The pain was unbearable. Spike had undergone burns, breaks, bruises, blood loss, and bugs in his brain, and none of them felt like this. There was not a muscle fiber, not a sinew, not a nerve in his body that was not firing with pain. The closest he’d ever felt was when his neural chip had malfunctioned, and just fired his pain center continuously for hours. But even that was direct – this was pervasive. And to make it worse, for the longest time, he couldn’t move. The pain was just there, not even part of him, it was him. The only thought in his head was pain. He did not exist. He was not himself. He was pain. He did not remember anything other than this pain.

    Slowly, he gained more control over it. His body was restoring, and every muscle tensed with the agony, rather than lying unreachable at the other end of his mind. The first thing he did when he had any control over any part of himself was to scream, as loudly as possible. It was silent as the grave. There was no breath, no vibration, nothing that indicated life which would enable his scream to be anything more than an open mouth and a tightly corded throat. When he realized that wasn’t going to do him any good, he clenched his jaw and endured, exploring the pain itself, as if it were a thing of hideous beauty.

    The pain did not cease, but it subsided, an ocean with the tide out, still as immense and powerful, but no longer lapping at the high sands. Spike still hadn’t opened his eyes. They were too heavy to lift, so he decided to leave them for a while and see what else he could do. Breath seemed important. Breath brought scent, and without scent, he was only pain. He tried to take in a breath, and couldn’t. His lungs were fused solid. He forced them open, one alveoli at a time, drawing in a droplet of air before he had to let it out again, and then a slightly larger one. Each growing breath felt like his flesh was being torn apart – which it was.

    How long that took, he didn’t know, but by the time he was able to take in half a lung full of air, he knew who he was again. He wasn’t simply pain. He was himself, Spike, undergoing pain. He’d done that before. Keep breathing.

    Eyes next. He forced a flicker and saw a flash of blinding light before the lids sank again under their immense weight. He tried it again, and again, resting, feeling like Sisyphus rolling the rock up the mountain, only to start again half way. Finally, his eyes opened, but he still couldn’t see. Everything was blurry, the eyes themselves unable to focus, the pupils frozen as if in death.

    He lost track of what body parts he tried to assemble and integrate. None of them were cooperative, all of them were in rebellion from the pain they were undergoing. He was climbing a mountain, and he rested frequently, often losing consciousness before wrestling himself back up the mountain of life over and over again.

    He didn’t know how long he’d been struggling when his eyes finally decided to learn how to focus and aim. There was something ahead of him, shapes that seemed important. Then, like watching the images that appeared slowly on a Polaroid, Spike recognized the tableau before him.

    Angel, the wanker, was sitting on a couch before him, fast asleep, his arm around a woman. The woman was curled up against his chest trustingly, breathing peacefully. Their hands were clasped. Their breath was even. Their faces were pale, but content. They... they were... they were together. Buffy, Buffy, Buffy – Buffy looked content. At peace. Buffy. Buffy. He wanted to say her name, but that part of his body didn’t work yet.

    It was at least an hour, the image of Angel and Buffy asleep before him searing into his retina. Closing his eyes did not let him escape it – they were burned in his vision. Finally his body recovered enough to move. He was able to look at something other than what felt like the end of the world.

    Various wires and monitors were stuck to his skin. The heartbeat monitor was, as one would expect, still and silent as the grave, but the brainwave scanner was jumping around with the occasional soft beep of a pain spike, and the blood oxygen tab was now reading at about fifty-five percent – past organ failure for a human, who were supposed to rest at a hundred unless they were ill, though it was only moderately low in a vamp. Spike took in another breath and it clicked up to sixty. Seventy-five was pretty normal for a vampire – and they could go down to zero without any permanent damage, though it was possible to get knocked out. Since his lungs had only just started working, he figured he’d been down to just about nothing not two hours previous.

