Chapter Text
The evening before the battle, Spike stopped me in the kitchen, a hand on my arm. Not an imperious hand, not a brutal one– just a requesting one. I note this because I'd spent a few weeks now waiting for his revenge, waiting for that hand to reach out and grab me and make short work of me. He no longer had a chip, and he had a grievance against me.
A justified one, I suppose. I conspired to kill him. I failed.
But the hand on my arm was as humble as such a hand could be. "A word with you, Rupert?"
He was the only one who ever called me by my first name. It was either Watcher or Rupert with him, I don't know why. I suppose he meant to emphasize that, contrary to appearances, he was older than I, and could address me as an equal if he pleased. I didn't particularly like Watcher– he always said it with that extra edge– but "Rupert" was plain unnerving– too familiar. As if we were friends, or could be.
He started towards the back door, but I stopped him. "I'm not going out alone with you."
"What?" He turned back with a puzzled look. For a creature of evil intent, Spike was remarkably open-faced. I could always tell when he was lying. And now he looked honestly baffled. Then his frown cleared. "Oh, that. Right. Look, if I wanted to kill you, you'd be dead. You aren't. You're safe."
"Why?"
He shrugged. "All irrelevant now. Next time, however, do me the honor, will you, of doing it yourself? Not secretly delegating to a civilian with a grudge? I'll let you take the first blow, straight up. I deserve that much from you, after fighting beside you all this time."
I didn't know what to say. He was right, in his twisted way. "You were a danger. Still are, as far as I can tell."
"Not now. Look, I don't care where we go. Long as no one can hear."
I gave in and led the way out to the dusk-filled backgarden. Spike took a seat on the picnic table, his feet up on the bench, and reached into his pocket. He pulled out a long white envelope with my name written across the front in an unrevealing block print. He checked the seal and held it out. "If I don't come back tomorrow."
I didn't take it. "What is it?"
"You know. Final instructions."
I stared at the envelope, wondering if he'd devised, I don't know, a preferred funeral programme, perhaps an epitaph for a gravestone, not that a quickly dissipated pile of dust was likely to have a grave. Or that we were likely to be bothering with funerals. "What sort of instructions?"
"Last will and testament. That sort of thing. Disposition of my worldly goods."
"I didn't know you had any left."
"Something in storage in London. Come on, take it. Letter bomb isn't my style, you know."
I reached out and took the envelope. It was weighted on one end. With inquiring fingers, I felt out the bump. "A key."
"Yeah. Storage locker. Bookstore in Charing Cross, rents out a few boxes. I emailed him last week. He said it was all still there."
As far as I knew, Spike hadn't been in London in a decade or more. "So what's in the locker?"
"Something for Dawn. And Buffy, if she'll take it. Figure you'll be going back there soon enough, and you'll know what to do with it."
"What if I don't come back myself, and the key is lost?"
He smiled. "You'll be all right. But if you're not, the shopkeeper knows me. He'll let me at my own stuff, key or not."
I must have looked suspicious, because he added, "It's legal. Kind of complicated to sort out, but what's in there is legitimately mine. No ethical dilemmas for you."
This wasn't the sort of commission I could honorably refuse, and he knew it. "You think you won't be coming back?"
He looked out into the night. "Buffy's going to survive this time."
It was, of course, my hope too. And I couldn't help but be glad Spike was declaring his intention to die in her place if necessary. I knew why– I could hardly go on denying that he loved her, in his obsessive way. I didn't have to approve of that to be glad of his devotion, his willingness to sacrifice for her. Better he than one of the girls, at any rate, or Xander, or even I.
Still I felt awkward there, so much unspoken between us. I felt the need to speak of the future as if there would of course be a future, one that included both of us. "At some point, Spike, I would like to hear about the process you went through to get this soul. I've about abandoned all my research, but eventually I'd like to get back to it, and, well, what you did was unprecedented."
Spike just shook his head. "Unprecedentedly stupid. Didn't think it through. Now it's pretty clearly revealed as one of my many worst mistakes."
This took me aback. Regretting his soul? "Why would you say that?"
"The First Evil couldn't have taken me over, I think, if not for the soul. The demon soul, left to itself, would have resisted the domination."
