Many Loves

by JW

EMAIL: williamthebloody79@yahoo.com

DISTRIBUTION: I can't imagine anyone being masochistic enough to archive something this long, but go ahead if you so desire. Just give me a shout about where it's going.

SPOILER: "School Hard" through "The Gift." Basically, everything Spike. Yeah, everything.

COUPLE PAIRINGS: Spike/Dru, Spike/Angelus, Spike/Harmony, Spike/Buffy.

SUMMARY: A not-so-brief history of William the Bloody, including a hundred and twenty years, two girlfriends, three doomed obsessions, four continents, nine haircolors, four parties, three torture scenes, two blowjobs, twelve consecutive shots of whiskey, forty-three thousand eight hundred packs of cigarettes, and a car theft.

RATING: NC-17 for violence, het and slash sex, and industrial- strength angst.

FEEDBACK: "To coin a popular Sunnydale phrase, 'duh.'"

DISCLAIMER: What's the Numfar of this fic? In other words, Joss is the malevolent god that owns all, although sometimes I sneak Spike out the side door and do wicked things with him.

DEDICATION: Donna, Donna, Donna, Donna, Donna, my betabunny and ficbitch extraordinaire, who is entirely to blame for my writing this fic. I can't thank you enough. Plus Av and Criss and Lar, who listened to me bitch about it through many a late-night AIM session, and all the DOOUL readers, 'cause... wonder why there hasn't been any new DOOUL since March? Here's why.

Title taken from the Allen Ginsberg poem of the same name.

Chapter 1

I. William
He underestimates my mind
I know he's messing with my head
My only weakness is
I can't believe the guy could be entirely dead
~Poe, "Trigger Happy Jack"

~*London, 1880*~

My life begins with an ending.

Her eyes are like black pearls, like ebony sapphires, like deep pools of gleaming oh for Christ's sake William can't you stop writing poetry in your head for five minutes running? She's got eyes, it doesn't matter what they look like, she's got eyes and all that matters is that they're looking. at. me.

((i see you))

No one's ever *looked* at me before.

"Do you want it?" she whispers, and

((oh yes))

"God, yes..."

And there's a piercing and a drowning and a chorus of screams, and for awhile there is darkness. Silence.

William dies.

Tries to, anyway.

Death is really something of a process.

Years later, while slightly drunk in a *ristorante* somewhere outside Rome, he tells me how they woke sometime that afternoon to find me laid out on the dining-room table. A violent argument soon erupted. Dru, classicist that she was, wanted me buried. She herself had not been buried (she had, I believe, awakened the next morning on a pile of dead nuns) and she blamed most of her mental and emotional problems on this singular fact. Angelus said he'd be damned (ironic, that) if she was going to bury that skinny little whelp in his rosebushes, and Darla just wanted the body off her dining-room table, NOW. I spend the subsequent century very glad that I slept through that particular conversation.

In any case, I can't imagine being buried. Scraping my way to the surface like

((like him))

like something out of a bad monster movie.

I may have my faults, but traditionalism certainly isn't among them.

The hero surviving his own murder, his own suicide, his own addiction, surviving his own disappearance from the scene- returned in new faces, shining through the tears of new eyes. -Allen Ginsberg, "Kansas City to Saint Louis"

Dolls are the first thing I see.

I can *feel* their eyes on me. Peering. Watching me. China cheeks and black curls and. Glass eyes. They frighten me so badly that I hastily lay back down and shut my eyes again.

((dolls))

((darkness))

((where am i))

Curiosity, at great length, finally defeats paralyzing fear, and I peel my eyelids open slowly to see

-a ceiling. Good one that, William. You're just a wealth of knowledge this evening- morning? Who knows? It's not a particularly familiar ceiling, but that isn't telling me much. It's nice as ceilings go but for God's sake William stop being such a pansy and sit up and look around, is that too much to ask?

Calm down. Breathe.

Not helping. Try not breathing? Similarly, no effect, very worrisome; a much older and larger cousin held my head in a bucket of water for nearly three minutes once when I was eleven years old, I know what not breathing feels like and it doesn't feel *anything* like this. Am I dead? I can't be dead; this isn't Heaven. It's got a nice enough ceiling, true, but it can't be Heaven, and I can't be in Hell because I've never done

((anything at all))

anything wrong. All right, William, you can open your eyes and investigate your surroundings, or you can lay here like the cowardly ponce you are.

That's good. Laying here, very good.

But not, after five or six minutes, very interesting.

Besides. I'm *hungry.*

I sit up again and gasp at the sudden rush of energy that surges through my muscles. Dolls. Dear God, they're everywhere. Twenty of them? Fifty? All frilly dresses and kid boots and wide, staring eyes. Silk wallpaper and lace curtains. Sharp smell of burning candlewax. A ladies' bedroom, no wonder I'm confused and lost, I've never *been* in a ladies' bedroom, and my skin feels strange, too tight and buzzing with electricity, the normally blurred lines between objects are too sharply defined and I can hear everything, *everything,* the merest rustle of my fingertips against the bedclothes. I'm in a woman's bed and the dolls are. Watching me. Where on God's green earth are my spectacles? I haven't been able to see without them since I was seven years old. The ends of my fingers are humming- no, they aren't. Fingers don't hum. I have a university diploma- well, will in three weeks, anyhow- and I know perfectly well that fingers don't hum. Stand up, you brainless ponce.

Trousers and waistcoat rumpled, cufflink and collar missing, and the side of my neck- I don't remember getting cut last night. In fact, I don't remember much of anything at all... a party. A party, and people laughing at me. Well, that could have been any night... God, but I'm hungry. I've never been this hungry in my life. What happened after that?

((effulgent))

It's a perfectly serviceable word. It's a *marvelous* word, dammit. Stupid bastard. What happened last night? Was I drinking? I don't drink, do I? What in the world have I been drinking?

"Have you lost your *mind*?" A deep, booming voice ((irish?)) somewhere outside the closed bedroom door.

"Probably," I whisper aloud to no one in particular. My voice sounds abnormally loud to my own ears.

This is just too much.

I walk to the doorway and put my hands against the surface. Each individual wood grain comes alive under fingertips. I can hear my footsteps on the soft rug and the candles seem too bright. None of this makes any *sense.* God. So hungry.

I push the door open slowly, soft squeak of hinges battering my oversensitive eardrums. I'm so overwhelmed by sensation and lightheaded with hunger that I can barely make my way down the dark, labyrinthine corridors that stretch out in front of me, and I can still hear that damned voice.

"Perhaps if she simply... takes him back where she found him? Leaves him there?"

"No good," inserts a woman's voice, cold, haughty. "They always follow you home. Trust me. I know."

I take a deep sniff with nostrils that can sense every mote of dust on the air and my stomach rumbles. Strangely enough, every kind of food that comes to mind seems vaguely nauseating, but I'm about to keel over with hunger- and there's... something. Nearby-

The woman's voice continues. "Only thing to do is to stake him. Oh, don't look like that, Drusilla. We'll get you a puppy, all right? Or a... kitten, or a rabbit, or something. Just stop that dreadful whining."

((drusilla))

A third voice, a child's voice ((where have I heard it before?)), choked with tears. "I don't *want* you to stake him, Grandmother. He's mine. I brought him home and I want to keep him. I l-love h-him..."

"Oh, you do not," the man's voice says with a great deal of exasperation. "We don't have time for this, Dru-"

"But you *told* me to-"

"Make yourself a playmate, I know. What I didn't realize is that you have astonishingly bad taste, and I can't take care of you and your misbegotten brat both."

"*I'll* take care of him!" she responds indignantly. "He's my baby, my shining boy, my prince, my noble white knight-"

Don't know who she's talking about. But whatever it is I'm hungry for is close, so close, and

((there))

and I don't really remember anything after that, only a red haze that falls over my vision and faraway screaming and suddenly my hands and clothing are very, very stained. But I'm not hungry anymore, so everything else is secondary, I suppose. I glance in dull horror- more alarmed surprise, really, than the revolted terror I would normally have at such a sight- at the body on the floor next to me. The girl, or what's left of her, looks fairly young, dressed in a workwoman's clothes- drenched in blood, now. A throat clears and I look up to see an immaculately coifed woman standing above me. Pale hair and cold blue eyes, hands folded sanctimoniously. She tosses a dismissive glance over her shoulder.

"Drusilla," she says sharply, "this creature with whom you are so enamored has eaten my chambermaid." A familiar face appears behind her, wide eyes and black curls, and suddenly I remember everything. The party. The alleyway. The biting ((biting?))

The girl ((Drusilla her name is Drusilla)) claps her hands together in delight. "He's made a mess, he's made a mess," she says joyfully. "Such a pretty mess." She turns to the dark-haired man beside her with an adorable pout. "May I keep him, Daddy? Please?"

He folds his arms over his chest and lets out a labored sigh.

"*Please?*"

"I suppose," he says, with all the goodwill of a long-suffering father. The girl squeals happily and drops to the floor beside me, clutches my hand, and presses her lips against mine.

Guess I'm home.

***

Chapter 2

Blest be the day, and blest the month and year,
Season and hour and very moment blest,
The lovely land and place where first possessed
By two pure eyes I found me prisoner.
Francis Petrarch, 61st Sonnet

The dolls have been turned to the wall, lest they watch and grow jealous, or possibly learn things that they're too young to know. Things that I still don't know. I understand on some very academic level what's about to happen (although I don't quite understand *why,* of all the people she could have in her bed, she's chosen *me*-) but that doesn't lessen my terror. I wonder if she'll take my clothes off for me or if I'm supposed to do it myself. I wonder if she'll laugh when she realizes I don't know what I'm doing. I wonder what the hell's going on. My fingers clutch convulsively at the bedsheets, my breath coming in harsh, unnecessary gasps that make her giggle in amusement.

"Silly boy."

She stands in the doorway, a dark, spare shape silhouetted in the soft light spilling in from the hallway. Darla appears behind her, deft fingers unlacing the back of Drusilla's gown. She leans towards the younger girl, lips grazing her smooth throat. "Are you sure about this, my dear?" she stage-whispers, eyeing me with undisguised derision. "So slender and shaking... like a frightened rabbit before wolves... I daresay he's never done this before."

A slow smile traces its way across Drusilla's lips. "I'll teach him."

"He looks stupid," Angelus observes, leaning against the doorframe with a tumbler of whiskey in one hand and a cigar in the other. "Probably won't know where to put it."

"Ssh!" Drusilla admonishes. "Don't say such nasty things. He's a poet."

He rolls his eyes. "Right, your wandering poet-knight, I forgot. Wandered his way right into a premature death, didn't he."

"It was fate," she replies breathily, her eyes never leaving mine. I twist my fingers tighter in the sheets, feeling oddly like a circus freak or an animal on display in the zoological gardens or- well, a terrified virgin being stared at by a trio of vampires.

"It wasn't fate," Darla replies sharply. "It was bad timing on your part and bad luck on his." She plucks at Angelus' sleeve. "Come on, dear. Let's leave the children to their games."

He shakes off her hand. "You go. I'm going to watch."

Drusilla grins, but a dark expression flickers across Darla's face, and she tugs hard on his arm. "It won't be that interesting. Come to bed." Her voice carries an unmistakable authority, and he reluctantly follows, his gaze trailing off me as he goes. There is something smoldering there that I don't understand and don't want to think about.

"Ssh," she admonishes me, one slender finger pressed against her lips. "Naughty, naughty William."

I furrow my brow in confusion. "What did I-"

"Never you mind. Daddy's going to have to learn to share, after all, isn't he?"

"I suppose," I stutter, praying it's the correct answer.

"Don't you worry. Mummy will explain everything." Slight of hand, movement scarcely noticeable, and the silk gown tumbles to the floor.

She doesn't wear anything underneath it.

I swallow hard, blink rapidly, and desperately search my mind for something witty or observant to say. The resulting sound sounds something rather like "guh." Two hours ago this

((vampire say it *vampire*))

woman gave me my first kiss and now she's standing... naked... before me. Expecting. Something.

"I... well, I, um-"

"Ssh." Shorter, sharper sound this time, a shut-up-and-pay-attention-you- brainless-prat sound, more familiar to my ear than easy, seductive tones. I can do this. I'll figure it out. I'm a university graduate, after all, or would have been three weeks from tonight; surely if I set myself at this like the difficult task it is, the intricacies of the act will become apparent and-

((shut up, william.))

So I say nothing, simply let out a wordless sigh.

((beautiful she's so beautiful))

She crawls slowly towards me over silken coverlets. The door's still wide open. I *know* they're not lurking in the hallway

((daddy's going to have to learn to share))

but I feel curiously exposed all the same. One slender hand settles on the inside of my thigh and I begin to tremble violently. "Drusilla-" I cannot keep the panicked stutter out of my voice. "Drusilla, I-"

((rabbit before wolves))

"Sssssshhhhhhhhhh." A long, low sound, too sleek and snakelike to be comforting. I must be talking too much again, mumbling and stammering, words spilling out of me in agitated torrents, and I wonder yet again when I'm simply going to learn to shut up, but I've never been this afraid before,

not when I looked down on my hands an hour ago to find someone else's blood on them, not when I awoke in this house this evening with no idea of where or what I was, not even when she unsheathed her fangs last night and I knew, even then, that my breath would cease in a matter of moments. I've never been as terrified as I am right now.

She slides her body forward and presses her lips against mine. After a few paralyzed, panicked moments, I respond to the kiss, bringing up my hands to bury them in the dark softness of her hair. Her fingers move slowly upwards, over the rapidly stiffening crux of my legs, and I gasp.

((terribly sorry but there must be some sort of misunderstanding, have we met? my name is william and this sort of thing *does not happen to me*))

Her hands move to my collar and begin to undo the buttons of my shirt; I squirm uneasily under her touch. She's not going to find anything she wants to see; frail form, slender shoulders, the pale, barely visible rack of ribs. She can't possibly want... but her fingers are traveling slowly down my torso and towards my waistband, unfastening my trousers and slipping carefully inside, and I am so overwhelmed with confusion and fright that part of me wants to push her hands away and say "I'm sorry, but women, particularly beautiful ones such as yourself, don't even *look* at me, and they certainly don't *touch* me, especially not *there*"-

-part of me wants to say that, oh yes, but it isn't the part of me that she's currently stroking with careful fingertips, no, it isn't *that* part at all, *that* part is *perfectly* content with what she's doing, and I bury my face in her hair and moan helplessly.

She helps me out of my clothes- I'm still shaking too hard to be of much use- and lays me against the silk coverlet, pressing her naked body against mine, curves and bones and flesh fitting together perfectly. Unexpected, in explicable tears spring to my eyes. She's so beautiful. Like something I would have written a poem about, a lifetime ago. Beautiful above me, dark curls tumbling over perfect breasts, slim thighs straddling my hips. Beautiful when she traces her hands over my chest, bites at my nipples, laves tenderly at my throat, covers my lips with her own and stifles my sighs. Beautiful when she guides me inside her and doesn't laugh at the choked whimpers that catch in my throat or the way my trembling hands clutch helplessly, artlessly at her body.

So beautiful when I feel her clench around me and she throws her head back and screams my name so loudly that it must be heard down the hall and in the street and the next three counties over, and beautiful when she guides me through my own screaming a few moments later. Our legs tangle tightly together and I clutch her against me, her skin smooth and soft against mine, her fingernails raking down my back, and the world tips and spins dizzily around me and then burns away in a feverish haze, pleasure trembling wildly along every nerve in my body, and I howl her name.

Afterwards, she holds my head gently to her breast, her lips working careful kisses along my neck and shoulders. "I love you," I whisper hoarsely, unable to stop the words from tumbling from my throat, and she smiles, and runs her fingers through my hair, and calls me her beautiful boy.

Her beautiful boy. Hers.

"Hello, Cecily."

She blinks in surprise. "William."

((not anymore))

"How did you get in?"

"Your mother was kind enough to let me in."

The stupid bitch tasted like overpriced perfume.

"Well, what do you want?"

I run my fingers lightly along a row of china figurines lining her dresser. "Just wondering how you were today is all." Small talk, is bookish little William making small talk with social butterfly Cecily Addams? Oh, yes, I believe he is. Well. Isn't this interesting.

"I'm fine," she says stiffly. "And if that's all, you should be going. I have to get to bed. I'm going rowing with Frederick and Alan in the morning."

"Yes, I know. I've already been 'round to see them."

Frederick and Alan aren't in much shape to be entertaining ladies anymore.

"Well, then, you'd better be on your way," she replies snappishly.

"Uh-huh," I murmur offhandedly. She blinks in surprise. "I think I upset you yesterday evening, Cecily."

"Doesn't matter. I've already forgotten it."

"Have you, now?"

((selfish little bitch i'll teach you to forget me so easily))

Two steps towards her and she backs against the wall. "William?" she asks, as if she's not quite sure who she's talking to anymore.

"Yes?"

"You look... different."

I say nothing, just give her a wide, disarming smile. She furrows her brow in confusion.

"Your spectacles are gone... but... no... there's something else." Tips her head to the side. "You've changed."

"I have," I murmur, tracing my fingertip along the edge of her lips. She doesn't try to stop me. "Oh, I have."

Piercing blow: metal slams fast, hard through her abdomen and sharply enters the wall behind her. Gush of hot blood over my hands. Her eyes widen in shock and

((try to see me))

oh, she does. For just a moment she stares into the abyss and she knows and she sees. Sees the monster she has created.

Gasp, sigh, then silence.

Relish the weight of her in my hands- just for a moment- and them let her heaviness drop to the floor. Railroad spike, dark with her blood, goes clattering after.

Sweet.

Thin trickle of blood from the corner of her mouth, beneath wide, sightless, staring eyes. I run my finger across the wet stream, suckle the tip. Time was I wanted more. Only last night I wanted everything- heart, soul, flesh. Time was I would have devoured her whole. Not anymore.

She's nothing now. Nothing. A dark smear on my hands and a mess on the floor. Human. Mortal. Dead.

Beneath me, oh yes, all splayed out and oh. so. beneath.

And you'd think it would be enough to make me stop loving her. But it's not.

I just had no idea until now that love and hate fit so well together.

If immortality means spending eternity with this blonde hellbitch that my dearest calls "Grandmother," I really don't think I'll be able to stomach it.

"I don't think you understand," Darla says sharply. She looms over me with disapproving glance, hands on her hips. "He's killed *everyone.*"

"As I'm neither deaf nor stupid," Angelus replies from where he stands in the doorway, "I understand completely. Enough, Darla."

"His parents. Older brother and his wife. Both their children. Aunts, uncles, cousins."

((no one left to remember no one left to testify that william ever existed no evidence))

"Neighbors. Half his graduating class at the university-"

"Darla-"

"And most of his professors!"

"I killed my entire village when you turned me-"

"London's not a village, Angelus!"

Angelus shrugs and takes a leisurely sip of whiskey. "He shows initiative."

"He's unbalanced!"

"Darla," he snaps, "shut up."

I close my eyes wearily. I didn't know it was possible to feel this exhausted. This sated.

This good.

((they all looked into my eyes and they saw me they screamed and oh it felt *good*))

I'm soaked in blood and trembling with joy and rage. Drusilla pulls my head onto her lap and runs her fingers through my crimson-stained hair, humming softly.

"William."

I raise my eyes silently to Angelus.

"Get yourself cleaned up, then go to my bedroom and wait for me there."

Darla's eyes widen almost comically. "You can't possibly mean that you-"

"Darla, don't start," he responds, cutting her off.

Drusilla pushes her bottom lip out in a pout. "Daddy's taking my toy away from me." She drops a kiss on my forehead. "Aren't you the lucky boy."

"Angelus," Darla storms furiously, "if you allow that idiot child into *our* bed, I'll-"

"You'll what, exactly?" he replies menacingly. "Leave? Again? And return two weeks later like a dog with your tail between your legs, randy as a goat, complaining of boredom and convinced that you've punished me enough? Your threats don't frighten me, Darla." He gives a sly smile. "I'm sure Drusilla will keep you company, if you're lonely." He turns to me. "William. Go." I nod quickly and do so.

I've just emerged from the marble bathroom when he enters, one eye bruised, one cheek marred by an already healing scratch. There must have been one hell of a punching-match with Darla. He stares at me like a famished tiger and I squirm uneasily under his gaze. I can somehow sense what's about to happen

((daddy's going to have to learn to share))

but the horror that the idea would have inspired in me before seems to have melted away. I'm nervous, I'll admit, but not nearly as much so as I was last night. Then again, last night I didn't have a few dozen rather efficient murders to my credit.

He settles himself on the immense bed in the center of the room. "So. You killed off half of London today, it seems. That's impressive."

"I don't know if I did it right," I reply, rubbing my hands together nervously as if there were still blood smeared there. "I didn't really have- well, a plan, or anything, and it showed. There was a dreadful mess."

He leans back against the bedpillows. "Well, there's a science to everything, you know."

I sit on the coverlet next to him, feeling for all the world like an enthusiastic pupil. "Explain it to me."

"Didn't she?"

I shrug. "Tried. Compared it to tigers, spiders, Venus flytraps. Bit me a couple of times and then sang some nursery rhymes about dead children that she'd obviously made up on the spot-" Angelus smirks. "But it still didn't make any *sense.*"

He sighs. "I know. I feared something like this would happen. She lacks the... attention span needed to properly instruct a fledgling."

*Fledgling.* I silently file that word away in my rapidly expanding new vocabulary. Master, minion, fledgling, Sire, Childe.

"I want to understand," I insist with the same tremulous determination that kept me at the head of my class since I was six years old. "I need to understand."

He chuckles softly. "You're eager. I like that." He leans towards me, his large form uncomfortably close. "Take your victim by the throat-" His hand snakes up around the base of my throat and I shiver unconsciously at the contact. He smells like smoke and cinnamon and old, old blood. "-quickly, so that they're taken by surprise and can't scream." He isn't moving quickly. His hand crawls with torturous slowness, fingers caressing my nape, thumb against the hollow of my throat. The other hand tugs gently at my collar, exposing pale flesh, trailing along the lines of collarbones. I squirm uneasily, acutely aware of the stiffening in my trousers. His face is inches from mine; I can feel the whisper of breath when he speaks. "You can pin their arms back with one hand, if they struggle." A slow smile spreads across his features. "Most of them won't."

I'm not struggling.

He tilts his head back and flickering candlelight plays across white flesh. Taking my hand in his, he traces my fingers lightly along a thick, pale-blue vein in his throat. "This one. The jugular. Learn to spot it."

I nod wordlessly, my hand trembling against his cool skin. I can smell his blood, lying still, pooled patiently in dead veins, waiting under fragile flesh. My mouth waters.

He pulls his hand away and my fingers trail slowly from the side of his neck. I swallow hard, trying to maintain my composure. He bends my head carefully to the side, his fingers working in the tangles of my hair, brushing against my face.

"Tilt the head back- like so- exposing the vein-" He moves in towards my

throat. "What if they scream, or fight?" I ask suddenly, although I have no intention of doing either. "What if they try to get away?"

"What are you, William?" he replies seriously, a glint of amusement in his dark eyes.

((a boy, a student, a spectacularly bad poet))

I run my tongue over my dry lips and pray I'm giving the right answer. "I'm a vampire."

He chuckles. "Yes." Angelus leans forward, his lips brushing my ear. "Remember that. Remember what you are, boy." The touch of his breath sends shivers through my body and I unconsciously lift my hands and curl them on his broad shoulders. "You are more powerful than anything they ever imagined and whatever you desire is yours for the taking."

A whimper escapes my throat, completely of its own accord.

"If they run, chase. If they scream, rip out their tongues. But remember that *you* are in charge." He moves his lips lower and I can feel his fangs grazing my flesh. "Find the vein. Break the skin. Then... drink deep."

I feel his long incisors, smooth and cool, press against my throat before piercing the flesh and sliding past the first layer of skin. I gasp aloud, my hands clutching convulsively at the material of his shirt. He thrusts his fangs deeper, forcing his way in and plundering the depths of my veins, taking his fill of me in long, greedy swallows. I'm lightheaded from blood-loss; the world goes half-gray and my eyelids flutter to mere slits. One hand holds my neck steady while the other undoes the buttons of my clothing and begins its descent, tracing down the length of my throat, the curves of my chest and abdomen, the stiffness between my legs. I gasp and he pulls away, lips reddened, smiling.

"Who were they?"

"What?" I shake my head, as if to clear it.

"Who did you kill?"

"Everyone I could think of," I whisper. If I can still remember their names, I certainly wish that I couldn't, and I don't want to think about them. I want him to touch me.

"Why?"

An incredible frustration wells up in my throat as I try to answer the simplest question I've ever been asked. Because they held me down, I think to myself, because they made me miserable. Because I didn't want to turn out this way, a timid, fussy, neurotic mess, and *they* shaped me into this and then disapproved of everything I ever did and every choice I ever made. Because I hate who I was and I'm terrified that he's not really dead yet. Because I'm angry, because I've been angry for the past twenty- four years, and because if I *am* dead, then none of them should be able to hurt me anymore. "Why did you kill them, William?"

Because my brother, the successful solicitor and father of two, didn't look nearly as condescending with his head detached from his body. Because my father will never bruise the backs of my hands with a ruler for writing poetry instead of doing math lessons ever again. Because I'm tired of being the one ducked into ponds and thrown into snowbanks on the walk home from school. Because Cecily looked so lovely with a trickle of blood running from the corner of her mouth and those wide, sightless eyes stared at me without derision. Because I'm so fucking sick of being beneath everyone.

I speak in a hoarse voice. "Because I can."

