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damalurbackupTITLE: Letters to My Mother, 10 November 2003
CHARACTERS: Buffy/Spike, Dawn, Joyce
NOTES: Set in an AU where Buffy meets Spike, is locked in a psychiatric hospital, escapes, and moves to Sunnydale, in that order. Some other things happen in between.
SUMMARY: This is a little wiggy, I'm not going to lie — writing a letter to you, I mean, with you being dead and all — but you always did want to know how I met Spike.
LETTERS TO MY MOTHER
10 November 2003
Dear Mom,
This is a little wiggy, I'm not going to lie — writing a letter to you, I mean, with you being dead and all. Okay, maybe not so weird, because I've written letters to Spike, and he's dead, but it's not like you're going to write me back. You're dead-dead, really dead, but there's some stuff I want to tell you anyway, because I wish I'd told you and because I need to tell it. I can't tell Spike, exactly. He's too close to everything, and anyway he was there for most of it, and Dawnie's too young. (Not for much longer, though. You should see her, Mom — she's taller than me now, and the queen of Sunnydale Middle School. Spike and I caught her making out with a vampire last week. I guess it runs in the family. Don't worry, the vamp in question is making nice with the other dustbunnies.)
I should probably start with my sixteenth birthday — or no, I was only almost sixteen. It was maybe two weeks before my birthday. You and Dad were still married, and okay, things weren't going so well, but at least we were all together, even if he spent more time getting to know his new secretary than he did his own family. Dawn was in...what, fourth grade? Maybe? And I was in the middle of my sophomore year at Hemery High, a rising star on the cheerleading squad, even if certain other extracurricular activities meant that I was spending less and less time doing high kicks and more and more time doing, well, high kicks. Fine, so there was still high kicking, but this time the intent was to nail a vampire in the nose, not display my oh-so-toned legs to the Hemery Hogs (go Hogs!).
Because here's the thing: at the start of that year, I was called as the Slayer. I know you believed me later, but at the time you didn't and you ended up hurting me. Merrick came to me only a few days after school started, and God, if you think it's terrifying to be a fifteen-year-old girl worried about zits and boys and your English final, try being a fifteen-year-old girl worried about all those things and vampires, and then a fifteen-year-old girl worried about zits and vampires whose parents don't believe her and then lock her up in a place for the crazies.
Sorry. I promised myself I wouldn't get on you about that, at least not now.
Anyway, one girl in all the world, chosen to fight the forces of blah blah blah. You know the spiel. So here I am, almost sixteen — I guess I'd been slaying for maybe five months, maybe not quite that — and I'm all by my lonesome up at Marshall Memorial Cemetery, which is the one closest to Hemery. It was maybe ten o'clock, and I was already on my last cemetery of the night. I remember I started early because Saundra Thomas (that skank who always wore pink spandex pants and leg warmers) made some pretty tasteless comments about my clothing at practice. Hypocrite, much?
So there I was, wandering around a graveyard in the dark, not getting a lot of action, when all of the sudden my spider-sense starts going berserk. I'd never felt anything like it before, especially not that intensely; it was like Merrick randomly popped out from behind a tombstone and started beating me over the head with a stick while screaming "VAMPIRE!" at the top of his lungs. Not that Merrick would ever do that. I can't really see any Watcher doing that, come to think of it, although maybe if we got Wes drunk enough...
I spun around, and there he was. You'd think he'd have lurked more, maybe prowled around in the dark while I hunted frantically, but that wasn't his style. The first thing I noticed (and please, please don't tell him this, his head's swollen enough already) was that he was incredibly hot. I'm talking male model hot. He had it all — the eyes, the cheekbones, the sort of chiseled-yet-compact build that had you drooling for him to strip that leather coat off. You could tell by the way he moved. (Hello, fifteen-year-old girl here. You think I wasn't going to notice?)
He was smirking at me, but when I failed to do anything more threatening than gape open-mouthed in his general direction, he threw back his head and laughed. He had me then, with that laugh, even if at the time I was only aware of a rising wave of anger.
"Who are you?" I asked. Or spit. Or snarled. Yeah, snarled might be the best word.
"Vampire, love," he said, between little spurts of laughter. It was hard to take him seriously, when he could laugh like that.
"Gee, really," I said. "No kidding." Okay, maybe I did forget he was a vampire for about thirty seconds there — but like I said, I was fifteen. That's the same age Dawn is now, come to think of it, and Spike calls her a walking hormone bomb. I was pretty much the same way. Maybe worse.
He stopped laughing then, but the smirk was still there, and the mirth in his eyes. Mirth. That's a good word, a Giles-word.
He said, "Slayer."
"Slayee," I said back, and the mirth bubbled up again. His eyes looked dark, in this light, but I remember thinking they'd be lighter out of the shadows. I was so sure he wouldn't have brown eyes. No, he'd have something electric and glowing. Gold or green - bright green, not hazel like mine — or blue. Gray, maybe.
"Who are you?" I said again. Kinda stupid, right? I don't normally go around asking vampires their names before I dust them.
