~*~
Chapter 1
~*~

She was up there, unaware as ever. The chatter and giggles coming from the pox of teenaged girls couldn’t overpower the soft tones of her voice. The many and varied scents from said invasion couldn’t disguise her unique blend of power and all woman. He was aware of her every move, every word, each sigh.
She had been his once.

No, she had not--not really. Yet it seemed that, in his entire century and a half of life and unlife, there had never been anyone that more defined him.

True, women had always been the mirror he best used in fixing his self-image.

First his sainted mother had encouraged the poor sod he had been to write drivel and pursue women above his station. She had adored him so.

He laughed as he remembered the first poem he had ever written. His careful penmanship--the pride of his tutor--neatly blotted and the page decorated with fanciful bunches of violets--her favorite. He had been all of six and eager for his mother’s soft smile and gentle approval. “Not quite a prodigy like Mozart.” He shook his head, remembering the hard worked lines:

“Mothers are our best friend.
They love us even when to bed they send
naughty boys who love them still
and promise to listen to their will.”

Anne had tried hard to keep her lips from twitching, hiding her mirth as she nodded over the hard cardstock with the rhymed apology for youthful disobedience. He had been rewarded with an extra slice of Cook’s special Banbury cake at teatime, all offenses forgotten without a word exchanged.

Spike had been touched to find the card amongst his mothers ‘treasures’ when he gleaned the house after her death for anything useful in his new life. It now rested in a box of his own ‘treasures’ at his old crypt, he supposed, along with various odds and ends of his short mortal life, whatever had survived the soldier boy’s explosive exit from their lives.

Spike idly wondered why memories of his beloved mother led to darkness and closed doors in his mind, given her status as the only female to ever willingly give her heart to him wholly.

He pressed his fingers to the bridge of his nose and tried to stave off the impending headache her memory always brought in its wake of late. “Part of the incessant guilt,” he surmised.

Cecily had been his idealized love. All porcelain and lace she was! Every man in the room noted her comings and goings and pathetic William had not been immune. Reams of worthless words had been dedicated to her supposed charms, her imagined perfections. The girl had ice in her chest rather than a warm, womanly heart and she revealed the truth of that to him that last disastrous day of his existence in human incarnation.

“No wonder I could only write shite in her honor. Must’ve known the bitch wasn’t worth a soddin’ limerick.” Even last year’s discovery that the object of his frustrated avowals of adoration had been a demon in reality as well as behavior hadn’t softened the memory of her cruelty and casual dismissal of his love.

“Effulgent!” No wonder Dru had been drawn to him. “Crazy as Dru ever was, me thinking that cold piece was effulgent or even gleaming! Waste of a good word on that one.” Dru must have seen the madness within his soul, the deep insanity driven by the need for love that called into the darkness and drew his Wicked Plum to his side.

That led to so many memories of his dark princess, crimson-bathed memories of horrific acts and wild passion that flayed his soul now, rather than leading to sweet nostalgia. No pleasure trips down memory lane to give a moment of comfort since his hard earned soul took up residence again.

There had been a time she was his all. He dedicated his existence to pleasing her, never seeming to learn that, short of becoming her sire, he would always fall short.

She was the one he had expected to love for eternity. She had made him, after all. The young romantic William had seen that as a sign that his destiny was at her side and he had been loyal to a fault. Years of madness accompanied by rampage and terror all mixed with healthy pinches of yearning for her precious lost “daddy” had not driven home the point that her making of him had been as casual and callous as Cecily’s dismissal before her. No, it took the return of said “daddy” to finally prove that his sloe-eyed darling was not, and never would be, his.

“Dru, Dru, Dru,” Spike lamented, “Wasted another century followin’ you from one start to another. Wherever the fairies or flowers or that damned Miss Edith pointed us, I was always right there, your faithful lover. Never gave it a thought that the sad bint had all ability to love tortured out of her, along with her sanity, by Angelus and his whore long before I swanned onto the scene.” Spike frowned and then amended, “Cept for that twisted kind of ‘love’ she’ll always have for Sir Broodsalot.”

He felt the same sadness at the memories of Dru that always came when he remembered his life with her. More a sadness of years wasted waiting for her to love him at least half as well as he had her. Sometimes ‘eternal love’ fell far short of the whole ‘eternal’ part.

“Only poetry with Dru was written in the blood of a thousand corpses,” Spike mused. “Dru did love to have me say pretty words while she bathed in the gore and horror. Could do it then too! Now….” Spike felt his soul twist within him. “Nothing of beauty there. Worse than the stuff Cecily inspired. Made my Wicked Plum laugh though.” He sighed deeply and raised his head again to the muffled sound of Buffy chiding one of the herd about eating the last of something.

