Title: Fall Into Life
For: licenseartistic
Prompt: Picture 2
Character: Spike
Pairing: Spuffy
Word Count: 1119
Rating: A UK 12 or 15, depending on how sensitive you are. Some violent references.
Note: What if the amulet in Chosen hadn’t been sent to Wolfram and Hart after Spike sacrificed himself? And what if it had the power to do more than bring back his ghost?



In the beginning – in the end – there had been darkness after light, and the fall. The pain had been brilliant, coruscating, a stream of light that made his soul scream, and he had felt both ecstasy and terror and an agony that was never ending but also momentary. Then there had been darkness, and silence, and the feeling of falling forever and ever.

Time had no meaning where he was, nor form. It was not hell, he didn’t think; there was no fire, no torture. Only this sense of falling ever downwards – or it could be upwards, it was hard to tell – and the darkness. And his thoughts.

Being left alone with his thoughts. Yeah, maybe that was hell. Though he was beginning to think that maybe it was purgatory. Looks like the Catholics had got something right, after all.

And then something tugged him back. He could feel it pulling at the insides he didn’t have, a distant feeling at first, then stronger. He was hooked like a fish, and the hook bit. He screamed soundlessly into the dark as he was pulled up and up, and he snapped back hard into…

…His body, reforming, growing bones, organs, sinews and muscles and veins branching painfully over his new skeleton, a whole new body created out of nothing in a moment of eternal agony. As his face and hair grew back he coughed up blood and passed out into blissful darkness.

When he awoke it was still dark. And he was thirsty. Hunger tore at his new belly, and he moved around in the dark, his reformed eyes adjusting to the light. He could see rock. Lots of it.

“Shit,” he said after a minute, his voice hoarse. He was under the bloody town, wasn’t he? The amulet lay beside him, gleaming softly in the dark. “Thanks a sodding lot,” he said, tossing it to one side. He didn’t know how or why it had brought him back. All he knew was that it had done so in a rather inconvenient location.

Sighing, he stood, crouched in the small pocket of space in which he had been resurrected, and began the slow, slow process of burrowing his way out of the rubble.

Time passed. He had no idea how long. He was constantly hungry. At times he felt himself slavering, dreaming of blood. In the ruins he found small crawling things. They afforded only a sip of blood, but it stopped him shrivelling completely. He worked constantly, pushing up through the rocks, tearing them out with his bare hands. At night he would fall asleep curled up in his tunnel, too exhausted to dream, and when he awoke, mouth drooling at the scent of blood, he realised he had been smelling his own wounded hands.

Eventually he reached the surface. He could see the daylight only a few feet away from him. That was the horrible irony of it. Freedom so close, but he couldn’t go into it! That day lasted longer than all the other days put together. Eventually night came, and he dragged himself out of the hole. At the edge of the crater he looked back and marvelled.

“I did a right job on that town,” he said, and wished for a smoke. Instead he trudged wearily down the highway, hoping he would find somewhere to stop before daylight.

He found a petrol station and stopped, weaving in the road. The smell of human bodies was overwhelming. He had half-killed the gas attendant before he recoiled, horrified at what he had done. With painful, clawlike fingers he tapped three digits into the phone behind the counter. Asked for an ambulance in a voice as dry as dust. Then, walking with arthritic legs, he took the teenager’s car and drove for miles. At daybreak he slept in the trunk.

It took a few days before he was capable of trying to find out what had happened to her and the others. It didn’t take too much effort. The demon bars were buzzing with news of the new slayers.

“At least the bitch headed overseas,” said a horned demon, snorting furiously into his beer.
“Overseas?” he asked, raising his eyebrows.
“Yeah. Rome, I think. Looking for La Dolce Vita or whatever,” said the demon sarcastically. “Why, what do you care?”
But he was already gone, out into the night and driving his car to the nearest airport.

There was a lot of crime involved in getting onto the plane. Stealing of money and so on. He didn’t feel guilty; all he could feel was the remorseless, endless need to get to her. He wasn’t sure what he expected from her. Didn’t think it mattered. He just needed to be near her. That was all he had ever really needed.

In the hold of the aeroplane, he lay in the windowless dark and cold with the luggage of a hundred holiday makers’ adventures. They stopped in London, and he was sorely tempted to get out and have a look around. It had been far too long since he’d been home, if he could call it home any more. But his need to see her was too pressing, too painful, to allow for delays. At last they landed in Rome, and as the luggage was unloaded he slipped away into a cold Italian night.

It was freezing here; unseasonably cold, they said, and there was snow scattered on the streets. It didn’t bother him; indeed, it had been so long since he’d seen snow that he felt vaguely delighted somewhere inside a part of him that wasn’t bloody and bruised and exhausted.

Various enquiries told him where he might find her. It was early evening, and since it was winter he’d have several hours to look. He walked all night, not paying attention to his exhaustion. He’d been tired forever, it seemed, and he wasn’t going to let that get in the way of finding her.

At last he picked up her scent. He hurried as the scent grew stronger, walking through a park and down a snowy embankment, leaving footprints behind him. She was only a few metres way, walking briskly across an icy bridge. He could see only her blonde hair above a tightly belted jacket, her dark trousers smudging into the night. He tried to call out her name, but found his voice had abandoned him, and as he reached the foot of the bridge, his legs gave way too. He fell softly, with barely a sound, his cheek scraping against the icy ground.

She turned instinctively, hand already reaching for her stake. For a moment it seemed she didn’t recognise him, and then her eyes widened and the stake dropped out of her hand and rolled along the ice. She put one gloved hand on the iron railing of the bridge. She might have stood there forever if he had not started slowly, painfully, crawling towards her, and then she rushed towards him, dropping to her knees and lifting his head, taking his hands, making a soft, horrified sound as she saw how they had become claws of scab and bone.

“I came back, pet,” he said hoarsely, dropping his exhausted head into her lap.

“Spike,” Buffy said, holding his broken hands between her own, her voice trembling. “Spike.”