Fire and Ice (3 of 4)
Jan. 7th, 2007 12:34 am![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
shipperx:
Title: Fire and Ice (3 of 4)
Spoilers: Post-NFA
Genre: Spike-centric AtS, Gen
Rating: R-ish
Disclaimer: Not mine. Never mine. Never been paid and never will be.
Written For:![[livejournal.com profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/external/lj-community.gif)
noel_of_spike
Summary As Christmas rolls around, Spike finds himself without plans... so he heads to Canada to atone for an old crime, confronts an ex, and faces down a dragon. He'll need whiskey in his egg nog after this.
Author's Note: I know that Christmas is over. Sorry for the delay. Belated Merry Christmas and Happy New Year to everyone.
III
Icy water felt like knives slicing his skin. As the dragon dove deeper, Spike tried to pull away, but the creature gripped its talons tighter, nearly breaking his ribs.
Spike stopped struggling. Even if he freed himself, he didn’t think he knew which way was up. Damned busted eardrums had buggered his equilibrium, and, in the total absence of light, even he couldn’t see.
There was an explosion of heat, and with it came a red-gold glow. And, if his brain function had slowed because of frigid temperatures, it began racing when he realized that the dragon was breathing fire into the water.
Liquid boiled around him, and Spike struggled again only to find himself face to face with the dragon. As he stared into its gray-green eyes, a knot twisted in his stomach. He began to suspect that this wasn’t a simple beast. He thought it watched him and read him. It definitely unnerved the hell out of him.
They sank deeper into the lake, and it felt like someone drove ice picks into his skull. He clenched his jaw against the pain and closed his eyes as an invisible ten-ton weight settled on top of his chest. If he were human, it would have felt like he was running out of air, and some vestigial biological instinct told him to open his mouth and breathe.
Vampires don’t drown, he told himself. It was absurd. But it was happening -- again -- as he sucked water into his mouth and lungs.
He coughed and choked. Vampires might not need air, but they were as incapable of breathing water as humans.
His body protested, and he convulsed in the dragon’s grip. The fire, the ice, and the ear-piercing/chest-crushing pressure coalesced into something overwhelming, and, even as he fought against it, Spike lost consciousness.
***
His body hit stone, and the impact forced almost a gallon of water out of his lungs.
Spike groaned. When he lifted his head, the entire world swayed, going slightly off-kilter, courtesy of supernaturally healing but not-quite-finished-yet ruptured eardrums. He pulled himself to his hands and knees and waited for the world to stop spinning.
He was in a cave. It was quite wide with a low arched ceiling littered with stalactites (or were they stalagmites? Spike never knew the difference). A campfire surrounded by a ring of river stone burned at one side of the cave, and behind him stood a wall of ice formed of countless threads of water - some thick, some thin.
"A waterfall trapped in a moment of time," a familiar voice said… an unforgettable voice. Unforgettable, and shamefully dear.
"Dru," he whispered.
Slender as ever and dressed in diaphanous silver lace that clung to her breasts and thighs, Drusilla emerged from the shadows.
Tilting her head slightly, she said, "Not what you should be. What are you?"
Spike rubbed his hands over his face and thought of all the moments that had brought him here. There had been the truce with Buffy over Acathla that Dru had never forgiven. There had been the Initiative and their experiments. There had been Dawn and Glory, and a promise. There had been Buffy, dead at his feet and seeking life in his arms. And there had been a mistake that had driven him halfway around the world followed by a quest that had driven him insane. He had found death and resurrection - if it could be called that – and the prospect of death again. None of it made sense to him, so how could he possibly make sense of it for her?
At a loss, he could think of nothing better to say than the truth. "I have a soul."
Her gray-green eyes glittered with amusement. "I know that."
Wait. Dru's eyes weren't gray-green.
With a sick sense of dread, Spike tensed for a fight. "You're not Dru."
"No," she said. “Not Dru.” And the dark-haired woman who stood in front of him became Fred.
He circled her. “The First. Knew routing you was too easy. Not gonna get your claws into me again."
“Not the First either." She walked across the room, sat by the fire, and then glanced at him from under her lashes.
Spike approached her warily. "If you're not the First, what are you?"
In the guise of Dawn, she rolled her eyes. "That should be obvious."
"You're the dragon."
"Duh," said the face it most pained him to see - Buffy.
"So how are you—" He bit off the question. "Why are you…"
"All the girls you've loved before?"
Dazed, he said, “I didn’t love Dawn and Fred like that.”
