Follow-up Bonus: Harbour - SaundeLill

In the previous Bonus update I talked about the Saunders x Lillith ship in the Harbour Alternate Universe, and how once upon a time it was in fact canon. I just want to point out real quick (and burst your bubble I guess) that it is no longer the case; this ship is not a part of the current SPIKE version, so henceforth in this post I'll be describing things related to a very old version of this story.

The SPIKE story is one that's been with me since I was fourteen, and naturally it's changed a lot over the years. To help myself keep track of things I have separated it into three main versions. First, Second and Current (the current one is basically everything from 2009 (deviantart chapter) and up until today etc). Or Early, Old and Current, something like that.

The first/early version has been briefly mentioned in an earlier post where I spoke about the character Zach and the more dystopian sort of noir version of SPIKE.

The second/old version is one that is somewhat similar to the version you know, at least it started out pretty similarly. But the characters were acting rather differently, and the story was much darker and more dramatic. Spike and Sam in particular was not the way you know them by now. Quite the oposite in fact.
Spike had a similar past as he currently has, but how it shaped him as a person was different. He was extremely shy of conflict and would do absolutely anything to avoid causing something to lead up to a conflict, including letting others control him and take advantage of him. He was very submissive and had a dangerously low self esteem and a complete lack of self worth. In his own eyes he was trash, he was unworthy of anything nice in his life, and felt that because he was so worthless it was perfectly fine and understandable why others treated him differently and worse than they treated others. Everyone deserved better than he did, that was how he saw it.

Sam and Spike were best friends, but Sam was also very different back then. He started out sweet, but when he began to develop stronger feelings for Spike he would find ways to take advantage of Spike's shyness to conflict as well as his loyalty and will to please others to lure him into doing what he wanted Spike to do.
Sam learned how to manipulate and guilt trip Spike into being more and more intimate with him, until eventually Spike just couldn't deal with any of it anymore and instead of letting Sam know and risk upsetting him, Spike ran away.

(Sam was like a younger "milder" version of Charles apparently... o _ o  )

Sam slowly realised the damage he had done, but it was too late now to apologise, and all he could do was hope that Spike would come back one day. But the longer he was gone for, the more bitter and angry Sam became.

When Spike one day did return, it was with the intention of fixing everything that had went wrong in his life prior to his disappearance.
He started by mending the bond he had with Sam, still believing that everything has been Spike's own fault somehow and that he had been very ungrateful to Sam and should have been kinder to him. So without being aware of it, Spike was still fully under Sam's control.
Sam was done with the mind games and felt he had learnt his lesson. When Spike returned he expected Spike to be angry at him and maybe even hate him, but Spike showed a form of affection that Sam mistook as something genuine, thinking that Spike had fallen in love with him for real.
So Sam was affectionate back, and Spike let him be because he felt guilty for having been so ungrateful to Sam in the past.
Spike even allowed Sam to sleep with him, numerous times.

Until one morning, Sam woke up to find Spike missing.
He searched he house for him and found that Spike's jacket and shoes were missing as well. He worried that Spike had left him again, but soon recalled how Spike had been talking about Charles a lot these past few days. And how he'd wanted to pay Charles one last visit.
Sam quickly got his clothes on and ran outside to find Spike and stop him from the imminent danger he was about to face.

Spike had went back to Charles to confront him, but fear got the better of him and Charles quickly overpowered him. What Charles hadn't counted on however, was that Spike had brought a gun. And in a fit of panic, Spike shot him.
The panic didn't leave him after that either, overwhelming him instead. But he continued to carry out his plan.
He set fire to the house to completely erase his past, his history, his memories. And then he walked off towards the bridge on which his father had once killed himself, seeking to do the same.

Sam followed the smoke, and understood from previous hints where he should look for Spike next. He arrived at the old closed down bridge and felt his heart freeze when he saw Spike standing on the edge with a gun at his temple.
Sam shouted at Spike not to do it, but there was nothing he could do.
Spike had already decided, felt he was too big a burden in everyone's lives and that they would be better off without him, happier if he didn't excist. And he saw the grief in Sam's eyes as proof that Spike brought nothing but pain with him, and he didn't want to hurt Sam anymore.
So he pulled the trigger, and Sam had to watch as his best friend and most beloved person in his life plummeted to his death.

