It was dark in the room, only the flickering of the television donated a scanty light.
He looked through the open window into the night.
It was surprisingly mild for the season; a warm wind crept silently through the streets and disarranged playfully the hair of the passers-by.
The ringing of the telephone disturbed the nightly silence and slowly he turned round.
Although he had expected the call, although he had known that it would come, he felt how his world got into swaying.
He closed his eyes for a moment and allowed the feelings to roll over him with an intensity which made him dazed.
His trembling hand reached for the telephone receiver and slowly he lifted it to his ear.
Not a single word left his knotted throat, while he listened for an eternity, with his eyes closed, to her breathing at the other end.
“You didn´t let me know”, she whispered barely audible and he felt how ascending tears made her voice shaky and weak.
“No, Buffy”, he answered in a voice which sounded strange in his own ears.
“I didn’t want to mix up everything... you’ve begun a new life and I kinda felt like I wasn’t... part of it anymore.”
He felt how his entrails contracted painfully and he swallowed while his hand held the receiver firmly clasped.
Hearing her after all these months let the old feelings he believed being buried deeply inside of him come to the surface again and a strange feeling of drunkenness came over him while bit by bit a hollow pressure spread out in his stomach area. Whenever he had convinced himself that his feelings for her would fade in the course of time, this tiny moment at which he had just listened to her breathing disabused him.
“Andrew told me”. Her voice was so quiet that he had trouble to understand her.
She said these words with a mixture of bitterness and reproach and when he closed his eyes, he imagined her being crouched down on the ground, the telephone in her small, childlike hands, while the tears ran down her cheeks and dripped inaudible onto the carpet.
"I didn’t call you up ‘cause I didn’t wanna destroy your new life. I thought of you every single day, Buffy. Thought of your face... the smell of your skin...”
He imagined how she might have changed.
She was certainly still as beautiful as he had her in his memory.
Maybe the tracks of the last fight could be seen on her face and in her green eyes the expression of light-heartedness had disappeared and at his place seriousness had maybe stepped.
Perhaps her hair was also a little darker, he didn’t know it, but in his imagination it still smelled of flowers and wind … and of her.
"Flowers and wind," and held onto the receiver desperately while he glided down the wall with his back facing it until he sat on the cold ground.
He could hear how she quietly cried at the other end.
“You still wear this stupid coat?” she sobbed after an endless time of silence and he nodded, well knowing that she could not see but understand him nevertheless.
******
They talked with each other until the morning dawned.
Spike drank one glass of whisky after the other, not because it calmed him down, but because it gave him the deceitful illusion of being able to control his feelings. Primarily, it was Buffy who talked and he listened quietly how she spoke about Italy, Dawn and her new life.
“Are you happy, Buffy?” he asked in a moment of silence. She hesitated before she answered: “I’m tryin’”.
She laughed insecurely, a noise which caused him goose-flesh.
And then:
“I want you to be here,” she asked quietly and for a short moment he was convinced that his heart had begun to beat again but it were just his fingers which nervously drummed on the tabletop.
"I want you to be with me", she said, her voice sounding steadier.
His lips formed a silent "why? “ No tone, however, deserted his mouth.
But as if she had heard him, she said: “I need you.”
“Buffy,” he answered while he felt an icy hand around his throat knotting it.
It was clear for him what he had to reply.
Although he had waited so long to hear her saying this, there was only one answer which was the right.
“You deserve someone better than me,” he forced himself to say. "A man who makes you happy as you deserve it. For you the best is just good enough, luv. And the best ... that’s not ME.”
He felt ill and old while he was saying these words to her and as if he were not he himself.
The narrowness in the chest, the panic arising slowly, the feeling that something was breaking inside of him... all this reminded him of the moment when he had her seen die.
Only with the difference that now he sat on the ground stiffly and collapsed and listened to her helpless gasp at the other end.
"Spike, I...", she began.
"Listen, Buffy", he interrupted her with a toneless voice.
"You’ve begun a new life, just like me. I don’t have the right to force myself in your life. Not now. And surely not after all I’ve done to you."
He took a gulp from the almost empty glass and hoped that it would ease the memory and the pain connected with that evening in her bathroom, although he knew how senseless it was.
