1. Smoking Cigarettes

This probably needs some editing but I just really liked the way it turned out and will probably edit it later maybe add more to it. Who knows. I'd love some feedback. I haven't written a fanfiction piece in awhile. This takes place after "Chosen" when Buffy is in Rome.

Smoking Cigarettes

_Smoking cigarettes at night  
I can't cope with this  
Smoking cigarettes at night  
Your the one to help me quit   
Smoking cigarettes at night  
In the midnight hour  
Late midnight hour –_

Tweet, Smoking Cigarettes

The cigarette burned against her lips. The filter seemed to fade away between her fingertips. She took the last few drags and then dropped the cigarette to the ground used the heal of her right shoe to stomp on it. A small amount of smoke sizzled up from the ground not enough to make her care just enough to make her stomp on it one last time before turning around and returning upstairs to the apartment. She'd taken up smoking although didn't explain this to anyone not even entirely to herself. But she hid it from everyone around her most of the time unless she could blame it on how much alcohol she had consumed, which recently had become too much. It didn't matter how much she would consume because nothing seemed to stay inside of her stomach anyway. She'd end up ten minutes later leaning against the bathroom toilet in one of the most popular clubs in Rome, her knees bent on the floor letting her insides come up gradually. Smoking seemed to be the only outlet she could understand. At least for brief moments in time when she wanted to admit that she understood her feelings at all.

The night was clear, clearer than it had been in the first months she'd come to Rome. She still couldn't get a grip on ever calling it home because it doesn't feel like home. Everyone was split up. The family she once knew no longer existed and Dawn's life had clearly become more interesting then her own since she couldn't even keep up most of the time where Dawn was and who she was with. Maybe this is why she started smoking cigarettes late at night, into the early morning. _She wasn't addicted_, she would tell herself. Never addicted. There would always be cigarettes left to smoke but maybe that's because she bought packs of cigarettes together in bulk and then she'd hide them in places Dawn wouldn't find them and Andrew when he was around. She'd spray herself with vanilla perfume from down the block and no one would know the difference. It was easier not to admit why she needed a crutch and that crutch then to admit why she needed it in the first place and really just wanted it and wouldn't give it up. It's easier to believe that things are simple when you are just left breathing and someone gives you something to hold onto but when you can't find that exact thing. That exact person you were holding onto for so long nothing makes sense.

Cigarettes in Rome weren't hard to come by and weren't expensive at least the cheap brand and she didn't seem to care which brand she was smoking as long as it left the taste of nicotine on her lips and tongue it made no difference to her. Her fingers would wrap around the small paper thin stick, suck on it, light it, take it and blow it out in round shapeless figures that just blended together. She used to think that he would be proud of her for being able to blow it out at all, for being able to pick up a cigarette and smoke it without hesitation, without a second thought. Like those last moments they had together where her hand pressed against his and the love seemed to blow up in flames right in front of her eyes, as he did. But she touched him, reached for him without hesitation just like every morning she reached for a cigarette and would step outside on her balcony when Dawn was gone look out onto the streets of Rome and light her cigarette, breathe it in and choke it down. He would never understand it even though she likes to think he would. That he would get it without her having to explain it. He couldn't possibly get it if only at those last moments he didn't actually get that what she told him was the truth which is why he could never understand why she had not so suddenly become so fixated on cigarettes.

They weren't the brand he had smoked. She knew that because she couldn't find them here and maybe that was a good thing because if she had she would only crave him more and smoke more then she already did. It was a crutch not an addiction. She made that clear to herself. She could quit if and when she wanted to, only she didn't want to quit because it would take her farther away from him and she couldn't stand to be farther away in spirit, in cold blood. It all seemed to blend together. The years she'd known him. The last year they'd spent together and that last night they spent in the cellar where she remembers kissing him for what felt like the first time while he cradled her against his chest. A chest, a body she had grown to love. A man she had grown to love with time with a past that could only tear them apart or bring them closer and there wasn't a day that went by now that she was not grateful for it bringing them closer together then farther apart although now to her he was gone. His hands had left hers and his lips would never touch hers again and so cigarettes were the consolation prize. That was his thing. Something he would do outside her house while he waited for her to come out. Something he would do because it was a part of him. Now she wanted it to be a part of her like it had consumed him.

