Note: Thanks to my beta t_geyer for her unending patience, perseverance and support.

Note the second: It's mostly post NFA with just a couple of bits set pre GiQ. I know the timeline might not quite fit with canon but, you know Andrew... He might have seen them snuggling once and be exaggerating and Angel's spy could have been unconscious for days...




Chapter 1


"Hi-."

"Willow, this is Giles. I'm sorry to be rather abrupt but I'm calling from the office and you know what the international call rates are like."

Willow suppressed a sigh and wondered if it was worth trying, yet again, to explain to her technophobic boss that they could talk just as easily using an instant messaging program for the price of a local rate call. Instead she decided to stick to the basics. "What's up, Giles?"

"Ehm, well, actually, I was wondering if you had heard anything from Buffy lately?"

"Buffy, not so much," Willow admitted reluctantly, but then Buffy was always the same when there was a new guy on the horizon. "Dawn drops me an email most weeks." Over the crackle of the line she could hear Giles taking a deep breath.

"Has Dawn mentioned anything about Buffy acting strangely, at all? Anything about say a new demon boyfriend?" the watcher probed.

Willow gave a sigh. "No. She hasn't. Giles, you tried interfering between Buffy and Spike and it sooo didn't end well. Maybe this time you should let Buffy make her own choices? She might make mistakes..." Like I did with Kennedy, the little voice inside her head added. And where was Giles and his over-protective father routine, then? "But she's got to make them on her own."

"If only it were so simple," Giles answered. "I received a report today from one of our junior slayers in Rome. Some of the girls were patrolling last night when they saw Buffy and her new boyfriend. They didn't want to intrude, but..." Giles voice seemed to fade away, as though he couldn't bring himself to say what was needed.

"Giles?"

"Buffy and her new paramour beat up someone... rather severely."

Willow shook her head. It just couldn't be. "Buffy wouldn't-."

"Ordinarily, I would wholeheartedly concur, but I have the word of three slayers and a doctor's report to prove it. I was wondering if perhaps..."

"Giles, I'm booked solid for the next three weeks." He should know, since he was the one who had filled up her schedule so completely.

"August will have to do then... I'll have my secretary arrange the flights. Why don't you get in touch with Dawn or Buffy and see if they'll be able to put you up? If I book myself a hotel, that should allow you and Buffy ample time for all those important best friend chats and I should be able to bring one of the others up to speed by then. At least enough to hold the fort for a couple of weeks."

And again with that twinge of envy. "You're going to leave one of the geriatrics in charge?" She would have to turn all evil and veiny again before Giles would pack his bags and leave one of the retired watchers running the show. Buffy just had to... Okay, maybe turn evil.

"They may not be in the first bloom of youth, Willow, but they're all we have right now... Would you rather I put Andrew in charge?"

---

"Look, Andrew!" Giles bellowed down the phone line. "I really don't care how you do it. Tell her you're decorating and you're allergic to the paint fumes. Tell her the exterminators are there. Burn the damn building to the ground if you must, but find a reason why you have to leave your house and move in with Buffy for the next three weeks."

---

"You've got to go, Giles," Buffy replied with a pout and a couple of subtle bats of her eyelashes, wafting the invitation in its heavy envelope between Giles and his copy of The London Times. "It's the biggest social event in Rome in all August."

Giles remained resolute. "That's because the population of Rome goes on holiday for the entire month of August and moves en masse to Ostia."

"Okay, so all the nightclubs and everything are shut. More reason to make sure you enjoy yourself while you can and I know you're thinking you'll be the oldest guy there... well, except for Immi and he doesn't count, but I'm sure there'll be lots of... mature people there, maybe even a mature babe or two. You can't make Willow go without a partner 'cause she doesn't speak Italian and her ass would end up black and blue and you look way handsome in a tux. Ple-ease, Giles. You can't make her go with Andrew..." The slayer finally took a breath. "Actually, you really can't make her go with Andrew since you shipped him off to California for the duration of your visit, so you're so totally under a moral obligation to save her from having to go alone."

"I did not send him to California for the duration of my visit. I just sent him off to investigate what happened in LA. The reports were confused enough to possibly indicate something of supernatural origin." Giles gave a snort of disdain. "Some of the newspapers even had eye-witnesses claiming that there was a dragon. I mean to say... A dragon in downtown Los Angeles?"

"I still say we should just have rung Angel and asked him what the sitch was," Buffy answered screwing up her face slightly. "Not that I'm not glad to have Geek Boy out of my hair for a while..."

Giles' back stiffened noticably. "The firm that Angel is working for is notorious in demon circles. It is responsible for some of the most heinous events of the last millenium. We can't have any truck with them. First it's a phone call, then it's a favour and then you find yourself doing business with Beelzebub himself. No, Buffy. So long as Angel and his associates remain in the employ of Wolfram & Hart we cannot have any dealings with them."

Buffy's cheeks burned at the idea of the name at the top of the embossed invitation in her hand. They couldn't be that bad. What Giles didn't know wouldn't hurt him... and these guys dealt with the rich and famous. There were opera singers, fashion designers, soap opera stars, some of those boy bands chosen for their ability to dance that Dawn liked so much... Everyone who was anyone and who hadn't done the annual trek to the sea for August was celebrating Ferragosto at the Wolfram & Hart ball.

"Okay, so, no talking to Angel..." Buffy sighed in mock submission. "But you'll come, right?"

Giles rolled his eyes. He knew that Buffy was deliberately using her reluctant agreement to cut off communication with Angel as leverage, but that didn't make him feel any less obligated. "Alright. I'll go."

---

Angel slit open the expensive envelope with some puzzlement. It was the first mail that they had had, other than utility bills, since they moved back into The Hyperion. No one else knew where they were.

"Ilona Costa Bianchi on behalf of the Rome offices of Wolfram & Hart

would like to invite Angel and guest to attend their

Annual Ferragosto Ball

at the Grand Hotel Parco dei Principi on August 15th."

Spike raised an eyebrow in his direction, sitting down in the chair opposite Angel and putting his boots up on the antique desk. "So?" he asked. "What's up?"

Angel tossed the envelope to Spike, who was surprised to see that it was addressed to them both rather than just Angel. The blond pulled out Angel's invitation and an almost identical one with his name on it. "Trap?"

"Trap," Angel agreed.

"Senior Partners a bit pissed off at you nicking their mojo, I reckon," Spike suggested.

"Probably. Might as well put them in the bin-." Angel paused, noting the expression of consideration on Spike's face as he looked at the back of his invitation.

"Oh no, Angel Cakes," the younger of the two vamps ground out as he placed his invitation, reverse side up, on Angel's desk and turned it so that the inscription in Ilona's handwriting was plain for his grandsire to see. "I don't know about you and the cocker spaniel, but me and Blue are going to Rome. We've got some unfinished business to attend to."

Angel looked at the other vampire and then back at the invitation and back up again. "It's still a trap, you know," he reasoned.

"I know," Spike assured him with a bitter grin. "They just came up with some bait that I don't particularly want to resist."

 
Note: Thanks to my beta t_geyer for her unending patience, perseverance and support.



Chapter 2


"So..." Nina's gaze flicked briefly to Spike before she returned to interrogating her boyfriend. "What you're trying to say is that you guys are going to go to Rome for the weekend?"

"Well, not really for the whole weekend. The plane picks us up on Friday. We get to Rome more or less in time to check into a hotel for the day. We go to the party and we're on a plane back as soon as it's dark on Sunday... Assuming that it isn't all a trap and that they're not planning to leave us stranded in Italy. It's not like we're going to be going sightseeing or anything. It's just one party."

"Like I was saying, you're going to Rome for the whole weekend. You're going to this high society party?"

"Well, it's Wolfram & Hart so more like dregs of society really." Angel did his best to make it all seem reasonable, despite Spike smirking at him over Nina's shoulder, his smile saying more clearly than words, 'I told you so!'

"You're going to an expensive party, with movie stars and opera singers and millionaire playboys?"

"Okay, yeah, I guess."

"A party where your 'forever love' is just going to happen to be there?"

Angel sighed. "It's not so much that she just happens to be there. And I'm over Buffy. I'm moving on... I'm moving on with you." The vampire threw his hands in the air. "Look, Buffy is so not the issue here."

"You're going to a party that this girl you're so over is going be at... and even though your invitation says 'and guest', you expect me to just stay home? Me, an art student. Rome? Galleries galore? And you're telling me that you want me to stay home? The last chance I'll probably get for a free ride to Rome?"

Spike stepped forward so that he was standing shoulder to shoulder with Nina. "The girl does have a point, Angel."

"Shut up, Spike!" Angel rounded on his companion. "This is meant to be a private conversation. What are you even doing here?"

"You want private, then you'd be better talking in your room instead of in the office of this supposed private detective business that we're meant to be running," the blond grouched back. "'Sides till you actually find some detecting to do, this is all the entertainment there is."

Angel scowled back but knew if he got diverted into an argument with the other vampire he was lost. So ignoring Spike, he tried another tack. The puppy dog eyes. "Look, Nina, it's not that I don't want to take you. It's just that we're not going to this party to have fun-."

"What?" Spike asked sounding horrified. "You're telling me that getting hold of that officious prick and making him pay for what happened to Fred isn't going to get that shrivelled little walnut you call a heart racing? ...Well, metaphorically, anyway. 'Cause I call that fun. I call that heaps of fun."

"Really not helping, Spike!" Angel ground out through clenched teeth before he turned back to Nina and resumed his plea. "Things could get really ugly. This whole thing is probably some huge trap. We could be attacked the minute we arrive."

"Things already got pretty ugly, 'round about when you tried to cut me out of the invitation. Last time you went rushing off to see her we weren't officially dating. I let it slide. You say you're moving on with me... but if you get on that plane to Rome without me, you'll be moving on alone when you get back. If it's as dangerous as all that, why's Spike taking a date?"

"Spike's-." Angel started, about to argue.

"I'm taking someone because Buffy and I are over," Spike stated with grim determination, as if this were something that he repeated to himself a dozen times a minute. "Buffy's moved on, I've got a life here that doesn't revolve around her and I'm not going to put my libido on hold while I wait to see if she changes her mind. I'm going to show her that I can get a bird, who could not only wipe the floor with her skinny arse if it came to a fight..." Just for a second, Spike's eyes glazed over as he pictured the goddess and the slayer wrestling each other in a swimming pool... with bubble bath.

Angel cleared his throat loudly.

"Yeah, right, well... Not only could she kick slayer arse, but she could make her look like Cletus the slack-jawed yokel. Hell, she could make her little witch friend look dumb and she can give Buffy a run for her money in the looks stakes as well. I don't want to look like some sad bastard who can't tell when to call it quits and move on."

