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Tell It To Someone Who Cares by slaymesoftly
 
one-shot
 
Second Seven Seasons challenge – What if someone had been listening when Buffy told Spike about being pulled out of Heaven?


Title -Tell It To Someone Who Cares
Author - Slaymesoftly
Rated – G
Word count – 504
Disclaimer – not mine, never were; but I love them


Tell It To Someone Who Cares

“I think I was in Heaven.”

The Slayer’s voice was soft, but audible as she turned to meet the vampire’s stricken eyes.

“They can never know,” she added quietly before moving out into the sunshine where he couldn’t follow. His hand stretched out, an automatic need to offer comfort causing him to forget momentarily that she was out of his reach. A muffled gasp reached his sensitive ears just as he snatched the smoking hand back with a curse; he ignored it, his eyes continuing to follow Buffy’s golden head as she moved out of the alley and turned towards her home. The sharp contrast between the warm sun, the glow with which it surrounded her, and the stark horror in her words left him speechless and bereft.

A choking sound reminded him that they had not been alone in the alley and he turned slowly to meet the haunted eyes of Buffy’s closest male friend. Trapped by the sun’s waning rays, Spike could only sit and watch as the emotions flew across Xander’s face. Horror, denial, dismay, acceptance, confusion; and then, the inevitable anger and jealously.

“Why did she…how could…why you? Why would she tell you something like that and not us…her friends…the people who love her…the people she can trust?”

Eyeing the distance between his shaded seat against the wall and the nearest manhole cover, the vampire stood up slowly and whispered, “Maybe because I’m the one who loved her enough to leave her there…”

“Oh, like you wouldn’t have done the same thing, if you could have! Save it, Spike.” The disdainful sneer could barely hide the trembling in Xander’s voice as his body continued to absorb and react to the full import of what he’d just learned.

Straightening up and suddenly appearing much less the annoying extra muscle that he had become to the Scoobies, and much more the master vampire that he actually was, Spike glared steadily into Xander’s eyes until the boy dropped them. His voice was controlled and cold.

“Do you really think, Whelp, that I couldn’t have found someone to do that kind of mojo for me, if I’d thought it was right? If I thought that she’d be grateful to me for bringing her back to the life that demands so much of her?”

“We thought…we thought she was in Hell. We thought we were saving her…” Xander’s voice was barely a whisper.

“Yeah, well - good on you, then.”

With a flash of black and platinum, the vampire was gone – the manhole cover dropping back into place before Xander had even registered his departure. With a moan that came all the way from his gut, the boy slumped onto the crate upon which Spike had been sitting, dropping his head back against the wall and shutting his eyes against the burden he now carried.

The end