Elderly Pets

Fic: Elderly Pets
http://www.livejournal.com/community/bloodclaim/989664.html#cutid1
Author: josie_h

Pairing: Spike/Xander
Rating: Mature Audiences (M/M sexual content! And themes)
***Warnings: D/s, Major character death, slavery***

It’s an AU!..... The Premise: A hundred and fifty years after the final battle with the Senior Partners… Demons rule the world. The luckier humans are pets…. Most are bred for food. Spike survived, and in the early days found Xander at an auction, purchased him and did what Spike does best…. Made the most of it.

Author’s Note: Don’t own the characters etc and bow down to their original creators Joss, et al., plus all the wonderful online writers who continue to give them life.



Part 15

Weeks merged into months and months into years… And every night Master was seen going to the tree, and every night Esther joined him. Whether they spoke or sat in silence, the pattern was always the same. He would sit, she would wander up, he would open up the now tattered old folds of the sleeping bag, and they would just… be.

Esther was indeed magically gifted. Her powers grew as she did. As she turned twenty there was a ‘blossoming’ of her ability, tapping into the mystical forces of dark and light…. At twenty one her simple entrance of a room had it rippling with her power and energy. The only person who was un-phased by the extraordinary being was her Master. Spike marveled at his protégé…. He knew that in times of old, Esther would have stood toe to toe with ‘Red’ or any of the leading Wiccans in terms of power, sadly she was denied that, she was alone.

In times of old she would also, no doubt, have been surrounded by the wisdom and kind attention of her sister wiccans. Now, at only twenty one, she was alone, and from all accounts, by far the most powerful witch on the planet… her saving grace was Master. Thankfully she was of the Aurelian line so specialist tutors were a given, and the fact that she was being coached in magical practice… tolerated.

There were other Aurelian children so gifted but for one parameter that differentiated Esther from the others… she tapped into the energy of both sides, light and dark, drawing on the power of her grandfather *and* his life partner, Master … The dark energy coupled with the gentle soul had been her guiding light, her silent strength since she could remember... Master had promised… they had talked, he needed her and they had agreed….


It was twenty years after Xander’s death and despite his own grief, Spike was no fool, Daniel had been his strength and his keeper through the hardest period of his own and Danny’s life… So Master called for the now grey headed human on the night before the twentieth anniversary of his father’s death….

“Are you happy Daniel?”

“Of course Master.”

“I believe you have need of a companion.”

“Master?”

“I want you to take a partner.”

“But Master… the rules…”

“Are defunct once you cease your stud duties…”

“Cease?…”

“You have been loyal to the stud for seventy eight years Daniel…. I have it on good authority that The Gish stud is retiring Emily this year…. I thought that I might….”

Daniel’s face lit up, and his chest tightened as tears began to fall, “Oh Master!”

Emily had been the mother of sixteen of his children and was a real favorite. Her stays at the Chateau during the servicing period were always joyous events and had become longer and longer as time went on, with Daniel dearly sorry to see her returned to her own breeding stud at the end of the two or near three months… And Master finding all sorts of reasons to extend the stay.

“I can’t… thank you ….” Daniel fell to a full down position, something he did so rarely these days but appropriate now.

“Consider it done. You will no longer be required at stud after this coming summer, but will remain as head of the household and assist John and myself in selecting the next two or three stud sires. I have my eye on Alexander and Thomas… but we have need of one more.”

Daniel remained down, his feeling of joy overwhelming any ability to speak…

Emily arrived at the Chateau in late summer … She had resigned herself to being driven to the feed lots, having had her last offspring in spring… she was close to fifty eight. As they neared the destination in the windowless van, she was stunned to have her chains undone, and despite her full down position, was witness to handlers passing over her papers to the Aurelian Master. She was confused but stood in compliance, then was led down a familiar corridor. As Spike stopped in front of a door, she dropped to her knees in a formal down position at her new Master’s feet and waited patiently for her fate. The door opened and a familiar figure dropped to his knees in front of her. Master was there but simply gave his blessing and wandered off, leaving them to embrace… Daniel rejoiced in the warm hug from the very special mother of so many of his children. He found her mouth and kissed her passionately. There was no imperative to procreate… it made their coupling all the sweeter. Master had decided… they were to be allowed grow old together… Emily buried her face in her lover’s neck and cried silently for the blessing they had been given. They would have one more child together as Daniel turned one hundred and seventeen… Timothy… Much loved, he remained on the Stud to become the third and by far the youngest original grandchild and stallion….

