A/N: Many thanx to our wonderful beta reader, Immortal_Beloved :)




Spike spent the next several hours trapped in a nightmare world created by his own mind, filled with fractured, entangled images of traumas and terrors from his past -- both recent, and many years old. He struggled and fought and fled through a surreal universe made of memories and fears, until he felt himself floating slowly back toward consciousness.

He wasn’t sure he wanted to.

Vague, echoing voices drifted to him through the fog that seemed to surround him, drawing him unwillingly back toward the surface of reality. That, and the dull, throbbing ache of the injuries he had sustained in his fight with Siron, not to mention the abuse he had endured in the weeks before the fight, abuse which had never been able to heal on the starvation rations on which Siron had kept him.

As reality gradually won the battle it was waging with his dark, tumultuous dreams, Spike realized with a nervous feeling in the pit of his stomach that the voices -- mostly young, female voices -- seemed to be arguing with each other.

“I don’t like it. I’m sorry, but I don’t. See, there should only be one solution to this little problem here, and I don’t understand why you don’t get that, Melinda…”

“Look, he rescued me! I wouldn’t have gotten out of there at all if he hadn’t helped me!”

Spike recognized the voice of the young Slayer he had helped escape from Siron’s penthouse, coming from very close to him, on his right, and turned his head instinctively toward her, seeking the support that he knew he would receive at least from her.

“Um, yeah, except that you would have,” a third young female voice replied flatly. “About twenty minutes after he showed you the exit and all. We were on our way already by then, remember?”

“Yeah, and twenty minutes is all it would have taken for that *thing* to…”

Melinda’s suddenly furious, trembling voice sounded a bit farther away now, as if she had quickly stood up, and Spike felt his body tense, beginning to tremble, at the rising mood of anger and hostility in the room. He kept his eyes closed, his mind trying to catch up with all that had happened.

The last thing he remembered was being taken to Siron’s room, after he had been caught helping the Slayer…

Where was he? What had happened to Siron? Had the Slayers come looking for their missing sister and taken him away with them?

And if they had -- was that a good thing?

“Oh, shit…oh, shit, it’s waking up…!” a trembling female voice announced, and Spike could hear a rising murmur of alarm in the room, several voices speaking at once, and very quickly.

He didn’t know much at the moment, but he knew that he was the cause for the turmoil, and it was a frightening thought -- especially if he was surrounded by Slayers, as he thought he was. He opened his eyes, squinting and blinking against the light of the room that felt painfully bright, thin arms crossing defensively over his torso, his legs drawing up under him in a subconscious attempt to make himself invisible.

“Okay, this is insane…does he really look like…?”

“Do something! Do something before it attacks!”

“Please!” Melinda scoffed angrily at the fearful voices of the other girls, and as Spike’s eyes adjusted to the light, he saw her move to stand protectively between him and the other Slayers. “Come off it! Does he look like he could hurt anyone right now? He’s hurt and starved, and he’s been a slave to that monster for who knows how long…he needs our *help*…”

“Last time I checked, we weren’t in the business of helping vampires!” another voice snapped, and Spike flinched, looking up with fearful eyes to see a tall blonde stepping right up into Melinda’s face, clearly trying to intimidate her. “You know, our job description is pretty much the opposite of that!”

Melinda refused to back down, taking a step forward to counteract the other girl’s advance. “Well, typically vampires don’t help Slayers, either, do they?” she retorted.

“Look -- if he’s so bad off -- maybe it’d be *kinder* just to stake him,” another girl put in timidly, earning herself a pair of dark looks from the two Slayers on either side of the argument. “I mean, look at him -- he’s terrified.”

Melinda turned suddenly toward Spike, her eyes wide with surprise, not having noticed when he had awakened. As she moved toward him, he instinctively looked down, his wide blue eyes focusing on the comfortable bed he was lying on, taking in the soft brown comforter that covered him, and the clean, cool white sheets beneath him -- mostly just trying to avoid the conflict that was already centered around him.

