Spike's arms wrapped around her back and lifted her off the ground to pick her up. She shoved against him, batting him away. She kept contact with the floor. His touch was too close. There should be rules against that sort of thing.

"Buffy," he said.

Oh no. No no no. Her head ducked towards her knees and she put her hands over her ears. Too loud. All the sound filling and bouncing around her head. The word, her name, resonating and burrowing and growing. Like worms in her brain.

"Fuck..." The word came under his breath, riding gracefully on the air molecules between them.

Fuck. She couldn't keep it out of her mind. He'd put the word in there, after all. Words saturating her skin and soul and being. Fuck fuck fuck. Buffy. Fuck. Fuckdoll.

Well, why not?

She raised her head. Spike was in sharp contrast. Like someone had messed with the settings on her vision. His body was starkly outlined against the gray background. He was there. Her hand gripped his jacket at the shoulder. He tilted his head.

She could fuck him. They'd done it before. Him demon. Her fuckdoll. Way it's supposed to be. And the echoing words in her head twined together in the only way that made sense.

Right. Get her tits out. She lifted her shirt only to have him stop her. Cool hands covered hers and pulled them down.

"No," he said. "Buffy, no. Not...we need to do that spell now, yeah? Get your powers back. Can't do it without your say."

More words. More echoes. No sense.

"Don't want to." She wanted to fuck him. Now. Hard. The drugs tickling and prodding her to do. Do something. Anything. Him. Spike being so close to her made her buzz with want. "It's...it's not gonna lead anywhere good, you know? Just won't. Pointless."

"It's the only way home."

"Fuck home! No time's passing there anyway, right? This portal? Takes us back right where we left. So if we don't go back, no time goes, nobody misses me, no biggie. That world's just...frozen. Best way to keep it. Sending me back there would ruin it all. Stain the world. Keep the filth in its place. That's what we should do." Words like waterfalls running from her mouth.

"Are you coming? We don't have time." Avery appeared behind Spike's shoulder. She cracked her knuckles in an impatient gesture. Buffy watched, mesmerized as Avery shifted her weight from one booted foot to another.

"Give me a fucking second!" Spike snapped.

Buffy stood on legs that felt like lightning bolts. Energy coursed down the muscles and tendons and bones and whatever else made up the parts of her legs. Maybe she should run...somewhere. Away. Somewhere that was not here.

But not without Spike. He'd become part of her. The color in the gray. Like another arm or something. Stuck together. What was the glue?

Buffy tapped on his chest with antsy hands to get his attention back from Avery. "Come with me, Spike. Come. Come, and we'll...we'll just go."

"What?"

"Cause it makes sense, this. You're a fucking vampire. And I'm a vampire-fucker. And this world is our...you know, our habitat. We'll have a home. A place. Nobody to bother us for anything. And it'll be good. No, no. It'll be fucking good. Better than anything over there. You remember? You remember over there?"

His hands were on her arms like she might float away. "I do. I remember you and your friends and your family over there. Don't you want to see them?"

She laughed. "I stopped wanting to see them years ago. It's easier that way."

"So you take the easy way out, then?"

"It's worked so far."

Sudden. Spike banged her back against the wall. The harsh plane impacted with her body. Or her body impacted with the harsh plane. It hurt, whichever way it happened. Spike's vampire features emerged, and his grip bruised. Buffy gasped and pushed against him. His muscles were stronger than her muscles though, and she couldn't break his hold on her. She kicked at his shins, but he held tight.

"Is it working now?" he asked. His head lowered with a growl to her neck. Back to the place that he'd already scarred on her. Bite marks teased with fangs anew. Dead, demon breath exhaled against her throat. It seeped into her skin, making her squirm to get away from it.

She pushed. Felt the strength in her arms and legs, but they seemed as useless as limp socks against him. His body covered hers. Stuck between him and the wall. Like two walls. Except one was drooling demon saliva on her. No way out as his fangs descended. Was he gonna...? But he wouldn't kill her! He needed her!

It's not like pinpricks when a vampire bites you. Pins are skinny. Fangs aren't. They pierced, and they opened her vein wide to let her blood spill out. The pain is vivid and cuts deep. Deeper than skin. Deeper than soul.

Her blood vanished into him. He would drain her like a vessel. Leave her empty. Nothing she could. No way to fight. Nothing. Fighting was pointless.

"Stop," she said.

