PAIRING : Buffy/Spike

RATING : R/NC17

SPOILERS : season 6

WARNING: Character death

DISCLAIMER : I do not own these characters.

I waited for years for the feeling to return to my limbs.

Those first few hours, days, weeks… Every day I would lay in bed, surveying my body, waiting to feel again.

I thought perhaps my body just needed to get used to the air again, and once it did, then I would feel. Anything, just feel.

But as the days trotted onward, it became painstakingly clear that I would never feel again.

I kept waiting for my love to return. I kept waiting for the memories to crawl out of their shells and become real, for my love and depression over Angel to come flooding back to me, for my sadness over what I did to Riley to suddenly hit me. I kept waiting for the moment when I would suddenly remember what it felt like to love my mother and grieve again.

But as the first few months of my being back from Heaven passed, I realized that those feelings were gone and the only thing I had was the memory of feeling, the memory of loving. I realized that I would never have any of those feelings again.

So I kept living my stolen life, because all I had left was the duty to live it.

Sifting through my memory, I could say that, primarily, the wait for reality was the reason why I fell through the floor with Spike under me that night. That night he told me I'd come back wrong and I didn't want him to know that I already knew. I don't think I'd completely realized that fact, though. I was still hoping that the next day, I would be me again.

But I was sick of waiting. At least when I was aroused, I was in my body. I could not feel emotions, but I could feel physical things. So Spike and I were physical.

It was difficult to accept at first, and I hurt him by running from him. But the good thing about having no feelings is that it didn't matter to me if I hurt him at all.

Once I realized that he was as good as it was gonna get, that his body in mine was the most I was ever going to feel, he became a drug to me. Instead of taking pills or drinking or shooting up, I went to Spike. I studied his body, his movements, his muscles… we would spar. Although, sparring is not exactly what it was. We'd fight to the death, only in our game, death was the first person that gave in and demanded sex. I died several times as I impaled myself on him.

If only my real death could have felt as good.

When we fought, it was always in the nude. After the first few weeks of denying how good his body felt, it crossed my mind that I had nothing to hide. Once I knew that I was never going to be Buffy again, I never acted like her again. So we fought in the nude and I studied his muscles and how quickly fighting made him hard. I studied how his hard cock would bounce around, thudding against his body as it reached for me. Likewise, I'm sure, he studied how quickly my body started leaking down my legs.

And that's how I spent the first few years after I came back.

I don't know if the gang knew about Spike and I. We told Dawnie. *I* told Dawnie. I decided, after two months of pretending that I didn't want Spike, that I *did* want him. And then I decided that if she and I were going to be living together, in our mother's home, she should know. So I told her everything. I told her how I came back wrong and how I didn't feel a thing for anyone. My friends were like strangers of whom I had memories. My mother was like a woman with whom I'd had pictures taken. I told her that I didn't feel anything but the pull of my blood when I was near her.

And she cried as I told her all this. She cried as I told her that I didn't love her, that I didn't love anyone. That I couldn't.

And I held her as she cried. I held her, feeling like a stone statue, as she cried. It was not the first time in my existence that I would feel like a statue in mint-condition, especially in matters of Dawn. But I did nothing to console her as she cried, because there was nothing I could do. I couldn't even tell her that I cared about her, because I didn't. I didn't want to lie to her. I told her she could leave if she wanted, and that I wouldn't hold it against her. I told her *I* would leave if that's what she wanted. Why should she have been in a broken, loveless house?

I told her that I knew I should love her and I wanted to love her, but it just wasn't there anymore. She told me she'd be okay, if she could just stay with me. She said she wanted her sister, no matter the form or shape or amount of my love.

If I could have felt anything, I probably would have cried when she said that.

It wasn't as if I hated her, because I didn't. I didn't feel anything for her, because I simply didn't *feel*.

So she and I lived in that house. Spike came and went. We slayed and we fought and we protected Dawn.

For years, that was enough. Instead of waiting to live again, I was content waiting to die.

Dawn eventually got married and moved away, had children that I felt nothing for, and lived happily ever after. I was happy that my dispassionate tolerance of her had not skewed her away from finding her own happiness.

Spike and I kept slaying and fighting and fucking. There were nights when we would rip each other apart, when I honestly thought we *would* be the death of each other. And there were nights when he was so achingly gentle and loving, that I wished I could have cried. But the only thing I could offer him was a whimper of his name and a squeeze of his cock.

I never thought twice about what those years meant for him. I never thought about how much it must have killed him to be inside me and never have me look twice at him. I didn't much care, as long as he was there. And he was, my willing slave.

Even when I was forty, he was still by my side, fucking me, kissing me, making his love to me… He never turned away. He never left, just like he promised.

No one could figure out why I lived as long as I did. Perhaps it was because I resigned myself to the fact that my purpose was to kill and fuck. Once I saw that, I could not be stopped. There was no demon stronger than me or smarter than me. I suppose Spike was right about that; I was a creature of the night. I belonged to the night, so I gave myself over to it, after I'd finished waiting.

The last time Spike and I had sex, it was tender and slow, as I was seventy-three at the time. Oddly enough, I had not wrinkled or aged much at all. No one understood that either, but no one could question it, as a slayer had never lived to be that old. I was weak, though. I had not grown to appear older, but my body ached with arthritis and my joints were stiff. I still slayed, although I whimpered the entire night after from the pain in my body.

So that night, he told me that I wasn't going to slay anymore. He said he would do it by himself and I would stay home and rest. Then, he slowly undressed me, covered my body in kisses and slowly made love to me.

I watched him as he entered me over and over, so gently. He always professed his love to me, as if him saying it might make me say it back, but I never did. I hadn't lied to Dawn all those years ago and I wasn't about to lie to him decades later.

But for the first time in fifty years, I really truly wished I *could* have said it. I looked up at him, just as he was about to come, and said, "I wish I could have loved you."

And then I died.

~El Fin~