“Like what?” Buffy rose to her knees and laid her palm against his abdomen. His stomach clenched, and his emotions skittered in a thousand different directions as she slowly moved her hand down to his waistband. “Because you didn't have sex?” She unbuttoned his jeans.
He grabbed her hands, pulling her away from his zipper. “I don’t do the love slave bit any more.”
Buffy smiled, and then she stood to kiss him lightly, sweetly on the lips. Warmth spread through him. “Love takes many forms,” she whispered and touched his face before her small figure grew larger and brawnier. She became Angel.
“Bloody hell.” Spike stumbled backward. “Stop that! Be someone else.”
“Someone I didn’t steal from your memory?” She (He? Did dragons even have a gender?) stood her ground. “I know I’m freaking you out, but I have a point. I found these loves in you.”
Angel faded away, leaving behind a slender, dark-haired girl with iridescent skin and a pair of dragon's wings. Spike wondered whether she was made entirely of ice, but in the deep v of her silvery décolletage, he saw a flush of pink that spread upward and outward. He realized that her skin wasn't just iridescent. It was translucent. Inside her beat a heart of fire.
“Do you know what evil is?” she asked.
“I’m a vampire, remember? Got a clue.”
"Evil isn’t blood," she said. "It's not even death. It's the absence of light – no love, faith, or charity.” She spread her wings, which were iridescent too. “The Old Ones were entirely of the dark. We tried to drive them away. We thought we had. Once.”
Spike remembered the story. The last Old One out the door had created vampires.
“No victory is complete,” the dragon said. “And, it turns out, no defeat is either. Every Winter Solstice we reach the tipping point—towards the light or away from it.” She seemed somewhat peeved. “The Dark Ones always push it, always try to skew things in their favor. They want to control the world again, but the dragons fight back. We bring chaos. Unbridled life. We bring the hope of spring."
"And just in time for Christmas, too," he mocked.
The fire inside her went from orange-gold to deep red. “We give light a chance.”
"I get it." Spike kicked a stalagmite with the toe of his boot. "You're the fiery, winged Persephone."
She looked offended. "That's an entirely different legend."
Spike shoved his hands into his pockets and began to pace. "If you're here for the `Long Night,' why have you never been here before?"
"There aren't many dragons left. Almost none at all, and there are more battles in the world than the one in this time and place. We can’t win all of them.”
“So what do I have to do with any of this?"
"You're a vampire, and you were out there—" She pointed to the wall of ice. "—saving humans, even ones who probably don't deserve it."
"So? Only means I'm a fool."
“You’re a bringer of light.”
Shocked, Spike shook his head. "Don't go thinkin' I'm a hero. I'm not that vampire with a soul. I'm the other one. I don’t have a destiny."
The silvery web of her almost-clothing glistened in the light of the fire and in the light of…well… her.
"There's no such thing as destiny," she said. "Things happen or they don't. Some plans work out and other times they’re shot to hell. That's life."
" `Course, you're the font of chaos."
She smiled mischievously. "True. But the fact remains that you have light in you." She laid her palm against his chest and his skin began to glow. Somewhere in the center of his being, heat built until white-gold light spilled out of him, reminding him of --
"Holy hell." He pulled back and pounded his chest until the light went away. Angrily, he said, "I burned in the Hellmouth because of a trinket from Wolfram and Hart. Not interested in doing it again just to be felt up by you."
She placed her hand on an icicle in the waterfall. “There may be prisms.” The light inside her fed into the ice, creating a rainbow. "But the source of light is you." Her expression became gentle, even compassionate. “How do you think I found all those people in your heart?”
When he didn’t react, she asked, “Are you going to force me to go Clarence on you?”
Frown lines creased Spike’s forehead. “What?”
“Clarence. The angel in It’s a Wonderful Life. “
“You got cable up here?”
“Where would I get cable?” she asked. “I have a satellite dish.” She met him toe-to-toe. “The point is, George Bailey, you’re actually a hero.”
“Name isn't George. And the line is ‘you actually had a wonderful life.’ ”
She shook her head. "I've had a peek at your life. It's mostly sucked."
She touched his jaw and forced him to look at her. "Light can burn out,” she told him. “It can dim. We can loose direction, become bitter about the fight, or become heartbroken about the love we didn't have. Every time we lose faith or hope, the dark draws a little closer."
Spike shrugged. "Happens sometimes."
