“Come on Doc. Let’s you and me have a go.” Spike edged down the platform, keeping his eyes trained on the demon in front of him. He couldn’t look at Dawn, wouldn’t allow himself to be distracted by anything that might take his focus off of the demon, who by all rights should have already been dead and rotting in hell.
Doc blinked, and said in his disconcertingly gentle voice, “I do have a prior appointment.” He nodded towards the girl, a move that went far to enrage the vampire.
Spike stopped, muscles tensing for attack. “This won’t take long.”
The demon hiding behind the old man’s face just blinked his black eyes and smiled slightly. “No, I don’t imagine it will.”
Suddenly, the demon wasn’t in front of him, but behind, sinking a blade through skin, muscle and bone. The pain was so sudden and sharp that his knees buckled, plunging the weapon even deeper. The knife lodged in one of his ribs, grinding against bone, sticking fast. The vampire stumbled sideways, taking Doc’s knife with him. He managed to put himself squarely between the old demon and Dawn.
“You don’t come near the girl, Doc.”
Doc looked down at his hand, as if confused that it was empty. He blinked again slowly, no hint of a smile remaining on his lined features. With another lightning-fast move, he was on Spike, hand grasping for the knife. They grappled briefly, but the motion sent the pain in his back sky-rocketing.
Spike stumbled sideways and suddenly he was in the air, falling.
Right before his body hit the ground, Spike caught a glimpse of Buffy racing up the tower. Without his knife, Doc was going to have a hard time cutting Dawn before facing a very angry slayer.
The pain of the impact drove all but one thought out of his mind: that he had kept his promise.
Day 2
Spike woke, and for about two seconds the dream was real. The brief flash of hope catapulted him into wakefulness.
Awareness ushered him into his own personal hell.
It was difficult to tell the difference between the physical pain of his battered body and the psychological pain of knowing the full extent of his failure. Each fed the other until the cacophony of self recriminations and damaged nerves was deafening.
He had promised to keep Dawn safe.
He had not.
That failure had forced Buffy to pay the ultimate price. She had died. The math was simple. Spike had killed the woman he loved as surely as if he had sunk his fangs into her throat and drained her dry.
Spike lay on his bed, still as the corpse that he was. Moving hurt... even thinking hurt. Part of him wished that the earth would open up and swallow him whole: anything to make the pain stop. The rest of him bitterly decided that it was no more than he deserved.
He had killed Buffy. He deserved all of the agony he felt and more. The math was simple.
Spike didn’t know how long he lay there, unbreathing, unblinking, a willing victim of the voices within, when he heard the sound of footsteps upstairs. A traitorous spark of hope wondered if one of the others had finally come with a stake to finish him.
The vampire hadn’t been able to walk after the fall from the tower. The body might have been able, but the rest was unwilling. He had simply shut down, ragged sobs fading into rasping gasps, and then nothing. He had curled on his side and just let the sun come. It had been his sudden silence that had drawn the attention of the stricken Scoobies. Either that or it was the smell. Burning human flesh, living or not, wasn’t a pleasant odor.
He had found himself covered in a worn tarp from the construction site and bundled into a car. Giles and Xander had returned the vampire to his crypt and dropped him on the bed. The grieving watcher had even removed Spike’s coat and draped it across the dresser. They had talked most of the way, sometimes to him, sometimes to each other. He hadn’t really heard them. Listening would have taken caring, and he was otherwise occupied.
He also hadn’t moved since the two had left yesterday. Hadn’t left the bed…Hadn’t changed his clothes…Hadn’t eaten. Moving would have taken caring, and he was otherwise occupied.
The footsteps made it to the ladder that lead into his sleeping quarters and started down. Spike was facing the opposite wall. All it would take to identify his visitor was to turn his head, but he didn’t. He could have inhaled, tasting the scent of the air to get the same answer, but he didn’t do that either. He couldn’t completely close his ears though, and the sound of a rapid heartbeat was deafening.
Human, then. Maybe he or she had brought a stake.
“Spike?” The voice was timid, but familiar - Willow. “I came to see how you were.”
Not a stake then. The vampire lost interest.
Willow walked closer, booted heels padding softly over the carpeted, earthen floor.
“Dawnie said you were stabbed before…” she trailed off, obviously veering away from the painful topic.
Spike could sympathize.
“Uh, I brought a first aid kit,” she said lamely. When he continued to just lie there, Willow walked around and into his line of sight. That earned a slight response. Blue eyes, flecked with angry gold sparks glared miserably at the witch. Spike couldn’t understand why she was pretending to care instead of leaving him to his misery.
Willow squatted down, coming face to face with the prone vampire. Her eyes were red and puffy, and her hair was a lanky mess. She didn’t look as bad as Spike himself, but it was close. “Spike, we’re going to have a… ceremony,” she blinked back the moisture that had suddenly risen in her eyes, “tonight. Dawnie… Well, she really wants you to be there.”
That elicited a spark of interest, though probably not in the way Willow intended. The redhead took his change of mood as an improvement. Spike allowed himself to be helped up into a sitting position. He didn’t even offer a word of complaint when she pulled a small pair of scissors out of her first aid kit and started cutting away the ruined pieces of his shirt from where they had started to heal into the knife wound. She tried to talk to him at first, but it seemed that Willow’s gregariousness was yet another victim of Glory’s tower.
The ensuing silence was a welcome relief.
