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Title: And All the World Besides
Author: Willa
Pairing: Spike/Angel
Setting: Post "Not Fade Away"
Summary: This story is at the request of itsabigrock, who asked for Spike and Angel after the battle. As you might expect, it's softly dark and melancholy, filled with "what if?" and "could it have been?"
WARNING: SERIOUS SPOILERS FOR FINAL EPISODE OF ANGEL

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From Sonnet #112...

They can't find Gunn. Or more properly, Gunn's body. Afterwards. When the smoke's clearing and the creatures have all gone down. Privately, Spike thinks the wounded man's probably in the belly of a dead beast - hell, even Illyria's crumpled at their feet, wounded past getting up again for a good while - and they're both marked from head to toe. What chance would a wounded mortal man have against monsters like that? Bloody none. Charlie's gone, and none of Angel's rampaging about, shouting for him, is gonna do a bit of good.

Fagged out beyond compare, Spike leans back against a mostly unbent streetlight and fishes deep in the pockets of his coat. God almighty, his Zippo and cigarettes that he barely ever smokes anymore both survived the battle. Should he light up? Would it be disrespectful to the dead and the - he nudges Illyria with his toe and gets a slit-eyed glare for his pains - well, the whatever-she-is-now?

Fuck it. He slips a smoke out of the pack, tamps it on his palm, and lights up.

Ahhhhh... that's more like it. Sweet burn, slipping down his useless lungs. He reckons that being dead, they were in a state before he ever picked up a cheroot. Wonder what they look like now? He's seen piccies of smoker's lungs, and...

Yeah, he's distracting himself. Spike swallows hard. Fuck. Wesley and Gunn. Both of them good men. Gone now. Bugger it. Straight to hell, or wherever those beasties came from.

He looks up through the cloud of his cigarette smoke and squints at Angel, knee-deep in carcasses and gore. At least he's stopped digging through limbs and wings now. His hands hang empty at his sides, and his head's sagged. Given up, has he? Ah, well. He must have known it was all in vain from the start. But he felt like he had to try.

Spike wonders, is that one of the big differences that keeps the two of them so distant from one another? Angel tries, even when he knows it's futile. Spike'll fight for a lost cause, but he knows when something's just not going to happen. Like Buffy, when she said... and here he swallows... when he was burning, and she said she loved him. He knew she didn't. Was just saying it because he was dying. Good job she knew when to quit, too, and got out alive. Even if she did end up with the Immortal bloke, and...

Damn, he's distracting himself again. Got to stop doing that. He's phasing out, knowing he's likely got a good thousand-yard stare going on. Well, that'll happen to the survivors of a battle like this one. Only to be expected.

But he was thinking, and he doesn't want to let the thread go. Thinking about Angel, and giving up. Angel doesn't give up. From what Spike's heard, he ran Darla nigh down to earth, and then he lowered himself far enough to fetch coffee to get back in his friends' good graces. And all along, he's been chasing this Shanshu thing like it's his salvation.

Which, Spike guesses, it was.

And he signed it away, in favor of the good fight.

Now how's that for ironic? No, not ironic, damn Alannis Morrisette and her fucking song, that's not the right word. He's still a rotten poet or he'd be able to think of a word that describes what it's like to know Angel was willing to sign away what he'd fought for all those years. Pitiable? Brave? Well, however you call it, it's a piss-poor trick by the PTB, dangling the carrot, then whacking with the stick.

And he wonders: what's that mean for him, then? A vampire with a soul's gonna get the Shanshu. Angel knocked himself out of that race. Spike's the only qualifier left that he knows of. Reckon one of these days, then, he'll become a real boy. Angel fought so hard over that. And he just signed...

Did he realize it would go to Spike? Was he willing to sacrifice that much more, to carry off his plan?

Damn him anyway, Spike thinks rebelliously, staring at the forlorn figure in the middle of all that mayhem. He doesn't want this Shanshu. He likes being a vampire, thanks. No way he'd have survived the battle if he was mortal. And he's not dumb enough to think this is the end of it. Hell, no, this was the opening sally. There's the war left to fight, and he can't do that if he's human.

Fuck. Fuck, fuck, fuck him, fuck this Shanshu, fuck the PTB, and fuck both Gunn and Wesley being dead, and fuck Illyria too while he's at it for taking Fred's body and fuck Lorne for walking away.

