It occurred to Buffy about a third of her way to the crypts that a montage would make everything better: some kind of roaring orchestral piece. Or maybe a power ballad. Something to fast forward through her more humiliating trips and falls and make each step feel just that little bit less slow and painful. But no. It was just one long agonising hobbling, hopping crawl across wet, slippery grass and mossy grave-markers.
 
Then, just when looking up at the remaining distance was becoming a hopeful exercise instead of a hopeless one, the first scavengers arrived: a pack of shambling, rotting ghouls.
 
Buffy launched herself off of the gravestone currently supporting her weight and brought her stake down hard on the nose – well, naked cartilage, really – of the first one that approached. It screamed, putrid grave-breath making Buffy gag, as the top third of its head caved in around the hole the stake made.
 
Ew.
 
Clearly, someone hadn’t been patrolling very well while she’d been dead: ghouls were dumber than a box of rocks and very, very easy to kill unless they swarmed you. Kinda like supernatural weeds.
 
A solid punch sent its jaw flying through the air, at which point the ghoul finally stopped screaming. Buffy then yanked off one of its arms and tried for a home run against its knees. When it toppled over, the rest of the pack shifted direction to go after their flailing fallen packmate. She threw its arm down the hill, and a few more went after that.
 
Morons. They might actually have overpowered her if they hadn’t gotten distracted. She shuddered at the thought of ghoul slobber and started moving again. She could outrun – outshuffle? – them now, given the short distance left between her and the first crypt.
 
The pair of vampires who literally ran into her as they were coming out of that self-same crypt was a more worrying surprise.
 
Buffy resisted the urge to scream out her frustration, deciding instead that she was just going to kill Spike – slowly and painfully – after she survived the night. There shouldn’t be ghouls or nesting vamps in her cemetery. It was just … disrespectful.
 
Buffy managed to stake the first one while they were all still reeling from the shock. The second was more challenging, but desperation and frustrated anger had given Buffy back a bit of her missing edge. He’d gone straight for her bloody shoulder, though, forcing the already-embedded fangs deeper and ripping the holes bigger. Her slow trickle amped up to a steady ooze.
 
Buffy half-fell into the newly emptied crypt, slamming the door behind her. After tying her belt around her arm in an attempt to stem the blood flow, she turned her attention to barricades. The crypt’s residents had kindly left a sarcophagus handy for that purpose, but unfortunately, trying to shove it across the door with only one good leg and one good arm was difficult, time-consuming, and making her blood pump harder and faster. Buffy managed to get it halfway across before deciding that was going to have to be good enough.
 
Collapsing on the floor alongside the deliciously cool stone of the sarcophagus, she took a moment to slam her knee back into place, then promptly passed out.
 
 
 
------------------------------------------
 
 
 
“… and then she bit off a chunk of his shoulder, and he was so surprised he just let her stake him. I barely had to do anything, and it turned out they were pretty rich, even if they were wearing pleather.”
 
“That doesn’t sound like Buffy….” Jonathan said dubiously.
 
“Oh, it was me,” the bot said, nodding and smiling. “Only a little better-dressed.” She looked down at her outfit, now the worse for wear from too many nights out mugging vampires.
 
“She’s really alive,” Andrew breathed reverently.
 
Warren was frowning, deep in thought. “We need to find out one way or the other.”
 
“What, like go knock on her door or something?” Jonathan asked.
 
“Ooh! Ooh!” Andrew said, waving his hand like he was still in school.
 
The other two stared at him in incredulity. Finally, Warren said, “Speak, Andrew.”
 
“We could turn her world into Sliver.”
 
“That was a terrible movie!” Jonathan groaned. “Not even bad enough for Razzies.”
 
“But just think!” Andrew said. “Naked shower scene?”
 
All three of them paused to stare off to one side, imagining naked, soapy, Buffy. It was weird picturing that with the bot standing all quiet and quiescent in the room, but they managed. They were strong-minded that way.
 
Warren snapped out of it first. “While we’re filming, we could test her – find her weaknesses, so we can exploit them in our plans.”
 
“Hey, maybe we could have a contest!” Jonathan said eagerly. “You know, whoever has the best trial wins a … a … what could we win?”
 