    His left hand was a wrapped bandage, where the pain was compounded twice, not just through inaction, but what felt like burns. His right hand was an oozing mass, the pain there compounded by a massive puncture, the sharp blade still skewering it as if his hand were a butterfly. There was also a needle attached to a plastic cord imbedded in his flesh like a tick. But where a tick would be drawing his blood away, this needle seemed to be giving it to him. He aimed his eyes at the IV bag and realized it was almost empty. His eye turned again to the blade. He recognized that blade. Bloody hell, he realized, they’d decided to restore him. Somehow.

    Why could no one ever just let him die!?

    Particularly if they were going to get all... together like that. He wanted to cry, but that was another set of functions his body hadn’t yet managed to assemble. Just kill me now, he thought.

    He had to get out of there. He couldn’t stay here and watch them. He didn’t want to be restored only to have them stand together and tell him, Look how happy we are! We want you to be the first to know! Spike had known this was coming from the moment he’d heard about Nina. Once Captain Forehead had learned that sex wasn’t the end-all and be-all of happiness, and he could finally get his groove on, he’d be turning back to Buffy, Nina go hang. And Buffy... well, Spike hadn’t thought she still wanted Angel, but clearly – he made himself swallow, and his throat hurt at the movement – as the tableau before him stated most eloquently, he was mistaken.

    He looked down. He seemed to be wearing a neck brace, and there was a stiff bandage around his torso. His legs were bound with straps to the hospital bed. An unlatched strap appeared to be waiting for his right arm – his left arm clearly being utterly useless – but hadn’t been attached. He ripped the IV out of his arm, and the scent of Angel’s blood made him feel sick. Grimacing with pain, he bent forward to undo the straps on his legs.

    He appeared to be wearing a pair of black long johns, and little else. The last thing he remembered, he’d been covered in demon ichor, so he assumed someone had changed him.  There did not appear to be any clothing visible. He unhooked his neck brace – no more pain than there already was – and made himself stand.

    He fell. He crashed sideways as his leg buckled, landing him on his left arm, and he would have howled with the pain if he hadn’t been afraid of waking the lovers on the couch. He didn’t want to hear their explanations. He didn’t want to hear how happy they were he was back. He didn’t want to hear Angel’s half-hearted and triumphant apology, or Buffy’s calculated and reasoned regrets. He didn’t want to hear their best wishes for his future happiness after he learned to move on. What he really wanted was to die, but they wouldn’t bloody let him do that, now would they?

    It took all of his stubbornness to fight through the pain and force his way to the wall cupboard, where sure enough, at least his coat was hanging up. Someone had wiped it down, though the seams were still a little sticky. He slipped it on, hoping against hope that the sounds he made wouldn’t wake them.

    He was out in the clinic lobby within another seven minutes, and had called a taxi to take him to his basement apartment. The taxi informed him that that neighborhood was still condemned, destroyed, and under martial law. Spike reached into his coat pocket and found his wallet. “All right,” he told the taxi driver. “Take me to an all night department store. I need shoes.”

    
***
 

    Buffy woke up slowly, stiff and uncomfortable, her arm pinned under her against Angel’s firm side. She had barely opened her eyes when she noticed something was wrong.

    Spike’s bed lay empty.

    She flashed through ideas in her head, and quickly arrived at the correct conclusion. “Angel!” she cried out. She yanked herself out from under his arm and stood up – far too quickly, as it turned out. Her ears started roaring and her vision swam. “Angel!” She made herself sit back down before she passed out.

    “What...? What?” he asked, waking slowly.

    “Angel, we need to find Spike.”

    “Spike?” Angel roused quickly and stared at the bed. “What happened?”

    “I don’t know. I think your spell worked.”

    “So where is he?”

    “Gone!” Buffy cursed the roaring in her ears, as her anemia fazed her utterly. Her heart pounded futilely in her chest, pumping her watery blood, trying to make her body work.

