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Melpomene melpomene@graffiti.net).
Prometheus
He'd been watching her for weeks, and his first impression that she was not the Willow he knew was confirmed. She was a beautiful darker, malevolent version of the source of that memory of pain and confusion that he kept trying to forget. The girl had turned into a ruthless killer who took pleasure in killing. A brilliant spark. Information on her wasn't hard to get, he learned to she had the status of an urban myth among some of the most prestigious of criminals, it was pitiful to watch Marlon Brando look a likes cowering at the thought of this little girl. In short they were in awe of her. She had a new name to go with the new her, Lune, it fit her diminutive stature and was deceptively innocent much like the name for a pixie, and at the same time there were enigmatic connotations. She was a mystery just as her namesake was. That name was only ever spoken in hushed tones, lending it an air of menace that was delicious. But the legend behind the name was the most intriguing, those who'd heard of her told him about an amphetamine that she was on that heightened her senses, it was very advanced. Spike had never heard of it before but it was fast becoming very fashionable to be on it, they believed that you wouldn't have a chance against Lune if you weren't on it. They were probably right, she had caught everyone she pursued and decapitated them with those claws of hers. The claws were a trademark, they could cut through anything, and he'd seen proof of that. She also had a technique in the Game; she had the ability to mute her heartbeat, allowing for a surprise attack even on those who had their senses heightened by the drug. He remembered a remark made by a gibbering female who hadn't quite gotten a handle on the amphetamines yet. "When you can't hear her heart you know you're gonna die." She fit the role of this legend well, she was methodical, she killed with ease and creativity, but above all, she was captivating. Now he was left wondering what he was going to do about her, for, as much as he wanted the closure he would get from killing her, he found that he was also enthralled by her. He realized that he'd been lying dormant ever since he'd killed her the first time, now his eyes had luster again, and his appetite for carnality was back, blood sports hadn't held his interest for years but she inspired him. He hated her all the more for it. * * * She'd been aware of him for a long time, he'd been following her, and she had let him. Admittedly she hadn't picked him up until two days after he'd started shadowing her, but she'd always known he was good. Now she bided her time, planning ways to make him burn with pain as unbearable as what he had inflicted on her. Just like that piece of pain that she squeezed into a dark corner of her mind and named Willow. * * * Spike found the girl lying in the gutter. Her ebony hair and contrasting white skin made him look at her twice. He thought he heard a soft, lilting voice chanting. But it was just a memory and shaking his head made it fade away but the dull familiar ache that came with it remained. It made him pick the girl up and take her home with him. He lay her on the bed, struggling with the demon he knew would eventually win. Just for a little while. He sat there staring at the girl until his eyes couldn't see. He was staining his alabaster skin with crimson tracks, as he tried hard to keep his mind blank but he did not succeed. * * * Her scream of pain brought him running into the room. There she was a puddle of black and white on the floor. As he came nearer she writhed in seizure, but all he could do was look on, confused and hurting in sympathy for her. When she stopped, it was as if she had died all over again. When her eyes snapped open they stared at him blankly, then her brow furrowed, perplexed. She didn't recognize him. When realization finally dawned she let out a low keening sound and ran to the nearest corner of the room and huddled into a ball of fear, trying to make herself as small as possible. He knew that she'd run from him so he remained where he was, he couldn't help feeling hurt and dumbfounded. "Dru love, what's wrong?" But she wouldn't answer him instead she just whimpered. Then he heard her start to chant something, her eyes where tightly closed and scarlet tears slid down, marring her beauty as she cried. But what she chanted shocked him to the core; ...sed libera nos a malo... He fled from her, not knowing what else he could do. She had finally gone totally insane. The days that followed were horrendous, he couldn't get close to her because she was surrounding herself with crosses, where she'd gotten hold of them he would never know. All the while he could hear her praying. When she disappeared he was frantic, but he didn't have to look at the crosses to realize where she'd go. He got to the church just in time to watch as she plunged a sharpened cross into herself and he just stood there at the entrance, not able to go any closer without an invitation on to sacred ground, one he would never get. As she crumbled to ash his heart crumbled with her and his demon rejoiced for there was nothing that was going to keep it harnessed, someone would pay, and pay dearly. * * * He'd reaped his revenge and it had left him somehow hollower as if everything inside had been torn away and all he had left were the images he had of her but he didn't want those. So he remained empty. The girl never woke and finally he took her up and drank her dry, a feeble attempt to fill his abyss. * * * He came to consciousness chained to a wall in a cell. The lights were bright and the cell was stark, there was only one chair on the far side and a sterile pallet that he lay on. The steel door opened and there she stood with a smirk of triumph on her face. He groaned, still disorientated from the tranquilizers. But her still