All of a sudden Angel pictured how it would look if he bumped into Buffy with The Immortal and he was there at the biggest social event of the Rome year on his own. "Maybe you should come," he answered in an abrupt about face. "And you should buy yourself a really nice dress... or I should. Get whatever you want. I'll pay you back... but if we run into The Immortal, no fornication, right?"

 

---

 

The Immortal leaned forward and pressed a kiss against the back of Buffy's neck.

The slayer stirred gently in her sleep but didn't wake.

Willow glanced over from the armchair where she'd been watching the TV as the demon began to lever himself out from behind his girlfriend as carefully as possible. "Long day with all the sightseeing and stuff," she said in an apologetic tone.

"Is o-." the demon stilled in his efforts to extricate himself from his horizontal position on the sofa as Buffy whispered in her sleep.

"Spike? Don't go."

Willow's gaze dropped to her feet unable to meet The Immortal's eye as he finally stood up.

"I'll see you in the morning, bella," he told the witch, keeping his back to her as he made for the door, his tone very carefully neutral.

 

---

 

"You wish for me to modulate my form?" Illyria asked Spike in a supercilious tone.

"I just thought it would be nice for you to receive the worship and adoration you deserve." Spike tried gamely to convince the former god-king. It wasn't that Spike really thought he had much chance of pulling it off, and turning up as the escort of a goddess was going to stir up the green-eyed monster inside the slayer whatever way you cut it. Turning up with a goddess, in an evening dress that would put Liz Hurley to shame would be a damn sight more fun and if Buffy was with that git, The Immortal, then having some fun at her expense was the least he could do.

Illyria tilted her head to one side, staring into the vampire's face as if she would read his mind. "You care nothing for the regard of the rest of these vermin or the honour they may pay me. You grant me little respect. You care only for the glory that may be reflected upon you."

Spike gave a gentle shake of his head and matched it with an equally gentle smile, raising a finger to brush aside the strands of mingled brown and blue hairs that obscured her face and tuck them behind her ear. "That's where you're wrong, bluebird. Us vermin ," he said with a half chuckle, "when we stand together in a fight like we did the other week... When there are just a handful of us against what seems like the rest of the world and we fight shoulder to shoulder and we buck the odds and make it through, then we give the ones who fought alongside us our respect... And more."

Illyria's head tilted a little further.

"For us vermin, it's times like that make for bonds that last a lifetime. A few years from now we might all have gone our separate ways... or maybe not," he added with a flirtatious grin, "but when we need some help from someone we can really depend on, those will be the ones we trust. And that's why we're doing this, because Fred was one of us, the best of us. She probably wouldn't approve of what we have in mind, but we don't take it lightly when someone hurts one of our own because it hurts us all. Maybe the witch wouldn't have been able to do anything, but it's just possible that she could have. Now we'll never know and that's down to the watcher.

Can't help thinking if Wes had had Fred to come back to, then he'd have found a way to make it back from Vail's. Part of him died with Fred and he was still grieving when the shit hit the fan. He didn't want to go on without her, but I kinda think if he was still here, then he'd be the first one on that plane. So since he can't be here to do it, we're gonna do it for him."

The vampire walked to the door, opened it and turned to say one last thing. "Look how you want, pet. We'll still knock 'em dead."

Note - Thanks to my beta, t_geyer, for her unending patience, perseverance and support.


Chapter 3


Giles put down his cup of Darjeeling, his expression becoming more serious as he paused until the waiter had taken away the plates from his and Willow's lunch.

"You still haven't really said what you think of him," he finally prompted, after the man was far enough away not to easily overhear.

"That's because I don't know what I think," Willow admitted. She swivelled her cup on its saucer with one finger. "He's charming, sure. And I guess for a guy, he's okay in the looks department, but the whole good-evil thing? I don't know."

"Have you asked her yet about what happened with Mr. Giovannelli?"

Willow raised her eyes to the heavens before she looked sceptically at her employer. "Sure, Giles. It was the first thing I did!" She switched to a sing-song aggressively cheerful tone of voice. "Say, Buffy, pass the cornflakes... and by the way, we were just wondering about that guy you put in hospital and whether maybe you've gone all evil?" She sighed her frustration. "We've been here three days, Giles, and before that we've hardly spoken in a year. It's going to take a little longer."

"Maybe I should ask her about it... in my official capacity, of course," Giles suggested, running a slightly nervous hand through his hair. It was plain to see that this was in complete opposition to his natural inclination.

Willow couldn't blame him. The relationship between him and Buffy had never really recovered after he had returned to England the second time. Her mother would have said that it was Buffy's abandonment issues that prevented her from trusting the watcher after that. The way Willow saw it, Buffy might eventually have forgiven Giles for leaving. It was Giles' conspiracy with Robin Wood to kill Spike that kept them apart. Their conversations were brittle things these days. They tried not to hurt one another, tried to pretend that if they went through the motions often enough that they'd eventually be able to act like father and daughter again. Every time there was an expectant silence, every time the subject was swiftly changed, the jagged little secrets that Buffy kept, ripped at the watcher for all to see. The slayer never went so far as to tell Giles to mind his own business, or that he wasn't welcome, but the time when he was the one with whom she shared her confidences had long since passed.

Before they got here, she had envied Buffy her place in the watcher's affections. She had always compared Giles' attentiveness to the slayer with her own parents' neglect and thought that Buffy was the lucky one. Now she was almost thankful for her parents' perpetual absences. If Giles used the authority of his position to force Buffy to provide the answers they wanted, then, as far as Buffy was concerned, he might as well change his name to Quentin Travers.

She gave him a little smile, hoping it looked more optimistic than she felt. "Why don't we save that for a last resort? Maybe I'll do some background checks on Mr. Giovannelli. Could be if we know a bit more about him... "

"Mr. Giovannelli is a private detective," Giles broke in. It seemed he had already done his homework. "The first number he dialled on his mobile phone when he got out of hospital was the offices of Wolfram & Hart in Los Angeles. The firm had been Mr. Giovannelli's only client for more than six months when he was hospitalised but the cheque he received this month was less than half the normal monthly amount, suggesting that he is no longer under contract to them. All this may explain why Buffy would look on him with disfavour. It is a very long way from explaining why he was beaten so badly."

"We'll work on that, Giles, after the party."

---

Nina had taken Angel at his word when he had told her to buy what she wanted. The bill for her little shopping trip had made the vampire look positively ashen, but she knew that he'd hoarded plenty of cash while he was in charge of Wolfram & Hart and while he might not like it, which had been part of the point, it wasn't as if he couldn't afford it. Her floor-length bias-cut satin sheath was somewhere between silver grey and palest beige, making her newly highlighted hair seem positively bright in comparison. Diamond studs glittered in her ears and in a sparkling tear at the hollow of her throat. Walking into the hotel on Angel's tuxedo-covered arm she was the picture of understated elegance.

Spike, naturally, had ignored the 'black tie' on the invitation and gone with black shirt and no tie instead, the outfit very similar to what he had worn to Anya and Xander's non-wedding, though since it had gone on Angel's tab at the tailors' he'd upped the quality a few notches.

There was only one word for Illyria and that was resplendent. She wore a choker of clear blue, square-cut sapphires, each surrounded by bands of diamonds. Sapphires also dotted the sheer iridescent cobalt blue fabric of her dress, a fabric that Spike, for all his years of dressing Dru, was unable to classify and probably one that didn't belong in this dimension or possibly any dimension. The dress was lined with pale silk in the exact shade of her skin but only so far as midthigh, and its skirt flowed as she moved, to provide tantalising glimpses of her shapely legs. Yet, when she wasn't moving she seemed demurely swathed. Fred would probably have looked awkward and ill at ease. Despite the medium-height heels she had affected, Illyria strode into the room as only a goddess could. Even amidst the reception area's overblown opulence, its highly polished panelling, moulded ceilings, marble columns and crystal chandeliers she shone. She turned impatiently when she reached the front desk, waiting for Spike to catch up and take her arm.

The vampire produced his invitation and was directed toward the lift and the building's top floor. Holding out his arm, he matched his stride to Illyria's when she took it.

"You have a plan for when you meet this person who offended you?" Illyria asked in that curiously flat way of speaking that she had, so different from Fred's animated ramblings.

Spike grinned. "The way I look at it I can't go too far wrong so long as I keep asking myself, 'What would Wes do?' So, yeah, I guess you could say that I've got a plan."

Angel and Nina joined them in the elevator just as Spike finished talking but it was obvious that the elder vampire had heard every word. "You're not going to get arrested are you?"

"Anyone get charged with anything after all the carnage at your last Halloween party?" Spike asked, lifting an eyebrow.

"Well, no, but..."

"Wolfram & Hart will have their own security. They're not going to get the police involved in anything and, since it's most likely a trap anyway, we might as well have some fun before they get their licks in," Spike gleefully overruled his grandsire.

The lift doors opened and an elegantly dressed functionary inspected their invitations before he gestured to a nearby set of double doors. Even Angel had the good sense to shelve the dominance issues between him and Spike and let the former god-king and her escort be announced first.

The room was spacious, but far longer than it was wide. The ceiling was gridded by heavy timbers of reddish stained wood, dividing the roof into hundreds of massive skylights. In daylight the room would probably be almost as bright as your average greenhouse. Currently, lights set around the edges of each window made it only just possible to catch a glimpse of the night time sky.

---

It had been more than half an hour since The Immortal whisked Buffy off to introduce her to some opera diva, leaving Willow and Giles alone in a room full of strangers. Giles had been grouching about it on and off ever since, which was sort of understandable since he'd actually known who the woman was, even owning one of her recordings, whereas Buffy had rolled her eyes like the dutiful girlfriend being coerced into being nice before she strolled off in The Immortal's wake.

"I'm sure they'll-." Willow paused midsentence in her efforts to pacify the increasingly irate watcher. It was impossible. She could not just have heard the steward announcing William the Bloody. There was no William the Bloody. Her eyes locked on the couple emerging from the farthest doorway even as she heard Angel's name.

She knew that she couldn't really be seeing the vampire. There was no way. Buffy had said that the amulet was burning him up before she left and even if he survived that, either his skull would have been completely crushed by the weight of rock coming down on him or he would have burned up in the sunlight if he was at the surface... but there was Spike, and behind him Angel with quite the doll... if you went for the petite blonde type which Angel obviously did, but it was Illyria who left the witch with her jaw hanging open.

