Title: The Hardest Thing in the World
Author: Eowyn315
Disclaimer: Joss said, "Show's over, write fanfic." (I may be paraphrasing.) I'm just doing what I'm told.

Prologue: After Life

“This is hell.”

Spike stared at Buffy, struck dumb by her confession. The words whirled around in his brain, but their meaning felt out of reach.

“Just getting through the next moment, and the one after that, knowing what I've lost.” She stood and started to walk away. “They can never know. Never.”

Spike wanted to respond, but he couldn’t find the right words, and before he had a chance, she was gone. He pushed himself up to slump dejectedly atop the wooden crate he’d been leaning against, and felt a sickening sensation, as if his stomach had needed a sudden rendezvous with his toes. He should run after her, he thought, but he was reeling from the weight of her words, and she quickly disappeared into the sunlight and out of his reach.

He silently cursed Willow and the rest of the Scoobies for bringing her back. How could they have been so bloody self-absorbed?

Abruptly regaining the use of his motor functions, he slammed his fist into one of the packing crates stacked next to him, ripping up his knuckles for the second time in as many days. He realized how ignorant they’d all been, assuming Buffy was in hell. All the times she’d saved the world, all the sacrifices she’d made over the years to protect them, including, finally, sacrificing her life.

He looked down at the blood on his hand as a strangled half-sob escaped him.

Of course she’d been in heaven.

Didn’t they know enough to know that she deserved it? He didn’t really go in for the whole religion thing, being fairly well damned himself, but surely the powers that be or whatever it was that controlled the universe would reward her for all the good she’d done. How could her friends even think she’d been anyplace else? They were so goddamn selfish, needing to have their Buffy back, convincing themselves that they’d be doing her a favor by resurrecting her.

But not him. He’d accepted that Buffy was gone. Oh, it didn’t stop him from loving her, or counting the days since he’d lost her, or being a complete wreck without her, but he knew she was gone.

Then all that changed. The first time he saw her, looking down at him from the stairs – and Harris was right, though he’d never admit it, it was the happiest moment of his entire miserable existence. Every sodding fantasy he’d had since that night, all the ways he saved her, coming true all at once. He wanted to leap up the stairs and crush her in his embrace and kiss every inch of her. But he held himself back, because he knew it would be hard for her.

But bloody hell, he’d never realized it would be this hard. He’d never been to heaven, but he could imagine how awful the world must seem after being there. He would never have brought her back. He’d rather love a memory than cause her this much pain.

*****

Buffy walked home, arms wrapped protectively around her body, trying to withdraw into herself, to block out the noise and the brightness. She squinted her eyes against the sun, her head bowed.

She had been in heaven and this was hell. Somehow, saying it out loud to someone had made it seem more real. It wasn’t a bad dream – if you could have bad dreams in heaven. This was real, this was the world, gritty and harsh and painful.

She was beginning to realize how right she’d been when she told Dawn that the hardest thing in the world is to live in it.

Main Street was crowded with people, laughing, talking, on their way home from work or out to dinner or for some last-minute shopping before the stores closed. They jostled her as they walked past, didn’t notice her dazed expression as they bumped her shoulder, meeting little resistance as she allowed herself to be pushed aside, adrift in a sea of people. Their loud voices echoed in her head, magnified in comparison to the quiet she’d known before. It felt like the time she’d been able to hear everyone’s thoughts, all ricocheting around in her skull, mingling into a cacophony, never resolving to clear voices, just an unbearable din that went on and on and on until she’d practically gone crazy.

Maybe she was going crazy again.

She stepped off the curb and the screech of brakes and a blaring horn jarred her out of her thoughts. She looked on, disoriented, as the driver yelled something she couldn’t understand and drove around her. She stumbled across the street and leaned against the wall of the closest building, closing her eyes to hold back tears. She hated everything so much, so much it hurt.

She didn’t know why she’d told Spike the truth. She should have let him believe that she’d been in hell, just like her friends did. It was easier for them to think they’d done a good thing. They wanted to help so badly. They wanted her to be happy. But they didn’t know, and they pulled her away from happiness. They’d given her the world. This cruel, violent world that made her ache inside. The world she’d saved so many times, and for what? Having seen what was on the other side, she wondered if maybe she’d done them a disservice by keeping them from it. What could this world offer but chaos and pain?

But for a moment, she’d had peace. That first night, when Spike took her hands gently in his, and spoke to her in low, soothing tones, telling her how many days she’d been gone, and that he’d crawled out of his own grave too, and that it would be all right. He’d comforted her, and for that brief instant before her friends burst in, the world hadn’t seemed quite so harsh.

As much as she hated to admit it, she knew why she confided in Spike. Because while her friends were loud and crowding, with all their expectations of her, Spike was quiet and calm and gentle. He knew what it was like to die… and he wanted to save her.

She just wasn’t sure she wanted to be saved.