Ronin
Spike, Andrew, Dana
R
Post AtS, AU, no spoilers
Cynthia Martin, ycymartin@cox.net

****

Dying was a busy job. Spike had a to-do list as long as his arm.
Errands and chores and fix-this, steal-that. Prepare for withering
death. Check. Train Andrew -- soddin', clueless, grief-stricken,
forgetful, perpetually sniffling and swollen-eyed Andrew -- up in the
way he needed to go. Check. Avoid Dana without hurting the poor
bint's feelings, check. Keep Dana in the dark about shanshus and
other potentially disturbing subjects. Check. Obtain for Dana what
she needed, not what she wanted, check.

Dana was a good little egg, really, sounder ever day. Blossoming.
Coming along fine, speaking whole sentences unprompted and only half
of them raving bugfuck paranoia. She was coming down from the psycho
stratosphere, taking an interest in life. It wasn't Dana's fault that
the sight of her made Spike's heart ache. It wasn't Dana's fault that
she'd saved his life on the beach, or that she kept dragging musty
blankets down from the bell tower to spread on his sarcophagus, or
that a glimpse of her sparring with Andrew made Spike think of Nikki,
and the little Chinese girl, and filled him with grief and worry. It
wasn't Dana's fault that her face was more sweet and serious by the
day, or that she was beginning to read, poring over Andrew's comics
and the psalters Lucero laid at her feet. It wasn't Dana's fault, or
anybody's, that her mere existence made the whole dying challenge
seem untimely, cruel, and miserably unfair.

Spike's awl slipped and his hand smashed into the scored silver. Pain
exploded from the impact -- a stupid little nick, for God's sake, and
he was practically seeing stars. Rotten creeping humanity, it was
worse all the time. Aches and pains, sensitivity to heat and cold,
insomnia at high noon. It was monstrous. Spike sucked at his bleeding
thumb and seethed.

"Perhaps we can pull some loose, senor."

"Lucero," said Spike with bitter, deadly patience, "these are
enchanted silver bricks. If we pull 'em loose the whole soddin'
place'll come down."

Lucero blinked his rheumy pig eyes. "I am sorry, senor. When I think
how happy you were about the silver, it makes me sad."

"Never mind. It was stupid of me not to ask."

"But this is a great pity.  You are a guest of Dona Dana. And you are
a good vampiro."

"Oh, how I wish that were true," muttered Spike.

"You grow weak, but you still manage to beat off the ravening hordes.
You keep the word. It seems wrong that you should have to work all
the time." Lucero poked at the tiny pile of silver shavings with a
cloven toe. "You are so busy since you started to turn human and die."

"I've got it handled."

"You must tell me how to help."

Spike brushed his meager tally of silver onto a page of Quatro
Fantastico and folded it, careful not to spill. "This'll do for now.
Go make supper for the kiddies, Lucero."

In evening the cloister's courtyard grew cool, and the high adobe
walls funneled breezes into it, soft zephyrs fragrant with sage and
wild rosemary. Dana was always busy in the courtyard at sunset. She
had many projects -- a few seedlings that struggled in neat squares
of savaged brick, graveyards for the badger bones she'd rescued from
the offal pit, mysterious patterns of pebbles marked with posts and
bits of wire. Head bent and brow furrowed, Dana tended them every day
as the light faded, gravely and with care.

Andrew was perched on the low wall that ran between the surrounding
arches, fiddling with his dead laptop. Hanging back in the
concealment of the breezeway, Spike caught Andrew's eye and tipped
his head in summons.

"Hi, Spike," said Andrew, in a voice meant to carry.

Dana looked up, then rose and rubbed her hands on her jeans. "Hi,
Spike."

There being no decent way avoid it, Spike nodded and took a step
forward. "Evenin'. Well. That's a fine thing you have going, there,
Dana. Andrew, we should be off."

"Okay," replied Andrew, betraying no intention to move. "Hey, Spike,
Dana found a cow's skull."

