This fic is very, very short, but I think I did a good job with it, so there.


Ben had stayed there for three days already. He still didn't know what his sentence would be, but at least he didn't have a guilty concience anymore; at least he had owned up to his mistake.

He remebered what it was like just after the accident. He kept telling himself that he should have stayed ... he should have taken the blame in the first place, but he couldn't bring himself to turn himself in.

Was he scared? Probably. He didn't want to lose his job. He didn't want his brother to look down on him ... *again*. He had felt as if the weight of the world was on his back.

"You did the right thing." Ben heard a child's voice saying to him.

"It took me long enough ..." he replied.

"But the point is that you finally listened to your concience." Spike said. Ben looked up and saw a smile spread across his former playmate's face, "You finally did what you had known was right all along."

Ben felt a smile spread across his own face. "It does feel good to have the weight taken off. It almost doesn't matter what happened to me because of it."

"You'll get through it, Ben." Spike encouraged him, "I know you will, because you won't be alone. I'll help you."

"You've always been there, Spike." Ben said getting more serious, "Even when no one else understood me, you were always there to help me."

"And I always will be."

"And to think that I made you up when I was a kid." Ben's smile came back.

"How do you know I'm made up?" Spike's question wasn't joking. It was dead serious. Ben gave a confused look to what he now realized was thin air. Spike was gone, and Ben was now left to ponder the words his friend had left him with.