Samson and the Broken Dolls - chapter three

The bed's all portraits and nothing useful. It's Illyria ransacking the bedside cabinet that finds, "A Palm Pilot."

"What's it got in it, love?" He goes though the drawers.

Only in his world could a God King of the primordium play with advanced consumer electronics in the bedroom of a dead ex-Power. "Names, addresses, contact details of witches, furies, others, slayers and their masters."

"Maybe we should ask Buffy or Giles for some backup, what with all those slayers they've got themselves nowadays. Believe me, I don't want to. Poor love's more than done her bit, but we might have to throw ourselves on the mercy of the Council." It's always the last thing that he wants that happens. He knows he's done Very Bad Things, but a break at some point in the century would make a novel change.

"They have scattered their forces. There are addresses all over your world, but there are no more than three slayers or watchers in one place."

"Must have learnt something from that business with the Council go Boom then - good to hear." Though he hopes that Giles has also learnt not to try and kill him if they have to throw themselves on his mercy. He'd put the odds at fifty-fifty himself, but it's better than he's used to when it comes to the business of slayers, so he's willing to risk it.

"It means, half-breed, that a few humans with stolen powers will not be enough to face the onslaught the Wolf, the Ram and the Hart will unleash upon us once they have re-gathered their forces to take us."

"Bugger. It's true. Wolfram and Hart'd be able to slaughter 'em, wipe 'em out with sheer numbers." He can't put Buffy at that risk, he just can't. The world's not the world for Spike without her in it, and he's put her through enough; he can't do it again. "This is our fight, they just want us. Leading 'em to Buffy would get her killed - not an option, Illyria. Girl loves herself a fair fight - though she'll deny it - but this, this wouldn't be. So, no."

"Slayers are predators, pale shadows of the true predators of my time, but predators. Even if you have allies among them, who would spare you to make use of you, they would try to kill me - an Old One walking amongst vermin."

"'S true, an' all. Not that the vermin speech would help much in convincing them not to try and take you down." He can't help remembering the children lost in the mouth of Hell and the ones he hopes made it - little Vi, prickly Rona, even Red's self-confessed Brat. "Can't let them make that mistake, Highness. Didn't die to take out the armies of the First only to get those kiddies slaughtered now, by you or Wolfram and Hart."

"The First - a trickster, forever starving to ape its betters, to feel the pleasure of life draining from the bodies of its enemies. An annoyance - little better - but it gives me pleasure that my pet should have defeated it." And the scary thing is that she does look proud of him - a lioness at her cub's first kill, only exponentially more dangerous.

"Not a pet." He can't help snapping, "If I find anything to tattoo myself with, I'm considering going with that."

Her look of pleasure at winding him up is unmistakable. "My half-breed."

He's definitely not going with that. "Not much better, Blue." He's had enough of offering up body, heart and soul and having them slung back at him, trampled on and used up.

"My companion?" But it's her note of puzzlement - the lost girl trying so hard to find her way in a strange land of her - that's going to make it hard.

Really hard. "That's more like it."

"I am unsure. A king is always alone. He has the worship, the fear and love of millions, but he is always alone. I do not understand this need for companionship I have since I was diminished. I dislike it."

"Sometimes we all do." He knows alone; it's broken his life so many times.

And it's the broken girl that says, "But I find I cannot do without it."

He's always glued the shattered pieces of his heart, his life back together, brushed himself off and tried again. He might not have much time left, but nothing's can change that now, not even him, even if he wants to. "Join the club, love. Join the club."

It's so tempting to leave going through drawers full of clothing that smells of the dead and the missing, to track down a nice bottle or three of oblivion instead, but he can't, he has responsibilities, so he doesn't. He forces his brain into thinking not drowning. Thinking about what she said earlier sparks a glimmer of hope he's frightened to rely on, but can't help grasping as a lifeline. "You did say there's 'witches' in that Palm Pilot, yeah?"

"Pathetic creatures - supplicants that crawled in the dirt for our favour, desperate for our most fleeting glance as they begged us to heed their pathetic mewling."

It's a bloody good job she can't send his hair grey. "Yeah, we're going to have to discuss this whole 'politeness when asking a monumental favour' thing. Course, I'm the last bloke to help you with that - bit out of practice, and all. Perce, on the other hand... well, it's him and Charlie we need the help for - so if you could call her 'Willow', if she's in there, it might get us somewhere, right?"

"The witch called Willow? She is in the machine." Watching Illyria's like watching a computer flash its lights while it does something that still amazes and thrills his Victorian brain. "She had power; the merest shadow of the powers that once danced through the air of this world, but power. She was attracted to the shell, Fred. She would help me." Off his look, "Us."

"Tried to get hold of her before, when you first got here, but we didn't have her number. The old man must have got his boys on the job. Bloody well took him long enough. Still dunno if she'd raise the dead again, not after last time." He shakes his head free of the pain and pleasures, the nightmares of that time. "But it did come right eventually like, so, God, I bloody hope she'll help."

"If I had my powers I would make it so. I am... not what I once was, but if this vermin has the power to bring back what is mine and refuses, I will rip the skin from her body and wear it as a cape."

"Well, that'd be poetic." He's never been able to resist irony, no matter how many times his life collapses in on his head - he can't stop now.

"I do not understand." Puzzled, he knows puzzlement and bewilderment in the eyes of his women.

And it's the experience of over a century of looking after his dark goddess that he falls back on in dealing with the blue one. "Don't have to love. Just let's find ourselves a phone, yeah? Give calling in the big gun a go, right?"

"But Charles is Gunn, and it was my Wesley who carried firearms."

