Part II of No Regrets
Jan. 31st, 2007 12:24 pm![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
shadowkatSee previous post for details. But this is part II of a fanfic I posted in jagged bits and pieces in my lj from 2004-2006. The final chapter I had to get from a fanboard that I posted it on.
Buffy at 40 goes to visit a shan-shued Spike at his mountain retreat.
Dinner, or supper as Will called it, was a simple affair. Far simpler than Buffy imagined it would be. Not that she was certain what she imagined he'd make exactly. The fried onion thing he used to go on about or some spicy gourmet meal? Instead they had venison stew, home baked bread courtesy of Charles Gunn, and a tossed salad with a vinaigrette. The stew was rather good but not too spicy. For drinks, he poured iced tea - made with water from a nearby spring and some mint that grew on the mountain side. He set it up in an alcove next to the living room that faced the back of the mountain, a crescent moon shown dimly through the leaves lighting the garden in front of the windows on the wall behind her, with a pale light. The wall facing her contained five pictures in fine wooden frames, a few were English Landscapes, but most were portraits. She recognized Angel's style. None of people she knew or recognized, except possibly Wesley and the tall black man she'd met outside. In the center, the place of honor, was a portrait of a woman, painted with oils. Fine boned. High cheekbones. Wide brown eyes matching soft brown hair. She reminded Buffy a bit of a waif or lost fawn. Yet, there was also an odd intelligence about her.
"Liam did those," Will said, following her gaze.
"I figured as much. The style is similar...to the drawings you have in the living room. Who's the woman? I'm not sure I met her."
"Winnifred Burkle. Or Fred as we used to call her. Killed by an old demon that took possession of her body only to destroy her soul. Not quite the same as vamps - when we kill you, your soul gets to escape. With Fred? It just burned it up along with all her insides. We tried to stop it, Liam and I. Too late."
Buffy winced. "I'm sorry. Were you close?"
"Didn't know her that long, but yeah, we were close. Close enough. She..." he paused, as if he were hunting the right words. "She was one of those rare people that you are told about but do not quite believe exist until you meet them. Compassionate to her core. She believed in the old man's mission more than the old man did, I sometimes think. Real lady. You'd have liked her, I think."
Buffy nodded, lapsing into silence as he finished setting the table and then sat down at its head, instead of opposite her as she expected. Almost as if he didn't want to be looking at her head on, although it could also be because he was closer to the kitchen. As she was about to take a bite of the stew he'd brought her, she paused, noticing from the corner of her eye that he'd bent his head and was mumbling something, then reverently crossed himself. The gesture startled her and for a moment she just stared at him, forgetting she had a spoon halfway to her mouth dripping with food. When he opened his eyes and glanced at her in bewilderment, she smiled nervously and ate the bite of stew.
"When did you become religious?"
He shrugged. "Don't know what you mean. Always been religious. Spiritual not so much, but religious? " He chewed thoughtfully. "Well, as religious as a vampire can be. Not that I cared. Didn't care about all powerful much as a vamp - except getting my thrills. Course when you're already aligned with hell, bit hard to care much about the other end of the spectrum. Did care about religion though - the rituals, the religious icons, those fascinated the demon in me for some reason. It had this insatiable desire to defecate on or desecrate all religious artifacts. When you're a demon that's what you do, spit on holy relics, makes you perky. Course, the more religious you were as a human, more you want to desecrate them as a demon."
"Suppose that makes sense. Never really thought about it, much. I just assumed.."
"Demons just destroyed things?" He chuckled, dipping some bread in the stew.
"Pretty much."
"Not untrue. They do. But what you got to take into consideration is why they do it. For each demon it's different. Not unlike humans actually or animals. Even within the same species it's different. You know better than anyone the biggest mistake you can make while hunting vampires is to think they are all alike. Aren't. Each one's behavior and attitude depends on the human it killed. That's what happened with the demon that killed Fred - it had to deal with the personality of the person it killed. It didn't get to just forget the personality, forget who Fred was - doesn't work that way. When demons take over a human body they act like a parasite, they don't get to create their own personality, they get the human personality they infected. Assuming of course it's a vampire, if it's an old one - like the one killed Fred, you get a split personality, the two duking it out. Everything they do is affected by who that person once was. What that person liked, hated, loved - all of it. Course depends on the demon or virus. Each one is different. "
"So the person isn't gone?"
"Not completely. Soul's gone. But the personality, mind, memories, feelings, that stuff? Still there. Still present."
"But corrupted."
He touched his nose. "Exactly. Corrupted. Twisted. What the human cares the most about, the vampire wants to destroy."
"Yet, your demon sought a soul to prevent itself from doing that," she said.
He stared at her for a moment. Then swallowed and nervously averted his eyes. "What makes you think that was the demon's idea?" He mumbled.
She watched his face, the lines were deep around the eyes and mouth, and she saw a weariness reflected in his eyes. Neither of them spoke for a while, just eating, chewing, dipping bread, sipping tea.
"How's the stew," he asked, breaking it.
"Good. Thank you."
"Sorry there's no wine. Haven't kept any liquor in the house for a few years now."
"Why?"
"Don't fancy it much, I guess. Or my body doesn't. Metabolism is all wacked. Same with the fags, can't smoke any more either, not without hacking. When Charley comes by, he brings his own then takes it back down the mountain with him. Should have told him to leave it for you this last time."
She guessed he was leaving a lot out of that explanation, but did not push. Achingly polite, that’s how they had become with each other, as if they were two porcelain cups that would break if set down too roughly. "Not a problem. I'm good. Never been much of a drinker myself, if you recall."
He laughed, a short quick burst. "No, you weren't were you?" And for a little while the awkwardness between them dissipated, laughing over a common memory.
Will denied all Buffy's requests to help clear away their dinner, telling her to make herself comfortable in his living room, where he'd bring them some hot chocolate and homemade cookies.
So here she sat, curled up in his chair, a creaking wooden armchair with deerskin cushions or at least she assumed they were deerskin, they could be fake as far as she knew, staring up at the rows of books on his shelves.
Did he hunt? She wondered. Envisioning Spike hunting deer made her giggle, so she pushed aside the thought. On the spines of the books, she saw titles ranging from Colorado Wildlife to the Collected Poetry of Philip Larkin. Nothing on demonology and none of the pulp paperbacks she vaguely remembered lying about Spike's crypt. Not being much of a reader herself back then, she hadn't really paid them much notice. Now that she was older and had more time to herself, she read more and appreciated books.
Her particular favorites were the Haiku poetry that she'd discovered a while back. Three line poems. Sort of like Limericks with the quippy one liners, but none of the sing-song rhyme. Sonnets annoyed her - too flowery and antiquated. Emily Dickenson, however, brought back fond memories of another boy who was into poetry, another road not taken. Not that she regretted not taking it, the timing was wrong and the boy had been an adrenaline junkie, which meant her particular calling, as it were, would have gotten him killed or worse. She had enough corpses on her watch as it was. Philip Larkin? She'd heard the name before but it was unfamiliar. Probably an English Poet, she thought.
She wondered if any of Spike's - Will's, she hastily corrected herself, was up there. Hard to think of him as Will. It was always Spike or William. And the Spike she'd known despised being called William. He reacted to it the same way she reacted when her mother called her Buffy Anne Summers, which made her wonder in turn what his full name was, she assumed he had one. Or once had one.
Years ago, shortly after the debacle in LA, when they thought Angel and his group had expired, she'd asked Giles to hunt down information on the human counter-parts of the vampires she'd been close to. Her purpose had been to locate their human graves and lay some sort of tribute on them. Like she had done for her mother and Tara. Like others had done for her. She also felt that it was the human counter-parts that deserved the tribute not the vampires, because it was the human personality, who they once were that against all odds, beat back the demon and helped her in her cause. But Giles could find nothing. They had lost a lot of records when Caleb and his acolytes blew up Watcher Headquarters. The ones that remained, only went back to the turn of the century, circa 1890. Spike and Angel were already vampires by then. So she was left to her imagination. Smith? Jones? Merrit? Giles? For a while she harbored a fantasy that Spike was one of Giles's ancestors, only to quickly dismiss it as a tad too coincidental. No he probably had an average, overused last name such as Smith or Jones. Not an obscure one like hers, Summers. Which was a name, according to Xander, that she shared with a comic book character. Made her wonder if the God of her universe, assuming he or she even existed, was a comic book writer in another dimension? That at any rate was Xander and Andrew's theory, that only an insane comic book writer could come up with the weird stuff they'd all gone through. Of course Xander and Andrew wrote comics together now and sold them, when they weren't off locating slayers, so the theory could be wishful thinking on their part. Save me from comic book geek logic, she thought shuddering.
William. Will. Her mind meandered over what little she knew of him. He seemed to despise the name Spike, which made her wonder if the man he was now wished to destroy every vestige of the vampire he'd been? No, she shook her head, glancing at the wall of pictures, if that were so, he wouldn't have all those photographs. Who was he though? This quiet man who so politely served her a meal and refused any assistance? He was nothing like the man she'd known, or rather remembered. She wondered what he thought of her. How she seemed to him now after all these years. Their meeting reminded her a little of a Vietnam War story Dawn told her about a soldier coming back to visit an enemy soldier in Vietnam, long after the war was over. They had bonded and helped one another during that war even though they were often at odds. Even loved one another a bit. Now years later, the soldier discovered his friend and former lover to be a broken melancholy sort not the snarky quick-witted fighter he once knew.
"Sorry that took so long, hope you weren't too bored," Will said, setting down a tray in front of her that contained two cups of hot chocolate and a dish of chocolate chip and oatmeal raisin cookies. The dish was simple in design. Not ornate. But then nothing he owned seemed ornate. "Sorry no marshmallows."
"That's okay," she said, smiling at the comment. He sat on the couch next to her. "Sorry, I took your chair."
He shrugged. "No worries. You're the guest, make yourself at home."
There were so many things she wanted to ask him but in the awkward silence found herself dismissing each one as either too nosey or too personal. "So you're a Philip Larkin fan?"
He looked at her oddly, then glanced up at the book case behind him. "I like him. Wouldn't call myself a fan. His work speaks to me. Is all. Why? You a fan?"
"No, haven't really read any of his stuff, too depressing - although Giles tried to get me to more than once."
"How is old Rupert?"
"Dead." She caught his look of complete shock and quickly added. "He passed away in his sleep a little two years ago, had a heart attack."
"I'm sorry, I know how close you were." He bowed his head and stared down at the chocolate swirling in the cup.
"Not so much in the later years. We'd drifted apart a bit, Giles and I. But he was in no pain and it was his time."
"So," she began, watching him dip a chocolate chip cookie into his cocoa as if he were conducting a complex surgical procedure. "I always wondered, what is your last name? I mean you must have one or how would you set up a bank account or sign a contract on the house..." She drifted off catching his look of bewilderment. "Sorry, that was an awfully nosey question, wasn't it? Sounded a bit like Anya there. Or Faith. Possibly been spending way too much time with Faith."
He snorted, almost spitting out some his coco as he did it. "Don't know - it's an honest question. We, Liam and I, certainly get asked it a lot." He chuckled, setting down the coco and she noticed there was laughter in his eyes. "Connor was the last time - wanted to know what Liam's and Darla's bleeding last names were so he could hunt down the descendants. Find his biological family. Made for an awfully awkward Thanksgiving dinner chat. Old Liam kept changing the topic, Connor kept changing it back. At one point the old man asked me for help."
"What did you tell him?"
He grinned. "Oh, I figured Liam was doing fine on his own. Besides, I was curious to hear the answer."
"And?"
"That there weren't any bloody old descendants to look up, he and Darla had eaten them all when they got all fangy and nasty, like. So why'd it bleeding matter what his last name was? See, told you, not exactly best Thanksgiving chat." He sighed and took a sip of the coco. "Truth of it is, Liam and I, we don't remember our last names, not the ones we were born with. When we were turned? The demon hated everything associated with that old life - including our names. Shat on it, right proper. After 100 or so years? You tend to forget them. Only reason we remembered our Christian names - is we used them amongst ourselves from time to time, usually as a curse."
