E-mail: wickedkat13@hotmail.com
Disclaimer: they're not mine, blah blah blah
Rating: umm...PG, i guess...
Improv: 17: ragged - cascade - invent - decade
Spoilers: all through and up to the season finale of 5.
Summary: Spike POV, in the aftermath of the events transpired in the season finale
Notes: totally un-beta'd, all mistakes mine.
Feedback: i'm a sucker for approval and constructive citicism.
******
It had been a beautiful day for the funeral.
Not a cloud in the sky, the birds trilling merrily in the trees. He had watched from the shadows, a cluster of trees shading him protectively. The sunlight had glinted of Willow's hair, turning it into a fiery nimbus around her head. It had bounced off the Watcher's glasses. It had shone on the wetness on all their faces. It had been everywhere, that unfuriating golden light that smelled so much like her. He had wanted to tear it down out of the sky, to fracture it to smithereens, watch the pieces cascade down and fade as they fell, never to shine again.
It seemed blasphemous for the weather to be so beautiful; seemed sacrilegious when the only light in their lives had gone out. He had scowled. Wasn't it supposed to be crap weather on the day of a funeral, anyway? He remembered hearing that somewhere.
And then they had all gone back to the Watcher's home, to grieve amongst themselves, Willow being visibly held up by Tara, Anya clutching depserately at Xander's hands--Xander, whose face was still blank with shock and denial; Giles, who kept furtively polishing his glasses with hands that shook, tears silently streaming down his cheeks...and Dawn, her young face placid and calm, the only one of them who didn't seem to have noticed that the world had suddenly come to a standstill.
He had stayed in the trees until darkness fell, until the rain came. The moon was covered by the clouds that had rolled in out of nowhere, the rain falling straight down, bringing a chill that touched even him.
Only then had he gone out to the grave, staring at the stone with eyes that didn't see quite clearly--he hadn't wanted to think it was tears, not then--and his knees had given out, squelching into the freshly-turned earth that was quickly turning to mud. He had reached up a hand and traced the letters on the stone, not wanting to really believe it until his hands saw it, and then his body started heaving n sobs, great wracking sobs that made his whole being spasm, made his voice go hoarse and his breath go ragged.
He didn't know how long he had been there until he felt a hand on his shoulder, a small mortal hand whose warmth he felt even through the chill of the rain. He didn't know that he had slipped into his demon visage until he turned his head to meet Dawn's eyes and she gave a little gasp, but quickly covered her surprise with a look of compassion, reaching out and enfolding him in those little arms of hers. He had buried his face in her hair--hair that smelled like her sister's--and allowed the sobs to taper off into occasional hiccups while she murmured soothing nonsense under her breath.
She had walked with him back to his crypt, he hardly looking up from the ground on the way, and had helped him take off his duster and crawl onto his slab, covered him with a blanket, and then curled up in the chair across the room from him.
He had waited until she had falled asleep to get up and cover her with the blanket, making sure it was tucked in protectively around her, then stared at the ceiling for the rest of the night through a haze of cigarette smoke.
He had made a promise, after all.
***
He doesn't ever remember feeling this cold, not since he was turned.
In his mortal years, he used to hate the cold rains of London, the way it snaked down the back of his neck and made his skin crawl, that damp that warped the paper when he tried to write and make the ink blotch and run. After Dru had turned him, he remembered going puddle-stomping with her, glorying in their childish antics while Angelus and Darla would snarl quietly at their behaviour. He was never cold then.
He doesn't know when it got so cold here in California--maybe it was always this way and he just hadn't noticed. This cold chills him from the inside out, making him feel brittle and fragile, as if he could be blown apart by a breath of wind alone, ending up as nothing more than a million Spike-shards borne away to someplace other than here.
If he died, would he go to the same place that she did? He doesn't think so. He is, after all, a demon, a monster.
But she always treated him like a man, the way her mother treated him like a person, the way her little sister still does.
