Trying - Part Four
DISCLAIMER: Barry Manilow and Noel Coward take a bit of a beating.
SUMMARY/NOTES: When we last left our hero, he'd had an academic test with Giles and an empathetic revelation with Tara, who'd given him an important hint for this conclusion. This entry reverses the absurdity- then-angst formula of the last chapters; we end absurdly. ;-)Wounded as he was by the emotions he had felt with and through Tara, this journey was the worst yet. Spike moaned when the familiar jolts of electricity-borne pain hit and kept hitting. The torture went on forever yet took no time at all. And through it, he could hear voices in the void: screams of agony, shouts of rage. The leopard roared somewhere beside him, and--
He stood alone in the dark, in a place that smelled rankly of city, of booze and piss and decay. A strong gust of wind snapped his duster; a streetlight popped on overhead. And he saw Cecily, as he had last seen her, circling him with a slight frown on her face. "My goodness, look at you."
Anya walked out of the shadows to join her. They surveyed and appraised him as if to sell to the lowest bidder. Spike vaguely wondered what the two of them had to do with each other, or with anything, but his head hurt so much that he couldn't be bothered to participate just at the moment.
"Can you believe this horrible poet-creature proclaimed his love to me? At a party?" Cecily asked Anya. "Really, I don't know what he was thinking."
Yeah, bugger the headache. "I was thinking I was in love with you, Miss Addams. Believe I said as much." He infused as much Big Bad surliness into the words as a man with a migraine could.
Cecily didn't seem impressed. She and Anya exchanged glances, then she said, "But apart from everything else, you were trying for a fellowship at All Souls. Fellows couldn't marry, William."
"They were going to change the rules!" he snapped.
"For you?" The women's nasty tinkling giggles reminded him of every nightmarish At Home he'd ever attended in his life. Cecily added, "If you think you were beneath me THEN...you just were not, are not, good enough. You're disgusting."
Spike's headache vanished, and the leopard suddenly growled in the shadows behind him. Then Anya took a step back, her hand brushing the amulet on her chest. "You thirsted for vengeance many times before, Spike, and I can certainly see why," she said. "You may choose to take it now, if you wish. I consider it just." Her hand closed on the amulet, and she disappeared.
Cecily stood in front of him, her ringlets whipping in the breeze, the disdainful smile he so well remembered curling her lips. The leopard prowled out into the light just behind him; he could feel the aggression rumbling its chest. He knew that it--he--could kill her. And she stood there inviting it, asking for her neck to snap and her blood to flow. He could all but taste it.
The big cat leapt.
And he pushed Cecily out of danger--"Run! Run, you stupid bint!"-- then turned to smash the creature back into the half-shadows.
The leopard rolled to its feet and glared with yellow eyes. Cecily was gone, but his erstwhile companion had transferred its blood-lust to him. The cat's waves of anger intensified with every growl. Of course he had some rage of his own to work out, too. Slowly, harshly, he said, "Watch where you're going."
It attacked him, claws out, and raked his neck. Cursing, he threw it off. The leopard whirled and jumped him again, and before he could get his hands around its throat, it ripped open the leather of the duster near his heart. It was as if the animal was digging for something. He kicked it back into the shadows, then went to his knees.
The leopard was seeking something, but what? Oh, of course. Tara had told him. The onion.
Spike took the thing, now glowing faintly, out of the inner pocket. He had an insane impulse, the kind that had driven him for 120 years, to throw the onion AT the leopard and say "Catch." Let the sodding cat have what it wanted, yeah? Why the hell not?
But his heart had already chosen. He popped the onion into his mouth and swallowed it dry....
Pain oh God and the terror of children, innocents screaming of loss, cries of the forsaken, blood, so much blood, it was too much, it was his fault his fault all his fault. Fire from the inside burned remorse into his cells and he knew he would fall into ashes but first...
He gently put his hand on the leopard now sleeping beside him. "I know who I am. And I say, Never again. Never again"--
And he staggered on his feet, standing in the bar where he had begun his quest. He wasn't at all sure but what his throat was on fire. "Water!" he gasped to the green-skinned demon who appeared at his side. The bar's host passed him a bottle, and Spike gratefully gulped it down. The water felt like balm to his wounds, like Tara's hand in his hair. He silently said a blessing for her.
