“Won’t this stupid van go any faster?” Buffy grumbled anxiously.

Xander eyed the already very high speed on the odometer as he shot back, “Not without serious danger to our lives.”

“Stupid piece of crap van!” Buffy muttered, irritated and impatient, but mostly scared to death.

“Hey!” Willow gave her an offended look from the front passenger seat.

The three of them were almost to the Initiative. They had left the vampires back at the mansion, which was showing a lot of trust, for Buffy. They were now de-chipped, and capable of defending themselves, and she had decided to tell them so before leaving them. It would be terrible to come back and find that Initiative soldiers had decided to show up at the mansion and they’d been hurt or captured because they didn’t know that they could defend themselves.

And really, Buffy had very little fear of their leaving the mansion or causing any trouble. They really were like children, too scared and insecure still to attempt going it alone. Because of that, and their concern for their sire, Buffy knew that they would be there when they returned to the mansion. She had no idea what they would find when they reached the Initiative, and thought it might be safer for everyone if the children stayed at home.

Just as they pulled into the parking lot at the rear of the building, the headlights carefully turned off, Buffy saw a lone figure walk slowly through the doors onto the lawn and stop – just standing there, apparently oblivious to their presence. A flash of platinum hair in the moonlight told her what she had already known, and she slid the door open and leapt from the van before it had even stopped moving.

As she started toward him, he sank to his knees in the cool, wet grass, his hands over his face. Fear gripped her as she broke into a run. He was hurt!

“Spike! Spike!” she called as she neared him, but he did not seem aware of her yet. She reached him and dropped to her knees in front of him, gently reaching up to pull his hands away from his eyes.

Tears streaming down his face and shining in his eyes, he looked up at her sort of dazedly, as if just realizing she was there.

“Buffy,” he whispered, his voice hushed and awed. “Oh, God, Buffy!” He shook his head slowly, at a loss, unable to find any other words.

But relief flooded her, because she understood. He had not fallen to his knees in pain or weakness, but rather in wonder and overwhelming emotion.

She saw in his eyes what he could not put into words. After a year – longer really, she thought, remembering the original Initiative – of being a prisoner, helpless and at the mercy of cruel captors who treated him no better than an animal, being unable to defend himself against their beatings, torture, humiliations, having absolutely no control over any aspect of his life…

He was finally free.

The chip was gone, his captors in the death throes of their defeat. And he was finally free to decide for himself again – to *live*.

“Oh, Buffy,” he whispered again, clutching her hands in his as the tears kept flowing.

Her own eyes filled with tears, and she gently freed one hand to lay a tender caress on his tear-stained cheek as she looked deep into his eyes. Her breath caught in her throat at the intense love she saw in his eyes as he held her gaze and leaned into her touch. When she saw the sob rising in his throat before he released it, she gently put her arms around him, pulling his head down onto her shoulder and holding him as he wept in her arms. Her fingers softly stroked through the damp blonde curls at back of his neck as she rocked slightly, offering him her wordless comfort and reassurance.

Slowly, almost reverently, Xander and Willow approached. Willow held her laptop in her arms crossed in front of her chest.

“Buffy,” she said softly, cautiously calling her friend’s attention back to the matter at hand.

Buffy glanced up at her before gently pulling away from Spike, her hand still resting at the back of his neck. She sought out his eyes with hers and asked softly, “Are you all right? Are you hurt?”

He automatically shook his head, then grimaced slightly and changed his response, nodding almost apologetically. “Bint did quite a number on me before they…” His words cut off suddenly, his eyes widening as they shot up to hers, guilt and fear showing through the sheen of tears.

Her serious green eyes held his firmly, as she dropped her hand from him and asked in an expressionless tone, “What happened?”

*Bloody hell.* His stomach dropped in fear – not so much a physical fear that she would harm him, as a sick, anxious feeling that what he was about to tell her would hurt and disappoint her, and cost them all the progress they had made in the past few days.

“Well,” he began with a deep, shaky breath, looking at the ground, “she decided to resort to torture to get me to tell her where you were, love…and of course I wouldn’t…so that’s where we were when I realized the chip had shut down. I tricked her into untying me and I – I almost killed her…I wanted to,” he admitted hesitantly, then hurried on, shooting anxious, pleading eyes up to hers for a moment, “But I didn’t! I knew it – it wouldn’t be right, and you wouldn’t like it, so I didn’t kill her, love.” His eyes searched hers as he paused, but he could read nothing there.

“Go on,” she prompted him, keeping her tone neutral.

He had really hoped to have been able to stop his story there. He started again in a trembling voice, “I – we…” He hesitated, unsure how to put the rest of his account so that she would understand. Wincing at her anticipated reaction, he closed his eyes and blurted out, “I drained her ‘til she was too weak to stop me and turned her over to the ones she’d turned…let them decide what to do with her.”

He cautiously opened apprehensive blue eyes to look at her, and saw that same impenetrable look on her face. His eyes downcast again, feeling increasingly vulnerable under her scrutiny, he added softly, “She had it coming, love. She killed them, she took everything from them. Who better to decide her fate? Government blokes’d just slap her wrist for bad procedure…wouldn’t care about them, what she did to them. I’m not in a place to judge her, right. I know I deserve the same as her, likely. But they didn’t. They didn’t deserve what she did to them.”

He took another deep breath, a hard lump growing in his throat, constricting his voice as he struggled to go on, “So I took her to them and left her…so…so I guess I did kill her. I knew what was gonna happen, and I…”

His words broke off as two small but powerful hands gripped his arms and jerked him forward.

