2-6

I disclaim especially as I don't like these anywhere near so much as the first. As they exist, however, I felt the need to post. Someone may like them. Just not me.

2 A Summers

He knows he’s dreaming, but he smiles anyway.

This is the night everything changed.

It’s not the one you think.

Buffy is alive and so is Dawn.

He said that every night he saves her.

She only assumed when.

The minions aren’t really human enough for this to hurt, or if they are, he doesn’t care.

Killing them is easy.

The pain is lesser here, and in this moment, that’s all that matters.

The monks are running from him, afraid of the vampire visage that makes him what, not who, he is.

Not that he believes that anyway.

“You made the Slayer a sister, but you made a mistake.”

The monks are terrified, this ceremony cannot be stopped and Glorificus can only be moments away and this vampire is attacking them.

Only he’s not.

“You have to change it. Make it better. The world is wrong now.”

“We can’t.” The smallest one chokes out as Spike leans on his chest, less afraid of him than of the Thing that is to come.

Spike doesn’t care, he is the Big Bad even with a chip in his head, and he is the Thing that other demons fear.

“You can. You took the blood of the Slayer to make your Key human, so that she can protect her, but you have to make Dawn able to protect herself.”

The monks are shaking their heads, not understanding what Spike means.

“Blood. That’s what everything comes down to, right?” The question is rhetorical, which is good since the monks are too terrified to speak. “Then use mine, too. Make her strong, make her tough.” He pauses, knowing everything that is to come and wondering where his past self is right now. He rips open his wrist with his teeth and lets the vein drip blood onto the urn. “Make her,” and these are the magic words, the words that will heal the world, “a Summers.”

The Night Buffy Died isn’t that anymore. He can see it now, how Buffy broke but Dawn was strong enough to jump when Spike was thrown, to trust her supernatural body to find the earth and the best landing pad – Spike’s broken form – and save herself.

The Night Buffy Died is now The Night That Dawn Broke Her Ankle.

And Spike’s favourite cigarette lighter.

He believes it was a small price to pay.

“Every night I save you.”

…Again.

3 Hello Iowa

He knows he’s dreaming, but he smiles anyway.

This is the night everything changed.

It’s not the one you think.

Buffy’s alive and so is Dawn.

“Soldier Boy.”

“Spike?”

He’s never seen anyone look quite so astonished since Angelus killed that bishop with his own mitre.

“Give me one good reason why I shouldn’t stake you right now.”

“She needs you.”

The cigarette flares between his lips in the darkness.

“Buffy?”

“You might be a wanker, but you’re the only soldier-wanker she’s got.”

“And you came all the way to Bolivia to tell me that?”

He is so confident, so self-assured, that Riley has to hit him just to stop himself from staking him.

His sneer doesn’t even flicker.

“Don’t get me wrong, she didn’t break when you left town but…”

“I can’t go back, Spike, the military own my ass.”

“Far as I can see, Buffy owns your ass.”

“At least she doesn’t kick it like she does yours.”

Riley has never been the most quick-witted of mortals.

“She needs your help. Bint won’t admit it but she does.”

Another blow, this time taking the cigarette from between his lips.

“I asked about your swearwords when I was on assignment in England – they’re really not words you should apply to a lady, Spike.”

His pride is in the gutter and now so his is chin, but what does that matter if his girls live?

“Hit a fellow when he’s just trying to help, why don’t you?”

“What do you want, Spike?”

“Me? All I ever wanted was a nice comfy crypt, with cable, a fridge, a microwave and a decent supply of blood. Human for preference.”

The look on Riley’s face makes the chip fire in his brain.

He shakes the pain away.

“So here’s the thing – God, I’m even starting to talk like her – the Big Bad is Bigger and Bad-der than ever and after Dawn. This Glory bint is harder to get rid of than a Mugwaie demon high on cheetos and you know how nasty those boys can be.”

Riley, in a moment of forgetfulness and soldierly-comradeship, nods.

“Why me?”

“I want ’bit in one bit.”

“Huh?”

“Ever seen a hell-god hit by an AK-47?”

The smile on his face reminds Riley of the sun rising over the cornfields of Iowa.

He is effulgent.

“Every night I save you.”

Just not always the way you think.

4 Troll Hammer

He knows he’s dreaming, but he smiles anyway.

This is the night everything changed.

It’s not the one you think.

Buffy’s alive and so is Dawn.

The crypt is comforting and Passions is on.

For once in his un-life, he ignores it.

Clem will tape it for him anyway.

“Spike?”

Buffy-bot is the perfect metaphor for his existence.

She is every b he has ever wanted: a beautiful, bright, brave bint, but she can never be his favourite b: Buffy.

He is always reaching and never grasping.

He may have his bot but she will never be like the real Buffy. He knows this and he knows what the final, most important b is: Beneath Her.

Warren is rattling his chains.

“Spike, please,” the boy is pleading, but he ignores him.

Did anyone listen when he sobbed, begged, pleaded after She died?

Did they hell.

“I’ll do anything you want – just please don’t hurt me.”

He always knew Warren had no backbone.

He is a b too - a bully, a braggart, a bastard, a bitch, a ball-less bawling baby.

On nights like this, he is a walking thesaurus.

