A/N Lovely Miss April proofed this little one, she's a star like that.
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She hadn't meant to eavesdrop, she really really hadn't. She just been passing the living room door and she'd heard. Okay, so maybe she'd hovered a moment longer than she should have, and maybe she'd leaned close to the wooden barrier to pick up the quiet conversation. But that was mostly an accident; she hadn't actually meant to eavesdrop.
"…time for me yet." She'd caught the sound of Spike's low, rumbling voice. "I should move out. Leave town before it's time for me."
"No!" It had been the almost panicked intensity of Buffy's reply that had stopped her, that had caused her to frown and edge closer. "You have to stay."
"You've got another demon fighter now." Resignation, but underneath it the pain was still raw. She could hear it in the timber of his voice, the desolation of his heavy sigh.
"That's not why I need you here." She froze in surprise, breath caught captive in her throat. Buffy was going to tell him, going to come clean about the feelings she'd all but admitted to her just hours ago.
"Is that right? Why's that, then?" The sound of hope is in so many ways more painful than despair, and her heart ached for the vampire.
"'Cause I'm not ready for you not to be here." She frowned. God, Buffy, what an absolute bitch. How could she say that to him?
"And the principal? How's he fit in?" Poor Spike. Such a fool for love, grasping at any crumb of affection she tosses so carelessly around him. A surge of protectiveness towards the vampire took her by surprise. Like the others, she'd always assumed it was Buffy's delicate human heart that was in peril in their screwed-up love affair, but maybe not. Maybe it was Spike who had the most at risk.
"I don't know." She heard the slayer getting up, annoyance and frustration edging into her voice. "Just stay, okay?"
"Okay, Buffy." He sounded defeated again and the witch couldn't help but wonder if it had always been like this. If every moment he'd spent with her was just another little peak and trough of heartbreak. "Whatever you want."
She fled quickly into the kitchen when she heard the slayer moving again, wiping the beginnings of pity tears from her eyes, heart pounding furiously with the fear of being caught in the act.
"Hey, Will." Buffy moved past her to the refrigerator, swinging open the door and sighing in frustration at the lack of anything edible. "Looks like I'll have to shop again tomorrow. Man, these girls can eat."
Something in her flippancy, in the lack of effect her encounter with Spike had had on the Slayer rankled the witch and she found herself glaring at her friend.
"What's up, Will?" Buffy asked suspiciously, body language turning defensive.
"I heard that," she accused, pointing at the living room.
Resignation chased the dawning realisation across the slayer’s face. "It was nothing, okay Will?" The shutters were down on the slayer’s eyes, emotions hidden behind iron-hard irises. "You don't have to worry about it."
She'd come to hate this evasive, emotionless version of her friend, and suddenly she was about ready to do something about it. "No, I guess my best friend turning into a cold-hearted bitch is nothing for me to worry about." Her voice was hard and uncompromising; she wasn't the goofy sidekick anymore, she was a woman, intelligent and powerful. Her words carried weight now, and she had something to say.
"I beg your pardon?" Outraged anger flashed in the slayer’s bright green eyes, and suddenly there was nothing delicate or girlish about her; she was the slayer, and that in itself was enough to silence most detractors.
But Willow wasn't cowed by the subtle display of power. "You heard me." She put her hands on her hips and stared evenly at her friend. "You are way outta line, and as your best friend it's my job to point that out to you."
"I'm outta line?" She stressed the words, making it clear who the slayer thought was really over-stepping the mark.
"You really are." Her voice rose a little and she took a deep breath to compose herself. "Buffy?" she asked, her voice much softer now almost sympathetic. "How can you be so cruel?"
"What?" Buffy's anger, too, had fled and she was looking at her friend with hurt questioning.
"What you said to Spike? The way you treat him?" She shook her head sadly. "It's not fair, Buffy."
Her eyes widened with shocked disbelief. "You're worried about Spike now?" she sputtered.
