Author's Chapter Notes:
Just a little fluffy fic I decided to write out of the blue. Hope you enjoy. :)
THE SKY

The sky fell on me.

And the damned thing had to be blue, didn’t it?

The color of his eyes when he laughs.

When he laughed.

Talking about him in past-tense is so impossible.

He was always the present.

Always here, in every moment. Filling me in every way.

So what? We started off as tentative friends after I came back. But then it all got overturned by lust and sex.

Now?

Or rather, then? Afterwards?

It was a tentative friendship? Mateship? Partnership?

I don’t know.

All I know.

Is that now, I’m supposed to talk about him in past-tense.

Otherwise everyone looks at me strangely and sadly and reminds me.

As if I’ve forgotten.

How could I forget?

How could I ever forget his body, his touch. His hugs. His kisses. His sensitivity when I was hurt. His foot-in-mouth-tripping-over-tongue antics that were so much like mine.

And his eyes. The adoring, beautiful look in his eyes. But there was a strength there. And inner mettle in there that I’d never allowed myself to see until now, in my memories. That strength. That full, passionate belief in love that I could never match because of my fear.

Until now, when he was gone.

And my heart wrenched.

Now, when I look out of the window, I can see a thunderstorm approaching. I don’t even think about the connotations of that. There’d been no reports in the newspapers of such a thing, after all. All I can look at, at the moment, are the clouds. Clouds the color of his eyes on those days/nights when I used him. The dark passion that would flame in his irises that would make my insides melt and quaver and turn me, inside, into a teenager again. But then he would make one move and make me feel like a woman. A Slayer. Someone powerful. To have that much power over him…

But then, he always knew somewhere he had power over me as well.

Lightning and thunder flashes. The rain splits open the sky before that had reminded me of his laugh. Now it reminds me of the tears I’d felt on my knuckles in that alley.

I wonder if he’d ever admit that he’d been crying?

William the Bloody. Slayer of Slayers. Crying.

Where was my Spike in those grand titles?

My heart clenched again.

I’d forfeited the right to call him mine.

I’d treated him so badly.

Guilt cannot assuage wounds. Guilt instead festers wounds, makes them so much worse. Poisons them and eats away at already scarred flesh.

I looked out the window again.

Even through my musing thoughts and half-fogged brain full of memories, the ferocity of it hit me like a tidal wave. Everywhere I could see dry land soaking up the rain as it plummets down, paving the path for new life. I could see the dirt wash away from the flagstones. I felt the purring rumble of thunder embrace the land as it cleansed it. Renewed it. Gave it life through the passion and vigor of lightning.

Damn.

Everything just had to remind me of Spike, didn’t it?

I wonder what could have happened if I’d been ready to be so willing to drink in the passion, the life he’d tried to give me instead of just using it like a drug that wears off to feel.

I’d turned it into something impermanent. Something that would only sustain me for a little while until the next time. And the next, and the next, and the next.

Instead of the gift he’d meant it to be. An all encompassing, purifying love to hold near your heart and have it sustain you forever.

But…

He never knew…

That was what it became.

Even when I was trying to desperately twist it into pure lust, force it to become my drug… somehow it got to me.

Wormed its way through my system.

Flowed through my blood.

To settle next to my heart.

But he didn’t believe me when I tried.

Suddenly, I felt an urge to run. To run through the thunderstorm and scream.

Because the image of my friends just hit me. Them trying to comfort me after his death. After he died to save all of us, even though we spat on him and trod him down and never appreciated fully, properly, all that he’d done.

I wanted to scream that I’m not normal.

I’m the Slayer.

I listened to Giles and everyone else when they said I should take a break from being the Slayer. I let them convince me I could finally have the normal life I’d always wanted.

It’s funny, though.

Once you’ve felt the world of demons.

Touched it. Fought it. Lived it.

Loved it…

You can’t ever go back.

I’m not normal.

I’m the Slayer.

So, I ran.

Out the door, out of the driveway, onto the flagstones.

Where a normal person would have begun to slip and slide, my body adjusted to the angles of the rain and the angles of the stone. I ran and ran, not knowing where. People peering out of their houses must have thought I was something inhuman. Tearing across, through the streets, my golden hair plastered to my face, my clothes hugging my body, and all the while screaming a scream that turned into a wailing song of mourning for all that I’d lost.

I made a silent promise to myself, then, that I would never try for normal again.

I made that promise to myself in the midst of the rain and the thunder and the lightning that streaked past, and I kept on running through it, exhilarating in it until I reached the beach. Then, I stood there on the sand, feeling my bare feet sink into it before I pulled them free, making semi-solid imprints that slowly faded away into slight puddles, eroded by the rain.

And I began walking along the coast.

I don’t know how long that freak thunderstorm lasted for. I don’t know when I sat down on the sand and watched the sky and then the waves crashing against the shore, and finally the yellow granules against my feet as tears trickled down my face.

But then, something broke through it all.

A familiar tingle at the back of my neck.

The tingle that only one vampire, in the entire world could ever give me.

I gasped, and looked up.

There, standing about a meter away from me and looking down at me… was Spike. Rain flowed down his duster and caught like crystals in his platinum hair as he sheepishly, shyly smiled at the look of awe and wonder on my face.

“Spike… you can’t…”

He grinned. “Nice to know you’re not the only one who can bounce back from the dead, huh Slayer?”

I gaped at him.

Then, he clicked his fingers, and the storm stopped.

I gaped at him some more.

“What…?”

The grin spread across his face. “While I was in this funny dimension thing the amulet transported me to, they taught me a few tricks to use. Draccy-boy can’t even conjure up a storm this big,” he boasted.

I stared at him.

He looked away, and the shy smile on his face crept back over onto his face.

“I’m… sorry, Buffy. I’ve been back for a while. But as a ghost, see? But then when Andrew came… he convinced me…”

“Andrew?” I stuttered in disbelief.

His eyes met mine, and I melted in them. The color of the sky.

“I… I wasn’t sure about what would happen, see. Thought I’d made a grand exit and all… I could never top that again. And your words… they haunted me.”

“I love you, Spike,” it tumbled out of my mouth. “Please, please, you have to believe me.”

He took a few steps towards me, and suddenly I was in his arms, cradled against that omnipresent black shirt of his and wrapped in his duster.

“I believe you, pet. I believe in you,” he said softly.

And I began to cry even more. Let the tears replace the rain that had stained my face. And when I was done crying, all that was left was one more question.

“Why did you change your mind, then?”

He smirked, and gestured around him at what the thunderstorm had done. “Think I made a good enough entrance?”





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