Summary: AtS Season 5, up to Destiny. A plotless piece of Christmas Spuffy fluff.
Rating: PG-13
Buffy unlocked the door to her father's apartment wearily. She had no idea why he would have chosen to keep a place in L.A. After all, it wasn't like he was ever here, or was ever coming back here, for that matter. That much was obvious at the moment.
She was supposed to be spending Christmas with him. He'd finally gotten in contact with her. After Sunnydale disappeared into a "sinkhole" he'd been worried enough to track her down, and had suggested they spend the holidays together in California. But he'd reneged at the last moment; work was keeping him in Rio de Janeiro. Right.
So, it was supposed to have been just her and Dawn, except that her younger sister got an invitation to spend Christmas in the English countryside with a school friend, and Buffy hadn't the heart to tell her she couldn't have some normalcy. Giles was buried in his work, and they weren't as close as they used to be anyway. Willow was off somewhere with the coven for a mid-winter retreat of some kind. Even Xander had seemed to be able to establish himself in Cleveland with Faith and Robin, working on containing the Hellmouth. And Buffy was on her own.
Well, not really. There had been a reason she'd wanted to visit her father in L.A. that had nothing to do with Hank Summers. He was alive, and she wanted to see him. To make sure it was really real.
Finding out had been an accident, of course. She was quite sure that Angel had meant never to tell her, knowing him. But Fred had emailed Willow to let her know abou their new deal at Wolfram & Hart, and her missive had been filled with all sorts of other details. The bit about Spike had been buried in with a number of other things, but the fact that he'd been a ghost and had recently been recorporealized was fairly clear. More than that, Fred hadn't said.
She'd found out a few weeks ago, but it had taken her a while to come to a decision about what to do with the information. A part of her wanted to just let it go, forget she'd ever heard. It was the part that worried that since he hadn't believed her in the cavern, he wouldn't want to see her now. The part of her that worried that he had changed completely, because death had a tendency to do that to a person.
But that part of her was in the minority. The much larger rest of her had had time to, as she'd told Angel, bake. She'd taken six months to figure out who she was in the larger scheme of things, and she'd come to realize something. It wasn't all about Buffy. Sure, she'd been the Chosen One, who'd stopped the world from ending any number of times, but now there were a number of Chosen Ones, and there were a lot of places in the world where she was just another face in the crowd. And she'd realized something else as well: Spike was one of the few people on the face of the planet who could make her feel special.
For Spike, she wasn't special because she was the Slayer, or because she was someone's ideal of a California girl, or any reason at all, really. She was special because she was Buffy, and he loved her. She hadn't gotten it completely then, when he'd given her that speech, the first night he'd held her. But she got it now. And she realized what an amazing thing it was to have someone who loved you that much.
He'd been right, as usual, down in the cave. He'd said she didn't love him, and she hadn't. Spike had been in her heart, and she had cared for him, but she hadn't loved him. But she had been right too, when she'd said, "Maybe someday," because she'd known that if given half a chance she could have loved him. When he'd sacrificed himself, they had lost that chance.
Now, she wondered if they hadn't gotten it back.
"Angel, don't be stupid about this," Buffy said, exasperated. Angel was being his usual stubborn self, insisting that seeing Spike would not be a good idea. To be honest, she didn't really care at this point.
He sighed, really more of a growl, and said, "Look, Buffy, Spike is trying to adjust to being solid again, and I'm not sure that seeing you would do him any good."
Buffy raised her eyebrows. She might be blonde, but she hadn't been born yesterday. "Let's pretend, just for a minute that you do care about Spike's well-being. And then let me take the opportunity to tell you I don't care. I need to see him, Angel. There were things we said, things we didn't get a chance to say. I think I should at least have a chance at closure."
The look he gave her told her he was giving up. (As if he'd ever had a chance at winning this argument.) "As long as you know that there's some issues with Spike being solid again. There's a prophecy, and..." he trailed off.
The Slayer rolled her eyes. "Right. Another prophecy. I'm sure it's fascinating, but all I really need is directions to Spike, and I'll be out of your hair."
Which was really what Angel was worried about. There had been something in her eyes after they'd kissed, after he'd given her the amulet, when he'd asked about Spike. She'd professed not to love him, but he wasn't so sure that was the case. The kiss itself had been more good-bye than hello. That was what had prompted him to ask, really. And yet, hadn't they both moved on? Wasn't that what he'd told Cordelia after he'd come back from his summer away? Just because Buffy had been brought back from the dead, didn't make the fact that he'd moved forward go away.
It didn't thrill him that the person she might be moving onto was Spike.
Buffy gave him one of her patented, "I'm waiting" looks, and he sighed. He could only hope that this would be their own version of moving on, and after seeing him, she would realize that there were greener pastures. Much greener pastures. "As far as I know, he's still in the building," Angel admitted reluctantly, and told her where to find her vampire.
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