"The... demon soul?"
His eyes gleamed with that bright irony. "You think only humans have souls, Watcher?"
Well, as a matter of fact....
"Don't think too hard on it, mate," he said kindly. "Otherwise you'll have to start accounting for anomalies like Dawn and Anya, won't you? Not to mention all those supposedly souled tyrants and murderers."
I said austerely, "A soul doesn't keep you from doing wrong. It only lets you know that something is wrong."
"Funny how so many souls seem to disagree on what's right and what's wrong. There are souls that think what Willow and her obnoxious little bint are doing is wrong. And souls that think killing heathens is right. And souls that don't give a shit."
Despite the impending apocalypse and all the preparations that awaited, I felt the tug of this– the chance to discuss souls and such with someone who actually thought about such things – someone like Spike. Well. Frightening thought, that in this house full of humans, it was the vampire whose insights intrigued me. But it was ever thus, Spike as provocateur, delighting in puncturing illusions and playing devil's advocate. For Spike, of course souls were stupid, and/or demons had them (stronger ones, of course), and/or souls were useless and/or weakening, and if the implications therefrom pulled down the pillars of conventional cosmology, theology, demonology, well, all the better.
I didn't agree with him, but arguing with him might be entertaining.
Too bad we didn't have time, and likely never would. If Spike– the ultimate survivor– thought he was going to die, he was probably right.
I couldn't help myself. I had to challenge him. "I'm sorry you regret your ensoulment. Still, as we approach this battle, I suspect you'll find it empowering–"
"Find it frightening, is more the case. Was thinking short-term, you know? Get the soul. Get good. Impress the girl. Forgot that damnation problem."
"Damnation?" I echoed faintly.
"Yeah. You know. Evil. Times soul. Equals damned." He was smiling again, in fact, his eyes brimmed with laughter at some joke only he was hearing.
"Soul equals redemption."
"Don't think so. Not for the evildoer. Wouldn't be much of an incentive to be good, if all redemption took was a soul, right? Nah. I've got it figured. Less'n I can lose that soul quick, I'm bound for perdition. And being as how I'm already a vampire, and can't be turned again–"
"But if you lost the soul, then you would be damned."
"Don't think so. Damnation is for the souled. Without a soul, I'd just cease upon the midnight with no pain, you know? Just cease to exist once the body's gone, and all that I was would disappear, and that would be all right with me. But now--" He broke off. "Can't get that Keats poem out of my head. Passages keep popping up. He wrote the harshest lines in English verse, I think–
Fade far away, dissolve, and quite forget
What thou among the leaves hast never known,
The weariness, the fever, and the fret,
Here, where men sit and hear each other groan;
Where palsy shakes a few, sad, last grey hairs,
Where youth grows pale, and spectre-thin, and dies;
Where but to think is to be full of sorrow
And leaden-eyed despairs–"
He spoke these words casually, as if they were part of a debate he was having in his head– word-perfect, the cadence easy and conversational. That was the puzzle that was Spike, that he'd have this poem at his disposal to comfort him or challenge him on this night of all nights. I didn't care– didn't want to know why a vampire would read a poem enough to have it memorized, or why it would be personally important to him. It was too late in our relationship to introduce such issues.
He thought he was going to die tomorrow– permanently, that is, become dust as vampires do when immortality fails. And he thought he would be damned. I wondered what hell was to him. He'd grown up when Victorian vicars were thundering about fires and eternal torment and the agonizing justice of a wrathful God. Hell would be... hell.
Would hell burn hotter now that he'd turned away from evil? Was his sacrifice all the greater knowing what awaited him?
There were no words for this. So I offered no comfort. I just rose and said, "I'll keep the envelope with me, then."
"Thanks, mate." He didn't follow me, and I looked back from the porch to see him still sitting there on the table. He was gazing at something on a chain, a piece of jewelry that glowed in the wan moonlight. To cease upon the midnight with no pain– there was something tragic in that, that last hope of his... that his best hope would be to cease to be, and that hope was lost now.
