The God of Healing noticed the looks passing back and forth between the vampires and decided that Spike was well enough to be allowed out for a walk in the Olympian sunshine. And he could take Angel with him, it might help the dark haired vampire to calm down, expend some of that nervous energy.
"Ok, children, take yourselves out of here and go for a walk. Go explore the place, the public places and gardens that is. I don't want to see either of you again until your visitor is ready to talk to you. Give it a couple of hours. Shoo, go, now!" Apollo ushered them out of the door and into the sun light.
Angel's immediate panic amused the God for a second, until he realised the fear was for Spike, and genuine.
"Didn't anyone explain things to you?" He asked Angel as he quelled his fears with a touch. "This is Olympus, home of the Gods and our assorted relatives. Vampires are descended from one of us, you are part of us, our family. You are free to walk in the Olympian sunshine. It will not harm you. Go, walk, enjoy." He leaned close to Angel's ear and whispered lower than Spike could readily hear. "See how pretty your Spike looks in the sun shine." And he pushed the vampire out into the full light from the Godly sun that warmed the Olympian day.
"Let's go." Spike turned in the direction he recalled Hera's garden to be in. He'd been there rather frequently since he had first woken on Olympus. The quiet in Hera's garden never failed to soothe the tension in the soul he wasn't supposed to have. "Hera's garden is close by, and quite possibly the most beautiful place on all of Olympus." He led the way for a second, no more, then Angel was by his side once more, hand clasping his as if this time his Sire would never let go.
Thinking about Hera triggered a cascade of memories for Spike. He still hadn't heard how she was doing. Oz had all but physically fought Angel to take Spike home, once there the three of them had transferred here and Angel had sat with him ever since. Oz had gone off to make enquiries as to the conditions, if any, of the three who vanished from the field of combat when Hera disappeared. So far Oz hadn't returned. Yet the memories of his first few meeting with Hera was niggling at the back of his mind. It was relevant to what he and Angel had been talking about. About their dear former friends in Wolfram and Hart. If only he could remember what she had said, he knew it would make quite a considerable impact on things.
"Talk to me. Tell me why you did what you did? And I don't mean just this!"
Spike made a gesture with his left hand and indicated the slight bump his belly was definitely showing. "I mean all of it! Start with why you killed me in the first place. You know, I never knew what it was that made you do it. I had my own ideas, just never the truth." The look he gave his ensouled Sire spoke volumes to the dark haired vampire.
"I've thought a lot about that night. Hell, that entire time we were together, an honest to God couple. I know exactly what you said that triggered that insane jealousy. You said that in the fullness of time, if you became a father, you hoped that you'd be as good a father to your children as I was to my childer. I couldn't stand the idea of you lying with anyone, let alone some bovine arsed mortal female that wanted you just for your baby making capabilities and your regular income. I thought, for a deadly second, that you wanted to leave me for some woman you'd already picked out. I saw red, I saw green, I saw every damn angry colour in the spectrum. And not liking that rage I struck out at what I saw was the cause if it all. You. I drained you. It only took moments. Then I realised exactly what you had said. In the fullness of time. Not today, tomorrow or next week - in some amorphous future that may or may not have happened. So I fed you my blood, and then I ran away. I couldn't look you in the face and admit how foolishly jealous I was. I left you to dust yourself in the first light of day." Angel faced Spike as he spoke. He let his estranged childe see the exact truth in his words in every look and gesture. "I was a fucking nightmare to live with for years afterwards. My sudden rages added to Dru's already addled mind. She thought it was all something she must have done or was about to do. Unable to decide she crumbled even further into her own world. For her part Darla didn't know what had upset me so much, nor did she even care. So long as she got her fine dresses and pretty jewels, she didn't care if I were happy, sad or suicidal."
"But when I came to you, with Dru, you were so pissed off at the very sight of me! I could see that you were annoyed that I'd not turned to dust. It was in every line of your body. You hated the very sight of me. I saw it all for myself, you can't deny it! I dare you to deny it!" Spike's voice cracked slightly at the remembered images of just how angered Angelus had been at the very sight of him in Drucilla's company.
"You have no idea do you?" Angel almost snarled at Spike's obtuseness. "I wasn't angered at you surviving. I was in a jealous rage because you were with Drucilla! She had already wormed a blood oath out of me that I'd not try and take her new friend away from her. Either by making him love me or by killing him. That I'd let her friend decide freely just whom it was that he wanted. See, I had always taken what lovers of hers I fancied for myself. But on that occassion she cornered me and I freely made that blood oath before Darla and the fucking Master so I couldn't go back on it. I'd never have uttered a single solitary word of it if I had known who her new lover was." Angel hugged his arms in close to his belly, as if the memories he was reliving were trying to make him throw up.
