DICTAPHONIC
RAMBLINGS
by
littleflame
Notes
We don’t really get the words we use every day. It’s like the use of them over
and over fades the original intent, like that orange shirt I had that faded
after a couple of years of washing until it was near peach, and then I couldn’t
wear it any more cause, God forbid I wear a colour that might make people
comment on the possibility that I had followed Larry down the path of sunshine
and small pink flowers. So even though I loved that shirt and it had moulded
itself to the perfect shape, I wouldn’t even wear it at home just in case I saw
me in it or something. I never threw it out though, it moved with me into the
new apartment. It’s gone now, part of the mass grave in the desert that used to
be home.
Okay, that’s not the point, though it might be kind of relevant
later and I reserve the right to come back to it. What I’m trying to say is that
when I tell you I was thirsty it just doesn’t cut it. Thirsty is taking a fancy
to a nice cool beer at the end of the day, or needing a soda to clear the taste
of vamp and fear from the back of my throat at the end of patrol. Thirsty as a
word or a description doesn’t touch the bone deep need that drove me to drinking
my own urine after four days of walking lost through African scrub at the edge
of the dessert.
After the hold-up, I remember standing like the idiot I
am watching my land rover disappearing into the distance, listening as they
played my ‘Best of Country’ and wishing that I had made the damn guide take me
after all. The guy had tried to tell me that this was a bad area but I just
didn’t get it. Those over-washed words again. I suppose that after so many years
running from the big and slimy I found humans just didn’t hit the same buttons
on my 'scream now' wiring. Those guns kind of woke that. Big, dumb white guy
just doesn’t have the power to push the pause button on semi automatic weapons
unless you are ‘the one’ and that I wasn‘t. So I’m standing with a couple of
litres of water, a lighter and my wallet and all I could think about was my
‘Best of Country’ and the one photograph of Anya that I had left tacked up on
the windscreen so she could see where I was, and the fact that I had enjoyed the
buzz of driving again after so long in countries where it wasn‘t
allowed.
Shit, I was so stupid.
I started walking. Just kept doing
the one foot in front of the other in the direction I had been driving. I
figured if I stayed where I was, some bastard would come and steal the rest.
Gotta admit I wasn’t feeling too PC at that point. If Willow had heard me she
would have given me the, 'Xander, I’m so disappointed' look, and then the long
lecture on western capitalists' greed and the deplorable conditions our fellow
man had to suffer in the Third World. I didn’t give a good goddamn then; I was
more interested in the deplorable conditions that I was suffering.
After
the first night, I started gathering shrubs and whatever wood I could find as I
walked along. I knew it was slowing me down, but that first night was so bad I
would take the extra sun stroke if I didn’t have to feel cold like that again. I
remember bitching about the cold in England and again, have to say I was dumb.
Yep dumb, one-eyed Jack here, because even after that night I was still whining
about the car and the itch in my boots and the smuggled hostess goods I had
stashed in the glove compartment. Even after that first night, where I was sure
that I was going to freeze to death, I just didn’t get that death was still a
possibility. I didn’t see that the possibility of being nothing more than a
collection of bones and a fancy leather eye patch like a prop in The Goonies was
a bigger probability than finding a village or handy American consulate, but
then I don’t see so well these days and no one has ever accused me of being
intelligent.
On the fourth day, when I found myself pissing in the empty
water bottle and licking my lips in anticipation, it started to sink
in.
I was walking along a dry river bed. You’re thinking that the reason
I was doing this was in the hope of finding some hidden water under the top
soil, or maybe a village close to the area, and okay, I did watch out for darker
patches of dust. At one point I dug down with my hands and found some damp sand.
I tried to see if I could suck the moisture out of it, but all I got was grit
and the taste of days old sweat from where I tried to filter it through my
shirt. The real reason I was following the riverbed was that it was all set out
in front of me. I didn’t have to think or choose a direction; the road was all
set out and I could concentrate on talking to the invisible companions who were
walking alongside me. Oh yeah, I had well in depth conversations with the
over-boiled soup that was my own mind. At one point Snyder was walking alongside
me, hands in his pockets, just strolling along like he was out for a walk around
the school before all the kids came to spoil the neat and tidy. I knew I was in
trouble when he seemed kind of nice; he was talking about the value of bleach
versus antibacterial spray and how much it took to clean the boy’s toilets every
week. He told me that using bleach on the human mind to clean out the memories
that we want to dump was much more financially viable than the spray. I kind of
missed him when he went, but by then everything hurt like I had been playing Mr
Puffy-suit and I wanted my mom so I wouldn‘t look too concerned about it. The
fact that I missed Snyder is just a teeny tiny indication of how screwed I was.
See, the sun out here is more than just rays of heat. It’s a weight; a
great Atlas boulder of air that sits on your shoulder, sucking every touch of
moisture until all that is left is salt and dust. So even though you think you
should be lighter without all that water to carry around, you’re not. You have a
weight of dust and air that slows you until every step is as difficult as
algebra. I was dragging along firewood as well, so I would stagger from one side
of the bed to the other, like watching my parents try to get from the car to the
house after the weekly visit to Uncle Rory’s.
