…The Truth of It…
Chapter I: You Were Still There

"There are places in the heart that do not yet exist; suffering has to enter in for them to come to be."
-Leon Bloy

*1*

I've lived a long time, if you can call it living, I suppose a better word for what I've been doing for most of my existence is just that; existing. I don't need air to breath, water to live… Or fire to burn. I feed off of life, but that's really the closest I'll ever get to it again. Using it. Taking it. It's been so long, I'm beginning to forget what it felt like to live.

I've been walking in darkness for so long, I can hardly remember the feel of the sun on my face. I don't remember the ecstasy of filling my lungs after holding my breath. I don't remember the names of most of the people I knew… But I remember you, Buffy.

I remember you.

*2*

The first time I saw you, I knew who you were. I'd never seen you before, but there was no mistaking the slayer. I'd killed two before ever setting my eyes on you… and they still lingered around me, whispering to me. Their blood was part of me and it knew you; it was a part of you too. We were connected before you were even born, and I had waited for you your whole life.

My entire body tingled as I stalked you from the shadows. God, I wanted you. I wanted you to join the others in my collection. I wanted to make you beg; to make you scream. You would fight, I knew you would. I could see it in the way you moved. I could feel the power coming off of you like heat. None of the others around you could feel it, could they? They didn't know what was inside you… but I knew. I knew because I'd tasted you, even if you didn't know it. I'd tasted what you slayers were all about. At that moment no one could have known you better than I did. I let myself indulge in the intoxication for a few moments as I watched you, imagining what it would feel like to sink my teeth in to your flesh. I'd make you want it. I'd make the torment so great that you'd want my teeth in you as much as I did… and when I killed you, oh, when I killed you, I would have made it hurt.

I've often mused that that was the moment I fell in love with you. I've never told you, because the sick truth of it is that I believe it was. Watching you dance with your friends, wanting nothing more than to cause you pain and feel you die… I fell in love with you. The thought of your pain made me so hot it almost hurt. You think love always comes from a good place? Maybe that would make life easier, but the fact of the matter is that love is all about hurt. It's all about suffering. When it stops hurting, it stops mattering. I could see my future in you, Buffy – and it was your death. I wanted it more than I'd ever wanted anything.

It was so easy to lure you outside. I wanted to see you fight… and when you saw me for the first time, it was the last time you would ever look at me and not know me for what I was. I saw a brief and uncertain attraction flicker in your eyes, but it wasn't physical. You were drawn to me. You were drawn to the blood. Slayer blood. Your blood.

If I knew then what I know now, I wouldn't have waited. I'd have tasted you then and there. I'd have sucked you dry while your friends watched. My way of showing you how much I loved you. Then it would have been out of my system. It would have been over before it started… because there was no other way I was ever going to escape you.

*3*

Drusilla was the first love of my life, though she happened to be after my death. I loved her for taking me away from a life of dull obligation. I loved her because she hurt me, and I was drawn to the pain like a man to his death… because all men are drawn to death, however against their will it may be. She showed me how addictive the inflicting could be. She showed me how much the bad could feel good. And she made me feel so bad. I couldn't get enough. I wanted to watch the world burn, and what's more – I wanted to burn with it. She made me that way, and I loved her for it.

After Dru left me, I'd lay awake during the day and stare up for hours contemplating her words; that she could see you all around me. She wanted to know why I wouldn't let you go. How could I explain to her that it wasn't me who wouldn't let you go, it was the other way around? I tried to get away from you. I wanted you out of my head, out from under my skin… but you'd burrowed yourself a nice little ditch there and laid down roots that grew like weeds. She was right. You were all around me, laughing at me. Taunting me. You had joined the other slayers like I'd wanted, but not in the way I had dreamed. Now they were laughing, too. There were never supposed to be any deals between you and me. No truce or peace. And I'd have no peace until I watched the life leave your eyes.

God, I had to have you.

*4*

I never thought of what I felt for you as love, not until the night I tried to get the chip out of my head. Before then, all I knew was that, whatever I felt, it was more than just simple hatred. It went far beyond hatred. After my Gem of Amara plan crashed and burned, meaning after you'd shot it down, I came back to Sunnydale to kill you. You had taken everything away from me, and I felt a deep need to take everything away from you. It was an obsession, and I knew it… I wouldn't admit it, but I knew it. I didn't know what waited for me in Sunnydale was not your demise, but my own.

When I got chipped, when I couldn't hurt anyone anymore, I became a joke. I didn't recognize myself anymore. If I couldn't kill, what was I? I had to settle on watching some other weekly disturbance try to take you out, but they were all jokes, too. Nothing ever even came close to touching you, Buffy. That was the most frustrating part. In my experience, the good guys didn't keep winning. They always eventually lost which was why I was still alive. I kept waiting for you to get what was coming to you, but in the end… I wanted to be the one to give it to you. You deserved me, and nothing else. That was why I stuck around even after you and your friends let me go. I didn't plan on being helpless forever, and I wanted you to be the first one to know when I wasn't.

When the doctor made me think he'd gotten the chip out of my brain, my first thought was of you. It was always about you.

"Good," You'd said when you showed up and I told you the happy news. "That means I get to kill you."

Dear God, I wanted you to try. I'd been waiting for so long. I could almost feel your blood running down my throat, warming my dead skin while it spilled down my chest. Hunger and the desire to hold you as your body went cold made me rush at you. No more waiting.

But it didn't happen. The chip was still there, wasn't it? You remember. I ran away, tail between my legs… Harmony trailing after me. I had never felt despair quite the same way as that, and even she was scared of me. I told her I couldn't live like that anymore. I couldn't be your little pet annoyance. It had to end, or I had to die.

*5*

The next day, as I slept next to Harmony, I dreamed of loving you. You crashed in through my crypt, and there was no thought in my head about killing you… and when I saw the stake, there was no thought of fighting back. I told you to kill me, and when the stake stopped short of my heart, I flinched… and then pulled you in, not to bite you, but to kiss you. I could feel my heart pounding and my skin felt hot, which would become a common occurrence in my dreams of you. While I was dreaming, you always made me feel like something I wasn't; a man.

I woke up from the dream on my declaration of love for you, and I was terrified. There was no denying it. I felt it in everything that I was. I loved you. I loved you, and I hated you more for it. I begged God for it not to be true, but I knew he'd stopped listening to me a lifetime before… and I was alone in this.

Harmony woke up beside me and sat up.

"Spike?"

I didn't look at her. Her voice grated on my nerves on a good day, and on a bad day she was lucky I didn't kill her.

"Go back to sleep, Harm." I demanded more than just said.

"What's wrong?" She asked, never seeming to be able to take a hint. "Is it the slayer?"

I turned to look at her suddenly, grabbing her by the neck.

"What?" I asked.

"Nothing." She said with fear in her dead blue eyes. She was such a young vampire. "You were so upset before, I just—"

I slowly relaxed my grip on her neck and my glare turned in to a leer as I looked over her body.

There was no getting in to the mood with us. I took her when I wanted to, and that was about it. I didn't want her just then, not at all… but losing myself in her body, pounding out my frustration, helped me to forget about you for a while. I said the most disgusting and degrading things I could say to her, trying to get the taste of "I love you" out of my thoughts.

But, in the end, the words were still there. You were still there.

***

…The Truth of It…
Chapter I: I would Never Stop

"I've met God across his long walnut desk with his diplomas hanging on the wall behind him, and God asks me, "Why?" Why did I cause so much pain? Didn't I realize that each of us is a sacred, unique snowflake of special unique specialness? Can't I see how we're all manifestations of love? I look at God behind his desk, taking notes on a pad, but God's got this all wrong. We are not special. We are not crap or trash, either. We just are. We just are, and what happens just happens. And God says, "No, that's not right." Yeah. Well. Whatever. You can't teach God anything."
-Chuck Palahniuk

*1*

Buffy had been drifting in and out of consciousness for the better part of 5 hours, and when she opened her eyes she couldn't quite remember what had happened. She couldn't remember what she had dreamed and what was real. She tugged weakly, uselessly, at her restraints… She was chained to some wall. From what she could gather, she was underground somewhere. She couldn't see him,but she knew Spike was sitting a few feet across from her in the darkness… staring at her silently. So that part wasn't a dream. For the first time in perhaps the whole time she had known him, she was afraid.

"Spike, wha—"

"What's the last thing you remember, love?"

Buffy swallowed and furrowed her forehead. Last thing? God, what was going on? Why was he doing this?

"You were…" She paused, trying to see his face through the darkness. She was beginning to remember. Spike had come out of nowhere. She hadn't seen him in a year, maybe more. She'd been surprised – glad – at first… until she saw the look in his eyes. He talked to her like everything was okay, but she could see something was off. She'd tried to back off, but she was caught of guard. He'd had her in his arms with her back to his chest before she thought to raise her stake in defense. His teeth tore in to her, and… when she woke up, she was here. Just like this… chained to the wall, him staring at her. She thought he was going to kill her, but all he did was talk. "You were telling me about falling in love with me."

Spike chuckled a little, deep in his throat.

"You missed out on a little then. I didn't realize right away that you were passed out again." He stood up from his non-descript wooden chair. Buffy made a mental note that she could break it to make a stake when she escaped from the chains… if she could somehow manage to escape. The loss of blood was making her tired and dizzy, and she wasn't recovering as quickly as she was used to. He must have drank her almost to death.

"No worries, though." Spike continued. "I don't mind repeating myself."

"Spike… What's happening? Why are you doing this?"

Spike laughed.

"She wants to know why I'm doing this." Spike said, inclining his head up to the ceiling. When he looked back at her, he took a few steps forward so that he was standing within inches of her face. "Aren't you happy to see me?"

"It's me… Spike, it's Buffy. Please, don't do this."

"I'm not crazy, Pet. I know who you are."

"You have to let me go." Buffy said, pulling at her chains. "Spike, I'm hurt. I'll die here if you don't let me go."

Spike was silent for a moment.

"Die?" He asked, then tilted his head. He brought up his hand and ran his fingers softly down her cheek. "Are you afraid to die?"

Buffy jerked her face away from Spike's touch, and he curled his fingers back in to his palm.

"All I want to do is talk." He said.

"Then take me out to coffee, don't kidnap me and chain me to a wall. Didn't you learn your lesson last time?"

"I'm a slow learner." He answered her quietly, then turned around and walked back to his chair. He sat back down slowly. Buffy struggled against the chains again, pulling as hard as she could. Spike laughed again. "Don't bother. I've been injecting you with muscle relaxants while you were sleeping. Pair that with the blood loss and you have one powerless slayer."

Buffy could feel the sting of tears in her eyes.

"Why are you doing this?"

"I told you." Spike responded. "I just want to talk."

*2*

After I realized the horrifying truth that I loved you and there was nothing I could do about it, there were still a few more half-hearted attempts at ending your miserable reign over me anyway. I failed horribly, and more often than not ended up allowing myself to be your punching bag or your baby sitter – beginning what was to become a very painful and one sided relationship… But it wasn't until I walked in to your backyard with that gun and saw you crying on your porch that I really knew. It was over. I was over. It hurt to see you cry, God help me. I didn't want your blood, and I didn't want you dead. I wanted you in my arms. I wanted to love you and take care of you the way I had taken care of Drusilla.

I had always been a strange one among my kind. Angel… he'd been completely devoid of any kind of humanity. Me? I still felt love and heartache. I felt the whole sickening gamut of human emotion. That made me worse, didn't it? I could identify with human pain, but I still loved to cause it. When I fell in love with you I knew I would have to turn my back on that. I would have to learn to live with being a little less evil than I liked… but I was willing to do it. You broke my heart when you wouldn't let me explain that I could change, that I would change. You wouldn't let me tell you I loved you. Oh, it burned. If you hadn't done that, I know I would have been able to turn Drusilla down when she showed up in all her dark and tempting glory. It never would have come to what it came to.

I never told you, but it was almost hard to feed that night. Dru found a couple snogging on the balcony in the bronze (popular spot, that)… And I followed her right to them. I watched in awe while she snapped the girl's neck. I felt that old pleasure creep back in knowing it was so cruel to kill the girl in front of the boy like that. She threw the body to me and I watched with desire while she sank her teeth in that boy's neck, and it all felt so right. It felt so wrong. It felt so… me. When it came time for me to eat, though, you were there in my head. I knew I could change. I didn't need a chip or a soul to be a better man. I wanted to prove you wrong about me.

But you weren't wrong, Love. You were right.

I was a monster. I was an evil, soulless thing who took pleasure in others' misery. I could love, but in the face of evil and opportunity, I couldn't be better. I drank every ounce of blood that girl had and the only remorse I felt was a sense that, if you knew, you would look down on me. I didn't pity her or her boyfriend. I wanted to watch them die again.

Also, I've never fooled myself as to my emotions that night when I had both you and Drusilla tied up and at my mercy. I still loved her… I felt something for her that must be unimaginable to anyone other than vampire, and I could still feel her inside me. She was the darkness at the end of my tunnel, the blood red lining. Even as I threatened to kill her for you, I wanted her. I could have taken her right there against that pole and still professed my love for you by staking her afterward. You were right to turn me down. You never stopped understanding what I was. A killer… cold and sick. And cruel.

But I think you enjoyed being cruel too, Buffy. You let me follow you back home after the whole embarrassing scene underneath my crypt. You knew Willow had done that spell to block me from your house and you knew it would kill me. I watched you walk away from me through the windows in your door. The pain… Buffy, the pain. I killed a thing or two on my way back to my crypt, and then I spent the rest of the night replaying every merciless word you'd ever said to me in my head.

It would never be you, Spike.

You're beneath me.

You can't love.

Drusilla was right when she said even she couldn't help me. No one could.

*3*

I dreamt of killing you. We were in your bed, and you were moaning underneath me. You begged me for more, but I felt nothing. You called out my name and left angry marks down my back with your nails, but I only stared down at you. My skin was cold, and my heart was still. I felt my face change to show my demon and in a very calm, collected way… I leaned in to your neck, and bit down through the skin. You screamed and began to struggle, but I sucked until the struggling stopped. When I leaned back away from you, I stared down at your pale dead face – the pillow bloodied behind you. My heart contracted in horror.

"Buffy…" I said. "Buffy!"

I woke up screaming.

*4*

There was nothing for me to do after that but to carry on like none of it mattered, like none of it happened. It was around that time that I realized my true worth, and as it turns out… I wasn't worth much. It didn't seem to matter that I had helped you and your poncy friends out on more than just a couple of occasions. They were very quick to forget any of the good I'd done in light of my feelings for you. I learned that good actions only mean something if you were a good person. But still I lingered around, humiliating myself again and again. Banging a robot – which, I admit, was low even for me… but I didn't regret her in the end, because she led to the only sincere kiss I'd ever get from you. And while we're on the subject of that first kiss, you should know that I didn't lie to Glory for anyone but you. If I thought you'd have gotten over it, I'd have fed Dawn to the wolves as soon as Glory said go. I hadn't changed. None of them, the scoobies, meant anything to me. Only you.

Maybe toward the end I'd felt something, but I don't know how much of that was me and how much of it was you. I stood there on that tower and looked Dawn in the eyes and I could feel her fear and at that moment I would have given my life to save her… but it was because you loved her. I don't know if I did then.

When the sun began to rise and you lay there in the pile of rubble, I didn't understand at first. I'd failed you, and it was supposed to be Dawn lying there, but I could feel that she was still alive. You, though… you were gone. I wanted it to be her, not you. Why was it you? You were gone because of me, and I couldn't take it. I buried my head in my hands and sobbed like a child. I didn't care that the sun kept coming and the shadows were disappearing. You were dead, finally. The peace that I'd always assumed would follow never did, and all I felt was agony.

The rest of them, they could go to you and cry over your body… touch you, hold you. I had to stay back in the dark. I had never been able to get close to you in life, and they were taking your death for themselves. No one cared about evil Spike who sat rocking brokenly in the background. Except for Dawn. Dawn came to me first. I don't know why. I didn't want her near me, and when she fell to her knees in front of me and in to my lap, I hated her. I wanted to kill her to bring you back.

But I had made you a promise to protect her. I hadn't been able to when the chips went down, but this was my cross to bear now. I wouldn't let you down again. I brought my arms up slowly around her and held her to me like I would never let her go.

I buried my head in her shoulder and cried like I would never stop.

***

…The Truth of It…
Chapter III: But Then Again

"God and I in space alone . . .
and nobody else in view . . .
"And where are all the people,
Oh Lord" I said,
"the earth below
and the sky overhead
and the dead that I once knew?"
"That was a dream," God smiled
and said: "The dream that seemed to
be true; there were no people
living or dead; there was no earth,
and no sky overhead,
there was only myself in you."
"Why do I feel no fear?" I asked,
"meeting you here in this way?
For I have sinned, I know full well
and is there heaven and is there hell,
and is this Judgement Day?"
"Nay, those were but dreams"
the Great God said, "dreams that have ceased to
be.
There are no such things as fear and sin;
there is no you . . . you never have been.
There is nothing at all but me.""
- Ella Wheeler Whilcox

*1*

Buffy hung nearly completely limp as exhaustion overtook her. She had never felt so helpless in her life. Spike was going on and on about his feelings for her, and she couldn't understand why. The last time she had seen him he seemed fine, normal. He was her Spike, the Spike she had come know and respect. The Spike she had come to have feelings for. True feelings. This was not something he would do. Something had to he controlling him.

"Someone's stopped paying attention." Spike said in a creepy sing-songy kind of way, cutting off from his narrative abruptly. "What's so important in that wired little brain of yours that you can't focus on the only thing happening in the room?"

Buffy took a deep and shaking breath, and bit down hard on her teeth.

"So you were sad." She said, mustering up any defiance that she could. "Why are you telling me this now?" She rattled her chains. "Like this?"

Spike stood again from his chair, but this time he receded further in to the shadows behind him, not closer to her. She could barely discern his silhouette now. The situation was rapidly becoming dire. This new Spike was eerily similar to the old Spike, the one who tried to kill her on a weekly basis… but at least then she had always been able to fight back.

"Because there's no other way to make you listen." Spike answered her from within the darkness.

"If you feel like you have to almost kill me and then tie me down every time you need to talk to me, I think we're pretty much over."

Spike laughed deeply, and it scared Buffy almost as much as everything else did.

"We never really started, did we?"

"W… we had something."

"Something." Spike repeated, and the sound of it almost resembled a growl. "It was not something. It was you. Your terms. You said when and how."

"This isn't you." Buffy swallowed back tears. "This can't be you."

"If this isn't me…" He came forward from the shadows, and now Buffy could make out the sharp lines of his face. "Who am I?"

"Y-y-you're confused. Something happened to you. Tell me what happened to you… The Spike I know wouldn't do this."

Again, he laughed.

"The Spike you know?" He asked. "You never knew Spike. You never knew me." He shook his head. "No, what you got was a watered down version of what I could really be. Even at my worst with you, Buffy, you never had the opportunity to see how bad I could really be."

"You slaughtered thousands." Buffy said, a cold chill running through her. She wasn't sure if it was the fear, or if it was just the warmth leaving her body. Any other girl would be dead by now. "How much worse could it get?"

Spike tilted his head, and Buffy could just barely see the smile on his lips.

"Worse." Was all he said.

"God," Buffy said angrily. "And you wondered why I would never date you."

"What?" Spike asked, coming close to Buffy and tugging playfully at her chains. "This? This means nothing. It doesn't change how I feel about you."

"Chained to a wall in a hole in the ground?" She asked. "Yeah, I can feel the love."

"It's not like you were accepting the nice stuff when I was willing to give it."

"Where is this coming from?"

Spike put his hand over his heart.

"Where it all comes from."

Buffy closed her eyes and pushed the tears back. She wouldn't cry. Once again, Spike stepped back and took his seat in front of her.

"And you seem lucid enough now… what say you we pick up where I left off?"

*2*

That summer, the Buffy-less summer… Something changed in me. I hadn't had a soul for over a hundred years but I never felt empty until after you died. Fighting and killing didn't feel as good, blood didn't taste as sweet. If you had taken over my thoughts while you were still alive, you completely owned them dead. From the moment I saw your body cold and lifeless, that was the only image my brain could manage anymore. The idea of living forever seemed suddenly so… pointless.

But there was Dawn, wasn't there? My last – my only – promise to you. In a hundred plus years of living and killing, I never once stopped to think about God and his role in all this… but I began to think that if I existed, he must have. If evil existed, and it did in spades, there had to be something to balance it, right? Something on the opposite end of the bloody spectrum - forever tipping and re-tipping the scales. If that were true, then I wouldn't believe that you were really gone. I couldn't believe it. You were too good in life to not have been accepted in to that infinite pool of goodness that I expect awaits all people of your breed. I'd fooled myself in to thinking that you could see me. That you could see me keeping my promise.

