The fight was amazing. The rain poured down, steaming in the heat of hell, as Spike whirled and battled like the demon he was. Oh, this was life, this was death, this was bloody poetry in motion. He snapped the neck of a demonic horse, twisted it full off, and then threw the still gnashing, sharp toothed head at another demon. He spared a second to scan the battle immediately surrounding him, and then grinned. “Ghoulie,” he said, snatching up an imp aiming a trident at his hip, “and beastie,” he whirled, knocking the imp against a red-eared hell hound that was worrying at the edge of his coat, “and midnight demon.” The hellhound was cricketed off into a worrying patch of darkness with glowing red eyes that was trying to sidle through reality and absorb bits of the world. Spike threw the imp after it, and ducked the resultant flash of flowing energy that tried to snatch him into the darkness of the failing demon. The black patch faded, but there were dozens more. Spike ducked his head down and dove into the nearest knot of creatures, bowling several of them sideways. He was totally vamped out, but there was no blood to drink here. There was only fire and darkness and metal-wielding flesh, under the occasional flash of lighting.

    The battle went on for what felt like hours. Spike didn’t know if he’d been injured – too busy to assess – but his arms and fists were aching, and he knew he’d lost his edge of speed. He planted the demonic spear he’d picked up in the nearest beastie, and looked around for more. Angel was somewhere behind him, the dragon he’d been fighting having dropped him half a street away from the main front of the battle. Illyria, or at least her power, could still be spotted occasionally – unless there was some other beastie in the battle who consistently threw out blue thunderbolts. He’d lost track of the others. Spike himself had just charged into the thickest knot of beasties and hoped for a good ride to the end. He hadn’t been disappointed. Everywhere he turned there was something else to fight.

    Thick demon ichor dripped down his front and made his fists sticky. There were sharp bristles imbedded in his skin from some furry worm creature he’d throttled. His face was spattered with his own blood, and he was pretty sure he’d earned himself another scar or two. He was tired. He wouldn’t be able to keep this up much longer, he knew. He wondered which demon it was out there who was about to have a real good day.

    The smell of human blood caught at his vamped senses, and he whirled. He saw nothing human in the mix at first, and then his eyes caught on a blinding light shining through the heavy rain. He wondered if some other hell creature had just arrived, and took a deep breath to make himself ready for the fray. He yanked a sword from the nearest battered demon, sliced its head off neatly, and then faced the new foe armed.

    The new foe took the form of a young woman, no more than twenty or so, with a bandolier of wooden stakes and a heavy looking battle axe. She had landed a good ten feet behind the blinding light, and Spike realized the light was from a helicopter, and the newest foe was in fact a slayer, who had just jumped from a descending ladder. With a broad grin and a war whoop, Spike went the opposite direction, unwilling to try and persuade a slayer in battle that he with his vamped brow and sharp fangs was really one of the good guys. He just set about clearing the area around her as much as possible, catching glimpses of other young women in amongst the fray. Someone, somewhere, had brought in reenforcements. The slayer army had arrived.

    He was backed up against a building when he saw her, leaping from the top of a tiny, newly risen volcano, her slayer’s battle scythe glinting in the red light. She was glorious, her blonde hair flowing around her head like a halo, her face alight with energy, her lithe form dancing in the sensuous ballet of death that had warmed his heart from the first day he saw her, and fired his soul from the second he had one. Oh, yes, he thought. Just one moment of this. She didn’t see him, but it didn’t matter. This was all he needed, all he would have asked for if anyone had offered. Just the briefest moment’s sight of her in the midst of epic battle.

    So it didn’t seem at all wrong that a demon the size of a mountain gorilla picked him up a second later and bent him backwards over its knee. The sound of it jarred through him as his lower spine was split, and he looked up at a behorned creature with teeth overflowing its mouth like an angry sea. The creature lifted him again, grabbed him by the head, and twisted.

    The last thought that fired through Spike’s mind was a pleasant one. That was a marvelous crunch.
 

    Angel trudged his way through the destruction as the sun slowly inched its way toward the skyline. The benefit of living in LA, he’d always thought, was that all the buildings usually gave you a little extra time to outpace the dawn.

    He’d hovered around the outskirts of the battle for most of it, unable to force his way into the center of the legion of demonic hellspawn that had been sent against him and his tiny crew. The tide had turned about two hours before dawn, and it wasn’t until now that he realized why. Another front had opened up in the center of the battle, and a collection of twenty or so young women were organizing themselves around a spot on the ground that was quickly becoming a makeshift infirmary. A distinctive blue head amongst them told him that Illyria had survived the battle, but Angel had little hope for any of the rest of his team. Angel knew only one of the young slayers that milled around on the spot. But she was a slayer well worth knowing. “Buffy!” he breathed, unable to cry out his joy at seeing her. He trudged closer, hoping his body would hold out long enough to get to them. One of the young women saw him and pointed him out to their leader.

    Buffy stood up and glared at him. “You were having an apocalypse,” she chastised him, “and you didn’t invite me? I’m insulted. I even had a new outfit, and everything.”

***

    It didn’t take long to fill in the details on both sides. Angel was brought safely out of the rising sun under the cover of a pop-up tent while they briefed each other. Buffy had been informed of the ensuing apocalypse through a prophetic vision when several of the slayers had been in training. So many of them together had made their dreams more potent, and much more precise. They’d arrived several hours after the invasion had begun. Until the slayers arrived, it had simply been a march of destruction, as there was only Angel’s tiny band on the defensive front, and most of them had died in the first fifteen minutes. Angel had only survived because that dragon had carried him away from the front before he’d managed to kill it, and Illyria was still around – injured and tired, but alive – only because she was a goddess. Until Angel had shown up, she’d been the only survivor.

    The slayers had lost fourteen girls, and a further twenty-seven were severely or critically injured. Buffy herself had some nasty looking injuries, but she didn’t seem bothered by them. The girls were on the forefront of her mind. The slayers were grieving. They did not like losing their own.

    “Was there a hellgate?” Angel asked, wondering where all the demons had come from.

    “Wolfram and Hart building,” Buffy said. “Monica collapsed it.”

    “Which one’s Monica?” Angel asked, wanting to thank her.

    “Still under it,” Buffy said. Then she indicated a blooded shirt which was surrounded by a ceremonious clear space. The shirt covered something lumpy, that was still oozing blood. “Mostly.”

    Angel felt sick. “I’m sorry.”

    Buffy shrugged, her face grim and contained. “The city’s still standing,” Buffy said. “We had acceptable losses.” She closed her eyes.

    Angel reached for her. “Hey,” he said. “It’s over. You don’t need to stand tall.”

    “Yes I do,” Buffy said, stepping away from what he had wanted to be his comforting arm. “The girls need me. The world needs me. There are still demons and demon spawn showing up under the rubble who need to be killed. You didn’t think to evacuate the area, so we keep finding victims who didn’t get out in time.” She grunted in annoyance and gestured with exasperation at something behind him. “And random fires appear to be flaring up for no reason at all.”

    Angel looked behind him to where her eyes had been drawn, and saw a flickering flame slowly growing from underneath the rubble of a collapsed building. Angel blinked, took a step forward, and hissed as the sun seared his skin. He slid back under the shade, ripping off his jacket to shove into Buffy’s hands. “My god, Buffy, go stop it!”

    “What?” Buffy said, confused. She was unable to see the black coated arm the little hand sized tongue of flame had sprung from.

    “I think that’s Spike!”

    Buffy didn’t waste time pointing her shock at Angel. The leather jacket in her arms, she launched herself at the growing flame and did her best to smother and shield it before it rose to an inferno.
    

***
 

    The girls had moved their tent rather than try and excise the unconscious Spike from the rubble under the glare of the sun. Buffy had burns on her arms and face, and had lost a shock of hair trying to shield him from the creeping dawn. Spike had pretty much lost his left hand, charred to a blackened crisp that looked like over barbecued meat. If he hadn’t been wearing his thick black leather, he’d have burned to ash. Angel knew from experience that a few months could restore even that severe a burn, but there were other concerns. The angle Spike’s head had been at when they’d finally gotten the rubble off him, and the fact that his spine no longer seemed to align were the most worrying.

    “Don’t move him!” Angel had said when he’d seen his broken neck. “If we don’t stabilize that, he’ll be dust.”

    Buffy had finally looked at Angel then. Until that moment she’d been shielding Spike from the sun, organizing the tent with shouts and orders, and helping with and directing the removal of the rubble from over and around his cold body. “You want to explain to me why he isn’t already dust, at the bottom of the Sunnydale crater?”

    “It’s a long story,” Angel said.

    Buffy looked daggers at him. “And one I don’t have time for until he’s stabilized, apparently. Two questions: is this really Spike?”

    “Yes,” Angel said.

    “Is it all of him?” Buffy asked. “Memories, soul, everything?”

    “It was yesterday,” Angel said.

    Buffy stared at him, and Angel wished she’d just hit him. Her eyes were harder than her fists ever could be. “Fine,” she said finally. “Kawn-Yin, add this vampire to the infirmary list. We need a clinic that can handle twenty-seven slayers, two orphaned imps, an injured tock demon, and a vampire. Are the human city victims organized?”

    “Ambulances already took most of them to hospital,” the older slayer named Kwan-Yin said. “We’re having some trouble getting the authorities to believe the area’s secured.”

    “I think Wolfram and Hart has a clinic safe house which can handle half a dozen,” Angel said.

    Buffy glared at him.

    “It’ll do for Spike,” Angel said. And himself, he thought, though his injuries were minimal in comparison. He’d lost a lot of blood – it turned out dragon scales were blade sharp – but that was solvable with time and a trip to the butcher’s. “And... did you say you found a tock demon?”

    “And two marsupial imps found inside their dead mother,” Buffy said. Tock demons were harmless by themselves – their main skill was time manipulation, so they were sometimes used to confuse and surprise enemies in battle, bringing a warrior back a few moments to strike a killing blow they’d missed. Marsupial imps could be evil or benign, depending on how they were reared. They were a little like huge wallabies. They lived inside the parent demon for several years before they emerged, usually deadly and unpleasant, but had been known to be raised by human sorcerers who kept them as loyal pets, or partners. The better and warmer they were treated, the nicer they would grow. “And I think your blue girl could use someone to look at her, but... no one’s dared ask her,” Buffy added. “She’s a bit creepy. Is this safe house still secure?”

    “It’s independent, for the most part,” Angel said. “Probably not corrupted. Much.”

    “Fine,” Buffy said. “The girls can go to the hospital until other arrangements can be made. We’ll take the demons, Bluey and Spike to your clinic, Angel, if you’re sure it’s safe.”

    “Send me in first. I’ll make sure,” Angel said.

    “Is Marissa still whole?” Buffy asked.

    “A few scrapes,” her friend said.

    “Fine. She’s good with babies. I’ll need her to rear the imps until we can contact Willow and find a good witch or sorcerer to adopt them. So she’s with us. Angel, can you get us transportation?”

    Angel cast about for an ally. “I think so,” he said.

    He made a phone call on his cell. “Harmony?” he asked. “Yep, still alive. One last job, and I’ll add dental to your severance package.”

   Buffy felt unreal. Spike was alive. Spike was alive. Spike wasn’t dust, his soul off beyond reach in some other dimension. He was alive.

    He sure didn’t look alive. She was used to him being dead and cold, she knew he was a vampire, but he was always moving. Spike couldn’t even watch television without tapping a foot or twitching his fingers. Even when he was sleeping his breath was regular and steady, and he twitched in his dreams. There was no breath in Spike right now. There was no movement. There was nothing.

    They’d stabilized his neck and spine before moving him in the private ambulance Harmony had arranged for them. If either one of those injuries had broken through the skin, he’d have been dusted right before their eyes.

    Angel had relayed to Buffy the general history of Spike’s resurrection, starting with the pendant, going through his time as an incorporeal ghost creature, and ending with the apocalypse they’d just fought – which was a much smaller and less impressive “end of the world” than he’d been expecting, apparently. There had barely been a destruction of twenty city blocks of LA. The arrival of the slayer army had been a decided turning point, and Angel had tried to joke, saying apocalypses just weren’t what they used to be. Buffy hadn’t even cracked a smile.

    “All right,” Buffy said. They were sitting in Spike’s hospital room, Angel on the guest couch, Buffy perched tensely on a folding chair. “So that’s that part. And the reason you didn’t tell me?”

    Buffy was sure Angel was playing coy. “Tell you what?”

    If it had been Spike she’d been talking to, she’d have hit him for that. But she and Angel had never been so easy together. “My friend was alive,” she said. “For all practical purposes, at least, less than a month after the Hellmouth. And you let me grieve.”

    “He was a ghost,” Angel said, splitting hairs, as far as Buffy was concerned. “That’s not alive.”

    “I could still have talked to him! You thought that wouldn’t matter to me?” She realized she was yelling and lowered her voice. “You knew he was important to me, and you just sat there?”

    Angel looked uncomfortable, but he had to answer her glare. “I didn’t trust him.”

    “So you made that choice for me?” she barked. “Like you always made choices for me, like I can’t be trusted, either? I am not a highschool kid anymore, Angel! I’ve been through hell, and heaven, and back again, I don’t need you to play the goddamn gatekeeper for my friends!”

    “I know what Spike’s capable of,” Angel said. “Believe me, I know.”

    “You think I don’t?” Buffy said, standing up to glare down at him. “You think I don’t know what you’re capable of? I just didn’t think you’d take such pleasure in torturing me when you still had a soul!” She gestured at him expansively. “You do still have one, right? You’re not just playing at it? Because god knows, I can’t tell at this stage.”

    “You really think that of me?”

    “I really do,” Buffy said. “If my mom showed up, would you tell her to trip off back to heaven, ‘cause I wouldn’t really want to see her?”

    “That’s uncalled for.”

    “You didn’t tell me!” Buffy shouted. She pointed at the still and silent form of the vampire in the hospital bed. “Look at him, lying there, and explain to me why you didn’t tell me!”

    “I already did!” Angel said. “I didn’t trust him. I know what he can do. Just trust me, Buffy, I know this creature a lot better than you do–”

    “You don’t know Spike anymore!” Buffy said. “I don’t even know Spike properly, but I know him a damn sight better than you do. He’s had a soul for barely a year, he’s still figuring out who the hell he is! He’s changed, Angel. You really can’t see that? He was changing from the first time he came to Sunnydale. He changed from the time you lost your soul and came and took over his life again. He changed as the human blood left his system, and he stopped being an addict. He changed as he started fighting evil instead of helping it. He changed as he earned human friends, and he changed as this... this time we had together tore him up and put him together again in a hundred different ways.”

    She shook her head, trying to get him to understand. “Spike nearly died for my sister. He underwent torture for me. More than once! He turned away from Drusilla and human blood and almost everything that made him what he was, until he finally went off and basically killed himself as a vampire to become whatever the hell he was still trying to become. And you pass judgement on him, because you knew him a hundred years ago? What judgement would you pass on yourself, if you were basing it on what you were then?”

    Angel looked away.

    “Based entirely on what you are now,” Buffy told him, “I judge you as an officious, meddling manipulator who still can’t see me as anything but a sixteen year old kid. You’d think you’d have learned better when I killed you.”

    “You sound a little bitter,” Angel said gruffly.

    “I feel like I could do it again,” Buffy said, annoyed. Her anger spent she sank down into her chair and glared at him. The absurdity of the situation crept up on them both, and smiles cracked on both sides. “Seriously, Angel,” Buffy said. “What the hell were you thinking?”

