Spoilers: All of the Buffy series up to the end of Season 5 and “The Gift”
Dedicated: To Emmy – my sister, my friend, my hero, my country music addict. You never cease to amaze me with you strength and grace through everything you’re dealt, kiddo. Thanks for seeing more than just me.
A/N: The title and lyrics used in this fanfic are taken from Martina McBride’s song “Concrete Angel”.
A statue stands in a shaded place,
An angel girl with an upturned face,
A name is written on a polished rock,
A broken heart that the world forgot
The night was clouded and bleak, the promise of rain heavy on the breeze. He moved through the shadows in silence, a breath and whisper, nothing more nothing less. How many nights had he tread this hallowed ground? How many nights had he heard her calling to him? How many nights had he answered her? Too many to count; too many to differentiate between anymore. When his mistress called him he went, no questions asked.
He stared down at the small plot of earth before him, the smooth surface of the granite stone looking back at him, strangely soft in the harshness of the darkness around. He dropped heavily to his knees before it, the grass supple, yielding to his weight, cupping his knees in soft solidity. His hands fell heavy in his lap as he stared at the slab of granite, his eyes running back and forth over the name etched there…Buffy Summers.
He felt his throat growing thick with emotion and he swallowed hard, pushing the tears down. She’d seen him cry too many nights now. Tonight he would be strong; he would be strong for the woman he loved. He leaned back on his heels, a hand reaching out brushing a stray smudge of dirt from her shining face. That is what it was now; this granite façade proclaiming her name. It was her face. It was as close as he could get to her face now, the smooth cool surface of her tombstone, replacing the warm feel of her skin against his fingertips. Again he felt emotions moving upward inside of him and again he willed them back to the recesses of his soulless dead heart.
Soulless. Dead heart. Vampire. That was what he was, a demon pure and simple and yet she had complicated it all for him. She had let him into her world, her world of courage, of faith, of undying devotion to friends and her mission. She had given him a chance, reluctantly at first, but she had offered him the opportunity to change and he had taken it, at least as much as he could change who and what he was. Though she had never loved him as he had longed for her to, she had treated him like a man, not a demon, seeing in him a worth and spirit far greater than anything he had ever dreamed of possessing. She had in essence helped him to transform, to be reborn as something more than just a simple demon, a common vampire. He had found a purpose and even an estranged form of love and friendship removed and outside of the base carnal passions of his bloodlust.
Pulling a cigarette from his pocket he lit the tip and took in a long drag, letting the smoke out, slow and steady. “Here we are again, Slayer,” he whispered to the silence around him. “Our little waltz doesn’t seem to want to end.”
The breeze moved around him, caressing his face, tousling the curls that had started to fall loose from the gel in his hair. He closed his eyes listening to it as if he could pull the soft melody of her voice from the recesses of his mind and send them dancing alive again across the air. It had only been a little over a month and a half since he had last heard her speak, but in his cold dead heart it felt like an eternity.
“I saved you again last night, pet,” he whispered aloud again, his eyes watching ashes tumble from the lit end of his cigarette; falling red, glowing through the air, fading to gray before being whisked away by the breeze. Whisked away out of his life, like so many things, so many much more precious treasures.
“If only I’d been faster, just one bloody second faster I never would have fallen, the Little Bit never would have been cut, and you’d be here, doing right by everyone now.” He sighed, his head falling forward into his hands. “I failed you, luv. You asked one small favor of me and I went and messed it all up. Should have staked me long ago.”
Releasing his head he moved back a few inches, his cigarette hanging from his lips once again. “No point feeling sorry for ol’ Spike, now is there. I just want you to know I’m keeping my promise. She’ll be safe this time. No one will ever lay one finger on her as long as I’m breathing, so you needn’t worry about that one, luv.”
His cigarette was almost out and he snuffed the fading embers out between his fingers. The moon had started to break through the thick cloud cover and bathed the gravestone before him in a soft blue light. God he missed her. All those time he thought being rid of her would ease the ache in his chest, the burning in his blood. But no, without her the pain was more intense, a ceaseless constant reminder of what he had never had yet lost just the same; what they all had lost. And all his heroic dreams of catching her, of saving her could never change that fact. She was gone and he still lived.
That thought in and of itself seemed so unfair to him, so unjust. He chuckled softly to himself, the irony of it all hanging suspended like stars in the darkness before him; Spike, the big bad vampire who had killed two slayers railing against the injustice of the world because this slayer was dead. Wasn’t death nothing more than the inevitable fate for any slayer? It would have been just a matter of time, right? Eventually she would have slipped up and Death would be calling her hand. She was a just another girl, just another in the line of slayers. Why then did it feel so wrong? Why was there no sense of finality, no feeling of closure to her life?