They never really accepted me, your friends. I was always somewhat apart from them… never completely brought in to the fold. I resented it at the time, but I get it now. How could they have possibly trusted me back then? If I had gotten that chip out of my skull, I can say with complete confidence that Dawn would have been safe, but the rest of them? I'd made no promise to protect the rest of them. Fighting by their side was, well… why not, really? I was bored and had nothing but time on my hands – and I had to stay close for Dawn. I was stuck there fighting next to people I hated for a side I wasn't on in the name of my dead mortal enemy. I can't remember a worse time in my life, but it wasn't the fighting alongside your friends that was the worst of it.

The worst of it was when I was alone in my crypt, trying for hours to fall asleep… and when I finally did, I always dreamt of you.

*3*

We were engaged once, you and me. You remember. It was only for a few hours and it had only been a spell, but for those few hours, you loved me. You had said the words to me. You said them, and for a small while you meant them. I would never hear that from you again… for quite a few reasons, and not the least of which being that you were dead. The echo of those words from your mouth in to my ears, though… it was enough to taunt me. To torment me.

Somehow, in my dreams, I was never the villain of the piece. I was always the hero. Had I been so inclined as to analyze that at the time, I might have thought it was weird… but I don't think so now. It had nothing to do with my internal fight between good and evil and everything to do with mentally putting on a face that I thought you would have liked better. Like a vampire switching to it's human form to lure in a victim. Or a teenage girl wearing makeup to lure in… well, a victim. It was a costume I wore. So, in my dreams, it was always me who saved you. Sometimes the others weren't even there. Sometimes I would defeat Glory myself. Sometimes we'd work side by side to rescue Dawn. Sometimes I would beat the life out of that lizard poof with my bear hands… but every dream ended the same. I'd save you and Dawn, and you would swear your undying love to me. Since I'd heard it before, since you'd said it to me, it was easy to imagine.

But when I woke up, the reality was that you were gone. I wasn't fast enough. I wasn't clever enough. I wasn't a hero… and you had never loved me. Now, the pain from waking up from one of these dreams was always annoyingly epic and something that I blamed partly on your bestest red headed friend. If weren't for her, I'd never have known what it was like to actually hold you in my arms, the warmth of your skin… the feel of your heart beat against my chest. The sound of your voice telling me you loved me. These were all fantastically exploitable memories that my tortured subconscious never missed a chance to use against me.

Willow was lucky, love. If that chip hadn't been standing between us, witch or not – she'd have been the first to go.

*4*

I actually thought about that a lot – eating the scoobies. I wondered what they'd all taste like. You all taste different, you know. You humans. You all have… something like a signature in your blood. Willow would have tasted like magic and sunshine. I think her blood would have gone down the smoothest of all of them. Xander, I imagine, would have tasted something like pathetic mixed with pizza. I would never have eaten him except for the fact that he annoyed me. Giles? I never really went that old with my cuisine, so I didn't really have an idea of what he'd taste like… but I had always assumed it would be the blood drinking equivalent of cracking open an old book. Or maybe he'd taste like a good cup of tea.

And then there was Dawn. She'd spent enough time in my crypt and I had spent enough time watching over her to really get close to her. I had smelled what pumped under her neck. Her blood smelled like you. There were some days I wanted so badly to taste her it hurt… but the difference between her and the rest of them was that I never would have hurt her. Given the chance, I never would have laid a fang on her. I was sure about that.

And that was how I knew I'd really changed. Maybe I hadn't had a complete transformation. Maybe I wasn't good, but I was something different from what I'd used to be. The old me would have torn through your friends and family one by one until there was nothing left… But I couldn't hurt Dawn.

But then again, who knows?

***

…The Truth of It…
Chapter IV: Balance

"The first step to eternal life, is you have to die."
- Chuck Palahniuk

*1*

The pain in Buffy's wrists was on the verge of becoming unbearable as she was no longer able to support her own weight and she more or less just hung from her chains. Her throat felt dry and her head was swimming faster than Michael Phelps—

Okay, if she could still make funny quips to herself, she was still here. She was still okay. If she could just keep from going unconscious again, Spike couldn't get near her to stick her with the muscle relaxants. He couldn't know how weak she was. He wouldn't risk trying to poison her while she was awake. Her blood was regenerating; she could feel it. In an hour or so she knew she would have some semblance of strength again. If she could just stay awake.

"Am I losing you again?" Spike asked. Buffy somehow managed a scowl.

"Well, yeah." She said, and was surprised by the raspy sound of her own voice. "I have the tendency to space out when you start talking about my friends as dinner."

"I want you to understand what I really am. I'm just being honest with you."

"Not loving the honesty."

"You never did, did you?" Spike asked, tilting his head a bit. "Not from me."

"If you haven't noticed, your brand of honesty has never been that much fun for me."

"You just don't like to be told things that interfere with what you'd rather believe."

"You're right, Spike. I'd much rather believe that you never once thought about eating my friends… but wait, I already knew that you were a disgusting pig, so no surprise there." She had to pause. It was taking a lot out of her to not sound as spent as she felt. "All you're doing is wasting my time."

Spike laughed.

"Gotta' love the false bravado." He said. Buffy was silent as he stood. "You think I can't hear how slow your heart is beating? That I don't know just how far gone you really are? I am still a vampire, you know." He finished, sounding a little offended. "Everyone seems to forget that."

"Spike—"

"I guess it's my own fault, really." He turned away from her. "Got no one to blame but myself."

Buffy took a deep breath.

"What happened to you?"

There was silence in the dank room for a few moments, before Spike turned back to Buffy.

"Something." He said quietly.

"What is it?" She swallowed to try and moisten her burning throat. "Is it The First? Are you being controlled again?"

"Oh, give me a little credit." He answered. "Fool me once and so on."

"That's too bad, because that would have been the only good excuse for this. Now I'm pretty sure I'm going to have to kick your ass."

"You don't seem to get what's going on here, love." Spike said, and then picked up the chair he'd been sitting in and threw it against the far wall forcefully. It crashed apart loudly, breaking the silence. Buffy felt a brief surge of adrenaline that made her blood rush a little quicker and made her feel more alert. "You think I did all this just to let you go? Right, properly piss off the slayer and then prepare to be served a nice spot of death." He walked to her and grabbed her suddenly by the upper arms. "How stupid do you think I am?"

Buffy managed a smile.

"How stupid?" She asked. "Average stupid. How dead? Soon to be very."

Spike took his hands away from her.

"Still not grasping your situation."

"What situation? Are you going to talk me to death? It took a lot more than that to kill me both times."

"And isn't that what makes this so anti-climactic?" Spike asked cryptically. "I suppose I should have planned something a little more grandiose than this. Should've invited your mates or something. Maybe a 21-bloody-gun-salute."

Buffy stared defiantly.

"Can't you taste it?" Spike asked, suddenly very quiet.

Buffy went still as a wave of cold fear crashed over her. That was when it finally hit her. She hadn't paid it much attention before, the taste in her mouth… it'd been so faint. She could have bitten her tongue earlier, or her lip. Anything could have put that taste in her mouth. The bitter coppery taste of blood. But now she knew. She finally understood what this was about.

"Oh my God." She said.

Spike looked in to her eyes.

"Now she gets it." He nearly whispered.

Buffy took every last ounce of strength she had left in her body and began to thrash about in her chains. She twisted and pulled, and fought as much as her tired and weak arms would allow. This couldn't be happening. She couldn't let this happen.

"Spike, please!" She said. "Don't do this!"

"It's already been done."

"You can still let me go!" She pleaded. "I'm the slayer. I can heal. If you let me go now, I can heal. You don't have to do this!"

Really, Buffy couldn't remember a time in her life when she was more scared… but this was the selfish kind of scared that had nothing to do with anything but herself. Usually when she was scared, it was for the world or for her friends, or for Dawn. Now she was just scared for her own life.

And she'd never felt so alone.

"I love you, Buffy." He said, caressing her cheek. "I can't let you go."

*2*

They didn't tell me what they were doing. All those nights when the scoobies slipped away in to the shadows to plan your little welcoming home party. All I knew was that they needed me to stay with Dawn at night, and I honestly didn't care enough to try and find out what they were up to. All that mattered to me in those days was Dawn. As long as I knew where she was, and I knew she was safe, I didn't care about anything else. What better way to know where she was and that she was safe than to be her protector? I figured that whatever the sainted pack were doing, it worked out well for me because it put me right where I wanted to be. In your house, watching over the girl.

"I'm really loving these slumber parties, Spike." She had said once, shoveling popcorn in to her mouth, as we sat on the couch in front of the TV. I gave her side-glance, understanding that a teenager was teasing me and that this was a perfect example of how sad my life had become.

"I can see why some animals eat their young." Was the response I gave her. Usually that kind of thing shut her up. Sometimes it didn't.

" Do vampires eat their young?" She asked with that look of morbid curiosity on her face. I turned to her and just stared. "Right, dumb question. Vampires don't have young."

"Why don't you just wash up and go to sleep like a good pain-in-my-ass?"

"Why do you stay here if I'm such a pain?" She asked, crossing her arms over her chest.

"Because I don't want to be blamed when you burn the house down."

"I'm 16 years old, I'm not a toddler with a set of matches."

I ignored her, mindlessly flipping through the channels.

"She's not coming back." She said.

I looked at her.

"What?"

"Buffy…" She shook her head. "She's not going to come back and fall in love with you because of your baby sitting skills. She's gone."

I knew that. Deep down, I knew that nothing I was doing amounted to anything in the end… but hearing it from her, knowing that even Dawn saw the truth of it, killed me.

I looked away from her, and shut the TV off.

"It's late. Time for bed."

"What? It's only—"

"Go!" I asserted, raising my voice but not looking at her. She jumped a little, and then slipped off the couch and was gone. I listened closely to make sure she went upstairs, and then listened closer to make sure I didn't hear any windows creaking open. Dawn had an uncanny way of disappearing if you let her.

I sat forward on the couch and held my head in my hands.

*3*

Before you died, when I realized I was in love with you, I rebelled against it. I tried to hate you; I tried to want you dead. I tried to forget about you… but there was nothing to be done about it. My heart had always had a mind of it's own, always wanting something it knew it should not have wanted. My first love, Cecily, was a wealthy aristocrat's daughter, and I was nothing. My heart wanted her like it had a right to want her. Drusilla was crazy and could never really belong to anyone. She went where the darkness was… and that wasn't necessarily where I was. You? You were something of a triumph, even for me. It was an amazing bloody feat of epic proportions for me to fall in love with you. Not because you were the slayer – all vampires are drawn to the slayer… but because no matter how much I wanted to believe in the darkness in you, I knew it wasn't really there. I knew I had fallen in love with something pure and beautiful, and that my ugliness would destroy it if you gave me half a chance.

That's what I meant, the night you died, when I said I knew you would never love me. You couldn't love me. It wasn't in you to love me. You could give me the little respect I deserved as someone who had helped you, but at the end of the day I really was beneath you. I didn't know you were going to die within hours of that moment, Buffy… but I knew that for however long you lived, you would fight the good fight and that you would die a good woman. I knew that I couldn't be a part of that. I couldn't have you. At that moment, I understood completely my place in your life, and your place in mine. To you, I was nothing. To me, you were just the blink of an eye.

That was, of course, when you were standing right in front of me. When me reaching out to touch you, while probably not being warmly accepted, would have been possible. I was feeling uncharacteristically self-sacrificing. In that moment I was ready to give you up to save you from me… but the next moment, when you were out of my sight, that was when the real truth struck me. The woman I loved was mortal, and one day I would be without her. Without her in the very strictest sense of the word. There would be no happy reunion if or when I died, because I would not be going to the same place you went. Your last moment alive would be my last moment with you.

Something inside me broke with that thought – something more than just my heart. How could I live without you, Buffy? My life had no point without you.

Maybe I was addicted to the pain at first. Maybe that was why my heart always found its way to women who only wanted to chew on it and spit it out. I don't know, but what I do know is that when I saw you dead a couple hours later, there was nothing addicting about that pain. I would have done anything to have you back. To have you always.

*4*

The night, the only night, I had angrily sent Dawn up to bed; the witches came home looking oddly… out of sorts. I should have known something was going on then and there, when neither one of them asked about your sister. They looked tired and pale… but asking about it might have given the impression that I cared, so I didn't.

"You two look like hell." Was what I opted for instead as I stood up from the couch. Will was well weathered against my barb at that point, and only looked mildly offended. Tara's feelings were still insultingly easy to hurt, and it showed plainly on her face.

"It was a long night." Was all Willow said as she shrugged off her jacket.

"Speaking of long nights, Dawn wouldn't go to sleep so I was forced to kill her."

"Dawn." Tara said, not scared, but visibly upset that she had forgotten to ask about your sister. "I'll go check on her."

She was gone the next second, which left me alone with Red.

"Would it hurt you to pretend to be worried?" I asked, opening the front door to leave. Once the two of them were home, I didn't like sticking around too long. "I'm still a vampire. Still capable of all sorts of… very bad things."

She furrowed her forehead.

"I guess this would be a bad time to ask if you could come back again tomorrow night?" She asked. I glared for a moment, but then lightened up.

"Fine. But I'm going to feed her junk food and let her stay up to watch scary movies all night. If I can't kill her, I can rot her teeth and her brain."

"I would expect nothing less."

I stepped out of the house and in to the cold night air, but something seemed suddenly very strange to me. I turned back to Willow and grabbed the side of the door before she could shut it behind me. I smelled something on her. Something deep and dark. I knew enough to know I was smelling magic and that it had to be strong for me to sense it at all.

"Getting in to the black stuff now, are we?" I asked, standing up straight. She looked surprised. Uncomfortable.

"Wh-what? No. We just—"

I put my hand up to interrupt her.

"Save the explanation for someone who's interested." I said, and began to walk away. "Just promise to save me a seat if it goes bad."

*5*

It all made sense two nights later when I saw you walking down the stairs. The late nights with Dawn. The weird smells coming from Willow. It all made sense… but none of it mattered to me. Looking in to your eyes, all that I knew in that moment was happiness. There was no darkness or ugliness. There was no pain. I was just a man looking upon the woman that he loved more than life when he thought she was lost to him forever. I had never been as happy before, and would never be as happy after. I didn't deserve that moment. Something like me didn't deserve to experience that kind of moment.

But I guess I'd be made to pay for it, so it balanced out.

***

… The Truth of It…
Chapter V: So I didn't

"Absence diminishes mediocre passions and increases great ones, as the wind extinguishes candles and fans fires."
-Francois de La Rochefoucauld

*1*

Finally Spike stopped talking. Buffy had had her eyes clenched shut during this last monologue trying to force him out of her head, not wanting to hear another word… but he kept on talking as though he didn't notice her. Now he looked right at her.

"I don't want to hurt you." He whispered in a trembling voice – maybe shaken by the memory of Buffy's death. This struck her as so odd that she didn't even notice she had stopped pulling against her chains. "If there was some other way—"

"I will never love you, Spike." She spat out with every bit of venom she had ever had for him.

Spike closed his eyes, and since her own had adjusted some time ago to the darkness, she could see and read the expression in his face plainly. She'd seen it there before so many times. Every time she called him a thing. Every time she gave him a shred of hope with her body, only to rip it away with her words. It was pain.

She'd only told him she loved him once, and she did love him in the moment she said it – but only in the moment she said it. She had always had a place for him in her heart, had always cared about him… but any love she felt for him had been out of trust and respect. She had only been in love with him for the second his hand burned in to hers. Then the moment was gone, then he was gone, and it was gone.

God, she'd be so happy, though - to know he was alive. She hadn't sought him out; she didn't know how, but when she did finally see him she was older and surer than ever that her feelings for him were not what he wanted them to be. She knew he had been searching her words and her actions for something – anything - to prove that she was in love with him. She could give him nothing but her friendship, and it hurt to know she was hurting him. Again. She had only seen him a handful of times since that first time, but he had never seemed upset. He never seemed crazy or hell bent. He seemed to have accepted it. Given up.

She had been so surprised to see him earlier… tonight? Was even tonight anymore? Or was it yesterday? Or was it today? God, she was slipping.

But she had been surprised. She'd settled in Ireland for the time being, and as far she knew, Spike was supposed to be on the other side of the world. She had just dusted a particularly violent vampire that had gotten her off her feet more than once, and so was already feeling dazed when she turned around to see Spike standing in front of her.

"Spike?" She had asked, a little startled… but then couldn't help the smile that followed.

"Hello, Buffy." He said, smiling just a little himself.

"Ireland?" She asked, cocking her head back a little. Spike looked around briefly before settling his eyes back on her.

"I could ask you the same."

"Well, you know." Buffy shrugged. "Matches my eyes."

Spike smiled a little wider, but said nothing.

"Spike, My God…" Buffy tried to continue, but didn't have any words.

"Maybe a little of both tonight, love."

The night was cold and dark, and something was wrong. Her instinct told her to take a step back.

"Wh—"

In one fluid motion he moved. Her back was against his chest, and he pulled her head back to reveal her neck. She couldn't scream, she didn't know what was going on… and she didn't have time to figure it out, because then the teeth came. The pain came. The darkness came.

She'd didn't go on patrol much anymore, and even less by herself, but how could she have known that this was going to happen? Even if she had had time to raise her stake and try to kill him, she didn't know if she even would have. She had always had a feeling, deep down, that he would make her pay for trusting him… and now, with the taste of his blood in her mouth, she was going to pay with her life.

"I don't need you to love me." Spike said after a long time, bringing Buffy back to the here and now, and then opened his eyes again. "I just… need you."

"Not this way." She said. "I'd rather be dead than be what you are."

"You wont always feel that way. You'll be—"

"Dead. Spike, you're talking about killing me."

"Never." He said firmly, sounding as though just the thought hurt him. "I'm making you eternal."

"I don't want that."

"I'm well passed caring about what you want." Spike's forehead knit in a confused frown. "Where have you been?"

"Then you don't love me." She said angrily. "This isn't love. This is obsession."

Spike laughed, quite without mirth.

"I love you obsessively."

"Whatever you make with me… it wont be me." Buffy said - her voice filled with the strain of holding back tears of exhaustion and terror. "You know that better than anyone."

"I can't live without you."

"You don't live at-"

"I exist, Buffy." He said, taking her forcefully by the waist and pulling her to him – his forehead touching hers, blue eyes locking with green. She yelped in surprise, but had no more strength to fight him. "A man knows what he can't take, and I know what your death did to me. It tore out my insides and left them out to burn. I'd rather have you a vampire than not at all."

Buffy had latched on to one thing he had said as she stared back in to the blue eyes that were somehow still so familiar.

"You. Are. Not. A. Man." She spent time on each word as though she were trying to stake him through the heart with them. Judging by the hurt registering in his eyes, maybe she hit her mark.

That was when he kissed her. She hadn't even noticed his hand had wrapped its way around the back of her neck so that she couldn't pull away.

"Mmph!" She protested in to his lips. His kiss was desperate and hard, and she vaguely realized that tears, slow and cold, were falling from his face and on to her cheeks. Something inside her recognized this – this almost tragic play for her affection. She didn't want to be back there. That was the worst time in her life, and he was making her relive it.

He pulled away from her mouth, and his hands found their way to either side of her face, forcing her to keep looking at him.

"I love you." He rasped out despairingly, and for the first time in a very long time, Buffy flashed back to the night in her bathroom. The night Spike was able to get her to the ground and keep her there for a horrifying amount of time… the night Spike left to get his soul back. It was the only time she had ever seen that look of crazed anguish in his eyes. Her heart froze at the thought. "I never wanted to hurt you. God help me, Buffy…"

He let her go… let her go? More like threw her face away from his, and then turned away from her.

"God, I thought it'd be easier this way." He said more to himself than to her, looking up in what appeared to be frustration. Buffy looked down, a terrible thought hitting her so suddenly and without mercy that she nearly lost her breath.

The only night she'd seen that look on his face. The night he left to get back his…

"Soul." Buffy whispered to herself. Spike inclined his body in her direction, looking at her, but saying nothing. She looked up at him, but he was far enough away in the darkness now that she couldn't see his face.

"Is that it?" She asked quietly.

Spike made no move to approach her again.

"Come now, Slayer…" He responded almost on a whisper, the dim torch light on some far off wall, making the tear tracks down his cheeks shimmer. "You've known all along."

Buffy swallowed painfully with a vague shake of her head.

"Why?"

"Why does a man do what he mustn't?" He answered, repeating words he said to her an eternity ago. A twisted parody of a disturbing memory. " Everything for you."

*2*

That night you came back… it'd started out mucked up as it was. Well, it'd actually started out like any other night, but gradually became more and more mucked as it wore on. I don't remember much of it now that I think about it, as the reappearance of you kind of casts a shadow on the memory of everything that happened before it.