    “Well, he never called you, either,” he said lamely.

    “And if he was conscious, I’d have words with him, too,” Buffy said. “But as it is, it looks like I might be too late to hear anything he might have had to say to me.” The thought stuck in her craw. “You, on the other hand, don’t get off the hook so easily. I don’t know why you thought it was okay to just let me keep hurting.” He didn’t have an answer, and she lost patience. “Would you please just tell me you were jealous, and get it over with?”

    “What makes you think I was jealous?”

    “Because you always get jealous,” she said. “You can’t have me the way you want, so you want no one else to, either. That’s fine, Angel. It’s messed up, but it’s human.” She stared at him. “Would you please just tell me the truth?”

    Angel hesitated. “I was jealous,” he admitted. His voice was almost a whisper. “I was searing with jealousy. But it’s not true that I don’t want you to...” He paused and rubbed his forehead. “It’s just not fair.”

    “Your better nature wants me happy,” Buffy said. “I know that. But you don’t always listen to that. And you’ve never trusted me to make my own choices.”

    “That’s not true, Buffy. I really know–”

    “You know what you want to know,” Buffy said. “But I’m not a kid anymore. You’re gonna have to let me go.”

    Angel’s head snapped up at that. “Let you go?” He sounded like a little boy. “You mean you... don’t love me anymore?”

    Buffy sighed, exasperated. “Angel,” she said. “I’m too mad at you to answer that question just now.” She looked up at Spike. “Now we have to figure out what to do about him. Is Wesley–”

    “Wes is dead,” Angel said quietly. “Everyone’s dead but me.”

    “And your blue goddess,” Buffy said.

    “She used to be Fred,” Angel said. “She’s dead, too.”

    He sounded immensely weary. Buffy gazed at him, sorry for him in spite of her anger. “Well. Let’s hope Spike–”

    “I do,” Angel said. “Honestly. I really do.” He shook his head. “We really don’t hate each other like we used to,” he said. “You have to believe that.”

    “Then why the hell do you both seem to hate me?”

    He reached out to try and touch her cheek. “Do you really think that?”

    She pulled away, annoyed. “You know what, Angel? Go away.”

    “Buffy–”

    “I said go away. I’m too angry to talk to you right now.”

    Even though her voice was calm and collected, Angel was hurt. Surprisingly hurt. “We really were going to tell you.”

    “When?”

    “We tried to find you in Rome one night,” Angel said. “We never really caught up to you. Andrew said you were dating the Immortal.”

    “And you believed a word Andrew said?” Buffy asked. “I was mostly in Scotland. I haven’t been dating anyone at all.”

    “Oh,” Angel said. “I’m sorry.” Last month, Angel would have been thrilled to hear this. Now... now he couldn’t get Spike’s words on the way home from that trip out of his mind.

    They were flying back from Italy, exhausted, disappointed, confused, not entirely sure where Buffy was, and more than half convinced she was off with the Immortal, the strongest rival the two of them had ever endured through their centuries of evil. Spike, clever bastard, had managed to bring an actual bottle of whiskey with him, as opposed to the airline thimble-fulls in the jet’s bar, and he was getting steadily drunk in the seat beside Angel. “Do you...” Angel trailed off.

    “What.”

    “Could I have some of that?”

    “When I pass out,” Spike glowered. “Not before.”

    “Jerk.”

    “Wanker.”

    “It’s not like it matters to you, anyway,” Angel said, hoping to shame him into sharing his whiskey. “You yourself said you never had a real shot with her.”

    Spike closed his eyes. “I want what’s best for her,” he said. “And I know that’s not you.”

    “Or the Immortal?”

    Spike shrugged.

    “I can’t believe she’s with him,” Angel said glumly.

    “I don’t,” Spike said.

    Angel looked over at him. “What?”

    “Your stalker-for-hire got waylaid, right?” Spike said. “So he hasn’t seen her really. I didn’t catch her scent at the club, or anything particularly fresh in her apartment. Andrew could be real up on the laundry, and she could have been wearing perfume or something, but something smells off. I mean, figuratively smells off. We never saw her face. And Andrew’s a liar,” Spike added, which Angel very much thought should have been his opening statement.

    “What makes you say that?”

    “He once told me he turned down a succubus.” He tilted his head knowingly at Angel.

    Angel put what he knew about succubuses together with what he had seen of Andrew, and determined that no, the sex-demon would never have been interested in him, and no, he couldn’t possibly have turned her down. “Right. Liar,” Angel said. “Why would he lie about Buffy?”

    “Wants her for himself, following orders, thinks it’s funny. Take your pick. But I’m not convinced that was Buffy.”

    Angel realized he didn’t know her scent well enough to know, anymore, if Spike was right. “So why are you getting drunk?”

    “Because I’m not convinced that was Buffy,” Spike said. “And your stalkers are so inept, she could be anywhere. Doing anything.”

    “Or anyone,” Angel said.

    Spike chuckled without humor. “But hey, at least I’m pretty sure she’s safe, that’s a plus. She just doesn’t trust you.” He took another swig. “Another plus.”

    “You’re an ass.”

    “Back at you.”

    “Buffy and me are eternal. Ours is a forever love,” Angel snapped.

    Spike scoffed at him. “Yours was a stalker and his underage victim.”

    “You know nothing. She wasn’t my victim, she was my beloved.”

    “You still stalked her,” Spike said. “You treated her just like you treated all your victims. Even with a soul, you don’t care about the damage you do.”

    “You know that for the bullshit it is.”

    “Just because you finally felt something pure after two hundred years doesn’t mean you’re not still a monster,” Spike said.

    “She loves me.”

    “Of course she does,” Spike said, and Angel knew it for sarcasm.

    “I was everything to her. I was the man of her dreams, her perfect moment. And one day, we’ll find it again, I know we will.” He realized he was trying to convince himself as much as Spike. “The dream will be made reality, and we’ll earn our ever after.”

    “What, when you become a real boy? You realize you sound delusional.”

    “And you don’t? As far as I can see, we’re in the same boat.”

    “I don’t expect ever afters,” Spike said. “Life is blood and pain and tears, and every once in a while you can be gifted with a single moment. There is no blue fairy. There are no fairy tale promises fulfilled by ever afters.”

    “There can be,” Angel said. “You don’t know Buffy.”

    “I know her better than you do. She doesn’t believe in fairy tales, either.”

    Angel smiled, knowing he’d won. “Yes, she does. You’re not her true love. You’re not her destiny. She didn’t give you her virginity, or take your promise ring, or have that perfect Cinderella moment at Prom. That was me.”

    Spike’s face contorted as if he was howling with laughter, but all he did was shake his head. “Do you hear yourself? You knew a little girl with her fairy tale dreams, you git. You played you were her high-school beau? It’s because of that you think you have an eternal love? You loved the girl, mate. You barely know the woman.”

    “You’re the one who doesn’t know her.”

    Spike’s eyes twisted sly. “She has a small mole on her left labia majora,” Spike said, “and she trims, but won’t wax clean. She likes it rough at first – deadly rough, if you’re doing it right – but she comes harder the third time if it’s slow. She likes silk scarves and chains, but not leather – not around her wrists. It’ll do for her knees.” His voice was getting distant, and Angel felt like he was drowning. Jealousy he’d felt before, but this was torture. “She whimpers like a puppy when you deny her an orgasm and, hardly surprisingly, she likes to be bitten, just hard enough to bruise. She’ll nearly break your hand if you make her come in public, rather than cry out.” He shifted his gaze to Angel, vindictively. “She doesn’t like being called a princess, but lamb is fine. She fights better after she lets her foe get the better of her once, so she’ll actually hold back until it starts to look like she’s losing.” He settled back more comfortably in his chair. “She likes ice cream before her period, but craves salt during, and prefers thongs at any other time of month.” His voice faded to a sultry murmur. “She kisses to music, as if it were a dance. Her vocal range is mezzo-soprano, but she sings more doing laundry than in the shower.” Angel was almost snorting with seething hatred before Spike added, “And her blood is sweet as hibiscus, and even more potent than absinthe.” Spike smiled. “No. I don’t know her at all.” He took a heavy swig of his bottle.  

   “You would kiss and tell,” Angel said. “She does real well to trust you.”    

    “Would I tell tales out of school, mate? Come, you already know her,” Spike said. “Tentative virgin on her seventeenth birthday.” Spike shook his head, scornful. “I’d be surprised if you even made her come. Let alone twelve times in a row.”

    “You’re trying to hurt me.”

    “Now where would I have learned that,” Spike said dully.

    “You’re just jealous because she never really loved you.”

    Spike scoffed a laugh and dismissed him. “Bollocks. You don’t know what we had.”

    “Yes I do, she told me,” Angel said, knowing it for the barb it was. Spike didn’t answer, but his eyes locked on Angel like a hunter. “The last night I was in Sunnydale,” Angel went on, hungry to see Spike’s pain. “She said you were in her heart, but she didn’t love you. She said it didn’t matter either way, ‘cause she basically wasn’t ready to settle down. With a kind of tortured analogy,” he added, then shook his head. “But she was just playing with you. She told me flat out. It wasn’t love.”

    Angel knew the look on Spike’s face. It was the look Spike had whenever Angel had bedded Drusilla in front of him. Tense and tortured, but highly controlled, his eyes burning through Angel as if wishing his gaze were sunlight, turning him to dust. His jaw tight, a barely concealed tremor in his voice, he spoke. “Maybe it wasn’t,” he said, his accent gone very precise. “Maybe it never will be. I already think it won’t, knowing my luck. But there’s only one reason for it, if that’s the case. You are a master, Angelus,” he said, the name a biting insult, “and I am always the one who has to clean up after the destruction you leave behind.”

    “What are you talking about?”

    “What you did to Buffy.” His head was very still as he stared at him, his voice tight and perfect. “Slowly, systematically, piece by piece, day by day. It was a glorious devastation. So beautifully subtle.”

    “What are you on about?”

    “Buffy makes Drusilla look like the clumsy, ham-fisted attempt of an amateur,” Spike said, sounding very drunk. “I wouldn’t have thought your soul could have given you such gifts if I hadn’t seen it with my own eyes. Such delicacy, to excise it so perfectly, a scalpel in the hand of a master surgeon, so you can barely see the scars. I am in awe at your skill.”

    The rancor in his voice was biting, and Angel was actually disturbed. “I don’t know what you’re talking about.”

    “I’m talking about the attachment disorder you left her with,” Spike said, his head lolling with drink. “Granted, you had the perfect clay. She was always going to be one step away from humanity, and you managed to catch her at the one moment in her life when you could negate all the support and love her mum raised her with. Too early, the wounds would have healed clean, or destroyed her completely. Any later, and you wouldn’t have been able to scar her at all. As it was, she is the most stunning masterpiece of your wretched existence.”

    “All right, I’ll bite,” Angel said, feeling like he meant it quite literally. “What did I do to her?” 

   “You. Destroyed. Her. Love,” Spike said. “Burned it out of her, as if it were a cancer.”

    Angel shook his head in dismissal. “You’re talking nonsense. She loves more than anyone I’ve ever met. She’s the only slayer in history with family and friends – she’s kept them close, they’ve strengthened her. She’s the most powerful slayer ever because of it.”

    “That’s what makes it so perfect,” Spike said. “You’ve left all her strength and her kindness and her devotion in place. You’ve left everything which lends her her power. You’ve just inserted the misery in the middle of it, like a gem of pain. It’s so subtle, even she can’t see it. You’ve sliced her in the one place which would enable to her accept a lover. Which would let her trust the love of another, and let her love them in return.”

    Spike shrugged. “And no, it’s not just me. She does it to anyone who touches that part of her. I grant you, it is very hard to see until you get close. She is devoted to her friends, her sister, the memory of her mum. Even to you. Probably to me. She believes in love. But she doesn’t believe it can exist for her. And she blames herself for it, not you. That’s the master stroke. She thinks it’s because she’s the slayer, or because she’s incapable or... that fate is against her and she’s unattainable. It is an exquisite scar, mate.” He raised his bottle as if it were a toasting glass. “I have to hand it to you, Angelus. You are a grand master of human destruction.” He took another belt.

    “And you’re a bastard,” Angel said. “It’s all bull.” 

   “You stalked her from the age of fifteen,” Spike snarled. “You demanded her love, her commitment, and forgiveness from your hideous sins from the age of sixteen. You took her virginity, and betrayed her, both, on her bloody birthday for god’s sake. You conveniently got your soul back at the last second, and made her betray you in return by killing you.” He shook his head. “Then, you come back from the dead and do it all over again, only this time, you ultimately abandon her, but still stalk her just enough so that she could never for a moment forget you.” Spike shook his head. “You see what a wreck I’ve been dealing with? If I’m wrong, and that was Buffy, she’s out right now using and abusing another lonely monster, trying to soothe that scar in her soul. Playing the same dismal tune over again. ‘Cause you know that bastard will never cherish her. And you know exactly which one of us is to blame.” 

   “I did not abandon her,” Angel said, his voice blistering with anger. “I love her. She’s my destiny.”

    “You’re her torturer,” Spike said. “If you really loved her so much, you’d do what I did.”

    “What do you mean? I’m the one who started this new-fangled ‘soul’ fad you decided to jump on.”

    “Yeah, with a curse, meaning you can’t give her what she needs.”

    “You’re an ass,” Angel growled. He glumly muttered what he felt of as his worst sin, as if to a priest. “I’d give anything to lose my soul in her, for just one minute.”

    “Then get it fixed,” Spike said. “I know where the demon lives. If you survive it, you two can live happy ever after, prophesy or no.”

    The thought had never occurred to Angel before. Go through the trials and the torture, have his soul fixed to him permanently, like Spike. He could find Buffy, wed her, bed her. They probably still couldn’t really have children, but she could if she wanted them – sperm banks were everywhere. It wasn’t so different from Willow and her girlfriends, and that was perfectly human. It would be a happy-ever-after, just like Spike said. And to his own horror, he wasn’t even tempted. The prophecy called to him. Angel didn’t want to risk torture and death for the chance at a good-enough life with his love – he wanted it all. Sunlight and humanity and redemption. He didn’t want to be like Spike.

    “You love your life more than you love her,” Spike said after pausing for a response Angel didn’t give. “Maybe you’d die for her if she needed you to, but not just to be with her. You love your tortured soul, your martyred existence, your legendary tragedy. I just love her.” Spike stuck the cork into three quarters empty bottle and tossed it to Angel before he stood up, and headed for the back of the plane.

    Angel caught the bottle and looked up at him. “Then why aren’t you staying in Italy?” he asked. “Why aren’t you trying to find her?”

    Spike looked back at him. “Look what you did to her when you came back from the dead,” he said. “I can’t do something like that till I’m sure.” He shook his head. “Besides. All I did was wear a bloody necklace, right?” he paraphrased Angel’s words from earlier in the night. “She never really loved me. None of this... mattered.” He laughed as if at a cosmic joke. “I guess this isn’t that important, in the end.” He sat down in the furthest seat from Angel. “I’m gonna sleep this off,” he announced, and turned the light off above his seat.

    Angel hoped Spike was right, and that Buffy was somewhere untraceable and Andrew really was lying. He also hoped Spike was wrong. Woefully, hideously wrong. He hated to think that Buffy might have been seriously wounded by what he had done to her. He really did love her. Really. Her. His Buffy.

