Fic: Chapters
Title: Chapters
Creator: drizzlydaze
Rating: PG
Setting: Post-Chosen
Word count: 506
Prompt: What is placed in the fire has a valuable role to play but leaves nothing behind when it's gone.
A/N: I’ll probably make this into a reunion verse…?
Great love is wild and passionate and dangerous. It burns and consumes.
There is nothing left.
No body. No dust. No keepsakes.
Oh, except for that giant sinkhole where Sunnydale should be. Nice little keepsake for brutal deaths and unfortunate girls. And Anya. And Spike.
Is it so wrong that her thoughts lay the most with Spike? That after the mourning for everything she could have prevented, for the girls she should have saved, for Anya who was ever learning and ever human, her remembrances turned to Spike and could not return? She has long learnt that loss isn’t a stage. It’s an ache.
Everyone has begun to move on, away from Sunnydale, from The First, and onto the new generation of Slayers. There is work to be done, more girls to be found, more still to train. There’s lots to do.
But sometimes she stands still, stops working for a moment. Sometimes she stands with Xander and they go to where their minds never leave.
They never blink back tears because the tears never come. Those are reserved for lonely nights, dark rooms, and a lot of staring at the ceiling. So thanklessly he did die with his soul burning him from inside out.
His favourite colour is red, because black’s not a colour and he couldn’t choose black, that would be cheating. His human self was a prat and could she stop probing him about what he was like before because he’s not like that anymore and no, he’s not trying to make her leave. He likes human food even though it tastes all twisty now, which is why spicy is the best flavour to vamp taste buds. Are we having a conversation? Do you even like me?
“I love you.”
“No, you don’t. But thanks for saying it.”
So this is just another chapter in Buffy’s life, isn’t it? Endings being beginnings and all. It doesn’t feel like much of a beginning. Spike-chapter closed-no, it doesn’t feel much like closure either. It feels grey and long. And only Xander can understand what it’s like to lag behind in the sinkhole, whether with Anya or Spike, to know the bare promise of a future snuffed out like a flame.
But as time passes, she understands.
Her realization only comes in dribs and drabs, bits and pieces, because she’s trying to be stuck in the past. She has to make sure she can’t forget Spike, because that’s what he deserves.
She’s wrong, of course. He deserves what he gave her. He deserves... he deserves so damn much he’s never going to get, so she’s going to live now.
I want the fire back.
Her future isn’t grey. He made sure of it.
And he’s dust now. She may not have seen it, but he is. He’s burnt up. He’s cinders.
It was another chapter in her life. And when she mourned? She hadn’t let it end. She hadn’t left Sunnydale behind yet.
But another chapter starts now, she knows and decides.
Her doorbell rings.