A/N: Slight spoiler alert! If you haven't watched past the season 5 finale, don't read!
Hey, this is my second fic, another one shot. Please review, thanks!
Disclaimer: I wish I could say I own it all, but really that's JW and some other guys. I do own this story though!
Summary: How Buffy is feeling after she's come back to life. Hints of her starting to realise what she feels for Spike. Spuffy, so if you don't like them, just don't read. Don't hate please! Xx
Title: Heavenly hell (Terrible title, I know. If you can think of another one, please tell me!)
It's so hard to wake up and know what's going to happen that day. I just want to stay asleep, because at least in my dreams, things are peaceful.
Everything's the same. I hate being back. Even if I try to act differently, or talk differently, the same old things happen. Wake up, endure the day, fight for my life, and go to bed.
But that doesn't matter, I don't want to talk, or act differently, I want to be somewhere different. No matter what I do, or say, or even think, it still hurts. It tears me apart from the inside. Sometimes I don't even know who I am. Am I being me, or am I still acting? The days run together into one long, meaningless blur. Sometimes I don't know what day it is, or even if it's the morning or the night.
Even worse is slaying. The fact that I know I have to do it still, no matter what. Along with every slayer before me, every day, every year, I have to go out, and do the same things, and fight the same demons. It makes my heart feel broken to know that when I'm fighting for my life, aching in every part of my body, I could be at peace. Even new demons just want the same things, blood and mayhem, and they're never enough to distract me. Why can't anything happen to turn back time? How is it possible that Willow could have dragged me out of heaven, yet after all the times I've saved the world, nothing is happening to send me back? It's like rubbing salt into my wounds. The only thing that keeps me going is the hope that something will happen, I'm not going to live like this forever. Something will take me back away from here.
Having to be cheerful, be around the same people, all talking the same way, having the same opinions, disagreeing and arguing over the same things again and again and again, is like being slowly poisoned to death. Even Dawn, or Willow and Xander, just don't get it. When they see me staring off into space, or becoming quiet and drawn into myself for no reason they can see, they just ask what's wrong, and when I tell them I'm fine, they try to smile, or cheer me up. How can't they see what's wrong? They don't know me anymore. I don't even know me. Sometimes I don't get how they can't understand. Why can't everyone see how hard it is to live?
How can't people understand that the world is a ruined and hopeless place? The realisation that I can't get back to heaven tears my soul apart. Every day, or at night, when I wake up, or come in from slaying, I think about my life, as it is now, and as it will become, and my heart just feels so heavy. I try to let it out, but I can't, and it eats me alive. Sometimes I just cry, and cry, but I can't even find the source of my tears. There is just a great aching hollowness inside me, and nothing I do will fill it up.
The only times I can find temporary solace, is when I'm with Spike, and for a few hours, I can be myself, not have to be someone else, and let out my troubles. I don't have to be cheerful, be strong, or capable. I don't have to disguise my pain, rescue anyone, or save the world again. I'm not just the important one.
It releases some of my pain to be with someone who loves me for me, for being Buffy, not the slayer. Someone who finds me beautiful, whether covered in blood, or all made up. It soothes the pain when I see how he can be so protective and fiercely dangerous, yet open and kind when he's alone with me.
When I leave his crypt though, the feeling of peace just floods out of me, leaving nothing in its place. My heart becomes so heavy, I'm sometimes surprised it doesn't do me physical damage. It really feels like its bruised. Afterwards, when the knowledge that I've been taken from heaven hits me again, when I realise I can never fully be in this world, or be the heroine I was before, the woman Spike fell in love with, I sink deeper than before, but the pleasure of talking my worries away and escaping this world, is always worth the pain of losing myself again to heart ache.
Sometimes I find myself thinking that I wouldn't mind to lose myself completely, to sink so deeply into that cool darkness I get lost, and never find my way back. If nothing happens in this world but the usual heartbreaks and pains, what's the point of being here for it? Having to know that any hurt, or despair that you feel, wouldn't be felt in heaven. The world is a play, endlessly repeating, and swapping roles. Why would I be any loss? Nothing would stop. Nothing would really change. Angels wouldn't fly down to take my soul; the earth wouldn't rotate the opposite way on its axis. Another slayer would be chosen, and I'd finally return to the place I deserve.
I don't understand why so many people are scared of their death. It was perfect. Just a great white expanse of peace and happiness.
When I first became a slayer, I was so scared of death. Once, I asked my mum what happens when someone is killed. Do their souls go to the same place as everyone else's? She told me that no one knows what happens when we die, but when she was little, her grandma told her that troubled souls turn into birds when we die. When I asked her why, she replied that after all the pain of being grounded with no escape, in a life so hard, there would be no greater release than closing your eyes and soaring away from everything. Letting your troubles fall away, as your mind freed of every thing save the freedom of flying.
That night, I dreamed of dying. Of climbing higher, and higher, stretching my wings to brush my feathers through the clouds. The moisture collecting beneath them making me shiver as the wind dragged me through the sky. Making me wonder whether I was controlling my flight, or whether, like most wonderful, forbidden things, I had no more control over my flight than the wind.
I dreamt of that again tonight. But this time, it was different. This time, I soared right up to heaven. The sweet release upon realising I had no recollection of my pain, was utopia. But as I was enveloped once again in white bliss, I felt someone's hand in mine. I turned my head to see, and saw Spike. He'd come with me.
I woke up slightly smiling, a tear rolling down my cheek.
Maybe I would survive here.
Please review! I'm literally beggin' here! Thanks!