Author's Notes: Watch out!! This is the THIRD PART of this 'episode'/'chapter'. Make sure you read Part One, 'William' and Part Two, 'The Bloody' first :)
 
A/Ns from previous two chapters apply here.
 
Also, at this point, I would like to extend my thanks to a reader named DeepBlueJoy, for their comments earlier on in this fic. If not for them, this 'episode' wouldn't look the way that it does. I originally wrote it pretty much in line with the episode 'Angel', but then concocted something else after reading their review. So, if you happen to still be around, thank you!! I am so much happier with this chapter now that I made the changes you inspired :)

  

---

 
Slayer would probably throw a fit when she found him on her front porch, but… this seemed like the best place to go looking for her. Joyce’s car was in the driveway, which meant she’d be unlikely to start swinging stakes the second she opened her front door. Probably a bit cowardly to be using the older woman as a metaphorical shield, but considering the position he was in, he didn’t have much choice.
 
By the third time he’d lifted his knuckles to knock and dropped them back down again, Spike realized that something was a little… off… here. There was an unfamiliar scent at the front door. Fresh. Female, he could tell, but… there was something rotten in it.
 
He figured it out in the same instant that a scream erupted from inside. Paralyzed for a second, he remembered that he already had the invite he needed. Spike burst through the door and immediately heard the echo of growls in the kitchen. In there he found a girl- a vampire –with her fangs sunken into Joyce’s throat, the woman slumped against her.
 
Roaring, he charged at her, grabbing the first wooden implement he could find and driving it into the bitch’s back. Joyce crumpled to the floor, and he couldn’t help following her. Couldn’t stop his demon as it drew him toward the scent of her blood. Fresh. Hot. Alive.
 
God, it had been so long. So long since he…
 
This time, Spike did feel the creature within him erupt to the surface. Felt the scent of the crimson elixir sharpen to an even finer point as his vampiric nostrils soaked it up.
 
He knew Joyce wasn’t dead. Wasn’t even close to it. Still had plenty of fluid left in her, plenty to spare.
 
You could, the vile thing within him whispered, urging him forward. Just a little nibble…
 

|#|+---+---+|#|

 
Every stride she’d taken home felt as if it had been weighed down by a stack of lead bricks. This might’ve been the first time since moving to Sunnydale that she truly felt glad to be home. That she’d sincerely thought of this house as home.
 
She wanted nothing more than to go inside, beg her Mom to make her a cup or twelve of hot chocolate, and curl up in front of the television with whatever mindless comedy she managed to pull off the shelf first.
 
Climbing up onto the front porch though, Buffy saw that the door was ajar. Weird. She looked over to the driveway. Maybe her Mom was bringing some groceries in…?
 
She shrugged out of her jacket and tossed it on the railing, heading for the kitchen.
 
For the second time in as many days, Buffy felt everything in her body seize up when she saw him. Spike.
 
His back was to her, and he was crouched down on the floor. Holding something in his arms.
 
No. Not something.
 
Someone.
 
“Mom?”
 
Her voice seemed to startle him, and he snapped around to face her, snarling.
 
Buffy didn’t see the way his face relaxed once he recognized her. Didn’t hear him murmur her name. Instead, something deep and primal and vicious revved up inside of her, and she charged forward. Grabbed two fistfuls of his leather jacket, and hauled him toward the back door.
 

|#|+---+---+|#|

 
Spike took out a portion of the railing as he sailed through the air. Landed hard in the grass, his hip connecting with the edge of one of the two-by-fours he’d brought with him. When he looked up, she was standing at the edge of the stairs, arms crossed, glaring down at him.
 
“You’re not welcome here,” Buffy said in a tone that had not a drop of negotiation diluting it. “You come near us again, and I’ll kill you.”
 
He just stared back, his mind still attempting to recall everything that had just happened. It was nothing but a blur, a haze of overwhelming scents swirling around a mass of confusion and rage and panic. He would’ve protested, would’ve said something in his own defense, but the door was already slamming behind her.
 

|#|+---+---+|#|

 
“Mom? Mom!” Buffy knelt beside her, felt for a pulse with one hand and held the phone in the other. Waited for what felt like a century before the echo of her mother’s heartbeat thrummed against her fingertips.
 
“Nine-one-one emergency,” said a voice on the other end of the line.
 
“Yes, I need an ambulance!” she barked into the receiver. “Sixteen-thirty Revello Drive! My mother cut herself, she lost a lot of blood! Please, please hurry!” She was about to drop the phone when the operator’s voice trickled through it again.
 
