Disclaimer: I own none of the characters within.

Author's Notes: A short character piece set immediately after The Gift. Somewhat angsty. Enjoy.

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Stages of Grief

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The funeral is everything it should be. Quiet. Respectful. Loving. Very loving. They stand in tender silence, not a single dry eye, linked together hand in hand to form a chain of support.

"Ashes to ashes..."

They weep.

And afterwards, after she has been lowered into the ground, after they have all touched the headstone and whispered final, aching goodbyes, after the hugs and the tears and the desperate comforts, they go home.

Xander takes Anya back to their place to rest. She is weak and weary from the injuries she sustained. Ugly bruises mar her back and arms, and there's a nasty lump on the back of her head that he can feel when he runs his fingers gently through her hair. He does that now, ever so careful of the sore spot, as he tucks her in bed. He changed her back into pajamas so she would be more comfortable, and now he tells her to rest.

"Get some sleep, baby." he says fondly. "I love you."

"Aren't you staying?" she asks sleepily.

"I think I'm gonna... I'm gonna go over to be with..."

"Oh, of course." she nods. "Go. Be with your friends. I won't wait up."

"Sweet dreams."

"I'll try."

And when Xander gets to the Summers' house, he has to stand outside on the sidewalk to collect himself. Breathe in, breathe out. Breathe in, breathe out. Breathe in... breathe out... With enough willpower, he can keep the tears trapped in his eyes, can force himself to be strong for everyone. Clenched fists. Clenched jaw. And at the last second, he relaxes it all and strides into the house before the sadness can catch up with him.

Inside is like a tomb. All the shades are drawn. His fists clench again as he remembers why.

Spike is sitting at the table where they left him, his head pillowed on his arms, unmoving and silent. He hasn't spoken a word since... since...

It's strange not to hear him speak, to not have to deal with his constant jabs and digs. His voice has become such a constant grating presence that to not hear it at all brings an otherworldly quiet, a muffled, suffocated stillness.

When Dawn approaches him he lifts his gaze, eyes bleary and exhausted. She pets his head fondly, her own eyes still filled with tears from the service, a reservoir that will never run dry. In that instant, Xander is swamped under a wave of crushing jealousy. He wishes he had run to the tower's peak to protect her. He wishes it had been him that took a fall for her, because then it would be him that she treated with such tender gratitude.

He remembers a time when he was the one she had a crush on. It feels so silly, so stupid to be upset that it's not him anymore. But for some foolish reason, it hurts. And perhaps it wouldn't hurt so badly if it was anyone else that had replaced him. But it isn't anyone else. It's that bastard.

Oh, shit.

Dawn's tears have triggered Spike's, and the two of them weep together. In Xander's bitter opinion, the vampire seems to have an endless well of melodrama to draw upon. From the moment they had to drag his sobbing, hysterical ass out of the sunlight to now, he's been the most inconsolable of the group. For someone who has seen and experienced so much death, he seems ridiculously knocked off balance by it.

It makes Xander nervous to see Spike like this, and not only does it make him nervous, it makes him mad. Mad, mad, mad. His anger reaches a boiling point as he watches them. Spike is still sitting, and Dawn cradles his head against her stomach, stroking his hair and rocking him gently. These are the movements of a mother comforting a heartbroken child. The sounds of his anguish are muffled in the soft material of her sweater.

He has no right!

Spike has no right to do this. He has no right to grieve so intensely. He has no right to force Dawn to console him. It is they who should be consoling Dawn! Spike has to be insane to think they'll feel sorry for him!

Xander moves to separate them, his eyes burning with undisguised, blatant fury, and then Giles is there, catching his arm and propelling him to another room. Before the younger man can splutter out a cry of protest, he speaks.

"We all need to mourn in our own fashion."

"He has no right." Xander's voice trembles with emotion. "He has no right to do this."

In a familiar gesture tinged with despair, Giles removes his glasses and presses the back of his hand to the bridge of his nose.

"He's grieving. Just like me. Just like you. He cared for--"

"Don't." The word is clipped and sharp. "I don't want to hear it." An anguished pause. "Dawn shouldn't have to comfort him. It should be the other way around. It's not right."

"Perhaps Dawn's way of grieving is different from yours. Perhaps she finds solace in her ability to comfort others."

Glancing back to the table, Xander can see the peace on the girl's face, the serenity. Though Spike trembles and cries in her arms, she grows calmer and calmer the longer she soothes him. It's consoling her more than it's consoling him. Once he begins to understand, Xander gets the feeling he used to get in his childhood when forced to take a particularly foul medicine; you know it's good for you, but it just tastes so awful and it sticks in your throat and you can never get the taste to go away no matter how much milk you drink.

"It doesn't feel right." he manages to choke out, though he feels like he's going to throw up because the grief is suddenly so painful. "He has no right to do this."

Realizing there's nothing he can say to sway him, Giles sighs and puts his glasses back where they belong. They both return to the main room, where Willow and Tara have arrived with their overnight bags. The lovers stand in a tight embrace, watching the two at the table with sad, sad eyes.

