#spike pointing out that he fought for his soul while angel had to be forced to change is sooooo cathartic

[bloomfish]

It's so weird that in angel s5e2 they do a little flashback to Spike's blaze of glory moment in the last episode of Buffy... but they leave out Buffy saying "I love you". It's such a blatant omission, the ONLY omission from that scene, that it feels totally deliberate and kind of dishonest. Considering a lot of the Spike and Angel moments in S5 revolve around their jealousy and rivalry towards each other, and a LOT of that is to do with Buffy like... Why would you leave it out? It's a pretty big moment for Spike's character in general.

As far as I recall they don't even mention it, they just mention the fact that Spike and Buffy have had a lot of sex compared to bangel's ONE disastrous time (that they remember) but it does kind of cheapen it for Spike. A big motivation for him not leaving LA could have been him not wanting to hold Buffy to her words, since he clearly doesn't believe that she loves him (even though she does, as per Whedon). He presumably thinks she only said that to make him feel better in his final moments, because she wouldn't have to actually follow through on her words. Which is sad. But it makes much more sense as a motivation than the weird 'it cheapens my moment of glory' excuse like since when does spike give a shit about that

[fireblaze5555]

Fire Away: Chapter 8

Also on Ao3: Fire Away: Chapter 8

Frank was so fucked. He watched Karen dozing on his completely numb arm as the morning light streamed through the balcony doors and he couldn't tear his eyes from her. Last night kept playing over and over in his head. The expanse of her beautiful pale skin, perfectly shaped breasts, the noises she made when he had his hands on her. The way she looked at him, like he mattered. Like he wasn't a monster. Like she loved him.

He watched her face as she took in the long slow breaths of someone in deep restful sleep, his eyes scanning her features and memorizing every line, as if he hadn't already. Her bruises had almost completely faded, leaving just a light discoloration at her temple and he wanted to press his lips to that spot and kiss away the last of the damage. For a moment he nearly forgot why he shouldn't be doing this, he just reveled in holding this incredible, beautiful woman in his arms.

Frank was unable to stop the flash of pride in his chest, he was one lucky bastard. Her words, I never regret you , echoed in his head over and over and each time he felt a little piece of his soul repairing itself. His demons never retreated for long though, rendering what Karen had managed to rebuild back to rubble. Suddenly it hurt to look at her, flashes of the family he couldn't protect filling his vision only this time her face was there too, covered in blood and unblinking.

He could no longer lie still, so to keep from waking her, Frank stood and threw his sweats on before stepping out on the balcony. She couldn't love him. He doesn't get to have that anymore. Karen was smart, beautiful, strong and resilient. She could have anyone she wanted. She fought for justice and saw the best in people while still accepting the darkness in them. There was no universe where he deserved her love.

It was that moment, with sickening clarity, thinking about her bravery, her smile, her kindness and her wicked sense of humor, that Frank realized he loved her. Most people felt light with a realization like that but all he could feel was a mix of guilt and disdain for himself. That's what she fucking needs, your psycho ass adding your bullshit to hers . A small childish part of him had hoped maybe it was just sexual tension and once they got that out of the way, they could walk away from each other. He knew how ridiculous that was when his heart wrenched painfully at the thought of being done with Karen when this was all over.

Frank was lost in his thoughts, not acknowledging the chill of the morning until a warm pair of arms wrapped around his torso and Karen pressed herself flush to his back.

Her voice was light but he could hear tension and worry there as well, "I could hear you thinking in my sleep." He felt her lips moving against his skin as she spoke, "Wanna talk?"

Frank turned in her arms so they rested chest to chest against the balcony railing. Her hair was mussed from sleep and she was squinting against the morning sun. Frank shifted a bit to shade her eyes with his body and the smile she gave him was so radiant he was nearly blinded himself. Her eyes were so blue Frank felt like he could drown in them and for a moment all he could do was stare in wonderment, his hand coming up to rest against the side of her face.

She leaned into his hand and stared at him expectantly and it took him a minute to remember she had asked him a question. Looking to the side to try and break the spell she had put over him, Frank took a deep breath, steadying himself for what he needed to do. He kept his voice low as he dropped the hand from her face to rest at her hip, "This," He looked at her hand that had come to rest on his chest over his heart, "is not a good idea."

Karen's beryl eyes turned to flint, pinning him to the spot even as she took a step back. Frank instantly felt the warmth she had brought retreat with her. He tried not to let it affect him. He tried not to feel the loss as acutely as he did. Tried but didn't succeed.

Frank wanted so badly to say something, anything to make her smile again or something to make her see how right he was but they had been through all of this before. So instead, he braced his arms on the railing behind him and regarded her carefully with narrowed eyes.

"Honestly, Frank, you give me whiplash." Her eyes were still hard but the gentleness with which she addressed him did far more damage, "You think that you being around is what gets me hurt. The truth is, it's watching you leave that hurts me more than anything. Seeing the way you look at me, the way you touch me, only for you to turn it off a second later and disappear." She gives a humorless laugh and his lungs constrict when he sees her eyes swimming. If only she knew how much he couldn't turn it off.

His throat is tight but he forces the words out anyway, "I can't be responsible for getting you killed Karen, I just can't. That's why this is a bad idea, 'cause when you're around I forget why I'm supposed to push you away."

She wiped a stray tear away quickly and took a step closer to him. Frank gripped the railing until his knuckles turned white, trying so hard not to reach for her. He was busy watching her rose colored lips as she pulled them between her teeth so when she spoke again it took him a moment to process her question.

"Then why are you here?" She asks, raising an eyebrow at his frustrated confusion, "I know you don't want anything to happen to me, but Frank, my job is dangerous. I deal with dangerous people almost every day. I mean, for God's sake, I work with the devil of Hell's Kitchen. If you think you shouldn't be around me, you didn't have to track me down, you could have left it up to Matt to help me." He hopes she doesn't notice the flash of contempt he feels cross his face but she doesn't miss anything with him. She huffs out a humorless laugh before fixing him with a hard stare, "You don't get to make me walk away only to pop back up when it's convenient for you. It's not fair. To either of us. Either you are in my life or you aren't, you can't have both."

Logically he knew she was right, he's sure he has told himself that before, but hearing it fall from her lips caused his chest to spasm painfully. He felt panicked, like he had to make the call right now which caused anger to spike since he thought he had already made that call. He's the fucking Punisher, he didn't need anyone, everything he needed died at that carousel but facing her now, last night playing over in his head in startling detail, he realized he hadn't been as sure as he thought. His chest and throat hurt, everything he was trying to say blocked his airways and made him choke, a small distressed sound the only thing he managed. Frank was shaking his head, trying to jostle some coherent thought loose and his eyes were wild, like a trapped animal.

Karen saw him struggling and like the angel she was brought his attention back to her and away from his spiraling thoughts, her voice was solid as she said, "Back in that hospital room, I told you to make it mean something, me being there. What were you going to say? Before the kid walked in."

The vortex of his thoughts came to a sudden, disorienting halt, focused solely on that memory. Clicking his tongue, Frank turned to glare into the distance. He really didn't want to relive that day. He regretted so much about it.

"I don't know." he said.

"That's bullshit." she spat.

He turned to look at her, her cheeks were slightly pink, her eyes glinting in the early morning light and she was so damn beautiful. Calm and steady to his anxious, agitated uncertainty. He wanted to tell her there was nothing he wanted to say, that he had already said it. He wanted her to believe that he was pushing her away because he genuinely didn't want her. But they never lied to each other.

His voice was rough, almost resigned. "I had no idea how to tell you everything I wanted to in the time I had left to do it. I wasn't lying, Karen, I don't want to give up the war. I don't know if that will ever change, it is something that is a part of me now. It may have always been a part of me. I thought if I could push you away you would be safe." He gave her a pointed look. "That was obviously a bit naive of me, knowing you. I couldn't stand the thought of you getting hurt because of me. Still can't. The idea was I would distance myself, then I could just focus on fightin', cleanin' up the city without worrying it would reach you. But I can't stop thinkin’ about you. Thing is, you don't know when to quit, even when you're just in my head."

Karen gave a little sniff, stepping back into his space and placing her hand back over his heart. The smallest touch, one she had perfected, one that could dismantle his armor in seconds. He wondered if she knew how much it affected him. How he could feel that small touch in every atom of his being. She stared at her hand where it rested for a moment while he stared at her and tried to control his breathing.

"In that hospital room, when I said you could love someone else, instead of another war, I didn't mean you had to give up the war. I just meant you could love someone else, not just the war. I do wish you could leave it behind but I understand why you can't." She looked up at him, eyes like blue fire as she flexed her fingers on his chest, voice vehement, "I know who you are Frank Castle. I know what you are capable of. Hell, I've seen what you are capable of, first hand. I know you can kill a man with your bare hands. Take down entire cartels in a matter of a week. I also know that you nearly gave your own life to give David Lieberman his back. That you would have given everything to keep Amy safe, both people you barely knew. That you used your own body to shelter me from a spray of bullets, from a fucking bomb. I know that this mission you have means dangerous people will be after you. Most importantly, I know, I would rather face that danger with you than live safely without you. What you do with that is your call."

Frank could feel his heart beating harshly against his ribs. It almost felt as though it were trying to break out of his chest to rest in her capable hand, God knows she already had his heart metaphorically, she might as well have it literally. He watched in fascination as her other hand loosened his death grip on the railing to place it on her hips once more and his other hand followed suit without a second thought from him.

"I'm not asking you for forever right now Frank. I am just asking that, once we are back in the city and this whole mess is over, you give this a chance. I can't promise that shit won't go sideways but I want us to try. Okay?"

It was a bad idea. He knew it was but that voice that always urged him to deny her couldn't be heard over her soft breathing as she is watching him expectantly. With no shortage of hope and anxiety. Everything swirling around in his chest made it difficult to form words but finally, he said, "Okay."

The smile that tilted her lips would have knocked him off his feet if her hands hadn't come up to wrap around the back of his head, pulling him to her so she could ghost a quiet, "Okay" over his lips before she was kissing him fully, running her tongue over his and holding on to him like he may fade away in her grasp.

Finally Frank pulled back, giving her a light kiss on the cheek before turning her back towards the door and nudging her into the condo. "Let's get our stuff together, we've already stayed too long, we need to get moving." He tried to sound rough and in control but it came out soft and more of an entreaty than he had intended. Judging by the little smirk Karen threw over her shoulder she wasn't impressed but she dressed quickly and started to gather her things.

They ate a quick breakfast with what was left in the fridge and in less than an hour they had all of their things together and loaded up, surveying the condo to ensure they didn't leave anything behind. Frank glanced over and felt a pang of sadness when he saw the open longing in Karen's face. Maybe, if they get through this and actually get their shit together, maybe they could come back. Actually explore and relax and just...be. But they had things to take care of first so he turned, watching her carefully as she turned as well, giving him a small smile before she stepped out of the door.

Mountains rolled by as they hit the interstate headed East and they settled in for the long drive back. It was a quiet comfortable silence in the cab as both were lost in thought, whether it was about their earlier conversation or what was to come. It had been nearly two hours when Frank glanced over to see Karen sifting through her bag. She held up the burner phone they had purchased for her triumphantly and began to punch in a number.

Karen didn't even look over to respond, she knew Frank was dividing his attention between the road and her. "Watch the road soldier, I'm just calling Foggy. I want to check in and let him know that we are headed back. I won't give him any details yet, maybe once we are back in the city we can get everyone together to finalize a plan." She looked over to him, he wouldn't say it was to ask permission, more of a chance for him to protest and her to probably do it anyway.

When he glanced over again he gave a small nod. If it were up to him he would storm the place, give the lady no other option but to leave Karen alone and then find a way into Rikers to kill Fisk. Simple. But this was Karen's plan, her situation. As much as he wanted to take care of it for her and remove all the danger, he knew she would resent him for taking it out of her hands. That being said, if it looked at all like shit was going sideways he was taking over, she could be as resentful as much as she wanted, as long as she was alive when it was over.

Frank focused on his driving, occasionally checking the rear view to ensure there was no one following them. When he tuned back in it was to Karen laughing quietly into the phone. He had to force himself to keep his eyes on the road instead of putting his full attention on her. It was novel, witnessing Karen just...being. No bad guys, no immediate danger, no bombs or hospital rooms. Just Karen talking to her friend.

"Yeah Foggy, I'm fine, I promise. We are headed back now. What?" A startled laugh. "Sorry I forgot to get you a souvenir, will a gas station shot glass be okay? Sunglasses for Matt? What an original idea you have." She giggled a little bit more before he heard her sober up. "Yeah, we know who is behind it, I-" He looked over just in time to see her roll her eyes. "Tell Matt eavesdropping is rude, even if it is a superpower." He couldn't help the small chuckle that escaped, Karen turned to him with a smirk and a wink. "I'll fill you both in once we are back in the city and I've got all of the information. I want to be sure we aren't being followed and there is a safe place for us to meet, I don't want to put you in danger." Her voice gave a little tremor but before he even had a chance to reach for her, she gave another laugh, "You're right, Marci would probably scare off anyone threatening her Foggy Bear."

Frank's eyes went wide, storing that information for future ammo in case he needed it. Judging by the loud groan he heard over the line, Nelson had not wanted that said out loud. A couple more reassurances and pleasantries and Karen was hanging up the phone, tucking it back into her bag.

Clearing his throat, Frank gave her a mischievous look, "So...Foggy Bear, huh?"

Karen bit her lip, laughter in her voice, "He's never going to forgive me for saying that in front of you. Try not to torture him too much with it."

A loud ping came from Frank's front pocket before he could make any promises he couldn't keep. He pulled it from his pocket and handed it to Karen to read the message.

"It's from David." She said, quickly scanning the text. "He got the information all together and has sent it. Once we get somewhere with internet I'll download it and work on it more. He also says your safe house is clear, there hasn't been any activity there since before you left."

Frank scowled. He never gave David any indication of where his safe house was located. They were going to have to have a serious talk about boundaries, that may include Frank punching him at some point.

He glanced over quickly when he heard Karen snort, she was looking at him, "You never told him where it was did you? He just used creepy hacker skills to find it didn't he?"

With a resigned sigh, Frank just nodded.

"God, he is terrifying." she said, a mix of admiration and a healthy dose of wariness in her voice.

"He can be but he's also an annoying idiot so I guess it balances out." He gave her a sideways grin when she let out a surprised laugh, tucking the phone into the center console and settling herself back in the seat.

Despite the shit storm they were driving back into, Frank felt at ease. They bantered about music, both settling on an old rock station for the trip. He outlined why The Boss was one of the best musicians out there and she nodded along in a placating manner. Her preferences were all over the place, some he could agree with others that just had him shaking his head.

It took them nearly two days, Frank insisted they take their time so they could arrive back in the city when it was dark. Karen would take over driving when Frank got tired and he would crash on the cot in the back or just lay the passenger seat back. The easy conversation slowed as they entered the city and their situation came back into focus. Frank took them in convoluted loops through the city until he was confident they wouldn't be followed before he finally pulled into a small abandoned warehouse.

Despite David's reassurance, Frank did a quick sweep of the premises before letting Karen out of the van, insisting she stay in the back where he had her hiding for most of their trip through the city streets. When he gave the all clear and she stepped out, Karen turned slowly taking in her surroundings, from the mini-fridge next to the table that held his burner for cooking to his sparse cot and neatly stacked clothes. Of course there were also stacks of weapons  lining the walls and a computer set up he had gotten from David. Frank cringed inwardly when she leveled her gaze back on him, he fully expected her to give him the third degree for living like this.

Before she could comment he spoke up, "I have an apartment. I stay here when I need to lay low or if I need to do some recon." Karen gave him a small knowing smile and he felt the tips of his ears turning red. Here he was, a grown man, feeling as though he needed to explain his living situation to a pretty girl like he was a teenager who didn't clean his room. Admittedly, it had been awhile since he had been to his apartment and it wasn't much more furnished than this but she didn't need to know that.

Turning back to the van, Frank busied himself with unloading the rest of their supplies before he could say anything else embarrassing. The first thing he brought out was Karen's laptop, he set it up with the password for the wifi and pulled up the most comfortable chair he had to the workstation for her. He was a bit distressed, these kinds of conditions were okay when it was just him but he hated the idea of Karen living with so little comforts, even if it was only temporary. It couldn't be helped though, so he tried to make it as comfortable as he could.

Karen sat down at the laptop giving him a grateful smile and began digging through the files that David sent over. He knew she would be at it for awhile so he went about checking his ammo and supplies, grimaced at the very empty mini-fridge, and then made up the cot with the procured hotel comforter.

It wasn't long before he had everything in order so he stepped over to where Karen was jotting down notes and furiously scrolling through files. He gripped the back of her chair, reading a bit over her shoulder, "Finding anything you can use?"

She made a somewhat noncommittal noise and continued to scroll for a few more seconds before she answered distractedly. "There is a ton of suspicious activity here, a lot of it corresponding with her communication with Fisk and that is just the phone calls I see on her calendar, there are probably more. If it were anyone else, I would say yes, we should be able to take them down with what we have here." Pausing for a second to bury her hands in her hair, Karen let out a disgusted huff. "But this is Fisk we are talking about. This is the second time we have sent him to prison and he still has just as much freedom as he did before. It's infuriating."

Frank moved his hands to her shoulders, rubbing them soothingly but when he spoke his voice was hard and unforgiving, "He needs to be put down."

Karen's shoulders tensed for a moment before she lowered her arms with a resigned sigh. "I really want to disagree with you Frank. I really want to say that the justice system will prevail and he will be held responsible but we both know that sometimes the justice system doesn't work, don't we?" She looked over her shoulder to give him a sad smile and Frank wished the world was good enough to deserve Karen Page.

There was really nothing he could say to that so he brushed his lips over her forehead in a light kiss before pulling back and heading to his own computer. "I'm going to go over the blueprints for the house, look at security details and schedules and put together a tactical plan. Do wanna meet with the lawyers tomorrow, run what we got by 'em?" He turned enough to see that she had already gone full steam back into her research, giving him a distracted 'Mhm' as she made a couple more notes.

Shaking his head with a smirk, she was an investigator through and through, Frank sat in his own chair and began booting everything up. While he waited he pulled out his phone and sent David another request.

The house, well mansion really, that Vanessa Fisk was residing in was a pretty basic floor plan and Frank had outlined an infiltration plan in a couple of hours, leaving room for adjustments if they got any additional information from Nelson or Murdock. All said and done he figured he could have Karen and himself in and out of the house within 30 minutes, more than enough time to say what needs to be said and get out. His email pinged, David getting him the earlier requested information just in time for Frank to shift his attention to his next objective.

A few more hours passed and vaguely acknowledged Karen moving behind him before he heard the bathroom door shut. There were many moving pieces with this objective and he didn't want to miss any details so he poured over it again and again.

"What is this?" He had been aware of Karen exiting the bathroom but it still startled him a bit to hear her just over his shoulder. She could be damn quiet when she wanted to be, noted.

"It's the blueprints for Rikers, personnel list and where the high profile inmates are kept." Frank felt Karen go completely still.

"No." she said. Her voice was sharp and when he turned to look at her, her eyes never left the screen.

"What do you mean 'no'?" His own tone was sharper than he meant.

"I mean, no, Frank. You're not breaking into Rikers to kill Fisk." She finally tore her eyes from the screen to glare at him. "Are you crazy? Do you want me to wrap you up in a pretty bow for them? Go ahead and put you in an orange jumpsuit to save them the trouble so all they have to do is throw you in your cell, lock you up and throw away the key?"

Frank felt his own anger rising, "You just agreed that he needed to be put down." He stood and took a few steps toward her when she turned, tugging at her hair and cursing quietly.

She whipped around so fast her hair came undone from the loose bun she had it in, hissing at him like a feral cat, "I said the justice system fails sometimes. How the hell did you get, 'Break into a maximum security prison to murder the biggest kingpin in New York' out of that?" She leaned against the wall, crossing her arms over her chest and stared him down.

Frank advanced, stopping just in front of her, his voice dark and echoing around the room. "He's a threat Karen. He's already had too many chances at you and I'm not gonna let him have another one. He signed his own death warrant when he signed that letter to you. Besides, I've got unfinished business with him." He started to turn but Karen gripped his arm, spinning him back around.

"You are NOT breaking into Rikers, Frank. Whether or not he deserves it, I'm not letting you put yourself in that situation for me! So fucking forget it!" She was shouting, her cheeks were red and her chest heaved with her anger, it would have been a beautiful sight if he wasn't so pissed off, his own breath coming in angry bursts.

Placing a hand by her head, Frank leaned in, his voice going deadly soft, "Fisk is a dead man, Karen. There's nothing that is going to change that." He saw a shiver run through her as she looked away but when she brought her eyes back to his, his lungs seized. The fire in her blue eyes burned hotter than anger and he had to place his other hand on the wall as well to steady himself when she slid her hands under his shirt to skim up his sides.

It was his turn to shiver when she ran her nails down his sides to hook in the waist of his jeans, her voice was quiet as well when she leaned in. "I'm not asking you to let him live, Frank. I'm asking you to not throw your life away to kill him.” Her breath tickled the sensitive skin behind his ear and Frank was dizzy with the sudden shift. He wanted to still be angry but the way she was running her fingers along his waistband he found that his anger was bleeding into arousal, the adrenaline fueling something else entirely. His body was reacting to her without much input from his brain.

She pulled back to look at him and the mischief in her eyes made him step closer until they were chest to chest. Karen’s back was pressed against the wall and Frank leaned his forearm above her head, his lips ghosting over her temple, “Are you trying to distract me from the discussion, ma’am?”

Karen turned just enough to nip his jaw, one of her hands ghosting down the front of his jeans, making him clench his teeth, her voice was low as she alternated between laying dragging kisses over his jaw and sucking at his pulse-point, “That depends, is it working?”

It definitely was. Between the residual anger and adrenaline from their fight and her wicked hands running patterns over his stomach, occasionally dipping into the waist of his jeans, he was rock hard. With the hand braced above Karen’s head, he buried his fingers in her hair and lightly jerked her head around to devour her mouth. Frank felt his cock twitch when she let out a breathy moan. It seemed Karen liked a little rough handling and that was knowledge that nearly had Frank weak in the knees with need. Once he had ravaged her mouth to the point they were both panting, he started to push away from the wall  and guide them over to the cot but Karen dug in her heels and kept him in place by holding on to the front of his waistband, her long fingers tucked against his skin while her thumb circled over the button.

Frank was distracted by the sight for a moment, staring down to where her hand was so close but not nearly close enough, he wanted so badly to guide her hand further but didn’t want to push too hard. However, when he looked back up to Karen, she had a determined devilish smirk on her lips and he felt the silky strands of her hair still tangled in his fingers slip free as Karen slowly slid down the wall until she was looking up at him from her knees, her eyes wide and the darkest blue he had ever seen them.

The image made Frank blink rapidly to ensure he wasn’t dreaming because if he woke up from this it damn well may kill him. When Karen leaned forward until she was directly in front of the bulge in his jeans, he held his breath. She studied him for a moment before she brought one of her hands up to cup him firmly, drawing that damned bottom lip between her teeth and suddenly the breath he had been holding left him raggedly as he watched in fascination when she dragged her teeth gently over the head of his dick through the fabric of his pants.

“Holy shit .” His voice was broken and he was surprised he hadn’t been able to say anything considering he still hadn’t been able to refill his lungs.

Karen drew back just enough to allow her nimble fingers access to the button and zipper of his jeans, making short work of them before hooking her fingers into his pants and underwear alike and slowly tugging them down. She hummed appreciatively as he sprung free and Frank had to bite back a groan when she turned hungry eyes up to him. If there had ever been any question of the power Karen Page had over him it evaporated when she slid her hands up his thighs so she could dig strong fingers into his hips and run her tongue from base to tip of his cock, never breaking eye contact with him.

He let out a growl, burying the hand not braced against the wall into her hair, “God Dammit Karen, you’re so fuckin’ sexy.” She didn’t reply but he saw the shiver run through her body, instead she ran the flat of her tongue up him again this time wrapping her lips around the tip bobbing her head shallowly over him. Frank rested his forehead against his arm on the wall for a second, clenching that fist tightly, closing his eyes and just focusing on the sensation. Her lips felt so fucking good on him, he felt lightheaded.

His eyes snapped open and another curse escaped him when he felt one of Karen’s hands wrap around the base of his cock, her mouth sinking to where her hand was squeezing before he rocked back in time to see her full lips slowly dragging back up. Her pace was torturous but he fought to keep his hips still, letting Karen take her time. As torture goes, this was more than acceptable and Frank would endure it happily.

Having  Karen Page, a woman so fierce and strong, on her knees in front of him was a humbling experience for Frank and he extricated his fingers from her hair only to reverently push them back through the silken strands, pulling it out of her face and gripping it loosely at the crown of her head. Her lips leave him with a soft pop and she looks up at him with hooded eyes when she strokes him firmly with expert hands. Frank lowered his hand from the wall to run a calloused thumb over her bottom lip, smearing a bit of saliva across the swollen skin. She catches his digit between those sinful lips and swirls her tongue over it before sucking lewdly, rolling her palm over the head of his cock at the same time. Frank has to remove his hand from her hair to lean against the wall once more when his knees threaten to give out.

