nights in white satin

'Take another hit, let the bottle slip through your fingers
and break like a promise made....
The day I remember, my heart I will keep,
my voice I surrender and I will not speak to lie.'

Spike was on his third bottle of tequila, but the blurring of his eyesight was only slight and he knew he still had a long way to go that night before he reached the point of intoxication he was aiming for. Digging clumsily into his pocket he pulled out another picture and held it up in the dim light to study it.

The man on the bed had long since stopped struggling and lay on the mattress, his body soaked in sweat, his wrists stained with blood from where he'd cut the skin from fighting against the coarse rope that bound his hands together behind his back.

Do you know who I'm looking at right now?

Spike's voice was quiet as he gazed at the photograph. It was taken on a sunny day in the park, of a little girl who wore her long brown hair in two enormous pigtails. Large black eyes stared out at him and a wide smile parted her lips, the scattering of brown freckles across her upturned nose and yellow sundress completed the image of absolute innocence before him.

He threw the photograph down on the bed and the man convulsed when he saw the photograph, the eyes of the little girl silently accusing him.

I suppose, Spike paused and took another long drink of the bottle beside him, I suppose it's in very bad taste of me to drop her in on this like you. After all these years of trying to forget her, and avenge her -- hating her as much as you loved her. Nothing we've ever done to each other though, has exactly been in what one would call good taste though, has it?

He took another drink of the bottle and instead of placing it back on the floor beside him he held it up and examined the amber liquid. The man shut his eyes but he was unable to block her from his mind. The photograph sent a rush of images and memories racing through his mind that he had never fully been able to forget, and seeing her again after all the years opened a flood gate.

After it all happened, I had to wonder, why? Why us? There was the fact that she was a Slayer and the rest of us members of the undead -- but a normal joe like you, what could you hope to gain from what you did to us? And then it hit me -- you weren't just you're average psycho hell-bent on domination the world or allying yourself with the forces of evil. You didn't want power, you weren't getting your rocks off over it, and -- from a certain point of view -- you weren't evil. It was never about any of those things.

It was about vengeance.

It was about a little girl who didn't make it and it was about you being unable to deal with your guilt. Somebody had to take the fall didn't they, Artie? And it wasn't gonna be you.

There must have been hundreds that she couldn't save. The ones that got away, that she was seconds late for. But you didn't care about them, or their family's grief. It was about Theresa only, and because of a situation she hadn't foreseen, where that little girl lost her life, that you had to destroy her.

Artie's eyes were pressed closed and a few dry tears inched themselves down the deep folds of his sagging face. Spike stood from his position on the floor and grabbed the photograph off the bed.

Perhaps I ought'a get this out of your way, the old man nodded. You know what they say don't you, out of sight, out of mind. He flicked open his lighter and held it under the photograph, 'Cept she's never left mine.

'We were so alive, we were so alive,
Shelter me from this sky,
dance with me one more time....
Sao paulo rain.... Sao paulo rain.'