Writing Meme
Jul. 14th, 2009 10:36 pm![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
shipperxWriting meme gakked from ![[livejournal.com profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/external/lj-userinfo.gif)
pfeifferpack and slaymesoftly :
When you see this, post an excerpt from as many random works-in-progress as you can find lying around. Who knows? Maybe inspiration will burst forth and do something, um, inspiration-y.
“I heard screams,” Berris said. “There was this girl, and I…” The earnest bastard looked tormented and, when Berris noticed the blood on his hands, he turned a bilious shade of green.
“Don’t boot in the car,” Spike said. “Hang your head out the window.”
Buffy jabbed her elbow into Spike.
Berris whispered, “I keep making mistakes.”
Buffy laid her hand on Berris's shoulder. “It’s okay,”
Right, Spike thought. ‘Cause she never took it to heart when someone died on her watch. Never beat herself up. Never made herself miserable. Never charged up rickety towers carrying a troll hammer or dived into world destroying rifts. And the pisser was that sometimes no matter what you did, people died and the world continued to suck.
Spike nudged the goat-thing with the toe of his boot. Nodding, as if saying to himself that he’d known it was dead all along, he stepped over the body. “If the Slayer kicked it, how do you know that Buffy isn’t the new one?”
The Watcher grimaced. “Too old, and not Spanish.”
“Hey,” Buffy said. “Not so old, and when did speaking Spanish become a requirement?”
The man gave her an odd look. Giles probably would have done the same. However, this Watcher, with his turban and dark skin, looked nothing like Rupert Giles.
The Watcher stooped and turned the creature towards the light, rendering its features a chiaroscuro model of darkness and necrotic pale. “When Lisette was killed, the Council summoned mystics to locate the new Chosen One.” He grimaced and pressed his hand against his injured shoulder before telling Buffy, ”She -- unlike you – is Spanish.”
“Lisette?” Buffy frowned. The name sounded familiar but…
“The Flemish bird what got murdered last night, “ Spike said. When Buffy shot him a ‘how-in-the-hell-do-you-know-that?’ look, he added, “Read it in the newspaper this morning, remember?”
“Yeah, well, you’re wrong. The girl who was killed was Belg…” Oops. “…ish.” Buffy cleared her throat and looked at the Watcher. “She was the Slayer?”
The Watcher nodded and looked grim as he closed the monster’s clouded eyes. Moving awkwardly, he tried to lift the monster’s feet but stopped to draw a hissing breath of pain.
Spike grabbed the Watcher’s bicep. The man screamed and there was an audible ‘pop’.
“Spike!” Buffy yelled.
Spike rocked back on his heels. “Don’t get your knickers in a twist. Watcher had a dislocated shoulder.”
She said, “We could have called a doctor.:
The Watcher tested his shoulder, lifting, rolling it and grimacing a little. Then, he stooped to pick-up the monster’s feet again.
Buffy sighed. “Stop. We’ll do it.” She gestured for Spike to take the arms while she took the legs.
Spike said, “Gonna toss this rubbish in the river, I hope.”
The Watcher shook his head. “We shall take him to the carriage.”
Before Spike opened his mouth to ask ‘why’, Buffy glared. This was not the time for you’re-not-the-boss-of-me posturing. Setting an example, she took the goat’s hooves. Spike huffed, but helped.
“Shouldn’t the beastie have shrunk by now?” he asked. “Was only a spell.”
The Watcher directed them away from the Traitor’s Gate. “It is magic, not science. Demonic spells frequently bend rules rather than abide by them.”
Since Spike was a day-walking, heartbeat-having, man-pire at the moment, he couldn’t argue the point and so remained uncharacteristically silent.
Buffy asked, “Don’t you want to know who we are?”
The Watcher said, “You appear eager to tell me.”
“Not eager, just…” Buffy’s borrowed shoes slid in the muck as she climbed the grassy slope of the moat. “I’m the Slayer from the future.” She skidded a little. “Does that sound as dumb as I think it does?”
"Yeah." Spike adjusted his grip on the goat.
Without looking back, the Watcher continued over the embankment. The fog had thickened and the moon had disappeared behind a veil of clouds, as if some invisible special effects team had been signaled to make everything feel extra-creepy.
Trudging through the grass, Buffy and Spike caught up to the Watcher at the entrance gate, where a rusted padlock, the size of a large man’s fist, hung looped through the bars. She wondered whether the Watcher had a key or if they were going to have to search for another exit, but he surprised her by removing the pins from the hinges. With a light push, he pivoted the wrought-iron gate by its latch.
“She’s telling the truth, y’know,” Spike said. “She is the Slayer.”
The Watcher looked doubtful. “A Slayer from the future?”
Buffy bristled. “Just because it’s stupid, doesn’t make it not true.”
“Not your most convincing argument.” The Watcher passed through the now-open gate. “And, even if it were true, that still begs the question—“ he faced Spike “—of who, exactly, are you?'
And then the fics abadoned inthe dark ages while the show was still running..
“There’s this theory that the universe is made out of strings.”
Spike tore his attention away from “Passions” to gaze at Fred as she alternately chewed a pencil and mused aloud. Spike arched a brow. “Strings? Like everything is made out of twine?”
Fred didn’t appear to hear Spike, but struck by sudden inspiration she took the pencil from between her teeth to quickly scratch a string of mathematical symbols on her yellow legal pad. Spike suppressed a smile, thinking that at any moment she would look up, her glasses cutely perched on the end of her nose and ask him for another word that meant ‘glowing’. . .or, at least, the mathematical equivalent of such a question.
Fred looked up distractedly. “What?”
“Didn’t say anything, pet.” Not recently, anyway. He gestured toward the television. “Sheridan did.” The blonde on screen was, as always, dithering between two brothers never openly choosing between them. Had been going on for years. Spike had once thought that the story would one day reach a conclusion. He wasn’t as hopeful now. He’d died and come back, and the story remained unchanged.
Fred scrunched her nose. “I don’t know what you see in that show. There’s nothing the least bit accurate about the supernatural in it. I would think that would bother you.”
