Summary: Spoilers for "The Gift" and S6. Spike manages to save Dawn, but pays a terribly high price. Will he be able to find meaning in his suffering?
Author's Notes: The title and some of the philosophy behind this story comes from Viktor Frankl's book Man's Search for Meaning, a must-read if you haven't already. In any case, it's basically about the importance of finding meaning in our suffering, since that's the only way we can avoid giving into despair. On a side-note, not everything in this story may be physically possible. But I didn't have Spike to experiment on, so you'll just have to take it as a plot device and leave it at that. As always, thanks and love to my beta, Heather.
Rating: PG-13
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Spike got back in the wee hours of the morning to find Buffy lying on the couch, waiting for him. "Slayer? What are you still doing up?"
Buffy shrugged, throwing off the blanket that had been covering her. "I couldn't sleep, so I thought I'd wait up for you. You're in later than usual."
"Poker game," he said by way of explanation, non-chalantly pulling an envelope out of his jacket pocket and tossing it to her.
"Spike, I don't think-"
"That's not all of it, Buffy," he said quietly. "So don't worry about that. If I can't fight demons for you, then I want to do something else to help."
She stared at the envelope. It was too much, and she shouldn't take it. But at the same time, he really did want to help, and she really did need the money. "Thank you."
He glanced away, not meeting her eyes. "Yeah well, anytime, luv. You should get to bed, though. You've got work tomorrow and school."
She resisted the urge to roll her eyes. It never ceased to amaze her that Spike knew everyone's schedules better than they did. "Would you do me a favor?"
He paused on his way to the basement stairs. "If I can. What do you need, Buffy?"
"Stay with me tonight." The silence that followed her request was deafening.
He turned to face her, slowly. "What do you want from me?" There was no anger in his tone, just a kind of curiosity. He wasn't sure what she wanted from him, because it certainly wasn't going to be sex, and he really couldn't see what else there might be.
Her features illustrated her warring emotions. Having admitted to herself that Spike made her feel as though everything would be alright was completely different than actually saying it out loud. "I need to feel-" She broke off, not telling him what it was he made her feel, but it seemed to be enough for him. His face softened, and he gave her a little smile.
"All right, then."
She followed him up the stairs, letting him set his own slow pace, and shut the door to her room behind both of them. He seemed awkward, as though he wasn't exactly sure what to do, but he sat on the edge of her bed and slowly removed the braces, setting them gently down on the floor. He was about to start on his boots, when Buffy was there in front of him. "Let me."
She pulled his boots off one at a time, and then pulled his shirt off over his head. "You know this isn't going anywhere, don't you?" he asked quietly as she ran calloused fingers over his face. "I can't give you anything, Buffy."
"You give me everything, Spike. Isn't that enough?"
He stared at her, shocked that she had spoken the words aloud. He gave her all of himself, and he didn't think she'd ever noticed. "It's never been enough before," he replied.
She kissed him deeply, roughly, needing this, needing him. She was using him, she knew, to feel safe, to make herself believe that tomorrow would be better. And yet there was more in her heart for him than simple pity. Indeed, nothing between them had ever been simple, not even when they were trying to kill one another. Even if this was all they ever had, it was enough for the moment.
~~~~~
Buffy woke slowly late the next morning, turning the alarm clock off quickly before it could wake Spike. She slipped out from under his arm, smiling as he muttered in his sleep, unwilling to let her go. Always so unwilling to let her go. She headed out towards the bathroom, shutting the door quietly behind her, only to face Tara in the hallway. "Hey."
"Hey, Buffy." She hesitated. "Spike's with you?"
"Yeah. Do you-could we talk? Later maybe?"
Tara nodded. "I don't have class till this afternoon. We could talk after you get out of the shower."
Buffy finished cleaning up and then went downstairs to find the other woman waiting for her in the kitchen. "Coffee?"
"Please." The Slayer gave a sigh of contentment as she took a sip. "Why does it have to be like this?" she asked, not quite rhetorically.
"Like what?" Tara replied, her face open and sympathetic.
Buffy looked down into her mug, as though the surface might give her the answers to all her questions. "I should hate him. He's everything I've been taught to detest. Hell, he should be dead by now. One of us should have killed the other at this point. And he's the only one who makes me feel safe."
