Sweet Spirit Of Fire

By Kallysten

The first light of dawn was barely a caress on the horizon when William emerged from the most delicious dream. Images danced in his awakening mind, filling him with wondrous feelings. Ignoring his body’s needs, he fumbled for his glasses on the night table, and, still in his nightclothes, went to sit at his desk and lit the oil lamp there. Slightly shaky hands gathered a blank sheet of paper, his favorite quill, the half empty inkbottle, and with fervor he placed the writing instrument to the paper, eager to transcribe the beauty that had haunted his night.

Words fled.

As he stared at the widening ink stain on the paper, his mind drifted back to his dream. The most beautiful woman had been there, a woman he had courted, seduced with rhymes, sweet attentions, witty puns. A woman whose touch on his hand – no, not even that, simply the memory of a fantasy touch – was setting him on fire. A woman who had bestowed upon him the most beautiful smile, so radiant it had lit her whole face, blinding him, igniting sparks in the depths of her eyes. Her hazel eyes.

The realization brought a momentary frown to his brow. Hazel eyes? But Cecily didn’t have hazel eyes! Had he dreamt of someone else than his muse? He was horrified and terribly guilty at the idea of being unfaithful to her in his sleep. Whom had his mind conjured, if not her? Who did he know who had hazel eyes? He couldn’t think of anyone. And yet, he had to have gotten at least a glimpse of her during one of those dreadful soirees. He just couldn’t have imagined her completely.

For long minutes, he tried to summon the vision back, but all he had left of her were vague memories, imprecise images, and that feeling of warmth, of love, so deep he could have drowned in it. In her.

With a wistful sigh, he abandoned his desk, knowing she was now lost to him, whoever she had been. Running a hand through his hair in a fruitless effort to discipline his mussed up locks, he walked to the window and pulled the drapes open. London looked gray and dreary, still asleep. But far in the distance, the sun was lighting low clouds on fire, and the sight brought a last fugitive image to his memory. A hint of hair gleaming as fiercely as the purest gold.

Smiling at the new day that was rising, he hurried back to his paper, and quickly scribbled a few lines.

Sweet spirit of fire,
Enchanted muse of my nights,
Shall you teach me
How to find love’s delights?

He wished he could have found the words to draw the most precise picture of her, but, strangely enough, his inaptitude was not frustrating him as it usually did. Instead, he felt confident that, some day, he would meet her at last, and when he did, he would have the words to tell her.

---

The memory came back abruptly a few nights after he realized that he loved her. Loving her was bad enough – what vampire worthy of his fangs would actually feel anything but hatred for the Slayer? But this… Remembering a dream that had taken place more than a century ago, when at the time he hadn’t even been able to remember what she looked like… It was insanity. Too many years with Dru, probably.

Sitting on the roof of his crypt in the middle of the night, away from Harm’s incessant ramblings, he took long drags on his cigarette and allowed his mind to retrace the dream from beginning to end now that he actually remembered it. It had been the Slayer, yes, no doubt there. Long golden hair, hazel eyes, and a smile to die again for. Her clothes were that of another era, but that had to be expected, poncy William could dream of a woman who wasn’t born yet, but he would never have dared imagine a lady wearing the kind of clothes the Slayer fancied. In the dream, he could see William, and he had trouble not to think of the wanker as of himself, offering the girl a box of chocolate, flowers, reciting poetry for her, making her laugh with puns and clever jokes. All the tricks a gentleman might try to win the heart of a lady.

The thought made him laugh, a short, dry, bitter laugh. He wasn’t a gentleman, now, and it was hard to think of the Slayer as a lady. She was a weapon, a little spitfire, a bitch, too, at times, a hell of a woman, but a lady? Nah.

The question was, what was he going to do about it? One thing was certain, he was not going to write poetry for her. That could only lead to disaster. Flowers… too cliché. Chocolate… cliché, too, but he seemed to remember, from his time chained up in the Watcher’s house, that the girl had a weakness where chocolate was concerned. Puns and clever jokes… yeah, he was good at that. He could also help her with patrol, make himself useful, get closer to her, and…

And what in the bloody hell was he thinking?! This was the Slayer, dangerous little girl with too many stakes hidden on her luscious body, and getting close to her would undoubtedly result in him getting staked without warning. Or worse, rejected again.

