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Warning: Angst Alert, for some of you this means you might need an extra tissue.
Reunions / Part 31

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When Buffy had regained a feeling of safety in Spikes arms she started talking again. She was afraid that if she ever stopped for to long, if she didn’t keep pushing herself to talk, that she would loose her courage altogether. “The day we found out about the Buffybot, that same day, Giles and I had gone out into the desert to do this vision quest thing that let me see the First Slayer. During the vision the First Slayer told me I was ‘full of love‘. Which didn’t make a lot of sense to me. The other thing she said was that I had a gift. She told me that ‘death was my gift‘. None of it made sense at the time and Giles couldn’t figure it out either.”

“But later, after Glory had Dawn, Giles told me that his research said that if Glory was ever able to use Dawn to open up a portal between the dimensions that it would destroy the world. He then told me that it might be necessary to kill Dawn to prevent that from happening. I remember telling Giles that if he tried to harm Dawn I would kill him before I let it happen. I also told him that this world was to hard, that if I had to choose between Dawn and the world, I couldn’t do it, I couldn’t choose to kill my sister.”

“A little later, when we went back to my house for some weapons, I asked you to protect Dawn. I was asking you to help me save Dawn. But I was also asking you to protect her from Giles. I knew that you were the only one who would do it. I knew that you were the only one who cared enough about Dawn to try to protect her from anyone who tried to hurt her. I was counting on you Spike, because I trusted you more than anyone else to be there for Dawn.”

“Up on the tower, after that guy cut Dawn and opened the portal, what the First Slayer had told me about ‘being full of love’ and ‘death being my gift’ came to me and I understood what I had to do. You need to understand this, because it’s important. I was finished Spike. I couldn’t face the responsibilities of being the Slayer anymore. I couldn’t go on with the fighting and the pain and the constant fear anymore. When I finally understood what the First Slayer meant it all became clear to me. I was full of love, I loved Dawn more than my own life. Death was my gift, my death was my gift to Dawn so that she could go on living. So I made the choice, my life for Dawns. My death so that she could go on living and the world would be safe. I made a choice and I died.”

Buffy broke down then and started crying hard. Spike tried to comfort her but his own pain was almost more that he could bear. Reliving those last few minutes, reliving his failure to protect Dawn from Doc, Buffy having to jump off the tower to save her and close the portal, seeing her dead on the ground, not being able to get to her, wanting to hold her, wanting to die with her. Seeing Dawn crying, needing someone to be there for her. Remembering his promise to Buffy. Spike tried to comfort Buffy, but his own pain was tearing him apart. The two of them held each other tightly and consoled each other in the only way possible for them at that time, with each others tears and pain.

Buffy didn’t know how long they cried together or when they stopped. All she knew was that time had passed and she felt emotionally drained. But then it came to her that the hardest part was still to come and she almost panicked with fear. But then it came to her what was at stake, making Spike understand what had happened to her that next year, when she came back from heaven. Slowly but with determination Buffy pulled herself back together so that she could continue with her story, her explanation to Spike.

With her face pressed against Spikes chest, her fingers wrapped in a fist full of his t-shirt, Buffy sniffed her nose and cleared her throat, then tried to talk. At first she couldn’t get any words out and realized that her mouth was pressed against Spikes chest. She had to turn her head to the side and rest her cheek against his chest before she could speak. “I’m not going to go over all the details of the next year, after I came back, just the parts about us, and what was happening with me, and with you. When Willow and the others brought me back, ripped me out of heaven, things weren’t alright with me. Everything was painful, the lights were to bright, sounds were to loud, everything I touched or touched me was to hard. I couldn’t see right, or hear, or taste or smell, nothing was the way it should have been, all I felt was pain, like something important was missing inside. But, I want you to know, that when I first saw you, when I came down the stairs and saw you standing there. It made me feel less afraid. I just knew that I could trust you not to hurt me.”

“Later, when everyone else was going on about saving me from a hell dimension, I couldn’t tell them what they had actually done, it would have hurt them to much. But when I was with you, it seemed to be alright to tell you, like you would understand and not be hurt by it. I don’t mean that you didn’t care, I just mean that you seemed to understand what I was feeling and didn’t try to make me do things I couldn’t do. Everyone else was getting all freaky around me, everyone wanted me to get back to being normal. But I didn’t know what normal was anymore. Because nothing was normal, nothing felt right. When I started going out on patrol, part of the reason for going out was to get away from the others. Their constant looks, wanting me to thank them, wanting me to be the old Buffy, it was driving me crazy. But with you, coming to join me on patrol, talking when I wanted to talk, being quiet when I needed the quiet, that was comfortable.”