“Why is that?” Spike asked. “I mean, other than me bein’ an encyclopedia of all that’s unnatural and undead.” Raising his voice to a falsely cheery tone, he mocked, “He’s a vampire. He’s a ghost. He’s a vampire-ghost. All I need is Firstie showing up making me a zombie again and I’m a trifecta.”
Fred bit her lip and looked down at her papers. She started scribbling again, and Spike knew he had said the wrong thing. He wasn’t exactly sure what the wrong thing had been, but he had definitely said the wrong thing.
“Is the TV bothering you?” Spike asked. “If it is, I can pop upstairs and annoy Angel.”
“No, it’s all right.”
“Not a bother, really.”
With a flick of her wrist, Darla had removed a dark wool blanket from a basket, revealing an infant that Angel had recognized as belonging to missionaries he had found hiding in an alley earlier that evening. He had left them there huddled there, but Darla must have found them. Her eyes had glittered with hurt and anger as she tried to goad him into killing the boy. "I won't be made a fool of, Angelus. Not by you. Not by anyone."
"I didn't mean to." And he had meant that. He hadn’t wanted to fail her. Even as his conscience whispered what he should and should not do, he had gravitated towards her, the whispers of his unnatural conscience had been foreign to him while Darla had been intimately familiar.
"I'm sorry," he had apologized. It had been the only thing hel could think to say, and he had never understood why he had said it. Had he been sorry the monster in him had been leashed or sorry for turning away from Darla.
"No more words," she'd said. "Act."
And Angel had considered it. He'd truly considered it. Even with his soul, he had looked at the child for several seconds, hearing Darla's demands and wondering whether it would be so difficult to damn his soul. Surely, it was damned already. It had to have been to have been placed inside him.
Now, Angel looked into the face of another infant. His son. His and Darla's son. It was impossible and wrong ...and miraculous. How could creatures such as Darla and himself produce an innocent child -- a *human* child?
That is, if his son *was* human. How were they to know? And what was he to do about it? The was his responsibility, his unanticipated miracle, and the sudden focus of his entire existence. But Angel didn't have answers. He felt every bit as lost and confused as he had in the alleys of Europe after the gypsies had cursed him with a soul.
"We can't stay here." Cordelia's whisper dragged Angel out of his reverie to focus on the woman rocking his child. She had stopped the baby's
crying by inserting her fingertip into his mouth.
"Don't bite," she saide. "I know the urge runs in the family but..." She smiled.
Wesley paced across the warehouse floor."Cordy is right."
The sun had gone down a half hour earlier and the dusty interior was illuminated by nothing but the headlights of Angel's car. Wesley paused in a beam of light. "The car battery is going to die soon. This place has none of the resources we need--"
"Like diapers and formula and Barney videos," Fred interjected.
Wesley blinked. "Actually, I was going to say books to research prophecies, but you have a point."
Gunn said, "My old gang hangs near here."
"Uh." Lorne tentatively raised his hand. "If it's up for vote, I'm voting 'no' on that option. Nothing personal, but your gang has issues with green-skinned Americans."
"You're Pylean, not American," Gunn said.
Lorne bristled. "We're going to argue citizenship now?"
Buffy felt she should argue with herself. She couldn’t know what she thought she knew. Spike couldn’t be on her side. Only Buffy didn’t feel like arguing. She didn’t feel wrong.
She dropped her left shoulder. There it was, another punch for the taking. But Spike ignored it --again-- and pushed her against the wall. “What are you up to, you silly bint?”
“Shouldn’t that be my question?” Under her breath, she added, “Liar.”
For a microsecond, confusion flashed across Spike’s face, then comprehension. She knew. And now he knew that she knew…or…um…any combination of she’s, he’s, and knew’s that made clear that his secret was out and that they were in this mess together.
Spike glanced at the Master.
She rolled her eyes. Like I could forget bat-face.
Still recklessly waving his pistol, Dexter asked The Master, “You sure you don’t want me to shoot ‘em?”
Buffy shoved Spike and they continued the floorshow. Buffy hit. Spike blocked. They were experts at this kind of fruitless fight. A battle between them could remain dead even for hours. It took no thought to put on an impressive show. The more pressing question was how were they going to get out of this mess?
Buffy glared at Spike. “Coward like you planning to make a break for it?“ Was it an option worth considering?
Spike ducked to miss her flying fist. “Not likely, luv.”
Buffy glanced at the door. She could make a break for it. Spike could too – if he wanted to—but then there was Xander. He lay sprawled on the floor, limp and motionless like seaweed baking on a late summer beach. Not even superstrength would make carrying Xander a viable option. She’d struggled to carry Dawn away from Glory; because of balance and maneuvering issues, Xander would be a hundred times worse.
Buffy felt overwhelmed. There were too many uncertainties, too many obstacles, and too many potentially deadly projectiles. And, to make matters worse, the Master was right. She wasn’t impervious to bullets. Xander definitely wasn’t impervious to bullets. His blood already made a crimson smear across the floor.
The Master looked bored, and knowing that was dangerous, Buffy pitched Spike into the glass and steel coffee table that stood in the center of the room. It shattered leaving Spike laying in a field of tempered glass confetti.
He sat up, wiping the blood from his lip. “Bitch,” he snarled.
Going Xena: Warrior Princess, Buffy dove after him. He caught her midair—which was cool because she hadn’t been thrilled about the idea of landing in the glass—and flipped her over the sofa. She landed on her back with an audible grunt, only to look up to see Spike hurtling over the furniture after her.
Out of the Master’s view, Spike mouthed the word, “Run.”
She shook her head. “Xander.”
A muscle flexed in Spike’s jaw. He didn’t say it, but Buffy knew he was thinking “I’m here.”
Not reassuring.
Spike growled. “You got delusions of grandeur.” And mouthed, “Get the calvary.”
What calvary? Dawn and Anya weren’t much help. . .although the thought of Giles and a bazooka had some appeal.
Spike’s gaze glinted glacier blue. “You’re not faster than a speeding bullet.”
“And you are?”
“Don’t need to be.”
So, leave him here? Trust him to protect Xander?
Trust him?
Spike never asked for the easy stuff.
