Still Ensouled 12

The Adventures of Captain Peroxide and Deadboy

The Angel/Spike Zone of the BtVS Writer's Guild

Chapter XII - A Little Mindfuck Can Be Nice

The two vampires had only been drinking from the Slayer for a moment when Spike felt a thump rattle through his brain as though he had been hit by a sledge hammer. He fell away from Faith’s body and landed hard on the concrete floor behind him. He lay semi-conscious watching his lover through rapidly closing eyes as he too let go of his prey and fell next to him. Spike was aware of his surroundings in only the vaguest of senses. He heard another body crash to the ground a few meters away and saw a blur that must have been Wesley trying to stand. He then looked over to Angelus and heard rumblings that could hardly be called words. "Spike." He heard clearly. Was he calling his name or talking about the blood? He couldn’t be sure, but as he lay his head back against the coolness of the floor he decided Angelus must have been talking to him. His last thought had to be of him. Spike closed his eyes a final time and slipped into a sleep so deep he felt he was falling into a canyon devoid of light.

Across the room Wesley had managed to tear his cell phone from his inner pocket and dialed Gunn. Wesley gave him the address of the occult shop and told him to hurry. He pushed the end call button and turned his attention to Faith. She had managed to stand up and was now pressing her hands against the puncture marks on either side of her neck.

"Are you okay?" Wesley asked her, using a nearby bookshelf to pull himself from the floor and get his bearings.

"Kicked their asses." She said motioning to the collapsed forms behind her. She started to speak again but felt a wave of dizziness cloud over her, she then had the faintest sense of falling, a feeling that did not leave even after she had hit the ground. She kept falling until all that surrounded her was emptiness.

"Where’s Connor?" Gunn yelled to Fred as he entered the hotel lobby dragging Angelus behind him. Wesley followed close behind carrying Faith.

"Fred, help me." Wesley said, resting the slayer on the couch. "Get Lorne and get her upstairs. I’ll get Spike out of the truck and be right up."

"Connor!" Gunn yelled again.

"What happened?" Fred asked.

"I don’t know, Wesley called I went." Gunn answered, rapidly checking the ropes that bound Angelus’s hands and feet. "‘Bout damn time." He said to Connor as the boy came running down the stairs. "Get the shackles from behind the counter; I only had rope in my truck."

"Leg irons too." Wesley said entering again, this time dragging Spike behind him. "We need to get them down to the cage quick. It’s possible they’ll wake up."

A scream startled the entire group as Lorne entered the lobby from the back office. "Sorry, that wasn’t terribly manly was it?" He asked rushing to Faith’s side. "Oh, she looks not well."

"We need to get her upstairs and into bed." Fred said quietly.

"Anyone going to fill me in on what happened?" Lorne asked as he picked the Slayer up and headed up the stairs.

"As soon as we know." Fred said following him.

"You sure putting them in the same cage is such a good idea?" Gunn asked.

"No, but I don’t particularly want Spike at my flat, either. Would you care to take him up to your room?" Wesley asked with raised eyebrows.

"Just askin’ if you thought it was a good idea." Gunn said smiling. "They like to be so cozy, let them." He pushed Spike a little closer to Angelus’s supine body as a murmur caught his ear.

"Kill you." Angelus said. Though his eyes were still closed he seemed to be struggling against something.

"Take you down." Spike moaned.

"That’s new." Wesley said. "I think I’ll go check on Faith. Are you okay here alone?"

"Yeah, you might want to check on Connor, too." Gunn replied.

"Alright, I’ll come relieve you in a bit." He started up the stairs.

"Hey, Wesley." Gunn called after him. Wesley stopped and turned to face him. "Clean yourself up too. Faith isn’t the only one hurt, okay."

"Thanks." Wesley conceded.

Upstairs, Lorne held Faith’s hand as Fred sponged her forehead off. She then worked her way to the wounds that circled the Slayer’s neck, wiping off the dried blood. Faith shook her off in her sleep, her eyes moving with force behind her closed lids, betraying the calm that her sleep-like state implied.