There were some scrubby
plants alongside the riverbed. They had a weird little fruit like thing, and I
thought that maybe they would have juice, or if I dug up the root I could suck
out whatever water they had. The first time I went for one, five year old Willow
appeared in front of it, shaking her head. She was frowning and wearing our
first grade teacher’s glasses. She asked me to look around for bird or animal
poop. I remember telling her that I didn’t have the time for a lesson right now,
but that I promised to listen in just a minute. Every time I tried to get past
her she would move and stand in front of me, until I got so confused by the
dodging about and her resolve face that I finally gave in. I couldn’t find any
signs of animals anywhere. We went from plant to plant until I finally gave up
and asked her why we were doing this. She said that I couldn’t eat anything the
animals wouldn’t; if a bird that lived here all the time thought the plants were
bad to eat then they would most probably be really bad for a Xander who was only
visiting. I remember trying to cry, so dried up and confused and tired and sick
and not able to cry because I didn’t have the water to spare. I just stood in
the middle of the trail unable to work out which foot to use next and
‘wanted’.
Then Jesse came.
He was the one who told me about the
pee drinking. When we were kids, we used to watch this show about people who got
stuck on boats or up mountains or on dry riverbeds in the middle of Africa. On
one show, this guy got stranded on a boat and ended up having to drink his own
piss. Jesse and I had laughed then, completely grossed out, and the two of us
had sworn that we would never do anything like that. We would come up with some
cool way of catching rainwater, or signalling for help. We sure as hell wouldn’t
drink our own piss, or if we did we wouldn’t tell anyone about it.
I
miss being that innocent.
Jessie was cool. He just grinned and we did
the pinkie swear that he wouldn’t tell anyone ever, but as he couldn’t think of
a cool way of finding water or signalling for help right now, well, the drinking
of the yellow seemed the only way to go. He stayed with me all the way to
nightfall that day. He made a lot of jokes at my expense, but I was so happy to
see him and be up and walking that I didn’t mind too much. I missed him when he
went; I didn’t see him again after that.
Africa is beautiful, but there
is no way for me to tell you or show you what I mean. I could show you all the
slides in the world, or go get an education and roll out all the fancy words I
can find, but it wouldn’t touch the truth of the place. It goes beyond anything
I knew. I‘ve spent so much time with the super that I never got the natural.
Africa has a heartbeat; not in a creepy, ‘Rosemary’s baby’ heartbeat in a jar
kind of way, but in a ‘this is the beat the earth moves by‘. It’s just that we
spend so much time worrying about what clothes we are going to wear, or if we
will get a date, or building stuff on top of it that we can’t hear it; we muffle
the sound and run too fast to realise that there is a rhythm. All we have to do
is just listen. I finally got it that last night. I knew I was going to die; it
took me a long time to build the fire, even longer to just get the lighter out
of my pocket. When I got it started, I lay down and looked at the stars. I
thought that, if I had the energy to just lift my arm, I could have touched
them. I was going to die and I was okay with it. I was somewhere beautiful, and
when I went I would go knowing that I had come to understand stuff that most
people would never imagine. I got to thinking about the hyena; I had so
repressed the whole Principal eating time that I didn’t see that I had lost the
good with the bad. She was so free of all the weird stuff we call social
constraints. She had the basic knowledge of where she stood pre-programmed and
the rest was just life, feeding and birth and death. She was a small glimpse of
what Africa is, though I’m not saying it right. I can’t; it’s like someone
trying to learn to be a doctor from reading the backs of cereal boxes and I
can’t teach you what you have to learn by yourself.
I guess it took me a
long time but I finally understand the dream Spanish.
I fell asleep
imagining that animals like the Hyena would get to live another few weeks from
me. Instead of disappearing into a grave, I would vanish into Africa herself. I
would get to become part of her instead of just being a visitor. Then I got to
thinking about blood, and that if I caught one of those animals how good the
blood would taste on my tongue; how wet. I fell asleep thinking about blood and
realising that if Spike was there he would laugh his ass off.
I was wrong
about that, the laughing. He looked more pissed than anything but then,
considering that I was sure I was dreaming and refused to follow him, that can
be understood. Like I said, I fell asleep thinking of being dead and getting
eaten, to become a part of the chain of life and drinking blood and whatever,
and hey, considering I had just spent days staggering through Africa talking to
Snyder and drinking bodily fluids not meant to be drunk, well, I think I should
get a pass on the exasperation.
Something had woken me. I remember
looking at the fire and wondering why it was so high, then kind of panicking and
looking around for animals that would possibly find Xander edible. I didn’t mind
being eaten after the fact, but having something take a bite before I was
finished with the body parts, well, that was a little too Sunnydale for my
tastes.
There was something moving on the other side of the fire,
something that was not me or a shadow. The moon was full, and outside the light
thrown by the fire, everything was clear in that blue wash that full moon
without pollution gives. The way it moved was feline. I would just get glimpses
and then it would smooth away again, just become part of shadow until I wasn’t
sure if I had seen movement at all. It took a lot of work to sit up. I was tired
and everything hurt like syphilis. In the end I had to compromise and, with
trusty burning branch in one hand, I crawled around to the other side of the
fire. Which was weird, because I was pretty sure that when I built it the damn
thing was too small to have another side. When I got there, I dropped the branch
and fell face first into the dirt. I guess laughing so hard after days without
water is where they got the term died laughing.
