The Only Love I Know

Spike is surreally solicitous when he sees my wrists. In a move that reminds me that the last time he was human was deep into the Victorian age, he takes my hands in his and kisses my bruises, not even turning it into anything kinky. And his eyes are kind when he looks at me, and his smile is William, the Bloody Awful Poet and I know I can never tell Willow who because there are whole people living inside his body that she'll never see and to kill one of them is to kill them all.

"Was it bad, pet? he asks. Did they see?"

He'll never understand Willow's response. He'll never understand how I let her run away. But this is Spike, and there are only a few things left that I'll lie to him about, and I don't think that this is one of him. His eyes are on me, seeing me more clearly than anyone else has in months, and I finally say, "Yeah, Willow saw."

His eyebrow quirked up, distorting his scar, drawing my attention. For a second, I can't hear his words. In some ways, we're still new to each other, and even the simplest things will draw our focus away from whatever we should be doing.

"What? I'm sorry, did you ask something?"

His smile is smug; he knows why I didn't listen the first time. "What I asked, Slayer, was what you said. Should I expect not to wake up some day soon? Is there some sharp wood in my future?"

"I didn't tell her it was you. I didn't tell her it was anybody."

Now he's almost laughing. "You told your best mate that you tie yourself to your own bed and what, exactly? Try to throw yourself off? You're maybe trying to be the next Houdini and you're still pretty bad at it?"

Put that way, it is almost funny. Or maybe my new sense of humor is as warped and wrong as everything else about me. In me.

"No, she's knows it was somebody. She didn't want to know who. Didn't care, I guess."

"And isn't that what I keep telling you? That I'm the one who here's for you, the only one who doesn't turn away. Don't know why you keep bothering to do anything with those whelps." He pauses, considers. "Nah, the Nibblet's right enough, but those others..."

Some nights I have to wonder if he doesn't have a point here. If my friends have moved on, moved away, since I died. I mean, it only stands to reason. Isn't that what you're supposed to do when someone dies? Move on with your life? There's nothing about me that isn't totally against the natural order of things. But I'm wandering again, getting lost in my own mind. That's happening more and more lately; sometimes it scares me. Most times, I don't think about it. I was saying something, though, I'm sure of it.

"Why!" I announce suddenly, and Spike stares at me quizzically, since it's clear that I'm not asking a question. I try to clarify. "She asked why."

He moves towards me then, all predator, danger in leather and denim, a wicked smile on his lips, the hint of fang. "And whatever did you tell her, pet? he whispers, breathing in my scent."

This I know, this is the first step in a now familiar dance. "I told her that doing this was the only thing that I could feel."

He's closer now, and I reach out to touch him, to pull him closer. He hisses in pain as I touch him, my hands hard on old bruises, but that only makes his eyes glow in anticipation. It's never just me that gets hurt. It's never just me. I'm as rough with him. I am. "What do I make you feel?" he murmurs, his fangs grazing my throat, delicate torture, a hint of things to come.

He's still too far, so I grab at him, pull him against me. "Alive," I answer, and bite into his lip, lick at the coppery blood that rushes to the surface. He moans softly in appreciation and leans in for a kiss.

"You're right, pet. I'm the one that makes you alive. The one that makes you real. The only one..." And then there are other, more interesting things to do with our mouths, and I know that conversation is over, maybe for the night. This is easier than thinking. This is what I need.

It's the early hours of morning when I finally come home, safe in the knowledge that a newly repentant Willow will never leave Dawn alone. I don't think that Dawn's forgiven Willow yet. I'm not sure she ever will, either for driving Tara away, Tara who was the next thing to a mother to Dawn, or for nearly getting Dawn herself killed that one time. But there doesn't need to be any forgiveness there. There doesn't need to be anything, except Dawn safe in her bed, asleep.

It's late enough that I don't expect anyone to be up when I come in. I'm used to the shadows of a sleeping house, the air of quiet in those dark hours when everyone's lost in their own dreams and I can be alone with the waking nightmare of my own life.