At first Willow thought that the group had seen her and Giles and was heading towards them but the blond seemed to curve off too soon. She had taken the guy standing by the wall as security, but it seemed that Spike, if it was Spike, knew him. Maybe he was just another guest after all. Angel held back, sweeping two glasses of champagne from a tray, passing one to Nina and then seeming to exchange words with the waiter.

"What on earth...? Willow?" the watcher asked irritably before he gave up on getting an answer and turned around to look for himself.

---

Angel began to get a bad feeling when he saw just where Spike was headed. What would Wes do? The vampire took two glasses of champagne from the nearest waiter and then tried out his phrase book Italian.

"Scusi. Dobbiamo telefonare per un'ambulanza." The waiter stared first at him and then seemed to search the room with a look of growing incomprehension.

Nina leaned in to whisper in Angel's ear. "You do know that you just asked him to call for an ambulance?"

Angel rolled his eyes and began again. "Parla inglese?"

---

Spike gave the security guy a deceptively friendly smile. "Parla inglese, per favore, signor?" he asked in an accent so perfect that it gave the lie to his claim not to know any of the language.

"Yes, sir. How can I be of help?" the man asked, returning the compliment.

"You're one of Wolfram & Hart's security, right?" the vampire asked.

The man nodded. "Si. Is there a problem?"

"No, no, nothing like that. My lady friend and I were just having a discussion about what sort of guns you would be carrying. She thought you'd most likely have the same standard issue as the guys the firm uses in The States. I reckoned either a nine mil Baretta or a twenty-two."

The guard caught the edge of his jacket and pulled it out slightly to allow Spike a brief view of the butt of a twenty-two calibre pistol in a shoulder holster. The gun, Spike knew, was reputed to be favoured by the Mafia as its small calibre meant that, fired at close range, it had the momentum to enter the skull but not come out the other side, with the result that the bullet would bounce around inside the brain until it came to rest.

Faster than the guard's eyes could follow, Spike had removed the piece from its holster and balanced it in his hand. "So is there a safety catch on this or do you just cock it like they do in the movies?" he asked, matching words to motion, as if he had never handled a gun. He turned away slightly as if to try to catch the light better, but really getting Giles in his line of sight and blocking the guard's attempts to get his gun back with his shoulder.

For a small gun, it still made a lot of noise when it went off.

"Ooopsie!" Spike gave an embarrassed grin and passed the gun back to the guard, holding the butt between his thumb and index finger as if it were a poisonous snake.

Twenty feet away Giles' leg gave out under him and when he pressed his hand to his calf it came away bright with blood.

Spike took Illyria's arm, led her back to where Angel's waiter was rooted to the spot in shock and helped himself to drinks for Illyria and him. "Good job I didn't damage any hotel property," he remarked to his grandsire. "Everything about here looks pretty damn pricey."

Angel tilted his head on one side and screwed his face up as if having difficulty reaching a decision. "Wes would have taken out the kneecap," he finally pronounced with a mixture of admiration and disappointment.

"Wes wouldn't have to listen to the slayer bitch about it afterward," Spike countered, his eyes following the wake of people who seemed to have been pushed to one side or another as Buffy made her way towards them.


Disclaimer - All writing is on a non-profit basis, purely for entertainment purposes. Use of any non-original material within any stories in no way implies ownership, be it from Buffy the Vampire Slayer, Angel the Series or any other film, television, musical or other source.

Note - Thanks to my beta, t_geyer, for her unending patience, perseverance and support.



Chapter 4


Willow sank to her knees, and held her hand out to Giles. "Tie?" she requested when he simply looked at her empty hand.

Even as she set about turning his bow tie into a tourniquet, Buffy came bustling over. "Giles, are you alright?" she asked in a concerned tone of voice that reminded the redhead of the old Buffy, high school Buffy... before Giles had been left behind, and then he left and everything.

The watcher looked at her, his impatient glare so familiar. "Of course I'm not bloody well alright!" he yelled. "Your bastard vampire just shot me."

"My vampire?" Buffy asked, sounding puzzled, but then maybe her slayer sense kicked in and a look of awe settled on her features.

"I believe he means me..." Spike answered, sauntering up behind Buffy, waving his champagne flute to emphasise his words.

Buffy's eyes almost glowed with joy and Willow knew that, concerned as she was about the watcher, he was no longer her first priority... at least until the vampire continued.

"...But then Rupert always was a bit behind the times."

Only Willow and Giles saw the way Buffy's face crumpled before she did her brave little toaster act, schooling her trembling lip into submission and forcing her eyes to go cold.

Spike smirked behind her back. "He can't mean Angel because he was busy trying to talk the waiter into getting an ambulance."

Buffy turned, coming to stand next to the witch. "You shot Giles, Spike?" she demanded, covering the hurt with indignation, trying to tell herself that whoever these far too attractive and elegant women on Angel's and Spike's arms were, they were just friends, and stifling the urge to ask how he could be back and not let her know. She didn't even pause for breath before she turned on Angel. "And you knew what he was going to do but didn't even try to stop him?"

Both vampires tilted their heads first slightly to one side and then the other, gave identical grimaces and then shrugged and nodded in unison at her assessment of the situation.

Buffy stepped forward and swung her hand, palm open in an arc toward Spike's face, but the vampire grabbed her wrist, forcing her arm down.

"Uh-huh, slayer!" he told her, staring into eyes that seemed to burn into him with their hostility. "You gave up your free pass when you started seeing The Impotent." Then, he nodded toward the goddess. "It's her job to hit me now." Almost nonchalantly, he pushed Buffy backward as he released her arm, so she stood in the same spot she had before she had made her attack.

Willow felt her heart freeze in her chest, skipping a beat as she got her first close look at Spike's escort. Recognition and abhorrence warred inside her and the champagne and entrees in her stomach came out losers. Fortunately, she managed to make the dash to the nearest planter of ferns before the final verdict was in. For the first time she began to wonder if whatever had brought Spike, Angel and their escorts halfway across the world to shoot Giles justified the watcher's punishment.

With her head over the huge plant-pot Willow heard the strangely emotionless accentless monotone, that was so unlike the vibrant young Texan whose face the demon was using.

"Yes, I beat Spike on a regular basis. I find it most relaxing ...though less so now that Angel no longer allows us to damage the furniture."

Buffy's mask of indifference finally cracked and she glared daggers at the blue-skinned demon. "And, other than your latest sparring partner, who does she think she is?"

Ilona, CEO of Wolfram & Hart's Rome office, breezed into the no man's land between the former Scoobies and the remnants of those who had stood against The Circle of the Black Thorn.

Willow found herself wishing she had a tissue and wondering why women with incredible breasts and sexy, inordinately powerful demons only happened along when she had vomit-breath.

In a sultry Italian accent, the babe began to explain. "She would be Illyria Wyrmslayer, Old One, current godling and former god-king of the primordium. We are most honoured to have you here... You look... like a goddess, which is as it should be, si?" She executed a neat curtsey, her extra long cigarette holder waving out to one side. "Now, what is with all the shooting, bello?" she asked, getting far enough into Spike's personal space to make the lines at the corner of Buffy's mouth slightly deeper. "We are thinking that here are many many old friends who would be making with the merry... not with the bullets."

Spike gave a grim smile and a shake of his head. "Faulty intel, pet. Rupert has never been my friend, 'specially not since he tried to have me killed. That sort of thing tends to put a damper on a relationship."

Giles, looked up at the vampire in astonishment. "That's what all this is about?" he asked incredulously. "I thought that had been settled. I mean..." His voice faltered slightly, looking embarrassed.

Spike gave the man sitting on the floor a look of total disdain. "You mean that you thought your total lack of any apology had completely won me over and I'd forgiven you?" he asked in a tone dripping with sarcasm. "Yeah, right. But if you mean had I decided to let sleeping dogs lie on that one, then, yeah. No harm, no foul. Isn't that what the Yanks say?"

"We're here to settle some slightly newer scores." The voice was Angel's and he waited until everyone's eyes were on him before he continued. "By our reckoning you have as many as three deaths to account for, but we'll be generous and say that Gunn might have died anyway, so call it two."

Willow could see big trouble brewing, but in the meantime she would really rather the only thing stopping Giles from bleeding to death wasn't a tourniquet that she had been responsible for applying. She knew enough about the theory of first aid to know that you were meant to loosen these things off every so often or you were just as likely to kill the patient with gangrene, but she had no idea how long you were meant to leave it or how long you were meant to loosen it off for. The sooner some sort of trained medic took over responsibility, the happier she would be, and this sounded as if it might take a while. She lifted her hand in the air, waving it around slightly until she had the attention of at least some of the people around her. "Ehm, not to interrupt the big exposition, but Giles... bleeding... you know?"

Giles actually looked rather pale, Willow suddenly noticed. What she couldn't work out was whether it was the result of pain and blood loss... or Angel's words.

"Well, I glad someone other than me remembers," the watcher barked.

"We remember," Angel replied, giving the Englishman a smugly satisfied smile. "We could probably give everyone else a refresher if you'd like though."

"And big deal," added Spike, in a tone that said he couldn't care less. "It's a flesh wound from a .22. Count yourself lucky the guards didn't have Uzis."

Willow was beginning to have visions of Giles bleeding out on the carpet while the two groups squabbled over his corpse until Ilona spoke up.

"Why don't we all go talk somewhere else and I will send for the house doctore?" she suggested. "I have a state room just along the corridor. We will have them bring champagne and food. It will be like our own private party."

Spike tilted his head toward the orchestra, asking in a facetious tone, "And miss all the entertainment?"

Ilona made another try, turning to Buffy and looking her up and down. In half a second she made Buffy feel like the dress she had spent days shopping for had been measured and found wanting, along with the girl inside it. "Perhaps you would like me to send for The Immortal?" she suggested, adding the mandatory sigh that seemed to follow his name whenever it was spoken by any attractive, or formerly attractive, Italian female. It was a habit that Buffy found more and more irritating as time went on. Maybe Giles would give her a waiver on the not using her powers on humans if he knew Ilona was the head of Wolfram & Hart.

Illyria gave a derisive snort. "In my time so transient a being would not dare to claim such an epithet. His flesh will wither and die and I will live on."

Buffy rolled her eyes at the woman on Spike's arm. "Hello? Immortal - as in lives for ever?"

Willow winced, realising that Ilona's description of Illyria had gone right over the slayer's head. As far as she was concerned immortal was immortal was immortal. Perhaps afterward she would get a chance to explain to her exactly how powerful the Old Ones had been.

Ilyria did an even better version of Ilona's assessment and turned to Spike. "You once found this simpleton worthy of affection?"

Spike and Angel exchanged glances before they both did the consider, shrug and nod routine again.

