Black. Black pants, black belt, black shirt… black boots? No, not the shitkicker boots... real shoes today. Shined, even. He stood up, and smoothed the creases from his pants. Funny, he hadn’t been wearing much black lately, had been trying out a new look, some gray, some earth tones. He had broken into a Gap store one night a couple of weeks ago and helped himself to a whole new wardrobe. He hadn’t stolen any money though... No the Slayer wouldn’t like him stealing money. Okay... the Slayer wouldn’t like him stealing clothing either... he knew that. But he *needed* the clothes now, didn’t he?

Not that *that* would make any difference to the Slayer. Not bloody likely. ‘Thou shalt not steal’. Those were the kind of rules the Slayer lived by. He knew those bloody rules... had had them drilled into him in endless Sunday sermons, but had found them amazingly easy to ignore over the last century or so. Until now. If he wanted the Slayer, and God, how he wanted the Slayer, he had to live by her rules. And he was trying. But he really had *needed* the clothes... he couldn’t go around for the rest of his bloody unlife dressed like he was going to a funeral, could he? Only he was. This morning. Going to a funeral, that is.

Spike stood up and pulled on a short leather sport coat. No duster today. He smoothed his hair back, fixing it by feel, as usual. He could tell that it was almost 11:00, his body so attuned to the rise and fall of the sun that he had no need of watches or clocks. Still, he paused...

The Slayer didn’t want him there. She had made that clear enough, planning this morning service knowing that he would be excluded. But, as powerful as the Slayer was, she didn’t control everything. Spike listened to the rain beating down on the roof of his crypt. Sometimes, even he, surely the most wretched of vampires, caught a break. Not only could he attend Joyce’s funeral but, in the pouring rain, nobody could see him cry.

Spike waited impatiently for a few more minutes, until he was sure the service had begun, then he crept quietly, with his vampire’s stealth toward the crowd surrounding the newly dug grave. The turnout was large... In the sea of umbrellas, Spike couldn’t tell who was who. He assumed that all of Buffy’s friends were there as well as Joyce’s friends and colleagues from the gallery. None of them would be pleased to see him there... save one. *She* was the reason he was risking the Slayer’s wrath. He tried to see her in the crowd, but she would have been way up front and lost under an umbrella. He stood behind a tree, and listened to the words the minister intoned. ‘Ashes to ashes, dust to dust..." Ironic words to a vampire. He soon tuned out the minister’s drone, and turned to thoughts of Joyce.

Their first meeting had been an inauspicious one. She had tried to kill him with an ax, though it was a natural reaction, since he had been trying to kill her daughter at the time. A slayer with a family and friends... Definitely not in the brochure. Yet, as his fate and the Slayer’s had become more and more entwined over the past few years, he had gotten to know Joyce. She had been so kind to him after Dru left, giving him cocoa with little marshmallows. In a way, she reminded him of his own long-dead mother, a widow struggling on her own to raise two children. She had tried to make him a gentleman, and had pretty much succeeded, but his life had taken a rather unexpected detour, and he had murdered her for her pains. Still there was something about Joyce that brought out that long buried gentleman, and made him laugh at her boring gallery anecdotes, and make polite chit chat with her, since that’s how a gentleman behaved, wasn’t it?

But mostly, Joyce was one of only two people in the last century or so, who had treated him like a human being, instead of a monster. And with her, he had felt like a human being, and he would never have hurt her even without the chip. He had secretly worried when she became ill, but the surgery had cured her... she had been well and entertained him in her kitchen only a week or so ago. Then, the news.

The Slayer would never even have told him... She thought of him as a monster, and why would a monster care? But Dawn had come to him. Dawn. Why she had come to him, he didn’t know. Well, part of it was a teenage crush on big bad Spike, but Dawn had a slight humanity problem of her own and they had formed a curious bond. She wasn’t afraid of him, even knowing what he was. He had told her horrible stories about his past... all true, and she wasn’t horrified. While Joyce had seen him as a human being, Dawn saw him as a monster... but, unlike her sister, she liked him anyway. He had hugged her gently while she cried, thankful that the Slayer couldn’t see him and accuse him of God knows what, and had sent her home before Buffy came looking for her... he had learned that lesson all too well.

The crowd was breaking up, umbrellas coming down as the rain stopped. He saw Buffy with Giles and the rest of the Scooby Gang. She was holding Dawn’s hand protectively... her reddened Slayer eyes searching the crowd for signs of Glory or other trouble. Spike looked at Buffy, so beautiful and strong and so very sad, and his heart ached for her. She turned…their eyes met, and for one precious second, Spike felt that they connected... but then Buffy turned on her patented "loathsome creature" look that he knew so well. She hid her feelings behind a wall of iron, that girl, but he knew that they were in there... Some day he would reach them. But not today. His coming here had made her angry… he could see it, though she wouldn’t make a scene. He would pay for it later, he supposed. But Buffy, as much as he loved her, was not why he was here today. Dawn, at Buffy’s side looked up and saw him. Her sweet face lit up. She mouthed the words, "You came! Thanks!" and smiled at him, through her tears, before Buffy pulled her away towards the waiting cars.

The End

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