Finally, Spike slides from Dawn's grip, shuddering in his efforts to control himself. His hands rest on the table before him and they all watch, mesmerized, as his fingers dance and tap and fidget. Xander notices for the first time how ashamed he looks, embarrassed by his emotions, mortified to be seen in such a state but helpless to control it.

In a strangely fatherly gesture, Giles places a hand on the vampire's shoulder and speaks in a soft, soft voice.

"The service was perfect. She would have been very pleased."

No response, no acknowledgment. They all know how crushed Spike was when he realized he couldn't go to the funeral. He begged them with wordless, wide-eyed pleas to have a night service, but that was something they couldn't do. She deserved to be in the sunlight, warm, safe, happy.

"If you'd like," Giles says quietly. "When the sun goes down, I can take you there to pay your respects and say..."

The unspoken 'goodbye' stings like a snakebite.

But at the unexpectedly kind offer, Spike looks up at Giles' face, searching and earnest. He nods; a rapid, jerking motion -- down, up -- and then looks away, unable to deal with feelings of gratitude or debt. Abruptly nervous, he chews his lower lip, and Xander wonders if he'll bite hard enough to make it bleed and whether he'll be comforted by the taste.

He hasn't eaten, either. Not since... since...

Every few hours they'll warm him up a mug of blood, but he ignores it, or gives it a disdainful glance and looks sick. The last time they tried, Dawn was begging him to drink, but that was before the funeral and he was much too occupied with moping about missing the service. Xander wants to force his mouth open and shove a tube down his throat. Pump the blood into him. At least then they wouldn't have to feel so damn sorry for him.

"I'm gonna go change." Dawn says quietly, fingering the sleeve of her funeral dress. She glances at Willow. "Can I just put on my pajamas?"

"Sure thing, Dawnie." the redhead summons a very convincing smile. "I think I'll put on my PJ's, too."

"Me, too." Tara adds. "We could order pizza for dinner." Noticing how disrespectful that sounds, she hastily continues, "Or... maybe that's not..."

"It's cool." Dawn smiles, and it's genuine. "I think she'd get a kick out of it."

When Willow tries to smile back, her face crumples into a small sob and she spins into Tara's embrace, hiding her face in her lover's shoulder. It's strange, but as Dawn heads upstairs Xander realizes that she is handling it the best out of all of them. Just how Buffy would have wanted it.

Oh, god. He'd managed to make it this far. But just thinking her name brings tears to his eyes, too many tears for him to keep in, too many, too many... He scurries into the bathroom to hide his shame.

When he comes out, Willow is sitting at the table next to Spike, checking his injuries. Vampires only heal when they're well-fed, and since this one hasn't eaten in days, his wounds are still open and unchanged since he received them. The cut over his eye was cleaned, but it still looks like some punishing scar, the mark of Cain. The redhead pulls up his shirt to check his bandages -- placed there not to stop the non-existent bleeding, but only to prevent the open sores from getting infected -- and makes a soft sound of disappointment.

"You have to eat something." she scolds. "This not-eating is really not-helping. I don't want to be checking your icky wounds forever."

Spike doesn't look at her, but he manages to look everywhere else. The floor. The ceiling. Giles' shoes. For a fleeting instant, Xander's face, and the brief eye contact crackles with a thousand volts of electricity.

"Fine." Willow yanks his shirt back into place, a little rough, a little pissed-off. "But I'm getting really close to not-caring."

"Let's go, Will." Tara suggests. "Go put on our pajamas."

They disappear up the stairs in a barely-audible swish of black skirts.

"I'm going to go lie down on the couch." Giles says wearily. "Take a nap. Wake me when the sun goes down, Spike, and I'll take you there."

No response. The defeated Watcher exits the scene.

Xander watches in stony silence as Spike fidgets, his knee bouncing up and down, still chewing his lip and tapping the tabletop. Finally, exasperated, the vampire digs in his pocket and surfaces with a pack of cigarettes. An empty pack of cigarettes. Overwhelmed by the monstrous unfairness of this slight, he flings the worthless cardboard across the room with a barely repressed sob of despair. He buries his face in his hands and remains still.

As the seconds drag on, Xander wants to march over and belt him across the face. He wants to hurt him. He wants to scream at him. He wants to beat him over the head until he understands that he has no right to grieve because he barely knew Buffy at all.

Instead, he heads out the front door into the fading afternoon light and starts walking. He walks for a long time, and as he goes, he tries to think.

At first all he can think of is Buffy.

She's dead. She's dead. She's dead. She's dead.

Then he thinks about how much he misses her.

She's gone. She's gone. She's gone. She's gone.

He thinks about Spike.

That bastard. That bastard. That bastard. That bastard.

He thinks about Spike in mourning.

No right. No right. No right. No right.

He thinks about Anya and Dawn and Giles and Willow and Tara and it's all too much for him to think about and he can't even focus anymore and he doesn't know where he's going or why he's walking anywhere at all.

