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tornknees
Pairing: Spike/Fred, mentions of others
Rating: PG
Disclaimer: This is all fiction, and while I’d like to go steal me a universe and the people in it, I can’t.
Word Count: ~4, 030
Warnings: Curtain!fic, permanent injury, fluff
Summary: After Illyria and the Apocalypse, Spike seeks a well deserved retirement, and Fred doesn't complain.
You are the ever-living ghost of what once was
I never want to hear you say
That you'd be better off
Or you liked it that way
It was a strange thing, happiness. Spike wasn’t sure this was even it, if happiness was something he was even allowed to feel. The Powers that Be could be right cruel after all; but then maybe that had just been their way of getting them out of there.
It had been Spike’s decision to leave. She wasn’t getting any better staying at Wolfram and Hart. She wasn’t getting any worse, but she wasn’t getting any better.
There hadn’t been any real resistance. The halls of Wolfram and Hart were decidedly less friendly after the apocalypse. Even when actively working for the good it seemed any big business was a cutthroat one, and they could no longer count on the usual friendly faces they had once known. He’d actually even missed Charlie-boy and Percy, Lorne and even Illyria a little. Having more people, better supports, might have made the news a little different. Seeing the scans wouldn’t have been any less devastating, but maybe it would have been easier to cope. Maybe someone else would have had a better idea of how to fix things, had something to say rather than sitting in stunned silence as he and Angel had, while poor Fred asked questions and then started to cry.
Despite all the poetry that said otherwise, it wasn’t just a soul that mattered, that made a person. The body mattered too, and Illyria was no master craftsman. Spike had known that. When he’d pulled Fred out from under the desk after Illyria had split from her, she’d been skin and bones, and missing some of the internal bits that the Old One had deemed vestigial. Putting a little weight back on hadn’t been too hard, and Fred didn’t much care that the Illyria had deemed her appendix and a few vertebrae of her tailbone unimportant. It was harder to deal with finding out that the Old One had opted for sterility in order to speed up the process of crafting her a body and had neglected to include some of the reproductive organs, but being with Spike, it wasn’t as though Fred could’ve had his children anyway, and there was always adoption.
What she couldn’t deal with—what they couldn’t deal with—was the liberties Illyria took with the grey matter. Spike had thought that once Fred got her wits about her, lapsed into only the occasional bout of the crazies, that everything would be okay. After all, Fred’s insanity wasn’t permanent, Spike viewing it more like his own temporary leave of his senses after his re-ensouling, rather than Drusilla’s infinite torture induced situation. It was hard to deal with, but once Fred got through it she’d be fine and that would be that, she’d be better.
Except she wasn’t.
Even now Spike knows his girl’s got that thousand-yard stare on, can feel it in the way she lies in his arms, curled up in the glass-enclosed patio of their new home. He wasn’t too surprised. Angel had come to visit, bringing his werewolf girlfriend, and it always made things harder. There was just too much history between he and Angel, between Fred and Angel, for things to be really comfortable. The visits were few and far between, Spike made sure of it, but they couldn’t be cut out completely, even if they did leave Fred hollowed out and exhausted, though she never let it show until after Angel left. With Spike she could forget the trail of bodies that they left at Wolfram and Hart. The memories of Wesley and Gunn were too ingrained with Angel though, and she could never truly forget, even if Spike did have to remind her that they were gone.
The sky is bleeding. The sun is in the water and the sky is bleeding as the late or early stars cling to the bruised skin they peer out of. Spike can’t remember if it’s the sun setting or rising that they’re watching, can’t remember how long they’ve been sitting here, how long Angel’s been gone, just knows that it’s beautiful and so close to but also so far removed from perfection that it ties his stomach in knots and hurts his head to think on. So he doesn’t think and instead just holds Fred closer.
Illyria hadn’t understood, or hadn’t cared about the complexity of the human brain. Fred’s knowledge may have been so ingrained that it was soul deep, but it still had to travel through those neural pathways. Nerves and connections and things Spike didn’t rightly understand the whole of, just that they were essential and as unique as fingerprints, carved by experience and memories and situations that made everyone different. When Fred’s brain had collapsed as she was hollowed out Illyria hadn’t bothered to take notice of just how it had been before, which veins went where, what little ridges were connected to which little grooves or indents. So when Illyria had recreated it all, she moved Fred into a house where half the wiring was wrong or missing.
