PART ONE



It was because Willow was once more in touch with Oz that Buffy found herself in this small provincial Vietnamese city, where the old French colonial buildings sat out like ruined cakes in the rain.

It was a pitiless rain, like hot water poured from a bucket. The air smelled bilgy, which was the smell of the river. She'd already seen the river, already crossed it.

It was strange seeing Oz, although not so much strange seeing him here, because he was the sort of person it wasn't really strange to meet anywhere, which was something Willow had always known, and used to say. He rose from his chair beneath the cafe awning and waited unmoving for her to reach him, and fold her umbrella, and realize that she was nearly soaked despite it. His hair and eyebrows were a reddish brown. He didn't look much different than the last time she'd seen him, on the campus at Sunnydale U, what, five years ago now.

"Hey, Buffy. You're lookin' like a grown-up."

"It happens."

He made no move to embrace her, so she sat down. The waiter came up, and Oz spoke to him in Vietnamese, which wasn't surprising either. He brought a second bottle of the local beer that was already open on the table.

"You know not to drink the water here," Oz said, as if it wasn't a question.

"I've traveled a lot recently."

"Willow said."

"She's even got you on the look-out for slayers, huh?"

"I'm happy to do what I can." Oz squinted, looking not at her, but across the shabby square. The traffic consisted of older cars, and bicycles, and carts drawn by a few varieties of animal, and sometimes by people, who biked them or dragged them on foot. Buffy wondered if he was looking out for someone else. He wouldn't be looking out for ... well, of course not. Because that was why she was here. Anyway, it was the middle of the afternoon.

There was a pause. Buffy tried to wait it out, but finally said, "Do what you can. Right."

"Yeah. Which is why I figured I'd better get in touch now. Because when she gave me the whole post-Sunnydale wrap up, Willow said he was dead."

Buffy swallowed some beer. For the past day and a half, since Willow's phone call, she'd been thinking of this, obsessively. It made a headache behind her eyes that wouldn't go away. He was dead and she'd processed that, it was finished. Finished, though the whole damn thing was nothing but unsatisfactory, truncated and inflamed, like a severed digit that wouldn't quite scab over. Just stupid, the whole sorry thing was just stupid.

Since then, she'd put all that kind of stuff aside. Meaning to come back to it later. Much later. Eventually. When she had more ... more something she didn't seem to have right now. What? She was busy.

The label of her beer bottle was wet as her trousers that were sticking to her legs, wet as her sandals. She peeled the corner back with her fingernail. "He burned. There's no way he survived it."

"Yeah." Oz paused again. Buffy tried to recall if he'd been given to strange pauses. "The other night. I got a little banged up." He held up his left hand now, to show the plaster cast on his wrist. "There's just the one hospital here—it's only a little infirmary, really. They told me there was another white guy there. Even if they hadn't told me, I'd have figured it out after a while, because he started yelling the place down. They asked me to try to talk to him. No one there has much English."

"So you talked to him."

"It was him, Buffy. I pretty much recognized his voice even before I saw him. His colorful phrasings."

Lots of English guys had colorful phrasings. She'd learned that, if she'd learned anything, since Sunnydale went down. It couldn't be him. He was dead.

"Why would he be in the hospital?"

"The nurse said it was his stomach. An ulcer. But it sounded like DTs."

She wanted to say that vampires didn't get ulcers, or DTs, probably, and anyway, they wouldn't go to a hospital if they did. All they ever wanted in hospitals was the plasma delivery. But all she could do was peel the beer label and try not to remember how it felt, his hand in hers, that intense heat, and how he'd looked at her and said No you don't. She was trembling, and it appalled her, that Oz might see it. That she saw it. She was supposed to be over all of that, that big rotten mess.

He was dead.

"He was pretty disorderly, and didn't want to stay in the infirmary. He didn't seem to know me, actually, but he wasn't in a state where I could really talk to him. He has a guy, a sort of servant, named Nguyen. Together we got him back home. Then I emailed Willow."

"And here I am," Buffy said.

Another one of Oz's now customary pauses. "... Will thought you'd be happy. Not that he's ... messed up ... but that he's ... you know ... alive."

She flung the bottle so it smashed against the blank cafe wall. "He's not alive. He's a goddamn vampire." Her chair tipped backwards as she rose. "Take me there."




There was no change in the rain. It made its own dimension, nearly stifling, the steady tattoo of its falling giving her the feeling that she'd gone a little deaf. Oz led the way; it wasn't far from the cafe. Dai Phuong—at least, the part of it that concerned them, as foreign travelers—was small, just a few streets leading off the central square, before it petered into slums in all directions. Oz said the name of the place meant 'end of the road'.

What would he be doing here? This wasn't a place he'd want to be.

"This is it." Oz whispered. The door they stopped in front of was made of adjustable wooden slats, as was the covering of the glassless window beside it. Both set into a faded blue stucco wall, part of a hundred-year-old building erected by the French, and repurposed so many times since that it was hard to tell whether it started out as a warehouse, a bureau, or an apartment house. Everything that went on in the street must be plainly audible to anyone inside, and vice-versa. How did people live that way? How did people live with this heat? Already it coated her with despair. "Do you want me to stay?"

Buffy's irritation rose—surely Oz knew that he could hear even the minutest whisper, that he could certainly smell them as well. Oz especially should know all about the smell thing. It occurred to her only now that she'd neglected to ask him a thing about himself.

Still, he hadn't seemed to expect it.

"I'd better do this alone."

Oz melted away without goodbye. Wishing he hadn't been quite so fast to take her at her word, Buffy furled her umbrella. The second floor of the building had an overhanging balcony that sheltered a few feet of the cracked pavement from the rain, which ran thick in the gutters of the poorly-paved street.

Lifting her hand to knock, Buffy paused. Her slayer sense was quiet; no here be vampires tingle. Maybe he was out. It was day, but in this rain, there was no danger on that score.

Except that Oz had told Willow, who had told her, that he didn't go out. That he'd been in this crazy place for months and didn't leave his room.

"Spike." She pitched her voice through the slats, trying to sound reasonable, calm. "I'm here to visit you. May I come in?"

Silence at first. Then, as she was about to call out again, a rustling, almost a scrabbling.

"Spike?"

"No Spike here."

She knew the voice. It was raspy and low, but it was his. It made the skin of her nape crawl, the heat rush up into her face, her heart wait a long terrible moment before committing two stumbling beats at once. She had to take hold of herself. That voice she'd never thought to hear again. That she heard, still too often, in her dreams.

"C'mon, Spike. I've come a really long way. And it's pouring." And the surreality quotient is climbing dangerously high here.

The door was locked. She rattled the knob. Of course she could demolish the matchstick thing with a kick, but that wasn't the point. She was afraid of what she'd see; picturing what Oz had described and wondering if she was picturing it right, because that wasn't Spike, Spike wasn't a patient.

" ... Spike's gone. I don't have ... I don't have him anymore."

Fuck that noise. "I'm coming in." A sharp turn of the knob demolished the lock; the flimsy door swung open into the unlit room that reeked of manfug, tobacco, and liquor, stale stinks that almost felled her. At first she couldn't see anything at all. Feeling along the wall, her hand encountered the windowslats; she opened them. This didn't help much; the overhang outside blocked what light there was. But she made out the general proportions of the room, the untidy bed draped in mosquito netting, the bedside table crowded with bottles, the slowly whirling ceiling fan, the rattan armchair with a shirtless man slumped in it.

He stared at her through a tangle of brown hair, the glass arrested halfway to his lips, nearly shrouded in untended beard. In the gloom, he gave off a sickly glow, like a mushroom in a dank cellar.

She stared back. No way, no way this could be him. No vampire could ever look ill in so ghastly, so human a way.

Darting forward without thought, she plucked the glass from his hand.

He surged out of the chair and knocked her down.

The room abruptly flipped, she only dimly registered him at the new angle, stepping over her—his bare foot and ankle, the fluttering pajama leg—then throwing himself on the bed. There was some clinking, the springs protesting, the sounds of renewed pouring and drinking. The glass she'd appropriated had rolled away unbroken; she could see it resting against the baseboard. The walls and ceiling were a brownish yellow, mapped with cracks and dark patches of damp.

"What are you doing?" She rolled to her feet to confront him, sprawled like a stoned pasha amongst too many stale pillows.

"Ought to know better than to get between a man and his booze."

The rage was so hot in her she only wanted to scream at him, to scream and scream. "You're not a man—!" She stopped.

Because the hell of it ... he was.




His skin was hot and slick with fresh sweat when she put a hand on his arm. He'd been sweating all along—they both were—but their first encounter made him reek more, of fear, of dread. He shrank back from her touch, but not before she felt the life in him. He was doing his best to destroy it, but it was there.

"No no no. Not even gonna ask what the fuck you're doin' here, slayer. Really don't want to know."

He wouldn't meet her eyes. Now she didn't know what to do; her towering rage was suddenly gone, and without its support, she felt helpless, defeated. Here she was in a bad far-away place, and her friend was in this terrible trouble—she didn't even know yet entirely what kind, but look at how terrible, smell how much. And this was the kind of thing she'd never been good at. Taking care of people. That was always her mother's department. Or Dawn's. Dawnie was good at looking after her friends.

Spike, who was, in those two or three awful months, her only loyal, pure, undemanding friend.

"Spike." She sank down on the edge of his bed. "You didn't die? Why ... why didn't you tell me?"

"Spike's gone."

She cast about for some answer to this, glancing around helplessly at the standing lamp with its yellow shade, the table where Vietnamese newspapers were spread amidst more bottles, empty or nearly empty.

"What shall I call you then?"

He didn't answer. All her instincts with him: to force him to look at her, force him to talk—they were old, bad instincts and no longer served.

He went on drinking, his eyes closed, already feeling with the other hand for one of the bottles on the nightstand.

The kitchen was primitive, but there was a sink. She found a cloth, a bowl. Filled it with what passed for cool water.

When she tried to touch the wet cloth to his shoulder, he jerked away.

"Please," she said, amazed at how humble she sounded. "It'll feel nice. You're all clammy."

"Get out of here. Didn't call for you. Don't want to be touched."

When did Spike ever not want to be touched? Especially by her?

"I'll go if you answer my question."

"No need to call me anything."

"Not that question. I want to know what happened to you, after ... after I saw you last. We ... we all thought you perished down there." Why was that so difficult to say out loud? A wave of embarrassment heated her skin all over again. He'd sacrificed himself for her cause, for her, and she'd ... pretty much taken it for granted that he'd do that. She'd done a pretty good job of not dwelling on that too much since, getting on with the moving on. After all, what was past and gone was, etc. But here he was, and the whole damn thing slammed down on her again. All the things she could've done differently.

"Far as you're concerned, he did. Fuck off now."

He sounded so tired, like it was more effort than he could gather just to pronounce his words.

This was a mistake. Coming here. He was telling her the truth—Spike was gone. Because the Spike she'd known would never have spoken to her like this. Spike would be—despite himself—curious about her. Interested.

"All right, I won't impose on you. But just tell me ... are you here ... living like this ... of your own free will? Do you have enough money? Because if you're broke, or sick, or someone's got something on you ... I'm not just gonna leave you to it. I want to help."

"I'm livin' my bleedin' life. He will live until he dies."

That sounded like some kind of quotation. "Who? Who will live until he dies?" Like this was any kind of life.

"The vampire with a soul." He began to laugh, and then to cough, and then he snatched the basin from her hand and was sick into it.



"I don't know what to do."

She didn't expect Oz to be able to tell her. He put more hot sauce on his noodles and stirred them around with the chopsticks. The hotel where they were both staying—the only one in town—was ostensibly air-conditioned, but the dining room was mostly "cooled" by ceiling fans going at such a pace that Buffy's hair blew around her face until she pulled it back with an elastic. There was an ancient, noisy window unit in her room that she'd set going as soon as she got back, in the hopes that it would be cool enough by time she'd eaten to maybe get some sleep. Her skin felt dirty even right after she washed. The air everywhere had an unpleasant thickness to it. Still, there was a little relief in being away from the rank odor of Spike's apartment.

It was still raining.

"Did you see Nguyen?"

"No. He doesn't live there too, does he?"

Oz shook his head. "He looks in most days. Straightens up, runs errands."

"Buys the liquor, you mean."

"Yeah, and the food."

"Oh, he eats?" She let out a bitter laugh. "Well, I guess I saw a little evidence of that." She'd poured the contents of the basin down the ... not a toilet. There was no toilet, just a hole in the floor in the bathroom. She'd seen arrangements like that in various places in Europe, so she shouldn't have been surprised. When she emerged from the bathroom, Spike was asleep, or pretending to be. She'd let herself out, closing the broken door as best she could.

"Do you have any idea what's going on? I mean, you know he's human now, right?"

Oz didn't know. Oz didn't know because he'd never actually touched him, and in fact, he wasn't wolfy anymore, thanks for asking. He didn't say that—thanks for asking—or even imply it, but Buffy didn't need to be guilted to feel guilty. Not at the moment, anyhow.

"Congratulations?"

He nodded.

"Is that a hundred percent good thing?" she asked.

"It's a solid ninety," Oz said. "And I don't know what's going on with Spike. But one thing I picked up during my tenure as a Scooby—anything's possible, y'know?"

"I just don't understand why he didn't get in touch with me."

Of course Oz didn't know the whole history, and even if Willow had filled in the details for him, he still wouldn't know, because Willow didn't know everything either. Willow had her own perspective, of course, not particularly hostile towards Spike, but not ... not the same as Buffy's own. And there were things—lots of things—Buffy had never told her. Things that were private, or that she didn't want to talk over with herself, let alone anyone else.

"He's ... depressed."

Well, duh.

"Guys ... when they're depressed ... often they just want to be on their own." Oz proposed this as if for her inspection and approval.

"Guys are jerks."

"Often," Oz allowed.

She hated this. She couldn't eat. How was she supposed to sit here and eat while Spike was wasting away in that disgusting room? How was she supposed to allow him to do that?

"Maybe we could move him here. The hotel is a little more comfortable—"

"How will we move him? I mean, if he doesn't want to come."

"I'll tell him it's cooler here."

Oz raised an eyebrow.

Buffy let the spoon drop into her soup. "Well, what? What am I supposed to do? I mean, you got me here, so you tell me!"

She liked being angry; it was easier.

"I thought you guys should know about this. I really can't ... can't advise."

For the rest of the meal, she asked him questions about his travels, and tried to be pleasant. Afterwards, she phoned Giles back in England.

"What does The vampire with a soul will live until he dies mean to you?"

There was a silence on the line. Then Giles said, "Where are you calling from?"

"I'm in Vietnam. I forget how to say the name of this place. It's very hot and it's raining. I don't think I'm ever going to be dry again."

"Vietnam? Not with Angel?"

Why would he ask that? "No, not with Angel."

Angel was a little bit of a sore point, still. She'd heard all about how he'd gone evil, allying himself with some big cosmic dark forces. Once, from that Big Evil Law Firm, he'd called on Giles and the council for help and after some deliberation, Giles had refused it. After that last time she'd seen him, before the battle with the First, she had no desire to get in touch with him herself. That whole encounter left a bitter aftertaste, it was a place in memory she didn't like to have to go.

"What then, Buffy?"

She was surprised Willow hadn't filled him in—supposedly they were tight like that these days. Much tighter than she was with Giles anymore. "Spike is here."

"Spike?"

She waited for Giles to finish his exclamations of amazement and incredulity. When he did, she went on, "Oz came across him. He's not a vampire anymore. He's human. And he said that to me, like it was a thing he'd been told. The vampire with a soul will live until he dies."

"It sounds like a prophecy, but it's not one I'm familiar with. I'll have to do research. At any event, what's he doing in Vietnam?"

"Trying to obliterate himself with booze is what it looks like, but I don't know what he had to come out to this shithole to do it for."

"I see. Or rather, I don't. What ... what do you propose to do, Buffy?"

"I came here to help him. But he doesn't want any help. He doesn't want to talk to me. So I don't know what to do. But I can't just leave him here. Giles, he's sick."

She waited for Giles to give her some version of the Spike is unworthy of your attention and care speech.

But all he said, in a quiet serious tone, was, "Shall I come out there and help you, Buffy?"

Tears sprang to her eyes, and she almost said yes. Yes, yes, yes, please, rescue me, Giles, the way you used to! But then she thought about Olivia, and the baby. What was the point of taking Giles away from them? Spike wouldn't be any more glad to see him—much less, in fact.

"No, I'm probably better on my own. Just ... if you can find anything out about what happened to make him human, that might be useful. I'm going to visit him again tomorrow. Maybe I can find a doctor who'll make a house call."

The air conditioner in her room labored noisily, but the temperature still had to be at least eighty when she went inside. The bed was lumpy, and she didn't care to look too closely in any of the room's dark corners.

In the middle of the night, the sudden silence woke her up. She lay startled for a long moment, then realized that the power was cut. The only sound was the insistent ssshhhh of the rain. Rising, she opened the french-style windows onto the night. The town lay in darkness. For a moment the air outside felt almost cool against her face. Staring into the black, she wondered how Spike had received such a prize, and why he seemed to hate it so much.



In the morning, she brought Oz to the infirmary with her, to interpret. The place was run by Vietnamese nuns. At first the head nurse didn't want to give out much information about Spike. Buffy said, "Tell her I'm his wife," slipping her ringless hand into a pocket. The nurse, who beneath a tight wimple had one of those inexorable, humorless faces, sort of like a female Quentin Travers, gave her a severe looking over, but finally she went to fetch Spike's file.

"By the way, you're Madame Smith now, so smile and nod when she calls you that."

"Smith? As in Smith Is Not My Real Name?"

"Apparently. Did Spike ever have a real name?"

"He must have, but I never knew it." I never asked. It seemed absurd to her now that she never had. No wonder he didn't believe her at the last. She hadn't behaved like a woman in love. The world being on the cusp of ending was no excuse, really. She just hadn't been able to bring herself to unbend that much, and she'd assumed somehow that it wouldn't matter, because Spike had always accepted her—cherished her—just as she was. That he might like to be cherished a little in return hadn't occurred to her at all.

The nun returned. She wouldn't let Oz actually see the file, but they talked for long enough that Buffy began, despite her desire for information, to feel impatient.

Finally they were crossing the courtyard again. Buffy tried to dodge the puddles, but her sandals were already soaked. The rain had stopped, but the sky was low and steely, and there was an ominous stillness to the heavy air.

"So?"

"He has a serious bleeding ulcer, and cirrhosis, and something wrong with his heart."

Something wrong with his heart. Right. He broke it for me. "What wrong?"

"I didn't get everything she said. It sounded like she was saying he had things wrong with him that he's too young for. She said that if you really were his wife, you'd take him home to America where they know how to treat these things."

"If I was? Huh. Smart nun."

"But she said he also has an uncanny strength. That he should have died a few days ago, when Nguyen brought him in. They all thought he'd die, the way he was bleeding internally. She said the Lord spared him."

"The Lord wouldn't know what to do with him, I'm sure He's in no hurry to take on that responsibility."

The rain began again. There was no preliminary pattering, it was like a sluice opening. They were drenched at once, and ran for the cafe.

There Oz told her that unless she wanted him to stay, he was going to move on. There was someone waiting for him in Bangkok.

"Someone you're in love with?"

His face lit up then, for the first time.

"That's really good, I'm happy for you," she said, and thanked him. This time they hugged; Buffy was glad they hadn't before, because now it meant something. They weren't really friends, she might never see him again, but he'd been good to her, and she made sure he knew she appreciated it.

"One last thing before you leave," she said, letting go of him slowly. "There's something I want to get, maybe you can show me where ...."





She held up the bottle so he could see the label. Jack Daniels. She'd paid quite a bit of money for this, even with the exchange rate, in a shadowy shop she'd never have found without Oz's help. When she was sure she had Spike's attention, Buffy opened the bottle, took a long swig, then held it out to him.

After giving her a long blank stare, Spike accepted it and drank.

"So," she said, dropping into a chair. "What are we drinking about?"

He didn't answer, not that she expected him to. But today he seemed accepting of her presence. He was, once again, sitting up in the rattan chair, wreathed in smoke from the noxious Chinese cigarettes everyone smoked here, wearing nothing but the thin peasant trousers she'd yesterday mistaken for pajama bottoms. Of course Spike would never actually own a pair of pajamas.

His eyes seemed sunken in his skull, ringed in grey. The beard—and how strange it was to see him with that!—clung to hollowed cheeks. She could see his ribs, and a convexity where his abs once were, and sinews in his neck she was sure hadn't been there before. But he still had most of his muscle tone. Yesterday, when he'd knocked her down, he'd done it as if his strength was never in doubt.

Sweat trickled from her armpits, and down her back, making her squirm. The ceiling fan only seemed to accentuate the terrible heat. Between that and the smoke, it was almost impossible to get a breath. She held a hand out, then, after a few seconds, snapped her fingers.

He started, bringing his gaze reluctantly to her face. She indicated the bottle, leaned forward to reclaim it. He watched her incredulously as she took another drink. She didn't choke or make a face now. She'd learned to hold her liquor, and even like it. Although usually she didn't get started this early in the day.

"So, William." She paused. Was he going to answer to that, now?

"Sound so damn snooty when you say that."

At least he was talking.

"I don't mean to." She passed the bottle back to him.

Spike held it for a moment, contemplatively, gazing into the neck as if down into a microscope.

Then he threw it. It didn't hit her, but it came close enough that she wasn't sure if he'd meant it to or not.

"Get the fuck out. Just get the fuck away from me. Got nothing for you, an' want nothing from you. Don't make me say it again. Don't put me through it an' through it an' through it."

He wasn't shouting—his voice was almost a croon. He seemed to shrink into the chair, to become smaller and frailer. Curling away from her.

Buffy got to her feet. "Spike—William—whatever—you know if things were the other way ... if it was me who was abusing myself like this ... you wouldn't leave me."

"Please."

That one word was so full of pleading, almost a sob. Buffy blushed, for herself, for him. He was sick, exhausted, didn't want her to see him this way, and he was powerless, or thought he was, to do anything about it. How could she threaten him with her return, day after day, how could she force him back to health, when her presence was so oppressive to him?

But she couldn't leave. She knew she'd stay here as long as it took to either see him better, or see him into his grave.

Madame Smith.

"What's your real name?"

He raised his face, squinted at her.

"Your family name," she prompted. "I know it's not Smith, you phony bastard."

He shook his head.

"Fine, I don't care! But you can't hold out on me, Spike! How did you survive the hellmouth closing?"

"Didn't."

"Then ... then why are you here now?"

"Wouldn't you like to know."

"Spike, I would. I really would."

His snort was full of disdain. "They're all dead, you know."

"Who is?" The ubervamps? The new slayers? She was a little bit afraid of the clarification. "You know, most of us got out. The Scoobies. Dawn. Faith. Your sacrifice saved us."

"Talkin' about the L.A. lot. Utterly decimated. All went down fighting. Angel's dusted, you know."

It was as if he'd struck her in the chest suddenly with a club. Her breath hitched, and failed her. She couldn't even begin to hide her reaction, and knew he was watching her, watching her with a greedy kind of satisfied anger. She felt the weight of his gaze even in the midst of her surprise and the torrent of grief that rose up to engulf her. She couldn't feel her body. Spots danced in front of her eyes. She thought she might faint, and that it would be good to faint.

Somehow she got herself up, and out.

In the downpour, she turned her face up. The tears came, hotter than the hot rain.



She'd lost some time. It was mid-morning when she'd gone to Spike with the bottle of Jack, and it was late afternoon now. Her eyes felt shrunken in their sockets, her whole body ached, and she couldn't account for all her movements. Couldn't account for the incredible sadness that came up and up in inexorable slow bubbles that burst painfully in her chest, over and over.

She hadn't cried like this for Spike, when he died so that she could save the world. Hadn't lost control of herself this way at all since her mother died. Felt that everything was shit, that there was no place to go, no home anymore.

Nothing had startled her this way either, since her mother. She remembered that mute incredulity of discovery, how it seeped and then crashed over her and then seeped again and crashed again, the cruelty of it, how it could repeat and not be any less.

She wasn't prepared for how much she still loved Angel. How awful it was to know he was gone.

She was in the cafe now. A policeman had brought her there. He'd found her wandering in the depths of the slums, by the river. A lost tourist. She hadn't understood a word he said, but she'd let him herd her back to the French streets, and put her in a chair here. She nodded as he lectured her incomprehensibly, and she offered him some money, which he first refused and then took. He said something to the cafe man before he went away.

The cafe man put a beer in front of her.

Swallowing it in one go, she motioned for another. Her thirst was sudden and terrible. While she waited, she felt at her neck, at the delicate raised scar there. Was that all that remained of Angel, the only bit of proof left that he'd existed?

She didn't know anything. The battle Spike referred to—which side was Angel on? Did Giles know about this? Had he kept it from her, tried to trick her the way he and Robin had tricked her, in trying to eliminate Spike?

Maybe Angel's death was a good thing for the world. She didn't know. Not that it would be any easier to bear if that was the truth.

Her cell phone was slick and warm in her hand—everything here was slick and warm, there was nothing that felt refreshing to the touch.

What would she say to Giles? What did you know and when did you know it? Why didn't you tell me?

No. She put the phone back in her pocket. Because if she asked all that, she'd have to ask herself why she hadn't gone to L.A., to find out what was really going on with him.

In the old days, she'd have felt responsibility for that.



"How can you know what happened to Angel?"

He roused, blinking, lifted his head for a moment from the pillow, then let it drop as if it was far too heavy. He lay on the bed as if shot. "Saw him go down with my own eyes."

"Wh—where?"

"Told you. In L.A. Big battle there was. Good an' evil, dukin' it out."

"Why is this the first I heard of it?"

"We'd have liked some help. Your lot thought the old man changed sides, an' wouldn't talk to us. Did you even know that?"

No. She wasn't in daily touch with Giles then. She was getting on with her life. Taking a break. Leaving the slayage to the newbies for a change.

"Not you. You were busy bein' party girl."

"I—"

"Out on the town in Rome, you were. Footloose an'—but you weren't fancy-free, were you? Dating the Immortal. How's that going?"

"How could you know that?" She almost started crying again; her chest and face were so congested.

Spike got up on his elbows. His grin was ghoulish. "Wouldn't you like to know."

It occurred to her that, in some way or other, he did still give a shit.

"What I want to know is what happened."

"World didn't end, no thanks to you an' your lot. That's all there is to it. You're not the one girl in all the world anymore, so it's no concern of yours. An' I'm nothin' you need to keep your eye on anymore either. I'm just a fellow wants to get on with his private life."

He'd managed, with his careless, barbed remarks, to pinpoint just exactly why she'd been so damn bored for the last year. But she couldn't look at that now. "So you. You were there? In the battle? With Angel."

"He fought well, he always does."

"And you? What did you do?"

He turned away from her, fumbled amongst the empty bottles, dirty glasses, and overflowing ashtray on the bedstand. Buffy looked around, found a bottle on the other table with a few fingers of brown liquid left in it, and brought it to him. The shards of the JD still lay on the floor, the spilled whiskey adding its aroma to the miasma.

"I thought you had a guy who does for you."

"Bastard hasn't been round today."

He didn't speak to her while she worked. She moved slowly in the drenching heat. First carrying all the dirty glassware and ashtrays into the mean little kitchen. Cleaning up the broken bottle, getting rid of the numerous empties, and the mess of newspapers. She knew he was watching her, but she didn't return his glance. There was a lot to do here, and once she began, she wanted to do it. There was something vaguely abasing about doing Spike's housework, but it was a feeling she welcomed. After her lost afternoon, there was a welcome specificity in washing things, sweeping, putting things right.

Finally she approached him again. "If you'll go sit in the chair, I'll change the bed. That is, if you have another set of sheets."

He nodded towards a chest under the window.

"Maybe you want to have a bath while I do this."

"Not lettin' you crawl into bed with me after."

This remark stirred anger as listless as his raised head when she first came in. It collapsed as quickly. "Like I'd want to. Have you looked at yourself lately?"

He grumbled something that she couldn't quite make out as he moved past her towards the bathroom. It was only after he'd slammed the door that she realized it was "Knew you wouldn't."



He stayed in the bathroom so long she began to think he was hiding from her. Finally he cracked the door and asked her to pass him some fresh clothes. When he emerged, it was obvious he'd made an effort: hair and beard combed, skin reddened where he'd scrubbed at it. He'd put on a shirt.

"That feels better, doesn't it?"

He shrugged.

"I went out for some food. Hot soup." The market place, with its medley of vivid aromas and stinks, was almost outside his door. She'd wondered, as she straightened the room, how he stood the noise just on the other side of the thin wooden slats. But perhaps he liked it. Perhaps it was company of a kind. "Go sit down, Spike."

"Stop calling me that."

"What shall I call you?" She sounded sharper than she intended.

Lover? Sweetheart?

"Don't see as you have to call me anything."

"Don't start that again, I'm mad enough at you already. Sit at the table. You can begin drinking and smoking again in a half hour, but for now, we're going to have a meal."

She'd found bowls and chopsticks and the soup spoons made of china they used here, and set, if not an attractive table, at least a neat one. The pho steamed in the center.

He was already sweat-streaked again, and regarded the food with apprehension, like a balky horse. The skin beneath his eyes and nose was green.

"Dunno if I can."

"Spike—" She started again, more gently. "William. You have to eat. You have to support yourself on something."

"Why?"

"Because you do."

"My stomach's all cut up inside."

"Have some of the broth, at least. Beef broth won't kill you."

"Would prefer it if it did."

"C'mon." She served out the pho—a small amount for him, more for her. Laboring in the heat had roused her appetite.

"Don't you get it, you stupid girl? Not interested in supporting myself. Not interested in any of this. Told you once already to just go away."

"I really don't care what you're interested in. I'm interested in seeing you eat, and I'm the slayer, so what I say, goes."

This might have worked, perhaps, if she'd kept her tone lighter, if she'd smiled. If she'd stayed out of his personal space by refraining from moving the bowl and spoon closer to him.

She hadn't yet figured out the extent of his frailty. He was plenty strong enough to upend the table. To throw a chair at her head. Which clipped her on the temple; she went down.

When she could see again, a middle-aged Vietnamese man was bent over her, staring into her face. She rose slowly, fighting her dizziness. Her stomach bucked and heaved. He began talking to her, his voice fast and agitated. She gestured to get him to move back. This must be Nguyen. He seemed upset by the overturned table, by her presence. The door stood open. Spike wasn't there.

Nguyen herded her towards the street. The door slammed behind her.

Okay, so far, this wasn't going well. Every encounter ended with him hurling something at her, something that hurt.

And it hurt to see him in so much pain. Wanting to die. Spike never wanted to die. She'd seen him at some low ebbs in the past—newly chipped. Insane in the high school basement. But he'd always clung to his sense of self, always wanted something.

There had to be something he wanted besides drunken oblivion and death. There had to be.

What was she going to go back there with tomorrow? What could turn this situation around? Walking back to the hotel in the relentless rain, her head aching, Buffy searched for some new idea.



The first year, she'd concentrated on getting Dawn settled, on getting to know Dawn better. She'd also concentrated on doing all the things she'd felt deprived of all her life, because she was the slayer. She learned to ski at Gstaad, and to do deep-sea diving in Tahiti. She met attractive new people, partied and shopped. Money was no longer a worry—Giles, via the reformed council of watchers, gave her a lump sum, carefully invested to yield a nice income, as a retroactive payment for years of service. Then about nine months after the fall of Sunnydale, her father died, and there was more money from that for her and Dawn. She didn't slay, and she didn't get involved with Giles' work with the new slayers. There was no need to, or so he told her, and so she told herself. She was free now, her life expectancy was that of any healthy woman, and she could do anything she liked. Many ideas occurred to her, as she flitted around, and she meant to look into them very seriously. Going back to college. Doing some serious volunteer work, like maybe building houses for homeless families. Joining the Peace Corps. Perhaps joining Xander in Africa, where he was searching for slayers. She would decide on something, once the novelty of all the freedom wore off a little.

That was the first year. The second year, she still hadn't made her mind up about anything, she was still flitting around. The fun was less fun. Xander was still away, Willow was working hard with the council, and the coven. She wasn't at the center of her friends' lives anymore. There was nothing to be the center of.

She'd walked away from being the slayer before, but something always came up to pull her back in. For the last few months, she'd wondered once in a while what it would be this time, and how soon. Yet she'd made no move to contact Giles. Didn't want to give up her freedom, even though she wasn't doing much with it.

For a long time she didn't think about Spike at all. Her mind just closed up shop on the whole struggle with the First. It was as far away and unrecalled as her time in first grade. Once in a while he'd turn up in a dream, but the details melted away as soon as she awoke.

It was Dawn who brought that to an end. About six months out, she started wanting to talk about Sunnydale, talk about the last few years. She was troubled about her existence; the whole key thing. She worried that she'd been unkind to people. Anya. Andrew.

"You were never unkind to Andrew. I never heard you be unkind to either of them. I don't know what you're talking about. You're just inventing things to feel bad about."

"Spike. I was so mean to Spike."

Somehow, hearing his name pass her sister's lips shocked Buffy down to the ground. She stiffened all over, was on the verge of rapping out an order to be quiet about him.

But why? Why shouldn't Dawn talk about Spike? Talk about anything she needed to talk about?

"I never forgave him. I forgave him in my heart but I never told him. We were good friends, and then we weren't, and then he thought I hated him." Dawn paused. "He thought we all hated him. Yet he was brave and willing anyway."

"I didn't hate him. He knew that."

Dawn looked startled. Then she said, "... I didn't mean you," and walked out of the room.

After that, Spike appeared in her dreams more often. Now she was celibate again, she had frequent sex dreams about him. She thought about him while she masturbated, because somehow ... he was just who she pictured when she felt sexy, when she imagined herself having sex.

One night she woke up gasping, in tears. She cried for hours, a deluge of weeping that seemed bottomless. She'd understood, in a deep physical way that made it hard to draw breath, that Spike was dead. Her body ached with missing him. She didn't feel finished with him, she was far, far from finished. He'd died misunderstanding her, and there would never be a chance to put that right.

She never discussed this with her friends. But when she turned down men who were interested in her, she gave her mourning as an excuse. Gave the impression that there had been a fiancé ... a soulmate ... whom she could not betray by moving on.

It didn't hurt that this made her seem rather alluring even as she was saying no.



Returning to Spike's apartment in the morning, Buffy found it shut up. She waited around for a while, making a minute inspection of every stall and cart in the market, distributing small coinage to beggar children. The rain was a fine mist that barely seemed worth repelling. Spike didn't return.

He didn't show up all day, or all evening.

It wasn't easy, making the rounds of Dai Phuong's bars, when she didn't know where they were, and didn't speak the language. She was conspicuous.

She didn't find him.

But she was so convinced that he was off somewhere on a bender that it wasn't until the third morning that it occurred to her to check at the infirmary. When the idea arose, it gripped her in a panic—what if he had died? What if he was in a coma? She'd miss her chance again— She took off at a run.



She had to wait in the bare reception room, on a wooden bench under a huge crucifix, for the head nurse. Buffy already knew she didn't speak English, but hoped she might make herself understood to the nun in French. She'd done French in high school, and picked up a little conversation since in her travels. Carefully she assembled some sentences in her mind, ready to spit them out when the woman appeared. Je m'appelle Madame Smith. Mon mari, Monsieur William Smith, il est ici?

Like it was credible, that she'd lost him. That she was even married to him. She knew the nun didn't buy that before. And Spike wasn't going to back her up on it either. He'd probably shout the place down denying that he even knew her.

If he was here, and conscious.

His name couldn't be Smith, could it? What a let-down that would be.

It turned out that she didn't need to say any of her painful French sentences; the nun appeared in the doorway, and beckoned to her at once.

Spike lay flat on his back in bed in a tiny bare white room, featureless as a cell except for the identical crucifix hanging over his head and the ceiling fan revolving above. His eyelids were nearly black, his face oddly sunken and shrunken. Buffy cried out at sight of him. "He's dead!"

The nurse said something she didn't understand, and prodded her into the room. A single straight-backed chair stood beside the bed.

There was an IV fixed to his neck, and another in his arm, dripping fluids into him. Fixing on these, Buffy understood that he couldn't be dead, because if he was, these things would've been removed.

"Il y a eu une hémorragie sérieuse. Il dort. Reposez-vous avec lui."

Then she saw that his chest was just barely rising and falling as he breathed. "Merci," she murmured, slipping into the seat. Spike's hand lay flaccid on the blanket. She curled hers around it. The nurse withdrew; Buffy listened to the firm tapping of her steps down the corridor. When they were gone, the only sound was the thin whirr of the fan overhead.

Spike's hand felt no more infused with life than it ever had, but when she squeezed it, she could feel a thready pulsing. Softly she laid her palm on his chest, and felt the beating of his heart. Probably it was only her imagination that it seemed indolent, reluctant. Now she was so close to him, she could smell the sour sickness of the beleaguered body. What surprised her was the tenderness that yawed open in her at these sad details. She'd been afraid—she only realized it now—that her feelings for Spike were only erotic, and that without sex there would be nothing. But this wasn't so. His illness made her feel wild with fear, but she knew she would be glad to have him, even ill or disfigured, if only he would stop pushing her away. She didn't think she'd ever felt that way about anyone before. There was something squirmy—embarrassing?—about it. She wasn't sure.

He didn't stir for a long time. The grey light in the room shifted, darkened. At dusk—what would've been dusk, if not for the rain—Spike's eyes opened.

"Sweetheart," Buffy breathed. "Oh God—how are you?"

It was as if he was holding his breath.

"Are you in pain?"

"Always."

She could barely hear him. His eyes fell shut again. Buffy ran out into the corridor, calling for help.



As the days elapsed, no one made her leave. A nurse brought her food from time to time. In the depth of the night, she lay on the floor and napped. Spike mostly slept; when he wasn't asleep, he wouldn't talk. But Buffy experienced something like serenity in her uninterrupted vigil. Hour by hour she grew bolder, took liberties. From merely holding his hand, to twining her arm around his. Resting her head on the pillow so she could murmur to him, touching her warm mouth to his cool cheek. Putting her fingers—very gently—through his hair. Spike made no protest, by word or movement, against these gestures, which gave her enormous pleasure. He didn't react when she called him sweetheart the first time—a word that burst from her without premeditation—or any of the subsequent times she called him that. She talked to him in low, warm tones, careful to say nothing that would upset him or force him to think. Mostly she repeated, in different ways, the soft assertion that he would be all right, that he would be taken care of. She was in a sort of ecstasy of tenderness, in which neither the bedpan-and-catheter realities, nor her own fatigue, made any impact on her.

He was very ill indeed. The next night there was another crisis, more bleeding, the doctor called for. But by some miracle he didn't die, and she began to think maybe this would be a turning point. He'd get dried out, and be more reasonable.

But on the fifth morning, when she returned to his side after going for a wash, he was alert once more, and frowned when she came in.

"You can't stay here."

"It's all right, Spike. I'll stay for as long as—"

"I don't want you."

She didn't know how to answer this; it was like talking back to a punch.

She took a step back, grabbed on to the door jamb on either side.

"The thing is, I want you."

"That's nothing to me. Get out."

"You never left me alone when I wanted you to. You stalked me for years, you enjoyed how uncomfortable your love made me. Well, turnabout is fair play."

"You're fucking joking."

"Not, actually."

"Dunno what you want from me, but you'll never get it."

"I want you to talk to me. And look at that, you are."

She tipped him a little smile of victory, but he was so angry now that he'd gone papery; his eyes filled, he gasped. He couldn't lift his head from the pillow.

He had no energy to battle her. Weak as a day-old kitten, in pain ... and her presence tormented him.

"All right, I'll go. Get some rest, Spike."



It was morning when she left him; she returned in the late afternoon.

The transformation was extraordinary. When she'd left him, he'd seemed ill unto death. Now he was sitting up, still not looking ready to stand up and walk, but as if he'd crossed back over the line into tenacious life. Someone had given him cigarettes; he smoked fast, tapping the ashes with a quivering hand.

He didn't look happy.

"I'm sorry, I had to check on you."

"Never mind sorry. Come in."

This surprised her. She sidled up to the bed.

"You look better. Amazingly better. But you shouldn't smoke."

"Listen to me, Buffy." He caught her hand, but it wasn't an affectionate gesture. His squeeze was tight, almost threatening. Where did he get the strength? "Listen to me. I'm not going to fulfill whatever fantasy you've got about me now. You can call me sweetheart an' be Mother Theresa all you like. You think you're responsible for me, because of what happened before, but you're not."

"You know ... it really hurts me, you talking this way." She'd never have admitted anything of the sort before, not in the old days. Suddenly it didn't seem so important, defending herself. She wanted to reach him, however she could. "I guess I understand why you hate me, but it seems unfair, when I'm trying to make up to you—"

"Bloody hell. Don't hate you. But I'm not out to please you anymore, either."

"Spike, you don't have to please me. Why do you think I'm here? I'm told that the man I love, who I thought was dead, is alive. So I come to where he is. You of all people must understand that I couldn't do anything else. You must understand that I have to do whatever I possibly can do for you. I can't do less!"

