Changing
 
Author: Lilithangel
 
Email: abchainey@xtra.co.nz
 
Website: www.livejournal.com/users/lilithbint
 
Fandom: AtS
 
Characters: Spike
 
Genre: general, slight slash
 
Warnings: none
 
Disclaimer: don't own anything but they followed me home and I'm suing Joss for neglect and keeping them.
 
Summary: Spike reflects on changing.  Written for The Batpack September challenge.
 
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Vampires weren't supposed to change, but they did.  It just happened so slowly that humans rarely lived long enough to see it happen.  He couldn't see his face in the mirror but he knew they were there and he had the poof to track the changes.
 
Sure he watched him, had done since that first night when Dru had brought him home to meet daddy.  Hadn't really been able to take his eyes off the bastard since.  It was probably a good thing that they only ran into each other every few decades otherwise even Angel would have noticed.
 
When he was a young vampire it was because Angelus was everything he wanted to be, a strong and powerful killer and the centre of Dru's world.
 
When he became top dog in the family he learnt to be that vampire, and was that vampire until Angelus returned and all their orbits changed to circle him again.
 
Really they all kept their eyes on Angelus, and he knew that Dru saw him watching.  She just didn't care when her daddy was around.
 
Seeing the poof in Sunnydale the changes were obvious, and it made him worry about the changes on his own face.  Now he understood that it was the guilt and suffering Angel wallowed in after getting his soul back.  It made him wonder how bad he had looked after his return from Africa, how much damage the ravages of guilt had done to his face.
 
He knew he must have changed and some days he longed for the chance to look in a mirror and see, even as he dreaded what he would see.  The expression on Angel's face at Wolfram & Hart when he had returned, the twisted disgust and anger told him that he must still be a monster.  That his soul could never make up for the demon and the dirtiness was always going to be there.
 
Now he had made the choice to stay in the orbit of that face no matter what expression was turned his way.  Allowing him to map the changes and wonder about his own.  He felt so old now he had to believe it would show on his face especially when he caught Angel's eyes resting on him puzzlement reflected there.  As if Angel was trying to remember who he was and why he was still there.
 
Once or twice he surprised a softness on Angel's face when his elder did not think he was watching.  Those looks were what really kept him there suggesting that maybe the changes on his face could possible be good ones, worthy ones. 
 
That maybe Angel did see the man he was trying to become the way she did before the end.  That maybe the changes ahead might not mean he would be alone again.
 
END
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