…………

Three years after Esther and Spike’s first ‘encounter’ under the tree, the laws preventing ‘ensoulment’ were withdrawn provided the party being ensouled requested it of their own free will. An early issue in the Alliance due to Spike’s own ‘condition’, the debate both for and against ensoulment had initially been quite fierce. As the argument went back and forth however, quite valid philosophical questions arose regarding the ‘nature of the soul’ as it pertained to demons, and with few answers apparent, the whole issue to became so muddled and obscure that the entire debate was thrown out of top level dialogue. The result was in some ways… inevitable, shortly after Xander’s death, a test case came in front of the Alliance leaders.

A pretty young vampire had fallen in love with a Kassini demon but their relationship could not be ratified unless she was ensouled. An empassioned speech and well constructed argument, and the obvious devotion of the young couple swayed the opinion of the Alliance group and the law was rescinded. Since no-one could clearly define what a soul would mean to a pure demon (if it meant anything at all!)…. The ensouling (if voluntary) was no longer considered an issue and provided the right paperwork was filled out, the few individuals to whom souls were installed had no more hassles with authorities.

Esther was a godsend for Spike. Extraordinarily bright, deliciously irreverent, and darkly beautiful… even after twenty four years, she caused his unbeating heart to skip whenever she approached…. She was a delightful combination of Xander’s wit and nervous affection, strength determination and pragmatism, along with her Master’s ‘bloody mindedness’ and learned ways.
Spike taught her demon languages, vampire lore, and mystical ways…. And when she outstripped his abilities, he brought in tutors. Xander would have been *so* proud!

From day one, however, Esther challenged Spike. She purported to hate the light, consistently venturing out in the dark and avoiding daytime activities. From the moment she hit puberty until the day he finally relented, she demanded to be turned, begged, cajoled and pleaded…. Her logic was flawless. By having another Aurelian Master vampire onsite, and one of the genetic family, there was a firm legacy that could not be challenged. Despite all the gains made at international level, the status of humans was still that of protected pets, with a family member, a powerful wiccan and now vampire, the family would be safer. She had only to take the dark choice. She had repeatedly prostrated herself at his feet to beg to be turned, eventually even her mother appealed. Spike relented and located the three remaining Orbs of Thessula. It took twelve years and the equivalent of half a million dollars to find them. The Master’s purchase of the orbs was utterly necessary. The third orb pushed the limits of six figures, by then Spike did not care. The day following its purchase Esther was turned and ensouled.

He had never made a childe before. Spike spent forty hours after her turning and ensoulment at her side, waiting for her to rise. She woke surrounded by warmth, familiar smells and the sounds of the family settling for the evening. Her first meal was from her Sire’s bloodstream, as were all her meals, exclusively, for the next six months and then on and off for the rest of their time together. Fed in such a way by her Sire, her move toward status as Master was accelerated, and by year thirty she was second only to her Sire as the strongest vampire on the planet. After sixty years on the Alliance, Spike suggested Esther, Mistress Aurelian Vampire, take his place. There was not even a ripple of dissent as the Aurelian Master stepped down in deference to his Childe. There was a passing comment in the press, but more space devoted to her choice of attire than political agenda, and barely a comment regarding the excellence of her inaugural speech. Spike communed with the oak that night, letting Xander know just what a wonderful woman they had produced.


Four years after her turning, Esther’s mother Octavia had begged Master, on her death bed, something Spike was not able to deal with…. was never ‘built for’. Riddled with cancer Esther’s mother had pleaded with Spike to take her, to end the pain, her sisters had also appealed… promising to look after her children, but begging Master to care for Esther… to let her magic abilities flourish. Octavia accepted that Esther had become a vampire, indeed parents and daughter had agreed…. It was a given, a way of keeping the family safe.. and she was honored at her daughter’s role…

Octavia was the first of the original children to die…. And in such pain… Spike was again asked to ‘finish it’ but only agreed after being berated by his Childe for three months. He kissed Octavia for the final time and started….but simply could not drain her, she was his daughter. The woman was so drugged with morphine that her system was shutting down anyway, yet Esther had to do what he could not… She adored her mother, loved her and gave her the relief and love only a child might… she drained her… Spike was there to catch Esther as she fell…. They cried together… Octavia was gone. Her mother had lost Jason, her life partner, seven months previously, and had lived on for the children. Were it not for Esther, Spike would have walked into the sun the next morning. Outliving a partner was one thing, outliving a child… no one should outlive their children.. his mother had said that, now he understood.