Dana pointed shyly. When Andrew gave him an imploring look, Spike
sighed and trudged into her weird garden.

It was a fine skull as skulls went, bleached to alabaster, with one
scored horn intact and the other broken halfway from the base.

Spike put his hands in his pockets. "Nice touch."

"I found it out near the well. The well that's broken." Dana bent to
tuck a sprig of pale lavender blossoms, already shriveling, into one
empty socket. "It must have died of thirst there, in the beginning,
when all the rain stopped. If I find people bones I will bury them in
the church."

"Good plan," said Spike. "Come on, Andrew, we --"

"It's like a pyramid," said Dana, cocking her head to examine it. "Or
the Mitsubishi logo. It has three points. Morning, day and night.
They point away from the center -- " Dana indicated spokes of quartz
pebbles arranged at the skull's base and joined by a circle of
chipped shale, " -- but they are one thing. It would look good on a
costume. Everyone can see it, if they want to."

"I can see it," said Andrew. "It's really neat, Dana."

"Let's go," announced Spike, turning on his heel and obliging Andrew
to follow.

"Dana, don't fight any vampires while we're gone," called
Andrew. "Okay?"

****

Four ounces of enscorceled silver was poor trade, even with humans
who didn't shrink from magic. A few batteries, a sack of oranges, a
hairbrush. Nothing. Spike was feeling very low.

"Maybe we should sell this soddin' jeep," he sighed.

"Maybe we should have a drink," suggested Andrew diffidently.

Andrew was getting that wobbly look again, the one that spoke of his
unbearable sorrow at Spike's impending doom, the one that made Spike
want to pull his well-meaning sappy face off.

Spike tossed the oranges on the back seat. "Right."

They drove to a demon roadhouse on dusty track at the feet of the
Santa Inez.

"Dos cervezas," warbled Andrew, taking a seat by the flyspecked
window.

The bartender merely sneered.

Spike pursed his lips and fetched the needful, and returned to find
Andrew drumming the oilcloth table.

"Jumpy?" Spike pushed a bottle at him. "Well, don't show it. That's
the quickest way to get demolished in a place like this."

Andrew sniffed. "I'm no longer he who jumps at demons. I mean, uh,
after the pubs Giles took me to, a place like this holds no terror."
Andrew took a swallow and picked thoughtfully at the label. "A place
like this... a place like this... does a lot of business, I bet, out
here in the thirsty trackless wastes."

Spike had downed his beer in one pull and was leaning back, letting
it hit. "I expect so."

"A big till, as they say. Mucho dinero."

Spike opened one eye. Andrew smiled.

"Don't talk daft," drawled Spike. "Look at the size of those buggers."

"They are many, and they are mighty, in their unclean way," agreed
Andrew softly, easing his jacket aside to show his holster. "But lo:
I carry the Equalizer."

****

The jeep reeked of stun gas all the way back to the San Pedro
Martir road, but it was full of booty. A kitten mewed among the
rolling bottles.

"And when I said: My name is Inigo Montoya, they didn't get it!"
Andrew crowed. "They cursed all the Montoyas just before they passed
out."

"Provincial sods," nodded Spike, in the vast good humor that came
from blood on his knuckles and the warm glow of cash well
earned. "Every last one. But they were prosperous, I'll give 'em
that."

"Loaded to the veritable gunwhales. We're flush. And they're real
pesos, Spike, we can spend them anywhere."

"Then set course for Mexicali, Sulu. I've got a list."

****

Fresh ash was swirling over the mission steps when Spike and Andrew
returned, and Spike saw Andrew's brow darken.

"Look, Andrew," he said, "Fish gotta swim, you know. Don't go
lecturing the girl, you'll just upset her."

"A Slayer's first duty is obedience," replied Andrew.

Spike laughed appreciatively.

