A/N: So okay, this fic is basically turning into a series of one-shots, all related to one another, dealing with Buffy and her feelings in the immediate aftermath of Chosen. They can all be read separately, if you so choose, but they DO all fit into the bigger, overarching storyline I'm working on, which will, eventually, be more than just memories and dreams. That's all I'm saying. ;) Enjoy.
His name was William. He wrote poetry and played the guitar and was always humming something or other quietly to himself. He told me I smelled like the sun …
Every morning, as she went about doing all her morning-type activities … brushing her teeth, combing her hair, showering, getting dressed, even eating breakfast … she would run through her mental list of things to not forget. Not a to-do list for the day. Nothing mundane as that.
No, these were things like … the precise color of blue his eyes were, or the way he'd always smelled like cigarettes and leather and earth and stone and rain. Only a Slayer would think the smells of a graveyard were comforting, but there it was.
She thought about things like the way he laughed sometimes, not that evil laugh he'd do around everyone else to cheese them off, no. The way he laughed when it was just the two of them. Or the way he was always making up silly little poems - it was never any good, but she had liked it all the same, though she never told him as much. She had always liked it when he talked about England, as it had been when he was still human.
Or the way his lips felt moving against her own. The way he'd breathe out her name, so reverently, even though he had no need of breathing at all. The way they would fight for control, until, in the end, it just didn't matter because the only important thing was that he was inside of her, and they were moving as one, close as two people could physically be.
Sometimes … sometimes she thought maybe it was more than just a physical closeness they'd shared. But she hadn't ever told him that. And now it was too late.
His name was William. His eyes were blue, not like the sky, but like sapphires or the really deep part of the ocean. He smoked too much, but what the hell, it wasn't like it was going to kill him or anything. He looked great in leather and he made love like … well, like a demon. He laughed like a lunatic. And he loved me …
It had taken her a long time to come to terms with that last part … too long, as it turned out. There had been times … oh, way back, before her mom had died, even … where there had been the stirring of … something … in her gut when she was around him. But she always quashed it, because you couldn't love things that didn't have souls. But she cared about him, and looking back now, she realized, there was really no difference. If he was someone worth caring about, then he was someone worthy of being loved.
She'd been kind of an idiot.
One of the times that they'd had an actual conversation after … well, after … he'd told her that she made William come out again. She'd narrowed her eyes and asked him if that was some kind of weird euphemism, and he'd laughed, long and loud and bright, and it had made her laugh too, she couldn't help it, and then he'd given her that look, that one that he only ever gave her, and she knew - knew that that was what he was talking about, that was William, that was the part of him that he'd held onto all these years. That was the part of him that made him love her.
A lump formed in her throat and there was a stirring in her belly, and it wasn't just lust. She'd run away then, not wanting to feel that, not for him, not when he didn't have a soul, what did that say about her?
But from that day on, every time she'd thought of him, she'd thought of him as William. Oh, he was still Spike when she spoke out loud to her friends, or when she was talking to him, but in her head … in her head he'd become William. And when he'd come back … after he'd gone to Africa … it had been hard to remind herself to call him Spike, still.
He hadn't had a soul before that, no, but he'd always had William. And that was where the difference was, she thought. She never really talked about it with anyone … didn't want to have to endure all their pity when she told them that she had, in fact, loved that guy who'd died to save them all. But she'd done reading, on her own, and she thought she sort of understood now. William had been a good man, that was why Spike had been such a … strange sort of vampire.
But now Spike was gone, and he'd taken William with him. He was just gone and she was alone, and she couldn't even make herself go into the basement of her new home, far away from Sunnydale, these days without thinking of him; without thinking of their last few hours together, when she should have told him, but she didn't, because she was sure that if anyone would make it out okay, it would be him. He was a warrior, her warrior and champion, and then after they returned home, she would tell him everything, and maybe, just maybe, everything wouldn't fall apart around her.
You're the one, he'd told her. And the funny thing is, after that night, she had thought that maybe he was the one, too.
But he'd had to go and be all noble and die for them, and she was proud, so proud, of him, but also so angry. It wasn't fair … it wasn't fair at all that as soon she finally thought she'd had it all figured out, it got torn away from her.
He said I smelled like sunshine … but he took it all with him when he burned. He was the sun then, and now the sun is gone.
His name was William. And he was mine.
