Spike looked around the unfamiliar living room. Well, only somewhat unfamiliar. The room, itself, he'd never been in. However, he recognized a lot of the tiny knick knacks and furniture. When he turned, he saw a young blonde girl sitting on the southwestern patterned sofa.

"Let me guess: this one is yours," Spike said as he sat down next to her. "How old are you?"

Buffy crossed her arms in a pout. "This is my old house in LA." She looked at her open-toed flip flops. "I think I'm five."

Spike snorted in amusement.

"Hey, I can't control what my dreams do all the time," she said.

It would have been a strange experience to have grown-up Buffy's words coming from child Buffy's mouth and voice. However, since they'd started the dream-sharing in earnest, Spike had been in a lot stranger situations. There'd been the whole thing with the dogs, for one.

Finding a remote on the sofa arm beside him, Spike fetched it up and tried to turn on the TV. Only static played.

"Couldn't you at least make the TV work?"

"Sorry, Mr. I'm So In Control Of My Dreams. Why haven't I ever seen you as a kid?"

He shrugged. "Maybe there's an expiration date on kid dreams. If so, I'm well past it."

"Shame."

Spike let that go without comment. In the corner of his mind, he registered a dark shadow crossing the window behind the TV. Buffy began to shiver beside him.

"What's wrong?" he asked.

Buffy shook her head, her pigtails bobbing back and forth. She scooted to the edge of the couch as she warily watched the entrance to the den. An eerie calm had fallen over the scene. "I think this is a nightmare."

Sure enough, Angelus came around the corner, dragging the bleeding body of Buffy's mother behind him. He snarled as he approached Buffy. She fell back against the sofa and screamed.

Spike stood and turned. Buffy was at the mercy of the nightmare but he, as an interloper, had more control. He yelled, "Buffy, wake up!"

When Spike awoke, Buffy was in his arms. Not to surprising given that that's how they'd fallen asleep. Nonetheless, it was a comfort after such a dream. He could sense her sharp intake of breath that signaled her own awakening. She craned her neck up to see him.

"Sorry," she grimaced.

"No need to be, love." He brushed her hair back from her face. "Not like you don't have a good reason for having nightmares."

Buffy sighed and laid her head back on his shoulder. "I guess. Still. Makes it hard to do that 'full night's sleep' thing."

Spike pulled her closer. "We can handle it."

*    *    *    *    *

"Are you sure you still want the details?" Dawn asked, pausing with her hand on the manila folder.

Buffy swirled her ice around her mojito. "Yeah," she said. "I mean, crisis over and all. Things have been so much better between me and Spike. But you did go through all the trouble of researching."

"Damn right I did," Dawn said.

Their nightly visits to Felipe had been scaled back to a once-a-week deal as the Drusilla Incident - as Dawn referred to it - had reunited Buffy and Spike. No need for Buffy to avoid being alone with him anymore.

Still, Dawn had brought the research she'd found about the claim. It couldn't hurt to have more information about it.

Dawn opened the folder, scanning through the Xeroxed pages. "Well, it was hard to find much of anything. There's no real precedent for a human-vampire claim originating during a mind trip, so I can't conclusively say that the lack of a physical claim is of any importance. However, I did find some accounts of claims being 'renewed' every few years, so there is a precedent for a reclaiming, I guess."

"Huh? 'Renewed'?"

"Well, like, if a claimed couple has been together for a while and are feeling a bit in a rut, they do the claiming ritual again. Kinda like renewing wedding vows. Just with biting and blood and stuff."

"Oh." Buffy sat back. "That makes sense."

"I mean, I'm not encouraging you to get all bitey with Spike. I'm just sayin'."

Buffy nodded. "I get what you're saying."

Their usual waiter came with their food, and Dawn put away the folder. Buffy was left with the idea of a reclaiming bouncing around in her head. Maybe that's what she and Spike needed to lend some substance to their bond.

This sort of stuff took time.

*    *    *    *    *

"Sherrie, my hair stylist, broke up with her boyfriend of five years," Buffy said while situating a shirt on the hanger.

Spike raised an eyebrow. "Come again?"

"I was just thinking. We're never gonna be able to break up, are we?"

Spike's hands paused in the middle of balling two socks together. If he had breath, he would have been holding it.