Dana was stunned by the haul. Eyes wide, she opened bags and caressed
their purchases, then jumped. "Oh! A kitten. It's a kitten."

"He just sort of came along. You don't fancy cats?"

"He's so small. He's gray, too."

Andrew busied himself with the Rube Goldberg contraption he'd devised
for the resuscitation of the laptop. The kitten walked up and down
the table, sniffing at bundles with his tail straight up. Dana
extended a cautious finger and stroked his back. The kitten responded
with adoration.

"I guess he's yours, then," said Spike.

Dana picked up the tiny creature and held it with puzzled delicacy as
it tried to burrow into her hair. Her smile was soft and faintly awed.

Spike left quickly.

The long gallery ran around the courtyard, and the view from the
third floor was bathed in silver light. Spike let Andrew's pillowcase
of swag drop soundlessly to the tiles at his feet.

>From above, Dana's garden was a mural. The broken fountain in the
center was a human face, with stones for eyes and trailing vines for
hair, and a cow's skull at the center like a diadem. Lesser figures
played over the tangled confusion of the scratched earth, demons made
of pebbles, killers made of glass. At one end was a bright form, made
of quartz chips, one hand raised in admonition -- Andrew, no doubt.
Opposite, and connected to the head by arrows and links, was another
shape -- not one figure but two, linked like siamese twins, with
conjoined halos about them and ringed by circles of glittering stones.

The sun was coming but Spike lingered, staring at Dana's garden,
until he heard her feet on the stairs.

****

The day's rest was scant and polluted by the usual bad dreams. The
basement in Sunnydale. The hard faces of the Scoobies. The forlorn
bodies of old victims, rigid in death. Even Angel made an appearance,
intoning rah-rah shite about heaven and the glorious boon of
humanity. Waking at intervals, Spike fidgeted on his sarcophagus lid,
listening to the unnerving soft thup of his awakening pulse.

The desert heat didn't reach underground. The tomb was hard and cold
and made his bones ache, and Spike eyed the blankets on the floor
with longing. Every morning Spike pushed them onto the floor and
every time he returned they were back in place, neatly folded,
occasionally graced by a broken flower or a colorful pebble.

Dying by inches was a drag. Each day brought another symptom. Spike
had been resisting, drinking the blood that nauseated him now,
keeping strictly to darkness, shunning Lucero's plates of badger and
boiled cactus. Spike was clinging to his vampirism with grim
fidelity, a regular paragon of undeadness even as his heart twitched
and pulsed in his chest. And it was hopeless. He couldn't win an
extra day.

It was all over but the shouting. Spike knew he'd have to abandon the
crypt soon, make his way to some monk's old cell, and adopt the bed
he'd eventually die in -- with Andrew holding his hand and a hot
water bottle at his feet, probably.

Fuck that. Spike rolled off the sarcophagus. Fuck turning human and
withering by degrees. Screw hanging on to every precious second,
teasing every additional minute out of what was left, just so Andrew
and Dana could find their feet and not go to pieces when he was gone.
Things needed saying, and saying loud, before he got so soft he
couldn't say anything but goodbye.

It was dry and hot upstairs, with the sun still hammering the desert
and the tiled roof of the mission, and the halls smelled like boiled
eggs. Andrew was in his room, surrounded by a pile of fragile books
from the library, and Lucero was squatting near him, translating
Spanish in his highly unreliable fashion.

"Spike! You're up early." Andrew gazed at him tenderly. "How do you
feel?"

"Like I'm gonna turn human and kick it any minute. Listen, Andrew, we
have to get a few things sorted."

"Spike, I found something. Lucero's been helping me. There aren't any
spellbooks here, but there are stories about --"

"Cut it out, Andrew." Spike sat heavily on the bed. "There's no
damned spell for this, and we don't have time to arse around. Those
fuckers we tossed out of this place have friends, and they're gonna
make life very hot for you when I'm gone."

Andrews eyes welled. "We won't let you go."

