Buffy listened to the prognoses from Giles over the phone with a sinking feeling. “Well, I really can’t say that I’ve heard of such a thing,” he said. “Not in modern days, at least.”

    “There is no reference to this?” Buffy asked. “The death period for a fledgling is never more than three days before demonic renewal. I’ve never seen a vampire who wasn’t still in transition look dead like this, not unless they were faking on purpose. They breathe, they twitch. Their hearts aren’t beating, but they’re alive. Magically alive, demonically possessed, but alive.” Buffy shook her head, even though Giles couldn’t see it. “Spike looks dead. Really and truly corpse dead.”

    “Well, Spike wasn’t supposed to be alive at all, as I understand it,” Giles said. “Are you sure it’s the same... ah, creature?”

    “It’s the same man,” Buffy insisted. “Angel assures me of it. There’s a goddess thing here who says she can still see his soul inside his body, so he’s not dead like a human being would be. He’s here, he hasn’t been shunted off to heaven or hell. I just don’t know what’s going on.”

    “Well, there have been instances of well known vampires being dead or missing for years, sometimes decades on end,” Giles said.

    “And?” Buffy said.

    “Well... then they come back, of course.”

    He was hedging. She didn’t like it when he hedged, particularly in regards to Spike. “Could you be a little more specific?” Buffy asked.

    Giles sighed. “There are ancient reports of vampires being killed in battle, and not going up in dust,” he said. “There is some debate as to whether or not they were strictly speaking vampires. But on the whole, yes, it does seem to have happened.”

    “So... he might really be dead?” Buffy asked. She was trying to be businesslike about this, but it was getting harder and harder to do.

    “Well, I don’t know,” Giles said. “Because some of these supposedly slaughtered vampires were seen many years later. But it was many years later, and....”

    He trailed off again, and Buffy wanted to shake him, or snatch the book she knew he was looking at out his hand. “Giles,” she said. “Just tell me what we can do.”

    “Well, as far as I can see, there’s nothing to do.”

    “What happened to these non-dusty vampires?” Buffy asked.

    “Well, any corpse would have been buried, of course. When first changed, a vampire will of course just crawl out and run away, but that doesn’t happen in these instances.”

    “What does happen?” Buffy asked.

    “Well, if they come back at all, they come back many years later and they’re staked, of course. Or burned. Or otherwise dusted.”

    “What aren’t you telling me?”

    Giles hesitated again. Finally he said, “Look, Buffy. It might just be kinder to... let him go. He has already gone once. You know what it is to be forced back to a life you shouldn’t still be living.”

    “Giles.” The tone in her voice brooked no more distraction.

    “He might come back as a mindless animal,” Giles admitted, and there was no joy in his tone. “If he comes back at all. If a vampire hasn’t been rendered to dust they can, in theory, heal any other damage, but... a severed spine means the mind is cut off from everything. Cut off even from the demonic magic that keeps it living. If the head was off, the dust would tell you the truth. Since there is still the most tentative connection to the rest of the flesh, the vampire – the demon – still remains within. But the brain – the thing that was once human. That may well be destroyed, or at least severed, forever.”

    Buffy seized on the only safe word in the paragraph. “May? May be, not will be.”

    “Well... there is some chance that being confined to a coffin without blood while weak and healing, combined with the pain of the spinal reattachment had simply driven them mad,” Giles said.

    That was only moderately better.

    “Giles,” Buffy said. Her voice sounded eerily calm to her. “Tell me something. Tell me something I can do.”

    Giles was silent for a long moment. “You only know what you already know,” Giles said. “Don’t confine him, keep him in blood. And give it time.”

    “Decades?”

    “If it’s the lack of blood that keeps them weak, then probably not that long,” Giles said. “That really is all I can say.” He paused. “Buffy. If you’re really set on doing this... you should bind him, and keep a stake on hand. If he does come back, and there is no human mind, a soul will do nothing to contain his bloodlust.”

    “You think I don’t know that?” Buffy asked.

    “I think... that in regards to Spike you often....”