“Um, he could be the leader for a week?” Andrew suggested.
 
“No,” Warren said. “I’m the leader here. You two would still be living in your moms’ basements if it weren’t for me.”
 
“Uh, Warren, we still kinda are….”
 
“Not the point!” Warren shouted. “Look, you two start thinking about your lame-ass trials. I’ll start rigging up a surveillance system. This is gonna be fun.”
 
 
 
------------------------------------------
 
 
 
Some hindbrain sense of self-preservation jolted Spike awake along with the pre-dawn chorus. He was moist with … dew, he hoped … and his head hurt. As did absolutely everything else. He reckoned he must be more sober by now, what with the headache and the being-awake, but when he tried (and failed) to stand up, he discovered that he was instead in that awful death-rattle of a good bender when you’re both drunk and hung over at the same time.
 
He groaned and tried again to stand – more successfully this time. As he started looking around, he was a bit puzzled to find himself in a cemetery. He had zero recollection of getting there and wasn’t even entirely sure which one he was in. There’d been a brilliant bar fight, he remembered that much, and then walking … but that was it.
 
There was a bank of crypts not too far distant, and Spike reckoned at this time of night they were a better bet than trying to guess which way to stagger home. He couldn’t say for sure if there were four of them or forty, but there was at least one, and that ought to do well enough.
 
He started moving slowly up the hill. After a dozen or so steps, he noticed his left foot was rather colder and wetter than it ought to have been.
 
He paused to look himself over. There were bits of rotted … something… all over his trousers. His left boot showed tooth marks and a couple of tears, but the draughty right boot could no longer truly be described as one. Its leather had been almost entirely gnawed off, leaving Spike with an anklet of shoelace and a socked foot fully open to the elements.
 
He was pretty sure there’d been two boots when he’d had his little lie-down.
 
Spike had been followed home from bar fights before – it was mostly why he’d stopped having this kind of Saturday night – so he gave himself a quick once over for injuries. There wasn’t anything major, but what there was looked like … dog attack? He took in a good sharp sniff of the gunk on his trousers and got a headful of:
 
Ghoul stench? Bollocks.
 
That was just … embarrassing – like having cockroaches. It also meant he had to be in Sunnydale Memorial. It was the only place he’d avoided enough that there could be ghouls.
 
Shaking his head, Spike started trudging back towards the crypts. He’d have to come back tomorrow night with fire: only way to really get rid of the buggers.
 
A few steps away from the first of the crypts, he caught the scent of fresh blood. Buffy’s blood. And it was sprayed all over the door to one of the crypts.
 
 
 
------------------------------------------
 
 
 
The pounding cracks and splinters of breaking wood woke Buffy up with a start. She opened bleary eyes and saw a panic-stricken Spike frantically smashing the crypt’s heavy wooden door to pieces with a stolen piece of column.
 
Clearly her barricade had been nowhere near good enough.
 
“Buffy?” He hurled himself through the hole he’d made in the door, scratching his face and arms on shards of split wood as he burst through. His attempt to vault over the sarcophagus failed when his socked foot couldn’t get traction on the smooth stone, so he ended up falling face-first, sprawled out on the floor in front of her.
 
“Fuck, that hurt,” he mumbled, before edging himself up onto all fours, panting slightly. The shock of falling seemed to have jarred the last vestiges of drunkenness out of him, leaving only the hangover.
 
Buffy just stared at him for a few seconds. Then she hurled her stake at his head, blunt-side first. “IDIOT!”
 
“Ow!” he shouted, glaring at her. “Thought you were gettin’ drained in here!”
 
“What, so I’m Bonnie Taylor now?” Buffy gestured towards the gaping hole where the door had once been. “I was just fine until you destroyed my barricade!”
 
“The way this place reeks of soddin’ Slayer blood? That wouldn’t’ve kept out a kitten!”
 
“You let ghouls into my cemetery!” Buffy screeched.
 
“I know!” he shouted back. “They ate my bloody boot off!” Spike collapsed back onto his side, suddenly feeling unfit even for the glue factory.
 
