Title: Under the Hidden Sun: A Fairytale
Author: snowpuppies
Fandom: BtVS
Character/Pairing: Spike/Buffy
Genre: Fairytale/Romance
Rating: PG
Disclaimer & Distribution: Recognizable things aren't mine but the fic is. Please don't archive or distribute without asking.
Summary: A hero's tale.
Word Count: 734

A/N: for fan_flashworks, prompt: Secrets
A/N2: for sb_fag_ends: Mayan mythology (Key Theme: Divine Tests and Challenges); Title inspired by the translation of Xbalanque, the name of one of the Hero Twins

Beta'd by velvetwhip




Under the Hidden Sun
A Fairytale


Our hero's story begins—as so many do—long, long ago and in a village very far away. As unlikely as it seems, our hero began life as a modest young man named William. William was small, bookish, shy, and well…a bit of a fop, really. Yet, his heart was filled with grand ideas of romance and love and he yearned for acceptance from his peers, but when his fumbling overtures failed to capture the heart of the woman he loved, William despaired.

It was in this despair that William found his ruin: killed, then born again of blood and violence and lust. He was transformed, not into a man, but a creature, a monster that fed from the veins of enemy and friend alike, consumed with the thirst for fear and anguish and pain. He wreaked havoc among the villages for decades, trading in his books and poems for fangs and spikes of iron.

It seems an unlikely place for the story of a hero to begin, but all stories have a beginning, and once the beginning has begun, it cannot be rewritten.



She finds him, pale and quiet—paler, stiller than death; her heart skips a beat—sprawled in the grass behind a mausoleum.



After over a century of mayhem, William—now called Spike—found himself in the pursuit of a Slayer in a little town called Sunnydale.

He pursued his Slayer, stalking her movements, her friends, tangling in combat and partaking in witty repartee vastly superior to William's fumbling attempts at poetry. (Living more than a century should be good for something, after all.)



When she swallows her shock at his appearance, she notices the bruises, the swollen flesh, the jagged cuts; she's seen him like this before.

(But never so still. So Still.)



And then change was wrought upon our hero once again. First, in the form of a chip—a piece of machinery so great that it harnessed the beast inside, reducing our hero to dependence on the humans he once feasted upon—and secondly, in the form of love. For in his pursuit of the Slayer's blood, he inadvertently won her heart. Although—as in the way of all good tragedies—the Slayer held her love inside, a secret she treasured close to her soul, and our hero learned of her passion only moments before his final act: one of sacrifice and love, in which our hero, consumed by the light of his recaptured soul, crumbled to ash.

A fitting end for a hero, one might agree, but this hero's story has one final chapter, yet to be written.



Thanking her Slayer strength, she carries him home, invitation falling from her lips without thought.

She cleans his wounds, wiping the dirt from his face, the blood from his skin, then pours a bag of blood down his throat.

He doesn't move.

She watches, she waits.



For he remained: transformed, ethereal (And very well dead this time. Really.), held in stasis by those that Be, who surveyed the hero's transformation with puzzlement. He was quite the anomaly, as the Powers had slated this role for another.

And those that Be spoke, voices as one, booming with power, yet intimate as a lover's whisper, unto our hero. They told of his great deeds and the love in his heart, the brightness of his soul. They spoke of a challenge, of a chance to redeem his existence, to rejoin the one who held his heart.



He doesn't stir.

Time passes: a day, a week, two…

And still she sits and waits, heart lodged in her throat, wondering if she's found him only to lose him once again.

A tear falls silently, leaving a sparkling trail in its wake.

She leans closer, her grief falling on the sharp plains of his face. Brushing the hair from his temple, she breathes against his mouth: "Please."



He railed against the thought, screaming to the heavens—"Not another bloody test!"—and scoffed and grumbled and asked for a fag, though he had neither breath nor lungs, nor even a mouth in which to place such vice. He was tired and worn, and exhaustion filled his very being…

…save his heart, which continued to beat—though it had not form—with only one thought, one desire, one name…

…and he agreed to the challenge.



He opens his eyes and she smiles.











FIN.










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