The chuckle starts somewhere deep in his throat and bubbles darkly over his lips. "Yes," he says, and pulls my shirt off slowly, sliding the cloth from my shoulders and trailing his fingers along my arm. My shirt falls in a puddle around my waist, exposing my flesh to the chill air. "Yes, exactly." Tilts my head again, just like before, and runs his lips along my jugular, keeping fangs sheathed and nipping lightly with blunt teeth, and I want it. Barely know how to do this with a woman and certainly don't know how to do it with a man but it doesn't matter because I. want.

I lift my hands uncertainly and they hover in the air for a moment, trembling, before coming to rest on his collar. He draws away from my throat with an amused smirk and I loosen his garment with trembling fingers, my eyes never straying from his, and I know he can see a pleading there. I don't care. Twenty-four years is too long to spend untouched and he makes me feel as if my flesh is on fire and if I'm supposed to feel ashamed of the naked begging in my eyes, more's the pity. Because I don't feel anything but need. I push the shirt carefully off his broad shoulders, watching firelight dance across marble-pale flesh and smooth muscles, and swallow nervously. "Are you going to hurt me?"

He smiles. "Probably." He draws me forward and captures me in a bruising kiss, his restless hands pushing the last of my clothing away. I feel a sharp pain on the inside of my lip and taste blood. I wish I could taste his, but this is enough. To be consumed.

He strips himself bare and pushes me back against the mattress, holding me hard by the throat with one hand as he reaches into a bedside drawer with the other, bringing a pair of steel manacles into view. My eyes widen and I buck involuntarily against his hands, trying to escape. I'm relatively sure that I don't want this to happen. I struggle against the pressure of his hands, scratching and biting... until he reaches down again and runs his fingers carefully along the heavy stiffness between my legs. My muscles go limp and I hear an exhausted whimper escape my throat as he chuckles and chains my wrists to the bedstead.

I don't want this. I don't want to be chained to the bed so that he can do... whatever it is that he plans on doing to me. But, dear heavenly Christ. Those hands.

His mouth races down the length of my body, wounding me with a series of shallow bites, his fingertips painting dark red stripes across my pale skin before licking them away again. I squirm uneasily underneath him, vaguely not wanting to enjoy this but unable to help it. Then he raises his head and drives his glistening fangs into the hollow of my hip, drinking deeply and sending trickles of blood into the mattress. My scream of pain is cut off in a horrified gasp as he eases two, then three blood-slickened fingers inside of me. Muscles clench involuntarily around him, my hands fisting convulsively inside their metal bonds.

"What- what are you-"

"Ssshhhhh." Voice low and insidious, like ragged, bloody claws sheathed in velvet, nearly enough to calm the mutiny in my head, the terror at such an invasion. Nearly, but not. A panicked sob escapes my throat.

"Please don't-"

"Quiet." Harsher now, impatient. I answer with a tearful nod and he places a nearly gentle kiss on my lips.

Before driving himself in to the hilt.

I let out a bloodcurdling scream as blinding pain tears through my body. A thrust, two, three. He pauses, pulls back to look into my face. "How does it feel, William?" A wicked grin. He's not interested in the answer.

The sound of my voice, hoarse and helpless, shocks me. "More."

More, yes, more. The agony ripping through my body is screaming at me to shut up, that I don't want this, I can't want this, that it bloody well *hurts* and that pain is *bad,* but dear heavenly Christ I can *feel* him, inside me, under my skin, lodged tight and hard and hot, displacing some of the cold emptiness there, tearing the flesh and drawing blood and god it feels so *real.* A touch that goes *deeper,* separating layers of skin, leaving its mark. And if this sort of love results in permanent scarring, so be it. Because I've never felt so claimed, so whole as when he's ripping me apart.

I can feel blood pouring between my legs and the pain is so intense that the world begins to go gray. And it's pathetic, of course. Pathetic of me to want it.

But it never occurs to me to tell him to stop.

"I shouldn't want this," I whisper hoarsely, my eyes filling with tears. I stare at the ceiling so I don't have to look at him.

"Don't worry," he replies with a smile. "You'll forget eventually that you're not supposed to like it."

I'd heard of this sort of thing, of course- who hasn't?- although I'd never imagined *I* would... and yes, it hurts. And yes, I never imagined *that.* *There.* But I want him- there, *anywhere* and it's... good. Good to be claimed, to be touched as if he wants to devour me whole. Good to be wanted in return, to feel the imprint of strong hands and sharp teeth and of his hardness inside me. To invite him in and dissipate, leaving only his body, his touch, his strength, rending me and rendering me a quivering, wanting mess. I keep screaming, but as with the fatal bite that made me what I have become, pain is not the only sensation that tears the cry from my throat.

Drusilla's touch makes me feel like a sacred icon; Angelus makes me feel like an unholy beast. Like a vampire.

Like a vampire, yes, as our bodies set a blood-rhythm, a mock-heartbeat between crimson-stained sheets. She is Sire, yes, she is all the sweet unholy wickedness that my tongue can taste, but she is only two decades my senior, with a childlike naivet? that will persist always. He died a century before my mortal birth, and his eyes are ancient with an understanding she will never possess. She is Lover; he is Vampire, and William dies a thousand final deaths in his blood-spattered bed.

Later that evening, I wake up at his side and start to think about changing my name.

Two weeks.

Two weeks of bone and bruise and bleeding and. her. Nothing but. Soft flesh and sweet voice and delicious pain- she sings softly under her breath as she ties me tightly to the bedstead and I can't figure out if the demon makes me want these things or if I wanted them all along but it scarcely matters anymore. There's blood and skin collecting under her fingernails; she's scraping bits of William away.

And him.

They love me, you see. Both of them. Sometimes both of them at once, although he doesn't like to share. Sometimes he won't let her near me; he claims me wholly, marking me with fists and fangs and cock. Darla's furious; he doesn't care. He calls me "beautiful" when I'm chained to his bed, beautiful and bleeding and his when he hammers me into the mattress, and I never knew it was possible to hurt like that, want like that. Beg that desperately and scream that helplessly when he drives me over the edge, and sometimes I can feel the edges of reality coming apart at the seams when he's inside me. Because I'm beautiful for them, beautiful and all bound up in the curves of his hands and the curls of her hair and unable to escape.

I will love them both forever.

***

Chapter 3

II. Angelus

And I hate myself just enough to want him
But I hate him just enough to get off.
~Poe, "Trigger Happy Jack"

Red.

Nothing but a haze of crimson, blurry blots and runny lines and the world swimming in scarletcarmine. Really a very nice color, I suppose, when you've been staring at it long enough.

"There are *rules,* William."

I blink my eyes hard and the blood that has gathered there clears away, restoring the world to its typical, less-red state. My wrists, which are currently chained to the ceiling, were bleeding quite profusely, dripping blood into my eyes; but they've nearly healed now. I've been here for a while. My shirt lies in rags around my hips, tattered and bloodstained.

She's very good at what she does. She should be. She's had nearly three centuries to practice.

"We come from a very long and honored race of ancient Master vampires, child. There are things that are simply *not done,* and defying your elders is one of those very things."

It's not that I mind being chained to the ceiling and beaten to a pulp. All right, that's not true. No one, except perhaps Drusilla, really *enjoys* being chained the the ceiling and beaten to a pulp, but with Angelus or Dru, the end result more than makes up for the foreplay.

With Darla, it isn't foreplay. It's punishment.

"It's not that I would expect an infant such as yourself to understand, but that doesn't change the situation at hand."

And, as she points out again and again with every falling stroke of the whip, I had it coming.

Never mind the fact that I've never once approached him, never knocked at his door or appeared in his bed. Never mind the fact that I've asked him to stop, time and time again, if for no other reason than to save me the bruising at her hands. Never mind the fact that he bruises me worse than she does if I refuse.

"But no, you deem it necessary to defy the established order of things, don't you? Just because your lunatic of a sire doesn't explain anything to you doesn't give you as excuse to be so unforgivably stupid."

It's not as if he loves me. He only loves her, and the world revolves in dizzy circles around her pretty blonde head. And that's the way it should be. He takes his pleasure of me occasionally, as the Sire of the Sire has a right to do, showing up at my door every other week and demanding my presence in his bed. He does it in spite of how she feels, or perhaps because of it. Disapproved. Discouraged. Forbidden, and yet still wanted. I'm the naughty little pleasure that he can't quite let go. She never acted this way over his attentions towards Dru, I'll wager, but those attentions seem sparse these days. No matter; Dru was a conquest, a challenge, a game, and he tires of games as soon as they're won.

This is different: a game between Darla and her Childe, a game that doesn't have any foreseeable conclusion. I'm not a lover; I'm an excuse for a fight- object of exchange but never of value, paying out the ass for the sake of their mindgames. There's something volatile about them, something elemental, like fire and ice, wood and stone, and they need those games to survive. Need scapegoats to stir things up a little.

"She never should have been made, and neither should you. I don't know why he insists on keeping the two of you around, but as long as he does, there are going to be some changes in your abominable behavior."

He'll never admit it, but there's something in me that she lacks. Dru was an amusement; I'm a passion, something that he finds in blue eyes that burn instead of ones that freeze. I'm his original sin, young and fresh and full of surprises in the hundred and twenty-seventh year of their courtship, now that he can recite her hunting patterns by rote. I'm his naughty pleasure, the only thing he wants that's still forbidden. My presence in this house touches something deep in him that Darla can't, and it drives her mad. He knows this. He exploits it. Jealously and rage are the bloodied fabrics that bind those two together.

"A few killing sprees, and suddenly you think you're something special?" she rages. "Beginner's luck is all. And he's barely *looked* at me since you came along."

I have no control over his attentions, his actions, his fists and tongue and cock; my hands are tied and my bones are broken and I have no say in this matter. And that's the bullshit of it, that she's just going to keep bleeding me and bleeding me until the end of time and not only will it not change anything, but it won't make her feel a damned bit better, either. He does it knowing and anticipating her disapproval, and there have been screams and bruises on both sides. But she wouldn't dream of bleeding him this way. She might be his Sire, but there's something about Angelus that no one can touch.

"Are you listening to me, William?"

Angelus gets what he wants, and apparently that's me, howling beneath him.

She takes my face in her hand and roughly turns my gaze towards hers, nails digging into my cheeks. "Don't fight me over him, boy. You. will. lose."

I've already lost.

O no, I am not the mover; Not to-day, not to you. To you, I'm the Yes-man, the bar-companion, the easily-duped, I am whatever you do. I am your vow to be Good, your humorous story. I am your business voice. I am your marriage.

What's your proposal? To build the just city? I will. I agree. Or is it the suicide pact, the romantic Death? Very well, I accept, for I am your choice, your decision. Yes, I am Spain. W.H. Auden, "Spain"

They've gone out again; the world outside is made up of angelusdarla and William stays behind to mind the children.

They've gone out again and they're left me here with her.

All alone with her and the voices in her head.

By the time they return, six days have passed. Neither one of us has slept or eaten during that time. Her screams, her terror, keep us here. Hungry. Awake. Trapped. Her body is a patchwork of healing scars, her nails are caked with gore, and I'm soaked head to foot in her blood. She's in the corner, torn arms wrapped around her head, screaming. I don't know what she sees and I don't want to, but it doesn't appear to be leaving anytime soon.

They knew. They *knew* this would happen. It's why they left.

Oh, and I didn't want it to be this way. She's terrified and she's hallucinating and she's fucking *insane* and I love her so much that it makes my insides curl up and ache. I love her and I should know what to do, how to make it better. But she won't stop screaming.

I hear their coach pulling up and I stand by the door expectantly, waiting for the punishment that will surely result. The house is a disaster. She broke everything she could get her hands on, and hurt me when I tried to stop her.

They're going to break me into pieces.

"Get the bullwhip, William," Darla says sharply, surveying the damage, "and remove your shirt. Angelus, do something about your misbegotten brat, the screaming is more that I can bear."

He locks her in the cellar. The screaming isn't any quieter there. It echoes.

Darla's whip expediently takes care of any remaining skin that Drusilla might have let intact. I can hear my blood running across the floor in quiet, unassuming trickles. Tears stream soundlessly down my face. The blood-loss is too much in my already hungry and exhausted state.

"Can I go to her now?" I say weakly.

Darla sighs and lowers the whip. "Only if you can get her to be quiet."

I try to stand, but the world spins and I find myself on the floor. I don't hear Angelus enter, but I see him looming above me.

"Jesus Christ, Darla. You never know when enough is enough, do you?" He tugs my head into the crook of his arm. "William! Wake up, boy. You're no good to us unconscious."

No, I'm not much good to anyone, am I.

"William? Drink, damn you."

I smell blood ((his?)) and open my mouth weakly. I feel it flow past my lips, and I latch onto his proffered wrist and begin to drink hungrily.

"I don't understand why you're letting that miserable little thing feed from you-"

"And I don't understand why you bother beating him to a pulp," Angelus snaps tiredly. "Isn't putting up with the Lady Insane for a week punishment enough? I don't know what you're trying to prove, Darla, but you're wasting everyone's time. He won't be able to hunt for a week in this condition and now we've got two children to look after instead of one. The next time you break him like this, it's your blood that mends him." He detaches my lips from his wrist and pushes me away. "That's enough, boy. Now go to bed."

I sit up, putting one hand to my head to stop the room from tipping. "But Drusilla-"

"Will have screamed herself into exhaustion soon enough. Go to bed."

I have turned down the hallway when I hear their voices again, and I turn, peeking around the corner. Darla's gaze is staring, dead, emotionless. The whip slips from her exhausted fingertips. She eyes her childe evenly.

"If you go to him tonight," she says, with no inflection whatsoever in her voice, "I'm leaving and I'm not coming back. Do you understand?"

He nods wordlessly. I turn and go to bed.

When I wake the next evening, I'm allowed to let Drusilla out of the cellar.

~*1881*~

Things are going fine until the Ice Queen gets a bee in her bonnet about visiting the relatives.

The Master's lair is in London, technically, well, somewhere *under* London. Dank and dark and smelly is bad enough, but something about the place gives Dru a fierce case of nerves. She starts shaking the moment we crawl down into his chambers, and clutches my hand.

"I don't like it," she murmurs desperately. "It whispers." The Master is a lily-colored fruitbat of an ugly bastard, the most violently unattractive sod I've ever laid eyes on, and Darla's all grinning and sitting on his wrinkled old lap and giggling like a schoolgirl. Angelus is prancing about and smirking while Darla brags about his infinite talents, and neither one of them have so much looked at Dru and I since we got here. She pulls me into a corner and croons softly, running her shaking fingers through my hair.

"That thing. In the corner." Heinrich Nest's voice is shrill and imperious. "Bring him here." Angelus kicks me forward in front of the Master's chair. "What in the world is this?" he mutters distastefully, placing one bony finger beneath my chin and lifting my face towards his.

"Oh, him," Darla sighs. "Drusilla made that one." Dru's name spoken with the utmost derision.

"What's he called?"

"William. She found him in an alleyway in London. Miserable little thing, isn't he?"

"He's thin."

I jerk my head back and grind my teeth together. "The name's *Spike.*"

The Master chuckles. "But feisty." His ice-cold fingers work along the lines of my throat, tightening slowly. A subtle gesture, but enough to feel his impossible strength. It leaves bruises in its wake.

"Impulsive and slovenly, irresponsible and moody," Darla retorts. "Kills only for hunger or sport, never for art."

"He'll outlive us both," the Master replies, waving a hand dismissively. Angelus grabs me by the shoulder and pulls me back, shoving me into the dank corner with Dru. "Why did you allow him to be Made?"

Darla passes an expectant look to her Childe, who swallows uneasily. "She didn't exactly ask permission first," Angelus murmurs.

"You encouraged her," Darla snaps.

"I thought her tastes were more... discerning."

I bite down hard on my lower lip. My throat is burning with rage. I bolt forward and Dru closes her hand tightly around my wrist, nails digging past the first layer of skin into fragile veins.

"No." Her voice is low, nearly inaudible, and trembles slightly.

"Dru-"

"No," she repeats, and her lower lip quivers. Her eyes, shiny with unshed tears, are wide and fearful. Wide like terror and knowledge and Vision, and I've learned better than to fuck with things that make Dru scared like that. She always turns out right.

Three of them, one of me, and god knows how many minions besides. I've never been one to pick my battles, but I'm not particularly aching to scrape myself up off this filthy floor.

"Why, then, did you keep him?" the Master inquires, raising an eyebrow. "Oh, the dust that scattered in the early days, when this one first learned to pass on the Dark Gift!" He chuckles fondly, pulling Darla into his lap and causing Angelus to take a defensive pace forward. "She brought home a different one every night, it seemed. You were the first one she kept. Why

didn't you simply get rid of him?"

"Well, we kept him as a distraction," Darla sighs, "and he's proven a useful nursemaid for the lunatic."

"Can he hunt?"

"With some skill, but no real finesse," she retorts. "He does well enough to care for Drusilla, that's his only purpose."

The Master raises an eyebrow in Angelus' direction. "His only purpose? Are you sure?"

A cold silence seeps across the room. Darla's eyes flash daggers in my direction.

"Do you think we should have them inducted?" Angelus blurts, trying to change the subject. "Into the Order?"

The Master fixes him with an icy stare. "I don't have the time or the patience for lunatics." He traces Darla's cheek with one finger. "I don't know what your boy was thinking when he made her, Dear One."

"And the fledgling?" Angelus asks, casting a glance at me.

"This fourth-generation whelp?" The Master waves his hand dismissively. "He has no place here. Besides, his blood is tainted by his parentage. He doesn't seem any more level-headed than his Sire."

We leave about an hour later.

Darla smirks at me for a month.

Angelus doesn't so much as glance my direction for much longer.

Chapter 4

~*1892*~

"William..."

That voice, that fucking soft insidious voice that makes all my insides gather up in knots. I shrug off the hand that slides delicately along the curve of my shoulder. "Don't call me that."

Ten years, you'd think the fucker would've *learned* by now.

"You're not still angry with me, are ye, lad?"

He was halfway down my throat last night when we heard Darla approach. He shoved me into the wardrobe, turned the key, and conveniently forgot about me. Seven hours of mothballs and claustrophobia weren't half so bad as having to listen to them fuck.

He screams louder for me, anyhow.

"Stop it." His finger works its way up my spine, through thin layers of linen and cotton (poncey clothes that I didn't want to wear tonight) and his breath whispers words I can't quite hear along the back of my neck. "I said stop it. What, you're not shagged out yet? Fucking insatiable, aren't you?"

He chuckles softly and I feel shivers run across the surface of my skin. "With you? Always."

And Christ, if that isn't enough to get me hard. But not enough to give me a deathwish. "Angelus, please, don't. Darla's right inside." And I really don't fancy being locked in the wardrobe again, my mind adds silently.

His tongue flickers along the edge of my earlobe. "She's feeding."

My gaze wanders along the ivy-covered walls against which he has me pressed, up to the enormous bay window which gives us an excellent view of the party inside. I stare at the glass anxiously as if Darla's disapproving face might appear there any moment.

"But-"

"Sshhhhh." His lips run along the curve of vertebra just below the base of my skull as his fingers reach to undo my trousers.

I sigh and press my forehead to the cool stone wall as he works at the buttons of his own clothing. She bled me for days the last time she caught us like this, but I've accepted the situation at hand with a kind of randy, half-cocked fatalism. She's going to find us, and I'm going to be beaten. All for the sake of a big hulking Irishman who doesn't love me, doesn't even like me, a man who leaves me locked in closets and chained to furniture and gets off on seeing me bruise, but that mouth and those hands and that cock feel. so. good. I let out a sharp gasp when he slides into me, my muscles tightening around him. A whispered breath forces its way past my lips.

"...Sire..."

I always call him that when he's inside me. Seems appropriate at the time. I've never called Dru that, not ever. Not sure why.

"Harder." I brace myself against the wall sweat staining the stone with my fingerprints. His complies, fangs grazing the delicate flesh covering my throat. I let my head loll to one side, moaning. This is gonna be worth the beating. Just to have his undivided attention for a few minutes.

"Naughty, naughty boys."

We lift our heads in surprise to see Dru, arms folded sanctimoniously over the black velvet breast of her gown. She wears an amused smile and a spray of blood roses tucked behind one ear.

"Drusilla..." Angelus swallows nervously, his fingers tightening around my arms. "Where's Darla?" He sounds like a guilty schoolboy.

Dru gives us a wicked grin. "There were some pretty children, and then I had an accident. Grandmother's cleaning up the mess before anyone notices." She sucks on a bloodied fingertip thoughtfully. "I won't tell her what you've been doing..." she says slowly, "if I get to play, too."

A slow smile spreads across Angelus' face, and I hold my hand out to her silently. She giggles as I pull her towards me and capture her mouth in a kiss. He loops an arm around her small waist and the tongue that had been at my throat begins to work its way down the front of her dress.

It's the last time I have them both to myself.

Darla finds us, bleeds us, and chains me to the ceiling for the better part of a week.

~Romania, 1898~

I don't know whose idea this was- his? hers?- but it's fucking absurd.

It was so *easy* in London. They never saw it coming, not really- stupid humans. Even the superstitious ones don't have a damn clue about what goes bump in the night. But here- these half-witted peasants have lain cheek and jowl with garlic and crucifixes since before the days of Vlad the Impaler. It's fucking impossible to get a decent meal around here.

Tensions are high, you could say. He acts like we don't bloody well exist, and he hasn't touched me in months. Can't see anything but that bitch these days. Dru stays in our room most of the time, keening and carrying on, scraping her nails across her skin and muttering in Romanian, which is fucking lunacy, 'cause she doesn't know Romanian.

"Te implor, Doamne, nu ignora aceasta rugaminte," she mutters darkly.

"Quiet, Dru."

"Nici mort, nici al fiintei, lasa orbita sa fie vasul care-i va transporta, sufletul la el."

"I said enough already."

She snatches a china pitcher off the dressing table and hurls it at my head, missing by inches. "He's leaving us," she screams hysterically, fingers twisting in her hair. "Don't you understand? The little bird is flying all away and we'll be left alone, alone, all alone..." she bursts into tears.

"Dru, pet... He's not going anywhere-" I attempt to gather her in my arms and she shoves me violently away. "All right, that's enough."

I burst into his room without knocking; he looks up from a volume of Descartes in surprise. "William, what-"

I slam the door behind me. "What the bloody hell is wrong with you?"

He closes the book with a snap and stands, eyeing me dangerously.

"She's having some kind of fit, she thinks you're leaving us, and I'm not sodding surprised. You haven't so much as bloody well looked at us since we arrived in this miserable country. That fucking bitch is all you pay any mind to."

"She's my Sire," he says evenly. "I have a responsibility to-"

"You have a responsibility to *me,*" I interrupt, my hands tightening to furious fists. He stares at me in shock and I know I'm about to get it and good, but the words are tripping and tumbling out over my tongue so fast that I can't stop them. I've waited twenty years to say this. "You have a responsibility to *us.* You took her and destroyed her and made her so batty that she thought making *me* immortal was a good idea, and then you allowed her to do it, so you'd better bloody well believe that this is your fucking responsibility."

He slaps me hard, once. Blood blooms on my bottom lip. I don't even lower my gaze.

"You don't get to talk that way to me." Swift punch to the gut and I double over in pain.

"You're nothing to me." Another hard slap across the face and my nose spurts blood.

"Nothing." Fist slamming into the hollow of my throat.

Nothing to him, right. Nothing to him all those nights when he's inside me and I'm howling his name and he twists his fingers through mine and sinks his fangs into my throat. Nothing to him when he runs his hands through my hair and over the curves of my body and whispers in my ear, pulling me into the nearest darkened alley, just out of the sight of his Sire. Nothing to him now, when he's ripping my clothes off of me and pinning me to the bed and wrenching my legs apart and I don't even try to stop him- I'm nothing, yeah, I'm not even *here.*

Nothing when Dru's down the hall and Darla's in the next room. Nothing compared to them.

I know how this works. He'll lose his patience with beating the shit out of me as soon as his raging hardon gets the better of him and then he'll fuck me into the mattress because he *wants* me and I must be *something* for him to want me that way, right? I've seen the blows he takes from Darla for nights like this and that's got to mean *something.* He hurts me 'cause he loves me and injury always has a higher purpose. Doesn't it? Or maybe that's just me trying to justify the fact that I want it this way, that I can't imagine it being otherwise, that I can't dream of him without scenting blood and seeing bruises. That I've been molded into wanting it after twenty years. Tailored to his desires and his fists and his cock, made and shattered and rebuilt again in his image every. fucking. night and twice as sick as he is for it because I always wanted it this way. I'll forget that when the flesh is healing and the blood is drying up, but it only lasts until the next time that I feel his hands on me, because feeling him force his way into me now is almost the most painful thing in the world. Almost.

Nothing to him, my ass. I'm his fucking property. His liability. Practically his Childe.

He seizes my hipbones roughly and I can feel veins tearing in protest, feel dead blood pooling beneath my skin in bruises that will appear and darken and fade away again before he leaves the room. And I bury my face in the pillow to hide my tears because if Dru's right, if he's leaving us, then those bruises won't even last long enough to remember him by and that, my dears, is fucking tragedy.

"I. don't. owe. you. anything," he grunts as he rams into me. I can feel my blood trickling between our legs. I bite down hard on my lip to mask the sobs and whimpers. The begging. "I. am. not. your. Sire."

It should have been him, I think feverishly. It should have been him in the alley that night, silky hair and whiskey-smooth accent and dark eyes that I could have drowned in. Should've been him, clasping me by the throat with one hand and the balls with the other- not seduction, really, no matter how slowly he ran his lips over my jugular; not Death's Lover, perhaps, never Death's Lover, but certainly Death's Whore. And that would have been all right, that would have been enough for me. To have that claim on him.

But I don't get that. I don't get anything but a quick fuck and a fading bruise.

At length he pulls away and I feel a great rushing emptiness inside of me. Absence of Angelus. "Watch your mouth in the future," he whispers harshly, his fingers trailing off my neck, "or next time Dru gets to watch."

