Melting Ice

"Just yesterday, Dawn was complaining about schoolwork, but never asking for help with her homework." I speak aloud my memory.

Spike gulps down a sob. "Yeah, the Nibblet 'ad a knack for being way too proud for 'er knickers." He slides up behind me, encasing his strong arms around my frame, resting his fatigued head that knows far too much for its own good along my shoulder. "Just like you."

"Should we return to what's left of the others? If they are any left? Regroup?" I distantly inquire, mind doing little angry flip-flops from one scenario to the next.

He overtly hesitates in answering. "Wha'ever we do, it should not be associated with giving up." He indomitably states, using the tone that suggests that he was saying it for his own state of mind.

"Don't lose it on me, Spike. If you do, I'll be tumbling right beside you."

He glumly chuckles. "Now aren't those the words I never thought I'd 'ear from you, love."

"I may be strong, but even the Great Wall of China has to crumble sometime." I tiredly enlighten, big droplets of tears ominous to cascade.

"Slayer, Buffy, hush baby, hush." Spike shakily whispers, moisture trickling from his eyes onto my shoulder.

I will not cry. I will not cry.

Fuck!

After all I have sincerely done for this world, the Powers That Be cannot just help me this one time! Lend a hand you damn maniacs! How can you sit back in your glow-y seats of power and watch this monstrosity of my life play out!? I'm your Warrior of Light that has shone for years longer than you had expected, and this is what I get in return!?

Why aren't you helping?

My eyes pivot around the room, soaking in every feature for this may as well be the last time I will be here. It's common knowledge to never be where your enemy knows. My age-old mantra ricochets in my head, attempting to build up what has broken since entering this building tonight. Be strong, Buffy. Be strong, Buffy. Be strong, Buffy . . .

Everything has been in a play of tug-o-war, and I think the game is over. I am the one sitting in the foul mud as the victors dance and bask in their ability to best me so. Every special person in my life is either standing with me now, in hiding, or dead. I should be the one rotting in a grave, not here, now, living and breathing.

"Spike, we left the past miles behind us, but it has legs, and anything with legs, will not sit still." I randomly ground out with a sigh attached at the end.

"I take it you mean we shouldn't run anymore? You know wha' bloody well happened the last time we gave that a go." He all too practically declares, nuzzling my shoulder to relinquish some of the sting that came with his words.

Panicking I bow my head, releasing sardonic laughter. "I don't know what I mean anymore. I'm talking in riddles for fuck's sake!" I ruthlessly shrug off his sentimental hold, spinning to face him, waving my arms frantically in the air. "I sound like Drusilla as a blonde!"

Spike thumps his hand against his face, a sign of quick thinking, quick appraisal, and quick reconfiguration. I know him all to well . . . And with a deadly slowness, swipes it down half in disappointment and the other half to clean away his tear trails. "Get over this, this stage you've plopped yourself in, put it behind you, flush it down, soddin' stake it, pet."

"Get over this? How can you stand there and say that after all we've witnessed together?! How, how dare you!"

Spike growls portentously. "To make it quite clear, Buffy, it's 'cause of what we've witnessed that I can say it." In all his fury his ethereal beauty magnifies tenfold, chalk white flesh dominant against antagonistic black clothing, insolent pulsing azure eyes loving and relaying . . . "Bloody hell woman, everyone we've ever given two shits about in a percentage is 100% dead, dying, or us!" Hands grip my shoulders in a bone-grinding grasp. "So we 'ave to get over it."

A lethal tranquility accompanies my words. "But what about Anya and Tara? They could still be alive and well." I awkwardly backtrack. "Not well, cause of their spouses deaths and all," I fumble a tad with my arms unable to articulate it for a second, "but at least alive. I made my decision. We regroup. Safety in numbers."

