SN

Buffy Summers is gone, and Sunnydale has never felt so quiet. Spike hasn't left her grave in days. Souled, grieving, and barely holding himself together, he carries the weight of everything he's done and everything he lost. Then vampires start turning up as ash in the alleys, dusted by someone fast, raw, and completely untrained, someone who leaves salt lines across doorways and the scent of burnt sage behind. That someone is y/n. Raised in a witch coven and always a little too strong, too fast, and too aware, y/n has spent a lifetime running from a strangeness no one could name. One wrong turn into Sunnydale, four hungry vampires, and a splintered fence post later, the answer finally has teeth. Spike sees a stranger killing vampires in the town Buffy died protecting. y/n sees a cocky, sharp-tongued vampire who won't stop showing up. Neither trusts the other, and neither can walk away. Some part of Spike whispers that Slayers come back. He hates himself for hoping.