"The strong ones recover,” she said. “They fight back. And, let me tell you, we dragons may be a tenacious lot but we only roar. It takes individuals to drive the darkness away." She framed his face between her hands. "Whatever doubts you have about yourself, you're strong. You fight. You have an astounding capacity for love. Enough to change others and even to change the world."
He laughed sadly, disbelievingly, and with just a bit of fear. "How can you possibly believe that?"
"Because you already have." She laid her hand against his chest again, and heat built within him, just like before. He could almost feel his heart beating as light flooded out of him and he stood in a fire that did not burn.
"It doesn't take a destiny to be special," she told him as they became enveloped by light. "It just takes the stubbornness to continue fighting, and the ability to love simply because you do.”
She kissed him again. Warm lips. Cool skin. Ice at his back, and fire raging everywhere else. "You are a hero."
There was an explosion of light, driving him through the wall of ice, shattering it.
Shot into the night air, he fell down the cliff with the ice waterfall falling with him until he landed in the snow near the glacial lake.
Chapter 4
Title: Fire and Ice (3 of 4)
Spoilers: Post-NFA
Genre: Spike-centric AtS, Gen
Rating: R-ish
Disclaimer: Not mine. Never mine. Never been paid and never will be.
Written For:
noel_of_spikeSummary As Christmas rolls around, Spike finds himself without plans... so he heads to Canada to atone for an old crime, confronts an ex, and faces down a dragon. He'll need whiskey in his egg nog after this.
Author's Note: I know that Christmas is over. Sorry for the delay. Belated Merry Christmas and Happy New Year to everyone.
III
Icy water felt like knives slicing his skin. As the dragon dove deeper, Spike tried to pull away, but the creature gripped its talons tighter, nearly breaking his ribs.
Spike stopped struggling. Even if he freed himself, he didn’t think he knew which way was up. Damned busted eardrums had buggered his equilibrium, and, in the total absence of light, even he couldn’t see.
There was an explosion of heat, and with it came a red-gold glow. And, if his brain function had slowed because of frigid temperatures, it began racing when he realized that the dragon was breathing fire into the water.
Liquid boiled around him, and Spike struggled again only to find himself face to face with the dragon. As he stared into its gray-green eyes, a knot twisted in his stomach. He began to suspect that this wasn’t a simple beast. He thought it watched him and read him. It definitely unnerved the hell out of him.
They sank deeper into the lake, and it felt like someone drove ice picks into his skull. He clenched his jaw against the pain and closed his eyes as an invisible ten-ton weight settled on top of his chest. If he were human, it would have felt like he was running out of air, and some vestigial biological instinct told him to open his mouth and breathe.
Vampires don’t drown, he told himself. It was absurd. But it was happening -- again -- as he sucked water into his mouth and lungs.
He coughed and choked. Vampires might not need air, but they were as incapable of breathing water as humans.
His body protested, and he convulsed in the dragon’s grip. The fire, the ice, and the ear-piercing/chest-crushing pressure coalesced into something overwhelming, and, even as he fought against it, Spike lost consciousness.
***
His body hit stone, and the impact forced almost a gallon of water out of his lungs.
Spike groaned. When he lifted his head, the entire world swayed, going slightly off-kilter, courtesy of supernaturally healing but not-quite-finished-yet ruptured eardrums. He pulled himself to his hands and knees and waited for the world to stop spinning.
He was in a cave. It was quite wide with a low arched ceiling littered with stalactites (or were they stalagmites? Spike never knew the difference). A campfire surrounded by a ring of river stone burned at one side of the cave, and behind him stood a wall of ice formed of countless threads of water - some thick, some thin.
"A waterfall trapped in a moment of time," a familiar voice said… an unforgettable voice. Unforgettable, and shamefully dear.
"Dru," he whispered.
Slender as ever and dressed in diaphanous silver lace that clung to her breasts and thighs, Drusilla emerged from the shadows.
Tilting her head slightly, she said, "Not what you should be. What are you?"
Spike rubbed his hands over his face and thought of all the moments that had brought him here. There had been the truce with Buffy over Acathla that Dru had never forgiven. There had been the Initiative and their experiments. There had been Dawn and Glory, and a promise. There had been Buffy, dead at his feet and seeking life in his arms. And there had been a mistake that had driven him halfway around the world followed by a quest that had driven him insane. He had found death and resurrection - if it could be called that – and the prospect of death again. None of it made sense to him, so how could he possibly make sense of it for her?
At a loss, he could think of nothing better to say than the truth. "I have a soul."