I close my eyes wearily as tears and blood and come soak into the mattress.

I'm not going to get a second time.

----- "Out."

I light a cigarette and quirk an eyebrow at my great-grandsire. "Whassat?"

"Both of you. Leave."

"Now, wait a bloody-"

"Angelus and I have a special evening planned and we don't want the children hanging about. Go out."

"And what? Hunt?" I scoff.

"I don't care *what* you do so long as you don't do it *here.*"

"Yeah, all right," I mutter, tossing my cigarette into the fireplace. "Let's go, Dru."

She puts her doll and hairbrush down and stands up. "Where are we going?"

"To get a drink."

"Goody," she chirps, "my tummy's all rumbly."

"Not that kind of drink."

We end up in a bar just outside Bucharest and I get into a mean game of cards with some arrogant local poofter. He calls himself Count Something-or-Other, and he's been pissing me off all night. I slap down a full house and he raises one immaculately plucked eyebrow in my direction. "Eleven pounds, mate. Pay up."

Trotting nonce makes a big show of patting down his overly brocaded pockets. "I don't seem to have-"

"You'd best get to seeming then, hadn't you?"

"I regret that-"

"Pay up," I insist, with the merest growl.

I pegged him as a vamp first glance- the kind that gets off on looking like one, the kind I can't stand. I don't want to start something here; flash of fangs can come to no good among these garlic-reeking, cross-laden peasants. Don't want to. Doesn't mean I won't.

"We'll have to settle this debt some other time, my young friend." Emphasis on *young.*

I stand up and lean over the table, my eyes flashing gold. "We'll settle this now."

He looks around nervously. The peasants seem to know what he is, and are ready with stakes and holy water if he makes a false move; rumor has it that a herd of Englishmen nearly kicked his ass here on his own turf sometime last year. He can't afford a scene here, but he doesn't seem to be prepared to back down. We're almost at one another's throats when the door crashes open and Darla enters, wild-eyed, her hair in disarray.

"Oh, dear," Dru says absently, "Grandmother's upset."

"Come with me now."

"Darla, I'm a bit-"

"Now, child." The Transylvanian ponce smirks at me as my great- grandsire hauls me out by the ear.

"Where are we going?" I demand as she drags us down the street.

"To get a bite to eat," she snaps.

A buxom Gypsy matron and three paprika-flavored little girls. It's the first decent meal I've had since we got to Romania. I emerge from the caravan with a loud belch; Darla gives me a familiar look of displeasure and distaste, but there is something else behind it. Behind the deadness in eyes.

Perfect despair.

"What?" I say defensively.

She closes her eyes in an attitude of exhaustion and snaps the neck of an elderly Gypsy before her.

"They cry out for mercy," Dru croons, pulling me towards the fire's edge, her hips rubbing enticingly against mine. "They cry out for mercy..."

"Show none," Darla says flatly, and stalks off.

We comply.

"You don't seem very enthusiastic," Dru says pointedly as we rip them all to shreds.

I shrug and crack another neck. "It's no fun when she *tells* us to. 'Sides, I'm full. What's this all about, anyway?" I gesture at the firelit camp, littered with bodies.

"Revenge," Dru whispers softly, bending over the throat of a still- bleeding boy.

"Revenge? For what?"

"For what's to come. When the house of cards comes tumbling, tumbling down." She lets the boy slide off her lap with a small sigh. "You realize, of course," she says dreamily, "that this is all your fault."

"What is?" I retort defensively.

She furrows her brow in confusion. "I'm not quite sure yet. But it's bad, and you just made it worse."

I kneel before her, suddenly afraid. She never sees anything *good,* for Christsakes. "Dru-" Her gaze wanders and I seize her chin between my bloodstained fingers, forcing her to look in my direction. "Dru, what the hell are you talking about? What's gonna happen? What-" I swallow nervously. "What did I do?"

"Too little," she whispers, scraping her nails painlessly down the side of my face. "Too little, too late."

"Dru, what did I-"

"You got hungry," she says, and giggles. "No shame in that. Happens to us all. Oh, but it hatches such terrible, terrible tragedy."

"What can we-"

"Sssshhh. Too late, sweet boy. Too late, too late." She leans forward and places a gentle kiss on my lips.

((he's leaving us, don't you understand, the little bird is flying all away))

I've no idea what it is that I've done.

But I'm beginning to suspect that I just fucked something up royally.

Darla drags us back to the house just before dawn, and Dru flies into fits. "You said he'd join us later!" she cries, wringing her hands convulsively, her eyes brimming with tears. "You said he'd be here-"

"Drusilla, not now." Darla sways slightly, steadies herself against the wall. She's as pale as death.

"What the hell is wrong with all of you?" I snap. "Angelus is an adult, he can take care of himself-" But Dru looks absolutely panicked, and there's a look in Darla's eyes that suggests she's not telling us something.

"Where is he?" Drusilla screeches hysterically. "Where *is* he?"

Darla slaps her hard across the face. "Go to your room."

"But, Grandmother-"

"Go."

She slinks off to her bedroom and I turn to Darla in alarm. "Darla," I demand angrily, "just what the f-"

My words are cut off by a deftly timed punch that sends me sprawling to the floor. I put my fingers to the corner of my mouth and they come away bloody.

"Do you have any idea what you did tonight, William? Do you have any idea what's happening?"

"Don't call me that."

"Answer me."

I smirk at her as my tongue darts out to collect the stream of blood that trickles from my lip. "Killed a few gypsies is all. As per your instructions."

"He's gone!" she screams back, her voice shrill and terrifying. "Don't you understand, child, don't you understand *anything?* He's GONE!"

I scramble to my feet and stare at her in dismay. "Gone?" I stutter. "What do you mean, gone?"

"They took him away from us!"

"What the hell are you- who? Who took-"

"The Gypsies! It was that girl!" she screeches shrilly. "That stupid Gypsy girl that I brought him." She briefly passes one hand over her eyes, as if she's close to weeping.

I twist my hands together uncertainly. I feel like a child. I can feel William scratching his way to the surface and he's about to burst into tears.

"What did they do to him?"

"I don't know," she snaps testily. "A curse... of some sort. I don't want to talk about it." She leans her head against one hand. "Don't tell Drusilla."

The gravity of what has happened begins to settle on me. He's gone. He's gone, and there's no fucking way Darla is going to waste her time on two child-vampires she can barely stand, and that means I'll be alone. Alone with her visions and hysterics and nightmares and sharp nails that rend her own flesh to ragged bits. I love her, but I'm not ready for that. Not yet.

I shuffle nervously from one foot to the other. "Are you going to leave us?"

She eyes me warily.

"Darla-"

"*What?*" Her voice is harsh with worry. She's coming apart at the seams.

"I can't take care of her alone," I say simply. "I... I can't."

"That's hardly my concern-"

"What if he never comes back?" I interject.

She pauses, bites down on her bottom lip.

"Where would you go?" I persist, baiting her. "Back to the fruitbat? Back to frozen fingers and frigid attentions and giving him what he wants of you in exchange for a cold bed and the opportunity to hunt whomever he lets you hunt, fuck whomever he wants you to fuck? Is that what you want, Darla? To spend another century as Heinrich Nest's slut, bleeding according to his whims and permissions? Are you ready to go back to that?"

"Stop it!" she screeches, digging her fingernails into her palms. There's already dried blood on the tips.

((his))

"What if he doesn't come back, Darla? What will you do then?" Because I know, you see. She needs us. She's not ready to be alone, either.

She takes a deep breath, fighting panic. I've got her now.

She's a lot like me.

"He'll be back, *William.*" Less certain this time.

"Well," I say decisively, "I suppose we could all wait for him together."

She thrashes me to a ragged pulp for the next three days, but she doesn't leave.

Chapter 5

She speaks much of her father, says she hears
There's tricks i'the world, and hems and beats her heart.
-William Shakespeare, Hamlet

~*London, 1898*~

It gets bad when we return home. Dreams of Daddy every night, screams and tears and hysterics, spellcastings and garbled prayers and bargaining with the gods to bring him back. The gods aren't interested. Staring through windows and starting at shadows. She's waiting for him to return. He won't.

She blames me, she blames Darla, and I think she blames herself most of all. Doesn't matter, anyway.

I put up with it for three months, and then I wake in the middle of the night to find myself shoving a pillow over her face to muffle the sound of her screaming his name. My hands are shaking and for one terrible moment I think I'm going to hit her.

That night we both sleep alone for the first time in eighteen years.

"We're getting the *fuck* out of England."

Darla just runs a spoon lazily around the rim of a cup of tea that she doesn't intend to drink. Faded blue eyes stare sightlessly at the opposite wall. Her gaze is unfocused these days. I expect her to argue, the way she would've before, the way she did right after he left, when her anger was hot and vengeful and she took the hurt out on me in spades as if the spell that drove him away (*how* exactly it did so we still don't know, Darla still won't speak of it) fell from my very lips.

But she doesn't say a word in protest. Doesn't say much of anything lately, though I can hear weeping through the walls. I'm the only one who hasn't cried since he left.

We leave London. It's very almost nearly a good idea.

~Greece, 1899~

She hasn't spoken for six days.

Six days ago, I told her that if she said *that* name one more time, I would rip her tongue out and cram it down her throat, and I bloody well meant it. Even now my throat closes in fear when I think of just how much I meant it. My fingers trembled with wanting to hurt her, and my body ached with the urge to fuck her into speechlessness.

She fell totally silent then. "I never said you couldn't talk," I said testily after the second day. "I just said you couldn't talk about *him.*" Problem is, I don't think she has anything else to say. Maybe she'll never think of anything to say ever again, I don't know. Maybe nothing ever existed outside of him and now there aren't any words left to describe how empty we all feel. Darla hasn't gotten out of bed since we arrived in Athens. I hunt alone, and come home blind drunk just before dawn every morning. It's all I can do to shut out Dru's deafening silence.

As I watch, she gently lays her favorite doll (the one with long black curls) on the stone kitchen floor and takes a poker in one determined hand. Tears run silently down her cheeks as she smashes the doll to bits.

Something in her eyes tells me that I'm to blame for the cracking and breaking.

~India, 1900~

"Look."

"It's a newspaper," Darla says with her best dry sarcasm, peering at me over the rim of her teacup.

"Read it." I jab my fingertip at the upper corner of the page. "China. Religious war." Her eyes sparkle.

For the first time in two years, we have something to do.

~China, 1900~

I never learn her name.

She's got jet-colored hair and sparkling black eyes, and she gives me the best fight that I've had in twenty years. I'm almost gonna be sorry to see this one end. Almost.

*He* never killed a slayer, goddamnit.

This is the best night of my life.

((take your victim by the throat, quickly, so that they're taken by surprise and can't scream))

My hand closes around her throat with practiced ease, eliciting the merest gasp from the girl. She doesn't even struggle. There's a deadness, an exhaustion in her eyes. As if she wants me to do it. Wants me to end it.

She can't be more than seventeen years old.

((this one. the jugular. learn to spot it))

((tilt the head back, like so, exposing the vein))

I wrench her head back with one hand, sighting pure blue lines running under her golden skin.

((what are you, william))

((i'm a vampire))

Mine. Mine for the taking.

((find the vein, break the skin, drink deep))

My fangs break past the first layer of skin and hot blood rushes down my throat. As soon as it hits my stomach I feel new strength surging through my veins. The blazing outside the window seems twice as bright. My fingertips are trembling, buzzing. I haven't felt like this since...

((i brought him home and i want to keep him))

The girl looks up at me, and I'll be damned if there's not something resembling gratitude in her gaze. She whispers something in her native tongue.

"I'm sorry, love," I retort. "I don't speak Chinese."

Her eyelids flutter and she slips from my hands, falling heavily

((beneath me))

to the floor.

"Oh, Spike..."

Flowing white gown, framed by the flickering flames in the doorway behind her. I've never seen anything so beautiful my entire life. "Look at the wonderful mess you've made," she says breathily, pride shining in her eyes. "Naughty, wicked Spike..."

She holds one hand out to me, firelight glimmering over lines of flesh and bone, and I can almost see myself in wide eyes that don't stray from mine. Dru doesn't hold a gaze easily- lashes flutter and attention wanders, caught up in rose petals and flickers of vision and snatches of nonsense poetry. It's only been a few months since she stopped screaming his name all day as she slept, only a few months since she stopped scanning streets constantly for sight of him or keeping silent vigil at rainwashed windowpanes, only a few months since those eyes have started seeing me again at all, and she hasn't looked at me that way since the night I was turned. As if nothing else existed. Not even him.

She lets out a soft gasp of delight as I push her roughly against the wall, moans when I pull her to the floor with me and push white lace away from soft skin. Screams my name when she comes, legs clenched tight around me, staring into my eyes. Seeing not dead things or absent things or unreal things but me. Only me.

He's finally, finally gone.

Our clothes are bloodstained and dirt-covered, the edges licked by fire, and while I don't care much, Dru wants something pretty to wear while we massacre the locals. We link hands as we make our way back to the pagoda; we are only two streets away when her fingers start to tremble. "Dru?" I ask, but she says nothing. Finally she stops short in the footpath in front of the house, her eyes wide. "Dru, love?" I try again.

"Eyes like needles." She lifts one hand to press against her cheek. "Daddy's home."

"What?" My voice trembles only slightly. "Dru, that's absurd."

"Make sure you cut clear to the bone," she says, and giggles. "Put the blade in the wall."

"What are you-"

"Ssh." She presses one finger to her lips. "They're not here right now anyway. In the streets somewhere. The whirlwind, you know. Of course, the whirlwind. Mustn't waste any time- who knows how long we have left?"

I rush into the house and, yes, there are signs. His clothes in the wardrobe, his pipe on the mantlepiece. But no matter. The house reeks of his presence, of cinnamonspice and heartblood and desire. The rugs and walls and furniture are imprinted with him. I don't need Dru's fortune- teller ramblings to tell me that he's back. I can smell him.

((yes))

((angelus our my angelus))

((no))

I fight to calm myself as Dru emerges in fresh clothes. What the hell does it matter, anyhow? It's just Angelus. Didn't we know all along he'd be back? Of course we did.

Besides, there's nothing he can do to ruin tonight for me. This is my night, my kill, my girl, and he can't have it. It's not enough to belong to him anymore. I need something that belongs to me for a change.

He can't have what's mine.

One of us, he said. "Guess that makes you one of us." Oh, and I want to believe it, want it so bad that it makes my insides ache, makes them twist in two-year-old knots. I don't want to miss him anymore. I don't want to love him. What I want is to stop feeling this way.

Because, truth be told, there's not enough "mine" in the world to make me stop wanting to be *his.*

I trace my hand across the empty surface of the mirror; the only thing it reflects back at me is a smear of bloodied fingerprints. Certainly doesn't reflect *him,* but no matter. I hear the footsteps, feel his hesitant hand on my shoulder. Besides, there's a knowledge of him that resonates whenever he is near. He is inside me; he is part of me. The part that I want to rip from my body and dash to the ground and stomp into bloody little pieces.

"Spike-"

I pull away roughly. "Don't touch me."

Nervous pause. "How'd you kill her?"

I pool water into my hands and splash my face. The cut over my eye's still oozing blood. "Snapped her neck."

"Just like I taught you," he murmurs softly.

I grab a towel and chuckle darkly. "Something like that, yeah." I'm not giving him credit for this. He wasn't even there.

He shuffles uneasily. "I missed you."

I tighten my jaw, turn away from him. "Don't lie."

Reaches out, fingers grazing my shoulder. "Will-"

"Don't call me that. And don't fucking touch me, I said."

"William, I want-"

"Bloody hell! What? You want what?" I stare down at his hand and suddenly I realize exactly what he wants. "Fucking Christ. You want to fuck me, don'tcha? The Ice Queen not blowing your sorry arse enough, you've got to come after me?" I pull back and shove him away roughly. "Fuck you. I don't owe you this... I don't owe you anything. You've been gone two years. You weren't here, Angelus." I feel an ache forming in the bottom of my throat and I clench my jaw hard. "I killed a Slayer and you weren't even-" I hitch a sharp breath and bite down on my lower lip. "Sod off."

Hands come up against my shoulders and push me hard to the wall. "You don't get to talk like that to me, boy." Words so familiar I could swear they're etched somewhere in the surface of my brain but an uncertainty, somehow, in his voice? Something different. His face is only inches from mine, tongue darting out to collect the trickle of blood that still flows from my brow, and he's going to fuck me and I *want* it. I want him. And I hate myself for it. Hate myself but that's not enough to make me stop him when his tongue goes down my throat and his hands fumble first with his trousers, then with mine, not enough to stop the careful fingertips that brush against my hardening cock or the gasp that tears from my throat or the fangs that sink into my jugular and my fingertips, tightening around his shoulders as he. Swallows me. Because I'm his whore.

He gazes for a moment at the blood pooled in his palm before sliding two, then three blood-slickened fingers inside of me. I whimper softly and lean my head against his shoulder, biting down hard on my lower lip.

Two years. Two fucking years and God. How I've missed him.

"What do you want, William?" he murmurs, his voice slightly amused. "Tell me what you want."

I put my lips by his ear and, in a hushed whisper, tell him in to uncertain terms *exactly* what I want

((you inside me all of you please now Angelus))

and he chuckles softly, laying me down on the chaise lounge like a fragile gift.

"How I've missed you, my boy."

I just moan against the fabric of his shirt. I want desperately to believe him. I want all sorts of things desperately. I am made up of wanting and desperation and ready, begging flesh and I. need. him. I can feel his hardness against my opening and he's teasing me, the fucker's *teasing* me, and "Angelus, for fuck's sake, please, Sire, *now*-"

He thrusts into me hard and I let out a sharp yelp of pleasure. "Sshh, boy," he murmurs, clamping a hand down over my mouth and looking over his shoulder nervously. "Don't want Darla to hear, do we? Sshh..."

I bite down hard on his palm and he pulls his hand away with a surprised laugh. "I don't care about Darla," I retort sharply, tongue darting out to collect the trickle of blood ((his)) that runs down my chin, "I don't fucking care what she- ohhhh..." He lifts my hand to his lips, runs his tongue along the surface of my palm, and sinks his teeth in.

Turn and turn about is fair play.

Careful hands hold my thighs apart ((gentle, why is he being gentle?)) as he presses his cock deep inside me and my teeth come down on my lower lip to muffle my howls. Don't want to wake Darla, don't want her to stop this, ever ever ever. He smells like cinnamon and leather, he smells like my blood, and I bite back

((love you Sire you fucking bastard hate you want you need you love you))

words I shouldn't say.

The sensation of his abdomen brushing against my cock is pure torture, but I don't dare say anything. He very often has been known not to let me finish, and he can make things *extremely* uncomfortable for me if he so chooses. Smooth flesh and muscles caress the sensitive skin as he thrusts into me and oh, God, I want him to touch me, I need him to touch me so badly. His tongue begins to work at the already healing edges of the wound in my throat and I let out a frustrated moan. Fuck, I'm close, I'm so close, and I can't take it anymore. Please God let him let me come this time, please fucking Christ let him allow me to come, he can beat me to a frazzle if he wants to he can bleed me dry he can break every bone in my body as long as he *touches* me. I throw my head back, staring sightlessly at the ceiling, tears starting to fill my eyes. "Angelus," I whisper, knowing I can't rely on his mercy but begging all the same, "fuck, Sire, *please,* I need-"

And, to my surprise, he closes his strong fingers around me and begins to stroke my length. I gasp in surprise, staring at him, his dark eyes melting into my pale ones. He leans forward and brushes his lips softly against mine, threading his fingers through my hair- "What is it you need, my boy?" he whispers against my mouth.

((something's different about him something's changed i don't know what and i. don't. *care*))

I whimper something unintelligible in reply as his hand begins to echo the rhythm of his hips. My vision has gone blurry and his whispered voice in my ear sounds very, very far away. And I want this to last. Forever. It won't, but I want it to. Want. I want.

"Sire-"

...and suddenly his hand closes tight around the base of my cock, preventing release.

((no no please no fucking christ no))

"Do you love me, boy?"

My eyes widen in surprise. "Do I- fuck! Do I *what?*"

Pins me down with one hand, still holding my cock tight in the other. Story of my bleedin' life. "Do you?"

"Yes, all right?" I snap, agitated by the blatant pleading in his gaze. As if he didn't know. "Yes, you fucking bastard, yes."

"But could you always?" he demands intensely. "If things were different- if everything changed, if I changed- would you still?"

"Of course," I whisper hoarsely. Who does he think I am- Darla? Does he think my love can turn with comings or goings, life or death of the changes of tides? My love is older than either of us, twice as stubborn and three times as stupid. My love will outlast us both. "Of course, always."

Bloody stupid question.

He loosens his grip and strokes me firmly again, once, twice, thrusts into me again, hard, harder, and I bury my face into the crook of his neck and I *scream*- "ohfuckangelus," I babble senselessly as I come, digging my fingernails hard into his shoulders, "ohgodsireyespleaseoh*christ*angelusFUCK-" My screams choke off into a strangled sob as he clutches me to his chest, a shudder tearing through him as he climaxes, and then holds me tightly against his body, whispering my name in my ear again and again.

His lips trail slowly off my neck as he pulls away and there is a distance in his gaze and I realize something so suddenly and painfully that my throat catches and my chest seizes up. He's leaving. Leaving us, leaving me. He's already gone. Maybe not today, maybe not tomorrow, but soon. It's over. Again.

He leaves me exhausted and trembling on the chaise as he turns away to collect his trousers. I stand slowly, staring at him in horror. When I speak, my voice is harsh and bitter.

"You're going to leave again, aren't you?"

He starts, turns towards me. "No, William-"

"Liar." I'm speaking around tears now. "You fucking liar." I hurriedly pull up my trousers and adjust my suspenders, keeping myself focused on the task so I don't have to look at him. My hands are trembling. "Do you have any idea she did to us when you left?" I sputter furiously. "Do you have any idea what she'll do if you leave again?"

"You don't have to stay," he retorts. "You're not a fledgeling anymore, Spike. You're the slayer of Slayers now."

"And where the hell am I supposed to go, Angelus?" I reply angrily, snatching my shoes from the floor. "I belong-"

((with you))

I bite my lip and look away.

A strange expression passes over his face and he starts towards me. "William-"

"Don't," I snap. "You don't get to call me that anymore." I back away from him slowly. He watches me leave; his eyes are wide and miserable, but he makes no effort to stop me.

When I am safely in bed, I bury my head beneath the pillows and weep softly.

The sound doesn't wake Dru.

I wake to the breaking of glass.

And I know, goddamnit. I sit up in bed and a lump rises in my throat and I *know.* And it's still too soon. Please, no, not yet, not yet. Oh, God, I knew it was coming I knew it was going to happen but please I'm not ready *not* *yet*-

I crawl out of bed silently and make my way down the hallway as quickly as I can, the cut over my brow still throbbing. Stop short outside the parlor door. Broken window, empty basket, shattered glass, and Darla. Just. Darla. Darla and shard-sharpness and remembrance and longing, strewn about all to hell.

No. I can still taste him in my mouth. I can still feel him inside of me. He can't be gone already. He can't. No.

"Where is he?" Voice trembling, frightened, unfamiliar. Two shaky steps forward. "Darla." She glances up, eyes wide and wild and not quite sane. "Where *is* he?"

Her voice is hoarse, nearly inaudible. "He's gone."

"You let him leave?" My voice rises in pitch and intensity, seemingly of its own accord. "He- he just got here-"

"I didn't *let*-"

"You stupid bitch!" I scream, tears rising in my throat. "How the hell could you do this? You let him leave!"

She clenches her fists and her eyes flash fury at me. "Don't take that tone with me, Spike. I did *not*-"

Soft footsteps behind us, an uncertain whisper. "Spike?"

I can feel my jaw tightening up. "Go to bed, Dru." I don't turn around.

"There was a dreadful noise-"

"Pet-" I start, without a bit of affection or patience in my voice.

"Everything's broken," she murmurs, eyeing the shattered window somberly.

I whirl around in rage, fists clenching, tears building in my throat. Blood's starting to trickle into my eyes again, it stings, my head hurts, I just want to go to sleep. I swallow hard, but I cannot prevent the flash of fangs.

"Drusilla-"

I will not be her keeper tonight. There's no one left to keep her for, anyway. I will break her into little pieces if she asks me where he's gone. I will.

"I told you to go to bed."

Her eyes widen and she whimpers, clutching her doll to her chest. With a silent nod, she shuffles out of the room.

"Very impressive," Darla says sarcastically when Dru is gone.

"Shut up," I snarl, moving menacingly towards her. She blinks in surprise, moves towards the wall. "Shut. Up. This is all your fault- you worthless little bitch. What the hell good are you, anyway? No one asks very much of you, Darla." I continue to move towards her, fangs flashing in her face, and she backs into the silk-papered wall behind her. "You were always inferior to him in every way. None of us ever wanted you around. You were nothing before you were turned, and you're nothing now. The only purpose you ever served was to fuck Angelus and keep him happy, and you couldn't even do that right. And now he's gone, gone *forever,* and it's all your fault!"

"*My* fault?" she screeches, her eyes blazing. "Who killed off that Gypsy family whose lives could have brought him back to us? This is all *your* fault!"

"Shut up!" I scream hysterically, my voice choked with tears. "Don't you *dare* fucking blame this on me! You useless, sorry whore, if *you'd* been worth anything, he wouldn't have left you-"

((wouldn't have left us))

"Maybe it wasn't me he left, child."

I slap her hard against the face and she stares at me in shock. One hand comes up to seize her by the throat and hold her hard against the wall.

