FIC: Seraph (7/?)
Mar. 4th, 2009 10:24 pm![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
snick_backupSome dialogue in this chapter borrowed from "Restless."
Story begins here. All parts may be found here.
A/N: I was going to post this shortie chapter with the last update, and then I dithered and thought there was a part that I wanted to change, and after fiddling and further dithering I'm posting it anyway. :p I have to say, getting to play in "Restless" totally makes up for having to deal with Adam. Yay.
~~~~~
He knew this was a dream, because in dreams he might as well have been human: the colors were washed out, the sounds tinny and muffled. He could never smell anything at all.
Then again, he might have been clued in watching the Watcher swatting vamp-faced Harm away with a program. Or by the Slayer, wearing an atrocious wig and a tasseled sack that probably passed for a flapper dress among those who hadn’t lived the era.
Spike circled the back of the auditorium, eyeing the plump and sweating and hairy necks, selecting a victim. It was never really satisfying--he couldn’t taste anything, either--but there was some small measure of triumph in draining someone, even in dreamland. There, in the back row. A big lug, athletic, features tending toward the apish, an inclination of his head that Spike took for a nancy trait. Spike sidled up the row to sit, smirking, in the neighboring empty seat. “Enjoying the show, mate?” He turned the smirk into the coy grin he’d used before for luring nancies--and got no response. Straight, then, was he? It made no difference to Spike. He clapped a hand over the bloke’s mouth and leaned in for the bite.
And leaned back, mystified, with a mouth full of nothing. The guy’s neck could have been made of rubber; Spike’s fangs had made no mark that he could see. He twisted to the woman on his other side, swept her dark hair from a face pretty, almost elfin, and tried again for a bite. Again, nothing. Neither of them ever even noticed him.
So it was going to be one of those dreams, was it? Spike slumped in his seat with a sigh.
“But we haven’t even rehearsed!” Willow’s voice rang sharp and clear over the cotton-mouthed hubbub of the crowd. Craning his neck, Spike caught sight of her, making tight, tense motions to Buffy as she talked. He slipped over the back of the seat and walked down the aisle. No one commented when he hopped onto the stage. As he neared he caught her scent, that blend of apples and incense and her own particular odor that she’d doubtless deny. “Look here, Red, how come--?” But she’d turned away, into the curtains, and when he made to follow he smelled something else, musky, unwashed, primal... He was backing up before he even noticed, and when he finally felt sufficiently far away he realized he’d vamped out.
He’d leave the nightmare to Willow, he decided.
He wandered up the aisle, and out, and found it night. He followed a stream of merrymakers toward a carnival’s garish lights. Suddenly another whiff came to him: the Watcher, smelling of cologne and, oh so faintly, a hint of very good scotch. There he was, with that woman who’d come visiting him once, and--the Slayer? In kiddie clothes now, pulling at Giles and running ahead and squealing even younger than the she looked. She didn’t have a scent.
“Come on,” yelled a very familiar voice. “You’ll miss it!”
Oh, it was one of those dreams.
There he was, the image of Spike himself, calling to Giles like they were mates. Spike slid in behind them, past Giles’ woman--crying now--to see himself... posing? “I’ve hired myself out as an attraction!” the other Spike declared. Cameras flashed. He struck poses he must have borrowed from Dracula, the diva. He looked like a sodding idiot.
Spike spun and strode for the door, glancing at Giles’ woman as he passed--and paused. She was crying, which didn’t concern him particularly, but now that his eyes had caught on her belly he couldn’t pull them away. So Giles was having a nipper too, was he?
There was room next to her on the sarcophagus, and after a moment’s hesitation he pulled himself up on it. Now he wished she’d stop the crying so he could talk to her, bumfuzzled though he was as to what he could possibly say.
Finally, when it didn’t look like she meant to dry up anytime soon, he said, “So, uh, how far along are you?”
