New Year's Resolutions:
part one
by Josie_h
Notes
CHRISTMAS EVE
Spike >>>>>>>>>>
He hadn’t really been fooling himself….
This was all about *feeling* something… anything…..
He always seemed to be so cold lately, you’d reckon he’d be used to it by
now, but this was different, colder than even a normal ‘room temperature’
standard. It permeated everything, chilled him to the core and seemed to freeze
his hard won soul. Inner pain and darkness with a side serve of utter physical
emptiness.
Starved of loving touch for … how many years now? Forever? How long was that? Dru was never one to cuddle; Harmony had a
closer relationship with her bloody stuffed unicorn than him; and the transient
slap ‘n tickle with the slayer was certainly not to be counted (him bein’ the slappee ‘n all!). There was some platonic affection with her pre his amulet
wearing departure, and of course the last couple of days with the whelp. The
return and whole non corporeal thing fed the craving for touch highlighted by
the beginnings of a reconnection with his sire. He never told the surviving Scoobys of his return, not even Xander. After all
what would he say? Hardly brothers in arms any more, those few stolen hours of
closeness pre battle, then his ‘glorious exit’ probably best left as a
treasured memory.
He twisted the wedding band he’d exchanged for his own rings on that last
fateful night of the fight with the First, idly wondered if Xander still wore
his and wished for the comfort of the two treasured reminders of his past.
Regardless of the lapsed years, he still couldn’t bring himself to make
contact, hell the whelp probably had wife and kids by now… he’d only ruin it
again for someone else he cared about.
His mind drifted to the months of threatened impending death courtesy of
the senior partners (or whoever!) and the time when connections with others
faded again.
The final battle with the senior partners had been a joke – odds so far
out of their favour that
the only obvious ending was a Butch Cassidy and the Sundance Kid ‘cover’. But
then the tide had turned. Illyria had gathered some inter-dimensional strength,
used it and disappeared into her self created dimensional rift as the ensuing
blast obliterated the opposition. The dragon was vanquished by the ‘hero of the
hour’ of course but it had still taken Angel down – stupid ponce – he only had to wait a few seconds more and
Illyria’s fire would have
changed everything.
Oh, they’d survived alright, only later was it apparent that the depth of
the dragon claw marks on Angel was not the issue. His sire had failed to heal
at all the following night. He’d collapsed the day after, vomiting blood and
shaking violently, but dismissed the incident as an effect of residual
exhaustion. Spike rang Andrew at the end of the fourth day when things took a
turn for the worse, Angel apparently fitting then crying out in pain when Spike
attempted to lift him to a sitting position.
The boy had come through on the research – but with no solution just
information. Dragon talons carried a poison deadly to all creatures, including
vampires, and there was no known antidote. It was a swift death for most, but
courtesy of a vampire constitution, his sire was to be condemned to a slow and excrutiatingly painful demise. It would possibly take a few
weeks to dust, if unlucky, a few months.
It was strangely comforting and unbelievably distressing to spend that
time finding ‘resolution’ with his sire. They had talked quietly for hours –
history, family, life and unlife, their women, and their own love/hate affair that had spanned one and a
quarter centuries. Spike pleasured his sire while the older vampire was still
able to respond – following each climax, the invalid and his attendant had both
sobbed through the twilight of ‘coming down’, not sated but holding to each
other crying out the shared grief for lost ones, lost opportunities, and lost
tomorrows. As Angel’s condition notably worsened, they began to grieve in
advance for the loss of … everything.
Two months from the fateful night, the dark vampire was emaciated almost
to a point of being unrecognizable and was no longer able to muster the
strength to feed, even when presented with the dripping, open wrist of his
childe. He sobbed silently for hours, excruciating pain taking away his ability
even to scream, then had begun to repeatedly beg his grandchilde, in a barely audible whisper, to give him
the dignity of dying in the embrace, and by the hand, of his ‘favourite boy’.
Spike knowing this to be the last gift he could possibly offer, had
tenderly kissed the dark vampire for the final heartbreaking time with all the
reverence one would bestow a beloved monarch. He then took a stake, placed it
between their chests, held it in place with his ‘wrong hand’, and lovingly
whispered goodbye to his creator. Choking back his own tears, he had grasped
the wasted form of his grandsire around the shoulders with a adoring caress,
and then used his own weight to drive the wood home in a last, desperate and
deadly embrace.