As Buffy continued to talk the emotionality that had been in her voice earlier seemed to fade away, it became more of a flat monotone. “But every time we went out on patrol together, the others would say things about you. Xander mostly, but Giles and Willow too, sometimes. They would say things about you still being obsessed with me, thinking you were in love with me. They wanted to know if you were bothering me, trying to force yourself on me. Xander would say you were a soulless monster and that it was impossible for you to love anyone. That I shouldn’t spend time with you, that the only reason you hadn’t killed all of us was because of the chip in your head. That now that I was back I should make you leave town.”

“Dawn tried to defend you. She talked about how you had helped her and how you had patrolled all summer and had helped the others and had probably saved their lives a bunch of times. She called them all hypocrites. Xander said that Dawn had a sick crush on you and that I shouldn’t let you come around and be near her anymore. Now that I was back they thought that you didn’t need to be around anymore. But, I want you to know that Tara didn’t say bad things about you. But, Xander claimed that was just because she didn’t know you like the rest of them did, so her opinion didn’t really count. Anya said some good things about you too. But no one ever listened to Anya.”

Buffy stopped talking and with her forehead pressed against Spikes chest she lay there breathing slowly. When she started speaking again her voice was even flatter than previously. “I got a call, …… from Angel. He’d just found out that I’d come back, ……. to life. I think Willow called him. We met at a place up the road, …… we‘d met there before. When I got there he was waiting for me. As soon as I saw him I rushed into his arms ….. and kissed him. …….. Spike, I didn’t feel anything. ……….. This was Angel, the man I was suppose to have loved more than anyone else in the world, …….. and I couldn’t feel anything. We talked, for awhile, …… I explained what happened. ……. I told him I was alright and that I had to get back home. ………. But, I didn’t tell him about heaven, I couldn’t. ……. I didn’t feel anything, but empty.”

Buffy laid there for several minutes without moving or speaking. When she did start speaking again there was a note of pain mixed in with every word. “Everyday things kept getting harder for me. I’d been dead for five months and when I came back I found out I was broke. I didn’t have any money, I didn’t have any skills, I had a house to take care of and a sister that needed me to give her emotional support, and I couldn’t do it. I felt empty and I couldn’t explain it to anyone, because they all kept looking to me to be the strong one and take care of things, and I didn’t know how. Giles helped out with some money, I don’t know what we would have done without him. I was depending on him Spike. I was depending on Giles to make things right again, to make the decisions, to tell me what to do, to be there for me when I needed him the most.”

“That’s when we had that dancing demon thing happen. I wanted to die, and you stopped me. You said that one of us had to live, to go on living. I’d just told everyone that I’d been in heaven and not in hell, and all it did was hurt them, make them feel bad. That’s when I kissed you. I don’t know why I kissed you that night. …….. No, that’s not true, I do know why I kissed you, it was because I wanted to feel something. I had just gone through that whole thing of baring my soul and I felt so empty, so alone. When I kissed you, I just wanted to feel something. The problem was, I didn’t know how to deal with what I felt. Spike, please believe me, ……….. I didn’t want to hurt you, …… not in the beginning.”

Every word Buffy spoke was a stab of pain into Spikes heart. Holding her he could feel the emptiness she had gone through, the pain she had felt. He wrapped his arms around her tighter, trying to give her what she had asked him for, a feeling of being safe. “You were the only person I had that I trusted, the only one who seemed to really care if I was alright, who wasn‘t pushing me to be the old Buffy again. But when I kissed you that night I felt something and it was so strong I couldn’t deal with it. It was like a memory of some other time, of being happy and full of love, and I knew that we had never had that with each other, so it was like it wasn’t real, like it was some kind of trick my mind was playing on me and it scared me. I didn’t realize it then, but I think maybe it was a memory, or a piece of a memory, from when we were under that love spell. Whatever it was or wasn’t, it scared me. That’s when it started changing between us, because I started doing what I had always done before. When I got scared I would turn my fear into anger and use it against what I was afraid of, and that’s what I did to you.”

“But after that first time I kissed you, you wanted more from me too, and that scared me even more, because I didn’t think there was anything inside me to give you. I tried to push you away. But you wouldn’t go away, you kept coming back, wanting more from me. So I got angry and mean and hateful. You would tell me you loved me and I would tell you that you were a monster that couldn’t love anyone. You would say things, like I should join you on the dark side, that I would like it there. Instead of feeling comfortable and safe with you I was afraid of you. The more I was afraid of you the more I wanted to hurt you and hate you. But, inside, deep inside of me, I knew you could love someone. I remembered Drusilla. I remembered that you had loved her for over a hundred years. What I was afraid of was that I was the one who couldn’t love.”

