No Other End of the World

She wants to hold him close.

A hundred years wouldn’t be enough time for all the words still left unsaid.

She wants to dance with him: To make love with feeling and warmth.

She wants to wake up in his arms as she did last night… and the night before.

Comfortable. Connected. Close.

She wants to be close to him for a lifetime.

So much wasted time between them.

The world may end tomorrow and she may lose it all. All she can think of is him.

She notices the dust gathering on the edge of the stairs. Amazing how these stairs have been traversed a hundred times a day all year long and yet the dust still gathers. She can’t remember the last time she swept or mopped or really cleaned. Her mother would have kept everything neat and clean, in the midst of invading girls and impending apocalypse, but her mother wasn’t there. And even her mother hadn’t kept the basement spotless.

He's sitting on his cot, the amulet held up in front of him, his eyes locked on it, looking through it. She steps down and as she stands at the bottom of the stairs he rises and they stand-together, yet apart. She raises her eyes to meet his.

She wants to dance with him: All the steps she’d never learned: The new ones they could dance together.

She wants to memorize his body: To take the time to learn him, as she didn’t last year.

She needs to understand him as much as he understands her.

All the time in the world would not be enough and yet all they may have is tonight.

He doesn’t move and she can’t either. So much between them left unsaid. A thousand miles and more, and yet tonight, here, she feels so close to him. They stand across the room from each other and yet she can’t feel the distance.

Not anymore.

She’s the one who finally breaks the silence, the self-imposed stillness they’re both reacting to.

She steps forward.

They meet in the middle of the room, and she reaches out her hand, taking the amulet from him and holding it up to the light.

‘Are you certain? You don’t have to wear it.’

‘Sure I do,’ his voice is soft, but firm, and she knows there is no room for denial as he reaches out and takes the amulet back from her.

She feels her breath catch in her throat and she reaches up her hand to touch his face, in this moment so proud of this man who stands before her offering her everything to make the world a better place. His eyes soften and she can see light behind the deep blue as he smiles. It is, perhaps, ironic, that a creature of darkness, of the night, can so bring light to her heart.

His hand reaches up and closes over hers and they smile at each other.

‘Faith’s still upstairs, I take it,’ he asks gently, a hint of a smile in his voice.

‘She offered my room back,’ she says. ‘I told her she needed the rest and that she should keep it.’

Is that surprise in his eyes? But he moves aside and they walk to the cot together. She slips off her jacket, and lays it over the back of a nearby chair before sitting down beside him. He touches her shoulder tentatively and she melts into him.

This is home.

This is where she’s always belonged.

All those years he’s loved her, and she couldn’t find it in her heart to love him back. Despite her attraction to him, she couldn’t believe that something without a soul, something dark and dangerous and immoral could truly love her, and yet he did. Only one thing has changed.

There is no pressure. No push for her to love him back. No requests. He has welcomed her with open arms, offered himself to her, and expected nothing in return.

It’s strange.

As he has let go, she’s realized that she does not want him to. That she needs him in her life to support her, believe in her, give her the strength she needs to face each new day refreshed and ready for the challenges of being a Slayer: being Chosen: being the One. And she realizes that despite her protests to the contrary, when he says those words she finds herself wanting to be the One: His One.

How can he love her so completely? And yet she trusts his love far more than she trusts the love of others because he’s seen her soul, the deepest, darkest parts of it. He knows her better than she knows herself, and he still believes in her.

She shifts in his arms and turns to lay her head on his chest.

She wants to apologize for all those times she hurt him indescribably, but the words won’t come, and even if they would, she doesn’t want to speak them tonight. They are words for another time, when there is time.

He shifts slightly, wrapping his arm around her shoulder and they lay quietly. His chest moves up and down under her cheek. Always breathing. It’s so silly, and yet, she can’t help but notice how he always does, as if by breathing he’s just that much more human. She draws a breath of her own and lets it out, attempting to release with it all of the tension, nervous energy, fear that she has in her heart.

She has told them they can win. But despite her brave words to Spike last night; to the potential—almost slayers—this morning; to Giles, Faith, and the Scoobies before that, there’s a part of her that fears she’s being too confident. It’s dependent so much upon timing and if the timing isn’t right, if the girls can’t be called, than Angel had better have his second front ready.

She moves her fingers lightly over Spike’s chest, feeling the strength that’s contained within the muscles under her touch. She’s fought all year for the man contained within this frame, the man who must constantly struggle with the demon vying for control. She’s defended him, supported him, rescued him, and yet tomorrow he will walk into the mouth of hell, face to face with the evil he’s fought over the past year and he will have to stand on his own.

She has every faith that he will immerge a champion.

