Disclaimer: Every character that has been taken from BtVS or AtS belongs to Joss Whedon. Every other character belongs to me

A/N: Thanks to my beta, Fetching Mad Scientist, who's doing a great job. If there are still any mistakes in the text, it's absolutely mine fault.

***

Greenville, 2005

Carrie entered the silent house. She tossed the keys onto the small, round table standing next to the doors, shoved off her shoes and slid her feet into a pair of pink, fluffy slippers Spike had bought her in Chicago. She remembered his disgust at the sight of these shoes. Despite the lack of his approval, she had purchased them – with Spike’s money, ‘kay – but nonetheless.

Speaking of him, Spike seemed to still be sleeping. When he hadn’t got up with her in the morning – and he always had, even if only to say a proper ‘goodbye’ before she left – she had assumed he had had a rough night at work. Since they moved to this God – forsaken town, he had been working at the local club as a bartender. You know, blessings of the night shift and all. But it wasn’t doing him any good, of that she was sure. He hated to work for somebody else – he was not used to having a boss. So not only did Spike have to deal with some fat asshole (not that she had ever used that word in front of him) from 10 pm to 2 am, afterwards he was determined to patrol. And about that –

Okay, time to stop thinking. Carrie had to reach her bed. She felt exhausted. A world full of people with thoughts and emotions was enough to make her pass out if she didn’t rest for a while. She climbed upstairs, walked past the door of Spike’s bedroom – perfectly silent, by the way, so he had to be sleeping – and entered her own room. Unpacked boxes were covering the floor. Usually, Spike was very strict about keeping their places in a relative cleanliness – something you wouldn’t expect from a guy who had lived in a crypt – but this time he understood Carrie’s hesitance about settling in. She still couldn’t believe that Greenville was their last stop, and they were not going to move any time soon. She still remembered her reaction to the news.

“Here we are”, Spike said when they showed up in town for the first time. He stopped the DeSoto on a driveway in front of a small, but nice enough, house.

“You sure about that?” Carrie asked him, frowning. She had been expecting another hotel, not… this. “Maybe we have the wrong address – ”

Spike laughed, “No, the bloody address is right. Carrie, I bought this house.”

“You bought a house? Where did you get the money? And… are you nuts?! What are we going to do when they… when they will find – “

“They will not!” he snapped back angrily, “Look, Sunshine, this is not a… regular house. And about the money… You remember Clem? My friend from Santa Monica?”

“Yeah,” she answered hesitantly.

“I told him that I’ve been lookin’ for something… safe. ‘Cause I’m bloody fed up with this soddin’ gypsy life. You know we can’t do it forever.”

Carrie refused to look into his mind, afraid of what she could have found there: weariness, and resignation – because of her.

“So”, Spike didn’t seem to notice that her face had become unnaturally pale, “Clem told me that he knew this property agent, who deals with unusual orders. I asked Clem to get in touch with the guy, hopin’ he’d find something for us… He did. And, because of my very fortunate connections, the owner agreed to be paid in installments. So here we are,” he finished, obviously content with himself.

Carrie raised her eyebrows. “I still don’t see why you think it’s going to be different this time,” she demanded, folding her arms.

“There’s a spell on the house, Sunbeam,” he explained, rolling his eyes at her being clueless. “It’s bloody impossible to locate it or anyone who lives here. It’s like… it doesn’t exist beyond this hell hole they call Greenville.”

Carrie looked at the said house incredulously, disbelieving his words and his thoughts.

“Does it mean,” she audibly gulped. “Does it mean that we can stay here?”

Spike smiled tentatively. “Yeah, Sunbeam. It means we can stay here. Permanently. Of course,” he added jokingly, “if you don’t mind the whole ‘Girl Who Don’t Exist’ routine – ”

Carrie returned his smile, “Nah.”

But despite the fact that Spike was doing his best to convince her that they could stop running away from the unknown threat, she stayed more than wary and couldn’t bring herself to unpack the boxes. Unpacking them was so… final. And she still had problems with accepting this new situation, too scared of the eventual disappointment.

Okay, bad, depressing thoughts. She had to clean her mind or she would go nuts. For a few minutes she just lay spread on her new bed, focused on not thinking at all. She could feel the headache coming, but after spending her day among those very mentally unstable people they called teenagers she should have expected this. Sometimes telepathy really sucked.

Well, when it wasn’t useful, that is. Like today, with that Jenna girl –

A slayer. God, it was just her luck to have classes with a slayer. Strangely – a slayer without a Watcher. ‘Course, she knew everything about the recent changes in the slayers’ line – via Spike’s memories – but despite that, or maybe because of that, Jenna’s situation wasn’t making any sense.

Oh, it wasn’t that she hadn’t been trying to break into the other girl’s brain, ‘cause she had. But even Carrie couldn’t reach the memories in question. They were totally repressed, locked away with this huge key, and there was no way to reach them.

But those thoughts she actually had reached hadn’t been nice. She closed her eyes and recalled the overwhelming feelings of loneliness, fear and… anger?

Carrie’s head was now hurting badly. She knew she had to warn Spike about a slayer in town, but that actually required getting up and waking him. And she was too tired for the first option, and too merciful for the second one. They both needed some sleep. So, she was going to take a quick nap, brief enough to catch Spike before he had to go to work. She was sure that on his way back he was planning on patrolling, and considering the fact that the slayer was going to do the same thing, the encounter was inevitable. It was up to her to prepare Spike for the meeting.

She opened her eyes after five minutes or so. Really, there was no way she could sleep longer. Carrie looked at the small clock standing on her night table. And she froze. Shit, the damn thing had to be broken, ‘cause it was impossible that –

She burst into Spike’s bedroom but it was empty. 'He has to be downstairs, drinking his supper', she thought, trying not to panic. She ran to the kitchen but he wasn’t there either. Instead, she found a small note pinned to the fridge with a magnet. Carrie recognized Spike’s old- fashioned handwriting.