Her gray-green eyes glittered with amusement. "I know that."
Wait. Dru's eyes weren't gray-green.
With a sick sense of dread, Spike tensed for a fight. "You're not Dru."
"No," she said. “Not Dru.” And the dark-haired woman who stood in front of him became Fred.
He circled her. “The First. Knew routing you was too easy. Not gonna get your claws into me again."
“Not the First either." She walked across the room, sat by the fire, and then glanced at him from under her lashes.
Spike approached her warily. "If you're not the First, what are you?"
In the guise of Dawn, she rolled her eyes. "That should be obvious."
"You're the dragon."
"Duh," said the face it most pained him to see - Buffy.
"So how are you—" He bit off the question. "Why are you…"
"All the girls you've loved before?"
Dazed, he said, “I didn’t love Dawn and Fred like that.”
“Like what?” Buffy rose to her knees and laid her palm against his abdomen. His stomach clenched, and his emotions skittered in a thousand different directions as she slowly moved her hand down to his waistband. “Because you didn't have sex?” She unbuttoned his jeans.
He grabbed her hands, pulling her away from his zipper. “I don’t do the love slave bit any more.”
Buffy smiled, and then she stood to kiss him lightly, sweetly on the lips. Warmth spread through him. “Love takes many forms,” she whispered and touched his face before her small figure grew larger and brawnier. She became Angel.
“Bloody hell.” Spike stumbled backward. “Stop that! Be someone else.”
“Someone I didn’t steal from your memory?” She (He? Did dragons even have a gender?) stood her ground. “I know I’m freaking you out, but I have a point. I found these loves in you.”
Angel faded away, leaving behind a slender, dark-haired girl with iridescent skin and a pair of dragon's wings. Spike wondered whether she was made entirely of ice, but in the deep v of her silvery décolletage, he saw a flush of pink that spread upward and outward. He realized that her skin wasn't just iridescent. It was translucent. Inside her beat a heart of fire.
“Do you know what evil is?” she asked.
“I’m a vampire, remember? Got a clue.”
"Evil isn’t blood," she said. "It's not even death. It's the absence of light – no love, faith, or charity.” She spread her wings, which were iridescent too. “The Old Ones were entirely of the dark. We tried to drive them away. We thought we had. Once.”
Spike remembered the story. The last Old One out the door had created vampires.
“No victory is complete,” the dragon said. “And, it turns out, no defeat is either. Every Winter Solstice we reach the tipping point—towards the light or away from it.” She seemed somewhat peeved. “The Dark Ones always push it, always try to skew things in their favor. They want to control the world again, but the dragons fight back. We bring chaos. Unbridled life. We bring the hope of spring."
"And just in time for Christmas, too," he mocked.
The fire inside her went from orange-gold to deep red. “We give light a chance.”
"I get it." Spike kicked a stalagmite with the toe of his boot. "You're the fiery, winged Persephone."
She looked offended. "That's an entirely different legend."
Spike shoved his hands into his pockets and began to pace. "If you're here for the `Long Night,' why have you never been here before?"
"There aren't many dragons left. Almost none at all, and there are more battles in the world than the one in this time and place. We can’t win all of them.”
“So what do I have to do with any of this?"
"You're a vampire, and you were out there—" She pointed to the wall of ice. "—saving humans, even ones who probably don't deserve it."
"So? Only means I'm a fool."
“You’re a bringer of light.”
Shocked, Spike shook his head. "Don't go thinkin' I'm a hero. I'm not that vampire with a soul. I'm the other one. I don’t have a destiny."
The silvery web of her almost-clothing glistened in the light of the fire and in the light of…well… her.
"There's no such thing as destiny," she said. "Things happen or they don't. Some plans work out and other times they’re shot to hell. That's life."
" `Course, you're the font of chaos."
She smiled mischievously. "True. But the fact remains that you have light in you." She laid her palm against his chest and his skin began to glow. Somewhere in the center of his being, heat built until white-gold light spilled out of him, reminding him of --
"Holy hell." He pulled back and pounded his chest until the light went away. Angrily, he said, "I burned in the Hellmouth because of a trinket from Wolfram and Hart. Not interested in doing it again just to be felt up by you."
She placed her hand on an icicle in the waterfall. “There may be prisms.” The light inside her fed into the ice, creating a rainbow. "But the source of light is you." Her expression became gentle, even compassionate. “How do you think I found all those people in your heart?”
