She stood at the open window, looking down at the garden and breathing in the familiar smell of pine, salt and see.
Her arms were crossed over her breast as if she was cold, while she watched the people taking a walk.
To everyone but her the “Haven of old and lonesome people” was known as “Bellevue Care Home”.
She wasn’t entirely sure why this place was given such a romantic name.
Not that anything, however, about the care home was romantic, except for its Italian architecture and lattice-shaded sidewalks draped with yellow and red roses.
She spent most of the time standing at the window, watching the days go by, as if waiting for something that she knew would never come back again.
Closing her eyes, she tried to suppress the suddenly arising feeling of loneliness and sadness, thinking of all the people she desperately wanted so see only once again.
**********
With careful steps which caused pain in her frail legs, she went back to her bed and sat down, looking at the small box which was sat on her nightstand.
The memories of a whole life, she thought sadly, while she looked at the old, yellowed photos, letters and things which were inside.
She reached for her stake and weighed it carefully in her hands, thinking of the years when she had been the Slayer.
Although she was eighty-two now, she remembered everything from that time, down to the smallest details.
Sometimes she wished that she could turn back time and take all the wrong decisions, all the mistakes she had made away, but she was aware that she couldn’t. And so she took the memories as they came, accepting them all, letting them guide her to all the places she had been, to all the people she had met.
Her trembling fingers searched the box for the photos, while she silently began to cry.
She looked at the familiar faces of her friends and her sister, who seemed to smile at her, as if they were alive. She glided with her fingers softly over the photos, feeling a painful mixture of loneliness and grief.
It hurt when she remembered that she wouldn’t see them ever again, neither her friends nor her sister Dawn nor her husband Alan.
Everything that was left was the memory of them, the moments they had shared and she guarded these memories eagerly, keeping them deeply buried in her heart.
She sobbed quietly and put the pictures carefully back, fearing that she could damage them.
With one hand she wiped the tears from her face and reached into the box again to get out a small book.
It smelled of mustiness, the cover was almost torn, the pages had turned yellow and fragile.
Her heart hammered against her breast when she opened it.
A page was marked with a dog-ear and while she began to read the lines, she swallowed hard and pressed a hand against her shaking lips.
She closed her eyes and the years began to move in reverse, slowly ticking backwards, like the hands of a clock rotating in the wrong direction.
She relived this moment in her mind when she had found the book with the French poems in his crypt... so many, many years ago.
The tears kept on streaking down her cheek, when she forced herself to open her eyes and read the poem by Pierre Louys:
‘I shall leave the bed as she left it,
unmade and disrupted,
with the sheets tangled,
so that the form of her body
will remain imprinted beside mine.
Until tomorrow, I shall not go to the bath,
I shall wear no garments
and I shall not comb my hair
lest I efface her caresses.
I shall not eat this morning,
nor this evening,
and on my lips I shall put neither rouge nor powder,
so that her kiss will remain.
I shall leave the shutters closed
and I shall not open the door,
lest the lingering memory
be carried away by the wind...’
Her entire body was shivering while she read the words.
The words he had read, again and again. The words which had been meant for her.
Slowly she laid the book back into the box with her eyes closed.
With a deep sigh she felt it all coming back to her. As if through someone else's eyes, she watched herself grow younger; she saw her hair changing from white to blonde and all the feelings for him, still buried in her soul, began to roll over her.
Pictures appeared like snapshots in front of her inner eyes... Two naked bodies, moving in perfect harmony.
His stammered words, „ I love you, Buffy. God damn it, I love you so much,” which she had never answered.
The tears burned in her eyes and burned in her soul, while her fingers clasped a silvery lighter.
*********
She searched the box and got out her bridal veil, reliving the day when she had married.
It had been a warm, sunny day in August, almost forty years ago, when she had become Mrs. Alan Harrison.
The church hadn’t been bursting with people, there had been only her closest friends and Alan’s family.
She remembered that Dawn had been sitting in the front row, dabbing her eyes with a blue handkerchief during the whole ceremony.
There hadn’t been a dry eye in the church, when the priest had read the passage in the Bible Buffy had chosen. It had been a passage from the Corinthians and she had started to cry, too.
Alan had squeezed her hand and she had smiled back at him, trying to hide her feelings of shame and guilt because for a tiny moment she had thought of someone else.
She had thought of the little package she had received the day before.
A beautiful, golden necklace with a small sun-shaped pendant had been inside, together with a letter.
Buffy,
You’re going to marry tomorrow and I just wanted to tell you how happy I am that you will finally live the normal life you have always wished for. I hope your husband will always treat you like the treasure you are and I hope that he’ll do anything to make you happy. There’s nothing I want more for you.
Be happy, luv.
Spike.
********
Buffy carefully closed the box and leaned back onto the cushion, reaching for her necklace with a hand.
In all those years she had never had the desire to remove it, it was like a part of her.
She turned her head and saw that it was already dark.
Slowly she got up from the bed, ignoring the pain in her bones as she did some careful steps.
