The Looking Glass (Part 5)

Tia

Chapter 5

Buffy glanced around at the shabby apartment that she had managed to
rent. She had promised the landlord that she would pay him all the down
payment and extra at the end of the month. Now all she had to do was
find a job so that she could keep that promise.

Finding work turned out to be harder than she thought. No one wanted to
hire a minor without a high school diploma so she had been forced to lie
about her age and exaggerate on her resume. Well you couldn’t exactly
call it exaggeration because she didn’t have anything to exaggerate
really. But at this point she would do anything for the money she needed
to survive in this city.

She finally found a decent paying job, two actually. She had found a job
at a nearby department store as a stock girl. Unfortunately, the money
from that wasn’t enough to pay the rent on her apartment so she had also
taken a waitressing job at a nearby 24 hour bar. They had needed someone
to fill the graveyard shift and she didn’t need much sleep anyway.

Besides, no one knew more about graveyards then her.

She was through with slaying though. She didn’t want to do it anymore,
correction, she couldn’t do it anymore. Not without becoming as nutty as
Drusilla. Kendra was dead and another slayer would be coming to take her
place. One was all the world needed.

No one really needed her... did they?

* * *

Spike lit a cigarette and sat down on a much too lumpy sofa in the middle
in his new basement apartment. He had gotten it from a fat landlord who
had demanded down payment by the end of the month. The building itself
was shabby as was the apartment but Spike wouldn’t be in town for more
than a few months so it didn’t matter. He could afford better but why
bother wasting money? Spike suffered from perpetual boredness and he was
sick to death of extravagance.

At the the moment, though, he suffered from something else. Something
that he had never suffered from before. Conscience.

Thee word alone should make him shiver with disgust but Spike just didn’t
seem to have the edge he had had in the past. Since he had left
Sunnydale he had stopped killing when he fed. Contrary to popular
belief, vampires didn’t need to kill when they fed they just enjoyed
ending lives. It was sort of a vampiric hobby, albeit a sick one.

Spike was miserable and he didn’t know what to do about it.

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