Spike was sitting,
crossed legged, in front of the fire, swaying to something only he could hear,
and wearing a skirt.
Okay, not a skirt like the girls would wear. It was
one of those traditional wraps that you see men often wear in the smaller
villages, but still, after everything that had happened I couldn’t understand
what my heat stroke version of Spike was doing dressed like that. He just sat
there with that, ‘oh, you plonker’ expression, and if anyone can tell me what
that means you can, because it’s one of those words that have always driven me
nuts, but I would rather claw out my other eye than give him the satisfaction of
asking.
I didn’t have the strength for the level of hysteria that the
sight truly deserved. I was too tired to keep laughing. In the end, I just lay
there hiccupping and looked at him. He was different from all my other visitors;
they had all looked like I remembered them. Half naked, skirt wearing Spike with
mud caked curly hair I can honestly say I had never seen before. He was the
colour of bleached wood, and no matter how close he sat to the fire the blue of
the moon never left his skin. I suppose that should have told me that more than
my imagination was at work.
He never spoke, just did that annoying head tilt
thing and looked at me, like he couldn’t decide if he was fascinated or
disgusted. I found myself trying to straighten up, brushing off dust as if I
could influence what side he came down on. As if I cared. I suppose, if I’m
honest, I always did. Care, I mean. If I didn’t, he wouldn’t have been able to
make me so mad with just a look. If I didn’t feel something, his constant cheap
shots wouldn’t have stung so much.
He just watched me for a while, then
he flowed upwards and yeah, I know, flowed, kind of flowery for me, but that’s
what it was. He didn’t go through the separate motions that we do to get from
sitting to standing, nor did he suddenly go from sitting to standing in a blink.
He flowed, like water pouring the wrong way; though perhaps I just had water on
the brain, but I can’t think of a better word right now. Then he started to walk
away. He looked over his shoulder to see if I was following, and when he saw I
wasn’t he kind of frowned and tilted his head. He didn’t speak, but I knew what
he was saying. I could almost hear the ‘come on, Harris, I don’t have all
night’. I stayed where I was. I had had a long day and the thought of following
a Spike apparition away from the safety of the fire just didn’t seem like a good
idea. Also, after he did the flowing thing, I didn’t want to have to feel him
watch as I struggled like something caught in a tar pit just to get to my knees.
We had a long, silent argument, and then he came back and crouched before me and
smiled.
The night after we held the service for those we lost in
Sunnydale, I was so caught in my regrets for Anya that I didn’t really connect
with much of what was said. The drink was strong, and to tell the truth I didn’t
really want to hear little anecdotes about people I didn’t know or didn’t want
to. I do remember Dawnie and Buffy talking about Spike, talking about the way he
would smile sometimes and they could almost see someone different, someone quiet
and wise looking out. At the time I snorted to myself and took another shot, but
that night, when he came back and crouched in front of me, I saw what they
meant. I saw why they trusted him so much, and considering that the world is
here and not in hell I figured it didn’t really matter exactly where I became
part of the chain of life, so with some struggle and a generous loss of dignity
I got up and followed.
We walked along the riverbed and rounded a corner
until I could no longer see the glow of the fire when I looked back. I spent
most of the time stumbling over loose rock and tired legs trying to keep up with
the thing glowing just ahead of me. And yeah, I do mean glowing. Not in a bright
light from heaven kind of way, but more like the phosphorescence you get from
those rocks or fish that have spent so long in the dark they produce their own
light to spite it. We walked until a tree, long dead but still standing, could
be seen on the scrublands to the right of the bed. Spike looked back to be sure
I was following then he turned towards the tree, and like Timmy down the well I
followed my Lassie. I remember hearing the theme tune to ‘ The littlest Hobo’
start in my head at this point and the giggles almost brought me to my knees. He
just looked over his shoulder and rolled his eyes, but he waited for me to
straighten up before he started walking again. It was when we got to the tree
that the weird really began.
Spike waited for me, then he pointed to a
rock in the distance. He waited until he was sure I knew what he was pointing at
then he turned to the tree and traced an arrow, pointing to the rock. It was
just a light brush of finger, but when he brought his hand away I could smell
wood smoke and the arrow had been burnt into the very trunk of the tree. When I
touched it, it was still hot. He stepped away from me when I went to look at his
hand, and then I understood or thought I did. I was dead and Spike was coming to
take me to hell. I thought that, maybe if I stayed where I was, I would be okay;
eventually someone from above would see me and take pity. He just watched me for
a while then tilted his head to the sky and sighed. It was weird; I couldn’t see
his mouth move but his voice was clear and he said, ‘Harris, a greater gift
gives no man than his life for another‘. I didn’t get what he was talking about
until he lifted a flat pebble and burned a cross on the very stone with his
finger. He smiled at me again and pressed the crucifix into the skin of his
hand. When he pulled the stone away his hand was untouched.