And he wishes it had never happened.

The more he thinks about Buffy, really thinks about her, the more realizes how dearly he loved her. How precious she was to him. How he wishes he could have told her that. How glad he is that he got to fight beside her for so long. How he wishes it could have been longer. How proud of her he is.

How very, very proud.

He remembers so many moments, too many to be numbered. Moments of friendship and laughter and love and family. A family that just might dissolve without Buffy to stand in the middle and hold them all together.

Suddenly, he's thinking about Spike again, and about how the vampire will never have a chance to be a part of that family. How he'll never have a chance to really know Buffy as a friend, to earn the respect that he so desperately wanted from her. He'll never get to make her laugh or give her a present or be anything more than just Spike-that-one-vampire-who-helps-Buffy-every-once-in-a-while.

And suddenly, it changes.

Poor bastard. Poor bastard. Poor bastard. Poor bastard.

When he gets to the convenience store, he scans the cigarettes for Spike's brand. He spots a label that he recognizes, having seen it countless times emerging from the pocket of the black leather duster, and gets a pack. Almost as an afterthought, he adds a bottle of Jack Daniel's to the purchase. There's no good liquor in the Summers' house.

The walk home is very, very quiet, and for some reason he doesn't seem to be thinking so hard. Maybe it's because he's calmer now. Maybe it's because he's pretty sure he figured things out. Maybe it's because he at least decided what to do next.

The sun has almost set when he gets back to the house. At a loss for anything else to do, Spike has been chewing his fingernails, and he glances up in guilty alarm when Xander walks into the room, whipping his hand away from his mouth like he can hide it. It doesn't really matter, though. Xander tosses him the pack of cigarettes and he snatches it out of the air, examining it and then glancing in complete surprise at his one-time enemy.

"Knock yourself out," Xander says lightly. "That's an order."

He ducks into the kitchen and opens the fridge, grabs the mug of blood, empties some of it into the sink. Grabs an empty mug for himself. Heads back to the table, where Spike is already halfway through a cigarette.

When the vampire sees the mug, he glances away in dismay, unable to drink it. Xander reaches into the convenience store bag and pulls out the Jack Daniel's. Spike's eyebrows shoot up almost to his hairline as Xander pours enough liquor into the blood to fill the mug to the brim.

"Look, it's a Bloody Mary," he jokes feebly. Nudging it in Spike's direction, he says, "All right, I brought you smokes and liquor, but you gotta meet me halfway, man."

And as Spike drinks long and deep from the mug, Xander splashes a little whiskey into his own cup and takes a swig. It burns.

When both mugs are empty, Xander walks into the living room and sees Giles asleep on the couch. The man looks exhausted, absolutely exhausted, and he doesn't have the heart to wake him even though the sun went down a while ago. A decision is made, one that would probably make Buffy proud, and he walks back to the table.

"Sun's down." he says. "Giles is out cold. I'll take you."

Spike looks at him, bites his lip, and glances away looking like he's about to cry. He manages to nod and drag himself to his feet, gesturing for Xander to lead, indicating he'd rather follow behind.

It's an epic journey. Frodo climbing up Mt. Doom with the Ring of Power must have been a cakewalk compared to this. Because this, this is walking to the cemetery to look at your best friend's grave and say goodbye. This is something that you should never, ever have to do. She was just a kid. This is worse than anything he's ever endured before, and he doesn't try to keep the tears in his eyes this time because Spike is behind him and can't see it anyway.

Spike's painful shuffle is uncomfortably audible on the still evening air. The sound of feet being dragged along the pavement for every agonizing step, forcing his broken body to move, almost completely destroyed by the plunge from the tower. Xander doesn't even fully grasp how he can keep himself moving, but he thinks he understands a little bit. It has to do with a desperate need.

The grave looks exactly the same as it did a few hours ago, only now that it's bathed in pale moonlight, it looks much softer and much more peaceful now.

BUFFY ANNE SUMMERS

"I really miss you, Buffy." Xander says with a tiny smile.

But Spike falls to his knees, covering his face with one hand and using the other to gesture frantically at Xander, begging him to turn away and spare him the shame. Suddenly pierced with respect, Xander silently agrees, moving away into the cemetery. As soon as his back is turned the night erupts with horrible sobs, wrenching, gulping, wracking the injured body from which they emit. It's awful to hear and he wishes he were somewhere else, while at the same he's very glad that he came. This is something that he needs to be witness to if he's ever going to be able to understand.

So he turns and watches and opens his mind and heart.

As the weeping recedes, Spike bows his head as if in prayer. The moonlight gives his pale hair an eerie halo, and the tears that fall from his face catch a glimmer of it and twinkle like crystals, tumbling to the grave in silence.

A voice speaks, a voice hoarse from days of misuse, a voice full of pain and regret and despair and longing and absolute sincerity.

It is as if Spike is being reborn from his old, shattered form, and Xander leans forward to catch his first words.

This is what he hears:

"I'm sorry."

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end.