Chapter Sixty-Six




“He’d just be a burden.”

Xander paused uncertainly, one hand still resting on the door he had just closed behind them. Although he had done his best to make small talk, Buffy hadn’t spoken much on the drive home. Nothing at all beyond a quick jerk of her head or a few monosyllabic words if he asked a question. At first, he thought she might be mad at him, although he couldn’t quite imagine why. Now, staring into her glazed green eyes, he realized that she hadn’t been thinking about him at all.

“You’re talking about Spike.” Even as he said it, Xander felt stupid. But it felt as if he had to say something; she’d fallen silent again.

Buffy moved a few steps across the foyer and turned as if to go up the stairs to her room, but she stopped once her hand came to rest on the banister. She didn’t look at him when she echoed, “Spike.” She ducked her head, her voice taking on a gritty quality as she added softly, “He would be a burden, you know. It’d be like taking care of a kid…or a dog. A big, mean dog that would kill people if I let it off its leash for even a second. Who needs that kind of grief? Who’d want it?”

“I don’t know,” Xander answered gently. And he didn’t. He also didn’t know where this conversation was headed. He didn’t think he wanted to know.

“Dawn said that I’m just being selfish…that I never tried to help him do right. Like it’s my fault that he didn’t do right, because I never taught him—”

Her voice caught, and he wondered in alarm if she was about to cry. Trying to head off any possible tears at the pass, he said quickly, “Well, Dawn’s just a kid and—and the hospital’s got her doped up. She probably doesn’t know what she—”

“She knows,” Buffy interjected hoarsely, and he knew by the trembling of her shoulders that now she was crying. “She knows and she forgives him.”

Xander lingered in uneasy silence near the door. His first instinct was to go to her, to hold her while she cried. It was what friends did, after all; he’d done it after Riley left. But the entire situation with Spike made him feel incredibly awkward, and besides that it had left his own relationship with Buffy on shaky ground. Maybe she wouldn’t want his comfort.

Still, he had to do something. He couldn’t just stare at her weeping form as if it were a specimen in a zoo. He cleared his throat and said with what he hoped was equanimity, “You know…it’s okay if you want to forgive him, too, Buff.”

Okay. So, it was possibly the most hypocritical statement he had ever made in his life; Xander also knew it was the one she most needed to hear. Anyway, she could forgive Spike without resuming her romance with him; maybe it would even help bring a sense of closure to it. At least, that was what he told himself during the excruciating seven seconds it took her to answer him.

“He almost killed my sister though…he almost got her killed. He spent weeks—months—lying to me about that money. You think it’s okay for me to forgive him for that?”

“Well, yeah. If that’s what you want to do, and if it makes you feel better. You shouldn’t feel guilty about it.”

She heaved a sigh and leaned over until her forehead pressed against the top of the newel post. “No,” she mumbled into the wood. “I guess I ought to feel guilty about everything else instead.”

“You mean…”

“Him,” she finished when Xander’s voice trailed off. “I should feel guilty about being with him. And it wasn’t even all his fault. Back then, in London, he didn’t even want to tell me how he felt. I made him. Just like I made him do everything afterward, even though he thought it was wrong.”

Xander stiffened, his mouth opening and then closing wordlessly as he tried to think of something to say. Was she talking about sex? Because if she was, he really needed to figure out a way to change the subject.

“Everybody makes mistakes,” he told her lamely. She laughed without humor and raised her head from the newel post.

“Not like mine.”

“Sure they do. And it’s even—” he almost choked on the word “—understandable how you would. Spike’s good-looking. Back then, he would’ve had the whole tortured Dickensian vibe going on. Probably lots of women would’ve—I mean, if they were in your shoes—”

Jeez. He was really bad at this, and Buffy was looking at him as if he had giant insects crawling across his face. Xander clamped his mouth shut and turned his head, wishing he could just make a run for the door and end this.

But she was the Slayer. Even if he had a head start, she’d probably catch him before he could reach his car. He gathered his courage and tried again.

“So, you made one mistake. You’re trying to fix it now. That’s what counts.”

“Dawn doesn’t think I’m fixing anything,” she said bitterly. “She thinks I’m using it as an excuse to take the easy way out. She thinks I don’t want—”

Her words came to such an abrupt halt that it startled Xander, and he looked over at her to see if she was all right.

“Buffy…” he began softly, once it became clear that she wasn’t going to finish her thought. “What do you want?”

