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Buffy wiped a hand across her eyes and smiled up at Dawn. “Hey.”

“Hey, yourself.” Dawn frowned down at her. “You’re crying? Spike’s back and you’re crying?”

“Me? No. Just allergic to this new mascara…” she sniffed.

"Well, you know I wasn't expecting you to be throwing yourself into his arms and all..." Dawn paused and reconsidered, "Actually I was..."

Buffy shook her head and looked away. "Well, there you go. Even little sisters aren't always right."

Dawn raised her eyes in exasperation and sat down next to Buffy on the floor. She drew a deep breath and decided to take things more slowly. “So. Bit of a surprise, huh?”

“You could say.” Buffy gave a long sigh.

“Wasn’t expecting that.” She waited for Buffy to make the first move.

“Nope.”

“Never the one for doing the obvious. I mean, he burns up and gets buried under a large chunk of southern California and next thing you know… there he is lurking in the shadows of a back street in Rome.” Dawn kept her tone light.

“Ah, well. The whole dying thing? No big. Given past experience, I guess I should have half expected it.” Buffy wasn’t giving Dawn a great deal of help.

“And…” Dawn hesitated. “And you’re pleased to see him, right?”

“Pleased? Ah, now there’s the question.” Buffy shrugged and looked down, twisting a ring around her finger.

“So the ring thing will be one of those Zen non answers?”

“No. It’ll be an ‘I don’t know how to answer that’ thing.”

Oh, for heaven’s sake… Dawn resisted the urge to scream. “What’s not to know? You spent the last year pining for him…”

“I did not!”

“Did too! Just because you wouldn’t talk about it doesn’t mean it was clear for all to see how much you were hurting. Even Giles noticed, and he’s British."

"Oh." Buffy frowned.

"So, now Spike's back. What’s not to be happy about?”

“It’s not that easy. It’s …”

“Complicated… yeah, Spike’s already done that line.” Dawn gave groan of frustration. “What’s so complicated? You love him, he loves you…”

“I never said…” Buffy looked up at her sharply. “How did we get on to love here? No-one mentioned love.”

“Except Spike did.”

“Yes.” A wry smile and a shrug. “Spike did.” When I say, "I love you," it's not because I want you or because I can't have you. It has nothing to do with me. I love what you are, what you do, how you try. The words were engraved in her mind, as clear as the nigt he'd said them. Buffy sighed and pressed her hand to her eyes. “But that was then. Dawn, all that… it’s a world away. Another life. Things change. People change.”

“Spike change?” Dawn gave her an incredulous look.

“Yes, mainly Spike. Evil bloodsucker to Champion of the Good. Big old change. He’s… different. I’m different.”

“And he doesn’t love you anymore?”

“He didn’t say.”

“And he had the opportunity?”

“Yes.” Buffy gave Dawn an abashed smile. “No… I guess… I kind of gave him grief for not coming to find me sooner.” She frowned. “But that’s it. He didn’t come and find me sooner.”

“Did he say why?”

“Yes. No. Sort of.”

“OK, did anything he say involve not loving you?” Dawn kept at the determinedly reasonable.

“Dawnie…”

“And you love him.”

“I don’t know… he…”

“Well, you do. So where’s the complicated?”

“You know all those romantic novels you read? Not the real world. Love… it’s just a word.” Buffy sighed. “It really isn’t that simple.

“Well, no, not simple exactly.” Dawn conceded “I mean him with the vampire immortality and all, and you with the getting old and wrinkly for one...”

“That’s not… but, yes, one of the many problems that kind of makes things less than simple. And not so much with the old and wrinkly.”

“But Buffy, this is Rome! You know how everyone drives here. You could get squished next time you cross the road!”

“Oh, thank you for that!”

“Well, you know what I mean. Carpe diem.”

“Latin?”

“Don’t just read romantic novels. Audeces fortune iuvat. Amor vincit omnia. I got a whole fund of suitable quotes for all occasions. But my favourite? Vita non est vivere sed.”

“OK – you know I never majored in Latin. Or minored in it, come to that.”

“Vita non est vivere sed. Life is more than just staying alive.”

You have to go on living… So one of us is living… Buffy closed her eyes.

Dawn smiled. “And anyway, are you really going to let someone that hot get away?”

Buffy was silent for a moment. “What if he’s already got away?” she said eventually.

“Then why don’t you find out? You know? The talking thing?”

Buffy gave a rueful smile. “Me and Spike? Never much with the talking thing. And besides…” She paused. “I’m scared.” She looked over at Dawn, tears glinting in her eyes. “I’m scared,” she whispered.

Dawn sat in silence for a while. “Do you remember when… when Willow brought you back? When Spike saw you for the first time?”

A flash of memory, of torn hands, of fear, of him at the foot of the stairs… Oh, god, I remember… how it had scared her then – lost and confused, afraid of the love that shone in his eyes when she had the taste of the grave in her throat and no right… no right… to be loved like that. Oh, Spike… what I did to you…

“He looked at you like… like nothing else existed, like you were the only thing in the whole world that meant a thing. The look on his face.” She shook her head. “I thought he’d completely lost it. On reflection, I’d just never seen… And you know something? Tonight, when he saw you? He looked at you just the same way. That’s not changed.”

Another memory… of the world falling apart around them, of hands locked and burning, and despite it all… despite everything…of the love that shone from him... that had called to her and finally… finally… something had stirred in her too-long frozen heart… too late… always too late…Ah, Spike… I missed you…

Dawn watched Buffy’s bowed head. A single tear dripped on to the bathroom floor.

“I missed him.” Buffy said softly.

Dawn wrapped her arms around her sister. “I know.” She held her tightly as the tears came and, at long last, Buffy grieved for Spike.





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