It took her a while until she reached the window.
Her old hands pushed the curtain aside, while she leaned forwards, taking a deep breath.
She couldn’t tell why she suddenly felt that he was there.
Maybe it was her instinct which told her that he was watching her, maybe it was also this strange combination of joy and sadness she felt every time when he was in her nearness.
And when she looked down, she could see him standing in some distance to the building and look up to her window.
He was there.
Just like he had been there for her as long as she could remember.
Always in the background, never asking her for anything.
She pushed the curtain back again, suddenly ashamed, fearing that he could see her the way she looked now, with this frail, old body.
One of her hands pressed against the window when his name came over her lips:
„Spike ... “.
And as if he had heard her, he started moving and stopped directly under her window.
She knew that he could see her shade behind the curtain, but she remained where she was, her hand still pressed against the glass.
Her heart hammered with raving speed inside her breast and she began to cry, whispering out all the things she had never told him.
He had hardly changed within all the years, he was still the man she remembered.
His blond hair shone silvery in the moonlight, and as she closed her eyes, she remembered how silky it had felt under fingers. She remembered the smell of his skin, the contours of his face.
She pressed her lips together and held back a sobbing, wishing desperately that she could roll back the clock and take away all the pain she had caused him.
Her lips trembled and she tasted the salty liquid which was dripping onto her breast.
She looked down again and saw him putting his head a little aside, while he still looked up at her window, patient, as if waiting for any sign that she was well, that she lacked nothing.
She knew that he required nothing, that he probably hadn’t even expected her to notice his presence.
She leaned her forehead against the chilly window pane and quietly whispered his name, while her body started to tremble.
And at this moment he lifted the hand and waved to her, slowly and carefully, as if being afraid that her shade would disappear by this movement.
There was so much in this simple gesture, it was not only a greeting, it was the promise that he was there, in her nearness, that there was no need to be afraid, as long as he was there.
She cried while she waved back at him, feeling this strange combination of heart-clenching sadness and pure joy again.
She told him all the things which had remained unsaid, well knowing that her words didn´t reach him, but condensed at the chilly glass.
She stood there, as it seemed, for a whole eternity, even after he had turned around and had walked away.
*******
Her hands didn´t tremble as she wrote down the lines.
She desperately wanted him to know that she had never stopped loving him, that he was still a part of her soul.
Her throat began to tighten when she remembered the day when she had heard the words which she was now writing.
It was the passage from the Corinthians at her wedding and while she read it once again, she felt that these lines had always been meant for him, that he was the one who deserved to hear them.
Taking a deep breath, she carefully began to remove her necklace.
She touched the golden sun softly with her finger, while her eyes filled with tears.
*********
It was far after midnight when she finally fell asleep.
She dreamed.
She stood before the altar beside Alan, who squeezed her hand and smiled at her.
“I love you...” she whispered, feeling ashamed that she was thinking of someone else while she looked into Alan´s eyes.
She let her head sink, but when she lifted it again, she saw that his eyes weren´t brown anymore, but blue while his face slowly began to change, too.
„Spike?" she whispered, unbelievingly.
He nodded, smiling softly at her.
He put his arms around her, whispering into her ear that he loved her, making her feel as if she had finally come home after a long, tiresome journey.
When the first sunrays displaced the darkness and the nature awoke to new life, her eyelids lifted the last time.
She smiled.
And she closed her eyes to never open them again.
*********
He looked in surprise at the nurse while she slowly approached him.
„Mrs. Harrison asked me to give you this,” she said quietly, showing him the little package the old woman had given her the evening before.
He hesitated for a second before he took it, turning it to and fro.
„She wanted me to tell you that she is so dreadfully sorry that she didn’t let you know earlier.“
His eyes widened when he understood.
His thumb glided softly over the package, while he looked up to her window.
The light was turned out and he wondered whether she was already asleep.
„Can I see her?" he asked, not trying at all to suppress the hopeful tone in his voice.
Silently the nurse looked at him.
And at this moment he noticed the expression of uncomfortableness in her face.
She opened her mouth to explain it to him, but he barred her from it, shaking his head, over and over again.
And again he looked up at her window, searching the light behind it, although he knew that it would never be turned on again.
********
Far after midnight it had started raining.
He didn’t know where he was and he also didn’t feel the drops on his body.
It was as if he was in a kind of glass cover, the world around him seemed to keep still, while his trembling hand held the necklace he had sent her the day before she had married.
The tears on his face mixed up with the raindrops, which were dripping onto the sheet.
The rain washed away the letters, making the written unreadable, but he didn’t try to save it.
There was no need because the words she had written to him, the words he had longed to hear, would be engraved in his soul as long as he was alive.
Love is patient,
Love is kind;
love is not jealous or boastful;
it is not arrogant or rude.
Love does not insist on its own way;
it is not irritable or resentful;
it does not rejoice at wrong,
but rejoices in the right.
Love bears all things,
believes all things,
hopes all things,
endures all things.
Love never ends.