(quick thank you to Rashaka and Aurelia for leaving feedback. It means so
much to me.) :)
----------------------------------------------------------------------------
----------------------------
I guess I'm here right now because of Spike.
That's a real selfish way to look at this, isn't it? Spike does something absolutely *amazing* and is in all kinds of torment over it, and I sit here with my best friend and a glass of water, in a warm place that's not a dark basement, talking about me, me, me. Add it to the list of huge I'm-sorrys.
It started a little after Buffy and Xander saved me. I understand the not telling me right away. Everyone was going through a lot, and... I know I'm the last person who should complain about being left out, after what I did.
Anya actually mentioned something about Spike being insane. But then Anya has a tendency to be - well, *Anya*. I didn't expect... I don't really know what I expected. In the middle of everything else going on, I guess I didn't think about it much until I saw him.
He was bad. Not Big Bad bad, obviously, the other kind. He was really gone, and it was pretty scary. (I think pre-soul, post-chip Spike would've enjoyed being able to scare me again, wouldn't he?)
So sometime later, I asked Xander about it. It was still sort of easier to talk to him at that point, even if it was just asking about Spike under my breath, afraid it was something big I should be tip-toeing around. And Xander had this long sigh (definitely peeved about something) and told me I should probably talk to Buffy. 'Course that wasn't the answer I wanted, because talking to Buffy would mean I'd probably have to get a lot of other things out of the way first, important things, and I wasn't sure if I was ready for that yet.
But later there was meditation, and I sort of had a joint conversation with Buffy and Gaia, and everything started to feel safe again. I was being trusted and it felt like *I* was safe, safe to be around, for the first time in a while, if that makes sense. Eventually I did get to ask her about him, and she told me.
She said, "He's got a soul," as if each word weighed a thousand tons. And I suppose, all put together, they did. They just about crushed me for a minute.
"Wow," I said. "Buffy, that's... wow."
"I know. Colossal wow."
The optimist sidekick in me lit up. "Well, this is good. Right? It's really good. It's... like a miracle, Buffy."
She smiles, the kind of smile you have to force a little. "That's one I haven't gotten yet."
"Buffy, of course, it's- it's great. I thought - oh God - I thought this whole 'beneath us' thing had something to do with it the way he's acting."
"I'm still not sure it doesn't." (Right. Duh. There's such a thing as too much sidekicky optimism. Still-)
"Still, we don't know, this- this could be normal. This crazy rambly thing could be a normal stage. It probably *is* normal. 'Cause, well, Angel. We don't know what it was like for him. M-maybe it took him a few months to adjust too. Or longer. That was a hundred and something years ago, and- and the second time, he was in hell for a while, literally. For all we know, this could just be a transitional stage, like- like a cocoon for the soul. I-it makes the brain all jumbly, but then it wears off and they grow out of it. We should call Angel. Did you call Angel?"
"Will, slow down. Yeah, I... I will. Soon."
"And Giles! He could know stuff too. He knows a lot of stuff -" I cut myself off and frowned at her, half-serious. "And even if he doesn't, you know, it wouldn't kill you to call him once in a while."
She almost laughed, I think, but it sounded too close to suffocating. "I'm handling one thing at a time, okay?"
"Okay. Sorry." I wasn't trying to be in big pressure mode, really. It's just hard for me to hear stuff like that and keep filtering between my brain and my mouth. "Wow" even slipped out one more time.
"No one's denying the wow."
"Yeah, I know. Oh, but... Buffy, do you think-? If there's one of those happiness clauses again, we really need to be careful. You know, that stuff gets stuck in the fine print, and you think, 'la la, nothing to worry about' and then, pfft, back to the evil."
"I don't think-"
"But no, I didn't mean I think *you're* definitely gonna go and... anymore... 'cause maybe Anya, for one thing. Just in general. I wasn't saying you'd even think about giving Spike a moment of happin- wait, this is coming out wrong. I don't mean you wouldn't make him happy - not that you would... n-not that you don't want to. Not that you *should* want-"
She cuts in, "It's not..." I take my cue to stop babbling. "...a curse. I don't think it is anyway."