"Now it's the opposite..."
"Come again?"
She shook head, not realizing she'd spoken aloud. "So what do you use as a last name?"
He shrugged. " I used to use Spike, until well, I realized I couldn't...” He bowed his head. “ And Charles Gunn offered to let me use his. We made it legal last year...Annie made all sorts of jokes about it too."
"So it's Will Gunn?" Her eyes scanned his shelves again without thinking.
He grinned. "You won't find my writing up there, so don't bother looking. Nothing published quite yet. All in process. And yep, Will Gunn, his gift to me, one I'm not sure I can repay."
"And Angel..."
"Angel."
"What?"
"He uses Angel, when he has to." He chuckled. "Yep, Liam Angel, doesn't quite have the same rhythm to it as Will Spike or Will Gunn, does it?"
"Uh, no."
"Connor thinks he should just take his last name which is O' something, always forget those bleeding Irish names. Can never keep them straight. O' this and O' that. But Liam he likes it. Has no sense of poetry, the old man. Completely tone death, rhyme death...ugh. Fucking Barry Mannilow, man. But he can draw like nobody's business. Quite the artist when it comes to visuals. Me? I like the sounds of things. The rhythm. He's all about the visuals. The look of it. Most of the design here? Liam and a little bit of Annie."
Buffy watched him for a while, mulling over in her mind what he'd just said. Why did he have so much trouble with the name Spike? Angel seemed to be fine with his name, although she'd noticed when he got a soul he got rid of the "us" at the end of it. Liam Angelus would have had a better ring to it.
"Shilling for your thoughts," he said after a few moments ticked on by.
"Just wondering why you have problems with the name Spike." He said nothing, just raised his eyebrows slightly and gave her a hard sarcastic glare that practically screamed, "duh". Chagrined, she amended, "Look, it's not like you changed it when you got a soul - not like Angel did by dropping the "us". You kept Spike, no William or Will then. Why now? "
He closed his eyes, resting his head against the back of his couch and lay that way for a long time, breathing slowly. Buffy regretted mentioning it. It seemed an innocent enough question in her head. The old Spike would have said something snarky. Will, grew quiet, still, withdrawing into himself. She thought about Angel then, how like and unlike they were. Angel also had the habit of withdrawing into himself, pulling away whenever she asked those difficult questions. Was this a bad habit he'd picked up from him?
"Look, I'm sorry I brought it up...we can-"
"No, no...don't.." He opened his eyes and looked at her then away, but before he did she saw a wetness in them. Almost as if he were suppressing tears. "I gave up the name Spike for some of the same reasons Liam hates the name Angelus. I do identify it with that other life - the one I lead before this happened to me, before I stopped being an undead thing that could leap buildings in a single bound. An undead thing that thought it could be heroic, well wanted to be heroic at any rate. I never quite bought into the whole hero deal not the way Liam did. Wanted to. And when Shanshu came - I thought, at first, hey - I'm redeemed. I'm worthy. Sin gone." He snorted. "Not so much. Memories are still there. All that's gone is the impulse, the pull, the..." he paused as if mulling over how to put it, eyes shifting back and forth, teeth worrying his lower lip. "I never saw the demon as a separate entity until it was gone, then I knew it was. A virus of sorts with its own agenda. An agenda that was so contrary to everything I was taught to believe in, to feel, to value...yet, oh god, yet...part of me succumbed to it. Wanted it even." He visibly shuddered, closing his eyes again. Took a breath. Then he opened them and leaned forward, staring intently at the wall of photographs. "Rupert ever tell you how I came by the nickname Spike?"
Watching him, she thought back, way back, to the first time she'd met him, at Sunnydale High, stalking her and her friends through the hallways with his gang. Intent on killing them all. The man in front of her bore only a vague resemblance to the vampire she'd known way back then. That still, occasionally, plagued her dreams.
"Liam...Angelus told me when we first met up that I needed a bloodier nickname. Willy just didn't cut it." He laughed. "Wee Willy..yeah right, that was Dru's choice." He glanced at her. Then pointed at his crotch. "You know." She raised her eyebrows but didn't laugh. "She also liked Billy, for some reason. But me and Angelus knew better. So the demon went out and proved itself. Got itself a nickname, right proper. One that would make people shudder."
As he spoke, Buffy remembered Willow repeating Giles words. "Giles says Spike got his nickname torturing his victims with rail-road spikes. Ewww. Buff. You don't think he actually did that do you? Because if so, maybe we should skip this dude, let someone else take care of him."
She winced at the memory. Another landmine, she thought. Their shared past appeared to be nothing but landmines. She'd assumed coming up here that he'd be like her, fondly reminiscent. She realized now, how truly naive that was. Faith had tried to warn her. "B, you can't honestly think this is a good idea? Visiting Spike, a human Spike, no less, after all these years? What you going to say to him? Hi how are you? Miss me? Or is Dawnie right, you going up to get laid? Cause I get that. Really I do, B. Except don't see this new Spike being all that willing..."
She'd told Faith that was not the reason and it wasn't. Not everyone thought about sex, something Faith being Faith tended to scoff at. Faith, she realized long ago, would have loved to boink Spike. But Faith wanted to boink most of Buffy's boyfriends or would-be boyfriends. Didn't bother her too much, since most of her boyfriends weren't that interested in Faith. The old, soulless, Spike might have gone there. But soulless Spike had slept with Harmony and Anya and that horrid robot. She wondered if Will regretted any of that? Guessed he probably did. Question was did he regret her? And if he did, how would she deal with it? She wasn't sure she wanted to even bridge that issue. She herself had few regrets regarding their relationship. And yes, there was, she thought, something to be said for being achingly polite.
"Got the name from people I hurt. Unlike Angelus - whose name comes from his kid sis, who thought he was some sort of Angel come to carry her away - a knight in shining armor. Mine comes from the coal mines and railway tracks of York and South Wales, North London, Brighton, Liverpool...Whitecastle. Where the sky is black with coal and people hack blood from the tb. No fight left in some of them. Ones that do, right dandy bunch, all fisticuffs and curse words. Shagging and brawling, drinking and living, until we happen along. Dru, me, Darla, and ole Angelus. My idea to use the spikes - show Angelus a thing or two. Show him that I was one of them. Push them through the wrists and legs like a regular crucifixion. Then do a jig on the graves, waiting for the corpses to rise, bloody and scarred but ready for a fight. We must have killed about thirty or forty in a night, the bunch of us. Course it sent the police and vampire hunters after us - so we had to hide in a mine shaft. Made Angelus bloody furious - he preferred taking his victims hostage to a nice little place, private like, no one knew of, sipping the blood a bit at a time, torturing them for days on end..." he caught her look of horror, and lifted an eyebrow, "What's wrong? Turn your stomach? Come on Buffy, this can't surprise you. You've seen it all, right?"
"Yes, but that's not you any more. And it's not Angel. You talk as if it is...I don't understand. I thought the shanshu washed that away, not all the memories maybe, but the guilt."
He sighed. "That what Liam told you?"
She nodded.
"He seem all guilt-free to you?"
"No, but..."
"It washes away the pain, yeah. No more screaming. No more voices. No more ghosts whispering to you in the dead of night. I sleep better now. Also no more demon whispering to you, tempting you, telling you that you want it, that this is who you are, what you were meant for, that it is your purpose...your calling. The demon, it’s gone. And with it - the craving, the pull to do it. To destroy everything just for the hell of it. Because you can. Not because it's right, not because it's wrong, not because it's necessarily evil, but because it feels fucking brilliant. Makes you feel all manly and powerful. Like you're god. And nothing, I mean nothing can hurt you." He stretched, then got up and walked over to the pictures. "These people they meant nothing to me when I was a vampire. Just toys I could play with. Toy soldiers to knock over. They didn't have lives. They were happy meals on legs...their deaths made me feel powerful. More I killed, bigger I was." He touched the picture of the black girl in the long jacket. "And slayers? The heroes?” He said the last word with a catch in his voice. “ People like you, Summers? Those were the best targets. Killing them, made me a fucking legend."
"But you changed, you fought against it. That counts for something."
He shrugged, his focus still on the photographs. "Like Darth Vader at the end of Return of the Jedi? Kills the Emperor and suddenly he's all redeemed, makes up for all the lives he destroyed, all the people he killed."
"Not the same thing. Besides the fact that Darth is a character in a movie,” she shook her head; he was as bad as Xander. She never got the movie references. “He was human; you had a demon inside you. You didn't have a choice. It killed you and set up shop in your body - like, like what happened to your friend Fred. Except you fought back, the man that you had been, that you are now, his personality won out in the end - it fought back. That counts." "Well." He looked up at the ceiling."He certainly thinks so, assuming he's up there of course. I tend to think he is considering how much he's yanked me back and forth the last few years. Old Liam certainly thinks so. One thing we agree on - religion. That and God. Although he calls him the Powers. I tend to be a bit more of a traditionalist."
"Why don't you?" she asked, setting down her cup of chocolate which had cooled and was beginning to taste a little bitter.
He shrugged. "Because I have to think that something in me made the demon what he was. Not all vamps are alike, right? Some are right pantywaists. Take Harm for instance, couldn't hurt a bleeding fly. Torture? Mayhem? Turned the girl's stomach. Poor kid. But me? I got off on it. Not the torture so much - never had much patience for it. Visuals ain't my thing. That's old Liam's gig. Angelus, he got off on torture. Me? I just liked killing things. Hunting them down, stalking them, figuring out their moves, besting them, and nailing them to the floor."
"Nothing wrong with hunting."
He shook his head. "Not with hunting, no. But that's..." he swallowed hard. And she tentatively approached him. "It's like what I told you all those years ago in your basement, you remember, when I begged you to kill me, before those blind ninja priests took me hostage?"
The image was laughable in hindsight, she thought and for a moment thinking back on it she couldn't help but wonder if Xander had a point. Maybe their God was an insane comic book geek with an obsession for musical theater and old sci-fi movies, the type with bug-eyed monsters in them and screaming girls in alleys.
"About the girls, yes..."
"I enjoyed it Buffy. That wasn't all demon. Something in me wanted that. Sought it out..." he bowed his head.
"Did you though? Did you really? Spike- I mean, Will. We all have demons inside us. We all have nasty desires. Years ago when a demon tried to drain my soul out of me, I felt these things, I wanted to kill and maim. Hell I felt that way towards Warren when he killed Tara and I certainly felt that way towards Professor Walsh, who set me up to get killed." And Riley’s wife, Sam. But she decided to leave her out of the mix.
"You've never tried to rape anyone."
"Got me there." God, she thought, this conversation reminded her of the ones she'd had with Faith. Hadn't they'd had it before themselves? She vaguely remembered one like it. No, she thought, they'd skirted around it because at the time, she still hadn't quite figured out how to deal with it or him or what he'd become. She was so young, so scared, and so insecure back then. And it didn't help, thinking back on it, that she had all these people watching her, judging her every move, telling her how to behave, what she should do. It wasn't until she got to Rome, actually got some time alone, traveled, that she began to make peace with it all, think it through and come to her own conclusions regarding it. She and Faith ended up discussing it and in a way that helped more than anything else. Hearing Faith's side, how she had tried to rape and murder Xander, when all he'd tried to do was help her, helped Buffy understand what happened in the bathroom and finally realize that it wasn't her fault. Oh she had a hand in it, but not necessarily a negative one. It had very little to do with her and everything to do with the war that was going on inside of Spike. A war, Faith explained, had been going on inside her as well. Except in Faith's case, the demon won and nearly destroyed her. In Spike's the man did and nearly destroyed him. Ironic that. Further evidence of Xander's theory, not that she believed in God.
"Humans rape people, Will. It is a human crime. You didn't have a choice when you tried to do it with me or when you raped and murdered those other girls - you weren't human. You were a demon. The fact you didn't actually rape me...I think, surprised us both."