“I don’t want to always be responsible for him. I don’t always want to be the one to blame when he messes up.” She paused. Then: “And I would be, you know. I’d have to be his conscience and teach him how to act normal. Do you have any idea what that would be like?”

“Well, yeah. Kind of.” It cost Xander to admit that, but he thought it might make Buffy feel better to know that he did understand, at least to some degree. She didn’t say anything else, but he could feel the question in her gaze, so he added awkwardly, “Well, you know how Anya can be.”

“But that’s different because Anya has a soul,” Buffy argued. “Doesn’t she?”

“Of course she does!” he snapped, while at the same time realizing in horror that he had never really considered the matter before. “But she spent a long time being a vengeance demon. She doesn’t remember how to—how we do things—and I’ve got to help her with that. It’s not always easy.”

“Is it worth it?”

There was a tinge of something else in Buffy’s tone now. Although Xander couldn’t quite define what it was, it gave him an uneasy feeling, as if he had started her down a path she’d have done better to avoid. He chose his next words carefully.

“With Anya, it’s worth it. She’s a human and she wants to learn how to act like one. She can learn. But with Spike, it’s different. Even if says he wants to be good. I mean, Buffy, don’t you think he’s a little—”

“A little what?” she demanded when he hesitated. Her angry expression startled him and he backtracked hastily.

“—short.”

It was the first word that came to his mind but so absurd that both Xander and Buffy laughed in spite of themselves.

“Yes, he’s short,” she said, sobering. “And soulless and immoral and completely stupid. I know all that.”

“But?” he prompted. Not that he wanted to know, but he knew she wanted to tell him. She needed to tell someone.

“But there’s another part of him that’s different. A lot of people don’t get to see it. It’s the part of him that wanted to rescue me from a life of drudgery in London…the part that wanted to take care of me and Dawn when I came back. He’d do anything for us, and that’s what scares me. If I asked him to, he’d kill someone without a second thought.”

“Better not ask him then.” Xander said it lightly, but his heart wasn’t in the joke. When Buffy didn’t answer him, he sighed and kicked at the baseboard.

“Do you love him, Buffy? Is that what you’re trying to say? That you want to forgive him and take him back?”

She was so silent that, for a moment, he thought she might not answer. He wouldn’t have been surprised. Buffy wasn’t really great at talking about her feelings. To be honest, Xander didn’t feel he was that great at hearing about them. It came almost as a shock when she spoke, her voice so small he could hardly even hear it.

“After Dawn got hurt, he went to get his soul back, Xander.”

His heart gave an instinctive jump, although a second later he wondered why. After all, it wasn’t as if he was emotionally invested in this mess. Still, he couldn’t quite stop himself from asking, “And did he get it?”

Buffy shook her head.

“He asked Angel, but Angel couldn’t help him.” She sniffed and wiped at her eyes. “But, regardless, that’s something no other vampire has tried before—Angelus certainly didn’t—and Spike did it for me. He did it because he thought it would make me happy.”

“But he didn’t get it,” Xander repeated. Because for some reason at the moment that seemed to him to be the most important thing. Buffy shook her head impatiently.

“No, he didn’t get it,” she repeated.

“So, how does it change things then? What does it mean?”

“I don’t know,” Buffy admitted. She pushed her tangled hair off her face and bit her lip, thinking about it for a moment before she added, “Either way, it’s just a lot of responsibility. You know?”

Xander did know. He also knew about Buffy’s feelings about responsibility, especially when it came to men and relationships. The way he figured it, Spike was screwed.

“You’ve been through a lot,” he said sympathetically. “He’s put you through a lot. And whatever else happens, I think that right now you just need to focus on your responsibility to yourself.”

Buffy cocked her head. “And what responsibility is that?” she asked.

“You need to do what makes you happy.”

And he hoped to God that it was the right thing to say.

~*~ ~*~ ~*~




What Xander didn’t seem to understand—what no one understood—was that while Buffy knew what she wanted, she had no idea what would make her happy. She had thought she’d been happy with Spike, but it was all based on a lie. And once she began to sift through the rubble of their romance, she found a lot of conflict there, a lot of causes for unhappiness.

Like the fact that he hadn’t ever really seemed happy. Why hadn’t he been happy? It couldn’t have just been the strain of keeping the eggs a secret. Dawn claimed that it was because he knew he couldn’t live up to Buffy’s expectations of him, and as she climbed the staircase after Xander left, Buffy wondered if it was true. Even before the eggs—even as far back as London—he had seemed uneasy with her, unable to relax into their relationship. Had he been afraid of disappointing her, even then?