The only other thing that stands out is that was the night I realized I did love Dawn. It was the first time I really had to protect her since… since I'd failed at protecting her. But it wasn't the demons attacking, or the fear of her getting hurt that caused the epiphany. It happened just before any of that. I'd been sitting in the armchair, the tele was on but I wasn't really watching it. I was more or less musing on the pathetic pile of ash my current life situation was, and then I looked behind me to see that Dawn had fallen asleep on the couch. And I loved her… simple as that. It was a small moment, nothing grand about it, but it still hurt. I only know one way to love, and it's the deep and painful kind. In that moment I knew I'd never be free.

After that, everything happened fast. The Hellions showed up almost the next second, and things took their course in such a way that I never really got the chance to ruminate on yet another of my newfound pains in the chest.

I think that's important though. I did love her, and I think it's important. I didn't have a soul then, and there was nothing dirty or wrong about what I felt for her. I wanted her to stay clean and innocent, and I didn't want any part of what was inside me to be able to touch her. I didn't want any of this to touch her. I didn't need a soul to feel that.

I just needed a heart.

*3*

I do remember being scared. I was more scared than I had been in a long time. Dawn had been right next to me one second, and gone the next. God, she was alone. With those biker demons having their fill of Sunnydale it wasn't a matter of if she'd get hurt, it was a matter of finding her first. So I followed her scent. I followed her scent for 2 sodding hours…

And where did it lead me, but right back home?

I mean your home.

I was so angry with her, but so relieved that she was okay – much the same, I think, as a father would have felt in a similar situation. I didn't know whether to hug her or to kill her, so I opted for something in the middle of the two, which was threatening to kill her.

Then the Buffy bot was coming down the stairs, which Dawn seemed to care about extra much for some reason. I was about to wave it off and continue my angry rant, but two things occurred to me suddenly and simultaneously. One, The robot had actually been in such a spectacular array that even Willow's horses and men couldn't put it back together, and two… Even if she could have, she couldn't have given the robot a smell or a heartbeat.

All I could do was stare.

You were the most beautiful thing I'd ever seen, and I've seen some damn beautiful things. You were a vision in white, come to soothe my shattered heart. It was like meeting you for the first time, like love at first sight, like falling in love for the first time. It was like feeling the sun again. It was sweeter than blood, and more profound than death. You were all I ever asked for and all I ever wanted, and there you were. I felt like I was being forgiven for being a monster.

If I had known what was coming, I'd have staked myself then and there… And the last thing I would have seen would have been your face. The last thing I would have felt was… alive.

I think we might have even had a moment. It might have been my grief-addled brain trying to place some kind of significance on a blank stare, but you let me lead you away to take care of you. You let me hold you by the hands and talk to you like a man. One hundred and forty-seven days, Buffy. Days spent wanting nothing more than to do just what we were doing for those short seconds. I just wanted to hold you, to stare at you. To take care of you.

*4*

Then they showed up. Your buggering, idiot friends who couldn't help you anymore than you wanted them to. I had to leave, Buffy. Not that you cared, not that it mattered to you, but I couldn't stay there with them. I went outside, tried to go home – but I couldn't. My legs wouldn't carry me farther than the front lawn. I went queasy and had to lean up against the tree for support. A plethora of sudden thoughts and emotions rendered me momentarily incapacitated, and I gave in to them.

Why hadn't they told me? Why hadn't those sods let me in? Was my searing love for you not enough for them to think I might have been interested to know? Did they think I'd be angry; try to stop them somehow? No, I'd have given them a limb for the cause if they'd needed it. I'd have been right there, cheering them on – bloody pompoms in hand if it helped. They knew I loved you. They knew…

And it hit me. Standing there in the cold, my back against your tree, tears running down my face, I understood. I told as much to your boy when he found me there and asked me if I was going to pick up where I left off, creeping around in the shadows after you. I slammed him against the tree, gaining a nice little headache for it, and told him I knew, maybe better than him, why I was shut out. Willow, damn her, knew that the spell could go wrong; that you could go wrong. They couldn't love you wrong. They couldn't have you being wrong. The witch had been prepared for it. Something in her had hardened over the months you were gone, and whatever it was it would have made her take it back if you weren't the right kind of Buffy. She would have taken it all back, you with it.

But me? I could love you no matter what you were. I was other than right myself, and you being wrong made no difference to me one way or the other. If I had known and something had gone bad, if she had had to send you back… What I said to Xander was, I wouldn't have let her.

What I meant was, and make no mistake about it, I would have killed her.

*5*

At first everything seemed to work out just fine for me. I had made some kind of noble decision to stay away. You didn't need me around, and I couldn't help you. I knew it. I tried to give you what I thought would be the only thing you could have wanted from me – my not being there.

But you came to me.

You came to me. Remember that, Buffy? That's important. I tried to stay away, maybe even tried to get away. I don't know why I was so surprised to see you in my crypt that first time you showed up. Every time I tried to pull away, you pulled me back in. You shouldn't have done it. Made it worse on both of us in the long run, but I guess you couldn't have known that. And maybe you didn't even care at the time. I know I didn't. What did I care? As long as I had you for a little while?

*6*

I told you I saved you every night. I wanted you to know that I never stopped thinking about you, that everything I did was for you… having you there again, so close to me, close enough to reach out and run my hand across your face, you didn't know what it did to me. I couldn't even tell you. But you? You just sat there across from me with that here-but-not-really-here stare. I, being what I am, couldn't make myself mind it. I know your pals did, and that's why you came to me. I wouldn't realize that until some time later, and at the time, all I could be was painfully happy.

"What did you do?" You asked finally, quietly. I looked at you, confused for a moment – wondering if you wanted me to go in to detail about how exactly I saved you every night, and I would have… but I saw that your eyes were resting on my hand, and understood what you meant. I looked down at it, too. Did you really care? Probably not. You just wanted to change the subject.

"Wall got a little out of order." I said, and then looked back at you. "Put it properly back in its place."

You blinked, still looking at my hand.

"You punched a wall." It was either a statement or a disinterested question, but I wasn't sure which.

"Time was I would have broken a neck instead, but…" I shrugged.

"You haven't changed much." You said, again in a very detached sort of way.

I let out a small bit of air, something like a laugh.

"One could argue."

You finally lifted your eyes back up to mine.

"One could." You said, and I really wasn't sure what you meant. I said nothing in response. We settled in to silence, and you didn't seem to mind it – or the way I kept my eyes firmly locked on your face. You didn't tell me to stop, so I didn't.

Starting then and there, I guess, was the recurring theme of our relationship.

*7*

I blame myself.

"Why do you live in a crypt?" You asked once with a look of distaste, sitting across from me on the cold stone ground in the candlelight – pile of cards in your hands. It'd been a month since you were back, and the initial shock had worn off. You seemed more like yourself and, since you didn't have to hide anything from me, I was the only one who got the real Buffy in those days. I had it so good back then, and was too blind to really see it. I didn't know that was as good as I was ever going to have it.

I looked around.

"Something about death and darkness, I suppose." I answered, and then looked back at you, over my own pile of cards. "And the rent's cheap."

"Ah," you responded, seeming amused. "Cheap is a word I'm becoming all too friendly with."

"Still dealing with the financial strife?"

"Progress is a thing unknown to me." You paused, dropping your cards to your lap. "And why should it be my strife? I've been dead. Shouldn't that give me, like, immunity to strife? Shouldn't my friends have made sure to paint my life in a neutral strifeless color before bringing me back to it?"

"What color might that have been, Pet?"

"Yellow, I think."

"And what color is it now?"

There was a scream outside, somewhere nearby.

You closed your eyes, taking a deep breath. When you opened them again, they were blank. You stood up, and walked to the door of the crypt and stopped only for a moment to answer my question.

"Red."

And then you were gone.

*8*

It may have been you who always came to me, but I let you because I loved you. I was like a painkiller to you. Addicting in the numbness I offered. I should have seen it for what it was sooner, but by the time I did there was nothing left of me that could say no to you. I said stay away; for your own good you needed to stay away. For my good, too. But you were drowning, and I was the anchor that kept pulling you down, however unwittingly. I didn't want to be that; I just wanted to love you. I couldn't push you away to save my life.

When you kissed me, my world shattered and all I knew was you. Your warmth, your lips, your tongue. You took everything I had and made it yours. My heart bled, and my body burned, and I knew I'd never be whole again without you.

That kiss is what killed me.

*9*

Then the music stopped, and you pulled your warmth away.

The separation hurt, and I immediately tried to pull you back. I had to get it back, whatever it was you'd just given me, but you jerked away from my touch. I didn't know what was going on, I only knew that I was suddenly in an uncomfortable and very unwelcome amount of pain, and that you were looking at me like I'd just kicked your puppy. I couldn't take it, not after you'd just given me everything I'd ever wanted. You couldn't just rip it away like that. I'd known cruelty, but none of it was anything compared to what I felt just then. I made another attempt to touch you, and again you moved back – further this time. Why did you just stare at me like that?

"Buffy." I said, it sounded almost like a plea to my own ears.

You very slowly and deliberately wiped your hand across your mouth, a look of disgust in your eyes, then turned and ran.

I watched you for a moment, then fell to my knees, then to my forearms – cradling my head in my hands. Men have died from that kind of pain…

I would know.

*10*

Dawn stood at the entrance of my crypt, still draped in her queenly blue silk as I climbed the ladder from below. She'd come just in time to miss a right cute little fit. No more breakables downstairs, as they were now, in fact, broken. I laughed underneath my breath, shaking my head as I stepped up on to the floor.

"What is it with you Summers women?" I said, sliding on to a stone tomb. "Is intruding on someone's personal space genetic?"

"You knew, didn't you?" She asked, her face as set as stone. I tilted my head a little, appraising her and her meaning.

"Don't take it personal, fun-size. She told me because she never cared what I thought."

"How could you not tell us?"

I laughed.

"Oh, that's adorable!" I said, jumping down and making my way to the fridge. I needed blood. This was too much for one night. I opened the door and pulled out a bag. Slamming the door shut, I turned back around to face Dawn who hadn't moved at all. "How could I not tell you?" I bit the top of the bag and sucked.

Dawn flinched and looked away.

Right. I was a still a vampire. Everyone seemed to always forget that.

"When you lot have been so bloody forthcoming with me!" I growled.

I finished the bag off and threw it to the ground. She looked back at me.

"I didn't know they were trying to bring Buffy back." She said, jaw clenched and eyes bright with tears.

I pulled my lips back in a knowing leer.

"But if you did, love… would you have told me?" I asked, taking slow and angry steps closer to her.

"No." She said firmly. I stopped in my tracks. "Because I would have tried to stop them." Her voice cracked just a little, and I shook my head in confusion. Nothing in me could comprehend why she would have wanted to do that.

"Is that right?" I asked.

"None of you bother telling me anything." She said angrily. " You all think of me as 'fun-size' Dawnie who can't handle life. No one tells me if I'm the key, or if my sister is coming back, or if my sister was in heaven. I always have to find out some other way, and it's always worse. I'm old enough to know that… and I'm old enough to know that bringing Buffy back wasn't right. I could have told you all that, but you all are too selfish to see past whatever is hurting you. And now she's here and she hurts, and she hates us."

Somewhere along the line, she had become near hysterical and she was out and out weeping now, holding herself around the stomach.

My anger dissipated in wake of her pain, and I closed the remaining distance between the two of us. I took her by the shoulders.

"Niblet." I said, and then thought better of it. "Dawn."

She looked at me, tears running fast down her face.

"She's having a bit of rough go at it right now, I'll give you that." I said. "But if there's anyone she doesn't hate, it's you."

As for the rest of us…

*11*

Then there was a spiral. A domino effect of every block you'd tried to set in to place, every wall you tried to build between us. You were crumbling on the inside and as much as I hated that and as much as I didn't want that for you, it worked for me. I knew that, and never denied it to myself. You knew it, too.

The night Giles left, I sought you out at the Bronze after you'd run away from me earlier. I could feel your sadness pulsating through the air in waves. I could smell the pool of hot tears behind your eyes. I could hear your heart constricting. Once, I would have closed my eyes and absorbed those sensations with a smile.

How things do change.

I found you sitting alone at the bar. You turned to look at me, and I smiled hesitantly… Your old pal Spike. The one you could talk to when you couldn't talk to anyone else. The one you came to when…

You turned away from me – effectively turning me away.

It was over. The role I had had in your life was gone, and you weren't going to give it back. The kiss had changed everything.

Fine, I thought. I always hated you anyway.

I walked away in some direction or another, just wanting to get the hell out of there. I wanted to get back to my crypt and drink bags and bags of blood until it ran from my eyes. Blood and gin. Maybe then, when I was fat, bloated, and drunk with blood and alcohol you lot would leave me alone.

I just wanted to be left the bloody hell alone.

I'd made it about as far as underneath the iron stairs when a small hand on my shoulder turned me around. The hand, as it turned out, had a mouth attached to it – and that mouth had made its way to mine.

And it was back. Everything you'd taken from me before, you were giving back. The warmth, the ecstasy. I had no dignity, only love for you. I couldn't turn away when you were offering yourself to me. I couldn't stop, and you didn't tell me to.

So I didn't.

***

… The Truth of It…
Chapter VI: Convenient

"The past is not dead. In fact, it's not even past."
-William Faulkner

*1*

She was warm and comfortable. There was nothing but warmth and silence, and… she was so tired. Was she dreaming? Was it possible to be tired in a dream? She'd felt something pinch her in her arm, so she couldn't be dreaming. Didn't pinches mean you were awake?

Buffy slowly opened her eyes. Her stomach sank as she realized, yes, she had been dreaming… and she knew what the pinch in her arm had been, too. She couldn't have nodded off for more than a couple minutes, but it was enough - enough for him to keep poisoning her.

There was no more warmth or comfort now that she was awake. Just the chains and the pain.

Fine. She could deal with pain.

"Tell me the worst thing, Spike." She rasped mostly to herself, in a voice that almost didn't sound like hers. She couldn't see him - he was hidden in the shadows, the torchlight extinguished completely – but she knew he was there.

"Love to." He said from somewhere far away. Or maybe he was close. Or maybe she was far away… getting further which each second that passed. She was dying. She was dying, and Spike was going to let her. No, Spike was going to kill her. He was killing her now, even as they spoke. "But I don't know what you're—"

"Come on… since you're being so honest with me." Buffy said. "You wanted me to know the real you, right? Your inner most vampirey self. Tell me the worst thing you've done."

Spike was silent for a moment.

"Not sure you want to know."

"Maybe not." She admitted without hesitation. "But I need to know."

Again, Spike was silent.

"There wasn't a worst thing." He said finally. "Just a very long string of bad, one after the other."

Buffy didn't hear the remorse in his voice anymore… it scared her, but it wasn't enough. She needed to know the worst thing. She needed to hear it from him; to gauge his interest in it… to know how far gone he really was. When or if she got out of this she had know if he was worth trying to save.

"Pick one."

"How about you pick for me?" He asked, and Buffy could almost hear the smile in his words. "Name something off. Man, woman, child. On land, or sea. England? Sunnydale? Whatever suits your fancy. Give us something to start with and I'll give you a story."

Buffy thought. She didn't want to hear any stories about children, and she was suddenly glad that Spike hadn't picked his own story to tell.

"Woman." Buffy chose.

Spike let out a small puff of air in place of a laugh.

"Plenty of those." He said, his voice filling with something she hadn't heard in it since… she didn't even remember. " One, in particular, I think it was around 1914… Picked up a couple on their wedding night." Buffy closed her eyes, but Spike continued. "I've never been one for the torture, you know. I'm too trigger-happy. Get too excited. My style's always been more direct – get my rush from the kill, not the lead in. Railroad spikes to the head… ripping spines out through the throat. That kind of..."

He stopped. She had shuddered when he said that, but barely. He couldn't have seen it. He must have felt it.

"You asked, Buffy." He said quietly… the eerie mirth disappearing from his voice. It was disturbing how quickly he could go from talking almost proudly about murder to sounding so normal.

"I didn't say stop." She responded firmly.

Judging by the kind of laugh he gave her, that bit of irony didn't go unnoticed by him.

"I cut off her eyelids so she couldn't close them like you're doing now." He said lowly. Buffy opened her eyes and clenched her jaw. Spike went on. "Like I said, I wasn't usually big on torture… but when I went for it, I laid in to it, and this girl? She was so… beautiful. I wanted to hurt her." He paused. "I tied the two of them up in chairs to face each other. I cut her boy apart piece by piece in front of her – anything that dangled went first. And I used a butter knife. Do you know how much a human body can take before it gives out, Buffy? The pain could go on for hours… and hours."

Buffy swallowed, her mouth was dry and her eyes stung.

"How did you kill her?" She asked.

There was a long pause before Spike answered.

"I didn't." He said, sounding every bit the evil thing she had met in the ally behind The Bronze. "That's why I consider her one of the worst."

"You made her watch—" Buffy stopped shortly, shaking her head. "You made her watch that, and then you let her live?"

"That's the thing about books and research." Spike offered. "You see, I'm sure you lot looked in to me when I first reared up in Sunnydale… but what did those books tell you, love? They told you I was a bad bad man who'd done some nasty things to a lot of good people. But did they give you the names of those people? Did they have pretty little illustrations?"

"What are you-"

"You wanted to know how it got worse than slaughtering thousands." He cut her off before she could get her question out. "It gets worse when you realize that each and every one them had a story… and none of them are prettier than the one I just told you."

No. They wouldn't have been, would they? He was right. Thousands of people dead, in theory, was sad. It was a horrible thought. When it really got down to it, though, she had never stopped to ponder the lives Spike – or Angel, for that matter – had taken. Thinking about them, really thinking about them, did make it worse.

"As for the worst stories?" He continued. "Well, I suppose you can get the idea that there are no worst stories… just varying degrees of worse. I do have my favorites though."

Of course he did. Slayers. Two of them.

"Buffy makes three." She said quietly.

"Care to elaborate on that one?"

"I'll be the third." She said.

Spike said nothing.

"Right?" She asked. "I mean, that's what this is all about. Killing another slayer. I'm a part of some great legacy… I inherited them all. Even the ones you killed." She had to pause, but only for a second. "They all had to die for me to be called. One in every generation. One after another. Like a parade in my mind." She wanted to cry. Or laugh.

"I'm there with them." Spike said knowingly. "Them and the thump-in-the-night's that got to 'em."

It was the truth. The deep and dark truth. All the slayers' murderers, whatever finally got them… each and every one from the very first until the very last, were all a part of her. They had been with her since the beginning - in the visions, in the nightmares. In the instinct. She carried them with her always. Maybe she'd never noticed Spike swaggering around in the background with two notches in his belt and blood dripping down his chin... But he must have been there, somewhere. Somewhere in the blood of those slayers he killed. It was sick, but it was just like he said earlier. He knew her before he met her. She was in him.

But he was in her, too.

When he killed those slayers - those women, he gave them to her. A blood soaked gift with his fingerprints all over it, moving her up two spaces in line. He may have had two for his collection, but she had all of them. A collection passed down generation after generation, growing bigger by one from one girl to the next. And now she was going to be part of it. Join Spike's other two dusty girls on the shelf.

"So what… this is my destiny?" She asked with weak disdain. She was going to die now because of some contract signed in slayer blood before she'd even been born?

He half laughed, half scoffed.

"Hardly, love. No such thing." He answered her, but remained hidden from her view. "The ponces that be… God… destiny." A beat. "All words we invented to try to give our lives meaning. Whatever's up there, whatever's out there, it doesn't take an interest in us. It turns us on and shakes us about, but in the end no one's operating the switch."

He was wrong. She couldn't – she wouldn't – believe that they were all just roaming around aimlessly and purposelessly. She'd lived through too much, had seen too much, to believe it.

"You know it." Spike said before she could say anything. "You used to be the slayer, and now you're just a slayer. You did that, remember? If all that 'slayer destiny' bullocks really meant anything, then you'd think a great big hand of destiny-fire would have stopped you from lodging that fantastically large wrench in to it's engine with the whole 'slayer army' thing. Bit of a game changer, wouldn't you say?"

The room echoed slightly with the sound of Spike's lighter as he opened it, the flame momentarily lighting his face as he lit the tip of a cigarette. She saw for the first time that he was sitting on his knees on the ground. His eyes burned blue by the small light of the fire, and then the flame was gone with a snap.

"If we have destinies, they're not etched in stone…" He said, and the tip of his cigarette glowed orange in the darkness as he took a drag. "They're just scribbled on a bloody napkin somewhere."

Buffy either had nothing to say, or she agreed. She wasn't sure which one. She wasn't even sure that she cared. She didn't want to talk anymore. She didn't want to listen anymore. Spike was gone. This wasn't him anymore, and she just wanted… to sleep.

She closed her eyes, and she dropped her head, her chin touching her chest.

