They were flying back from Italy, exhausted, disappointed, confused, not entirely sure where Buffy was, and more than half convinced she was off with the Immortal, the strongest rival the two of them had ever endured through their centuries of evil. Spike, clever bastard, had managed to bring an actual bottle of whiskey with him, as opposed to the airline thimble-fulls in the jet’s bar, and he was getting steadily drunk in the seat beside Angel. “Do you...” Angel trailed off.

    “What.”

    “Could I have some of that?”

    “When I pass out,” Spike glowered. “Not before.”

    “Jerk.”

    “Wanker.”

    “It’s not like it matters to you, anyway,” Angel said, hoping to shame him into sharing his whiskey. “You yourself said you never had a real shot with her.”

    Spike closed his eyes. “I want what’s best for her,” he said. “And I know that’s not you.”

    “Or the Immortal?”

    Spike shrugged.

    “I can’t believe she’s with him,” Angel said glumly.

    “I don’t,” Spike said.

    Angel looked over at him. “What?”

    “Your stalker-for-hire got waylaid, right?” Spike said. “So he hasn’t seen her really. I didn’t catch her scent at the club, or anything particularly fresh in her apartment. Andrew could be real up on the laundry, and she could have been wearing perfume or something, but something smells off. I mean, figuratively smells off. We never saw her face. And Andrew’s a liar,” Spike added, which Angel very much thought should have been his opening statement.

    “What makes you say that?”

    “He once told me he turned down a succubus.” He tilted his head knowingly at Angel.

    Angel put what he knew about succubuses together with what he had seen of Andrew, and determined that no, the sex-demon would never have been interested in him, and no, he couldn’t possibly have turned her down. “Right. Liar,” Angel said. “Why would he lie about Buffy?”

    “Wants her for himself, following orders, thinks it’s funny. Take your pick. But I’m not convinced that was Buffy.”

    Angel realized he didn’t know her scent well enough to know, anymore, if Spike was right. “So why are you getting drunk?”

    “Because I’m not convinced that was Buffy,” Spike said. “And your stalkers are so inept, she could be anywhere. Doing anything.”

    “Or anyone,” Angel said.

    Spike chuckled without humor. “But hey, at least I’m pretty sure she’s safe, that’s a plus. She just doesn’t trust you.” He took another swig. “Another plus.”

    “You’re an ass.”

    “Back at you.”

    “Buffy and me are eternal. Ours is a forever love,” Angel snapped.

    Spike scoffed at him. “Yours was a stalker and his underage victim.”

    “You know nothing. She wasn’t my victim, she was my beloved.”

    “You still stalked her,” Spike said. “You treated her just like you treated all your victims. Even with a soul, you don’t care about the damage you do.”

    “You know that for the bullshit it is.”

    “Just because you finally felt something pure after two hundred years doesn’t mean you’re not still a monster,” Spike said.

    “She loves me.”

    “Of course she does,” Spike said, and Angel knew it for sarcasm.

    “I was everything to her. I was the man of her dreams, her perfect moment. And one day, we’ll find it again, I know we will.” He realized he was trying to convince himself as much as Spike. “The dream will be made reality, and we’ll earn our ever after.”

    “What, when you become a real boy? You realize you sound delusional.”

    “And you don’t? As far as I can see, we’re in the same boat.”

    “I don’t expect ever afters,” Spike said. “Life is blood and pain and tears, and every once in a while you can be gifted with a single moment. There is no blue fairy. There are no fairy tale promises fulfilled by ever afters.”

    “There can be,” Angel said. “You don’t know Buffy.”

    “I know her better than you do. She doesn’t believe in fairy tales, either.”

    Angel smiled, knowing he’d won. “Yes, she does. You’re not her true love. You’re not her destiny. She didn’t give you her virginity, or take your promise ring, or have that perfect Cinderella moment at Prom. That was me.”

    Spike’s face contorted as if he was howling with laughter, but all he did was shake his head. “Do you hear yourself? You knew a little girl with her fairy tale dreams, you git. You played you were her high-school beau? It’s because of that you think you have an eternal love? You loved the girl, mate. You barely know the woman.”

    “You’re the one who doesn’t know her.”

