In the weeks after he was gone, she buried herself in her work, hoping that if she submerged herself enough in the methodical tedium, she'd forget everything else. It had been easy, for a while, to live in denial. The Squad had pretty much replaced whatever semblance of a social life she'd had before, as sharpening stakes and barking orders melted into a messy patchwork of an existence. Buffy felt empty – so empty – but if she kept herself busy enough, sometimes she could forget the emptiness. It was hard to think of emotional trauma when five hundred stubborn, super-strong teenage girls were reliant on her.
Though the Potentials were now decidedly more kinetic, their superpowers every bit as strong as hers, they were young and inexperienced. Some of them had never even been face to face with a real vampire and only a few of them had gone up against anything remotely apocalyptic. Faced with the excruciating task of equipping them for the "real world," Buffy was surprised she had any time to wallow.
She hated it, wallowing. She hated feeling sorry for herself and she hated feeling so much loss for someone she had professed to detest for years. More than loss, though, she knew Spike had been wrong when he'd said she hadn't really loved him. She did. She loved him more than she'd ever imagined she could. She had no fucking clue what his reasoning was, and for a little while, she'd kinda hated him for whatever it was that made him deny her that day. But hate had started feeling suspiciously like agonizing loneliness, so she'd dropped that pretense and… continued to wallow.
"I'm like some lovesick high schooler," Buffy muttered to herself, knocking over the blurry photo that Dawn had snapped a couple of years ago - Spike sitting cross-legged in his crypt, drinking blood out of some horrendous yellow coffee mug he'd nicked from Giles that had "Kiss the Librarian" printed across it – so she didn't have to look at it anymore. Buffy didn't fully know why she'd framed it. It wasn't the only photo she had of Spike and it definitely wasn't the best, but there was something about it. It was so him, so perfectly the way that he'd been. It made him seem closer and more real. If she had this, she could pretend, for a second that he was still out there somewhere, lounging around on stone tablets and screaming at his stupid soap operas like they meant something.
Buffy buried her head in her arms, choking out the sobs she'd been restraining for what felt like eternity. She had only cried a few times since his death because the crying had such bad associations. Crying meant mourning which meant letting go of denial and picking up something new and much harder to deal with: real grief. Crying for someone meant they were gone without a chance of coming back, and Buffy wasn't ready to think of anything that permanent. The battle in the high school basement still felt surreal two months later, but she could accept what had happened. She could accept the carnage and the guilt and horrifying fear of seeing Uber-Vamps go after the naïve young teenagers she'd so readily led towards death. Spike's death, however, felt like some nightmare manufactured purely to make her lose it, once and for all, and Buffy knew losing it might be on the agenda if she didn't do something soon. Something that worked.
She'd tried every kind of therapy she could come up with for herself, from pounding the shit out of the unassuming Slayers-to-be during training to replaying the situation in her head and imagining a million ways to change what had happened. Nothing made a difference; it was all self-destructive, whether it hurt physically or not. Physical blows were rarely the most painful, that was one thing Buffy had learned during her nearly eight years of slaying. Still, her go-to method was leaving a string of x's up her arms that she couldn't hide forever, and Buffy wasn't so much a fan of the long-sleeved tee.
A rough, urgent knock yanked Buffy out of her thoughts, also managing to knock her onto the floor. "Ow," she muttered, wondering why the Slayer strength hadn't shown its face. She'd been feeling weaker lately, and her reflexes were slower… she wasn't sure why, but it couldn't be good. "Come in!"
"Oh, Buffy, there you are." Giles stood in the doorway, shoving his glasses up his nose, and staring at her with confusion. "Willow was looking for you. The amulet-"
"The amulet?" Now it was Buffy's turn to stare in confusion. She'd assumed that it was buried in whatever was left with Sunnydale, with about a billion pounds of Uber-dust and an apparently state-of-the-art high school. Spike had still been wearing it when she'd gone. If the amulet had resurfaced, did that mean – no. Buffy refused to let herself think it through again.
"Yes, um, I believe it's been mailed here. Quite strange, but probably not of malicious intent -" Giles furrowed his brow worriedly, seeming to remember that she was still on the floor. "Are you all right?"
Buffy stumbled to her feet and fell into the chair, feeling shaky. "I'm fine, Giles. Where is Willow?"
Giles blinked. "She was with some of the new recruits, last I saw her. Are you absolutely sure you're all right?"
Buffy nodded and stood, trying to disguise how much effort it took. What was wrong with her? She'd been weak before, sure, but nothing like this. This hurt. It hurt to stand, to walk, to turn the door handle, even. Giles was gone so she didn't have to worry about putting up a good front, but the whole functioning like a human being thing was suddenly proving very difficult. Buffy grimaced as she staggered down the hallway and out the door into the chilly Scotland air, inhaling deeply. Maybe she'd just been stuck inside too much. Or maybe her work was taking a greater toll on her than she'd thought. Even slayers could get sick from stress, right?