But as if she had not heard his words at all, he heard her saying: “Within all the years I’ve never wanted to admit it, Spike. You’ve always known me better than everyone else, even better than me. The time we’ve had together … everything what we’ve shared … I want you to be with be” she whispered desperately, nearly helplessly.
He gave up the fight against himself and allowed the tears to leave his eyes while the pictures appeared in front of his spiritual eye.
Everything that connected them with each other, everything they had done to each other, the hours, days, nights with her… everything passed him and left a vague feeling of pain.
“Buffy, there can’t be a connection between body and body” he said with breaking voice to her, knowing well that he spoke the words, actually, to himself. “There can be only one connection …one love … between soul and soul.”
He felt that she wanted to say something but he impeded her.
“Buffy, I want you to find somebody whom you love with everything you have to give. Promise me that you’ll have a normal life, just as you always wanted it. With somebody who can give you all of which I can’t. Promise me.”
She didn’t say anything for a whole eternity or so it seemed before she quietly answered: “I can’t.”
He heard her sobbing and somehow it made everything even worse.
He promised her to be there for her always, to remain a part of her, as well as she would be a part of him.
He spoke incoherently and completely helpless, something in him seemed to break slowly bit by bit.
And when they finally hung up, his shirt was completely soaked.
Although he hadn’t spilled one single drop of the whisky.
******
Her first letter reached him about two weeks after the telephone call.
She wrote that it was still hurting when she remembered.
I feel so lost, she wrote, it reminds me of the time when my mother died. I still remember the moments when I came home and began to fancy she would sit in the kitchen and smile at me … or shout at me because I’d come too late. And now, when I open the door of my apartment, I imagine that you’re sitting here and waiting for me. I know it’s stupid, but I just can’t help.
She wrote that not a single day had passed on which she did not think of him. She felt helpless and alone, as if she was a little child.
He buried the face in his hands, while the salty liquid dripped onto the letter and made the writing unreadable.
*******
The second letter came three months after the first.
She wrote that she thought of him albeit not as often as she used to do.
Maybe because it still hurts as much as at the beginning, I don’t know.
I miss you. When I wake up at night I catch myself reaching for you, as if you had just lain next to me, although I know how ridiculously it is.
She wrote that she distracted herself by going out with Dawn who had changed very much, as she described. From the nerve-racking girl with the eternal babbling she had turned into an adult, pretty woman, to whom she felt closer than to anyone else.
Except for him.
******
The next letter reached him six months later.
She wrote that she felt a little better with every day which passed and that she still thought of him often, but that she didn’t feel that lost anymore.
I have thought a lot about everything you said. I wanna be happy, Spike. Maybe you have been right and I should try to find somebody who entirely completes me.
*****
Eight months later he held a paper in his trembling hands in which she wrote that she had met somebody.
I wanna thank you so much for your words, Spike. Now I really do understand what you meant when you said that you want somebody for me who can give all of this to me that you can’t.
She wrote that she was very happy.
He knew that he should have been sincerely glad that she had found somebody and he knew that it had been exactly what he had wanted for her. And nevertheless he couldn’t prevent that something, which felt as if a relentless hand would squash it, slowly arose at the place where his heart had once beaten.
******
Her last letter came a year later.
She wrote that she had moved to New York and she assured him that she was well and happy as never before.
I’m pregnant... if you only could see how fat I am! You’d laugh at me pitilessly. But I don’t mind. When I think of it how I will hold my little daughter in my arms in a few months, it doesn’t matter to me what I look like.
I want to thank you for everything, Spike.
I see how much I must have meant to you and maybe still mean, so that you have renounced your happiness to let ME be happy.
******
It was colder in New York than he had expected. An icy wind whistled its monotonous song while he walked through the streets.
The town sank in a greyish mass of snow, only the shop windows, decorated colourfully and shiny were a contrast to the cheerless grey.
He noticed the Christmas decoration just as little as the other passers-by, who hurried to return into their warm apartments.
What the hell am I doin’ here? he asked himself again and again, although he knew the answer.
He searched his pocket, until he had found the letter and read the address for the millionth time which was written on the back of the envelope in small, neat and tidy letters.
He didn’t intend to speak to her.
Not only because it would have been difficult for him to assure her plausibly that he was glad about her happiness, but also because he knew that she would be able to read in his face each of his feelings for her.