"Me?" He chuckled again, then slid one hand inside the pocket of his duster, produced a carton of cigarettes, slammed the carton twice against the palm of his right hand, tucked the cigarette between his lips — very nice lips, too — and finally flicked open a silver Zippo and lit the thing. Needlessly dramatic, but boy, nice lips.
"I," he said, with a curious twist to his head and then the cigarette was between those long fingers, "am Spike. And hate to break it to you, pet, but I'm here to kill you."
"Oh yeah?" I tossed back. "And what exactly makes you think you can beat me? Slayer here, in case you haven't noticed."
He took another drag off the cigarette, then dropped it to the ground. He didn't even bother to put it out, which seemed a little strange to me, since vampires are big with the flammable and all.
"Oh, this is going to be good," he said, more to himself than to me, and then he threw himself forward with a vicious right-backhand left-hook combo that snapped my head back and left my cheek bruised for a week, which is about as long as any bruise ever lasts on me.
I'd never fought anyone like him before. I still haven't, but in those days fighting him was a revelation, with none of the playful familiarity between us now. At almost-sixteen, I'd never met a vampire older than twenty, never taken on a demon larger than a small dog or a (very) large rat. I was good; he was better. I had potential; he had experience. I had five months of fighting fledgelings and punching bags; he had a century of fighting the biggest, nastiest, and meanest monsters he could find.
I mean, I still like to think I held my own, at least for a while. That potential was just starting to be honed into skill, and I was creative. It must have been twenty or thirty minutes before we stopped, which is an eternity for a fight. The thing is, though, he had me. There were at least three instances where he could have pinned me and had his fangs in my throat, and another riskier opening that might have meant his end but would have meant mine too.
Spike, of course, claims that he fell in love with me the minute he saw me, but it's hard to tell with him, even now. Sometimes he really is that smart, or insightful, or whatever, and sometimes he's just pretending, and sometimes he's pretending to hide that truth that happens to be the same as what he's pretending, and sometimes he flat-out lies. I don't think he was lying, though. He's a crap liar.
I think it's more likely that I interested him, and that he was bored, and he wanted to string this third Slayer thing out a little longer. He's a sucker for a good fight. Whatever the reason, he walked away that night, and so did I.
There you go, Mom. You always wondered how Spike and I met, and I never did tell you the whole story. It doesn't exactly put Spike in a good light, what with him trying to kill me and me trying to kill him and the whole killing each other thing. I did tell you he was evil, though. You just never believed me. You never believed me when I was right, like about the vampires, and you never believed me when I was wrong. I figured it out by myself.
I still love you, though. I love you so much, Mom, and I miss you, and it isn't the same with you gone.
Love,
Buffy
CHARACTERS: Buffy/Spike, Dawn, Joyce
NOTES: Set in an AU where Buffy meets Spike, is locked in a psychiatric hospital, escapes, and moves to Sunnydale, in that order. Some other things happen in between.
SUMMARY: This is a little wiggy, I'm not going to lie — writing a letter to you, I mean, with you being dead and all — but you always did want to know how I met Spike.
LETTERS TO MY MOTHER
10 November 2003
Dear Mom,
This is a little wiggy, I'm not going to lie — writing a letter to you, I mean, with you being dead and all. Okay, maybe not so weird, because I've written letters to Spike, and he's dead, but it's not like you're going to write me back. You're dead-dead, really dead, but there's some stuff I want to tell you anyway, because I wish I'd told you and because I need to tell it. I can't tell Spike, exactly. He's too close to everything, and anyway he was there for most of it, and Dawnie's too young. (Not for much longer, though. You should see her, Mom — she's taller than me now, and the queen of Sunnydale Middle School. Spike and I caught her making out with a vampire last week. I guess it runs in the family. Don't worry, the vamp in question is making nice with the other dustbunnies.)
I should probably start with my sixteenth birthday — or no, I was only almost sixteen. It was maybe two weeks before my birthday. You and Dad were still married, and okay, things weren't going so well, but at least we were all together, even if he spent more time getting to know his new secretary than he did his own family. Dawn was in...what, fourth grade? Maybe? And I was in the middle of my sophomore year at Hemery High, a rising star on the cheerleading squad, even if certain other extracurricular activities meant that I was spending less and less time doing high kicks and more and more time doing, well, high kicks. Fine, so there was still high kicking, but this time the intent was to nail a vampire in the nose, not display my oh-so-toned legs to the Hemery Hogs (go Hogs!).
Because here's the thing: at the start of that year, I was called as the Slayer. I know you believed me later, but at the time you didn't and you ended up hurting me. Merrick came to me only a few days after school started, and God, if you think it's terrifying to be a fifteen-year-old girl worried about zits and boys and your English final, try being a fifteen-year-old girl worried about all those things and vampires, and then a fifteen-year-old girl worried about zits and vampires whose parents don't believe her and then lock her up in a place for the crazies.
Sorry. I promised myself I wouldn't get on you about that, at least not now.
