Spikeid XI

[quinara]

You knew it was coming! brutti_ma_buoni has absolutely rocked in getting these back to me, so the end is essentially nigh. Cheers for the fabulous beta, BMB! This book is about 4400 words (~570 lines) and has big warnings for death and violence.

Gunn and Illyria deal with their counterparts.

[X]

XI

      Gunn hasn’t been quite sure what he should say
Now they’ve arrived in this bewitched world;
He hasn’t known exactly how to say
Which memory the spell has pulled from him
To represent this place. He doesn’t know
How he’d describe the twist inside his gut
Wrenched tight and sharp to see the others cast
And walking there beside him, in the halls
And offices of their Wolfram and Hart,
Their branch the way it was before all this.
He’s still himself, his hoody and his sweats,
His chair, they’ve all come back with him, but here,
In this their lobby he’s got everyone
With him – with Buffy as Cordelia,
Perhaps not perfectly belonging, but
Familiar as she cracks jokes and smiles
And keeps an eye on Angel, who is Spike,
Whose gait and energy are not so far
From Angel’s at the end as you would think.
And there with them, with him as well, of course,
Is Fred, returned and solemn, though a smile
Glints from her sweet brown eyes. Somehow his mind’s
Remembered just how beautiful she was,
Despite the fact he’s long since found it hard
To dream of how she used to look before
Illyria distorted everything.
      It’s strange, it’s really strange to be with them
So casual in the lobby, at their side
The portal glistening with liquid light,
A wide and gaping circle on the floor
As nameless techs in coats are standing by,
All carefully applying sacred dust
(Or chemicals?) in scientific signs
Around its edge, some sanctioned magic spell
To break the stitches, shut the portal closed.
The suit who’s not a suit, the dragon-man,
Was leading them beyond the entrance desk
Towards the elevators, Gunn assumes
To find the White Room and the Conduit,
The stairs that he remembers disappeared
Apparently without him noticing
(Illusion is not fixed in permanence),
But then, of course, the panther exited
The elevator they’d just called, and now
It’s prowling by their sides, turns them around
To face the portal once again. Its voice
Is just as Gunn remembers it, the sly
And slow, persuasive crawl inside his brain,
The way it was before the Conduit
Became himself and called him insolent –
Gunn wonders why it’s still the panther now.
It must be some reflection of the way
The leader or – the queen (so as his mind
Supplies the word) relates to people here?
It’s true the panther has significance,
To him at least. He can remember how
It felt to be the only one who heard,
To understand he needed to be more,
That there were ways to make that come to pass.
That finally The Man acknowledged him.
He fit at W&H, the way
He never fit before, through brainwashing
Or not. With Angel and Cordelia and Fred
(And Lorne and Wes and Spike and Harmony)...
He wonders if the people here all fit?
      These thoughts escape his mind once they have crossed
The marble lobby floor and gathered round
To stand in front of their great portal, all
Nine stitches as the other three explained.
The panther talks again, its silent words
Insinuating thoughts throughout Gunn’s mind,
“We dread prevarication, so allow
That we might make our thoughts resound quite clear:
Our understanding is from what we have
Experienced on your world at your hands.
You are a violent people, who respond
To cries of fear with mortal wounds, with blades;
We wish to separate ourselves from you
And have you cede this portal you have cut
Into our realms, be free of it and you.
We will negotiate to understand
The secrets of the spells which bond it here.”
Confusion captures Gunn, enough so that
He doesn't fully realise what's been said.
“I'm sorry,” he eventually regroups,
“It seems as though we've all misunderstood.
We didn’t make this portal to your world.
An enemy of ours, whose reach extends
Beyond our own dimension, they did this.”
“You're lying,” dragon-man responds, voice sharp,
“We saw you, we all saw you cast the spell.”
He's standing by the panther's side, by turns
Both nondescript (if dressed in Hugo Boss)
And snarling, jet-black leathered joints and eyes
Which fix on Gunn's with barely softened hate.
The panther adds, “This cannot be denied:
We have observed the portal and we have
Envisioned its construction; we have seen
It was created on your world alone,
No matter all the other worlds it binds
So tightly to its edge. We saw the seed
Of it be planted, grow to bloom, arise
And pierce the greatest of our walls
To well your hell dimension on our home.”
Spike's only holding back in deference
To him and his wide-reaching expertise –
Gunn knows that much as by his side Spike scowls –
And that makes Gunn at last realise what he
Is meant to do. He wasn’t really sure
How helpful all his fact-dropping could be,
Since there’s no legalese to get through here;
But hopefully, he thought, he’d get them through
With knowledge of traditions. And it’s true
His brain can make things work for them; he needs
To think, however, can’t just call up facts,
Because he doesn’t know this world – but he
Can easily work out approximates
From all of the reports he has received.
They're dealing with a hive mind, singular
But plural, single thought but multiple