"Poor Buffy. You always are too late."

"No! No! How can you say that to me!" He'd let go of her hand; now she seized his. "Spike, please tell me you don't still think I was lying! I have never cared for anyone as much as I care for you right now! Don't—don't—insult me this way!"

He seemed stunned. " ... not insultin' you, Slayer. Go easy. Just ... yeah, I get it, I think I do. An' I feel sorry for you."

"NO!"

"I've got nothing for you anymore. I wish you hadn't found out about me, hadn't come. I'm not going to be here long."

"Where will you go? Where?"

"Gonna die."

She wanted to scream him down, but the way he said those two simple words, struck her silent. Her legs turned to water. Lungs shriveled up into two tight fists. She folded to her knees, too overwhelmed even to cry.



After that, things happened fast. In a burst of manic energy, Spike checked himself out of the infirmary—this consisted of yanking out the IVs, lurching up from the bed with more determination than strength as the sweat stood out on his greenish face, demanding his clothes in barked French, and refusing to wait for the doctor. He ignored Buffy's attempts to restrain him, or even persuade him to at least slow down. Once reinstalled in his apartment, where Nguyen had refreshed the liquor supply, he set to work on drinking as if trying to make up for the dry days in the hospital. An hour later, he was incoherent.

He didn't tell her again to leave him; mostly he ignored her. She stayed with him, sitting opposite, thinking mutely of what he'd said with such matter-of-factness. When he passed out, Buffy went back to her hotel room.



"I may have some information on that prophecy, but it's sketchy."

Buffy stared up into the whirling blur of the ceiling fan, her mobile glued to her ear with sweat. Giles sounded like he was right next door, and at the same time it felt like she'd never be able to return to the world where he was. The world of heroes and villains she used to inhabit, which from here was starting to look really sane and regular. Why had she been so eager to give that up? This now was a limbo, everything tinged with ambiguity. "Tell me."

"Wesley Wyndam-Pryce was working on this pretty extensively. Unfortunately he's dead—"

"I know about that." And for some reason knowing it hurt, like she'd discovered some huge forgotten responsibility. She didn't want to dwell on it. "They all are, Angel's whole circle. Which I guess you know. We missed the boat there, Giles. But let's talk about that later."

He was silent for a moment; she could imagine him pursing his lips, parsing her remark about the boat. It was so tempting to blame everything on him—he'd heard from Angel and turned him down and didn't tell her—but what was stopping her from checking in with L.A. herself? Nothing but indolence and a lot of feelings she didn't want to feel.

"Wesley's papers have not been recovered, but in the last few years he wrote occasional letters to his father, which I've been able to see. After extensive translation work on an ancient scroll, Wesley deduced that the vampire with a soul, would, if he worked actively on the side of good, and turned the tide in a great battle to come, achieve shanshu. Shanshu, as far as Wesley could determine, means both to live, and to die. His interpretation was that after a certain length of time and certain events set out in the prophecy, Angel would be restored to life as a reward for his good actions."

"So that's what he will live until he dies means."

"That's what Wesley believed."

"But Spike said Angel went down in this battle. And he's the one whose heart is beating."

"The prophecy never mentioned Angel by name. It referred to the vampire with a soul. Spike's regaining his soul—that was a wildcard."

"There's got to be more to it than that. There's a lot Spike isn't telling me."

"So you haven't learned any more? You sound very tired. What's happening there?"

"Nothing good. He's had two serious hemorrhages in the last week, but he's back in his smelly little room, drinking again."

"Buffy. Some people will do that. Some people—"

"Giles. This isn't some people. It's Spike. He's not like this. He's never been like this."

"He's a human being now. Alcoholism—you don't know, Buffy. You've never seen it up close—"

She didn't believe Spike was an alcoholic—at least, he certainly wasn't when he was a vampire. He drank sometimes to excess then, because he was bored or unhappy. But he always stopped when something more interesting engaged him.

There was a willfulness to what he was doing now that suggested the same thing. If there was something more attractive than killing himself slowly, she believed he'd be perfectly able to stop.

She just didn't know what that could be, if her love wasn't it.

It was so strange, to be near him and not feel the mute impress on her consciousness—and her conscience—of Spike's love. She'd learned, first in disgust and then in some emotion too complex and uneasy for her to parse, to rely on it as an absolute. She'd used it for her own purposes. She'd tested it, over and over, and found it unflagging.

And now it was, without preamble or explanation, just gone.

Leaving her disoriented, unsure of herself, groping in the dark.

She'd never known how much she'd come to define herself by Spike's attention, until now. Even in the last few years since his "death," she'd still regarded herself, in some obscure, unquestioning way, as his. Plighted to him.

"Giles, it's not what you're saying. That would be the tail wagging the dog. The liquor, it's a symptom. I'm just not sure ... exactly what the disease is, yet."

"All right then. You know I'm ready to come if you think I can be useful to you. Or to send other help, whatever you need."

"... thank you. I just don't think it would be any use. I need to find out what happened to him."

"When you do, fill me in."

"Yes. Goodbye, Giles."



"Is there someone else you'd like to see, someone you'd like to keep you company? Besides me?" Buffy couldn't think who to offer him. Anya was dead, and anyway their liaison had only lasted that one night; Buffy couldn't recall Anya making much time for Spike when they were all holed up in her house together. She couldn't recall anyone making time for Spike. Well, except Andrew, but Spike couldn't possibly miss his pestering. She reached. "Maybe Faith? I could track her down." This was by no means certain, nor was the assertion she went on to make, "I'm sure she'd come." She couldn't imagine Faith here. She'd take one look at this set-up, at him slumped in the rattan chair like a pile of soiled laundry, and snap 'Later for this.' "Or Dawn. Would you like me to call Dawn? I know she'd be glad to—"

"Don't want to see anyone."

"She wouldn't be angry at you anymore. She forgave you, it bothers her that she never got to—"

"Don't want anyone."

He didn't want her, but he tolerated her. The way he tolerated the heat, the awful humidity that made her feel she'd been bundled into a sodden blanket in a steam room, unable to escape. He drank steadily all day and during long stretches of wakeful night, and barely moved. Sometimes when she glanced at him, he was in tears, but he never sobbed or wept aloud.

His unwashed body gave off a meaty smell he'd never had as a vampire. From time to time he'd lurch to his feet and urinate into a chamber pot that was kept under the bed. He made no effort to conceal himself; all the impetus was on her to turn her head, or get up and walk out if the loud rushing sound, the strong odor, was too much for her. He never touched the pot; Nguyen emptied it when he appeared, or Buffy did, holding it out at arm's length, when she couldn't stand the thought of the brimming thing half-concealed by the trailing sheet.

It was so odd, Spike pissing. Of course he never needed to before, and she'd never really wondered how it was that he could drink beer and not need to pee it out. Where did it go? He didn't sweat much either. Hardly at all, even when they'd been fucking for hours.

She remembered, when she was with Riley, how he'd always get up at a certain point after love-making. If they were at his place, where the bathroom was right off the bedroom, she'd be able to hear the heavy stream hitting the water; it was a sound she always disliked, was embarrassed by. Didn't like seeing the toilet seat standing up either, when she went in there.

She'd lived in a household of women only for so long that she'd forgotten that that was normal too.

Nothing with Spike was normal. For a while she toyed with the idea of asking him what it was like, having human bodily functions again. But there wasn't going to be any good answer to that—clearly he hated his body, his life, himself, or else he wouldn't be here anaesthetizing himself like this. So, not a useful line of questioning.

She hadn't yet asked him any of her other smoldering questions. She was waiting for an auspicious time. Mostly she asked if he was hungry—sometimes he'd consent to eat, but usually afterwards he'd vomit. Though it made her retchy too, she stayed with him through these bouts, breathing through her mouth, sometimes closing her eyes.

Once she tried to talk to Nguyen, to enlist him as an ally. But if he understood any English, he kept that carefully concealed. It was obvious though, from the way he looked at her, that he viewed her as an interloper. Perhaps he feared she'd rob him of his meal ticket. Spike did have money—this was another facet of the mystery. Once she saw Nguyen give him bank documents to sign; an hour later he returned with an envelope full of multicolored bills, which he showed to Spike before putting it into a tiny safe set into the wall.

"Why did you come to Vietnam? To this town?" Buffy asked. "Do you like it here?"

"Nobody likes Dai Phuong. S'a cesspool."

"Why then?" Maybe he had some history here. She didn't know about his past—only about the two murdered slayers. If he'd been to China, perhaps he'd spent time in southeast Asia as well.

He shook his head, but just when she thought he was going to doze off, he opened his eyes wide and looked at her. His face was so thin now, his eyes so glassy, that his stare had something horrible about it. "Thought I'd do a bit of seeking, see? Try to learn what it's all about. Go up to those lofty spiritual places in the clouds, where they supposedly know what's what. How to find enlightenment."

"You mean, like, in Tibet?" This was unexpected—exciting, even. She leaned forward. "You were going to meet a guru? Learn to meditate?"

"Yeah. Seemed like the thing to do, after ... after."

"So—what happened?"

"Got this far, an' thought, what the fuck."

He'd always had this—call it a talent—to rock her back with words. The difference now wasn't so much that he'd honed his skills, as that she was so wide open. Years ago, she'd thought he was pathetic, and had no qualms about telling him so.

He was pathetic now, in an entirely different way, but she could no longer begin to summon that old disdain. Her stomach was a tight knot; fear and frustration. She wanted to shake him, make him be clear, make him be the old Spike she knew how to cope with.

He stared blearily at his knees, the bottle clutched at the end of his dangling arm. Like he'd already forgotten they were talking. Forgotten she was there. Buffy's eyes compulsively traced a vein that bulged up on his shoulder, down to his biceps and into the crook of his elbow. His pallid skin was slick; he looked deader than he ever had when he was undead.

It was so hard to talk to him; Buffy had to gather herself before every attempt. After a while, she said, "Would you still like to go there? I'd take you—" Hastily she corrected herself, "I mean, I'd go with you."

"Fucking hell, what sort of a nancy d'you take me for?"

"I don't. You brought it up first! I just—"

"You'd clean the floor with your tongue if I asked you to now, wouldn't you? What the fuck's wrong with you, Slayer? 'Stead of hangin' round where you're not wanted, you should be off doin' your job."



She wanted to return a sharp answer: who are you to tell me what my job is? but the words stuck in her mouth, and then they didn't make any sense anyway. No one knew better than Spike what her job in life was, or used to be. The job she'd walked away from.

She was supposed to be free now, because of the power sharing—free to realize her potential. That is, the potential she had back when she was a normal girl most concerned with lipgloss and whether she had the right boys—and the right number of boys—on her string. She'd never really thought about what she wanted to grow up to be, in those days. She'd more or less expected that she'd go to college, then marry somebody suitable who would give her a house with a pool, and a convertible, and she'd maybe work for a couple of years and then quit to start a family, trading in the convertible for an SUV. Her teengirl ambitions never went much further than the need to be the girl with the best boyfriend.

"Well, so should you!"

He sneered. "What's my job meant to be, then?"

"What ... whatever you were doing with Angel, before ...." She frowned. She didn't know what that was, not a clue. "You still haven't explained to me how you weren't dusted in the hellmouth, let alone—"

"Was dusted in the hellmouth. Burned up from the inside out."

Surprising—maybe it shouldn't have been—how hard it was, despite his matter-of-fact tone, to hear this. She didn't want to picture it. She knew what a burning vampire looked like. She'd heard their agonized screams. "So how'd you get around that?"

He snorted with real disgust. "Purely 'gainst my will, I assure you. Ended up at Angel's when someone mailed him back the amulet. Dunno who did it or how. Thing belonged to The Senior Partners at Wolfram & Hart, which is all you need to know, really. I was trapped inside it somehow. Was just a ghost for a while. Walkin' through walls. Havin' to watch the others run that demon law firm an' tell themselves they weren't getting corrupted by it. Couldn't leave the city, was tied to the place. Had no choice then but to keep company with the old Poof. When I was corporeal again, there were other reasons to stick close. An' when it came down to him an' his lot makin' their big move, tryin' to bring the whole thing down, 'course I signed on."

"... so there was a battle. They weren't corrupted? They fought on the right side?"

"Yes. And ... no. 'Course there was corruption. Rottenness shot through an' through the lot of 'em, and believe me, it hurt 'em all. Makin' that bargain with the Senior Partners cost Angel more'n' he ever imagined. But they fought the good fight when the time came."

And they all fell. Only you were spared."

"No, I wasn't." His anger was back; not at her, but at the forces that manipulated him. "Was beheaded by some great smelly Orc with a bloody huge sword. Had time to think it wasn't near as much fun as flaming out with all the power of the universe surging through me. But stands to reason dyin' for glory wouldn't be as good the second time. Shouldn't have been a second time. Didn't want one. I was supposed to be through. Wanted to be, by then."

"And after?"

"I dusted. No more Spike."

"Yet here I am, talking to Spike."

"Told you. I'm not him. They took him away, left only me."

"... yes. I heard you." She wasn't entirely sure of all he meant by this, though she could guess. "You're still answering to—"

"Too polite, I guess ... an' too annoying ... to correct you every bloody time."

This rebuke made her flush. "Okay, okay, William. So—"

"Woke up in a room in Angel's old place, that hulk of a hotel, few days later. Weak an' full of needs I'd long since forgotten, my heart tryin' to fling itself out my chest. Was alone there." He took a long swallow from the bottle in his hand. "... been alone since."

She knew what it was, to believe you were finished, entitled at last to peace, then to come to in a strange place. On the infrequent occasions when something reminded her of it, Buffy recalled all the terror of that confined awakening as if it was fresh. His story made her shudder, and filled her with pity. But she knew better now than to express that pity. "That's what I don't understand. Why didn't you—"

"What? Ring up your lot? You've never known what it is, have you, to live, day in, day out, among people that loathe an' despise you. Why would I run back to that? Just because they're the only familiar faces left? Pardon me, didn't feature bein' part of Rupert's cabinet of curiosities—the vamp who got made into a real boy. Not that he was ever curious 'bout me before."

She couldn't deny that Giles had despised him, or that Xander had, although she didn't think that either of them did on the day of his sacrifice. Or that they would've despised a newly-human Spike. But there was no point getting into that with him. "I can understand that."

"Doubt it. Don't think you ever gave it a thought—what it was like for me, those final few months. When I thought it would be better I go—you kept me there."

"I did. But c'mon Spike ... if you'd really wanted to leave, you'd have left. You were glad to be there."

"Never heard you say a word to your friends when they were rude to me."

She blushed, and knew he saw her. Part of her wanted to laugh, at the whole idea of the Big Bad's wittle fweelings being hurt because some thoughtless young people were rude to him. But it was true. He'd returned to them with a soul, a soul he'd fought for and won, and no one had ever expressed the slightest wonder, let alone amazement or respect. No one had asked him to tell his story. "Okay, yeah. I didn't and I should have. But I'm sorry that you misunderstood me so thoroughly."

"Don't think I did."

"That you believed I wouldn't drop everything to go to you, if you only let me know you were there! Either before this ... shanshu thing ... or after."

"Yeah, well."

"I admit it, okay! I thought ... I thought when we made love that last night in my basement, that you understood. You've always seemed to understand me, Spike. But I should've told you. I should've shown you more clearly, how much I—I wanted you. Esteemed you, adored you—listen to me, I'm saying what you've always wanted to hear! I wanted a future with you, afterwards. I was afraid to hope for that. And I guess I was afraid to say any of this out loud, but God, I felt it. That's haunted me, since. All the things I never got to tell you." She hoped this might garner some acknowledgement from him. The Spike she'd thought she knew would've blissed out on this confession.

This Spike lit a cigarette, and blew out a long stream of smoke. "Give the bleedin' violins a rest now, Slayer. They're gettin' on my nerves."



His casual cruelty wasn't like the Spike she'd first known. In those days, he'd enjoyed baiting her; even at his coolest, he was red hot whenever they were together. Nothing off-hand about it.

Now he took her loving words—the confession that cost her all kinds of pride and self-possession to say—as if they were nothing more than tiresome.

Behind the shroud of mosquito netting, he slept. Buffy wandered around the room, looking at his things. There wasn't much, but he'd been here long enough to accumulate a couple piles of books—some in English, some in French, all at least thirty years old, and most of them at least beginning to mildew. There was a radio, but no television. She looked for something familiar: the duster. His old scuffed boots. Found nothing like that.

This was so bad. She shouldn't stay here, to be treated this way. Wasn't it time to go home? What would any of her friends say about a woman who hung around trying to change a man, a man who wasn't interested, or kind, or healthy?

She knew what she'd advise anyone else, in her place. That's not love. It's stupidity.

She really should go back to Rome. Get seriously started on whatever the next phase of her life was going to be.

There was a deck of cards. Buffy laid out a game of solitaire on the table, and poured herself a finger of bourbon into a clean glass.

She was in the midst of her twenty-second game when Spike got up. With her back to him, she listened to him curse, and scratch, and cough, and piss, and groan because his belly pained him.

"Found the cards, I see. Deal us out a game of gin rummy. You know how to do that, don't you?"

She nodded, concealing her surprise. Opening a new bottle, lighting a fresh cigarette, he took the other chair. "Five hundred dong a point. Ante up, Slayer."

"I'm not playing for money."

"Yeah you are. Make it interesting."

"Kittens were interesting. This is just ..." She shook her head, but pulled out the wad of small denomination notes from her pocket. The money here was all paper, and was something like 13,500 dong to the dollar. It was like play money.

Something ought to be done about feeding him, but she was afraid that if she suggested that, he'd get angry. Maybe after a round or two of cards.

They played in silence. Spike smoked hard, holding his head at an angle, squinting. In the light of the flickering 40-watt bulb that hung over the table, he was cadaverous, his cheek and clavicle bones in deep shadow. He winced frequently, touching his stomach each time. Buffy restrained herself from remarking on it.

After a half hour, she said, "I'm surprised to find you here, in Downpour Central. I'd have thought a former vamp would go someplace sun-drenched. So you could find out at long last whether you'd freckle."

"Told you why I'm here."

"Yeah, but that doesn't explain why you don't leave."

"Play your hand."

"I'm not going to let you win all my money. You'll only spend it on booze."

"Don't need your money."

"You used to. Who's bankrolling you now?"

"There's an account. Was there when I began this life. Found a passport, an' various cards an' statements laid out for me on the dresser. When I spend it, they top it up."

"They?"

He shrugged. "Dunno who. Don't care."

"It might be blood money. Evil money. Wolfram & Hart money."

"Probably is. Don't care."

"I'm surprised you'd touch it. But I guess you don't spend much. Your wants are simple, I see. You like squalor, although I guess you don't exactly thrive on it. This isn't even top shelf bourbon, and really, with the exchange rate what it is here, you could buy anything you want for peanuts."

"There's nothing I want."

She trembled inside, but decided to go on pushing. "I thought you wanted to be dead. So ... why aren't you?"

"Will be soon enough. Now be quiet an' play."

He won two hands, she won one. Neither of them was being aggressive about it. Spike had taken over custody of the pack; he didn't ask her, as they finished each round, if she was up for another, just kept dealing. Another hour went by in near silence, before Buffy tried again.

"So you got the reward that Angel was supposed to get. Is that why you're doing this to yourself?"

He ignored her. They made a few plays, he drank down another glass of bourbon.

"I'd have thought you'd relish taking the top prize away from Angel. You with the big rivalry."

No answer.

"You think you didn't deserve it? I mean, whether Angel did or not, that's a separate question. You really think you were unworthy? C'mon, Spike, you stepped up. You stepped up big time. And nothing forced you to. You got that soul of your own free will. Which means you had a conscience even when you were supposedly nothing but evil. I've met a lot of vamps in my time, and none of 'em ever had that. I could argue that makes you more—"

"Shut yer gob an' play, or get out."

"But I want to understand what's happening here. You say you want to die, but why are you taking such a slow way about it?"

"Don't recall consulting you."

"So why did the Powers give you the Shanshu, and not Angel? Do you have any theories?"

"'Spect it was my beaux yeux."

"Maybe." She made an elaborate shrug. "Probably the whole thing was a mistake. Angel was supposed to wear the amulet. Instead, it was you. Administrative cock-up. I guess that's why you feel so guilty."

"Fat lot you know about it."

His mounting irritation was a result. Not quite the result she wanted, but a result nevertheless. "What do you think Angel would've done afterwards, if he got the Shanshu thing?"

That question earned her a look—a look that would've killed her by frying her every synapse, if it could.

Carefully, she laid down her winning hand, and scooped the money towards her. "Just so you know ... if it had been him ... and he'd come to me ... I wouldn't have married him or anything."

Spike growled. "Bollocks."

"It's true. All of that between us was over a long time ago, and it wouldn't have come back. But I guess I can't expect you to believe that either. You don't believe anything I say."

"You'd better go an' marry some fellow or other, Slayer. You won't be marrying me."

Oh ho. "I don't recall asking for your hand."

"Just lettin' you know you'd better squash any ideas you've been keepin' with all those 'sweethearts' you've been dolin' out."

"Noted. Deal again?"

"I'm done. Goin' to bed."

She was going to make another smart remark, but when he rose, Spike staggered and pitched forward; she caught him before he went sprawling. For a moment he was in her arms—not at all in the way she wished him to be. His hair and skin smelled bad—not just unwashed, but with the high funk of degeneration. A groan escaped him; he pushed her back. Something splattered on her, something bright red. Holding his stomach, barely keeping his balance, Spike bolted towards the kitchen. She heard him vomit, then cough, then vomit again.

When she was seventeen, she'd constantly imagined her wedding to Angel. Drawn pictures in the back of her notebook of the gown she'd have, the bouquet. Imagined him in a black morning suit, a white rose in his lapel. Imagined, over and over, the sweetness of their first married kiss. Their first married dance. Imagined her mother and Giles there, to watch it, and applaud, and eat from her wedding cake. Imagined how they'd float through the years on clouds of bliss, belonging to each other, never wanting anything or anyone else.

His blood made her shirt stick to her skin. "Spike—are you all right?" She ran to him. Je suis Madame Smith. Mon mari, Est-il ici?




He wouldn't go back to the infirmary. "Don't want to be stuck full of pins by a gaggle of nuns. Fucking nuns I used to eat for breakfast."

For the next few days he barely stirred from the bed. She sat with him as he dozed, fanning herself with a fan made of woven rushes she'd bought in the market, listening to the BBC World Service, sweating. Occasionally Spike talked in his sleep—nothing very coherent, but he always sounded angry. He drank water and didn't ask for liquor or cigarettes. Didn't ask for anything. But he was too weak to refuse her help when he needed to get up.



"Giles, can you get someone to find out who forged Spike's papers? Who's financing him?"

"He's being financed?"

"Not for much. But yes." She'd taken advantage of his long periods of unconsciousness to do a bit of ransacking, and now she was at the post office, the only place she could find that had modern tech. "I just sent you some faxes. Copies of his passport—his last bank statement. It's very small potatoes, and I don't think he's got any other hidden accounts. There's just enough to live month by month. But he says he doesn't know where it comes from."

"I'll try to get someone on it. The council's a bit short-staffed on forensic accountants at present."

This tiny joke made her smile. "Ask Willow to work her internet magic. And ask her to find out for me what Spike's real name is. I'm pretty sure it's not William Smith, even if that's what's on the passport."

"That may not be so easy. Why can't you ask him yourself?"

"That's what's not so easy. But I need to know."

"All right. I'll see what can be done." Giles paused. "How are you doing, Buffy?"

"I'm tired. I've been sitting up with him. But it's nothing to what he is. He's really suffering."

"Suffering that's self-inflicted."

This shut down her friendly feeling. "It's not that simple. Why do you have to pass judgment on him even now? You don't know—"

Giles was quiet for a moment. Then he said, "You're right. I don't know. I'm sorry."

"Listen to me. I don't think I'm going to say this again, or to anybody else. But I want you to know. Giles, Spike is the one. He's the one. Whatever else happens in my life ... there isn't going to be anybody else for me remotely as—as—" She'd been so steely, but suddenly her eyes filled. "I—I have to go. I can't leave him alone too long."

"Buffy, I understand. I understand that you need what you need. I hope ... I hope things work out with him."

"They probably won't. But I have to try."

"Yes. I'll call when I have the information."




On the third bedridden day, he asked again for the bourbon.

"Spike, you were vomiting blood. You can't just—"

"Don't tell me what I can't do, Slayer. You here to help me, or—"

"I'm not here to help kill you." But she rose and brought him the bottle. There didn't seem to be any point in refusing. Withholding it wasn't going to instill in him a will to live.

After the stuporous days, in the dead of night he was wakeful and even chatty. Volunteered little stories about Angel's crew, about a green demon named Lorne who wore amazing suits, and a woman who called herself Fred, who had a great scientific mind. He described how she was taken over by a god.

"A god? Like Glory?"

"Bit more reasonable. Not exactly a bad sort, as rogue gods go, except that it destroyed a dear sweet woman an' stole her body."

"Dear sweet? You had a crush on her."

"We all liked her, all us fellows. Adorable slip of a girl, an' smart as a whip. Was Wesley who was in love with her. Was in his arms she died."

"Oh. Poor Wesley." She still thought of him as the prissy watcher she'd had to slap down, though she'd been told he'd changed.

"Waited for her a long time, I think, while she didn't care for him, an' in the end never even got to fuck her. But knew, before he lost her, that she returned his love. So in a way, it was all right."

In a way.

She wanted to ask what Fred had done to show Wesley that she loved him back. How had she managed it so as to be believed?

But she couldn't ask. This Fred was dear and sweet—two things she couldn't accuse herself of being, not with him anyhow—so probably that accounted for it. Women like that didn't have trouble imparting themselves to their lovers.

Spike talked readily about some things, but when she asked him direct questions, especially about anything to do with the Shanshu, he ignored them. If she pressed him, he flared up, accused her of enjoying his suffering. "You're lovin' it, seein' me brought low. That's what you hang around for."

"No. God, no."

"Never wanted you to see me like this. Puny an' disgustin'."

"You don't have to be— If you'd just stop, you'd be—"

"I am puny. I always was. What do you think I ever was, when I was a man? Man or vamp—just runnin' fast as I could to stay in the same place. Puttin' on a big show. Load of bollocks."

"I don't think that's true. You're not seeing yourself clearly right now. You've lost your self-respect, but that doesn't mean it's true that—"

"You don't fucking know me. You never did. Never cared to."

"I care to now. I'm listening now. Please, Spike—"

"Leave me be. Too tired for this crap."



In the middle of the third night after the hemorrhage, he wept. To Buffy's surprise, he didn't pull away when she sat on the edge of the bed, put a hand on his arm. She could tell he was feverish, even through the sultry heat of the room. He should've been in a sweat, and wasn't. His crying produced no tears. She stroked his arm. Whispered. "What's the matter, Spike? Can't you tell me? Can't you let me share it with you, whatever it is? Maybe it isn't so bad. Nothing could be so bad that you have to punish yourself this way."

For a long time he cried, but would say nothing. At last, near dawn, he subsided. She thought he was asleep, when he murmured, "Just can't do it. Not me. Not me."



The next day he was up again, still weakened, still refusing food, but ready once more to play cards, and smoke.

Buffy cut the deck. The shuffling echoed the sound of the omnipresent rain. She dealt.

"How did you know about me and the Immortal? You spied on me?"

"Angel spied. Angel knew. Wasn't aware of it myself, 'til he shared a bit."

"I don't know how I feel about that." She did know. She didn't like it. But this wasn't the time to go into that.

"Had no business keepin' tabs on you, way I saw it. Doesn't say good things 'bout a man, when he keeps tabs on an ex. Anyway, had no call to be doin' it. He had a mistress."

"He did?" Her stomach made a shameful little seize.

"Pretty blonde, no surprise. Werewolf, bit of a surprise there." The corners of his mouth turned down. "Would've liked a mistress of my own. Didn't quite get around to it though, an' then everything fell to shit."

He threw out a card.

Buffy stared at it, through the thick smoke, while the room spun around her, and her heart pressed up into her throat.

"Spike. I'll be your mistress. I'd like to be."

She imagined slipping out of her chair, taking off her teeshirt, offering him her breasts. Saw herself getting on her knees for him. Wanted his two hands tangled in her hair while she took his cock in her mouth.

She would do it. It didn't matter that he was dirty and sick, she didn't see that, she just saw him. Wanted him. Wanted him to know how much.

She would do it.

She started to rise.

"Where're you goin'? Play your turn, Buffy."

"Spike—"

Then he laughed. "Haven't had a stiffy last three months at least. Got no use for a mistress now."

That laugh—nasty, mocking her and himself—made her cringe and flush. She dropped back into her chair.




The next morning, he was still in bed when she arrived, looking as if he'd lost a desperate struggle with the sheets. The room smelled of vomit, and there were flecks of dried blood on the pillow. His hair and beard were darkened with sweat; he rattled when he inhaled.

Buffy's heart sank. What should she do? Drag him back to the infirmary? And what then?

As if he'd read her mind, Spike said, "How long're you goin' to keep comin' here, Slayer? S'not doin' you nor me any good."

"I want to help you." The meaningless of this rang in her ears as she said the words. Spike hadn't lifted his head; his voice was half-muffled by the pillow. He coughed, his whole body shaking. He was shivering with fever. She approached, but he thrust an arm out to ward her off.

"Had a bitch of a night, feel like shit, can't stand your hoverin'. Go away. Just go away—least 'til later."

It was true that he was at his worst in the mornings, and at his best—a very poor best—in the late afternoons.

"I'll bring you something to eat, then. Later. Around five?"

"Five. Sure. Piss off, now."

The day weighed heavily on her. The rain was unchanged, so heavy that she couldn't maintain any enthusiasm for exploring the town—she'd seen most of it already. She sat in the cafe with one of Spike's books, slowly sipping beer and reading as the hours crawled damply by.

In the afternoon she checked her email at the public terminals in the tiny post office. There was a note from Dawn, who was in the midst of her university finals. Buffy hadn't told her about this trip; she wondered now whether she should ask Dawn to come here when her semester was over, even though Spike didn't want to see anyone. If he did die, and Dawn found out that she'd missed a chance to tell him about her forgiveness ... and maybe he would respond to her, if she was here. They'd been close while she was dead—closer, Buffy suspected, than anybody ever told her. Sure, that closeness evaporated when her affair with Spike began, but that didn't mean he didn't still have great untapped reservoirs of affection for her sister. The sight of her might bring that to the surface.

What if I bring her here, and she succeeds where I'm failing? What if Spike gets better for her, and they fall in love and Dawn marries him? How would I live with that? I'd have to live with it. I wouldn't be able to say anything. I'd be glad, glad he was alive and they were happy, and I'd be a really good aunt to their kids and—

This musing, coming out of who knew what crazy recess of her mind, left Buffy with a don't-know-whether-to-laugh-or-cry feeling. In some ways, she was still a schoolgirl, with schoolgirl preoccupations. Here she was mired in this heart-rending horror, and her subconscious served her up with what if my sister crushes on the boy I like?

This story wasn't going to end with wedded bliss for anyone. She could see that much already.

Sitting there in the stuffy post office, staring at the grimy screen, a wave of woe overtook her, so hard and sudden that she drooped and suppressed a groan. Something opened in her, and she got the Spike's-eye view: life was shitty. Nothing meant anything, nothing led anywhere, love was futile, death didn't soothe or solve anything, pain was omnipresent. You struggled along, and each time you managed to save the goddamn world just meant you'd have to save it again a little later, only it would be even harder, and life would be grubbier and stupider afterwards.

What was she going to do with herself? Even if she persuaded Spike not to die, what was that going to do, for her or for him? They weren't here to solve each other's lives—no one could do that for anyone else, anyway. And if all her purpose as a woman had come down to what was happening in this place—well, that had to mean she really was lost. He was maddening and pathetic, taking the boon he'd been granted—a boon Angel had strived towards with all of himself for years—and drowning it in booze-soaked self-pity. That was disgusting. If he was going to go on like that, he didn't deserve her help, or anyone's.

But she couldn't go back to skiing at Gstaad. She didn't know what she could go back to. Spike had become something that was appalling, but her love didn't know that, her love—dashed and defeated as it was—refused to lose all hope, wanted to be with him.




At five she went to his apartment, carrying a container of hot fish stew, and another bottle of Jack—which she planned to hold back, a reward for good behavior. If he ate, and didn't throw up, she'd break it out afterwards.

When she came in, the light was on beside the bed, the ceiling fan slowly whirling, the radio on low, playing the BBC World Service. He wasn't in the room.

"Spike?"

In the kitchen she set the food down. The bathroom door was shut. She heard the bath running. That was a good sign. He hadn't bathed in quite a while.

"Spike, I've brought dinner. Will you be finished soon? It's hot."

No answer.

"Spi—all right, William. William, sir, your dinner is served. Whenever you're ready."

Under the forty-watt bulb that dangled from the ceiling, she blinked back a headache as she assembled the bowls and spoons. Set the table in the main room and came back for the stew.

Then she noticed the glimmer on the floor. Going closer, she saw that water had seeped out under the door, was spreading slowly across the worn linoleum on the kitchen floor.

"Spike! What's going on in there!"

Still no response; she kicked in the bathroom door.

The place was awash in red. Bloody water steadily pouring over the side of the bathtub, half an inch deep on the floor. Blood splashes on the dun walls.

And in the overflowing tub, where he was submerged in red steaming water, Spike's slashed arms floated, still seeping threads of darker red.



Before the police herded the rubbernecking locals out, Spike's apartment was so packed that the doctor had to struggle to get through. It was Nguyen who had conjured all these rubbernecking witnesses when, after coming upon her keening over Spike on the bathroom floor, he hastened out into the market, calling for help.

Two policemen stood between Buffy and the apartment door, as if they expected her to bolt. She didn't understand what anyone was saying, the voices gabbled all around her, barely heard. Her eyes, her whole being, were fixed on Spike. She'd dragged him out of the tub, knelt with him on the flooded floor, trying everything she could think of to revive him. The only effect of her efforts was seemingly to expel the last thin dregs of blood from his torn arms. He didn't move or cough; no sound issued from his sunken chest. Lying now on a stretcher in the main room, covered to his chest in a sheet, he was white as a maggot, eyes half open, unstaring.

God I'm stupid. Why did I shoot my mouth off? Why did I say that about dying the slow way?

The doctor barely touched Spike's lips and neck before he rose and began writing something in a small notebook, talking out of the side of his mouth to the policemen. Two of them lifted the stretcher and started towards the street.

"What!" Buffy cried. "What are you doing—you're supposed to help him! Do something! CPR! Give him mouth-to-mouth—!" She surged forward. "I'll do it! Let me try once more!"

They caught her by the arms before she could fall again on Spike's body. Dragged her upright, held her. She could've torn herself free easily, but the doctor was looking at her now, shaking his head. He was an old man, all the lines of his face trending down, as if dragged by the weight of his experience. He shook his head. In English, he said, "Lady, this man dead. Four, five hour."



Whenever they fucked, it was hard, violent. She needed to work herself off on him, work off her rage and frustration and ennui. That he liked it too was just convenient.

Sometimes he complained about how difficult she was to keep up with. But always there was a note of admiration in his voice. And he liked the rough stuff just as much as she did—she knew that. She decided that was all she needed to know about him. He was good for this, and he could say no if he wanted to, but he never really did. He might say no, but his cock would spring up at the merest suggestion. She didn't have to consider his feelings, because she didn't really believe in them.

Once she let him tie her up. Not with the hand-cuffs, but with chains cased in velvet. Instead of spread-eagling her, he sat her up on the foot of the bed, spreading her legs wide, lashing her ankles to the bed-legs, binding her hands to the posts. These won't hurt you, love, he said as he fastened her wrists and ankles. As if she cared whether they did or not. She'd never asked him not to hurt her.

Such a pretty quim yours is, he said. Ever taken a good look at it?

She rolled her eyes. As if.

He brought out a mirror from his collection of junk, propped it up so that she was confronted with her reflection: her face, already a little reddened, breasts stretched taut by her upraised arms. And there it was, all that part of her that she in fact had never deliberately looked at, not like this, spread open to show everything. She closed her eyes.

Want you to look.

Yeah, well, you can't tie up my eyeballs, so I guess I'll do what I want there.

Gonna show you yourself at your most beautiful. Gonna show you how I love seein' you.

Kneeling before her, he began to kiss her there. At first, eyes squeezed shut, she repressed her urge to berate him—he wasn't doing it right, it wasn't hard enough, it was too slow. He was wasting her time with these kisses she could barely feel—she didn't have all night for this bullshit. His hands on her thighs, barely touching.

She wasn't going to look at what he was doing. Wasn't going to look in case he raised his eyes to hers. She didn't want him seeing her like that, tied up and powerless.

Her clit throbbed. He kissed it as lightly and indiscriminately as if it was her forehead, didn't stay on it. His lips went here, and there, and didn't stay anywhere. She flexed, tried to push herself against his mouth.

See yourself, he whispered. Watch yourself, sweetness.

In the mirror, she was alone. Though he was firmly planted between her thighs, there was no reflection of Spike to block her view. She could see the effect of what he was doing, see her pussy flex and twitch, see the wetness spread out from the center, the lips redden and pooch.

Then he feathered his tongue over her clit; it went hard and bright red. As he bore in deeper, closer, licked faster, she watched it all happen, the orgasm building up slowly from the root of herself. It was fascinating, the most amazing thing she'd ever seen. She forgot about the indignity of this, forgot that she'd ceded control. She came sobbing, transfixed on her image in the mirror.

He whispered against her belly as she panted and throbbed. You saw it, love, saw how you look to me. God I love you. I love you, Buffy. And when he kissed her mouth tenderly before undoing the restraints, she didn't bite or force her tongue against his. She kissed him back.

They never talked about that scene afterwards. Never did anything like it again. She gave him the heave-ho soon after.

On their last night in her basement, after their first long slow fuck, and after she sucked him off, and after the short nap she woke from angry at losing even ten minutes with him, he laid her back with a pillow beneath her hips. She understood what he wanted, and lolled her legs apart. Remembering what he'd said about her beauty, she flushed and smiled as he looked at her. Lay patiently while he looked his fill.

Afterwards, he kissed her repeatedly on her mouth, pausing sometimes to draw in breath, as if he would speak, and then going on again, as if he couldn't begin to say in words what he was telling her in kisses. She tasted herself on his lips and tongue, tasted his satisfaction with her, his love. They conversed in kisses, and she was certain he knew everything about how she belonged to him at last, how she would always belong to him from now on. How she wanted nothing else but to be his, as he was hers.

Her whole love affair with this man who was more to her than anyone else was contained in that single night. It was the only time she had to love him. The only time she traded shame for joy in his arms. When that night was done, there was no more.

Beneath the mosquito netting, curled up in the middle of her hotel bed, Buffy rocked herself in a fever, wrapped in the relentless shush shush of the hot rain on the other side of the slatted blinds.

There was no more.



When the room changed from pitch black to deep grey, so that she could see the outlines of things, she stopped pretending she'd ever fall asleep. Her whole body was cramped in on itself, an ache, a stone.

Her mobile phone rang.

"Sorry if I woke you. I didn't add up the time difference," Giles said. "I've got some answers for you. A William Merrit-Smith, whose birth was registered on July 10th, 1848, in the parish church of Canonbury—that's in London—and who died on October 12th, 1880, is almost certainly our man. He was the youngest son of Charles Merrit-Smith, a solicitor, and his wife Anne, whose maiden name was Banning. He was a solicitor also, employed in the family firm. There was an older brother, also Charles, and two sisters, also older. William was the baby of the family—ten years distance between him and the next oldest."

Buffy said, "Oh."

"As for the money, Willow did trace it back. By quite a circuitous route, the funds originate in a numbered Swiss account dating back to the early nineteenth century, and administered from that time to the present as a trust by a small firm of Dublin solicitors."

"I think that's the most times I've ever heard you say the word 'solicitor'."

"I won't bore you with all the details, but the money was Angel's."

"Angel's."

"He made these arrangements for Spike. In anticipation, seemingly, of what would happen."

"Seemingly."

"Buffy. Are you all right? You sound quite dull. Nothing's happened, has it?"

"I'm fine. I'm ... is that Merrit with one 't', or two?"

"One."

"One. Okay. Good. Thanks. Bye."

Merrit-Smith. Merrit-Smith. That wasn't bad. She wouldn't have hated changing her name to Merrit-Smith.

She never would change her name now. Never share a home with a man. Never have a child. Of all this she was certain.

He was the one.




The night before, she'd tried to follow Spike's body, but the police kept her back. She must come to the station.

At the station she was made to wait while an interpreter was sorted out, so she could be questioned. They put her to sit in the chief's office, where two shabby leather guest chairs faced a shabby desk, under the ubiquitous ceiling fan.

Buffy didn't want to be questioned. She wanted to rush to where Spike was.

Her heart seemed to be beating very slowly. As if it was winding down and would soon stop. She clasped her hands between her knees, laid her head on them. Curling up small seemed better, easier. It was harder to breathe that way, and if she couldn't breathe she wouldn't cry. She didn't want to cry in front of the police. Didn't want to sprawl on the floor and shriek and bang her head. That would be fucked up.