"No," she denied automatically. Then with a shake of her head that sent fiery strands flying about her face, she changed her mind. "No, actually I am. I mean, not like I'm about to join Andrew in the Spike Appreciation Society, but no one deserves to be used like that."
"You think I'm using him?" The slayer’s voice dropped with contained anger. "You are so wrong." She threw out an arm, gesturing vaguely towards the basement. "I haven't done that…we haven't been together like that since he got his soul."
She didn't get it, the witch suddenly realised. Probably didn't even realise what she was doing. She wasn't screwing his brains out then kicking him in the head anymore, so she thought she was treating him all right. "That's not the only way you can use someone, Buffy." She looked intently at her friend, trying to drive understanding through the slayer’s walls. "You need to let him go. What you said: 'I'm not ready for you not to be here yet.' It's not fair. You keep tossing him scraps, just enough to keep him here."
"No." She could see the slayer resisting the truth of it. "No, it's not like that. We're friends now; he stays because he wants to help—"
"He stays because he's in love with you," she broke in impatiently. "And you know that. You use that to keep him here when he'd be far better off gone."
Buffy's eyes were big in her face now, the beginnings of tears making them shiny and luminous, her voice small and trembling. "I don't mean to."
"Don't you?" She hated hurting her friend, but Buffy needed to face up to this. "If you don't want him, Buffy, then just let him go."
"No." One fat tear spilled in slow motion from her eye and trailed lazily down her pale cheek. "I need him here."
"Why?"
"Because I, we, need him to fight the first" she broke off then eyes suddenly bright with fear. "And for the girls we need—"
"Ah-ah." She wouldn't let the Slayer get away with that. "Don't do that, Buffy. Don't try and justify this. Why do you need him here?"
The slayer's green eyes where huge and wary and her mouth tight as determined to keep her secrets locked inside. "Buffy" Willow tried again, knowing instinctively that if Buffy didn't talk to her now, if they couldn't connect in this moment then their friendship was lost, lying broken and worthless in their history. "Today you called him Technicolor, alive, and tonight…" the deep breath she took did little to calm her hammering heart as she prepared to make or break their six year friendship. "Tonight it looks like you're really trying to kill him."
For a moment she looked ready to give in, to step out from behind the barricade she'd erected long ago and be honest about her feeling for the first time in what must be years, maybe since she cried on her best friend’s lap over Angel's leaving. Then anger replaced vulnerability in a lighting-fast schizophrenic shift.
"What right have you got to judge me like this?" Her eyes flashed danger and Willow found herself recoiling internally. Of course it would come down to this, down to the fact that it was Willow’s fault that she’d fallen from heaven, that her heart had frozen in the descent. She was ready to retreat before Buffy could land that sucker punch when the slayer started talking again.
"You and Xander and Giles." Her hands waved violently about her as she listed them. Wait, Giles? He hadn't been involved in her resurrection; how could she be blaming him? "With your disapproving looks and your prejudice. With your 'he's soulless monster Buffy' and your 'dear lord's. You and your goddamn 'I' statements."
Willow gaped. She had no reply for this unexpected attack. Feeling like she'd been out-flanked somehow, she just shook her head in confused denial. "It's your fault that I was hiding in crypts and abandoned houses."
In a way it was good to see the slayer animated again, over-wrought even. But still the unfairness of the allegations forced the redhead to reply. "What? You're saying it's our fault you made Spike your dirty little secret? Not a chance, Buffy."
"What else could I do?" She put on a plastic smile and sugar-coated voice. "'Guys, guess what? Spike and I are having crazy naked sex any chance we get. Thought you'd want to know.'" Her smile fell away and her voice hardened with bitter derision. "Yeah, like you'd have accepted that."
She didn't have an answer for that. Buffy was right, of course. She could hear Xander in her mind. "Buffy, have you gone insane? He's a soulless killer!" Giles wouldn't have been much better, nor would she if she was going to be honest with herself. Tara probably would have understood. Her heart cried out in sudden pain at the thought of her lost love. If only they could all have been a bit more like Tara.
