CHAPTER FIVE

With a stretch and a growled purr, Spike set aside his latest letter from Buffy. He was well satisfied with their evening's work and relieved that she really did seem to have forgiven him his temper tantrum. His Slayer was now safe abed, at peace for the first time in months, and all was right in Spike's world.

Not only that, but he had a small mountain of mail waiting to get through,. What better time was there to read, after all, than in the middle of the night--especially when one was naturally nocturnal?

Taking himself back downstairs, Spike settled back on the floor with another mug of blood and dug into Buffy's letters. What he discovered over the next few hours was an entirely open, honest Slayer who took his breath away all over again--regardless he didn't need to breathe in the first place. Reading her words was like dropping eyes first into her mind, with her sharing things he'd always wanted to know or to be but thought never to discover or to have.

Some of the letters he set aside to read again and again.

~ ~ ~



Excerpts from the Slayer's Letters

...I know you're gone, that you'll never read this, Spike. But I wish you could somehow know what's in my heart. How much I miss you every day as I face these girls who can only learn of you through Gile's histories. They'll never know your wicked sense of humor, your obnoxiousness, your honor or your power first-hand. I've tried explaining, but they don't get it. All they get is, "We kill vampires, we don't make friends with them. You should too." Same song, boring verses.

I wish that you could know how much I miss your voice, your snarking at me about everything, your patience and impatience when you dealt with me. I even miss the way you drank blood and licked at the edges of the mug just to annoy me. I don't miss how you left your mugs for me to clean those last weeks. I love you, but...no, I don't miss that.

I miss your fingers in my hair and the coolness of your skin, how your voice rumbled through me when you were talking and I lay against you, and oh my god, the other things that voice and that tongue could do to me. It's probably a good thing you never knew. Or, rather, that I never told you.


~ ~ ~





...I can see so clearly now how much I failed you by not saying so many things before it was too late.

I know that you thought you failed by not rescuing Dawn and me on the tower, but you know that unexpected things always happen during battles. Who could have predicted Doc's intrusion or how strong a fighter he was?

Dawn told me what happened up there. She still has nightmares about the despair in your eyes before you fell, and she knows how desperate you were to save her. She never thought you failed, and neither do I. She knows, if there had been any way, you would have stayed and kept fighting to get her to safety.

She says she told you so over and over during that summer, but you wouldn't listen. Your explanation was that you were a stubborn John Bull and she should give it up, and then you had to explain exactly what that meant. I love how you were always teaching all of us something, all of the time, even when you didn't mean to.

You never failed my mother either, and I think you know that. She liked you, and I never understood why until I saw the movie ticket stubs you kept. I think I get it now--she could talk to you about Dawnie and me, and she somehow knew you could be trusted with us.

I think, too, that you were her friend. So you two snuck off to go to the movies...good for you. Both of you. She needed a break from worrying all of the time about the gallery and the bills, while you...I guess you needed her, didn't you?

You took such good care of the people I loved, and I think I understand that in time you came to love them too. Oh, not Giles and the Scoobies--they made it impossible for you, didn't they?--but Mom and Dawn were different. You guarded the house and looked after them when I was worried Glory would find them.

And then you saved the world for Dawn and me. You made the world safe and laid it at our feet, and then you died because...I guess you thought that's what I needed. But it's not. How could I need a world without you in it?

If I had it to do over, Spike, you know I'd find a way to save you for my own selfishness. You're so much less selfish than I'll ever be. I hope you won't hold that against me. It's just that living without you is so very hard.

~ ~ ~



Giles is reading some book by Nietzsche (go me for spelling that right), and I glanced through it in his office after breakfast. This immediately made me think of you and what we shared--"You must have chaos within you to give birth to a dancing star."

I miss dancing with you.

I like using your seal. It makes me feel closer to you. Sort of like when you stole my sweaters, I guess?

~ ~ ~



Now that I have time to think about things and try to put some pieces together without everyone pulling on me to be The Slayer (another gift from you, go Spike!), I can see that everyone you loved seems to have left you. Me included--even when I was still there.

I know what it feels like to be left, over and over. Not good.

Your being turned and your being undead had to hurt. I know that how I treated you hurt as well, and it's bothering me. I wake up in the middle of the night wishing I could change things between us. Love you and not leave you.

How much pain did you feel that I never knew about, that you couldn't share with me? Did I ever help with any of it, Spike, or did I just hurt you more?

I'm so sorry. I write that a lot to you--I'm sorry--and I so know that it's not enough. My father used to do that, say he was sorry, so that it lost all meaning.

I want to do something or be someone who can help you now. I want to hold you and help you heal. I want us to be together.

But you're gone, out of reach, and it's like what Hamlet said--the rest is silence. The silence totally sucks.

~ ~ ~

I've finally gotten around to reading all of the Watcher records on Angelus. Spike, I am so angry with him and so ashamed of myself at the same time. I was a virgin, and I let him in.

I believed Angel wasn't Angelus. I was so stupid.

