Part VII
SPIKE
Dear Buffy,
You're laughing at me right now, aren't you? That night in the alley, when I was taunting you with how one day you would be desperate to die. . .wondering if you'd enjoy the moment when it finally came. . .how sweet it must be for you to know that it is me who is sitting here, trying to find something meaningful to say in this bloody letter that I'll be putting on your grave and hoping against hope that I won't destroy the whole occasion by breaking down sobbing like an infant while the others leave their messages. . .Congratulations, Summers. . .you finally got me.
I wish I could believe that, Buffy. . .I wish that I could believe that somehow you intended for this to blow up in my face, to leave me and my ineptitude against that bastard Doc as the cause of your death, and for me to be shunned by the Niblet and all of your friends as a miserable waste of undead flesh and tattered clothing. . .not even worth the trouble to stake. But I know better. . .you invited me back into your home and trusted me with a job that was terribly important to you, believing that I would give my life to perform it if need be. I would have. . .you have to believe I would have, but I failed. Perhaps it would have been better if the others had blamed me for failing, for making you do the job that I hadn't. . .but no one said a thing to me. They just looked sadly at my pitiful self and walked away. . .even Harris. Willow and Tara have been watching me. . .think they're afraid I'll go out and kiss the sunshine. I won't. . .I still have a promise to keep, and I'll keep it until I'm dust, no matter who I have to kill to do it.
Buffy. . .with all of the unsettling and perverse emotions tied into my feelings for you, there is one question that I have never seriously tried to sit down and answer before. . .why did I fall in love with you . . .why will I always love you? I suppose it would be easy to attribute it to the obvious things: your grace, your spirit, the way you fight with every ounce of strength within you. . .and, of course, your beauty, which will be the last thing I see whenever I close my eyes from now on, if I live to be ten thousand. . .but I'm certain that, at the core, it isn't any of those things that made me fall in love with you. It was looking at you and seeing the brightest light and the uttermost darkness, both within you and visible to anyone who knew how to look. . .and seeing you hold that darkness down every day that finally got to me, I believe. Even with Joyce dying, I believed that you were going to hold on, to prove me wrong. . .and if living had been the only way to save the world and the Niblet, I believe that you would have lived, no matter the burden you had to bear.
I was telling you the truth, at least as I know it, about the other Slayers and what caused them to meet their ends. Placing the fate of the world on the shoulders of a young girl, then depriving her of most of the consolations that make life in this unhappy world bearable, is a cruelty that would make even Angelus shudder, love, and I hope that wherever you are that you can confront whoever decided how things were going to be and use some of that determination and fire that I came to dread and love to make them justify themselves. For everything you've done, you deserve to know that much.
Buffy, if you're reading this, you're probably wondering if I'm going to backslide into my old ways with you gone, and I want to promise that I won't, that your memory alone will suffice to keep me fighting with the White Hats until the bitter end. . .but I can't, and you're too clever to believe that sort of blanket promise anyway. We both know that at my core I am evil, and the urge to do evil will always be part of me, just as it is for Angel-soul or not. I can tell you this, though. . .for the first time in my unlife, there are a lot of reasons for me to want to do good, and I'm going to try my utmost to listen to those reasons, for the sake of the Niblet and. . .I can't believe I'm saying this, your friends, who were always interesting enemies and will make good allies in the days ahead. You invited me back into your life just before you left mine. . .and I'm going to do my best to prove that you were right to do so.
All My Love,
William
. . .to be continued
As always, comments are welcomed and desired
SPIKE
Dear Buffy,
You're laughing at me right now, aren't you? That night in the alley, when I was taunting you with how one day you would be desperate to die. . .wondering if you'd enjoy the moment when it finally came. . .how sweet it must be for you to know that it is me who is sitting here, trying to find something meaningful to say in this bloody letter that I'll be putting on your grave and hoping against hope that I won't destroy the whole occasion by breaking down sobbing like an infant while the others leave their messages. . .Congratulations, Summers. . .you finally got me.
I wish I could believe that, Buffy. . .I wish that I could believe that somehow you intended for this to blow up in my face, to leave me and my ineptitude against that bastard Doc as the cause of your death, and for me to be shunned by the Niblet and all of your friends as a miserable waste of undead flesh and tattered clothing. . .not even worth the trouble to stake. But I know better. . .you invited me back into your home and trusted me with a job that was terribly important to you, believing that I would give my life to perform it if need be. I would have. . .you have to believe I would have, but I failed. Perhaps it would have been better if the others had blamed me for failing, for making you do the job that I hadn't. . .but no one said a thing to me. They just looked sadly at my pitiful self and walked away. . .even Harris. Willow and Tara have been watching me. . .think they're afraid I'll go out and kiss the sunshine. I won't. . .I still have a promise to keep, and I'll keep it until I'm dust, no matter who I have to kill to do it.
Buffy. . .with all of the unsettling and perverse emotions tied into my feelings for you, there is one question that I have never seriously tried to sit down and answer before. . .why did I fall in love with you . . .why will I always love you? I suppose it would be easy to attribute it to the obvious things: your grace, your spirit, the way you fight with every ounce of strength within you. . .and, of course, your beauty, which will be the last thing I see whenever I close my eyes from now on, if I live to be ten thousand. . .but I'm certain that, at the core, it isn't any of those things that made me fall in love with you. It was looking at you and seeing the brightest light and the uttermost darkness, both within you and visible to anyone who knew how to look. . .and seeing you hold that darkness down every day that finally got to me, I believe. Even with Joyce dying, I believed that you were going to hold on, to prove me wrong. . .and if living had been the only way to save the world and the Niblet, I believe that you would have lived, no matter the burden you had to bear.
I was telling you the truth, at least as I know it, about the other Slayers and what caused them to meet their ends. Placing the fate of the world on the shoulders of a young girl, then depriving her of most of the consolations that make life in this unhappy world bearable, is a cruelty that would make even Angelus shudder, love, and I hope that wherever you are that you can confront whoever decided how things were going to be and use some of that determination and fire that I came to dread and love to make them justify themselves. For everything you've done, you deserve to know that much.
Buffy, if you're reading this, you're probably wondering if I'm going to backslide into my old ways with you gone, and I want to promise that I won't, that your memory alone will suffice to keep me fighting with the White Hats until the bitter end. . .but I can't, and you're too clever to believe that sort of blanket promise anyway. We both know that at my core I am evil, and the urge to do evil will always be part of me, just as it is for Angel-soul or not. I can tell you this, though. . .for the first time in my unlife, there are a lot of reasons for me to want to do good, and I'm going to try my utmost to listen to those reasons, for the sake of the Niblet and. . .I can't believe I'm saying this, your friends, who were always interesting enemies and will make good allies in the days ahead. You invited me back into your life just before you left mine. . .and I'm going to do my best to prove that you were right to do so.
All My Love,
William
. . .to be continued
As always, comments are welcomed and desired