    Buffy listened to the prognoses from Giles over the phone with a sinking feeling. “Well, I really can’t say that I’ve heard of such a thing,” he said. “Not in modern days, at least.”

    “There is no reference to this?” Buffy asked. “The death period for a fledgling is never more than three days before demonic renewal. I’ve never seen a vampire who wasn’t still in transition look dead like this, not unless they were faking on purpose. They breathe, they twitch. Their hearts aren’t beating, but they’re alive. Magically alive, demonically possessed, but alive.” Buffy shook her head, even though Giles couldn’t see it. “Spike looks dead. Really and truly corpse dead.”

    “Well, Spike wasn’t supposed to be alive at all, as I understand it,” Giles said. “Are you sure it’s the same... ah, creature?”

    “It’s the same man,” Buffy insisted. “Angel assures me of it. There’s a goddess thing here who says she can still see his soul inside his body, so he’s not dead like a human being would be. He’s here, he hasn’t been shunted off to heaven or hell. I just don’t know what’s going on.”

    “Well, there have been instances of well known vampires being dead or missing for years, sometimes decades on end,” Giles said.

    “And?” Buffy said.

    “Well... then they come back, of course.”

    He was hedging. She didn’t like it when he hedged, particularly in regards to Spike. “Could you be a little more specific?” Buffy asked.

    Giles sighed. “There are ancient reports of vampires being killed in battle, and not going up in dust,” he said. “There is some debate as to whether or not they were strictly speaking vampires. But on the whole, yes, it does seem to have happened.”

    “So... he might really be dead?” Buffy asked. She was trying to be businesslike about this, but it was getting harder and harder to do.

    “Well, I don’t know,” Giles said. “Because some of these supposedly slaughtered vampires were seen many years later. But it was many years later, and....”

    He trailed off again, and Buffy wanted to shake him, or snatch the book she knew he was looking at out his hand. “Giles,” she said. “Just tell me what we can do.”

    “Well, as far as I can see, there’s nothing to do.”

    “What happened to these non-dusty vampires?” Buffy asked.

    “Well, any corpse would have been buried, of course. When first changed, a vampire will of course just crawl out and run away, but that doesn’t happen in these instances.”

    “What does happen?” Buffy asked.

    “Well, if they come back at all, they come back many years later and they’re staked, of course. Or burned. Or otherwise dusted.”

    “What aren’t you telling me?”

    Giles hesitated again. Finally he said, “Look, Buffy. It might just be kinder to... let him go. He has already gone once. You know what it is to be forced back to a life you shouldn’t still be living.”

    “Giles.” The tone in her voice brooked no more distraction.

    “He might come back as a mindless animal,” Giles admitted, and there was no joy in his tone. “If he comes back at all. If a vampire hasn’t been rendered to dust they can, in theory, heal any other damage, but... a severed spine means the mind is cut off from everything. Cut off even from the demonic magic that keeps it living. If the head was off, the dust would tell you the truth. Since there is still the most tentative connection to the rest of the flesh, the vampire – the demon – still remains within. But the brain – the thing that was once human. That may well be destroyed, or at least severed, forever.”

    Buffy seized on the only safe word in the paragraph. “May? May be, not will be.”

    “Well... there is some chance that being confined to a coffin without blood while weak and healing, combined with the pain of the spinal reattachment had simply driven them mad,” Giles said.

    That was only moderately better.

    “Giles,” Buffy said. Her voice sounded eerily calm to her. “Tell me something. Tell me something I can do.”

    Giles was silent for a long moment. “You only know what you already know,” Giles said. “Don’t confine him, keep him in blood. And give it time.”

    “Decades?”

    “If it’s the lack of blood that keeps them weak, then probably not that long,” Giles said. “That really is all I can say.” He paused. “Buffy. If you’re really set on doing this... you should bind him, and keep a stake on hand. If he does come back, and there is no human mind, a soul will do nothing to contain his bloodlust.”

    “You think I don’t know that?” Buffy asked.

    “I think... that in regards to Spike you often....”

    “Giles,” Buffy warned. “You’re going to want to stop talking now.”

    “I wish the best of luck to you, Buffy,” Giles said instead. “I pray all goes... well.”

    Buffy took a deep breath after Giles hung up the phone. She went up to Spike, still lying like a corpse in the hospital bed. “You’re a dope,” she told his still face. “Seriously. A complete idiot.” She touched his cold, pale skin, running the back of her finger along his cheek, her fingertips smoothing his eyebrows, her thumb gently caressing his bloodless lips. “If I can bring you back from this, I will,” she promised him softly. “So long as your soul is in this body... I’m not giving up on you.” She laced her fingers through his, laying her cheek down atop their joined hands. “Spike,” she whispered up to his still face. “What was it? What on earth could have made you stop believing?”
    

***
    

    “I knew you’d come for me,” Spike said.

    She’d just released him from torture at the hands of First’s minions. He was weak from blood loss, damaged from tortures she didn’t want to contemplate, and he looked so tired. “I’m sorry it took so long,” Buffy said. When he’d properly looked at her, and known she was real, she’d stared into his only good eye and knew the depth there was his soul. There was no more madness, no more anger, no more confusion. There was just Spike in there. Or, no. Not the Spike she knew. There was more than Spike within him now, a person compared to a paper doll, and she’d been blasted by it. Within a few weeks, the awkwardness and doubts would rise again between them, peppered by fear and the occasional sting of resentment, but just at that moment, there was perfect faith between them. They were together.

    “I knew you’d come,” he whispered again.

    They made it to the ladder, and he shook his head. Buffy was concerned as he pulled away and sank to the floor of the pit, leaning against the wall. “Can you climb it, or should we...?”

    “I’ll climb it,” Spike said. “If you help me. I just need to rest.” Traversing the short distance from his torture chamber to the exit had drained what little strength he had.

    “Did you find him?” It was Xander at the top of the pit, and Spike cringed at the loud voice.

    “Yes, we’re fine,” Buffy said. She thought Spike wouldn’t want Xander to see him at his worst.  “Go wait in the car. We’ll be there soon.” She crouched down before Spike. “Is there anything you need?”

    “Blood,” he said. Even the word made his good eye dilate, as if he were hunting. His hunger must have been intense. “They took... almost all of it. To open the Hellmouth. But it can wait... until we get....” He sighed and his head tipped back.

    “Spike!”

    Spike flickered his eye open. He was breathing hard. “Would you hold my hand?” he asked. Though weary, it sounded like the desperate plea of a child after a nightmare.

    Buffy slipped down to the ground beside him and laced her fingers through his. She nestled her head against his arm, holding him. He was too weak to put his arm around her, but the softest, most imperceptible squeeze of his hand told her he appreciated it. “I’m so sorry. I couldn’t get here faster,” she told him.

    “It’s all right. I knew you’d come for me.”

    “How?” she asked.

    “You said you believed in me,” he whispered. “I couldn’t not believe in you. I’d have died believing you’d come for me.”

    Buffy shook her head. “There were times I doubted I’d get here in time,” she said.

    “It was hard, sometimes,” he confessed. “I had to keep telling myself. But I kept believing.”

    Buffy’s eyes closed, and two tears leaked out and dripped onto his chest. More followed. “Don’t cry, pet,” Spike said softly. “It’s over.”

    Buffy almost laughed. “That’s supposed to be my line, you doofus. You’re the one who... god, I’m sorry.”

    “I think I’ve gone through a few more bouts of torture than you, love. When it’s over, that’s all you can say.”

    “But it’s not over,” Buffy said truthfully. A war was starting, and Spike had been its first victim, one of its first weapons. “It’s barely begun.” She nestled in closer to his chest for a moment, then. “But at least I’ve got you back.”

    “Then all’s right with the world,” Spike muttered. His head sank until it was leaning atop hers. “I wouldn’t let myself stop believing,” he said. “I wouldn’t.”

    And he didn’t stop believing in her, not for one moment. Not until the day he died.

    “Are you sure about this?” the demon phlebotomist asked.

    “Yeah. I’m strong.”

    “But your platelet count is already–”    

    “I’m fine!” Buffy insisted. “I’m a slayer. We regenerate quickly, and we have extra reserves.” She reached for the syringe. “If you won’t help me, I’ll do it myself.”

    “No,” the creature said. “It’s safer if I do. But you can’t keep this up for much longer.”

    “I know I can’t,” Buffy said. “But I have to try what I can.”

    And another pint of blood was drawn from Buffy’s arm.

    There was a full staff at the clinic consisting of four demons; one doctor, a receptionist, and two nurses. They had catered mostly to Wolfram and Hart’s independent contractors, their full-time workers usually being treated by the science department – people like Fred used to be. The vampire dentist also treated his patients there one night a week. It had been five days, and even though Angel was pretty much healed up, Buffy hadn’t spoken to him. She would barely acknowledge him. The tock demon had been restored and returned to a comparatively neutral plane of reality, and the other slayer was still tending the two marsupial imps in a makeshift nursery down the hall. Illyria was mostly all right, though she had been more injured than she’d let on. She stayed haunting the clinic, sleeping a lot. She peered in on Spike sometimes, – they’d sort of become friends – but other than that she spent a lot of time watching daytime televison; “Studying your culture,” as she put it.

    Buffy had been staying in Spike’s room. Most of the other slayers had been returned to their homes or training camps. Two of the worst damaged had been brought to the clinic to heal, and Willow claimed to have found a home for the imps, though she wanted to inspect the place, first. The doctors had started trying to restore Spike with a basic transfusion – donated human blood, because that was proven among vampires – but there had been no response. The eerie silence of the brainwave and oxygen monitors had torn at Buffy, and she’d asked to be a donor after the first day. “The blood of a slayer restores,” she’d said. She wouldn’t drain herself, but every pint she could give him, she determined would be his.

    “Why do you do this?” Illyria had asked her when she’d visited one day. “He is already dead.”

    “You said his soul was still present.”

    “His soul was bound to his flesh, by the demon he bargained to. So long as there is flesh, the soul is forced to remain. But there is no mind, no thought, no emotion. He is dead.”

    Buffy looked down at him. “He’s been dead for over a century,” she said. “I have to try.”

    “Your blood is unlikely to result in his revival,” Illyria said. “I understand feeling grief for him, but to pour your life into him in this manner is a danger to your corporeal form. Does this fruitless action assist with the grieving?”

    Buffy had realized Illyria was still trying to understand humanity. “It’s called hope,” she said. “And yes. So long as you have it, it does assist.”

    “This hope you speak of sounds like madness.”

    Buffy sighed. “Maybe it is,” she said. “But I’m not giving it up. Not yet.”

    “To consume another to revive a life is wrong,” Illyria said. “I have been told this. The being of the shell I inhabit was consumed for my resurrection. It has caused grief among many. It has caused grief for your friend.” She indicated Spike’s still corpse. “He would not have wanted his beloved consumed for his own revival.”

    “Am I his beloved?” Buffy asked.

    “I have powers of empathy,” Illyria said. “He did have a beloved. Your aura echos the shape of his longing.”

    Buffy looked over at her. “Thanks for telling me.” She touched Spike’s hollow cheek. “I’m not going to die from this,” she said. “Not unless I am very unlucky. He’d be furious. But... he and I have shared so much. To share my blood seems like such a small thing, in comparison.”

    “Blood is life,” Illyria said. “He believed it so.”

    “I know he did.”

    “So you will share with him your life?”

    Buffy didn’t have an answer. After several long minutes, Illyria let the question go, and returned to her own room.
    

***

    He was burning. He was burning and screaming, his blue eyes crumbling, the fire consuming his form, only to branch out, a shock wave, his life tumbling over and over and over to destroy the Hellmouth and suck the whole town into oblivion. And she was forced to watch it.

    Buffy woke up on the couch fighting the nightmare. She’d been sleeping a lot, lately. She knew it was blood loss. She knew she should stop. But the nightmare just made her need to help all the more. It was a nightmare she’d had over and over again since she’d left Sunnydale. It had started to fade, finally, before she’d come to LA. Now it was back in force. She pulled the oxygen tube out of her nose – compensation for her distressed system. It smelled like plastic.

    There was only one thing that had ever soothed her after that nightmare. To curl up on her side and imagine Spike still there, lying beside her, watching her sleep. She couldn’t invoke her memory of him with him lying there, still and silent, on the hospital bed. Suddenly she felt so lonely she wanted to scream. She stood up and went to him, and ripped open the velcro bond on his right arm, so that she could hold his hand. She settled in beside him on the bed, gently, not shifting his bound spine or his braced neck. But she had to hold him. She remembered holding him before he’d died, holding him for hours until he was warmed through with her own body heat, until he almost felt human against her.

    “You’re so still,” she said, settling her head on his shoulder. “I’m used to you being cold, but you’re so still. This feels wrong, somehow. Holding you, without that steady sound of your breath, the subtle movement of you that makes you not really dead. It’s not like I go in for corpses. A vampire isn’t really a corpse, is it. But you seem like one right now.” She buried her nose in his bare chest and inhaled. “You don’t smell like one,” she said. “You still smell like a vampire, heady, and sort of seductive. No decay. You still smell like Spike. Vampire and cigarettes and whiskey, just a tang of blood. I’ve missed that smell. I wished... I’d made you take off your coat, or kept a shirt of yours or something. But Sunnydale was gone. The house was gone. You were gone.”

    The exhaustion wore her down. “You were gone,” she said, her throat closing up with tears. She reached out and laced her fingers through his hand again. “All I had was this. My hand burned for a week. It tingled even longer. I think, from what Angel says, I felt you in my skin until you were called back. God, Spike. What did you think I was going to do? I didn’t want you to be dead. I was the one who told you to stop!” She shook her head, her tears starting to dry. “It was selfish of me,” she admitted. “You knew what had to be done. And you were right. But still... I wished you could have been selfish, too. In the end, you were the better one. You made a better choice than I did. A more moral one. But it wasn’t what I wanted.”

    She sighed. “This isn’t right. You’re not supposed to be here, still and silent, after hiding from me for.... Why were you hiding here? Did you think this meant nothing to me? This...” She let go his hand and placed hers on his chest, over his heart. “This was so important to me. How could you try to throw this away? Leave it behind to rot in my chest, unable to explain to anyone how I... missed you.” She shook her head. “What was this to you? Didn’t this mean anything? Did this die with you?” Her eyes closed. “I refuse to believe this is dead,” she said. “This is real. This is true. This... is.”

    She was drifting back to sleep, too exhausted to think anymore. “I love this,” she whispered.

    “This... bed’s kind of narrow,” Spike told her.

    It was the night Buffy had killed the preacher, Caleb. The night she’d given Spike the amulet. The night after she’d let herself go and finally given her self, unguarded and unashamed, into Spike’s arms. “I think we’ll be okay,” Buffy said sidling in next to him. “We’ll just have to stay close.”

    He made a small sound at the word, and Buffy had looked up into his eyes. They were closed. “You okay?” she asked him.

    “Yes,” he said quietly, but he didn’t look it.

    Buffy thought back to his confession earlier in the evening. Last night was the best of his life. He had never, ever, been close. To anyone. “Are you still terrified?”

    He chuckled, and finally opened his eyes. “More than ever,” he said.

    “Why?”

    He didn’t answer. He just closed his eyes and looked pained, and Buffy squeezed him gently. “Spike,” she said. “Please talk to me.”

    “That’ll only make it worse,” he said.

    “Is that possible?” she asked.

