Chapter Fifteen

 

For a Slayer, passage into sleep is risky business.  Not only do they lay prisoner to the Powers That Be for prophetic dreams, but also their lives of violence and fury can come back for replay over and over again.  There were several events that Buffy had experienced as recurring nightmares, but they were things she kept to herself.  No one knew that she still dreamt of being bitten by the Master, or spearing an ensouled Angel through with a mystical sword.  A giant snake had even received airplay, along with the renegade Slayer that she had once called friend; her sister in arms.  These, however, were destined to take a back seat once she had opened Pandora’s Box and let the future come out to play.

 

Lying in the arms of a vampire would normally have felt too wrong for her to remain.  Being in Spike’s arms, however, allowed her a euphoric indifference to sleep and she gave no thought to closing her eyes and wrapping herself around him and succumbing to the bliss of rest.  Her confidence had steadily built as she held his trembling form within the circle of her arms, whispering fond, or perhaps loving reassurances in his ear, as he continued to sleep soundly. Without fear, she drifted off alongside him.  Her focus on him allowed her to forget, but in the land of nod, she no longer could.

 

Smothered by relentless and dank darkness, she came to with a gasp, desperate to draw breath into her lungs, and quickly realised that there was limited oxygen to sustain her.  She felt around and touched soft fabric all around her, above and to the sides of what felt like a long narrow box, and came to the startling conclusion that she was to relive her resurrection.  She wasn’t immediately frightened- knowing on some level that this was a dream, but as she began to gasp for much needed air, desperation kicked in.  Frantically clawing and tearing to reach wood she used her fists to smash and punch the lid of the box and sobbed in relief as it splintered and gave way.  Like reliving a horror movie over again she pulled herself above ground and collapsed on the shredded grass in front of her tombstone.

 

Her sobbing had stopped but her blood ran cold when she saw the engraved epitaph, She Saved The World A lot!  With a little jolt she fell back and hit another tombstone.  At first her eyes were too blurred to comprehend what she read, and as they cleared and she understood her body shook with an unwillingness to accept.  A fist came forcefully through the grass and she fell back and screamed, but immediately again reached forward to take the hand to help pull out her fellow traveller.  They looked at each other, taking in the bleeding knuckles, the dirty matted hair, and the dirty, mud streaked burial clothes.

 

Spike perched beside her, himself gasping for breath, and with realisation she raised startled eyes to his as she placed a shaking hand to his breast.

 

“Your heart is beating,” she told him in a broken, distant voice.

 

“We need to die to live, Slayer.”

 

“Slayer?”  Her voice shook on the single word.  She looked back to the tombstone marking the desecrated grave he had left and covered her mouth with shock.  William Summers, loving husband and father, He helped her save the world a lot.

 

And then she laughed.

 

“Did I kill you?  Do you hate me?  Is that why you call me Slayer?”

 

“No sweetheart, you saved me.  You will always be Slayer to me, just like I will always be Spike to you.  I love you.”  And he pulled her into his arms and rained beautiful sweet kisses onto her face.  Her lips collided with his forcefully, desperate in her need to reassure herself that he was there, that he was hers, and as her grip tightened he became less firm.  She pulled away, her eyes widening in disbelief as he began to shatter into dust.

 

“No!” she screamed at him.  “Don’t leave me!  I love you.” 

 

He smiled sadly at her and shook his head.

 

“No you don’t, but thanks for saying it.”  And he was gone, a billowing cloud of dust lifted in the breeze and spread to all ends of the world.  Left behind a weeping, hysterical girl trying to cling to particles of air as they drifted away.

 

“I do mean it,” her raspy voice declared what felt like hours later.  “I do mean it.  I love you so much.  Come back, come back, don’t leave me here alone.”  Her broken sobbing continued until light began to filter through the trees and she dragged herself off the ground to her knees, and then to her ridiculously clad feet.

 

She wandered aimlessly, not caring where she stumbled, having forever lost her light and knowing she would never find her way out of the darkness. Cloistered forever in her own existence.

 

“I don’t know what I need to survive this,” she whispered to the lightening sky.  “I don’t think I can.  I don’t think I want to.” Stumbling she hit the steps of a building in a rush to her hands and knees.  Looking up she discovered a chapel and looked again at the sky in confusion.

 

“Um, thanks?” she offered in her daze, and then found her way inside.

 

Stained glass and a gothic looking crucifix took up all her remaining attention.  Realisation hit her like a blow and she frantically searched the shadows for him.

 

“Spike?”  Her voice was raw with continually shed tears and her eyes had trouble seeking him in the dark as the sky that had been reaching dawn now hit night with a daunting perceptibility.  He could only exist in the night.  His heart did not beat.

 

He came forward slowly, hesitating on the brink of discovery.  His chest bare and glowing in the moonlight and she cringed, knowing that every blight on that skin, every scar and torn piece of flesh, was her reward.  This time he needn’t tell her, she was with it that he had a soul burning bright for her, dragging him kicking blindly at the ghosts of the past, clinging to hold him in the dark.

 

“I wanted to give you what you deserve, and I got it.  Now all it does is burn.”  And for the second time she saw him burn from the inside, ashy edges creeping out until he was dust at her feet.

 

“No.”  She could muster no more screams though the tears continued to flow in great rivers down her cheeks.

 

“No Spike, I don’t deserve this.  I loved you without a soul, I will always love you.  You are mine, and I am yours.  I’m sorry, so sorry I made you do this, made you prove to me what I already knew, believed.  I lacked courage, Spike. Courage to love you. To acknowledge you. To be with you.  God, please bring him back.  I need him so much. He is my soul, my light, but I was too stupid to know.” 

 

She crawled forward to the cross that she knew in reality he would burn on his chest for relief. For rest. Touching it softly with her fingertips, she was jolted with a charge so strong that her fingers reflexively curled around the wooden surface of the crucifix, unable to let go.  His memories flooded her, the blood, the death, the horror and the screams, his fear, his hate, his sex, his glee, and his love.  Too much, again too much, and as she relived his past, and felt his pain from regaining his soul, she encompassed the insanity that was him and understood the man behind the monster with a finality of passage.  She took it all into herself, sharing the load, and wailing all the way.

 

Suddenly she was dragged back from the cross and engulfed in the warmth of acceptance and love.

 

“She shall look on him in forgiveness, and everybody will forgive and love.  He will be loved.”  Spike smoothed her sodden hair away from her glistening cheeks and pressed a light kiss to the corner of her mouth.

 

Opening her eyes, she beamed her intentions to him.  “I will forgive and love,” she whispered and they kissed slowly, the barest brush of lip to lip.

 

And in the doorway stood, with one heart racing in shock, a stunned Watcher and a furious vampire.