Darkling I listen; and, for many a time
I have been half in love with easeful Death,
Call'd him soft names in many a musèd rhyme,
To take into the air my quiet breath;
Now more than ever seems it rich to die,
To cease upon the midnight with no pain...
It was a few hours after the collapse of Sunnydale that I remembered the envelope. I retrieved it from under the seat in the bus but didn't open it. I didn't want Buffy to see his handwriting, to tell the truth. She seemed well enough that evening, still the general, marshalling her troops into their barracks– a seedy motel a few blocks from the hospital where we'd taken the wounded. But her control was so iron-hard, I thought it might break her, a vise tightening on her heart and throttling her spirit.
I folded the envelope up and put it into the lining of my coat. There would be time, there would be time, as Eliot said, for all the works and days of hands, that lift and drop a question on your plate. There would be time to deal with the dead once we'd dealt with the living–
We all agreed that the Cleveland Hellmouth was relatively inactive and could wait. At the end of a quiet summer spent with Angel, Buffy went off on a vision quest to Tibet, leaving Dawn in a private boarding school. The young slayers went back to their families to wait for further instructions– I didn't even want to imagine how that might turn out. I returned to London to start the impossible task of rebuilding the Council of Watchers while simultaneously trying to account for and make provisions for all the potential slayers. We would never have enough Watchers for them all, so I hoped to gather them all into a school of some sort, at least until they were trained to use their powers for good.
It was several weeks, as it turned out, before I had an afternoon free enough to fulfill Spike's last wish. There was a moment of panic before I located the correct coat and withdrew the envelope. I got myself a drink– Glenlivet, I realized, Spike's preferred whisky; he always did have liquor tastes far above his economic station– and sat down in the front parlor of my Chelsea flat to open the letter.
I just looked at the neatly typed page for a moment, letting myself remember him. I didn't want to remember him, but there you have it. There had been no funeral, no stone commemorating his passing, and perhaps this was all the memorial he would get– the occasional passing thoughts of those who were with him his last days. I realized that I had known him for ... oh, six years at least, two of them as my enemy, four as something else. We used to drink together sometimes after patrolling– that's how I knew his alcoholic preferences– but I always did my best the next morning to forget whatever drunken camaraderie we'd shared watching Manchester United or Blackadder, or discussing demon varieties, or remembering the glory days of London punk.
He was a sort of annoying constant on the periphery of my life. I relied on him to protect Dawn, to guard Buffy's back, to show up with his muscle whenever it was needed. But I never trusted him, and no matter how much he changed, I never forgot that he was a demon first and foremost.
His final action, well, I hadn't yet put it into a category yet. I knew I would have to at some point– I am cursed with a mind that must make sense of things, even when there is no sense to be made. At some point I would have to decide what his sacrifice meant about, oh, good and evil, and love and hate, and sin and redemption. And heaven and hell.
But now I just had to fulfill his last wish.
Dear Rupert: For all sorts of reasons you can guess (no identity, for one, and probably dust now, for another), I cannot do this myself. I hope you will help me. Next you're in London, will you visit the Meridian bookshop in Charing Cross and tell the shopkeeper you're there for my things? This letter and the key should be all you need.
The portrait must be worth some money. Don't worry. I didn't steal it. Or I only stole it from myself. There's a letter and a sketch inside the back wrapping should authenticate it. Your Watchers' Council's contacts must have the resources to fudge up some provenance. Could you sell it and put the money in trust for Buffy and Dawn? Don't know how that works, but you will. You can give them the money outright if you think that would be better. Don't tell them it's from me. Anonymous donor, that sort of thing. Someone whose life Buffy saved– wouldn't even be a lie. She's saved my life many times.
The book is for you, in thanks. Or as commission, whichever makes you feel more comfortable.
Yr obt servant,
Spike
I didn't open the box until I was back home again with another glass of Glenlivet. Then I cut the string with my penknife and withdrew a small painting, 12 X 18, and framed in gilt wood. I recognized the face right away– any boy schooled in England would– but didn't recognize the portrait: Admiral Nelson, a headshot, the blind eye concealed by shadow, his powdered hair light against a dark background.
I didn't know why Spike would have a reproduction of some unknown portrait of a national hero, or why he'd give it to me.