"You stopped me."
"Yes, but barely. I was vulnerable. I had no stake. I'd been injured. Even at full strength we had fought one another at a standstill. No one was there but me and you. You could have easily killed me that night. We both know that."
He looked down at her then past her towards his books. "Instead I got myself a soul." He laughed. "We wanted to be like Angel. Good enough. Course we found out that that wasn't possible...we found out how ugly we truly were. Stained. Shanshu doesn't wash that stain away, Buff. Nothing does."
Buffy didn't know what to say to him. She stood there awkwardly, just a few feet away, when he turned towards her.
"Do you ever regret it?" He asked.
"Regret what?"
He shrugged, looking back at the wall, then towards her again. "What happened between us? What happened between you and Liam? Not just marrying old soldier boy and riding off into the bleeding sunset, which you might have done if I hadn't...interfered. Bollixing things up for you."
She sighed, moved towards his windows and stared out at the darkness that lay beyond them. Wondering if he missed being able to see in it. "No." She shook her head. "Way I see it? It's over and there's no changing it. Riley? Our relationship was doomed from the start. We didn't quite fit. Would have broken up anyway. No sunset was ever in our future. But to be honest is it in anyone's?" She turned to face him. "You dating anyone, Will?"
"Are you?"
"Not for some time." She touched the glass and drew a finger down one of the cool panes. Was that a deer she glimpsed in the moonlight? She couldn't tell. "Haven't really wanted to. Been happy with my own company, that of my friends. Did have a marriage proposal once." She smiled remembering it, how the boy had gotten on his knee and offered her the ring. But he was a boy, even at 26. "Didn't work out."
"I wanted that for you...the picket fence, the nice house, the kids, the ..."
She laughed through her nose. "Why? Because it was your fantasy?" She turned to face him, tilted her head to the side and examined his face, lit by the track lighting above them. The rest of his body in shadow as if a spotlight were on them and they stood alone on some stage. "Because, it was never mine. I lived that life, Mom, Dad, car, cool clothes, cool boyfriend - only to discover how rotten it was underneath, how fake. As a kid, sure, I wanted it. Normal girl. Normal life. It wasn't until I got to Rome, got the normal life I dreamed of, got the cool boyfriends, no more slaying all the time, that I realized it wasn't much different than when I was slaying. Life's life, you deal with it. Hang on to the good times, let go of the bad. All you can do really."
He was silent. For a while they just stared at one another, the only noise, the creaking of the house around them and their own breathing. He was the first to look away, moving past her to the windows. "So you really have no regrets? Nothing?"
"Sure I have regrets - I just don't," she paused, irritated with where the conversation was going. She'd never been fond of talking over this stuff. Going over and over it like a raw wound. When Dawn did that - she used to yell at her to "get over it." "I don't see what the use is in rehashing them. Can't change the past."
"Would you, though? Change it?"
She shrugged. "Don't know. Never really thought much on it." She stepped beside him, rested her hand on the sill, and leaned her cheek against the glass so she could see his eyes, half hidden by the shadows. He'd pressed his forehead she saw against it and was idly tapping the glass with an index finger. "Would you, Will? And if you did? What good would it do?"
"Don't know, figure save a few lives maybe. What you think?"
"Also maybe kill a few. The thing of it is, you don't really know do you? I go back in time and decide to fall for Xander instead of Angel - what happens? You never get a soul, Angel never goes to LA, Darla lives...or maybe it all happens anyways, except Xander's probably toast."
"Toast?"
"Never had much luck with human boyfriends back then. They tended to get killed or freaked. Xan talks a good game, but he also is missing an eye because of me."
"Not your fault."
"Please. He wouldn't have been there if it weren't for me. It is my fault. It was my plan. Even Xan knows that."
"Was my fault just as much as it was yours."
"And how is that exactly? Wasn't your stupid plan, was it? If I recall you were amongst the naysayers."
"I was there, if I'd.."
"What? Fought off Caleb better? He took out two slayers and five slayerettes. Somehow I doubt one vampire could have bested him. It was a dumb plan to take you all in there, blind like that. But I was young and I'd gotten cocky. Learned my lesson, unfortunately at Xander's expense."
"He didn't have to come."
"That's what Xan keeps saying."
"How's he doing by the way? The Xan-man? He come out of the closet yet?"
"What?" She stepped back from the glass and stared at him. He looked at her innocently, but she saw a mischievous glint in his eyes and a slight twist of his mouth, as if he were suppressing amusement. "Xander is not gay...not that there would be anything wrong with it if he were. But he's not."
"Right. You know that because..."
"Well he has girlfriends. Lots of girlfriends."
"Right." He shook his head, clearly amused. "Forget I said anything. You know him better than I do." He passed her and picked up a bottle she hadn't noticed before on a side table and poured himself a glass of water. At least she assumed it was water, he'd mentioned that he no longer drank alcohol.
"Why would you think he was gay?"
"No reason. Really, forget I mentioned it. What's he doing now? He still trolling after slayers? Or he finally start work on that comic he was going on about?"
She felt her jaw drop as she stared at him, resting her back against the windows.
Will laughed at her expression. "He did? Good for him. Told him he should just write the things. Was driving me bonkers talking about it all the time."
She closed her eyes and smiled. That's right, she thought, they'd lived together for a while at her coaxing, which made the gay comment even more disturbing. She tried to picture Andrew and Xander together and was drawing a blank. "He and Andrew are writing them now," catching his knowing and somewhat irritating smile, she added. "No, they aren't living together. Andrew lives in Rome still and Xander is somewhere in England, last we chatted."
"You Scoobies...you certainly get around. Must be all those years stuck in Sunnyhell."
"You know, Xander has a theory..."
He scoffed. "Xander always had a theory, usually some hair-brained one."
"You'd like this - he thinks God is a crazed comic book writer with a musical theater obsession."
"Musical theater? Xander still trying to get around calling that dancing demon, what was his name? Stripe? Smythe? Snipe.” He shook his head, laughing. “Not so hair-brained though. Gotta remember to tell Charley boy that one. He'd get a right kick out of it. Huge fan of comics, Charley. Annie keeps pestering him to get rid of the stuff he's accumulated in the last five years alone. Liam would like the musical theater angle - keeps pestering me to go with him to Les Miz. Told him I'd already seen it in the Mother Country. Once, trust me, was enough."
"You never answered my question."
"What question was that," he asked, swirling the liquid in his glass which from a few feet away reminded her awfully of blood or deep red wine.
"Are you seeing anyone? Dating? Anyone special in your life?" She watched him tilt the glass back, take a long drink, wince slightly, and take another. The gesture took her back in time to the days he was a reluctant guest in her house, drinking pig's blood. The glass was the color of blue ink so she could not quite tell the color of the liquid.
"Does it look like I'm seeing anyone?" He waved his glass at the room and the space beyond it.
"No...looks like you've gone all hermit-crab like and shut out the world. What you drinking by the way? Cause if it's juice or wine - I'd love to try some."
"This?" He looked at the glass somewhat sheepishly and smirked. "You wouldn't like it, trust me." He took another sip, frowned, and put it down. " If you're parched I got some water in the fridge - nice cool straight from the spring."
Buffy brushed past him, picked up his glass and sniffed it. No smell. He tried to snatch it back, but she backed away deftly avoiding him. The liquid was a dark, smokey, red making her think a lot of blood or possibly bourbon, certainly had the same thickness. She swirled it once and then took a sip. Nearly gagged on the bittersweet taste resembling prunes dipped in something tangy. "Ugh. What is this?"
He was laughing at her. " Told you that you wouldn't like it, didn't I?" He shook his head. "Some things never change."
Buffy put the glass down in disgust.
"It's prune juice mixed with cranberry. Keeps me regular." He rubbed his tummy in demonstration. "From your expression, looks like you could use a bit of it."
She made a face. "Ugh. I'll pass, thanks. Don't tell me - homemade courtesy of Annie?" He nodded. “I’m going to have to meet this Annie sometime.”
"Still want that water?"
"Not turning it down. Anything to get that taste out of my mouth. How do you stand it?"
"After you've drunk pig's blood, it's not that big a deal. Bit sweet to my taste, but the cranberry helps. Last batch was better." He disappeared into the other room leaving her to ponder what had just happened. When did they become old? Or rather when had he? She didn't feel old. Oh she had the wrinkles and the lines and the threads of gray, but her body was in the best shape it had ever been. Probably helped that she wasn't getting the crap beat out of her on a constant basis like in the old days nor having all those difficult relationships. She lifted the glass and stared into the swirls of prune juice. In a million years, she'd never have imagined Spike drinking prune juice. Angel, maybe, but not Spike. But then this man wasn't Spike any more was he?
"Here you go -" he said taking the glass of prune juice from her and replacing it with water. "So what are you up to now? Still training slayers?"
She shook her head sipping the water, which felt cool and refreshing after the bittersweet tast of the prunes. "To a degree, but since most of the demons were sealed off from this dimension - we've been focusing on helping people adapt, fight the remaining pockets, and try not to become monsters themselves. That and self-defense training. Keeps me busy at any rate and it's as Faith would say, very zen."
"Have the house with the picket fence?"
She snorted, blowing water through her nose. "Hell no. We got a nice cottage up in Canada, Faith and me. Not unlike this place actually. Take turns visiting it. While we get along alright, can only handle so much of each other at a time. Sort of like this place. Large, rustic, comfy." She scanned the walls of living room and the area beyond the windows. "Live here long?"
"Nope. Just four years, give or take. Course you've only seen the living room, bedrooms are in back to the left of the dining area. Not much. But serviceable."
"How did you afford it, if don't mind me asking? Angel?"
"Liam had some money squirreled away but so did I. Can't help but squirrel away bits and pieces here and there. Didn't want to touch it when I turned. Considered it blood money, but Charley-boy convinced me otherwise. Told me that I could do more good with it here than letting it just rust in some Swiss bank account. So I gave him a bit, used a bit to build this place, and gave a bit to the Women's clinics in the surrounding towns. Charley has pretty much the same philosophy you do - let sleeping dogs lie."
"It's a good philosophy."
"Is it?" he asked looking back at the pictures.
"Do you ever miss it? Being a vampire -" He glared at her as if she were nuts, gesturing wildly and somewhat angrily at the pictures behind him. "No, no, not the carnage, or the blood, I mean the power, the super-human strength, the...immortality. Not having to drink this stuff for instance." Seeing his look of bewilderment mixed with annoyance. She sighed then stretched lazily like a cat, tossing her hair to one side, her bangs had swept into her eyes so she felt as if she were looking at him through a veil. "Several years back, Giles drugged me, took my powers away - it was some sort of coming of age test dreamed up by the Watcher Council. Don't ask. Long story. So not worth going into. But the crux of the deal was - I lost my powers for a while. Was all weak and kittenish. Couldn't throw worth crap. Couldn't lift anything. Couldn't fight. Couldn't do those nifty moves. Was a weak normal girl. What I remember from it all was how much I missed it and how it made me feel. Like I was less than everyone else. Here was my gift and it was gone."
He stared at her for a few moments, as if he were chewing on something inside. Then at the half empty glass in his hand which he quickly set down on the fireplace mantle behind him. He tilted his head upwards stared at the track lighting, squinting his eyes then out at the darkness that lay beyond the windows. "Time was I could tell you how many deer there were outside. Didn't have to even look. Could smell them. Feel their blood pumping in their veins. Taste it. If they ran? Could chase them, even catch one, barehanded, no gun necessary. Tear its throat out with me fangs. Didn't need a weapon, had one built in, nice and proper. If I fell off a cliff or my bike, no bruises, no scratches that wouldn't heal within minutes. Could fall out a fifty story window and be fine as a daisy. Could also smoke, taste the nicotine, feel the buzz, no hacking, no coughing, no fear, didn't breathe. Just pure rush. Same with alcohol - nice rush there. Get drunk as I wanted, no headache the next morning, no throwing up, head all sweaty over the toilet seat. No liver damage, no…" He stretched his neck, tilting it to the sides, rolling his shoulders slightly, before leaning back against the mantle piece. "Do I miss that? Sure. But I don't miss what came with it. That's the difference between you and me, slayer. Your gift it isn't booby trapped is it? You don't have a demon hissing in your ear. You don't have to worry about frying in the sunlight."