“Hey,” Melinda said, her voice suddenly soft as she sat down on the side of the bed beside him, reaching out to take his hand, frowning slightly when he flinched away from her. “Hey…it’s okay…you’re safe…nobody‘s gonna hurt you…”

When the blonde snorted in contempt at that, Melinda shot her a fierce glare, and she turned away, rolling her eyes in frustration.

“Don‘t worry about them, Spike,” Melinda advised him gently. “Nobody’s gonna hurt you. You’re free now…”

Spike looked up at her, shaking his head in confusion, trying hard to focus on her, and not the varying degrees of hostility he could still feel rolling off the other girls in waves. “W-what…?”

“We stormed the compound. Siron and all his men are dead,” Melinda explained with an encouraging smile. “They can’t hurt you anymore, Spike.”

His eyes widened in wonder at those words, as a vague memory began to press its way through the fog that was still clinging to the edges of his consciousness. “S-siron…”

“He’s dead,” Melinda repeated quietly, hesitating a moment before adding with a grim smile, “You killed him.”

Spike was silent, the fuzzy images of what had happened starting to come back to him -- and with them, an overwhelming sense of confusion and uncertainty. As the girls around him began quietly arguing again with no regard for his feelings on the matter, Spike tried to make sense of what had happened.

Was it possible that he was really free? Siron was actually dead? Then what would happen next? Where would he go? Was he now a prisoner to these Slayers, instead of to the demon master who had so brutalized him?

And if so, was this position really that much better than his last?

“Just stop it!” Melinda went on beside him, her harsh tone momentarily silencing the other girls, and a single word from her next statement drew Spike’s attention out of his thoughts instantly. “It’s not up to us. It’s up to Andrew, and he should be back any minute. Let’s just leave it up to him, and stop going on about it!”

Spike stared up at her through wide, startled blue eyes. “Andrew?” he whispered uncertainly.

Melinda looked at him with a puzzled frown, but before she could respond, the blonde Slayer was moving toward them again, and Spike’s eyes focused on her in alarm as he noticed that she held a hypodermic needle in her hand.

“Yeah,” the blonde said shortly, “we’ll leave it up to Andrew. But in the meantime, I refuse to be in a room with this *thing* unless it’s kept under control. You can get all chummy with it later, Melinda!”

“No,” Melinda argued forcefully, reaching to hold her arm back as she reached toward Spike’s arm. “No, you don’t have to…”

But it was too late. The blonde had plunged the needle into Spike’s arm, despite Melinda’s protests. Within seconds, Spike felt the fog of confusion and exhaustion washing over him again, pulling him back down into the darkness of oblivion. Before it took him completely, he heard the faint sound of voices, increasingly muffled and distant.

“What are you, crazy?” Melinda objected furiously.

“It’s just to sedate him, Melinda. He’s a vampire, it won’t hurt him, it’ll just keep him from hurting us…”

“He’s *not* going to *hurt* anyone!”

“No,” the blonde answered calmly, smugly. “He’s not. This’ll keep him nice and quiet and unconscious until Andrew gets here and gives us permission to stake him.”

Above Melinda’s indignant objections, Spike heard a familiar male voice speak from the doorway, in a quiet voice of certainty, tinged with a sort of awe and disbelief -- and his voice silenced the others. Spike would never have thought before that he would ever be so grateful to hear Andrew’s voice; but in this particular situation, it made him feel safer, reassured.

“I’ll be doing no such thing. *No one* is going to hurt that vampire. He’s a hero. A *champion*. And there will be no staking of any kind.” Andrew was quiet for a moment, and when he spoke again, his voice was much closer and the last thing Spike heard before losing consciousness. “We’ll call Mr. Giles. He’ll know what to do.”

************************************

When Spike next woke, it was to a sudden jarring motion that shook him from the heavy sleep that had enveloped him for -- he really had no idea how long. He looked up, blinking into the darkness that surrounded him, waiting for his eyes to adjust. After a moment, he realized that he was in the backseat of a car, and the jolt that had awakened him had been a particularly rough pothole in the road.

