DISCLAIMER: Joss Whedon...etc., etc., etc. ... Mutant Enemy...

so on, so on, and so on ... Bottom line: not mine.

A/N: It's been a looooooong time since I wrote in the Buffy fandom. This story is an old one, but, as wasn't around when I started writing fic, I'm posting them here for the first time. Feedback is always welcome, always remembering that much of what you will find in my Buffy fiction was written when the show aired and thus reflects the reality at that time. For that reason, some events will not match up with happened on air after I had written a particular story.

Series notes (please read): This set of twelve vignettes and an epilogue was written between the 5th and 6th seasons. Each vignette is short and told from the point of view of one of the characters Buffy touched. They can be read in any order.

For This Reason (Spike)

Hey, I always knew I'd go down fighting. Sure as hell never thought it'd

be on this side... or for this reason

---Spike, "The Gift"

I made you a promise. If I hadn't, I'd have come to this part of the cemetery at sunrise, and let it wash over my face. I'd root myself to the foot of your grave and watch the flames start. They'd begin at my fingers, I think, and probably the top of my head. The fire would race up my arms, catch at my toes and cut my legs out from under me. I'd howl until the conflagration ate my voice. The words would shake the leaves of the willows that surround you, echo in them, and whisper back down on my ashes. The last piece of me to go, the slowest to catch, the hardest to immolate would be my unbeating heart. But nothing in this corpse of mine could resist the flames and eventually, in what might feel like a lifetime, yet would really be seconds, it would explode into the dust you left of my existence. It wouldn't be a long death, it would hurt like bloody anything, but it couldn't be worse than what it's like without you. 'Cept I made you this little promise, made it the night you sacrificed yourself for 'Bitty Buffy'. And, despite the predictions of a few sorry minions, the world didn't end as scheduled.

So, I come at night and sit. And smoke sometimes, but mostly I just stare at the ground. We let them put you in there, had to hold Dawn back so she wouldn't throw herself on top of the box - coffin. Sorry, can't bring myself really to call it anything prettier than what it was - four sides, a top, and a bottom of wood makes it a box. We let some undertaker set you in it, fix up your face which was still breath-stealingly beautiful in death, and then we all stood around and watched in silence while someone who never knew you talked about ashes to ashes and dust to dust. And, yeah, we held Dawn back, flailing, screeching, sobbing her eyes out for want of you. The rest of us were just quieter about it, but we were all right there with her over it.

It was all quick-like, felt as if there should have been more, as if we should have been calling out to the whole world what you'd done for it. Again. Seven of us, seven who knew what you really were, who understood the gift you'd given to each and every person still walking around on this miserable rock. Again.

Was your life anything but apocalypses and darkness?

It was, once, back before you got all chosen. Angel was there that day, saw you, watched it happen, watched the sunlight hide itself from you forever. He fell in love with you. Used to whine about it when he was Angelus, used to make fun of his poor soul-having self who went and fell head-over with the stupid, fucking Slayer, of all girls! Joked about how pathetic, whiny Angel got jealous of your 'white knight' because he could see you in the sunlight. Talk like that always got Dru going, turned her all sympathetic and mushy, made me tune out. God, Buffy, wish I'd paid more attention to my old grand-sire back then, wish I could picture you like that - young, free, smiling in the sunlight. But I think I get it now. It's what you gave Dawn - the chance to have a life in the sunlight, to live without one eye over her shoulder wondering what lurks around the next dark corner.

Angel was in a bad way when he came back up here with Willow. The two of us might have made quite a pair - double immolation ceremony if it weren't for the two that came with him. Finally felt sorry for the big poof. Guess I understood for the first time what he lost when he left you. Watching him I figured out, too, why he had to leave you and just how much he feared this day would come and he wouldn't be around.

I think everyone pretty much surprised him when they told him I was staying.

"People change," Cordelia reminded him. She's come a long way, that one has. You all did, but her. Well, more than her hair has changed. Know Angelus never gave her a passing thought, but when she said that to Angel her eyes were all full of meaning only the other English one got. Was he really your Watcher for a while? Makes Rupert look downright wild.

"He's not a person," our Angel reminded her. And if words could have staked, I'd be a pile of dust in your hallway.

The girl only raised her eyebrows at him. Don't think anyone really believed at first that she could make him back down, but he did.

"He was - is - wa... whatever, to Buffy," Willow said, both confused and defensive.

"And is to me," your little sis added. Girl gets more like you every day.

Even carpenter boy nodded.

Still and all, it was hard on Angel. At least the rest of us were here. We know how it went down. Know why you had to do it. There's a small peace in that. Very small.