It utterly destroyed Sam.

Saunders too was absolutely devastated when Sam told him. And it took a long long time for the two of them to process their grief enough to manage to attempt going about their daily life as before.
One day some time later, Saunders got a call from Lillith, asking if she may talk to Spike, and Saunders had to reopen the wound and tell her the heartbreaking news that Spike was dead.
Lillith tried her very best not to cry on the phone, and as calmly as she could thanked Saunders for telling her. She hung up the phone, crying her heart out and wrapping her arms around her belly where the result of her and Spike's relationship was slowly growing.

...So yeah. Shit was pretty dark.  o  _  o

Lillith and her mum eventually moved in with Sam and Saunders, as Lillith's mum and Saunders figured it would do Sam and Lillith good to keep each other company in these difficult times, seeing how they both knew Spike better than anyone.

Lillith in this version of the story actually knew Sam and Spike when she was younger, but she moved to another city a couple of years later. Spike meets her in that city again, but Sam on the other hand hasn't seen her since they were kids and used to hang out at his place.

Lillith would often visit Sam when she was little, being one of Sam's closest friends before Spike came along. She was also very fascinated with Sam's dad back then, but when Lillith got older and met Saunders again after several years the "childish crush" she had once had was now becoming a new type of emotion. A desire.

This was mostly due to her being in a very vulnerable state of mind and feeling a desperate need of comfort and affection after the traumatic death of her boyfriend and all. She starts feeling what she -thinks- is a romantic and/or sexual attraction towards Saunders, but it is not as genuine as she thinks it is, but more a response to the grief and loneliness she feels over having lost Spike and of the isolation Sam is putting her through (he is not very pleased that Spike got her pregnant, jealous that Spike may have loved Lillith more than him).
Saunders is a calm and gentle, safe and protective, loving and caring maskuline figure in her life at the moment, and he becomes a sort of embodiment of all the things she wants or misses, making her subconsciously believe that being intimate with him will make her feel better, feel safe and relaxed, thinking he will understand and comfort her, even love her.
Hormonal changes due to her pregnancy also leads her on to think that she is in love with Saunders. Him being a father already is something that has a subliminal appeal to her in this state, making him seem like someone who would be a wonderful person to have in her and her baby's life.

So although she deep down feels it is wrong of her to approach him like this, she just can't help but wanting him.

(Really though; despite how she feels, it is wrong of her to go about it this way as what she is doing is in fact bordering on rape because Saunders is asleep at the moment and unable to give or deny consent. So this romanticisation on her part of what technically could be classified as attempted rape is another reason why this idea was eventually scrapped. Though I know Lillith would never be one to force or pressure anyone into sexual acts. With her and Spike it was with mutual consent, and while she did go too far by kissing Saunders in his sleep, she stopped the second he showed unwillingness/disapproval - realising too how she'd gone too far)

But yeah..

I guess that's all the context you guys need to know before reading this little CCS. :)
Sorry that it's dark, but the story it spawned from was hella dark as well, so *shrug* I dunno, I wrote it when I was like, sixteen or something, and I was all gloomy and angsty back then so the SPIKE story kind of mirrored that.
Pardon the typos or wrong use of words or faulty descriptions too, by the way. Again; it's an old comic XD

I hope the text is okay-ish to read, but I totally understand if it isn't. Let me know if you'd like a transcript or if you have any questions about this all. I'll attach the "pages" as downloadable files to this post so you can zoom in better, or adjust the contrasts better (just please don't repost or upload it anywhere or claim it as your own and stuff... common decency and all that, you know? ;) Don't worry though; I trust you guys <3 )

Okay, so here goes:

(the fade-out here was simply due to me being too lazy to finish it XD )

And again:
If the images are too small and hard to read, bigger files are attached below here in this post. The pages are numbered from page 0 to page 18 ("SLill_pg00" to "SLill_pg18" ), and if they're still hard to read then let me know and I can write a transcript of it for you :)

Also pardon the low quality of these. I would have re-scanned them, but the ring binder I keep them in is back in the house I'm moving from so I won't get hold of them for a while. These old photos of the pages are all I have of them at the moment. Sorry for any inconvenience  ._.'

Curious to hear what you guys think though O3O