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-- updated ch. 19, 20, 21 in a chunk --
A/N: The song is "Your Eyes" sang by Roger in the Broadway musical Rent. I love that musical. Everybody go watch it.

Warning: This chapter's pretty emotionally charged...

Chapter 21 Your Eyes

Friday, August 1st 2005

Twentieth Entry.

You know that feeling, Giles? When you know that you should have done something and you know because you didn’t do that something… that everything was going to go to hell? It’s when your insides feel like they’re being dropped down Kilimanjaro and your body still feels like it’s being suspended in air.

Well I plummeted down a hole that night, Giles, lying in bed and seeing his face everywhere. I tried to convince myself that what I did was for the best, you know? He had a son, he had a fiancé, he had a life, he had a lot of things that didn’t include me. And I had a lot of things that didn’t include him.

I tried to remember the words he said that cut me to the bone. The words he said to me at the club when he sang that song. And I don’t know what to do. I will never be with you…. He had told me that I had betrayed him… I don’t think he was exactly coherent that night, but still. His words had hurt me more than anything else. He was the only one who could hurt me like that, it seemed.

And then I remembered the look in his eyes when he first told me he loved me. I remembered those times he held me under the stars on the shore and the way he made me laugh and feel absolutely perfect. I remembered his rumbling laughter and his beautiful voice as he joked around with me. I remembered the way he sat persistently on my windowsill, day after day, no matter how much I ignored him or pushed him away.

And I remembered how I loved him. Love him. Always will love him. And I realized at that exact moment that there was no way in the world that I was going to let him slip away.

Saturday, June 4th, 2005

I didn’t bother changing into jeans as I got up from bed. The second I processed the world around me and decided that yes, I was, in fact, awake, I shot out of my room as fast as my legs would carry me and rushed into my car.

I think I broke every single traffic law in the book that morning in my hurry to get across town to his apartment. I didn’t care… I was single-minded Buffy and I had one goal in mind. Find. Spike. And after I found him, I’d figure out a way to tell him. He wouldn’t leave me after that. He couldn’t.

As I pulled into the parking lot to his apartment complex, I glanced at my watch. 10:48 am. How did I sleep in so late? It didn’t matter. Run to apartment.

I forgot to lock my car door as I sped across the lot, into the building, and up the stairs until I reached the second floor. My heart thumped nervously in my chest as I approached his door and my mind was reeling out of control. I wasted no time.

“Spike! Spike… It’s me! Buffy!” I pounded on his door, desperately wishing it would spring open and he would stand before me, surprised as can be. “Open the door!”

I waited for a few seconds for him to yell out his… “Bloody hell, I’ll be right there.”. But it never came. I counted to ten. Maybe he was still asleep. It was just like him to oversleep! Especially on a day like this.

“Come on, Spike!” I shouted, resuming the pounding of his door. “It’s me, open up! I need to talk to you!”

I pressed my ear up against the door to listen for footsteps coming to the door… maybe a body dropping out of bed, shower running, TV too loud, something. But all I got was silence. Deathly, empty, nothing silence that sliced into my gut.

“Spike!” I felt my eyes start to water up and I tried to hold them back. I wouldn’t let them fall because that meant that he was gone. And he couldn’t be gone. “Spike! Please!”

There was no answer. I leaned my back against his door and covered my face in my hands. He had to be in there. I knew he had to be.

“Please… please, Spike…” I slid down the door and the tears fell down. I started crying and I couldn’t stop myself. “Please Spike… please open the door.”

I heard a sound of a lock turning and looked up to see the door across the hall open. An old lady peeked out and fixed me with a stern glare.

“Dear, I believe Dr. Pratt and his fiancé are on their way to the airport right now. They left about an hour ago,” she said, obviously irritated at me. “Now will you be so kind as to stop making all that racket? Some of us are trying to sleep!”

With that, she went back in and slammed the door, leaving me heartbroken and hollow. No…

…………

I sat against his door for another hour on the off chance that maybe he was in his room and his neighbors were crazy. Or maybe he forgot a suitcase and had to hurry back to get it. I waited and waited, not willing to admit to myself that he was really gone. I wouldn’t let myself believe it.

But as 12:00 slowly came and went, I got to my feet and walked back out to my car. I walked slowly, because maybe he decided not to go. Maybe he decided ‘to hell with it’ and would come hurrying back to me.

I felt like I was walking through a dream… everything seemed so surreal. Maybe it was a nightmare and I’d wake up soon to find him by my window again, singing to me. And then I would tell him.