Response: a queen and workers, warriors.
The influence of Earth has fractured them,
Brought pain to those who've left, confused the rest,
And generally, Gunn's certain, they don't know
The differences between this world and theirs.
“Dear Queen,” Gunn now begins, the Fred-bought weight
Of his old legal mantle settling
Like ermine on his shoulders, weighing down.
“I don't know what resources you guys have
To look at what we're doing out on Earth,
But naturally I understand in light
Of what they've told you it's impossible
To lie. But all the same I think you've seen
Without complete facility to see
The actual reality of what
All these things mean to us as who we are.
Dear Queen, we cannot live like you and share
Our thoughts completely with the rest of us.
I do not know if there are on your world
Some beings who are forced to live like this,
But that's the way it is on Earth. We think
And then we must express our thoughts through words,
Between ourselves as much as we are here,
In order to collectively set out
A plan of action, then to act on it.
The seed of all of this, the thing you saw?
That wasn't something we agreed to do.
The guy we worked with who resigned himself –”
And here Gunn can't resist a look at Spike,
Who's frowning, animated, not so much
Like Angel anymore, who really was
A half-erased enigma by the end.
“– that guy kept all his thoughts locked up inside
Until it was too late and we were set
At halfway through his plan with no way out.
He acted and he suffered on his own.”
Gunn’s not sure how to take that Angel is
In hell; the idea screws him up, won’t make
Coherent sense. But what can they do now?
They’re always on their own, right at the end,
They always are. So Gunn explains:
“We either had to kill his enemies
And unleash all the energy they used –
By 'they' I mean those other enemies,
The energy they used to sit in state –
To tear a whole between these worlds of ours;
‘Cause else our friend, who never said, he would
Have been signed up to work with them, to do
Much worse on our world than he ever did
Before.
             “We wanna shut this portal down.
As much if not a little more than you
That's what we came to talk about. If you've
Got questions on what sort of magic's here
We probably can’t answer them, although
We can explain the way things work back home.”
Gunn keeps a steady eye on how the queen
Reacts, the way the panther's mouth stays straight
And closed, its tail sweeping steadily
In time with all the cadences of what
He's said. She's thinking, that's what Gunn believes,
Her mind is processing and working through
This population's thoughts, her world of state.
The dragon guy, perhaps it's no surprise,
He interrupts, decision simply made,
“You're lying! Always lying; always lies!
His arms grow wide around him, flare like wings
Some darkness gathering like anger through
The spellcast image of the world, the sound
Of great black sails far away, the smell
Of smouldering, of pitch beneath the old
And fading memory of office plants
And soap. “You cannot live like this, exist
And yet perform essential public tasks.”
It’s not a threat; he’ll only shout at them,
So Gunn thinks as he doesn't take the bait –
The only problem is Spike's got annoyed.
“You know, I've had about enough of you,”
He throws back attitude, hands up to fight.
“All right, you're used to getting thoughts wired through,
But you, you're just not fucking listening!
We've told you all our end, so why don't you
Pipe down and let your leader talk the talk?”
The dark is growing wider, screeching more
Acute, the burning cutting through the air –
Gunn cannot see the dragon-guy straight on,
Not anymore; he only catches him
In his peripheral vision. Yeah, the spell can't hold
Against too much aggression, so it seems.
“Hey, man,” Gunn starts to Spike, but he's cut off
As Buffy says, “Come on...” but she's cut off
As dragon-guy's distorting voice cuts in
With deep and pitch-bent words, “How dare you speak
To me with insolence as deep as yours!
I should have killed you on your world, destroyed
As you have mindlessly destroyed!
I should –”
                    The swirling, darkened words are then
However, interrupted by the queen.
The panther’s raised her hackles, eyes like lamps -
“Enough!” she utters, loud and carrying.
“We understand, we understand at last...
Thank you,” she turns her head, addresses Gunn.
“We see at your direction that this spell
Has not been cast by unified designs,
But three – we do believe that three whole minds
Have overlaid three interwoven spells.
We see their work and yes, we can –”
                                                                 But then
There is a scream, a wide and keening sound
As all the techs around the portal break
And shatter into smoke. The light around
Is brightening, spreading wide to cloak them all
In white, the way the other three described
Before. Gunn feels his mind is breaking down,
The spell is breaking down away from its
Sophisticated heights, he’s being plunged
Into the sea of thought the others felt.
“Don't move!” he tries to shout at them, before
They go. “It's no attack; we have to leave!”
And at the same time then Illyria
Proclaims, quite calm and clear, “Of course he would
Arrive; he wishes to protect this spell...”
Gunn's sight is overcome, so he's not sure,
He thinks that he can see there's something there?

