I’ve never attempted fanfic before, so please excuse me if this is not very good. Thought I’d have a go and see if it was any fun. This tale is set in the aftermath of the final Angel episode and while it might reference a bit of what happened in the comics after, it will only be vaguely. Never read them myself. The story is centered around spike, but will likely venture into a Spike/Buffy thing down the road. Hope you enjoy :)
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Heaven And Hell
Chapter 11 A Crack in the Wall
AN: This chapter and the one after will be a touch shorter than normal. After that the chapters will return to their normal length. Many thanks for the kind words. I know the story is a bit sad right now but its a journey and I promise you that we'll get to a brighter place eventually. This is the start of a turning point for our surly hero. Enjoy.
No longer feeling comfortable in the Watcher’s small apartment, Spike and his companions left the day after Giles got on his plane and returned to England. They found a small, ratty hotel off the strip with a set of adjoining rooms. The accommodations were neither comfortable nor entirely pleasant but did serve the purpose, which was allowing Spike some time to rest and recover.
Gate disappeared almost immediately to see if he could find out anything about Dominic’s whereabouts. He reported back to Tara that the demon had gone to ground and was most of his operations had tightened security or simply closed down. He told Tara to hang tight while he continued to search but by his tone wasn’t expecting many results. Tara gathered from the young mans frustrated tone that the local demon community was being especially tight lipped.
Having heard from Giles something of the spell that afflicted Spike, Tara expected him to remain bed ridden for days at least, but he was up and moving around the next evening. Stiffly, of course, but he looked like he was going to make a full recovery. She anticipated a troubled, even depressed Spike. It would only be natural, given the long and bloody history of the vampire. That wasn’t the case though.
He was quiet, sure. Distant even. But he seemed more thoughtful than upset. She watched him worriedly, really studied him to see if he was okay. A difficult read at the best of times, she just wasn’t sure what to make of his reflective state. Something had upset him, and deeply. He seemed to have pushed that hurt aside though and was instead focusing on something else, perhaps as a means to avoid the original issue.
Despite herself, she was growing frustrated with the stubborn vampire. He had to know on some level, that internalizing wasn’t what he needed. That he needed to sort the countless issues in his heart and mind out. He also knew that she was prepared, even wanted to listen to him, to help him. It was a huge part of why she was living and breathing again, after all. Yet they’d hardly spoken of his inner struggles at all. Worse, she knew that he wanted to talk. He just wasn’t allowing himself to do so.
She was outside the rooms, seated on a cheap plastic chair beside a filthy pool full of an unhealthy green looking water, mulling over exactly how to get him to trust her when he appeared at her side and planted himself the chair beside hers. An unlit cigarette hung absently from his lips and he was flicking that beloved Zippo of his open and closed without seeming to notice that he’d never actually bothered to light the cigarette.
The witch glanced at him as he sat then returned her gaze to the ugly green pool. And waited. If she pushed, he’d give her some snark and leave again. That was just how he was. It had to be on his terms.
“I’m not William,” he said after a solid ten minutes of silence. His voice was.. Not quite rough but it certainly belied a hint that he didn’t enjoy the topic. “After I got the soul, I thought maybe..” a pause “Not sure what I thought, really.”
“You aren’t William,” she replied, a bit surprised. She’d expected him to talk about Buffy, what with Giles being there and Spike’s reaction to the Watcher. “I’m not sure I understand.”
“Not sure I understand it either, pet,” he muttered. “That’s the problem. I remember what I was as a human. I remember who I was. It’s always sorta been there in the back of my mind. Bit like you look back and remember what you were like as a niblet. Only more… segregated, I guess. Like this little part of me was always William. Guess I thought once I got the soul I would go back to that part that I locked away. That would be more… what I was. Be like I was back then.”
“But it’s not?” she encouraged.
He shook his head slowly, not looking at her. “He’s still there, same as when I was..” He fell into a thoughtful silence again, flicking his lighter open and shut distractedly.
“Who are you, then?” she pressed gently.
