Author: Morgan R.
Email: Lshallot@juno.com
Rating: PG-13
Summary: Why was Buffy so harsh?
Feedback: Oh, how I would adore it.
Spoilers: Crush
Author's Note: After Crush, I was furious with Buffy. I couldn't believe it. I was all, "Does she need glasses?!" Sometime during the week, that changed. The B/S 'shipper in me is furious, but I just can't help it. I've been seeing things her way.
****
"The only chance you had with me was when I was unconscious."
****
Hours later, when the nausea had faded, those words still echoed in her throat and ears. Had she really said that? Had she come so close to telling-
She shuddered, clutching her elbows in her trembling hands. It was too much for too long, and she felt covered in cracks, stress fractures running all over the golden body he claimed to love.
Love.
****
The first dreams of Spike were almost inconsequential. Faded, partial. Nothing at all.
The dreams of Spike ripping her throat out were slightly more vivid, of course. Dreams where he had no restraint, no thought of earning her trust (or even forbearance). Dreams of violence and sex that she could never wash out of her mind. Dreams of Spike possessing her, as Drusilla had possessed him for so long.
Those dreams were borne of all the desires behind his ice eyes, read so clearly without even realizing it. When Spike smiled at her, she choked, knowing that all his saccharine sweetness in the world couldn't erase his fundamental desire to dominate her soul.
She was nastier than she needed to be, perhaps, but the revulsion she felt when she saw his confident stride took away all her presence of mind. If he leered, she cowered inside, fighting the urge to run.
****
Waking up in chains. Hands numb from the blood flowing out of them, cold fingertips and the knowledge that this was the only way he knew how to ask for anything. She remembered his plan from two years earlier, when Dru had broken up with him- "tie her up, and torture her till she likes me again."
Even his begging was an order. His pleading eyes oozed with a darker lust for control. If Buffy pulled out her sharp tongue in response to his confessions of love, it was because she was caught in the most horrific, unending round of deja vu she had ever experienced.
(Don't scream don't scream don't scream don't-)
And she said it: "The only chance you ever had with me was when I was unconscious."
What if he had seen it? The panic buried beneath her disinterested expression, the fear bred by months of that very same thing happening? After all, it wasn't really that she believed vampires couldn't love. She, of all people, could recognize the deep, gnawing agony of love gone wrong. But the manifestation of love in Spike's own vampiric family was the one thing she feared deep inside. Love as ownership was what she fought against. (Something she had tried to avoid with Riley, causing just as much damage in the opposite direction.) The final kiss leading to bloody immortality, making someone your own for desire and eternity. All of Spike's charm couldn't change the fact that someone so miserable could never make her happy.
Souls were no longer optional in members of the opposite sex. She was already weary of blood, flowing sluggishly and smelling like death. She was so tired, so bone tired, and so unwilling to sleep.
But she didn't dream that night, in her house where he was no longer welcome.
She could say no. His hypnotic eyes could not, in the end, break her resolve. How could he love her when she couldn't seem to form a coherent self? The only conclusion to draw was that he loved The Slayer. As always.
Buffy, however, was not Always. She was twenty, nearing the Slayer's lifespan. And Spike-
Needed to get used to an eternity without her.
****
finis