“Sorry,” a voice beside him spoke up apologetically, “these roads are a little torn up. Didn‘t mean to wake you.”

Spike’s head snapped up at the familiar sound of that voice, and he was surprised to see Andrew sitting beside him in the backseat of the vehicle. He glanced around, taking in the lush interior of the car, and realizing that it was most likely a limousine. He looked back at Andrew, who was looking at him with a sort of curious, anxious, hopeful expression on his face -- as if the boy wasn’t quite sure *what* to feel.

“Are you okay?” he asked hesitantly.

Spike just stared at him for a moment longer before looking away. “What -- what do you think?” he asked finally, his voice hoarse and low, and trembling in a way that made him wince.

“Right. Sorry,” Andrew replied uncomfortably, clearing his throat in a self-conscious way.

“What -- what was in that -- what did they give me…?” Spike found that his words were slurred slightly, and his thoughts were still coming too slowly, most likely the aftereffects from whatever drug the blonde Slayer had pumped into his arm.

“Oh, that. I gave her a piece of my mind for that, Spike, I promise! I’m so sorry about that. Some of the girls -- well, they don’t understand. They didn’t feel safe unless you were -- sedated.”

Spike swallowed hard, a faint, bitter smirk rising to his lips at the irony of that idea.

“And then -- well, there was the plane ride here, since you can’t exactly get to England by land, and since we couldn’t let you be exposed to sunlight, we had to send you in the cargo hold, which involved a wooden box and claustrophobia and coffin associations, so I sort of decided that maybe the sedation idea might not be such a bad one…and anyway, it should be wearing off pretty soon,” Andrew assured him, rambling nervously. “I mean -- it shouldn’t last too much…”

His voice trailed off as he finally looked at the vampire beside him again and saw that he was, once again, fast asleep.

Andrew stared at him for a moment longer, swallowing hard, and wondering what Mr. Giles would do when they reached the new Council headquarters. He had assured Andrew that he would help Spike deal with his ordeal, the things he had been through, and Andrew had been relieved to hear it. Although he would have been willing to do anything in his power to help Spike, who even now was still his ultimate hero, Andrew knew that he was by no means equipped to deal with the kind of trauma Spike had certainly endured.

As the limousine entered the city limits of London, Andrew breathed a weary sigh of relief.

Soon, the weighty responsibility would be out of his hands.

**********************************

For the third time in less than forty-eight hours, Spike woke up in an unfamiliar place.

Only this time, thankfully, he woke up alone.

He found himself in a soft, comfortable bed, in a large bedroom that was well-decorated and warmly lit, though not too bright. The overall atmosphere of the room made him feel safe and reassured. Though he knew better than to accept that feeling without question, not until he knew where he was, and who had brought him…

*Wait…Andrew…* he remembered, feeling a sense of relief wash over him.

Andrew might be an annoying little ponce with a disturbing fascination with him, but Spike at least knew that Andrew would not let any harm come to him, as long as it was in his power to stop it.

Of course, that wasn’t saying much, either.

But -- something else Andrew had said was niggling at the edges of his mind. What was it…?

Just then, there was a quiet knock at the door. It was by no means a threatening sound, but Spike flinched, nevertheless. The events of the past two months had left him constantly apprehensive, expecting pain and punishment at every turn.

Nevertheless, it didn’t matter, because whoever was at the door did not wait for a response before edging the door open slowly and stepping into the room.

And then, Spike felt his relief grow stronger, letting out a slow, shaky breath that he hadn’t known he was holding. He and Giles had not always agreed on everything -- okay, well, on much of anything, for that matter -- and Giles *had* tried to have him killed, but Spike knew that the Watcher had thought it was for Buffy’s own good, and he couldn’t say for sure that if the situation had been reversed, he would not have done the same thing.

Giles would be fair, of that much at least, Spike was sure.

The Watcher’s smile was slightly guarded, but reassuring, as he closed the door softly behind him and turned to meet Spike’s eyes. He walked across the room, waiting until he was seated in the chair next to the bed to finally speak.

“Hello, Spike.”