“Uh, Miss? You said sixteen-thirty Revello?”
 
“Yes! One-six-three-zero Revello Drive. In Sunnydale!”
 
“I… I know where…” the operator stopped, took a quick breath. “Miss, an ambulance has already been dispatched to that address.”
 

|#|+---+---+|#|

 
Two hours she’d been searching now, and she hadn’t been able to find him. Not at the Bronze, not in any of the housing complexes nearby, not in any of the cemeteries he’d tracked her down in before.
 
Part of her hoped he’d already skipped town. Run somewhere far, far away where she’d never have to track him down. Never have to stake him.
 
On the other hand, finding him would mean that she hadn’t been running all over Sunnydale wielding a crossbow for no reason. Glad as she was to be holding a weapon a little more high tech than a stake, she didn’t enjoy trying to convince the people passing her on the street that no, they didn’t need to call the police. Or buy her a first class ticket to the puzzle factory.
 
By about the third abandoned warehouse she’d hit, pieces from that night started clicking together in her mind, and the picture they formed didn’t look quite the way she’d expected it to. She hadn’t thought much about what she’d encountered when she walked into her kitchen earlier that night. She’d been too worried about her mother, too enraged by the sight of Spike crouched over her…
 
But now, having made her way from one end of town to the other and back again, she’d had nothing but time to think about it.
 
She thought about how from the way he was positioned, Spike’s fangs couldn’t have been fastened to her mother’s neck when she walked in.
 
She remembered the 9-1-1 dispatcher telling her that there was already an ambulance on its way to her house. At the time, mind too clouded by concern for her mother’s life, Buffy thought the lady was just trying to tell her not to panic. Don’t worry, I’ve already got one on the way, I was just confirming the address… but had she actually meant that someone had called for help before she’d even picked up the phone? That Spike had…
 
Stopping dead in the street, a final memory from earlier that evening overtook her. When she was kneeling next to her mother, trying to revive her, there was something gritty on the floor around them. It had crunched under her boots. After she stood up, she remembered wiping her hands on her pants. Leaving behind little finger-shaped tattoos of dirt.
 
No. Not dirt.
 
Vamp dust.
 
She could still make out the faded markings on her thighs, similar in texture and colour to the jagged circles on her knees.
 
Buffy didn’t know what it meant. It certainly wasn’t enough to exonerate Spike, but… it was another indication that things perhaps hadn’t been what they’d seemed on her arrival. Veering left when she’d originally intended to go right, she headed back home. She’d have to have another look in her kitchen; make sure that she was right about this, and that the granules stuck to her clothes weren’t just flecks of dirt that Spike or someone else had tracked inside.
 
She was still a good twenty houses away from her own address, but even from this distance she could see him in her front yard. He was kind of hard to miss with that hair. Pacing back and forth across the lawn, cigarette being lifted to his lips every ten or fifteen seconds. Guy was lucky he didn’t have to breathe, or worry about little nuisances like lung cancer.
 
Despite her suspicions, Buffy spent those last few blocks building a fortress around her emotions. Blocking out any small measure of affection she felt for him. Instead, she pushed to the forefront of her psyche all the things she knew about him. Spike was a vampire. One who’d gone on a killing spree that lasted more than two decades and spanned whole continents.
 
Continents. Plural.
 
He had extinguished the lives of two Slayers before her.
 
Plus, there was every possibility that all of this- right down to the reasons she had to believe he might be innocent –were a part of some big game he was playing. Maybe Spike was as manipulative as he was savage. Maybe he liked to screw with his victims before he took them out.
 
Lifting her crossbow, she watched him through its sight as she made her final approach. Ready to shoot if he decided to lunge at her.
 
Spike didn’t look up until she was standing at the outer lip of her front walkway. He jerked to a halt, cigarette stuck between his lips, staring at her with the eyes of a deer caught at the edge of a watering hole by a hunter. Several beats of silence yawned between them before he snatched the burning stick from his lips and tossed it away. “Slayer.”
 
She noticed that the front yard was littered with butts. How long had he been here? Looking back up at him, she fixed her index finger to the trigger. “I told you that if you came back, I’d kill you.”
 
“Yeah, you did.”
 
“So what are you doing here? Did you want to find out if I really meant it?”
 
The muscles in his jaw ticked, and he flexed his fingers into tight fists. “Came to speak my piece.”
 
“So talk.”
 
“You really want to do this out here?” he asked, looking around. “Want to have to explain to Mother Dearest why the neighbours saw you holding a crossbow on your history tutor in the middle of the night?”
 