All the distance that had gradually built up between Willow and Buffy over the years since they had left high school meant nothing. She could almost feel Buffy's pain, fresh as the day Angel had rejected her or Spike had burned up to save the world... or the day they had believed he had at any rate.

"Come," encouraged Ilona. "We will go to my room and we will talk like adults... because this is our way. Americans, they resolve things by violence, but this is a civilised country." She nodded to one of the security guys, not the one who had given Spike his gun. That one seemed to have disappeared. Willow didn't blame him, civilised country or not. The guard helped Giles to his feet and began to steer him from the room, leaving the others with little option but to follow.

"And we're not bloody American," Willow heard Spike mutter under his breath.

Note: Thanks to my beta t_geyer for her unending patience, perseverance and support.


Chapter 5


Buffy grabbed Willow by the elbow as the group began to filter from the room, pulling her to the back and letting the others enter Ilona's stateroom without them. "Did you know?" the slayer hissed.

Willow had no need to ask what Buffy meant and it had nothing whatsoever to do with why Spike had shot Giles. "How would I know?" the redhead answered question for question.

"Well, Giles didn't seem to be too surprised."

Willow's eyes narrowed slightly as she thought back over the last five minutes. "No-o-o," she finally agreed, "he didn't, but he didn't let me in on the secret."

Buffy's face twisted into a scowl as she thought about the talk that she and Giles were going to have later. "What about Giles? Can't you just magic him better?"

"You mean without the goddess in the room noticing what I'm doing?" Willow retorted. "I'm kinda thinking that they're not going to come half way around the world to shoot him and then just stand by while I mojo him better. Besides, I know I can do it but I don't know whether I could do it without the Goth look making a come back... and until I hear what they've got to say, I'm not even sure I want to."

"But this is Giles," Buffy opined. "We can't just leave him."

"And that woman with Spike? The soul, the consciousness... whatever is inside is ancient and powerful and quite possibly evil, but the body that she's walking around in used to be Fred , who used to be human and sweet and could do things with string theory that I could barely understand and she used to be my friend... Have you stopped to think how much Giles must have pissed the four of them off for them to drop everything and come all this way? You do know that there was every chance that Spike might have ended up dead if the security guys were quicker off the mark? I mean not exactly a kamikaze mission, at least not if he's still a vampire, but not exactly risk-free either."

Buffy didn't care if Fred had been world macramé champion, but her face blanched as a long ago memory played in her head. Spike looking coyly at his boots. "Right person. Person I loved." Bright blue eyes, brimming with sincerity as he looked straight into her own. "I’d do it." As for whether he was a vampire, hanging out with The Immortal meant that Buffy hadn't exactly done a lot of slaying lately, but she hadn't forgotten that particular kick to her senses that was Spike. "He's still a vampire, Will. The only thing that's changed is who he's in love with."

She painted a brittle smile on her face as she felt The Immortal's approach, taking his hand as he joined them.

"What is the problem, bella? Ilona, she send someone to say that I should come."

Willow sensed that Buffy couldn't work out quite how to answer that, so she stepped in. "Same old, same old. Buffy's ex just came back from the dead and shot Giles. We'll have it all sorted out in no time." She pushed open the door to Ilona's rooms, letting the slayer and her escort enter before she slipped through and closed the doors behind them.

---

"Okay, now we talk," Ilona stated. "Why don't you begin, Angel? Is only fair that Mister Giles, he should know why it is that you should be wanting to shoot him. You talk. I phone the doctore."

Giles rolled his eyes. "I'm sure that someone must have phoned for an ambulance already and the police."

Spike grinned. "And I'm sure you haven't checked out the brochure on this place. Soundproofed rooms part of the deal. Maybe not the ballroom or whatever that was, but if all the rooms between there and the ground floor..." He gave an eloquent shrug.

His expression completely deadpan, Angel locked eyes with the council chief as the security guard lowered him onto one of the room's sofas. "I don't want Giles shot. I want Giles to die an excruciatingly painful, lingering death as his entrails liquefy inside him, knowing that the only way the agony will stop is when he dies."

The door opened and closed behind them as Angel spoke, Buffy, The Immortal and Willow slipping into the room.

Spike gave a melodramatic sigh. "Unfortunately, we didn't happen to have a non-communicable version of the Ebola virus to hand... Oh, and we might be into the 'eye for and eye' thing but if you hadn't had a hand in destroying her soul so that we don't even have the consolation of imagining that she might be watching us from heaven, then I figure Fred might have been watching and she wouldn't have approved. Of course, I wouldn't let that make you feel too comfortable, watcher, 'cause Wesley, he probably is watching... and 'round about now he's probably thinking I should have shot your balls off."

"Wesley?" Giles uttered in a shocked whisper.

In a fraction of a second Giles found himself dangling in mid-air, only his feet still touching the couch, Spike's fingers buried in his shirt front and the vampire's demonic face so close to his own that he could barely focus. "You fucking hypocritical wanker! The fact that Fred died in agony and that her soul is scattered to the four winds means nothing to you. A beautiful girl, and when I say beautiful I'm not talking about the outside, not that she wasn't easy on the eyes as you can tell from looking at our friend Illyria here, but a girl who would go out of her way for a virtual stranger, who'd put her own life on hold to help them out, a girl who had the brains to be the next damn Marie Curie if you'd given her half the chance... And you wouldn't even so much as make a phone call for her. And why? Because she worked for Wolfram & Hart? But you'll swig their champagne and stuff your face with the profiteroles of evil?"

"I have-," Giles gasped out.

"You have about a minute to live if you don't shut the hell up and listen. Fred was special but you treated her dying like taking out so much rubbish. You have the nerve to say that we're evil but you chose to let her die. Couldn't care less until one of your blue-blood inbred watchers gets listed in the casualties." Spike threw the watcher back down onto the sofa in disgust. "All we wanted you to do was to tell Red what was going on and ask if she could help... And you were so arrogant, so fucking sure, despite all the times you've been proved wrong before, that you alone knew what was right that you let that brilliant, generous, loving, noble woman not just die but be obliterated in this world and the next... for your vanity... but that means nothing to you because her folks were just ordinary Joes with hick accents who drove a bus and did whatever it was that her dad did and not home counties, double-barrelled watcher spawn. You make me sick."

"Giles?" Willow's voice trembled a she spoke. "Is this true?"

"I- well, I made a decision. You were busy in the field, trying to track down slayers. In retrospect... I may have made an error of judgement but, even if by some stretch of imagination you think I might have contributed to this woman's death, I don't see how I can be held responsible for any part in whatever happened to Wesley."

Spike looked as if he wanted to tell Giles how he came to be responsible for Wesley's death but the witch held up a hand in front of his face.

"But you knew that Fred was dying? You knew that they wanted my help? And you decided to keep that from me?" the witch asked. "Did you know that she was my friend?"

Giles looked irate for a second. "I thought you knew of our policy of non-communication with Wolfram & Hart and their employees?"

"And your concept of non-communication involves attending their annual ball?" Spike snarled before Willow could reply, the veins in his temple throbbing.

"I can't believe that you even think you have the right to criticise me because I happen to believe that Fred was the same person after she took that job as she was when she worked out of a run-down hotel." Willow's gaze seemed to settle on Spike for a few seconds before she went on to look at Angel. "Start at the beginning. Tell us everything that happened."

Note: Thanks to my beta t_geyer for her unending patience, perseverance and support.

Chapter 6

Angel was right where he liked to be, centre stage, and Spike didn't begrudge him the odd exaggeration of his heroic efforts on Fred's behalf. It was the way he seemed to be splitting his attention equally between drilling home the message to the watcher, who was now being tended to by the doctor that Ilona had summoned, that he had done a very bad thing and puffing like a rooster in front of Buffy that was making him want to punch the git's lights out. More especially, it was the effect that all that preening was having on Wolf Girl. The Poof could be such a total idiot.

With a whispered word to Illyria, they slipped sideways around the perimeter of the lower half of the split level suite, their movement making it awkward to maintain their former arm in arm pose so that Spike held Illyria's hand instead. They brushed past Buffy and The Immortal in the process. Spike gritted his teeth to help him resist the temptation to look the slayer's way when her head pivoted in his direction as he did so. One plaintive look and he knew he'd want to throw away everything he'd achieved in the last year. He'd had enough of being dangled on a string. Second best had been bad enough. He sure as hell wasn't about to hang around on the sub's bench now that he was even further down the order. He couldn't watch her try out yet another guy, especially not this guy... whether or not she thought she was ready for him to not be there. For once, he was damn well going to do what was right for him.

When he was behind Nina, he settled a comforting hand on her left shoulder as he leaned forward to whisper into her right ear. "He's not in love with her."

Nina's head twisted round, and her eyes locked with the vampire's, asking as clearly as if she had spoken the words out loud whether Spike knew something that she didn't.

Spike nodded in the direction of her boyfriend and she turned her gaze back toward Angel, though Spike was sure that she was now listening only to him.

"Oh, he's moron enough to think that he is..." he whispered, "but just wait until he's finished his little story and, then, when she has her back turned, you ask him what colour her eyes are... There's a chance, given the way he's making himself look like a complete tosser by playing to that particular section of the audience, that he might have realised his mistake, but a month ago he was making inquiries about a girl with blonde hair and blue eyes. And I don't care if all he's got to remind him is an eight by ten, black and white glossy, that's just not the kind of mistake you make when you really love someone."

Nina flicked a sideways glance. She got a very good look at Buffy's eyes, just the same, because the slayer was staring straight at the tableau that she, Illyria and Spike formed. Sometimes, Nina gauged, they might look hazel, but for now, jealousy made them appear emerald green.

Spike gave her shoulder one last squeeze and taking Illyria's hand again, he led her to the nearer of the two short staircases, one either side of the room that led up to the bedroom area of the suite. He climbed to the seventh or eighth step, before he turned and sat down, pulling out his cigarettes and a lighter.

Illyria hesitated slightly, and Spike patted the carpet at his side. In a hushed voice, so as not to interrupt Angel's narration, he pointed out, "Know you're not much for sitting down, prefer to be up an' hitting, but there's a way to go before grandpa gets to the Wes part of the story. Rupert's a tough old git. Shooting him got his attention, least long enough to make him sit still and listen, but if we really want him to hurt he has to understand... and the best way to do that is to let His Lardy Wideness keep talking."
Illyria's eyes swept the area next to Spike as if searching for the smallest speck of dust that might make it unfit for her to rest upon. Apparently the hotel cleaning staff must have been sufficiently industrious, for she took her seat.

