Taming the Muse Prompt 53, BoaS Part 37, Nor law, nor duty, BtVS, PG

[thismaz]

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Title: Nor law, nor duty
Part 37 of the Blood on a Sundial series.
Previous parts, in reverse order, are here or in my memories.
Fandom: BtVS
Prompt: #53 - Ayers Rock
At: tamingthemuse
Summary: Spike, Xander, AU in Season 2. We are talking slow burn here, people.
Disclaimer: here.
Rating: Pg
Word Count: 2,010



37. Nor law, nor duty

"I told you. It's one on one. It has to be. That's the lore. She's called Wergeld and I'm going to oblige. You, stay here! If I'm not back by dawn, you get out. Right out of New York. You get on a plane or a bus, or you bloody hitch a ride, but you get out! Understood?

Xander's expression was, for once, unreadable. "Are you planning on getting beaten, Spike?"

"'Course not." Spike snorted his derision. "That overblown minion? Not a chance." He looked down at the knife and sheath in his hand and spoke to them, rather than to Xander. "But, just in case. If I trip over or get hit on the head by a meteorite... if anything happens to me, you're free. If you're there, she'll get you." Now he did look up, emphasising his final point. "So you stay here!"

"And what about the bit where it's a trap?" Xander grabbed the letter off the table and shook it in Spike's face. "Flavia, destroyer of the Watchers Council declares herself Master of New York, beholden to no one," he recited the first words of the letter he'd spent most of last night reading, over and over, once he'd wrested it from Spike's charge. "Anyone who writes like that has got to be up to no good. It's too flowery. And it's not even true."

Sighing, Spike shrugged. "It's a formal challenge, of course it's flowery. But she can't break the lore. It has to be one on one. And one on one, I can beat her with both arms tied behind my back."

"So, I'll come and watch. Just to make sure."

Bloody humans, with their complicated feelings and their inconsistent thinking. They didn't understand that there were ways of acting, there were forms of behaviour, that had been in place for centuries. Unchanged through the long life spans of the members of the society that founded them. "No you won't." Spike's patience was beginning to stretch to breaking point. "I'm not arguing, I'm telling! You promise to stay here, or I tie you up and leave you here anyway. Which is it going to be?"

Xander stopped then, and stared at Spike. "You're stubborn," he exclaimed, his own exasperation colouring his voice. "You're like some rock. You're like the biggest rock in the world. You're like that big rock in Australia." For a full thirty seconds, he glared at Spike, but seeing no softening in Spike's expression eventually he rolled his eyes. "Oh, why do I bother?" he asked the ceiling. Looking back he apparently recognised that Spike was quite capable of doing exactly what he threatened and his crooked smile twisted his lips as he lifted his arms in resigned defeat and took a couple of steps back. "Okay, okay, I get it. But since the reason you don't want me to come is so I can run if you don't come back, I'd rather not be tied up and left helpless, if you don't mind."

With one last glare Spike nodded, picked up the whetstone and went back to sharpening his knives, while Xander withdrew to the other side of the room and sat on the floor in front of the coffee table, picking up one of his Colts and beginning to dismantle it. Spike guessed he was going to clean it, again. Boy seemed to love those guns more than anything else in his life and caring for them did seem to calm him.

Silence reigned for fifteen minutes as they both concentrated on their tasks, but when Spike slid his second knife into its sheath Xander spoke again. "How are you going to approach?"

Spike pursed his lips in apparent thought. "Er, the overpass next to the bridge?" he suggested with a sly shrug, snorting his amusement when he saw Xander's shocked expression. "I'm not stupid mate. I'll head through Corlears Hook and cut north once I cross FDR."

Xander nodded. "Yeah, that's a good route. At least there's a bit of cover, until you get close. Better than coming in from the north - the tennis courts make that way too open." He gave a faint smile. "Just be careful, okay?"

Spike raised an eyebrow as he fastened the knives, in their sheaths, to his wrists. "I didn't know you cared."

The smile was swallowed by a scowl. "I don't," Xander said, emphatically.

Grinning openly now, Spike strapped a couple of stake sheaths to his thighs before walking over, picking up his duster and pulling it on. "Right." He paused, looking down at the boy, resisting the urge to reach out and give Xander's shoulder a squeeze, contenting himself with a half hearted punch as he turned away. "I'll see you later," he said, as he walked to the door.

*****

Spike knew he was being watched long before he stepped out onto the tarmac'ed area under the Williamsburg Bridge. He'd known when he passed Flavia's look out's and he'd felt them close in behind him. Automatically, he logged the shadows, noting which were big enough to conceal a guard, as he scanned the immediate area. Flavia was standing arrogantly in the centre of the open space, so Spike approached carefully, but with enough swagger to ensure she didn't mistake his natural caution for fear.

"Don't you get tired of this, Flavia?" he asked. "Why are you so determined to die?"

Flavia stiffened. "I won't be Master of this city by anyone's leave," she announced, pompously. "I am the strongest here and I owe you nothing."

"Yeah? Like you don't own me for the tip that those watchers were in town? Like you would have dared take them on, if I hadn't shamed you into it?"

Flavia's head jerked and the followers he had known were there, detached themselves from their dark corners and approached, surrounding Spike on three sides.

"Thought you'd issued Wergeld, girl. That means one to one, and you know it."