Well… when he put it that way…
 
And she needed to go inside anyway to play Sherlock Holmes with the kitchen floor. 
 
“All right. Get inside. Slowly.”
 
Guiding him through the house, she instructed him to stand with his back against the kitchen door. “Don’t move. Don’t speak. I don’t even want to see you blink your eyes.”
 
“That might-”
 
“What did I just say?”
 
He opened his mouth to protest, but snapped it shut, teeth clicking. Instead he just glowered at her. Crossbow still in hand, she moved forward from the doorway and knelt down in the spot where her mother had been lying a couple of hours ago. Swallowed the outrage that bubbled up in her chest, calming it with the knowledge that she was in a hospital bed now, awake and talking and surrounded by doctors who had her hooked up to all sorts of fluid lines and things that beeped.
 
Inspecting the space, she noticed a greyish brown plume spread across the floor. Like someone had upended a plastic baggie of cocoa mix. It was faint though, and scattered after having been trampled through by her, Spike, and the EMTs. She might’ve even questioned if she was actually seeing what she thought she was seeing, if not for the fact that when he’d walked to the other side of the kitchen just now, Spike had left the stamp of his boot in the vampire remains.
 
Looking up at him again, she slowly straightened to her full height. “Tell me what happened tonight.”
 
“So I can talk now then?”
 
“Spike.”
 
He let out a harsh sigh. “Right. I came by looking for you. Wanted… wanted to talk about what happened. Last night.” He lifted his eyes to the ceiling, indicating her bedroom. “Was standing on the front step when I heard a scream. I came in, saw some vamp latched on to your Mum, and I staked her,” he said, using his hands to act out the series of events. Well, as best he could with them up in the air like a criminal seized by the cops. “Guessing that’s what you were looking at just now.”
 
Although he’d implied it up to this point, she needed to hear him say it. “So you didn’t bite her?”
 
“Of course not.”
 
“Oh, well gee, I’m sorry for jumping to the wrong conclusion when I walk in and see you fanged out over my mother’s unconscious body,” she shot back, annoyed by his tone. Like he couldn’t believe she would ask such a question. Spike seemed to realize his mistake, and stayed silent. “Why didn’t you say anything when I came in?”
 
“Didn’t seem like you were feeling very chatty at the time.”
 
Buffy couldn’t really argue with that. Even if he’d pleaded innocence, she probably still would have thrown him through the railing on the deck. “Okay. Let’s say that I believe what you’re saying. That you didn’t attack her.” She could see that it bothered him that he hadn’t fully convinced her of his innocence, but… well, he was just going to have to un-live with that. “Then… then what is all this? Why have you been coming around here? Feeding me information, helping me… saving my life? Has this all just been some sick game to you?”
 
“There’s no game, Slayer. I’ve been helping you because I want to help.”
 
“That’s bull and you know it! You’re a vampire!” she almost yelled, as if that statement alone was enough to prove that he was lying. She edged closer to him, crossbow still ready to deploy an arrow into his heart. “Giles told me everything. About who… about what you are. The things you’ve done. You really expect me to believe that someone like you just decided to switch teams all of a sudden?”
 
He sighed, gaze falling to the floor momentarily. “Look. I know a thing or two about Watchers. How they operate, the kind of information they’ve got handy. Know the sort of things they probably have to say about yours truly.” His hands were twitching. It was probably killing him to have to stand so still. To not be able to calm his nerves with a hit of nicotine. Again, Buffy was finding it tough to care. “But they don’t know everything.”
 
“Fine. Then you tell me what I need to know. Tell me why I shouldn’t do the world a favour and pull this trigger right now.”
 
What startled Buffy the most at this point was the fact that… despite the accusations she was levelling at him, despite the fact that the beast within him must be going mad from being held hostage like this, his gaze was constantly glimmering with a light of understanding. As if he could appreciate why she was treating him like this… as if he knew that it was necessary.
 
“Guess I should start at the beginning,” he mused aloud. Looking down, he scuffed a boot against the tiled floor. “I was turned at the tail end of the last century by a bird who’s about as crazy as they come. Right from the start I had myself a gang that looked at humans like they were little Happy Meals with legs. Some of them you ate, some of them you played with… sometimes you did a bit of both. I spent a quarter century running with them, and I enjoyed every bloody second of it.” It was frightening how sincere he sounded when he said that. Buffy tightened her grip on her weapon.
 
“Something happened though.”
 