Harmony had inspired visions of rats in traps more than anything else. She was a one-night stand gone terribly wrong, complete with unicorns and an unhealthy obsession with malls and boy bands. William had never been good at giving a girl a proper shove-off and the demon had taken solace in the easy sex after Dru’s betrayal.

Who would have guessed that Spike’s real ‘eternal love’ would be the Slayer of his kind, she who should have just been his third warrior taken in battle? Everything about the girl touched the William deep inside, the frustrated poet yearning to create worlds of beauty with his words.

“Started even while I thought I hated her,” Spike remembered. “Watchin’ her writhe on the dance floor, lookin’ as temptin’ as Salome before Herod yet pure as a child seein’ its first snow. Drove me near mad. Should’ve known then; Dru did. Never could bring myself to deal the killing blow, even though I had more than one chance in the beginning to snuff her easily enough.” Spike shivered at the thought of being the cause of Buffy’s end. “Didn’t want her dance to ever end. Still don’t…won’t…not gonna happen even if it takes my dust blowin’ in the wind.”

He looked around at his humble surroundings: a cardboard box with a change of clothing and a small cot in the Slayer’s cellar. Oh, he had his moments out of the dark and dank, when needed. Some times to help train the increasing numbers of hormonal teenage girls that daily added to Buffy’s long list of responsibilities. Other times to just get out of the way of someone else’s training session, something more cerebral than physical. Most nights he got a bit of violence by patrolling with one or more in the group, never fully sure if one of his “students” might choose a heated moment to put an end to him.

“Likely to die of boredom before I dust, at this rate.” Spike paced the small area of basement he considered his “room” and kicked idly at a cardboard box, sending plumes of non-vampire dust into the air. “Great! Destroy the Slayer’s stored goodies. Perfect way to thank her for not putting a period to me months ago.” He bent to put the items that had spilled from the torn box in some order.

The box had contained a variety of things generally found in family homes. There were a few forgotten photo albums, some ancient receipts, notebooks from years gone by filled with a few pages of household notes and plans, the odd paperback novel. Spike slipped a couple of those on his cot to look into later, hoping with all his might that they wouldn’t turn out to be mind-rotting nonsense like those Dru had loved with the Joker in a diamond logo on the cover.

He looked through the photos and smiled fondly at the pictures of a very young Joyce with a towheaded toddler on her hip. Buffy had that twinkle in her eyes that had been there from time to time until her resurrection, the one that had always been there when they had fought. “Charmer even as a babe, weren’t you? Bet you had your daddy wrapped round your wee finger.” He scowled at the young man in the picture who already had his eyes trained on someone other than Joyce as the camera’s shutter had closed. “Wanker!”

Taking the pile of albums and notebooks to his cot, he indulged in a bit of snooping he had denied himself since the soul. Picture after picture of Buffy’s childhood and young adolescence filled at least two albums. Some had faded slightly with age, but all showed the lively and bright child that was clearly the center of her mother’s life. Some pictures included Dawn and Spike was reminded of the girl’s rather recent entry into Buffy’s life and family. “Seems the monks didn’t think it was important to plant many pictures in the albums rabbited away.”

The notebooks contained ancient grocery lists and Joyce’s reminders to herself to attend this meeting or that gallery showing. Seeing her handwriting brought a smile as Spike remembered the signature on the only Christmas cards he ever received. “Good woman, that Joyce. Had kindness even for the likes of me.”
He carefully removed the few written pages and placed them in the photo albums, keeping the partial books, now empty, to use for his own purposes. “Don’t see Joyce mindin’ me usin’ her leftovers.” He hadn’t written in ages, not really. Oh, the odd threatening note or message to Dru over the years had found its way onto paper, but not anything important, nothing lasting. Not even as interesting as Joyce’s long ago reminder to pick up celery and round steak.

Opening the first of the notebooks he thought for a moment. What to write? A memoir? Hardly! “No ‘Interview With A Real Bloody Vampire’ comin’ out of this noggin! Poetry? He laughed at his audacity after all these many years. “Then again, I started this life as ‘William the Bloody Awful Poet’; might as well go out with it as well.”

He smiled as he heard Buffy’s shrill giggle over something Dawn had said and closed his eyes, imagining for a moment that the sound had been caused by some delight he had brought to her. He always had wished to bring her joy, make her laugh, ease her hurts. Never managed to do it, at least not for long.