“I swear, anything you want.”

The hope that burns in the boy’s eyes is so bright that it would sear someone not Spike.

The Buffy-bot is tugging on his chains.

“Spike, can I play with him now?”

“No,” he can’t bring himself to say the word ‘Buffy’. Not now. Not when he’s seen the bot take his beloved’s place and seen her walk where Buffy would soar. “I need him still.”

“OK.” She is as bright as a summer’s morning.

Like the sun, she burns him.

“Spike, what do you want me to do?”

“I want you to make the bot a sister.”

“A menage a trois with Dawn? Kinky-”

The word is punched away. The pain in his head is worth it. He’d kill the boy if the chip would let him.

“Just do what I ask and I won’t have the bot castrate you, alright?”

Warren nods, his jaw already darkening to purple.

The night Glory came for Dawn she saw double.

Two Buffys, two Dawns, and one grinning Spike.

She took one real Summers sister and one bot.

“If you cut us, do we not bleed?”

No, actually. Not when the ‘we’ is a moody teenage Dawnbot with a troll hammer.

“Every night I save you.”

RIP bot.

4 A Girl called Glory

He knows he’s dreaming, but he smiles anyway.

This is the night everything changed.

It is the one you think.

Buffy’s alive and so is Dawn.

That little bitch, Doc, is before him, but it’s all changing.

When he’s thrown from the tower, he falls as always.

That doesn’t change.

The landing never comes though.

Catching himself pulls his arm out of his socket, ripping tendons and dislocating joints.

The pain is pleasure.

Doc’s tongue is long, whip-like and strong.

He can’t resist digging his black-varnished nails in as he drags himself inch by angry inch back to the tower.

Dawn stands bleeding glowing light from wounds that should never have been.

Doc hasn’t allowed him to distract him from that.

He gurgles.

“Shallow cuts… Shallow cuts… Let the blood flow free…”

With her halo of hair and her effulgent eyes, she should bear the name Glory.

Suddenly, achingly, there is ground beneath his feet.

He still has hold of Doc’s tongue.

There is barely room to swing a cat on top of the tower.

Swinging a Doc is another matter.

The discus players of Ancient Greece would give him a perfect 10 for that throw.

The blood still flows.

Spike spits blood and grins at his Nibblet.

Even as he cuts her free, they see the portal opening beneath her feet.

“Spike, it’s started.”

The portal looks different from up here.

From below he saw hell.

From above he sees heaven.

A conundrum for the Watcher.

“Dawn!” Buffy is running.

Glory is vanquished too late.

Dawn steps forwards, pulling herself out of Spike’s arms.

“I’m sorry.”

He remembers watching this from the ground, broken and bleeding, begging her not to jump only to see Buffy jump in her place.

Buffy is coming, but Dawn’s eyes are only on him.

She’ll never know how much he loves her.

He grins at her.

“Cause it's always got to be blood.”

His own words haunt him and he sees it all so clearly now.

He wishes he wasn’t about to die with Johnny Nash singing in his head.

Chip screaming, he drinks the blood that tastes of the Slayer.

“Spike... no!”

Before Dawn was screaming after Buffy.

Now Buffy screams after him.

Nothing has ever sounded so beautiful to him.

“Always remember I love you.”

The leap is huge, but he is the Big Bad.

“It’s gonna be a bright sun-shining...”

…Damn.

6 Blood of a Slayer

He knows he’s dreaming, but he smiles anyway.

This is the night everything changed.

It’s not the one you think.

Buffy’s alive and so is Dawn.

The bathroom is a place he will learn to avoid, but that hasn’t happened yet.

If what he hopes comes true, it never will.

Alone in the dark, he smiles.

The Poof would smile too if he knew what was about to happen.

The blood of a slayer, only stopping the blood would close the portal. The words are scarred forever into his stilled heart.

The monks took Buffy’s blood to make Dawn, only a few drops, but enough.

Spike is after more than a few drops.

For a few brief weeks, it is his dearest possession. He sleeps with it beneath his pillow at day.

He throws it away with love.

The blood is stopped in its flow.

He licks his lips. The smell alone is enough to make his eyes yellow and his fangs sharpen. It is richer and headier than the finest wines known to humanity. How he un-lived without it, he’ll never know.

He dreams of his last taste. ‘Serial killer in prison’ his arse. If they thought his imagination was limited by the chip they must be mad. He was William the Bloody, childe of Angelus. The railroad spike was only the beginning.

It’s worse than high-security prison because it’s of his own making and he loves its walls. Every day he spends in it is another day of being near Buffy. That is better than any freedom.

Or so he tells himself.

The truth of it has eluded him for a while, but now he knows he can never go back to what he was anymore than he can forget where he came from. He is still William the Bloody Awful Poet, Spike the Bloody and now, Spike the watcher of cable TV infomercials.

Vampires do not have babies.

Connor is a freak of nature.

Typical of Angel to do something impossible to increase his brooding material.

Broody material, too, come to think of it.

None of that means Spike does not know what a Tampax is for or smell the changes in Dawn and Buffy at their time of the month.

‘The Night Buffy Died’ is now ‘The Night Spike Grossed Everyone Out Saving the World’.

But no one ever asked if he had more than one.