Releasing his thumb, Karen gives him an innocent smile which, considering the proficient way she was building him towards release, was far from innocent. He gives her smirk of his own, burying his other hand in her hair this time and slowly, giving her a chance to protest, guides her back to his straining dick. She purrs, parting her lips slightly, just enough to drag them down one side of him and back up the other before she opens again and takes as much of him as she can. Frank growls at the sensation, he’s too big for her to take him completely in her mouth, but she doesn’t flinch when he feels himself bump against the back of her throat. Goddamn . As if he didn’t already worship this woman enough. She moved fluidly back and forth over him, her hands alternately gripping and pumping him to groping at his hips and thighs.

The telltale coiling of pressure at the base of his spine had Frank tightening his fingers in Karen’s hair urging her to move faster. She didn’t need much encouragement, bobbing her head quickly, her hands moving in tandem with her talented mouth. He was on fire, he felt sweat dripping down his spine and every muscle in his body was straining to reach his release.

Frank never tore his eyes from her face as he ground out a warning, “I’m coming, fuck , Karen-” She hummed against him and snapped her eyes open to watch him, never slowing her pace. It only took a couple more pumps from her and Frank was letting out a low gravely shout, leaning heavily into the wall as his orgasm tore through him. A deep moan escaped him as Karen continued to work him over, drawing every last bit of his release from him. When he had the strength to open his eyes again he watched as Karen sat back from him, holding his gaze as she swallowed, giving him a knowing smirk when he growled lowly at the sight.

He tugged gently at the hair he still had fisted in his hand and helped her back to her feet. Before she could say anything, Frank had her pressed against the wall once more, kissing her with all the gratitude and adoration he was feeling. When he pulled back he shook his head, smirking at her smug expression. His voice was rough, still recovering, as he attempted to reprimand her, “You don’t fight fair, Ms. Page.”

She smiled coyly at him, “Yeah, well, all’s fair in love and war and all that.”

Frank gave a huffing laugh, pressing his lips over hers in a quick kiss. “The discussion isn’t over, just to be clear.”

Karen’s smile grew before it turned into a yawn. Taking her hand, Frank pushed away from the wall and moved them toward the cot.

“What are you doing? I still have stuff I want to go over.” She asked even as she stifled another yawn.

“It’s been a long couple o’ days, we need to get some sleep. We can sort out the rest tomorrow.” Truth be told, if it were just him, he would stay up all night until he had everything planned to his liking but he didn’t just have his own health and safety to look after at the moment so Frank climbed into the cot first before pulling her down and tucking her between him and the wall and tugging the blanket over both of them. Despite her protests, Karen tucked into his side, burying her face in his neck with an arm thrown over his chest and was breathing deeply in a matter of moments. He wasn’t far behind, turning just enough to be able to drape an arm over her waist, Frank breathed her in, honeysuckle and vanilla, and drifted off as well.

[rahirah]

via Barb's Place OK, guys, normally I try not to publish things which are this rough, but fuck it, it has been YEARS and I feel like I owe the six of you who are still hoping to read the rest of POM someday something. So here is the crappy first draft of Ch. 14, scene 1. (If you feel like leaving critical comments, please do. It needs savaging.) As Tara collapsed into Willow's arms, the silver cross, still straining at the end of its chain towards the stone, collapsed with her. Only a necklace again, and not the needle of Angel's moral compass. Buffy snatched it and held it tight, till her palms ached where the metal dug into the flesh. She could almost imagine the cross burning her hand, as if she were the vampire. Angel wouldn't, couldn't be doing the things Spike had described if he still had a soul. He might be infuriatingly high-handed sometimes, but he wasn't some kind of undead Don Corleone. Okay, fine, he'd basically put out a hit on Spike last year, and there'd been that whole episode with Resurrected Darla – she was certain she didn't know all the details there, and was even more certain she didn't want to – and that thing with the submarine, though Spike wasn't the world's most reliable narrator where Angel was concerned, and that had been forever ago and Angel had been really depressed back then and it shouldn't count, should it? And anyway, he'd said he'd had an epiphany, hadn't he? Buffy forced herself to take a breath and relax. Or to take a breath, at least. Damn Angel anyway. There was a corner of her heart that would always be his, just as she suspected that a corner of Spike's heart would always belong to Drusilla, so why couldn't they both just stay in their respective corners, safely cocooned in nostalgia? It would make life so much simpler. Everyone else was still arguing. Giles, bless him, had intercepted Kennedy and the Finns, but Dawn pounced on Spike with the speed and ferocity of Miss Kitty hunting the wily laser pointer. "Come on, spill! What plan?" "Doesn't bloody matter what plan, because it's bugfuck insane, and we're not having it." He really wasn't at a hundred percent yet. Insane plans were the last thing that was likely to put Dawn off. Her sister folded her arms and raised an eyebrow. "You do realize that this is the twenty-first century, and I can just, like, phone Cordy and ask her what it is?" Spike's jaw worked, and he glanced up at the ceiling and then over at her, as if imploring the heavens and the Slayer in order of importance. Buffy sighed. "We kinda used her for First Evil bait last year, Spike. The protect-poor-innocent-Dawnie ship has sailed, lost radio contact, and disappeared into the Bermuda Triangle." "I miss the days when a bloke could cut a sodding phone line," Spike muttered. "All bloody right, here's the gist. Chase had the idea this Burkle chit can use Dawn to pop into another dimension, where we'll conveniently run into no slavering monsters whatsoever, traipse across the landscape without falling into any inconvenient pits of molten lava, and pop back into this world in the Hyperion's safe. Then she fancies we can drag this Gunn bloke back the in same manner as whence we came, no doubt scattering sodding rose petals in our wake. I told her — " "But I can do that!" Dawn exclaimed, whirling on Buffy. "You know I can. I got us to Pylea and back last summer! We could drive close to the Hyperion as we can, cross over into the other dimension, hike to the spot where the Hyperion would be, cross back into our world, rescue the prisoners, and cross back to the World of No Slavering Monsters to get back to the car, and then cross back into our world again." At Spike's dubious expression, her own grew obstinate. "Seriously, how is this worse than you sneaking in and out of Angel's hotel through the sewers, which are definitely full of slavering monsters?" You had to admit Spike was giving it the old college try. "And supposing we miss the safe? Pop out in the middle of the lobby? Or the middle of a wall?" "You said Mr. Tanner's with them, right?" Dawn replied, smug. "He's a geomancer, remember? He specializes in topographic magic. I'll bet he can come up with something to get us to the right spot. I'm not dumb. I know this is going to be dangerous, but you need me. It's not like I'm going on some solo mission here. I'll be with you and Buffy, and Faith might even get here by then. All I'm going to do is stand around and exude Key vibes while you guys make with the punchy-kicky." She looked Spike in the eye. "I did fine in Pylea, didn't I? If this was some random nest of vampires..." "But it's not." Buffy hated the brittleness in her voice. "If Angel's really... it took everything I had to beat him last time." More. "You have a lot more now than you had then," Dawn said, her voice softening. "You're only alone if you want to be, Buffy. Let me help. Please." She'd had help last time, too. How could she explain to Dawn that the memory which haunted her nightmares even now was the result of that help: the look of stunned betrayal on Angel's face as she plunged the sword into his heart? If Willow had called his soul back five minutes later, or half an hour sooner... Dawn had never known that particular flavor of heartbreak. She took her sister's hand. "Thanks, Dawnie. But – " "No buts. I get it," Dawn said with the certainty of someone who didn't. "You have all this romantic baggage, and Spike has all these weird-ass vampire daddy issues – " "Oi!" "Well, you do! But you guys have fought demons, and wizards, and gods. I'm not saying Angel isn't a badass, but repeat after me: He's only a vampire." Spike's lips twitched in a rueful smile. "Bit might have a point, love." Rats. She did. Buffy grimaced. "You're not supposed to be the insightful sister." "I've always been the insightful sister." Dawn let her go and bounced back with a grin. "So I'm coming with you, right?" "You're coming." Buffy straightened. "OK, people. Spike and I leave for L.A. tomorrow morning. Kennedy, Willow, Tara, Giles, you're all with us – we'll take two cars if we have to. Riley, do whatever you need to to get your people there, and let me know when you'll arrive. And make sure they know not to randomly stake anything with fangs. Spike's called in some favors from the local vamps, and while I'm not gonna cry bitter tears if some of them come home in a Dust Buster, I don't want to waste troops. We won't know how many of them will keep their word till they actually show up in L.A., so Xander, can you and Anya stay here and coordinate things with David, and let us know how many are coming and when they'll meet up with us?" Xander nodded; if he was disappointed not to be tagged for combat duty, he didn't show it. "Anya and I can pack up the weapons and supplies tonight, if you want to get some rest, Buff." Buffy shot him a grateful look. "That would be great. We'll talk to Cordy in the morning about someplace to stash any allied vamps. Riley?" Riley exchanged a look with Sam. "We've got some fast talking to do with Headquarters. I'll keep you updated." Team Finn rose in tandem and headed for the door. Giles, having assessed the population of Casa Summers and deemed it excessive, was phoning a hotel. Willow was fussing around with Tara, and – "What are we going to do with Grandpa when we get there, Slayer?" And Spike was looking at her like he expected her to have an answer for that. Maybe she did. "After we catch him? We can enroll him in Riley's chiphead program if we have to. At least until we find out what's going on." Spike frowned. "You think a chip in the head's gonna be enough? For Angel?" How was this even a question? "It was enough for you. And it's only temporary." "It was an excuse to hang about in your general vicinity. Not that I'd have admitted as much at the time." His tone was serious; Spike wasn't even trying to pick a fight, damn him, and she really wanted to punch something in the nose right now. "Angel, he won't put up with it, not for the pleasure of anyone's company." Buffy choked back a bitter sound halfway between a laugh and a sob. "'A more permanent solution,' huh? Maybe everyone's right. It took me... so long, last time. To... do what I had to. And people died for it. I can't let that happen again. But I can't..." The words dried up in her throat, too painful to force out. "All of you want me to kill him, don't you?" She was shaking. "So easy for all of you to say, because he's not your friend or your lover. Well, you know what? Screw that! Drusilla's up there with him, and I haven't once questioned that you'll be able to handle her!" Spike's eyes flashed yellow for a second, but he didn't rise to the bait. Maybe his L.A. adventure had really knocked some restraint into him after all. "Yeah, well, maybe you should. I promised you Dru's ashes once, if ever you gave me a crumb. P'raps you've noticed that she's not actually a big pile of dust yet, for all I've gotten the whole sodding cake by now." His shoulders drooped. "Fuck it all, pet, I don't want you to kill him. I hate his sodding guts, but he's family. It's just... you keep talking as if you can fix him. What if there's nothing to fix? What if he really has just stopped trying?" "Then we convince him to start trying again. We didn't give up on Willow when the First had her, did we?" Spike stood silent for a moment, his bright head bowed. Then he sighed. "Fair do's," he said. Whatever that meant. "You know I'll back you, Slayer. I've got no doubts you'll do as you have to. Whatever that turns out to be. Just needed to have my say first." The unshakable confidence in his voice was... not cheering, exactly, but something. She laid her forehead against his shoulder, saying with touch what couldn't be said with words. After a moment his arm snaked around her shoulders, and she felt the uneven rise and fall of his chest gradually match the rhythm of her own breathing. She wondered if he even realized that he did that. "I've got to get some sleep. You coming up?" He glanced across the room. "Up in a mo.' Want a word with Tara. Bird's had a rough night of it," Join the club. "OK. See you in a bit." It occurred to her, as she climbed the stairs, that if the worst ever happened between the two of them, Spike would see that final stroke from her hands as an affirmation rather than a betrayal: a little gesture to show that she cared. Which was weird and sick and vampirey, and also... strangely comforting. No wonder Angel was convinced she'd come back from heaven wrong. TBD comments

[todaydreambelieversfic]

Author Spotlight: seeleyboothfan day 4

An incredible NINE RECS TODAY Go forward for:

Expectation Fails Fresh Start Too Late Shattered Glass The Color of Souls Just to Feel You Chloe and Me Now I know my ABCs King of All Wild Things

1.      “Expectation Fails series”: by lilinas and masturblaine

D/s age!gap fic with student Kurt and teacher Blaine’s dom and it’s hot as hell but also full of the most amazing imagery and feeling? This scene takes place after Kurt’s first punishment of Blaine.

It was almost fully dark now and Kurt waited until Blaine seemed completely out before he shifted himself out from under his sub, who clutched at his pillow as he moved, and climbed out of the bed. He padded in the dimness out of the bedroom and down the hall. It was strange to walk naked around someone else's house, feeling the air brush against his still-sensitive skin, but putting on his clothes would have been silly.

He hovered for a moment on the threshold of the living room and surveyed the scene of their struggle, items strewn across the floor like casualties of battle, lit faintly by the last of the sun coming through the thin curtains at the west-facing windows. Blaine's clothes and shoes shoved under the table by the door. Kurt's scarf and cuff on the floor by the kitchen, with the wooden spoon discarded nearby. A few steps further and he could see the wrapped box containing the black cuff in the corner of the kitchen where it had fallen after it bounced against the refrigerator.

They were such tiny things, but seeing them there where they'd been left in fear or anger or lust, somehow illustrated in ways Kurt hadn't fully accepted the enormity of what had happened to him in the past three days. Three days! Just last Thursday Kurt had woken up and gone to school a clueless teenager dreaming of romance and hoping for a Glee solo and enjoying the fact that for some reason the jocks seemed to have forgotten how to torment him. Now here he was naked in Blaine's apartment, Blaine who he'd spanked and teased (which had been hotter than he'd ever imagined and made Kurt suspect he'd found his first kink), Blaine who'd made him come like he'd never known it was possible to come, Blaine who was asleep in his bed right now waiting for Kurt to come back and hold him. He was a dom. He was Blaine's dom. He would be Blaine's dom for the rest of his life.

2.      “A Fresh Start series” by Picking Violets

Kurt and Blaine create a blended family and continue fostering and adopting. There is a huge heartbreaking moment where they lose some of their family and I still cry thinking about it. This scene takes place when two of their foster kids get returned to the biological father – CUE THE WATERWORKS

This man was taking away his kids.

His kids.

HIS kids.

Kurt stepped away from the car on unsteady legs, holding his hand to his mouth as Tia made her little 'grabby hands' motion for him. The doctor reached out a hand, as if hold her small fingers from a distance, but turned it into a shaky wave at the last minute.

The young father glanced around uncertainly after shutting Tia's door.

Blaine started shaking his head. First slowly, and then almost frantically.

"No."

Both Finn and Puck stood at attention, hearing the desperation in his voice.

"No. This isn't right. You can't do this."

Blaine turned to the children's father.

"Why! Why would you do this? They were happy! They were so happy with us! We love them!"

Finn stepped forward, attempting to place a calming hand on his brother-in-law's shoulder, but Blaine brushed it off.

"Please don't do this," he called out to the man who was backing away slowly, preparing to climb into the driver's seat... ready to drive off with his children. He paused, looking at Blaine with a pained expression. It was obvious that he wanted to say something, but just had no clue what.

Kurt closed his eyes, looking as if he was going to be sick.

"Honey. We can't-"

"Please don't take them," Blaine gasped. "Please..."

The children's father swallowed nervously, glancing around at the men surrounding him.

Finn looked off into the distance, knowing it was time for him to intervene.

"You need to go, Mr. Scott. This won't get any easier. Go, and I'll check in with you later."

The young man nodded with a harsh swallow, and ducked into the front seat quickly.

The door slammed shut.

The engine started.

A squealing cry rose from inside the car as Tia realized that the vehicle was leaving, and neither Kurt nor Blaine was with her.

"Tia," Blaine murmured, stepping forward. Kurt gasped a little sob, wrapping his arms around himself, looking as if he was physically trying to hold himself back from following the car too.

The last glimpse they had- was two pairs of green eyes, gazing at them through the back window, full of tears and confusion. Then the dust started to rise as the car pulled away.

3.      “Too Late” – by Zavocado

This one got to me and I gobbled up each chapter. Blaine is killed in an assault and he comes back as Kurt’s sort of guardian angel? It’s Zane, so you really shouldn’t need to know more. This scene is from the beginning where it sets up Blaine’s death – my favorite quote from the story ruins a big plot point, so this is the second best. Seriously though, you need to read this story!!!

Blaine Devon Anderson, 16, of Lima passed away peacefully on Saturday, September 4, 1960, at Lima Medical Center.

He was born on October 15, 1943 to James C. Anderson and Lyra B. Anderson of Lima.

Blaine was a student at McKinley High School, where he was a prominent member of the boxing team, the choir, and the band. He was also the male lead soloist in his church choir. He was already set to continue his education at Julliard in August of 1962 with a full music scholarship.

He is survived by his parents, James (49) and Lyra (41); his older brother, Cooper (27); and both his maternal and paternal grandparents.

A memorial service will be held at 10 A.M. Monday, September 6, at Carmel Catholic Church. The family will be receiving friends later that evening at their home from 5 to 7 P.M. on Treebird Lane. The burial will be private.

Cooper stared long and hard at the short article. His hands were trembling uncontrollably, and his chest felt like a spiked ball was expanding in it. This wasn't fair. None of this should be happening. It was the first line that struck him the hardest, though. Passed away peacefully. He scoffed and tossed the paper onto the table top.

Blaine's death had been anything but peaceful. His mother must have written that. She'd been deluding herself into thinking it since he'd arrived at the hospital two days ago.

A sharp pang seared through his chest at the thought. His mother, not theirs anymore, his. Cooper's alone, because his brother – his baby brother – was dead.

4.     “Shattered Glass” by redandyell0w

This story/author is no longer online that I can find (the link I have is the last one I could find, but it’s since invalid), so I’m beyond thankful I saved it to word document before it was removed. It’s a story that takes place after Kurt and Blaine committed suicide and they meet in heaven. The imagery gets to me and I kind of the love the idea that heaven isn’t this magical happy place and they fight to find happiness with each other? This scene takes place after they’ve been ‘talking’ to each other across an impregnable glass wall in heaven.

I wish I could see you, like really see you.

Kurt wrote one day to Blaine, and Blaine nodded eagerly. Blaine twirled the charcoal between his fingers before replying.

I want to touch you, just to know what it feels like.

Blaine looked embarrassed as he wrote this down, and Kurt knew if it could his face would be burning. Yet he couldn't help but agree; he wanted to touch Blaine too.

Kurt, are you as lonely as me in your heaven?

Blaine was looking at him tentatively, and Kurt nodded his head sadly, looking at Blaine with sorrowful eyes. Blaine smiled sadly too and began to write.

I wish I could be with you Kurt; that way we both wouldn't be lonely anymore.

Kurt felt like he wanted to cry. He missed crying, he could sob dryly sure, but he hated that no wetness came. He missed the feeling of tears streaming down his face, the real, raggedness of his breath as he fought for air, or the way his body would stutter and wrack as each sob took hold of his entire being. He missed being alive, and more than anything in the world he wanted someone to be there for him, someone to hold him while he really sobbed, someone to comfort him... someone like Blaine.

I would want to be with you too, I don't want us to be alone.

6.      The Color of Souls by PrinceHummel

A beautiful piece about how people’s shadows are almost cognizant and go off on their own? Again, the imagery is amazing. This scene takes place towards the beginning where Blaine is describing his first meeting with Kurt’s shadow.

The reason it holds such importance to him is on the grass in the background of the photo. It’s a Shadow, and one he’s come to recognize easily over the past few years since he (for it seems to be the silhouette of a boy) first found him the day Blaine was released from the hospital after the Sadie Hawkins mess.

The Shadow’s color had been concerned, almost understanding in a way that Blaine hadn’t known before. He’d stayed at Blaine’s side, literally, until that night when Blaine turned out the lights and finally slept. It was his first night without flashback-ridden nightmares.

Blaine didn’t see that particular Shadow again until he was at Dalton during his junior year. He hadn’t recognized it as the same Shadow right away — the hair was different and the jaw sharper, his overall stature lean and definitely a bit taller than Blaine himself. But he had the same presence in his head, a kind of calming force with attitude.

When Blaine met Sebastian Smythe for the first time, that Shadow was with him. And he was in no way pleased with the new Warbler, red and icy cold blue crackling dangerously in the back of Blaine’s mind.

7.     Just To Feel You by Cuter-Than-A-Guinea-Pig

Asexual Kurt navigating a relationship with Sexual Blaine. So like, this is everything I’ve wanted out of an asexual fic – where you can still have a relationship as long as you treat each other like deserving equals. I love this bit after Kurt finds a way he’s feels comfortable giving Blaine some sexual satisfaction that doesn’t go against what Kurt himself is comfortable with, where you get to see how sometimes things are one-sided in a relationship and that’s totally fine, as long as the other person gets their own time too? Ugh, it comes across much better in the story – just read it.

“So,” he began, shifting his position so he was straddling Kurt’s thighs and sitting in his lap. “You feel good about this right?”

“Well maybe not as good as you.” The smirk grew. “But yeah, it felt good,” he ended genuinely, leaning forwards for a kiss.

“So this can be something we do now?”

“Yeah,” Kurt answered softly with a slight nod. “I suppose it can.”

“Like when you jump in the shower after a long day and I light the candles and put on the music and we dance and cuddle and then now we can do this too?”

“No. Well um….yeah, no.”

“No?”

“No…..I don’t know, it’s just those nights have become our special thing. And I know where it all started from and all but still. That’s about us. This is about you. No, Blaine, don’t look at me like that. It’s true and it isn’t a bad thing. Couples are allowed to do things together that are really just for one of them. And it’s fine. It didn’t hurt me in any way. It just didn’t do a lot for me either. I don’t mind doing it again. I want to do it again because now that I can, I want to be able to give you what you need to be fully happy in this relationship. I just don’t want the stuff that used to be about us to turn into being all about you. And I’m not saying that this stuff shouldn’t be special because it should and it deserves to be so, I just think we need to come up with another time to make it special. Is that okay?”

8.      Chloe and Me by legallyblained

Klaine but told from Blaine’s dog’s point of view. It makes me sob every time. This scene takes place right after Kurt and Blaine get together. Chloe’s commentary through the whole story makes me giggle. Also you’ll need tissues for the end – word of warning, this follows loosely the Marley and Me storyline.

There's one thing Chloe doesn't like. At least Blaine is home during the week now, but just as she's trotting happily after him and Kurt into Blaine's room, expecting them to practise singing together or just sit around doing homework or talking, they both give her a quick stroke, walk in and close the door behind them. Chloe doesn't even have Blaine's parents to play with. How inconsiderate. She whines for a moment, trying to fit her paw under the door, but realises just how much they'd been touching, kissing, their hands moving towards each other's hind quarters. Their scents had definitely been different. They must be in heat. Human mating season or something. She's been there. As Blaine's room gets awfully quiet, Chloe figures she can probably sit this one out, and wanders downstairs for a nap.

9.      Now I Know My ABCs by villageidiot

26 ficlets that also somehow work together in the end – just read it.

10.  King of All Wild Things by NotUnusual

A piece where Blaine and Kurt are from completely different cultures and speak different languages but manage to fall in love all the same. I adore the beginning where Kurt thinks Blaine is a savage. This scene takes place toward the beginning where Blaine just wants to love on Kurt but Kurt thinks he’s a filthy beast who just WON’T STOP KISSING HIM – BOUNDARIES, BLAINE!

Kurt edges away from the wall and picks up his bag for something to hold between himself and Blaine. He grabs it wrong and its contents spill out, clattering to the floor. There isn’t much, but Kurt crouches immediately to gather it all up. Blaine crouches, too, retrieving Kurt’s favorite book and giving it a curious look. Kurt huffs and snatches it from him.

“Mine.” Kurt stuffs the book back in the bag. Blaine’s eyebrows raise and he picks up Kurt’s mirror next. “Mine,” Kurt says again, taking the mirror from him. Blaine grins and picks up one of Kurt’s shirts. “Mine! Honestly, Blaine, I can do this myself.”

Blaine ignores him, though, and scoots closer, looking at Kurt from beneath his lashes.  “Mine,” he says, pressing a hand to Kurt’s chest.

Heat floods Kurt’s face and he stares at Blaine. “I—I am not,” he finally protests, trying to ignore the way Blaine’s gaze makes his stomach do somersaults.

Blaine’s fingers trail down Kurt’s cheek and he stands, stepping back. He gives Kurt one last smile before descending down the rope ladder.

When Kurt’s heart calms down he realizes Blaine has taken the ladder with him.

“Not a prisoner, my ass.”

[dragonydreams]

Finding Where We Belong - BtVS/LoT Crossover 2/5

Title: Finding Where We Belong Fandom: DC’s Legends of Tomorrow, Buffy the Vampire Slayer Rating: Teen Pairings/Characters: Sara Lance/Leonard Snart, Spike/Willow Rosenberg, Dawn Summers, Faith Lehane, Legends Team Summary: Faith, Dawn, Willow and Spike end up in Legends ‘verse when their only chance of survival was to escape through a portal Dawn created. When Gideon senses the portals opening but isn’t sure what to make of it, the Waverider crew goes to investigate and find much more than they bargained for. Timeline: BtVS: post-series (ignores comics), Legends: end of Episode 2.10 The Legion of Doom Disclaimer: I claim no ownership over these characters. I am merely borrowing them from Berlanti Productions, DC Entertainment, Warner Bros. Television and Mutant Enemy, Kuzui Enterprises, Sandollar Television, 20th Century Fox Television. Betas: Thank you to angelskuuipo and shanachie for looking this over for me. Author’s Note: This marks my 15 year anniversary writing fanfiction. I don’t know the exact date that I shared my first Willow/Giles story in a Yahoo Group, but it was definitely in September 2012. This milestone anniversary demanded a story that crossed the first fandom I wrote in with my current fandom obsession.