"But it's also not permanent. I can die. Vampires....can live forever."
"Heh. Right. Forever. Until that is, someone dusts you.” He shook his head, a wry smile dancing across his lips. “Certainly felt like forever at times, especially after the soul. And now, like death is always going to stay just out of reach. Find the aging process reassuring yet frightening at the same time. I fear dying, because of what I might find, and what I've done, yet at the same time I crave it like a lost lover's embrace that I got gypped out of. Been alive a long time slayer, but never really felt alive...except for a few times here and there, usually in the midst of a crisis."
"But fighting isn't living, Will. Crisis? That's not living, is it? That's just surviving, getting through."
"Suppose. Never thought on it much. When you're a vampire with a soul? It's all about crisis. Fighting the next big battle. Keeping the demon at bay. Then, when that's over..."
"You get to live the life that was interrupted when you became a demon. You get your second chance. You deserved one, you and Angel. We all deserve one."
"Do we? Sometimes I wonder."
Buffy stared at him for a while, leaning against his mantelpiece, back framed by photos of dead souls, sipping his prune juice. Wondering, as she sipped her water, how long they'd been talking. It felt like forever and no time at all. His last few words saddened her, as if he felt that his life was a waste of space, and should by all accounts be over and done with. She supposed, from one perspective, he was right. He had been alive a long time, yet that wasn't really living was it? Rushing about causing mayhem like some perpetually twisted teenage punk? That's what vampirism had done to him, caused him to go through a violent yet expanded adolescence. He hadn't really begun to grow up until he'd met her, and in a way they matured together. Or at least that was one way of looking at it. She wasn't quite sure how he did.
"The way I see it," she began, carefully choosing her words. "Each stage in our lives is another book, not a chapter or a stanza of a poem, but a different poem entirely." She glanced up at his shelves. "The first chapter in my life's history might be for instance - the Little Princess, the next a really dark version of Brother's Grimm..."
"So what's it now? Little Women?"
Ah, the snark, she'd missed it. "Not quite. What I'm trying to say is we aren't the same people any more, Will. Our past is important, sure. But only to the point in which it informs who we are, where we've been. There's no use retreading those same old paths over and over again or re-reading those books. We've changed, we've grown, we've moved forward...we've-"
"We've become cookies?"
"What?" She felt her cheeks flush crimson. "Oh god. He told you, didn't he?" She hid her face in her hand.
"The cookie dough speech? Oh yeah. Ranted about it, actually." He chuckled, clearly amused. "Not one of your better analogies, Summers."
She shook her head, laughing. "No...but I was under quite a bit of pressure around that time."
"Won't argue with you there." He tilted his head and studied her a moment. "I realize we're different people now and all that. Living a whole new book, as you so eloquently put it. But humor me - what exactly did you feel for me back then?"
"What do you think I felt for you?"
He shrugged. "Never been completely sure. After I met Fred, I decided what you felt for me must been sort of similar to what I felt for her. Not love, exactly, well not the hearts and flowers sort of love that we poets go on about, more friendship. Sense of gratitude combined with compassion, I guess. Something like that. Difficult to put it into words."
She looked down at her hands and studied them. Turned one of them over and stared for a few moments at the scar, slight, barely visible, where she had burned herself long ago in the hellmouth, holding his hand. Faith had suggested she get a skin graft or remove it somehow, but she preferred to hold on to it, for some of the same reasons she held on to her wrinkles and the other scars from her battles. War wounds, Faith called them. Badges of honor.
"What did you decide you felt for me?" She didn't look up from her hands, just waited for his response, even though she could more or less guess what it might be.
The silence drug on for so long, that Buffy glanced up at him half expecting to see him pacing or leaning against the mantelpiece, a smirk on his face. Instead, he'd sunk into one of the chairs beside his fireplace, turned it around so that the back of it was facing her. Resting one arm against the top of the back rest, legs sprawled on either side, he faced her. The posture reminded her oddly of the old Spike, except that his head was bowed and his attention was focused on floor between his feet, the half-empty glass of prune juice dangling from his right hand.
After a while he seemed to become aware of her attention upon him and glanced up to meet her gaze. But after the space of maybe five or six seconds, he shyly looked away again, a frown furrowing his brow, clearly flipping over something in his mind.
"Love...it's a funny thing," he said, so softly she had to lean forward in her chair to hear him. He glanced at her. "When I was a vamp, saw it as being all about blood, not brains. Passion. Consuming. You felt it here," he hit his gut, "and here," he hit his chest. "Fire. Burned you up inside. Made you crazy. Made you hard. Made you weak. And powerful at the same time. Depending on the situation. It's what me and Dru had - that all consuming passion, couldn't get enough of each other - couldn't be around each other without touching, without kissing - and when we connected, the world exploded. When we didn't? The world was a bottomless pit. All or nothing. No in between. Was all about the rush. Before Dru, before I became a vamp? It was about poetry, gentle conversations, sneaking kisses in corridors, dancing just ever so closely...what one reads in books, I suppose." He shook his head, laughing softly; she guessed at himself.
"Always thought of love, romantic, parental, what-have you as being the focus of someone's life. My Mum? She didn't love me unless I was the center of her existence, her focus. Everything I did was beautiful in her eyes. She'd die for me, my mum and I'd die for her. When I met Dru - saw it much the same way, except more so, Dru was mine. We belonged to one another. Course, it was a selfish type of belonging. I could shag whomever I chose, but she couldn't and vice versa. We drove each other right bonkers." He paused, stared at his half-finished glass of prune juice, made a face and put it aside. Leaning back slightly from the back of the chair he'd been resting against, he looked past her at his shelves. "Some of those books up there - they talk about nothing but love - Shakespeare's sonnets, Shelley, Keats, Byron, and of course old man Proust's Swann in Love. Namby-pamby nancy boy talk - but that was me, at heart. Love's bitch. It wasn't love unless it consumed me, ate me up inside, made me crazy. Thought much the same about everyone else." He tilted his head to the side.
"Then I became obsessed with you. Wasn't love. Not at the start. Drove Dru away from me. Caused me to go back to Sunnyhell and get the bleeding chip in my head. Made me right crazy. All I could think about, dream about was you. You became my world. My raison d'etre. Killing you, shagging you, possessing you. See to a vampire killing and shagging aren't all that far removed - result in more or less the same experience. Except shagging tends to last longer."
"I seem to recall you saving me quite a few times, along with Dawn."
"Well, yeah. When I decided I loved you, couldn't bloody well stand to have you hurt, could I? How'd you feel when we tortured Angel? Torn up inside right? Like someone hurt a part of your own self? That's how I felt when Glory or any of those other nasties hurt you. Like someone was sticking pins in me. You became my entire world. I lived because you were in my life. I considered dusting myself when you died, only thing that stopped me was that promise I gave you about protecting the Bit, Dawn. When you came back - it was all I could do not to be around you, see you, touch you. When we had sex - I wanted more. Became as addicted to it as you were I suspect."
She laughed. "Yes, well, the sex was great."
His eyes flickered in surprise and amusement. "Was it now? Nice to see you admit it."
"Don't remember denying it."
He thought for a moment. "No, you didn't. Never denied wanting me, did you? Other things, yeah, but not that. But it wasn't love, was it? Thought it was at the time. Thought we had what you and Angel did - that all consuming passion. Never getting enough of one another. Covering each other's backs. Took me a long time to understand what you tried to tell me before I attacked you. How that burning passion I felt consumed by and thought we had, wasn't love. When I got the soul, you were still the center of my universe. My reason for continuing. I'd have died for you, well sort of did, come to think of it. Although I think I might have done that anyway. Right thing to do. Certainly did something similar with the old man. I loved everything about you, your quirks, flaws, blemishes, horrid analogies, would have done anything you asked, right or wrong. Didn't matter." He stretched his legs and tilted his head to either side, stretching the neck muscels. Letting the silence fall between them for a bit.
"Then I died. And came back, which was…” He winced. “In the intervening years, I've been with a few women, dated. Also seen the relationship between Chuck and Annie blossom nicely. And realized I didn't know a hell of a lot about love. " He shrugged. "Did I love you? I lusted after you, I craved you, I burned for you, I desired you, I wanted you, I worshipped you, I honored you, I grieved for you, I fought for a soul for you and I died for you. But I'm not sure that's love. At least not the way you or anyone else deserves or wants to be loved. Not in the quiet, companionable way Chuck loves Annie. You should see them together? How they quietly support one another. How they have their separate pursuits. Don't judge. Don't force. Find each other endlessly fascinating. They click in a way I'm not sure I've ever quite clicked with anyone. It's patient. It's caring. And it's mutual."
His words made Buffy feel tired. Musing on them, she wondered why people felt the need to define indefinable emotions such as love or hate so neatly. Neither were neat emotions. Comparing her feelings for people as one might compare two sizes of steak or pieces of chicken. Weighing them. As if the feelings one felt for someone else were tangible items that could be placed on a sliding scale. “From one to ten, ten being the highest, one the lowest, how'd you rank your lovers?” Dawn had asked her, finding the question in some Italian fashion magazine. As if lovers could even be ranked or compared in such a fashion or love were some prize to be rewarded at the end of the competition. Oh, I've done all these tasks, I've fought for you, now may I have your love? It wasn't that easy. It wasn't an emotion one chose to bestow on someone else because they'd earned it the way a dog might earn snacks. Nor in her experience, at least, had it ever been neat or definable. She didn't always understand why she loved someone the way she did, she just did. But then she'd never really been overly fond of overanalyzing her feelings or for that matter defining them; she preferred just to feel, to go with her gut.
She looked up at him, catching him watching her, his question hanging in the air between them unsaid. Realizing that if she wanted to change the subject, let it stay unanswered, he'd let her with little complaint.
"I think you loved me," she began slowly, choosing her words, "maybe not like Charles loves Annie or Tara loved Willow, but it was love all the same." She looked up at him, absently circling the rim of the glass with her finger. "I wonder if love is something that we can be neatly define, like a three line poem placed in a box and wrapped with a nice little bow for valentine's day." She ignored his grimace at her analogy.
Looking up at his books, she continued, "I don't think it's as neat as you've outlined. Relationships. They're messy. At least mine always were." She sighed. "I've never been much of word person. So I don't always tell people that I care about how I feel. For me - it's always been more about the doing not the telling. Years ago I remember driving poor Giles and Dawn nuts telling them I loved them and how weird it sounded and how maybe I hadn't gotten that across to you or Angel or Mom or poor Tara, the people I loved that had died. I worried over it. Then, I realized something, I had told you maybe not in words, but in gestures. In what I did. And I loved each and every person differently. You can't love people the same way, that's impossible. Nor, do I think you can say you love one person more than another. You just love them differently. Some you love, like you loved your friend Fred, quietly. Others you love with blinding passion. And others, with a combination of both."
"Right..so, what did you feel for me? Blinding passion? Or quiet like?"
Still curled in his chair, she looked up from her glass, which she was still absently playing with, and smiled at him. "Before you closed the hellmouth? Combination of both."
He nodded, appearing to take it in filing it away somewhere for later pondering. "You regret any of it?"
"What? Meeting you? Our time together?"
He nodded.
She tilted her head thoughtfully. Did she? Faith had asked her a similar question once. "No," she said after a couple of moments, staring straight ahead out at the darkness that lay outside his windows, in her mind's eye across the decades to Sunnydale. "I don't regret it. Don't want to relive it or anything close to it. Very glad it's over, believe me." She looked down at her hands and the glass cradled in them. "But don't regret it either. Doesn't seem to be much point in regretting, does there? Besides, it worked out more or less. Better in some ways than I expected."
Buffy at 40 goes to visit a shan-shued Spike at his mountain retreat.
