It was dark and dismal, rain pouring down like the bloody heavens above were giving them the two finger salute in response to their grand heroic gesture. Wasn't exactly a confidence booster, and didn't say much towards greater causes and all that rot. In all honesty, it looked rather bleak. Looked pointless, point in fact, but who was he to say? This was Angel's fight, and he'd aligned himself into that. Angel says it's for the greater good, Spike had to believe him. He had to believe in something, might as well be the Poof's one last drive at reformation and atonement. One last 'sod off' to the Powers That Wank that popped Spike back and threw him into this 'Hero of The People' role he never even wanted in the first place.
Honestly, he never thought he'd be doing this again; the noble sacrifice, the last attempt to make a difference. The first go around, dying all epic-like in Sunnydale, it was mostly for Buffy. Yeah, it was him who stayed at the bottom of the Hellmouth, him who wore the amulet and took out the ubervamps, watching as the place crumbled to dust before he soon followed in suite - but if it wasn't for her, if Buffy hadn't have asked him to wear the amulet, Spike wouldn't have done it. He wouldn't have done a lot of things if it wasn't for her; good, bad, soullessly-inclined either. But giving up his unlife, giving it up so she could live, that's what before was mostly about.
Now Spike stood alone in the darkened alley behind an abandoned building, hidden in the comfort of the shadows as he waited for the others. The rain came down in sheets around him, the ever-present cold setting in with it. All he had to do was wait for the rest of them to show up: Angel, Wes, Gunn, and Illyria. He was the first to get there, and after pushing aside the initial pride that came at knowing he got his job done first, he immediately started to worry about the others. And that right there was something he hadn't begun to get used to. Caring about people, about these people. His colleagues, and on several alcohol-induced occasions, his friends.
He heard a noise off to his right; the sound of shoes pounding their way through puddles. Angel, of course, if the squeak of the lifts the Champ wore was any indication. There was a unique sense of drama and flair to him as he jogged his way into the alley, all dark avenger-like and big with the grand entrance. Spike watched Angel look around worriedly a second or two before he gave in and stepped out of the corner, slipping out of the relative safety of the shadows and back into the downpour.
"Boo," he called out, catching the attention of Angel. You'd think, what with him being a vampire and all, he'd have sensed Spike in the shadows. Guess things really were dire, so much to the point that Angel couldn't even tell when his own kind was standing five feet away. The beasties were honing in on them, and Spike knew it - felt the tinglies up and down his spine, felt his chest tightening in anticipation. This was it. The bad was coming, and this was really it.
Angel drew in a deep breath, looking around expectantly. "Anybody else?"
"Not so far," Spike answered, still staring hard at him. "You feel the heat?" He sure as hell felt it, which was all sorts of ironic given the cold rain that continued to drench their already soaked bodies. His duster lay heavy on him, and the rain dripped from his hair in an annoying and constant rhythm. His boots were soaked through, bloody ruined, and his jeans and shirt clung to him; all of it weighing him down.
"It's coming," Angel slowly replied, turning to look down the alley.
Spike snorted. "Finally got ourselves a decent brawl."
Another noise off to the side caught both of their attention, and this time it was Gunn who came running into view, staggering and carrying his axe over his head triumphantly. "Damn, how did I know the fang boys would pull through? You're lucky we're on the same side, dogs, cause I was on fire tonight." His voice lowered, giving way to the obvious pain he was in, as he came closer. "My game was tight," he muttered, just before losing his balance. Spike and Angel immediately were at his side, pulling him to a box as they sat him down on it.
Spike smelt the blood all over Gunn, saw the deep wounds through his torn clothes. "You're supposed to wear the red stuff on the inside, Charlie boy," he joked, but his voice fell flat with the seriousness of it.
Gunn didn't bother with an acknowledgement. He looked up, the pain he was trying to hide written all across his face. "Any word on Wes?"
Just then, Illyria jumped down from the rooftops, joining their huddle.