He gave me the
stone. I remember holding it tight all that night. I still have it on a piece of
rawhide around my neck.
When we got to the big rock, he pointed me to a
small series of rock hills then burned another arrow into the stone. From the
hills, we went to another dry riverbed, which we followed to a curve. At the
curve I could see the lights of humanity and the sounds of dogs.
When he
saw that I had registered where we were he nodded, and the next thing I knew we
were back at the fire. Three times altogether, that night, he took me to each
point, making sure that I touched his arrow at every marker. When he was sure I
could find my way, he brought me back to the fire.
I could see that he
was going to go and leave me. He had never spoken to me or even touched my hand,
but I knew that he was more than the ghosts my mind had created to keep me
company along the way and I really didn’t want him to go. By now pride was a
distant memory and I found myself almost pleading with him to stay. He looked at
me then checked the fire and, kneeling down, put his arms around me and kissed
me. And yes, we are talking a true, peach shirt-wearing kiss. I almost drank
him; I had been without touch for so long that being held was more than I could
cope with. I came back to myself with my head buried in his neck, holding him so
tight that if he had stayed I would have seen the bruises form. He let me pull
away and, sitting on his knees, looked back at the fire before checking the sky,
then he turned and grinned at me and, reaching over, brow slapped me really
hard.
And then I woke up.
I woke up in the pre dawn, cold,
sporting a woody and clutching the stone he had given me so hard it had left a
crease on my palm. I gotta admit that I found myself kind of proud of little
Xander for managing to acquit himself so well in such trying circumstances. I
got to my feet and started to walk. Before nightfall I had found the village and
was being taken to the closest hospital. They said it was a miracle I had
survived. They said it was a miracle I had even found the village at all. If I
had stayed on the same riverbed I would have found nothing but more scrub and
sand and death.
Two weeks later I found my slayer and called to let you
guys know that I was okay and she was on her way. I guess people would wonder
why I didn’t just say screw it and come back, but I was tired of failing; I was
tired of only reaching for what I thought I could touch. That night, looking at
the stars, I hoped for something without realising that I could and it came, in
strange packaging, yes, but then the best surprises usually are. Africa and me
came to an understanding; I learned to listen to her and she adopted me as her
own. If I honour her she will continue to keep me safe.
It was with Talia
that I realized more was going on than I thought. It took me a long time to pick
up the different languages that change from region to region. Some towns you can
have up to five or six languages being spoken at one time. I had figured that I
was just good at picking up what the girls I found were trying to say. I thought
that, hey, after all those years with different ogly bogglies grunting at me I
could communicate without words, but Talia didn’t speak. She had escaped from
Rwanda with other refugees when she was a child. She had no hands or legs and
she couldn’t speak; yet in my head I could hear her. It was like I knew exactly
what her voice would sound like. Often, it was screaming; just this long, tired,
frustrated wail. To the people around her she was worthless. She had been so
badly abused that children were unlikely. She couldn’t work or breed or speak.
She certainly couldn’t slay. All she could do was go quietly mad and accept the
food shovelled into her mouth twice a day. But I could hear her. I could almost
see her dreams. Her yearning was like a paste in the back of my throat and for
days I wondered around freaking, until I'd had enough and drove out to the bush
to camp away from everyone for a while.
That was the second night, he
came.
It was different this time. I wasn’t asleep, just sitting before
the fire with my head in my hand trying to work out what was happening to me and
what I was going to do with Talia. I heard a slight sound and when I looked up,
there he was, sitting cross-legged before me doing that swaying thing. I must
have been gaping because he smiled and reached over to push my mouth shut with a
snap sharp enough to echo through my teeth. I was so happy to see him, but now I
wasn’t dying I couldn’t let him see that so I tried to be aloof, cool. I think
he saw me for the sophisticate I am when I reached over and hugged him hard
enough to smother. He didn’t seem to mind, just did that head tilt thing and
looked at me as I cleared my throat and wondered how the NFL was faring, and
babbled about everything that was going on like the big manly man I
am.
When I finished we were sitting just looking at each other for a
time, then he did that thing with his eyebrow, which I'm sure is an English
thing. You use a million big words to describe an egg but only twitch a few well
placed muscles to make a point. and yes, the twitching muscles is something else
I will come back to. But right then, with the eyebrow, he was kind of saying,
you finished? Then he reached and just touched my ears. I couldn’t get what he
was saying; I couldn’t get why he wasn’t saying more. The Spike I knew never
shut up. Even when he was crazy he just created more voices to compensate and
this silence pissed me off. He just let me rant, then got up and rummaged
through my bag and brought back an old pair of sneakers. I remember sitting
there looking at him and thinking that he had spent way too much time with
Buffy. Here I was, dealing with these huge life on balance issues and he was
making commentary on my footwear.
He didn’t wear any shoes, just the
dusty wrap with some runes stitched on it, and okay, I know the runes are
something you might find important but hey, I was a little more interested in
telling Spike that he could have the sneakers but they would be at least three
sizes too big.
