Epilogue

Last Kiss

*Dedicated to the lovely Megan_peta for her comments, support, whining, and begging, her suggestions, her intelligence, and just being a good friend. Hugs!*


She lay with him behind her on the cot in the basement, sharing her warmth. She couldn’t sleep; she never could on the night before the big apocalypse. She was too nervous to close her eyes and too anxious to relax. It was more than just the impending battle on her mind. The battle was, in fact, the last thing on her mind.

She was more concerned about the man behind her.

She turned over in his arms, twining her legs in his. He was sleeping; the absence of breathing was always a giveaway. She never had figured out why he bothered. It wasn’t like the air did anything for him. She figured it was just his way to seem more human.

His face was soft and relaxed in slumber, boyishly so, and she smiled tenderly. While awake, he had a hardened look about him, tenseness in his face and a clenched jaw that made him seem older. Jaded. The only other time she had ever seen this soft look was when he proclaimed his love, and she had slapped it off his face.

Her heart ached in her chest for lost time and wasted energy fighting what had been preordained for both of them. He had given her so much over the years. He gave her his heart; she gave him her fist. He gave her love; she gave him pain and rejection. He gave her his soul, and she returned nothing.

She wished she could return to the beginning and redo it all. Relive her life for herself, and not for her friends and Watcher. Learn from her mistakes and errors in judgement. Love him the way he deserved to be loved.

Her life was filled with regrets, and this was one more. The big one.

She touched his hair, and he muttered in his sleep. She didn’t want to wake him. She was so over the whole sex-with-a-vamp-is-bad phase, but sex was not what she needed from him now. It had never really been what she needed from him, although they had been explosively good with each other.

What she wanted and needed more than anything else was to tell him how much she felt for him.

She thought back to her cookie dough speech in the cemetery. God, the cemetery. It seemed like she spent half her life there already. She could tell that Angel wasn’t going to let it go, especially since it was Spike. She gave that lame-ass speech to get him off the scent and off her back, and somehow it worked. He went back to his safe haven in LA, and she came back here.

Spike would have never left her, had the shoe been on the other foot. He would have ranted and raved and finally threatened, and stayed in spite of what she wanted. It was one of the things she loved about him. He did what was right, not what would save his skin.

Like the soul. She still was awed by his soul. She could see it sometimes, dancing there in his eyes, and her breath caught in her throat at the beauty of it. He did it for her. He did so much for her.

He loved her, wholeheartedly and without reservation, with and without the soul, and she felt shamed. For a human, she was a sorry excuse.

She touched his face with trembling fingertips, tears glistening on her lashes. Tomorrow may be her last, or his; there was no way to predict how the battle would go. There never was. Flashbacks flickered like moving pictures in her head, and she relished them. After tomorrow, it may be all she had. Or all he had.

She leaned into him, whispering quietly into his ear. “William, I know that you’re asleep, and you may not remember this later, or maybe think it was a dream. I still feel like I need to say some things to you, and maybe you’ll remember them later.”

“William, I love you. I think I always have, and I know I always will. You did everything you could to prove yourself to me, and I always threw it back in your face. I was so wrong. You didn’t need a soul. You always had your conscience.”

“I love the way you smile, with that little twist to it, that smirk when you know you had me. I love the way we sparred, physically and verbally. I never had a better partner than you. I love the way you knew exactly where to touch me and when. The feel of you. The smell of you. The taste of you.”

“I used to dream of the day when my friends would pat me on the back and congratulate me on my excellent taste in vampires. I dreamed of our wedding day more than once, and even plotted it out on paper one time.”

“I can’t tell you how sorry I am that I could never say the words to you face to face. You showed me the best of you, and I showed you my worst, and you still love me. That amazes me about you. You never gave up on me. You never left me. I was always leaving you.”

“Last night, you gave something to me again, and I can’t ever repay you for it. You gave me the strength to believe in myself, when nobody else did. You handed me your heart again, with your words and your touch and your presence, and it made me love you more.”

“I love you, William Augustine Giles Worthington. I love you, Spike. I love you with all my heart. And God help me, if I didn’t think you would see it as the champion’s door prize, I would wake you up and beg you to make love to me one last time.”

She leaned down, and pressed her mouth to his. “I will always love you. Always remember.”

Her tears finally came, and they washed her soul clean with their salty purity.

She turned in his arms, and curled into his stomach, his arm draped across her. She pulled the arm closer to her, and tried to sleep.

Behind her, Spike opened his eyes. He would never let her know he’d heard her confession, but he locked it inside his heart. She loves me. She really does love me, enough to find out my real name. She loves me.

Her breathing evened out, and he knew she slept. It was only then he let his own tears fall.


a/n: Many thanks to those faithful on the BSV that reviewed constantly. Tasha, Esther, Megan, Confused Muse, chanel 5, Marzbar, Max, SpaceLord, sue, letitia, idk5743228, zoegrace, BTL, cas, vladt, UncagedMuse, Pin, Dreylin, Elizabeth Anne Summers, and of course, our own redwulf.
Thank you for feeding the muse and the artist's soul. I cannot tell you how much your reviews meant.