Title: Crazy Faith
Author: Sarmi
Category: Post-BTVS Finale
Genres: Angst
Disclaimer: I don't own Buffy Spike or even Angel but a girl can dream.
Summary: When you love a slayer, you do what you have to do.
Authors note: The title of this story and lyric within is from the Allison Krauss song "Crazy Faith"
Ch.1 Heartburns
~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~
I
lit my love and watched it burn:
Asking nothing in return.
Except
the lessons I will learn.
From holding crazy faith.
I've
been touched by that bright fire.
Down to the root of my
desire,
While the smoke, it rises higher.
Glowing crazy
faith
"He's in my heart."
What the hell was that supposed to mean. Please, I spent nearly two decades with the boy and all he ever gave me was heartburn.
And I left like she wanted me to. A second front, so to speak. And I told myself that she didn't choose the bleached wonder over me, she just needed me at her back. I tried not to focus on who was at her side, because baked Buffy is supposed to be Angel's future.
I never expected her to show up on my doorstep a few days later, sans Spike, with a gaggle of battered little girls and the Scoobies in tow, asking for a place to crash while they figured out what to do next.
"We won."
That's all she said with a small smile before Fred jumped in to help Willow organize where to put everybody.
I found her later in a room on the third floor staring at her the palm of her left hand.
"You better put something on that or it will scar."
She didn't even bother to look up at me when she replied "That's kinda the idea."
"Buffy, I just wanted to ..."
"Don't."
That's when she decided to finally look at me. And instantly I knew where it was going to lead and my heartburn was back.
"Don't tell me you're sorry, not about him at least. We both know you're not. So just ..don't."
What was I supposed to say to that? And she was looking at me like I was the one who staked him. Like she's the only person on the planet who ever lost someone they cared about. Like she was the only one in the room who ever cared about William the Bloody.
Before I could say anything she was suddenly standing in front of me. Somehow I had forgotten how short she is. She barely came up to my chest, yet the accusation in her eyes made me feel like the small one.
"Did you know what it would do to him? That it would destroy him?" she lashed out with an icy tone.
How could she think that? I was going to wear that god awful thing. It was supposed to me with her in the final battle. She was the one that sent me away. And a horrible thought occurred to me.
"Would you rather it was me at the bottom of what left of the hellmouth?"
And then suddenly she couldn't look at me anymore. And I knew her answer, and I still wish I didn't.
Raw cookie dough in her heart. Yeah right, I think her edges are actually burnt.
"He wasn't supposed to die," and she sounded so hollow that I could almost hear an echo, "not like that, not without a fight."
And when she looked up at me with wet eyes and said "I never even got to love him," I knew that I had been fooling myself, we never had a future. And the heart that I thought was long since broken shattered a little more inside the chest she sobbed against.
And I am sorry.
About him.
Because I know what its like to miss your chance. Because I had somebody in my heart too. Where she has a punk, I have a cheerleader.
But I didn't tell her that. I just let her cry. And then I let her leave, because we don't belong to each other, not anymore.
We both missed our chance, and not just with each other. I might never get Cordy back, but I knew what I had to do when I found him in that sewer.
I worried that his mind was too fractured from the soul and who knows how long in hell. That was until he looked at me with clear hopeful eyes and asked one simple question.
"Where's Buffy?"
I know he is going to be okay now, because she is in his heart to. And the flames of hell are nothing when you love a slayer.
You're not asking if I love
this man.
I know you don't, you don't believe you can.
Yet I've
seen the love open like a dancers fan.
It's crazy, I know, but my
faith says so:
It tells me
~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~