Dinner, or supper as Will called it, was a simple affair. Far simpler than Buffy imagined it would be. Not that she was certain what she imagined he'd make exactly. The fried onion thing he used to go on about or some spicy gourmet meal? Instead they had venison stew, home baked bread courtesy of Charles Gunn, and a tossed salad with a vinaigrette. The stew was rather good but not too spicy. For drinks, he poured iced tea - made with water from a nearby spring and some mint that grew on the mountain side. He set it up in an alcove next to the living room that faced the back of the mountain, a crescent moon shown dimly through the leaves lighting the garden in front of the windows on the wall behind her, with a pale light. The wall facing her contained five pictures in fine wooden frames, a few were English Landscapes, but most were portraits. She recognized Angel's style. None of people she knew or recognized, except possibly Wesley and the tall black man she'd met outside. In the center, the place of honor, was a portrait of a woman, painted with oils. Fine boned. High cheekbones. Wide brown eyes matching soft brown hair. She reminded Buffy a bit of a waif or lost fawn. Yet, there was also an odd intelligence about her.
"Liam did those," Will said, following her gaze.
"I figured as much. The style is similar...to the drawings you have in the living room. Who's the woman? I'm not sure I met her."
"Winnifred Burkle. Or Fred as we used to call her. Killed by an old demon that took possession of her body only to destroy her soul. Not quite the same as vamps - when we kill you, your soul gets to escape. With Fred? It just burned it up along with all her insides. We tried to stop it, Liam and I. Too late."
Buffy winced. "I'm sorry. Were you close?"
"Didn't know her that long, but yeah, we were close. Close enough. She..." he paused, as if he were hunting the right words. "She was one of those rare people that you are told about but do not quite believe exist until you meet them. Compassionate to her core. She believed in the old man's mission more than the old man did, I sometimes think. Real lady. You'd have liked her, I think."
Buffy nodded, lapsing into silence as he finished setting the table and then sat down at its head, instead of opposite her as she expected. Almost as if he didn't want to be looking at her head on, although it could also be because he was closer to the kitchen. As she was about to take a bite of the stew he'd brought her, she paused, noticing from the corner of her eye that he'd bent his head and was mumbling something, then reverently crossed himself. The gesture startled her and for a moment she just stared at him, forgetting she had a spoon halfway to her mouth dripping with food. When he opened his eyes and glanced at her in bewilderment, she smiled nervously and ate the bite of stew.
"When did you become religious?"
He shrugged. "Don't know what you mean. Always been religious. Spiritual not so much, but religious? " He chewed thoughtfully. "Well, as religious as a vampire can be. Not that I cared. Didn't care about all powerful much as a vamp - except getting my thrills. Course when you're already aligned with hell, bit hard to care much about the other end of the spectrum. Did care about religion though - the rituals, the religious icons, those fascinated the demon in me for some reason. It had this insatiable desire to defecate on or desecrate all religious artifacts. When you're a demon that's what you do, spit on holy relics, makes you perky. Course, the more religious you were as a human, more you want to desecrate them as a demon."
"Suppose that makes sense. Never really thought about it, much. I just assumed.."
"Demons just destroyed things?" He chuckled, dipping some bread in the stew.
"Pretty much."
"Not untrue. They do. But what you got to take into consideration is why they do it. For each demon it's different. Not unlike humans actually or animals. Even within the same species it's different. You know better than anyone the biggest mistake you can make while hunting vampires is to think they are all alike. Aren't. Each one's behavior and attitude depends on the human it killed. That's what happened with the demon that killed Fred - it had to deal with the personality of the person it killed. It didn't get to just forget the personality, forget who Fred was - doesn't work that way. When demons take over a human body they act like a parasite, they don't get to create their own personality, they get the human personality they infected. Assuming of course it's a vampire, if it's an old one - like the one killed Fred, you get a split personality, the two duking it out. Everything they do is affected by who that person once was. What that person liked, hated, loved - all of it. Course depends on the demon or virus. Each one is different. "
"So the person isn't gone?"
"Not completely. Soul's gone. But the personality, mind, memories, feelings, that stuff? Still there. Still present."
"But corrupted."
He touched his nose. "Exactly. Corrupted. Twisted. What the human cares the most about, the vampire wants to destroy."
"Yet, your demon sought a soul to prevent itself from doing that," she said.
He stared at her for a moment. Then swallowed and nervously averted his eyes. "What makes you think that was the demon's idea?" He mumbled.
She watched his face, the lines were deep around the eyes and mouth, and she saw a weariness reflected in his eyes. Neither of them spoke for a while, just eating, chewing, dipping bread, sipping tea.
"How's the stew," he asked, breaking it.
"Good. Thank you."
"Sorry there's no wine. Haven't kept any liquor in the house for a few years now."
"Why?"
"Don't fancy it much, I guess. Or my body doesn't. Metabolism is all wacked. Same with the fags, can't smoke any more either, not without hacking. When Charley comes by, he brings his own then takes it back down the mountain with him. Should have told him to leave it for you this last time."
She guessed he was leaving a lot out of that explanation, but did not push. Achingly polite, that’s how they had become with each other, as if they were two porcelain cups that would break if set down too roughly. "Not a problem. I'm good. Never been much of a drinker myself, if you recall."
He laughed, a short quick burst. "No, you weren't were you?" And for a little while the awkwardness between them dissipated, laughing over a common memory.
Will denied all Buffy's requests to help clear away their dinner, telling her to make herself comfortable in his living room, where he'd bring them some hot chocolate and homemade cookies.
So here she sat, curled up in his chair, a creaking wooden armchair with deerskin cushions or at least she assumed they were deerskin, they could be fake as far as she knew, staring up at the rows of books on his shelves.
Did he hunt? She wondered. Envisioning Spike hunting deer made her giggle, so she pushed aside the thought. On the spines of the books, she saw titles ranging from Colorado Wildlife to the Collected Poetry of Philip Larkin. Nothing on demonology and none of the pulp paperbacks she vaguely remembered lying about Spike's crypt. Not being much of a reader herself back then, she hadn't really paid them much notice. Now that she was older and had more time to herself, she read more and appreciated books.
Her particular favorites were the Haiku poetry that she'd discovered a while back. Three line poems. Sort of like Limericks with the quippy one liners, but none of the sing-song rhyme. Sonnets annoyed her - too flowery and antiquated. Emily Dickenson, however, brought back fond memories of another boy who was into poetry, another road not taken. Not that she regretted not taking it, the timing was wrong and the boy had been an adrenaline junkie, which meant her particular calling, as it were, would have gotten him killed or worse. She had enough corpses on her watch as it was. Philip Larkin? She'd heard the name before but it was unfamiliar. Probably an English Poet, she thought.
She wondered if any of Spike's - Will's, she hastily corrected herself, was up there. Hard to think of him as Will. It was always Spike or William. And the Spike she'd known despised being called William. He reacted to it the same way she reacted when her mother called her Buffy Anne Summers, which made her wonder in turn what his full name was, she assumed he had one. Or once had one.
Years ago, shortly after the debacle in LA, when they thought Angel and his group had expired, she'd asked Giles to hunt down information on the human counter-parts of the vampires she'd been close to. Her purpose had been to locate their human graves and lay some sort of tribute on them. Like she had done for her mother and Tara. Like others had done for her. She also felt that it was the human counter-parts that deserved the tribute not the vampires, because it was the human personality, who they once were that against all odds, beat back the demon and helped her in her cause. But Giles could find nothing. They had lost a lot of records when Caleb and his acolytes blew up Watcher Headquarters. The ones that remained, only went back to the turn of the century, circa 1890. Spike and Angel were already vampires by then. So she was left to her imagination. Smith? Jones? Merrit? Giles? For a while she harbored a fantasy that Spike was one of Giles's ancestors, only to quickly dismiss it as a tad too coincidental. No he probably had an average, overused last name such as Smith or Jones. Not an obscure one like hers, Summers. Which was a name, according to Xander, that she shared with a comic book character. Made her wonder if the God of her universe, assuming he or she even existed, was a comic book writer in another dimension? That at any rate was Xander and Andrew's theory, that only an insane comic book writer could come up with the weird stuff they'd all gone through. Of course Xander and Andrew wrote comics together now and sold them, when they weren't off locating slayers, so the theory could be wishful thinking on their part. Save me from comic book geek logic, she thought shuddering.
William. Will. Her mind meandered over what little she knew of him. He seemed to despise the name Spike, which made her wonder if the man he was now wished to destroy every vestige of the vampire he'd been? No, she shook her head, glancing at the wall of pictures, if that were so, he wouldn't have all those photographs. Who was he though? This quiet man who so politely served her a meal and refused any assistance? He was nothing like the man she'd known, or rather remembered. She wondered what he thought of her. How she seemed to him now after all these years. Their meeting reminded her a little of a Vietnam War story Dawn told her about a soldier coming back to visit an enemy soldier in Vietnam, long after the war was over. They had bonded and helped one another during that war even though they were often at odds. Even loved one another a bit. Now years later, the soldier discovered his friend and former lover to be a broken melancholy sort not the snarky quick-witted fighter he once knew.
"Sorry that took so long, hope you weren't too bored," Will said, setting down a tray in front of her that contained two cups of hot chocolate and a dish of chocolate chip and oatmeal raisin cookies. The dish was simple in design. Not ornate. But then nothing he owned seemed ornate. "Sorry no marshmallows."
"That's okay," she said, smiling at the comment. He sat on the couch next to her. "Sorry, I took your chair."
He shrugged. "No worries. You're the guest, make yourself at home."
There were so many things she wanted to ask him but in the awkward silence found herself dismissing each one as either too nosey or too personal. "So you're a Philip Larkin fan?"
He looked at her oddly, then glanced up at the book case behind him. "I like him. Wouldn't call myself a fan. His work speaks to me. Is all. Why? You a fan?"
"No, haven't really read any of his stuff, too depressing - although Giles tried to get me to more than once."
"How is old Rupert?"
"Dead." She caught his look of complete shock and quickly added. "He passed away in his sleep a little two years ago, had a heart attack."
"I'm sorry, I know how close you were." He bowed his head and stared down at the chocolate swirling in the cup.
"Not so much in the later years. We'd drifted apart a bit, Giles and I. But he was in no pain and it was his time."
"So," she began, watching him dip a chocolate chip cookie into his cocoa as if he were conducting a complex surgical procedure. "I always wondered, what is your last name? I mean you must have one or how would you set up a bank account or sign a contract on the house..." She drifted off catching his look of bewilderment. "Sorry, that was an awfully nosey question, wasn't it? Sounded a bit like Anya there. Or Faith. Possibly been spending way too much time with Faith."
He snorted, almost spitting out some his coco as he did it. "Don't know - it's an honest question. We, Liam and I, certainly get asked it a lot." He chuckled, setting down the coco and she noticed there was laughter in his eyes. "Connor was the last time - wanted to know what Liam's and Darla's bleeding last names were so he could hunt down the descendants. Find his biological family. Made for an awfully awkward Thanksgiving dinner chat. Old Liam kept changing the topic, Connor kept changing it back. At one point the old man asked me for help."
"What did you tell him?"
He grinned. "Oh, I figured Liam was doing fine on his own. Besides, I was curious to hear the answer."
"And?"
"That there weren't any bloody old descendants to look up, he and Darla had eaten them all when they got all fangy and nasty, like. So why'd it bleeding matter what his last name was? See, told you, not exactly best Thanksgiving chat." He sighed and took a sip of the coco. "Truth of it is, Liam and I, we don't remember our last names, not the ones we were born with. When we were turned? The demon hated everything associated with that old life - including our names. Shat on it, right proper. After 100 or so years? You tend to forget them. Only reason we remembered our Christian names - is we used them amongst ourselves from time to time, usually as a curse."
"Now it's the opposite..."
"Come again?"
She shook head, not realizing she'd spoken aloud. "So what do you use as a last name?"
