The Long And Winding Road

By ezagaaikwe

Pairing: Spike/Tara

Rating: up to NC-17.

Warning: character death

Spoilers: Something Blue, Seeing Red, Villains, Two To Go, Grave and well, all BtVS season 7 (although AU by then) and AtS season 5.

Author Notes: Post BtVS and AtS.  This fic's not big with the 'splainy about how Spike got out of the pickle he and Angel's gang were in at the AtS series finale.  You just know it was damn heroic, though.  Big thanks to my betas Calove, Lillianmorgan, Married_n_mich, and especially to MyFeetShowIt for help brainstorming ideas.

Grateful acknowledgement to Appomattoxco for her presidential slur, to Calove and Julia_here for help with horsemanship terms, to Curiouswombat for Victorian attitudes toward capital punishment, to Jeff the Wacky Wiccan, to Kazzy_Cee for her glorious fanart, to Mr Google for help with pagan and Wiccan sources, to M0resoul for help with Chinese, to Speakr2customrs for his "button" idea, to the betas who pinch-hit for me, especially Claudia_yvr, and most especially, to my lovely readers. Blessings on you all!

Where was Spike? Spike—or William, as he was now forced to think of himself—sad old duty-struck William was facing up to the inevitable. Every day was a fucking dogfight. Barred from the Sunnydale Hellmouth and the impending apocalypse, he was still on the trail of the latest Cleveland demi-big bad, a creature curiously named Hungerford, a name that afforded William grim amusement and informed his plans for it. He would feed Hungerford to himself, up to the armpit, when he caught up with him. Hungerford would hunger no more.

But until then, Hungerford was eating children: latchkey kids, truants, and teens trysting in darkened parks. Birdie's intuition, that pregnant women and children were especially vulnerable in this apocalypse, had been spot-on. Dogged as a hound homing in on a scent, William was following a lead, but part of his mind, as always, was thinking of Tara and what kind of life he was offering her.

During the days in Westbury just prior to and following Eliza's funeral, he had held himself at arm's length, enjoying Tara with the maddened sense of a starving man scenting dinner cooking. Her hair, her skin, her arousal. He would allow himself to come close, senses alert for the old tingle he remembered, the First Evil's trigger that signaled his old bloodlust. He'd hoped for a few seconds warning to hurl himself away, and then appalled at his selfishness in endangering her, would withdraw, holding himself apart from her.

Tara had seemed to understand, and could communicate her love and longing for him from across a room, without chastising him for his distance.

Some lover—endangering the beloved! He could only give thanks, to Whom he knew not, that he had not hurt her.

Now he was deep in the tunnels beneath Cleveland's Industrial Flats, wading through putrid water sheened with oil and stinking of chemicals. Still trailing the monster, he calculated his age to take his mind off the revolting smell. He groaned soundlessly. In the grand scheme of things, personal fulfillment, romantic love, a few weeks of bliss was inconsequential.

It was not that she was beautiful—frequently she was not. She had jug handle ears. He remembered teasing her, tickling her, her soft torrent of giggles collapsing into a snorty laugh, and the lovemaking, hot and sweaty or tender and slow, that would ensue.

This wouldn't do. He pictured her in middle age, large and soft, her pillowy lips pulling her face down into saggy dumpling cheeks, breasts drooping, her delectable rounded bottom collapsing into a flat middle-aged butt.

It didn't matter. There was nothing in him she did not satisfy. The only thing that would save him, and incidentally her, was his love for her.

He forced himself to remember the last human mistress he'd had, back in the early 80s. Middle-aged, but drop-dead gorgeous. He knew that like her, when Tara felt the first chill breath of old age, she would inevitably plead with him to turn her.

What mistress was it? Oh, right. Shawn, the siren secretary. The reason he'd sworn off human mistresses. He had wondered why she was out so late. Her boss should have sent her in the company limo, or at least put her in a cab, but she had been waiting for a passing taxi. A vamp gang had sampled her, passed her around without draining her, and they were about to drag her away, no doubt to abuse her further at their lair, when William had spied them.