I always forget that you know. I think we all forget how
little he is. When I hugged him, in a manly way, of course, my arms were able to
wrap right around him with space to spare. I think Dawn would be bigger than
him, now. He just gave me a look and I could hear him say ‘ big where it
matters, mate’. Then he threw the sneakers at me to pull on and started to walk.
So we’re back to the wandering around Africa at night, me with my trusty
sneakers and him doing his night light impression. We got well out into the bush
and then he turned to me and grinned, and the next thing I knew I was holding a
spear and running after a small herd of African Dik-dik. Everything was in fast
motion, just the sound of the grass slashing past as we ran after the deer. The
terrain was throbbing under me like a David Lynch movie only without the scary.
It felt right, good; there was nothing else in the world but Spike, the deer and
the land under my feet. Every step I took was in perfect time with the beat of
the air around me, everything just snapped into sync. I released the spear and
hit the doe that Spike had cornered from the herd and, as the spear struck home,
all other sounds but the breath of the land disappeared. Spike looked at me then
changed into grr face and began to drain the deer. I could hear its heart beat;
I could hear the animal's panic and slow acceptance. That throbbing got louder
and louder and I started to grey out a little; not concussion, more like the
time Oz got that really good pot and we lost hours just staring at the van
ceiling. I sat down and closed my eyes to try and clear my head. When I opened
them again we were back at the fire. Spike was stretching hide on a wooden
frame, the deer was on a spit and I got what he had been telling me.
I
had just learned how to listen.
I know, motor mouth learning how to shut
up and hear what’s being said for a change, but that’s all it was. Not some
demon infection or compensation for my lost eye. I’m still one hundred percent
human, no super stuff here. I think I just tapped into something any human could
if they bothered to stop and try. The night I almost died I had seen it. I had
finally clicked on to the knowledge that the planet we spend so much of our
lives saving was more than just a ball of rock, but when I got better I forgot.
I guess the Sunnydale syndrome finally kicked in after all these years. Spike
says that we forget our pains and fears because we have too. If we remembered
every scratch and hurt with complete clarity we would never leave the womb. I
just kind of threw the baby out with the bath water.
That night I had
woken a part of me up that had been sleeping for a long time, or as Mr
Salterson, my eight grade wood shop teacher used to say, I had expanded myself
to my fullest potential. We only use a tiny part of our brains. Who’s to say the
same doesn’t go for our other body parts? I had a long talk with Spike about
maximisation of body part usage and I realise you probably don’t need to hear
about that conversation. So let's just say that the Viking is still performing
to his utmost potential and move on… though thinking that potential is not the
word I want to be using; it brings back too many memories of nubile young
schoolgirls. Ah, stopping now. See, that’s what happens when I spend time
getting de-briefed by Andrew and yes, I know, that is another unfortunate
collection of words.
I was surprisingly okay with the whole hearing
thing, didn’t freak out at all and if Spike tries to say different, those
earplugs were just to prevent flies from crawling in.
I. Did. Not.
Freak.
After many years of hellmouth living, the sudden ability to hear
people's thoughts and see the dead undead didn’t faze me at all. I dealt. A few
days running around the bush humming with my hands over my ears and some fist
shaking at the sky and I was A-OK. That didn’t help with Talia though. I still
didn’t know what was the best thing to do for her. I was worried that taking her
away from what she knew would do more harm than good. Back then, the council was
just getting to its feet and we had enough trouble with the healthy slayers. I
spent a couple of sleepless nights before I made my decision, and as long as the
fire burned, Spike stayed with me.
See, that’s the catch, and I know you
are rolling your eyes in impatience that I haven’t got to this sooner, but I can
only tell this in order so hold on to your ‘good lords’ okay?
Spike is
some kind of higher, vamp fire element secret, doing his amends kind of hybrid
thingy. He says he can tell me only what I need to know, though just between you
and me I don’t think he knows much more himself, or if he does he doesn’t really
understand it.
Things have changed but there are still rules. He can walk
in sunlight though it never seems to affect him much; he never really loses the
touch of blue from that first night. He still has the vamp face and the soul
which, well good, or I would be a dead Xander, but he’s tied to fire. If I feed
the fire and keep it burning he can stay, but once it goes out he is gone. I
don’t know where he goes when he does the disappearing act. That, he won’t tell
me but I think it’s somewhere nice, he always gets a little smile when I ask
him.
I found a witch doctor in Burundi who figured out how to keep an
ember burning in an amulet. It’s activated by a spell so I don’t have to stop
and light a fire every time I want to see him, and it means that if I’m
travelling in less than safe zones I have a guide and guard all rolled into one.
Also it’s nice having someone who actually understands my pop culture
references, even if he does shake his head and call me a tit for some of my
lamer puns. He can’t get too smug though, he may call me a twat but he is a big
dork as well for knowing what I’m taking about in the first place.
He’s
not mine though. Well he is, but not in the genie in a bottle, I’ve just caught
a leprechaun kind of way. He comes and goes, as he wants. He gets jittery if we
spend too long in cities or heavily populated areas, which is funny all by
itself. Spike not liking the bright lights of the big cities. I suppose if you
saw the kind of light that Spike has seen, you'd find the glare of electricity
painfully false.