Opening his eyes, he looked about for a writing implement and, upon finding a small stash, began to write in the first notebook.

Songs from the Cellar
A journey in sonnets by William John Leslie Pratt, Esq.

~~~

He chewed on the top of the pen as he thought about just what he wanted to say to Buffy. She would never read this, but still he wished to speak his heart properly. “Suppose if I’m gonna spill all about love and whatnot, I should explain my idea about what love is first.” He remembered his heated announcement to Buffy and Angel back in the days before he knew what real love was, what he really felt towards this Slayer. Even after he had her, knew her, he still only had a slight grasp on what love really was, what it required. He thought back to that disaster in Buffy’s bathroom, the one unforgivable act in a long list of unforgivable acts that condemned him. It took getting the soul to see, to truly see, what love was about. It wasn’t about him at all! Love was all about her.
He began to write.


I. What Is Love

Love speaks not of the one she hath enslaved.
’Tis the beloved one alone, no more.
’Tis who she is, what she is, ‘tis her core
that draws him to her flame. His path is paved
with loving her and by this is he saved.
A simple smile doth make his spirit soar.
Bereft is he when seeing that no more.
To see her glad is what he ever craved.
No tears but of joy, his beloved earn.
The beast within loves as it were a man.
Wretched man long dead now lives for her smile.
Great love will consume. All in its path burn,
rules the choice, informs the soul, caverns span,
all change or compromise is worthwhile.

“Fucking Italian sonnets!” Spike raised a mental clenched fist at his muse. “Just what a vampire’s best at--structure.” He laughed at himself. “Couldn’t have settled on some clever limericks that even a bloody awful poet could pull off with ease, could you?” His muse didn’t reply, didn’t snicker, merely hit him with other thoughts, words, images and rhymes to torment him.

“Couldn’t be as simple as,

‘There once was a bad man named William
Whose love for a Slayer near killed him’
could it?”

He sighed and remembered his mother once admonishing him, “William, nothing worthwhile in life comes easily.” Well, his poems might remain unread and were likely far from worthwhile, but easy had ceased to be an option after that first foray into putting his feelings to paper.

“Where was I?” He reread the pitiful sonnet he had produced. Yes, love was a hard concept to describe, but oh so easy for him to feel…always had been. Of course, it had taken Buffy to really teach the meaning to him.

Yes, he knew love now that it was too late. It had always been about her and always would be. He had ever tried to be whatever the object of his adoration wished. He’d been the good son, the evil master vampire, the tamed beast, and finally, the man who understood, who was a partner. It was too late, of course, for that partnership. He’d managed to bugger it up before he got it right, but his heart was finally where it should be. It was all about her, all for her.

He needed to start explaining from the point where they met. He had a century trying to live up to Dru’s desires. Always in the shadow of the Great Poof and never quite up to the mastery of pure evil that his grandsire had perfected. Dru had been his tutor, his dark muse. He had tried to be all she wanted. He had inflicted pain while pleasure had been his deepest desire. He had given her rivers of blood to dance in, to love in, and it had never been enough. He was an unrepentant monster when he first laid eyes on his Slayer. He looked and thought he saw his third kill rather than the one who would finally put an end to his existence.
The pen fairly flew as he put words to the thoughts.


II. What you Found

A ravening beast, nothing more was I,
Adrift in seas of blood. No light to lead
my journey, just one endless night of need.
No reason to think or rules to live by.
Just take what I want; I’d no need to try.
Keep to the shadows; success comes with speed,
terror in your wake; this, the Vampires creed.
Rend, feed, be on your way; those who see die.
This and more, hard things, I learned from my Sire.
Once at beauty’s alter bowed, now Shiva’s
living incarnate. Dreams of beauty done.
Embracing full the life of a Vampire
‘Til she ensnared my mind, showed me what was
The price paid and made me yearn for the sun.

All those years with Dru and he had never begrudged the moonlight. The sun was not something any proper Englishman had truck with in an ordinary way, so losing its embrace in exchange for the whispered promises of the wisp of a girl who claimed to know his very heart, his true worth, had not been too high a price. Then he saw Buffy and mourned its loss. She glowed, shone with goodness that put that sun to shame, and he wanted it…and her. Only the sun could reveal every marvelous feature of the Slayer. Shadows and moonlight looked lovely on her but hid too much. He had wanted all of her, still did, always would.


III. What You Are, What You’ve Done

What blinding power has this maid possessed?
Satin-cased steel, tongue sharp as any stake,
Enough it is to nudge the man awake.
Slight in form is she and with kindness blessed.
Evil raging within this beastly breast;
devoid of good, that which no god didst make,
Man and beast would lay down life for her sake.
Her light reached in and sought out all the best.
Goodness, purity, life itself she wields.
Laying to rest the monstrous creature.
This giver of death bringing life instead.
‘Neath her shining good the monster’s reign yields
Her compassion and her light: my teacher.
To humanity the monster was lead.


Dru had claimed to know him, to know his hidden desires, abilities. She had known only what the fairies giggled to her and that only fractured as her mind had been. No, Buffy, without even trying, had reached deep within him and awakened the man he had been. The man he had yearned to become. The dreamer who longed to create beauty was still there, merely silent. Now she made him sing.


IV. My Salvation

Powers’ true weapon, striving for the good,
Love’s pure magic, like water into wine,
changes monsters to something clean and fine.
For such, I do that which I never would.
I was the ravening beast, deeds no eye should
E’er see. Nothing clean within. Crossed a line
Conceived an ill-thought plan to make her mine;
now choosing things a monster never could.
Goddess of all that’s good looked down upon
One beneath her. Now bestows her goodwill,
compassion for the beast she once did shun.
The thing I was, the plans I had, now gone.
New cravings have I only she can still
Her smile the new blood of my redemption…

“Spike!” Andrew’s whiny voice broke into the vampire’s concentration. “Kennedy plans to take a group out to Restview and Buffy’s not here. I told her you had to go with them because they were still merely Jedi-in-training, but she won’t listen to me.”

“Not likely to listen to me either--or anyone else,” Spike snorted. The girl had latched onto Willow like a leech and thought that somehow made her superior to the other Potentials. He sighed and faced the inevitable. Placing the notebook under his mattress, he reassured the nerd in residence, “Be right there.”

~*~
Chapter 2
~*~

Patrol had been smooth, Buffy having joined after the girls had managed to kill a fledgling. She had looked at Spike and rolled her eyes as if sharing a private joke at the girls’ expense. It had taken four of them to kill one scrawny, elderly fledge, but they were whooping as if they had killed a cougar with their bare hands.

Kennedy had pouted the remainder of the time they combed the streets and alleys of Sunnydale.
“Bint can’t even give over control to THE Slayer!” Spike fumed at the time. “Creature like me can’t expect respect, but Buffy’s owed it.” He decided that a long talk with Giles was in order before the silly chit got herself and everyone else killed before they even faced a real Big Bad.

Seeing Buffy as she quipped and danced her way through her duties never got old to him. She was in her element and Spike fell in love all over again with each twirl, each flip and each clever move.

God, how he still wanted her! Even knowing how undeserving he was, the burn never went away. At times he felt he would dust from it.

She was all he had ever desired in one lovely package. Even when she had been a right bitch to him he craved her notice. Anything would do, even a punch to the nose. “Just like a toddler, willin’ to do anything to have her attention.”

All the long walk home, he tuned out the children and, eyes on Buffy as always, let his mind go back to that time after he knew his heart and had yet to learn how unworthy he was to even think of reaching for her. He turned each memory over in his mind and remembered perfectly how he had felt, even with the soul now telling him his sins. He would try to capture those thoughts when he got back to his cot, succumbing to the lure of the notebook in lieu of elusive sleep.

