By: MsBigBad

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“Was it all just not good enough? Was I not good enough for her? I tried. I tried so hard, but God! I can’t. Why did this happen? Why does this always happen?” She cried burrowing further into his chest.

“Why do I do this to people?” She continued.

“Shh. No. It’s not your fault, baby, it’s not.” He assured her, slowly rocking her back and forth.

“But it is Spike. It is.” She said as if realizing it for the first time.” There’s something wrong with me.”

“Nothing’s wrong with you, pet. Nothing. You’re perfect. There could never be anything wrong with you.” He said so sincerely that it brought new tears to her already reddened eyes.

She wanted to believe him.

But she couldn’t.

“Everything’s wrong with me! Everything! And I am nothing! I mean nothing. I can’t change anyone’s life! I don’t save them! I delay their deaths! I’m nothing!” She screamed.

“You’re something to me. You’ve changed my life. You’ve saved me. You mean everything to me, Slayer. “ He said, desperately trying to make her understand.

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That conversation she’d had with Spike as he held her in the middle of her blood filled bathroom had stuck inside her mind, although she’d never let on that it had meant anything. It would press on her thoughts at the strangest times for no particular reason. It was the reason however, that she chose to live, and to work. To protect and to kill. That was the night she had found Dawn lying in a bathtub full of her own blood. That’s the night her whole world changed. That’s when the girl in her died. That’s when the woman grew up, grew old.

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She thought she was living. She thought just because her lungs took in air and because she walked around this world day by day that she was alive. She’d been dead ever since that night, and she’d refused to acknowledge it, but he knew. Her friends knew. She was a walking corpse. Living or not living by any standards. Just existing. She would listen to no one because no one could hear her. She talked to no one because no one could talk to her. She saw nothing because there was nothing left to see. She had her own world somewhere deep inside her head, and seldom did she ever leave it. She was running on auto-pilot. Going through the motions once again. She dusted vamp after vamp after vamp. No challenge. No enjoyment. No feeling. The cemetery was soon emptied, so she sat by her sister’s grave and felt nothing.

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She could sense him coming. She always could. She got up and walked to the front gates. She didn’t want to talk to him. She didn’t want to se him. She didn’t even want to remember that he existed.

He was in front of her in an instant and she was pushing past.

“Runnin’ away again, Slayer?” He asked.

“I don’t know what you’re talking about.” She replied, shouldering him out of her path.

“No, you wouldn’t would you?”

“I have to go Spike.” She said, suddenly running away from him.

“Buffy!” He yelled after her.

She continued to run, so he began to chase her. Finally he caught up, spinning her around to lock eye contact.

“What? What? What do you want me to do? Stop? Just stop? Forget? Pretend I never had a sister? That I never loved a sister? That I never held a sister? So maybe you don‘t think she was real because she was made by the monks. You think I should be able to just get over it because she wasn‘t real, but she was the only thing, person I had! She was real to me. She was mine? How am I supposed to forget?” She asked in desperation, tears running down her cheeks in a flood of emotion. The first feeling she’d had in forever.

His hand went to her face and wiped her pain away the best he could.

“No” He shook his head. “Never forget. Never stop loving her because she was real. She was real to all of us. You just have to learn to live without her. That’s all. You can’t keep this up. The way you’re acting, it’s gonna get you killed. Maybe that’s what you want, but I know what Dawn would want. She wouldn’t want this. Just try Buffy.”

“Do you think I haven’t tried? That I haven’t wanted it to stop? Do you think this pain feels good? It doesn’t. I’ve done this already. I remember, after I came back I felt this way, I wanted it to stop. I tried. It only got worse. Everything I do, every time I breathe, every time I think, every time I cry; it just gets worse. It hurts. It hurts so bad.” She confessed.

“I know luv, but you’re not the only one hurting…” He began.

“You know? Do you? Do you know what it’s like to be me? To have no one? To kill everything around you just because you’re you. Because a few million years ago someone thought up this whole chosen deal? Do you know what it’s like to lose everything you care about? Lose everyone you ever gave a damn about? They’re all gone! FOREVER…gone!” She went off on him.

“Slayer, listen at what you’re doin’ to yourself! Don’t you remember the way you used to be? Huh? How happy you were?” He asked.

“Happy! Happy! I haven’t been happy all my life! My parents divorced. I got kicked out of school. Then I came here where there was always something new to fight. I had to kill my boyfriend, lie to my mom, go to school, and try to have a normal life all at the same time! Do you know how many apocalypses I’ve stopped? Really? Do you know, because by now I’ve lost count! My mom died. I died. I came back, then my sister. They took my sister from me! I did it. It’s my fault! I said it and I made it happen! I don’t have a sister! I said that to her! Then I hurt her! How could I hurt her? How could I do that? I don’t understand how you can hurt someone you love like that? She‘s dead because of me!”

