“Spike!”

She’d been smart. She’d been brave. But she was scared out of her wits even more.

As feral amber eyes found her and focused on her stake, he commanded his minions to stop, to let the humans—sheeplike and just as stupid—leave the bomb shelter so it was just her…and them. Slayer…and vampires. Slayer…and Spike.

“Down the stairs,” Buffy commanded, her voice hard in her effort to stem the fear that threatened to buckle her knees. Her hand shook, the stake scratching against the fabric of her hostage’s dress. Moving slowly, Buffy prepared to push the beautiful Dru down the steps into her companion’s arms when the vampiress startled her and spoke.

“We’ve made it now, my Spike. Always searching till I could find where you belong. The sun can shine upon you now; let you glow till you find that power. Don’t hurt the girl, my love. Be brave for Princess.” And the psychotic Dru fell forward onto the stake, the sharpened wood sliding easily through her skin and further as the weight of her body brought force into Buffy’s unintentional blow.

When nothing but dust separated them, Buffy looked at the vamp face in front of her in horror. Flinched from the shock and pain that held him still. Without words his minions knew his will and had attacked her at once, caught her and knocked her unconscious, his glowing eyes and the madness of Drusilla’s phrase the last things she knew as her world became black.

~ * ~ * ~ * ~

She never knew your insides could burn so hot that you felt like you could melt. Never knew that fear could manifest in a blinding fire that rendered limbs powerless and the beat of a heart almost tired. When Buffy opened her eyes, it was to a sight that made hope useless. Stripped her bare of any emotion but one that left her trembling, her eyes shining in fright she couldn’t hide and her legs shaking as they strained to keep her body standing.

Even in her lack of consciousness she’d known she was chained. Hung from the ceiling by heavy thick links that forced her to be still. Forced her arms apart until her shoulders ached and her head screamed in pain. And then her eyes cracked open and it was no longer just a fear inside her head; it was a fear her whole body could react to, and did.

She was in a room, a small space that held a bed in front of where she was held aloft, and a vampire staring at her with eyes beautiful in shade but glaring hate and menace. Buffy knew she would be dead—just like he wanted. Just like he’d come to Sunnydale to achieve. After what happened with Drusilla, she almost felt like she deserved it—deserved to be punished for killing the loved one of even a vicious vampire. Somehow, she didn’t think Angel would be of the happy with her either.

“Spike?” Her voice wavered, had lost its strength on the comatose journey from the bomb shelter where her friend had sold her out in favour of vicious immortality.

His eyes were red with grief and Buffy could feel something odd twist in her heart; she’d seen the power of his emotion when aimed at the dark vampires when he’d seen her in trouble. Seen it and was guardedly jealous of it. Still, she’d never forgotten what they were, and as obvious as her danger was now, she felt like giving up. She’d killed by accident and it should have made her want to gloat, flaunt the fact that she had destroyed a being that was a century and a half old. But she’d made a judgement on love, on devotion without meaning to and to see the anguish in the one left behind was too awful for her mind to hold.

She’d killed, like was her duty, and now she was in the path of retribution, and that was his right. That was his reward for being evil and for catching her off guard. She’d hold her head high, and die like a Slayer.

She swung back in the chains, her body reacting harshly to his as he pounced from the bed, lashing out until he’d slapped her face, relishing the welts that came up from the semi-deep scratches left by his nails. Then he collapsed at her feet. Feet bolted to the floor and chained so that she was suspended just centimetres off the floor. She was helpless, and it was fitting.

“I’m going to make you pay for what you’ve done. I don’t know what the bloody hell she was on about but she was weak, not in her own mind to off herself like that on a Slayer’s stake.” And he found a knife and set to cutting her clothes from her body; pants falling to the floor and leaving her in her skimpy panties as his fangs sunk hard into her thigh.

Buffy cried out at the pain, tears rolling down her cheeks despite her avowal to herself to die like a warrior—with no admission of weakness. She knew what was going to happen. How could she not? Angel had only tonight told her what he had done before he’d turned Drusilla and she would be a fool to think Spike hadn’t been taught to torture in the same manner.

She felt his teeth scrape over her skin as he made it to her top, and suddenly it was ripped from her body, leaving her exposed to the cold and even colder sapphire eyes, gone dark with hatred.

“Dru liked to be touched. Do you like to be touched, Slayer?” His lips were curled in that hateful smirk, even though he revealed the pain behind the actions with the glassiness of his gaze.

Buffy could see so much in him that she’d never thought she would have ever cared to observe. This was no emotionless demon. How had she thought that pain for them would be physical, that they would react to a wound but something of the heart was out of their depth without a soul? This vampire held agony in his heart like her friends had at the loss of Jesse. Showed such overwhelming grief to her that she didn’t deserve to see. He was showing her his weakness and she was defiant about her own. Again she was acting wrong; she nodded in answer to his question.

“Yes, Spike. I like to be touched.”

He looked at her in shock, his lip beginning to tremble the longer he tried to keep strong, and watched her as she stripped herself bare to him, let the block on her emotions slip and revealed her own fear and hurt to one who would take advantage.

The growl started in his chest like an irritating itch, yet as she stood there and looked at him in silent apology, it fuelled his hate, made him want to bite her and fuck her and hit her till she passed out, and then do it all over again. He roared in outrage that a Slayer could soften his intentions with watery eyes and a display of vulnerability. She was meant to fight, even if caught and apparently helpless.

The bra was ripped from her body and his fangs penetrated the flesh, biting viciously into the padded softness of her breast as his other hand squeezed its partner painfully. Buffy screamed, her body flaming in hot, excruciating pain. He dragged his mouth from the wound as his hand grabbed her hair, dragged her head to the side and left her waiting for another of his punishing bites, leaving her to wonder if this was the one that would leave her breathless.

Buffy didn’t struggle, knowing it was her fate to eventually die at the hands of one of these monsters, but she wanted him to know before he took her life, wanted him to believe that what had happened had not been her intention.

“I’m sorry,” she whispered against his chin, closing her eyes as he gave another roar of ferocity and buried his fangs in her throat, the ticking pulse rapid against the piercing pain of his pointed fang. And then it drifted and ticked slower, leaving her feeling drained and resigned. Then she passed out.

~ * ~ * ~ * ~

Heaven looked a lot like the bedroom Spike had had her chained in before he drained her life away. Big difference was the comfy bed, and the shaking body that was reclining beside hers, wracked with sobs.

“Spike?” she asked, her voice raspy with the lack of strength that came with perishing by losing all your blood. “Not that it’s not nice to see a familiar face, but how come they let you into Heaven with me?”

“I offered to bite all the angelic traitors. Are you off your bleeding nut? I didn’t off you yet. You’re not in Heaven, Sunshine.”

Something struck him, a word that was now bouncing around his skull and joined the one that stopped his strong gulps of the girl’s blood just before he took it too far. ‘Sunshine. Don’t hurt the girl.’ Dru and her cryptic messages. It really pissed him off. Somehow she didn’t want him to kill the Slayer, yet he couldn’t help but take out his building fury on the one who held a stake to his dark princess’s chest.

“Oh,” was her belated answer. Buffy couldn’t deny that her head was more cottonwool than usual, but even she thought this reprieve was odd. Why didn’t he kill her? It’s not like she wouldn’t have driven a stake through anyone who had killed Angel. Well, like she might have done before he did the emotional blackmail thing and forced her to verbally commit to feelings she wasn’t sure she felt.

“You’re bleeding.” He shocked her with the obvious but she didn’t have the energy to do anything but raise an eyebrow. She couldn’t even muster up any fear when he buried his head at her throat once again and licked the wound clean, placing a pad of cloth over it and pressing a little hard to stop the flow of blood.

Buffy hated to admit it, but his cool tongue had felt kind of nice; soothing against the fire in her skin that came with the blinding flashes of pain that came with being attacked by sharp implements.

“Could-could you do that to the other wounds?” Buffy looked quickly at the one that had mutilated her breast and instead of anger, she flushed red with embarrassment.

He didn’t answer, just moved over her so that he could gently take the torn flesh into his mouth and bath her clean with his tongue. Buffy was incapable of keeping back the moan of pleasure she felt at having her skin cared for in such a manner, and despite the fact that she had evil lathering her naked skin, she felt the beginnings of arousal.

It was sick. She was insane, but as he nudged her nipple with his tongue and gulped her flesh into his throat, all thoughts of violent death escaped her mind to huddle in that darkened corner she’d pushed Angel into after the forced ‘I love you’ declaration earlier that night. For reasons that escaped her at this minute, she had felt more violated being put on the spot like that than she had being stripped and mauled by her enemy.

The peroxided head lifted; he refusing to look at her while he covered her with another square of cloth, a thumb just feathering over the other puckered nipple so softly she thought she imagined it in this unsure state.

“And—“ Before she could ask his lips were on the inside of her thigh, a vampire kiss in reverse as his tongue made gentle swirls over the twin needle marks, his hand absently stroking the small square of fabric between her legs.

Buffy felt her body shudder even as her legs unconsciously fell further apart. Her eyes were closed and she was lost to the sensation of his cool tongue, feeling the tightening of her body as he stroked her clean. Buffy couldn’t help herself as she dug her heels into the bed, lifting her hips slightly to encourage something—she didn’t quite know what.

It was with shock that she jolted as her panties were harshly ripped from her body and a mouth buried deep in her pussy, tears falling fast as a cold wet tongue delved into places she didn’t know existed, the rough surface driving her mad with need for something she was only just learning made her body feel good. Despite her weakness she felt her fingers tangle in his hair, both trying to get him away from her as well as make him stay, make him give her something, soon…now…please.

It was there, just out of reach as he feasted on her clit, his mouth suctioning the stretchy organ until she writhed. Almost at release he pulled himself away, his eyes turned golden in fury as he abruptly unzipped his pants and grinned as Buffy’s eyes went wide and she moved up the bed in fear. He grabbed her ankles and yanked her back down, quickly ridding himself of his jeans as he rejoined her, hands strong on her hips as he held her down.

The rounded curve of his cock made her cry as it nudged her thigh, slipped over her thoroughly moistened pussy and stretched her entrance almost painfully.

“Spike, please don’t. I’ve never—“ Before she could blink he had her hands in cuffs and tethered to the bedhead.

“I know that, sweetheart. You said you were sorry, now you can show me how much.” And he pushed his cock till Buffy screamed her protests, her pussy walls jittering in objection even as fluid gushed to make his slide more bearable.

“Spike, please stop. You’re hu-hurting me.”

“Not now, Pet.” He thrust into her deep, his hands wandering from her hips now she was captured and finding the hard points of her nipples, letting his palms rub over them as his cock undulated against her.

Sensation turned brilliantly intense; she saw colours, felt ridges as his cock rubbed her emotions raw but slicked her good. Buffy could feel her mind detaching, drifting up and watching as this monster took her against her will, but lovingly treated her body as a gift, his hands not painful as he teased her tender nipples. Watched as he drifted down to lift her legs around his waist and moved closer so he could thrust slowly, her hips lifted to an angle for deeper penetration and opening her up for all sorts of wonders.

When he leaned forward and sucked a nipple hard into his mouth, Buffy felt herself fall back to coherency. All three bite marks seared her, her pussy shuddering around him as the sensation of him inside her made her insides heat to boiling. She could feel the flush all over, could feel the tightening of her own legs as she held him, her tears drying up as he thrust into her slowly.

He released her aching nub with a sloppy ‘pop’, watching her almost shyly as he slowed the movement of his hips even more. His eyes were as clear as crystal, a blue flame that took her to the edge of fire with a lust look. His rough thumb pad found her clit just as he asked, “Still hurt, luv?”

Buffy shook her head, not knowing what to do now that the slowness that stretched her wide with no pausing in the build-up made her want to writhe beneath him and clutch his hair.

It felt good and she felt almost grateful that such an animal could be so gentle with her during something so evil. It released her, this taking of her when so long she had been dancing around the act with Angel.

And this sensation was divine; this pleasurable feeling of having thickness invade her and moving so slowly. It was almost driving her out of her mind, and she wished she could see. Wished that her first time—and likely only time—wouldn’t be such a teenage cliché. Dashed in darkness and mystery. She wanted to know what he was doing to her, and she wanted him to see that if this was how she could help make him feel better about losing Dru…well, she wasn’t begrudging the act.

But she was young; she didn’t know the etiquette, let alone that with a master vampire like Spike. She let him slide in her, eyes pleading for him to understand, to know she was okay if her mind and Slayer were objecting to it all. As she watched, he ripped the rest of his clothing off, his chest finally becoming bare to her watery gaze as he tossed the tee across the room. Then he slid up her body and she felt the barest brush of her breasts against his chest, felt his cool breath at her ear as it teased her hair.

And was blasted with an almost uncontrollable urge to turn her head and let her lips brush his. Her mind was lost to the fantasy, her heartbeat pounding in her chest even at the thought of their mouths meeting for something so sweet as a kiss. When Buffy felt the sudden fall of her hand as it was released from a cuff, she immediately used it to tangle in his curls, her eyes drifting open in some drugged haze to find her fantasy real, and he was loving her with his mouth.

