Chapter 4: Buffy

Before I really know what’s happening, Spike is helping me up the stairs to my apartment. I make a half-hearted attempt to resist him, but I’m no more successful at fighting him off now than I was in the alley.

I feel nauseous – the knowledge that Spike nearly killed me is twisting a knot in my stomach. The funny thing is, I’m not afraid of him. Maybe I should be, but all I feel is disgust with myself, that I failed so miserably.

Let’s add a nice, fat “again” to that statement. It seems like all I’ve been doing is failing, screwing up, letting people down, letting people get hurt, ever since that night. My birthday. When Angel and I…

We reach my door, and I struggle with my keys as usual. Finally, Spike takes them out of my hands, unlocks the door, and gives it a good shove to get it open. I step over the threshold and turn back to face him. I feel like I should thank him, but the idea of thanking him for not killing me seems absurdly unwarranted.

“You should get some rest,” Spike says, ducking his head a bit, as if he’s not sure what he’s doing, either. He starts to leave, then turns back. “Don’t be so down on yourself, love. You did save the bloody world, after all.”

It’s true. I did. I killed the only guy I ever loved in order to save the world. Noble of me, huh?

Except…

“He got his soul back in the end.”

Spike looks at me, puzzled.

“Willow was able to do a spell that restored his soul. He – he didn’t know what had happened, couldn’t remember at first. But the vortex was already open and I had to… even with the soul.”

“Must have been hard,” he says. I stare at him. Is he seriously trying to sympathize with me?

The expression on his face tells me that he is, and I realize that what he said in the alley was true. Not tonight. Whatever this reprieve is, whatever grace there is in Spike not killing me, it means that, just this once, we can relate to each other as something other than enemies.

“Come in, Spike,” I say.

He hesitates before stepping through, as if he’s not sure I really meant it and the insincere invitation might not have worked or something. But it did, and he’s in my apartment, and he might come back and kill me tomorrow, but that’s something I’ll worry about tomorrow because right now I feel like this is important.

“Would you like anything?” I ask, knowing I have little to offer.

“No, thanks.”

“Tea? I could make tea.”

“I’m all right, Buffy.”

I’m a little startled – he hardly ever uses my real name. I think he’s a little startled, too, because he suddenly fixates on the nametag pinned to my uniform. He runs his fingers lightly across it and asks, “Why Anne?”

“It’s my middle name.”

“No, I mean, why…” He stops, closes his eyes briefly, then looks at me. “Never mind.”

I’m not sure what just happened. “What?”

“Changing your name,” he says. “There’s sanctuary in being somebody else.” He seems like he knows what he’s talking about, and for the first time, I wonder what he was like before he was Spike.

He starts to wander around the apartment, examining my stuff. There’s not much to see. I don’t have much furniture, just a kitchen table with two chairs, one of which has a broken leg, at one end of the room, my mattress on the floor at the other end, and a ratty sofa sort of in the middle. I don’t really have anything in the way of decorating – just a couple picture frames on a cinderblock next to my bed. My mom in one, Willow and Xander in the other.

Spike notices them and says, “Your mum must be worried sick.”

“Maybe.” I shrug. “Maybe not.”

Spike looks at me like I’ve sprouted another head, so I explain, “We had a fight before I left. She told me if I walked out the door, don’t even think about coming back. So I didn’t.”

He just shakes his head at me. “Don’t mean she doesn’t love you. Don’t mean she’s not out of her head with missing you.”

“She’s probably relieved I’m gone,” I say, even though I really don’t think that. Spike gives me a look that says he doesn’t think that, either, and I get defensive. “She couldn’t deal with what I was.”

“’S not like you gave her much of a chance to adjust.”

My head tingles with rage, and there’s a slightly hysterical tone to my voice. “Now you’re taking her side?!”

He shakes his head again. “I’m on no one’s side, love. Just think maybe you oughta think of someone else besides yourself once in a while.”

Now I’m really seeing red. “How dare you!” I fling myself at him and pound on his chest. “Think of someone else? I killed Angel! I loved him more than anything, and I killed him because it was the right thing to do!” I’m fighting back tears, and my fists have slowed down now, so Spike can grasp me by the wrists and hold me still.

It’s like a crack in the dam, and now there’s a flood, and all the thoughts and feelings I’ve been trying to bury are resurfacing again and before I know it, I’m crying, and the whole awful thing is coming back, all the pain I caused, and I just wanted it to stop, and I had to leave because I didn’t know how to make it okay again. Everything I put my friends through, and Giles was tortured and Kendra was killed, and they thought I did it, and I got expelled from school… and Mom, she was so angry, and there was nothing I could – I had to save the world, I had to –

And I think maybe I deserve this, because it’s my fault Angel went bad, and it’s my fault I couldn’t kill him when I had the chance, and if I had maybe Miss Calendar would still be alive, and Kendra, and, oh God, why couldn’t I be stronger? I can’t forgive myself for that, and I can’t forgive myself for killing him, and it’s something they’ll never understand, and so I had to go away, don’t you see?

I had to.

Eventually, I realize that Spike is still there. I’ve sort of collapsed in his grip and he’s half-supporting me, looking utterly perplexed at my breakdown. I quickly pull away, move to the bed and sit with my back to him.

“Buffy,” he starts, but he’s at a loss for words.

I don’t want to hear them anyway. I shake my head. “Please go.”

He does, without question, slipping out quietly with vampire stealth, despite my creaky floorboards. I hear the click of the door closing, and then I lay myself down on the bed.

I cry until I fall asleep, and when I wake up the next morning, I’m still in my work uniform, wrinkled and smelling like fried food and faintly of cigarettes. My head hurts, one of those headaches you get from crying a lot, and when I look in the mirror my eyes are puffy and red.

I feel like a fool for crying like that – especially in front of Spike, of all people – but there’s some part of me that feels relieved, as though a humungous weight has been lifted. I’d been holding it all inside, because it was too hard to sort through all the pain and the guilt and the fear. But you can only hold so much, you know? And I carry the weight of the world on my shoulders on a regular day, and this, on top of all that, completely just kicked my ass.

Speaking of ass-kickings, I’m still sore from the fight with Spike. The mirror tells me I’m pretty banged up, and I just know Ellie’s gonna have a fit when she sees it.

I take a moment to wrap my head around the fact that Spike could’ve killed me last night – and didn’t. What the hell was that about? I mean, I know he said that thing about it not being a challenge, but really, a slayer’s a slayer, right? One more notch on his belt. I just can’t believe that he’d really feel sorry for me, or care about me… and yet, here he was in my apartment, holding me while I cried my eyes out.

I think back to what he said about my mother, how she’s probably missing me. I miss her, too, and my friends, and more than anything, I wish I didn’t have to cope with killing Angel alone. But how can I go back to them, how can I ever open up and let them in, when the past six months have been a constant reminder of how much there is to lose?

No, better to do this, to live this way, so that there’s nothing to lose, and no one to hurt.