Shot in the Dark

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Chapter 46: Intervention
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The sound echoes long after he stops screaming. Spike curls up tight, trying to contain the pain surging through his body. Minutes pass in silence as the echoes finally fade.

When he realizes the pain that burned through his chest is finally slowing, Spike begins to loosen his limbs, letting his body unfold. With a supreme effort considering the way his skin still sings with recent pain, he pries one eye open, the clear blue clouded with confusion. The sight that greets him is not at all what he expected. Both eyes pop open and he sits up, a bit too quickly.

“Bloody fucking hell.” Spike holds his head and looks around more slowly. Everything is so bright, he can’t quite tell where he is. “Or maybe...heaven?” He worries a hand through his hair, pushing it into disarray, trying to figure out who made a huge paperwork mistake and sent him to heaven. A figure stands in front of him, glowing so white hot he cannot see anything else.

“I do hope the pain did not last too long, Spike. And no, this is not heaven.” Her voice slices through the fog in his mind and he realizes it is because her voice is ONLY in his mind. He blinks, shakes his head to clear it. Pushing himself up from the grass beneath him, biting off a moan, Spike gets to his feet. The blazing light in front of him dims so he can see the figure in front of him more clearly. Light pushes from around her, contained for the moment so she merely glows. A tall woman stands there, topping him by a few inches. Her robes are pristine, flowing around her in a cloud of soft fabric. Silver cords wrap around her, tracing her waist and torso. The skin he can see is so light it is nearly translucent. A mane of silken black hair is bound up in the same cords on her head in an elaborate design. Spike blinks, speechless. And so she speaks again. “You can hear me, can’t you?” Her voice is musical, tones gentle and harmonious, caressing his mind. Spike finds himself lulled by the sound, but finally rouses to speech.

“Yes, I can...hear you. In my soddin’ head, that is. Not sure how you are managing that little parlor trick. And I don’t know who you are...and why I’m not dead. Unless I am?” Spike frowns, looking around again. His hands run down his chest, but he feels quite solid. He considers checking to see if she is real, but something about the aura pouring off this woman makes him reluctant to move any closer. Power. He can smell it.

“So many questions. I forgot how mortals can be. It’s been some time.” She laughs, and the sound pounds his mind from the inside out. Spike swallows. He was right about the power. She is so far from human he’s not sure what to do. “Hmm. Where to begin? You are not dead. At least, no more than you were.” She smiles and Spike finally focuses on her face. If he was not already sure that he was dealing with something other than human, the eyes would have told him. They are not quite blue, not quite gray and they seem to have no end. He breaks eye contact before he loses himself in them.

“And Buffy? She’s okay?” Spike tenses, jaw twitching. If those robed bints tricked him...

“She is well as can be expected. She did hear you scream before I stopped time.”

Spike sighs in relief that she is unhurt and then shakes his head, not quite sure he heard her correctly. “Before you stopped what now?”

She smiles briefly. “I needed time to speak with you and my daughters do not like to be interrupted. Better to just stop time for a few minutes. I have friends in high places, you might say.”

Spike stares at this woman in front of him, unsure which question to ask next. The waves of old power she emits are making him feel lightheaded. That, and the almost being killed thing. “Luv, can you start over? I have no bloody idea what is going on. I thought I was making a sacrifice? And could you maybe speak out loud? Words bouncing around inside my skull are not the most comfortable thing.”

She brushes by his question, but her next words are audible. Spike sighs in relief. “My daughters are quite set in their ways, mortal. They have been undisputed in their power for much too long. It is good to remind them they are not infallible. Do you know me, young one?”

“‘fraid not. I’m gonna go out on a limb and say, you’re a goddess? Just a hunch.”

She smiles softly at him. “I am Themis, mate of Zeus, mother of the Fates. Do you know me now?”

Spike digs deep in his brain for his classical education of a hundred years ago. He’s read about the gods of ancient Greece, never realizing they were real. Themis...yes! “An oracle, eh?” He smiles, happy with himself. “At Delphi, no less.”

Another smile. “Yes, that is how man knows me. I tell the future. I write prophecies by dictating them to men.” She pauses, watching for the connection to be made. Spike’s face lights up.

“It was you! You wrote the prophecy I’m in! Bloody hell.” Spike starts to pace, hands on his hips. This is all a bit too much for him to take in all at once.

“Ah, I knew I was right about you. Clever. But I have other powers, unknown to common man. I am the goddess of oaths and of divine justice. And I see a need to fulfill one and dispense the other.” She pauses, sinking into a chair Spike did not notice until just then.

“You swore an oath to love her. To save her by giving up your own existence. To avenge her death should it come prematurely. I do not brush by such oaths. Particularly not from soulless beings. I abide by them.” She rests her chin on her hand, studying the blond vampire as he fidgets back and forth across the space in front of her. The frenetic nature of the mortal world is always entertaining. “Certainly you don’t think I simply write the prophecies?”

