Is this what death looks like?
My love was supposed to protect her
It didn't
My love was supposed to heal her
It didn't
You had said, Don't leave me
And I begged you not to leave me
We did



Buffy dropped her spoon into her mug of hot chocolate at the first firm knock on her front door. She ran to open it, Willow trailing behind. The door swung open to reveal a haggard looking Tara, carrying an unconscious Dawn in her arms.

“Dawn,” Buffy breathed.

“She’s fine. I’ve checked her a dozen times. She’s just sleeping.” Tara laid Dawn carefully in Buffy’s arms. “Can you take her upstairs and put her to bed?”

“Tara, what’s wrong?” Buffy stared hard at Dawn’s weak body and carefully bandaged hands, trying to fight back her panic with Tara’s assurances that everything was ok.

“She’s fine now, and we’re all safe. I promise. I’ll explain everything when you come back down.”

“Fine.” Buffy reluctantly nodded and climbed the stairs. “But I want answers,” she stated before she disappeared from view.

Willow cautiously stepped forward. “Tara?”

“I’ll be right back. I need to get Spike. I don’t know what he’ll do if I leave him alone. Do you think Buffy will let me bring him in?”

“Spike?” Willow stood, dumbfounded. “What’s wrong with Spike?”

“I’ve got to go get him.” Tara repeated. “He’ll need a blanket. I’ll be right back.”

Willow latched on to the one portion of Tara’s instructions she actually grasped and traversed the living room to grab a blanket from the couch. Tara entered the doorway with Spike leaning heavily against her just as Buffy descended the stairs. Buffy stood as stone, three steps from the bottom, as she watched her lover’s sharp face covered in blood and pain. For an instant, she distantly thought she couldn’t remember the last night she’d had that was so full of tears. It didn’t seem right, even for the Hellmouth. And despite how scarred and torn Spike suddenly looked, leaning on a woman with less than half his strength, and with bloody droplets matting his white-blond hair to black, she couldn’t help thinking he was one of the most beautiful things she’d ever seen. He’d always been.

He also looked irrevocably broken. Every line of him screamed a torture she couldn’t quite discern, and this unspoken message prompted her to move her feet down the steps, to lay an arm under Spike’s and take on most of Tara’s burden. He took a sloppy sniff through a blood-filled nose and then leaned his head on Buffy’s shoulder, speaking only three whispered words. “Buffy. It hurts.”

She awkwardly shouldered him into the kitchen, settling him on one of the stools. Willow entered and darted forward to hand her the blanket before retreating back to the entryway. Buffy placed the green throw solidly around his shoulders. The moment he felt the motherly touch and the drape of the fabric, he set his head onto the bar, covering it with thin arms, and sobbing into the hard wood with garbled phrases that sounded too much like, “make it stop,” and “so sorry, so wrong.”

Buffy desperately needed answers. She attempted to disengage from him only to find him laying a trembling, sticky hand over hers. “Please, don’t leave me.” For the first time since he entered the house, his eyes met hers, and Buffy lost her voice. The color was the same deep blue it had always been, but somehow it conveyed so much more… more strength, more weakness. Any meaning behind it evaded her, but the mere possibilities had her chilled.

She fought for her voice and managed, “Oh, Spike.” She brushed a lank strand of hair from his face, and he leaned into the touch unconsciously. “I’m not leaving you. I promise. I’ll be right in the next room. And Willow will stay here with you. Right, Will?” Buffy cast an eye toward her friend that was far more demand than request, and Willow hesitantly nodded. He whimpered at the loss of contact when she pulled her hand from his, but he made no other motion.

The witch walked toward him slowly, taking Buffy’s place on the stool beside him and laying a tentative hand on his back. Buffy checked to make sure Willow continued her unwieldy attempts at comfort before storming toward the living room.

“I want names. Tell me who the hell did this to them and where I can find them. Now.”

Tara shifted uncomfortably. “Buffy, it’s not like that.”

