The Adventures of Captain Peroxide and Deadboy
The Angel/Spike Zone of the BtVS Writer's Guild
TITLE: Innocence (1/1)
AUTHOR: Laikokae ([email protected])
CATEGORY: S/A;
RATING: PG-13
SPOILER: Reunion
FEEDBACK: Be critical. Be very, very critical.
DISTRIBUTION: If you want it, just take it.
SUMMARY: Angel visits Spike and they..talk.
DISCLAIMER: Alas, not mine.
NOTES: I started this at three am in the morning, curtsy
of my insomnia, with no real idea of where it was going.
I've learnt since that this is *not* the way to start a
story. It's turned out kind of disappointingly, but I
got to the point of no return, so I had to finish it.
Also, having the unfortunate luck of living in Australia,
I haven't actually seen the episode 'Reunion', so excuse
the interpretation.
X----X
He wasn't that hard to find in the end.
He'd never admit to it, because he likes to think he can shock people, but my boy William is as predictable as they come. And I know him like the back of hand.
He's always been a fan of the dank and the dark and the dirty. I haven't a clue where that came from since he lived the life of an aristocrat while he was human, and I only ever kept him in huge sprawling mansions with dozens of servants.
Sometimes I think it's all a part of the facade he puts up to the world. A part of the ballsyness and bluster that have become his trademark. Will always thought he had something to prove. Maybe that's why he always sought out the sleaziest dives and the filthiest joints to inhabit.
He's looks as though he is sleeping when I find him in his crypt. His eyes are closed, one hand is loosely wrapped around the neck of a mostly empty bottle of Jack Daniel's and he's sprawled across the bed, wearing only his jeans.
I know him better than that, though. When Spike sleeps, his face loses the guarded expression that it still holds as I watch him now. The lines soften, the tenseness of his jaw slackens and once, back when I was Angelus and I still had a right to call him my Childe, I caught him sucking his thumb. He's not asleep.
He's either too drunk to register that I'm nearby, or he's ignoring me, because he doesn't shift a muscle when I enter the crypt.
In the mixture of moonlight and lamplight, his pale skin glows a peculiar silver, and his fine cheekbones stand out as if carved out of marble. His full lips are parted and tinted their usual pinkish color, and every so often the tip of his tongue swipes out and wets them. And one of his hands, his beautiful, beautiful hands, lay beside him on the stained bedsheets, half curled upwards.
Instead of stirring something in me, the sight of my boy calms me. My boy Will who, even after everything he has done, even walking right out of a massacre with the blood of scores on his hands, can still look at me with those brilliant blue eyes and beneath the shields and the bravado and the wariness, I can still find innocence there.
I found in Will by accident what I had searched for in Drusilla and what I thought I saw in Buffy once.
Purity.
Innocence which can be bathed in blood and still come out pure and white and whole. Innocence that can never be cut away or deformed or defeated. Innocence like a candle that will always burn, no matter how rough the wind. Innocence which is not a fire, but the light which comes as a result.
I know the Watcher spiel about how vampires are made off by heart: the person dies, the soul is lost and a demon sets up shop in the carcass.
I also know that it's unadulterated bullshit.
When a vampire is made, the person is not lost, the person is changed. The human becomes demon, with all the drawbacks and advantages that come therein. Nothing they become is anything they didn't already have the potential to become.
How much of the human characteristics that survive the change varies greatly. Minions will retain nearly nothing human bar memories. Childer can retain everything from the personality of the human they were to the entire being.
With my change, my vicious side became more punctuated, more dominating. Dru only lost her fear of herself with her change. The rest of her potential I brought out by driving her mad before I killed her.
And Will...
I was never completely sure how genuine his transformation was. From the day he was turned, Will was a ruthless killer. He immediately put out a tough-as-nails, devil-may-care facade out to the world. To the casual observer it would appear that William the Bloody Awful Poet was dead and gone and his replacement was the antithesis of everything he had been, but I knew better.