"Oh. Good. Again. Good, for him. Right?" She exhaled and shook her head, kinda the verbal equivalent of *shrug*. I asked her what it was.
"He made it sound like... like he did it himself. He did it to himself."
"Oh," I said. "Oh.... oh boy."
I stopped asking questions around then, because the look on her face said she didn't have answers. So I just thought about it after that, by myself, giving it a week or so to sink in.
I thought, how many ways are there to get a soul back? I only knew the one. And it was so much trouble for everyone to get it, to have it translated, to find it again, and people kept dying. And now, this Spike thing - maybe it's just easier if you want it? Can a vampire turn it on anytime he wants to? That doesn't seem right though, not with all the trouble it took the rest of us. And I never even thought that could happen, the wanting-it part. It was so out of the question with Angel. Not that it makes him a bad person or anything- or less of a good guy than Spike, I'd never think that. That voice that makes you stop and think can mean a lot. If it's not working... well, this is an authority on the subject talking. I'm the last person who should be judging either of them.
I... never get to judge anybody again, do I?
What we did on him, when we did it - when *I* did it - it was powerful. It was nothing near what I experienced this summer or- the time before- but it was big. For me, it was like... beyond regular words. I'd only done minor chanting and candle stuff, and suddenly I'm in my hospital bed feeling things, channeling things, from places so much greater than I am. And I could make them work for me. Maybe that's when...
Maybe the last four years of my life could be undone by going straight back to that spell over Angel. But would I want them to? All things considered, selfishness turned off, that question's way too big to think about. I have enough thoughts in my head without it. There's so much...
Like, okay, here's another concerned Spike thought that doesn't have anything to do with me. When Angel changed in the first place - when he lost his soul - he was a completely different person. *Everything* in him was different. He was dead, and there was this evil nasty guy walking around instead. So I'm thinking, how much does the soul matter? Tons. People's entire personalities can be erased just like that, in an instant. How much of you can stay in, really?
So if works the opposite way... suppose there's some really sweet English guy that got erased inside Spike a long time ago. Now he gets free, and I wonder (as weird as this sounds) what happens to *our* Spike? The whole bloodlusting, chain-smoking, bitter insult guy. Is he gone or still in there somewhere? He's not there right now, 'cause he's all crazy, but when that goes away... who does he turn into?
Can we even still call him "Spike"? Maybe - we don't know - maybe with the soul, he'll want something a little less pointy.
Is it really yucky for me to think I'd probably miss him a little, if he did become William the Non-bloody? I admit it, I probably would. There's a million reasons *not* to miss Spike, I get that. But overall, how bad was he when he wasn't being diabolical and failing? Sometimes he really was good. There were even times, once and a while, when it wasn't just because he wanted something.
It's not like I ever forgot who he was or anything. I know he nearly killed me - me, specifically - twice. I know he did a lot of horrible things, and he'd definitely still be doing them if he could, and he has no shame at all in how much he still wants to do the horrible things he'd be doing.
But even with that, I just feel like there's something you have to sort of like about Spike, at least the chipped version. First of all, he's... let's face it, he's completely pathetic. Total loser - and he knew it most of the time too, under the whole macho bravado thing. You know those lobsters in the tank at a seafood restaurant, with the claws all taped up? Spike used to remind me of them. Yeah, you'd have to be nuts to take the tape off one and expect it not to snap at your fingers. The tape is good, I'm all "yay" for tape. But that lobster in the tiny tank, cramped in with all the others and just waiting to be taken away and cooked, hour after hour, you have to feel sorry for him. It's a harsh world out there, and he can't even protect himself a little, and he didn't ask to be taken out of the ocean where he could snap at people's fingers and legs all day and okay, you get my point, this analogy has to end. I felt sorry for Spike. He came to us for help, and he was all sad and alone, and everybody was just - they were *bitching* at him, and no wonder he wanted to play villain all the time.