And he did end up disappointing me, didn’t he? He ruined my whole life.

Of course, she’d ruined his as well. As much as she’d like to pretend otherwise, the engagement ring in its box on her nightstand proved that. Giles might have been right, and Spike’s destiny might have been to become a vampire, but Buffy knew that she had made the transition that much harder for him. He had grieved for her, and it had steered him toward a whole host of new victims. All those blond girls…

She felt a flush of shame, thinking of what she’d said to Dawn, how she had tried to deflect the blame for what had happened. It wasn’t that she didn’t share a good portion of the guilt in the matter; she did and she was willing to admit that. It was just that Dawn had made her so angry with her accusations, the way she acted like Buffy didn’t want to forgive him, when she did. Of course she did. But things weren’t that easy. For Dawn, it was just a matter of accepting a friend’s apology and moving on. But Buffy was the Slayer. She had the world at her back, depending on her to make the right decision and judging her if she didn’t. The truth was that her decision to be with Spike had almost gotten someone killed. Had the scheme with the eggs gone off as intended, it would have had the potential to get several hundred people killed. And that would have been her fault, too. How could she just forget that? How could she forgive him?

How could I even want to? she asked herself as she pushed open her bedroom door. But she did want to, and as she began to paw through her closet for fresh clothing, she wondered if maybe a part of her already had. One of Spike’s shirts was lying on the closet floor just inside the door, and she paused when she saw it, stooping to pick it up as she balanced her own clothing on her other arm. His favorite red shirt, frayed at the collar, divested of most of its buttons. One of the very few articles of clothing he owned; he’d been wearing it the first night she met him, in the alley outside the Bronze. On an impulse, Buffy lifted it to her face, rubbing her cheek against the thin, soft fabric and breathing in the scent that still clung to it.

You’re so stupid, Spike. Why’d you have to be so stupid? Why’d you have to ruin everything?

But these would have been pointless questions even if he had been there to answer them, because Buffy already knew the reason why. She let the shirt fall back onto the floor.

When she stepped into the shower a few minutes later, she shampooed her hair and scrubbed hard at her skin with the washcloth to rid herself of the antiseptic stink of the hospital. But despite the promises she’d made to her friends, she knew even then that she wouldn’t be returning to her bedroom, or lying on the crisp sheets that Willow and Tara had so thoughtfully put out for her. She lingered under the spray until the water began to run cold and then dawdled as she dried her hair, but it was just nerves, not indecision. She knew what she had to do.

Had to. Right or wrong, she had to do it. She couldn’t stop herself if she tried.

As she walked to the cemetery, Buffy tried to mentally prepare herself for the task ahead. She knew it was useless, but she had to focus her thoughts on something or she would go insane. Already, she felt almost ill, her knees trembling so badly that she almost considered giving up and going home. Better to delay this than risk collapsing in the street, after all. And if she could have turned back, she would have done it. It was just that when she tried, her feet didn’t seem to cooperate. Her feet were determined to get it over with.

She hesitated once she reached the crypt door, one hand resting against its cool, steel surface as she debated whether to knock. It seemed as if she should knock because it was the polite thing to do. Then again, she had never knocked before; she’d always just barged in on him. An act of disrespect at first, one that had later developed into a sense of entitlement. Because, after all, he belonged to her.

He had belonged to her. Had. Past tense. She had left him. That was the whole point of this.

In the end, she compromised by sharply rapping on the door and then immediately throwing it open.

Inside, the crypt was quiet and so dark that even with the light shining in from the open doorway it was easy to miss him. Buffy did miss him, at first. She was halfway across the room before she noticed him sitting on the sarcophagus. One shoulder was to her, his legs dangling and his head turned a little to the side. He didn’t look at her as she approached; he didn’t even seem to realize she was there, his glazed eyes remaining steadily trained on the wall opposite. The upright posture of his body—his utter motionlessness—told her that whatever else he might have been, he wasn’t intoxicated. She had no idea what he was.

It took her three tries before she found her voice to ask him, and even then she couldn’t finish.

“Spike…are you…?”

There was the slightest movement of his head, and then his eyes focused on her and she was looking him full in the face. And, Jesus Christ, he looked horrible. Filthy and bloodstained—he obviously hadn’t changed his shirt since the night Dawn got hurt—and somehow diminished. Not just thin, but small. Closed. As if something integral had been taken from him and his entire being was curling into itself, protecting the hole that was left behind. She couldn’t bring herself to look him directly in the eye.