    He sighed. “No,” he said. “Maybe. I just... I still don’t know. You say I don’t have to be scared, but... I still don’t know what that means. And I’m glad... god, I’m so glad you’re here now, love, it’s just... I’m afraid you’d rather be basking in Angel at the moment.”

    “Boy, you really were there, weren’t you,” Buffy muttered.

    “I was following the preacher,” Spike said. “I stopped by the vineyard, like I said, and he was on his way out. I wasn’t trying to spy on you. I just–”

    “I don’t even care,” Buffy said. “I just dealt with all this with Angel, you know. I sent him away. Does that mean anything to you? I sent him away.”

    “Well, that was your choice, I didn’t make you.”

    A wall of tension was building between them again, and it wasn’t what either of them wanted. Buffy realized he’d opened up considerably more than she had. “You’re right,” she said, trying as hard as she could to soften her voice. “That was my choice. Spike.” She placed her hand on his cheek and made him look at her. “That was my choice.”

    The tension lingered another moment, then finally Spike relaxed. “I’m sorry,” he said. “I don’t want to fight with you. It’s just... I know why I’m terrified, and I... I want armor to hide behind.”

    “What frightens you so?”

    “I know how much you can hurt me,” he admitted. He laughed helplessly. “And it’s starkers, ‘cause you could always rend me to pieces with a flash of your eyes, pet. It’s just... it seems so much worse, now.”

    “What makes it worse?”

    “There’s more pieces,” he whispered. “You could rip my heart out, you could torture my body, you could poison every thought, but....”

    “But you never had a soul to rend before,” Buffy said, understanding.

    He swallowed and looked away.

    “Is there anything I could do that would help?” she asked.

    “You’re doing it,” he whispered.

    “Am I?” she asked. “Because I’m holding you now, and you still seem kind of far away. Not like last night.” Spike closed his eyes. “I don’t want to hurt you, Spike,” she said. “I can’t promise I’ll never make another mistake, but.... I know you’re feeling vulnerable. If it helps at all... I do too.”

    He looked at her then. “Really?”

    “Spike,” she whispered. “I wanted you last night, like I never had before. You reached out for me, and I felt you, and I wanted you. And not... the way I used to want you, to disappear in you. I really was there with you. I was... lost, and you found me. And I didn’t want to let you go.” She shook her head. “I still don’t.”

    Spike closed his eyes.

    “I wish there was some way I could get you to believe me.”

    Spike laughed.

    “What?”

    “I know that feeling,” he said. “I spent years telling you I loved you, and by the time you finally believed me, it was already over. And you never let me have what I really....” He shook his head. “Buffy. I don’t think you have any idea how much I have longed to just hold you.”

    “I think I have an idea.”

    “No,” he said. “You don’t know long that’s been...” He sighed. “The night of your mum’s funeral, I was there.”

    “I didn’t see you.”

    “I know,” he said. “Don’t think I was stalking you, I actually came that night to pay my respects to Joyce. I had kind of a soft spot for her, you aside, and... she treated me like a human being. But I was coming up on the grave, and... and there you were. With Angel. I could smell your tears. He had his arms ‘round you. I was already half mad with love for you, and you hated me for it. And I looked at the two of you... and I was so glad he was there.” He sighed. “I hated you both the moment I saw you, I wanted to rip you apart with rage. And then I wanted to be him, kiss your tears away, just... hold you though your sorrow. The scent of your tears was potent as blood, I ached with yearning. And there I was, burning with jealousy, and longing, and... I was so glad he was there. Because I knew you needed him. I knew you needed someone, to hold the weakness you wouldn’t let yourself feel unless another was standing as your strength. And I knew he could do that for you. So I walked away. Even though I was choking with envy, even though he was still the creature I hated most in the universe... I was so glad he was there.”

    Buffy realized what he was trying to say. “And last night....” she began.

    “Last night,” he said. “You let me fill that role. You let me stand...” His words sank to a whisper. “As part of you. Your strength, your shield, something. You let your guard down and let me in... or I liked to think you had. And I didn’t think you ever would.” He swallowed. “I was so sure you meant to spend this night with Angel.”

    And he felt the same as he had then, she knew that. Torn in three ways, only this time, it must have felt as if she’d been ripped from his arms first, by Angel’s arrival, and the kiss she’d planted on him. Spike had been there, he’d seen it... and he walked away. The nobility of it touched her. She let her fingertips trace Spike’s brow. “Angel doesn’t fill that role for me anymore,” she said. “He can’t. There are things he doesn’t understand about me. I’m not the person he knew, not the girl he loved. I’ve been through too much. I want too many things that little girl never would have. And one of those things is you.”

    Spike’s head moved, and for an instant she thought he was going to kiss her, but he didn’t close in. “I know you love him,” he said quietly.

    “I did, once,” Buffy said. “I can’t decide if I still do. I know it’s not the same. But I don’t believe in schoolgirl dreams anymore. I know if he stayed that he’d be a destabilizing force. We’ve all been working together for weeks, months, and we all know where we stand. I don’t have a place for Angel in this war. But I know I need you.”

    “I’ll fight beside you,” Spike promised.

    “I’m glad,” Buffy said, taking hold of his bare forearm. “But I meant... that I need you now. This...,” she said, caressing his skin with her thumb, “whatever this is... is too important to me. I’m not going to risk this now that I’ve found it.”

    “This,” he said. “With you and me, it’s always this. This thing without a name.” His voice sank very low. “That isn’t love.”

    Buffy sighed, and Spike shook his head. “I’m sorry, pet,” he said. “I shouldn’t have said that.”

    “No,” Buffy said, and she was ashamed to realize her voice sounded like a sulking little girl’s. “It’s not that, it’s just... everything gets so confusing when I start to think about love,” she said. “It’s just got so much baggage to it, so many dead ends and wrong turns, and it feels stagnating and just... painful.” She shook her head. “It’s like, once you call it love, it ends. It’s limiting. I mean, what is it, anyway? It’s not friendship and it’s not trust and it’s not partnership, but maybe it is all that, but who knows? It’s like the word doesn’t mean anything. To the point it starts to mean nothing at all, and... and....”

    “And it makes the thing mean nothing, too,” Spike said, understanding creeping across his face.

    “Well, I don’t know if it means nothing,” Buffy said, unsure what she’d been trying to say in the first place. “It’s just I don’t know what it does mean. And it seems to diminish everything else around it, and... and maybe those things... shouldn’t be made less important.” She almost groaned with confusion. “And maybe it’s not important. I mean... I loved Angel.” She closed her eyes and couldn’t help but squeeze Spike closer. “I was young. I loved him more than I’m ever going to love anything, beyond all sense and reason. Even when he was evil, I couldn’t... see past the love. I loved him with the purity of a child,” she said, as if she were confessing some sin. “And really, there was nothing else between us. There was no trust, there was no honesty, there was no respect. It was all about the love. And then I killed him. What good did loving him do? And Giles and Dawn love me, and they’ve betrayed me. I mean, what does that mean? Love. It’s... it just hurts.”

    “Did it always hurt?” Spike asked. “When I used to say it to you, did that hurt?”

    “I don’t know what it made me feel,” Buffy said. “Sometimes I wanted you to say it. It made me feel warm, and... I don’t know... put sparks in my chest.” Spike smiled. “And other times, it felt like being slapped.” She shook her head. “And what we had... I mean, what was it when it wasn’t love – because clearly it wasn’t always. Not even for you. So does that mean that, before it changed, what we were to each other wasn’t important? I mean, even from the first night I met you, there... there was something between us. But I know that that wasn’t even the vaguest shadow of love. But it...”

    “It was real,” Spike said. “I felt it too, the moment I saw you. It wasn’t love, but it was.... There was hunger in it, and excitement. Bloodlust. Just a touch of fear.”

    “Rampant curiosity,” Buffy said. “And then there was rivalry. Then truce.”

    “Desperation,” Spike added. “Trust.”

    “Distrust.”

    “Both,” Spike said.

    “Lust,” Buffy added.

    “Lots of that,” Spike said with a grin. “And hatred.”

    “Lots of that, too,” Buffy whispered.

    “But, you know,” Spike said, “even in amongst all that hatred, there were times I just... didn’t take that opening. Wouldn’t make that blow.”

    “Wouldn’t throw that strike, that stake, wouldn’t pursue,” Buffy said. “I know. We’ve both been caught up in this. It sort of feels like it would... throw all that away to narrow it down to just one emotion, doesn’t it? This,” she said. “You and me, I mean.... It’s just this.”

    “What does that mean?” Spike asked, the same words he had asked her earlier that night, in almost the same tone, such tenderness and wonder and, yes, there was still fear in his eyes. Buffy frowned. Then suddenly, almost mockingly, Spike asked, “What is this to you? This thing we have?”

    Buffy recognized the question. He’d asked it before, as they were still charged with barely satisfied lust, just before he’d moved their violent lovemaking into something involving more trust, more risk. Handcuffs and binds and reciprocating bondage. At the time it had just seemed kinky and sexy, but now that Buffy looked back on it, he had been drawing them closer together. Forcing trust between them inside the lust, even if she refused to acknowledge it, or talk about it. She smiled. “Well. I suppose we don’t have a thing,” she said. “We have this.”

    “Do we, still?”

    “We always did,” Buffy said. “I guess we always will.”

    She had thought they would. Always changing, always evolving, they were rivals and friends and enemies and lovers. They fought and hated and lusted and wanted and drank and teased and flirted and laughed and played cards and bickered and screwed and knocked each other around. There had been bruises, and kisses, and silence; rejection and acceptance, solace and pain, recrimination, jealousy, need, sacrifice and torture. And always, they had this. This, between them, that was never the same. This, that had always been.

    This between them, that she knew had ended when he died.

    She couldn’t understand. When he was resurrected... why hadn’t this come with him?
 

    It had been more than a week. The full moon was rising over LA. Angel had gone to check on his friend Nina, make sure she found a safe place to spend her long weekend, since the Wolfram and Hart building was nothing but a pile of rubble. Nina was okay; she’d found a place with a heavy door. He had another task to do tonight. He came up and lightly knocked on the open door to Spike’s hospital room, so as not to startle Buffy when he came in.

    All of the machinery was eerily silent. No beeps or blips, no lines wavering or numbers clicking. Just zeros and flat lines and the slight hum which indicated they were still plugged in. Buffy was lying on the bed beside the still corpse, her hand on his, her thumb lightly tracing along his skin as if he could feel her. She’d been doing that a lot, lately. The last three days she’d been lying beside him every time he came in to check on her. The rest of the time, she’d been sleeping on the little guest couch. She’d been careful to eat heartily, took fluids and iron supplements and hooked herself up to oxygen when she knew she was going to be sleeping, but it wasn’t enough. She was pale as death.

    Angel came up on the other side of the bed, and set his bag on the floor. “Any change?” he asked.

    Buffy shook her head.

    He wondered if she’d talk to him at all. Often, she barely said three words.“You don’t look good.”

     “I’m fine.” Her voice was dull and distant, but she looked too tired to force the silent treatment on him this evening.

     He was glad of it. He needed to talk to her. “You can’t keep doing this to yourself.”

    “Yes I can,” she said. She looked up at him. “I did it for you.”

    “Not every day for a week,” Angel said.

    “You took more than a pint,” Buffy said. Her eyes flickered back down to Spike. “He needs it.”

    “Why don’t you ask some of the other slayers to help?”

    “I did,” Buffy said. “Some offered. A couple of them, at least. The ones who knew Spike, who were down at the Hellmouth with us. Three or four pints, I don’t remember, before they left LA. But most of the girls were injured, and they’re mostly gone now. And he is a vampire. I can’t ask any of them to risk themselves for Spike.”

    “Not even Faith? You could call her in.”

    “She’s still working with Dana. I don’t want to break her retraining.” She looked up at Angel. “You didn’t even tell me when he lost his hands?”

    Angel felt sick at the accusation in her eyes. Clearly, she’d been doing her research as well as tending to Spike. Rather than acknowledge, he went back to his own subject. “Buffy. You’re killing yourself.”

    “I’m just tired and anemic,” Buffy said. “I’ll stop before I die.”

    “Buffy.”

    “Don’t say it, Angel,” she said. She was fighting emotion as she added, “I know it has to be soon.”

    The despair in her eyes tore at him. “Just tell me one thing,” he said. “Do you love him?”

    Buffy’s eyes flickered back up to Angel. “What do you mean?”

    “Last time I asked you that, you said no. He wasn’t your boyfriend, and you saw no future together. How about now?”

    “How can you ask me that?” she said. “Look at him. He’s not even...” She closed her eyes, exhausted. “What does it even matter?”

    “I just need to know. Are you two in love?”

    Buffy almost laughed, a sad little smile tickling at her pale lips. “I don’t know,” she said softly. “We never tried to define it. It was always just... this. This thing between us, that didn’t have a name. This thing that changed... daily. Minute by minute. Word by word. Sometimes it was hatred, or resentment. Sometimes it wasn’t. Sometimes it was everything, and sometimes nothing at all. We never really called it love.”

    “Why not?” Angel had to know.

    “At first, I wouldn’t let him,” Buffy said. “I wouldn’t believe him. I thought it was just some vampiric obsession, hunting down another slayer, one way or another. Then even when I believed him... I didn’t want to. Because that would mean I was hurting him.”

    She settled her head deeper into the pillow, staring at his waxy face. “He said this was enough. This thing between us. He said this was real, that this was powerful. This.” She shook her head. “Even at the end, he wouldn’t let me name it. I don’t know if he was protecting himself, or me. But with us... it was always just this.”

    Angel stared at her. She’d said the whole thing in a kind of dreamlike hum, fading to a pained whisper that hurt his heart. “And what was this to you two?”

    Buffy smiled. “It was different for each of us,” she said softly. “He gave me everything he was. His heart, his flesh... eventually his soul. He let himself be tortured, you know. Many times. To protect what I loved, to make himself worthy. To prove himself worthy. He even let me torture him, in a way. He helped me through... the darkest moments of my life. I was addicted to him for a while. It was so hard to stop, and it made it even worse when I did. It almost dragged us both into hell. Nearly drove him mad. It did drive him away, into the hands of that demon, who seared his soul back into him. I didn’t know him when he came back. He had changed so much, there was so much more to him. I had to get to know the depths of him, that he hadn’t had before. He said he wanted to be... whatever I needed. Even if I needed him gone.” She touched his cold cheek. “I think I was his whole world.”

    “And you?” Angel asked. “Was he your world?”

    Buffy shook her head. “I have a calling,” she said. “I can’t ever let one person be my whole world. The world would break apart if I did. But he could make me laugh when I was miserable. He gave me strength when I had none. He made me feel....” She closed her eyes, tears escaping through the shadowed lids. “I don’t know what I’ll do if he doesn’t come out of this,” she said. “To find him again, but not. I don’t know what it’ll do to me. I accepted he was dead – that everyone dies some day. But I’ve been living on since then with this big hole in my heart....” She stopped. Her face changed slowly. “He completes me,” she said, revelation in her voice. She closed her eyes, exhausted by the very thought.

