Semper Redis (You Always Come Back)

By S_Star

Summary: Post-Season 6. Buffy revisits Spike's crypt for the first time...probably exactly as clichéd as it sounds.

Rating: G

Disclaimer: *whistles idly* Characters? What characters? I haven't stolen any—Oh, THOSE characters. Well, uh, I know they're Joss'...but, um...I'm charactersitting. Yeah, charactersitting. He told us to. I'll go ask him if you want. What do you mean, restraining order? Stop asking me all these questions! I'm trying to sit on Spike...I mean, FOR! Sit FOR Spike. Yeah, that's it...

I know it's from my collaboration Lord of the Rings fic, but I couldn't think of any new witty disclaimers...

AN: Sorry if it's clichéd, dull, badly written, etc, etc...this little plotbunny just kinda came into my head and wouldn't leave, so I wrote it down...

{Also, thanks to the lovely Nikita for beta-ing this! You should all check out her site Enlightenment – - and vote for me (or Kantayra. Or anyone, really) at her Spuffy Awards - - ^_~ }

Semper Redis

It's not what I expected. Okay, so I don't actually know what I was expecting, but it wasn't this.

I thought it would be, well...different. I don't know, dustier, maybe? I know it was already dusty, you thought the idea of going round cleaning was...poncy or something. I've gotta agree with Anya about the whole British slang thing: I'm really not getting it. Anyway, yeah, it's kinda strange for someone who loved his duster so much to...

All right, maybe I'll stop with the jokes now. It's just that I don't really feel much like laughing right now. I haven't for a long time, not sincerely anyway. I mean, the whole post-averted-apocalypse party should be going on right now. I should feel some kind of gratification, or satisfaction. I should feel relieved.

But I don't. And I'm not partying.

Instead, I'm standing here, in the entrance to your crypt, waiting for...something. I don't know what. I know that you're not just gonna pop up from the lower level, and make some dumb comment that'll make me wanna hit you, and then we'll fight, and then we'll kiss, and then everything will be okay again for a little while.

'I don't call five hours a little while'

But, again, not gonna happen.

I'm still not moving. I don't wanna. From here, I can still see you living here. I can still imagine that you're decorating the downstairs, or just out at Willy's buying blood, or stealing bubble-weed or whatever it was from the Magic Box, or playing kitten poker...anything but whatever you're really doing know, although, for all I know, you are doing one of those things, or at least something similar...but that's not the point. The point is that you're not here, and nothing's changed.

Okay, so maybe the TV isn't blaring and there isn't a jar of blood sitting on top of the little fridge/cabinet thing you use (and if it is a fridge, how can you use it? I mean, you always liked your blood warm, and since when were crypts wired for electricity? Speaking of, how does your TV work, anyway? Oh, forget it), and maybe I can't hear any muffled swearing from the level below, but that doesn't make it different.

It looks the same. Not all the candles are lit, but everything's in its place. There's even some old novel lying on the couch, as if you were just out for a smoke, not that you ever minded smoking indoors. I know that the novel could actually be Clem's or something, but I doubt that 'A Collection of Victorian Poetry' is gonna exactly be his cup of tea. Or lemonade. Whatever.

Oh God, you'll never guess what I'm doing now. It sounds so stupid, even to me. I'm walking round the crypt, looking at everything, and I'm not touching the stuff, just holding my hand right above it. My hand's just millimeters above the sarcophagus now, and it's strangely comforting, like I can feel you there, in the air around it.

Of course, I can't touch it really. If I touch anything, then it's not a dream anymore. If anything gets disturbed, it won't be the same, and if it's not the same, then I can't be sure that you're coming back.

And you have to come back. I need you here. I know I never told you that, and maybe I should've done, but I couldn't, y'know? Well, not that I couldn't, more like there was no need to.

You were always just...there. I yelled at you, hit you, beat you beyond recognition, and you still came back to me. You still loved me. I never thought there'd come a time when you wouldn't come back. I never thought you'd give up on this. Give up on me.

'Isn't this the part where you kick me in the head and run out, virtue fluttering?'

Because that's what this is, isn't it? You finally understood that I'm me? You'd say all those things about me, how I was feeling, who I really was, and I'd deny them, but you'd know better. You know me. And still, when you finally saw those things, it was too much for you, wasn't it? You couldn't put up with me any more. I messed with your body, mind and so—spirit, and if I were you I would've backed down months ago...but you didn't.

You always surprise me like that. I know that you're not exactly the average vampire, not by a long shot, but it surprised me that a creature who had forever would spend so long over me. The world is your oyster, as much as I hate that expression, and yet you decided to focus all your attention on me. You loved me, and you stuck it out. That's one of your traits, the fact that you always follow your heart.

