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Love Awakened by slaymesoftly
 
Ten and Epilogue
 
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AN - RL is about to get busier for a bit, so just so I don't forget to post this last chapter - here is the ending...for now.


Chapter Ten

Before she could process what he meant by that, he sat up and gave her a light tap on her firm butt cheek.

“It’s getting’ late, love. I need to get you home before your mum comes lookin’ for me with that axe again.”

Without looking at her, he began to hand her the clothes that had fallen onto the floor, not bothering to watch her put them on, but pulling on his own pants and, after a rueful look at his buttonless dress shirt, a clean black tee.

Buffy dressed quietly, not speaking until she was ready to go.

“We’re not going to do this again, are we?’ she asked in a small voice.

Clutching the doorjamb so hard he left impressions from his nails, Spike struggled to keep his voice even as he replied, “I don’t think it would be a very good idea, Slayer.”

His use of her title rather than her name or one of his endearments was a clear signal that he wanted her to remember the distance between them and she nodded without arguing. She walked past him as he held the door for her, not looking at him as she did so. If she had, she would have seen the absolute despair that flashed across his face when she quietly accepted his statement.

The ride to her house was both too long and too short. The silence between them stretched out uncomfortably as neither one could think of anything to say; and yet the quickness with which they arrived in Buffy’s driveway caught them both by surprise. Buffy gave a little gasp as she realized she was home already and whirled to face the vampire, catching him staring at her as though trying to memorize her every feature. A cold lump settled in her chest as she guessed what he was thinking.

“You’re going.” she said quietly, not even making it a question.

A silent nod was her only reply.

“Were you even going to tell me ‘good-bye’?”

He shook his head, whispering, “I don’t think I’ve I got that in me, love.”

Buffy made no attempt to hide the tears now streaming down her cheeks.

“You don’t have to do this! You could stay here.”

“Your watcher would never stand for it, pet. And if he did, the Council of Wankers would have a wet-team here in a heartbeat- probably to kill both of us.”

Buffy sniffled quietly, unable to come up with any argument that didn’t make her sound like a spoiled teenager refusing to listen to the voice of experience. In what appeared to her to be totally off the topic, Spike suddenly asked, “How old are you, Buffy?’

“Just turned seventeen,” she answered in a monotone. “What has that got to do with anything?”

“Nothing, I hope.” he replied enigmatically. “Jus’ that it’s getting right up there for a slayer.”

Buffy’s hand was on the door handle as she ignored his remark about her age to say quietly, “If you leave without saying ‘good-bye’, I’ll never forgive you.”

She pushed the heavy door open and stepped onto the asphalt driveway, prepared to go in and go to sleep, and take up the argument again the following night. His softly spoken, “Nor should you, Slayer,” was her only warning as he backed out of the driveway and turned around in the street. As the car lurched into motion, the momentum caused the still-open door to slam shut as the taillights disappeared down the street.

Buffy’s immediate impulse, to chase the car until she could pull him out and beat him to a pulp, faded as quickly as it had arisen. The car was already out of sight and the sound of the V8 engine was fading rapidly, as she sank onto the pavement and began to sob.

Drawn out by the sound of the car’s sudden departure, Joyce peered out the front door and saw Buffy huddled on the driveway. With a sigh that couldn’t come close to expressing the way her heart ached for her daughter and the life for which she’d been chosen, she walked over to Buffy and silently pulled her to her feet. Without explaining how she knew what had happened, she murmured soothing platitudes of “It’s for the best, honey,” and “If he didn’t care about you so much, he wouldn’t have left,” as she guided the now-quiet girl into the house.

“You knew,” Buffy said accusingly. “You knew he was leaving.”

“I knew he was thinking about it,” was all Joyce would say.

She had no intention of telling Buffy about Spike’s daring daytime dash from a manhole into the back door of the gallery earlier in the day. When he had thanked her for doing his laundry and asked her to take care of Buffy, she had known he was not planning to remain in Sunnydale much longer. She had made no attempt to change his mind about leaving, being convinced that, as much temporary unhappiness as his leaving might cause Buffy, she would never move on to having a normal life as long as she was spending her all free time with the blond vampire.

She quietly accepted his thanks and assured him that she would do whatever she could to protect her daughter, smiling wryly as she added that she had no idea what that might be as Buffy was the one with the superpowers.

“You jus’ keep that axe handy, Joyce,” he responded to her with a smile that did not reach his eyes. “Never know when you might need it.”

As she looked into her daughter’s shell-shocked eyes, eyes that looked old and bruised for the second time in months, she briefly considered finding the vampire and taking the axe to him again. As much as she agreed with him that he was not what Buffy needed in her life, and as relieved as she was that he was gone, to see Buffy so devastated again so soon after she had seemed to recover from her experience with Angelus was tearing at her heart.

Reminding herself that she could not protect her child from the inevitable sorrows that come with growing up and falling in love, she hugged her tightly and sent her upstairs to deal with her latest heartache as best she could.

I hope that stronger than normal means her heart is stronger too; that she can handle more pain than a normal girl. What if it only means that she feels things more deeply? Surely these Powers that she talks about couldn’t be so cruel to my poor baby. I think I need to talk to Rupert about this. Perhaps he knows the answer.

Epilogue:

When Buffy returned from patrol the following night, silently carrying an armload of red and black bedding up to her room, Joyce bit her lip in sympathy. While the Slayer went to sleep on her newly decorated bed, sleeping in a black tee shirt that Spike had left behind, her tear-streaked face buried in the sheets that she vowed never to wash, Joyce shed her own tears over her child’s difficult calling and the adult decisions that had been forced upon her.

For the first month after Spike left, Joyce wondered every night if she had done the right thing by encouraging him to leave. Buffy’s obvious unhappiness was tearing at her heart; all the more so as she became more cognizant of how unlikely it was that Buffy was going to have a normal life span and how weak her platitudes about “finding someone else” and “you’re young, you’ll forget about him soon” sounded to her own ears.

Chronologically, Buffy may have been only seventeen, but the death that she dealt with – and dealt out – every night, as well as her own shattering experiences had given her a lifetime’s worth of growing up and Joyce could no longer cling on to the idea that her daughter was a normal teen-ager.

When Buffy eventually took the sheets down to the washing machine and laundered them before putting them back on her bed, she sparked hope that she was moving on from her mourning for the departed vampire. Although Buffy continued to sleep in Spike’s shirt, she did wash it once a week and Joyce was relieved to see that the teenager was gradually getting back into her school activities.

Sometimes, when Xander and Willow were at the house and the three friends were eating popcorn and watching movies while they giggled over something that happened in school that day, Joyce would allow herself to believe that it was all a bad dream and her daughter was going to have the life she wanted for her. Then, the evening would be over; Buffy would offer to escort her friends home on her way out to slay vampires and demons with the weapons she no longer had to keep hidden under her bed and Joyce would once again wait in fear until she heard the front door close, announcing Buffy’s safe arrival home.




The end -
for now – to be continued at some future date. It looks like this is going to become a series- perhaps with a visit from Spike in every season? Maybe just one or two more until we reach the point in the show where he became a permanent resident of Sunnydale. I’m not sure yet.

*hugs and smooches* to everyone who has reviewed this fic so faithfully. (And I hope Kathleen is still speaking to me)
 
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