Author's Note: Some threads are tied up using elements from prior chapters.
*****************
IN THE INTERREGNUM-

The roar of anguish that came shattered the calm of the place, and Joyce winced. Even without the need of a body, she felt the shock down to her bones. She’d felt it for years now, and it never ceased, never wavered. The poor thing was in agony, and Joyce suspected would always be so.

She’d told her that.

But, since when did Buffy ever listen to her? Joyce knew that things were going to get rough. Things weren’t going to be easy.

But then, things with those two never did go smoothly. It was all about the consuming heat of emotions. The fire of love burned so bright in the both of them that sometimes it was hard to control. Each loved the other so much that it was hard to see past it, to be at peace with it. And they were both so stubborn. Both bound and determined to paint the world with their brush, their colors.

She loved them both so much, but a love that big could cause fires. So now, Joyce was a firefighter.

Joyce didn’t love the role she’d been cast into, the role of firefighter, but she accepted it. As far as the two of them were concerned, whoever got the job as their guardian angel would have to be a firefighter. And, it seemed that she was uniquely qualified.

She felt it was necessary to show Buffy what her death had really done to his spirit. She needed to know. Joyce knew it would be harsh and cruel, but Buffy needed to see it.

She needed to know that there was more to a being than a body and soul. If that were all there was to it, then there would be no evil in the world at all. There would be no murder, no crime, no inhumanity to man. She had to see that there was more to being human than just the label.

Joyce knew now that she did see, and understood, because she saw his pain reflected in Buffy’s eyes as she tried to offer her daughter’s soul comfort, “Oh, Mommy it’s so painful!” she sobbed against her mother’s chest, “How long has he been like that?”

Joyce held Buffy in a comforting embrace, gently rocking her as she whispered, “That spirit has been in pain since before even I knew it existed. When I came here, I was in as much shock as you are. I didn’t know that that was even possible. I’d been taught differently,” Joyce looked into Buffy’s pain-filled eyes and nodded sympathetically, “just like you had. And, he taught you what he knew. I’m sorry Honey, but Rupert Giles is wrong on this one.”

“But what is it that’s torturing him? I’ve never…” the words for that kind of pain didn’t exist, in any language, “Oh Mommy.”

“I know, Sweetie. I know. Are you sure you want to know what he does? In order for you to know what that spirit’s been through, you’ll have to experience something very close to it. It’ll be real to you, just like it was for him. Are you sure you want that? ”Joyce listened as the cry of grief grew louder, “I know he wouldn’t want you to go through that. He would do whatever he had to, to keep that kind of pain from you.”

“I know. That’s why I have to help, Mommy,” Buffy sniffed, “I have to understand. If what you say is true, then I have to help. How can I? Will you tell me, please Mommy?”

Joyce nodded.
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Buffy woke to a darkened house. She looked at the bedside clock; it told her it was three in the morning. Of course it would be quiet. She really hadn’t meant to fall asleep, but she was so tired.

For an instant, Buffy’s heart seized. She looked over at the place where he had been, and it was empty. She stared at the spot where he should have been, and wanted to blink the image away. She was tired, but that was no excuse. She shouldn’t have fallen asleep. She shouldn’t have let him down.

Panic surged through her. Then came the terror. The most unreasonable, unrelenting terror she’d ever felt ripped through her. She had to find a place to hide. “Get low,” it told her, “Be small, then it won’t find you.” She’d felt this before, somewhere in her brain she knew that this was a part of the sickness she’d gone through, and that now it was passed. For her, the time to fear the unknown was passed and was replaced by the gaping fear that her present had become. Spike was in the worst fight he’d ever been in. His brain didn’t enter into this. She welcomed the fear. It meant that he wasn’t dust.

He was going by instinct. And now, so was she. Her instincts told her she’d find him where he thought he’d be safe. For him, safety meant darkness. That meant the basement. So, down she went.

She saw it all unraveling in front of her, and she’d done nothing to help him. Buffy cursed herself for being so blind.

Buffy had never known it was this bad before. No. That was wrong. She had known it. Knew it was happening. She just hadn’t wanted to believe it was happening. Not to him. Not like this.

She saw it all in slow motion. The walking stick she had passed off as nostalgia. As a bit of whimsy, and he didn’t tell her otherwise. He just smirked at her and winked. It was the same with the eyeglasses, the ones he shouldn’t have needed, that sat perched on the end of his nose.

She’d seen it. But she’d run from it. She ran from it. And now, as she stared into the darkened basement, it was all catching up with her.

She had to choke back a sob at the shock he presented, as his white skin glowed against the dark.