Start from the beginning

Chapter 2

After informing the rest of the crew about what, and who, they'd found, Sara asked Amaya to take their guests to the galley for some much needed food and drinks, while she went with Phil/Rip to the med bay, where Mick had already taken Leonard.

"I don't need to see a doctor," Phil protested. "There's nothing wrong with my memory."

Gritting her teeth against the headache that was forming, Sara ground out, "Fine, but I still want Gideon to check you out and heal any injuries you may have from being tortured."

"It can do that?" Phil asked, in awe.

"It can hear you," Gideon said, causing Phil to stumble back into the medical chair he'd been standing next to. "Please lie down so that I may assess your injuries."

Once he had, Sara wrapped a medical cuff around Phil's wrist, to his startled protests, until he suddenly fell silent.

"Thanks, Gideon," Sara said, knowing the AI had administered a fast-acting sedative. "Let me know what you find out about both his physical injuries and memory loss."

"Will do, Captain," Gideon responded.

Sara crossed the room to where Leonard was lying motionless on another chair. She stood on the opposite side of Leonard from Mick, watching his chest rise and fall as he breathed. "And Leonard?" Sara asked.

"Mr. Snart's body is in shock from having been trapped in the time stream for the past several months," Gideon announced. "Otherwise, he appears to be in complete health. The time stream he was trapped in appears to have kept him in perfect stasis."

"When will he wake up?" Mick gruffly asked.

"It shouldn't be long now," Gideon answered.

Wanting to stay by Leonard's side until he woke, Sara knew that she had to go deal with their guests.

"Gideon, please alert me as soon as he wakes up, no matter the time," Sara requested.

"Yes, Captain," Gideon responded.

"You're leaving?" Mick asked, tearing his eyes away from his partner's face in surprise.

"Don't want to," Sara admitted, her hand hovering over Leonard's cheek. "But I need to go be Captain for a while and make sure our guests are settled. If he wakes before I come back, tell him…" she paused, her voice thick with emotion.

"I'll tell him you'll be here soon," Mick finished.

Sara blinked the tears from her eyes and smiled at Mick. "Thanks."

After a quick stop to change back into a pair of ripped jeans and a tee-shirt, Sara headed towards the galley.

The newcomers were sitting at a table, eating heartily. Considering that they looked like they'd just been through a battle, she imagined they needed it.

All except for the blond man, Spike.

"Not hungry?" she asked him.

He smirked at her. "As shiny as your food replicator is, I don't expect that it'll be able to produce what I eat."

"And what's that?" Sara asked.

"Blood," Spike answered.

Sara raised an eyebrow at that. "So the stories about vampires are true? You survive by drinking the blood of the innocent?"

Dawn snorted, then coughed.

"Now just the not-so-innocent," Spike promised. "And usually only bagged stuff from blood banks or animals."

Sara turned to Amaya, who had been watching the group from off to the side of the room. "Can you run to the med bay and grab a couple of bags of blood?"

"Are you sure we should be humoring him?" Amaya asked, not convinced that vampires existed.

"If it makes him sick, it's his own fault," Sara pointed out.

"Not making it up," Spike said.

"You said back at the Vanishing Point that you had a soul. Why did you make a point of mentioning that?" Sara asked.

"I'd like to hear this, too," Nate said, poking his head into the room.

Sara rolled her eyes. "Anyone else eavesdropping out there?"

Ray bashfully stepped into the room beside Nate. Followed by Jax.

"No Stein?" Sara asked.

"Oh, did I hear my name?" Martin asked, as if he'd just been passing by.

Faith and Willow exchanged a look and burst out laughing.

"Oh, yeah, this feels just like home at Slayer Central," Dawn said.

"Grown-ups behaving like children?" Sara asked.

"Yep. Except they were mostly teenagers," Dawn agreed.

Sara raised an eyebrow at that and made a mental note to follow up on it.

"Huddle up, kiddos, and we'll go over Vampires and Slayers 101," Spike said.

Everyone found chairs as Amaya returned with two bags of blood, which she held out to Spike. Starving, Spike shifted to his game face and tore into one of the bags, slurping down the contents.

"Ta," he said licking his lips, once the bag was drained. "Been ages since I was able to properly feed." He relished the shocked looks on their hosts' faces.

"Astonishing," Martin said, breaking the silence.

"Right, so, vampires. To become a vampire, you get drained of most of your blood by a vampire, who then feeds you their blood, causing you to become one, too," Spike said.

"But most vampires don't have souls," Faith added. "When the demon takes over the body, the soul is pushed out, or something. Never really understood how that worked."

"Sounds 'bout right," Spike said.

"So how come you have a soul?" Ray asked. "Were you made wrong?"

"Bite your tongue," Spike hissed. "My sire may have been insane, but I was made right. They didn't call me William the Bloody for nothing."

"Easy, Spike, he doesn't know what he's saying," Willow said, calmly.

Spike adjusted his coat and sat back in a huff.

"I-I'm sorry," Ray stuttered. "I didn't mean any offense."

"Apology accepted," Spike said, grudgingly. "Anyway, I went and fought for my soul. Had to make myself worthy for her."

"Aww, you got a soul because of a woman?" Ray simpered. "How romantic."

"She didn't see it that way," Spike murmured.

"She had good reason," Dawn quietly reminded him.

"I know," he acknowledged. "And my soul is permanent, unlike some cursed poufs that I know."

"Cursed poufs?" Jax asked.

"Angel is another souled vampire we knew," Willow said. "He was a ruthless killer until a gypsy cursed him with a soul, forcing him to feel guilty about everyone he'd killed for over a hundred years. After another century of moping and brooding, he became one of the good guys. He's gone now, like so many of our friends."

"You chose to take on the guilt of a century of killing?" Sara quietly asked, suppressing a shudder as she wrapped her arms around herself.

Spike tilted his head to look at Sara, easily seeing her pain and guilt. He wondered what she had to feel so guilty about. "Was more than a century, but yeah. I'd already been neutered by some soldiers makin' it so that I couldn't harm humans anymore, and I felt that I needed to prove that I could be good on my own and not just because of the chip in my brain."

"Is that why you haven't killed him?" Amaya asked Faith. "You said you are a slayer of vampires, did you not?"

Faith smirked. "That wasn't my call. He was already making nice with Buffy when I rolled into town. She said to leave him alive, so I did."

"She was your commander?" Martin asked.

Faith laughed. "She acted like it, but no, she was the slayer before me." She sat up straighter. "I've gotta back up and give the slayer history."

"Oh, can I do it?" Willow eagerly asked. "I always loved when Giles did it."

"Knock yourself out, Red," Faith allowed.

"Into every generation a slayer is born: one girl in all the world, a chosen one. She alone will wield the strength and skill to fight the vampires, demons, and the forces of darkness; to stop the spread of their evil and the swell of their number. She is the Slayer," Willow said.

Jax raised his hand. "Um, you said, 'one girl', but weren't there two of you?"

"Smart boy," Faith acknowledged. "When one slayer dies, the next is called out of all of the potential slayers out there. Buffy drowned but was resuscitated. According to the mystical forces or whatever, that still counted as a death so the next Slayer was called. That was actually Kendra, who also died, and then I was called."

"So there haven't been any new Slayers since then, since you're still alive?" Nate asked. "Do you think that you leaving your world would count as a death and call the next slayer?"

"There are no more potential slayers on our Earth," Willow said, sadly.

"Because Willow made them all active Slayers when we were fighting the First Evil," Dawn added. "But also, because they're all dead now."

"We weren't able to find them all in time," Willow said. "They were killed before we found them, or they didn't want to come with us to be trained, or they hadn't trained long enough before going into battle, or…"

Spike reached across the table to cover one of Willow's hands with his. "It's not your fault, love," he said. "There were too many of them to find them all; and in the end, there were still a hundred demons to every slayer."

Ray's jaw dropped. "Hold up, are you two," he gestured between Willow and Spike, "together? I thought you were with Faith."

"What? Because I said I was a computer geek I can't get the hot guy?" Willow asked, turning her hand over to hold Spike's.

"No, that's not it at all," Ray spluttered. "They've just been sitting together and bantering since you got here so I thought…"

"Raymond, I suggest stopping there before that shoe enters your throat," Martin suggested.

"Getting back on track, I have a question," Amaya said. She touched her totem briefly before asking, "You said that Willow activated all of the potential slayers. With magic?"

"You don't believe us?" Dawn asked defensively.

"You misunderstand," Amaya said quickly. "There is not much magic here, but some does exist. The totem that I wear allows me to channel the spirit of any animal and take on their attributes: strength, speed, flight, and so on. I am merely curious to meet someone who possesses magic."

"That explains the buzzing that I've been feeling," Willow said. "I thought it was portal-lag or something. It's the magic from your totem that I'm feeling. It's very powerful."

"Just like my girl," Spike said, proudly.

"What about you, Dawn?" Jax asked. "What's your story?"

Dawn looked to Willow as if silently asking how much to tell them, then nodded. "Until about eight years ago I was energy; a mystical key between dimensions. Some monks wanted to hide me from a crazy goddess who wanted to use me to return to the dimension she was banished from, so they made me human and made everyone think that I was Buffy's little sister. That's the only life that I've ever known, but I wasn't born, I just existed one day as a teenager."

"A bratty teenager," Willow interjected.

"And you retained this ability to open portals in your human form?" Martin asked.

"It took me a while to figure out, but yeah, I can still do it," Dawn said. "It's how we got here."

"You also said something about being a Watcher," Nate said.

"Watchers train slayers," Dawn answered the unasked question. "I know I'm young, but I started hanging out with Buffy and her friends as soon as they let me, so I had access to a lot of Giles' books. He was Buffy's watcher. I could read Sumerian in high school, as well as a handful of other dead languages. I help read the ancient prophecies and prepare the slayers with what they'd need to fight particular demons. Willow does a lot of the research, too. Or, we did. Not sure how those skills will be useful in a world without demons."

"You're sure we don't have demons here?" Ray asked, tentatively.

"It's how we ended up here," Dawn said. "When I created the portal, I told it to take us to a world without demons."

"That's a relief, I guess," Ray said, sitting back with a sigh.

"Now your turn," Spike said, settling back in his chair. "We showed, now you tell."

"As I said before, I'm Sara Lance; Captain of this time ship and former member of the League of Assassins before I became the vigilante Canary. I go by White Canary now. I boarded this ship in the year 2016."

Spike nodded upon hearing that Sara had been an assassin. Explained her look when he talked about his soul. He had a feeling they'd get along just fine.

"What year is it now?" Willow asked.

"I guess that depends on where you are," Sara said. "Right now we're in the time stream, which is basically out of time. When we talk about going home, it's to the year 2017. For most of us."

"It was 2006 for us," Dawn said.

"I am from the year 1942," Amaya offered. "My name is Amaya Jiwe and I was recruited from my home in Zambesi by the Justice Society of America. You may also call me Vixen."

"Ray Palmer. I built a supersuit, A.T.O.M., that lets me fly and shrink down to the size of a, well, atom. Which is also my code name."

"I'm Nate Heywood. I came on board because I'm a historian and I helped find this crew when they were scattered throughout time. Thanks to a serum Ray manipulated, I can also now turn my skin into steel and go by Citizen Steel."

"Since when?" Jax snorted.

"Since always," Nate grumbled.

"I'm Jax. I was an auto mechanic until I became the other half of Firestorm with Grey over there. When we're merged, we can fly and shoot fire. I'm also the ship's mechanic."

"Martin Stein. To give a little more history as to how we came to be partners, in 2013, in Central City, S.T.A.R. Labs turned on a particle accelerator which exploded and released a massive dark matter wave that created what have come to be called meta-humans. The explosion caused me to drop the matrix for the F.I.R.E.S.T.O.R.M. project that I'd been working on and my body merged with that of my former partner, Ronald Raymond. While we did not know it for a very long time, we had become Firestorm."

"Fast forward to after they figured out who they were and how to control their powers," Jax said. "Ronnie died trying to close a vortex and Grey needed a new partner to merge with otherwise he was gonna die."

"Not that that was much incentive for you at first," Martin chided.

"I came to my senses," Jax conceded.

"In the med bay we have Mick Rory sitting with his unconscious partner, Leonard Snart; the man that Dawn opened a portal for." Sara paused to take a steadying breath. "We thought that Leonard had died holding down a fail-safe button in order to destroy the Oculus wellspring. The Time Masters had been using the Oculus to control people's lives throughout time."

"He sacrificed himself to save the world," Spike said knowingly, a hand unconsciously rising to his chest as he felt the phantom weight of an amulet resting against it.

"Yeah," Sara agreed. "We'd flown off as the explosion started and assumed that he'd been killed by the blast. We've been mourning for him for the past nine months."

"He and the big guy, Mick, they're together?" Willow asked.

"Not that kind of partners," Amaya answered.

"Back in Central City, they were thieves together. Captain Cold and Heatwave; the master thief and the arsonist. They've both switched to the side of good now," Sara added.

"To conclude the introductions, I am Gideon," a voice said out of nowhere.

"Who said that?" Faith asked, suddenly on alert.

"Gideon is the ship's AI," Sara said. "This ship is from the year 2166. The former captain of this ship is Rip Hunter, who is the man that you found tied up."

"He insists his name is Phil," Dawn said.

"That's a long story," Sara said. "Short version is that he touched something dangerous on the ship that not only time scattered him into the past, but also gave him a completely new personality and accent. He's actually English."

While Dawn had been listening, she'd pulled a metallic disc from one of her pockets and had begun to examine it.

Sara had been watching Dawn and realized that the disc looked futuristic. "What have you got there?"

"Oh, um, kleptomania stuck again," Dawn said, blushing. "I found this in the room next to where Phil was being held while everyone was fighting. It was just sitting out there and had interesting markings and I must have slipped it in my pocket."

"Gideon, can you tell what that is?" Jax asked, having stood to get a better look at it. "It looks like something Time Master-y."

"That is a mnemonic archive," Gideon informed them. "That device is designed to store memories."

"Whose memories?" Faith asked.

"Rip Hunter's, I'd guess," Dawn said, turning the device over in her hands before offering it to Sara.

Trying not to sound too hopeful, Sara asked, "Gideon, can you restore Rip's memories from this?"

"I will need to fully examine the device first, but if they truly are Captain Hunter's memories, then yes, I have the ability to restore them," Gideon confirmed.

Jax gave a whoop of excitement.

"Ray, I want you and Martin to work with Gideon on examining this device and restoring Rip's memories," Sara said, passing the device to him.

"On it, Captain," Ray said, eagerly. He and Martin quickly headed to the library to begin their examination.

"The rest of you can take our guests to the fabrication room and help them fabricate new clothes, pajamas, and anything else they might need for a few days. Oh, and fabricate some cots and bedding and get them set up in one of the emptier storage rooms," Sara instructed.

"You've got a room that just makes stuff out of thin air?" Dawn asked. "Like on Star Trek?"

"It's not made out of thin air, but yep," Jax confirm. "C'mon, I'll show you."

"And what will you be doing?" Spike asked Sara.

"I'll be in the med bay waiting for Leonard to wake up."

Chapter 3

[we-pay-for-everything]

Not Fade Away, Conversations With Dead People, Graduation Day pt. 2

Hi! Thank you for the ask! I NFA and Graduation Day are favorites too. CWDP... not so much. Let’s see:

Not Fade Away

My favorite or second favorite episode! The best series finale I’ve ever seen. This episode is quite controversial. I know many who, like me, think it is brilliant, and many who lament the abruptness of the ending. There’s so much I could say about this episode, including how it connects to the season, but I’ll settle for the essential analysis. 

This episode works wonderfully as a series finale because it does what series finales must do: it honors the show (and not the season necessarily) and represents, in 40 minutes, everything we love about Angel. 

To honor Angel (both the show and the character) is to honor its mission statement - that started back in Amends, which isn’t even an Angel episode. Buffy’s words to Angel “Strong is fighting. It's hard and it's painful and it's every day. It's what we have to do and we can do it together.” inspired Angel to fight for himself and, later on his own show, for others. 

Angel himself never stopped fighting but throughout the show had to learn and re-learn what he was fighting for: “If there is no great glorious end to all this, if nothing we do matters, then all that matters is what we do, ‘cause that's all there is. What we do, now, today. I fought for so long, for redemption, for a reward, finally just to beat the other guy, but... I never got it. [...]  All I wanna do is help. I wanna help because I don't think people should suffer, as they do. Because, if there is no bigger meaning, then the smallest act of kindness is the greatest thing in the world.". 

After his epiphany, Angel never looked back and also taught others what he had learned the hard way: “Nothing in the world is the way it ought to be. It's harsh, and cruel. But that's why there's us. Champions. It doesn't matter where we come from, what we've done or suffered, or even if we make a difference. We live as though the world was what it should be, to show it what it can be.”. 

Angel knows how to make a statement, he knows that even if you can’t win you have to fight, because the smallest act is everything we’ve got against the universe. Angel must fight W&H because, like he told Buffy, evil is there to be fought, not necessarily to be won. Angel had to show the world what it could be and lead the way for other champions and fighters. It doesn’t matter where he came from, what he suffered or even if he made a difference, he decided to live what could be his last minutes as the world should be to prove what it could be. “Let’s go to work”, he said. I can’t think of a better way to close the show and Angel’s arc. Despite his shortcomings during season 5, I knew who the Angel from NFA was and I loved him.

There’s an existential theme to this episode (and to the show as well) that has always been represented by Angel and his arc. But Gunn’s own contribution to this episode was also an important existentialist one that justified the ending of the show itself. Gunn spends his last day helping his friend, Anne, at her shelter. When helping her move some boxes, he asks her: “What if I told you it doesn't help? What would you do if you found out that none of it matters? That it's all controlled by forces more powerful and uncaring than we can conceive, and they will never let it get better down here. What would you do?”. Anne’s answer is simple: “I'd get this truck packed before the new stuff gets here.” And nothing else is said on the subject. 

 Although the most prominent theme of the episode is existentialist in nature, there’s also an absurdist theme represented by Wesley’s character. Wesley’s journey was largely one of pain, sacrifice and meaningless loss. He kidnapped Connor, but his plan failed and he ended up friendless and with his throat slit, he finally got the girl and lost her violently, he tried to kill a member of the Circle of Black Thorn and died having failed. Unlike the potential deaths of Angel, Gunn, Spike and Illyria, Wes didn’t die in battle victoriously and with purpose, but rather meaninglessly, wasted away on the floor, in the arms of an illusion. Wesley’s journey is an absurd, pessimistic one that counters the show’s lesson that fighting is worth it and that life as a meaning, a design, even if it’s a small one. Whereas Angel fights but wins, Wesley fights and loses. I like that. It’s tragic but adds a touch of realism to the show. Not everything has a meaning or a purpose. Somethings are just absurd.  

Earlier in the day, Wesley and Illyria had discussed what his perfect day would be. Wesley, in that absurdist vein, answered: “There is no perfect day for me, Illyria. There is no sunset or painting or finely-aged scotch that's going to sum up my life and make tonight any... There is nothing that I want.”. However, there was something Wesley wanted, but couldn’t have: Fred. So Illyria offered to become her and Wesley refused: “The first lesson a watcher learns is to separate truth from illusion. Because in the world of magics, it's the hardest thing to do. The truth is that Fred is gone. To pretend anything else would be a lie. And since I don't actually intend to die tonight, I won't accept a lie.“. 

Mercifully and true to his words, when Wesley realizes he is going to die, he finally accepts the lie: “Would you like me to lie to you now?”. Wes sees “Fred” for the last time and dies in her arms. If you listen closely, you can hear my sobs. That was the most beautiful, poignant death scene I’ve ever seen. 

Lastly, I’d like to mention Spike, Lorne and Lindsey’s stories. Spike finally gets some credit for his bad poetry - a surprising but fitting ending for his character, the “fool for love”. Lorne gets a sadder, controversial ending. He kills Lindsey. All I’ll say on the subject is that Lorne had a choice and chose to help Angel. And Lindsey, well, he was more demon than man at that point. 

Rating: 10/10

Conversations with Dead People

I’m not particularly fond of this episode. I also confess that I don’t remember it well. Mostly, my dislike for it comes from the conversation between Buffy and Holden. 

What many might call a introspective, clever conversation, I consider to be psycho babble and pretentious drivel. Like many, “psychology” students portrayed in tv and movies, these “experts” sound very little like actual psychologists and more like people who like to name drop Freudian concepts like “ego”, “id”, “Oedipus” so they can sound more knowledgeable. 

I disliked how Buffy spoke of Spike. One of the major problems in this season is how victimized Spike is and how villanized Buffy is. Following the unhealthy Spuffy relationship from season 6 which culminated in the AR from Seeing Red, there’s a lot of bad blood between Spike and Buffy that the writers decided to not address or to address rather badly. Giving Spike a soul immediately shifted the blame from Spike, giving him a chance to escape judgment. However, the writers passed judgement on Buffy instead. She admits herself that she is to blame for their dynamic, because she used him, and implies feeling guilty for whatever she did while depressed and in a “relationship” with a manipulative, abusive, soulless demon. 

Perhaps this episode could’ve done something useful and helped Buffy acknowledge that her guilt was misplaced, which would’ve caused a much needed shift in Buffy and Spike’s dynamic. Unfortunately, this didn’t happen and their dynamic became more and more co-dependent and gross. Spike used Buffy as a clutch, Buffy felt guilty so she clung to Spike, Spike isolated Buffy and Buffy relied more heavily on him, and so on and so forth.

I’m also not convinced by Buffy’s “inferiority complex about her superiority” complex either (see what I mean about pseudo psychology?). Sounds like a gross simplification to me, 

Regarding the Willow/Cassie and Dawn/Joyce parts, my only comment is that I was unimpressed by both. Tara/Willow doesn’t interest me much so I think it’s natural that Cassie didn’t spook me. I will concede that The First was used more effectively in this episode than in most of the other season 7 episodes. 

My rating: 6/10.

Graduation Day, Part 2

My second favorite season 3 episode and one of my top 10 best Buffy episodes! I very much adore it. 

Graduation Day (both parts) in one of the most intense episodes of the Buffyverse. As it happened with Surprise/Innocence, Graduation Day, parts 1 and 2, are immensely successful at constructing a heavy, suspenseful, dangerous atmosphere to keep the audience hooked and expectant. 

Following the Buffy/Faith fight and Angel’s poisoned state, the stakes are high on GD pt. 2. Faith is in a coma, and Buffy has no slayer blood to feed to Angel except her own. Despite bite scenes being a common occurrence in vampire fiction, Joss Whedon only once resorted to that cliché and did it cleverly enough that it didn’t seem like a cliché at all. It was convenient that the poison’s antidote was slayer’s blood because it forced Buffy’s hand regarding Faith. However, it was also a clever way to put the final nail in the coffin for Buffy and Angel’s relationship. What better way to contrast their opposite natures then through Angel drinking Buffy’s blood? Whereas Buffy gives life, Angel takes it, Buffy dies and Angel lives. They can’t co-exist together, not as lovers, not as friends, and not as enemies. That bite scene is perhaps one of my favorite Bangel moments ever. I loved how it was directed. Buffy and Angel falling in slow motion on the floor was quite dramatic, and the music was also. The scene was definitely erotic (the final consummation of Buffy and Angel’s love, because Buffy giving Angel her blood was an act of love) but it was not completely romanticized, it had a very disturbing vibe to it. 

I also loved Wesley and Cordy’s epic kiss, the preparation for taking down the Mayor (not with humus) and every little moment that led up to the battle. Graduation Day part 2 has less filler scenes than the first part, one of the reasons why I find it superior. 

The epic battle was indeed epic. It was the perfect tribute to the high school years and to Joss’ original concept of Buffy being about surviving high school. The Sunnydale High students’ survive high school both literally and figuratively. They fight as one, united for the first time in acknowledgment of the supernatural. Buffy kills the Mayor quite creatively, but first he snacks on Snider (RIP). 

Buffy and Angel’s parting kills me a bit inside, and the final shot of out heroes, as well as Oz’s words, fills me with intense longing and nostalgia. This episode is one of the hardest for me to watch for this very reason. It’s the last of the best Buffy seasons and the end of an era.

Rating: 10/10. 

Tell me your 3 favorite BtVS/AtS episodes and I’ll give you my brutally honest opinion on them 

[lievbios]

Angel || Spike

Name: Spike

Age:

Relationship: Single [Verse depending]

Sexuality: Pansexual

Job:

Faceclaims: James Marsters

Spike (born William Pratt) was a famous and widely-feared vampire turned in 1880. He was well-known among both humans and demons for having faced and killed two Slayers during his unlife, and his history of torturing his victims with railroad spikes (which is rumored the moniker of “Spike” is derived from). His reputation for evil and bloodshed was second only to that of his grandsire Angelus.[1] In his human life, William was an unsuccessful and unappreciated romantic poet known as William the Bloody, for his “bloody awful” poetry, though after he became a vampire, that moniker was re-purposed to imply he was very violent. After being sired by Drusilla, he reinvented himself and terrorized Europe alongside Drusilla, Angel and Darla throughout the 19th and 20th centuries.