Annoyed, I set it on the desk and pulled out the gallon-sized ziplock bag containing the book. Through the cellophane, I read the words on the spine. Charles Dickens. Our Mutual Friend. Old, but in astonishing shape, the red leather smooth and unscarred.
With a careful hand, I withdrew the volume, and turned the thick pages to the publication information. First edition, 1865.
My librarian mind was already at work. It wouldn't be worth much, even in such pristine shape. A thousand pounds, perhaps. Dickens had been the most popular author in the world in his day, his every new release greeted with Beatlemaniac-like frenzy. There were hundreds of first editions of this book out there. But still–
It was lovely to hold it in my hand, to breathe in the rich smell of the leather, that sweet dusty smell of the old pages, to read the old-fashioned type, to know that the publisher had typeset this directly from Dickens's own manuscript pages.
Slowly I flipped the pages back to the frontispiece. There, in the careful cursive of a well-taught child, read, "To my beloved Mother. Christmas, 1865. Your loving son, William."
The flowing Victorian shape of the letters were marred by a slight backwards tilt, a faint fuzzing indicating a hand drawn across the ink before it fully dried. The telltale signs of a lefthanded writer.
I closed my eyes, conjuring up a moment – it was dark, some cemetery, Spike laughing as some vampire rushed at him. Buffy tossed him a stake. He twisted– an awkward move in a usually graceful man– and caught it with his left hand. I had noted then, without much interest, that Spike was lefthanded.
I touched the child's writing with a tentative finger, traced the signature. Spike's hand. William's hand.
I turned the page back to reveal the inside cover. Anne Trent Nelson was penned on the bookplate. So this was my commission. William's mother's book.
Anne Nelson. He said he'd come by the portrait legitimately. Nelson must have been a relative....
As instructed, I checked the back of the portrait and slid a careful hand in the split of the back-wrapping, snaring a packet between two fingers. There was a broken wax seal. I fitted the two pieces together to reveal a Gothic L that made my heartbeat slip just for an instant. Then, slowly, I withdrew the letter inside.
It was a receipt. Small portrait as sketched attached. Received, 300 guineas, from Robt. J. Nelson. 30 June 1804. Thos. Lawrence.
I turned over the square of parchment, saw the quick lines sketching the outline of the portrait, and underneath, in the hand I now recognized as the great artist's– after Beechey.
A Lawrence portrait of Admiral Nelson, modelled not from life but from the famous Beechey portrait. Could it be real– but it must be. Spike wouldn't have kept a fake for more than a century.
I had inherited an elderly aunt's library– this is my excuse for having both the Debrett's and Burke's Peerages on my shelf. It took awhile to find what I was looking for, as Admiral Nelson, before his military exploits, had not been of the peerage. His father had been a gentleman, in that quaint old definition, a vicar from a good family, but the genealogy wasn't as extensive before as after Nelson's ascension to the peerage. Still, I located a Robert James Nelson, the vicar's first cousin. He had a son, William, born in 1806, who had a son Robert born in 1830, and there the Peerages lost interest in this not very interesting spur of the great Nelson line.
Spike had been turned in 1880, I knew that from the Watcher records. He was, he'd told me once, 26 then. Born then in 1854. Robert's son. Another William.
So, I supposed, he was right. He'd come by this portrait legitimately enough. I wondered when the vampire would have gone back to his old house to steal the portrait, to take the book. I wondered how he had kept them all these decades, as he rampaged over Europe.
And I wondered that, having kept them all that time, he would pass them on to me. He trusted me. That was why.
And the shopkeeper part of me wondered how much the portrait was worth.
I cared nothing for the book's price, for I wouldn't sell it. Because it was Dickens. Not because it had been Spike's.
The Council of Watchers might be defunct, but its suppliers were intact. And it took only a couple weeks to work up provenance papers. A William Nelson, tragically caught in the earthquake that had consumed Sunnydale, California, a many-times removed descendant of the original purchaser, had records of storage and frame-cleaning and insurance payments dating back to the 19th Century. In his will –naming Rupert Giles, DPhil Ox. (Balliol), executor– he designated the beneficiary to be a trust for the Misses Summers, also late of Sunnydale.
