He sat on the back porch the same night she’d been to the third appointment. He sat there for long minutes almost every night, chain-smoking and staring into the dark, sometimes a small smile playing on his lips, more often lately, a too calm expression on his face.
Barefoot she padded out through the back door, closing it softly behind her. He didn’t turn to look at her but she saw the small shift in his shoulders. The air was cool and she shivered a little as she took her place beside him, the low sound of whatever TV-show Dawn was watching drifting to them.
Wordlessly he put an arm around her and she leaned heavily against him. He felt warm even though logic told her he wasn’t.
They sat in silence for a long while. She watched him stare into the night, taking slow drags of his cigarette. The light shining through the house’s windows made his skin look almost white in the darkness.
In the end she reached up to caress his cheek with two fingers.
“You’ll take care of her, right?” she whispered.
He pulled her closer.
They didn’t save many of her belongings. Dawn had written ‘BUFFY’ on the box and then placed it in the middle of the room, before they together chose a few things to keep. The rest they would give away. Now the girl slowly sank to the floor beside the box he’d been staring at for the last minute.
The smell of tears made his gaze fly to the girl just as she covered her face with her hands. “It feels so wrong!” she sobbed. “L-like… we’re putting her away inside… inside that!”
In a second he was pulling her into his embrace, his own tears streaming into her hair as she clung to him.
“Think…” His voice was hoarse and he had to swallow. “Think of it like saving her instead.”
The Whelp came home two days before the funeral and stayed for over a month. Right after the boy – man – left, the two of them went out together to do some male-bonding, another word for getting drunk. Or the vampire got drunk. So drunk he passed out in the car on the way home. In the morning he woke up in bed fully dressed.
Somehow, that evening helped. The following day, when Dawn settled on watching cartoons and he knew they showed reruns of Passions on another channel, he put up a fight. It was heaven to see the girl’s eyes lit up as they argued.
Soon he decided to just steal the remote. When they had struggled for a short while and he had her carefully pinned to the floor, the sound of her laughter was filling the room.
They ended up with her curled up against his side, his old favourite show on the TV, and he felt more at peace then he had for a long time.
“No.”
“Spike, have you really thought this over? I think it would be easier…”
“No. I… I promised her. I promised them both.”
Glinda looked up at him with wise, soft eyes and then placed a hand on her girlfriend’s arm. She smiled softly.
“Willow, I think… I think Spike is right. We know Buffy wanted it to be him too.”
He called the Watcher and thanked him when he got the papers and the identification. After the uttered ‘you’re welcome’ the conversation didn’t last long.
“I’m sorry I wasn’t able to stay for more than a day, Spike,” Giles said slowly, “How are –”
“Save it, Rupert,” he said, not having the energy to answer questions with obvious answers. “I got the papers and I got me a job. I’ll try to make her happy.” He put the receiver back in its cradle.
When he showed the papers to Dawn she threw her arms around him and hugged him so hard he almost thought she’d crush his ribs. Finally she pulled back, smiled widely and raised an eyebrow.
“So, should I call you Dad now?”
He hit her over the head with the papers but couldn’t stop himself from grinning madly as well. She embraced him again before running off to phone the witches and invite them over to celebrate.
Sitting in the wet grass in front of her gravestone he pulled out a cigarette, brought it to his lips and lit it.
“So, love,” he said quietly, “Wanna hear about last week?”
He told her what the Slayeretts were up to, about Dawn forcing him to the mall, about the nasty demon he killed some days ago. He pictured her smiling and nodding, laughing occasionally or rolling her eyes.
Six months after he was sitting on the floor in the living room. He watched Dawn bite her lip, concentrating as she finished the last nail.
“There, done!” She studied her handwork. “How will you ever manage when I start college next year?”
Rolling his eyes even as he smiled, he lifted his left hand to study the once again black nails. “Dunno,” he said, “Perhaps the same way I managed the decades before you.”
“Yeah, yeah. But you didn’t have as nice nails as you have now.”
He chuckled. “That, I definitely hadn’t.”
Then, Dawn yawned and stood, claiming it was bedtime for her. Spike followed her with his eyes as she slowly walked over to the stairs and halted just before the first step, one hand on the rail.
“Have… have I ever told you, what she said? When she told me how little time she had left?”
“No,” he said slowly.
She didn’t turn around. “I’ve thought about it a lot lately,” she said. “In the beginning I was just so angry… just wanted to wring someone’s head off. Or, well, I was angry when I wasn’t crying my eyes out.”
He chuckled sadly. “Know the feeling, love.”
“Yeah.” He saw her tighten her grip on the rail. “It felt so wrong – she was so young. Anyhow, when she sat me down that day and I was all ‘this can’t be happening’… she said it was her time. That everybody had their time and this was hers.” Her knuckles were whitening. “Do you believe that, Spike, that everybody have their time?”
He had to swallow past the lump in his throat. “Maybe.”
She nodded and started up the stairs.
“Night, Spike.”
“Night, Nibblet.”
The End