He shook his head, rooting his teeth further into her flesh. The vein ripped more. His grip on her arms tightened. It felt like he was squeezing his hands right through her as he fed. Drinking slowly. The heat she'd felt turned cool as he took her.

"Stop him," she said to Avery, who watched with arms folded.

Cold eyes met hers. "Why?"

The fangs disappeared, leaving the wounds to the air. To pulse and throb and bleed. "I remember, once upon a time," Spike had lifted his head. Stopped feeding. "You would have kicked my ass clear across the room for sneaking a taste."

His fangs were still out and shined with her blood. "You motherfucking - "

"What? You getting mad at me? Thought you liked it this way. Being pushed around by my lot."

Pushed. He did. Shoved her hard back into the corner of the room. Her head banged against the wall, and she crumpled to the floor. Her first instinct was to put a hand to the bite on her throat. Keep the blood in, even as her bones rattled from the impact.

"Your soul..." she said. Cause the soul meant he couldn't do this stuff, right?

He grabbed her by the hair and yanked her head up. Her body arched uncomfortably as he lowered his face to hers. "Obviously not doing as it ought," he said.

With a shove, he slammed her against the wall again. Body battered. The sound of the collision echoed in her bruises.

She could see his boots from where she was on the floor. Looking up stretched the muscles of her neck. Made the bite mark sting. Not worth it. She looked at the boots. Somehow, she was always on boot-level with demons.

"Tell me you wanna kick my ass for this, pet." His voice came from above her.

"I wanna put a stake through your fucking chest for this," she snapped.

Words had barely even left her mouth before she was swept up in his arms. She couldn't find the strength to resist as he carried her out of the room behind Avery. He'd beaten it out of her.

The rooms moved, and Buffy had to close her eyes to keep from throwing up. She felt dizzy, and the unsteady journey from bedroom to lab didn't help.

"Shut up," Spike mumbled under his breath.

She'd been tricked. This whole ploy to try to get her in to that spell. She knew it as Spike dumped her onto the table in the lab. Candles were already placed around it. Not lit. The air smelled heavy with herbs and magic and...fear.

Her fear.

She kicked out, struggling to get up. She'd been beaten into submission and didn't like it. But this alternative...it was... "Spike, I don't want - "

He pushed her back down. "You do. You just don't know it." So curt.

Her mind was still racing. He hadn't taken enough blood to slow her down. "I can't - "

"Yeah. You can."

"No. You're not - "

"Slayer." A growl. "I've known you for near on a decade now. You've rather spectacularly kicked my ass on more than one occasion. You've foiled every Big Bads' plan even before they come up with one sometimes. You are the most aggravating, tenacious, pain in the ass woman that I've ever known in my century plus years of existence. And you don't fucking give up! So stop being Buffy the Weak-Willed Whore and get back to Buffy the Slayer that I fell in love with, okay?"

Love?

His attention wasn't even on her. It was on Avery, who flipped through books and mixing potions.

This was really happening. After five years...she was gonna be the Slayer again.

Being the Slayer was pain. It was loss and death and choices and killing and slaughter and long, grueling hours with little thanks and power...it was power, unrestrained, unmatched, unquestioned. It was being somebody that could be respected...and loved. Which wasn't what she was now.

"Spike." He turned to look at her. He'd gone back into human face, but her blood remained on his lips. She nodded. "Okay."

He almost smiled. "Avery, get to chanting."

"Light that candle. No, that one first! Watch my back, and watch that thing you two have brought in!"

She'd be different soon. Better.

"Esha retouk sileya. Netari broto sesya!"

Candles were burning around her head. Like a halo. She could only squint at it. Her eyes hurt. Her body ached. It felt like she'd been sucker-punched and was now struggling to get air. Spike had disappeared from her field of vision, but she could sense him off to the side.

Avery's chanting grew louder, and Buffy felt as if her ribcage were being pried apart. Her muscles tensed and her body contorted, kicking out and knocking over several candles. Buffy screamed.

Then she passed out.

***

She drowns.

Blood drains and she's left face down in a pool of muddy water. She hadn't even struggled.

But there's someone who's trying to change that. They're bringing her back. They're forcing her to breathe. Forcing her heart to beat again. Since she's dead, she can't even resist it.

So she lives again.

Coughs out the water from her lungs, and she opens her eyes to see who had insisted on her living. Xander.

"Buffy!" he exclaims.

Angel is beside him. Demon with a soul. Something he'd lose later. She remembers that. Remembers the pain to come.

"Buffy," Xander says again. Softer this time.