Yet it was a lie. He didn’t love her; didn’t even like her. Was using her as nothing but a vessel to assuage his grief. And when had she ever cared what he felt and what he did? He was evil. Spike, a monster that would kill her as surely as her name was Buffy. Her enemy.

And yet she was becoming lost in the soft way his lips moved against her own, felt her head go fuzzy as his tongue met hers. Felt every defence shatter and run as the kiss—slow and sure—echoed the rhythm of his cock as it swelled and rolled inside her.

Her other hand was released and it went straight to the curly wonder of peroxided locks, holding him so close as she lost her mind to his mouth. It was so much sensation—much more than she’d ever experienced. Her body fighting to claim something new, to accept some delightfully explosive shivers as they bounced around her body, preparing her for something so huge she had no words. Buffy knew the words, had had her own small self-induced ones after trying out some Cleo tips, but had never thought such fierce rightness could ever be achieved in her long, slow exploration of feelings with Angel. Now she had it here, trapped in a body that wanted to lose all boundaries and scream to the world how amazing she felt.

The kiss got a little rougher, Spike moaning into her mouth as his teeth nibbled on her lips, his hips moving a little faster and causing a friction against pussy walls that eagerly encased him. Then he broke roughly away, gasping in air he didn’t need and quickly diving in to deliver peppered kisses over her throat and breasts.

“Do you wanna see? Want to see me pound into you?” He was trying to shock her, trying to claim back the control over this vicious act that had lost its animalistic fervour almost as soon as he’d penetrated her and nearly burned to death.

“Please,” she whimpered and it didn’t quite sound like the plea for mercy that he’d been counting on.

Without leaving her body, he sat her up in his lap then shuffled forwards so she was leaning against the head of the bed, some gentlemanly remnant dictating he ensure her comfort as he loaded soft pillows behind her back. He pushed two under her and then had her sit back, catching her eyes in his as he slowly looked down at his cock being sucked by her newly initiated slickened lips.

Spike felt angry at how her eyes seemed to eat up the sight, how she seemed to push out her breasts a little as she watched his cock sink into her and slowly pull out, the sucking sound as he did audible to both of them. The Slayer was breathing heavily, her heart and blood were racing, and his cock was swollen to almost unbearable widths on the power of his consumed Slayer blood. He wanted to bite her again, feast on her blood until she was an unresponsive corpse beneath his body, but words held him back. Kept him on an edge of furious outrage that he was doing this, sharing himself with the woman that took his salvation away.

Even if he knew it wasn’t her fault.

He wanted it to be. Wanted so much to blame her and hit her and cut her till she bled out all over the bed. But a sense of fairness wouldn’t let him. He’d been lost in cold fury, taking it out on this little blonde when he knew it was his Dru who had made the decision. Had played kamikaze vampire on a skewer as she uttered strange prophetic words that he knew better than to ignore.

So, she’d brought him to this place. Introduced him to a purpose she’d not mentioned since the night she’d made him a monster. So all he had to do was find his sun, and he tried to work the riddle as he looked into the face of one of the loveliest humans he’d seen in a long time. And she wasn’t clawing and biting at him; wasn’t fighting for her freedom from his brutal invasion of her body. She was watching his glistening cock as it joined with her, seemingly mesmerised by the motion of his pole moving back and forth.

And then she reached out her little hand and slid warm fingers over him as he moved, stroking him almost lovingly as he slid all the way out. He stayed out for seconds, gasping as she let her hand drift and cup his balls, looking up suddenly to make sure it was okay. Then she pulled on his sack and he was moving within her again and he couldn’t help it. Couldn’t stop it when he fell forward and his lips found hers again.

She burned him like the sun—her beauty, her goodness. Her acceptance and her enthusiasm. She made something inside him shine, gave him a sense of power he hadn’t felt since that first night he’d encountered Dru. Felt earlier that night long ago when he was all buoyed up with the possibility of love.

As the riddle cleared and made sense, he sucked on her tongue, feeling tears slip from behind his closed lids and wrapped her in his arms. Her body shivered against his, her legs wound tight around his waist as his thrusts finally sped up, needing finally to gain a release that would put an end to this and work out what the beginning would be. He was insane for even thinking there could be one.

He was evil. A predator that fed on her world, and yet he wanted to be a part of her.

But how could he? He’d robbed her of her innocence for the selfish motive of making her pay for something she wasn’t responsible for. As he made a decision, he felt himself swell, stretching her walls to the brink as he pulsated against her, kissing her deeply as he came. He found her sensitive pulse and stroked her, feeling the sense of doom as she squeezed him tighter, held her shuddering body against his as he released tears into her neck.

They breathed against each other, Spike reluctant to let her go for the relief it gave him to touch her. Buffy clinging to him with the joy of the most intense sexual experience of her life. He felt the twitch of her lips against his shoulder, nearly jumping out of his skin when he felt tiny human teeth sink into his flesh and her beautiful mouth suck some of him into her. It was enough to hope—but not enough to change his mind.

He pulled away, a sincere look of apology in his eyes as he slowly leant forward and gently kissed her lips. Then he located what he needed beside the bed on the floor and placed it in her hands, turning his back once and for all and reclined on the bed.

Turned his back on a Slayer and her stake.

It vibrated in her hand. A lonely stick of wood with the sole purpose of ending the existence of the undead. Walking death that had surrendered his voyage through time to a risky end, lying with his vulnerable back to her after giving her intensity that she deserved. On a closer look, Buffy found it wasn’t the stick that moved in a buzzing beat in her hand, but her hand itself that shook. A loose grip on a tool of her trade, less than a metre from its destiny.

Spike’s back was smooth and pale, white skin shining through the blur of moisture in her eyes. She couldn’t reconcile it in her head—frenzied passion and kisses the like that almost stopped her heart, against the fear of being used, of being taken and ruined by the soft hands of a monster. Yet there had been no animal on the bed with her. The moment she’d woken thinking herself in Heaven, Buffy had been beside the body of someone who…maybe not cared, but not someone that hated.

God, confused much?

Buffy was tired, sore and cold. Her hands felt even looser around the cylinder of wood and she suddenly felt a rising anger. She couldn’t kill the one who had taken her virginity, whether it was through lack of consent or not. Her mouth had not conceded to his actions, had not given voice to the one word that would allow her head to be alright with the event. But her heart seemed to consult with no other part of her and influenced too many of her feelings and actions.

Buffy squeezed her eyes closed and threw the stake, shuddering as the impact of her decision settled. Opening them again slowly she spied the yucky looking lace coverlet and pulled it up over herself, shifting forward so that her naked body was pressed into the equally bare back of the vampire who had completely altered her world. Her arm curled around his ribs and as she held her breath, Buffy nearly jumped against him as he slowly touched her hand and finally held it, a thumb stroking the skin she just willingly gave him.

Pent up tears fell as both blondes lay spooned in the bed that had once belonged to someone else, trying hard to forget how the night had come about, while memorising the events that brought them to this moment.

And after awhile, they surrendered to their emotional fatigue and slept.

~ * ~ * ~ * ~

It was a vision he’d refused to ever contemplate. The girl he loved snuggled up to a notorious killer, quite obviously enjoying the closeness that came in being with her maker. He remembered what it had been like, being the one under Darla’s expert tutelage and overwhelming lust had certainly made him rather happy, and he’d returned the favour when his darling Drusilla had joined the family. But he’d never consented to this. Would never have allowed Spike to take what was his. Would never allow his Buffy to be tainted by what he had been, what he still was.

She was dead.

They’d suspected it when he’d made it to the club checked out with her friends the previous day, finding Buffy’s old LA school friend dead—neck twisted thankfully. He’d not been fed on in front of her. But then Angel identified her blood at the top of the stairs and had felt himself die again with acknowledging the truth. If Spike had the Slayer, she wouldn’t remain alive.

He’d caught one of the less diligent minions outside the factory walls, holding him with just a snarl and a forearm as the less than loyal one told a horrifying tale. His Dru was gone, apparently dusted by her own madness and yet a casualty to the Slayer’s stake. As the haunted howl was seemingly ripped from his throat, he’d felt the tears and had to wait hours after hearing. He’d dusted the minion and gone to wail away from the factory, knowing if he stuck too close Spike would sense him.

He should have felt her pass. Should have known the very second she’d left his blood, but his neglect left him too much on the outside. The guilt was there. He’d failed them both. He should have taken Dru under his wing when he’d first seen her in the park, should have tried to change her and help her heal. He was her sire, and she loved him. Something could have been done.

And Buffy. He knew that under the circumstances it would be too late anyway. Far too late to storm the factory and save his beloved. And still the image replayed in his head—her stake, her threat. Dru might have impaled herself, but Buffy had given her the weapon. For a brief soulless moment, he was glad that Spike had her. And he’d hoped his grandchilde had made the girl hurt.

And so the night had passed—he oblivious to one childe’s passing, but ever aware of the other one’s pain. Angel had locked himself away in silence, his own crying the one sound in his apartment as he drank more and more yet became more sober by the minute. His bleak hatred for the one that caused it to happen finally turned into himself and showed him rationality.

It wasn’t Buffy’s fault. She’d probably done what she’d needed to do to get out of that place. He’d seen the door. Could tell if it closed there was no easy way out—especially if you were locked in with a room of ravenous vampires, two of those being of old. So, how could he hate her? How could he have left and condemned her to a sure and brutal death?

And his soul kicked back in painfully and he mourned for yet another loss, and this, one that he could have saved. He’d been brought to her by Whistler to offer direction, to fulfil a prophecy—who could possibly know with the cryptic Powers That Be? Whatever the reason, whatever purpose he’d been given, it certainly hadn’t been to offer her up as a ripened peach to a tormented, grieving vampire like Spike.

The one thing he’d never suspected, though, was an addition to his family. He’d not felt it. Not felt the line swell in number. He’d blocked out each addition over the years, finding it less than productive to torture himself over and over to wonder which of his family had added another death to their ranks.

A turned slayer.

It was wrong, and it ripped out his heart without the benefit of dusting. It killed him that he’d have to take care of her, dust her before she could kill. Oh God, if she hadn’t killed already. It didn’t seem that way, instead looking like other vampire carnalities had taken place. He could see the chains hanging free, could see the splashes of blood on the floor where he imagined she hung waiting for Spike to kill her. Her clothes were flung torn to the side, and the image of her naked body being abused and tortured for the sake of Dru made him want to begin howling all over again.

But that would take away the surprise, would make it too difficult for him to take her against the force of them both.

She moaned from deep in her throat and seemed to snuggle closer to Spike, her bare back so close a target for Angel’s stake. Tears clouded his view but still his path was chosen. Only then did the pain erupt and he roared as he lunged, even the sudden surprised movement of the lovers before him not enough to prevent the stake from penetrating and her blood seeping forth—splashing over his hands.

Screams rent the air, snarls and fury dripping from fangs as Buffy lay whimpering on the bed, pain filled cries echoing all around him. Spike attacked, taking Angel down with a solid kick to the side of his head and another to his crotch. He ripped the wood from his grandsire’s hands, flung it so hard it lodged almost the full length into the wall.

“What the bleeding fuck do you think you’re doing?”

It was the pause that was needed, time enough for Angel to wonder at the urgent thumping heartbeat that slowed as he stood fascinated, watching blood pool down Buffy’s back.

“Sp-ike,” she called out, her voice weakening even as her eyes closed. Spike caught her as she collapsed, his eyes flashing amber as he looked at the intruder that had tried to rip away his hope.

He kissed her brow, his hands urgently tracing around the wound and growling in his chest when copious slippery liquid slid under his fingers.

“H-how bad is it?” Angel asked numbly, seemingly totally disassociated, seeing not his would-be girlfriend but a human that he might accidentally have killed. Yet the shocking pain he’d expected was slow to reveal, the crippling agony of all his past misdeeds as Angelus having far more impact than this attempt at righteousness.

His answer was a feral snarl, and he flinched at the unaccustomed hatred on Spike’s face. They’d always had their clashes, but they’d never breached the bond of care that came with being family, with being tied to each other through the incestuous twist of sire and childe.

More than he could ever suspect, it was this possible loss of his last close family member that broke him, made his soul cry for his mistake. Not the attack on Buffy. Not being the one to almost kill the Slayer. That she hadn’t been vamped by a grieving Spike hadn’t even entered his mind yet. He was blocked to all but this infringement on vampiric law—attacking a favourite of his family in front of her paramour. Dru was dismissed from the situation momentarily, and instead he thought of what punishment would be befitting of his crime. What he would have forced upon Spike had he done something similar to him.

The expectation of what was to come wasn’t pretty, but rather than even focus on what had occurred in clan lore, Spike was keening painfully over the wound in Buffy’s back, gentle lips and tongue removing the mess obscuring the damage so they could know what she would need.

Angel could hear her heartbeat now, slow but loud and he sighed in relief. How did he miss it when he first entered? How could he ignore the steady beat of something so heavily in existence in a silent room? Stunned recriminations were diverted by feral yellow eyes, warning that his presence was not welcomed—nor would be borne any longer.