He shrugged. " I used to use Spike, until well, I realized I couldn't...” He bowed his head. “ And Charles Gunn offered to let me use his. We made it legal last year...Annie made all sorts of jokes about it too."
"So it's Will Gunn?" Her eyes scanned his shelves again without thinking.
He grinned. "You won't find my writing up there, so don't bother looking. Nothing published quite yet. All in process. And yep, Will Gunn, his gift to me, one I'm not sure I can repay."
"And Angel..."
"Angel."
"What?"
"He uses Angel, when he has to." He chuckled. "Yep, Liam Angel, doesn't quite have the same rhythm to it as Will Spike or Will Gunn, does it?"
"Uh, no."
"Connor thinks he should just take his last name which is O' something, always forget those bleeding Irish names. Can never keep them straight. O' this and O' that. But Liam he likes it. Has no sense of poetry, the old man. Completely tone death, rhyme death...ugh. Fucking Barry Mannilow, man. But he can draw like nobody's business. Quite the artist when it comes to visuals. Me? I like the sounds of things. The rhythm. He's all about the visuals. The look of it. Most of the design here? Liam and a little bit of Annie."
Buffy watched him for a while, mulling over in her mind what he'd just said. Why did he have so much trouble with the name Spike? Angel seemed to be fine with his name, although she'd noticed when he got a soul he got rid of the "us" at the end of it. Liam Angelus would have had a better ring to it.
"Shilling for your thoughts," he said after a few moments ticked on by.
"Just wondering why you have problems with the name Spike." He said nothing, just raised his eyebrows slightly and gave her a hard sarcastic glare that practically screamed, "duh". Chagrined, she amended, "Look, it's not like you changed it when you got a soul - not like Angel did by dropping the "us". You kept Spike, no William or Will then. Why now? "
He closed his eyes, resting his head against the back of his couch and lay that way for a long time, breathing slowly. Buffy regretted mentioning it. It seemed an innocent enough question in her head. The old Spike would have said something snarky. Will, grew quiet, still, withdrawing into himself. She thought about Angel then, how like and unlike they were. Angel also had the habit of withdrawing into himself, pulling away whenever she asked those difficult questions. Was this a bad habit he'd picked up from him?
"Look, I'm sorry I brought it up...we can-"
"No, no...don't.." He opened his eyes and looked at her then away, but before he did she saw a wetness in them. Almost as if he were suppressing tears. "I gave up the name Spike for some of the same reasons Liam hates the name Angelus. I do identify it with that other life - the one I lead before this happened to me, before I stopped being an undead thing that could leap buildings in a single bound. An undead thing that thought it could be heroic, well wanted to be heroic at any rate. I never quite bought into the whole hero deal not the way Liam did. Wanted to. And when Shanshu came - I thought, at first, hey - I'm redeemed. I'm worthy. Sin gone." He snorted. "Not so much. Memories are still there. All that's gone is the impulse, the pull, the..." he paused as if mulling over how to put it, eyes shifting back and forth, teeth worrying his lower lip. "I never saw the demon as a separate entity until it was gone, then I knew it was. A virus of sorts with its own agenda. An agenda that was so contrary to everything I was taught to believe in, to feel, to value...yet, oh god, yet...part of me succumbed to it. Wanted it even." He visibly shuddered, closing his eyes again. Took a breath. Then he opened them and leaned forward, staring intently at the wall of photographs. "Rupert ever tell you how I came by the nickname Spike?"
Watching him, she thought back, way back, to the first time she'd met him, at Sunnydale High, stalking her and her friends through the hallways with his gang. Intent on killing them all. The man in front of her bore only a vague resemblance to the vampire she'd known way back then. That still, occasionally, plagued her dreams.
"Liam...Angelus told me when we first met up that I needed a bloodier nickname. Willy just didn't cut it." He laughed. "Wee Willy..yeah right, that was Dru's choice." He glanced at her. Then pointed at his crotch. "You know." She raised her eyebrows but didn't laugh. "She also liked Billy, for some reason. But me and Angelus knew better. So the demon went out and proved itself. Got itself a nickname, right proper. One that would make people shudder."
As he spoke, Buffy remembered Willow repeating Giles words. "Giles says Spike got his nickname torturing his victims with rail-road spikes. Ewww. Buff. You don't think he actually did that do you? Because if so, maybe we should skip this dude, let someone else take care of him."
She winced at the memory. Another landmine, she thought. Their shared past appeared to be nothing but landmines. She'd assumed coming up here that he'd be like her, fondly reminiscent. She realized now, how truly naive that was. Faith had tried to warn her. "B, you can't honestly think this is a good idea? Visiting Spike, a human Spike, no less, after all these years? What you going to say to him? Hi how are you? Miss me? Or is Dawnie right, you going up to get laid? Cause I get that. Really I do, B. Except don't see this new Spike being all that willing..."
She'd told Faith that was not the reason and it wasn't. Not everyone thought about sex, something Faith being Faith tended to scoff at. Faith, she realized long ago, would have loved to boink Spike. But Faith wanted to boink most of Buffy's boyfriends or would-be boyfriends. Didn't bother her too much, since most of her boyfriends weren't that interested in Faith. The old, soulless, Spike might have gone there. But soulless Spike had slept with Harmony and Anya and that horrid robot. She wondered if Will regretted any of that? Guessed he probably did. Question was did he regret her? And if he did, how would she deal with it? She wasn't sure she wanted to even bridge that issue. She herself had few regrets regarding their relationship. And yes, there was, she thought, something to be said for being achingly polite.
"Got the name from people I hurt. Unlike Angelus - whose name comes from his kid sis, who thought he was some sort of Angel come to carry her away - a knight in shining armor. Mine comes from the coal mines and railway tracks of York and South Wales, North London, Brighton, Liverpool...Whitecastle. Where the sky is black with coal and people hack blood from the tb. No fight left in some of them. Ones that do, right dandy bunch, all fisticuffs and curse words. Shagging and brawling, drinking and living, until we happen along. Dru, me, Darla, and ole Angelus. My idea to use the spikes - show Angelus a thing or two. Show him that I was one of them. Push them through the wrists and legs like a regular crucifixion. Then do a jig on the graves, waiting for the corpses to rise, bloody and scarred but ready for a fight. We must have killed about thirty or forty in a night, the bunch of us. Course it sent the police and vampire hunters after us - so we had to hide in a mine shaft. Made Angelus bloody furious - he preferred taking his victims hostage to a nice little place, private like, no one knew of, sipping the blood a bit at a time, torturing them for days on end..." he caught her look of horror, and lifted an eyebrow, "What's wrong? Turn your stomach? Come on Buffy, this can't surprise you. You've seen it all, right?"
"Yes, but that's not you any more. And it's not Angel. You talk as if it is...I don't understand. I thought the shanshu washed that away, not all the memories maybe, but the guilt."
He sighed. "That what Liam told you?"
She nodded.
"He seem all guilt-free to you?"
"No, but..."
"It washes away the pain, yeah. No more screaming. No more voices. No more ghosts whispering to you in the dead of night. I sleep better now. Also no more demon whispering to you, tempting you, telling you that you want it, that this is who you are, what you were meant for, that it is your purpose...your calling. The demon, it’s gone. And with it - the craving, the pull to do it. To destroy everything just for the hell of it. Because you can. Not because it's right, not because it's wrong, not because it's necessarily evil, but because it feels fucking brilliant. Makes you feel all manly and powerful. Like you're god. And nothing, I mean nothing can hurt you." He stretched, then got up and walked over to the pictures. "These people they meant nothing to me when I was a vampire. Just toys I could play with. Toy soldiers to knock over. They didn't have lives. They were happy meals on legs...their deaths made me feel powerful. More I killed, bigger I was." He touched the picture of the black girl in the long jacket. "And slayers? The heroes?” He said the last word with a catch in his voice. “ People like you, Summers? Those were the best targets. Killing them, made me a fucking legend."
"But you changed, you fought against it. That counts for something."
He shrugged, his focus still on the photographs. "Like Darth Vader at the end of Return of the Jedi? Kills the Emperor and suddenly he's all redeemed, makes up for all the lives he destroyed, all the people he killed."
"Not the same thing. Besides the fact that Darth is a character in a movie,” she shook her head; he was as bad as Xander. She never got the movie references. “He was human; you had a demon inside you. You didn't have a choice. It killed you and set up shop in your body - like, like what happened to your friend Fred. Except you fought back, the man that you had been, that you are now, his personality won out in the end - it fought back. That counts." "Well." He looked up at the ceiling."He certainly thinks so, assuming he's up there of course. I tend to think he is considering how much he's yanked me back and forth the last few years. Old Liam certainly thinks so. One thing we agree on - religion. That and God. Although he calls him the Powers. I tend to be a bit more of a traditionalist."
"Why don't you?" she asked, setting down her cup of chocolate which had cooled and was beginning to taste a little bitter.
He shrugged. "Because I have to think that something in me made the demon what he was. Not all vamps are alike, right? Some are right pantywaists. Take Harm for instance, couldn't hurt a bleeding fly. Torture? Mayhem? Turned the girl's stomach. Poor kid. But me? I got off on it. Not the torture so much - never had much patience for it. Visuals ain't my thing. That's old Liam's gig. Angelus, he got off on torture. Me? I just liked killing things. Hunting them down, stalking them, figuring out their moves, besting them, and nailing them to the floor."
"Nothing wrong with hunting."
He shook his head. "Not with hunting, no. But that's..." he swallowed hard. And she tentatively approached him. "It's like what I told you all those years ago in your basement, you remember, when I begged you to kill me, before those blind ninja priests took me hostage?"
The image was laughable in hindsight, she thought and for a moment thinking back on it she couldn't help but wonder if Xander had a point. Maybe their God was an insane comic book geek with an obsession for musical theater and old sci-fi movies, the type with bug-eyed monsters in them and screaming girls in alleys.
"About the girls, yes..."
"I enjoyed it Buffy. That wasn't all demon. Something in me wanted that. Sought it out..." he bowed his head.
"Did you though? Did you really? Spike- I mean, Will. We all have demons inside us. We all have nasty desires. Years ago when a demon tried to drain my soul out of me, I felt these things, I wanted to kill and maim. Hell I felt that way towards Warren when he killed Tara and I certainly felt that way towards Professor Walsh, who set me up to get killed." And Riley’s wife, Sam. But she decided to leave her out of the mix.
"You've never tried to rape anyone."
"Got me there." God, she thought, this conversation reminded her of the ones she'd had with Faith. Hadn't they'd had it before themselves? She vaguely remembered one like it. No, she thought, they'd skirted around it because at the time, she still hadn't quite figured out how to deal with it or him or what he'd become. She was so young, so scared, and so insecure back then. And it didn't help, thinking back on it, that she had all these people watching her, judging her every move, telling her how to behave, what she should do. It wasn't until she got to Rome, actually got some time alone, traveled, that she began to make peace with it all, think it through and come to her own conclusions regarding it. She and Faith ended up discussing it and in a way that helped more than anything else. Hearing Faith's side, how she had tried to rape and murder Xander, when all he'd tried to do was help her, helped Buffy understand what happened in the bathroom and finally realize that it wasn't her fault. Oh she had a hand in it, but not necessarily a negative one. It had very little to do with her and everything to do with the war that was going on inside of Spike. A war, Faith explained, had been going on inside her as well. Except in Faith's case, the demon won and nearly destroyed her. In Spike's the man did and nearly destroyed him. Ironic that. Further evidence of Xander's theory, not that she believed in God.
"Humans rape people, Will. It is a human crime. You didn't have a choice when you tried to do it with me or when you raped and murdered those other girls - you weren't human. You were a demon. The fact you didn't actually rape me...I think, surprised us both."
"You stopped me."
"Yes, but barely. I was vulnerable. I had no stake. I'd been injured. Even at full strength we had fought one another at a standstill. No one was there but me and you. You could have easily killed me that night. We both know that."