Spike first traveled to Sunnydale in 1997, accompanied by Drusilla. He quickly established himself as one of Buffy Summers’ most dangerous enemies, but was eventually forced into a series of uneasy alliances with her and her team, the Scooby Gang, after being captured by the Initiative and implanted with a cerebral microchip that rendered him unable to harm humans. Eventually, Spike realized that he had fallen in love with Buffy and officially joined the Scooby Gang, later being motivated by his love for her to successfully fight to regain his soul.

Spike sacrificed his life in battle against the First Evil, both defeating its army of Turok-Han and permanently closing the Hellmouth, as well as destroying the town of Sunnydale. However, bound to an ancient amulet, Spike became an incorporeal entity haunting the halls of the Los Angeles branch of Wolfram & Hart, then under the management of Team Angel. After becoming corporeal again, Spike struggled to find a place in the world, only to join Angel in his battle against the Senior Partners and become a Champion in his own right.

William Pratt[2] was born circa 1850 to 1853 in London, England to Anne Pratt and her unidentified husband. Anne often sang him an old folk song called “Early One Morning” throughout his infancy and childhood.[3] By 1880, William had grown into a sentimental, and ineffectual gentleman who lived alone with his ill mother. He was a poet, and enjoyed a certain level of economic comfort. Struggling to make a place for himself in London’s high society, he attended parties, and was nicknamed “William the Bloody” because his poetry was so “bloody awful.” This moniker, with far deadlier connotations, followed him into his future as a vampire.

While he moved within elite circles, William found little in common with his contemporaries, who often made him the butt of their jokes. Still, he showed a strong capacity for loyalty and was highly devoted to the idea of love, two traits that remained with him long after his siring. After his romantic overtures were rejected by the aristocrat Cecily Addams, a despondent William literally collided with Angelus, Darla and Drusilla, who had been terrorizing London. Drusilla followed him into an alley, where she found him in tears. She desired a playmate — a “knight” —, whom she could make hers forever. After a brief talk with the young poet, Drusilla seduced him and turned him into a vampire.[4]

After Drusilla sired William, she buried him and allowed him to be reborn as a vampire; he crawled from the depths of his own make-shift grave.[5] The pair partied for several days afterward, both draining human victims and drinking alcohol. They eventually decided to go back to William’s mother’s residence, where a live-in servant ignorantly invited them inside.

After staking his mother, William began a new existence with Drusilla. Euphoric with his new-found vampiric abilities, he abandoned the genteel hypocrisy and morals of Victorian life but still remained emotionally sensitive. He was eventually introduced to Drusilla’s sire, Angelus, who initially embraced him by expressing an interested in killing with another man. At first, the innocent William idolized Angelus, but was still quick to disagree when he insulted Drusilla in his presence. He preferred to think of her as childish rather than insane, and treated her with undying loyalty.

William was urged to give up his last drop of aristocracy, and became a rebel, adopting a working class North London accent and embracing impulsiveness and violence. He took on the nom de guerre “Spike”, inspired by a detractor from his human days who had exclaimed he would rather “have a railroad spike driven through his head“ than listen to William’s poetry. It was even indicated that he was involved in criminal activities, as Spike later remarked that he spent “the better part of a century” in delinquency. In the company of Drusilla, Darla and Angelus, Spike tyrannized Europe and Asia for the better part of two decades under the banner of the Whirlwind.

1890: Spike, Drusilla, Angelus, and Darla attended the ballet Giselle, in St Petersburg, Russia.[10]

October 1898: Spike & Dru were in Borsa, Romania with Angelus and Darla. Spike, however was oblivious that Angelus had regained his soul due to being cursed by gypsies. But he joined in the massacre of the gypsy clan Kalderash.[12]

June 18, 1900: in Beijing, China, Spike killed Slayer Xin Rong during the Boxer Rebellion. During the fight, in which she used a sword and Spike was unarmed, the Slayer gave him the scar on his left eyebrow, which he still had over a century later. Once again, Drusilla and Spike’s attraction to each other was heightened by chaos and bloodshed, as they immediately become intimate after Spike has murdered Xin Rong.[4]

1953: Back in Rome with Drusilla, Spike had apparently caused a Black Widower demon to be in debt to him. The demon had avoided repaying his debt however, and Spike catches up to him when he’s just had sex with then 18-year-old half-demon Pearl, and was about to eat her, while her brother Nash had been knocked out. In attempt to collect his debt, Spike became an accidental hero, decapitating the demon and inadvertently rescuing Pearl. She became fascinated by the vampire that she considered her hero.[14]

1969: Spike attended Woodstock, where he drank blood from a flower child, and spent the next several hours watching his hand move; a side effect from the psychoactive drugs in their bloodstream.[9]

July 13, 1977: He fought and killed Nikki Wood, a Slayer in New York City aboard a subway train, and stole her black leather duster, which he continued to wear even decades later.[4] At some point he met British punk rocker Billy Idol, who was inspired by Spike’s look and copied it.

Spike first appeared in Sunnydale accompanied by his longtime lover Drusilla, who had recently been wounded by an angry mob in Prague. He was a devoted caretaker to Drusilla in her weakened condition, and initially hoped the Hellmouth’s powerful energy would help to restore her strength. The presence of a Slayer made the town an even more attractive retreat to Spike. He tracked Buffy Summers down at the Bronze and observed her from afar. His interest in her immediately seemed more perverse than homicidal.

Eventually, Spike discovered that Drusilla could only be healed by the blood of her sire; he was more than happy to kill Angel to restore her, and kidnapped him with the help of Willy the Snitch. He subsequently hired the Order of Taraka to assassinate Buffy, though he ultimately cancelled the bounty when she defeated the three assassins who had been sent.[17] With the help of Kendra Young, a second Slayer activated when Buffy drowned the previous year, Buffy tracked down Spike and Drusilla to the church where the were going to perform the ritual to heal Drusilla. The ensuing fight ended when Spike was crushed under a collapsing pipe organ; he was left paralyzed from the waist down for several months. Though Angel was saved, Spike’s ritual succeeded, and Drusilla was restored to perfect health.[18]

It was later revealed that Spike and Drusilla traveled to Brazil, where she remained horrified by his alliance with the Slayer. Drusilla’s abilities caused her to sense that Spike would come to develop romantic feelings for Buffy; she rejected him and cheated on him with a Chaos Demon,[4] which sent the lovelorn Spike into a long drunken depression.

He returned to Sunnydale, where he kidnapped Willow Rosenberg and Xander Harris and attempted to force Willow to cast a love spell on Drusilla. While in town he visited Buffy’s mother, Joyce Summers, who listened sympathetically to his heartache, and recruited Buffy and Angel to help him gather ingredients for the spell. However, Mayor Wilkins, knowing that Spike’s mere presence in Sunnydale posed a threat to his plans, quickly organized a “welcoming committee” consisting of Spike’s own former minions to deal with him. After fighting them off, Spike cheerfully abandoned the idea of enchanting Drusilla, resolving instead to win her back by torturing her until she loved him again and told the Slayer where to find her two missing friends. He also told Buffy and Angel that no matter what happened, they would never be friends because of their eternal love for one another. Buffy later remarked to Angel “I can fool Giles, and I can fool my friends, but I can’t fool myself — or Spike, for some reason.” This final quote foreshadowed the pivotal role Spike would someday come to play in Buffy’s group.[20]

Spike’s existence took a pivotal turn when he was captured by the the Initiative, a secret demon-fighting government organization, the members of which implanted him with a cerebral microchip that rendered him unable to willingly harm or attempt to harm humans without experiencing crippling pain.[23] This chip became Spike’s surrogate soul, as it forced him to consider moral consequences of harming others, with the literal punishment of physical pain looming over his head if he ever went against it. Unable to hunt for blood, and still pursued by the Initiative, he reluctantly made the decision to turn to the Scooby Gang for help.[24]

Spike became ecstatic when Xander warned him of an upcoming apocalypse because he wanted the world to end. He nonetheless managed to cheer himself up by viciously tearing down Willow and Xander emotionally, remarking that they were both useless to Buffy, who as a Slayer, would be better off if she didn’t have to constantly watch out for both of them. Willow and Xander were forced to think of his words despite their mutual denial.[28]

Spike came to discover that the chip did not prevent him from hurting demons, much to his joy, allowing him to be more independent of the Scoobies and move out to a crypt.[29] He subsequently became a reluctant ally of the Gang and provided them with assistance in exchange for cash or brawls. At this point, Spike was still interested in his own selfish well-being, and reminded the Scoobies of this constantly with one of his many catchphrases: “I’m Evil!” Upon learning that the unstable Slayer Faith was on the loose, he proclaimed that he would find her and tell her the Scoobies’ exact whereabouts, and gleefully watch while she tore them apart.[30]

When Adam discovered that Spike had failed to split up the Scoobies, he made an attempt to kill him, but Spike managed to escape. After Buffy slew Adam, Spike saved Willow, Giles and Xander from an attacking demon in hope that they wouldn’t kill him for his actions; indeed, they agreed to spare him out of fatigue and gratitude. Spike then helped the Scoobies and Riley Finn battle the rampaging demon hordes within the Initiative’s complex, rescuing most of the soldiers. The Initiative was then shut down by the U.S. government, as it had proved an unsuccessful operation.[31]

Following the fall of the Initiative, Spike began offering more and more assistance to Buffy and the Scoobies. He told Riley about his old rivalry with Dracula,[21] and later punched Tara to prove that her father’s claims about her being a demon were untrue, as his chip caused him pain when he struck her, thus confirming that she was purely human.[21]

His story revealed his fixation with Slayers to Buffy, who had him replay his battles with the two Slayers in great detail, fights he related to “dances.” Buffy was disgusted by his desire to “dance” with her, and pushed him to the ground. Spike was visibly hurt when she told him that he was beneath her, as this was first said to him when he was turned down by Cecily Addams as a human. Equipped with a shotgun, he went to her house with the goal of killing her, but upon finding her on her back porch in tears about her mother’s illness, cast aside his feelings of anger and humiliation and comforted her for the first time.[21]

Buffy’s trust in Spike grew immensely from there; a prime example being when she left Dawn with him in his crypt after Glory “brain-sucked” Tara. While there, Dawn tearfully blamed herself for Glory’s attacks on her friends (including Spike’s torture at Glory’s hands) and believed herself a lightning rod for pain. Spike consoled her as best he could, telling her that as a vampire, he knew a thing or two about evil, and she wasn’t it. When Buffy later joined them, believing that she had managed to talk Willow down from taking vengeance on Glory, Spike quickly pointed out that Willow, being a very powerful and angry witch, would not be so easily reasoned with regarding someone she loved being hurt, causing Buffy to immediately rush to her rescue.[37]

Spike remained unaware of the Scoobies’ plan to resurrect Buffy until after the event; he returned to the Summers’ residence in search of Dawn, only to discover Buffy alive-and-well 148 days after her death.[5] He, like a few of the others, considered the possible drawbacks of such an extreme act, but later expressed that, had the spell gone wrong, he wouldn’t have let the others destroy the result if it had retained even the slightest part of the real Buffy. Unable to confide in her friends about being torn from Heaven due to guilt, Buffy began to go to Spike for comfort, who willingly accepted both the best and worst of her emotions.

With the returning of Spike’s soul came a conscience filled with guilt, both for the sins he had committed throughout his life and his more recent attack on Buffy. He couldn’t bring himself to see her for some time, and took shelter in the basement of the newly constructed Sunnydale High School, where he presumably lived on rats. There, he was tormented by both the the First Evil and his soul, and appeared to be losing his mind; he forced Buffy to leave when she discovered him, and sadly showed her that he had tried to cut out his own heart in self-contempt.

Buffy went to him and pleaded that he accompany her to the surface, telling him that he had done more than enough, but Spike remained true to his desire to die for “love, honor and all the right reasons”. He told her that he could feel his soul within him, and Buffy, saddened but accepting of his resolve, locked fingers with him in order to feel it too. She told him that she loved him, moving Spike. He, however, did not believe her and said “No you don’t, but thanks for saying it.” He forced Buffy to leave his side then, and was slowly incinerated by the sunlight. As he burned and crumbled to dust, Spike reveled in the destruction before him, glad to be able to see the fight to its end. He died closing the Hellmouth and saving the world.[53]

Spike appeared in Los Angeles 19 days after his apparent death in Sunnydale. The amulet he’d worn during the battle against the First had mysteriously been mailed to Wolfram & Hart in a parcel. When Angel opened the package, the amulet fell out and Spike materialized from a cloud of dust. Confused and afraid, he immediately attempted to attack Angel, but found that he could no longer touch anything, and had become incorporeal. At first, he complained about being brought back, stating dramatically: “Can’t a man die in peace without some high almighty deciding it’s not his time?”[54] He intended to leave Los Angeles and travel to Europe to reunite with Buffy, who was gathering Slayers there, but discovered that he was mystically bound to the city and was unable to leave its limits. He opted to stay at Wolfram & Hart in order to find a way to regain his body, and to haunt Angel, whom he still hated with fervency.

Just as Spike began to grow accustomed to his ghostly nature, a mysterious package arrived for him in the mail; upon opening it, a flash of light restored his body. Chaos concurrently erupted at Wolfram & Hart. Eve soon arrived with an addition to the Shanshu Prophecy that stated that the existence of two corporeal ensouled vampires would complicate the outcome of the prophecy, and perhaps even destroy the fabric of reality. She told Angel and Spike that an extended translation of the text revealed that, in order to restore balance, the two must compete to drink from the Cup of Perpetual Torment. The winner would be bestowed with great responsibilities and pain before ultimately having his past washed clean, allowing him to live as a human again.

Angel’s old enemy Lindsey McDonald subsequently chose to take advantage of Spike’s desire to do good by pretending to be the late half-demon Doyle and persuading him that he is destined, like Angel before him, to “help the helpless.” Alienated by Angel’s corporate, bureaucratic approach to fighting evil, Spike willingly stepped into his shoes as a hero for the people. While in business, he took on Dana, a psychotic Slayer who had escaped from a mental institution. As a Slayer, Dana was burdened by dreams and memories that were not her own, and mistakenly believed Spike to have killed her family (she was confusing other Slayers’ memories with her own). She captured and drugged Spike, and cut off his hands. The experience caused Spike to more deeply examine the nature of the evil within him; he later told Angel about Dana’s misconception that he had murdered her family, and said: “And I’m supposed to do, what, complain, ’cause hers wasn’t one of the hundreds of families I did kill?” Spike expressed to Angel that there was little hope for Dana, who had become a monster like them, but Angel responded that she was an innocent victim. Spike then pointed out that he and Angel were innocent victims too, “once upon a time.” Spike’s hands were reattached at Wolfram & Hart, after which he was instructed to play video games for physical therapy, including Donkey Kong and Crash Bandicoot.

After the Fall of Los Angeles into a hell dimension, Spike and Illyria were separated from Angel and began watching over a group of human and demon survivors. One such civilian, Jeremy Johns — despite Spike’s resistance — became Spike’s right hand man and friend. In hell Illyria soon began randomly changing back into her Fred form which left her confused and vulnerable, and Spike was forced to urge her to remain as Illyria in order to protect her. During this time he briefly considered the prospect that he had developed feelings for Fred.

While wandering the city, Spike encountered a dragon, and considered killing it until it telepathically told him that he should mount it. The dragon took Spike to the ruins of Wolfram & Hart, where he found a figure suspended inside a field of energy, writing in pain. Meanwhile, in Spike’s absence, the civilians were kidnapped by a group of strange demon warrior women. After leaving the law firm, Spike encountered one of the women, and commandeered her truck in order to rescue the hostages. He tried to run down the leader of the group, who threw Illyria (who had transformed into Fred once more) into the front of the truck; she reverted to Illyria on impact.

Spike eventually adjusted to Los Angeles’ new status as a literal hell on Earth.[57] He and Illyria both served together as demon Lords of Beverly hills, during which time it appeared as though both of them had returned to their evil roots. It was eventually revealed that their position was a facade; Spike and Illyria were secretly rescuing humans and benevolent demons and evacuating them into the care of Connor, Nina Ash, Kate Lockley and Gwen Raiden. Spike was given the opportunity to return to the side of evil again, but as always he remained loyal to the good fight, and helped Angel to bring down the other Lords’ champions when he challenged them for control of LA. Spike rallied with the rest of the gang against the machinations of Charles Gunn, who had unfortunately become a self-hating and deluded soulless vampire, and was unknowingly working under visions from the Senior Partners. He also struggled to control Illyria’s increasingly unstable powers in the hell dimension; she had continued to periodically revert to Fred’s form and gentle personality, leaving Spike with the duty of protecting her.

Spike relocated to Las Vegas with his associates, the telepathic fish Betta George and pyrokinetic Beck, where he attempted to create “Team Spike”. While there, Spike learned about Wolfram & Hart’s presence in the city, but his attempts to stop them were hampered by a confrontation with the now resurrected Jeremy Johns, who had been possessed by the liaison to the Senior Partners in Las Vegas, and a man called John. John had become romantically involved with Spike’s sire and ex-lover Drusilla, and was convinced that Spike had “stolen” his soul. He was thrown from a window, and rescued by Groosalug and his dragon, subsequently contacting Willow for additional assistance (Reasoning that his enemies would be expecting him to contact one of Angel’s team). Much to Spike’s surprise Willow was thrilled to see him and proud of his personal growth.

Wanting to come to terms with himself, Spike left San Francisco and the Slayer residing there behind and underwent an interval of highly uncharacteristic brooding. He drowned his sorrows in alcohol, and sat alone in the dark for prolonged periods of time. He even travelled to the literal “dark side” of the moon on his ship. His bugs began to worry that in such a state, he was unfit to be their master, and repeatedly tried to cheer him up. They decided that he had been spending too much time in the dark, and opted to bring him into the solarium he had built to be Buffy’s “light place”, where they had set up an artificial beach inspired by the pictures from a magazine. They also replaced the solarium skylights with necro-tempered glass that blocked the rays dangerous to vampires, allowing Spike to sit in the sunlight without being harmed.

Spike, welcoming a distraction from his constant thoughts about Buffy, agreed to meet Angel and arrived at Alasdair Coames’ place in London to discuss a strategy to defeat Eyghon the Sleepwalker and recover the body of Rupert Giles that the demon had possessed. Spike was vital to the operation because as a vampire he would be less likely to fall under the control of Eyghon. After some petty bickering with Angel, and a brief attempt to catch-up with Faith, the group which includes several London slayers are attacked by Eyghon and his zombies. Angel and Spike worked together in an attempt to capture and defeat the demon. They came very close to apprehending him, but Eyghon now more powerful in his true form overcame the demon within Spike and managed to possess him. While Eyghon failed to corrupt Angel because of the three spirits inside of him (Giles, Angelus and himself), Giles briefly dominated and managed to kill Eyghon, releasing his control over the zombies. Having regained his composure, Spike, along with Faith, noticed that Angel had become completely erratic with multiple beings with him. With the final piece of Giles’s soul, Spike and Faith were forced to come up with a new plan, considering Angel was the only person who had any clue how to restore Giles’ body.[72]

Spike can be seen as something of a paradox amongst vampires; pre-soul he exhibits many characteristics that separate him from his soulless brethren, and he very often challenges his kinds’ supposed emotional and physical limitations. He embraces certain elements of humanity, most notably love, and is exceptionally loyal. Both love and loyalty would be considered too “human” to other vampires, and would therefore be offensive. His humanity and ability to love are detected and ridiculed by the Judge when they resurrect the demon to battle Buffy. While Spike could be seen as a largely selfish individual, he has a capacity for extreme acts of selflessness and loyalty to people he truly loved and cared for even while soulless. With or without one, he displays a strong sense of honor and devotion: he doted on Drusilla for over a century, kept his promise briefly to Buffy to leave Sunnydale with Drusilla after helping her to defeat Angelus[20] (which he later broke),[21] left anonymous flowers to show his respect for Joyce Summers after her death,[81] endured intense torture at the hands of Glorificus in order to protect Dawn for Buffy’s sake,[82] continued to aid the Scooby Gang even after Buffy’s death to honor her memory, assisted Willow and Tara to raise Dawn due to his promise to Buffy,[83] chose to remain in Los Angeles with Angel’s crew after Fred Burkle’s death because he knew she would have wanted him to,[84] agreed to accompany Buffy to the abortion clinic when she believed herself pregnant,[65] and refused to leave Dawn’s side when she began to fade due to the end of magic despite Buffy venturing to the Deeper Well.[75]

Although Spike’s love for mindless destruction might suggest otherwise, he is highly intelligent and educated. He has displayed excellent skills of insight and analysis, particularly in regards to relationships, and makes regular references to literary works. He’s also demonstrated an impressive knowledge of magic rituals and items. He was easily able to discern romantic undertones in Willow’s “friendship” with Tara before her other companions, and he used his deep understanding of Riley Finn’s anxieties about Buffy to undermine him.[94] Ironically, he was often delusional about his own relationship with Drusilla, and refused to acknowledge her repeated acts of infidelity.

Spike has a punk look which strongly resembles that of English rock musician Billy Idol. His hair is platinum blonde and combed back, although previously it was a natural medium brown (unstyled) as well as dyed black in the 40s. Spike received a scar on his eyebrow from the sword of the Slayer he killed in 1900. Angel once sarcastically asked him “What color is your hair? Radioactive?”, and he has been called “Captain Peroxide” by both Xander and Angel. His nails are often painted black.

Spike usually wears long black leather coats. The first coat belonged to a Nazi officer he killed and briefly wore it. His signature leather duster was the one he took as a trophy from Nikki Wood, the second Slayer he killed. He wore the Slayer’s black duster for over twenty-five years. When the coat was destroyed by a bomb planted by the Immortal in Italy, Spike heartbrokenly declared it to be irreplaceable. However, the Italy branch of Wolfram & Hart quickly supplied him with a whole wardrobe of new, nearly identical ones which he happily began wearing.

Powers

Enhanced vampire abilities: Spike had the standard powers and vulnerabilities of a vampire; he was immortal, regenerated damage, possessed superhuman physical attributes, and had heightened senses, able to track people by scent alone. He was also vulnerable to holy items and sunlight, could be killed by decapitation and a stake to the heart, needed to regularly ingest mammal blood to maintain his vitality, and could not enter the residence of a living human without being invited by a resident. Due to his advanced age, however, he was considerably more powerful than an average vampire; he could flip over a car when angered [111], punch through an opponent’s torso [112], drain and hide the bodies of two fully grown men in a few seconds without alerting the girl they were walking with, block an oncoming blade from hitting his back by grabbing his foe and swinging her 90 degrees to the path of the blade before it could finish traveling[113], and survive a bomb explosion[114] Also, he was more resistant to sunlight and holy items than most vampires, once using a large cross as a bludgeoning weapon against Angel and withstanding the pain despite it burning his hands[115].

Advanced combat: Spike was famous for having killed two Slayers. Buffy even once went as far as referring to him as the strongest fighter the Scoobies have during their fight against the First. Spike was a highly skilled and versatile fighter in both armed and unarmed combat. For example, he was able to briefly overcome Illyria during a testing of her abilities when she is at the height of her powers; however he had been training with her for months and had adapted to her abilities so others could have achieved this as well if given the time Spike had. Illyria criticizes his (and others’) ability to adapt, calling it “compromise.”

Much like Angel, Spike was proficient in various forms of martial arts, and his typical fighting style blends Judo, Karate, Kung-Fu, and others. It’s also likely he would have knowledge of Taekwondo and Brazilian jujitsu, being able to discern them both as the fighting styles that Illyria had proficiency in, as well as Street-fighting and Boxing.

Intelligence: Spike often displayed insight and skills in perception and observation, especially with regard to relationships and personalities, so long as the relationship in question doesn’t concern him personally. This ability allows him to wield powerful psychological weapons as easily and effectively as physical ones. For example, when he wants to create disharmony among the Scoobies, Spike divides-and-conquers by exploiting tensions that exist under the surface to turn Buffy and her friends against each other.[116] He explains to Buffy that he was able to defeat two Slayers because he sensed and exploited their secret desires to be free of their burden. Spike’s skills of analysis allowed him to be the first to see through Tara’s abusive and controlling family, forced Buffy and Angel to admit that they were more than “just friends,” and identify when and why some relationships, such as that between Buffy and Riley, are not meant to last, feeding Riley’s insecurities in an effort to sabotage his relationship with Buffy so that Spike can pursue her. His analytical skills also help him in battle from time to time; for example, he identified Illyria’s fighting style as a Tae Kwon Do/Brazilian Ninjitsu hybrid.[117]

Although capable of developing sound battle strategies, Spike (particularly in the days before receiving his chip and being ensouled) often loses patience with anything more complicated than outright attack:

He is also impatient to fight the Slayer upon his initial arrival in Sunnydale; the attack is supposed to coincide with the Night of Saint Vigeous, but he “couldn’t wait” to go after the Slayer and attacks the night before, which results in the deaths of many vampires of the Order of Aurelius. However, Spike did exercise patience when he was confined to a wheelchair after a brutal battle with the Scoobies left him paraplegic for several months. Feigning weakness, he endured tortuous weeks watching Angelus sexually pursue Drusilla as he waited for the right time to strike against his rival.

