Disclaimer: None of the characters from BtVS belong to me. They are all Joss.

Summary: Future fic. Set ten years after sometime in season six.

“What knowledge have we of anything, save through our own minds? All happenings are in the mind.”
-George Orwell

Author’s Note: This was a bit harder to write than my other fics, mostly because everything represents an aspect of Spike. Tell me if the plot seems completely obvious, because I tried to make it as confusing as possible. Song and lyrics are “Last Ride In” by Greenday.

********

The deep rumble of the percussions, the moaning hiss of the guitars, they permeate the air of the club, their angry and metallic pulsations screaming into the blood of every patron. This is a place of those who believe themselves dead to the world, those that convince themselves that life is a curse that they would be better off without.

The dance floor is crowded with writhing girls, teenagers with heavy black eye liner and lips of dried blood, their young breasts straining through the ebony gossamer of their dresses. Boys are here too, with narrow, empty faces and thin bird-like limbs; they are not yet men, yet their eyes are hollow and jaded as they strive to maintain an aura of bored indifference.

Those who cannot retain this facade turn to the drugs, and their blood burns with the chemicals that they use to escape their lives. Most of these children are upper class, and they turn to this place because they feel their lives are too good, because they want to be undeserving of their mansions and sport cars, their butlers and their summer homes in Europe.

And so they drift like the hazy smoke of a joint, waiting to crumble.

He sits at the bar, staring into the mirror of clouded blue in which he does not reflect, feeling the presence of The Ghosts.

The whisky, his poison of choice for tonight, burns his throat as it flows down his palate. When he gets like this, when The Ghosts haunt his memories, he turns to alcohol. Tequila, bourbon, vodka, scotch ... it doesn’t matter. Just as long as it is strong enough to encase his veins in fire, to numb his mind, to make The Ghosts leave, or more truly, to make him forget that they are there.

The Ghosts. He cannot recall when it was that they first started to haunt him, when he first needed to drown his memories in binges of hard liquor. But they have been there for awhile now, glimpses of gaseous beings in elevators, department stores, shadowy figures under the yellow lights of the streets in which he prowled.

They haunt him. They don’t let him forget. Their eyes burn into the very soul of his demon, and he feels it as they judge him, as they find him wanting.

He had tried. And he had failed. So why wouldn’t they leave him the fuck alone?

As he tosses down his next shot, as he revels in the tongues of pain as they lace down his throat, he sees her azure reflection above the bar. He refuses to turn his head at the smell of her mortal flesh as she slides onto the seat next to him, as she places a warm hand on the shoulder of his worn duster.

Another crazy bird, another young woman with too much going for her, with a desperate need to destroy herself.

And he could help her out with that, he could sink his long fangs into the tender flesh of her jugular, he could rip the hot blood from her veins and crush her heart in his preternaturally strong fist. She would probably love him for it.

She cups his chin with her bony fingers, turning his face so that he is looking directly into her viridian orbs. Her eyes are ringed in smudged charcoal like bruises, her lips like pigeon-blood rubies, wet and glittering in the black lights over the bar. Her hair is long and black, and it falls over her face in luxurious waves, making her eyes glimmer like emeralds in contrast.

He realizes that she is a rarity in a place such as this, a faceted diamond among polished stones. Life shines in her eyes, full and vital and powerful, and he can see that she is infatuated with it.

With life.

Her dark lips curve into a smile, and he sees her as an echo of what he once was, and he realizes that he would have that joy of life again.

But he knows that it is too late for that, that there is nothing left of him but a hard and brittle shell of death and blood, of nicotine and alcohol. There is nothing left for him but various intoxicating substances, hard fucking, and The Ghosts.

Always The Ghosts.

Her lips meet his, and he can feel the warmth of her mortal blood as her flesh brushes against his own.

Her eyes are luminescent and glowing, glittering in her face like shards of green glass with her excitement. He imagines the fear he could place there instead, the way her crimson lips would curl as she screamed when she his true face, the way her heart rate would escalate so beautifully.

He pushes her away with a growl, he will not drain her, no matter how much he craves the taste of her blood.

She presses against him again, and this time he feels the point of her stake against his heart. He nearly laughs aloud at the realization that she is a Slayer, and a smile twists his white lips as she tells him to move outside.

He shakes his head with a bitter chuckle, motioning to the bartender for another shot. The pressure of the stake against his chest intensifies, and he turns to this nameless Slayer, his eyes like black ice in his chiseled face. “Try it,” he tells her, “it won’t work. They won’t let it work.”

A frown creases her forehead, lowering her full eyebrows over her brilliant eyes. With a sharp twist she moves to plunge the stake into his heart.

At that very moment a young patron, his eyes wide and bloodshot from the marijuana he had smoked, lurched to the bar, knocking into The Slayer and turning her blow askew.

The vampire shrugged nonchalantly at the stake embedded but a few millimeters from his death. “I’ve tried,” he tells her, “spent a bloody week sitting outside. They made it rain every day.”
He tosses back the whisky in his shot glass, welcoming the numbness that is always too slow in coming. “ And in the fucking desert, too.” His face impassive, he pulls the stake from his chest and hands it back to the Slayer.

The Slayer raises an arched eyebrow, the expression in her bottle-green eyes saturated with mingled curiosity and skepticism. “And who exactly are ‘They’?” Even her voice rings with life, like church bells through winter snow, crystal and clear. He looks at her sharply, admiring the almond cut of her eyes and their shade of deep jade against the milk-chocolate of her skin. The force that surrounds this girl, her fire, it reminds him of someone from his past ... and he hates that.

His voice is hoarse in his throat, “The Ghosts”.

The Slayers wide yet delicate nostrils flare in her beautiful face as she snorts, her full lips curl into a knowing smirk. “You”, she says, “are very drunk.”

He looks at her through bleary eyes as he downs yet another shot of the whisky. His lips stretch across his face in a parody of a smile, and his eyes shine with acidic pain. “Not bloody drunk enough,” he murmurs, “Not even close.”

He raises his gaze to the mirror again, the pane of cobalt that shows no tired man sitting next to a beautiful young girl, no fingers around the shot glass he holds. It is as if he doesn’t exist. His eyes still focused on his missing reflection, he starts to speak, his voice low and pointed, “You know why people love the sun?”

“It dusts depressive drunk vampires?”, The Slayer is getting bored. She came here to slay and to party, to join the mass of people swaying to the angry beat of the band. Not to listen to the ramblings of a hallucination-prone member of the undead.