So it *was* to be physical harm, then, he thought ruefully. Resigning himself to accept the consequences of his actions, only hoping that he could somehow make her understand, he whispered, “Buffy, please, I…”

His words were silenced by her lips on his, her tongue gently darting between his parted lips to steal his words away. He hesitated for a moment, stunned. This was the last thing he had expected. But then instinct and emotion took over and he put his arms around her and kissed her back.

Willow looked anxiously at Xander, unsure of how he would take the Slayer’s public vampire-snogging on the Initiative lawn.

He just sighed, and put a hand to his eyes as he turned away, muttering, “I was hoping not to be around when they started that!” He opened his eyes to see Willow’s wide green gaze focused on him in astonishment.

“You knew?” she gasped.

“Come on, Will. I’m not a *total* moron.” He rolled his eyes, but that put them back on Spike and Buffy, and he quickly turned away again.

“Um, Buffy,” Willow reluctantly broke in again. “We still need to do this.”

Buffy pulled away with an effort from the kiss, giving Spike a soft, reassuring smile before looking up at Willow.

“Can anyone think of any reason we’d need to go back in there?” Xander asked.

Spike’s eyes widened and he gripped Buffy’s arm, turning pleading blue eyes on hers. “Buffy – my – my other children…”

She frowned slightly, uncertain. To take on a dozen more fledgling vampires, now unchipped and therefore dangerous – it was quite a risk. But the desperate hope in his eyes nearly broke her heart when she thought of crushing it by leaving his children here to die when the military came in. And if they were as obedient to Spike as Diana and Darian were…and Spike was following her lead…it could be all right.

She made her decision in a moment. They would work it out.

“Let’s go get them,” she said with a brief, decisive nod.

“No,” he said quickly, as she helped him to his feet, then looked her in the eye to repeat firmly, “No, Buffy. I’ll go. I’ll bring them out here to you.”

She searched his eyes, and saw that he wanted to spare her another scene like the one of Riley’s death. “Are there any soldiers left in there?” she asked with a frown of concern.

He shook his head, looking her in the eye, his own solemn.

She nodded slowly, satisfied that he would be safe going back in alone. “We’ll wait,” she told him, turning to lead the others back to the van.


He returned about twenty minutes later, with his children in tow. By the time he got back to their quarters, Cordova had been torn to pieces. He had taken the time to have them clean up a bit before presenting them to Buffy. As surprisingly understanding as she was being about this, meeting her while soaked in the blood of a recent victim was not the sort of first impression he wanted them to make.

He had explained to them that, chips or no chips, they were to obey the Slayer’s every command. Otherwise, he, or she, or both would give them a thrashing they’d never forget. The last thing he needed was one impulsive childe, high on the rush of new freedom, deciding to try his luck against the Slayer and buggering it all up for the others. So he made it very clear to them that disrespect to Buffy would carry severe consequences.

So it was that as Buffy got out of the van, it was a very subdued little band of vampires that met her.

“I don’t wanna seem rude,” she said immediately, “but we’ll have time for introductions later. Let’s get everybody in the van, and then we’ll lock this place down and get out of here.”

“Getting everybody into the van” proved to be a challenge. Even with all but the first of the rear seats folded down to make a flatbed, it was impossibly crowded. But these vampires were newly freed slaves, ones who fortunately did not require oxygen, and they were willing to put up with the crowding and temporary discomfort, as it meant leaving the Initiative behind forever.

Three of them crammed onto the middle seat with Buffy and Spike, who didn’t mind the extreme closeness after their recent harrowing separation. She held his hand tightly in both of hers, resting in her lap for all to see, and he felt a warm thrill of pride at her open affection.

As they drove back to the mansion, she unabashedly looked him over, taking her first good look at anything besides his face since he had stepped out onto the lawn.

“You found your coat,” she murmured softly, her eyes widening, and a sort of shy look coming over her face at the recollection of where he had to have found it, and what that would have revealed to him.

He smiled back at her, stroking her hair back from her face with his free hand. “A lot more, too,” he whispered.

She glanced down again, and her eyes widened more when she realized that the coat was *all* he was wearing. It was all he had been able to find of his clothes after Cordova had released him from the table and he had knocked her out. She had probably intended to keep it for herself, he thought.

Buffy frowned at the vicious burns that covered his chest and stomach, clearly visible under the half-open garment, saying softly, “That looks bad, Baby. We need to get you taken care of.”

He smiled at her as he shook his head dismissively. “It’s nothing, pet. It’ll heal.”

He didn’t tell her that the blood he had taken from the general had already helped to heal them to a small degree, and what she saw now was actually a slight improvement on the way it had looked earlier. And though he didn’t want to admit it to her, his victory over Cordova and emotional release following it had actually drained quite a bit of his strength and he was beginning to feel the pain again.

When his eyes met hers again, he saw the tenderness there that told him she knew anyway. She slowly leaned in, her eyes on his until her closeness to his face prevented it, to place a feather-light brush of a kiss on a mostly-healed cigarette burn on his cheek.

She pulled away to gaze again into his wide, startled eyes. She leaned in again to place an only slightly less gentle kiss on his lips, never breaking eye contact this time. Then she drew back to speak the words she had been trying to say with her actions, as overwhelming gratitude for all his sacrifices for her the past few days brought fresh tears to her eyes.

“Thank you.”