Samson and the Broken Dolls - chapter four

"I also. How do we accomplish this?" She crushes the phone almost without noticing.

Spike knows he should say something, that destroying a possible life-line's maybe not the smartest call ever given that they're on their own and the clock's ticking down to doomsday, but he hasn't the energy. All the energy he has got has to be used on going beyond last hopes, looking past the rules, the way he's lived his entire existence and about the only thing he's got left to give. "Been thinking, I have. The bird that took Angel, the one that kept looking for Percy, she said they just slap middle-management back together and Bob's your uncle, instant soldiers."

"Blood magic. I know of this. In my time, my army covered this world like ants, as numerous and as easily replaced. My enemies did not command armies greater than the grains of sand in the desert - they raised their dead to fight and be slaughtered time beyond measure. I will not allow them to do this to my Wesley and Charles."

"Me neither, Illyria. But we need to know how to stop 'em. Bird had a decapitation scar and still looked a bit of all right."

He gets a glare for his pains. The strange thing is that it's blue.

"Wesley, my Wesley, he dismembered her." Blue eyes shift to brown, but the tone is all green-eyed monster. "He was sleeping with that tramp. He told me it wasn't all about holding hands, and then it all changed and got real confusing, okay? And I don't know if he'd a loved me the way he did if it was all static. But nothing's static, the whole universe is in motion and if it ever stopped it'd be real bad and we don't want that. And the feelings they're all in motion too, and in pieces - but they're the wrong pieces - right down to the sub-atomic, and the strings won't stop strummin' in my head and I can't seem to stop it!" He can see her visibly shake off the Fred memory and force Illyria back to the forefront.

And it gives him the key he's been looking for to understand, get the switches that tear him apart. "It's when you're talking her feelings that what's left of her comes out to play, isn't it? That and when you're accessing what she knows, using that great big brain of hers to -"

"Silence! Fragments to be used to serve my purposes. Echoes. Overlays. Nothing more!"

But he knows better and it breaks his heart.

"Of course." The pleasure of memory rolls off her like waves. "They scattered on the winds as my armies fought them with flame and rendered their masters into ash beneath my feet."

"Burn them to ashes, leave nothing to pull 'em back with?" Fire's nothing he wants anything to do with, but he'll dance with it one last time for his friends. He'll add to the nightmares, the flicker of fear and remembrance of pains past that sear him with each spark of his lighter. He'd kill for the comfort of nicotine, can feel his hands patting his coats for cigarettes, but right now, the sight of fire's absolutely the last thing he can face - so it makes absolute sense it's the very thing he has to do.

"It was effective then." Pleasure melts into pain. "It should be now."

"Dunno if I can do this, love. There has to be a way round this. There's always a way round it - or straight through it. Anything's better than this!" He'd put his head in his hands in despair, but it hurts too much.

"There is not. We have no choice; we have run out of time. I, the Ruler of Time, have run out of time. You and my Wesley stole it from me, diminished me, and now I cannot save him though I would choose to do so."

Illyria's right in his face and somehow it's the last straw. "Yeah, sorry about saving you from the whole exploding thing and all." He embraces the anger; it's all that's holding the loss at bay, keeping him here, now, himself, saving him from the living nightmare of having to see his friends burn like he burned. "Big mistake obviously."

She's a teacher to an apt pupil, a mother to a child, and with as little malice. "We must utterly destroy their bodies. Leave nothing for the Wolf, the Ram and the Hart to consume."

"Bloody know that!" He wishes he could see malice in her, something to fling himself against, something worth destroying himself on, but it's not there and that pulls him back. "Just wish I didn't, is all."

"There was a flame-thrower kept by the cage where the humans caged the vampire."

"I'll go fetch. Don't feel right using it on them though." It's odd how the habits of childhood peak through at odd intervals, how persistent the need for the right words, songs, rituals are even after a century in death. "Know we got to, but -"

"We will use it on the room, make this hotel the sacrificial pyre to save my Wesley and Charles from my enemies. Ensure there is no extinguishing the flames that free them, no recovery of their ashes." And she's crying. "To save them I must render them unto utter destruction beyond all recall. Once this would have given me joy."

Been there, got the T-shirt. He can't help reaching out. "But things change. People -"

And its Illyria looking at him, saying, "Yes, they do."

