Title: Let's Pretend

Author: Analise

Archive: Man or Demon, anywhere else, email me. analise@notthatjaded.com

Spoilers: "Out of My Mind"

Rating: PG-13 for language

Summary: What if the events in "Out of My Mind" had gone a little differently?

Disclaimer: Spike and Angel don't belong to me. Neither does anyone else on B:tVS or A:tS. I'm only borrowing them. They'll be returned without a scratch. I made no money off this fic and don't plan to as it was written simply for entertainment.

~*~

Dammit.

Dammit all to hell.

Gods I'm pissed off. Probably drunk too.

How much of this whiskey have I had?

Don't remember. Oops.

Now, where was I?

Oh yeah, pissed off. Pissed off at that effin' wanker who calls himself my Sire. Why's he got to act all holier than thou toward me just because the nonce has a soul. We both know he and Angelus aren't that different. Like they say, denile's not just a river in Egypt....

I mean, you'd think he could be happy for me, now that I finally got myself out of the purgatory I was stuck in, but nooooo. At least he didn't call the little Scooby gang and tell them the good news. Slutty'd probably stake me on sight if she knew what really happened earlier...

I couldn't believe it. After all, something that had been a part of me for entirely TOO long was finally gone. Just like that. All it took was getting that fool initiative doc to take it out. Well...it took a bit of "convincing" on my part for him to do it, but he did take the blasted chip out. I figured I might lay low for a bit and let that bint Slayer think the doc hadn't taken it out, even got the doc to play along. And Harm...well, just tell Harm whatever you want her to say and think and leave out the stuff you don't want her to say. Probably a good thing that Slutty did think the chip was still there, seeing as she would have killed me on the spot for not helping to save Farmboy. Well, she would have tried to kill me anyway, I've jus' been holding back in all our other upteenth fights. As it was, Harm and I got out while Farmboy got himself all fixed up. I dropped her off somewhere, glad to finally be rid of the bint, and got the hell out of dodge. Not like I had to stay there any longer for my food.

However, I don't know what possessed me to drive down to L.A. I wasn't drunk....yet.

Naturally one of the first people I had to run into on my joyride of freedom was the dark swirly coated poof himself. I was right in the middle of a young delectable morsel too. Damn him. He made me let her go, saying something about it being a good thing he got there before I killed her. She ran off screamin' and cryin' and probably died of blood loss later, too afraid to go to the hospital. What a waste.

I then got the wonderful pleasure of having to tell the poof just how I was able to feed. Seems like he should have been bright enough to have figured it out, I mean, oi. The next question was something along the lines of, "And why did you drag yourself back to L.A.?" As you can see, all that stuff about there being this bond between Sire and Childe is a load of horse crap. The only thing Angelus feels toward me is animosity, which I return wholeheartedly, I might add. After that debacle I found myself basically told to get out of town as fast as possible and go far away from California.

That's why I'm sitting in this cheap motel, with the curtains drawn, drinking the day away.

That's why I'm trying to pretend I'm not as lonely as I feel.

Good riddance to them all.