gwynnega | Illyria ficathon fic

Title: The Basics
Author:

gwynnega
Rating: PG
Author's Notes: Illyria, Spike (not shippy). Takes place during AtS S5 "Origin."
Dedication: For

crayola_yellow
Challenge: Illyria/Fred, a Spike/clipboard appearance, and Illyria looking into Fred's past. No mention of Gunn.
Disclaimer: This stuff doesn't belong to me.

They were making progress, Spike thought. At any rate, that's what he chose to tell himself. They had fought - or, rather, Illyria had thrown Spike across the training room five or ten or twenty times that afternoon. His clipboard had also gone flying a few times. Now she gazed down almost indulgently at him, sprawled on his arse. "Winifred Burkle led a terrible life," she observed.

Aha! Spike thought. At last, she wants to talk. He scrambled to his feet and looked around for his clipboard. Then he wrote down what she'd said. "I didn't know Fred very long," he said, "but she seemed quite happy, most of the time." Even towards the end, he thought, she was cheerful, looking around at all of her boys. Bloody ineffectual boys, unable to save her. "Before you took up shop."

"But before that...she was a slave for years. It drove her mad."

Well, she had a point. "'Nasty, brutish, and short,'" Spike said. Poor girl, that was her life. Angel had told him how he'd met Fred in Pylea. Trapped, hiding, afraid. Nearly crazy. Crazy. But brave. She'd been enslaved so young, then finally hollowed out, her soul destroyed - not just out in the ether, or in heaven, someplace where it might be retrieved, but burnt up. Gone. Her body stuffed full of this peculiar and dangerous creature.

"She liked Patsy Cline," Illyria announced, and cocked her head to one side as if listening intently to music in her head. Or maybe she was just retrieving information? Spike wasn't sure how it worked, what Illyria had kept of Fred's, besides her form. He wasn't sure he wanted to know - except that he was supposed to be researching her, god knows why. Maybe so she wouldn't kill them all, which he supposed was a good reason.

"Well, who doesn't like Patsy Cline?" Spike said.

"This 'Patsy Cline' possessed a formidable ability to create beauty with her voice," she said, and for a crazy second, Spike thought she was gonna burst out with a rendition of, well, "Crazy," or maybe "I Fall to Pieces." It made him crave a shot of tequila just thinking about it. But instead, she continued, "Also, she liked 'The Dixie Chicks'...who possess no such formidable ability." She pondered. "She liked a foodstuff called...tacos. I do not require food or drink, so it is difficult for me to understand how, when she was trapped in that other world, she pined, not only for those she had left behind, but for tacos."

"Ever tasted a taco? They're delicious. There's a Mexican place not far from here..."

"Your mouth waters," Illyria said, peering at him. "You are hungry at the thought of these...tacos. But you are a vampire. You need blood to live. Why should you concern yourself with food that does not sustain you?"

"It's not all about survival, Blue. You should know that. If you're gonna live forever, it gets bloody boring only attending to the necessities. Tacos - among other things - make it interesting."

"You are wrong," she said. "It is about survival. About power. About winning or losing, about defeating one's enemies or being defeated. If Fred had realized this..."

"Maybe she'd still be alive? And you'd still be what? Dormant? For all intents and purposes, dead?"

She tensed as if about to clock him one, but all she said was: "Perhaps."

"Good thing for you Fred didn't share your views on the meaning of life, tacos and the Dixie Chicks and so on."

"But Fred helped to kill the man responsible for her slavery and madness." She smiled slightly, nodded approval.

Spike didn't write that down. It didn't seem right to incriminate Fred now, even though there was nothing more that could hurt her. "What are you on about?" It surprised him to imagine Fred killing a human being - or helping to kill one, whatever that meant.

"That she sought vengeance against one who wronged her shows strength. If she had only favored that aspect of her personality, instead of wasting her time in frivolous pursuits."

"Like what - science? She was a brainy bird."

"I understand curiosity. I am speaking of love. When I ruled, love was but a plaything I batted around the way a cat toys with a mouse."

It occurred to Spike that it would be rather nice to feel that way about love - to be its cruel master, rather than the other way around. Not bloody likely.

"There were those she wished to love," Illyria said. "There was a witch, a red-headed woman of some power. Fred desired her."

"That right?" Who'd have thought it? Fred had a yen for Red. If he'd known, he might've teased her in rhyme. Poor girl.

"Before she died," Illyria went on, "Fred loved Wesley. But their intimacy did not reach fruition. She had a terrible life. Her curiosity was rewarded by violence, isolation, madness and death. The pleasures and joys she attained were all too fleeting."

"In large part due to you," Spike said.

"She was weak. If I had taken over her form earlier, I would have decimated those who tormented her in Pylea. I would have taken all that she desired and more, wrung every drop of knowledge and pleasure from this puny world."

Spike wrote on his clipboard: Seems like Big Blue's feeling sorry for Fred.

"Perhaps," she said, "I can yet finish what Fred started in some areas."

Spike raised an eyebrow and wrote on his clipboard: Seems like she wants to shag Percy.

"Not that it would be worth my time," she added.

Maybe not, Spike wrote, but as he finished scribbling the words, a blow knocked him down, and his clipboard clattered out of his grip.

"Enough talking," Illyria said cheerfully. "I wish to pummel you again."

Spike was almost glad. It didn't seem right to have a chat with the one who'd taken Fred's life away. Violence made more sense, even if he was the one who did most of the bleeding. With any luck, he'd get a few licks in. "Right," Spike said, and picked himself up off the floor. "Let's get to it."

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From:

paratti.livejournal.com

Good stuff.

From:

Illyria ficathon fic

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