Anyway, one girl in all the world, chosen to fight the forces of blah blah blah. You know the spiel. So here I am, almost sixteen — I guess I'd been slaying for maybe five months, maybe not quite that — and I'm all by my lonesome up at Marshall Memorial Cemetery, which is the one closest to Hemery. It was maybe ten o'clock, and I was already on my last cemetery of the night. I remember I started early because Saundra Thomas (that skank who always wore pink spandex pants and leg warmers) made some pretty tasteless comments about my clothing at practice. Hypocrite, much?
So there I was, wandering around a graveyard in the dark, not getting a lot of action, when all of the sudden my spider-sense starts going berserk. I'd never felt anything like it before, especially not that intensely; it was like Merrick randomly popped out from behind a tombstone and started beating me over the head with a stick while screaming "VAMPIRE!" at the top of his lungs. Not that Merrick would ever do that. I can't really see any Watcher doing that, come to think of it, although maybe if we got Wes drunk enough...
I spun around, and there he was. You'd think he'd have lurked more, maybe prowled around in the dark while I hunted frantically, but that wasn't his style. The first thing I noticed (and please, please don't tell him this, his head's swollen enough already) was that he was incredibly hot. I'm talking male model hot. He had it all — the eyes, the cheekbones, the sort of chiseled-yet-compact build that had you drooling for him to strip that leather coat off. You could tell by the way he moved. (Hello, fifteen-year-old girl here. You think I wasn't going to notice?)
He was smirking at me, but when I failed to do anything more threatening than gape open-mouthed in his general direction, he threw back his head and laughed. He had me then, with that laugh, even if at the time I was only aware of a rising wave of anger.
"Who are you?" I asked. Or spit. Or snarled. Yeah, snarled might be the best word.
"Vampire, love," he said, between little spurts of laughter. It was hard to take him seriously, when he could laugh like that.
"Gee, really," I said. "No kidding." Okay, maybe I did forget he was a vampire for about thirty seconds there — but like I said, I was fifteen. That's the same age Dawn is now, come to think of it, and Spike calls her a walking hormone bomb. I was pretty much the same way. Maybe worse.
He stopped laughing then, but the smirk was still there, and the mirth in his eyes. Mirth. That's a good word, a Giles-word.
He said, "Slayer."
"Slayee," I said back, and the mirth bubbled up again. His eyes looked dark, in this light, but I remember thinking they'd be lighter out of the shadows. I was so sure he wouldn't have brown eyes. No, he'd have something electric and glowing. Gold or green - bright green, not hazel like mine — or blue. Gray, maybe.
"Who are you?" I said again. Kinda stupid, right? I don't normally go around asking vampires their names before I dust them.
"Me?" He chuckled again, then slid one hand inside the pocket of his duster, produced a carton of cigarettes, slammed the carton twice against the palm of his right hand, tucked the cigarette between his lips — very nice lips, too — and finally flicked open a silver Zippo and lit the thing. Needlessly dramatic, but boy, nice lips.
"I," he said, with a curious twist to his head and then the cigarette was between those long fingers, "am Spike. And hate to break it to you, pet, but I'm here to kill you."
"Oh yeah?" I tossed back. "And what exactly makes you think you can beat me? Slayer here, in case you haven't noticed."
He took another drag off the cigarette, then dropped it to the ground. He didn't even bother to put it out, which seemed a little strange to me, since vampires are big with the flammable and all.
"Oh, this is going to be good," he said, more to himself than to me, and then he threw himself forward with a vicious right-backhand left-hook combo that snapped my head back and left my cheek bruised for a week, which is about as long as any bruise ever lasts on me.
I'd never fought anyone like him before. I still haven't, but in those days fighting him was a revelation, with none of the playful familiarity between us now. At almost-sixteen, I'd never met a vampire older than twenty, never taken on a demon larger than a small dog or a (very) large rat. I was good; he was better. I had potential; he had experience. I had five months of fighting fledgelings and punching bags; he had a century of fighting the biggest, nastiest, and meanest monsters he could find.
I mean, I still like to think I held my own, at least for a while. That potential was just starting to be honed into skill, and I was creative. It must have been twenty or thirty minutes before we stopped, which is an eternity for a fight. The thing is, though, he had me. There were at least three instances where he could have pinned me and had his fangs in my throat, and another riskier opening that might have meant his end but would have meant mine too.
Spike, of course, claims that he fell in love with me the minute he saw me, but it's hard to tell with him, even now. Sometimes he really is that smart, or insightful, or whatever, and sometimes he's just pretending, and sometimes he's pretending to hide that truth that happens to be the same as what he's pretending, and sometimes he flat-out lies. I don't think he was lying, though. He's a crap liar.
I think it's more likely that I interested him, and that he was bored, and he wanted to string this third Slayer thing out a little longer. He's a sucker for a good fight. Whatever the reason, he walked away that night, and so did I.
There you go, Mom. You always wondered how Spike and I met, and I never did tell you the whole story. It doesn't exactly put Spike in a good light, what with him trying to kill me and me trying to kill him and the whole killing each other thing. I did tell you he was evil, though. You just never believed me. You never believed me when I was right, like about the vampires, and you never believed me when I was wrong. I figured it out by myself.
I still love you, though. I love you so much, Mom, and I miss you, and it isn't the same with you gone.
Love,
Buffy