"Drunken, jovial tourist" was usually good protective coloration. But no, this time one of them sensed a fellow creature. Not all vampires possessed this ability, but the look of recognition for another vampire was unmistakable. So, "drunken, jovial monster" would have to do. Weaving, he reeled up to them. "Here now! Sharing's fair. You've got the doggie bag. Give me a taste," he coaxed, before exploding in an angry buzz saw of fists and fangs. He'd taken all six out, and then turned to the terrified woman. She had cowered by a street lamp, unable to stand, and flinched away from his approach. She'd all but hissed at him, looking like a lioness brought to bay with bared teeth and 80s big hair. She fumbled one of those newfangled mobiles, big as Maxwell Smart's shoe phone, but her hands shook too badly to hit the numbers. She pitched it at him, raising a welt over one eye.

She had been too traumatized to listen to explanations or reassurance, so he'd simply plucked her up and taken her to hospital, got her seen to, and faded into the distance before he was asked his relationship to her.

She must have figured him out, for she tracked him down later, and begged to be allowed to join his little club. Her boss at Wolfram and Hart, displeased with her squeamish dislike of her more unsavory duties, had set her up.

Funny how evil creatures like himself, or even morally shaded ones like Shawn, could be attracted to the light, just as good ones sometimes go to the dark side. Spike, sad to say, was Shawn's light. She could not fight, but she had a facility for languages, and though on-line research was in its infancy, she knew computers and could track down prophecies and cross-references like the champion she became.

They hadn't been lovers at first. Spike had tried to remain celibate while Tara was on earth, but she had been a toddler in Alabama, and he'd long since forgiven himself—somewhat—for the fact that he hadn't been faithful in his long journey back to her.

Shawn had lasted three years. Oh, he hadn't loved her, any more than he'd loved Dee or the one before her. The bootlegger's mistress with the rumble seat? Or—

It was too much. How could he approach Tara and say, "I could not love thee, dear, so much loved I not comfort more." He guessed he felt guiltiest about Shawn. His other mistresses, as infrequently as he took them, were mostly demons, chosen for their value to him in the mission. Like Llta, the madam of the Tenderloin demon brothel, too fastidious to sample her clients, who would feed him information in exchange for his not-inconsiderable sexual favors. Demon lovers didn't seem to count against him as much as a human mistress did.

You'd think he could have refrained from 1980, Tara's birth year, on. But twenty-two years was a long time to remain celibate.

The lovers weren't the worst of it. He knew the kind of creature he had become. Not because of the soul. He was no Angel, brooding about his sins. He simply knew himself for what he was.

A killer.

Once he and Rain had tracked a Windigo in the Quetico wilderness. William was no outdoorsman, and native cannibal spirits were far outside his experience, so he rode shotgun while trusting Rain to track the creature. (Stout lad to have on board, William had finally realized. How parochial he'd been to think that evil was only urban). It felt good to let someone else be the expert for once, and the Windigo was an interesting departure from his usual sort of monster. One got stale from the day-in, day-out vampires and garden-variety demons.

William had disliked the chill and misty north woods, and a fragment of song flitted through his mind: I'm sick of the trees... take me to the city, but he had long since schooled himself to ignore his physical comfort. Comfort, except that which could be found between a woman's legs, was unimportant.

To take their minds off the endless frozen trek, Rain had told William about the legend of the Windigo, except that it was no legend. It was real, and it was eating a path through the Cree and the pulp cutters in the north woods.

They'd trailed the monster to a decimated logging camp, body parts lying in crimson splashes that were visible even in the moonlight. Rain had finished his story in a whisper, "You want to kill the Windigo, you have to become it." It had begun to snow, and heavy wet flakes lay on Rain's black hair before melting from his heat. They stood outside a cabin at the periphery of the camp, a bloodstained trail leading to its only door. A slurping noise, as though marrow were being sucked from bones, had come from within. "Hoka hey, it's a good day to die." Rain's eyes had held an anticipatory glitter, matched by the blade of his drawn Bowie knife.