“Dawn,” he whispered. His voice was thick and watery; he ducked his head, clearing his throat before continuing. “Is she all right?”

“She’s good. Or, better anyway. Well enough to argue with me, which she did admirably just a few hours ago. I think the worst danger is probably over now, although she still has a lot of healing ahead of her. She’ll be in the hospital a while.”

He nodded.

“I wanted to see her, to see how she was doing. But…I knew I wouldn’t be welcome.”

“She isn’t angry with you, Spike. She doesn’t blame you.” Buffy almost smiled at herself, thinking how absurd that sounded. But it was true.

“Bit…she understands,” he answered wearily. “I meant…”

Although his voice trailed away, Spike’s meaning was clear. He’d meant her. He was right, of course. If he had shown up at the hospital again, before her talk with Angel, she probably would have escorted him out with her fists. She sighed.

“Well, can you blame me for not being understanding?”

“You didn’t even let me explain.” It sounded like arguing, but his voice was deadpan. When he slid off the sarcophagus and onto his feet, the posture of his body was more exhausted than combative. Still, he persisted, “I tried to explain. I tried to tell you why I—”

Buffy felt a flash of impatience at that.

“God, Spike. I already know why you did it. Do you really think I’m so stupid that I haven’t figured it out? You did it for money; you did it for me—”

He flinched.

“Buffy—”

“—and the thing is…I knew it all along.”

Spike shook his head, and she wasn’t sure if it was an expression of disbelief or confusion. Maybe it was both. He shifted a few steps closer to her, closing the gap between them so that they stood only a few feet apart.

“Maybe I didn’t want to believe it,” she admitted, fighting the urge to back away from him. To draw closer. “In fact, I pretty well forced myself not to. When the money started coming, I told myself that of course it was from my father. Who else could it be? But I knew, even then. I mean, my dad didn’t care enough to call me after my mom died; he’s certainly not going to start sending me thousands of dollars in child support for Dawn. He probably didn’t call because he was afraid he’d be held responsible for her care.”

Her eyes locked on his sunken, bloodshot ones.

“Spike, the only person I know who would care enough to do all that is you.”

“Then why…?”

She rubbed her forehead, feeling a hot flush of shame wash over her.

“I knew you must be doing something wrong to get all that money, but I…I wanted it anyway. I was drowning and I couldn’t see any way out of the water. When you threw me a life preserver, I grabbed hold of it first and asked questions later…or not at all.”
“Still doesn’t make it your fault,” he began. Defending her to the last, as always. She interrupted him.

“Yeah, it really does. I know what you are, Spike, and I know what you’re capable of. You’ve been trying to be good because I expected it of you, but you don’t even have any idea of what ‘good’ is. When you saw Dawn and me in trouble, you thought it was all right to do anything as long as it was to help us. It’s not your fault. You don’t have a conscience, and you didn’t know any better.”

“But I know better now,” he argued. “I made a mistake, but I’ve learned from it. I have. I’d never—”

“Not this, maybe,” she conceded. “I know you’d never do this again. What about other things? What about the next time you engage in some repulsive, immoral act because it feels okay to you? Because you think you’re doing the right thing? What about if we have a fight—if the chip stops working—and you decide to take your anger out on someone else?”

“If I wanted to take my anger out on someone, don’t you think I would’ve done it by now?” he asked, looking stricken. “You left me already…you told me it was over. I could’ve tried to get my chip out…I could’ve bitten someone even with the bloody thing in place. You’ve seen that firsthand. If I’d felt like it, I could’ve burned the entire fucking town to the ground. Instead, I—”

He stopped abruptly, his blue eyes cutting to one side to avoid her gaze. Part of her wanted to think that he was just feeling shy about going to Angel for help, maybe even embarrassed about wanting something he’d so often derided his grandsire for having. But that wasn’t it, and Buffy knew it. He didn’t tell her that he had tried to reclaim his soul, because he thought that she wouldn’t believe him if he did.

She swallowed hard but couldn’t quite force down the lump that had formed in her throat. Her voice rasped a little when she told him, “Angel came to the hospital last night. He said that you showed up in LA, asking for his help. He said you wanted—”

“It was bloody stupid of me,” he interrupted, suddenly looking angry. “No help there, obviously. Not from Angel. He wouldn’t want to give up the throne, you know. He likes being the only vampire to have a soul. I should’ve known better than to ask.”

Buffy opened her mouth to argue with him, to tell him that Angel would have helped if he could have and that he was trying to help even now. But she realized how that would sound to Spike. She dropped her gaze to the floor and sighed.

