Title: Wind Beneath My Wings.

Point of view: Spike.

Time frame: Between Episode 14 “Hotel California” and Episode 15 “Black Hole Sun”.

Wind Beneath My Wings

It’s two thousand four hundred and fifty miles from Sunnydale to Pittsburgh. About as far as from London to Baghdad.

God, the USA is a sodding huge place.

And it’s only taking us five hours.

No driving by night for days. No careful planning of a flight so that I can leave and arrive in the dark. Which can be bloody hard for medium length flights, let me tell you. Not easy for International flights, either. Airlines don’t seem wildly enthusiastic about landing at Third World airports in the dark, which is why I had had to have myself shipped to Uganda in a crate in a non-pressurised cargo hold. Just as well I don’t have to breathe, but it wasn’t fun. At least I could come back on overnight flights, getting in to Heathrow an hour before dawn. Dodging the sun all day until I could get a night flight to the States.

All in the past now. Walking across the tarmac in broad daylight. Seeing myself reflected in the windows. Getting all emotional like a total wanker.

Sitting in the plane like a normal human. If the sun comes in through the windows and shines on me nothing happens. Fighting the reflex telling me to scream and run. Safe. I wonder if I’ll freckle?

To think I wasted the sodding Gem of Amara on one short fight with Buffy. I should have gone to Hawaii and done some surfing. I didn’t even really want to kill her. I thought I did; but if I had, would I really have spent half the fight mocking her about her one-night stand with that pillock Parker? Who I really must track down and disembowel one of these days. Sod the soul, he took something precious and trampled on it. He deserves to die. Bollocks, I could never really do it. Knocking his teeth down his throat, though, that would be fun. Good now, soul, can’t start anything. Can think though.

Sitting in a row of three seats. Next to Dawn. My sweet Bit, who I will protect to the end of the world. If she doesn’t set fire to me in my sleep, that is. She hates me, and I can’t blame her. I hurt the girl. Hurt her sister. I still love my Nibblet; she’s my sister as far as I’m concerned. Her hating me doesn’t change anything.

Teresa on the other side of Dawn. Looking at me with those Spanish eyes. Do I hate her? She stood and watched as Drusilla turned me. She could have stopped it. She didn’t, because of some bloody stupid prophecy that I’d save the world. William the Bloody Awful Poet was no big loss, I like myself as a vampire much more. Except, how many people have I killed? At least one every couple of days for a hundred and twenty years. Seventeen, eighteen thousand? How do they feel about dying so that I could wander round having fun for a century, and then save the world years after they died?

Did I really save the world? Maybe I did. If I’d left Buffy to fight Angelus and Drusilla by herself, she’d have lost. The whole bloody world would have been sucked into Acathla. Goodbye Man United, goodbye dog racing, goodbye Happy Meals on legs. That’s what I thought then, and I was probably right. Doesn’t mean the people I killed felt any better about dying.

Maybe I helped against Glory, too. I failed when it mattered most; but I was some help, wasn’t I? Could they have done it without me?

Waste of bloody time asking questions like that. It’s not as if I’m going to get any sodding answers, is it?

And not as if I’m going to get much conversation with Nibblet. It’s Teresa who’s going to get the Teenage Glower Treatment ™. All I can do is listen, while I read the in-flight magazine. Which is boring crap.

“So, do I call you Auntie or what?”

“You may, if you want. I would regard it as an honour. Call me Auntie, call me Aunt Teresa, or just call me Teresa. I would like it best if you called me Tia, which is Spanish for Aunt, or Tia Teresa, but it’s up to you.” She is unruffled. Point to Teresa, I think.

“So, what’s my stepmother like?” Teenage Glower still active.

“A lady. Beautiful, intelligent, charming. Linda means beautiful in Spanish, and she lives up to her name.”

“So, not some skanky ho just after Dad for his money, then?”

Teresa laughed. “And rich. I spent a hundred and ninety years taking back from the French what they had taken from my family, and returning it. I overdid it. Her father is the biggest exporter of sherry in all of Spain.”

“So what did she see in Dad? I mean, if she’s so perfect? He’s just Dad. Old. Not that good looking or anything. Is he?” Dawn was puzzled, resentful perhaps.

“I’ve only met your father once, apart from the wedding itself, so I’m not that qualified to judge, but I think it’s because he is warm and kind. She was frozen, and he melted her.”

“Frozen?”

“She was engaged to a Captain in the Spanish Police. Two weeks before the wedding he walked past a car. The Basque ETA had packed it with forty kilos of Semtex. They detonated it. They killed him and eleven other people. And broke Linda’s heart.”

