Disclaimer and Author's Notes: The characters of
"Angel" don't belong to me. They belong to Joss
Whedon, Mutant Enemy, and some corporate bigwigs. I'm not making any
money off of this; it's
written strictly for entertainment--mine and yours. I don't have
permission to use them, but I promise
I'll put them back when I get done.
This was written in response to a challenge at the LJ Community
Church of Spike, delineated at the end
of the fic.
Indispensable, Exquisite Cats
Gunn couldn't believe it. He'd shot a ninety-two on the golf course
that morning. Ninety-two! He
hadn't played that badly, ever. Even in his first game. The download
was slipping, the Big Black Cat
was gone, and he had nowhere to turn.
The Conduit. He needed to talk to the Conduit. That would make
everything all right again. It
always did. But how to get it back? The White Room had reappeared, but
somehow its utter
emptiness was eerier than the howling abyss had been. There had to be
some ritual he could perform,
some sacrifice he could make.
Wes would know. But he couldn't consult him. Because then Wes would
ask uncomfortable
questions. Wes would go to Angel. They already felt skittish about his
new skills; the idea that he
wanted to make some mojo to bring back the Cat would only freak them
out more.
What about...he reached for an errant thought. Files and Records?
She was a scary chick, but
she knew everything about everything. Sure. She'd have the info.
He didn't see the smile she allowed herself after he left her part
of the basement.
***
It was always blood. In this case, he needed the blood of a former
lover, mixed with the blood
of her current paramour. So. Fred. That part was easy. But who was she
seeing now? Not
"Knoxy"--she'd been totally dissing him the other day. Not Wes. No
matter what he felt about her,
she was oblivious. He wasn't even a blip on her radar screen.
Spike. Gunn had seen the looks they exchanged, the subtle little
signals they thought no one
else caught. Oh, yeah. They had a thing for each other, all right.
Getting them into the White Room was laughably easy. Tell the one
the other was in trouble. Cold-cock them in the elevator. Going up. Not
coming back down. Sorry, Fred. I loved you once. Sorry, Spike. I like
you, dude, but I just can't function like this.
***
Spike came back to agonizing consciousness, slowly becoming aware
that not only was he
bound, he was bound to somebody. Fred, he sensed before opening his
eyes. He lay on his right side,
and she lay on her left, facing him. He couldn't move at all, some
spell or other keeping him still. She
was out cold, blood congealing on the side of her face. Knee to knee
and ankle to ankle, they were
fastened together. Her right wrist was between his, and his left wrist
was between hers, tied up.
It didn't take much thought to realize where he was, although he'd
never come in here before,
even as a ghost. But, in addition to Fred's soap and blood, he also
smelled oddly-scented candles, and
herbs. When he realized that they were inside a huge pentagram drawn on
the floor, a light went off in
his brain. Dark Magic.
He knew Gunn was there, even though he was out of Spike's vision.
"Charlie? Can we talk
about this, mate?"
"No." Gunn's voice, desperate and sad, sounded behind him. "I have
to do this, Spike. Don't
make it any harder than it is." Footsteps faded across the room, and
the elevator doors hissed open,
then shut.
"Freddikins? Wake up, kitten."
She moved her head and moaned. "Spike? Hurts..."
"I know, pet. I don't think our Charlie's quite right in the head.
Get that big brain of yours to
work on how we can get out of this. I don't like our chances
otherwise."
He didn't like their chances at all, actually. Fred's eyes were
unfocused and muzzy, and he
was afraid she had a concussion. He kept her talking, asking her inane
questions and becoming
increasingly terrified at the answers. Freddi was barely there; Charlie
had obviously hit her harder than
he intended.
Spike's internal clock told him that midnight was nearing when the
elevator doors swished open
again. A pair of Armanis stopped by their heads, and Gunn knelt down
next to them, a ceremonial
stiletto in one hand and an ornate goblet in the other. "Sorry about
this." Gunn's voice was all the more
chilling for its bleakness.
And now Spike saw the reason for the odd positioning of their
wrists. Gunn picked their arms
up, put the goblet underneath, and, with one smooth motion, stabbed the
stiletto clear through all four of
their wrists together, mingling the blood that pumped out into the cup.
Still frozen in place, he could
only watch helplessly as Gunn stood up and drank the contents of the
chalice.
The results were appalling. Gunn threw back his head and howled,
then began changing before
Spike's horrified gaze. His ears became pointed and elongated, his eyes
transformed to something that
would be better suited on a venomous snake, and his muscles expanded
while he grew taller, tearing
out of his suit.
Spike suddenly realized he could move. Using all his strength, he
popped the bonds holding his
knees, ankles, and wrists together, enfolding Fred protectively and
rolling them both out of the way,
while the monster that Gunn had become roared over their heads.
He hadn't heard the elevator doors open again, but a fusillade of
gunfire told him that someone
had come to their rescue. What was left of Gunn screamed once, crashed
to the floor, and lay still, a
pool of yellow blood congealing by his head.
Spike looked up to see Wesley, a large gun smoking in each hand,
standing over them. "Thanks, mate. Wish you could have gotten here a
bit sooner."
"The building psychics just now started going crazy. We came as
soon as we found the
source."
Spike stood up, cradling Fred like a child. She was still mostly
out of it, but aware enough to
say, "Spike saved me from the monster." She smiled, reached up, and
kissed him softly on the lips,
before falling back and fainting.
***
He locked himself and Fred in Angel's office, after getting her
patched up in the infirmary. While she slept on the couch, he broke
into the private stash of Irish whiskey. He needed a drink after
watching Charlie almost turn himself into the Conduit. Halfway through
his second bottle, he began
rummaging through the desk drawer, looking for the phone number he just
knew had to be in there. Angel the technophobe would never use a PDA or
anything like that to store information. Ha. There it
was.
Three rings. "Hello?"
"Buffy? This is Spike." His words slurred a little. "I know you
think I'm dust at the bottom of
a crater, but I'm not anymore, and I just wanted to say, we are so
over." Spike looked over at Fred,
drowsing peacefully like a little brown tabby cat. Fred, who had kissed
him and was grateful to him for
saving her. Fred, who had always treated him nicely. "I've found
someone else. So, you can have
your happily-ever-after with Peaches, and I wish you all the best.
Goodbye." He hung up while she
was still sputtering on the other end, and made his way unsteadily over
to Fred. Sitting on the floor next
to the sofa, he pushed her hair out of her face and watched her sleep.
The Challenge: I went outside the length
parameters, because no matter how I trimmed it down, I
couldn't get it to 1000 words. Sorry. To be brief, the challenge was to
find out through a meme what
your ideal episode of "Angel" would be like, and write a ficlet based
on that, taking as many or as few
elements as you liked--as long as Spike was a character. My ideal
episode looked like this:
Angel looks very pretty
Wesley shoots two guns. TWO.
Spike calls Buffy in a drunken haze and says they
are SO over
Gunn goes over to the dark side. Way over.
Fred sticks to a previously-demonstrated skill set
Harmony notices a clue everyone else overlooked
Lorne re-re-opens a nightclub
...and this is what came out. Feedback rocks my world.
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