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Authors Chapter Notes:
Banner by the thoughtful and talented EdgeHead, thank you!

Revised


Spike could feel them all, each and every broken bone is his lifeless body, that had snapped when he’d body planted from the shifty tower into the rubble below. His bones creaked in protest when he tried to lift himself.

‘Just need a minute,’ he thought to himself, not stalling his efforts to get up, he didn’t have a minute, he had a job to do.

He could hear the screaming of something inhuman from above, could feel the electricity crackling in the air all around him. A sound to his left brought a small smile to his face, it was the distinct sound of a hammer smashing into a hell-god; ‘good’, he thought, remembering the torture he’d endured at its hands. The torture he’d endured for his girls.

He smelled it then, Dawn’s blood, and though his once only creaking bones were now shrieking at him to yield, to let his weary, century plus, body rest, finally rest, he couldn’t find enough cowardice inside him to give up this fight.

Swiping at the blood slowly leaking into his eyes he started toward the tower. A flash of blond hair signaled Buffy was on her way up, up… ‘where all heroes go to die,’ he thought morosely, doubling his efforts to re-climb the rickety and makeshift tower. He wouldn’t let the world know what it was to be Summers-less, couldn’t. The Summers line would not be broken and forgotten, not while borrowed blood pumped through his long dead veins. How would the sun rise each day if it did? How?

He could hear his niblet now, his tiny little friend, and her broken voice only broke him more.

“You have to! You have to let me go! Blood starts it, and until the blood stops flowing it'll never stop. You know you have to let me …” Dawn half-cried, half-pleaded, her young, shrill voice breaking as her long hair whipped around her tear stained face in the wind created by the tear in the sky.

He reached the top of the ramp and stilled when he heard the slayer trying to placate a millennium old key, his heart swelling. He gave himself a moment to listen to her voice, letting it wash over his broken limbs and heart like a salve, closing his eyes and listening, as though the wind was sharing its secrets with him. And she was the wind, wasn’t she? Never staying still, unpredictable, un-tameable, free. Free…he would make sure of it.

“Listen to me! There's no time, Dawn, please listen. Listen. I love you. I'll always love you. But this is the work I have to do. Tell Giles I... I figured it out. And I'm okay. Give my love to my friends. You have to take care of them now -- you have to take care of each other. You have to be strong. Dawn. The hardest thing in this world is to live in it. Be brave. Live. For me.”

Blood. It always came down to blood. Blood he could do, blood he’d been (un)born to do. The next moment passed as if in slow-motion, she was running, and then he was too, how he didn’t know, adrenaline maybe? Did vampires even have adrenaline? He could have laughed at the thought if he didn’t know it would be one of his last. He passed Dawn, ruffling her hair a little as he did so, a sure way to annoy her on a regular day, and a sign of affection on his last.

His arms wrapped around Buffy’s waist, catching her off guard mid-jump. Pulling her back onto the platform Buffy looked at him with furious eyes, “I have to do this, let me go,” she screamed out. Her fear, her power, her strength, and her love of all things good pouring through her voice. “Death is my gift Spike,” she half yelled into the screaming winds.

His hand came up to cup her cheek with a small smile, death was her gift. He was death, in some form at least, he could be her gift tonight.

“You have to be strong. Buffy. The hardest thing in this world is to live in it. Be brave, live for…live for everything; live so that one of us is living,” he whispered into her ear softly, hand leaving her cheek to pull her to him, uncaring that he’d stolen part of her speech.

“It’s all about the blood,” he whispered vehemently, and as the understanding washed over her he could have sworn he saw sadness in those hazel depths, but there was no time left to ponder anything, no time left for anything except for what needed to be done.

Buffy barely had time to register the fangs sinking into her neck, or the deep, quick pools of blood he was taking before he let her go before walking three feet backwards, and when the heels of his scuffed up steel toed boots felt nothing under them anymore, he looked at his girls and smiled.

Dawn was weeping, had run to her sister who…no…could it be? Buffy was crying openly for him, twin trails of blood seeping from the twin wounds on her neck…for him for fuck sake, and he knew then that without a doubt, this, this was what his whole un-life had been for.

A century plus of death and heartbreak, fighting and loving, feeding and fucking and killing, that had all led him to this precipice of a moment, this self-sacrifice, this gift. He’d been born and un-born to save this girl, this slayer, the one and only Buffy Summers. A peace washed over him then with the realization that this is what he had been for.

With his trademark smirk he saluted the girls, “I wanna’ see how this ends,” and with a wink he was gone. Falling into the chasm of light and lightning, his body turning to ash as he laughed.

Free in the knowledge that he had saved his niblet.
Free in the knowledge that he had saved the world.
Free in the knowledge that he had saved Buffy.
And free, finally free, of his torturous love for her.

Free to be nothing, if not a hero.

The last of his ashes scattered through the small breeze, Buffy’s neck no longer bleeding, Dawn’s small but vital cuts clotted: the portal closed. The world safe for another day, everything was right in the world again…wasn’t it?




It had been 147 days since Spike had sacrificed himself in a flash of blood and lightning to save the world. The twin scars on Buffy’s neck a daily reminder of why she was still alive, though on some days she didn’t feel it. She didn’t even bother to pretend that she was happy anymore, her friends not understanding the deep pull of regret she had for how they’d all treated him, how she in particular had treated him. As though he’d never been a man, as though he wasn’t, as though he couldn’t fathom what it was to be good, and pure, like her…like how she used to imagine herself to be at least, but age and his blatant love for her had refused her a return to the bubble she’d once lived in.

With a sigh Buffy walked through the door, “Dawn? I’m home, you hungry?”

A sound at the top of the stairs caught her attention.

It had been 147 days since Spike had sacrificed himself in a flash of blood and lightning to save the world, except, today didn’t count, did it?



Chapter End Notes:
Quotes from "The Gift"




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