He had spent the ensuing five days lying in the ashes of his maker,
unable to think, let alone move. Then he simply got up, brushed himself down
and walked from the apartment into the night without a backward glance.
He felt Dru’s passing
a couple of months later, though still had no idea how she had dusted. On that
day, he had withdrawn from all contact, demon or human, adopting life as a
hermit trapped by his own misery.
Six years on, found him in yet another damp basement apartment. He could
afford better, with the ready cash flow from many investments these days. Angel
had seen to that in his final weeks, transferring all the assets from AI and
his ‘Aurelian’
Swiss bank accounts to Spike… But dark, dank and underground felt right… his
mood was always dark and underground these days. The Spike of old was a
gregarious, larger than life and undeniably social animal, it made his choice
of subterranean solitary confinement seem even more fitting for his perpetual withdrawal
and personal hell.
He was too thin, eating infrequently, smoking a great deal and inebriated
often. After a century and a half, he’d concluded that feeling nothing was
better than feeling hurt….No more deep wounds, no more rejection, no more fear…
He knew he was a bad man, undead, not worthy of caring caresses, of loving.
Everyone was dead or gone… or both.
The mantra was ingrained, Angelus left – he was the favourite childe, then nothing; Dru left – he was her prince, then so despised
that a chaos demon replaced him; Buffy… Buffy was never really there, he knew
that now; hell, even Harmony left; Angel he had only just found, and he’d left
– albeit involuntarily. The only two times he had done the leaving was when he
died – first as mortal choosing death in an alley over his dear mother. And
second, to stop an apocalypse with his own blaze of light and destruction,
leaving an ally he cared for deeply and only just taken as lover.
There was no killing any more except if he stumbled across a nasty whilst
on a rare trip to buy blood, even those occasional fights had become a matter of physically reminding
himself that he existed. He had been close to this desperate before, babbling
confessions of angst and inner thoughts to ‘the First’ in a haze of insanity,
starvation and sadness in a school basement. But this was far worse…. This time
there was just silence and he was utterly alone.
Now, somewhere in Boston, he lay staring up at another grey, blotchy
ceiling complete with water stain in the shape of a fleeing elephant, and pipes
that groaned and thumped at inopportune moments – it was always a bloody
basement. People threw things they couldn’t be bothered with into basements.
They went down there when something was amiss with the plumbing or some such;
or when there was a garage sale and they figured to rid themselves of the
unwanted flotsam and jetsam in their lives.
He stared at the jumbo stain’s ‘flapping ears’ and casually wondered if
he was the ‘flot’ or the
‘jet’…. Finally fixing upon the thought that he was, no doubt, the
‘Sam’. *I am Sam, I am Sam, do you like
green eggs and ham… oh Sod it* He took another swig of the bottle in his hand,
accidentally hit his front teeth with the rim of the bourbon, and began to
giggle with the pain and his own obscure thoughts.
Strains of ‘Away in a Manger’ sung by a boy soprano drifted down from an
apartment above him and his chortle became a hitched sob. Christmas again,
years merged then dropped away as the memories flooded in. He dropped the
bottle, curled up on the decrepit couch and cried in earnest for the fourth
time that day.
Xander>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>
Xander lay on his back staring at the ceiling of his room of his now
‘single occupant’ apartment.
The bed was cold, he was cold. For all the success at work, and
acceptance back into the ‘normal world’, he felt empty and cold.
He’d all but decided to leave relationships alone for good now. “Gay me
up Willow” had been the glib line delivered with good humor to his favorite wiccan. It had been kind of appropriate for that
moment, but he didn’t think that in all honesty *anyone* could love him now.
Gender, age and apparently even species had no bearing on his unloveability. Hell even his own parents barely tolerated
him. To date he’d had a few ‘anyones’ from of each of the categories in his 30+ years. But there were two
that held profound sadness when remembered.
He had stood on the edge of the crater that was Sunnydale, and publicly yet quietly, grieved for Anya, then later, alone and away from the abyss,
privately and extremely loudly, mourned Spike. Both losses made more acute by
the apparent willingness of the survivors around him to seem so eager to forget
their dead demon friends, and so at ease with ‘moving on’.