He turns to face her, and she sees a flicker of cold fire in his eyes, and her mouth goes dry as she sees the danger in him. He sees her reaction, and he brings his face closer, the light reflecting on the tight skin over his sharp cheekbones and giving him a skeletal appearance. “ No”, he points his index finger at her chest, “The sun is life.”

He draws back away from her, breathing a long sigh as he fingers his next shot. “ Without it there would be nothing. The sun is what gets the whole cycle going, what keeps this miserable little planet breathing.” He raises his glass to his dry lips, gracing The Slayer with a long intent look from the corner of his indigo eyes, and she shivers as he seems to look into her soul. “But what they forget ...,” he whispers, his stare unfocusing, “ ... is that the sun kills too.”

He looks at the Slayer again, slowly reaching out to brush a strand of dark chocolate from her golden-brown face, and she startles at the coldness of his fingers. He smiles softly, but the expression is tainted by the pain he seems to bear in the same way that he wears his threadbare duster. “The sun’s what killed me you know.”

. “Oh, not the big ball of fire hanging in the sky.”, he explains at the skeptical look in her eyes, his voice shaded with recalled happiness as his mind carries him into a better time that now exists only in his memories. “ But a bitty slip of a girl, with hair like spun gold and fire in her soul.”

The vampire props his chin on his hand and stares onto the obsidian top of the bar, at the way his prismed glass reflects rainbows of color on the shiny surface.

“Is she a ghost?”, The Slayer’s face are open and honest, her eyes lit chartreuse with genuine interest.

A strained chuckle escapes his lips, and his eyes are lonely and dark. “ I used to think the night belonged to us”, he tells her, “ to the vampires. But it doesn’t, it belongs to the living, like everything else on the fucking planet. And I don’t really walk in it, not anymore. She changed me, and I can’t ever go back to what I was. You want to know where I exist? I live in an eclipse.” His jaw clenches, and his expression is bittersweet. “I’ve touched the light, I had the fucking fire all around me, surrounding me. I breathed it in deep, I savored it. I tasted it like honey on my tongue. And you know where it left me? Nowhere. Because you can’t go back to the darkness after you’ve loved the sun, but the sun will not take a being that belongs to the shadows. So I’m stuck in the bloody middle with nowhere to go.”

He looks at the Slayer again, and his face looks world-wearied, his porcelain skin drawn too tightly over the sharp angles of his face to appear human. He slumps his shoulders slightly, immense sorrow radiating from his every pore. “But to answer your question, no. She’s not one of Them.” Is voice lilts so that it sounds almost wistful, “She’s the only one that isn’t.”

“So who are they?”, she asks softly, her eyes wide in her face. The vampire studies The Slayer carefully, critically. Her slender body is cloaked in revealing black lace, the swell of her breasts clearly defined by the plunging neckline. Beneath the heavy makeup that covers her face she is very young, probably fifteen or sixteen. This Slayer is still very innocent, she would have to be to sit with a being such as he, fully aware of what he was, and talk to him. But her eyes are full of intelligence, her face reflecting not only a joy of life, but a thirst of knowledge, of experience. He looks at her, and he hopes that she makes it.

“They’re the ones I didn’t save.”

She understands that this pain is too close to his heart, and she changes the subject. “How did you meet her, your sun.”

A ghost of a smile softens his otherwise sculpted features, and The Slayer realizes that at one time he was probably very beautiful, a Greek god of white marble and pale moonlight. But time had worn away at his spirit, and now he was but a shadow of a man, a being too cloaked in pain to be attractive.

“I was going to kill her.”, he states simply, “ I wanted to do my third Slayer in, you see.”

The current Slayer’s jungle-green eyes widen in her face, her mouth rounding with wonder. “You loved a Slayer ...”

“Yeah,” he chuckles again, the sound low and reverberating in his chest, “ ‘Fraid so. And a bloody lot of good it did me too.” He smiles at The Slayer, his eyes warm.

An almost playful glint in his eye, he lowers his voice to a conspiratorial tone, “ And I tell you I hated that bitch. Here I was trying to make evil like a good vampire and there she was, stopping me every time. And I wasn’t a pushover, either, mind you. I was the BigBad, one of the youngest Master Vampires in history, and I couldn’t seem to kill the little spitfire. The bloody bint put me in a fucking wheel chair, for God’s sake.”

“You’re Spike! William the Bloody!”, The Slayer looks at him with open awe on her face, “I’ve read all about you!”

A scowl settles over his feature, “Lies, most likely. Watchers are full of shit, I’ll warn you about that first off. Never trust the fucking Council, or anything they’ve got to say.”

“I don’t work for the Council.”

Spike slaps his hand on his lean thigh. “ You’re on the right track then, pet.” His voice takes on a thoughtful undertone, “ You know they always told Slayers that we were no better than animals? That we weren’t capable of anything good, anything human. Said we couldn’t feel ...” His voice trails off, “ ... said ‘cause we’re soulless we couldn’t love. Lies, all of it.” He meets The Slayer’s gaze, “ I’m not telling you to put up the stake, luv. Don’t get me wrong here, we’re generally evil, most of us would kill you in a second. But we are certainly capable of love.”

The Slayer nods. “I know that, my Watcher explained all of that. And I’ve read Buffy Summer’s diary, so I know about Angel, and you.” She lowers her voice, her eyes earnest and full of compassion for the monster before her. “She was your sun, wasn’t she?”

The vampire’s crystal eyes cloud with tears, his lightening mood instantly subduing once more. “Yes.”

Abruptly, Spike swung his seat around, lurching from it with a drunken swagger. He turns to face the slender creature still seated at the bar, “But what could come of it, really? She was mortal, and she could never love me. Since when does the sun love the night? And she’s dead. So what does it matter?”

Shoving his hands into the pockets of his duster, the vampire begins to stride angrily from the bar. He opens the door to the night that he will never belong to again, and he leaves the club of alienated youth and forceful instrumentals.

He has barely made it to the end of the street when he hears the sound of her heels clicking against the pavement as she runs, the steady beat of her heart as it pumps oxygen to her blood.

He stops, a solitary figure of darkness weaved into the web of the night, the streetlights emphasizing the harder planes of his face, the dull luster of the leather on his back. “You shouldn’t have followed me, luv.”, he whispers, not bothering to turn around.