When he didn’t react, she asked, “Are you going to force me to go Clarence on you?”
Frown lines creased Spike’s forehead. “What?”
“Clarence. The angel in It’s a Wonderful Life. “
“You got cable up here?”
“Where would I get cable?” she asked. “I have a satellite dish.” She met him toe-to-toe. “The point is, George Bailey, you’re actually a hero.”
“Name isn't George. And the line is ‘you actually had a wonderful life.’ ”
She shook her head. "I've had a peek at your life. It's mostly sucked."
She touched his jaw and forced him to look at her. "Light can burn out,” she told him. “It can dim. We can loose direction, become bitter about the fight, or become heartbroken about the love we didn't have. Every time we lose faith or hope, the dark draws a little closer."
Spike shrugged. "Happens sometimes."
"The strong ones recover,” she said. “They fight back. And, let me tell you, we dragons may be a tenacious lot but we only roar. It takes individuals to drive the darkness away." She framed his face between her hands. "Whatever doubts you have about yourself, you're strong. You fight. You have an astounding capacity for love. Enough to change others and even to change the world."
He laughed sadly, disbelievingly, and with just a bit of fear. "How can you possibly believe that?"
"Because you already have." She laid her hand against his chest again, and heat built within him, just like before. He could almost feel his heart beating as light flooded out of him and he stood in a fire that did not burn.
"It doesn't take a destiny to be special," she told him as they became enveloped by light. "It just takes the stubbornness to continue fighting, and the ability to love simply because you do.”
She kissed him again. Warm lips. Cool skin. Ice at his back, and fire raging everywhere else. "You are a hero."
There was an explosion of light, driving him through the wall of ice, shattering it.
Shot into the night air, he fell down the cliff with the ice waterfall falling with him until he landed in the snow near the glacial lake.
Chapter 4
![[identity profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/openid.png){kind=small}
no subject
Date: 2007-01-07 08:43 am (UTC)no subject
Date: 2007-01-07 11:28 am (UTC)“Name’s not George. And the line is ‘you actually had a wonderful life.’ ”
She shook her head. "I've had a peek at your life. It's mostly sucked."
Hee! Very true. And also very true that "There's no such thing as destiny," she said. "Things happen or they don't. Some plans work out and other times they’re shot to hell. That's life."...
She smiled mischievously. "True. But the fact remains that you have light in you."
"Whatever doubts you have about yourself, you're strong. You fight. You have an astounding capacity for love. Enough to change others and even to change the world."...
"Because you already have." She laid her hand against his chest again, and heat built within him, just like before. He could almost feel his heart beating as light flooded out of him and he stood in a fire that did not burn.
"It doesn't take a destiny to be special," she told him as they became enveloped by light - from both her and him. "It just takes the stubbornness to continue fighting, and the ability to love simply because you do.”
Nods. That's Spike all right.
Lovely chapter.
no subject
Date: 2007-01-07 12:57 pm (UTC)no subject
Date: 2007-01-07 02:48 pm (UTC)no subject
Date: 2007-01-08 05:16 am (UTC)no subject
Date: 2007-01-07 06:13 pm (UTC)“Where would I get cable?” she asked. “I have a satellite dish.” She met him toe-to-toe. “The point is, George Bailey, you’re actually a hero.”
“Name isn't George. And the line is ‘you actually had a wonderful life.’ ”
She shook her head. "I've had a peek at your life. It's mostly sucked."
Love this! Now off to the last chapter...
no subject
Date: 2007-01-08 03:27 am (UTC)no subject
Date: 2007-01-08 03:31 am (UTC)no subject
Date: 2007-01-08 03:34 am (UTC)no subject
Date: 2007-01-08 05:57 pm (UTC)"You have an astounding capacity for love. Enough to change others and even to change the world."
So true.
no subject
Date: 2007-01-09 04:17 pm (UTC)no subject
Date: 2010-12-18 07:22 pm (UTC)Wow. That's really, really good And usually the whole dark-vs.-light idea loses me a bit in stories because it tends to be so handwavingly defined, but you've made it into a workable model here. All about maintaining the hope and love. Beautifully done.
I don't know if ever saw this one the first time around. Really enjoying it!
no subject
Date: 2010-12-20 06:00 am (UTC)no subject
Date: 2010-12-20 03:53 pm (UTC)no subject
Date: 2010-12-20 03:57 pm (UTC)It's old enough now that my reading it is almost like reading someone else's work. I'm not exactly sure where I came by some of the ideas in it. :)