Whatever the others may say or believe, Spike has that strength of character and soul that she once thought only one vampire would ever carry. Perhaps it runs in the family, she thinks ironically, wondering if that means someday there is hope for the dark beauty who was the owner of Spike’s heart for so long.

‘We’ll make it through, Buffy,’ he says softly, rubbing his fingers across the bare skin of her shoulder, causing a spread of warmth and comfort across her soul. ‘Tomorrow, this time, the First will be finished. They’ll be a helluva lot of Slayers out there and the Vampire population should be a bit unnerved.’

His voice is comforting, emerging low and rumbly from his chest. He falls quiet, his fingers keeping their light movement across her skin and she marvels that they can lay like this: together in such a peaceful moment after all the roads they’ve traveled.

‘Certainly should cut down on the population of the undead,’ Buffy says lightly. ‘Ratios should definitely become more favourable, for the side of light, anyway.’ She picks a piece of lint from the dark t-shirt and drops it onto the floor before sighing.

‘It means a good deal of work, though. If this succeeds and we make it through the First’s plans and the Slayers are activated, that means they’ll be girls everywhere. Anyone who might have been a Slayer whether too old to be called or too young to be a potential will have Slayer strength. But they won’t have Slayer skills. We’ll have to find them, explain everything to them somehow.’

‘And you will,’ he responds. ‘It’s what you and Giles have been doing all year. Gathering up Potential Slayers from all over the world. The Coven can help you, possibly even Red will be able to, and you’ll pull them all together. And you, and Faith, and Giles, the whole lot of you can train them. You’ll have a bleeding Hogwarts set up in no time,’ he pauses then adds, a smile to his lips. ‘Think I’m dark and mysterious enough to be potions master?’

She giggles, for all her doubts and worries suddenly absolutely certain that her plan will work: that they’ll pull through this.

‘I’m leaning towards the defense against the dark arts position myself,’ she says. ‘Since when do you know anything about potions?’

She looks up and their eyes meet and his eyes are smiling and there is a comfort there she hasn’t felt since she was pulled out of heaven. Could it have been like this last year had she not been so fucked up? Or would it have been possible without his soul? Could they have truly had this peace and love without the horrible year that spurred them both to see the darkest places they could go and realize their need to strive for something better?

‘Spike, I—’

He glances at her and she falters. Her words stuck suddenly in her throat. She remembers what she told him in the doorway before she walked out to find the tomb and she remembers what he replied.

‘Let’s go be heroes’.

She’s uncertain that this is the time for deep discussions, for hopes, for dreams, for anything other than battle plans and strategy. But she’s tried battle plans and strategy, and without hopes, dreams, and love those plans are worthless words thrown out into the atmosphere to lead people into war and death. She doesn’t want to think about the people who may die tomorrow, the Potentials, Xander, Dawn, Spike. She wants to hold onto the dreams and hopes and pray that there is still time for those.

She knows now that Angel is wrong. He assumed she could not love because she was a Slayer, but because she is a Slayer she must love. She must love this world or she will never be able to save it and to love the world she must love her world and her world begins with those nearest to her: Dawn, Giles, Willow, every one of the potentials, even Rona. And Spike.

Terrified.

She understands now what he meant. More frightening than the battle tomorrow, the prospect of running a real life Hogwarts, or facing down a raging pit of Turrok Hans, is the idea of loving Spike. Not because he was a vampire, or because he was once evil, but because if she loves him, she must accept his confidence, his love, and the image of herself that she sees reflected in his eyes and his soul. It is light and it’s brilliant and it burns so brightly and to feel it, truly feel it, she must bare her heart to him as he has done to her a hundred times.

He still stares at her, his brows drawing together in concern, and his eyes holding a question.

‘What I said, the other night, before I left for the to find the tomb, about maybe after everything is finished,’ she begins, trying to find the words to say what’s in her heart, but his head begins to shake and she stops.

‘No,’ he says quietly. ‘Tell me after. Whatever it is, tell me after we pull this through. When we’re standing on the other side of the apocalypse.’

She swallows, and he smiles at her.

‘Cause we’ll be there, Buffy. We’re gonna win this,’ and he reaches his hand over and touches her cheek gently.

She lets out her breath, in a way relieved that she doesn’t have to try to find the words and yet frightened that there will never be time. Frightened once again that this will be the only time they have and that they’ll never know all the things she would have said. He smiles at her, that half smile that sets her heart spinning and she knows that he can feel that, and she smiles back. He can feel that. Her heart is telling him tonight those words she will speak to him on the other side of the apocalypse.

She relaxes into his arms, and he tightens his grasp. She feels his lips brush her forehead and she squeezes his hand to show him that she doesn’t mind. They fall into a comfortable silence that will be periodically broken by bits and pieces of conversations for after all, who could sleep tonight?

And if this is the end, if this is all the time they have, she would have it end no other way.