When Buffy and Giles walked back into the house, she was surprised -- and amused -- by the unexpected sight that met her eyes.

Spike was seated on the couch, looking more at ease than she had seen him in a very long time, with Willow on one side and the youngest of Giles' group, the attractive, dark-haired male who she hadn't yet met, on the other. Willow was telling a story which the others all seemed to find hilarious, her voice and face animated and involved.

Spike was sitting with his back turned slightly toward Buffy, so he did not see her come in. As she started quietly toward the little group, Buffy was pleasantly surprised again when Spike raised a finger to interrupt Willow -- quietly, tentatively, but still, he actually interrupted her! -- to interject his own comment into her story.

"No, Red, that's not quite how it happened," he began, and proceeded to make a minor correction to her account of the story as he remembered it.

The three younger vampires were fascinated.

Willow and Tara had been relating stories of the battles Spike had fought with the Slayer, five years before. He had only helped her a few times that year, right after he got his chip, but the two witches seemed to remember every time in vivid detail, as they related the stories to the rapt vampires, whose attention kept shifting between the girls telling the stories and the master vampire they were talking about.

They were quite impressed.

For his part, Spike seemed a bit uncomfortable with the attention at first, but as the girls persisted, he found himself getting caught up in the memories right along with them. And the obvious positive effect it seemed to be having on him was all the encouragement they needed to keep remembering.

Spike had never thought that any of the Slayer's friends had really noticed him at all during the fights they had witnessed. Back then, he had just resented the fact that he was forced to work with the Slayer, just to get in a good spot of violence, and hadn’t really paid that much attention to her friends.

At least, he had told himself that he resented it.

Back then, the Scoobies had merely tolerated him, seeing him as harmless, under control, but still capable of being a menace in many ways. They had certainly not seen him as a friend, or even liked him, as far as he could tell. Now, it warmed his heart to hear Willow and Tara speaking about the times he had all but forgotten, with a warmth and affection that they had not felt – or not expressed – at the time it had actually occurred.

Time had a way of changing things.

The touch of a soft hand on his shoulder startled him, and he jumped slightly with a sudden sense of alarm, immediately stiffening under the touch, but not daring to move.

“Just me,” Buffy spoke softly, reassuringly, behind him, giving his shoulder a light squeeze before coming around the couch and perching on the arm, since all available seats in the room were taken.

There was a momentary pause in the conversation as everyone acknowledged the presence of the Slayer, but Willow quickly went on with her story before things could become awkward, and the others soon became immersed in her story again.

As for Spike, the startled fear left him, but it was replaced by a vague anxiety, slowly creeping in to take the place of the tentative sense of comfort he had been developing. He immediately found himself wondering if Buffy needed anything, if he should rise and give her his seat, if she approved of his casual behavior with the others.

Then, he heard her laugh, saw her eyes light up as Willow got to the funniest part of the story she was telling, and he began to relax a little. She looked so happy, lost in the memories with the rest of them, and the grip of his worries on his mind loosened a little.


If she was happy – he was happy.

He tried to get back into the conversation, turning his attention back to the others and trying to figure out what they were talking about now.

“I think you would have made a very good vengeance demon,” Anya was saying to Willow matter-of-factly. “You’re very creative. And that’s what it’s all about in the vengeance business, really. I mean, someone who just, you know, turns someone into a frog or something isn’t gonna go nearly as far as someone who, say, writes, ‘That’s what you get for being a lying, cheating sack of crap’ on someone’s wall in their own viscera.”

The room was utterly silent for a long moment as some of them tried to process the horrifying comment Anya had just made, and others just tried to forget that they had heard it at all.

Spike decided he had picked the wrong moment entirely to try to get back into the conversation.

“Well…I don’t think I would have come up with anything that…creative,” Willow replied, her eyes wide as she carefully chose her words, giving Anya a weak, self-conscious smile.

Anya shrugged. “Some girls have it, some don’t.”

“I don’t think I’d have been very good at vengeance. But I sure did do a lot of damage,”
Willow went on, laughing softly as she looked off beyond them for a moment, remembering.