And, I mean, the poor guy falls in love with Buffy then? Of all the dumb luck. (Bizarre, out of left-field luck that defies all natural laws.) And sure I felt sorry for him again. Believe me, I understood the basic wrongness of it - I can't say a murderer being reformed against his or her will would be my ideal love connection either. Still, he loves her, she rejects him, and he finds a whole new level of self-pity to sink into. I can't help but empathize with unrequited love. There was Xander for starters - please, I'm more than over it now, but I remember what it felt like. So to take all that hopelessness and keep caring anyway, keep doing *good* things not because you want love back, but because you already feel it inside and just can't help it... I like Spike for that. I can't not like him.
Come on, Buffy was *dead* for a while, for a whole summer, and he could've walked away or gone super evil or killed himself or anything, but instead he just kept fighting on our side and protecting Dawnie, because he knew that's what Buffy would've wanted. And I couldn't even... I-
I didn't even.
I didn't do that for Tara.
I didn't have that in me.
Back to how I can't judge anyone. Back to me, me... me using poor Spike (poor Spike!) as a way to focus my attention on something else.
It did have to be upsetting for him though. Sudden guilt, the way it hits like a crippling force after just *two days* of damage, 48 hours of blood and fear and venom - I can't imagine what that would feel like after a century. No wonder Spike's talking to himself. (Not to forget the possibility we don't call him Spike anymore, because he's back to Mr. 1800s England who suddenly woke up a vampire in the middle of nowhere. He must've been so scared.)
Oh, here's another fun idea. Would *this* Spike, as opposed to normal Spike...
(I won't even bring this up to her, I won't, I cross my fingers I won't)
Would he still love Buffy?
Well - probably. 'Cause... because I don't see why not, right? Unless it was the angry soulless vampire part of him that loved her, and now he's gonna move forward and suppress that? That wouldn't make any sense.
Would she love him back?
Yikes. It took me that long to realize it, I was sitting there all worried about him, and I barely even thought... Oh, Buffy.
I don't know. I really don't. My gut says there's *something* there, there has to be, but love is a pretty strong word for it. I know if she just wanted to self-destruct last year, there are plenty of ways she could've done it without sleeping with Spike. There have to be reasons.
But now I feel like I'd have to go walking around in her subconscious again to find out. In high school, I bet she'd just tell me. We'd sit in our PJs with a bag of chips, and there would be officially no censorship or truth evasion, just the two of us soul-bearing, joking, and probably crying. It's been such a long time since we could do that. I never had so many questions she didn't have answers to, or the other way around I guess. Maybe we grew up. Growing up could mean going through things - *doing* things - that you can't explain or understand yourself, so you know there's no way even your best friend would understand. I'm starting to get this idea that the point of friendship is that it doesn't matter.
In the end, I'm just left guessing about the Buffy/Spike possible-lovefest. Let's just assume for a minute that he did and she did. He had to have done this because of her somehow. And it is a pretty romantic development. (romantic in a Xander-will-smash-his-head-into-a-wall-repeatedly way, maybe) But still it wouldn't be a fairytale, I know that. That was the whole deal with Angel when he left, right? That Buffy deserves somebody caring and funny and with a pulse, all at the same time. I sure never envied her love life. Vamp-human relationships: not good for the long-term stability.
But on the other hand, what is? True love doesn't come with a warranty these days. It has to end somewhere, right? The pop goes out of the relationship or you grow apart or someone cheats or... dies. And the other person has to keep going, keep breathing through the pain, every single day. If it'll end like that anyway, might as well go for it. Carpe diem. And the other one - caveat emptor. Buyer beware.
Thinking all this over tonight, I had dreams. Not so much about Spike, just a lot of things, most of them of the meaningless cheese-man variety. By the end of it, I was slipping and falling down a hole, reaching for Tara and falling. It was one of those where you feel yourself slam hard onto the bed as you wake up, and then there's the sweaty shaky factor. And if you're me, you have to wonder if something really did lift you up to the ceiling and let go.