“Do you want it?”, she asks. He cringes at the familiarity of that phrase, as he sees in his mind’s image another dark beauty speaking those very words. But he had learned his lesson since that fateful night, and he answers with caution. “Want what?”

He senses it then, a thickening of the air around him, like oil on his skin. A resigned look on his face, he turns to her, bracing himself for the inevitable darkness.

She sees the mingled pity and sadness in his eyes, and then she feels it as well, an unctuous and caustic presence that seems to eat at her very soul.

But it is too late for her now.

The Beast rips into her, crimson eyes wild with bloodlust, it’s face becoming coated in The Slayer’s spurting liquids.

Spike watches calmly, but as The Beast turns to him, he speaks, and his voice is soft. “I didn’t want her to die.”

The Beast smiles, it’s open maw dripping with a mixture of blood and saliva, a piece of The Slayer’s gorgeous mulatto skin stuck between it’s glittering obsidian incisors. “But that’s exactly why I had to kill her.”


********

It is dark, gray. Only a thin sliver of light provides any illumination in this place, in this small room that speaks of hopelessness and decay.

“I want to reach him.”, she say softly, her hazel eyes wet with tears in her sweet face. “I have to reach him.”

The patient one touches her shoulder gently, compassion in her eyes. “We’ve tried. He doesn’t want to see us, he pushes us away. He knows we are there, but he refuses to see us. ” She sighs softly, brushing a strand of honey-brown away from her face. “He makes it so we that cannot reach him, and he makes us leave.”

A trace of anger laces through her tongue, giving a sharpened edge to her words. “He’ll want to see me. And if he doesn’t, well, this is the last time I’m going to try.”

Her companion frowns, her open face concerned, but understanding. “So what will you do, then?”, she asks, her voice low and composed. “Surely you won’t ...”.

Spike’s sun shakes her head, “No. I never could, and I won’t now.” She bites her lip, picturing the hard face of the vampire she had grown to love, picturing his smile, his sneer. Expressions she had not seen for ten years.

“If I can’t reach him this time, I’m going to move on.”

The Ghost nods, “To tell the truth, you need to. I know that it’s hard, but you probably should have given up on him ten years ago.”


********

He wakes to a pure Heaven, the young woman he loves cuddled against his chest, lids closed in her golden face. He leans down gently, pressing his dead lips to the warmth of her face, feeling the pulse of her blood beneath her skin.

Four years ago, he never would have see this coming. Back then, he was the BigBad, a abomination of peroxide and leather, an ebony silhouette in a night of even deeper shadows , his Dark Goddess at his side. He remembers how he used to hate her, how the very sight of her hair glinting in the light of the club at which she danced had enlivened him, how his dark blood had screamed for him to take her life ...

He remembers, but the emotions are alien to him, like they were only a dream. As if they had belonged to a character in a novel, far removed from his present self.

Two years ago he had turned to her in desperation, a shadow of himself, thin from the forced starvation of the chip in his head. He had hated her then as well, but the feeling was tempered by the fact that he hated himself so, that he despised his dependency on The Slayer and her crew of pathetic children playing themselves to be heroes.

But being in increased contact with the slender yet powerful Slayer had allowed him to feel ... other things. Things he kept close to his undead heart, telling himself that they were lust and hormones, nothing more.

And then he had realized his love for her, and it had been the most confusing time of his unlife. For he still wanted to hate her, but he could not. He was a monster obsessed, his every thought centering around the girl who loathed him. He had not been lying when he had described himself as drowning, for he was. Drowning in her spirited eyes, her alluring scent of vanilla and clean shampoo, the sheer wonder at the strength he saw in her.

It was funny that Dru had seen his love for Buffy four years before he had awakened from a dream and and that terrifying revelation, the revelation that he, William the Bloody, was in love with the person that had once been the bane of his existence.

Buffy had died, and he had mourned for her with every bit of the soul he did not possess, fulfilling his promise to her by helping the Scoobies, all with a heavy heart and a broken will.

But she had come back, beautiful and whole. And although he had started to see the darkness he had always sensed her to possess but had never witnessed, his love for her had remained the same. Unchanging, constant.

And despite the turmoil of their early relationship, she had come through, as he had never dreamed of her doing.

She loves him, and it is a greater gift than he deserves.

She smiles at the touch of his mouth, turning to snuggle closer to him, a contented sigh escaping her lips. His eyes warmed to a soft azure with his love, he rests his chin over the top of her blonde head, breathing in the perfume of her skin and hair and savoring the taste of them on his tongue. “Love you, pet.”, he whispers, closing his eyes as he spoons his body around her own.

“I love you too, “ she smiles, the air of her breath blowing like a warm breeze on the tepid flesh of his neck. She rests a hand on his pale and naked thigh, and he loves the warmth, the light, that only she can bring to him. “What time is it?”, she murmurs softly.

He raises his eyes to the glaring red of the numerals on her electric alarm clock, “6:10.”

She groans, craning her neck around to see for herself. “Fuck.” He raises his scarred eyebrow, a questioning look in his eye. “I’ve got a pretty early shift,” she tells him, “I’m supposed to start work at 7:00.” She moves to get out of the bed, but he is reluctant to lose contact, and he grabs her by the hips, pulling her back into his cold embrace.

********

A forceful and foul-smelling breeze drifts across the open cemetery like the outstretched hands of an amorphous being, twirling the dry husks of dead leaves among its fingertips, scattering them across the crumbled and eroded headstones.

This is a cemetery of those forgotten. The epitaphs carved in memory of the dead are no longer visible, removed by time much like the people who had once wrote them.

The vampire finds a strange comfort in this place, in this wasteland of fallen marble tablets, of dry husks of grass that whisper like violins when the wind blows through them.

He sits on the grass, his knees curled to his chest, feeling as lost to life as those buried here over the centuries. His sharp eyes study the fallen head of a stone cherub as lays in the grass, and in the shadows, its eyes seem to stare into him.

The wind moves, and the angelic child’s gaze appears to flicker, as if studying him. He sighs, drawing his duster closer around him in an attempt to ward of the chill that will never leave him.

He looks to the moon. It is high and luminous in a sky of tattered velvet, round and silver as it shines its light onto his forsaken figure, as it turns the headstones to alabaster shadows.

He remembers when the moon was beautiful, when he loved to wreck havoc and bloody mayhem beneath its subtle light.