The next instant Spike was upon her, lifting her head in both hands. He was saying something to her. What? She couldn't hear him. Was he mumbling? Why did he sound so far away when she could feel his hands on her face?

"—ffy!"

Did he sound scared? She couldn't tell. She just wanted to be left alone. She was so tired, and the chains hurt too much. Her throat burned when her eyes were open, but now that they were closed she didn't feel anything. She was numb.

"Buffy!"

Why was he screaming her name? Still mumbling something. Incoherent words.

Not-time-yet-love-god-wake-up-buffy-please-not-yet-please …

It all bled together.

And maybe he wasn't mumbling any of it.

"Buffy, please. God, not yet… Buffy!"

He was screaming.

He was shaking her.

She opened her eyes.

"Spike…" She said quietly, furrowing her forehead. He stared her in the eyes,

seeming to try to get a glimpse of something deep down inside of her. Some kind of tortured noise escaped from the back of his throat, and his arms were around her the next moment.

Buffy bit down hard on her jaw and clamped her eyes shut. He was scared for her just now. That meant she had probably just taken a very sharp nose-dive in a very bad direction. He must have sensed that she was on the edge now.

No. No, not like this. She wasn't going to go out like this. She had to pull deep from whatever reserve of slayer strength she had, and she had to stay here. She had to stay with it. She was better than this.

"Get. Off. Of. Me."

"Buff—"

She bucked him off with her shoulder. Spike was thrown just a bit off his balance, but regained it within an instant. The look of surprise on his face that she had been able to do even that mirrored how she felt.

"Look at you." She spat. "You're pathetic." She knew didn't have the muscle to back up the sentiments. Maybe he knew, maybe he didn't… but either way, he watched her silently. Curiously. The tears were still drying on his face, but he no longer seemed hurt or sad. He looked blank. She knew that look. It was the look right before he got angry. She went on anyway. "You killed your conscience so you could come and turn me, but still all you can do is stand there and cry? Looks like you can take the soul out of the Spike, but you can't—"

He must have backhanded her in the face, but she wasn't sure. All she was sure of was the stinging pain across her left cheek, and the taste of blood on her bottom lip. Fine by her. It woke her up.

"Right then, love." He growled at her. "Chained up, no strength. Seems like a perfect time to piss me off."

Buffy laughed.

"'Oh, Buffy. Buffy, don't die yet. Pretty please?'" She mocked him. Her face went hard. "If you're going to kill me, then kill me. I'm done listening to you."

Spike took one step toward her, his body inclined at an angle so that he was not completely turned to her.

"Must get under your skin." He said. "With you so used to being in charge and all that. So used to lighting those hoops on fire and watching me jump right through them. Catching fire myself sometimes. You loved to watch me burn."

"That wasn't me back then."

"Oh…" He said on a laugh. "It was you. Every scratch, every bite, every lick, and every word."

"Keep telling yourself it meant something, Spike."

*2*

It did mean something. All of it did.

That second kiss didn't end much differently from the first… Except maybe there was even more visible disgust in your face when you finally pulled away from me. The kiss itself was much different, though. At least in it's meaning. I couldn't deny the fact that you had been under a spell when we kissed before, but the kiss at The Bronze? No, that was all you… and in public, no less – which may, now that I think about it, have had to a lot with you looking more disgusted. I couldn't have cared less at the time, though, because now I knew I was in your head. You never meant to let me in; I think you'd always just meant to watch me from your window, but I was there now. There was no pain when you ran away from me this time. All I could feel when I watched as you ran away was… happy.

Wish there was a darker word for that.

*3*

You let me too close to you. That was your own fault. You thought you could tug me around like a dog on a leash, because that dog couldn't bite back when he was bitten. But then I could bite back.

And when I knew I could, I did.

*4*

Did it scare you to think you came back wrong? I hoped it did. Something in me cracked open at the knowledge that I could hurt you again. It was something I thought I had lost completely, but it'd always been there laying in wait. I didn't lie when I said I was happy to be the one to break the news to you. I wasn't just happy, I was bleeding elated. It knocked you down off of that pedestal you'd been building higher and higher for yourself your whole life, and I was the one to tell you. It felt good to have some semblance of control back in my hands. It put us back on level ground. You couldn't swing at me from your perch anymore because I could finally reach you again.

I did enjoy the look of fear on your face. I reveled in it. It'd been too long since I'd been able to scare you… and it was beautiful, even if it wasn't exactly me that you were afraid of. When I hit you, though, it was as much just to touch you as it was anything else. When had been the last time we had really fought? When I came to Sunnydale for the Gem of Amara.

Our last fight had been fought in the light of day.

We were bringing it back to the dark now, though, weren't we?

*5*

And then…

I don't think any amount of waxing poetic could describe just what exactly was going through my head when I had you in my arms and I felt you reach between our bodies. I knew what you were doing, I think, but I know I didn't believe it. My mind was racing, and all I knew for sure was that we had been fighting and then you kissed me. Maybe I'd been expecting that at some point. You thought you were wrong so it gave you an excuse to keep being wrong. That's the truth of it, but I didn't look at it that way at the time.

What I thought was… God, I thought I'd finally won.

There was an initial push that was a shock to my system. It was a shock to my everything. The heat from your body made its way in to mine… and my skin felt hot for the first time since I'd died. All I could do was stare in to your eyes at first. Was this really happening? Could I trust this? I had wanted you so badly for so long; I'd wanted you since I met you. I had always wanted to be inside you in some form of another… with my teeth, with my words.

Now this.

My heart stung painfully when you didn't pull away from me. It stung with the same feeling that I'd always gotten when I watched Drusilla sleep; the agony of being utterly and completely in love. I loved you so much it hurt to be that close to you. It hurt to feel your skin against mine… but I wanted it. I wanted it for the rest of my life, and you didn't stop. We fell through the floor all the way to the bottom, and you still didn't stop. Hours went by, and you punished yourself with me. I didn't think that at the time either.

I know now what that night was about for you, but you never asked me what it was about for me… and for me; for me it was all about worshipping you. It may have been violent, but then love always is. If it hurt when I pulled your hair, or if I bit a little too hard with human teeth, or if my hands bruised your skin for holding on too tight – it was all to show you how much I loved you. I had always wanted to devour you whole, and I did that night. I consumed your whole body, and you let me. With each push and pull and scream, I just wanted to show you I loved you.

I didn't know what was going to happen in the morning. I didn't care. That night was all that existed for me, all that had ever existed, and all that ever would exist. There was nothing outside that house. There was never any sun in the sky. We'd always be there in the dark, wrapped up in each other.

The hunter had finally caught his prey, and instead of eating her alive he was drowning in her.

*6*

And also, just as a side note, I liked the tattoos.

*7*

The sun, though, did come up.

You woke up first.

Now, let me make this next part perfectly clear. Convenient? Yeah, I watched while you wracked your cracked little skull for just the right word. I knew you were going to try to hurt me, but I waited to hear it anyway. Why? Because I liked the way you hurt me. But then you said convenient. Convenient. I knocked over convenient stores for fun. It was easy and, on the whole, pointless… but it was something to do. I'd put lamps in my crypt because they were more convenient than torches. Convenient was at the top of a very inconsequential list of crap, and if there was one thing I didn't want to be, it was that. There was no passion in convenience… and it wasn't just that you wanted to hurt me. You wanted to be cruel.

There was one of only two ways that could have gone. One was what you saw. I just stared at you for a second, stood up and put my pants back on.

The other was ripping your fucking throat out.

*8*

I probably could have ripped Willow's throat out, too, for what she did to Dawn. I'd spent way too much time protecting the girl just to have her snuffed out by Big Red. I guess it would have have been funny in its irony, but I did love the nib unfortunately… and I wouldn't have fancied having to brave the fallout.

"I hate her." Dawn had said while we sat in the overcrowded emergency room at Sunnydale Memorial. I could smell blood everywhere and I would have been a little distracted from her even if Popeye hadn't been on the flat screen in the corner.

"Yeah, well, I don't blame you, pet." I said, not looking at her. "I'm no doctor, but I think your arms broken right and proper."

"Where was she?" She asked. I sat staring at a little girl with a very badly scraped knee, and was still not giving her my full attention.

"Couldn't tell you, love. Wasn't there."

"She should have been home with me. Not Willow."

That was when I looked at her, but she wasn't looking at me. She glared straight ahead of her, holding her injured arm.

"You mean Buffy…"

"She doesn't care what happens to me."

"Looked like she cared from where I stood watching her kick that thing's ass."

"That's her job."

I turned took her chin and faced her to me. I could smell the anger coming off of her. I was surprised I hadn't noticed it before.

"No, that's my job. I'm the one deals in death and pain. Your sister—"

"Hey! Who's up for a whole lot of Spike getting his hand off of Dawn?"

I bit down hard on my jaw and rolled my eyes to the side. That was the voice of my eternal punishment. I was convinced that he was an immortal sent to annoy me for the rest of time.

I curled my hand away from Dawn's face, and looked over to see man/boy Harris looking at me with his hands clapped in front of him.

"What are you doing here?" I asked.

"What did you think?" He answered my question with his own. "Buffy's going to let you sit here with her sister all night?"

I scoffed and stood up. Yeah, that is what I thought. Blood unbelievable, right? Who could have ever thought that anyone would let me stay with Dawn all night— Oh wait, all your stupid friends did until just a few months before. Bloody tosser.

The idiot immediately took my seat.

"Thanks for keeping it cold for me." He said.

I stood there for a moment seething in anger. It wasn't just you who thought you could treat me like something you stepped in and wanted to scrape off on the sidewalk. It was all of them. I'd done more than my share to help when I could. I'd fought against my nature to do that, but they'd never see me for anything more than the demon face I rarely even showed them anymore.

"On second thought, Dawnie…" I said through clenched teeth. " You're right. She should have been there, just like she should be here now instead of sending one of her flunkies to do the work she didn't want to. Guess big sis just doesn't give a bloody damn about any of you."

Then I walked away. I hated you and I hated them, and it'd be too good for all of you if you ripped each other apart.

*9*

I could smell the garlic from the front lawn. You must have had your room plastered with it. Did you think that would have kept me away if I had really wanted to get in? I wasn't even sure if a deinvite spell would have worked on me at that point. You couldn't kick me out of your home when I'd already been invited in to your body.

That was probably just the poet in me who thought that.

Either way, you never did do the spell. You kept saying you wanted me gone, wanted me out of your life… but you never took any real steps to make it happen. I almost wish you would have.

*10*

37 times. Maybe I should be too embarrassed to admit to having kept count, but shame might possibly be an emotion that the soul takes with it when it goes. Also, I can't imagine that the fact would surprise you anyway.

Once, the only time you let me in your bed, you let me go slow. You didn't stick your fingers in my mouth when I tried to tell you I loved you… so I think I might have said it a hundred times before we were done. You kept your eyes closed tight. I knew you were pretending I was someone else. Probably Angel. That would have made sense with my cold body. You couldn't have hurt me more if you staked me. I tried to fill you with me, bent my head low to your ear to whisper to you. Nothing nasty, just how much I loved you, worshipped you. How badly I needed you. You still kept your eyes closed. You were concentrating on keeping me out of your head even when I was so deep inside your body. When you cried out, it wasn't my name… just sounds. I wanted you to open your eyes and see me.

When you finally did, it was probably because you felt the tears dropping on your face. Pathetic? Yes, I agree.

I rolled off of you on to my back.

It was too much. I couldn't be there in your room like we were some kind of real couple. You didn't want me and, at least that time, I couldn't pretend I didn't know. My heart broke for you and my heart broke for me, and it was all too bloody sad to ignore.

You didn't say anything when I stood up and put my clothes back on. You didn't say anything when I opened your window and climbed out.

I never tried to have it out with you in your bed again. That place wasn't for us. I'm sure you didn't want me there anyway.

*11*

The very last time, you told me to tell you I loved you. God, you probably could see the hope in my eyes. You'd never asked me to tell you before. In fact, I usually got some manner of ass kicking when I forced the issue… but you came to me and wanted me to tell you. I didn't hesitate even for a second. I thought…

Doesn't matter what I thought. I was wrong. Nothing had changed. You were just there to pull me apart from the inside without me even knowing you were doing it.

*12*

You called me William… and it was over. Just like that.

*13*

I went on a killing spree. If you didn't have much to do on patrol for the next few nights, you can thank me for that. I think I probably offed anything without a heart beat within a ten-mile radius, and quite a few things with one for that matter. I'd drink with the sun, and kill with the moon. I kept waiting… hoping that you would come back. I waited every night for the crypt door to swing open, but you never came. Not even for a fight. I knew you wouldn't. Something told me you were finally done with me, but my heart wouldn't let it be true.

Everything went to hell after that.

*14*

"I was a monster." Buffy said, remembering what she had done to him, but she wasn't sorry. She was sorry then, but she wasn't sorry now. She'd moved past it, and if he couldn't… well, he would chain her up and remind her about it relentlessly. "Like I said: that wasn't me."

"Oh, you mean like the monster isn't me?" Spike asked incredulously. "The monster, the saint, the hero, the villain… they're just parts we play, Buffy. When we're not playing one, we're playing another – but the other parts don't disappear just because we're not showing them. We're all of them, all at once, and all the time."

"No, Spike. You got rid of your soul so you could kill me. That pretty much puts you back on the 'all monster, all the time' channel."

"I never said I got rid of it."

Buffy didn't know what to say to that.

"Huh?" She asked, rather a bit confused. Wait. No. He couldn't have it. He couldn't. Spike wouldn't do this. Not with a soul.

"I didn't get rid of it." Spike reiterated. "Didn't have to."

Spike disappeared in to the darkness and said nothing more for a few moments. Buffy's head swam with confusion.

Then… there was light.

Buffy clamped her eyes shut to the sudden pain of light hitting her retinas after so many hours spent in the dark. It took her several seconds to be able to open them a little, to finally be able to see where she was. The light was dim enough to adjust to quickly.

Whatever she had been expecting to see, this was not it.

"See anything interesting?" Spike asked, standing a few feet away from her in what now appeared to be…

"Your crypt?" Buffy asked quietly.

She was in a tunnel to the side of everything, but she could see it all. Spike's bed. His bar. That rug. They were underneath his crypt… and all was illuminated by a lamp on a nightstand. It was all still so familiar. This couldn't have been possible. She and Riley had blown this place up years ago. No, wait. That was a moot point. This room shouldn't even have existed at all. It should have gone out with Sunnydale's bath water.

"I didn't have to get rid of my soul." Spike said, stepping in front of her, and Buffy noted vaguely that he looked somehow much thinner to her than she had noticed earlier. Maybe because it'd been dark and he'd been wrapped in his leather coat. Now he stood before her in the light wearing a dark blue button up shirt that was almost too big for him. The thinness was unmistakable. It was his equivalent of looking younger. "I just had to take us back to a time before I had one in the first place."

Buffy's mouth hung open in shock. If ever there was a time in her life to pass out, this was it. She didn't understand any of this, but she was filled with cold dread anyway. Taken them back to a time before—taken them back? Taken them… She couldn't grasp this. It was too much to take in.

Spike gestured toward the lamp.

"See?" He asked with a dark grin. "Convenient."

***

… The Truth of It…
Chapter VII: Over

"Of all the wonders that I yet have heard,
It seems to me most strange that men should fear;
Seeing that death, a necessary end,
Will come when it will come."
-William Shakespeare

*1*

Buffy hung silently from her chains in darkness. Spike had put out the light almost as soon as he had turned it on, and then had left her mostly in silence with her thoughts. Back in time? Really? As if she hadn't had twenty lifetime's worth of disturbing impossibilities packed in to her thirty years of life, now she had to deal with time travel? She'd asked him how, but had only gotten more of his vague anecdotal lecturing, and nothing in the way of actual answers. From what she gathered inside her dumbfounded mind, they were in the past sometime after Willow had brought her back from the dead, and sometime before Spike left to get back his soul. What she couldn't understand was, if she was here, who was in the void she'd left in the future, and where was the Buffy who was supposed to be here?

And why wasn't Spike's soul left intact?

She didn't understand, and her mind reeled… but Spike wasn't answering any more of her questions. He wasn't speaking at all actually. She may have appreciated this earlier, but now that she finally understood how far off the deep end Spike had really gone, the silence was more eerie than anything else. He'd been quiet for the last half hour at least.

"Spike…" Buffy tried again.

Nothing. For all she knew, he wasn't even there anymore.

She shifted her wrists a little to try and redistribute her weight, but all she got for her trouble was a sharp and stinging pain that shot down her arms. A sound like a wounded animal escaped from her lips…

And finally, she began to cry.

"It wont hurt much longer." Came Spike's voice from where Buffy knew his bed to be. He must have just lain there watching her since he'd stopped speaking. She couldn't see him, but she could imagine him lounging with his hands behind his head… staring at her through the darkness with yellow eyes.

"Please, Spike…" Buffy started, giving up all pretense of strength, all of her – what had he called it? False bravado.

"I can feel you fading away." Was all he said.

"You fought for your soul… just to throw it all away? Just to bring us back here?"

Spike remained quiet long enough to make Buffy think he wasn't going to respond… until he did.

"I was a joke." He said, and now he was closer to her, no longer speaking to her from the bed. He was moving toward her.

"What?"

"I did fight for my soul." He answered, and now he was right in front of her. "I saw, despite how much I loved you, what I was still capable of doing to you… and it scared even me."

That was a telling statement. Was he scaring himself now?

Buffy had stopped crying, but tears still rolled sporadically down her cheeks.

"But it wasn't all bad in here." He whispered, and maybe he had his hand over his heart, that's what Buffy imagined – but she couldn't see him. "I admit, it wasn't all sweet singing nightingales either, but it wasn't just about the pain. I wanted… You know what I wanted to do for you?"

Buffy didn't respond.

"I wanted to…" He laughed a little. "I thought about it. I planned it out in my head."

"What are you talking about?"

"A garden." He whispered hoarsely. Buffy didn't know what to say. "I wanted to plant you a garden. Something beautiful and…" He trailed off for a moment, his voice cracking a bit. "Alive."

Buffy felt him reach up over her. She heard a clicking sound, and then a second later one of her arms fell free. She cried out suddenly from the unexpected pain of hanging from only one battered wrist… and then her other arm was released, and she toppled in a heap to the floor.

"That night I came to you, you were hurt and I could see it." Spike continued. He was kneeling down to her. Buffy's head spun from what was happening. He had let her go, but she was too tired and weak to try and stand. "If you hadn't been hurt, what happened that night never would have happened. You couldn't fight me off at first."

Buffy closed her eyes and let the feel of the cold dirt beneath her sink in to her flesh. She remembered.

"But more than that…" Spike said, "You thought that if you begged me, that I would stop. That means that somewhere along the line, you stopped thinking I was capable of hurting you." He paused. "Just like I thought."

"All you did was hurt me." Buffy whispered.

Buffy could hear the crunching of the dirt as Spike backed himself against a wall.

"I didn't understand that." He responded. "The most ironic thing about it was, if you'd have trusted me enough to let yourself love me back then, I never would have done what I did… but by not trusting me, you forced me to prove you right." He laughed. "Even if I never hurt you, it didn't make me the kind of man who would never hurt you."

He took a deep breath.

"That's why I went after the soul."

"And now… what?" Buffy rasped, her eyes still closed – the cold from the earth still seeping in to her body. She understood why he'd let her go. He knew she was done. There was nothing left in her that could fight back. He'd taken everything from her, and now he was going to sit up against a dirt wall and watch her die. "Decided the soul wasn't a good fit? Did they ask you for your receipt when you gave it back?"

Spike sort of laughed.

"I fought for my soul, because you made me see that I could still hurt you. I couldn't-" He cut off abruptly, and then paused. "I wasn't in control. I didn't get the soul back to be a better man; I got it back so that I could choose for myself what I was. I once told Angel that I kept fighting because I knew it was right… truth is, I had no idea what was right. No sodding clue."

Buffy swallowed.

"Wanting to get your soul back for any reason made you a better man."

"Could be." Spike said with something not unlike anger in his voice, but also not quite similar to it either. "That's getting in to the nature of morality though, isn't it, love? I've never been one much for philosophy, but I do remember some of the bloody doctrine the tutors crammed in my head."

The tutors. He'd probably had a governess, too. Wasn't that how it was back then? She forgot, sometimes, how old Angel and Spike really were. They wore the faces of young men, but those were just the faces of victims long dead. He went on.

"Is a good act good in and of itself, or is it the intention behind it what makes it good? Or bad? And can a good act done by a bad man still be considered good?"

"I failed philosophy." Buffy said blankly.

"I saved a family of three once, during one of the wars." He sounded almost nostalgic. "I did it so they would trust me… so that they would tell me where the others were hiding." He laughed. "They thought I was going to help them all."

"What did you do?"

A pause.

"What do you think?"

