spike, stop…it doesn’t concern you” Buffy interrupted him. She would have preferred to be hit, hurt…as it was, she felt nothing. God, absolutely nothing. Who knows, maybe now she was the one without a soul…and with only one demanding priority.
“Take your Dru and go. I’ll take care of Angelus”
”It doesn’t concern me?” Spike stared incredulously at her. “That is where you’re dead wrong, darling. It certainly does concern me. And keep this in mind. If you dare to go near him…near us…you’ll really embrace the darkness.” He spat on her shoes. “That of your grave”.


The car careened, swerving across the street. He was still, splayed over the steering-wheel, in the burning furnace that black big car became under a pitiless sun. Weird. It hadn’t cost him a thing to tell her. Indeed, it had been…a relief. He hadn’t given her the time to answer back or to attack him. Better the sun than staying there even a single moment, a moment more in that room, with his grandsire’s perfume and that stranger that had destroyed his heart. And his family. An uncomfortable family. Mad. Perverse. But nevertheless his.
He had to get out of the car. Protecting himself with the open duster, he ran in search of refuge in the fresh, cool half-shadow of the high-class mansion.
Drusilla slept on the unmade bed, crouched in a fetal position, exhaustion still visible on her, like a child who had cried too much. Next to her, leaning against the headrest of the bed, long legs folded to his chest, Angelus sat, broken chains hanging from his wrists and nasty burns on his arms. He seemed calm, now. His dark eyes, big and tired, followed the blonde vampire.
“Quiet” he whispered. “Dru just got to sleep”.
“Do you feel better?” Spike asked, sitting down next to the sleeping female. She whimpered.
Angelus lowered his dark head. “No. I was convinced I was mad, before…it wasn’t that bad, at least” he passed his hands over his face, through his hair, and the chains clanked. “It was Buffy, wasn’t it? God, she really learnt her lesson well…I taught her that just by tasting darkness, just understanding how much she liked it¸ she could hope to beat it…Well, she liked me even a bit too much, didn’t she, Spikey?” His expression was surprisingly serene. “And she beat me”
“And…how is it?” In Spike’s voice fear and reverence warred. “How is it to have…a soul? Like it was when you were…alive?”
“When I was alive I didn’t feel like this” Angelus answered, all tense muscles. “I killed so many people…but…they weren’t…for me, they weren’t real people…they were just prey…their faces…faded, vanished…I thought so…But they didn’t…not really. I recall each and every one of those faces, distinctly, now…And now they’re not prey any more, but people…and they are there still, staring at me, asking me for a reason…a reason I can’t give them.”
With his hands, Angelus tortured the fabric of his trousers, nothing in him was really stable, all vibrated and boiled. “In among that crowd, there’s my sister, Kathy…I had forgotten how beautiful she was, how pure…that day, she had been at my burial, and when she opened the door, seeing me in front of her, she took me for an angel…” He laughed, sadly. “No fear…eternal faith…and I broke her neck…so swiftly that her smile lingered on her lips…No, I wasn’t swift out of pity, Hell forbid…I’m sure I wasn’t…I’m absolutely sure I did it that way for aesthetic reasons.” He stared at the burns on his own arms, with a matter-of-fact expression.
“I wanted to run into the sun, earlier…I broke the chains and…But the pain has been too strong…and I felt fear…funny, don’t you think? I didn’t fear death, when I was death…Now, I don’t know what I am, exactly, but I don’t want to die…maybe Buffy liked that about me? My…masochism?”
A solitary tear ran down his cheek, and he was astonished to see a similar tear on Spike’s face. Their burns looked alike, too. For some mysterious, intrinsic reason they were at the same time further apart, and yet closer than ever.
That shocked them both.
“What are we doing?” Spike whispered.
“As in us?” Angelus looked at him, frowning his brow. “There doesn’t exist an us anymore…It doesn’t…”
“Don’t tell me this doesn’t concern me” Spike objected. His chin was trembling. All of a sudden, the ghost of loneliness blew on the nape of his neck, and that icy breath terrified him. It was so easy to hate Angelus…yeah…and even easier to love him. Impossible to imagine a future without him. “Don’t say that”
All in all, he’s still my child, Angelus thought, studying the transparent, fragile eyes of the other vampire. I didn’t bite him, I didn’t choose him, and yet, I made him what he is now…
Him. And Drusilla…the flower I stepped on and soiled…They are my children…And I haven’t any answer to give them…
“What are we doing?” Spike insisted.
Europe’s Scourge dried another tear, and admired the wet trace of it on the back of his hand.
“Let’s wait for the night, pet”





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