No one had noticed at first, Fred had been crazy, whether or not she remembered how to spell speculum wasn’t really an issue, and it had started slow. She knew what she’d needed to, all basic humany things required for staying alive, and all the rambling had just been attributed to her insanity, the same with her silences. If he had to tell her three times in two days that Wesley and Gunn were dead, and Lorne had left them, that was just a result of the trauma and her not wanting to remember. Spike thought nothing of it when Fred would walk into the kitchen and stop, brow furrowed as she tried to remember what she had gone in there to get. It happened to everyone, himself included.
Bit by bit though, words would escape her, stuck on the tip of her tongue and that was when Spike had started noticing. Fred didn’t forget what a speculum was called. She didn’t forget how to properly spell positron. She sure as hell didn’t forget the word for pen. But that was all easily chalked up to trauma. She’d been in sensory deprivation for months, coming down from crazy just as long. If her cage got a bit rattled that wasn’t necessarily surprising. He pushed it all aside and ignored it.
When Fred stopped him just outside the lobby of Wolfram and Hart as they were leaving one night, gripping his wrist until her knuckles were white as she turned her head this way and that he couldn’t ignore it any longer though. Not when she finally looked at him, wide eyed and frightened with her voice thin and whisper soft, Spike? I can’t remember how to get home from here.
The scans had shown dark spots.
That was all Spike knew, but he knew it wasn’t good, Angel did too as the doctor put them up on the backlit screen, then brought up a scan of a healthy brain for comparison, just proving what they both already knew.
Miss Burkle, the scans show—
Atrophy. I can still remember that word, the laugh was disparaging, tinged with a bit of panic. Talk got clinical then, the doc and Fred both tossing around words like static, progressive, idiopathic and early onset, and all Spike got from it was that they knew nothing for sure. Fred had waited for the doctor to leave before she started crying and that lump in the pit of Spike’s stomach settled itself deeper, cemented itself in place as he realised just how bad things could really be.
Pet, it’s . . . I’m sure it’s not as bad as it seems now. Bringing up the last scans, how not being able to have her own babies seemed bad but then wasn’t such a big deal, was such a bad idea that even Spike had no problem stopping the words before they came out of his mouth. With those last scans they still had options.
Spike there are holes in my brain. It’s not like the filing system just got messed up, the whole room’s burned down.
He understood the idea of that better than the word atrophy
The doctor did more tests that didn’t prove anything. He posited that Fred wouldn’t get any worse, that the scans were still showing the same thing. If nothing else, through the months of tests and scans the damage, if it was moving to other parts, was moving too slow to be seen. She might not lose anything else, or it could take years.
What she’d lost already though had been enough.
After awhile Fred didn’t really bother to try to remember on her own what she was missing. She’d ask, pick up a graduated cylinder and look to an intern who’d give her the word or what it was used for or whatever else she needed. She did enough to get by as she went to work and came home every day, but it was resignation and acceptance and it made that ache in Spike’s stomach radiate and spread. He knew she still poked at the edges of her forgotten memories, it was where the thousand-yard stare started creeping up, she’d find a hole and look into it but not really try to remember, just wallowing in the emptiness, masochistic but without the pleasure.
Illyria, with one act of shoddy craftsmanship did what Wolfram and Hart never managed to do. It sucked the life from her, the joy. It broke her. It broke them both. The handsome man couldn’t save her from this. She couldn’t save herself from this.
It turned out, vampires could get stress ulcers.
As he slowly bled out and Fred gave up, Spike made his decision. He looked for a place, for a way out. Fred didn’t put up any fight when he handed her her own letter of resignation to sign. Angel didn’t complain when he demanded the money for the down payment, and the work orders for the necrotinted glass for the cabin and to turn the open deck into a solarium.
In the weeks it took to ready everything the pain and the pall over them both got worse, though Spike didn’t truly notice until he had everything packed away and Fred waiting in the car. The empty apartment felt like a sepulchre, and he realised that it had felt that way even before it was emptied. There was no life in the place and hadn’t been in a long time, if there had ever been at all. He realised there were only two options he’d truly had, and Spike wasn’t ready for a funeral.
Dead leaves were strewn across the lawn by the time they got to the cabin, the still green grass obscured by a motley of browns and reds and oranges. Autumn was on them, the nights lengthening, the time he’d be cooped up in the cabin shortening. It was on a whim that he looked up from the raking their second night in the cabin, picking up a handful of the brightly coloured leaves and threw them at Fred.
For a moment she’d simply stared at him, the same blank look that she had too often, before there was a spark. Spike didn’t get time to revel in the victory of seeing her smile for the first time in weeks because as soon as he glimpsed it, he had a flurry of damp leaves in his face. When she kissed him, later in the scattered remnants of their pile with mud and rot on their hands and leaves in their hair, he realised just how long it had been.
