Epilogue/Normal

This one is different than the rest of the ones in this series. It's from
Buffy's point of view, and takes place directly after "In the Hospital...".
Sadly, this is the end of the BtHSS. I'll have you know I have had a
wonderful time writing this, and I'd like to take the time, right now, to
thank anyone and everyone who's commented positively. Now this
is gonna go from July 26, 2001, to today: thank you to Sun-chan,
kaylin, Jade, Angelus, spike's babytalk, Kelley, Meg, gyrlfriend,
Levi Truelove, Riel, Jane McCartney, Ashley, Lila, Ursubear, Angelic
Gemma, fluffypuff, Isabelle, cosmic, Amelia, Belladonna, nina de majia,
and Destiney. Thank you all. Boots, Cindy, daphne, and Cameo...think
what you will. You're probably not reading this, but I still felt the
need to say it.

~*~ Epilogue/Normal ~*~

For some reason, someone put me under the delusion that my life
is normal. That *I* am normal. Who, in their right mind, asks their
boyfriend, who's in a coma, to marry her? I suppose I was desper-
ate. The doctors had been talking about pulling the plug on him,
and I would have been the one to sign the papers. And, quite
frankly, I don't know if I would have the strength, the willpower,
the mercy in me to sign those papers, even if it would've freed him
from any pain he'd been feeling.

Maybe I should go back and explain. Two years ago, two days after
my sixteenth birthday, my boyfriend Liam had returned from a trip to
England. He'd brought back a scroungy-looking little lanky sixteen-
year-old boy with him. He had brown hair, ice blue eyes, and he was
mostly skin and bones. The moment I laid eyes on him, I had felt
sorry for him.

Until he saw that pity in my eyes, and a fire lit underneath those blue
orbs, melting the ice away. He'd told me some biting remark, something
about my looking like a cheerleader or something, but I'd dismissed it
as him being an asshole. In fact, I had entirely dismissed him and gone
inside.

The next thing I knew, that boy was being shuffled upstairs to the guest
room with everything he owned and shuffled back downstairs to get
something to eat.

Me? Not happy. Him? Joyous.

Then I learned his name was William Walthrop, and my mother had
decided to take him in as part of a foreign exchange program type thing.
William bit my head off when I called him that the first time and told
me that if I ever did it again he'd cut my finger off and feed it to my
neighbor's dog. He then told me his name was Spike.

That really scared me off from him, and the more I knew him, the more
I found out he was an asshole and a jerk. But underneath that
exterior, he had a soft spot for girls in trouble. A sort of damsel-in-
distress complex. When he tried to talk to me at school for the first
month or so, I congenially told him to piss off. Then I managed to
poison my friends against him, except for Willow. Xander immediately
took to jovially making fun of the now-blond punk.

So, much to my chagrin, I found out he was in a lot of my classes. That
summer I was happy to get away from the house, but the boy seemed to
follow me like a lost puppy. I think that summer he had a crush on me or
something. Like he would ever admit that to me.

But during my senior year, back in beginning of December, or the middle,
I don't remember, my feelings started to change for him. I started to
think about him more and more, and he uncovered the god-awful truth
about the boyfriend I adored. He comforted me that night, and then
proceeded to spend the next twenty-four hours "shagging" some skanky
ho he picked up at the Bronze. Who, by the way, happened to work for
my boyfriend's secret international underground organization.

Needless to say, that pissed me off a little.

Then he got arrested for the alleged murder of two teachers at Sunnydale
High School, but was arraigned and released from custody later that
week. After that, Spike, Xander, Willow, this guy named Oz, and I got
stuck in Saturday detention. That was the first time I let my feelings for
him manifest. We made out in the broom closet...not exactly the most
romantic-y of places but suitable for that purpose.

He started avoiding me after that for a little while. So my mom kindly
suggested I take him to the Bronze with me. So I did. And he almost
stomped out. But I told him that my mom would be angry with me if
he didn't stay, so he stayed and we danced. We danced a lot. And I
found my emotions shifting towards positive to him, much to my
chagrin. I found him in our backyard after coming home from the Bronze
talking with his cousin, the bitch, Darla. After that, he left the house.
I tried to go with him, but he wouldn't let me.