((see me))

There's a sharp knife laying on the table near the wall. I bet her blood is dark. Finely aged. Hints of salt tears and dry, bitter things. The blade is just barely tinged with red.

((his))

I run my finger slowly down the edge of the blade, biting down on my lip. I raise my eyes slowly to Darla's pale and stricken face.

I could bleed her for hours and she'd never make a sound, but I can smell her fear now, and that's enough. That's enough for me. I killed a Slayer tonight, goddamnit. I don't need this anymore.

"I've had enough of this bullshit, Darla," I mutter, releasing her. "We don't need this. We don't need *you.*" I examine my fingertip, where his blood has collected. "Dru and I are leaving as soon as the sun sets."

She nods weakly.

"If he comes back-"

"He won't."

"If he comes back," I continue doggedly, "don't tell him where we are. I don't want him finding her. You understand?"

"I understand," she snaps. "Just go, William." I nod and leave her alone by the shattered window.

When I am in the darkened hallway, alone, I lean against the the wall and bring my bloodied fingertip to my lips.

And taste him.

One last time.

She's in bed when I return to our room. Laying on her back, hangs clasped to her breast, eyes wide in the darkness.

"Something's happening," she mutters bitterly, "and you won't tell me what it is."

Sometimes she's only psychic in retrospect.

"It doesn't matter," I reply, blowing out the candle. "It's over now, anyway."

***

Chapter 6

III. Drusilla

You can't talk to a psycho like a normal human being.
~Poe, "Trigger Happy Jack"

"Pack your things."

She sits up slowly, blinks sleepy eyes at the chaotic state of our bedroom. I've been up since before sunset and all of my things are ready to go; I've got her steamer trunks open and her clothes strewn around the room. "Get up, Dru."

She furrows her brow in confusion. "Why is everything so messy?"

I toss the curtains aside and let moonlight stream into the room. "Hurry, pet. The train leaves at midnight."

She stares at me stubbornly, pretending not to understand.

"Drusilla. Now."

She shakes her head silently and I grasp her by the arm, hauling her out of bed.

"We are getting on that train in four hours, Dru, with or without your dresses and lace gloves and hair ribbons and bloody dolls and whatnot-"

"No," she says calmly.

My fingers tighten harshly around her arm.

"Not without my Angel."

My hand flies out, completely of its own volition, and strikes her hard across the face. She gasps, her eyes wide with shock, one hand coming up to cup her reddening cheek. I close my fists around her arms and press her hard against the wall. Porcelain figurines on the shelves rattle in protest. "I don't *ever* want to hear that name again. Do you understand?"

She starts to giggle and I slap her again, once, twice. A cut opens in her lower lip and blood trickles down her chin; I resist the urge to lick it away. I didn't want this, didn't want it to be this way but oh it feels good.

"He's gone. He's left again, he's left both of us, and he's never coming back. I don't want to hear his name, I don't want to hear anything about him, is that clear?" Bruises bloom on her skin under my fingertips. "Do you understand me, Dru?"

She nods wordlessly, her eyes filling with tears.

"Good." I lean forward and press my lips against hers, tasting blood and salt. "That's my girl. Now get ready." She kneels on the floor and continues to weep silently as she packs her things.

An hour later, Darla's servants load our belongings into a carriage as she sits at the dining room table with yet another untouched cup of tea and stares off into space. She doesn't glance at us; she hasn't spoken since I left her room last night.

"Grandmother?" Dru says uncertainly, clutching her favorite doll to her chest.

I take her hand gently in mine. "Let's go, pet."

Her lower lip trembles slightly. "Grandmother won't talk."

"She'll be all right, love. Let's go."

"Goodbye, Grandmother," she whispers sadly, and lets me pull her away from the dining-room table.

Six months later, our boat arrives at Ellis Island. When Dru sees the the Statue of Liberty, she claps her hands together excitedly.

"It's beautiful," she whispers. "It's fairyland."

~*Long Island, New York, 1922*~

Prohibition? Bollocks. I've never seen so much alcohol in my life, and I can't remember the last time I was this drunk- or this hysterically, blissfully happy. The band starts up another jazz number and Dru and I spin around on the dance floor, laughing like loons.

I fucking love the Twenties.

I'll be forty-two next month, and I'm starting to get this kind of, I don't know, perspective. I've seen enough to compare it all, and I think I'm enjoying this decade best by far. I mean, where else can you get great booze, great parties, fantastic music, and women with short hair and knee-length skirts? "You should get one of those dresses," I whisper to Dru, nodding to a cute blonde with chin-length hair and a short pink dress. She gives me a horrified look, and I sigh. Dru, who hasn't worn underwear since 1862 and knows fifty-two ways to make me scream her name (only seventeen of them painful), still refuses, in this modern age, to wear a dress that shows her knees. She still doesn't approve of my hair, which I keep dyed dark brown and plastered closely to my head with pomade. Dru still dresses the way she did the night we met; she probably always will.

"Having fun, pet?"

"I want to raise the demon," she pouts.

"What have I told you about raising demons at parties?" I scold. "We're never gonna be invited anywhere if you keep that up." I take a gulp of gin. "Sides, you don't even *speak* Estruchan."

She frowns at me, pushing her bottom lip out slightly. "Then we'll just have to find someone who does."

Dru speaks flawless Latin, and I can hold my own in Spanish, Italian, and a half-a-dozen demon tongues, plus some Greek left over from my university days. That covers about nine-tenths of the spells that Dru attempts (I say attempts because she lacks patience for the follow- through). The Estruchan Resurrection of Divine Chaos spell, however, is not one of them. "Dru," I plead, "do we have to do this? Can't we just enjoy the party without... you know... resurrecting anything?" I mean, I'm glad she's so innovative and everything, but I'd really just rather have a drink and enjoy the band.

"*He* would have helped me," she mutters darkly.

My hand tightens around the glass. She hasn't said his name once in the twenty-two years since we left China, but that certainly doesn't prevent her from mentioning him. Especially when she wants to goad me into giving her her way.

"You hungry?" I ask, ignoring her comment.

Nod.

"Come on, then," I reply, motioning towards the more secluded rooms down the hallway. We've never been ones for stealthily picking off the ones who go unnoticed- if there's gonna be bloodshed, might as well make an event of it- but this is a really great party, and I'm not gonna go fucking it up by bringing stained carpets and hysterical guests and questioning policemen into the mix. People tend to stay in crowds at these gatherings, but we do find a bloke alone in the library- thirty-ish, bearded, bespectacled.

Reading poetry.

((quickly, please, i'm the very spirit of vexation. what's another word for gleaming?))

This has got to be one of the greatest damn parties of the decade (although we're only two years into the decade so I shouldn't speak so soon) and this wanker's spending it in a corner reading a fucking volume of poetry.

((it's a perfectly perfect word as many words go, but the bother is nothing *rhymes,* you see))

No one should ever spend a good party alone with poetry, for Christ's sake. It's right unseemly.

"Having fun, mate?"

He looks up in surprise. "Um. Well. Yes. No, not actually. I don't really- well- know anyone here, really."

I waggle my eyebrows significantly at Dru. No friends means no one will miss him until they find the body sometime tomorrow morning. "I'm Spike," I say, grinning at the familiar confusion that always greets my nickname. "This is my girl, Drusilla."

"Dalton," he says, rising and extending his hand. "Dr. Phillip D-Dalton."

"This one is full of feeling," Dru says strangely, taking the proffered hand. "He reads-" She shakes her head and seems to come to herself.

"Sorry." The apology is automatic, instinctual. "She's a loony." Dru gives us a wide grin and nods energetically. I pull out my cigarette-case and offer him a smoke; he shakes his head. "So, Doctor, eh?"

"Well, um, Ph.D. I'm a p-professor at the university," he explains hesitantly. "L-literature and l-l-linguistics."

"Linguistics?" I inquire, casting a meaningful glance at Dru.

Her eyes light up and she claps her hands in delight. "Do you speak Estruchan?"

Turns out he does.

~*Spain, 1948*~

The bulls are everywhere.

They crash into the drawing room, smashing into windows and shattering furniture. One of them plows right through the dining-room door, stands there for a moment looking dazed, and runs out again, grunting. Three hapless mortals who didn't have the sense to get out yet are trampled and killed instantly; a fourth is gored on sharp horns, screeching madly. A wild young calf barrels into the room, knocks over a candelabra, and sets the drapes ablaze. I nod to my two most expendable minions, who go the attend the quickly spreading inferno and are soon set on fire themselves. They tear through the room screaming, which doesn't do much for the already precarious psychological state of the wild animals currently wrecking my home. The air is filled with the stench of bull dung, human blood, and flaming vampires. The rest of my employees become overwhelmed with panic and make a mad dash for the exits, which are now blocked with crumbled stonemasonry. The bulls have now trampled everything in sight and are running in madcap circles around the room. And, in the midst of it all, stands Dru, perched atop a relatively intact coffee table in the eye of the hurricane, clutching her spellbook to her chest and laughing wildly as the house falls down around her.

I'm really not all that sure how exactly this happened.

I could blame Dalton, of course, but he's only doing his job. He's proven indispensable; he can translate nearly anything, and what he doesn't know, he makes up with alarmingly inventive skill. Dru can't tell the difference anyhow.

But I don't know *what* the hell those two have cooked up this time. All I can tell is that it involved three Fyarl demons, twenty-seven Spanish bulls, and one extremely psychotic matador who had sold his soul to the devil for the national championship. Mix ingredients with thirty-two party guests (seventeen humans and fifteen vamps), shake well, and Carnivale has officially begun.

Works in theory, of course, and I gave my smile-and-nod approval like I do every time that Dru comes to me with a new harebrained scheme. Problem is that my villa's on fire, several humans are dead, nearly my entire crew has been wiped out, and the *polic?a* are on their way.

It's our sixty-eighth anniversary, you see. Don't ask me why the sixty-eighth is important; Dru seems to pick these significant years at random, completely neglecting milestones like the twenty-fifth and fiftieth while celebrating the seventeenth and thirty-third with wild abandon. I don't mind; keeps things interesting. But the seventeenth and thirty-third, while somewhat chaotic and extremely messy, weren't nearly this disastrous. She hired a band, ordered sixteen cases of champagne, and hand-wrote the invitations, which she delivered by wandering into bars and picking people at random. Then she approached our trusty transcriber for help in whipping up a little Chaos spell. Two nights before the party, Dalton crept into my study and suggested, in tremulous tones, that what Dru had planned might not be such a good idea after all. I glanced at him over the corner of my newspaper and asked him if *he'd* like to be the one to tell her that she couldn't have her party like she'd planned.

He left without a word.

The evening of our anniversary, we exchanged gifts- diamond earrings from me, a crushed handmade paper flower from her- and made love on an enormous heap of rose petals that she had tossed on the bedroom floor as guests began to gather in the parlor. When the clock began to chime ten, she playfully pushed me off of her and reached for her spellbook.

"Now the fun begins," she giggled.

Ten minutes later, my house was on fire.

I'm snapping the last policeman's neck when a rather disheveled Dalton rushes into the room, his coattails still smoldering. "If I might not be remiss in my suggestion," he says nervously, wringing his hands, "perhaps we should leave Madrid."

We return to the U.S., where the postwar political situation is less threatening and the parties are largely bull-free.

Chapter 7

~*Boston, Massachusetts, 1957*~

"What'd'ya think?" I ask, lighting a cigarette and pushing my jet-black, heavily Brylcreemed hair out of my eyes to better view the beautiful sight before me. "You fancy it?"

She giggles and hops up and down like a small child. "It shines."

I run a finger down the side of the gleaming black automobile. The 1957 Dodge DeSoto, prettiest fucking piece of machinery on God's green earth, a car so hot that I'm getting hard just looking at it.

I've loved cars since we saw our first ones not long after arriving in the States, but Dru was so petrified of them that we didn't purchase one of our own until the mid-thirties (it was 1942 before I could convince her to ride in it). But it's not running so well these days, and besides, I want something sportier, more modern. I give Dru a questioning glance and she nods enthusiastically.

"Well then," I say, my fingers trailing slowly off the DeSoto's surface, "let's go make ourselves a purchase."

The car dealership's front window yields easily to my motorcycle jacket-clad elbow; I'm halfway done pawing through a drawerful of car keys when the night-watchmans's flashlight beam washes over us. He draws his gun and I roll my eyes. "Kitten," I call to Dru, who is currently jumping up and down on the leather seats of the Thunderbird convertible on display, "take care of the nasty man, will you? Daddy's working."

She approaches the watchman and raises two fingers. "Look into my eyes, dearie. That's a good boy."

"No use wasting parlor tricks on the hired help, Dru," I interrupt.

"Hush. You have your fun and I'll have mine," she retorts. "Be in my eyes... be... in me..." The watchman's stare goes blank and Dru thrusts out her bottom lip in an adorable pout. "That was too easy. Stupid, stupid boy." She slices his throat open with a manicured nail and delicately licks his blood from her fingertip. "Yech!" she exclaims, making a face and letting the body drop to the floor. "Tastes like cheap whiskey and onion rings. Dreadful."

"You're hungry? We'll go get something to eat as soon as I find the key."

Dru plucks the flashlight out of the watchman's limp hand and starts to make shadow puppets on the walls. "Oh, now that we have a car, let's go to one of those hamburger restaurants with the girls on roller skates, they're lovely." She licks her lips in anticipation. "They taste like bubblegum and vanilla ice cream."

"Sure thing, pet." I locate the DeSoto's ignition key and we race out to the parking lot, hand in hand, laughing like loons.

"Listen to that engine purr," I say appreciatively as the car hums to life. I switch on the radio and find an Elvis tune.

"Mrrrrowwwrrr," Dru whispers softly. She cuts her eyes slyly towards the backseat. "I want to play."

I cup her face in my hands and press my lips against hers. "You're positively wicked, pet." In response she climbs nimbly into the backseat, dragging me with her.

Mmmm. Leather interior.

~*Woodstock Music Festival, Bethel, New York, 1969*~

"I hate the summers here," she pouts, tapping her fingernails against the tie-dye-curtained window. "Sunlight, sunlight, like bright yellow birds that fly inside and peck at my brain, peck, peck, peck-" Tap. Tap. Tap. The tips of her fingers are beginning to sizzle. "I want to go to Canada, Spike. Sweden. Siberia. Somewhere where the nighttime lasts all day."

I look up from the boxes littering the back of the stolen van and quirk an eyebrow. "The nighttime lasts all- oh, never mind." I toss aside a carton of tiedyed t-shirts and Haight-Ashbury posters. "There's nothing good in- hey! Records." I pull out an album and nod in the direction of the two dead hippies that lay slumped in the front seat of the van. "Their taste in decor was crap, but the music collection ain't half-bad."

"Music's so lovely." She presses an ear to the door of the van, running her hands over the surface as if trying to feel the vibrations of sound from the concert outside. "I want to be *in* it, Spike. I want to taste the guitars and pluck the notes out the air... how much longer must we stay in this awful van? I don't like the curtains; they hurt my eyes."

"Just a little while longer, pet," I reply absentmindedly, flipping through a stack of records. "The sun'll be down in about an hour." There's a portable record player in the back of the van, one of those battery- operated deals that plays for about twenty minutes before going dead, but our young hippie friends, who tasted like wheat germ and cheap wine, kept a plentiful supply of batteries in the back. I put on a Grateful Dead record and pray to some unspecified deity that the sun's gone down before their set starts. I didn't miss much of anything yesterday, even wandering off during the nighttime sets- crap like Ravi Shankar and Joan Baez (did I come all the way to New York to hear "Sing Low, Sweet Chariot"? I think not)- for a leisurely feed. But I had to sit in this bloody van through Santana's set three hours ago, and *that* bloody well infuriated me.

"Hey, look what we have here!" I exclaim appreciatively, lifting a small plastic bag out of the bottom of the box.

Dru narrows her eyes. She doesn't like the "green stuff," as she calls it; partially because of the smell, but mostly because my job is to act sane and keep her grounded and I'm not much good when I'm acting... well, like her. Or, as she said hotly the first time I came down, "Only Princess is supposed to see things that aren't there, Spike."

I roll a joint with an expert hand. "You want?" I ask, offering it to her.

She shakes her head vehemently. "It coats the world in chocolate and puts ladybugs in my thoughts."

"Fair enough." I light the joint and take a deep drag. "I'm so bloody bored. What's the point of a three-day-long concert when you can't go outside during the day? Maybe we should've gone somewhere else. I hear it's pretty cool in San Francisco."

"You wouldn't like it," she murmurs, tracing her fingers over the tacky curtains. "You hate all this, you know."

"I didn't say I hated it," I say defensively, reeling my thoughts back into order as I start to feel the effects of the pot. "I just don't like being stuck in a bloody van all-"

"No," she retorts. "Not the van or the concert or the ugly curtains or the pretty green plants in plastic bags-" As if in response, I expel a stream of smoke and giggle. "I mean everything right now." She tips her head to one side and says in a singsong voice, "Peace, love, harmony-" She laughs helplessly at the insanity of it all. "It's silly. You know it's silly. We were born to make wars, my lovely, not stop them."

I shrug, knowing that she's right. I've grown my hair out past my ears and I've taken to wearing dirty jeans baggy t-shirts, mainly so I'm not too conspicuous among the flower children. I like grass, yeah, and the Rolling Stones fucking *rock,* but I don't believe in any of it. "We could go somewhere else."

She shakes her head. "No. This is important. Children will read about this one day in history-books."

"This?" I ask incredulously. "This concert?" But I don't argue. After the Stock Market crash and the bombing at Pearl Harbor, both of which she foresaw, I've learned not to argue.

Five hours later we're grooving to Janis Joplin, dancing through the crowd, high as kites. "That one," Dru whispers, pointing to a pretty little blonde-curled, blue-eyed thing, decked in flowers. "So pretty, like a fairy-child. Can I have her? Can I, Spike?"

I trail a line of kisses down the side of her neck. "Anything you please, Princess."

The girl goes down easy, without struggle, as if she never noticed we were there. Hot blood courses down my throat as I suckle her braceleted wrists, leaving the jugular vein for Dru.

"She tastes funny." Dru drops the girl to the ground and wavers slightly, pressing her hand to her forehead. "Spike? I-"

I start to answer, but my concentration is immediately absorbed by my right hand, at which I begin to stare in utmost concentration.

"Wow," I whisper.

Three hours later -----

Five, I think in wonder. I've got five fingers. It's, like, y'know? Five.

Wow.

It's- like- a *hand,* y'know? Kind of like a foot. I squint suspiciously as my hand to make sure it isn't turning into a foot. But no, it couldn't possibly, because it's attached to my arm and not my leg, isn't it? I shake my hand about to make sure it's still firmly attached at the wrist, lest it escape and become a foot. But bright trails of colored fire shoot out from my fingertips every time I wriggle my hand and I forget to keep my vigilance.

"Wow," I whisper again. If I can say anything else, I've forgotten how.

I hear a familiar-sounding scream from the other side of the lawn.

Time to worry about it later. When I've figured out this whole hand groove, y'know?

-----

By the time I've come down enough to realize what the fuck is going on, it's nearly six in the morning and I can hear her screaming bloody murder from the other side of the campsite. I run to her as fast as I can.

Fucking hell. Dru on acid. Given her normal mental state, I can't even begin to imagine what...

I find her under a tree, bleeding and terrified, most of her clothes missing. It's only minutes until sunrise.

//one pill makes you larger and one pill makes you small //and the ones that mother gives you don't do anything at all //go ask alice when she's ten feet tall//

Jefferson Airplane has just taken the stage.

//when the men on the chessboard get up and tell you where to go //and you've just had some kind of mushroom and your mind is moving low //go ask alice //i think she'll know//

"Pet?" I ask anxiously. "Are you all right?" Stupid question.

//when logic and proportion have fallen slowly dead //and the white knight is talking backwards and the red queen's on her head//

She looks up, her eyes wide and wild, and says a name that she hasn't spoken in sixty-nine years.

//remember what the doormouse said//

"My Angel was here. He was very, very angry with me."

//feed your head//

I sit beside her on the damp grass, and hold her as she sobs.

~*New York City, 1976*~

It's been awhile since I've tracked one, but I've gotten restless in the last few years. It's been too long since I've gotten into serious trouble.

The down-to-business ones must be easier to kill; I wasn't in China a week before I took down that first Slayer. I've been back in Alphabet City for nearly two months now and I haven't gotten the better of this one yet. The little bitch simply doesn't play by the rules. I'm gonna stop turning minions for myself if she's just gonna kill 'em all off, it's a waste of my bleedin' time.

Her name is Nikki, and she's got the greatest ass I've ever seen.

Dru knows, of course, because Dru figures out everything sooner or later, and you'd better believe she isn't happy about it. Never mind the fact that I'm not fucking the Slayer and have no plans to; never mind the fact that I *have* to get close to her to fight her, have to understand her every thought, plan her every move. Dru doesn't understand any of that; she's just pissed off that I'm having "naughty thoughts."

That's okay, though, 'cause it'll be over soon. Three weeks ago, her mother- a single woman supporting Nikki and two brothers on a shoestring budget- lost her job. Last week, her boyfriend of a year broke up with her after a vampire broke his arm during a graveyard scuffle. At that point, he said, he'd "had enough of this monster-fighting shit." Two nights ago, vampires killed her best friend.

I didn't have anything to do with the arm-breaking or those nasty wounds on her best mate's neck, but I'm glad they happened. I learned from the best, they might say; but truth be told, I don't so much emulate Angelus as sit back and watch poncy buggers like him do all the work. Things like what he did to Dru- killing off the family and friends, taking the victim's world to pieces before moving in for the final blow- not for the sake of any ulterior goal, just to rack up points on their evil karmic scale. It's a stupid waste of time, but it makes my job easier. Because I've got the patience to wait 'til that little Slayer's ready to crack, and then I step in to give her what she wants.

I've been waiting for one good day.

This is going to be too easy.

~*New Orleans, Louisiana, 1987*~

Strings of cheap, brightly colored plastic beads- hundreds of them, it seems- hang from the hotel ceiling. Lying on her back, she reaches up and twists her fingers through the tinkling strands.

"I'm bored, Spike," she muses. "I'm tired of America."

I roll over on the bed to face her, placing one foot on the floor when the room starts to spin dangerously. Mardi Gras just ended, and I haven't been sober for two weeks now. "Tired of America?" I sputter incredulously. "How the bloody hell can you get tired of *America*?" The thought doesn't seem possible. It's so damn *big.* Fifty states to get into trouble in. You get bored with the South, you go out West. You get bored with the West, you hit the Midwest. When you get bored with the Midwest (doesn't take long, believe me), you've got the North. We've lived in twenty-seven different cities since we got here and I'm *still* not bored. It would take me at least the whole fucking century to get tired of America, and the century's nearly come and gone without me getting restless yet.

But Dru doesn't have much of an attention span. "I want to see the ocean again."

"Fine," I say grumpily, burying my face in the pillows and groping at the bedside table for my beer. "We'll go to Florida."

Dru wrinkles her nose in distaste. She didn't think much of Florida, and Disney World positively terrified her. "No. No more neon-plastic spiderwebs and tinfoil streetcars, Spike. I want to see buildings older than I am. I want to smell the centuries." She tugs hard on a strand of purple beads and the string snaps, scattering bits of plastic all over the bed. "Athens. Milan. Provence. Madrid."

"We're not going back to Madrid," I mutter. "We're probably still wanted there."

"Dublin. Oslo. Frankfurt. Prague."

"We'll talk about it."

"But, Spike-"

"I *said* we'll talk about it," I repeat firmly. I take a swig of my beer and look up. "How's the kid?" I ask, nodding to the fledgling asleep in the corner. Lucius is nineteen, or was before he died last week. Dalton found him in a bar in the French Quarter and became rather smitten with him. Most people would flirt in a situation like that, but Dalton's far too shy, so he ended up turning the boy instead. Whatever works, I guess.

Dalton glances up from his volume of Chaucer and smiles proudly. "I took him hunting last night."

"Yeah?" With great effort, I sit up. "How'd it go?"

"I barely had to instruct him. You know that little bar on Rue de Chatres? He cleaned out half the place and scared the rest out of their wits. He's amazing."

"Well then," I say decisively, draining the rest of my beer, "I guess we'll keep him around, then." I really could use another minion, anyway. Since it looks like we're returning to Europe, where they won't take you seriously unless you've got a fucking entourage.

"Rome," Dru continues dreamily. "Berlin. Edinburgh-"

"Enough with the geography lesson, pet. We'll go to Europe, okay? Just hush." I've got a pounding headache. I've been doing enough boozing it up myself, never mind that the bloodstream of every tourist is practically 80 proof.

She rolls over and gives me a wicked glare. "Bucharest."

I growl in the back of my throat. "Fuck that."

She turns on her back and sets herself once again at the task of ripping Mardi Gras beads down from the ceiling. She's been talking about him lately. Never actually saying his name, but talking about him nonetheless.

"I want to go to Bucharest. I want to see the ancient mountains and the paprika-scented girls-"

"You mention fucking Romania again and we're not going anywhere, you understand?"

"I hate you," she says quietly. "I miss him and I hate you."

"Yeah, I know," I respond hoarsely, burying my head in the pillows again. "Dalton, take the kid and go get me another six-pack."

Two days later we depart for Rome.

Chapter 8

~*Prague, Czechoslovakia, 1995*~

"I think it's some kind of phase," Lucius says quietly. "Everyone has them, y'know?"

"Yes," Dalton replies in an equally low tone, "but do his phases always have to be so... well... messy?"

"They're colorful, at least," Lucius concedes.

I pull my head out of the sink and toss it back, scattering droplets everywhere and spraying the wallpaper with dark speckles. "I can *hear* you," I snap, and Dru gives me a wide grin, her fingertips playing in the dark swirls of water. "Well?" I ask her.