Tara said nothing, waiting for Buffy to go on. "Some days it feels like everything's too much. Taking care of Dawn, and being the Slayer, and working, and school. One thing after another every day, day in and day out.. And the only time I feel like it's bearable, and I might just make it is when I'm with him. Why is it him, Tara? Why is it that Spike makes me feel safe when no one else can?"
Tara was quiet for a long time. "He loves you, Buffy. I think it's the people that love us the most that make us feel the safest."
"It's not supposed to work that way," she protested. "It's not supposed to be the soulless vampire that saves the world, and loves me."
Tara smiled. "Nothing is ever perfect, Buffy. Sometimes you just have to take what you can get."
"But what if it's a trick?" Buffy moaned, putting her head down on the counter. "What if I take it, and it turns out it was just a trick and I wasn't supposed to?"
"Then I guess you'll have to figure out if it's a risk woth taking," Tara said gently but firmly.
~~~~~
Buffy came home from work exhausted. She'd been at home less and less the last couple weeks, what with school and starting her new waitressing job. She was just grateful that both Tara and Spike were more than capable of taking care of Dawn. But she thought she would finally have the opportunity to hang and spend some quality time with her sister.
"You're going to Janice's to spend the night?" Buffy asked incredulously. "And I'm supposed to fall for that one because of the surprise lobotomy?"
"It's okay, Buf," Xander said. Xander, Anya, and Willow had come over to work on dancing for the wedding reception. "Spike told me before he left that he'd checked it out with Janice's mom. She's picking Dawn up."
"Please, Buffy?" Dawn said. "I didn't know you were going to be home, and Tara and Spike both were going to be out tonight, so they thought it would be okay."
"Sure, why not?" Buffy asked glumly. Then, as she thought about an evening alone, she decided to take Xander up on his offer of a night of Bronzing and the promised "frothy nectar."
But the Bronze didn't seem to have the same appeal as it usually did. And Xander, Anya and Willow seemed bent on having a good time. It was easy enough for them. They didn't have the same kinds of responsibilities that she had. They didn't have to worry about performing a duty that would most likely kill them, sooner or later. She wandered upstairs to the balcony overlooking the dance floor, staring down, watching as her friends danced.
"Fancy seeing you here." Spike's deep voice echoed out of the shadows behind her. "What's the matter, Buffy? You look a little down."
She was silent, not wanting to talk to anyone at the moment. "You're thinking you're the only one with problems," he said, uncannily reading her mind. "You look at them and you think they have it so easy." He swung himself over to stand just behind her. "Look at them, Slayer. So full of their own problems that they don't see you're hangin' on by a bare thread. They'd never know how close you are to just givin' up."
His voice tickled her ear. "Harris scared stupid he's rushin' into this thing, thinking he might have made a mistake askin' her to marry him. And the demon-girl thinkin' he might leave her at the altar or get tired of her or somethin'. And she'll be left just like all those women she got vengeance for. Red, who's strugglin' with the magic every day, feelin' like this huge piece of her is missin' and not havin' much hope that it's gonna get better."
Spike put a gentle hand on her shoulder. "Shall I go on, Slayer? You think you've got problems? The only problem you an' your Scoobies got is that you're too blind to see how much you're all hurtin'. Can't see past your own noses, any of you. Meanwhile, the rest of us on the sidelines just watch and wait and hope it all blows over, because we depend on you lot to get your heads out of your arses and save the bloody world. Go figure."
He turned to leave, but Buffy's bitter words stopped him. "And what about you, Spike? You haven't said anything about how sucky your life is."
"What are you talkin' about, luv?" he asked softly. "I made my choices and I live with them. End of story."
She watched him as he left, then watched from above as he moved to an empty pool table, only to be harrassed by a couple college kids. She couldn't hear what they were saying, but she knew it wasn't very nice by the looks on their faces and the set of the vampire's jaw. But he responded easily, and soon they were playing a game that Spike would win. For her. Damn him.
He was so alive, she realized. More than anyone she'd ever known, he glowed with life and seemed to pass it on to any who would drink from him. He would give it all to her, for her. He would breathe it into Dawn, into Tara, to make their lives a little more bearable. To allow them to know someone loved them. And she had to wonder how someone who was supposedly dead could be so alive, so brilliant and shiny with it. It made her love him. And it made her hate him.
~~~~~
Buffy came into the house and shut the door behind her, feeling as though the police were already on her heels. She had killed a girl tonight, and instead of doing something about it she had run. She, the Slayer, had freaked out. Well, to be completely honest, she'd frozen, and then she'd freaked, but still.