      There has been nothing for Illyria
To say until their meeting’s broken up.
Until Osiris, he has come at last.
For she can see him: she will not allow
A simple spell's decay to take her sight.
She sees as she has seen since they've arrived,
Her ancient halls, carved rock as it was carved
Millennia ago, great spells and prayers
In spiralled sentences of careful glyphs
On every wall and pillar, in her name.
Her three companions are invisible –
She's sure because they have no equals here –
And as her army works against the spell
Cast by Wolfram and Hart (one warrior
Cast black and ill at ease), Illyria
Is in discussion with herself. Her form
As it once was, too great to comprehend,
Gunn's mortal voice more quiet than a breath,
A sigh, a whisper or her blinking eye;
Her ancient voice resounds to fill the halls.
Illyria can only stand and know
In her pathetic, fragile human shell
The distance she has fallen to become
This sympathising shadow, who she is.
She welcomes it, she's sure she welcomes it,
The breakdown of the mortals' squabbling
And the arrival of Osiris here –
For he has come, she knows this as she turns.
He blasts a swathe through minions where he stands
To break down their disruption of his spell.
“Of course,” Illyria is thinking, says
Out loud. He's here to break the tedium
(The crassness she has found affection for)
And force her into action, though as yet
He does not know that this is what he means
To do.
             The others fall away to thought;
Illyria, she leaves them to it, walks
And meets Osiris by the portal, where
He waits for her. A smile fills his face.
“You've really done so well,” he says. “You have;
It almost seems a shame to stop you now.”
She's still approaching, does not answer yet.
“But all the same,” Osiris carries on,
“You really should have known I'd stop you here.”
He's taken on a form, Illyria
Can see that it was once a mortal man
With all the trappings of the pharaoh he
May once have been, but isn't anymore.
“There are so many things,” she says to him,
Approaching still, the memory behind
Of who she was before, “that I have learnt.
The instability of time, or else
The changeability of fate, those both
I know and fear that you have never learned.
My place, now I have fallen, that I know
With clarity I fear you’ll never have.
Not now your time is over, like my reign.”
Osiris laughs, and looks like he'll reply,
But here Illyria is set on course
And cannot see a reason to delay.
She came here to destroy Osiris, so
She strides her last few steps and strikes him hard,
One fist against his face to fell him down.
The first expression on that face is shock,
But then he gathers up his strength, hits back.
      He isn’t used to fighting, not this god,
Not anymore. And more, he has not fought
Illyria, the way that she fought him
Gone thirteen times in Buffy’s memories.
She feels it as his flail strikes her face:
His hand's uncertain, aim not perfect, sure,
Despite his youth and ostrich-feathered crown.
He’s come here, she can see, quite unprepared
To be met by resistance, quite unlike
The way she has been fighting since she rose,
In preparation for this fight alone.
“Osiris, oh,” she says, “you were a fool
To come here.” And no matter she fights on,
The words express themselves with weighted breath.
He's ducking underneath her swings, still quick.
“A fool, was I?” His voice is warm, dark gold
And bright with clarity as much as hers;
Bright, rolling echoes ebb across the stone:
“It really did not feel that way, when I
Observed that you had found this audience,
That you intended to the destroy this work
Of mine –” He holds a hand imperious
Against her breastbone, throwing her away
As he spits spitefully, “My greatest work,
Contracted carefully and utilised…
So many hundred years I spent in talks
Agreeing this, so many deals I cut
To make the lawyers and that vampire
Dissolve catalysis to bring this forth.