She'd press her lips against the filter and hope that it would burn into her, become a part of her. Eventually the taste stayed on her lips and sometimes it was his taste. The way he tasted after he smoked a pack and would toss the cigarettes to the ground. Kiss her. Fuck her. He tasted like that. Like a million cigarettes, even smelled like them but it never bothered her. It only ever bothered her that she liked it sometimes even loved it. Now with him gone the taste must remain somehow, within her. It must make a curse upon her lips, her tongue. The inside of her mouth so that she would remember his taste and never lose it. She was often afraid that the way he smelt and tasted would somehow become a blank memory. A memory that would be chewed off by time and the only way to keep it alive, to keep remembering the memory was to smoke until her hearts content. She'd drink she'd smoke if only to keep that memory alive inside of her. At night if she closed her eyes, tilted her head upwards, smoked a cigarette she could feel him there, next to her breathing in the only lifeless way he could.

She'd smile for a moment then, remember why she loved him and why she needed him and things would somehow make sense again when she'd press another cigarette to her lips only minutes later savoring the taste. Remembering there last moments together the cigarette would become a part of her. Him and her entwined as one.


	2. Remember

Remember 

_So, baby, if you'll please come home again you know I 'll  
Kiss you for my supper,  
You know I'll kiss you for my dinner, yeah!  
But, ah, if you don't come back you know I'll have to  
Starve to death –_

_Jimi Hendrix_

The rain fell against the window, splashing causing her to toss her pack of cigarettes aside and push herself up from the bed she was staying in and press herself against the window. Her hands had risen to touch the glass and trace the pattern of where the rain had fallen. She watched her fingers and wondered when they had gotten so old, so thin. She could remember her hands when she was younger, so delicate, so soft, now they felt so coarse so run down.

She wasn't meant to live this long. Sometimes but only sometimes she wished she had died, with him. _Maybe he was in heaven_ she thought. Maybe he'd come back like she did and they would have something else in common.

The days and nights in London always seemed longer then the ones in Rome. In Rome she would go out in the morning to the market buy some fruit, walk around, smoke some cigarettes and soon enough Dawn would be out of school and they would argue about when she should do her homework. Eventually she would win and Dawn would go into her room and study for at least a little while. Andrew would come home from whatever he was doing, sometimes it was a trip to the country or some watchers meeting that he set up for potential watchers. The days in Rome blended together until night came and she would go out sometimes with other Slayers and others by herself, mostly by herself. The nights were when she liked to be alone because in all the time he'd been gone she had become the moon and the darkness was her home. She'd bag herself some Vamps around town then go dancing, meet a few guys but never bring them home no matter how convincing they tried to be.

Love was something she could never fully get a grasp on. It would come and then go almost like breathing. You breathe in and then out. No one is paying enough attention to notice that the breathing has ceased and there is no sound coming from your mouth. Love is like that. One minute you can feel it, taste it, and practically live in it. Feel it's every heartbeat and then it is gone as fast as it came. She only remembered love in pieces. Moments in time that seemed suspended as if they were floating above reality and against it but still there in your memory. She could see love, remember it, smoke a cigarette and taste it but she could never really feel it. At least not anymore. Not that he was gone.

It was the passion that had always held them together. The obsession for him. The anger for her at herself.

Sometimes she wasn't sure if he felt love at first and if they both grew into loving each other at the same time. Maybe she had a hard time believing any part of his obsession was love because for her, her obsessions could be love but only for a brief moment and then the obsession faded and the love embedded her like a deep wound. Like the scar on her neck from a lover who seemed so long ago but yet she still felt some passion for, some love for. Some cookie dough analogy but yet could not bring herself to mourn the loss of their relationship any longer even though she knew sometimes it was partly her fault for never believing Angel could truly be a man without her. That he could only be a man because of her.

