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“What are you saying Buffy?” Spike asked softly, unable to bear the pain in her eyes and voice.

“Pancreatic Cancer, one of the only things my mom every gave me.” She broke off for a minute to straighten her clothes, needing some barrier between them as she talked. “When I was fifteen, the family I was staying with was going to adopt me. While the papers were going through the system, they tried to add me to the health insurance. During the mandatory health screening, my lab work came back with an abnormality. A few tests later I was diagnosed and the family decided they didn’t want a kid with cancer. The state paid for the surgery and my treatment and when I turned sixteen they told me that it had spread. They gave me drugs and they made me sicker than the cancer ever had. I overheard the doctor telling my social worker that I would have a few years at the most and I decided I was better off living what ever time I had left on my own terms.”

“But you could go back on the drugs and…”

“Wrong.” Buffy said softly. “Being a whore had its own risks and when I started getting sick again I thought I had picked up something from one of my johns. I went to one of the free clinics and found out I was clean STD wise but my labs showed that my cancer was spreading even more quickly than the other doctor could have guessed. Turns out slayer healing may work like a charm on nicks and stab wounds but it was like adding gas to the fire when it came to my cancer. The doctor gave me some more meds but he told me I had maybe a year left…that was about six months ago. Which was why I wasn’t overly surprised when Tara said I had the aura of a dead person.”

“Buffy I am so…” Spike said reaching for her but he found himself roughly shoved away.

“Don’t say that you’re sorry for me Spike.” Buffy told him coldly. “After the life I’ve led, cancer was like getting out early for time served. I made peace with the fact that the end was seriously neigh and then I met you. I’ve lived more in this moment with you than all the years before that combined so don’t ruin that by feeling sorry for me. I finally got to know what it was like to be happy and that was something you gave me. You made me feel safe and warm, loved…you showed me what it was like to be loved. After nineteen miserable years, I knew what it was like to be not be alone and to feel something other than pain. Which is why I can’t let you take that third bite…I won’t bring you down with me, just after I learned what it was like to really live.”

“There is another way…let me bring you over.” Spike said softly his voice heavy with pain. Love was blinding but it also could make you see with perfectly clarity in times of absolute darkness. Buffy didn’t deserve to be forced down the path of torment the fates had put her on, one dark twist after another…she had suffered more than a single soul should be forced to bear. If the light, the pure and holy couldn’t see that then the darkness would embrace her. He was death given earthly fet and he could take her some place to hide from the reaper of mortals. Since the devil had always dealt in a different coin, their blood could be used to purchase anything, even another chance at life…or something like it. “You don’t have to be alone anymore and since I can’t go with you…come to me.”

“I have sinned but you’re not talking about delivering me from evil…you’re talking about me becoming it. I’ve done a lot of bad things in my life Spike, but I am not about to become the thing others fear. I know what it’s like to be a victim, frightened and unable to fight back…it would destroy the part of me that you love, if I became the hands reaching out from the darkness.”

“What if you didn’t have to,” Spike said pulling her back into his arms. “Could you live without another moment of pure happiness, if it meant you could live without becoming a monster?”

“The curse…Angel’s curse? What does that have to do with me, I mean it‘s not like there are very many gypsies hanging around Sunnydale.” Buffy said, not understanding what he was trying to tell her.

“When Angel lost his soul, Red restored his curse. He never knew that it had a trigger but your fear of becoming a monster would be enough to trap your soul. It might not work for him because he has always been weak but your will is the strongest I have ever seen. You could still feel everything, just as long as happiness didn’t fill you entirely.” He pressed a firm kiss on her forehead and cupped her face in his palms, stroking his thumb across her cheek. “I’ll hide you away and keep you from hurting anyone until she can perform the spell. Just like you I have never felt complete, then I met you and all of the missing pieces fell into place. I’ve been waiting for you forever luv, and I am not about to let you go just when we found each other. You’ve been cold inside but your body feels alive and this is the chance to trap that fire beneath the surface and even though your skin is cold to the touch, you’re warm and alive inside. So say yes Buffy, not just because I want you to but because you want to.”

She wished that she could say she wasn’t afraid of the passion in his words but she was. Intimacy was more terrifying than death but like Eve with the first taste of an apple…she couldn’t go back now. It would take more than a single tear to wash away all of the emptiness still inside her but she had been willing to die. So was it really wrong to want a chance to live instead, she asked herself searching her mind. He was offering her a choice. A real choice about where her life could go from here while everything else had been forced on her, expecting her to deal with the aftermath alone.

The Powers had turned her into a slayer but even if she accepted Spike’s offer, she would be the one who decided how to use that power. Control had always been paramount in her life and she had used it to ruthlessly dictate the way the things she hadn’t asked for affected her. It had been the same with her cancer, it wasn’t something she could stop from taking her over but she had refused to let it tell her how to live the years she had left. If she decided to do this, she needed to know that she could control her death just as completely. “I need you to promise me something and if you can’t my answer is no.”

“I would die before I broke a promise to you, so whatever it is you know I will do whatever it takes to keep my word.”

“If the curse doesn’t work or if they won’t do the spell, I want you to promise to kill me. I know that if the demon takes me over completely, I won’t be able to stop myself. So I am asking you to promise that I won’t have to live inside my body watching as my hands are used to kill.”

He wanted to beg her to ask him to promise something else, slay a dragon or some other daunting task, anything other than to be solely responsible for ending her existence. Closing his eyes he tried to imagine pushing a stake into her chest and staring down at the ashes instead of the face he loved but as hard as it was to force the images to play out in his mind, he couldn’t deny her last request. Not because she wouldn’t accept his offer but because she would only truly die if she became the type of thing that could take an innocent life. She was a champion, not because the Powers that Be said it was so but because it was her choice to be. “I promise.” He vowed solemnly, never taking his eyes off of her face. He would do what he must but he alone understood that he had condemned himself to die along with her.





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