He looked down at her then past her towards his books. "Instead I got myself a soul." He laughed. "We wanted to be like Angel. Good enough. Course we found out that that wasn't possible...we found out how ugly we truly were. Stained. Shanshu doesn't wash that stain away, Buff. Nothing does."
Buffy didn't know what to say to him. She stood there awkwardly, just a few feet away, when he turned towards her.
"Do you ever regret it?" He asked.
"Regret what?"
He shrugged, looking back at the wall, then towards her again. "What happened between us? What happened between you and Liam? Not just marrying old soldier boy and riding off into the bleeding sunset, which you might have done if I hadn't...interfered. Bollixing things up for you."
She sighed, moved towards his windows and stared out at the darkness that lay beyond them. Wondering if he missed being able to see in it. "No." She shook her head. "Way I see it? It's over and there's no changing it. Riley? Our relationship was doomed from the start. We didn't quite fit. Would have broken up anyway. No sunset was ever in our future. But to be honest is it in anyone's?" She turned to face him. "You dating anyone, Will?"
"Are you?"
"Not for some time." She touched the glass and drew a finger down one of the cool panes. Was that a deer she glimpsed in the moonlight? She couldn't tell. "Haven't really wanted to. Been happy with my own company, that of my friends. Did have a marriage proposal once." She smiled remembering it, how the boy had gotten on his knee and offered her the ring. But he was a boy, even at 26. "Didn't work out."
"I wanted that for you...the picket fence, the nice house, the kids, the ..."
She laughed through her nose. "Why? Because it was your fantasy?" She turned to face him, tilted her head to the side and examined his face, lit by the track lighting above them. The rest of his body in shadow as if a spotlight were on them and they stood alone on some stage. "Because, it was never mine. I lived that life, Mom, Dad, car, cool clothes, cool boyfriend - only to discover how rotten it was underneath, how fake. As a kid, sure, I wanted it. Normal girl. Normal life. It wasn't until I got to Rome, got the normal life I dreamed of, got the cool boyfriends, no more slaying all the time, that I realized it wasn't much different than when I was slaying. Life's life, you deal with it. Hang on to the good times, let go of the bad. All you can do really."
He was silent. For a while they just stared at one another, the only noise, the creaking of the house around them and their own breathing. He was the first to look away, moving past her to the windows. "So you really have no regrets? Nothing?"
"Sure I have regrets - I just don't," she paused, irritated with where the conversation was going. She'd never been fond of talking over this stuff. Going over and over it like a raw wound. When Dawn did that - she used to yell at her to "get over it." "I don't see what the use is in rehashing them. Can't change the past."
"Would you, though? Change it?"
She shrugged. "Don't know. Never really thought much on it." She stepped beside him, rested her hand on the sill, and leaned her cheek against the glass so she could see his eyes, half hidden by the shadows. He'd pressed his forehead she saw against it and was idly tapping the glass with an index finger. "Would you, Will? And if you did? What good would it do?"
"Don't know, figure save a few lives maybe. What you think?"
"Also maybe kill a few. The thing of it is, you don't really know do you? I go back in time and decide to fall for Xander instead of Angel - what happens? You never get a soul, Angel never goes to LA, Darla lives...or maybe it all happens anyways, except Xander's probably toast."
"Toast?"
"Never had much luck with human boyfriends back then. They tended to get killed or freaked. Xan talks a good game, but he also is missing an eye because of me."
"Not your fault."
"Please. He wouldn't have been there if it weren't for me. It is my fault. It was my plan. Even Xan knows that."
"Was my fault just as much as it was yours."
"And how is that exactly? Wasn't your stupid plan, was it? If I recall you were amongst the naysayers."
"I was there, if I'd.."
"What? Fought off Caleb better? He took out two slayers and five slayerettes. Somehow I doubt one vampire could have bested him. It was a dumb plan to take you all in there, blind like that. But I was young and I'd gotten cocky. Learned my lesson, unfortunately at Xander's expense."
"He didn't have to come."
"That's what Xan keeps saying."
"How's he doing by the way? The Xan-man? He come out of the closet yet?"
"What?" She stepped back from the glass and stared at him. He looked at her innocently, but she saw a mischievous glint in his eyes and a slight twist of his mouth, as if he were suppressing amusement. "Xander is not gay...not that there would be anything wrong with it if he were. But he's not."
"Right. You know that because..."
"Well he has girlfriends. Lots of girlfriends."
"Right." He shook his head, clearly amused. "Forget I said anything. You know him better than I do." He passed her and picked up a bottle she hadn't noticed before on a side table and poured himself a glass of water. At least she assumed it was water, he'd mentioned that he no longer drank alcohol.
"Why would you think he was gay?"
"No reason. Really, forget I mentioned it. What's he doing now? He still trolling after slayers? Or he finally start work on that comic he was going on about?"
She felt her jaw drop as she stared at him, resting her back against the windows.
Will laughed at her expression. "He did? Good for him. Told him he should just write the things. Was driving me bonkers talking about it all the time."
She closed her eyes and smiled. That's right, she thought, they'd lived together for a while at her coaxing, which made the gay comment even more disturbing. She tried to picture Andrew and Xander together and was drawing a blank. "He and Andrew are writing them now," catching his knowing and somewhat irritating smile, she added. "No, they aren't living together. Andrew lives in Rome still and Xander is somewhere in England, last we chatted."
"You Scoobies...you certainly get around. Must be all those years stuck in Sunnyhell."
"You know, Xander has a theory..."
He scoffed. "Xander always had a theory, usually some hair-brained one."
"You'd like this - he thinks God is a crazed comic book writer with a musical theater obsession."
"Musical theater? Xander still trying to get around calling that dancing demon, what was his name? Stripe? Smythe? Snipe.” He shook his head, laughing. “Not so hair-brained though. Gotta remember to tell Charley boy that one. He'd get a right kick out of it. Huge fan of comics, Charley. Annie keeps pestering him to get rid of the stuff he's accumulated in the last five years alone. Liam would like the musical theater angle - keeps pestering me to go with him to Les Miz. Told him I'd already seen it in the Mother Country. Once, trust me, was enough."
"You never answered my question."
"What question was that," he asked, swirling the liquid in his glass which from a few feet away reminded her awfully of blood or deep red wine.
"Are you seeing anyone? Dating? Anyone special in your life?" She watched him tilt the glass back, take a long drink, wince slightly, and take another. The gesture took her back in time to the days he was a reluctant guest in her house, drinking pig's blood. The glass was the color of blue ink so she could not quite tell the color of the liquid.
"Does it look like I'm seeing anyone?" He waved his glass at the room and the space beyond it.
"No...looks like you've gone all hermit-crab like and shut out the world. What you drinking by the way? Cause if it's juice or wine - I'd love to try some."
"This?" He looked at the glass somewhat sheepishly and smirked. "You wouldn't like it, trust me." He took another sip, frowned, and put it down. " If you're parched I got some water in the fridge - nice cool straight from the spring."
Buffy brushed past him, picked up his glass and sniffed it. No smell. He tried to snatch it back, but she backed away deftly avoiding him. The liquid was a dark, smokey, red making her think a lot of blood or possibly bourbon, certainly had the same thickness. She swirled it once and then took a sip. Nearly gagged on the bittersweet taste resembling prunes dipped in something tangy. "Ugh. What is this?"
He was laughing at her. " Told you that you wouldn't like it, didn't I?" He shook his head. "Some things never change."
Buffy put the glass down in disgust.
"It's prune juice mixed with cranberry. Keeps me regular." He rubbed his tummy in demonstration. "From your expression, looks like you could use a bit of it."
She made a face. "Ugh. I'll pass, thanks. Don't tell me - homemade courtesy of Annie?" He nodded. “I’m going to have to meet this Annie sometime.”
"Still want that water?"
"Not turning it down. Anything to get that taste out of my mouth. How do you stand it?"
"After you've drunk pig's blood, it's not that big a deal. Bit sweet to my taste, but the cranberry helps. Last batch was better." He disappeared into the other room leaving her to ponder what had just happened. When did they become old? Or rather when had he? She didn't feel old. Oh she had the wrinkles and the lines and the threads of gray, but her body was in the best shape it had ever been. Probably helped that she wasn't getting the crap beat out of her on a constant basis like in the old days nor having all those difficult relationships. She lifted the glass and stared into the swirls of prune juice. In a million years, she'd never have imagined Spike drinking prune juice. Angel, maybe, but not Spike. But then this man wasn't Spike any more was he?
"Here you go -" he said taking the glass of prune juice from her and replacing it with water. "So what are you up to now? Still training slayers?"
She shook her head sipping the water, which felt cool and refreshing after the bittersweet tast of the prunes. "To a degree, but since most of the demons were sealed off from this dimension - we've been focusing on helping people adapt, fight the remaining pockets, and try not to become monsters themselves. That and self-defense training. Keeps me busy at any rate and it's as Faith would say, very zen."
"Have the house with the picket fence?"
She snorted, blowing water through her nose. "Hell no. We got a nice cottage up in Canada, Faith and me. Not unlike this place actually. Take turns visiting it. While we get along alright, can only handle so much of each other at a time. Sort of like this place. Large, rustic, comfy." She scanned the walls of living room and the area beyond the windows. "Live here long?"
"Nope. Just four years, give or take. Course you've only seen the living room, bedrooms are in back to the left of the dining area. Not much. But serviceable."
"How did you afford it, if don't mind me asking? Angel?"
"Liam had some money squirreled away but so did I. Can't help but squirrel away bits and pieces here and there. Didn't want to touch it when I turned. Considered it blood money, but Charley-boy convinced me otherwise. Told me that I could do more good with it here than letting it just rust in some Swiss bank account. So I gave him a bit, used a bit to build this place, and gave a bit to the Women's clinics in the surrounding towns. Charley has pretty much the same philosophy you do - let sleeping dogs lie."
"It's a good philosophy."
"Is it?" he asked looking back at the pictures.
"Do you ever miss it? Being a vampire -" He glared at her as if she were nuts, gesturing wildly and somewhat angrily at the pictures behind him. "No, no, not the carnage, or the blood, I mean the power, the super-human strength, the...immortality. Not having to drink this stuff for instance." Seeing his look of bewilderment mixed with annoyance. She sighed then stretched lazily like a cat, tossing her hair to one side, her bangs had swept into her eyes so she felt as if she were looking at him through a veil. "Several years back, Giles drugged me, took my powers away - it was some sort of coming of age test dreamed up by the Watcher Council. Don't ask. Long story. So not worth going into. But the crux of the deal was - I lost my powers for a while. Was all weak and kittenish. Couldn't throw worth crap. Couldn't lift anything. Couldn't fight. Couldn't do those nifty moves. Was a weak normal girl. What I remember from it all was how much I missed it and how it made me feel. Like I was less than everyone else. Here was my gift and it was gone."
He stared at her for a few moments, as if he were chewing on something inside. Then at the half empty glass in his hand which he quickly set down on the fireplace mantle behind him. He tilted his head upwards stared at the track lighting, squinting his eyes then out at the darkness that lay beyond the windows. "Time was I could tell you how many deer there were outside. Didn't have to even look. Could smell them. Feel their blood pumping in their veins. Taste it. If they ran? Could chase them, even catch one, barehanded, no gun necessary. Tear its throat out with me fangs. Didn't need a weapon, had one built in, nice and proper. If I fell off a cliff or my bike, no bruises, no scratches that wouldn't heal within minutes. Could fall out a fifty story window and be fine as a daisy. Could also smoke, taste the nicotine, feel the buzz, no hacking, no coughing, no fear, didn't breathe. Just pure rush. Same with alcohol - nice rush there. Get drunk as I wanted, no headache the next morning, no throwing up, head all sweaty over the toilet seat. No liver damage, no…" He stretched his neck, tilting it to the sides, rolling his shoulders slightly, before leaning back against the mantle piece. "Do I miss that? Sure. But I don't miss what came with it. That's the difference between you and me, slayer. Your gift it isn't booby trapped is it? You don't have a demon hissing in your ear. You don't have to worry about frying in the sunlight."
