Better off Dead.

Monitors beeped. IVs took fluid in and out.
Faces etched with worry peered down at her.
She’d finally suffered an injury her slayer powers couldn’t heal.
There would be no recovery. This bed was now her life.
She often thought she’d be better off dead.

Stay away. She doesn’t need you.
We’ll look after her. We know what’s best.
Spike hovered on the outskirts.
Opinions unwanted and unheard.
He watched the doctors’ failure, until one night he could take no more.
She smiled as his fangs bit deep. Sucked greedily at his wrist.
She knew she’d be better off dead.


Gone

She was different now. Sounds were too loud.
The sun lethal. Her energy boundless. Appetite insatiable.
Each night they hunted together. Her victims; any who strayed too close.
He tried to guide her. To kill just demons.
But she cast him aside in death, as she had in life.

He spoke with watcher and witch.
Now they listened. They accused.
His fault she was out of control.
Soulless.
Her sister – her last meal.
She rode him hard. The climax he gave her, the best she’d ever known.
He coughed as the stake hit its mark.
She was better off gone.

*~*~*~

She loves me…

He remembered their first kiss.
How could he not with all that daft music?
Their second…that look of disgust, but then she still found him.
The memories of the others blurred between punches and kicks.
As he stroked her hair in that stranger’s bed, he realised that she truly needed him.
Not loved.
But needed.
Almost as good.
Much better than the usual dismissals.
Finally the guilt that forced him to seek out his soul was assuaged a little.
Then hands clasped, she said it.

*~*~*~*

Echoes

There were times when he could almost feel her presence as intensely as when she was alive. He supposed a woman as powerful as she’d been had to leave echoes behind. Like now, in his crypt and could almost smell her perfume.

The world still felt her absence.

Squeezing his eyes shut, he clenched his jaw and willed the desolation of her loss away.

It should be getting easier, not harder, to bear.

A wall punched in futile anger sent echoes of another kind through the dusty crypt. He half-smiled and licked his raw knuckles.

Time to go baby-sit Dawn.


Silence

The Scoobies stared at each other. The silence almost deafening. On the table sat the last of the things she needed for the spell.

The witch knew she was the only one without any doubts.

She knew the others thought her arrogant, but she didn’t care. She wanted her friend back. She could do it. What was wrong with that? She narrowed her eyes as each friend in turn avoided her eye.

Their silence she could live with. The silence left by Buffy’s death was something she could not and would not live with.

“Tomorrow. We will do it tomorrow”.


Patience

She was broken. Worst than he’d ever been. None of her friends even noticed. He wanted to hug her, take her away from them and cater to her every whim. Nurse her back to health like he had Drusilla so many times.

Patience.

Not normally his thing, but for her he could do anything. Even stand back and wait for her to implode. His joy at seeing her alive, tempered by the bleak desolation in her eyes.

Patience.

She’d come to him. He’d died and come back. He’d dug his way out of a coffin. He could identify with her.


Grace

What he wouldn’t give to be in her good graces. Even caring for Dawn while she’d been gone didn’t seem to be sufficient.

Kitten poker hadn’t helped his cause at all.

Now he waited for her to grace him with her presence.

A punch in the face would be welcomed now.

Instead a punch to her face told him more about her than any words could.

A graceless smirk and a tactless remark or ten and she came at him.

Fists and feet flying in an ever more graceful dance, until joined they reached heights he never thought he’d scale.