“What do you mean?” He squints at her. For the first time, he realizes they are still in the circle of fire, only it is frozen, motionless. The orange flames behind her are stopped in mid-flicker and the sound is gone. He casts a glance over his shoulder briefly, only to find the Fates are still there, but are held like statues, arms still raised. Spike turns back to Themis, eyes a bit wider.

She leans forward, threatening to pull him into her bottomless eyes. “I make them happen. I push the Fates this way and that a bit, put ideas in the heads of other gods and of course, mortals. The Fates do not know it. My girls would not approve. But I am a Titan. An ancient one, pre-dating the gods. I am what you might call...set in my ways.” Her mouth twitches up in a half-smile.

“So, this is all not really up to the Fates? They said I had only two choices. Their two choices.”

“Stubborn girls. Impetuous. Sometimes they are downright bullies. Don’t tell them I said so, but they get it from their father. Zeus is all storm and bluster sometimes. Insists everything is done his way.”

Spike chuckles, starting to really like this bird. This god. He swallows, realizing she could likely blink him out of existence without straining a muscle. His laughter dies quickly.

“The truth is, you do not have any choices as I am not giving you one. My prophecy will be fulfilled as I intended. Not as the Fates intended. I won’t have them bending my words to their own ends. You have defied your destiny so many times, your current path has become your new destiny. They don’t like that one bit. Well, I don’t like my prophecies being abused and I happen to have more power than they do, so I did something about it.”

Spike grins fully. He definitely likes her. Only he hopes her choice is better than being dusted by the three Fates.

“As I said, I am, among other things, the goddess of divine justice. And the justice I plan to dispense deals with my wayward daughters. Their divine power makes them foolhardy and I will put them in their place. They know full well you are not to die today. And they also know that the humanity in question is not the Slayer’s.”

The words scroll through Spike’s mind: His triumph will bring humanity to light, his failure will bring only darkness. His existence is the price.

Spike stops pacing, turns to face her fully. His words come out slowly. “Not Buffy’s humanity?” Inwardly, he curses the three Fates for lying to him.

“And not all of humanity as the one called Giles thought. There is only one humanity I had in mind.” She stops speaking and just rests her eyes on Spike. The way light seems to emit from her skin is making it hard for him to concentrate on her words. Not to mention the eerie time-stopping. He notices even the wind has stopped blowing. A thought enters his mind, but he instantly tries to dismiss it. A few feet away, Themis nods. Spike flinches. Great, she reads minds, too.

“Yes. Yours.”

“That’s all very interesting, luv, but I don’t have any humanity, remember? Vampire? Soulless creature of the night, yeah?”

She shakes her head and light seems to shake from her like water. “You have more humanity than even you realize. My girls did tell you one thing true. Drusilla was meant to kill you. When you became a vampire, I took note of you for one very good reason. Angelus was meant to be the figure in my prophecy, but the spark was not there. In you, I observed something. Something more. It is complicated. When Clotho created a new thread for your existence as a vampire, Lachesis wove it into your old thread as William. Only she left a small thread of him there. And it grew, flowed along with you as a vampire. Separate, but present.” She paused. “Do you understand?”

Spike squinted at her, turning these concepts over in his head. “You are saying that...William has never left me completely? A bit of him still in here?” He splays a hand to his chest, covering his heart.

“Yes. He gives you the capacity to love the way you do. The demon in you has held his influence at bay for some time, but when you met Buffy...something changed. He...asserted himself.” She smiles softly, and Spike feels the warmth from her glow on his skin. It warms him more than the artificial sunshine created by the Fates.

“So...it wasn’t you who made me fall in love with Buffy to make your prophecy work? It was the bloody poet in me?”

She laughs lightly before reclining in her chair. “That’s right. One of the most fortuitous things that could have happened. I had wanted you for that prophecy for some time and you paved the way without my help. Well, I helped a little. I planted an idea in the most impressionable Psyche and she ran with it. Convinced Cupid to...awaken your interest further. Reveal your feelings for the world to see.” The grin is mischievous and Spike runs his tongue across his front teeth, remembering just how much his interest had been awakened after Cupid’s interference.

“So, uh, what’s next, then?” Spike feels his skin itch in anticipation. Maybe he will not die this night after all. He had grown used to the idea. Grown used to the thought of having to leave Buffy, though it tore him to pieces inside. Now, maybe this goddess was going to change his...life?

She smiles, and it reaches all the way to her cavernous, storm cloud eyes this time. “This might hurt a little.”


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Author's Note: Thanks for the reviews so far! By the way, I have an L J (http://www.livejournal.com/users/__tiana__) as well as an e-mail update list (tiana_updates@hotmail.com) if you want to know when new chapters of any of my fics go up! Hope you enjoy the new chapter! :) Tiana