I was hoping that you’ll be up to tell me about your first day in school but you were sleeping like the bloody dead, and I don’t mind hearing the story tomorrow. When you wake up order pizza or make yourself something to eat on your own.

See ya in the morning.

Spike.

Carrie dumbly mouthed the last words. In the morning. In the morning?! It would be too late in the damn morning! The vampire and the slayer were going to meet in the cemetery tonight. And how bad could that end?! With Spike being dust or Jenna being hurt or both of them dead, apparently… And it was all her fault.

So the clock hadn’t been broken. It was really 2 am.

She overslept.

And now she had to make things right.

***

Los Angeles 2005

He could hear them from the end of the corridor and it wasn’t for his enchanted senses – they were just bloody loud. Although he really wanted to catch them as they were doing exactly what he had forbidden, he knew he could stand no chance against two teenage girls with superpowers. Before he reached their door, Carrie and Jenna became completely silent.

He knocked. “You decent?” he asked just in case.

“Come in,” came the replay.

Spike opened the door and walked into the room. Carrie was lying on the bed with a book in her hand and Jenna was occupied with arranging her clothes in the wardrobe. They looked at him simultaneously, as if they were surprised to see him so fast. Their eyes were perfectly innocent. How could he even think about them fighting?

He could, ‘cause knew them. And they weren’t bloody fooling him.

He stood motionlessly in the doorway, tapping foot impatiently.

“Is something wrong?” Carrie put down the book and looked at him with huge doe eyes.

He was far too old for that gig. “There was only one soddin’ thing,” Spike started in a low voice that was vibrating with suppressed anger, “I asked you two. Do you remember… what was that?”

More innocent looks and eyelash batting.

“I asked you to behave yourselves,” the vampire finished, when they wouldn’t, “I asked you to be quiet, and not to break anythin’.”

Jenna was a poor liar. As always, she was the one to give in. “We didn’t break anything!” She answered immediately, obviously feeling guilty. From the corner of his eye Spike noticed as Carrie made a face. He stepped in, and with one swift motion of his foot uncovered the brim of the carpet, revealing pieces of the shattered china. The girls looked at the pile of trash that had been a blue vase, then at each other, and finally they hung their heads.

“Well?” Spike inquired.

“We’re sorry,” Carrie forced out after a moment.

“We didn’t mean to,” Jenna added eagerly.

“We’ll pay for it!”

“With my money?” Spike raised an eyebrow, not appeased.

“We…” Carrie started carefully, thinking about the best answer.

“… We’ll give the money back…” the slayer carried out instead of her.

“… Later…”

“ When we’re older…”

“… And independent…”

“… And being paid…”

“… Well paid…”

Spike glared at them incredulously. “You two, you’re my biggest failure,” he stated, resigned.

“But a very cute ones,” Carrie beamed at him.

Spike sighed. He was doing a lot of that – sighing – lately. It was nothing like him, like his present self. Sighing was more of a thing William would have done while facing a difficulty. Spike – the real, vampire Spike – wasn’t the one to give up with a bloody sigh. He was supposed to bicker and swear, and kick things, and then swear some more – but not sigh.

He sighed. Those girls were making him soft. William-like soft.

He sat on the bed. Immediately, Carrie hugged him, her thin arms all around his neck. Jenna sat next to them.

They both looked at him expectantly.

“How did it go?” the slayer asked in a concerned voice.

Carrie’s head rested on Spike’s shoulder.

She already knew. Probably read it the moment he came in, but it didn’t discourage him, “As expected,” he shrugged, “They were asking too many bleedin’ questions.”

“Did they – ” Jenna started but Spike didn’t let her finish.

“Fortunately, no,” he cut in. “They were so bloody occupied with hatin’ each other and yellin’ at me for not tellin’ them about another slayer, that Sunbeam’s presence stayed unnoticed.”

“For now,” Carrie said quietly. “But they’re going to – you know – ask ‘bout me.”

“Well, they can ask ‘til the Hell freezes over,” Jenna snapped angrily, “I may be a slayer, a part of their stupid Council, but you are none of their business!”

“Language,” Spike reprimanded her automatically, “You’re right, Freckles, but the thing with these people is that they hardly realize some things are not their business. So, don’t even think ‘bout answerin’ them like that,” he gave Jenna a meaningful glare,” ‘cause that straightly leads to arousin’ their soddin’ curiosity.”

The slayer mumbled something unintelligible under her breath.

“And,” Spike carried out calmly, “it’s important for yourself to play nicely with them.”

“Jenna doesn’t like them,” Carrie said dreamily, being a little unaware of her surroundings. Neither Spike, nor Jenna reacted – they were used to her daydreaming. She usually did that while reading many thoughts at once.

“I don’t need them,” Jenna corrected. “I’ve got you. You’ve trained me better than any watcher ever would, you patrol with me, you help me with the research and – ”

“Look, Freckles, I know it’s hard to trust somebody once he’s disappointed you,” the vampire told her softly, “but you can’t bloody isolate yourself… Especially, when there are so many other do-gooders around. We have to make sure that you won’t stay all alone in case I go down… And you know I’m countin’ on you to take care of that pink monkey,” he smiled tenderly, while Carrie, who seemed to wake up from her weird trance, rolled her eyes and made a face again.

“So what now? We’re supposed to stay quiet, say nothing at all? Nod and smile like some stupid schoolgirls?” Jenna still wasn’t convinced.

“Yes. Do that – ” A pillow hit his head but he ignored it. “Seriously, Freckles, it’s for the soddin’ best. Trust me.”

Jenna looked at him and smiled, “I do.”