BTVS Oneshot: Foretaste of Beauty

[jesterladyfic]

Title: Foretaste of Beauty
Rating: G
Summary: Buffy's thoughts during Spike's speech in the Gift.
Disclaimer: I don't own BTVS or the title. This was written for authoressnebula's birthday.



Foretaste of Beauty

“…I know I’m a monster. But you treat me like a man and that’s…”

She stood there and looked at him. He wasn’t asking her for anything, but what he said made her long to grant his unasked request. It wasn’t that she might not want it or didn’t think it was possible, but she couldn’t.

Dawn was about to be sacrificed. Dawn wasn’t even the Dawn she knew. Giles wanted her to kill Dawn instead
of the skanky hellgod who was going to destroy the world. Tara’s mind had already been destroyed. Her mother had
just died and left her. She was on the rebound. Also, she really needed to figure out who this person of the Slayer
was supposed to be and exactly what it meant for death to be her gift.

There was too much in the way. It wasn’t just an invisible barrier keeping him from entering the house and it was
more than the distance between her on the stairs and him at the bottom. It was circumstances and people and
nature and really lousy timing. None of which was insurmountable eventually, but not now. Now there was no time.

So she looked at him and tried to tell him without words, without actions. She had neither of those to give.
Instead, she tried to communicate the possibility without giving hope. She gave him all she had in that moment, just
as he had her. It wasn’t much and he didn’t press, she knew he understood. There was too much between them to
ever let them come together, but now he knew that was the reason.