"Wesley's dead," she told them, matter-of-factly. The way the words fell from her mouth, the hint of anguish in them that Spike didn't know she was even capable of feeling, added to his own instant sense of pain. They all shared a brief silence over their fallen friend, grasping to connect with the reality of it. Wesley was dead. The first one down tonight, and suddenly it was all too real. "I'm feeling grief for him," Illyria continued bitterly. "I can't seem to control it. I wish to do more violence."
That was the language he understood - violence, carnage, mayhem. The sudden weight that had been put on Spike with the knowledge of Wes' death momentarily lifted. The tightening in his chest loosened and the tingling up and down his back became less evident as the legion o' Big Bads closed in on them. "Well," he drawled in response, glancing down the alleyway towards the oncoming demons. "Wishes just happen to be horses today."
"Among other things," Angel muttered.
Slowly and together, they turned towards the horde of beasties coming at them, unrelentingly, as far back as he could see and feel. A dragon swooped over their heads, screeching loudly as it fluttered above them, its massive clawed wings flapping up and down in a fast, painful looking rhythm. Every sort of demon was on the menu tonight; it was bloody hell on earth. Was worse than Sunnydale, worse than the bottom of the Hellmouth. At least then the baddies were contained. At least then it was just vampires they were dealing with and, lucky for Spike, he'd been surrounded by an entire girlband of tiny Slayers, not to mention Buffy. He'd had the amulet that did everything, took them all out, so all he had to do was stand there and wait for the burning to stop. Now... was pointless. The demons were just going to keep coming until the last of their bodies hit the ground, until the last of their dust washed away with the rain.
"Okay, you take the 30,000 on the left..." Gunn joked, bent over and still gripping his side tight.
Illyria looked down at him, scoffing. "You're fading. You'll last ten minutes at best."
Gunn sucked in hard, slowly standing up beside them, the pain deep enough for Spike to sense as he stumbled to join them. It hit him with a bit of respect, as Charlie struggled to straighten. "Then let's make 'em memorable."
Together they stood, the sounds of an Apocalypse growing closer. Howls and screams flooded the alley, the rain doing nothing to drown out the intensity and volume of it.
"So, in terms of a plan?" Spike asked tentatively, keeping an intent eye on the demons.
"We fight," Angel answered simply.
"Bit more specific," Spike pressed. A vague thought briefly flickered through his mind: he didn't have any weapons on him. Angel had a sword, all typically phallic-shaped as he took on the voiceless unofficial role of Leader, Gunn had the battle-axe he'd arrived with, Illyria had her time-warp mojo and that fun bit of strength he remembered all too well from previous training sessions with her - but Spike didn't have anything. His mission Angel had sent him on didn't exactly require a weapon. Steal the baby, fight off the sorry excuses for a clan that came at him, and get the hell out of there. Grabbing a weapon hadn't even crossed his mind as he safely made his way to the alley for the big group meet-up.
That was probably going to cost him his unlife a bit earlier than he'd hoped.
Angel stepped forward, drawing the hand wielding his sword up close as the demons fell upon them. "Well, personally," he answered. "I kinda wanna slay the dragon." A pause, all in the sake of it being dramatic, as the demons continued to swarm closer. Then, he lifted the sword and smirked. "Let's go to work." He finished the sentence with a swipe of his sword and the battle began.
It all blurred to black and red as Spike lunged forward, an animalistic growl escaping from his lips as his fists made their first connection. He spent no time on the first vampire he encountered, punching it in its face before quickly screwing off its head, moving onto the next before he'd missed a beat. Beside him, Angel's sword clanked loudly on the thick skin of some of the bigger demons. The loud, breathy grunts to his left told him Charlie was still in it, holding his own. Illyria was further into the alley, effortlessly taking on three and four demons at a time.
Spike couldn't help the grin that spread across his face as he charged further into the swarm, picking up a pry bar he found laid forgotten off to the side.