As Buffy continued to speak a trace of anger crept into her voice. “That’s when Willow did that stupid mind wiping spell that made us all forget who we were. I was Joan and you were Randy and I felt myself feeling something for you. Then the spell ended and everything went back to the way it had been, all the pain, all the emptiness, and all the feelings I’d been having for you weren’t real anymore. The next day Giles left me and went back to England.”

Buffy stopped talking and started crying silently. She didn‘t shake or tremble or sob, but silent tears ran from her eyes and dripped onto Spikes chest, he could feel them through his t-shirt. The pain that Buffy was feeling as she relived that moment in time when Giles had abandoned her when she needed him the most brought anger to Spikes heart. He had never been able to understand how Giles could have been so blind as to not see how desperately Buffy needed him right then. Giles had been Buffy‘s Watcher for five years, he above anyone should have seen how fragile she was, how much leaving her would hurt her.

Minutes went by before Buffy started speaking again. As she spoke, Spike could hear that there was a little more emotionality in her voice now. As much as he hated to hear pain in her voice he preferred it to the flat emptiness she had expressed earlier. “Right after Giles left I started having dreams, more like nightmares really. I kept dreaming about the people in my life and how everyone always left me. My boyfriend when I first became the Slayer. We had this big public breakup where he blamed me for the breakup because I was acting all crazy. My dad leaving us after I burned down the gym and got kicked out of school. I heard him and mom arguing before he left, about how he couldn’t take the way I behaved anymore. How disappointed he was in me. It was my fault he left us. Angel, he said he loved me, but he left me. He was afraid that he would loose his soul again, and it would be my fault. Riley, he left because I couldn’t love him enough, it was my fault. Mom, I know she didn’t want to go, but somehow I blamed myself, maybe if I had loved her more. When Giles left me, I knew that there was something wrong about me, something bad, that maybe I was some kind of monster. Everyone I’d ever loved or cared about left me. I started feeling that I deserved to feel bad, I deserved the hurt and the pain. That I was some kind of really horrible person and because I was I didn’t deserve to be happy.”

“Then one night we got into an argument. I was being a super bitch again, and I hit you, and you hit me back. When you hit me, it was like, I felt something. Yeah, it was pain and anger and fear, but it was something. I was feeling something. Then you told me that you could only hit me, that when I came back I came back wrong, that I was a monster just like you. When I heard you I became so afraid. Then I became angry. I hated you right then, I wanted to hurt you and make you pay for making me afraid. The next thing you know we were tearing down a building beating on each other and having crazy unbelievable sex all night, and I felt it all. For the first time since I’d come back I was feeling something. But the feelings were all messed up. The pleasure I was feeling got all twisted up with the anger and the hate.”

“After that, being with you, having sex with you, it was like a drug. I’d gotten that job at the Double Meat Palace and every day was a mind numbing torture just to survive. I’d go to you and we’d have sex, so that I could feel something, and when we were done I didn’t feel anything again. Except the anger and the hurt and the pain. Every day hurt, and every day I would take my hurt and pain and anger out on you, and every day you let me. I know you let me hurt you because you loved me. But Spike, I couldn’t feel anything, not for you, not for me, nothing. I kept trying to push you away, and then I would pull you back. You kept telling me you loved me, you kept asking me to love you, and I couldn’t.”

“Did you ever wonder why I wouldn’t look at you when we had sex, or when you tried to tell me you loved me? I couldn’t look at you Spike, I couldn’t. I was afraid that if I looked at you, you’d see the emptiness inside of me. I was afraid to look at you and see the love you felt for me in your eyes. I couldn’t look at you because you were a vampire, a living un-dead, and you were more alive than me. I was the dead one Spike, and every time you told me you loved me it just made me feel more dead inside, because I couldn’t feel anything.”

Buffy laid still for a minute, then lifting her head from Spikes chest she pushed herself up until she could see his face and he could see hers. “Having you hold me like this has made me feel safe, given me the courage to talk to you. Not having to look into your eyes and see the pain I’m causing you has made it easier. But I don’t want this next part to be easy, it’s to important.”

Spike watched Buffy take in several breaths as she prepared herself to continue. He could see the pain in her eyes, he could see the slight tremble of her lower lip. He didn’t want her to continue, nothing she had to say to him was worth what she was putting herself through. He had promised to hold her to make her feel safe. He had promised to let her talk to him, to explain her side of their relationship. But what she was doing to herself was more than he could bear. But as he watched he saw a look come into her eyes that he remembered so well from the past, a look of determination to face whatever was to come.