---

Willow listened to Angel's story with a growing sense of horror. She didn't know if ultimately she could have saved Fred. She was, however, pretty sure that she could have created a temporal bubble around her that would have slowed the transition and bought them more time, and maybe that time might have allowed her and Wesley between them to find a way that they could alter the spell that would have returned Illyria's sarcophagus to The Well of Souls.

Since she didn't have the specifics of the spell Drogyn had spoken about, she didn't even dare to suggest that it might not even have been necessary to modify the spell at all. It obviously hadn't occurred to any of the LA crowd that had they done the spell from the centre of the well, they might have been able to summon the coffin through the earth, rather than around the earth. By taking the tomb to an abandoned mine or something, and surely with the connections of Wolfram & Hart they could have easily managed that, it could have been summoned straight down into the centre of the earth without risk of infecting anyone.

Logic insisted that there might have been any number of obstacles, but the further Angel got with his tale, the more that sense of connectedness which Willow had with the earth told her that she should have been able to help. Illyria didn't belong in this time. She was no longer part of their world, no longer a part of the natural order, and powerful as she was, Willow's intuition told her that during that critical transitional period, someone channeling the almost limitless power that connected all living things might have been able to force the goddess out of her friend's body.
Fred was dead and, whatever logic might say, in her heart Willow believed that Giles was to blame.

---

"After that Wes started drinking," Angel explained. "He was a different person. It was as if without her nothing else mattered to him. We knew that he took chances he probably shouldn't do... like diving through a portal after Illyria, but if he was a little reckless, that didn't mean he wasn't an intelligent man. Then, when things went down, the only way we could cover all the angles was for us to split up. He got the mage. We thought with his knowledge he'd be best able to defend himself. The guy was old... frail. We never thought Wes would go up against him spell for spell. It made no sense. I've never seen anyone better with a gun or pair of guns than Wes... He just needed to get a foot in the door and wait for a chance to take his shot and he would have had him. He had to know that, but all he took with him was a knife. He'd been carrying a pair of semi-automatics as more or less routine by that point, but that night he chose not to take them with him."

The vampire stared straight into Giles' eyes. "You took away his reason for living."

Giles glared right back. "I don't see how you can say that," he argued, but he didn't sound entirely convinced. "I assume he went into this situation on your say so. You didn't provide him with any backup. Even if he had been more appropriately armed there is no guarantee..." He sounded like a man striving to hold on to his last delusions.

Willow couldn't take any more. "Giles, shut up!" She looked up and for the first time the watcher saw the tears that streamed down her face. "Just shut up. You don't even believe yourself."

The witch looked around from Angel to Nina and on to Spike and Illyria as she continued. "I didn't know Fred all that well... or Wes, even. It's not my place to get revenge or to decide what either of them might want. That's down to the people who loved them." She looked straight at Spike, the only one of the LA crowd who she knew had heard all about her magic problems, as she gave a watery, self-deprecating smile. "And I think I might just end up going all veiny and undoing all that stuff I learned after Tara died, if I tried."

She turned again to Giles for one last time. "...But I'm not going to get in their way, either. I don't know what's happened to you, Giles... and it's not like I'm giving up on you as a friend. I owe you more than that, but I can't work for you any more either, not when I can't trust you."

"But-." Giles tried to interrupt, but Willow put her patented 'resolve face' to good use.

"You'll have my letter of resignation first thing in the morning. You're the one who helped to teach me that magic has to be used for good reasons, not selfish ones. Thing is, that isn't just an option you can pick up when it suits you. It's a duty. You betrayed that duty and, doing that, you betrayed me and I can't risk that happening again." She gave a sigh. "I can understand you not wanting to help Angel. I mean it must have looked like the perfect chance to get your own back for Jenny... but you're meant to be better than that. You were meant to make the council better. It was going to be about giving the slayers more respect. It was meant to be about ideals and doing what was right. We were meant to be getting rid of all the crap that Quentin Travers stood for and doing it right this time. You used Wolfram & Hart as an excuse. You said that no one could work for it without being corrupted. From here it looks more like you should have been worrying about the council instead."

The witch fumbled with her purse, searching for her tissues so she could do at least some repairs before she braved the hotel corridors.

"Willow?" the watcher tried to reason. "Alright, I made a bad decision... One bad decision. The council needs you."

Willow gave a resolute shake of her head. "I have to do what's right for me, Giles, not what's right for the council."

Suddenly, another voice joined the debate, a sad, lonely voice. "And it's not one bad decision. It's one more bad decision..." Buffy pointed out. "Didn't you learn anything from that whole mess with Wood? You're not the boss of us... or, well, you are, but I guess you shouldn't be, so I guess you get my resignation, too." Anyone could tell that the decision was one that pained the slayer. Considering in her year in Italy she hadn't actually managed to learn much more than how to read a menu, it wasn't as if she was going to find another job in Rome. In fact, it was all too likely that she was going to find herself back in California, working at another branch of DMP, but there were times when you had to take a stand.

"Si, bella," The Immortal chimed in supportively. "It will all be okay. I will make employment for you. I pay you plenty so you can keep Dawnie in school."

Buffy's eyes darted instinctively to Spike's, his low opinion of the suggestion and what that made her clear for all to see. Her own eyes flashed with anger, though she wasn't sure whether it was aimed more at Spike or The Immortal and she pulled away from the demon, striding toward the door. "There are some services that aren't for sale."

She was almost there when she felt a hand on her arm. She looked down and recognised the manicure she had done for Willow earlier. She reached over to place her other hand over Willow's in a gesture of solidarity and the friends made their way from the room, with The Immortal already rushing after them.

Note: Thanks to my beta t_geyer for her unending patience, perseverance and support.
Chapter 7


"Bella, I did not mean-."

"No," Buffy agreed, pausing at the door to the ladies' room that Willow had already entered. "I know you didn't, but think about it... I can't even speak Italian. So how much does an au pair make these days? I'm guessing board, lodging, maybe enough for a cappuccino in a nice piazza once in a while."

"Buffy," the Italian tried unsuccessfully to interrupt.

"Say, what about a chauffeur? How much do you pay Paolo? Hmm, nice suits so I guess he must pull down a decent paycheck, or maybe you provide the suits... Of course, you'd have to can him first. No... wait, I knew that thing about not wanting to learn to drive in a city full of suicidally reckless maniacs was going to come back and kick me in the ass.

Guess that only leaves two reasons why you would want to pay me that much and since I'm not about to quit the council so that I can become your hired muscle - slayer strength is meant to be used for the benefit of humanity, not so you can trade in your goons for someone in a size six evening gown - the remaining option wouldn't be very flattering."

"But you like to live in Rome," the Immortal tried reasoning.

"Yes, I liked living in Rome. It's been great, but now I have to go back to the real world." Buffy sighed and straightened in her high heels to look him square in the eye or the closest approximation she could manage, which still wasn't all that close.

"Not necessarily-."

"Don't try to make this into something it's not," Buffy cut in before he could go any further. "You're an okay guy. You've taken me all sorts of places and it's been fun. We've had a good time, but you know I'm not in love with you and I know that the only thing you'll ever be in love with is the chase and we both know there's only one reason why it's lasted this long. Your pride might be hurt, and I'm not saying you won't miss me, for a day or two at least, but I doubt you'll be heartbroken for any longer than it takes to find Ilona or some other woman to sigh every time she mentions your name and give you a consolation screw.

Now, I've got a friend in here that I need to check on. Feel free to go find the next ex-girlfriend-to be."

---

The doctor coughed loudly and turned to speak to Ilona in a rush of Italian.

"The doctore, he say that he must take the Englishman to our medical facilities for the bullet to be removed."

"After Spike's earlier reference to 'the profiteroles of evil', I assume that by our medical facilities, you mean those of Wolfram & Hart?" the watcher asked.

"Si, signore, but do not worry. There are no finer doctors in all of Roma. You will be taken care of like an honoured guest."

"I'm sorry, madam, but if you could just phone for a normal ambulance, I'm sure-."

"I spit on the normal ambulance and the normal hospital," Ilona replied, matching actions to words. "You must have the best."

"I must insist-."

Spike grinned widely. "I think you misunderstand, Rupert. Ilona has a reputation to protect. We're her guests and anything nasty that's going to happen to us here, it'll be down to her and her bosses, not the local police turning up because some local quack's reported a gunshot wound. She's not offering. She's telling. That right?"

"Si, Signor Spike, but you should know that since your little battle The Senior Partners have been silent... Even to The Maybe Not Quite So Immortal and their other liaisons. Perhaps they wait, grow strong again. Perhaps they use too much power." She gave an eloquent shrug and the sort of grin you might expect from a sixteen-year-old whose parents have gone for the weekend and left the liquor cabinet unlocked. "Perhaps they never come back."

Suddenly, Ilona was bombarded with questions from all sides.

Spike sprang to his feet, abandoning his seat on one of the suite's staircases, and stalking forward as he spoke until he was almost nose to nose with the W & H exec. "You saying the only reason The Immortal was immortal in the first place was because he had some damn contract with The Senior Partners?"

"The Senior Partners have gone?" asked Angel.

"You weren't actually working for Wolfram & Hart?" a slightly shell-shocked Giles enquired of Angel, who only glared back at Giles by way of reply.

Ilona looked from Spike to Angel and then back to Spike again. "Si, The Immortal he is like Roma's Marcus Hamilton. He has served the Senior Partners for many many many years but they speak to him no more."

"We should have bloody known!" Spike nearly growled. "It was all down to him, right from the bloody start, that whole run around."

Ilona seemed to consider for a couple of second and then made a slight grimace. "Is simple misunderstanding, and The Immortal he must save face. He promise if you return to Roma then he kill you but you return under protection of The Senior Partners, so he string you along a little to save face... but no one is hurt. No one die and you all get your head."

"And if he was immortal because The Senior Partners made him immortal," Angel surmised, "and now The Senior Partners aren't around, then what does that make him now?"

"A little greyer than he was a few weeks ago," Ilona replied, with a flick of her fingertips to the hair at her right temple.

"Alright, then, if we're not here because your bosses on high want to stomp us into little tiny pieces for wrecking their LA operation and wiping the floor with their pet monsters, then why the bloody hell are we here?" Spike wanted to know.

"The Immortal he ask if is possible to invite you both, but is better if he explain." Ilona gave a sigh. "But this is for later, now the doctor, he must take the watcher to our offices."

Spike turned to Illyria. "We done with the watcher yet?" he asked. "Or do you want to get your licks in, pet?"

Illyria tilted her head to one side and considered Giles. "His loss is like a shroud that enfolds him," the godling proclaimed. "It does not cause me discomfort as Wesley's pain did. I believe you would call my feeling satisfaction."

"Angel?"