    “Well,” Angel said bluntly. “I think that answers my question.” He took Spike’s hand from Buffy and sighed ruefully. Then, to her complete shock, he attacked Spike, stabbing through both their hands with an ornate blade. “From the blood of the sire, he is risen,” Angel muttered through a snarl of pain. “From the blood of the sire, he shall rise again.” Then he cursed, very unceremoniously, as a brilliant purple sun burst through the room, followed by a faint golden light glowing dimly through their impaled hands. When the light faded and died, Angel sighed. “Okay, that’s enough of that.” He yanked his hand off the blade and reached again for the bag at his feet. He pulled out another IV bag of blood, this one at least three times as large as the ones Buffy had been supplying daily. He hooked the needle in alongside the blade in Spike’s hand, and hung the bag beside Buffy’s on the IV stand. He wrapped a bandage around his hand. “So, we’ll see if that works,” he said glumly.

    Buffy slid off the bed and caught Angel as he crossed the room. “What did you just do?”

    “A restoration ceremony,” Angel said. “Actually, Spike taught it to me; remember when they tried to kill me restoring Drusilla?” He glanced over at Spike’s still form. “I’m only his grandsire, but I don’t know where to find Drusilla right now. Don’t know if it’ll work. It might do, we’ve shared a lot of blood back and forth over the years.”

    “Why would you two–?”

    He headed off the question, his eyes heavy. “Buffy. Don’t ask when you don’t really want to know.”

    “Where’d you get the blade?” Buffy asked instead. “Doesn’t it need to be some fancy reliquary?”

    “It’s the same blade,” Angel said. “Spike left it behind when the organ fell on him. I saved it.”

    “I didn’t see.”

    “You were a little preoccupied, what with getting us all out of the fire,” Angel said. “It was in my office at Wolfram and Hart. I’ve been searching the rubble for it. Found it a few days ago.” He grunted, closing his eyes. “Excuse me,” he said with a sigh. “I’m tired.”

    Buffy glanced at the IV bag. “Is that all your blood?”

    “I’ve already replaced it,” Angel said, “it’s just it’s mostly in my stomach at the moment, and it’s all still animal blood. Nothing against Spike and all, but I didn’t really want to die to restore him. I don’t owe him that much. Took as much as I could safely – that much worked on Dru.”

    Buffy stared at him, amazed. “What would you have done if I said something else?” she asked. “If I said he was nothing to me.”

    “The same thing,” Angel said. “I just wanted to hear you say it first.” He looked immensely tired.

    Buffy felt terrible. This sacrifice, this attempt, had touched her. “I’m sorry, Angel. I don’t mean to hurt y–”

    “I fell in love with Cordelia,” he broke in.

    “What?” It had been a very blunt delivery, one that surprised her no end. “You... wait, what?”

    Angel sat down on the narrow hospital guest couch and looked up at Buffy. “I fell. In love. With Cordelia,” he said, very distinctly. “It was real,” he said evenly. “It was true. It was just as impossible as it always was with you, and she’s gone. She’s dead. But I fell in love with Cordelia.” He reached out to Buffy and took her hand, drawing her, not entirely unwillingly, onto the couch beside him. “I’ve also got a girlfriend,” he mentioned.

    Buffy raised her eyebrows. “You’ve got a girlfriend.”

    He nodded. “Nina. She’s a werewolf.”

    “That must be... nice...?” Buffy was bewildered. “You want to explain why you’re telling me this?”

    “We’re able....” He looked awkward. “It’s kind of a trick, but I’m able to...” He looked at her directly. “Basically I have to be... I’ve learned to sort of think about....”

    “Are you telling me you’re getting laid?” Buffy demanded.

    “Yeah,” Angel said. “I have to be careful. Have to think about... all the misery in the world, and.... Well. She’s a sweet girl, and I’m still getting to know her. I don’t love her the way I did you,” he finished. “I... don’t do anything, anymore... the way I did with you.”

    “Obviously,” Buffy said. She was more bewildered than upset. “This is insane. Two and a half years of forced and tortured celibacy followed by... whatever the hell your circling my life like a vulture has been for the last half decade, and now you’re telling me you just have to stay broody? And to prove it, you lay some other bitch? Is this how you’re coming on to me?”

    “I’m not coming on to you at all. And don’t call her a bitch.”

    “Sorry, you said werewolf and I couldn’t resist.”

    “It is tempting,” Angel admitted, “she does it herself privately. But that’s not the point. The point is that... Buffy... I haven’t been fair to you.”

    “Just figuring that out now, are you?”

    “No,” Angel said. “Spike sort of... pointed it out to me.” He took a deep breath. “When I first met you... I did hunt you,” he admitted. “I didn’t mean to. Before I met you, I’d been living as far away from humanity as I could get myself. The truth is, it had been so long since I’d spent any time around human beings, that I didn’t know... any other way to interact with them. So I-I was asked to help a slayer, and I immediately started thinking of you as I would have one of my victims. I thought, because I didn’t want to eat you, that everything was different. But it wasn’t. I stalked you. I lay traps for you. I let myself manipulate you in ways I would have if I’d been trying to... make you mine. And in the middle of it all I fell in love with you. Before I’d even talked to you, which wasn’t fair to you at all.”

    He shook his head. “It’s just... it had been so long since I felt anything like that, it-it did things to me. It took me over, like bloodlust. I felt like it was your fault. That you’d done this thing to me, and you had an obligation to reciprocate. It was completely unfair of me... to put myself in a position around you where you could even see me as a romantic partner. Particularly at your age – my age. Now, see, back when I was human, at sixteen, you could have been getting married. Society has changed... but I didn’t change with it. It was unconscionable of me. If I had really wanted to help you, I should have taken a role as your teacher, contacted Giles first, even your mother. I should have done anything other than... offer you jewelry and stalk you to The Bronze to show off my wounds while gallantly offering you my coat.” He shook his head. “I shouldn’t have hunted you like I did.”

    “Yeah, I know,” Buffy said. Angel looked up. “Spike’s told me much the same,” she said. “He used to get very angry at me... well, really, very hurt... that I kept making such a big deal about you, that you had a soul, when he kept pointing out you weren’t behaving very differently from what you’d been without one.” She shook her head. “I still don’t understand, though. If you had a girlfriend, and the celibacy thing has... been solved, why did you still keep Spike a secret? Why were you still so jealous?”

    “Probably because there’s still a part of me that thinks I’ve claimed you. I mean, ordinarily, that part of me would have eaten you already.”

    Buffy laughed.

    “It’s not funny,” Angel said. “The victims I claimed like that... they were very important to me. They were my art. Once I took you, you would have been inside me, part of me. Your life... would be completely mine. I would never have had to let you go. I am... that part of me, at least... isn’t good at letting go. But the thing is, even though the demon in me thinks of you as mine, that is not my better nature. I have been moving on. I have fallen in love, deeply. And I’ve reached out and found... exactly how happy I can be, and learned to stop there. And I want that for you, too. And if that means Spike, then... I guess I can learn to be okay with that. I’m never going to like it or anything, but... if it makes you happy... I’ll like that.”

    Buffy sighed. “It’s all kind of moot, at the moment,” she said. She looked up at the dead form of Spike. “I’m so afraid it’s too late. God. Why didn’t anyone tell me?”

    “Spike showed up before Nina and I got together,” Angel said. “Cordy was... pretty much gone already. I was alone, and... I couldn’t accept the idea that I might lose you.”

    “You never had me,” Buffy snapped. “You kept throwing me up in the air like a rubber ball, you certainly didn’t... hold me.” She looked down. “Not even when I wanted you to.”

    “I know,” Angel said. “I was able stand back, but not aside. I had to keep touching you, just enough to keep you. And when I came to Sunnydale that last time, all ready to die beside you, and suddenly I find you with Spike... I was just burning with jealousy. His scent was all over you. Then twenty days later he shows up as a ghost in my office, and starts talking about... the things he’d done with you, and I... all I wanted was for him to go away. Spike and I have always sparred,” he said. “I was Dru’s sire, Spike was her child, I did terrible things to him. I tried my best to make him mine, like Dru was... so that there was no part of Dru that didn’t still belong to me completely. And I failed, ultimately. In many ways, he’s stronger than I am. But he’s never going to forgive me for that. And I’m never going to forgive him, for all the things I did to him. I know that sounds mad, but–”

    “No,” Buffy said. “That’s the most sensible thing you’ve ever said about Spike.”

    Angel chuckled. “We don’t hate each other like we did,” he said. “We’ve come to... a truce in these last months. We’re allies. I didn’t tell you at first, because I couldn’t bear it. And then once he wasn’t a ghost anymore... I didn’t think it my place. It was his life.”

    “So why didn’t he....” She sighed and covered her eyes.

    “I don’t know,” Angel said. “He meant to go to you at first. Then he was bound to LA for a while, and couldn’t. Then I... I think he got confused. When we tried to find you in Rome, it was pretty clear he thought... you didn’t care about him.”

    Buffy shook her head. “And I’ll bet you did everything you could to help with that, didn’t you.”

    “I didn’t try to change his mind, no,” Angel admitted. “But part of it was, he didn’t want to hurt you. He told me... to look at what damage I’d done to you, when I came back from the dead. I think he didn’t want you going through that. He was flashing into hell. He’d felt himself burn. And you were ten thousand miles away. I don’t know if there’s more to it than that – it’s not like I was his confidant or anything. Mostly he just took pleasure in annoying me.”

    Buffy smiled. “That sounds like Spike.” She swallowed, and Angel realized she was holding back tears. He reached out and pulled her close, and she did not try to pull away.

    “The thing is, Buffy, I’m always going to love you. You really are a part of me... and not only because I’ve tasted you.” She chuckled, and he went on. “But there are different kinds of love. And if you can forgive me for what I’ve done to you... I don’t need to be your lover. You’ll be just as important to me no matter what.”

    “You’re important to me, too,” Buffy said. “Whatever you’ve done to me, whether you meant to or not, I’m okay. No matter how angry I am at you – and I’m still plenty angry over this, believe me – you’ve helped me become who I am.”

    “You’ve done the same,” Angel said.

    “And I do still love you,” Buffy admitted. “But you’re right. There are different kinds of love. I don’t want you like I did when I was a girl. That girl in me is always going to see you as... everything. But...”

    “But that’s the girl,” Angel said. “And you’re a woman now. I know.” He chuckled. “Spike pointed that out to me, too.”

    Buffy took a deep breath and asked what was to her a very important question. “This restoration ceremony. Could you have done that any time?”

    “I had to wait for a full moon to rise,” Angel said. “No. I wouldn’t have left you grieving again, if I didn’t have to.”

    “Do you think it’s going to work?”

    “I don’t know,” Angel said. They looked over at Spike’s still body. “I hope so.”

    They watched as the IV bag slowly spilled drop after drop of magically charged blood into Spike’s hand. They were both tense and weak from blood loss, and the silent room was timeless. Neither of them noticed when they fell asleep.

    And neither of them woke when one of the machines monitoring Spike began to beep.

 

    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.”
 

    Spike passed out in the taxi, woke up, managed to get himself clothed, and then passed out again as the taxi drove him to the docks. It didn’t take long for Spike to find what he was looking for once he got there. An immense cruise ship awaited the arrival of its passengers – probably later that day, or the next. He wasn’t even sure where it was going, and he didn’t really care. South, he thought, but that didn’t mean much. Away was all that mattered to him. He didn’t have a ticket yet, but that wouldn’t matter soon. He’d hide, he’d lurk, he’d steal, he’d do something. He could talk his way out of just about anything, he was sure. Just get on the ship, that was stage one. Everything else could be handled en route.

    Why couldn’t they just let him die? Why did they always have to save him, restore him, bloody resurrect him? Dru, Buffy, Angel, none of them could ever just let it end. They had to keep torturing him. It had to go on for sodding ever.

    No. It was time for it to be over. Angel and Buffy were content together, and he could go on his miserable way without getting in between them. It was time for all of this... to end.

    Every fiber still ached with stiffness and inactivity. He kept coughing, kept cringing, trying to make his body work right. Dru hadn’t mentioned if she’d been in this much pain after her restoration. He doubted it. She hadn’t been unconscious, after all.

    Why had he been unconscious? He stretched his mind back to the last thing he remembered. It was Buffy, Buffy in battle, her blond hair flying, the scent of her tickling his nose. No... no, that can’t have been it.

    Crunch. That was it. The crunch. The beautiful symphony of a breaking neck, a life ending under his hands. Only it wasn’t in his hands. It was his own, his spine snapping, he’d been broken. The neck brace had been holding him together. And Angel had restored him. Why?

    It would have been Buffy, he realized. He’d have done it for Buffy. Of course, Spike thought, heading up the gangway. Angel would do anything for Buffy. Even drag an unconscious and unruly vampire back from the edge of the dust. A forever love they had, yeah? Buffy still loved Angel. She hadn’t been sure, but Spike was. He knew they’d never stop. Just like he’d never let go of Dru, not completely. She was an imprint in his heart that would never fade, no matter what happened between them. No matter that Buffy overshadowed it now, and always would.

    That thought made him pause. He was almost aboard ship, and the idea of Buffy overshadowing Dru caught him. That was my choice, she had told him. She had made a choice one night... and that choice hadn’t been Angel.

    He turned around. He had to know. He couldn’t just let Buffy go, not to captain sadness and his insecurely attached soul, his selfish martyrdom. Saving the world every bloody day, just to prove he deserved to be a real bloody boy.

    But what made Spike better? Just because he’d gone through torture didn’t make his choice any less selfish. Angel risked his life to save the planet. Spike had only put his body on hock, no one else was in particular danger. He turned back to the ship.

    Buffy wouldn’t want to see him, anyway. He knew that he was only a complication between the two of them. Angel had probably only saved him for the same reason Spike hadn’t staked him during that whole Cup of Torment debacle. Didn’t want to hear her bitch about it.

    And what about Mr. Holier-Than-Thou’s bitch of a girlfriend? Spike wondered. Dropping one supposed love for another – yeah, real loyal there, peaches. Buffy deserved better than that. He turned around again.

    Buffy wouldn’t care about that. Not if she wanted Angel back, could have him back. She could indulge that little girl inside her, lose herself again in a dream of love. He turned again.

    A dream. That’s all it was, though, with Angel, a bloody dream. Spike was the reality. He was the one who had been there with her, he was the one who had tasted her, who had brought her body into ecstacy, he was the one she had disappeared into, night after night, for months. He was the one she craved, the one she longed for, he was the one she’d been as addicted to as he’d once craved human blood. He turned again.

    But she’d turned away from it. She’d gotten over it. As surely as he’d gotten over the blood. He turned again.

    Gah, this was madness! A twisted maelstrom of insane impulses, and he didn’t know what the hell he wanted! He wanted her in his arms, he wanted her so badly his bones ached – or was that just the pain? It didn’t matter. He still wanted her. And he wanted to run a thousand miles away, never drown in the depth her eyes again, never lose himself in her scent, never have to second guess his every move, never disappear within her. He wanted to be himself, not this endless aching longing that he had been almost since he met the bitch.

    And he wanted to be her strength, her support, he wanted to be the one to make her laugh, make her soft, make her scream.

    With a roar of frustration, he punched at the metal bulkhead of the cruise ship. It clanged, and dented. His bones clicked, his fingers were torn open with the impact, and the pain almost made his head straight for moment. He looked at his now broken and bleeding hand. The impact had ripped open the skin, and the stab wound in his palm had started to trickle again. As he expected, the preternatural scent of Angel’s magically charged blood tickled his nose.

    And another scent. A sweet, potent, alluring scent. The blood of a slayer.

    This was insane. He had to know the truth. Being frightened wasn’t going to get him anywhere.

    He’d had enough of being frightened of Buffy.
 