When Buffy started speaking her voice was stronger, more forceful than it had been before. “I heard what you said to Dawn about that night I beat you and left you in the alley. You told her that when I left you there to die, that was when you figured it out that I didn’t feel anything toward you, love or hate or anything. But I need to tell you a story so that maybe you’ll understand why things happened the way they did that night. You weren’t around when Faith came to Sunnydale so you don’t really know what happened with her and why she went evil. We were out together searching for a vampire nest when someone stepped out of the shadows. Faith reacted and stabbed the guy, she thought it was a vampire, but it wasn’t, it was a human and she killed him. It was an accident, but Faith wouldn’t face up to what happened, she’d killed a human being. She kept saying that it didn’t really matter, that what she did as a slayer was more important than one accidental death. What happened after that doesn’t matter now, but the point I’m getting to is that Faith went evil after that happened. That night when I thought I had killed Katrina, that I had killed a human being, even if it was an accident, I couldn’t deal with it. When you tried to stop me from going to the police, you said that one persons life wasn’t that important compared to all the other lives I had save. That was almost the same thing that Faith had said. But to me it was. Everything about me, everything I believed in was on the line for me that night. With all the fighting and killing that I had ever done, the one thing that I always held onto was that I didn’t, couldn’t, wouldn’t kill another human being. Thinking that I had killed someone was killing me inside. When you tried to stop me I hit you, but you wouldn’t get out of my way. So I kept hitting you and hitting you and hitting you.”

Buffy paused to catch her breath and to try to get herself back together. She hadn’t taken her eyes off of Spike the whole time she’d spoken. She had seen the pain in his eyes as she reminded him of what he had said to her that night. “But, you also told Dawn that you figured it out that night that I hated myself. Remember when I told you about Faith doing the body switch thing with me? Tara figured out a way to switch us back and I caught up to Faith in a church. Why she was there doesn’t matter now, but when I caught up to her we started fighting. Remember, Faith was wearing my body. She got on top during the fight and she was punching me in the face, her face, and she started screaming at me. ‘SHUT UP! Do you think I'm afraid of you!? You're nothing! Disgusting! Murderous bitch! You're nothing! You're disgusting!’ Spike, every time she hit me, she was hitting herself. Every word she screamed at me, she was screaming at herself. I was able to use Tara’s spell to switch our bodies again and Faith got away. But the important point I’m trying to make is that when I was hitting you, I was screaming at you. I was screaming that you didn’t have a soul. That there was nothing good or clean in you. That you were dead inside. That you couldn’t feel anything real! But Spike, every time I hit you I was hitting myself. Every word I screamed at you I was screaming at myself. That’s why I ran away and left you.”

Buffy watched Spikes face, trying to read his eyes, to see if he believed her. She knew that she had just told him the truth, but not all of it. Still looking at him she completed her confession. “Once I got inside the police station and heard the dead girls name was Katrina, I put two and two together almost immediately and realized that I wasn’t the one who killed her. It was Warren, and he was the one who made me think that I did it. Once I knew that I hadn’t killed Katrina all I could think of was finding and catching Warren to make him pay for what he’d done. I was so focused on what I was thinking I completely forgot about you in the alley.” As she finished speaking a tear ran from one eye down her cheek. Spike raised one hand slowly and cupped her face, gently he used his thumb to wipe away the tear.

Spikes gentle touch was more than Buffy could bear and she broke down crying. She buried her face in his chest and let the tears come. Spike wrapped his arms around her and gently tried to sooth her. It amazed Buffy that Spike even allowed her to remain in his arms, much less try to sooth her and make her feel safe again. With her face again hidden from Spikes view and with her voice choked with tears, Buffy started talking again. “Tara came by the next day with some news for me. I’d asked her earlier to go over the spell that Willow used to bring me back, to see if maybe I’d been brought back wrong. She told me that day that the spell sort of gave my cells a suntan or something, that’s why your chip didn’t work on me, but that I was fully normal and fully human. I broke down when she told me and more or less confessed to her what had been going on between us. I was crying and telling her that she had to be mistaken, that there had to be something wrong with me, because if there wasn’t something wrong with me, how could I be doing what we were doing to each other. She assumed I was just talking about the sex we were having, but that wasn’t what I was talking about. I couldn’t understand how I could be normal and hurt you the way I kept on hurting you. I couldn’t understand how anyone human could do what I’d done to you. The next week, when you came to my birthday party, you were still pretty beat up. I know how quickly vampires can heal. I’d seen you with bad injuries and it had never taken you so long to heal before, except the time Glory had nearly killed you. You don’t have to believe me, but I swear Spike, I didn’t know that I’d hurt you that badly.”