Like the epitome of what he was, Angel slunk out of the room and blended morosely into the night. News for the Scoobies would be patchy at best. He’d almost killed Buffy—because she wasn’t dead like he’d assumed.

She’d been bedded, though. That much he’d smelt and the thought now made him nauseous yet strangely calm. He’d not yet managed the switch from wanting her dead for the dusting of Dru, and recognising it wasn’t her fault and that she didn’t deserve to be drained. Except she hadn’t been—hadn’t even appeared to be tortured. Instead, loved? He had no clue what to tell Giles, if he could even open his mouth to speak.

His childe had acted out of character, abandoning the eternity he had bestowed upon her and robbing them of another fourth of their group. The women were gone and behind they’d left two broken men. What Spike had chosen to do in that state was yet to be made clear to Angel, and in his confusion, he completely bypassed the Watcher’s home. Locating a bottle of alcohol instead, he sunk into a depression that had been spared him when he’d taken Darla from his world by his own pointy and handy arrow.

He had nothing to tell, so for now he would be silent.

Dead men told no tales.

~ * ~ * ~ * ~

She felt too cold in his arms; too much like Dru after they’d spent the night feeding and fucking. She felt dead, despite the weakened pounding from her chest. His mouth had bathed her wound, taken in the ambrosia of her blood as it leaked purity from her body. The bleeding had slowed once he’d pressed balled fabric against it, putting too much pressure on it but still she remained oblivious in a comatose state.

“Slayer. The wanker’s gone now, pet. Come on. Time to open those gorgeous eyes of yours.”

Her soft moan brought air past his lips and for the first time he realised it had hurt not to breathe. Actually pained him to not do what he’d been reborn to leave behind. She shuffled a little in his arms and he almost wept his relief. She’d be okay. She’d be once again warm and be the sun of his heart.

He had to kill Angel. No two bloody ways about it but the fucking nancy dipshit had to go. He’d broken code, interfered in lore that he’d had no right to. The Slayer had been beside him, still human but for all the git knew, chosen to be more than a bed partner. Selected to join their diminished family in one form or another. The loss of her heat told Spike he would never sacrifice her life just so he could have her for eternity. Dru had warned him to not hurt the girl and killing her would do more than that.

As far as he knew—and he’d done his fair share of studying the Slayer line—no Slayer had ever been successfully turned. No vamp would have wanted to. No matter how much irony might be in the act, in the achievement, no vamp would want to bring over one who had devoted her breath to extinguishing their kind.

As much as a trendsetter Spike considered himself to be, he wasn’t going to be the first one to do it. Not when he’d felt what it was like to bathe in the sun. When the heat of confused green burned into him for answers, he almost folded. Almost forgot who he was and crumbled over her, holding her safe against him forever.

This metamorphosis was too much, too soon. He’d barely realised the loss of his sire, let alone the partner of his eternity being gone from him forever. And now the last of the four was breaking code, pushing boundaries that the two-faced wanker had pounded into him for the first year of his unlife.

It was wrong for one vampire to interfere with the kill of another. Wrong to attack a mate, a possible mate, or even a special one chosen by a familial member. Sharing was allowed, relished even, but only once consideration and permission had been granted. Angelus had no right to trespass in his bedroom without an invitation, whether he’d thought the Slayer in danger or not. For making such a gross mistake against their code, the brooding hair gel obsessed poof would cop it, and Spike was going to enjoy pounding the living fuck out of something. His grief was obscene, rising up righteous and furious once again, and a whimpering Buffy wouldn’t be the one he took it out on this time.

She didn’t speak a word, silently watching as his face went from concern to hate in almost a split second. Fear rose and made her blood pound through her body, gushing back into the balled cloth at her back. Buffy jumped as his growl tore from his throat, the fabric pressed harder and he looked at her with not so gentle rapprochement.

“Spike?” Buffy watched as his demon took over and fangs descended, yellow eyes clashed with her pain filled green. Weakness clung to her limbs and no matter what she was in for now, she had no hope of escape. No possibility of even retrieving the stake he’d handed her earlier in the night. The one she’d tossed in decision as she’d curled into his back.

Despite the amount of blood she’d already lost, Spike dived at her mouth, fangs ripping harshly into her lips. Buffy’s pained cries didn’t stop him at first, too intent on letting the demon vent and retrieving his battered ego. It had all gone wrong, from the moment he’d allowed that oily haired teen to enter his lair and offer a trade. The Slayer. How could he not have known it was too easy? And now his lover had gone and he’d initiated a replacement within hours—apparently with Dru’s own approval.

He was a vampire. He’d been made immortal, raised within the truth of evil and rules. Too many had been broken, too many lines crossed and the only control he could regain was to make Angel pay.

With a not so gentle thrust, the Slayer was away from him, huddled fearfully on the quilt that his Dru had lovingly placed upon their bed. He suddenly felt sick, felt unfaithful and disgusted. He’d been controlled, been ignored in the order of decision. Dru had no right to make those plans—even if she had seen something foretold over a century ago. Angelus had had no right—not to bound into his room and attempt to eradicate his replacement mate. It was time to wreak havoc on this town, kill indiscriminately until the ache in his chest eased.

He was dressed and standing at the foot of the stairs in minutes, ignoring the crying form of broken Slayer on his bed.

He left her there—refusing to deal with why he’d wanted to even have her as his mate, and no replacement at that.

Events shifted around him and he was powerless to stop it.

Powerless to do anything. But kill Angelus.

She couldn’t stop shaking. Shock had begun to seize her limbs and her face felt numb from the cold of her tears. Buffy hugged cold, numb arms around herself, her mind almost blank as the torn flesh at her back almost crippled her to pain.

Angel had attacked her.

The thought was terrifying in itself. Buffy remained huddled on the bed, naked and shaking as she replayed the event in her mind, only snippets and no words sinking through the barrier that wanted to protect her even now. But Spike’s voice carried a name as he shouted and tried to pull her out of the way, and her back itched and seared with fire as her flesh was viciously cut into with wood. She’d seen that much, seen Spike in his protective rage bury the implement in the far wall after seizing it from Angel’s hand. Blurred to the impact the event then had as she faded from consciousness.

She’d thought she was safe. It was irony at its best. One vamp had tried to stake her in the back, and another was all vamped fury in her honour. A Slayer at the mercy of vampiric whim, and yet she’d felt safe with Spike watching her back. Literally.

It all seemed different when she’d pried her eyes open again. She was weak. Afraid. Obviously in need of medical attention as she felt the slow flow of blood as it again took to trailing down her skin. And she was alone. With no explanation other than threats against Angel, he was gone, leaving her to stain a bed that didn’t belong to her. A bed in which she’d been left naked and weak.

She wasn’t alone, though. Buffy could feel her neck tingling with awareness of the presence beyond this room. Knew without any doubt that too many minions lay just beyond her and she would be dead before she even got out of the building. She was bleeding profusely; it felt warm as it slid over the skin of her back. It would be some kind of miracle if she made it to the top of the stairs without a swarm of vamps waiting just on the other side of the door.

But the continued loss of blood was making her weak, and Buffy came to the frightening reality that she didn’t have a choice. She could feel the thumps of her own straining heart as they echoed throughout her entire body. For any kind of a chance she had to leave; had to attempt to make it to a hospital where she could have her wound treated and possibly submit to a blood transfusion.

When the colour seemed to seep from every object she looked at, she made up her mind. On spaghetti strong legs, Buffy regained her feet and felt around for her clothes. Her slayer vision was failing, some things blurring even as the black clothing around her stood out stark in memory—if not in sight. The Slayer cringed when the back of her shirt stuck to her back, blood seeping through and making it stick tighter than any bandage. That was bad. Had to mean all kinds of bad that there was so much blood. Spike must have only stopped it for awhile.

Finally the struggle with shoes was at an end and one foot rested on the bottom of the stairs. No amount of directed breathing or slayer pep talk could calm the fear and her heart beat a rhythm loud enough to wake the dead. Being that it was night, and she was surrounded by at least twenty walking demons, she wasn’t thinking they really needed the extra help. The scent of Slayer blood was more than enough to have them gathered and snarling over an easy meal.

Then again, miracles had happened before. She’d lived through the previous night, despite being at the mercy of a grieving vampire who’d been after her blood since he rolled into town. Events had been turned so far to the other side of what should have been expected, that Buffy was more than willing to take another gamble right now. If she didn’t—if she remained naked on that bed waiting for her world to suddenly once again make sense—she had no doubts the minions would find her dead on the comforter anyway.

The first step hurt, but the second step was much worse. Pain wracked her body in excruciating detail, leaving no cell bereft of the message. Yet still a foot matched a step until she was at the door, a shaking hand raised to push it open and face almost certain death in an effort to save her own life.

The door opened too slowly, the creak of the hinge echoing throughout the factory like an injured calf baying for its mother. It was almost prophetic, that sound that warned of her entry as she stared at a multitude of glowing amber eyes all aimed at her, almost eating up her pain and fear. Whatever hope she had clung to—that the factory would be empty or that Spike would come running to her rescue, or even that she was dreaming and Angel hadn’t really stabbed her with her own chosen weapon—crash dived in the face of over twenty ravenous vampires. Elongated fangs salivated at the scent of her strong blood.

Buffy closed her eyes as she took the first step into the room, keeping them closed when she took another and another. Tingles raced over her skin and pounded into the back of her skull, the inherent demon warning almost knocking her out in inbred Slayer panic. Her will hadn’t yet deserted her, but Buffy did not retain the strength needed to take them all on and keep walking.

She was barely walking now, and as she made the fifth step and remained unharmed, she allowed her eyes to hesitantly slide open. The sight made her scream and she stopped still, heart thudding a race to get out of her body. To run and never quit running until someone forced her to.

They were so close. Not touching her but less than an arms length away. She could reach out and rest a hand on them if the thought didn’t completely squick her out. Buffy could feel the blood gurgling at her open wound, could feel the cold of helpless tears as they asserted a path down her cheeks. Could almost smell the fetid breath of these less grooming friendly minions.

She didn’t know what to do. They were in front of her, behind her, beside her, all eyeing her neck greedily like she was some special entrée they had all been fighting over and now still hadn’t reached the decision of who got to bite her first.

She couldn’t look. Even if she’d had a stake and hadn’t been incapacitated, Buffy couldn’t take on twenty vamps and made it out alive. The odds were more than against her, and yet on trembling legs she reached the factory exit and found herself surrounded by the cool reassurance of the night.

More followed as Buffy ventured her way to the hospital, darting frightened looks over her shoulder at the enlarging number of vampires that were following her path. She suspected her wiggins levels had just been blown right off the chart. Forcing herself to move on, to ignore the strangeness of what was happening, Buffy pushed on. One step after another until in a particularly dark alley had her turning slightly and crying out in distress to see her following had swelled in number to such a degree that it looked like a parade.

None of them came more than a step closer to her. None of them pushed the very obvious advantage they had to attack and tear her broken body apart.

Buffy’s body was shaking alarmingly in shock as she descended the steps into the hospital, almost fainting in relief on a free passing gurney. Falling face forward, she finally gave in to her terror and cried, allowing the blood that saturated the back of her shirt to tell the tale while emotion allowed her to claim some semblance of sanity.

Then painkillers and Doctor’s voices reassured her that if the monsters of the night hadn’t killed her outside when there were no witnesses, then they weren’t going to do it once she’d reached a kind of haven.

Her last thought was of a confused collage of Spike’s attitude and care before her world went thoroughly black.

~ * ~ * ~ * ~

It had not been a conscious decision, but rather one based more on vampire code and instinct. She’d reeked of Spike; they’d scented his scars on her body. So, though enticed almost out of their minds by the high of her blood, the claim their master had on this Slayer through bite and sex was far more than what a little taste would be worth. Spike may be new to their group, might be new to them as Master, but his reputation wasn’t exactly non-existent. He’d lost one of his women this night—if they’d dared take another…it just wasn’t worth the pain. The end to their existence. The quick introduction to hell.

The aroma had been too strong to ignore altogether, though. It had called to them like a siren song and so minion after minion succumbed and crowded her, imagining what that one little taste must have been like. Spike must have had more than a taste as more than one bite could be scented. They’d followed her like dogs eager to not lose their bone, pulling in a crowd as they drifted past other nests and dreamed of that one taste all the way to her destination.

The strange behaviour of explicit looking but not touching the Slayer must have intimidated the newcomers. The ones that didn’t bow down to Spike’s rule yet were wary enough to not want to cross the unknown element. His strength was renowned for sure and any challenge on a woman covered in vamp bites and still walked…well, none of them admittedly had the balls. So they walked alongside her as if in a funeral brigade and then mourned once she passed into the relative safety of the hospital.

They didn’t disperse until close to sunup.

~ * ~ * ~ * ~

“H-hello?”

“Can I speak to a Mr. Rupert Giles, please?” The efficient nurse glanced up from the file in her hand and smiled briefly at a passing nurse.

