All About Spike - Plain Version
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My Torment and My Peace
By pepperlandgirl
I miss him.
Eighteen months after he returned from Africa, 12 months after he sacrificed
himself. I feel like a vital part of myself is destroyed. I hate myself for
letting him go. I know it was his decision to make, but I didn’t even try to
stop him. I wonder what hurt him worse, his body being torn apart or the fact
that I acted like I didn’t care?
At the
time, I thought I didn’t. Since Spike had returned from Africa, I had been
friendly with him. I helped him when he needed someone to guide him through is
moral dilemmas and problems. I patrolled with him. I even invited him to dinner
a few times, but I always kept him at arm’s length, and I never gave him any
reason to believe we’d be more than friends. Sometimes I wondered if we were
really friends at all, so it never occurred to me to stop him from saving
Xander. Why would I choose Spike over my best friend?
He didn’t
ask me to. Didn’t even suggest it, or treat it like it was an option. He just
sized up the situation, kissed Dawn goodbye, smiled at Anya, and then he was
gone. And Xander was there. We ran to him, crying with relief, Anya kissing him
and promising to love him forever, begging him to never scare her like that
again. Dawn was crying too, but I knew it wasn’t for Xander. She wasn’t even
looking at Xander, she just hugged herself, standing away from the rest of us. Willow was beside herself with joy, but I saw her
eyes darting to the place we last saw Spike, and they seemed a little clouded.I wasn’t expecting it to hurt like
this though. I wasn’t expecting to dream about him and wake up crying. I wasn’t
expecting to miss the way he smiled at Dawn like she was the most precious
jewel and he was awed to be in her presence. I wasn’t expecting to miss the way
he smiled at me; if Dawn was a jewel, I was his sun. I missed the way his eyes
darkened before he kissed me. I missed the way his hair curled when he didn’t
bother slicking it back. Sometimes I would want to tell him about a certain
move I’ve learned, or show him a new weapon Giles has sent from England, but
then I remembered that he’s not here.
Anya confessed to me that Xander misses Spike too. Some
nights he goes up to the cliff where the whole sordid thing happened and talks
to him. We put a small memorial on the cliff for him, where we lost him. He tells
Spike how Dawn is doing in school, about her latest boyfriend, the way she’s
cutting her hair. He also updates Spike
on my progress; about my latest job, how many
vampires I’ve slain, any new injuries I get. A million trivial things that
Spike should know himself.
I never
even got to thank him, or apologize to him. I wanted to thank him for taking
care of Dawn, for loving her. I wanted to thank him for helping me kill the
nasties. I wanted to thank him for being there when I needed him and for
leaving when I wanted to be alone. I wanted to apologize for all the times I
hurt him, all the times I ripped his heart out, all the times I turned my back
on him. In other words, I wanted to tell him that I’m proud to call him a
friend. I always put it off because he
wasn’t going anywhere. Barring an unfortunate meeting with a stake, he should
have been immortal. I should have had plenty of time to talk to him. I try to
assure myself that he probably already knew everything I wanted to tell him,
but that doesn’t make it better, or easier.
I simply
wasn’t prepared for the void his absence has created in my world. My life went
on as usual, I still fight and avert apocalypses. I still take care of Dawn. I
still go to the Bronze with my friends,
and to work, and I even started taking night classes. I even took a poetry
class. I recognized several of the poems Spike used to recite when he thought I
was asleep, including Byron’s She Walks in Beauty.
Some nights
though, I don’t feel so lonely. Sometimes, when I call his name in my sleep, I
swear I hear him answer. That’s impossible, of course. He’s probably in some
hell dimension, banished for eternity from light and love, and any chance he
had at redemption. Or maybe the final sacrifice redeemed him, maybe he was
already redeemed because he could love. No matter what happened before or where
he is now, he died a man.
/////////////////////////////
She misses me. She doesn’t know I’m here.
It’s a
clever punishment, really Someone, somewhere is one sick bastard, rivaling even
Angelus’s depravity. See, I’m to spend the rest of eternity watching her;
unable to touch her, talk to her, hold her, comfort her, even smell her. I’ll
always be here and she’ll never know it.