"You're dripping." She flicks colored drops in my direction. "Messy boy."

"Hand me a towel, then." I run the bathtowel briefly though my hair, irreparably staining it. "How's it look, love?"

"Like the ocean during a storm or the sky after sunset," she croons, her fingers darting out to comb through the damp locks. "Like a bruise blooming under pale skin."

I hold up the haircolor package and examine it critically. "Yeah, but do I look like the bloke on the box?" She giggles and snaps her teeth playfully at the model's picture. "You don't want to look like him. Nasty boy." She traces a fingernail over the printing on the box. "Midnight blue. That's all *wrong,* Spike. The sky is never blue at midnight. It's black, and thick with secrets..."

"Right, then," I reply, cutting her off before the subject of haircolor can get any more esoteric. "Polaroid me." I toss the camera in her direction. I'm not one of those vain vamps who has a picture made every time he gets a new outfit, but I do like to know what my hair looks like when I change it, and this is my sixth haircolor in the past year. Before this it was black, chartreuse, burgundy, purple, and (briefly) turquoise. If it hadn't been for the camera, I might not have realized how ridiculous I look with turquoise hair.

"I don't understand how this works," Dru says, catching it.

"Look through the hole until you see me and then hit the button." We've been through this so many times.

"No, that's not what I meant," she says testily, although she doesn't really understand that part either. "I don't see why the electric portraits work when mirrors don't."

I smile at her use of the archaic term. "No clue, pet."

She giggles and takes the photo, which develops a few minutes later. "You look just like your picture," she says with a touch of hysteria, as if it's the funniest joke in the world.

"For now," Lucius inserts, settling in a chair and opening an issue of Guitar World. "Until next week, when he dyes it pink or something."

I growl at him briefly. It's true I've been restless lately, true, I can't seem to settle on a haircolor and we've lived in seven different countries in the last eight years, but *that's* going a bit too far.

Dalton paces restlessly in front of the hotel room's window. "How long are we planning on staying here?"

"As long as Princess wants," I reply, looping an arm around her waist and kissing her on the nose. She makes a disgusted face and brushes rivulets of midnight-blue water off her cheeks. Dru's mad about Prague and we've barely been here a week. We might set up housekeeping here for awhile.

"Maybe we should go back to Paris soon."

"We're not going back to fucking Paris." We had a minor run-in with some self-professed vampire killers in Yugoslavia a month ago and he's been paranoid about the East ever since. Besides, I hated Paris.

"No one believes in vampires in Paris. It was safe there."

"Dalton, put a bloody sock in it already, mate."

"We should be careful," he persists. "Once you start going this far east, the locals get tougher to deal with. They know about us- they know how to kill us."

I wave a hand dismissively at his concern. "You're bloody paranoid is what you are." We've been to Romania, for fuck's sake. *Those* people are tough, and Dru and I got out without a scratch.

((angelus, on the other hand))

"Still," he persists, "we should, um, be cautious."

I'm not worried.

Prague is going to be great.

I can barely see through bruised eyelids and the haze of blood that trickles from my forehead. They're only humans, yeah, I know that, I've heard it all before, but who had any idea there'd be so damn many of them? The fucking ridiculous thing is, I never quite figured out just what we did to set them off. Truth be told, it could have been any number of things; Dru and I get into trouble everywhere we go. And hell, this is what I wanted, isn't it? Back against the wall, nothing but fists and fangs and a mindless determination to get away so I can figure out what the fuck happened to Dru- mindless determination and nearly paralyzing terror. There's too many of them, Jesus Christ, there's too many of them and I can hear her screaming. I can't see her through the mob of murderous locals but I can hear her screaming and they've got crosses and holy water and they're supposed to be the *good* guys, right? Isn't that how it works? If they're the good guys, then why exactly is my girlfriend on fire?

((if i can't convince you, maybe an angry crowd will))

I'm convinced already, yeah, okay, you were right, you son of a bitch, you were right about *everything* and I'm way fucking past convinced, but oddly enough, *you're* not here to do a goddamn thing about it, so shut the fuck up already.

Oh, God, she's screaming. She's screaming for me.

Next thing I know we're surrounded by piles of dead and dying humans nd I'm lifting what's left of her into my arms while Lucius screams at me that we have to get the fuck out of here, *right now,* because there's more of them coming. We run into a nearby abandoned warehouse and I lay her carefully on the floor. Her blood is gushing over my hands and soaking my clothes. Her screams tapered off into moans as we ran through the streets, and now she is silent. Her eyes are open, but that doesn't mean anything, since her eyelids aren't exactly intact. She doesn't seem to be conscious. I want to reach out and shake her, but I'm terrified that if I touch her tattered body I'll break something that can't be fixed, so I scream at her instead.

"Dru- Dru? Fuck! Dru!" I choke back the tears of panic that are rising in my throat. "Oh, fuck, oh, fucking Christ-" I look up desperately. "Dalton- go- go get someone-"

"Who?" Dalton says uncertainly. If Prague has paramedics for the undead, we sure as hell don't know where to find them.

"Christ, fuck, Dalton, I don't know!" I scream hysterically. "Just *go*!"

I should have been able to take them. I should have been able to take them. There weren't that many, just humans, stupid humans

((if they run chase if they scream rip out their tongues but remember that *you* are in charge))

I should have been able to take them kill them *stop* them- "Lucius," I gasp, "Lucius, I can see her insides, I can see-" Rocking back and forth compulsively over her ruined body, I bite down hard on my hand to choke off the sound of my sobs. "Oh, holy hell, Lucius, I can see *everything*-"

"Don't look," he says, and tries to push my head to the side, but I can't stop staring in horror. Her skin is little more than shreds and tatters now, I can see organs and muscle and gleaming white bone, I can see everything, I can see too much. Little pieces of Dru splayed out across this dirty warehouse floor. I feel a wave of nausea hit me, and then I hear retching, and then sobbing, and finally screaming. They sound very far away, but I suspect I am responsible for all three.

"Sir? Sir? ...Spike!?"

I start in surprise and look up to see a familiar, bespectacled, frightened face. He must be freaked. Last time Dalton was scared enough to call me something besides "sir," he referred to me as "Mr. the Bloody." "Dalton," I whisper helplessly, "I can see her insides."

"I know, sir, but-"

"She's in pieces," I insist, and hear myself begin to giggle hysterically. "She's in pieces, Christ, Dalton, she's in pieces all over the floor." I run my hands through my hair, smearing her blood through the strands. "I don't know how to put her back together. I mean, I went to university and everything- did you know that? Didn't graduate, of course, Dru killed me first- but I never took anatomy, goddamnit- just Elizabethan poetry... philosophy... European history... why didn't I study anatomy, for fuck's sake? It's a lot more fucking useful than Elizabethan poetry, Spenser never had a damned thing to say about gluing your girlfriend back together."

"Sir-"

"Why wasn't I *prepared* for this? I'm in charge. I'm supposed to be in charge. Why didn't I-"

"Sir," he interrupts, "it's all right. There's someone here."

"Oh," I say softly. "Good, that's good." I have no fucking idea what he's talking about. "Who?"

"Local sorcerer."

"Did he take anatomy? He didn't take poetry, did he? Poetry's no good to anyone at a time like this. Can he put her back together? Can he-"

"I'm sure he can." Dalton's face is a mask of calm, like a parent attempting to reason with a senseless child, but his voice has begun to take on a hysterical edge.

I stand up, knees shaky, and face the old man who is currently setting out his array of medical equipment, herbal remedies, and magical talismans next to Dru's torn body. "She's broken," I say stupidly.

He just nods. "I'll do what I can," he says evenly; "why don't you go get cleaned up?"

I glance down at my ruined clothes. I'm covered in her blood. Drenched in it. White t-shirt and blue jeans, I'm never wearing light colors again, they show too many stains. I rub my hands absentmindedly against my spattered jeans, but the thick layers of red have already dried into the creases of my palms. Dalton tugs at my elbow. "Come on, sir. There's nothing else we can-"

I backhand him across the face and he goes tumbling into the corner, mouth bleeding. "I'm not leaving her," I snap angrily, "you're all fucking insane if you think I'm leaving her. Now you- get to work or I'll tear your fucking throat out."

The sorcerer nods weakly, and begins.

"Spike?"

"Huh." I don't look up. Don't take my eyes off her face. Eyes bruised and swollen shut. Face marred with lacerations. Skin pieced together with stitching and bandages. If I look away she might disappear. If I look away-

"How long has it been since you've eaten? Or slept?"

I raise my eyes to Lucius' nervous face. "Dunno," I murmur. "How long's it been since-"

"Five days."

"Five days, huh?" I echo softly.

"You need your rest-"

"No." I run my fingers lightly over the bandages that cover her hands. Fingers broken. Nails ripped away.

"At least get yourself cleaned up-"

"I said *no*!" I shout, rising in anger, which turns out to be a mistake, as the world tips and spins dangerously and I sink to the floor.

((you're no good to us unconscious))

Lucius kneels over me. "Spike, for god's sake. Just rest for a couple of hours."

"No," I protest, laying helplessly on my back, tears rising in my throat, "what if she wakes? I have to be here when she wakes-"

Five days. Five days and no movement, no sound. Nothing.

"We'll come for you if there's any... change."

"No," I reply stubbornly. I'm going to get up. I'm going to get up and I'll sit by her bed for another five days five months five years if I have to but I'm not going to sleep until she wakes. I'm going to get up.

Just as soon as I remember how to move my limbs.

When I finally wake from an exhausted, groggy sleep, fourteen hours later, I let them bring me something to eat.

On the eighth day I finally take a shower.

My clothes have dried so stiffly with her blood that I have to cut them off. The dark red-brown stain coats my hair, my face, my hands. Especially my hands. It's caked on them, worked into every crease and pore, caught deep under the nails, and it won't wash off. I scrub hard, harder, washing blood-colored soap suds and dark red flakes down the drain but my hands are still stained and I scrub harder and harder until they are raw and bleeding and then my blood runs with hers and I can't tell who I'm washing away anymore and they won't know the difference but I. know. better.

I will always have her blood on my hands.

My throat closes with sobs, and I sink shaking into the corner of the shower stall. An hour later, they finally come and pull me out.

On the thirteenth day she pulls one swollen eye open slowly and speaks through her crushed windpipe.

"It hurts," she says.

Don't I know it.

Chapter 9

~*Chicago, 1996*~

"How is she?"

Dalton looks up from his text. "Better today. She's sitting up." He rolls his eyes and pushes his glasses up his nose. "Lucius bought her a kitten."

"Christ. Not another one. If she tries to teach it to fly again, tell him he gets to clean up the mess." I reach into the fridge and get myself a beer. "Any luck?"

"Actually, yes," Dalton replies, flipping through pages. "A Hellmouth."

"A Hellmouth?" I glance around for a bottle opener, fail to locate one, and gameface briefly in order to pry the bottlecap off with a fang. "Really?"

"A strong one, it seems. But that's not all. It's wide open- no one's in charge."

"Of a Hellmouth? You're fucking with me, Dalton."

"I made a few calls." He pulls out a notepad from underneath his stack of books. "And old master vampire controlled it with his brood, the Order of-" Dalton squints at his handwriting. "Aurelius?"

My hands tremble suddenly and I nearly drop my beer. "Did you say Aurelius?"

Dalton looks up in surprise. "You know the Order?"

((what in the world is this?))

"I- I've heard of it."

((he's thin))

"Well, this Master apparently died last spring, and his minions have been at loose ends ever since. You could probably take over pretty easily."

((this fourth-generation whelp? he has no place here))

"So the fruitbat finally bit it," I murmur.

"Sir?" Dalton says quizzically.

"Pack your things," I respond abruptly. "We'll leave tonight. Where is this Hellmouth, anyway?"

Dalton peers at his book again. "California," he replies. "Sunnydale, California."

1997

It's a calculated risk, I know.

She couldn't even get out of bed until last week- a full seven months after her injuries. I shouldn't be moving her at all, the condition she's in. And the Aurelians... well, fruitbat or no fruitbat, they're a hard-headed bunch. And ever since I announced our trip to California, she's been... well, weird. There's no other way to explain it but that she's been

((seeing again))

weird and I've been nervous.

'Cause I have to get this right, you know. If I fuck this one up, she dies.

She taps her fingernails nervously against the black-painted windows of the DeSoto. "Black sky. Black night-"

"It's three in the afternoon, Dru."

She twists her head, the dim light streaming through the windows tracing a death's-head on her haggard face. "There are hornets buzzing around your ears, buzz, buzz- what's wrong?"

I shrug and light another cigarette. "Nothing. It's nothing."

"Haven't seen you in the killing fields for an age," she says abruptly, and lets out a hysterical burst of laughter that rocks her frail frame. "Run and catch... the lamb is caught in the blackberry patch... what will your mummy sing when they find your body?" She leans forward, examining my face. "What will they sing, Spike? The bird's all dead and he's run out of songs, skewered and blasted into Hell, and I can't *see.* What are they going to sing when it's all over?"

I heave a sigh. "Dru, I don't know what you're talking about."

I don't want to know what she's talking about.

She taps at the window again, attempting to scrape the paint away. Of course, it's painted on the outside for this very reason. "It's so pretty, Spike," she says wistfully, rubbing her hand against a spot where shuttered sunlight barely seeps through. "Can I touch it?"

"No." I have to repair burnt fingertips every goddamned time we go on a long car trip and I suddenly want to scream *Can we just *not,* Dru? All this goddamned insanity bullshit, can we just not fucking deal with it for once? Could you pretend to be *normal* for ten minutes running?*

Oh, but I don't want to do that. Don't want to yell at her. It's just that she was up all last night, screaming and moaning and carrying on, and I don't know what to do for her anymore, and my head hurts and I'm tired. 'Cause it's tiring, you know. Life with Dru.

She reaches for the window handle and rolls the glass down a fragment of an inch. "Dru. Cut that out."

"Will it be my friend?" she says, running her fingertips playfully along the crack where light streams through.

"No, it bloody well won't." The car swerves slightly as I try to bat her fingers away from the window. "Get your fingers back inside the goddamn car, Dru."

I hear the sizzle of burnt flesh; she lets out a sharp yelp, mostly out of surprise, and then she realizes what's happening and starts to scream in earnest. She used to not mind fire so much; occasionally, she even liked it, branding irons and candlewax and strategically placed matchsticks. But not anymore. Not since Prague. I pull the car over quickly and gather her into my arms, where she trembles violently.

"Such pretty fire," she weeps with hysterical abandon. "Conflagration. Perfect world, nothing but ashes. Taste like ashes. God, this town will burn, a pretty fire- the flames are lovely, they dance, and the fire licks like a cat."

"Sshhh," I whisper, stroking her hair. "Sshhh, pet."

"It's so pretty and so bright," she says wretchedly, cradling her burnt fingers in her lap, "and i don't understand why it has to hurt so much, everything hurts."

"Dru," I say hesitantly, "do you think we should go to Sunnydale?"

She smiles darkly and nods, brushing tears from her cheeks. "Of course. We have friends waiting for us, after all."

Home sweet home.

"Oh, my Spike, it's perfect," she says breathily, staring up at the factory's high ceilings as if it were a cathedral. "Can it be our castle?"

I place a kiss on her thin cheek. "Of course. Nothing but the best for my Princess." I thread my fingers through hers. She's gained weight. Not much- I can still count ribs and wake to find myself bruised against the sharpness of hipbones- but at least she has a face now around wide, staring eyes.

"Everything will be perfect now."

"You bet, kitten."

"You can rip their throats out," she says cheerfully. "And then it'll all be better." She tightens her fingers, nails digging into my hand. "Won't it?"

"Of course, darling," I say hollowly.

((if you fuck this up))

"Everything's gonna be fine."

((if you fuck this up she dies))

"That's my boy," she says sweetly.

"Angelus!"

He looks the same. Shorter hair, modern clothes, but Jesus fucking Christ he looks the *same.* Same face, same voice, same height and shoulders and cinnamon-leather scent and dear fucking bloody hell it's *him.* He's back.

((if he comes back))

((he won't))

((if he comes back))

I've rehearsed this moment countless times in my mind since the night he left ninety-seven years ago. There's a theater inside my head where I've staked him, torn him limb from limb, and fucked him into oblivion. I've imagined a thousand different reactions, tinged in rage, superiority, indifference, violence, and contempt.

None of them were anything like this.

What I feel is joy, absolute exhilaration, spreading through my chest and rushing through my body in a feverish wave. I've never felt such, perfect, undiluted happiness before, as if something that was wrong is *right* now, as if something missing is complete, like blood that seeped from veins only to return to its original source. *He's back,* a hysterical little voice screeches blissfully inside my head, *everything's all right now, he's back, and maybe this time if I do everything right he won't leave.*

"I'll be damned!" I exclaim, still unable to process his presence, here, in this god-awful little Hellmouth town. He's got one arm hooked around the neck of some mortal, but the other gathers me close in a fierce hug.

"I taught you to always guard your perimeter," he chides. "You should have someone out there."

"I did," I retort, rolling my eyes. "I'm surrounded by idiots. What's new with you?"

"Everything."

I don't know why, but that single word runs chills down my spine.

"Come up against this Slayer yet?" I ask.

"She's cute," he says with an offhand shrug. "Not too bright, though. Gave the puppy dog 'I'm all tortured' act- keeps her off my back when I feed." He giggles, a bit hysterically.

But he hasn't been feeding, an obnoxious little voice pipes up in the back of my head. Not like before- look at him. Thinner. Not much, but enough. Paler.

"People still fall for that Anne Rice routine," I say derisively. "What a world!" But there's an uncertainty lingering, a strangeness that has lodged itself somewhere in my guts. Because... he was never one for the Anne Rice routine, himself. Playing the gentleman vamp isn't his style. If he wanted an in, he'd pretend to be human. For about ten minutes, before he started tearing out throats.

This isn't like him.

"I knew you were lying," the kid sputters. "Undead liar guy."

He growls and grabs the kid by the hair and why the hell is he getting *angry* with lunch? Why the fuck should it *matter* what the kid says? What the *fuck* is going on?

"Wanna bite before we kill her?" he snarls, exposing the human's throat.

Something's wrong.

Terribly wrong.

His hands are shaking- ever so slightly- and the boy's neck isn't even *bruised* and he's *lying* to me, after all we've been through and all I've put up with and as well as I know him, does he honestly think he can lie to *me*? Angelus did a lot of fucked-up things to me, yeah, but the only one that I can't forgive him for is

((you're going to leave again, aren't you?))

((no, william))

disrespecting me enough to *lie.*

Besides, Angelus doesn't share. Ever.

So I ignore the proffered gift and give him a calm smile. "I haven't seen you in the killing fields for an age."

I would have *heard.* Jesus Christ, he was the fucking Scourge of Europe, he was *famous,* and if he was still around, if he hadn't

((changed somehow I don't know how exactly but he's *changed*))

I would have *heard.*

He shrugs. "I'm not much for company."

*That* is such utter bollocks that I dismiss it immediately. "No, you

never were." I pause for a moment, considering how to bait him. "So.

Why are you so scared of this Slayer?"

"Scared?" He tries to sound incredulous and misses by about a million miles.

"Yeah," I press. "Time was you would've taken her out in a heartbeat... now look at you. I bet this, uh, tortured thing is an act, right?" I say, trying not to sound desperate. "You're not... housebroken?"

Please god I don't want this. Please god whatever's wrong with him

((what did they do to him?))

((a curse, of some sort, i don't want to talk about it))

I want it *fixed,* now.

"I saw her kill the Master," he growls.

*And you didn't try to stop her?* that voice pipes up again. *Your grandsire?*

"You think *you* can take her alone? Be my guest. I'll just feed and run." He snarls and bends towards the boy's neck.

"Don't be silly!" I reply in what I hope to Christ is a reassuring voice. "We're all friends. We'll do it together. Let's drink to it."

But he doesn't get anywhere *near* the kid's throat, leaving me plenty of room to knock him halfway across the room. He staggers to the opposite wall but makes no move to

((punish me for my insolence))

retaliate.

You think you can fool me?" I scream, fighting back tears. "You were my sire, man! You were my... Yoda!" The word "sire" comes tumbling off my tongue so easily. Because he always was, you know. Sire. But "Things change," he whispers. He doesn't sound angry. He almost sounds ashamed.

"Not us! Not demons!" My head is spinning. I'm not gonna cry in front of him, no, I'm not gonna cry, 'cause I'm too fucking furious. "Man, I can't believe this. You Uncle Tom!"

((may I keep him, daddy? please?))

They were supposed to keep me, goddamnit, they were all supposed to keep me *forever.*

A few minutes later, the newest Slayer tells me that it's gonna hurt a lot.

Don't I know it.

Chapter 10

You know, I am *trying* to work here. I mean, it's why I *came* to this fucking town. To get her well. And it wouldn't be such a goddamned effort if it weren't for that bottle-blonde bitch and that fucking poncey ensouled bitchboy of an ex-Scourge. As if he weren't enough trouble when he was *evil,* he hasn't stopped fucking my plans up once since he went all good.

The last thing I remember is the pipe organ. Jesus Christ, I didn't realize it was possible to ache this badly. "Spike?"

With great effort, I peel one eye open to find Dru, Dalton, and Lucius peering down at me expectantly.

"Oh, dear," Dru moans, wringing her hands nervously. "He's broken, all broken, and it can't be fixed, ever, ever again. Won't ever be the same. Oh, dear, oh, dear."

I swallow painfully and manage a weak smile. "Nonsense, pet. You're Spike's gonna be just fine." I mentally survey my condition. Throbbing headache, check. Some cuts and and bruises. Broken arm. And-

Fuck. Oh. Fuck.

((don't you dare break down in front of her don't you fucking dare))

"Dru, love, why don't you go fetch my smokes?" I clench my fingers around the bedsheets and try to keep my voice from shaking. She nods obediently and trails into the living room. A simple task such as locating my cigarettes should take her the better part of an hour. When she is gone, I look up at my minions. Dalton is twisting his hands together compulsively; Lucius averts his eyes.

"My legs."

They exchange nervous glances.

"Well?"

More silence.

With great effort, I raise my unbroken arm, gather up Dalton's shirtfront in my fist, and haul his face close to mine. "Why the *fuck* can't I feel my legs?"

"Y-y-your spine," he stutters. "W-w-we think it's b-broken."

I release him and cover my face with both hands.

"Spike," Lucius says patiently, "you know this will heal."

"Yeah, I know," I reply hoarsely. "How long?"

"Three months. Maybe four."

"Three months-" I let out a deep sigh. "Leave."

"But you-"

"I said go."

Dalton scurries out quickly, but Lucius turns back one last time. "You sure you don't need-"

"I'm sure." I look up with a bitter chuckle. "Y'know, of all the times in my life that I've fucked up royally, this is certainly one of them."

"You did the right thing," he says confidently. "Dru's recovery was- well, amazing. It'll all be okay now. You'll see."

"Yeah," I say softly as the door shuts behind him. I'd like to believe him.

But things have developed an unpleasant habit lately of not turning out how I planned.

Three days later there's an ugly red wheelchair in my room and I'm determined to get out of bed.

"Do you need any help?" Dalton asks uncertainly, laying a pile of clothes beside me.

"Fuck off."

"But if you need-"

"Fuck. Off."

He nods but doesn't move.

"That means *leave!*"

He blinks in surprise, nods again, and shuffles outside.

Ten minutes later, I call him in again. I'm lying collapsed in an exhausted heap on the floor, twisted clothing piled all around me. I can't look at him, but keep my eyes firmly fixed on the wall. My throat is burning with frustration and rage.

"Go get Dru."

She's gonna dress me like one of her dolls. I don't know if I'll be able to stand this.

She enters and slides the door shut behind her. "Aww," she purrs, approaching the bed. "Poor little kitten."

Rage gets the better of me and I slap her hard across the face. "I am not your little kitten," I sputter angrily. "This will be over soon and everything will go back to the way it should be. Until then, you'll have to help me. But I'd greatly appreciate it if you kept your fucking mouth shut until then, understand?"

Her eyes fill with shocked tears and I am overcome with a wave of guilt.

"Oh, poodle, I'm sorry. I'm so sorry." I reach for her hand and she pulls away. "Dru?"

She stands by the rainwashed window, rubbing her bruised cheek absentmindedly with one hand and tracing her fingers across the frosted glass with the other. "I'm not the one you're angry at."

"What?" I whisper.

"I know what makes you talk that way. He'll be here soon. Oh, so very soon." She giggles sickly. "He's coming back, you know. Just like he was. But you- *you'll* never be the same again."

Something's gonna happen soon.

It's not going to be pretty.

"You let her kill him." His voice trembles slightly, and I tighten my jaw in annoyance. Lucius is just a kid, I must remind myself, nineteen when he was turned only ten years past. And Dalton wasn't much of a Sire, but he was still his Sire.

But it's not my fucking fault.

I sigh and take another swig of wine. "I didn't *let* her do anything. I'd like to see *you* try to stop her when she's got a bee in her bonnet about something, and you've got two functional legs." I'm in a really bad mood. My spine hurts like hell where it's starting to stitch back together, I had to deal with a visit from that fucking Slayer bitch and

((Angelus))

her ensouled lapdog and I'm really not sure about this big blue guy thing and on top of everything else, I didn't particularly *want* Dalton killed off, okay? He was an okay guy.

"You let her get away with anything."

"I do not." I grit my teeth and drain the bottle. I can *see* what he's thinking- that I'm Dru's bitch, that I do whatever she says and bend to her every whim and haven't stood up to her once in a hundred years. And he'd be right. Dead, if he dared say it out loud, but right nonetheless.

He plops down in a chair beside me with a desolate sigh and grabs a beer from the nearby cooler. "I mean, she's trying to destroy the world. Again. What's up with that?"

