Songs From The Cellar 2/3

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Chapter 2
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Patrol had been smooth, Buffy having joined after the girls had managed to kill a fledgling. She had looked at Spike and rolled her eyes as if sharing a private joke at the girls’ expense. It had taken four of them to kill one scrawny, elderly fledge, but they were whooping as if they had killed a cougar with their bare hands.

Kennedy had pouted the remainder of the time they combed the streets and alleys of Sunnydale.
“Bint can’t even give over control to THE Slayer!” Spike fumed at the time. “Creature like me can’t expect respect, but Buffy’s owed it.” He decided that a long talk with Giles was in order before the silly chit got herself and everyone else killed before they even faced a real Big Bad.

Seeing Buffy as she quipped and danced her way through her duties never got old to him. She was in her element and Spike fell in love all over again with each twirl, each flip and each clever move.

God, how he still wanted her! Even knowing how undeserving he was, the burn never went away. At times he felt he would dust from it.

She was all he had ever desired in one lovely package. Even when she had been a right bitch to him he craved her notice. Anything would do, even a punch to the nose. “Just like a toddler, willin’ to do anything to have her attention.”

All the long walk home, he tuned out the children and, eyes on Buffy as always, let his mind go back to that time after he knew his heart and had yet to learn how unworthy he was to even think of reaching for her. He turned each memory over in his mind and remembered perfectly how he had felt, even with the soul now telling him his sins. He would try to capture those thoughts when he got back to his cot, succumbing to the lure of the notebook in lieu of elusive sleep.

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Spike had never felt the depth of emotion Buffy drew from him. The passion was intense enough to make him burn to ash more than once. She could be a right bitch and he had told her as much. Still, be it anger or desire or any of the vast numbers of emotions she enflamed in him, she made him feel more alive than he ever had in his existence.

“She never knew how the words hurt,” he remembered. “Even now.” His mind flinched as her most recent slight had pierced his heart. While taking out a group of baby slayers, Buffy lectured them, spewing all the same old dogma that the Council of Wankers had cooked up over the centuries.

One minute she was confusing him by showing concern, even with the girlies there to witness and comment, and the next she was putting him right back in his place.

“A vampire is an animal. Sometimes they run in packs, sometimes alone. The animal inside is always the same,” she had told the girls, then looked at him with what seemed to be an apology.

It had still hurt though, being called an animal. No wonder none of the white hats had seen anything wrong with the labs of the Initiative; demons were animals and animals always were the experimental subjects of choice.

None of them ever saw how their words wounded. “Nothin’ worse than an over-sensitive vamp,” Spike snorted in self-derision. Then again, William had been that way as well. He had so wanted them–her–to see him, to really see him and not just the fangs. He had wanted them all to notice how he had tried, but mostly he had wanted her to see it, see beyond his lack of a soul.

He might have had a chance too, if Angel hadn’t done his damage. It hadn’t been so much the horrors of Angelus that had done it. No, she had been ready to forgive that, chalk it up to some separate creature and never lay a crime at Angel’s door. It had been his leaving the way he did. Just one more person walking away with no backward look of regret. Didn’t help that so many others before and after had done the same.
Buffy had said she could never love him because she could never trust him, there in the room of his greatest shame. She had trusted him though…with everything but her heart.

V. My Desire

Your words, they flay and cut me to the bone!
O that said tongue would, like rapier sharpen,
Remove the veil ‘twixt us, to me hearken,
Free at last, seeing us to heaven flown.
Angel, in name alone, has left you prone
to fear. You run from love, mistrusts deepen.
The girl before had a heart wide open.
Would that I could soften your heart of stone.
I’d show you love if you would let me in.
I’d not leave, mold you like a piece of clay,
Or place you on a stand. Want you free to
spread your wings. At my side, be my sweet sin,
partner, love, completion, if you’d but say
the word. I’d take a crumb and make it do.

He wasn’t anything like Angelus or Angel, never had been. For some reason, when he was yet soulless, he never had his sins written off as Angelus had, blamed on that lack of a spark. No, he had been judged on human terms and rejected when he was determined to be a vampire after all.

All he had ever wanted to do was to love her, to cherish her, to watch her grow. “Okay, wanted the bint to love me too,” Spike admitted to himself. “Really convinced myself I could be good for her, not mess up,” he sighed sadly.

He thought over their long history, his and Buffy’s. He had made a lot of progress. He had channeled his instincts in a direction she might have been proud of…had she noticed. He had tried to suss out how to act, what to choose based on a mantra–“What would Buffy want?”–to no avail. Often it was just too hard to figure it out.