"Aw, fer chrissake, will you let me talk? You have to get ready,
Andrew. I'm going out tonight and find their new lair, and kill as
many as I can. You gotta be ready for the ones who get past me,
because they'll make a beeline for
this place. If you and the girl play it right, you can probably waste
the rest. Then you'll have peace for a bit, and you'll be able to
make plans."

Andrew had gone white. "So that's it?" he asked quietly. "Tonight's
the night?"

"Yeah, it is. Won't be up to it if I wait."

"Please wait," said Andrew.

Lucero bit his rubbery lip in anxiety.

"Don't give all the ugly details to Dana," continued Spike. "Keep
your mouth shut for once -- she doesn't need to know about the
shanshu or any of that crap. She's a Slayer; she'll understand if I
go out on a mission and don't come back. She'll be fine."

"No she won't. And neither will I."

"Don't try me, Andrew."

"Dana will be crushed, Spike. Think of her. I think she's falling --
oh. Hi, Dana"

Dana stood in the doorway, grinning tentatively. Her hair was damp.
One wavy strand curled over her brow, bleached white.

"I used some of that stuff you bought," she told Spike. "There's a
lot left, though."

"It looks just like Rogue, Dana," said Andrew kindly. "Good job."

Dana looked at Spike. "Is it?"

"Yeah," said Spike. "Good choice."

Dana flushed with pleasure.

****

Spike folded his blankets neatly, collected his stakes, and left the
crypt. The church was empty -- Andrew wasn't going to see him off,
then. Bleedin' sulker.

Spike paused before the doors. The high altar was gleaming in the
twilight, defended by alabaster angels bearing tapers, faces lost in
the gloom. Spike felt unhappy and ill-used. Was it so much to expect
a farewell, then? A few good wishes after all they'd been through?
Humans were cold, that was all, and he wasn't sorry to avoid turning
into one of them.

"Hi, Spike." Dana stepped out of the shadows. "Are you going to
hunt?"

"Might do. Just a little fun. You have to stay here, though, and
guard the fort."

"Okay. But I'd like to go with you sometime, Spike."

"Right. We'll do that." Spike pulled the heavy door aside. "You mind
Andrew, Dana, while I'm gone. He's a good lad, and he likes you, and
he knows more than you think. Be sure to mind him."

"I will," said Dana, and her fist came out of nowhere and smashed
into his jaw like a piledriver. Bells rang and birdies sang and the
last thing Spike saw, through the falling curtain of astonishment,
was Dana's face floating above him like the moon.

****

"You bastard," rasped Spike through swollen lips.

Andrew took his hand. "I realize you are angry and see this as yet
another stab between the shoulder blades, but this long goodbye stuff
is so last week, Spike. Wiser heads must prevail."

"I'm going to kick your arse."

"Now, Spike."

"Get these fucking things off me."

Andrew adjusted the bits of old monk's cloth that lay on Spike's
chest like a lead weight. "No can do, hermano. I'm glad to see they
work. It's the habit of a saintly friar who died here, along with a
bit of his shroud."

"I can feel what they are, you soon-to-be-painfully-slaughtered git.
I'm choking."

"Yet you do not burn. Fascinating." Andrew patted Spike's hand and
took up a sheaf of notes. "I am going to say several prayers now,
invoking the aid of the said saintly friar."

"The hell you say! Get me off this goddamned bed!"

Andrew paused. "It's very fortunate none of us has to be a believer
for this stuff to work. You just have to be humble and deserving,
Lucero says. Dana and I are going to take it in turns, because it's a
novena. It'll take nine days, during which we will fast and keep
vigil for you."

"Stop," groaned Spike. "Stop."

"The novena to San Santiago the confessor," announced Andrew
primly. "Let us pray."

****

It was like a bad dream. It was like the bad dream, in which Spike
lay on a human bed in a stuffy room, waiting to die while Andrew
fussed. Except for the lack of a hot water bottle and the presence of
Dana, it was like the
fulfillment of a loathsome vision.

