ONE HUNDRED DAYS

“You don’t come near the girl, Doc.” Spike clenched his jaw, glaring at the demon facing him. He could hear Dawn’s terrified heart beat pounding behind him, smell her fear. He could hear the sounds of battle below them, the shouts of those from both sides, the occasional yell of pain. His mind flashed with worry for the Slayer briefly, and his dead heart twisted. He could smell his own blood from the stab wound on his back, and he bit back the pain.

Doc was standing there looking as peaceful and harmless as ever, except for the knife gripped in his fist. The knife stained with Spike’s own blood. The little man smiled pleasantly at him, looking every bit the part of a senile grandfather. The sick bastard’s face wrinkled with confusion. “I don’t smell a soul anywhere on you... Why do you even care?”

“I made a promise to a lady,” The vampire ground out, his thoughts returning to the Buffy. She was below, fighting Glory. He could hear both of them, smell them, even from here. She would be okay. He could hear the incremental changes in Dawn’s vitals. She was calming the tiniest bit. She had hope.

They were both going to be okay.

Til the end of the world.

 “Oh?” Doc’s face smoothed again, but he remained passive. “I’ll give the lady your regrets.”

His tongue came shooting out of his mouth, the unnaturally long muscle headed straight for Spike’s face. Dodging quickly to the side, Spike reached up and grabbed it, wrapping it around his hand and jerking it back, pulling the demon towards him. Forcing the Doc to turn, he wrapped his tongue around his neck. Pulling the demon back-first towards his own body, Spike wrested the dagger from Doc’s grip, and thrust it up into his back, finding sick satisfaction in his strangled scream as the vampire twisted it.

“So Doc,” Spike muttered in the demon’s ears, jerking him roughly closer to him. “A sword won’t kill you. Reckon a ten storey drop will?”

And with that, Spike pushed the demon away from his body, and the Doc fell screaming to the pavement below.

Spike stood with laboured breathing for a moment before turning and untying the girl behind him, who was crying with shock and joy. He carried her down the makeshift stairs of the tower despite his injuries and into the arms of her waiting sister.

Buffy hugged Dawn as they both cried with relief, clutching at each other desperately, sobbing and muttering broken, almost nonsensical reassurances to each other. The other joined them then, and all of them were crying and laughing as Spike watched, hugging and holding each other in succession. Tara and Dawn clutched each other, both relieved at their returns to safety and to sanity, and Buffy turned to Spike.

She was glowing, beautiful and happy despite her injuries and exhaustion. Joyous.

Effulgent.

Her eyes still shining with tears, she grinned at Spike and threw her arms around him in a loving embrace.

Spike closed his eyes as she held him.
 

*                              *                              *                              *                              *                              *                              *

 
Spike opened his eyes only to see the grassy earth of the Slayer’s grave, tears burning in his eyes. It was near dawn, the other’s had gone home and expected him to do the same. They always did. And he always came here instead.

Dawn had insisted on burying her in the evening so he could be there, for Buffy as much as for her, and he had continued to come to the site every night since, right before the sun rose and forced him back into the darkness of his crypt.

If it hadn’t been for Dawn, he probably would have ended it. Let the sunlight take him or doused himself in alcohol and thrown himself into the nearest fire. If it hadn’t been for the promise he had made to Buffy, to keep Dawn safe, he wouldn’t be able to keep going.

Every night he came here and saw it all differently. Every single time a new way. Those final moments that meant that Buffy hadn’t had to have jumped. The moments when he could have kept his promise. If he had done that, none of this had to have happened.

His fists tightened uselessly at his sides as his mind flashed with images of her body lying broken and lifeless at the base of the tower, of the look of peace on her face. She could have been sleeping. Tears spilled out over his cheeks as he looked up at the gravestone, his eyes tracing the words Buffy Anne Summers.

The woman he loved was dead.

And she wasn’t coming back.

Spike’s throat clenched tightly, painfully with unshed tears and he swallowed them back, laying a hand open palmed on the grass six feet above where her face would lie.

“One hundred days, Buffy.” He whispered; standing as the sun began to rise. “I love you.”