"I miss you."
There, she's said it.
She hears it drop into a well of silence, and she knows it shouldn't be like this. It should be whispered against him in a world all theirs; screamed at him across the brink of some apocalypse.
She should at least be able to see his face.
There are tears drumming against her skull, her mouth clenched as she fights not to say the rest of it.
"You know where to find me."
He doesn't look at her, and his words are tired, his voice empty. In the darkness it's all she can do to hold the weight of his shoulders in her eyes.
"That's not what I meant." She pulls at some invisible crease in her top, the words tripping over her mouth before she can stop them. "I miss - I miss you. The way you used to be."
He lifts his head, then, and she'd forgotten, until that moment, that one bolt of blue could flood a whole room with light. She'd forgotten that it felt like this, blue electricity racing through every vein in her body. She'd forgotten how hard it was to look away.
"Why didn't you say so before?" He's back, suddenly, the old Spike, all snark and swagger. "What's a man supposed to think? Shame on you, Slayer."
She knows, then. He can take her name out of it; make it that bit easier to get through, but she knows where they are now. What's a man supposed to think? She can see it again, the great dark outline of the cross, etched in smoke; and she can see him, still, stooped in front of her, his soul laid bare in the moonlight. And neither of them can hide.
She has to say something. Anything that isn't that.
"It's so dark in here."
His hand moves instinctively to his chest: the ghost of an old gesture, and she sees the pain, transparent, cut across his face as he reaches for the lighter and grasps nothing but a fistful of memories.
She has it, still, the coat: testament to everything that ever held them together and everything that ever kept them apart. And she's not ready to give it back, not yet.
He finds the lighter at last, and she shifts, uncomfortably, barbed by his confusion as he struggles with tangled fingers to do this one, simple thing the old Spike flaunted as a trademark.
"What's it take?" His voice is tight with anger, and frustration, and undercut with despair. "What's it take to strike a spark?"
She looks down at his hands, and she sees, then, that he's shaking.
"Here."
She's very gentle as she takes it from him, and he lets her fingers hold in his, just for a moment, before he pulls away.
"Fine, take it, I don't want it. Take the spark. It's yours anyway, your spark, you know that."
She says nothing, because she doesn't know what to say; doesn't know how to make it right.
"There has to be a light in here somewhere."
She finds it, at last, out in the corridor. The switch is long unused and the light seeps reluctantly into the room, tired and yellow.
"Can you see anything?"
When he answers she almost wishes she hadn't asked the question.
"There's nothing here. Not any more."
She was selfish, and maybe she deserves it. But she wants him so much, still: not in the way she wanted him before, but in a way that, somehow, she wanted him before she ever knew she wanted him.
She wants what she's always wanted. She wants him, there. And he's not there, not all there, not any more.
She shivers a little, longing for something, though she hardly knows what.
"You cold, love?"
Something about the way he's looking at her makes her feel anything but cold. And she wants to let go, ride it, this sudden, great wave of tenderness, drawing her in. But she shrinks back in horror as she sees him reach for the neck of his shirt.
"What do you think you're do- " For one moment she feels an old sickness welling inside her, and then she stops, and realises. "I don't – thank you."
She takes it, pulls it around her, threading her arms through his sleeves. It smells of him, and she remembers feeling warm. She remembers lying awake wrapped in his eyes, a quiet sanctuary of blue, and she forgets sleeping alone, the hard, tearless nights after. After that.
This is how it ought to be.
She watches him, standing there in the half-light, lost and vulnerable; and she's back there again, in the Church, every broken thought in her head sanctified by the moonlight.
I loved you, just then. How could I not? And I said I would hold onto you, and I believed it. And I am holding onto you, I always hold onto you, in my mind. But I'm holding onto you and sometimes it feels like you're slipping.
"I have to get back."
He nods, and she knows that it's not enough; that she needs some kind of reaction; anything; anything real. So she dares to say it, when her better judgement tells her she should just leave it, and go.
"You know I'm always here for you."
"I know." He clutches his head, fiercely. "You're always here, in here. You always have been. You always will be."
There is something like desperation in his voice; something that reaches out to her and asks her something she isn't sure she can answer.
"Spike, I – another time. I can't stay now. I have to let the others know what's going on."
He doesn't say anything.
"Another time, I promise. I'll find you. I'll listen."
She waits for him to say something, anything. She waits. She waits, and then she turns and walks away, and she doesn't look back.
He watches the only silhouette his broken mind can hang onto disappear into shadow, listens to her footsteps, fading, an echo of the only heartbeat he can ever know.
And then he says it. He says it to an empty corridor that still trembles with the memory of her, lives her, breathes her.
"I don't need you to listen. I need you to talk. I need you to tell me. And you don't, you never tell me any more. You only tell them." He stumbles on, alone, the words blistering his throat as he continues. "Because you don't trust me. You'll never bloody trust me. Not now."
She doesn't hear him, he's sure of that. She's too far away; even when she stood there, touching him, she was too far away; too far away to hear him.
He turns his back on the doorway, because it hurts, so much, and sometimes he doesn't know if he can bear it.
And suddenly he feels it. He watches the tired, yellow light pull away from him, and he feels the darkness, falling across him, soft and quiet. There in the doorway, just one, tiny shadow, and yet it fills the room.
She stands there, and she looks at him. She says it so quietly he has to strain to catch it, but she's looking at him, right at him.
"I do trust you."
A/N: I wrote this partly as a sequel to My Treasure and partly as a response to 'Help'. We all know what we want "someday she'll tell you" to mean. This isn't about that. It's about what Buffy and Spike mean, now. And I hope you like it.
Disclaimer: I don't pretend to own Buffy, Spike, or the line from OMWF I adopted for my own purposes. And because I'm brave and have enormous faith in the powers that be, I won't even say I want to own them. They're quite safe left to their own devices.