I went downstairs for water. Buffy was at the computer, staring at this amateur Flash effect scrolling poems and watercolors across the screen. I'm pretty sure I saw a picture, Cassie Newton, just before she saw me and casually minimized the window with a smile and "Oh, hey."
"No sleep either?"
"Guess not." She was still fumbling with the mouse and keyboard, trying to bring up a search engine so it looked like she was busy, like she wasn't looking at a dead girl's website in the middle of the night. And as I was standing there, pretending I didn't see, brushing off my nightmare and keeping things light and sidekicky, I saw her suddenly get a spark of an idea and bring up the demon database.
She said, "It would really help to be in bed before my eyes close." She typed *ins* and erased it.
I said, "I was just in a bed. It's overrated." She typed *manifest sp* - and erased that too, back to the m.
She typed *mind c* - erase.
*mental* -
"Buffy..."
"Yeah?"
I looked over her shoulder more obviously than I was before, innocent. "Whatcha doing?"
"Oh, nothing. I was just thinking- you know, this thing with Spike," she said with a little hand gesture that basically yelled *I am trying very hard to be flip about this*.
"What thing?"
She sighed. "It's just I go down there sometimes, and..." her face got serious. "And the other day I thought I felt something. But I wouldn't know how to..." she trailed off and gave up on the computer screen.
"You gotta get him out of there," I said.
"I know."
It took about half a minute for me to convince myself to sit down, as opposed to saying "well good luck" and running back upstairs. Instead I said, "You want to tell me?" quietly.
I didn't mean to phrase it like that exactly, it just came out. She looked at me, more confused than anything else. And then... she got it. She looked at me and got it.
And she said, "No."
So now we sit here, Buffy and me. Me with my water and her with a computer she doesn't know how to use. Me breathing through the pain and her starting to laugh, a did-I-just-say-that laugh that turns into tears. Me hugging her and insisting that it's okay and her saying things, things about the two of them hurting each other, that I can't even remember now. Me trying to put my growing up theory into words again to explain it to her, but she doesn't understand it, because I can't even understand it. And us realizing that maybe it doesn't matter.
I guess I'm here right now because of Spike.
That's a real selfish way to look at this, isn't it? Spike does something absolutely *amazing* and is in all kinds of torment over it, and I sit here with my best friend and a glass of water, in a warm place that's not a dark basement, talking about me, me, me. Add it to the list of huge I'm-sorrys.
It started a little after Buffy and Xander saved me. I understand the not telling me right away. Everyone was going through a lot, and... I know I'm the last person who should complain about being left out, after what I did.
Anya actually mentioned something about Spike being insane. But then Anya has a tendency to be - well, *Anya*. I didn't expect... I don't really know what I expected. In the middle of everything else going on, I guess I didn't think about it much until I saw him.
He was bad. Not Big Bad bad, obviously, the other kind. He was really gone, and it was pretty scary. (I think pre-soul, post-chip Spike would've enjoyed being able to scare me again, wouldn't he?)
So sometime later, I asked Xander about it. It was still sort of easier to talk to him at that point, even if it was just asking about Spike under my breath, afraid it was something big I should be tip-toeing around. And Xander had this long sigh (definitely peeved about something) and told me I should probably talk to Buffy. 'Course that wasn't the answer I wanted, because talking to Buffy would mean I'd probably have to get a lot of other things out of the way first, important things, and I wasn't sure if I was ready for that yet.
But later there was meditation, and I sort of had a joint conversation with Buffy and Gaia, and everything started to feel safe again. I was being trusted and it felt like *I* was safe, safe to be around, for the first time in a while, if that makes sense. Eventually I did get to ask her about him, and she told me.
She said, "He's got a soul," as if each word weighed a thousand tons. And I suppose, all put together, they did. They just about crushed me for a minute.
"Wow," I said. "Buffy, that's... wow."
"I know. Colossal wow."
The optimist sidekick in me lit up. "Well, this is good. Right? It's really good. It's... like a miracle, Buffy."