Buffy remembered the heat. The virus closed off all sensation but one. Slowly, the burning of the nerve fibers was all that was felt. It was all the virus allowed. That made movement, eventually, impossible. The virus slowly and mercilessly robbed its victim of any refuge from the pain. It robbed its victims of the ability to cry out for comfort. It isolated them from any solace that could be had from contact. First through pain, then by cutting off all other outside stimuli, painful or otherwise, due to blindness and deafness.

It was a horrible way to die.

Right now, Spike was being engulfed in a fire that consumed everything, yet touched nothing. Buffy knew that pain. And his was a thousand times that.

When the pain had started for Buffy, her first instinct had been to rend herself free of her clothing in an effort to cool her emblazoned nerve endings. Joni had been small then, so in order to keep little eyes from seeing what they should not, Spike would spend hours, perhaps days, just holding her. He used his body’s unnatural coolness to calm her, and keep her safe.

Buffy had no such mercy to give him. So here he was, lying nude on the concrete floor of the basement, unmoving.

She rushed over to him, and he stared at her with pain-blinded eyes, “Help,” he panted, “Angel…he has…to help. Joni…too small…can’t save…Buffy…Angel can…but…won’t.”

Buffy didn’t want to see what the virus was doing to him. She didn’t even understand how he was able to talk. She had been saved. The Slayers still were, thanks to him. A part of him knew that, she felt sure. The vaccine he’d developed could not be synthesized. Each time a Slayer was stricken, it meant that Spike had to expose himself to the virus again and again. He knew that eventually even his body would become saturated with it, to the point where his body could not repair itself. But, he didn’t care.

Time disorientation was a symptom of the virus. Buffy knew he had no idea where he was, or when. She closed her eyes and tried to draw in a calming breath, “No Love,” she said, “that was years ago,” she swallowed the lump in her throat, and cooed, “You saved us. You saved me.”

His eyes fluttered shut, “B…uffy? Saved you…did?”

“Yes,” she told him reverently, “you did.”

“Now…promised…me…not…you.”

Buffy bit her lip in worry. The disorientation really had him in its grip, “What did you promise?”

“I die,” he rasped out, “Not you.”

“When did you promise this?”

“Before,” he whispered, “And…after. I love you…love…always,” with that, his body gave out, and he fell into unconsciousness.
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He’d brought them here so that she could see the colors. When she had her sight back, the first thing he wanted her to see was the color of the change of seasons. And she did. She saw brilliant oranges, fiery reds, blazing gold, cool greens and soothing white. She saw everything with new eyes.

Maybe that was because of the joy he took in watching her live again. Everything he did made her feel more alive, like she couldn’t breathe without him.

And now the light was dimming. Slowly, slowly down to dark. Now her world was greying out.

The grey light of morning was slipping through the window, but Buffy didn’t notice. She knew that these were her final hours with him. She didn’t know how she knew but she did.

She also knew that the Slayers owed their very lives to him. Again.

In the history books, the name William Alistair Dustin would go down with the likes of Jonas Salk. “Lace” had been eradicated due to the vaccine he’d developed. William the Bloody had, in the end, saved more Slayers than he ever killed.

Buffy cursed herself a thousand times for not listening to the Shadow Men all those years ago. If she had, then maybe Spike wouldn’t be lying in that room now, in so much pain it physically hurt her to watch him struggle. And he wouldn’t be struggling now, if it hadn’t been for her brilliant stratagem.

An army of Slayers; what a brilliant idea that was. If only she’d known. She would have saved him so much pain.

Spike always told her that she had a bit of a demon in her. He said that was what made her a good Slayer. And now thanks to him it was true.

Thanks to Spike, all of the Slayers had a bit of a demon in them. The demon was the key to the virus. It was what kept her alive.

And in return, she was killing him.

He once told her she was a little bit in love with death. He’d recognized it before she did because he was too.

Joni watched her mother shiver in the grey light that seeped through the haze of death that hung over the house. Daddy and she had tried so hard to make this a place of life and color. And they had.

As she went through the photographs of her mind’s eye, everything was saturated with such vibrant color. The life and laughter that she grew up with was so bright that the world outside paled in comparison. Her Daddy had done his best to make a world for her. A world full of the things he couldn’t have.

And now she wondered what would happen to that world once he left. Would it be dimmer, somehow? This house already was.

Joni slipped silently in beside her mother, and took her hand. Joni wasn’t even sure she had noticed. Her eyes never left the grey mist of fog that seemed to hang over the house now. She just stared out into space, her voice was stilted and raw, “He wanted you to have everything, Joni. He wanted you to have the best.”

“I did Mom,” she said in a hushed tone, “I had the best. I still do. I have the best, Mom. I have you,” her eyes bobbed on a sea of unshed tears, her Daddy wouldn’t want her tears, “And I still have Daddy.”

