FEELING


Written by: Martine Lewis


~ ~ ~ ~ ~ ~ ~ ~ ~ ~ ~ ~ ~ ~ ~ ~ ~ ~ ~ ~ ~ ~ ~ ~ ~ ~ ~ ~ ~ ~ ~ ~ ~ ~ ~ ~ ~ ~ ~ ~

Summary: Despair from being resurrected catches up with Buffy. Spoilers: Up to Wrecked. A/U: 'Once More, With Feeling' and Tabula Rasa never happened and Buffy hadn't told anybody she was in Heaven.
Disclaimer: The show Buffy the Vampire Slayer and all of it's characters belong to Joss, Mutant Enemy, & Fox Prod.
Special Thanks: Sincere thanks to Dawn Pares for review and comments. She really helps me a lot to improve.
Author's Note: English is second language here… please, be kind…
Feedback: Please, I want plenty! lewis_martine@yahoo.ca


~ ~ ~ ~ ~ ~ ~ ~ ~ ~ ~ ~ ~ ~ ~ ~ ~ ~ ~ ~ ~ ~ ~ ~ ~ ~ ~ ~ ~ ~ ~ ~ ~ ~ ~ ~ ~ ~ ~ ~

She felt.

She felt the hard cross and stake in her hands, the coldness of her bedroom, the darkness of her soul.

Oh yeah, she felt, regardless of what they were saying.

Why? Oh God! Why?

Why had they taken her away from that place of joy and peace? Why had they brought her back to this Hell where she was suffering so much? Of course, nobody knew… except Spike. At least, hating him was not something she had to hide.

But now, everything had changed. In a moment of rage, she had given up… She had hit him and he had fought back!

He had fought back!

His chip was not working on her. What was she, anyway? Obviously, she was not human enough to cause Spike pain anymore.

He had fought back…

And she had been so desperate and mad that she had fought him like her very life had depended on it. But had it? Really? And the passion of her fight… their fight… had turned into an unbearable lust. She had wanted him so bad it had hurt more than his fist on her face. He had wanted her, too. And it had been explosive.

They had destroyed an entire building in the process, for crying out loud! And she had enjoyed every second of it, had wanted every second of it. He had made her feel so alive.

Alive…

And now, she was simply terrified.

Even if she was protecting herself against him, she wondered who she was most afraid of…

She didn’t understand and she didn’t know what she had become. And she had had sex with Spike!

Spike!

Of all people!

Why? Why him? Why now?

She had pushed him away for 3 years but now, she simply gave in? What if she really loved him?

That thought was so terrifying for her confused mind that she began to tremble.

Since she'd been brought back, he was the only person she felt she could talk to, the only person she felt she could trust, the only person who could somewhat understand what she was going through. Why would she trust him so much with her most intimate thoughts? Why? And since when was she seeing him as a person and not a thing?

She didn’t know what to think anymore.

Deep inside, as much as she wanted to hate him, she wanted him with her. She wanted to cry but not alone. She wanted to be held by someone who would not ask anything, who would not try to make her say what was wrong, who could simply hold her…

She wanted Spike to hold her…

Everything was so completely wrong. She hated every second of this Hell that everybody called “life”. She wanted to die and get back to heaven, to peace, to love, to rest.

Tears were falling down her cheeks. She wished somebody would hold her.

She was crying so hard, she barely heard the door open. She was only half-aware that somebody had sat down on her bed next to her.

This somebody slowly took the cross and the stake from her hands and put them on the bedside table. He then took her in his arms and gently stroked her hair, kissing the top of her head from time to time, and tightening his grip when her pain got too strong and threatened to overwhelm her, to make her stop breathing, or lose her mind.

She was barely aware of who it was but despite her foggy mind, her heart told her it was Spike. She was so sick, she thought her heart would explode. She grabbed his shirt and held on to him for dear life.

‘Oh God! Please! Please! Don’t leave me!’ she thought.

His presence was so reassuring. He didn’t ask anything, he just held on to her, keeping her from falling any deeper.

After a while, after being sure he was not leaving her, after being sure he wouldn’t question her, she relaxed and fell asleep without releasing her grip on his shirt.


***


The Niblet had been right, her sister was in pain. Walking towards her room , he could feel the anguish emitting from her bedroom. Without even knocking, he slowly opened the door and was repelled by the strong smell of garlic.

But he felt her pain and wanted to be there and hold her.

He walked in the room with all the courage he could muster and closed the door behind him. He could not believe what she made him do, he could not believe he was walking in this extremely repulsive place.

Her pain was so strong, her distress was so great that he wanted to run to her and hold her right away, despite everything that his instincts were yelling at him. Then he saw the stake and the cross in her hands.