***

    “We’re gonna win,” Buffy told him. He’d fallen asleep after he and Buffy had talked, but she’d been unable to find slumber, even in his arms. The First had taunted her, and she’d come up with her world changing plan. Spike had woken from a dream of drowning, and found her looking excited, almost frightened, and for the first time completely confident.

    Spike was stunned when she’d finished explaining her plan. It was still several hours until the sun rose. Everyone else was still asleep, and until the household arose and could settle into a meeting, the world-shattering plan – every potential in the world a full and empowered slayer – was a secret between the two of them.

    “Do you really think Red can pull it off?” Spike asked.

    Buffy nodded. She’d joined him on the cot to explain her idea. “You didn’t see her after Tara died,” she said. “She was... an unstoppable force. With the strength of that scythe, I don’t doubt that she can tap into the power of the slayers.”

    “Is it really that powerful?”

    “I can’t describe it,” she said. “It’s like... my blood sings with it, and my strength is just... unfathomable. It’s not just that it’s mine, it’s like it’s me. Like an extension of my arm or something, but it empowers me at the same time. I don’t know. Maybe... it’s made from the same demon that gives us our slayer strength. It feels like it.”

    “And with that weapon... you intend to awaken that power... in every potential girl in the world.”

    Buffy nodded.

    Spike considered this for a moment. “I feel bloody sorry for the world.”

    “Spike,” Buffy said, almost chastising. “It won’t be a force for evil. It’ll be–”

    “I know what it’ll be, pet,” Spike said. “But if there are thousands, or even just hundreds of women in the world like you... there’s not a man safe on the planet.”

    “I’m not sure if I should be offended or flattered by that.”

    “Take your pick,” he said. “I know I can hardly handle just one of you.” He glanced over at her. “Though I gotta tell you, love, if I was still into killing you, I’d be thrilled.”

    She laughed, then for the first time, doubt clouded her eyes. “Tell me I’m not crazy?”

    “Oh, you are definitely crazy, goldilocks,” he said, putting his arm around her. He drew her close and whispered in her ear, “Doesn’t mean you’re not right.”

    Her arms went around him sensuously and held him tightly, and he felt a responsive shiver rush through him. His breath caught, and it made him pull away.

    Buffy noticed. It wasn’t the first time she’d noticed, but it was the first time she hadn’t just let him. “All right, Spike, what is it?”

    “What?”

    “You hold me so tenderly,” she said. “You say it’s still all about me, but you pull away. These are the same hands that held me on the balcony at the Bronze. You’re the one who pulled out the handcuffs. I mean, five hours wasn’t unheard of for us, and you pull away. It’s not your soul, is it? I mean, you’re sure this isn’t the problem that Angel had?”

    “No,” Spike said quickly, pulling away even further. “No,” he said, softer. “No, the soul’s fixed, I just... I didn’t think it my right.”

    “No, that’s not it,” Buffy said. “I’d have agreed at first, but.... You’ve come within an inch of kissing me a dozen times in the last two nights, and you’ve pulled away each time. This has been going on since you got back. No touching, you said. You were mad, but that didn’t really go away. You don’t want me lifting your shirt, sometimes you hesitate just taking my hand. Last night was... lovely, but chaste. I mean, we’ve had reasons not to. And, I haven’t been pursuing, but you’ve been actively pulling back. Now I’m here, I’m open, and for some reason, you’re... not.” She pushed forward, and he leaned away, until finally she had him half recumbent on the cot, peering into his face. Her breath clung to him like honey. “Come on, Spike. Since when do you act like an innocent virgin?”

    He tried to keep his face still. He tried like hell to keep the truth out of his eyes, but his wretched soul was such a damned bloody tell, he knew she was reading him like a sodding fashion magazine. “Spike...?” she asked. “You’re not...?”

    Spike pulled her off him and slipped her beside him. He felt a little less trapped when she wasn’t looming over him, when he could look down at her from his elbow. “I’m just... it’s complicated,” he said.

    She tried to keep her voice gentle. “What?”

    “My soul,” he admitted, “back before it was taken from me... was a very tender thing,” he said. “I was a moral, upperclass Victorian gentleman. I was shy, and genteel. And frankly, I could be wounded to the core by almost anything. I followed the rules. I knew the roles of propriety. It was only becoming a vampire that unleashed me, gave me the freedom to do what I’d always wanted.” He swallowed. “I had never taken a lover. I had never even shared a kiss.”

    “Are you telling me...?”

    “I remember everything,” he said, letting the hunger color his tone. “It’s not like I’ve suddenly forgotten how or anything. I remember what it felt like... what it could do. I remember you...” His hand slid down her bare arm, the memories heavy in his eyes. “The heat of you,” he murmured. “Your passion... how raw.... But I remember a lot of other women, too,” he said. “A lot of victims,” he confessed. He shook his head. “Even touching your hand felt... different... when I got back,” he said. “These last two nights have been...” He couldn’t find any other word, even though he knew not to use this lightly around Buffy. “They’ve been heaven,” he whispered. Her eyes grew too intense for him then, and he had to look away. “I don’t know what kissing you would do to me, love,” he breathed. “Let alone....” He felt like an idiot.

    He felt Buffy’s lips against his then, and he pulled away instinctively. She didn’t hold him to her, but she didn’t quite let him go, either. Hovering a hair’s breadth away, she breathed into his mouth, moving, caressing, letting him barely feel her heat as she almost kissed him, but didn’t force him to close on her. He felt like he was drowning in her scent, melting in her heat, he felt unable to pull away, unable to stop, and just as helplessly unable to claim her lips as his. Their mouths slid wider, their breath heavier, until every breath he took was hers. Their tongues touched before their lips really did, and the taste of her made him gasp, tense with terror and longing. He pulled away again.

    “Spike,” she breathed into his mouth. “It’s me.” Her fire hot fingertips touched his cool cheek and left streaks burning through his skin. “Have you any idea the things you taught me? Things I never thought... I would ever let myself do. Let alone relish, or crave, or beg for.” For a brief moment she pulled a little away, and their eyes caught in the dim light. “Just let yourself feel it,” she whispered, words he had murmured to her a hundred times, in circumstances intimate, or passionate, or dire. She pushed closer to him, presenting herself, and he finally felt he could claim her, a little moan escaping from him as he closed on her. She let the kiss flow sweetly between them only for a few breaths before bringing in her naughty little teeth, nipping at his tongue, his lips, pulling away before claiming him over and over again.

    It did feel different. Worlds different. Even as a pure vampire, the difference between a victim and a willing lover was like steak and ice-cream; solid meat to chew apart compared to sweetness melting on your tongue. The difference between everyone else and Buffy had been veritable cocaine, pleasure almost too powerful to leave him his sanity.

    He didn’t have an analogy for this. It was Buffy. It was her, racing through his blood, hardening his body, leaving him a gibbering nothing of wordless sensation, past want, past lust, past love, past all words he could even consider. There was only this, her, her lips, her body, her scent, her heat, and all of it penetrating him until he didn’t even exist anymore. He was only this, this movement, this sensation, falling into her.

    Buffy pressed him down into the pillows, her hands inching up under his shirt, the heat of her pressing down on his cold torso. He let her stop kissing him and she bent over him, trailing her blazing hot lips up his chest as she slowly raised his shirt. A moment later he was sitting up, just enough to let her slide the black cotton over his head, and her hot little hands were sliding over his flesh, his nipples, down his sensitive belly. His wanted to look at her, fix his eyes on her, but they kept closing for long seconds with uncontrolled pleasure, or longing, or fear, he couldn’t decide. His breath came like a freight train. She shifted, crossed her arms over her body, and tore her tank top off over her head. For a moment he was stunned by the image of her white breasts, and then hunger for them ripped through him, and he moaned as he lifted his head, clutching her to him, nuzzling into the soft, warm flesh, finally finding a nipple and drawing it into his mouth, feeling it harden and grow against his tongue, between his teeth. He sucked on it, nibbling it, and felt a responsive shudder move through her.

    A while later she pushed him down again, straddling him while she stared into his eyes, and he was lost in her. “Share your soul with me, William,” she whispered.

    There was only one thing to say. “It’s already yours.”

    She had pulled him from his fear of her, his fear of opening himself and his soul at the same time. These last few months in LA, he’d been trying to figure out who and what he was without her, which was something he knew he needed to do, if it was ever going to be fair to her. But there was a difference between finding himself without her, and running the hell away, and that was exactly what he was doing now. He was running not because he thought it was better for her. Not because she loved Angel. He wasn’t even running because he thought she wouldn’t want to see him. He was running because he was scared. He was as scared of her acceptance as he was of her rejection. She’d break him if she didn’t want him anymore. He would lose himself if she did. Both ideas, both hell and heaven, terrified the crap out of him.

    But either way, he had to find out.

    He wasn’t a coward. He was a warrior. If he could face a bloody demon horde, he could face a small blonde slayer. He had to get over it this time by himself.

    No matter what she might do to him.

    Angel went very quiet after Buffy had informed him of Spike’s sacrifice. He answered questions in monosyllables, and refused to look at her. “Angel, what?” Buffy finally demanded, after it became difficult to work together. “What?”

    “I didn’t believe it,” Angel said, unable to look at her.

    “Believe what?”

    “Spike. I felt... that he’d stolen my thunder, and he didn’t really do anything. He himself said he’d just waited for the fire to come. I thought it was the amulet. I didn’t think it was really Spike.”

    “Yeah, well. It was.”

    “Yeah,” Angel said. “But I made him believe it, too. I discounted his sacrifice, and belittled him for it. Told him all he’d done was wear a necklace.”

    Buffy stared at him. “And made him believe he wasn’t worthy,” Buffy said. “Worthy of me, of anything. You really can be a piece of work, Angel.”

    Angel shook his head. “Spike brings me back to who I was when I knew him,” he admitted. “I think I do the same to him. We bring out the worst in each other.”

    “Yeah, well,” Buffy said. “Maybe it won’t be a problem anymore. One way or another, it looks like he’s gone for bloody good!”

    He tried to hold her. “I’m sorry, Buffy–”

    “Don’t touch me,” she said. “Not right now. You know, if we find him again, I’ll forgive you for this, Angel. If not... I’m gonna need you to stay away from me for a very long time.”

    “Do you really mean that?”

    “If you had acted like a human being, with a soul, or a conscience, or any compassion for either him, or me, I’d be really torn between the two of you. As it is... I need your help, and you saved his life. If both those things weren’t true, I’d tell you to get out of my sight.”

    “And if we find him?” Angel asked.

    Buffy glared at him, but it wasn’t full of hatred. “Then I’ll just insult you a lot over a beer.”

    He laughed, and she smiled, but he knew she was still angry.“Guess I’ll bring Nina,” Angel said.

    “Yeah, that’d be fun. After we make sure he hasn’t just walked into the sun,” Buffy said.

    “He wouldn’t do that.”

    “He’s been tempted to do that for years,” Buffy said. “He got himself a soul instead, and used it to defeat evil.”

    “You really think the amulet wasn’t the...”

    “It was a magnifying glass, Angel,” Buffy said. “Not a flame thrower. It didn’t hold the power, it just... amplified Spike. His soul in particular, but all of him. He was the weapon.”

    “How do you know?”

    Buffy swallowed. “Because I touched him,” she said. “And I knew him. I felt it. In my own soul, I felt it. The purifying, the cleansing, all those scrubbing bubbles, they were an instruction manual, not a contents list. It was only because he was what he was that it worked at all.” Buffy shook her head. “And you dismissed it.”

    “I am sorry, Buffy. I couldn’t believe it. I knew him when... god, it’s not even fair to say the sorts of things he used to do.”

    “Angel, I know the sorts of things he used to do. Some he’s told me. Some... I’ve inferred. But that was a demon. It wasn’t his soul. It wasn’t even his heart.”

    “He just doesn’t seem so different to me.”

    “You don’t seem so different to him,” Buffy said. “But he really has changed, even before he earned his soul. He really wanted to be a better man.”

    “I thought he just wanted to get in your pants.”

    Buffy stared at him. “It was a little more involved than that,” Buffy said, annoyed with his scorn. “Yeah, if he hadn’t fallen in love with me, he probably wouldn’t have done it. But it’s not like I asked him to, and there was no guarantee that I was going to take him back. It was very over between us, and he knew that. He had to know that. There was no going back. We happened to go forward, but it was unlikely that we would. He just felt bad. He felt guilt. He knew how wrong he had been, and he wanted to be better.”

    “You know this?”

    “Yes,” Buffy said. “A demon, racked by guilt. How can you just dismiss that as lust? I mean think about it, honestly, did you feel guilt before you were cursed? I mean, ever?”

    “No,” Angel said, and he looked ashamed.

    “He did,” Buffy said.

    Angel looked confused. “Why? He’d hunted, murdered, tortured, slaughtered whole families for over a century. What hideous sin could he have committed that would suddenly make that monster feel guilty?”

    Buffy gazed at him. “Angel? Don’t ask when you don’t really want to know.”
 

***    

    Things were getting past heated between them. Spike had gotten over his fear of making love while bound to a soul. They’d undressed each other, explored each other, touched and heated and drawn themselves into a state of mutual arousal so potent that there was no going back now, not for either of them. Buffy felt such relief at finally having him again. All the denial as for years she’d told herself she would never want him, that was gone. The pain and confusion from the cravings she’d been battling, as she raged against her addiction to him, all that was gone. And the nightmare that had plagued her ever since that terrible moment in her bathroom, when his thirst for her had driven him almost mad, and he’d lost all control over his demon. That was gone, too. It was only this, only him, and her, and they were all alone in the world, and nothing mattered but their bodies and their souls and this, this thing between them, that at the moment was more potent than a drug. It was blissful. She opened for him, ready to draw him in, and his fear was gone – he was ready to come home.

    “You don’t really think I’ve changed, do you, pet?” Spike’s voice hissed at her.

    Buffy froze in Spike’s arms and pulled away, but he was staring at her in confusion.

    “I’m still the demon,” he taunted. “I’m still the big bad. I go where I please and I take what I like. And now I’m taking you.”

    It was the First. Buffy knew it was, taking on Spike’s form and taunting her with it. She turned her head, and sure enough, there he was, pale and soulless and dangerous, hovering over their cot like a dark shadow. It wasn’t fair. Not now, not when everything was almost perfect. “I don’t hear you,” she snarled.

    “Buffy,” Spike said beside her. “Buffy, you all right?” He looked around the empty room. “Is it here?”

    “Yes,” she whispered.

    “All that sin,” the First breathed. “All that evil. All that dirt you like to roll in. That’s your biggest problem, pet. How are you supposed to fight me when you love me so much?”

    “Don’t listen,” Spike said in her ear. He held her very close, and she let him, hoping his cool arms would shield her from the mental ache. “Don’t listen to it.”

    “Evil is why you exist,” the First said. “Evil is what makes you feel. Evil breathes life into you, and your heart can hardly beat without it. Without me.”

    “Stop it,” she growled, knowing that by even answering she was playing into its hands.

    “Who is it, love?” Spike asked.

    “So you play my whore,” the First whispered. “Let me rub my sin all over you, until you’re steeped in the blood of the innocent. Until you’re black and sticky with me. You let me taint you. You let me inside you. And you love it.”

    “Who?” Spike asked again.