Much like Angel, Spike, presumably due to his long lifetime, often displays in-depth knowledge of different demon species and other supernatural beings, being aware of Rack and surprised at Willow’s trips to his place[118] and also knowing that Wolfram & Hart represents “the worst evil in the universe.”[1] Spike has also proven to be far more intelligent than others give him credit for; for example, he quickly realizes that Angel and Twilight are one and the same.

Spike’s “vampire constitution” provides him with an extremely high tolerance for alcohol (which he regularly consumes in copious quantities).

Technical skills:Spike has shown to be significantly more competent and comfortable with modern technology than Angel; his knowledge allowed him to turn an old crypt in a Sunnydale cemetery into a comfortable home with electricity and cable television.

Criminal and motorist skills: Due to his experience in criminal activities, he is skilled at picking locks, hotwiring cars, and pick-pocketing. He is also capable of easily operating various vehicles, such as various cars, a Harley Davidson motorcycle,[5][45][119] and a Winnebago.[38]

He has also been shown using video game systems and a computer, treating injuries, and playing poker and pool.

Multilingualism: Spike is also seen speaking Latin, Luganda (a language of Uganda, where he meets the demon shaman), and the language of Fyarl Demons.

Former Powers

When Spike was transformed into a ghost-like intangible state following the destruction of Sunnydale and the Hellmouth and his subsequent materialization at Wolfram & Hart, he was capable of walking through solid objects. He was initially unable to make contact with objects around him until he learned how to focus his abilities through desire, allowing him to make brief contact with people and things if he concentrated enough. However, this ability was relatively useless in a fight, as he was unable to pick up a wooden bar to hit the demon Tezcatcatl,[120] and required a few moments to properly punch a cyborg that was strangling Gunn.[121]

VERSES

[valkyrieoc]

Lucian vs Kora

Lucian had lived a long life, he had seen a great many things. He had fought and won many battles, he had even defeated the Devil himself. But for the first time, today, all versions of the heavens and hells have sent their champions, ones that have been bred and trained since birth with one goal in mind.

His destruction.

He stood on top of a hill, as all great battles he has seen seem to begin. Before him, in the valley below, stood the legion of devils and demons sent to finish him off. In the sky above flew the angel army, full with numerous archangels from all different gates of heaven.

He was strong, very strong. It was why he was hunted so, for fear if he ever went on a rampage he would annihilate all of the divine realms, though he had no inclination. But today…today was different. And he felt that. Today would be his last day, the two army’s before him stood full of the nastiest beasts he had ever come across, he could feel their combined strength, far surpassing his own for the first time. He would go down fighting!

In his Lycan form, Lucian stood roughly nine feet tall, one eye an icy blue, the other a pulsating garnet in color. In his right hand he held a black katana, crafted as it were from his own shadow, which was no where to be seen in the light of day so long as the sword was drawn. A low growl started in his chest as the armies advanced upon him. He had chosen this location for it was far from civilization, a hard feat in today’s times, and for its strategic advantage.

In eye sight, he had both armies, and that meant they could not flank him easily. As they approached, he readied himself, dark tendrils of the beast within him seeming to almost evaporate away from his skin. He crouched low to the ground and…he jumped.

As he lands, he lands directly in the center of the demon horde, his blade and claws cleaving through the masses, rending them limb from limb. He would NOT go down easy! All the forces of heaven and hell close in on him as he fights… —- Kora glared up at the multitude above her. They loved making her feel inferior and small despite her power. Only she had the power of judgement between life and the after life. Despite their desire the gods were unable to use that power. Only give it. And as much as they attempted to bend her abilities to their will they had never broken her. Bribery, torture, blackmail, she had seen it all. But what she held was a power that she would not relinquish.

The gods stared down at Kora. They had a task for her and she could sense the urgency. Finally one of the gods, Zeus, spoke, “There is an enemy of the realms that we need you to collect.”

Kora looked at Zeus and then surveyed the faces of the other celestial beings. They were all grim, even the tricksters such as Loki and Hermes. Ra continued, “This monster has grown more and more powerful and needs to be stopped before he sets his eyes on our dimension.”

Kora shrugged, “I will do my job and nothing more. Give me the assignment and I will judge him the same as any being before or after him.” Mercury came down to her and handed her a sealed envelope. Without a word Kora took it. Dark, feathered wings materialized on her back as she leapt into the air. She flew out of the council room and into the open air. Arriving at the road between worlds, she nodded at Heimdall who opened the door to Earth. As she entered the portal she took a deep breath and didn’t release it until she had finally arrived home. Earth, once it had been the only home she had ever known, now she traveled between dimensions as a Valkyrie for the gods.

She landed on top of a small hill overlooking a lazy little town. Her wings folded and vanished while a light breeze ruffled her white grey hair. Her average height seemed taller as she stood surveying the town beneath her with her piercing grey eyes. The only color about her was the bright blue pendant that hung around her pale neck.

Kora opened the envelope and pulled out a charcoal sketch of what she could only guess was some kind of lycan or werewolf with shadows surrounding it. On the back of the parchment was her assignment. Find him, collect his soul, send him to eternal torture. — Bodies flew left and right as his body seemed to flow naturally through the throngs of enemies. Most creatures he simply cleaves in half, a few more put up a good fight and cause him to send out ice shards to pierce chests, leaving empty holes where a heart should be. Realizing his sword was too long for the close combat he was engaged it, Lucian dismisses it and allows his shadow to reform, but only for a brief moment.

As soon as the shadow reforms, it quickly is sucked into his body, his dark fur turning blacker than the night of a new moon. The shadow that he seemed to have absorbed while he fought now seeps off of him, lending him strength as he bursts through the next line and into the fray once again. In his wake lay a steady stream of dead bodies, but for his efforts he was also cut and scratched, deep wounds rending his body. This, however, did little to slow him down, his body still a veritable blur of motion.

After hours of fighting, his body healing as he goes, each new wound staying for milliseconds longer than the last until his ability to heal is almost completely compromised. At this point, he has single handedly decimated almost the entirety of the overwhelming force that started against him, as his form is that of a massive wolf. His shoulders stand at nine feet tall and his length longer still, and he was eating his attackers.

However, despite the near complete annihilation of his foes, the battle took its toll. At this point, the only ones that remain are the handful of archdevils and archangels that lead the forces. Ten in total, they all stare him down as he slowly reverts to his Lycan form, then his human one. His sword reappears as he unsteadily props himself up on it, the blood less clearly taking its toll upon his massive frame.

As one, all remaining enemies attack, but Lucian was ready. As they all shot forward, his eyes change to their icy blue. The angels all recognize it and manage to stop, but every archdevil charges directly towards him unfazed…until the massive ice spikes shot from the ground, instantly killing them.

He was not one to go quietly.

Seeing the fate of their counterparts, the archangels instead devise a plan and transmit it to each other. They all slowly surround him as his eyes return to red, his breath a weak pant. They all knew this would be his last attack.

Once more, all remaining foes close in, albeit much slower than before, and Lucian slowly extends his shadow out along the ground towards their own. After they all connected, the darkness spread until the entire ground was a massive black circle. As the angels reached within striking distance, his trap is sprung.

This was a last ditch effort, for he was not safe from it. The shadows left their place in the earth and encompassed all of them, the walls, now tangible, closing in. Kneeling down, Lucian’s eyes go blue for what he assumes to be the final time. His arms cross tightly across his chest as his entire body tenses…

He releases. His back arching out, his head thrown back, and his arms thrown open, all the blood that remained in his body flies as magically enhanced bullets in the shape of small spears from himself and riddles all of the angels with holes.

As he collapses on the ground, the darkness is lifted. Surrounding him for miles and miles are hordes, legions, and more, of all manner of creature, both heavenly and hell based. The battle was hard fought and he won, but it would cost him his life…

As he lay on the ground unmoving, his eyes stare blankly into the sky, he felt this was a good way to go as consciousness slowly slips away. — Unfurling her wings Kora leapt into the sky and took off towards the final resting place of the lycan. As she approached she could see the hordes of creatures that had gathered to defeat this being. As she watched she saw the lycan decimate the armies sent against him. Kora was fascinated. This monster was stronger than anything she had come across in her lifetime. She wasn’t even sure if the gods could stop him.

Kora hovered in the air and observed the battle from her vantage point. Slowly the lycan worked his way through the enemies. She saw ice and shadow molded to his will as he fought endlessly.

Finally she saw only the most powerful beings were left against this lone warrior. As she watched she saw how tired he was and that this was his time. The gods would get their prize. As the last of the enemies fell she slowly descended towards the lycan and finally became visible to him as he drifted towards his final moments.

As a being that was to bring death she was often told that the sight of her approaching was one that brought fear to many of the strongest warriors. Kora wondered if this creature knew fear. He had fought the gods most powerful beings without hesitation. She had not seen fear in him. Only strength.

Kora landed next to the lycan and knelt next to him. She gingerly touched his wounds trying to bring what little comfort she could. She hated this part, having to send a soul to eternal torment and agony. Reaching within her self she called upon the power given to her. Closing her eyes she brought her power forward. Regardless of the gods assignment she wanted to see this man’s soul and what kind of monster he truly was. Slowly she opened her eyes, now a solid white, and looked into the soul of this creature that had fought the gods and won, though it cost him his life. Kora expected to find a soul blackened by malice and anger but instead found a soul that had been tormented and tortured for decades. A soul burdened by immense power and the fear of those around him.

Kora blinked as her eyes returned to normal and she looked once again at the creature laying beneath her hand. She saw a man, beaten and bloody, wrongly targeted by the most powerful beings in the universe. The gods were insufferable and Kora relished the thought of taking away their greatest desire. This man in eternal torment. But did she dare? Was this man worth ignoring a direct request from the gods?

Kora stood and surveyed the battlefield. Bodies were strewn for miles. She sighed, this would have to be dealt with. Mortals should not find a scene such as this. The cleaners would be there soon and she had a decision to make. She stared down at the lycan and twisted the bright blue pendant at her throat. — As Lucian lay dying on the blood soaked earth, an image of a beautiful woman descends from the sky above, landing delicately directly next to him. Even in his current state, the magic within him trying desperately to keep him clinging to life, he can recognize her for what she is.

It was at this time, Lucian realized it was time. Time for the torment to end, time to rejoin Sonja in…no. There would be no ending as happy as that for one such as himself. He would be sent to a dark corner of one of the hells and be tortured for all eternity.

He supposes this is still better than carrying on, and resigns himself to his fate. The light in his eyes grows weak, the pulses they send out matching his slow beating heart. They trace along her face, the fire in his eyes never fading even though he had resigned to his new fate.

He was a creature of great power, and he would never show them any weakness. He was certain the valkyrie had been hand selected to take his soul, so he assumed she had simply chosen to skip the weighing of his deeds. He spots the pendant, the blue Fire that seemed to be housed within clearly visible to him. He waits for his fate. — Torn, Kora saw the resignation in the being below her. This monster, no, this man did not deserve this fate. Not once had he moved against the gods in a way that warranted this drastic attack. And despite its success it had left devastation in its wake. If the lycan had not chosen to bring the fight here there might have been many casualties.

A soft ripple of thunder and a flash of lightning brought her out of her thoughts. The gods were impatient. She looked to the sky, “What?” She yelled into the open air, “Am I not moving fast enough for you? Then why don’t you come down and do it yourself you pompous dicks. Oh right, you can’t, you chose me to do it for you and now you’ve got to deal with my judgements.” Kora took a deep breath and looked down at the dying man. “This man is not guilty of the allegations you have set against him. Not only does he not deserve eternal torment but he should never have been sentenced to death as you have done.”

Another flash of lightning lit the sky as the wind picked up and began to whip around her. For a brief moment Kora’s grey eyes flashed with blue fire. “You have no choice but to accept my judgement!” She shouted into the wind as she spread her wings.

A bolt of lightning leapt towards the lycan but before it could reach him Kora blocked it with a staff of blue flame that had appeared in her hands. The pendant around her neck was now a dull grey as the blue flame had become the weapon she now easily gripped in her hands.

“Oh lay off it. You know you can’t go against the will of a Valkyrie.” She yelled into the sky. The blue flame slid back into her pendant as she knelt. “Let’s get you out of here,” she said as she gently picked up the lycan. Spreading her dark wings she fought against the wind that continued to get stronger as she took off into the air carrying the lycan. — After a short time she alighted next to a temple that was secluded on a mountainside. Carefully she carried the man into the temple. The open air temple was plain and unadorned except for a small altar. Tables and cots lined the walls and the open windows were covered with plain cloths draped across them. The altar opposite the door had gold, wood and stone figures set upon it of winged women warriors. There were also offerings set in front of the altar and incense burning in beautiful burners atop the altar.

Kora placed the lycan onto one of the cots and stood over him. “Svá hjalpi þér hollar véttir, Frigg ok Freyja ok fleiri goð, sem þú feldir mér fár af höndum.” She murmured the words of strength hoping that the lycan would receive the words and benefit from their power. — He hears her words, and if he had any sort of strength left, he may have stared at her incredulously. However, he had none, so he simply watched her with his garnet colored orbs until the wind picked up more fiercely. He can feel the electricity in the air, and watches as her pendant that he felt power emanating from earlier, shoot out a blue flame that turns into a staff of sorts. Seemingly without effort, the Valkyrie before him blocks the finishing blow from the gods.

It had been long millennia since he found another being able to rival the gods, but listening to her words, he realizes she does still work for them. She simply does so defiantly. Regardless of where her loyalties lie, he realizes she was attempting to help him. His healing factor was keeping his brain alive, but there was little else he could do. If he attempted to heal the wounds he had sustained, the sheer pain itself would cause him brain death. Due to this, as she lifts him, he is nothing but 287 lbs of dead weight in her arms. Regardless of that fact, however, she seems to have no trouble flying with him, let alone carrying him in the first place. As she embarks, the wind force only seems to pick up, although the woman seems unfazed by the turn. In the distance, he spots a temple of sorts.

As they fly, he realizes the temple is their destination, and he inwardly raises an eyebrow, though he still lacks the strength to truly do so. Once they arrive, he is placed upon a cot, and the Valkyrie stands over him speaking words of power. With little warning, the words hit him with the force of a nuke as he lay there, a sudden and ragged breath filling his lungs.

As his breath returns, so too does the color in his face and his ability to move, albeit still limited. His eyes track her as his head lulls slightly towards the direction she was to him. He attempts to speak, but finds his body still rebooting, and therefore cannot. Instead he pulls out an ability he hadn’t used in a very long time, one that had very limited use.

He is able to project one single word into her mind, though it takes him a moment to decide which one. As he lay returning from his visit to death’s door, one question floats around in his mind more than any other. One question that he simply cannot find a logical answer to. One word, sent directly to her head.

“Why?” — Kora blinked. She looked down at the lycan, the word echoing in her mind. Life certainly was full of surprises. Apparently he had a form of telepathy. “My task is judgement of the dying, not following the will of some pompous dickholes that call themselves gods. Your only sin was being powerful enough to scare the gods. They need someone like you around to take them down a peg or two.”

A priestess entered the temple and saw Kora and the lycan. “Kora, you’re back, and brought a lost puppy.” The priestess smiled.

Kora turned, “Well hello there gorgeous.” She greeted the fiery haired priestess with a grin. The priestess walked over and kissed the Valkyrie before looking down at the lycan.

“What’s the story with this one love?”

Kora shrugged and wrapped an arm around the priestess’ waist. “Oh you know, the gods felt threatened and tried to kill him and I decided to screw the gods and save his life. No need to thank me, I’m here all week.” The priestess sighed and rolled her eyes.

“Really Kora, one day you’ll go too far. You’re not immortal. I’ll go get some water so we can clean him up a bit. He looks like hell.” The priestess turned and walked out to the courtyard in front of the temple where a small well stood.

Kora watched her go then turned back to the lycan. His strength seemed to be returning, though it would take a while for him to return to full strength with the beating he had taken. — As his strength returns, Lucian can’t help a pained laugh that sounds more like gurgled blood than a true laugh. A weak smiles shines through at her response to his question as his eyes meet hers once more. He slowly closes his eyes to rest, so that he could concentrate on healing himself is small bursts.

His healing power was great, but came with great drawbacks, so his help would be little so he needed to rely mostly on whatever power she washed over him. Inside, he hated this. He was always on his own, he hated his need to rely on another, his very life hanging in the balance.

His thoughts are halted by the new voice, his eyes slowly opening to greet the newcomer. He sees another beautiful woman, he assumed another Valkyrie, make her way into the temple. His eyebrow twitches up slightly at the sight of the kiss, but he does not dwell long on this.

As his savior wraps her arm about the new woman’s waist, he assumes they are together, though this matters little to him at this time. Hearing her version of his fight causes a small chuckle to escape his lips, this time his laugh sounding like a true one.

After the second woman leaves, his eyes once again meet the eyes of the one he now knew to be Kora. He silently watches her for a minute before finally opening his lips. Two words slip out between his dried and cracked lips. “Thank you.” His voice was hoarse, but the fire in his eyes was burning as strong as ever.

At this time, most wounds were half sealed, and his complexion was returning. His blood red colored eyes flowed brightly, pulsating in time to his strengthening heartbeat as he recovers. — Kora watched the lycan struggle to express his thanks. She shrugged. Saving him hadn’t been out of any great love or sympathy. Only judgement that his crimes did not warrant the terrible death he was receiving or the torture and agony that awaited him in the after life.

“Just don’t let it happen again,” she smirked as she looked down at the lycan. “I don’t know if I can save you from the gods a second time.”

The priestess returned carrying a jug of water which she placed by the cot and filled a cup from it. She placed the cup of water on the small table next to the lycan. “Shall I strengthen the security then love?” The priestess asked Kora. “Have you pissed off the higher ups again?”

Kora grinned. “Would it be me if I didn’t? You might want to just double check everything. Also I’ll need a message sent. Where’s the feather brain?” The Valkyrie glanced around the temple.

Shrugging the priestess answered, “I haven’t seen him in a few days. You know he gets restless. Just leave me the message and I’ll make sure he gets it.”

“I just figured we’d let the other girls know. Just in case the gods try going to the other parent when mommy said no.” Kora winked at the priestess.

The priestess laughed. “Mommy huh?”

Kora grinned wickedly and pulled the priestess closer to her. “Mhmm, now come to momma.” And kissed her deeply.

The priestess laughed into the kiss and when Kora broke the kiss the priestess gently tapped her on the nose then turned and walked away, swinging her hips ever so subtly. Kora whistled and laughed before turning back to the lycan.

“You got a name wolf boy?” — Lucian grunts and scowls at her remark, struggling to sit up. Once upright, he slowly lulls his head in a circle. After stretching his neck, he returns his attention to the woman. “I’m Lucian, and chances are, I’m much older than you, so watch what you say.” He rolls his eyes and glances around after the other woman.

“I gather that you are the Valkyrie sent to judge me, I also gather you carry little love for the gods. I presume your friend there to be another Valkyrie, as well as your lover of some fashion. I will not ask again why I am here,” he suddenly breaks down into a coughing fit, his weak voice drowned out but the sound.

After a brief moment, Lucian regains composure and speaks, his voice stronger than only moments ago. “I thank you for your help, but now I will be leaving. I have no desire to deal with the gods and their cronies, even if you don’t like them much.” Struggling to his feet, Lucian takes a few steps forward, each stride holding more confidence and strength than the last. — Grinning, Kora eyed the lycan mischievously. She had no fear of this supposedly “all powerful” being. And his assumptions almost made her choke laughing. As he started to leave she spoke. “The Valkyrie are sisters, we do not make lovers of our sisters.”

She shrugged, “I have no great desire to protect you. But I feel I should warn you that as soon as you leave the boundaries of this temple you are at the mercy of the gods once again. This place is sacred to the Valkyrie and thus the gods have no power here.”

The priestess returned with a raven perched on her shoulder. “He barely made it back. There’s quite a storm brewing past the barrier.”

Kora sighed. The gods could be such children. “I’ll deal with it.” She started towards the entrance to the temple. — Lucian grunts at the mention of his new cage, supposedly protecting him. “If they want in, I’m sure they can find a way around any rules preventing them. You have saved me, I will return the favor.” With shadows seeping off of him, Lucian takes a step out into the world once more.

He stands quietly at the threshold, watching the storm clouds form outside, a quiet bemusement floating across his face. He silently draws his sword, all the darkness floating around him condensing into a single, jet black blade. He places a hand on the barrier, sending out a single pulse wave of magic that ripples away from him. A doorway exactly his size opens in the barrier to allow him passage.

Stepping through, Lucian braces himself against the coming onslaught, seeing the clouds overhead twirling around. He sees lightening crackling overhead, culminating closer into the center of the vortex. Finally, all the electricity in the air shoots down into a single, massive bolt. The light clashes with the sword that Lucian raised at the precise moment to stop the blast, but he flies backwards and crashes into the barrier. — Kora lets Lucian walk past her and watches as he braces himself for the bolt of electricity. She grins as he flies backwards towards the temple. She meets him where he lands. “They pack quite the punch huh wolf boy?” The fire from her necklace seems to jump from her throat to her hand as a staff appears in her hand. She spins the staff absently as she glances at the sky. “Let’s see if they respect the laws.”

She crouches as her feathered wings materialize from her shoulders. Looking up she shoots into the sky. She spins the staff and hovers just above the temple’s highest point. “Your temper tantrums are getting on my nerves.” She shouts into the sky. Thunder booms behind her and she whirls to face it her pale hair whipping around her face and her grey eyes flashing. “I don’t want to hear it! You appointed me as your Valkyrie which is your right. But there is an order to things and I have a duty apart from your wishes. One day your time will come and I will judge you and send you each to your own personal hell.” She grins as the wind tries to remove her from the sky. “That’s what you need. A good long time out. You’ve had free reign for too long.” The wind picks up swirling into a funnel around her before subsiding and the grey clouds slowly begin to dissipate allowing a small bit of sun to appear.

[lucifer-gift-exchange]

Fic: Adversary, Defeated (Deckerstar)

to @ghostofstartraveller776 / from @tmellis

Hope you like it! This manages to check of apocalypse vibes, p l e n t y of angst. Warning for character death.

made for round 1 of the @lucifer-gift-exchange

Even when she was old and clinging to the tattered shreds of her mind, Chloe Decker was always going to remember the day they placed that screaming baby in her arms for the first time.

She would always remember the rush - she’d been so tired after that one last push, she was convinced she’d never be strong enough to hold her daughter up. But as soon as her little baby was in her arms, Chloe had pushed her past the baby blanket and pressed the tips of her fingers to the baby’s chest. She was determined to feel that tiny fluttering pulse. As if she could hold her heart the way she held Chloe’s.

She would always remember her mother’s squalling voice after, when everyone who needed to be there pushed themselves into the hospital room and saw the family for the first time. Someone delivered the must be Dan’s latino side line for the tenth time in regards to the baby’s darker skin tone, which meant Dan tried to hide a wince for the tenth time, trying not to be bothered by the lowkey racism. (Everyone who needed to be there - please, everyone who her mother thought needed to be there.) Penelope Decker crowed on and on about her name is Faith, isn’t that lovely? Chloe, I never knew you were so spiritual. The couple’s eyes lifted from their daughter, meeting with the same look of pure spite.

She would always remember how it felt to sign the paperwork. Dan had been dozing off in the corner beside the baby’s hospital bed - and Chloe had been so tired too, she knew he was just as exhausted as he was. She wanted to let him catch a few hours before their life of parenting began. So she’d accepted the paperwork from the nurse. The man was terribly nice too, offering to stay and quietly help her write down all the right things. They’d laughed about how awful it would’ve been if she managed to spell something wrong. She’d remarked about how fancy his pen was, scratching against the… the parchment… like an old quill… He didn’t even chastise her when she cut her thumb on the sharp edge, spilling a splash of blood over the Jane in Chloe Jane Decker… Never thinking that she was signing her daughter away to the Fates to string her into their ultimate narrative.

She would always remember the day Beatrice Espinoza came into her life. And if she ever forgot… well, then she would always have this. That beautiful baby ’s face, now a girl’s, a beautiful baby girl, contorted in pain, confusion. How could this happen? That was the question big brown eyes asked her. How could her mummy, sworn to protect her forever and ever, not have stopped this? Chloe touched the spot over Trixie’s heart, trying to hold back her tears.

“Baby, I’m sorry, I’m so so sorry, I’m - I’m gonna fix this. Mommy’s gonna fix this, and you’re gonna be okay, you’re gonna be so okay, I’m sorry, I’m-” She had to be strong, for her baby. She had to be strong because Trixie was hurt and looking to her for her promises. Mommy promised it was going ot be okay, and therefore it had to be. But there was a lot of blood, and Chloe’s rational logic was slipping further and further from her reach. She swallowed back the lump in her throat, pawing a little uselessly to smooth Trixie’s hair back.

This was her fault. All this time, they thought it was something to do with her. It’d never been about her. It had been about Trixie. Of course. Of course. The daughter of a protector of justice and a miracle. Chloe’s gifts weren’t for her own sake. She was meant to be a shield, a shield for the next messiah… for the day the devil would come to claim her as his nemesis.