Will still loved, still *needed*, just as much as he ever did when he was human. And the facade he showed the world was only ever that - a facade.
And that ever-unwavering innocence never faded. Not in the decades after he was turned and not in the century I was without him. When I faced him in the school after several lifetimes, I still saw the innocence in his icy blues eyes and it threw me.
No amount of physical or emotional abuse, exposure to the most foul of atrocities and even decades and decades of killing constantly and brutally could ever erase it.
His innocence was something I hungered for, had hungered for, throughout my whole sorry existence. As human, as demon, as demon with soul. I hungered for it, because it was what I had always lacked. What I still lack, even now. And what I will always lack, no matter how long my immortal life winds on.
He is still as I watch him. I can tell by the tense way he is holding his pose that he knows I am here. I should've known better than to ever believe that mere alcohol could keep him from feeling my presence.
The tension in the room skyrockets. He wants to know why I'm here, why I have come. I can practically feel the apprehension and wariness rolling off him in waves.
Truth is, I'm kind of wondering the same thing.
Why should I come to him now? Why should I come to him at all?
Souled and unsouled, our relationship has always been one of particular roles. Mine giving, his receiving. Mine dominating, his submitting. I molded him so that *he* would need *me*, not the other way around.
But I'm not here for him this time. I'm here for me.
I take a step towards him.
"Fag off," he tells me immediately, without shifting expression, without so much as opening his eyes.
"Nice place you have here, Spike," I reply, carefully keeping my voice steady and level. I want so badly to call him by Will, by the name I always think of him by, but I know for certain that my reception would be even chillier, if I dared.
He ignores my reply. "I don't want your soddin' pity," he informs me in the same uninterested tone he used before. "So you may as well take your Nancy-boy soul and bugger off back to LA."
"I hate wasted journeys," I tell him, mostly to fill in the silence, while I work out what it is I really want to say. "You know that." I wish like all hell that he would open his eyes. I love looking into his eyes, I love having those eyes look at me. Maybe that was why I came.
"Get used to disappointment," he sneers at me. "Now, sod off."
I begin to stroll aimlessly around the crypt, stopping occasionally to touch something or other. But I am careful not to actually move any closer to him than I already am. I need time to work out what the hell I'm doing here, before I do anything permanent.
I didn't even consider why I was coming here on the drive down. It literally never occurred to me. All I can remember is the urge to find Spike. I forgot to wonder where that urge came from.
Figuring it out isn't exactly rocket science, though. In a way, it makes perfect sense. I have just been brought up short yet again against the fact that I don't belong with Them anymore. It makes sense that I would search out my boy.
They were my family, he was my family, my whole existence for more years than I care to remember. Even when my soul made me an outcast, I struggled against to remain with Them. Seeing Them again and feeling like a traitor on the wrong side of the fence made me ache again for what I once had.
And while my soul is sickened by the killing, all of me aches for the rest of it.
Did I search out Will just because he's as much of an outcast of our blood loop now as me? Did I believe we could console each other?
"Look, peaches," Will's voice cuts through my thoughts. "I'm not interested in being your bleedin' good deed for the day, so piss off."
Could I be so foolish?
I take my gaze off his crypt walls and drag it back to him. What I see makes my nonexistent breath catch in my throat.
He's sitting up against the pillows now, one lean leg crossed over the other. His hands are folded over his lap, and I get the feeling that if it weren't for the bottle of Jack Daniel's, they'd be crossed over his chest like a sulking teenager.
But that isn't what makes my throat close up.
His eyes are open and those blue orbs are focused with all their fire on me.
No, that wasn't why I came here.
This is.
To have those eyes on me. To *look* at him. To realize in this instant just how much I've missed this, just how much I've hated not having a right to this anymore. Mostly, to realize just how much I *need* this.
"You're beautiful," I tell him frankly, without thinking.
