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Author's Chapter Notes:
I'm relieving the stress a little by posting part two straight away...again, would love to hear what you think.
Second

She didn’t want to hear it. Not again. Not when she’d spent years bowing down to insincere platitudes and forgiving them all one by one till they ate her very soul. This time there was nothing they could say that she could buy. They’d known. Chosen to not tell her he was back, taken her ‘happiness’ in their hands and squished it to nothing but ugly mush.

It was no secret she’d mourned. Was still mourning every time she was forced out of her bed. Just because she hadn’t had tears continually streaming down her face and had that pathetic look of grief that Willow had somehow patented, didn’t mean she didn’t hurt. That she didn’t ache. That she didn’t die inside every day that she was gone from him. Knowing he’d been brought back—that he could have assuaged that sense of failure and joined her in requited love, well, it lanced hotter than any Hellmouthy fire could have done.

She’d found her man and lost him within a day, and knowing he’d been brought back—for whatever reason, she HAD to believe the Powers had had something to do with it. If they had deemed Angel too important to lose from the world then they would be too cruel to turn their backs on Spike.

Then again, maybe it had never really been about Angel. Or Spike. What if all those times she’d been told it wasn’t really all about her, it really was? What if they’d brought Angel back as a reward to her—only he didn’t get it and ran from her instead. What if Spike came back, to give her the second chance to make him see, but he was too busy disbelieving her and refusing to let her be ‘the one’ to let her know he was back in her world?

What if the Powers truly were on her side and took pity in the constant barrage of hurt that the world and her friends piled on her head, and tried to give her unconditional love—only to be foiled every time by insecure vampires that could never trust her heartfelt devotion? Sure, she had no trouble seeing how Spike might have had difficulties believing her at that stage. She hadn’t exactly been all with the obvious when she’d spent those last nights with him. She’d taken his strength, got a little obscure with admitting that the time they were together was special to her—that it was everything to her—but then backed off and kissed Angel.

It was a mistake.

Everything she’d done had been a mistake and it was too tragic for her to bear the price now. She’d had her chances to show him she cared, to let him in a little further than she’d ever allowed him or anyone before, and she’d squandered every single one. Her friends had kicked her to the curb of her own house, had stripped her of belief and security and attempted to eradicate the one real solid support in her life—and what had she done?

Nothing.

At the crucial moment, she’d kissed Angel. And rendered it impossible for Spike to believe in her depth of love for him—even though he clung to his belief in her courage and dedication to the world.

He thought he was an after effect. The solace that came when everything else that meant something to her had been stripped away. He didn’t get that he was the ‘everything else’ and she had no solace—that there was no solace—from that.

And now he was gone—and they’d all known.

They’d kept her locked away from happiness again.

And they were her friends.

~ * ~ * ~ * ~

Giles and Willow stared at each other, eyes locked in mutual worry. They felt concerned, of course they did, and more than a little guilty. But as was their experience over the years, it slithered away until just self-righteous belief stood between them.

“She’ll be okay. What we did was for the best.”

Andrew stood in front of the television set, arms crossed and body partially obscuring the paused view of a screaming and burning Spike as his body disintegrated in the picture. The youngest and barely accepted Scooby member shook his longer curly locks and fidgeted. He felt insecure and unconvinced.

“She really didn’t look like happy Slayer that was going to be okay. You guys really take a lot of decisions out of her hands. It kind of reminds me of Warren—“ His eyes wandered to stare dreamily into his past, remembering a time when Warren’s schemes were the most fun of his life. Until he’d thrown his lot in to help against the First and spent real quality time with Spike.

Willow seemed a little unsure as she shook her head in denial. “I know that Buffy thought she loved him, but—“

“What?” burst passed Giles’s lips as this new piece of information floated around him. “She never said she loved him.”

“Yes she did.” The cold certainty in a remote voice shocked them out of their well-intentioned justifications and the conversation hit an abrupt end. Three sets of wary eyes lit on her hardened face, took in the packed bag at her feet and suddenly hearts started to beat erratically at what it could mean. It wouldn’t be the first time Buffy did a runner—but it was the first time she had nowhere to run to.

“I told him I loved him. In the Hellmouth. As he faced death down a barrel of sunlight—and everything collapsed around us. I told him I loved him and he didn’t believe me. Does that make you happy?” Her eyes were shiny as she stared each and every one of them down, and the flickers of hate and resentment seemed to push passed previously held barriers.

They’d never believed she could hate them before. Xander with his spite and judgemental attitudes, Willow with her kablooey magic that effected Buffy more than any other and then her subsequent ‘black’ phase where she wanted to kill her best friends and everything in the world. Giles, the father who should have known better, but ended up treating her as much of his property as her real father. None of them knew her. None of them respected her. None of them truly wanted her happy. They wanted the bot, and Buffy felt like that plastic contraption had a more real smile than she herself had ever sported around these people.

“Silly me. Of course it makes you happy. Because you kept him away from me again—and now he’s dead. Again. And I don’t see any of you being sorry or even slightly broken up about the fact that one of the world’s heroes died while saving it.”

Andrew whimpered, obviously not in full agreement as he already mourned the loss of the white knight he’d fantasised about since he’d shared the back of a bike with him.

“Well, okay,” Buffy conceded. “Maybe Andrew is sorry. But you all knew. You kept his return a secret, and what? You sent Andrew to spy on another apocalypse that spelled disaster for men I cared about and thought nothing of ever mentioning the possibility of helping them. We have slayers coming out of our asses, a monumentally powerful witch sitting behind a desk doing paperwork for the council, and you thought to do nothing to help Angel and Spike?”

She shook as she looked at the faces of the people she’d always thought would be there to encourage her; to love her. Their smarmy arrogant attitudes pissed her off for the last time.

“You make me sick. Spike at his most evil was more humane than you.”

With a dreaded purpose, Buffy seized the Immortal’s head—still firmly wedged into a bowling bag and tossed it to the watcher whose face she wasn’t keen to see again in quite awhile. Her last mission in the council’s name was complete. Services rendered, head delivered.

The Slayer picked up her bag from the floor, her hand steadying herself on the doorframe as she took one final look at the people who would never see her as a human being with feelings and a heart that bled.

If Spike was gone, then so was she.





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