Disclaimer: If I owned the characters on Buffy, Spike and Buffy would've spent much less time beating each other up and much more time being a happy couple. And Xander wouldn't have lost his eye.

I love you.

For a long time, it was dark. He saw nothing, felt nothing, smelt nothing. All he knew was that it was over. Or rather, he'd ended it. Ended the fight, ended the hellmouth. He'd burned away, and he was ash, and there was nothing. Nothing but her voice, whispering to him in the darkness.

I love you.

Those three words kept him from slipping away. He clung to them with whatever was left of him. His soul, he would realize later, but at the time, all he knew was that he held onto those words, that memory, with trembling, ghostly hands. The darkness pulled at him, but he stubbornly held to the golden words, to the memory of her fingers intertwined with his. She hadn't pulled away, even after he burst into flame.

I love you.

"Buffy..."

He called for her. He screamed. He had no sense of time, of how long he'd been cloaked in darkness. Ironic, what had once been comforting, been a refuge, was now a prison. It held him, stifled him, smothered him with memories of her.

He rattled his bars, shrieking and crying out. Sometimes he cursed the god he'd long since stopped believing in. He never received an answer, only her voice, soft and anguished.

I love you.

He wondered if this was hell. If he'd sent himself to hell. If this was all he'd know. Sometimes, he could feel the flames; he could feel her hand gripping his as he burned away. He would scream her name them, hands flailing, reaching out, but he could never find her.

I love you.

He thought he was going mad. Perhaps he'd already gone mad, and imagined everything. That particular thought hurt worse than any of the others. It had to have been real, her hand on his, her words, the way her face had looked when he'd told her to leave.

I love you.

And then, everything broke apart. Her voice rose from a whisper to a bellow, and the darkness shook and trembled. And he was in flames again, screaming, and this time she was nowhere to be found, as the darkness split open and he was blinded.

"Spike?"

The voice was wrong. Too deep, too masculine. He panicked for a moment, blinking around him, overwhelmed with sensation. He could smell again, and he recognized his sire's scent, along with several other humans and a demon he did not recognize.

He strained his ears, listening for it, for the words he needed. He ignored them for a moment, even as he looked around the room, seemingly dazed.

I love you.

It was still there. She was still here, and she loved him, wherever she was. She'd chosen him, and he'd chosen her, and that couldn't have changed, or he would have felt it. And then, for the first time since his body had turned to ash, he parted his lips, and whispered incredulously, "Bugger."