Andrew and Dana stormed heaven. They chanted, they lit candles, they
festooned the room with altar hangings. Nothing happened, of course.
Spike grew steadily weaker and more furious, pinned under the habit
of the holy friar. Day followed night followed day, and the prayers
droned on.

"Dana," said Spike one evening, while Andrew was off bathing in the
cistern, "this isn't the way, pet. You've got to let me up. I don't
wanna go out like this."

"We have two more days," responded Dana stolidly, laying aside her
comic book for Lucero's psalter.

"It's not that I don't appreciate the thought," cajoled Spike with a
hint of desperation, "but I'm a vampire. Bad, bad vampire. We're SOL
as far as all this miracle rot's concerned. It's a waste of time,
time that I don't have."

Dana put on her stubborn face, one that Spike had come to know well
in the intervening days. "You're not a vampire anymore, not
completely. Andrew told me what's happening to you. So it's going to
work."

"Let me up, there's a good girl. Just for a minute, there's a good
Dana."

"I think what happened to you and Angel was a miracle. It just didn't
go right. So we have to fix it." Dana knelt on the hard tiles. "Let
us pray."

****

"Spike, wake up. Time for a soothing beverage."

Disgusted and apathetic past all resistance, Spike allowed Andrew to
tip a bottle into his mouth. Beer hit his empty stomach and a loud
gurgle filled the room. Spike grimaced in shame.

"Wow!" Andrew beamed. "That is a tasty burger! Your stomach's
rebelling like an alluvial damper. No, wait, that's for repairs. An
broken ion coil? Anyway, I think we're getting somewhere."

"Bollocks. Andrew, I can't stay awake. Listen to me. I'm sorry I
yelled at you. I have a bad temper and say things I don't mean. It
was nice of you to try this, even if it was a stupid, half-witted
betrayal that robbed me of any hope of happiness in my last hours.
Thanks."

"What are friends for? Don't worry, Spike, this isn't the end. It's
not. Hey, Dana's come to read for you."

Spike hadn't seen her enter. The room was very dim. "I found some
poems," said Dana. "In a box."

"I'm going to get the thing," said Andrew.

"Okay," said Dana.

Spike closed his eyes.

The desert wind sighed in the tiled eves. Past the shuttered window,
out over the scrub, Spike could hear animal voices, wild and
contentious, alien and unconcerned. Dana read slowly, her words
rising and falling like a guttering candle.

"Over the ramparts fanned
While the fresh wind was fluttering his tresses,
With his serenest hand
My neck he wounded and
Suspended every sense with his caresses.

"Lost to myself I stayed
My face upon my lover having laid
>From all endeavor ceasing:
And all my cares releasing
Threw them among the lilies there to fade."

****

The light was harsh, leeching the color out of everything. Just a
blind empty haze except for his Ponceness, who hulked darkly at
Spike's elbow and was clearly in a bad mood again.

"Thanks a lot," said Angel irritably.

"You're welcome." Spike squinted at him. "What'd I do this time?"

Angel crossed his arms. "Never mind. Too late."

"Oh, that's helpful. Nothing like a bit of mysterious taunting for
the dying bloke. God, even heaven hasn't taught you manners."

Angel sighed. His head drooped. "I guess not."

Spike considered him. "Well. Thanks for this last bit of
encouragement, Angel. I'll just pop off and go back to being dead,
then."

"Yeah," said Angel. He lifted his head and smiled sadly. "Do it
right. Just get it right."

****

There was fire. A glowing ingot, a searing coal. On Spike's chest,
over his heart, burning straight through.

"YAAAARRRGH!"

Spike threw himself out of bed. The monk's cloth fell away in smoking
chunks. A human finger dropped onto the floorboards and Spike
recoiled from it, groaning and gamefaced, as Andrew helpfully doused
him with water.