She might have remembered reading something about Spike massacring a group of refugees during WWI… or She remembered Giles reading it and telling her about it. Really, she'd heard a lot about Spike in those first days he'd showed up in Sunnydale.

"So." Spike said. "Was the act of saving those people good or bad?"

"You didn't save them." Buffy answered. "You just saved them for later."

"Bad example, I suppose." He sighed. "Anyway, I got my soul because I thought we could be together if I had a soul. I thought you would love me."

She did love him… God, she did. It may not have been the kind of love he wanted, but he had been important to her. She regretted not letting him know just how important, so that maybe it might never have come to this, but she realized that she hadn't completely understood until now. It took losing him this way to show her how much she had really loved him.

She was too tired to cry now.

"But you didn't love me when I came back from Africa. You didn't love me until I was about to die… then when I came back from that, you went on your merry way, pretending none of it ever happened." He laughed angrily. "I remember being so afraid that you would find out I was alive and that suddenly everything I had done for you would be worthless. Turns out I was right."

"It wasn't worthless."

Why was she even bothering?

"I did a lot of good. Saved a lot of people. Made and lost a lot of friends…but I was never free of you. But when I finally saw you again, you'd moved on."

Buffy wanted to say something, but she didn't know what – and in any case, he kept talking.

"And now I'm here. We're here. And I'm… different."

Different. Soulless.

"How do you know? Maybe it's just-"

Spike chuckled.

"How do I know?" He asked, interrupting her. It was just as well; she hadn't really even known what she was going to say. "There are several tip-offs. For starters, for the first time in a long time I feel incredibly… peckish." He uttered the word pointedly, allowing all that it implied to sink in, and then continued. "Not to mention the fact that the idea of siring you a new one had never actually occurred to me until now. Don't know why. Just seems so obvious."

So he never meant to lose his soul. What did that mean? Did it mean anything? She didn't know. She was so confused, and she felt sick.

It took everything Buffy was to pull herself up to a sitting position against the wall behind her, flinching as she moved. Spike didn't try to stop her. She wished that he would have, because that would have shown that he at least thought she could get away.

"How did I get here?" She asked.

"Well, I dragged you here." Spike answered matter-of-factly.

"No, how did I get back here? To this time?"

"Oh, that?" Spike asked. "Funny story, really. I was just out and about in London, minding my own business when it happened."

"When what—"

"I was knocked unconscious. Woke up in a situation not too dissimilar to the one you now find yourself in. I don't know who it was. Couldn't see him… but he put his hand on my chest, and I could feel the burning in my heart and see the flash of light behind my eyes." A beat. "I could feel him reaching in to my soul, Buffy."

"Spike, what are you—"

"He saw what was there. Generations of murder and bloodshed… and you. He saw what I did to you."

Buffy was breathing hard now, realizing there was so much more going on than she could possibly have understood before.

"I get it." Spike continued. "He sent us back here because this was when you were most vulnerable to me. This was when I was most capable of hurting you. When my love for you could make me hurt you."

Buffy thought back to when Spike had attacked her. She'd been doing… something. What had she been doing? She couldn't remember. It was like she'd just been dropped in to the cemetery out of nowhere and hadn't realized it. She was there one second, the vampire showed up, and then Spike right after. Now that she thought about it, everything clicked in to place. She never patrolled by herself anymore, and if for some reason she did – never alone. Also, cemeteries? Not so much her style anymore.

She had been back in Sunnydale, circa sometime around 2002 complete with a 21-year-old's body, before she'd even seen Spike's face… and she hadn't even noticed.

"He sent us back here so you could kill me." Buffy whispered.

"Tell her what she's won." Spike said almost as quietly. "Way I figure it, we were sent back so I could take you out before you ever have a chance to raise your army of girly wrath. Change history."

Buffy's heart raced. That was it. That explained everything. This had never been his plan. He was being used. They were both being used.

"We're being played with, Spike." She said urgently. "You can stop this."

"But I wont."

"Why are you letting this happen?"

"Because I've seen the future, love… and I don't feature myself going through all that pain and trouble again. From what I remember, the pay off wasn't quite worth it."

"That's the no soul talking." Buffy argued. "But there was something good in you without it."

"Oh, now you sing me a different song!" Spike said on a laugh. "I tried for years to convince that I could be good without a soul, but it was always 'evil, soulless, thing' with you. I think here they call that flip-flopping. Very unattractive quality."

"You have to know that this is wrong."

"Yes, I do know. I also don't care."

"How—"

"Because I love you, Buffy!" He growled violently, startling her out of her words. "Whatever he was that sent me back, he knew that, knowing what I know, I would do it. He knew if I didn't have a soul that I'd turn you, and I don't bloody give a damn. He was right. Let him be right."

Buffy closed her eyes, leaning her head back against the wall.

"All that." She said quietly. "Just to end up back here."

A pause.

"Ain't love grand?"

Something inside Buffy snapped in half, and she began to laugh brokenly.

"Something funny?" Spike asked.

"You are." She answered, sliding back down the wall to her side. "We changed the world together just so you could wipe it all away. Everyone's going to die. Dawn, the potentials… everything we fought for. Everything you died for…"

"I died for you."

"And now I get to die for you." Buffy responded. "Poetic enough for you?"

"Right." Spike said solemnly. "I suppose it is."

A heavy silence hung in the air for a few moments.

"Where will my soul go?" She asked, in a detached sort of way, suddenly very curious as to what was going to happen to her – the part of her that would be gone. "Will it go back where I was before? Will it go to heaven without me?"

"I…" Spike started, sounding stricken. "I don't know, Buffy."

"Your soul didn't have some kind of… soul memory?"

"I don't think it works that way." A beat. "I don't know what a soul is. Never did. Maybe it's not the kind of thing that goes anywhere. Maybe it just… goes to sleep. Having one, losing it, having it again… didn't seem to change who I was. Fundamentally speaking, anyway. It changed what I was, but maybe a soul doesn't have anything to do with who we are."

"There was nothing left of Angel when he lost his soul."

"Angel." Spike spat out. "Yeah, like he's a prime example. You ever stop to wonder as to his deeper seated character issues?"

"No."

"Well, love will blind you to a lot of things." He said caustically. "Anyway, seems to me that when it comes to what happens to a person after their soul's gone, personality can go a long way."

"Personalities make up for bad hair, not for killing helpless women."

"Helpless." Spike rolled the word out from his tongue. "Is that what you think you are?"

"No, I'm…" Buffy said, and she thought that she could feel the beginning of what losing consciousness must have felt like. She wasn't really sure though, because she never remembered what it felt like by the time she woke up. She was going to try to make some kind of sarcastic joke about being all kinds of "helpful", when something occurred to her.

When she went unconscious this time, would it be for the last time?

"Scared." Buffy admitted without realizing she had at first. When the word "scared" floated past her ears in her own voice, she knew that it was true. She was terrified.

A long and unpleasant silence spanned out between them in the darkness before Spike finally spoke.

"Me too."

*2*

My father died in 1862 when I was ten years old. One hundred and forty nine years have passed since then, and now I can't remember his face. I can't remember the color of his eyes or his hair… I can't even remember his name. I stopped using it, and I forgot it. Time has a way of taking things from you when you're not looking. You never know when the last time you're going to be thinking about something is going to be the last time… but there's a last time for everything.

The only thing I do remember about my father is that his death was the first in my life. It was the first time I was introduced to the human weakness of mortality. The first time I understood what it really meant to be alive. Being alive meant, at some point, you would be dead. It terrified me.

Isn't that funny? I was terrified of death.

*3*

"What are you doing here?" I asked, exasperated, from my armchair. I didn't need to turn around to see that it was Dawn who'd just walked in to my crypt. "I thought you and your mum'd be bonding over steaming cups of love by now."

If she kept her word, you never knew that I'd tried to help her bring your mother back. Now you know.

"It… didn't work." She answered.

I looked down, a kind of sadness I hadn't known in over a century washing over me, and then stood up to face her. Her cheeks were flushed and the skin around her eyes was swollen. She'd been crying. I tilted my head.

"Didn't work, or didn't work out?" I asked.

"Were you scared?" She asked, ignoring my question, but that was as much an answer as anything else. I watched her, waiting for the rest. She swallowed. "When you died?"

I looked her in the eyes.

"I didn't have a chance to be." I answered her truthfully. "And neither did your mother."

Her eyes flashed wide for a moment as though she was surprised that I knew what she was really getting at. She stepped down farther in to the crypt, and I instinctively took a step back.

"Why do people have to die?" She asked.

She had never had to deal with death before, and she had come to me, a dead man, to get answers. She wanted to know why. Why? I'd killed hundreds of people whose last word was "why". I didn't have an answer for them, and I didn't have an answer for her.

"I'm…" I started, and then trailed off. "I'm not the one who can help you with this."

She stepped closer to me again, and again I stepped back.

I felt… afraid. I had never been in that kind of position before, never had to comfort someone after a death. Usually I was the one causing the death, and so the ability to soften the blow had long escaped me. I was uncomfortable and my heart hurt for her – which just made me more uncomfortable. If that chip hadn't been in my head at the time, I might have knocked her unconscious just so I could get away from her without looking like a coward.

"What's it like to die?"

She stared at me, and I stared back. Dying was like falling in to an abyss, trying so hard to find something to catch hold of – anything to stop from falling any deeper. You can feel yourself slipping away, and no matter how hard you scream… you don't make a sound.

"It was like going to sleep." I answered her. It was a lie, but lying was the only comfort I knew how to give.

She broke eye contact, and her gaze fell to the floor. I watched her silently for a few seconds.

"Oh." She said, then turned slowly… and walked out of the crypt, leaving the door open behind her. I don't know how long I stood there staring with a slack jaw after she'd left. I was unhappy about Joyce's death from the second I'd found out about it. She had always been nice to me, even when she had no bloody right in the world to be. I liked her… and I didn't want you to hurt. But it didn't touch me. Death was death, and I was used to it. When Dawn came to my crypt that night asking questions that terrified me to try and answer…

That had been the first time since I died that death had touched me.

*4*

They'd had your funeral during the day.

It wasn't a funeral in the traditional sense. There was no priest, no chairs to sit on, no flowers. There were only six people in attendance… the scoobies. Giles had taken care of all the arrangements, I think. The coffin. The headstone. At the time I had understood the need for secrecy as a way to keep the demon world at bay. No one could know you were dead, because no one could know the slayer was dead. I guess I know now that it had also been a way to avoid some kind of weird uproar when Willow brought you back.

We had all done our part to dig the grave itself the night before. Xander had put up a half hearted fight at first, didn't want me helping with something so intimate to them… but when I ignored him all together, we just dug in silence.

I couldn't stay long to watch them bury you. I had tried to hide beneath the trees and a particularly thick blanket, but the sun was bright that day. Too bright. I hated it for having the audacity to shine now that you were dead. I hated it for keeping me from you when the rest of them could get as close as they liked. Soon you would be buried beneath an infinity of dirt, and would be untouchable forever.

I couldn't even say a proper goodbye.

The smoke had been rising from my body for a good couple of minutes before I finally pulled myself away and back to the darkness.

*5*

When the sun set, I went back. I half expected to see them all still there, quietly standing vigil over your grave… but you were alone. For the first time since I'd known you, you were really alone.

It was too much.

I fell to my knees a foot from your headstone. I could hear sounds around me. Wailing. Screaming. The sound of someone's heart breaking in two. I looked around confused… and it wasn't until I brought my hand to my face and felt the tears that I realized the sounds were coming from me.

*6*

Dawn was sitting in my chair when I came up from beneath. I was never surprised to see her anymore. I never really felt much of anything actually. You'd been gone for eleven days, and I had stopped caring about most things.

"Haven't seen you around." She said, watching me as I walked toward the back of my crypt, sitting in the corner on a stone slab – putting as much distance between the two of us as I could.

I wanted to snap her neck, but without any real passion. It was a detached sort of desire. I mostly just wanted her out of my crypt. She smelled too much like you.

"I brought you some blood." She said when I didn't answer her. I looked at her, taken off guard by that.

"How sweet." I said.

She looked down.

"Why haven't you come by the house?" She asked. I gave her a small ironic laugh.

"My presence was never much appreciated in your neck of the woods if memory serves."

The truth was, I had gone every night to your house. It was as much to feel near you as it was to make sure Dawn was safe. At that point, your pals hadn't asked me look over her yet, so I took care of her from the shadows.

"Do you miss her?" She asked me.

I swallowed, and wasn't able to meet her eyes.

"Does it matter?" I asked.

"I miss her."

"I'm sure you do."

"No one talks about her at home." She said. "I think they're afraid of upsetting me or something."

"They're probably more afraid of upsetting themselves."

"Willow fixed the robot." She said after a while. "I… I like having it around. It's like having—"

"That thing is nothing like Buffy." I said bitterly.

"You liked it enough."

I bit down.

"Why are you here?" I asked, trying my hardest not to let my irritation get the better of me.

"I just…" She stopped and took a breath. "I just want to talk to someone who doesn't treat me like a little girl."

"Then you came to the wrong crypt, pet. Now run along like a good child and…"

She was crying.

"I killed her." She said.

I closed my eyes tightly to that. I could see how she would feel responsible, but she was wrong.

I had killed you.

"Dawn-"

"It was my blood, Spike." She sobbed. "If it wasn't for me, Buffy would still be here."

That was true. God, I hated her.

"If it wasn't for Buffy, you wouldn't be." I answered. I didn't want to comfort her, but I couldn't hurt her either. Hurting her would go against my promise of protecting her, so I bit my tongue and reigned in my anger. "You didn't kill her. She saved your life. She saved all our lives."

Every single one of us. You'd saved us all. The world didn't deserve what you'd done for it.

"I was going to jump. It was supposed to be me."

"But it wasn't." I said, standing up. "You think this is what she wanted? Do you think she gave her life for you just so you could come here and whine to me about it?" I began stalking toward her. She looked surprised at my words.

"Spike-"

"Right, came to me to get some grown-up talking to… and that's what you're going to get." I came to stand directly in front of her. She looked up at me.

"Buffy loved you." I ground out. "That's more than most of us pathetic wankers got. She loved you so much that she gave you the only thing she had left to give… her death."

"I didn't ask her for that!" She cried.

"Well too bloody bad, bit." I said, kneeling suddenly in front of her and taking her by the arms. I bore my eyes in to hers. "Love isn't pretty, and love isn't fun… it's pain and it's death, and now you're alive because of it. If all you're going to do with this gift she gave you is sit around and lament it for the rest of your life, you might as well go spit on her grave."

She broke down in front of me, and I let her collapse in to my arms. I closed my eyes and stayed still for a moment before pressing her to me, running my hand over the back of her head. That was the only time I would ever speak to her about you that way.

"Do you think it hurt?" She asked, and the sound was muffled somewhat by my chest.

"Just like going to sleep." I answered in to her hair, lying to her again. I had no idea if you felt any pain. Truth was, the question tormented me. "Remember?"

My crypt door opened.

"Spike!" Xander said urgently as he crashed in uninvited. "Dawn's…" He stopped as we both turned to look at him, my arms still around her. "Here." He said, furrowing his forehead and crossing his arms over his chest.

"Bloody hell." I said, letting Dawn go. We both stood.

"Did I just interrupt something very awkward and inappropriate?" He asked.

Dawn wiped away at her face as I stared at him, annoyed.

"She came to me, special-ed." I responded.

"It's true." Dawn said. "I—"

"Dawn, do me a favor." He interrupted her, but didn't take his eyes from mine. "While you're waiting outside for me, think of ten reasons why hanging out in a crypt with a vampire is not normal behavior for a teenage girl."

Dawn glanced at me, and then left the whelp and me alone. I bit at my bottom lip from the inside and looked him over with a smile.

"Am I in trouble?" I asked sarcastically.

"Look," he started. "I'm not going to pretend I don't hate you, because I do. In fact, if hate were a person he'd have a full time job sitting in the corner making your life miserable."

"Wonderful." I said blandly. "Anything else you wanted to tell me that makes no impact on my life whatsoever?"

He sighed, seeming to switch gears.

"You helped us before. Would it be the dumbest thing I've ever done to assume that you'd do it again?"

"I don't know about the dumbest. There's some pretty stiff competition there."

He laughed, but didn't really laugh.

"Yeah. I guess that's what I thought." He said, and then turned to walk away.

"Seeing as how the bot's back in proper order, I guess that means you lot are thinking about picking up the slaying slack." I said, stopping him. He turned back to me.

"Are you in?" He asked.

"You're asking me if I want to kill things?" I asked. "Have we really grown so far apart?"

He merely nodded, and then was gone. I guess that's how the saddest alliance of my life was born.

I turned away from the door and slumped in to my chair.

I hadn't answered Dawn, but I'm certain she knew. I did miss you.

*7*

Once, not too long after Willow had brought you back, we sat outside my crypt on a cold stone bench. There had been no action all night, and you hadn't said a word for about an hour. We just sat there together in the silence, you staring down at the stake in your hands. I didn't know what you wanted from me, but I wanted to give you whatever it was anyway… so I didn't try to speak. Anyway, in those first couple of weeks, I found that staring at you was the only way to convince myself that it was true, that you were really back. It was the only way to dull the pain in my heart that had lived there since you had died.

"I remember…" You started, and I was slightly startled by the sudden break of the quiet. I watched you, but your eyes still rested on the stake. "I remember what it felt like, the exact moment I wasn't alive anymore."

I said nothing. I had a feeling you didn't care if I responded anyway.

"It was like… my whole body tingled, except I knew it wasn't my body. I wasn't my body."

I didn't mean to ask you what I asked next, but something in me needed to know.

"Did it hurt?" I asked.

You breathed in and out slowly a couple of times before giving me an answer.

"No." You said, shaking your head only slightly, your eyes glazing over with tears.

I didn't want to feel relief just then, not when you seemed so unhappy about it… but I did. It had hurt when I died, and I didn't want that for you. Even though it was over, even though you were back – I couldn't stand the thought of you dying in pain.

"Count yourself lucky then, pet." I said, trying to ignore the stabbing pain in my heart as I watched you brush away a stray tear. I wanted to put my arms around you and let you soak my skin with those tears that no one else would let you cry. I wanted to hold you until there was no pain left for you to cry out.

"Oh yeah, I'm really lucky." You said, standing up and walking away. I followed you. Of course I followed you.

"Yeah, well… death isn't always as pretty as you seem to remember yours being." I said, falling in to step with you, a slight pang of irritation rising up in my cold blood.

"And it probably wont be next time."

"There won't be a next time." I said, my chest constricting as the thought of any "next time" briefly filtered through my thoughts.

You stopped and turned to me, incredulousness in your eyes.

"Spike, I'm the slayer. Dead before 25 ring any bells?" You laughed a little, and I moved my head to one side. "Why did they bother?"

You shook your head and started walking again. I stayed where I was.

"Because they love you." I answered. It was an honest and true answer to your question. I wasn't defending them. You kept walking away.

"Great, why don't you all get out your 'we love Buffy' pins and start a club?"

I clenched my jaw in anger, and caught up with you.

"You should have done us all a favor and stayed dead." I said, walking past you in to the darkness of the cemetery.

*8*

When I had you pinned beneath me, watching you struggle and scream… I think a thousand tortured thoughts were coursing through my mind. I had had you, hadn't I? Sometime in that dark and twisted year, you had been mine. You had come to me and had shared the darkness with me. You gave me your body and I rested in it for hours at a time, loving you so much it ripped me apart… but it was the only peace I had ever really known. Then you took it away from me. You took away every measure of peace I'd ever felt, and tore it to pieces with your perfect little hands. I watched it bleed at your feet while you laughed at me. Laughed in my face. Laughed at the idea that someone as pure and beautiful as you could ever love a thing like me. You broke me. You broke my heart and my spirit, and there was nothing left of me. There was only you, and I needed you. I loved you so much.

I needed that peace back. I needed to feel you against me again. I needed you inside me again – because you had been more inside me than I had ever been in you. If you would only let me close enough. If you would give me one more chance to show you what I felt for you; to prove to you what we had was real. It was deep and intense and no one would ever make you feel what I could make you feel.

I… just wanted you to feel it.

When you finally pushed me off of you, it was like some kind of spell had been broken. The intense misery and desperation I had felt just seconds before had dulled back to its normal ache. I watched you wrench yourself up from the floor and pull your robe closed. The tears that slipped from your eyes might as well have been falling from mine, they hurt me so much to see. I had caused them. I know I had hit you in the past, had hurt you, had even tried to kill you… but I had never been able to make you cry. You had never let me inside long enough to make you cry. But there you were, shocked and bruised. I had finally gotten inside your heart, and this is how it ended up.

God, Buffy, I'd done so many cruel and evil things before that point, but that was the only time I ever felt like a monster.

"Ask me again why I could never love you!" You said to me, your voice heavy with emotion.