"Buffy?" His voice came from the shadows, from the kitchen, and he looked at her with nothing but concern in his eyes. "Is everything alright?"
"No," she whispered. She didn't know why she was telling him, except she didn't know who else to tell. "There was a girl in the woods. And demons. I don't-time went all funny, and I killed her, Spike. I killed the girl."
He was by her side in an instant, faster than anyone had any right to be on crutches. "Are you sure?"
"Yes," she replied. "I mean, I know she was dead, but I thought-I thought she was a demon and I hit her. Spike, I didn't mean to."
"Shh," he soothed, running one hand over her braided hair. "It was an accident. You wouldn't hurt anyone like that. Did anybody see you?"
She shook her head. "I don't think so. I panicked."
"Right, then." He put a hand to her chin and forced her to look him in the eye. "Listen to me, Slayer. You never left the house tonight, hear me? There's nothin' to connect you to the body, nothin' at all. They'll find her, and they'll scratch their heads and that will be the end of it."
"But I killed her," she protested.
"And you didn't mean it," he said furiously. "It was an accident, Buffy. There's nothin' you can do about it now." His voice softened. "Go upstairs, crawl in your nice warm bed, and go to sleep. Everything will be fine."
She wanted to believe him, she really did. But after an alarming nightmare where the dead girl and Spike kept changing places, she knew she needed to tell someone, tell the police, do the right thing. Of course, she would do the right thing. She was the Slayer, after all.
She had wanted to tell Dawn, but had chickened out at the last minute. Spike and Tara would take care of her, she knew. They would tell her what she needed to know. She'd leave a note for Spike. But Spike hadn't gone to bed. What she hadn't figured on was Spike's dogged persistance or the fact that he seemed to know her so well. "Where are you going, Buffy?"
He stood, facing her in the living room as she came down the stairs, apparently waiting for her to try something just like she was doing right at that moment. "I need to tell someone. I'm going to the police."
"And what are you going to tell them, luv?" he demanded. "That you were out for a walk when three demons attacked you and you accidentally killed the girl by mistake?"
"Let me go, Spike," she said, anger and fear and horrible guilt washing over her in great waves.
"No," he replied. "I love you, Buffy. I won't let you do this. You're throwin' your life away for nothin'. There's nothin' to tie you to the girl, if no one saw you. Don't do this."
"I have to," she spat back. "How can you understand? You're a vampire, vampires kill people. I'm the Slayer. I'm supposed to save them, and I killed her! I killed her!" Her agonized words broke his heart, and he reached for her, only to have her back away from him.
"Buffy, luv, please don't do this. It won't do anyone any good."
"I have to." She turned her back on him, went to walk out the door, and he grabbed her arm.
"I can't let you," he replied. "I won't let you." She pulled her arm out of his grasp and kept walking, but he just grabbed onto her again, tighter this time. "No, Buffy."
Angry, half-blinded by tears, she pulled back her fist and hit him, sending him crashing to the floor, his crutches scattered. She'd knocked him a good one; the red mark under his eye would shape up into a nice shiner. But it was his sprawled form that stopped her in her tracks. He looked up at her, half-dazed from the blow. "That's right, luv," he whispered. "Put it all on me."
"No," she muttered. "No, I can't." She stared at him, looking up when she heard her name.
"Buffy?" Dawn and Tara stood on the stairs, and the four of them froze, a tableau of grief and confusion and anger. In that moment, Buffy suddenly realized that she couldn't do it. She couldn't go through with it. Not tonight, anyway. Tomorrow, in the morning, she might have to do something (what she didn't know), but for the moment she couldn't.
"Dawn," she said quietly. "Go get some ice, please. Tara, help me with him." She couldn't look him in the eye as she helped the witch collect his crutches and get him standing again. But she helped him over to the couch, and told him in no uncertain terms to lie down, placing the ice-pack Dawn brought gently on his face.
Then, with much hesitation she told her sister and Tara what had happened earlier. Dawn was both devastated and angry that Buffy would have left her, which the Slayer could understand completely. But Tara was thoughtful.
"You said time went funny for you?" she asked.
Buffy nodded. "I don't know what happened. It almost felt as though I were speeding up and then slowing down. I couldn't figure out the sequence of things at all."
"Are you sure you killed her then?" she asked gently.
Buffy froze. All she could think about was spinning around and knocking the girl down the hill, but she wasn't even sure about that, about when it had happened. "I don't know," she admitted.