The greatest coup of souls since heroes’ wars:
I did not do all this for you to stop
My work, no sooner than I have begun.”
Collapsed a moment on the floor's cold stone,
Illyria can hear the others shout,
Their voices burbling behind her still
As she looks down and sees herself, her shell.
To see one's plans as destiny, she knows
That is divine, that was her truth before.
But he, Osiris, he will learn – like her.
It will humiliate him, as she's been
Humiliated – that's what she decides.
For after all she has no sympathy
For his designs, no sympathy for him.
If he’s the one who caused their present pain,
Who bought the prophecies and circumstance
(Perhaps bought her release back to this world),
Then he not only caused her suffering,
But unforgivably brought pain to those
Of whom protection has become almost
Her sovereign duty. That has set her course.
      And that, the simple course which has been set,
That makes her rise to run at him again.
It's so clear now he has not fought: he acts
Surprised, with standard figurations, speed
Beyond the mortal eye, but passion less
Than any she has fought since she was called
To naught but abdication. So he kicks
In bold high circles, punches sharp, fore-back –
But he is not afraid, though moderate fear
Would aid him, is not panicked, though that too
Would lend him haste. For her they’re screaming out,
“Illyria! Illyria!” All three
Companions, they are shouting out her name
To echo through the halls their fear and their
Dismay. They’ve realised what it is, her aim.
She fights for them, admits it as she does,
Strikes out and then is thrown and grappled back.
She knows Osiris does not fear his death,
And that will be what brings it to him here:
She uses what she has, the carapace
Which shields her limbs, or else its image-thought,
To beat him to the floor, to gather him
In absolute distraction as they come.
For yes, they do –
                                  – it's Buffy who comes first,
The slayer who has clarity of mind
Enough to pull herself back into form.
Unlike before, Illyria can see
As Buffy lands and runs on ancient stone,
Her mortal frailty not so out of place.
She comes behind Osiris, where he's caught
In fighting with Illyria, who sees.
“Hey, god,” she says, to make him turn to her
Before she punches smartly, hits his face.
Illyria awaits her moment, stood
Now at his back as Buffy finishes,
Before he has a chance to rally to,
“Oops; made you look!” She dives without a pause,
Grabs at his legs and yells, “Illyria!”
Just as the God-King knows she must react.
She pounces, throws an arm around his front
And pulls his dark hair in her other fist.
This moment, as she holds him, is when Spike
At last finds form as well to stand and look,
His eyes surprised to see her stand this way.
No matter that he told her what she was:
A vampire, who takes their prey by the neck.
      The final curl of trepidation yields
At last – she feels it in her chest and throat.
It's time to take the role she knows is hers.
“You cannot move.” She tells Osiris how
His lithe, immortal body will not help,
His shoulders clamped beneath one arm of hers,
Whose strength increases with her certainty;
His pulling at her weak like infant hands.
His crown has long since clattered to the floor,
The feathers ragged where she tore at them,
Much like his godly hair that’s pulled in her
Closed fist. She tells him how his fugitive,
The slayer, holds his legs to keep him there.
“You think it matters, this humiliating fall?”
He asks her, voice quite strained, but mocking still,
“There is no end to me, my life goes on.
No matter what you bring upon this shell
That holds my spirit in your arms, I’ll live.
I will return and slaughter you, all you;
I’ll dirty my unsullied hands and you
Will then be subject to my wishes, as
These two great worlds must all kneel down ‘fore me.”
Her hands on this immortal creature, who