She smiles, the kind of smile you have to force a little. "That's one I haven't gotten yet."
"Buffy, of course, it's- it's great. I thought - oh God - I thought this whole 'beneath us' thing had something to do with it the way he's acting."
"I'm still not sure it doesn't." (Right. Duh. There's such a thing as too much sidekicky optimism. Still-)
"Still, we don't know, this- this could be normal. This crazy rambly thing could be a normal stage. It probably *is* normal. 'Cause, well, Angel. We don't know what it was like for him. M-maybe it took him a few months to adjust too. Or longer. That was a hundred and something years ago, and- and the second time, he was in hell for a while, literally. For all we know, this could just be a transitional stage, like- like a cocoon for the soul. I-it makes the brain all jumbly, but then it wears off and they grow out of it. We should call Angel. Did you call Angel?"
"Will, slow down. Yeah, I... I will. Soon."
"And Giles! He could know stuff too. He knows a lot of stuff -" I cut myself off and frowned at her, half-serious. "And even if he doesn't, you know, it wouldn't kill you to call him once in a while."
She almost laughed, I think, but it sounded too close to suffocating. "I'm handling one thing at a time, okay?"
"Okay. Sorry." I wasn't trying to be in big pressure mode, really. It's just hard for me to hear stuff like that and keep filtering between my brain and my mouth. "Wow" even slipped out one more time.
"No one's denying the wow."
"Yeah, I know. Oh, but... Buffy, do you think-? If there's one of those happiness clauses again, we really need to be careful. You know, that stuff gets stuck in the fine print, and you think, 'la la, nothing to worry about' and then, pfft, back to the evil."
"I don't think-"
"But no, I didn't mean I think *you're* definitely gonna go and... anymore... 'cause maybe Anya, for one thing. Just in general. I wasn't saying you'd even think about giving Spike a moment of happin- wait, this is coming out wrong. I don't mean you wouldn't make him happy - not that you would... n-not that you don't want to. Not that you *should* want-"
She cuts in, "It's not..." I take my cue to stop babbling. "...a curse. I don't think it is anyway."
"Oh. Good. Again. Good, for him. Right?" She exhaled and shook her head, kinda the verbal equivalent of *shrug*. I asked her what it was.
"He made it sound like... like he did it himself. He did it to himself."
"Oh," I said. "Oh.... oh boy."
I stopped asking questions around then, because the look on her face said she didn't have answers. So I just thought about it after that, by myself, giving it a week or so to sink in.
I thought, how many ways are there to get a soul back? I only knew the one. And it was so much trouble for everyone to get it, to have it translated, to find it again, and people kept dying. And now, this Spike thing - maybe it's just easier if you want it? Can a vampire turn it on anytime he wants to? That doesn't seem right though, not with all the trouble it took the rest of us. And I never even thought that could happen, the wanting-it part. It was so out of the question with Angel. Not that it makes him a bad person or anything- or less of a good guy than Spike, I'd never think that. That voice that makes you stop and think can mean a lot. If it's not working... well, this is an authority on the subject talking. I'm the last person who should be judging either of them.
I... never get to judge anybody again, do I?
What we did on him, when we did it - when *I* did it - it was powerful. It was nothing near what I experienced this summer or- the time before- but it was big. For me, it was like... beyond regular words. I'd only done minor chanting and candle stuff, and suddenly I'm in my hospital bed feeling things, channeling things, from places so much greater than I am. And I could make them work for me. Maybe that's when...
Maybe the last four years of my life could be undone by going straight back to that spell over Angel. But would I want them to? All things considered, selfishness turned off, that question's way too big to think about. I have enough thoughts in my head without it. There's so much...
Like, okay, here's another concerned Spike thought that doesn't have anything to do with me. When Angel changed in the first place - when he lost his soul - he was a completely different person. *Everything* in him was different. He was dead, and there was this evil nasty guy walking around instead. So I'm thinking, how much does the soul matter? Tons. People's entire personalities can be erased just like that, in an instant. How much of you can stay in, really?