She’d screwed up. She was screwed-up. She should have taken control. She was the Slayer. She was supposed to lead, but she had closed her eyes and allowed Spike to take responsibility for everything. And that always led to bad things.
Buffy didn’t know how much time had passed-- it had seemed like forever --before Spike had come to her bedroom, sliding beneath the covers, and spooning against her. He had kissed her shoulder and said, “It’s all right.”
It hadn’t been. Nothing had been all right. She had rolled over and climbed on top of him. With his narrow hips beneath her, she had lowered herself to take him in. There had been greed in her desperation. She had sought something, had needed it, and would have taken more if she could have.
It had been crazy. Folie a deux. But she hadn’t been able to stop. All she had wanted was release, to throw herself over the precipice and find oblivion on the other side.
Know that piffle about your life flashing before your eyes just before you die? It's true. I should bloody well know. I've been killed. Twice.
Notice I said I've been killed, but I'm not dead. Well, I am dead, but I'm a vampire so that's beside the point, innit? What I'm trying to say is I was killed, transformed into a vampire, and have now been killed again. Go find a Dustbuster. I'm done.
So, if these are my final moments why am I prattling like some hysterical bint? The truth is--I don't know. It's damned embarrassing, but I can't seem to stop myself. I must be in that moment where my life is passing before my eyes...and I do mean my life--those days of sunlight and delusion which make me want to retch or hurl in alternating order.
I remember being a kid in short knickers standing on the back stairs of my family's country house listening to my parents fight. It wasn't a fair fight. Mum always won. That I called our home a "country house" proves she won. Father said calling it that was pretentious. Mum said was it necessary to "keep up appearances." Father was right, but Mum won in the end. She always did.
So country house it was. After all, it was in the country, and it was a house. But Mum's insistence on the title of "country house" implied that somewhere existed a "city house," and there wasn't one. The house where we lived was all we had. Though if memory serves, it was a rather nice house built of white limestone standing on the edge of an intensely green field. Of course most fields in England are intensely green, so there's nothing unique about that. My homewas your generic bucolic setting for you ordinary country squire. . .not that my father actually was a squire, but we liked to think it so.
If I'm being honest--and since these are my final moments before being sucked into hell, I see no reason to not be honest--my father was hardly the inspiring sort. He was average looking, of average height, and of average build. He wore tweed most of the time, and I vaguely recall that he was developing just the hint of a gut the last time I saw him. He was also a good man. A very good man. Bought me tin soldiers. Read me books. Taught me to ride a pony. But I didn't mean he was 'good' just because he was a good Da or because he attended church services every Sunday and paid his tithe. I mean, he cared about people. He listened to them, and--when he could--he helped them.
Bloody stupid fellow wasn't he? But I loved him.
Naturally--being good and all--he succumbed to cliché and died young. Poor bugger never saw his thirty-fifth birthday. He caught the flu, that turned into pneumonia, that turned into death. I was ten years old at the time, and cried for weeks. Then our creditors threw us out of our "country house," and more tears followed.
Father was a kind man. He was a generous man. He was not, however, a wealthy man, and Mum had the tastes of a very wealthy woman.
Ah, Mum... No need to worry about going all warm and fuzzy about her. To use an expression of my day, she was a "diamond of the first water" which loosely translates to drop dead gorgeous. To use a modern expression, she was a ball bustin' bitch who knew how to get what she wanted, and when she was young and poor and working as an upstairs maid for some Viscount who owned a REAL country house, what she wanted was my father... or one of his older brothers. Too bad for her, she wound up with only the third son. I was born six months and three days after the wedding.
Father, being a good man, never openly resented being trapped into marriage. The same cannot be said for Mum. She may have set the trap, but once in it she discovered that my father's purse was very lightly padded and that nothing he owned rated highly with the cuffs and collars crowd. Mum voiced her displeasure about that loudly and often. . .which was the cause of one of countless arguments I listened to on the back stairs.
When Father died, Mum and I went to London. Mum managed to stay three steps ahead of our creditors long enough to snag Mr. Winton J. Oddbody. Mr. Oddbody was two decades older and two stone heavier than my father, but that was not the only difference between the men. Mr. Oddbody was wealthy, not of the genteel class, and was not...kind.
How do I explain? Wasn't there some abrasive bastard of a step parent in a Dickins' tragedy? Being Dickens I'm sure there was, but I can't seem to remember which book I'm referring to. Not that it matters. Just use your imagination and know that was what Mr. Oddbody was to me.
Copperfield. David Copperfield. That was the novel, and Oddbody was my own personal Mr. Murdstone. Knew I hadn't forgotten the book even if it has been more than a century since I read it.
I read a lot as a lad. I was bloody clever. Earned a scholarship to Eton. Not much to crow about, actually. The sons of Lords and Earls looked down on me. My Mum was common. Da, being disinherited and all, only a bit better. And me? I was slight of build, wore glasses and stammered. No surprise that I became the class whipping boy.
Of course, being a good little martyr I endured it with stoic, timid 'bravery.' At least that's how I explained it to myself -- leaving out the timid part. What I should have done was sneak into their rooms late one night and whaled on them with a cricket bat.
I was an idiot. Had some idea of making my father proud, so I smiled in the face of humiliation and hid myself in books while admiring pretty girls from afar. Sodding fool, I was. What was I trying to be? An idealist?
Well yeah, I was.
Anyway, after Eton came Oxford and after Oxford came unemployment. It was a part of the peculiar Victorian mindset that work was beneath the upper class, and even though I was only on the fringes of that class and had no money to speak of, there were very few professions open to me. I was a 'gentleman' after all.
By that time Mum was having a go at Mr. Oddbody's legal counselor. She wanted to make sure Oddbody's will was locked up right and tight. She intended on inheriting every pence the old miser had scuttled away.
If there had been a radish in sight--and Gone With the Wind had been written--Mum would've imitated Scarlet O'Hara swearing, "I will never go hungry again." And just like dear old Scarlet, Mum wouldn't have given a damn who she hurt to make things turn her way, even if it meant doing a terrible thing to Mr. Oddbody's daughter Meg.