"That bother you?" he asked.

Buffy let the hangered shirt fall onto the bed, reaching into the laundry basket for the next article of clothing to be folded. She ended up with a pair of panties wadded up in her hand.

"It's kinda scary. Relationships and me have never been so much with the long-term, you know?"

"You think we rushed into it?" Spike started carefully folding a pair of Buffy's dress pants.

Buffy shrugged. "I think we did what was best at the time. I'm happy now. But fifty years in the future? How do I know that I'm gonna be happy then?"

"Dru and I were happy," Spike said, trying to sound cavalier. "Were for over a hundred years."

"And look how well that turned out," Buffy said.

Spike bristled. "We're completely different than Dru and me were, pet."

"How so?"

Spike sighed. The laundry basket was empty. He looked over at Buffy, meeting her eyes for the first time since the conversation had started.

"Cause," he said. "You kept me. Drusilla never did." He grabbed the basket up to put it back in its spot in the corner. "Makes me not worry too much about our future."

Buffy looked down, fussing with the fold of a dress shirt. "Drusilla was crazy not to claim you."

Spike grabbed Buffy by the arms, twirling her toward him. He caught her lips in a wild kiss and backed her to the bed.

As the mattress hit the back of her knees, Buffy folded down on top of the neatly folded clothes. She protested. "We're gonna mess the laundry up."

Spike crawled on top of her, raining kisses up her neck. "Sod the fucking clothes."

*    *    *    *    *

"Have I mentioned that I hate the steering wheel being on the right side?" Buffy took a turn without slowing down.

Spike braced himself against the window. "I could've driven..."

"No way. You'd insist on playing your music."

They were heading into town for a couple days for a shopping trip. Buffy had it in her head that Spike needed a whole new wardrobe. He'd tried to tell her that he was perfectly content with just a few shirts and some jeans, but she'd gotten that excited gleam in her eye about the outing. He couldn't deny her that.

Spike did decide to take advantage of the long drive they had ahead of them, though, to broach a subject that Buffy had been trying to avoid all day.

"So, you wanna talk about that dream last night?"

Buffy fell silent. The two of them had shared a host of dreams, ranging from erotic to bizarre to nightmares. Last night, however, had been a cavalcade of torture, death, and pain featuring Drusilla and Angel. Spike had almost thought it was his dream at first, but the small details showed that it was Buffy's. Drusilla was impersonal, filtered through Buffy's viewpoint of her. Angel had been infatuated with Buffy, giving little attention to Spike.

Their usual trick of waking themselves up at the start of a nightmare hadn't worked. They'd been stuck in the labyrinth of despair.

And Buffy had steadfastly refused to talk about it. Well, until now.

"I don't know what to say," Buffy admitted.

"You still think about Angel a lot?"

"Kinda hard not to after everything that's happened, isn't it?" Buffy got defensive. "I mean, it's not like he doesn't show up in your dreams, either, so I don't know what's the big deal about him making an appearance in mine."

"Difference is, in my dreams Angel doesn't pin my hands to the wall with a knife and rape me."

Buffy's knuckles were white. "Did he ever...? In real life, did he...?"

Spike frowned. "Why are you asking?"

The brakes screeched as Buffy brought the car to a sudden halt. Spike put his hand to the dash to steady himself. As soon as they'd stopped, Buffy turned to Spike, her face bright red.

"He tortured you, Spike. This man that I had given my entire adolescence to brutally tortured you. I feel sick thinking about it." Her face contorted. "All the times I let him hold me, I let him comfort me...all those times..." Buffy shook her head. "I'd rationalized so much about him when I was younger. Since I didn't know any of his victims, I could let myself believe in the fantasy that he was a good man. I deluded myself. Did until...what he did to you.

"But it's not the first time he did that to you, isn't it? You've known all this time the extent of what he is, and I never..." Her hands gestured, but she struggled to find the right words. Spike decided to take things up from there.

"What can I tell you, Buffy? Yeah, I knew all about Angel. Soul or not, the bloke gets his jollies from the hurt. Soul just put a damper on it. Working for Wolfram & Hart, though, wore it down. Brought out his old self." He reached over and grabbed one of her hands. "None of it's your fault, love."

"Isn't it? Dawn knew immediately that something was fishy about Angel's story. Me? I just moped about, doing nothing. I..."