So if works the opposite way... suppose there's some really sweet English guy that got erased inside Spike a long time ago. Now he gets free, and I wonder (as weird as this sounds) what happens to *our* Spike? The whole bloodlusting, chain-smoking, bitter insult guy. Is he gone or still in there somewhere? He's not there right now, 'cause he's all crazy, but when that goes away... who does he turn into?
Can we even still call him "Spike"? Maybe - we don't know - maybe with the soul, he'll want something a little less pointy.
Is it really yucky for me to think I'd probably miss him a little, if he did become William the Non-bloody? I admit it, I probably would. There's a million reasons *not* to miss Spike, I get that. But overall, how bad was he when he wasn't being diabolical and failing? Sometimes he really was good. There were even times, once and a while, when it wasn't just because he wanted something.
It's not like I ever forgot who he was or anything. I know he nearly killed me - me, specifically - twice. I know he did a lot of horrible things, and he'd definitely still be doing them if he could, and he has no shame at all in how much he still wants to do the horrible things he'd be doing.
But even with that, I just feel like there's something you have to sort of like about Spike, at least the chipped version. First of all, he's... let's face it, he's completely pathetic. Total loser - and he knew it most of the time too, under the whole macho bravado thing. You know those lobsters in the tank at a seafood restaurant, with the claws all taped up? Spike used to remind me of them. Yeah, you'd have to be nuts to take the tape off one and expect it not to snap at your fingers. The tape is good, I'm all "yay" for tape. But that lobster in the tiny tank, cramped in with all the others and just waiting to be taken away and cooked, hour after hour, you have to feel sorry for him. It's a harsh world out there, and he can't even protect himself a little, and he didn't ask to be taken out of the ocean where he could snap at people's fingers and legs all day and okay, you get my point, this analogy has to end. I felt sorry for Spike. He came to us for help, and he was all sad and alone, and everybody was just - they were *bitching* at him, and no wonder he wanted to play villain all the time.
And, I mean, the poor guy falls in love with Buffy then? Of all the dumb luck. (Bizarre, out of left-field luck that defies all natural laws.) And sure I felt sorry for him again. Believe me, I understood the basic wrongness of it - I can't say a murderer being reformed against his or her will would be my ideal love connection either. Still, he loves her, she rejects him, and he finds a whole new level of self-pity to sink into. I can't help but empathize with unrequited love. There was Xander for starters - please, I'm more than over it now, but I remember what it felt like. So to take all that hopelessness and keep caring anyway, keep doing *good* things not because you want love back, but because you already feel it inside and just can't help it... I like Spike for that. I can't not like him.
Come on, Buffy was *dead* for a while, for a whole summer, and he could've walked away or gone super evil or killed himself or anything, but instead he just kept fighting on our side and protecting Dawnie, because he knew that's what Buffy would've wanted. And I couldn't even... I-
I didn't even.
I didn't do that for Tara.
I didn't have that in me.
Back to how I can't judge anyone. Back to me, me... me using poor Spike (poor Spike!) as a way to focus my attention on something else.
It did have to be upsetting for him though. Sudden guilt, the way it hits like a crippling force after just *two days* of damage, 48 hours of blood and fear and venom - I can't imagine what that would feel like after a century. No wonder Spike's talking to himself. (Not to forget the possibility we don't call him Spike anymore, because he's back to Mr. 1800s England who suddenly woke up a vampire in the middle of nowhere. He must've been so scared.)
Oh, here's another fun idea. Would *this* Spike, as opposed to normal Spike...
(I won't even bring this up to her, I won't, I cross my fingers I won't)
Would he still love Buffy?
Well - probably. 'Cause... because I don't see why not, right? Unless it was the angry soulless vampire part of him that loved her, and now he's gonna move forward and suppress that? That wouldn't make any sense.
Would she love him back?
Yikes. It took me that long to realize it, I was sitting there all worried about him, and I barely even thought... Oh, Buffy.
