Buffy woke quietly. She had never, in her life, felt more peaceful, or more content. She couldn’t quite get a grip on where she was, at first – the peace of the moment almost felt wrong, as if it shouldn’t belong to her. She hadn’t felt peace since she was a child. Not since before the power of the slayer began to wake in her blood. It had actually happened, she knew, when she was about eleven. Then the potential began to show, and for some years she was like those girls she’d been training – just a little stronger than normal girls, just a little more agile, just a little easier to stay in shape; perfect for gymnastics and cheerleading and fashion all those other vapid banalities that she allowed to take over her life, in the hopes that they would swallow the dreams of blood and death and violence that had started to creep into her sleep.

    To be the slayer made her different. Even being a potential made her different. Possibly it made her a little less human. Whether that was the case or not, it had made her a lot less peaceful. She opened her eyes to unfamiliar surroundings, and an unfamiliar weight against her, all quiet in the soft light of early morning.

    Spike. His hair was what caught her eyes first. She had fallen asleep last night against his chest. Several times she half woke, or even in her dreams felt him beside her, fondling her hair, kissing the top of her head, the weight of his gaze as warm and comforting as a blanket. He lay beside her now, curled up on her shoulder like a child on his mother’s breast, one hand on her hip, the other beneath her. Holding her close. His leg was curled over hers, embracing her. He had been holding her so long he felt warm beside her, holding and reflecting her body heat, for once feeling just as human and alive as she was.

    He breathed gently in his sleep. Vampires frequently claimed they didn’t breathe, but they did. They didn’t need to as often as a human did, but without breath they would pass out, or they could drown. It was simply that lack of breath would never kill them. It was this breath which made him a living thing, warm and alive and real beside her. Feeding harmlessly off the warmth of her life, as he held her so gently.

    It felt so wonderful.

    Buffy had never woken with such peace, feeling such certainty or such strength. He had fallen asleep beside her in perfect trust, perfect love. His words of the night before chimed in her head. I love what you are. What you do. How you try. You’re the one, Buffy.

    With Spike in her arms, with his certainty and his devotion, she felt it. For the first time in her life, she felt it. She didn’t feel like the power had made a mistake. She didn’t feel like just a girl, holding strength she didn’t deserve, because the wrong vampire happened to settle his lair beneath her highschool in L.A., and she just happened to be the closest potential at the time. Spike knew her, believed in her, loved her. She wasn’t faking it. She wasn’t an imposter. She was The Slayer. For the first time, she actually felt like The One.

    And that she had the right to be.

    She’d had intuition before. She knew how to close the gate that Glory had opened. She knew how to defeat the Master. She knew how to fight monsters, and escape from hell, and what those girls needed for some of them to survive. And she knew that Caleb was hiding something important at the vineyard. And without second-guessing her, Spike knew – somehow knew – that she was right.

    She looked down at him again, curled up so peacefully against her. She also knew – though how she wasn’t sure – that she needed Spike in this fight. Needed him desperately. Could not possibly win without him. She’d known it from the beginning, from the moment the First had targeted him, and she’d had an inkling of what she was fighting. She supposed it could have been inferred from the fact that the First had targeted him. But it had targeted Dawn and Willow as well – if not as direly – and she did not have the same certainty that the fight could not be won without them. Dawn in particular Buffy almost wanted gone – she felt more like a liability than an asset.

    She realized she was already thinking in terms of this still being her fight. The whole tiny army had turned on her apart from Spike – her best friends and her watcher and her sister and the girls she was training. She’d let them take the fight from her and walked away. She’d spent all of yesterday in a black cloud of despair, the apocalypse taken from her hands, and it had devastated her. She hadn’t wanted it back, but she’d been broken. It wasn’t right that it wasn’t her fight...

    You’re the one, Buffy.

    She was the one. The First had to have manipulated it this way, working on the girls and her family and her friends, making them turn on her. Spike was the only one immune, and only because the First had worked on him so harshly. He’d been inoculated, already suffered through the illness of betrayal that the First seeded in its manipulated victims. Somehow, she knew all this. She’d known all this before Spike had taken her into his arms... but she hadn’t trusted it.

    She trusted it now.

    She knew what she had to do. Gently, she pulled her arm from under Spike’s head, sliding her body out from beneath his enfolding arm. She felt strong, refreshed, invigorated. A full night’s peaceful sleep. A returned sense of purpose. An ally beyond doubt.

    Spike remained asleep.

    Buffy went to the bathroom, raided the kitchen for something she could call breakfast, found a brush and made herself presentable. Then she went to tell Spike what she meant to do.

    Spike was still and silent, his eyes closed. She knew he could sleep very heavily. The sleep of the dead, as it were. She wanted to wake him, but... she couldn’t bring herself to do it. He lay there so peaceful, so calm, so content. Still curled on his side as if she were still in his arms, his head on the pillow, breathing gently. The sight of him was perfect. He looked so... beautiful....

    He looked innocent.

    The scourge of Europe, the slaughterer of innocents, the murderer of thousands, lay on that bed with his eyes closed, having fallen asleep against the woman he loved, and he looked innocent as a newborn child. Buffy was sized with a sudden desire to grab him and hold him close, or rip his clothes off and claim him as hers, or even just sit down and watch him for the next three hours. But she didn’t have time.

    She couldn’t bring him with her, anyway. It was daylight, he couldn’t leave the house. She went back out into the hall to the message pad by the phone, and wrote him a note, instead.

    Dear Spike.
        I think you’re right. I’m going back to the vineyard to find what Caleb is hiding. I’m going alone. If I succeed, I’ll probably be back at the house. If not, it won’t matter either way. I’m sorry to leave you here.
    Thank you for last night.
            Love, Buffy.

    She stopped, and nearly crossed out the word love. Then she realized that would be even worse, and she should probably just rewrite it if it was that important. Then she realized she was being very silly about the whole thing. She’d signed letters to her plumber “Love, Buffy.” She’d finished college applications, “Love, Buffy.” It was an automatic close to a letter, and the only reason she was second guessing it was because... because...

    He might think she meant it.

    She left it. She left it, because she wasn’t at all sure she didn’t mean it after all. It might be the last thing she ever said to him. If it was, he could think he what he wanted. If it wasn’t, it was easily dismissed.

    If dismissing it was what she wanted to do...

    She pretended to forget the whole dilemma, folded the note, and left it beside Spike on the pillow. He’d see it when he opened his eyes.

    She wanted to kiss him, though she knew that would wake him, and she didn’t want him to wake. She just couldn’t get over how beautiful he was. The look on his pale, peaceful face. The face of the man who had tried to kill her, who had beaten her half senseless, who had seduced her with pure violence, who had had his way with her in public, who had even tried to rape her. If this was going to be the last time she saw him, this was what she wanted to remember. The last image of him that she would carry into death.

    Pure and complete innocence.