Title: Life Goes On
Disclaimer: Joss’s world, Joss’s characters, Joss’s production company, Joss’s money. All I have is my imagination.

This has been up on my site for a while, but I was never happy with it. The brilliant and talented Amyb has beta'd the hell out of it for me and it is much better - not to mention, punctuated more correctly than before.

Life Goes On ---CHAPTER ONE
by Slaymesoftly

Buffy walked into the conference room at Council Headquarters and looked around at the faces.

“Whoa! Is there an apocalypse I should know about?” she joked as everyone looked at her with solemn expressions.

Giles sighed and took his glasses off to polish them.

(Uh oh, polishing the specs -not a good sign.)

“Ok, not a joking issue then.” she said, giving her own sigh. “So, what’s up?”

Silently her former watcher pushed a packet of papers across the table to her. She picked it up with an eye roll and glanced at the cover. Whatever snarky comment she had been about to make about forcing reading material on her was quashed when she saw the LA postmark.

“And this is?”

“Something you need to read before we begin our strategy session,” Giles said quietly.

“You can’t just tell me about it?”

“I would prefer you get the entire story – as much as we have of it – directly from the source in chronological order,” he said. “And you may want to read it in private,” he added, gesturing toward the adjacent office.

“Who is this source who did such a good job of keeping things in chronological order?” she asked, still somewhat flippantly.

“Wesley,” Giles said. “It is Wesley’s record of the events that took place at Wolfram and Hart over their last—in the course of last year.”

“Once a Watcher, always a Watcher, I guess. Huh, Giles?”

The older man gave a tight smile that didn’t reach his eyes. “I suppose that’s true, Buffy. We spend a lot of years learning to observe and to record those observations. Apparently old habits die hard.”

“So, Wesley sent this to us?” she asked, turning the packet over in her hands curiously. “Why didn’t he just call you?”

“It appears that he was quite busy toward the......lately. And somewhat distracted by personal issues. This is information he obviously felt it would be important for us to have.”

Buffy dropped into a chair and pulled what was clearly a journal of some sort out of the envelope. She opened it and started reading. Giles cleared his throat and again suggested that she might want to read it in private. She looked at him in confusion and said firmly, “Giles, I realize there’s probably stuff about Angel in here. Surely you know that I’m OK with whatever he’s doing now? That ship sailed a long time ago. I can’t imagine what Wesley could possibly have in here that I......”

Her voice trailed off and he could see from the way her knuckles whitened that she had caught a glimpse of Spike’s name somewhere as she flipped through the notebook. She immediately turned back to the first page and began reading with a speed that reminded him that despite her aversion to book work, she was actually both quite bright and a very good reader.

Wesley’s journal entries appeared to begin several months after the defeat of the First Evil. He talked about the meeting in Angel’s office, the accidental knock to the floor of the mysterious envelope on Angel’s desk and then described how the screaming Spike had emerged from the amulet. He even quoted Spike’s first gasping words, asking for Buffy. Her eyes squeezed shut momentarily at this reminder of how she was always his first priority. Then she opened them quickly and continued reading. Giles could see her jaw clench and knew she had read of Angel’s offhand “somewhere in Europe” reply to Spike’s asking where she was.

Giles had read the account of the events in LA several times already; he found that it was possible to tell where Buffy was in the story by observing her closely. She quickly closed down her face, hiding whatever emotions were being evoked by the ex-watcher’s tale, but she couldn’t hide her body’s responses and Giles could see the mounting tension in her as she understood that Spike had actually come back in one form or another.

Suddenly she leaped to her feet and headed for the private office behind Giles, mumbling something about needing to read where it was quiet. Since no one in the conference room had so much as breathed heavily while Buffy was reading, he knew that she had come to something that was going to make it hard for her to hide her emotions from them.

Once in the smaller room, behind closed doors, Buffy dropped the emotional shields she had put up outside and allowed herself to collapse onto the floor, clutching the journal to her chest and letting the tears flow. All the grief and loss she had been suppressing for the past year, the aching empty place in her life that Spike had filled - emptiness she hadn’t known was there until he was gone - she couldn’t ignore those feelings any more. As she read Wesley’s meticulous account of Fred’s efforts to keep Spike from slipping into hell, the jerry-rigged machine she’d created to make him corporeal again and his willingness to give up his restoration to save her life, a more familiar emotion began to emerge.

Suddenly her grief was replaced with a cold anger – anger at everyone at Wolfram and Hart who knew about Spike and who hadn’t thought to tell her. She was mentally preparing a stake just for Angel as she thought about his refusal to tell Spike where she was – even though she knew that he knew how to reach her if contact was necessary.