*And a lot of good,* Buffy thought to herself, memories of some of the more pleasant effects of Willow’s will-be-done spell coming into her mind. Spike’s lips on hers…his arms around her…that feeling of utter contentment that he was the one she loved, and she was going to spend the rest of her life with him…

She only realized that she was staring at him when he looked up at her hesitantly, a fearful, uncertain look on his face. She realized that he was not sure how she felt about the memories Willow’s story had brought back, and was afraid that she might be upset or embarrassed.

Willow had thought of that herself, but she had started the story before Buffy had come back into the room, and knew that stopping it in the middle because of Buffy’s presence would only have been *more* awkward and embarrassing.

Buffy did not feel awkward or embarrassed at all. When she saw Spike looking at her carefully, she put a small, flirtatious smile on her face and gave him a quick wink, feeling gratified at the look of surprise on his face, followed by a small, tentative smile.

Before long, Tara announced that she was going to make lunch, and headed for the kitchen. Willow and Mara both immediately offered to help and followed her.

Buffy’s friends were all very much aware of the disaster that her attempts at cooking always turned out to be, so she did not feel guilty at all as she promptly got up from her perch on the arm of the couch, only to take the seat Willow had left vacant beside her vampire.

Spike shot her an anxious look, and shifted slightly away from her, as if afraid that he was crowding her. “Can I – can I get you anything, Buffy?” he asked softly, his voice hushed and private as he searched her eyes. “Anything I can do for you?”

She shook her head, giving him a warm smile. “No,” she said firmly. “Just relax.”

As she spoke, she reached an arm around his shoulders reassuringly, pulling him gently closer to her and settling in comfortably. Then she turned her attention back to the conversation, just sitting there casually with her arm around him as if it was the most natural thing in the world.

She could not honestly say that she loved him – not for sure. But she knew that he meant a lot to her, and she wanted him in her life, as much more than a slave. And she was determined to make him stop seeing himself as nothing more than that, if it was the last thing she did.

“So you’re the Slayer,” the larger of the two vampires commented, his eyebrows raised speculatively as he gave her a quick up-and-down look.

“Yep,” she confirmed. “And you are?”

“Name’s Aaron,” he replied, meeting her gaze boldly.

Spike was amazed at how openly he was appraising her, obviously sizing her up, impressed -- but not intimidated. He cast a side-long glance at Buffy to judge how she was taking the vampire's behavior.

She did not seem upset in the least. In fact, if anything, the Slayer seemed impressed herself by the fact that Aaron was not afraid of her. He was chipped, a slave, helpless, facing the greatest natural threat to his kind that existed. If she wanted to, she could destroy him without even trying.

And he was not afraid.

Spike heard a soft but sharp intake of breath beside him, and glanced to the side to see that he was not the only one shocked -- and a little scared -- at Aaron's reckless behavior. Julian was staring at his friend, wide-eyed with horror, glancing anxiously between Aaron and Buffy as if he expected the Slayer to strike him down at any moment.

When instead, she suddenly turned her attention on *him*, the little vampire nearly jumped out of his seat. “And what’s *your* name?” she asked him, her tone light and friendly.

“J-Julian,” he responded with a tremor in his very small voice. “Ma’am.”

“Please. Just Buffy,” she corrected gently with a little grimace. I really don’t like ‘ma’am’. It makes me feel older than Giles.”

Julian ventured a small, uncomfortable smile, unsure how to respond to her mockery of his master, even as affectionate and good-natured as the mockery was.

Aaron, on the other hand, laughed aloud, surprised and delighted by her words. “You got that right!” he smirked. “He’s older than dirt.”

Julian glanced anxiously toward the kitchen where Giles had disappeared a few minutes earlier, as if afraid that he might come back at any moment and hear their offensive words.

Buffy frowned, troubled and surprised by his reaction to their gentle joking. She knew that Giles would never hurt these vampires, who seemed to see him as a protector rather than a master to be feared. Yet for some reason, this timid little creature seemed terrified to step outside the boundaries that society had placed on his race, in spite of his master’s different mindset.

Buffy determined that she would ask Giles about it later.

She could feel the tension in Spike’s shoulders under her arm around him, and knew that he too, was so conditioned by slavery as to feel uncomfortable with Aaron’s easy, “disrespectful” manner. Almost without even realizing that she was doing it, her hand tightened gently on his shoulder in a comforting way, and she smiled when she felt him move a little closer, leaning into her casual embrace.