"Let him go," the elder vampire replied to his grandchilde. "He's lost Buffy and he's lost Willow and if that isn't punishment enough, then maybe, now that he's beginning to get a hint of the real picture, his conscience will make up the difference."

Spike lifted his elbow, holding it out to Illyria.

Catching the gesture, Angel turned to Nina and held out his hand, surprised when his girlfriend seemed to hesitate before she slipped her fingers into his. Together they made their way to the suite's double doors and Spike and Illyria fell in behind them, leaving the watcher, the doctor and the Chief Executive Officer of Rome's Wolfram & Hart branch alone. If that meant that the only way for Giles to satisfy his watcherly curiosity about the events in LA, which had only been alluded to so far, was for him to make nice with someone he had made it council policy to despise, then neither Spike nor Angel had a problem with that.

---

Nina waited until they were most of the way along the corridor leading to both the ballroom and the elevators before she broke the silence. "So what now?"

Angel shrugged. "We've done what we came for. It doesn't help Wes or Fred, but at least we can hope that Giles will think a little more carefully before he refuses help to anyone else."

"I wish to attend the party," Illyria informed them as if this settled the matter. "I require sustenance and the white-haired one promised that if I attended garbed in this way that I would receive the adoration that is my due."

"Looks like me an' Blue will go to the ball." Spike grinned.

"Spike," Angel gave a sigh. "Only you could think it was appropriate to turn this into a night of fun and frolics."

"An' only you could think it's appropriate to drag your woman halfway 'round the bloody planet, let her get all dressed up to watch you make a complete tit of yourself running after another woman, an' then drag her back to the hotel to watch you brood all night without so much as taking her for a spin round the dance floor," Spike retaliated. "Just because you told her we didn't come here to have fun doesn't mean you've got some duty to make the poor bint miserable."

"I'm not making her miserable," Angel replied reflexively, "and I was not running after..." His gaze drifted to Nina, remembering her hesitancy. "Buffy." For an eternity his eyes met those of his date. "Another time, another day, I'd love to... but it just wouldn't seem respectful."

Nina lifted her chin and let her hand drop from Angel's. "You have to do what you believe is right..." she told the vampire. "And you might think Wes would want you to go back to the hotel and stare at the walls, but I think Fred would want us to enjoy ourselves while we can, so go if you feel you have to. Spike probably won't object to doing double duty on the escort front for the rest of the night."

Spike raised an eyebrow, but also held out the arm that Illyria wasn't holding.

"Nina-a-a..." Angel cast a last glance toward the elevators before he reached out and took Nina's hand again, and when they reached the elevators he kept on walking.

Nina let her gaze drift to the ballroom's emerald green carpet as they made their way through the tables toward the dance floor. "Angel?" she asked. "What colour are my eyes?"

"Huh?" Angel stopped dead, but Nina kept her head angled downward.

"I just wanted to see if you knew."

"They're grey... but why?" The vampire's brows knitted together and his lips twisted into a grimace... until Nina tugged him back into motion and then wrapped her arm around his waist as she pressed into his side.

Note: Thanks to my beta t_geyer for her unending patience, perseverance and support.
Chapter 8


Buffy made her way through from the area of the rest room facilities where they actually had toilet cubicles and wash basins, and back to the carpeted area just beyond the outer doors, where there were mirrors on one wall and a counter below them for people to put on make up and where there were also three huge sofas adrift in a sea of carpeting.

Willow was curled up into the corner of one of these sofas, her legs drawn up in front of her and the sofa's wing back seemingly all that was stopping her head from lolling off to the side.

Buffy passed her the fifteen or so yards of folded up super-quilted toilet paper that she had snagged and Willow moved the tissue box, which now held only damp crumpled tissues, from the arm of the settee to the floor and replaced it with the wad.

"It's not even so much that she's dead, you know?" the redhead sniffled. "I mean, back in Sunnydale at the end we lost a lot of people. It's that she didn't have to die."

"The pointlessness?" Buffy asked, sitting down next to her friend. Between them they barely took up a third or the seat. "The why her?"

"Well, yeah, but no... not like when someone gets really ill or gets hit by a car. She really didn't have to die. If Giles had told me... I'm pretty certain I could have stopped it... and even if I couldn't, then probably the coven where he sent me..."

Buffy couldn't offer any consolation that might appease that feeling. She could remember her grief over her mother, the way she'd tormented herself about what might have happened if she'd come home sooner, if she'd been there, but at least she'd had the doctor's word that there had been nothing she would have been able to do. To truly believe that you could have made that difference, and were deliberately denied the opportunity...

---

It seemed that the staff manning the buffet table had been briefed in advance about the tastes of their various guests. Spike had only to approach the tables and he was being offered his choice of well-filled wine glasses, robust Italian peasant or French bourgeoisie, both virgin the waiter assured him.

"And both still alive?" Spike asked, lifting an eyebrow.

"But of course. Signorina Costa Bianchi she insist that for you and Angelus we must find the willing volunteers. Many many beauties they compete to give their blood." The waiter gave a slight grimace and a shrug. "No quite so many for Angelus and maybe later in the night he must drink the rodents, but for you we take only the blood from the virgins and only one bottle each."

"I will have the Italian," Illyria announced. "It is many years since blood has been spilled in my honour. I would remember the taste."

"You heard the lady," Spike instructed. "Two glasses of your best Italian red." He turned to Illyria, asking, "Now what d'you want to go with that? Maybe a nice salad? Or since you've got our Fred's tastebuds, maybe we should be tracking down some tacos?"

Illyria gave Spike a look that, had he been human, would probably have made his genitalia shrivel up and try to take refuge inside his body. "I may no longer commune with the green, but I have no wish to eat those who might once have been called acquaintances."

Spike took the two proffered glasses from the waiter, passing one to Illyria. "Really? I've known plenty of acquaintances I'd eat in an instant, if it wasn't for the soul, or if I didn't think Harris would taste all sickly sweet an' greasy."

---

"And it sounds like they were so happy. I mean, flying car at the end of Grease happy, only it was him who had the makeover and ended up all stubbly and John Woo and heroic?"

"People change," Buffy observed. "Rumour has it you used to be a nerdy computer geek."

Willow gave a weak smile. "I'm still a nerdy computer geek. Just now and again my best bud helps me pick out Italian designer clothes." Willow twisted at the piece of tissue in her hand. "We did the right thing, right?"

Buffy shrugged. "Dawn probably isn't going to thank me when she's the new kid trying to fit in at some public school as opposed to the mysterious American in Rome, but, yeah, we did what we had to. What's that thing Xander keeps saying? With great power comes great responsibility. I guess when Giles got control of the council money, I didn't look too hard at what I was signing up for. I thought it would be like in Sunnydale where I could overrule him..."

"But you don't overrule the guy who signs the paychecks?" Willow asked. "Especially if he's hundreds of miles away and just neglects to mention that people are dying... or that your hunny is back from... Can a vampire come back from the dead? 'Cause, vampire, pretty much of the dead..."

---

"You know for, well, a guy who knows his way around the bedroom, you don't seem very comfortable on a dance floor," Nina whispered in Angel's ear. "You're way too tense. Relax. No one's going to jump out and bite you."

Angel looked down into Nina's eyes, an amused glint in his own. "I really haven't done too good a job of explaining my relationship with Buffy, have I?"

"Let her try," Nina assured him. "She'll find out my bite's a lot worse than hers."

---

Buffy sighed. "I just didn't look past the Jimmy Choos and the nice apartment and Dawn's school. It seemed like I'd earned it, when what he was really doing was getting me out of the way..."

"I'm not sure he planned it like that," Willow reasoned.

"But it sure didn't hurt that everyone that might question what he was doing was scattered to the four corners of the world," Buffy argued. "The Fred thing... I hate it. I hate that you got stuck in the middle, but after Wood and Spike... I feel like an idiot that I didn't see it coming... That was my own stupid fault but I just can't believe that after everything that happened, after what we all owe to him, that Giles would let me go on living my life as if Spike was gone."

"Buffy?" Willow placed her tissue to one side and tucked her legs under her. "What happened with Giovanelli?"

"Huh?" Buffy asked. "Who?"

---

Spike and Illyria took turns at leading as they performed the tango, though mostly Spike's turns lasted only long enough to support the godling in a dip or spin her under his arm before she again pulled him in a direction of her choosing. It seemed that Fred's experience in that direction had been limited to watching Strictly Ballroom, rather than trying to put any of the moves into action, and so Illyria chose her own interpretation.

"You do not seem content," she observed as Spike dropped her into a dip. "You have done that which you wished, but your sorrow still pervades the air around you like an acrid stench that cannot be dispelled. Yet did you not say that we should have fun?"

Spike set her back on her feet and Illyria chose a new direction. "Fun can't always be had to order, Blue. We did what we could, an', yeah, it helps... but I just can't help thinkin' how much better it'd be to have her here, to see her eyes light up at dancing under the stars, to watch her try to see how much of that buffet table would fit in that stick figure body of hers. Hell," he added, giving the godling one last twirl as the song ended. "I'd even put up with Country and Western if I could watch her on the dance floor, shakin' her skinny little arse."

A ballad started up, and this time Illyria did little more than sway in his grip. Spike closed his eyes, rested his cheek against Illyria's temple and let the music guide them, trusting others to get out of their way if need be. When the scent of the woman in his arms lost its demon edge, smelling only of floral shampoo, camellia bodywash and soft warm human skin, his eyes closed tighter still.

---

Buffy's face twisted into a grimace of incomprehension.

"Three and a half, four weeks ago maybe now. Private eye working for the LA branch of Wolfram & Hart. You and The Immortal beat him up... Put him in hospital."

Buffy's jaw dropped. "You mean he wasn't a vamp? But he was taking all these pictures... and, well, he wouldn't say who he was working for... I mean... I thought it was some new master sending out the minions to size up the competition. I thought if I sent him crawling back, well, I more stood to one side and let Immi do the sending 'cause it was kinda muddy and we had reservations for the rooftop restaurant at the Splendide, that his boss would maybe back off."

"Aren't you meant to know?" Willow asked. "Isn't that one of those slayer tingly things?"

"Usually," Buffy pouted, "but Immi kinda screws with the readings, or he did until I got used to him. Sorta like trying to find something on a radar screen when the whole thing's glowing like Chernobyl."

"Well, that kind of explains the no patrol-y, all party Buffy that Giles was so worried about."

"So creepy photo-guy was really human?" Buffy asked, her lips drawing into a tight line as she weighed the rest of the information Willow had supplied. "Do you know who he was working for at Wolfram & Hart? 'Cause it'd be kind of nice to know which of my ex-boyfriends is stalking me."

