Trying - Part Three
DISCLAIMER: Rudyard Kipling gets a little shout-out in this chapter.
SUMMARY: When we last left our hero, he had performed a variety of tasks in an Oxford college library, including tidy onion-peeling and the rescuing of Giles and Tara from vamps. This time--nobody expects a Watcher's inquisition (unless you're Spike on an identity/vision- quest. He's not so surprised, actually).He'd expected the jolts of electricity, but they were much longer and brain-crushing this time. Suppressing a rather girly scream, he reached down and caught the leopard's forelegs before the claws could rake his shin. The cat struggled, and Spike lost hold--
And he slammed face-down on an Oriental carpet which had seen better days. "Ow." The cat fell on top of him, all tooth and claw. "Ow, ow, OW! Gerroff!"
"I had no idea 'Master Vampires' were such babies," Giles sniffed from on high. Spike managed to extricate the leopard with a minimum of snarls on either side, and looked up. Giles and Tara bent over him, scrutinizing his undignified position.
"Do you need help, Spike?" Tara asked. He considered a range of answers, from the incredibly vicious to the slyly insinuating to the merely rude, but settled on taking her outstretched hand and getting to his feet.
"Thanks, pet." The leopard bounded across his feet--"Bloody hell!"-- to spring into a leather chair by...the fireplace?
He stood in the middle of a Fellow's sitting room, much like the one William had wanted so badly. True, the carpet was worn, the 15th- century walls were a bit wonky, and it was damned drafty--but the fire crackled behind the grate in the fireplace, the leather chairs were broken in just right, the two oak desks were inviting, and the walls of books made his mouth water a bit.
The leopard, trying to get comfortable in the chair, extended its claws for a pleasant scratch; Spike, seeing this, vaulted over two chairs and a desk to get to it. He caught the paws firmly in his hands. "No. I understand it's your nature, but no." When the big cat flattened its ears against its head, Spike narrowed his eyes. "I said no."
The leopard huffed a feline sound of disgust and went boneless. Spike turned back to see Tara ensconced in a huge arm-chair and Giles busily writing at one of the desks. "Come then," Giles said without looking up. "We have work to do."
"A sherry to start?" Tara asked.
"Please." Spike took a seat at the other desk. Something in a duster pocket knocked against his pocket when he sat, and he recalled that he had items to use. Didn't hurt to check, though. "Am I allowed to use anything for this exam? Don't want to cheat or some such, but it might be useful to have pen and paper, for instance. Or not."
Giles took off his glasses. "Are you asking me?"
Spike set his teeth in irritation. P'raps he wasn't supposed to ask. P'raps he was just supposed to KNOW. Bugger it. "Yeah, I'm asking." Luckily Tara brought his sherry then, so he could make himself feel better by smiling seductively in thanks. She rolled her eyes and returned to her chair.
"Fascinating." Giles scribbled more, then said, "Oh, right. Carry on."
Spike collected his onion, knife, pen and paper from their various storage places and spread them out on the desk. He took a second look at the paper: now neatly marching across the top of the otherwise empty page were the words FABLE TRUTH LOVE, headers for lists which didn't exist. After taking a sip of loathsomely sweet sherry for fortitude, he uncapped his fountain pen and adopted an attitude of careful attention. It felt odd but not completely out of character.
Giles stared at him. In that gaze was deep, dark accusation for every wrong Spike had ever committed, as Willliam Bennet or William the Bloody, and Spike had to fight to hold the look. He almost fancied he could hear crying in the wind outside, the hard sobs of twice ten thousand human lives lost because of him; his eyes wanted to tear up, but he wouldn't let them. 'Cause he didn't care, did he? He couldn't care about that. All the books said so.
"What is the moral of the Leopard Who Got His Spots?" Giles suddenly barked.
Kipling, wanker, Just-So Stories, hmmm--Spike at once reverted to William's tutorial manner, which blended deference and sublimated aggression to a nicety. "That one change or adaptation was all it was allowed. I believe the passage is 'But they will never do it again, Best Beloved. They are quite contented as they are.'" Ha bloody hah! More than was asked for: Spike's speciality.
"And your reading of that is--?"
"That Kipling was damned misinformed," Spike began hotly, then stopped. He felt a little lost. "I don't think he asked the leopard."
"Must he have done?"
"Well, no. He could use..." And Spike realized he had begun to write "Spirit" and "Imagination" over and over in the TRUTH column.
A female hand, fingers tipped in crimson, reached over his shoulder to try to rub out the wet ink. He caught the arm in a hard grip and swung around.
It was Buffy. She glared at him. "What ARE you doing, Spike?"