"Not yet. Not this time," William said, laying a restraining hand on the boy's arm. "Me, I'm already a monster." He had grinned without humor. "Besides, I don't want your auntie coming after me." He had shaken off an unbidden memory of Ann and Charles' son, young Will. He added, "The thought of her pissed-off at me makes a Windigo look tame."

Rain accepted his elder's decision. William was his leader. He had withdrawn to let William go in and... eat the creature's frozen heart.

To this day, a part of William felt that he'd never become warm again.

William shuddered, shook off his brooding and returned to the present, but could not but feel a stab of anger at the injustice of this. What was the grand plan the First Evil had had for him? Was sorting out this paltry evil in Cleveland all he was good for? He did not count Hungerford as more than middling evil, its baby raping notwithstanding. It didn't represent danger on a global scale. Meanwhile, his beloveds—Tara, Buffy, and the bloody Scoobies—were sitting geese. William thought he detected more of the Divine's hand in this. There was irony in his dogged devotion to this mundane duty, like Sisyphus and his rock, while his beloveds' goose cooked on the real Hellmouth. He'd sort out Hungerford, then see if Giles and the coven hadn't found some foolproof way to defuse his trigger for good, before the imminent Sunnydale blow-off. William might not be able to ride off into the sunset with Tara, but he was damned if he couldn't protect her while she turned the chits into slayers, and his other self brought the house down.

Once this was over, he would explain it to Tara. Let her down easy. No women on the team. He'd learned his lesson—first Shawn, and then Rain's woman, that Allie that the lad had brought over from England. She'd been the picture of her great-great-grandmother Penelope. No more women on board! It wasn't p.c. of him, but there it was: he wasn't a p.c. bloke. He could hear Tara's objection: "What—I can't join? No girls in your tree fort?" Her imagined voice was warm and indulgent.

He shook it out of his head. He would not lose her in the way Allie and Shawn had been lost.

The lads had each other. Well, Gary and Dan did. Rain would get along. None of them would be on the team if they couldn't fight like demons.

Close, now. According to the tracking amulet he carried, he was nearing Hungerford's lair. William moved through fetid hip-deep water, slowing his steps to minimize the chance of being overheard as he approached. After several abortive tries on Hungerford's life, or unlife, William was too near to miss again.

The tracking amulet was a prize he'd taken from a greater prize still: Hungerford's closest associate, a female vampire named Delilah. William had been in deep cover, and had been mistaken by her as one of the vampiric lowlifes infesting Cleveland's red light district. Cooing like a lovesick dove, Delilah had allowed herself to be picked up, and had confided to William that she was lonely. Her value to Hungerford had been in her ability to attract children for his delectation. She'd been pretty in an obvious way, with huge blue eyes, and she reminded William uncomfortably of Harmony. But Delilah had lacked Harmony's daffy near-innocence, and had no loyalty to her current boss. She had allowed William to sweet-talk her into his bed, where he won her trust with mattress-pounding sex and insincere promises of ensconcing her as his consort when Hungerford had been deposed. Queen of Cleveland—what woman could resist? He snorted soundlessly, remembering. Predictably, she had caved, and coughed up the ensorcelled tracking device.

For her pains, he'd dusted her. He'd wrestled briefly—all of ten seconds—with the thought of her salvation. A soul? He hadn't the time to see about getting her one, and at the thought of her with one, his eyes rolled. She had been petty and vindictive, over and above her acquired demonic cruelty. As a human she had been an au pair with designs on her employer's husband and no regard for her young charges. Indeed, before she'd been killed and turned, they had been her first victims. William couldn't imagine her living with the memory of procuring for Hungerford as she had. Better to send her to the next world, to seek what hope that even such as she might find.

