Not Ever

Blocker

Not Ever



characters: Spike and Dawn (kinda)
time frame: AR where Dawn died at the end of s5 instead of Buffy
to: Ren
word count: 521

Spike heard the whimpers but was really too drunk to do anything about it - until he saw her.

Some wanna-be-bad had a girl by the throat and was draining her and making her drink him.

Not his concern, not his problem - until he saw her slim form and long brown hair.

Visions of another girl with a similar frame came to mind and even with the way the street seemed to ebb and flow in front of him, he ran to her side. He knew he was too late, but he staked the vamp anyway.

But when her pale body slumped to the blacktop, he found himself lifting her in his arms and carrying her back to his lair.

Just an abandoned apartment building, but it had heat and water and cable that he'd stolen from the tenement next door.

He laid her gently on the bed, trying to decide what to do with her now that he had her.

Lighting some candles, he looked her over. She didn't really look like Dawn. Oh, same tall thin frame, same long chestnut hair. But an innocence to her face that Dawn had lost as soon as she'd discovered that she was an ageless thing and not human at all.

He'd done that to her. He'd helped her break into the Magic Box, he'd even deciphered Rupert's writing, bringing her that bit of woe.

'All your fault, all your doing. Spike's been a bad, bad boy.'

The vision of her lying in a bloody pile at the bottom of a steel scaffold brought him up short and he searched for another bottle.

Never enough booze to quiet his head. Never enough blood or drugs or blessed silence to make him forget.

He found a half full bottle in the bedside table; he didn't remember putting it there, but then, he didn't remember much these days, did he?

It didn't take him five minutes to finish it off and then he lay down beside his prize and fell asleep.

He dreamt, as he did almost every day, of that night. The night he watched her die. But, like in many of the dreams, this time he saved her.

Was a little faster, a little stronger, got there in time, before the knife touched her skin.

The slayer took out Glory, but it had been he who saved the girl.

Fingers on his skin woke him and he opened his eyes and saw her looking down at him. But she looked - different.

"Dawn?" he asked her, not really believing.

"You saved me," she said, wonder in her voice.

"Not Dawn," he sighed, remembering - he hadn't saved the girl after all.

"You saved me," she said again.

He used a fang to cut a slit in his wrist and watched her change from a lovely girl into a monster. Watched her bloodlust grow as the blood pooled and ran down his arm.

When she couldn't bear it anymore and lunged for him, he pulled a stake and rammed it through her heart.

"Couldn't save the girl," he muttered to himself, "not now, not then, not ever."



The End