    Spike’s eyes twisted sly. “She has a small mole on her left labia majora,” Spike said, “and she trims, but won’t wax clean. She likes it rough at first – deadly rough, if you’re doing it right – but she comes harder the third time if it’s slow. She likes silk scarves and chains, but not leather – not around her wrists. It’ll do for her knees.” His voice was getting distant, and Angel felt like he was drowning. Jealousy he’d felt before, but this was torture. “She whimpers like a puppy when you deny her an orgasm and, hardly surprisingly, she likes to be bitten, just hard enough to bruise. She’ll nearly break your hand if you make her come in public, rather than cry out.” He shifted his gaze to Angel, vindictively. “She doesn’t like being called a princess, but lamb is fine. She fights better after she lets her foe get the better of her once, so she’ll actually hold back until it starts to look like she’s losing.” He settled back more comfortably in his chair. “She likes ice cream before her period, but craves salt during, and prefers thongs at any other time of month.” His voice faded to a sultry murmur. “She kisses to music, as if it were a dance. Her vocal range is mezzo-soprano, but she sings more doing laundry than in the shower.” Angel was almost snorting with seething hatred before Spike added, “And her blood is sweet as hibiscus, and even more potent than absinthe.” Spike smiled. “No. I don’t know her at all.” He took a heavy swig of his bottle.  

   “You would kiss and tell,” Angel said. “She does real well to trust you.”    

    “Would I tell tales out of school, mate? Come, you already know her,” Spike said. “Tentative virgin on her seventeenth birthday.” Spike shook his head, scornful. “I’d be surprised if you even made her come. Let alone twelve times in a row.”

    “You’re trying to hurt me.”

    “Now where would I have learned that,” Spike said dully.

    “You’re just jealous because she never really loved you.”

    Spike scoffed a laugh and dismissed him. “Bollocks. You don’t know what we had.”

    “Yes I do, she told me,” Angel said, knowing it for the barb it was. Spike didn’t answer, but his eyes locked on Angel like a hunter. “The last night I was in Sunnydale,” Angel went on, hungry to see Spike’s pain. “She said you were in her heart, but she didn’t love you. She said it didn’t matter either way, ‘cause she basically wasn’t ready to settle down. With a kind of tortured analogy,” he added, then shook his head. “But she was just playing with you. She told me flat out. It wasn’t love.”

    Angel knew the look on Spike’s face. It was the look Spike had whenever Angel had bedded Drusilla in front of him. Tense and tortured, but highly controlled, his eyes burning through Angel as if wishing his gaze were sunlight, turning him to dust. His jaw tight, a barely concealed tremor in his voice, he spoke. “Maybe it wasn’t,” he said, his accent gone very precise. “Maybe it never will be. I already think it won’t, knowing my luck. But there’s only one reason for it, if that’s the case. You are a master, Angelus,” he said, the name a biting insult, “and I am always the one who has to clean up after the destruction you leave behind.”

    “What are you talking about?”

    “What you did to Buffy.” His head was very still as he stared at him, his voice tight and perfect. “Slowly, systematically, piece by piece, day by day. It was a glorious devastation. So beautifully subtle.”

    “What are you on about?”

    “Buffy makes Drusilla look like the clumsy, ham-fisted attempt of an amateur,” Spike said, sounding very drunk. “I wouldn’t have thought your soul could have given you such gifts if I hadn’t seen it with my own eyes. Such delicacy, to excise it so perfectly, a scalpel in the hand of a master surgeon, so you can barely see the scars. I am in awe at your skill.”

    The rancor in his voice was biting, and Angel was actually disturbed. “I don’t know what you’re talking about.”

    “I’m talking about the attachment disorder you left her with,” Spike said, his head lolling with drink. “Granted, you had the perfect clay. She was always going to be one step away from humanity, and you managed to catch her at the one moment in her life when you could negate all the support and love her mum raised her with. Too early, the wounds would have healed clean, or destroyed her completely. Any later, and you wouldn’t have been able to scar her at all. As it was, she is the most stunning masterpiece of your wretched existence.”

    “All right, I’ll bite,” Angel said, feeling like he meant it quite literally. “What did I do to her?” 

   “You. Destroyed. Her. Love,” Spike said. “Burned it out of her, as if it were a cancer.”

    Angel shook his head in dismissal. “You’re talking nonsense. She loves more than anyone I’ve ever met. She’s the only slayer in history with family and friends – she’s kept them close, they’ve strengthened her. She’s the most powerful slayer ever because of it.”

