“Are you sure about this?” the demon phlebotomist asked.

    “Yeah. I’m strong.”

    “But your platelet count is already–”    

    “I’m fine!” Buffy insisted. “I’m a slayer. We regenerate quickly, and we have extra reserves.” She reached for the syringe. “If you won’t help me, I’ll do it myself.”

    “No,” the creature said. “It’s safer if I do. But you can’t keep this up for much longer.”

    “I know I can’t,” Buffy said. “But I have to try what I can.”

    And another pint of blood was drawn from Buffy’s arm.

    There was a full staff at the clinic consisting of four demons; one doctor, a receptionist, and two nurses. They had catered mostly to Wolfram and Hart’s independent contractors, their full-time workers usually being treated by the science department – people like Fred used to be. The vampire dentist also treated his patients there one night a week. It had been five days, and even though Angel was pretty much healed up, Buffy hadn’t spoken to him. She would barely acknowledge him. The tock demon had been restored and returned to a comparatively neutral plane of reality, and the other slayer was still tending the two marsupial imps in a makeshift nursery down the hall. Illyria was mostly all right, though she had been more injured than she’d let on. She stayed haunting the clinic, sleeping a lot. She peered in on Spike sometimes, – they’d sort of become friends – but other than that she spent a lot of time watching daytime televison; “Studying your culture,” as she put it.

    Buffy had been staying in Spike’s room. Most of the other slayers had been returned to their homes or training camps. Two of the worst damaged had been brought to the clinic to heal, and Willow claimed to have found a home for the imps, though she wanted to inspect the place, first. The doctors had started trying to restore Spike with a basic transfusion – donated human blood, because that was proven among vampires – but there had been no response. The eerie silence of the brainwave and oxygen monitors had torn at Buffy, and she’d asked to be a donor after the first day. “The blood of a slayer restores,” she’d said. She wouldn’t drain herself, but every pint she could give him, she determined would be his.

    “Why do you do this?” Illyria had asked her when she’d visited one day. “He is already dead.”

    “You said his soul was still present.”

    “His soul was bound to his flesh, by the demon he bargained to. So long as there is flesh, the soul is forced to remain. But there is no mind, no thought, no emotion. He is dead.”

    Buffy looked down at him. “He’s been dead for over a century,” she said. “I have to try.”

    “Your blood is unlikely to result in his revival,” Illyria said. “I understand feeling grief for him, but to pour your life into him in this manner is a danger to your corporeal form. Does this fruitless action assist with the grieving?”

    Buffy had realized Illyria was still trying to understand humanity. “It’s called hope,” she said. “And yes. So long as you have it, it does assist.”

    “This hope you speak of sounds like madness.”

    Buffy sighed. “Maybe it is,” she said. “But I’m not giving it up. Not yet.”

    “To consume another to revive a life is wrong,” Illyria said. “I have been told this. The being of the shell I inhabit was consumed for my resurrection. It has caused grief among many. It has caused grief for your friend.” She indicated Spike’s still corpse. “He would not have wanted his beloved consumed for his own revival.”

    “Am I his beloved?” Buffy asked.

    “I have powers of empathy,” Illyria said. “He did have a beloved. Your aura echos the shape of his longing.”

    Buffy looked over at her. “Thanks for telling me.” She touched Spike’s hollow cheek. “I’m not going to die from this,” she said. “Not unless I am very unlucky. He’d be furious. But... he and I have shared so much. To share my blood seems like such a small thing, in comparison.”

    “Blood is life,” Illyria said. “He believed it so.”

    “I know he did.”

    “So you will share with him your life?”

    Buffy didn’t have an answer. After several long minutes, Illyria let the question go, and returned to her own room.
    

***

    He was burning. He was burning and screaming, his blue eyes crumbling, the fire consuming his form, only to branch out, a shock wave, his life tumbling over and over and over to destroy the Hellmouth and suck the whole town into oblivion. And she was forced to watch it.

    Buffy woke up on the couch fighting the nightmare. She’d been sleeping a lot, lately. She knew it was blood loss. She knew she should stop. But the nightmare just made her need to help all the more. It was a nightmare she’d had over and over again since she’d left Sunnydale. It had started to fade, finally, before she’d come to LA. Now it was back in force. She pulled the oxygen tube out of her nose – compensation for her distressed system. It smelled like plastic.

    There was only one thing that had ever soothed her after that nightmare. To curl up on her side and imagine Spike still there, lying beside her, watching her sleep. She couldn’t invoke her memory of him with him lying there, still and silent, on the hospital bed. Suddenly she felt so lonely she wanted to scream. She stood up and went to him, and ripped open the velcro bond on his right arm, so that she could hold his hand. She settled in beside him on the bed, gently, not shifting his bound spine or his braced neck. But she had to hold him. She remembered holding him before he’d died, holding him for hours until he was warmed through with her own body heat, until he almost felt human against her.

    “You’re so still,” she said, settling her head on his shoulder. “I’m used to you being cold, but you’re so still. This feels wrong, somehow. Holding you, without that steady sound of your breath, the subtle movement of you that makes you not really dead. It’s not like I go in for corpses. A vampire isn’t really a corpse, is it. But you seem like one right now.” She buried her nose in his bare chest and inhaled. “You don’t smell like one,” she said. “You still smell like a vampire, heady, and sort of seductive. No decay. You still smell like Spike. Vampire and cigarettes and whiskey, just a tang of blood. I’ve missed that smell. I wished... I’d made you take off your coat, or kept a shirt of yours or something. But Sunnydale was gone. The house was gone. You were gone.”

    The exhaustion wore her down. “You were gone,” she said, her throat closing up with tears. She reached out and laced her fingers through his hand again. “All I had was this. My hand burned for a week. It tingled even longer. I think, from what Angel says, I felt you in my skin until you were called back. God, Spike. What did you think I was going to do? I didn’t want you to be dead. I was the one who told you to stop!” She shook her head, her tears starting to dry. “It was selfish of me,” she admitted. “You knew what had to be done. And you were right. But still... I wished you could have been selfish, too. In the end, you were the better one. You made a better choice than I did. A more moral one. But it wasn’t what I wanted.”

    She sighed. “This isn’t right. You’re not supposed to be here, still and silent, after hiding from me for.... Why were you hiding here? Did you think this meant nothing to me? This...” She let go his hand and placed hers on his chest, over his heart. “This was so important to me. How could you try to throw this away? Leave it behind to rot in my chest, unable to explain to anyone how I... missed you.” She shook her head. “What was this to you? Didn’t this mean anything? Did this die with you?” Her eyes closed. “I refuse to believe this is dead,” she said. “This is real. This is true. This... is.”

    She was drifting back to sleep, too exhausted to think anymore. “I love this,” she whispered.