“That it did,” he confirmed with a twist of a smile. “Made the mistake of feeding on this one girl. Beautiful. Dumb as a box of rocks, but had a good sense of humour about things. She was a favourite among her clan.”
 
“Her clan?”
 
“Romani. Gypsies,” he clarified. “Funny thing is, I wasn’t even the one who had my eye on her, but…” he laughed. “Well, I always wonder if he did it on purpose. If he knew what was gonna happen. Stupid sod was jealous, didn’t take well to me getting so famous after…”
 
“Spike,” she prompted him, sensing that he was getting a little bit off track.
 
“Right. Well you see, after learning what I’d done, the elders conjured the perfect punishment for me. They restored my soul.”
 
Oh, big whoop, Buffy thought. His soul? That’s it? “What, they were all out of boils and blinding torment?”
 
He snorted. “I wish they’d gone that route. That I would’ve enjoyed by comparison.” Off her questioning look, he continued. “Look, becoming a vampire… it means the demon takes over your body, but your soul gets Hoovered out in the process. Can’t say where it goes, just that it’s gone. There’s no conscience, no remorse. Makes it easy to live the way we do. Can you imagine what it’s like, Slayer… to have done the things that I’ve done, every night for two and a half decades, and to actually give a damn?”
 
No. She really couldn’t. Buffy doubted that what he’d just described was something that any human could comprehend, but… thinking about the atrocities both Giles and Spike himself claimed he was responsible for… a quarter century filled with death and destruction and chaos… she could maybe see how giving Spike back his soul, his ability to feel bad about what he’d done, was a worse punishment than any sort of physical retribution.
 
“There’s something you haven’t told me about yet,” she said, realizing that she’d relaxed in the last few moments. She tightened her muscles back up though, because so far, she hadn’t heard what she needed to hear from him. This was a nice story and all, but… there were still some pieces missing. Big pieces. “Giles… said that you… you have a thing for Slayers.”
 
Something shifted in his gaze then. A shadow of guilt mixed with trepidation. “He did, did he?”
 
“Yeah. He said you’ve killed two of them before. So I think you’re going to tell me about that now.”
 
Spike laughed, shaking his head. “Sorry love, but that particular topic is not on the table for discussion.”
 
“Oh really? Well, I’m thinking that since I’m holding the crossbow here, I’ll be the one who decides what is and isn’t on the menu.”
 
“You don’t want to hear what I have to say, Slayer. Trust me. Not yet, you don’t.”
 
“Actually I do, Spike. I need you to tell me about the girl that you murdered in China.” She spit the word out, although it probably didn’t have much effect on him. After all, murder had been a frequent pastime for him long before he ever encountered his first Slayer. “I need you to tell me about the one in New York. I need you to tell me how it is that seventy years after you supposedly got your soul back, you killed another Slayer.”
 
The look he gave her at that was sharp. Begging her to stop. But she couldn’t. Couldn’t stop the words from tumbling out of her lips. Everything she’d been thinking for the last day and a half had just detonated a few sticks of dynamite at the base of the walls she’d built around her emotions, and now they were rushing out.
 
“Tell me that I’m not just another project to you, Spike. Another Slayer you’ve decided to screw with.” She felt tears starting to tickle the edges of her eyelids, and she did her best to fight them back. She couldn’t break down. Not here. Not now. “Tell me that what we’ve… that what you’ve made me feel for you isn’t…”
 
It was only now that she was able to admit it to herself. That she’d even really realized it…
 
A lot of horrible things had been swirling around her since last night. The discovery that he was a vampire. That he’d probably killed enough people to populate a small country. Including two Slayers. Finding him in her house tonight, crouched over her mother. Standing in the waiting room of the ER, waiting for a doctor to come and tell her that Joyce would be all right.
 
But what bothered her… what was hurting her the most was the idea that everything she’d been feeling for him these last few weeks… the affection, the playful annoyance, the gratitude… was all a lie. That it wasn’t enough for him to mess with her life, her friends, her family… that he actually had to use her heart as a prop in this gruesome little play of his.
 
“Slayer, stop.” His leg twitched, and he shifted his hand halfway to her face before he dropped it again, apparently determined to abide by the restrictions she’d placed on him. He squeezed his eyes shut, clenched his jaw. Cast a weary look around the room before finally settling his gaze on her again. “Listen. I’ve been around a long time, all right? My past…” He shook his head. “It’s big, it’s ugly, and it’s complicated. That Slayer. The one in New York. It’s a long story, pet, but… I promise you. No matter what’s in those books your Watcher’s got, they don’t know the whole of it. I didn’t… it’s not how it seems, yeah?”
 
