-1

Author's Note: The characters? Not mine. This is just a humble fan's Frankenstein creation.

B/S "Spuffy" Spike goes to Buffy in a moment of weakness. Minor angst.

Let Me Go

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"All the time you're leaving, yet you never let me go."

Buffy Summers was wearing dark shades, the sort that hid her puffy red eyes. Her golden hair blew in the wind, and she pulled her cotton jacket closer. The moon was high, almost full, and her breaths were slow, a little heavy for the clean night air. She was alone, and it was better that way.

"What are you doing here?" she asked the vampire who walked up behind her. He hadn't made a sound, but she could feel him. Without looking, she knew that he was wearing the anguished look that only she could give him. "I told you to leave me alone." She kept her eyes away from him, and as he moved closer, his steps became heavy.

"If you want me to go away, you need to leave me alone," Spike said, running a hand through his platinum hair. If her breaths were heavy, his were drowning. "You need to stop saving my life, to let me die." His voice was choked with tears, she realized. She could see it, if she closed her eyes. His tears, his pain. Her fault.

"I'm leaving you alone," Buffy said, clearing her voice. "I'm not the one on your doorstep. It's you who won't leave me alone." She turned to face him, making sure the sunglasses were still in place.

"You're so incorrect," Spike said, letting out a breath he didn't need. "You are downright wrong."

"Wrong? Wrong, am I? Why are you here?" She took the glasses off, to try and get a closer look, a better picture of him. He was thinner than she remembered, maybe a touch paler. It was the eyes that struck her. He'd been broken before. She new she'd hurt him. But the eyes… they were downright empty. "You haven't been sleeping, have you?" Her own eyes were rimmed with red, bloodshot. Not losing sleep, downright lacking in it.

"You keep saving my life," Spike told her. "I go out and find a right row, something right, something worthy, and you save me, each and every bloody bleeding time. Each and every bloody bleeding time you lie to yourself. You tell me you don't feel a damn thing. That there is nothing between us. I'm a monster." He moved closer, and she could feel the heat of him. She could reach out and touch him, could hold him, could feel whole and secure for one minute, maybe two. She blinked, and then pulled back.

"There isn't anything there. You can't feel it, can't feel," Buffy told him. "You're a vampire. A demon."

"If I cannot feel, why do I feel so bad? Why do I feel so torn up, so wrong? Why do I feel like clawing my heart out?"

"You don't," Buffy said. "You just think you do."

"Then stake me, pet!" He swung at her. "Stake me good and proper!" The words stung more than the blow. Buffy countered his next attack, as quick as she could, instinctively aiming for his nose. It was always the nose, with Spike. Familiar. Like the fights they'd always had, like so many nights, over the years.

" I don't want to live anymore, Buff. I want to end." His voice was filled with more pain than a vampire should have been able to feel, and as he lashed out, Buffy Summers, the one and only vampire slayer, found herself on the defensive. "I don't want to be this thing anymore, Buff. Please. Let me rest. Just… Buffy, I need you to let me rest." He was crying, she realized. Crying, and she couldn't fight him, and he wasn't hurting her, not physically, not really. He never could, chip or no chip. Buffy dropped her arms, and looked up at the golden vampire she'd spent so long protecting, neglecting, destroying.

"I can't," Buffy said. "You don't get to just come to me for an easy fix to all this. You're the one that knows things. Knows how to do things. How life is." Her voice was empty, hollow. Much like she'd felt for the past… a long as he could think.

"I don't know if I can just walk into sunlight, anymore, love. I need you to do this for me. If you care so little, this should be easy. I'm a vampire. I'm hurting you, pet. I'm evil. Stake me. Do the world a favor." Spike was shaking, trembling violently. He shoved her, knocking her back into the pavement. She just looked up at him, her red-rimmed eyes filling with tears.

"Maybe you'll love me, when I'm gone," he said, a funny little smile creeping onto his face. Hopeful, and insane. "Maybe you'll want me, when you can't have me anymore. Maybe that's what you're afraid of. Maybe you are afraid that you love me, and that's why you are always there, why you save me when I want to be dead. You can't love me, but you keep on saving me. Afraid. Yes, yes, pet, maybe you're just afraid."

"I'm not," Buffy said, her voice stronger than she felt. "I'm not afraid."

"I am," Spike said. "Me, the big bad. Trembling in my right smart boots. Please, love. End me."

"I can't," she said. " I still need you. I don't love you, but I need you. You complete me."

Spike held out his hand and she took it, allowing him to pull her to her feet. "Then love me," he said. "You can end my torment, still. Love me, or I swear by everything unholy I'll walk into the sun. I think I can do it, knowing that it'll sear your soul as it sears my flesh. Knowing that you feel the same way I do"

"You couldn't do it, couldn't hurt me," Buffy said, leaning in to him, breathing in the leather and cigarettes, the alcohol and clean laundry, and there, underneath it, the scent that was uniquely spike."

"I have never wanted to, pet. You'd be amazed what I can do," He spoke into her hair, the tears still falling from his eyes.

"Why can't you just let it be simple? Why can't you just feel it, and keep it inside?" Her arms slipped around him, and she realized with a start that he wasn't the only one trembling.

"I'll burst," he said. "My chest will blow open, and I'll die."

"I trust you," she told him. "I don't ever say the words, but I do."

"You don't," Spike said. "You can't. You can't trust me, because I am a monster. Like a monster movie."

"Then why do I leave her with you, every time? Why, when I can't be there, do I feel okay, because I know you're there with them, and that you'd die before you let anything happen?"

"These army brats put a bleeding chip in my head," he said. The two of them stood together, neither pulling away, their trembling bodies supporting one another. Leaning on one another. Neither said a word for quite some time.

"I love you," Buffy mouthed, "Even if I can't tell you."

"I can hear you," Spike said, quietly. "Vampire hearing, you know."

Their fearful and anguished trembling became something else, as the two of them slid to the ground, laughing.

"You never had to say it for me to hear," she told him, quietly, when the laughter subsided. "I knew, from the moment I came back to life, before then, too. You were the one person, the only one who would never let me go." It was the rising sun that drove them back inside, and Dawn's heavy sigh that had them laughing once again. Buffy, smiling, felt for just that moment like she was in heaven.