sweetly innocent voice penetrated the fog in his head. "That was too easy, really Spike. I guess you're still not over the whole Drusilla thing, huh?" "What?" "Oh come on, the girl, Spike, she was bait. I pumped her full of stuff before I lay her neatly in your path. Didn't you wonder why she just wouldn't wake up?" Reality hit home then. "Now, just so you know, I'm going to be rummaging through your head to find what sort of goodies I can use, I can be pretty creative but I feel it wouldn't be very personalized if I didn't make this effort. And we've had so much history, you're too special Spike you are going to get the full treatment. So, we'll start with Drusilla shall we then we'll go from there." With that she left him to ponder what she said. He felt something within him sinking. * * * Every minute of every hour he relived Drusilla's death. He could smell the smoke from the censers, hear her prayers, see the ash as it floated toward the floor like snow, taste the tang of his own blood tears. Feel the futility all at once. It left him immobile with pain. And every time he had any respite from the assault of these memories that Lune forced on him, he would see her and she would have a mocking grin on her face which would have rivaled his own. He could do nothing while she sat there happily injecting him with different drugs which would induce whatever delusions she chose and hating her just made him feel all the more helpless. In one of those rare moments of lucidity she let him have, he mustered all the anger he had and glared at her. She nodded in acknowledgement and replied, "Go ahead and hate me, I can see why you would, her last days were worse than I imagined and yes, I take full responsibility for it. But still, it had to be better to finish it rather than being in limbo like she was, never being able to reach a level of maturity past six, never being able to deal with the power she had, she would have been a wonderful witch. Poor Demented Dru. It was selfish of you to have kept her for so long, Spike, didn't you ever think that she'd be happier if you'd have just let her go peacefully in Prague. Angelus should never have driven her mad before he turned her it was a cheap thrill to him. But I guess self-indulgence is the only word in a vampire's vocabulary." It was odd to listen to her ramble on, she still did it and it brought back the Willow that he knew, the one that could manage to take pity on a crazy vampire. But then again that girl didn't have enough pity to stop herself from pushing that same vampire to an excruciating death. Thinking of the hypocrite she was made him need to hurt her and he gathered as much of his reeling mind as he could, to make the only assault left to him, a verbal one. "You only say she was meant to die to push the blame on to others, you are not taking any responsibility for her death at all. The bottom line is that you manipulated her insanity, you knew that she couldn't survive getting her soul back, you knew how painful a death it would be, but you, for all your innocence and purity, did it anyway." It was a slap in the face and he knew it affected her as soon as he said the words. Her stricken face encouraged him to continue, "I may be a soulless monster, but at least I'm not you." She had lost, and she knew the balance of power between them had shifted. She stormed out of the cell and he found enough energy to laugh as she left. * * * Lune couldn't think, it was the first time she was blind with fury. Time had left her with a distance that allowed her cold thought after her death but this time, the only thing left in her whirling mind was He must pay! It was the truth and that's why it hurt so much, she had a soul, reputed to be a gentle one but she still managed to hurt someone she considered innocent beyond the boundaries of hurt. But Lune couldn't face that, instead in her bitterness she focused on hurting Spike. All she did was remind him of a pain inflicted on him, what she really needed was to change his role of weak, helpless victim and make him understand what he was. In short, she wanted him to feel the pain he had inflicted on others. His last words echoed in her, he was a soulless monster. This made her smile and her smile darkened her face. * * * He was pulled into consciousness from another dream of Dru by the searing, white, hot pain that coursed his body. It was as if he was burning from within, his organs aflame. He felt as if he was going to turn inside out. He instinctually curled up into a foetal position, he whole body was on fire now. He found that he was forcing air into his disused lungs to quell the fire but each breath tingled, instead of cooling the heat, he felt as if he was breathing in the fire. It felt as if he was alive again, then blackness consumed him. * * * As Lune watched Spike she was struck by how strangely beautiful and yet disgusting it was, like watching a birthing or a death. He sucked in deep breaths as if he needed them, then he suddenly stopped heaving and lay still for a long time, she began to fear that she had mis-cast her spell and killed him, but as she came closer she noticed the blood tears pooling beneath his face, so dark they were maroon. As she came even nearer he opened his now bloodshot eyes and there was an anguish there that made her heart skip a beat but he closed them again, unable to look at her. Lune sighed in satisfaction, but she knew there was one more thing to make it perfect. * * * Each face burned into him, each cruelty that was so novel at the time. The phantoms mocked him as they hacked away at his mind like he and Angelus had hacked away at Dru's. Dru. Now he understood why she had cowered from him, knew what it was to be a monster, what could she do but kill herself, he wished that he could do the same. She knew what it was to be loved by a fiend. He had always fancied himself as Dracula, and she was his Mina, but the reality was that he was