"Scratch you out." She whispered. "Kill you."

"She’s not making any sense." Fred said, giving Lorne a worried look.

"None of this makes sense." He agreed, as he turned Faith’s arm over revealing a large bruise and puncture at her inner elbow.

"How is she?" Wesley asked from the doorway.

Lorne rose to meet him and pushing him into the hallway. "How do you think she is?" He asked. "Tell me you did not pump her full of Orpheus and feed her to those two."

"It was her idea, Lorne. She knew the risks." Wesley said, although he could not meet the Host’s stare.

"She couldn’t have and you damn well know it." He went back into the room and handed Fred a fresh washrag. Fred turned her attention back to Wesley.

"Wes, what did this? Spike bit me, it didn’t put me into a coma, and from the looks of it, he took more blood from me than her." She instinctively rubbed at the bandage covering her own neck.

"Faith injected herself with a drug called Orpheus. She spiked her blood to stop Spike and Angelus." He threw himself into a nearby chair and for the first time tried to take stock of his own injuries.

"So, she’ll be better once the drug wears off?" Fred asked.

"We can hope." Lorne answered. "Orpheus isn’t purely chemical, it’s also mystical, the real damage it does is to the mind."

"What does it do?" Fred asked as she tossed a damp rag to Wesley.

"It takes you down to Hell, and it leaves you there." He answered, burying his face in the cool cloth.

Spike arose in a daze. He put a hand to his forehead and batted away a long lock of hair that had been covering his eyes. "How long was I out." He asked himself. He looked around, turning once to better see the lavishly furnished room he was standing in. He had expected to wake up in the occult shop, or at the very least the cage in the hotel. This place looked remarkably like his mother’s home, right down to the music box that had sat on her end table when he had been alive. He took a deep breath in through his nose taking in the scent of the room. He gasped as his nostrils filled with the familiar scent of saffron and lavender that his mother had inhaled daily to combat the tuberculosis that was eating away at her.

Spike walked further into the room savoring the scents of his human youth, scents he thought were long gone to him. It was then that he passed a mirror, he gave it no thought until he saw a glimmer of a reflection moving behind him. Not his own, he was sure of it, he was close to the mirror and the face he saw seemed far away. He turned to see who had cast the familiar visage in the looking glass. He felt a tear hit the back of his hand as he looked at a face he had not seen in more than a century. He saw William. The man he had been, and the man he had so recently sought to be again.

William was reading out his poetry to what Spike thought was an empty couch. He cringed slightly at the inanity of the words that streamed forth in a voice that was his, but not his. It lacked the confidence that came with a hundred years of living. It was still the voice of a young man who had never spent more than a week outside of London. It held the lilt of someone aiming to please, and as Spike walked closer to the ghost before him he saw why. Seated on the couch, clutching at her handkerchief was his mother. His beautiful mother, alive, and hanging on every dripping syllable that escaped William’s lips. She smiled at him a look that only a child who has known true love recognizes. It was a look Spike had wanted to receive for the past dozen decades. It struck him like a locomotive to finally see it again.

Spike crouched down on the floor and listened to her voice coo over the words he had written so long ago. A brief coughing fit stopped her for a moment, but as soon as it had passed she asked her son to sit with her while she sang the sweetest words into the top of his head. She stroked his hair softly as she alternately sang and hummed a melody.

"I heard a maiden singing, in the valley down below, da da da." Spike felt tears well in his eyes as he sat enjoying the vision.

"The day before your turning." A voice boomed from behind him. Spike was so startled he jumped from his perch on the floor and stood at attention in front of Angelus. He wiped a stray tear from his cheek and did his best to look fierce.

"Yeah, glad to be rid of the ponce."

"So, this is your mother’s home, is it?" Angelus asked, looking at the artwork that covered the walls. "Nicer than my father’s home was."