Meg. Poor girl. Around the turn of the century --the last century--I decided to find out what had happened to Margaret. What I discovered wasn't pretty. After Mr. Oddbody's death, Mum kicked the girl into the streets. Dear little Meg met a bad end, and not at the hands of vampires or demons and the like. Ordinary men can be monsters too.
Bollocks. Didn't mean to bring up that bit of ancient history. It's enough to remember, all short and sweet like, that Mum did her best to set me on the path of becoming an amoral and soulless creature...a lawyer.
I resisted at first, but in the end I took the job. I needed the money. I was quite the spineless poof and always knuckled under to everyone's wants but my own.
What did I want? I wanted to be accepted, to be loved, to belong. I was a wanker who wanted puppies and Christmas and home fires burning. I wanted to be a poet like Blake, Browning, Shelly, or Keats. I wanted to put into words all the beauty in the world.
I was hopeless.
My first love was a little opera singer who hardly knew my name. I sat in the audience night after night just to see her, to hear her. She had a frothy French accent that was entirely fake, a wardrobe dominated by white lace, and--why should I lie about it now?--she was a lightskirt...which was only a polite way to say whore.
I heard others call her that, but I refused to believe it. I decided I could save her from such cruel barbs. I could help her gain respectability. I would wed her and love her and care for her... and she laughed in my face. Give up money, jewels, and fame? For what? For me?
For years her laughter rang in my ears. Who am I kidding? I can still hear that pitch perfect giggle.
You'd think I'd have wised up then. Love is futile, and all that rot. It tempts you with a carrot then beats you with a stick...but I hadn't copped to that info yet. And even if I had, not sure I would have cared. Not sure I care now. Love may be a bitch, but it's that or nothing at all.
So I stupidly crawled back for more--only this time I set my sights higher. I decided I needed someone admirable. Someone noble and worthy. I chose Cecily. After all, I wasn't just a stupid blighter. I was an incredibly stupid blighter.
Cecily was a lady of refined sensibilities, and I wished to place her on a pedestal so that I might admire her more fully. I adored her...and she told me I was beneath her. Nix that. She said even my admiration was beneath her. It was in the dark moments that followed, as I shed bitter, hateful tears that I met my Dru--my beautiful, broken pet. She gleamed in darkness and gave voice to my pain.
"What possible catastrophe came crashing down from heaven and brought this dashing stranger to tears?" she asked.
I must have looked at her as though she was insane--which of course she is. But in that moment it was an intoxicating insanity. I liked the way she looked at me. I liked the words she said. I wanted that bright, gleaming, effulgent vision of myself. I was seduced. Willingly. Eagerly. Completely.
William died that night. He left this earth unmourned, for who would mourn him? Not a mother wrapped up in her greed and fading beauty, not a singer who had laughed at an offer of fidelity, and not Cecily who had thought even my admiration beneath her. There was no one...I couldn't even mourn myself because in my final moments I saw what a pathetic sod William was. He was nothing. He was unneeded, unwanted, and unloved...so I created Spike whose life may be no more fruitful than William's, but at least it's a hell of a lot more fun.
There were four of us in those days--Darla, Angelus, myself and my darling Dru. Or as Angelus put it--himself, his women, and me. What a cocky bastard Angelus is. So full of himself he can't see half of what's going on around him.
'His' women? Bollocks. Darla owned Angelus body and...well...body. As for Dru, no one could touch her. Oh her body was up for grabs, and I became quite possessive of it, all white and soft and sweet smelling. But the rest of her? She's beyond the reach of man or vampire. She's lost in darkness, clouds, and stars. I saw that almost from the first and became quite determined to
find out why. Why was my precious pet, such a beautifully broken bird?
I found my answers and saw Angelus clearly. Women might be blinded by the poof, but not me. I've seen what he is and know what he's done...
"What do you do with principles that no longer apply?"
"That's a rhetorical question."
"Is it? I don't know. I used to know. There was right and there was wrong. There was black and white and very little gray in between. But if the right thing is supposed to feel right then I don't know any more. Nothing has felt right in a very long time." She lifted her gaze to his. "What do I do now?"
What the hell was he supposed to say? He couldn't tell her to give up ethics when he believed those ethics himself. There should be love and fidelity and loyalty. That might not be the way the world worked but it was the way the world should work.
Cassie looked up at the cloudless sky and laughed. "I'm and idiot. I'm asking for moral guidance from the man who betrayed me for no reason."
"There were reasons," he said. "There were lots of reasons."
"Reasons. . . "
Court raked his hand through his hair and started pacing. He could feel a thin line of sweat trickling down his back as the sweltering heat caged them. "Maybe my reasons don't meet your standards. They're not entirely ethical." He smiled wryly, a self-mocking smile. "I didn't let myself think in those terms. I did the only thing I thought I could. I did what I thought I had to."
"Why?"
What could he tell her? He swallowed and tried to make some sense out of millions of words jumbled in his head. He wanted to make her understand, but hadn't she been the one to say that it was already too late?
"You said you had reasons," she pressed.
"They don't matter any more."
Her dark eyes flashed. "That's a cop out."
"I'm just telling you what you're always telling me. "It's over. It's too late." He chuckled bitterly. "Besides, what would be the point? You wouldn't believe me."
"That's easy to say, but do you know that?"
"Give me a little credit. I know. Maybe you would have believed me once--a long time ago, but not now. Not when the only thing I have to offer is my word with nothing to back it up. And there is nothing to back me up, Cass." He wanted to make that clear. "Not one single thing." He jammed his hands into his pockets and turned his back to her. "Did you ever add a little philosophy to you reading about black holes and quantum physics?"
"Why on earth would you ask that?"
"I was just wondering if the truth is an absolute or it is like one of those trees that falls in the forest that doesn't make a sound because there's no one there to hear it. If I know something to be true but everyone else knows something different. . . " His voice trailed into silence. The lightest of breeze eased the stifling heat for an exquisitely brief moment.
She shook herself. "God, you're good." She looked angry. "That's a nice little conundrum you've set for yourself, isn't it? No explanations because there's no evidence. No evidence because. . . because I don't know why. But I'm supposed to take it all on faith." She impatiently brushed a tear from her cheek. "You give me excuses for why you can't tell me the truth. The truth--ha! You can't even decide what you think the truth is. Well, I'll tell you the truth. The truth is you're an insufferable bastard."
pfeifferpack and slaymesoftly : When you see this, post an excerpt from as many random works-in-progress as you can find lying around. Who knows? Maybe inspiration will burst forth and do something, um, inspiration-y.