“Oh would you shut you’re whining up? Snap out of it! It’s done! It can’t be changed! Live with it! Boo hoo hoo, I’m Buffy and my life is awful! I can’t stand it! I wish I were dead! Won’t someone please feel sorry for me? Well you should have thought about that before you abandoned the scoobies. Let them feel sorry for you, because I don’t! Cause that’s not what you need Slayer. You know it. You don’t need someone to listen to you cry. They done that for you and it didn’t help did it? No. You need someone to slap it outta you.” He concluded, finally getting an idea.

“They don’t even listen. They sit there waiting for the right time to tell me everything’s gonna be fine.” She sobbed.

“If you’d just try talking with them and being patient with them you’d get what you wanted.” He chides.

“Oh, really, would I? So, you’re doing the same thing then. Go talk to your friends. Everything’s gonna be fine. Talk to them and maybe you’ll get your sister or your mom back. Is that all it takes Spike? Really? Because if that’s all it takes to make everything fine again…” She said, sarcasm dripping off every shaky word.

“No. Everything’s not gonna be fine Slayer, but who’s life is? Or unlife for that matter? Nothing is perfect Buffy. Not even you. Everyone has hardships to bear, some more than others, but can’t let that stop you. What happened to the fearless, determined, fiery woman that I fell in love with?” He asked, hoping she would take some offense and show that she wasn’t all gone.

“She died last year.” She replied coldly.

“Yeah, I guess she did.” He shook hid head and started back to his crypt.

She let out a sigh of relief that was all too soon. Before she could even register what was happening she found herself flat on her back. The wet clay of a freshly dug grave sunk into her clothing. Six feet above stood the bleach blond asshole who’d put her there.

“You’re not getting off that easy.” He warned.

“Easy? You think…” She started to protest.

“I don’t think it sweetheart, I know so. An’ like I said, enough with the pity ditties. You’re all talk and no action. You really have changed.”

“For someone who doesn’t like talking,” She said, clawing her way out of the grave, suppressing any bad memories it brought back. “you sure do a lot of it. Let’s see a little more action, Spike!” She promptly grabbed his leg, trying to make him unsteady.

He tipped forward only to regain his balance and smirk at her. She replied with a swift kick to his ass that sent him diving head first into the open grave.

“I fuhhckingh haaht yoooahh Slahherh !” Came the muffled insult, distorted because he was still lying face down in the mud.

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What had started out as a light drizzle was now turning out to be a heavy flood of eye stinging rain. The thunder rolled and lightening made it’s crooked way to the ground somewhere in the distance.

What had started out as a good talking to and a possible light slap had now turned into an all out war. Slayer and vampire rolled in the mud of that grave kicking, biting, and clawing at one another. A timeless dance they’d long since adapted to. Somehow Spike had gotten the upper hand this round and pinned her beneath him, holding her arms back and sinking further into the brown muck with every second. Her feet were kicking wildly trying desperately to reach him. His left leg locked around hers, preventing it from moving any further. Then he did the same with his right. They were a sight to see if you could actually recognize them.

“You’re not gettin’ out of this one, Slayer.”

She made one final attempt to get up and failed miserably. Spike was right for once, she wasn’t getting out of this anytime soon.

She was helpless… again. Spike was here… again, and she knew if she asked him to, regardless of everything he’d just said, he’d hold her again and tell her sweet things, just like he had that night. But he was right, again. In fact in her mind he’d never been more right in one night as he had this night. She didn’t need words. Words meant nothing if you couldn’t hear them. If you couldn’t read them or even understand them. She let herself relax into the sludgy mud of someone else’s final resting place, not too sure that it wouldn’t be hers. She cried.

She let it all out and the hands that were holding her down soon came around her waist and then proceeded to sit her tired body upright. He was behind her, sitting with his legs in a V. He pulled her back with him against the wet dirt. He kissed her hair that was a complete mess. He held her and said nothing. No kind words. No verbal reassurance of the days to come. Just comforting silence and the whispers the heart makes, weather it is beating or not, when it’s breaking for someone else. She cried into the night until she sobbed with dry matted eyes and her mouth felt like a desert.

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“You know you said I was perfect. In the bathroom that night. You held me and told me I was perfect. You told me there could never be anything wrong with me.”

“Didn’t think you remembered that.” He said, stringing his hand through her hair.

“You lied to me.” She accused.

“Luv, you’re just about as close to perfect as I’ve ever seen.” He put his finger under her chin and turned her face to him.

“That’s not a compliment coming from you. You thought Drusilla was perfect!”

“Hey, and Angel was so great?”

He looked at her taking his brow in his hands and tried to stretch it over his eyelids.

“No, Buffy, we can’t tonight. We can’t ever! You know how grumpy I am if I actually get some! And besides I’m two hundred years old even Viagra can’t help me with my problem!”

She couldn’t help, but burst out laughing. The impression was so cheesy and Spike’s face was so cute! Wait did she just say Spike was cute? She couldn’t think of it for too long because she was still clutching her sides in laughter over the whole thing.

“Do you realize what you’re doin’ Buffy?” Spike asked. “You’re laughing.”

“Yeah, I guess I am!” She said a bright smile gleaming on her face.

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