~~~

Spike had never felt the depth of emotion Buffy drew from him. The passion was intense enough to make him burn to ash more than once. She could be a right bitch and he had told her as much. Still, be it anger or desire or any of the vast numbers of emotions she enflamed in him, she made him feel more alive than he ever had in his existence.

“She never knew how the words hurt,” he remembered. “Even now.” His mind flinched as her most recent slight had pierced his heart. While taking out a group of baby slayers, Buffy lectured them, spewing all the same old dogma that the Council of Wankers had cooked up over the centuries.

One minute she was confusing him by showing concern, even with the girlies there to witness and comment, and the next she was putting him right back in his place.

“A vampire is an animal. Sometimes they run in packs, sometimes alone. The animal inside is always the same,” she had told the girls, then looked at him with what seemed to be an apology.

It had still hurt though, being called an animal. No wonder none of the white hats had seen anything wrong with the labs of the Initiative; demons were animals and animals always were the experimental subjects of choice.

None of them ever saw how their words wounded. “Nothin’ worse than an over-sensitive vamp,” Spike snorted in self-derision. Then again, William had been that way as well. He had so wanted them--her--to see him, to really see him and not just the fangs. He had wanted them all to notice how he had tried, but mostly he had wanted her to see it, see beyond his lack of a soul.

