Pain -- by Luisa


Rating: PG

Description: Spike and Willow talk about the past.

Note: Dedication - To Jennifer, as a belated B-day present.

Disclaimer: Joss Whedon owns Buffy the Vampire Slayer.


Spike never talked about her. About the love of his life, the one who had made him suffer more than anyone else in his life. Willow sometimes looked at his face and saw traces of pain there, shadows of a loneliness that she couldn't even begin to understand. She wondered what his life with Angelus and Drusilla had been like. It scared her to think about it, but at the same time she was deeply interested in knowing the truth. But Willow wasn't the sort of person who invaded someone else's privacy and Spike wasn't the sort of person who allowed that to happen. He continued to mourn his losses but the time of mourning grew shorter and shorter as the days went by. First of all, he had other things to consider. A new home was one of them. They'd been relentlessly looking at tombs and empty warehouses for the past few days, but Spike was hard to please. His crypt had to have something...something that made it different from all the other potential candidates. "But, Spike...", Willow cautiously observed, "you're the one who's gonna make it a home by living in it and decorating...". He waved away her words impatiently, frowning at a castle of cards he'd been in the process of building when she'd arrived. "No...", he sighed, "I don't want a place that reminds me of her.". Willow raised her head sharply, gazing into the vampire's concentrated features. She knew he wasn't talking about Harmony.

He suddenly tore down the card structure with a violent gesture, uttering an exclamation of sheer frustration. Getting up, he moved towards the kitchen, helping himself to the contents of Giles' fridge. He came back with a beer and a can of Coke. Sitting on an armchair, he handed her the can, an absent look on his face. Willow took it, a troubled expression on her gentle emerald eyes. She seemed to hesitate for a few seconds, as if unable to find the words that expressed her concern, and then suddenly decided to speak, striving to make her voice as soft as possible.

"What happened with Drusilla in Brazil?", she asked and immediately regretted her question when his face grew as dark as thunder and he banged the bottle on the coffee-table, spilling half its contents. Willow drew back, frightened out her wits. "*DON'T*...!", he shouted, "Don't *talk* about it!". He got up, heading towards the other end of the room. Willow laid down her Coke, staring at him. Her conscience was crucifying her for having said the wrong thing. She'd had the feeling it would do Spike a world of good to talk about it, but maybe she was mistaken. It was possible that vampires didn't work the same way as humans did. She recalled the previous year and how Spike had confided in her without holding back. But he had been drunk then.

Sharing on a regular basis was something that seemed alien to them, or at least sharing with a mortal. And Spike had more than once mocked Xander's anxious questions about her well-being. The question "Are you OK?" had apparently never been uttered by him. Vampires took pride in their self-sufficiency and Spike was no exception. Looking at him with a pained expression on her face, Willow sighed. "I'm sorry.". This made Spike look up from his deck of scattered cards. She awaited his answer with a pounding heart. "Forget about it.", he answered calmly. "I want to hear about your boyfriend. Tell me.". It seemed he didn't have the same qualms about asking her the wrong kind of thing. Willow turned her face away, gazing unseeingly at the wall. <No....no...no...>, her heart wailed. "What do you want to know?", she murmured. She felt him cross the room noiselessly and sit down on the armchair, resting his legs on the coffee-table. "Why did he leave?", he asked. Willow's startled glance flew to his steady gaze . His face didn't move a muscle. He was waiting.

"I don't know...I'm still trying to figure that out.", she whispered, her voice full of tears. "It's like he wanted nothing more to do with me. I-I was...the past. And he wanted a different future." As the words came tumbling out of her lips, she realised he was the first person she'd told the truth. Spike took the bottle of beer and drank. After a few minutes of utter silence, he finally decided to speak. "He's not human. Not a whole one, anyway." This made her stare at him, rage filling her soul to the rim.

"Don't *SAY* that!", she snapped, tears revealing her lack of self-control. "He was human, he was all that I had!", she shouted. Spike didn't answer. He looked away but didn't seem worried. "That's not true. What about your friends?", he asked and Willow would have sworn she'd heard a faint trace of irony in his cool tones. It was as if he found his own question laughable. "It's not the same...", she muttered, rubbing a tired hand against her face to get rid of some unwanted tears. "No, it's not.", he agreed. This gave her courage to pursue her own craving for revelation.

"What happened with Drusilla?", she tried once more. This time he didn't snap. His voice was singularly toneless as the words touched his lips. "Nothing happened. I went there...", he murmured. "and she was making out with another sad wanker." He stopped and reached for the beer. "I was so fucking mad, I could barely speak. She just pouted...in the way she always did. "Spikey, she said, it's over. Baby...". She could actually stand there and talk to me in her normal voice. I hit her and she hit me back. We had this fight...and just as I thought that everything was gonna be OK, she got up and left me. On the floor, in the middle of a *fucking* room!" Willow flinched at the despair in his voice. But he wasn't finished. "I went after her. She was tearing me to pieces but I still went after her. I begged and I grovelled and she just laughed. "You're such a baby, Spike. What would Daddy say if he were here?". The way she was talking about him made me want to vomit. I left." He raised his eyes and scanned her face bleakly, maybe expecting to find a semblance of contempt there. But Willow Rosenberg wasn't like that. The girl had nothing but warmth in her. The vampire had never met anyone like Willow. And it appeared he was finally starting to understand her. She was the first human being he had wanted to understand.

"Spike, I'm so sorry...I guess we're both out of luck.", she said, offering him a feeble smile. He raised the bottle and smirked: "Here's to our beloved soulmates.".

Silence followed. As Willow finally looked at Spike again, she noticed his gaze on her. It was hard to decipher its meaning, but there was something wonderful in it. She felt happy.

The End

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