The Only Love I Know

During the day, there's nowhere to go. I walk like the ghost that I am, staying in the shadows, trying not to cry. There's nowhere to go. No job, no school, no life until the dark comes again and swallows me whole. All of this is just a reminder that this life isn't real, isn't right. What was it that demon said to me, the demon that Willow made when she brought me back? That I wasn't real, that I'll pop like a bubble, leaving nothing behind? And then she asked if I even had a choice about coming back. Eerie, the things demons know, the insights that they have. I should have listened to her more, heard what else she had to say about my choices, or lack of them.

Choices. I have so few of them nowadays. I tried work, and I know I'll have to try again, but nothing feels right. It's all like clothes that don't fit, this one too tight, that one too loose, the last worst of all, someone else's life. It was sweet that they tried, I guess, sweet that they wanted to care, wanted to help, but it's not working. They all hope that their lives will go onto me seamlessly, a perfect match, but it's no use. Even Spike, who spends his days on his knees in the hope that I might be like him, even that didn't match. No, whatever I do or don't do, it's going to have to be my own choice. This life, my last life, it has to be my own. I have to figure out for myself who I am right now.

I should go to Spike's crypt. I should lose myself in him, to him. When we're together, it's like a drug, dulling all my senses, stealing my memory. There's only him. There's only me. There's only us, and the sun outside the door while we stay in the dark. It's not like I want to think about this travesty that my life's turned into. It isn't as if things are all going to get better if I just concentrate real hard and then maybe click my heels together for luck.

There's that one catch though, the one thing keeping me out in the sun no matter what else my body wants: Willow said she was sorry; Willow cried. So now I need to figure out what that means, if that changes anything. Decisions need to be made now, because we've reached a crossroads, she and I. If I can't forgive her for this, I can't forgive any of them for it, and I need to walk away. Five years of friendship and a thousand memories will turn to dust, and I'll only have Spike and Dawn and no human life but it's possibly better than looking at them and feeling the anger eat through me like an acid. If I can forgive, though, if I can forgive... we get it all back. I won't be able to forget, I don't think any of us will be able to forget, but we might be able to move on. Changed, darker, older, but still together, still friends. I'm one of Anya's bridesmaids, and Tara loves my little sister like a daughter. Willow was the other side of myself for years and even the thought of losing her hurts like ripping another piece of my soul out. Xander's picked me up so many times I've lost count. All of this, and yet when I look at them, I can only see them through the red haze of rage, seeing them like a demon would, seeing only their ugliness, only their selfishness and none of the beauty. God, they were so beautiful. They glowed in the sun like diamonds. I don't want to lose that, I don't, but the fear that I already have won't leave me. I think I lost them when I died. I think that I lost everything.

I stare in a store window like I've never seen myself before. There are bruises everywhere, and the scars on my neck will never fade, a constant question and an endless lie. My eyes are empty, cold, nothing to see there, and my mouth is flat, as if I've forgotten how to smile. I'm death pale, seeing as I spent the best tanning months six feet underground. I don't know myself anymore, but the people who were my friends know me. They look at me and I'm familiar to them. There are no questions, because everyone already knows the answers. If I lose everything, if I drop this life behind me the way a snake sheds its skin, there will be questions again. There will be more lies. There will be a thousand more secrets than I'm keeping right now.

My hand touches Angel's scar, rubs the ridges and grooves and pretends it's a worry stone, while thoughts swirl through my mind, never still, never silent. This is pulling me apart, destroying me again, maybe more completely than death did. If I leave, and I die again, who will mourn me, who will remember me? Dawn's memories are a gift to her, nothing real, nothing earned, and Spike has only ever seen me through a thousand different passions, an eternal kaleidoscope of Buffys.

New determination guides me when I walk home, drags me back to the responsibilities and weights of a life I never asked to have. We need to have one last talk, Willow and I, because she's at the heart of all of this. She's the catalyst.

And she's the one who's not home when I get there. I go all through the house, looking, calling, but no Willow. It figures that, now, when I actually want to talk to her, she's nowhere to be found. The only sounds in the house are the ones I make, playing hide and seek by myself. Fine. This was a stupid idea, anyway, the idea that I could try and make everything right again. Nothing can ever be right again. She's probably out getting her kicks with magick again, hanging out with the amazing rat girl cause even an addict with no morals is a better friend then the girl who sleeps with her own best enemy. And lets him mark her. I probably make her sick. I bet she fell off the ol' spell casting wagon cause I disgust her so much. I mean, there's only so much throwing up that a girl can take, and then she has to do something fun, am I right?