Laughing, Flavia stepped forward into the final position, directly in front of him. Her mouth twisted into an ugly sneer of assured supremacy. She wasn't going to attack immediately, she wanted time to gloat and possibly time to convince her acolytes that this course of action was acceptable. Spike turned in a slow circle on the spot, eyeing each of them in turn. He noted the silent signals that passed between them as their eyes flicked back and forth between him and each other. An established group then, a street gang maybe, turned together and knowing no better than to follow their sire. That made them very young. He didn't doubt they knew how to fight. The only questions were, did they know how to use the additional strength and speed of the demon and did they know their new weaknesses? He cursed himself for not keeping a closer eye on Flavia's court, but he'd really not wanted to waste his time on her. All he wanted was for her to leave him alone and get on and rule the city, not set the cops onto his business and keep the streets clean and tidy. But she couldn't leave it at that. She couldn't bear to know she'd been bested. That kind of stupid pride led to a short life. Unfortunately, he'd underestimated her when he'd assumed she wasn't too stupid to know that. She was overdue a lesson in common sense and he was going to make sure it was him who delivered it.

Relaxing his face, he allowed it to change and bringing his hands together, he drew the knives from inside the cuffs of his duster and moved into a fighting stance. Across from him, Flavia smiled and a flicker of disquiet entered his brain, which swiftly coalesced into a kernel of dread in the pit of his stomach as Flavia drew a gun from the back of her waistband. "It won't kill you," she agreed with his unspoken thought, "but it'll hurt like hell. And with both your kneecaps gone, you won't be doing any of that fancy dancing." Laughing she continued, as she pulled back the hammer with her left hand and repositioned the grip of her right, "You didn't really fall for it, did you?"

From behind her came the strange 'chunk-chunk ' sound of a pump action shotgun being primed and a voice agreed, "Yes, he did, actually," as Xander stepped into view. "Spike's always been a bit of a romantic." He held his shotgun loosely, but it was pointed squarely at her back. "But I'm not!"

Flavia spun to face him. "Good, I wanted you, too," she growled, raising her own gun. It was the last thing she said, as the shotgun spoke and her body exploded, leaving only her ashes to settle slowly to the ground.

Dropping his knives, Spike grabbed his stakes and with a backward thrust, took out the minion behind him before he could react to the shifted power dynamic. The shotgun fired again, claiming the one on his left and he spun fast to face the last, just as his target burst into furious action and charged. Together they tumbled over, with Spike on his back underneath, but using the momentum he continued the roll, throwing the furious fledge over his head and clear, while he snapped back to his feet and swung around to face where the body had landed. His opponent was scrambling to his feet, face twisted in furious denial. "You bastard! I'm going to get you!"

Laughing, as he bounced lightly on the balls of his feet, Spike held his hands out in front of him, palms up and twitched his fingers towards himself. "Come on then, what're you waiting for?"

The fledgling growled at the taunt and charged again. But this time Spike was ready and well balanced. He absorbed the force of the untutored attack and used it to swing his attacker into the base of the nearest bridge pylon, where his head made sharp contact with the concrete. Before he could shake whatever small modicum of sense he normally had back into his head, Spike closed and staked him through his back, feeling the minor resistance of his ribs give under the blow, before he too was dust on the breeze.

The sudden quiet was broken by the sound of a late night train, as it rattled it's way across the river to Brooklyn above their heads and the 'chunk chunk' of Xander's shotgun, as he pumped a new shell into the chamber. Spike turned to face him. "It's over, mate. They're all gone." Xander's face was a frozen mask, a mixture of horror and something else that Spike couldn't identify. Suddenly he felt nervous. "Xander? Pet? Are you okay? Come on, you know you can't use that on me, so why don't you put it down? It's alright. You can relax, they're gone now."

He took a few steps forward, but stopped when the shotgun swung towards him. They stood unmoving for whole moments, then Xander shook his head, as if to clear it. He lowered the gun and broke it, removing the shell from the breech and walked past Spike to the base of the pylon. Placing his arm against the concrete he raised the shotgun like a stake and brought the butt down sharply against his wrist. Spike started forward with a cry, but stopped as he saw that it was not his wrist Xander had hit, but the bracelet. The bracelet which now broke neatly into two parts and fell to the floor. Xander bent down and picked them up, slipping them into his pocket with the shell.

"How...?" Spike gasped. "How did you...? You broke it?"

Turning to face him, Xander looked like he was going to cry. "It's been broken for weeks," he said wearily. "I think it was the Anashaman."

"And... And you knew....?"

Xander shrugged "I knew." He swung the shotgun up, so it rested over his shoulder. "I'll see you at home," he said, as he began to walk away.


Note: The title is from a poem by Yeats, written in 1919. Something about it seemed to fit Xander at this point:

An Irish Airman Foresees His Death

I know that I shall meet my fate
Somewhere among the clouds above;
Those that I fight I do not hate,
Those that I guard I do not love;
My country is Kiltartan Cross,
My countrymen Kiltartan's poor,
No likely end could bring them loss
Or leave them happier than before.
Nor law, nor duty bade me fight,
Nor public men, nor cheering crowds,
A lonely impulse of delight
Drove to this tumult in the clouds;
I balanced all, brought all to mind,
The years to come seemed waste of breath,
A waste of breath the years behind
In balance with this life, this death.

Next Part


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Comments

[thismaz.livejournal.com]

Poor Xander is still conflicted, so he's under a lot of strain. As for what happens next... I sort of know the big picture, but the small stuff....? I don't know yet. But he didn't shoot Spike and he did say he would go home... so... *shakes head* I'm really not sure.