Rating: PG for some language
Feedback: Thank you. Melpomenethalia@aol.com
Spoilers: Through season seven's "Help," episode four.
Distribution: The Warren and Fanfiction.net. If you're interested, please let me know.
Summary: Spike asked Buffy to sit with him to keep the monsters at bay. Here's my take on what might happen if someone stayed with him.
Disclaimer: All characters are owned by Mutant Enemy (Joss Whedon), a wonderfully creative company whose characters I have borrowed for a completely profit-free flight of fancy. Kindly do not sue me, please, as I am terrified of you. Thank you.
Author's Note: This is the fifth in a series of vignettes, all occuring on the same day.
2:48 p.m.
I don't want to be here, but I am.
I'm sitting in front of a smelly, incoherent vampire, twiddling my thumbs and waiting for something to come out of the shadows and fight me, because that's what usually happens when I take a break for a second. I still can't figure out why he's living in the school basement of all places. I mean, this building didn't even exist when he left. He doesn't have any memories about it. It has no connection to him.
And suddenly I think I might be seeing the attraction.
I'm really uncomfortable, and not just because these stupid shoes, which admittedly are really cute, feel like they're amputating my big toes. I have no idea what I'm supposed to feel, and it's really confusing.
It was a lot easier when he was evil and we were trying to kill each other. That's simple and easy to understand. Bad thing gets stuck with wooden thing, bad thing go poof. No problem. Then he had to go and make that stupid deal with me when Angel was going to destroy the world, and things got all out of whack. Of course, the gold medal for wacky fun was when the Initiative made him chip-boy. Suddenly, I'm not supposed to kill him because he can't kill anybody else. I've never read that Slayer Handbook, but I'm betting that scenario isn't covered in it.
Of course, they probably don't have a section titled "What to Do When Your Mortal Enemy Falls in Love with You." If they do, though, I bet the next sentence doesn't begin with "Find a broken-down, abandoned house." That was an unbelievable level of stupid.
Of course, stupid was par for the course for me last year, and I'm not entirely sure that sitting here across from a guy who tried to rape me a few months ago qualifies as brilliant either. A really big part of me wants to kill him, but other parts of me are just, well, confused.
First off, I think killing him would probably be a lot easier for him than living. But it's not just that. I don't know this person. Spike I knew, or at least I thought I did. Big, nasty vampire who liked spicy food, Passions, and the occasional drinking binge. Always there, whether you want him to be or not. Guaranteed to say the most annoying, rude, obnoxious thing on any given occasion. Except when he didn't. Except when there were those moments when he actually made me feel… something. I don't know what. I didn't want to know what. I still don't want to know what.
I do know he's in pain, though. A lot of it. And fine, and good, and he deserves it, and why did he do this when he must have know this is what would happen to him? He's sitting with his back against the wall, hunched over, and there's an expression on his face that's taken me a long time to identify because it's so different from what I'm used to seeing there. I'd never seen it in his eyes before he came back. It's terror.
I don't know why he did what he did… any of what he did, really. Vampires can't love without a soul. Angel loved me, and Angelus didn't. It's that simple. That's why I never really got Spike and Drusilla. Was it some game they were playing, or did they really fool themselves into thinking they actually had hearts? The life he leads, nothing but killing and battle and fighting, it means his heart must have gone dead. He can't feel anything. If he thought he did, it can't have been real.
Why should he be able to feel it when I can't? I'm the good one, aren't I? Well, aren't I?
I stand up and dust off the back of my new black skirt. He just keeps staring off into space. I don't like it down here. It's too quiet and dark, and there's nothing to do here but stare and think thoughts that just aren't helping anybody.
I leave to go back upstairs so I can go through my amazing change from Buffy, peer counselor, to Buffy, burger flipper, soon to be followed by Buffy, vampire slayer. I don't say anything, and I don't look over my shoulder as I leave, so I'm not sure if what I heard after I turned the corner was really a small sob or just the rats. And I don't want to.