"Jesus Christ!" Spike sputtered and slapped at his face. "Ow! Ow!"

"Does it hurt?' asked Dana with interest.

"He's all bumpy, "marveled Andrew.

"Es miraculoso," murmured Lucero. "Gracias, Senor."

Spike stared up at them, smarting, and they smiled down at him
benevolently.

Dana picked up the severed finger and presented it proudly. "We broke
the glass case. He must have been a very good saint, to set you on
fire like that."

"What an event! Truly prodigious," said Andrew, taking Spike's elbow
and assisting him to his feet. "This is one for the history books. A
reversal. A finger to fate, so to speak. Prophecy averted by the
plucky faith of a few loyal companions, an intervention from heaven
that must surely --"

"Angel," blurted Spike. "What about Angel?"

Andrew settled Spike's smoking clothes and handed him a mug. "What
about Angel, O traveler of the afterworld?"

Spike frowned. He was forgetting. Something about Angel's face --
that resignation, that blighted hope, that loss. Was it in Los
Angeles, on the lip of that smoking crater, or after? The memory was
slipping away.

"I don't know. It's gone."

Andrew smiled. "If it's important, it'll come back."

"I don't know," Spike said again, troubled.

****

They had a little party when Spike was hale once more, a small,
intimate, glad-you're-an-undead-freak-again soiree. Andrew played the
theme to Star Wars on his tinny laptop, and Dana sang the Bill Murray
lyrics. Then they lit the last of the candles and started loading the
jeep.

"Shame to leave all that silver," noted Andrew.

"He's out there," said Spike. "I feel it. We fucked over his shanshu
when we worked that little miracle, and they chucked him. He's human
now, and God knows what kind of mess he's in. Look, Andrew, I know
what I know. And if Angel's out there in trouble, we gotta go."

"Okay, Spike. Far be it from me to quarrel with half-remembered
visions from the Beyond." Andrew placed his laptop on the back seat
and shut the door. "We'll find him," he added stoutly. "It's a
mission. We'll scour the world, using mystical means and our own keen
instincts, leaving no stone unturned, and when we do, well... what do
we do then?"

"Spend a few days in hospital, I expect. He won't be half pissed with
any of us."

"Still, we must," said Andrew in a small voice.

"Yeah," said Spike. "We must."

Dana came down the steps balancing an enormous bundle of books and
bedding. Lucero followed her, sobbing.

"You will come back, my child? You will visit your poor servant?"

Dana heaved her burden through the jeep's hatch. "It's still my
house, Lucero. No vampires will come in, ever, as long as I live."

"I know, my daughter, I know. But I will be lonely."

Dana kissed his broad, bristled brow. "I'll come back."

Spike and Andrew turned away in discomfort at such a naked display of
feeling. Dana joined them in the jeep a moment later, holding the
panicking kitten to her chest.

"I told him we'd visit. And we will."

Andrew fumbled for his keys. "We're embarking on an uncertain
journey, Dana."

"No telling what'll happen," agreed Spike.

"We're going to visit. And I don't want to sit back here alone," said
Dana.

Spike tapped ash out the window. "You've got your bloody cat, haven't
you?"

"I want you to sit with me. I sat with you. For nine days."

After a moment of silence Spike sighed and got out, shutting the door
with a bit more force than necessary.

Dana smiled as he slid in beside her. "Good. You look happy since you
died again. You look nice."

"Don't cuddle, Dana. Sit up like a big girl. Come on, pet, don't be
crowding me."

Dana chuckled. "I'm glad you're here."

"Yeah, I'm here," muttered Spike, permitting himself to touch her
hair. "What a life."

"It's a wonderful life," said Andrew, starting the engine. He laughed
at himself, startled, and threw a smile up at the rearview mirror,
where Dana was leaning her head against an invisible support. "Get
it? I made a Jimmy Stewart. It's a wonderful life!"

"We get it, Jimmy," said Spike. "Drive."

END