It amused me to establish this William Nelson, so meticulous, so cautious, a fussy man with fussy habits and enough foresight to send the portrait and its records to his executor a year before his untimely demise. I pictured Spike with bifocals and, well, normal hair and a well-aged tweed suit and a worried expression, a Spike sans any Spike. A Spike I should not be ashamed to drink with, except that he probably would not drink with me.
I spent a month in negotiation with a private, very private, auction house, explaining the need for discretion, that the Misses Summers must not know of the sale, implying some delicate situation that I could not describe (because I could not imagine one delicate enough to suit, beyond the truth, anyway). And they purchased it outright from me, for perhaps a bit less than I might have cleared from a true auction, but a quick sale and a cheque on delivery.
I'd already set up the trust, and all that remained was to deposit the cheque and inform Buffy. Even Tibet is within email range now, with Internet cafes in the low-lying villages, and in a couple days she called me from some rich mountain climber's satellite phone. She sounded unnervingly close. "A trust? For me and Dawn?" There was relief in her voice, and skepticism.
"It's enough to pay tuition for Dawn, and for you, if you'd like to return to university. And... and a bit more."
"How much more?"
I hesitated. "Enough to buy a house. A car. But, Buffy, my dear, please don't buy a car. I value your life too greatly for that. Lease a limo with a chauffeur instead."
"You mean... thousands. Hundreds of thousands."
"Something like that."
"An anonymous beneficiary of my work."
"Yes."
She sighed, a quavery, watery sound. "At least we know Spike's share of the Great Train Robbery has gone to a good cause."
Buffy was no intellectual, but she was clever. "Why would you think it's Spike?"
"Well, I suppose it could be Angel, only I didn't save him, I killed him. And – well, I've been in worse financial straits before this, and he's never offered me money. Not that I'd accept it. So it's not Angel, is it?"
It offended me to imagine Angel getting the credit for this. "Certainly not. But I'm sure you've saved a few millionaires in your time."
"None that I know of– or know of me. And Spike– well, if he had any money, I'm sure he would have left it to me and Dawn." Another sigh. "Giles, just tell me that it's ethically all right for me to accept this. That, you know, it's not money stolen off the bodies of his victims, though really, he probably would have spent that on blood and cigarettes years ago."
Carefully I replied, "You need have no moral qualms. The... the anonymous donor came by this fund honestly. And I can vouch for his– his or her– intentions. He or she wanted only a secure future for you and Dawn."
"Thank you," she whispered, and "I have to go. Tell Dawn." And she was gone, and I thought of her huddling on some bleak mountain, handing the phone back to its owner, and deflecting questions about her tears.
But I'd hardly hung up when she was back on the line, her voice full of anguish. "Oh, Giles, I tried, I did, and I told him in the end, and he didn't believe me, and he died and his last thought was that I didn't love him."
Gently I said, "I think his last thought was that he loved you. And that he was sparing you another death. And you honor that by – by finding happiness. That's what he would want for you."
"I can't. I can't find it in me. It's lost." A moment of silence. "He had it in him. He found it easy to be happy. Maybe only for a moment– but I'd see it in him, that joy. It's so strange... he and Anya– they are the ones I think of when I think of joy. Do you know what I mean? I don't think a day went by that they didn't know a moment of joy... and they were both demons, and now they're both dead."
I thought of Spike laughing as he fought, of Anya dancing her dance of capitalist superiority– of the frightening suspicion that joy was demonic in origin.... "You have it in you also, Buffy. It's there. And he'd want you to find it." Comforting words, vague words, and yet true, or so I hoped. "Come, now, isn't that why you're on the roof of the world? To find serenity and peace and illumination through meditation?"
Buffy groaned. "I hate meditating. And Giles? Promise me when I get back, I never have to eat rice again?"
She rang off, more cheerful now, and I wondered what she had told Spike there at the end. That she loved him? And he had not believed her, she said.
Disquieted to find myself pitying him, I made my call to Dawn's room at boarding school, and told her that there would be funds for college, no matter what. I found myself awkwardly deflecting her gratitude– she assumed I was the anonymous donor– and was glad that the doorbell rang so I could politely disconnect.
