[Reviews - 165]
-
Table of Contents [Report This]
Microsoft Word Chapter or Story | ePub eBook Chapter or Story | Printer Chapter or Story

Has been viewed 2356 times

- Text Size +




Author's Chapter Notes:
As promised, here's another chap! I'll have you know this one caused me a lot of heartache, and was very therapeutic at the same time. Not exactly sure how that one works...Oh, and do me a favor? I got in a car accident today and my BABY is totalled. Heal my pain. Leave a review. Thanks again to Flibble and Bree!
***If you started reading this story back when it was first being posted, you may need to go back and reread Chapter Four for all this to make sense.
Chapter Nine




Buffy couldn’t breathe. She gasped for air, but could not get enough oxygen to fill her lungs. Her head swam, her chest burned horribly, and she knew the human body could only hold out for a few minutes without air. But the immovable object resting on her chest had been smothering her for longer than that. Much Longer. Three hundred and sixty-five days, to be perfectly exact. An entire year without drawing a proper breath. She wondered vaguely if she could sell her body to science; she had to be some kind of medical marvel.

There were days when the weight was not so unbearable. Days when the tears came, falling thick and salty from her eyes, alleviating some of the terrible pain. Almost as though her body had found another way to exhale. She couldn’t count how many nights she’d cried while locked in her room, her face buried in her pillow so no one would hear. With the tears came sleep, bringing with it dreams of inhaling, which was close enough to the real thing, because he was there.

In the rain, his lips on hers, he was there.

The sheer mass of him was enough to crush her petite form, but somehow he resuscitated her as he kissed her gently, the rain dripping from his brown hair into her eyes and mixing with her tears. Always in this dream, as his kiss filled her empty damaged lungs, the skies would turn an angry purple and thunder would clap so close she could feel it reverberating in her bones. She would throw her arms around him, clinging to him desperately, refusing to let him go this time.

But inevitably, the hair on the back of her neck would stand on end as he pulled away to look at her sweet face and brush the hair from her forehead. A blinding flash of light, and suddenly he was gone. She would wake screaming, wasting the precious oxygen he had given her, lips tingling with his taste as she whispered his name on a final breath before suffocation set in again.

The days that held that for her—dreams and tears—were followed by days like today. No tears, no screaming. Simply the absolute quiet and indescribable emptiness that viciously pressed in upon her fragile body from all sides. She was distantly aware that the afternoon sun was shining brightly, but the atmosphere around her had grown stagnant and sickly, and everything felt too quiet. As though she had been trapped inside an impenetrable bubble for twelve months. She wished she could cry, or scream, or even vomit. Do anything to purge some small fraction of the aching in her torso.

Today, the one that held the same horrid date on the calendar, there would be no relief. She knew that, had been expecting it for some time, and had resigned herself to being holed up in her bedroom alone. It was the day he had done what every person she had ever truly loved had done: left. Riley was gone, and he had taken much of her with him, just as her father, her mother, and Riley’s own parents had done. Huge chunks of her had gone missing, leaving her riddled with holes and secure in the knowledge that loving someone, giving your heart to them, meant it would be torn to shreds when they went away.

Buffy tried very hard not to think of this same day, one year ago. Fervently, she attempted to block out images of a dangerous sky, torrents of rain, the sound of her feet sloshing through the puddles and the thunder swallowing her voice as she yelled his name. Panic set in as her mind pulled her, unwilling, through the ankle-deep mud toward the center of the corral, her nostrils stinging with the scent of burnt hair and flesh, praying with her whole soul that the only corpse it contained was that of the horse she could see near the gate.

Her chest constricted brutally, curling her into a ball on top of her mattress as her memory slowed painfully, each step taking eons, as she drew near enough to see over the animal’s hulking, crumpled body. Eyes finally resting upon him, his white t-shirt clinging to him in the downpour, she fixated upon the fact that his shoes were lying some twenty feet away, still tied.

Time stopped completely as she ran to him, feeling for a pulse, trying to remember her C.P.R. training, and attempting to force air into his lungs. She had given her very last breath, trying to make him stay. But she knew, could feel it down in her core, that he was gone; he’d slipped through her fingers. She planted a final kiss on his cold brow and laid her head on his unmoving chest for an immeasurable span of time, feeling that piece of her—the piece that belonged solely to Riley—wash away in the rain.

Bolting upright on her bed, clutching at her sternum as a now familiar shock of pain seared through her, Buffy was beyond desperate for relief. Frantically, her mind raced, trying to come up with a way to escape the boulder perched on her chest, if only for a moment. Sleep, and therefore beautiful dreams, would not come, she knew. Running to Xander, or even Willow, to cry on their shoulder was not an option. The pair had gone into town to visit the grave site and some old haunts in his memory- something she was positive was not within her capacity for pain. But even if they were there, they had seen too much of the wall she had built to hide some of her despair, her strong face. Today was not the time for facades. This was not Buffy with her “look-how-well-she’s-coping” front firmly in place. Today was nothing but raw fear and agony and loneliness.

Quite suddenly, but quietly, it dawned on her what she needed, and she found herself propelled forward, dreamlike, through the hallway and down the stairs. And every step told her that yes, a small piece of reprieve was coming. Her mind had looked back and latched on to the last time she’d almost been able to breathe.

Just a simple brush of fingertips and a split second of eye contact had allowed her chest to expand the tiniest bit. That was all she needed: a tiny bit, a hiccup, enough to get her through just a little longer. It didn’t make any sense, a part of her realized, to turn to someone she hardly knew, but she was being drawn all the same.

She found him standing near the sink in the kitchen, turning to look at her as she entered. She knew that her face was mask-like; numb and deadened by the pain. But her panic must have been written very clearly in her eyes, because the moment Spike’s disarming gaze met hers, he flew across the room, enveloping her in a fierce embrace.

Buffy gasped, gratefully breathing him in by the lungful, and clutched him savagely as racking sobs lurched through her. Tears and pain and glorious oxygen all flowing freely. The torment of a year without breath was over.







A/N: Do you think happiness heals whiplash? Let's find out, shall we?





You must login (register) to review.