She didn’t protect her. Her God given duty in this life was to protect her daughter from Satan Incarnate, and she failed.

That was where the rage hit. It struck in the chest like a fist landing a punch, and flared into an incandescent fury. Eyes still glazed over from the tears, Chloe began to shake with anger. The debris that was scattered across the apartment floor cracked and shattered under his weight as he pulled himself to his feet, and slowly started forward again. There had been a blast after the blade had gone through Trixie’s side, powerful enough to knock him back… but they were out of time.

Lucifer was advancing once more, and Chloe met his hellfire eyes with a fire of her own.

“I’m going to kill you,” she promised, pulling her weak daughter closer, ignoring the way Trixie was struggling to breathe more and more. She only glared down the Beast as he stalked closer, that gleaming blade of Death still in his curled fingers. And, as he extended dark angel wings behind him to become bigger than he already was, he smirked. It cut deeper than any divine weapon could. He had smiled like that a thousand times before. It was that stupid smug little grin that came across his face when he was the one to solve a case, when he managed to get her to laugh at his jokes, when she actually admitted out loud, “Maybe you’re not as bad as I thought.”

She was going to be sick. Shaking, she pulled her hand to her belt, pulling her gun to point at him. It made him laugh.

“You think that’s going to stop me?” he taunted.

Chloe was never one for one-liners, one of the things she’d always hated about Lucifer, and she pulled the trigger. His head snapped to the side as the bullet caught his nose and tore through the flesh. A muscle in his neck twitched, tossing his entire head like a jolt of electricity had shot through him… and he slowly turned back, seemingly unfazed by the wound that made a hole in his skull. Lucifer’s jaw twitched back and forth, as if he had something stuck in his teeth - she watched the bullet pass into his mouth, and he spat it to the side.

“Close, but no dice, darling. That won’t work on me. Your nullification was meant to protect the next Bringer of Peace, but you’ve failed. Humanity. You’re mine for the taking. The twisted tempted. I just can’t believe it took so long!” he laughed, as if pleasantly surprised. Clearing milking his victory for all its worth, “It took five years of waiting, but isn’t this worth it? Once the devil left his throne, it was all too easy. Did he not remember the first step to bringing about my apocalypse? When the devil walks in His kingdom again, the Horsemen will follow - and the End of Days shall begin. Of course-”

He tilted his head, pointing the blade at Trixie, who cowered into her mother’s side, “-that was all meant to make sure the Messiah looked really good when she came about to save the day, but I don’t have to worry about that now, do I? I can’t be stopped if the only person who can stop me rots.”

One of his wings lifted, in a surreal sort of shrug, “The villain wins. Evil prevails. If it’s any consolation, I’ll be sure to let your dearest Lucifer know you fought to the bitter end. On your knees, helpless, while the only person you ever cared for died in your arms.”

Did he not remember the first step to bringing about my apocalypse? Your dearest Lucifer. Chloe’s rage faltered - and realized why felt like she hardly recognized the creature before her. It was his demon eyes, his face, his body, but it wasn't him. Not Lucifer. Not her Lucifer. Teary eyes went wide - mouth open to find something to say, but there was nothing. It was too late.

The shadow of that man was hovering over her, wings spread as if in absolute ecstasy. He ordered her, “Close your eyes, mother, lest you want to watch your child die.”

“You’re gonna pay for this,” she promised him, “You’ll never win.”

“We’ll see how far victory takes me. With you and your little runt gone, it will take me all the way. But so be it.” The shadow raised Azrael’s blade, evil taking a gleam in his fire, “This kingdom is mine.”

Chloe moved to shield Trixie from the oncoming blade, when the sickening clash of metal grinding against metal thundered in her ears. It was like mountains coming alive and clashing together, it was so loud and so powerful-

Confused, she lifted her head, and saw that the blade had been stopped in its path by a long metal staff with a spiked ball at the end.

A morningstar.

Light flared in the room behind her, as bright as the sun (only closer), and Lucifer’s thinly concealed intensity rattled her to her bones. She twisted, looking above and behind her. There he was, Lucifer, glowing like the sun and the moon and the stars, brilliant white wings extended behind him as if prepared to launch himself forward. He bared his teeth, like an animal snarling at another. The shadow looked at him, took in the radiant light emitting from him, the wings that were supposed to have been cut from him so long ago, and he had the right mind to be afraid. Lucifer growled, and pushed the mace forward. It forced the shadow back, putting enough space between them that Lucifer could round around the Decker girls and stand between them and their adversary.

“Impossible,” the shadow tried to insist, “How did you-”

“Yes, sorry for the delay. Got caught up in traffic. A quartet of chaps on horses were holding up Sunset.” It sounded so much like him, that laissez-faire attitude, even in the face of his own darkness, that Chloe - despite everything - grinned. The sound prompted him to turn to glance at her, the sharp intense rage giving way to a more comforting look for her sake. As he turned back, he went on to her, “Hope I didn’t miss all the fun, darling. Not to worry-”

He swung the morningstar, testing the handle in his grip, “I’m sure I can keep up.”

“You’re too late,” the shadow hissed, trying to collect a semblance of his previous power, “I’ve already pierced her with Azrael’s blade. Soon enough, she’ll bleed out and die a true death - and not a soul in Heaven or Hell can save her.”

“We’re not in either, though, are we?” Lucifer barked, all levity gone in his tone. “No no, you’re here on Earth, with me. And I swear, Beatrice Decker is under my protection until I draw my last breath. You come for the Deckers, you’ll have to face me.”

“You’re not stronger than me. I am the Adversary. I am the King of Darkness. I am the devil in the flesh-” With those proclamations, the shadow charged forward, raising the blade to strike Lucifer down. But Lucifer parried the blow, twisting around and underneath the crossed weapons to throw the end of his morningstar into his half’s side, then with a quick adjustment of his grip on the handle, swung it back around to shatter the shadow’s wrist. The creature cried out, releasing the blade. Lucifer yanked the mace free of the broken bone, and finally brought it down on his half’s head.

The shadow fell to his knees, but did not die. It could not - made up of all the power of the dark, it was too powerful. As long as evil existed, so would it. But Lucifer seemed to expect it. He removed the morningstar, dropping to the side with the dagger, and he crouched to the other’s eye level.

“You are not any of those things, Samael. You are only a boy. A boy who wanted his father’s love, enough to kill for it.”

The shadow shuddered and shook, until the injuries on his flesh were gone - and only the child remained. Tear-stained and whimpering. Lucifer hushed him, setting a hand on his shoulder. When he did, the inky black feathers on the boy quivered, fluttering as they changed to the same pearl white of Lucifer’s wings.

“You are an angel of God. You are the light bringer - and therefore, the bringer of darkness. This, the apocalypse, was all your design. Plan B, in the face of the impossible future where you lost the war. The Horsemen were your toys, your childhood heroes. Your favourite sister, Azrael, was the most obvious. Death. Amenadiel, the relentless and inevitable doom, Pestilence. Uriel, starved for attention, was Famine, and the last… that which brought your destruction, War. Michael. Mere shades of the true angel. Just like you, Samael. My worst self. My darkness… and you’re only a lonely child. I feel sorry for you. I’m sorry you thought you could not love and be loved. You were so convinced of it, that there was no point in a world where there was no love, and so you set up your toys to burn the entire world down. But the day comes, Samael. The day comes when you meet a woman who makes you feel, and you will know meaning. She is everything. You’d give her the world if you could… and you know what? You will.”

The child, Samael, let out a strangled choke. Pained, he looked down to his chest, where Lucifer had pushed his hand into his chest. He whimpered, looking up at his other half.

“Please…” Samael cried.

Lucifer closed his eyes, and yanked the heart out of Samael. The child fell… dissipating into nothing by the time his body would’ve hit the ground. As he did, the light from Lucifer faded. The effect on him was immediate, his wings sagging until they dragged on the ground. Samael was gone, but the heart remained, heavy in his hands. His feathers were fading from their whites, as if the floor polluted their purity. Already, they were a molting gray.

Chloe hardly dared to breathe, wet eyes staring wide at the scene as she attempted to even begin to understand what had happened. The first to move out of all of them was Trixie, who lifted her weary head and asked quietly (too quietly), “Lucifer?”

He looked up then, and the detective saw that his face was stained with tears of his own. She let out a shaky exhale, just as Trixie opened up her arm to reach for him… and her hand fell.

“Trixie!” Both Chloe and Lucifer cried, and Lucifer was quick to move to their side. Lucifer took Trixie’s hand, all pretenses that he loathed the child gone. There wasn’t time for it.

“You’re gonna be okay, it’s okay, honey.”

“You’re going to be alright, spawn. Listen to your mother, and be okay. You have to be okay - you’re the Savior. You’re going to save the world, but you have to make it.”

Chloe looked back to where Samael had disappeared, “Lucifer… who was that?”

He swallowed, hard, trying to avoid her gaze. But after he made an audible gulp, he explained cautiously, “I… I’ve done a horrible thing. That was… that was me.”

“What?”

“I thought that if I could… if I could separate my darkness from my goodness, I could… I was trying to be enough. For you. Maybe for me too. I… I didn’t think of how stupid it could be, to unleash a truly evil devil upon the world, I didn’t think - and I never thought that Trixie was the one-” Whatever attempts Lucifer could have made to go on were stopped when he looked down at the young girl he’d hurt, the young girl who was dying because of him. He swallowed once more, and looked up to meet Chloe’s gaze. His voice warbled and croaked, “I’m so sorry. I… I don’t know how to… I don’t know how to stop this. Azrael’s blade is too powerful, you can’t just heal from it. Samael thought it was either him or her, and he… I was selfish. It was me, this is all my fault. Beatrice is dying at the End of Days. All the prophecies, they’ve always said, she would be my undoing…”

Lucifer stopped then, his face clearing. Chloe frowned at him, “Lucifer-?”

“No!” Trixie cried out, and whimpered through the pain. Whatever idea had come into his head, she saw it before Chloe did, and was actively protesting. But it didn’t stop Lucifer. He was suddenly moving away, pulling away to fetch the heart and the dagger. He returned, holding the blade up - for Trixie to take.

That was when it clicked for Chloe.

“Lucifer, no-”

“The Savior is a direct source of Dad’s will. It’s more than the magic your fairy tales preach about. It is creation. It’s faith, it’s love, it’s everything that was and is and will be. If Trixie takes my life before she dies, then perhaps it could save her life.”

“And what- what if it doesn’t? Then you’ll be dead. Lucifer, I’m already…” Chloe’s face contorted in pain as she started to sob, “I’m already losing her, I can’t lose you both-”

“Stubborn as ever, you can never just let me die, can you?” Lucifer retorted, but it wasn’t enough to coax a smile from his detective. He faltered - there was nothing in his expression to hide the fear, the pain. He shuffled closer, murmuring, “Trixie doesn’t have time for this. She’s dying, and it’s slow - the worst kind of death. It’s not right, it’s not her time. But if she strikes my heart, here, then it will be quick for me. And I’m… I’m old. Old enough that it shouldn’t be a quarrel. And maybe I deserve this.

“It is written, detective. Good triumphs over evil.” Lucifer opened his mouth, as if to go on, but was suddenly speechless. He lifted a shoulder to shrug at his uselessness - his wings shook, the gray steadily darkening with every passing second. His back bent a little more, as if there was a weight he couldn’t quite hold for much longer. The darkness was attempting to claim back its prince.

“Luci…”

Both adults looked down at the dying girl. Trixie’s breath was shallow now, weak little hiccups as she struggled to hold on. She looked up at them, shaking her head gently, “It’s… not your fault… I don’t blame you…”

“Shhh, baby, don’t talk. It’s gonna be okay.” Chloe cried, reaching to brush Trixie’s hair back.

Trixie turned to her, nuzzling her head against Chloe’s arm, “Mommy… I love…”

Her eyes fluttered shut, and stayed shut. Chloe’s eyes remained open, even though her baby wouldn’t open her eyes, not her baby, no-

“Chloe, please,” Lucifer implored. Chloe shook her head, clinging tighter to Trixie. He shuffled closer, his voice desperate, “Once upon a time, you and I stood on a beach and I told you the truth. It will be her, over everyone else. Over me. I know that it will always be her, I know that. If you change your mind about that now, then you are not the woman I fell in love with. Please. Please let me die in your daughter’s place.”

“N-no,” Chloe was sobbing, “Don’t make me choose.”

Lucifer placed the heart on the floor between the three of them, and reached for Trixie’s limp hand. He didn’t dare look away from Chloe, insisting wordlessly.

“Darling, please. It can’t be me. It has to be her, you have to guide her.”

Chloe sniffed, using her wrist to wipe at her cheeks in futile effort. As much as it hurt to realize, he was right. Of course, he was right. This was foretold. So it was written… She reached down, wrapping her hand around Trixie’s, fastening the grip of Azrael’s blade. Lucifer swallowed, looking as though he was finally realizing the gravity of the decision. But he was prepared - as frightened as he was, he was ready to sacrifice himself.

“I’ll find my way back,” he promised her - them, “If it takes an eternity, I’ll find my way back to the mortal plane.”

“You better. Or I’m coming to get you.” Chloe told him. Lucifer smiled then, and reached up to stroke her cheek.

“Detective,” he whispered.

She drove the blade down, and his hand fell. The Adversary was finally defeated.

And maybe, an eternity later, Trixie held open the doors of the abyss and let the two lovers who saved her find each other again.

[hybridfiction]

March 2020 Free Content: "The Blood Plague of Prague" by Andrea Kriz

Below, find Andrea Kriz’s “The Blood Plague of Prague,” our free short story for this month. Set in a grim alternate history, it follows an SS soldier who is part of Hitler’s paranormal task force. Plus there are fairy tale undertones and considerations of what it means to be human when you don’t look like one.

š›š›—

The tank’s been impaled I see as I step up on its hull. Spikes twist above me, their blackness tinged crimson by the dying sun. They pierced clean through the thickest part of the armor—armor I’ve seen stopping artillery shells, rockets—these things. They forest the entire square. Worming over a bicycle here, upending a telegraph pole there. Across the cobblestones, a tram ripped free of its wires teeters on its side. Through its creaking, a slow drip. More of the sludge, half-hardened, flows down its seats and through its doors.

“A survivor of the plague,” Doctor Engel explains beneath me. “His body’s reaction—was disturbing to say the least.”

My reflection stares back at me from the nearest spine. Skin nicked by razor, the hooded eyes of a man kept awake a week straight. By orders that came for me just as I’d finished my last assignment in the wastes of the Russian front. A dossier that contained only a few cryptic sentences and a ticket to Prague. The entourage met my train at an outskirts station. Drove me up to a fortified Castle overlooking the city and refused to let me leave my quarters until today. The last time I saw Doctor Engel, I was on the verge of death. I can’t say I’m delighted to meet him again, especially under these circumstances. But beneath its bandages, my right arm twitches of its own accord. It reaches toward the sludge.

“Don’t touch it!” Engel says a bit too late.

I tear off my glove, hurling it away. The muck eats away the leather like acid. I suddenly notice a total absence of life in the vicinity. It’s summer. But no birds sing in the leafless trees. Only the knot of soldiers assigned to us whisper, shifting their rifles uneasily.

“This is all blood?” I ask. “From one survivor?”

Engel shakes his head. I peer down the turret and as my eyes adjust to the dimness, make out a splattered pair of goggles, the green-grey shreds of a Wehrmacht uniform. This spike didn’t erupt from beneath the tank—but from within.

“These were our soldiers,” Engel says. “And the civilians too.”

***

A case of hemokinesis. I’ve fought those with the power, of course. It’s an ability that often arises in those of degenerate blood. To the extent that the SS dedicated an entire security division to their disposal in the occupied territories. Hence, my presence here. My services have been in high demand since the invasion of Poland, the start of the war, a few years ago. Much to the chagrin of my parents—hunters trained in the old ways who turned up their noses at working with the Nazis—I quickly rose through their ranks. There was no work left for me in the Black Forest after all. Our ancestors had all but purged that region of beasts. Only leaving a few tribes deep in the wood for us new generations to hone our skills on. Those savages usually shape it into weapons, I learned at an early age. A sword for example, like that of Bruncvik—the famous Blood Knight—of Bohemian legend. Easy enough to dispatch by modern means. But what Engel seemed to be suggesting—control of blood outside one’s own body?

By the time we rejoin the others, the sun has dipped below the clouds. The houses we pass, so charming in the daytime, grimace over us like gargoyles now. In the flicker of the occasional streetlamp, I see the walls ripple with red, feathery motions. Posters. Out of curiosity, I stop to read a few. Murder – death. Arson – death. Black market – death. By decree of the Reich-Protector, Obergruppenfuhrer Heydrich.

“They call him the Hangman of Prague,” our translator whispers.

“Is that so?”

“Even more so after the assassination attempt.”

He’s a mousey man, plucked from the bowels of Petschek Palace—the Gestapo headquarters—not looking particularly grateful for the favor, considering. He keeps staring at my right arm, encrusted with bandages that haven’t been changed in days, flinching every time it twitches, every time I speak. And other than my speaking, there is not a soul, not a sound.

“Where is everybody?” I demand.

“The curfew is eight, Untersturmfuhrer,” Doctor Engel says evasively.

“For the Czechs. What about the Germans? Other patrols?”

“Everybody fears the blood plague.”

“He’s got all the troops massed up there, around the Castle,” the translator interrupts. “The Hangman. Every night, he closes off all the roads. You’ve been staying there, right, Untersturmfuhrer? Then you’ve seen it. No one’s allowed to enter until dawn.”

“Silence!” Engel roars.

The translator shrinks. The soldiers stare with a listlessness that suggests they’ve seen this scene play out a number of times before.

“The Protector’s a brilliant man,” Engel continued. “I was with him in Berlin. Reichsfuhrer Himmler himself looked to him for advice. He hasn’t been the same since the assassination attempt, that’s all. And now the plague, overrunning the very city the Fuhrer entrusted him to protect. It’s our job to eliminate the problem at its source. The survivor.”

His eyes take on an unnerving sheen as he turns to me.

“We must fight creatures of the abyss. With the abyss.”

***

I catch sight of one of the city’s innumerable steeples and grind to a halt. My arm arches. A side effect of this limb, this gift the doctor gave me—the ability to sense those with degenerate blood. The soldiers fan out around every exit, grate, sewer in sight, while the largest surges forward. The door splinters before him. With the things one hears about occupied cities these days, I expect the church to have been looted, swarmed with refugees and beggars and the like. But the darkly gilded statues, the pews—everything stands in its place. Only the withered lilies at the foot of the altar hint at its abandonment. I crouch down for a closer look and catch movement out of the corner of my eye.

One of the soldiers shuffles up beside me.

A shot rings out.

Only then do I notice my gun, in my hand.

The bullet tears through the poor man. In that instant, I see my fate. The shells I carry were developed by Reichsfuhrer Himmler’s occult division with a core of silver and marrow—made to destroy those that ordinary weapons cannot. And that shadow hunched on the balcony above me, beneath the gleaming pipes of the organ, has somehow grasped this. No matter how I struggle, the barrel in my hands tilts slowly, inexorably, until it comes to rest beneath my chin. But not of my own will. My very blood boils in my veins against me.

My right arm snaps.

The bullet ricochets off an arch. My bones burst through bandage, through skin, twining above me. My pistol clatters to the tile. The shadow leaps. For a moment, I impale her. Her. A woman in a white shift. She stares at me with starved, choking eyes. I hesitate.

“What’s wrong? Never killed anything that fought back before…”

Long enough for the sludge dripping from her throat to melt through bone. As I shriek, she lands on the carpet, catlike. A salvo of useless shots behind me, and she’s through the door.

I fall to my knees.

The remaining soldiers stare at me in silence. I can well imagine what they’re struggling to hide. Disgust. Shock. The same expressions twisting my face as I thrust my arm down, assessing the damage. The bones have fused into one, their ends stripped to a point. I manage to force them to a more natural size, stop the bleeding. But my mind balks at willing them back under skin. My hand, along with half my forearm, hangs limply by a flap of flesh. This I’m inexperienced in. Hardening bone to absorb impact I’ve trained; muscle to block shrapnel, I’ve mastered. But I do not like to be reminded that I am a monster.

Only Engel dares approach me.

“That was a woman,” I bark at him. “A girl. You told me the survivor was a man.”

“It was a man who escaped from us,” Engel says.

“How many are there?”

“Untersturmfuhrer, the survival rate is one in a hundred thousand—”

I grab his coat with my good hand, slam him against a pillar.

“How many of them are there?” I scream.

It doesn’t matter, I realize, loosening my grip. I could barely stand against even one. That monster, twisting my blood to her own whims. Much less two. Three. Ten survivors. Unless I attained such power myself… but no. I must fight it. As the rest of my arm sloughs off, leaving only bone, I feel a bit of silver beating against my heart and it tells me: I must not give in. I must not become. I must remember. The hunter’s mantra my father taught me. What separates me from them. Them from me. I raise my left hand, clasp it against my chest instead. I am not a beast, I mouth. I do not kill for joy. I do not kill for lust… Engel staggers but regains his composure, setting his glasses back on his nose and rising.

“What’s the matter?” Engel asks. “You can regrow it, you know. Every ability the original owner of that arm possessed. They should’ve passed on to you.”

“I told you back then.”

 “Even though they wear human skin, they’re beasts, right?” I woke in a field hospital raving, grasping at the man who stood beside me, white-coated as an angel. “Even if they wear the skin of children. No human can have all that power.”

“Indeed. But why not use it to your advantage?”

 “I won’t.”

“Even so,” Engel says. He takes a syringe out of his satchel. “We must return to the Castle at dawn. With results. The Protector sent you out here to finish a job.”

“And you?” I snarl.

A jab in the back of my neck. My body shudders, dulls. But I can no longer feel the bones beneath twisting, scraping to get out, at least. I take the bandage Engel holds out to me and wrap it slowly, painfully, around my stump.

“To make sure you do yours.”

***

We cross a bridge, looming with sculptures—I turn every few steps, seemingly catching one moving out of the corner of my eye—we knock on doors that no one answers and kick them in. A variation of the same scene greets us every time. A meal rotting on the table, a radio left to static. Strange stains sunken into the floorboards. And always through the windows, behind us as we descend and set out again, far up on the hill, the spires of the Castle fading into the dusk.

 “The plague got out of hand,” Engel admits, “and due to our carelessness, spread through the city. But the extermination of these survivors will end it.”

We’re standing in a silence that’s become familiar to us over these hours. In front of yet another building that seems utterly abandoned, despite the flags flying from its balcony. My eyes rest on the statue set into the alcove. A king in a flowing cape—or a lifeless suit of armor. Impossible to tell with its helmet welded firmly shut. The figure, along with the entire corner, is plastered with more of that reddish sludge. The same cakes the automobiles skewed on the curb behind us, the gutter at our feet.

“Is that all you want to tell me?” I ask.

The dying light reflecting off his glasses masks his eyes. I’m reminded of the first time I met the doctor. In that camp that stank of death and excrement and more besides. Two of the prisoners he’d been experimenting on had manifested—powers—and overwhelmed the guards. That’s when I’d been summoned. No sooner had I stepped toward them than a blossom of bone encased me. Those girls had remarkable regeneration abilities. But, at the cost of my arm, I managed to fire the decisive shot. The other twin stared at me with dead eyes. She grew her fingers. And ran herself through. I woke in Engel’s clinic with her strange limb grafted to my gaping wound. He did it save my life, Engel explained. But I don’t trust him. I think he did it to me to see what would happen, the bastard.

“We initially developed the plague in Lidice,” Engel says. “A small village about a dozen miles from here with some tenuous connection to the resistance. That was right after the assassination attempt, you see. The plague worked stupendously. Of course, the Protector did not believe me. He sent such a battalion of men to shoot, to dig, to bulldoze that place down. But by the time they arrived, nothing of those villagers remained. And nothing would grow from the soil they had bled into ever again. The Protector was quite taken by that detail too.”

“That battalion,” I interrupt. “Were any of them infected?”

“Of course not. You know the blood doctrine. You know such sickness cannot spread to us. In fact, when the plague reached Prague proper, I myself strode among the patients as they lay dying—without any protective gear—just to prove that point.”

 “Do not believe him,” the translator whispers as we begin to walk again. “After all. If the plague didn’t affect you, could you use that arm?”

“What do you mean?”

“Tell me. When you were up in the Castle. Did you see the Protector?”

That too had been something like a fairy tale. I’d heard the rumors, of course, that he’d grown increasingly paranoid after the assassination attempt, checking under tables for explosives before sitting down and the like. But the perimeter in the royal gardens, blocking everyone but a few from exiting or entering, couldn’t help but bring to mind a forest of thorns. Even the soldiers sat tight-lipped in their sentry boxes behind their sandbags as we passed. Inside the Castle itself, servants made themselves scarce. Only the noise of some infernal dog echoed incessantly at all hours of the night through every hall. The Protector’s, I assumed. I’d been only too glad to leave that morning to focus on my assignment at last.

