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Time passed and life continued on. Every day things got a little bit better, although there were days when all Buffy wanted to do was crawl into bed and stay there. Especially on the day the divorce papers arrived. She had come home from work and was feeling drained having had just an all around bad day. She wondered what would have been worse—having had a bad day and then getting slammed with papers or having a great day first and then getting slammed with them.

She knew as soon as she walked in the kitchen after having gotten mauled from Lindsey at the door, and found Spike at the table, the thick package in front of him. He looked grim and she knew; just knew.

She eyed the package, an unassuming thick manila clasp envelope. "Those them huh?"

Spike nodded. "They came Fed Ex."

"Would you like some tea?" she asked suddenly.

"Buffy—"

"How was Lindsey today?"

He seemed to sense that she was not up for talking about it or opening them just yet, so instead he humored her. "Why don't you go change and I'll make the tea?" he offered.

She nodded, "Good idea."

Running up the stairs, she sprinted into her room and sat down on her bed, trying to catch her breath. It wasn't the run up the stairs that did her in, but the knowledge that this was possibly it. "It" with a capital I and capital T. It was funny that she felt this way considering over the past month she'd made comments about wanting it to be over already, and wondering when Angel was going to make a move and hoping he would just do it already.

Well, he finally had and she wasn't ready to deal. Perhaps because being in limbo and waiting made it seem not real somehow. And possibly because she didn't anticipate that she would feel this way once they came. She'd imagined relief, but now all she felt was cold.

Spike had made it clear to her how he felt. He said he was in love with her; he said he wanted her and always had. Knowing he felt the way he did made her feel desirable and sometimes even lovable but then Angel's words would echo in her mind about how he never loved her—not really, anyway. She refused to seek him out and let him comfort her with his body and pretty words no matter how overwhelming the desire was at times. She wouldn't use him to assuage her pain and low self esteem over having never been loved or possibly wanted. It wasn't fair to Spike and she was done creating any more pain and complication where there didn't have to be. And, he'd been great. He and Lindsey were two peas in a pod and Spike was always there to help Buffy out of a jam, talk with her when she felt the need to vent, or just sit quietly with her when she didn't feel like talking. They were getting on so much better than before and she was loathe for that to end. She needed him. She needed the rock that he'd become and she wondered idly if that was a way of using him as well. Especially since she wasn't much closer to giving her heart to him; the idea of giving her heart to anyone filled her with dread.

Even if little things he did made her heart skip a beat and sometimes it felt as if he were chiseling away at it. She didn't want to overanalyze it though, she just wanted to ignore it.

Most of all, she just wanted to feel human again. Alive.

Knowing she couldn't avoid the inevitable forever, Buffy quickly changed and padded down the stairs and headed back to the kitchen where Spike was instructing Lindsey to put some milk in her tea.

"Can I go now?" Lindsey whined slightly.

"Sure poppet, what are you going to do?"

"I want to . . . play with my dolls on the deck. They need some sun."

Buffy giggled as her daughter pranced off and Spike shook his head, chuckling. "She's your daughter," he told her.

"She's definitely yours too. She's got your stubbornness."

His eyebrows raised, "MY stubbornness?" he said, poking himself in the chest with her finger. "Buffy, love, you've got stubbornness to spare."

Grabbing her tea, she sat down at the table, the package in the center. She stared at it as she sipped her tea. Spike sat next to her. "You don't have to open it now, pet. You can wait until you're ready."

"Then I might never open it."

He winced slightly at that.

She reached over and took his hand, "It's not . . . it's not because I feel the same way for Angel. It's just . . . he owned a large part of my life, Spike. I was his wife. I was Buffy O' Connor for so long and now I'm going to be Buffy Summers again. It's not like I'm just signing away a name, I'm signing away an entire way of life. It means I accept that he never loved me, that he left me, that he didn't want me—" she choked back the tears. "It's signing away the little traditions we had—decorating the tree with Lindsey at Christmas time or always having pancakes on Saturday mornings, going apple picking in the fall—I lived a whole life with him. I'm not closing a chapter, I'm closing an entire novel and putting it on a shelf for eternity.
And you think that it ends once you put it on the shelf, but it doesn't really. It just ends up being footnoted in the future. It doesn't completely wipe the slate clean. Instead, it leaves you with some baggage. Baggage that hopefully you can maintain and put away, but it never truly leaves, does it?" Sighing heavily she stood up and away from the table. She placed her hands on the sink ledge and stretched back with her legs.

"Buffy—"

"Can you do it? Open them for me and see what they say? If it's fair and all that?"

"I think you should be the one. It'll make it more real."

She let out a shrill laugh. "It's funny because how much more real do I need it to be?" she shook her head and bounced away from the sink, heading back toward the table with determination. "You're absolutely right. I should do it." She grabbed the package and tore into it with gusto; never again would she let a manila envelope stress her out. It tore easily open—just like her marriage.

She stared at the words for a minute, none of them registering, the only thing running in her mind being ‘This is it.'

"Well?"

"Sorry. Hold on." She sat down again and started to look them over. Spike stood and looked over her shoulder.

"Well, I'll be damned," Spike muttered.

"I can't believe it. I thought for sure after what I told him—"

"Told you he'd be all peaceful like," Spike said with a smile in his voice.

"And fair—HOW is THAT possible?"

"Buffy, he knows what he did. He walked out on his family, leaving you high and dry while he shacked up with another bird. Even if Lindsey was his, what he did would not be seen kindly by a divorce attorney. He also had a previous affair. Told you he didn't have a leg to stand on."

"I just – he's supporting me with enough to keep me well off for a very long time. I can even keep this place. But . . . " she stopped and looked up at Spike. "I don't want to."

He froze, "What?"

"I want to move."





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