"Well, lookie what I found," he drawled appreciatively to a group of demons surrounding him. "Looks like ol' Spike isn't as weaponless as you thought," he breathed out, spinning around before the last of the words had left his mouth. He swung the bar down like a baseball bat, knocking over two of the charging demons. It sent them toppling over each other, and Spike had the pleasure of hearing the distinct sound of bone crunching when they hit the pavement.
Before he had time to crack a smile, he felt a blow to the back of his legs. He stumbled forward a foot or two before catching his balance, and ducked down instinctively as a clawed arm swung over his head, just missing contact. He clicked his tongue in disapproval as he jumped to his feet, whirling around, and jabbed the metal rod through the chest of the attacking demon, letting the pained yell of the demon mix with his own cry of adrenaline as he pulled it back out.
They were going down, no doubt about that, but fuck did it feel good.
He turned around, his back suddenly to Angel's. "Looks like that dragon's still circling above," he felt obligated to point out, growling as he dropped a kick to a vampire. The vampire fell backwards, taking down a few others with him, as Spike turned to his left, dodging another aimed blow at his head.
"Just saving the best for last," Angel grunted, swiping his own sword in a steady rhythm through limbs and various body parts.
Spike smiled, turning away and focusing on a new bunch of demons that encircled him. "This is rather sad," he told them, breathing in hard. "Whatever happened to fair play? It's the whole lot of you, against the four of us. That lacks all sort of battle etiquette." He grinned, raising his eyebrows upwards with a small 'bugger all' type shrug. "Then again, sod the bloody etiquette."
And with that, he threw himself into the thick of it again, swinging the pry bar around defensively, happy when the thing made any bit of contact. He felt fangs and claws shred through the thick layers of his duster and shirt, the pain temporarily numbing, but he lunged forward, willing himself to not stop. If he stopped, they'd trap him. Hone in on his weakness and take him down that way.
"Gunn!"
Angel's voice caught his attention as he pulled back from an attacking Fomes demon, and he turned his head in the direction that it came from just in time to see Gunn falling to the ground.
"Bloody hell," Spike muttered, and instinctively took off. He kicked through a wall of demons, punching past and pushing through, and jogged up to Gunn's side. Without hesitation, he dropped his makeshift weapon and grabbed Gunn by the underside of his arms, dragging him backwards through the alley littered with the bodies of the few demons they'd managed to kill until he felt the solidity of a wall behind him. He didn't have time to be doing this, there were too many baddies already on them and they weren't looking to stop any time soon, but he couldn't just leave Gunn out there. Not where he'd get trampled and forgotten. Wasn't a hero's way to go. "Charlie," he called out, quickly pushing Gunn up against the wall beside the boxes he hoped would cover him just enough to not be noticed. "Stay here, alright. Don't move."
"Spike?" Gunn lifted his head, blinking fast and hard. "It hurts," he choked out, grabbing his side. Blood stained his clothes and seeped through his fingers, the rain doing nothing to thin the steady stream of it.
"Yeah, well who'da thunk being ripped at by beasties would do that," Spike drawled sarcastically, eliciting a pained laugh out of Gunn. He leaned forward, pushing Gunn up against the wall one last time. "Stay here, you're gonna be fine, alright? Angel's out there, whacking away with the rage of a bloody hundred-man army, and we all know how well Angel does with the whacking." He straightened, grinning, and started to back away from Gunn, back out towards the fight. With a smirk, he added, "Good thing that soul clause has a loophole for happiness of the self-inflicted kind."
"Hey." Gunn pushed himself up, leaning on his elbows. He coughed and winced from the effort, his breath coming out more ragged. "Here, man," he forced out, tossing his battle-axe to Spike. Spike caught it, pausing to stare at Gunn, shocked and grateful. Gunn's arms gave way and he collapsed back down, clutching at the hole in his chest and stomach again. "Go give him hell, for Wes and Fred."
