MIRROR IMAGES by perletwo
I always wondered why vampires can't see themselves in mirrors.

Fangs, of course. Strength and speed, understandable. Nocturnal hours, nature of the beast. But the whole mirror thing never made sense to me. Asked Angel about it once, even. But he didn't know anything about why, just that it was so.

Occasionally, after Giles and I got heavy into the Slayer training thing, I'd wonder why I still had a reflection. If I understood the half of Giles' lectures I actually paid attention to, we were created to be the vampires' opposite number, right? A mirror image.

I still do have a reflection, of course. Only, as time and the Slaying wore me down, it got harder and harder to look at. After Willow brought me back, I could hardly stand to look at myself in mirrors. That first night, I saw myself as I was in the coffin - a rotting corpse staring back at me. Around then I started mostly wearing my hair in a ponytail, because I could do it like that without looking. It was a long time before I could face that mirror again.

Spike once told me that we were the same, he and I, when he first admitted that he loved me. The very idea was so revolting I dismissed it as soon as the words left his mouth. I couldn't see anything at all of myself in him, or of him in me.

But that was before. Before I died, before Willow denied me Heaven. After she brought me back, I started to understand why vampires like to hang out in the cemeteries. After, I only felt comfortable with the dead. I saw myself in them. And in him, at last.

It turns out that if you can't see your own reflection, you start projecting your inner self onto other people, I found out. You try to remake them in your image, so you can see yourself.

I thought, back when he said we were alike, that Spike could see his demonic nature in me. Because that's what Slayers are made of, right? Takes a demon to kill a demon.

Now, looking back at that time - after seeing how he looked at me when we came face-to-face in the basement, and how he talked about me in the church last night - now I think he was projecting all the best pieces of himself onto me. His loyalty, his capacity for kindness - the remnants of his humanity - he took it all and wrapped it around me in this golden aura that was too big for me to carry. I hated him for it, at first - wasn't it enough that I had to carry the weight of the Watchers' eyes and expectations on me all the time? - that was why I disinvited him.

And after I came back, I had all the Scoobies' expectations to add to the Watchers'. Only Spike understood how frozen I felt inside, and tried to help.

Which was good, until I started using him to feel something. Oh hell, say it - using him for sex. Even that would just have been bad enough, only he started looking at me like I had that aura again, and I started to hate him a little again.

I started doing that projecting thing too, to get back at him for that. I needed to break down that aura. I needed him to see me as the cold, dead thing I was. What good was using him going to do me if I had to live up to his expectations too?

So I hammered at him with fists and words and indifference, for months on end. Anything I could think of to make that light in his eyes die out, I did. And it felt right to be doing those things to him. It felt....Slayer-ish.

In the end, though, it wasn't even his eyes I saw my reflection in. It was Riley's, and when I finally saw it, it was tinged with pity. That was what brought me to my senses, was the pity. Couldn't stand that.

So I tried to end it then. He held on, and wound up ending it himself, the same way he'd begun - holding me captive, trying to make me see he loved me as best he knew how, and me spitting venom back at him. I was relieved when he was finally gone, and his love along with him. A little disappointed, maybe, late at night. But mostly relieved.

But it was too late, I see that now. My work was already done. I'd beaten and twisted and abused everything almost pure in him - his love for me - so much that I'd reshaped him into my own image. Now he's the image of my inner self, last year: dark, tormented, helpless, useless, full of self-loathing. And alone. Terribly alone, always.

Now I know why vampires don't have reflections. If they could see themselves after doing what they do, and if they have even a shred of conscience or any kind of value system, they'd never be able to keep from walking straight out in the sun from the disgust.

Spike was right. We always were made of the same stuff, after all.

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