So I waited for myself to wake up as I got into my car and started the engine. I waited for myself as I pulled out of the parking lot and turned onto the main road. I waited all the way on the drive back home until I pulled into my familiar driveway. Involuntarily, my head swiveled to my window, checking to see if maybe he was on that tree, waiting for me to get back to my room.

But he wasn’t there.

Dazed, I opened my front door and went into my house. I had never felt this way before. Before I could have a moment to process the morning’s events, my mom’s head popped out from the kitchen.

“Buffy, you have a phone call!”

That phone call changed my life.

…………

… Miss Summers, there has unfortunately been an accident …

… head on collision heading back to Sunnydale from the airport…

… regret to tell you that he is currently in a comatose state …

… was transferred to the hospital in Sunnydale …

Have you ever had one of those moments when you hear something and you freeze? More often than not, you freeze because of the initial shock, but once you actually have time to understand what’s going on, you stay frozen because you’re in denial? It’s as if all time had just stopped and all you can hear is your heart slowly pumping away in your chest?

Sometimes even the heart feels like it just died and wont ever wake up. Inside, you know you should be running, screaming, crying, doing something other than standing there still with the phone pressed against your ear. The other person’s still talking but you don’t hear what they’re saying. All you know is that voice going through your head… No… no… no… no… no .. no .. no, no, no, no no no nononononono until you go crazy and you finally burst.

…………

The second my mother pulled the car up along the circular driveway of the hospital, I ran to the information desk by the front door in a frenzy.

“Pratt, William,” I told the receptionist, who looked up at me then slowly put her glasses on before wheeling herself over to the computer to look up the name. I tried to urge her on, “hurry, please.”

She gave me this little, annoyed look before setting to work, typing each letter into the computer carefully. Her fingernails were so long that she literally took forever on each and every letter and by the time she hit ‘enter’, I thought I would literally combust and light her shiny hair on fire.

“Fourth floor. ICU,” she told me, coldly, going back to her paperwork. I didn’t glance back at her or say thank you as I sprinted to the elevators. I pushed passed the couple getting out of the elevator and earned a flare from the elderly man next to his wife in a walker. I didn’t care.

‘Hurry, hurry, hurry, hurry,’ I wished the elevators to move on faster after I pressed the ‘4’ button, but they slid ever so slowly past first floor… second floor… third floor… ding!.

The second the doors were open, I was miles away, searching for the Intensive Care Unit. I found it off to the right, behind a green and yellow waiting room, closed in by double doors. I was seconds from breaking the damned doors down, but a nurse materialized out of nowhere and stopped me before I could get through.

“I’m sorry, but you’re not authorized to go in there,” her tone was clipped and icy. What the hell was with these nurses?

“I’ve got someone in there that needs me,” I felt the tears spring to my eyes, but my anger shone through my pain. “I’m a goddamn visitor! I need to go in there.”

“I see, and what patient are you here to visit?” she looked down at her clipboard.

“Pratt. William Pratt,” I told her and she scanned her list. She frowned when she saw his name and looked up at me. “What’s your relation with this patient?”

“I’m his sis- “ my voice died as I saw Cecily walk through the same double doors that I had just tried to burst open seconds ago. She came towards me and when she saw me, her eyes narrowed into thin slits. I finished my sentence with a gulp, feeling a sickening sense of dread come over me…“ – ter.”

“Sister?” the nurse sounded suspicious and a little confused, “sorry, but his fiancé didn’t mention a – “

Cecily had walked up to us and was standing right behind the nurse now, facing me. Her eyes were so hard and her lips were set in a thin line and I felt my heart drop when she tapped the nurse’s shoulder.

“Excuse me,” she said in a refined British accent. I gave her one last look, trying to make her understand, but I realized it was futile. The tears sprang to my eyes and I turned my back, walking away slowly from the nurse I had just been talking too. It was obvious that Cecily wouldn’t let me see him.

“That woman,” I heard Cecily continue in her articulate tone of voice, “is William’s sister.”

I stopped, shocked beyond belief and numbly turned around to stare at the woman that I had once seen as a haughty, snubby bitch in astonishment.

“Oh!” the nurse seemed flustered at her admission, “Okay… well, visiting hours close in about half an hour… “ and she walked away, leaving me alone with Cecily in the waiting room in front of ICU.

I didn’t move a muscle and just stood there staring at her. “Thank you…” I finally mumbled. She shook her head.