She had to use tweezers to remove the pieces of fabric that were trapped in the healing tissue. Her hands faltered a little when she rested her knuckles on his back to get a better angle with the tweezers and the pressure made the broken edge of a shattered rib grind under her hand. Spike didn’t even flinch. After a long moment, Willow started working again, cleaning the wound and pulling the ragged edges together with waterproof butterfly bandages and medical glue.
The twinge of the broken bone ached, but it was just one more pain amongst many. Spike ignored it, and focused instead on the first threads of a plan that was quickly outlining itself in his mind.
When Willow told him that he might want to clean up his other wounds; he actually managed to dredge up the motivation to nod. Clean, yes. He would need to be as clean as possible with another slayer’s blood still staining his hands. He owed it to Buffy to not reek of burned flesh and stale blood at her funeral.
Afterwards, it wouldn’t really matter.
In times past, when a samurai had shamed himself beyond all redemption, he would take his own life in order to atone for his failure. To die with their honor intact, the warrior caste of Japan developed rituals and methods designed to ensure that the act was not a coward’s way out. This was no quick, painless death, even when a second was tapped to help end the shamed warrior’s life. It was the poetry and pain of the act that earned a samurai’s redemption.
Spike found the concept appealing.
He watched the silvery casket being lowered into the earth. The generator controlling the straps that held the coffin suspended above the hole that would be its final resting place hummed quietly.
The Scoobies all looked shell-shocked.
There had been little talking, even from the start. Dawn had hugged the vampire briefly when she had first arrived. He had mechanically returned the gesture, holding her close. That had earned a few sharp looks, but he was too numb to care. Dawn had favored him with a watery smile before retreating to the side of the open grave closest to the casket and the ceremony had begun.
Giles appeared to have aged years in one day, but true to form, his face was dry. Spike had no doubt that the watcher would shed his tears over the privacy of his personal stock of scotch. Willow had lost the fragile composure that had sustained her during her visit to his crypt. Silent tears were running unchecked down her expressive face. Tara, looking lost and haunted, held her girlfriend in gentle arms, trying her best to ease the redhead’s sorrow. Xander’s face held a kind of horrified fascination and disbelief, as if he fully expected Buffy to spring out of the casket and announce that it had all been a terrible joke. Anya, who was probably the least equipped to deal with human mortality, sniffled into a tissue: the only sound other than the creaking machinery that was slowly lowering the slayer’s earthly remains into the ground.
And then there was Dawn.
She was stiff-backed, eyes wet with unshed tears. Her lower lip was caught between her teeth, pressed white under her effort to keep from crying. She was brave, his Little Bit. It was her display of inner strength that finalized Spike’s decision. She was made of tough stuff and didn’t need a vampire, who carried only death in his wake, further mucking up her life.
The coffin settled at the bottom of the hole with a dull thud. The sound struck like a sword through Spike, but he wouldn’t look away. He would pay his penance and bear witness to the totality of his failure.
Without a word, two men stepped forward from the shadows and started disassembling the machinery. Giles had paid them off to help keep the burial a secret, a common enough practice in a town with Sunnydale’s dark reputation. There had even been a minister, who, while uncomfortable with the cloak and dagger nature of the burial, had at least spouted the appropriate platitudes in the correct order. He had left soon after, offering condolences that fell on deaf ears.
This ceremony had to be a secret, for as long as the charade could be maintained. Buffy’s mere presence in Sunnydale had kept down the influx of demons that other Hellmouths attracted. The longer they could keep her death from the demonic community, the better for the citizens of southern California. Spike understood the necessity of this precaution, but it still rankled.
To die unremarked seemed the greatest injustice to a slayer who had been so remarkable in life. There wasn’t even a headstone to mark her passing, though he had heard Giles mention to Dawn that one had been ordered. In its place was a smooth river rock from the Summers’ garden decked with such small flowers and trinkets that the Scoobies had seen fit to bring as a final gift to their friend and champion. Spike intended to add his own memento to the burial, but not quite yet.
Taking shovels in hand, the two men, Spike hadn’t cared enough to catch their names, started shoveling dirt into the open grave. The clods of soil struck the casket below, echoing hollowly in the vampire’s ears. Willow leaned closer into Tara’s arms, wincing in time with the sound. When the men finished their solemn task, they mumbled hasty goodbyes and empty regrets, loaded their machinery and shovels into a cart, and disappeared into the shadows, following the minister’s path.
The lump of disturbed soil, covered with loosely arranged patches of sod, stood like an ugly scar across the cemetery’s perfectly manicured grass. The disturbed dirt would not settle until after the next rain or two.
The Scoobies were starting to shuffle around, knowing that even though they wished otherwise, there was nothing left for them to do here. Tara quietly took charge of her girlfriend and Dawn, ushering them away from the fresh grave. Spike was glad to see Dawn go; there were some things the girl did not need to witness. Giles was the next to start to turn away, probably hearing the call of his liquor and the hated task of filling out his final record in the Council’s records of Buffy Summers’ life.
Spike had waited long enough. It was time.
He stepped forward. That drew the remaining humans’ eyes, especially when he pulled his battered, silver flask out of the pocket of his duster. The incensed watcher balled his fists, rage saturating his features. Xander looked ready to kill, and took a threatening step towards the silent vampire. Their instinctive anger only proved that they didn’t really know what was inside the container. This wasn’t disrespect, this was penance. Not that their actions or opinions really mattered. They’d never reach him in time to stop what was coming.
Here’s to you, Buffy.
Without a word, Spike opened the flask and downed its entire contents: holy water.