The Only Love I Know

Silence can almost become a living thing. If it goes on long enough, it almost seems to breath, to move and catch everything around it in it's own strange half-life. I can feel it, cool and searching, resting against my skin, heavy with questions. I could feel it pressing against her, waiting to engulf me, to make me into itself. Heavy like cotton, thick with need, it wrapped around me, wanting to take me, to empty me of all thought, of all reason. With effort, I pushed the idea off of me. Human, I was human, and humans didn't do these things, didn't respond to things as I was doing right now. Willow had said something, and whether or not she was correct, it was an idea that needed to be talked about. I could talk. I had always been able to talk.

Willow was watching me carefully, apparently uncomfortable with saying anything. I didn't feel up to meeting her eyes. Willow had seen me with Spike last night, had seen me as I really was now, and I didn't want to take the chance of finding out for sure if Willow was afraid of me now. The other woman stayed quiet, waiting for my response, waiting to find out how I would react to this news. When I could finally find any words in myself, when I finally felt like I wasn't being strangled with silence, I managed to force a single, rusty word out of my throat. "What?"

Willow looked uncomfortable now. "The monks. They needed to make sure that you would love Dawn, that you would care for her like one of your own. So they took part of your soul. That's why..."

"Why what?"

"Why you knew you were sisters, even after I did the forgetting spell. Because you match. It's not just the DNA, it's not just the flesh and blood and bone of you that they made Dawn out of. They made her out of everything. She is you."

I shook her head. Ideas were crashing down on me, threatening to bury everything I thought that I knew.

"But she doesn't look like me." That, at least, I understood.

"You're not clones. This is magick, not science. But she is you."

"That means...that Spike could hurt her, too. That he always could." The thought was troubling, more than troubling. Even when I had trusted him for nothing else, I had always known that he cared for Dawn, that he would protect her above all things. It was the first thing that I had truly liked about him, the only thing that I could admire without it reflecting back on me in some way. Spike liked Dawn. Spike would protect her. I had gone to my death secure in that knowledge. This, this changed everything.

"He never has. I don't pretend to understand him, but I do think he really cares for Dawn. The Goddess knows that we had all been counting on that when... when you were gone. Maybe he sees you in her."

"Or her in me," was my restless response. I turned her eyes out the window, back to to the night that I had lost Spike in. The night I had lost myself in. Always this way… If Dawn was the reason I had changed, the reason I was so wrong now, there was no going back, no fixing anything. If Willow was right, I had been this way for much longer than I had ever thought possible.

But Willow couldn't be right. I hadn't felt like this last year. I felt so cold now, so empty that I thought it would be easier to die again than to ever find a way to make myself feel complete again. I would remember that, those feelings, the aching distance from everything that used to be so close. I would know... I would know.

But like it or not, thoughts were crowding up on me now, memories that I had thought I had lost with death. The way I had felt so cold and so hard last year, the way that Riley hadn't been able to see that I cared, even when I tried her hardest to show him how I felt. I had thought it was losing Mom, I had thought it was losing Angel. I had never thought that it was losing myself. Could Willow possibly be right?

"Buffy? You still in there?" Willow's voice, sounding like she was somewhere else, somewhere where the world was right, where people were people and nothing ever went wrong. Willow's voice, sounding as far away from me as possible. If Willow was right, then nothing would ever truly be right in my world again. The distance that had been growing between me and the others would continue as it had been. Nothing would ever change.

"You're wrong," I whispered, still staring into the twilight hues of the approaching dawn. "You have to be wrong. It has to be you. 'Cause I can feel how different I am, I can feel how I changed..." I didn't care if my words hurt Willow. Willow deserved to be hurt. Her, it had to be her. I had to be mad at someone I could touch, someone I could hurt. The monks were all beyond me now- they had fallen to Glory first, and there was nothing left to find of them. There had to be somebody left I could blame for all of this.

"I don't think..." Willow's voice was soft, concerned, maybe even worried. "I don't think that you've changed as much as you think you have."

"Bullshit! You saw me tonight; you saw what I am now. You heard what Spike said. You saw... how it is between us... you saw... I don't- I'm not- I'm different."

There weren't even words to describe what I was now. I could feel the anger under my skin all the time, like a living thing, fighting me for control. The anger, the pain, was everything, consumed everything.

Everywhere I looked, everything I did; it was all tainted by this pain that would never leave me. Humanity was lost to me, had to be lost to me. Nothing human ever felt this. It couldn't feel this way. I was alone, more alone than I had ever been.

