“Buffy, are you coming
down today?” Dawn stood at the firmly shut door and sighed. For the last
week Buffy had been hidden away in her room. Sometimes she had heard Buffy
laughing loudly and then other times she had heard weeping. Dawn was
confused and angry; she felt even more abandoned by her sister, who only
came out to get a snack or to use the bathroom. Studiously avoiding everyone
in the house. Dawn wanted to talk to Buffy about Spike, and didn’t want to
do it through a closed door.
She also wanted to talk
to her sister about Tara and Willow. Both of them seemed to be walking on
eggshells around each other ever since they had come back from dinner at
Xander’s. Sometimes Willow-- who acted all weird and hid stuff when she
came into a room, Dawn had found a bunch of dried flowers hidden in the
bookshelf which she was positive Willow had hidden there. She had stolen
them, crumbled them into a powder then washed them down the drain. She
didn’t want to know what they were for, but she was a hundred percent sure
that Willow had searched the whole room for them the other night. It scared
her. She desperately wanted her sister to protect her.
“Buffy, please, I need
to talk with you.” Dawn leant her head on the door and sighed.
Then she fell forward as
the door clicked open; Dawn stumbled into her sister’s now unrecognisable
room.
It was a study in
decadence.
She gasped in surprise
as her stunned eyes took in the altered room. The carpets that Xander had
grudgingly collected were layered on the floor, the bed was made up with
black silk sheets and littered with crimson velvet throw cushions, and the
curtains were hangings that Buffy had removed from Spike’s crypt and added
to the gothic decadence of the place. It smelled of spices and candle wax.
Everywhere she looked
were candles, flickering in the slight breeze her entry had made. Leather
bound books were piled on the bedside tables and carefully placed on the
bookshelves. It was as if Spike had moved into her sister’s room. “Wow,
Buffy when did you…? How?” It was a warm safe haven and the realisation
dawned on the younger Summers that it was a sanctuary for her sister. No
wonder she hadn’t wanted to leave. She silently wished that Buffy had let
her come in here earlier, and now hoped that her elusive sister would let
her.
“When you guys were
out at school.” Buffy stepped out of the shadows by the window and
Dawn’s jaw dropped in shock.
In ten days Buffy had
changed. She had become a wraith in her own home, never seen and barely
heard by the other inhabitants. Dawn had raged at her through the door at
first, then curled up next to it crying for her sister and Spike. After that
the apathy had set in and Dawn had sat there silently for a whole night just
waiting for her, but her sister had remained in her self imposed dungeon. On
the eighth day Dawn had given up and gone about her day to day business,
secretly hoping that Buffy would come out. Now she wished that she hadn’t
come in to her sister’s room. To
see the mess she was in was terrifying to the teen.
The only person she had to rely on was falling apart at the seams and
there was nothing she could think of to do to help her.
The black t-shirt was
Spike’s, she was sure of it, and it hung off Buffy’s gaunt frame.
Her hair was stringy and unwashed and her face was pallid with dark
circles under her eyes. She looked worse than the night Dawn had found her
cowering under Glory’s tower. Buffy’s skinny arms were wrapped around
her waist and she shivered slightly. Shifting from foot to foot,
uncomfortable under her sister’s assessing gaze. Buffy ducked her head and
looked at her toes, which were curled in the silk of the rugs.
“Oh my god, Buffy,
what the hell have you done too yourself?” Dawn took a hesitant step
forward and then halted, shock making her blurt out the first thing that
came to mind. Buffy shied away from her sister and skittishly moved around
to place the bed between them. Her haunted eyes peered through her hair at
her shocked sibling; she was skittish as a newborn foal.
“I killed Spike…I
was too slow and they dusted him, but it was my fault. I should’ve moved
faster,” was all she said. Buffy slumped down onto the edge of the bed and
reached for a journal. Her
hands caressed the hand-tooled cover, ragged nails bruising the burnt umber
leather. She had read them all obsessively from start to finish. She had
learned all about William and fallen in love with the gentle poet with a
heart so fragile and easily shattered by the bitch Cecily. Buffy had cried
over his heartache and wished she could go back in time and save him from
the cruelty of his social circle. She knew all too well how feral people
could be. The Cordelia’s of
this time had been pussycats compared to the idiots who teased and tormented
William. She had giggled over Spike’s posturing about being bad before he
was turned, and was secretly glad he hadn’t been. It added even more depth
to the vampire, who she had belatedly realised she could have easily loved.
Buffy had then started
on the journals covering his early days as a vampire. First meeting Angelus
and the others, it had been fascinating to read about them from Spike’s
perspective-- and gross. Freaky kinky sexage aside, Buffy had read between
the lines and realised that
even then Spike had loved deeply and had been hurt so much by Dorksilla’s
screwing around. She had hated Angelus even more for his head games and
cruelty. Slowly, as the years had progressed, Spike had evolved from the
existence of the gentle poet and fledgling vampire. Her eyes had widened at
the discovery that Angelus had hidden from fights, unlike Spike. She also
was surprised to read that Angel with a soul had tried to rejoin his family
in China. Even then he had been weak.