He just wanted to see her for a last time...convince himself that she was well, that she lacked nothing.
He wanted to see her before he returned to Los Angeles again, to forget her.
Sometime.
*******
He stood in the shade of the adjoining house and watched the apartment complex in which she lived.
It was a multi-storey building with many flats, there were Christmas pyramids at some windows and he wondered behind which she lived.
And while all these thoughts were shooting through his head, he saw her.
Wrapped in a grey coat, her hair hidden under a woollen cap, she went to the entrance door without haste.
He felt his mouth becoming dry, while, on the other hand, his eyes were filling with tears and he had to fight against the desperate impulse to approach her.
His lips formed her name silently and and leaning against the wall, he was observing how she arrived at the front door.
Her stride seemed strangely tired as if she had had a really exhausting day. Every movement seemed to cost her strength.
And then he suddenly noticed that she wasn’t thick at all, unlike she had written.
Strictly speaking, she seemed to be even thinner than he had her in memory.
The baby! He understood with painful clarity.
She has lost the baby.
He felt the nausea and the shock spreading out in him and a sudden choking escaped from his throat, while tears were running over his face.
Oh God... no... please no... don’t let it be true, he begged again and again although his brains told him that there was no other possibility.
A feeling of a never known helplessness came over him, as he watched the door being opened and an old woman coming out, who said something to Buffy which he couldn’t understand.
They changed a couple of words before Buffy finally disappeared into the house.
Without hesitating he stepped out of the shadow and approached the woman, who pulled back as she noticed him.
“Didn’t meant to frighten you”, he said fast and grabbed her arm.
“What do you want?” the lady cheeped anxiously.
“You know Buffy? The young woman who just went into the house?”
She nodded, apparently surprised by his sudden appearance.
“What has happened to her baby?” Do you know anything? Where is her husband?"
She didn’t immediately answer him and it cost him all of his self-control to not grab her breakable arms and shake her hard.
And when she finally did it, he felt how the floor started to sway below his feet.
******
The door opened a little and he saw dark blond hair before her pale face appeared.
Her green eyes widened when she saw him, her mouth opened for a soundless "oh", but not a single word left her almost colourless lips.
“Buffy”, he said in a trembling voice.
He wanted to continue but he simply wasn’t able to say anything else.
All he could do was to look at her, her thin face, in which the years had left traces of the solitude and her green eyes which were dull like a faded picture.
"Why did you lie... in all these letters?” he whispered.
"Why did you write that you found somebody, that you are happy?"
She lowered her head and the hair fell in front of her face like a veil.
First it seemed, as if she wanted to answer nothing at all, then, however, he heard her say quietly: “It was what you wanted to hear, wasn’t it?”
********
Her voice was calm and it almost seemed as if she spoke to him from a wide distance.
He lifted a hand and carefully put a strand of hair away.
“Buffy...why?”
She shrugged the shoulders helplessly and said without looking at him: “I always used to lie when it was about you, you remember?”
He wanted to reply something but she continued.
"During the telephone call you said that I made you happy, while I myself am was happy.”
A tear fell from her eye and ran down her pale cheek.
"I’ve tried, Spike”, she whispered hardly audible.
She shook her head, sobbing.
"But it didn’t work"
******
She cried quietly and raised her head to look at him.
And suddenly he understood.
The man with whom she could be happy... there was only one.
And that was he himself.
Her lips shook as he raised his hand and wiped her tears off with his thumb.
He approached her carefully, came so close that their bodies touched and leaned his forehead against hers.
With both hands he held her face and whispered softly:
“I’m so sorry, luv. So sorry because of all the wasted years.”
He closed his eyes and breathed her familiar smell in deeply; flowers and wind.
He tried to tell her the words he had told her a thousand times in his imagination, he wanted to tell her that he loved her, that she was the his first thought when he woke up and the last that she and the last one before he fell asleep.
He wanted to tell her all these things but the words faded in his mind and finally disappeared completely.
But although he didn’t say a single tone, while he held her softly in his arms, she seemed to understand on a mysterious level all of the unsaid.
“There’s only a connection between soul and soul,” she whispered into his neck, while her tears mixed with his.
END
Author's Chapter Notes:
Hey, I´m not a native speaker, so there will surely be a lot of mistakes *blush* Thanks to my beta Anisha *hugs*