After a nod and one last glance, Spike turned back around, only making it a few feet before he was completely surrounded by another collection of demons. "This is getting real old, real quick," he sighed, his chest tightening as they closed in on him. They snarled at him, some hissing, and all trying to look menacing as they started to pounce.
Before the inevitable attack, one of the circling demons just in front of him screamed out in pain. His head came clean off the next second as a sword swiped through his neck, sending his headless body falling limply to the ground below. A quick glance upwards and Spike saw Angel smiling at him, in place of where the demon had just stood. "Hi," the Champ smirked, before spinning around and disappearing back into the mass of blackness without another word.
Spike didn't hesitate as he raised the axe upwards, swinging down hard and making all sorts of squishy contact with random body parts behind him. Bastard demons, circling him. He grinned appreciatively as the axe cut through with relative ease, carrying on without stopping to bask in the feel of it.
He sensed Angel again as he slammed through a bunch of demons beside him. "Hey, Champ," he called out breathlessly, spinning around and using his momentum to forcefully kick three more attacking demons away from him. He straightened, gripping the axe at his side tight as he stopped fighting for a few calming seconds. "What do you say after we finish up here, you give me that Viper, for real this time. Think a noble sacrifice such as this merits a nice shiny, red power-engine reward." He growled out the last words as he got knocked in the face, the force of it sending him staggering backwards, running him into several other vampires in the process.
"Yeah," Angel ground out, taking several kicks in the stomach. He spun around, and in the time it took Spike to rid himself of his trio of attacking vamps, the Poof had taken out his own as well. "But you're missing the whole idea behind the word 'sacrifice'." He ducked down just as a wooden stake aimed for his heart flew over his head, barely missing being dusted. "They've got stakes?" Angel complained, completely unimpressed as he quickly straightened. "That lacks all kinds of etiquette, especially given the good guy-to-bad guy ratio."
"That's what I said," Spike laughed, breathing it out hard. He was pushed forward, feeling fists connect with the back of his head, but ignored it all the same as he righted himself. "They're not stopping," he cried out in the general direction of Angel. He raised the blunt end of the axe upwards and dropped it back down in one swift motion, hitting the demon behind him as it came down hard. "It's like they sent out the whole bloody lot of the underworld - Agaric demons, the Order of Taraka, sodding Carrion and Flarat demons--"
"The Scourge," Angel added, nodding his head towards a group of uniform-clad demons marching silently towards them.
"Bloody hell!" Spike punctuated his frustration with a few punches, before leaning back on his heels, observing the chaos playing out before his eyes. Hard not to appreciate it, all things considered. "I bet some of them Initiative wankers are filtered throughout here," he muttered bitterly. "Bleeding governmental toy soldiers." He caught the sight of unmistakable blue leather out of the corner of his eye, grabbing his attention. "Hey, Blue," he called out, turning towards Illyria. "Gramps needs help." He nodded towards Angel, who had stumbled over and was quickly being surrounded by an assortment of demons, none of them looking like they just wanted to talk.
Illyria raised her head upwards in defiance, clearly not pleased with him ordering her around. Eventually she walked off without protest, headed in Angel's direction, her arms raised in front of her as she batted away the smaller demons stupid enough to charge her.
A roar caught Spike off guard, and in a blur of claws and palely colored flesh, he was knocked down hard. Gunn's axe dislodged from his grip as he hit the ground with a painful thud, a Suvolte demon quickly climbing its way on top of him. Bloody great. He hated these things, on account of that whole mishap with the Slayer and the ex-Soldier back in Sunnydale a few years before, and this one here wasn't earning it any bit of credibility by sitting on him.
