She slipped out the door, closing it quietly behind her.

“Buffy.”

She looked up, her brow crinkling in confusion at the vampire standing in the alley. “Spike, it's daylight and you're...”

“Not on fire?” He glanced at the sky. “Sun's low enough—shady enough here.”

Suddenly cold, she wrapped her arms around herself, her eyes distant and unseeing.

“I was gonna go inside, but I overheard you and the Super-friends exchanging a special moment and I came over a bit queasy,” he quipped in an attempt to hide his bitterness at the way the Scoobies had excluded him from their plans, and were now back to treating him like scum after a summer of working together as a team. She continued to gaze into nothingness, moving only to brush her hair idly away from her face. “Say, aren't you leaving a hole in the middle of some soggy group hug?” he continued, looking for some sort of reaction.

“Just wanted a little time alone,” Buffy replied quietly as she walked over and sat on a packing crate a few feet away from him.

“Oh. Uh, right then.” He could take a hint—when it suited him. He turned to leave, then realised that he was trapped until the sun moved a little further across the sky.

“That's okay,” Buffy said. “I can be alone with you here.”

“Thanks ever so,” Spike replied, smiling ruefully.

“Right.” Buffy winced inwardly when she realised how her words could be interpreted. She didn't mean to be hurtful; it was simply that there was something about Spike's company that brought her solace.  She didn't feel like she was suffocating when she was with him—drowning under the weight of everyone's expectations. Her pulse didn't race as the flight from fear instinct kicked in as it did when her friends cornered her with their half-accusing puppy-dog eyes, waiting to be told they'd done good when they had caused her so much loss, or her hands tremble from the adrenaline that flooded her system.  Her thoughts didn't whirl as rapidly in his presence, even if the ache in her heart still throbbed just as fiercely.

If only she could remember.

“Buffy?” Spike asked after the moment stretched into a long unbearable silence. “Slayer? Are you okay?” He hated to see her looking so lost, so vulnerable.

She nodded. “I'm here. I'm good.”

‘Buffy,” he said once more, walking back toward her. “If you're in... if you're in pain... or if you need anything... or if I can do anything for you...”

She knew she should remember—it was important that she know, but try as she might, all she could remember from before the gut-wrenching, mind-tearing pain was that she was loved.

Her gaze dropped to her lap, attempting to hide her pain from the too perceptive vampire. “You can't.”

“Well, I haven't been to a hell dimension just of late, but I do know a thing or two about torment,” he said, tentatively dropping to sit beside her.

She had been safe and happy, everyone and everything she cared about was safe, and above all else she had been loved in a way she'd never known before, and probably never would again.

“I was happy,” she whispered.  “Wherever I... was... I was happy. At peace.”

Spike stared at her, unable to hide his shock.

“I knew that everyone I cared about was all right,” she explained. “I knew it. Time... didn't mean anything...” She glanced briefly at the vampire as fragments of memory whirled around in her mind, bright and sharp for a fraction of a moment, then fading rapidly before she could grasp them. “I was warm... and I was loved... and I was finished. Complete. I don't understand about theology or dimensions, or... any of it, really... but I think I was in heaven.”

Spike continued to stare at her, aching to offer comfort, but not knowing what he could do or say to make things right—if making things right was even possible.

“And now I'm not,” she continued, her voice catching as her mind reeled once more with her loss.  “I was torn out of there. Pulled out... by my friends. Everything here is... hard, and bright, and violent. Everything I feel, everything I touch... this is Hell. Just getting through the next moment, and the one after that... knowing what I've lost...” She was unsure why she would confide such a thing in Spike, especially when she knew beyond a doubt that she couldn't tell her friends. All she knew was that telling him felt right—felt safe.

Rising, she walked to where the shadows stopped and the bright sunlight took over, and paused. “They can never know. Never,” she said, walking slowly into the sunlight.

the end