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Thanks to everyone for reviewing. You're all wonderful. :) I hope everyone enjoys this next part.
The house felt so cold, so empty. It was like a tomb.

In the three weeks since she had learned of her mother’s death, Buffy felt like her heart had become a tomb too.

Frozen. Numb.

Even the pain of breathing was unfamiliar, like a foreign sensation that killed her by keeping her alive.

All she wanted was the bastard who slaughtered her mother like a dog behind bars. Of course the police didn’t have any leads on the crime. Joyce had been one of two people who had died, the other being the restaurant manager.

But in spite of numerous eye witness accounts of the well-built, tall, dark-haired gunman, the cops didn’t have any tangible leads yet.

They didn’t even have a motive. It seemed that the killings hadn’t been money based as they first suspected, but apart from eliminating that theory, they were coming up empty.

God, they were hopeless. She would probably have better luck getting out on the street and trying to find the suspect herself.

Or…maybe not. Somehow she didn’t see herself as a budding Scooby Doo.

And she definitely didn’t imagine that she would find herself making any snappy cartoon quips in the near future.

Did it get any worse than this?

That very first night, after Spike had broken the news to her, Buffy thought she had hit rock bottom. The tears had flowed freely, tricking down her sallow face and mingling with the blood that was encrusted onto Spike’s shirt as he gathered her in his arms and let her cry out her pain.

He had whispered his apologies into her ear, sobbing out his own sorrow with her. Over and over he told her how he blamed himself. She responded with whispered reassurances that she didn’t fault him for anything that had happened. After all how could he have known that would ever happen? It was bad luck, fate, destiny, whatever you want to call it.

In those moments she felt a closeness to Spike that all the nighttime fantasies in the world couldn’t replicate in a millennium.

“I did love her, you know.” He confessed through his tears, drawing back from her to look into her own puffy eyes.

“I know.” Her voice was a mix of sadness and thankfulness that her mother had been truly loved, but yet she couldn’t help the tinge of bitterness that bled through her words.

However, he either didn’t notice, or ignored that because he drew her back into his warm embrace and buried his face in her neck.

They needed each other right now.

“I love you too.” Spike’s words were so quiet that she hardly heard them. But she knew what he had said. He had told her he loved her.

And he did.

Just not in the way she would have wished. She was a daughter to him, but she didn’t think he saw her as a lover. It hit her like a train.

Of course that was not something she believed would change anytime soon. So instead she settled for crying over the loss of her mother.

Crying over how she wished she had picked up her wet towels from the bathroom floor. Crying over how she wished she hadn’t fought with Joyce over her parents’ divorce. Crying over the fact that her most stimulating fantasy was the thought of bedding her mother’s husband.

But that night the tears had dried up.

It was as if her entire ability to feel anything had left her body with the sobs that wretchedly wracked it that night. And now all that was left was an empty shell.

Spike wasn’t faring much better. He was so…distant. Since she had first met him, their relationship, aside from her girlish fantasies, had been defined by mutual playfully snarky banter. But now it was defined by icy silences and painful awkwardness.

He spent most of the time locked in the small office he had set up in their house, the sound of clicking of a keyboard and the occasional hushed conversations the only sounds emanating from the room.

Spike had taken leave from the martial arts studio that he owned, and of course, his employees had been understanding. They nodded and told him they knew how hard grief was.

Perhaps they just didn’t want to witness his impending breakdown that they all feared.

And Buffy didn’t even want to think about the drinking he was doing, but even she couldn’t spent too much time in denial about that when she saw the whiskey bottles piling up in the trash like tiny reminders that he was crumbling on the inside.

But despite the rancid quagmire that her home life was becoming, still she continued to try and be Normal-Buffy and go about her day, go to school, try to ignore the sympathetic looks from all the other kids. She didn’t want their pity. No amount of pity could raise her mother from her grave.

In the past few months, she had gradually become a loner, and this just sealed it all.

But in the harsh light of day, she could ignore the blatant realities, pretend that her life didn’t suck balls to the fucking nth degree.

Yeah, that was her…Buffy Queen of Denial.

It was, however, times like now, in the dark, with only the morbid truth to keep her company that everything started to sink in.

Yet, still she couldn’t feel. It was just like watching a movie of someone else’s life.

Clearly this movie was not a comedy.

When it became obvious that sleep was not coming to her that night, she finally peeled herself off of her bed and threw a robe over her shoulders, carefully making her way downstairs without pausing to flick on the light.

She was almost at the foot of the stairs when the sound of hushed whispers coming from the kitchen reached her ears.

“What the bloody hell do you mean he’s disappeared?”

Spike’s voice.

His accent and intonation could never be confused with another’s.

Buffy thought he had gone to bed. Or gone out drinking. When he wasn’t at home the only other thing he seemed to do was frequent some of the local dives.

Buffy frowned as she peered around the corner of the kitchen, still hidden in the shadows to see her stepfather wildly pacing, his palm plastered to his forehead. His usually perfectly quaffed peroxide locks were wildly curly, not a hint of gel in sight. He wore rumpled jeans and a T-shirt that looked like it had seen better days. Not that Buffy could criticize right now, she thought, as she looked down at her own crumpled pajamas.

“Of course I sodding know it was!…Well, saw him didn’t I?...Yeah, I’m not some bloody wet behind the ears git, I know exactly why…”

His voice was irate, his movements jerky and agitated. It couldn’t be more obvious that Spike was royally pissed off.

His little spy felt a tiny spark of happiness ignite inside her heart at that thought. She could barely remember the last time she had seen him with sure fire. Not since her mother had been…murdered.

Feeling a little guilty about intruding on Spike’s private business, Buffy desperately tried to suppress her innate curiosity, but she couldn’t help but with that she could hear the other side of the conversation.

Buffy stifled a gasp as Spike’s pacing brought him a little too close for comfort, and she was about to retreat to the sanctuary of her bedroom when she heard some fateful words.

“No, I need to make sure that my stepdaughter never finds out.”

Spinning on her heel, she stepped out into the light of the kitchen, shards of agony in the stare that she leveled at her stepfather.

There was no way she was letting this go that easy.


Chapter End Notes:
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