Kinda like
when I was undead. I was miserable without her, and miserable with her, but at
least I could talk to her. If nothing else, I could goad her into beating me.
Some contact, no matter how negative, was better than none. Not now though, now
I just watch.
They turned
me into a bloody watcher.
It’s my
reward too, for saving her friend. This is hell and it’s heaven, living with my
murderer, watching my savior. She’s my sin and my touch of grace. She owns the
night and outshines the sun. She killed me and loved me a thousand different
times, and no matter how much it hurt I always came crawling back, and now I
can never leave. I never have to be
away from her and my heart drinks in her beauty daily. I’m happy to be close
enough to her breath, hear her laugh, just watch her be. But my heart breaks
because she was never mine and never could be mine.
I didn’t
have to die in Xander’s place. It was my decision, and I could have walked
away. But I looked at Buffy, and in that second I knew with clarity that I had
never previously possessed that she really could never love me. I **knew**
it. She never lied to me about her
feelings. She never loved me, would never love me, and could never love me. She
could barely tolerate being my friend when I needed her to save my life—my
soul.
I looked at
Anya, human again after her brief return to the world of vengeance. She had confessed to me a few days before
that she thought she might be pregnant. She was so excited to have Xander’s
child. She really loved him, like I loved Buffy. Even if she weren’t pregnant,
she would be one day. She deserved that.
Willow was
still hurting from losing Tara the year before. She couldn’t lose her best
friend too. I liked Willow, admired her for struggling to do the right thing,
and to earn her own redemption. Though her job was easier than mine—she didn’t
have over 100 years of murder and mayhem under her belt.
Dawn was
crying.
And as
clearly as I understood that Buffy would never love me, I understood that these
people would never be my friends, no matter how hard I tried to redeem myself,
to prove myself. I knew that no one was left to mourn my death. It’s a funny
thing, but I had only wanted acceptance. I didn’t care where, demon world,
human world, it didn’t matter. I just didn’t want to be stuck on the outside
for eternity. I’m a social guy, I’ve always been that way. But I didn’t belong
anywhere, and never have.
Xander did
though. Xander belonged in this world with his women. I was a freak, a nobody,
and I was finally forced to admit that to myself. So I pushed Xander out of the
way and jumped to my death. Content that it would end, that I would leave, and
their world would continue to spin for now.
Only, it
didn’t work out that way. Nobody explained to me why I had become a ghost, a
shadow, in Buffy’s life. I don’t know what I am
supposed to do, or how long I will be here. All I know is that it hurts so
bloody much. I still feel the guilt of the soul, but now I have the added
burden of sitting on the sidelines, unable to help her or Dawn.
How the
truly ironic part is that I have friends now. Buffy misses me, so does Dawn,
and even Xander visits my ‘grave’ to give me weekly updates. I wish I could
tell him not to bother. One day he’ll forget why he goes up there, he’ll
remember that he hates me, and he’ll stop visiting. And it won’t even matter
because I know every minute detail of everything they do. I could only prove my
worth in death, and that stings more than anything else.
I don’t think she loves me now. Twice I died for love. Three
times if you count the soul. And it never mattered. I’m still being punished.
This is the gift to the soul and punishment for the demon. Or maybe it’s the
other way around? Punished for loving
the sun. Punished for loving the one woman who had more grace and light and
purity than the stars themselves.
As if being a ghost wasn’t enough, I’m waxing poetic now. If
I thought I could, I’d kill myself again.
And waxing
poetic isn’t even the worst part. The worst part is that I’m awfully broody
now. Which isn’t a surprise, really, because I have nothing better to do than
brood. It hurts too much to watch Buffy all the time, and I’ve learned to tune
everybody out. I learned quickly that I can’t read, or go for walks to escape
her. I can watch telly, but only if someone else has turned it on. And they all
watch crap.
Alone in
life, alone as a vampire, alone as a ghost. Loving her from afar, as
always. She is the best and the worst
that I have ever encountered. My torment and my peace.