This was always her delusion. Her own self centeredness. Her own desire to keep people locked and chained against her because she was afraid of them leaving. She would make them feel that they could be nothing without her. It didn't last long. The self righteousness. It lost its luster when her mother died, when she died. Maybe even truly before that but somehow Spike always brought it out in her.

The constant need to be better then him at times was what could've killed her a third time. It wasn't his fault she knew that now. She knew that even before but yet could not bring herself to tell him. To tell anyone because no one would understand. If everyone believed he was a bad man then he was a bad man for her. It was an addiction at first. It wasn't like her smoking cigarettes to find comfort because she couldn't use a cigarette. The cigarette used her. The companies used people to make money from a stick that would eventually kill the living with lung cancer or put holes in their throats and voice boxes to keep them speaking. She used him and it was the only thing she knew how to do. Everything else made no sense but even in her darkest moments away from heaven she knew why she used him and he knew it to, worst of all he let her. He never stopped her because he needed her too much even if the relationship was never what he truly wanted. She liked to believe that before he died, really died there relationship had gotten somewhere to that point of where he had wished it to be.

She would stare at the rain in London watch it wash over the streets and splash against the sidewalks. Against the doorways of all the flats on Giles block and wonder always wonder what she would be doing if he were still there. Still by her side. Still in a physical form of where she could touch him, walk by him and then smile.

Giles and her had some sort of understanding now that they must bring all the slayers together, train them, teach them and yet there relationship had never been the same after he tried to kill him. He never believed Spike could be a man worth loving. A man worth saving but she believed. She still believed.

The only real father figure she had after her own father seemed to give up his responsibilities had failed her had lied to her. She tried to understand it when she would sit outside his flat on a step that always felt like it would fall beneath her and pull out a cigarette from her pack, light it and chain smoke until she heard him calling her. She had realized that she licked her lips after a cigarette just to reinforce the taste upon her lips, to remember that he was there once. Her lover was there. Giles knew she was smoking maybe he was even the only one. He never said anything, never even asked her why because he knew why. She would walk back into his flat, smelling like smoke and would start talking while still licking her lips because the habit remained like a disease.

She knew she would have to give it up eventually the time would come. Not this year she kept telling herself. Not the first year away from him. Not the first year he is gone. _I need this_, she would say to herself every time she would pick up a cigarette inhale then exhale and blow circles into the night's cool air.

It seemed to always be raining in London. At least whenever she was there dark clouds seemed to hover. They would break open like eggshells cracking then they would erupt in a never ending shower taking its claim on the land like a hunter would do with its prey. She often asked the slayers and Giles if it rained a lot. The responses varied. Yes. No. Sometimes. But it was nothing clear, nothing that seemed to validate her thinking it rained more when she was there as if some sign from heaven or even hell.

This used to be his home and she would wander the streets like a drunken solider looking for some sign of him. A want-to-be Billy Idol. A man with bleached blond hair. Someone who was dressed in black. She would roam the streets at night before catching an early flight back to Rome and walk down the streets that seemed unchanged from time. It was then she would smoke and no one would notice her, with a cigarette in hand and her fingertips becoming yellow. Her knuckles almost always bled from a punching bag or a nasty fight with a Vampire or Demon. Most of the time they just bled and the scabs were unpleasant to look at yet she couldn't stop herself from beating a bag too hard or a Vamp who was going to die either way. She began to think people saw her hands before they saw her. They were hard to ignore. They were her scars from the pain and sadness she could not admit to truly feeling.

She couldn't seem to get past it, past him, past the fact that he was gone. It was the constant thought inside her head. She didn't fool herself into believing they would have ever had a life together. It didn't mean she never thought about it. She thought about it, sometimes she thought about it when he had walked into the kitchen, grabbed a box of cereal and then handed it to her knowing that she wanted it too, knowing that there was something they were sharing. It was at those moments when they sometimes could get a grasp on what it meant to be around each other, near each other constantly that they became aware of each other's habits. She'd grab the milk from the refrigerator pour it in her bowl and when he was watching a potential walk in she would pour it in his bowl as well, not because she wanted to but because it was simply a reaction. A habit. A ritual. She would wonder when they had become that couple. That old married couple that knew each other so well sometimes speaking wasn't ever enough.