And yet…

And yet, if he had dreamt of her a hundred years before, it had to mean something, right? He didn’t believe in that soulmates business, and for good reason, he didn’t have a soul after all, but for a bloke to dream of a girl that would be born a century after his death… It just couldn’t be a coincidence. And so, he had to try, at least, to see if there was a chance that she might come to like him. And if she could…

Sweet spirit of fire…

---

The light at the entrance of the cave faded, another sun had set. Spike didn’t notice. He never noticed anymore. His mind was full of images and sounds, too full to allow him to react to anything that happened outside.

He had stopped screaming long before, his voice having died from too much use. He had stopped crying, too, because he simply didn’t have a single tear left in his body. He was hungry, so very hungry, but the idea of blood, any kind of blood, was sickening. And so, he just remained there, huddled in a corner that sunlight never reached, too lost to realize that hunger, inaction, solitude would only make things worse with each passing day.

He must have fallen asleep, or passed out, because he dreamt. Except, he knew he was dreaming. He knew it because the dream was familiar, experienced for the first time a century before, mere weeks before everything had changed, and remembered a couple of years before, when the meaning of it all had finally struck him.

In his dream, he was seducing a sweet lady who wore his Slayer’s face. He knew it was only an illusion, though, because while the dream girl had succumbed to his advances, Buffy, the real Buffy, never had. Oh, he had gotten to enjoy the pleasures of her flesh, yes. But never more than that. She had never offered him what he had yearned so much for. Her heart. When she had not given, he had tried to take. And now, it was his own heart he was trying to take out of his chest, along with that damned spark that had set everything on fire and suppressed all shadows to show him what he had done in a blinding light.

Once upon a time, the dream had filled him with joy. Joy that someone, even someone he didn’t know, someone he had thought he had invented, could love him so. Later, it had given him hope. Hope that this dream had happened for a reason, that it was somehow a promise of things to come. Now, it was slowly bringing him back to reality and sanity. The girl in his dream didn’t exist any more than the ponce who had seduced her. The real girl, the one who was fire, light and life, the one he would never have, the one for whom he had gotten his soul back, was right now on the other side of the planet. She was going to need help, sooner or later, because she lived on the Hellmouth and bad things had a tendency to happen there. He wouldn’t be able to help if he remained curled up in a god-forsaken cave. He wouldn’t be able to show her what he had become, under her teaching.

Slowly, with painful protests from muscles that hadn’t been used in too long, he managed to get to his feet, and, swaggering like a drunk man, he walked out of the cave.

---

They had not talked. She had come to him, come with him, they had danced one last time together, but they had not said a word. What felt like an eternity before, it used to infuriate him when she refused to talk, to answer to his own words, praises or curses, and he often made it his goal to pull out a word, any word, from her unwilling lips. On this one night, he understood. Understood that sometimes words were grossly inadequate, however well chosen they were. Understood that actions could replace them advantageously.

And so, without words, with only his skin, fingers, eyes and lips, with soft touches and softer kisses, Spike had told her everything. Told her all that she meant for him, all that he saw in her, all the strength he found in her, told her his regrets, apologized, and, above all, again and again, told her how deeply and sincerely he loved her. Despite what they both were, beyond their not so glorious past, even if they would never have a future together, he loved her.

In return, she had given more than she ever had before, more than he thought possible. And as she slept in his arms, now, trusting him with what might be – but not if he could help it – her last night on this earth, he refused to let himself wonder what exactly she had said in these caresses she had bestowed upon him. That she trusted him, believed in him, had chosen him to stand at her side the next day was enough. It didn’t matter anymore to him – not so much – to know if she loved him, if she ever had, if she ever could. It was too late for him to care about such things.

But one thing was ever so clear in his mind. Loving her had made him a better man – and no, the soul had nothing to do with it. By falling for her he had discovered what it meant exactly to love. Romantic dreams from a century before had faded, and been replaced by something where grand declarations mattered far less than simple actions.

Somehow, he regretted not having ever told her that she had haunted his nights long before she was even born. Would she have laughed at the notion? Smiled? Found a truth in it that he refused to even consider anymore? Maybe it was better like this.

With words so soft they barely stirred her hair an inch away from his lips, he recited to her words another incarnation of himself had written many years before, altering them slightly to fit the lovely creature in his arms and their past.

Sweet spirit of fire,
Enchanted muse of my nights,
I thank thee for teaching me
The truth of love’s delights.

Pressing the ghost of a kiss to her shoulder, he joined his Slayer, his muse in sleep for what was to be the last night of his life, until another started.

~Fin~