I shrug. I'm not too keen on the whole destroying-the-world thing, either, and I'd put my foot down about it (metaphorically speaking) if I actually thought it was going to work. Last time one of her destroying-the-world spells had anything resembling success was 1903, and all it did was take out six blocks of lower Manhattan. Besides, side effects involving rodent spirit guides and an anti-gravity clause resulted in mice running about on the ceiling for weeks.

"It won't work," I say dismissively.

Nothing's gonna go wrong.

((i've had it with this place. nothing ever comes off like it's supposed to))

But somehow I can't shake the uneasy feeling that the world's about to end.

Eyes like needles, she told me once, eight dozen years ago- daddy's home. But I didn't get a warning this time, just hysterical giggles and a conversation about naming stars, and I could *strangle* her for not giving me the heads-up this time around. Yeah, baby, he's back, back and better than ever to hear him tell it. 110% Angelus- isn't it? Same obnoxious smirk and confident swagger. Same way of looking through me as if I'm not here, and undressing her with his eyes. Oh, yeah, baby. He's back, and I've got this uneasy sensation in the pit of my stomach, this lurid feeling of doom that I can't shake.

((we're family again))

Isn't this what I wanted? Isn't it? The two people that I've loved best of anyone my unnaturally long life, loved more than I thought possible for human or demon, loved so much it threatened to take me apart? I've missed him so much since China, God, I've missed him so fucking much that there were times that it felt like bits and pieces of me were coming undone, and I never told her because I couldn't bear to hear his name. And now he's back.

But it isn't him, it doesn't *feel* like him. Don't ask me to explain it; I can't. He's pacing around the factory like a caged animal, chain-smoking and bitching about the Slayer and why the hell can't I shake the terrible feeling that this is *not my Angelus?* I wanted this, goddamnit! I *wanted* it!

But it was different before. It was all right, back then, because he Belonged. Because he was a part of us, much more so than I ever was, and we couldn't see it any other way. But a hundred years have passed, and anyone who tries to act like a hundred years isn't a long time is just trying to act pretentious around the short-lived humans. It might not be the lifetime that it is to them, but it's still a long fucking time. It's over thirty thousand days of dozing in her arms, laying in sleepy beds, sheltered by sun-drenched curtains. Thirty thousand nights of drinking blood from her soft lips, moaning under the precious sting of her fingernails, of racing through darkened streets of a thousand cities, hand in hand, high on blood and giddy with love. A thousand full moons to dance beneath, to watch her eyes go wide with wonder as she whispered "She's singing to me. Can you hear it?" Ten decades of popes and politics and assassinations, of cars and clothes and music; ten decades of watching the world change around us while her favorite song, her favorite doll, her favorite dress never did. Thirty thousand suns burned holes in the morning sky as we ran to ground and still we held the world cupped in the palms of our hands, a glimmering jewel, blood-spattered and sparkling with fabulous death. Thirty thousand nights that he could destroy with a snap of his fingers. A hundred years of memories that he could steal away.

He could. I swear to Christ I'm not just being paranoid; I *know* he could. I haven't forgotten what it was like- the way her eyes lit up when he walked into the room, how everything else in his presence just seemed to fade away into the wallpaper. I wanted to leave- to take her away, somewhere where he couldn't see her, where he couldn't make her eyes shine like stars. I don't know if I could have done it- we were all in his thrall to varying degrees- but I sure as hell wanted to try.

I made the suggestion once. She raked her nails down my face hard, pulling the flesh away in ragged scraps, and called me a bad son.

If he's back- if he's *really* back- that means that a hundred years of loving her, making love to her, bleeding the world dry with her, coaxing her through visions and pulling her out of the sunlight will dissipate like so much dust, and it will be as if I'm not even here. As if I never existed, or as if William lay ashes and bones in an English churchyard. And that's not fair, because I *do* miss him, and, in spite of my better judgment, I *do* want him back. But not at this price. A hundred years ago I was her consort and her naughty boy, but never allowed to claim her as completely as she claimed me. I have tasted that dark wine, and although it has its bitterness, I can't give it up. Not for him. Not for anyone.

She shapes me, she defines me, she makes me whole, and without her I cease to exist. And I will gladly defy every drop of blood I ever shed for him if he tries to take that away from me.

It's not the fact that she's fucking him that bothers me, it's the fact that they don't even try to hide it.

No, wait, it *is* the fact that she's fucking him. Yeah. That's definitely it. Stupid, of course; they spent the first twenty years of my life shagging each other senseless in the next room and it didn't bother me. Well. Didn't bother me this much. I'm just going to have to calm down. He's her Sire. He's her Sire, all of us were made for a specific purpose, and this is hers.

To be his whore. His whore, yes, she was built for it, shaped for it, given eternal life for it, and I have no right to interfere. He stamped his claim on her when I was still a mortal child and I have no place here. Heart and blood and body all his, and I have no rights in this matter.

I listen to them shrieking like banshees for the better part of the afternoon before he emerges, sated and self-satisfied. I briefly entertain the notion of trying to leap up and tear his head off his shoulders before realizing how stupid I'd look in front of Dru, ten minutes later, writhing helplessly on the floor after he kicked my ass.

I've hated him before, hated him for well over a century, but not like this. Never like this. That part deep inside me that was built only to ache for him has twisted inside out, blackened, and the horrible fury in its place threatens to swallow me alive. I speak in a hoarse whisper, so low that I myself can barely hear it. "You never would have done this to me before, you know. You loved me. You fucking bastard."

"I never loved you," he retorts. "Don't be stupid. You were a good fuck once, is what it was. That's changed. For you." He gives me a rakish grin. "Fortunately, it hasn't changed for her."

She doesn't return to our bed that night.

I loved him once, I think. Yes, I definitely seem to remember that I did. I keep having to remind myself. It's like a faded picture in someone else's storybook. Whatever used to be there, only a harsh, black bitterness remains.

But the flesh remembers. That, I suppose, is not to be helped.

He doesn't bother with restraints; I can't escape anyway. Can't escape, can't move, can't. feel. Can't feel the fingertips that I know, from memory, will leave fragile blooms of blueflower bruises on my hipbones. Can't feel his thighs between mine. Can't feel the ripping and tearing of him inside me. Can only smell my own blood as he forces his way in.

I wish I could feel it.

((not supposed to want this))

He's muttering something in my ear- something about the Slayer, it seems. Fucking Christ, I don't give a damn about the bloody Slayer, why is everyone so goddamn obsessed with her? She's tough, which I respect, but I like my women with darker hair, a little less mental stability, and a good pair of velvet-lined manacles.

"You had no right to touch her."

I roll my eyes and bury my head into the pillow, waiting for it to be over. It's so pathetic, it's almost boring.

"No right to fight her."

"I'll fight whom I please." He growls once and strikes the back of my head hard enough to make the room spin.

"No right to put your fangs at her pristine white throat. She's mine, boy. She's only ever been mine."

"Jesus. I don't care." If he's going to kill me, I wish he'd get it over with. "Just shut up already."

Hand around my throat, tight enough that I nearly forget that I don't need to breathe. "You'd *better* care, because you'll realize sooner or later what she is."

"And what's that, exactly?" Croaking half-tones, 'cause he's still choking me.

"Everything," he says dreamily. "An unstoppable force of good that can only be fucked or destroyed." He tightens his hand once before releasing me. "Someday you'll understand that, boy."

"I don't want to fuck her," I mutter, "and I don't want to fuck you anymore, either."

((i don't owe you anything. i am not your childe))

He pulls away, and there is anger in his voice. This is the first time in a hundred and twenty years that I've ever turned him down.

"Maybe Drusilla will be more accommodating."

"Maybe so." I sound toneless, dead. I bite down hard on the inside of my cheek, filling my mouth with the taste of blood. He storms off, leaving me alone and bleeding on the bed that I used to share with Dru.

No one's all that happy with the situation at hand these days.

I can't bloody well wait to see how *this* one turns out.

Destroy the world?

What the unholy bleedin' *fuck* is going through his overgelled, pointy- haired head? Destroy the fucking *world*? Are his soul and his sodding *brain* somehow karmically linked?

Destroy the world? The same world that gave us punk rock, Playboy magazine, and McDonald's french fries? Why would anyone want to destroy *that*?

Oh, yeah, because it's evil. Come on, boys and girls, let's go be "evil" now. Bloody hell.

I've never understood that about those two, you know. My decision- making system is based on having fun and protecting Dru. It's a fundamentally selfish decision-making system, and if that is translated ninety-nine times out of a hundred as "evil," so be it. I mean, it's a well- known fact that evil, by and large, is more fun than good. Ask any religious type if you don't believe me. And that's why so much of what I do is, you know, evil. Not to rack up more gold stars in the "demons" column of some great cosmic scale, but because it's *fun.*

But I have *never* heard of anyone that faced an impending apocalypse and classified it as *fun.* Suck the world into Hell? What the bloody hell for? No one wants to go to Hell, for fuck's sake. The things that *originated* there are always bloody well trying to get out. Why would anyone go *willingly,* just so's you could drag hapless humanity along for the ride and therefore score some more brownie points for the Greater Evil? It doesn't make any fucking *sense.* So now- bloody hell- I'm gonna have to put a stop to it, in interest of the preservation of my own ass, and Dru's, and to ensure that punk rock isn't wiped off the cosmic plane just yet. And in the process of stopping the apocalypse- which is about as textbook evil as you get- I'm gonna get the unsavory reputation of being good. Bloody hell.

This isn't like Dru and the whole Judge thing; I let her get away with it because, frankly, I knew it wouldn't go down- I can't remember the last time one of Dru's spells worked. But Angelus is a persistent motherfucker, after all. He's gonna see this one through. He's making preparations; today he decided to stake every last one of my minions. Nothing left of Lucius put a handful of dust and a few rumpled Clash t-shirts.

He's got her in his bedroom again. I can hear her giggling.

This will all be over very. very. soon.

It's over.

She comes to about half an hour away from the border and starts screeching bloody murder. Legs kicking, fangs snapping, hands clawing at the windows, breaking through, scattering glass. Pleas, orders, and threats don't calm her down. I try hold her back; she dislocates my shoulder, cracks two ribs, and nearly gouges out one of my eyes.

"My Angel," she yammers senselessly, "My Angel, my Angel, myangelmyangelmyangelmyangelmy-"

((not without my angel))

And I don't know why I draw my hand back and bring it across her cheekbone with devastating force, it could have been panic, it could have been because there's no other way to control her, no other way to keep her from hurting me, hurting herself, or it could be simply because I can't. stand it. Can't stand hearing her scream his goddamned name. The night we left China floods back into my mind with brain-numbing clarity and God, I don't want to hurt her, but it's his fault. Always his fault. Her body whips around with the impact of the blow and her face smacks hard against the windshield, leaving a smear of blood on glass from where her lower lip has burst open. She glares at me for a moment, in unseeing hatred, before going at my throat with her nails again.

"Listen to me," I snarl, clamping one hand around both of her wrists. "I had to sell out to the sodding Slayer in order to get us out of town alive, and I'll be fucked twice on a Sunday if I'll let you go back there to get dusted. So if you're planning on ditching me to run back to Sunnydale to look for him, don't. For one, seeing as the car hasn't been sucked into hell yet, I'd be willing to bet that Angel's ass has been thoroughly kicked by this point. For another, I'll just keep knocking you unconscious until you bloody well calm down. And you will shut the *fuck* up about him *right* now, do you understand me?"

By the time we reach Mexico, I've knocked her out three times.

CHAPTER 11

Love is not love
Which alters when it alteration finds.
-William Shakespeare, the Sonnets

I lean over her in the dark, in a bed that feels ice-cold these days. She twists and turns, tangling the sheets, dreaming dark dreams.

"My Angel..."

I place a hand gently on her back and she pulls away with a soft moan. She doesn't like being touched by me so much anymore, but she screams for him a lot. It's worse than when he first left. Much, much worse, and this time, I don't think

((*say* it))

that we're gonna get through this.

We're breaking, you see. Breaking up. Breaking apart. Breaking into little pieces.

I feel damn breakable right about now.

"Dru," I whisper helplessly into the darkness, "I love you, pet."

She rolls over once, and says his name again.

You know, I *tried* to prevent this, I really did.

I didn't want to end up in fucking Rio, for one. Fucking Brazil, it's all this god-forsaken country's fucking fault. I was hopelessly sick of it all, sick of California, sick of Americans, sick of the States, sick of the whole Western fucking Hemisphere, and I wanted nothing more than to put her on a plane and get us the fuck off this continent, get us anywhere but here- Russia, Morocco, Japan. But I can't trust her to behave on the plane, these days. She's weirder than ever. She doesn't talk to me much anymore, but she spends a lot of time talking to Miss Edith.

Like all tourist traps and party towns, Rio has a high demon population; I didn't think anything of it. I should have known. Dear Christ, I should have *known.* But it seemed like a good idea when we got here; I thought the parties and distractions and tasty tourists would keep her mind off him. I thought she was just flirtatious, but that it wasn't anything to worry about. I knew she was angry at me, but I didn't think it would last, we'd been though this before- losing him- and surely, Jesus Christ, surely we could get through it again.

We only argued once, shortly after arriving in Brazil, but it was enough. It was *my* fault, she said stubbornly; I went to *her,* whose name she refuses to say as much as I refuse to say his. Never mind why I did it; never mind that I did it for her. A real demon never would have. "She *invited* you!" she screamed finally, her nails tearing gashes in the side of her face. "She invited you into her house! Did she invite you inside anything else?"

I felt something snap inside of me, then. Because I had known. Her and Angelus. All along. And that she could *dare*-

"Well, she might as well have, for all you cared," I replied icily. "After all, you were occupied elsewhere, weren't you?"

She didn't answer, only turned away, wringing her hands and humming in high-pitched tones.

"Don't. Don't fucking do that." I reached out and pulled her back harshly with one hand. "Tell me. Tell me the truth."

"Let me go-"

Consumed with anger, I pushed her onto the bed and knelt over her, holding her down as she tried to escape out from under me. "Tell me, Dru!" I screamed, pinning her to the bed. "Tell me how you were fucking Angel while I was trapped in that bloody chair! *Tell* me!"

She struggled to sit up and suddenly one fist flew out, seemingly of its own volition, and knocked her back to the bed again, and I was afraid then. Afraid of how good it felt. I would have smashed her to pieces if she hadn't torn a gash in my throat and disappeared out the door.

She stopped coming home, most nights. At first there were excuses: uninventive, transparent, insulting to my intelligence. The need for those discontinued when she stopped speaking to me altogether. I resorted to- well, call them presents, call them peace offerings, call them whatever the bloody hell you want to, I was trying to buy my way back into her uncaring, unbeating black little heart. Bribery is what it was, and it didn't bloody well work.

And, goddamnit, I want to make it work. I'm not even sure *why* any more, but I know that I'm supposed to be trying to make it work. But it's over, and in spite of the fact that I just caught her in the act, it's somehow all my fault. Because I fucked up. Because I taste like ashes and feel like blood-soaked cinders. And so now, an hour after her slimy Chaos demon boy-toy slinks off, we're still in front of that damned park bench, screaming our lungs out at each other.

Now, for the record: this is not about the fucking Slayer. I just want to make sure we're all *clear* on that. Yes, I know that's what Dru thinks, but Dru also things that flowers scream when you pick them (except for dandelions, which are, apparently, masochistic) and that the cicadas are gossiping about her, so I don't really lend to much credence to any of her fucking theories on life, death, and deconstructing Spike right now. This. is. about. him.

"Go then, if you're leaving!" I scream, shoving her away from me when she tries to- I don't know, explain, defend her position, whatever. I'm crying so hard that my throat hurts. "What the fuck do you think this is, joint custody? I get to protect you, and take care of you, and put up with your bullshit insanity- which is *his* fault, by the way- for well over a century, and in return he gets to be the one you dream about when I'm sleeping beside you and the name you scream when I make you come? Do you think I wanted this, that I'm content with twenty percent of your attention span and six percent of your affection? Is this your fucking idea of *fair?*"

"Spike-"

"I hate you!" I shriek, feeling raw and bleeding inside, feeling like I'm falling to pieces, feeling terrified and fucked up and clueless and alone even before she's left. "I hate the way you make me feel and the way I act over you! I hate that I love you this much when I know how fucking *stupid* it is! I hate the way I come crawling back on my hands and knees every fucking time, begging for more, and most of all I hate it that he's still inside you, in a place I can't get to, that I'm not allowed to touch, and I can't ever be what he was to you. I'll never be good enough- or bad enough, whatever the fuck it is. And *that's* why you're punishing me, because I'm not your bleedin' Angel! You make me wish you're killed me for real, did you know that? You make me wish I'd stayed dead. Now get the fuck away from me!"

She nods silently, picks up her purse to go. Fear washes over me in icy waves.

"Dru-"

There isn't that much that scares me, really. I've been dead for a hundred and eighteen years and precious little makes me nervous anymore. But I'm so fucking terrified right now, as she stares back at me, her eyes filled not with anger or fear but an indifferent acceptance.

I guess a year on the Hellmouth has conditioned us to noisy apocalypses. Truth is, the end of the world doesn't make a sound. It's the sound of things clicking into place. It's the sound of the pieces of your life shifting apart.

She leaves me on the park bench. Two minutes from sunrise, I go inside.

I must have gotten really fucking drunk after that, 'cause the next thing I know, my car's swerving and tipping and hitting... something. That fucking sign.

Fucking Sunnyhell. I grope for the door handle and- ouch. Pavement. Fuck. Pavement is *bad.*

Home sweet bloody fuck-all home.

Well, isn't this just too fucking sweet.

He's Good now, for whatever it's worth. I still hate him, of course- don't harbor any misconceptions about *that*- but I just don't have the *energy* for the exercise that I once had. 'Cause he's right- lot of trouble for somebody who doesn't even care about you, as he said- and all I seem to be able to do about it is bitch and moan. This hurts, it hurts a whole fucking lot. Being in the same room with him makes me feel like I'm going to break into little pieces. Now more than ever.

He's epic, you know. Oh, they're so goddamn epic.

We were never epic, see. Dru and I had the kind of relationship that advice columns warn people not to have, and I don't care. I loved her for a hundred and eighteen years against my better judgment and I want her back so badly it aches. I can't have that, and it doesn't quite make *sense.* I try to kill him to save Dru from her injuries, I'm the bad guy. I try to kill him to save Dru from being sucked into hell, I'm the good guy. Either way I'm fucked, and he makes out okay.

*She* didn't leave him. She sent him to *hell* and that still didn't break them up. He did this to himself, and she's still here. *He's* not alone. He doesn't *deserve* that. He doesn't have the first clue about love, and he'll never love the way I do. Give him a thousand souls and another century to figure it out and he still won't get it right, and somehow he still comes out a saint with the Slayer and the Almighty Antichrist with Dru, and either way I'm just a shell of a loser. And it's not. fucking. fair.

Yeah, maybe he loves her and maybe he doesn't, maybe it's all just part of the redemption, maybe it's ready-made flogging and maybe it's 'cause he can't stay away from cute blondes and maybe he really does love the little bitch, but I don't care. I'm so sick of those two, their martyr pouts and their lovelorn eyes. I'm so sick of hearing how tough it is for him. It's all his fault, anyway.

1999

She's relocated to Mexico, but it isn't hard to find her. Hell, all I needed was a police scanner. You could say she's something of a messy eater. Her hotel room isn't a mile away from an ancient Aztec temple and I wonder what the gods have been whispering to her since I left. She doesn't look surprised when I break the door down.

I do terrible things to her, oh, all sorts of terrible things. He would have been so proud.

((i guess that makes you one of us))

Perfect carbon copy, really; every word, every gesture, every carefully applied stroke of the whip and I. am. demon. enough. I'm gonna have to buy new clothes; her blood's never gonna wash out of them this time around. Oh, and she moans when I hit her and she screams when she comes, but it still isn't my name that she's whispering in her sleep that night.

And why not? It's about as logical as everything else she's ever done. Do the math, Dru, 'cause I'm not seeing how this one adds up. The Spike giveth and the Angelus taketh away, and still she can't let her darling daddy go. The honeymoon period lasts exactly a week and a half, and then I catch her cheating again.

She wants me to bleed her, but I just don't seem to have the energy these days.

But her he never wanted to despise, But listened always for her voice; and when She beckoned to him, he obeyed in meekness.

And followed her and looked into her eyes, Saw there reflected every human weakness, And saw himself as one of many men. ~W.H. Auden, "In Time of War"

We've broken up seven times in the last two months, and it would almost be funny if I weren't cracking into jagged little pieces.

When I hear the door close, I roll over and begin to run my fingers mindlessly over the crazy Rorschach pattern of bloodstains on our bedsheets. On the nights that she's not here, I curl underneath the covers and stay there until I hear her return. I'm beset by the terrible certainty that if I get out of bed I'll see William's reflection in the empty mirror on the other side of the room. I realize, of course, that I've begun to go just a little bit insane, but I figure things work out in my favor in comparison to her. When she comes back, she comes scraped and bloody and smelling of Others. On the nights that she's here, I chain her to the bedpost and beat her until she promises to stay.

It feels like rote, after so many times. I could recite her pleas verbatim and thrash her in my sleep.

I used to miss her when she was gone. It was something that ached in every cell of my body, screamed in every nerve in my brain: the terrible certainty that without her I'd simply cease to exist. But that space feels empty all the time now and I have to look up to remind myself whether she's left yet or not. And I'm tired. I'm so tired.

She'll only stay if I hit her, you see. I can do it when I'm angry, if I have to, but I just want to go back to sleep right now. The idea used to horrify me, but now it's just a chore, an unbelievable effort. Tear the skin in a half-assed attempt to bleed him out of muscle and bone, appease the gods for another night to keep Dru in my bed. Problem is I keep forgetting why I do it; it simply seems to be what I'm supposed to do these days. After a hundred and twenty years, giving her what she wants is merely habit. It's awful, I know, and I swear to God I'd get upset about it if I had the energy.

One evening, after days of silence, she speaks.

"You're not him," she says in a sad, singsong voice, tugging hard at strands of Miss Edith's hair and twisting them through her fingers. She's thin; we've both lost weight. We hunt less than we used to. Built for bruising and fucking and screaming these days, and little else. Maybe that's all I was built for in the first place.

"I'm well aware of that." My eyes stare sightlessly at the ceiling. It's a really crappy ceiling. My throat feels dry.

"You try and you try and you do everything you can think of but you're *still* not him. Loving me didn't change that, and loving her won't change it, either." She slaps Edith hard against her fragile porcelain face, her hands trembling.

I swallow thickly. "I'm not trying to be-"

"Sshhh." She presses one finger to her lips and shakes her head. "Lies don't look pretty on you anymore, pet."

"Doesn't matter. You're not mine anyway. You're his." My throat closes with tears and I struggle to speak. "You'll always be his. Go. I want you to go. I'm so fucking tired of this."

In the end, there isn't any big showdown. Two painfully silent weeks later, I wake up in an empty room. Her clothes are still here but the dolls are gone, so I know she isn't coming back.

I'm too exhausted to cry.

Six days later, I get out of bed and head north again.

Chapter 12

open his head, baby
& you'll find a heart in it
(cracked)
-e.e. cummings

~*Venice Beach, California, July 1999*~

"Women." I tip my whiskey glass conspiratorially towards the blonde, who I'm currently seeing three or four of. "Evil. I know this, you see. I have *vast* experience with evil things."

She giggles and tosses her hair over her shoulder in a drunken yet somehow childlike gesture.

"Vampire Master. Of a Hellmouth. For a couple of months, anyway, and then I broke my spine. Plus, I killed Slayers. Two of them."

"I know a Slayer," she says conversationally, and motions to the bartender. "She blew up our high school this one time."

"And I'm the grandchilde of this bloke, right, this evil bloke, Angel-face the Poncey sonofabitch, scourge of- of-" I rack my whiskey-soaked brain, trying to remember what exactly Angelus claimed to be the scourge of. "I dunno, scourge of a whole fuckofalot."

"You need another drink," she says, and a whiskey magically appears in front of me. This could be my tenth whiskey. Or my twelfth. Or my forty-fifth.

"Right." I try to light a cigarette and she laughs as I chase the tip with my lighter. Fuck it, it's not my fault I see seven Zippos right now, it's her fault for buying me so many drinks. "Where was I?"

"You were telling me how evil you were." She drains her fifth margarita and looks around again. "Hey! Bartender-guy!"

"I'm *really* fucking evil," I insist.

"I can tell."

"Well, I've had *experience* with evil, that's the main thing. And I know evil when I see it and women. are. *evil.*" I sit back with satisfaction, as if I've just made some ground-breaking leap of logic.

She stirs her sixth margarita with her straw and pouts. She's kinda cute when she pouts. "That's not fair. Women aren't evil. Except those of us who are evil in, like, you know, the *evil* sense. Obviously." She's only a month old and still takes her creature-of-the-night status very seriously.

"Every woman I've ever fallen for. Evil. And that proves it, y'know. Statis- statista- statistically shpeaking."

"Uh-huh. And how many women is that?"

"Two."

((you're all covered with her))

"Possibly three. That's what the second one said, anyhow. But probably not. Probably- just the two."

"And you're *how* old?"

"Hundred n' nineteen," I admit begrudgingly. I need another drink.

As if sensing this, she motions to the long-suffering bartender again. "You've just had bad luck is all. There are plenty of girls out there who know how to treat a man." She smiles suggestively. I don't know her name, don't care, but she's got strawberry-scented perfume and a seemingly endless financial supply and a great pair of tits. If we don't make it to the hotel, we can always fuck in the back of my car. I haven't been sober in three months now and I've lost track of how many girls I've woken up next to and watched leave without ever learning their names. One more won't make a damned bit of difference. Yes, I'm a whore. Thank you for reminding me.