He scowled, not angry but rather uncertain. “There’s the rub, innit? I’m not who I was as a human. I won’t be what I was as a vampire. Can’t do that. It’s all mixed up with the things I did. A thousand memories that I… but worse than that, I’m not sure how different the two are. William was a ponce, yea, but he had the rest inside him. Just never opened himself up to it. Never let himself explore what that darkness inside meant. He was a good man,” this was said with a hard, unforgiving edge. “but the capacity for evil was there. Makes me wonder if I’m all that different now.”
“Spike,” she frowned “everyone has that capacity. Everyone. You know that.”
He sighed, finally lighting his cigarette. “I do.”
“Then what are you saying?”
He growled and got up. For a second she was afraid he would walk away from her again, but he just started pacing. “The soddin’ soul was supposed to make it easier,” he grated. “Was supposed to make it easier for me to tell what the right thing to do was. Make it so I couldn’t hurt h… people again. Moral compass, right? Tell right from wrong. But it doesn’t. I’m standin’ here talking to you now and all I can think of is the things I did and wondering how the fuck I am just supposed to move on from that, if I should even be able to. Getting a soul shouldn’t excuse all the evil things a man did. Shouldn’t make it all okay. It was still me did those things.”
She was quiet in the wake of his mini rant, trying to follow his train of thought, which seemed to be bouncing and touching a number of subjects, half of which she was sure he hadn’t articulated. She had to be careful now. That much was clear.
“How are you thinking about those things you did?” she asked slowly, then continued more quickly when he flashed her an annoyed look. “What I mean is, are you really confronting those memories, or are you letting them haunt you?”
“What’s the difference, Glinda?” he growled. “Not like I don’t deserve to be haunted.”
“Maybe,” she allowed “but answer the question. I-I-I don’t want to be cruel, Spike, but wallowing in the pain isn’t going to make what you did okay anymore than ignoring those things will. The only way you are going to heal is to deal with it.”
He growled again, a more animal tone that she thought must have come from his demon. His features curled a bit into a strange grimace of pain and anger. “Why should I heal? Why do I deserve to heal when none of them can.. When all of them..” He fell silent and took a long drag, jaw clenching.
“Spike,’ she whispered, her heart breaking for him now. She couldn’t even imagine what it was like for him.
“It’s fine, Glinda,” he muttered “just another ride in the park, eh?”
“Stop. Don’t brush this aside. This isn’t something that you can just snap your fingers and fix, Spike. I won’t pretend to understand what you’re feeling. And I won’t trivialize what you did. You did horrible, horrible things. Things that should stay with you. Things you should never forget.”
She had his attention now. Those blues eyes were on her, his pacing having stopped. She pressed on, knowing that she’d opened the door already.
“Letting this eat you from the inside out isn’t going to make what you did okay, Spike. Those souls you killed aren’t going to be made whole by your pain. They’re dead now and they are in a better place. You aren’t helping them by suffering. All you are doing is holding yourself back from being the man that you can be. From being the kind of man who can do good in this world. Maybe save some other people from having to go through what your victims went through.”
That last had been a mistake. She knew that as soon as she said it. Her fear was confirmed when his face hardened and he looked away. “I’m not a bloody hero, girl. Never going to be. Never want to be.”
“Okay,” she sighed “Look at it this way. You‘re going to stay like this, uncertain of who you are and where you fit in, until you learn to cope with your past. And not to be mean, but eventually it will stop being noble and sad. It will just be self indulgent. You honor them by facing them. Not by running away from the memory of what you did or by martyring yourself in their name.”
Fire flashed in his eyes when she suggested he was running away. “Not running from a damned thing, pet. You shouldn‘t say such things.”
“Yes you are,” she said firmly, trying not to let him see exactly how difficult it was for her to be firm when pinned by that electric gaze of his. “You‘re indulging your need to suffer because you don‘t want to be okay. Because all you‘ve known for a century is pain and you don‘t know how to be okay.”