She didn’t answer, didn’t even glance his way, just kept on with that same toneless weeping. Bugger. She probably couldn’t see him either. He slid into his fangs and snarled at her, and he might as well not have been there at all.
But he didn’t get up. He looked down at his hands and slipped her quick sideways glances. Finally, “Does it hurt, getting all big like you are?” No response, of course. “Seems like it’d have to, your skin stretching and all that. And then there’s the birth part, and I know that hurts--comes up all the time on the telly. It’s always sending bints off into comas, or giving ‘em amnesia--although that was just the one show,” he amended. “S’a wonder there’s still a human race at all, seeing the trouble you lot go through to add a person to the world.”
Another breath, another glance to that downcast, glistening face. “So, you and old Rupes? ‘Course, you’re probably keeping yours. Funny, I’d never have figured him for Father Knows Best. Bet you he’s never held a sprog in his life. Suppose that’s all right, though, you birds having that natural mothering instinct and all. Convenient.”
It took a few moments’ inspection of his knuckles to find his next words. Finally he leaned over until he could look up into her eyes. “What’s it feel like?,” he asked. “Is it the same for you? Heartbeat, and the little one moving around, doing the backstroke, so’s you feel almost alive?” A long moment with no sound but the weeping and those last words echoing in his head.
Suddenly he shoved to his feet. “What’m I saying, you are alive. Or not dead, anyway. Or--” Disgusted, he turned to leave, and paused at the doorway to consider the daylight now streaming in. Cautiously he stuck a finger into the light, and when it didn’t sizzle, he stepped out.
Before him spanned a desert, empty and harshly bright.
Slayer-scent.
He turned to see behind him not the cave he’d come from, but one of the Initiative’s huge, white-painted hallways. The Slayer walked down it, pace measured, gaze fixed past him.
“How come I can smell you?” Spike said.
She shifted her gaze to him, head cocked curiously. “Why are you here?”
“It’s a sodding dream, why do you think I’m here?”
“You don’t belong here. You’re not even one of us.” Then she crouched, expression puzzled, and she pressed her hand to his stomach. “But you are.” Then she rose and walked on.
Another girl came out to meet her, a curvy ash-blond Scheherazade, wide-eyed and breathing vague mystical wisdom.
He picked up that other scent again, wild, feral. Slayer, he realized. It was the essence Buffy exuded every time she fought, it was what he’d tasted in his first Slayer and gone nearly out of his mind on, but this was that essence compounded, concentrated, and ancient--much, much older than anything he knew.
Spike found himself backed against a boulder.
There she was, as feral as her scent, circling Buffy with a stride low and furtive.
The other blond was mouthing gibberish to Buffy, but Spike didn’t pay much attention. She didn’t matter. The Slayers, bright and dark, were winding up to a battle, and it was going to be bloody gorgeous.
There--Wild Child launched herself at Buffy, straddling her and slamming her head against the sand. Then Buffy twisted, shoved her away, swiped the side of that dreadlocked head with her heel. A feint, a leap, a kick into the sand. Then they were standing, feet braced and fists pulled in tight. Buffy straightened, saying something Spike couldn’t quite catch, and for an instant the entire world was still. The other Slayer leapt again and then hands to hair, knees to guts they went tumbling down that long, long hill.
“Spike.”
The other blond was at his side. She had no scent, but she could see him; could he bite her, he wondered? But she was regarding him openly, seriously, and he decided he could put off trying.
“What’s all this, then?” he said.
“You think you know what’s to come. What you are.” She lifted a hand to his chest. As she laid it over his dead silent heart, heat radiated from her touch, spreading, warming him all the way to toes and fingertips and earlobes. She pressed, and something gripped him beneath his ribcage and squeezed. He gasped at the shock, and then it was gone and his heart was beating--not like hers, steady, regal, but quick and fluttering. “You haven’t even begun.”
next part
Story begins here. All parts may be found here.