I’m going too far forward here. I’m not like Will or
Dawn; the coherency thing is a beautiful myth for me.
Talia.
God,
I struggled so hard with this then it just clicked, I hate that. It’s like when
you spend hours trying to fix the TV only to find that you forgot to switch it
on at the plug. I couldn’t just send her to you guys. She needed one on one and
I think the trauma of flying back to England would have been too much for her. I
got talking to a couple of missionaries that knew of a private hospital in a
better-developed part of Kenya. It was expensive but she would get the best of
care. They would teach her how to read and write, help her with counselling and
perhaps one day she would be able to break out of the cage her body had become.
When the slayer designated to that area is sent I will make sure that part of
her duties is to bond with Talia. Buffy lasted so long with the help of friends;
Talia’s duty can be giving another slayer a reason for sticking around.
I
found it so hard looking at all the others who were going to be left. I felt
guilty that I was only helping one of the dozens, who were as bad, if not worse.
Spike said I had to look after my own tribe first. I wasn’t bloody Bob Geldof. I
had a job to do and if I kept thinking the way I was I would get lost, not
seeing the wood for the trees.
He still mixes his metaphors. He is still
a pain in the butt and he still slaps you over the head with harsh, tactless
accuracy.
I left a hefty chunk of change with the missionaries in Kenya.
I didn’t think you would mind; we all work for the good of humanity. Those guys
just deal with the aftermath of the human monsters.
I started to
really enjoy Africa, then. Every day I would check the Willow map and go looking
for a new slayer, and then at night I would light a fire and spend time with
Spike. Don’t get me wrong, we still snarled and bitched at one another like two
girls fighting over the last dress on sale, but we had spent so much time
together by now that it was comfortable. In a way my tent only felt like home
after I had the evil undead sharing the bathroom so to speak. He is so much
easier to live with the third time around. There are no towels for him to leave
lying on the floor and that was a major bone of contention out of the way. At
first he stayed away when I had a slayer on board, but after a lion attack in
Tanzania when I had the eleven year old twins to care for he stayed to help and
then it just became the norm for him to be there when I picked up the new ones.
I know you have written before to ask about ‘Xander's ghost’ and I kind of blew
it off. I’m sorry about that but I needed time to sort out some things myself.
For a long time there was a part of me that worried that he wasn’t real or was
some kind of evil fake. See, the slayers didn‘t react like he was a demon. They
trusted him on sight. The younger ones treated him like he was a skinny, snuggle
bunny. In certain villages the elders practically treated him like a god, and if
you are trying to imagine how puffed up he got in those situations multiply it
by a thousand and you still wouldn‘t come close. I didn’t want to tell you about
him only to have you send back a reasonable explanation that meant he wasn’t
real or worse. I really didn’t want you asking other questions because by that
time the thing between us was becoming more than brotherly love unless, of
course, you live in an area where your bald, toothless younger brother likes to
play the banjo at gas stations.
It wasn’t until I went to LA a few
months back to meet up with Andrew for a quick meet and slayer handover that
every thing just slid into place. I saw Deadboy and he just knew. He actually
grabbed me and sniffed, which okay gross, but the look on his face was worth it.
Especially when I used the amulet and Spike appeared in front of him. I gotta
tell you that was a relief, his appearing I mean. When I left Africa I was
terrified that Spike wouldn’t be able to leave or the amulet wouldn’t work from
so far away, like it could lose the signal. Or worse case scenario, I would find
out for sure that he was just a figment of my sun boiled imagination, but Angel
saw him. Angel with his vamp family blood connection knew him, and considering
the frowning angsting growls, I was pretty convinced.
The LA crew was
fascinated by him, they couldn’t wait to get him into the labs. I thought Spike
would baulk but he seemed to enjoy the attention, especially as he could see how
much Angel hated all the fuss. By the third day, though, I could see him getting
jittery and I have to admit I was ready to get home as well. They could only
confirm what Spike had told me in the first place, that he is some sort of
elemental demon construct.
By all accounts he’s an anomaly; he shouldn’t
exist. A vampire that has merged with a fire element should cancel itself out
but Spike being Spike... well, you know. As Angel said, one thing you can count
on Spike to do is the opposite of what he should. They think it has something to
do with the amulet and the way he died. I don’t know or care about the details,
really, I was just happy to have real other people proof that he was there at
all.
It was in LA that I found out for sure that I was still human.
Angel acted all cool, keep to the shadows guy, but I think deep, deep
down he was happy to see Spike again, though he may have just been trying to
hide the bubonic looking burns on his face from the fight where Spike used his
ET finger. Watching the two of them roll across the floor, hearing Deadboy‘s
little yelps each time Spike poked him, was worth a thousand Mastercards. By the
end of the visit all Spike had to do was threaten to stick his hands in the big
guy's hair and silence reigned. You cannot imagine how smug that made him. After
all these years he finally has one up on the Sire. I didn‘t begrudge him the
smirk time, and it meant he couldn‘t pout at me too much for not completely
taking his word that he wasn‘t some freaky remnant of the first evil. I suppose
that, outside of Drusilla, they are the closest to family that they have. A
hundred years from now, when we are all dust, they will probably have only each
other, and after losing Cordelia, Angel probably feels that it is best to hold
on to what you’ve got, no matter who it is.
