"You didn't write anything."


He stood just behind her shoulder. She could feel him dripping, how the droplets rolled down from his sodden curls, off his cool skin, the bare board floor soaking it up beneath his feet.


A couple of weeks ago she'd been using him, invading like a battering ram, beating herself out against his strength.


And then she'd made up her mind to stop.


"I still can't remember. But you did this to me, right? Tell me the truth."


"You think I killed you?"


"Maybe. Or maybe ... you turned me. You couldn't just leave me there to, whatever, bleed out, so you—"


"No. Said I couldn't put a stake in you, and that's what I meant."


"So you foiled my suicide-by-vamp?"


He stepped back when she said that; she felt him recoil, fade across the room, as far from her as he could get. "That's wrong too."


"You think I didn't want to die?" She toyed with the pen. Suddenly the topic lost all interest for her. What difference did it make? All those problems she'd had in Sunnydale weren't hers anymore. She was something else now, somewhere else, with all new problems.


Only he was the same.


"You should go back, Spike. You promised to look after Dawn. Don't you know she needs you now more than ever?" She glanced around then. He'd dropped to the side of the bed, his back to her, head in his hands. Bare skin still water-flecked.


"Can't leave you alone, can I?"


"Why not? You say you're not my sire."


He shot up then. Lots of others would've looked ridiculous, so much intensity with a damp towel looped around the hips, but not Spike.


Spike got more dignified with every layer he stripped off.


Crossed the distance between them in four long strides, seized her by the shoulders and lifted her out of the chair, shaking her so she rattled, the heavy shackle on her ankles clanging against the table leg. She struck out, a clapping punch to the ear so he dropped her, and she tumbled over the chair, head connecting with a crack to the floor.


Sudden silence.


She rolled to her side. "Get these off me before I break them."


"Slayer—"


She sat up, seizing the rigid bar in both hands. Began to work it. Spike watched her for a moment, then moved around the room, getting his clothes back on. Clink-clink-clink of his belt buckle, then he approached her again, squatting. Not offering to free her, but not preventing her either.


"Spike, you really should go."


"Takin' care of you."


"But you shouldn't. You know I'm not the girl you're in love with. And she rejected you, anyhow. You should stick with the good things you were doing, you know, in Sunnydale. Help Dawn. And the others, they'll need your muscle." As she spoke, she pulled at the shackle. Felt it slowly slowly changing shape as she bore down on it. It was easier to talk to him like this when she didn't have to look at him. In her peripheral vision she saw the frayed hems of his jeans, and his pale tensed feet, but that was all.


Then his hands seized her wrists. Tore her off the iron, held her in check. She could feel him breathing, aspirating the passion of his refusal.


She kept her voice level, light. "You know you can't be my prison guard. Not forever."


"You don't want to kill."


His grip on her wrists tightened. He tugged her forward, and she knew he expected her to look him in the eye, but she didn't. Stared instead at her captured hands. How white they were. Bloodless.


In a different voice, almost a whisper, he said, "Love, you don't have to kill."


She couldn't help it, she laughed.


Spike dragged her upright, shook her again, like he thought he could addle her to obedience.


"Don't tell me you don't wish you could," she said. "The chip doesn't change that. You always want it. Every night. Every hour."


"I did, yeah. But it gets less, longer I go ...."


She peeked at him then, and the confusion in his eyes, the sadness, piqued her. Was he sad for himself, for his thwarted violence—because violence was his best beloved?—or for her? She couldn't guess.


She whispered, just to see what he do. "I could rip them open for you. For us to devour together."








In the car, the back of her head ached, where she'd gone through the wall, and her face too, where he'd driven his fist into it.


Which come to think of it, was a pretty funny way for Spike to protest her offer, the gift of shared violence that, okay, he sincerely seemed not to want.


Of course they'd had to leave that hotel, and that town, but she was pretty sure, as they drove south, that they'd find another very much like it in a few hours. She still had the unwritten postcard, and the pen; she'd gathered them up as they were leaving. It wasn't like she had much other luggage, and it felt sort of necessary to have something to take out of there with her.


The moon was fat and high, riding along with them. She gazed up at it, feeling her pain and appetite, taking inventory of what else she wasn't feeling. Maybe she'd go on being numb like this if all she ever had was the blood of pigs and cows. Maybe to feel human again, she needed to feed human.


She wasn't sure if that was good or bad.


And it didn't account for Spike.


Who had been quiet for two hours, smoking cigarette after cigarette. Radio on to heavy metal music sung in Spanish, but so low that it just seeped in along with all the other ambient noise of barreling through the night, the engine's rumble, the echoing aromas of the road.


He popped the radio off. Cleared his throat, "You are Buffy."


"Because you say so?"


"No. Because you are."


"Everyone—including you—has always told me that a vampire is not the person who—"


"You think you're so easy to destroy? Your spirit, your personality, your strength? You bloody wish."


The contempt bled into the night sounds, dopplered back and forth in her head.


"I guess I do. Wish."


"You're changed, but I refuse to call you ruined. Don't you dare think that. Doesn't have to be true if you don't let it."


"Spike—"


"Shut up. You think you know everythin' about vampires but all you know is how to slay 'em. There's more to us than that."


"Us."


"You don't have to be a monster."


"Oh Spike. Really?" She didn't bother to laugh this time, because her face ached, but it was there in the tinge of her voice.


"You'll see."


Something like pity stirred in her for him. "I really fucked up your life, didn't I?"


"Not a bit of it."


God, he was a saddo. Being in love sucked. She was glad she wasn't in love with anyone or anything. It was so much easier.


"I didn't mean it. What I said about us sharing."


"No?"


"No. Because I still want you to go home."


"An' leave you to become Queen of the Damned?"


"If you believe that's what I'm going to do, you really should stake me now."


"Shut up about that."


"Or I could stake you. Either way, we'd part, which is the point."


"You don't want to do that."


"You think not?"


"You'd be too lonely."


Oh God. She scrunched down in the seat and closed her eyes. "Why do you still talk to me like I'm Buffy?"


"Because you are Buffy."


Second verse, same as the first. She opened her eyes again, and fixed them on the moon, and wished her face would quit aching and that he'd quit being so fucking nice.