Disclaimer: None of the characters belong to me, most obviously, because if they did, B/S would have been together a lot sooner and hence, there would be no premise on which to write this fic. Also, the quote and title belong to Tori Amos, off of her album Little Earthquakes.

Summary: Buffy ponders in the aftermath of the events of "Smashed", B/S

~ "So you can make me cum, doesn’t make you Jesus" ~

-Tori Amos

I was dreaming. Dreaming that I was trapped in this long corridor and had no way to get out. A long stretch of darkness, one long hall of agony. And I’m trying desperately to find some exit, my hands scratching the narrow confines, scrapping at it like a trapped withering flame in an airtight jar. I’m screaming and screaming into endless black with nothing but puffy gusts of anger coming from my mouth, no noise, no words to convey the open walking wound I am. And all this noiseless screaming is making me exhausted. Tears burn down my face, but still I’m running, scrambling away from . . . what is it? What is it on the other side that I’m running from? I glance back and I see it. And despite this kind of familiar knowledge that I should be edging towards it instead of frantically backing away, I still nearly trip in desperation to get away from it. The light.

Finally I think there’s no place to left to go and I’m left staring at this door, a way out of these walls, this dank emptiness, this hell. And I reach for the knob to hesitantly open it. I’m afraid of who I’ll find behind it. And I know I’ll find a who behind it. And I pray to God it isn’t who I think it is.

Suddenly a murmur and a sigh and I stir. I don’t know what came first, the realization of the blinding pain that comes in waves over my body or the stream of broken sunlight through ceiling beams that fills the slits of my eyes with consciousness and my head with panicked recognition. I turn my head slightly and I see a bare leg, whiter than ivory, lying carelessly on top of rubble and broken lumber. And I’m becoming more and more aware of a two-by-four jutting its edge into the small of my bare back, forever imprinting a crease in it, feeling like an everlasting reminder of the horrible, horrible mistake I’ve just made.

A groan and his arm reaches absently for me, but I spring up, covering my nakedness, my shame, with my strewn leather coat, splayed over another pile of dust and broken brick. Wait. My mind’s trying to register this. Broken brick? Rubble? I gaze up at the ceiling. Or what used to be the ceiling. Now just planks of wood, ravaged, broken, exposed, a gaping hole, a mockery of what used to be a strong foundation. Okay, stop over-identifying with destroyed lumber, I tell myself through agitated pants. I rise up from the cold, oh-so-cold cement floor----how was it that I kept so warm the whole night on it? Oh wait, don’t go there-----and try to level myself on wobbly legs. My feet feel battle-worn as they clumsily stumble over gravel and debris. And I can hear him wake and my heart fills with fear. He’s snorting awake, his hair mussed and frumpy and, if he wasn’t a bloodsucking monster, an adjective coming close to "cute" in effect. Oh god. His head bobbles from his neck and he’s trying to register everything as well, a crinkle forming between his brow. And he’s just lying there, his legs draped open and comfortably naked, oh God, naked, like this is a situation he’s used to being in with me. His body is covered in bruises and hickies and red welts and I know I inflicted about 99 percent of those injuries. His marble white body is propped up so that his stomach his flexed and I can feel myself getting weak from just looking at him. So I mumble the first thing that comes to mind.

"W-when did the house fall down?"

***************

I hate him. I’ve never hated someone so much. And I’ve never hated him more than last night. Last night, when he cockily spat these lies, all lies, that somehow faked themselves into truth. That I came back wrong, that somehow, he was the one who had the right to tell me. And then cracked his knuckles across my face my worst fears came true. He wasn’t the put-down dog I thought he was; he was fighting back, he was returning my punches and blows with equal fervor. I wasn’t shocked that he was hitting me----he had done it before. I was shocked because in that moment, we were finally equals-----I whacked him hard across the face because he deserved it and he whacked me back because I deserved it. He was a dead thing, struggling to exist on the fine line between being human or a total ghoul, but . . . I was that too. I wasn’t a slayer, he wasn’t a vampire, we were just two dirty misfits in bright, shiny Sunnyhell. Can’t live, can’t die. We were the same. I hadn’t felt that about anyone since I’ve been back. How could anyone understand how empty I was? Nothing touched me, not the warm smile of Willow, not the impish grin of Xander, not the parental glow of Giles, not even the sisterly adoration of Dawn. I saw it, I knew what it was like to feel love for all that once, to soak it in once----but no more. Now I see it all and it’s like looking at a fine masterpiece of art. You acknowledge it's beauty, the love that it was created in, but you can’t . . . you can’t reciprocate, you just have this cold feeling of an observer, an outsider looking in.