He blinks at me in shock. His face ripples with surprise and amazement before he has the presence of mind to guard his expression.
I've thrown him off guard completely. That was the last thing he expected to say to him now. It's probably the last thing he expected me to say to him ever.
His mouth opens and closes several times without any words coming out. He's completely flabbergasted. It actually takes him a few moments to regain his composure. But once he has, the shields are back up in full force.
He scowls at me. "You drove all the way to Sunnyhell to spout bad pick up lines at me?" he mocks me. "What's the matter? The tweed-clad weasel no longer heeling when you call him? Surely the cheerleader will put it out. Just flash her those soulful eyes of yours. Or are they so close you might loose your poofy soul?"
I clench my teeth at the mention of Wesley and Cordelia. Those wounds aren't even closed over yet.
"I've never told you that before, have I?" I muse quietly.
All of the sudden, while the shields are still up, the facade is gone and I'm faced with William instead of Spike.
"No, you haven't," he shoots back angrily. "And now is not the time to start." The facade comes back. "I told you, peaches," he continues in a contemptuous drawl. "I'm not one of your bloody goodwill cases. You can't turn up here and pat me on the head just so you can feel good about yourself."
He throws out his arms as his anger rises. The bottle of Jack Daniel's slips from his grip and shatters against the concrete floor. He doesn't even seem to notice.
"It doesn't work that way," he informs me flatly, coldly. "Not now. Not ever."
I start to move towards him and he actually flinches. I am so surprised, I stop dead in my tracks. Will has *never* flinched away from me. He would never give me the satisfaction.
Even after a round with the cat of nine tails or my favorite blade, Will would never budge an inch when I came at him. That would be showing weakness. Will never showed weakness. Not the obvious ways anyway. He was too damn stubborn. Too damn certain that he had something to prove.
That he would flinch at me merely approaching him shocks me. I feel a protective anger rising in me. What have those Initiative fucks *done* to him?
"I didn't come here to pat you on the head," I tell him honestly. "I didn't come here for you at all," I continue.
His eyes are guarded as he regards at me. "You can sod off, then," he interrupts me.
I take an unnecessary breath. "I came here for me," I finish.
The look he gives me isn't one of shock or surprise, it's of confusion. Wariness clouds his eyes. "What do you want?" he ask me hesitantly. It would be a demand, if he had more conviction in his voice.
"I don't know," I answer honestly.
His expression turns into honest exasperation and I can't help but smile at it.
"So let me get this straight," he begins. "You drove all the way here from LA," he ticks off each event. "Woke me up, threw some corny bloody pick up line at me, ran through a bizarre version of the 'it's not you, it's me', and then tell me you don't know what you're talking about or even what you're bleedin' doing here."
He gives me a patented 'you're fucked up, you know that?' look. "Is that about right, peaches?" he asks me.
I shrug. "I didn't wake you," I reply.
His expression becomes even more exasperated, if such a thing were possible. "You're a headcase," he informs me. "Did you even check if it was your soul the gypsies cursed you with? Because it's becoming more and more likely that the stupid bints slipped up and summoned some batty old chit called Angela Landmire instead."
I smile despite myself. "It's me," I reassure him.
"Yeah," he agrees finally after a long look. "Only you could be this bloody annoying."
I cover the short distance between myself and the bed. "Can I sit down?" I ask him politely.
"Go ahead, Angela," he replies gruffly, rolling his eyes. "Seeing as I'm not going to be getting rid of you anytime soon." He lies back on the pillows, shifting around until he is stretched out like he was when I came in.
I hesitantly take a seat on the other side of the bed.
I watch him.
His eyes are fixed straight ahead and he gives every impression of not caring one way or other whether I'm here or not. His pose is slightly more relaxed, but there is a tenseness implied that gives the impression that he could snap at any minute.