As she continued reading and came to the part where Spike suddenly regained his solidity, she switched her anger to him. He could have called somebody – he could have found Giles fairly easily. He could have asked someone there how to reach the Council. Fred and Willow talked; Wesley knew how to reach Giles; Angel knew how find all of them.

A block of ice settled in her chest as she read about his aborted trip to Europe to find her. (Why did he change his mind? Didn’t he want me anymore?)

When she realized that Andrew had seen and talked to him, she threw a chair against the wall; the small blond man to leaped to his feet in the other room and ran very quickly out of the building. He wasn’t completely stupid; he had a pretty good idea what was causing her temper tantrum -- fortunately for him; as Buffy threw open the door to the conference room and glared around it looking for him just seconds after his departure. When she didn’t see him, she went back into the smaller room, slamming the door behind her and muttering what she was going to do with his various body parts.

She shuddered as she read of Spike’s loss of his hands – those wonderful hands that had soothed her when she needed soothing, that had brought her to ecstasy when she needed release. She smothered the urge to go to Dana’s locked-down room and strangle her.

Her emotions continued to roil as she followed the events of the past year. She smiled at Wesley’s descriptions of Spike and Angel arguing like children over ridiculous things; she laughed picturing Angel as a puppet; she smiled warmly at his developing relationship with Nina (And that pretty much says it all about my cookies, doesn’t it?), she thought wryly, remembering how much pain that his moving on would have brought her just a few years before. She shook her head at the idea of Spike and Angel trying to kill each other over a cup of Mountain Dew.

She read Wesley’s account of Spike’s explanation for not going to find her. It first made her angry to think that he thought she would love him better as a dead hero than as a live boyfriend; then, it made her heart ache again as she realized that he really hadn’t believed her when she told him that she loved him. He didn’t stay away because he didn’t love her anymore; he did it because he really believed she couldn’t love him. Once again the tears filling her eyes made it impossible to read for several minutes.

(Ok, granted I never gave him much reason to think that I could love him before he came back with his soul. I spent a lot of time telling him how impossible it was. But surely those last few months.......how could he not have seen how I felt? Those last two nights......Oh, Spike......)

She tried to shake off the grief that was once again threatening to paralyze her so that she could finish the chronicle. It was obvious that it was leading to something else besides just telling them about Spike’s reappearance and she felt a small twinge of fear as events unfolded and became grimmer and grimmer.

She cringed for Wesley as he tried to discuss Fred’s death and the subsequent emergence of Illyria dispassionately. His heartbreak and grief bled through the clinical description of her gradual deterioration, and Buffy’s eyes welled up again in sympathy for the man who had been her Watcher so briefly, what felt like so many years ago.

She unconsciously sucked in her breath when it appeared that Angel was succumbing to the evil influences of Wolfram and Hart, then relaxed as the real story was revealed. Tears of pride prickled her eyes as she discovered that Spike’s hand had been the first to go up when Angel asked for volunteers to take the fight to its bitter end. The narrative ended the day before the planned attack on the great evil conspiracy that was clearly supported by the senior partners of the law firm. Wesley had made it very clear that he was not expecting to survive the coming battle, nor had he expected anyone else to do so. He was sending the record to Giles and the Council so that they would know what had happened, so that they could be prepared for the outcome.

For several minutes after she finished reading, Buffy sat immobile, clutching the journal to her chest and trying to sort out and deal with the emotions rolling over her in waves. For the past year she had done her best to subdue any kind of negative emotion; she had pushed all her grief, her fears for the future, her anger at the Powers that Be for making Spike their sacrifice so deep into her psyche that she had been able to pretend they weren’t there. The hour spent reading the events of the past year in LA had made continuing that way impossible. In that short space of time she had gone through every bit of pain and fear that she had so successfully hidden from herself for the past year.

She felt exhausted, but exhilarated at the same time. (Nothing like a good cry, or two or three, to get the juices flowing) she told herself as she got up and prepared to face the group in the other room. Since it was supposed to be a strategy session, she assumed that there was a situation to handle. Mentally bracing herself for whatever else she might learn, she reached for the handle and opened the door.

All conversation ceased when she entered the room, and Giles looked at her with concern.

“Are you all right, Buffy?” he asked carefully. Over the past year he had gradually regained much of her respect, as well as the affection that he had always taken for granted. He had tried to apologize for his part in the attempt on Spike’s life, but she had refused to discuss it; he had to settle for admitting that he had been wrong about the vampire while leaving his guilt unassuaged.

Wesley’s journal had made it clear, beyond any shadow of doubt, exactly how wrong he had been and he found himself wishing that he could apologize to Spike in person for doubting him. He knew that his wish to be able to talk to the blond vampire, however, was nothing compared to what Buffy must have been feeling.