‘Bloody Hell!’ he thought with despair. ‘Why did you have to make my life so complicated, Slayer?’

Slowly, not to scare her more than she already seemed to be, he walked to the bed and sat on it. He put one of his hands on her shoulder and with the other one, took the stake from her hand and put it on the bedside table. He then took a few kleenex out of the box. He knew this wouldn’t be easy, this would hurt horribly, that it was against everything his instincts told him to do, and it was already not easy with all this garlic in the room. He felt the beast in him coming forward and he couldn’t stop it. He knew it would be painful… Crazily hurtful.

Slowly, fearing the excruciating pain, he took the cross away from her hand.

Good God! It hurt!

Even with something between his hand and the cross, the pain was unbearable. But he knew better than to throw the cross away. Anything sudden would have taken her out of her stupor and that could be a lot worse than a cross burning his arm of.

He thought he would not be able to control the beast anymore when his hand finally reached the table and he dropped the cross on it. He then looked at his hand, losing his demon face. It was badly burned but he knew it would heal, and by the look of her, his hand would heal a lot better and faster than her pain.

He slowly repositioned himself to be comfortable and took her in his arms.

He loved her, everything about her. He had loved her for so long now… And he couldn’t bear to see her this way. She was his fighter, she always had something nasty to tell him… even if it hurt every time she did. But now, she was just a ball of pain and despair. And that was something he couldn’t bear.

Gently, he stoked her hair.

And than he felt it.

He felt the pain in her growing so strong, he thought her heart, her soul would be torn apart. Terrified that it would actually happen, he held her tightly in his arms, as if his arms would keep her from exploding.

‘Luv! Luv! Please come back to me Luv,’ he thought.

He could feel her walking a very fine line between sanity and insanity, sanity that would make her suffer for the rest of her days, and insanity that would surely kill her.

He wanted to tell her to hold on, but he knew in his heart that she didn’t want him to speak, to say anything. He knew she just wanted somebody to be there and hold her… He knew she wanted him to be there.

Why had her supposed friends put her through this? Why? They hadn’t thought even for a minute that she might have been in heaven. How selfish of them! They hadn’t even asked him his opinion about it, they hadn’t even bothered to tell him! No wonder she didn’t want to speak to any of them about what she was going through, no wonder she was coming to him!

Again, he could feel her pain grow and threaten to rip her apart, and this time, it hurt him, too.

He remembered when he had lost her, when she had laid dead in the rays of the morning sun. All her friends had been around her, but not him. He couldn’t because of the bloody sun. But he had cried, the pain had been so great.

Tears fell down his cheek as he remembered her loss, and feeling her despair at being back, he hugged her tightly.

God, he loved her.

He loved her so much it hurt. He loved her so much that he could feel every second of her pain. He loved her so much, he was in her heart, in her head, in her soul. And it hurt. Oh God! It hurt. He could feel the turmoil, he could feel the anguish, he could feel the insanity.

‘Luv! I’m here, Luv! I’m not going anywhere. I am not going to ask anything… I’m simply here to hold you,’ he thought.

Gradually, he could feel her relax in his arms, even if she was still holding his shirt so tightly it would have taken him a month to take her hands away at full blown vampire strength.

He felt her relax more and more, and after a while, she fell asleep.

That is when he finally let his tears flow freely. ‘What have they done to her?’ he thought.

Slowly, the door opened and Spike saw Dawn walk in the room.


***


As she walked in the room, Dawn was assault by an awful smell. Worried, she looked at her sister in Spike’s arms.

Spike looked at her and winced as if something was hurting him.

“She okay?” she whispered.

Spike nodded

Intently, he looked towards the windows and Dawn followed his glance.

And she realized what he had done. The smell was totally unbearable… And Spike had braved it to be with her sister! It was love at its purest expression, in Dawn’s mind, and she hoped that she would be loved like this when she got older.

‘He must have been through Hell just to be with her,’ she thought.

Rapidly, she opened a window and threw the garlic outside. She then walked toward him and saw the cross wrapped in Kleenex on the desk. And that’s when she figured how truly and deeply he must love her sister.

She looked at him. He shrugged but his eyes expressed a deep gratitude. She saw he had been crying, but she also knew it was not because her sister had hurt him this time. Buffy was holding his shirt tightly, she could see that.

Dawn took the cross and threw it in the drawer. She could tell that Spike was finally relaxing.

“Thanks, Niblet,” his lips said.

“Love you,” said Dawn.

She could see his smug smile before she walked away to let them rest in peace.


Continue...




Back to Fiction: By Alpha ~ Back to Fiction: By Season