But now he looks upon it, and he misses his sun.

And worse, he knows that its absence is his own fault.

********

“Don’t go.”, he pleads, bowing his head to kiss delicately along the length of her collarbone. She moans softly, arching her neck back to allow him better access. He brings his mouth lower, alternately sucking and nipping as he raises a hand to her breast, rotating the hard pebble of her nipple between his forefinger and his thumb.

She pushes him away, trying to ignore the desperate yearning he has ignited within her. “We can’t, Spike. I have to work, you know that.”

He leans back on the bed, frustrated. “I can get you money, you know.” His smile is loving but hungry, and it sharpens his porcelain cheekbones. “Then you could stay.”

“I’m not raising my baby sister on dirty money.”

He pouts, his brows lowering in his face. “Not everything I do is dirty, luv.” He smirks then, his lips curling into the look that he has most surely had copyrighted. Slowly, he raises himself, sliding off of the bed and stalking to her so that his arms are around her once more. He lowers his voice playfully, his cool lips brushing across her ear as he whispers, “Just some things.” In a seductive and deliberate motion, he begins to run his blunt teeth over the ridge of her earlobe, teasing her with his tongue. She pauses, still partially undressed, and he takes the opportunity to his advantage, dipping his hand over her naked torso, deftly brushing her dark curls with his fingertips.

She closes her eyes, and he can hear it as her heartbeat escalates, as her lungs speed in their contractions of air. He is getting to her, and he knows it, and he grins wolfishly.

“Tonight.”, she mumbles, but her voice has lost its conviction, and it is edged with lust and need as she savors the touch of his skilled fingers.

He moves his lips from her earlobe to her neck, lazily twirling his tongue at the nape, moving to her shoulder. “Right now.”

She gasps as he skillfully maneuvers around her, closing his cool cavern around the tip of her hardened breast. She curves into the deft movements of his teeth over her, smiling as his cool hands press her to him.

Her job momentarily forgotten, she twines her fingers in his short hair, seductively sliding one leg to hook around his sculpted waste, allowing him to feel the wetness of her arousal against the bare skin of his pelvis.

He groans as the smell of her musk drifts to his sensitive nostrils, and the sound trails off in his chest, developing into a full-throttle growl.

A wicked laughter escapes her chest, and she pushes him to the bed, and her hazel eyes are as dark and as tumultuous as the crests of ocean waves, her golden skin flushed with pure heat and desire.

She crawls across the bed to him, smiling coyly at the the darkened expression in his eyes. A feral gleam cascading across her features, she straddles him, dipping forward to seize his lower lip between her teeth.

She scratches him lightly with her nails, feeling empowered at his responsive shiver. By now, his cock is huge and bulging almost painfully into the apex of her thigh. A sultry smile twisting her lips, she leans to his neck, scraping her teeth harshly against his motionless jugular.

His reaction is a half-growl, half-whimper, and it is then that she impales herself upon his stiff erection. “Mine.”

********

He can feel the dawn as it comes, a burning presence that makes him uneasy, restless. He could wait for it, he knows.

He remembers those days he stayed in that desert, in that burning abyss of red sandstone and bruising wind. When he had not allowed himself to seek shelter by day.

The devastating, agonizing pain. Standing there, in the full brunt of the crimson sunlight, he had been in torment. At once, it had felt as if his blood was boiling in an attempt to break its way out of his skin, and that his skin was tightening in a desperate struggle to hold him together.

He had been there a week. Unconscious by night, writhing in unspeakable anguish by day. And he had not walked from the experience with a touch of added color to his snow skin, much less the death he had craved.

A sigh passing his lips he stands, leaving the comfort that can only come from a place of the dead.

He had almost liked the pain of the sun, loving that it could punish him better than he could ever scourge himself. But he realizes this is not the time nor the place for such endeavors. He needs to leave town before The Beast begins to decimate the population of this city, and so he will move again.

But not tonight. Tonight The Beast can be allowed to kill a few, for this is Spike’s night.

It’s his ten-year anniversary.

********

He gasps as her slick fire engulfs the length of him, and then she brings her lips to his neck, and her blunt teeth rip into the preternaturally cold skin. At once, Spike freezes in an explosion of gold as she draws his dark blood into her mouth. “Mine.”, she growls again, but he stills himself, grabbing her firm hips with his hands and stopping her movement over his still raging cock.

He looks deep into her eyes, seeking the understanding in her face, wanting her to realize exactly what she is doing, what it means.

She smiles tenderly, her lips tinged ruby with his blood. “ You are my Mate.”

His heart expands with a sudden rush of increased love for this girl, his Slayer, his Buffy. A primitive snarl erupting from his chest he turns her, plunging himself deeply into her hot channel.
Spike’s face is that of his demon, prominent ridges shadowing the gleaming saffron of his eyes, but the look she gives him is not one of disgust or revulsion, but of love, need, and lust.

“Mine.” And then he sinks his teeth into her swan’s neck, shattering hard and sending jets of cold sperm into her womb as he pulls the life blood from her veins. It is beautiful and coppery on his tongue, tasting of sunlight and warmth, of life. Her inner muscles tremble around him as she follows him in a spiral towards ecstasy, deep ragged breaths coursing through her chest as she screams his name.

As they come down from their climaxes, he withdraws his teeth, licking softly at the twin punctures his fangs have left in her soft flesh. “You know what this means?”, he questions softly, moving his head to meet the dancing eyes of his Mate.

A smile turns the corners of her rosy lips, and her voice speaks only of content and happiness. “Forever.”, she whispers. She kisses him softly again, and his mouth tastes of the salt from their mingled tears. “Or at least, as much of a forever as I can give you.”

********

The stranger stares curiously at her surroundings as she walks down the twisted and narrow street, her eyes roving up the lengths of the various buildings that seem to jostle for space in a cluttered city.

This place is bizarre to her. The buildings, similar to those from her own world, are different in a way that she cannot quite identify. The perspective seems off, somehow, and their broken windows seem to watch her like eyes, their wide doors appearing to be wide and laughing maws.

There are few people on the street, and the harsh light of the day seems bleak and despairingly gray as it scores down on this skewed reality.

She realizes that this place is nocturnal, a place for those that live by night. It makes sense to her, it is appropriate. This light is acidic to her skin, and the air seems to catch in her lungs like it is not quite willing to be inhaled, like it has a mind of its own.

Which, she reflects, it probably does.

