Chapter Text
Sometimes it felt like her life was a series of snapshots. As if someone was following her around with a camera, taking a picture the instant her life changed, and would open up a scrapbook every so often to show her.
“Here’s the moment where you were Called. Here’s that time Angel lost his soul. Oh, and remember when you found your mom dead on the couch?”
The snapshots were all there in her mind. There’d be a flash of light, an image she couldn’t forget, and then everything was different.
But today… today felt like its own collection of snapshots. Starting with the moment Tara had reached out to Dawn, babbling about green light and energy, and Glory had just smirked at Buffy because she knew .
Snap. Flash.
They had run. Buffy had taken Dawn and just run , reeling at the miracle that Glory had been hit by a truck when she’d pursued them, and hadn’t come after them since.
Snap.
Sunnydale wasn’t safe for Dawn anymore. It probably never had been, but…
Flash.
She needed to get out. Hell, maybe they all needed to. Maybe Glory wasn’t an opponent that could be defeated. Maybe she was just something you ran away from.
Snap…
But all of them leaving would be a noticeable thing. Where could they even go? No, it couldn’t be all of them. Someone needed to stay and fight. And if anyone was staying, Buffy needed to stay to protect them.
Flash…
Somehow Buffy found herself standing in the middle of Spike’s crypt, the red slashes across his face even angrier as he frowned, eyes darting between her and the girl standing behind her. Dawn had tears running down her cheeks and a duffel bag slung over one shoulder that she was clinging tightly to.
And Buffy’s life felt like it was changing again and again with every word that fell out of her mouth. Pleading with Spike, begging him to take Dawn away… and to not look back, not for a second. To take care of her, and never return, unless they heard directly from Buffy that it was safe to do so.
“Please, Spike,” Buffy heard herself saying, in a voice more tired and broken than she’d ever felt. “I’m counting on you… to protect her.”
Dawn sniffled behind her, but Spike’s eyes stayed firmly fixed on her, frowning even more deeply as he seemed to stare into her very soul. His thumb came up to her cheek, wiping away a tear she wasn’t even aware she’d shed. The motion was idle, like he wasn’t even thinking about it. He just… did it.
And she knew then, if she’d been doubting herself before, that she’d made the right choice in asking him.
Finally he spoke, so quietly she almost missed it. “Til the end of the world, Slayer,” he said. “Til the end of the world.”
Snap, flash as Buffy turned and threw her arms around her little sister. Dawn held her in a death grip and sobbed into her arms, but not once did she beg Buffy not to send her away.
Even she knew she would be safer with a vampire. Buffy had failed in her duty to protect her, and all she could do now was ensure that Dawn would be off with someone who would do a better job of it.
“Be good, sweetie,” she whispered, kissing the top of Dawn’s head over and over. “I love you so much, Dawnie. I will always love you. But you have to be strong. Be brave, live… for me.”
“I love you, Buffy,” the girl wept, and that seemed all she could manage to say, until Buffy carefully pried her arms away.
Spike had miraculously procured his own duffel bag from somewhere, in another snapshot that Buffy almost didn’t have time to note. “Ready, then?” he asked gruffly. “Car’s parked behind the cemetery, so we’ll have to make a break for it.”
Dawn nodded, scrubbing the tears off her cheeks, and she moved to stand by the door. Spike started walking by Buffy without a word, without a glance… and in a snapshot, she reached out and grabbed his arm.
He stilled, frozen in time by the motion, and only tilted his head slightly to face her.
And that was the longest moment of the day. An image so burned in her memory that she was sure she would carry it with her until she died. His face, still marked up from the last time he’d stuck his neck out for her sister, looking at her with a thousand emotions running through his eyes. Yet somehow looking like he’d never seen her before.
And everything felt too big, too heavy, too much to fit into any cheap and meaningless words. She wanted to kiss him again; almost burned with the ache of it, just like she had the last time he’d saved Dawn. But even that felt like nothing, like a treat for being a good doggie and listening to her orders.
It wouldn’t be fair, anyway. She would likely die in the next few days, and never see him again.
But even as she stood there, the leather of his sleeve creaking as she gripped it tightly in her fingers, he suddenly lifted his free hand and touched the side of her head. “You needn’t say anythin’,” he murmured. “No harm will come to her, Slayer. Told you I’d die before that happened.”
She shook her head, trying to make him understand what even she herself could not.
“I know you’ll never love me,” Spike said. “Probably nothing I could even do to change that. But you… your trust, Buffy, it’s more than I ever… I’m honored to have it.” He gave her a weak smile, lighting something up inside her that had long been dormant. “You owe me nothing. Nothing at all.”
He dropped a kiss on the top of her head, and with a curt word to Dawn and a swirling of fabric as he covered his head, they raced across the sunlit cemetery, a whirlwind of bright colors and black leather, before they were gone.
Dawn and Spike, both gone. Both out of her life, probably forever.
And it was that image that snapped and flashed so bright and painfully in her mind that her legs wobbled, and she toppled to the ground, and was claimed by a sweet and blessed oblivion.