Title: Big Changes
Author: Am-Chau Yarkona
Rating: mild
Disclaimer: Not my characters.
Summary: For dreamtree's challenge, just a little post-Chosen something.
Heat. There had been heat; unbearable, scorching heat.
He'd been dust. He knew for a fact that he'd been dust, and it had hurt.
The pain was still there, a distant memory intruding under his skin—and there was heat, too, but that didn't seem to be internal.
Spike opened his eyes, and found that he was staring at the sun. He shut them again quickly.
Pain. Pain was good, it was something he could hold on to, fight with, revel in.
There was a stone digging into his lower back. Footsteps sounded around him. Voices spoke ("poor guy… drink? drugs?… sunstroke, at least") and moved on past—he could practically see people trying to look at him without showing their curiosity.
No reason to move presented itself, and so he lay there, sun-bathing, pain-bathing, sure that this was hallucination or purgatory. He was, after all, dead.
The sun went down. The people went. Demons moved past—only some were walking—and they ignored him, too. Until… "Spike?" said a voice, a knowing, cheerful voice.
He opened his eyes again, trying to identify the newcomer.
Skin—lots of skin, folded and creased enough to hide playing cards or kittens or possibly a small Eiffel Tower in—a smile, wide and cheerful and always optimistic; and breath, real, living-person breath than smelled of Kentucky Fried Chicken and cooked onions.
Carefully, Spike put the jigsaw pieces together, and enquired, "Clem? What the…"
"I, err, hear you saved the world," Clem said, conversationally. "Shall we—have a drink? I don't really want to be hanging around here for long."
"Yeah," Spike said. There didn't seem to be a lot of choice.
"Are you—you know, *okay*? I mean, lying there isn't getting us out of here, actually."
In a spirit of scientific experimentation, Spike sat up. His head swam for a moment, and his heart thudded.
He did a swift double take.
One hand on his chest, he looked up into Clem's face—though he couldn't exactly tell if the lines were a frown or just Clem's normal look. "Weird," he said.
"Right, man. Weird. Can we just get out of this place?"
"Why?" Spike asked, and then took the time to look around. Demonsville, the bad side of town—whatever town this was—and things that had ignored him earlier were starting to pay more attention. "Okay."
Carefully, he stood up, and Clem began to lead the way out of the alley, walking at first, but then starting to run, as the things behind them took more notice.
They ran in silence for a while, until the bigger, nastier demons seemed to have been left behind, and those that were around ignored them. Then, breath catching in his throat, heart pounding in his chest, Spike stopped, and gasped, "Where are we, anyway?"
Clem shrugged. "No idea. Well…" he looked around in the darkness, looking for any sort of clue, "we're only a hundred yards from the zoo."
Spike raised an eyebrow. "The *zoo*?"
"That's what it says," Clem replied, pointing at the sign. "One Hundred Yards To The Most Biggest Collection of Animals Since The Ark!"
"That doesn't exactly help us," Spike said. "We might as well go on and look for…"
"Why?" Clem asked. "Let's go to the zoo."
Spike didn't have to voice the thought. 'You must be crazy' said his face, his newly-human body, in fact everything about him, up to and including the leather duster.
Clem had only just noticed the duster. He wondered briefly how it had survived, and then put it down to some sort of after-death Darwinism. Survival of the fittest, and all that.
"Suit yourself," Clem said. "I'm going. I like to see the big cats." He turned and started walking down the road, not looking back.
For a moment, Spike simply stood there, undecided; then he followed Clem. Nothing wrong with being crazy, after all. He'd heard it was in fashion this year.
* * *
"See the lion over in the corner?" Clem said, a slightly curved fingernail pointing the way.
Spike peered, found that no, he couldn't see it, and slipped into his game face without thinking. "Yeah," he said. "What about it?"
"Don't you think it looks a bit like Angel?" Clem asked. "Big brow, hair stood up on end like that, ever so serious all the time?"
"I see a certain resemblance," Spike admitted. "But how long have you known Angel?"
"Oh, ever since I got here," Clem said. "Arrived in the big new city, no idea of how to find my way around, and I figured that one of Buffy's friends was as good a place to go as any. They're running some sort of law firm now, I think—I haven't been involved much."
"Oh," Spike said, and then, "We're in LA?"
"Unless we ran so far we made it to… wherever's next up the highway," Clem told him. "Anyway, it's your turn. What about that lioness in the middle?"
Spike looked at the lioness in the middle, and all she reminded him of was Buffy. "Can't think of anyone. Look- it's nearly dawn."
Clem looked, and indeed, the sun was starting to rise. "We'd best be going, man. I don't want to have to… you know, sweep you up."
"No going to be a problem, actually," Spike said, beginning to realise for himself what things meant. "I'm human. I'm human—doing stupid human things, like breathing and going to the zoo; and not dusting in the sun."
"Oh," Clem said. "Oh. Oh, well, then. We can have more ice cream, and without stealing it, this time."
"You're on," Spike grinned. "If you're paying."