The Dance

Chp. 1

Diaries Kept

Summary: Post NFA. Set approximately a year after that episode.

Our lives are better left to chance, I could've missed the pain, but I'd of had to miss the dance.

Buffy finds a box of old diaries that she'd written in while in Sunnydale.

Rating: PG-NC-17: For later chapters.

Disclaimer: I don't own Buffy, Spike or any thing else having to do with Buffy the Vampire Slayer, the song contained here-in belongs to Garth Brooks.

**********

Looking back on the memory of
The dance we shared beneath the stars above
For a moment all the world was right
How could I have known you'd ever say goodbye
And now I'm glad I didn't know
The way it all would end the way it all would go

Our lives are better left to chance
I could've missed the pain
But I'd of had to miss the dance

Holding you I held everything
For a moment wasn't I the king
But if I'd only known how the king
would fall
Hey who's to say you know
I might have changed it all

And now I'm glad I didn't know
The way it all would end
The way it all would go

Our lives are better left to chance
I could have missed the pain
But I'd of had to miss the dance

Yes my life is better left to chance
I could have missed the pain
But I'd of had to miss the dance

**********



She'd grabbed them hastily as she'd been stuffing things in the dufflebag. The old shoebox that held the diaries she'd been writing in from the first day she'd been in Sunnydale. She'd written in them only when she'd had a slayer dream, or something monumental had happened in her life. They'd fled from the collapse with her safely in their size six box.

She'd completely forgotten about them, until that fateful day. The day that she'd had to go and save Spike's lilly white ass, again.

It was like deja'vu. Rummaging through the closet, and coming across the forgotten Jimmy Choo box shoved in a far corner, on a shelf in her new Roman apartment.

She'd instantly pulled the box out, as she'd noticed it. The red one with little, yellow flowers strewn haphazardly over the cover lay on the top of the stack, as she had lifted the lid from the slightly abused box.

She'd known just from a glance which part of her Sunnydale life had been written down in the thin, little book: Junior year of high school. The year that the bleached, pain in her ass had shown his beautiful blue eyes in her town, or Spike as everyone had been want to call him.

The one and same bleached wonder that she was yet again going to save, because he didn't know how to keep his souled ass out of harms way, especially if he thought the fight were going to be a right brawl.

She'd grabbed that diary, and a couple others, stuffing them into her already over-stuffed carry-on bag, that she'd held tightly in her right hand, and shoved the rest of the box back into the side of the closet, to resume shuffling through the rest of the stuff in the huge alcove.

She'd needed something to do on the long plane ride.

She'd grabbed her rarely used slaying boots, and that handy axe, scythe thingy that the lady in the temple had given her.

She'd thought that her slaying days were over, but as usual, something pulled her back into the fray.

Willow had sensed some kind of upheaval in Los Angeles, and Giles had conferenced she, and Faith, who'd taken a few of the more experienced slayers to Cleveland. They'd been there for around six months, watching over the hellmouth that resided under the city, with Robin.

All Willow had to say was one name, and she was ready to jump on the first flight from Rome to L.A..

But Giles had suggested strongly, or as she'd come to know, demanded that she fly to Cleveland and meet up with Faith, and her merry band of slayerettes. She'd grudgingly agreed. Hell it was always better to have an army, than go in half cocked.

She'd known that Spike had come back for little over a week. The idiot had actually thought she wouldn't feel his presence, but she had. He'd been at the club where she and the Immortal had gone to dance.

She had ran from the place, in hysterics, the Immortal on her heels. She'd thought she'd been hallucinating. She'd seen Sunnydale collapse on top of him, and there was no way he'd survived the whole town dropping on his head.

After calming herself down, she'd ask her companion to take her home. When she'd stepped into the hallway leading to her apartment, she'd felt him again, it had nearly knocked her to her knees. She'd run to the door, the feeling getting stronger with every step, so much so, that she could have sworn the vampire would be sitting in her living room, his feet propped up on her expensive coffee table, and looking at her accusingly. At least that's how the scene was in her head. She'd slowly opened the door to find that there wasn't a bleach blonde head anywhere to be seen.

She'd been sitting on the couch when she heard keys tinkling outside of the door around an hour after her arrival.

She'd watched as the door slowly, and quietly opened to reveal that Andrew was home. Of course he'd asked why she'd been crying, as he'd noticed the tear tracks on her cheeks. He'd cracked, spilling what he'd known about Spike, when she'd told him what had happened at the club, and when she'd gotten home.

She could've killed the little pipsqueak, for not telling her his secret sooner, but she sort of admired him for being able to keep his mouth shut for so long. For Andrew that was one hell of hard thing to do, she'd figured.

It had taken sure force of will for him not to spill it all as soon as he'd stepped from the plane when he'd returned with Dana.

At the time hearing the full truth, well the truth in Andrews words anyway. It had hurt. Really hurt. She'd lashed out, gotten angry, as was always her reaction when something involved Spike. She'd scared the hell out of the poor little guy that had told her in all the honesty that he could muster, what Spike had said.

But all of this had happened nearly a year ago., and she'd gotten over it. Hell she'd been over it by the next day, not the hurt, but the anger. Spike had his reasons, not good ones, but he'd still had his reasons.

She hadn't cracked a one of the diaries on the plane back to where it had all begun. She'd fallen asleep about five minutes into the flight, and afterwards she hadn't had the time to even think about reading them.

By the time she'd gotten to the door of the house that Faith, and the rest lived in, the dark slayer had her troops all packed and ready to go to L.A.. Instead of even having a few moments to rest, they'd ushered her back out the door into an old chevy van, not unlike the one that Oz had had in high school, and rushed to L.A. like the hounds of hell were nipping at their heels.

**********


Now she sat at a desk in the library of The Giles School for Special Girls, or The Slayer Headquarters as everyone called it. Cause seriously the G.S.S.G was just too wiggy a name. Seemed like a name for invalids, or psycho's. But for legal, and anonimity reasons they'd grudgingly agreed to name it after Giles.

She'd found the shoe box, yet again. This time it had been crammed into another box along with a few of the belongings she hadn't unpacked after moving to London from Rome.

The box sits there in front of her, as she stares off in wonderment at all the things that had happened to her in the three hundred and sixty-five days since she'd last seen the designer shoebox.

She slowly lifts the lid, taking out the ones that she'd designated as reading material on a plane ride from Rome to Cleveland on the morning of the fateful day that had forseen the rest of her life.

She'd placed them back in the box when she'd arrived back at the apartment, and left them to collect dust for another year.