Samson and the Broken Dolls - chapter two

But he can't help looking up at the sky for the vampire that's overshadowed his entire life. The man who takes everything Spike wants without effort and only tosses it him when it's broken beyond repair. The one person he's no reason in the world to love, miss or ever want back. Even if he is the only one that understands what it's like to know, to have done what they have and to care, and who's gone to torment. Spike knows it makes no sense, but it's not just the rain that fills his eyes and runs down his cheeks.

But the sky remains empty - dark and stormy but utterly bereft of the vampire it's swallowed.

It's not the only one. Spike's been lonely for most of his existence, but he's never felt it more than now, with the closest he's ever had to real friends dead at his feet or gone for good at best, and without even the tantalising lure of hope baited in a lie to cling to.

It's the latest broken dolly Angel's left strewn in his wake that calls him back from the void. "You should obey your leader."

And he's so damned tired of always being put in his place that he swallows down the tears and snaps, "He's not my leader. How many times do I have to bloody well tell you that!"

She swipes away the tears and water from his face with her gauntlet. It's rough, and the demons she's torn apart with it have lent it the scent of satisfaction it never had in the training room. But it's not the blow she dealt him there either. It's harsh, and strangely overwhelming, but not cruel. She's so much more powerful even now than he is, a demonic mother-cat cleaning her half-breed kitten with a rough swipe of the paw.

One that tastes his tears on her glove, before tilting her head and studying him. "I have eyes to see, though they are not my eyes and they refuse to stop crying."

Her blue eyes are pitiless in their honesty, but bathed in a grief he can't help sharing and wanting to comfort somehow, no matter how very tired he is of trying to glue together what others have broken and then hold them together by force of will. But he can't help who he is; he can't help trying. "Know the feeling, Illyria."

She's so close, so sad, so angry, and so very broken it's like coming home.

"I hate it. I reek of human grief. It infects me. I want it gone, yet I cling to it lest I lose him, Wesley. I do not understand why I can't make it stop. Does it ever stop?" Her tears don't and he can't help thinking a man blessed who can make a god weep for his loss.

Spike knows that the only one that ever wept for him was the mum he killed. He really wishes it were different, but he can't lie to himself any better than he can to others. "Right little torments of Sisyphus, it is, I reckon. Every time you think it does, that you can rest, it just gets bleeding worse. Then we get up and do it again, faster, better like - that don't fix it though. Some things you never can make right. But we do what we can, yeah? For those we can. And you still don't sleep too good, but it helps."

"I wish to fix it. Stop this feeling. What can I do though? Wesley is dead. He took my powers to walk through time and worlds at my will, and now when I would use them to save him, I can't. Spike, I want to save him."

She's not the only one. "Think I might know a way, love. For Charlie-boy too. Don't know if it'll work. I don't think we can get 'em back, even if we should. And I dunno what Angel's got in the hotel, but I reckon we'll have to settle for doing the impossible not miracles. You want to give it a go?"

"Yes!" The force of her nod sends her wet hair flying, almost blinding him with the spray.

He goes to pick up Gunn's broken body, to take him to the hotel, but her hand clamps onto his arm so strongly the bone creaks. "Ow! Bloody hell, woman! What the fuck do you think you're doing?"

The gauntlet melts away to show Fred's long fingers but the grip's all Illyria. He looks up to see brown eyes looking into his. "Charles loved the shell, Fred. The memories, fragments and confusion though they are, tell me that Fred loved him once. I know he would want me to lie to him too."

He knows the comfort of lies only too well. "Have to disagree with you there, pet. Reckon he learnt his lesson on that one."

But she's focused on what she needs to do. "I will carry him. I will brook no opposition."

And he knows all too clearly the need to care for the body of the dead loved one. "Tell me about it."

"You will open the hotel. I will carry Charles, and then I will go for my Wesley."

He can't help smiling though his voice is cracking. "Sounds like a plan."

And from the frost of Illyria, she's a Texas summer. It's somehow Fred caressing the sweetest benediction to Gunn's cheek before kissing his forehead. "Charles, you died and left me all alone. But it's gonna be ok, really it is. I'm taking you home and we're gonna save y'all."

But he couldn't then - any more than he can let Charlie-boy and Wes suffer now.

So it's with a sigh and a curse at the heart that keeps on bringing the temple down on his head, that he breaks open the door of the Hyperion. He forces the pain and the losses of years into a sweeping, "Your kingdom, my lady."

