Chapter 2
October 24, 2005
When I see people around me complaining about this or that, I want to walk up to them and say, “My mother just died.” Just to see what they’d say, just to see if I’d get sympathy. I think I want the sympathy. I want someone to tell me it’s all right for me to feel like shit even if I was the one that moved away and pulled back. But I don’t have to tell them that. They don’t need to know that at all. I wouldn’t get their sympathy then and there would be no justification any longer. I highly doubt Spike will be giving with the sympathy. I’m just his bitch of a ‘stepdaughter’ that blew off his wife for nearly five years. Nearly. What’s that? It was five years. That last month doesn’t count for shit. Especially since she didn’t even tell me she had been sick.
Why is it so hard for someone to admit they’ve fucked up?
Closing her journal, Buffy slid it into her purse and watched as the cab pulled onto her tree-lined road. She was home. If she could even call it home. She was in a former residence of a former life. In a place she once considered home. Tears formed and she sat still, unwilling to move for fear they would drop. She held her breath, willing for them to pass and once they did, she took a shuddering breath.
Then the cab pulled up to her old house and fear gripped her. Normally, she wasn’t afraid of much, but having to see Spike gripped her in ways she never thought possible. She was at his mercy right now and if there was one thing Buffy hated, it was being at anyone’s mercy.
********
Spike watched from the window as Buffy gathered her things from the cab and paid, struggling not to drop the ten thousand bags she had with her. He supposed he could help her, but he wasn’t much in a helping mood. Not after he’d just had to start making arrangements for the funeral. It was enough that he’d waited for Buffy before choosing a casket. He could cut her that one small slack.
He opened the door to her and said nothing as she passed through. She looked up at him and let her things slide to the floor unceremoniously. “Hi,” she said.
“Hi,” he said grimly, staring at her. She’d grown. He couldn’t really put his finger on it, but she appeared older to him. Her hair was longer and more golden now than bleached blond, her green eyes held some pain and the weight of experience in them, her skin was paler and she had thinned out a bit. She was dressed in jeans and a tank top and he could see muscle definition in her bare arms.
“What needs to be done?” she asked.
“I saved the casket for you.”
She nodded. “I’ll just put my stuff upstairs.”
He figured maybe now he could help after having watched her struggle and gaining some perverse joy from it.
Hauling her things upstairs, Buffy felt choked when she got to her bedroom door. She could smell her mother still. Memories of her childhood came back: her mother smiling, laughing, sharing stories, making cookies, and kissing her boo-boos.
“Can you just leave my stuff here?” Buffy asked Spike, not able to turn to him, not able to face him.
“Why?”
“I need a minute; can you give me a minute?”
She heard him drop her things and then pad down the hall and run down the stairs. Heaving a sigh, she placed her hand on the doorknob.
Mommy, I wish I could kiss your boo-boo now.
Stepping inside, Buffy found her room as she’d left it. It was as if she herself had died and her mother had preserved her memory by not touching a thing. The only thing out of place was photo album on the bed. Moving slowly toward it as if it were going to attack her, Buffy choked back more tears. Her baby book. The image of her mother sitting on her bed and flipping through her baby book alone caused Buffy to let out a strangled cry. The tears came then, hard and uncontrollable, rocking her tiny frame to the floor where she knelt and sobbed.
Spike heard the anguished cry and took a step toward the stairs, ready to run up and comfort the crying girl, but then stopped. Did she deserve comfort and sympathy after how she’d abandoned her mother? Did she deserve to have someone hold her and tell her that it was going to be all right and that Joyce knew she loved her and that it was all forgiven?
Or did she deserve instead to wallow?
“I know you don’t understand, Spike, but you’ve never had a child before so you don’t know what it’s like. I can’t disown her as she’s done me. I love her. I carried her in my womb for nine months; I was there when she got her heart broken for the first time—and do you know who did it? Her father. Her father was the first man to break her heart and she doesn’t even remember it. Ever since then, she’s carried this torch for him and sought his approval. Remember William: Only the one that’s hurt you can take it away.”
That was Joyce all right. All forgiving, all knowing, all understanding. He had to admit: It drove him crazy. He wanted to curse himself for thinking it, but there it was and it didn’t make it any less true the fact that he didn’t want it to be true. Joyce had always been such a calming force when he at times could be a downright volatile force.
He supposed that was one instance in which he and Buffy had something in common: Both of them had tempers that couldn’t be assuaged by a simple kiss or nugget of wisdom. And both held grudges. He held a grudge against her for hurting her mother for so long and she held a grudge against Joyce and him. Or so it seemed.
The last month, Joyce had reached out once more and Buffy had actually taken accepted that olive branch a bit. Not enough for his liking, but Joyce assured him these things took time.
So, now he was torn between wanting the girl to wallow a bit in her pain and really feel it and going up as Joyce would want him to, and comfort her.
Climbing the steps slowly to her room, Spike hoped she’d stop crying before he got there so he wouldn’t have to do something that he felt at this point was out of obligation to his dead wife, and less about obligation to being a kind, forgiving person.
His prayers were answered for by the time he’d reached the top of the stairs, Buffy emerged, eyes red and puffy and her hair pulled back. She looked up at him, seeming surprised to see him there, a hint of a question behind her eyes. Clearing her throat she said, “I’m ready,” and strolled past him to head down the stairs.
He waited a minute, staring after her, and then followed.