Part: (2/4)

Author: Jessa (jessa_88@hotmail.com)

Disclaimer: The character's aren't mine. The story is.

Spoilers: up to 'The Body'

Distribution: my site, Trish's site, anyone else just email me and tell me where it's going

Feedback: Yes yes yes! I thrive on it.

Acknowledgements: Dedicated to Trish for being such an awesome help in beta-ing and just because she's awesome ;)

Part 2

With a well aimed spinning heel kick, Buffy took out the vampire on her right, sending him flying into the decaying wooden fence and conveniently splitting him into a million tiny dust particles. Simultaneously she used her momentum to reach behind her with her right, weapon-ready, hand and stake the other vamp with expert precision. She knew, without looking, that the other two vamps had run off to find safety so she straightened out of her fighting stance. Scowling, she brushed off the dust particles that had decided to settle on her shirt. It always gave her the wiggins to have dead vamp on her.

The sudden vampire attack had made her bad mood worse. She could handle the depression, the hopelessness, the pain. At least those were to be expected. But now she was just plain angry. It was too much. To see the world going on around her, moving without missing a beat, even though her mother wasn't in it. How dare those vampires try to kill her. How dare they make the darkness malignant instead of mournful.

Her mother was dead. How dare the world go on without her!

She wanted to cry but she found that her tears had dried up days ago with seeing her mother's body lowered into the ground. It killed Buffy to see the body without her mother in it, but she refused to have her cremated. It seemed cruel to even consider giving her mother the same form of death as she did her enemies. Her friends, as well as Dawn, understood this without her having to say it. Of course everyone wanted to help. She appreciated it, she really did, but sometimes it was all too much. They expected her to get over it, maybe not right away, but to feel the pain and then eventually let it go. But Buffy didn't even know if she had fully accepted it yet.

She was shaking and she didn't know why. The tears rested on her cheeks but she didn't even know if they were hers. She'd thought they were gone, that she couldn't cry anymore, but apparently even what are seen as certainties can be lost just as easily as everything else. She felt the pain. Sometimes she thought that was all that she could feel anymore. And now everyone was expecting her to just get over it. To slay, to watch after Dawn, to carry on with her life even as it was collapsing all around her. She needed to feel the pain because in this moment it was all that was keeping her from falling away.

She wasn't ready to feel better. She wanted to cry and shout and run through the streets howling into the wind. She wanted to scream and rage and feel it out. She hated the soothing. She hated the comfort. She hated having to know that she hated these things.

Buffy barely noticed until she reached it that she had been walking in the direction of her mother's grave. She hadn't come back to it since the funeral, scared of the pain it would bring. Now it loomed in front of her like an unwelcome visitor during a quiet evening at home, and she was surprised that the sight didn't cripple her. Instead she only felt a calmness run over her, like her mother had been waiting for her return and was putting her at ease. Buffy's legs weakened as she knelt before the grave and now the tears that ran steadily against her cheeks seemed to ease her pain instead of aid it.

Spike was sick of this darkness that surrounded him. No matter where he went there was a bleakness that even lamps did little to stop. It wasn't so much a lack of light as it was a lack of radiance.

‘Imagine that' Spike thought amused. ‘A vampire who covets radiance.' The ironic thought seemed out of place against the quiet shadows of the night, even though it wasn't said aloud. Spike noticed for the first time since he began his walk that there seemed to be a lack of blood in the air. It was as if everyone was gone for the night and he was the only one left walking with the demons. He didn't even notice when in his concentration on the night, he had thought of himself separate from the demons, as if he wasn't one of them. Nor did he notice that it had become more and more common for him to do so.

The quiet had grown eerie in it's consistency and suddenly desperate to consort with, instead of against the silence, Spike began to sing softly to himself. This wasn't his typical punk rock tune that he sang in his crypt or to irritate the Slayer on occasion. This was a quiet ballad, meant not to break the stillness of the night but only to accompany it as he carried on his way.

"Find me here, speak to me. . . I want to feel you, I need to hear you. . . You are the light, that's leading me. . . To the place, where I find peace again. . . "

After sitting by her mother's grave until the chill had made it unbearable for her to stay Buffy stood and made her way back home. She felt surprisingly better but the loneliness was still eating at her and she wanted to go home to sleep and pretend that everything was okay, if only for a moment. Making her way through the cemetery she caught ear of Spike singing. At first she didn't realize it was him but she could feel the presence of a demon and Spike was the only vampire she knew of who would sing in the middle of a cemetery. Without realizing it she lost herself in his voice as it drifted over to her, carried with the wind.

"You calm the storms, you give me rest. . . You hold me in your hands, you won't let me fall. . ."

Normally it annoyed her to have him sing his inane songs. Probably because she hadn't heard of most of them and he was a much better singer than she was willing to admit. This song was different though. It was softer, more benign and almost seemed to walk hand in hand with the night.

Forgetting about her desire to get home to bed, she moved closer towards the music. It was comforting in a way that only the simplest of things can be. Buffy stumbled slightly due to her weakness from crying and fighting, not only real demons but her own, and her need to hear every note sung.

"Would you take me in, would you take me deeper now. . . ‘Cause you're all I want, you are all I need. . . You are everything. . . Everything. . ."

The song ended and Buffy felt like someone had tore her heart from her chest as she was reminded yet again that everything is only temporary. The silence, now, was deafening and she wondered, as the darkness settled over her eyes, how she hadn't heard the demon come from behind her.