The demon reared back, elbow jutted out and fist clenched tight, and growled as he came down, punching Spike in the face with enough power to split his lip open. Kept punching, again and again, undeterred by Spike's weak efforts to pull himself free. He felt the blows in painful detail, his head bouncing hard off the pavement each time his face connected with knuckles, the blood pouring out of his mouth and sputtering upwards from the force. The exhaustion he'd been too energized to feel started to settle in in traitorous form. He tried to move, but was pinned entirely underneath the weight of the heavy demon. He tried to look around to see if Angel or Illyria were near enough to pull the thing off of him, tried to call out for help, but his words died on his lips, drowned out by his own blood.
He could feel unconsciousness looming behind closed eyelids every time he blinked, and... fuck, this wasn't how he wanted to go. He'd hardly made an impact in the number of demons they'd killed, hardly made any difference at all. This wasn't grand or heroic, it was sad and pathetic - and bugger that if he was just gonna let this sorry-fuck of a demon sit on top of him and beat him into unconsciousness. Might as well rip open his shirt and draw a straight line to his heart and end his unlife now, a bloody step-by-step guide to staking him.
He growled, the demon inside awoken and royally pissed off, and began to struggle underneath the green lard of about-to-have-its-ass-kicked on top of him, thrashing wildly until the punching stopped. He bucked his hips upwards, and when the demon on top of him tensed in surprise, he used that leverage to roll himself onto his side, grabbing the leg of the demon and ripping it off of him in one fluid motion.
Free, he jumped up, adrenaline heightening his senses as he bent over and picked up his battle-axe. He didn't even have time to whack off any of the demon's parts in retaliation before he was hit again, the force of the blow sending him stumbling sideways into a group of demons, all who looked none too pleased by his sudden presence. He caught himself before he could topple over, straightening as he sucked in an unneeded breath air, and swallowed the bit of blood he inhaled by doing so. "Evenin', ladies," he drawled pantingly, and was quickly ducking the next second as fists shot out. He dodged their arms and squeezed in between their bodies until he was no longer enclosed, only stopping long enough to toss his elbow behind him and feel it connect with one of their heads before he ran, fumbling towards the place he last saw Illyria and Angel.
He came upon Illyria first, her standing in the same spot he'd last left her and looking stone-faced with her head cocked to the side. He looked around for Angel, not seeing the billowy black coat or feeling the familiar tingling that told him family was near. "Where's the Champ, Blue?" he asked, out of breath, as he wiped the still flowing blood off of his lip with his free arm.
They stood there for long seconds, on the outskirts of a battle that was still raging on despite their lack of presence. The only sound heard was his shallow breathing as he deeply inhaled, sharply exhaled, panting from exhaustion.
Illyria did nothing but tilt her head even further to the side, as if she was contemplating what to say. Finally, with an impartial squint, she pointed to the ground. He followed her thin finger until his weary eyes focused on a lone sword settled amongst demon parts and spotted with blood. It took him a second before he noticed the thick layer of dust that the sword lay upon, the blood clumping the dust up in small, red balls.
"Your leader was killed," she spoke out evenly. "He called for me, but I was too late. He was dust before I had arrived at his side."
Spike's head spun, his stomach rebelling against him as he stared at the dust. Angel's dust. Bloody hell. Bloody fucking hell. He tore his gaze away from the ground, the sense of loss overwhelming, and turned to look at Illyria, suddenly reminded of Gunn who he'd left laying for dead and hell-knows-what in the back corner of the alley. "Gunn?"
He tried to move then, tried to run to check on Gunn, see if maybe he was still alive, if maybe the demons had left him alone, but his legs didn't want to work with him. They were dead, useless, holding him to this one spot against his will. And then everything started to slow down around him, everything muting down to a deafening silence. The demons who were at once in constant movement were now hardly moving, everything being played out in an exaggeratedly slow pace. The rain that had incessantly been falling now had seemingly stopped altogether. The noises that had filled the alley, the screams and varying other battle cries from the assortment of collected demons, had now cut off completely.
Spike sucked in hard at the realization of what was happening. Illyria was working her time-warp mojo on them.