“I heard screams,” Berris said. “There was this girl, and I…” The earnest bastard looked tormented and, when Berris noticed the blood on his hands, he turned a bilious shade of green.
“Don’t boot in the car,” Spike said. “Hang your head out the window.”
Buffy jabbed her elbow into Spike.
Berris whispered, “I keep making mistakes.”
Buffy laid her hand on Berris's shoulder. “It’s okay,”
Right, Spike thought. ‘Cause she never took it to heart when someone died on her watch. Never beat herself up. Never made herself miserable. Never charged up rickety towers carrying a troll hammer or dived into world destroying rifts. And the pisser was that sometimes no matter what you did, people died and the world continued to suck.
Spike nudged the goat-thing with the toe of his boot. Nodding, as if saying to himself that he’d known it was dead all along, he stepped over the body. “If the Slayer kicked it, how do you know that Buffy isn’t the new one?”
The Watcher grimaced. “Too old, and not Spanish.”
“Hey,” Buffy said. “Not so old, and when did speaking Spanish become a requirement?”
The man gave her an odd look. Giles probably would have done the same. However, this Watcher, with his turban and dark skin, looked nothing like Rupert Giles.
The Watcher stooped and turned the creature towards the light, rendering its features a chiaroscuro model of darkness and necrotic pale. “When Lisette was killed, the Council summoned mystics to locate the new Chosen One.” He grimaced and pressed his hand against his injured shoulder before telling Buffy, ”She -- unlike you – is Spanish.”
“Lisette?” Buffy frowned. The name sounded familiar but…
“The Flemish bird what got murdered last night, “ Spike said. When Buffy shot him a ‘how-in-the-hell-do-you-know-that?’ look, he added, “Read it in the newspaper this morning, remember?”
“Yeah, well, you’re wrong. The girl who was killed was Belg…” Oops. “…ish.” Buffy cleared her throat and looked at the Watcher. “She was the Slayer?”
The Watcher nodded and looked grim as he closed the monster’s clouded eyes. Moving awkwardly, he tried to lift the monster’s feet but stopped to draw a hissing breath of pain.
Spike grabbed the Watcher’s bicep. The man screamed and there was an audible ‘pop’.
“Spike!” Buffy yelled.
Spike rocked back on his heels. “Don’t get your knickers in a twist. Watcher had a dislocated shoulder.”
She said, “We could have called a doctor.:
The Watcher tested his shoulder, lifting, rolling it and grimacing a little. Then, he stooped to pick-up the monster’s feet again.
Buffy sighed. “Stop. We’ll do it.” She gestured for Spike to take the arms while she took the legs.
Spike said, “Gonna toss this rubbish in the river, I hope.”
The Watcher shook his head. “We shall take him to the carriage.”
Before Spike opened his mouth to ask ‘why’, Buffy glared. This was not the time for you’re-not-the-boss-of-me posturing. Setting an example, she took the goat’s hooves. Spike huffed, but helped.
“Shouldn’t the beastie have shrunk by now?” he asked. “Was only a spell.”
The Watcher directed them away from the Traitor’s Gate. “It is magic, not science. Demonic spells frequently bend rules rather than abide by them.”
Since Spike was a day-walking, heartbeat-having, man-pire at the moment, he couldn’t argue the point and so remained uncharacteristically silent.
Buffy asked, “Don’t you want to know who we are?”
The Watcher said, “You appear eager to tell me.”
“Not eager, just…” Buffy’s borrowed shoes slid in the muck as she climbed the grassy slope of the moat. “I’m the Slayer from the future.” She skidded a little. “Does that sound as dumb as I think it does?”
"Yeah." Spike adjusted his grip on the goat.
Without looking back, the Watcher continued over the embankment. The fog had thickened and the moon had disappeared behind a veil of clouds, as if some invisible special effects team had been signaled to make everything feel extra-creepy.
Trudging through the grass, Buffy and Spike caught up to the Watcher at the entrance gate, where a rusted padlock, the size of a large man’s fist, hung looped through the bars. She wondered whether the Watcher had a key or if they were going to have to search for another exit, but he surprised her by removing the pins from the hinges. With a light push, he pivoted the wrought-iron gate by its latch.
“She’s telling the truth, y’know,” Spike said. “She is the Slayer.”
The Watcher looked doubtful. “A Slayer from the future?”
Buffy bristled. “Just because it’s stupid, doesn’t make it not true.”
“Not your most convincing argument.” The Watcher passed through the now-open gate. “And, even if it were true, that still begs the question—“ he faced Spike “—of who, exactly, are you?'
And then the fics abadoned in
“There’s this theory that the universe is made out of strings.”
Spike tore his attention away from “Passions” to gaze at Fred as she alternately chewed a pencil and mused aloud. Spike arched a brow. “Strings? Like everything is made out of twine?”
Fred didn’t appear to hear Spike, but struck by sudden inspiration she took the pencil from between her teeth to quickly scratch a string of mathematical symbols on her yellow legal pad. Spike suppressed a smile, thinking that at any moment she would look up, her glasses cutely perched on the end of her nose and ask him for another word that meant ‘glowing’. . .or, at least, the mathematical equivalent of such a question.
Fred looked up distractedly. “What?”
“Didn’t say anything, pet.” Not recently, anyway. He gestured toward the television. “Sheridan did.” The blonde on screen was, as always, dithering between two brothers never openly choosing between them. Had been going on for years. Spike had once thought that the story would one day reach a conclusion. He wasn’t as hopeful now. He’d died and come back, and the story remained unchanged.
Fred scrunched her nose. “I don’t know what you see in that show. There’s nothing the least bit accurate about the supernatural in it. I would think that would bother you.”
“Why is that?” Spike asked. “I mean, other than me bein’ an encyclopedia of all that’s unnatural and undead.” Raising his voice to a falsely cheery tone, he mocked, “He’s a vampire. He’s a ghost. He’s a vampire-ghost. All I need is Firstie showing up making me a zombie again and I’m a trifecta.”
