The Divine Comedy: A Series of Drabbles pt 2

Purgatorio

*

She’d run out into the night, overwhelmed by what she’d seen and heard. How was it possible, that he could have a soul? How could it have happened? How could he have wanted it?

Did he really love her that much? She’d wanted to believe he couldn’t love.

She ran half a mile before she stopped and thought about what she’d done. Left him lying on that cross.

She turned around and ran back to the church. He was gone, the smell of his burning flesh lingering in the air. She hoped he’d climbed down. The alternative was beyond bearing.

**

She shouldn’t have forgiven him. She should have staked him, right there in the cellar, amidst the dust of his victims. What did it mean?

She had to forgive him. How could she slay him, so confused and afraid, in the cold of the cellar, when he had risked everything for his soul. She knew what it meant. He’d changed.

He was being controlled by the First. She explained it, and now he knew it too.

He sat, wrapped in the blanket in her living room, wondering why.

She watched him, fearing for him, wanting to protect him, wondering how.

***

This is what he deserves. The torture. Being picked apart bit by bit. The knives. Being held under the water, in no way dangerous to him except in his mind.

In his mind, where he sees her. Not real, yet there. He dreams she helps him, but he knows she won’t. She has other things to deal with than the likes of him.

Foolish of it to use Dru, though. It can’t hurt him that way, can’t tempt him.

She comes to save him, again, but this time he touches her. She’s real. Real as the compassion in her eyes.

****

The girls watch them closely. Most are a bit afraid of him, knowing what he is, but Buffy trusts him, and she’s their leader. They have a kind of dance as they work, almost like their movements were choreographed. They look comfortable together.

The girls wonder at that. Just what the relationship is. How a vampire and a slayer can come together as teachers, colleagues. And what else they do together.

Whatever they are, they’re beautiful to watch. Both blond, muscular, small in stature and yet each commanding respect with their very presence.

They stand together, side by side. Equals.

*****

Lying together, wrapped in each others arms, they find the intimacy and tenderness they’d never found in their tempestuous affair. He watches her as she sleeps. She gently strokes his fingers as he does.

There is a peace here neither had believed they would find.

But now the time for peace is in the past, and two champions fight to save the world. The time is short.

They clasp hands, and everything that words cannot express passes between them. It is a memory she will hold on to in life. It is a memory that will sustain him in death.

Originally posted at http://seasonal-spuffy.livejournal.com/253074.html