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He doesn't feel the burn mark, but he's scorched anyway. It's been so long that he'd forgotten what it was like to laugh with friends, to converse with people, to dance simply because you could.
When he watches her he almost believes that he could go into the sun, that he could be more than a thing. She kisses him and he forgets that his lips are only warm due to reflected heat. He knows he has to return to his position of ally and nothing more; his fleeting dreams of being someone dear to her are a dangerous fantasy.
---
The demon has already twisted the sword and yanked it out before his memories return. Casually picking off classmates, the snap of Jenny's neck, torturing Giles but worse is seeing the haunted look in her eyes.
He doesn't understand how she could have forgiven him so easily. His greatest joy was his vile demonstrations of how little she meant to him. His soul has already been sniffed out here and he will be shown no mercy but he deserves no less.
He knew that monsters don't get to love the heroine, why did he dare to think he was special?
---
He waits until he can't see her or hear her, a stone statue with an inscrutable expression. He purposely forces in a huge lungful of air and holds it long past the point where a human would have released it, gasping desperately for breath.
He can taste decomposing rat, old blood, demon viscera, raw sewage and ever so faintly and already fading, the salt sting of her tears. If he was alive, he would be vomiting by now. Instead, this is what heartbreak smells like when you're a demon and your heart hasn't worked in two hundred and fifty years.
---
The look in her eyes almost derails his decision even before the pain has time to take root. It's not the sorrow; he's painfully used to being the cause. It's the resolve written on her face to go forward with her life and forget him. What is he if he no longer resides in her heart at all?
And then he remembers her unguarded words, foolishly spoken aloud because she didn't think she had to hide her deepest wishes any longer. A normal girl with a normal boyfriend. He lets her go, wondering why he ever thought they could work.
---
He was there for sympathy and support. His kiss was meant to be a friendly peck; instead she opened her mouth and filled his with the warm, wet glide of her tongue. Instantly, he pulled her closer, nibbled her lips, felt her body melt against his even as her hands and mouth grew more insistent.
He had been sleepwalking for months but like a fairytale princess, her kiss awakened him. How naive to think that they could ever have moved past each other, when their passion lay like a demon just below the surface of their skin. He couldn't stay.
---
Her skin is stretched so tightly that he can see the cat's cradle of her veins on her arms. She turns away from him and in a barely-there voice she tells him of absolute stillness, of perfect love, of never-ending peace.
He thought he could help her but now he recognizes it for arrogance. All he knows is hell, the hell he suffered and the hell he meted out. The only time he has ever known peace he was wrapped in her arms, her beating heart promising him that she would light the shadows for him. He knows better now.
---
He plods back to the car and with every step his mood darkens. She still thinks about him, but he knows he's not the man she loved. He's been broken so many times and every time he's reassembled there are pieces missing. He's already left her so often that now that she's sending him away, it doesn't even sting.
He's not getting any older and in the end, that's the rub. Still a vampire. She's the same also, still looks like innocence, kisses like sin. He guiltily thinks of Cordy, but the truth is she'll always be his biggest weakness.
---
All this time he had harbored a smidgen of hope. No more. He knows Spike will be all right. He loves fiercely, passionately, completely and eventually Spike will find someone else to devote himself to. Not him. Even though he loved Cordelia, likes Nina, she is his touchstone.
It's not that she's with The Immortal, he knows that he's just a temporary diversion. It's that she wants nothing to do with him romantically, professionally, not even as a friend. He's been excised from her life as if he was a tumor. How could he be so blind regarding her heart?
---
After three years of being on the run, it finally appears his enemies have lost interest. He stays in the shadows for twenty-three days and watches her house, reminding him of a year spent in LA watching her. He finally knocks, not because he expects anything, he just wants to see her one final time.
A lifetime of conflicting emotions flits across her face.
"I knew you weren't dead." She looks straight into his eyes, judging him. "Will you stay?"
"I don't have anything to offer you," he mumbles.
"Stupid idiot." She grabs his hand. "Just you was always enough."