William hadn’t wasted much time on remorse. He couldn't afford to be betrayed, and he knew from personal experience with her, Delilah excelled at betrayal.

Wrong turn here. Damned amulet must not be calibrated right. William was thigh-deep in water, and transferred his cigarettes and a small plastic pouch to the breast pocket of his tee-shirt. Neither the broadsword sheathed over his spine, Blade-fashion, nor the stakes in his waistband would be hurt by the water.

He shook the amulet, rinsed it, and consulted it once more. That way. He veered down another tunnel, lower and deeper. Waist-deep now. William remembered when he and his group had gone to the movies a few years back. Some local evil had been quashed, and they were celebrating. It was Dan's turn to choose (Gary leaned toward martial arts movies, but Dan went for those fantastical good vs. evil shoot-'em-ups, and William felt vicarious enjoyment of Dan's innocent bloodthirstiness.) Lad had picked Constantine. They all shared an ironic enjoyment of movie depictions very like their own supernatural adventures, and they had smiled at the audience's thrills and chills. But William had snorted at the main character's efforts to earn Heaven. Not that William believed in a storybook Heaven! Or even if there were one, it was not for the likes of him.

While hunting another exotic monster several years back, Der Golem, his path had intersected another do-gooder on its trail. Very X-Files, that had been. An obsessed rabbi, Benjamin by name, and a little cuckoo on the subject of monsters, had been on the case with William that time. (Except for his lads, William still preferred to work alone, and the old git was more hindrance than help, but the man had not been good at taking hints.) Benjamin had later asked him that very thing: What motivated William—reward or absolution? William was usually not introspective, and annoyed with the question coming at the time it did. He had been simultaneously trying to ungoo the soles of his favorite boots, stuck to the pavement as they were, while carrying the wounded man to hospital. He'd finally flagged down a taxi, and had loaded the bleeding Benjamin into it. As he tried to say good-bye, Benjamin had dragged him William into the cab with him.

"I think I have you pegged." As they rode to the hospital, Benjamin had told a parable, which had embarrassed William no end, having been told in the presence of the taxi driver:

"A very good man, a man of God," Benjamin began, losing William already.

"Well, that lets me out—" William had interrupted, thinking to change the subject, but it was not to be.

Benjamin went on as though William had not spoken. "—who'd served God all his life, heaved a rebellious sigh as his wife pressed her starving child to her bosom."

William's stomach had rumbled. He hadn't eaten in a while, and between killing the golem as he had, his blood being a bit 'up,' as it were, and the man bleeding beneath the pressure bandage William had applied, all combined, distracting him intolerably.

Benjamin continued the parable, "A voice thundered in his ear: 'Your portion in the next world is lost!'

'It matters not,' the man said joyfully. 'The thralldom of reward has gone; henceforth I serve God as a freeman.'"

"Um, right," William had said, rolling his eyes. "You've got me pegged." He had delivered Benjamin to hospital and saw that he was tucked up, and then he had left without saying goodbye. Later, though, he had thought about Benjamin's words.

It wasn't exactly a burning bush (which anyway would have been more William's style to piss the flames out, rather than heed the words). But there was that... doing the right thing because it was right, with no thought of reward... but what was missing was belief.

William had a secret. He'd never told a soul, not even Tara, but he thought God might... give him a break. Not because of any intrinsic worth in William, not even the "dying to save the world," which, although William knew was not without value, was partly motivated by what he'd told Buffy on the Hellmouth—wanting to see how it came out. He'd never been one to walk out of a movie before the end. No, if God existed at all (which William doubted) it might just be that He was that kind of guy. Let him off for the hell of it. Give him a pass.

Once, William had hoped for reward. A happily-ever-after with Tara. Now, (that Pavanne's "hell" that yawned before him in his brief Wolfram & Hart day he recognized as a deception, a ploy to unman him, a key player) the best he hoped for was annihilation.

Rest.