“Speaking. W-who is this?” The voice was worried, suspecting as if he’d been waiting a long time for news of tragedy.

“Mr. Giles, this is nurse Johnstone calling from Sunnydale Memorial. You are listed on Ms. Buffy Summers file as next of kin. She has just come in and is being treated in Emergency. Would it be possible for you to come in and take care of admittance details?”

“Oh Lord, how is she?” The British accent cracked a little and then there was some kind of interference over the phone as the nurse suspected she heard some kind of fabric muffling the sound.

“You would need to discuss Ms. Summers’ condition with her doctor. I’m sorry I can’t help you, but I am not up to date with her circumstances. Will you be able to come in soon?”

“Oh yes, yes, of course. I am on my way.” The phone clicked abruptly and was obviously disconnected.

Nurse Johnstone was almost disappointed that the nice sounding man had clicked off the connection, doubting she would get to put a face to the voice as her shift ended and she gathered her jacket and headed for her locker.

~ * ~ * ~ * ~

They’d been gathered around the table looking up any information on William the Bloody and his girlfriend, Drusilla. Trying to fill in the time with purpose while waiting for Angel to show up with some kind of news. Xander spent most of his time staring with blurred eyes at pictures and words that didn’t relate to anything he knew, and looking up to share terrified looks with Willow. Giles had uncharacteristically thrown one book after another aside, parrying off his own desperate need for alcohol with numerous excursions to his kitchen and subsequent kettle, not returning to the teenagers till he had a tray laden with cups of tea that no one intended to drink.

Eyes spoke louder than words as each of the three periodically studied the clock on the wall, trying to tamp down rising fear every hour on the hour when Angel failed to show. When the phone rang, the only worry that flittered through their minds would be that Mrs. Summers had for some reason gotten the number from someone and was wondering where the hell her daughter was. No one expected it to be news of Buffy herself, and certainly not from the hospital. That Angel had failed to gather the information or save Buffy from whatever hell she had been catapulted into had never crossed their minds. Despite his vampiric status, they trusted him to find Buffy and make their world okay again. Make their world once again safe enough to sleep in.

So, it was in varying shades of shock that they made their way to the hospital, finding it necessary to dodge a number of vampire groups on their way from the carpark to the front entrance. Just that short trip was fraught with enough fear to keep their hearts pumping and to stave off total exhaustion and catatonic shock.

They found Buffy unconscious, dressed head to toe in white and lying on her side. A Doctor outside her room informed them of the damage to Buffy’s back, the need to boost her blood supplies with transfusion and the very real need for a restful recovery. They had no information on how she came to be stabbed so viciously in the back, but he was very caring in his relief that she had survived the attack.

“I-it’s almost like she’s been…staked.” Giles thought about his Slayer’s condition in a quiet stunned fashion, hardly believing that this girl he had begun to very much care for was not only still alive, but had almost been killed in the manner of the vampires she was charged to eradicate each and every night of her life.

“But, why G-man? I mean, a vampire would know she’s not dead, and even if they thought she was—and I can’t even imagine how those perky vamp ears wouldn’t hear her heartbeat—why would they kill her with a stake in the back?” Xander stood staring at his unconscious friend, a look of dazed puzzlement on his face.

“I-it could be some kind of bizarre retribution. Kill the Slayer in the manner she kills.” Giles stood beside Xander, both opposite a silent Buffy and a contemplative Willow.

“Or…maybe someone felt she had been turned and they thought they had to kill her before she could start to hunt on her friends.” Willow refused to look at Giles, only chancing the smallest look at Xander before she had the courage to continue. “We haven’t seen Angel. What if he thought she was dead? Thought she was a vampire? If he was all grievy it could be possible, right? He might have been too heartbroken to hear her heartbeat. So, just maybe, he staked her and now he’s either all dusty from Buffy protecting himself or all of the hiding because he is freaked out from almost killing her.”

“That actually makes a lot of sense. And if that’s what happened, then Evil Undead better not come around here no more.” Xander puffed out his chest against his crossed arms, a furious line of hate straightening his lips.

“Was that an obscure Tom Petty reference? I never thought you listened to him, Xander. I might have to reassess your intelligence in regards to good music,” Giles told him with a burgeoning pleased smile.

“Say what now? Never heard of him. Does he do country?”

“Oh, I give up,” Giles conceded and shook his head as he fell back into the only visitor’s chair in the room.

They resumed the awkward silence of earlier and just waited. For what they didn’t know. Sunrise? Angel to return and straighten out this mess…or maybe best of all, for Buffy to wake up and tell them where she had been for the past two nights and why she was sporting the gaping hole in her back that was the rage amongst all fashionably unlucky vamps in the Hellmouth area.

No answers materialised as the night wore on, leaving them to greet a tired sun with a continually confused frown. Buffy was yet to wake, and for them to still be out when school beckoned for their presence, questions would possibly need to be answered when they showed up to get either sleep or a book bag.

In tacit agreement they stayed, shifting uncomfortably on chairs that had been provided by thoughtful and compassionate staff. Buffy’s waking up was the priority, and knowledge of the situation at hand of the utmost importance.

Giles was the first to call in and beg off work for the day, citing the accident of a close family friend. When Willow took the risk and told her mother where she was, the woman who supposedly knew Willow best told her it was perfectly acceptable for her to want to spend her time at Muffy’s bedside. As long as she returned some time that day. Xander made no move to phone the school or his parents, figuring neither would really care or miss him till the damage had been done.

So, together they stuck side by side, waiting for their warrior to return to them and shed what light she could.

There was little more they could do.

Chapter Four

These humans reeked. They surrounded him in his torment and acted the way they always did: blind and insecure. Deserving of death. Deserving of destruction. How could he disappoint?

Warm blood encased in flesh swarmed around him in the streets, enough to take his pick without resorting to the celebration of the Bronze or some other establishment these hoards flocked to for fun but instead sunk further into melancholy. He refused to be tamed. Refused to let the circumstances of Dru’s mad actions and the Slayer’s delicious body and blood turn him soft, change who he is.

A fresh little brunette passed him on the sidewalk and gave him a flirty smile. He smirked and followed her, letting his eyes drift over her body as she swayed to a silent rhythm. The blood mesmerised him, turned him into an animal that paced his kill, following her from the light of the street into the dark of an alley. She would be his demon’s prize—spread out before him to abuse and feast to his ultimate satisfaction.

And freedom was his gift.

He’d always thought that was Dru, his glorious princess that had saved him from a mediocre existence being the brunt of the cruel humour of the more successful of his society. She’d seen something within him that no other had taken the time to examine. She’d recognised his potential and gifted him with time and immortality to relish the beast within, again and again.

The blood meant something different to him than it did to others of his possession. While the majority of vampires relished the kill, bathed in the blood and fornicated in death, he was much simpler.

Blood meant life.

It meant a power that he’d never had as a mewling mortal, weakened by his societies strictures and hierarchy. He had a higher calling to it than his lowly minions, and Slayer blood was the biggest kick of all. He wasn’t only about the kill. It was the accomplishment, the fight to assert who and what he was.

It was the thing that lying in bed with the Slayer had slowly began stripping him of. Identity. Dru had dusted right in front of him and taken away his meaning, left him floating in the sea of confused understanding. Was he still there, or had she taken him away with her? Had she now broken him with her misguided and misunderstood visions and subsequent action, or was she giving him something new to mould?

He couldn’t find the direction she’d left. Thought briefly that he could fumble through when the Slayer threw away her stake and curled around his flesh. Having the interruption—of Angel breaking with a tradition that the great one had pounded into him from his raising—was that small spark that could get him out of there. Was one more little shred of evidence that Dru had tried to take away all he’d known for over a century.

He refused to let Peaches add to the mess. He’d been punished severely to never forget the code, to never go against his family, and yet the amazing audacity of his prick grandesire had him running out of there in desperation to kill. To maim and feed and fuck. Except maybe not as the Slayer’s blood still pounded through his body and her scent was still heavy on his cock.

The scent infuriated him like no other and before he’d made a conscious decision he’d stepped out in front of the girl, his wicked smile making way for the change of his face and the drop of his fangs. He didn’t even stop her scream, ripping the front of her dress as she tried to run.

“That’s right, little girl. It isn’t worth it unless you scream.”

Yet when the time came it wasn’t her pussy he wanted. He’d never been about that, needing no one but Dru to satisfy his still Victorian principles. It wasn’t her blood he wanted, feeling almost ill at mixing common slutty trash with the virginal blood of the Slayer. But her neck he craved and so his hands caressed the flesh, his thumbs stroking against the pulse of her frightened screams, and then the wrench that stopped it all. Killed the noise and killed the girl. Stepping over the prone form of his success at banishing the fear.

Power like no other, and just like that, he was back to being the Big Bad with a grandsire to find.

A traitor to punish.

And a decision to make.

~ * ~ * ~ * ~

He’d made a mistake. Hours trekking after the poof of his making, the elder of his line, had been useless. The decapitation of too many bar patrons and the savage attacks on the proprietors had gotten him nowhere. He’d even ventured to the bright and loud arena of the Bronze, snapping another neck while he sniffed desperately to pick up a recent scent. No one knew where the fucker lived. No one knew where he’d been. And no one had seen him tonight.

It pissed Spike off no end. Left him directionless on a night that had demanded retribution.

He’d never taken Angelus for spineless. Never taken him for a yellowbelly who would turn his back on a mistake and run. Even jam-packed with a soul.

Spike felt the rage surge through his body, needing so badly to take out this deed on the perpetrator. Make the git pay dearly for lodging a stake in Buffy’s back. The chit could have died…

Something icy cold settled on his back and Spike ran, blurred past pedestrians like hell was on his heels. He’d left her, to assert vampire lore and control over one who’d usurped his own, only to leave a profusely bleeding Slayer at the mercy of his minions.

Seemed like the night was all about stupid decisions, and for this he could blame no one but himself. The heavy cloak of black was lifting by the time he made it back, making the colour around him lighter, yet only by a degree. It was enough to call vampires home to their nests, cause distress in those too far from home. Spike arrived on the outskirts of his own group of minions in their state of hypnotism.

Spike stood back, watching as they all slowly made their way past him, ignoring him as they focused on getting back inside the factory and settled for the night. They all looked drugged, out of it in a way that had Spike more than slightly spooked. It wasn’t uncommon to thrall a demon but he’d never seen this kind of effect. The flashy no-substance Dracula had never even managed this kind of feat.

He didn’t know what he would be following them into. Didn’t even feel confident he would find a live Slayer still bleeding all over his bed. Then each step he took he saw a big splash of blood that could only belong to her. His minions seemed to be lined around each pool, beyond mesmerised by the magic of her scent, and with a sudden frantic need Spike ran through the factory and into his bedroom.

His heart was searching, but his head already knew. She was gone; the story of her blood on the dirty cement floor and the mangy cream lace coverlet Dru had adored.

Blistering fury tore through him and he almost choked with the need to destroy. The lace shredded easily in his hands, howls of anger and pain almost drowned out with the redecoration of his furniture. Wood splintered as he kicked the dresser, punched at the bedside table. Porcelain dolls smashed beautifully as he saw the disintegrating face of the woman he’d loved for a hundred and more years; her black hair, her feline shaped eyes and the gold of her demon.

She’d given him this? This horror in which to continue existing? She’d brought him to Hell, not Sunnydale. How bloody dare she tell him this is what he had been destined for since the night she’d taken his breath from him. How fucking dare she leave him alone and confused in a place that was home of the Slayer and then tell him not to kill her.

And how dare she see a future for him that would rob him of everything she’d taught and encouraged him to be?

Finally Spike realised his resistance was useless. When had he ever fought one of Dru’s convictions and won? Bloody never, that’s when. He’d never been able to overpower her mind, as flimsy as it often was. He’d never been able to hurt her—not in over a hundred and twenty years. She’d been his salvation and he’d loved her deeply for that. Respected her endlessly for finding the depths in him that he’d accidentally hidden in his human world.

She’d never stopped surprising him. Never stopped taking him to newer heights.

It was the same even now. Bringing him and handing him over to the Slayer he was forbidden to kill. She’d halted his path, changed his direction and his resistance was wearing thin.

But despite everything, despite what his sire had hoped and predicted, no way was he going to change and be the Slayer’s newest puppy dog. No way would he hand over the power to one he’d forced from innocence in an evil and guilty way. He’d marked her so she was his, but he had yet to decide if he wanted her.

Angel had interrupted the process. Had made him forget the slippery slide into cosiness that he’d been in danger of falling into. He had the poof to thank for that at least, but he’d also stopped the process that would have left him at the beginning of something. Either the beginning of something monumental, or the edge of his own demise. Whatever it was it involved the blond, encompassed her life in a way that put him at its pinnacle.

He’d given her a stake, but he would never give her the power.

~ * ~ * ~ * ~

Head down and body huddled around a bottle of something hard, he thought he could almost forget his own name. It was something he’d wanted; something he’d tried to do for a century now. Forget his name, forget his entire existence. It might have brought him some low level of peace, but he doubted he’d ever receive the comfort.