It might have been an hour later, or five hours—she had no idea—when a policeman drove her to her hotel on the back of his scooter. She'd tried to decline this courtesy—the walk would've taken ten minutes and not necessitated having to sit so close to a stranger—but the interpreter insisted, and Buffy didn't want to fail in politeness. Asians always thought Americans were rude.

There was a power cut as they rounded the corner away from the station. Buffy saw all the lights go out down the street, the windows fall dark. The bulbs seemed to glow for a few seconds, like fireflies winking out. Despite the darkness, her driver didn't slow down. She arrived spattered in mud, wet to her waist. The lights came on again as she crossed the hotel lobby.

They were all polite to her, in the police station. No one suspected her of lying, or of having had anything to do with Spike's death, which, the interpreter assured her, was most sad. She was free to make arrangements; the body would be released to her agents whenever her arrangements were in place. Though no one was unkind to her, Buffy had the sense that all these officials were irritated by the white foreigner whose suicide created extra paperwork.

Arrangements.

She didn't know how to begin to make arrangements. She couldn't even get out of bed. Eating was out of the question. She wanted a bath, but he had died in the bath, so she couldn't do that.

He might not be dead today if she'd said something different to him. If she'd just handled the whole thing in some other way—some way that a girl like dear sweet Fred would've instinctively known.

It occurred to her that she should've been angry—didn't suicide leave people angry?—but there was nothing like that. She could barely even cry now. Just lay staring up into the ceiling fan's blur, as her eyes leaked corrosive tears.

The banging roused her. It took a while to understand that it was someone knocking on her door. She had no idea what time it might be or how long she'd lain there motionless. Long enough that when she tried to move she felt rooted in place. Her muscles sang with pain as she got up, every one of them threatening to tighten into a charleyhorse; her legs didn't want to straighten, or bear her weight.

Through the spyhole she saw Nguyen. What was he here for? He might want money owed to him. He might want to make trouble for her.

"Go away," Buffy said. "I can't talk to you."

She started back to the bed, but the banging continued. A piping voice called, "Lady, Lady! Please you come!"

The young boy with Nguyen was the one who called out; she hadn't been able to see him through the peephole. When she opened the door he made a little bow and said, "Lady, please you come see."

Buffy glanced at Nguyen. His face was thundery, his eyes set in a squint. But he always looked like that.

"What is it? See what?"

"You come, you come, please."

So sure was she that they'd lead her back to the police station, which was also the jail and the morgue, that when they reached the turning, she went left while Nguyen and the boy went right. The child ran after her, splashing mud as he touched down in every puddle, and tugged on her hand.

They brought her to the infirmary.

A lick of satisfaction stirred in Buffy; yes, it was better that Spike be laid out here. It was cleaner and quieter, and the nuns would know how to treat his body. Whoever had decided this—the chief of police?—was admirably sensitive. She'd have to find out and thank him. And maybe the head nurse could help her with the arrangements.

When they'd crossed the courtyard and stood before the great wooden door, Buffy took out some money, tried to offer it to Nguyen and the boy. "Thank you. Thank you for telling me he's been brought here instead."

The boy blinked at the money, and didn't reach to take it. He shook his head. "You come see. Come see."

Nguyen led the way inside; the child tugged on her hand again, pulling her past the empty reception desk, into the inner sanctum. Buffy wondered why they didn't wait for someone to come; the nuns wouldn't like these civilians wandering around the place unaccompanied. She tried to catch Nguyen's eye, but he wasn't looking at her.

At a familiar door, the child stopped. "Lady, see."

Before Buffy could decide whether she was meant to knock, the head nurse came out, carrying a basin of soapy water with a sponge floating in it. She didn't seem surprised to see Buffy. She spoke in an approving tone to the child, who smiled as if he'd been petted, and to Nguyen, who nodded, and immediately taking the child in hand, started away.

Buffy tried to scrape up some French phrase, a greeting, a question. Her mouth was dry, her sight fizzled at the edges. She felt shame in front of this solemn important woman, who devoted herself to healing, to the exclusion of all else—she would think her a miserable failure. She'd let her charge commit suicide. Which was, Buffy recalled, a sin in her church.

The nun gazed at her with a strange fervency, then stepped aside to motion her into the little room.

Spike's body was in the same bed he'd occupied before. The blankets were pulled up to his chest. His arms were carefully dressed to the elbow, the bandages so white they seemed to glow in the listless grey light.

She stared, not understanding what she was seeing. Why had they put him here? Was it the usual thing in places like this, to tuck a corpse up in bed with blankets and a pillow? Maybe there was no room in the infirmary's morgue. Fatigue and grief had slowed her mind; thoughts were gluey and disconnected. She blinked, blinked again. The edges of things boiled in an unpleasant way. She was getting a headache.

Now that she'd seen him, she wasn't sure what the head nurse wanted her to do. Keep a vigil by the body? Probably she should now broach the subject of the funeral, the interment. She turned back to her, struggling to assemble a sentence. If she'd ever known the French for these things, she'd long forgotten it. She could only remember how to say excuse me or I'm sorry.

"Buffy ... "

It was as if something small and hard hit her in the small of the back, a pebble sharply flung. She shivered to her finger's ends and caught at the nurse's arm. Afraid to turn around, she kept her eyes fixed on the other woman's austere face.

Still cradling the basin of water, her eyes opening wider as if to encourage Buffy's own seeing, the nun put one large callused hand on Buffy's elbow, turned her back towards the bed.

"Maintenant vous voyez, Madame," she murmured. "C'est un vrai miracle, non?"

Trembling, terrified, Buffy let go of the nun's triumphant gaze, turned her bleary eyes back to the figure on the bed.

Spike lifted one feeble bloodless hand towards her. "Buffy. Oh God ... what's happening to me?"




She understood that she'd slapped him because her hand stung.

Understood that she'd screamed because the nurse was suddenly tugging on her. "Arrêt, madame! Du calme! Vous ne devez pas le déranger!"

"You fucking coward, I hate you! I can't believe you did that! I had to find you like that!"

"Madame, madame! Tranquillité! Ici pas Õtre un endroit pour les cris!"

Buffy spun to face her. "Je suis désolé! Excusez-moi! All right? Now please get out!"



He reminded her, in a disturbing way, of an animal. An animal that suffers dumbly, patiently, that conveys its pain only with its eyes and its stillness. This impression interfered with her sense of what to do next. She'd struck him and ranted, and now she was just looking at him while he looked back at her.

If he hadn't spoken already, she'd have feared he was mute. He regarded her with complete and sorrowful attention, like a dog. Outside the rain stopped, creating a sudden silence that was terrible to her.

"I'm sorry I hit you."

" ... doesn't matter."

"It matters. I'm so angry at you ... I just lost my shit. But I shouldn't have hit you."

They were both perspiring. Buffy's thighs stuck to the chair. Everywhere that her skin touched skin—even the insides of her elbows—was sticky and irritating. She hated this place. Of course he was crazy here, where it never cooled off, where you could never be really dry or clean or comfortable. This was a hopeless place.

"They said you were dead. I saw you dead."

"Didn't bloody take, did it?" He dropped his gaze then, and after a moment, closed his eyes. She started to speak again, then realized he was asleep.

Somehow she didn't want to hold his hand or lie beside him as she did before. Those felt like futile gestures, gestures that would weaken her. She thought again of going—to Saigon, where they had air conditioning—and then back home. Staying here was useless. He was just going to break her heart. She missed her previous ignorance of his existence. Ignorance was good.

She sat a little while longer, arguing with herself, berating herself. It wasn't that she wanted to leave him. She wanted nothing but to be here, to keep her attention fixed on him, as if that attention had the power to force him back into his old mold. It used to be, that whatever challenge she gave all of herself to, went her way. Because she was the slayer, with motives unmixed. It was some inner voice—a maternal, therapeutic sort of voice, the voice of stern articles in women's magazines about how Not To Be A Doormat With Your Man, that chivvied her to walk out before you drown.

She rose. It was time to cut this insanity short. He didn't want her anyway. She would go.

Spike flinched and cried out in his sleep. Another cry, and a convulsive spasm that launched him over the side. Buffy caught him before he fell out—it was like catching a loosely-tied bundle of sharp branches—and settled him back. His bony body quivered all over; he breathed in harsh sips, blinking. Watery eyes haunted, a fixed stare of incredulity and fear.

Dropping to her knees at the bedside, so she could look at him straight on, she wrapped her hand around his. "Don't be afraid. I'm here. I'm not going to abandon you."

"Christ ..."

"Oh Spi—William. I know it's hard. I'm sorry it's so hard. What do you need? Tell me what you need, anything, anything."

"Blow my brains out, won't come back from that. So what I need's a gun."




"How many times have you almost died?" She asked this as she walked back into his room. She'd gone outside, walked around the periphery of the infirmary's high walls. Paused in the blind alley at the rear to punch the stucco until both hands bled. She'd rinsed them in the outpouring from a downspout, and held them now, the skin raw and broken, at her sides. "Before this suicide attempt, you had the hemorrhage last week that everyone here said should've put you in the ground. And the one before that, when Oz found you, from which your recovery was also amazing. You don't eat and you subsist on bourbon and yet you keep on ticking."

"Haven't been well for some time."

"What does that mean?"

"I don't owe you any accounting of myself! You an' me, our business was done a long time ago!"

"Then why are you shouting at me? If you didn't care, you wouldn't yell."

"Fuck you."

"I don't think this wrist-slitting thing is the first time you actively tried to kill yourself. Tell me how many times you've tried to die."

It took an hour of needling and coaxing, but he finally admitted to a whole history of drunken mishaps, as he insisted on calling them, starting back in LA with the big gas oven in the Hyperion's kitchen, progressing through numerous overdoses and alcohol poisonings, the time he stepped out in front of an SUV and somehow bounced off the fuckin' windshield and landed ten yards away, bloodied but unbroken, and another time when he'd hung himself but the goddamn knot gave way. Three times. Nothing took, as Spike related it, and he always blamed it on being shit-faced. As if, had he possessed the will power to get really sober, he'd have managed to off himself for good by now.

Listening to this stream of frustrated illogic, Buffy realized what Spike either hadn't figured out yet, or—far more likely—refused to admit to himself. Human though he undeniably was, he wasn't going to be able to die. At least, not by his own hand, or of his own will.

"William, listen to me. You want to be finished—you can't take anymore. I know! I've been there! But you're not finished. And you're just going to have to suck it up."

"Not if I blow my head off. Not if there's nothing bloody left."

"If you get a gun—and I have no doubt you will if you want to, I've seen them laid out for sale in the marketplace—you know what's going to happen?"

"Nothin' you have to worry about, Slayer. Won't do it where you'll have to see."

"Don't you understand yet what's going to happen? You'll end up disfigured, and in a permanent agony compared to which your current state will feel like a picnic, and you'll still be alive."

He wouldn't look at her. She grasped his chin and turned his face. "Did you hear me?"

Spike closed his eyes.

"Fine! Ignore me! But you've got to know I'm right! If the Powers That Be were going to let you die, you'd be dead by now!"




She'd never mourned someone who was still alive, and wasn't sure how to go about it. It seemed to involved walking aimlessly in the rain, but then everything here was about walking in the rain, when it wasn't about sitting dully on an uncomfortable chair, feeling like your body was melting into the atmosphere.

She missed the way the sunlight lit up the Roman stone buildings in the late afternoon, so they seemed to glow as the sky went pink at the horizon. Missed the food there, missed her bed. Why couldn't she bring Spike back to Rome, install him in her bed, stuff him full of that food? You couldn't stay depressed for long in Rome, it was too beautiful, too exciting.

He wouldn't want to go there with her, or anywhere, and there was nothing she could do about that.

The river was a wide, odorous expanse of opaque brown, the rain hitting it at a hard slant. The small boats seemed to her unpracticed eye to be moored in an undistinguished jumble. The air smelled like frying meat, the water like ancient decay. Letting her umbrella rest on her shoulder, her sandaled feet planted carelessly in the thin mud, she stared at the opposite bank, while her mind flipped through possibilities that made her heart thump up and fall back as she considered and dismissed each one.

She couldn't keep him from getting a gun. She couldn't make him want her, want his unanticipated life. He'd warned her, in the very first moment, that he wasn't Spike any more. She could no longer ignore that. She'd known Spike in many moods, soulless and souled, triumphant and defeated, sane and otherwise, self-satisfied and suffering. But she'd never known him like this. Indifferent to her, wanting nothing but an end to his existence.

She could remember when she'd felt that way herself, in those early months after her resurrection. But the memory was flat; a mercy perhaps, that she couldn't anymore access the full dimension of that mental agony. Couldn't quite trace, either, how it was that she'd reclaimed her life again. The process was gradual and composed of all sorts of small details that were personal to her; she had no advice she could offer Spike. Not that he was going to listen to advice.

She knew what would happen. He would leave the infirmary against doctor's orders, he would go back to that terrible hole of an apartment, and a few days or hours or minutes later, he'd put a gun in his mouth and pull the trigger.

Who knew? Maybe, if he got a shotgun big enough, it would take.

If she didn't want to be the one to find the body, she'd just have to stay away.

Except that she couldn't.

Birds circled and cried over the brown water, diving and flapping, darting up again into the low grey. It was impossible to distinguish the sky from anything else; it was a tight-fitting lid, compressing everything into this atmosphere of super-saturated dread.

She ought to call somebody. Her sister, or Willow. But that would involve explaining, the situation and her reaction to it. And she could imagine what they would say, none of it of any use. She had no tolerance for the fuss of outsiders.

At her usual table in the cafe, as she drank a beer, an idea came to her that, unlike all the others, she didn't immediately dismiss. This was because it was an idea that wasn't going to solve anything: wasn't going to save Spike's life or give her what she wanted most, which was his love and his company as long as they both lasted in the world.

But it would be something, something consoling for her and maybe even for him in a way, though she wasn't sure about that. The problem was to talk him into it. She went back to her room to bathe and make herself as pretty and appealing as she could manage to be in the heat.




"No."

"Weren't you listening? I said I won't try to interfere anymore with ... your plans."

"It's bollocks, what you said. 'Course I'll die. Make sure of it this time."

"Maybe so. I said I won't try to stop you. But just give me this first."

"No." A pause. "Anyway, I can't."

"You could if you stopped drinking for a week or so, and ate a bit. You know you could."

"Don't want to stop drinkin' for a week or so."

"Except you will, so as to be sure you don't slip when you're firing the gun. Right? You want to be sure this time. Sober."

He shrugged.

"But I'm just asking you, do this one last thing for me. It would cost you very little really, to let me have it before you leave me, and it would give me something to go on with."

"By way of a soddin' souvenir? No. Can't do it, wouldn't if I could, an' what's more, you're no more fit to be a mother than Drusilla."

That hurt, but she forced herself to stay quiet.

"Besides, you don't want a bloody baby. You just want to go on fucking with my head for as long as I have one. Which won't be for long, but no bloody thank you."

She repressed a scream, squeezing her hands into hidden fists. "I don't know what I can say or do or be anymore to make you believe me about what I feel for you. But if I can't have a life with you, if I really have to accept that that's not going to happen ..." A sob came up her throat like a hiccup; she had promised herself she wouldn't get emotional in front of him, because he would only get angry at being manipulated that way. She'd thought she had herself under control, but the idea of losing him, of not even having this much contact with him ever again, stabbed her unbearably. She forced herself to go on, though her voice was thick now with unshed tears. "I want something that comes from us both, that I can love and care for and remember you by. Can't you accept that I'm honoring you by asking for this? This is my only chance to have a baby. You're the only man I could have a child with."

"That's bollocks."

"It's true. There isn't going to be anyone else for me, once you're gone. Oh shit." The tears burst from her in force, shaking her body, choking her. "Please. I need this. Please don't tell me no." She was amazed at how desperately she wanted something that in fact she'd given no thought to before that day. She hadn't so much as fantasized about childbearing in years and years. Once the whole slayer thing had really settled into her psyche.

Once she understood, if only subconsciously, that the only men she would truly love would be undead.

Something in his cold gaze shifted then. It wasn't exactly a softening; more an uncertainty. "You poor cow."

"Yes! Hello! Your actions are having consequences here, Spike!"

"About kills you, askin' me for anything."

"That's not why I'm—!" She scrubbed at her eyes, as if that would make the tears disappear. Her head whirled. Unthought of three hours ago, the child—theirs—was real to her, absolutely solid. She was pleading for his life, that it be saved, rather than bestowed. Not a symbol, nor a trophy, nor a souvenir, not merely proof that she'd once believed herself thoroughly in love with an old enemy. But a reality, that would be the focus of her life. She would cherish him for himself, whatever he was, and through him she would be able to go on cherishing Spike, even though he did not want her to. There was nothing in her life as it now was that could ever be more necessary than this.

"Don't deny me just to be mean."

"Told you. Can't do it. Can't get it up."

"You could if you wanted to. I could—" Without thinking, she reached for him. He jerked away so fast he almost tumbled out of the far side of the bed.

The nurse appeared then, with the chart and a thermometer. Buffy walked out.



So certain was she that he'd bust out of the nurses' care again, that she went the next morning to his room near the market, only to find the door locked, the window dark.

Well, of course, after yesterday's big tactical error on her part, he wouldn't come back here. He'd go where she wouldn't be able to find him. Where he wouldn't be plagued with her pestering.

Repressing panic, she ran to the infirmary. Maybe the head nurse would know something.

But he was there in his bed, smoking and reading a week old copy of Le Figaro. He looked a bit more robust—not well by any stretch, but so much less ghastly than the day before that Buffy was certain now of her theory. His demon was gone, he was a man again, but some mystical force still inhabited him. A force that countered his attempts at self-destruction.

Which didn't necessarily mean it was a benign force.

"You're back, I see."

"Yes." She'd stopped in the doorway. It felt presumptuous now, to just walk in.

"Suppose I taught you everything you know, 'bout hanging about where you're not wanted."

She had become, well, not accustomed, exactly, but expectant, of these remarks. This one, though, had a perfunctoriness to it that raised a small question in her heart. She leaned against the door jamb. He wasn't actually looking at her, but if he did, she wanted him to see her a certain way, hip tilted, confident but not aggressive. It was exactly what she didn't feel, but she could pose with the best of them.

She held a hand up, counting off on her fingers. "Out. For. A. Walk. Bi—"

"Last time I was laid up like this, was when that psycho slayer cut my hands off."

She bit off the last word. "What?"

"Dana, her name was. Poor bint broke out of the bin when she got her power, an' had herself a right little rampage."

"Your hands were cut off?"

He'd laid the newspaper down, and was looking at his arms, still neatly swaddled from wrist to elbows in gauze.

"With a saw."

"Oh God."

"She thought I was someone else."

Buffy vaguely recalled being told—maybe by her sister—that an insane slayer had been brought from the U.S. to England. That was the time when she wasn't taking much of an interest in the slay-capades.

"Who? Who did she think you were?"

"Some bloke who killed her family an' tortured her for months, when she was a sprog. Could've been me, but wasn't. Though I never did have the patience to keep anyone goin' for more than a couple of days. We were the short attention span twins, me an' Dru."

Oh, I get what you're doing right now. You're trying to repulse me, so I'll go. Well, I'm not playing.

"I didn't realize you read French."

"French. Latin. Greek. Italian. Bit of Spanish, which is easy if you know Latin an' Italian. Some Japanese an' Russian. Bit of Vietnamese, enough to get by. Fyarl. Few other demon languages. But not Chinese. An' not Kraut." His smooth acceptance of this change of subject only indicated how indifferent he was to talking to her at all. He'd picked up the newspaper again; she could no longer see his face.

"May I come in?"

"Can't stop you."

She slid into the only chair. "Anything interesting in the paper?"

"No."

She'd decided not to bring up yesterday's subject again. Anything but that. "So. Merrit-Smith. That's a nice name."

The paper rustled and fell. She was confronted with his cold glare.

"Don't pretend you don't know whose name that is. I did a little research."

More glare.

"Did you enjoy being a solicitor?"

"Fucking hell."

"I'll take that as a no."

"Take it as whatever you bloody want to. Not playin' at Twenty Questions with you."

She kept her tone bantering, but gentle. "You keep complaining that I don't know anything about you. Then when I express an interest ..."

"You wouldn't have cared for the man Spike was made out of. He'd have bored you rigid, yeah? So drop it."

"So you're not Spike ... and you're not William Merrit-Smith. Who are you, then?"

He stared at the spread newspaper for a long moment. "Very very temporary."

"We're all that, though."

"Don't play at philosophizing, Slayer, doesn't suit you."

"Hey, I did some philosophy. At the university."

"Why aren't you there now? Why aren't you finishin' your education, an' doin' your job?"

She wanted to throw the question back at him. Why wasn't he fighting anymore? He'd dusted once, in the Hellmouth, and been brought back, only to take up the struggle against evil again. So what was different this time? Angel's being gone? The shock of housing a beating heart?

"You hated Angel, I always knew that. But I think ... maybe part of you loved him, too."

Spike stared at her as if she'd grown a horn.

"Maybe not loved him ... I don't know ... but you were part of each other, weren't you? In ways I can't understand." She groped along this line of thought, which she'd never considered before and which struck her now, with shame, as being glaringly obvious. Why had she never considered Spike in any other light than as her suitor, or her enemy? She'd barely given Angel any more dimension than that either.

"Not talkin' about it."

"And he wasn't evil. Whatever that was about, him running Wolfram & Hart ... Giles was wrong, to cut him off. That was a mistake. He was never evil, and you knew that."

"Not ... not in intention, no." Spike's voice was low, far away. He didn't raise his eyes from the newsprint spread across his lap. "But evil things came of it before there was any good. The old poof made a rotten bargain an' didn't know how rotten 'til the noose was 'round his neck. But his intentions were good. His intentions ... were the finest."

"You admired him."

She almost expected Spike to deny this, with his old vehemence. But he only nodded, once.

"It's not just that you got the Shanshu, is it? You were part of his team. After what you sacrificed in the Hellmouth, coming back to life again ... there was nothing else for you to do but join in with him. You'd have ended up there, no matter how or where you came back. Isn't that so? You knew each other, really intimately. You were on the same side. His death ... and your surviving it ... is really hard for you. You miss him."

He raised his hands, clapped them together with mocking solemnity. "Go to the head of the bloody class."

"I am so sorry. What you've lost ... it's irreplaceable. I know it is. I ... I condole with you."

Spike frowned, as if he didn't know what to make of this. Maybe he was just surprised to hear her turn condolence into a verb. It was a verb, she was sure of that. SAT word.

She decided not to press her luck with any question or statement beginning Angel wouldn't want ... She was sure Angel wouldn't want Spike to waste himself this way, but he wouldn't want to hear that, especially not from her.

"I wish you'd tell me about that. You and Angel. What you did together in those last months. Or anything about your history together. Whatever seems important. Whatever would make you feel better for getting out."

"Now you're my damn shrink."

"No. I'm just your friend." Something about saying this made her eyes burn. But he wasn't looking at her, and she managed to repress the gathering tears. "Like you were my friend, when I most needed one."

" ... wasn't though, was I? Took an' used you, an' ... "

"Oh William, don't go back to that. That's all over and done between us. You know I forgave you for that a long time ago. I thought you forgave me too."

His hands crawled across the thin pink paper, then with a sudden movement, tore it, and tore it again.

No.

It came to her in a burst like a flash-bulb going off, lighting up every obscure shadow—he hadn't forgiven her. He might've thought he had, might've tried to teach himself he had nothing in fact to forgive.

But that was a lie. And he was only now feeling how deep it went.

Buffy rose slowly, and seized hold of his manic hands. "Stop. Stop. Look at me."

His eyes were so blue. That had always struck her, that a being so dark, so dangerous, could have eyes the color of a summer sky.

The flash went off again in her mind, lit up more obscurities bright as day. Of course her presence was too much for him. Equal to how he'd loved her, was the pain she'd ground into him, without thinking. Even when she believed she'd befriended him ... even when she'd imagined they were lovers, really lovers at last. All that time he'd been storing up his hurts, hiding them absolutely from himself. Loving and serving and bolstering her, and all the time infected inside with that creeping decay of all those suppressed insults, all the advantages she'd so blithely taken of him, all the cutting inequalities.

How he must have loathed her, loathed himself for loving her, and how he'd blinded himself to any hint of it!

She let go of him, stepped cautiously back.

"William, if you're angry at me ... if you hate me a little ... or a lot ... You don't have to pretend any more. Repress, or ... whatever. I know this isn't all about me. But whatever part of it is ... you should just let it out."

He eyed her like a cornered animal. An animal that could lash out at any moment, claws and fangs.

"If you want me to go now, I'll go. If you want me to leave you alone for good ... I'll do that. Just tell me. I don't want to be the cause of any more of your pain."

She could see now that he was exhausted; the bit of color he'd had in his face when she arrived was gone. His features had gone rigid with fatigue, but still he stared at her.

Clumsily, she retreated to the doorway. "I'll look in again later. You can tell me then what you want me to do. Or ... just leave word with the nurse. If you ... if you prefer ... "

He didn't rescue her with a single word or sign. She stammered for another few seconds, and fled.



The next few days elapsed in a kind of shell-shock. It was like waking up out of a dream so immediate, so vivid, you were sure it was real. It contained all the elements of your life, and a seamless internal weft.

As long as you remained immersed in it.

Once the dream was broken, the insane troll logic glared from every detail.

Her whole sense of the past she'd lived and shaped was off-kilter. She questioned all her assumptions about herself, about her friends.

It was too easy ... especially when you were a damn super hero ... to forget that every individual was the star player in his or her own life. She'd managed to misunderstand everything to do with Spike in the years before they closed the hellmouth, and culminate the whole blistering farrago by utterly failing to communicate her final change of heart. Now the thought that his love for her was dead, that he hated her or would always be indifferent to her, was nearly unbearable. It twisted and writhed inside her like a poisonous snake.

She stayed away from the infirmary, sending instead the cafe owner's schoolgirl daughter, who was happy to make a daily inquiry in exchange for a small payment. Each day it was the same: Mr Smith continues to recover.

He didn't send for her. Every day she told herself that if she didn't hear from him the next day, she'd pack up and leave Vietnam.

On the sixth afternoon, while drinking a beer and reading a paperback that had once been waterlogged and was now dried into a crinkly friable board, a shadow fell across her table.

"Been thinkin'. Have some questions."

Quickly reigning in her surprise, she gestured at the opposite chair. It was shocking to see him on his feet, dressed in clean clothes—though they were unlike anything she'd ever seen him wear before, and seemed to come from the infirmary's stash of cast-offs. He leaned a bit on the large wet umbrella as if on a cane. Hair and beard were combed. Buffy couldn't reconcile the sight of all that long hair—brown, curly—with her mental image of Spike. This William looked like he'd stepped off a box of cough drops. In that frame, his wasted face wouldn't sync up with what she expected to see when she looked at him. Only the intensity of the eyes was unchanged.

The waiter approached. Spike spoke to him in Vietnamese; he came back a moment later, again to Buffy's surprise, with a bottle of Vittel water. She watched him pour it into a glass, watched Spike take a sip.

She was full of questions for him, but forced herself to wait.

"This desire to get knocked up by yours truly. What's it about, exactly? Don't tell me you've been pinin' for that all along."

Of all the things she thought he'd bring up, this was dead last. After their most recent encounter, she'd tried to dismiss the baby idea from her mind—it didn't seem like something she could ever bring up to him again. She'd completely lost her nerve for demanding anything from him.

She tried to choose her words carefully. To be as calm as he seemingly was. He had an air about him as if he was conducting a job interview. "I haven't. That was never part of what I hoped to have with you. Apart from it being impossible ...."

"So?"

"Well ... now I find you've been brought to life, and ... and you hate it. I want you not to hate it. I want you to live. To live with me. But if you can't live, then I want ... well, it's not quite right to call it the next best thing. But it would be something. It would be a way for me not to utterly lose you."

"You never wanted to be a mum."

They'd never discussed this, of course—they'd never discussed anything really personal between them. But he knew her, all right. Had her figured out, with more insight and accuracy than she ever had about him, or almost anybody else.

"No. But this situation ... this is an emergency. It changes what I want."

"You're mad, Slayer. Gonna sign yourself up for twenty years of child-rearin' out of some sentiment that's doggin' you—"

"It's not some sentiment! Why can't you acknowledge what I feel for you?! Why? What do you think would happen to you if you let yourself admit that you have that part wrong?"

He rocked back in his chair as if her voice was a strong wind.

Twisting her hands tight around her empty bottle, Buffy forced herself down. "I'm sorry. This is crazy. I keep lashing out, but ... you make me angry. You scare me. Frustrate me." Like I did you, back in Sunnydale.

The way he tilted his head to regard her brought him back for a moment—the real Spike. But in this man's squint, there was pity and incredulity. There was irritation.

"You ought to go home. Never asked for you to witness any of this. You've done enough."

"I can't. I can't go while you're still here." Tears backed up in her eyes; she pressed the bridge of her nose. "God, I wish we could just talk. You always used to want to talk to me, and I wouldn't. We should have then. We should now."

He smiled suddenly. "Look at you. Wantin' this an' that from me. An' here stand I, with the whip hand at long last."

She bowed her head. "Yes."

"Never could've imagined it, back in the day."

"Neither of us could." She wanted to sink under the table, but forced herself to look into his eyes. "I was the slayer then, and you were a notorious vampire. I really never thought I'd ever get past that. That I should ever get past it."

"An' now I'm nothing, and you ... you're what? On hiatus? Retired? You'll never quite be nothing yourself, but what are you? Wantin' to be mother to some little blighter you can spoil an' dote over so you never really have to be a grown-up woman with a grown-up man."

"I'm ready to be a woman to your man. You're the one—"

"Timing. Timing's always been our curse, hasn't it, Slayer. Don't want you anymore, do I?"

Do you? Her throat tightened into a painful knot. "I can accept that if I have to. I just can't accept that you only want to die. Spike. As long as I've known you, you've always wanted things—and yeah, they were usually things that were wrong, but. My point is, you were engaged. You had passion. I can't believe that's really gone. Especially now you're alive."

"Like bein' alive's such a treat."

"It can be. You're free to go anywhere, to experience anything—out in the sun—in beautiful places. Among any kind of people you—"

"Used to think of it, sure," he said, as if she hadn't spoken. "Tried to beat Angel out when we thought it was a question of findin' some holy grail. But never could quite get why it was so important to him. Bein' alive hurts. Hurts twenty-four/seven. 'Course, he was under a curse. I never felt cursed 'til now."

Christ. If that's how it seems to him .... "It doesn't have to hurt—if you just took better care of yourself—"

"Always wanted things, yeah. Trouble was, never could get them, could I? Or if I did ... made things worse. Got my soul, an' where did that lead? Tired of strivin' anymore. Just want an end, if I can get that."

"I'm sorry." She couldn't think of any more arguments, so just said what she felt. The sorrow was intense, and deep. At the waste of him, of herself. All the missed signals and unhappiness. How often in the future would she remember this dreary place, the rain, the dirty Campari ashtray, the strong aroma of his Vietnamese cigarette, this conversation? Wonder why she couldn't think of something to make it come out differently.

"Right. So, my mind's made up. But if you want a dab of my precious jizz so damn much, suppose you'd better have it."

"Oh!" Without thought, she reached for him. He batted her hand away.

"Not sleeping with you. Get that notion out of your head."

She wondered, but couldn't ask, whether he was worried about loss of prowess, or if he really couldn't muster up any desire for her any more. Or perhaps he thought if he let her into his bed, she'd exhaust him all over again with her pleadings.

"So ... what? How am I supposed to get pregnant if ...."

He took something from his pocket, laid it on the table. A small plastic syringe, scored off in milliliters, for measuring out liquid medicines.

"Filched it from the nuns."

She stared at it, uncomprehending.

"When will you need my stuff?"

For a moment, she still didn't understand. Didn't want to understand. That he was seriously proposing to hand over his sperm like a sample in a cup.

Still, she couldn't bring herself to ask him for what would be a pity fuck. She counted in her mind. "Now. I could probably ... use it now. Today. Tomorrow."

He got to his feet, leaving the syringe on the table. Sober as he was, his movements were slow, unsteady. "All right then. Come 'round tonight. Nine o'clock. Should be able to produce the necessary article."

She watched him move slowly across the square, under the big black umbrella, zig-zagging to avoid the worst puddles. From behind, she wouldn't have recognized him, not by his shape, not by his walk.

Spike really was gone.

Slipping the syringe into her pocket, she motioned to the waiter for another beer. A last beer. To toast her new prospects in.



At eight-thirty, Buffy showered, sprayed herself with cologne, and slipped a light dress on over her damp bare skin. She didn't know what to expect when she got there, but she wanted to be ready to have sex if there was the remotest chance of it, even though she didn't feel the least bit sexy. He wasn't either; it was as if, after trading on it for all those decades as a vampire, he'd shattered his beauty as a rebuke to himself. Did he, now that he had a reflection, look at himself? Did he take perverse pleasure in his physical decline?

Even as she made that grim determination to seduce him if she could, another part of her shrank from the entire business, wanted just to curl up in her bed here and hide until she got word that Spike had shot himself.

She was more and more certain that he'd agreed to her request because he was ready to do that. His sobriety pointed that way too, far more than it pointed to any other change of heart. Perhaps he'd spent the time since early afternoon obtaining the gun. She wondered if she'd see it there, or if he'd keep it hidden from her. Probably he'd hide it.

As she combed and coiled her hair, Buffy tried out things she might say to him, but everything seemed pointless. He wasn't in his right mind, and neither was she, otherwise she wouldn't be playing along by his rules. It was like being under a spell—she knew it wasn't rational, yet she went along as if set in a groove.

The rain had paused; she managed to get from the hotel to his door without getting wet or muddy, although the motionless air coated her in a fine sweat as soon as she stepped out of the lobby. When she knocked on Spike's door, rivulets trickled, tickling, down her back.

"Haven't changed your mind, have you?"

The rapped out question startled her. He stepped aside to let her come in.

Quietly, she said, "Have you?"

As an answer, he thrust something at her. A small glass jar, that might've once held babyfood. She almost dropped it.

"You ... uh, okay ... it's all ready." This was excruciating.

He threw himself into the rattan chair. "Where will you live? Who'll help you with the sprog, if you manage to spit one out?"

"I—"

"You don't bloody know, do you? Haven't given it one little thought. Dunno what you're playin' at, Slayer."

"I'll figure all that out. Just like everyone does. It'll be good for me, after you ... when ... it'll be good for me to have something to concentrate on. To plan for."

He gave her a bleak look. Then, hauling himself back to his feet, muttered, "Just don't name it for me. Not first, not last. Got that?"

"Why, do you think it would be bad luck?"

He started to cross the room. She put herself in his path. Laid a hand gently on his arm to keep him from side-stepping her. Up close, he smelled strange, musty, like an old man. "If you're so worried about all that stuff ... why don't you hang around and see about it?"

"Because I don't want to have a bloody kid with you or anyone, an' I don't want to hang around here or anyplace. Thought I taught you that little catechism already. You're borin' me."

"So why did you agree?"

He stepped back, away from her touch. "... because ... like you said, won't cost me anything. An' I figure it'll be it's own reward, won't it ... bein' a mother to a person like me. My own mother found it so."

He laughed then, and she wanted to demand what the hell that meant. But he began to cough, and had to stagger back to his chair.

"Can have the jizz if you want it," he gasped. "Dunno if it'll do anything. Probably won't. No reason for it to take any more than anything else I try."

She hadn't considered that. The suggestion was gasoline dashed over the flames of her anxiety. "You have to wait, then! Promise me you'll wait. Because if it doesn't happen this month, I'll need to try again next month."

"That's your game, is it? Pretty transparent, Slayer. Think you'll keep me hangin' on for the next four weeks, an' all the while you'll work on me ... I bet you'll toss that jar in the river soon as you leave here, so you can pretend ...."

"No, I won't work on you. Okay? If you promise me to hold on until I'm sure I'm pregnant, I promise I won't pester you about your life. I understand anyway, that I have no influence over you anymore. I guess that's the biggest change. Bigger than the love thing."

Letting his head loll back against the chair, he sighed. "No one's got any influence over me. 'Cept the bloody higher Powers. An' I'm hopin' even they'll relinquish the damn pricks if I kick 'em over often enough."

"Yeah. I guess they will." Her palm was slick against the slick glass jar. She didn't like looking at its contents.

He gestured. "Better go get on with it. Stuff shouldn't sit around."

"... yeah," she repeated. It was obvious he wanted to get rid of her. What would he do when she was gone? There was no evidence of liquor; he didn't smell of it, he just smelled sick. He must be so bored without even that distraction.

She wanted to apologize to him.

She wanted to beat him up until he cried uncle.

Cradling the jar against her belly, she walked out.




Clumsily, over the sink in her hotel room, she drew the semen up into the syringe. Now she had to inject herself—like inserting a tampon. This was so gross. Jizz in a tube. What was she doing? This was insane. A wave of revulsion—for the milky liquid, the plastic syringe, herself, him, everything, seized her with nausea.

She couldn't do it.

Any of this. She'd entered so far into Spike's madness that she'd lost track of what was real.

In the morning, she'd pack up and go back to Rome. Go back to the people who would be glad she was there, who cared about her. Spike was beyond help, beyond hope. She'd done enough—more than enough—to pull him out of his abyss. If he wouldn't or couldn't come, well, ultimately, she couldn't hold herself responsible for that, much as the sense of what she owed him twisted and coiled and tightened inside her.

And this baby idea was insane too. She didn't want to have a baby. What she wanted—it was so clear to her—was to somehow preserve him. Which wasn't possible.

It was the wrong reason to have a child.

And she was the wrong woman to ever contemplate being a mother.

Leaving the syringe on the sink, she went to bed. But in the middle of the night, after tossing sweat-soaked for five hours, she stumbled up, grabbed the damn thing like it was the last stake on earth and she was up against a horde of ubervamps, and put a foot up on the toilet seat. It wasn't until she'd shot the plunger that it occurred to her she should've done this lying on her back. Spike's stuff was already running down her thigh when she pitched herself back on the bed.

She lay there, legs drawn up, holding her sticky knees with her sticky hands, in the air conditioner's ineffectual roar, and prayed.

She wasn't the praying kind. The semen had been lying out in the humid bathroom for hours. All the swimmers would've gone belly up by now. And she knew she wouldn't ask him again to wait a whole month. She didn't think she could bear to wait that long herself.

Oh God, she wanted him to get it over with. So she could leave here. Leave and try to forget. Her courage was failing her. Shivering, shaking she begged the Powers to let him go, to give him rest.

She hoped—but did not pray—that it wouldn't take. Hoped, but stayed put with her knees drawn up.



She awoke with a dry mouth, her thighs stuck together, feeling unreal. What a crazy dream. The whole thing—she kept her eyes closed, to review it before it dissipated. Crazy. That Spike would be alive again, that he'd be in Vietnam—weird—and ... what was that noise? The grinding motor sound stopped suddenly, with a dying fall. The hot air was utterly still.

Another power outage.

No dream.

Wearily, she pulled herself upright, went to wash. The syringe, the jar, both coated in dried semen, lay in the sink. She threw them away. Scrubbed hard at herself in the shower, hard between her legs, as if that would blot out the night before.

That evening, tired from the journey by boat and train, and even more from her determined refusal to think too much about her next move, she'd checked into the Sheraton in Saigon. In the air conditioned restaurant, she ate a big meal and paged through Japanese Vogue.

All these pictures. Pictures of dresses, of actresses, of handbags, of tropical resorts. She had no picture of him. No picture of the Spike she'd fallen for, struggling against it all the way.

Romantic love was stupid. A deeply stupid idea, an idea for morons. Or ... okay, maybe not morons, but for people who were very young, naive, people who were dopes. She should know better.

He knew better, at last, and now so did she. It was the rage of knowing better that stabbed her in the throat, so that though she ate and ate, every swallow hurt, and she could taste nothing.

She'd had her share of the loveys and the doveys already. It wasn't what she was put here for, but she'd had it. Suffered it. Survived it. She was older now than she was ever supposed to be. It was time to let go of the last of her silly girlish ideas, and get on with things. With her purpose.

Faith was holding down the Cleveland hellmouth with a handful of the new girls. It might be a good thing to give her a little time off. Let her rest for a month or two if she liked. Faith never had given herself a break. Faith never had indulged herself with romances, or ski vacations, or sandals that matched her purse. She was a slayer, and she didn't mess around.

Tomorrow she'd send Faith an email. Tell her to expect her. She'd email Giles, too. She'd just, generally, get back to her real life. The one Spike chided her for abandoning. Because if there was anything at all positive to take away from this fiasco, it was that. Shove the pretty illusions. Do the fucking job.

Tomorrow.



Ten days later she was back in the room with the grinding air conditioner motor. Walking to Spike's apartment in the evening darkness, encased in the rush rush of the rain. She could barely take a breath; her ankles trembled with every step. She didn't know what she wanted to find.

She arrived just as the door flew open. Nguyen appeared in it, backwards, shouting into the room.