So it was not a reward, but William's integrity that made him continue. Respect, especially self-respect, was huge. Buffy's belief in him was where it had started. He had a wry thought of the line in Tom Sawyer, about the women they kidnapped always falling in love with them. But that hadn't happened, no matter what the Slayer had said. He still did not believe her last words to him on the Hellmouth. He wanted her out! She had too many responsibilities to indulge in this operatic: "I love you—let's die together." His last words to her were meant to be instructive. A more concise: "No, you don't; now live—get the hell out of here and be a mum to your sister."

Angel's decision to leave the Slayer was less plangent. "A normal life"? What was that? Poof had made a bad bet there. A Slayer as a lover made perfect sense. "A consort battleship," as Shaw had said. Her light to his dark. Not that she was all that light! In William's opinion, Buffy had never accepted this. She and Angel would have made a good team, if not for the poof's infernal paternalism and the largish stick up the Slayer's ass on the subject of vampire lovers.

William briefly toyed with the idea of going to Sunnydale and taking the cup from Spike, letting him ride off into the sunset with Buffy... to where? Perhaps to LA, to live with Angel? The thought of the three of them, together, had certain symmetry, and would suit her inflamed Slayer libido.

Naaah.

It was all smoke. He hadn't made her happy, and the "cup" that awaited Spike would be the making of him. He would learn that even though it could not make up for the thousands killed in his first go-round as an evil monster, dying to save the world did count for something. It had to.

Buffy could work out her own destiny. If shoe-shopping in Rome and dating The Immortal suited her, who was he to argue?

Close now. From wading neck-deep in water smelling revoltingly of rot and petrochemicals, pushing himself along with the toes of his boots, the water now grew shallower, his boots made a sucking sound as William slogged through the muck. He was forced to remove them. Bare feet were quieter, if slipperier.

The amulet, laying quivering on the surface of his palm, turned itself like a compass needle, pointing to a side tunnel William had always missed on his previous forays. This time, he would not miss.

The tunnel sloped upward and ended in an arras covering an opening. Scrolly letters spelled

All Hope Abandon, Ye Who Enter Here.

Cute.

William paused outside the arras, peering through the moth-holed fabric into a goth lair, festooned with cobwebs, chains, and torches, as unlike William's own cozy hobbit hole as a sump pump from a Marin hot tub.

William scanned the room first for signs of life. Hungerford's most recent victim, splayed upon a table, was clearly not in the "alive" category. William tamped down instant incandescent rage. In a few moments, he would unleash it upon the creature sitting with the back of its orange head to him, sucking its teeth.

Good. No back door, no way out. The monster was his. Quietly, William moved the arras aside and slid in.

William circled slowly, getting the long-awaited good look at... what?

An august clown, more John Wayne Gacy than Emmett Kelly. This called for a Buffyesque quip. He'd always admired her style. The creature sat with its eyelids lowered coyly, still sucking its teeth, a small smile half-covering yellow fangs.

William had expected more of a fight. Or any fight. That Teutonic bombshell back in the 30s—the Sunnydale would-be big bad sent by the Austrian Sunday painter—now there had been a fight. Made the long wait tracking her worthwhile. A consummation.

Oh, what the hell. "Stephen King called," muttered William. "He wants the clown suit back." William raised his stake.

Hungerford was still sitting, picking its teeth with a small bone. It gave an inane giggle as William slammed the stake home. It didn't exactly dust, as a proper vampire should. (Small wonder—it probably wasn't all vampire, given its limited ability to go about in the daytime, all the better to prey upon children. William had theorized that it was some daylight-tolerant demon that had been killed and turned, but that was all moot now.) William watched with fascinated revulsion as it liquefied, melting into an gluey black goo that somehow suited its Rust Belt chemical stew surroundings.

Then, the tarry ooze trembled, Jello-like, reassembling itself Claymation-fashion into the appearance of Hungerford, complete with red striped clown suit. William's stomach lurched as it turned to him, giving the ludicrous ruffled suit a final prissy smoothing. It adjusted the rubber flower at its lapel and gave another fey giggle. "Whee! I thought you'd be forever about it! Don't you know there's an apocalypse going on?"

