What He Left For Me

A/N: Post-Chosen, so spoilery for that episode. Just a little Buffy POV one-shot.

Dedicated to Sass, who makes me love Spike even more.

*****

I build his memorial every night.

            It's not much. Nothing tangible. No gravestone, though I guess there's probably one with William's name on it back in England, old and weather-beaten, the name barely legible.  But that's William. It was Spike who died last month, and Spike is the name I call each time I add another tribute to his memory.

            Each vampire I dust is blessed with his name. Every demon, every fight… it was he who gave me the fight back, after all. Not only the night he held me until I was strong again, though that figures in. This world, where demons still walk… he gave me this, gave me back what I am sworn to protect. And so I do, taking his words with me in every step, every battle.

            It's not some noble gesture. It's not a hair shirt; I'm done with the martyr phase, thank god. And no one else knows. Oh, they know what Spike did. I told them. They called it heroic, through tight-lipped mouths, and they couldn't meet my eyes for days afterwards. They think Spike did it for me, I guess, but he didn't. Not really. Not like the soul. He loved me and he would have done it for me but this… it was bigger. It was for himself.

            So, what can I say for him? I don't have words to lay over some bodiless grave, nothing to etch onto a tombstone. William the Bloody, a.k.a. Spike. Born a hell of a long time ago; Died a hell of a long time ago. Died again because he was a Champion. Beloved…

            Beloved. Because he knew, that bastard, he knew I was not lying when I told him I love him. He knew me, always, knew how to read my heart like it was written just for him. And that day, in the Hellmouth… it was. For him. And he knew it. He had to have known it. I can't… I can't believe anything else. Anything else… hurts too much.

            I'm pissed at him for that. Dumb, shirty jerk, stealing my big confession scene and making it his. You'd think maybe I could be more generous about it- I mean, he did die then- but after all that time, all the insanity that went on between us, both good and bad, he couldn't just let me give all I had to give him right then. He couldn't let me put that much of myself into him, knowing he wasn't going to be there.

            Bastard. Shirty bloody bastard.

            I've found myself using his slang since he died. Giles laughs at me- I don't think I use the British right- but he's been laughing at my slang all along, so that's sorta comforting. Still haven't called anyone pet or love yet. Nibblet is out of the question, Dawn would kill me. She scowls every time I say bugger but I've caught her using it too, when she's stuck on a translation or can't find the right Aramaic symbol. My sister, the Watcher. Beats being the Key, I guess.

            Anya has no grave either. Maybe I should invite Xander out on patrol with me sometime. He mostly stays back at whatever hotel we've booked for the night, channel-flipping with the younger Slayers or playing cards with Dawn. Giles is teaching him chess, which blows my mind. Xander, playing chess. Next thing you know, he'll be taking up with Dawn in the Watchery stuff. I guess we all grieve in our own ways and chess is better than booze… but patrolling might be good for him. Kicking ass is comfort food and that's not just a Slayer thing.

            Xander doesn't speak of Anya. I don't speak of Spike. It's a thing. Not sure that it's a good one, but it seems to work so far. Keeps harmony in the little hotel rooms at any rate and when things get too stuffy, when his name bats inside me like something living needing to flee, I calmly pack my stakes and head for the nearest, anonymous cemetery, where the word Spike hisses through the air with my stake and strikes out hearts into dust.

            My heart isn't doing so well either.

            Maybe a monument would help. Just to have someplace to go where I could talk to him without feeling crazy… but besides the whole 'what to put on the stone' issue, we're never in one place longer than it takes to make sure the Slayer-of-the-Day is settled with her new powers. And anyway, he's not in the ground. Not just that there was nothing to bury of him but… the ground could never contain Spike. Not what he is, what he was… you can't bury life like that. I hold it inside me, cling to it on the bad days and fight it on the others, but it's huge and spiraling and I'm starting to think that it's too alive for even me to keep.

            And so, I patrol. I don't look for him behind me as I used to but I know he's there, all the same. I give over the heroics of my slaying to his memory and build his monument nightly.  It's all I have to give him now and he'll take it, by god, even if he wouldn't take my love at the end. He'll take this because he has no choice now. It's all up to me and I give it to him for the both of us, for what we created between us and how that creation, that love, saved the world.

            No, not the love. The soul. And Spike's choice to use it…. Spike saved the world. I can't own any part of that. It was his gift to himself; redemption and a salve to the pain his soul brought.

            But he'll take my own heroics all the same. He gets the credit. I can't paint him a beautiful picture or write a poem. I can't even give him a eulogy, not aloud. So I kill. It's what I do.

            His memorial grows nightly. And I move on, town to town, spreading the goodness he left behind.