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| a.connor a.doyle a.lindsey a.oz a.spike a.wesley a.xander a.other three.somes het.fic character.study |
| Title: Five Things Spike Does with Angel's Ashes. Author: Lyrstzha Rating: PG 1) Spike is lunging towards Angel as the final beheading stroke leaves only a whirlwind of dust. He passes straight into that riot of ash, blinking furiously as it fills his eyes and brings up welling, grey tears. Spike, who has never been good at remembering that he doesn’t need to breathe, inhales a deep lung-full of Angel, coughing as his throat is coated in carbon. The ashes dust fine over his skin and in his hair, slipping beneath his clothes as he fights. Later, he finds himself thinking that Angel feels less itchy against his flesh than he would have expected; it doesn’t seem right. He keeps meaning to wash Angel off of him, but somehow it ends up being a week before he actually does. He tells a disdainfully fastidious Illyria that this is simply because he’s very busy and can’t be bothered with such trifles. 2) Before he leaves the battleground, Spike gathers up all the ash he can find, and even shakes some out of his hair onto the pile. The ash is a bit damp from the slightly rain-slicked pavement, and it turns more than a little mud-like against Spike’s scraping hands. He takes this mud back to their motel room, spreads it like paste over the top of the wooden bureau, and leaves it to bake to dryness in the sunlight beneath the window. This feels appropriate, even if it means that he has to be careful to stay on the shadowed end of the room all day. 3) When they leave the motel, Spike puts the ashes in the ice bucket he steals from their room and brings them along. He isn’t sure what to do with them, and Illyria could quite obviously not care less. “It is only the remains of his vessel. It no longer contains his essence,” she says, staring at Spike with her flat blue gaze. “You half-breed creatures have never understood the true scope of immortality; you wear it like borrowed finery that does not fit. It matters not what manner you dispose of this pathetic handful of dust.” Spike makes noises like he agrees, but he keeps packing the ice bucket back into the trunk every time they move on anyway. 4) On their meandering way to Cleveland, they run across Dru in a roadside bar somewhere in Kansas, of all places. Spike cannot imagine what she could possibly be doing there except lying in wait for them, unless she’s been reading The Wizard of Oz again. He lures her outside into the parking lot, where he means to stake her, but she looks at him with wide, weeping eyes, and reaches out a hand to brush his cheekbone. “Drifted over you like snow, he did. Cold and white and quiet. I can see him on you still.” She leans closer, her dark lips moving almost against Spike’s ear. “Little snowflakes caught in your eyelashes. All yours to carry now, all yours. Greedy Spike.” He gently pulls her hand from his face, opens the trunk, and takes a pinch of ash from the ice bucket. He leaves it in her cupped palm; she’s still family, and she has as much a right to Angel as he does. When they drive away, she is still standing motionlessly beneath the flickering halogen light in the parking lot, her clenched hand cradled against her unbeating heart. 5) When they get to Cleveland and settle into an apartment in the city, the ice bucket takes up residence in Spike’s room under the bed. It lurks there like a guilty secret, like a forbidden stash. He pretends to forget that it’s there. It takes a few months to learn the lay of things in this new Hellmouth, but they gradually build up contacts, enemies, resources. Well, mostly Spike handles the contacts, because Illyria is still not winning any awards for her charming social graces. She does, however, do her fair share on the making enemies front. One of these contacts is a talismonger, who forges some of her wares from steel. After doing her a good turn with regards to the neighborhood demon protection racket, Spike has a few words with her one night. He brings her Angel’s ashes, and she mixes them into a crucible full of white-hot molten steel and forges him a rather nice sword. It holds its edge no matter what, and it doesn’t break, not even if Spike hacks full-force at the stony carapace of a Mer’shk!all with it. “More use than you ever were before, not to mention easier to handle,” Spike tells the sword. “Damn sight sharper, too. Hope you appreciate how fittin' it is that I had Shaelan make you into a bastard sword, you bugger.” But still he polishes it meticulously to mirror-brightness every day, and it sleeps sheathed beside him during the sunlit hours with its hilt curled in his hand. -End Feedback |