It was because Buffy was different; Buffy had been different, and she deserved more, a hell of a lot more than just some small curved stone for her ending. There had never been a slayer to match, at least none he had lived to see or heard of, and he doubted there ever would be another. He had never seen someone with such passion, such drive, such determination to at least try, to do all she could without a thought about her own life. Or maybe that’s just what being a slayer was all about, that weight, that responsibility. No. There was something more in her. Or maybe it was more what she had done to him that had made the difference, made her larger than life.
Two slayers dead by his hand, and several others faced and dealt with. He was a living legend, a scourge of humanity and yet with a bat of her lashes, toss of her eternally bouncy hair he had thrown up his hands and admitted defeat. No stake to the heart, no cloud of fading dust, rather she had defeated him, stolen away his freedom, his love, his very self with the essence of whom she was, of what she had become to him. He loved her not because he would never have her. No, after Dru had left him he could deal with unrequited love. He loved her for the promise that loving her offered him; the promise that someday she could at least respect him, that he could earn friendship from her, and maybe, in the process earn a bit of himself back as well. Oh god did he miss her.
And never once had he been able to tell her everything he had wanted to. Oh she knew he loved her, she had nearly gotten physically sick when he poured out his heart to her, but that had been when his love was mostly lust, when he himself had not fully understood its depth. And now, now he was lost to her in the greater sense of the word. His love was unending now, surpassing time and space and he knew he would be bound to it forever, a part of him that would never fully heal. He closed his eyes again, the poet within him moving, whispering to him.
“I miss you, luv. Things just aren’t the same anymore without you. House is a mess, Bit’s all big with the bossy and the crying, Red hasn’t smiled in weeks, even Xander’s been chatty with me and you know that can’t be a good sign. It’s chaos without you here.” He paused, the breeze picking up again, the moon moving back behind the clouds. “Sure that’s not what you’d be wanting to hear now is it, all warm and safe wherever it is you are. And you’d be right. Suppose we can’t keep going around dragging our feet and all but I’m not any closer to figuring out where to go from here. World owes you more than this little rock and that wooden box you’re napping in that’s for sure. Feel like there should have been some eclipse of the sun, some bloody earthquake, something. Suppose you were never one for the big send offs. Do your job, give it your best shot and let the chips land where they will. Well to hell with that! I’m not ashamed to admit it. We’re bloody lost down here without you, Buffy! And I for one don’t give a damn whether you are happily strumming away on some sodden harp. You left us! What are we suppose to do now?”
Emotion cracked his voice, as his question hung heavy in the air. A sob, hot and angry bubbled out and his hand instinctively came up, cradling the sides of his head. “When will you let me go?” he cried to the sky around him. The wind was picking up now, the temperature dropping. The air was heavy, pregnant with rain.
“Angel, even that wanker, Riley, you had your turn at them both and eventually let them go. But not me, not Spike your eternal punching bag, no, you’re not through with me yet, are you pet? No never, never let me go, never get out of my blood, just going to keep burning and bleeding me until I’ve got nothing left to give.” He pushed himself up to his feet and began to pace angrily, throwing glares like daggers down upon the stone. “I tried for you, tried it all your way. Threw aside all that my insides were telling me was right,” he stood legs spread in front of the headstone, his right hand clenching his chest. “Gave up ever last bloody ounce of reason and stood by you. I’m a demon; it’s what I am, it’s what I follow, and you, you just took it all away from me, you and that Boy Scout troop from hell with their bloody chip!”
He turned sharply on his heels, cutting into the soft earth, and began to pace again. “And for your information I was doing just fine with the whole demon thing, had my reputation and everything. Two for two on the slayer count. Yep, all white houses and picket fences for William the Bloody, and then you worm your way into my blood and I can’t get you out, can’t make you leave. And now it just burns and nothing can make it stop. Can’t scream you out, can’t cry you out, bloody hell I can’t even drink you out! How am I supposed to live with this fire inside? I’m being eaten alive, Buffy, and it’s not fair!”
