TITLE: Solstice
AUTHOR: Kelso
RATING: PG
SPOILERS: "Grave"
SUMMARY: Post-ep for "Grave." Be careful what you wish for.
DISTRIBUTION: anywhere
WEBSITE: http://www.geocities.com/kelso28a/
DISCLAIMER: "Buffy" characters belong to Joss Whedon.
NOTES: This story is not in my usual style so if you hate it, just think, I
probably won't write anything like it again. :)
She measured the summers of her life as great periods of inertia. There was the
summer after the Master, the summer she ran away, the summer after Angel left,
after her first year of college. Even the summer she'd been dead.
And then there was the summer after Spike disappeared, when she showed Dawn the world and Willow healed and no one wished for the return of a blonde vampire who'd attempted rape on a bathroom floor. But return he did, after an abeyance of 107 days.
His searing eyes pinioned her so that she asked where he'd been when what she really meant was why was he back. He replied, "Soul searching," and laughed maniacally, and that was when she knew he wasn't Spike.
Without prompting he murmured an addition she didn't quite catch. It sounded like he said he'd gotten what he deserved. Maybe he meant it was what she deserved. Whichever it was, she eked the body of the story out of him like a ragged patchwork quilt and at some points wished she hadn't.
Inevitably, he became the monster living in her basement because even as chipped-Spike could not be put down, neither could souled-Spike. Even though he had left and she had changed and he came back and he was changed, and neither of them was what the other had asked for.
His human name had been William. She called him that; asked the others to, as well. Sometimes Xander didn't, and claimed it was an accident.
Dawn never forgot. Dawn never called him anything at all, never opened her overgrown childhood mouth around him. Dawn had seen the world in a summer and already forgotten what it contained.
He didn't seem to notice, although he cried at broken intervals, hot rain streaking his face. He would babble names and dates and places in a tone of humming desperation she remembered from the worst days with Angel. In silence, though, in silence his eyes shadowed a raw, vast bitterness that frightened her more than the bulk of his ranting. She wondered if Angel had been like him for the first 20 or so years, and for the first time wished she had dared to ask.
She didn't know this tortured being, this William-with-a-soul. On rare days he was a pleasant, quiet young fellow who'd scribbled doggerel and loved a haughty miss and been reborn of despair, but he wasn't her Spike.
She dovetailed into remembrances of Giles' acquaintance, the mage who had been hired to steal Angel's soul. Stories had been written about beings like him. She devoted scores of midnight-stippled hours to tedious paging for a relevant passage. Then she buried the volume in a locked box underneath her bed and wondered if she would ever have to use it.
Or she could simply leave him be until the kaleidoscope of emotions imploded upon him. Once or twice he had asked, "How do I make it go away?" as if speaking of a migraine or a toothache.
In the end, she handed him the marked book because it was one of the few items that was as intensely familiar to him as a lullaby. Didn't know if that made him stronger than Angel or weaker, didn't know if she did it for herself or for him.
***
Two weeks later, Spike came to her. She tasted the keenness of his dread on his painted lips and knew not how to ease it.
His face flashed above her, glistening pale in the incandescent stillness, and despite it all he looked almost human. After, she breathed beside him, loud and awkward in the predawn air. It didn't matter anymore.
She fell asleep and dreamed of Spike, standing in the sunlight of flowers.
When she woke up, he was gone.