He turned then and caught sight of her. His angry face darkened further; he shook a finger at her, scolding incomprehensibly, then abruptly grabbed her arm, dragging her forward.

"What are you doing? Let go of me—!" He shoved her inside.

It was dark; what light there was, seeping in from the street, showed her nothing but the outlines of disorder.

Then the headlamp of a passing motorbike lit up Spike, splayed low in the rattan armchair. There was something dark lying down the length of his torso, beginning at his mouth. Buffy thought of all the times she'd seen him vomit blood, how it made a dark stream over his lip, chin, neck, spreading down his chest. His right knee came up. That was all she had time to notice before the light was gone, and she didn't understand it, but there was something about that slow crabbed movement of his leg that terrified her.

"Spike!" She threw herself forward. To her left, the wooden window slats shattered with the sound of a bird careening into glass.

In the broken glow, brighter now through the broken slats, he was sprawled on the floor, body still fitted to the overturned chair, so that his feet were up in the air as if he was kicking in a tantrum. The shotgun's trigger hold was still hooked around the big toe of his right foot.

Buffy grabbed the gun, its hot barrel sizzling against her hand, and bent it double. Behind her, the light over the table came on. Seizing his arm, she yanked at Spike. He came up like a marionette, only loosely strung together, and staggered before he found his balance.

"Buffy ... thought you'd gone ... " She heard a reproach—how can I get anything done with you popping up? But then his hand rose, feeling towards her like a blind man's. It closed around her shoulder, gripped tight. " ... thought you'd left me."

I tried to. Oh fuck. I tried. "William, this has to stop. It just has to stop." A strange sensation, dizzy and light, spread up from her breast into her head, made it buzz. Her gorge rose. His brains might've been splattered all over the wall.

"Want it to. Don't you know I want it to?" He let out one sob. She waited for the next, but he seemed to be beyond crying.

His hand dug into her. She encircled him in her arms, pulled him unresisting towards the bed. For a moment they were both tangled in the mosquito netting. When she lay him down, he sobbed and turned his face away.

"Shouldn't have come back here."

"I know. I know I shouldn't. I wasn't going to."

"I'm tired, Buffy. I'm so bloody tired."

She smoothed his hair. "I know, William." A thought—treasonous, evil, appealing—flitted through her mind. She could do it. With a small handgun, a pillow.

She could, so easily.

She never could.

What a pity.

"I saw a doctor in the city. I'm pregnant."



Buffy poured the Jack Daniels into a clean glass, set out the fresh packs of cigarettes, the matches and ashtray. She dealt the cards for gin rummy.

Spike was already drunk—his low-level, before-lunchtime kind of drunk—when he emerged from the bathroom and took the chair opposite hers at the table. He'd taken to bathing in the morning, lying for a couple of hours in what passed here for cool water, sipping away at what he called breakfast: the local beer. If he ever ate solid food, Buffy didn't see him do it, and she'd stopped bringing in things to tempt him with when her own nausea became a problem. But in the last few weeks he'd become almost cheerful, or at any event, easy-going. They'd established a routine, the days spent together in cards and conversation. He behaved towards her as if they two stranded travelers, passing the time amiably until they could get moving again.

Up to a certain point each day, he was good-natured, patient. No more insults, no more bitter laughter. He smiled at her little jokes, and thanked her for what she did for him.

Late in the evening, when he'd been drinking steadily for some fifteen or sixteen hours, his mellowness shaded into something else: a quiet rage that burned like acid. But even then, it was himself he burned, much more than her, and when the burn reached a certain temperature, he'd tell her it was time they both went off to their beds.

He'd agreed, with the ease of someone who truly doesn't care about a short-term inconvenience, to postpone his next attempt at self-erasure until she was certain the pregnancy was well under way. Buffy had no illusion that he was interested in the child; whenever she started to talk about it, he always listened politely for a few moments, then changed the subject as soon as he could. She was unsuccessful in enlisting suggestions for names, or any anecdotes about his own early childhood. She couldn't get him to say anything more about his mother.

But they were talking. At last. The way he once had wanted so badly, the way she craved now nearly as much as she craved what all the talking wasn't going to bring back: the old Spike.

He told her the whole story of his time in Los Angeles, in enough detail that she was really able to piece together the personalities, the sequence of events. Spike painted a picture of Angel, and of Wesley, that she'd never considered before.

Listening to him sometimes made her tearful, which she attributed to the hormones, and tried to hide. The old Spike would've noticed right away, but this man, who sat just outside of the circumference of light shed by the 40 watt bulb dangling over the table, who sipped all day at whiskey and beer and wreathed himself in cigarette smoke, was apparently unaware of her more subtle reactions.

Unaware of the pity and sympathy for him that distilled itself in her, pure and sharp, as she listened.

One day, she asked him when he first knew he loved her.

The question elicited a quick smile, ironic, maybe embarrassed. "In a dream."

"A dream."

"Not a hearts an' flowers dream. Not a happy dream. Confounded me. Scared me."

"I guess it would." She threw out a card. "Would you like me to tell you about when I first knew I loved you?"

He squinted at his hand, moving the cards around and around. Finally he said, "... if you must."

"It was after that time I beat you up. I was talking to Tara ... I confided in Tara. Except that I lied to her. I told her about us as if I was somehow your victim. Letting you do things to me. She asked me if I loved you. She said it would be okay if I did. And I denied it. But I knew then. I knew I was lying. I went on lying to myself for a long time after that, but I knew it was a lie. I fought and fought against myself, against what I felt. I couldn't let myself be someone who was in love with you."

Silence. He threw out a card, took one. "That was pretty obvious."

Was that all he would say?

"So ... you believe me?"

"If you say so, pet."

That meant nothing. She felt herself flush, her muscles tensing for a moment into fight or flight. Remembering how easily, unthinkingly, she used to punch him. For anything or nothing, her fist driving hard into his face.

If she punched him like that now, one blow would be enough to kill him.

Furling her cards, she hid her hands under the table. "I never owned up to that beating, either. I can't believe I had the cheek ... will you please accept my apology for that? For beating you, and also for ... for acting afterwards like I'd done nothing wrong."

She looked up, hoping to catch his eye.

"I'm not asking for forgiveness, William. I think it would be very easy for you to say you forgive me everything, because you think it doesn't matter what you say anymore. So that's not what I'm saying now. I'm saying, accept my apology. Can you?"

"I used to think a girl wasn't worth anything if she wasn't a bundle of trouble. If she didn't cost me dear."

Oh God.

"Never knew what it was, to have my love returned. Expect I didn't believe in it, really."

"D-D-Drusilla loved you." Didn't she?

"Sometimes. When she could." Abruptly, he threw his cards down. "Don't want to play at this anymore now."

"All ... all right. Do you want to lie down?"

"Buffy. Don't torment yourself 'bout what's done an' gone."

"I need to. I need to torment myself, or else—"

"Or else what?"

"Or else I go on being that person who could hurt someone who cared for her, over and over. I can't be that person."

"You're not hurtin' me anymore."

"Maybe. But I'm not helping you either." The tears rushed up, hot and bitter, but they were as frequent now as nausea, and she was determined to pay them as little attention. "I think you want to die because you're lonely, and I want to show you that you don't have to be lonely, because I'm here. But I'm not enough. Nothing is enough."

He lit a fresh cigarette. "Nothin's enough," he echoed, a whisper expelled on smoke.

"Why? Why can't it be?"

"Was proud of goin' out how I did in the hellmouth. An' when they brought me back again, was a shock. Angel an' I talked once 'bout movin' on, getting on with our lives, but all the time we were sayin' that I knew I couldn't imagine what that could be for me. On an' on into infinity, with Crash Bandicoot an' beer, for what? But there was another opportunity then, to go all out for the right cause. Angel promised us we'd all die tryin', an' I was the first to raise my hand. Because it was the right thing, an' because I was pretty sure that time I'd get my bloody honorable quietus."

"Can't you take it on trust that this life you've been given is a reward? That it means something? You can make it mean something. We all have to make our lives—"

"Thought you weren't going to work on me."

"I'm not. We're talking. I just want to understand."

"Bein' alive's not such a picnic. S'like I'm half blind. Half deaf. Got no sense of smell anymore, to speak of. Nothin' tastes like anything. I'm weak as a kitten. Sex isn't ... isn't what it was, even with old Missis Palm. Compared to what I was before, it's a bleedin' robbery. This body ... it's always tired, always in pain."

"Because you treat it like shit."

"You won't credit it, I know, but as much as I hated bein' chipped up at the beginning ... that's nothing to how I hate this. To how unnatural it feels."

"You adapted to the chip. If you really wanted to, you could—" Her tears overflowed at this, tracking hot down her cheeks. Why why why couldn't he try to see it differently? Why couldn't he just change his mind about this?

He shook his head. "Can't make a wolf over into a dog who'll sleep by the hearth. He'll just be sick at heart if you try, an' he'll die, because he can't live that way. ... He can't live."




The next day he said, "Why don't you go back to Rome? They don't know you're pregnant, do they? You should be with your sister an' your friends now."

"I couldn't leave you."

"You could. You should."

"I would be too lonely without you."

At this, Spike glanced around—at the wretched furnishings, at the collection of glasses and bottles on the table between them, and then down at his own wasted body—before casting his eyes back to her. "Because we're havin' ourselves such a jolly time here."

"I don't want to be away from you. You know I don't."

"It seems like that now, but once you're back home, snug in your bed, you'll be glad you are. I know I'm half mad. You are too, long as you're here. Knockin' yourself up proves it."

"No."

He remained patient. "This's no place for you, 'specially now you're up the spout."

"The streets are full of pregnant Vietnamese women, they're perfectly all right! Women are pregnant in every country of the world, on every landmass! They're fine!"

"You know that's not what I mean."

Her boiling hormones betrayed her once more in tears. "I can't leave you. I don't want to leave you. I like it where you are." Saying this, she felt like a child stubbornly insisting on eating more candy when she was already horribly sick.

"Well," he said, with a sudden sigh like a punctured tire, "suit yourself."



Her body felt full all the time. Occupied. Buffy imagined the developing baby like a ball in her stomach. There was undoubtedly something going on inside, something busy and self-directed, seemingly oblivious to her dragging sadness. She hoped the baby couldn't feel how sad she was. Although she knew that as yet it was just a bunch of almost undifferentiated cells, still she worried about that.

It wouldn't be fair, to be born sad.

After her bath each day, Buffy examined herself in the mirror. Her belly was still flat, but her breasts were getting bigger, the nipples pooched out. Spike would like them, she thought. Although he'd told her once, in a moment of idle postcoital chat, that he wasn't so much a tit man, or a leg man. Told her it was long hair, falling free around a pretty neck, that made him amorous. He'd actually said 'amorous,' though at the time she'd mentally substituted the word 'hungry'. Then he told her that he liked cunny—looking at it, tasting it, fucking it—that every woman was beautiful there, even if nowhere else.

She'd punched him, for saying that. She wasn't entirely sure why, even at the time.

Still, she thought now, squeezing them together in her hands, he'd like her breasts now, if he saw them.



"What would you like me to tell our child about you?"

The bottle he flung at her went wide past her shoulder, and smashed against the wall with a splash. She was sure he'd meant it to miss her. She changed the subject.



"Slain anything since you've been here?"

The question, thrown out with a discarded card a day later, startled her. Far from slaying anything, it hadn't even occurred to her to patrol. She didn't do that anymore. In the last year she'd staked three vampires, and that was only because they'd positively stumbled across her path.

"Why'd you quit?"

"I haven't quit."

He poured out another drink, swirling the whiskey in the glass. "Surprised me, that you had. Really never thought you'd down tools like that."

"I—"

"Don't you want it? Don't you crave the smash an' bash an' crazy joy of it? The anticipation, an' the feeling you get right after. Where's there a bigger high? You're not still trying to teach yourself that you're an ordinary girl, are you? That the violence, the vengeance, isn't part of you?"

"Not this again."

"Not tryin' to seduce you off into the dark this time. Talkin' about what's real about you. Your essential nature. Your ... your happiness. Buffy ... you're not happy."

"I can't patrol. I'm going to have a baby." This was essentially a nonsequitor; she knew it even as she said it. This topic made her itchy and twitchy. Like she wasn't sure whether she'd gone out and left the iron on, only to the tenth power.

His head tilted as he looked at her. Except now it made her feel like a bug under glass. Who was he to analyze her anymore? "You're not happy, pet. You haven't been for a long time. Isn't that so? You need—"

"I need you! And if you're not going to give me what I need, then shut up about it!"



The next day, when they began their card game, she said, "I'm sorry about yesterday."

"Forget it."

"No. You asked me why I stopped slaying, and I didn't give you any kind of answer."

"Well, have you got one now? One that doesn't have me comin' into it like King Charles' head? Because I know it's got nothing to do with me."

She stared at her cards, so she wouldn't have to look at him. She didn't like to think it had anything to do with him either. He'd died to help her save the world, and she'd mourned him. But she'd lost people before. Angel, her mother. She'd always rejoined the fight.

"There are a lot of slayers now. Giles has them deployed everywhere they're most needed. I was able to take some time off. I was able to look at my possibilities."

"Like datin' the Immortal."

"William, I only did that for like two months! C'mon."

"All right. So?"

"All that responsibility I had before, it was lifted. I wasn't the one girl in all the world anymore. Back when Faith first came to Sunnydale, Mom thought I'd be able to leave town to go to college, because she'd be there to hold down the hellmouth. Of course it didn't work out that way." She stopped. That sounded so lame now. It was so long ago. "I thought—" What had she thought? That she'd done enough? Paid her dues, and paid and paid? So that she ought to be free from now on to ignore the coming apocalypses and just live her life.

Whatever that was going to consist of. She'd been waiting for it to start, ever since.

"So, feelin' redundant, were you? Lost in the crowd of new talent?"

"No."

"You don't like bein' ordinary. You always say you want to be, but then when you get a taste of it, you go all restless an' ornery. Like when you were datin' soldier boy."

"Why do we have to drag him into this conversation? That was years ago."

"Don't bore yourself to death, pet."

"You must mean yourself. You're the one who hates being an ordinary man. You're the one who's—!" She leapt to her feet, grabbed his hand. "C'mon. We could both get out of here right now. We don't have to just sit here in this heat and bicker—"

"I'm too sick to go stumblin' about. An' you're goin' to have a baby, remember? Siddown before you overheat. You're red as a beet."

Suddenly she was dizzy; the seat of the chair seemed to rear up and slap her behind; she grabbed onto the edge of the table to keep from tumbling off it as the room spun around her. Spike pushed her water glass closer to her. In a quiet voice, he said, "Don't you make yourself ill, Buffy. I can't be lookin' after you."



She had little appetite because of the heat, but now the nausea struck her at odd times—morning sickness, apparently, was a misnomer. It was hard to sleep—again because of the heat. Her body was cranking like a furnace, constant flushes and sweats that made it hard to settle down.

Giles called late one evening, wondering why she'd fallen out of touch. "You're never in your room. You don't answer your mobile."

"Did you find out anything else about the shanshu?"

"Unfortunately, no. All of Wesley's effects are lost, and the Council archives are decimated. We're flying blind now in many ways." He talked for a few minutes about the serious shortage of watchers. Too many slayers were idling or getting into trouble for lack of adequate supervision. Buffy half-listened, as her stomach gurgled. A wave of acid reflux burned her throat and made her gag.

"Dawn says you haven't been answering your email. What's going on there?"

"It's complicated. I don't like to leave Spike. I only come back here to sleep."

Giles was silent, a reproachful silence. You tried to kill him when you knew I needed him. She still wasn't over that, but she couldn't bring it up. Giles had to know it, anyway. Nothing between them was ever the same.

"Please call your sister. She's concerned about you."

"I will. I promise." She hung up without saying goodbye, then took the mobile from her pocket. She hadn't turned it on in days; Spike didn't like it when it rang, and she didn't want to talk to anyone, lest she have to try to explain what she was doing.

There was five messages from Dawn. Buffy sent a text. I'm all right. Doing a little exploring in SE Asia. Will email when I can. xxx




They'd been playing rummy in silence for an hour, while she plowed up her anxious thoughts over and over. She'd lain awake all night, trying to think clearly about what was wrong here, about why, even though they were talking in ways they never had, they still weren't connecting. Comprehension of other people was always fleeting—she'd figured that out a while ago—but with those you loved most—and she loved him desperately—it ought to be possible to, if not know one another, at least get a good glimpse.

Spike only took his eyes off his cards to glance at the glass he drank from, or the cigarette pack. She'd considered asking him to smoke less—he was chain-smoking now, and it was often hard for her to breathe—but the request seemed like more trouble than it was worth. He had so little, how could she try to take that away?

"The other day. When I told you about being in love with you."

"Ah, that." He took a drink.

"When we were involved, you know, I was ashamed, yes. But I want you to understand that was about me, not about you. When I look back on it now ... I could've accepted you. You were ... you were plenty good enough for me, Spike." She winced at her wording. An unremembered snatch of speech floated up in her mind then: Andrew saying to someone Confidentially, most of the slayer's people are murderers. "I mean ... at that point ... I mean ... you were ...." How could she describe her agonies of regret, over what she'd thrown away with both hands? She could've had something with him, something that would've lasted for more than a year and a half—an eternity by her reckoning—if all else had gone the same. And maybe it wouldn't have gone the same—maybe Spike would've gotten out at the end, if he'd had her to survive for.

She'd tried to tell herself that she was too emotionally disturbed after her resurrection to participate in a love affair. But that felt like an excuse. It didn't make her feel better about how roughly she'd treated him. And it didn't explain away her own mendacity.

That's what hurt the worst. It would've been one thing if she really hadn't cared for him.

"I was dishonest with you and with myself. I took perverse pleasure in mistreating you. I took pleasure in how much you let me get away with. I was all fucked up inside, but that's not an excuse. I didn't have to take it out on you. It was a choice I made. A horrible choice. I wish it was different. When I think of how good you'd have been to me, if I'd let you ...."

"All right, Slayer. All right."

"It's not all right! Spike!"

"You poor cow. Don't trouble yourself, Buffy. You'll do better another time."

"You really don't give a shit, do you?"

He stared at his hand of cards. "Dunno what to say when you talk like this. It's all past an' gone."

"I should've let myself ... I wish I could've made you happy ... you were so easy to please, then, and I could've ... and the soul, it shouldn't have mattered. Spike, I loved you before you had your soul." Suddenly terrified of his reaction to this, she cried out "It doesn't matter why you got it! I forgave you! I—I—I think I forgave you that same night! Don't don't don't bring that up again!"

He stared at her now, pale, watery-eyed, alarmed at her outburst.

"Sorry ... I'm sorry ... I'm too hot ... I'm going to wash my face."

She jerked up from the table, fled into the bathroom. There was too much to say, she could've said it all to him, he'd have heard her, helped her, understood everything. But this one, this William ... she couldn't decide if he really didn't care, or if he merely lacked the energy for her intensity.

It felt so crucial that he understand her at last. So crucial, and yet so impossible.

Which was, she realized, as she looked at her dripping face in the mirror, exactly how it was for him, back then.

Oh God. It was exactly the same. Everything she was going through now ... was what she'd inflicted on him before.

Well. That was ... karmic. She'd just have to remember that.




"What are you going to do with yourself? When the novelty of havin' a sprog's worn off?"

"The novelty?"

"C'mon, I know you, Slayer. By time the thing's—say, four, at the outmost—you'll have passed it off onto your sister and Xander, an' you'll turn into an occasional visitor, rather than its mum."

"My sister and Xander?"

Spike waved a hand impatiently. "That'll happen. I saw it when I lived in your house. They probably don't know it yet, but they'll marry an' breed, you'll see. Never mind that now. Answer my question."

"I resent your question."

"What do you imagine we'd be like, if we made the family you think you want so much? You really want to settle down with a normal man an' a normal child? You'd last a month, maybe."

She didn't want to remind him that she'd only asked for the child as a substitute for a life with him.

Quietly she said, "I think that if you're not going to be part of my future, you don't have the right to interrogate me about what I'll do when you're not around."

"Oh ho."

"Well I do."

"Right you are, slayer."



"What was it like, getting a soul? I'm not asking about the fight. I'm asking about how you felt, when you got it. What was different? What was the same?"

"Didn't know there was to be an essay question this mornin'. Where's my number two pencil?"

"C'mon, William. I would think you'd want to tell me about it. I should've asked you all this long ago."

"What do you think it is really, Buffy? The soul. You were taught to set such store by it, but do you even know what it is?"

"It's ...."

"It's not a conscience. Because I'm pretty damn sure I had one of those before. Else, why did I feel I needed a soul at all?"

"I don't know. I never understood that. You had a chip. A chip isn't a conscience. But I do know you were developing a conscience before you got your soul."

"Developing. I like that."

"All right. You had one. But I never saw any evidence of it before you were chipped, and then it was always very situational. Will you admit that?"

Spike smiled his wolfish smile. "Angelus could tell you how it took him twenty years of hard training to repress my conscience."

"What do you mean?"

"Always had a conscience," he said, waving away her question. "Fallin' for you, woke it up a bit, an' then bein' entrusted with your sister, a bit more. Still, I never worried about what I'd done in the past. Never thought much about anything that wasn't going on in front of my face. Then I got souled up, an' suddenly it was all up in my face—my whole filthy century."

"It was too much for you. It made you insane."

"Yeah. Was right lost for a while there."

"And then—? When you'd pulled yourself together?"

"Empathy. Noticed I had empathy for people I didn't know, people who weren't you or your sister or the dear little Scoobies. Strangers. Theoretical people, people out there, y'know. Didn't make me into a buggerin' bleeding heart like Himself, but I cared. Couldn't imagine takin' pleasure in causing anyone trouble. Wanted other people to have what they wanted. Shared in the anguish an' what little bits of joy were goin' round. Couldn't detach myself like I used to, when I was ... when I was free."

"Free?"

"It's a sort of shackle, no question. After you know what it is to exist without one. Took it on for good reasons, though, an' had no regrets."

"It was a courageous thing to do."

"Never was a coward, was I? When I was Spike." A smile flitted across his lips. Pride. Reminiscence. It was gone before she could begin to smile back.

"No. You never were." The implication was that the man he'd been before ... the same man he was now? ... was afraid. Always afraid? Wasn't it fear that made him crawl into the whiskey bottle now, that made him court his death?

"Spike was everything William Merrit-Smith wasn't. Everything he couldn't be?"

"Somethin' like that."

"I think I get it now. What you told me that time, about moving up the food chain, as you put it. How good that was for you. It must've been such a release ... from a difficult life."

"Don't pretend your opinion's changed. Yours isn't to be all understandin' of the monsters. Not supposed to rehabilitate 'em, just kill 'em all."

"But if I'd slain you back in the day ...."

He winced. "Don't go there, Buffy. Makes my head hurt."

"Do you believe in destiny?"

"Bloody hell! Know I'd prefer not to."

"But you do."

"Christ. Have to, don't I? Or ... I don't know. Stupid abstraction."

"If you really believed in it ...."

Spike flushed, heaving himself out of his chair. "Fulfilled my bloody destiny, all right? Twice! It's the fucking reward I don't want! A fellow ought to be free to take a reward or chuck it if it doesn't suit him!"

"Sweetheart, don't. Don't ...." She came around behind him, gently pressed him back into the chair.

"Hate all this jabber. That was Angel's department."

"Sssh, sssh. We don't have to talk anymore." Helpless tenderness led her to slip her arms around him, to risk laying her cheek against his greasy hair, though he might push her away in the next instance.

He didn't push her away. After a moment, in quite a difference voice, he said, "Don't suppose I smell very good. Go on an' sit yourself down."



No one knew about her pregnancy, except for him. Sometimes, despite the constant heartburn and nausea, she didn't quite believe in it herself. When it was something to be wangled for, pried out of him, she'd wanted it desperately. Now that it was real, she was capable of forgetting it, or thinking of it as something that might perhaps require her attention eventually—a long time from now. Her whole foreground was taken up with him. Amazing how undifferentiated days of gin rummy and the BBC world service could be so packed as to leave her little attention for contemplating the future.

Of course, the future was just him being dead finally, if he got his way—or turned into some grotesque vegetable, if her prediction about the outcome of a bullet to his brain was right. The future was her being on her own, increasingly out of step with her friends' lives, because she couldn't imagine a time when she wouldn't miss him every day, every hour.

She really didn't know how she was going to raise their child, or where or with whom. Every time she tried to grapple with the problem—it was always late at night, back in her hotel room after a long day—she only lasted for a few moments before either slipping into sleep or distracting herself with something—anything—else. It would be, she decided, like when Dawn came. Suddenly she was there, and Buffy loved her, and protected her. That was all.

Spike needled her once in a while on the subject, but she could never actually engage him to the problem. "Gave you what you asked for," he said, "an' that's that. When're you going to go home? It's about time you did."

Much as he changed the subject whenever she mentioned the baby, she did whenever he brought up her departure. She'd only asked him to wait until she was sure the pregnancy was well in train, but how long was that? She never wanted to leave him at all. Going away would mean she'd really given up on him. And if she wasn't here, she'd never know whether he was dead or not—and that uncertainty would be a worse torment than being sure.

It was August now, the height of the rainy season. Nothing was cool or dry anywhere. She moved slowly through the days and evenings, never rid of the feeling that moss was sprouting on her skin. Spike's concession to the weather was to permit her to set the ceiling fan on high. Though his skin always glistened with sweat, he seemed oblivious to the heat.

Every morning when she came into his dingy room, she thought, What a terrible place this would be to die.

After a hemorrhage that forced him to stay in bed for a few days, he asked her to help him wash his hair. Her heart surged up as if at a marriage proposal. When she knelt beside the claw foot tub where he lay bonelessly in the tepid water, still smoking his pungent Vietnamese cigarette, he put out his left hand and touched her belly.

"It isn't really any bigger yet," she said apologetically.

"No." He didn't move his hand. Buffy was suffused with physical excitement at this touch, didn't want to shift an iota lest it be withdrawn. "Used to be, I'd have known as soon as you were in pup. Could smell whether it was a girl or a boy. Now, everything that was transparent to me is closed off."

She could empathize with his woe, the loss at being stripped of his keenness. It seemed unanswerable. She remembered her own rage and confusion, when Giles had crippled her for the Cruciamentum. Imagine never recovering from that.

Pulling his arm away, he tossed the cigarette past her into the sink. "Right. Let's get on."

It felt like making love to him, this chance to touch his hair, his neck, to caress him in the guise of shampooing, to pour water slowly on him like a libation. She teared up, but then everything made her tear up. He was too weak to lift his arms, to do this himself.

When she was finished, and couldn't pretend anymore that he needed yet another rinse, she turned his face towards her and kissed his mouth. He tasted of tobacco and sour liquor and a little bit of vomit, but because he didn't pull away, she lingered.

"Never wanted to be seen like this. 'Specially by you."

"No, no, you don't understand. It's a gift for me, to be able to do anything for you. You know, you know what it's like, being in love this way. You must remember."

"Remember, yeah. I remember. It's a wretched thing."

"Yes it is," she said, rising. "But I can't help it, and I wouldn't if I could. This is my big romance, and I want every bit of it I can have. Let me help you out of the tub."



When she'd supported him into his bed, brought him a fresh drink and lit his cigarette, he thanked her. Turning away, she started to tidy the table.

"Buffy."

"Yes."

"Listen to me now. No argument, yeah? I can't continue like this. I can't. Not suited to be a man, not suited to be this weak childish thing. Not after what I was. Want you to go home, so I can do what I need to do."

"We can talk about that tomorrow."

"No. Not tomorrow. I've been patient, Buffy. I gave you what you asked me for. I waited like you said. But I'm too tired to wait any more. An' you have things to do for yourself—you need to be getting on with your life. It's time."

"No it isn't. No it isn't." She wanted to start all over again, with her arguments, her anger; all the urges to shout at him, punch him, force him; to prostrate herself and plead, rose up fresh as ever.

All she could do was shake her head, and sink down beside him. Her body was hollow, a cold wind blowing through her even as sweat trickled down her back. "Please, William. Please think about it a little more. You could still change your mind."

"I have thought. What else have I been doin', whole time you've been here? This isn't me. I can't be this."

All her persuasions were spent. She reached for his hand. He rubbed her palm slowly with his thumb.

"I want you to get back to bein' what you are. What makes you special. All that righteousness an' goodness that Spike loved. All your beautiful deadly power. Stop wastin' that. Will you get back to your life's work?"

My life's work. It was a question whether she'd be able to get up and cross the room, let alone do anything like what he was proposing. She nodded. "After the baby comes. Yes. All right."

"Good." He drew his hand away, but slowly. She felt his effort to be firm, but not cruel. "Go on now. Go back to your hotel, arrange for your tickets an' all. You can come say goodbye to me in the morning, and then you'll be off home."

"What—you want me to go tomorrow morning? That's too soon, I have to—"

"You have to go back to your real life. To yours and to this one's that's coming. You know, Buffy. This is one of those things, like the battle with the First. You just have to face it, an' get through as best you can."



He wouldn't let her stay any more that evening. Going out into the street, she felt like an orphan, cast out into a strange place. The passersby, the people in the market, talking to each other, buying and selling fish and vegetables—how could they do that, how could they go about their business when she was dying inside? She wanted to sink down sobbing, and expire.

But she wasn't the sinking, expiring type. She'd always been the one who got it done, no matter how wounded she was inside. Returning to the hotel, she went through the motions of what he'd prescribed. Got out her open return ticket from her suitcase; called the airline for a reservation. Checked on the times of the ferry and the train to Saigon. There really would only be time for short goodbyes in the early morning, if she wasn't to miss the evening flight to Singapore, and from there to Rome.

Packing didn't take very long. She hadn't bought anything during her stay, amassed no souvenirs. Except this one, she thought, stroking her belly.

As she washed some underwear out in the sink, the cramp came that doubled her over.



She didn't know how many hours she'd sat curled on the toilet, nose against knees, shaking and sweating and groaning, while her body spasmed and cramped and spasmed again, and blood poured out into the pan. No pain she could remember was ever so severe, not since the pain of closing Glory's portal. But this lasted much much longer. All she could think of was that she'd failed even in this. She couldn't hold on to anyone she loved, her love would always go unreturned. It must've been the middle of the night, or early morning, before dawn, when the agony eased, and she managed to waddle, bent over and holding herself, as far as the bed.

She was lying there on her side, knees drawn up, soaked and trembling and just trying to breathe, when the knocking started. She was sure she hadn't been asleep, but she'd lost all sense of time. She called out for the knocking to stop, and it did. Good. Good. She couldn't deal with anyone now. The maid ... it was probably the maid. She'd have to come back later. Then she heard the doorknob rattle, and cried out again. "I'm fine! Go away! Privacy!" Her mouth was so dry, she croaked.

Someone was unlocking the door. She recognized the voice of the hotel manager, speaking, but not to her. She tried to roll over, as the door swung open, to see who would come in, but she was too cramped. "Go away. I'm fine."

"Christ Slayer, you're not fine. Don't move." He spoke in urgent Vietnamese; she heard the manager's steps hastening away. Then the mattress dipped as he sat beside her.

"What ... what are you doing here?"

"You didn't show this mornin'. First I thought you'd decided to go without goodbye, but then I had my doubts. Hush now. Doctor's comin'."

"I don't need a doctor. It's all over. It all bled out." Her own words startled, shocked her. She began to weep.

He smoothed her damp hair. "Sssh. Don't worry about anything. In a little while I'll take you home."




In the back of the hired car, Buffy shivered. For the first time since she'd arrived in Vietnam, she was cold. The old Mercedes, in which a friend of Nguyen was driving them to Saigon at Spike's expense, was shabby, but it had leather seats and aggressive air conditioning. She stared through the mud-caked window at the rice fields, yellow-green in the steady morning rain. She'd taken in very little of the landscape on her way towards Spike, and as she was sure she'd never come back here again, it seemed important to get a look now, though she was exhausted and on the verge of being car-sick. Spike sat close to her, permitting her without comment to rest her head on his shoulder, though the bone was sharp and the road was jouncy.

Glancing up at him, Buffy got a view of his papery nostrils, of the individual hairs of his shaggy mustache and beard—up close they were three different shades of brown that would've been pretty if they weren't so dry, if the skin they sprang from wasn't so wan. She could trace a blue vein across his cheek, like the shadow of a scar. She didn't know how he'd found the strength to come to her; he was barely ambulatory when she'd last left him. But he was like her in that much, able to summon up reserves of strength when need required it.

He'd stayed by her side since. After the doctor gave her a sedative, he'd lain beside her for one more night in the room with the roaring motor. Sometimes his coughing brought her out of her drugged sleep. Remembering why he was there, and that soon she wouldn't have even that solace, she reached for him, resting her feverish forehead against his feverish back. Just after dawn, still dopey, still bleeding, she followed him outside to begin the trip to Saigon.

By time they reached the airport, after hours and hours on indifferent roads, Spike was pale green; Buffy wasn't sure he'd make it into the terminal, or that she'd have the strength herself to catch him if he toppled. But they made their way, like two zombies—grim, slow-moving, silent, determined.

Only when they'd sunk into their first class seats—Spike's doing also—did he revive into a moment's speech. To the steward, he said, "Mine's Jack Daniels. Keep 'em coming. An' the lady will have water. Keep that coming too."

The steward's bland friendliness slipped; Buffy thought he was going to object to the presence of such an obviously ill man on the flight. Spike pulled himself up a little, showing his teeth in what might or might not pass for a smile. "All right, mate?"

"Of course sir."

When the steward moved off, Spike turned to her. "My next fag won't be for hours an' hours." There was a tinge of apology in his tone.

"You're being amazing."

"I am, yeah. For a little while." He took her hand. "Warned you, didn't I, that it probably wouldn't take."

"I don't think it was your fault." She took a deep breath. "It was nobody's fault."

His thumb rubbed gently back and forth across the back of her hand; she felt him thinking.

" ... better this way, maybe." He paused. "You still in pain?"

She shrugged angrily. There was something definitely cruel in Spike's chivalry. Escorting her home, only to ... what? He'd given her no reason to think he wasn't still intent on ending himself, which he could do in Rome as well as anywhere, or that he wouldn't turn right around and go back to Dai Phuong. If he meant to stay with her, to recover himself and be her lover, he'd have said so. Nothing was better. Nothing. She was in pain, in a limbo where there was no way to know when the next blow would come, or from what direction, or how long the onslaught would last. None of her fighting skills were proof against any of this. It only made it worse, to acknowledge that part of her suffering, right now and through that long night of bleeding, was that mixed with the loss was a dark relief, that there would be no baby after all. She knew she'd torment herself for years over that relief. Other things might scab over, but not that.

The steward brought their drinks, placing them on the wide arm-rest between them, so they had to part hands.

The ice cubes spun slowly in the glass.

"I miss you so much."

She didn't realize she'd spoken out loud until he turned his head to regard her.

"You miss Spike. Who is no more."

His insistence on the distinction was more irritating than ever, though she understood at last how real it was for him, and for her too.

"I wanted to be with him, but I see now I never will." She began to shred one of the damp napkins. "As for the baby ... I wanted ... I wanted not to be left with nothing."

" ... m' sorry," he murmured.

Something inside her tightened and held. "I'll get through this like I get through everything. But unless you tell me you're going to live, William, I think you should get off this plane."

The coach passengers were still filing on, trundling their carry-ons by up the narrow aisle. On the other side of the center seats, the steward was handing out dinner menus to the other first-class passengers.

Spike didn't look surprised, didn't look like a man whose intentions have been misunderstood, who has been holding something back for a glad surprise. His level gaze inquired, assessed. She kept hers steady, though her throat was a knot and her heart a frenzy.

Then his gaze fell. Slowly, he sprang the catch on the seat-belt. "That's right, Slayer."

She stared, not at his face anymore, but at his hands as he pushed himself unsteadily up. "I really ... I really hope it works out for you," she said. "I mean—that you're able to do it clean this time. Since you won't change your mind." Quickly, she shifted her body—aware of the soft liquid squelch between her thighs as she uncrossed her legs and recrossed them the other way—pressing her face against the cool of the window, clenching her fists.

A dizzy dip in her chest reminded her to breathe.

When she fell back against the head-rest, gasping, he was gone.




Rome in late August was given over almost entirely to tourists. The natives, except those whose jobs involved taking care of visitors, had fled to the mountains, or the seashore.

Somber amongst the camera-happy Japanese, the sunburned Germans, the badly-dressed Americans, Buffy made her way back to her apartment through the hot morning crush. The sun was already too warm, too glaring. She had to shade her eyes with her hand. After the hours on the plane, the long wait to clear customs, everything around her felt unreal. The edges of buildings and objects boiled slightly, unless she looked directly at them. She was hungry, but the thought of food was impossible.

Letting herself into the apartment, where all the blinds were drawn, she called out softly, "Dawnie?"

Her sister was asleep, but sprang up with glad surprise to embrace her. "I didn't know you were coming home today!"

"I kind of didn't know either, it was a last-minute thing, or I'd have called." Buffy spoke the words as if they were ordinary, as if she was ordinary. The room spun; she sat down abruptly on the edge of the bed.

"You just caught me," Dawn said. "I'm leaving town this afternoon."

"Leaving? For where?"

"I ... I'm flying to Casablanca." Dawn said it with her best approximation of a sexy French accent. "To meet a man."

"To meet Xander."

"How did you know?"

Trying to smile, Buffy put her sister's disordered hair back behind her ears. "Oh, a little bird told me. A noticing bird."

Dawn cocked her head. "A bird?"

"How long has this been going on?"

"It ... it isn't. Hasn't. Just ... in email. We're going to see ... if there's anything. Going on." Dawn blushed. "Anyway, it's only for a week, then he's heading down to Burundi. And I have to get ready to get back to school. You're not weirded out, are you?"

"No ... it's nice. I just wish you weren't going so soon. I was hoping we could have some sisters time. But I realize I've left you alone for almost the whole summer with barely a word, so ...."

Dawn was wide awake now; her happy demeanor shaded as she got a better look. "Buffy, you're strange. What's the matter? There's some big hell beast thing brewing, isn't there? You're going to be slaying again?"

"No hell beast. I ... I've just come from hell, though. A two-seater hell."

Now Dawn looked scared. "What are you talking about?"

On the plane, Buffy had filled the freeze-dried hours with brooding over all she'd said and done since the first moment she walked into Spike's apartment. Especially that last gesture, telling him to go. At the time it felt like the only thing left to do. To release him from the polite chaperonage that they both knew didn't signify any real change of heart, before they had to endure even more interminable hours together. But once airborne, a million doubts stung her—if he'd stayed on the plane, perhaps something might have happened to alter his course. She might have found something new to say, or maybe there would be some unanticipatable event ....

Except she couldn't make herself believe that anymore, not for one second. She couldn't revive a hope that was already dead. No. She had to take some control of her own heartbreak.

"Dawnie, I was with Spike." As she said the words, a sluice of tears started from her eyes.

"Spike! But ... Buffy, Spike's dead. Buffy ... you're freaking me out."

She shook her head, overwhelmed with how to explain. "He was alive ... he'd been made human. And he was so unhappy, so ill ... I think he's dead now. I think he is. I'm sure he is. I just hope ... I just hope it's all right—"

Her sister's astonished face swam in her vision. Buffy took her hands, held onto them tight, to keep herself from slipping into the hole that yawned inside her. Against all her old instincts for secrecy, for silence, she told everything.

In a little while, Dawn too was in sympathetic tears.

"I'm sorry to dump all of this on you ..." Buffy said. A problem shared was supposed to be a problem halved, but somehow, laying it out for her sister just made Buffy even more exquisitely aware that something terrible had befallen her, something that would hurt her every day for years and years.

"Don't be stupid, of course you had to tell me. If you didn't ... oh Buffy. Oh Buffy, I'm so sorry. I'm so sorry for you, and him. And about the baby. God, that just ... all of this, it's so hard."

"The baby was a really really foolish idea." This brought out a fresh gust of grief. She felt like some misshapen dirty little animal, that needed to creep into a burrow and die. "But I wanted—I wanted—" At this moment, she couldn't imagine wanting anything, except not to have to feel.

Dawn pulled her in close, stroked her hair. "I wish you'd told me sooner," she murmured. "I'd have come and tried to help."

" ... I thought of it, but I couldn't. I just couldn't bring anyone else in ... he'd have hated it if I did."

Dawn nodded, but Buffy didn't think she really understood. How could she? How could anyone? The whole thing sounded so unlikely, so perverse, when she described it. Now that she'd left the stifling atmosphere, with its constant sharp smells and numbing patter of rain, the reality of it was already unraveling. Had she really been pregnant three days ago? Had she really been with Spike, and lost him again to his own despair?

If not, then why did she hurt so much?

At least Dawn shared her sadness. At least she was crying too, wads of crumpled tissue clutched in her hand.

"Aren't you angry with him?" Dawn hesitated, watching out of brimming eyes. "I ... I think I'm angry at him."

" ... yes. I was angry. I'm angry and sad and ... and angry and sad. I can't imagine feeling anything anymore except those. Frustrated. W-w-wretched."

"It's not like him. The Spike I remember ... he would never have given up."