The mood had changed. I don’t think Teresa was really talking to Dawn any more as she went on.

“I tried to find them. The terrorists who planted the bomb, that is. I was going to leave their bodies, drained of blood, on the steps of the police station. I failed. I speak twenty-eight languages, including six Spanish dialects, but I don’t speak a single word of Euskara. I got nowhere. And I know now that it wouldn’t have helped at all. It would have made me feel better, but it would have done nothing for Linda. Only time helped. Time, and your father.”

Dawn put her hand on Teresa’s arm, and spoke hesitantly. “Tia Teresa, if Dad was so good for her, why wasn’t he for us? Why’d he stay away when we needed him?”

“Your sister is very good at pushing away those who love her.” Teresa gave me an enigmatic smile. “Isn’t she, William?”

Anger flared in me suddenly. “You know nothing. Just bloody shut it, okay?”

“She’s right, Spike.” Dawn gave me the warmest smile I’d seen from her since the wedding that wasn’t. “Buffy did it to you.”

“Yeah, well, I was evil, right? Bloody deserved it.”

“You were so not evil! Willow was evil. She made me miss the movie, and sit in the creepy place for hours, and crashed the car, and broke my arm. Then you sat with me in the hospital, and Buffy looked after Willow, and when we got back she’d hung the place with garlic. And it was all “poor Willow”, and you were hardly ever allowed back any more. And Willow fucked with our minds, and Buffy still let her stay and not you.”

“Wash your mouth out, Bit!” I interrupted. “Not nice language for a little girl.”

“Geez, Spike, sixteen here. Think I can say a naughty word once in a while. Anyway, Buffy did push you away. She told me. And she told me what she did to you in that alley and - oops, she said not to tell you she’d told me. Oh well, I forgive you, Spike. And I want you to be all big brothery again. Including telling me off for swearing, not that I’m going to take any notice of course.”

I lost it. I couldn’t help it. William the Bloody, Slayer of Slayers, the Scourge of Europe, started crying like a baby. In front of The Reaper, La Mort Par Nuit, Las Manos de la Muerte; a Bad as big as I ever was. And with the new head of the Council of Wankers in the next row of seats too. All because a chit of a girl was forgiving me, and I felt as if my heart would burst.

“Oh, Nibblet,” I choked out. “Thanks. I don’t deserve it, but thanks.” She grabbed me and gave me a big hug, and I hugged her back fiercely. “Love you, little Bit.”

“Love you too, Spike. Not that way, of course, ‘cause that would be eww, gross.” She gave me a great big smile.

“Family,” Teresa said firmly. It was the same tone that Buffy had used that day in the Magic Box when she’d defended Tara from her blood kin, and when I’d bopped the Good Witch on the nose to prove she was all human.

I’d acted all Big Bad and aloof, of course, but I’d envied Tara that day. I’d have bloody killed to be included in the same way. Not that it had worked out quite like that for Glinda anyway. She was always that bit outside the inner circle, like me. Not kept out by Buffy, but by Red and the sodding whelp. Even though Red was her lover. Still couldn’t bear to think of anyone being as close to Buffy as she was. She’d treated Tara like a possession. Glinda the Good Witch, and me, were allowed to be friends of Dawn; but never actual Scoobies. Sodding evil Red witch. I’d bloody liked her once. Still, she was being punished at last. Kennedy was punishment enough for anything.

And I wasn’t being punished any more. “Family,” Dawn agreed. She kept hugging me with one arm, and reached out for Teresa with the other.

“I’ve made my peace with Buffy, Spike,” Teresa told me, joining in the big group hug. “Family? Auntie, and niece, and potential nephew-in-law? In-law with other niece, of course.” Dawn giggled.

“Some bloody hope, but – yeah, family.” I hadn’t been this happy for bloody years. Maybe I could even let myself hope.

Giles giving her away – he’d apologised to me before we left for the airport, shook my hand, and looked at me almost with respect. Dawn as a bridesmaid. Clem as Best Man – which would probably piss the whelp off, he’d probably expect to get the job even after all the years of mutual insults. He’d just have to be Chief Usher. Buffy as the most radiant bride. The ring meaning we could have any kind of wedding she liked, without me having to sign the register as Mr. Big Pile of Dust if a sunbeam got in.

Dreams. Too much to wish for. But if there was any chance at all, then the First Evil wasn’t going to bloody get in the way. I’d rip Turok-Han apart like they were cardboard to get a proper chance with Buffy.

Hell, I’d even put up with “Wind Beneath My Wings” as the first dance at the reception.

FIN

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