“I’m fine,” she answered firmly. She squared her shoulders and looked around the table. “What do we know?”

Everyone let out the breaths they had unconsciously been holding and relaxed back into their chairs, ready to begin the meeting. Giles nodded to one of the few watchers who had escaped the explosion at headquarters and asked him to begin.

“Well,” the man began somewhat pompously, “the only things we know for certain are that the Senior Partners of Wolfram and Hart were quite angry and unleashed a horde of demons and various other nightmare creatures from another dimension into Los Angeles. Their target was Angel’s group specifically, although we’ve no reason to believe they were given cause to avoid a more general sort of violence. Apparently Angel’s group was able to accomplish all of their objectives on that last day; thus was the Senior Partners takeover of Los Angeles averted. We know that Mr. Wyndham-Pryce lost his life very early on; however, his mission was completed by the entity using Ms Burkle’s body. This…being ... effectively disposed of their target, then joined the others to face the coming battle.”

“It was assumed that all that were left – Mr. Gunn, Illyria, and the two vampires - had all perished, although they had done an amazingly good job of destroying the incoming army of supernatural beings. It appears that the vampire known as Angel was.......well, he did not survive his battle with the dragon.”

Buffy squeezed her eyes shut briefly in pain, then opened them and nodded at him to go on.

“He did, however, take the dragon with him, meaning that that particular danger was eliminated quickly.” Nigel had been briefed on Buffy’s relationships with both souled vampires and of course, had studied Wesley’s account of the previous year and so he knew of the more recent connection between Buffy and Spike.

As the uncomfortable man hesitated, Buffy looked at him sternly and said, “Go on. What do we know about......the others?” She steeled herself for what she knew was coming.

With a quick glance at Giles, who nodded firmly, Nigel continued in a shaky voice. “Well, we know that Mr. Gunn was apparently already wounded when the final battle began; he did not survice, although there is no way to be certain exactly how long he continued to fight. Our observer could see the other vampire and the blue....entity.....fighting from a position in front of the young man, but he was forced to leave the scene at that time and cannot verify that Mr. Gunn was saved. He assumes not, as they were seen later that night fighting in other areas of the city and Mr. Gunn was not with them.

“And Spike and Fr-Illyria?” Buffy was very proud of the steadiness of her voice was as she asked the watcher to break her heart.

Nigel blew out a breath – “We....we don’t know. No one has seen the vampire since that night. There are rumors of a woman wearing a blue catsuit –" He paused as everyone in the room looked at him like he’d lost his mind.

“Un, blue catsuit?” Willow put in for the first time. “Not really Fred’s style at all.”

“Please be assured,” he said, suddenly sounding very certain and very much like a member of the Council, “that the entity using Fred’s body is, in no way, actually her. It is from an ancient race of beings that are very nearly gods. As you know from the journal, it was necessary that they take steps to remove much of her - its - power simply to prevent it from destabilizing and taking the entire city with it in the resulting explosion. This being does bear some physical resemblance to the original owner of the body; it has her memories, but it is not, and will never again be her. It can shift at will to assume the form of Miss Burkle, but its typical physical appearance is now its natural state. In addition, our informant’s firsthand observation and the correlation of the two seems quite consclusive towards proving this armored shell to be the former god.

“As I was saying,” he continued with a glare toward Willow, “there have been stories of a woman wearing blue showing up to confront pockets of demons and destroy them. ‘She’ doesn’t speak to anyone and vanishes as soon as its task is complete. We are assuming this is Illyria, although we don’t know why it would continue to fight after everyone else was gone.”

Buffy bit her lip before she spoke, telling herself that there was no point in crying over Spike’s apparent death when she’d been living with it for over a year. She pushed down the sickening feeling that if she’d known she could have been with him all this time to focus on business.

“So, if Illyria is still fighting demons, there are still problems in LA?”

Giles took over the story, thanking the other man for his information and allowing him to sit down. “Yes, it would appear that even though Angel and his group did an amazing job of taking out the most dangerous of the things let through when the dimensional portal was opened, they were not able to defeat them all before.....succumbing.....” He could see that Buffy, in spite of her impassive face, was clutching her own upper arms so tightly that he was sure there would be bruises there for days.

“It appears as though Illyria is taking the remainder of the Senior Partner’s horde out as she finds them, but I think a contingent of slayers deployed to serve as back up would go a long way toward ridding the world of whatever is left of that horrific army.”

“So, when do we leave?” Buffy kept a tight rein on her voice and expressive face as she mentally prepared to return to a place that she knew could only create more unhappy memories for her.

