It was an unexceptional corner of the park. The oak tree looked just like the others nearby, with its limbs too high for climbing and its leaves brown and dry this late in autumn. The ground in front of it was also unremarkable; it was no rockier, no muddier, nor more trash-strewn than the rest.

Yet Spike knew that spot like no other on Earth. Xander had died there. The sharp, sweet scent of his blood had faded, but all of Spike's senses could be gone and he would still be able to find that one particular patch of ground where Xander had taken his last breath. He could feel it in his bones, in his marrow, because his own life had ended there, in that same moment of pain and blackness.

He knelt and placed the single sunflower he carried against the trunk of the tree. He positioned it so that its bright petals were tilted toward the sky, and then he sank back on his heels.

"Oh, love... I keep thinking I'll feel you here, that there'll be some small sign of you, but you're not here, are you? You're nowhere I can reach you now." He reached out to adjust the flower slightly and trailed his fingers down its stem before returning them to twist in the denim of his jeans.

"Wish I'd been with you," he said. "Goes without saying, I guess, but I wish I'd pushed like I always do instead of giving into you for once. Wish I'd gone with you, even though you told me to stay home. How was I to know you'd be stupid enough to cut through the park on your way back from Willow's? Even with my bloody arm being broken, I could've saved you."

He held out his arm and laughed hollowly.

"See? It's all better. Told you I'd be fine, but you worried anyway..." Spike swallowed around the lump in his throat.

"Even if I couldn't've lifted a finger to help you, love, I still wish I'd been here, just to be with you during those last moments. I could never have turned you, but at least I could've been the last thing you saw before you..." He swallowed again. "Could've held your hand, kissed your lips one last time before they grew as cold as mine."

Spike blinked hard against the tears in his eyes.

"I'll never forgive myself, Xander, for not being there," he said. "I could live a thousand years, and I'd never forgive myself for being so careless with something I loved so much. You knew I loved you, didn't you? Did you believe me when I said it? Did you feel it when I kissed you?"

With trembling fingers, Spike touched the ground that had soaked up the last of Xander's lifeblood.

"I'm lost without you, love. Every moment is torture," he whispered. "They say it'll get better, your friends. They hug me and feed me and tell me that the pain'll pass, but it's been weeks and it's only getting worse. Wish I could greet the sunrise. Wish I could make it all stop. But I still wouldn't have you, would I? Not going to go where you are. Never going to be there with you..."

His fingers clenched into the dirt where Xander had lain, and tears spilled down his cheeks.

"Know you'd be yelling at me if you were here about making wishes aloud in Sunnydale, but you're not. You're not here, and I bloody well still am." He took a shuddering breath and spoke as clearly as he could. "I wish it had been me who had died. Not you."

Spike waited, his head bowed, but there was no sound, no movement, no chance for hope. No one who might have been listening granted any of his wishes.

Kneeling by the spot where his love's soul had flown from his body, he felt time pass and his life with Xander fall that much further behind him. Empty hours, years, centuries loomed ahead.

"God, Xander, I wish it had been me," he murmured once more as the smell of the approaching sunrise began to creep into the air. Touching his fingers to the sunflower, he rose to his feet and returned to the apartment that they had shared but that, without Xander in it with him, could never again be called home.

~end~