A lone derelict, a waver in his step, makes his way towards her. The cast of his skin is as pewter as the landscape around him, and his face is partially concealed by a beard, long and straggled, stained pink with cheap wine. He smells like the inexpensive liquor on which he binges, and his eyes are vacant and bloodshot, red-rimmed, watery. His thin lips are cracked, and the teeth in his red mouth are long and yellow, broken. “It’s too late”, he tells her, “the sun is gone.”

She looks to the bleak sky, squinting into the severe light as it shines into her face, and she wonders at his meaning.

********

Spike squirms restlessly on the couch, unable to get comfortable. He looks to the cheap watch of black plastic on his wrist, frowning when he realizes that it has been five minutes since he had last checked the time.

And he still has three hours to wait until Buffy returns from the pit of grease at which she works.

He picks up the remote, restlessly flipping through the various channels, unable to find anything of enough interest to bother watching. Even “Passions” seems unappealing as he waits for his Mate to return to him.

His Mate. His beautiful Slayer of spun fire, possessed with just enough darkness to make her human, to make things interesting.

The fact that they have joined together in this way is beyond the fantasies of even his wildest dreams. He had known that he loved her, but he had never expected that she would return his feelings with a ferocity to match his own.

And to have her as his Mate, to have her as his to worship, his to love ....

He jumps from the couch, his mind too distracted with thoughts of his love to notice the signs that might have warned him. The three heartbeats as they pounded with anticipation in the shadows, the acrid smell of sulfur and black flame as their owners readied their attack.

And so he is unprepared when the first flaming crystal breaks through the window of the kitchen, startled as he saw the soft fingers of thick smoke as they billowed into the air. He realizes that the fumes must be enchanted, for he can feel his dead body slow, his eyelids becoming weights of lead in his face.

His last thought is for Buffy, and it is a pang of worry.

When he wakes, he finds himself strapped to a wall, the metal fetters tight and relentless against his straining wrists and ankles.

He growls loudly as Warren steps from the shadows, and he feels his demon come to the fore in his rage.

The dark-haired man smiles, his human face twisted in an expression more savage than that of the vampire. Without a word, he steps forward completely, revealing a long, engraved dagger that he holds in the palm of his hand. The edge of the blade gleams dully, and it the knife hisses as its wielder swings the blade in a violent motion.

Spike looks down at his pale chest, seeing his blood as it wells in a thin line from the cut Warren has left. His mustard eyes blazing in his anger, he stares at the younger man, who responds with another twist of his blade.

The vampire clenches his jaw as the cool metal slides into his stomach, as Warren inches the blade upwards in a straight line, creating an angle at the chest. “Sorry man, “ the brunette smiles, “ But I’ve always wanted to do that!” He takes a step back, admiring the Y-incision he has carved into the vampire’s cold flesh, a bubble of delighted laughter escaping his lips. “It always looked so cool when Scully did it ...”. He frowns, but the glint of laughter remains in his malevolent eyes. “Of course Scully’s cadavers were really dead, unless you count that zombie from the ep David Duchovny directed, you know the one with Tea` and Gary?” He shakes his head at the vampire’s obvious lack of X-File knowledge. “I can’t remember if she autopsied any vamps in ‘Bad Blood’, ‘cuz if not, I’m striking new territory here.”

“What do you want, you bloody pillock?”, Spike demands, careful to keep his face impassive. He survived a torture session with a Hell Goddess, he knows that this whelp cannot possibly hope to break him.

Warren shrugs. “We want the Slayer dead.”, with that, he plunges the dagger into the white flesh of the vampire’s wrist, cleaving the blue veins beneath the skin, laughing again as the black blood flows in an arterial burst.


********

The vampire rubs the bones of his wrist almost unconsciously, feeling the spidery scars that lace across the slender bones with his fingertips.

He is stalking his prey, and his demon is closer to the surface than he normally allows, right beneath his very skin, struggling to overtake him. It should know by now that he will never allow it to overpower him, never again.

He sees the dealer out of the corner of his eye, a tall being of greased hair and blue tattoos, the pockets of his gawdy outfit of green and black no doubt lined with the cocaine he sells.

This is the type that he hunts now, the low-class criminals with their oily, puckered skin and their tainted, embittered blood. He needs to eat, but he can no longer take the lives of innocents, not after having felt the love of the sun.

As his stride lengthens, as he approaches the sinner that will have no time to repent, he remembers how he had told The Slayer that he was living in an eclipse, and he realizes that he had lied.

For he understands now that he is the eclipse, the blight of darkness that blots the light of the sun. In nature, he knows that the shadow across the sun does not last but a minute or two, with the sun always emerging victorious from behind the moon. But he is not a part of the natural world, nor has he been for over a century.

He had finally accomplished what he had once lain awake dreaming of, he had blocked the light of the sun forever, had completely destroyed it.

And he had been left in the cold.

********

Buffy had been distracted the entire time she had been at work, her heart and mind entirely focused on the vampire she loves. Her Mate.

She smiled at the thought that she, Buffy Summers, Slayer extradonaire, was now the official, claimed Mate of William the Bloody.

Back in her idyllic, younger days, she would have been appalled at the very thought of pledging herself to a soulless being of darkness. Her world had been black and white; people are good, vampires are evil.

The thing that had never occurred to her was that vampires might be people too.

The first crack in that state of mentality had come along with a tall, brooding member of the undead, her Angel. The Angel with his soft, chocolate eyes and warm heart, the Angel that felt guilt for all that he had done, the Angel that loved her.

And so the first shade of gray had been established, but it had been so close to the aforementioned white and black that she had been unable to distinguish it from the others. Angel had been easy to justify, for he was souled.

It was not the state of being a vampire that made one evil, it was the loss of the human soul that accompanied the Turning. Or so she had convinced herself.

But Spike had made things more difficult. He did not only try to show her a million varied shades of gray, but had tried to burst her into a violent array of color as well.

Even when he had been with Drusilla he had made her question the supposed inability of vampire’s to love, to feel. She remembers the look in his yellowed eyes when she had threatened to stake Dru in that awful club, how he had been willing to do anything for the insane, perpetual child that he had loved. How he had been willing to join with his mortal enemy to get her back .....

And then when he had fallen for her in that strange and obsessive way of his, when he had stalked her, when he had chained her in the lower-level of his crypt, she had been terrified. Terrified that Spike could only be attracted to an inner evil to match his own. That something had to be wrong with her to make him feel that way.