"Did you know her?" Spike asked from under his ice-pack. "Any chance of that? Because no self-respectin' girl is gonna be out that time of night in that area of town."
There was a long moment of silence as Buffy tried to remember. "There was something familiar about her, but I-I can't be sure. I mean, it was so fast, and-"
"Enough." Spike pulled the ice away from his face and sat up slowly. "So there was somethin' funny goin' on, which means you don't know anything for sure." His face was stern and set, something she didn't think she'd ever seen on him before. It made him look older somehow. "Seems to me we wait. Papers'll have somethin' about it soon enough. Or you can get Red to hack into the police files for you, if that's what you need. In any case, no point in turnin' yourself in for a crime you're not even sure you committed."
The Slayer hesitated, and then admitted, "You're right. I was just-"
"In shock," he said gently. "You were in shock, an' you were scared. Nothin' to be ashamed of, pet." Spike looked at the other two. "You lot should get to bed too. It'll be fine." He shared a look with Tara, who took the hint and started to herd Dawn up the stairs.
When they were gone, Buffy turned to him. "I'm sorry."
"Don't be," he said shortly. "You know I'd do anythin' for you."
She shook her head. "No, Spike. Don't make light of this. I'm sorry. I shouldn't have hit you."
Seeing how serious she was about it sobered him. "It's alright, Buffy. No harm done."
"You're going to have a black eye."
"It'll mend." He reached up to brush her hair back from her face. "You should try to sleep."
She shook her head, took his hand. "I had this dream-I know it's stupid, and I know you probably don't want to, but will you stay with me tonight?"
"If it'll help you sleep," he replied. And then he suddenly pulled her into his arms, holding her tightly. She stiffened and froze, but then relaxed against him, shivering. He sighed. "I can't carry you upstairs, pet," he murmured. "You're going to have to walk."
"Forget upstairs," she mumbled against his shirt. "Just hold me here, Spike. Now."
~~~~~
He was still sleeping the next morning when she rose to join Dawn and Tara in the kitchen. Tara held the paper out to her apologetically. "It looks like they found her body," she said.
Buffy read the short article. Dead girls weren't as big of news in Sunnydale as they probably should be. She scanned it quickly and then frowned as she read the name. "Katrina Silvers?"
"You know her, Buffy?" Dawn asked from over her cereal bowl. She hadn't completely forgiven her sister for almost leaving the night before, or for hitting Spike as she had, but she was beginning to soften. Her sister hadn't left, in the end, and that counted for something.
The Slayer shook her head. "Not exactly, but I know who she is."
"Who, luv?" Spike asked, swinging himself into the kitchen, looking rather rumpled.
"The girl from last night," she explained. "She was Warren's girlfriend. You know, the guy that made the girlfriend 'bot."
Spike had the grace to look ashamed of himself at the reminder of Warren and his robots. "Why would he need a 'bot if he had a girlfriend already?" he asked, puzzled.
Buffy shrugged. "He made her before he met this girl. Though I don't think she stayed around for long after she found out about it." Snarling suddenly, she slammed the newspaper down on the counter. "That bastard. I know he had something to do with it. And I would bet money he and his nerd friends had something to do with me finding her."
"What are you going to do?" Spike asked.
She rubbed her hand over her face. "First I'm going to get cleaned up, and then we'll go to the Magic Box. I need to find out what kind of demons those were, how he got me all turned around. And then, when I get my hands on him, I'm going to kick his ass." She turned a considering eye on Spike. "Meanwhile, you need to get something to eat and get some sleep. You look like you need both."
He gave her a wry look, touching his black eye gently. "I look that bad, eh, luv?"
Buffy marvelled at the fact that she'd knocked him across the room and he still could look at her like that. "You've looked better," she admitted quietly. Forgetting that Dawn and Tara were still in the room, she gently touched his face, the unbruised portion. "Thanks, for last night. I probably would have done something fairly stupid."
He ducked his head, not quite meeting her eyes. "You would have figured it out, Slayer. You always do."
"Still," she replied, moving forward to kiss him on the lips, much as she had done after he'd tangled with Glory. "You're a pretty decent guy, Spike."
He watched her as she left the room, ignoring Tara and Dawn's knowing looks. He probably should have reminded her that he was evil, but somehow he couldn't find it in his unbeating heart. At this point, he'd settle for being decent.
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