He might have had a chance too, if Angel hadn’t done his damage. It hadn’t been so much the horrors of Angelus that had done it. No, she had been ready to forgive that, chalk it up to some separate creature and never lay a crime at Angel’s door. It had been his leaving the way he did. Just one more person walking away with no backward look of regret. Didn’t help that so many others before and after had done the same.
Buffy had said she could never love him because she could never trust him, there in the room of his greatest shame. She had trusted him though…with everything but her heart.

V. My Desire

Your words, they flay and cut me to the bone!
O that said tongue would, like rapier sharpen,
Remove the veil ‘twixt us, to me hearken,
Free at last, seeing us to heaven flown.
Angel, in name alone, has left you prone
to fear. You run from love, mistrusts deepen.
The girl before had a heart wide open.
Would that I could soften your heart of stone.
I’d show you love if you would let me in.
I’d not leave, mold you like a piece of clay,
Or place you on a stand. Want you free to
spread your wings. At my side, be my sweet sin,
partner, love, completion, if you’d but say
the word. I’d take a crumb and make it do.


He wasn’t anything like Angelus or Angel, never had been. For some reason, when he was yet soulless, he never had his sins written off as Angelus had, blamed on that lack of a spark. No, he had been judged on human terms and rejected when he was determined to be a vampire after all.

All he had ever wanted to do was to love her, to cherish her, to watch her grow. “Okay, wanted the bint to love me too,” Spike admitted to himself. “Really convinced myself I could be good for her, not mess up,” he sighed sadly.

He thought over their long history, his and Buffy’s. He had made a lot of progress. He had channeled his instincts in a direction she might have been proud of…had she noticed. He had tried to suss out how to act, what to choose based on a mantra--“What would Buffy want?”--to no avail. Often it was just too hard to figure it out.

“Never understood how disgustin’ my past had to be to her.” Spike bit his upper lip. “Not ‘til the soul showed it all to me in livin’ color.” He had known how submitting to their passion had made her sick, made her hate him even more. He had seen the evidence of the multiple scrubbings she had given her soft skin after they had lain together in sweaty and often torn sheets.

He hadn’t understood why though, not then. No, he had expected her to notice how he tried, to care that he was remaking himself all for the love of her.

She had revived the man but not given him direction; Buffy didn’t seem to know or care that he needed that from her.

“Maybe if she hadn’t died, if she had seen…,” he mused. “She might have helped me the rest of the way.” He shook his head in despair.


VI. Unmade

Forgot fools dance to music of the heart.
Now her dance alone does rule my being.
Dancing to her tune is oddly freeing.
Alone, confused, for death was once my art,
Reborn by love, now demands a new start.
Sweet grace! My maker, love, began seeing;
then claimed by death before acknowledging
changes made, left behind a broken heart.
Before, the beast lent life to what was dead
She had slain that beast, pulling forth the man.
Now she was gone but left her guiding light.
Could have gone, left that night, but chose instead
to stay, do what I said, and never ran.
Though hated, did not give up the good fight.


He took a certain amount of pride over his actions that summer. He had kept his word as well as her friends had allowed. He had tended to Dawn, patrolled, made sure all her charges and duties were taken care of the way she would have wanted.

Spike had really come to think that he was one of them until Buffy was back and he was once more consigned to the role of unwanted evil thing.

“Was worth it, just havin’ her back,” he admitted. “Hated losin’ the closeness with the Bit, but can’t say it mattered ‘bout the rest.”

“Really thought I had a chance with her.” He remembered the pain and frustration they both experienced during those months of passion and shame. “Thought somehow I’d earned that crumb I’d begged for, that she’d see what a good boy I’d been while she was…gone.” He still couldn’t use the word ‘dead’ about that long dreadful summer.

“Figured all she had to do was just let herself love me and she’d want to be alive again.” He sniffed back a tear. “Couldn’t see how it was killin’ her to be wantin’ the touch of a creature like me. How it made her feel as dirty and wrong as I was.”

It took the soul for him to get it, to understand that it would never be enough--the trying, the following her lead. Until HE knew how wrong he was, the wrong he had done, he was beneath her. She could tell him but he could never fully get it. Wrong had to be wrong for itself, not because it offended the object of his love.

She had made a new thing of him, but he was still a thing nonetheless. “Girl like Buffy deserves more than some evil thing with a trail of blood behind him.”

No way to undo a century of murder and mayhem. No possible reprieve for the judgment his due. To fall in love with the one ordained to pronounce sentence and perform execution had been madness, but a brilliant madness nonetheless.