“Fuck,” he snapped, turning away with in a violent twist. She could see the tension in his back and shoulders beneath the battered old black tee shirt. He didn’t explode though. That was something. “Fucking hell, Glinda. Warn a fella before you gut him, eh?”
She didn’t push him any harder. In fact, she started to worry that she’d gone too far as the silence between them began to stretch out into uncomfortable lengths. She didn’t break the stillness, though. Either he was going to speak or they would have to start over again some other time. It wasn’t easy seeing him hurting like this. She wanted to wrap an arm around those tense shoulders and give him comfort. That just wasn’t something he could accept yet though.
His voice was quiet, almost a whisper. She leaned forward, straining to hear.
“When I got it, there was.. I lost myself for a while. Still don’t rightly know how I ended up back in Sunnydale after. It was all I could do not to end it all. Tried to, a few times. Buggered it up, though. Then she found me. An after that, there were things that needed doing. Wasn’t any time to be distracted by the past. She needed me,” he said the last urgently, almost like he was trying to convince himself that it was true. Like he was starting to wonder if it was.
“She needed you,” she broke in, firm and certain. “You don’t have the right to doubt that. Ever.”
He flinched ever so slightly but continued as if he hadn’t heard her. “Then I died, an I was okay with that. Dying for her. Maybe doing that.. Maybe it made what I’d done..” he shook his head and changed his line of thought. “Then I was back in LA and I was okay. Just push it all aside, pretend it didn’t matter much. Get on with things. Nothing to be done about it now, right? Get on with.. But it was all there still. All of it. I tried to be okay, but I don’t think I am, Glinda.”
She winced at the breathy, vulnerable tone at those last words. “You aren’t,” she said sadly.
“How, then?”
“Tell me about one of your victims, Spike.”
His expression hardened, pain and hunger and grief warring there. But he finally sighed and began to speak.
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Dominic stood in a large chamber buried deeply bellow the city of Las Vegas. Wounded and in pain, he nonetheless stood erect and firm as he faced a series of shimmering windows hovering in the air. In each window a figure stared back at him. Creatures of fell power. Lords and generals of the armies of night. Each of them a threat to the world on their own. And now united under a common banner.
The ancient demon was not one to feel fear. He was a power unto himself and had existed long enough to be comfortable in his role in the world. But standing there, he knew the shadow of fear in his heart. These were not forgiving masters. Not creatures to lightly accept failure.
“The vampire survived,” he reported dutifully. “As far as I can ascertain someone among his group contacted the Coven working with the Watcher’s Council in England and they dispatched someone to reverse my spell.”
“You were ordered to eliminate the vampire, Swan,” the figure in the center window spoke quietly. He never raised his voice, but Dominic knew he was on thin ice. There was malice in that voice. An immediate threat.
“I still can,” Dominic assured him quickly. “Our assassins are in place. They arrived earlier tonight.”
Silence. They were discussing him, though he could not hear their words. Scattered across the globe as they were, they’d mastered the art of communicating in this manner. It took a moment before the leader spoke once more.
“This is your final chance, Swan. We’ve invested too much time into you as it is. You will dispose of the half-breed and then you will get back to work. A disruption in our operations in your region will set everything back for years. Our schedule will not be delayed again. Am I clear?”
Dominic bowed deeply, relief flooding through him. Death would be a mercy if he failed again. He knew that but it was part of the role he played. A necessary risk considering the possible reward if their vision was fulfilled.
“We will contact you in one months time, Swan. Do not fail us again.”
Before Dominic could respond, every shimmering window went black. The demon exhaled slowly. They still needed him. It could only be that. If they hadn’t needed his specialized skills, they would have ended him for his failure. Awareness of that need could be parleyed into favor in the future if he played this right. Kill the vampire, then get back to work.
A smile touched his elegant features. Failure or not, he saw a bright future. He could work with this. All he needed to do was ---
He never finished that thought. The point of the sword that slammed into the back of his skull and exited the space where his right eye had once been made it impossible for him to think anything at all.