Fred bit her lip and looked down at her papers. She started scribbling again, and Spike knew he had said the wrong thing. He wasn’t exactly sure what the wrong thing had been, but he had definitely said the wrong thing.
“Is the TV bothering you?” Spike asked. “If it is, I can pop upstairs and annoy Angel.”
“No, it’s all right.”
“Not a bother, really.”
With a flick of her wrist, Darla had removed a dark wool blanket from a basket, revealing an infant that Angel had recognized as belonging to missionaries he had found hiding in an alley earlier that evening. He had left them there huddled there, but Darla must have found them. Her eyes had glittered with hurt and anger as she tried to goad him into killing the boy. "I won't be made a fool of, Angelus. Not by you. Not by anyone."
"I didn't mean to." And he had meant that. He hadn’t wanted to fail her. Even as his conscience whispered what he should and should not do, he had gravitated towards her, the whispers of his unnatural conscience had been foreign to him while Darla had been intimately familiar.
"I'm sorry," he had apologized. It had been the only thing hel could think to say, and he had never understood why he had said it. Had he been sorry the monster in him had been leashed or sorry for turning away from Darla.
"No more words," she'd said. "Act."
And Angel had considered it. He'd truly considered it. Even with his soul, he had looked at the child for several seconds, hearing Darla's demands and wondering whether it would be so difficult to damn his soul. Surely, it was damned already. It had to have been to have been placed inside him.
Now, Angel looked into the face of another infant. His son. His and Darla's son. It was impossible and wrong ...and miraculous. How could creatures such as Darla and himself produce an innocent child -- a *human* child?
That is, if his son *was* human. How were they to know? And what was he to do about it? The was his responsibility, his unanticipated miracle, and the sudden focus of his entire existence. But Angel didn't have answers. He felt every bit as lost and confused as he had in the alleys of Europe after the gypsies had cursed him with a soul.
"We can't stay here." Cordelia's whisper dragged Angel out of his reverie to focus on the woman rocking his child. She had stopped the baby's
crying by inserting her fingertip into his mouth.
"Don't bite," she saide. "I know the urge runs in the family but..." She smiled.
Wesley paced across the warehouse floor."Cordy is right."
The sun had gone down a half hour earlier and the dusty interior was illuminated by nothing but the headlights of Angel's car. Wesley paused in a beam of light. "The car battery is going to die soon. This place has none of the resources we need--"
"Like diapers and formula and Barney videos," Fred interjected.
Wesley blinked. "Actually, I was going to say books to research prophecies, but you have a point."
Gunn said, "My old gang hangs near here."
"Uh." Lorne tentatively raised his hand. "If it's up for vote, I'm voting 'no' on that option. Nothing personal, but your gang has issues with green-skinned Americans."
"You're Pylean, not American," Gunn said.
Lorne bristled. "We're going to argue citizenship now?"
Buffy felt she should argue with herself. She couldn’t know what she thought she knew. Spike couldn’t be on her side. Only Buffy didn’t feel like arguing. She didn’t feel wrong.
She dropped her left shoulder. There it was, another punch for the taking. But Spike ignored it --again-- and pushed her against the wall. “What are you up to, you silly bint?”
“Shouldn’t that be my question?” Under her breath, she added, “Liar.”
For a microsecond, confusion flashed across Spike’s face, then comprehension. She knew. And now he knew that she knew…or…um…any combination of she’s, he’s, and knew’s that made clear that his secret was out and that they were in this mess together.
Spike glanced at the Master.
She rolled her eyes. Like I could forget bat-face.
Still recklessly waving his pistol, Dexter asked The Master, “You sure you don’t want me to shoot ‘em?”
Buffy shoved Spike and they continued the floorshow. Buffy hit. Spike blocked. They were experts at this kind of fruitless fight. A battle between them could remain dead even for hours. It took no thought to put on an impressive show. The more pressing question was how were they going to get out of this mess?
Buffy glared at Spike. “Coward like you planning to make a break for it?“ Was it an option worth considering?
Spike ducked to miss her flying fist. “Not likely, luv.”
Buffy glanced at the door. She could make a break for it. Spike could too – if he wanted to—but then there was Xander. He lay sprawled on the floor, limp and motionless like seaweed baking on a late summer beach. Not even superstrength would make carrying Xander a viable option. She’d struggled to carry Dawn away from Glory; because of balance and maneuvering issues, Xander would be a hundred times worse.
Buffy felt overwhelmed. There were too many uncertainties, too many obstacles, and too many potentially deadly projectiles. And, to make matters worse, the Master was right. She wasn’t impervious to bullets. Xander definitely wasn’t impervious to bullets. His blood already made a crimson smear across the floor.
The Master looked bored, and knowing that was dangerous, Buffy pitched Spike into the glass and steel coffee table that stood in the center of the room. It shattered leaving Spike laying in a field of tempered glass confetti.
He sat up, wiping the blood from his lip. “Bitch,” he snarled.
Going Xena: Warrior Princess, Buffy dove after him. He caught her midair—which was cool because she hadn’t been thrilled about the idea of landing in the glass—and flipped her over the sofa. She landed on her back with an audible grunt, only to look up to see Spike hurtling over the furniture after her.
Out of the Master’s view, Spike mouthed the word, “Run.”
She shook her head. “Xander.”
A muscle flexed in Spike’s jaw. He didn’t say it, but Buffy knew he was thinking “I’m here.”
Not reassuring.
Spike growled. “You got delusions of grandeur.” And mouthed, “Get the calvary.”
What calvary? Dawn and Anya weren’t much help. . .although the thought of Giles and a bazooka had some appeal.
Spike’s gaze glinted glacier blue. “You’re not faster than a speeding bullet.”
“And you are?”
“Don’t need to be.”
So, leave him here? Trust him to protect Xander?
Trust him?
Spike never asked for the easy stuff.
She’d screwed up. She was screwed-up. She should have taken control. She was the Slayer. She was supposed to lead, but she had closed her eyes and allowed Spike to take responsibility for everything. And that always led to bad things.