He leans with his back against the back of the stone, legs splayed out in front of him; tries to imagine that it's her he's leaning into, but he only feels the cold hardness of the stone.
What if she's cold down there?
He's been here so many times already, tracing those letters again over and over until they feel imprinted into his fingertips. He always ends up here, after every patrol, sometimes joined by Willow, whose face still screws up every time she's here; sometimes with Xander, who finally broke down in the aftermath of the funeral, punching walls and bloodying knuckles and leaving bloodstains of doorjambs. There is a sort of grudging respect between vampire and whelp now, thanks to her. They both realise that she wouldn't want them to fight anymore.
Tara is always silent when she's with Willow, and Anya is too loud and awkward--but she doesn't totally understand the idea of sloughing off the mortal coil, not yet.
Dawn hardly leaves his side.
She doesn't go to school anymore, opting to be taught by Giles, who is working to obtain legal guardianship of the teenager. None of them have heard from her father. None of them particulary want to, at this point. He wasn't there when Joyce died, wasn't there when--
He still won't allow himself to think too much about it.
But it's funny, in a sort of peculiar way--all the night before the last few months seem to blend together, make an endless seamless stream of darkness. These last few months have been filled with light--her light, he thinks--and he remembers nearly everything: every punch and kick she delivered to him, the raw animalistic behaviour channeled into that slight body, so deceptive in strength and speed. Every scathing word he ever said to her, the way they all linger on the back of his tongue, the taste of ash--every scathing word she ever said to him, the way some of them still twist and fester inside his undead heart. He remembers telling her about the deathwish that all Slayers have, and how she fought it every step of the way, even right up to the point that she threw herself into the air.
He wishes there were something he could do, maybe invent some way to take all of that back, make it never have happened, fix everything so that none of them hurt anymore. Make it so he could go on the way that the others seemed to have been able to do.
Half a decade, he thinks. Far beyond the average life expectancy, but it's still not long enough.
The rain makes little silver rivers down his cheeks, sluicing through the tears he hadn't noticed earlier.
He hears a tep behind him through the rain, someone trying to be quiet, small feet squishing into the sodden grass. Dawn sinks down next to him, and he opens his duster so she can curl into it and maybe be a bit drier.
"And what did we learn today, Niblet?"
She shrugs against his chest. "He never teaches me anything cool. I wanted to learn some stuff I saw in one of Willow's books, something in Latin, but he said no. Wanted me to do more geometry. Says I need practice on the Pythagorean Theorem." She reaches up and touches his face. "You're crying again."
"S'just the rain, love."
"No it's not."
"Yes it is."
"No it's not.'
"I'm not getting into another argument like this with you. Completely bloody pointless."
"Cause you know I always win." He smiles briefly at her giggle. Then she sobers. "They're still worried about me, you know."
"What, cause you haven't 'dealt,' as they say?"
She pulls the duster closer around herself. "Yep. But I can't. It's not that I'm not sad, cause I am, but..." She shrugs again. "They'er smothering me. But I know why she did it. I told you guys that I was gonna do it myself, but she wouldn't let me. And I told you all what she said, right before..."
"I know, love. We all do."
"And they still don't understand you, either. They can't understand why you went so nuts, why you wouldn't let anyone else touch her afterward."
He bares his teeth momentarily. "They don't have to. All they have to know is that I love her just as much as they do. Maybe not the same way, but I do."
"I know you do. And she loved you, in her own way."
His face twists, and more tears find their way down his cheeks. He hugs Dawn to him suddenly, fiercely, and she returns the hug just as fiercely.
They sit there a bit longer, the lost little girl that's not a girl at all, and the centuries-old vampire, letting the rain soak them in these winter weeks after Buffy's death.
"Maybe I'll learn something tomorrow," Dawn says thoughtfully.
Spike chuckles. "I wonder if any of us ever learn anything, love."