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Author's Chapter Notes:
Any reviews would make me smile. :)

I suppose I should warn readers that this isn't a light fic in any way....
She laid on the ground, curled into a ball, her head in her hands as the last sign of defeat. Sobs escaped her frail chest and shook her so hard she thought she might turn inside out, and then she realized that she was terrified of how she felt. "Frail," that was the word, it was the way she felt when her father had stormed off one night and something in her gut knew he wasn't coming back, it was the way she felt when Angel had turned into Angelus and handed her own heart back to her on a platter, and again a year later when he twisted taking the last shreds of hope she held onto and cutting them to pieces into a noble act of love. It was how she felt when Parker Abrhams told her she was nothing more than a good time, the way she felt when Riley got into a helicopter and left the country without a second glace, it was how she had felt when Giles told her he was leaving indefinitely. And now it was the way he had made her feel.

Spike was never supposed to get up and walk away. Whenever he left her, she had always known it'd only be a matter of time before he came back. Even when he left after the abusive portion of the relationship they shared had come to an end, she knew he'd left for her, to do something for her, and she was right. He was supposed to be the long-haul guy, the one who could deal with all the pieces others had left her heart in and help her figure out how to stick them back together.

More sobs echoed through her hollow chest and made her cough so hard she thought she might vomit. It was then that she could hear his voice promising that he'd be the one. All those times he'd sworn up and down that she couldn't get rid of him if she tried, and yet here she was, all alone, wrapped up in his duster just to remember his scent.

It had been three and a half years since he had given his life, or more correctly, un-life, to the hellmouth in order to save the world she fought so hard to protect. She had felt terrible afterwards, she shut people out and ran from any sort of authentic conversation with anyone, even Dawn. She couldn't understand why he was taken from her just as she was ready to move on, to let him love her and love him back with everything she had. But somehow she dealt with his death, if not for herself then for her friends and sister. A huge part of her ability to deal with the whole situation was because she knew he'd been taken from her, he didn't choose to leave like all the others had, and he had loved her until his dying day, just as everyone before him had promised and then turned their backs on. Then, she got the call from Andrew, and before she knew what was happening, she was on a plane to the City of Angels preparing herself to see a non-corporeal edition of the love of her life. Within moments of getting off the plane (a red-eye, of course), she found herself in his arms, half-dazed and half-elated. It was a full five minutes before she even had the opportunity to ask how he was holding her, if he was supposedly "all ghosty." After a long explanation from a lot of different mouths at once, she found that they had found the correct spells to being Spike back to his normal, cold-blooded self.

With this memory fresh in her thoughts, her mind began to wander, as it always did when she was at an extremely low point like this one, back to the day her world had burned to ash and left her to try to build something new.

---ONE YEAR EARLIER---
Buffy thought that she had learned to appreciate his love from the experience of losing him for what she had assumed would be eternity, and so did all of her friends. Giles, and even Xander had been happy to see her and Spike together, if for no other reason than the way her eyes shined when she looked at him. They were perfect for some time after his unexpected return into her life, but old habits die hard and before either of them knew what had happened, they were back in the familiar routine of Buffy taking Spike for all he had to give, and then some. Before she could stop herself, she was right back in the position of cold-hearted housewife, while Spike spent more and more time trying to please.

One morning, before the sun came up, Buffy came home from patrolling alone (for the third time that week), to find all Spike waiting for her in the living room, all of his belongings packed into suitcases and bags that were lying around his feet. Tears were welled up in his eyes long before she walked into the room, and before he spoke she knew what he was going to say.

He took a deep breath, "Buffy, I'm leaving."

She could hear her heartbeat echo at lighting speed in her ears, she knew he could hear it, too. Her bottom lip was quivering, she knew it. She bit down so hard on it that she drew blood, and finally found the courage to look at him him. She opened her mouth to speak but only a tiny gasp could be formed, she leaned against the wall to steady herself because she wasn't so sure she could trust her legs anymore.

"God this isn't easy, pet. And don't look at me like you think it is. I don't want to hurt you but ----" he continued, as the tears he'd been fighting began to fall.

"No, of course not," Buffy interrupted. "No one ever WANTS to hurt me. And I'm sure it's so hard for you Spike, you know, tucking your tail between your legs and running as fast as you can as soon as things get rough!"
"Oh, I didn't mean it," she thought almost immediately after the words escaped her mouth, but the rejection she felt led her to stand her ground, the best a woman in her situation could.

"Buffy," Spike started cautiously, knowing she was going to interrupt again.

"Just go," she responded in an icy tone with her eyes lowered to the ground. He assumed she'd been saving daggers to shoot at his back on the way out, but the truth was that she was just too afraid that if she looked at him, she'd beg him to stay; and she wasn't about to beg another man, intent on leaving, to stay.





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