Disclaimer: This story is a work of fan-fiction. All used characters don’t belong to me and I just borrowed them. The only profit I hope to achieve with this story is the pure pleasure of the reader.
Feedback: All feedback, comments or anything else you might want to share is welcome and can be sent to LadySet@gmx.net
Author’s notes: The story was my contribution to all the other wonderful post-Gift stories out there but this one was written when I hadn't even seen the episode, in fact hadn't seen the whole fifth season yet. It changes from first person to storytelling.
Sadly by her side
by Belladonna
She is gone.
Dead.
All that she was now is no longer and all that is left for me are only tears.
I am standing here at her grave, looking down at it and try to remember the times we’d had together but all I feel now is pain. It hurts me more than I want it to, more than I’d ever admit, even to myself. I have loved her, I still do and nothing will change that. Now that I have finally come to realize it myself, she is gone, forever and all that truly is left for me are the broken pieces of my heart and my soul, one I have thought to have lost long time ago.
Never in my life had I imagined it to hurt so much but it does and nothing I try to do will ease this pain, nothing at all. Never have I imagined it hitting me that deep inside my heart and cause it to shatter into thousand pieces. I haven’t thought that I could love her, never thought it would happen but in the end I was helpless against it, just as I was helpless there when I was watching her die.
I have to admit that it is not common for me to show that much emotion, for it is not my way. Also it is not in my character to grieve for anybody, I never have and I even have killed those I should fear the most, those who were like she was. Those who were born to slay those like me, to hunt them down and then to hand them over to their final death.
I don’t know when I have felt it the first time, when exactly this moment had been I had come to realize that she would become someone very special to me and so much more. But it happened and every time after that, when I looked into her beautiful and gentle eyes I have lost myself in them. She had managed to warm this dead heart in my chest and to make it beat again. Every time I was near her, I felt more alive than I have ever been before and all that I owe her. Her simple closeness managed to make this dead heart beat even faster and the sweet scent of her hair, of her filled my lungs. Every moment I could be with her, I have enjoyed and treasured in my heart, every single one of them and right now I’d give everything to have these short moments back again, and her. She was so much more for me than I have wanted her to be, but that is the truth.
I do love her from the bottom of my heart, so much that it pains me even more to have lost her now. My love for her was so strong that I even have let a copy of her made for myself, only to have her with me, to have the illusion of her loving me. I let someone make a copy of her for me, a mere copy that will never be more than that, and that love is like she is, an illusion.
Does she know that, does the robot know all that? I don’t know, don’t even know whether she has feelings at all, feelings that are not programmed into her. But now she is standing with me here at her grave, next to me and I feel her hand slowly closing around mine. She is trying to comfort me, but she doesn’t even know what that is. She doesn’t know the deep pain I feel inside and that has moved into my heart after her death.
She does look like her, talks like her but she will never be like she was, she could never be even close to what she was to me but she probably doesn’t know that either.
The skies above me are dark, night; but it cannot come close to the darkness that I now feel inside, the pain over her loss and the anger about my own helplessness. I couldn’t protect her, couldn’t do anything to prevent this no matter how much I wished for it and with her a part of me has died as well that night. For it was she who made me alive again.
I truly loved her, more than I have ever loved anybody else or ever will again. I would have died for her and now I’d give my life only to see her alive again, to be able to hold her again in my arms and to look once more into her beautiful and deep eyes. I’d give everything I have to be able to tell her, how much I love her. But all that is left for me are the memories of her and an us that never existed. And the robot, nothing but a mere copy.
My inner soul is filled with pain and mourning. Before, I wanted her death but now all that has changed. Now it pains me more than I want it to, it hurts so much to have lost her and I wished for nothing more than to have her again with me, as I am standing at her grave now.
I have loved you, Buffy, and I always will.
~/~
The vampire known as Spike looked down at the gravestone; down to where the woman lay who meant more to him than his own life and whom he loved more than anything else. In his hand he held a single rose and his fingers trembled slightly as he put it down onto her grave. The robot next to him was squeezing his hand gently to show him her sympathy and give him consolation, but how could she know what that meant to him. How could she ever know, only an inanimate object, a copy and a substitute, never more to him.
He stood there in silence at her grave, looking down on it and the rose, blood red like the tears that came falling down his cheeks as he stood there with his love for a last, final time. And he had never felt more that painfully lonely and alone than in this moment as he stood sadly by her side.
~fin~
