Actions

Work Header

Rating:
Archive Warning:
Category:
Fandom:
Character:
Language:
English
Collections:
Peja's Wonderful World of Makebelieve Import
Stats:
Published:
2020-11-04
Words:
1,571
Chapters:
1/1
Kudos:
5
Hits:
1,093

Damaged

Summary:

rated y-14, Contains swearing (it's Spike!), violence, drinking, &
mentions of sex. Has major character deaths.
main characters: Spike, Buffy
contains mention of past-tense Spike/Dru, Dru/Angelus, Dru/others, and Buffy/Angel
disclaimer: I don't own anybody from Sunnydale.
distribution: NHA, WLS, Bite Me, Soulmates, Wic... um, anybody else, if I've given the ok for previous stories, you can also have this one if you want it.
notes: AU s4 - Spike did not come to Sunnydale for the Gem. Uses
Jinni's
PoetryQuoteChallenge 18
I wish that I might be set free
from little cares that bother me
But human frailty is such
that small things matter very much.
- My Cage by Mildred Price

Work Text:

Damaged
by Lucinda

Drusilla had left him. Again.

It had been damned annoying the way she'd been shagging Angelus when he'd lost the soul. Not quite as annoying as when the arrogant bastard had tried to destroy the world, but damned frustrating. Bad enough that she'd gotten involved with that Chaos demon last year. He'd been able to ignore her playing with minions off and on, telling himself that they needed the punishment to bring discipline, and it gave him more time to plan.

He'd caught her in bed with a fungus demon. Disgusting. The whole room reeked of sex, slime and some other vampire.

His next clear moment had been in Mexico, watching some drunken vampire tourist tossing rats to the iguanas. He'd apparently left Brazil, drank a hell of a lot, considering the way his head had been throbbing and his tongue had tasted furry. At least, he hoped it had just been too much alcohol leaving his tongue feeling furry, he wasn't too clear on the time between Brazil and here.

"What in the hell am I doing?" Spike had asked, looking up at the stars. He didn't expect them to answer, but he needed to figure out what he was going to do next.

He'd gone to ground in some old ruins, hiding from the sun. There wasn't any television, but the carvings made up for that. The walls were covered with old carvings, strange figures with wide smiles or animal heads carving hearts out of bound captives. He could even smell the faintest lingering hints of old blood and fear, the sweat of crowds. "Bloody Aztecs... You got to admire their dedication."

It felt like Dru had carved his heart out and tossed it to the side. Shattering him with affair after affair, dallying with the minions, writhing and clawing at Angelus, screaming for him to take her again. Had the Chaos demon and this new Fungus demon been her only demonic lovers? The damned bitch kept cheating, kept laughing about it and the way that it made him hurt inside.

He shouldn't care. A vampire wasn't supposed to care, weren't supposed to expect the same sort of careful relationships as a human. Glaring at the ceiling, he shouted, "Damn it all, I do care."

Spike growled, looking again at the carvings on the wall. Piles of hearts, piles of bodies. He remembered hearing something about the Aztecs sacrificing to their gods, to keep the sun rising and the plants growing. He'd done something similar for Dru, for his dark goddess, only to have her cast him and his devotion aside.

He wasn't going to continue the pattern. He was done with Dru. Besides, if the daft woman had bothered to remember what she'd read before taking some demon to bed, she'd know that Fungus demons reproduced by letting their spores grow in dead things, eating their way out. It was a gruesome thing, though a bit interesting if it was just in a corpse. He'd seen a minion once, before Dru had been turned, that had shagged a Fungus demon. For about a week, nothing seemed different. Then, she'd started feeling pains in her stomach, and drinking more blood. About a month in, her stomach started to swell, and there was pain all the time.

He could still remember waking up to her screaming, watching her stomach bulge and ripple before it had burst open, the little fungus demons spilling out and settling down to feed, stripping the flesh from her bones as she screamed and flailed.

One of the most hideous sights that he'd seen, ever. He certainly didn't want to be there to watch it happen to Dru.

