Chapter I: You Were Still There
"There are places in the heart that do not yet exist; suffering has to enter in for them to come to be."
-Leon Bloy
I've lived a long time, if you can call it living, I suppose a better word for what I've been doing for most of my existence is just that; existing. I don't need air to breath, water to live… Or fire to burn. I feed off of life, but that's really the closest I'll ever get to it again. Using it. Taking it. It's been so long, I'm beginning to forget what it felt like to live.
I've been walking in darkness for so long, I can hardly remember the feel of the sun on my face. I don't remember the ecstasy of filling my lungs after holding my breath. I don't remember the names of most of the people I knew… But I remember you, Buffy.
I remember you.
The first time I saw you, I knew who you were. I'd never seen you before, but there was no mistaking the slayer. I'd killed two before ever setting my eyes on you… and they still lingered around me, whispering to me. Their blood was part of me and it knew you; it was a part of you too. We were connected before you were even born, and I had waited for you your whole life.
My entire body tingled as I stalked you from the shadows. God, I wanted you. I wanted you to join the others in my collection. I wanted to make you beg; to make you scream. You would fight, I knew you would. I could see it in the way you moved. I could feel the power coming off of you like heat. None of the others around you could feel it, could they? They didn't know what was inside you… but I knew. I knew because I'd tasted you, even if you didn't know it. I'd tasted what you slayers were all about. At that moment no one could have known you better than I did. I let myself indulge in the intoxication for a few moments as I watched you, imagining what it would feel like to sink my teeth in to your flesh. I'd make you want it. I'd make the torment so great that you'd want my teeth in you as much as I did… and when I killed you, oh, when I killed you, I would have made it hurt.
I've often mused that that was the moment I fell in love with you. I've never told you, because the sick truth of it is that I believe it was. Watching you dance with your friends, wanting nothing more than to cause you pain and feel you die… I fell in love with you. The thought of your pain made me so hot it almost hurt. You think love always comes from a good place? Maybe that would make life easier, but the fact of the matter is that love is all about hurt. It's all about suffering. When it stops hurting, it stops mattering. I could see my future in you, Buffy – and it was your death. I wanted it more than I'd ever wanted anything.
It was so easy to lure you outside. I wanted to see you fight… and when you saw me for the first time, it was the last time you would ever look at me and not know me for what I was. I saw a brief and uncertain attraction flicker in your eyes, but it wasn't physical. You were drawn to me. You were drawn to the blood. Slayer blood. Your blood.
If I knew then what I know now, I wouldn't have waited. I'd have tasted you then and there. I'd have sucked you dry while your friends watched. My way of showing you how much I loved you. Then it would have been out of my system. It would have been over before it started… because there was no other way I was ever going to escape you.
Drusilla was the first love of my life, though she happened to be after my death. I loved her for taking me away from a life of dull obligation. I loved her because she hurt me, and I was drawn to the pain like a man to his death… because all men are drawn to death, however against their will it may be. She showed me how addictive the inflicting could be. She showed me how much the bad could feel good. And she made me feel so bad. I couldn't get enough. I wanted to watch the world burn, and what's more – I wanted to burn with it. She made me that way, and I loved her for it.
After Dru left me, I'd lay awake during the day and stare up for hours contemplating her words; that she could see you all around me. She wanted to know why I wouldn't let you go. How could I explain to her that it wasn't me who wouldn't let you go, it was the other way around? I tried to get away from you. I wanted you out of my head, out from under my skin… but you'd burrowed yourself a nice little ditch there and laid down roots that grew like weeds. She was right. You were all around me, laughing at me. Taunting me. You had joined the other slayers like I'd wanted, but not in the way I had dreamed. Now they were laughing, too. There were never supposed to be any deals between you and me. No truce or peace. And I'd have no peace until I watched the life leave your eyes.
God, I had to have you.
I never thought of what I felt for you as love, not until the night I tried to get the chip out of my head. Before then, all I knew was that, whatever I felt, it was more than just simple hatred. It went far beyond hatred. After my Gem of Amara plan crashed and burned, meaning after you'd shot it down, I came back to Sunnydale to kill you. You had taken everything away from me, and I felt a deep need to take everything away from you. It was an obsession, and I knew it… I wouldn't admit it, but I knew it. I didn't know what waited for me in Sunnydale was not your demise, but my own.
When I got chipped, when I couldn't hurt anyone anymore, I became a joke. I didn't recognize myself anymore. If I couldn't kill, what was I? I had to settle on watching some other weekly disturbance try to take you out, but they were all jokes, too. Nothing ever even came close to touching you, Buffy. That was the most frustrating part. In my experience, the good guys didn't keep winning. They always eventually lost which was why I was still alive. I kept waiting for you to get what was coming to you, but in the end… I wanted to be the one to give it to you. You deserved me, and nothing else. That was why I stuck around even after you and your friends let me go. I didn't plan on being helpless forever, and I wanted you to be the first one to know when I wasn't.
When the doctor made me think he'd gotten the chip out of my brain, my first thought was of you. It was always about you.
"Good," You'd said when you showed up and I told you the happy news. "That means I get to kill you."
Dear God, I wanted you to try. I'd been waiting for so long. I could almost feel your blood running down my throat, warming my dead skin while it spilled down my chest. Hunger and the desire to hold you as your body went cold made me rush at you. No more waiting.
But it didn't happen. The chip was still there, wasn't it? You remember. I ran away, tail between my legs… Harmony trailing after me. I had never felt despair quite the same way as that, and even she was scared of me. I told her I couldn't live like that anymore. I couldn't be your little pet annoyance. It had to end, or I had to die.
The next day, as I slept next to Harmony, I dreamed of loving you. You crashed in through my crypt, and there was no thought in my head about killing you… and when I saw the stake, there was no thought of fighting back. I told you to kill me, and when the stake stopped short of my heart, I flinched… and then pulled you in, not to bite you, but to kiss you. I could feel my heart pounding and my skin felt hot, which would become a common occurrence in my dreams of you. While I was dreaming, you always made me feel like something I wasn't; a man.
I woke up from the dream on my declaration of love for you, and I was terrified. There was no denying it. I felt it in everything that I was. I loved you. I loved you, and I hated you more for it. I begged God for it not to be true, but I knew he'd stopped listening to me a lifetime before… and I was alone in this.
Harmony woke up beside me and sat up.
"Spike?"
I didn't look at her. Her voice grated on my nerves on a good day, and on a bad day she was lucky I didn't kill her.
"Go back to sleep, Harm." I demanded more than just said.
"What's wrong?" She asked, never seeming to be able to take a hint. "Is it the slayer?"
I turned to look at her suddenly, grabbing her by the neck.
"What?" I asked.
"Nothing." She said with fear in her dead blue eyes. She was such a young vampire. "You were so upset before, I just—"
I slowly relaxed my grip on her neck and my glare turned in to a leer as I looked over her body.
There was no getting in to the mood with us. I took her when I wanted to, and that was about it. I didn't want her just then, not at all… but losing myself in her body, pounding out my frustration, helped me to forget about you for a while. I said the most disgusting and degrading things I could say to her, trying to get the taste of "I love you" out of my thoughts.
But, in the end, the words were still there. You were still there.