"I bet so, pet. I bet you'd know how to treat a guy *real* good." Oh, god, I sound pathetic. Drunk and horny and pathetic and lonely and *old.* I'm trying to pick up a girl who was *born* during my hundred-and-first year. God, I'll be resorting to crappy pickup lines next. Why can't it be *simpler?* Why can't I just walk up to a cute bird and say "I'd really like to get laid, please, okay, if that wouldn't be too much trouble"?

She traces one perfectly manicured fingernail along the inside of my thigh. "What's your name, baby?"

Oh, god, I don't wanna start trading names. She'll tell me hers and then she'll expect me to fucking *remember* it. Most of them leave upon realizing that not only do I not know their names, but I don't quite remember having sex with them and usually am unsure as to which city we've been having sex in. Fucking hell. "Spike."

"I'm Harmony." Her hand starts to caress my leg, inching towards my cock and I want her to shut up, okay? I just want her to stop talking. Fuck making it to the DeSoto. We'll fuck in the restroom. "Where you from, Spike?"

One thing you never do, for Christ's sake, is ask someone a hundred and nineteen years old where they're from. "Hell, I dunno. England. China. Czechoslovakia. Brazil. Crappy little town called Sunnydale. Does it matter?" Who invented small talk in singles bars? Can I eat them?

"You're from Sunnydale?" she squeals excitedly. "Ohmigod, *I'm* from Sunnydale!"

I choke on my whiskey and start to wave my arms frantically in the bartender's direction. "I need another drink," I say desperately, "I need many, many more drinks, please. Now."

She has to remind me her name in the morning, but I manage to remember that she's fantastic in bed.

And she doesn't leave.

"Harm... what are you doing?"

God, I'm so sodding tired, I just want her to fuck off already. Why doesn't she ever just fuck off?

"I'm writing 'Spike loves Harmony' on your back."

"Why?" I try to use my Patient Voice, but it appears that I can't channel the Patient Voice for anyone but Dru. No, it's lovely, darling, now put down the straight razor, if you please, there's a good girl.

"I don't know," she replies with a shrug. "It's fun. I'm bored." She holds out that godawful black lipstick. "You can write on me."

I don't get her idea of fun. She doesn't like bloodplay, doesn't like to be tied up. She dug her fingernails into my back once, drawing blood, and then apologized profusely. I told her to do it again, only about three times harder. She stared at me as if I'd gone mad.

I shrug her off and reach for my t-shirt. "I've got to get back to work."

Harmony heaves a sigh. She doesn't understand why I put so much effort into finding this gem. Doesn't understand why it's so important. Doesn't understand that my return to Sunnyhell is a disaster waiting to happen, that I'm terrified- of fucking up, of humiliating myself in front of that goddamned Slayer yet another time, of falling asleep to be rent to pieces by Dru's fingernails in my dreams. Terrified of the bad memories lurking on every street corner in this godforsaken town.

Harm doesn't fear anything. She doesn't mistrust anything, especially me. I'm her blondie-bear, her Spikey, and I try to take those nicknames in good faith even though they make me want to retch. Because she adores me- completely, unquestioningly, unerringly.

And I. can't. stand it.

I don't know why; I don't know what it is about her fawning adoration and naive affections that set me on edge. It's not just her vapid, valley-girl behavior, although it drives me up the wall as well. It's not the negatives, no, it's the things I'm supposed to *want.* It's those eyes that love me without expecting anything in return. Hands that seek only to please me with no thought of her own pleasure. I should want it, it's what everyone wants, isn't it? It's so goddamn ideal, but on me it's like a garment that doesn't fit quite right. I don't love her. I can't love her. It doesn't hurt enough for that. And I want to scream at her to stop it, stop loving me like that, quit treating me so well, quit acting like I'm so goddamn perfect, because it's fucking *weird.*

But I can't say that. Can't explain the hundred and twenty years that have shaped me into a creature that gets off on its own destruction and thrives on being wounded.

"You love that tunnel more than me," she says with a hint of tears in her voice, and I want to tell her that tears don't get you anywhere, don't win you any extra brownie points in the end, don't buy you any extra time, trust me, I know.

"I love syphilis more than you," I retort, getting up to leave.

I don't think she realizes that it's not exactly an insult.

I don't think much of love these days, either.

He sanctioned my bleeding for twenty years running, so I can't see what goddamned right he has to complain now that the manacle's on the other wrist. Not that he's complaining; it wouldn't fit too well in the redemption schedule.

He looks like the crucified Christ, like the Hanged Man in Dru's Tarot pack. Dangling there in his chains and martyrdom is *such* a good look on him these days. It looked great on me a century ago- Darla saw to that- but I fear it's fallen out of fashion since then, and I don't have anyone to make such a fool of myself over anyhow, not anymore. It doesn't count if you don't suffer, he thinks, but he only thinks that because he hasn't been suffering as long as I have. He'll learn. And I can be the one to teach him.

I'd call it poetic justice, but I don't go for poetry much these days.

I shouldn't be enabling such idiocy; I don't approve of contrition, no matter where it's owed. Especially from him. Forgiveness is what he wants, and he's not about to find it at my hands. It's almost too pathetic, y'know? The Scourge of Europe awaiting his punishment like a naughty schoolboy. I remember when we sliced and scratched and snarled our way across continents.

I remember when nothing could stop him.

And I almost want to put down the needle-nosed pliers and tell him that it's all right, that he doesn't need forgiveness, he doesn't need anything but us, and if we were all together again he'd see how much better it could be. It's all right, I almost say, you don't have to be good. You just have to be *ours.* Of course, I know what he'd say to that. So I'm just gonna grip these pliers as tightly as I can so he doesn't see my hands shaking, and I'm gonna teach him once and for all that martyrdom isn't all that fun.

I have a right to take what's coming to me. I have a right to take it out in spades.

He hasn't screamed that loudly for me in a hundred years.

All right, so let's review The Terminal FuckUps of William the Bloody, shall we? Who wants to start?

1) Going to Prague. We should have bloody well stayed in New Orleans where everyone was too drunk to go vampire-hunting.

2) Coming to Sunnydale for Dru's cure. I haven't quite figured out what went wrong there, since it was such a good idea on paper, but there was obviously a fundamental design flaw somewhere, so it definitely constitutes as a FuckUp. 2b) Not hightailing it the *fuck* out of California when the Ponce of Europe reared his overgelled head. 2b1) Fucking up the raid on the high school. 2b1a) Fucking up *every* time I tried to kill that goddamned Slayer, in general. God, I hate that bitch. 2b2) Fucking up Dru's restoration ceremony, and getting my spinal column snapped in the process. 2c) Not hightailing it the *fuck* out of California when the Ponce of Europe lost his soul. I mean, what the fuck was I thinking? That life with Angelus was *fun*?

3) Stopping the apocalypse. I should have just bloody well let the world end. Would've been better for everyone concerned. 3b) Stopping the apocalypse, on account of the extraordinary degree to which it pissed Dru off. Should've just let her have her bloody apocalypse. 4) Letting Dru leave. 4b) Going back to Dru after she left. I should've just left bloody well enough alone. 4c) Letting her leave again.

5) Hooking up with that brain-dead bottle-blonde Harmony. 5b) Returning with that brain-dead bottle-blonde to this god-forsaken town.

6) Losing that goddamn gem. 6b) Trying to reclaim that goddamn gem from the Ponce of Europe, and failing with devastating, humiliating panache. 6c) Setting my hair on fire in the process.

7) Returning to Sunnyhell only to find myself zapped by a bunch of half-assed toy soldiers, locked in a sterile white room, and surgically rendered impotent.

8) Returning to Harmony. 8b) Getting *dumped.* By *Harmony.* Low on the cosmic scale of consequential fuck-ups, true, but quite possibly the most mind-boggling humiliation thus far.

Which brings us to the current state of affairs, in which I have ended up crouched under a blanket in a carport near the Watcher's apartment, hiding from the sun and beset with the sneaking suspicion that there will be quite a few more fuck-ups to add to the ever-growing list by the end of the day. I watch as the redheaded witch goes in with a stack of books and frozen peas and, a few minutes later, some girl I don't recognize with that other kid, who looks decidedly unwell. Maybe if he dies, I can eat him. My mouth waters.

Maybe if I played nice...

No. Bloody hell, *no.* Not going in there. Not that desperate.

Another spasm of hunger hits me and I double over in pain.

I might be a fuckup of the highest degree, but I know when I've been beaten.

This is wrong, I know on some fundamental level that it's wrong. All things weighed equally, I don't hate her any less now than I did half an hour ago.

"Oh, Spike," she sighs, her eyes full of joyful tears. "I don't know what to say."

Hate and love go together so well, you know. I remember that.

"Just say yes," I reply simply. "And make me the happiest man on earth."

Vampires don't marry; rarely you'll hear of a couple who married as mortals. I always wanted it, though. Not a wedding, per se; weddings involve churches and, by proxy, uncomfortable things like crosses and holy water. But still... I wanted *something.* A reason for Dru to get dressed up and we could invite all our friends and have lots of alcohol and show everyone how much we loved each other.

It's sappy, I know. It's maudlin. It's excruciatingly Williamesque. And Dru never would have stood for it.

The Slayer's a fucking annoying little bitch, but she's a bloody great kisser. And you take what you can get, y'know?

I can't stand that bloody basement, but I get so bored when they drag me over to Giles' for their little research parties. Bored and annoyed and very, very hungry in a roomful of humans. I spend most of my time there drinking and staring at the endless rows of bookshelves, searching in vain for something remotely interesting.

Nothing interesting, perhaps, but there's a damn sight here that's familiar- uncomfortably so. I trace my fingers along the titles, scraps and titles and passages jostling their way into my memory. Shakespeare, of course, and Dickens and Chaucer; Spenser and Middleton and Swift; Sophocles, Homer, Plato. The Romantics: Byron, Shelley, Keats. Wycherley, Congreve, Dryden; all three Brontes. Philosophers: Hobbes and Locke, St. Thomas Aquinas, Descartes. I've read all of these, at university. Some of them dozens of times each. And I fucking loved every single one.

Standing there, in Giles' living room, a beer in one hand, I get a sudden flash of insight: What Might Have Been. Not what'd I'd be today, not exactly- so many crumbling remains in a London churchyard is all I'd be- but what I'd have become if I'd been allowed to live, allowed to age.

I'd be Giles. The clothing only slightly more old-fashioned, perhaps, the stutter a bit more pronounced. My father wanted me to be an investment banker or a solicitor, which I would have attempted, of course, and failed at miserably become continuing my studies and becoming, in all likelihood, a stodgy old university professor, imparting my wheedling knowledge and spectacularly bad taste in poetry to countless impressionable young minds.

I shudder, draw my hand away from the books, and shake my head as if to clear those images away; thoughts of William are more common these days but still just as unwanted, as if I keep him caged in the back of my mind and he's always trying to escape.

I've got to get out of here. Away from these bloody humans.

Maybe it's time I got myself a nice crypt.

2000

My mind is a blood-soaked abattoir where I rip her heart out every night.

"Well?" I ask, expertly twirling a red-hot poker in one hand and brandishing a cat-o-nine-tails in the other. "Am I?"

Blood runs in long, dark stripes down her arms from where the manacles that hold her hands stretched above her head have begun to shred her wrists into damp, ragged ribbons. She rolls her eyes in exasperation. "Are you *what*?" she asks impatiently.

"Demon enough," I say tiredly, as if it should be obvious.

"Obviously not," she replies, stifling a yawn. She lolls her head back in an attitude of boredom, and I can see blood running in lazy trickles from where the scar in her neck has reopened of its own volition. She never told me who put it there. She didn't have to.

"Maybe I'm just biding my time," I say defensively.

"Please," she retorts. "You haven't even used them yet, and you would by now if you were ever going to."

I glance down at the poker and cat-o-nines, which feel heavy and stupid in my hands now, before tossing them away. "They weren't for you, anyway." Don't know what I'm supposed to use now. The railroad spike in the corner is rusted from disuse.

She shrugs carelessly. "One excuse for failure is as good as another." The blood is coursing down her flesh in thick rivulets now, staining her shirt and plastering the material to the curves of her chest like a second skin. I go for her throat, growling, and she stops me with a derisive smile. "You can't. You *know* you can't."

"Why? Because of the chip?" I demand hotly. "Makes no difference. This isn't even *real.*"

Another shrug. Manacles clank in the stillness of the room, an abandoned warehouse decorated with stone caskets and crepe-de-chine walls. "Doesn't matter. Pavlov's dog and all."

"I'm not anybody's dog." I bite down hard on my lower lip, drawing blood.

She smirks. "No, and don't you wish you were."

I lift blonde curls off her neck and begin to lick away the crimson stream that trickles down her skin, my tongue traveling up her throat in long, slow strokes. My teeth graze the wound in her jugular, nibbling slightly at the flesh. She tastes like him. "See? What did I tell you?"

She heaves a sigh. "Yeah, whatever. The only chance you have with me is when you're unconscious."

I slap her hard across the face, feeling her cheekbone snap under the pressure of my hand, and pain explodes in my head.

I wake up bathed in sweat, famished, with a splitting headache. Two shots of whiskey to dull the pain and a bag of rancid pig's blood to ward off the hunger pangs wage a furious battle in my cramped stomach until I finally lean out the door of my crypt and regurgitate the whole mixed- drink mess all over the frozen cemetery ground. I go back inside, hurling the empty bloodbag and whiskey bottle at the wall in fury. I lie back down on the stone-cold tomb and my throat closes in frustrated rage. I throw one arm over my eyes and let out a choked sob. It echoes back loudly in the still emptiness of the crypt.

I want to die. I want her to die. I can't figure out which one I want more.

I drift off into an exhausted sleep again, only to wake three hours later when an ugly patchwork demon barges into my crypt and makes me an offer I can't refuse.

Should've seen it coming, I guess.

Hell, maybe I wanted it this way. It all makes a sort of sick sense, doesn't it? After all, she's got the whole make-Spike-suffer routine down nearly as well as everyone else I've ever

((loved))

((*say* it))

"No," I whisper again. Harm stirs slightly beneath the covers. If she wakes up, and begins with her incessant yammering, I'm going to fucking go insane and then I'll *have* to rip her heart out through her throat and then I'll be all alone because

((*say* it))

no. I'm not in love with the Slayer, no, no, no, no-

((end my torment))

I start to giggle hysterically, placing both hands over my mouth to muffle the sound. Oh, but this is rich. I've really done it this time.

((seeing you every day everywhere i go every time i turn around))

I squeeze my eyes shut, the half-assed laughter growing so loud that I bite down on my palms in a desperate attempt to get a hold of myself. Images flash on the backs of my eyelids, pale curls and soft eyes and bright, pretty bruising.

((take me out of a world that has you in it))

The giggles break into choked sobs and I bury my teeth deeper, sending red trickles down my arms. It's too soon. Too soon to cry over her. Too soon to bleed.

And I'm fucked now, you see. I'm well and truly fucked.

((just))

'Cause there's only one way I know how to love.

((kill me))

Forever.

Chapter 13

IV. Buffy

This ain't no headtrip, honey, this is a collision on the road
And you've got me feeling oh just like a roadkill
and you know deep down I know
~Poe, "Trigger Happy Jack"

-----

A Slayer.

I'm

((*say* it, you wanker))

in love with

((you stupid, clueless, brainless *ponce*))

a fucking *Slayer.* As in, "the sodding bitch with a sacred duty to stake my ass into so much dust."

I light my sixth cigarette and shake my head in amazement.

Stupid, stupid, stupid *moron.*

I've been staring at her house for so long now that the yellow glass squares of her windows have burned into my retinas and everything else is fading away.

Which is kind of miserable, when you think about-

Fuck. There she is.

"Spike," she snaps, as if she can't for the life of her think of a more revolting concept than the sound of my name.

My voice shakes nervously when I speak. "Hi, Buffy." Oh, Christ, was that *William* I just heard? Yes, I do believe it was. Quick, kill it before it

has a chance to breed and multiply. Fucking hell.

She heaves one of her long-suffering-Slayer sighs. "Don't take this the wrong way, but..." Next thing I know my nose is broken for the fifth time in the past two months. Don't take it the wrong way? What bloody way am I *supposed* to take it? There aren't a lot of varied interpretations for the broken-nose method of communication, especially when sign and signifier have changed so damn little in the past four years. I helped her keep the goddamn *world* from being sucked into hell, you know, and this is the way she treats me.

Fucking bitch.

"What are you doing here?"

I open my mouth and start to say something that will no doubt sound very plausible.

"Five words or less."

I narrow my eyes and start to count off words on my fingers. "Out. for. a. walk." Can't resist the final jab. "Bitch." It's almost like haiku, isn't it? Guess there's still some poet in me after all.

"Out for a walk. At night. By my house." She folds her arms impatiently. "No one has time for this, *William.*"

My jaw clenches in fury. The little bitch just called me William. What fucking right does she have to-

"On your merry way, then," I snap heatedly. Goddamnit, but I can't believe the bollocks on this bird. "You know, contrary to one's *self-involved* world-view, your house happens to be directly between..." I flounder for an explanation. "...parts... and... other parts of this town. And I would pass by in the day," I continue in heavily sarcastic tones, "but I feel I'm outgrowing my whole "burst into flame" phase."

"Fine," she says dismissively, starting to leave. "Keep going, I cut you a break."

That snotty, self-absorbed little-

"Oh, yeah, okay, let me guess... you won't kill me?" I say dramatically. "Oooo... the whole crowd-pleasing threats-and-swagger routine. How *stunningly*

original." She gives me a positively venomous look. "You know, I'm just passing through. Satisfied?"

No, haven't been lurking in your front yard for two hours, no, certainly not. Would I do that?

"You know, I really hope so, because God knows you need some satisfaction in life besides shagging Captain Cardboard-" That hits home, and she blinks in shocked anger. "And I never really liked you anyway," I finish lamely, "and... and you have stupid hair." Without giving her a chance to respond to this tirade, I stalk off angrily back to my crypt.

There really are no limits to my idiocy these days.

----- I could love you as dry roots love rain. I could hold you as branches in the wind brandish petals. Forgive me for speaking so soon. -Carl Sandburg, "Offering and Rebuff" ----- A handful of crumpled bills and a plate of buffalo wings and that's supposed to mean something, is it? Supposed to be enough to slice me open and lay me bare for her perusal, like I'm a bloody how-to manual? It's not much but it buys her a brief history of The World According to Spike, at any rate. Oh, God, I'm so full of bullshit this evening, but she buys every word. I don't tell her everything, of course. She doesn't need to know- oh, so many things.

How sharp Darla's fingernails could be. How pale Dru was after Prague. What her ex-boyfriend was really like, a hundred years past.

((and william, she certainly doesn't need to know about william at all, no good could possibly come out of that))

Afterwards, as she weeps quietly and tolerates my silent presence beside her on the back porch, I feel a cold chill of terror run through me, and a clear thought surfaces in my head: Joyce is going to die. Perhaps not this week, or this year, or for the next fifty years, but Joyce is going to die. And her eldest daughter, with her damned destiny and twenty-year shelf life, is going to die- probably sooner than later. And her sister, and her

lover, and her friends will someday all die as well.

This isn't something I've ever had to deal with. I don't know when I'll see Dru or Angelus again, if ever, but they won't be dead. They might disappear for a century or two or three, but they won't be *dead,* and in that knowledge lies the dim hope that someday I might find them again. But humans... you kill humans, and they stay dead, and you don't see them again. Ever.

Death is her art, oh Christ, it is indeed. She was built for death, built to make it and fated to suffer it; hell, I tried to bring it about myself less than a year ago, before I decided that I'd rather fuck her than destroy her, before I realized that I'd rather go hungry than be alone. And suddenly I cannot shake the cold shockwave in my skull, screaming that someday, perhaps someday very soon, I'm going to wake up and this girl

((this girl *say* it the girl you love))

will be nothing more than so much dead flesh and bone. And perhaps it would be worth it, after all, even if I missed her. Worth it to sleep in peace and make this aching stop.

But I can't imagine myself without that ache these days; I can't imagine my flesh without bruises, my sanity without rips and tears, and my heart without jagged, bleeding cracks. She belongs here. And loving her belongs in me.

This world is a fucked-up place, but I can't bloody well imagine it without her.

----- 2001 ----- She knows. Not exactly, but she knows something's different. I've been paying through the nose for her sense of unease. She's been such a bitch since Captain America took a hike, anyway, and she bloody well blames it on me. Not my fault all her boyfriends are tall, boring sods with commitment issues.

You'd think I would've learned by now to not put up with this shit. Doesn't even the most unrepentant masochist eventually get up out of the handcuffs and say "ouch, I've had enough of this bruised and bleeding shit, I'll be moving along now"? But oh, no, not me, it's not enough by half. Dru's fingernails and Angelus' fists started a habit that I just can't seem to break, and wanting her's the naughty little pleasure that I just can't let go. I guess you could say that I've developed a taste for bleeding for her.

Oh, but you'll break me someday, Buffy. I'm gonna wake up in little pieces and I won't know how I got there and it's all because of you. All for the sake of a stupid bint with golden-green eyes and sharp fists and sharper words, a selfish little bitch who doesn't for one moment deserve to be loved the way I love.

I don't want this, I don't want this, and dear God, there must be something left in me that can make it stop. I don't wanna feel this way, don't wanna see you smirking there when I close my eyes to go to sleep. But I'm not strong enough to fight it, to fight you.

Oh, it's all you, baby, you and your harsh hands and smiling lips and your fucking sense of higher purpose and you won't ever go away. It's always been you, nothing but you for four years running now, bruises and bleeding and heartache besides. Didn't matter that I hated you, hate you now; I didn't have to love you for you to fill up my head and rip out my insides like this. It's all wrapped up in your preternatural muscle and stupid blonde curls and goddamnit you're not *worth* this.

I spend every evening outside her window now. Me and this crushed box of fucking chocolates.

Dawn knows, but she keeps her mouth shut.

-----

She looks the same.

I don't know how I expected otherwise. She looked the same the night we met as she did in 1900, 1957, 1995. The clothing bears a modern designer label

now, but it looks the same. Of course she looks the same, I look the same, we all look the fucking same. Except I don't feel the same anymore.

((you taste like ashes))

The same girl, as beautiful and demonic and crazyinnocent as she was the night she ripped out my throat, all dark waves and seastorm eyes and fingernails that could take you to pieces. She smirks at me around the petals of a blood rose. Memories rush over me and I wait for that familiar constriction around my heart, but it doesn't come. I expect to feel *something*- relief, affection, lust- but all I can feel is a tired anger, a resentment that feels so much older than three years in the making. A bitterness that would scream its lungs out

((you stupid worthless bitch, look what you've done to me))

if it had the energy to speak.

"So, let's get this straight. Darla got mojo'd back from the great beyond."

((they always follow you home. trust me. i know))

"...you vamped her... and now she and you are working on turning Angel into his own bad self again."

((yeah baby, i'm back))

"Sounds fun."

"It is," she says confidently. "Like lollipops at the circus." She traces her fingertips along healing burn marks that mar her chest. "Although I didn't care for Angelus setting us on fire."

((he shall be very cross if he finds we had a lovely mass slaughter without him))

"And this has gotten you, what? All nostalgic, has it?" My voice sounds so dead, cold, careless. All I can feel is a kind of dull horror.

"I want us to be a family again, my William."

William. She hasn't called me that in a century or more.

Wonder why she's doing it now.

((is that what you see? that skinny, helpless, stuttering whelp? take away my teeth, and is that what i become?))

"Come back with me..."

I wanted her, oh, God, I wanted her back so bad, and part of me will always ache for clove-scented curls of dark hair and the faces of porcelain dolls, ache for the knowledge that all my secrets would remain bound up forevermore in glass eyes and sharp fingernails and fairy tales about naughty boys and dead children. I want silken coverlets and lace canopies and the acrid smell of burning candlewax, I want the last four years to dissipate like so much dust. But my short-term memory wants her to get the fuck out of Sunnydale before she bollixes up my life again. Please, I want to say, please, can't you just get out before you break me for old time's sake, please, don't you understand that it's been too long and I've learned to bleed for someone else?

Oh, but I'm weak, and I'm lonely, and I want someone crazier than me in the room for once. And damn it all to hell if I'm not still William after all, still William after all these years, perhaps now more than ever. And she can see that, as clearly as she sees the nasty bits of plastic that keep me down.

She wants me back, and I'll go, 'cause I don't know any better and can't help myself. But I'm already dreading what's to come. Already anticipating bruises inside and out.

Already reverting to Life with Princess.

-----

We work our way through the Bronze and go out into the street. She helps me tear my way through five, six, seven of them; it's been too long since I've drunk to fullness, too long since hot blood and secondhand liquor have mixed that way inside of me, and I feel exhausted, nauseous, dimly afraid that my guts might explode. We end up in the back room of a bar off Main Street; she coos over my distress and kneels between my legs, running her fingers lightly along the zipper of my jeans. I close my eyes wearily and trail my fingers through the dark silk her hair.

"Spike? What's wrong?"

One last time.

"Ssshhhhh."

Family again. Her hands on my thighs and her lips around my cock and it's oh so familiar. Hell, the only part of "family" worth remembering is the blowjobs.

((bad timing on your part and bad luck on his))

((that thing. in the corner. what in the world is this?))

((i don't owe you anything))

Family again.

((you taste like ashes))

Crumbling like ashes for months now. Made up of ashes, these days. She doesn't want that taste in her mouth, and we both know it.

