Nothing Changes
Rating: PG14
Disclaimer: I don't own these characters. I wish I did
but they belong to Joss.
Nothing Changes
It was almost a month after Buffy's death and the
despair hadn't lifted. In all his years as a vampire
Spike had never approached anything resembling
remorse. It simply wasn't something they were capable
of. But his regret for not saving Buffy, for not
protecting Dawn was a constant taunting pain, sharp as
a stake in the heart only not as merciful.
Dawn was insane with grief after the funeral. Every
reminder of Buffy reduced her to tears. The Scooby
Gang took turns looking after her. It gave them
something to do. It was Spike's turn on the night he
walked into the house and found her on the floor
weeping uncontrollably over Buffy's casually discarded
hairbrush. What he saw in her tear scarred eyes, was a
terrifying blankness.
The Scoobies didn't approve but Spike's idea was for
him to take her far away. Somewhere where there was no
reminders of her loss. He thought that a continent and
an ocean were far enough.
London was stupefying that summer. Not like the crisp,
Pacific sunshine of Sunnydale. It was humid and muggy,
the sky brimming with suppressed rain. The heat
reverberated off the old stone buildings and rose in
shimmering waves from the pavements. The people were
irritable and cranky and the population swelled by the
summer tourists and Wimbledon fans. The hotel prices
were jacked up accordingly. They found a rooms in a
cheap Earl's Court hotel and the manager looked at
Dawn with lewd interest.
"Look mate, I'm not running a knocking shop. And she
looks underage too."
Spike grabbed him by the hair, smacked his head down
on the reception desk and snatched the room key. He
stormed up the stairs, trying to ignore the inevitable
pain. Dawn followed him silently as the manger grabbed
at his bloodied nose and howled.
"Home sweet home" Spike said, sitting down on a bed.
He looked round the dingy room decorated in ugly 70s
furniture and lit a cigarette. "Over priced, dirty,
too big, rude people. Forget why I ever left."
Dawn kneeled on the window seat looking out at the red
brick street, bright under the yellow streetlights.
"Can we go to the Tower tomorrow?" she said quietly.
"You can go, kitten. They don't keep vamp hours. And
bring me back something from the butchers, I'm
famished."
As he had on the flight over, Spike wondered why he
was here. What he really wanted to do was to stock up
on some Rheus negative, Jack Daniels and The Clash and
drive as far and fast as he could into the endless
Californian desert. To get lost forever in somewhere
as dry and empty as himself. He wasn't very keen on
baby sitting a teenager in his old hometown. So what
was he doing it for?
Partially keep his promise to Buffy. And partially
Dawn reminded him of Buffy. Bitty-Buffy he called her
and that was more true than he'd realised. To have
Dawn alive meant a part of Buffy was still living. But
Spike couldn't deny a large part of him truly wished
Dawn had died instead of Buffy. And yet he felt
different things when she looked at him.
Spike was used to seeing reactions to himself from
people. They were mostly variations on terror, which
was always enjoyable. And approval from Dru, her crazy
eyes shinning as he did something particularly
terrible and Angelus-like. He'd tried so hard to live
up to her warped ideal. For Buffy it'd been the
opposite. He'd tried to win her over by some quick
move and witty comment: to prove that a vampire could
be worthy of love.
Dawn had never asked anything of Spike, apart from his
company. No one had ever liked him for himself, either
pre or post mortem. When Dawn looked at him with her
big dark eyes she seemed to see right through all his
posturing- right into him. He was all she had now and
he knew it. Oh, to be wanted! It was a pleasure that
curled darkly through Spike's veins like a fresh
intake of blood. Her need was intoxicating. It was a
mirror that that Spike could preen himself before.
Spike wasn't happy about letting her roam the city
alone. He knew intimately what Big Bads lurked in the
underground stations, not just the demonic kind
either. But what else could he do?
He dozed intermittently and uncomfortably during the
long summer days. His dreams interrupted by replays of
the struggle with Glory, in all of them he did
something different and better and Buffy lived. It was
the saddest of songs and he couldn't seem to stop
playing it over and over again. Spike woke every few
hours bathed in sweat and waited for Dawn to return.
When Dawn came back in the late afternoon she'd bring
him the souvenirs from the places she'd seen. They'd
watch Eastenders on the TV: Spike doing exaggerated
comic versions of the Cockney accents. Dawn had
started keeping a journal again. She sat cross-legged
on her bed, sticking postcards in it and writing
quietly. "Is there anything in it about me?" spike
asked. Dawn just smiled. It was first time she's
smiled in a long time.
"Spike," she said, "I couldn't get you anything. That
butchers you mentioned is a Starbucks now."
"Figures," muttered Spike.
At night the city was theirs though. They prowled the
noisy, gaudy streets of Covent Garden, pretentious
posers wearing dark glasses at midnight. One night
Spike lifted a couple of cheap plastic sunglasses from
the rack outside a Leicester Square shop. It struck
him as a melancholy joke. Sunglasses? Of all the
things a vampire could steal. But Dawn had solemnly
taken the pair he'd handed her. "Now we can look like
proper tourists," she'd said.