I don't remember ever having asked you that to begin with. I only remember trying to force you to admit it wasn't true. I never thought you didn't love me, and maybe that had been the problem.

"Buffy, my God, I didn't—"

"Because I stopped you." You said, your voice cracking. "Something I should have done a long time ago."

I stared, stricken. A long time ago? No, dear God… if you'd said no from the beginning, I would have died from heartbreak. I didn't want you to regret me. I wanted to make you happy. I never wanted to hurt you. I just wanted to love you.

"Get out." You said firmly, hatred evident in everything about you.

I swallowed, and closed my eyes, trying to get the image out of my head, trying to get it all out of my head. Trying to force the ringing out of my ears. This was all wrong. This couldn't have just happened. Yet when I opened my eyes you were still there, still crying, still shaking.

"Please, Buffy, I'm—"

"Don't you dare say you're sorry."

But I was sorry. God, I was so sorry.

Even after everything, even after that, the thought that you could only be so hurt because you really had loved me still circulated through my head. All I wanted at that moment was to wrap my arms around you and hold you while you cried. I wanted to run my hand through your hair and whisper to you that everything would be okay. That I loved you and would never hurt you.

Even though I just did.

"Get. Out." You repeated. My legs started moving me toward the door, toward you, but you kept your distance and effectively switched places with me as I moved – never taking your eyes from mine. It was like you were afraid of me. I had always thought that you fearing me would feel gratifying in some way, but it just hurt.

"I love you." I said desperately, since you wouldn't let me apologize.

You stared silently, unbelievingly, for only a second before letting loose.

"Love?" You nearly roared, still clutching tightly to your robe. "You think this is love?" You asked, gesturing toward the bathroom floor. I couldn't look. "This is pain and violence, and it's ugly! I don't know how I ever got so lost to be able to ever let you touch me, but this isn't love! You're pathetic and disgusting, and this will never be love."

"I never meant—"

"Get out!" You screamed at me, grabbing a bar of soap from the sink and hurling it toward my head. I ducked in time to miss it, but you were already throwing something else at me. "Get out of here!" You threw another object, and then another. I heard my heart crack a little more each time. Finally I opened the door, shock making my eyes wide and my mouth hang open.

I finally felt it. I finally understood it.

You hated me.

I turned back to look at you one more time. Your face was red and streaked with black lines.

"I hate you." You said from behind clenched teeth.

Might as well have staked me.

I walked backwards out of the bathroom, and then stumbled in a drunken-like stupor down the stairs. I stared up toward the bathroom until I was at the front door, and then I still stared up the stairs.

Memories flashed through my head.

"I know you'll never love me…"

I'd said those words from the same spot that I stood at that moment.

"What did you do?"

I had asked Dawn as you stood before me, back from the dead.

Now I stood there feeling empty and alone… and I knew nothing would ever be the same after that. I had always followed my heart, and now I'd followed it straight off a cliff.

It was over.

*9*

Buffy?

***

… The Truth of It…
Chapter VIII: Need To

"The human soul has still greater need of the ideal than of the real. It is by the real that we exist; it is by the ideal that we live."
-Victor Hugo

"I think, therefore I am."
-René Descartes

*1*

There was something else. Buffy could feel her face shifting in confusion even before she realized she was confused. There was a sound. A voice. Coming from far away. Almost like it wasn't in focus. She didn't know how a voice couldn't be in focus, but that's what it sounded like. What was it saying? If Spike would just shut up she could listen.

"Buffy?" Spike asked suddenly, breaking off his pontificating.

Buffy's attention was called back to the vampire and she felt herself sink even further in to the dirt if that was even possible.

"Not dead yet." She responded in something that wasn't exactly a whisper, but couldn't be called speaking aloud either. She wasn't sure why she was still holding on. Maybe she was still hoping for a miracle. The slayer in her, which was most of her, couldn't grasp that this could be her end. She couldn't believe that after everything, after all she'd been through, her destiny was to end up a vampire.

"Not ever." Spike responded. "I think you're failing to understand the concept of living forever."

"Vampires aren't alive."

"Well, that depends on what you mean by 'alive'." He said grimly. "Got vegetables lying in wait on hospital beds being fed through tubes. They've got the heartbeat, they've got the necessary expanding and contracting of the lungs, they may even still have the soul – for all the good that does them… but are they alive?"

Buffy said nothing.

"Then you have us." He continued, and Buffy didn't like the thought that maybe 'us' was meant to include her now, too. "If we close our eyes and lay real still, you couldn't tell us apart from a corpse in the ground… But you know that 'I think therefore I am' bit? Seems to me old Descartes knew that there was more to being alive than a great throbbing pulse."

Buffy didn't know who Descartes was, but she wondered if he had any clue that his "bit" was going to become a part of vampire credo one day. Probably not. In fact, if he had known, he might have just kept the whole thing to himself.

Still, she said nothing. There was nothing more for her to say. No more arguing, no more questions. Nothing she could do.

But then…

"—it's more of an idea—"

He kept speaking on and on, but she tried to tune him out. She heard the voice again. It was louder now, less muddled. Less like a voice trapped in a tank of water. She tried to focus on it.

/Buffy…/

It was calling her name.

/Buffy, can you hear me? Buffy?/

She realized with something of a start that the voice was familiar. The voice was Willow. Buffy swallowed and opened her eyes. She could still hear Spike going on and on about whatever he was going on about, but it was like background noise now. She took a deep breath. She didn't know if she was hallucinating or not, if the voice in her head was real, but she had to try to communicate.

I can hear you, Buffy thought as loudly as she could.

/Buffy, if you can hear me… Know that I can feel you. I know you're in trouble and we're looking for you. We'll find you. I promise we'll find you./

Willow's ethereal voice was pitched in panic, and Buffy knew she couldn't hear her in return. She couldn't tell them where she was, couldn't scream for them to come help her. It was almost funny, this last seed of hope thrown at her, and torn to bits before it could blossom. They wouldn't find her in time. She had no more time.

Willow… Buffy tried again, but the witch was no longer in her head. She could feel the emptiness where her friend just was, and now she was alone again. Might as well have never happened.

"Are you listening to me, Love?" Spike asked just in time for her to give her attention back to him.

"Do I have a choice?" Buffy asked with a little more force behind her voice than she would have been capable of just a minute before – the bit of adrenaline she'd just had at the thought of rescue coursing through her body.

"Seems like you're doing a pretty good job of having a choice to me."

"What can I say?" She asked. " I make it look easy."

"Always have." Spike responded, and Buffy wasn't sure what he meant by that. She also didn't care. She was tired and was ready to close her eyes and sleep. She didn't even know if she was scared anymore. Fear seemed to have taken a backseat to exhaustion, and if she was scared… it was the kind of dull fear that came with resignation. Which, she felt, was worse.

Spike was silent for a few moments, as he seemed to regard her in the darkness.

*2*

All I ever wanted… was for you to love me.

Seems idiotic, now, to say that. Looking back on decades and decades of my life, most of them completely oblivious to you, years spent in complete blind rapture and chaos – how could I have wanted you? How could I have wanted your love?

You never believed I loved you. Not to begin with, anyway. You thought I was dirt. Disgusting. You wouldn't believe that a thing like me was capable of loving you the way I loved you, because that was too much for your watcher taught brain to handle. The soul was key. Always the soul. He had one, but I didn't. He could be good, but me? Never. Without a soul, I was just an animal. A thing. God, how many times had you called me a thing?

But, Buffy… I don't think "thing" was ever exactly accurate. I was always flesh and blood, dead as they both were – but flesh and blood. And heart. Mostly heart. How it did break… with every nasty word you flung at me. They all hit their mark. They all hurt. You didn't think you could hurt me; even though you tried, for reasons you didn't even understand, desperately to hurt me. You wanted to hurt me so you didn't hurt by yourself. And I did hurt, but you wouldn't believe it, because what was there to hurt if not the soul?

I let you do it. Why? Because you were my girl, and my girl got what she wanted from me, no questions asked. I would have given you anything. I wanted to give you everything. I wanted to wrap the sun up in a nice package and deliver it to you on your doorstep, because you deserved it. It may have killed me trying to give you what you deserved, but I tried anyway.

You never knew. You'll never know… how much I loved you.

And yes, all I ever wanted was your love. William wanted it, though he didn't – couldn't – know. He wanted you his whole life, but he wasn't ready for you. He needed to rise above what he was. He couldn't make his journey as a man. No, he had to have the man ripped away from him with jagged teeth and cold dead fingers. He - I - didn't know that it would lead, all of it, to you. I didn't know, but I did want it. I loved you my whole life, and then after.

Then we met. I watched you. Wanting you. It wasn't just about wanting to hurt you. It wasn't just about the overwhelming desire to rip you to pieces and then bathe in your blood. Absolutely not. If that were all it was, maybe things would have turned out differently. Maybe I'd have just killed you in your sleep, set your house on fire or something… but that wasn't all it was. I wanted to hurt you, to kill you, because I wanted that intimacy. I didn't want anyone else to have it. You were mine. You were the one I had died for. I knew it, even if I didn't know it.

Like I said, you were in my blood.

*3*

It's like water, Love.

The desire for blood can't be overcome. Not with a chip. Not with a soul. Not with love. I couldn't overcome my need for blood anymore than a person could theirs for water. It's not just something you want, it's something you have to have with a kind of absolution that the universe was built on. Days and days without water, and most people would be willing to kill for it. Always having to kill for it, and most people would get used to the killing. So used to it… some might come to enjoy it.

We have to come to enjoy the things we need, or they would kill us.

That's what the soul was to me. It was death. Not just mine, but all of them. It's something that I know would be impossible to grasp for someone who never experienced it. Even if the thought of all those dead that I killed, that my kind killed, makes you sad… it's still in an abstract, disconnected sort of way. You can't imagine closing your eyes and seeing their faces. Their terrified and blooded faces frozen in a silent and eternal scream of pain and horror.

I can't really imagine it either. Not now.

The soul made me hate the blood, but it could never make me not need it… and I hated that, too. I hated that a part of me still wanted that hunt, the chase, the kill. I hated knowing that was never going to change, that I'd always want those things even though the wanting of it broke my heart in two. If I was nothing without my soul, I felt more so with one. A soul didn't make me a man – it just damned me. Damned me more than Drusilla ever did. Being sired set me free, and regaining my soul set me firmly back in shackles.

Like I said, I don't know what a soul is. Could just be a flame inside that the demon blows out, could just be something we made up and decided to believe in… but whatever it is, whatever it isn't, it's not who we are. You can add sugar to water and it'll taste sweeter, but it's still water. Water can save a man.

Water can kill a man.

*4*

In any case, with or without a soul, blood reigns over us. It teaches us to listen to our impulses without hesitation. This is the kind of impulse that drives us, vampires, forward. We take what we want when we want it because we know nothing else. We know no limits or law.

You can't blame me for what happened in that bathroom.

But believe me, if I'd have known that was going to happen, I would have staked myself before stepping foot in your house.

As a vampire, it's nearly impossible to control impulse… but not impossible to feel regret.

*5*

You shouldn't be afraid.

Drusilla hadn't told me not to be afraid. Maybe she'd wanted me to be… and I was. I didn't know what was happening. She'd promised me something glowing and glistening. She'd looked in my head and my broken heart and promised me all the things I wanted. When her face changed, I was too hypnotized to care. When she bit me, there was some pain. Panic began to settle in my slowing heart for a few seconds, but when the pain went away, the panic went away with it.

When she stopped feeding, I felt drowsy and cold. I was slumped up against a light post and she kneeled in front of me with glowing yellow eyes, licking her lace-gloved fingers. I stared at her, feeling the life slip from me – knowing that my heart would beat only a minute or so longer, and then never again.

She pulled one glove off, a finger at a time and then used one long nail to slash at her wrist. When she brought it to my mouth, it was with a vague sort of realization that I understood what was happening to me. I would die there that night, but if I drank what she was offering me, I would wake up and be what she was. My body couldn't manage the kind of fear that it was attempting to feel… but I was afraid. I didn't want to die, I was still so afraid of death, but I didn't want to be one of her kind either. I didn't want to hunt lonely people in alleys and do to them what she was doing to me. I didn't want to hurt anyone. I didn't want to be a part of something so ugly.

"Be a good boy." She said, pressing her wrist to my lips… and I drank for the first time. The blood was cold and thin and tasted like rusted metal. I managed only two long drags before the darkness overcame me.

My last thought was of my mother.

*6*

"William," My mother had said to me once as we took a carriage to Covent Garden to see some play that I had been excited about. I couldn't have been older than sixteen at the time. I took my eyes from the passing scenery and lay them on her face, though hers were unfocused. "I had the strangest dream."

I tilted my head.

"Dream, Mother?" I asked.

"Yes." She said, seeming to be far away in her thoughts – barely aware that she was speaking. "I dreamt of you."

I lifted my eyebrows in confusion.

"Me?"

"You stood in the dark reading a poem for me." She began. "And you seemed somehow older, and terribly unhappy. You insisted on apologizing to me for…" She stopped, suddenly.

"Apologizing to you for what, Mother?"

It was then that she looked at me, and she was herself again. She smiled suddenly, almost embarrassedly, and waved her fan offhandedly in the air.

"Oh, it's nothing. Darling. Just foolishness."

I settled back farther in to my seat, watching her quietly – wondering what I had been apologizing to her about in her dream. Wondering why I would ever have reason to apologize to her.

"All right." I said, not wanting to push her to tell me something she didn't want me to know.

It couldn't occur to me then, and it wouldn't occur to me until the night I died – … that my mum had somehow known this was going to happen to me. Maybe my soul knew what was to come before I did, and it was sorry. It was sorry for me and for her, and it apologized to her years before it happened. Seems like something William might have done, had he the chance. Anyway, stranger things have happened.

*7*

I woke up hungry.

When you're first turned, there's no immediate thought – only instinct. I didn't stop to wonder why I was suddenly cramped inside what felt like a wooden box. I didn't stop to think about what had happened before I ended up there. I didn't stop to think about what I was. There was a humming in my head and in my blood that told me what I needed to do without approaching a conscious idea. I knew that I needed to claw out of that box without knowing it. I had to get out. I had to feed.

I didn't have much room to punch up, but I was filled with such amazing strength now that the wood gave like the shell of a raw egg. Dirt immediately began to spill over me and I had only one instant of panic before I realized I didn't need to breathe. I wasn't breathing. I kept hitting at the wood and pulling myself further up through the earth. It was like I had done it before, like my body remembered it and knew exactly what to do.

When I finally pushed my hand up in to the cold night air, I felt a surge of excitement. I climbed out from the ground and on to my knees – basking in the moonlight, feeling more alive than I'd ever felt before. I could feel that Drusilla was near, but I didn't see her. Layered in with the overwhelming need for something that I didn't quite understand yet, there was the desire to be with her that had done this to me. I wanted her. My whole body tingled for her touch.

There was no pain, Buffy. No fear. No doubt.

I was what I was and would be forevermore. I felt connected to something bigger and stronger than myself, and it wasn't humbling. It was empowering. I knew that something was gone now, I could feel an empty place somewhere deep inside… like something you're trying hard to remember because you knew it once, but don't seem to know it anymore. It didn't concern me.

It won't concern you.

*8*

Later, after I'd gotten my soul back, Dawn would ask me what hurt the most to think of. It was one of the few times she spoke to me after I came back… She'd walked down in your basement likely looking for you. I was lying on my cot with my arm draped over my face, having a particularly nasty time of it, the voices being extra angry that day. Dawn stopped at the foot of the stairs and asked.

"Which memory hurts the most?"

I was startled a bit, but not much. Hard to be too startled without a heartbeat. I took my arm down and sat up.

"Dawn, you shouldn't—"

"I know what I shouldn't." She said, maybe trying to assert her age. She was older, wiser. She didn't need me protecting her or giving her advice anymore. This wasn't her asking me for anything. Not like she used to. She was just curious. I sighed.

"Is it Buffy?" She asked. "Is it what you did to Buffy?"

I looked down. Maybe I should have just told her it was. Maybe I should have let her walk out of there thinking the worst thing I ever did was try to have it off with you when you didn't want it. Personally, it was the thing I regretted most… but it wasn't the worst thing I'd ever done. Didn't even come close. You know that.

"No." I answered honestly. Time was I would have lied to comfort her, but she didn't need that from me. Not anymore.

"What then?"

"Look," I said, "I can't hide from the things I've done. I can't pretend I didn't do them. Do enough research and it's all there in red and white… but that doesn't mean I need to run my mouth and fill your head."

She paused, her face hardening in the same way it had when she told me if I hurt you I would wake up on fire.

"You live in my house." She said. "Seems to me a girl has a right to know what the monster in her basement has done."

Monster. She'd never called me that. God, that hurt.

I stared at her steel face for a moment, and then nodded with a slight resigned smile. It hurt, but I was proud of her. The sooner she figured out that none of us, and I mean none of us, were to be trusted, the better.

"The first one." I answered her.

"The first one?" She asked. "The first one you killed?"

I nodded again.

"A little girl." I started, and I could see a shiver run through her. "It wasn't pretty, and no… I won't tell you the whole long and short of it, but I regret her the most."

"Because she was a little girl?"

This time I shook my head.

"Because she was the first."

*9*

Years and years after I was turned, in Prague, Drusilla and I lay sprawled out on a bed covered in blood stained white linen - a body of some nameless man crumpled in the corner watching us with the glassy stare of the dead.

"She's all sunshine and lilies, the new girl." She had said dreamily, staring up at the ceiling. It was just before an angry lynch mob attacked us with holy water bombs and burning crosses. I sat up against the headboard of the bed and smiled to myself, but didn't look at her.

"Is that so?" I asked, having no idea what she was talking about, but I loved to hear her talk in those days.

"She's got a halo round her head, but it's all made of woody thorns… they poke little bloody holes in her skin even when she smiles."

I ran my fingers down her arm.

"Sounds like my kind of girl."

She turned her eyes to me then and smiled… reaching up and spidering her thin fingers over the top of my head in spirals.

"My William is one for all sorts." She said, and then growled at me. I grabbed her wrist and placed a kiss to the place that I'd drunk from more than a hundred years before.

"No. Only for you." I said, moving suddenly and positioning my body over hers – pinning her beneath me. She let out a sound that was something like a giggle, but not quite.

"We'll be ready for her, won't we, my darling?"

I still had nothing in the way of a clue as to what she was talking about, but I loved it when she called me darling. I leaned down close to her face.

"Anything you want." I said, then pressed a hard kiss to her mouth. She pulled away and placed a finger to my lips.

"Shhh…" She whispered, and then she seemed to stare through me to the sky. Maybe even beyond the sky. I adored her so much it made my insides hurt. After a few moments, she turned her eyes back to me. She pulled me down so that my head rested on her chest, and she ran her hand over the back of my neck in a motherly sort of gesture.

Then the first bottle of holy water came crashing down on top of us from out of nowhere, and I never had the chance to really think about what Dru had been saying… so I'm not exactly sure when I figured it out.

Because, of course, she was talking about you.

*10*

Looking back on memories like that, it's weird to think that only a few years later I would be in Africa battling to the death to regain a soul that had been mine for less time than it hadn't.

I didn't know what it was going to feel like. I didn't know how it was going to happen… I just knew that it was what I wanted. I lay on the cold dirt ground, ready to die or ready to get the soul back. Whichever came first. I think I might have been passed the point of caring. But then the thing told me I had endured the required trials, and I knew that that was it. No more tests. No more torture.

"Bloody right I have." I said, with a little bit of that false bravado that I learned from you. Honestly, I was scared. I pulled myself up to a sitting position on my knees. "So, you give me what I want. Make me what I was… so Buffy can get what she deserves."

Funny, that. Like I knew what you deserved.

"Very well." The demon said, and I thought, not without a kind of respect. "We will return your soul."

A word to the wise, Love… once your soul's gone, I wouldn't suggest running off trying to make friends with it again. Even if you don't have a century of murder to feel guilty for, the actual receiving of the soul is unpleasant at best.

So I screamed.

I could feel the light inside me, exploding behind my eyes. Every nerve ending tingled with burning agony. I didn't know how long it was going to last, but I wondered – as much as I could wonder while the pain pulsed through me – if I had been tricked, and if this was another trial. Maybe there were a hundred more to come, and I would die there in that cave after all.

When the light was gone, the pain remained… but it was different. It wasn't hot like the end of a branding iron anymore, it was cold. Cold and heavy. I kept screaming. I could hear the sounds escaping my mouth like they were coming from someplace else, and I hadn't felt such crushing despair since the day you died.

I couldn't hear what the whispering voices were saying yet, but they hated me. That much I could tell. Every voice in my head hated me. Even my own.

I could see you crying out underneath me again, but there were others standing the corner watching us – faces covered in blood, some of them with their throats ripped out. They hadn't really been there in the bathroom with us, I didn't think. I was pretty sure I'd remember them.

