DISCLAIMER: Nope not mine. I wish but it ain't going to happen anytime within my lifetime.

SUMMARY: This piece was inspired by a pair of role-playing groups I have been a part of. It explains some of the posts I made in the beginning.

DEDICATION: This is dedicated to Kit and Drew. Without them, the groups never would have happened and this story couldn't have come to be.

May 25, 2003

It's been a couple of days since I wrote anything. It's just been a long couple of days what with the traveling and arguing.

Yes. I said Spike and I have been arguing. I haven't been sleeping. He finally picked up on that fact yesterday. He asked me why I haven't been sleeping and why I haven't eaten much lately. What he doesn't understand is that everything I've eating has come back up. I hate shoving a finger down my throat every time I eat anything.

Of course he figured that out about two hours later. When I walked out of the bathroom and he stopped me, sniffing my breath. He couldn't figure out why I avoided him whenever I left the bathroom after eating.

"You've been throwing up. Why?"

"I just feel sick to my stomach. That's all."

"Why didn't you tell me? I wouldn't have forced you to eat." He sighed. "Bit, let me help you. Let me take care of you."

"Why? I'm not a baby. I can take care of myself. I know what I'm doing."

"I smell something else on you. What have you been taking?"

"Nothing. I swear."

"Don't lie to me, Nibblet. Don't ever lie to me."

I lost my temper then. "Don't accuse me of lying to you! Unless you can prove that I'm lying, don't accuse me of it!"

He was fighting to keep from losing his temper. I could tell. I just kept pushing him though. "And what about you? You don't know what I'm going through! You didn't just lose your sister! You didn't just lose her a second time!"

I hung my head. "At least you're real," I whispered, tears starting to fall from my eyes.

I turned away from him but he wouldn't let me go. "You are real. You are more real than anyone else I have ever known. Bit, don't do this. Don't turn away from me. You and I don't have anyone else. Just each other. We have to be strong for each other."

"Spike, it's hard. It's hard to sleep. I haven't been sleeping. You're right. I've been taking these." That's when I pulled out the bottle of pills that I had started taking. "I just don't want to sleep. I can't stand the nightmares. You told me that you have nightmares too. But let me tell you about mine." I told him all about the nightmare I had had the first night we had been on the road.

"Bit, I wish you had told me about this sooner. You need to sleep. Please. I'll be right here." He was all but begging me to sleep. I nodded. I just couldn't fight my fears and him at the same time. "Lay down. I'll sit right here beside you until you fall asleep."

I lay down on the bed and he tucked me in before sitting down with his back to the headboard. I snuggled up to him. I felt safe with him next to me.

I don't get it. Just a few months ago, I was threatening him with burning him alive. I still had a hard time with the fact that he tried to rape my sister. But I understood that he hadn't been in his right mind then anymore than he was when he was first discovered in the basement after he got his soul. I had gotten over being angry with him pretty quickly when I realized what he had gone through for her and the way he had stayed beside her even when I turned against her.

The night we told her to get out, he went with her. He later told me that it was to make sure that she didn't do anything stupid. But he had told everyone else that they just didn't appreciate everything Buffy had gone through. He had been right. They didn't. I didn't and I had been here the whole time. Kind of.

I mean, come one folks. I know I'm not real. I'm a mystical Key given shape and sent to the Slayer so she could protect me. But she's still my sister. She's the one who protected me when no one else wanted to. Giles was willing to kill me if the ceremony started and no one could stop it.

Spike helped Buffy. Even though it almost killed him, he helped her. Doc hurt him so badly that night. And it almost broke my heart when I saw the look on his face just before Doc threw him off the tower. The look that said, "I failed. I failed both of them. Forgive me."

There was nothing to forgive. I knew he had tried his best. How she could not have known? I knew. I think deep down she did too. And he never left me alone through that horrible summer. He was always there when I needed a shoulder to lean on. When I desperately needed to cry and no one else could see it, he was there giving me a shoulder to cry on. Even held my hair when I got sick from crying so much.

It was amazing, the way I felt when I was with Spike. He made me feel safe and protected. Are you falling in love with him? I didn't know. It was possible. I mean I had crushed on him for a little while. I just lay there for a while and dozed. I never even realized it when he got up and went to his own bed.