"Xander?" she asks.

"Welcome back."

Back. Back to life. Back to fighting. She feels stronger. Better. Resolved.

Xander and Angel help her stand. Because she couldn't possibly stand on her own, right?

"The Master?" Buffy asks. The one who had killed her. First of many.

"He's gone up," Angel says. Another one who had killed her. That's what demons always do.

Buffy nods. Her palm rubs against the rough grain wood of the stake in her hand. Still clutched in her hand from when she'd died.

She knows how to be the Slayer again.

There's always a layer of resistance when plunging the stake into a creature's heart. It's the muscle. It's thick. But Buffy lodges the stake in Angel's chest with a satisfying sound. His face is one of surprise in the second before he dusts around her stake. Then he's nothing. More nothing than she used to be.

"Buffy! What did you - " Xander steps back. He's confused. Maybe a little scared. He doesn't need to be. He's not a demon.

"It's okay, Xander," Buffy says. "I'm the Slayer."

***

Buffy breathed first. Then she opened her eyes. She was jittery, but things felt different now than they had before she'd passed out. It was like something crawling up her spine, vertebrae by vertebrae. Underneath that was something else, though. A tempest in her chest.

"Buffy!"

Spike's voice.

Buffy had no time to act. She could only react as the axe entered her field of vision. It hurtled toward her head, but she held her hand up and snatched it by the handle. Just like that. Just like a fly was holding the other end.

She turned her head to get a look at the attacker. A demon. Of course. Fucking demons.

Buffy ripped the axe away from the creature. She sat up while flipping her grip on the weapon and swinging it at the demon's head. The thing had a tough cranium, but the blade chopped cleanly through it. Blood spurted and the body fell.

She looked around her. She was in the magic lab. In the corner, that little bug demon, Jigal, cowered in his restraints. Spike was across the room at the door, holding off another attacker from the lounge. The woman, Avery, was nowhere in sight.

Right. Ugvan's men come to kill Spike. Well, they were fucking with the wrong vampire. Spike was her partner.

It felt like she was watching herself in a movie as she stood and walked to the doorway to the lounge. Spike glanced at her as she stopped beside him to survey the situation. There were three other demons out there. A dead carcass lay across the sofa.

Ugvan had only sent five demons after them? Pity. Buffy was in the killing mood. Fire breathed through her veins, and she knew it was impossible for her to stay in one place. Compelled to move. To act.

One horned demon was fumbling to its feet. Buffy grabbed it by the horn and smashed it face-first against her knee. She tossed it against the wall and sank the axe into its back with a delicious squelching noise.

She sniffed. Behind her she could hear the tell-tale snap of a neck being broken. She turned to see the demon Spike had been fighting crumple to the floor. The other demon, the final one, was fast approaching him with claws at ready.

Buffy removed the axe from the corpse and swung it around in a toss to land squarely in the final demon's back. It fell forward.

Not even a sweat. She wasn't even gasping for air. Her muscles didn't hurt. At all.

She sniffed again. But, fuck, it still felt like bugs were crawling underneath her clothes. The coke was still in her system. Still overwhelming her.

"You're shaking," Spike said from across the room.

Buffy could feel the stickiness on her cheeks from tears she'd shed during and before the ritual. She wiped her nose. The back of her throat hurt. The only consolation was that the bite he'd given her was already healing. "I'm still fucked up," she mumbled.

"You look good," he said. Then he glanced down as if he hadn't meant to say it. When he looked up again he continued, "Looks like you got your strength back."

Magnets. Buffy was pulled to him without even realizing she was closing the distance between them. She just knew she was right in front of him then. Him a demon which made a part of her cry out in disgust. But the rest of her was calmed by his earnest desire to help, even if he would deny any such desire existed. Partners.

When she'd given up, he'd set the goalposts for her. And he kept moving them back. Urging her forward. Keeping her moving. Not letting her fall back. Harsh. Cruel sometimes. Disgusting at others. Demon to the core. But layered with soul. With good intentions.

Just the opposite of her.

He tilted his head at her perusal. She had him off-guard, unsure of what to expect from her. Good.

Buffy placed a hand at the back of his neck and pulled him down for a kiss. He didn't resist. It wasn't a bruising, desperate kiss. Instead, it was a feather-light contact. An exchange of breaths with the tantalizing promise of more. Just a taste.

Then it was over, and Buffy released him. Spike's eyes had gone soft.

"Where's Avery?" Buffy asked.