Joni could see the pain in her eyes as Buffy looked at her, “He was right, Joni. They all go by so fast, and it’s really not enough.”

“What isn’t, Mom?”

“The years. It’s not enough. We’ve been married a little longer than you’ve been alive Joni,” Buffy heaved a heavy sigh as tears rolled down her face, “Nearly twenty-three years, and it still isn’t enough. “Twenty-three years,” she shook her head in a wash of memories, “and in love much longer than that,” she slowly wiped the tears away, “Although you’d never know it from the way I treated him,” her eyes sparkled with a far away light, “I think I loved him the minute I s-saw him.”

“Daddy’s still here, Mom. You can still tell him,” she nodded toward his sickroom, “Daddy still loves you,” she choked back a sob, “Tell him, Mommy. Give him a reason. Please, he needs it!”

Her eyes widened with fright, “No Joni, I can’t go in there!” Buffy’s breath came in strangled gasps, “I can’t watch. Oh, God,” she gulped, “I can feel it. But, I can’t watch.”
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Buffy approached the gravesite with an ache in her heart. Spike had always been her rock. When she’d first gotten sick, and her world became a haze of pain and needles and antiseptic, he’d stayed with her, even though his eyes told her how frightened he really was, he still stayed with her.

The only thing that gave him any focus outside of her was taking care of Jonina. Willow had told her that their daughter had been the only thing that kept him from sinking into madness when she’d taken ill.

They had seen what the virus could do to a Slayer, and how quickly it took hold. She and Spike had been working on isolating it almost from the moment Jonina was born.

She remembered that Spike took it hard each time a Slayer was stricken with the virus they called “Cassandra’s Lace.” He seemed to take the virus’s appearance as a personal affront to him. And when Joni started showing signs of being a Slayer, nothing else seemed to matter to him more than finding the answer to the puzzle. He seemed driven; haunted by something he wouldn’t share.

Then, despite her best efforts to conceal them, she started showing symptoms. She shrugged them off at first, but there came a time when even she could no longer deny what was happening to her. She was dying, and they both knew it. They’d both seen it happen to other Slayers, and now, it was happening to her.

She had accepted it. But, Spike had not. Because of his stubborn refusal to accept their world the way it was, she was the one standing in a graveyard, putting flowers on a grave she never really thought she would ever see. Because of him, Joni was living in a world that once again contained an army of Slayers, albeit a small one, who were now beginning to forget what peril they had been in just a few short years ago.

And she was standing here. That fact alone should have brought her happiness, but it didn’t. And the reason it didn’t is because, once again, he’d sacrificed himself to save her.

Buffy looked at the stone that bore his name, and tried it out on her tongue. It had been so long since she had been able to stand here. Being here, looking at his name, hurt her in a place she couldn’t name. It evoked a pain that she couldn’t give voice to. So when she heard her voice sounding like a thimble, small and tin-like in her ear, saying his name aloud, it didn’t seem real at all.

She read the stone aloud. It was the eulogy she knew he deserved, but never received, at least not from her. It hurt too much to believe that he was gone, “William Alistair Dustin, beloved husband, father, friend, and champion. Departed, but not forgotten, December 2, 2027,” Buffy kissed her fingers and pressed them to the letters of his name, “Who is it that takes care of you now? Where are you? I tried to find you, you know,” Buffy felt her lip tremble and tasted the salt water as it slid down her face to her lips, “Just to know where you are. Joni and I miss you so much,” her face twisted in sadness and anger. She knew her thoughts were disjointed, but she had so much loss in her right now, that she had to give it an outlet, “Willow said you weren’t in Hell, and that’s good,” she sniffed and wiped her eyes, “But she said you weren’t in Heaven either. It didn’t make sense. I mean vampires don’t die of viruses! They just don’t. Okay, there was that time that Angel got sick because of that poison, but I saved him. But when you got sick, you wouldn’t let me save you. Why?” she sobbed, “When you were feverish and delirious,” she bowed her head, reliving the pain of her loss, “while you could still talk, you kept talking about a trade, some kind of bargain. I know you were in pain. I know it. But you never complained, not once. And then Angel tells me about some kind of prophecy. I tell you, Spike, I was so angry, I could have staked him. Joni nearly did. And now, I come here, every day, just in the hope that, some way you’d find me,” Buffy left her bouquet for him, “I know it’s silly. But, I wish you were here,” she said as she left the graveyard.
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Buffy sobbed into her mother’s arms. What she felt now was so sad there were no words to describe it. If this is just a tiny fraction of what that spirit felt, of what it would feel, without her, then she had to help. She couldn’t let him suffer like that.

She knew she had to go.

“I’ll go Mommy,” she said, “I don’t want him to be alone. I don’t want our little girl to be alone in that place. If he has to go, then I go too.”