Buffy looked over Spike’s ghoul damage. After a second, she started to giggle. She’d been numb before – concentrating on whatever the next thing was she needed to do to keep going, to survive. But her adrenaline high was gone now and she was exhausted and in pain and Spike had just taken the mother of all pratfalls and he was covered in ghoul yuck and only had one boot and suddenly it was the funniest thing she’d ever seen in her entire life.
 
Spike’s expression – sulky and sullen as a little kid – just made it funnier.
 
Once she’d laughed herself out, Spike propped himself up on one elbow and quietly asked, “Not like you to get this badly banged up.” He craned his neck to get a better look at her shoulder. “I’n’t the whole point not to get bit?”
 
She told him what had happened – even the lost time, to her surprise. She was still angry at him for telling Giles about that. He didn’t say much, just listened. That was even more surprising.
 
“Why’d you come out, anyway?” he asked finally.
 
She pointed at herself. “Slayer, dumbass.”
 
Spike snorted disdainfully. “Did the full rounds last night. No reason to come out tonight as well.”
 
“Uh, ghouls much?” She waved her hard around. “Inhabited crypts?”
 
Spike just rolled his eyes. “You know what your problem is? You’re so caught up in the soddin’ mission, you’ve forgotten what it’s like to live.”
 
Buffy laughed, brittle and sharp. “When should I have been living, Spike? While hellions were trying to take over Sunnydale? Or maybe when Glory was trying to end the world? Oh, no, wait! It’s while my mom was dying, right?”
 
“None of that was today, though, was it?” he asked gently.
 
Buffy shifted uncomfortably. “No.” They sat in wary silence for a while. Then, “Spike?”
 
He made a noncommittal grunting noise.
 
“Why did you stay? When I was dead, I mean. You don’t … the whole keeping-the-world-safe isn’t exactly your thing.”
 
Spike turned back to her. “Promised to keep Dawn safe, didn’ I?”
 
“Yeah, but … patrolling?”
 
He shrugged. “Didn’t start out like that. I was … angry, I guess? Wanted to take it out on somethin’. Sort of got to be habit.”
 
“I don’t know if I’ve ever thanked y—”
 
“Never have.”
 
Buffy rolled her eyes. “Well, thank you.” She paused. “Even though you did a lousy job on the patrolling part.”
 
“Welcome,” Spike said quietly. He sat up and went to sit next to her. Without really thinking about it, Buffy leaned against him.
 
“When I used to, uh, walk by your house from time to time—”
 
“When you were stalking me, you mean?” she asked.
 
He grimaced. “Point is, back then you were existin’, not livin’. Barely sleeping or eating. All stoic and smiling if anyone was there to see, then bawlin’ your eyes out soon’s you were alone with the dishes.”
 
Buffy pulled away from him and let out a slow, shaky breath. She’d known he was … around … a lot, back then, but it felt invasive and creepy knowing anyone had witnessed her nightly routine of crying-with-chores. Weirdly, she didn’t feel anywhere near as disturbed as she’d expected to – maybe because of what else Spike had witnessed the last couple weeks, “Guess I need to work on that vamp-dar, huh?” she said, trying to make light of it.
 
Spike grinned. “Pro’ly.”
 
“Or maybe I just need better curtains in my kitchen.”
 
He scratched awkwardly at the back of his neck. “I, uh … might possibly’ve spent more time in the basement than the back yard….”
 
Buffy counted to ten in her head, focusing on deep, even breaths. “How often were you inside my house?”
 
“Er, a lot?”
 
Buffy suddenly had imminent-meltdown face.
 
“‘M very, very sorry,” Spike said quickly.
 
“Tell me that you get how wrong that was.”
 
“Very wrong,” he said, even quicker.
 
“Like, majorly, immediate stake-to-the-heart wrong.”
 
Spike nodded rapidly.
 
Buffy sighed. “And you felt the need to tell me this now because why?”
 
“‘Cause you’re goin’ straight back to it!” he said, frustrated and not at all sure that opening his mouth wasn’t about to backfire. “There’s nothin’ tryin’ to end the world right now. Let your gang of idiots look after you for a change.”
 
Buffy thought about what Tara had said to her earlier – that it would be okay if she admitted she wasn’t okay. Then how much of a relief it had been asking her and Willow for rent money and getting it. Just like asking Anya to take care of the bills and stuff had been. And asking Spike to keep the nightmares away.
 