"My kingdom was much larger." Illyria's imperious tone is unmistakable but he's learnt to live with it; it's the tenderness with which she holds Gunn that's downright disturbing.

It's almost as disturbing after Helm's Deep outside, that the light switches work and flipping one shows a scene of such normality. Horribly empty normality. There's no nukes, the seventh cavalry and/or girls school of slayerness are conspicuous by their absence, and he can't see enough C4 to keep Alias in blowing shit up for years, or well, anything other than some sofas, a desk with a phone on it and a deserted office.

"No last minute deus-ex for us then, love. Knew it wasn't likely. Couldn't help hoping." He never can, but it's always dashed. "Looks like it's all down to us then."

"There is nothing here to save Charles and my Wesley?"

Spike's reckons it's a good job that the Lilah bird took Angel with her on the one way trip to hell, as it has to be less immediately painful than the pissed-off god's plans for him right now. "Dunno, might be some stuff in the office, yeah. I'll have a looksie. You want to put Charlie down on the sofa while we do?"

"No. I'm gonna take Charles home like I promised him. We're gonna go up to our room, and if y'all could open the door that'd be real great, 'cause I don't want to hurt it since it was ours, or Charles of course 'cause that would be real bad." If the pissed-off god is scary enough, the rambling determined Fred of her is worse, much worse.

He's not sure which one he follows up the stairs, but he can't help doing it.

The hotel's a labyrinth of death, all empty corridors, echoing with dead voices and the scents of the lost. He can see why the old man went for it; it's perfect for some really quality brooding time. The room Illyria stops at for him to open is worse. It's a tomb.

A tomb filled with the faded scents of the dead; the one carried in the arms of the other.

It's been stripped. Nothing personal remains. The bed she lays Gunn on so tenderly is a bare mattress, but the care with which she smoothes his clothes and strokes his cheek make it a four-poster heaven. "It's gonna be tight, Charles. Can I say 'tight' now? I'm gonna go get Wesley now, and me and Spike, we're gonna make it tight, really we are. I gotta leave you now, but I'll be back real soon. We both will, and we're gonna save you. So just you get some rest now. It's gonna be ok, really it is."

"How much of her is in there?" Illyria's head-tilt of enquiry disconcerts him; it's seeing his old self through a mirror darkly, and it keeps throwing him off a balance he needs quite desperately right now. "Fred, I mean. I know she's gone; I can smell that, but these flashes, these bits of her, I'd say it's like a goose walking over my grave but I keep getting up and out of those."

Brown eyes freeze into blue ones far, far colder than his own. "Fragments. Echoes and overlays. Memories and knowledge that are not my own and which intrude into My Grace. But be very certain that I am and remain Illyria - diminished as I may be."

"Believe me, Highness, I'm bloody certain who and what you are." But he can't help that each glimpse of the Faerie Queen of Wolfram and Hart breaks his heart.

"Good. You will examine this place for anything left by the vampire important enough that he should direct us here. I will bring my Wesley home." And it's with a last glance at Charles, that she leaves him alone with his dead.

He's never felt the loneliness of responsibility the way he does now that it's all down to him. He's so tired that he doesn't dare sit down on the bed to promise his friend that he'll save him for fear of not being able to get up again. So he gives his word standing up, and that seems right somehow. "Going to do my best, mate. Promised a lady - well sort of - and I'm promising you now. Going to get you and Wes out of this mess if it kills me. But I got to go now and see if the old sod's left us anything useful. I know, fat bloody chance of that. But I'll be back soon, and I am going to save you, Charlie - you can bet on that."

The hotel's hungry. Its' eaten well over the decades and it's looking for another meal. He can feel that; he's passed too close too recently to the ravenous maw of Hell not to feel it snapping at him again. He can almost hear the cries of the damned in every starving room, each colder than any tomb. Broken walls are full only of loss. In room after room, the lost souls howling out their pain and fear are enough to keep Pavayne out of Hell for eternity. Where there's no howls, there's a sucking silence that's somehow worse. Even what must have been Lorne's home echoes with emptiness rather than music.

He never thought he'd find himself trapped in Hotel California and he's a horrible feeling that he won't get to leave.

Even the garden's been watered with blood and planted with the dead.