"And if you had known? You'd have not made the oath, would you?" Spike's voice held an echo of a long nurtured pain. The belief that Angelus only let him live on sufferance, that his Sire would have killed him rather than acknowledge him way back in 1880. Angel could hear that very old pain in ever breath and utterance.
"Damn right I wouldn't have. I'd have beaten your whereabouts out of Dru and gone after you and claimed you for myself! When I saw that the lover I had sworn to leave alone was you I could have killed her!" Angel realised that they had reach a beautiful formal garden, he hadn't noticed their journey at all, he had been that focused on Spike. "Oh, is this Hera's garden then?" He looked about and saw a delicately carved wooden bench and escorted Spike over to it. "Please, rest, sit, we still have a lot to talk about." He assisted the pregnant vampire onto the bench and kneeled before him. "You have to believe me, I have loved you from that first evening I met you. And I thought I had killed you. Did you know that Angelus only ever fell in love once and only ever experienced guilt once?" Angel looked up into Spike's face as the Olympian sun made golden highlights in the younger vampire's natural hair colour. "I should never have stolen you from the sun. I don't think it has ever forgiven me that crime."
"You were saying?" Spike blushed as he prompted his Sire to continue his narrative.
"Huh?" Angel managed, less articulate than Cordeilia with a vision induced headache.
"Angel loved once, felt guilt once? You were talking about it.." Spike shrugged, deeply embarrassed and hurt that maybe he had misinterpreted Angel's words. Maybe he was talking about Buffy?
"I fell in love, real love not just lust with you. And when I killed you it was the guilt that made me turn you. It doesn't really matter if it's Angelus or Angel, both incarnations love you equally. Only I'd like to think that as Angel I'm less likely to act on jealous impulses where you are concerned." Angel stood up and took his place on the bench by Spike's side. Reclasping the younger vampire's hand in his as he did so. "Even when I was attacking you, making our daughter in such a painful and deplorable fashion I was lying through my fangs!"
It was such an out of character thing for either Angel or Angelus to say that Spike couldn't help himself, he laughed at Angel's choice of words. "You lied about what, to whom?" Spike's voice was taking on more and more cadence of William James Mansfield, loosing the adopted nuances that were all Spike.
"I lied about not wanting you to touch Buffy because she was mine. I didn't want you to touch Buffy because you were mine! I didn't really give a rat's arse about her being touched, just about you doing the touching." Angel grinned somewhat sheepishly at his admission.
"But, last time before that, when Angelus was let loose you took Dru away from me! You never once looked at me with anything but derision in your eyes!" Spike tried to storm to his feet and stalk off in high dudgeon. He didn't even make it upright. He was held firmly by Angel and came crashing back down to sit beside him.
"Remember the blood oath? By that time both Darla and the master were dust. The oath was null and void since the witnesses were no longer with us. But I chose not to take you from Dru but to take Dru from you!" Angel held Spike's gaze all the time he spoke. "You were supposed to wheel yourself into my bedroom and not move until I left Dru alone! Only, you didn't follow the script I'd mapped out in my head. Oh no, not my beautiful Spike, he went and teamed up with the slayer and won! What was supposed to happen was you would finally demand that I put aside Dru and my obsession with the slayer and we would make wild passionate love for the very first time in one hundred and twenty seven years. I had allowed for the contingency that you'd kill the slayer, making your tally three slayers, and then you'd fight me for Dru. Only we'd end up making love rather than wrestling. That one didn't work out either."
Spike watched Angel's face as the older vampire catalogued his lack of foresight when it came to predicting the most probable reactions of his childe. He had to conclude that Angel and Angelus really didn't know him all that well!
"And sending the entire world to Hell? Was I supposed to come and stab you and thus proving how noble and honest and worthy of a soul I was?" Spike was trying to fit in what Angel was telling him with what he remembered so clearly of the return of Angelus.
"No! I was thoroughly pissed off and had decided to do something utterly stupid! I can't explain that one, because I don't have any idea as to why I did it. I found out about the artifact, which had no business being found where it was by the way. Anyway, it was like finding that dammed collar, I don't know why I did what I did, I was only left to regret doing it. I went to Hell, or Wolfram and Hart's headquarters as I now know it to be. And if Wesley and the other's hadn't been there for me this time I'd be back there now. I was going to destroy all of them for torturing me like that. For putting me in a position where you suffered like that! And to cap it all off, I found out a day or so after the event just what that collar was! As it is all I managed to do was kill Lindsey MacDonald and Darla again, that's becoming too much of a habit you know? Anyway, I killed them, went to Wesley to find out about the collar, I'd had this dream and the collar was so important in the dream. Wesley had a copy of Gronmann's catalogue and I flipped out when I read the dedication in it. So Cordy took it from me and Wesley found a reference to the collar. When I knew I'd caused you to suicide carrying a clump of cells that would have been our baby I threw up!" Angel blushed, a deep even red. "I mean, I was in such a state I had to let Cordeila drive my car and I made her stop so I could throw up! I've never thrown up, not once before that night. Granted I've came close, but that was the first time I actually did it."