I don't remember all that much from the English classes I've taken, probably because I barely showed up in them, if mind if not in body, but I think I remember learning that in Shakespeare's plays, when things start to go horribly wrong in nature, that means that things are going horribly wrong with the characters. It's all symbolic and stuff, tons of deep meaning. For the first time ever, I think that maybe my teachers weren't making these things up as they went along, because I'm certainly the worst thing that could ever happen to nature, I'm like this huge, glowing sign that nature got screwed, and certainly everything in my own life is going to hell in hand-basket, too. I'd say it's taking me with it, but I've been in hell since I saw those white satin walls all around and smelled the stench of my own lingering death. It's not that my life is going to hell. It's that my life figures it would be a good idea to join me where I live.

I'm just sitting on the couch when Dawn gets home. The T.V. is on, but I have no idea what's playing. I remember turning it on with the vague thought that it'd be nice to see what Spike liked so much about Passions and then everything is a blur, a washed out haze. That's happening more and more often. At first I thought that living would become easier, the longer that it went on, but it just keeps getting harder and harder. I seem to lose more time every day, hours turning to minutes and then I have no explanation for where the time went, or what I did during it. It only seems to happen during the day, though, during those times when I feel like I have no control over anything. Another sign that I'm not meant for the day, that I'm something different from the average girl. Like I needed more reminders about that.

As soon as Dawn comes into the house, comes to join me on the couch, I feel better, more alive than at any other time when the sun shines. If I'm only fit for the darkness now, Dawn is my own personal moon, drawing life out of me like the tide. Even if I wasn't swallowed whole by love every time I saw her, for everything that she was, the way that she always made me feel better just by entering the room would be enough.

She sits at my feet, to tell me about her school day, while I stroke her hair, and listen to the rise and fall of her voice. It never fails to amaze me how different we are. She was made from me, and yet we are totally new creatures. She's wearing a new necklace, one that I can't identify, but it looks good on her. The beads on it draw out the color of her eyes. I want to compliment her on it, figuring one of the Scoobies must have given it to her when I was gone, but I don't want to interrupt the river of her words. Here, I feel whole. Here, I feel complete, and there's no need to go searching for anything. If Spike makes me real with his pain, Dawn makes me real with her love. Funny how a person could have such different needs, funny how fractured I am. Or maybe not so funny. No laughs at all, really, but I don't think about that, I just sit with my sister and be.

It's Dawn that notices that Willow has left on note for me on the fridge door. Seeing how like a bird Willow was becoming, so frail that I was sure her bones would turn hollow, letting her fly away from all her pain and problems, it didn't occur to me to look anywhere near food. But, no, Dawn's right, there's a letter held by this stupid cow magnet to the door, cryptic but real.

Buffy,
Off researching that thing we talked about today. Back later. Don't wait up. And don't worry. It's not magick, it's my trusty laptop and whatever books are left at the Magic Box.
Willow

What thing that we talked about? I'm sure she's not researching my sex life with William the Bloody. I'm pretty sure that there are no books about that anywhere. What's left, my startling lack of humanity, the way that he can hurt me now? The way that I let him? Didn't realize Anya stocked psych texts. But no, it must be the humanity thing, it must be trying to figure out what type of creature that I am, that looks human until my eyes come into view and then there is no more hiding. Then there is no more believing any sort of comforting half-truths, because I've looked in the mirror lately and I've seen what I look like. My eyes have all the appearance of a normal human, nothing is slit and nothing is the wrong color, but the depth of them, the age, screams of things that were never meant to be. Some memories cannot be lost, they are burned forever in the brain and can be glimpsed through the eyes, and I am full to bursting of those memories. I have seen death, and I have seen Heaven, and I have come out again and I will never recover from that. That's what can be seen in my eyes, that's what's left of me. No wonder the humanity is gone, no wonder I can't feel anything anymore. I've felt all there is to feel, I've tasted perfection, and I know there is no way to find it on this earth. Nothing will match, can match, the places I've seen. But I'm doomed here anyway, and so spend most of my time looking past people, so that they can never see in me and burn to dust the way that I have. She expects to find a book about that? Good luck with the hunting; I think I'm all alone in the world. There has never been another creature like me. A demon for the good side, dressed in borrowed human skin. I can't be human anymore. I can't be anything.

There's nothing really to do with the house. All those meaningless chores have been done. So I sit with my sister awhile longer, and laugh like a human girl would, and make plans for the weekend, like I think the future is something besides unending torture. She must never know, she can never know. Dawn sees the bruises, but she doesn't understand, only wants to kiss and make them better and I will never take that innocence away from her. She likes Spike, has liked him for longer than I have, but she would never understand the things that we do to each other. For her, everything is simple, everything is clear. She sees he loves me, and so assumes that he cherishes me, like Angel did, like Riley wanted to. The idea that I'm sick of being cherished, of being prized, that I'd rather be down in the dirt than up on a pedestal would only make her sad. Her eyes weren't made for sadness and I've already caused her enough pain.