“The Hangman, we call him,” the translator says, laughing softly. “The Blond Beast. We’ve got a new name for him now. He doesn’t show himself to the world anymore, you see. Oh, he’s still lucid. But after the doctor brought him back from the brink of death, after the assassination attempt, he began to transform, they say. Yes, at dusk, like the rest of this city… he becomes…”

“Shut up.”

“The Mad Beast.”

For once, this arm and I move of the same will. New fingers emerge from my bandages in one smooth movement, formed entirely bone. I only mean to scare him. That’s what I tell myself. But I want to test it. Want to feel his throat crushed in my hand, his every breath struggling against me. I know, I tell the silver pendant, the memory of my sister’s fingers, warm around my neck, that I’m sinning, that I cannot kill one who is not a beast, that this is exactly where my father said this work with the SS would lead—but in the rising moonlight, I feel a smile trickling across my face. In this city devoid of all beings, devoid of anything but sickness, I can afford to sin. Just to see that look in his eyes. Just this once.

 “I am not afraid of you, Untersturmfuhrer,” the translator wheezes. “I have seen worse shapes than yours shambling down this city’s streets. I have seen the golems of legend past. I have seen… the future…”

***

When night falls, the sounds begin. The groans of the buildings we no longer try to enter. The scraping of their rafters, the collapsing of their stones—as if the puddles within them have come to life, gnawing at them from the inside out. More than once we find our way blocked by rubble and are forced to take yet another detour. Past yet more ornate wooden doors, through yet more winding lanes. The further we go, the more they start whispering, our soldiers. They’d rather brave the Protector’s wrath, rather be sent to the Russian front than keep wandering. Anything not to hear. The shrieking, the snarling. The further we go, the more difficult it becomes to blame the sounds on inanimate objects.

What am I waiting for? I wonder. Now that we’ve dropped the façade of searching. For unseen eyes, trailing us through the windows, to leap out and strike? Then we should climb up onto a roof, dig a foxhole, camouflage ourselves at a bend in the road—the memory of my father whispers, the hunting lessons he gave me as a child—and let them come. What leads me on instead? Perhaps it’s that first tank I saw. Left completely unguarded, without a cleanup crew even in sight. This iron taste on my tongue. Perhaps it’s because, like the bandage around my arm I can’t help itching and twisting, I’ve begun to feel something come undone.

As we turn the corner, two sights abruptly meet us. A huge contraption set into the wall. Clockwork moons, orange-gold, the lower one haloed by saints. And beneath them. Furtive movements. I signal and the soldiers raise their rifles, relieved at an order that might accomplish something at last. Ready. Aim. Engel obediently steps back. The creatures, engrossed in—what looks like a lump of clothing—take no notice. Fire. Only the one struck by my bullet falls. The others lunge. With gaping eyes, I see as they come closer, blind. I feel teeth on my throat, saliva dripping onto my face, before slamming my palm into its jaw. I hit it again, hardening my bones. The creature’s neck snaps around. With a shudder it collapses, wormy flesh spilling over my chest.

I hear boots clattering into the distance, noises spewing from a bloody mess a few paces away. Engel couldn’t run as fast as the soldiers, evidently. But I won’t let the doctor die that easily. Because I see now what those things were tearing at. An SS uniform. With the hunter insignia, an eagle feather, on its lapel. Just like mine. I heave the carcass off me. With another shot, scatter the beasts hunched over Engel. A fine use for my last bullet. I hurl the pistol, skidding it across the cobblestones.

“The plague can’t spread to us?” I shriek. “Even the animals have become infected!” I kick at the remains—a dog, swollen to the size of a calf. Its ribs give way like overripe fruit. “No more lies. How many hunters have you brought here to die? What kind of madness is this?”

“The Hangman’s,” Engel coughs. “The Blond Beast’s.”

Behind his shattered glasses, his remaining eye has begun to reflect the moon, red.

“I could say something like… to refuse to obey him would’ve been death…”

“Not even he would be insane enough to order something like this.”

Engel laughs.

“Let me tell you about the Hangman,” Engel says. “He grew to hate this fairy tale town. Having half your face blown off will do that to you. He looked forward to nothing more than burning it all down. But after the assassination attempt, he was on his deathbed. A nasty infection and no penicillin to save him. Luckily, I had just perfected my serum. Purified from dozens of test subjects. Designed to gift others their abilities—to create others like you. It turned out to have regenerative properties as well. But there was not enough left for his wife. And the serum could not bring his sons back to life. It could not bring back his little daughter, led as if by two pied pipers by the would-be assassins away.”

He laughs again—attempts to—and gurgles instead.

“He ordered wave after wave of reprisals. But not even that could sate his bloodlust. The Fuhrer twisted his arm, forbade him from doing more. We need the Czech factories at full productivity for the war effort, after all. I whispered in his ear: Obergruppenfuhrer, I will create a plague for you. From my serum. It will spread among them like a fine rain. They will dissolve while we stand among them. Not even their corpses will remain. He could not… resist the poetry in my words…”

A serum? My heart thuds into my mouth.

“What did you inject me with back there at the church?”

“Just a bit of saline…”

“Liar.” I kneel and raise my hand, feel it contort into a blade, sharpen to my will. “It was your plague, wasn’t it? You infected me! You wanted this to happen!”

“I really thought you were different. That you could do it. I really thought you could kill all those survivors. With a little help…”

He reaches up. And caresses my face.

“I only wanted to see your body pushed to its limit… my dear hunter.”

I hear baying in the distance and rise. His hand stays there, grasping. But still, as I leave him for the dogs, I can’t help but hear his words.

“I lied to the Hangman only once, you know. I told him the plague would infect the Jews, the Slavs, but leave our pure, Aryan blood unharmed. But I was wrong! It does not know how to differentiate between us. Only how to spread. Even the Hangman himself, up in his Castle, has become infected. Isn’t that delightful? If the blood leaves this city, it will infect the entire world. To be able to manipulate lymph, bone, muscle, to have such wonderful control over your body. Isn’t that what it truly means to be an Ubermensch?”

***

I stagger into the vast square alone. My steps echo and shrivel—dulled by the black sludge which carpets the ground, creeps like vines up the walls of the surrounding buildings. My arm throbs at my side. A swollen thing it’s become, bristling with bones. Like the veins that pulse along it, trenches furrow the stones beneath my feet. Skirting hissing mud, I limp to the edge of one. It’s overgrown with lumps. A line of guns, I see as the moon drifts out from behind a cloud, upended. Anti-tank rifles.

“Ah. So now the SS has recruited beasts to hunt down their own kind?”

A voice tolls. Piercing as those Gothic spires, silhouetted against the sky. I clutch my arm as it springs up of its own accord—and meet the eyes of a shadow sitting above me. Among the bronze waves of a sculpture that drowns the center of the square.

“I am not like you,” I tell him.

The shadow tilts his head.

“The hunter blood runs through my veins,” my voice echoes thinly. I remember my heritage. My father. My sister. Our house at the edge of the looming trees. “Though I’ve been infected. The hunter way will save me!”

“When the plague began, my people gathered here by the thousands,” the shadow hisses. “As if their old legends could save them…”

In a flash, I’m a child again. Face to face with a boar in the wood. Armed with nothing but my bare hands. Back then, I looked everywhere for a ditch to crawl in, a tree to leap up. But this time, I lurch forward. Because maybe if I can see it—that glimmer in his eye—maybe I can have a bit more confidence that I can carry this through as myself, as a man. Instead, laughter.

“…but nobody did.”

He’s clutching something. A bayonet, I see as he raises it abruptly, slashes his throat. The blood readily forms a blade, curving above him, a shaft for him to grasp. And there’s someone else here. I feel her in the shudder that runs through my bones, the wave rippling under my skin—as if an unseen puppet-master stands above me, jerking my strings. I whirl around, even as the corrosion eats away at my boots, my palms, and I tear one of the rifles free from the sludge. Steel every ligament in my body as I aim it at the ground. And pull the trigger. A spike erupts after me, in the blast, as I hurtle upward. Twists, drying as it grasps my ankle. I tear out of it, slipping, scrabbling down the solidifying wave, and finally drag myself to a standstill.

I see. From this height, gasping. The blackness that steeps these roofs, this city—this is the dead. It’s just as Engel said. Not even their bodies remain. Only their plagued blood. A near infinite pool for these survivors to control.

I feel the scythe slice through the wind and duck. Another sweep, and it crumples the pillar beneath me. I raise my rifle—but the damn thing’s jammed. A spike bursts through my shoulder. Another grazes my leg. I leap back, letting the first impale me, catch a foothold on the second. Only to feel it give again. The scythe’s blade crashes against my rifle stock, raised just in time.

The roofs rush past. In front of me, that murderous face, teeth bared, inches from mine. He has the same eyes—as the twins I ended in that camp, as the countless ones I had hunted down as a teen. The ones who shaped their own bodies into weapons to protect their children, their villages, their souls. They all have the same eyes. The eyes of an animal on the edge of an abyss, backed up against a wall. As it should be. I wouldn’t be able to pull the trigger on a beast who looked human up until the end. It’s that look that separates us. That makes me the hunter, gives me the right to stand on the other side. Eyes that, at this moment, might as well be a reflection of my own.

 “You must remember,” my father told me once. Finding me in a clearing, dripping with the entrails of a boar I’d slain, he made me kneel, clasp my hands until my entire body ached. “You must not allow the blood to linger on your skin. You must not kill like a beast.”

 I’ve got no choice. I will my bones to grow, arcing them toward the gash in my attacker’s neck. Too little, too late. In one flowing motion, he breaks my rifle in two. His scythe catches my shoulder, tears through my tunic. I feel a weight move. More than the searing pain of blade ripping through bone, sinew, muscle. It’s something I’ve kept in my inner pocket, close to my heart, all these years since I’ve left the Black Forest. A glint of silver.

Slowly.

Hurtling past me.

I hit the ground. Feel my spine cave at the impact, hack up blood. Then silence. Every vibration of steps shuddering through me. A dozen figures loom at the rim of the crater I made. They’ve taken on strange shapes in the moonlight. Along with the crescent of the scythe, I see a white dress, spikes of dried blood bent into spider’s legs, others coiled into the facsimile of wings. And the words that whistle between their teeth—they’re no longer human, no.

“Will he melt like of the rest of them, you think? Or will he turn?”

I move to stand, but my hand slips. On warm liquid that pulses over my skin with every breath. My eyes move down and meet—intestines, worming from my torso. The other half of me I only glimpse darkly, my vision blurring with nausea.

“You’re weak, aren’t you? That’s why you’re in that uniform. You hate it. You don’t want to be helpless anymore. Why do you fight it? All of this power… is within reach.”

She dangles it from her fingers. A thread of shining silver. Such a slight, such a fleeting thing. But it’s mine. Mine. I won’t let them take it from me. Tears start up in my eyes. My body aches, and my remaining hand curls, squelching on the stained stones.

“You see, there is no cure for the plague, good hunter.”

I can hear it. I can hear it. Them. Why wasn’t I listening before? Even as some small part of me, deeper and deeper down, screams. I must remember. What separates. I must not let it in. I open every part of myself, my pores, my skin to them. My blood mingles with the plague’s blood and the blood has a voice, singing sweetly to me. A siren song I must make reality. I lift my finger. A movement that dissolves my flesh into pure euphoria. For as my blood, our blood, scatters, sharpened into points, I feel the others pierced, I feel them tear. Feel them scream, and in that scream I feel myself wax and wane.

Did I get them all? Or is there still fighting to be done, a war to be won? It matters not. That effort drained every drop in my veins. I’ve got eyes only for the bit of silver, glinting in the moonlight. A locket. I pick it up. It takes minutes, with my gnarled fingers, to wrench it open. Even longer for my burning brain to begin to make out the words engraved within.

Dear brother.

Dearest little Hansel.

Please come home.

The spikes above me liquefy and begin to fall. Each drop acid on my skin. Through my clouded eyes, I catch sight of my reflection in a puddle and I start laughing. The sound comes out snarled, warped through a snout and rows of teeth. What a pretty picture book it’d make, this. A forest of horns coiling from my skull, my spine arcing the rest of my body down to meet them. When they find me here, the armies, the golems, the fairy tale kings, they’ll mistake me for one of their monsters. Twisted… in this twisted beast of a city…

—

About the author: Lena Ng is from Toronto, Ontario. She has short stories in close to three dozen publications, including Amazing Stories. Her 2020 forthcoming publications include Mother Ghost’s Grimm, Beer-Battered Shrimp, What Monsters Do for Love, Schlock Magazine, and The London Reader. Under the Autumn Moon is her short story collection. If you want to contact her or join her mailing list for story updates, please email: scarystorygirl@hotmail.com

Thank you, Andrea!

[thesleekavatar-blog]

The Word of God

By Enii Emmanuel N. There were wails of anguish on all sides. The sky overheard, dark and devoid of its usual beauty swirled and twirled. Lightning carelessly flashed as if portending doom, and the roar of thunder caused hearts to shake with fear. Below, a multitude of people of diverse cultures and backgrounds; of different race and creed had gathered. Many great thrones formed a circle around them, and shiny beings of gold and emerald sat on them. Every now and then, someone was called up to face one of the shiny beings, and a verdict was passed. It was the day of reckoning. A man was soon called up before one of the great thrones. It didn’t take too long to reach a verdict. The man was judged guilty by one of the angels the Creator had assigned with expediting the judgment process, subsequently manacled and dragged off in the direction of hell- that blazing furnace in which the souls of the damned are consumed and destroyed. The manacled man begged in vain for the angels to spare him his assigned fate, but they wouldn’t listen for they had been given their orders. ‘The creator knows me' the man protested. ‘God knows me I swear. I prayed in his name. I did what he asked of me. How can you condemn me? Do you not know who I am?’ The angels said nothing to him, and kept dragging him along the spike strewn road that led to the burning pit where the souls of the wicked and unrepentant were destroyed. This was the “second death” from which there is no resurrection. It happened however, that in the course of dragging the condemned fellow away, God cast her eyes on the three: the unfortunate fellow and the two angels charged with executing him. And she hollered at them to stop. ‘I know that man' she said to the angels. ‘Bring him forth!’ The angels did as commanded, and dragged the man towards God’s great throne. They let go of him here, and shrugging off their hands, the man said to his to-be executioners, ‘ see what I told you. God knows me.’ He looked up at the great throne, and to his surprise God wasn’t the stern bearded man he had imagined him as, but a soft looking woman whose face was partially hidden with a veil. ‘Who are you?’ the man asked. God seemed to smile for a crow foot appeared in her eyes now. ‘Are you surprised?’ she asked him. ‘What do you see?’ ‘You’re a woman' the man said in disbelief. ‘So it seems' God replied. ‘Actually, most souls here see me in the form they least expect me to be. Only those with a clean heart can perceive my true form. And even then- anyhow, if you see me as a woman, then its because you least expected me to be a woman.’ The man shook his head, and tried to come to terms with this. ‘Father' he started out at first, only to correct himself immediately and go with, ‘mother, I have been wrongly condemned to destruction. I did what you instructed us in your holy book. I did everything to the latter. I was one of the most popular preachers in my time. You know this, don’t you?’ ‘I know very well who you are' the creator replied with a smile. ‘So you feel that you have been misjudged. Don’t you?’ The man nodded. ‘I have' he said. ‘And I think that you should stop your angels from doing the judging. They keep condemning the wrong people, and sending the right people to the New World.’ ‘My sincerest apologies good sir,' said the creator, ‘but if my angels pronounced you guilty. Then that is because you are. You are welcome to try and prove me wrong.’ The man was incensed and terrified at the same time to hear such words leave the creator’s mouth. ‘Why do you say so mother?’ ‘Tell me now,’ the creator replied, ‘when the hungry gathered outside your church premises, where were you? When that fellow who had nothing to his name but two thousand bucks to his name came to your church, what’d you say to him? Shall I remind you? You told him this: just as the widow gave those two copper coins in sincerity, give all you have to God, and you shall reap in abundance. Three months after he did as you advised, he committed suicide.’ ‘That was no fault of mine’ the man replied. ‘I simply stated what you said in your good book.’ The creator slammed her hand against the arm of her throne and there was a huge tremor that seemed to come from deep in the ground. The sky once dark brown, red interspersed, became black. It thundered, and for a minute, the noise that once overwhelmed the whole place was subdued by intense silence. The man quaked in fear. ‘You stole from everyone you could steal from' the creator said. ‘You didn’t point a gun at their heads, but through manipulation, you tricked them into divesting all they had. And what did you do with the money? Did you feed the hungry as I instructed you to do in the “good book”? Did you clothe the naked? Did you house the homeless as I instructed? No. Rather you bought jets, and built mansions, and larger churches to attract larger purses. And you say you were doing what I instructed you to do?’ The man trembled. ‘Do you know the original principles of religion?’ God asked. The man said nothing. ‘The salvation of the soul,’ she said, ‘and harmonious coexistence with others. And then Kings put their minds into religion and it all changed. It slowly became what it is in your time: an elaborate gimmick designed to divest funds from the unwitting and ignorant; a machine for sowing discord and encouraging suspicion. Now tell me again what you did in my name that was right. Tell me for I am listening.’ The man swallowed hard. The tumult had by now risen once more and the voices of many damned souls could be heard clamoring for mercy. And the sky had taken on a blood red hue that made the scene down below very apocalyptic. The man said very slowly, ‘I spread the good news. I spoke good things about you! I preached so that all men and women might hear and believe.’ God laughed. ‘I was quite clear when I said that if you could not feed the hungry, clothe the naked, offer assistance to those in desperation, and fought against evil and corruption tooth and nail, then you did not deserve the new life I promised. How different would it be after all from the first one? I saw all you did. I saw the churches you built- quite grand they were. I wish I could have lived in them. I saw the crowd that attended your services, as you preached about money, and breakthrough and cast aside the messages that mattered: of love, peace and tolerance. I saw the universities you built for your rich friends thanks to the money from your congregation- a great majority of who could not attend it. I saw the jets you bought for yourself, and the guards that you hired to protect yourself while convincing your ignorant congregation that stickers purchased from you were sanctified by the holy spirit and would protect them in the event if danger. And now, you think you deserve a second life. Why do you think so?’ Before the man could reply, an Angel came up to the Creator and whispered something in her ears. The creator nodded, and made a sign for someone to be brought forth. It was a girl, and a quite haggard one. She had blonde hair, sad brown eyes, and her skin was somewhat tanned. ‘A special case huh?’ the Creator remarked. She turned to the man with whom she had been speaking and raising her finger, she said, ‘give me a minute will you?’ She returned her attention to the girl. ‘They say you were a slut and an atheist' she began. ‘And that you didn’t believe in God. And that you drank and gambled quite excessively. My angels are afraid to take the case.’ ‘She's headed to destruction no doubt' the man chuckled. ‘Sentence me and be done with it' the girl said. ‘I have very few regrets.’ ‘Why did you think that I did not exist?’ God asked. ‘Two world wars were fought amongst other countless wars,’ the lady replied, ‘hungry people littered the streets, poverty and corruption ravaged the earth. Where were you then? What use was belief in a God who sat by and watched all this happen? So yes, I was an atheist, and that is it.’ God nodded. ‘I am sorry for all the suffering,’ she said, ‘but it was hardly my fault.’ The woman raised her eyes to meet his. ‘When I made the world,’ the creator continued, ‘I blessed you all with resources and all the good things. And I laid down rules by which you may live. But because I gave you all the will to choose, I could not force you to live the way I wanted. A few things are my faults. Volcanic eruptions, hurricanes, storms, flood, earthquakes- you name them. These are things you can blame me for. Hunger, wars, corruption? That’s not my doing. Humans make wars- out of ambition, out of greed. I cannot interfere in the way you all live no matter how pitiful it is to see. However, there are always repercussions for every action taken, for every word uttered- that is after all, the reason behind life. It is simply a test for a better place. Those who fail the test of life are destroyed; and those who pass cross over to the next one, for they have proven themselves.’ ‘What is to be my fate?’ the woman asked. ‘Destruction?’ God smiled. ‘You were a strange one' she said. ‘You had a problem with men. You abused your body. However, these are the afflictions of humans. Weakness and imperfection. It is a flaw in design. You did a lot of good however. That boy whom you have a home after his mother left him to die in the streets as a boy; the charities you donated to on behalf of the homeless and destitute. You were firm against corruption, and you did good out of your heart. Small these gestures might have been, they made a lot of impact. And that is why you will be taken to Paradise; to live out the rest of your life being good as you were in your former life, and better.’ The woman’s eyes lit up, and thanking God several times, she was led away. As soon as she disappeared from sight, the man erupted. ‘This is partiality’ he raged. ‘How can you let that whore- that vile wench to go to paradise. And I? You would damn me? This is not who you said you were! You made it explicit what good and bad was! How can you do this?’ The Creator smiled. ‘Good and bad has nothing to do with what you think' she said. ‘When you kill; when you cheat; when you destroy and watch evil being carried out! That is evil! Good is doing the right thing despite the difficulty of it. It is being honest! It is kindness and compassion! It is assisting the weak! It is harmonious coexistence!’ ‘And she didn’t believe in you’ the man argued. ‘How about that?’ The Creator shook her head. ‘Knowing God does not mean acknowledging my existence' she said. ‘I do not need the acknowledgement of mortals. It means living the right way. It is seeing the good in everything, and besieging in it. It is being good.’ ‘Your book was divinely inspired' the man further argued. ‘It didn’t make mention of this! How can you tell me that now?’ ‘What book?’ the Creator returned. ‘The Bible? The Sutras? The Baha’I Creed? I inspired humans over the ages; I opened their eyes to the truths I thought necessary for humankind to know. They were but a few. I wanted a harmonious existence for humans. The imperfections of humans are spectacular though. They are most often carried away. Despite my desire to teach the humans only the truth, establish a way of life that wasn’t centered around rituals and excessive laws, that is essentially what happened. Religions were born. And along with it, the farce that plagued the world. Recall that in the Holy Bible I told Moses to strike the rock one. He did it twice. Eli was my servant but he could not chastise his sons. Solomon built a temple for me, and rules his Kingdom with an iron fist. I gave Adam a simple test. And he proved to me that even in their most perfect state, humans are incapable of being perfect. Many whom I let in on my thoughts had a penchant of adding their own beliefs somewhere in between. It was not really their fault. They believed it was part of what was inspired. Thus, the birth of religions and holy books. However, in all of them can be seen the fundamental truths I hoped to instill in humankind. Those with whom the fault lie are those who treat these works as if they fell down from they sky. God is not found in temples and books. I am everywhere and anywhere. Every human knows what is right and what is wrong. Question is: can they do the right thing? If they can, then they have found God and salvation whether they acknowledge my existence or not.’ The Man kicked in anger. ‘This is bullshit. You’re a liar and you know it.’ The Creator snapped her fingers. ‘Take this one away. And put him where he deserves.’ The angels seized him. And obeyed the Word of God. #story #satire #religion

[magicalcreaturesofthenightbios]

Spike

Name: Spike

Age: 25 / 161

Relationship: Single [Verse depending]

Sexuality: Pansexual

Job:

Notes:

Wanted fc:

Spike (born William Pratt) was a famous and widely-feared vampire turned in 1880. He was well-known among both humans and demons for having faced and killed two Slayers during his unlife, and his history of torturing his victims with railroad spikes (which is rumored the moniker of “Spike” is derived from). His reputation for evil and bloodshed was second only to that of his grandsire Angelus.[1] In his human life, William was an unsuccessful and unappreciated romantic poet known as William the Bloody, for his “bloody awful” poetry, though after he became a vampire, that moniker was re-purposed to imply he was very violent. After being sired by Drusilla, he reinvented himself and terrorized Europe alongside Drusilla, Angel and Darla throughout the 19th and 20th centuries.

Spike first traveled to Sunnydale in 1997, accompanied by Drusilla. He quickly established himself as one of Buffy Summers’ most dangerous enemies, but was eventually forced into a series of uneasy alliances with her and her team, the Scooby Gang, after being captured by the Initiative and implanted with a cerebral microchip that rendered him unable to harm humans. Eventually, Spike realized that he had fallen in love with Buffy and officially joined the Scooby Gang, later being motivated by his love for her to successfully fight to regain his soul.

Spike sacrificed his life in battle against the First Evil, both defeating its army of Turok-Han and permanently closing the Hellmouth, as well as destroying the town of Sunnydale. However, bound to an ancient amulet, Spike became an incorporeal entity haunting the halls of the Los Angeles branch of Wolfram & Hart, then under the management of Team Angel. After becoming corporeal again, Spike struggled to find a place in the world, only to join Angel in his battle against the Senior Partners and become a Champion in his own right.

William Pratt[2] was born circa 1850 to 1853 in London, England to Anne Pratt and her unidentified husband. Anne often sang him an old folk song called “Early One Morning” throughout his infancy and childhood.[3] By 1880, William had grown into a sentimental, and ineffectual gentleman who lived alone with his ill mother. He was a poet, and enjoyed a certain level of economic comfort. Struggling to make a place for himself in London’s high society, he attended parties, and was nicknamed “William the Bloody” because his poetry was so “bloody awful.” This moniker, with far deadlier connotations, followed him into his future as a vampire.