He listened to his voice echoing off of the silence of the graveyard, heard his words dancing back around his own ears. He sounded like a petulant child; a spoiled brat who lost his favorite toy and was throwing a tantrum because his mother wouldn’t buy him a new one. What was wrong with him? It wasn’t all about him, none of it was. His grief, his pain, that was all consequential. All side notes to the greater story before him. Her death wasn’t some conspiracy plan to hurt him, to leave him eternally bound to her. She’d sacrificed everything without a second thought for the world, for her friends, for Dawn. And here he was berating her memory, dishonoring all that she had surrendered because he felt badly about it.
“I’m such a fool,” he whispered aloud, dropping heavily to his knees before her. He stared down at his hands as his mind began to unfocus, his thoughts drifting back. He found himself stumbling over their first meeting, their fights, their battles, and their unholy alliance against Angel. He recalled the first night he knew she was in his blood, the fights when just having her body close, whether she was hitting him or insulting him, was all that he could focus on. The way she smelled and the way she smiled, the way she laughed.
He stared hard at his upturned palms in his lap as his mind was flooded with fantasies, ones he played out with his robot pet and ones he had kept locked in his heart. He imagined again what it would feel like to have her in his arms, to kiss her mouth, to taste her, the real her. The chaste kiss she had given him for protecting Dawn despite what Glory had done to him still scorched his lips when he thought about it. He felt his chest grow tight as he delved deeper into his mind. He pictured her body naked and strong beneath him, the feel of him inside of her, the sound of her moaning his name against the side of his head, all of it washed over him like a storm surge. The way their bodies would cool side by side beneath the sheets as the body rush passed, the way she would feel in his arms as she slept, and the way she would say ‘I love you’ to him, smiling up from the pillow beside him.
But none of that mattered, not then, not now, not ever. It wasn’t real. He had never been worthy of her then and could never be now. So once again he was left alone with his fantasies, his dreams, his hopes.
He leaned back on his heels again. The wind was starting to really pick up, but still he lingered in silence before her, not wanting to leave, knowing he could not stay forever. There was no place for him now, a vampire who had killed his own kind, who had allied himself with the slayer. No he was a pariah whichever world he chose, human or demon. She had been his bridge, his council, and now he was adrift alone and unwanted.
A tear brought his mind back from the abyss of self-pity he had started to drift into, and he quickly wiped it away. “I’m sorry, luv,” he whispered aloud, “for so much.” The blank face of the gravestone stared back at him, smooth, emotionless, the hard biting edge of reality.
“But I’ll make up for it, you’ll see. I keep my word, pet. I’ll keep fighting the good fight wherever it takes me, and I’ll protect them, all of them. Then maybe someday you’ll forgive me.” He said the last few words with his head bowed low, his hands gripping the sides of the granite stone.
The sky opened up then, large fat drops of icy cold rain poured down from above. The drops stung at his face and head, dripping, running, biting at his skin, but still he remained bowed before her, silently offering his penance, begging for mercy, for forgiveness. Rain pushed strands of his blond hair down over the front of his forehead, forming a river of water that ran down his cheekbones, diving off his chin and nose to the ground below. He felt his knees sink deeper as the grass opened up and drank in the water. His duster shone slick and wet in the faint moonlight, a crash of lightning illuminating the graveyard around, painting the image of him, the vampire, and the penitent man in sharp contrast to deep shadows all around.
Finally, slowly, he rose to his feet. He stood drenched, shivering, staring down at her. He turned up the collar of his duster, wrapping the open front flaps tighter around him, stuffing his hands deeply into his pockets. The night could storm all it wanted, he cared not. Without a word, without a sound, he started to walk backwards, slowly, his eyes still trained on her face, her stone. Finally he felt the solid brush of his destination behind him.
Turning, he stared up into the driving rain at the face of the stone angel that loomed over him, her wings outstretched. One carved hand clutched her breast, the other reaching out ahead of her directly at Buffy’s stone. She was quite a few years old, her nose and eyes softened by the wear of time, but still she kept her watch over all that lay at her feet, including the new shiny stone before her. The stone that now belonged to his angel.
In a world that she can't rise above
But her dreams give her wings and she flies to a place where she's loved,
Concrete angel
The rain continued until just before dawn. As the sun began to warm the pre-dawn air, he finally stirred from his vigil. Within the shelter of the angel’s wings he had sat through the storm, always watching, always guarding. But now, now it was the sun’s turn to warm her resting place, to beat down on her with radiant light, to celebrate her life and sacrifice in the shining glint of her stone face, in the soft hues of the flowers that would be placed there soon enough. So quietly he knelt before her, touching his cold lips to the cool face of hers, and made his goodbye.
“Tonight, luv, I save you again.”
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Very special thanks to Angela for being the best beta reader!