The rising stars draw me outside like sirens would, the beauty of their voice a deadly compulsion. Death doesn't scare me. I know where I'll go when I die, and I'm not scared. When Spike reminds me of the way all slayers are in love with death, I just laugh now because I know it's true. I've taken death for a lover, take its cold emptiness into me nightly and wrap it around myself to sleep. What is this with Spike, if not a burning passion to die again? He kills me gently, just a touch, just whisper, just a scream, just us together in the night. His eyes are like a glacier, deep and burning with cold when we make love, and sometimes I think he's just as confused as me. We are death to each other, a whispered promise, threats wrapped in caresses. Some nights we go so far into the pain, into the games, into our own little dance, it seems like we couldn't survive the night. But the sun rises on our surprise every morning and we try our lives again. Another day of wondering why we're here at all.

Patrol tonight. Hadn't thought farther than that. There are always new things to kill, another death to chase. Vampires go ashes to ashes and dust to dust then I wipe myself clean and go and kill again. I'm hard all the way through now, burned empty of any passion, except for what I find with Spike. It used to bother me. Now, nothing bothers me. Everything spills out around me, cool and clear, and frozen. There's nothing that could bother me, I'm past all that. Past everything.

I like Sunnydale at night. I like the way the way the street lights look, shining on the sidewalks. I like the sound of the empty air, the way the quiet rolls in like fog. I enjoy listening to my footsteps echo faintly, rat-tat-tat, on the ground when I walk. Even in Southern California, the evening air can feel cool and fresh and we're not so far away that you can't smell the ocean on the breeze, salt with its bitter tang, a strange bite in the wind. I never used to appreciate the night, lived only for the day. But now I see that it has its own beauty, one of shadows, a thousand shades of blue, and midnight rainbows wrapped around the moon, and hidden in lamp glow. If there is ever some way for me to retire, if another is called, and lets me finally rest, I think I'll move some place quiet, with peaceful nights that I can go walking in and never have to fight anything. I would like to just enjoy this time, give myself over to my nocturnal nature. I would like not to kill. I would like the kind of life that other people have. I would like to take things for granted instead of being taken for granted.

There's an answering echo on the sidewalk now, a ghost of sound that almost matches mine, and yet stays off by seconds. No one else would notice, but I'm the Slayer and things like that stand out like trumpets in my hearing. Someone following, getting closer, thinking that they have me fooled. They're the fool, be they human or demon, and soon they'll be dead. Adrenaline races through my veins, clearing the calm out of my mind, rushing over me like a wave. Crashes around me as I come alive again, ready for the fight. Ready for anything.

I spin, my body tensing, muscles strung tight, the itch and fire for a good fight pulling at my skin, crackling in my bones and blood. I want this. I'm ready for this.

It's Spike, smirk in place, hands behind his back, like a general surveying his troops. I used to practice with Giles, spar with him to stay on my toes. Spike is better, this is better, because I know that he'll never pull his blows. Know that it doesn't matter how much he loves me, he'll never fight just for fun, or do anything halfway. The fire still sizzles in my blood, lightening flashes against my eyes; seeing Spike doesn't change any of the things that I feel. Only the way I'll show them. I let my mouth curl into an answering smile, just as dark, just as deadly, and let my fists curl. He's my favorite fight.

"Letting your guard down, Slayer? Letting the baddies get close? How close do you want them?" He steps towards me lightly, on the balls of his feet, ready for action. "What are you thinking tonight?"

I reach out, grab him closer. "I'm thinking I want them off their guard, thinking I'm an easy target," I sweep a foot out, knock his feet out from under him, and he goes down hard. His eyes narrow into slits of ice.

Keep that up, Slayer, and I'll forget to be nice to you.

"Who said that I want you to be nice?" And I pull back to kick at him again. I wanted a fight, and damn it, I will get one. Even with him. Always with him.

He grabs my foot, pulls me off balance. We know each other's moves too well now for any fight to be really fair. The only thing that we have going for each other is the same amount of unfairness, an equal knowledge of how to throw the other one off balance. I go down next to him, just as hard, just as sudden, and now we're on the ground next to each, like we aren't on the middle of Main Street, like a million people might not show up any instant, or a million vampires.

He grins, rash, wicked; the man has no sense. Never has. I have no idea how he lived this long, no idea how he keeps living even the half life that he has now. But his grin calls to me, and I can't stay angry, can't do anything except feel this weird little bubble of joy dance up inside me. It's only with Spike that I want to go on living. It's only with him that I remember that I used to like being who I was, how I was. This is not what anyone would call a love story. I can't even put words to what I feel for him, can't describe what he means to me, but I know he makes me feel things I thought I could never feel again.