"Dawnie, he wasn't the Spike you remember. That's the thing. He couldn't stand being weak and alone."

"He wouldn't have been alone if he'd come to us."

"Please don't. Don't make me go over all of that again. Believe me, I told him all of that. I tried to show him, to change his mind. I failed."

Dawn chewed her lips. "Don't say failed, okay? I'm sure this can't be your fault. He's the one who—"

"No. No! I don't want to hear you run him down! You weren't there, you don't know."

Rebuked, Dawn withdrew a little. Wiped at her nose and eyes over and over, until she put Buffy in mind of a squirrel.

"Dawnie, it's okay."

"I'll stay with you. I don't have to go to Casablanca."

Tempting as it was to accept this offer, to cling to her with both arms and never let go, Buffy shook her head. "No, I think you really do. I want you to be happy, Dawnie. It's very very important, that when you think you've found the one, you don't let him slip through your fingers."

She watched Dawn struggle with her impulse to insist on staying, and her all-too-obvious yearning to go. "Give Xander my love. But don't ... don't tell him about Spike, okay? I'm not sure yet that I want everyone to know. Giles does, and now you, but that may be as much as I can stand."

"Oh ... okay. So. What are you going to do now?"

"Right now? I don't know. Sit around and cry. But after that ... I've decided it's time I get back to my job. I'm going to be the slayer. Well, a slayer."

"Here in Rome?"

"I don't think so. I could use a change of scene."

PART TWO



The wind blew heavily off the river, blasting through the cemetery on the slope with bitter force, unbroken by the bare trees and shrubbery. A thin crust of snow crunched under the boots of the two young women who walked in tandem amongst the grave markers, and the shadows of markers on the whiteness. Above their heads the full moon hung cool and aloof.

"Spring is never coming," the taller one said, pulling her scarf up higher around her chin.

"It's March already. It'll come. The days are longer already."

"You're used to that endless summer of southern California. I thought you'd complain more about the winter here."

"Not so much into complaining." More into enduring. "But I guess you're used to it." Buffy paused to stamp her feet. After Rome, even after Vietnam, Cleveland bored her. She'd come here because it was a place of purpose, it was the Hellmouth. Her role, after what she'd endured with William, seemed clear—knuckle down again to slaying, be part of the bigger project, try to be humble. It didn't make for a happy life, but she felt she was managing it with grace. Like taking yucky medicine without making a face.
"You don't get used to being cold," Julie said. "Even though I've lived here all my life, every year, come November, I'm all what the fuck?"

"Yeah, I guess. I like the seasons, in theory anyway." She wasn't looking forward to the summer nights—they'd be too festive for her mood, too short for her purposes. She only really felt like herself when she was patrolling under the dark sky. When she was battling, inhaling the dust of her enemies. Even though she was taking two college courses and putting in a couple of afternoons a week at the battered women's shelter (also a good place to pick up occasional tid-bits of information on local demon movements), even though she was surrounded by ostensibly sympathetic sister slayers, the daylight hours left her too much time to wonder where her life was going. Where her life was.

The nights, though, long and dark, kept her focused, kept her busy.

William was right about that at least. Her body and mind were working together now in ways she'd forgotten while she was on hiatus: she needed to function as a slayer. She had energies that could be exerted no other way.

That winter, Cleveland teemed with vampires and demons. As best the slayers and their watcher could determine, a gathering of the clans was going on, all because of the approach of some obscure astrological convergence called the Fell of Seven that made the hellmouth seethe and bubble like soup left too long in the microwave.

It made for a party the soul-free crowd couldn't bear to miss, apparently.

And as long as master and wannabe master vampires—with their armies and entourages and hangers-on—were pouring in from all parts of the planet, why not forge new alliances, settle old scores, jockey for territorial power, and amass new minions? It never quite made the eleven o'clock local news, but despite the best efforts of more than a dozen slayers, the Cleveland underground was a free-for-all war zone, with hapless humans sucked down nightly. One slayer had already fallen victim to turning; Buffy's first job when she got to the city was hunting her down and dusting her. It was easier for her—she didn't know Tamika.

"I'm not getting used to this slaying thing either. It just keeps hitting me, this change, how big and strange it is. I still forget my own strength. I break jars getting them open. Slam car doors so hard they need to be fixed afterwards." Julie paused, as if debating whether to go on. "I scared off my boyfriend. We'd been together since ninth grade, I thought we were solid. But he couldn't cope with the super-strength, and my being out here every night."

Buffy glanced at her. Ninth grade, huh? Julie was about twenty-three; Buffy did the mental arithmetic, and felt a twinge of envy, even though Julie had just admitted she'd been dumped. "The thing that really freaked him, though ... sorry if this is TMI ... since I got called, my sex drive is like ... astronomical. I mean, I always used to want it, but now ...."

"It's not just you."

"I know. I've talked about it with the other girls." She hesitated. "I heard some scuttlebutt, about you ...."

"Get yourself a vibrator. Vampires are not sex toys."

"What?"

Buffy stopped walking. "I don't want to talk about it."

"Talk about ... what? I thought you'd have some good tips on coping with the single life. I heard that you were, you know, very self-actualized. You've got the wisdom, you know, from being there first. I wanted to ask you about that. How you do it."

"I don't. Didn't. I don't know who told you that, but they're—"

"Okay, okay. Sorry. But c'mon—vampires aren't sex toys? You've got to give me some follow-up on that!"

Could she really be so uninformed? Buffy always assumed that the gossip about her predilections must've reached the ears of every single slayer from Cleveland to Katmandu by now. Hell, all the demons knew. Since she'd been here, if she'd heard that Buffy the vampire layer quip they all thought was so original once, she'd heard it a hundred times. They obviously dished to each other more than B-list Hollywood blondes.

"No, I really really don't—Julie, incoming at five o'clock!"

Julie spun around; Buffy turned to answer her own back-of-the-neck tingle; five more vamps bearing down on her from behind.

Even as she dusted one and exchanged punches with the next, she heard Julie's own satisfied ungh as she drove a stake home. After a few minutes' dust-up, Buffy flipped the last rusher over her head; he landed directly on Julie's upheld stake and shivered into nothing with a low whoosh.

Julie bowed. Buffy smiled. That was always ... kinda neat.

She was turning in a slow arc to make sure there was nothing else coming when she heard the clapping. Measured, slow, ironic ... oddly familiar.

A figure stepped out from behind a mausoleum. Beneath a shock of white hair, golden eyes flashed and beamed. The grin showed fang. "Nice work, love."

The voice, the words, made her heart freeze. The cold of it coursed down her body, to her two planted feet. What is this? This can't be.

Julie was already starting towards him. The vampire held up a hand, white palm glowing in the moonlight. "Tell her to stand down, Slayer. Came to talk to you."

No. No, this is a trick.

"I don't want to hurt the girl. But I will, if she comes near me. You call her back, now." His stare, reflective, gleaming, held her.

"Julie, wait a sec'."

Julie took another step, then paused, glancing around at her, mouthing a question.

"Come back here. Let me."

The vampire nodded, the grin coaxing. "That's right, Slayer."

The voice ... the voice was perfect. The whole presentation—from the hair to the flowing leather, to the lightness of his step in the big boots—it was uncanny, it was horrible. It was perfect. A perfect mockery. Meant to throw her off balance, to make her vulnerable.

Amazing, really, that none of them had tried this on her before.

She advanced on him, stake held tight in her gloved fist. "Nice trick, moron. But you're not fooling me."

"Fooling you how?" The fanged grimace, the fierce ridged brow, melted away into the angry smirk she'd once known so well. The blue eyes glittering with an intensity whose temperature she couldn't gauge.

For a moment that lasted too long, all she could do was stare, as a thrill of terror mounted her spine. Stare and try to understand if she was looking into the face of a friend or an enemy. How she could be looking into that face at all.

This just wasn't good. No matter who this vampire was ... it couldn't be good.

"What do you want? Scratch that—I know what you want. You want what all the other vamps playing King of the Hill around here want."

"Is that so?"

"Like I said, you're not fooling me with the cheap glamour."

"And you're not fooling me with the cheap bravado, Slayer. You know who I am."

Without otherwise shifting a muscle, his arm suddenly flew up in a backwards punch that sent Julie careening off into the mausoleum wall ten feet behind him. She crumpled to the ground and was still.

"Hey!" Buffy darted towards her, but he blocked her path.

"They don't listen to you like they ought, these new girls, do they? Didn't want to have to do that, but she shouldn't have come up behind me like that."

"Get out of my way!"

"She's all right. Just stunned. Can hear her heart beating, strong as ever. Leave her be, we don't want her hornin' in on our chat."

"Get. Out. Of. My. Way."

He stepped aside with a cheeky bow, and let her go to Julie, who was already coming back to herself.

"What's going on?" she whispered. "You know that vamp?"

"I ... might, yeah." God, I know nothing. Buffy knelt beside her. "Look, you'd better go. I'll be fine on my own."

"But—" Julie craned to see past Buffy's shoulder, even as she was starting to scramble to her feet. "Tell me why you didn't just stake him? I really want to stake him."

"He ... he might have information. That could be useful. It's better if we talk."

Julie's eyes narrowed, as her gaze darted back and forth. "What information? He's just baiting you."

"I need to talk to him."

"We don't talk to vampires."

"We don't. Except when we do. This is one of those times. I have to find out why he's here."

"Why he's here? He's here because he's a vampire. What reason do any of them have to have?"

"Julie. I don't like to pull rank ...."

"Okay. Okay. But I don't like it. I mean ... look at him. And that move—" She fingered her swelling jaw. "That was some move. How did he do that, without turning even a little bit?" She worked her arm up and down in imitation. "The leverage—"

"Slayer! Night's a-wastin' here!"

"You can just shut up and wait!" She was so confused—and angry—she could barely see straight. The world pivoted and twirled as she rose again. Her exposed skin was so cold she couldn't feel her face. All at once, she wasn't sure if this was real. Since she'd come to Ohio, it seemed that grief and loneliness often made her dreamy and stupid.

"Go home, Julie. I can handle him. I'll text you later, okay."

As she approached him again, he dipped his head to light a cigarette; the Zippo sparked and for a moment the sight of the familiar face, its pallor bathed in a golden glow, made her knees go soft.

He exhaled a jet of smoke into the frigid air, and smiled a cool, arrogant smile. "Alone at last. Hello cutie."

She fisted her stake.

"You're adorable when you don't know what the fuck to say."

He was so like. Every detail was right. Every stitch of clothing. Every cadence. If this was one of the ambitious vamps scheming after prime hellmouth real estate, then he'd bought some incredible magic.

And if it wasn't ... if it wasn't ... well, that would be really really worse. "You'd better prove yourself to me right now, one way or the other, or you're dust."

That grin again, the one that always made her want to punch his lights out. "What, you really thought for a second I was some other bloke, doin' an impersonation? Never could be another, Slayer. Ought to know that well enough by now."

She did know. She just didn't want to. "What is this? You can't be ... I thought he'd be dead by now. That's what he was going to do!" All the time she'd struggled with him over his life, she'd never imagined he'd resort to anything like this.

"I am dead, pet. An' a good thing, too. You're lookin' well yourself."

This was unreal. This was just too too much. She'd thought, the first time she saw him living and breathing, that her world was pulled inside out. Yet that sickening wrong was nothing to this.

"What's the matter, Slayer? Cat got your tongue?"

"So why are you here? To throw it in my face? To reject me again? Believe me, I already got that message."

"Hellmouth's where the action is."

"The action. So—what? You've come like all the others, to throw your hat in the ring? To be Lord of the Vampires?"

His gaze, his nervy little smile, his wide stance, didn't falter. She waited for him to contradict her, while her heart shivered in her chest. Waited to see the Spike who had knelt at her feet in some stranger's bedroom and told her that she was the one.

He was the one. But she didn't see him here. All she saw was the cocky vamp who'd promised, in the alley behind the Bronze, to kill her on a Saturday night.

Stake poised, she looked up into his eyes. "Well, I hope you have more minions than that sorry bunch we just dusted, otherwise you're never going to make dog-catcher, let alone Master."

"Those idiots weren't mine."

"Oh, so they just happened to attack us while you just happened to observe?"

"Was watching you, sure, but didn't need to set up any attack. This city's lousy with my kind. Could count on one developin' on its own."

"Watching me—for how long?"

"I've always loved watching you, pet."

She brandished the stake. He caught her wrist and tossed her stake away before she wrenched free.

"Now now, no need to do that."

"I see a vampire. I slay vampires."

"Not me, love."

"Why not? You're telling me you're not evil?"

"I'm telling you I'm Spike."

Spike. Who was supposed to be gone, Shanshu'd away, never to reappear.

"I don't understand. You were trying to make a date with a shot gun. How ... how did this happen to you?"

"To me? Or to little man who used to be William the Bloody, 'til they clapped that buggerin' Shanshu down on his poor head? That fellow who was so tired of bein' the Powers' private little puppet, robbed of any say even over when he'd say goodnight? What happened to him was, he realized the answer was in front of him all the time. Figured out the way to be free, an' took it."

The world reeled. She remembered to breathe, as little dots marched around the edges of her vision. "Took? You're not telling me you chose—?"

"Chose to be beautiful an' strong? Golly gee, who'd do that?"

"You call going backwards—freedom?" His sneer, his stance, chilled her more than the crackling air. It was the face of bald-faced betrayal. Betrayal of all the trust she'd slowly built in him. Of the love she'd so painfully offered.

This was some sort of nightmare. Alive, he'd rebuffed her in every way he could. She'd never expected to see him again. That he should return to her in this form, all gloating and strange, was nearly unbearable. She blinked tears that went instantly from warm to cold as they slipped down her cheeks.

"Not tired now. Not sick, not weak, not half-blind an' deaf, gutted an' tormented." He thrust his arms back, chest out. "Anybody stakes me now, pretty damn sure I just blow away. Nothin' left. Nothin' to bring back. I call that freedom." He paused, studying her. "You want to go pick up your weapon, Slayer, I'll wait."

He held his undefended pose for a moment, then when she didn't move, relaxed, reaching into his pocket. He lit another smoke, chin tipped up. The lighter chinked, flared, died, snapped closed with a sharp click.

His smugness made her shiver. "But what about your soul?"

His lip curled then, the eyes smoldering dark with anger. "Seem to recall, few months back, girl who looked a lot like you, in a lather of tearful remorse, sayin' how Spike was worthy of her even when he had no soul, if only she'd been able to admit it. Thought she'd maybe sussed some things about herself, an' about him. Should've known, it was only the heat, gettin' to her. Makin' her soft in the head for what she thought she'd never have again."

"I can't believe this. I can't believe what you've done ... I mean, my God, you just took and threw it all away, didn't you? Your precious humanity, the soul you fought so hard for ... and now you came find me and ... what? What did you expect was going to happen? You let me know pretty clearly back in Vietnam that you were over me."

He strolled off to the side then, picking up her fallen stake from the snow. As he handed it to her, he said, "Wasn't the human man you wanted, pet. We both know that. He was as big a disappointment to you as to myself."

"I never said—!"

"Didn't have to. As for bein' over you—back in LA, thought I ought to be. But if there's one good thing I got out of that fiasco in Nam, was learnin' that I'd underestimated your intentions. You wanted Spike. Turned out, so did I. So here he is."

Inside her, one Buffy howled, another wept, a third laughed until tears spurted from her eyes. She'd tried to reconcile herself to the idea that he was dead—hoped he was merely dead, rather than suffering some worse-than aftermath of a failed attempt to shoot himself. Never had it occurred to her that he'd do something so rash, so risky, so perverse, as this.

It was too much.

"You goddamn thoughtless arrogant prick. You are a piece of fucking work! How could you be so cruel! Don't you know I can't—I can't—" Helplessly, furiously, she began to sob. As she sobbed, she struck, a boot in his gut, fists windmilling. At first he stumbled, head spun around by the force of her blow. But he was up again in half a breath, and then the attack became a fight.

He'd always been a fair match for her, always was able to hold his own—for a while. But now, he was more. As if he'd learned some way to draw power from the hellmouth, he was stronger, faster. As strong and as fast as she was. Buffy's tears dried, her sobs transposed into tight dry rage, as she battled for her life.

From a fight, this was turning into a disaster.

He hooted as he pummeled her, the vamp-face a rictus of perverted joy. "That's it, pet! Punchin' me gets you hot! You're back in the game now!"

It was as if he could read her mind—she couldn't surprise him. Couldn't outmaneuver. He didn't flag, or misstep, or overreach. As the battle stretched out, her emotions made her sloppy; but not him. He wanted nothing from her but the pleasure of the struggle ... and seemed all too confident that his would be the kill.

When blood splattered from her nose, he crowed.

And then he picked her up and dashed her to the ground so hard she saw stars.

Before she could recover her breath, he dropped astride, snarling.

Here they were, she thought, right back where they started. He'd meant to murder her from the first, and now he would. She should never have trusted him. Trusting any vampire was a big big mistake. The prime mistake.

Inside her, something came uncoupled; she felt herself relax. All her hard-acquired trust and love were dashed, never to rise again. This was the end. She didn't even tense, awaiting the bite that would finish this. There was a kind of relief mixed with the despair of it.

Suddenly she was hauled up to a sitting position, the grave markers swirling around her head, and five of him kneeling in front of her. He gave her a hard shake, but with a difference. "Deep breaths. Breathe, damnit! You do not give up!" The five became four, then three, then resolved into one.

He reached towards her midriff; she cuffed at his hand. "What—what are you doing?"

"Lookin' for tissues. Don't carry any myself. Your nose is dripping."

Confused, still dizzy, she fished in her pocket, dabbed at herself.

"Since when don't you defend the face?"

"Why didn't you bite me? Why are you jerking me around like this?" She punched him hard in the face and leapt up.

"Hey! Fight's over. Wanted to talk to you in the first place."

"No! No way! First you're suicidal, then you-you-you're a vamp again, which is just ... and one minute you're at my throat, then you're wiping my nose and wanting to talk? What the fuck?!"

"I'm myself again. Yeah. Thought you missed him. As for being at your throat, wasn't me who threw the first punch just now. But I'm not poor weak blighter I was, nor am I your lapdog anymore. We're equals, Slayer, or we're nothing."

"You don't get it! I can't do this!" She punched him again in the throat, wanting above all to shut him up, so she could walk away from him in silence.

"Vampire! Stand back or we shoot." Julie's shout startled them both. Four slayers, each with crossbow raised, advanced on them across the glowing snow.

Buffy held up a hand. "Guys! It's all right." Beside her, Spike took a stand just behind her left shoulder. "Julie, you didn't have to come back. I told you I'd be fine."

"I didn't want to leave you out here on your own. I had the idea this one was dangerous."

"Yeah, well, I'm still standing. So really, you guys can just—"

"Holeeee shit!" Faith stepped out from behind the mausoleum, battle-axe slung over one shoulder, and advanced on them, gawking. "Julie said B was out here talkin' with a bleached bad ass in black, but I thought, no fuckin' way could it be—! Last I heard, you were one of the L.A. dead."

"Guess I'm just too blond to die."

She laughed. "Shyeeit." Just short of arm's reach, Faith paused, suddenly serious. "Hey, no hard feelin's still, for that beat-down I gave you back in Sunny D?"

"All forgotten, pet. Good to see you still kickin'."

"And you, man."

Faith closed the distance between them, and then they were embracing, the axe lying in the snow, and Spike lifted her off the ground as she whooped. The other slayers, slack-mouthed, watched, cross-bows held at various levels of stunned attention. Buffy was astonished at Faith's display of emotion; she wasn't given to sentiment about fallen comrades, but apparently she felt things she seldom shared.

When he set her down, she beamed up at Spike, all leer and raw delight. "Well well, ain't this a turn-out for the books. Tasty-looking as ever." She poked a springy finger into his chest. "So maybe this time you an' me can do a little undercover work, ya think?"

Returning her come-hither smile, he proffered, then lit, her cigarette. "Always did tempt me—"

"Yeah, yeah," she said. "Don't tell me. B's still got you whipped. Some things never change. So, what's the sitch?"

"Interested in helpin' your side if you can use another warrior."

"Can use all the help we can get. Vamps an' demons got us hoppin'." Her smile shaded into a squint. "You are still on our side, yeah? Not a double agent or somethin' like that?"

"Long as your team's got the better lookin' women, that's where I play."

This answer seemed to genuinely amuse Faith. She turned to the others. "Weapons down, kids." She tossed a grin at Buffy. "Can see why you didn't want any back-up. We'll get out of your hair. I'm freezin' my tits here, anyhow. C'mon, let's go to Denny's. I'm drivin'."

As they filed off, Buffy stared at the ground. Balked of her angry exit, she still couldn't quite bring herself to just follow them.

When they were out of earshot, Spike said, "We left off at 'fuck you.'"

"We sure did." She looked up. He was so beautiful—entirely restored to that appearance that had stirred her even in the days when she'd only despised him. But she couldn't manage anything so simple as despising him anymore. His face had long since come to represent the visage of her desire—beloved and longed-for, the only one she wanted to engage with, to kiss, to be seen by. Her man. This yearning coexisted with her lively rage, lapping and overlapping. "Seems like that's where we always leave off."

That tilt of the head, that had the power to undo her. She responded to it by raising her own chin.

"S'true, Slayer. An' yet we're always drawn to each other. Spike an' Buffy, belong to each other."

Buffy couldn't quite bring herself to look at him. Instead she looked at the wood clamped in her fist, testing the point against her gloved palm. Whole scenes replayed in her head in the matter of a second: things he'd said to her, about her own darkness. About passion. About her nature, her desires and needs, what set her apart from her friends, apart from the self-image she cherished, even as that image grew more and more distant from reality. About his comprehension of her, his deep need for her. His satisfaction with himself, his shame. Scenes of other fights: in the abandoned house. In her bathroom. Win, lose. Draw. After he'd returned, wounded and souled, she'd set all that aside, an unfinished dialogue whose ugly truths she didn't have to consider anymore, because they'd both moved on from that place. The bad place of soullessness and soul-sickness they'd never return to together. It was only afterwards, when he was gone, and she'd quit the life, that she realized Spike's core ideas about them weren't necessarily wrong, or even so bad, if only ... if only.

But that was before Vietnam. She didn't know what to make of his treatment of her now. All this whirling and changing, could make you tired, and sick, and angry, and sad.

Buffy slipped the stake into her coat pocket. She was chilled through, numb to the bone, and still facing a long walk back to where she'd left her car. Without another word, she turned and started off. Spike didn't follow; she could feel him watching her go, feel his gaze bore into her back.

Only when she reached the cemetery gate did she start to cry.



Without the slightest intention to stop, Buffy found herself pulling into the flood-lit parking lot at Denny's ten minutes later. She wasn't hungry, knew she barely looked presentable, didn't want any company, yet the idea of going home to her empty apartment—why didn't she have a cat?—she should get a cat—horrified her.

And it didn't help that she knew Faith and the girls would be talking about Spike, and about her. She didn't like the idea of that going on behind her back. It felt necessary to do some damage control.

Still, it was one thing to want to intervene, and another to just break in on their little circle, already in progress. Buffy stopped off in the ladies room. In the overheated air of the restaurant, her thawing cheeks burned and stung. She still had dried blood crusted around her nostrils, and an expression, when she confronted herself in the mirror, that was very deer-in-the-headlights.

Being pulled backwards in time was beyond unnerving. That's what it felt like, encountering old-school Spike again. Losing a fight with him was always unnerving too. She wasn't sure exactly why she'd lost this one, although there were plenty of non-mystical reasons she could line up.

Such as that she was in shock.

Such as that she was afraid.

Such as that she was in love.

He didn't start the fight. He never meant to kill you, she reminded herself as she splashed her face. He was showing you ... What? That he wasn't, as he'd warned her, her pussycat.

"Buffy!" Faith swung into the mirror behind her. "Saw you come in an' then you disappeared."

"I don't know what I'm doing here."

"Where's Spike?"

"I bailed on him." Shutting off the tap, Buffy dashed the water from her face. Faith tore off a paper towel and handed it to her.

"You okay?"

"Sure. I just, you know ... couldn't really deal right now." She was glad Faith and the other girls hadn't witnessed her defeat.

Faith wore what passed with her as a 'concerned girlfriend' expression. They were still learning to get along, learning to care for each as more than comrades in arms. Buffy was aware of all the other slayer's good efforts since she'd come to Cleveland—she could've been territorial and exclusionary, but instead she'd welcomed Buffy and showed the other slayers that they should too. The two of them still didn't have many interests in common outside the slaying, but they hung out sometimes. Faith wanted to learn how friendship worked—Buffy tried to show her. In the months since she'd arrived, they'd not only gone over their old conflicts, but shared their pasts.

There were plenty of times Buffy had been glad for a sympathetic, but ungushy listener. Without quite setting out to, Buffy had told her about the miscarriage—she had to tell someone—and sketched in a story, set in Vietnam, of an affair gone horribly wrong. Faith was good at expressing genuine compassion with nothing but a grunt. But Buffy hadn't been able to bring herself to connect those events with Spike. It was dishonest, but it was as much as she could bring herself to confide. Telling the whole truth felt tantamount to confessing a terrible weakness, a shameful failure.

"Want me to drive you home? The girls can call a cab when they're done guzzling."

This, from Faith, was extraordinary. Buffy straightened up, forced herself to smile. "Not until I've had my grand slam breakfast and gallon of coffee."

"Okay. C'mon then."

Sliding into the banquette, Buffy tried not to be spooked by the four pairs of eyes fixed on her. Pre-empting the first remark, she said, "You guys are lucky. You can say you met the vampire who saved the world."

It turned out that Faith had filled them in on at least that much—Spike's role in the apocalyptic struggle that made them all slayers—but they weren't inclined to be overawed. Buffy recognized that brand of nonchalance. Not for the first time, it struck her how little the girls were ever taught about the history of slayers gone by. There ought to be a text book; there ought to be a quiz. Amazing that she'd never been more curious herself, when she was starting out. Even now, she didn't know the name of the girl who'd immediately preceded her, or how she'd died. That was something she really should look up.

"Except we didn't meet him," Leora said. "You didn't introduce us."

"He's handsome," Annie sighed. "Why can't all the vamps be handsome like that?"

"Because then you wouldn't want to stake their ugly hides," Julie said. "And you wouldn't be all swoony if he'd hit you the way he hit me. He didn't even turn around. Not even a little bit. I never saw—or felt—anything like it."

"I ... I bet, if you asked him, he'd teach you how to do that." Self-conscious, Buffy wondered if that came out sounding inappropriately perky. She sure didn't feel anything close to perky— now that she was here, she was convinced what she really wanted was to go home, get into a hot bath, and try to sort out the barrage of overwhelming feelings going off inside like fireworks. "He helped train the first wave of potentials—the ones who lived at my house, before we closed the Sunnydale hellmouth. He was the first vamp most of them ever saw."

"So we're going to see a lot of him?" Julie asked.

"I ... I don't know. Maybe."

"You said he was going to give you information. So what did he say?"

"He ... well, not much. I mean ... " Buffy took a deep breath. Just then the waitress came, her outstretched arm laden with six heaped platters, and began to dole them out. The slayers dug into their food like linebackers.

Twirling a rasher of bacon in her fingers, Faith caught Buffy's eye across the table. She mouthed two words. Fess up.

Buffy frowned.

Dara looked up. "So—the information. Are you gonna share it with us?"

Okay, deep breath. "I didn't get any information. Look, the thing with Spike—is complicated. Some of it is private. We have a long history. As enemies, and as—"

Julie leaned forward, brandishing a pointing finger. "Vampires aren't sex toys, huh? Holy shit. You've been with him!"

Why, even now, did the accusation make her blush? She should be far past that. "Spike and I have been ... intimate, yes." The girls stared; a couple gasped. Buffy's grip on her fork tightened; she felt the metal start to bend in her hand. Intimate. That was a funny word. It wasn't really the right word, either. Spike and I have tried to communicate and mostly failed, because we don't have the same semaphore flags at the same time. But we were successful at fucking like rabid bunnies. That was more like it.

"Can you do that?" Kima said. "I mean—you're a slayer! That's like ... that's like ... lying down with the oppressors, man. It's not cool. ... is it?"

"He used to be in love with me. I don't exactly know if he still is. But ... I'm in love with him. I don't know if anything is going to come of it. Probably not. We're ... there are issues." She set down the fork. "That's it. Full disclosure. Or ... as full, anyway, as I'm going to go with you guys." It was all she could do not to bolt. Instead she made herself look at them. "Any questions? Ask 'em now, or keep 'em forever to yourself."

Leora's squinched up face might've been inquiry, might've been constipation. "Umm ... vampires don't have a heart beat, right? So, uh ... they don't have a circulation, either. Which makes me wonder ... you know ... umm ... how does a vamp guy get a boner?"

"They don't," Kima said. "I mean, how could they?"

"But Buffy says she slept with him. Why would she sleep with him if he didn't—"

"Maybe they can only ... you know," Dara said, sticking her tongue out to give the air a long sensuous lick, "like I saw this movie once, where Jon Voight was like this paraplegic war veteran, and Jane Fonda was his nurse or something, and when they went to bed he did her with his tongue and she was all Oh my God! because her real husband was this ramrod-up-the-ass kinda guy who never would. And afterwards she stopped setting her hair, and started wearing love beads."

Faith's laughter drowned out the next few remarks. Buffy rapped on the table. "Guys! Shut up!"

Julie was smiling now, a rather nasty little smile. She pointed a finger at Buffy. "I think this Spike was quite the stud for you. Isn't that true?"

"I don't like your tone," Buffy said. "Don't you play gotcha with me."

"Why not? You're all butter-wouldn't-melt, when all the time—!"

"All the time what? It's none of your business!"

"So they do get hard-ons," Kima said. "Okay, that's just ... disturbing."

"Why is it that any time more than two slayers are in a room together, the conversation devolves into this ... this crude I don't know what?" Buffy said.

"Because we're lusty super-hero chicks who're always horny," Faith said, slurping up her orange juice loudly through a straw. "An' you're the only one who's still so up-tight about it, B."

"I'm not up-tight, I just ... this is a Denny's, for heaven's sake. Grannies eat here. You can't talk about erections in Denny's."

"So they get them? The vampires?"

"Hell, they're even lustier than us slayers," Faith said.

"You sleep with vampires too?" Leora said. "What is this?"

"Nah, I never have. That's B's thing."

"It is not a thing! There is no—thing. There's ... there was Spike. And there was Angel. And that's all. AND—both of them were on our side before I ever touched them!"

Buffy subsided after that, letting Faith answer the next barrage of questions in her own brash way. Her food was cold, but she couldn't eat it anyway. She was lost in their encounter in the cemetery, puzzling over the path he must've taken, from leaving the plane at Saigon, to turning up here stripped of heat and heartbeat. Even though she'd seen him, touched him, part of her couldn't become convinced Spike's reappearance was real. Part of her didn't want it to be. Part of her was desperate to find him again, right now, though it was unclear whether she wanted more to kill or to kiss him.

Suddenly they were all rising. "Julie, you drive mine," Faith said. "I'm ridin' with B."

Faith and Buffy lived on the same block of old brownstone rowhouses in a section that was only half-gentrified. Buffy let her have the wheel. Neither spoke during the twenty minute ride.

Gliding into a parking space, Faith said, "Never thought I'd hear you say it."

"Say—oh. That."

"I thought you loved him back then. Sure looked like it to me. But I figured you were both bein' discreet."

Buffy shook her head.

"I'm glad he didn't go down in the LA battle. Maybe ... maybe that means others survived too, an' might turn up."

"I don't think so. I mean, we'd have heard."

"We didn't hear from him. Why'd it take him so long to track you down?"

"Because he wasn't. He had no intention of ... he didn't know I wanted him. I thought he understood, back in Sunnydale, but ... I left it too late to tell him. When I did, he didn't believe me."

"No way he didn't know. He must've just been workin' through some shit. He wouldn't have come here if it wasn't for you, B."

"I'm not sure. This is the hellmouth. You want to fight the Big Evil, or be the Big Evil, this is the place to be."

"He's not evil. Don't be a dope. He came because it's where you are." She shut off the ignition. In the sudden silence, they both sat still, looking out through the windshield.

"Faith, there's something I've been withholding. About me. And Spike."

"Withholding something about Spike? You? Never."

"After the LA apocalypse ... he got the Shanshu. D'you know what that is? He was made human."

"Shit." Faith frowned, then glanced at her, almost shyly. "He sure didn't look human just now."

"Listen ... the man I told you about, whom I was with in Vietnam, who was so strung out and self-destructive ...."

"Was him." Faith popped a fist off the steering wheel. "Well, shit B. That ... that adds some dimensions to the story."

"Yeah. It does." She resisted an urge to apologize. She didn't owe Faith all her intimacies, and Faith never expected them.

"So he was the father of—?"

"Yes. Indirectly. I mean ... he wouldn't actually ...." Tears welled up. Poor poor thing. That was how she thought of it, the sexless baby who really was better off never having been born. Better off, but which she sometimes imagined holding, nursing, when she drowsed late in bed on Sunday mornings. "When we parted I never expected to see him again. Especially not like this."

"Alive, huh? I can't really see it. How'd that work?"

"It didn't," Buffy said, opening the door and starting to get out. "It just really really didn't."



The next day at Slayer Central, she arrived early and sought out her watcher. No matter what time she got there, Hugh always seemed to be there already. He was conscientious and involved, like early Giles, and frequently unshaven and rather slovenly, unlike early middle or late Giles.

"There's something you need to be aware of."

"And a lovely morning to you too, Buffy."

"Right, hello, hi, etc. Are you familiar with the backstory on Spike, aka William The Bloody?"

"Am I familiar with ...?" Hugh had a sleepy habit of repeating questions in order to give himself time to gather his thoughts.

"Former very bad seed vamp, subsequently much reformed, souled, sacrificed himself in Sunnydale to save the world? Well, he's back. I'm not entirely sure what he's up to, but I'm hereby putting a No Stake APB out on him."

Hugh blinked. "Spike? Ah ... yes. Rupert Giles has told me about him."

"Has he? Okay, good. I'm going to tell all the girls when they get here—"

"Rupert also told me something about you and this Spike."

"Yes. You don't have to be cryptic about it. We were lovers. Did Giles also tell you that he schemed behind my back to murder Spike? Because that's kind of a bone of contention he and I still have, and I don't want you to get any ideas."

"He did mention that, yes. Not in quite the same—"

"There's a possibility—currently very small because I'm furious at him—that we may be an item. Spike, I mean, not Giles. If that's going to be a Watchery problem for you, say so now."

Hugh turned slowly in his chair. "Buffy—"

"Look, I'm just telling you. No secrets, okay? But mainly, he's on the No Kill list. If anyone kills him, it'll be me. The rest of it is our business."

"Buffy. Sit down for a minute."

She didn't want to sit, didn't want to be questioned. She wanted to punch the bag until her arms were sore. She wanted to punch Spike, to scream at him.

She sat.

"You haven't been happy since you came to us," Hugh said.

"No. I cannot have this conversation. I mean—it's nice of you to notice, but no."

Hugh sighed. "I have a lot of girls to look after. I haven't had a chance to ...."

"You're not my camp counselor. And you're not responsible for my state of mind. No one is. I've been a slayer for ten years now, I'm all grown up."

"Of course, only—"

"Save it. Really. I get that you're reaching out, but ... just back me on the No Slay My Possible Boyfriend thing, and we're cool. Lemme work out my own life."

"Faith already alerted me about Spike, actually. She seems to think he's joined forces with us."

"When did she call you, at four in the morning?"

Hugh rubbed his eyes for answer.

"Yeah, he says he wants to be on the team. That remains to be seen. But I don't think he's on any other team. Hence—"

"No Kill. I heard you. Yes. I'll mention it in the daily email."





For the inside of a week she patrolled on tenterhooks, half an eye always out for where he'd appear, stepping out from behind something, leaping down into the midst of her fray.

He didn't show.

She wanted to look for him, but where to start? The city was too big, there were too many hotels, motels, SROs, apartment houses, warehouses ... she had no idea what his living arrangements were.

As the time slipped by without a sighting, as her life's mundane obligations continued, she began to wonder if he'd changed his mind. She'd berated him, she'd walked away ... had he taken that so seriously that he'd skipped town?

Hadn't she meant it to be taken seriously?

She was still angry after all—angry at his repeated rejections and maddening self-destructiveness; angry about his triumphalism in the cemetery, as if becoming a vampire again really solved anything. She was angry that he'd said nothing to her about the miscarried child. That he'd given her such a trouncing.

That he hadn't tried to kiss her.

Not only were her feelings overwhelming, they weren't even consistent.

But how could she expect to be consistent when he was the King of Inconsistency? After keeping her at a distance for so long ... after being so cruel to her when she showed him her heart ... did he really expect she'd accept him back without a flinch? Why did he want her again, after finding her so resistible for so long? It hurt that he'd spent almost a year with Angel in LA and never got in touch with her.

Where the hell was he?

And what was he up to? The level of nighttime carnage was way out of proportion to the number of vamps they ever managed to chase down and dust. Something was weird, and she couldn't help suspecting he was part of it.

Another night patrolling in the freezing cold, another night that turned up no new nests, that caught only a few random vampires, out on their own. At quarter to three a.m., she stopped off for a quart of milk on her way towards a hot bath and her bed.

She'd parked right in front of the Seven-Eleven and was switching off the ignition when she spotted a distinctive blond head inside. Behind its wide expanse of plate-glass, the store was lit up like a stage-set. Spike was the only customer. She saw him wend his way from the fridge cases at the back, pausing to grab a couple packages of Slim Jims before he swung a six-pack of beer onto the counter. The clerk, a red-headed teenaged boy in a striped teeshirt, was doing something with the Slurpee machine, but stepped over when Spike spoke—Buffy could read his lips: carton of Marlboro, mate.

As the kid reached up to the overhead cigarette display, Spike vamped, seized him by the neck, and dragged him across the counter.

I fucking knew it—! Buffy rushed the door, fisting the stake out of her coat pocket. She was through it, shouting, when—

—the clerk exploded into dust.

"Slayer—behind you!" Three big vamps in varsity jackets were coming in the door. Out of the corner of her eye, she saw Spike take on the three who poured out of the back storeroom—all teenboys like the clerk. He dispatched them fast—powf, powf, powf—but not before half the junkfood in the place was strewn in the aisle.

Hers taken care of, she scouted the back, past the frozen food cases and the cold sodas. The store-room door yawned open. Inside, among the piled crates of beer and Beer Nuts, the room was littered with empties and crumpled Cheetos bags. Three bedrolls lay in a corner. There was no one else there. When she threw open the door leading out to the dumpsters, something fell on her head.

A short strip of leather, with three glass beads knotted on it.

"What's that?" Spike said.

"Not sure yet. I suspect it's not purely decorative."

"What'd you come here for?"

"Uh—milk."

Spike yanked open the rear door of the dairy fridge. "Grab it an' go. Guessin' cops'll be here in a minute."

She'd never realized that the milk and beer was stocked in from the back. For the first time since that lipstick at Bullock's, Buffy took something without paying for it.

They piled out through the rear, jumped into her car, and were already down the road before Spike heard the siren approaching from the opposite direction. "Slow down, Slayer, you're all right."

"I thought ...."

"You thought I was gettin' beer, smokes, an' blood fresh from the tap."

"That's how it looked. If I'd been just a little faster, I might've—" She didn't want to think what she might've.

"It's all right. You were on your toes, per usual." He glanced around. "Well looky look, you're at the wheel. Your first car?"

"Uh ... yeah, believe it or not. It's only a used one." Cleveland was a city; you couldn't cover it on foot, and the public transportation here was for shit. She'd bought this eminently impractical bright yellow convertible even before she'd found her apartment.

"Looks like fun."

"You don't have one?"

"Not at the moment." He pulled a bottle from the floor at his feet. She hadn't even noticed him leaving with the six-pack. The coat hid a variety of things. "Want one?"

"I'm driving."

"You're such a goody two-shoes." He took a long swallow. "That's something about you that always got me hot."

"Since when do vamps run convenience stores?"

"Since they slaughtered the Pakistani family that runs the place, an' used the store as bait. It doesn't sell gas an' it's just out of the way enough that there's seldom many people in there at once. The punters who wander in in ones an' twos become vamp food. Their cars get driven off an' turned over to their sire. It's quite a neat little operation."

"You sound pretty familiar with it."

"The Stop'n'Chomp's an old American tradition among vamps."

"Been there, done that, huh?"

"Thing that would've really amused you back in the day, was one time on the outskirts of Atlanta—Dru in a car-hop's uniform. Had good legs, though she seldom showed 'em off, an' she was fetchin' in the little cap. The skatin' was a bit of a challenge for her, but she rolled with it."

"You're hilarious."

"You're smilin'."

"Only because ... okay, I'm smiling."

"An' a sweet sight it is," he said, taking another long swallow.

"Was it Drusilla who turned you?"

"She was my sire, yeah, you know that. Though was Angelus who really—"

"I meant, just now. It was her, wasn't it? She found you, and you couldn't—"

"It's important to you, is it, that I was vamped again 'gainst my will?"

