Time passed by, not slowly, not quickly, but just right. Anya and Buffy worked on mending their friendship, though it was not easy – largely because Anya did not make it easy. There were times when Buffy was ready to throw in the towel and just give up, lamenting to Spike that maybe this was the infamous impasse that some friendships had to go through; that her and Anya had reached their crossroads and had to go their separate paths.
Upon telling Faith about what Anya had said about Doyle, her ‘sister’ had flat out warned Buffy not to put her in the same room as Anya anytime soon as she was liable to knock her ‘flat on her ass.’
“Personally, I wouldn’t object,” Spike had told her.
“Why is it that you’re so against her? You dated her, remember?”
He snorted at the implication. “If you can even call it that. “
“So then what is it that has you all anti-Anya?”
“I suppose,” he told her, pulling her into his arms, “That it has to do with the things she said to you. How she used Doyle against you the way she did. Plus, the way she treated you before that – making you out to be some kind of simpleton when you most clearly are not. I don’t like the way she’s treating you now, and there’s this general sense of mistrust I feel about her being around.”
“Oh? Mistrust that she’ll . . . ?”
“I don’t know yet, I haven’t figured it out. That’s why she makes me so uneasy. Anya, in the little time that I spent with her, doesn’t seem the type to necessarily let something go. Like, if she found a way to do a sneak attack to exact her revenge, she’d take it.”
Buffy looked up at him, speculative. “You think she’s just waiting for a chance to strike? Like a cobra?”
He pecked her nose, smiling at her, “Yes.”
Snuggling into him she said, “Nah. I don’t think so. I think she’d just walk away from me.”
“Oh, kitten, that’s one of the things I love most about you. Your inherent trust in others.”
“You say that like it’s a bad thing. I trust you, just think where you’d be if I didn’t.”
He chuckled, “Can’t dispute logic like that.”
Plans for the gallery showing were going smoothly and rapidly – at least in Buffy’s eyes. She was in part ready and in part extremely terrified. Bad luck seemed to follow large openings at her mother’s gallery. She was hoping, no, praying, that whatever horrible thing had to happen to somehow counteract the moment of the gallery opening, it’d happen before and not during or just before.
It seemed moments like that, the bad and tragic ones, happened without rhyme or reason though. She remembered Doyle quoting his favorite author, Oscar Wilde, once and saying that “It often happens that the real tragedies of life occur in such an inartistic manner that they hurt us by their crude violence, their absolute incoherence, their absurd want of meaning, their entire lack of style.” She remembered giggling at how true that was, and how sad.
And so, one day, as she was rifling through her mail, thinking about her plans for the day – follow up on the food with Anya, follow up with Tara on her pieces and accompany Spike to a doctor’s appointment – that she came across an envelope. An envelope with her name and address typed on the front, but no return address. Curious she opened it and imbibed the words printed out on the plain white paper:
Hi. You don’t know who I am, and I don’t know who you are. I kind of wanted to keep it that way. If I knew exactly who you were, I know I’d want to track you down and see you in person, largely, I think, to see if you were all right.
There is no easy way to say who I am; my name does not matter in such a case. In fact, after learning what it is I have, my name is of no consequence at all and will not be remembered. All you will remember is that I was the recipient of a heart; a heart that was donated to me by your loved one.
I really don’t think there was an easy way to say it, and I want to apologize profusely for how abrasive that may have sounded.
The purpose of this letter was not to hurt you, or make you upset, but instead to thank you, to thank your loved one. I was dying, slowly, before I received my new heart. My future was, for all intents and purposes, grim. I had none, basically. And now . . . now I have a new life.
Nothing can compare to what it’s like to suddenly feel as if you have a whole new life before you. That you have a ‘do over’. With that do over, you want to do right by yourself, by your loved ones, and by the one that gave you that new life.
I know that without the heart that I was given, I would not be in the place I am now: the place of peace, happiness, and of being in love for the first time in my life.
My intent with this letter was not to bring pain to you. It was instead to give you thanks and to perhaps give you hope and assurance that in another, your loved one lives on.
Blessing and Thanks.
If Buffy had to note when the tears started, it was right after she read that someone out there, had Doyle’s heart. The tears fell and stained the letter she held loosely in her hand. It wet the paper in her hand.
She thought of Doyle, living on in another. The thought didn’t comfort her as the person who wrote the letter wished. It instead made her think that somewhere out there was part of her husband and she had no idea where. And it wasn’t the same as having his kidney or liver . . . it was his heart and that was different. It was just different. It was Doyle’s kind, loving and considerate heart.
She wanted to know the recipient’s name, she wanted to see him or her. Wanted to touch the place that held her husband’s heart. What she would do after that, she did not know, only that she felt she’d know if she got the chance to simply do it.
Her next thought was of Spike. She wondered if he’d ever contacted the family of his donor and, despite how happy she was that he was alive and had a new life, she wanted to warn him the pain it could cause that family.
She felt numb, which belied the tears falling freely down her face. In her heart she knew that this was the reason why Doyle donated his organs. He wanted to be able to help others, and what better way to help someone than by giving them a heart; a new life?
“Buffy?”
Her head jerked to the sound of Spike’s voice coming in, and she hastily wiped at her tears, stuffing the letter in the envelope. “I’m in here!”
She didn’t look at him, not immediately. She wanted to gain some semblance of control; didn’t want to worry him and wasn’t ready to delve into this new development. She wanted to find a way to come to terms with it on her own before she shared.
However, she should have known the kind of man Spike was. The kind of man that was so in tune and devoted to her, that he knew at once, just by stepping into the kitchen, that something was wrong.
“What’s wrong?” he asked immediately.
She shuffled her mail, “Nothing.”
He grabbed her arm and turned her toward him. She looked down. “I was just having a moment.”
“What happened?”
She shook her head, “Spike, don’t—“
“Dammit, Buffy, tell me what’s wrong!”
Bottom lip quivering, she reached for the letter and handed it to him. She watched with watery eyes as he tore the envelope open and then watched as he paled before her.
“Oh God,” he whispered and dropped the letter, stumbling back, his eyes wide with horror.
She knew he’d feel something about it, but not to that extent. “Spike?”
He shut his eyes, and she noticed he was breathing heavy, and sweating. “Buffy,” he whispered brokenly, “I’m so sorry.”
Something was starting to click inside her head, pieces were clicking in her brain and she stared at him. “Spike.”
He opened his eyes then, stared at her with pain evident in his eyes, so clearly evident it was as if someone had come in and stabbed him in the back as she stood before him. His eyes filled with tears, “It’s me,” he croaked out. “I have Doyle’s heart.”
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