While he moved within elite circles, William found little in common with his contemporaries, who often made him the butt of their jokes. Still, he showed a strong capacity for loyalty and was highly devoted to the idea of love, two traits that remained with him long after his siring. After his romantic overtures were rejected by the aristocrat Cecily Addams, a despondent William literally collided with Angelus, Darla and Drusilla, who had been terrorizing London. Drusilla followed him into an alley, where she found him in tears. She desired a playmate — a “knight” —, whom she could make hers forever. After a brief talk with the young poet, Drusilla seduced him and turned him into a vampire.[4]

After Drusilla sired William, she buried him and allowed him to be reborn as a vampire; he crawled from the depths of his own make-shift grave.[5] The pair partied for several days afterward, both draining human victims and drinking alcohol. They eventually decided to go back to William’s mother’s residence, where a live-in servant ignorantly invited them inside.

After staking his mother, William began a new existence with Drusilla. Euphoric with his new-found vampiric abilities, he abandoned the genteel hypocrisy and morals of Victorian life but still remained emotionally sensitive. He was eventually introduced to Drusilla’s sire, Angelus, who initially embraced him by expressing an interested in killing with another man. At first, the innocent William idolized Angelus, but was still quick to disagree when he insulted Drusilla in his presence. He preferred to think of her as childish rather than insane, and treated her with undying loyalty.

William was urged to give up his last drop of aristocracy, and became a rebel, adopting a working class North London accent and embracing impulsiveness and violence. He took on the nom de guerre “Spike”, inspired by a detractor from his human days who had exclaimed he would rather “have a railroad spike driven through his head“ than listen to William’s poetry. It was even indicated that he was involved in criminal activities, as Spike later remarked that he spent “the better part of a century” in delinquency. In the company of Drusilla, Darla and Angelus, Spike tyrannized Europe and Asia for the better part of two decades under the banner of the Whirlwind.

1890: Spike, Drusilla, Angelus, and Darla attended the ballet Giselle, in St Petersburg, Russia.[10]

October 1898: Spike & Dru were in Borsa, Romania with Angelus and Darla. Spike, however was oblivious that Angelus had regained his soul due to being cursed by gypsies. But he joined in the massacre of the gypsy clan Kalderash.[12]

June 18, 1900: in Beijing, China, Spike killed Slayer Xin Rong during the Boxer Rebellion. During the fight, in which she used a sword and Spike was unarmed, the Slayer gave him the scar on his left eyebrow, which he still had over a century later. Once again, Drusilla and Spike’s attraction to each other was heightened by chaos and bloodshed, as they immediately become intimate after Spike has murdered Xin Rong.[4]

1953: Back in Rome with Drusilla, Spike had apparently caused a Black Widower demon to be in debt to him. The demon had avoided repaying his debt however, and Spike catches up to him when he’s just had sex with then 18-year-old half-demon Pearl, and was about to eat her, while her brother Nash had been knocked out. In attempt to collect his debt, Spike became an accidental hero, decapitating the demon and inadvertently rescuing Pearl. She became fascinated by the vampire that she considered her hero.[14]

1969: Spike attended Woodstock, where he drank blood from a flower child, and spent the next several hours watching his hand move; a side effect from the psychoactive drugs in their bloodstream.[9]

July 13, 1977: He fought and killed Nikki Wood, a Slayer in New York City aboard a subway train, and stole her black leather duster, which he continued to wear even decades later.[4] At some point he met British punk rocker Billy Idol, who was inspired by Spike’s look and copied it.

Spike first appeared in Sunnydale accompanied by his longtime lover Drusilla, who had recently been wounded by an angry mob in Prague. He was a devoted caretaker to Drusilla in her weakened condition, and initially hoped the Hellmouth’s powerful energy would help to restore her strength. The presence of a Slayer made the town an even more attractive retreat to Spike. He tracked Buffy Summers down at the Bronze and observed her from afar. His interest in her immediately seemed more perverse than homicidal.

Eventually, Spike discovered that Drusilla could only be healed by the blood of her sire; he was more than happy to kill Angel to restore her, and kidnapped him with the help of Willy the Snitch. He subsequently hired the Order of Taraka to assassinate Buffy, though he ultimately cancelled the bounty when she defeated the three assassins who had been sent.[17] With the help of Kendra Young, a second Slayer activated when Buffy drowned the previous year, Buffy tracked down Spike and Drusilla to the church where the were going to perform the ritual to heal Drusilla. The ensuing fight ended when Spike was crushed under a collapsing pipe organ; he was left paralyzed from the waist down for several months. Though Angel was saved, Spike’s ritual succeeded, and Drusilla was restored to perfect health.[18]

It was later revealed that Spike and Drusilla traveled to Brazil, where she remained horrified by his alliance with the Slayer. Drusilla’s abilities caused her to sense that Spike would come to develop romantic feelings for Buffy; she rejected him and cheated on him with a Chaos Demon,[4] which sent the lovelorn Spike into a long drunken depression.

He returned to Sunnydale, where he kidnapped Willow Rosenberg and Xander Harris and attempted to force Willow to cast a love spell on Drusilla. While in town he visited Buffy’s mother, Joyce Summers, who listened sympathetically to his heartache, and recruited Buffy and Angel to help him gather ingredients for the spell. However, Mayor Wilkins, knowing that Spike’s mere presence in Sunnydale posed a threat to his plans, quickly organized a “welcoming committee” consisting of Spike’s own former minions to deal with him. After fighting them off, Spike cheerfully abandoned the idea of enchanting Drusilla, resolving instead to win her back by torturing her until she loved him again and told the Slayer where to find her two missing friends. He also told Buffy and Angel that no matter what happened, they would never be friends because of their eternal love for one another. Buffy later remarked to Angel “I can fool Giles, and I can fool my friends, but I can’t fool myself — or Spike, for some reason.” This final quote foreshadowed the pivotal role Spike would someday come to play in Buffy’s group.[20]

Spike’s existence took a pivotal turn when he was captured by the the Initiative, a secret demon-fighting government organization, the members of which implanted him with a cerebral microchip that rendered him unable to willingly harm or attempt to harm humans without experiencing crippling pain.[23] This chip became Spike’s surrogate soul, as it forced him to consider moral consequences of harming others, with the literal punishment of physical pain looming over his head if he ever went against it. Unable to hunt for blood, and still pursued by the Initiative, he reluctantly made the decision to turn to the Scooby Gang for help.[24]

Spike became ecstatic when Xander warned him of an upcoming apocalypse because he wanted the world to end. He nonetheless managed to cheer himself up by viciously tearing down Willow and Xander emotionally, remarking that they were both useless to Buffy, who as a Slayer, would be better off if she didn’t have to constantly watch out for both of them. Willow and Xander were forced to think of his words despite their mutual denial.[28]

Spike came to discover that the chip did not prevent him from hurting demons, much to his joy, allowing him to be more independent of the Scoobies and move out to a crypt.[29] He subsequently became a reluctant ally of the Gang and provided them with assistance in exchange for cash or brawls. At this point, Spike was still interested in his own selfish well-being, and reminded the Scoobies of this constantly with one of his many catchphrases: “I’m Evil!” Upon learning that the unstable Slayer Faith was on the loose, he proclaimed that he would find her and tell her the Scoobies’ exact whereabouts, and gleefully watch while she tore them apart.[30]

When Adam discovered that Spike had failed to split up the Scoobies, he made an attempt to kill him, but Spike managed to escape. After Buffy slew Adam, Spike saved Willow, Giles and Xander from an attacking demon in hope that they wouldn’t kill him for his actions; indeed, they agreed to spare him out of fatigue and gratitude. Spike then helped the Scoobies and Riley Finn battle the rampaging demon hordes within the Initiative’s complex, rescuing most of the soldiers. The Initiative was then shut down by the U.S. government, as it had proved an unsuccessful operation.[31]

Following the fall of the Initiative, Spike began offering more and more assistance to Buffy and the Scoobies. He told Riley about his old rivalry with Dracula,[21] and later punched Tara to prove that her father’s claims about her being a demon were untrue, as his chip caused him pain when he struck her, thus confirming that she was purely human.[21]

His story revealed his fixation with Slayers to Buffy, who had him replay his battles with the two Slayers in great detail, fights he related to “dances.” Buffy was disgusted by his desire to “dance” with her, and pushed him to the ground. Spike was visibly hurt when she told him that he was beneath her, as this was first said to him when he was turned down by Cecily Addams as a human. Equipped with a shotgun, he went to her house with the goal of killing her, but upon finding her on her back porch in tears about her mother’s illness, cast aside his feelings of anger and humiliation and comforted her for the first time.[21]

Buffy’s trust in Spike grew immensely from there; a prime example being when she left Dawn with him in his crypt after Glory “brain-sucked” Tara. While there, Dawn tearfully blamed herself for Glory’s attacks on her friends (including Spike’s torture at Glory’s hands) and believed herself a lightning rod for pain. Spike consoled her as best he could, telling her that as a vampire, he knew a thing or two about evil, and she wasn’t it. When Buffy later joined them, believing that she had managed to talk Willow down from taking vengeance on Glory, Spike quickly pointed out that Willow, being a very powerful and angry witch, would not be so easily reasoned with regarding someone she loved being hurt, causing Buffy to immediately rush to her rescue.[37]

Spike remained unaware of the Scoobies’ plan to resurrect Buffy until after the event; he returned to the Summers’ residence in search of Dawn, only to discover Buffy alive-and-well 148 days after her death.[5] He, like a few of the others, considered the possible drawbacks of such an extreme act, but later expressed that, had the spell gone wrong, he wouldn’t have let the others destroy the result if it had retained even the slightest part of the real Buffy. Unable to confide in her friends about being torn from Heaven due to guilt, Buffy began to go to Spike for comfort, who willingly accepted both the best and worst of her emotions.

With the returning of Spike’s soul came a conscience filled with guilt, both for the sins he had committed throughout his life and his more recent attack on Buffy. He couldn’t bring himself to see her for some time, and took shelter in the basement of the newly constructed Sunnydale High School, where he presumably lived on rats. There, he was tormented by both the the First Evil and his soul, and appeared to be losing his mind; he forced Buffy to leave when she discovered him, and sadly showed her that he had tried to cut out his own heart in self-contempt.

Buffy went to him and pleaded that he accompany her to the surface, telling him that he had done more than enough, but Spike remained true to his desire to die for “love, honor and all the right reasons”. He told her that he could feel his soul within him, and Buffy, saddened but accepting of his resolve, locked fingers with him in order to feel it too. She told him that she loved him, moving Spike. He, however, did not believe her and said “No you don’t, but thanks for saying it.” He forced Buffy to leave his side then, and was slowly incinerated by the sunlight. As he burned and crumbled to dust, Spike reveled in the destruction before him, glad to be able to see the fight to its end. He died closing the Hellmouth and saving the world.[53]

Spike appeared in Los Angeles 19 days after his apparent death in Sunnydale. The amulet he’d worn during the battle against the First had mysteriously been mailed to Wolfram & Hart in a parcel. When Angel opened the package, the amulet fell out and Spike materialized from a cloud of dust. Confused and afraid, he immediately attempted to attack Angel, but found that he could no longer touch anything, and had become incorporeal. At first, he complained about being brought back, stating dramatically: “Can’t a man die in peace without some high almighty deciding it’s not his time?”[54] He intended to leave Los Angeles and travel to Europe to reunite with Buffy, who was gathering Slayers there, but discovered that he was mystically bound to the city and was unable to leave its limits. He opted to stay at Wolfram & Hart in order to find a way to regain his body, and to haunt Angel, whom he still hated with fervency.

Just as Spike began to grow accustomed to his ghostly nature, a mysterious package arrived for him in the mail; upon opening it, a flash of light restored his body. Chaos concurrently erupted at Wolfram & Hart. Eve soon arrived with an addition to the Shanshu Prophecy that stated that the existence of two corporeal ensouled vampires would complicate the outcome of the prophecy, and perhaps even destroy the fabric of reality. She told Angel and Spike that an extended translation of the text revealed that, in order to restore balance, the two must compete to drink from the Cup of Perpetual Torment. The winner would be bestowed with great responsibilities and pain before ultimately having his past washed clean, allowing him to live as a human again.

Angel’s old enemy Lindsey McDonald subsequently chose to take advantage of Spike’s desire to do good by pretending to be the late half-demon Doyle and persuading him that he is destined, like Angel before him, to “help the helpless.” Alienated by Angel’s corporate, bureaucratic approach to fighting evil, Spike willingly stepped into his shoes as a hero for the people. While in business, he took on Dana, a psychotic Slayer who had escaped from a mental institution. As a Slayer, Dana was burdened by dreams and memories that were not her own, and mistakenly believed Spike to have killed her family (she was confusing other Slayers’ memories with her own). She captured and drugged Spike, and cut off his hands. The experience caused Spike to more deeply examine the nature of the evil within him; he later told Angel about Dana’s misconception that he had murdered her family, and said: “And I’m supposed to do, what, complain, ’cause hers wasn’t one of the hundreds of families I did kill?” Spike expressed to Angel that there was little hope for Dana, who had become a monster like them, but Angel responded that she was an innocent victim. Spike then pointed out that he and Angel were innocent victims too, “once upon a time.” Spike’s hands were reattached at Wolfram & Hart, after which he was instructed to play video games for physical therapy, including Donkey Kong and Crash Bandicoot.

After the Fall of Los Angeles into a hell dimension, Spike and Illyria were separated from Angel and began watching over a group of human and demon survivors. One such civilian, Jeremy Johns — despite Spike’s resistance — became Spike’s right hand man and friend. In hell Illyria soon began randomly changing back into her Fred form which left her confused and vulnerable, and Spike was forced to urge her to remain as Illyria in order to protect her. During this time he briefly considered the prospect that he had developed feelings for Fred.

While wandering the city, Spike encountered a dragon, and considered killing it until it telepathically told him that he should mount it. The dragon took Spike to the ruins of Wolfram & Hart, where he found a figure suspended inside a field of energy, writing in pain. Meanwhile, in Spike’s absence, the civilians were kidnapped by a group of strange demon warrior women. After leaving the law firm, Spike encountered one of the women, and commandeered her truck in order to rescue the hostages. He tried to run down the leader of the group, who threw Illyria (who had transformed into Fred once more) into the front of the truck; she reverted to Illyria on impact.

Spike eventually adjusted to Los Angeles’ new status as a literal hell on Earth.[57] He and Illyria both served together as demon Lords of Beverly hills, during which time it appeared as though both of them had returned to their evil roots. It was eventually revealed that their position was a facade; Spike and Illyria were secretly rescuing humans and benevolent demons and evacuating them into the care of Connor, Nina Ash, Kate Lockley and Gwen Raiden. Spike was given the opportunity to return to the side of evil again, but as always he remained loyal to the good fight, and helped Angel to bring down the other Lords’ champions when he challenged them for control of LA. Spike rallied with the rest of the gang against the machinations of Charles Gunn, who had unfortunately become a self-hating and deluded soulless vampire, and was unknowingly working under visions from the Senior Partners. He also struggled to control Illyria’s increasingly unstable powers in the hell dimension; she had continued to periodically revert to Fred’s form and gentle personality, leaving Spike with the duty of protecting her.

Spike relocated to Las Vegas with his associates, the telepathic fish Betta George and pyrokinetic Beck, where he attempted to create “Team Spike”. While there, Spike learned about Wolfram & Hart’s presence in the city, but his attempts to stop them were hampered by a confrontation with the now resurrected Jeremy Johns, who had been possessed by the liaison to the Senior Partners in Las Vegas, and a man called John. John had become romantically involved with Spike’s sire and ex-lover Drusilla, and was convinced that Spike had “stolen” his soul. He was thrown from a window, and rescued by Groosalug and his dragon, subsequently contacting Willow for additional assistance (Reasoning that his enemies would be expecting him to contact one of Angel’s team). Much to Spike’s surprise Willow was thrilled to see him and proud of his personal growth.

Wanting to come to terms with himself, Spike left San Francisco and the Slayer residing there behind and underwent an interval of highly uncharacteristic brooding. He drowned his sorrows in alcohol, and sat alone in the dark for prolonged periods of time. He even travelled to the literal “dark side” of the moon on his ship. His bugs began to worry that in such a state, he was unfit to be their master, and repeatedly tried to cheer him up. They decided that he had been spending too much time in the dark, and opted to bring him into the solarium he had built to be Buffy’s “light place”, where they had set up an artificial beach inspired by the pictures from a magazine. They also replaced the solarium skylights with necro-tempered glass that blocked the rays dangerous to vampires, allowing Spike to sit in the sunlight without being harmed.

Spike, welcoming a distraction from his constant thoughts about Buffy, agreed to meet Angel and arrived at Alasdair Coames’ place in London to discuss a strategy to defeat Eyghon the Sleepwalker and recover the body of Rupert Giles that the demon had possessed. Spike was vital to the operation because as a vampire he would be less likely to fall under the control of Eyghon. After some petty bickering with Angel, and a brief attempt to catch-up with Faith, the group which includes several London slayers are attacked by Eyghon and his zombies. Angel and Spike worked together in an attempt to capture and defeat the demon. They came very close to apprehending him, but Eyghon now more powerful in his true form overcame the demon within Spike and managed to possess him. While Eyghon failed to corrupt Angel because of the three spirits inside of him (Giles, Angelus and himself), Giles briefly dominated and managed to kill Eyghon, releasing his control over the zombies. Having regained his composure, Spike, along with Faith, noticed that Angel had become completely erratic with multiple beings with him. With the final piece of Giles’s soul, Spike and Faith were forced to come up with a new plan, considering Angel was the only person who had any clue how to restore Giles’ body.[72]

Spike can be seen as something of a paradox amongst vampires; pre-soul he exhibits many characteristics that separate him from his soulless brethren, and he very often challenges his kinds’ supposed emotional and physical limitations. He embraces certain elements of humanity, most notably love, and is exceptionally loyal. Both love and loyalty would be considered too “human” to other vampires, and would therefore be offensive. His humanity and ability to love are detected and ridiculed by the Judge when they resurrect the demon to battle Buffy. While Spike could be seen as a largely selfish individual, he has a capacity for extreme acts of selflessness and loyalty to people he truly loved and cared for even while soulless. With or without one, he displays a strong sense of honor and devotion: he doted on Drusilla for over a century, kept his promise briefly to Buffy to leave Sunnydale with Drusilla after helping her to defeat Angelus[20] (which he later broke),[21] left anonymous flowers to show his respect for Joyce Summers after her death,[81] endured intense torture at the hands of Glorificus in order to protect Dawn for Buffy’s sake,[82] continued to aid the Scooby Gang even after Buffy’s death to honor her memory, assisted Willow and Tara to raise Dawn due to his promise to Buffy,[83] chose to remain in Los Angeles with Angel’s crew after Fred Burkle’s death because he knew she would have wanted him to,[84] agreed to accompany Buffy to the abortion clinic when she believed herself pregnant,[65] and refused to leave Dawn’s side when she began to fade due to the end of magic despite Buffy venturing to the Deeper Well.[75]

Although Spike’s love for mindless destruction might suggest otherwise, he is highly intelligent and educated. He has displayed excellent skills of insight and analysis, particularly in regards to relationships, and makes regular references to literary works. He’s also demonstrated an impressive knowledge of magic rituals and items. He was easily able to discern romantic undertones in Willow’s “friendship” with Tara before her other companions, and he used his deep understanding of Riley Finn’s anxieties about Buffy to undermine him.[94] Ironically, he was often delusional about his own relationship with Drusilla, and refused to acknowledge her repeated acts of infidelity.

Spike has a punk look which strongly resembles that of English rock musician Billy Idol. His hair is platinum blonde and combed back, although previously it was a natural medium brown (unstyled) as well as dyed black in the 40s. Spike received a scar on his eyebrow from the sword of the Slayer he killed in 1900. Angel once sarcastically asked him “What color is your hair? Radioactive?”, and he has been called “Captain Peroxide” by both Xander and Angel. His nails are often painted black.

Spike usually wears long black leather coats. The first coat belonged to a Nazi officer he killed and briefly wore it. His signature leather duster was the one he took as a trophy from Nikki Wood, the second Slayer he killed. He wore the Slayer’s black duster for over twenty-five years. When the coat was destroyed by a bomb planted by the Immortal in Italy, Spike heartbrokenly declared it to be irreplaceable. However, the Italy branch of Wolfram & Hart quickly supplied him with a whole wardrobe of new, nearly identical ones which he happily began wearing.

Powers

Enhanced vampire abilities: Spike had the standard powers and vulnerabilities of a vampire; he was immortal, regenerated damage, possessed superhuman physical attributes, and had heightened senses, able to track people by scent alone. He was also vulnerable to holy items and sunlight, could be killed by decapitation and a stake to the heart, needed to regularly ingest mammal blood to maintain his vitality, and could not enter the residence of a living human without being invited by a resident. Due to his advanced age, however, he was considerably more powerful than an average vampire; he could flip over a car when angered [111], punch through an opponent’s torso [112], drain and hide the bodies of two fully grown men in a few seconds without alerting the girl they were walking with, block an oncoming blade from hitting his back by grabbing his foe and swinging her 90 degrees to the path of the blade before it could finish traveling[113], and survive a bomb explosion[114] Also, he was more resistant to sunlight and holy items than most vampires, once using a large cross as a bludgeoning weapon against Angel and withstanding the pain despite it burning his hands[115].

Advanced combat: Spike was famous for having killed two Slayers. Buffy even once went as far as referring to him as the strongest fighter the Scoobies have during their fight against the First. Spike was a highly skilled and versatile fighter in both armed and unarmed combat. For example, he was able to briefly overcome Illyria during a testing of her abilities when she is at the height of her powers; however he had been training with her for months and had adapted to her abilities so others could have achieved this as well if given the time Spike had. Illyria criticizes his (and others’) ability to adapt, calling it “compromise.”

Much like Angel, Spike was proficient in various forms of martial arts, and his typical fighting style blends Judo, Karate, Kung-Fu, and others. It’s also likely he would have knowledge of Taekwondo and Brazilian jujitsu, being able to discern them both as the fighting styles that Illyria had proficiency in, as well as Street-fighting and Boxing.

Intelligence: Spike often displayed insight and skills in perception and observation, especially with regard to relationships and personalities, so long as the relationship in question doesn’t concern him personally. This ability allows him to wield powerful psychological weapons as easily and effectively as physical ones. For example, when he wants to create disharmony among the Scoobies, Spike divides-and-conquers by exploiting tensions that exist under the surface to turn Buffy and her friends against each other.[116] He explains to Buffy that he was able to defeat two Slayers because he sensed and exploited their secret desires to be free of their burden. Spike’s skills of analysis allowed him to be the first to see through Tara’s abusive and controlling family, forced Buffy and Angel to admit that they were more than “just friends,” and identify when and why some relationships, such as that between Buffy and Riley, are not meant to last, feeding Riley’s insecurities in an effort to sabotage his relationship with Buffy so that Spike can pursue her. His analytical skills also help him in battle from time to time; for example, he identified Illyria’s fighting style as a Tae Kwon Do/Brazilian Ninjitsu hybrid.[117]

Although capable of developing sound battle strategies, Spike (particularly in the days before receiving his chip and being ensouled) often loses patience with anything more complicated than outright attack:

He is also impatient to fight the Slayer upon his initial arrival in Sunnydale; the attack is supposed to coincide with the Night of Saint Vigeous, but he “couldn’t wait” to go after the Slayer and attacks the night before, which results in the deaths of many vampires of the Order of Aurelius. However, Spike did exercise patience when he was confined to a wheelchair after a brutal battle with the Scoobies left him paraplegic for several months. Feigning weakness, he endured tortuous weeks watching Angelus sexually pursue Drusilla as he waited for the right time to strike against his rival.

Much like Angel, Spike, presumably due to his long lifetime, often displays in-depth knowledge of different demon species and other supernatural beings, being aware of Rack and surprised at Willow’s trips to his place[118] and also knowing that Wolfram & Hart represents “the worst evil in the universe.”[1] Spike has also proven to be far more intelligent than others give him credit for; for example, he quickly realizes that Angel and Twilight are one and the same.

Spike’s “vampire constitution” provides him with an extremely high tolerance for alcohol (which he regularly consumes in copious quantities).

Technical skills:Spike has shown to be significantly more competent and comfortable with modern technology than Angel; his knowledge allowed him to turn an old crypt in a Sunnydale cemetery into a comfortable home with electricity and cable television.

Criminal and motorist skills: Due to his experience in criminal activities, he is skilled at picking locks, hotwiring cars, and pick-pocketing. He is also capable of easily operating various vehicles, such as various cars, a Harley Davidson motorcycle,[5][45][119] and a Winnebago.[38]

He has also been shown using video game systems and a computer, treating injuries, and playing poker and pool.

Multilingualism: Spike is also seen speaking Latin, Luganda (a language of Uganda, where he meets the demon shaman), and the language of Fyarl Demons.

Former Powers

When Spike was transformed into a ghost-like intangible state following the destruction of Sunnydale and the Hellmouth and his subsequent materialization at Wolfram & Hart, he was capable of walking through solid objects. He was initially unable to make contact with objects around him until he learned how to focus his abilities through desire, allowing him to make brief contact with people and things if he concentrated enough. However, this ability was relatively useless in a fight, as he was unable to pick up a wooden bar to hit the demon Tezcatcatl,[120] and required a few moments to properly punch a cyborg that was strangling Gunn.

VERSES

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