What she had failed to realize was that he was not in love with her darkness, rather he loved both her darkness and her light. Spike loved everything that she was, everything that she could ever be, he loved her. And unlike the others, he did not distinguish between ‘Buffy’ and ‘The Slayer’, but had recognized them for what they were, one being.

And she had punished him for the turmoil of emotions that he had felt for her, pushing him away, time and time again, only to pull him back when she needed him. He had loved her too desperately to refuse anything she had thrown at him, had naively convinced himself that through stolen moments of harsh kisses and hard fucking she would grow to love him.

What he did not comprehend was that she already did.

She had loved him, but had been too afraid to embrace her own emotions, too afraid to allow herself to feel. But she needed him, and she had found her life to be much less without his warm heart and cold body, without his voice and his touch, without the love that had always shone from the azure of his eyes.

And so she had realized that she did not love him for his gentle moments of light, but for the unique combination of light and dark that was most purely his own. And she did not divide him into two persona as she had with Angelus and Angel, but had recognized William and Spike for what they were, one being.

And she loves him.

So what was so wrong with becoming his Mate? Nothing. When they were together they seized to be vampire and Slayer, and became what they most truly were, two beings of mingled light and shadow, two people, deeply in love. And nothing could ever be wrong with love.

Humming softly to herself, Buffy made her way down Revello Drive, her heart and mind light, and for the first time since her return from Heaven, she was happy.

And then she saw the state of her home, and her heart, which had been throbbing at the thought of consummating her Mateship once more, froze in her chest like an eerie scream.

The windows were broken, shards of glass glittering like diamonds in the soft grass. A layer of black smoke seemed to cover the outside of the house like a murky haze, and Buffy is slightly relieved that Dawn was at a friends’ house tonight.

But her mind is whirling with fear and worry for her Mate, and as she approaches, she realizes that she can sense his blood as a part of her. It is on a note, dried crimson spelling out the message taped to the front of her door.

 

In the corner was a scribble of what Buffy assumed to be a pile of ashes. Only one group of people could have dreamed up this lame plan and note deal. The Geek Trio.

She almost snorts with laughter. Spike got himself abducted by three Trekkies? She’s never going to let him live this down. And as for their inane little plot?

She could probably break the handcuffs if she pulled hard enough, or she could pop her wrist and slide through them. And since when has she needed her hands to fight anyway? She could certainly pummel any human to death with a well-placed roundhouse kick.

Slightly annoyed by this inconvenience, and only a little concerned that the note had been written with Spike’s blood, Buffy sets out towards The Bronze.

********

The stranger feels the call of their bond, even in this place, and she follows it faithfully.

She has been waiting ten years to talk to him, to see the expressions that pass so easily across the sculpted planes of his face, the emotions that sparkle from the depths of his beautiful sapphire eyes.

This is the first time that she has come to this place, but she had sent the others before her. The others were more experienced in these matters, had the knowledge and the abilities to travel here. She had never been trained for this, these subtle matters were not considered important for a Slayer.

But ten years is a long time, and although they would go when she asked them to, she had gradually come to realize that they would never be able to reach him.

And so she had shouldered the task herself, daring to hope that she would be able to touch her Mate, really touch him, for the first time in a long decade.

********

Spike feels the pain as the life-substance of his veins leaves him in a searing roar of agony. His vision blurring, the vampire snarls at the lily-faced boy with the beetle-black eyes who is still holding the knife.

Warren pulls something from the pocket of his genes, small and plastic and black. Red lights flicker across its surface as he unfolds a small antenna. His fingers dance over the various buttons, and Spike moans as the manacles imprisoning him open, and he is dropped to the ground.

His demon is calling for blood, and he rushes at Warren, his yellow eyes savage and crazed. He pushes the whelp forward, moving to sink his fangs into the pasty flesh of his neck, only to be stopped by a flash of painful electricity across the various synapses of his dead brain. He howls in strained anguish, clutching his hands to his head.

The borrowed fluids of his body continues to leave him in heavy torrents, and Spike rolls off of Warren, his body convulsing as his demon screams for blood.

Spike fights it desperately, knowing that he needs his mind to emerge from the situation undead, and he wills his demon to calm its thrashing ....

But he is unsuccessful, and when his body rises from the floor, its haunted, yellow eyes perusing its surroundings for prey, there is no semblance of Spike left.

********

The hot blood of the dealer’s veins is streaming down his throat, and Spike crushes his dying body to him, desperate for the life to enter his own cold veins.
It is then that he feels it, a bond that he has not felt the pull of in too many years. He can smell her as he stands there, having dropped the lifeless, heavy body of his victim onto the pavement of the sidewalk.

Vanilla, and warmth, and sunlight.

Feeling as though his heart is about to burst in his chest, he turns, his eyes wide and shocked to perceive the sun for the first time in ten years. “Buffy ...”

********

“I’m sorry.”, Jonathan whispers. His voice is heavy with a mixture of sorry, resignation, and guilt. He has pulled the van to a stop; they have arrived at their destination.

Buffy’s words are a knife, cutting through the stagnant and Dorito-scented air of the van. “Don’t be.”, her face is cold, and her voice is steel. “Nobody is making you do this. So either stop, or continue with whatever the hell you guys are doing. But don’t be fucking sorry about it. You’ve chosen this, Jonathan.”

The short man’s eyes fill with tears that Buffy is unable to see through the heavy cloth of the blindfold, and he slumps his shoulders in defeat. “He’ll kill me.”, he whispers, his voice almost inaudible to Buffy’s ears.

“That’s not an excuse. You could have come to us.”

He shakes his head softly in a gesture he knows is not visible to her. “Thank you,” he whispers, “for everything you’ve ever done. You kept me from taking my life, and I’m afraid I haven’t done much with it since.” He hops out from the driver’s seat and slides the door open for Buffy. He touches her hand gently as she steps onto the ground, “Please forgive me.”

She can hear two new pairs of footsteps as they approach, and she imposes her best ‘Slayer-face’ over her features. “Where’s Spike?”

The blindfold is ripped from her face, and she sees that she is outside of an old, cement bunker. Trees stand tall around her, their green boughs pointing like arrows to the glittering night sky.

“Remember to scream.”, Warren smiles, and then she is pushed through a door that Andrew has quickly wrenched open. Startled, she falls forward into a deep and impenetrable darkness, and she hears the click of the lock as the door slams shut behind her.

