(A/N: This is a Buffy/Spike breakup scene, set sometime post-Season 10 of the comics.)
That time with Spike in San Francisco had been wonderful – well, terrible, too, given that the pace of world-ending threats never really let up, but being in the fight together and then falling into bed together, exhausted but exhilarated, took some of the sting out of it. She'd missed that – that couple life – during her years of quick flings and canceled first dates, and she'd started to relax into it. She was still – always – the boss, but Spike didn't mind following her. He'd follow her anywhere, for as long as she wanted. Or so she thought.
The end, when it came, was so unexpected that it still made Buffy a little dizzy when she thought about it.
He'd given her a ring. Not a diamond – even Spike wasn't crazy enough for that. Just a birthday gift – a blood-red garnet set in a circle of silver. Beautiful.
But when he'd slipped the cool band onto her finger, her throat had closed up and her chest contracted painfully.
It means you belong to somebody.
In short, she'd freaked. Again. In her mind's eye, she watched Scott Hope's Claddagh ring clatter to the glossy, cold floor of the Sunnydale High hallway.
She'd been as surprised by her reaction as Spike was. She'd pretended everything was fine, but after he fell asleep, she sobbed heartbrokenly in her shower as the water beat hot, then tepid, then cold over her head.
One look at her face the next morning and he'd made an excuse to clear out for a few days. When he came back, he'd had a look in his eyes she'd never seen before.
"It's no use, pet," he'd said.
She'd panicked a little. "We have a good life here, Spike. Don't... We can't just throw it away. I'm sorry. You just caught me off guard."
"I just can't do it, luv. I can't get in deeper and deeper like this. Not when you still think of yourself as his."
"I don't," she'd said forcefully. Or she'd meant to. But she'd choked on the words, her eyes filling again.
"I thought this would be enough," he'd said ruefully. "I thought I could be satisfied with anything you could give me."
His blue eyes pierced hers for moment, then grew distant. "But I'd rather be on my own than live like it would be from now on, always waiting for the other shoe to drop."
"Spike, please," she'd said. "That's over. It's so..."
The misery of her own words made any remaining pretense untenable. "It's over," she said hopelessly, hiding her face in her hands and sobbing mercilessly.
He'd just pulled her into his arms and held her as she cried. Eventually he whispered into her hair, "There's always hope, luv. As long as you're both still in this world."
He'd chuckled a little then. "And even if you're not, knowing you lot." She could hear tears in his voice.
After he left, Buffy cried buckets, moped on the couch with pints of ice cream, followed the standard breakup script. But she knew she wasn't crying for Spike, not really.
She was crying for the girl she used to be, for a quintessential piece of Buffiness she had lost a long time ago. Could she ever get that back? She didn't know.
But one thing she did know was that, like that girl, she still felt like she belonged to somebody.