Is now defeated, who now cannot move,
Illyria does not know if he hears
The words that have escaped his mouth: the shell
That holds him, it has made him just as strong
As he is weak, as he is weakened now.
The shell he has is life, and that she’ll pull
Apart between her hands. “You do forget
I know your shell as mine, and know it’s more
Than flesh,” she states, then wrenches on his hair
Until he breathes with pain. “Mortality
Lives on in me, this girl, her memories.”
(Although she long has wished it were not so.)
“And yes, it is the very same for you.”
Osiris shakes with violent hate, but still
Seems to retain conviction that he will
Return from death, as is his right to turn.
“And I remember,” so Illyria
Tells him, “Still I remember there was more
To that bought prophecy of Angel’s death.”
He freezes, outright flinching in her hands.
“Apocalypse perhaps he catalysed,
Releasing that dark swell of energy
When he dissolved the Black Thorn ring, but there
Was more, an extra clause in what you signed.
His doom is to receive a human’s fate,
So I remember, be rewarded at his end.
And looking at you now…” Illyria
Inspects his neck, feels all of the disgust
Osiris oozes – but then lifts her head,
Accepting weakness as she gazes on
Her memories and halls for one last time,
The prayers on columns and her loyal serfs
All watching this, their eyes black spots of fear.
And Spike, she sees, is standing now with Gunn,
So out of place in her great, ancient hall.
She thinks perhaps Spike understands, or else
Imagines possibilities such as
The action she has long committed to.
He’s sorry, finally he’s sorry for
The insolence he’s shown her – or as he
Would think of it – his failure to foresee
What she intended with her words of hate.
There's pity in his frown as now at last
He sees how she is broken, full of words
That used to mean much more to her before.
“I do not think,” she ultimately says,
As she looks down, back on her fallen match,
“That Angel’s fate can be achieved with your
Dominion on his broken afterlife.”
Nor does she think that any of their aims
Can be achieved, no earthly peace be found.
With spitting words, Osiris answers her,
“And what exactly do you mean by that?”
His shell has grown more fragile in her hands,
So fragile she can feel the muscles twitch,
The first frisson of fear, too late, across
The stolen, ancient nerves. At first she waits,
Allows the fear to grow, but then she says,
Explains, “I did not know why I returned;
My Qwa'ha Xahn was killed, a feckless fool,
And my advisor after this was slain.
On our first journey to this world, I thought
That I might rule it, wield my might of old
Without the shackles binding me where I
Once lived. But I chose to return, again.”
She sighs, and wonders as she knows she should,
As all the lower species wonder – what
In all the fates that form existence was the point
Of that? Her rule on Earth was over, so
What point was there for her to suffer one
More day?
                    (She killed the girl who filled the shell
In which she now resides; she fears it’s her.
Right at the end there's still this simple doubt:
It’s Winifred who’s killing her.)
                                                   There’s none,
No point Illyria can see, except
Protecting those whose pain she now has felt,
Protecting the humanity that plagues
Her fallen kingdom – and if not when they
Are living, then by managing their souls.
“When I returned,” she tells on now, “I came
To understand what my old foes had spawned,
What I in turn had let myself become.
A parasite, no power of my own,
A self I leech in part from hollowed flesh,
Sustained by blood-debt, nothing more than this.”
She sighs again, can feel the foreign tears
Her flesh insists on making swell in drops.
“But you –” She pulls the twitching shell again,
Restrains Osiris harder in her hands.
“I saw that you were too entrapped by blood,