Lestat, incapable of loving another, selfish and lonely. It was his nature, he could wretch just thinking about how vile he was. The door opening to admit her familiar figure disrupted his thoughts. Willow. Just thinking about her made him shudder with another urge to wretch and sure enough his stomach roiled, he could taste the acrid tang of decayed blood on his tongue already. He gave into it and purged himself. The blood gushed to the floor he didn't care where it splashed as long as it wasn't in his body. He leaned back on the bed to find her face watching him, and there was a cold glint in her eyes that he recognized, it'd been in his eyes many times. He knew exactly what she thought of him, she loathed him and he knew that he deserved it. He went through each of her friends faces determined to punish himself further. He remembered the joy he had hearing her cry when she saw her parents' heads in his hands, her screams when he flaunted the fur coat he'd made out of the love of her life. It made him want to vomit again thinking about skinning the werewolf. But her absolute stillness and submission beneath him made him feel the dirtiest. He wanted to take off his skin, the skin that had felt it when she died and reveled in it. Right now, her proximity made the starving demon within him want to take her apart. Her heartbeat was it's usual drug enhanced flutter but Spike prevailed, it was difficult but the weakness from the vomiting helped. He managed to open his eyes to see her pushing a glass of blood in his face, the sight of which threatened to make him sick again. She ignored the green tinge that his face took on and forced his mouth open to pour the liquid down his throat. Even as his demon was overjoyed he loathed himself for taking the delight that he took. When finished he looked back into her eyes, the icy, bitter humor was still there. This is what he'd done to her, he realized, he'd made her cruel. He tried not to remember but the images came unbidden, forcing themselves on him like they did with uncomfortable frequency, and he saw a young girl who looked exactly like the woman before him, a happy vibrant version who had an easy smile for those she loved, a girl who fought tears as she stood her ground ready to fight him off with only the fire in her Chartreuse eyes left to fight with. He had killed Willow, all that was left was Lune. He closed his eyes, trying to obliterate her too. He couldn't help but stain his pillows red. She was still there when he finally managed to stop his silent tears. He watched through blood-filmed eyes as a sudden grin became dominant on her face. It was devious and it contorted her face so that it lost all semblance of the Willow he knew, it was disgusting. She lifted her hand up into his field of vision so that he could see what was in it. And what he saw made him want to flee, he blacked-out just from the realization of what it meant. Only to come back to consciousness again when his fears were confirmed. On top of him, straddling his weak body was himself with a maniacal grin, the same one as on Lune's face seconds before. And vicious laughter rang out, setting his teeth on edge. He braced himself for what was coming and when it came the pain tore at him, both body and mind. His head rolled to his aching shoulder to find the metal spike in it. He looked up in fear at his own leering face. Neither his body or his mind could handle this assault but before he could retreat into the blackness of unconsciousness another spike was plunged into his other shoulder keeping him from passing out. And as the last metal spike was driven into his chest Spike roared like he'd never done before. At that moment he broke, his body pinned in some mockery of a crucifixion, his spirit roiling from being plagued by past victims, and finally his mind took flight from the sheer, unbearable pain he suffered in both. * * * Lune rode on the waves of pain she'd created, feeling something akin to ecstasy as each one passed. When he lay still, she dispelled the glamour spell she'd cast on herself, her slick hands still grasping the metal in the middle of his chest. She looked down at his face as his eyes flickered open. What she saw behind those eyes horrified her. The reality of what she'd done finally reached her. She broken him on the inside, she could see it in the demented look in his eyes. She quickly pulled away all the spikes she'd driven into his body. The holes gaped at her as if in shock she wanted them to stop persecuting her so she looked around for blood, finding none she slit a wrist and pressed it to him. She watched as his mouth suckled on her but his eyes never focused on what he was doing, instead they looked at her with the brightness only found in the retarded. When she pulled away her wrist the wounds healed and a meaningless smile was on his lips. Then he said one word, a word that made her stumble back and run for the door. "Yum," he repeated to himself when she was gone, then he drifted, finally, into a restful sleep. Lune's mind was in a maelstrom, she wasn't sure what to feel, she had wanted to feel exultant, she had wanted to stop feeling so weak, and she wanted to make him feel her pain, so that maybe she could finally be rid off it. But as she saw those lightless eyes on her, all she could feel was disgust. She finally admitted to how right Spike was, she was much worse than the monster he was. Even Pilate would have been reviled. All she could do now was to hope that her remorse could save her. Lune allowed herself something she hadn't allowed since she died. She cried freely, letting the pain she'd named Willow so long ago leak out of her in the form of tears. That night she vowed that she would heal Spike, repair the damage she'd done. He will be the man he should have grown old as. And something resembling her old resolve face appeared.
- fin -
Part 3: Shards This story is not to be archived without permission. |