My eyes keep getting drawn to the perfect profile and I suddenly have the urge to sketch it. Being able to draw is almost a necessity for vanity's sake when you cast no reflection. I remember having sketched my boy before, but I've long lost any of those drawings. Why I need another one now when I have the original right in front of me, I have no idea.
"I meant what I said before," I tell him.
He snorts. "Ta, mate," he replies sarcastically. "I'm flattered, Angela. Really."
"Stop that," I chide him gently with a smile.
He meets my gaze, the beginnings of a smirk playing around his lips, but all of a sudden the expression takes an about turn and he's regarding me seriously. "What are you doing here?" he asks me again.
I'm not quite ready to answer that one, so I dodge clumsily, change the subject. "Dru's in LA," I tell him.
I expected a lot of possible responses to that one. But I definitely didn't expect blank acknowledgement, free of any form of surprise. "I know," he tells me flatly.
I blink. "How?" I ask incredulously. I didn't even know until she strode into that dank motel room and drained Darla right in front of me. And Dru was my Childe. If anyone should have sensed her, it should have been me.
He shrugs. "She's Dru," he answers simply an unreadable tone in his voice. "'Sides," he goes on. "Your lackeys called the Watcher while I was over there collecting my blood rations." He gives me look. "I thought you staked the dozy bitch. Can't you do anything right?"
I know he's talking about Darla now. Will and Darla have always shared a venomous animosity for each other. Darla, as Will's Grandsire demanded respect from him, and Will, being Will, always blatantly refused her. He thought she was a stuck up bitch and she thought he was a insolent swine. Not even the blood bond they had could make those two stand each other's presence.
"They think I'm Angelus," I tell him, referring to my 'lackeys', and carefully ignoring the Darla reference. That's one can of worms I don't want to open right now.
"So they said," he replies. "Slayer's got her knickers in a twist, thinking she's going to have to stake you."
"You knew I wasn't Angelus," I observe quietly.
His expression becomes bitter. "*Angelus*," he practically spat the name, "wouldn't come to me. And he certainly wouldn't sod around by the door like a great ponce."
"But he would lock a roomful of mortals in with Drusilla and Darla to be massacred," I point out, carefully blanking my expression.
Will gives me a long, examining look. His expression is strangely still and I haven't a clue what he is thinking. "Heard that, too," is all he says.
"I don't feel guilty about it," I admit bluntly.
"You're not him," he answers immediately, his gaze steady.
"I don't feel guilty about it," I repeat, a little more surely. "I keep thinking about it, and all I can come up with is that I don't deserve to feel guilty about it."
I watch for a reaction, but he gives none.
"Those people were scum, human or not," I begin to vent. "They deserved to die. I'm sick to death of drawing the line between good and evil directly between human and demon. That's not the way it works."
I search his eyes for some sort of recognition, some clue that he understands, that he agrees with me, but I find none.
I'm not sure why I expected it. This is Spike. He could care less if a bunch of nameless humans wound up on Dru and Darla's menu. And if I'm honest, I know it's not Will I'm trying to convince. It's me.
"Is that why you came here?" he asks me frankly after a long
silence.
"I don't think so," I reply a little uncertainly.
He gives me an exasperated look.
"I missed you," I admit finally.
He doesn't reply. He stares at me for awhile with guarded eyes. I feel like I've being put under the microscope. I feel like he's trying to see inside me, turn me inside out. It's not an altogether unpleasant feeling.
"So," I say finally, breaking the silence.
"So," he says.
I stand up. "I better go," I tell him a little awkwardly.
"Right," he agrees, just as awkwardly.
I make a beeline for the door. When I reach it, I take once quick glance at him before I leave.
He's still watching me, his expression partly annoyed, partly bemused and partly confused. His lips are twitching as if he can't decide between a smirk or a frown. And his eyes, those piercing blue beautiful eyes, are regarding me with a glint of amusement and that ever present innocence in them.
I turn and leave without another word.
-END
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