Which is why it's such a shock to see Willow sitting on the couch, tinted amber by the light of a small lamp. She's awake, and she's waiting for me. It's the only thing that's readily obvious about this situation.

Her face is serious, that looks she gets when she wants people to sit down, shut-up and listen. But I'm not talking, I feel more comfortable standing and I'm not sure if there's anything that she can say that I want to hear. She thinks she knows something. She thinks she knows everything. I doubt she's right. There's very little that she has been right about since I came back. Hell, bringing me back was the first crack in the Willow I knew and those cracks are getting deeper by the day. You can very nearly see her falling apart in front of your eyes.

"You've been with him, haven't you?" Her voice is shaking only a little when she speaks. She must have been practicing. This ought to be fun.

Spike was careful tonight. There's nothing new to see in plain sight. Anything new is safely hidden by my clothes. I stare at her, silent, unblinking. Hey, she was the one that left this morning. She was the one throwing up because whatever I am is that disgusting to her. What does she think I'm going to tell her now? What on earth does she think she's ready to hear? Ah, screw it. She needs to wake up. She needs to grow up. "Yeah, I was with him."

"Shouldn't you be patrolling? Isn't that your job?" Oh, so now this all about how I'm neglecting my responsibilities. Because she's so much the person to talk, playing at magick with Amy all night long, dragging my girl to the witch's equivalent of a crack house. Right, and there's no such thing as vampires. Tell me another story. I'm not nearly tired yet.

"The two aren't mutually exclusive." And that's a hint, if she bothers to listen. If she's not all caught up in feeling righteous and moral.

I think she might almost be understanding now cause she's swallowing again, convulsively. Probably another sign that this conversation, too, will be called on account of sickness. Sorry, ref, no game today; the other team forfeits.

She's breathing deep now, trying to keep it under control. And now the show's really getting rolling. It's... nearly there, come on girl.

"You tried to talk to me about this, didn't you? That night I brought Amy back? This was what you were talking about? Your bad choice?"

Whoops, wrong answer, Will. Now I think it's the right choice. No, that's wrong. Now it's the only choice.

She closes her eyes a second, like I'm hurting her somehow. She doesn't have the faintest understanding of what real pain is, how deep it can go. Finally, she's ready to try again, she's trying to talk again.

"Um...it's...it's Spike. Isn't it?" She's asking like she's all cool with everything, but her eyes are begging me to tell her somebody, anybody, else. She doesn't want to hear this, but's she finally asking the right questions.

I look down at her, wishing I were in my bed so that I could touch all my new bruises and remember what it was like to be with him, safe. This is the hardest truth. "Of course it's Spike. Who else could it be?"

She closes her eyes like I hit her, like this is a gut punch to her mind. "Why?" she whispers in anguish.

I look at her coldly. I don't have time for this, and even less interest. "'Cause he loves me." I don't think I've ever really said that before. Not like it mattered, not like it was real. Now it's everything. He would never do what he does to me unless he loved me. I'm heading out of the room before she can even bring herself to look at me. It's clear that I'm nothing that she wants to see.

But her voice stops me before I can go very far. Her eyes are opened again, but she's looking away. The closest to a compromise that we can come to on this, I guess.

"His chip...when did it break? How long has he been able to hurt humans?"

A shiver of anger works its way down my spine and it's all I can do not to turn on her. Her fault. This is all her fault.

"That's the thing, Will. The chip is fine. Spike can't hurt humans. Just me."