He tries the cellar - laughing only slightly hysterically as he finally guards his perimeter - to ensure they've an exit to the sewers if they need it. He finds one, but the basement's stacked with the scent of death - human and demon. It's old death that's had time to soak into the very floorboards, and a sense of loss pervades the walls.

It's all too much. Too much loss, too much death, too much pain, too many fucking basements, and it's so damned tempting to let himself drown back into the whirlpool of madness that's been sitting there tempting him since he got his bloody soul back. Slip away from the real, the responsibility for anyone including himself, into the world where nothing's real and everything is, but none of it is here, now.

It's the wounds stabbing at him, now the adrenaline from the fight's worn off, that reminds him that he is real, that it's all real; and that if he doesn't find something soon he's going to be facing the only real friends he's ever had in battle. Spike doesn't know if he's the heart for that, but he knows he can't stop trying.

Or really, really hating basements.

And paperwork. The office is full of it. Books full of gobbledegook and symbols that might make sense to Percy, but make sod all to him. Translating the Odyssey, ordering a few Fyarls to crush and bash, and ordering a beer and a shaded room in enough languages to get a bloke round the world a few times - that he can do. Incomprehensible dusty tomes make him know he's missing something crucial, and no amount of shouting at the uncomprehending can force past this language barrier. He's sure the key to Angel's last words must be in here, but for all he can understand, he might as well be that small boy waiting outside the headmaster's office for six of the best for not declining his Latin verbs properly.

He'd hit something, take the frustration out on something if he didn't have to heal up ready for the second half of the match in a few hours. His ribs are more fracture than bone. Every page he turns grates the broken bones in his hands against each other. He's used to pain in his eyes when he reads too much - pain in his hands is a new joy.

Forcing open the briefcase hidden under the desk is a study in sharp, stabbing agony. Pain such that even the couple of bags of O Positive he finds in the fridge can only take the edge off it. He fed up before he went out to face the last day, drank deep of the last otter and vole from Angel's private stock before they left the office, but even a couple of pints of person isn't enough. Not after the damage he's taken slaughtering the Fell Brethren single-handed and then helping smash the armies of Isengard. He needs more blood, more blood that's closer to what he is to get him fixed up and ready for Street-fighter 2 - This Time It's Personal. He's not sure that even a pint or so of slayer would do the trick. But even if it did, he's drunk his fill of slayers.

The pain's productive though. The briefcase's full of enough money to buy minions from LA to Rome and back, and account numbers and details how to access them for banks in Switzerland, Luxembourg and the Cayman Islands. From how much money the old man and Darla must have stashed over the years - and how little the mean bastard spent out of his own pocket - Spike reckons he could probably buy several third world countries with the proceeds. It's a shame he can't figure out how he could somehow live long to enjoy the moonlit beaches, funky clubs, good footy and cold, cheap beer, as it's bloody appealing right now.

But it's not an option; he's a job to do, so he tips all the money out, finding two sets of keys and some smudged copies of Wes' report on the runes Lindsey used to fuck with him and the Senior Partners. He reads his way through them but he can't help wondering why the fuck Wes couldn't write a report on contract busting as well, breaking it all down into nice simple bullet points; it'd be bloody useful right now.

It's a resounding crash that pulls him out of the heap of papers and into the lobby.

To find a Texan gal holding her man, one that speaks with the authority of aeons and expects him to follow her up the stairs as a matter of course. "I would place my Wesley with Charles. You will open the doors."

"Yes, Highness." He's pretty sure he ate enough Buddhist monks back in China to understand the concept of karma, and he knows he's built up a massive debt - but dealing with Illyria has to be burning some of it away. He lives in hope anyway.

Illyria's walk through the rain's washed Wes free of most of what, going by the wound Spike can see, must have been a lot of blood, and his face is strangely at peace. Spike's going to move heaven and earth to make sure it stays that way.

She's quiet and focused solely on her mission until they reach the room where they left Gunn, when the predator looks at him from Fred's eyes. "What did the vampire leave us to fight with?"

He opens the door for them and closes it as he answers. "Not much. Some car-keys, some door-keys, enough cash to bring back Dawson's Creek, info on some tattoos that might buy us some time, not much but, you never know, it might come in handy."

He moves to help her put Wes on the bed beside Charlie but she waves him away.

"I always know. Did you discover anything else?"