Without comment the Host passed him a second bottle. After it was gone, he said to Spike, "There now, English toffee. Wipe away those tears, okay?"
"Yeah, mate." Spike rubbed at the salty moisture in and around his eyes. Then, struggling to stand, he murmured, "You know what would go down a treat right now? Some extremely strong mints. I hate onions if they're not fried and all flowery."
The Host twinkled at him, "I was just thinking the same thing." He let Spike crunch the bulk of his peppermint stash, then discreetly gave him a handkerchief to clean his face and the wounds on his neck.
After Spike finished his recovery efforts, he sagged onto a bar stool. He could hear Angel still singing Barry Manilow. It was still horrible. However, there were matters more pressing than music criticism. When the Host sat down beside him, he asked, "Right then. I'm here. What were the messages you had for me?"
"Ah. Well. Thing is..." the demon fidgeted a bit under Spike's gaze. "You have to sing for me."
"You have GOT to be windin' me up."
"Now would I do that, lemon-drop? I need you to sing, and then I have much to tell you."
Spike's throat still burned, and if he moved his head the wrong way he could still feel the agony, the regret, which lodged inside him. He desperately wanted to find a very small corner of a very small closet and hide himself away. His earlier words, however, came back to him. "I have chosen. I have endured." Well, if it wasn't one sodding thing it was another. He sighed, got to his feet, and moved toward the stage.
Angel, if Spike wasn't very much mistaken, was singing the exact same song as when Spike had left. What. A. Wanker. Buffy, all golden and glowing, gazed up at the poof from her table in front of the stage. So Spike jumped the steps, took the microphone away from his stunned grandsire with a moderately polite "Step off, Peaches," and started in on the bridge: "I feel the change coming, I feel the wind blow..."
Then suddenly the words actually meant something. Spike caught Buffy's eyes and sang to her, "I feel brave and daring, I feel my blood flow...With you I could bring out all the love that I have, With you there's a heaven so earth ain't so bad..."
Bolstered by the spirits he had encountered or conjured and the pain he had survived, Spike's voice rang out. Hell, if he had to sing, he'd do it right. As he kept going, he put his heart into the gaze he shared with Buffy: he ignored the Host swaying in time to the music, hands in the air, at the back, and shut out Angel spluttering behind him.
She smiled at him. A real Buffy-smile, the like of which had never been directed at him before.
He moved to her level when he got to the last line, and after "When will I hold you again?" he brushed his lips against her hair. She didn't touch him, but she still smiled. As he walked away, he could hear the broodster protest, "But, but that was MY song!" and Buffy reply, "Oh shut up, Angel."
Spike was grinning when he reached the Host, who after wiping away his own tears enthused, "That was so beautiful, my little all-day sucker!"
"Uh-huh. Extraordinary how potent crap music is." The green demon smacked at him, but he ducked. Then he stopped smiling. Quietly, seriously: "Now. Tell me what you need to tell me. I'm ready to listen at last."
"You have done well. You have done very well," the Host said, also serious. "You have chosen to create. That which has held you back is gone. That which you lacked is given. That which first changed you is within, but no longer in control." Spike's mind heard an echo of a feline growl with those words, but the leopard was only a trace inside. It was power but not destruction. "Now you must seek who you are, not who you were."
"I must create." Spike closed his eyes.
"You must create," the Host's voice repeated faintly--
And Spike opened his eyes on a bonfire almost out and the sleepy eyes of the shaman across from him. Sore and stiff, he felt rather like crying again. Instead he stretched, and said, "Hullo. Have I been out long?"
The spirit-caller's face radiated good feeling. "You know where you've been, little brother. It has been forever and no time at all."
"Felt more like the forever end of the deal, actually," Spike said. And then he laughed.
THE END
[Note: All Souls College, Oxford, actually did abolish the marriage requirement for Fellows in 1882. So let's chalk up the missing 2 years to ME time, okay?]