If she has anything to say to that, I'm not hanging around to listen. Knowing Willow and her new-found capacity for denial, she'll probably think that Spike turned me. She'll probably think I'm a vampire. It would never occur to her that this is her doing, the consequence of whatever dark magick she used to pull me from my final rest. I've been angry at her for so long now. I've been angry since I came back and it just seems like everything she does makes me angrier. She's known the truth for weeks now, she's fully understood what she did for days and days and days and she doesn't say anything. Nothing real. So I'm forced to think this was all for her, that I was only secondary to her goal. She just wanted to try something deeper, something darker- and I'm not a fool, even if I'm so not a witch, there's not gonna be any convincing me that whatever spell she used to bring me back was right and clean and of the light- and whether or not I ever forgave her for what she did is, well, unimportant. Because if it had mattered, wouldn't she have said something, wouldn't she have done something about it by now. Wouldn't she have at least apologized?

She's silent as I walk away from her. Figures. So glad that we could have this little chat, so glad everything is all better now. At least there's the almost comfort that she looks like she enjoyed this conversation even less than I did.

Upstairs in my bed, staring at the moonlight-silver walls, I hold my pillow against my body and wish it were Spike, hating it when it gets warm. Spike is always as cool as rain against me, no warmer than the air around us. There are only shadows in the room to keep my company, and the loneliness comes crashing down around me again. There has to be a way to get away from all this again, the pain, the brightness, the look on Willow's face like I was the one who betrayed her. Am I really doing anything that wrong? When I start to cry, the despair in me so deep, so all consuming that I have no other choice, I force myself to do it quietly, so that she doesn't come back, so that she doesn't want to talk anymore. She'll want to know what I am now. That's a question I can't answer, that no one can answer. Spike and I debate it for hours. He's always on the side that I came back as something purely of the night; he wants so badly for it to be true, so that everything he feels that is so wrong can suddenly turn right. There are times I want that too, times when we almost convinces me. Because why else would I spend my nights with a demon I used to try to kill? Why else would I sleep with a creature that I used to hate? What am I now, what are any of us? We, all of us, have changed. We're nothing that we could have dreamed up before. When did we start to turn into everything that we fought?

Thoughts spin around in my brain so fast that I'm almost certain that I can't be a demon, because I've met enough of them to know that demons don't worry, demons don't not sleep for wondering what they are. So there's still no answer to the question of what I am. I don't even know who to blame. I've read enough Watchers' diaries to know that I'm the oldest living slayer in generations upon generations. Maybe we all turn to this, turn to ashes. Maybe we fight so hard that the humanity burns out of us, guttering like a candle in a draft.

Sleep is a long time coming tonight. It's always a long time coming.

In the morning, I come downstairs just long enough to take care of Dawn. She's not a part of this, she's an innocent, just like she always has been. The easiest part of coming back has been Dawn. Her feelings are so real, so pure, that even though I still feel cold and dead inside, when I'm with her, I can feel something like warmth curl inside me. To her, my return is nothing short of the best gift ever, and I bathe in her love like water. She's so beautiful. If I'm grateful for anything about living again, it's that I'll get to see her grow up. That I'll get to stay with her. So I steal whatever time I can have with her, because that does matter. That is real. If everything else faded into dreams and mist, I know that I could still reach out and touch Dawn, because she's part of me. All of me.

Willow is there too in the kitchen, trying and failing to eat. I don't pay any attention to her, though. The next move is hers. I've taken all the steps towards her that I'm ever going to, and all she's done is inch back, slowly, as if I were something to be scared of. No more. No more of this. I manage to say good morning, because Dawn will wonder if I don't, and she doesn't need to worry.

I send her off with a kiss to school. Sometimes I envy her so much, the way she could be made new, the way she could be made real. I wish someone would wave a magic wand at me and make over again. I covet her humanity, her place in this world, the place she made for herself in an existence that never expected her. I've changed so much, lost so much, all I want is for someone to make me new again. I imagine the pages of time turning back, making me young, making me innocent. But since that can never happen, I watch Dawn and I smile and I daydream about how things used to be.

I'm washing up the dishes as Dawn leaves, doing the household stuff cause the gang tells me that family services comes by, every now and then, just to make sure everything's cool, everything's fine. So reassuring to know that they were fooled by a robot for nearly four months. Makes me think that I don't really have all that much to worry about. I worry anyway, though, because I don't want anyone to take Dawn away from me. Neither of us wants that. My father doesn't even want that.

