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Shadows of a Brighter Day by Eowyn315
 
Out of Place
 
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Chapter 2: Out of Place

As they walked through the snow, Spike wondered how the Slayer had come to settle in this quiet neighborhood, tucked away from the hustle and bustle of downtown London. She was just north of Camden, which would have been his kind of place, a haven for alternative lifestyles, with the goths and the punks who wore black and chains and spiky blue hair – if he’d been inclined to fit in with anyone, that is. But only three quick tube stops away, she lived in a different world.

At the door to her apartment, Buffy repeated her invitation, allowing Spike to enter unimpeded. “Well, this is it,” she said, waving a hand in a broad gesture that he presumed was her version of the grand tour.

Before he had a chance to respond, a blonde five-year-old tornado in pink fuzzy pajamas slammed into Buffy’s side, squealing, “Mommy! Mommy!”

Buffy’s demeanor shifted then, and he saw shades of Joyce as she bent down and swung the child into her arms, perching her on one hip. “You should be in bed, young lady,” Buffy scolded her, and though the child appeared sheepish, Spike could see the light in the Slayer’s eyes.

She turned to him apologetically. “I’m sorry, would you excuse us a minute?”

Spike stared after her, speechless, as she escorted the young girl down the hall and back to her bedroom. His stomach churned with indecision, feeling more and more like an intruder with each passing second. Here he was, thinking he could just walk back into her life as though nothing between them had changed.

Of course, nothing had changed – for him. Not a single day had gone by that he hadn’t thought of her, not a night that he didn’t dream of her. She’d consumed him, her memory burning him up inside like a raging fire.

He’d tried to let her go. He’d searched for meaning, purpose, without her, and almost succeeded with Angel and his crew. Though relations had always been shaky at best with his grandsire, theirs was a bond of family that nothing could replace. And Angel had given him something to fight for, something that wasn’t tied to her. Something he could do to prove to himself that the soul was worth the cost.

To prove that he didn’t need her to be his conscience anymore.

But that was before he’d lost everything. Before everyone he had cared about for the past year was taken away from him, before everything he had fought for went up in smoke.

How he’d managed to escape from that alley with his life was a mystery to him. As he watched his comrades fall, one by one, he was sure it was his end as well – as sure as he’d been wearing that amulet. But just as before, he found himself undead – in more ways than one – and forced to start over, cut off from everyone who’d ever meant anything to him.

He spent an entire year drowning in the bottle, trying to salve his wounds with whiskey and hoping to dull the pain of his memories. What was the point of trying, he thought, when trying got you nowhere but shit? He’d died to save the goddamned world, and what had it gotten him? Buffy was wrong. Angel was wrong. There was nothing worth fighting for. He longed for the simplicity of his younger days, when life had been nothing but feeding and fucking. But he could never return to those days, not with the soul haunting him, dogging him at every turn. Even this bout of self-pity chafed his soul, as though trying to tell him he wasn’t following his champion’s destiny.

Well, sod destiny. Destiny was nothing but a cheap soft drink in a fancy chalice.

It occurred to him, with Angel gone, that meant he was almost certainly the vampire with a soul spoken of in the prophecy, the one who would earn the Shanshu reward.

He couldn’t have cared less.

Becoming human merely offered him more ways to die. The only bright side of the deal, in his mind, was that, as a human, this time his death would probably be permanent. Unless, of course, the Powers that Fuck With You had different ideas.

Well, he was done with the Powers and their bloody champions and their stupid prophecies. They could find another vampire with a soul to fuck with. He was done being jerked around.

Who knew how long he’d have wallowed in his misery, if he hadn’t decided, in a moment of drunken stupidity, to pick a fight with a Fyarl demon. Barely able to hold himself upright, he’d gotten his ass well and truly kicked. But that beating had reawakened the fighter in him, and from then on, things were different.

There was no plan. He’d never been good at plans. Even the ones he’d carefully thought out, plotting until they were foolproof, always managed to end up in disaster when he got too impatient for his own scheme. So, he wandered aimlessly, killing demons wherever he found them.

He traveled alone. He’d lost enough friends to convince him that it wasn’t worth it to build connections. He ran into Slayers every now and again, but none that had lived in Buffy’s house, none that had fought at the Hellmouth. He didn’t even know how many had made it out alive, and he resisted the urge to ask for news of the ones he’d left behind. He was better off not knowing.

And, in that way, he’d managed to avoid Buffy for ten whole years. He couldn’t face her – not after everything. Never had he wanted to see her so badly as that last night before the big battle in the alley. Just one chance to hold her, to touch her, one last goodbye. He’d thought himself a fool, all the time he’d wasted, being here with Angel when he could’ve gone to her, and he promised himself, if he lived through this, he’d find her again, Immortal or no Immortal.

But he never expected to live through it.

And he never expected to watch Angel turn to dust, his body already broken and battered from slaying that damned dragon. The shocked expression on his face looked almost peaceful at its end, and he faded into nothingness as Spike slaughtered his killer a moment too late.

In the days that followed, he’d been plagued by survivor’s guilt. Why was he the only one left standing? Why should he live when others more brave than he had fallen? And – worst of all – how could he go to Buffy now, when there was a decent chance he wasn’t the one she wanted? How could he tell her he’d let her lover die? Sure, she’d console him, tell him it wasn’t his fault – and it hadn’t been, not really; death was inevitable in a battle like that, and they’d all known it going in – but really, she’d be wishing it was Angel instead of him who was there with her.

He’d managed to convince himself she didn’t want to see him. Surely, someone would have mentioned he was alive – she had to know. And though his lifestyle had become nomadic since he left Los Angeles, she could have found him if she’d wanted to. After all, Willow had found him when she needed to.

But Buffy never came.

It was really for the best anyway. How far he’d fallen from his hero’s end – he’d died to save the world, returning only to lose the next battle and yet survive to see his failure through. He could live with it, as long as she never knew. As long as she remembered him for who he’d been, even if she’d never loved him, at least she wouldn’t know what he’d become.

But he just couldn’t leave it be. It was a foolish idea, after all this time, but when the phone call he never really expected finally came – from Willow, the first of the Scoobies he’d spoken to since Andrew came to L.A. – it hadn’t even been a choice. He had to go to her. He was hers, just as he’d always been.

He had expected things to be different – and sure enough, the Buffy he encountered in the cemetery had a few extra pounds on her and the beginnings of crow’s feet at her eyes, and for once in her life was wearing sensible shoes to slay in – but for some reason, he’d never imagined her as a mother.

There was no question the girl was Buffy’s – even if he hadn’t just witnessed the little domestic scene, she was the spitting image of her mother. The same button nose, the same mischievous smile, the same blond curls… He’d have known her anywhere.

His eyes fell on the toys strewn across the living room rug, and then were drawn up to the wedding portrait on the mantle, surrounded by smaller, colorful frames chronicling the simple adventures of the happy family. Buffy wasn’t his anymore, was no longer the lonely warrior-child starving for affection, willing to accept tenderness from a dead man’s arms. He’d left it too long. She had a life here, a life that he didn’t belong in.

As his gaze settled on the man’s coat tossed casually over a chair back, his mind was made up. Without a word, he turned and walked out the door, walking out of her life, wishing he’d never come.
 
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