When the stars threw down their spears
And water'd heaven with their tears:
Did he smile his work to see?
Did he who made the Lamb make thee?
        The Tyger
            William Blake
 

 
    Buffy was crying.

    Spike could smell it as he passed through the quiet house. Everyone was sleeping. Even Buffy was sleeping. But he knew she was crying all the same.

    He didn’t want to disturb her. (She was already disturbed.) She needed her sleep. (Is sleeping like this really restful?) It wasn’t his place. (Then whose place was it?)

    In the end it was an impulse stronger than stopping a beating heart, a hunger stronger than that for blood. The woman he loved was crying, in a way he knew all too well, and he had to – he had to – put an end to it.

    He gently opened the door to her bedroom, hoping just that would do it. But as he feared, it didn’t. When Buffy cried in her sleep like this, it was deep. Her normally hyper-reactive slayer senses weren’t connected. She was too far gone.

    Memories raked at him, of the other times she’d done this. In his crypt, late, exhausted, after hours of violently passionate lovemaking, when she simply couldn’t keep her eyes open anymore. She and Spike didn’t snuggle. They weren’t sleeping together – Buffy never did that. But the physical inability to do anything other than recuperate; that had happened, sometimes for up to an hour. Precious hours and half-hours and minutes that he’d tallied up in his head and still didn’t account for a full night, even all together.

    And sometimes, when that happened, Buffy would cry. Still unconscious, silently, without expression, tears would leak from her closed eyes, and Spike – exhausted himself – would be unable to keep his hands off her. It was physically impossible not to kiss her cheeks, her eyes, drink in those tears as if they were her fragrant slayer’s blood, listen to her moan, slowly awaken, wrap her arms around him, her breath catch and speed, the tiny sounds of hunger and pleasure that would signal her arousal before she drew him inside again, again, again...

    The light from the hall touched the slayer’s face, glistening with her tears. It did not awaken her. His presence did not awaken her, or Dawn in the bed beside her, or the three potential girls in sleeping bags on the floor. He was vampire silent. Buffy was still crying.

    Spike crossed the room and... did not kiss her eyes. (God, how he wanted to!) “Buffy,” he whispered. When there was no reply he knelt at her bedside and gently touched her shoulder. “Buffy, love.”

    Buffy’s eyes opened, calmly, without a startle reflex. Given the stress she had been under, that surprised Spike. Someone randomly waking her in the middle of the night? Her first thought would be emergency. But no. She opened her eyes and simply looked at him, tears still glistening on her nose. “Problem?” she whispered back.

    Spike shook his head. “You were crying.”

    Buffy drew in a smooth breath and tilted her head back. She wiped the tears from her face (he bit back a moan. What a waste of sweet slayer salt...!) and made a small noise in the back of her throat. Not a moan or a grunt, but the same sub-vocalization she used to give when they were in bed together. She had to know what he meant. She’d been there, too, as he used to wake her, kiss the tears away, make love to her. He’d asked about the silent tears, and been rebuffed, and beaten, and thrown away. He’d stopped asking, but he kept kissing them away every time it had happened.

    “Sorry to wake you,” Spike whispered. “You need your sleep, but... the regret dreams... they don’t help.”

    Buffy shifted her head to look at him. “Those dreams aren’t regret,” she whispered.

    Spike couldn’t understand it. He knew they had to be. He’d lurked outside her house for months before he decided that was too Angelus-level creepy and abandoned it, but during that time he’d heard her toss and moan in Slayer Prophecy dreams, heard her cry out in nightmares, heard her sob loudly in dreams about her mother, or in fear for Dawn, but the silent crying... that was different. They mostly happened in his crypt.

    They had to be regret. Regret for what they were doing, loathing for herself, and for him; hatred for what he was, disgust at what she had become.

    “I was just dreaming of heaven,” she confessed.

    Spike felt as if he’d been punched in the gut. He’d just stolen her from a dream of heaven...? He stared at her, disgusted and horrified with himself. “Was that what they always were?” he asked. “Dreams of heaven?”

    “Mm-hm.” Buffy still sounded half asleep. They didn’t dare raise their voices for fear of waking the rest of the girls.

    “God, Buffy... I’m sorry. The grief–”

    “It’s not grief,” she murmured. “I can’t explain it. It’s just a feeling, really. Warmth and peace and joy... no fear or doubt or regret or anything, and I guess when I was just a soul it made sense, but my body can’t handle it or something. It all overflows, and I wake up in tears.”