You tried to tell me, didn't you? "Angel could pull it off." Your smile was so sad, and now I get that if he hadn't been distracted by Acathla, he'd have systematically destroyed everyone close to me until I was all that was left. And then he'd have driven me as insane as he made Dru.

You saved everything. And you know what? I think you knew you were doing it. Yeah, Dru was part of it. You wanted your girlfriend back. But I don't think that was all of it.

"I want to save the world," is what you said.

I know now that you were telling the truth. Looking back, I can't remember a time when you ever lied to me.

Unlike Angel/Angelus. He was great at lying by omission, if nothing else.

I still don't know even half of his history. I'll never know all of it, but I know a little bit, and I am so over Angel. He always told me he wasn't Angelus, but he is. Even when he's ensouled, he's still Angelus underneath, isn't he?

He's not like you--he's never fought for his soul and asked for it to be anchored.

You may have been evil but, from the first time we met, you were honest about the state of your soul. I'm starting to get how rare that is in the mortal world, never mind in the demon world. You really were something very special.

~ ~ ~



If we were together now, I'd know to hold onto you like you wanted to hold onto me. I'd never let go unless you wanted to be let go. To wash your car or play some pool or go do something really evil like you had to do from time to time, even if it was only cheating at kitten poker. Or teaching Dawn how to cheat at...whatever.

I wish you hadn't loved me enough to give me the world and leave.

~ ~ ~



I took a deep breath tonight and called Dawn to explain to her how what happened in the bathroom was more my fault than yours.

I was so messed up that year, Spike. I messed you up too, in ways I don't think you'd ever been messed up before even with everything Angelus did to you.

I know now how close to the edge I drove you--I confused you and made you hurt inside and feel more lonely than ever.

What I expected of you was so unfair that year. You were supposed to be perfect without any support from me or anybody, really. To have all of the answers and do all of the right things just because I wanted it. You got so much right, but all I held onto was what I claimed you got wrong.

Not only that, I expected to be able to be intimate with you and then to drop it and walk away with you just accepting it. I was entirely out of line, and I know it. I knew it then, but wouldn't admit it.

"No" had always meant "yes" between us before--how were you supposed to know that it meant "no" that time? A demon wouldn't have stopped, Spike. A demon would have kept coming and kept coming until I was forced to kill it. Even some humans wouldn't have stopped.

You stopped.

You aren't a monster. You aren't an evil, undead thing. You never were. All you wanted was for me to see you, to acknowledge your feelings and respect you.

You wanted me to love you the way you loved me.

I couldn't then, I couldn't love anybody. Not even myself. I was too messed up as the Slayer, and I didn't know how to let myself be me. Just Buffy without the Slayer. I didn't know to handle everything I felt when I was with you--the need, the hunger, the passion, the kink, the heavenly way you had of making me fly. I was so scared, and what's sad is that if I had told you how I was feeling then, you'd have helped me get through it like you helped me get through everything else.

Instead, I used you, shoved you away because of what I feared inside myself and wrecked everything between us.

Dawn understands now that both of us were messed up, and she doesn't blame only you for what happened anymore. She misses and mourns her friend--the coolest vampire on earth who helped with her homework and rocked her when she cried, the friend who had to sneak over the roof and into her room to stay until she fell asleep and chase away her nightmares.

I didn't know that Xander and Willow chased you away from Dawn and at the same time used you to patrol that summer. I didn’t exactly encourage you to see her after I came back, either, did I?

You must have gotten so tired of all of us using you.

~ ~ ~



I wish that I could do with you what Dawn said you used to do with her in the summer. The two of you would go for ice cream and eat it in the park. I wish you and I could do that now. I wish I could hold your hand for the whole world to see. That I could have another chance to show the world how much I love being with you. I wish we could try being not a vampire and a Slayer, but just you and me. I'd see you now, Spike.

We missed out on so much because I was so messed up--stupid and immature, full of fear about what others would think or say, or whatever else you want to call it.

I will always regret not loving you the way you deserved to be loved. No one has ever wanted to be in my life and have me in his the way you did. I know it's likely no one ever will. But every time I look at the ring you had made for us, I remember that once I was loved, and that you were real.

~ ~ ~



It's weird, but only the letters I write to you go to Spike or William at the Queen's Gate address. I've tried writing to Mom, but those letters go nowhere, so what's up with that?

I have to use your nib holder, too. The paper and ink don't seem to matter, but I have to use your pen.

I'm sure that if I told Giles about your magic writing box he'd be all over it. I know that his idea of "all over it" might be to destroy what makes your box send my letters off somewhere. Like his idea of helping last year was to try killing you. In the end, I guess Angel and his pretty amulet did what Giles and Robin couldn't.

Stupid amulet.

I know you saved the world with it, and your soul was beautiful and shiny that day. You were so strong, so brave and so determined, I can still hear you saying, "I gotta do this." But that doesn't make me resent any less that Giles tried to kill you, and that the hellmouth actually managed to do it.

I kept you alive for so long, I never realized until you were gone that you were keeping me alive, too. Maybe that's why the world feels so dead and empty to me now.