    “Giles,” Buffy warned. “You’re going to want to stop talking now.”

    “I wish the best of luck to you, Buffy,” Giles said instead. “I pray all goes... well.”

    Buffy took a deep breath after Giles hung up the phone. She went up to Spike, still lying like a corpse in the hospital bed. “You’re a dope,” she told his still face. “Seriously. A complete idiot.” She touched his cold, pale skin, running the back of her finger along his cheek, her fingertips smoothing his eyebrows, her thumb gently caressing his bloodless lips. “If I can bring you back from this, I will,” she promised him softly. “So long as your soul is in this body... I’m not giving up on you.” She laced her fingers through his, laying her cheek down atop their joined hands. “Spike,” she whispered up to his still face. “What was it? What on earth could have made you stop believing?”
    

***
    

    “I knew you’d come for me,” Spike said.

    She’d just released him from torture at the hands of First’s minions. He was weak from blood loss, damaged from tortures she didn’t want to contemplate, and he looked so tired. “I’m sorry it took so long,” Buffy said. When he’d properly looked at her, and known she was real, she’d stared into his only good eye and knew the depth there was his soul. There was no more madness, no more anger, no more confusion. There was just Spike in there. Or, no. Not the Spike she knew. There was more than Spike within him now, a person compared to a paper doll, and she’d been blasted by it. Within a few weeks, the awkwardness and doubts would rise again between them, peppered by fear and the occasional sting of resentment, but just at that moment, there was perfect faith between them. They were together.

    “I knew you’d come,” he whispered again.

    They made it to the ladder, and he shook his head. Buffy was concerned as he pulled away and sank to the floor of the pit, leaning against the wall. “Can you climb it, or should we...?”

    “I’ll climb it,” Spike said. “If you help me. I just need to rest.” Traversing the short distance from his torture chamber to the exit had drained what little strength he had.

    “Did you find him?” It was Xander at the top of the pit, and Spike cringed at the loud voice.

    “Yes, we’re fine,” Buffy said. She thought Spike wouldn’t want Xander to see him at his worst.  “Go wait in the car. We’ll be there soon.” She crouched down before Spike. “Is there anything you need?”

    “Blood,” he said. Even the word made his good eye dilate, as if he were hunting. His hunger must have been intense. “They took... almost all of it. To open the Hellmouth. But it can wait... until we get....” He sighed and his head tipped back.

    “Spike!”

    Spike flickered his eye open. He was breathing hard. “Would you hold my hand?” he asked. Though weary, it sounded like the desperate plea of a child after a nightmare.

    Buffy slipped down to the ground beside him and laced her fingers through his. She nestled her head against his arm, holding him. He was too weak to put his arm around her, but the softest, most imperceptible squeeze of his hand told her he appreciated it. “I’m so sorry. I couldn’t get here faster,” she told him.

    “It’s all right. I knew you’d come for me.”

    “How?” she asked.

    “You said you believed in me,” he whispered. “I couldn’t not believe in you. I’d have died believing you’d come for me.”

    Buffy shook her head. “There were times I doubted I’d get here in time,” she said.

    “It was hard, sometimes,” he confessed. “I had to keep telling myself. But I kept believing.”

    Buffy’s eyes closed, and two tears leaked out and dripped onto his chest. More followed. “Don’t cry, pet,” Spike said softly. “It’s over.”

    Buffy almost laughed. “That’s supposed to be my line, you doofus. You’re the one who... god, I’m sorry.”

    “I think I’ve gone through a few more bouts of torture than you, love. When it’s over, that’s all you can say.”

    “But it’s not over,” Buffy said truthfully. A war was starting, and Spike had been its first victim, one of its first weapons. “It’s barely begun.” She nestled in closer to his chest for a moment, then. “But at least I’ve got you back.”

    “Then all’s right with the world,” Spike muttered. His head sank until it was leaning atop hers. “I wouldn’t let myself stop believing,” he said. “I wouldn’t.”

    And he didn’t stop believing in her, not for one moment. Not until the day he died.