"We-ell, Giles only got as far as Wolfram & Hart... but once he told me that I managed to hack their bookkeeping system."

"Shouldn't stuff like that be kept offline?" Buffy asked.

"Even bookkeepers have email... and there's a lot you can do with computers and magic that you can't do with just computers. Do you want to know who was paying him or not?"

Buffy closed her mouth and twisted her fingers over it in a locking gesture.

"Every time there was a payment to this guy, it was offset against Angel's salary."

Buffy's eyes narrowed and she looked her friend up and down. "I think I need to have a word with Angel before he leaves town. If we do some damage control on the make-up are you up to staying or do you want me to call a cab?"

"What about Spike? Don't you want to talk to him?"

"Sure, but I'm not so sure he wants to talk to me..."

Note: Thanks to my beta t_geyer for her unending patience, perseverance and support.
Chapter 9


"Where's Angel?" Buffy demanded, and regretted it as soon as Spike turned both the coldest of glares and his cutting tongue on her.

"Gee, Spike," the vampire said, his voice dripping with sarcasm. "Good to see you. Was thrilled to bits when I heard you weren't dead." He set his glass down on the table where he was seated between Illyria and Nina and took Illyria's hand in his.

"Spike..." Buffy really wasn't sure whether it was meant to be an apology or a warning not to get between her and the guy who currently had her extremely pissed off.

The vampire gave a snort of disgust. "Looks like some things never change. Your actual boyfriend had some shiny business proposal for him or something, just couldn't wait."

"He's not the actual boyfriend," Buffy protested.

Spike smirked. "Like that, huh? Poor little dumped girl looking for a shoulder to cry on? Well, if it makes you feel better he only kept Dru an' Darla around for the one night when he was using them to get at us. Guess that means the pair of you were practically engaged in comparison."

Before Buffy could get her breath back after that little bombshell Spike had finished.

"They're in The Immortal's suite. I'm sure you know the way," he concluded with a last raking glance from head to toe. Then, he turned to Willow and gave a shallow nod, allowing a little warmth back into his eyes and even smiling slightly. "Nice seein' you, Red. Fred would've appreciated what you did. Thank you." With that he turned back to face the table, put an arm around Illyria's shoulders and drank deep from the oversized wine goblet that definitely didn't hold wine.

Buffy was left with the distinct feeling that she had been dismissed. Sure they had always argued, but normally it was an anger born of passion, one that would end as rapidly as it was begun with them in each other's arms, but she'd only once heard him use that tone of voice on her, the time she'd accused him of being responsible for the nerds' video cameras. Just as she had no answer for it then, she had no answer for it now.

She turned, ready to go find Angel, and she made it about five feet before Spike deigned to throw a parting barb. "Oh and, Buffy, Blondie here has a thing or two in common with Red's guitar player. You wouldn't want to be poaching in her territory or it might just come back to bite you in the arse... literally."

---

The Immortal laid out an array of eight by ten colour glossies on the coffee table between him and Angel, two for each city that he named. "From my own personal holdings... Seattle, San Francisco, Los Angeles, San Diego... One desirable residential property and one office building in each city, nothing the size of Wolfram & Hart's offices but all more than adequate for a small detective agency, all in the best areas, all ready-fitted with necrotinted glass. You could have an office in every major city on the Western Seaboard... Or you could dispose of these and buy The Hyperion outright, restore it to its former glory."

"In return for what?" Angel asked sceptically, though he had a feeling that he already knew.

"You allow some shamans to draw off a portion of the energy that you stole from The Senior Partners, enough to sustain my youth for say... another century or two. I'm not greedy. After that we can always renegotiate if need be."

Angel looked at the pictures, imagining Nina's face if she saw the Malibu beach-house...

"It would be but a fraction of the power you drew from Hamilton. You made the partners so angry that they just kept feeding their power into him until their reserves were all gone." He moved to the bar as he spoke and poured two glasses of Irish malt whiskey.

"You really think that, with our history, I'm going to agree to this?" Angel asked.

The Immortal shrugged, setting one of the glasses down in front of Angel and taking a sip from the other as he glided into a loose-limbed seat on the suite's sofa. "You'd be a fool not to. Wolfram & Hart have offices in every major city in the world, and in each city there is a liaison like me, all now cast adrift. What I ask is not one hundredth of what you took. I doubt you would even notice the difference... and look at what you would gain."

"And what guarantee do I have that your shamans wouldn't simply drain every last drop of power from my body and channel it straight back to The Senior Partners?"

The Immortal didn't even pause. He'd obviously been expecting this argument. "If that is your concern, then we could always ask Miss Rosenberg to perform the ritual. It would be difficult for a single mage but not beyond her capabilities, and I'm sure you would agree that she is a sufficiently neutral party."

Angel tilted his head on one side and then gave a nod. "If we do it, Willow would be acceptable." He gave a last longing look at the photographs and, as he drained his glass, a knock sounded at the door.

"Does that mean you will do it?" The Immortal pushed as Angel rose to his feet.

Angel shook his head. "It means I'll discuss it with the others." Last time he had made a decision like that on his own he had ended up at Wolfram & Hart. He wasn't in a hurry to repeat that mistake.

There was another knock, less patient this time and accompanied by an ineffectual turn of the door handle.

"I'll leave you to your visitor," Angel told the demon, releasing the lock and pulling the door open to find himself face to face with Buffy.

---

"Ouch!" said Nina after Buffy had left. "I've practically got freezer burn just being within a mile of that conversation."

"Your point being?" Spike asked.

"My point being that, according to Angel, she was meant to be the love of your life, too," Nina suggested, raising an eyebrow. "My point being that you knew Angel was wrong when he said she had blue eyes."

Spike pulled out cigarettes and lighter and lit a cigarette before he bothered to reply. "Alright, so I'm in love with her. Doesn't mean I have to like her."

"Shouldn't it?" Nina asked.

"You tell me?" Spike suggested, drawing deep on his cigarette. "How'd you feel if for years the guy you loved only ever seemed interested when there was no one else interested in him? Evil doctors, unfaithful ex-boyfriend soldiers - an' you're the student here, but correct me if I'm wrong... a TA as screws his students, so far outta line that even she should have realised the corn-fed Iowa goodness was just a front -..."

Spike paused and raised an eyebrow, gratified when Nina's face screwed up into an involuntary grimace.

"Her TA?" she asked, as if hoping Spike might at least confirm that Buffy hadn't been in any of Riley's classes.

Instead, the vamp gave a self deprecating smile and continued on. "...Creepy principals, morally ambiguous immortal demons? Anyone but you... How would you feel if he shagged you blind one minute but he wouldn't be seen talking to you in public? How'd you feel if half an hour - half a bloody hour - after he tells you that there's a chance at something real but it'll have to wait until after the next apocalypse to work it all out, you find him with his tongue down his ex's throat?" Spike's voice began to crack slightly and his eyes were suspiciously bright. "How would you feel if you died for him and then you come back and you travel half way around the planet and when you track him down he's so busy partying in public with the latest guy who isn't you that he doesn't even notice you're there? The best damn slayer in the last century, if not ever, and two master vamps walk into the room with her - her senses would have been screaming at her like a ten-engine fire - but she couldn't even peel herself off her latest boy toy long enough to acknowledge the fact we were there."

Nina's hand reached out to cover Spike's in a gesture of sympathy. "I heard she told you she loved you," she added, trying to put together the snippets she had heard from Angel, what were likely the more honest bits Spike had just admitted and the looks that Buffy had given her when Spike had come to offer comfort.

"Yeah, right and there's a guy works down the chip shop swears he's Elvis."

Nina didn't say anything more but he felt the pressure of her patient gaze.

"She said what she thought she needed to to get me to stick it out to the end... maximum damage. Waited until there was no chance she'd ever have to back it up. No way I'd live long enough for her to have to tell her friends. Another dirty secret between her and a dead man. That's all... Words are cheap."

The ensuing silence was broken by the thump of Illyria's glass returning to the table. "This bores me, the mewling imbecile is not worthy of a warrior such as you, and your self-pity sours the air like cheap perfume." She pushed her chair back and rose to her feet. "We will dance again."

---

Without preamble Buffy punched Angel square on the nose... and without conscious thought on his part Angel returned the favour, only Angel's punch sent Buffy staggering back the width of the corridor and drew a trickle of blood. Buffy's punch didn't even make the vampire flinch.

"You hit me," Buffy whined.

"As I seem to recall saying once before, you hit me first. You want to be more careful when it comes to picking on people you think are weaker than you are. Sometimes you miscalculate."

"H-how?"

"Ask your boyfriend." Angel wet his forefinger and wiped a smudge of blood off of his other hand. "Now, if we're finished with the unprovoked attack section of the evening, I'll be getting on with my life and leaving you two to get on with yours. That was what you wanted, wasn't it, Buffy?"

Buffy ran the edge of her hand under her nose, not so much wiping the blood away as moving it around.

"Oh, no you don't, mister! Where the hell in our agreement did you decide that leaving me alone meant sending stalkers with cameras to detail my every move?"

Both The Immortal and Angel looked embarrassed and uncomfortable but it was the more recent ex who spoke first. "Perhaps it is I who should leave?"

Buffy swung her fist as she turned to face him. This punch had the desired effect and the demon sailed six feet across the room and landed on the sofa. "Nope, I just got me a twofer."

"But I have done nothing..." The Immortal protested as he levered himself into a sitting position and checked his nose for breaks.

"Except forget to tell me that you had some screwed up relationship with two of my exes. Or did you just happen to forget that you fucked Dru and Darla?"

"Is not so cut and dried... Your friends they have very fine taste in women..."

"Yeah," Angel added sarcastically. "That'd explain why you had to have us jumped by a mob of your lackeys and chained up in a dungeon so you wouldn't have any competition."

"Yeah, right," Buffy piped up. "And your good friend Ilona inviting them here, that was just pure coincidence? Nothing to do with you wanting to rub all our noses in it?"

"Bella, I have never done anything to hurt you... Your friend Angel and I had business to discuss, business that is quite urgent."

"And Spike?" the slayer demanded. "What was that, huh?"

"William I ask for another reason." He shrugged. "In your sleep you cry out always for a ghost who is not a ghost... and I know I will never have you. I think maybe you see your ghost and you both go live happily ever after... Or maybe you see him-."

"And she screws everything up right royally, gives up on the dream and you don't need to compete with a memory any more?" Nina asked from the doorway.

All the others turned to stare at her. "Ilona gave me directions. I thought it was Angel you were looking for?" She gave Buffy an inquiring look.