    “Oh, god,” Angel said. He stood up. “What if Giles was right? We didn’t bind his arm up again–”

    “If he’d turned into an animal, he wouldn’t have been able to work the buckles,” Buffy said. “Animals don’t think. Besides, wouldn’t he have attacked us? It’s not like we were a threat over here. No, it’s him. It’s Spike. He came back and he saw us... oh god! God dammit!”

    Angel knelt down and put his hands on her shoulders. “It’s all right,” Angel said. “This is a good thing, right? He’s probably just gone for a drink or something–”

    “You don’t understand,” Buffy said, annoyed at his contemptuous dismissal. “If he woke up, and found us like this.... You don’t know what that would have done to him.”

    “Wouldn’t he give you the benefit of the doubt? I mean, clearly we were restoring him. He knows we’re close.”

    “Yes, he does, but... oh, god, Angel, this is bigger than that. If Spike had a soul like yours, he wouldn’t have had to play celibate. Making love wouldn’t have done it for him. It’s this – sharing space, being close. The eyes, the soul, lending strength. That’s his bliss, Angel. If he opened his eyes and found us... it would have been worse than finding us in bed together.”

    Angel’s eyes went wide, and then closed in agony. “Oh, god. I’ve done it to him again.”

    “Again?” Buffy asked.

    “Don’t ask,” Angel said, standing up. “I’m a monster, Buffy.”

    “Yeah, well, whatever you’ve done to him, he also would have left you to it. He’s done it before. If he ever thinks that I really need you, he just walks away.”

    “He wouldn’t walk away. Spike’s always fighting with me.”

    “Maybe he spars with you, but he won’t fight you over me. He never thinks of me as his. Remember what I said? He wants to be what I need, even if I need him gone. If he thinks I need you...”

    “He couldn’t bear to watch it,” Angel said.

    “Oh, god,” Buffy groaned. “I’m never gonna see him again at this rate!”

    “I’ll help you find him,” Angel said. But it became clear over the next few hours that he was being overly optimistic. They fell into a flurry of activity, looking up tracking spells in Angel’s now very limited supply of spell books, and going by more conventional or technological means. They came up with very little. Buffy, much to her chagrin, kept being forced to sit down. She was used to being strong, with the endurance of a slayer, but she had poured so much of her life into Spike she was weak as the proverbial kitten. Angel’s contacts were limited. So many of the demons and sorcerers and law enforcement he had known were beyond his reach, or dead, or had turned on him. Even Harmony was unreachable now, having gotten a job with a loan shark. She was probably back on human blood again, knowing her.

    After the eleventh dead end, Angel turned to find Buffy crying. “Hey,” he said, coming up to her. He tried to embrace her. “It’ll be all right–”

    “No, it won’t!” Buffy said, shrugging him off. “He feels betrayed. I know he does. God, Angel, I can’t bear to betray him. Not after what we went through.”

    “I know you were close,” Angel said. “But we haven’t betrayed him. You have to believe that.”

    “No,” Buffy said. “You don’t know close it got, Angel. Just before the end... we nearly lost everything. It was only trust that got us through. Perfect trust. You even showing up nearly broke it. If I’d spent that night with you, instead of him, all would have been lost. If we hadn’t let go of everything, all the pain and the fear and the recrimination, if we hadn’t joined together, the First would have won. There would be nothing left of the world.”

    “I’d have stayed. The amulet–”

    “Would have been worthless,” Buffy said. “It wouldn’t have done a thing. Believe me. It wasn’t gold and gems that saved the world. It was Spike.”

    Angel looked shocked. “You mean that?”

    “You couldn’t have done it,” Buffy said. “It wasn’t the soul, it was the sacrifice. It was the redemption. He felt sorrow and guilt before he earned himself a soul. It only worked at all because Spike chose to be better.”

    “How do you know that?” Angel asked.

    “I know,” Buffy said. “Believe me... after what Spike did for me, what we both went through together... I know.”