But the shades served a purpose- hiding Dawn's tears
and Spike's exhaustion. Inviolable, under their hidden
gazes they surveyed the free street show: the acrobats
and fire-eaters, the foreign tourists, the drunken
locals, the homeless people, the constant smell of
sweat and warm blood and alcohol. Nothing changes,
thought Spike, only the drinks get more expensive. In
a way it was like his best years with Drusilla. Spike
had a brief pleasant flashback of him and Dru feeding
on a group of comatose students on the spot where Dawn
now stood watching a juggler.
Spike scowled as he suddenly recalled the rest of that
night, when they rendezvoused with Angel back at their
place. In the beginning he'd often listen outside
Drusilla's room like a child, listening to Angelus
take her again and again, not having either the nerve
to walk in or to leave. That night Angelus came out
and caught Spike lurking in the shadows. "She's all
yours, Will" he smirked and Spike had truly wanted to
kill him. Instead he walked in and slammed the door on
him, wishing they could leave for good and find their
own way in the world.
Since he'd returned to London Spike was thinking a lot
about the old days. It was easy for vampire's to
obsess about the past. In 120 years Spike had
experienced places and events that humans could only
read about in books. Yet sometimes he wondered if he'd
ever really left this place, where his life had left
him. When he closed his eyes the years would fall
away, and there he was: still stuck in London 1880, as
though he'd never left it. He wondered if he was the
only vampire to open his eyes and find the world not
at all the way he expected it to be.
He shook the thought away and looked towards the east
where the mid-summer dawn was already breaking. "Time
to go, love. Beddy-byes. I don't want to get a crispy
suntan."
They walked back silently to their digs. Spike watched
his non-reflection in a new glass and steel building.
He couldn't get over how much London had changed. In
places it was just like LA. But then back in the old
days the city was always changing too. New buildings
built up and knocked down. The coming of the trams and
tube and then cars and then airports. So it always
was. Nothing changes. Only everything does.
That morning Spike stood by the window listening to
Dawn's sleep-deep breathing. Bathed in blue half-light
she looked older, more like Buffy. She'd matured so
much in a few months. Dawn would get over the loss of
Buffy and she'd get over Spike. She'd find some nice,
breathing boyfriend. He could see her now at 21, 25,
looking at him the way any woman looks back on her
high school crush. That bright adoration would change
to embarrassment that this was what she found
attractive when she was 14. And relief too, that she'd
moved on and joined the grown ups world. He'd still be
stuck, frozen at this point- still grieving for Buffy,
still mourning everything that he'd lost. Eternity hit
him like a brick wall.
It's pain kills you in the end, pain and loss and
seeing too many changes. When you become a vampire you
think you can stop the clock, instead you are tied to
it forever.
Dawn would learn to live and die in this world- but he
never could.
The light was already pushing through the gap into the
room. He could hear the sounds of the city waking up,
the delivery vans, late night stragglers, and street
sweepers. London was getting ready for another day.
The clock kept on ticking but how easy would it be to
stop it for him, to open the curtains. It would be
painful but probably less painful than immortality in
the long run.
The thing Spike always wondered is where vampires go
when they die. Hell? Well, he was certain there'll
always be a place for him there.
A sob from Dawn's bed brought him back. She was on her
stomach, crying into the pillow. He sat down on the
edge of her bed. The tears suddenly embarrassed him.
He felt dull and old, unsure what do. He pulled back
her hair, seeing the vein pulsing in her delicate
neck. He had an unwanted instinctive thought of how
easily those bird-like bones would break in his hands
and pushed it to the back of his mind.
"It's ok kid." The words sounded lame even as he said
them. They hung heavily in the air inadequate and
useless.
"Not it's not." The pillow muffled her voice. "It's
all my fault. Why did she have to die? I hate myself."
"I could help you," Spike said.
"I don't want you to help me" she sobbed.
"No, he said quietly, "but maybe you can help me."
Dawn lifted her head from the pillow and looked at him
directly for the first time. He realized that Dawn
might be alone but then she was all he had left too.
And she knew it too.
"Dawn, maybe we'll leave here tomorrow." Spike felt
like he was holding his breath until he realised he
didn't breath. "Would you like to go to France? Paris
is really something."
"Is it?"
"Nah, of course not. But its something different ain't
it. Change'll be good. For both of us.
"Okay then?"
She tried to smile and couldn't but she'd stopped
crying. Spike wiped away her tears with the edge of
his sleeves. He'd be better of without this. And she'd
certainly be better off without a vampire as a
guardian. But then again she doesn't need to see him
go up in flames. Not yet anyway.
"Okay, Dawn."
He'd promised Buffy he'd protect Dawn until the end of
the world. And the world kept on callously turning.
But they were still there. She wouldn't need him one
day but that day wasn't yet.
Maybe this human could anchor him to the world, if
only for a short while. Maybe one day he would stop
the clock for good, when he'd seen too many changes.
But that day wasn't yet.
FIN
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