I couldn't face Willow, couldn't stand to see whatever emotions might be in the other woman's face. The cuts in my palms still throbbed, a constant reminder of just how hard it was to keep myself under control. Even remembering the love I had once had for Willow, even wanting everything to go back to the way that it was, it had been all I could do not to turn on the witch, not to try to make someone else feel the pain that I was in. Spike had assured me that Willow hadn't seen what I was now, couldn't see what I was now, but I wasn't as sure. I had lost touch with my own emotions, couldn't recall how exactly things were supposed to feel, or what names those feelings ought to have, but I thought that this vague, sick sense of dread that kept me looking out the window even as Willow watched me and tried to make things better between us

might be shame. I should have stayed dead. It would have been easier on everybody.

I could feel Willow's weight on the couch shift, imagined that I could see Willow thinking about reaching out again, thinking about touching me, thinking about trying to be everything we used to be to each other. But there was too much between us now, too many lies, too many betrayals, and I wasn't surprised when O felt the weight shift again as Willow pulled back, deciding not to risk anymore touches. Maybe she wasn't as stupid as she was starting to act.

Without turning, without moving at all, I asked again. "Are you sure?"

Willow's voice when she answered was etched with sadness. "As sure as I can be. Buffy, it's the only explanation I can find."

There was nothing that I felt that I could say to sure. As curses went, this one was pretty much a kicker. The only thing keeping me from being human was also the only thing that made me feel human. Not for the first time, I sourly reflected that the monks had had a lousy sense of humor.

Willow had also fallen silent. Apparently, after that last line, there was nothing left for either of them to say to each other. Maybe ever. Maybe this was the end of all their conversations. Maybe there was only a finite number of words between two people, maybe everything was coming to end. After a moment of quiet so long that I fully expected Willow to just get up and leave, to end yet another conversation she didn't want to have, the witch spoke again, only a whisper, but even that was something.

"Buffy..."

It was enough.

I stared out the window, refusing to turn, refusing to move. But some part of me wanted things the way that they used to be, wanted the past, wanted to feel close again to something real and living. My voice cold, drained of all emotion, I began to talk to Willow, to tell her what it was really like to be alive again when I had thought that I had gone to her final rest, that I had finally finished all that I had been put on this earth to do. I talked about the red anger that lived inside of me all the time now, the way it had been there since I came back, the way it warped everything, so that the world around me seemed as solid and as real as a fun house mirror, nothing to be trusted, nothing to believed. I talked about how the rage lived inside me like a monster, how there were times that I couldn't even stand to touch myself, I was so angry at what it was that I had become. I talked about how empty I felt, how there was nothing left for me anymore. I had done what I was meant to. I had saved the world. What was left, what could be better than that? Everything I did now was wasted action, wasted breath. It should be Faith now, making the world a safer place. I had had my glorious death. I had sacrificed myself and it was all for nothing. I talked about how it felt to lose more and more of myself everyday, to be trapped by something that I couldn't understand and had no hope in fighting.

I talked about what it felt like to be with Spike, how being with him calmed the anger, directed it, focused it. How with him I could be real because he accepted everything without prejudice. He wanted nothing that I couldn't give; he wanted nothing but me. He had no expectations, every moment they had together was a gift, more than he had ever thought possible. It was soothing, to be around someone who could never think poorly of you, never think that you may not be doing things right. Even when I turned on him, even when I lashed out at him, made him hurt, made him bleed, he smiled at it and took me into his arms again. Pain was nothing to him and anger was just another aspect of love. It helped that he had been in love with a madwoman for over a century. There was nothing about me that could shock him, nothing that could make him look down on me. I talked about what it was like when he hurt me, how much of a relief it was that anything could still hurt me, that I could still feel pain and with it, pleasure. I talked about how being with Spike made me forget how frozen I was inside, how lost and how destroyed. I talked about he way he made me feel alive again, made me feel like something beyond a living body wrapped around a rotting heart, a zombie come to earth, walking around for the pleasure of my master. I told Willow how Spike made all the cold go up in flames, how it was to be with him, unthinking, only feeling, only pleasure and pain.

Finally I talked about what it felt like to be with Dawn, how it was only my younger sister, only the girl that Willow had almost killed, that made me feel whole and complete. How there was no anger in me at Dawn, because none of this had been her fault. The last true innocent, that was Dawn. I talked until I could hear my own voice going hoarse. I talked until there were no words left between us.

Through the torrent of speech, washing away the silence like a flood, Willow sat still and said nothing and I was fine with that, comfortable even. There was no room for Willow's pain inside of my own. It was nothing, not even worthy of the name. What was there in me to comfort Willow when I couldn't even comfort myself? There were no soft and gentle lies to tell here, no way to gentle the awful and terrible truth. Willow's spell or the monks, I was a demon now, with a demons' heart and a demon's ways. I couldn't comfort anything. I couldn't even help herself.