    “That’s what makes it so perfect,” Spike said. “You’ve left all her strength and her kindness and her devotion in place. You’ve left everything which lends her her power. You’ve just inserted the misery in the middle of it, like a gem of pain. It’s so subtle, even she can’t see it. You’ve sliced her in the one place which would enable to her accept a lover. Which would let her trust the love of another, and let her love them in return.”

    Spike shrugged. “And no, it’s not just me. She does it to anyone who touches that part of her. I grant you, it is very hard to see until you get close. She is devoted to her friends, her sister, the memory of her mum. Even to you. Probably to me. She believes in love. But she doesn’t believe it can exist for her. And she blames herself for it, not you. That’s the master stroke. She thinks it’s because she’s the slayer, or because she’s incapable or... that fate is against her and she’s unattainable. It is an exquisite scar, mate.” He raised his bottle as if it were a toasting glass. “I have to hand it to you, Angelus. You are a grand master of human destruction.” He took another belt.

    “And you’re a bastard,” Angel said. “It’s all bull.” 

   “You stalked her from the age of fifteen,” Spike snarled. “You demanded her love, her commitment, and forgiveness from your hideous sins from the age of sixteen. You took her virginity, and betrayed her, both, on her bloody birthday for god’s sake. You conveniently got your soul back at the last second, and made her betray you in return by killing you.” He shook his head. “Then, you come back from the dead and do it all over again, only this time, you ultimately abandon her, but still stalk her just enough so that she could never for a moment forget you.” Spike shook his head. “You see what a wreck I’ve been dealing with? If I’m wrong, and that was Buffy, she’s out right now using and abusing another lonely monster, trying to soothe that scar in her soul. Playing the same dismal tune over again. ‘Cause you know that bastard will never cherish her. And you know exactly which one of us is to blame.” 

   “I did not abandon her,” Angel said, his voice blistering with anger. “I love her. She’s my destiny.”

    “You’re her torturer,” Spike said. “If you really loved her so much, you’d do what I did.”

    “What do you mean? I’m the one who started this new-fangled ‘soul’ fad you decided to jump on.”

    “Yeah, with a curse, meaning you can’t give her what she needs.”

    “You’re an ass,” Angel growled. He glumly muttered what he felt of as his worst sin, as if to a priest. “I’d give anything to lose my soul in her, for just one minute.”

    “Then get it fixed,” Spike said. “I know where the demon lives. If you survive it, you two can live happy ever after, prophesy or no.”

    The thought had never occurred to Angel before. Go through the trials and the torture, have his soul fixed to him permanently, like Spike. He could find Buffy, wed her, bed her. They probably still couldn’t really have children, but she could if she wanted them – sperm banks were everywhere. It wasn’t so different from Willow and her girlfriends, and that was perfectly human. It would be a happy-ever-after, just like Spike said. And to his own horror, he wasn’t even tempted. The prophecy called to him. Angel didn’t want to risk torture and death for the chance at a good-enough life with his love – he wanted it all. Sunlight and humanity and redemption. He didn’t want to be like Spike.

    “You love your life more than you love her,” Spike said after pausing for a response Angel didn’t give. “Maybe you’d die for her if she needed you to, but not just to be with her. You love your tortured soul, your martyred existence, your legendary tragedy. I just love her.” Spike stuck the cork into three quarters empty bottle and tossed it to Angel before he stood up, and headed for the back of the plane.

    Angel caught the bottle and looked up at him. “Then why aren’t you staying in Italy?” he asked. “Why aren’t you trying to find her?”

    Spike looked back at him. “Look what you did to her when you came back from the dead,” he said. “I can’t do something like that till I’m sure.” He shook his head. “Besides. All I did was wear a bloody necklace, right?” he paraphrased Angel’s words from earlier in the night. “She never really loved me. None of this... mattered.” He laughed as if at a cosmic joke. “I guess this isn’t that important, in the end.” He sat down in the furthest seat from Angel. “I’m gonna sleep this off,” he announced, and turned the light off above his seat.

    Angel hoped Spike was right, and that Buffy was somewhere untraceable and Andrew really was lying. He also hoped Spike was wrong. Woefully, hideously wrong. He hated to think that Buffy might have been seriously wounded by what he had done to her. He really did love her. Really. Her. His Buffy.

    But the words ‘forever love’ were starting to ring very selfish and hollow in his head. He opened the bottle Spike had given him and did his best to drink that feeling away.