The One You... (Spike/Buffy), PG

[coalitiongirl]

Title: The One You...
Pairing: Spike/Buffy
Rating: PG
Summary:  The necessary scene in Dead Things, after Buffy departs the police station.

Comments

[seapealsh]

Wow, that's powerful. Fits seamlessly into canon, girl. Nicely done.

[coalitiongirl]

Thanks! :) I've always found it hard to believe that Buffy would've completely abandoned Spike that night...

[norwie2010]

Lurve it!

This fits my personal canon to a T. :)

And, as always: Beautifully written, so much heartbreak and despair, compassion and confusion. My crazy kids!

And then they’re stumbling away together, two idiots spiraling toward destruction with no one else to cling to but each other.

This is about the perfect summary. Description.

There’s so much awe in his voice that she wants to sob again, to lash out at him and hurt him until he hates her properly like she deserves.

Waaaah! You break my heart! (The both of you: Coalitiongirl and Buffy!)

Is he so desperate for her touch that he would take unneeded pain for it?

And now it breaks for Spike, too.

[coalitiongirl]

Thanks! I'd been planning on writing this ficlet for a while now, and when I was rewatching those final scenes in Dead Things, I stumbled across this moment that had me thinking again- they're both caught in this horrible rut in S6, and while on one hand, Buffy wants to use Spike to forget, he's still the guy she gained so much comfort and friendship from before the sex...so there's caring and guilt for caring and guilt for the guilt for caring. It just goes on and on and on. :(

[rebcake]

Well, that's darned satisfying, in its way. Who to reassure first: Dawn or Spike? I like to think it went like this.

There’s so much awe in his voice that she wants to sob again, to lash out at him and hurt him until he hates her properly like she deserves.

It’s Spike, and it’s why she hates and needs him so fiercely.

Yup, she's a mass of contradictions at this point. You've captured it beautifully.

[coalitiongirl]

Judging from Dawn's unhappiness with Buffy and the "Does this mean you're not going away?" the next day, I'm assuming that Buffy got back too late to tell her anything that night. So she must have been busy with something- or someone- else. ;)

In some ways, this arc is my favorite one to play with. There's so much wrongness and turmoil there that it's deliciously faceted to write. :)

[lutamira]

THANK YOU FOR WRITING THIS. Something like this just had to have happened off-screen, you know? And you've made it so beautiful, and so so them. Lovely.

[coalitiongirl]

Thank you! It seems likely that Buffy would've at least taken Spike back to his crypt, because nothing about that scene was inherently spiteful, right? Judging from the horror on Buffy's face, anyway...

[rahirah]

If something like that had ever happened, I'd be a lot less ambivalent about Buffy...

[coalitiongirl]

I like to think that she actually did take him home, at least. But I tend to read the S6 arc sympathetic to Buffy in the first place...

[rahirah]

I don't know if it's that simple a divide. I've seen plenty of fans who are very sympathetic to Buffy assume that she was in too much emotional turmoil to give any thought to him, and plenty of fans who woobify Spike to the skies write stories where Buffy has an epiphany and goes back to save him. But that's beside the point - it's a good story, regardless.

[coalitiongirl]

You're probably right. I'm just brought back to the next scene, when Buffy says "You always hurt the one you love." And this is probably my Spuffy goggles showing, but I can't help but think that she's thinking of Spike and has somehow already begun to come to terms with the beating that had horrified her so deeply the night before. I can't excuse Buffy's actions from that night any more than I can excuse Spike's all season, but she's a character so entrenched in self-doubt and self-loathing that I can't imagine that she would have just moved on from that without any impetus.