((family again))

I remember everything, you know. I'm not stupid. Not that stupid, anyway. Loneliness and cold blood and Buffybruise and the passage of time are bad, yeah, but they aren't enough to wash that away. I remember Darla's contempt when I was a clueless fledgling, Angelus' brutality when I was trapped in that chair, Dru's betrayal when I did what was best for us instead of what was best for him. You think I don't know how badly they'd take to my current toothless state? My skin aches just thinking about it. Family again, yeah, Dru, let's go turn Angel evil again and get to reuniting, can't fucking *wait* to see how that one pans out. I can't wait to bleed for you again, and then stand by helpless and harmless as I watch you go.

'Cause sometimes she's not psychic in retrospect, you see. Sometimes she can't see forwards or backwards, just in dreamy, dizzy circles around her head and sometimes she lets the voices tell whatever she wants to hear. Whatever bullshit strikes her fancy that day. She thinks like a child, and she desires like a child, and the lines between what Dru wants and what Dru gets are frequently blurred into pretty, messy, bullshit lines. She wants family again, 'cause she doesn't remember those bruises the way *I* do.

She doesn't remember far enough ahead of herself to realize that she's just going to end up leaving me again.

I'll let her stay tonight, oh yes, and I'll drink fresh blood from those pretty little lips and I'll take my pleasure between those pretty little thighs and maybe I'll be able to forget for ten minutes running. Maybe. And when she wakes up tomorrow, bored and restless and searching for naughty pleasures that I can no longer provide, I'll let her go. Because it hurts too much otherwise. I've been down that road too many times in the last hundred and twenty years and it hurts too much. There's not enough blood or sex in the whole world to make me Darla's punching bag and Angelus' fucktoy and Drusilla's bitch again. So I keep my eyes closed when she fucks me, and then we get dressed and return to the crypt.

Sometime before we get there, what's left of my sanity breaks into little pieces, and my recent trend of stupidity reaches its zenith.

-----

I am completely in control. I am handling the situation to the best of my ability. I am not cracking up.

I am not fooling anyone. Least of all myself.

Sometime after I get back from the computer nerd's, I drain my fifth beer, toss the can on the alarmingly high pile of empties in the corner of my crypt, and realize that I've officially hit bottom. The reasons, of course, are Legion: she won't let me in her house; her Watcher won't let me anywhere near her; her little sister hates me; her friends, if this is humanly possible, hate me even more than they used to; her mother will probably never give me hot chocolate again; Dru thinks I'm a hopeless loser; and oh yeah, one other thing- I've just commissioned a lookalike robot so that I can go on pretending that it's all okay, sure, yeah, no problems here, it's just Spike and the AutoShagger and baby makes three and everything. is. okay.

I'm okay. I'm not cracking up. She hasn't broken me yet. Not yet.

((lies don't look pretty on you anymore))

But it's always been lies, hasn't it? As far back as I can remember, 'cause poetry is the biggest liar of all. Beauty is truth, truth beauty, my ass; there's nothing as lovely as a good lie. Keats was a liar, and Byron, and Shelley, and that fucker Shakespeare- he was the worst bullshit artist of the whole lot. "Love looks not with the eyes, but with the mind," he said- love looks with the mind my *ass.* Love looks with eyes and fists and cock and tongue but it never bloody well bothers with the fucking *mind* because the mind might see past the lie and then there'd be no point to it. Because Buffy's a bitch and Angel's a bastard and Dru's a whore and if I let myself remember that, even for a moment, then I might have to remember what I am, too.

((you're nothing to me william))

Nothing's pretty as a good lie. But this is one lie that I'm going to have to stop telling myself. 'Cause she doesn't love me. And she isn't ever going to.

I drink myself into a stupor for the third time this week. When I come to, Joyce is dead.

That's what I get for sobering up, I guess.

***

Chapter 14

I'm in a good mood, goddamnit.

I haven't been in a good mood for about three years and it first it feels, well, kind of strange. Of course, I get reaccustomed to the sensation real damned quick. Besides, it's refreshing to have sex with someone who isn't either talking to the stars or examining their manicure while riding you.

I can't remember the last time I was so goddamn happy. Christ, if this is anything like the real thing, no bloody wonder she shagged Angelus into perfect bliss. Ten shags in seven hours and who knows how many blowjobs besides. Swear to Christ. It's fucking amazing. If I wasn't immortal *and* preternaturally strong, I would've keeled over from exhaustion by now.

"Should I start this program over?" she asks in a falsely cheerful voice.

"Shh!" I admonish. "No programs."

((that's right, no programs at all, you didn't just pay a few thousand dollars in stolen cash to have her tailor-made to walk like her and talk like her and fight like her, and love you and hate him in a way that she never would))

"Don't use that word. Just be Buffy."

It's not real, a little voice nags in the back of my mind as her lips begin to work their way down my throat. It's not real, it's plastic, it's wiring and programming and computer chips, it doesn't mean anything, she doesn't love me and it's not real. And I turn to this voice with fists clenched and fangs bared and I snarl out my protest, because *I* know the difference, because *I* know that half-assed fantasies of blonde curls and soft lips and harsh fists are not real, mannequins and Polaroids and stupid protestations that die on the air the minute they're spoken are not real, and jerking off every night in an empty crypt is. not. real. But this- touching fucking hands stroking fingers lips tongues searching legs twisted tangled clamped tight voice screaming my name into the darkness- that's real, goddamnit, it's *real.* It has to be.

"Do you love me?" I ask hoarsely. I told him to program her to say it at random intervals, but it doesn't seem to be working. She has to be told to say it. Kind of like Dru.

Her eyes blink twice, rapidly. Processing information. "Yes," she says chirpily. "I love you, Spike."

I close my eyes tightly and thread my fingers through hers, burying my face into the crook of her neck. She doesn't smell like Buffy. I explained this to Warren, several times, very slowly; and he tried, he really did. But humans are so fucking clueless and he said he didn't know what "sunshine" smells like. She smells like the ocean. She smells like orangeflowers. And it's close, it's really close. But it's not her. "Say it again."

"I love you, Spike."

"Again."

"I love you."

"Again."

I'm a sick fuck.

-----

You know, I really don't ask for trouble.

Well, not *this* kind of trouble, in any case.

'Cause, frankly, pain just really isn't any fun unless I'm a) the one causing it or b) gonna get laid before, after, or during. And you know what? I am so fucking sick of being chained to ceilings and shredded to a pulp by bitchy, self-absorbed, preternaturally strong bottle-blond whores, okay? I mean, I'm way past it.

((there are *rules,* william))

Way fucking past it and rapidly losing consciousness.

((you're an idiot, spike))

((you think? 'cause i'm not the one chained to the ceiling))

She's started to scream. There are bugs in her brain, she says. I don't care. She's no good at it anyway, hasn't talked to the moon once, doesn't know any pretty lullabies, can't wear crazy nearly as well as Dru.

((eyes like needles. daddy's home))

"My name is a holy name," she screeches, seizing the front of my shirt,"I can see things that no one else can see, and when I enter a room you will look, and when I speak you will pay *attention!*" I roll my eyes.

"Why aren't you talking to the moon, then?" I snap testily. "Don't you know how this works? How stupid are you, anyway?" She slaps me across the face, her fingernails digging into my skin.

I don't think she understands what I mean.

"Why the hell won't you tell me?" she shrieks, her voice taking on a hysterical edge. "Do you honestly think that you have anything left to lose?"

((something a crumb a barest smidgen tell me maybe someday there's a chance))

I never asked for this. I've bled for a lot of people but the Slayer's fucking kid sister was never supposed to be one of them. But it's not Dawn I'm bleeding for, it's Buffy, and it was never supposed to have gone this far. I was supposed to stop her from making me feel this way before it went this far.

((you think I like having you in here?))

But they, all three of them ((family)) were never even on their worst ((best?)) days this thorough, this... inventive. She pokes a sharp finger through the first, second, third layer of skin covering my sternum, like a curious kitten ravaging helpless prey. Family never wanted anything for the bleeding, oh no, and the cuts and bruises were catch-as-catch-can but she. is. oh so determined.

((are you listening to me, william?))

She's got this knife, you see, pretty little sharp thing that she is, and she's taking me apart piece by piece, pulling apart pale flesh, opening up to white bone and the dark tracery of veins, and I never wanted my insides that way

((in pieces all over the floor))

and I'm afraid. Afraid she'll peel away the layers and expose the bone; afraid she'll strip me down to nothing. Tattered clothing will go first (all black now, I can't remember what happened to that red shirt I used to have, what'd I do with it? I really liked that shirt; it disappeared sometime last year, along with everything else) and then bleached strands of hair will scatter to the floor, followed by black-chipped, nicotine-stained fingertips that go tumbling clattering after and I can't survive without such things, I am made up of such things, and you can only rip away so much before I've been shredded down piece by piece and all that's left is

((william))

I am made up of such things.

"I don't *understand," she whines, stomps her foot like a frustrated child. "Why isn't pain working? Pain works on *everyone.*"

((you'll forget eventually that you're not supposed to like it))

A sly smile works its way across her face and I feel a shuddering run through me.

"You're one of *those* types," she purrs, and her hand is back on my chest, gentle this time. "Oh, I should have guessed it, with your whore's lips and come-fuck-me eyes, oh yes, you're just everyone's little bitch, aren't you? It's just too cute. I know how to get to you." Her fingers begin to work at the waistband of my jeans and I swallow hard. "Ssh, sssh baby, it's okay. You're gonna give it up for me, aren't you? Of course you are. You're gonna give Glory what she wants, ssshhh, it'll feel just fine, don't you worry." She lets one small hand drift between my legs, higher and higher and ((yes please))

I can't help it. Split skin is the only aphrodisiac I know. I can't help it. It's not my fault.

Lipsticked mouth around my cock, warm like a human's, and she's good, oh yeah, I could believe that she'd been working on her technique since the dawn of some demon dimension; two blowjobs in three hours, one from a sexbot and one from a psychotic deity, and aren't I just a regular bleedin' Casanova these days? I have the craziest urge to bury my fingers in the thick wavy blondness of her hair, but the manacles are a bit of an impediment. Her tongue knows the secrets of the ages and her fingernails leave light scrapes in my thighs, and it's so fucking much like *family* again that I bite down on a choked sob that tries to force its way out of my throat.

She pulls away for a fraction of a moment.

"Tell me."

"Fuck off." But I don't sound as determined anymore.

She runs a fingertip slowly along the underside of my cock. I can feel her breath on the insides of my thighs. "Tell me."

"No." It's more of a plea than a refusal. I can feel my resolve beginning to pull and tear at the corners. Pain doesn't do the trick, oh no, pain doesn't do a damned thing, but pleasure's just enough to break me. Ten shags in seven hours and it's not enough, it's never enough, they mark me again and again with her fingernails and his cock and her fists and then they all leave and I can't seem to accumulate enough scar tissue to wrap around myself and keep me warm. It's been too long since I've been able to tell where my loneliness leaves off and I begin.

So yeah, I've got lips and eyes and hands that beg for sex or pain, I've got a hard cock and a weak resolve and the inability to know when to say when and a hoarse voice that begs anyone who will listen to hurt me just a little bit more. No standards, no shame, just a willing body and a stupid want. So go ahead, Glorificus. Make me your bitch. Join the fucking club.

And it's not fair. Dawn's gonna die and Buffy's gonna hate me and all because I'm too much of a slut to keep my mouth shut when a hellgod is giving me mind-blowing head. It's not fair. None of this is fair.

I hear a muffled whimper escape my throat. I'm about to come, and when I do, I'm gonna be putty in her hands. Goddamnit. Not fair.

And suddenly she stops.

"No-" I don't mean to say it, but it can't be helped. You can't just... *stop*... like that... it's just not done. I don't care that she's a fucking hellbeast, it's not *done.*

She gives me a sly grin. "Tell me."

"Go to hell." Stupidest comeback in the history of the world, considering that's precisely what she's trying to do, but I barely have two braincells left to rub together and all my blood has rushed southward. My voice is strained and tinged with an edge of pathetic desperation. If she doesn't let me finish I have a sneaking suspicion that my balls might explode. Or implode. Or something... fucking hell just let me finish and then I'll tell you...

No. No, I can't. Can't tell. Buffy- Buffy wouldn't- goddamnit, why am I putting myself through this for Buffy? She doesn't even *like* me and she probably can't give head this good.

"Tell me who the Key is," she says doggedly, her hand closing tightly around the base of my cock.

No. No...

"Tell me, vampire."

I bite down hard on my lip, tears coming to my eyes, my throat closing with pleading and screams that fight to escape. Yes, it's her, it's the kid, it's Dawn, I'll tell you that, Jesus fucking Christ, I'll tell you anything, I'll rip my heart out and lay it on your pristine Persian rug just don't stop, don't fucking stop touching me anywhere, everywhere, *please.*

"I'll tell you if you let me finish," I say weakly. I don't know yet if it's true or not.

She raises one immaculately plucked eyebrow in disbelief. "I'll let you finish if you tell me." She tightens her hand and a wave of agony spreads through my groin.

"Fuck you," I sputter. "This isn't *fair.*"

She kicks me in the balls, and I black out for awhile.

When I come to, she's got the knife again. "I have a riddle for you, precious," she says smoothly. "How is a vampire that won't talk like an apple?"

If I'm lucky- *really* lucky- she'll just get annoyed and kill me.

"Think I can do you in one long strip?"

Chapter 15

Takes me a moment to figure it out.

Supergeek did good work, you see. The Virtual Girlfriend remains a steady 98.6, accentuated with flutter of digitized heartbeat. But he couldn't recreate the whisper of her breath, the sweet scent of blood rushing beneath her skin; even the finest Plasticene isn't the same as someone else's lips against your own. Oh, and it feels soft, and warm, and good, and I wanna slap myself for pulling away, but what the fuck is going on? I stare at her in confused amazement, and she gazes back calmly.

She looks so old sometimes, you know. Older than me.

She turns to leave and I fight to speak through my crushed windpipe. I know this question's gonna get me in trouble, but I have to ask. "My robot?"

She swivels her head and gives me a derisive look. "The robot is gone," she snaps. "The robot was gross and obscene."

I duck my head, feeling shame rush over me in waves. "It wasn't supposed to-"

((you don't understand she was supposed to love me))

"Don't," she cuts me off. "That- that *thing*... it wasn't even real."

((i love you spike))

((say it again))

She moves towards the door again, and I lower my head, squeezing my eyes shut. I want her to go, and it would probably be best for both of us if she never comes back. Because I cannot even begin to conceive of how much I've fucked things up this time.

She pauses, speaks softly. "What you did, for me, and Dawn... that was real."

I lift my head and find her gazing at me, for the first time, with honest, uncomplicated gratitude.

"I won't forget it."

The door shuts behind her, leaving me in darkness.

-----

I've got to get out of this sodding Winnebago before I lose my fucking mind. I mean, how exactly did this *happen*? How the *fuck* did William the Bloody, Slayer of Slayers, end up in a goddamned Winnebago with seven humans? I don't wanna think about it anymore. It's giving me a headache. Like the kind I would get if I ripped their heads off, one by one. Xander's first.

Tara pushes an arm past Willow, trying to brush her fingers against Dawn's shoulder. "So pretty," she says plaintively, "can I have one?" Willow patiently pushes her back with a small sigh. I wonder what she sees, what all the crazies see when they look at Dawn, the same way I always wondered what Dru used to see that made her scream for days. Tara wears crazy well; her eyes are wide and staring, begging for a cohesion that eludes her. It's familiar, so goddamn familiar that it makes my chest ache.

I don't want to be here. I never wanted this.

She reaches for the blinds, and I see it coming right before the harsh sunlight streams in.

((it's so pretty, Spike))

((can I touch it?))

I yelp in pain and jump away from the table, waving out the flames that have erupted on my hand. "Tara, no!" Willow shouts, pulling her back. "What did I tell you?"

((will it be my friend?))

((get your fingers back inside the goddamn car, Dru))

Tara bursts into hysterical tears and Willow shushes her as I nurse my smoldering hand. "I'm sorry," she says apologetically. "She didn't mean to. She doesn't know what she's doing-"

"We know," Dawn answers softly.

She probably really *is* sorry, that's the thing. Sorry for me when I couldn't bite, even though it meant that I couldn't bite *her.* Sorry for me that time I tried to off myself in Xander's basement. The only one of all of them, really, that's ever given a damn. "No biggie," I say quickly, trying to sound reassuring, not sure who I'm meant to reassure. "Look, the skin's already stopped smoking."

((it's so pretty and so bright and i don't understand why it has to hurt so much, everything hurts))

"You go ahead and play peek-a-boo with Mister Sunshine all you like," I continue, effortlessly channeling a hundred years of Coping With Dru. "Keeps the ride from getting boring." Willow looks at me gratefully.

Tara twists her head around wretchedly, tears shining in her vacant eyes. "All the light is gone."

-----

I've bloody well had it with this apocalyptic shit, you know.

What is this, the second end-of-the-world bash? Third, if you count that time at the high school last year that I damn near caused instead of prevented.

You know, I survived a hundred and eighteen bloody years without a single goddamn apocalypse, but they seem to be yearly occurrences here. Armageddons just *follow* these people, like obnoxious puppies.

"The weapons are in the chest by the TV," she calls over her shoulder, and it occurs to me how fucked-up it is that a vampire Slayer is telling me where she hides her weapons. "I'll grab the stuff upstairs."

I can't get through the door, of course. I mean, as if I could have forgotten that humiliating night, I can *feel* it there. A barrier of energy that hovers in the doorway and tells me in no uncertain terms to go fuck myself. "Uh, Buffy..."

I'm not angry about it anymore- only a little ashamed. I have to admit, after all, that I fucked up. Not with the whole being evil thing, per se, 'cause I don't mind being evil, and I never will... although I mind that she minds a whole hell of a lot. But following her around like a hopeless loser and demanding that she love me, *that* was a fuckup of the highest degree, and I guess I deserve some contempt for that. Maybe that's why I can't bring myself to ask her to invite me in. "If you wanna just hand them over the threshold, I'll..."

"Come in, Spike," she replies quietly.

I feel a rush of warmth course through me. She let me back in. I fucked up, yeah, but maybe... it's okay now. Maybe I don't have to keep paying through the nose for it forever, like I have with every other mistake I've ever made. Maybe... maybe things get better sometimes, or at least they don't get any worse. And I can live with that.

I step over the threshold tentatively, as if expecting the preternatural force field to slap me upside the head and tell me to hightail it back to my crypt, where I belong. But nothing happens. She just gazes at me.

((if looks could stake))

But they can't. Not anymore.

((that was real. i won't forget it))

"Presto," I say softly, not trusting myself to say more. "No barrier."

She gazes at me for a moment, and it looks like... well, it doesn't look a thing like love- I'm not that stupid anymore- but it looks a damn sight like trust. As if I'm not a shell of a loser anymore. As if I've found something I can do without fucking up, for once.

And yeah, it's Good. Helping the Slayer. Saving the bleedin' world. Good in the textbook sense, at least, but I just can't give a damn anymore. Maybe they're *all* wrong, after all- Angelus and Angel, Dru and Buffy, all the saints and devils, all the keepers of proper and naughty behavior. Maybe it's not a question of good and evil after all. Maybe it's just a question of being a stupid jerk, or an okay guy. The kind of guy you might wanna have handy in case of an apocalypse.

And so, yeah, this whole being good thing might not be my cup of tea- I think I'm starting to get a reputation that I don't want- but it's better than nothing.

Better than sitting in a crypt, getting drunk and watching Jerry Springer. Better than being alone. And she doesn't have to love me, after all. She just has to let me love her, and everything else will sort itself out. Pathetic, yeah. But it could be worse.

Standing this close to her makes my chest seize up and I pull away, going into the living room and gathering weapons from the chest. "Won't bother with the small stuff. Couple of good axes should hold off Glory's mates while you take on the lady herself."

((have we met?))

((you hit me over the head with an axe one time. remember, 'get the hell away from my daughter?'))

"We're not all gonna make it," she says abruptly, turning towards me. "You know that."

"Yeah," I reply, trying to sound flippant as I carry the weapons back into the foyer. I wonder who will be the first to go- Willow? Xander? Anya, who has all the tactical fighting skills of a confused poodle? Tara, too discombobulated and confused to know what hit her? "Hey, always knew I'd go down fighting." That's not exactly true, but I always *hoped* I'd go down fighting. In the early days, at least, when I still thought about death. When I just hoped I wouldn't go down at the ends of Angelus' fists or Darla's fingernails, drowning in a pool of my own blood.

"I'm counting on you," she says softly. "To protect her."

"'Til the end of the world," I reply with quiet pride. "Even if that happens to be tonight."

((i like this world))

((you've got dog racing, manchester united, and you've got people))

"I'll be a minute." She turns for the stairs.

It's crazy, I know- Spike, the White Hat. It's fucking insane, as insane as it was to betray Dru in order to keep her. But despite the training I received at the feet of the Scourge of Europe, I don't think I've ever been good or evil simply for the sake of being so; that doesn't make a bit of damn sense to me. I do what I have to do to protect myself, and the ones I love. And if I have to give up love to be evil then, well, you can bloody well keep it.

It's taken me to pieces more times than I can count, but I can't imagine it any other way. I was built for this.

Built to bleed for her. And maybe that's not so bad, after all. A little messy sometimes, a little tiring, but not fatal.

She starts up the stairs, and I start to speak before I'm even aware I'm doing so. "I know you'll never love me," I say nervously, my tongue tripping over itself in the rush to get the words out, because it has to be said. "I know ((i'm a bad poet))

I'm a monster, but you treat me like a

((but i'm a good))

man. And

((all i ask is that you try to see me))

that's..." I trail off, helplessly. "Go get your stuff, I'll be here."

She gazes back at me for a moment, and her eyes are calm for the first time that night.

I think we've finally forgiven one another.

-----

I don't figure it out soon enough, I guess. I'm mashed into the concrete, true, which would disrupt anyone's concentration, and I just don't *realize.*

Not too quick on the uptake tonight, are we, Spikey? No, I don't realize what's happening until she's already airborne. Psychic in retrospect, that's me, a half-assed Janus glancing over my shoulder and lamenting the lost years and the countless times I've fucked things up for everyone involved, and I realize that I'm looking backwards again (you idiot, my mind screams as she dives from the platform, you *worthless* idiot, you could have done something you could have *saved* her), and I've begun to mourn for her before she even has a chance to hit the ground.

((it's always got to be blood))

((love isn't brains, children, it's blood))

Yeah, I watch. My hands are tied and my bones are cracked and there's nothing left for me to do but watch her fall.

That's the worst part, I suppose, if you *need* a worst part, as if the whole package weren't fucking tragedy as is, as if the aftermath won't be bad enough but I get to witness the *present* in slow-motion Technicolor savagery: I see her fall, watching in vivid detail a death that won't occur for at least another five, another ten seconds. I've got a cracked sternum and pulverized ribs and a hell of a contusion on my right temple, so I can't quite stand up, but I roll over on my back and I see. Oh, and I'll tell you what I see. Not delicate limbs or light strands of hair caught in the wind. Not wide eyes already looking into the next world. You don't see the mundane at a time like that.

I see time.

I see the next year, the next ten years, the next fifty. Dawn's high-school graduation, Giles drinking himself into an early grave, the whole stupid lot of them growing up and going away and never saying her fucking name again and living out brief, pointless lives and I'll still be around. I won't get the luxury of muddling through for sixty years and dying peacefully in bed, I'm going to have to live with this *forever.*

I close my eyes before she hits the ground.

-----

World. Spins. Crypt ceiling. Round and around.

Feel my insides falling to pieces, and

"How long has it been since you've eaten?"

"Dunno," I whisper hoarsely. Peel one eye open. It's Harris, with the witches in tow. Armed with bloodbags and blankets and concerned expressions. Circle the wagons. Tend to the wounded. "How long's it been since-"

I didn't go to the funeral. It was an hour after sunset (memory of Willow's babbling voice cutting through the haze: night, cemetery, Sunnydale, bad idea- but still the resolution passed) so that Angel and I could attend. I don't like funerals, I don't see the point to them, I didn't have one and there's no reason anyone else should and there was no way in any fucking demon dimension you can dream up that I was gonna face *him.* So Red, in her infinite understanding and terminal stupidity, sent him to my crypt when he arrived in Sunnydale, because they were all so fucking *worried* about me.

It was all quite laughable, really. He came in and started spurting all sorts of meaningless clich?s about the good fight and Buffy Would Have Wanted and I put my hands over my face as my body bent over double in grief and screamed hysterically at him to get out, get out, get *out.*

When I opened my eyes again he was gone. Smart move, that.

"Ten days."

My tongue drags slowly across dry lips. "Ten days, huh?"

Seems I'm improving my track record for refusing to eat in the face of unimaginable grief and distress. Good for me. I'm not good for much these days

((i'm counting on you to protect her))

but I can pout with the best of them, can't I? Oh, yeah, Buffy. You made me feel like a man, and what a man I am. They start talking again, but I drown it out. Finally Willow's voice, reaching a fevered pitch, slices through- "Spike, for god's sake, please. You have to eat *something.*"

"Not. Hungry."

((what if she wakes i have to be here when she wakes))

"Spike," Xander says firmly, "Buffy wouldn't have wanted-"

The world spins dangerously when I stand up but I manage to get one good punch in before the pain from the chip sends me sprawling to the floor again.

I see their faces, blurred, gather over me before I black out.

I don't give a rat's ass about what Buffy wanted. It didn't stop me from hating her, it didn't stop me from loving her, and it doesn't make any fucking difference. Buffy got saddled with a lot of things that she didn't want. Stupid, pointless things. Destiny. Responsibility. Grief. Me. And none of it. fucking. matters.

And as soon as I fucking remember how to stand up, I'm bloody well leaving this miserable town.

'Tis better to have loved and lost, they say.

Bollocks.

~Finis

Better Buffy Fiction Archive Entry

Many Loves