“Never understood how disgustin’ my past had to be to her.” Spike bit his upper lip. “Not ‘til the soul showed it all to me in livin’ color.” He had known how submitting to their passion had made her sick, made her hate him even more. He had seen the evidence of the multiple scrubbings she had given her soft skin after they had lain together in sweaty and often torn sheets.

He hadn’t understood why though, not then. No, he had expected her to notice how he tried, to care that he was remaking himself all for the love of her.

She had revived the man but not given him direction; Buffy didn’t seem to know or care that he needed that from her.

“Maybe if she hadn’t died, if she had seen…,” he mused. “She might have helped me the rest of the way.” He shook his head in despair.

VI. Unmade

Forgot fools dance to music of the heart.
Now her dance alone does rule my being.
Dancing to her tune is oddly freeing.
Alone, confused, for death was once my art,
Reborn by love, now demands a new start.
Sweet grace! My maker, love, began seeing;
then claimed by death before acknowledging
changes made, left behind a broken heart.
Before, the beast lent life to what was dead
She had slain that beast, pulling forth the man.
Now she was gone but left her guiding light.
Could have gone, left that night, but chose instead
to stay, do what I said, and never ran.
Though hated, did not give up the good fight.

He took a certain amount of pride over his actions that summer. He had kept his word as well as her friends had allowed. He had tended to Dawn, patrolled, made sure all her charges and duties were taken care of the way she would have wanted.

Spike had really come to think that he was one of them until Buffy was back and he was once more consigned to the role of unwanted evil thing.

“Was worth it, just havin’ her back,” he admitted. “Hated losin’ the closeness with the Bit, but can’t say it mattered ‘bout the rest.”

“Really thought I had a chance with her.” He remembered the pain and frustration they both experienced during those months of passion and shame. “Thought somehow I’d earned that crumb I’d begged for, that she’d see what a good boy I’d been while she was…gone.” He still couldn’t use the word ‘dead’ about that long dreadful summer.

“Figured all she had to do was just let herself love me and she’d want to be alive again.” He sniffed back a tear. “Couldn’t see how it was killin’ her to be wantin’ the touch of a creature like me. How it made her feel as dirty and wrong as I was.”

It took the soul for him to get it, to understand that it would never be enough–the trying, the following her lead. Until HE knew how wrong he was, the wrong he had done, he was beneath her. She could tell him but he could never fully get it. Wrong had to be wrong for itself, not because it offended the object of his love.

She had made a new thing of him, but he was still a thing nonetheless. “Girl like Buffy deserves more than some evil thing with a trail of blood behind him.”

No way to undo a century of murder and mayhem. No possible reprieve for the judgment his due. To fall in love with the one ordained to pronounce sentence and perform execution had been madness, but a brilliant madness nonetheless.

He’d been a moth to her flame from the first moment he saw her. She had been and would ever be his destiny. “Not sure what that destiny might be,” he huffed. “Like as not to be true dust under her feet.” He’d faced other Slayers and not felt the draw that he did with Buffy. With them it was the challenge, the battle of equals and the pride of being the one to walk away.

With Buffy there was always some vague, unnamed reason not to kill the girl. Always some unknown reason why another day would be better for his third warrior taken in battle. It had driven Dru into a rage.
He sighed. “Think I loved her in part from the beginning. Knew it was my moment, my destiny; nothin’ would ever be quite the same.” He didn’t know whether he wanted to laugh or cry at that realization. “Fate is a miserable fucker.”

Dru had been right; he had not been the same from the time he first challenged his Buffy. She had begun to unravel him from the first, without either of them realizing it. As he came apart, she was knitting him into something new, foreign, and Dru could see the process from the start. Saw where it led too, to that spark, the fire within that would one day surely consume him in its angry flame.

VII. Remade

Behold Terpsichore lays snare unknown;
The smitten beast falls in. Begins the dance,
Love wakes, quells the monster with but a glance.
The sun he saw, her inner beauty shone.
My one sure thing in this world on my own
was loving her. By my hand, lost my chance.
Not wanting me, she stopped my cruel advance;
I to Dark Continent, sin to atone.
Fight to claim what’s mine or dust. Much to Hades’
Surprise, both man and beast agreed to face
trials, then my battles won, didst win my soul.
Intent to win, ne’er counted on the shades
that torment, punish, ‘til her timely grace
gave sweet relief and helped to make me whole.

The soul. His proudest moment snatched from the ashes of his greatest shame. No other of his kind had ever thought, ever dared, to even desire it. The soul quest was to kill the beast he was in one way or another. He would die trying to wrest his spark from the ether or have himself so changed by its return as to be a different being. That was the model shown by Angelus, at any rate. “Naturally, the bugger had to make it seem like Angelus just left the building when he was the Great Souled One! Thought old Spike was gone any way the battle played out.”