“After that is when Riley came back. I know you think I ended things between us because of him, but that really wasn’t the reason. The only thing that seeing Riley did was to make me realize how different I was from when I first knew him. I’d become so lost from what I had once been that I was having sex with someone that I thought I hated, just so I could feel something. I was using you to make me feel, and it was killing me. That’s why I had to stop seeing you. It took everything I had to stay away from you. Several times I found myself heading toward your crypt when I was out on patrol and had to force myself to turn around. I wasn’t doing good, but I was doing better. You were staying away from me and I was staying away from you, I thought that was a good thing. But when you showed up at Xander’s wedding with a date, it hurt. I wanted you to get on with your life, to not still love me. But when I saw you with someone else I was a little jealous. I know we made a joke about it, but it did hurt, a little.”

Buffy paused for a moment and took in a deep breath of air as she pushed herself to finish. “But when the thing with Anya happened….” Buffy had to stop talking because Spike had taken his arms from around her and tried to turn away from her. She looked up at him and saw that he had closed his eyes, but the pain he was feeling was clearly written on his face. She had to reach out and grab him by the shoulder to keep him from rolling his body away from her. “Spike, please listen to me, I’m not trying to hurt you. Please let me finish, let me tell you what I was thinking and feeling. Why I acted the way I did toward you.” Spike stopped trying to turn away but kept his eyes closed, tears were running down his face as he lay there. Buffy gently reached up and cupped the side of his face as she started talking again.

“When I saw you making love to Anya I couldn’t believe what I was seeing, but more important, I couldn’t believe how it made me feel. When I saw the two of you together I thought my heart tore in two. For months and months I’d been telling myself that I didn’t love you, that I was only using you to make me feel something. But when I saw the two of you together I felt hurt and betrayed. I didn’t have a right to feel that way, I know I didn’t, but I did. When you came to me the next night, in the bathroom, I’d just gotten home from a patrol. I’d been in a fight with a vampire and I was careless, I got hurt. I’d been thinking about you and wasn’t really concentrating on the fight. So, by the time I got home I was blaming you for me getting hurt. When you came into the bathroom I was already mad at you, I couldn’t get the picture of you and Anya out of my mind. I know you were trying to apologize, but I didn’t want to hear it. When you tried to hold me I wouldn’t let you. You told me you loved me and I told you I could never love you because I could never trust you. I’ve thought about this a thousand times or more over the years and I always think that if I had stopped you sooner, hit you or something, I don’t know, that I could have prevented things from going as far as they went. But to be honest with you I really didn’t think you would go as far as you did. When I knocked you off of me I told you that what you had just tried to do proved why I could never love you. After you left I sat there on the floor crying, but I wasn’t just crying for me. I saw it in your eyes Spike, when you looked at me, I saw the pain. A couple nights later I needed to leave Dawn somewhere safe, she wanted to be taken to your place. When we got there we ran into Clem and he told us you had left town. When he said that I felt my heart drop into my stomach. After all the times I’d tried to push you away from me, telling you to go, hearing that you were gone hurt in a way I didn’t believe I could feel.”

“Later, after Willow nearly destroyed the world, Giles took her back to England and it was mostly just me and Dawn together. We spent a lot of time trying to patch things up between us and I did a lot of healing inside. I spent a lot of time that summer thinking about you. Thinking about what we did to each other, what I did to you. You know I’m not big on the whole personal insight thing, I’d rather hide from the truth than face it. But that summer I tried to look at what happened between us and I had to admit to myself that most of what happened was my fault. I know, your probably thinking that I always blame myself for everything, but this time it really was the truth.”

Buffy took a deep breath and pushed herself up so that she could look Spike in the face again. She tried to smile at him, but it came out kind of crooked. Tears were still in her eyes and the pain of all that she had just put herself and Spike through was fresh in her mind. “But I did figure out something else that summer too. It took me awhile to work it out, and to admit it to myself. But I realized that summer that I loved you. Maybe not in the way you wanted me to love you. But I did love you. I also realized how much I had hurt you. When you left town, I think that was when I realized it for the first time, that I loved you. I also realized that I might have destroyed you. I didn’t know where you had gone, or if you were coming back, but I knew that I was the reason you were gone. I went through this whole thing in my head about how I always drive the people I love away from me. How I always hurt the ones I love. So I didn’t blame you for leaving, I knew it was my fault. I also made myself a promise that summer. I promised myself that if you ever came back to Sunnydale I would never hurt you that way again.”

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