lirazel | Choco_cherries: Puzzles

Ha! The triumphant return of the great love of my life:

choco_cherries !

Title: Puzzles
Fandoms: Buffyverse/Firefly
Characters/Pairing: Spike/River Tam
Rating: PG
Wordcount: 300
Prompt: Game
Summary: It's always Slayers.

It’s always Slayers. Wandering centuries, continents, then planets, and after Buffy, it’s always got to be Slayers. He never thought he’d go on after she died for the (third) last time: he always thought he’d greet the sun after the night stole her away. But here he is, still wandering, still looking.

He finds pieces of her in her sister-Slayers, like he’s assembling a puzzle: this one has golden hair, this one her roundhouse kick, this one eyes of steel and sorrow. He trains them, protects them, fights by their sides (but despite his strength, his centuries of experience, they still die violently, young). He doesn’t seduce them, though sometimes he lets them seduce him. There’s always something lacking. He moves on.

After a while (time lost meaning when it lost her), all the vampires are gone. He alone remains. But just because there isn’t any need for a Slayer doesn’t mean there isn’t one. The Watchers are long gone, and the girls who are called don’t understand what’s wrong. He seeks out tales of young women accomplishing impossible feats.

This tale, though, is more than any he’s heard before: soldiers whispering of a tiny girl slaughtering hundreds of Reavers. He grins, flips a coin to the bartender, and sets out to find her.

She’s Buffy’s strength and unbreakable spirit mixed with Dru’s madness, with Fred’s vulnerability and brilliant mind tossed in. Add Dawn’s “you’re dumber than a rock” look, and she’s the reincarnation of the women he’s cared about in the course of his unlife.

She dances with him as no one has since Buffy, each blow and kick graceful as a dancer’s. Her words are a puzzle to assemble, a game only she knows the rules to. For the first time since his Slayer, he finds himself enchanted.