He’d been a moth to her flame from the first moment he saw her. She had been and would ever be his destiny. “Not sure what that destiny might be,” he huffed. “Like as not to be true dust under her feet.” He’d faced other Slayers and not felt the draw that he did with Buffy. With them it was the challenge, the battle of equals and the pride of being the one to walk away.

With Buffy there was always some vague, unnamed reason not to kill the girl. Always some unknown reason why another day would be better for his third warrior taken in battle. It had driven Dru into a rage.
He sighed. “Think I loved her in part from the beginning. Knew it was my moment, my destiny; nothin’ would ever be quite the same.” He didn’t know whether he wanted to laugh or cry at that realization. “Fate is a miserable fucker.”

Dru had been right; he had not been the same from the time he first challenged his Buffy. She had begun to unravel him from the first, without either of them realizing it. As he came apart, she was knitting him into something new, foreign, and Dru could see the process from the start. Saw where it led too, to that spark, the fire within that would one day surely consume him in its angry flame.


VII. Remade

Behold Terpsichore lays snare unknown;
The smitten beast falls in. Begins the dance,
Love wakes, quells the monster with but a glance.
The sun he saw, her inner beauty shone.
My one sure thing in this world on my own
was loving her. By my hand, lost my chance.
Not wanting me, she stopped my cruel advance;
I to Dark Continent, sin to atone.
Fight to claim what’s mine or dust. Much to Hades’
Surprise, both man and beast agreed to face
trials, then my battles won, didst win my soul.
Intent to win, ne’er counted on the shades
that torment, punish, ‘til her timely grace
gave sweet relief and helped to make me whole.


The soul. His proudest moment snatched from the ashes of his greatest shame. No other of his kind had ever thought, ever dared, to even desire it. The soul quest was to kill the beast he was in one way or another. He would die trying to wrest his spark from the ether or have himself so changed by its return as to be a different being. That was the model shown by Angelus, at any rate. “Naturally, the bugger had to make it seem like Angelus just left the building when he was the Great Souled One! Thought old Spike was gone any way the battle played out.”

He had done the one thing he truly had never believed himself capable of doing. He had hurt Buffy. For that, something drastic had been required. It could never be allowed to happen again. This had seemed the only answer. Hadn’t everyone always been reminding him that his lack, his unworthiness could be summed up in that one word: soulless?

“Thought if I could get the soul I’d never hurt her again. Thought she’d see that I was worthy of her love, a real partner for her.” Spike closed his eyes at the pain his naïve conclusion had encompassed. “Planned to show her that I’d not leave like all the other bloody ponces before, that I could be all she needed.”

He shuddered as he remembered how it really felt to have that spark back, it and all the ghosts attached to it. Every sin, every evil, was exposed and shown in stark relief against the gleaming goodness that was Buffy.

“Then I understood.” Spike closed his eyes in memory. “Knew full well how loathsome I’d been. No scrubbin’ the blood from my hands. Thought to stay far away from her, from Sunnyhell. Knew the last thing she’d want would be to see me again after….”

The promise. The thrice damned promise to watch over Dawn had drawn him back. He’d had just enough sanity left to figure a plan he’d thought would work to allow him to keep his promise yet spare Buffy from ever seeing him again.

“Had to rebuild the school over the bloody Hellmouth!” Spike shook his head in amazement at the utter stupidity of the humans in charge of that plan.

It had seemed a simple idea--be there where Dawn went to school, keep tabs on her without anyone knowing, keep the promise. He hadn’t planned on the First getting its claws in him or the power of the Hellmouth to take what was left of his wits and grind them like wheat.

For untold months before he opened the door and saw his bright angel there in that basement, he had chased rats and conversed with ghosts. Over the previous century, he had killed countless people, often without noting a thing about them. Over those months since, he became intimately acquainted with each and every one. He knew their names, who they had left behind, the hopes they had before meeting him, their dreams drained from them along with their blood. He knew each and every life he had destroyed. He met the monster.


VIII. Beneath You

Far gone in vice, a past no human knows.
Beneath your feet, to love you I did dare.
Sought to trap you but fell into the snare.
Unworthy, I struck a confident pose.
The one-time tender man she doth expose.
I was the ravening beast, meant to rend, tear,
Once yearning only for blood without care.
‘Neath her taming hand, now find soft repose.
Forgiveness given, new won soul doth sigh.
With such grace what matter be I lonely?
Indeed to be what she needs is not hard;
it is the least one like me can do. I
would gladly become dust, no more, only
to lie ‘neath the sunrise of your regard.