She supposed she could believe that much. After all, they apparently hadn’t known that he was all soul-having, so… it was possible there was something missing from their account of what happened to that particular Slayer.
 
Still… he hadn’t exactly said that he hadn’t killed her…
 
And just how much room was there for misinterpreting something like the death of a Slayer at the hands of such a notorious vampire?
 
“But as for the other… Buffy… I came here, I came to Sunnydale because of you. Not because I wanted to hurt you, or to toy with you.”
 
She could tell that he wanted to touch her. Even though he hadn’t tried to reach for her again, he was leaning towards her. Bobbing on the balls of his feet. She couldn’t let him do it though. Couldn’t lower her weapon, couldn’t let him build that bridge between them. If she let him in now, she knew he’d never leave… and there was still too much uncertainty. Too much she didn’t know.
 
God, even this soul he claimed to have… it was still just that. A claim.
 
“What you feel for me,” he continued. “You’re not alone in that, pet. Last night in your bedroom, when we kissed…” He lowered his head as he pushed a sharp breath out of his chest. “If you had any idea-”
 
“Buffy!”
 
She didn’t know if she was relieved or enraged when Giles’ voice severed whatever Spike had been about to say. “Yeah, I’m here!”
 
Willow called out next. “Spike didn’t attack your Mom, Buffy! It was-”
 
It physically ached to tear her gaze away from his. “I know,” she said, watching the three of them come around the corner, faces the colour cherry lollipops. “Did you guys run here from the hospital? Giles, you have a car, don’t you?”
 
“So you haven’t dusted him already?” Willow asked, not waiting for the librarian to answer.
 
She frowned. “Uh, no, hence why he’s-” she turned around to point out that he was standing less than two feet from her… but he was gone. The kitchen door was hanging open, and she heard something crash into the bushes outside. “No. I didn’t.”
 

|#|+---+---+|#|

 
“Ah, the post-fumigation party.”
 
Marvelling at her friend’s appreciation for yet another thing that would’ve seemed absurd anywhere outside of Sunnydale, Buffy figured this was one of those times where it was just easier to ask for clarification. “Okay, so what’s the difference between this and the pre-fumigation party?”
 
“Much hardier cockroaches,” Xander answered, clearly a repeat participant in this tradition.
 
“So, no word from Spike?” It was a question Willow had been asking every three or four hours for the last two days.
 
“Nah,” she said, trying not to let any of the tumultuous emotions she associated with him leak into that tiny word. She’d sounded nonchalant, right? Totally at ease with the whole situation? “I think it’s gonna be a while though before I stop expecting him to just show up and be all ‘got some-’”
 
“Information for you, Slayer. If you’re interested.”
 
Buffy froze at the sound of his voice behind her. Was she hallucinating? No. No, she couldn’t be. Not with the way Willow was grinning at her, or the look on Xander’s face that was equal parts surprised, homicidal, and intimidated. Spinning around fast enough to give herself whiplash, she plunged into a deep blue ocean, skin tingling from the discharge of electricity that surrounded him.
 
“Um, we’re just gonna…” Willow mumbled. “Over there, we’ll… look, Xander! Shiny things!”
 
“Huh? What? I don’t-”
 
“And cookies!”
 
She was barely aware of the sound of Willow dragging the brunette away, senses too full of everything the vampire was pouring into them. Even standing still, it was a lot to absorb. The glimmering sapphires that consumed her, the jagged scar on his eyebrow, the cool breeze wafting over her with his soft, shallow breaths- what kind of vampire breathed, anyway? –the rich scent of leather and tobacco that followed him as though it was a part of his very aura.
 
“H-hi,” she finally managed to breathe out, dispatching a weak smile in accompaniment.
 
“Hello, pet.”
 
Damn him. How did he sound so calm? And… after another thirty seconds dribbled by where they just stared at each other, she wondered… why wasn’t he saying anything else? If he was so calm, why didn’t he decide on a starting point for this conversation? “So… you… sort of bailed, the other night.” He’d better not give her any cut-eye for that opener. It was the best she could do, and it was his fault that every other thinking process in her brain had shut down.
 
“I did.” He nodded. “Didn’t much fancy sticking around for an enlightening chat with your dear Watcher and the Wonder Twins.”
 
“I get that.”
 
“Wanted to see how your Mum was doing though.”
 