********

She stares at the rapt face of her Mate, her heart pounding in her chest.
He looks so different to her, so alien and unfamiliar. The bones of his face, always prominent, now rise from his pale skin like swords that threaten to break the surface of his skin. The sharp and chiseled cheekbones that she had always loved are gaunt, and they cast the rest of his emaciated features in shadow, so that his eyes are disproportionately large in his narrowed face. She sees the expression in them, and she is torn between the need to embrace him and a strange fear at the vacancy she feels in him.

Spike is seeing a ghost.

His stretched lips work noiselessly, his eyes are wide with wonder and love. He stares at the girl that he loved, the girl he killed, his Mate, and suddenly he is able to speak. “Thank you,” he whispers softly, his throat too dry for anything louder, “ all the others have come, but never you.” His haggard features are clouded with a remarkable and warm glow, “ I always wanted it to be you.” He takes a deep breath, “ Forgive me, luv.”

She lets out a small cry, suddenly overpowered by the need to feel his touch, to reassure herself that he is real. She runs to him, and stopping abruptly when she sees him flinch backwards, and her heart softens as she realizes that he expects a blow. Tears are streaming down her face, and she can taste the salt in her mouth. “I love you, Spike.”, she states, softly but firmly. Her lips quiver and twist in her pain, and her gaze is wet and imploring. “I wanted to give you as much of forever as I could manage, and all I got was a day.”

He cringes as if she had just screamed a hateful accusation, and she frowns, confused. “Well that’s my fault, isn’t it, pet?” His face is drawn, shaded in remorseful tones of gray with the roughened edge of an artist’s pen.

It hits her with the power of a vortex of fatal energy, the realization that Spike believes himself to have killed her.

She laughs, but the sound is sad and bitter in her throat, a parody of joy. “I’m not dead, Spike.”

He stares at her, uncomprehending, utterly unable to believe her words. I drained you, luv, I fucking pulled the blood from your fucking veins until your heart stopped. I fucking buried you ....” His eyes are filled with tears, and he looks way, unable to meet her gaze. “And that’s when the nerds got your friends.”

She frowns again, her eyes the deep green of a pine forest. “Never happened.” She comes closer, and this time he does not move away. His knees appear locked, and she can see that he is trembling.

She places a gentle hand on his face, and he almost whimpers at the feel of her warmth, at the sensation of the blood in her hand running beneath her golden skin. His knees cave beneath him then, and he slides to the ground, his duster spilling around him like dark wine. She follows him, and then she places her arms around him, and she is sobbing into his chest. “I missed you so much.”

********

She traces her fingers over his chin, tilting her head upwards to meet his mouth with her own. The touch of his soft lips awakens a thousand memories within her, and his hands are twisting in her hair, running down the length of her back.

He slips his tongue into her mouth, and she rubs it with her own as she clutches to him, unwilling to ever let him go. She loves that he still tastes the same, like blood, sex and booze. She deepens the kiss yet further, hungry for him.

He raises himself, lifting her in his strong arms, never breaking contact with her mouth for a single second. He breaks the door in of the nearest building, utterly unaware but the fire that is burning him.

It is some sort of home, and there is a large bed in the corner, black sheets of silk covering it. He carries her to the bed, laying her down with an utmost tenderness. Her gaze, as she looks up at him is purely happy and yet sad at the same time. He rests his weight overtop of hers, and seizes her swollen lips with his own cold mouth.

She arches into him, her nails digging into his back as she runs her hands over his T-shirt. Buffy slips them underneath the black cotton, and he almost orgasms at the feel of her heated hands on his bare skin. She rips the shirt off of him, leaning forward to encircle a dusky, flat nipple with her wet tongue. He growls in pleasure, and then her hands are at his belt, working desperately to free him of his cumbersome jeans.

He kicks them from his legs, and his erection springs free and hard. She licks her lips, eager for him to fill her, and then his cool hands are on her chest, pulling off her shirt, expertly unhooking her bra.

He draws back, momentarily stunned by the beautiful image his bare-chested sun makes against the black silk.

She mews loudly, deep in her throat, protesting the loss of contact, and he smiles.

He slides down her jeans, slipping deft fingers beneath the the elastic of her panties, feeling the wetness staining her dark girls.

And then he is in her, his aching member squeezed tightly by the inner muscles of her hot passageway, angling slightly as he thrusts. He reaches a hand between them, and he pinches her clit between his fingers as he meets her desire-darkened eyes.

The force of her orgasm is immense, like a tidal wave, and he is relentless. He drives into her without mercy, his eyes rolling into his head as she clenches around him, and then he is following her, and it is like coming home.

********

He watches her sleep, admiring the beauty of her pert face. Her long lashes lay on the golden skin of her cheek, and they flutter softly as he traces her lips with the pad of his thumb. A soft, feminine snore lifts slightly as she breathes, and he smiles softly.

After ten long years, his sun has been returned to him, and he doesn’t think he will ever go into the night again. Her eyes open, and the hazel orbs seem to absorb him.

He leans down softly, kissing her. “I love you.”, he whispers.

She begins to cry again, and he watches, fascinated by the path her tears take as they fall from her eyes. “I love you, so much.”

He holds her, and they sob together. Two beings clinging together amid ebony sheets and cruel worlds.

“But you have to leave.”, he tells her.

She jerks away from him. “What!” Her bottom lip trembles as she stares at him, anger in her eyes.

Tears fill his cobalt orbs, and his cheekbones become sharper and more hollowed as his face hardens in pain. “Anything I love dies.”

She stares at him, confused. “I thought we had already established the Buffy-liveness here. I’m not dead, and I’m not going to die.” He raises an eyebrow, his face troubled. She shrugs, “After you ... left I found out that the spell Wills left on me made me immortal.” She traces a hand across his muscular torso. “ I can give you Forever.”

Elation burns his chest at the thought of an eternity spent with the woman he loves, but he realizes that it is not possible. “You can still be killed.”, he whispers.

And then he can feel the change in the air that always precedes the coming of The Beast, and his face twists into a mask of dread and panic. “You have to go!”, he yells, tossing her clothes into her arms.

“What the fuck is wrong with you?,” Buffy snarls, “ I spend ten years trying to get you, and I get a one night stand? I’m your Mate!”

“And if you don’t leave it will kill you! It kills anything I like, anything I love.”