“She should have staked me there in that minute.” Spike would never understand the workings of Buffy’s mind. He had nearly raped her, was guilty of every imaginable horror and many no one could imagine, and yet she had been moved to pity at his state there in that basement.

She had taken him to Xander for shelter and a chance to reclaim some of his sanity. “That had to be a heated conversation,” Spike snorted. Still, the young man had let him move in at her urging.

Even after it was obvious that he was killing again, had tried to kill HER again in yet another basement, she had ignored his resignation, his yearning for the stake and had bundled him up and taken him into her home to this basement, his final cellar.

She had never said the word “forgive,” but her every action since his return had shown that his betrayal, his attack, had been consigned to the past. She believed in him! She had come for him.


IX. My Shame

To win your heart, celestial one, I’d be
anything you command, whatever you
require. I’d be remade, a creature new.
I’ve pulled myself inside out; you don’t see
The changes there in the man you set free.
Fathoms away the monster you once knew
Tamed, remade, in the fires of love that’s true,
all for a single bit of care from thee.
Know it well I lost the chance, have no right
You said “no” but my wounded heart shouted
O’er. No excuse have I, I should have seen
Your tear streaked face, emblems of your sad plight.
‘Twould never hurt you; I never doubted
so wrong. No penance dire could wash me white.


She might have forgiven, but he never would. In all of Spike’s existence, he had never believed himself capable of truly hurting anyone he loved. He had loved Buffy too, even before the soul. It might have been imperfect, selfish, but it had been real. She had deserved better from him.

No torture devised by the First in that horrible cave would come close to what he deserved for having betrayed her trust. Every kind touch or gentle word from her was like salt in an open wound to him. He would never be worthy of her forgiveness and any hope of winning her love was ludicrous.

“Doin’ it again, you pitiful sod,” Spike chided himself. “Makin’ it all about you and what you want. Buffy’s already given me more than any monster like me could hope to imagine.” He thought of his long journey to this point in his life, the changes, the challenges. Buffy had altered him far more than Dru’s bite had in that long ago alley. Where Dru had made him a monster, Buffy had made him a man.

~*~
Chapter 3
~*~

He thought of what he had been, first as William and then as the Slayer of Slayers. Even before the soul, she had forever changed him. He was more than he was supposed to be able to be, more than he had ever imagined. Through her, he had learned to care for those he once thought of as nothing more than food, prey. Through her, he finally had the ways and means to be a creator of beauty as he had once aspired to be. He had choices unimagined before she graced his life.

He had never stopped valuing love, but she had finally helped him define it. The demon had been tamed along with the remnants of the man. Thanks to Buffy, he was as close to alive as he had ever been and actually had begun to be his own man.

He’d not offer his love again, but he would damn sure offer his life. He was hers to command, always had been, but now he expected no return. She was his liege Lady, his Guinevere, and he her faithful Lancelot, an unworthy vassal born to see to her need, her comfort, her safety. He owed his very self to her and the debt would be paid.


X. My Debt

Love waked by your kindness. Your inner light
made me a man again because of you.
Yours: not the man alone, but the beast too.
Unmerited mercy earned you this knight.
Once I held you in my arms, my delight
was falsely felt. Your heart intact, I knew.
I thought to make you feel the love was true.
Now know I well my sins, my soul contrite
within. I seek no love from one so pure,
One I did defile. Now you have my pledge
Of loyalty, my life is solely yours.
I’ll be your paladin, you can be sure.
I follow where you lead. Hell’s very edge
will not deter me. All I have is yours.

He closed the notebook and thought about all that Buffy inspired in him. She had led him without much protest into the light. Her fight had become his, just as his very desire to exist was tied up with her survival. Until Buffy Summers, he had only glimpsed love through a glass darkly. He had never plumbed the depths of his own passions, his willingness to give all for another. He thought of the words he had just composed and knew he was still a bloody awful poet. Buffy would likely cringe if she ever read his pitiful attempt to immortalize her and what she had made of him with ink and pulp this way.

He opened the notebook again and added a postscript to his work.

"My very dearest Buffy, I wrote this pathetic jumble of words while listening to the music of your voice, your occasional laughter, deepest sighs, and even the sounds of your gentle breathing while asleep. You are the orchestra and I vainly tried to play lyricist. I learned a century ago that I was no Byron or Wordsworth and to do justice to you, my shining star, that sort of talent is required and no less. If you ever have cause to read these words, please know that the feeling behind the words could not be put into adequate expression with the human tongue or demon either. You made a man of me. You gave me true life. One day I may be called to give that life for you and I will do so willingly.

