AUTHOR: Sophie
EMAIL: sophie_limbourg@hotmail.com
RATING: G
PAIRING: Buffy/Spike
SPOILERS: None. Set in the future.
DISCLAIMER: Nothing is mine.
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Things are great between them. Since she has admitted her own feelings, she’s never been so happy. Of course they still argue and fight, but that’s part of the fun.

Dawn walks in the bathroom, takes her toothbrush. She notices Buffy’s contraceptive pills tablet, half empty.

“Why do you still take these? It’s not like you could get pregnant or anything.”

There is no wickedness in her question. She just asks out of curiosity.

But it hits Buffy full force.

Of course she won’t get pregnant. She’s in love with a vampire. He’s dead. Her womb will remain empty. No babies. Never.

She slowly put her brush back on the sink, walks out of the bathroom and in her room. She stays in the middle of it for a minute, before the tears starts to run freely on her cheeks, first in silence then suddenly in huge, desperate sobs.

Dawn arrives in the room, confused.

“Buffy?”

She sees her sister falling on her knees on the floor beside her bed, crying her heart out. What just happened? The younger girl wonders. Dawn makes her way to the stairs and yells,

“Spike!”

But the vampire is already there. He was in the garden, but he heard her. He can almost physically feel Buffy’s pain.

“What’s going on?” he asks Dawn while entering the room and lifting his girl in his arms.

“I don’t know,” she says, feeling helpless in front of her sister’s despair. “We were talking and…”

Understanding sinks in, as Dawn recalls exactly what she has said. Oh God. She didn’t mean it that way. She never thought for one minute that her simple question would provoke so much sorrow. Swallowing her own tears, she retreats back to her own room. Buffy’s heartwrenching sobs are now filling the whole house.

Spike has laid her on the bed and is holding her tight. He rocks her back and forth, caressing her back in a soothingly manner. He doesn’t understand. But Buffy can’t tell him. He will be crushed, if he knows. He’s the only one who can comfort her, and by a cruel irony, the one who involuntarily caused the pain in the first place. Because of what he is.

So she can’t tell him, because then they will be two to suffer, and there has been enough pain and suffering already. It’s not that she made a lot of thoughts about it. And she’s too young anyway. What she’s grieving is the fact that she will never have a child with Spike. That’s something they will never share, and it hurts deeply.

Of course it’s not too late. She can choose to leave him, find someone else, someone human, and she’ll have all the babies she wants. But she left Spike once already and she has felt horribly miserable. And she didn’t even love him then. She does now. Completely. He’s her life. Her blood. The air that she breathes.

He makes her complete.

And she realizes there was never really a choice to make in the first place. Without him, she has no life at all.

She slowly calms down, taking comfort in the strong arms encircling her, the firm chest she’s pressed against. Buffy finally opens her eyes. She plunged them into the blue depths of his. Relief replaces the worry on his face. She raises her hand and put a finger on the bridge of his nose, tracing it to his cheekbone and jaw line. He kisses the tip of it when she places it on his lips.

“Is there something you want to tell me, pet?” he asked softly.

“I love you,” she simply says, and he smiles back.

That’s all she needs to feel good again.

FIN.