Several minutes later his servants found his still body laying on the cold stone floor of the massive chamber. Before they could raise an alarm, however, explosions began ripping through the secured underground compound and the servants quickly were sent to join their former master once more.
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Spike and Tara were deep in conversation still when Gate and another creature hurried into the motel parking lot. The witch and vampire broke off their quiet talk at seeing the young man hurrying over. He was practically dragging the other creature, clearly a demon. Spike was the first to speak when they got close enough to identify the second figure.
“Clem?” Spike sounded surprised. Pleased, but surprised. “Heard you’d relocated to San Francisco, mate.”
“Spike!” the affable demon grinned a shockingly ugly smile that was oddly out of place with the friendly voice. “Yep, I sure did. Had some trouble though. Some Tylocks tried to grab me right in the middle of one of the luckiest streaks of poker I’ve had in ages. So I had to get out of there.”
“Tried to grab you?” Spike flashed an amused smile. “Cheating again, mate? Told you it was too obvious hiding cards in those flabby folds.”
“I wasn’t!” the wrinkled, flabby demon protested animatedly. “Well I was but that’s not why they tried to grab me. Word is someone is out there collecting any demon, vampire or enlightened soul who had the misfortune of being in Sunnydale before… you know.. Kablewy.”
Spike nodded darkly, remembering the whole ‘kablewy’ thing all too well. Gate broke in before he could respond to his old friend though. “I found him up near the Strip in the parking lot of the MGM. Couple of nasties I didn’t recognize were chasing him down. He said he was looking for you and was an old friend, so I brought him over.”
“I wanted to warn you,” Clem said sheepishly. “These hunters are pretty persistent. I haven’t been able to keep up with any of my shows for weeks now.”
Spike frowned thoughtfully. Clem wasn’t a fighter, not really. A little brawl in a backroom now and then maybe, but he was by his very nature not one to get involved in a serious conflict. More than that, he probably couldn’t protect himself from a concerted effort to take him down. The question was, why would anyone want to capture Clem? Clem wasn’t a threat to anyone or anything unless you had an unwary kitten running around.
“Don’t go getting all broody on us, Spike.” Tara murmured.
“Broody?” he objected, sharply. “I’m not soddin’ Peaches.”
“Well, you do get a little with the dark looks and long thoughtful pauses these days,” she reminded him, un-phased by his annoyance.
He grunted. “I’m much better at it than he is anyway.”
“Spike, I don’t know Angel but I am sure you are a thousand times better brooder than he is,” she assured him with a grin.
He had to laugh, even went so far as to sling an arm over her shoulder. “You know what, Glinda, it’s a bit hard not to love you, just a little.”
She beamed in response but he spoke again before she could reply. “What say, bit? Las Vegas is losing its appeal. Fancy moving on?”
“Where would we go?” she didn’t seem displeased with the thought.
“Heard some pretty strange rumors about Chicago,” Gate said thoughtfully as he flopped into a chair nearby and waved for Clem to follow suit.
Spike glanced over at the young man. “You coming then? Don’t recall you hanging around all that long in the past.”
Gate shrugged indifferently. “I don’t really have anything going on these days. And its starting to sound like you are going to have your hands full of lurking bounty hunters and Wolfram & Hart assassins soon enough. That sounds sorta fun. Remind me to congratulate you on what a fantastic idea it was to hang out in the Law Firm from Hell’s offices someday, by the way. Top notch thinking. No way that coulda gone bad.”
“Hey,” the vampire scowled. “That was Angel’s gig.”
“Well, he always was a putz.”
“Nothing’s changed,” Spike snorted then looked at Clem, who appeared to be peering at the darkened parking lot around them as if seeing assassins waiting for him “What about you, mate? Bit of the Windy City? Don’t expect anyone will be looking for you there.”
Clem answered with a happy grin and that was that. The odd little band of misfits and outsiders was agreed.
“Right then, first we get pissed, then we shove off.”
There was a general rumble of approval, more for the drinking part than the other, but it was enough.