But then all of a sudden I was feeling something. I was feeling the harsh crunch of bone under my solid fists, then the searing pain of fists on my own face. For so long, everyone’s been treating me like china, maybe all I needed was someone who tried to break me. Whatever is was, it sparked this fire in me . . . not the slow burning fire I was used to, but this raging, out-of-control forest fire, blazing my very being with long-deprived energy. It’s funny how it’s either two extremes----I either feel nothing or everything-----but the latter only when he’s around. I can’t even place what kind of fire it was, or what emotion it used for kindling. Hate? Despair? Anger at what he was telling me? Even more frightening, Lust? That would make me when of those sick masochists like . . . well, like him. But I suppose I became one when I turned from beating the crap out of him to smashing his lips to my own, intensifying the already burgeoning flame within me.

Don’t ask me why I did it. You do, and you’ll be rewarded with a world of "Absolutely no freaking clue". It just seemed like a natural transition----from fighting with our fists to fighting with our lips . . . and later, other parts as well. And m-maybe I just wanted to hold onto this moment, no matter how disturbing or twisted, this moment of just feeling. The kind of feeling that throttles you, forces itself down your throat and fills your chest with pain, tingly and sharp a-and . . . real. But no, that wasn’t it----that can never be it. It can never be real.

God, but it felt real.

The moment I had my arms around him, pawing, frantically trying to reach him under layers of his and my leather until finally, I just reached between us and yanked his zipper and jumped on him-----that felt real. I’ll never, ever tell him how real I felt in that moment. So real that I was forced to open my eyes, I couldn’t contain it and it was coming out my mouth it short pants. I should have never done that because then I had to stare at his eyes and they just made me feel worse, a tsunami of feeling now with his eyes trying to bore holes into mine, so blue, so deceptively alive and clear. And they were pleading with me, first shocked, then glazing over with pleasure. And everything washed away from me, every concerned glance from Xander, every cluck of concern from Willow, every single feeling that was supposed to make me feel alive was gone. I traded it in for one moment of searing pleasure from a dead thing.

And in that moment I felt whole. Not shattered, broken, broody Buffy, not housework, bankrupt, lousy-at-plumbing Buffy, not even old perky shiny happy pre-Resurrection Buffy----just another thing altogether. A walking ball of raging nerves on fire.

The rest of the night passed in a haze of events that will forever after make my hair stand on end and my skin flush visibly. And I can’t let it happen again. Despite how alive I felt in those few hours, more alive than I’ve ever felt before, I can’t let it happen again. It’ll just remind me of how I keep forfeiting the light for him----the personification of darkness. It’ll remind me of how dark I’ve let myself become, and I can never let that happen. To acknowledge how dark I’ve become, so dark that I actually need his dead body to feel alive . . . it would mean everything I’ve fought for and as a Slayer would die. Enough of me is already dying daily, I can’t have that go as well.

So I’ll pretend that I can occupy myself with things I before thought precious. Dawn’s smile, Willow’s spoken sentences, broken by giggles, Xander cheerful voice as he feebles another joke. And I’ll pretend that he means nothing to me. I’ll pretend the words he says this morning aren’t true. That I won’t "crave him like he craves blood". I’ll pretend I won’t need him, won’t ache for him after this. After all, if I convince myself hard enough on it, it may just come true.