"Don’t be jealous, Peaches. It was just a home." Spike forced himself to look away from the scene that continued to play out on the couch.

"It’s nice, really, Will." Angelus said giving Spike a little squeeze on the shoulder. "Show me around?"

"Yeah, let’s start with the bathroom." A woman’s voice chimed in. "Unless it’s just a privy. Did they have running water in your day?"

The vampires turned to face Faith. "Hey, this is my memory, get out." Spike said turning his back on the Slayer.

"No fair, he gets to be here." She said motioning to Angelus.

"Yeah, I noticed that." Spike said pulling the other man closer.

"I think it’s kind of fun, seeing you this way." Angelus said with a nip at Spike’s lower lip. "I don’t get why she’s here though."

"Maybe I’m here to just baby-sit you two psychos until Team Angel shoves a soul back up your tailpipe."

"Whatever, maybe I’m just supposed to see Spikey’s childhood home. Or maybe I’m your tour guide, either way I’m dying and you get to watch."

"Thought you got over the whole suicidal tendencies thing in the great enlightenment." Angel taunted.

"I rolled the dice, I lost." Faith said. "I’m over it, what’s behind door number two, Willie?" She asked pushing open the parlor door.

The air was cold like a river wind when the two vampires and the Slayer stepped onto the street. Looking around they saw few cars on the street, but the evidence of an emerging automobile town were there, a lone gas pump outside a mercantile store, a display of road maps in a shop window, and a repair shop on the corner. One restaurant boasted a sign on the door that read "LEFTOVERS AVAILABLE IN BACK AFTER 6PM".

"Where the hell are we now?" Faith asked.

"Not sure, familiar to you Angelus?"

"Yeah, dammit, can we go back to your place, this is just unbearable." Angelus said with a cringe.

"What’s the matter, deadboy? Don’t like the view? Pretty mountains, lots of green, lots of... Holy shit! Is that you?" Across the street on the sidewalk stood Angel, clean cut and shaven, although his clothes looked haggard and his shoes could barely be called such.

"Oh I remember this place. We’ve got to get out of here before it starts again." Angelus watched as his alter ego crossed the street and headed behind the restaurant. The trio followed and watched him stand in line with what seemed like half the town. "Fucking Montana. A million acres and not enough people growing food, this is pathetic."

"Lover, why is Angel standing in a soup line? Did he forget we don’t eat?"

"Do we have to watch this? It’s disgusting." Angel made it to the front of the line and accepted a bowl full of thick stew. As soon as he stepped away the man at the door announced that was all they had for the night and shut the door as quickly as possible. Most of the people who had been waiting went back onto the street, either piling into cars to leave or finding a bench in front of the run down businesses to rest on. Angel looked at the bowl in his hand, ready to take a bite when he noticed one family, a woman and her four stick-thin children, banging on the door begging the man to throw out anything that might be left. Angel turned back to the restaurant and handed the woman his bowl. He then took off his jacket and gave it to one of the shivering children. The woman tried to thank him, but Angel waved her off and slipped into the crowd of people milling on the sidewalks, and then passed out of view completely.

"Dude," Faith howled, "you just gave that kid the shirt off your back. That was funny."

"Oh, you think that’s funny? The whole Depression went like this, we froze in sewers, abandoned buildings, giving useless humans any warmth he had. It makes me sick." Angelus sneered.

"Angel always was a bit of a pillock." Spike said with a mischievous grin.

"You don’t know the half of it."

"Angelus, you’re in hell, you’re reliving Angel’s good deeds. Wicked." Faith started walking down the sidewalk and stopped in front of the mercantile. "Either of you got any money on you? I’m dying for a smoke." She opened the door and entered, once again she found herself in William’s lush living room, only this time she was face-to-face with Drusilla.

People emailed Tania to urge her to put down the homework and get back on the computer.

Violators will be beaten to death with a shovel

(A vague disclaimer is nobody's friend)