I get that.
When we
got back we started off in Libya, and Spike vanished for a week. I think he
figured I was okay for a while and he needed to go wherever it is he goes to
deal with the spending of so much time with smog and peopled civilisation again.
He pulled his usual appearing act as I was crossing into Algeria. One moment it
was just me and Patsy Kline, the next the CD is a distant flash in the rear
mirror and I’ve got the re-incarnation of King Tut rummaging around the glove
box, stealing my last bar of chocolate.
Things should have gone right
back to the way they were before, just taken up were we left off but they
didn’t. I was jittery. Babbling, hyper-aware of him, whereas he was just
himself. But every now and again he would give me this look, as if I had
disappointed him or changed my mind about something my mind had never set itself
on in the first place, and sometimes he would glance at the ember around my neck
as if he was afraid I would decide to blow it out forever.
It was all on
me. Another big Atlas boulder on my shoulder, only the sun looked better and
every time I looked out the window I was aware of the space where Anya’s picture
had sat in the old Rover and I was more comfortable with the denial, and the
pretending that those times of touching were just plain old innocent brushes of
manly, hearty goodness. After LA, that thing we had been happily ignoring
started to raise its head and roar. I mean, just because there was a space
opened up didn’t mean we had to park in it.
Words are not my
friends.
In Ghana we didn’t have time for prancing about like catholic
schoolboys who‘ve just worked out why shoes came in two's not three‘s, as Spike
would say. We had a slayer who made Faith look like the poster girl for world
sanity. Actually that‘s wrong. This girl knew exactly what she was doing, she
enjoyed it and, okay, I get that being born a woman in a strict Muslim family
may not be the best lot in life but there are other ways to deal. By the time we
found her things had already got messy, and yeah, that’s in the literal sense.
This girl could have given Anyanka in her heyday a run for her money. We offered
her a way out; a ticket to England and all the therapy she could want.
She left her brother's testicles in the glove box.
I still find
myself looking at bleach with yearning when I think of the sound of her voice in
my head.
Spike says she took the slayer dreams and used them to her
advantage, only unlike the rest of her sisters she emulated the vampires. We
played cat and mouse for weeks, only realising when it was almost too late that
we were the mice. We buried her in the Digya national park; I couldn’t face red
meat for a month after.
I had spent most of my time up to then inland but
after, we drove down to Elmina and spent days at the water. It seemed like I was
going to be fine. Spike said little, just stayed with me, watching as I tried to
wash away what wasn’t there any more. We camped near the coast and played
tourist for a few days, then I got spectacularly drunk and acted like a complete
bastard. The expression on his face when I asked him how it felt to take down
his third slayer sobered me up pretty quick. He didn’t leave though, just let me
rant then held me through the next few nights as I wondered how many girls we
were going to have to bury in the coming years. How many people were going to
die because we gave power to those who were never supposed to hold
it?
I’m not like Buffy or Will or even Faith. If Spike hadn’t been here
it would have been chunks'o'Xander and for the first time I started to wonder if
we had really done the right thing.
Very few places are strong enough to
hold a slayer if she doesn’t want to be held. Considering the alternative what
makes us any better than the old Council? That seems harsh, but the term
wet-works has taken hold on my brain like a big slimy wet…thing and now I’m
thinking you guys have already thought of this side of things and mister
techno-touch-it-break-it-here just missed the memo, yeah? That techno clumsy
thing being the reason that my contact has been a little less than regular. It’s
not that I’m avoiding you guys or deliberately trying to leave out stuff you
might find important, and hey, did you know that they still have nomads out
here?
Heh.
Procrastination is my middle name. Well no, not really,
but wouldn’t it be cool if it was? Cool and charmingly accurate.
I’ve
been tiptoeing around a subject with big heavy dance around the bush boots. I
guess I have been hoping that you would pick up the gist of things without me
having to come right out and say it, but if I keep with the coy you might get
the impression that I’m ashamed and I’m not. Also, as Spike would say, ‘if I
can’t say it I’m not ready to do it’ and I am ready. Well, considering the doing
we’ve been doing I’m long past ready so even though I know you are pleading with
me not to say it, I gotta disappoint.
Spike and I are a
couple.
Don’t go grabbing your gourd just yet. I’m not possessed, it’s
not a spell nor am I being taken advantage of in my grief, so leave the glasses
alone and step away from the books.
It’s just that listening thing again,
though this time I was finally listening to myself.
Out here, everything is
flipped over like those old maps where people actually fall of the end of the
world. Most of my life I avoided the dark. We saw patches of sunlight as safe
zones, as if that would keep us alive, making the dark the bad guy, but in
Africa you look for the shade, life congregates in shadow. You feel that old
safe now buzz at twilight when it used to be dawn because the planet itself is
more dangerous than anything supernatural could throw at you. I think that was
the hardest for me to connect; that the dark wasn’t bad, that just because
things used to be a certain way didn’t mean that they always would be. When I
got that switch, when the understanding that shadow had its own security finally
hammered its way into my thick skull, things got a lot easier, and I realized
that I wasn’t going to fall of the edge of the world if I kept walking where I
hadn’t before.