"I need to remind myself of what it means to be a bloody vampire," Spike muttered. "Something big, violent, lots of blood. The sort of thing to make people take notice."

He considered slaughtering every idiot vampire in the area that wouldn't follow orders and taking over the town. He imagined the blood running in the streets and the screams of the townsfolk.

"Nah, tequila gets old, and I doubt I could get anything good on the telly," Spike decided. "Something else..."

Killing that Slayer in New York had done big things for him, though. If he could do that again, kill another Slayer... "Yeah, I'll go kill the Slayer. She's in Sunnyhell. That one always did put up a good fight."

He'd leave when the sun set. He could steal a car, and be in Sunnyhell in less than a week, and take the chance to feed up and be in good form to take down the blond Slayer. She was pretty, they always were, but he still couldn't figure out what Angelus had seen in her... Must have been just the soul.

***

Spike grinned as he saw the 'Welcome to Sunnydale' sign along the road. Swerving, he left the road to smash into the sign. It did create an alarming rattle underneath the hood, but he wasn't worried. He was in Sunnydale now, the car had served its purpose.

Next step, finding the Slayer. That had never been one of his problems in this miserable town. She was always there, just underfoot to trip up his plans. It should be easy to figure out where she was, then he could get into a fight. Maybe he'd kill her tonight, maybe he'd let her get away so that she'd have time to stew in the fact that he was here, get herself right terrified before he killed her? No, he didn't think this one worked that way.

He left the car parked along a side street in the warehouse district, and started looking for the Slayer. He'd start local, and then move to the cemeteries, maybe that pathetic excuse for a club if he couldn't find her sooner. If nothing else, he could pick up someone for dinner.

After three hours of searching, two large demons looking for a fight, and one dead frat-boy, Spike felt the Slayer's presence near the college campus.

She looked like she'd lost a little weight, and her hair had lost
some of the shine and bounce that he remembered.

"What's the matter, Slayer? Did the brooding lump get himself dusted?" He called, hoping to both attract her attention and keep her off-balance.

Her head turned, and she glared, seeking his location in the shadows. A stake was clutched in one hand, and had the other clenched into a fist. "Spike, what are you doing here? In Sunnydale?"

"I like the ocean view," he drawled, not wanting to admit anything more. He didn't want her to know about Drusilla, about Spike's current unease about his vampire-hood. "So, where is General Grumpy-pants anyhow? Dare I hope dead?"

"Don't you talk about him!" She swung he fist at him, eyes furious.

"I guess I touched a nerve," Spike grinned, blocking her fist. "Want me to touch another one? He talked about you when he stayed with us."

Buffy swept one leg at him, knocking him off balance as she spat angry words that he didn't pay attention to. She was angry, they were fighting - that was enough. Spike lost himself in the violence, feeling indescribably better. He could feel the bruises starting to form where she'd gotten through his guard, and he could see one forming on her cheekbone, and another on her arm, just below the elbow.

"I could turn you, give you a bit more time to dwell on your issues with him," Spike offered, uncertain if she'd be able to adapt to unlife as a vampire, uncertain if he'd even want her to have the chance. But to spend decades watching her pine of Angelus, taunting her over the older vampire's abandonment of her... If he'd been less in love with Dru, that's what he would have done. Should have done.

She froze for a moment, her eyes wide with shock as the breath caught in her throat. "No..."

Spike decided to seize the moment, and lunged for her throat. His fangs pierced flesh, and he could taste her blood, thick and hot, potent. The fight was there, something he could taste, as was fear. Did she really fear getting turned that much? He drank greedily, not wanting her to manage to get away from him somehow.

Pain flared in his back, moving into his chest.

Spike gasped, loosing his hold on her throat as the pain radiated through his whole being. Without his grip holding her up, the Slayer fell to the ground. He staggered back, looking down to see a tiny bit of wood sticking out of his chest. "You stabbed my coat..."

Spike crumbled away, his ashes falling over Buffy Summers, the Vampire Slayer. Buffy closed her eyes, a tiny smile on her face. She took a shallow breath, letting it out slowly, and then was still.

Neither one of them was in pain anymore.

End Damaged.