Its cycle from your body to the floor:
Complete it found you on your throne once more,
Your world thus forged in blood, your power, place,
Command.” He’s shaking in her arms, afraid;
Afraid as he should then have been before.
“Your shell still bleeds, and this will see your end.”
There’s shouting then, but she ignores it all:
She lowers down her mouth, her human teeth,
Unable to be changed, a vampire though
She is. She bites, digs in her teeth the way
She knows that vampires bite, can feel the skin –
Divine and flawless, but not armour, no –
The skin resists at first, quite pliable,
But then the pressure breaks and she is through.
There’s blood inside her mouth, across her tongue,
More blood as she bites on, chews out the skin
And then attacks the red she has revealed.
The god is screaming, thrashing in her arms,
But still her bite is small, quite human-sized,
So all the blood flows out into her mouth.
She swallows, pausing not for breath but to
Release the air she’s pulling past her lips.
Her eyes are closed, her face against his neck,
Hot blood now flowing faster, fast enough
She has to call on what her shell still knows
About the human gag reflex
                                                  (about
The quickest way to chug a pitcherful,
To beat the boys on Friday kegger nights
And be the nerdy girl who’s popular)
                                                                     .
      The blood is settling in her stomach now,
Has filled it full; but so, as vampire,
She feels it solve away inside her flesh,
The cells prepared to take what’s there to have.
It’s flowing through her frozen veins; she feels
The knowledge swell and grow, displacing her,
Reducing her awareness of the world she’s in –
No, using it, expanding wide her mind –
It feels as when she was aware of time:
She feels the paths of souls throughout the worlds,
The weight of worth distinguishing each stream,
The wider worlds she knows she manages.
There’s peace? There’s peace, she thinks she feels it come –
Who are those watching her, whom now she leaves?
She can remember, but it’s distant, small,
As yet more blood leaks down her throat,
Transforming her, great vampire god, her life.
      The shell is slipping, can’t contain this god;
Illyria is shedding her, she’s gone –
No, not yet gone, not yet, but going soon.
She whispers to Illyria, she says,
Hey, you, don’t you forget me when you go;
Don’t you forget the rest of us, don’t you
Let Angel rot away down in that hell!
Illyria is leaving now, can feel
Old feelings rising, flickering; they snap
Like guttering flames. But still she’s heard, and then
She promises, right at the last,
                                                     I won’t.

[XII]

Comments

[readerjane]

Woah. Such power.

Love the way each of them interprets this world differently, according to their experience, and in doing so understands different facets about it.

It makes perfect sense, that a hive-race would not understand the human propensity to keep secrets; to act at cross-purposes to other humans. So of course they assume that anything one person from our world did, all people from our world must have willed.

This bit just rings:

" the Fred-bought weight
Of his old legal mantle settling
Like ermine on his shoulders, weighing down."

That legal knowledge gives Gunn power, makes him a royalty of sorts, and yet it is a burden because of what it cost them all. Beautiful image.

[quinara]

Thank you!! :D And, heh, I'm extremely glad you think the bit with the hive-race makes sense (I really didn't want it to be a cop out - life is generally easy, I feel, if you can get into a situation where people actually can communicate).

And you're so lovely about that image - I remember it specifically taking a while to get right, because the last line wouldn't settle into place at all. I'm glad it worked for you!