Aaron went on talking, telling some story about something Giles had done to prove his point of how very old and out of touch the Watcher was, but Buffy was only halfway listening to him. Her thoughts were focused elsewhere, consumed mostly by the things she and Giles had talked about outside.

With the exceptions of Angel, and later Spike, she had never before thought of the idea of vampires as anything more than dangerous animals to be destroyed – certainly not as people, with rights, valid feelings, actual potential. She had never personally known any vampires, actually, besides those two – and had never wanted to.

But suddenly, she found herself wanting very badly to know *these* vampires.

Her pensive musings were cut off a few minutes later when Tara’s smiling face appeared in the doorway to the kitchen. “Lunch is ready, guys. Come on into the kitchen.”

Buffy put her concerns out of her head for the moment and rose from the couch, heading toward the kitchen – and what was sure to be a very interesting meal.


No horrific, bloody battlefield could have been as terrifying to the young soldier as the expression on the face of his superior officer, as he stood before his desk, shaking in his military-issue boots.

“I’m s-sorry, Sir,” he stammered. “I’ve checked every public record I could get my hands on – I’ve cross-referenced every combination of all the names on the list you gave me, and it didn’t bring up anything! I – I’ve tried…”

“Then try…harder.” Riley Finn’s words were calm, controlled, but the way he bit them off with barely bridled rage made the soldier flinch.

“Y-yes, Sir,” he replied automatically, really having no other option. He felt his heart sink with despair, sure that he was going to end up failing in this assignment. Finn had ordered him to locate where the people on the list he had given him were staying – so there was no option but to keep looking.

“Dismissed,” Finn’s voice was full of disgust as he waved his hand derisively at the useless soldier, who couldn’t seem to get away fast enough.

Riley was frustrated.

He sank down into his chair behind his desk with a heavy sigh, leaning forward and resting his elbows on the desk, and his head in his hands. He wouldn’t have thought that it would be so difficult to locate a couple of ordinary civilians. But for some reason, every friend that Buffy had ever had before and during the first months of their marriage seemed to have dropped off the face of the planet.

Except that he knew they hadn’t. They had been with her the last time he had seen her.

Fresh rage filled him at the very memory of it…the way she had just swept in, beating him down without even breaking a sweat, disrespecting and dismissing him, and taking with her the slave who had brought about the breakdown of everything that Riley had treasured. Because of Spike, Riley had lost everything.

To him – power was everything.

He opened his eyes, feeling tired and depressed – until his eyes fell on the papers on the top of his desk. A cold smile spread across his face as he reminded himself of the importance of those papers.

He sat up straighter and smoothed them out, reading them over again, looking as he had a dozen times already for any loophole she might attempt to use against him.

There were no loopholes.

It didn’t matter how far Buffy tried to run, or if she tried to hide from him. Riley knew that eventually, he and his people would find her. And when they did find her – well – she couldn’t very well fight the *law*, now could she?

He smiled down at the papers before him as he murmured to himself with a cruel chuckles, “That’s my girl…blonde as ever…never was one for details, was she?”

Buffy liked to present herself as strong – to appear powerful and invulnerable – but Riley knew better. He had learned well during his years of marriage to her just how to make the Slayer cave to his whims. It was all about finding the weaknesses that she tried to hide.

Except that that last night, when she had left him – she had made no attempt to hide the weakness that he would soon use against her. It was very simple really; it was really too bad for her that she had such a soft spot for lost causes.

Her weakness was Spike.

She had made it very clear through her behavior that night that she cared more for the bleached blonde vampire than she had admitted. Her fury when she saw the evidence of Riley’s discipline had been overwhelming, and Riley was aware that he had been lucky to escape the situation with his life – all of which only went to prove one thing, one thing that he planned to use to his advantage.

Buffy *did* care about her slave, very much.

“Too bad, Sweetie,” he sneered quietly, his fingers tracing the lines of the paper in his hands. “Should have read the fine print.”

He stood up from the desk, carefully folding the papers and placing them back into the envelope he had originally taken them from, the day they had brought Spike back here. No matter what it took – and he was sure that it would not take much – he was going to have his payback against his wayward wife and her slave.

And those simple papers were going to make it easy for him.