It was true. She stared straight ahead.

"Except it's not so. I sought it out. Wanted to be myself again. Only way I ever felt right was bein' Spike."

"You always talk about 'Spike' and 'William' as if they've barely got anything to do with each other. Which we both know is so bogus. They're just you. You're just you."

He was quiet, sipping at the beer.

"You make me so angry with all this bullshit! When I think of what you had—and you couldn't wait to throw it away with both hands! The Shanshu was a gift! Do you really think Angel would've begrudged it to you, if you'd really gone out and lived?"

"Could only do what I could do."

"That's no answer!"

"This's how I live, right? This is how I feel alive! Always have!"

"That's not an excuse for what you've done!"

"Not makin' excuses, all right? No more excuses. This is just how it is."

"I don't know why I should talk to you, much less trust you."

"Bloody hell! I'm here, aren't I? Didn't blow my head off. An 'stead of New York or New Orleans or the bloody City of Lights, I've come to this borin' Midwestern hole that's got no interestin' night-life. What does that tell you?"

"So far it tells me that you're another vampire drawn to the Hellmouth. Sunnydale didn't have much interesting night-life either. You came there to murder me and be the Master."

"Been some water under the bridge since then, hasn't there?"

"I don't know! I don't know what you think you're doing, what direction you're pointing! It sure looks backwards to me!"

"You don't even bloody know what a soul is, do you? Dunno why you set such prim store by 'em—that wanker Warren had one, as you may recall."

"I don't know what to make of you."

"Got no certificate to hand you, Slayer. Got to make of me same as anybody else. By my actions. By your gut. Same as I do you."

"Yeah, but what do I have to go on? You beat me down in a cemetery, then you disappear for a week. If you're courting me, you've got a funny way of going about it."

Of course, he'd always had a funny way of going about it.

"You were the one struck first, that night. An' walked away first, too. I was for having a conversation."

"A man who wants to have a conversation calls a woman on the phone. Or, or, rings her doorbell at some socially acceptable time. God, Spike. You can't just ... you can't just put me through the wringer, drop out of my life for so much time, and then show up all fangy again and ... "

"You can also only do what you can do. That's why I let you walk away."

"Instead of what? Jumping me?"

"Instead of tryin' to make you stay an' talk. Was givin' you a bit of time to get used to the idea of me. To make up your bloody mind, so you'd know it when you saw me next."

"You're being too reasonable now. Stop that!"

"Can drop me off here."

Here was a quiet stretch of street with boarded up warehouses on both sides, near the river.

"Don't tell me this is where you live."

"It's a fine place to let me out," he said.

She speeded up instead. "Do you know where I live?"

"You're not in the phone book."

"No, I'm not."

"232 Spencer Place. Flat 3B. Faith lives cross the street. It's walkin' distance from the Church of the Holy Slayers, so was easy for me to scent your trail there an' back. Faith likes to linger outside the pawnbroker's window an eye up the flick-knives. You always pause by the vintage shop." He smiled into the beer bottle. "You'd look right nice, come summer, in that dress."

"I ... I don't know which one you mean."

"Yes you do, pet. On the right-most mannequin—that one with the tight bodice an full skirt, that's all over roses. You eye it up every time you go by."

Her face felt fiery. She didn't know how to take it, this nocturnal stalking of her by her scent. Had he even concealed himself on her block, to watch her comings and goings? Buffy yanked the car to the curb, put it in park.

"I think you should get out."

Even as she spoke, her hands reached for him, grabbing two big fistsful of leather, hauling him in to her mouth. At first touch, his lips were icy and tasted sourly of beer. But they parted and then she tasted him, the old flavor of Spike she used to batten on, cool but not cold, a little coppery. His firm pliable lips, his surging tongue, were a homecoming. Everything in her rose towards it, doubt eclipsed by the wild excitement and joy that came spiraling up. She groaned, the press of his mouth against hers going straight to her clit, making her tremble all over. Her seatbelt was still on; she fumbled one-handed at the catch, ready to surge onto his lap.

Then he pulled back. Opening the car door, he threw the bottle out; she heard it shatter a ways off. Frigid air blasted her hot face. His hands on her arms gently but firmly put her back.

"What?"

"I'll see you." He had one foot on the ground. She held on.

"No! Where are you going?"

"Better I hop it now."

It was like a slap. "You want it as much as I do. I could feel it."

"I'll see you soon," he repeated. He swung up and out, grabbing the beer carton as he did.

She grasped for the meaning. "Spike! —Oh, okay, not here, I get that. Let's go to my apartment." That had to be what he wanted. It was what he'd always wanted, to make love to her in her own bed. She'd known throughout the months of their desperate affair, though he'd never dared to say so straight out. And then on that last night before the battle, she'd had nowhere to be with him but a grungy cot in the basement, her own room upstairs being wall-to-wall with potentials.

He started to slam the door between them, but she cried out. "Why ... why are you hiding from me?"

He stooped to peer in at her. "You're beautiful when you hate me. But I won't have this."

Oh. "I don't hate you. I am experiencing some anger. You were cruel to me in Vietnam. And it seems like I have no right to kick about it, because God knows I was cruel to you first. But ... you keep throwing me for loop after loop, you never say anything about ... anything that I can grab on to. I don't even know how to contact you when I want to."

"An' yet you'd like me to fuck you tonight."

"I ... you ...."

"Get you all excited. Yeah, I know. Feelin's entirely mutual, pet."

"Spike, you know, it's not a secret, how I feel about you. I told the other slayers. Our watcher knows."

Clearly he hadn't expected this. His face opened a little. "That must've been a job of work for you, Slayer." He paused. "Thank you for that."

"So why go? Get back in the car. If you don't want to ... if you don't want to be with me tonight, at least let me take you back to wherever it is you stay."

"Drive safe, there's black ice up ahead." He closed the door—gently, without a slam, and was gone. It was too dark for her to tell where.

She felt naked. Stripped naked when it was 25 degrees and windy, which it was. She hated having her desire shoved back at her. Made her feel ashamed to want.

He'd brought up Drusilla. That was odd enough, his referring to her like that. And then when she asked him about her, he'd left the question hanging.

Was Drusilla here? Was he beholden to her? That would explain a lot. It would explain ... just about everything. She might have power over him—real supernatural power. Or it might be the power of sentiment—with Spike, that could be just as strong. He'd loved her for a hundred years; if she'd sired him again, he'd feel bound.

She wished she had Spike's tracking abilities. If she could only follow him now, she'd know the truth. But the sixth sense that warned her of the presence of vampires didn't extend that far.

At home, after neither the vibrator nor the bath worked off the stymied tension, she skipped bed and went to Slayer Central, where she punched the bag until it was time to go to her morning class.



The next afternoon, while they were gathered in the darkened nave of Slayer Central listening to another one of Hugh's Powerpoint presentations about vampire sociology, a voice spoke up from the back.

"Your info on the Order of Magog's a good two decades out of date, mate. Anyway, the slayers don't need to know who begat whom or who's in bed with whom."

All heads turned. Spike advanced with a leisurely swagger up the aisle, hands in duster pockets, and came to a stop next to Buffy, who was sitting on the end of the fifth pew back. Hugh hastened down from the altar.

"Y'know, any vamp can just stroll on in here. Don't think you want that, really, even with all the girls about. Although it's a nice touch—witty—makin' your clubhouse out of a deconsecrated church. An' the stained glass is pretty, though not today so much. It's snowin' again."

Some of them groaned at this news. Buffy noticed the ice crusted on his boots. He'd come on foot, from ... somewhere. Walked out in the broad day, under cover of bad weather.

He glanced around at the assembly of young women, and smiled. "Hello cuties." Fixing his attention back on Hugh, he said, "You must be Piper. Borin' for Britain. Thought all you lot were blown up, an' yet there's always someone tweedy an' weedy standin' by with advice for the ones who actually do the work." Suddenly he turned to her. "What do you think of him as a Watcher, pet? Any candle on old Rupert? Course I like him better already, since he hasn't tried to have me killed."

"He's good. But I don't know him very well."

"You wouldn't, would you? One man lookin' after so many. It's not the same as it was. Still, I expect he knows his business. Knows there's three or four baddies in town tryin' to consolidate power an' be the undisputed Master." He pointed towards the projected list, "He spells it Herkules with a bloody 'k', by the way, an' you should also add bird name of Belledame to the list, thinks she's all that an' has a bit of a following—but what you need to know is where they're holed up, what bigger battle-demons they've got on tap, an' what kind of magic they're usin' to ward you lot off, because whatever it is, it's big, lettin' 'em hide in plain sight like they are. You need a sort of forensic magician of your own."

"Please," Hugh said. "Would you like to make the presentation in my place? I'll step aside."

"Nah, I'm no scholar. Just stopped by to pay my respects." Everyone was staring at him—at both of them. Buffy felt the curiosity in their stares—knew that every one of the girls who wasn't at Denny's the other night had heard about it from those who were. They all knew she was in love with a vampire, and they were waiting to see ... something.

But Spike did not mean to give them a show, not now anyway. Taking a step back, he nodded to the assembly. "Be careful out there in the snow tonight. Slippery underfoot, an' raw. Us vamps don't feel the cold." He nodded then to her, showing an ambiguous half-smile but not quite catching her eyes, and withdrew.

After he was gone, the talk turned to what he'd said—a lot of nothing, Julie asserted. A couple of names that might or might not have been real. Nothing useful. How did they know he wasn't one of the Master wannabes himself? Coming in bold as brass to get a look at them, at their outpost, to figure out what they knew?

Voices were raised—why wasn't the clubhouse warded? And why exactly were they trusting this Spike? So far he'd done nothing to demonstrate his allegiance. All they had was Buffy's word.

More stares. "Maybe you want to tell us what he's up to," Dara said. "You've been seeing him, haven't you?"

She rose. "I haven't. And I don't know anything—you're right, he might be an enemy. I believe he's on our side, but I don't have any proof."

"You're not exactly objective, are you, Buffy?" Julie said.

"Hey!" Faith was up, taking a stance in the center of the aisle, passing a quelling look around at the gathering. "I know Buffy. An' I know there's no reason for you all to be gettin' your paranoia on. Chill."

The group broke up, an uneasy feeling in the air. No one spoke to Buffy as they filed out. When they were alone, Faith laughed. "Poor Spike. What're you doing to him?"

"Poor Spike? He's the one who—"

"Now you're bein' dumb. He came onto your territory, in broad day, hat in hand. And you barely said 'bo' to him. What, did you expect him to drop to his knees for a chorus of Mammy?"

"Huh?"

"C'mon, B. That whole performance was a big cry of Jesus Fuck. What, didn't you see that? He's completely nervous ... about you, about all of us. Where's he gonna fit in? But mostly about you."

"So why didn't he stay and talk to me?"

"How do you know he wasn't hanging around in the porch for ten minutes waitin' for you to slip out and join him?"

Faith's suggestion stung. It had never occurred to her.

"The thing is ..." She didn't know how to put this to Faith, who'd been plenty evil herself. "I want him, I do. God, do I. But ... he's out there without a soul, without a chip, unrestrained—how do I know what he's doing? How can I love him and trust him when he's—"

Faith frowned. "You ask me, you worry too damn much."

"But—"

"You want to put off happiness forever, keep picking this to bits. One thing I learned in prison, you have to pay your dues, but you also have to keep fit, you know? Take care of yourself. You keep pushin' away what nourishes you, you're never going to feel right, B."




That afternoon, Dawn called.

"Why didn't you tell me?"

"Tell you—?"

"I heard from Spike."

"You did?"

"Buffy ... I can't believe it."

"How did you hear from Spike?"

"He said he got my number from Andrew. He called me, just now. We talked for an hour. Well, we were on the phone for an hour. I cried for the first thirty minutes."

"God." Andrew?

"I can't believe it," Dawn repeated. Buffy felt her sister was waiting for some signal from her, but she wasn't sure what that was. Her own feelings were so diffused. She didn't think of Spike as a guy who used the telephone. She never imagined he'd try to connect again with anyone else who ... well, who wasn't her.

"So ... uh ... what did he say, Dawnie?"

"That he would always love me for trusting him when he most needed to be trusted by someone innocent. That he was sorry for hurting me. And that if I couldn't be his friend again, he'd understand, but if I would, he'd be so glad."

"Huh. And what did you say?"

"What do you think I said! ... Buffy, are you all right?"

"I don't know."

"He said he didn't know if you were. We didn't really talk about you—he wanted to talk about me. But of course I asked if you two were ... he was kind of ambiguous about it. So—are you?"

"I don't know." Suddenly she wanted to cry. Why didn't she know? Why was everything so hard? Why was he being so aloof? Why was she the only one who was tormenting herself over Spike's lack of a soul?

"Buffy, what's going on? You sound so sad."

"He did mention the Being A Vampire again part, didn't he?"

"Yeah. That accounted for about twenty minutes of the crying. But it's better than ... than him being gone altogether, isn't it? Maybe it's even better than ... he always just was a vampire, Buffy. I never knew him any other way. And he was always good to me. When he asked me if I was angry at him I started to laugh even though I was still crying. Who could go on being angry after—?"

"I'm really glad you got to talk to him. To tell him all that stuff you—"

"I want you to be happy, Buffy. I don't really know what's going on there, but I hope you two manage to get together. I think you need each other."

"Did he say that?"

" ... no. I told you, we mostly talked about me. This is just me talking to you, sister to sister. I want you to—"

"Be happy. Check."





Spike continued elusive. The next night, checking in at Slayer Central after patrol, Buffy was surprised to learn from an ebullient group of younger slayers that he'd turned up on their round, tipped them off to the presence of a huge nest in a slum apartment house, and helped them clean it out.

"I dusted eight vamps tonight," one of them boasted. "Eight. That's my personal best." She was grinning from ear to ear. "We'd never have found the place without him."

"So where is he? Didn't he come back here with you?"

"He asked us to go have a drink with him, but none of us has a fake ID, so he took off. I think he was a little surprised when we told him we're all seventeen."

She understood then how he was playing it. Couldn't blame him really. It was smart, to demonstrate himself to the other slayers without going through her. Showed them—and her—that he was serious about the mission.

It was the same story for the next four nights. He'd come out of nowhere, lead a party of other slayers to some place they'd never have discovered on their own, and join in the vamp massacre. Afterwards he'd say good night and vanish.

Buffy was keyed up, spilling over with things she wanted to say to him, questions demanding to be asked, resentments to be aired, grey areas to be cleared up.

It wasn't only that. Her body shared none of her mind's ambivalence about the re-made Spike. Desire was constant, nagging—and came with a large dose of shame, because she wanted him despite his strange behavior and ambiguous status. She was running through a fresh set of batteries for her vibrator every day, but coming that way just made her hungrier for what she craved and wasn't getting. Sitting in class, she'd find herself thinking about his cock, about its heft and thickness and how it felt in her mouth. She took to masturbating in the toilet between Rome Under the Caesars and Intermediate French II. She kicked a lot of male vampires in the groin and staked them through their backs when they doubled over. All the men she encountered noticed her ornery arousal—she'd never had so many offers.

But it wasn't just the physical yearning that ate at her while he made her wait. The time without him felt squandered. She wanted his company. Knowing he was around, staying out of her sight, pushed her loneliness up to fever pitch; no-one else could assuage it. Being with the other slayers, or with Faith, or her few college pals, just made it worse. At least when she was alone at home she could think of him without distraction.

He was making her mental.

The next time she found out that he'd patrolled with other slayers, she barely made it into the bathroom at Slayer Central before she burst into burning tears.

She wasn't used to feeling such jealous helplessness. This wasn't what she'd experienced in Dai Phuong—it was so much pettier, yet for all that, she thought it was harder to endure. It affected her pride. Made her wonder how much he could really want her, if he could bear to postpone her this way.

Returning home from her evening class laden with textbooks and groceries, she almost tripped over something on the mat outside her apartment door.

A flattish rectangular box, gift-wrapped. After briefly considering whether she should immerse it in water and or bring it to Hugh, Buffy just opened it.

Inside, neatly folded, was the rose-print dress from the vintage shop window. When she lifted it out, the shop owner's card fluttered to the floor. On the back was written Pretty frock for prettiest girl. Be patient with me a little longer. —S. P.S. Haven't seen D in years.



The night time body count was climbing, even as the vampires were elusive as ever. All the slayers were on edge. Suddenly there was no sign of Spike. At one of the daily meetings, Julie threw out the idea that the so-called help he'd been giving them up 'til now was instead him using the slayers to consolidate his own power. To Buffy's disquiet, the others were thoughtful at this suggestion; everyone looked at her. What was she going to say? No, it can't be true, because he bought me a dress?

Slowly, she got to her feet. "Spike's way of doing things was never subtle. When he was evil, he was good at making plans, sure, but he wasn't good at seeing them to fruition, because he's impatient, and impulsive. He likes to boast. He jumps the gun. I'm convinced that if he really was working to become Master here, we'd know it."

"You're convinced," Julie drawled.

Faith slammed a hand on a pew back. "You're outta line."

"No, she isn't," Buffy said, suppressing her urge to tell Julie she was full of shit. "Just because we're the old timers, doesn't mean we can't be questioned. It's important that we can rely on each other, but we're all slayers—we all have to rely first and foremost on our own judgments and instincts." Even as she said the words, Buffy felt she was turning a crank. It wasn't that she didn't believe what she was saying—just that she was utterly bored with the whole situation. She hated this group work. Faith was one thing, but all these other girls felt inauthentic to her ... and unimportant. She'd really tried since arriving in Cleveland, to be part of them, but it just wasn't taking.

Dara put a hand up. "I don't think we have enough evidence to suspect him. He's helped a bunch of us in the last few weeks, and didn't want anything in return. We have no evidence that he's hurt anybody. I have to wonder what Julie's so sore about."

"I'm not sore!"

"Just because some of us are uncomfortable with the sleeping with a vampire thing doesn't mean we have the right to tell Buffy what to do."

"I'm not telling her—!"

Hugh intervened. "All right, ladies, all right. Let's table this for now. We functioned here before Spike came along, and we'll function whether he's helping or hindering or gone away again."

Afterwards, Faith took her aside. "What do you think's going on?"

"Julie has issues."

"I meant with him."

"Hugh is right. We don't need him, and if he's part of the baddie mix, we'll figure that out and we'll take him down."

"B."

"Look, I don't know! I haven't seen him. I don't know what he's up to!"

That was Buffy's last chance to brood. Willow arrived that day, dispatched along with two other witches, by Giles, to do what Spike had dubbed 'forensic magics'. Nights were turning into pitched battles, with hordes of vampires appearing out of nowhere and disappearing just as seamlessly. In the space of a week, three slayers were killed, and three more maimed. Willow described the pall of magic over Cleveland as A Perfect Storm. Spring was coming, which seemed to make things worse—more people outside in the evenings meant more victims.

Then, after being gone for so long Buffy had about given up on him, Spike chose another stormy day to make a morning call on Slayer Central, this time with a proposition.

Two of the four big contenders were newly dead; the other two—Herakles and Belledame, had joined forces in uneasy alliance, behind the magical cloak, to rule the Hellmouth. Having made himself indispensable to them, he could now get some slayers into the seat of power, and help them fight their way back out, taking the vamp leadership down in the process.

"Get us in—how?" Faith asked.

"Well, as my prisoners."

"No way!"

"Belle an' Herakles are stupid, but they're not stupid. Not gonna let me parade slayers into their playroom just because I say so."

"So we'd have to trust you," Julie said. "Which we should do—why, exactly?"

Spike looked at her then. "Since when is this a bloody democracy, Slayer?"

"Since they're all slayers too," Buffy said, on a sigh. This whole situation was maddening, on so many levels. She had no energy for the struggle that would ensue.

Willow stepped forward. "You know what kind of magic they're using? Where it's centered?"

"Know where the powerhouse is, yeah. Not up on the particular species, though. They've got a few shamen on round-the-clock duty, keepin' it up."

"You've seen them?" Willow was giving Spike what Buffy thought of as the bug-eye; that penetrating stare that made people squirm, and got some girls, apparently, out of their clothes PDQ. Spike though, just looked back at her, cool as could be.

"I've seen 'em, yeah."

"If you can get me in there, I can crush them."

"What, just you? Don't think so, darlin'. There's too many of 'em—vamps I mean. We'd never get out alive. Needs a slayer's touch, an' the more the better."

Most of the slayers—led by Julie, who was vocally skeptical—were inclined to smell a trap. As the discussion went back and forth, Buffy kept mostly silent, watching Spike, looking for the little clues to his sincerity or the opposite, though she had no serious doubts that he meant to betray them. Doubts about everything else were rife. Like, how had he gone from the broken man she'd been with before to this meta-Spike? Spike perfected, all suave and confident and take-charge. He made her yearn; he made her feel sick. She didn't know what to feel, and missed the old days, when she'd managed for long periods of time not to feel at all.

"So how do you take us prisoner, exactly?" Faith asked.

"Some of my boys 'n' me will ambush you. You'll pretend to fight, maybe slay a couple for the show of it—and then you'll be subdued."

"Your boys?" Willow said. "You have boys again?"

"Got lots of things again, balls among 'em. Don't look at me like that—you lot need me."

Faith didn't look happy. "How exactly are we going to be subdued?"

Spike smiled. "Know you've never been subdued in your whole life, pet, so just watch the others an' do it like they do." He turned to Willow. "Looks like I'll get a taste of you at long last. But don't worry—I'll be gentle. An' I won't let any of the others touch you."

"Wait a minute—you're going to bite me?"

Buffy sighed. "For the show of it. To put us—and the 'boys'—in our places."

"That's right, Slayer. This whole op depends on convincin' performances. The other vamps have got to buy my line—an' buy your weakness—so I can get you into the soft underbelly, so to say."

There was more back and forth, but the other two finally agreed, and Hugh raised no objection.

Once they'd finished the arrangements, she followed Spike out to the porch, and grabbed his arm before he plunged out into the downpour.

"I was waiting for someone else to ask this, but amazingly, no one did. So I have to. How many?"

He raised an eyebrow. "How many what?"

"Goddamnit, Spike! How many people have you killed to get in with Herakles and Belledame? They must've known you used to be a white hat."

"I like that used to be."

She hit him. "Do not joke about this! If they consider you one of them, it's because you've shown them you are. How many lives have you taken to set this up?"

Frowning, he freed his arm. "You lot are breakin' your backs here, an' getting nowhere. This city's nearly theirs—they're killing slayers now. Way they're going, they'll massacre the whole lot of you by summer. You needed someone on the inside if you were ever goin' to make a difference. I'm the only way you could have that."

"So you admit it." Of course he was killing again. He had no soul. She should've known, the moment he showed up, that all bets were off.

"Trust me, an' I'll keep you safe. No one but me'll lay a tooth on Willow, or you. You'll get inside, an' you'll take 'em all down."

What he was saying was perfectly sensible. They were getting creamed. He was uniquely placed to double-cross the bad vamps. But that didn't mean she was easy with it. It was one thing to use an ally whose morals were questionable—but for her to take a Spike who was actively feeding and killing into her bed, into her heart ... went against everything she was. It was another roadblock, of the many he'd set up for her.

He had to know he was putting her in an untenable position. But then, there could be no better way to torment her, if that was his intention. Providing indispensable help ... help which put him, at the same time, morally off limits to her, if she was going to cleave to her standards of self-respect. Resentment that approached hatred rushed over her, harsh as a bath of bile. "You really are a thorough bastard. Don't you know this changes everything? By rights I should—"

"Gotta be pragmatic, yeah? There's such a thing as collateral damage. War isn't tiddley-winks, Slayer." He glanced down, then back up into her eyes. She could barely look at him. "Coming here, knew I could just be your fangy teddy bear, or I could really make a difference on the side of the Big Good. Chose—"

"I get it." It was unbearable that he lecture her, let alone try to give her a lesson about strategic battle planning.

He shook his head. "Look ... when you've got 'em all on the run, an' are laying about you left an' right with your stake, you'll know what to do about me. You'll know, an' you'll do it."

"I'm not completing your suicide for you, you shit." She wanted to howl, to punch his face into a pulp the way she once had. After all her effort to pull him back from the brink, to make him want his life, here he was making her responsible for whether he'd live or die.

"'S'not suicide I'm after here, Slayer. Far from it. Spike's a lover, an' a warrior. I'm yours for both, but you've got to have me as I am, or not at all."

Pulling his duster collar up, hunching his shoulders, Spike pushed out into the heavy rain without goodbye.



"So Katrinka's no more, huh?" Buffy took another bite of pizza. She and Willow were squeezing a catching-up session in between their respective bouts of preparation for the big event, but for such old friends, separated for so long, it was pretty desultory. She found she wasn't inclined to talk much about what was heaviest on her mind, and neither, apparently, was Willow, who just nodded and shrugged.

"There was love there, but it got so competitive, ya know? Last time I try to have a thing with a fellow witch."

"Did it get scary?"

"Do you mean, did either of us vaporize anyone before it was all over? No. Trinka was more of the passive-aggressive type."

Buffy wondered if that described Spike, or if he was more aggressive-aggressive. For a moment she considered putting the question of what to do about Spike to Willow, but then realized she really didn't care about her friend's answer. If she brought it up, she'd have to say how she felt, and if she did that, she'd cry, or possibly smash the big oak library table where they sat.

Willow glanced up. "What?"

You killed people. And I forgave you. We're still friends. At least ... on paper. So why not—?

Because it wasn't the same, wasn't the same, wasn't the same. And what Spike had done to her, since she'd learned he didn't perish in Sunnydale, was just ... cruel. Whether he loved her or not, wanted to help her or not ... it was only cruel. Putting his fate back in her hands to decide was the cruelest of all.

"We're all freaks," Buffy said. "We're such freaks we can't even pair off successfully with our fellow freaks. We're freaks' freaks, the freakiest. None more freaky. Qui es mas freako."

"Huh? What brought that on?"

"What do you think? Oh, I know! If I got a cliterectomy, and a lobotomy, I could just be, y'know, a slaying machine. And when I wasn't slaying, I could knit for the troops or something. It would make everything so simple."

"Buffy—"

"Or you could do me a spell. A de-sexing spell. You must have that one down by now. Just cancel all my sex drive and consciousness of romantic love. It would mean I could never sit through another Reese Witherspoon vehicle again, but I'm willing to make that sacri—"

"Buffy!"

Despite her resolve, here she was talking, and here she was crying, the tears slipping down her cheeks and falling onto her pizza slice.

"Or just make me hate him! I hate him already, but not enough! Just make it so I hate and loathe and detest and revile him as much as he deserves, and then—!"

Willow came around the table, and put her arms around her, but Buffy didn't really feel the comfort; it was as if there was some thick cloud between them. She wasn't in the mood to be comforted, anyway. She needed her rage to get her through the raid that night. One way or the other, it would be necessary.

Still, she spent the last couple of hours meditating, or trying to. It was harder than usual to clear her mind. Questions kept pouring in, questions that went beyond Spike, questions like, why am I even doing this? What's the point? There are always more vamps, more demons, it's just an endless cycle, isn't it? When do I get to rest? When do I get to love and be loved? By the time she rose to go, she didn't know anymore what she wanted for her life, except just to get through this night alive, kill all the vamps and make sure the slayers survived.

It was as good an attitude as any, she figured.




It went down as Spike described. Pretending to be on their way home from a girls' night out, they encountered him and a posse of male vamps in an alley behind a downtown movie theater; in the fracas, she and Faith, protecting Willow, killed half the minions, then let themselves be overpowered by the others. Then Spike made a show—or was it a show?—of tasting their blood. The other vamps watched hungrily as he snatched Faith to him, pulling her hair back tight so they could all see him fasten on her neck. She winced when he bit, but otherwise was stoic; when he let her go after a few seconds, she crumpled convincingly between the two who held her arms. When he turned to Willow, she seemed to panic, or maybe it was real panic: her jerking and struggling made Buffy fear she'd unleash a whoosh of magic that would ultimately blow the whole thing. Of course, it was she whom Spike had once captured and menaced with a broken bottle and threat of rape—Willow had told her all about that, more than once. She had plenty of reasons to find this tough.

Seeing her eyes go big and black, Spike hesitated. Would he spare her? But then he grinned. "Yours'll make me high for days."

The minions holding her stirred as Spike went for her throat; one nosed her neck on the other side. Spike rabbit punched him so hard he screamed. "This lot are mine. You wankers remember that, or it'll be the last thing you know."

Willow's expression when he buried his face in her neck showed that she hadn't believed, until this moment, that he'd really bite her. He lingered with her longer than with Faith, but Buffy got the sense he was doing this more to show off, and irritate Willow, than to actually feed; when he pulled back, the wound on her pale neck looked slight.

Turning next to her, he smiled again, a different smile, soft, menacing, triumphant. She didn't want to respond to what was private in his look. Still, she couldn't help but watch for the message, listen for it so she could reject it. "Slayer. Little while, gonna make you all mine. Possess you every way I know how—an believe me, that's more than you've got fingers to count 'em on." As he loomed in, his hand cupped her breast, squeezing with a soft encompassing possessiveness that might have been gentle, or threatening. She wasn't sure how to take it, and while her rational mind was angry at this whole business, she was suddenly, sharply aroused. All at once she knew how much she wanted this bite. How desperately she'd been anticipating it all day. Her desire to give herself to him overlaid every other thought about the operation—including her disgust and anger.

She wanted it, not like this—not with her arms held back, in front of witnesses; not in a stinky alley. But she wanted it. Wanted to belong to Spike in that way that must mean most to a blood-obsessed vampire.

The idea flitted through her mind, that if he was to take and turn her now, she could love him and be with him and there would be no conscience to prick her. She'd be free, like he was. God, I am fucked up.

"I hope you choke."

He answered this with a stroke of his thumb across her nipple, which was hard and tender. As his mouth brushed the thin skin of her throat, she closed her eyes. The minions, Faith, Willow, the alley, all disappeared. Emotion flooded her like a drug—she couldn't even put a name to it, didn't know if it was joy or its opposite.

"Oh yeah," he breathed against her neck, his hand still holding her breast. "You're all mine. You'll belong to no one but me. An you'll like it so bloody much." He drew back far enough to look into her eyes. "Gonna save it for when I can savor you." He dropped into a whisper, audible only to her—and the minions who held her. "My cock'll be buried in you to the hilt when I take you, Slayer."

When he drew back, there was nothing for a long moment but her intense disappointment. Then, remembering herself, she kicked out hard. "Get away from me, you filthy shit!"

He backhanded her—hard enough to make her stagger. She was stunned, then realized this was her signal to fall back, to pretend to be overpowered. The show was over. The minions tightened their hold on her arms.

Spike gestured. "Bring them."

There were hairy moments in what followed, but Spike hadn't misled them. He was treated by Herakles and Belledame with trust, almost as an equal. They were pleased and unsuspicious when he presented the three women as his prisoners, and entirely surprised when Spike opened the assault by suddenly garroting their largest flunky, and producing stakes from the depths of his leather duster, tossing them to her and Faith.

The battle begun, Buffy was so revved that success was never in doubt. She barely thought about what she was seeing or doing—Herakles and Belledame just didn't seem very important to her. She let Faith slay them, in payment for the murdered slayers whom she'd led, and concentrated her efforts on protecting Willow from the melee so she could overcome the shaman. Spike seemed to be everywhere at once; he'd secreted bigger weapons for them, and obviously bribed some of the vamps into loyalty, so that for a while vamps were killing one another, before they completely understood that Spike had sold them all out. But by then the shaman was down, the magic cloak broken, and other slayers were pouring in. By two a.m. the complex of derelict factories was in flame, and the slayers who surrounded it could pick off the last fleeing vamps almost at their leisure, until the sirens of approaching firetrucks signaled it was time for the slayers to melt away. They did so, in all directions, in triumph.

Buffy looked around for Faith, who greeted her with a high-five and a grin.

"The utter rout of my enemy always makes me hungry. Grab Spike an' let's get some breakfast."

"That did go well. But I'll pass on the eggs."

Faith smiled with one corner of her mouth. "I knew he'd do right by us."

Buffy shrugged. She wasn't sure why she was so unwilling to share Faith's satisfaction in what was, after all, a thoroughly satisfying battle. But now the fighting was over, she was curiously let down. She hadn't seen Spike in the last half hour at least. It occurred to her that he might feasibly have been dusted. The idea brought no twinge of anxiety. She was still angry.

"I'll see you later, okay?" Buffy cut through an alley, into the next deserted, cobble-stoned street.

"Well fought."

She wheeled around. Spike was pacing behind her. The heat and light from the burning buildings outlined his figure, made his tufted hair orange. He was in vamp-face, the eyes glowing like two cigarette ends.

"Yeah. You too." Couldn't have done it without you. She couldn't bring herself to say it. Suddenly she remembered the fight they'd had that night she thought she'd murdered Warren's ex-girlfriend. He'd harangued her: So you made a mistake and killed someone! How many have you saved? How many are alive now because of you? How many were alive tonight in Cleveland, because Spike had come there and done what he had to do to get them this inside advantage? It was an argument that enraged her that night; now she felt her attraction to it was a sign of encroaching moral weakness. The older she got, the more confused she became about right and wrong and the big no-man's land that existed in between. Loving this new Spike would mean always having to make excuses to herself, always having to juggle rationalizations. Faith had told her to stop resisting happiness, stop pushing away what she needed. But Faith was herself a killer. For a moment, Buffy wished she was one too; it seemed to be a club with some pretty attractive members, and one where the living was easier.

"C'mon, I'll take you home."

"I'll walk." She felt that if she didn't escape him now, she'd explode somehow. She could imagine swinging the axe she carried, catching him with it just where his sleek jaw met the neck. His dust would stick to her sweat-streaked face.

He caught her hand. "Got some spry wheels. Come see."

"I don't give a shit about—"

"No, this is a really fine ride. Look."

She let him draw her into an alley beside a nondescript warehouse building. The dark green car parked in back wasn't like the DeSoto—it was some ten years newer—the phrase muscle car floated into her head, she wasn't sure where from. It was the sort he'd relish, shiny, flash and fast.

"Was the previous owner one of the people you strategically ate?"

"The previous owner was some poor fuck who fell foul of Herackles, but I wasn't 'round to see that. Anyway, it's mine now, I've got the keys an' all." He held the passenger-side door open for her.

She wanted to say, You really think I'm going to get into this car? With you? But then she was getting in, tossing the axe into the back, feeling around for the seatbelt as he crossed to the driver's side door. He smiled as the car roared to life, orange light reflecting off his incisors.

"Why're you still fanged out?" she asked.

"Am I?" The bumps slid away, and it was the face that existed so perfectly on the line between pretty and completely masculine that turned to regard her full-on. Having met William, she no longer thought of this visage as quite a human one. It was one side of Spike the monster, as the demon face was another, and really no more or less benign. "You're still wearing your game face, Slayer."

"Mine doesn't slip on and off so easily as yours."

For a moment he looked a question at her, then he put the car in gear. Backing out at fifty miles per hour, turning with a screech, he barreled through the empty early morning streets towards her neighborhood, barely touching the brake at intersections. Buffy sat with her hands deliberately open in her lap, trying to keep her jaw and shoulders loose, willing her tension away. It wasn't working. She was tired, not exhausted, but too tired to think, unwilling to think. All her thinking never got her anywhere. The vein in her neck throbbed and jumped. She touched it, and was startled to find the skin unbroken. I'm nothing but one big open wound.

"You didn't slay me back there."

"Oh, fuck you." He had no idea how close he'd just come to losing his head.

"Did you think I wanted you to? That time's past."

"I don't care. I don't care what you want or don't want. I can't care. You've forfeited any—" She couldn't look at him. The window glass was cool against her fevered cheek.

"Any what? Any claim I ever had on your respect? Your affection?"

She nodded, but confirming it sounded like a lie she was telling to herself. Riding next to him, she felt so completely ... present. Here, in Spike's car, with Spike, exuding smells of vamp dust and tobacco, felt like where she belonged. Like what she wanted. But she wasn't sure she had the fight in her now, to resist her own scruples, to let this ruthless Spike in. It was ruthless of him, to demand she accept him so, with blood in his teeth.

"If I believed that was all you felt 'bout me, I'd drop you off an' go. But we both know it's not quite like that, is it?"

She wanted to say he was wrong. Wanted, and didn't want. She yearned for something she didn't quite dare define. She could've told him to just keep driving. Take them away somewhere where nothing mattered, wherever that might be.

But it was almost morning; he couldn't drive into the day. And they were almost home. He slid into an empty spot right in front of her building.

"There's never anyplace to park on this street," she grumbled. "I had to leave my car three blocks away."

"Guess it's meant that I should see you up to your door."

She could've said no. Instead she said nothing as she got out, leaving the axe behind, feeling in her pocket for her housekeys. Spike followed her up to the top of the stoop. As she unlocked the double doors with their etched-glass panels, she felt him standing just behind her, close enough to breathe on her neck except that he wasn't breathing. He tailed her up the two flights to her apartment. A sudden wave of irritation took her, like the chill called someone walking on my grave. Staring at the doorknob, she willed him away.

Of course, that never worked.

In a clipped voice, she said, "I have nothing for you."

"Nothing?"

"No blood. And I'm out of liquor. I don't think you're interested in low-fat cherry yogurt."

"Open the door, slayer."

"It's almost sunrise. You'd better leave now."

"You don't want me to."

"God Spike, why do you have to make everything so complicated? Don't tell me what I don't want. You're lucky I'm talking to you at all." She unlocked the door without glancing back, and was starting to walk in when he seized her elbow.

"Invite me."

"You have to leave now. You'll just have enough time to get back to wherever you stay before it gets light."

His grip tightened. "Invite me, Buffy, or else I'll do it out here."

It? She was about to pull free when his other hand went around her, and she was lifted off her feet. "Put me down, you stupid vampire!"

"I will do, inside. Say the words."

"No!"

All at once she found herself swung up, slung across his shoulder to dangle down his back. She heard his face change against her hip; felt the graze of fang through the cloth. "Always did crave some monster in your man. Know you're really ready for it, at last. So I'm gonna make it easy for you."

Oh God. She kicked, but they both knew it didn't mean anything. If she really wanted to get free, she could make him put her down. She didn't. "All right, all right. We'll talk. Although I'm about out of things to say to you. Come in, Spike."

He laughed and slapped her on the behind. She expected he'd bear her into the living room and dump her unceremoniously head first onto the sofa, since he was suddenly acting like an overgrown teenager. So she was startled to find herself spilled down on her back across the kitchen table, skirt yanked up, tights torn down the middle, panties pulled away with a stinging snap of elastic, and the cock she'd thought so much about already riding into her.

"—what the hell are you—the door! The door's wide open!"

"Neighbors're all asleep—Christ—Buffy—we've both been needin' this—"

Pulling her legs up beneath his arms, he started to fuck her in deep sawing strokes. She was already wet and trembling. Rearing up, she grabbed him by the neck, pulled him down on top of her. The table jumped, banged rhythmically against the wall, knocking over the salt and pepper shakers so they spilled into her outspread hair. She licked wildly at his teary eyelids, then fastened on his gasping mouth, trading moaning breaths back and forth. Together they wriggled higher; he was up on the table with her. His body in the bulky leather filled her arms. A pile of mail near her shoulder sifted to the floor. She came fast, shaking, crying out, clutching at his back. He didn't last much longer. They shuddered in long aftershocks as he subsided on her, his face buried in her neck.

"Baby," she murmured, "I have to breathe." He raised his head, looking like he had no idea where he was or how he'd gotten there; then he shifted a very little, jealous of letting go, his cock, still half hard, buried inside her, pulling her hips askew. Though his clothes were bulky, his zipper scratching her in a tender place, she didn't want to be uncovered, uncoupled. He kissed the corner of her panting mouth, her cheek, the side of her nose. Kissing back, she thought, I never knew I'd call him Baby.

"Fucking hell, that was a bit of all right. How're you, pet?"

"Good. I'm good." The hot blister of rage and resistance was blown open, leaving her drenched and floating on a calm, warm sea. Her prickling conscience was, for the moment anyway, if not silenced, so far submerged that she could ignore it. He'd promised to make it easy for her, and he had. "Wow. You really ... I wasn't expecting that. I'm glad you just—took charge. I was dreading the ... y'know ... negotiations."

"Could smell your cunny all juicy an' twitching in the car just now."

This brought her out in blushes. It was true; she'd been aroused since the biting business in the alley, had fought the whole battle with a vague awareness of congested energy between her thighs. She was still trembling, as if another orgasm was building, though they were both lying still and spent.

"Figured you'd only refuse me if I just asked you for it. Decided to take a chance on your wrath. Knew you wanted me."

"Because when I think about you, when I'm with you, even when you make me so angry ... I get all wet." This admission couldn't be news to him—it wasn't to her—but saying it out loud made her feel so exposed. All at once she felt her face crumpling into the ugly grimace that always made her so self-conscious. She hit him, an ineffectual slap, and then again, a slayer blow that made him grunt. "You're cruel to me, I can't trust you, I don't know what you are anymore—and I think about you all the time—!" Her crying, jagged and loud, was a freak lightning storm after a long sultry build-up.