A/N: I was going to post this shortie chapter with the last update, and then I dithered and thought there was a part that I wanted to change, and after fiddling and further dithering I'm posting it anyway. :p I have to say, getting to play in "Restless" totally makes up for having to deal with Adam. Yay.
~~~~~
He knew this was a dream, because in dreams he might as well have been human: the colors were washed out, the sounds tinny and muffled. He could never smell anything at all.
Then again, he might have been clued in watching the Watcher swatting vamp-faced Harm away with a program. Or by the Slayer, wearing an atrocious wig and a tasseled sack that probably passed for a flapper dress among those who hadn’t lived the era.
Spike circled the back of the auditorium, eyeing the plump and sweating and hairy necks, selecting a victim. It was never really satisfying--he couldn’t taste anything, either--but there was some small measure of triumph in draining someone, even in dreamland. There, in the back row. A big lug, athletic, features tending toward the apish, an inclination of his head that Spike took for a nancy trait. Spike sidled up the row to sit, smirking, in the neighboring empty seat. “Enjoying the show, mate?” He turned the smirk into the coy grin he’d used before for luring nancies--and got no response. Straight, then, was he? It made no difference to Spike. He clapped a hand over the bloke’s mouth and leaned in for the bite.
And leaned back, mystified, with a mouth full of nothing. The guy’s neck could have been made of rubber; Spike’s fangs had made no mark that he could see. He twisted to the woman on his other side, swept her dark hair from a face pretty, almost elfin, and tried again for a bite. Again, nothing. Neither of them ever even noticed him.
So it was going to be one of those dreams, was it? Spike slumped in his seat with a sigh.
“But we haven’t even rehearsed!” Willow’s voice rang sharp and clear over the cotton-mouthed hubbub of the crowd. Craning his neck, Spike caught sight of her, making tight, tense motions to Buffy as she talked. He slipped over the back of the seat and walked down the aisle. No one commented when he hopped onto the stage. As he neared he caught her scent, that blend of apples and incense and her own particular odor that she’d doubtless deny. “Look here, Red, how come--?” But she’d turned away, into the curtains, and when he made to follow he smelled something else, musky, unwashed, primal... He was backing up before he even noticed, and when he finally felt sufficiently far away he realized he’d vamped out.
He’d leave the nightmare to Willow, he decided.
He wandered up the aisle, and out, and found it night. He followed a stream of merrymakers toward a carnival’s garish lights. Suddenly another whiff came to him: the Watcher, smelling of cologne and, oh so faintly, a hint of very good scotch. There he was, with that woman who’d come visiting him once, and--the Slayer? In kiddie clothes now, pulling at Giles and running ahead and squealing even younger than the she looked. She didn’t have a scent.
“Come on,” yelled a very familiar voice. “You’ll miss it!”
Oh, it was one of those dreams.
There he was, the image of Spike himself, calling to Giles like they were mates. Spike slid in behind them, past Giles’ woman--crying now--to see himself... posing? “I’ve hired myself out as an attraction!” the other Spike declared. Cameras flashed. He struck poses he must have borrowed from Dracula, the diva. He looked like a sodding idiot.
Spike spun and strode for the door, glancing at Giles’ woman as he passed--and paused. She was crying, which didn’t concern him particularly, but now that his eyes had caught on her belly he couldn’t pull them away. So Giles was having a nipper too, was he?
There was room next to her on the sarcophagus, and after a moment’s hesitation he pulled himself up on it. Now he wished she’d stop the crying so he could talk to her, bumfuzzled though he was as to what he could possibly say.
Finally, when it didn’t look like she meant to dry up anytime soon, he said, “So, uh, how far along are you?”
She didn’t answer, didn’t even glance his way, just kept on with that same toneless weeping. Bugger. She probably couldn’t see him either. He slid into his fangs and snarled at her, and he might as well not have been there at all.