"Did you 'ear what I just bleedin' took my time to rant? They're all dead. We moved the farthest, they didn't. You 'ave to understand how a predator works. We wear you down with the running exercise, watch as you break apart in a hasty last resort, let the hope that it's over breach your mind, and pounce the closest to farthest, one by one. By then you're numbers 'ave dwindled, you're fucking worn-out, and scarcely clutching on by a silver thread."

I stare dead on, flailing around in his astounding and logical knowledge, but then again, he was . . . correction, is a predator, a legitimate bloodthirsty vampire. Since the first night of running it has been forgotten, only the occasional walking in on him drinking blood from a warm mug sparks the fact back to life. Such a strong, intelligent, and resourceful predator by his deviant blood and mentality who's mine to command.

He concludes his speech. "Efficient, chaotic, and most of all an unexplainably smashing time, baby."

"We regroup." I resolutely repeat.

"Sweets." Spike's attitude dims and is replaced by the one of a dissembled man that has had to many things stolen from him, had many things to live for and now is only down to one. His hands retract their clutch on me, descending listlessly to his sides. "We get over it, remember them always, and save our skinny bums. Do you want to wade in the past and drown your woeful being, or swim out, pull its plug and watch the cocky bastard swirl down the drain?"

I blatantly gawk, nibbling thoughtfully on my bottom lip, eyes tearing once more, and the heady smell of Dawn's death still pestering my nose. He strummed a chord in me with his metaphorical reason. "I . . . I just want everything the way it used be . . .

"I want to be back in Sunnydale worrying about mundane things; bills, dishes, cleaning demon goop from my latest jeans, the once a year apocalypse hazards, stupid familiar things." I dryly giggle, tears shedding from my eyes by the mere thought of these statements. Spike's smug trademark grin peaks from behind his anguished facade. "Yeah, I said it, I rather be back on the Hellmouth, fulfilling all my pestering Slayer duties, fighting some new big baddy bent of the end of the world as we know it . . . and stuff, than failing those I love time after time, living as they are dead, and all I can do is run from my inevitable death in fashionably cute but pain inflicting heeled boots." A moment beats, Spike coos me back into his arms. Meekly, I sniffle. "Can't we poof them all back, kill this baddy bent on our destruction and finish the day by Ben & Jerry-ing it?"

"In your imagination, ducks, in your imagination." He delicately pets my hair, seeming lost now, all words and sentences leeched up and away.

"If you're so right," His leather coat muffles my soft and beseeching words, "then everyone is dead, we're the only two remaining of them all, they're going to be coming after us next, what do we do?"

A whistling sigh blows from his lips. "I only know what my blood tells me." He allows it to hang . . .

"What does it tell you?"

Spike counts them off. "Get smashed. Commit violence. Drink blood. Shag Buffy. Repeat cycle not necessarily in that order."

I wallop him on the back, a grateful smile my other reaction for his diffusion of the situation. "Other than that, sweetie."

"It says beauty is in the eye of the beholder."

"Cut the crap."

He arches his scarred eyebrow. "Well beauty is . . ." He resentfully huffs. "But onto the bloody serious and significant bullocks." I lay my head back onto his chest, the peace of his halted heart rocking me to a light sleep. "It boldly says to love and protect this little golden parcel that is you, while occasionally keeping myself from the end of a pointy something or other."

One-step in dream world and one-step in reality I wistfully murmur, settling more into Spike's chest. "So we have no plan but to live on?"

"In your case you live, in mine I am already dead, not six-feet-under as proper, but dead nonetheless."

My arms bound themselves around his waist. "You're the most alive being I know. Listen to yourself babble about being dead. Do the dead have girlfriends? A life? A home?"

"Aw shucks Slayer, you're making me blush."

Another wallop on the back. "Shut up, Spike. Learn to take truths in all their wordy forms."

He pulls back to scrutinize me with a skeptical expression. "That isn't some blarney you're weaving for grateful minds like me?"

"Blarney?" I cynically question. "I don't even know what that means, so how can I be-"