    “You,” she said. She was starting to tremble, and she didn’t know why. She was strong, she’d just taunted this creature not an hour ago, she knew they could win against it. Why wasn’t she standing up and arguing back? The answer was partly in the precious and delicate moment the First had interrupted, but there was more to it, and she wasn’t sure what it was.

    “Oh, god,” Spike whispered, and tried to block her ears with his hands, but they both knew it was fruitless.

    “You know I haven’t changed,” the First said, as clearly in her head as if there were no barrier. “You know what I am. You know what that makes you.”

    Buffy cringed. “Leave her alone!” Spike barked at what to him was the empty room, but the First ignored him.

    “You’re already one of mine, love. You can’t stand against me. You’re drawn to me. I wouldn’t even be here if it wasn’t for you. I wouldn’t have a chance at this world. And just look at you, curled so happily into my blood stained hands. I’m just as evil as ever. The blood drips off my every whisper. Pours delicious into your mouth with every... sultry... kiss.”

    Buffy shook Spike off her head and sat up, glaring at the apparition. “It’s not true,” she snapped, angry now, and glad of it.

    “You already know it is,” the First said, out of Spike’s bedroom voice. “You know it intimately. Why do you keep lying to yourself?” It came closer, kneeling over the cot, almost breathing in her face. “Great love is wild and passionate and dangerous, it burns and consumes.”

    Buffy had heard this before. She had heard it with this exact same inflection, flashed back to it in moments of tortured weakness. “Don’t do this.” She couldn’t help but say it, a prayer, not to the First, but to god or fate or luck, anything that would stop this before it got any further.

    “I know you feel like I do. You don’t have to hide it anymore.”

    “Buffy, what is it saying?” Spike asked. He had sat up with her, holding her secure, but neither his vampire strength, nor her slayer powers could protect her from this. And she was trembling. The Slayer, the warrior of the people, was trembling. What the hell was it doing to her?

    “Let yourself feel it,” the First said. “You love me.”

    “You know what it’s saying,” Buffy said to Spike, her voice tight. “You were there.”

    Spike was lost for a moment, and then tensed as he realized what she meant. “Oh, bloody hell,” he breathed.

    “You love me!” it went on, and she shut her eyes on the demonic desperation the First was replaying on the false Spike’s face. “Let it go. Let yourself love me!”

    “It’s over,” the real Spike whispered in her ear. “It’s all over, don’t let it take you, it’s over.”

    “I know you felt it, when I was inside you,” the First said. “You’ll feel it again, Buffy. I’m gonna make you feel it!”

    This was where Buffy had ended it the first time. Where the slayer had stopped the vampire, to the relief of them both. Buffy cried out, waiting for it to be over, but it wasn’t over. The First started all over again, Spike’s voice, Spike’s inflection. “Why do you keep lying to yourself? Great love is wild, and passionate, and dangerous.”

    “Stop it!” she screamed, but it kept right on.

    “It burns and consumes.”

    “Buffy!” Spike hissed at her.

    “It started over,” she told him.

    Spike held her, rocking her as the words brought back the memory, in the vivid flashbacks she’d used to suffer of that moment. Again and again Spike held her down. Again and again she begged him to stop, please, please, Spike. Again and again her trust was shattered, her affection poisoned, their beauty stolen, her life torn apart by an act of brutal lust. In reality Spike was rocking her gently, whispering in her ear, trying to shield her from the memory, but the memory was beating her down. “Don’t do this. God, please don’t do this to her. Please. Not to her. Buffy. Buffy, I’m sorry. I’m sorry. Oh, god, don’t do this!”

    Then he heard it, the First, in his own voice. “Early one morning, just as the sun was rising...”

    Spike’s face darkened in anger, but he had full control. The trigger was snapped. “You don’t get me that way!” he snarled through his fangs. “I’m free!”

    “Unh-uh,” the First said. “It’s your turn. You know what you’re supposed to do. How could you use a poor maid so?”

    The song was powerless over him, but the First didn’t stop trying. The song danced in his head as Buffy still fought off the flashbacks. “It won’t stop,” she told Spike, clutching at her head. “Over and over again. It won’t stop.”

    “I know,” Spike said. “It happened to me, too, when I got back. Months ago. The same scene, over and over. I thought it was just guilt at the time, but not now.”

    She turned to look at him, and didn’t even seem to notice his vampiric face. “How’d you get out of it?”

    “I went mad,” he said. “It couldn’t find me there. Not always.”

    It was one of the methods the First had used to plant the trigger, Buffy was sure of that. His guilt, his tender new soul, his pain, his loss, all of them had been vulnerable, and the First had used them to turn Spike into its weapon. It had found another vulnerable moment tonight, and it was attacking again.

    “I know you felt it, when I was inside you,” the First repeated. “You’ll feel it again, Buffy. I’m gonna make you feel it!”

    “Slay him.”

    The First’s voice had changed. It was her own. “Kill him, and it will stop. Please, please, Spike, please! Slay him. Be what you are. He’s evil. Just a little stake, one little punch, you know you can do it. There’s one on the shelf. Right within arm’s reach. You should have done it years ago. Stake him.”

    Buffy was extremely tempted to do just that. It was what her own heart was telling her to do. But she knew she was stronger than that. The slayer in her told her to fight this creature – not the vampire in her arms, but the pain that was being thrown at her. But there was nothing to fight, nothing her fists could connect to. How could she fight formless evil, or a painful memory? “Why do you keep lying to yourself?” Spike’s voice again, starting again.

    Buffy groaned. The voice burned on and on, torturing her again. “Let it go. Let yourself love me!”

    “Spike,” she said, fighting the nightmare. “Kiss me.”

    Her mouth reached for him, but he pulled back. He shook his darkened head. “I...”

    “We have to take it back!” she hissed.

    “What?”

    “The memory,” she said, trying to block out the horror in her ears. It was all she could think of. If it was the memory that was the First’s weapon, she needed to take that weapon back. “That moment. Do you remember what you said?”

    “I...”

    “Before! And as it happened, do you remember what you said?”

    “No!” he cried, desperate. “Yes,” he confessed at the despair in her eyes. It was burned in his memory, a trauma as painful for him as for her. “Oh, god, don’t do this!”

    “Say it again,” she said. “Say it all again, take it back. Make it right.”

    “I can’t.”

    “Make this beautiful again,” she said. “Do it. Great love is wild and passionate and dangerous, say it! Please, Spike, please. Don’t leave it for the demon, take it back. Please, take it back. Please!”

    He couldn’t deny her, not with that plea in her voice. Her pleas and cries had haunted him too long not to do anything she begged for in that tone. It was like tearing his own heart out, but he made himself say the hated words. “Great love is wild,” he said low. “And passionate. And dangerous.” He was shaking as he lifted her up onto his lap, and her legs wrapped around his hips. “It burns... and consumes....” He was crying, now, out of his yellow eyes, and Buffy kissed his dark brow. “I can’t.”

    “I know you feel like I do,” she whispered.

    Spike closed his eyes and tilted his head back to the ceiling. “I know you feel... like I do.”

    The words meant something entirely different now. They were both human, they were both alive, they could both feel. Buffy kissed him, caressing his fangs briefly, and she felt them slide and retract beneath her tongue. When she pulled away, he stared at her, his own soulful blue eyes again. “You don’t have to hide it anymore,” he whispered.

    Woman. Slayer. Buffy. There was nothing to hide. He ran his lips along her throat, trembling in her arms like a fever victim. “Let yourself feel it,” he breathed in her ear. Feel her strength, and her weakness. Accept herself. Gently he lay her down on the cot, and if the First was still speaking, neither of them heard it. Buffy arched up, feeling his strong arms, his beautiful torso. “You love me?”

    It was a question, not a demand. Curiosity, a dare, even. The idea was attractive, and she smiled at it.

    A whisper. “Let it go.” It was already going. The trauma was dying as he spoke, and she wanted him, found herself opening for him. “Let yourself.”

    He kissed her and kissed her. She could feel him hard against her, insinuating himself alongside her. “Love me.”

    As if the request had been for an invitation, she shifted and slid him inside. His eyes closed with pleasure. “Buffy,” he breathed.

    “Keep going,” she whispered. “Take it all back.”

    “I know you felt it, when I was inside you,” he said. She felt everything with him. He made her alive, he made her feel. She moaned and shifted, and he gazed down at her with such love. “You’ll feel it again, Buffy.” Hunger touched his eyes, and his last words were a promise. “I’m gonna make you feel it.” He thrust inside her sensuously, using himself as an instrument for her pleasures.

    She sighed with satisfied lust, and writhed beneath him, breathing in the scent of him with each gentle thrust, her hand on the back of his head, pulling him into a kiss.

    How long it went on, neither of them knew. Buffy rolled him over and moved herself on him gently, until he took her beneath himself again, each movement a wave of the sea over her inflamed body.

    It was gentle. It was loving. It was tender. It was as different from their previous sexual encounters as it was possible to be. Every breath was a gift, every movement was beautiful, every tender moment was part of this, part of themselves, part of everything. When she came she buried her cry in his mouth, and a moment later he let himself go, hiding his breath in her throat. The feel of his mouth against her throat sent a shiver through her. He pulled away and rolled beside her, holding her close. A moment later he opened his eyes. They gazed at each other. “It’s gone,” he whispered. “Did you hear when...?”

    “No,” Buffy said.

    “What was it trying to do?” he asked.

    “It doesn’t matter.”

    “Don’t keep it hidden,” Spike said. “That’s how it works in you.” He brushed a strand of hair out of her face. “It used to take on your form and torture me. Say you wouldn’t come for me. That you didn’t care.” The back of his finger caressed her cheek. “I never let myself stop believing in you, but it hurt. Every moment, it hurt.”

    Buffy closed her eyes. “It was saying... that I couldn’t fight evil because it was part of me. Because I took to its bed and let it inside me.”

    “With my voice,” he said. “That must have been a picnic.”

    “When I fought back, when I wouldn’t doubt you, it attacked,” she said. “With the memory.”

    “I am so sorry,” he said, and she knew he meant for the attack, and the fact that the memory was there in the first place.

    “I know you are. I just didn’t have an any other answer... for why I had....”

    “Taken a murderer to your bed.” She nodded.  “I have one,” he said. She looked at him, truly curious. It was something she’d never found an answer for herself. “Slayer,” he whispered. “Cutting the cancer out of the world. You could have cut me out, but you didn’t. You were healing me.”

    Buffy looked at him. She’d never thought of the evil as a disease.

    “The chip gave you time to work on me. Restrained the worst of the evil so you could heal it out of me. You made me want to be good. Drew the evil out of me drop by drop,” he said. “Even before you touched me, even before I got my soul. No matter how evil I was inside. You infected me with goodness, until I could not stand against you. You started by treating me like a man, and then you made me want to be one. I still have a way go, but the worst is gone.” He kissed her briefly, and went on. “You are drawn to evil, but only to neutralize it. You do it everywhere you go. Anya, and Faith, and Willow. You polished the last of it – or a lot of the stain, anyway – out of Angel. If you can avoid killing you do, and you heal it instead. It sounds to me like the strongest, the best, and most subtle slayer in history.” He kissed her nose. “You’ve got it scared,” he whispered.

    “But it’s my fault it’s loose,” Buffy said. “If I wasn’t here, the First would still be trapped.”

    Spike shook his head. “Maybe your resurrection opened the door, but you’re still standing in the entrance, like a guardian. The most powerful slayer in history. It knows it has to get rid of you before it can escape.”

    “Did it go after you, too?” she asked. “You went dark there.”

    Spike touched his forehead to hers, tense in anguish. “It tried to trigger me,” he said. “It wouldn’t stop singing, even when I refused. I was supposed to kill you.”

    “Not just kill me,” Buffy said. “Kill me now, when my trust was complete, and the betrayal would be greatest.”

    “That would have only fed it,” Spike said. “The deepest of evils.” He sighed. “I guess we know what it had planned for me, now.”

    “Do you... think it’s given up?”

    “It knows the trigger is gone. I think... I think I’m not its weapon anymore. It failed.”

    “It almost didn’t,” she confessed. “It told me to kill you, too. When it failed with you, it turned to me. After you refused, when it knew the trigger was snapped, it told me to stop you.” She swallowed. “Those flashbacks were.... I wanted to.”

    “I would have let you.”

    “I know. It wanted the betrayal. It wanted to end this,” she said. “You and me.”

    “It doesn’t want us together,” Spike said.

    They both realized what it meant at the same time. “This is a weapon!” “It’s afraid!”

    “This,” Spike went on. “Somehow this... you and me... we can hurt it. How?”

    “Well, sacrifice,” she said, considering. “And redemption. And forgiveness. Those are all weapons against evil.”

    “So then... this whole thing....”    

    “All of it,” Buffy said, realizing. “Even that I used you, even that you betrayed me. The hatred and the growth and the trust and everything. This whole thing between us. All of it, even the nightmares. It’s powerful.”

    The two of them stared at each other. “We are gonna win!” they both said.

    A bit before dawn, Angel abandoned the search. “I have to go,” he said. “Nina will spend all day locked up if I don’t let her out.”

    Buffy glanced at him. “Right,” she said. “Werewolf.”

    “Will you be okay?”

    Buffy shook her head. “Not until I find him,” she said.

    “I’ll pick up some more books. We can keep looking for spells,” he said. “I’ll be back after the sun rises.”

    “Unless I find a way to track him,” Buffy said, “I’ll be here.”

    She didn’t make any progress without Angel, either. Buffy sagged at the desk in Spike’s vacated room, exhausted, tired of getting nowhere with phone call after phone call, spell book after spell book. This was fruitless. Spike wasn’t going to be using the normal parameters to travel. She was pretty sure he didn’t even have a passport – it wasn’t as if he still used his last name. He was going to go as someone else – and there was no knowing what that alias would be – or he was going to disappear secretly, and there would be no tracing him, no matter what they did. She hoped Angel would get back soon. Maybe he’d have an idea. If nothing else, he had that necro-protective whatever glass in that car he was using, so the two of them could at least check things out in person, on the docks if nothing else. That was the most likely way she’d find Spike, she knew. In person. He might come to her if he saw her. She feared she’d never see him again otherwise.

    In despair her head sank onto her hands, and she rubbed her eyes, exhausted, miserable, hopeless.

    There was a soft knock on the edge of the open door. Angel had come back. The moon had sunk down a while ago, the sun had already paled the night sky to teal. He had probably come to tell her that Nina was fine, but that finding Spike was still fruitless. She did not lift her head from her hands. “Come in,” she said, wearily.

    “Hello, cutie,” said a voice she hadn’t heard in far too long.

    She felt as if someone had just poured hard liquor down her throat. She turned in her chair, relief and anger and shock and joy all fighting for space inside her. “God damn you!” she cried at Spike, standing up so clumsily she knocked her chair over. “God damn you, you idiot, what the hell did you think you were doing? Are you insane?” She came up to him, shouting, her accusatory glare fixed on him. “You sick, sadistic serial killer!” And then she had her arms around him, and her head buried in his collarbone, and her tears ran down his neck. “I missed you,” she sobbed. “I missed you, you idiot.” She pulled away a little and looked at him. “And the second I stop crying, I’m gonna be really angry at you!” she said. Then she fell back against him, and held him hard enough to bruise.

    It hurt like hell, and he didn’t try to get her to ease up. “I’m sorry,” he murmured. “I – umh!” God, her lips tasted like wine! He let himself kiss her back, sensuously, hungrily, and then froze in surprise as her knees buckled and she slid down. She’d have fallen if it hadn’t been for his arms catching her. “Buffy?”