………………………

He took Xander’s old collar that John had returned on his death bed, and fastened it slowly around his pale neck. He was naked but for Xander’s favourite hip chains, they still didn’t fit.

………………………….

Spike was three hundred and seventy five years ‘young’. But one could only tell that from the power that rolled off the master vampire in ‘waves’ these days, and detected through the dull ache of loss and fatigue that could be seen in his eyes. He looked physically unchanged since the day of his turning more than three centuries ago, but it was sixty years today that Xander had died and Spike had pined for his lovely Pet every day since.

The family had lost individuals from unpredictable sickness on the property for the first time ever…. two of their grandchildren, both merely infants, four years previously, and then John just seven months ago, all succumbing to the deadly Embarrian virus, allegedly a mutation of the long forgotten tuberculosis. If that were true, Spike had, in reality, lost four relatives to its ravages including his own mother. Of late it seemed a vaccine was well on the way, something that was a relief for all who still owned humans. But it gave no relief to the grieving family. Carlos was inconsolable, stopped eating and died within seven weeks of his dear partner. Doctors could give no reason for his waning…. a broken heart apparently a reality.

In year thirty after Xander’s demise the Chateau purchased the two adjacent properties, one initially established as a training facility for human breeding practices, but later as a medical centre specializing in the treatment of humans with demon diseases. The other property became the place to retire elderly pets and breeding stock from the Aurelian line (the alternative normally to simply ‘put them down’). The second facility also allowed the Aurelian children an opportunity to engage with the extended family. The closeness and outside experience was something all the family benefited from.

…………………………………………


One would think that after sixty years, the pain would ease, but it did not. He carefully placed the envelope for Daniel and Esther on the mantel piece.
……………………..

Three years after Xander’s death, Spike found a doctor who could restore the larynx of their beautiful boys… but Simon and Adrian refused. After sixty two years of silence, neither aging twin could think of a reason they would wish to speak. With family it was not needed, the love they were constantly given and the joy of being ‘home’ was all they required. Both men simply hugged their Master in gratitude, and politely declined.

Spike learned of their horror at waking in dual beds in the ‘hospital wing’ of their stud home, feeling ‘different’ and slowly realizing what had happened. Attempting to cry out and to move, the former now no longer possible, the latter prevented by leather restraints. The desperation when they learned of their ‘adjustment’, the eventual feeling of the area now devoid of scrotum. Deep depression was chemically treated as they were retrained. The loss of muscle mass and body hair over the months of training, indicative of their changed status. Beaten into submission, time and time again, compliance became a survival strategy, that they were still together, their only solace.

Their greatest punishment was their designated role as the minders for the mothers of all their children. Powerless to act and devoid of voice, they watched as the females in their care were impregnated again and again with their seed, and the children they knew to be their own, sold and lost to them at fifteen or sixteen never knowing that their silent impotent protectors were in fact their fathers.

Daniel quietly told Spike one evening. The master had walked to the tree and cried as he conveyed his distress to Xander… begging forgiveness. The twins had joined Master there, Daniel having let them know of his discussion. They all held and rocked and cried.

Simon and Adrian had aged faster than the other siblings, having been without Master’s blood for nearly sixty years. But their last thirty plus years were wonderful. Surrounded by children of their own line, they slid into their roles as the ‘loved elderly uncles’ and were virtually never seen without at least one or two small people in tow.

Simon died of a heart attack aged one hundred and seventeen, Adrian died six weeks later refusing food, he simply took to his bed and died. It was a sunny spring day, Bethany had visited her uncle with her latest two little boys. They had played at Adrian’s feet as the aged gent sat in his chair on the balcony. He had smiled and held her hand. She thought he looked happy for the first time since the funeral. She left promising a visit in the morning, but Adrian joined his beloved brother, dying quietly twenty minutes after she departed.