Too many always wanted him to remember, to grieve over the gruesome evil that his existence had been before someone took control to alter him forever. To water him down forever. It was what he felt now. Half a man; half a demon. The whole of nothing. He’d lost the places where he had belonged, whether by right or design. He’d been stripped of it all—his home, his family, the life he’d known, all taken away to leave him in a small cold place where everyone knew his name. Everyone warned of his game.

It wasn’t hard. He was a broken creature feeding on misery and death, though not the same kind of death as previously. This time it had been rats, the odd faltered homeless that had lost their chance at life. Blood still warm though the heart beat no more. It was the only place he could think to return, to hide from his name and his truth for more than a minute at a time.

It didn’t hurt that no one would think to find him here. Dirty and sozzled on good Irish plonk, his leather blending into the night until the sky became more grey than pitch and he’d be squeezed back into the pulse of life once again. Brought back into the open to answer to crimes against human and vampire alike.

The Powers had given Buffy to him for purpose. Had given him reason to emerge from his shell and attempt to make good on his past. So far he’d screwed it up. Had let Buffy be caught, had allowed his childe to dust herself for whoever knew insane reason. Had let himself be convinced by something deep and dark within that she was gone and he had to destroy what was left. Kill his Buffy to save his soul. Except he feared it was gone already. Trapped in some murky depths of a cheap bottle of alcohol while he sat lost in useless guilt.

The first signs that the night was turning came with a distant silence as a strange light seemed to hunt him down. It had an essence as it struck him in the chest and left him flinching in pain while his back hit hard against a brick wall. It was an impact of fury, enough to have him falter in his misery.

“Daddy snapped at the pretty white children and hurt my William’s new gift.”

Angel froze, his eyes squeezed tight against the pain of the voice he could never forget. His grief was playing tricks he couldn’t withstand and tears began to flow down his cheeks. In an effort to stave off the pain, to prove to himself that the frightening images of his imagination had not escaped to exist before him, he had to open his eyes.

And there she was. Glowing white in a dress that he knew was familiar, though exact memory failed him for now.

“Drusilla,” he whispered into the still air and she smiled, though the tension around her lips was hard.

“Bad Daddy, thinks he can always take William’s things. My Spike won’t let you this time. Naughty boy has broken the rules and he will bring you to hell on a silver white horse and a big shiny hat.”

His shock could not shift enough for him to even think over her words, finding them—as usual—not important enough in comparison with her presence.

“Oh Dru, you look so beautiful.” He stared at her spectre until he felt the heat of her anger sink through his oblivion.

“My Angel never learns when he must let go the shackles. William isn’t your boy anymore and he is caught now on the road to sunshine. You must help him make it right, make what I did to him right, or I will return and make the gypsies hurt you deeper than the spark.” With a feral growl and the snap of her fangs, she was gone, the light she’d shone around him getting smaller until it barely illuminated a crack in the road. And then it was gone completely and Angel found himself stumbling his path through a hazy early morning darkness, racing for home before the truth hit him hard and he was left to rot on his knees.

Or let his failures spread on a dusty wind.

Chapter Five

Giles drove Buffy home the next morning, her lips remaining stubbornly closed despite the number of pointed observations regarding the bite marks on her neck and the need to know details about her back wound. Everything hurt; her back, her neck and her heart and Buffy was so tired of all the images that flashed in her mind.

She’d awoken to an audience.

Her friends and watcher had kept her safe through the night and had stayed to support her when she realised she was in a hospital bed. She’d had a steady flow of doctors and police officers questioning her on the apparent attack and all she would say was that she didn’t see it happen. She couldn’t tell them anything, and they left not wanting to know.

For her friends, she wouldn’t tell them anything.

For Giles, she cried, clamped her mouth closed and gave in to her grief and stress.

They pulled to a stop in front of her home and she was so glad that her mother was away again on business. Wondered at the convenience of being almost killed while her closest relative was out of town.

Giles turned the ignition off and sat in silence, staring forward like Buffy and saw a house. A home, and wondered why his Slayer couldn’t have been in it that night instead of being caught by vampires. The marks on her neck told a bare bones story that Buffy herself seemed yet too traumatised to reveal. Having seen the telltale marks of defeat once before on her flesh, he was almost grateful to whichever vampire had felt the impulse to end his feeding on the Slayer enough to spare her life.

He wondered if Buffy had dusted the vampire that had done this, and again thought of the possibility that it was Angel, just as Willow had suggested. The ensouled vampire was yet to turn up—had been almost classified as missing in action since the night Buffy made her way to the hospital. If it was he who had done this damage, and Buffy had staked him to save her own life, then he felt a rush of sympathy for her refusal to speak of the matter just yet.

Angel. Giles didn’t even feel a smidgeon of grief if the vampire was indeed dusted. There had been a subtle glint in his deep brown eyes that the souled one had kept desperately hidden that made Giles more than careful while he was in the vicinity. Of course, the unpredictable nature of his appearance was enough to give even the most calm a heart attack.

It would explain Buffy’s reluctance to get the events of her abduction off her chest. Share the burden of something that quite obviously pained her to remember.

“Buffy,” he began, hoping to at least reassure the girl that he was here should she feel a need to talk.

“It was Angel,” she reported in monotone, still staring ahead at her house. “He found me, and…he stabbed me in the back. I guess he thought I was a vampire.”

“What…but…surely he could hear your heart beating?” Giles was stunned, despite suspecting something of the nature.

“I guess he was too busy seeing me in a vampire’s lair to wait and listen for proof.” And her hand moved to the door handle and pushed the door ajar.

“Wait, Buffy. Did you dust him?” Giles leaned over the front seat as Buffy left the car, more questions tickling the tip of his tongue.

“No.” And she was walking away from him, up the path and steps, then through her front door into safety, leaving Giles to wonder if his sigh was in irritation or relief.

~ * ~ * ~ * ~

Buffy leaned back against the door, flinching as her back hit the cold wood against her bandaged wound, and let the tears finally fall. It was so confusing. Should she be grateful that Spike left her behind and she saved herself—losing the monster who took advantage of her in her innocence? Should she be grieving for the vampire she could never forgive for wanting to end her life, without the benefit of talking to her first and finding she was still very much human? If it were true, if those were the things she should feel now, why was there a great ache in her heart?

Through blurring tears Buffy made a slow start on the stairs, feeling the sobs as each foot took a step up, taking her closer to her bedroom. Still, she held the better of it in until she had tripped over the threshold into her own room, collapsing finally on her bed to release the grief that welled furiously within her body.

She hated Angel.

It was true. How could she forgive him after he almost took away her life? Even if she had been turned, and ewww to that thought, she would have been part of his family. Wasn’t it worlds of wrong to kill your family? Well, considering he dusted Darla with seemingly little pain, Buffy was guessing of the not. For some reason, that hurt even more and Buffy felt herself swept along that same tide of livid anger that had seemed to dissolve Spike’s sense.

And Spike. She didn’t miss him exactly, but the itching of her insides was all for him. She craved his skin against hers and she felt so cold and broken without him to curl up into. Was it normal to have this kind of craving for whoever took your virginity? Was she destroyed now because she couldn’t think of anything but the pleasure he had turned her pain into while he attempted to make her scream with agony?

The crystal blue of his eyes couldn’t be clearer to her now than if he had been sitting across from her, and she miserably wished he was. Sitting on her bed and stroking her hair as he did nothing but smile. No words would be needed so long as she could just feel him close to her. It was like he’d taken more than something physical away from her. Buffy felt like he’d moved a part of her emotionally that was now so displaced, it couldn’t return whole.

She’d been crying for what felt like a physically draining hour when she felt the tingle at the back of her neck, felt the shiver skate over her sensitive skin that indicated a vampire was near. The insane urge to scratch forced her to the realisation that her enemy was close—she just couldn’t tell who it was.

Squeezing her eyes shut, Buffy took deep steadying breaths as she sat up and turned toward the window. They felt the same to her, but still Buffy expected it to be him, peering through her window to check she was okay, to make sure she’d made it home alright. Clear caring blue to take the edge of darkness off her night and reduce the hollowness that was breaking her heart.

When her eyes finally parted, sluggish and reluctant with tears, the image sitting at her windowsill cleared. An adrenaline rush tore a harrowing scream from her throat and she ran, snapping up a stake from her dressing table as she departed her room in a frantic search for safety. She bolted through the house, worrying over invitations that now seemed the epitome of stupidity, soul or not. At least this time she was prepared. This time she wouldn’t let herself be vulnerable.

This time it wouldn’t be her that so nearly ended up dead.


~ * ~ * ~ * ~

Angel felt like his entire being had cracked. Too much alcohol pushed him to thinking some kind of drug might bring him relief. It wasn’t like he hadn’t partaken in ease and fashion of opium pipes and other sources of artificial relaxation when he was bad; when he was evil.

Several bottles of whisky told him he still was. Underneath all those lies of offered help, of cryptic clues to ward the Slayer from danger, and he’d killed her with his own hand. On the streets he’d encountered the trail of Spike and his fury and it left him wondering if his own impact on Spike’s rigid following of tradition had prevented him taking care of Buffy as he originally would have.

He was evil, no matter which way he wanted to spin the blame. With soul or without, he’d attempted to kill the Slayer, Buffy, and he had no idea how successful his aim had been. He’d staked to kill, and a vampire had to be pierced in the heart—an action that would be just as effective in human and demon alike.

When he passed the turn to Revello, and his unsteady feet picked up a rhythm in the direction of her house, he soon spied lights. Well, a light. One in her room that seemed enough to either prove she was alive or dead. Alive and in her room, or her mother grieving in the space her child had lived.

The light gave him no answers at all.

Without reason or conscious thought, his morbid curiosity propelled him forward. He leapt silently to the roof under her window, staying low in case her mother should chance to look and see him hanging around. Buffy’s cries were the first thing to be heard, and then the stable but heightened beat of her heart as she sobbed uncontrollably into her pillow.

Angel knew he should have left the second she took deeper breaths and the crying jag tapered to a slow hiccupping resignation. Tenseness settled on his shoulders as he watched—the eyes of a vampire picking up every slow, pained movement as her body slowly twisted to face him. Except she held her eyes closed, great blobby tears almost melding them shut as she took deep breaths and took courage to see him.

Only as they parted did he think she might not be wanting to see him. Thought that she might feel a vampire presence and be expecting Spike. When frightened jade alighted on his still pose at her window, the deafening pitch of her scream almost threw him back to the grass. Instead, he stayed in devastation as she snatched up a stake and left through her door, heavy and determined footsteps pounding down the stairs.

The panic in her heartbeat met him in her room even as she skidded to a stop at the kitchen door. It seemed overtly thunderous in the quiet night, even drowning out the crack of the door as it hit the wall and she rushed through it outside.

Angel was past caring how badly thought out his actions had been lately. He was causing pain and confusion everywhere he went. He knew he was mostly biding time until Spike finally located him and could take whatever fury out on him the younger vamp decided he deserved. But Buffy was now in her yard and armed with a stake. She had hurt and revenge on her side, and he had much alcohol and mind-altering substances filtering through his blood.

He almost wished he could meet her and let her give him what he deserved, but brave he was not. He fell less than gracefully from his perch and hunched in the grass for a handful of seconds, then made his way to his feet and sped away into the night, leaving the trail of a coward behind him.

~ * ~ * ~ * ~

Buffy felt like she couldn’t breathe as she tugged on the locked kitchen door, desperate fingers prodding at the lock as she finally managed to click it free and slammed the door open. Her frenzied rush into the cool night air came to an abrupt halt as she slammed into a body and fell hard to the ground. As prepared and fired up for action as she’d felt during her initial adrenaline driven flight, she felt the determination leech from her body, leaving her feeling flat, shocked and frightened.

Buffy rested her hot cheek against smooth black leather. She felt a sickness well in her belly as arms crept around her, her skin flashing cold then hot and cold again, not knowing how to settle when her own heart couldn’t decide if he was her friend or foe. Hands that rubbed soothing circles on her arms, that kept her lying upon him while he left his back on her turf, that had killed. She was being held and soothed by a murderer, a monster and her heart still wanted her to kiss him. Wanted her to rest in the protection of his nearness and bathe in the familiarity of being with him.

Spike.

Buffy couldn’t believe how affected she was by this vampire who had raped her of innocence, kept her chained while he bit hard into her flesh and tore her skin in a revenge that was unworthy. Yet her mind shut down now, welcoming the strange vampire into her home even as she kept him balancing on the edge of her heart. A heart that couldn’t believe what she’d done in such a short space of time. Couldn’t believe how quickly her views and beliefs had twisted around and in on themselves.

The giant clash of thoughts and actions left her bereft of energy and Buffy succumbed to the hypnotic rocking as Spike cradled her in his arms and carried her upstairs and to her bed. Eyes tightly closed even as her body shuddered. If this moment was to lead her to madness, she felt wholly incapable of preventing it. Panic over Angel’s appearance seemed long gone as Buffy curled away from this other vampire she had been so intimate with recently, her heart and mind fighting the tiny points until she was so confused she could do nothing but whimper in fear.