There was never a moment she could pinpoint and say, _it was then_.

There were newspapers all over Giles guest room, dates that she couldn't recall plastered on the front cover. The room had somehow become her own while in London. She didn't like the hotels anymore after all the places they had stayed in the states looking for Slayers, trying to track them down she couldn't stand to see another white wall and lay on sheets she'd never felt before. She would have much rather preferred a tomb. A tomb where she could rip her clothes off in and walk around naked, never worrying about how cold it was or drafty but simply in love with the ground she was walking on and the man in front of her. She had often wished she could go back to the tomb he had made his home all those years but it was gone, dead and buried like everything else in Sunnydale.

Her heart was still there. Inside her old house or rather the dirt that was left over. The cellar where she'd spent her last night, with him. She could never express what happened there last night together. To her it was a secret she kept close to her heart something she would never give up not to anyone. Willow asked her once if they had made love and her response was brief but there wasn't a yes or a no just a slight grunt and sigh and a face of longing that only she could truly possess.

It was then she took up smoking when she couldn't explain to anyone what had happened and why it had happened because only he could understand.


	3. Therapy

Note: I realize this story needs editing but I figure I'll edit it more thoroughly once I finish it. I know it's going a little slow right now and you're wondering where's Spike and so forth. But I just wanted to get more into what state of mind Buffy is in.

Therapy

_Wide awakened out of spinning  
Round the safest orbit  
You controlled the ordinary  
I was grateful for it  
Wide awake in the beginning  
Trembling after the fall  
Only half my world remembers  
While the other half revolves_

- Finger Eleven

She ran her fingers through her hair. Her hands streaked with saline from wiping away the tears that stained her cheeks. The smell of smoke littered the air and she groped at the pack of cigarettes in her pocket. Her jeans felt so tight against her hips. She felt her fingers turning red as the box squirmed out of her pocket and into her hands. Her fingers shook while she grasped a cancer stick in between her fingers then placed it to her lips and pulled her silver rimmed lighter open and lit the cigarette. The air quickly filled with the smell of nicotine. She barely noticed. The smell stayed with her no matter what she did to get rid of it. Nicotine on her fingertips and on her tongue, in her clothes. She sighed evenly, quickly before exhaling smoke into the air upwards as she tilted her head.

The sky looked as if it were caving in on her. On Rome. It's jaws ripped through the atmosphere and coming closer and closer to the ground. She imagined herself walking on her hands and knees to keep the sky from falling on her. It wasn't a beautiful night but nothing felt exceptionally beautiful anymore. The nights she remembered for their beauty and simplicity were the nights she spent with Spike before he died everything else after that held very little meaning. It was her fault she didn't. He had given her this life to look forward to and yet she couldn't look forward to it without him. Everything resembled life but just felt lifeless. Her moments with Dawn were few and in between. Dawn had her own life, away from her. It was easier that way. It kept Dawn out of danger and it kept her in her own head, thinking too much about her dead lover. _He was always dead_, she thought _except now he was gone_. His time had run out and hers kept going. Wasn't he the one that's immortality ran deeper then her own?

She ran her tongue over her lips like she did so many other times while the in betweens from inhaling and exhaling. The taste stayed with her. He stayed with her that way. Still only Giles knew about this, about her addiction. What she knew had turned into an addiction like their first attempts at a relationship. It turned unhealthy with high amounts of sex and abuse she found that she treated cigarettes that way. Pretending they weren't there. That she wasn't addicted. That they made her feel something she so obviously missed, every day. But the cigarettes used her. She knew this. But maybe now she was using them back. She told herself she could quit whenever she wanted. That it wasn't something that mattered but deep down she knew that wasn't true. It mattered, just like breathing mattered. It mattered because he still mattered to her. She couldn't shake the memories. They were a force field inside her brain spreading to her entire system like a triggering disease that drives you insane.