Spike patted the hands that still held his right hand so tight. He could symapthise with Angel's upset over throwing up. It wasn't something he enjoyed doing in the ealry stages of his pregnancy. During his 'I still hate Angel and don't know why he did as he did to me' stage. Finally Angel had confirmed all Hera had found out for him, had it been only a few days before? Then he remembered something else of importance. He owned Angel's building and the mrotgage he had taken out over the lease! And he remembered just what Hera had said about Alicia's existance. Granted it had been the first morning, or close to it, after he had tried to stake himself, he could be forgiven for not recalling clearly. It seemed that maybe it was his turn to confess all, or at least a healthy chunk of all!
"I knew all that. About Wolfram and Hart. I knew about your jealous rage and how they had induced it. Hera found out about it a few days back. But I had to hear it from you too, I had to hear you say it. There was no point in me knowing it if you never faced the truth. I also know some other stuff that you should know too. Stuff like I own your mortgage and your damned hotel. And things like, Hera thinks you were made to pick up that collar. After all, it was kinda too handy to be genuinely coincedental that you got it and used it before you found out what it did! Hell's teeth, it could have made me super strong or anything and you used it without a moments hesitation. And here I quote Hera who was trying to explain why they saved me and what had happened by the way!" Spike took a deep breath before he spoke again. "She was talking about how they had tried to cover all the variables but couldn't... hadn't foreseen one major change in their scheme of things, she said; 'One of those details is the baby you are now carrying. We didn't actually count that into our plans. We suspect one of the other players got wind of our plans and tried to counter our emergence into the field of play'..."
"What?" Angel's voice went very cold, very flat. "Wolfram and Hart didn't just try and drive me insane they arranged for me to... to find that collar while I was in the frame of mind where I'd be easily convinced to use it? They made me do all this to you? Oh, I promise you, I am going to make them pay and pay and keep right on paying, in blood if need be, until you are satisfied that they have suffered enough. Only then will they die!"
"Who are you avenging? Me or yourself?" Spike tried to read Angel's face, but he had closed in on himself in his rage. He was determined to not show that anger anywhere near Spike, a fact that Spike could not help but smile at.
"Neither, I am avanging Alicia. She shouldn't have been conceived like this! She should have been the product of love, not manipulated hate. I should never have hurt you, I should never have killed you that night back in 1873. I should never have done any of the evil things I've done to you..." Angel's very real guilt was haulted in its tracks by Spike's next words.
"You might have been manipulated into creating me too. Did you ever think of that? That you had no real say in creating me?" Then Spike's new idea really sunk in. "Fuck!" He screamed abuse at the fine Olympian sky. "Who did I tell you I worked for? Wolfram and Hart's partners. Who did they want to overthrow? Those same partners. They never batted an eye lid after they discovered I had been turned!" Spike was raging. His free hand twitched and pointed out each point.
"They may have taken advantage of our meeting. But I rather think I fell in love with you all by myself." Angel smiled, gently. "But as for the rest of it - you became a vampire and were round long enough to wake them from the hibernation or what ever they're doing."
"What are we going to do about it?" Spike asked, calming down as Angel drew lazy circles on the back of his hand, soothing him.
"We are going to go out for dinner, see shows, take in movies. I hope. I have every intention of courting you the right way now. Just like I should have done back in the begining. I am going to beg for your forgiveness and pray that our daughter will want me in her life when she hears how I raped you. I am going to ignore all of them, as best I can, and concentrate on making your life as full of love as you'll let me."
The dark haired vampire sat in the sun, waiting for Spike to comment on his dream for their future. He knew a myriad of thoughts were chacing around in his childe's head, and heart.
"She was created to the devine plan of the Gods, or somebody, demon if you wish. We were just vessels for their machinations." It wasn't Spike that spoke to him, it was his sweet William. "She is, however, our daughter. And I like your plan, and our role in it." He smiled a genuinely warm smile, the likes of which Angel had not been on the receiving end of for one hundred and twenty seven years.
"You will let me court you? As you should be courted?" He asked, just to make absolutely sure he understood everything that Spike, 'William' might be saying.