The tears had returned, though they had probably been prematurely pushed away in light of Angel’s unexplained visit. Now they seemed the only way to deal with having another vampire in her house; in her bedroom. She felt so ashamed; so disgusted with her weakness as a cold hand settled on her neck. In twisted logic Buffy arched away from his touch, instead allowing for more of his long fingers to find a grip on her throat.

“Please don’t hurt me anymore,” she begged, angry and frustrated that she was giving in and doing the one thing he said she would do. Begging him for her life.

A chance look at his eyes had Buffy gasping, the fear escalating as his fingers squeezed and she found oxygen a depleting reserve. His stare was a sharp blade that hit her from hundreds of different angles. Pain seared through her body as the last of her oxygen gasped past her lips and she welcomed the only thing she could depend on.

Buffy kissed the darkness and died.

Chapter Six

The moment she stopped breathing was the minute his commonsense kicked in. Spike was hurting the girl, perversely fighting the last instruction Dru had shot at him before she became so much dust. His sire’s crazy cackle circled around his brain and he tore his fingers from the Slayer’s skin, mesmerised by the emerging bruises even as he noticed that the rhythmic inflation of her diaphragm had stilled.

He’d killed his third Slayer and he felt a chill around his heart, rather than the celebration in his blood. Then it was blind panic that had him gather her in his arms and start the shaking, shouting as he tried to change the result of his loss of control. Spike felt sobs choke his throat and with an anger he had no chance at understanding, he shook her like a rag doll and didn’t even wonder at the brutal jerks her neck was further sustaining and the hair that whipped him violently in the face.

Hysteria was a bubble he was trying to hold away for the time being, and then he was kissing her, throwing her back on the bed and slapping her face as tears ran streaks down his own. Dru’s words goaded him to further confusion, and when he finally understood he wasn’t getting a response—or at least one he’d belatedly decided he needed—he collapsed onto the pillow of her breasts, howling for all the grief the past two days had brought him. Raging for the loss of his sire—hating Angelus for both making the stupid bitch so insane she talked in riddles and took her unlife, as well as for taking his moment with Buffy away by killing her, infringing the lore that had seen them both through a century and more of vampiric existence.

He was completely lost to this world, everything ripped away from him that made sense, and well he was kicking himself for depriving his time of the last thing that made his loss bearable.

The Slayer.

Buffy.

She’d been his for a moment and in one wild act of petulance, he’d lost her too. Once he’d killed Angelus for breaking code, he would be entirely alone with no one to love him. No one to hold him. No one to need him.

He would be better off dust. What was eternity if you had to wander alone and heartsick?

He had journeyed so far into his grief that the slight tickle as his hair was swept through with heavy fingers was completely ignored. When the soft touch of a fingertip drifted over his neck he felt the slightly cooled sensation and held his breath, keeping his eyes tightly closed while he waited for more. Waited to see if it was a dream or a beautiful reality he shouldn’t even hope for.

He was rewarded when the rapidly warming hand reached around his neck, and instead of squeezing him in an identical grip she tugged him up toward her mouth. Spike couldn’t look into her eyes, couldn’t see the lack of trust in this moment while his guilt was still chomping on his heart. He rested his cheek against hers and just breathed—in and out, slow breaths that hushed her ear even as he wanted to taste her again.

The slightest move and she’d captured him. Her face was dry but her lips were wet, hot and moist, giving strength yet asking questions his confused mind didn’t understand. All he could grasp was that Buffy wasn’t dead and he seemed caught in some tripe of a fairytale, kissing the princess awake. But then this made sense in the way that all of Dru’s rambling predictions did. She’d sent him into a world of Brothers Grimm and he was stuck like glue, even as he felt his body move and settle half off the Slayer’s as her arms seemed to strain to wrap around him.

Of course. He’d killed her. Might take a bit to come back from something like that. If the stories he’d heard about her short demise the previous year were correct, the chit was beginning a dangerous trend of expiring annually. Her arms seemed to hang without strength around his neck as she sucked his life from him by way of his tongue. And he was alright with that; was more than happy to play the gentleman that supported her while she gained power back in her limbs.

That concept of gentleman seemed to knock hard at the inside of his skull and he balked at what was happening. He’d almost killed this girl, and instead of trying to kill him back, or at the very least kick him away from her bed and out of her room, she’d taken possession of his lips even as she subtly shifted and allowed more of her body to be held to the mattress with the weight of his own.

Wasn’t right. Felt off; felt like he was taking advantage of her lack of experience like he had the first time. Felt like he was pushing his need to assert her life with the feel of her hot flesh against his, and he needed to slow it down. Needed to stop it entirely, yet her needy hands were capturing him in places other than his mouth.

With a wrench that caused a heavy drop in his gut, he thrust her away and got to his feet, cringing at the purpling of the bruises around her neck. The horrified look in her eyes shouldn’t have been a shock, but he felt pained that his thoughtless, plan deficient tantrum had brought them to this moment.

Spike felt the swell of that original fury, berating himself with the whole idiocy of the situation. What was his bleeding problem? He’d wanted this girl dead with a passion that had fuelled his visit to this godforsaken town. With the loss of Drusilla, that desire should have strengthened, rather than change course in the most upsetting of ways. God, he wanted to hate her and punish her, and so many things that suddenly morphed into images of fucking her, and loving her and he just couldn’t bear it anymore. And there she was, watching him with misery inspiring the rush of tears from her beautiful eyes.

“I hate you,” she whispered in a raspy voice and he felt again a foreign rush of guilt. Instead of enemy, now he saw a frail girl he’d been told to protect and yet she’d sustained two ferocious attacks on her life in such a short period. What kind of fuck-up was he that he was so incompetent in keeping this human alive when he’d held Dru’s existence in his hands for a hundred and twenty years with only the smallest of problems until Prague? It had been a good wicket and he felt bloody stupid and useless now when he hadn’t even gotten through a day of keeping Buffy safe. Not from himself. Not from Angelus. And now was his chance to keep them both safe and he was crumbling under her confusion.

“I know, Kitten. An’ you should. I’m the Big Bad.”

Just like that she started to sob, throwing less than cautious looks at him while she begged him to make her understand this craving to have him near, to have him in her bed, have him swelling inside her when she couldn’t bear the thought of him.

It was the imagery that did it; the idea of his cock sliding against her slick heat that brought him back to her side, enfolding her in his arms and making him forget all the pain that either of them were in. His shock at feeling her hands on the flesh of his back was short as he succumbed to the pleasure, recalling every detail of how glorious she’d felt naked under his body while he initiated her to sex. Violent, beautiful, meaningful shagging that he suddenly realised he could never give up with her.

His mind shut down and his fingers found fastenings, ridding her of the clothes that covered her from neck to ankle. A little hiss of pain brought him back from whatever haze had drawn him to her side and he bounced away, trying desperately to pull his eyes from her body.

“No,” she refuted heatedly. “Stop pulling away from me. Do you not want me? Am I ugly?” Her uncertainty compounded with a huge attack of compromised confidence and she covered herself with hastily gathered bedding, shame and grief tearing her voice to shreds as she pleaded with him through blurring eyes.

“We shouldn’t be doing this, Buffy. I almost killed you.”

“You did kill me!” she shouted in a fury that seemed to come from nowhere, even as she kneeled on the bed, pushing herself closer to where he had retreated closer to her door. “You can’t keep doing this to me. I don’t know why I do, but I want you. I need you to touch me and if you don’t fuck me right now I’ll scream this house down.”

He could visibly see the edge she was barely balancing on, could almost taste the blood that was pushing to her surface as she built herself into a larger frenzy of emotion. When she finally tipped, clawing and moaning, he grabbed her and tossed her on her back, almost tearing his own clothes to get free and give her what she’d demanded.

He couldn’t see straight till he’d rammed his cock hard up into her, revelling for a moment her cry of pain as he felt the tightness of her pussy suck him into a mental breakdown. Her legs curled over his hips hesitantly, and as her hands showed the same amount of uncertainty in touching him, he remembered why he’d initially thought they shouldn’t be doing this.

And he was apologising with kisses, feathering her with gentleness on her discoloured neck, licking her lower lip and whispering words of sorrow against her mouth. Her heavy breathing was against his ear and it moved him so much, made him begin to cry like the royal poof he had strived to never be. He started to lick up her tears, grasping her hand and linking their fingers together as he finally started to move inside her, feeling the massive surge of emotion all the way through himself and his partner as he pulled against her suction, pushed against her fluids. God, it was the most incredible sensation he’d ever felt. He was buried in heat, trying so hard not to let loose too soon. He felt a need to reassure her first, to do something to repair some of the damage their association had caused to both of them the past forty eight hours, and a kiss was the only way he could think to do it.

As he slid his tongue against Buffy’s bottom lip, he slipped passed her meagre resistance and brushed over her teeth, feeling his fangs piercing his own gums in readiness to burst forth. All control was gone when he smelt the sweet scent of her, tasted the lust on his tongue. One hand tight in her grasp, another twined in her hair and his pelvis gyrating against her pussy in a frenzy of a pounding so essential he wasn’t sure of his name, he pulled back and prepared to take her neck.

Existing bruises infuriated his demon and he quickly changed course, finding the spot where previously he’d marked her breast and sucked the straining globe into his mouth, sinking fangs deep into her flesh. Only small spurts of blood greeted his gentle intrusion this time, and while he was glad to not be hurting her so much, the lack of her essence was frustrating. He soothed his inner beast with the slow thrust of his cock in her depths, feeling the glorious effects of power as she moaned beneath him and held onto his hand tightly.

Her release was accompanied by sobs, and again he took to licking them away, finding that the coolness of her tears soothed the pain in his own heart. In a grand sacrifice the likes he’d never known, he pulled himself free, still hard and raging for the final claiming thrust that would bathe her walls with his come. He settled his bestial fury with a slide down her body, burying his head against the hot flesh, sensitive already and slippery with completion.

Her taste was something he knew he wouldn’t be able to live without, and suddenly those words of hate hurt him; his actions of the night wounded him. As he licked her pussy lips and flicked her clit, his remorse took shape and his feelings began to slide differently.

As she shuddered around him again, covering his face with moisture he was glad to have wrought from her, he smiled sadly. Everything was changing in the blink of an eye and he had no way to stop it.

When he looked back up, he couldn’t avoid her eyes. They shone with something different to the hate she’d proclaimed and instead of hoping, he blocked it from his heart and just lay by her side, hands still clasped as they re-enacted the naked repose that Angel had violently interrupted last time.

Buffy kissed him gently, releasing him for a moment while she went and covered her window, climbing back to be beside him, looking at him. Their eyes locked and held, communicating silently all the jumbled up emotions that kept them electrified and in each other’s presence.

Neither looking away; they waited for sleep to give them respite from trauma, having no clue but many worries about what tomorrow would mean.

What was forever changed.

Chapter Seven

Buffy was cold. Her flesh was fighting against touching a surface that left her chilled. But it was the first thing that broke through her numbness. The first thing that indicated she was still alive and could move her limbs if she wanted to. And she had wanted to. All through the night she’d wanted to run screaming naked into her yard and collapse on the grass, fist handfuls of dirt and dig a hole big enough to fit her body and give her somewhere to belong.

She’d been dead.

She’d felt the beginning passage of the end, her final journey coming to an abrupt stop as she felt a painful surge of beats in her chest, felt the blood begin to slide once again through her veins. It was the most horrible feeling she’d ever experienced. Buffy had spent her night, eyes locked and terrified, with the vampire who had stolen her innocence. Folding her body against his, holding a hand that wouldn’t let go. Revelling in a touch that got colder and colder with the progress of the night. They barely took the time to blink, afraid of that flash of explanation they might miss in a millisecond of fatigued action.

And now she was cold, straining against a vampire who was succumbing to sleep with the rise of the sun, and as much as Buffy knew her legs now worked, she couldn’t summon the determination that wanted her to move.

With his eyes closed in sleep, he was beautiful. Why did she see that? What was this feeling that had her reaching out a hand to touch his nose, his lips, and then through his hair, not even feeling slightly afraid that he might wake and punish her for taking advantage.

He was so beautiful and she wanted to kiss him and make him love her, yet she hated him. Wanted to kill him and could focus easily on the monster in him. Why did she want him? Why couldn’t she kick him out and dust him and just ignore that she had ever managed to live through this experience?

Buffy felt the shudder run all the way through her body even as a hand reached for his, her shakes making it difficult to lace her fingers through his. The cold didn’t recede at his touch, instead encompassing her fingers and palm in an even more pervasive chill that she couldn’t let go of.

Buffy studied the fingers that had automatically tightened around hers. Slim, nicely shaped digits that had touched her all over and had an intimate hold on her now, even as he was hiding in the dark of unconsciousness.

Buffy just couldn’t understand where this was going. Why hadn’t she dusted the second vampire who had killed her? Was she destined to surrender her life to these demons that had invaded her life on a regular basis?

