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Author's note: This scene takes place after the last episode of BtVS...
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Spike looked around... huh, this was weird.
Okay, he thought - backtracking. We left Buffy's and drove down to the high school. I was wearing that bloody...
Necklace.
Spike remembered now. He had worn the rock like a champion... He'd saved the world and died a hero. Also, he was pretty sure, he had bitten his tongue as he set on fire, because the taste of blood was still fresh in his mouth. It was a distinctively metalic taste - and he didn't like it. He thought that it was something like how blood must have tasted to a human... not a trace of the sweetness he was used to. And if that hadn't been odd enough, he realized something else....
His lack of knowledge as to where in the bleeding hell
"Am I?" He added out loud.
There was no answer. Only Spike's deeply accented voice carrying back to him, after having bounced off some far away, unseen wall. There was nothing around him that he could see. Just a great big expanse of white nothingness that seemed to go on forever. He was alone - and there was only silence (except for spike's consistant inhaling and exhaling... something that would also have struck him as being very odd had he noticed). Spike creased his forehead and scratched the back of his neck.
Maybe this was hell.
An eternity of this blank canvas of a place would certainly suck a bit. It would drive him completely sixes and sevens just *after* getting bored got boring. And the worst part...
He would never see Buffy again.
She had told him she loved him. *Finally*. After three excrutiatingly painful years... she had finally spoken the words. He knew she hadn't meant it... not in the way that he had always wanted her to mean it in any case. In a way... it was better like that though. How else could he have let himself do what he knew he had to do if he had really thought that Buffy loved him the way he had loved her? ... But he appreciated the gesture all the same. Buffy cared for him, perhaps even loved him as she loved Xander or Willow... and that meant the world to him. And that made what he had to do easier. His whole existance had led up to that moment.
Redemption.
"No, you don't." He had said to her. He had meant no malice or resentment by it... and he knew that Buffy knew that. "But thanks for sayin' it." Buffy understood... and she had said nothing else. Just held his hand. Maybe there hadn't been true love between them... but there had been something. Fire. There had always been fire...
And then she was gone. She had to be gone. She had to live in the new world. Spike had to stay...
To destroy the old one.
And so he did... presumably. He let it all come back to him, moment by moment. He had been so scared, he remembered now... but Buffy's words had given him the last bit of conviction that he needed. He was making everything better for her... and he was taking Sunnydale down with him (and that was gratifying on many, many, what the hell... *many* levels). There had been a lot of crumblings and rumblings... as though he truly was inside the belly of the beast...
"I want to see how it ends." He had said... the sheer perfection of the moment - of his soul actually pumping his dead heart, blood coursing through his veins was overwhelming. He had beaten the bastards. It was the greatest feeling anyone or anything could ever have experienced. Victory. Redemption.
Then death.
He could still feel his insides boiling... the skin burning off his bones... He could feel it all. Being set on fire didn't exactly tickle... but the pain had been worth it. Hell, his had been one of the coolest deaths he had ever seen... and he had seen quite a few. Yet...
Now he was here. Wherever the hell *here* was. He had pretty much decided it was not hell. He had paid for the world with his life, and somehow he just couldn't believe that had been just so he could go to hell with a clear bloody conscience. No. This was some place else entirely. Spike swallowed. Could this be...
"Heaven?" A decidedly female voice said from behind. Spike turned around to face the owner of the voice abruptly.
What the hell?
"Anya?" Spike asked - more than just very surprised.
"Yeah," she said, and sounded a little annoyed. "And this isn't heaven." Spike furrowed his forehead.
"How did you--"
I can hear your thoughts, Anya said without moving her mouth. Spike's forehead uncreased, and he shrugged in indifferent acceptance. "And besides... what moron from any lower class species wouldn't wonder if this is a demention of heaven?"
".. Which it's not.."
"No." She said. "It's not." Spike didn't have to ask how she knew... because somehow... he knew too. He could feel it. It definately wasn't hell... but now, it definately wasn't heaven either. It was somewhere in between. And not how earth was somewhere in between... This was something much different. But, Anya said without saying anything as she looked around. We *are* dead.
"That's not exactly news...or *new*. I've been dead for a while, love." He looked around as well. "Although this is a bit more dead than I'm used to." Anya looked back at him.
"What are you whining about?" Spike looked confused.
"I wasn't--"
"You got this whole glorious hero's death. With the practically saintifying light--"
"Saintifying, li-- Look, Anya, I--"
"--The proclamation of love." She continued, not hearing Spike. "Maximus - the savior of freaking Rome. And what did I get? *Tucker's* brother, and a knife in the back, that's what. So, you had sex with the slayer a few times. Woop-dee-freaking-doo. Why does that earn you the light show?!" Spike could see the whole thing clearly through Anya's eyes as she remembered it. He could see why she would feel a little short changed.
"I died alone." He said, as though it would be some kind of consolation.
"Yeah, but you died happy." She said, receding a little.
..So did you.
Anya was silent. She took a deep breath. Yes... she had died happy. She had died fighting for something greater than herself. Spike sensed that she did not want to admit this, so he shrugged.
"Anyway... I knew I was going to die." He said. "The night Wood tried to kill me. I was talking to Buffy, and I just knew." He paused, and then: You knew too, didn't you?
Anya nodded - relenting. She looked at Spike.
"When I was talking to Andrew while we were getting stuff for all the mortaly wounded back home... I kind of knew then." She paused. "But it really hit me... when I was on the ground bleeding from one cut on both sides..." Spike smiled, and then... so did Anya.
"Well," Spike said. "We managed to beat back the apocolypse again." And then, as an after thought: And we turned sunnydale in to the world's largest kitty litter box.
"I don't know about you, but that was always a hidden agenda of mine."
"It was a definate unchecked box on my to do list." He took a deep breath. "So... any ideas as to where this is, instead of where this isn't?"
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