He had done the one thing he truly had never believed himself capable of doing. He had hurt Buffy. For that, something drastic had been required. It could never be allowed to happen again. This had seemed the only answer. Hadn’t everyone always been reminding him that his lack, his unworthiness could be summed up in that one word: soulless?

“Thought if I could get the soul I’d never hurt her again. Thought she’d see that I was worthy of her love, a real partner for her.” Spike closed his eyes at the pain his naïve conclusion had encompassed. “Planned to show her that I’d not leave like all the other bloody ponces before, that I could be all she needed.”
He shuddered as he remembered how it really felt to have that spark back, it and all the ghosts attached to it. Every sin, every evil, was exposed and shown in stark relief against the gleaming goodness that was Buffy.

“Then I understood.” Spike closed his eyes in memory. “Knew full well how loathsome I’d been. No scrubbin’ the blood from my hands. Thought to stay far away from her, from Sunnyhell. Knew the last thing she’d want would be to see me again after….”

The promise. The thrice damned promise to watch over Dawn had drawn him back. He’d had just enough sanity left to figure a plan he’d thought would work to allow him to keep his promise yet spare Buffy from ever seeing him again.

“Had to rebuild the school over the bloody Hellmouth!” Spike shook his head in amazement at the utter stupidity of the humans in charge of that plan.

It had seemed a simple idea–be there where Dawn went to school, keep tabs on her without anyone knowing, keep the promise. He hadn’t planned on the First getting its claws in him or the power of the Hellmouth to take what was left of his wits and grind them like wheat.

For untold months before he opened the door and saw his bright angel there in that basement, he had chased rats and conversed with ghosts. Over the previous century, he had killed countless people, often without noting a thing about them. Over those months since, he became intimately acquainted with each and every one. He knew their names, who they had left behind, the hopes they had before meeting him, their dreams drained from them along with their blood. He knew each and every life he had destroyed. He met the monster.

VIII. Beneath You

Far gone in vice, a past no human knows.
Beneath your feet, to love you I did dare.
Sought to trap you but fell into the snare.
Unworthy, I struck a confident pose.
The one-time tender man she doth expose.
I was the ravening beast, meant to rend, tear,
Once yearning only for blood without care.
‘Neath her taming hand, now find soft repose.
Forgiveness given, new won soul doth sigh.
With such grace what matter be I lonely?
Indeed to be what she needs is not hard;
it is the least one like me can do. I
would gladly become dust, no more, only
to lie ‘neath the sunrise of your regard.

“She should have staked me there in that minute.” Spike would never understand the workings of Buffy’s mind. He had nearly raped her, was guilty of every imaginable horror and many no one could imagine, and yet she had been moved to pity at his state there in that basement.

She had taken him to Xander for shelter and a chance to reclaim some of his sanity. “That had to be a heated conversation,” Spike snorted. Still, the young man had let him move in at her urging.

Even after it was obvious that he was killing again, had tried to kill HER again in yet another basement, she had ignored his resignation, his yearning for the stake and had bundled him up and taken him into her home to this basement, his final cellar.

She had never said the word “forgive,” but her every action since his return had shown that his betrayal, his attack, had been consigned to the past. She believed in him! She had come for him.

IX. My Shame

To win your heart, celestial one, I’d be
anything you command, whatever you
require. I’d be remade, a creature new.
I’ve pulled myself inside out; you don’t see
The changes there in the man you set free.
Fathoms away the monster you once knew
Tamed, remade, in the fires of love that’s true,
all for a single bit of care from thee.
Know it well I lost the chance, have no right
You said “no” but my wounded heart shouted
O’er. No excuse have I, I should have seen
Your tear streaked face, emblems of your sad plight.
‘Twould never hurt you; I never doubted
so wrong. No penance dire could wash me white.

She might have forgiven, but he never would. In all of Spike’s existence, he had never believed himself capable of truly hurting anyone he loved. He had loved Buffy too, even before the soul. It might have been imperfect, selfish, but it had been real. She had deserved better from him.

No torture devised by the First in that horrible cave would come close to what he deserved for having betrayed her trust. Every kind touch or gentle word from her was like salt in an open wound to him. He would never be worthy of her forgiveness and any hope of winning her love was ludicrous.

“Doin’ it again, you pitiful sod,” Spike chided himself. “Makin’ it all about you and what you want. Buffy’s already given me more than any monster like me could hope to imagine.” He thought of his long journey to this point in his life, the changes, the challenges. Buffy had altered him far more than Dru’s bite had in that long ago alley. Where Dru had made him a monster, Buffy had made him a man.

 

Originally posted at http://seasonal-spuffy.livejournal.com/340225.html