"The First Evil, I presume?" The lurch in William's stomach gave way to a sickish sinking sensation.

That daffy voice: "You've got me pegged!" and the steam-whistle wheee! again.

"Thought it was a little too easy." William felt an unpleasant sense of what he thought of as vujà dé, or "I have fucked this up before." This sensation was thankfully less frequent as the years went by, since he had (or thought he had) learned to think things through. "Thought you had places to be, since as you say, there's an apocalypse goin' on." With real curiosity he asked (although he didn't expect an answer), "Does it tax you to be in two places at once?"

Sure enough, The First Evil sidestepped the question, saying, "Thought you were a key player?" The girlish giggle grew into a sputtering laugh that sounded like a fruity Bronx cheer. The foolish clown figure morphed into the austere image of Eliza, saying, "You have proved yourself an admirable person. I'm very pleased...proud, really proud—to be allied with you."

William shook his head, as though to shake away his confusion. He'd been had again. Backpedal—need to salvage this. Eliza's image morphed into that of wild-eyed, about-to-be-dead Warren, saying, "You want to be the boss? You can lead it. I had my turn, and it didn't go that well. I don't mind. You can do it."

William's jaw jumped and he said, "I don't want to lead. I'll leave that up to the Slayer, who incidentally is about to fry your baby-rapin' ass. Her and my other self—"

The First Evil pulled a shocked face. "But they're delicious!" he protested in a scandalized tone, before morphing into the dark beauty that had been Drusilla, saying, "As well you know, my darling!" Her preternaturally long tongue described a complete circle, removing the vampiric equivalent of a milk mustache, in this case, baby blood smeared on her scarlet lips.

William's stomach lurched again, but he fought to keep his voice level. "Since it's clear that this was all a smokescreen, why don't you just bugger off to Sunnydale? I'll be joining you soon."

"You wish," the First Evil snorted. "You're not young enough or tasty enough." It morphed into William's bad old self, back when he first came to Sunnydale, saying, "I'm a veal kind of guy; you're too old to eat... but not to kill," before morphing back to the goofy clown persona.

"'Joining you' in the 'sorting your sporty striped ass' sense—" William began, but the clown barged on as thought William hadn't spoken.

"Places to be, children to eat. Your 'friends'—delicious, most of 'em. All those young girls, mmm, mmm—your witch isn't up to that 'empower-the-potentials' spell, by the way—but I plan on having her for dessert. You can help me... if you don't mind 'sloppy seconds'." Warren's smug mug resurfaced, leering, and he gave William a wink of complicity. "There's a veritable maternity ward there—the squaw and the Watcher's wench are both bigging."

Before he could stop himself, William had launched himself at the First Evil, sailing harmlessly through it, of course. He landed and rolled, springing to his feet and whirling to face it.

"Fooled you." The First Evil reappeared behind William, saying with relish, "Children to eat..." It sucked its teeth and added meditatively, "Of course they're all 'His children'," it said, lifting its eyes ceilingward in a mockery of reverence. It gave another titter. "I'll enjoy them all, and thank you for helping me."

"I'm all done helping," William said tiredly. "Why don't you toddle off? You're beginning to bore me. 'Course, that may be your evil plan, in which case, it's working brilliantly."

"Better hurry," the First Evil advised. "I'd help with travel arrangements, if I actually wanted to, you know, help. But it's a long way. How to get there?" The question was rhetorical, but it morphed briefly into a Latino dwarf, exclaiming, "De plane, boss, de plane!" and then into a lanky, coonskin capped American frontiersman, drawling, "Keep your powder dry, pilgrim." For a final touch of the surreal, Daniel Boone melted into a pudgy cartoon Charlie Brown, saying plaintively, "How can we lose when we're so sincere?"

It vanished like an old telly that had been switched off, its picture narrowing to a line, then a dot, then disappearing with an absurd pop!