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There was a time when Spike would have killed the Slayer in a heartbeat.
That time was long gone.
Now he saw her broken body and he wept.
It didn’t matter that he didn’t have a soul. William the Bloody, The Scourge of Europe, the demon, cried.
He almost couldn’t see through his tears, but he could smell the death. She was just a few feet away from him.
The Scoobies had already moved closer to her remains; they wept too.
Dawn, with slashed wrists, came running to the lifeless form and hugged it. Others gathered nearby, hugging each other, feeling her loss already soaking into their souls. He was certain; he could smell their tears, he could sense the death all around them. He could see her broken body on the ground. Before, he would have cheered, he would have danced on her grave, he would have had his one good day. But everything had changed. Everything was different. From the moment he knew he loved her, and probably some time before that if he could trust Dru. She had told him, but he didn’t know at that time. Now he knew everything and more, and the knowledge was sharper than razors. The pain was raw and cutting into his unbeating heart. He shouldn’t have told her about the death wish.
Was it his fault? Did she want to die in the end? No, he told himself. She still had ties to this world—her sister, her friends, even her watcher. He tried to get on his feet and shuffle on a broken leg close to her. He limped closer. The others were too deep in shock to say anything when he dropped to his knees next to Buffy’s.
Next to her lifeless body. He saw so many corpses. Some looked still alive, while others no longer resembled humans.
She looked at peace. Done. Finished.
And he hated it, hated it so much. She still had so much to live for. It hit him how young she was. Not for a Slayer, but as a girl. She was so young.
Dawn, still holding sister's lifeless form close, didn’t notice Spike at all. There was so much emotion in his heart, so much pain and anger. He thought he would burst. She was gone. Really gone.
Why was he still here? He should have been gone too; he always knew he would go down fighting. Spike tentatively reached his hand to touch Buffy’s. At that moment, Dawn noticed him and their eyes met. Blood was in the air—his, Dawn’s, and the Slayer’s. She had saved them all. Even with Dawn watching, he clasped Buffy’s hand. The Scoobies be damned if they wanted to stop him.
“I wish…” he started to say in a broken voice.
In that moment, Dawn grabbed his hand, the one that was holding the Slayer’s. Her eyes were glowing green. Time stopped and he felt the hair on his body stand up. Tears in Dawn’s eyes started to drop, not down but up. He couldn’t tear his eyes from hers. Magic.
“Dawn…” he managed, but his voice broke.
She squeezed his hand harder and said three words that would burn into his brain as the law of the world.
“Keep her alive,” Dawn said in a voice that sounded like hers and also didn’t. But the look in her glowing eyes was pure pain, pure pain as a sister who had lost her family, her only other relative that mattered, her only sister.
Then there was darkness and Spike stopped existing.
Buffy was in a library training. Giles was away at some clearing doing watchery stuff and she had a moment to herself.
“What am I gonna do? It’s not like I can go to college and leave the Hellmouth behind. Well, maybe with Faith in Sunnydale it would really work,” she said to herself, but it didn’t feel right somehow.
Still, she finally had something to look forward to and she could get this Slayer stuff done, at least for a while. But now that Angel was back in the land of the living, so to speak, she wanted to be here for him.
“Maybe if I told him I could leave for college, he would look at me with his beautiful brown eyes and beg me to stay. Yeah right, this is so stupid. I am so stupid,” she muttered to herself. She grabbed a jump rope and started training harder.
Cordelia, Xander, Willow, and Oz had a double date today, and she was glad for them, but boy, she was bitter about life right now. Finally, something good happened that would make her a normal girl she always wanted to be, but at the same time, it happened at the worst possible time.
“Life sucks!” Buffy gritted her teeth as she jumped harder.
Spike woke up with a scream. He frantically looked around and saw the inside of a very unkempt car. He blinked several times; he was inside a very familiar car.
Is this my Desoto?! He looked around doubtfully. I haven’t kept this much stuff in here since…
“Since when Dru broke up with me,” Spike muttered. There were really dozens of empty booze bottles. Brown paper bags were everywhere, a few empty fast food wrappers too. And bloodstains here and there.
“What the bleeding hell is this?” He started to get up but saw there was still light outside, and then he finally noticed terrible pain in his hand. Spike stared at the terrible burns on it. From the sun. It hit him then.
No, I remember this. This already happened. I was able to run to the Desoto after I woke up with a burning hand in the Crawford manor after I came back to Sunnydale. I came back because Dru dumped me. Because of… Because of Buffy. His eyes started to water. But Buffy was gone. Why would he be here? His eyes snapped to his hand again.
“This already happened,” he repeated, his head spinning. He tried to open and close his palm. It hurt, but not as much as his heart hurt.
“Buffy is dead, but…” He shook his head, confused.
“If Buffy was dead, what am I doing here? The last thing I remember is looking at Dawn…”
“Keep her alive!” Spike had to close his eyes as a sharp pain ran through him.
“Dawn, what did you do?” He remembered her eyes, glowing green, his hand holding Buffy’s, still warm. All their blood merging together. Dawn’s, Buffy’s, and his.
“This cannot be real! No, I was holding her and looked at Dawn and then…” Spike looked around, taking in the interior of his car again. He touched the seats, the ceiling. His left hand throbbed with pain. His head stopped spinning.
“Yes, this is my car. Damn it, did she really send me back? Back to when Buffy was still alive?!”
“Buffy. Alive.” A whisper like a prayer left his lips.
Salty drops flowed down his cheeks and Spike tasted them when he spoke next. “I can prevent it, I can keep her alive!” As his mind set on this singular goal, he smiled. It was not a nice smile.
“I will tear everything apart, blow the Mayor to bits, shred Adam to smithereens. I will bring hell gods to their knees, just to keep her alive!”
“I will make sure she survives!” He growled as his face shifted. “No, I will make sure she lives as well,” he swore, yellow eyes glinting dangerously in the darsness of the car, a plan already forming in his mind.