Vignette II

Rating: PG

Pairing: S/B usually comes through in the stories

Summary: Buffy thinks about Spike's situation, and her friend's reactions after the events of episode 7.8 "Sleeper." It takes place at the end of the final scene where everyone is sitting at the dining room table talking about the issue.

Disclaimer: It's all Joss' even if he doesn't want to claim it...his creations, not mine :)

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Of course Xander was angry. He never trusted Spike anyways...now was obviously not the time he would start.

Anya seemed indifferent, more concerned with the treatment of Spike vs. her own treatment a few weeks earlier...

Willow seemed more concerned than angry. At least she didn't look like she wanted to stake him...

Then there was Dawn, who already had a bad week what with the ghostly and possibly evil visit of their mother...but it was always surprising to see her so angry at Spike of all people. They had been so close once, and Buffy couldn't help but feel a bit guilty. She just wished Dawn would get over it...would let him talk to her again...he would really love that.

And there he was, just sitting there. Vacant. Like all the life...or unlife...had just been sucked out of him.

Life he had just sucked the life and blood out of those victims...

But it wasn't him, she reminded herself.

And if it had been him? What would she have done?

As soon as he started attacking her, she should have been ready to stake him. Instead, she could barely hold onto the wooden object in her hand. Instead of being ready to kill him; she was ready only to save him. To tell him that this wasn't what he wanted to be doing. She had known it. Trusted.

When the first evil came to them: Tara was Willow's, Joyce was Dawn's. The people that it knew would have the greatest emotional impact.

Spike was Buffy's. The one that had the most power over her...the one that could break her more than anyone else. And as she looked at him, staring blankly at the wall, a world of suffering inside of him for something he didn't mean to do...she understood why.