I expect nothing from you, precious one. I am not fit to speak your name! You have looked down and given notice to one far beneath you and I am ever grateful for that. I love you for all that you are, all you do. You have gifted me with the chance to serve you after I committed the worst sin upon your person that any man can a woman, much less a woman he adored. You have taken me into your home, if not your heart, and given me the benediction of your forgiveness. I would never have dared ask for half of that.

Now, in case you DO read this sad tribute one day, I should give you something well written at least. I called this “Songs from the Cellar,” an echo of Elizabeth Barrett-Browning’s “Sonnets from the Portuguese” and no other I have ever read encapsulates my emotions towards you better than the last part of that famed poem and so I leave you with that."

Printing in neat letters words older than himself,

“How do I love thee? Let me count the ways.
I love thee to the depth and breadth and height
My soul can reach, when feeling out of sight
For the ends of Being and ideal Grace.”

Spike’s pen shook as he made a notation in script, “And that soul resides in me because of you alone. I doubt even one immortal as I will live long enough to count the many reasons though.”

”I love thee to the level of everyday’s
Most quiet need, by sun and candle-light.”

Spike smiled and noted, “You are my sun in the darkness, my peace in the turmoil of my soul’s endless screaming.” He continued returning to the block print letters,

”I love thee freely, as men strive for Right;
I love thee purely, as they turn from Praise,
I love thee with a passion put to use
In my old griefs, and with my childhood’s faith.”

“Only you,” Spike chuckled as he penned, “I’ve never known the heights and depths of love ‘til you Buffy. You are my true religion.”

”I love thee with a love I seemed to lose
With my lost Saints, I love thee with the breath,
Smiles, tears, of all my life…”

The poet within his breast protested his breaking into the good lady’s sonnet but he had to--truth demanded it. He put his notation in the elegant script his tutors had beaten into existence. “My life has been long in years, but only truly began with you. When I was a man, I only knew reality as a dreamer knows it. As a demon, I knew nothing but blood and taking what I wanted. I lost all that I was and had nothing to fill the void until you. I know I haven’t loved you nearly as well as I should have, too selfish by far. Got distracted by what I wanted and hurt the only one I never wished to hurt. I lost all that made me more than that monster within and only through you found myself again…my true self. A self that might be better worthy of your regard one day should I live long enough. But know this, Buffy, should this battle not turn out well for me,” He finished the Sonnet in a bold hand, his resolve complete,

”and, if God choose,
I shall but love thee better after death.”

He closed the notebook, at last content that he had said all he could to put his feelings out there properly. Likely she would not see them, but he felt better knowing he had created the beauty he had long desired to, to the best of his meager ability. There was a battle coming soon, an enemy he knew well might take them all down this time. Time was growing short and Buffy didn’t need the distractions of a lovesick vampire or all the baggage they carried between them. Still, he felt a sense of relief that the words had been formed at long last, even if she who inspired them never laid eyes on them.

~*~
Epilogue
~*~

The school bus rattled its way towards Los Angeles and the medical facilities available there. Some of the new slayers were in need of at least an overnight stay and Robin Wood looked like he could use Intensive Care.

Buffy stared out the window as they traveled, not paying much attention to the conversations going on in hushed tones around her. Dawn watched with worry, knowing that her sister was most quiet when she was bottling up too much emotionally. She suspected that Buffy’s seemingly casual reaction to the battle and their losses covered a deep well of sadness. Sooner or later Buffy would have to talk to someone, and Dawn hoped it would at last be her.

“Hey, hand me my backpack, will you?” Dawn asked a tired but upright Rona.

She was rifling through the items she had packed in haste before leaving for the school, looking for her Discman and earphones, when her hand brushed against something she didn’t recognize. “Huh? What the frilly heck is this?” She pulled out the lined notebook with her mother’s printing emblazoned on the front cover with “Must do’s and really should’s”. “Wonder if Buffy slipped this in to remember Mom by. Personally, I’d have picked a few more pictures,” she mused as she opened the notebook and started to read.

She only got as far as the first stanza when she quickly closed the book and nudged her sister. “Um, Buffy…,” she hesitated. “I don’t know if now’s the right time or even if there is a right time, but I think this is for you.” She handed the notebook to Buffy. She discreetly placed a box of tissues next to her numb sister and smiled gently before moving away to give her the privacy she knew Buffy was going to need.


~fin