He gathered her in, relieving her of his weight, holding her tight. Caressed her with light touches on her face, her hair. Even as he gentled her, she felt his cock rise and expand inside her. Her teary anger excited him. "It's all right, Slayer. It's all right. Have your cry, you've earned it. I've got you."

"I love you. I love you, you bastard! Spike. You've put me through too much—! Don't leave me."

"Not going to."

He rocked her, and it didn't feel childish or silly, it was what she needed, even as she knew he was consoling her for the very wounds he'd inflicted.

After a minute or two, the rocking grew more purposeful. Clenching around him, stirring her hips, she whined a little as he began a deeper thrusting; she was already sore from her frantic bouts with the vibrator. She told him about it; he listened with a solemn attention that was nonetheless a little mocking. "Poor girl. Could feel your pussy was all swollen, when I first went into you. 'Fraid it'll be sorer still though, before I'm satisfied. Gonna fuck you all night, every way I can. But then I'll kiss it better, yeah?" She nodded wildly, bucking under him. The calm that enveloped her a little while ago was gone. He laughed, pinching her taut nipples hard through her bra; she came hard, grunting and writhing. "Look at you, insatiable little cunt. Look at you, so eager for me. Gaggin' for it, you are, little cat in heat. That's you—pretty little wet Buffy cunny, just for me to fuck." These remarks made her toes curl, made her strain.

They were still rattling the table when they heard a door open and shut above, followed by a slow tread starting down the stairs.

"Shit—!" Buffy hissed. "The door!"

Spike scrambled up, kicked it shut.

She sat up, and reached out to twist the lock. Maybe it was the abrupt withdrawal, the fast change of posture, but she was suddenly plunged back into self-consciousness. It was the sad feeling that used to descend on her after visiting Spike's crypt, when she put her clothes back on and made her solitary way home, the product of her excitement and release pooling in the crotch of her panties (if she could find them afterwards), as her conscience nagged at her for taking solace with a demon whom she should've long since slain.

Would she never be free of that?

Sex had always left her feeling sad, but she'd always blamed that less on sex than on her unique circumstances. Her fuck history was pretty bleak, after all, and even when the men weren't actually evil before during or afterwards, being with them tended to leave her feeling weirdly scooped out and vulnerable.

Spike was shrugging out of his clothes. When he was bare from the waist up, his erect cock jutting out from his peeled-back fly, he clunked one booted foot on the table between her knees. "Tug that off."

He'd never addressed her in this peremptory way before, at once lordly and familiar; she wasn't sure how she felt about it—it was ballsy and unexpected, just like everything he'd done so far in Cleveland. What was he thinking? That he'd conquered her completely, that everything was going to be fine now, all the dilemmas he'd raised laid to rest by one good lay? Avoiding his eyes, she grabbed onto the boot and sock and pulled them away together, letting them drop to the floor. When she'd freed both feet, he stepped out of his jeans, kicking them under the table, and stood back, slowly milking his cock with one hand, looking at her. As always when he was nude, he was completely self-possessed. There was something almost regal he seemed to put on, when he wore nothing but his skin. No trace remained, in his tightly muscled body, his confident little smirk, his smooth white skin, of the man she'd sat vigil by for all those suffocatingly sultry weeks. The man who'd coughed and vomited and pissed and swore at her as he tried to die. The man she still didn't understand, about whom there were still so many questions she needed to ask. A little corner of her mind missed William, and something she couldn't quite pinpoint, as if she was the victim of a shell-game, not yet quite aware of how and how badly she'd been cheated.

"Get your kit off, Slayer, 'fore I tear it off."

"Don't call me that."

He cocked his head. "What's wrong now?"

She wanted to hear him apologize—for Dai Phuong, for deciding to be a vampire again, for the Clevelanders he'd killed. But she was pretty sure he had no intention of doing that, now or later. She could take the moral high ground, and occupy it alone, or she could have—at last—her ... demon lover, her man, her mysterious old/new Spike.

Why did it have to be this way? All her doubts rushed back in on her. Without entirely intending to, she said, "I don't think we can do this."

Not at all nonplussed, Spike actually smiled a little. "Still determined to rehearse that song, are you?"

She didn't want to look at his unrepentant face, or his erection, or anything. She'd pulled her skirt down over her legs; she stared at that. "Why did you have to do it this way? You must've known I'd have to— That it couldn't be— Why couldn't you—oh shit." She waved a peremptory hand in the air. "I know. I knowIknowIknow, you explained it, and I understand. But that's not the same for me as ... why can't I just accept—"

He came to her then, standing between her knees, taking her shoulders in his hands. The smile was gone; he looked very kind and wise, which seemed like another one of his unfair advantages, when he was naked. "Because you're the once an' future, Original-Wrath-of-God Slayer, an' I'm an old vampire who's been very wicked in my time. Ask me a harder one."

"Don't try to make this into a joke. This is about who I am—" She couldn't find words to express the war going on in her mind. She wanted to suppress it, ignore it, force it to silence, but wanting and achieving were so far apart! And she felt guilty for the wanting in the first place.

"Who you are. Buffy, I know who you are. How far you've come, poor girl. Your misgivings do credit to you, head an'heart, as they used to say when I was a lad. But it's time to lay 'em aside."

"Don't call me 'poor girl' either." She grabbed two fistfuls of skirt, to prevent herself from putting her arms around him.

"Back in Dai Phuong, remember that night near the end, when you helped me wash my hair?"

She nodded. It was something she'd thought about every day since.

"Even though I asked you to, I was half eaten up with humiliation. Wanted to disappear—wanted you to disappear. Think I was at my lowest of the low ebbs, that night."

"Yeah ... and?"

"Didn't know it at the time, either of us ... but that was my turning point. First time you really permitted me to make love to you, versus being your stud, was that final night in your Sunnydale basement, right? An' it was a sweet thing for me to have, to carry to my so-called death. But that filthy DP bath—that was when you made love to me, Slayer. Even though I was nothing anymore that you could possibly want, you went full out with it. Were in an ecstasy—could see that, feel it, well enough, an' knew it was all for me. You said, 'this is my big romance,' an' you shone. You shone with it like a star, an' even through my misery I felt it an' knew what a mistake I'd made. Being too proud an' stupid in California to figure out in time when you loved me back."

She'd been happy in that disgusting bathroom, pregnant and spending her love out without reserve; also without hope, but there was something crazy and good about having no hope and yet making the most of the moment anyhow. The humid intensity of it, her quivering jelly of happiness at being allowed to lavish him with touch, came back to her with specific vividness now where she was perched on the table. Her skin burned with a consuming embarrassment. Words poured out of her mouth that felt futile and somehow petty even as she said them. She was angry at him, but angrier at herself for being stuck here.

"You could've decided to live! That's what you were supposed to do, why you got the shanshu. God, Spike, why why why did you have to walk away from your soul? Now you're a demon again, you've killed people, and here I am having to somehow justify—"

He stepped back, so he wasn't touching her anymore. "We've both been warriors long enough to know how these things go, Buffy. A few people, including slayers, had to die, so more could be spared, an' the Good could bob up tops in the end. That's what they call realpolitik, yeah?"

"Yes, but—"

"As for how I mean to go on ... may not be the bleedin' heart I was, but know right from wrong in my head, an' know whose side I'm proud to be on. I've got my balls again, yeah, but I'm not on the spree."

"That's it, is it? That's all you're going to say about it."

"Uh, yeah. Pretty much all there is, without repeatin'. No purpose in givin' you a run-down on the what when who. Either take me as I am, Slayer, or I'll get in my pretty car an' take off from here."

She could tell, from the suppressed emotion behind his matter-of-fact tone, that he meant it. And really, it was true: what would be the point of demanding a blow-by-blow of his adventures with Herakles and Belledame? What point going round and round on anything he'd done, either in Ohio or Dai Phuong or back in Sunnydale? She'd made plenty of mistakes too, and anyway, they hadn't started from the same point. In so many ways, his had been the longer and more arduous journey, to the place they both rested this moment.

Spike wasn't a human being, but he was a man, and at long last, an adult.

Forcing herself to focus, to see him, Buffy brought her hand up to touch his lips, and trace the line of one cheekbone. The tender gesture evoked a welling of tenderness inside her. Impossible to imagine losing him again.

"Where would you go?" she whispered.

"There's slayers all over the world could probably use a bit of the old Spike brio. Though what other could give me such a cockstand as I get, just thinkin' about you an' your dear little pussy?"

"I don't know."

"None. None I'd want to fuck, an' please, an' cherish like I do you. None who could teach me to forget what being lonely feels like." He moved in between her legs again.

A full-body shiver took her; she couldn't keep anymore from reaching for him. "Spike ...."

"Buffy, love ... be my mistress. Promise not to disappoint you, an' I'll make it worth your while."

"Your mistress ... would that involve lunchtime assignations and me in lingerie?"

"Wouldn't say no."

"But I want more than that. After everything ... all the shit and the waiting ... I want—"

His mouth took on a sympathetic pout. "Can't marry a dead man, pet. An' we're not the marrying type, you an' me. Not really."

"No, I know. But ...." She was thinking of the bite she couldn't bring herself to ask for yet, burying her nose and lips against his throat, screwing her eyes shut. "I love you. So much. Please please don't kill any more people."

"Not without checking with you first, anyhow."

"Oh God."

He lifted her off the table. "Think we've done justice to this room—let's see what else you've got." Spike took her hand, and led her down the dark narrow corridor that led to the bedroom. She switched on the light. There wasn't much to the room—a black-out shade on the single window (so she could sleep in after late patrols), a bureau, a rug, a rocking chair, some framed prints on the walls. How common and unimaginative Spike would think it.

"That's your bed, is it?" He put a knee up on the edge, as if testing the firmness of the mattress.

"It is."

He nodded. "Gonna fuck you in it. Sometime before tomorrow morning." He seized her by the waist then, backing and pinning her against the wall, so high she had to strain to keep her toes on the floor as he went into her.

"Not like that," he said. "Let me hold you. I've got you."

She understood at once, catching onto what she was sure he was thinking of: their first time. Long since changed from a memory she shied away from, to one that bore the golden glow of destiny. When she wrapped her legs around his waist, letting him take all her weight, Spike sighed into her neck. "That's it. That's it, pet. Gonna have you, love. Gonna fill you up an' have you all I like. Make you do all the things that'll please me. Say it. Say it for me."

" ... fuck ... Spike ... yes ... fuck me ...!"



They did it all over the apartment. Spike kept moving her from one place to the other, changing positions. It took her a little while to realize he wasn't letting her come; every time she got close, when her breathing went ragged and she began to keen, he'd move her.

She was bent inelegantly over the sofa arm, her cheek and neck and chest half buried in the cushion, her thighs high and spread as he rode into her from behind. It was a position that let him get in deep, but left her understimulated—something he had to be aware of. He kept talking, telling her what a good fuck she was. There was an edge to his voice, almost of contempt; she couldn't tell if it was real or just part of the dirty talking that was wringing her to such a pitch of frantic excitement she could barely think. She heard herself speak too, but she didn't know what she was saying. Pleading and cursing. Begging him not to stop, begging him to let her come. She'd never felt so full, so fully possessed. He controlled her, holding her hips, dragging her up to meet his thrusts. She'd never let him rule her like this before when they fucked; she'd always been the one in charge, even when she'd permitted him to bind her. From the moment he'd laid her out on the table, she'd understood that everything between them was different—he was different. He was taking her for the first time. All the other times, in Sunnydale, she was the one who'd taken, who'd ruled him with her smallest glance.

Her happiness, like her orgasm, hovering high up inside her, just out of reach, entirely in his power to bestow. She was frantic, and struggling to hide it. Frantic because she finally understood things she hadn't known before, and the understanding—the experience—was already tearing her apart. This desperate wild need, yawning and insatiable, this was what he'd endured, while she'd held him at a distance. While she'd hated and used him, refused to treat him like a man and a friend, beat and kicked him, he'd stayed with her because he felt this. Oh, she thought, oh, I get it now. It was like a religious revelation, terrifying and awe-inspiring. A part of herself she'd never known was there was wide open, he was fucking that part, which cried and keened and wailed to be filled up. She knew now, he could do anything to her, and she would revel in it. He could ask her to crawl, and she would crawl. She was fixated, it was like hypnotism, or a spell: fixated on his cock, his undulant body, his grasping hands, his face, his eyes. With hers screwed shut she could see them, that blue gaze that had the power now to gut or reward her, by their mere expression. She yearned for the bite. If he didn't vamp out and devour her soon, she would offer it, she would offer and offer until he accepted, because it was suddenly terrible to her that she not give him everything of herself, over and over and over, as much as he could take. She wanted to cry because she was afraid he would leave some part of her unclaimed.

All of this was what he'd felt, she was sure of that now, he'd existed in that constant restless agony of wanting and needing and giving and luxuriating even in her abuse, because it was attention, it was something she gave to him alone.

Once, in his crypt, after the brutal punishing sex she'd come to him for, he'd talked about his desire. No one had ever spoken to her the way he did that night; she'd never even imagined anyone would. Told her in a crude specific way that disgusted and thrilled her, about her cunt, how it fascinated him. How he couldn't think about anything anymore but fucking it, eating her out, carrying her aroma, her flavor, on his own skin. Pleasuring her so she might smile at him, or even not at him, but at anything at all. How he dreamed about her and woke up aching and hard and furious and at the same time filled with happiness, with hope, because he loved a wonderful woman, who might come to him that day and let him have her.

At the time she'd thought he only talked that way because he was a demon, but she understood now. More than understood—she inhabited that same place, where wanting and having were mixed up together in an impossible mélange of fulfillment and fear that at any moment the fulfillment might be torn away. Spike might go. He might take his attention and his hard body and that beautiful cock away from her, he might take himself to Faith or one of the other slayers, or he might disappear altogether. This might be a trick—his ultimate punishment for her. Or it might be a dream.

He withdrew suddenly, his slick cock sliding out, splattering their juices against her thighs. She cried out. Flipping her over onto her back, so her hips lying on the sofa arm were still higher than her head, he drew her legs up tight beneath his arms, pushed inside again. She wanted to hold him, to bury her tongue in his mouth, but he was too far above her to reach. She stretched her arms, flailed amongst the sofa pillows, dug her hands into the cushions. The way he was holding her gave him complete control. She could only grapple his back, her ankles hooked together, heels digging in against his spine when she flexed.

"Please, Spike. Please."

"Please what? What d'you want?"

"I need you nearer. I need to kiss you."

This seemed to please him; he reached a hand out to her. She caught it, he hauled her up. When her arms were around his neck, she sighed, writhed, riding his pelvic bone, trying to come.

"You hungry little minx. Not yet. Didn't I tell you, not yet?"

"But I need you! I need—"

"Hush, Buffy. I know what you need. Gonna give it to you, in my own sweet time."

This made her shiver. He could be unkind to her now, humiliate her and shame her, he could do anything, and not only wouldn't she stop it, she would like it. She'd hate it but she'd like it too. He was watching her, and she couldn't hide anything from him. He was as aware as she that it was all changed. He was no longer her supplicant, she was no longer the queen.

"Kiss me then," he said, his tone indulgent and a little condescending. "Let's have your sweet kisses."

He sank with her into the armchair as she pressed her mouth to his, taking wild frantic gulps of him. With her knees beneath her again, straddling his thighs, she started to fuck herself on him, but he caught her hips and stopped her.

"Not yet."

"Please."

"No." He pinched her nipples. "I ought to get a nice little pair of clamps for these. Wear 'em under your shirt as you go about in the daylight, an' think of what I'll do to you when we're together."

A twinge of fear took her at this, even as she nodded. "Oh ... yes."

His smile was smug. "Yeah, you'd really like that, pet. God, Buffy, you're really something. When you come around, you really come around."

"Because I need you. I need—" As much as she wanted to hide this new desperation, she also wanted to tell it to him. He knew it already, she could see that clearly in his face, the way he looked at her.

The lazy way he touched her now, as if he didn't care when they started fucking again, didn't care when he'd come. His hands traveled over her, proprietary and confident, pausing here and there to caress, to inspect. He traced the undersides of her breasts with the rough side of his finger. "These lovelies have been lonely, need a bit of attention, don't they?" Ran his fingertips along the lines of her ribs, explored the hollow of her belly, poked a pinky into her navel. "You're not so thin as you were. That's good. Don't be too thin, love. Like you with a bit of flesh. Like to see you tuck into your food." Traced the lines of her collarbones, dusted them with kisses, so she gasped and winced, even as she surged up to meet his mouth. He looked carefully at her face, turning it this way and that. "You look so good to me. But there's too much winter in your little face, too much sadness. You don't like it here. You've been lonesome."

"What else could I be but lonesome? I thought you were dead!"

"Poor sad little Buffy. We'll fuck that out of you, yeah? Make you rosy an' sleek, like you were when we first met."

She wanted to ask for the bite then, but she didn't quite dare. She was afraid that he'd refuse. It seemed strange to her, that he'd abstained earlier, in the alley. But he must have meant it, that he was saving it for later.

"My lovely slayer. My pretty darling. Whose tight little cunt is wet for me, is mine to fuck. Who looks at me with such eyes. Such eyes."

She shivered, tears tracking helplessly down her face. Smiling, Spike lifted one off on his fingertip, slipped the finger between his lips. "Here she sits all trembling an' proud an' delicious, on William the Bloody's big hard cock."

"Here I sit," she nodded, then, overcome with a sudden shyness that made her spine curl, she buried her face in his neck. "Here I sit, in all my glory."

He let her move then. Let her do what she liked, which was to fuck herself on him, tight and slow, her inner muscles rippling. She rested her head against his chest, so she could watch what she was doing, and because she thought that if she saw his face now, it would be too much for her. He stroked her hair, lifted it over and over off her shoulders, where it kept falling back. Gently now he pinched her nipples, rolled them between his fingers, rubbing them with his palms. She couldn't remember when her breasts were so exquisitely sensitive—the pleasure rippled through her, made her wriggle and shake. He didn't stop her anymore from touching herself, it seemed to please him to watch her strum at her clit, to hear her escalating gasps. His hands moved down to her behind, squeezing and stroking. He brought a wet finger to her asshole, slipped it inside. She grunted.

"Gonna fuck your sweet little ass, Slayer," he whispered. "Pretty soon now."

He'd wanted to do that back in Sunnydale, and she hadn't let him. It seemed like a strange thing to her, a thing she didn't think women liked, that she didn't think she'd like. Especially with him. It would be too much of a surrender, with him.

Now the idea of his cock in her ass made her desperately excited. Sensing that, he chuckled, pushing his finger in further. She arched, wriggled. "Oh please. Please." She didn't even know what she was pleading for anymore. Spike's finger penetrated higher, crooked a little. She cried out. She could feel it through the thin membrane, rubbing against his cock inside her.

"You want everything, don't you, Slayer?"

"Yes. I want you everywhere. Need you to stay with me."

"Sssh, not goin' anywhere. How could I? Go, an' miss this? Miss you?"

His voice, his words, so full of tenderness, pushed her over the edge. Somehow she'd forgotten, in the midst of her frenzied hunger for him, and his lordly conduct, that he also loved her. She'd felt curiously alone, but he was there now, holding her steadily, his hands cherishing her as she shook and wailed. "That's it, pet, that's it. Go on an' come now. You're lovely when you spend. That's it. Come on me. Come, Buffy." In a little while he jerked up into her, once, twice, and then she felt him start to spurt.

"Oh Spike. Oh lover lover lover—" She rocked into him until he went soft, until he subsided, his head lolling on the chair back. He drew her head to rest on his shoulder, and for a few minutes, they were quiet.




When the phone rang, she was so startled, she realized she'd been asleep. Spike half-rose, still holding her, and grabbed it up, handing it to her before collapsing back into the armchair.

"Debrief at Slayer Central at two o'clock," Faith said, without hello. "We have a lot to go over about last night. And we have to start talking about the memorial services. Shandra's family are flying in tomorrow, and—"

"Oh. What time is it now?"

"Almost noon. See you there, okay?"

"Uh—no. I think ... I'm going to stay in today. Have some me time."

"You time."

"Yes. I think you can spare me."

"Okay. By the way ... have you seen Spike? Because after the battle, he kinda disappeared. Some of the girls were worried, but I figured—"

"You know he's here. He's with me. We want to be alone."

"All right, why didn't you say?" The tone of Faith's voice changed. "Sorry I interrupted. I'll let Hugh know that you're off duty."

"Tell the others that they did a great job."

"Tell Spike we couldn't have done it without him."

Letting the phone drop to the rug, she said, "Faith says hello."

He caressed her sweat-streaked back. "Faith said to tell me they couldn't have done it without me."

"Vampire hearing."

"She's not exactly the whispering maiden."

"I guess not."

"Glad to know there's a bit of gratitude going."

"Spike ... I'm grateful." Her body was pleasantly numb, yet she felt strangely defensive and closed.

Sex with Spike always had been easier than talking with him. Somehow the talking was harder now that they were unopposedly together. No one was objecting, trying to part them. There were no secrets. Yet she found herself feeling shy, and as if Spike was, in many ways, a stranger. She knew such a very little about him, really. Even their fucking had stayed in a narrow groove, because she'd so stringently kept him from expressing his affection, and had reined in her own softer impulses too.

"Not fishing," he said. "Did it for mostly selfish reasons, anyway."

"Selfish reasons ... uh huh. You wanted to strut your stuff in front of all those slayers ... and you wanted a free pass to bite Willow after all these years."

"Bite did her good. If some vamp bit her properly, say, once a month, she'd remember a bit that she's a person like other people when she gets up in the morning. Would improve her."

Buffy found she agreed with this idea, but decided to let it pass unseconded.

Spike smiled then. "And I got off on taking those stupid buggers down—nothin's more irritating than the vanity of vamps when they clump together into families an' start putting on airs. And since they were startin' to get lucky with other slayers, didn't want ... didn't want you to get hurt."

"No one was going to kill me."

He gathered her in. "Don't say that. Want you confident, yeah, but hubris is no good. You forget you're mortal, you get careless—"

"Okay, coach. End of pep talk."

"It's not a pep talk. Just me bein' selfish again. I want my pretty mistress sound of wind an' limb, so I can fuck her every day."

"Is that what I have to look forward to?"

"Bloody right. An' don't pretend it's not what you're hankering for." He squeezed her nipple. "You're on fire for me."

"I wouldn't dream of it." Even as she smiled and bantered, Buffy wondered how they were going to do this. If they could do it.

Combine how they'd begun—that wild, nearly senseless passion—that passion that was almost nothing but the senses—with what came later. The feelings that developed ... festered ... when the touching was over. When the bruises had faded beneath the skin, into the bone, into the invisible webbing that connected them.

They'd never been lovers or friends in any conventional sense. Never gone out on a date. Never eaten a meal together. The conversations they'd shared were always full of silences, awkwardness, ideas censored on both sides, choked off. The whole thing—her unease, her silences, her manner of being demanding and stand-offish at the exact same time—all of that was sustained entirely by Spike's devotion, by his tacit agreement to take whatever she dished out.

How could they find their way now? There was so much that was undefined.

She realized that she was afraid of him now, which she'd never been before. But it was a fear that she wouldn't have dispensed with even if she could. She'd never felt it for any other man before, it seemed to be as much a part of real love as desire was, and inextricably bound up in it. It didn't seem to have much to do with trust, oddly. She trusted that he wouldn't double-cross her or deliver her into the hands of her enemies. The fear was completely personal, and titillating, and in a strange way, entirely beside the point. He ruled her with his hands and cock, ruled her with a look. He might hurt her, physically or emotionally. She wouldn't be able to stop him. She didn't want any more to stop him. That was part of what was different about herself. The end of her defenses.
Still snuggled together in the armchair, the juices of their fuck drying on their skin, she said, "This is so strange. It feels ...."

"Feels bloody fucking fantastic, to me."

"Yes—! To me too. Only—" She struggled to figure out what she wanted to say. "I barely know you. The little things about you ... details ... I don't know."

"An' whose fault is that?" He said it without provocation, almost like a real question. His hand was on her breast. "Shift a bit, pet." He pulled her up so her back rested against his chest. "Now spread your legs."

He slipped the hand not holding her breast down between her thighs. Curled his palm around her pussy, the fingers going inside her, the heel of his hand seated tight against her still twitching clit. The other hand went on kneading her breast, teasing the nipple.

She hadn't known she needed to be held this way, but she did.

Having arranged her to his liking, Spike glanced around. "Nice flat this is."

He obviously wasn't worried right now that she didn't know the little things about him.

"It's my first real place. Where I had to think about what I really wanted, and shop for it. The flat in Rome came furnished."

"Never saw your bedroom there anyway. Just the front room. An' bloody Andrew."

"Oh, Andrew. He absolutely worships you."

"Silly git."

"Oh, he's turned out all right. I mean, as all right as any of us. He does good work."

"Yeah, he did a good bait an' switch on old Angel back in L.A. Spiriting away that demented slayer who maimed me. Suppose he's all right. Though don't think I'll ever forget what it was, riding out with him after that clue 'bout The First, having his little boy boner pressed into my back the whole trip down. Then bein' stuck there for a whole day, while he prattled on, an' all I wanted was to get back to you."

"You should've fucked him," Buffy said, amazed at herself. Her head was so light, she felt as if her brain had floated up to the ceiling and was stuck there like a lost balloon. "That would've shut him up, I think."

"What, him? He'd have yakked all through it."

"Not if he was sucking you off. He'd have liked that."

"Why Buffy." He tightened his grip on her pussy. "Are you havin' a naughty little fantasy?"

"About you popping Andrew's cherry on the floor of a church? Noooo ... I would never think about such things."

"No, not you. Wasn't you just now, either, sayin' all sorts about me an' my cock. Like it when you talk dirty. Like it when you talk sweet. An' both together is best of all."

She blushed. "I meant all of it. Even when I didn't know what I was saying—"

"You're so damn beautiful when I'm fucking you. You show how much you like it. Makes a fellow proud."

"You've got a lot to be proud of." Everything she'd once thoughtlessly relied on him for was here and accounted for. The incredible body with its stamina ... the seemingly telepathic understanding of what got her off ... the pain that turned into pleasure ... and the tenderness she'd once punished him so severely for displaying.

Spike really was back.

She craned her head to look at him. "This ... this is really happening, isn't it?"

"Course it is. What, you think you're hallucinating?"

"This is something I wanted so much. It might be a dream. What if it was like that time that demon scratched me, and I was this mental patient who only thought she was the slayer? That seemed so real."

"No delusion, pet."

"There's things I can't get my head around, though ... I mean, it's like the man I spent those months with in Dai Phuong never existed. The hair. The coat ... you're Spike Classic again, as if you never were anything else."

He let go of her. Took her shoulders and turned her. His face was cloudy, suspicious. Buffy's heart dipped and raced. She wished she'd kept this to herself.

"You know it's not the same coat."

"I don't care if it's the same coat—! Look! This is coming out wrong. I'm trying to say—"

"Wish you'd never found me in Dai Phuong. Wasn't meant for public consumption."

"If I hadn't found you, you wouldn't be here now."

"Suppose that's true." He frowned more. "Guess I've you to thank, after all, for getting me back to being Spike. How's that for a tasty bit of irony?"

"A little more bitter than tasty," she said, thoughtlessly.

He pinched her. "I'm no one's whipped boy now, not The Powers', an' not yours."

"I know! I ... I like it." Her clit twitched, she knew she was blushing.

"Can see you do." His gaze was locked on hers. She was certain he knew everything about how he'd conquered her. How entirely his she'd become.

But he surprised her again. "You like it, yeah. But I know that you think a little worse of me, for failin' at being human. You'll always wonder about the man, won't you? About how it would've been if I'd been stronger—by your lights—an' done my bloody duty."

"Duty? That's not a you-word."

A low rueful laugh rolled from his throat. "When I was a lad, back in the 1850s an' '60s, everyone in England spoke about their duty, the way people now talk about tryin' to be happy. The duty of a man, of a son, of a brother, a husband. Duty was a solemn thing, a public an' private thing, an' everyone knew theirs, because was inculcated in all of us from the time we were babes in arms, in the world I was brought up in. World I couldn't really live in an' couldn't escape. Well, 'til Dru popped up an' freed me."

This was a window on Spike's personality she'd never thought to see open. "So, what was William's duty?"

"To do what was hardest, what was least pleasant, least natural to me, because that was what my father, my family, my school, my church, my peers, everyone, expected." He shook his head. "I tried so bloody hard to wear that strait-jacket, but it all felt like a charade. Wasn't like you, invested with special strength to meet special circumstances. I lacked what it took to be a proper gentleman in my world. 'Course, plenty did, but I suspect most of 'em weren't so writhingly aware of it as I was. Could never go back to bein' that desperate little man."

"What would you have preferred? If you could've done anything?"

He shook his head impatiently.

"No, tell me. C'mon. Tell me, and I'll keep it to myself. Also, I'll tell you something embarrassing about me."

" ... fancied myself a poet. Was always scribbling verses. Thought I was damn good at it, an' ought to be the poet laureate. Wanted to be celebrated like Mr Wordsworth, to live in Italy in a splendid villa full of antiquities, have other clever men for friends, an' a beautiful, worshipful wife who'd give me a passel of pretty children playing about my feet." As he spoke his voice got softer and softer, his mouth curdling in disgust. "Was so damn wet it's amazing I didn't drown myself."

The picture this presented stunned her. She'd always had a half-formed notion that Spike came from some rough, low background, that he was, in life, the same sort of ruffian he was as a vampire. She hadn't observed him closely enough in the years he hung around the Scoobies to realize just how much his persona was an invention, an inversion of his personal truth. Even learning that he'd killed and turned his mother didn't quite dispel that amorphous idea from her mind. "Spike, it's all right." She held his face in her hands, breathed a kiss across his mouth. "You shouldn't be so angry at him. He's only you. The one who was sorry for me because my mother was sick. The one who proved to her family that Tara wasn't a demon. The one who notices that Dawn and Xander are sweet on each other—which you were right about. Don't talk of him as if he's someone else. William is you. And I love you."

"But it bothers you, that I threw my humanity away, as you put it. Not as much as it bothered you that you loved me when I had no soul. But it's something like that."

He sounded angry, sore, offended. Yet she wasn't sure he was angry at her, exactly.

"I'll always wonder about the man I met in Vietnam. And, yeah ... I think it's going to be a challenge for me to really accept you as you are. Which is my problem, not your problem, okay? And I will work on it. But the last thing I think of you as, is a failure. The last thing. I knew you were courageous, back when you didn't give Dawn up to Glory, and I never stopped relying on you for that. You've shown me over and over how brave and willing you are."

"Really?" He'd always, even at his mightiest, had that streak of doubt just beneath the surface. It was that, she was certain, that made him different from the other vampires. That made him changeable. Maybe it was even what had helped him survive for a century and a half. As lordly as he'd been a little while ago, he still needed her reassurance. She took pleasure now in smoothing it away, with kisses and whispers, but she didn't think it would ever be entirely gone. After a little coaxing he returned her kisses, deepened them. Then suddenly his mouth changed beneath hers. She was confronted by his game face.

Caressing the hard ridges of his cheeks with her thumbs, she went on kissing him with barely a pause. A growl started in his throat. Beneath her thigh she felt his cock harden. She felt she'd passed a test.

His hand wormed between her thighs, seized hold of her again. She shimmied, shifted to give him more room. Her whole body was quivering with anticipation. When he slid his mouth down her neck, she arched and whimpered. She was liquid between her thighs. At last, at last—they were getting to it, the great thing she yearned for.

"Can feel your blood beatin' here," he murmured, giving her a lick where jaw melted into neck. "All that power an' life just beneath the skin."

"It's yours," she gasped, shifting so she could curl her hand around his cock. "Oh God, I need you—take it, take it!"

He rose then, holding her by the waist, guiding her out of the chair, down onto the floor, positioning her on her elbows and knees, his body curled tightly over and around hers. Cock bumping and gliding against her grasping pussy, one hand groping at her dangling breasts. She felt him breathing gently against her back, against her shoulder. The breath parting her hair, and then as his prick slid into her, his lips closed on her neck. The sharp fangs brushed tantalizingly against her goose-bumped flesh as he nipped and licked the place just below her ear, the place that was somehow connected directly to her clit, so that it throbbed as he sucked on the tender skin. All the while he was fucking her in long slow strokes. Strokes that made her arch and shudder, that bent her head closer and closer to the floor. She began to sob, shivering hard. The sharp teeth brushed again and again over her neck, without fastening. With every deep, slow thrust, she moaned, begged.

"Oh please. Oh please. Oh please. Please—"

"Hush love. Hush an' get fucked."

"I want you to—"

"Hush." The hand that was on her breasts moved to her mouth, covered it. Everything he was doing was so gentle, hypnotically slow and gentle. She felt like the priestess of some indolent god. His skin against her lips tasted like her sex; she licked the fingers, panting. His fangs still grazed her skin.

"Feel me fucking you. Full up, you are. Beautiful slayer gettin' fucked by her vampire."

His mouth fastened on her then; the fangs sharp against her tender flesh. Mouthing and holding her like a cat dominating another cat. Coming close to breaking through, but not breaking through. Her forehead was almost touching the rug now. She keened with every breath, her pussy fluttering hard around his cock. Spike lifted his hand from her mouth, and then his fingers were on her clit, a sudden sharp pinching that made her spasm, scream, shake. He kept her coming for long moments, fucking her faster now, murmuring his filthy encouragement.

Finally she couldn't support herself anymore, and collapsed to her belly. Spike took his last thrusts and spilled; his come oozing thickly out of her already overflowing cunt even before he tumbled to her side.

When she raised her head, expecting to see the blue eyes again, he was still vamped. She pressed her mouth to his, taking a long deep kiss.

"You're amazing," he gasped when she broke the kiss, stroking her hair back from her flushed cheeks. "You've never been like this before. You're magnificent."

"I'm in love." She threw an arm across him, snuggled in tight. "I'm in love with my old enemy."



The next time she noticed, it was evening. She said, "We should probably get dressed and go patrol."

"Not lettin' you get dressed any time soon. But I'm a bit peckish."

"There's blood! I'll—"

"Thought you said you had nothing for me."

"I ... lied. I got some back when I thought ... when I hoped you'd visit me. I can defrost it."

He looked pleased. "Stay put. You hungry? Must be. An' thirsty too."

"Are you going to fix me a snack?" She watched him rise elegantly to his feet. Even from the severely foreshortened vantage of the floor where she was still sprawled, he looked good.

"Will do if you've got any food in your fridge. I'm expecting to find half a lemon an' some month-old chicken chow mein."

"That is so not the case. I have food. I'm an accomplished practitioner of the domestic arts. I clean, and I cook nutritious and tasty soups that I freeze, and I make my bed every morning, and if you'd fix me a fried egg on toast with just a little butter I will be your best friend forever."

"Thought you were my best friend forever already."

"Yes. That's exactly what I want you to think, because it's so so so what I am." She expelled a frisson of pleasure in spangled laughter. "Do you know how to fry an egg?"

"What kind of idiot do you take me for? 'Course I do."

"Don't break the yolk."

"Intact yolk, check."

"And the blood's in the freezer, you'll see it. You can heat it up in the microwave, or I have a double-boiler—"

"A double-boiler! Slayer, don't need a ruddy double-boiler."

"And if you want some eggs, have some. Have anything you like. Also, there's tea. I got that kind you used to drink when you were living in my basement."

"Typhoo? Brilliant."

"Make a pot. I am thirsty. Or—let me help you, it'll go faster—"

"Don't you move. When I come back in here, first thing I want to see is you lyin' there with dimpled knees akimbo."

"Akimbo, check."

He gave her a wink before disappearing towards the kitchen.

She stayed obediently in place during the twenty minutes he was gone. It would've been easy to doze; she couldn't remember the last time she'd been so agreeably fucked out, so utterly relaxed and happy. But she didn't want him to find her asleep. She was looking forward to sleeping—but later—in his arms. In her bed. Sooner or later they'd have to make it to her bed. For now, she concentrated on holding still. Letting her eyes lose focus as she stared up at the ceiling fan. Letting her knees loll open, her hands lie unflexed, palms up. She counted her breaths, and smiled to herself, until he came back into the room, carrying a tray. The aroma of the fried egg made her stomach gurgle.

"Good girl," he said, seeing how carefully she'd followed his directive.

"You know you don't get to tell me what to do when we have our clothes on, right?"

"'Course I don't. An' not when we're naked either, if you don't agree." He descended as smoothly as he'd risen, without unbalancing the tray. "You know I'd never try again to force you. You do know, don't you, Buffy?"

"Yes. May I sit up now and eat my supper, or would you like to stare at my crotch some more?"

"Don't say crotch. Say, my pretty pinky quim."

"Uh ... I'm not gonna say that." She reached for the plate. Spike poured out two cups from the flowered tea pot.

"Where's your blood?"

"Didn't think you'd fancy smell of hot blood while you ate your eggs, so I drank it while yours was cookin'. D'you think you could get such a thing in this burg as a bit of Berba weed?"

"I thought of that! But ... I couldn't remember the name of it. I'll get you some, yes, of course. Hugh will know where. Oh, this is good. This ... this is like my mother used to make it for me. With the toast cut up into strips."

"Soldiers, we called those, when I was a little fellow."

She smiled, dipping a strip into the yolk. "When you were a little fellow ... I can't imagine you as a child."

"Well, I was one, once. With a governess I detested, a Papa who beat me with a switch when the governess told him to, an' a Mamma who could do no wrong."

"That ... that doesn't sound too good."

"Was paradise, Slayer. Home was a paradise, 'til I was seven."

"What happened when you were seven?"

"They packed me off to school. Harrow. Which is called that, 'cause it's harrowing."

"Really?"

"No."

"But you didn't like it."

"I was a very little fellow. Rather timid. I was the youngest, you know."

"I didn't know."

"My mother was forty-three when I came. My next oldest sister was already ten."

"So why did they send you to school when you were so young? Was it a punishment?"

"Seemed that way to me. But that's just how it was done in those days. I had a hard time of it for a while, but I found out I wasn't bad at games, and then it was all right. Games were all that really mattered at school."

"Spike—tell me how you got turned again. It must've been difficult, you were so ill ...."

She could see that the question unnerved him. His smile faded; he stiffened. "Buffy, is it really so important? You know how vamps're made."

"I just want to understand about you."

"Understand what, pet? What happened to my soul? That's what's worryin' you."

She shook her head. She wasn't going to ask him about that. "Please. I don't want you to be ashamed."

"Not ashamed."

"Well?"

"Just not really ... not anything to brag about."

"Then don't brag it, just tell it. Or ... " She colored, wondering if she was being insensitive and self-absorbed. "Maybe it was painful? Humiliating."

"Not ... not exactly. Could've been, but ...."

"But what?" She knew she'd snagged him now, and settled in with her hands wrapped around the hot mug to listen.

"Well, once I'd made up my mind, had to weigh a few options. Couldn't just stride into the nearest demon bar, like you say—I was too fragile for that. Finally thought my best chance was with a bird I used to know back in the 1920s, in Paris. The madam of a vamp brothel. Probably the greatest vamp brothel on the planet."

"Like that place you took me once—where the vampires bite people for money?" She made a face, she couldn't help it. That filthy sordid hole.

"No. Anouk's place was very high class, exclusive an' select, situated in an old house on one of the best avenues in the fifth arrondisement. More'n half of her whores are human, most of the johns're vampires. The sort of vampires you slayers never see, because they don't prowl the streets. They're old, an' rich, got their own opulent world. Angelus first took me to Chez Anouk, 'round 1895. Her girls—an' boys too—were the prettiest an' most skilled you could imagine—she paid 'em handsomely too, for what they could do, an' what they'd allow to be done to them."

"Done to them. So—what? The vampires would bite them?"

"Fuck an' suck, yeah. Which makes it sound crude, but there was nothin' crude about a night at Anouk's. A willing, beautiful woman who'll show you every elaborate attention, give you a fantastic ride, an' beg to be bitten at the height of it—lot of fangy fellows are glad to pay for that, an' don't need to kill to be satisfied. Anyway, I didn't start really frequenting her place 'til after the Great War. Was in the Twenties that she became known in certain circles for her parties—orgies, really—that was a time and a city for parties like you wouldn't believe—jazz was new, an' cocaine, an' in some quarters it was like sex an' bloodlust were brand new too. Anouk wanted the most beautiful, uninhibited guests, the best dancers, the shining stars, whether they were demons or humans. Me an' Dru were always welcome because of how we looked, an' we did a mean tango, too—Darla used to say we were like the Castles."

"The Castles?"

"Famous dancin' pair at the time. Vern an' Irene Castle. They were superstars in those days. Anyway, Anouk always fancied me, an' I never did slip it to her as much as she wanted, so she never had a chance to get tired of me. Thought she'd remember me still, so I went to Paris an' sent word to her. Her house was in the same place as always. She was intrigued enough to consent to a meeting."

"You paid her to turn you?"

"She's richer'n'Croesus already. So rich that she's more interested in gossip—anything that'll relieve the boredom—than she is in money. She was appalled when she saw me. But she remembered what I was like before, an' agreed to what I wanted, in exchange for ... well, call it an agreement of indentured servitude."

