Shattered
Twilight drowns the tears...
This soul can no longer shed
And darkness buries that same soul...
Within the blackness of night's bed
A thousand nights of pain and death...
Of fear, voices begging for peace
These are the things I would endure...
For one quiet moment of release
Beneath her evil soulless monster...
Words to make a soul writhe and bleed
Drowning in memories of her pain...
As soulless evil, overtakes loves need
To stay and remember listen to her words...
The gift of her scorn filled hate
More fitting punishment than any self derived torture...
From this my newly souled state
For moments or hours I find stillness...
Within the past's twisted embrace
But too soon I am lost as my soul it cries out...
With the memory of her face
Shattered trust like shattered tiles...
Gasping pain and betrayal in her eyes
Burdened with a thousand thousand deaths
But nothing so cruel as her cries
Gone now the hope of the man...
Killed by the unworthiness of the thing
Kept company by past faces full of truth...
Welcome for the pain they bring
To die a blessing but death a gift...
That this creature does not seek
Hell would be a blessing of torment...
But this soul trapped inside is weak
Haunted by the pasts voices...
Madness my friend in the harsh light of day
I pray it take and enfold cradle me in insanity...
I beg of them all please stay
The voices say that soon it will be time...
For the dance that does not end
But for now the darkness will shelter me...
Constant madness my only and willing friend.
What is real and what is false...
Neither darkness nor the light show the truth
But blood on my hands and copper on my tongue...
And a song long gone as proof
The vampire lay on a makeshift bed made of things that humans threw away.
Soiled rags and old drop cloths, even an old worn carpet that he'd scavenged from somewhere, during his infrequent trips to the world above.
He tossed and turned fitfully, clutching desperately at the vestiges of sleep that still lingered, his mind trying to dive back into the safety of the horror of his dreams rather than face the despair of wakefulness.
Spike didn't know much these days, and what he did know was confusing and disjointed but he knew one thing no matter how insane the soul had made him.
HE HAD HURT THE GIRL.
It was a constant mantra in his head every time he was conscious and with the knowledge also came the pictures in his head. The ones that made the guilt and pain of 120 years of mayhem and destruction pale in comparison.
God he was so fucked.
He had killed and maimed more people than he could remember.
Hell, every time he closed his eyes his victims paraded before him in a long and streaming line of the dead... His dead. All of them so clearly defined in his memory that it was as if he was still with them... killing them...over and over and over again.
Until the faces the screams and the begging all ran together into one cacophonous cry of pain and fear, which forced him from the ever cycling nightmares, leaving him gasping for unneeded breath.
And that was when the real horror began... that was when he remembered he'd HURT THE GIRL.
At first he didn't know who it was that his soul was telling him he'd hurt, but after his first wound based delirium had faded, the memory flashes had gotten clearer.
White tiles and the sharp smell of fear... Cries of pain and quiet desperate words.
ASK ME AGAIN WHY I COULD NEVER LOVE YOU...
And finally the memory... the knowledge, that he had tried to rape the woman he loved... tried to rape Buffy.
As his body grew stronger, healing itself of the wounds he'd gathered on his damned quest, his mind grew weak, less able to stand the battering of the souls grief at his actions.
But it wasn't the dreams when he slept that were destroying him, or even the visits from the creature that pretended to be both friend and foe. Hell he was insane, not stupid. He could still sense when he was being played and manipulated.
No it wasn't any of those things. It was the memory of the hatred in her eyes as he pinned her to the bathroom floor, trying to force her to feel something that he had no business... no right to expect.
Not even the knowledge that he'd been an unsouled evil demon with no conscience could banish the agony of his guilt over what he had done to Buffy.
It didn't matter because HE HAD HURT THE GIRL.
So Spike rocked and keened and prayed for a visit from the evil that so often came to taunt and tease... whispering and cajoling. Trying to control and seduce him.
Because when it was with him the memories faded and the horror of what he'd done to her... to his love... receded. Leaving him with nothing more than his somehow, simple cleansing insanity.
Today it had been Drusilla, taunting him with the kills they'd shared. And then Darla, her contempt raining down on his head like she had done so often when he was first turned.
He had cringed and writhed under the regard of these lies that wore familiar faces, but found himself praying that whatever the creature was that was playing with him would stay just a little longer... Lie to him a little more. Anything, to avoid the memory of white tiles and the feel of soft struggling flesh, flesh bruised by the monster who could never be a man.
He shivered and cowered and played the game, and even when it donned her face to spit hard and final truths at him, he stuck to the script, knowing in his heart of hearts that this was not his death that paced the room.
He cried and whimpered, playing the part perfectly as the Buffy shaped thing spouted words that he barely understood. He used her image as a shield to protect himself from the horror of what he'd done.
Because after all, this wasn't real, nothing was real. Only the guilt and the pain were real... and only the slayer could touch him now.
And this was not Buffy... his life was hers for the taking and this thing had not taken it.
Not even ... when she'd touched him.
She closed the door to her room. Leaning against it for a moment, she tried to catch the breath that she'd somehow left behind in the dark maze under the high school.
He had come back, and every thing she thought she would feel was absent.
Somewhere deep down inside, where the slayer resided when she wasn't dealing death, she was angry... Extremely angry.
But here in her mind and Heart, the reality that was just a girl... just Buffy, was glad... so very very glad.