    “Those were tears of joy?” he whispered. He felt worse than ever. What kind of a monster was he? He’d devoured those tears, woken her from her dream of peace, sucked up her joy and plunged her into the midden, over and over again.

    “Mmm,” Buffy hummed acknowledgment.

    He’d felt he was comforting her... and he’d only been stealing her from her sodding dreams. He always mucked everything up. “I’m... sorry to have waked you,” Spike murmured.

    Buffy shrugged. “‘S’okay.”

    “No,” he said. “For all of it. I should never... never have woken you....”

    Buffy realized when he meant, and turned her green gaze on him full. “I liked it when you woke me,” she whispered.

    That surprised him.

    “I had those dreams a lot just after I came back. The worst part about them was waking up,” Buffy said. “When I realized... I wasn’t there anymore. But when you woke me from them, I didn’t feel the loss of it so much.”

    “What do you mean?”

    Buffy gazed at him, her eyes milky and sleepy. “When I woke in your bed, all I ever felt was you.”

    The golden spark of Spike’s soul burned in his chest, and he swallowed. Kiss her, moaned a voice deep inside him. Kiss her, claim her, drag her down to the floor, press her body beneath you, you know she wants–

    And his own self-loathing put a stop to it as firmly as if he’d staked it. Dawn was here, and the potentials, and he hadn’t the right...

    He wasn’t worthy.

    Buffy shifted her head on the pillow, her gaze steady and soft. “You thought all this time they were regret?”

    Spike shrugged. “You were with me,” he said. “What else could it have been?”

    Buffy’s brow furrowed, and her eyes turned sad. There was regret there now, as opposed to the cool certainty of a moment before. “It was just heaven,” Buffy whispered. “Too much for an earth-bound soul.”

    Spike nodded. He was feeling too much to stay here. There was too much that he wanted, too little he could do, almost nothing he was worthy of. He shouldn’t have walked through that door in the first place. He should have left Buffy to her dreams, tears or no. He stood up to leave, and Buffy’s voice surprised him. He’d thought she’d let him go.

    “Spike?” she whispered. “Where was your soul?”

    Spike stopped and turned to her. “Pardon?”

    “Your soul,” she asked. “Do you have any idea where... where it might have been, before...? Any memories?”

    Spike slowly shook his head. “No. There’s nothing.”

    “Not even a feeling?”

    “No. Just... my life. My death. My unlife. Death, then demon. Nothing more.”

    Buffy partially sat up to look at him directly. “What did it feel like, when you opened your eyes, and you had it...?”

    Spike gazed at her. He knew he was only going to confirm what she already knew, but she had her reasons for asking. And the answer had the benefit of being the absolute truth. “Like I’d opened my eyes into hell,” he whispered.

    “Yeah?”

    “Yeah.”

    It was different, of course. He actually was a demon, and had a century of bloodlust and death and regret and pain laced through his unlife. But she had come back to a life of violence and loss and pain, in her own way. She was partly a demon, too. She knew that now. Everyone knew that. A soul called out of heaven, to the body of a partial demon....

    They stared at each other in the dim light from the hall, and then Dawn turned over in the bed. Buffy automatically put her hand on her sister to calm her, and by the time she turned back to Spike, he was gone. The door closed between them.

    Buffy stood up, still feeling half asleep, and as if in a dream she went to the door. She almost followed him. It was nearly sunrise, no doubt he was about to head down to the basement. She could follow. She could curl up beside him on the cot, and tell him all the things she did regret – how badly she’d treated him, how she’d let things get to the point that they had, how she’d spent so long pining for heaven she couldn’t see earth as anything but hell. How confused she was that things seemed to be over, but maybe they shouldn’t be over. How much he was hurting.... She longed to tell him how fascinated she was by him, how unlike Angel he was – still himself, but shaded, deeper, beautiful. She wanted to tell him how much she admired the man he was... and how proud she was of the demon he had been for wanting to become it. To bond over the horror of a resurrected life. To question the possibilities of heaven.

    But there was the First Evil, and an apocalypse rising. There were her friends, and her duties as a general, and her role as the Slayer. And there were the sobbed words, Please don’t do this! and the pained gasp, You always hurt the one you love, pet. All of that was still between them, and she didn’t have the luxury of taking the time to clear it away.

    She gently touched the door, still debating. Then one of the potentials stirred, and Buffy realized it really was nearly morning. Everyone would be up soon. There wouldn’t even be time....

    Never the right time.

    She went back to the bed.

    In the hallway, Spike took his hand off the door. He knew it had been too much to hope for.