A few days later I got a call from Wesley Wyndham-Pryce, informing me that the vampire Spike had returned to life, or something like that. He had been sent back for some reason that wasn't yet clear, and unable to leave. In fact, he was currently confined in manacles there at the Angel Investigation offices. "For his own safety," Wesley informed me, just in case I thought that the AI gang might get its jollies by chaining up recently re-souled and resurrected demons. "He tried to dash out into the noon sun yesterday. We're trying to determine what is keeping him here, and why he returned." Awkwardly he added, "I thought that perhaps, well, his former... colleagues might have some insight."
My first thought, after the astonishment at least, was that I was glad I'd gotten the painting sold and the trust established before he came back and revoked the bequest. Then I felt a stirring of shame. I had no reason to believe that Spike would do that. He'd died for Buffy, after all, braved hell for her–
"Did he say–" I started. "Did he say where he'd been these months?"
Wesley chuckled. "Always researching, eh, Rupert? I am rather eager to discuss just that with him. But Angel's got him sequestered. For his own good," he said hastily. He certainly wanted to make that point. "Any insights you might have–"
I suddenly wondered if Angel had approved this phone call. No, I thought not. Wesley was doing this on his own. Angel wouldn't want Buffy to know– "You want to know why he returned. Well, you know, I'm sure, that he was buried with Sunnydale. That amulet Angel brought, the one for the champion–"
"Ah, yes." Wesley invested that with a great deal of irony. "The champion."
For some reason, that annoyed me. I surmise it was that Sunnydale-LA rivalry cropping up again. Spike might have been an unusual sort of champion, not my choice by any means. But he was our champion. "Yes, he performed estimably. He held the army at bay until Buffy and Faith got everyone out. He rejected the opportunity to escape while he could in favor of destroying the Hellmouth. Buffy told me that she thought he had been burned up by the amulet's power. Perhaps this all has something to do with that–"
"The amulet, well, it was apparently harboring his essence. When it was returned to us, that's when he appeared."
"I'd suspect, then, that he was returned because he has–" it seemed so unlikely. But then, a vampire dying to save the world seemed unlikely too. "Because he has been redeemed and given another chance at life."
"Or unlife. He is still a vampire." Wesley added grudgingly, "He has a soul, you know."
"Yes. Last year, he went off on a quest and won it." I added honestly, " I do not know how to evaluate that."
"He– he won the soul? It wasn't forced on him?"
Yes, Wesley, I almost said. My champion is cooler than your champion. Instead I merely observed, "I know, quite unprecedented. But then, Spike has never been your average vampire. One of a kind, certainly." Oh, dear. Very soon I was going to be saying he was prettier than Angel and could dance better too. And I didn't even like the scoundrel.
I just despised Angel that much more.
I tried to tamp down my competitive urge and speak analytically. "There must be some purpose to his return. A reward, perhaps, for his service. But why return there? Why not to – well, there's nothing left of Sunnydale, I suppose."
"Perhaps you could– well, come collect him? He is your responsibility, rather than ours."
I grew annoyed again. "I'm quite occupied now, with the rebuilding. But I'll tell you what. Buffy will be back through California very soon. I'm sure she'll be glad to see him alive and well. And perhaps she'll be happy to take him off your hands."
It was, of course, hardly the outcome I preferred, and I suspected I would make sure it didn't occur. Nonetheless, it did score a few points in our unspoken little competition. Wesley hemmed and hawed and then said, "Well, I think perhaps Angel will want to deal with him first, save Buffy the bother. We can no doubt find some use for him. I understand he has some experience fighting?"
"A bit," I said drily. "He fought beside Buffy these last three years. Demons, vampires, hell-gods, First Evils, ubervamps.... We did get quite a lot of action in Sunnydale, you'll remember."
I like to think that Wesley was a bit chastened, no doubt remembering how Sunnydale had punctured his pomposity and taught him what real danger was. But he only thanked me and promised to keep in touch.
I hung up, wondering if I should have asked to speak to Spike. But no, I thought. He wasn't my responsibility, no matter what Wesley thought. I had discharged Spike's last request, and that was sufficient. He could expect no more of me.