Buffy and Spike: A Love Story

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Title:	Buffy and Spike: A Love Story
Creator:	The Royal Anna
Date(s):	early 2000s?
Medium:	online
Fandom:
Topic:
External Links:	B/S Love Story, Archived version
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Buffy and Spike: A Love Story is an essay by The Royal Anna.

It is one of many essays at Octaves, a Buffy and Angel website.

Excerpt

I’ve read some funny old discussions about whether Buffy "loved" or was "in love" with Spike, there at the end. I think it’s kind of missing the point.

She’s standing there looking at him, looking at him with the fate of the world burning in his eyes, and she loves him. How could she not? He is perfect. This man, who has loved her and trusted her implicitly and absolutely is standing there and he is perfect, just then, and that makes her perfect. That makes her perfect even though she is going to turn round and leave him there because she has a life she owes it to him to live.

If it hadn’t got to that point, would she have told him that she loved him? No, of course not. Not then, because it didn’t need to be said, and maybe it didn’t need to be known or acknowledged. But it was there. I don’t have to read between the lines, or fill in missing scenes that I dare to hope could have happened. I know what I saw there on the screen in front of me. I didn’t need anything else.

I don’t often indulge in a might-have-been, but imagine for a moment that somehow the First was defeated without Spike’s death and without the destruction of Sunnydale. I know exactly how that works in my head.