The cigarette's burned down to the filter, held in his nearly-nerveless fingers, while he stares at Angel. Bastard. Noble, self-sacrificing bastard. Gives it all up and he's still the bloody hero of the piece.

Words drift from his lips on the last exhalation of cigarette smoke: "You are so strongly in my purpose bred," he says quietly, "That all the world besides methinks you are dead."

"Angel!" he lifts his voice to call. "Angel, come out of it. Back over here."

No response from the Man in Black. Spike's not surprised. He is startled, however, when his body starts squelching through the ichor and gore, the mass of corpses, over to join Angel. Here, he wasn't intending -

But his legs keep doggedly walking, and soon enough he's at Angel's side, looking down at what's got him so fascinated.

Oh. Seems he found Gunn, after all. Or what's left of him.

Fuck. Vampires can so vomit, and his stomach's churning within him. "He died a hero's death," Angel says, and even his voice sounds dead. "We shouldn't just... leave him here. With the rest of this."

Spike swallows hard. "Nor Wesley. He shouldn't stay in that filthy house to rot."

"Illyria?"

"Bugger her, she can take care of herself."

"She's alive?"

"How the hell do you answer that one? Alive as she ever was." Spike fumbles for his cigarettes again, and offers Angel one. It's a sign of how shook-up he is behind that exterior that he takes it silently and begins to smoke.

He shakes his head. "No. If she's alive, we'll get her out of here too."

"Your call." Spike glances up. The sky's boiling with soot, but they've an hour, maybe, left before dawn. "We'll need to get out of the open soon, Angel."

No response.

"Angel?" Spike tugs at his arm. Hell, you could easier bend a girder. "Angel, sunlight and vampires don't mix, remember? We need to... take him... and get out of the open. We can doss down for the day in the house where Wes is." Plans form in his mind and spill down his tongue like wine. "Then, come nightfall, we torch the place, right? Make a grand funeral pyre for the both of them. Send 'em on to Valhalla, or heaven, or wherever they'd have wanted to go. And yeah, we'll tote Illyria along, too. She'll be back on her feet soon." He tugs the immovable arm. "Angel, come on, man. Let's go."

Angel doesn't move. Spike doesn't think he's blinked once. He gives up the tugging and stands back with a sigh, looking at that face. "They gave up everything, same as you did," he says quietly. "For the good fight. And if you want to keep on fighting that good fight, we'll get out of the sun like nice little vampires and stay inside until night. Make our plans. Figure out how to keep on going."

Angel takes a deep drag on his cigarette, then holds it out as if it's a strange and foreign thing. "Spike?" he asked, lost and wondering as a child.

Spike lays his hand on Angel's arm again. "Yeah."

And Angel leans forward, touching his forehead to Spike's own. He doesn't say anything. But after a moment, his shoulders shake, and Spike realizes that he's crying.

Fuck it all. He won't cry, too... won't... won't...

"Angel, come on," he manages. "You take his head. I'll get his trunk. We'll go together."

Neither moves.

"Angel, please," Spike begs. "Move your arse."

But Angel's arms have come up around him. Hands are holding on to his shoulders, and they're shaking as the older vampire weeps.

Ah, hell...

His first cool tears course over Spike's cheeks as well, like drops of morning dew down a lily's stem.

"All the world besides ourselves is dead," he says, not knowing nor caring what he means by it. "But we're here. We go on." He tugs again, and this time Angel moves. "Come on, lad. Come on, love. Let's go. Let's do this thing. Let's go."

And Angel bends to pick up his part of the grisly burden they must carry off the battlefield, urged on by Spike's soft coaxing. And Spike has a feeling this is how the day will go, with him urging in his gentlest tones: "You can do this, Angel; you've come this far. Only a little further, a few more steps to go. Work with me, love, I've got you..."

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For those interested:

Sonnet 112

Your love and pity doth the impression fill,
Which vulgar scandal stamped upon my brow;
For what care I who calls me well or ill,
So you o'er-green my bad, my good allow?
You are my all-the-world, and I must strive
To know my shames and praises from your tongue;
None else to me, nor I to none alive,
That my steeled sense or changes right or wrong.
In so profound abysm I throw all care
Of others' voices, that my adder's sense
To critic and to flatterer stopped are.
Mark how with my neglect I do dispense:
You are so strongly in my purpose bred,
That all the world besides methinks y'are dead.