“Then you better tell me what it is like, and fast. Tell me why my sister’s practically comatose and my vampire… Spike,” she amended. “Why he’s so… broken.” Her voice threatened to crack on the last word.

“Buffy, we need to sit down.”

“Funny. Not feeling particularly sitty at the moment. I’m more in the fighty mood.”

“I know. That’s w-why we need to sit down.” Tara sat and raised her face to Buffy’s with pleading eyes.

Buffy sat stiffly on the couch beside her. “What’s going on here?”

Tara took a deep breath. “Spike came to me tonight. He wanted his soul back.”

Buffy’s laugh was brittle and a little too loud. “That’s crazy. Spike wouldn’t do that. Why would he do that?”

Tara averted her eyes. “Buffy, you know why.” Still implication crept between them. “He said he wanted to be a real man. That he wanted to know what he was feeling was real.”

Buffy couldn’t help a weak, “He doesn’t think it’s real?”

“He said he had to know for sure.”

“But you didn’t do it. You told him you couldn’t do it.”

Silence was the only answer.

Buffy went on. “You can’t. That spell was powerful. You’re not strong enough to do something that… Oh god. Dawn. What happened to her? Did she help? Was she hurt?” Buffy forced herself not to grab Tara and shake loose the answers the so desperately needed to know. And she tried not to voice the one question she so desperately wanted to ask. Did it work?

“No, Buffy, I promise. Dawn’s fine. She’s just exhausted. Spike and I had given up when she picked up the orb.”

“So it didn’t work.” Buffy’s voice was studiously neutral on the subject. She tried to force her mind into a similar tone.

“The curse failed,” Tara confirmed.

Buffy didn’t know why she suddenly felt like crying. She never asked him to get a soul… had never even considered the possibility he’d do anything other than laugh at her if she’d suggested it. Of course, that meant she had considered suggesting it. Only once or twice. Those darkest nights when she wondered what a world with a trustworthy Spike would be like. Those nights when she didn’t try to punish herself with hopelessness. When he’d do or say something that made her wish she could let herself love him, just a little. But she had never asked.

She didn’t even know if it would’ve made a difference for the two of them if it had worked. Could they actually expect to have a relationship without the sweaty sex-a-thon’s that had pretty much been the whole kit and caboodle of what they were lately? She just knew that a part of her loved him for trying, and a part of her heart was breaking for his failure. And she couldn’t deny the depth of his feelings anymore. Because this was something unheard of. Something no one --Angel --else would ever have done. Not for her. Not for anyone in the world.

Buffy didn’t realize tears were running down her face until Tara handed her a few scraps of Kleenex. She quickly brushed them away.

Tara was plagued by uncertainty. Whether the tears were of relief or regret, whether she should go on or not. But she knew she had to make one thing completely clear.

“Buffy, Spike has his soul.”

“The curse didn’t work,” Buffy protested, subdued and dazed.

“It’s not a curse,” Tara continued quickly. “It’s permanent, as far as I could tell. Something happened after we failed. Dawn shattered the orb, and there was blood. When I touched them… I felt the power flow through me. I’ve never felt anything like that before, so pure and warm. Buffy, his soul was so pure. I don’t know what Dawn did. I don’t think she even meant to. But I felt her too. Like her energy was calling him out of the ether.”

Buffy darted another nervous glance upward to Dawn’s room and shifted in her seat. “She’s ok,” Tara affirmed. “I checked her over and over again while Spike was… trying to get himself together. She was awake at first, but she fell asleep on the way over.”

Buffy finally softened at the assurances. “Spike’s blood?”

“He went a little nuts, at first.”

“You’re not looking so lively yourself,” Buffy noted.

“I’m tired,” Tara admitted. “But it was so beautiful. That moment, when he got it back. Before he remembered everything, he smiled at me. And it was the most beautiful smile I’ve ever seen. He was at peace.”

“And now?”

“Now, I think he’s in Hell.”