Buffy didn’t know how much time had passed-- it had seemed like forever --before Spike had come to her bedroom, sliding beneath the covers, and spooning against her. He had kissed her shoulder and said, “It’s all right.”
It hadn’t been. Nothing had been all right. She had rolled over and climbed on top of him. With his narrow hips beneath her, she had lowered herself to take him in. There had been greed in her desperation. She had sought something, had needed it, and would have taken more if she could have.
It had been crazy. Folie a deux. But she hadn’t been able to stop. All she had wanted was release, to throw herself over the precipice and find oblivion on the other side.
Know that piffle about your life flashing before your eyes just before you die? It's true. I should bloody well know. I've been killed. Twice.
Notice I said I've been killed, but I'm not dead. Well, I am dead, but I'm a vampire so that's beside the point, innit? What I'm trying to say is I was killed, transformed into a vampire, and have now been killed again. Go find a Dustbuster. I'm done.
So, if these are my final moments why am I prattling like some hysterical bint? The truth is--I don't know. It's damned embarrassing, but I can't seem to stop myself. I must be in that moment where my life is passing before my eyes...and I do mean my life--those days of sunlight and delusion which make me want to retch or hurl in alternating order.
I remember being a kid in short knickers standing on the back stairs of my family's country house listening to my parents fight. It wasn't a fair fight. Mum always won. That I called our home a "country house" proves she won. Father said calling it that was pretentious. Mum said was it necessary to "keep up appearances." Father was right, but Mum won in the end. She always did.
So country house it was. After all, it was in the country, and it was a house. But Mum's insistence on the title of "country house" implied that somewhere existed a "city house," and there wasn't one. The house where we lived was all we had. Though if memory serves, it was a rather nice house built of white limestone standing on the edge of an intensely green field. Of course most fields in England are intensely green, so there's nothing unique about that. My homewas your generic bucolic setting for you ordinary country squire. . .not that my father actually was a squire, but we liked to think it so.
If I'm being honest--and since these are my final moments before being sucked into hell, I see no reason to not be honest--my father was hardly the inspiring sort. He was average looking, of average height, and of average build. He wore tweed most of the time, and I vaguely recall that he was developing just the hint of a gut the last time I saw him. He was also a good man. A very good man. Bought me tin soldiers. Read me books. Taught me to ride a pony. But I didn't mean he was 'good' just because he was a good Da or because he attended church services every Sunday and paid his tithe. I mean, he cared about people. He listened to them, and--when he could--he helped them.
Bloody stupid fellow wasn't he? But I loved him.
Naturally--being good and all--he succumbed to cliché and died young. Poor bugger never saw his thirty-fifth birthday. He caught the flu, that turned into pneumonia, that turned into death. I was ten years old at the time, and cried for weeks. Then our creditors threw us out of our "country house," and more tears followed.
Father was a kind man. He was a generous man. He was not, however, a wealthy man, and Mum had the tastes of a very wealthy woman.
Ah, Mum... No need to worry about going all warm and fuzzy about her. To use an expression of my day, she was a "diamond of the first water" which loosely translates to drop dead gorgeous. To use a modern expression, she was a ball bustin' bitch who knew how to get what she wanted, and when she was young and poor and working as an upstairs maid for some Viscount who owned a REAL country house, what she wanted was my father... or one of his older brothers. Too bad for her, she wound up with only the third son. I was born six months and three days after the wedding.
Father, being a good man, never openly resented being trapped into marriage. The same cannot be said for Mum. She may have set the trap, but once in it she discovered that my father's purse was very lightly padded and that nothing he owned rated highly with the cuffs and collars crowd. Mum voiced her displeasure about that loudly and often. . .which was the cause of one of countless arguments I listened to on the back stairs.
When Father died, Mum and I went to London. Mum managed to stay three steps ahead of our creditors long enough to snag Mr. Winton J. Oddbody. Mr. Oddbody was two decades older and two stone heavier than my father, but that was not the only difference between the men. Mr. Oddbody was wealthy, not of the genteel class, and was not...kind.
How do I explain? Wasn't there some abrasive bastard of a step parent in a Dickins' tragedy? Being Dickens I'm sure there was, but I can't seem to remember which book I'm referring to. Not that it matters. Just use your imagination and know that was what Mr. Oddbody was to me.
Copperfield. David Copperfield. That was the novel, and Oddbody was my own personal Mr. Murdstone. Knew I hadn't forgotten the book even if it has been more than a century since I read it.
I read a lot as a lad. I was bloody clever. Earned a scholarship to Eton. Not much to crow about, actually. The sons of Lords and Earls looked down on me. My Mum was common. Da, being disinherited and all, only a bit better. And me? I was slight of build, wore glasses and stammered. No surprise that I became the class whipping boy.
Of course, being a good little martyr I endured it with stoic, timid 'bravery.' At least that's how I explained it to myself -- leaving out the timid part. What I should have done was sneak into their rooms late one night and whaled on them with a cricket bat.
I was an idiot. Had some idea of making my father proud, so I smiled in the face of humiliation and hid myself in books while admiring pretty girls from afar. Sodding fool, I was. What was I trying to be? An idealist?
Well yeah, I was.
Anyway, after Eton came Oxford and after Oxford came unemployment. It was a part of the peculiar Victorian mindset that work was beneath the upper class, and even though I was only on the fringes of that class and had no money to speak of, there were very few professions open to me. I was a 'gentleman' after all.
By that time Mum was having a go at Mr. Oddbody's legal counselor. She wanted to make sure Oddbody's will was locked up right and tight. She intended on inheriting every pence the old miser had scuttled away.
If there had been a radish in sight--and Gone With the Wind had been written--Mum would've imitated Scarlet O'Hara swearing, "I will never go hungry again." And just like dear old Scarlet, Mum wouldn't have given a damn who she hurt to make things turn her way, even if it meant doing a terrible thing to Mr. Oddbody's daughter Meg.
Meg. Poor girl. Around the turn of the century --the last century--I decided to find out what had happened to Margaret. What I discovered wasn't pretty. After Mr. Oddbody's death, Mum kicked the girl into the streets. Dear little Meg met a bad end, and not at the hands of vampires or demons and the like. Ordinary men can be monsters too.