Sitting next to each other the cold sidewalk, feeling night's chill seep up through my clothes, till I'm almost as cool as him, all we can do is laugh at each other. No vampires are going to come for us right now; when we laugh, we sound like what we are. Dangerous, and deadly, and looking for a fight. He stands first and, all gentlemen like, reaches down to offer me an unneeded hand to get up. I don't want help when I take his hand, I only want to feel his skin against mine, the start of his seduction. He oh-so-kindly dusts me off, his hands lingering, his eyes heating. I lean against him, breath his scent. Maybe we won't patrol tonight. Maybe the demons can be safe a few more hours. I want him now.

He leans in close, breathes my scent. I'm always fascinated by him when he's like this, always amazed by his actions. There's no mistaking him for human, no thinking he's a mortal man. He's watching the blood beat in my veins, getting turned on by the rich smell of life so close to the surface. He's listening to my heart beat, knowing that if he plays his cards right, he can drink me again tonight. I know just by watching how his eyes move that his skin is tightening with the need to touch me, that he can smell what watching him is doing to me. When he licks his lips, I know that he is already tasting me, all my flavors, in his mind.

But he shakes himself suddenly, and bends down abruptly, picking something off the ground. Eyes suddenly nervous, grin looking a bit sickly, he shows me his new handful.

Flowers. Delicate, white flowers, almost geometric looking, with almost lilac veins running through them. In his rough hands, with their black painted nails, the flowers look almost fragile, like they would break if I breathed on them.

"What are they?" I asked, fascinated. They almost looked like morning glories, but albino. But morning glories die by night, the rules of their existence carefully written into their very cells. I had never seen anything like this that bloomed at night, washed in the glow of the moon.

"Moonflowers," he said proudly. "They only bloom at night," and now he seems almost bashful, a change in mood that leaves me lost, as his moods so often do. "I got em for you. Nicked em from this lady's yard. Thought of you, cause, you know, you bloom at night, too." That last part in a rush, like he can't believe he's saying it, like he doesn't understand what he's doing. Makes two of us, because I am nothing short of confused. We are not a flowers and poetry kind of a couple. I'm not even sure if you could call us a couple. If we were anything to each other but a secret in the night.

"They're beautiful," I whisper. No one had ever brought me flowers. I'm not that kind of woman, the kind that inspires men to acts of gentleness. And certainly not Spike, whose every action with me is outlined in red violence, a thread of danger. Whatever we mean to each, whatever truths we whisper in the night, we are death to the other, and neither of us is capable of forgetting that. There's always the thought that the next night will end on our deaths, that we'll forget everything that we're trying to be to do each other and revert to what we are. Vampire. Slayer. But he's standing in front of me, cupping these flowers in his hand like some kind of a miracle, and I have no idea of what I'm supposed to do now. Always before, we were clear on the rules. We danced only one dance, but I think the beat just changed.

"Why?" I ask, desperate for a reason.

He looks everywhere but at me, and I think I can read anger in the way he holds his body so still while his eyes dance around.

"It's been a month, all right? A month since we brought the house down. If you don't want em, just bloody well say so, all right. Don't leave a vamp standing around, feeling the fool."

Yeah, he's pissed. This I know, even if I don't understand the reasons. I grab the flowers from him, find a way to twist them into my hair, feeling my anger shiver and rise in return. He calls to me like nothing else in this world or the next. Our bodies sing to each other, every emotion, no matter its nature, is echoed in the other, draws the other to new heights. We are always dangerous to each other, in our passion, in our anger. Casual emotions are outside our reach, beyond our understanding. There is only passion, in its million disguises. Even when we fought to kill each other, it was our passion that ruled us.

"Happy?" I snarl, the words twisting out of me like weapons.

"Bleeding ecstatic," and he sounds as close to the edge as I do. There is never solid ground beneath our feet; we are always on an edge with each other. Always fighting to keep our balance, never knowing what direction we'll fall in.

But his eyes soften when he looks at me and I feel something inside in me glow. I shouldn't bother with mirrors; I only see the nightmare I've become. To Spike, I am perfect, walking death, a glorious end, and need blazes in his eyes so quickly. Here, with him, I am beautiful. I am valued. If Willow is any example, my friends won't be able to stand what I've become: I will be disgusting to them, a monster, because they are too innocent to understand that some people crave the dark, need it inside them. But to Spike, I am beautiful. To Spike, I am only myself, nothing monstrous at all. Some nights, I think that I would give up everything just to keep the feeling that Spike shows me. Not unnatural. Not wrong. Not twisted. Perfect in my own dark distinction, wrapped in my invisible demons. Night blooming.