"Oh… God…" I managed to stammer out, but the thing that had done this to me was gone already. Hiding again. It had given me this "prize" that I had come to claim, and then left me with no way to cope with it.

I fell back to the ground and passed out.

My last thought, was of you.

*11*

I tried to hide from you, tried to pretend, tried to be the me that I wasn't anymore. I thought if I pretended hard enough, the voices in my head would go away and the searing guilt that knotted in my throat and squeezed my chest would disappear.

You followed me in to that church, and you listened to me speak, and you watched while I draped my body over the cross.

"Buffy… Can we rest?" I had asked you. I could smell my flesh burning, and I could hear it sizzling, but I couldn't exactly feel it. I was numb and tired and if I withered away to nothingness against that cross, I wouldn't have cared. You didn't attempt to pull me away from the place where I stood slowly burning, so maybe you didn't care either.

After a very long silence, you spoke.

"You did this… for me?" You had asked quietly.

I let my hands slip from the cross and fall to my side, and lifted my head. The sizzling stopped immediately, but the smoke still lifted from my body. I didn't turn to look at you. There were things running through my head at that moment that didn't add up to what was happening, things that didn't make sense. Thoughts and ideas whirred around in my mind so fast that I couldn't really latch on to any of them.

And, of course, there were the voices. Mostly screaming.

And you. Crying.

"You seem disappointed." I said.

You said nothing. I furrowed my forehead and turned to look at you, and watched as the burns across my chest and face instantly registered in your eyes.

"Are you disappointed?" I asked. You only stared at me, open mouthed and wide eyed – tears slipping down your face. That was when I noticed the stake in your hand. I stalked slowly closer until I was standing just a step or so away from you. You hadn't moved away. You hadn't moved at all. I looked down at the stake you held and reached for it. You didn't pull away as I brought the stake and your hand up to my heart. "If it's what you want." I whispered.

Everything for you.

That was when you wrenched yourself away. You took a few steps back, staring unbelievingly in to my eyes. A second later you threw the stake to the ground, turned, and ran away from me and out of the church.

I wasn't surprised. You had always run away from me.

*12*

"What did you expect me to do?" Buffy asked, a little of the old irritation Spike had always stirred in her coming forth from the shadows of her fading consciousness. Also, as much as she didn't want to be, she was interested in the last few things he had been saying. He was talking about the soul now, his in particular – but it concerned hers now, too, didn't it?

"I didn't expect anything, did I?" He asked, seeming a little surprised that she had spoken up. "There may have been some grand plan before, but after the great rebirth it was completely at sixes and bloody sevens up here."

She assumed he meant his head.

"But the plan was to be with me." She said more than asked. "Like the soul would wipe your past clean."

"Had done for Angel."

If she could have, she might have laughed at that. Even now, comparing himself to Angel.

"I loved Angel before I knew what he was."

She never realized she had thought about it that way, but after she said it, she realized it was nothing more or less than the truth.

"Right…" Spike said quietly. "Never had a chance then." He finished. She had a feeling he was talking more to himself than to her.

"You can't make someone love you, Spike." She said shifting, with quite a lot of effort, on to her back. She couldn't stand the smell of dirt in her nostrils anymore. It reminded her too much of the cemetery. Too much of death.

God, when was this going to be over?

"No. You can't." He agreed with her. "But a man can live on less than love. I've proved that before."

"Please." Buffy said, wincing as she readjusted the way her weight rested. "You were like a dog begging for scraps at the table."

Something strange was happening now. Buffy wasn't exactly sure what at first, but as she felt herself sinking back in the ground in her new position… she realized what she had just done. She moved her whole body. She'd turned completely over. That had taken strength. Strength she was sure she had not had even minutes before.

"Better to live on scraps than to starve."

"Was it?" She asked, wiggling her fingers slightly at her side… feeling for how much energy she had.

"I loved you so much that even the pain you caused me was better than nothing at all."

"It was all pain."

"Mostly, yeah. Not arguing that." He paused. "I told Riley once that it must have been torture being with you and not really having you, that I thought maybe I had the better deal."

She never heard of that conversation from either of them, and maybe she'd have found herself wondering if it had had something with him leaving so suddenly… but she was too busy trying to figure out how much strength she had, and what's more, how much more she'd be getting. Also, she was doing this while trying not to alert Spike to the fact that anything had changed. Any elevation in her body temperature, any difference in her heart rate, she knew he'd notice. She couldn't overpower him right now, that much she knew for sure. She was using every bit of that Zen stuff that Giles had crammed down her throat when she was younger. Meditation made you stronger, or something. Maybe it did, maybe it didn't… but at least it made it easier to control her breathing.

"I loved Riley." She said absently.

"I bet you told yourself that every night." He laughed a little. "Anyway, it only took me a second to know that I was wrong, that he had the better end of it… but I guess I was right, too. It was torture."

Buffy said nothing. She didn't like to think that she had "tortured" anyone, and she didn't want to hear anymore about that.

It was all out of her head the next moment, though, when the tips of the fingers she was moving at her side came in to contact with something cold and smooth. Her thoughts flew back to earlier. She had said something to make him mad… so mad that he'd thrown his wooden chair against the wall. It had splintered off in to at least a dozen pieces. One of which must have bounced off the wall from the force… and landed right here, where Buffy was laying.

A cold, smooth, long piece of wood.

She took hold of it slowly and quietly in her hand.

"Spike." She said. He didn't answer right away, because she was certain he could hear her heart pounding now.

"I wouldn't try anything." He said in an eerily stony voice. "This is almost over. No point in making the end any harder than it has to be."

"You know what I have in my hand." She stated, didn't ask. As soon as her heart had begun to beat faster she knew he would have changed to his demon face to see what was going on. He had to have seen the stake.

"I do." He said. "Won't do you any good, Love. You're about as weak as a kitten and hundred times more appetizing."

But he had it all wrong.

"I know I can't fight you." She said, then slowly brought the splintery point of the piece of wood she held in her hand up to her heart. "Don't need to."

***

…The Truth of It…
Chapter IX: The Truth of It

"All the art of living lies in a fine mingling of letting go and holding on."
– Havelock Ellis

*1*

Buffy could hear as Spike shifted in the dirt – maybe coming up on his knees. He didn't say anything, and he didn't seem to move away from where he was.

"You talked. I listened." Buffy said. "Now it's time for you to listen to me."

"You could barely lift your hand." He said quietly. " You don't have the strength to run yourself through."

"Want to place bets?" She said, pressing the stake against her skin.

"Okay, Love." He started, almost interrupting her. "I'm listening."

He sounded scared. Good.

"You claim to know me so well." She began. "Then you know when I say there are only two ways I'll leave this crypt and neither of them is as a vampire, I mean it."

"I believe you." He said, and then was quiet. There was no need to ask or state what was already clear, what the two ways were.

Alive, or dead.

Buffy went on.

"I can't fight you. We both know I can't, and I don't know what you've been injecting me with, so I don't know when I'll get my strength back… but if you come near me, you can be sure that I'll use whatever strength you haven't taken from me to see to it that I'm dead before you can get this stake out of my hand."

Harsh. She knew it was harsh… but she needed him to know she was serious.

"Buffy, you can't-"

"I can't wake up as a vampire with a heart full of wood."

"Don't…" He had said that very forcefully, and then stopped before saying anymore. He seemed to try and collect himself for a few moments before starting again. "Don't talk like that." He finished more calmly, like a man trying to talk a suicidal friend off a ledge.

"You know I won't let you do this to me."

"I'm not doing this to you, Buffy." His voice was strained, and she could tell he was holding back tears. "I'm doing this for you."

"You're doing this for you." Buffy ground out.

"I love you!" He cried out. "You expect me to turn my back on that? You except me to live without you?"

"I don't expect anything from you. But you know what you can expect from me."

"Even if I let you go, you're too weak to get far on your own. You'll need me if you plan on getting out of this cemetery alive."

"I don't need you for anything."

"How do you plan on getting home?"

"I don't plan on getting home. I don't plan on making it out of this cemetery. I only plan on not living to see a sunrise that I can't."

"Please, Buffy, listen to me."

"I'm done listening to you, Spike! And I'm done talking. You tell me now. Are you going to let me go, or are you going to watch me die?"

"It's not what you think." He argued. "You don't have to be afraid. You don't have to hate what I am."

"It's who I am to hate what you are!" Buffy yelled with a passion that that belied how sick and weak she really felt. "Every part of me hates every part of what you are."

"Buffy…"

"No!" She interrupted him, painfully wrenching herself back up so that she was sitting up against the wall again. "You've spent hours trying to convince me that souls don't count, that heart's all that matters… but all you've done is prove to me what evil really is. It's selfish and it's blind, and all it wants is to hurt."

"No. I don't want to hurt you."

"But you do, and you are! What do you think this is? You think this is fun? You think this is some great big party where Buffy's not just the special guest, she's the snack bar, too?"

"I just wanted to talk to you… to try to explain. I wanted you to understand what I am so you're not afraid. You don't have to be afraid of this."

"Not afraid? Have you been listening to yourself? When we first met, you wanted to kill me to show me how much you loved me. That's not just scary, that's sick. Now you tell me not to be afraid?"

"You'll be forever."

"I don't want to be forever!" She said, and her voice cracked a little. "I didn't even want to be right now, but I didn't have a choice. It took me a long time to fix myself and to put all the pieces back together, and you're trying to take it away from me."

"I'm trying to give you what you deserve."

"You said yourself you didn't know what I deserve."

"Didn't. Do now."

"I deserve to die?"

"You deserve to live."

"You don't live. You exist, remember?"

"Better than not existing."

"I'm nothing like you. I'd rather starve than live off of scraps."

"You'll feel differently about this. You'll feel differently about everything."

"Because I won't be me."

"Bloody hell." Spike cried out in frustration. "You will be you. Nothing can change you, Buffy. I've seen you at all hours of your life, including the darkest, and you always come out better than you were before. Nothing can beat you. The demon is only part of us, but it's like the soul… it's not who we are."

"Tell that to the bride and groom. Tell that to the little girl."

"Can't. They're dead. I can only tell you."

"And they're dead, why? Because you chose to be your inner demon on those days?"

"They're dead because they were in the wrong place at the wrong time, and I was meaner, stronger, and hungry." He said in a thick, raw voice. Just like she'd said earlier: his brand of honesty was never that much fun for her.

"From where I'm sitting with two holes bleeding down my neck, it looks like that's all this is, too."

"Except I didn't love them."

"And you don't love me."

"I know the setting's right for it, but we're not going to start in on that song and dance." His voice was deep and threatening in a way that he'd only spoken to her with a handful of times, including before he'd fallen in love with her. "Fact is, I do love you and always have. I wouldn't be doing this if I didn't love you… and I won't let you go."

He wouldn't let her go.

What did that mean? That he'd rather watch her shove a stake through her heart than let her leave? Or maybe he thought that he could stop her.

God, then she couldn't give him a chance to stop her.

He said he wouldn't let her go, and she believed him… there was nothing more for her to do but make good on her threat. She wasn't going to die a hero, and she wasn't going to die fighting, but at least she would die Buffy.

She closed her eyes took a deep breath and prepared herself for the pain. She knew it would be intense, but she promised herself it'd be over almost before it started. Her heart would stop immediately, and then her blood would stop flowing to her nerve endings. She'd pass out, and then it'd be over. Everything would be over.

She pulled her hand slightly away from her body so that she could plunge it back.

"I was going to let him kill me!" Spike exclaimed suddenly, brokenly, and she could hear him move abruptly closer to her. She opened her eyes and looked in his direction.

"What?" She asked.

"Xander." He said, and Buffy was somehow able to note the fact that he had called the man "Xander" and not one of his more usual terms of endearing insult. She slowly dropped her hand down to her lap, waiting for him to continue. "When he found me at the Magic Box that night after I'd been… after I'd been with Anya."

"Spike, what—"

"Before things got really bad, I mean… before they got worse, I did feel."

Buffy was getting angry.

"Feel what?"

"Remorse."

"And what does that mean to me?"

"You think we change so much when we're turned." He paused, maybe to try and reign in his emotions. As it was, it didn't seem like he was having an easy time talking. "Truth is, not much changes. We're freer. Emptier, yeah. I won't lie to you. Something's missing in me… but not as much as you think. Angel, he was a piece of art. Darla's art. The Master's art. They made him, and then he made me. Certain things are not inherent, they're learned."

"Been a few hours, Spike. I'm getting awfully tired of waiting for you to get to the point."

"The point?" He asked, almost sobbed. "The point is that my heart was broken that night. Anya's heart was broken. The boy's heart was broken, and hell if I couldn't take it. I gave up. I knew, I knew, he was going to kill me, Buffy… and I didn't care. I didn't have a soul, had no bloody idea of getting one either, and at that moment I felt so bleeding sorry for all of us, that I didn't care if he killed me. I wanted it to be over. The killing. The violence. The hate. Me."

A beat. Buffy said nothing.

"There were still bits of the man in me. I pushed him away for over a century, but he was still there. I was still there."

"Was he still there when you tried to rape me the next night?"

"Yes." He answered without hesitation.

Buffy felt herself go cold at his answer. She hadn't expected that. Even if it was true, she hadn't expected him to admit it.

"What?"

"I wasn't talking just to hear my own voice when I told you we're always every bit of ourselves all at once. The man's here. The demon's here. Maybe the soul or whatever the bloody hell you want to call it isn't here, but it doesn't make a difference. It might serve as a moderator, a filter, I don't know… but we choose what we are and we can fight our nature. The only thing that bit of burning light ever taught me was that I didn't need it."

"And the first little girl you killed? What does the man in you think of that?"

Spike scoffed, but it wasn't in humor.

"Not a damned thing." He answered. "Why should he? We're all a product of what surrounds us, and I can't regret choices of circumstance. What I did with Anya that night, and what I did to you, that was me. I did those things because I was miserable, and desperate… but there was no one else urging me on. No lunatic paramour begging me to hurt the girl a little more, and no unhinged grandsire forcing me to compete with him."

Buffy didn't know what to make of what he was saying to her. She wasn't even convinced that he understood the torrent of words spilling from his mouth. All she knew was that she was dizzy and tired. She just wanted to go home… back to Ireland. Back to Dawn. Back to where all this kind of tragedy was in the past, and her and Spike were…

Something. Her and Spike were something.

But not this.

"And now?" She asked. "How about now?"

He didn't answer her right away. Silence spanned out over the dank and thick air, and Buffy felt like choking on it.

"Man's here." He answered quietly.

"And what does he feel?"

A beat.

"Broken."

"What? Now that you see I'd rather stake myself than—"

"No." He interrupted her. "Because I don't want to do this to you."

Tears stung at the corner of her eyes.

"Then don't."

"And because the lunatic and grandsire aren't here now either." He went on, ignoring what she'd said. "I know this is wrong. I know it so much it's killing me… but the truth is, it doesn't take evil to be selfish. Men can be selfish, too – are, in fact, most of the time."

"Most men don't go around killing for laughs."

"You're right. Most don't." He said pointedly, and there was more Spike in his voice than William now, though he still sounded distinctly on the edge. "Have you ever actually met a saint, Love?"

"What?" She asked uncertainly. "No."

"No." Spike repeated. "And you know why? They have to wait until a bloke's been dead for five years to even consider making him one. That's because it'd be damned hard to prove anyone's a saint otherwise."

"Believe it or not, good people do exist."

"Good people exist." He agreed with her. "Perfect people don't."

"Well, great." Buffy said warily, leaning her head back against the dirt wall. "Now that we have that all sorted out, let's make me a vampire."

Silence again. A long and pronounced silence that seemed, on the whole, fittingly funerary.

But when Spike spoke again, she was startled for two reasons. One, she hadn't realized that her eyes had been closed. Two, he was closer now; right beside her… and she hadn't even heard him move.

"Buffy…" He said, and she could feel his caressing hand moving up the length of her leg. She tightened her grip on the stake in her hand and didn't move.

"Don't." She said.

He didn't seem to be touching her suggestively. It was tender, consoling.

"Spike…"

"Shhh…" He whispered, putting his hand over hers that held the piece of wood. She swallowed. She could feel his lips against her ear when he spoke again. "I can hear your heart pounding, Love. You don't have to be afraid. Not of me."

Buffy moved her head away from him.

She wasn't sure if she could do it now, not with him so close. He'd be able to stop her.

"I've never been afraid of you." She managed to say.

He was quiet for a moment, running a thumb over the back of her hand. She clutched tightly at the stake… she wouldn't let him take it from her.

"You said you believed in me once." He was still whispering. "Believe in me now."

A tear, slow and hot, fell down Buffy's cheek.

"I did." She said, unable to hide the emotion from her voice. "But I can't believe in this."

One cold finger ran up her cheek, wiping away her tear.

"That's the funny thing about the truth, Pet." He was holding her cheek now. "It's true whether or not you believe it."

She said nothing. She didn't have the words just then to argue with him, or to articulate the pain she was feeling. She couldn't, wouldn't, explain to him that he was doing so much more to her now than he could have realized. Being here with him, his hand trying to comfort her, wiping away her tears… whispering to her.

He was breaking her heart.

"Just rest here with me." He said, moving his arm across her shoulder and gently pulling her in to his chest. She didn't fight it. She didn't want to fight anymore, and as he smoothed his hand over her hair, she just wanted to close her eyes and do what he asked.

Rest.

She closed her eyes against him, and she didn't realize he was moving the stake out of her hand until he'd already done it.

"I'm sorry, Buffy." He said in to her hair.

Words came from her mouth, but she only vaguely noticed that she was speaking. She may have said something along the lines of, "I know", but she couldn't be sure. Not anymore.

And it was only the gentle shaking of Spike's chest underneath her cheek that alerted her to the fact that he was crying.

"I do believe in you." Buffy said softly, the words drifting through her as though from a dream. "My Spike loves me more than I'll ever understand… and I know he wouldn't do this to me. My Spike would let me go."

There was a short silence.

"… Your Spike." The vampire said almost inaudibly.

"You showed me what you could be. What you are." She said, feeling herself begin to fade in to darkness. "I believe in you, Spike. Prove me right…"

The cold and dark were absolute now. She felt a part of it as though it were in her skin. Spike's slow hand running through her hair was a part of her, too. She knew she was falling now, deep and slowly, irrecoverably, in to the abyss Spike had decided not to tell Dawn about when she'd come asking for answers about death.

"Rest now, Buffy." He whispered, and then with a voice heavy with the truth of what it spoke, "I love you."

She was almost gone now. She could feel her last moments of consciousness slipping away from her. Her mind wandered slowly through thoughts of her sister and of her friends.

Willow… the shy sixteen-year-old red head had become something so amazing, so powerful. So unique to a world where "unique" was beginning to become a thing of the past.

Xander - her rock. A man who had no business being as brave and true as he was, but was nonetheless. Always, always, there to laugh in the face of annihilation. Always there to pick up the pieces and make them whole again.

And Dawnie.

Dawn. Beautiful, incredible, Dawn…

She couldn't think anymore.

"I love…" She said, almost too quiet for her own ears.

The next word, whatever it was going to be, didn't come, but as the darkness rushed in to take the place of Willow, Xander, and Dawn in her mind – one word did roll softly around in the quiet and cold. One word that she didn't understand, but didn't deny either. One word as the world slipped away from her.

You.

*2*

When all your friends mutinied and decided to throw their lot in with the other not so pleasant slayer, you were alone in the world.

But I found you.

*3*

I'm not a young man. I'll always carry the face of a boy named William who died in his late twenties, but the years still tick away. Time doesn't stop just because we do. We are forever pictures of ourselves at a time when we were beautiful. Looking at me, looking at any of us, it's easy to forget how old we really are.

My best mate from school died in 1916. He had been my age. I suppose I might have died around that same time. It's a weird thought, even for me, that I went on existing past my own lifetime. I lived to see the world around me change in to something completely different from the one I had been born in to. Women stopped wearing corsets and heavy skirts, and men stopped holding doors open for them. At first no one owned a car, then everyone did. The word "charming" lost it's place and it's meaning. The world sped up.

Can't say I cared. Can't say any of it really mattered to me… but in all the time I've had to roam the planet, all the time to see things and experience things, I also can't say I haven't been lucky. I got to witness the rebirth of society several times over. I got to set the world on fire with the woman I loved more than I could ever express in words.

I've seen some ugly things, some of which delighted me to no end… but I've also seen some of the most beautiful things a man can see. Moonlight over Rome before cars and noise distracted the senses. Paris in the fall when the air smelled like life. I saw a world that now only exists in pictures and history books.

I've had some incredible nights.

But in all that time, even now, I can still say the best night in my life was the first night you let me rest beside you and hold you to me.

*4*

I was ready to die for you when I did. Not for the world. Wasn't my world, anyway. Hadn't been for a while.