It hurts; he wants to help, do his bit. But he understands only too well the need to care for the lost beloved, so he lets the God-King take care of hers, and covers the pain of exclusion with a joke. "I'm still gobsmacked Peaches managed to learn how to use the photo-copier."

She lays the watcher on the bed so carefully, stroking his hair straight, even as the rainwater bleeds into the mattress. "There is nothing to save my Wesley? Nothing to bring him back to me?"

"No, love. Been working on it, believe me I have, but nothing yet. Wish we could stop the clocks. Give ourselves more time, find something."

"I can't do that anymore." She sounds so lost.

And she's not the only one. "Can't see anything here to break Wolfram and Hart's claim on Wes and Charlie."

She slumps onto the bed between Wes and Gunn - a rag doll between two perfect marionettes that look ready to dance only someone's cut the strings. "But we gotta! They don't get to take my boys, my beautiful boys."

And she includes him in that warm brown glance, and it feels so damned good to be included, almost bloody poetic in fact. But poetry won't save the day this time. He's not sure brutal truth will do much better, but truth's all he has to offer, so he gives it. "Reckon as we don't have that much time either. First thing the bastards are likely to do is animate 'em. Make us fight 'em, make us feel it."

And it's the God-King who stands up. "I agree. It would be a good plan."

"It's what the old man would have done." And he can't help hearing the screams of the dead. But that way lies getting lost in bug-shagging insanity in basements and he's trying very, very hard to avoid that. If he's going to die, he's going to do it standing on his own two feet spitting defiance with his last breath.

"He had potential."

"But let's foil this one, yeah?"

"I agree."

He just wishes he knew how to do it.

But it's Illyria who breaks the silence, "There must be something; you will show me what you found," and walks out of the room expecting him to follow.

And he's nothing else to offer, so he does.

He's seen and done pretty much everything in his time, but nothing's ever going to make him used to a god in a red leather body-suit reading her way through a sheaf of photocopies to an accompaniment of full Fred-babble mode and blue hair mussing. "These could buy us some time, I'm thinkin'. Not for a real long time since they did find Eve eventually. But it could hide us all real snug and safe, maybe give us time to get away from here so they don't know where to start lookin' for us - which is kinda important when y'all want to find someone."

"Sounds good, love." It's the most hopeful news he's had all night.

Illyria reads as fast as Fred but never blinks. "We will need something to inscribe your flesh with. I can modulate my form to incorporate the tattoos, but you are limited."

"Not that limited! About as flexible as you can get for a vampire!" He has to be to cope with this living automaton inhabiting his friend. Snarking at it helps a lot.

Though she ignores his protests. "We both have enough power within us to make the tattoos work to shield us."

"Not the Powers That Be or anything close, Highness, but we'll do." There's no choice and no help; it has to be enough.

"The snivelling cowards that named themselves that while we laughed at their conceit? Weaklings that begged at the gates of my temple, sniffling after the tiniest scraps of My Power. Barely above the half-breeds, unworthy of feeling my wrath on their pathetic carcasses."

"They upgraded."

She switches to reading the tomes he couldn't make head or tail of and still it doesn't stop her talking. "No, this world diminished. Grace was shut away while cowards survived to use worms to fight battles they dared not risk themselves in."

"Can't argue about that one. Using girls up 'til they break and beyond. Calling blokes Champions and fucking with 'em 'til they're burnt out. Sounds like we add them to the shit list too, yeah?" After all, he's absolutely nothing to lose.

And she's as utterly serious as ever. "They will die. They will feel my hands ripping out their entrails and the last thing they will see is me strangling them with their own intestines."

"Good to know they got them." A bloke lives and learns, even on his deathbed.

And the Fred in Illyria never stops making discoveries. "This key, it's for Cordy's room. Lorne told me when we left the hotel that Angel was all worried about Cordy's things kinda gettin' lost before she could wake up, so he put some locks on her old room, and well, he sorta kept the keys himself. I'd of visited, kept it all real nice for her, but I kinda gotten busy with your ghost problem, and then she stayed in the coma and died, and then well Wesley and me, then I kinda died too, so I never did see what he did with the place."

"Reckon he put anything useful in there?" Hope's such a hard thing to stamp out, for all he's had all the practice in the world.

"We have to find out! We might be able to save Wesley and Charles!" Determination, traces of old grief and some guilt freeze into blue." Bring the papers the vampire left us." The switches are going to be the death of him.