Fond Memory-

Fond Memory- sequel to The Unreturning

by: Isabelle

-Disclaimer: I do not own any of the characters, they are all Joss. Quote from film Phenomenon.

-Summary: Sequel to The Unreturning, how Spike and Buffy deal with each other's memories.

-Rating: PG-15 (Language, Sexual Suggestion)

-Author's Note: Feed me FEEDBACK!!!! :)

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Dear Journal,

I sit and wait for sometype of sign of his return. He has left me now for twelve hours and thirty-two minutes. Twelve hours and thrity-two minutes since he held me, since I felt him, since I saw him. Twelve hours and thrity-two minutes ago my life was so different. At times I ask myself if it was my fault he left, just like it was my fault that Riley left.

Because I couldn't tell people that I loved a man they would never accept, because I was worried that I might die tomorrow and he would live forever?

I keep going over in my head the reasons for his departure. He said we weren't mean to be and I know it. This we have is wrong. But it is something.

Something that it is killing me as much as it is killing him. That we have to suffer being away because I was daylight and he was night (WOW-who knew I am a poet).

But I've spent the most important hours of my life in darkness. I am, like him, a creature of the night. How can a creature of the night love a creature of the day? Maybe that was the fallout of Riley, he was too brisky for me.

Funny that when Spike held me I forgot about this entire universe and our purpose in it. It was just us two.

I remember the first night we kissed and made love.

It had beed about a week since Riley left, me and Spike had gotten trapped in that cave by the old cementary. We fought with each other for about two hours straight, when water started to leak in from the rain outside. I was going to drown.

He was frantic. It was the moment he started planning every single plan under the sky, divising ways to get me out alive that I looked at him, I mean I really looked at him and realized that I cared for him.

That he cared for me. That after years of fighting, insults and hatred, we had grown in an inseperable bond. That the experiences we both went through together were shared by only us two and no one else. That we had both been left by love. That we were both wild creatures of the night and we both made each other crazy.

I remember I walked up to him and kissed him. He almost tripped over into the muddy water that had risen to our knees. But I catched him as he stared at me with his wide blue eyes, I almost laughed but I didn't want him to think that I was taunting him. At that moment-like so many other moments in my life-he was all I had. I was going to drown, he might die too if he didn't feed in a couple of days.

Then he held me as I cried, I didn't want to die, not like this, not drowning in a mud filled cave. I was the slayer, born to die in the hands of a demon. And here he was......in front of me, my demon. It was then that I realized he had always been there, yeah he left, but he always comes back, he returned.

As he held me while I cried I realized how much stronger he made me feel. How, in front of him, I was never hidding anything. I was Buffy, I was the Slayer. He had seem me down in the dumps, he had seen me at my best. He had seen me act silly, he had seen me being the hero. He saw me as the package, as the embodyment of who I am.

In all my other relationships, I was only a shade of me, only a part, the other pieces.....I layed them dormant.

With Angel, I wanted his protection, I was still the frightened little girl who needed looking after. The slayer would be put to rest with my Angel and I was just Buffy.

With Parker, that was just a mistake, and no other words on that issue.

With Riley I was cautious. There was a fine line between the things I shared with Riley and the things I didn't. I was part Slayer and part Buffy. But there were limits, places I didn't wonder to, things I knew he wouldn't understand. Afraid of hugging him too hard, I might break his back. Afraid of hitting him to potently, I might do serious damage. GOD! It was the constant battle of formalities that drove me away from him.

But with Spike. With him it was a nightly release of who I was. When I was with him, I didn't hold anything back, I was free. I could cry, he let me and held me until I stopped. I could laugh when he would tickle me (I got him back though). I could fuck his brains out nigthly and he would do the same to me. Doing things that normal human beings would be left bruised and beaten for. Bones crushing bones, it was miraculous release. I was coming home, everytime.

It was the looks we gave each other in front of the others, when no one was looking. It was the rush and the mystery and the knowledge that we could never be that drove me to love him more and more each day.

Noticing the silly things he did, like scream at the television when something in Passion went in a twisted direction. The ways he took off his shirt from the back of the neck. The way he poked the marshmallows in mom's hot cocoa while he smiled at her and her stories. The way he refused to believe that he was no longer the big bad. The way he wrinkled his nose when he drank his pig's blood which he hated. The way he would fight so full of energy and stamina, and after a kill he would hop in exitement like a little kid. The way he cocked his head to the side when he couldn't believe what you were saying. The way his chest puffed up when ever his name was associated with evil and fright. The way he secretly rubbed the small of my back as he led me into a room. The way that evertime our eyes met he was shouting "I love you" yet no words were spoken.