*5*

When I came back, nothing made sense. The one thing I'd known, that I'd been certain, I'd ever done right for you, and it had been taken from me. Spent weeks and weeks knocking about with no sense of touch or taste or smell. It was like I was played with, laughed at. Mine was the best death I'd ever seen, and really, I'd seen some pretty great ones.

I had been a villain, a fool, a slave to love, and then a hero.

When I came back, I was nothing. I was afraid you would think I was nothing. That insecurity followed me, haunted me, through out the better part of a year. Even when I was willing to die to save the world again in that alley with Angel, even after.

Especially after. When you finally found out I was alive.

*6*

Hadn't known how to get in touch. That's what you said.

*7*

I searched for years for one small sign that you had loved me. I waited around, even though I wasn't around, for you to realize that we had something beyond what anyone else around you had. That I knew you. That we knew each other.

You didn't realize it.

I think, maybe, I'd even accepted it. Even though it hurt.

*8*

Then the man in black with a satin top hat found me as I was leaving a sidewalk café in London with a bird I'd met the night before. Pretty girl with long brown hair who reminded me of Dawn except without the bright eyes. They were blue, I think, but dull.

"Pardon me, Madam," He'd said to the girl on a bow. "But would you mind if I spoke with your gentleman escort for just a few moments?"

I gave him the once over and a cocked eyebrow. Hadn't really seen anything like him since the very early 1900s.

"Push off, Mate." I responded before the girl could say anything.

He looked at me, still in a bow, then stood up straight.

"Well, that wasn't very polite, William." He said.

Then I must have been knocked over the head with something, because there was a very sharp pain in my skull before everything went black.

*9*

I woke up in chains.

*10*

"I can smell your soul." The man had said from the darkness, and I couldn't see him… but the space around us was filled with his scent. I knew he wasn't human, but I wasn't sure what exactly he was. "It's old. Smells of… strawberries."

"Lovely." I responded to him sarcastically.

"You're not like the other, are you?"

I scoffed, assuming he meant Angel.

"Not hardly."

"No, not hardly." He agreed. "Not at all. You're not haunted like he is. Not exactly."

"What can I say, Topper?" I asked. "Sulking's never really been my style."

"Oh, but you are haunted." I could hear him coming closer to me. "That much I could see. I saw it in your eyes same as I saw your soul."

"Yeah, deep ocean of secrets." I said, pulling against my chains.

"Want to tell me what haunts you, William?"

"That name doesn't mean a lot to me." I answered him. "Don't know why people always think it punctuates their point."

"Well, if you won't tell me…"

He ripped open my shirt and I could here my buttons go flying.

"Hey!" I said angrily. "I'm not in to—"

Then his hand was on my chest… and I screamed.

*11*

I could feel my retinas light on fire in the back of my head, and my heart and chest suddenly felt like they were being squeezed in a vice grip. I knew this pain. Every time the soul had ever made it's presence known to me, it'd felt like that.

Nothing but pain.

And then I saw it. Their faces. The blood. The screaming. I could smell the fear. I could taste the agony. Salty tears and blood all over my tongue. Mothers begging me to just let their children go. Husbands crying out in horror as their wives' necks were snapped like twigs right in front of them. Men calling out to God.

And you. Your voice was there, begging me.

Please, Spike, don't do this! Please, Spike, don't do this! Please, Spike, don't do this! Please, Spike, don't…

The faces were gone. The pain and heat dissipated.

"I see." The man said as I hung there panting uselessly in front of him.

"What the bloody hell did you just—"

"You really are not like the other. His soul doesn't scream like yours does, and it's not as a part of his being as yours is. Not as easy to separate."

"Went to hell and back for it." I ground out.

"Interesting, though, that out of all the voices your soul carries with it, that the voice of Buffy rises above every one of them."

If my blood could have gone colder, it would have.

"How do you know B-"

"Don't flatter yourself, Spike." He laughed at me again. "You thought this was about you?"

Well, yeah. But also, not really. It was always about you.

"You can't use me to hurt her."

"No, not now, I suppose." He said, but didn't sound disappointed, which set me on edge. "But you have hurt her in the past. You were certainly able to hurt her in the past."

"Too bad that was the past."

"Shouldn't torture yourself over it, either. Desperation and love can drive a man to do terrible, terrible things." He didn't seem to be speaking to me anymore. I pulled at my chains.

"I don't torture myself… but I get out of these chains, and they won't even be able to use dental records to identify you." I growled.

He paused before speaking.

"Say hello to Buffy for me." He said quietly, but somehow with all the force of ominous implication.

*12*

Then, simply, I was here, in my crypt. A weight on my chest was gone, and it didn't take me more than seconds to realize what had happened and where I was.

And I felt you almost instantly.

*13*

"Spike?" You had asked after staking a nameless fledgling. You didn't know what had just happened. You didn't even realize where we were. You didn't notice your hair being shorter or darker. You couldn't see how young you looked.

"Hello, Buffy." I said, a slow smile on my face. You had no reason to expect anything from me. You even seemed happy to see me. My cold blood was rolling in my veins, urging me forward. This was my chance to have you. To finally and completely have you.

"Ireland?" You asked me. I hadn't stepped foot in that country while you'd been there. I looked around, vaguely wondering how you hadn't noticed the difference between Ireland and my cemetery.

"I could ask you the same." I said. Really, I could have. I never did understand you settling in any country of Europe. California was in your blood.

"Well, you know." You shrugged. "Matches my eyes."

I had to smile at that.

"Spike, My God…" You started, words seeming to fail you.

If God was just something that created other things, then yeah.

"Maybe a little of both tonight, Love." I responded.

I saw the change in you immediately – but my instincts were quicker than yours. You tried to step back, but it was too late.

"Wh—"

I had you in my arms against my chest and there was no thought before I plunged my teeth in to your flesh.

Finally, tasting you.

It was everything I'd always imagined. Beauty and power and a taste that human tongues would never know.

*14*

I drank just enough. Just enough to damage you.

*15*

By the time you'd woken up, I'd already been out and about in Sunnydale to find just the right mixture of drugs to fill you with to make sure you could barely carry your own weight let alone pull out of your chains or take me in a fight.

It hurt to do it to you. I had tears in my eyes as a pulled the blade across my wrist and as I tipped your head back to let my blood drip in to your mouth. It did hurt me. But I was used to pain.

Every time you'd go back out, I'd drink a little more. Slowly taking your life from you.

*16*

I couldn't just turn you without trying to explain that it's not all harsh and ugly. I wanted you to understand that we are capable of so much more. I didn't want you to be afraid.

Even though I was.

*17*

I'd lived through your death. I'd lived through a life without you. I couldn't stand the thought of it. I just wanted you to be mine.

I look at your face, and I ache. How can I live without you?

I just want you to be mine.

*18*

But you called me yours. And you're right, Buffy. I am yours. Until the end of the world.

*19*

The voices were far away.

Muffled.

Sounded like someone was drowning.

Someone calling her for help.

No, not for help. Just…

Just calling.

Calling her away from the darkness.

But all there was, was darkness.

They were calling her name. They weren't here in the darkness with her. They were somewhere else. Somewhere outside of wherever she was. Somewhere trying to reach her, trying to pull her back to them. Pull her out.

Buffy opened her eyes, and at first the brightness was too overwhelming to adjust to. It felt like she'd been asleep for years.

The voices were still talking, still calling to her – but they were closer now. Coming in to focus. There were forms in the light that were coming in to focus, too. She wasn't alone here.

"Buffy…"

It was Dawn.

Buffy blinked her eyes several times and swallowed the dry lump in her throat.

"Buffy!"

Willow.

"Thank God."

Xander.

All there.

"Wh…" She tried to speak, but found that it hurt to talk. She cleared her throat painfully. "What's…?"

"It's okay, Buffy." Xander said, coming in to view. He looked so tired, and so young. "You're safe."

The brightness of the light that flooded her eyes began to recede, and Buffy was able to take in her surroundings.

She lay in a bed. In a hospital room.

She tried to sit up, but now Dawn and Willow were there easing her back down with words and gentle hands.

Dawn's arms were around her the next moment.

"You're awake." She said, tears in her voice. She stood up straight, looking like every bit the radiant girl she was, though she appeared to be just as worn out as Xander. "Stop scaring me like this."

Buffy reached up weakly to caress her sister's cheek. She was young, too. There was something so beautiful about seeing her this way again, that she could feel the tears begin to sting in her eyes.

"Dawn…" She said. "You're a teenager."

Dawn glanced at Willow, and Buffy dropped her hand back to her side.

"We know." Willow said gravely. Buffy looked at her. "We know you're not supposed to be here."

Buffy closed her eyes as relief washed over her. Good. That would save a whole lot of time and explaining that she didn't think she had the will for just now. She was only mildly curious as to how and why they figured it out, but she'd save that question for a time not now.

"Can you reverse this?" She asked, then opened her eyes and looked at her friend. The witch took a deep breath.

"The magic, whatever it is, it's weak. I don't think it was meant to last very long. A couple days, maybe. I think it will just… you know, wear off."

A couple of days. Just long enough for her to be killed.

Buffy nodded, letting everything sink in.

"Is Buffy 2.0 in my place?" She asked. "Or am I 2.0?" She looked at Xander who shrugged slightly.

Willow Smiled a small, weary smile.

"These kinds of things usually require a swap." Willow said. " A matter for matter deal. Or, in this case, a Buffy for Buffy."

Buffy looked back to the young witch.

This Willow who hadn't lost the love of her life. This Willow who hadn't tried to end the world.

"Will," She started. "I have to tell—"

Willow held out her hands.

"Buffy, no." She said. "Time's a tricky thing even when you're not taking fun joyride's through it."

"But me just being here changes things."

"I don't think so." Willow answered.

"She was telling us about this back at the house." Dawn said, sounding bored. "Time isn't linear, blah, blah, blah."

"Well, when you say it like that…" Willow said, a look of insulted nerdy pride on her face. Buffy shook her head.

"Linear-what-now?" She asked.

"The only way time travel could be possible, even with magic, is if time progresses in a loop, not in a straight line." Her friend explained. "Which means when this spell wears off, none of us here should have any memory of it at all. Otherwise, you would remember your little trip to the future." She paused. "You don't, do you?"

Buffy shook her head. No, she didn't. That was the worst thing about all of this then. Being sent back and not being able to change any of what happened.

"Don't worry about any of that now." Xander said.

"Yeah," Dawn agreed. "You should rest."

Rest.

"How… how did you find me?" Buffy asked.

"Spike." Willow answered. Buffy nearly started at the name, and the rush of hot adrenaline that ran through her at the mention of him made her heart beat a little faster. Dark memories of everything she'd just been through making her go cold.

"We had just done a locater spell." The redhead continued.

"It pointed to the cemetery and we were about to take in the full cavalry," Xander interrupted. "But Spike was there when we opened the door."

"Buffy, you were so pale and…"

Dawn couldn't finish her sentence.

Buffy managed to sit up a bit.

"Wait." She said. "Spike? Spike brought me home?"

It didn't make any kind of sense.

"He said he found you outside his crypt, unconscious." Dawn said. "He… he was pretty broken up. He just left you with us and ran away. Like, ran away."

Buffy didn't know what to feel or think. He'd spent hours and hours telling her he needed her, that he wouldn't let her go. He'd taken her back to her friends?

"Buffy…" Xander started with that look that she knew so well to mean he was about to address an elephant in the room. "Did Spike… did Spike have something to with this?"

Buffy looked to Xander suddenly. Of course he would assume Spike did this. Xander wouldn't even begin to trust Spike for another year or so. Anyway, he wasn't wrong.

"Xander, Buffy doesn't want to—"

"No." Buffy cut Willow off. "Spike didn't have anything to do with this." Three pairs of eyes rested on her. "I… don't know what it was. I didn't know what had happened and something came at me. I wasn't prepared to fight… what with the time traveling and all."

"He saved you." Dawn said with a strange hint of pride in her eyes. Dawn had loved Spike like a brother. Buffy had almost forgotten that. Her gaze found it's way to her sister's face.

A beat.

"Yeah." She said as she touched her fingers to the bandage at her neck. "I guess so."

Saved her? Maybe. From himself.

But he had done something else for certain. He'd proven her right.

*20*

6 Months Later
Newry, Ireland
Present Day

Dawn and Buffy stood together on the balcony that led out from Buffy's room in the cold night air, the wind blowing her hair back slightly. Behind her, in her bedroom, various boxes marked with black sharpie took up most of the space. It was time to move on from this place. Time to go back home, to America. To California. Dawn would stay in Ireland and head up the slayer base here. She was ready for that.

Dawn took a deep breath.

"I can't believe we're not going to be living together anymore." She said. Buffy looked at her 24-year-old sister and smiled. It had been nice to see her as a kid again when she'd been catapulted backward in time. It had been nice to see all of them like that. One good thing to come from all that pain.

"We'll still see each other." She answered.

"I know, but… still." The two girls looked out over the city. "Are you scared? You know, that the time traveling thing could happen again?"

Buffy thought about it. Whatever had been behind the whole thing was still out there and was definitely still a threat because it wanted her dead and the slayer army gone and was obviously willing to go to great lengths to see to it… but she had her friends. She had Dawn. The slayers were strong and getting stronger. They'd be able to beat it back, whatever it was.

"No." She answered honestly. "Fear is of the past."

Dawn half laughed, half rolled her eyes.

"Buffy…" She started after a few moments. "What's going to happen if you see Spike?"

In six months, Buffy had heard nothing of Spike. Not a letter or a phone call. No groveling apologies. No gestures of love. She didn't know what to think or how to feel at first. She still didn't.

Really, she didn't even know if he was alive.

"I don't know." She answered.

"Do you hate him?"

Dawn hadn't pushed her to talk about it in the whole time since she'd been back, and she'd only revealed a few details. No need to spell it all out. It hadn't been pretty. She didn't think anyone would want to hear just how much it hurt to hang helplessly from iron chains or just how close she'd come to staking herself. She didn't want to go over how hard it was seeing Spike that way again, how much pain it caused her. She didn't even think she could explain it if she tried.

"It was…" Buffy paused, then looked at her sister who was already looking at her. "Complicated. He had all this weird insight that made the kind of un-sense that he's so good at making."

"His un-sense always made sense to me."

Buffy paused.

"He talked a lot about you." She said. Dawn looked confused.

"Really?" She asked. "Why?"

"You were the only constant, other than the tirade of philosophy and death and pain." The older sister answered. "Even without the soul, I think he really did feel for you."

Dawn nodded, then looked back out from the balcony.

"I always knew he did." She answered.

"I didn't."

"You do now?" Dawn asked and looked back at her.

Buffy took a deep breath.

"I don't know." She answered. "He was everything evil that I remembered, but at the same time he wasn't."

"And he let you go."

"Hard to give him points for that, all things considered."

"I'm on board with the angry." Dawn started. "I don't know if I can forgive him for what he did to you… but letting you go must have been the hardest thing he's ever had to do."

Buffy looked away from her sister, then out at the view again.

"I'm going to go for a walk." She looked at her sister. "You going to be o—"

"Buffy?" Dawn interrupted her with an incredulous smirk. "24 now. Going to be leading a whole branch of an army. I think I can hold down the fort while you go for a walk."

Buffy smiled slightly.

"I'll be back."

*21*

Buffy walked slowly down the quiet street. This city was known for it's nightlife, but where her and Dawn lived was peaceful and silent most of the time. It reminded her of home, Sunnydale, when there was nothing to fight and the world wasn't ending… home had been comfortable and warm.

Buffy hugged herself tightly, a cold breeze washing over her. Everything was so different now… and soon, they'd be different again. Nothing stayed the same. Their world and their lives were constantly in flux and change was so constant that it was often hard to tell that anything was different until it had been for a long time.

"Buffy."

It was so surreal, so sudden, that Buffy wasn't sure if the voice behind her was just her imagination. She creased her forehead and turned around.

He stood a few feet away from her, his head at a tilt – the moonlight bathing him in soft blue-white.

"Spike." She said quietly, her heart racing. A beat. "Are you real?"

He smiled almost undiscernibly.

"Every time, Pet." He answered. This was eerily familiar, and Buffy took a step back – her hand going instinctively to the stake in her waste band, though she didn't take it out.

"You look…" He started, and then took a deep breath. "Good."

Buffy laughed shortly.

"Yeah. Having all my blood works for me." She responded, taking another step back. "What happened to you?"

He looked down.

"Had to deal with getting the soul back again." He said, and then looked back up. "Had to deal with what I did to you."

Buffy was silent for a moment, realizing just how cold it was outside and wishing that her arms and neck weren't so exposed. She shivered slightly.

"What are you doing here?"

"Wanted to make sure you were all right." He answered.

"You came to check on me?" She asked. Then looked confused. "After six months?"

"I didn't really think my presence would be all too welcomed." He responded, taking a step so that his body was at a slant to hers. "I did try to kill you, after all."

"Wasn't the first time."

Spike shrugged slightly with his eyes as though to say, "Well, yeah, you got me there".

"I feel that 'sorry' would be humorously redundant at this point, but… I am. I thought I was better than that, stronger. Guess I don't know myself any more than I ever did. Never thought I'd tried to turn you."

Buffy swallowed.

"Tell me why."

Spike laughed.

"I spent the better part of 2 days telling you why."

"No." Buffy said, shaking her head slightly. "Tell me why you let me go."

Spike paused before answering, straightening his head.

"Because you called me yours."

Buffy thought back. Had she called him hers?

Yes, she had.

"Your Spike could never hurt you." He continued. "You believed in me. I…" His voice broke and he trailed off.

Now Buffy took a step forward, forgetting her stake.

"You proved me right." She said. Spike's head tilted again, and something in his eyes spoke of gratitude. "You didn't just let me go. You… let me go."

Let her go. The kind of letting go that meant forever. He had wanted her to be by his side for the eternity that he would exist, but he'd given that up. They stood in silence for a long moment.

"All that stuff about not needing the soul," Spike started finally. "I don't—"

"You were still able to make the right decision without one." Buffy interrupted. "I… I don't know what a soul is." She took another step forward. "But I know what you are."

"What's that?" He asked quietly.

A beat.

"A good man."

It only took a second or two for his eyes to glass over with tears.

"I'll never forget what you did to me in that crypt." She continued. "Or the things you told me. I can't forget it… but you came face to face with everything bad inside you, and there was nothing there to tell you no, but you still did the right thing. I don't know what that means. I don't know why you're so different, but I know I won't forget that either."

She took a final step forward so that she was standing right in front of him. He looked… not scared, but a little uncomfortable. Almost like he thought that Buffy was fragile and just being close to her could hurt her.

She placed a hand on his cheek. He seemed startled at first, but then he moved his face in to the caress.

"I do love you." She said simply as though it were the most natural thing in the world, and then took her hand down. He closed his eyes and swallowed, then opened them back up again. The blue was bright with tears. "It's not… what you want. It can't be what you want."

"Buffy, you don't have—"

"But it is real." She asserted. "I've seen the best and the worst of you, and I know you now. Better than I did before. I've seen that there's good in you even when there shouldn't be, and if that's not a reason to love someone… there's no reason to love anyone."

He leaned in then and kissed her. There was nothing wild or desperate about the way his lips moved over hers. There was no dangerous passion in the way his hands cupped her face. There was no thought in Buffy's mind to move away.

It was just a kiss between two people who understood each other better than anyone else ever would. Two people who had been to the end of the world, to hell, together and back. Two people who loved each other, but who would never be together and knew it. It was sad, in it's own way… but it was comforting, too.

Buffy pulled away first and took a few steps back.

"So, this thing that hit you on the head in London." She said, beginning to walk. "Any idea what he was?"

Spike was visibly recovering from what had just taken place, though he didn't ask her about her admission of love – only the second she'd ever given him, or the kiss. He came in to step with her.

"No… but when we find him I think it will be fun to string him up and fill his face with candy before we bash it in."

"Ooh, like a piñata? I hope we find him near my birthday, then." She smiled, and so did Spike a little. The two were silent for a long few moments. Buffy took a deep breath, looking around. "This place really is beautiful." She said.

"Yeah." Spike agreed, though he was only looking at her. "Beautiful."

*22*

I've lived a long time, and been dead for most of it. You can call it living though, because I fell in love with a girl, with you, Buffy, and you brought everything that was ever good inside me back to life.

I've been walking in darkness for so long, I can hardly remember the feel of the sun on my face, but you carry summer with you even when it rains. I can remember your touch on my face, and it feels brighter and warmer than the brightest and warmest day ever did before there were no more bright or warm days. Before there were no more days at all.

I was a monster, but you made me a man.

You were my soul even when I didn't have one. Even if I can't spend my eternity with you, I'll always remember you. I'll always love you.

And, maybe, I'll always hate you a little for that, too.

And that's just the truth of it.

The End