***************************************

Part 2: Dig Ophelia

Dawn drapes the blanket around the vampire’s hunched shoulders, then steps back. Her brow furrows as she surveys him.

“Here,” she frowns. She takes his hands in hers, and with them gathers up the fraying edges of the cloth. “Tuck it under your chin like this, see?” His fingers are slack and unresponsive. Finally she gives up.

The afghan is thick and heavy, if a bit rough from repeated washings. It should provide warmth even to one whose body consistently hovers at room temperature.

But Spike still shivers.

***************************************

Friday.

She knows she should be looking forward to the weekend but she is uncomfortably torn about surrendering Spike.

He’s huddled on the ground a few feet from her, flush against the wall as if trying to make himself as small as possible. She keeps her tone level and firm when she speaks.

“Where were you? I want to know what made you this way. I want to know what beat you, defeated the great Big Bad.” She cocks her head. “Was it another demon, or a human? Maybe you went to England and got mad cow disease.” There is no indication that he has heard her.

“I couldn’t believe it, when Clem said you’d gone. I thought you’d never leave.” You told me you’d never leave.

“I guess once Buffy cut you loose, there wasn’t much point in hanging around, huh? Or maybe you were scared. ‘Cause of what happened.” She sits down across from him, fishing a slightly flattened sandwich out of her bag. She places half on the floor in front of him and chews contemplatively on her portion.

“Willow tried to kill me,” she says, around a mouthful of bologna and honey wheat. She thinks she sees him jerk a bit at that, but in the next instant his eyes are vacant once again.

“She tried to kill everybody, actually. Everybody as in – everybody. Me, and Giles, and Buffy, and – oh, yeah – six billion other people. Then Xander talked her down with some lame-ass story about a crayon or something. I didn’t get it. And now she’s all forgiven, it’s okay, no hard feelings. I don’t get that either.” She shrugs. “It’s all right. I’ve got enough hard feelings to go around.”

“They’re not going to forgive you, though,” she continues. “Not after what you did. Xander wanted to stake you. He’s the one who told me, if you were wondering. Which you probably weren’t. I think he liked telling me. It made him feel clever, since he’d hated you all along and we – we hadn’t.”

She puts the sandwich aside, unfinished. “Buffy cried over you. I heard her at night and I knew it was you because she said your name. Not like she was angry. Like she was sad. It made me sick. I wished you were right in front of me, those nights, so I could stake you myself. I even went to Anya – I asked her to bring you back, so I could make you pay. She wouldn’t do it. She said Buffy was the injured party, and she was the only one who could seek vengeance.” Dawn snorts. “I think that’s a sucky rule.”

“’I like a look of agony,” Spike whispers suddenly.

“What?”

His voice is hoarse; scraped raw from the ravings that cease only when she is present.

“’I like a look of Agony,
Because I know it’s true –
Men do not sham Convulsion,
Nor simulate a Throe –‘”

His gaze is fastened somewhere behind her and even as he speaks, his lips twist as if the words hurt coming out.

“Spike?” she asks uncertainly.

In a blur of motion, his hand tears across his chest, ripping a deep, jagged gash. Blood pours from the wound before Dawn can even move.

“Oh. Oh, God.” She scoots over to him, clumsily pressing the fabric of his shirt against the lacerated flesh. He arches away from her fearfully but she follows. After a few seconds, however, she pauses. Sitting back on her heels, she watches him in his anguish.

“I get it,” she says stonily. “You think you can bleed it out – all that pain. It doesn’t work.”

She resumes her efforts to staunch the flow, but now the pressure of her hands is punishing.

“That moment, when you realize – you don’t belong, you’ll never belong and they don’t understand because they’re real, and you’re not – that’s when the awful blackness fills you up until you just have to let it out.” She shakes her head violently.

“It doesn’t work. The blackness – it stays with you, inside of you. Because that’s all you are.” She’s taking great gasps of air, too fast; she wonders dimly if she is hyperventilating.

“You’re not real. You were never meant to be; you’re fake and now everybody knows it. When they look at you, all they see is a mistake, an – an abomination.” Words tripping out of her in a rush, clogged faintly now by the tears that threaten. “And what if there’s no place for me now? What if I’ll be wrong forever? That’s what I hear in my head, when I’m alone – that I’ll never, ever be right, not ever and it aches inside me, sometimes…”

She doesn’t know how it happened but his arms are wrapped around her; tentative at first then solid and strong like she remembers. “Hush. Hush now,” he murmurs. “Shhh, sweet. You mustn’t fret so.” He gathers her to him and rocks her gently in his embrace. She’s crying, feeling stupid but good at the same time. She hates him, she’s sure of it but in this moment she can pretend that he will keep her safe, that with him she’s no longer alone and wrong.

“It hurts,” she sobs. Can he understand? She wills him to, as she buries her head against him and batters him uselessly with her small fists until he catches them in his own. Understand. That a lifetime of artificial memories can’t be forgotten in one sisterly season; that she’s afraid of what other ugly surprises may be lurking under her skin; that doing this to him, day after day, is a new and scary kind of suffering to which she cannot help returning.

***************************************

Later, on the couch with Buffy as they feign interest in a sitcom, she tries to forget.

Just a momentary freak-out. She’s had them before. With Spike, even – back when they actually hung out, she’d pester him endlessly about her origins, her nature. He knew no more than anyone else, but he’d always answer her. He’d always give her something to hang on to.

She’s in control, she promises herself. She can handle this, all of this – school, and Spike, and lying to Buffy. She’d just lost it a little bit today, was all.

And Spike…

Spike was just convenient.

Part 3: Tell-Tale Heart

Author's Note: The poetry Spike quotes is from Emily Dickinson's '241' (number supplied by Thomas H. Johnson, editor of The Complete Poems of Emily Dickinson).

| HOME | WHAT'S NEW | ABOUT | FANFICTION | BLOG | LINKS | VERBIS | NOMINATIONS |