“We’re prepared to leave tomorrow. We were actually just waiting for you to get here.” Giles studied her face carefully, then turned to Nigel. “Please tell her the rest of it,” he ordered. At the same time he gestured to the others in the room to leave and they filed out quickly, glancing back at Buffy and wondering what else was going on.

“The rest of it?” she asked carefully. “What haven’t you told me?”

Nigel took a deep breath and said, “The only other place that Illyria has apparently been seen—and only once or twice-- is at a hospital where many of the victims of the original assault were taken. It has been seen going in or out of the room housing a comatose man who authorities have not yet been able to identify.”

“A man?” Buffy asked meaningfully. “We know it’s a man that she’s visiting, and not a....a......” She couldn’t bring herself to finish the sentence. Shaking herself slightly she said, “It must be Gunn, then”.

“ The man is white,” Nigel said quietly. “And blond, with a scar on his eyebrow.”

Buffy felt the room spinning and was surprised to find that Giles was holding her up and guiding her to a chair.

“Buffy,” he said gently, “that’s all we know. It’s a blond man, who could be anybody. Someone Illyria knew from Wolfram and Hart, a friend of Angel’s, a friend of Fred’s, perhaps.....”

Buffy looked up at the man who had been her surrogate father for nearly a decade; he winced at the pain and hope he saw warring in her eyes. “But it could also be..... It could be, Giles!”

“We won’t know till we see him, will we?” he said as he brushed her hair gently with his hand. “And don’t forget, Buffy…this man, whoever he turns out to be, is in a coma. He has obviously been grievously injured.”

Buffy ignored him and stood up.

“Where are you going? Are you going to be OK?”

“I’m going to pack,” she said without looking at either of them. “I’m getting on a plane tomorrow.”



The man lying in the hospital bed seemed to be as unresponsive mentally as he was physically, but that was an illusion. In reality, from time to time he was conscious and able to hear what was going on around him. He couldn’t see anything, nor could he let anyone know that he was alert, as he couldn’t make any of his voluntary muscles respond to his commands.

The only one who seemed to be aware of his changes in status was Illyria. He knew that she came to see him sometimes. He had no way of knowing how often she came, or if he was always aware when she did, but he could always tell somehow when she was there. When she could sense that he was listening, she would talk to him about the demons she had killed; sometimes her voice would soften, and she almost sounded like Fred when she spoke of Wesley, of some demon he would have liked to study before she killed it.

He already knew that they were the only ones to survive that final battle. Even if she hadn’t told him, he would have known that Angel was gone; he could sense the empty space in the small part of him that could feel the presence of members of his vampire “family”. He never dwelled on the emptiness where the Master or Darla had been, but he was surprised to find that the loss of his grandsire left a painful hole that he knew would not stop hurting anytime soon.

If he could have, he would have smiled when Illyria described seeing Angel riding the dragon and sawing away at its neck with his sword as it screamed and flew into a burning building. (Way to go out in blaze of glory, you great poofter!) he thought. (The slayer would be proud of you).

At the thought of Buffy, the mental smile went away and he wondered where she was and if she had any idea what had happened in the city of her birth. His dreams while he slept were full of images of her – golden hair and skin shimmering in the sun, smiling at him, beckoning him to follow her into the sunshine.

It was several weeks before he realized that the heartbeat he was hearing was his own, and that the rise and fall of his chest was due to a need for oxygen, not just habit.

Bloody hell! I got the Shanshu? I’m a real boy now?

Spike wasn’t sure how he felt about that. He had no desire to go back to being William; he feared that the combination of the soul, which had already changed him, and humanity would result in his again becoming the meek, bookish man he had once been.

Eventually he realized that the fear was irrelevant as he was helpless to move or talk anyway. When he was aware of Illyria’s presence, Spike tried as hard as he could to move some body part, to do anything to let her know that he still inhabited the inert body in the hospital bed. The frustration of not being able to so much as open his eyes or blink was mounting to the point that he was sure that he would spontaneously combust during one of her visits.

After a particularly grueling attempt to open his eyes during one of her monologues, he was surprised to feel a touch on his arm and to hear her voice reassuring him, “Do not try so hard to do what you cannot. I can tell that you hear me. It is not necessary that you respond.”

Astonishment-- at both the touch and the attempt at comfort-- left him unable to even pay attention to anything else she said and he almost missed it when she mentioned that there appeared to be many new demon fighters in the city.

“They are all young female humans. Could these be the Slayers of which I have been told?”

Even as he mentally screamed to be allowed to stay conscious, he felt himself slipping away; Illyria soon left, knowing instinctively that he was no longer able to hear her. Since Spike wasn’t able to answer her, she determined to find one of these humans herself, to learn precisely who or what they were.