Before he could think to protest, let alone think to question it all, a sudden stab of pain hit him, and he dropped Gunn's axe, clutching at his side. He looked up, blinking back the pain, and saw that Illyria was staring intently at him. Unvoiced questions were being asked behind her eyes, but before he could catch them, her right hand had clamped down on his forearm. An instant sort of 'Oh, shit!' feeling came over him, knowing that this wasn't just a hand being offered for support, and when his gaze jumped back up to hers, she was already looking away.
He opened his mouth and widened his eyes, needing to stop her, but her hand was already making a circular movement, and in the next instant, before any sound could pass between his lips, everything had turned white. It felt like the world gave way beneath his feet and he felt himself tumbling forward, a sense of weightlessness surrounding him until Illyria's hold on him loosened. His eyes slammed shut, popping back open just as quickly, the familiar solidness of the ground back in place the next second.
"Bloody hell," he growled as soon as he was sure that she had stopped working her magic. He blinked, trying to force away the white that clouded his sight. Everything was too calm, too quiet to be the alleyway. There was no rain, no screams, no tension. He couldn't feel a bloody thing, and the nagging instinctive feeling in his gut that something was off wasn't easing his rising anxiety. "Blue," he shouted, trying to get a sense for her nearness. "What the bloody hell did you do?!"
He looked around for the first time, the white in his eyes having reduced itself to just sporadic blotches of brightness every time he blinked, and... what the bloody fuck? This couldn't be right. He blinked, spinning around as he looked around him disbelievingly. They were in a cemetery. Not just any cemetery, this was his cemetery. This was Sunnydale.
"Illyria!" he called out, only then noticing that she wasn't at his side. He spun around again, his duster flapping at his sides. "Blue?!" he yelled, and again got nothing. Not a good sign that he'd lost his tour guide. And speaking of - where the hell was he? Sunnydale, yeah - but how? Sunnydale was dust, as in no longer in existence, as in big, huge crater that he personally could avow for given the fact that he was the one who created the bleeding hole to begin with.
"Spike?"
Spike whirled around to the direction that all-too familiar voice came from. His heart - he was pretty damn sure - skipped a nonexistent beat as he drew in a deep breath, seeing a figure bathed in moonlight a couple hundred feet away. He knew that figure. He knew that voice. He knew that golden hair that shone from the dim lights that lined the walkway of the cemetery, and he sure as hell knew just who it was causing that instantaneous tightness in both his chest and pants.
"Buffy?"
squawks
05/18/17 04:16 am
pj! I remember wishing one of your stories would be finished seriously about a decade ago. Amazing. I just tried an old password I used to use and amazingly got in too. Memories!
pj
03/20/17 01:20 am
10 yrs later, i finally rem my username and password. Pari, you rock. Hope you are well.
Rabbit_moon1
12/23/16 01:12 pm
I donate every month. Please donate to keep this site up!
AudryDaluz1
10/06/16 08:34 am
Great post.
Chrissel
08/31/16 03:45 pm
And anyone else who loves this site, it's worth mentioning there's a nifty little "Donate" option just below the shout box here! ;)
Chrissel
08/31/16 03:43 pm
Just wanted to take a moment to thank Pari and all the mods for maintaining such a great site!
05/18/17 04:16 am
pj! I remember wishing one of your stories would be finished seriously about a decade ago. Amazing. I just tried an old password I used to use and amazingly got in too. Memories!
pj
03/20/17 01:20 am
10 yrs later, i finally rem my username and password. Pari, you rock. Hope you are well.
Rabbit_moon1
12/23/16 01:12 pm
I donate every month. Please donate to keep this site up!
AudryDaluz1
10/06/16 08:34 am
Great post.
Chrissel
08/31/16 03:45 pm
And anyone else who loves this site, it's worth mentioning there's a nifty little "Donate" option just below the shout box here! ;)
Chrissel
08/31/16 03:43 pm
Just wanted to take a moment to thank Pari and all the mods for maintaining such a great site!