Buffy was still trying to convince herself of this when her knees buckled and she tumbled onto the ground, blacking out.
He felt a fiery pain explode through his lungs, ripping him apart and throwing him into an entirely new dimension of pain. Hell hadn't been all that kind to him in the past, but he was getting the feeling that this was its way of letting him know he'd worn out his welcome. "Bloody good house guest I've been," he muttered, incoherently sputtering out something that could have been mistaken for an apology as he writhed and twisted under the pain, drowning in it. It felt like it was tearing his brain in half, searing into his nerves, blinding him until all he could see was an eclipsing, overwhelming black. Red swam through it, harsh and dark, like blood. Dried blood. Pretty blood. Little crimson light that won't go out, can't go out, little red fish swimming in a mercury sky, acid-drenched, thick and salty and wet and – solid?
Spike felt chapped, blistered lips close, and he licked them, tasting tangy, acidic blood in his mouth. This sensation was real, not imagined. The solid thing behind him was not another of Hell's oh-so-clever delusions, it was the ground. He was… alive? He groped at it wearily with his fingers, feeling stone under finger nails that had grown way too long. He stared dazedly at his hand, at the grit that clung to his palm. His skin looked chalky and pale, his fingers bony. But the paleness was sort of a regular thing for him, he thought, and the boniness probably had something to do with an eternity of torture that didn't exactly include snack breaks.
"Bloody Hell, I was driven mad in there." He whispered to himself, and felt how hoarse his throat was. The pain he felt now was amplified but not distorted – it was all real, all earthly, and it was manageable, if not pleasant. He'd welcome it with open arms after whatever had happened to him in there.
Details rushed back into his aching skull as though they'd been waiting to come home, the more intricate memories that Hell had knocked out of him hitting him hard, suddenly. Buffy.
The sodding slayer had gone and had him channel the power of the sun, of all things, like that was so smart for a bloody vampire to do, without a single thought to his well being, to all that he'd done for her, she'd just gone on, whipping that hair around like she was in some warped, gory commercial, playing the hero while he was stuck in that all too familiar supporting role as martyr, haplessly pushing for good when bad was pushing so very hard right back at her – God, he loved her. He could never see her again, but he loved her. He couldn't do that to her, couldn't stomach the idea of a confrontation tainted by his death. Last she'd seen him, he was burning to a crisp and screaming at the top of his lungs; he didn't want to haunt her, didn't want to be her ghost. For reasons he couldn't even fully explain, Spike felt he'd be an intruder in her life now. Things had probably changed radically since he'd last seen her. She had probably changed radically. Without him there, pulling her into the shadows again and again, she'd be stronger and safer. Happier, too.
Spike shakily struggled to stand, but when he found he couldn't he settled for wrapping his arms around his knees, holding them to his chest. He didn't cry because he wasn't sad; he knew he should be blissfully happy, or maybe even just confused. He had life again, existence, and he hadn't done anything to particularly deserve it. He felt like something was wrong or something was missing, maybe, but something was making him on edge. Vampires were humans, but they were also animals, and after more than a hundred years of surviving on instinct, Spike knew to trust those prickly feelings that convened on the back of his neck.
"Anyone there?" He called experimentally, dissolving into coughs before the words had left his mouth. This was fucking wonderful. Whoever was there didn't even have to look at him to sense his vulnerability, they could hear it in that little-boy-lost tone he'd picked up somewhere between Hell and Hell on Earth.
The trees surrounding him felt like gaunt, imposing shadows and he was arrested by their sheer number. This was like nothing he'd ever seen before. Where the hell was he? What if this wasn't Earth after all? Spike pushed his hands against the ground again. No. This was definitely Earth. It felt like Earth, looked like it, even bloody smelled like it, it just wasn't any place he'd seen before.
Spike inhaled with a long, raspy sigh and climbed to his feet, wobbling as he stood. He felt a little stronger now, more like himself. The dirty, ragged duster that hung off his now skeletal body was shelter enough against the mild elements, and he figured a little walk through the woods couldn't do much harm. No Blair Witch or not so friendly ghost to be afraid of, just another tumble through Hell, and even that was nothing he hadn't seen before. Spike raked back the obstinate curls that had grown long during his absence and then shoved his hands in his pockets, doing his best imitation of a confident man who had nothing to fear, no one after him.
It was a parody instead of the real thing. It felt wrong. He felt wrong.
Something was still missing, and Spike knew, however much he wanted to deny it, what it was.