It finally felt like he could breathe again.
In their cabin the life that had been missing in his apartment started coming back. Spike was surprised to find that, not only did their little cabin have neighbours, but it had neighbours he actually liked. It was a good thing, since Fred with all her sweet southern charm insisted on hosting them all, making introductions and fast friends.
He didn’t even mind hosting the retired hunters three cabins down, and so long as he didn’t mention that their little poofy love affair was also an incestuous poofy love affair—he could smell the familial relationship there—they didn’t have too much issue with what he was. After all, at least you don’t sparkle.
He found out that he wasn’t the only vamper around the lake anyway, not even the only one living with a human girlfriend. They were of completely different lines he learned, different species—and he also learned arguing with a Viking about the true definition of a vampire and just being a demon was an effort in futility. He did get to revel in the fact that he could be awake in the daytime without bleeding from the eyes, even if he did run the risk of wearing his game-face permanently if he ever got as old as Eric. He didn’t have to worry about his insides becoming his outsides if he was ever staked either, just easy, clean ashes and dust. He made a tidy little commission for helping outfit their home with necrotinted glass too, so all in all he considered things fairly even. Besides, so far as Spike was concerned, his girl was prettier.
Fred certainly smiled more now that they were out here, out in the country with fresh air and people she liked. She was better. She wasn’t healed, and Spike wasn’t expecting any miracles, but she was better. All the weight that Illyria hadn’t bothered to give her she had gained back, though she was still just a slip of a thing. The place had breathed life back into her, giving her a glow that had nothing to do with the tan she boasted now that all her time wasn’t spent locked away in a lab, was more than just the usual human warmth he could feel soaking into him even through the layers of clothing as they lay stretched out on the cushioned deck chair.
It wasn’t perfect of course. Fred still forgot plenty of things, and if it wasn’t necessarily worse it was always different. He never knew just what she’d forget, what would catch her off guard, and he knew others could tell. Mostly they minded their own damned business, but they noticed, that much was clear.
“I’ll . . .” Fred trailed off, brow furrowing slightly in confusion as she looked around the table for a moment. There was recognition when her eyes landed on Spike, but their guests, the set up of the dinner table seemed to utterly escape her as she stood up from the table, her empty plate in hand.
Spike wasn’t sure just how to fill in the blanks subtly, though thankfully he didn’t have to.
“Oh Fred, let me help with the dishes. It was so nice of you and Spike to have me and Eliot over for dinner.” Spike didn’t bother to hide his gratitude as the other woman filled in at least some of the blanks as she picked up her own dish to help Fred clear the table and usher her into the kitchen.
Spike did his best not to get poetical about it, but honestly he hadn’t really seen the draw of the quiet, scarred up woman before. He hadn’t quite fathomed the devotion he saw in Eliot when they were together, the fact that even though the other man insisted he didn’t live on the waterfront, had a place down in Portland, Spike had never seen him leave for more than a weekend either, not in the months since he and Fred had moved. He knew there was a story there, knew there was some attachment that was more than skin deep but he never truly had looked beyond the heavy scars that covered her arms and he assumed her torso, the one that split her lower lip in half in a way that would have been alluring if it was natural, or the scar above her eyebrow. Still, for a moment the girl was almost as beautiful as Fred as he watched both women walk away, hearing Fred laugh as dishes clattered into the sink and the faucet turned on. For a moment it reminded him of Drusilla, no one ever understanding what Spike had seen in her. Not even Angelus could see the beauty of her, even if she was his greatest work. It reminded him of Fred. The girl had scars, a story Spike couldn’t even begin to fathom, but it didn’t take anything away from her beauty, not how it mattered. Fred forgot things, got a little lost sometimes, but that didn’t change a damned thing. She was still the scary brilliant bird who’d thought him worth saving, and he’d spend the rest of her life trying to prove her right.
“That much of an early onset.. . trauma?”
Spike couldn’t help scowling a little as he looked away from the kitchen’s entryway and the girls’ quiet conversation to the other man. It wasn’t a question, and Spike hated him a little for not letting the moment pass the way it seemed to between the two girls, easily forgotten and gracefully swept aside.
“It’s a very distinctive—“ Eliot cut himself off, shaking his head slightly as he picked up his beer and drank, knowing the defense wasn’t needed or wanted, the conversation a touchy one. “Look man, it’s . . . I get it. You can’t protect them from everything, ‘least that’s what they’ll try to tell you.” Spike knows that flash of guilt all too well as Eliot’s attention shifts to the kitchen before forcing himself to look back at Spike, regret clear in his eyes even if his face gives nothing away. “You an’ I both know you shoulda though, and that’s for us to shoulder. Sometimes, even half a second too late and it’s like you were better off never showing up at all. I don’t know what happened. I don’t think I want to know. But, I get it. And we’re here, if you need us.”