It was a thought that didn’t cause as much fear as Buffy expected. The melt around her heart kept her close to him even as her mind tried to reject the surge of warmth that lit her from within. A realisation was enough to squeeze new tears from beneath resigned lids and Buffy cried for the futility of it all. Despite her youth, she could tell that she was going to love this monster in her bed; this vampire beside her holding her hand. Buffy was going to love him with all the power she had thought was going to belong to Angel.

She couldn’t remember what the brunette looked like anymore.

He’d sat menacing her from her windowsill only hours earlier and yet she couldn’t remember what kind of face he had. The colour of his eyes, the shape of his nose. What he wore and how he smiled. Did he smile? It almost felt like Buffy had never experienced the concept of happiness, so tired were her lips.

So tired was her heart.

Spike rolled onto his back, pulling her along until her head was resting on his shoulder. Before she completely gave in to this strange occurrence, Buffy raised the covers at the end of the bed and prayed it would pass her some of its warmth.

~ * ~ * ~ * ~

His body had succumbed to a steady burn, singeing away his skin with his sense from the outside in. Eyes closed he could feel her, smell her. Felt himself surrounded by Slayer and wondered how he managed to be lying against her with his heart blossoming with something new. Something unexpected. Something gifted from his sire from his rebirth to her final death.

For just a moment Spike allowed the loss of himself in her, allowed his heart to just feel the things that had been pushing to be felt. It was freeing to accept that he wanted her. That the thought of killing her was nauseating to him. That the thought of spending his time loving her was a glorious and happy concept rather than a disaster and betrayal to all that he was.

He couldn’t allow it to last. Just this short time while he lay beside her with her warm body heating him. Once they moved and left this room, then it all would come back. That insecurity that came with them being who they were, starting from where they did.

She said she’d hated him, yet their desperation for each other the night before implied other truths. Other possibilities in opposition to that statement of hate directed toward him. Her touch hadn’t felt like loathing. Her tears hadn’t been violent. When together they were far less than enemies and he could understand the fear attached to that. For himself as well as her.

She was young. Not even seventeen, and yet he’d forced his body into hers and created a bond he was unable to break. He no longer wanted to, instead feeling slightly broken that she could ever hate him. Could ever not want to look at him and be with him. He was evil—a monster that didn’t have regrets or think of himself as ever making mistakes, but he acknowledged now that it was possible. How could he know if this thing that seemed to crackle between them was an odd supernatural event that would never have occurred outside of Dru’s odd statements and dramatic end? With time, it could have been something entirely different—consensual and sought. Now he didn’t know what it was, and it left his dead heart scattered and afraid.

Only a small twist of his neck brought her beauty into view—blonde strands spread across his chest like shimmering gold silk, and her face soft and welcoming as she shut out the trauma of daylight. As she surrendered her youth and safety to his slippery grasp. As confused as he was—as much as he didn’t, yet did want this connection with her, Spike had decided that this was as far as it went. The attempts to control her—murder her and make her hurt…it was time for him to stop. Was beyond time for him to accept that the little blonde in his arms was his to protect, and he’d be damned if he would fail that responsibility again. It was his, and no amount of Angel sniffing around her windowsill would put him off that. He’d just have to eradicate the brooding pain in his ass as soon as he was able. And the thought of that put the first smile of the day on his face.

But she hated him; it was her job to do so, and in light of what he’d done to her body, he couldn’t blame her. He had no clue how they could ever get past it. He sensed her reluctance to lose him from her arms—that the link of their touch soothed some burden of her heart that she hadn’t trusted him with confession. Still, it was a high fence to jump, and as much as he was good at leaping to the rooves of buildings, he thought this fence was made out of the strangest, most unfamiliar substance that it might make him trip and fail.

Spike could feel the sun just outside the window, wondering what the Slayer would do when she woke and found herself comfy against his chest. He felt almost terrified about what the look in her eyes would be. Whether she would smile at him—even hesitantly—or would she try and shove him headfirst out into a day that could be his last. The uncertainty of his position was overwhelming to a vampire who had known his place for over a century—forever by his sire’s side whether she was cuckolding him or showering him with kisses.

His world had changed in ways Spike could never have planned. Despite the conflict in Prague that had almost left him alone, he’d never believed it was really possible. Weakened and close to destroyed, Dru had still remained at his side. She’d been cared for in his arms for such a long time that the changed weight was strange. Yet now that he had Buffy in the same place, it felt nothing like replacing one goddess for another.

It was two different lives; two different worlds that he’d existed within. The first was gone—irretrievable and over just like that. And now he had a Slayer beside him, he a vampire cooling her bedsheets as he argued with himself about what was happening with him.

It was an hour before he stopped thinking himself in useless circles and just listened to her heart beat. Smelled the scent of glorious blood under her skin. For the first time it didn’t tickle his tastebuds and he felt his demon soothed by the pulsing presence against his chest. Still, the blood brought him out fangs first, and when a soft hand settled over his belly, he almost bit through his tongue to hold back the moan.

“You’re awake.” Her voice was neither cold nor warm—almost resigned and it was a tone that his demon wanted to punish. It was with effort that Spike pushed against his impulse and recognised the girl stroking slowly his naked flesh and gave her the benefit of her confusion and fear.

Still, he couldn’t help but be a little cheeky. He ignored the subtle shake of his hand as it disappeared beneath the covers and held her fingers still, then moved them to grasp around a heavily straining cock. “That I am, pet.”

Her face was hot as she sunk further against his chest, but her hand didn’t run. Rather, her fist closed around the firmness of his length and she slowly almost skimmed upwards, driving him nuts with the softness of her grip. She didn’t play long, didn’t look up and read his expression. Instead, she made her way to straddle him and took him deep inside herself, squeezing objection all the way. The dryness didn’t last, yet he watched her with shock. The previous night they’d fucked out of furious fear. Out of some need to connect that had no explanation. Now, it was almost out of obligation that she raised herself up and down on his cock, rubbing him to a rough ragged arousal that had his fangs almost reasserting themselves.

But the look in her eyes told him a tale. Told him a story that made him want to hurt her again. Made him want to hurt himself that he’d brought such a strong woman to this self-conscious no-knowledge of herself.

His fingers gripped her hips and slammed her down. Her pussy lips were taut around the base of his cock and he groaned at the sensation, wanting to smack himself that he had to make her stop.

“What are you trying to do, sweets?”

Her eyes glittered green fear and he could see terror making her body seize.

“D-did I do it wrong? I j-just read how men like it i-in the mornings and I thought…I didn’t know what to do and you were ha—“

He couldn’t let her continue, couldn’t let her kill herself in an act she didn’t understand or even seem to want.

“Oh Buffy, you don’t have to feel like you owe it to a bloke to get him off just because his rod is all set to go.”

She hiccuped and Spike felt himself melt by virtue of her tears. The contortion of her face was too much, breaking his heart and making him dwell on all the mistakes he’d made since laying eyes on her the very first night he’d been in Sunnydale.

“You don’t want me?”

She was so utterly miserable that Spike was beginning to wonder if stopping her and explaining the lack of necessity for her to adapt to a man’s needs had been the right path to take.

“Sweetheart, I think I’ve always wanted you. I’m jus’…guess I’m regretting how we first…maybe we should slow down, yeah? Try and sort through the mess a bit before we get even more tangled.”

Her lower lip wobbled even as her eyes hardened—and then her body was once again in motion and he felt her juices seep around his cock and treating him to a slippery ride. It was glorious and he loved the look of power on her face as she controlled his presence inside her. Then she was guiding his itching fingers to her nipples and he groaned, needing to tighten his clamp around them as he squeezed her to a higher arousal.

She didn’t look so innocent as she pounded him into her mattress. Her face was scrunched up with pleasure, her lips slackened in her concentration on the power of manipulating his cock and his mind. He didn’t mind, though. A woman deserved to be queen of her man—and belatedly he realised he WAS hers, couldn’t be more than devoted to one at a time. He didn’t love her, but he adored the sensations she wrought from his cock—craved the continuation of pleasure as she moved over him, circling her hips and squeezing him tight with her hands braced against his biceps. It brought her low enough for him to taste those glorious pink nubs. They were like fresh rosebuds and just as succulent in his mouth. The flicker of his tongue against the hardened peak had her writhing and moaning in pleasure and he was satisfied—more so than when, seconds later, he shot himself free in her darkened hidden depths.

His demon loved fucking her. Loved being fucked BY her. Rejoiced in Dru’s sacrifice to bring him this, as long as he didn’t think about it too closely. When the Slayer seemed to burst around him, her body shuddering in time to the throbbing impulse of her pussy, her nails digging brutally into his skin, he felt the settling of their morose passage through relationship hell as he succumbed to it.

It was pain. They’d shared nothing good yet. Nothing but the satisfaction of making her shake and no truth of the flesh.

He’d never get tired of seeing the wobbling perfection of her tits. When she slumped over him and they brushed his chest, Spike almost thought he felt heaven, and his cock responded with instant rigidity.

The controlled shaking of her body told him she was crying and Spike felt the cold certainty that he’d fucked it up again. He thought she needed to show him who was boss by riding his cock till he blew, but she was still caught in this adolescent misapprehension of sex. He was teaching a baby the rites of love, the needs of the beast, and he somehow hated her for that. Hated Dru for delivering him to a child.

As gently as his blooming anger allowed, he shifted her off his body and made to leave her. He refused to look at more of her tears, wanting to stake himself for his own contrary behaviour and actions. Refused to be so bloody slayer whipped that he resembled the poof he was going to kill.

Once the concentration he’d needed for dressing was unnecessary, he stopped and felt the warmth of day on his leather covered back. He was stuck here till the moon began to glow, but be buggered if he was going to wallow in temptation.

With a barely coherent mind, he stalked from the room and down the stairs.

A door slammed and then silence, leaving no real clue as to how he’d disappeared in the shine of day, but it left Buffy alone. Alone with her thoughts, emotions and fears.

It was a destructive combination. Destructive and terrifying as Buffy resigned herself to the cold vacuum his disappearance left in her heart and her room. The imprint of his head was still sunk into her pillow, and rather than stem the flow of her tears, she buried her face in the soft reassurance that he’d been there and cried harder.

He’d left, completely wordless and revealing nothing of what she suspected was disgust. He’d tried to stop her giving him pleasure. Surely that meant he didn’t enjoy her? Couldn’t bear the thought of her pleasing him even though she made him come?

It was all so wretched…and the horror of it all just confused Buffy more. She hated him, and yet it broke something inside to think he didn’t want her. Didn’t think she was enough.

She supposed it might be selfish to expect him to get over the dusting of his partner of a century, but Buffy didn’t know what to do about any of this. They should be talking. Should be making a plan or working out what they were to each other.

Instead, he made her feel like a real pro…good for a go, but not good enough for love.

And the thought that she might want love from an evil vampire like Spike just confirmed how crazy she actually was. There was no question he was capable of it—not after seeing how devastated losing his partner of over a century made him. Everything about it was wrong—the timing, the being, the beginning of their attachment.

With nothing worked out in her heart or her head, Buffy cried hard enough to traumatise herself into sleep.

A miserable, grief-stricken vampire listened to her devastation from the basement, and wept.

Chapter Eight

One week. How had she survived a whole week of her friends trying to get answers to questions she didn’t want to face, teachers asking for homework in subjects she didn’t want to attend, and Giles asking about a vampire she didn’t want to ever see again?

By the many sympathetic hugs from her friends, Buffy guessed that Giles had told them what Angel had done to her. They probably had many versions of their own answers to what they wanted to know—what they seemed to need her to tell them. But Buffy was close lipped. She couldn’t tell the tale of Angel without revealing the uncertainty she felt over her association with Spike.

The blond vamp had disappeared out of her life. No goodbye kisses, no demented pencil drawn portraits of her sleeping left beside her pillow, no dead animals left anywhere near her house. And the lack of his apparent interest in how she would take it, hurt.

She knew that it was foolish to think he could have ever fallen for her. In her head, she knew. Her heart was driven by something else completely. Her heart felt things that her head constantly chastised her for.

Craving more erotic experiences with a creature who had more or less raped her of her innocence and youth. Spike had put a frown of depression on her face and abandoned her to the feeling of a worthless slut. It made her eyes burn and her throat ache.

Was that how he saw her?

Hours and hours of her every day were spent on Buffy obsessing over how he felt. Had he left her because she was no good? Was she just a silly girl he could get a few good laughs out of? Or was it deeper? Had he set out to destroy the Slayer no matter which way he tried?

And the thing that made her cry in the night and doubt herself in everything she did: Was she unloveable? Was she so repulsive and inexperienced that even a monster couldn’t stay with her?

Buffy would never have thought she would let herself fall so far as to be needing validation of her worth from a monster. Then again, she’d never have believed that she would let her body be stroked and pleasured by a vampire, either. And yet, the misery that came with every moment of feeling discarded, rejected, proved to her that whatever it was that she needed from Spike, it was breaking her in its absence.