Spike’s first battle
with a slayer had ended in blood and screwing. But she had sensed his
respect for the Slayer through his words and his elation of becoming a
master vamp. Despite the killing of her kind, she had been excited for him;
his ebullience had echoed throughout his words and infected her with his
pride. One thing stood out from it all, though.
Spike could’ve trashed Angel in her eyes over and over with the
information recorded in these diaries and he had never done it, even though
he had just cause.
Then with a fascination
bordering on obsession, she had read all the journals covering his arrival
in Sunnydale and ending with the night before his death. The last entry had
carved a hole in her soul that Buffy doubted would ever heal.
“No, Buffy don’t.
It’s not your fault.” Dawn sat down next to her grieving sister and
wrapped her arm around her sister fragile shoulders.
“Don’t…I don’t
deserve you being nice to me.” Buffy tried to pull away from her sister
and failed, Dawn stubbornly holding on like a limpet. She was determined to
do something to help… anything. She
wanted her sister back, not this shadow. “He should be here and I should
be dead, it’s my fault. He said it. There
had to be a balance and he was the balance, all gone now and I don’t know
what to do. Dawnie, what should I do?” Buffy was almost childlike in her
grief.
“Firstly a bath, cos
damn you’re a stinker, sis,” Dawn teased and pulled Buffy up, not giving
her a moment to balk at leaving the room. She kept up a line of mindless
chatter about school and Janice as she pulled her sister into the bathroom
and filled the tub and got her into the bubble filled water.
Buffy docilely let her
sister wash her long hair and rinse out the dirty suds. It felt good to be
clean. It had been so long since she had showered-- that day when the two of
them had brought the boxes home. Ever since then she had been reading
Spike’s journals and slowly falling in love with him. Even with the blood
that painted the pages, there had been a sense of the mortal man who had
just ached to be unconditionally loved, but who had never realised that
dream.
She had read on,
entranced as slowly Spike evolved into the vampire who had let a Hell
goddess torture him into a pulp, evolved even more into the vampire who had
wept over her dead body and then tended her battered fingers and knuckles
after she had dug her way out of her coffin. His poetry was not the best,
but it was heartfelt and scattered through the diaries of his life and
unlife. Adding poignancy and depth to him, he was no longer the Big Bad
vampire to her. He was William the Bloody Awful Poet come vampire with a
heart bigger than the world—and he’d loved her.
Everything was so
different now. She wished it had been before she had failed to save him. But
at least Buffy knew now that she really loved him and railed at the
unfairness of it all. She was cursed to never be happy in love, so she had
created a homage to him in her room and curled in on herself and mired
herself in his words – in his hopes and dreams.
“Thanks, Dawn,” she
whispered and lay back in the warm water, letting it ease her tension.
“Chicken and Stars,
with crackers!” Dawn exclaimed and ran towards the door, skidding suddenly
to a halt and turned to face her sister. “You won’t lock me out again,
will you?”
Buffy opened her eyes
and looked over at the gangly form of her teenage sister and tried to smile.
The corners of her lips curved up slightly and she shook her head. “No
Dawn, I won’t.” She looked down at her toes, peeking shyly out of the
suds and then back up at her sister. “I’m sorry,” she whispered
meekly.
~~~~~~~~
The two sisters were
curled up on Buffy’s bed, reading Spike’s journals. She had picked one
with the least amount of icky stuff so that Dawn wouldn’t be freaked. She
was sipping at the lukewarm soup Dawn had brought up for her and while
nibbling on the bread Tara had baked she realised how hungry she was.
Being so absorbed in Spike, she had let herself almost starve to
death.
“Oh my god, did that
really happen?” Dawn giggled and pointed at the entry she was eagerly
reading.
Buffy glanced down, and
smiled. “Yeah, he had on Xander’s shorts and this waaaay hideous
Hawaiian shirt. Oh man, Dawn
you would’ve peed yourself if you could’ve seen his white knobbly knees.
Sooo not the Big Bad!”
Dawn laid her head on
Buffy’s shoulder and kept reading.
“I miss him,” she
whispered into Buffy’s damp hair.
“Me too, Dawnie…me
too,” Buffy sighed.
“Tara tried to talk
with me about him, but it was hard. She didn’t understand and I wanted you and you were so sad
and hiding. I missed you, Buffy. I loved him.” Dawn blinked her eyes
furiously, trying to clear the tears so she could keep reading.
“Sorry baby, but I
needed to…”
“I know, you loved him
too.” Dawn interrupted when she realised Buffy was faltering to explain
herself. Buffy shot her a relieved smile, secretly grateful that whiney brat
Dawn was gone and this more serious and kind version of her sister had
replaced her. She still felt sick about smacking her. She had promised her mom to protect her, not whale on her.
Cocooned from the world,
neither sister realised that the door was ajar and that they had an
eavesdropper.