It doesn't take him long to find the flame-thrower and to check it's still up and running. The flames make him shudder, but they're the only hope, so he shoulders his burden and heads upstairs, leaves it in the hall and enters the tomb.

To find Fred smoothing down a blue and gold bedspread over Gunn and Wes. "It's Cordy's comforter. It felt right, since she kinda can't be here right now, and I know she'd wanna be here, for them, though I know she's watching and she's gonna look after them when I can't. But I wanna do my best for my boys, Spike."

The way she's smoothing Wes' hair kills him. "Doing the best we can, love." Bloody wounds all covered up in bedclothes, his friends look like they're sleeping, and he supposes in one sense they are. He can't help wondering what he looked like sleeping - but he woke up, they can't, can't be damned like him. He can't save himself; he has to save them. "Wish we could do more, but -"

She smiles at him so bravely. "We kinda run out of time."

"Yeah."

She's caressing Gunn's cheek, tears rolling down her own. "It feels kinda right, you know? Charles, his crew - can I say crew?"

He's smiling through his own tears and can only nod.

"If the vamps took one of them and they didn't know if he'd drank, they all brought some wood to the pyre. They saved them, together."

And he wants so hard to do it and to do it together, so he swallows hard and joins her standing by the bed. "We're going to do that, pet, we really are. And the bedspread, it should help the flames to get a good hold too, love."

She moves closer to him even as she straightens an imperceptible wrinkle in the cover. "Kinda trying not to think about the flames. Though I poured Cordy's perfumes over the comforter for the accelerant factor to make it all smell kinda nice, on top of a girl making it all warm and snuggly for her boys...for the journey."

"You tucked 'em in all nice and cosy." And he's crying; he can't help it. "You've done a lovely job, pet."

"They're gonna be safe and together and this is gonna work."

She's do damned determined and so damned hurting he wants to do something to make it better for her. But he's done everything he can think of, so all he can do is ignore his own grief and try to be her rock in this. "Bloody hope so. Really do."

But when she asks, "Time to say goodbye now?" Fred pushes him into the silent sinkhole of grief and it's all he can do to nod.

"Wesley, my love. I meant it you know, all of it, I really did and we will be together one day but right now, right now I gotta let you go on ahead, but you won't be alone - you won't - you'll be with Charles and with my love." She kisses his forehead and tries to smile at him, "Oh, my love, my Wesley," and kisses his lips for one last time.

"Charles. I know you didn't want me to get hurt, I know it, really I do." She kisses his forehead and strokes his face one last time. "I know you never wanted to hurt me, and you were there for me when I came back from Pylea and you loved me and wanted to save me from the monsters, from me, and I'll never be able to look at pancakes without thinking about you. I, we, wanted to save you, but we're out of options and runnin' out of time and that's just wrong, 'cause if Hawking is right... But we have, so I gotta say goodnight now, but I wanna tell you that I love you and I forgive you before, before it's too late."

"'S always too late, isn't it, love? Never enough time. Never the right words." And she's crying, thin fingers grasping his hand for dear life, and it's going to set him off again and it'll be too late. It's always too late, too slow, too fast, and he can't save Buffy from falling from the heavens, and she can't save him from hell caving in on him, but he'll be damned if it'll be too late this time.

And he'll be damned if he won't take time enough to say his own goodbyes. "'Night, Charlie, Wes. I'm sorry, I tried. Tried my very best, we both did. Really hope you know that and I bloody hope this'll work. 'Cause, 'cause, I really don't want to have to kill you, not after the way you... after everything."

And it's too much, and the tears are going to stop him seeing the lighter, let alone lighting the pyre and he can't fail them now, not in this, so he grinds his jaw the task and flicks the lighter.

The perfumed coverlet soon covers the lost in flames.

The fire embraces Wes and Gunn while Spike and Illyria stand transfixed at the door, still hand in hand. She never takes her eyes from the blaze as she says, "I do not know what to be, who I should be for them."

He's given up disguises, had too many of them burn through. "Be yourself, Illyria. It's all any of us can be when it comes down to it."

Smooth skin becomes rough gauntlet, but she doesn't let go of his hand. Her grip, it's crushing, grinding the broken bones in his hands together. It's excruciating but there's no way he's letting her go. The pain's an anchor, a focus, something other than the blazing pyre consuming the only friends he's ever had. The friends he's failed.