"You sold yourself to her."

"For her personal use, an' the use of a selected clientele, for a period of time not to exceed seven years. Yeah. That's what I had to sign up for."

"I guess you broke the contract."

"'Course I broke the bloody contract—I'm no one's fuck slave. Never again."

She wanted to probe that never again, but he was already going on. "Her mistake was underestimating me. Don't think she had much experience with makin' other vamps—thought I'd rise weak an' meek an' besotted with my sire. She locked me in her bedroom without my clothes, an' watched over me 'til I rose, thinkin' she'd sample first fruits while I was still tender an' pliant."

"You dusted her, didn't you? With your bare hands."

"Sure weren't any stakes in that room—not so much as a wooden bedpost. 'Course I had to fight a couple of her flunkies first—she'd brought them into the room with her, she wasn't a complete fool. Still, they were nothing I couldn't handle—they didn't know I'd once won out over a guy with flaming brands for fists. Was a good spot of fun, actually. In the end, twisted her head off to preserve my honor. Was savin' myself for you."

"I'm ... touched." In one way the story was funny. In another, horrifying. But what it overwhelmingly was, was all Spike. The Spike who was determined to be himself. Who was devoted to her.

"After that, gettin' out of there was more a question of cunning than strength. Turned out there were half a dozen of Anouk's underlings were well anxious to be first to take over the establishment, an' quite happy to have her out of the way. None of 'em was half so interested in keepin' me on the premises as in consolidating their power while the situation was in flux. I dressed myself in what I could find an' scarpered pronto."

"Huh. That's ... that's really something." She didn't like to think of the reality behind what he'd done. The frail, disease-wracked William she'd left in Vietnam, giving himself up to be bitten, drained. Murdered. Having to trust that the vampire would keep her word. And then not keeping his. Knowing he made his choice at the almost certain cost of his soul. Having to hope that that dire sacrifice would get him the death, the finality, the complicated sort of freedom from the influence of the Powers that he desired. Had he trembled at the solemnity of that renunciation? Had he doubted then? Had he been at peace with the idea that he might well awaken as an unreconstructed monster?

Resolutely, she pushed her doubts away. They'd bob up again—it seemed like they always would. "So, did you bring me anything from Paris?"

She thought he'd laugh and tease her for asking, but he gave her a sly smile. "I did, actually. Snaffled you a souvenir from Madame Anouk's."

"What is it?" She found herself feeling a little sorry for Anouk, who must've been quite a character. "It's not something that's got an evil spell on it, is it?"

"No. Aren't you a greedy little baggage? An' here I still wait to hear a word from you about that dress."

"The dress! Oh Spike—I can't believe I forgot—it's a wonderful dress!"

"You look nice in it, do you?"

"I look delicious in it. Thank you."

"Hold on, I'll get your petit cadeau." He rose.

"You have it here?"

"Deep pockets in my coat." Leaving the room, he returned a moment later with a flat box. It was black leather, old and shabby, the edges crumbling. She took it with a lick of misgiving, remembering all of a sudden the horrible silver skull ring he'd given her that time he'd proposed. Would this be some ghastly piece of old tat that she'd have to pretend to like?

Spike sat beside her, watching her face intently as she lifted the hinged lid.

"You won't mind that I stole 'em," he said. "Was more'n past time for 'em to go to a living beauty."

The inside of the box was lined in satin, faded with age from white to the palest kind of brown, like old ivory. Resting on the satin was a long necklace of pearls, with an elaborate diamond and sapphire clasp.

Buffy stared. "This—is this real?"

"Oh yes my pet, it certainly is. These pearls're famous. Once upon a time, in the 1770s, when Madame Anouk was a young danseuse in St Petersburg, she was taken up by a wealthy Russian nobleman, name of Count Pyotr Shinzhov. He gave her these stunners, an' much else besides."

"My God. I've never seen such a—"

Spike lifted the necklace out of the box. "He was also her sire."

She was reaching to touch, but let her hand drop. "Did he give her the pearls before he turned her, or afterwards?"

Spike was undoing the clasp, although the necklace was so long that wasn't necessary to putting it on. He paused, and looked into her face.

"Anouk told the story in my hearing many times—Shinzhov was, she always said, the great love of her life. He sent her this necklace the morning after he took her virginity, when she was just fourteen. The pearls arrived wrapped 'round three dozen hothouse roses. Quite a triumph for an opera girl to so thoroughly conquer the heart of a great fellow like that. When he called on her later, and saw her in them, they were both so overcome with desire that he had her again right there on the carpet, an' bit her besides. Which was, she always liked to say, her introduction to ecstasy, an' to a solid business model besides, though that was well in the future. But he only turned her four years later, when she was, according to the count, at the peak of her beauty. An' she was a beauty." He looked nostalgic, then shrugged philosophically. "Ah, she had a good innings. Not many people realize that whole swathes of the old Russian aristocracy were undead, long before Rasputin came along." He held the necklace up. "So, will I put this on you?"

Buffy hesitated. The pearls were madly beautiful and precious, glowing like living things; even with her unschooled eye, she could see that, and she, like any woman, instinctively wanted them. But there was so much freight of meaning attached to them: the brutal seductiveness of the male demon, overwhelming a young girl whose only power was in her beauty—passion that led the little dancer to her death—obscene wealth and theft; it gave her pause, and sent her mind shooting off on strange tangents.

"So if I accept these from you ... wear them ... will you turn me too?"

Spike started to laugh, then realized belatedly—as she did—that the question wasn't exactly a joke. There was a is that a threat or a promise vibe hanging between them as her words dissolved on the air. Buffy blushed, and stared at her knees. "I didn't mean—"

"Would break my heart if that were to happen to you. Pet ... you know I'd never hurt you."

"Even if I wanted you to? Not—not hurt me—" The words escaped her in a rush, just ahead of her burgeoning confusion and chagrin, "—but have me—I want your bite, I want you to enjoy my blood the way you do my body, I want to be joined to you that way, to feel that pleasure, pride, abandon—you know what I mean—don't make me plead!"

Head on one side, he gave her a deep assessing look. Little by little she was able to meet his gaze, and answer the question she saw there with her own. They held each other's eyes for a long time. Buffy finally remembered to breathe.

Leaning into her, Spike fastened the pearls around her neck in a solemn gesture. "Way these glimmer an' glow, remind me of you. That's why I took 'em. These are yours for your life, Buffy. Your life." The heavy rope hung down between her bare breasts, cool at first against her skin, then warming as she touched them.

She understood the exhortation, the caution, in his words, but still she was far more excited about the implied agreement than she was about the priceless necklace. "When, Spike? Now?"

"Not yet, Buffy. Soon."

"But you will—?"

He picked up her hand, pressed the palm against his mouth. His lips, like the pearls, warmed gradually in contact with her skin. "Oh, I will, love. I will."

"So—"

"The anticipation ... that's a pleasure too, isn't it?"




In the bathroom after peeing, Buffy faced her disheveled self in the mirror. She might as well have been pulled through a hedge backwards, but despite the ravages to hair and skin attendant on hours of fucking directly after hours of fighting, she saw in herself the vibrant beauty Spike praised. The pearls, hanging with unaccustomed heaviness on her bare skin, made her look exotic and a little savage. She smiled down at them. A present. My boyfriend gave me a present. Dreamily, she rolled the strand back and forth across her nipples, which tightened more than they were already, and poked the bottom-most pearl into her belly button. My vampire boyfriend gave me two hundred fifty year old pearls from Russia. Because I. Am. His. Mistress. Giggling, she admired the brightness of her own eyes in the mirror.

She was sure that Anouk must have often worn this necklace as her only garment; they seemed to go with nakedness. It already bothered her less to think that they were stolen; if not to her, to whom then should they belong? Spike's instinct that it was fitting for them to pass from a vampire to a slayer pleased her sense of good order.

As she surveyed herself, she was aware of her body's humming, like a struck tuning fork. Breath she didn't know she'd held was at last exhaled. After all this time of wanting and missing him, of trying to get her mind around the idea that she wouldn't be able to have a life with the man she wanted, he was here. Though he was utterly free to resume evil, to seek out old loves and old haunts, to go anywhere, he'd chosen her. All at once she understood, fully and deeply, what Spike meant when he talked about his freedom—how for him, even the soul had become an intolerable yoke.

And his goodness was a more meaningful choice without that stinger galling him, wasn't it? The imperfect goodness of a demon making an informed decision about his conduct.

That made her think of Angel. Angelus never—never!—could've acted as Spike was acting now. He wasn't capable, sans soul, of even making such a choice.

She still couldn't remember Angel without a pang. The habit of caring for him would never die out in her. She hoped he'd made a good death; hoped his soul was at peace wherever it was now. Hoped, most of all, as she reached for a comb, that he could find it in himself to appreciate what she was doing now.




When she returned to the sitting room, Spike was back in the armchair, legs stretched out, head tipped back. Coming alongside him, she saw he was asleep. His lips were parted, but no air passed through them, or his nose. He was entirely still, but his prick stood up hard and red-tipped. Was he dreaming about her?


Kneeling between his feet, Buffy took the velvety cockhead into her mouth. After a few seconds, Spike woke with a little start, then sighed appreciatively and stayed still as she went on. The knob was all she could manage, but she'd learned before, how to make the most of that, how to use her hands besides to make him moan, fist her hair, babble her name. She could taste herself on him. The press of his heft on her tongue excited her so that she moaned too. Greedily she thought that in a little while they'd fuck some more; they'd talk and laugh and sleep together, and be a couple. The demon that animated his body and his spirit, that made him so beautiful and potent, would satisfy the deepest darkest part of her, the demon part that she could lay bare only to a fellow demon. It was to this he referred, when he said she liked him best this way. Her cheeks burned; shame at her penchant for the undead was a potent habit, but the penchant was real, and what point anymore to deny or feel sorry about it?



He preferred to be this instead of being a live man. And the truth was, she could not teach herself to prefer what was supposed to be more worthy over the mysterious powerful thing that called out to her own mystery, to her own power, that attracted her at a level beyond—beneath—the rational. Here was the Spike she'd come to love, untransmogrified into anything tamer, anything less, and she wanted him, he was perfect to her.



When he shot, with a cry that echoed through her own frame, she held the spunk on her tongue before she swallowed, savoring the flavor of it, a taste she'd struggled to recall on many late sleepless nights, when she'd believed him to be irrevocably dead.



Rising from her crouch, she crawled up into his beckoning arms, to give him a taste of himself in a kiss. "I don't suppose you socked any of that stuff away in a freezer somewhere, before you got yourself vamped again?"

Instantly she regretted the words, and began kissing him again, hoping to hurry him past them.

But Spike put her back gently, and looked at her with calm serious eyes. "Buffy, I'm sorry you had a miscarriage. Sorry for all that business."

"We don't have to talk about it now."

"Thought you were out of your mind, wantin' my child, an' thought I'd punish you more by givin' it to you."



"You wanted to punish me." This wasn't a surprise, but still it was startling, to hear him say it so baldly.



"I did. I ... I don't know what I wanted. Was so bloody angry at everyone an' everything. I wasn't myself, an' didn't know how to get myself back. Worst feelin' in the world."



"I know I gave you plenty of reason to be angry at me, after my resurrection. I was really depressed then, but I have a lot of regrets from that couple of years." Sliding an arm around his neck, she settled herself against his shoulder. Spike responded with a squeeze. This position had the advantage of making it impossible to see his face. "Are you still angry with me? Tell me the truth."



"... I don't know. Mostly not. Statute of limitations on some things're are long enough an' no longer. Right now, I just want to be with you."


"The whole time in Vietnam, I thought you weren't in love with me anymore. I couldn't believe it. It was like a bad dream I kept thinking I was waking from, only I'd just wake into the same bad dream." She touched his hair, soft under the gelled crispness. It occurred to her that she could be angry at him, for abandoning her, for making her suffer in Dai Phuong. The Buffy she'd been a couple of years ago would probably have mustered that rage, but she couldn't really get there now. "I don't think I understood until then how much I'd come to rely on your love. I felt ... stripped without it. I felt so alone. When I began to cramp and bleed that night, I thought, of course, of course I'm not going to be allowed to get away with this. It looked then like I wasn't going to be allowed anything, and I didn't know how I could go on with my life."

An anguished sound issued from Spike's throat. He pulled her closer. "All the time I loved you, never thought you'd care for me. Just wasn't part of my picture. I tried to make it happen, but I never deep-down believed—"

"Because I was the slayer?"

"Yes, an' because you were good an' I knew I wasn't. I always knew—long before I was a vampire—that I wouldn't be able to draw a woman to me, who was worth having. Not sayin' this to make you feel sorry for me. I'm sayin' it to explain ... apologize ... I really never thought I'd have the power to effect you with what I wanted. D'you see?"

"Spike ... oh my lonesome lonely Spike ..." A wave of sentiment overtook her, that she had to expend in blushes and kisses on his cheeks and mouth. She felt very silly, but the feeling was real.

"But then you turned up in Dai Phuong, actin' like a woman in love, which I never thought to see from you to me. 'Cept at that point, was just the thing to scare the buggering fuck out of me."



"So it was true then, when you said you didn't love me anymore?"



He shifted uneasily beneath her. "Love was beyond me, state I was in. I wanted you to go home and leave me be."

" ... I guess I felt that, finally. Somehow, though, it made me love you more. I thought—hoped—I could love you back to ... " She was going to say, 'to life', so she didn't say anything.

"Well, an' you did. William couldn't stay so hard-hearted as he tried to be, in the face of your goodness to me, an' your disappointment."

"Oh ...." The backs of her eyes fizzed and burned. She didn't like to think that it was her love that directly inspired William Merrit-Smith to give up his mortal life a second time. She hadn't meant to kill him.

Even as they both knew full well that neither of them preferred that man to the vampire he would become.

It was difficult to think about, the skeins so tangled, so fraught. So much blame to go around, so much gratitude. All the time they'd known each other, when one left off following, the other turned and became the follower. Buffy couldn't help but believe now, that it was always meant for them to find one another. There must've been some nudging from The Powers here and there—or else the thing really would've been impossible.

"Anyway, don't blame yourself about the baby. I can't say I'm sorry it didn't come to pass. But If the child had been born, you'd have been good to it, I know. An' I suppose I'd have done the same, if positions were reversed. If you were the vamp I loved 'gainst all reason, come back to life an' longing for death. I'd have done my best to knock you up while I could. I'd have wanted to try that way to make you take an interest ... an' to have something of you if the interest wouldn't come."

There was something terribly funny about this, and poignant. She'd never imagined their roles reversed like that. Buffy began to cry. Mourning the normality she'd long known she didn't really want, but still held in a place of yearning nostalgia. Trying to stop her tears, she gave him a hard thump in the chest. "I don't think I have the mothering bone," she mumbled, "or whatever you call it." She could imagine herself, living here with a crib beside her bed, a babysitter coming in every night so she could go out patrolling. The sitter would think she worked in one of the clubs downtown, as a cocktail waitress if not a stripper, though she'd wonder why Buffy didn't have implants. That would account for her work hours, anyway. As the baby grew, she'd look for him in the small evolving face, in his little mannerisms. She'd love him and hate how he tied her down, hate the bargain she'd made. Hate that she'd brought a life into being solely because she couldn't have what she'd really wanted. It felt like such a lonely thing ... lonely for her, lonely for the child. Then the tears gave way to rueful laughter, and she told him what she was thinking.

Spike stroked her hair. "Love's a terrible thing."

"It is. Absolutely terrible."

As if to seal their agreement on this point, they kissed, kisses rolling one into the next, as they squirmed together, clasping each other closer.

After a while, she pulled back to breathe. He ventured, "You're still so young. There's many twists in the road. We both know that. Never say never."

"I can't imagine us as parents. I don't want to think about children now."

" ... no. Me neither. But just wanted you to know, don't have to sweep the whole thing under the rug. You want to talk about it, we'll talk about it. Mourn it."

She wondered if he mourned the people he'd killed in Cleveland, even as she murmured, "I mourned you more."



This is it. This is what it's like. They'd made it to her bed finally, had another slow rocking fuck, starting with her on the top and finishing the other way around, because she wanted Spike to cover her, to fill her mouth with kisses. This was followed by a sleep that Buffy was amazed to wake from, sometime in the night, to find herself not bereft, but still lying in Spike's arms. For a long moment she held her breath, just feeling what it was like, this combination of My Bed and My Lover. Then she inhaled, bringing the mingled scent of her sheets and Spike's hair deep into her lungs. He stirred and woke, his arm tightening around her.

She felt his lips trace the line of her neck, then hover at her ear. "Buffy," he whispered. "Buffy Anne Summers."

"Present." She snuggled back against him, fitting her behind against his pelvis, mingling her legs with his. His feet were icy. For a moment that sent her mind to a sad place, until she remembered that she'd had affairs with other men whose feet were cold in bed; men who were completely human. She smiled into the dark. " . . . You've finally won, you know."

"Won?"

"Me."

His soft cool breath touched her cheek, followed by his lips. "It's you who's done the conquerin'. You took an' slayed bad old Spike, an' made him into something brand new."

I did, she thought. No, he did. No, both. We made ourselves, we made each other, into different people.

"Spike. Do you know what I think would be good?"

"Oh Slayer. So many things."

She laughed, lacing her fingers in with his.

"What I think would be good ... what I would like ... is for you to tell me your life story."

He was quiet; she twisted around to face him, but with the shade down, it was too dark, so she snapped on the little bedside lamp. Spike blinked, his eyes narrowing.

"Everything you'd want me to know about you. I'd like to hear it. I'd like to hear it right here in bed, like The Arabian Nights. Only I promise I won't slay my Scheherazade when you finish."

"Bloody hell. Wouldn't know where to start."

"At the beginning would be good. I want to hear about your mother and your father and your governess."

"You still owe me one embarrassing anecdote from the early life of the slayer."

"I'll tell you as many as you can stand—there's an almost infinite number—if you'll tell me your story."

"Want you to respect me. Don't think detailin' my worst excesses is the way to go about it."

"Then don't detail them. But tell me where you traveled, and who you met, and what you thought. Tell me ... tell me what you and Drusilla wore, and how you danced and what you saw. Tell me what it was like for you after you parted from her. Tell me about what happened to you in The Initiative. Tell me about what you did the summer I was dead, and after Sunnydale, when you were with Angel."

"What, now?" He squinted at the clock.

"No. I'd like to hear it ... over time. I'd like to learn about what you were like, at the same time as I learn what you're like now." She traced his full lower lip with her thumb. "I want to live with you and know you."

Spike looked uncertain, but out of the corner of her eye, Buffy saw the sheet starting to tent further down—he was excited by what she was saying, even if he was dubious. "I know you enjoy telling stories, Spike. And I know you think I'm very ignorant, even for an American. Be ... be my teacher."

At this he laughed, and pulled her against him, kissing her hard. "All right, Adorable Girl, I will. You give me a little time to collect my thoughts, though, yeah? Go back to sleep now."

"But I'm not sleepy. There's other things you can do with your tongue besides talking." She dipped a hand between her thighs, wetting the fingers, and brought them up to his nose and mouth. Spike groaned, like a famished man, and thrashed free of the sheets.

In a moment she was sprawled across the mattress, one leg hanging over the side, the other foot propped high against the window frame, while Spike went down on her.

He'd done this to her so many times back in Sunnydale, when she was sad, or enraged, or being stubbornly oblique, wanting to escape, wanting to obliterate her numbness. And later, on their last night together, with a kind of worship that made her, even in the midst of her pleasure, a little uneasy. But she'd never experienced it this way. Somehow it transcended sex; it was an exchange of happiness. They were holding hands, signaling each other with squeezes, with smiles.

She was already so het up that she came fast, bucking up to grind herself against his swarming tongue, but even after she subsided into sobs and helpless giggles, he went on, letting her oversensitive clit cool down a little as he explored further down, lips and tongue and fingers delving into her slick pussy, teasing the sensitive bud of her ass. He kept pausing to talk to her, little remarks that made her laugh. She realized, listening to him, that she'd never heard him laugh before. Not in this open delighted way, that was at no-one's expense.

When he brought her off next, he had two fingers buried in her ass, and she saw stars. He laughed again when she seized up, shaking and crying out—a laugh full of delight, as if she was some intricate delicate mechanism he'd thoroughly mastered.

"You're abso-fucking-lutely amazing when you come."

"I feel abso-fucking-lutely amazing when you make me come. Oh God. I feel like I have about thirty million backed-up orgasms that have to come out."

"Funny, so do I."

"I like it when it's a win-win." She sighed happily. "You can bring your things over tomorrow night. You can just move in. That'll be so good. I can't wait to live with you. I want to be good to you. I want to give you lots of blowjobs, and cook things for you."

"Pet ... about that ... don't think it's such a good idea."

"Wha—what?" She sat up to face him. "What's not good about it? I told you I can cook!"

"Don't mean the cooking. Sure I'll like that. But think you ought to have your own space. An' so should I."

She hated the panicky feeling that rose up at this. Was this what her earlier premonitions—about how he could do anything to her now, hurt her any way he pleased—was coming to? "You're joking. I mean—what is your space? Some crypt furnished with things you find at the dump? I don't want you to be living in a graveyard!"

"Sweet ... I'm not. Got a little flat of my own, on the south side. Not so nice as this, but it's all right, an' nothin' in it comes from any dump. Got a bit of dosh, remember? Angel left it to me. Sees me all right."

"But why won't you move in here? Or if you don't like this place, we could get something else together. Spike, I want—"

"You want me not to slip off an' leave you. An' I won't."

"I want to sleep with you every night in my bed. I need that."

"I'll be here an' sleep with you, you see if I don't. But there's gonna be an evening when you find you want to be on your own, and then you'll be glad I've got somewhere else to kip."

"Why would I want to be on my own?"

"Well ... if you were just a bit tired, say. Or if we had a spat. Could happen. We always were at each other's throats, weren't we? That's not gonna change. You're all lovey-dovey now, pet, but you've still got your temper on you. Let's not mix ourselves up about what an' who we are, yeah? Never gonna be part of the young married set. We're perverse. We're passionate an' wild an' free."

"Passionate and wild and free. But ... but monogamously passionate and wild and free. Right?"

"You want to see me rip a man's head off an' quaff his brainstem, all you've got to do is sleep with him."

"Uh ... right. It was more you I was worried about, than me."

"What, you think I'd—"

"Well ... I ... no. I mean ...."

"Thing with Anya was a long time ago, pet. An' it was only after you'd—"

"Kicked you to the curb, yes yes I know. Oh, I'm not seriously worried, but ...."

He chuckled. "But you know there's twenty other slayers about, an' some of 'em are right beddable, so you think my eye'll wander."

She tried to laugh. "Being in love does make you stupid."

"If you really can imagine for more'n a second that any other woman could interest me like you do, you are stupid."

She pinched him. "Thanks."

"Buffy, how many times have I told you ... you're the one."

"So, why can't I be the one who gets to play house with you? C'mon, Spike. Keep your apartment, okay, but I just want us both to be here together for a while. I've never had that before. The man I love, living with me."

His eyes softened.

"When you say 'man I love', can do anything with me."

"I should hope so."




Buffy finally left Spike sleeping in her bed, to go to class. It was hard to pay attention. She was convinced, as she stepped into the lecture theatre, that everyone would know what she'd been doing; she was a klieg-light of love, lit up hot and bright from almost two solid days of being adored. She was hyper-aware of her body; both sore and still aroused. Taking it up the ass had turned out to be wonderful—nothing like she'd imagined. And Spike's pleasure at fucking her that way, the praise and gratitude he rained into her ears ... was a whole additional dimension of goodness. But now she was walking funny.

Afterwards she went to Slayer Central, wondering if any of the others would notice her radiance. She wouldn't mind attracting a little bit of feminine envy. The other slayers tended to see her as someone who had been unlucky, whose life was sad, maybe even, especially in the eyes of the youngest ones, over. She shouldn't care what people thought, especially ones she barely knew, but this suspicion offended her Queen Bee-ness.

It wasn't easy, this Being One of Many thing. Sure, she was the one who decided to share her power, and she'd done a pretty good job since coming to Cleveland of being all humble and part of the crowd. But whose psyche was so healthy that she could go from being the One Girl In All The World to The Twenty-First Girl In Cleveland Ohio without it rubbing her the wrong way from time to time?

She reminded herself, as she hauled open the big front door, that this was a place of mourning today, even as it was a place of triumph. She didn't know the dead slayers very well, and it wasn't easy to focus on them when she was buzzing with fresh happiness. But she tried to assume a sober expression when she entered the sanctuary.

A few girls were there, sitting on the backs of the pews, chatting, doing schoolwork, peering intently at their Blackberries. They greeted her in the usual way. Faith wasn't around.

Dana blew a big pink bubble with her gum, and when it burst, peeled it from her chin, saying, "Oh, Buffy, Hugh wants to see you."

Heading down the underlit corridor towards the office in the former sacristy, she could see through the frosted glass that Hugh wasn't alone. She put her head around the door.

"Hey. I'm sorry if I missed some important post-mortems, but—"

"Buffy." It was Giles who rose from Hugh's guest chair. "My dear, how very good to see you."

He folded her in his arms before she could compose a stance.

"I was hoping to hear from you," Giles said, giving her an assessing squeeze before letting her go to resume his chair.

But you didn't, she thought, taking the chair opposite, glancing at the other watcher. You heard it from Hugh instead, so here you are, come to meddle.

"I've meant to call ... the time difference ...."

The undertone of old mistrust crackled between them, ambient static. She'd forgiven, but she could never actually forget that he'd plotted to murder Spike.

So the next thing he said surprised her. "I understand why you weren't eager to contact me after Spike turned up here."

She waited.

"Hugh tells me Spike helped turn the tide here. Made what was starting to look like a complete rout into a stunning victory."

Now Hugh spoke up. "If he continues as he's begun, he'll be a definite asset to the work here. I'm hoping that we can—"

Giles interrupted, in that way he had that managed to seem polite, even as he was cutting the other man off. "Which is why, now that the vamp cabal here has been broken up, I'm proposing to take him away from you."

"Wait a minute!" Buffy bounced to her feet. "Taking him—where? He's not yours to take! Or yours—" she whirled on Hugh, "to give away!"

"Excuse me," Giles said, "that was worded badly. I've come here to make an offer. To Spike and to you."

"An offer."

"Having so many slayers creates its own headaches—I don't have enough experienced watchers to help all these girls. Sometimes in their inexperience, they create more problems than they solve. I need a smart, independent team I can dispatch to put out fires anywhere in the world they crop up. Which they do with relentless regularity. How would you feel about giving up Cleveland? I realize you've only just gotten settled in your new home here—"

She felt like leaping up in the air and clicking her heels together—but she kept her cool. "I don't know if Spike wants to take orders from you. I don't know if he'll be able to trust you."

She waited while Giles did the wiping his glasses thing—when was he going to get a different tic? This one was so predictable.

"Of course, I'm aware that Spike and I have baggage that we'll have to—"

"And another thing, which you might as well know right off the bat. Spike doesn't have a soul now. In order to help us take down the cabal, he killed some innocent people. I don't know how many. I don't like it. I do understand that it was the lesser of two evils. But if you're going to make a big fuss about it, then we're not going to be able to work with you."

Hugh's eyes widened; she wondered if this was really news to him. Giles sighed. "Buffy, I'm not here to 'make a big fuss', as you so vividly put it. I'm here to persuade the two best fighters I know to take their rightful, most useful, positions on the Council of Watchers. Positions of trust and responsibility. Positions, I might add, which will be amply remunerated."

"That means 'paid'," Hugh murmured.

"I know what it means," Buffy said. She had every intention of asking about the expense account, too.

Giles glanced at Hugh, and then at the floor, and when his eyes met hers again, they had softened into tenderness. "I know you've been unhappy in Cleveland, Buffy—you've been unhappy for a very long time. I know you miss being near your sister and your friends. And while you've done an excellent job here, I'd like to see you using your skills in the way you've always done best—which isn't as part of a large group. And if Spike is going to lend us his skills as well—which I very much hope to persuade him to do—the Council mustn't squander them either. I'm convinced you'll make an able team. And I trust that, paired with you, Spike will keep his demonic exuberances in check."

Buffy crossed her arms. "I'm sleeping with him, you know. Just to be clear."

"Well, of course, my dear."

"All right. Come to dinner tonight, at eight. I'll cook. You can talk to him. If he agrees, I agree."






§§§


Buffy looked up from her drink. "Oh my God. Who are you, and what've you done with my punk-ass vampire?"

Stood in front of her table, he smiled, hands in his pockets, rocking back a little on his heels in the universal gesture of male self-satisfaction.

"Was in New York that I put that on ... guess it's fitting that I put it aside here too."

It wasn't like she'd never seen him try to change his look. But he'd never departed from it very far, or very sincerely. So his appearance now ... was kind of mind-blowing. It wasn't just the slim-cut black suit—though she'd never remotely imagined she'd ever see him in a decent suit—or the sleek black shoes—nothing like those big boots he'd always worn—or the well-cut black shirt that looked so unobtrusively expensive. It wasn't even the hair, which, still slicked back in the usual way, had gone from bleached white to a very William Merrit-Smith soft brown. It was the air about him—an attitude she'd never seen before.

"Do I still call you Spike?" The question was only half a joke.

He slid into the banquette beside her, and took her hand.

"Course you still call me Spike." Though he'd left off his indicators of menace, he appeared no less tough. It was a different sort of tough now. An I-can-kill-you-with-my-cuff-link tough.

The waiter came up. Buffy wondered if Spike was going to order something equally out of character—maybe a martini, shaken not stirred. But he asked, as usual, what the beers were on tap, and ordered the one he always plumbed for. "An' the lady will have another of whatever that is she's sipping."

When they were alone, she fingered his lapel. "So—"

"Hope you approve."

"Do you really?"

He raised an eyebrow. "Course I do."

She wondered if he thought of the suit, the hair, as another costume, another performance, or if in his mind this was an end of that. He looked very adult. Confident, but no longer defiant. In these clothes, which he clearly knew full well how to carry himself in, he could go ... anywhere. Attracting only the right sort of attention.

It occurred to her that the way Angel had dressed in LA wasn't miles different from this. He too had sported jeans and leather when she first met him. She didn't think this was something Spike would want to talk about, even though it was obvious that it was the inheritance from Angel that paid for the makeover.

"I wonder how long it will take before my mental image of you matches up with ... this."

He smiled, and took a grateful swallow of the glass of beer just set down in front of him. "Sometimes I still think of you as the apple-cheeked girl I first came gunnin' for. She's so burned into my brain ... but then I see you as you are, an' all's I feel is glad."

She let her head drop against his shoulder for a moment. "Is this for me? Are you changing for me?"

"Was time for me to change. I've always done it, Slayer. Was past due lately, that's all." He spoke gently, as if letting her down easy on some bad news. "'Course I like to be a suitable arm for my sweet bit of candy to rest on."

They had another couple of drinks, and Buffy ate dinner. She noticed that Spike attracted attention in the restaurant, from other women, and men as well. The waiter seemed to be waiting only for some oblique signal to drop to his knees. Sometimes Spike gave a smile to the women who stared at him as they passed the table, but even when he did, he always turned his attention right back to her.

At eleven, a car arrived to take them to the airport, to meet the small Council jet Giles had sent from London. As they rode along in the enclosed silence of the town car, Spike said, "You still haven't told me that you approve."

"What would you do if I didn't? Would you change back?" She smiled, watching his eyes in the orange light.

"Well do you?"

Sliding down against the corner of the seat, parting her knees, she hooked a finger into her evening bag on the floor, and pulled something out. "What do you think?" The panties she'd taken off in the ladies' room dangled from her hand for a moment, before Spike snatched them out of the air, and pulled her to him.



It was early the next morning when the jet landed at Luton airport. They'd both slept during the flight, but Buffy was still looking forward to stretching out in a real bed for a few hours before she did anything requiring effort.

The plane taxied into a hangar before letting them off, well away from the rays of the rising sun. The Council obviously still enjoyed certain privileges—they were admitted to the UK with only the most polite and perfunctory check of their passports, and directed towards another dark-glassed limousine waiting beneath an overhang outside, which would take them to the new Council headquarters in a remote house outside of London.

Buffy fell behind Spike, answering the driver's question about luggage—was there anything, madam, she wished to keep with her inside the car?—when she heard her sister's voice. Dawn emerged from the back of the black car, unfolding herself to stand up surprisingly tall, the brisk morning breeze tugging at her long hair.

"Oh my God. Oh my God—you're really here!" She reached a hand towards Spike, the gesture tentative and wary, as if she was trying to sneak a touch of an artwork in a museum. Spike stopped just out of her reach.

Dawn peered at him. "Oh look at you!" With a sudden lunge and squeal, she tugged Spike into her arms. For a moment he was stiff and stunned, his arms rising warily, before he recovered, and greeted her as he had greeted Faith weeks ago in the nighttime cemetery—lifting her off her feet.

"My friend, my friend—you are, aren't you? We're friends again, please say we are!" Dawn was still coltish even now, and in her anxiety, seemed years younger than she was. "Oh Spike, I never thought—!"

He put her back to look at her—and really looked, Buffy noticed, as if he was seeing some long-lost sister, drinking her in with big eyes. Then he pulled her into another long hug.

"I'm sorry," Dawn was babbling, "I'm sorry I was such a pill, so hard-hearted, and I never even said goodbye to you—because I so know you saved my life, more than once, and took care of me, and loved me—oh SpikeI'msogladyou'rehere!"

He still hadn't said anything, and now Dawn searched his face for some response. "Tell me it's all right—if it isn't all right I won't get in the car with you, I won't make you sit with me for—"

"'Course it's all right, silly girl. Didn't we talk about that already?"

"On the phone. I dunno, somehow the phone doesn't seem to count. It's not quite real."

"Was real to me. I've never changed my mind about you, Platelet."

"Platelet! I used to love when you called me that! And Snack-size, and—" She turned to Buffy suddenly. "What were the other names?"

She was startled. Spike's nicknames for her sister in those days were just part of everything she'd found revolting about him, which was ... everything. Or so she'd tried to teach herself at the time. And whatever pet names and jokes they'd had the summer she was dead, had never been imparted to her afterwards.

"Oh, you wouldn't know," Dawn cried, her nervousness spilling over into arm flapping, "why am I asking you? Oh Buffy, hello!" Now it was her turn to be grabbed into a tight embrace. "This is so good! That you're both here! I missed you so much! And we have so much to talk about!"

Buffy tried to peer over her sister's shoulder at the car. "Is ... did Xander come too?" The reunion of Spike and Xander was something she'd been dreading ever since Giles proposed they come to England; so terrible was the prospect that she couldn't even imagine how it might go.

Her fiance's name had a bracing effect. Dawn shook her head. "No, I came alone. I wanted you two to myself for a little while, before everyone else got a chance. Oh—look, look—!"

Suddenly she was waving a hand in Buffy's face. Something gleamed there; Buffy grabbed her fingers to make her be still.

The engagement ring Dawn wore had a diamond considerably bigger than the one Xander had given to Anya. "Isn't it beautiful? He chose it himself, but it's just what I like. Spike, look." She presented her hand to him more calmly, and Spike, calmly, admired the ring. Buffy wondered what he was thinking. She'd meant to discuss the Xander question on the plane, but then they somehow hadn't gotten around to it.

"Are you happy then, Niblet?"

"I am. I'm very happy. Having you back, and with my sister ... that's the crowning touch."

"It means you're free to be silly and all a-squee, because you don't have to worry about old maid Buffy being mopey and celibate during your shining time," she said, pulling Dawn to her for a sisterly kiss.

"No!" Dawn protested. "That's not what I meant!"

"But it'll do," Spike said. "C'mon, let's not keep the man waiting."



"Xander Harris, International Man of Mystery."

As different as Spike had made himself appear, the change in Xander more than matched him, as he rose from an armchair in the old house's library to greet his old enemy. Buffy didn't realize she was holding her breath until the shock of seeing Xander extend his hand to Spike, with all the suave ease of a natural clubman. He too wore a suit, and his hair, cropped close to the head, was lighter from living in the sub-equatorial sun. He was deeply tanned, and the eye patch seemed now less a sign of affliction, and more an element of personal style. Xander had grown into himself. Africa, being a watcher, loving Dawn, had changed him.

"William the Bloody." He gave Spike his name without malice, looking mild and agreeable as they shook hands. "So much water under the bridge, I hear, to bring you back to us."

"Floods," Spike agreed with a shrug. "Deluges."

"And now we're the accepted lovers of a pair of sisters—"

"—best sisters in all the world—"

"—I guess we'd better bury the hatchet."

Buffy's knees went liquid. Dawn's lips were suddenly at her ear. "I thought this would be the way—but I didn't want to say anything to you beforehand. Just in case."

"He's being magnificent. And look at him. You got a handsome one."

Spike smiled a close-lipped smile, his gaze fixed on his hand joined in Xander's. "I guess we'd better, at that. Seein' as we're the happiest two fellows out."

There wasn't time for anything more, because the doors opened to admit the other inmates of the house, new and surviving watchers, including Andrew, some slayers, and members of the coven Giles had allied to them, gathering for drinks before dinner. Buffy got a second surprise when Willow came in hand in hand with Oz.

After the greetings and introductions—Spike seemed not to remember whatever encounter he'd had with Oz in Dai Phuong, or else preferred to pretend so—Buffy took him aside. "I want to thank you."

"Nothing to thank me for." Oz squinted at her. "You look better."

"I am better. So's he. And you? Your travels just happen to bring you here now, in time for the engagement festivities?"

"Willow brings me here."

"Willow?"

Oz's face took on that ethereal expression it sometimes had, that made him look like a wise old monkey. "Turned out after all ... she's the one."

"She—? But— Oh. Oh, wow. She didn't tell me."

"We were keeping it on the down-low for a while." Oz winked. "She says she's gonna have to turn in her Lesbo League membership card. But I think it's good to hang onto all the cards."

Buffy laughed. She'd forgotten Oz's dry humor; there wasn't much of that going when she'd been with him last. "So the person you went to meet in Bangkok—that's off?"

Oz grinned. "That was Will."

"Love's a terrible thing," Spike said, having come up silently behind her during the conversation.

Oz nodded a deep agreement. "Rotten. Rotten as hell."




"It's funny," Buffy said, when they were up in their room later, getting ready for bed after the good dinner and conversation on topics both demon and non-, over brandy around a baronial fireplace. She slipped out of her dress—the rose-print one Spike had bought her—draped it over a chair, and stood in her bra and panties and pearls on the center of the threadbare oriental rug. "How we all find ourselves paired with people we first loved in Sunnydale. As if noone else—nowhere else—could be quite real for us since. Even Giles. Olivia came to visit him there once. Afterwards we never thought we'd see her again. But then they gravitated together in the end."

"There is no end." Spike slipped his arms around her from behind, as she stood at the window. With the lights off in the room, she could see across meadows in the moonlight, clear across the valley. "Was a magical, romantic spot, old Sunnydale."

"Don't tease."

"Me tease? That town was the makin' of me." His lips brushed her nape, then fluttered at the side of her neck.

Buffy pressed herself back against him, luxuriating. "Are you hungry, baby?"

He replied by nuzzling her closer, his tongue tracing the line of her artery, as one hand slipped inside her panties.

There was great surprise for him—and for her, a wild strange pride and rapture she knew she could never discuss with anyone else—the first time he bit and drank from her. The effect of some half a pint of her blood on him was both immediate and long-lasting—he'd wanted no other for a week afterwards, and was stronger and harder both in bed and on the battlefield. Buffy wondered at his astonishment—he'd done in two slayers, after all. Finally he told her, without bragging or exaggeration, about those killings. How he'd only just tasted the Chinese slayer, and how his adversarial respect for Nikki precluded breaking her skin at all. "Never drank deep from any slayer before now. An' am glad of that."

She'd brought Angel back from the brink of agonized death with her blood. That was a special case—she hadn't quite realized it would be so potent in the absence of that poison. She told Spike the story, even though she doubted he'd really want to hear it. But he listened with an equable mien, as she described how, crushed beneath Angel's big body, her terror and doubt gave way to a profound mystery and pleasure she'd never known before or since.

"You wanted to recapture that. Is that why you offered me—?"

"I didn't want to recapture anything. I wanted us to have everything we could have together. Every closeness, every pleasure. I knew it would be something special, beyond what regular people can have. We're not regular, and we might as well live that to the hilt, no?"

That was the beginning. Tonight would make the fifth time in as many weeks that she'd offered herself. So far Spike had never asked, much less intimated, his desire to feed, waiting always for her signal, though he never hesitated once she gave it. She hoped eventually he would be so at his ease that he'd just take her in the heat of lovemaking, with the same mastery that he already exhibited when it came to everything else. She knew she could tolerate much more—she never felt depleted afterwards, and the bites themselves healed in a day.

But for now, this was good. She reached back and closed her hand around the bulge in his trousers. "Take off your clothes. I want you naked and fanged out and fucking me."

"My filthy little slayer."

Buffy smiled. She turned, moving aside from the window, to watch him, standing in the strip of moonlight on the carpet, disclose himself to her.

~END~
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