The whole family had grieved… their ashes were mixed together and spread at the base of the family tree.

………………………

He straightened the bed and placed the old Panda proudly at the centre of the pillows. The memories of first lovemaking flooded in.

…………….

It had only been a month after their first encounter and Spike ‘purchasing’ him.

There had been mutual ‘relief’ and discussions of orientation… but on that one evening… after some sixty-nine activity that Spike had offered and Xander accepted, with the promise of reciprocal rights. Much reciprocated. Xander was filled and filled him. Their ecstatic joining like nothing either had experienced or expected. In one single evening their coupling was complete and absolute.

As Spike’s slow strokes edged his partner toward completion, and the tongue took away the expressions of joy so appropriate for the moment, he pledged his own devotion. There would be no other. At the time, a mere few months since their meeting, neither could conceive of the years that would truly entail. Neither had a clue as to the length of time their partnership would span or the joy they might be privy to.

………………………………………

He turned the lights off and pulled the door to their much loved bedroom closed for the last time. He had only taken a few small items that were precious, and he wandered down to the old knarled oak. He had left the sleeping bag behind with the note for Esther. He would attend his love without encumbrance.

………………………………………….

For the last sixty years he had endured constant dreams of Xander, but in the last six months, it had translated to not sleeping and in the last two months… not eating. Daniel in his fading years was frantic, yet sadly Esther knew. Her taking of Master’s blood allowed her to see that he had been merely surviving to keep the family safe. In truth he had died with his life partner. He needed to join Xander.

One evening in late spring, Master had invited Daniel and his beautiful Emily, and Esther and her new partner Davina to dinner. The dialogue was finite, the instructions clear. Typical of Master, he couched his reasons in the text of his childhood studies… neither Daniel nor Esther missed the meaning…. He took them to the tree, they both knelt at his feet as he spoke…

“I take it you have studied Hamlet….” His son and Childe both nodded. “Good… Well…”

“I have of late--but wherefore I know not—
lost all my mirth, forgone all custom of exercises;
and indeed it goes so heavily with my disposition
that this goodly frame, the earth, seems to me a sterile promontory,
this most excellent canopy, the air, look you,
this brave o'erhanging firmament,
this majestical roof fretted with golden fire,
why, it appears no other thing to me than
a foul and pestilent congregation of vapours.
What a piece of work is a man! how noble in reason!
how infinite in faculty! in form and moving how
express and admirable! in action how like an angel!
in apprehension how like a god! the beauty of the
world! the paragon of animals! And yet, to me,
what is this quintessence of dust? man delights not
me: no, nor woman neither, though by your smiling
you seem to say so.”

And indeed son and granddaughter gave rueful smiles, countered by their own tears as they knew the decision had been made and was out of their control.

It had been a long while in coming, but Spike knew the family would now be safe and the outside world was getting better for his children. Esther had replaced him at the Alliance. The next generation of children was safe under Esther’s protection, and given an esteemed position with Timothy, Alexander and Thomas’s bloodlines.
………………………………

Around six in the morning, Spike kissed the old photo of his Pet. He had clutched it to his chest so many times over the last sixty years. And now simply whispered, “Be with you soon my love”. He then stood at the base of their favorite oak and stepped into the ‘warmth’ of a glorious sunrise for the first and very last time in three and a quarter centuries. His ashes joined those of his lover at last, lying together in final repose.

…………………………………………..

Spike had been careful as he collated the estate information and ‘handover documents’ for his beautiful wiccan daughter Esther, in every way now the Mistress of Aurelius. She had known his intentions for some time and understood… tried to understand… he was her sire and her grandfather… the hurt to her would be real, yet she understood.

Daniel and Esther entered Master’s rooms, but already suspected what they would find. The thick package contained specific messages for each of the surviving siblings and for his business and political associates. It also had particular family related instructions for Daniel and Esther and a poem to have engraved and placed as a marker at the bottom of ‘their tree’ so the children might read it and pause to think.