The time he spent away from me and my mom drove me absolutely up
the wall. I couldn't stand being away from him, I couldn't stand having
privacy, I couldn't stand eating breakfast alone and not arguing with
him on the way to school. In short, I had it bad and I hadn't even
realized it until he was gone.

One night, Willow, my mom, and I went to the Christmas tree lot, and
I ran into him there. I kissed him on the spot, and he kissed me back.
We didn't realize we were so into each other until then. I tried to help
get Liam off his back, who was blackmailing him by then, but I ended
up getting him abused in the park after he and I went to the Bronze for
a Christmas party and declared our love to each other. That night,
Willow also ended up in the hospital after a bad car crash. Then we
came up with a plan to trap Liam and ended up being trapped ourselves.
Liam shot Spike in the shoulder, and my boyfriend ended up comatose.
Which brings me back to my first point: would a normal girl ask her
boyfriend to marry her while he's comatose? The answer, in all honesty,
is probably no. So I guess I'm not normal. But quite frankly, I don't
think I want to be normal--Spike loves me the way I am.
***

Anyway, it's been a month since I asked Spike to marry me. It's February
14, Valentine's Day. Mom had decided to knock down the wall between
out rooms, giving us the freedom of basically the entire second floor of
the house. We had a phone with our own phone number and line, a king-
sized bed, two stereos (one is mine, one is his), my television with cable,
and all sorts of odds and ends from our separate rooms.

But anyway, we decided that it would be best to go and be social for a
little while, then come back home and be love-bunnies. Okay, not so
much bunny. Either way, whatever we were going to do, it was special.

I went downstairs, joining Spike in the living room. I wore an old-
fashioned red dress along with the locket he gave me the previous
Christmas, and a cheap, plain, immitation gold ring on my left ring finger
(I bought it for myself to keep the hospital staff under the illusion I was
his fiancée). Originally, I hadn't planned to ask him to marry me, but it
was a last-ditch effort to pull him out of his coma. Not that I wouldn't
want to me Mrs. William Walthrop. But, Buffy Walthrop? God, talk about
a fumbling name.

So I joined him in his old DeSoto and we went to the Bronze. We danced
and we sat around a table and talked with the other two couples in our
groups, Xander and Cordelia and Willow and Oz. Suddenly, Spike kissed
me and took my hand, leading me up on stage once the band finished a
certain song. He picked up the microphone, much to the chagrin to everyone
else.

"First of all, sorry to you, mates, only gonna be a couple minutes.
Secondly," he turned his gaze on me. "I have somethin' I wanna say to the
blond in the little red number," he smirked and I felt my cheeks grow hot,
"wearing the cheap little ring she bought herself while I was in a coma."

Suddenly, he started to sing softly. "You are so beautiful, to me," he
caressed my cheek, "can't you see? You're everythin' I hoped for, you're
everythin' I need...you are so beautiful, to me..."

I couldn't help it. The gesture was just so sweet and selfless and in that
moment I knew I would never love anyone else. Tears began to spill over
onto my cheeks.

"Buffy Anne Summers, I love you. If you would do me the honor," he got down
on one knee, "of making me your husband, you'd be making a decision that
would make me the happiest man on Earth. Pretend like you never proposed to
me, 'cause I want this to be traditional like."

I wiped my tears away without being rude. He set the microphone down and
opened a red velvet box to reveal a gold band with three tiny diamonds set
in a row. "Please?"

I nodded, my lips trembling into a smile. "Of course, silly. Did you think I'd
say anything else?"

He smiled at me, and the world disappeared. He removed the old ring from my
hand and tossed it into the sea of bodies I didn't even know existed anymore,
and slipped the much more expensive, much nicer ring onto my finger. Then
he proceeded to kiss me entirely breathless.

Yeah, I'm normal. Really.
***

That night, when I walked up to Spike's and my room, I found a piece of
paper taped to the window, fluttering in the wind. I opened the window and
pulled the note from the glass.

And dropped it like it was liquid fire.

**DEaR buFFy:

*******I'm baCk...

**HuGs aND kIssEs...

******yOu kNOw wHO