    “Sorry,” she said. “Little faint.”

    Spike lifted her, ignoring the pain in his burned hand, and the ache in his injured one, and carried her to the bed. He set her on it, sitting up to look at him. “You all right?” he asked, concerned.

    Buffy nodded. “I’m just anemic.”

    “Yeah, I can tell,” Spike said, looking at her color. He looked her over. “How much did you give me?”

    “Just a pint,” she said.

    He raised an eyebrow.

    “Every day. For a week.”

    His shoulders sagged in disapproval. “Bloody hell, slayer. I always said you had a death wish.” He reached out for her throat, taking her pulse with his fingers. “You’re not good, pet.”

    “I’ll be fine.”

    “Barely,” he said.

    “Well,” she confessed. “I was about to give it up, for a while.”

    “From your color, I’d say you should have given up three days ago,” Spike said.

    “You were alive,” Buffy said.

    “I wouldn’t have cared, if you’d killed yourself for it.”

    “I was hoping it would work,” Buffy said. “The blood of a slayer restores, gives power. I was going to stop for a while, and then try again once I’d recovered.”

    “For how long?”

    “As long as it took, you dope,” Buffy said. “Until you came back, either sane or not.”

    Spike gazed at her. “Was that in question?”

    “Did you think I strapped you down for the fun of it?” At the look on his face, she changed tacks. “While unconscious, I mean?”

    He smiled at the reference, but awkwardness quickly rose up between them. “Blood loss aside, you’re looking...” he trailed off.

    “I haven’t brushed my hair in three days, or changed my clothes in four, so I’m pretty sure I look awful,” Buffy said.

    “Not to me,” he said quietly. “It’s been a while.”

    “Yeah, it has,” Buffy said pointedly. “You wanna explain what the hell you thought you were doing?”

    Spike didn’t know what to say. He swallowed and looked at the wall.

    “Spike,” Buffy said. “Why didn’t you tell me?”

    He shrugged. “I didn’t know what to say.”

    “Okay,” Buffy said. “I’m alive. How’s that for a start?”

    Spike smiled and shook his head. “Not so easy as that.”

    “I’m back? Hi Buffy? Up for a shag? Any of these would have been better than silence.”

    Spike laughed. “God, I’ve missed you.”

    “That’s another good one,” Buffy said. She reached out and rubbed his neck. “I missed you, too.” Her hand traced his collarbone and down his arm. “God, I was so scared. This wasn’t fair to me, Spike. According to Angel, you all planned on dying the other night. If we hadn’t taken it upon ourselves to come rushing into the apocalypse, you all would have. Not to mention, utterly failing to stop the apocalypse as it happened, because you lot weren’t up to it. LA would have looked like Sunnydale does, and that’s some millions of people, Spike. What the hell were you all thinking?”

    “Yeah, well, not evacuating LA was Angel’s call, not mine,” Spike said. “Probably no one would’ve have listened to us, anyway,” he added. “You can ream him out for it.”

    “I’ve been too busy reaming him out for not telling me about you,” Buffy said. “When I wasn’t giving him the silent treatment. Do either of you have any respect for me at all? Let’s just leave Buffy grieving, it’ll be a laugh!”

    “That wasn’t what I was thinking,” Spike said.

    “Well, what the hell were you thinking, because I just don’t get it, Spike. I would never have known you were alive. You want to explain that?”

    Spike hesitated, and then shook his head.

    “Okay, you want to explain why you did it all over again tonight?”

    “I’d have thought that one was obvious,” Spike said.

    “What, Angel?” Buffy asked.

    Spike shrugged.

    “Because you happened to wake up on two people who had just passed out from exhaustion and blood loss from trying to bring you the hell back.” She glared at him. “I’d have thought that was obvious, since you took the damn blade out of your hand.”

    “It was just hard to watch,” he said quietly.

    Buffy sighed. “At least you came back, this time,” she said. “Why did you?”

    He held up his hand. It was ripped open, still oozing blood. “I smelled you,” he said. “Your blood is pretty distinctive, pet. It’s a little tainted with Angel’s, but... I’m actually saturated with the two of you at the moment. Was that the plan?”

    “No,” Buffy said. “Angel surprised me tonight.” She relayed the information about the ritual.

    “So where is he?”

    “He went to let his girlfriend out,” Buffy said. “She’s sort of... locked up.”

    “Right,” Spike said.

    Buffy was just as annoyed by his casual acceptance as she was by his walking off. “And you knew he had a girlfriend,” she said. “Did you know about Cordelia?”

    “A little.”

    “So you knew he wasn’t after me.”

    “I know nothing of the kind,” Spike said. “He still goes on about your forever love, your bloody destiny.” He shook his head. “He’d take you in an eye blink.”

    “And you didn’t think to ask me first?” Buffy demanded.

    Spike’s injured hand clenched in a fist, and he stepped away. Here they were, reunited for less than ten minutes, and all that anger and defensiveness had risen a wall between them again.

    “I don’t understand,” Buffy said – pleaded, almost. “How could you do that? Just throw this – us – how could you throw us away like that?”

    “I wasn’t throwing this away. I just... couldn’t decide what to do.”

    “So you abandoned me.”

    Spike whirled on her, his voice firm. “No!”

    “What did I do wrong, Spike? I thought you trusted me.”

    “I did. I do. I... thought I did.” Spike sighed. “Buffy,” he said. “At first I couldn’t – I couldn’t leave LA, and I couldn’t touch anything, so I couldn’t even call you. And Angel wouldn’t, and...” He shook his head. “I just... I started to doubt.”

    “You doubted me,” Buffy said, hurt.

    “No. I doubted me,” Spike said. “Buffy, I was going to hell,” he said. “I kept flashing out of reality, and I... I found myself in hell. I mean, what did that mean? Everything I did, all the pain I went through, all the torture, all the suffering, all the madness, even the ultimate bloody sacrifice, and I was going to hell. Maybe it wouldn’t have mattered to you, but... it mattered to me. You deserved better than that.”

    “Than a reformed demon who hadn’t redeemed himself completely?” Buffy asked. “You think I wouldn’t have wanted you to keep trying?”

    “I did keep trying,” he said. “But I did it... without burdening you with it.”     

    Buffy lost the tentative reign she’d tried to put on her temper. “If I hear one more martyred vampire tell me that he was avoiding me for my own good, I’m going to scream.”

    “I wasn’t playing the martyr, that’s Angel’s game.”

    “Then what is your game?”

    Spike felt flustered, and completely at sea. “I don’t have a game!” he cried out, his hands to his eyes. Then he had to pull them away, because both hands hurt like hell. He sank down onto the guest couch and tried to breathe. Everything hurt, he just wanted to go to sleep, the love of his life was glaring at him, and he had to find a way to explain what he had never even properly explained to himself. “I was afraid, all right?” Spike said.

    Buffy’s hands clenched in irritation. “Of what?”

    “Of this,” Spike said. “This moment. This fight. This... thing. This... whatever was going to happen. I was afraid you’d yell at me, or hate me, or wouldn’t know what to do with me.”

    “Since when has that ever stopped you?” Buffy asked.

    “I.... It just did.”

    “You thought I’d turn on you?” she asked. “God, you’re a jerk. You know, I thought you knew me. I thought you believed in me.”

    “I do.”

    “Doesn’t look like it,” Buffy pointed out. “You know, I thought you were just trying to protect me, but... I was there at the Hellmouth with you. You heard what I said. Did you think I’d make that up?”

    “No.”

    “You think I’d throw everything away, forget what you’d done, what we had been to each other? You really think I was lying?”

    “No,” Spike said, a quaver in his voice. “I was afraid you were telling the truth.”

    Her anger faded a bit. Whatever he’d been thinking, he seemed to be getting to it. Buffy stood up off the bed and went to him, kneeling on the floor so she could look at him.

    “I believed you,” he said, refusing to meet her gaze. “It just... it hurt. After so long... longing for you in so many ways... to know the end was coming, and have complete bliss put before me, only to burn to ash in my hand. I didn’t want it. Not then. It was only going to hurt both of us.”

    “I had to,” Buffy said. “It was my last chance. It was the first time I was sure. What love was, what it meant. I reached out, and I felt you, and... there was no real change in how I felt about you... I just finally knew it was there. It was... like what we had had been too big and complicated to sort through before, and the love was just mixed up in all of it, hiding in it. I don’t even know when it showed up, but it was there. It hurt that you wouldn’t accept it.”

    “It felt so good to hear it,” Spike said. “But what? Have love die for you again? You said it yourself – the moment you call it love, it’s doomed.”

    “It was already doomed,” Buffy whispered. “Why not name it?”

    Spike shook his head. “It just didn’t feel fair to either of us.”

    Buffy sighed. “Love or no... I still don’t understand how you could let... this... die down there,” she said. “Why wouldn’t you let it come back with you?”

    “Because it was already gone,” Spike said. “Buffy,” he said. His eyes looked so lost, like a little boy. “I haven’t been my own man since I met you. I don’t know who the hell I am anymore. All I know about myself is that I belong, heart and soul, to you. I mean, how is that fair to either of us?” His head sank. “Yeah, I knew you were grieving,” he said. “I was too. But I knew you could handle it. You had your slayers, you had your Scoobies, the niblet, you had all you needed to keep going. All I’d ever had was you, and...” He closed his eyes. “Soul or not, it just seemed like an empty spirit to offer.”

    Buffy was annoyed. “So, like Angel, you made that choice for me.”

    Spike shook his head. “I never made a choice,” he said wearily. “I let the wind take me, and wished I’d just been allowed... to stay dead.”

    Realization dawned. “Oh,” Buffy said. She let the moment hang for a long time, as Spike stared at the floor, and she stared at Spike.“So you and I,” she said, no anger left anymore. “You just let it be finished.”

    “After a while,” he said. He rubbed one eye. “I spun in circles a lot. Living itself just seemed... complicated enough, and it was easier to not... really care.”

    “Or feel,” Buffy said quietly.

    He got very distant then, his eyes closed, his soul very far away.

    “I get it, now,” she said. “You can make crazy decisions when you were ready for it all to be over.” She felt such sympathy for him. “You know I know that.”

    “It’s not quite the same,” Spike said, refusing to look at her. “I wasn’t pining for heaven, I was being dragged into hell, over and over and over again.”

    “But you felt finished,” she said. “As if nothing were quite real... and this wasn’t meant to be your life.”

    “I guess,” he whispered. “I tried not to think about it that hard. I told Angel, before this last fight, no bloody jewelry. I’ve just been existing, not really... living. Things were dropped on me, and I reacted. I tried not to think beyond the moment. I didn’t look forward, I barely looked behind. A fight, a death, a mission, whatever fell in front of me. Anything beyond the moment seemed out of reach with... too many possibilities, and choices that weren’t supposed to be mine. Angel’s the one who thinks in forevers. I only wanted to think in now. It was just... you and me, it felt... too big. Too far away. Too important.” He cringed a little. “It was hard to face.”

    “Life can be,” Buffy said. She crept up closer to him and placed her hand on his bleeding one. “Life is complicated, and crazy, and painful.” Then she smiled. “Life’s not a song,” she whispered to him, an echo. “Life isn’t bliss. Life is just this.” She let go his hand and touched his cheek. “Don’t throw this away.”

    He sighed, with something akin to relief, and some of the terror left his eyes. “I don’t want to,” he said. “I just didn’t know how to reach for it again. Just going on was hard enough, and you... terrify me. You tear me apart, Buffy. If you love me, or if you hate me... either way, I’m lost.”

    Buffy considered this for a long moment. “Do you want me to just leave?” she asked.

    There was a beat as he considered it, and then his face crumpled. “Oh, god, no,” he breathed. His breath caught and he nearly collapsed into tears of panic. He pulled her close and held her tightly – tighter than he knew, with all the slayer’s strength in his system, but Buffy didn’t care. “Buffy...” he breathed.

    “It’s over, Spike,” she whispered into his ear, knowing that was all there was to say. She kissed his jaw and ran her nose along his hairline. “It’s over.” She pulled away and he gazed at her, fully there with her, the wall of defensiveness down completely. She gave him a brief kiss. “I’m in front of you now.” She smiled. “So. React.”

    He bit his lower lip seductively and leaned toward her, breathing in her scent – god, her scent had driven him crazy from the first night he met her – and sensuously nuzzling up to her ear. “I love you, slayer,” he whispered, his cool breath sending a shiver up her spine. She kissed him properly then, gently, passionately, just the smallest edge of teeth to please the demon in him.

    When they separated, his eyes were languid with desire. “Bloody hell, I suddenly want to bite you,” he said. He gave her a peck and pulled away with a smile. “I’m going to have to wait at least eight weeks, you suicidal git.”

    Buffy hugged him, kissing gently at his throat before she whispered in his ear. “I guess that means we’ll have to stay together at least that long.”

    “At least,” he whispered back.

    “Not too far beyond the moment?” she asked.

    “Not at all.” He kissed her neck, licking and nibbling on it gently until she was weak in the knees with it, then actively faint – again. She sank, and he caught her. “Whoops,” he said. He made himself stand, picked her up and carried her back to the bed. “Ow,” he grunted as he set her down. “Bugger,” he said.

    “What?”

    “You’re a blooded victim, I feel like a train hit me, we’re gonna have to wait to do anything else, either.”

    Buffy almost laughed as she realized he was right. Neither of them were up for it, even if they were a lot more careful than either of them much liked to be. “Well, I guess we’ll just have to stay close,” she said. She shifted in the bed and held out her arms. He slipped off his coat and joined her with a sigh. He pulled her against him in the way that always made him feel like a completed puzzle, all the pieces in place. “Oh, thank god,” she sighed. “I’ve been holding you for a week all dead, I’ve been longing to feel you breathing.”

    “You’ve been holding me?” he asked.

    “Mm-hm,” Buffy hummed, nuzzling into his chest.

    “Sorry I missed it.”

    “I’ll do it again,” she said.

    He kissed the top of her head. “I’m looking forward to it.”

    Buffy sighed happily. “You don’t want to run away again?” she asked.

    “Of course I do, love. I’m scared to death,” he said. “This takes terrified to a level beyond all sense or sanity.”

    “But are you going to?”

    Spike shook his head. “No.”

    “Good,” Buffy said. “I didn’t want to have to strap you down again.”

    Spike chuckled, and then asked what he had to ask. “And Angel?”

    “What about Angel?”

    “I know you still love him.” There was no judgement in his tone. Only truth.

    Buffy sighed. “I do, in my way,” she said. “But Angel’s not enough. Love isn’t enough, not by itself. You know,” she shifted to look up at him, “when I fell in love with Angel, it was pure. It was really easy to see, because there was nothing else. It was young. It was empty. But with you... there was always so much between us. There still is, so much more than love.” Then she reached up and kissed him. “But the love’s there, too.”

    “You’re sure?” he asked.

    “I’m sure,” she said. “It’s been there a long time. It was just complicated. A lot harder to see it in all the mess.”

    “So, at least we’re still messed up,” Spike said. “Glad we’re on familiar ground.”

    Buffy laughed. “So this is back?” Buffy asked. “We have this, you and I?”

    “We have this,” Spike said. He squeezed her hand, bending down to whisper into her mouth before he kissed her. “And no matter how this changes, love, or what it becomes, or what gets tangled up in it... I am never, ever, going to throw this away.”