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Sometimes Buffy thinks Spike needs a way to her. He’s killed so many people, done so many things, but there are times when she can see his eyes are changing. Like now they’re rimmed with bruises, and she thinks he understands.
He tears her world apart sometimes, when he looks at her with the question why, why’s that wrong? and makes her explain, to him and to herself. With him she’s more self-righteous than she’s ever been, but she’s more consistent too. She’s better.
And so sometimes she drops explanations into her speech like footnotes, more than she ever used in college, like translating glosses helping him to read along.
What you did, for me, and Dawn – that was real.
He plucks the comments from the air, turns them over, builds a path towards her out of matchsticks, every inch a stretch towards comprehension. A step away from killing.
There’s a path of words that grows between them. Sometimes she thinks that she’ll be waiting at the end.