“She’s good. Still a little confused about how she cut herself on a barbeque fork that doesn’t exist, but… other than that, peachy with a side of keen.”
 
“Good.” Another nod. “Good.” His gaze was roaming over her face now, unable to fix on a certain point. He lifted his hand, but hesitated. Seemed to undergo some serious internal debate before finally coming to a decision and capturing a loose ribbon of her hair. Running his fingers down its length, he lifted them to repeat the motion once he’d reached the end. “Listen, Slayer. This thing between us…”
 
“Can’t ever be anything. I know.” His gaze sharpened, forehead crinkling into a frown. Apparently her conclusion was a surprise to him. “I mean… it… it can’t. I… can’t…”
 
Now his other hand was in her hair, joining its mate to tangle in the golden tendrils, fingertips massaging their foundation. She heard him take a deep breath, and his forehead touched hers. “I get you, Slayer. Didn’t really think… but I get you.”
 
There was only one thing she’d been able to decide for sure in the days since their conversation in her kitchen. And that was the fact that she still wanted him. Even knowing what he was, knowing the things he’d done… Buffy couldn’t dismantle the part of her that felt connected to him. Couldn’t find the switch she needed to flip in order to deactivate the craving for his touch, now that she’d had a taste of it. 
 
She wanted him for the fact that she’d never have to explain away the bruises she wore when she got home at night. For the fact that he would be impressed, rather than horrified, by the contents of her weapons chest. She wanted the fact that he could be strong for her in the times when she’d need it most- when the Master finally found a new way to escape from his mystical prison, or when some other big nasty decided to come after her.
 
Yet here they stood, on opposite sides of some ancient, mystical divide that opened a chasm between them the size of the Grand Canyon, even when their toes were close enough to be touching.
 
He breathed against her again, shoulders rising and falling, bringing with them the hands she didn’t realize she’d placed there. “But, Christ, Slayer… you smell so…”
 
“Spike?”
 
“Yeah.”
 
“Kiss me.”
 
His lips touched hers before she’d even finished voicing her request, and she let out a startled little whimper. Fingers already splayed over his neck, she wrapped both arms around his shoulders to clutch him closer. Pressed her body flush against his, and sighed with relief. His tongue slipped into her mouth, and she found herself pushing back. Wanting to taste the chilled walls of his moist cave, to memorize every dip and groove and angle. If this was the only chance she’d get to do so, she wanted to possess him in the most thorough way possible considering that they were in a public area.
 
His hand skimmed down her back as her own tangled in his hair. He slid around to grip her flanks, and squeezed. She pulled at his vanilla locks as though she were trying to suck the flavour out of them through her fingertips.
 
“Slayer…” he panted, diving back in for another kiss, nibbling at her lower lip as he pulled away again. “We keep going like this, I won’t be able to…”
 
Breathing hard, her chest pressed against his with each inhalation, but she couldn’t force herself to move back for the sake of getting more air. “I know. I know.” One more, she told herself, pressing her lips to his in a chaste encounter. She slid her hands down to cup his cheeks, and gave him one last long, lingering kiss. It was then that the scent of seared flesh made it to her nostrils, and she looked down. “I didn’t… hurt you too much, did I?” she asked, somewhat ashamed.
 
Sneaking out from beneath the neckline of his t-shirt was a rectangle of sweltering skin. Touching her finger to the outermost edge of the ruby red, glistening blemish, she looked up to him with apology in her eyes. She already knew it was going to hurt when they walked away tonight… she hadn’t intended to also leave him in physical pain.
 
“Nah,” he assured her, lifting a finger to the cross around her neck, but not quite making contact with it. “Besides, it’s my own fault for giving you the bloody thing, isn’t it?”
 
“Yeah,” she tried to smile around her frown, around the despair that was scrabbling to the surface of her features with the realization that this was it. “Way to go.”
 
Spike laughed, untangling his arms from where they were still embracing her, and taking a gentle step back. “Right.” He sighed, running both hands through his hair to smooth down the mess of curls she’d created.
 
“I guess I’ll see you around?”
 
“Yeah.” Before she could turn around though, he spoke one last time. “Just… promise me one thing, Slayer? You plan to go on any dates in the future, send out a memo, yeah? Wouldn’t want to have to… you know… break that pesky rule I have about not dismembering people anymore.”
 
For the sake of her own sanity, Buffy decided to skim over the fact that he’d said ‘anymore’, and nodded. “Yeah. Will do,” she promised him. Even though, after tonight… after everything she’d gone through in the last week, she really didn’t it was going to be an issue. For a long, long time.