I don't know. I really don't. My gut says there's *something* there, there has to be, but love is a pretty strong word for it. I know if she just wanted to self-destruct last year, there are plenty of ways she could've done it without sleeping with Spike. There have to be reasons.
But now I feel like I'd have to go walking around in her subconscious again to find out. In high school, I bet she'd just tell me. We'd sit in our PJs with a bag of chips, and there would be officially no censorship or truth evasion, just the two of us soul-bearing, joking, and probably crying. It's been such a long time since we could do that. I never had so many questions she didn't have answers to, or the other way around I guess. Maybe we grew up. Growing up could mean going through things - *doing* things - that you can't explain or understand yourself, so you know there's no way even your best friend would understand. I'm starting to get this idea that the point of friendship is that it doesn't matter.
In the end, I'm just left guessing about the Buffy/Spike possible-lovefest. Let's just assume for a minute that he did and she did. He had to have done this because of her somehow. And it is a pretty romantic development. (romantic in a Xander-will-smash-his-head-into-a-wall-repeatedly way, maybe) But still it wouldn't be a fairytale, I know that. That was the whole deal with Angel when he left, right? That Buffy deserves somebody caring and funny and with a pulse, all at the same time. I sure never envied her love life. Vamp-human relationships: not good for the long-term stability.
But on the other hand, what is? True love doesn't come with a warranty these days. It has to end somewhere, right? The pop goes out of the relationship or you grow apart or someone cheats or... dies. And the other person has to keep going, keep breathing through the pain, every single day. If it'll end like that anyway, might as well go for it. Carpe diem. And the other one - caveat emptor. Buyer beware.
Thinking all this over tonight, I had dreams. Not so much about Spike, just a lot of things, most of them of the meaningless cheese-man variety. By the end of it, I was slipping and falling down a hole, reaching for Tara and falling. It was one of those where you feel yourself slam hard onto the bed as you wake up, and then there's the sweaty shaky factor. And if you're me, you have to wonder if something really did lift you up to the ceiling and let go.
I went downstairs for water. Buffy was at the computer, staring at this amateur Flash effect scrolling poems and watercolors across the screen. I'm pretty sure I saw a picture, Cassie Newton, just before she saw me and casually minimized the window with a smile and "Oh, hey."
"No sleep either?"
"Guess not." She was still fumbling with the mouse and keyboard, trying to bring up a search engine so it looked like she was busy, like she wasn't looking at a dead girl's website in the middle of the night. And as I was standing there, pretending I didn't see, brushing off my nightmare and keeping things light and sidekicky, I saw her suddenly get a spark of an idea and bring up the demon database.
She said, "It would really help to be in bed before my eyes close." She typed *ins* and erased it.
I said, "I was just in a bed. It's overrated." She typed *manifest sp* - and erased that too, back to the m.
She typed *mind c* - erase.
*mental* -
"Buffy..."
"Yeah?"
I looked over her shoulder more obviously than I was before, innocent. "Whatcha doing?"
"Oh, nothing. I was just thinking- you know, this thing with Spike," she said with a little hand gesture that basically yelled *I am trying very hard to be flip about this*.
"What thing?"
She sighed. "It's just I go down there sometimes, and..." her face got serious. "And the other day I thought I felt something. But I wouldn't know how to..." she trailed off and gave up on the computer screen.
"You gotta get him out of there," I said.
"I know."
It took about half a minute for me to convince myself to sit down, as opposed to saying "well good luck" and running back upstairs. Instead I said, "You want to tell me?" quietly.
I didn't mean to phrase it like that exactly, it just came out. She looked at me, more confused than anything else. And then... she got it. She looked at me and got it.
And she said, "No."
So now we sit here, Buffy and me. Me with my water and her with a computer she doesn't know how to use. Me breathing through the pain and her starting to laugh, a did-I-just-say-that laugh that turns into tears. Me hugging her and insisting that it's okay and her saying things, things about the two of them hurting each other, that I can't even remember now. Me trying to put my growing up theory into words again to explain it to her, but she doesn't understand it, because I can't even understand it. And us realizing that maybe it doesn't matter.