“I’m not doing it for you,” she told me. “I understand that you had… a relationship with William. And I think that he loves you…”

She began to lead me through the double doors into the intensive care unit.

“No, I know that he loves you… and believe me,” she gave me a short, humorless laugh, “I know what it is like to be in love. And who am I – “ she turned to face me “ – to stand in the way?”

We stopped in front of a room and my heart broke to see the man I loved lying helpless on a hospital bed, hooked up everywhere to various tubing, looking so… lifeless.

Cecily closed her eyes at the scene and said softly, “The doctors say that there’s a high chance that he may enter into a persistent vegetative state. I just think… maybe you’re what he needs to get past this. Go to him.”

I gave her a grateful smile and slowly walked into the room. I heard her close the door behind me, but my eyes were glued to the body lying in there before me.

The room was small and there was a window next to his bed. The walls were painted pink and I almost smiled at that. I saw a chair in the corner and pulled it up so I could sit beside his bed. The machines around him made me a little uneasy and I looked at the heart monitor next to him a little warily. Turning back to the man I loved, I reached out and slid one of his hands into mine. It was warm. His face was so relaxed and he seemed so peaceful, almost as if he were just sleeping and would wake up at any moment.

“Come on, Spike,” I whispered, giving his hand a little squeeze. “Wake up. Wake up, you need to wake up.”

The tears streamed down my face and I let them fall. Before, I had always tried to stay strong in front of him and I had always held my tears back, but now I just let them run their course and I didn’t bother wiping my face. A few tears landed on his white sheet, but he didn’t even flinch. He didn’t move, his face didn’t change, he just lay there - oblivious to the living world. Oblivious to me.

“Spike… look at me, please?” I silently begged him. “Look, I have something important to tell you. Come on.”

Nothing.

I sat there staring into his lifeless form… his body which had once burst with a brilliant persona, just lying there still, almost dead-like.

I remembered all those nights he climbed into my window with his guitar, singing me to sleep. And all those mornings when I would wake up to his voice in my ear. He had always sung to me and it had always made me feel better.

“Maybe, it’ll make you feel better,” I suggested to him. “I’m not very good, though… but I’ll try. I’ll try for you, baby.”

I closed my eyes and tried to sing, determined not to let myself be embarrassed. I would have loved to be embarrassed… loved to have him wake up to my singing and see his cocky little smirk at my lame attempt. My voice came out hoarse and unrefined.

“There’s a hero… if you look inside your heart…” I stopped. The song wasn’t right.

I don’t know how long I sat there, just holding his hand and looking at his beautiful face. It felt almost like eternity and I wished I could get closer. I wish I could hold him and hug him close… treat him like he was meant to be treated – with love. How could I have never told him? I bit down on my lip, trying to wish the thoughts away.

And suddenly, it came to me.

“Your eyes,” I began, softly, moving my chair closer to him, “As we said our goodbyes. Can't get them out of my mind, and I find, I can’t hide.” I remembered the way he looked at me when he told me he was going to leave. I remembered the way he tried to communicate his love to me, the way his eyes begged me to ask him to stay.

“…From your eyes…
The ones that took me by surprise,
The night you came into my life,
Where there’s moonlight,
I see your eyes…”

I kept singing to him, imagining the clear, gorgeous blue of his eyes. Those eyes that glowed with strength and love and life. Those eyes that had shown all his emotions, those eyes that I so desperately wanted to see open again. Tears choked up my voice, but I kept singing to him, … I needed to let him know.

“How'd I let you slip away?
When I'm longing so to hold you,
Now I'd die for one more day!
'Cause there’s something I should have told you
There's something I should have told you…”

I brought his hand up to my lips and kissed it. I’d sing to him forever.

“When I looked into your eyes,
Why does distance make us wise?
You were the song all along,
And before the song dies…
I should tell you, I should tell you,
I have always loved you.
You can see it in my eyes…”

I silently prayed to myself that maybe, just maybe his eyes would flutter open and my words would kiss him hello. When they didn’t, I cried. Hard, racking sobs that shook my entire body as I buried my head in his shoulder.

“I love you, Spike,” I breathed out in between sobs. I extended my arm out to rest across his chest, trying to bring him closer to me. “I love you so much and I’m so sorry… so, so, sorry I never told you. Please, Spike. You have to wake up so I can tell you.”

But he never did.

.....................................................................................
A/N: Whew. There's only about 2 or 3 more chapters left... and they'll be third person and in present time. Hope you enjoyed everything so far... i'd like to thank everybody for their support.





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