The way he loves so entirely without any holds. He is willing to give so much love it scared me at first, but then I used it as a tool to learn to love again. In the three short weeks I was with him, he reached inside of me and brought out who I really am and who I was meant to be.

I was free.

Buffy Summers

Buffy placed down her pen and sighted resting her head on her wrist. She couldn't cry no longer. She gave a non-humorous laugh. She had no water left in her body.

I can do this. She said noding her head although it felt as if it weighted one hundred pounds.

She looked down at her bed and smelled her pillow, it smelled like him, this is where he had last slept, here they had last talked until dawn. She was literally never going to wash that again. She layed down to sleep inhaling his scent as she drifted off to dreams of him.

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He stared at the motel ceiling like a zoombie whose life has become so unbearable that they have decided to block everything thing else out.

He slowly raised himself from the position he had been at for the past twelve hours. He missed her, he missed her so much it hurt.

So this is what you felt for the past three years. Spike talked to Angel silently.

He could still smell her on his coat, the coat he gave her that night, that first night she had kissed him and he died for the second time of shock.

Then he remembered holding her while she cried for fear of her death, how tight she held on to him. He was dying. Both from excitment of this new revelation of trust and for the thought that only one of them was going to walk out of the cave that night.

When she finished crying she looked at him with longing in her eyes and he did what any red-blooded male would do, he stuttered.

He didn't know what to say; what do you say "Ummm.........I love you......like forever now......wanna run away together, sorry you're dying?"

He shook his head, she was the slayer, yeah he had dreamed about it, fantasized about, but never expected for her to return it the emotions.

But there was no holding back, this was his moment, he could still hear in his head those words that had done her in after she had stopped crying. He told her, "If you die tonight, you will not die alone."

Her eyes had sparkled, something he had never seen her do, this was new, like a new found happiness in the middle of a death sentence. She was happy and those simply words that He had said had made her happy, had made her feel sheltered.

He had kissed her tentatively at first and when she responded his intentions it had finished off being the best night of his life. She had given herself to him so completely so lovingly that even in the mud water, that reached their waist by the time they finished, it didn't stop their love making.

When he realized the danger she was in and the way he actually had some serious chance to be with her, he had gone into a panic attack. He wanted her to live and he wanted to un-live, he wanted them to be together.

He remembered the water reaching his shoulders and her neck, he had picked her up as she wrapped her legs around his waist and they cried together.

She had whispered the things she wanted him to tell her family and friends and he had cried like a little boy whose only real thing in this world had been taken away.

When the water had reached their chins they grew very quiet and he had asked her if she wanted him to turn her, she had said no, but thanks for the compliment. She knew that him siring her would have meant eternal life together. She had refused, even though at first it hurt him he understood that she didn't want to become one of the creatures she had been born to destroy.

The last few minutes had lasted hours for him they stared into each others eyes forming an electric bond that would change everything between them. It specially came to a surprise when the water stopped two seconds before drowing her and the cave opening shattered, showing the dark night. The water current had pulled them and dragged them a few feet till they ended in the middle of the cememtary floor still clinging to each other. There had been a silence between the two, thinking that perhaps they were dreaming, that their unexpected escape was not real.

But then they had laughed, laughed until their stomachs hurt, laughed out of joy and delight. She had felt silly and he had told her then and there; never to hold her feelings back in front of him. That had changed everything, they became inseparable since then. That night they had made sweet love, rough love, and silly love.

He smiled remembering how she had played "the damsel in distress" and he the shinning knight that rescued her. They had the time of their lives, loving, adoring, and trusting.

With Buffy it was the first time he could honestly say he had fallen in love. Before that day in the cave he had lust, but now.....it was most definetely love.

And because of love he was going to do what he was doing now.

He braced himself as his Desoto stopped in front of the old hotel that read "Angel Investigations". He was going to tell Angel what he had found out from a messanger sent by Drusilla. The meassage: a vision.

In twelve hours Angel would be human, and he just wanted to let his sire know that he was glad that Buffy was getting what she deserved. A human, one that she loved. Her loving Angel had not bothered Spike, because she knew that he still loved Dru. But there was a grand difference between loving someone and being in love with someone.

Buffy eventually would fall back in love with Angel, he knew it, and even though he knew neither were going to forget those sweet three weeks, they had to go on with their lives.

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George: Do you think you could love me for the rest of my life?

Lace: No, I'm gonna love you for the rest of mine.

from Phenomenon

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TBC......................