"Heav'n forming each on other to depend,
A master, or a servant, or a friend,
Bids each on other for assistance call,
'Till one man's weakness grows the strength of all.
Wants, frailties, passions, closer still ally
The common int'rest, or endear the tie.
To these we owe true friendship, love sincere,
Each home-felt joy that life inherits here..."

Alexander Pope


The package he left included a special ‘present’ containing a full pint of his own blood for the upcoming sire of their clan.

Timothy was Daniel’s youngest son, and the spitting image of his grandfather at the same age. Spike knew that the packet of blood (bolstered by Esther’s at regular intervals in the future) would mean a far longer and healthier existence than his great uncle John…. John’s offspring would continue his line, their family so extended now, that the children had honestly abandoned all pretence of trying to explain to outsiders who was who…. ‘Family was Family’; ‘Blood was Blood’. Master had said so, Grandfather agreed, they all knew.

Only twenty five years old, and with an expected role in the family, Timothy was solemnly handed the package with the enclosed loving note and the precious gift… He knew he was the youngest and the favorite…. But it didn’t help…. He retreated to his Master’s rooms.

He tugged an ancient, now rather worn soft toy in the shape of the long extinct Panda from the bed. Master had apparently given it to his Pet some in their first year together. It was noted as particularly special because Great-grandfather Xander had always wanted just such a toy Panda as a child. It had always had pride of place in front of the pillows when Master’s bed was unoccupied. Yet now it would come with him to his quarters… Master had sent him to fetch it in his very last letter… Somehow that made it all the more poignant… He knew… Master and the Grandfather he never met had survived to keep them safe …. To keep them all safe… and now…. Aunt Esther had lost her sire, they had lost their Master but they could not deny him this last respect… Every day for sixty years he had missed his love… and all he wanted was to be with grandfather….

Timothy clutched the black and white fuzz to his face and cried like the abandoned and distraught little boy he felt he was at that moment…..And grieved for Master.

……………………..

Over the ensuing three decades after Master’s demise, all the remaining sons and daughters and their partners died… inevitably surrounded by loving relatives and with the hope that their species – humans – were to be dealt a better lot in the future.

Yet Chateau Aurelius went on.

…………………………..


Eight decades later, Timothy stood tall and proud, the dark haired, stunning, the Supreme Aurelian Sire in his late prime… the Panda and his grand father’s diamond strings of outdated torso chains, along with an odd little leather clad book of rather ordinary poetry, always managed to have pride of place somewhere in the private quarters of the Chateau. The now bejeweled, ‘literary’ Panda was the very simple, yet no less profound celebration of just far the Aurelian line had come in the past two hundred years since its establishment, and the legacy of their old Master, Spike, and his Pet, Xander, their bloodline sire. Esther remained an esteemed member of the Global government, his own daughter Farah had recently been voted to local government and his warlock nephew Jonathon was the new head of the council of clans in Nice.

It was eighty years today. He pulled the Panda from the shelf, and flicked on an old fashioned MP3 that he remembered Master playing*. It was a favorite of grandfather’s, recorded nearly two hundred and forty years ago. He stood on the balcony overlooking the south of the estate absently caressing the ancient glass eye of the toy. As the music started, an ancient song from grandfather and Master’s early times together. Timothy idly wondered which one of the many extraordinary children that carried the Aurelian bloodline would prove worthy of inheriting ‘Panda’ in the future….



“Just lay it all down. Put your face into my neck and let it fall out.
I know
I know
I know.
I knew before you got home.
This world you're in now,
it doesn't have to be alone,
I'll get there somehow, 'cos
I know I know I know
when, even springtime feels cold.

But I will learn to breathe this ugliness you see,
so we can both be there and we can both share the dark.
And in our honesty, together we will rise,
out of our nightminds, and into the light
at the end of the fight...

You were blessed by a different kind of inner view: it's all magnified.
The highs would make you fly, but the lows make you want to die.
And I was once there, hanging from that very ledge where you are standing.
So I know
I know
I know,
it's easier to let go.

But I will learn to breathe this ugliness you see,
so we can both be there and we can both share the dark.
And in our honesty, together we will rise out of our nightminds
and into the light at the end of the fight.

...and in our honesty, together we will rise out of our nightminds
and into the light... at the end of the fight...”

* Nightminds - Missy Higgins… www.missyhiggins.com