Spike frowned. "What?"

"Magic lady? Brutally murdered her master? Where'd she go?"

He blinked a few times, obviously trying to get a handle on the subject change. "Uh...she ran off when the fight started. Not wanting to get involved, I suppose."

Buffy nodded. Pressing needs. Couldn't sit around. Couldn't wait. Had to be moving. "But you know where we're going next? What needs to be done to open the portal?"

"Yeah."

"Good." Buffy turned and walked back into the lab. In the corner was the quivering form of Jigal. She approached him and knelt down. She could feel Spike's presence right behind her.

"We still letting him live?" Spike asked.

"He has a soul," Buffy said. Jigal recoiled as Buffy laid a hand on his cool skin. Such a foreign sensation. Demon. Should be killed outright, like the rest.

But some demons had their uses. And this one...this one could be used against his master.

"Thanks for the mess."

Buffy stood while turning. Avery was just entering the lab. She gingerly picked up a shattered vial and sighed. Footsteps crunched through the debris. Buffy's ears rang at every crinkle. Reality was too loud. Like a camera zoomed in too close. She had to try to shake herself out of it. She was the Slayer now. She was in control.

"Where'd you run off to?" Spike asked.

"Hey, I agreed to do the spell. I'm not obligated to fight for you. A gang of thugs come here to get some money out of you, that's your problem."

She had a point.

That's what Buffy hated. Avery had a point. Avery had convictions and goals, and she did whatever it took to get them. She wanted freedom so much, she killed her master to get it. Slaughtered him. Even though he was one of the good ones. It wasn't enough for her.

Buffy had taken it as an affront. A judgment on herself. Because if Avery could free herself, why couldn't Buffy?

It was so petty. And it didn't matter now.

"Avery," Buffy said while stepping forward.

Avery paused in her task of rooting through one of the fallen demon's pockets. She looked up in acknowledgment.

"Thank you," Buffy said. "For the spell. For the help."

The other woman straightened and regarded Buffy with a wary gaze. "It's worth the cost," Avery said. Speaking right to Buffy's thoughts. Avery knew too well.

Buffy thought back to Wyver's brutalized body. The cost of freedom. She nodded. "I hope so."

Hope that it'll be worth it. Facing her family and friends. Getting her powers back. Having to try. To work. To be someone else. Do something other than relent. It had to be worth it. She couldn't have come this far just to falter.

Spike laid a hand on Buffy's elbow. The world seemed steadier. "We need to go, pet."

Buffy looked back at Jigal. "Yeah. Let's go."

***

Avery had disposed of the bodies. All the bodies. Even Wyver's. She'd put it off for a while, but after the trio had left, she knew it was time to clean everything up. One spell to get rid of the corpses. Then a lot of scrubbing to get rid of the gore.

She stood in the doorway to what had once been Wyver's room. It would be hers now. The thought filled her with an empty happiness. Her joy was hollow. She knew what she had told Buffy was true. It was worth it. But still, now, so soon after she'd done the deed...it still hurt to think about.

There was a knock at the door. Avery frowned. She wasn't expecting anybody else. Unless Buffy and Spike had forgotten something.

As soon as Avery opened the front door, she was overwhelmed by demons as they entered the house. They grabbed her by each arm, yanking her roughly back and away from the entrance. She cried out in protest.

Her voice left her, though, as he entered the foyer.

Tall. Monstrously tall. Head mere centimeters from scraping against her ceiling. His aura swept over her, crashing against her senses in a cacophony of pain, menace, and evil.

"So this is the little slave that helped me out so." He looked down at her.

Her mouth was dry, but she knew she couldn't be cowed by this demon. This was the demon who had promised her freedom. He owed her.

"Not a slave," she said, though the words sounded weak in his presence. She jerked against the guards holding her. "We had a deal."

Dehevret leaned down. He was even more frightening close up. Avery resisted every urge to close her eyes. She flinched when his hand touched her cheek. A gentle caress at first, then his nail pierced the skin and clawed a gouge down to her chin.

She struggled, but she had no power. She couldn't even feel her magic with him in the room. Her cheek throbbed in pain.

"We had a deal," she repeated, but she found this time she had tears coming unbidden from her eyes.

"We did." Dehevret nodded. "But I'm not really one to keep my deals, dear." His hand wrapped around her throat. Not to choke, but to intimidate. To command. To own.

"You see," he continued. "I'm in the market for a new slave right now..."

tbc...