Disclaimer: I do not own any of the characters of Buffy the Vampire Slayer. ‘Nuff said, I think.

Setting: After the Season 5 finale.

A/N: I realize this fic blows but I didn’t even remember writing it. So that’s really why I’m sharing it. Heh.

They Break So Easily

by Cassie

A small, red coal glows in the deepening twilight. No wind stirs to move the smoke from his pale face. It hovers over him in a murky cloud, choking his still lungs, seeping into his black shirt and jeans. He inhales because he loves the familiar motion. The lithe ribcage relaxes in and out as though a heart beats beneath. In the more quiet moments, he doubts a heart exists within him anymore. Shrunken, dried vessels long deprived of bright, red blood. Rather, his body is a husk, a more perfect mummy of the man who lived before. And the timeless ritual of driving his fangs into soft flesh and whimpering in pleasure as the hot, savory blood gushed into his greedy mouth…a hallucination. An unending dream with a single, determined purpose of giving him something to need, something to live for. But a dream nonetheless.

And of what of that young girl he had fought for years? The girl he hated and loved with that mere memory of a heart inside him? She was neither real nor imagined. She was the purity of love itself, borne of desperation to end the unending chapter of his undead life. He was dirty and she was clean. His body had lusted with the need to bathe in the lifegiving blood of her body. His mind had yearned for the touch of her. She was the perfection of his artistic thought, luscious in body and spirit. Neither dead nor alive, Buffy Summers was the avenging angel of William the Bloody’s tortured conscience.

Here in this graveyard stands a tombstone etched with the letters of her name. A memorial to a girl that foolish people had believed lived among them. A creature so strong in mind and body that not even the Grim Reaper could effectively keep her down for the count. He had made her too perfect, he realized. Too strong, too cunning. In his desire to appease the hunger of his body, Spike created Buffy so wonderfully, that not even he could touch her. His Galatea was supposed to love him, care for him, give her body to him with perfect trust.

And in the climax of his ignited passion, she had towered over him and refused him her love. The girl he had created had walked away, strutting in those stiletto boots he had so often thought of sliding off her weary feet.

Was it a game? No. She was a part of him. The only real love he had been able to experience with this vanished heart of his. All the others believed she was real and in their world. They grabbed at her, his creation, ripping her away from him until she was cast down into the very world that had rejected him. He was the unforgiven, unthanked creator pushed into the meaningless role of bystander. The bastards had thought she was real. They tore her apart piece by piece until she was no more. Their greed destroyed her. His angel. The only hope of salvation lay in the tatters of the girl he had called Buffy. No one could have touched her where he kept her safe. But those she would call friends, family, loved ones ripped her into tiny fragments. Life, breath, death and she was no more.

Damn them all.

In this quiet graveyard, Spike stands over her grave. In his frame of mind, he cannot understand just why they buried his angel. Angels don’t die. She wasn’t even supposed to be here. She was the best part of him. Nothing else mattered. These life-addicted people had no understanding of the depth of his love. How could he love? There had to be a heart for love, right? A soul? A genuine caring for someone other than himself? His treasured creation, the girl who had rejected the one who loved her most, lay in soft pieces beneath the ground. They had stored her in a wooden box to keep her safe, chained a cross around her neck. They wrapped her in a shroud of chiffon and satin and placed a white rose in her cold hands. Pictures of friends and family lay within the coffin. Poems of love and remembrance. A stuffed pig that she had cried upon during those illusory years of childhood. But nothing of him. Nothing to tell the world that he had been robbed of what he had created. They had stolen her, used her, and tossed her down into this dark hole of earth.

On his knees now, Spike grips clumps of grass between his fingers. Too real. She wasn’t supposed to be here, trapped in this real earth. She was supposed to be with him. His fingers rip into the earth, he flings away the carpet of flowers left for her. Damn them to hell! He screams a tortured sound of loss and claws his way deeper into the moist earth. In his fury, he bites into his lips and tongue with his fangs, willing blood to drip down into the earth. My body, my blood. But there is no blood. No heart to beat, no breath to breathe. The undead creator tunnels into the tender earth, screams of pain issuing from this body he can’t escape.

Deeper, deeper. Two feet, four feet, six feet. A coffin of pale oak smeared with mud. The locks are easily broken. The lid is so heavy. They would never let his angel leave her tomb. Blue satin bordering her torn frame. A withered rose in her small, white hands. He had never wanted her to be so pale. Her face was to be flushed with life, a symbol to him of all that he had lost. She was to stare at him with those beautiful eyes and make him pay for all that he had done in the name of evil. She was to be his savior, this broken girl tossed into the black earth. She looks so cold. So alone.

He climbs into the coffin and pulls her into his arms. She is home again. He is saved, at last. Spike places a gentle kiss on her cheek and inhales his last. And smiling, he closes the coffin and settles down to sleep.

Few people know that a cemetery is a place of torment. The dead cannot weep. Only the living can mourn what is lost. Love lingers only in the wind that stirs the green, spring grass covering the graves. But sometimes, life remains if only to grieve for what can never be returned. And in a small family tomb there can be heard the sounds of sobbing issuing from its dusty chamber. The dead cannot weep but sometimes the living cannot let go. In this tomb, a man grasps for the dream torn from him, the pain hurting more than he can bear.