"You're right, we wouldn't have." Her voice was soft with shame then, and her gaze fell to the kitchen floor. Still, their failings didn't excuse Buffy's. "But you still should have done it. You could have made us accept it if you'd tried."
"Yes." The anger left her body in a shuddering sigh and she ran a delicate hand over her face. "But I was so ashamed. I thought there had to be something wrong with me. He had no soul. I didn't want to feel that way about him."
"How did you feel?" She moved to sit at the counter and Buffy settled down opposite with another heavy sigh.
"I wanted him so bad. I craved him." She relaxed a little into the confession, things that had been bottled up so tight for so long finally percolating to the service under her friend’s sympathetic gaze. "Everything was so difficult and I felt so dead, numb. But with him I came alive and it hurt, like being burned, but I needed it, too. I think I hated him for that."
She broke off and Willow placed a warm hand over hers on the counter top, wordlessly encouraging her to continue. "I kept thinking I must be wrong somehow to want a soulless thing so much, that maybe I’d left some of my soul behind in heaven."
"Oh, Buffy, I'm so sorry." Guilt weighed heavy on her shoulders. God, what she'd done to Buffy…what she'd stolen from her.
A small nod of acceptance and the slayer continued. "I look back now and it's all so clear. But, then, I was such a mess I couldn't begin to understand what I was feeling for him."
"It's clear now, though? You know what you felt?"
"Yes. It doesn't change anything, but at least I know." The sense of loss in the slayer’s voice, the defeated resignation was enough to make Willow push her a little harder.
"What did you feel?" she asked softly.
"I loved him. I loved him and I hated him for it" It felt like the vice around her heart was suddenly released, as if in confessing she was absolved. Suddenly she understood why Catholics went to confession, why it was important, crucial even, to stand before one other human being and say simply, "I was wrong."
"I still do." She dropped her eyes and gave a rueful shake of her head. "I love him and I hate him. And I'm too selfish to let him go because I only just got colour back in my life and I'm scared he'll take it with him if he goes." another shake of her head "Oh Willow I don't know…" she trailed off at the witches distracted expression. "Willow?" But her wide eyes were trained on the doorway.
Nerves attacked her belly like a premonition of doom as she turned in slow motion to follow her friend's eyes. He looked shocked. Not ecstatic, or awed or any of the marvellous things she'd always imagined she'd see on his face if he ever found out the truth. Shocked and a little scared—no, scratch that, terrified.
"Buffy?" The single word asked so much: "Is it true? Why didn't you tell me? Are you playing with me?" And most frighteningly of all, "What now?"
"Spike." There are no answers in the slayer’s response. Just more questions. Suddenly Willow felt awful for meddling in what wasn't any of her business and casting the two of them a drift in a asd sea of emotion. She began to slip away, heading for the back porch, retreating from the intensity of their as yet unspoken discussion.
"You…?" She turned at the door as he trailed off, afraid to ask, or more probably afraid to know. He let out a breath he was holding, a gut of air leaving his dead lungs unprocessed, unchanged.
"Yes." Such a simple word, but the way she said it: clear and true like silver on crystal. The surge of love and pride she felt for her friend gave her a lump in her throat and she stepped out into the night thinking that maybe she hadn't done too badly after all.
She paused on the porch for a moment to look up at the stars and think of Tara, of the boundless capacity for understanding that had made her stronger than any other person Willow had ever met. She glanced back over her shoulder to see them still standing apart, gazes riveted on one another. She remembered that, how sometimes she'd look at Tara like that and the whole world would narrow to the connection of their eyes. Yeah, maybe she'd done okay. A smile tugged at her lips and she stepped out into the night. What are friends for after all?
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A/N Massive Sloppy kiss for whoever nominated The Best of Friends at Loves Last Glimpse. Thank you so much