“It wouldn’t have made any difference, anyway,” she muttered.

Spike’s eyes narrowed. “Why not?” he demanded.

“Because it wouldn’t change anything between us. People with souls screw up all the time; they do evil things to each other. Having one isn’t quite the cure-all I once thought.”

“That doesn’t mean I’d—”

“I mean, look at us,” she cut in. “You said you were capable of being good, and I know you were trying, Spike. You were trying really hard…you’ve been trying really hard…and I never even thought about helping you. I thought that because you were trying to be good, you would be good, that you’d somehow just automatically know right from wrong. I’ve got a soul and what happened to Dawn is my fault—”

“No, it damn well isn’t!” he retorted with a flash of spirit.

“What happened is my fault,” she repeated. “You were trying to be a better man—a good man—a—a man—and all I did was get in the way. If it hadn’t been for me, you would never have needed money and none of this would have happened. Everything you do is for me, and that’s just holding you back. I’m not helping you learn. I just sat on my ass and let you support me and shut my eyes to everything you were doing. I made it all a thousand times worse.”

With her heart suddenly thudding against her breastbone, she reached into her jacket pocket and pulled out the small, worn ring-box that had sat in state on her bedside table for weeks now. His eyes followed her movements and now they filled, although he didn’t exactly cry.

“Don’t—” he choked as she pulled the ring from its nest of velvet and pressed it into his hand. His words, though hardly audible at first, were desperate, pleading, and she knew she couldn’t have hurt him worse if she’d driven a sword through his heart. “Jesus Christ, Buffy. Please, don’t do this—”

Buffy couldn’t look at him anymore. Not in his eyes and not at his face. She dropped her gaze to their hands, her own two gently folding the fingers of his left one until they made a loose fist around the ring, concealing it from view.

“You’re never going to know right from wrong,” she said haltingly, unwittingly echoing the words Angel had said to her at the hospital. “You’re always going to struggle; you’re always going to be tempted. You’re always going to make mistakes. And I don’t want you to make any more because of me. I don’t want to be responsible for what will happen afterward.”

Spike’s eyes were closed, the expression on his face taking her right back to the moment in London when she’d refused his proposal. He was a man steeling himself to withstand a blow and failing miserably. And she thought about what had happened later that night, how she’d rashly promised him something he could never have had. How her dishonesty had nearly destroyed him…how it had compelled him to destroy other people. She thought about Dawn, how she knew all the things Buffy didn’t. All the things he was afraid to tell Buffy. And Dawn loved him anyway, even though she’d nearly died because of him.

She thought about Xander and Anya, how he was uncomfortable with and a little bit ashamed of her past. How he appreciated her efforts to fit into the present; he thought that what they had together was worth the struggle.

And she remembered all the things Angel said to her at the hospital. He didn’t like broken things; he thought Spike didn’t need a soul. But he also didn’t think they should be together. He thought that Buffy should find someone normal, someone to grow old with despite the very real fact that she would probably never get the chance to grow old in the first place.

All the advice given to her, all the conversations she’d had, all her memories of him—good and bad—passed through Buffy’s mind in the instant after she gave him the ring. But, somehow, none of it mattered very much. Her mind had been made up from the moment she left her house and, right or wrong, she had come too far to let such things dissuade her now.

Her hands slid over his shoulders, passing behind the back of his bloodied gray t-shirt as she wrapped her arms around him. He was shivering, his muscles clenched tight beneath the unexpected embrace. Beneath the thin cotton, Buffy could feel his ribs, the sharp jut of his collarbones pressing against her as she leaned up and put her lips close to his ear.

“You’re not going to make any more mistakes because of me,” she whispered. And now she was crying, although she’d tried very hard not to. She added, with a sniffle: “I am not going to be your roadblock anymore. I’m not going to watch you struggle with something you don’t have the first clue about.”

“I do.” His voice was so soft she could hardly hear him, and so hoarse she could barely understand. “Buffy, I do—”

“Spike, you don’t…and it’s okay that you don’t. Because, this time I’m going to be there for you. This time, I’m going to help you learn.”

Spike’s eyes opened and he shook his head just slightly; Buffy could see the question forming on his lips. Before he could give voice to it, she lowered her mouth to his neck, trailing down and around until she found the sweet spot. She kissed it once, lightly bit down on the cold vein, and murmured the words she had been practicing in her head for the past two hours.

“Ask me.”

~*~ ~*~ ~*~