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Imperfect
Author: Jo
Disclaimer: Not mine, alas.
Wordcount: 500
Setting: Season 6
Notes: Written for ba_rosebuds.
Prompt ‘Imperfect’.
**
Imperfect
Dust sifts down into Buffy’s hair, as she kneels in a building that is as
broken as she is. Spike has left her here, alone and cold and abandoned,
gone off into the night with a jaunty whistle.
She has to get back soon, or they will miss her, and she cannot let them
know that she’s been with him. There must be no suspicion, because if they
find out, she’s afraid that they will see into the less-than-perfect heart
of her.
She isn’t right. She isn’t what she used to be. She’ll never be that person
again. She’ll never be the person he loved, ever again.
Angel.
He loved someone he thought had a purity, a fire, a Champion’s heart. He’s
told her this, so many times, after he first admitted that he loved her.
But, she had to kill him because of his love, and now it seems only fitting
that she, in her turn, should be dead to him.
Dead to him...
She shies away from that thought, consigning it back to the shadows of her
soul.
When she lost Heaven, she thought she wanted to die. That first time with
Spike, she believed that she understood herself. She needed to feel
something, anything, and what Spike did to her certainly wiped away, for
those few minutes, any memory of Heaven.
But now? Now, the deepest darkest monsters of her mind have flashed a fin
in those unexplored oceans of insanity, and she mustn’t look, mustn’t
listen, mustn’t think, mustn’t know what they want.
Except... She does know. She’s known ever since she met Angel for those few
brief hours, and she won’t think those thoughts, or listen to those
monsters, because if she does, she will be lost.
The fin flashes again, and this time there’s a glint of sharp, white fang.
She’s huddled into a ball, now, on a floor full of plaster and pieces of
roofing timber, evidence of their exertions. She’ll have to push harder
next time. Harder, and harder, until Spike...
The monster of thought leers at her again, and she shies away from it. Far
too late. She’s recognised it.
She doesn’t want Spike to kill her, although he might, and she wouldn’t be
sorry if he did. Not truly kill her. She doesn’t want the pain,
although it’s better to feel something than nothing. And she isn’t
punishing herself, because it wasn’t her fault that she was pulled out of
Heaven.
No, she’s imperfect of mind and body, and since that’s the case, what she
truly wants is to be imperfect in a way that Angel can live with. If she
pushes Spike hard enough, perhaps he will do what Angel never would.
Perhaps he will lose himself in her, and do what comes naturally to a
vampire.
Perhaps Spike will turn her, and she will be imperfect enough to prevent
Angel’s perfect happiness. Then, without Heaven or Hell, maybe they can
count the world well lost enough for love.
The End
August 2010
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