She'd looked into those piercing blue eyes that she'd last seen holding her down on the floor of her bathroom and somehow the girl had over ruled the slayer.
He was back... he'd come back. And she knew now, with that sort of oft ignored and barely tolerated inner sense that he was back for good... for her... because of her.
And that he would never leave her again.
She'd left him of course, mad and raving... down there in the bowels of the new High school.
Left him, because for now she needed to be away from the promise she could see in his eyes, even overlaid as they were by the madness.
She left him because if she hadn't she might never be able to again, and she wanted... NO... needed time. Time to reconcile the woman and the slayer to the fact that he had left her like all the others, but unlike them he'd come back.
Not because she was in trouble... not out of duty... not because of a mission.
No this soulless demon... this man, who should not be able to love or feel guilt had come back for no other reason than HER.
From the moment she'd entered his crypt needing him to watch over her sister. The moment she'd realized he'd done what she never thought he'd do. That was the moment for her that she'd finally given in to the shame and the sorrow.
Not over what he'd done to her. NO never that.
But rather what she'd done to him.
She'd finally forced him to do the one thing that not even her death had achieved.
She'd made him leave.
No matter what they thought or said, no matter how harsh their words. Not even Dawns anger or shock could shake her from the knowledge that what had happened in the bathroom between them had been a violation of love and trust... just not hers.
She had taunted him and abused him, beaten him and fucked him.
Hidden their affair from every body.
Played games with his head and his heart... all in the name of fear.
She had gone to him and given him a taste of what was to him in his own words, the closest to heaven he'd ever get. And then watched calmly while her ex boyfriend, a man who had cheated and left, destroyed his home and the last of his hope.
And even then she couldn't resist digging the knife in just a little deeper.
She'd gone to him later... treated him like the man she'd always denied he was... and ended it.
And still it wasn't enough for her.
NO, not the great and mighty slayer.
He'd come to her to apologize... to talk, because he'd had the bad judgment to sleep with another woman for solace and comfort.
And what had she done?
She'd given him the crumb... the one he'd begged for, so long before.
And then after saying those few words that she knew would give him hope, she'd deliberately crushed that hope... practically in the same breath.
Of course he'd attacked her... tried to make her feel. Hell, she'd been the one to tell him that he was the only one that could.
Even when he was grabbing at her, pleading for her to let him in... for her to love him.
Even then, when she screamed and flailed in panic knowing full well that as the slayer, even injured as she was, she could push him off at any time.
EVEN THEN, there was a part of her that was thinking this is it... this will make him leave. This has to make him leave.
Oh yeah she was so fucked up.
And she'd been right... He'd left.
She'd known the moment she won. She'd seen it in his eyes after she finally tired of the game and kicked him off.
She'd seen the horror and the guilt... the anger and the pain, and above all she'd seen his resolve.
The knowledge of his leaving was written large in his eyes as she threw those last final... nail in the coffin words at him.
ASK ME AGAIN... WHY I COULD NEVER LOVE YOU.
And She'd won, he'd left, and she was alone... finally completely alone.
Of course when she'd gone to his crypt and he'd not been there part of her had been surprised. After all, knowing the truth and accepting it were two completely different things.
And of course she'd had a lot on her mind with Tara dying and Willows descent into madness, so that at first she'd felt nothing more than a total sense of betrayal and anger when she realized he had really gone.
Typical screwed up Buffy.
She'd finally driven him out of her life, and she had the gall to actually be pissed that he wasn't around when she needed him.
Oh yeah, she was a real hero.
Of course, it was only moments before the full realization had hit her, and then she'd nearly drowned in the grief and pain, the realization that she loved him... and he'd left her.
It wasn't like Angel, she'd had no time to brood and mourn, no time to rage and curse. She had a world and a sister to save again, and the knowledge of the fact that it was her doing... her that had finally driven him away. Well she would think about it later... And she did.
Much later after the world had been saved; Not by her... but by a boy and a yellow crayon.
Later after the dead had been buried and the broken girl that used to be her best friend had been taken away over the sea... then... it was then she faced what she had pushed out of her mind.
Wrapped up within his duster... the smell of him cocooning her in familiarity, she had cried tears of sorrow and guilt... for the both of them.
For so many nights that she'd lost count, she went out and did her duty, slaying the evil alone in the dark. Only to return home to face up to her memories and regrets, wrapped in the last piece of him she had left.
And now he was back... and apparently insane.
Sitting on the edge of her bed, she brought the familiar comfort of his scent laden duster up to her face, breathing in deeply she pondered the fact that she'd done this to him. She' the slayer had forced him from her life, and somehow in the process driven him completely mad. And she had no Idea how to fix it.
Sobbing quietly she rocked for many long minutes, releasing all her pent up grief and relief over the fact that even with all she'd done, he still in his madness had found his way home... to her.
Then finally cried out she straightened, and with a resolve that he surely would have applauded she called forth the slayer and gathered herself together.
He was back. He was insane. He was dirty and wounded... he was a vampire.
Soulless and chipped but still a vampire and she was the slayer...
Even after everything, all that had happened between them. The fights, the pain the sex and the tears.
None of it mattered, not any of it.
Not all her friends dislike, or her watchers condemnation.
Because deep down inside, she was the slayer and she knew her duty... the duty to protect what was hers... to protect those that she loved. She knew what was right and wrong.
And she knew one thing better than she knew any other.
She knew Spike.
And he was hers.
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!