Stupid Little Boxes

I wonder if Giles would mind if I were to slay Jim. I mean, I like the guy but sometimes I really could do without his practical nature. Practical nature leads to practical suggestions, practical suggestions lead to us having to do normal things and normal things lead to weird thoughts... well, weird for me anyway. Right now I'm glaring at the mountain of forms from what will soon become our insurance company. The old Council never cared about providing such trivial things for its slayers and while in principle this is a good idea --well, it is a good idea if we can keep doctors from becoming suspicious of our miraculous healing and trying to go all mad scientist on us, otherwise it would be a really bad idea-- these forms ask way too many normal questions.

For instance, if my life were anything near normal, a question about marital status would be easy enough... I'm single and I'll remain single for the foreseeable future, thank you very much. Sure, I love Spike but it's not like we can get married even if we wanted to. He's a vampire and that means he doesn't exist... at least not legally. Besides weddings tend to involve churches and chapels, blessings and all too often crosses, and I'm well aware that vampires and crosses don't mix. I don't need a wedding to know that for all intents and purposes we are married, just like Willow and Tara don't need one to reaffirm their commitment to each other. Marriage is not the issue, the English language is.

It's true that when I was little I used to dream about my wedding day... it seems so silly now but back then it was a big deal to me. I guess Blair could give me a really long and boring anthropological explanation on the relevance of mating rituals or on how the media helps shape our dreams and goals but that's not the issue and I really don't want to hear about it. I could probably talk Methos into performing some sort of marriage ceremony for us if it were really important (I'm pretty sure he was ordained at least once by some religion in order to gain access to a sanctuary in Holy Ground), but that's not what I want. The thing is that I've known for a very long time that I would never live to see my wedding day and I made my peace with that fact a long time ago. Of course back then that used to be because I was sure I was meant to die, now it's simply because marrying a vampire would be too creepy and complicated... and the fact that a wedding seems creepy by comparison after so many years of fighting demons tells me how far from normal my life really is, but as I said that's not the issue.

The truth is that I don't want to get married, I really don't, but seeing all these stupid little boxes in these stupid insurance forms got me thinking, if I were to somehow marry Spike... would I become his wife or his widow?