“He’s got a soul.” Saying the words did only a little toward cementing the thought, but they brought to mind the true problem. “He remembers it all…”

“And it’s killing him,” Tara finished for her.

The Slayer in Buffy had been spoiling for a fight since she first saw her limp sister’s form in Tara’s arms. Now, she was deflated. No demons to kill. No evil to slay. No place for the Slayer at all. Only the girl in Buffy was left to pick up these pieces, and to her, the girl seemed so woefully inadequate. She sought out Tara. “So what do I do?”

“Help him.”

“I don’t know how. I don’t know what he needs.”

“Yes, you do, Buffy. You’ve always known.”

Buffy nodded slowly and set her shoulders before walking from the room. Brief panic seized her at the sight of her Spikeless kitchen until she noticed Willow standing uncomfortably by the back door and caught the stray sobs coming from the porch.

Buffy breathed in deeply, shooting a look of thanks to Willow before stepping out to face Spike. At first sign of her presence, Spike tried desperately to hide his tears, choking them back into childish hiccups that wouldn’t stop coming. He seemed to cave in on himself an inch more with each step she took toward him, but Buffy merely sat beside him, stiff to the chill night air. When he abandoned his attempts to hide and the sobs renewed, she placed a warm hand on the back of his neck, patting him several times before a wave of reminiscence and discomfiture stopped her. The next words from her mouth, though not wanted most, were maybe the most needed.

“I’m sorry.”

Spike choked a reply that Buffy best interpreted as, “I don’t deserve it.”

Buffy’s next attempt carried more personal meaning than the first. “Spike. I’m so sorry.”

“Makes no difference,” he muttered between his arms.

“What doesn’t?”

“Sorry,” he sniffled. “Peaches has it wrong, you know. Understand him less than ever now. Now that I know. What he saw. What he felt. Nothing’s enough. You can’t atone for what we did.”

“Spike…” His own pain wrenched her heart, and she stood on uncertain ground. Compared to Buffy, Spike was a master teacher at the comfort game, but she’d paid little attention to those lessons.

“You were right about me, before. You were right about everything.” He wiped his matted hair back as his voice grew clearer, and Buffy realized that most of the blood she’d seen earlier came from wounds on his hands, not his face. Tiny cuts, and slivers of glass all over his hands. They looked like silver glitter in the moonlight.

“I don’t feel very right,” she whispered.

He turned to her. “You understood what I was. What I am. I never did.”

“What, Spike?”

“Evil.” His voice hitched on the word, and his body shook with a physical effort to restrain another crying jag.

Somehow, blessedly, the words came then, in a lesson learned and forgotten so many years ago. Buffy took Spike’s face in her hands, forcing him to look at her as she spoke. “Giles,” she said certainly.

For a moment, the wry light returned to Spike’s eyes. “Beginning to wonder about you bringing the Watcher’s name into all our special little moments like this, pet. Sure you haven’t favored him with a Christmas shag or two?”

Buffy’s laughter took her by surprise. Spike shared it for only a second before pulling from her hands and looking to his shoes with a gasp, as if he’d been caught out cursing in church.

Buffy dropped her hand from the air down to rest atop his arm before continuing. “Giles told me once that there were two kinds of monsters. The ones that could be redeemed, and the ones that would never want to. You know what the difference between them was? Love. The ones that could be redeemed were the ones who could respond to love.” Her voice grew in passion. “Spike? We’re not them.” He met her eyes, his jaw tensed with his fear of hope. “We won’t let ourselves be them, Spike. We don’t want to be anymore.”

When he made no further move, Buffy pulled her hand back, uncertain if she should leave him to sort through his memories and sins alone. When she shifted away from him, he set a battered hand against her knee without looking at her.

“Know I’ve no right to ask,” his rough-hewn voice said. “Know I don’t deserve it. But… could you just… stay with me.” His last word was a gentle, hard-fought, “Please.”

Buffy set her arms around him, pulling his slightly resisting form to her breast. Together, their tears shimmered in the darkness.