Andrew’s heartfelt description of Anya’s heroism had touched him deeply, and he had
taken some comfort in knowing that her end had been swift. Not so for Spike it
seemed. Buffy’s explanation of his beloved vampire sharing a poignant moment
then beginning to burn up, had Xander conjuring pictures of tortured witches
with flames licking at their hair from Inquisition accounts in the watcher’s
books; of TV images showing self immolating priests dying in public view,
protesting the Vietnam war; of screaming victims trapped and burning in
countless scenes from Hollywood ‘B’ horror movies. Endless terrifying scenarios
had played out nightly in torturous dreams and daily in his worst thoughts, for
months after the averted takeover by the First.
Eight years later, they were the occasional companions that plagued him
when stressed and alone,
or momentarily distracted by the sight of a leather duster, platinum hair, or smell
of bourbon, cinnamon and tobacco.
He had left the group of survivors shortly after the battle, choosing
anonymity and relative solitude over a life as perpetual ‘donut boy’ and handy
man repairer of all things. Giles had offered him a place at their newly
established ‘HQ’ in England, promising relative luxury and ‘loving’ company of
what remained of the Scoobies for as long as he would care to stay. Even suggesting Xander might try
his hand at ‘watching’, the offer firmly rejected even before the former
librarian had finished speaking.
Instead, he used his cut of the “Federal Disaster Fund” for Sunnydale’s ‘earthquake’ victims to finance his move to
the relative ‘safety’ of suburban Sacramento. Building was still his thing –
project management his forte. Dedicated and thorough, everyone knew Harris was
available 24/7, his workaholic behavior put down to the welcome drive of a
‘young and hungry exec.’ in the post dot.com era of improved property
investment and construction ‘frenzy’ in the area.
When others inquired of his personal life ‘status’, vague references were
made to loved ones, the ‘quake’ and grieving periods. Eight years on, a few of
his colleagues began to puzzle over their rather enigmatic workmate. Xander was
well liked as personable, capable and intelligent; his management style seen as
efficient and fair; but he always left functions first or ‘found something to
do’ at parties to provide a plausible reason to retreat from contact.
Currently Xander sported a beard, trimmed and ‘goatee’ style, but
definitely edging toward pirate. His eye patch itched occasionally, and vague
memories of a picking up a certain dearly departed vampire on his ‘pirate
speak’, always caused him to twist the two ‘borrowed’ rings in habitual
succession. The familial ring and the Aurelian seal were exchanged with Spike for his own
plain band as a promise and sign of hope all those years ago, now they were
sported as a sign of inner pain and posthumous respect.
At the moment Xander wasn’t sleeping properly; his lean form reflecting
the lack of desire to eat adequately or work out regularly; his ever present
thoughts that he let down everyone who counted in one way or another fed a
deeply entrenched guilt and self loathing. The ‘all’s great’ capable work
exterior crumbled in private to reveal a ‘needy and naïve’ underbelly and he
felt ashamed of that weakness too. So he strove harder to be successful in
public and hid the rest….
Tonight he had escaped a party early, citing a second commitment and
departing with good natured smiles. As he entered his airy apartment, Xander was reminded of the main character from the
movie ‘Fight Club’. He too had the quintessential Ikea décor with the hand made
‘whatevers’ and neutral tones.
Though he was hardly a ‘Tyler Durden’ having no intent to hit anyone again – ever – too much violence past
had resolved any need to ‘do that’.
Keys were removed from the door and eyepatch tugged off, then both were casually tossed
onto the dining table. Xander
decided to obliterate all further thought for the night or at least to dispel
the lonely ache and self doubt embedded after years of being alone, all to brilliantly highlighted by the party
atmosphere he had just escaped. He sought an act of solo carnal relief and its
associated oblivion. Even he admitted this to be his ‘rescue’ method to forget
the ever present sense of emptiness. If only he and his toys could make the
world go away for more than a few exulted minutes.
He showered, wandered into his the tastefully appointed bedroom and fell
back on the king sized bed. As an afterthought, he flicked the television on to
view a delayed broadcast of Christmas Eve ‘Carols from Kings’ celebrations… ‘Away
in a Manger’ was being sung by a single (no doubt famous) young boy soprano
with choral backing. Xander
thought of Christmases past and of the people from those times, all now lost to
him. He ‘took himself in hand’, gently caressed until he came, then let tears
of loneliness and regret flow as he gave in to sleep.