"Don't deny my words," he said evenly.
Her eyes softened, the way they did when he gave her unlooked-for pleasure, in bed or out. "I didn't mean to hurt you, really."
"I know you didn't, love. My love." He pressed a sweet, lingering kiss into her palm. She reached her free arm back to his paper, finger outstretched to smudge, but he caught that one too.
"You do remember that you're an evil thing?" she inquired.
"But I'm not contented as I am." The words rang in the Fellow's room, but he hadn't known he would say them. Buffy pulled away from him and was gone. He wasn't sure he'd ever had her. Probably hadn't. Hadn't.
At the pain ripping through his throat, his gut, he turned back and reached for his sherry; it didn't seem quite right, though. It-- "Giles, you pillock! When did this turn into port?"
"They're both fortified wines," Giles said pedantically. "They're just fortified...differently."
Spike sipped. "Needs a nice Red Leicester to accompany it, I think."
"In good time. I have one more question for you." He looked at his notes, shuffled papers. "Truth. Is there anything positive in you which merits our attention?"
Positive? Spike consulted his paper. The FABLE column now read "William B: The world is wholly beautiful, and thinking can make it so. William the B: I am wholly evil, and thinking can make it so." The words sputtered sparks off the page, but he didn't look away. He'd been a blind git, any road. His mouth opened, and he heard himself say "I have endured, and I have laughed."
"You have endured. You have laughed." It was the voice of the spirit- caller, speaking through Giles.
"I have endured, and I have laughed. But I have not chosen."
"You must choose. To destroy or create."
"I will choose. I swear."
The oath having been taken, Spike sagged in his chair. He wasn't ready--but suddenly Giles turned into a tall Watchery version of the White Rabbit. "Good, good, excellent. Now where is that cheese for the port? I'll go wake a scout or brave the High or something. Tara, look after Spike." He scuttled out of the room, academic robe snapping behind him.
Tara rose and held out her hand to Spike. "Let's sit by the fire, sweetie."
The two walked hand in hand to the chairs, one occupied by leopard, in front of the fireplace. There was an awkward moment when Spike had to pick up the leopard (which did not wish to move) and adjust it on his lap, while Tara reclined gracefully in hers. Spike wondered if juggling a recalcitrant big cat while making conversation with a sweet lesbian witch was yet another test.
"I've come to one conclusion during this little hootenanny," he said casually. "I'm one deeply troubled wanker."
She laughed out loud. "It's cramp again, right? You're prone to that."
He grinned at her. She was a pretty one, wasn't she, and so good. But not too good, as that crack proved. "I'm so glad my disturbed brain conjured you up on my little quest. Amusing and kind, all in the face of sodding spells and things comin' out of my mouth I'd never..." But her face had changed subtly, revealing a well of sadness and loss. "Pet, did I say something wrong?"
"Not you," Tara said. She hesitated, then reached over and took his hand. The leopard stirred, then took itself off to the other side of the room. The fire popped loud in what seemed like unnatural silence, and Spike realized that he couldn't hear her breath or feel her pulse. "Spike, you're right about the others, but...this is me. My spirit, with you."
He took this in, trying to understand--then pain ripped through his gut. "You're not--Tara, no. No."
"W-w-well, yes, I've died, Spike," she said.
He fell to his knees in front of her and buried his face in her hands. It shouldn't feel like this, he shouldn't care, why did he care so? Then his lips brushed her wrist and he felt all of her pain and fear and oh Willow and loss, aching loss, I'm losing myself but I'm safe, I'm not here I'm here....He felt her.
He looked up, but he was holding the hands of a middle-aged Chinese woman, her face lined with grief. "She said to tell you she was sorry. And I'm so sorry too," he whispered. He closed his eyes then opened them to an angry Black woman, inconsolable. "It's not enough to say I'm sorry, is it. Oh no. Please, no." He closed his eyes once more, afraid what he would see next. But he did open them, and Tara gazed at him with infinite compassion.
She kissed his forehead and ran her fingers through his hair, and it was balm. Then she left him for a moment, going back to his desk. "You don't have anything written in the LOVE column, Spike. Here." She wrote a few sentences with his pen, then capped it. She picked up his other items, brought them back to him, then watched as he read the sentences: "An it harm none....love thy neighbor as thyself....what you send out comes back....I am thou."
He gazed up at her, all defenses gone. "What else should I do, Tara?"
She leaned down and whispered, "Don't let the leopard get the onion, sweetie."
The wind picked up, howling outside the room--"I feel the change coming"--and Spike was slammed against, then through, the wall. The leopard sprang with him, and the two spun out into nothingness.