But none of that really mattered. “They need me to look after them,” Buffy said stoically.
 
Spike laughed. “They’re adults. ‘Bout time they stood on their own two feet.”
 
“Dawn isn’t an adult.”
 
Spike’s voice tightened. “What Dawn needs most is for you to tell her where you really were, and that she’s not to blame for hundreds of years of torture. That gonna happen?”
 
Buffy hunched into herself.
 
“Here.” Spike dropped his cell in her lap. “Why don’t you ring the house and ask someone to come pick us up? Good a place to start as any.”
 
 
 
------------------------------------------
 
 
 
Giles snapped awake at the sound of the phone ringing. He stumbled out of bed and up the stairs to the kitchen, where he saw Tara in the act of picking up the receiver.
 
Tara – not Buffy. Giles’ stomach dropped.
 
“Hello,” Tara said sleepily.
 
While she listened – expression growing increasingly worried – Giles ran through all the possibilities: Buffy was paralysed … dead… turned.
 
“Oh! O-okay, Buffy.”
 
Giles sagged back against the basement door, his knees suddenly threatening to buckle with relief.
 
“Yeah, I’m happy to stay here in case Dawn wakes up.” She stopped to listen again. “‘Kay, bye.” Tara hung up and smiled at Giles, who was pasty and sweating. “She’s fine. Mostly. Just a twist-y knee and stuck in the middle of Sunnydale Memorial.” Tara paused. “Breathe, Giles.”
 
Giles let out a shaky laugh. “Sorry, just….”
 
Tara smiled. “Take my car; go pick them up.”
 
Giles frowned in confusion. “Them?”
 
“Spike’s with her – she was calling from his cell.”
 
 
 
------------------------------------------
 
 
 
Silence reigned on the drive back. Spike and Buffy had opted to save Tara’s upholstery from blood and bits of decomposing ghoul by folding down her back seats and sitting in the hatch. But Giles suspected it had more to do with neither of them being very happy with him just then – he’d had difficult conversations with both of them today and they’d certainly never showed any consideration for his upholstery before. Or Xander’s. Or Cordelia’s, for that matter.
 
And now they were whispering to each other. Again.
 
When they finally arrived back, Spike carried Buffy into the house – as he had carried her into the car before. Giles couldn’t remember her ever submitting to being carried – not while conscious, anyway. But, then again, Buffy’s knee had never been three times its proper size before, either. Perhaps he was overthinking things?
 
Yet Giles felt … superfluous, following them into the house. He hovered in the hallway while Spike set Buffy down at the dining room table and went to get the first aid kit from the kitchen. There was a low murmur of voices as Spike and Tara discussed something.
 
Perhaps she should have been the one to pick them up.
 
Giles stepped cautiously into the dining room. “Er, shall I get you some ice?”
 
Buffy shook her head. “Thanks, but I want a shower first – well, a bath, really.” She smiled weakly. “Not sure I’m up to standing right now.”
 
Spike came back into the dining room with a pair of tweezers and a package of antiseptic wipes. “Those fangs need to come out or your skin’s gonna close ‘round ‘em.”
 
Buffy rolled her eyes. “Ya think?”
 
“F-fangs?” Giles asked weakly. Instead of answering, they launched straight into an argument about whether or not it was necessary to cut Buffy’s shirt off.
 
This had been Giles’ role, once – patching Buffy up after patrols. But she’d stopped coming to him at some point…. Feeling suddenly uncomfortable and useless, Giles left them to it and went into the kitchen.
 
Tara had set the coffeemaker percolating, and the kettle was about to boil. Four mugs sat on the counter, ready to be filled. There was nothing left for Giles to do.
 
He sat down at the breakfast bar, gratefully accepting the tea Tara pressed into his hands a few seconds later. When she went into the dining room with drinks for Spike and Buffy, Giles just let the sound of their voices wash over him.
 
Perhaps it was time he left. He wasn’t needed here. Not really. And there was so much more he could do for Buffy in England.
 
He snapped out of his brown study when he realised that what he was listening to was Spike digging into Buffy’s shoulder to remove the fangs. And it wasn’t hurting him just as much as it was hurting her. That could only mean the chip wasn’t firing.
 