Even as I ran silent, when there was nothing left to be spoken, when every truth had been told, Willow sat silent. Maybe it wasn't really disgust. Maybe it wasn't really horror. Maybe it just took a long time to take everything in, to understand everything that I had just said. Maybe the Hellmouth would become a popular tourist attraction. I could see the first red streaks of sunrise on the horizon, like blood washing through the clouds. Everything was blood now; everything was death. And there was no hope of making things right with Willow, because whatever the other girl may have felt before, it was gone now, drowned in the flood of my confessions. There was nothing left for Willow to be friends with; whatever Willow had brought out of the grave, had brought to save Sunnydale and damn herself, it was not me. Willow would have forgiven the old me, the human me. She would have still loved her.

It came as no surprise when Willow left without saying a word. Nothing was a surprise anymore. You needed to be able to feel to care when the woman you had called your best friend for years walked out on you without even saying she loved you. Without even saying she was sorry. Feeling like every word I had said was resting on my shoulders like stones, like souls with no home and no hope of rest, I got up from the couch and wearily made me way to the bedroom. Maybe this would be as good as it got, maybe the only things left to say were my confessions, and once said, all language had dried like the desert between us. Why had I ever left Spike this night? Why did I ever bother come to this place at all, this place that used to be home?

My bed was empty and cool, strangely soft and unfamiliar after Spike's crypt. I lay in bed like a corpse laid out for the funeral. Sleep began the hardest time, my body remembering what it felt like to die, to be dead, and fighting to be again. No matter what my heart thought, no matter that some days I felt like I could almost grow accustomed to living again, my body always yearned for the grave, always fought to get back to its last moment of peace. It wasn't ever satisfied with the ecstasy I fed it like a drug, the passion that only Spike could give. The first few moments of sleep brought something akin to terror but closer to hope to me, the mix changing with the day. Maybe this time I wouldn't wake up. Maybe this time I would get my wish, my curse, and die again, die for real, in some way that I could never come back from. My next death, I wanted them to burn the body and scatter the ashes.

Sleep was hovering over me like a mist, cool and opaque, when I heard the door to her room open. No matter what else I had become, I was a slayer first and that was all it took to bring me back ready for the fight. Minutes out of the grave, I had fought. This would be no different. Jerking up, my eyes scanned for whatever it was that had come here ready to die.

It was Willow. "I m sorry," she stammered, scared, unsure. "Were you asleep? I didn't want to..."

With an effort that became harder every day, I managed to control myself, managed to push down the desire to kill that rose in me like a fever. "Still up. Obviously." Her voice was unsteady. Spike had been right when he had said that I didn't want to hurt Willow. Must be some kind of sickness, that I kept staying my hand. Or maybe just the memory of what we used to be to each other. Memory was a powerful thing.

"Did you want something?"

"I thought that maybe, maybe you wouldn't understand earlier. Why I left."

I felt my face grow hard and still. I struggled against the urge to turn away from Willow, or to show any of my hurt on my face. "Not my business, what you do."

"It is. Buffy... I didn't understand how it was for you, how it is. What I did."

"You said how I changed was the monks' fault."

Willow carefully sat on the edge of the bed, trying to be both close and far at the same time. "Losing part of your soul, changing into something not quite human, that was the monks. But... sentencing you to this... this life. That was all my fault."

"Yes." I agreed. Words were only words, symbols for thought. Words were nothing. I wanted Willow to bleed for her.

It was the last word that did Willow in, that caused her face to crumble, her strength to pour out of her in a wave. One moment I was sitting, trying to be strong, the next she was flat on Buffy's bed sobbing as if her heart were breaking. It softened something inside me, to see her that way, to see that I wasn't the only one who hurt. But not enough, never enough, to quiet the demons that lived inside my blood now.

On the bed, Willow was still crying, her words muffled by the blankets, by her sobs. Watching her, I was struck again at how the masks of humanity concealed predators beneath the flesh. With my soul torn in two, I had lost those soft edges, those places to hide from the reality of myself. Watching Willow cry, it was a fight to ignore that part of myself that whispered that Willow was the enemy and the enemy was on her own now, was weak and could be destroyed. I was not here to kill humans, I knew that, it was only my genes that were confused, only my instincts. What was that the First Slayer had said? No friends. Only the kill. She had probably killed humans; she had probably killed anything that crossed her. That was my lineage, that was my heritage, and that was my constant fight. Did the monks know what they were doing, when they stole away the only thing that made me human? Did they know what I was? Did they know what they did to me? Did they curse me on purpose? Did they damn me to this sure in the knowledge of what they were doing? Or was this an accident, the natural side effect of saving the world?