"But it's also not permanent. I can die. Vampires....can live forever."
"Heh. Right. Forever. Until that is, someone dusts you.” He shook his head, a wry smile dancing across his lips. “Certainly felt like forever at times, especially after the soul. And now, like death is always going to stay just out of reach. Find the aging process reassuring yet frightening at the same time. I fear dying, because of what I might find, and what I've done, yet at the same time I crave it like a lost lover's embrace that I got gypped out of. Been alive a long time slayer, but never really felt alive...except for a few times here and there, usually in the midst of a crisis."
"But fighting isn't living, Will. Crisis? That's not living, is it? That's just surviving, getting through."
"Suppose. Never thought on it much. When you're a vampire with a soul? It's all about crisis. Fighting the next big battle. Keeping the demon at bay. Then, when that's over..."
"You get to live the life that was interrupted when you became a demon. You get your second chance. You deserved one, you and Angel. We all deserve one."
"Do we? Sometimes I wonder."
Buffy stared at him for a while, leaning against his mantelpiece, back framed by photos of dead souls, sipping his prune juice. Wondering, as she sipped her water, how long they'd been talking. It felt like forever and no time at all. His last few words saddened her, as if he felt that his life was a waste of space, and should by all accounts be over and done with. She supposed, from one perspective, he was right. He had been alive a long time, yet that wasn't really living was it? Rushing about causing mayhem like some perpetually twisted teenage punk? That's what vampirism had done to him, caused him to go through a violent yet expanded adolescence. He hadn't really begun to grow up until he'd met her, and in a way they matured together. Or at least that was one way of looking at it. She wasn't quite sure how he did.
"The way I see it," she began, carefully choosing her words. "Each stage in our lives is another book, not a chapter or a stanza of a poem, but a different poem entirely." She glanced up at his shelves. "The first chapter in my life's history might be for instance - the Little Princess, the next a really dark version of Brother's Grimm..."
"So what's it now? Little Women?"
Ah, the snark, she'd missed it. "Not quite. What I'm trying to say is we aren't the same people any more, Will. Our past is important, sure. But only to the point in which it informs who we are, where we've been. There's no use retreading those same old paths over and over again or re-reading those books. We've changed, we've grown, we've moved forward...we've-"
"We've become cookies?"
"What?" She felt her cheeks flush crimson. "Oh god. He told you, didn't he?" She hid her face in her hand.
"The cookie dough speech? Oh yeah. Ranted about it, actually." He chuckled, clearly amused. "Not one of your better analogies, Summers."
She shook her head, laughing. "No...but I was under quite a bit of pressure around that time."
"Won't argue with you there." He tilted his head and studied her a moment. "I realize we're different people now and all that. Living a whole new book, as you so eloquently put it. But humor me - what exactly did you feel for me back then?"
"What do you think I felt for you?"
He shrugged. "Never been completely sure. After I met Fred, I decided what you felt for me must been sort of similar to what I felt for her. Not love, exactly, well not the hearts and flowers sort of love that we poets go on about, more friendship. Sense of gratitude combined with compassion, I guess. Something like that. Difficult to put it into words."
She looked down at her hands and studied them. Turned one of them over and stared for a few moments at the scar, slight, barely visible, where she had burned herself long ago in the hellmouth, holding his hand. Faith had suggested she get a skin graft or remove it somehow, but she preferred to hold on to it, for some of the same reasons she held on to her wrinkles and the other scars from her battles. War wounds, Faith called them. Badges of honor.
"What did you decide you felt for me?" She didn't look up from her hands, just waited for his response, even though she could more or less guess what it might be.
The silence drug on for so long, that Buffy glanced up at him half expecting to see him pacing or leaning against the mantelpiece, a smirk on his face. Instead, he'd sunk into one of the chairs beside his fireplace, turned it around so that the back of it was facing her. Resting one arm against the top of the back rest, legs sprawled on either side, he faced her. The posture reminded her oddly of the old Spike, except that his head was bowed and his attention was focused on floor between his feet, the half-empty glass of prune juice dangling from his right hand.
After a while he seemed to become aware of her attention upon him and glanced up to meet her gaze. But after the space of maybe five or six seconds, he shyly looked away again, a frown furrowing his brow, clearly flipping over something in his mind.
"Love...it's a funny thing," he said, so softly she had to lean forward in her chair to hear him. He glanced at her. "When I was a vamp, saw it as being all about blood, not brains. Passion. Consuming. You felt it here," he hit his gut, "and here," he hit his chest. "Fire. Burned you up inside. Made you crazy. Made you hard. Made you weak. And powerful at the same time. Depending on the situation. It's what me and Dru had - that all consuming passion, couldn't get enough of each other - couldn't be around each other without touching, without kissing - and when we connected, the world exploded. When we didn't? The world was a bottomless pit. All or nothing. No in between. Was all about the rush. Before Dru, before I became a vamp? It was about poetry, gentle conversations, sneaking kisses in corridors, dancing just ever so closely...what one reads in books, I suppose." He shook his head, laughing softly; she guessed at himself.
"Always thought of love, romantic, parental, what-have you as being the focus of someone's life. My Mum? She didn't love me unless I was the center of her existence, her focus. Everything I did was beautiful in her eyes. She'd die for me, my mum and I'd die for her. When I met Dru - saw it much the same way, except more so, Dru was mine. We belonged to one another. Course, it was a selfish type of belonging. I could shag whomever I chose, but she couldn't and vice versa. We drove each other right bonkers." He paused, stared at his half-finished glass of prune juice, made a face and put it aside. Leaning back slightly from the back of the chair he'd been resting against, he looked past her at his shelves. "Some of those books up there - they talk about nothing but love - Shakespeare's sonnets, Shelley, Keats, Byron, and of course old man Proust's Swann in Love. Namby-pamby nancy boy talk - but that was me, at heart. Love's bitch. It wasn't love unless it consumed me, ate me up inside, made me crazy. Thought much the same about everyone else." He tilted his head to the side.
"Then I became obsessed with you. Wasn't love. Not at the start. Drove Dru away from me. Caused me to go back to Sunnyhell and get the bleeding chip in my head. Made me right crazy. All I could think about, dream about was you. You became my world. My raison d'etre. Killing you, shagging you, possessing you. See to a vampire killing and shagging aren't all that far removed - result in more or less the same experience. Except shagging tends to last longer."
"I seem to recall you saving me quite a few times, along with Dawn."
"Well, yeah. When I decided I loved you, couldn't bloody well stand to have you hurt, could I? How'd you feel when we tortured Angel? Torn up inside right? Like someone hurt a part of your own self? That's how I felt when Glory or any of those other nasties hurt you. Like someone was sticking pins in me. You became my entire world. I lived because you were in my life. I considered dusting myself when you died, only thing that stopped me was that promise I gave you about protecting the Bit, Dawn. When you came back - it was all I could do not to be around you, see you, touch you. When we had sex - I wanted more. Became as addicted to it as you were I suspect."
She laughed. "Yes, well, the sex was great."
His eyes flickered in surprise and amusement. "Was it now? Nice to see you admit it."
"Don't remember denying it."
He thought for a moment. "No, you didn't. Never denied wanting me, did you? Other things, yeah, but not that. But it wasn't love, was it? Thought it was at the time. Thought we had what you and Angel did - that all consuming passion. Never getting enough of one another. Covering each other's backs. Took me a long time to understand what you tried to tell me before I attacked you. How that burning passion I felt consumed by and thought we had, wasn't love. When I got the soul, you were still the center of my universe. My reason for continuing. I'd have died for you, well sort of did, come to think of it. Although I think I might have done that anyway. Right thing to do. Certainly did something similar with the old man. I loved everything about you, your quirks, flaws, blemishes, horrid analogies, would have done anything you asked, right or wrong. Didn't matter." He stretched his legs and tilted his head to either side, stretching the neck muscels. Letting the silence fall between them for a bit.
"Then I died. And came back, which was…” He winced. “In the intervening years, I've been with a few women, dated. Also seen the relationship between Chuck and Annie blossom nicely. And realized I didn't know a hell of a lot about love. " He shrugged. "Did I love you? I lusted after you, I craved you, I burned for you, I desired you, I wanted you, I worshipped you, I honored you, I grieved for you, I fought for a soul for you and I died for you. But I'm not sure that's love. At least not the way you or anyone else deserves or wants to be loved. Not in the quiet, companionable way Chuck loves Annie. You should see them together? How they quietly support one another. How they have their separate pursuits. Don't judge. Don't force. Find each other endlessly fascinating. They click in a way I'm not sure I've ever quite clicked with anyone. It's patient. It's caring. And it's mutual."
His words made Buffy feel tired. Musing on them, she wondered why people felt the need to define indefinable emotions such as love or hate so neatly. Neither were neat emotions. Comparing her feelings for people as one might compare two sizes of steak or pieces of chicken. Weighing them. As if the feelings one felt for someone else were tangible items that could be placed on a sliding scale. “From one to ten, ten being the highest, one the lowest, how'd you rank your lovers?” Dawn had asked her, finding the question in some Italian fashion magazine. As if lovers could even be ranked or compared in such a fashion or love were some prize to be rewarded at the end of the competition. Oh, I've done all these tasks, I've fought for you, now may I have your love? It wasn't that easy. It wasn't an emotion one chose to bestow on someone else because they'd earned it the way a dog might earn snacks. Nor in her experience, at least, had it ever been neat or definable. She didn't always understand why she loved someone the way she did, she just did. But then she'd never really been overly fond of overanalyzing her feelings or for that matter defining them; she preferred just to feel, to go with her gut.
She looked up at him, catching him watching her, his question hanging in the air between them unsaid. Realizing that if she wanted to change the subject, let it stay unanswered, he'd let her with little complaint.
"I think you loved me," she began slowly, choosing her words, "maybe not like Charles loves Annie or Tara loved Willow, but it was love all the same." She looked up at him, absently circling the rim of the glass with her finger. "I wonder if love is something that we can be neatly define, like a three line poem placed in a box and wrapped with a nice little bow for valentine's day." She ignored his grimace at her analogy.
Looking up at his books, she continued, "I don't think it's as neat as you've outlined. Relationships. They're messy. At least mine always were." She sighed. "I've never been much of word person. So I don't always tell people that I care about how I feel. For me - it's always been more about the doing not the telling. Years ago I remember driving poor Giles and Dawn nuts telling them I loved them and how weird it sounded and how maybe I hadn't gotten that across to you or Angel or Mom or poor Tara, the people I loved that had died. I worried over it. Then, I realized something, I had told you maybe not in words, but in gestures. In what I did. And I loved each and every person differently. You can't love people the same way, that's impossible. Nor, do I think you can say you love one person more than another. You just love them differently. Some you love, like you loved your friend Fred, quietly. Others you love with blinding passion. And others, with a combination of both."
"Right..so, what did you feel for me? Blinding passion? Or quiet like?"
Still curled in his chair, she looked up from her glass, which she was still absently playing with, and smiled at him. "Before you closed the hellmouth? Combination of both."
He nodded, appearing to take it in filing it away somewhere for later pondering. "You regret any of it?"
"What? Meeting you? Our time together?"
He nodded.
She tilted her head thoughtfully. Did she? Faith had asked her a similar question once. "No," she said after a couple of moments, staring straight ahead out at the darkness that lay outside his windows, in her mind's eye across the decades to Sunnydale. "I don't regret it. Don't want to relive it or anything close to it. Very glad it's over, believe me." She looked down at her hands and the glass cradled in them. "But don't regret it either. Doesn't seem to be much point in regretting, does there? Besides, it worked out more or less. Better in some ways than I expected."
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Date: 2007-02-01 12:24 am (UTC)What a fantastic exploration of their relationship, from beginning to end, and on how they've gotten to where they are now. What I'm liking best about this is that it's a universal theme--we all have done things that we aren't proud of, and things that we are proud of. But what a powerful and empowering moment when you understand that all that, the good and bad, has made you who you are now.
Really great depth of character exploration here. I'm devouring this. :)
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