"Saved me." Spike said. "You saved me. Brought me back. Rallied the whole Slayer outfit to help you do so. Risked everything. For me." He sought her eyes, but she kept them averted. "You have no blame in this, Buffy."

She exhaled a shaky breath, brushing away at the tears that were forming. "I've just, for so long, I've ignored who Angel really is." She looked up at him. "I didn't want to know. Now I do. I want to know everything about him. I don't want to run from the truth anymore, Spike."

Spike considered his answer. "What about me?"

Buffy blinked. "What about you?"

"You think I don't have a past with buckets of blood in it? You want to know about your former now that he's gone. When do you think you'll be able to stomach hearing about my dark deeds?"

Buffy looked out the front window. The headlights faded into the distance. Outside was pitch dark.

When she finally spoke, her voice was soft. "Angel was cursed against his will with a soul. When he lost it, he wanted nothing more than to keep it lost. He was...a monster." She looked at him again. "You're not like him, Spike. Your soul is earned. I don't feel like I'm deceiving myself in believing that you're a good person."

Spike raised an eyebrow. He almost interjected, but Buffy raised a hand to cut him off.

She continued, "Angel didn't like to tell me stories of his past. The few times I asked, he was reluctant. You wouldn't be, and that makes you the better man. You'd sit here now and rattle off all the people you'd killed - well, all that you remembered. Marvin's girlfriend, Linh, or Robin's mother or, I don't know, whoever else you've killed. If that's something you feel you need to do to make peace with yourself, I'm happy to be there for you. I know who you are, though, Spike, so much more than I ever knew Angel. Years ago, when you first fell in love with me, I was already convinced you were a monster. What I needed to learn was that you're much, much more than that."

Her thumb skirted over his knuckle. "What I need is to know about Angel."

Spike nodded. His throat was tight, humbled by what Buffy was telling him. Any response he could come up with felt insufficient. Instead, he simply acquiesced. "Then I'll tell you about Angel."

*    *    *    *    *

"Mine," Spike whispered into the curve of Buffy's neck, lips brushing against the blood pooling to the surface from his fangs' marks.

Buffy gasped. "Yours."

When Spike raised his head, Buffy's eyes were half-closed in an expression of ecstasy. Her most beautiful state for Spike. If he could keep her looking like that as much as unhumanly possible during their immortal life, he would have no worries.

With a speed that belied her sated posture, Buffy lunged up, clamping down on Spike's neck with blunt teeth. Using her slayer strength, she didn't pause until she'd broken skin and torn through the vein.

Spike's turn to gasp. His hand tangled in her hair.

"Mine," Buffy said around a mouthful of his flesh and blood.

"Always yours," he said.

When Buffy released him, she allowed her body to fall back against the pillow. His blood spattered across her lips along with a satisfied smile. Spike couldn't keep from leaning forward to lick the blood from her mouth.

"Anybody ever tell you vampires that this whole blood thing is kinda gross?" Buffy asked.

Spike rolled off her to the side, propping himself up on an elbow. She stretched her arms overhead, letting them rest on the pillow beside her head. Doing so stretched her breasts against her ribs and elongated her torso. Spike's eyes were pulled to watch her body shift.

"You seemed to get off on it," he said absently, eying the spot where the sheet hit her hip right above her vagina. Tantalizing glimpses of flesh that never failed to excite him.

"Not hard for you to get me off," Buffy commented.

Spike realized that Buffy was watching him, and he brought his own attention to her face. She studied him as if searching for something.

"What?" he asked.

Her eyes flickered. "We're forever now."

It wasn't a question or a protest. It was a simple statement of truth. Her voice carried acceptance and contentment with it.

Spike brought a hand to her cheek, running a knuckle down to her chin. "Suits me fine."

Buffy smiled. "Me, too."

Their moments of truths had come and gone, dusted along with their former lovers - their former lives. In its place, they'd found the security of each other and the strength they shared together. Spike could hardly remember the insecurity he'd felt at the start of this whole thing. It was so distant as to be nonexistent. Now, he knew that what he had with Buffy was right. Was strong and secure. He was cast off by vampire society, by his former kin, by the demon world entirely. None of that mattered, though, because he was with Buffy. He was hers.

He was kept.