Frozen, Giles heard Buffy haltingly ask Tara to help her get herself into a bath. When the girls started upstairs, Spike came back into the kitchen and started washing the blood – Buffy’s blood – from his hands.
 
“Your chip didn’t go off,” Giles said.
 
Spike stopped and slowly turned towards him. Well that’s bloody torn it – gonna have to tell him everythin’ now, even if she doesn’t want to.
 
Giles stood up, hands scrambling for the stake left lying on the counter.
 
Spike backed away from him slowly, hands out. “Now, now, Rupert. Let’s not do anythin’ rash.”
 
“You’re – dear Lord, you – are you killing again?”
 
“No! It’s just Buffy – I swear. Since she came back.”
 
“I don’t believe you.”
 
Lightning quick, Spike darted in and punched Giles in the face. Then he staggered back against the counter, swearing and holding his head.
 
Giles gingerly rolled his neck. “You could be faking,” he said dubiously. But he was no longer holding the stake in position to strike.
 
Spike looked up. “Why the bloody hell would I want to do that?”
 
His eyes weren’t that bloodshot before throwing that punch. Were they?
 
Giles shrugged, putting down the stake and lightly brushing his fingers over the lump he could feel forming on his cheek. “You needn’t have hit me quite so hard.”
 
Spike rolled his eyes, wincing at the movement. “Still conscious, aren’t you?”
 
Giles harrumphed. Sounding more subdued, he asked, “Are you … are you certain about this?”
 
“Course I’m bloody not!” Spike exclaimed. “How could I be? Might’ve just stopped working on women, for all I know.”
 
“I find that highly unlikely.”
 
Spike sighed. “Doesn’t react at all to Buffy. Certain of that much.”
 
“How?” Giles asked coldly, accusingly.
 
Spike shifted uncomfortably. “Re-set some broken fingers … knocked her out. Plus this, tonight.”
 
“What were you – no, don’t tell me. I don’t want to know. Does she know?”
 
“Haven’t talked about it.” He glared at Giles. “Reckoned the last thing she needed was more reason to be terrified there’s somethin’ wrong with her. Already half-convinced she’s not properly human anymore.”
 
Giles sat down abruptly. After a few seconds, he said, “I do so wish you’d told me that before.”
 
Spike went very, very still. “What did you say to her?”
 
“I may, perhaps, have suggested to her the possibility that she, er, that she came back wrong.”
 
Spike groaned. “Wish I’d hit you harder now.”
 
“How was I to know?” Giles snapped.
 
Spike snorted. “Got a brain in your head, haven’t you? What would you think if you came back from the dead stronger an’ faster an’ going into a soddin’ fugue state that makes you bite the ears off your enemies!”
 
Now Giles went still. “What did she do to the M’Fashnik, Spike?”
 
Spike groaned again, even louder than before. “Buggerin’ FUCK!”
 
“What did she do?”
 
“Beat his head to mush,” Spike said sullenly. “Like a sack of mud, it was.”
 
Giles blanched. “What else has she done?”
 
“Tried to kill me a couple times.”
 
“Not overly concerned with that right now. What else?”
 
Spike sighed. “Took out a nest of ten, easy as pie. No stake.” He paused. “Did somethin’ similar tonight. Then there’s the hellions.”
 
“How many?”
 
“All of ‘em. Tried to help – that was one of the times she tried to kill me.”
 
Giles took off his glasses and rubbed at his eyes. “And that’s aside from the attempt,” he stared down a squirming Spike, “attempts, rather, at harming Dawn?”
 
“There’s nothin’ wrong with her,” Spike said coldly.
 
“Pretty to think so,” Giles snapped. Then he sighed. “While this is … unsettling, it does not impact overly-much on my initial decision: I must go back to England and get expert help.” He put his glasses back on and blinked a few times. “I am reluctant to do that until we have settled the limits – or rather, lack thereof – to your chip.”
 
Spike straightened. “Look, reckon I know someone can check out the chip. Tell us what’s what.”
 
Giles frowned. “You’ve found an Initiative doctor?”
 
Spike laughed. “Fuck, no! Was thinking of Warren Mears.”
 
Giles blinked a few times. “Do you know, that’s actually quite a good idea.”