With effort, I pushed away the thought of Willow's vulnerability and instead tried desperately to listen to her words, the things she was saying. Tears were not that far off from blood, a cleansing of a sort. And Willow was not anything that I was supposed to kill. Willow was human. Willow was a friend.

"I'm sorry, Buffy, I'm sorry. It was selfish, I know it was, I didn't think, I just... I missed you Buffy. I loved you and you were gone and I could fix it so I did. I never meant to hurt you, I never meant to put you in this kind of pain. I just wanted my friend back. I wanted everything back. I'm sorry, I'm sorry, I'm sorry..." her words trailed off into incoherency, into sound without meaning, words like a running stream of water over all the hurt and pain of the last few months.

Through it all, I sat very still, only my eyes moving. This one hurt, Willow hurt. Willow was crying, was trying. Moving like a statue come to life, like something frozen by time and pain and only just coming to life again, I reached a hand out and touched Willow's hair, short now, a paler red, one of the thousand ways that Willow had changed since they first met all those years. Willow stilled as she felt my hand and rolled, turning her face, tear marked, stained by grief, up to me.

"Do you hate me now? Do you want to kill me?" The words were without emotion and I realized for the time that Willow knew exactly how I had changed, had seen it all, it was only that she didn't know what to do. Just like I didn't know what to do.

"I don't... I don't to hurt you, Willow. No matter what it looked like, looks like. I just... I can't control anything anymore. Can't control myself. I think Spike's right, I think I did come back wrong."

Willow slowly sat up, pushing her hair back from her face, and reached for a shaky level of control, of confidence. "It wasn't the spell. I mean, it was and it wasn't. It's the spell's fault, and my fault, and it's kinda the monks' fault, but it's not the spell exactly."

"How do you mean?"

"I think..." and here Willow struggled again for the right thing to say, the only thing to say. "I think that you're really mad at me. At everyone. And you're right to be. We did the wrong thing. We were wrong and we hurt you. And that's why things are so hard now, why everything is hard now. Cause you didn't want to mad at us, but you are, but you don't wanna be, so you push all that away and it comes crowding up... and we're not so hot at this stuff, are we? The emotional stuff?"

I choked out a laugh at the last. Yeah, we sucked. Confession night at the Summers' place, free redemption for all. Maybe Willow had a point with that anger stuff. Maybe, with my soul gone, everything was just that much harder to control, maybe everything felt inhuman. Maybe I was inhuman.

"And my soul?" I finally asked. That seemed to be the kicker, the thing that screwed everything else up, the thing that made everything else so hard and painful.

"Dawn's," whispered Willow, sounding like there was anything else in the world now that she would rather tell me, knowing as she must that it was a sentence of living death, that I would never be human again and without that humanity, maybe never really in control again. "You might get it back when she dies..."

"Which will be long after I do!" I snarled. "Everything I have done in the last year has been for her. I'm not throwing that away. She's mine to protect."

"Then this is it, Buffy. This is as good as it gets."

Leaning against my pillows, wishing I could curl up into this place of darkness and warmth, and never come out again, I sat and thought about the last year. Thought about if I could have changed in such a fundamental way and not even known it. The memories slide through my mind, slick and smooth, a twisting canopy of thought and emotion. Thought about changes, about actions and reactions and of all the things that were different now.

"This is what Spike sees in me, isn't it? In Dawn and in me? He sees that we aren't human."

"Yeah, probably." Willow's voice was reluctant. She was still not thrilled about the Spike thing. Not thrilled about any of this. There was probably enough not-thrill in this very moment to ensure that neither Willow nor me would ever be happy again. This was the anti-thrill.

I felt exhaustion wash through like a living force, stealing energy, stealing strength.

"Okay, okay." I slumped back in bed, caught again by the strange softness of this human life I was trying to live. Trying and failing. My humanity was gone; everything was gone. "Okay, Willow, you have to go now. I'm crashed. You have you have to go."

Willow struggled up from the bed, tried to find her feet underneath her. As she got to the door, she turned and looked back at me. It was all I could do to keep my eyes open. This was too much, too much, death was rushing at me again, the death of the sleep, the forgetfulness of night, the darkness stealing into my mind. But keeping a friend may be the only human thing left to me, and I pushed to keep that, would hang on that with tooth and nail. Nature red in tooth and claw I thought and realized again how much of human was truly animal. I could fight this; I could try to find myself again.

"Buffy, can you forgive me?"

"I don't know, Willow, but I can try to forget." The words were whispered, my last bit of spirit fading away with the rising sun. I was barely awake enough to see Willow come back in and kiss me goodnight, could not even stir in response, or manage a smile. The day had stolen me, sleep had stolen me, and there were no more words to say.