"Yes." William said quietly, looking up at him from beneath the shelter of hs impossibly long lashes.
Angel sealed their agreement with a gentle kiss to William's fingers, still held captive in his much bigger hands.
"My William." He whispered in bendiction to his returned love.
"Erm, Spike. After all this time, I've kinda gotten used to Spike. But, maybe William, in quiet times, private times... Liam." The hope of private times with Spike almost had Angel disgrace himself in Hera's garden. The release of tension was a near orgasmic moment.
"Spike it is." Angel was content to sit by his childe's side and look to the future, now that he had one. "We'd better get back to your visitor, it sounded so mysterious when Apollo was talking about it." He hated to break the mood, but he hated even more being the cause of trouble for his Spike if he could possibly help it.
"I suppose!" Spike sighed deeply at the concept of facing whomever was scheduled to see him. He was far too content simply sitting there in Hera's garden, enjoying the Olympian sunshine. "Help me up then, and we'll head back." He batted his eyelashes outrageously at Angel making the darker vampire laugh at his antics.
"My pleasure." And Angel drew him to his feet, and into the embrace and shelter of his arms. He held him there for a few moments, letting Spike know through that gentle contact that he loved him and thanked all fates everywhere that he was giving him this second chance. Despite his strong desire otherwise, Angel knew it was far too soon in their renewed relationship to risk even a fleeting kiss. The moment might be soon, might be near at hand but wasn't yet now. He contented himself with a heart felt sigh instead.
Together they started to walk back to Apollo's chambers and the mystery guest that seemingly awaited their return. Walking side by side once more both grinning widely in the sunshine, it was a major victory against their enemies. Wolfram and Hart and their demonic minions might try their damnedest to break them, but they would not let them. They were once more together, and would remain together.
"So, who do you think we're going to meet?" Angel wove his fingers once more through Spike's and gently squeezed his chidle's hand. Grinning wildly when he felt Spike's fingers squeeze back.
"With the Greek Gods, it could be any bloody one of them, a hero type or whatever. We'll only find out when we get there." Spike looked up at his sire and smiled. "Anyway there're far more important questions I want answers to!" He didn't snap, he did scowl slightly however, for effect.
"What questions, what's wrong?" Angel's immediate concern was genuine, it was clearly writ large in his troubled gaze and Spike felt a tiny little twinge of guilt for putting it there.
"Where are you taking me for our first date?" He smiled, almost shyly at his flabbergasted sire.
"Where ever you want to go!" And he bestowed the first kiss he felt able to give him onto Spike's fingers entwined with his. That moment was now. Spike welcomed his gentle touch.
"Funny, I thought you'd say that!" Spike laughed and walked on, towards their mysterious meeting and whatever lay ahead. Angel had to follow, he was determined to never let go of Spike's hand again. No matter how inconvenient it became. Angel laughed at his silly thoughts, attracting Spike's attention once more. "What's so funny?"
"Oh, just random thoughts." Angel smiled at his childe. "I love you. I've always loved you." He saw the confusion that danced in Spike's face and regretted the abruptness of his declaration. "It's ok, I only want you to get used to hearing that from me, because it's true. I do love you. And I truly always have. Only I was never able to express it properly before."
"And now you can?" Spike asked bluntly.
"Yeah!" Angel sighed, deeply as if from the roots of his soul. "The very thought of losing you was the catalyst I needed to grow up. I was a tactless, self obsessed drunken lout when I was alive, and remained that way for the best part of two hundred and fifty years. It was the sight of the one being to ever truly touch my heart and what little soul I ever could lay claim to dying because of something that I did, it changed me. I prayed so damned often to the Powers that be for the chance to start over.." He sniffed up, rather inelegantly. " And now I have it, courtesy of the powers that were rather than those damned task masters I followed so slavishly."
"So don't waste this one, because this one is the last one. Ok?" Spike was gentle, but firm and Angel knew he spoke the absolute truth.
"I won't, I promise you that much. I won't let you down, either of you, ever again." Angel touched the slight swelling that was their child and held his loves eyes with his. A single tear tracked down his cheek unheeded.
"Well..." Spike muttered a little uncomfortably at the declarations of love Angel freely gave him. Strong emotions had only ever led to pain and humiliation, normally at the hands of Angelus. It was going to take a lot of work to learn to trust Angel instead. "Let's get back then before the send the dog out looking for us!"
"Why would that be such a bad thing?"
"It's got three heads and all of them have truly awful bad breath is why!"
Spike laughed and walked on, enjoying the sound of Angel's honest laughter as he dragged along behind him.
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