Title: Blurring the Lines
Fandom: Buffy the Vampire Slayer
Author: veronyxk84
Characters/Pairing: Buffy/Spuffy
Rating: PG-13
Warnings: none
Word count: 300 (Google Docs)
Spoilers/Setting: Set in S6, after ep. 6x13 “Dead Things”
Summary: Buffy is trying to deal with her guilt.
Disclaimer: This is a work of fiction created for fun and no profit has been made. All rights belong to the respective owners.

Challenge: #461 - Line by fan_flashworks
Also for: #424 - Not That Different by drabble_zone

—

Buffy stood before Spike’s crypt, her face a hard mask, her heart pounding.
She had resolved to go there after a chance encounter with Clem had made her see her violent treatment of Spike in a different, frightening light. The loose-skinned demon had found his kitten-poker pal in an alley, beaten to a pulp, for which Spike had blamed a gang of muggers. Human muggers, which had made him unable to defend himself properly because of the chip.
Except that it was just a bald-faced lie. She had beaten him up, and the chip had already stopped working on her.

He could have fought back, but he didn’t.
More importantly, she could have stopped, but she didn’t. Buffy clenched her fists, recalling Clem’s words: “I know we’re all monsters to you, but so are those people. And unlike Spike they have a soul. What’s their excuse?”
Right. What was her excuse?
She’d made Tara look into the resurrection spell, which had confirmed, indisputably, that she hadn’t come back wrong; she just had some sort of mystical cellular tan that was messing with the chip’s sensors.
And if she couldn’t blame her misbehavior on being “wrong” anymore… What was it, then?

Maybe Clem was right.
Maybe she was not that different from the monsters she’d been fighting since the age of fifteen. Or maybe she’d just let all the pain and anger get the best of her, pushing her to cross lines she’d never thought she’d cross, and yet there she was. Lost in a labyrinth of dangerously blurred lines, torn between the urge to hate Spike with everything she had and the undeniable pull she felt toward him.
How could someone evoke such extreme feelings? Was he feeling the same? Was the line between love and hate truly that thin?