Spike’s jaw ticked, wanting to be annoyed, tell the wanker to sod off, tell him he and Fred were just find, thank you very much. Except he had seen the scars, and he knew the look of guilt, of regret, all of it hitting a little too close to home. They’d both been too late and now ? Now . . .
Fred never had to go to the grocery store alone anymore, either Eliot or his girl going along with her, sometimes even Sookie willing to tag along, make sure everything went alright. Spike didn’t even lose daytime sleep over it anymore, knowing that Fred was cared for. No matter where she ended up going, Fred always came home safe, even when Spike wasn’t able to make sure of it himself.
He wanted to be suspicious. The hunters thought it was a little strange, having so many people from such questionable backgrounds in one place, but no one looked into it. Dean was a man after Spike’s own heart in some ways, and every time Sam brought up how it seemed a little odd that two vampires, hunters, an old demon’s vessel and a fairy ended up retiring to the same area, not to mention whatever Eliot was, Dean was quick to shut down the train of thought. What mattered was that they’d all found peace, and Dean was just too tired and sore most days to look the gift horse in the mouth. Instead they simply looked after each other, and it was good enough.
“Spike?”
He thinks he must have dozed off, the sky brighter than it had been before. Sunrise then. He makes a noise in the back of his throat, shifting just a little in the deck chair to watch the silhouette of the side of her face, the flutter of her eyelashes as she shifts her gaze from the glistening water to some point near their feet.
“I can’t remember how we met . . .”
It would hurt, except Spike knows their meeting wasn’t anything special. Flash of light, failed attempt at attacking Angel, and presenting ghosty Spike. Beyond the ghost part it was nothing really to write home about. He doesn’t blame her not remembering, would almost welcome it if it weren’t for the why of it all.
“It was in LA, a few years back. Was dark, down by the pier. Newly in town, I was, just mindin’ my own business after savin’ the world from the apocalypse, lookin’ for a little vacation,” he can’t help the small smile that curls his lips as he thinks back on something that never was, just an idea of what he almost wishes it could have been as he looks at their own waterfront. He can hear the distant call of a loon in amongst the reeds on someone else’s beach. “Heard this scream, lotta splashin’. Found you all beset upon by a nasty group of demons, your old beau pitched into the sea. Personally, think he dove in to escape and left you to slow ‘em down. Ran pretty fast when he hit shore again. I swept in and saved the day, though y’were holdin’ your own all right if I remember correctly. Still needed your dear old Spike though. Been together ever since.”
He can feel her laughing before she makes a sound, little body vibrating in his arms before the peal of laughter hits her lips. He’d be insulted but he’s grinning too. He’d tried for ideal and it just all sounded wrong. Somehow a ghost from a locket made more sense.
“That is not how it happened”
“How do you know? You can’t remember what happened.”
Fred wrinkles her nose a little as she tilts her head up from where it’s been resting against his shoulder for who knows how long. Most of the night and part of the morning at least, not that it matters when he really hasn’t got much in the way of circulation, doesn’t need to worry about body parts going numb or falling asleep. Everything wakes up anyway when she brushes her lips against his, reaching up to card his fingers through her hair, keep her from going too far when she pulls away. She doesn’t go far anyway, just nestles back in with her head tucked in beneath his chin as she goes back to watching the lake. He thinks he can see the loon with a clutch of chicks huddled close skimming along the surface from some feeding ground to another, though they’re only specks on the eastern shore, even to his eyes.
“Sometimes, I think we’ve always been here.”
It would be a nice idea, and he almost wishes it were true, or that he could forget what brought them here. All the pain and the death and the doctors. Spike’s had over a hundred years of it, in one form or another, and he’s tired. He also knows that they never would have gotten here without it. Fred would still be down in her lab, seeing Wesley and Spike . . . he’s really not sure just what he would have done.
Feeling the sun soaking into his skin, Fred warm at his side and against his chest, he can watch the world wake up and spring unfolding on the lake and in the trees. He doesn’t know where else he might have ended up. He doesn’t want to know.
“We were other places pet, but I think this is where we were always supposed to be.”
It’s not perfect, but Spike thinks it’s as close as anyone’s ever gotten. Maybe it’s not perfect happiness, but it’s close enough for Spike.
But no one is ever gonna love you more than I do
No one's gonna love you more than I do