The weirdest thing about being alive again is the strange things you notice when you least expect them. Things like that fact that there's no real way to describe what water feels like on your body, no words that really convey what it's like to go from being dry to wet. Soap bubbles hold whole rainbows inside them, everything is new and yet somehow old.

It's not a surprise when Willow interrupts me. In fact, to me, it only stands to reason that she would end that one thing that's not Spike or Dawn to occupy my attention for who knows how long.

"How long?" she asks and I'm startled, because for a moment there I think she's just repeating my own thoughts. This conversation thing has been a slow thing to re-master. It's easier to be quiet, more relaxing to be silent. I don't have to try as hard.

It's a question, though, one that shows she sees me again, that I've pulled the scarf off her eyes. The anger is almost a relief after all the numbness. I'll take whatever reminders I can get that I'm not still six feet deep.

"About a month," I answer without looking. That eye contact thing is the death of us every time.

She's silent, thinking, wondering where to go with this next. "Why do you let him?"

"I thought I answered that already."

"Is it... is it..." more hesitant now. She's not sure what it is she's asking, not sure what she really wants to know. "Is it more than the pain? Does he... do more than hurt you?"

Willow makes it sound so bad, so wrong. It's not wrong. It's just different. Like I'm different. Despite all my own certainty, I can tell she'll never be convinced, that she'll never see this as anything but a perversion. I still try, though, even knowing that I'll never win.

"Of course. There's, there's a lot." It's hard to explain. "We're..." there must be an adjective here that I can use. Something that actually fits the situation. "We have fun."

That sounds so lame. So one dimensional. There are whole life spans between Spike and I, a million different parts to each of us. How do you put that in words?

"We match," I say finally, and hope that is all that she needs to hear. That she'll be content now, and leave it alone. After weeks of wanting her to ask, now all I want is for her to leave it alone.

I hear her before I feel her, coming up behind me, trying to be close again, in distance if not in thought, and put a hand on my shoulder. I can feel the bones in it. Everything has hit her so hard.

Her voice is quiet when she speaks, almost a whisper and yet it sounds like thunder when she speaks. "I'm sorry. If what's happened is my fault, I'm sorry."

So close, and yet not the apology I needed. "Are you apologizing for Spike and I being together? Cause somehow, that wasn't what I expected to hear. Isn't that sort of beyond your control? Or is that you think you can control everything?"

She's crying again, resting her head against my shoulder so that I can feel tears seep into my skin, salty sweet, the poison of grief. All it does it make me madder, and I spin around so fast she falls back, catching herself on the table before she falls.

"You're crying? You're crying? Look at me! Look at me! What am I? You have the nerve to cry about the fact that I sleep with Spike and have nothing at all to say about the fact that I'm not human anymore? What I am? What have you made me? You want something to cry about, cry about that! That whatever you did changed me so much that I don't know what I am anymore! Cry! Cry about that! Don't get all weepy about the only thing that makes me feel alive. Cry for yourself."

She's reaching out for me, tears streaming down her face. It's eerily reminiscent of the night she realized she was addicted to the magick, that it owned her now. What owns her now, what new fear has she found in herself that's she's reaching out like this?

"Buffy, I'm sorry!" The words sound like agony to her, like they've been ripped out of her very soul. She means it, I can tell. The words are in every line of her body, in every beat of her heart, in everything, and I wish I could make them mean enough. I wish they were enough.

I want to go to her so badly. She used to be my safe harbor. She used to be like a missing part of my flesh, a piece of my soul. Now I can barely recognize her. But I miss her, the pain so bad it feels like it will eat me alive. My face crumbles and cracks, I break to pieces. But it's too little, too late. No matter how far we stretch, there's no closing this void between us.

"I'm sorry, Will. I think it's too late."

To Be Continued...