Seeing Angel, watching him die a little more, I thought back over this journey of mine, the path my life and afterlife has taken. In one of life's grand ironies, your Angel and I have loved the same woman, twice now. Though, not really, I suppose. It's Angelus who loved Dru and only as a prize, a possession, a circus sideshow freak with her second sight. And it's Angel who loved you, but I remember quite well your effect on Angelus. Much as he tried to hate you, he knew the Angel that loved you was in there somewhere still. He never could quite shake that. I thought it was weakness - his. Never knew until this last year that it was strength - yours.

When Dru found me in that alley I was a man reviled by the people he valued most. She took that and turned me into her playmate, her consort and I reveled in it. But she never saw the better parts of the man she'd turned. She saw only the evil she'd created. It was all anyone saw for a long while.

Like to think the better parts of who I was carried over. Love and poetry. I may not have had a gift for words, but the feelings were always there.

My love (and only in death, and only in solitude do I get to say that) you saw the things no one else ever did, in everyone around you. In Willow. In Xander. Even in Rupert. Especially in the poof and finally, in me. You saw and you reflected them back at us, let us catch glimpses of the best we could be and something in you - your smile perhaps; maybe your eyes; maybe the way your heart wrote its messages on your whole face - made us want to see more, to see ourselves the way you did. You let our actions tell you who we were more than what we said. You believed in us every step of the way, even when you didn't want to, even when you tried to hate us, me. You couldn't. You made us who we are. And in some ways I'd like to think we helped you find out who you were.

I sit here and think of the girl I never knew and the one I did. I remember the first time I ever saw you, wanting to kill you because you were the Slayer. A word. Bed time bogey-girl to frighten bad little vamps. Almost as bad as being sent to your room without supper it was when your sire or some other knowing vamp would tell you all about the one girl in all the world, chosen, destined to fight our kind. You were never like any other Slayer and it became personal. I started to hate Buffy Summers. That made you more than a word, a myth. I hadn't felt anything except easy contempt for any mortal in so long you made me step back and wonder why, wonder how you'd gotten to Angel so deeply and how you drove Angelus buggery even when he claimed you didn't. That's where it started for me. That need to understand you, that started me loving you. Not quite sure when that happened. Dru knew it long before I did.

I know you always thought it was the chip, making me behave and all. Maybe it was. But somewhere in there all the years hate twisted 'round and became love just the same. I once told Angelus to kill you a body had to love you. Never realized until it was too late that once a person loved you it was impossible to kill you.

I wish I'd known the girl before. I really do. I would have liked to see the sun catching all the light in your hair, would have liked to hear you laugh with a pure joy, without the ever present knowledge that evil waits in every dark, or not so dark, space around us. I would have liked to see you smile at me, just once, without the sadness that lived in your soul.

I knew you'd never look at me the way you look at him. Knew it going in, unlike poor Commando Boy. Didn't care either. I just wanted to see in your eyes that I was worth something. Not as a plaything, not as a killer, not as the butt of a thousand jokes, but as someone worthy of your respect, your trust. I did all I could to prove to you my love wasn't because of the sodding chip in my head, but because of you, because of what you meant, still mean. When you let me in to your house... you knew what I meant when I said there was no barrier. I could hear your heart beating beneath your flesh. Didn't know... didn't even guess I'd never have the chance to hear it again.

I told you I knew you'd never love me. When I said it, I knew I was going to die, again. In my mind, the world was going to go on that night, but without old Spike in it. You were going to take out Glory and I was going to rescue the Niblet, but somehow I wasn't going to make it. That was all right. That felt good to me. I thought you'd hold Dawn, stroke her hair, dry her scared tears, and say a few words about my final sacrifice, maybe even let slip that you'd really cared more than anyone had known.

When I said it, you turned. And I know now what I saw in your eyes. It wasn't William the Bloody bad poet or Spike the notorious vampire or even Spike the pathetic shell of his former vicious self. I saw the man I'd been looking for, the one I'd hoped you might love. I know now I had a tiny piece of your heart and it's enough. Over the years you'd given us all pieces of your heart, your soul, and Dawn is the biggest part of that. I know what you gave me when you counted on me to keep her safe.

Doc asked me why I cared. I told him I'd made a promise to a lady. I intend to keep it, Buffy. I'll protect Dawn, forever if it comes to that. Not because of the chip, never because of that. Because you died for her. Because you died for all of us. Because you died for love. You gave the world the gift of your heart, your love, your very soul. And because she's you. She's the you I never got to know. So I'll love her like you loved her. And protect her like I couldn't protect you.

For this reason I watch your grave at night and hope that wherever you are the sun holds you tightly in its warm embrace and that you know nothing of darkness, apocalypses, or the evil which marked your every hour as the Slayer.

You saved more than the world, Buffy. You saved a boy who died in an alley over a century ago. You saved him. A lot.

END