Disclaimer: Buffy the Vampire Slayer and all respective characters are property of Joss Whedon. I'm just borrowing them to write about them.
A/N: This is actually my first fanfic ever! I would really appreciate feedback and reviews on this. I know post-'The Gift' fics are overdone, but I have my own distinct direction I want to take it and haven't seen any fics that tell the exact story I want to. Lot of angst in this first chapter, establishing the main ground for where Spike starts out here.

I. A Fraying Thread

Spike blinked open his eyes and sat up wearily, disoriented. Slowly, he began to process his surroundings with a now-familiar sinking feeling of disappointment and despair. He was on the cold, hard floor of his crypt, an empty glass bottle of Jack Daniels lying on its side next to him where it had toppled over. His body ached, weak and very strained from his slowly-healing injuries, partially-knitted broken bones sapping his waning strength as they still labouriously struggled to finish mending themselves. Exhaustion must have claimed him earlier and caused him to fall asleep on the floor. Feeling tears pricking at his eyes, as always when he awoke and reality sunk in again, he buried his face in his hands with a sob choking from his throat.

Buffy was dead. Just moments ago, she'd been alive in his dream. He'd saved her again.

Ever since that fateful night, he relived it in his dreams every time he slept. He would do something different than he had, do it right this time, to prevent the love of his unlife from having to leap to her death to save the world. Various details always changed, but the important things stayed the same—he kept Dawn safe, Buffy didn't have to jump, and the apocalypse was still averted.

But here, right now, he wasn't dreaming anymore. This was the reality where he'd failed to protect Dawn, the little girl had been hurt and bled because of his shortcomings, and Buffy had to sacrifice her life to save the world and her sister. The Slayer had trusted him to keep Dawn safe, and he'd failed. The woman he'd fallen so deeply in love with had finally begun to see him as a man and not a monster, and maybe she could have loved him someday...but now it was too late. She was dead.

Dead. Gone. Forever.

The vampire shuddered with the sobbing that wracked his body as he broke down again, once more his heart breaking like a wound that kept being reopened. It was getting harder and harder to deal with waking from these dreams, being taunted by a world with Buffy in it only to have to face her death anew when it was over. His battered body had nothing on the pain in his heart, and it was more tempting each time this happened to free himself from it by taking a walk in the sun.

Drawing in a deep unnecessary breath to try to pull himself together, he struggled to his feet and staggered unsteadily towards his fridge, leaning against the appliance for support as he retrieved another bottle of strong liquor from inside. He was glad he'd stocked up on it, having blown all of his money on alcohol the night after the world nearly ended. He'd crammed as much of it into his fridge as possible, then immediately drank himself into a stupor with the extra booze that hadn't fit. It was the only way he could numb his emotional pain and refrain from trying to dust himself.

He sank to the floor again, leaning back against a wall as he popped off the cap and threw his head back, gulping down several deep pulls of his drink. It burned his throat and warmed him from the inside, his otherwise-empty stomach causing the much-welcome buzz to very rapidly go to his head. The liquid settling into the bottom of the hollow space elicited a long, painful growl of hunger from the abused organ, protesting his diet of nothing but hard liquor for...how long had it been now? Nearly two weeks, he realised with a slight shock. He'd saved her in his dreams thirteen times. This knowledge suddenly made him acutely aware of the painful gnawing in his gut that he hadn't even noticed much before in his misery, but he could deal with physical pain—even enjoy it sometimes—and right now it was at least providing a distraction from his heartache and depression.

As he paused to massage his free hand into his rumbling stomach, trying to soothe it a bit to be sure he could keep his precious intoxicating beverage down, he glanced down at that hand and the bare torso it touched. His body used to be lean and fit with carefully well-maintained musculature, but most of that muscle had wasted away now from lack of feeding, cannibalised to sustain him and attempt to repair his many injuries. Where he once had chiseled abs, his stomach was now entirely devoid of that muscle tone and sunken in from self-imposed starvation. Though he wasn't altogether skeletal, his ribcage was starting to become rather unhealthily prominent and his hip bones sharper, his jeans looser and riding lower, barely fitting him anymore. He absently thought that he ought to be a lot more upset about the atrophy of his hard-earned physique, but he was so deeply wallowing in misery as it was that he just couldn't bring himself to care beyond wondering if vampires could actually starve to death.

At this, the thought of blood briefly passed through his mind, only for his hunger to immediately be replaced by an intense nausea that once more thoroughly erased any desire to ever eat again. Images of Dawn trussed up and bleeding on the tower flashed through his mind, the helpless young girl he loved like a little sister crying in pain and fear as shallow cuts leaked rivulets of crimson down her body, pattering the droplets onto the ground that would open the portals of Hell. The memory was still so vivid it might as well have been happening right then, and a violent shudder of sadness, failure, and revulsion had him hugging his arms tightly around himself and desperately wishing to banish the memory.

The surviving Scoobies had tried to feed him the morning it happened, he remembered. He'd been forcibly relocated to his crypt for his safety, having tried to embrace the rising sun upon seeing Buffy's lifeless body, then they'd bound his broken bones so they would heal correctly and coaxed him to try drinking a mug of blood. He'd been too devastated by the loss of the Slayer to have any appetite in the first place, but the smell of it had repulsed him by invoking those same images of Dawn he'd seen just now, and he'd gagged on it and refused it. It's always about the blood, he recalled ruefully, swallowing hard and fighting to banish the memories from his mind.

His shaking hands sought out a pack of smokes from his jean pockets, extracting one and balancing it between his lips as he clumsily fumbled with his lighter for a moment to get it lit. Finally succeeding, he leant back against the wall again and sucked in a long drag, exhaling a cloud of smoke and trying to clear his mind. After a few deep breaths, he was rewarded by the faint tingling of the nicotine starting to help him relax, and he closed his eyes with a soft sigh and let his tired body go slack as he smoked, focusing on indulging the comforting habit to retreat to a calm place away from his troubled thoughts. He lifted his drink back to his lips when his stomach finally settled again, and he resumed knocking back the beverage, setting about getting sloshed and gratefully welcoming the drunken oblivion awaiting him.

Such was the way he struggled through each day. He felt like he would never be done fighting the temptation to give up, grasping at a fraying thread of reasons to keep going amidst his pain.