Fire burns like acid in her eyes, and her entire body is taut in fury. “What the fuck are you talking about?”

His jaw is clenched, determined, as he pulls on his jeans, as he faces the door, fist clenched in a defensive position. “I won’t let it have you, Buffy.”

And then the Beast flys through the door in a rush of wind, and with the sickening sound of splintering wood.

Buffy stares at it, curious, as Spike growls low in his throat. “You will not take her.” His eyes are chips of blue ice, his body as hard as marble, as strong and lithe as that of an albino jaguar. “You will never take her.”

The Beast sniffs the air curiously, its red eyes glowing as it breathes in the scent of their sex. “Been busy.”, it remarks, his voice like sandpaper rubbed in open wounds. It stares hungrily at Buffy, and its cardinal eyes seem to scan over her, settling on her scarred neck.

It starts forward, and as Spike moves to stop it, he finds himself paralyzed. The Beast’s face seems to soften as it looks at the immortal Slayer, and it looks both wondering and confused, almost kittenish. “I love you.”, it tells her, its gravelly voice tinged with amazement. “ My Mate.”

Spike snarls, his eyes glittering saffron, but Buffy raises a hand to quiet him.

“ Spike”, she says softly, “ I have some things I need to tell you.” Her gaze wavers between the vampire and The Beast, as if she is unsure of which one to address. “I came her to take you with me,” she whispers, “ This place isn’t real, Spike.”

He shakes his head, “What the hell are you talking about?”
She tries to smile, but it doesn’t seem to work, and it only makes her lips look lopsided, skewed. “What you remember, drinking from me? That all happened Spike, but you didn’t kill me. You never buried me, and my friends are all very much alive. You left me weak and unconscious, but not dead.” A true but sad smile lifts her features. “Somehow you knew not to take too much.”

Spike’s gaze is blank, bewildered, but The Beast is nodding its head in agreement. “I knew what you were to me, and I could never have killed my Mate.”

The vampire stares at The Beast, who looks to him with a resigned look on black face. “Haven’t you figured it out yet?”, it asks him, “ I’m your demon.”

Spike stares at the Beast, his mind fighting the knowledge, but his heart recognizing its truth. He frowns, his expression stubborn. “ I couldn’t have dreamed up the last ten years, pet.”

The Beast shifts its feet uncomfortably. “ I kinda have to agree there, luv.”

“Don’t call her that!”, Spike yells. His demon glares back at him, a retort most obviously poised at the tip of its tongue.

Buffy glowers at the both of them, and she turns to her lover, her Mate, an accusing tone to her voice. “What’s the name of this city? Why were you able to come in here without an invitation?”

Both the vampire and The Beast wrack their minds for the answers, both finding themselves unable to derive them. His jaw slacked, his eyes stunned, Spike admits it, “I don’t know.” His eyes shining with tears he looks at the love of his undead heart, “ I don’t know.”

The Slayer looks at them both, “I came here to bring you back. I need to have you back. And if I can’t ....”, she lets her voice trail off, and her voice becomes but a whisper in her throat “Then at least I got to see you one last time.”

Spike walks to her, wrapping his arms around her and holding her to his chest. “Don’t talk like that.”, he breathes, “I will never not be with you, pet. I love you too much, I couldn’t stand to lose you again.”

She looks into his eyes, and her she smiles at the love she sees shining in his face. “Don’t leave me.” And then she collapses against him, and she cries, large sobs erupting from her chest with the violence and ferocity of a large volcano.

********

Spike screams as he batters himself bloody against the invisible barrier, as he tries to reach his Mate.

He can’t, he realizes. His cause is hopeless. Funny how he has withstood so much, and yet he cannot defeat this solid barrier of his own making .

********

Tears stream down his face as he futily tries to break it down, as his tendons strain with his effort, as bruises and cuts erupt over his hard body. He feels that the wall is softening, and for a brief and precious moment, he sees a whirring mass of color and the sun above him, calling him. Hope and elation, adrenalin fill his system.

He wants to go to her, he has to go to her. And so he continues to struggle.

With a gasp he wakes up, and he moves his body for the first time in ten years. Buffy is there, her beautiful hazel eyes shining with her happiness, and as he covers her lips with his own, he realizes that he is free.

And so he kisses the sunlight.

*********

The room is somber and gray, desolate. Water stains color the white ceiling a murky brown, and the dripping sounds of water in rusty pipes echoes throughout.

A lone light bulb is the only source of illumination, and it makes the Slayer’s hair shine white as if she was wearing a halo.

She looks down upon the face of her vampire, her Mate. His eyes are closed, and he looks to be at peace, a soft smile caressing his pale lips.

“It didn’t work. did it?”, Tara eyes shine with empathetic tears, she knows how this hurts her friend, but she is resigned to fate, unable to alter the present.

As the Slayer shakes her head woodenly, Tara watches the soft flow of the blood from the IV as it runs into the veins of the vampire. The soft crimson of his vampiric blood blurs across her vision, and she thinks with no small amount of wonder at the ways in which the mind can imprison itself while convincing itself that it is free.

But then again, does convincing oneself that something is true make it so? Only in that one mind, Tara answers her own question. And as she looks at Spike’s face, she sees the tranquility there, and she thinks that in his own mind, Spike is with his sun.

But not in Buffy’s world, and never in Buffy’s mind.

Spike has been in a coma for ten years, had thrown himself into one as soon as he had seen what he had done, as soon as he had come back into his own mind only to see the unconscious and bleeding Buffy in his arms.

The horror at thinking he had killed her had trapped him in his own body, in his own self. And more remarkable still was the fact that his own psyche had created realities unto itself, all in an effort to keep Spike from ever returning to the real world.

One could only wonder as to why.

For the last ten years, Spike had encountered nuances of his own personality made human in a world of spun cobweb and shadow. He had created his punishment, a mindscape where everything he loved was doomed to die, where occasional flashes of the real world were nothing but the ironically titled ‘Ghosts’.

And who knows how long he will spend in this new world of his? A world of sunlight, where he can spend forever with the Mate that is no more than a figment, a creation of his own mind?

Buffy leans forward, and she kisses the vampire gently. Without a word to either her Mate or the witch, she leaves the small, sepulchral room of deadened hearts and lost loves.

And so the Slayer moves on, into an eternity that will never love her.

Into an eternity that she will spend alone.

Forever.

********


“Last Ride In” has no lyrics.