Her mother smiled and nodded again, as she watched her disappear.
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Buffy strolled through the cemetery. It still hurt, but at least now she could walk through this cemetery, even in late December, and not feel cold inside.

Somehow she knew she wasn’t alone here.

The snowstorm that was driving stinging snowflakes into her skin and whipping the wind until it became a comforting familiar growl didn’t scare her. Joni had said that she’d met a friend, an old gardener named Homer, and she wanted to thank him for befriending Joni, and helping her grieve, when she was not able to see beyond her own sorrow.

There was a comforting light, coming from a cabin in the distance, which drew her close. She was close enough to see the person that stood behind the glass windows. She smiled. It looked warm and inviting in that place. It was a little oasis.

Then, the howling wind became a voice, and the voice became a name. Her name.
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He’d forgotten the cold, forgotten the pain. Forgotten everything but her. The snow didn’t matter. The wind that stung his eyes was nothing. He wasn’t alone.

Dear God in Heaven, he wasn’t alone.

He could see her far ahead. She was just as he remembered her, her golden hair streaking the dark sky with light. He raced toward her, afraid to believe that it was true. His madness was truly complete now, first his daughter, his little Jonina, now his sunshine. His soul. His Buffy.

Just as he was about to let go and let the madness take him in its swell, the howling wind carried something with it that galvanized him, and his feet carried him faster. The scent of vanilla and roses was carried to him, and he knew. He knew it was Buffy. It really was her. He hadn’t gone mad. She was here. Just how and why didn’t matter. Not now. She was here.

The cold air shocked his lungs as he drew it in. To speak her name, a name that had become something sacred in his loneliness, would take all the mental fortitude he could muster. It would take courage. He knew that. If she didn’t react, if she was indeed part of his madness, he would be utterly crushed under the weight of emptiness he felt.

But, if he didn’t try, and by some undeserved miracle, she was real, the ache would kill him. He needed her. In order to continue here, in order to deal with her loss, he’d convinced himself that he did not need her. That she was gone, never to return. And, he didn’t need her.

Not only that, but he’d convinced himself that he couldn’t have her, didn’t deserve her. And that added to the pain he felt in this place.

He didn’t know how he’d done it, but he’d somehow managed to make himself believe that she was dead. He could remember the smell of it. He could remember straining to hear her as she breathed her last. Desperately, he clung to the echo of her final heartbeat. Desperately, he clung to his last hope.

His self-deception had been so complete, that even the one he thought of as his daughter had believed it.

He remembered it all so vividly. Yet, here she was just a few feet away. Almost close enough to touch. He watched as the snow battered her skin and he laughed. As the snowflakes dove toward her on their kamikaze mission, melting into her as they made contact, he was reminded of himself.

He knew, even as he hurled toward her blindly, that she meant death to him. But, he didn’t care. He had to have her.

The sacred name escaped and floated above the roaring wind.

In all his fondest dreams, in his waking nightmares, it had never happened just as it was now. His heart formed in his throat as he watched her turn. She had heard him.

He nearly fell to his knees for that alone. But, as he heard a name he’d all but forgotten, a name he’d buried under years of misery, whispered on the wind, he rushed into her embrace.

“Buffy,” Spike sobbed, wondering just what he had done to deserve this ray of light in his world of darkness, “Oh Buffy, is it really you?”

Spike saw her warm eyes glitter in astonished wonderment. Her beautiful, lyrical voice held a wariness that told him that she doubted her own sanity as she asked him, “Are you real, Spike? Please tell me you are,” she wept for his loss, and for his return, as she held him tighter. She felt a shimmer of joy and disbelief shoot through her as he smiled at her. Oh, how she missed that smile, those eyes.

As he smiled down at her, Spike was grateful she was there. If she wasn’t there to bear him up, he felt certain he would collapse from the tremors of exhaustion, grief and happiness that rocked his body now. In a voice that hadn’t been used outside of his dream state, he told her, “I was never real, Love. Until just this moment, I never existed at all.”

Inside the cabin, a little girl smiled. She had her parents back. Now they could take her home.
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NOVEMBER 1, 2005 -8:00 A.M.

Just as the rumble under Willow’s feet had begun to die down, another deafening roar ripped through the air. A light flashed, and where only moments ago Spike had kissed Buffy goodbye, instead there was Angel, lying on the floor of the club, gasping for air.

Wait. That wasn’t right. Was Angel really breathing?

Just as Willow was about to question her own senses, Buffy’s tear- ravaged voice spoke for the second time that day, “Human. Oh, God. Angel,” she lunged toward him before Willow could stop her and pulled his rubber limbs to bear, “What did you do?” she hissed, “What did you do to my child! Where’s Spike?” she demanded, “What happened? What did you do to him!”
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