I wonder where your heart is now.

You're not like me. I know you put up your 'Big Bad' mask to face the world, but even with that, you were so emotive; I always knew what you were feeling. You could love so easily, and I always envied that. Not only that you could love, but that you were able to love, allowed to love freely without ever fearing that it could put their life in danger – much.

Why did you have to choose me? You could've had anyone else you wanted, someone who could love you back as freely as I never could. Although, if what Dawn's told me is right, you realised you were in love with me because of a dream. One dream. One tiny space of about seven seconds convinced you that you loved me? Or did it just make you think you loved me? I don't actually know if you even know this stuff, it's just...there's so much I never asked you.

I don't even know what your surname is...was...whatever. I don't know about your family, your friends. I don't know much about who you are or who you were, and I wish I did.

'What can I tell you, baby? I've always been bad...'

But what difference would that make? Just because I knew some lame facts about William the Bloody, I'd suddenly be able to understand him? I doubt it. You're...again, different. Complex. I could spend years trying to puzzle you out – hell, I have – and still not get beyond 'Did Billy Idol really steal his look from you?', and I could love you for eternity and still not begin to feel anything, if that makes any sense at all.

You do understand, don't you? You have to understand, you always do. You get me. You could puzzle out all these thoughts in a heartbeat...although maybe not, what with the whole no pulse issue, but you know what I mean.

Argh, this is hopeless! It's, what, an hour after I arrived, and I'm still just standing here, my hand just above your sarcophagus, talking in my head to someone whose gone...not that I blame you. Even for the rape thing. The attempted rape thing. I'd messed you up so badly that you just didn't twig until it was too late.

Was that why you left? Because the Buffy you'd imagined wasn't me? Because all those things you thought you knew, I screwed up one thing, and that in turn screwed up everything else?

I don't know anymore. How do you do this to me? You're not even here, and you're driving me insane! It's weird, but you always made me kinda...introspective? You knew me so well that I was ashamed of how little I knew myself, or something. I just wish I'd looked a little deeper.

I'd always heard that you don't know what you've got until it's gone, and I always thought that it was one of the worst clichés ever. I figured, I dunno, that surely you'd have some instinct that you'd miss whatever it was you missed before you missed it, or something. I figured that it was only in romance movies that true feelings were acknowledged after separation; absence made the heart grow fonder or something.

I never thought that it could be clichéd for a reason. I never thought, not even when I kissed you, that it would hurt like this. Okay, so then I still thought that you'd always come back to me, but it still applies. When we were together, you were just a body to me. A very hot yet very cold body with no pulse and curly blond hair and clear blue eyes, but you weren't a man.

'I may be a monster, but you treat me like a man'

You were just like a punching bag to me: a way to relieve all my tension, forget my stress...and even beating on you as though you really were a punching bag was exhilarating, because you fought back...most of the time. That time in the alleyway, when you told me to take it all out on you, was that the first time you saw it like that? The first time you came out of denial and realised that I was using you? It should have been, yet you still came to my party. And you brought beer.

You always came back...but not this time.

I'm yawning now, suddenly. I've been here so long that my back's getting stiff, but I can't sit down, can't move anything...

She says, turning away and hitting a jar of blood (that was, incidentally, on the floor by the sarcophagus...how stupid is that?). Way to go, Buffy.

It's all quiet now. I mean, before, it was quiet, but it was quiet like your crypt is normally quiet. Quiet like the cemetery. Now, it's just stifling. The blood's just sitting there, beginning to creep down some cracks in the floor, but mostly just being...bloody. I don't notice anything about the glass except that sound it made when it smashed. It shocked me, woke me up, and I don't just mean from my daydreams. I mean about everything.

You've gone, and you may never come back. I drove you away, and I can't forgive myself, but there's nothing I can do, and letting your crypt say in the same pitiful state forever isn't helping.

As scared, as I am to do it, I touch the sarcophagus, and the familiar cold stone under my hand is enough to make me feel at ease.

And also, very tired.

I hate to do it, but I'm now lying down on the sarcophagus. I don't know if I like it, much. Last time I was here, it was the first time I'd trusted you – or myself – enough to really sleep with you, and then Riley had come in. That was the last time we were together, and although it happened once, it still feels kinda empty here without knowing you're beside me, even if I did make a point (at the time) of not actually touching you while we slept.

But for now, I'm exhausted, and this coat still smells of you, and this place still feels like you.

Because when I sleep, I can dream, and when I'm dreaming, I know that when I wake up, you'll have come back, come home...to me.

AN – psst…there's a button below that you can click to review!

Also, the thing about always coming back (a VERY major theme here) was kinda borrowed from ShadowDreamer's Eiei Koiboto and sequel, which you should all read!

So, tell me what you thought!