She would talk to him sometimes. He would be there beside her. She knew he wasn't real but she still talked to him like he was and even went to touch him knowing it would only be air once her fingers reached his flesh. She would tell him in choking sobs how angry she was with him for leaving her and then that she knew he didn't want to. That he loved her and that she loved him. That he did the right thing but it didn't cure the pain of losing him to the hell mouth. Her mind deceived her. Her thoughts ran blood red with thoughts of him. Her dreams became nightmares of a time she no longer had. She relived that last night they had together over and over in her head and cried into her pillow, wishing so deeply they could've had more like that the last year they spent together. She blamed herself so much of the time for never believing in him till it was almost too late to be anything at all. She knew it wasn't completely true but she couldn't stop herself from thinking it. He was a hero now.

She leaned her body against the brick walls outside her balcony, watching the city gleam with desire and mystique. It was a gorgeous city. She knew that. But it wasn't home. She missed home with all its vampires and hell mouth business. She missed it. Things weren't predictable in Rome. But she wasn't the only slayer anymore. _The Slayer_ maybe but she didn't have to carry the weight on her own anymore. Her life was hers. It belonged to no one else. She was capable of coming up with new rules for slayers to obey and live by and they were her rules. The rules she had lived by. The rules that had and still kept her alive. She knew she wasn't the smartest girl when it came to books but with life she knew she had more experience then most people and she used that experience to get what she wanted out of other people around her. She hadn't had to avert the apocalypse at all in the time she'd been in Rome. Bagged a bunch of vampires, some demons but nothing huge. Nothing that could change her universe. She wasn't bored, content maybe in Rome. In the city that's problems weren't as intense she found some sort of peace.

Her eyes looked down towards the street. The sidewalk littered with people on the weekend trying to get home from some club or other. Tourists getting lost. She often ran into tourists on the street while walking around, smoking her cigarettes. The tourists would cough as she blew smoke into their faces while they tried to speak to her in Italian asking directions to such and such a place. She would tell them she was an American in English and they would look relieved. She'd point them in the right direction then keep smoking and walking along. The streets in Rome were pretty. She didn't have very many big cities to compare them too. While on the cross country tour of the US to find all the slayers New York City hadn't been a priority and she missed that city altogether only seeing it from the horizon across the Hudson river in New Jersey. She could compare the streets of Rome to those in LA but the comparison was feeble. LA was an American city where everything old was torn down to create the new, almost like the cycle of people. Rome was an old city. The cobblestone streets were old along with so many of the buildings they restored every year to keep from falling down.

She wasn't high up. Fifth floor. The buildings weren't huge there. Everything was a reasonable height except the museums, which were huge and she often got lost in trying to find something from a century he would've remembered. He was always more articulating when it came to fine arts while she could barely get through finger painting in Pre School. She dropped her cigarette to the cement ground of the balcony and then placed her heal of her shoe on it. She watched the smoke dwindle down to nothing then bent down to pick it up wanting to leave no evidence of her addiction anywhere she quickly threw it off the balcony knowing it wasn't the best thing to do to such a pretty city but she couldn't bear Dawn finding out or even Andrew. She turned her back to the city and opened the wide glass door and stepped back into the apartment where no one was except her and the silence. Dawn was at some school event and Andrew was out of town. Most likely in England with Giles on some watchers retreat. She picked up the perfume from the coffee table and sprayed herself with it. Her clothes began to smell like violets in the spring. The smell of nicotine quickly fading except from her lips and tongue.

The living room was small and nothing was broken so unlike her old living room. The windows never got shattered and the coffee table never ran into a demon and the lamps stayed in tact. But it always felt lonely, missing of all those elements she knew so well. The disasters. Spike. It was missing Spike, sprawled out in the chair in the corner, watching her sometimes pretending to ignore her. She fell onto the couch, deeply sinking in and closing her eyes to only see his face. The indents of his jaws. His lips curving up to smile at her. His hands against her spine. The thought was broken with the sound of the door opening. Dawn's key twisting in the door. She leaned over the couch grabbed a breath mint and stuck is quickly in her mouth. Then watched as the door opened and Dawn's body came flying in. Her memory of him still in tact was pushed to the back of her mind to retain some sort of normalcy that was supposed to make sense. Even though it never did.


End file.