For a long time my life was that riverbed. I just kept
following what was all set out. I didn‘t have to make choices outside what brand
of generic soap I was going to pick that week. I followed what I knew without
thinking that it would be okay to pick my own direction, plugging for the normal
life. The job, wife, picket fence and two point kids who would have grown up
hating me. And like that damned riverbed, I would have ended up dead. Not in the
literal sense, but in my heart I would have just been another drone. I took the
courage to trust and found safety in the desert; I had to step out of that track
in my mind as well. I got it. I suppose I found myself in a weird Simba
following Scar kind of way, and okay, perverting Disney movies with Elton John
theme tracks not helping my I-swear-I’m-not-possessed case here, but hey, the
theme music is a perversion all of its own.
When I look back to the time
before, I can’t remember being happy; I mean, really happy. I guess I was always
playing catch up. A part of me still wonders if Willow and I hadn’t come as a
pair would I even know you guys now? Spike says I was the reason Buffy fought,
that I represented humanity at its best and worst, that we didn’t fight and
struggle and die to save the world for the witches or slayers but for the
humans, and my place was reminding you all why you fought, and that’s cool, I
get that. But no one really wants to be the mascot. In our hearts of hearts we
want to be the guy scoring the touchdowns and cheerleaders. Most times no one
even remembers the guy in the mascot costume's name. I’ve got someone now who
sees me as the quarterback. I don’t come in as the add on or the irritating
friend who makes stupid remarks and calls for pizza. I have someone who will
never forget my name or use me as just another tick on a life list.
I
wondered if Willow had done the gay me up spell, but Spike had laughed and said
why would she fix what hadn’t been broken…bastard.
It’s not the sweeping,
dewy-eyed love of romance novels and bad TV movies; we are too much ourselves
for that. There are still mornings when I wake up surprised to see him there,
and I know that he has just as many flashes of panic that the whole thing is
going to fall down around us as I do. We’ve seen too much to want the fairy tale
ending. We would probably fight over who gets to be the prince and who the
horse, and to be honest we know that most fairy tales end in someone getting
something cut off with medieval weaponry and hey, been there, wearin' the
eye-patch.
Sometimes I imagine some bored god flipping us like coins.
Heads for hate, tails for love, and a part of me will always be waiting for the
next flip. But until then I’m here and its not just for the company. It is big
heart slamming, I can’t get enough of him, ticking bomb clock love. I love him
more than I could ever have dreamt of hating him and I know by every glance that
he feels the same.
He’s still Spike, though; the sacrificial goat act
didn’t change him where it matters. He’s no angel, which considering the
thudding punnage is a good thing. There are differences. Yeah, sometimes it’s
like living with a cross between a Ritalin deprived toddler and Buddha and, okay
I love him, but he is far from perfect. He can be murderously annoying, he hogs
the covers and picks his teeth with left over animal bones, he constantly messes
with the radio, and for all his
I’m-so-cool-now-that-I-have-become-some-w
When I asked him why he came and why he stayed he just
said, “You wanted.”
I know that this is not exactly what you were
expecting when you asked for this report, but hey, the reason you sent the
Dictaphone was because the written appeared in code, right? And I write like I
think so the talking isn’t going to be any better organised, but at least you
can’t see the spelling mistakes. I can hear the Oh dear lord from here, and no
that’s not my new listening skills, it’s just experience. But I kind of wanted
to tell you first that I’ve fallen out of the closet, and even though you might
not like the coat I happen to be wearing I’m hoping you are going to at least
understand. Considering all the years that you and I were joint presidents of
the let's stake Spike coalition, I don’t expect you to swing out the barbecue
for the fatted calf, but I don’t want you to feel like I betrayed you or let you
down. I remember how Will reacted after the Cordelia exposure and hey, maybe
that mess should have given me a clue, huh?
Here’s hoping I’m not doomed
to repeat.
I lost so much time with Anya. I screwed up so bad with the
not having the courage to come clean about how I felt. With Spike we can’t lie,
we hear each other too well, sometimes way too well. But with Anya, all that
time I lost when she was back to Anyanka, all those minutes and days when she
thought that she was alone, when I didn’t tell her that I was still her friend,
that I still loved her…
That chewed at me for a long time.
I don’t
want anyone I care about to feel like that because of me again. I think Spike
knows that I love him, not just the human part but all of him and hey, love you
too. Not the sleeping bag aerobics kind of love, but big smooches, please don’t
be pissed at my sins of omission, love.
Pretty smart, sending me this
thing. I’ve ended up saying more than I had meant to when I started, but then
that was maybe the point. It’s probably for the best considering you are coming
out here next month; it will save you the heart attack when you are met by mini
Mowgli and me.
So, okay huh, this is kind of like leaving messages on the
answering machine; I never know what to say to finish up. I suppose in the past
it was more big monster chasing me! We never did have much time to figure out
the niceties of this talking to air. So see you next month, give everyone my
love. Or if you want to spare me a job and share the news, give them our
love.
I’ll let you get to the whiskey, then.
Click.