Bollocks. Didn't mean to bring up that bit of ancient history. It's enough to remember, all short and sweet like, that Mum did her best to set me on the path of becoming an amoral and soulless creature...a lawyer.
I resisted at first, but in the end I took the job. I needed the money. I was quite the spineless poof and always knuckled under to everyone's wants but my own.
What did I want? I wanted to be accepted, to be loved, to belong. I was a wanker who wanted puppies and Christmas and home fires burning. I wanted to be a poet like Blake, Browning, Shelly, or Keats. I wanted to put into words all the beauty in the world.
I was hopeless.
My first love was a little opera singer who hardly knew my name. I sat in the audience night after night just to see her, to hear her. She had a frothy French accent that was entirely fake, a wardrobe dominated by white lace, and--why should I lie about it now?--she was a lightskirt...which was only a polite way to say whore.
I heard others call her that, but I refused to believe it. I decided I could save her from such cruel barbs. I could help her gain respectability. I would wed her and love her and care for her... and she laughed in my face. Give up money, jewels, and fame? For what? For me?
For years her laughter rang in my ears. Who am I kidding? I can still hear that pitch perfect giggle.
You'd think I'd have wised up then. Love is futile, and all that rot. It tempts you with a carrot then beats you with a stick...but I hadn't copped to that info yet. And even if I had, not sure I would have cared. Not sure I care now. Love may be a bitch, but it's that or nothing at all.
So I stupidly crawled back for more--only this time I set my sights higher. I decided I needed someone admirable. Someone noble and worthy. I chose Cecily. After all, I wasn't just a stupid blighter. I was an incredibly stupid blighter.
Cecily was a lady of refined sensibilities, and I wished to place her on a pedestal so that I might admire her more fully. I adored her...and she told me I was beneath her. Nix that. She said even my admiration was beneath her. It was in the dark moments that followed, as I shed bitter, hateful tears that I met my Dru--my beautiful, broken pet. She gleamed in darkness and gave voice to my pain.
"What possible catastrophe came crashing down from heaven and brought this dashing stranger to tears?" she asked.
I must have looked at her as though she was insane--which of course she is. But in that moment it was an intoxicating insanity. I liked the way she looked at me. I liked the words she said. I wanted that bright, gleaming, effulgent vision of myself. I was seduced. Willingly. Eagerly. Completely.
William died that night. He left this earth unmourned, for who would mourn him? Not a mother wrapped up in her greed and fading beauty, not a singer who had laughed at an offer of fidelity, and not Cecily who had thought even my admiration beneath her. There was no one...I couldn't even mourn myself because in my final moments I saw what a pathetic sod William was. He was nothing. He was unneeded, unwanted, and unloved...so I created Spike whose life may be no more fruitful than William's, but at least it's a hell of a lot more fun.
There were four of us in those days--Darla, Angelus, myself and my darling Dru. Or as Angelus put it--himself, his women, and me. What a cocky bastard Angelus is. So full of himself he can't see half of what's going on around him.
'His' women? Bollocks. Darla owned Angelus body and...well...body. As for Dru, no one could touch her. Oh her body was up for grabs, and I became quite possessive of it, all white and soft and sweet smelling. But the rest of her? She's beyond the reach of man or vampire. She's lost in darkness, clouds, and stars. I saw that almost from the first and became quite determined to
find out why. Why was my precious pet, such a beautifully broken bird?
I found my answers and saw Angelus clearly. Women might be blinded by the poof, but not me. I've seen what he is and know what he's done...
"What do you do with principles that no longer apply?"
"That's a rhetorical question."
"Is it? I don't know. I used to know. There was right and there was wrong. There was black and white and very little gray in between. But if the right thing is supposed to feel right then I don't know any more. Nothing has felt right in a very long time." She lifted her gaze to his. "What do I do now?"
What the hell was he supposed to say? He couldn't tell her to give up ethics when he believed those ethics himself. There should be love and fidelity and loyalty. That might not be the way the world worked but it was the way the world should work.
Cassie looked up at the cloudless sky and laughed. "I'm and idiot. I'm asking for moral guidance from the man who betrayed me for no reason."
"There were reasons," he said. "There were lots of reasons."
"Reasons. . . "
Court raked his hand through his hair and started pacing. He could feel a thin line of sweat trickling down his back as the sweltering heat caged them. "Maybe my reasons don't meet your standards. They're not entirely ethical." He smiled wryly, a self-mocking smile. "I didn't let myself think in those terms. I did the only thing I thought I could. I did what I thought I had to."
"Why?"
What could he tell her? He swallowed and tried to make some sense out of millions of words jumbled in his head. He wanted to make her understand, but hadn't she been the one to say that it was already too late?
"You said you had reasons," she pressed.
"They don't matter any more."
Her dark eyes flashed. "That's a cop out."
"I'm just telling you what you're always telling me. "It's over. It's too late." He chuckled bitterly. "Besides, what would be the point? You wouldn't believe me."
"That's easy to say, but do you know that?"
"Give me a little credit. I know. Maybe you would have believed me once--a long time ago, but not now. Not when the only thing I have to offer is my word with nothing to back it up. And there is nothing to back me up, Cass." He wanted to make that clear. "Not one single thing." He jammed his hands into his pockets and turned his back to her. "Did you ever add a little philosophy to you reading about black holes and quantum physics?"
"Why on earth would you ask that?"
"I was just wondering if the truth is an absolute or it is like one of those trees that falls in the forest that doesn't make a sound because there's no one there to hear it. If I know something to be true but everyone else knows something different. . . " His voice trailed into silence. The lightest of breeze eased the stifling heat for an exquisitely brief moment.
She shook herself. "God, you're good." She looked angry. "That's a nice little conundrum you've set for yourself, isn't it? No explanations because there's no evidence. No evidence because. . . because I don't know why. But I'm supposed to take it all on faith." She impatiently brushed a tear from her cheek. "You give me excuses for why you can't tell me the truth. The truth--ha! You can't even decide what you think the truth is. Well, I'll tell you the truth. The truth is you're an insufferable bastard."
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