"Bloody wish he'd taken one with him, not a pig-sticker. Might not be in this bloody pickle if he hadn't!" When they do get him back, he's going to have a few words with Wes about suicide runs and leaving Spike to deal with the aftermath. He's getting tired of it.

"I will punish him when this Willow returns him to me." Her absolute sincerity makes him think he'll have to keep Willow around for a bit in case they need her to do it again.

He can't help smiling. "Reckon he'll like that."

He positively grins as he finds a henna pen among a collection of transfer tattoos and some very interesting toys. "Bingo!"

"A game of chance played by the decrepit among the worms of this world. I do not see the relevance."

Sometimes he really wishes the watcher hadn't been such a committed teacher. "Bingo, love, as in something we can use to draw on me that'll stick for long enough to give us a break, yeah."

"That is good. We will hunt down this telephone and while the witch crawls to my summons I will inscribe your flesh."

The pleasure in those deep tones really shouldn't turn him on, but he can't say it that it doesn't. Especially when it's combined with looking at a bikini made from coins coiled round a coronet, sitting on a harem girl outfit complete with cape. "Angel had the cheerleader play dress-up? Bugger always did like that."

It's Fred that looks up at him with vulnerable eyes that just bleed hurt. "In hell, they made Cordy a princess. When I got there... they didn't do that."

He drops the shinnies to the floor and concentrates on her. "Daft sods. You'd have made a brilliant princess, love. Spent more than a century with one - know what I'm talking about, I do." She gives him a brave smile and it's the best he's felt all night. "Leave this here, yeah. Lets go check if the phone in the office is working."

She nods sweetly, which becomes imperious as she walks out of the door.

He follows.

And finds Illyria in the office listening to the phone's dial-tone with the same rapt attention she gave the Wolfram and Harts ferns, until her attention snaps back to him and she asks, "This Willow, she can do this? Bring them back to me... us?"

He can hear the phone ringing and his heart leaps towards hope. "Know she can do it, Highness. Gave me the shock of my life, she did, most bittersweet moment I've ever had too - seeing Buffy's hands all torn up like mine were once."

"This was the predator that laid you on the sacrificial stone to win her victory? Impressive."

It's her look of appreciation that fans his temper into fire. "Illyria. No! My call, not hers. My decision to take that sodding amulet; keep it on when it started flash-frying me. You haven't a bloody clue what you're talking about!"

He gets a flash of ice-blue fury at his, "Defiance," that promises incineration just as sure as that bloody amulet.

It's her eyes melting into hurt Fred brown which douse his flames into guilt. "Look, I'm sorry. I'm a bad rude man - I know that. I'm fed up, and angry, and tired. I'm bleeding exhausted and gripping on to a sliver of hope that an insanely powerful witch that probably doesn't know I'm back from the dead, and who I tried to bite that one time, is going to be there, willing to help and able to do it over the phone. It's a bit much really."

She keeps Fred's form. "Why over the phone. She should fly to my side, grateful to please my merest whim."

He knows Fred's voice is the one that's got the best chance of getting help from Red, but it still freaks the fuck out of him. Focusing on fact's all he can do to fight it. "Took a coven-worth of the strongest witches in the Western Hemisphere to teleport Giles across the Pond with enough juice to sort Red with, or so they said, and we'll need her juiced up. Can't have her teleporting all this way - that'd wipe her out, leave her vulnerable for when Wolfram and Hart come back with the substitutes, and we'll still not get our boys back."

"That is not acceptable." He can hear the phone creak in her bone-crushing hands.

"No it's not. So let's hope she's there, eh?" He knows this is going to work. It has to work, he'll make it work if it kills him.

"I agree."

And she'll kill everyone else to get it to work too, and as very few people have the practice he has in defying gods, the poor sods don't stand a chance. They're going to do it. The answer's at the end of that phone line to Brazil. "And dial, yeah?"

Fred's warmth, hope; the promise that they can and will do it; that red will come to the rescue of brown; take the shackles of responsibility off his shoulders; save all of them, bring back the lost, bring back life, bring back hope. "Yeah, I kinda used this a lot in the old days, that whole summer we lost Angel and Cordy, and Lorne went to Vegas and wasn't real helpful - 'course we found out later that he was being held captive so we had to rescue him, and -"

It's painful to listen to, but Illyria's giving him the girl he needs, the girl they both need. "Good girl. Let's do the dialling thing, yeah?"

Seeing Fred bob and nod happily when it's not her, he'd rather bring the mouth of hell back down on his head anytime, but he endures and he's rewarded with the sound of home.

"Hi, this is Willow."

And he's never been so happy to hear anyone's voice in his life. It's going to work. He is going to keep his world, save Charlie and Wes, rescue the pillock from the clutches of Wolfram and Hart's human resources department, stop the bastards getting their claws, horns, or whatever else the sods have got on him or Illyria. He'd do a happy dance if his ribs were up to the job, only he doesn't want to look like a right pillock in front of the God King.

"And Kennedy!" Even that voice is heaven to his ears. God, the relief, it's ambrosia.

"We're kinda not here right now. You remember, Buffy, I told you about that whole apartment-y thing Kennedy's folks were talking about giving her for her birthday, since we've been spending all that time in Rio. It's ours! I so can't wait to send you and Xand pictures! A luxury condo overlooking Copacabana Beach that's all ours - you so have to come for the house warming! It's gonna be amazing. But we gotta do the moving thing. If it's an apocalypse, break the necklace I gave you guys. If it's not, do the message thing. This is Willow and Kennedy doing the 'beeeeep' thing!"

It's too much for both of them

"We have failed." Her voice is Fred's horror and Illyria's bewilderment at the concept.

"Yeah." His is defeat wrapped in despair. "Suppose I should have known. It's never that easy."