"I was looking for Angel when I found out he paid some sleazebag to stalk me. When Spike let slip that I was just another way for him ," she nodded toward The Immortal, "to score a few points in whatever sick game the three of them are playing, then my priorities shifted slightly."

Nina glared at Angel. "You were stalking her?"

"No," Angel floundered. "It wasn't like that. I just paid a private detective to keep an eye on her and make sure she was alright and that she wasn't in any sort of trouble..."

"You were stalking her. Paint it any way you like," Nina replied firmly. "Later, once we get back to LA, I am going to explain very slowly and loudly just how warped that is..." She turned on Buffy. "This one is my problem now, not yours.

Your problem is that you take too long making up your mind about what you want."

"Huh?" Buffy looked from Nina to Angel to The Immortal as if to see if the men were as lost as she was.

"Illyria's right. You really are a mewling imbecile," the student continued. "I saw the way you were looking at Spike. What I don't get is why when he's so obviously the guy you want, you're in here with these two instead of out there trying to get him back."

"You heard what he said. He doesn't want me any more. He has some goddess or something..."

"No, you're right. He doesn't want you," Nina pronounced bitterly. "He wants a girl who's willing to say she loves him in front of the whole world. He wants a girl who makes him feel like he belongs, not one who treats him like a dirty little secret."

"I-I I told him I loved him... At the end. I did."

"You left it too late. If you'd told him one day earlier... An hour earlier, even. If you'd got on that bus and given him a great big kiss for good luck in front of the whole parade, then maybe he might have believed you, but who can blame him for thinking you were just playing him one last time when you waited until he was dying and that's all you've ever done."

"I didn't... He knew. I said we'd work it out after..."

"And this would be right before he caught you with Angel? Get real."

"So that whole cookie dough thing?" Angel asked, sounding pathetically like a small child.

"Was me trying to let you down easy," Buffy answered bluntly before turning back to Nina, her eyes glistening with tears. "He has to know."

Nina shook her head. "You cried wolf too often. You used him over and over and that's all he's come to expect from you. You waited until the words were meaningless and now you're too chicken to go back in that room and show him that you really meant them."

Buffy glared at Angel's new girlfriend as if she wanted to punch her on the nose, too, but instead she just swept from the room. The Immortal grinned, grabbed the pictures up off the coffee table and pushed them into Angel's hand. "Show her the one in Malibu, but come. This , we do not want to miss." He ushered the others from the room, locked it and then took off down the corridor at a jog in the direction of the ballroom.

---

Buffy stalked into the ballroom like a huntress in search of her prey, but then stalled abruptly at the sight of Spike slow-dancing with the blue-haired goddess. Suddenly she was convinced that this could only end in humiliation. Nina had to be wrong. It wasn't as if she'd been there at the time. She couldn't know how things had been between the two of them. There was no way anyone on the outside could understand.

'And who do you suppose she got that second-hand information from?' a tiny voice inside herself asked.

"Allow me," suggested a familiar voice at her elbow, and glancing over her shoulder she noticed that Angel, The Immortal and Nina had caught up with her. It seemed The Immortal wasn't about to give her an excuse to back out. He strode toward the couple on the dance floor and tapped Spike on the shoulder. Spike and Illyria stopped moving and then Spike relinquished his hold on the goddess and The Immortal took his place.

Buffy was just about to move off again when Nina caught her wrist and pressed a tissue into her hand.

"Blood," she reminded the other blonde. "Pretty sure that he'd clean it off for you but probably not the impression you want to make."

Buffy cast impatient glances Spike's way every other second while the art student scrubbed at her nose, upper lip and hand until she was satisfied that the evidence of Angel's punch had been erased, at least to human sight. The slayer couldn't help thinking that if she took too long then Spike would disappear onto some balcony or into a quiet corner and if Nina was right then this had to be done as publicly as possible.

However, Spike seemed in no hurry to abandon his plus one. He quit the dance floor but waited at its nearest edge to where The Immortal had interrupted and lit up a cigarette, his eyes never leaving the pale-skinned godling, as if Immi needed only to cross some unspoken bound of propriety and Spike would go rushing to Illyria's rescue.

Buffy waited just long enough for Nina to pronounce herself happy with her appearance before she made her way across the dance floor. Her first couple of steps were hesitant but she soon threaded her way between he dancers with an unstoppable sense of purpose.

Spike never looked her way until she passed between Illyria and him, and when he did look at her it was with a scowl that seemed designed to make her turn aside.

Her heart sped even faster in her chest, certain, yet again, that she had finally tested whatever relationship they might once have had to the point of destruction. If gaining his soul had made Spike realise how badly she had used him, then who knew how his attitude might have changed when he came back from the dead. She was shaking inside at the idea he might walk away but that horror paled in comparison to the idea that he could be walking around, not breathing under the belief that she had only said those words as some sort of sop for a dying man.

"Slayer," Spike greeted her coldly when she was four feet away, using her title as a means of distancing himself from her.

Buffy just kept going. She plucked his cigarette from his unresisting hand and tossed it aside and then her body collided with his at a speed that knocked her breath from her body, her arms wrapped around his neck, drawing his head down and before he could protest further her lips captured his, taking no prisoners.

For a fraction of a second his lips softened against hers, but then he was pulling away, and one strong hand was grasping each of her upper arms, holding her at arm's length.

"Don't!" the vampire warned, a hint of gold flashing briefly in the dark-lashed ultramarine of his eyes.

"Why?" Buffy argued. "Because you think it's a game? What part of me saying I love you was too difficult for that vamp brain of yours? I know I should have said it sooner, but I thought we'd have time. I thought once it was over we'd have all the time in the world to do it right and then I was losing you..."

"Nice try, sweetheart. I might even have fallen for it if you hadn't been so damn determined to ignore the fact we even existed last time me an' Angel hit town... Or if your pet geek hadn't been so keen to let us know how happy you were with your nice new life with your nice new boyfriend."

"Andrew? When the hell were you talking to Andrew?" Buffy scowled and wrenched her arms free. "And he's not my pet geek. He's Giles' pet geek."

"Yeah, that'd be why he was livin' in your apartment." Spike replied, sounding less than impressed. "And that depends on whether you mean the time we were here and he was telling us how you moved on and were so cute snuggling up on the sofa with lover boy, or whether you mean the time your psycho slayer hacked my hands off and he brought The Spice Girls to grab her out of the clutches of the Evil Empire, making it pretty damn clear you wanted nothing to do with any of us in the process."

"You didn't believe anything Andrew told you?" Buffy asked in exasperation. "And I am so-o-o going to kick his proto-watcher ass the next time I see him. I didn't even know you were alive until I saw you tonight. If I had had the least clue you were back I'd have been on the next flight to LA... which is probably why Giles made sure I didn't find out. Spike, I meant it when I said I loved you."

"Make me believe you," Spike asked.

---

'Make me believe you,' Buffy thought. 'How the frilly heck am I meant to do that? Since it seems that walking over and kissing you in front of a hotel full of people including my best friend and my first love apparently isn't enough.'

Suddenly, she was pulling open her purse and rifling through it. The seconds it took her to find her cell phone and dial the number for their apartment seemed more like hours.

"Dawn?" she demanded when her sister finally answered. "You know I love Spike, right?"

There came a world-weary sigh. "Well, duh! Who else sits up with you in the middle of the night and shares your ice cream?"

"And you know if I got a second chance I couldn't let it go?" Buffy asked.

"Buffy?" Dawn's voice sounded trapped between disbelief and hope.

"He's back, Dawn. Don't ask me how. I don't know. Seems like he's been in LA with Angel, but he's leaving soon. I already told Giles I quit and if we can get everything packed up in time I figure maybe we can leave same time he does."

"You're serious?" the teen asked, obviously still not totally convinced that this wasn't some cruel joke on her sister's part.

"I'm serious. We've got to find you a new school before term starts. Just start packing... We've got 'til...?" She raised an eyebrow in Spike's direction.

"Tomorrow night, about nine, if you want to hitch a ride with us."

"That was him!" Dawn almost screeched. "You really mean it! Buffy, tell him I'm sorry about the bed thing, ple-ease! Okay, I'm packing. I'm packing right now." With that the line went dead.

This time when Buffy slid into those familiar arms she met no resistance. His mouth came down to meet hers in a tender kiss and the slayer held her phone out at arm's length to take a picture before it got too heated. When they finally drew apart Spike cast her a curious glance as she added a message to the image and then he moved so he could watch over her shoulder. The accompanying text was brief and to the point, just three words - "I love him!" - and when Spike saw that it was Xander's name she picked out from her contact list to send the message to, then that was as much proof as he needed.

"Wanna dance?" the vampire asked.

Buffy grinned. Tomorrow was another day and it looked like it was going to be a fairly hectic one. She had a hundred questions but she could get explanations later. Tonight it was enough that he was here and with her and that they could try to make up for all the things they had missed out on first time around... starting with a slow dance.

---

Willow sighed as she watched the couples swaying on the dance floor. 'Times like these, all the guys in formal wear, well, all the guys except Spike in formal wear... Kinda makes me sorta wish I wasn't gay any more,' she thought, 'Especially when I've got as much chance of some hot chick asking me to dance as I have of being picked for the next space shuttle mission.'

She picked up a fork, consoling herself that at least the buffet still had great pasta. They had to be changing the trays out every ten minutes to keep it as fresh as this.

"Hi," came a slightly unsure voice from by her elbow.

Willow spotted a pair of dark pants and just an inch or two of white shirt in her peripheral vision, so close she'd have had to crick her neck to see his face. Great... the last thing she needed tonight was some guy hitting on her.

"Look, I'm sort of stuck here," the guy rushed out. "I came with my agent but his wife went into labour... and, well, I figured the last thing they want is some guy hanging round so I thought I'd stay here rather than end up stuck alone in a hotel room for the night but I don't know any Italian and the hostess said that you and your friends were American and that the guy you came with had had some sort of an accident and had to go to the hospital, so you were kind of with your friends but sort of on your own as well, and I was sorta wondering if it'd be okay if maybe I hung out for a while."

The witch rubbed at her hands with a napkin as the guy finished his babbled explanation. She could do babble and, strangely enough, she found herself actually believing that he really was looking for company rather than hitting on her. "Sure," she agreed and extended one newly scrubbed hand. "Grab a chair..."

The guy pulled out the seat beside hers and sank into it, letting Willow get a decent look at him for the first time.

"...Mr Cusack."

"John," the guy corrected her. "Mr Cusack makes you sound like my tax accountant. So... How's the ziti...?" He paused.

"Willow, Willow Rosenberg... and the ziti's pretty damn good."

The End