But he didn’t get up. He looked down at his hands and slipped her quick sideways glances. Finally, “Does it hurt, getting all big like you are?” No response, of course. “Seems like it’d have to, your skin stretching and all that. And then there’s the birth part, and I know that hurts--comes up all the time on the telly. It’s always sending bints off into comas, or giving ‘em amnesia--although that was just the one show,” he amended. “S’a wonder there’s still a human race at all, seeing the trouble you lot go through to add a person to the world.”
Another breath, another glance to that downcast, glistening face. “So, you and old Rupes? ‘Course, you’re probably keeping yours. Funny, I’d never have figured him for Father Knows Best. Bet you he’s never held a sprog in his life. Suppose that’s all right, though, you birds having that natural mothering instinct and all. Convenient.”
It took a few moments’ inspection of his knuckles to find his next words. Finally he leaned over until he could look up into her eyes. “What’s it feel like?,” he asked. “Is it the same for you? Heartbeat, and the little one moving around, doing the backstroke, so’s you feel almost alive?” A long moment with no sound but the weeping and those last words echoing in his head.
Suddenly he shoved to his feet. “What’m I saying, you are alive. Or not dead, anyway. Or--” Disgusted, he turned to leave, and paused at the doorway to consider the daylight now streaming in. Cautiously he stuck a finger into the light, and when it didn’t sizzle, he stepped out.
Before him spanned a desert, empty and harshly bright.
Slayer-scent.
He turned to see behind him not the cave he’d come from, but one of the Initiative’s huge, white-painted hallways. The Slayer walked down it, pace measured, gaze fixed past him.
“How come I can smell you?” Spike said.
She shifted her gaze to him, head cocked curiously. “Why are you here?”
“It’s a sodding dream, why do you think I’m here?”
“You don’t belong here. You’re not even one of us.” Then she crouched, expression puzzled, and she pressed her hand to his stomach. “But you are.” Then she rose and walked on.
Another girl came out to meet her, a curvy ash-blond Scheherazade, wide-eyed and breathing vague mystical wisdom.
He picked up that other scent again, wild, feral. Slayer, he realized. It was the essence Buffy exuded every time she fought, it was what he’d tasted in his first Slayer and gone nearly out of his mind on, but this was that essence compounded, concentrated, and ancient--much, much older than anything he knew.
Spike found himself backed against a boulder.
There she was, as feral as her scent, circling Buffy with a stride low and furtive.
The other blond was mouthing gibberish to Buffy, but Spike didn’t pay much attention. She didn’t matter. The Slayers, bright and dark, were winding up to a battle, and it was going to be bloody gorgeous.
There--Wild Child launched herself at Buffy, straddling her and slamming her head against the sand. Then Buffy twisted, shoved her away, swiped the side of that dreadlocked head with her heel. A feint, a leap, a kick into the sand. Then they were standing, feet braced and fists pulled in tight. Buffy straightened, saying something Spike couldn’t quite catch, and for an instant the entire world was still. The other Slayer leapt again and then hands to hair, knees to guts they went tumbling down that long, long hill.
“Spike.”
The other blond was at his side. She had no scent, but she could see him; could he bite her, he wondered? But she was regarding him openly, seriously, and he decided he could put off trying.
“What’s all this, then?” he said.
“You think you know what’s to come. What you are.” She lifted a hand to his chest. As she laid it over his dead silent heart, heat radiated from her touch, spreading, warming him all the way to toes and fingertips and earlobes. She pressed, and something gripped him beneath his ribcage and squeezed. He gasped at the shock, and then it was gone and his heart was beating--not like hers, steady, regal, but quick and fluttering. “You haven’t even begun.”
next part
![[identity profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/openid.png){kind=small}
no subject
Date: 2009-07-05 09:53 pm (UTC)no subject
Date: 2009-07-06 03:29 am (UTC)I have to confess, I think that conversation with Olivia is probably my favorite bit out of the whole thing.
Yay excitement!