Title: A War Worth Fighting
Author: Kat Lee
Fandom: Buffy the Vampire Slayer
Character/Pairing: Spike/Buffy
Rating: PG/K+
Challenge/Prompt: beattheblackdog #40: Launch and seasonal_spuffy: Under Influence of… War
Warning(s): None
Word Count: 1,420
Date Written: 6 November 2016
Summary: She makes war worth fighting.
Disclaimer: All characters within belong to Whedon, not the author, and are used without permission.
He’s been fighting for so long now that he can barely remember what it’s like not to fight. This war they’re fighting seems endless, just one battle after another, one near miss of the apocalypse after another, one near loss of the woman he loves after another. He has lost her, and she’s come back, but still, the war continues. Always, with or without them, he knows, this war will always last until evil finally wins or time ends. He more than half expects that, despite all of Buffy’s valiant efforts and the others risking their lives day after day to save the world, evil will one day win, but he knows, too, that when that happens, his Buffy will be long gone from this world. As long as she lives, she’s going to keep kicking its ass, and he’s going to be right here beside her.
At least he’s fighting for a just cause now. Some nights, it doesn’t really matter to him any more. It’s just one battle after another, just as it was one fight after another before she converted him to the side of good. Except, of course, the Demon in him craved violence. It still does sometimes, but now there’s a part of him that just wants to grab his love, hightail it away from all this fighting, and just live out the rest of her days, loving her peacefully.
But even if he wanted it with his whole being, it would still never happen, Spike knows. People like them need something to fight about, although Buffy prefers to think of it as having a reason to fight instead of simply fighting. He knows the truth, though: She craves the violence almost as much as he did. It’s why their first many times together were so violent that they often took down the building where they were, and why she still likes to chain him and have her way with him on occasion, not that he minds. There isn’t a single thing that woman can do to him that he’d ever mind enough to stop her.
Yet, the thought of living peacefully and just loving her every night has its appeal. The object of his thoughts stirs in her sleep. She whimpers something indecipherable, but he knows she’s dreaming of yet another fight. He runs his fingers lightly over the tender flesh of her arm where it lays over their sheet and then follows the trace of his fingertips with his lips. He murmurs soothing words to her in between his gentle kisses until she calms again.
The sun’s beating down hard outside, but she’s got enough curtains on her window that he can slip in to be with her at any time and never fear colliding with the fatal rays of the sun. She fell asleep again this morning inside his arms, and he’s held her ever since. He hasn’t stirred except for now as he’s soothing her unspoken fears.
She’s the bravest woman he’s ever known, but he knows a part of her is still afraid every time they venture into battle. She’s never afraid for herself. She’s afraid of letting down the world, of losing the fight to save it, and, most of all, of losing him or one of her friends, but fear for herself is something for which this girl remembers nothing.
He remembers when she was afraid. He remembers smelling her fear and getting a hard on knowing that he still had what it took to make a Slayer afraid. She never once backed down from him, but she was very much afraid of him. Yet, he remembers with a cocky half-grin, half-smirk, she managed to convince him to help her save the world even back then. At the time, he thought he was saving it for Dru, but later he came to realize that that wasn’t the case at all.
Yes, he’d love Dru, but even then there had been something about Buffy that appealed to him, something that kept him coming back to Sunnydale, and to her, again and again. It had seemed even to him to take him the longest time to figure it out. He’d fed himself a thousand lines from telling himself and Dru that she meant nothing to him to trying to assuage his guilt over no longer always putting Drusilla first with the belief that he simply wanted to spill another Slayer’s blood to attempting to convince himself that the only reason he wanted anything to do with her at all was because he wanted to hurt Angel. But none of that was true. Somewhere along the way, he’d fallen in love with her.
Once he’d realized the truth, he hadn’t backed down or away. She had done plenty of that for both of them. But when she’d had no one else, he had remained standing beside her. She’d been driven into his arms by desperation at first, but some time after he regained his soul and she’d nursed him back to health, some time after he’d proven himself to her countless times and she’d eventually thought she’d lost him, after he’d gotten his body back and found her again, and after all those many, many battles in between, she’d finally stopped running.
He’d like to think she’d never looked back as he hasn’t, but he knows it’s a lie. That’s one thing he will no longer do to himself. He’ll face the truth no matter how much it hurts, and the truth is that she’s often looked back. She’s dallied with Angel. She’s almost dallied with others, but in the end, every time, she’s come back to him. And he, Spike thinks as he places another kiss on her shoulder, has been waiting for her as patiently as a bloke can wait for a woman who keeps looking for a better love than the one her heart has chosen for her.
He’d like to think those times are beyond him, but he’s a realist. Just as he knows he’ll forever be love’s bitch and his love will forever be the Slayer, he knows she’ll venture away from him again. She’ll try to do better than him, and he’ll let her. But when the pieces of her life fall down again, when she needs him again, he’ll always be as close to her as she’ll allow him.
Just as he’ll continue fighting these endless battles with her. She turns slightly in her slumber, and he finds himself gazing down into her beautiful face. Hers is definitely a beauty worth fighting for. He’s reminded of the line of the woman whose face launched a thousand ships. Helen of Troy tore apart two kingdoms. Buffy, he knows, has already torn apart that and many, many more.
He leans down to kiss her, but she moves again. His black lips collide with silky strands of her long, blonde hair instead. The poet in him wants to compare them to spun gold, but he knows those lines have been used a thousand times over. She deserves more. She always deserves more and better than what he can give her, but he gives her his all nonetheless and knows he always will.
Brushing his lips once more against her hair, he reflects that these quiet, tender moments he shares with her, even if she isn’t awake, make every battle they endure worth their sacrifice. It isn’t the world for which he fights. It never has been. It’s always, always been her.
He brushes his lips again across her hair, but this time, she moves to face him, her green eyes sliding open. “Kiss me,” she orders with a fake sternness and a little groggily, “instead of my hair.”
He grins. “You know I’m love’s bitch, darling. It’s my pleasure to let you order me.” And truly it is, he thinks as he leans down and takes her lips with his. Every moment spent with this wonderful woman is his pleasure, but all the moments in the world which they keep saving could never be enough time spent with her. He doesn’t break their kiss to whisper words of love to her or offer her a poem that could never be worthy of her wonderfulness, beauty, or courage. He simply keeps showing her night after night, day after day, with his every kiss, his every touch, his presence in every battle where she’ll let him assist her, his every action how much he loves her and always will.
The End
Originally posted at http://seasonal-spuffy.livejournal.com/572949.html