Buffy had forced a barrier of solitude around herself, finding it unbearable to allow her friends to be around her for time other than at school. Sometimes they forced the issue and she was stuck with Xander quipping with a mouthful of chips and Willow panicking at every vampire that came across their path.

She felt like her stake was her only friend those nights. The only thing that stayed silent enough for her to hear the drop of dust as it hit the dirt around her. She wanted that quiet. Wanted to be immersed in that shelter of dangerous destiny so she could pine and punish herself for wanting to find a peroxided-haired vampire in her cemetery.

Buffy was convinced he’d come. If her friends were just somewhere else. Each night they insisted on tagging along and she knew in her heart that he was watching. She was missing him only because they couldn’t leave her alone. The nights she walked the darkness alone, she never felt him. Her neck would ache, and her heart felt squeezed. She had no understanding why he was treating her like some one night fuck toy and leaving her to shatter herself with words and thoughts.

Thursday night, Buffy had convinced Willow to study for some test the redhead had been worrying about, and offered a silent prayer of thanks that Xander felt it best to stay in. She’d created a nightly path for herself—one that never faltered a step from the routine. Having her head telling Buffy that she hated Spike intensely, and that the best thing to do once he finally revealed himself was to lodge a stake in his chest, seemed too much when he actually stepped out of the shadows.

Buffy gasped as the moonlight caught his hair and words she’d too long practised caught in her throat. He stood, more still than she’d ever seen him, and treated the ground at her feet to a very intent stare. All the hate that had burned within Buffy seemed to fade away as she watched and craved to touch him. Craved for him to touch her and show her she meant something—even if it was only something small.

Buffy had tried picturing this moment—and it more often than not ended up with her pushing a stake through clothing, skin and bone and to watch in relieved satisfaction as dust over a century old drifted to the ground.

Now that he was in front of her, Buffy could only admit to herself that it had all been a lie. A mistake that she could have ever killed him. She’d known it that first time she’d had the chance—the night he’d turned and revealed his back to her. But it was easier to convince herself that she could do it if she had to. If the world was at stake, she could so eradicate her boyfriend, couldn’t she?

Then her chin wobbled and she knew. Even now she was recognising him as her boyfriend in her head. Making him beloved and breaking into tiny heartbroken pieces because he wasn’t there. He didn’t want her like she wanted him, and she hated herself for wanting a monster in disguise of beauty.

Buffy wasn’t word girl. She knew it and becoming garbled in front of Willow on a daily basis made it pretty darn obvious to everyone she knew. So on this occasion, the mix-up of her feelings kind of left her speechless and in no possible position of expressing to Spike what she’d discovered.

The air around them seemed charged with an energy that hadn’t been there five minutes before. Buffy drew in a shuddering breath and waited, hoping for something but unsure what. When Spike finally looked up and she could see the same confusion on his face, she was able to breathe comfortably for the first time since he’d left her.

“Buffy?” Spike tipped his head to the side and watched. He could feel each shiver as it raced though the Slayer’s body, felt the strain on her lungs as she drew in breath. Felt the pounding of her heart and knew that whatever this was between them—whether based on a lie or not—had to have room to spread wings.

She said nothing, just waited for whatever he was going to broach as her pretty glossy lips parted and enticed him closer. He couldn’t tell her his plan—not until he’d tasted her once again.

Cool lips claimed warm and tested all the resolve Spike had. He’d spent days wondering and arguing with himself that this was for the best. That he owed it to Buffy to let her find happiness apart from him. He was a vampire—the thing she was made to hate and kill and it made no sense to spend time falling in love with her. And the most important thing to Spike right now was to make sense. To find sense in this situation.

He hadn’t found it yet, but it didn’t mean he had to stop trying.

Spike felt the trembling of Buffy’s lips as she clung to him. Her hands were clutching the leather at his forearms, her lips not letting him go. And as he tried to make himself fall back, tried to let go, she poked her tongue through her lips to gently lick at his. When he opened his mouth, he tasted her tears and it brought the knot back to his throat. The knot he’d been forcing away with crate after crate of the hard stuff.

God, he was trying to do the right thing—so why did it feel so bloody wrong? Buffy’s arms crept around his neck, holding him tight as she sobbed into his mouth. And when the function of a kiss became impossible, she buried her face into his neck and hiccuped her sorrow.

“Where did you go?”

The yearning in her voice was a shock. Happiness was tinder at the base of his non-existent soul and her wanting to know his whereabouts lit a spark amongst it.

“Did you miss me?” He was trying for brave, cocky but knew he’d done it wrong again as he watched her face crumble. Her cheeks were wet within a second and her chin and lips were weak. Finally, she couldn’t allow him to see any longer and collapsed into the palms of her hands.

“Oh, sweetheart.” And he folded her in his arms, tightening them as she started to shake and rock against him. “I’m so sorry for doing this to you. I want to make it right. Want to help you.”

Buffy heard the words and was calmed.

Maybe together they could sort it out, make a path through the mess and validate her feelings. Maybe with a gentle word or two, Spike could eradicate the damage and put her back together again. For the first time in the week, Buffy felt hopeful.

She could feel the slight coolness of his skin through the front of his tee, glad that it was tight and she could be as close as she needed. This slow, comforting hug put them on a different level, brought a semblance of normal to an existence that had been so far from not.

Boyfriend.

That word was back in her mind, and as Buffy felt his arms tight around her, she could imagine the concept easily. She felt safe, cared for and needed. She felt a little bit loved and it caused a rush of happiness to creep up on her.

When she pulled away, her lips were curved in a smile.

“It’s okay now. Everything is fine,” she told him, confident finally that it all would be.

But his frown popped her bubble in seconds.

While Buffy’s fingers itched to stretch around his neck and fluff his curls, the look on his face told her to back off. One step and she was shaking her head at him, really NOT wanting him to speak.

“Buffy, I need to leave. Need to let you get back to normal and forget I ever happened to you.” Spike’s voice was low and soothing, but each syllable that passed his lips stabbed at something fragile.

Buffy was moaning. He couldn’t bear the sound and yet it got louder.

“You’re leaving?” Her eyes were wide, incredulous even as the tears rushed down her face.

“Buffy, it’s for the best, love.”

“No.” She was taking steps back, shaking her head in denial as he opened his mouth and broke her heart into smaller bits. “Don’t call me love.” And she’d lost control of her voice, lost control of everything as she flew at him and punched him in that face that even an angel could love.

There was a surge of hopelessness that fired through her, giving her fists strength they hadn’t felt all week. She pummelled his face, beat his body as she screamed insanity at his unmoving body.

She was weak and hysterical by the time she stopped, sobbing into the broken form of her lover even as he held her against him and cried silent tears. Wrong again. Always bloody wrong, no matter what he did. Dru had cursed him with her ‘don’t hurt the girl’, because surely he was incapable of anything else.

It felt like it took hours before Spike could find the strength to get up, to shift Buffy’s shaking body enough to get back to his feet. The sun was still a bit off, but he knew it would be best for Buffy to get home. He had to make sure she was safe.

When he got her there, there was nothing more. She was rocking with her back to him, her face rubbing helplessly into her pillow.

There was nothing he could do but hurt her more.

So, he turned away and left.

Chapter Nine

“Oh, excellent…punch…Buffy,” gasped Giles, trying to keep to his feet rather than retire into a pile of bones at the young slayer’s feet. It was astounding how committed she’d become to her training. Giles was relieved and grateful he still had a slayer under his tutelage, now accepting his advice and his strenuous program for improving her slaying skills. They could so easily have lost her.

Not that she’d been anything but distant since the attack.

The Watcher sighed, removed his glasses and nodded to his protégé that enough was enough for today. “I fear I’m rather covered in bruises, my dear.” He was reluctant to admit his ego was damaged to that extent, even if Buffy was meant to have powers mere mortal men couldn’t stand against. He wasn’t young anymore, and so training with a woman of superhuman strength—and one who seemed to be barely shielding herself from some kind of grieving process—was more than his flesh could stand.


“Should I head out for patrol then?” she asked robotically, eyes downcast and shoulders slumped.

Giles observed her with growing unease. Not once did she look at him as she unwrapped her fists, not one glance to see why he stalled with his answer. His slayer was on automatic and she point blank refused to discuss it with him—or with her friends. He wasn’t a stupid man; Giles knew something important had occurred the two nights Buffy was missing, but other than knowing Angel had stabbed her in the back with her own implement of destruction, he was very much in the dark.

“Buffy, I realise you don’t want to discuss the attack, and I don’t want to press you on it, but I really think it is doing you no good to keep it all locked up inside.”

The teenager’s shoulders quivered and Giles thought that he finally might be making headway with the girl. Might finally uncover the reason behind what had brought her to the point of becoming such a rigid soldier as she fought back the darkness.

But he was wrong. Buffy regained her composure, stood up straighter and headed to her bag to pull on some sweats and locate a stake. She tossed it experimentally in her hand, nervously, until she grasped it with a solid hand, gripping it tight enough to make even Giles wince.

“There’s nothing to talk about, Giles.” She said nothing more as she gathered herself together and walked with determination from the library.

As soon as she’d passed through the halls, though, her head dropped and Buffy struggled to hold back the tears that always wanted freedom. She had to stop this…this grieving for a vampire. It was so wrong, and even though she was struggling with her heart, her head knew the facts and clashed violently with any craving she might have had to hear Spike’s distinct accent again.

It wasn’t going to happen, and she really should have been glad. She was fighting toward such a point, but the going was slow and frustrating. Since Spike had left, Buffy hadn’t been able to control her wildly swinging moods. She’d become deeply introspective, only coming out on those occasions where she permitted Giles to train her in the ways all slayers had apparently been trained. Being around her friends was impossible, and Buffy flinched as she heard Willow and Xander approach her from the other end of the corridor.

“Look, Wills. I’m guessing the Buffster is heading out on patrol. You think she might make any eye contact as we walk past?” Xander, being but a boy, was unable to hold back the bitterness he felt at being shut out of Buffy’s life after becoming accustomed to being very much a part of it. The subtleties of the last few weeks were beyond him and no amount of shushing from Willow was able to crack through his resentment and confusion to make him hold his tongue.

Guilt dragged her down even more and Buffy was unable to prevent her feet from dragging and then stopping all together when she was in front of her friends. When she looked up, she did more than make eye contact—with Willow. Xander was completely ignored as Buffy pleaded silently with Willow to join her tonight, and the redhead immediately agreed.

“Oh. OH!” With wide eyes of understanding, Willow turned to her male friend and hoped he’d get the reason behind the brush off. “Xander, I think Giles would like some company tonight to, you know, sort books or something.” Willow beamed at the watery smile of relief from Buffy, even as Xander’s brows hit his hairline.

“Books? Oh sure, like the G-man would welcome me near his precious bound papery objects.” But he took enough of the hint to vamoose, leaving Buffy and Willow facing each other, awkward and alone in the hall.

“Thank you,” Buffy managed to croak out, her voice feeling raw in her throat through the tears she didn’t want to shed.

“Think nothing of it,” Willow said with a smile, brushing off Buffy’s discomfort while threading her arm through the Slayer’s. Their heels clicked against tiles as they disappeared out of the school and into the first whispers of night.

~ * ~ * ~ * ~

Xander stalked past an oblivious Giles and plopped down at one of the numerous spare seats at the central table, plucked a random book off the surface and proceeded to make annoying sounds from deep in his throat. Giles spun around from where he stood at the library counter, his book of prophecies open and his annoyance clear.

“Would you please refrain from making that hideous noise while you loiter around me?” Though fashioned as a question, Giles felt quite certain that, in his present mood, he’d bite the boy’s head off if he so much as repudiated his demand.

Unusually insightful, Xander held up his hands in defeat and fell silent. For exactly one minute.

“The Buffster went out patrolling with Willow.”

After the initial—yet obviously false—promise of glorious peace and quiet, Giles nearly jumped out of his skin. Not only had he almost forgotten the teen still sat at his table, but he’d found the declaration more than a little unexpected.

“That’s…that’s…”Giles stumbled, looking for the precise adjective that would describe his relief at this event. “Good, actually.”

Xander’s brows raised a fraction, showing his amusement at the understatement.

“Think our Wills might get some kind of confession?”

The exhausted and battered watcher expelled a harsh breath and flopped in a chair opposite Xander, revealing for the first time how very concerned he was about his slayer.

“I bloody hope so.” The crudeness didn’t seem the least out of place while both males sat and commiserated over their lost Buffy, wanting desperately for the return of the carefree, quipping girl.

“Perhaps our contribution tonight should be to locate Angel?” Giles suggested. While he didn’t feel the slightest desire to seek out the unrepentant vampire for any reason other than to stake him, Angel’s disappearing act tugged at some sense of worry that all was not about to return to normal.

“Load me up with weapons and it’s a ‘can do, will do’ mission.” Xander stood, murder bright in his brown eyes. Giles was momentarily startled, until he realised that the boy was merely reflecting what existed in his own bitter expression.

“We have no real clue what is going on with Angel,” he felt the need to warn, and Xander just jerked his shoulders as if to say it didn’t really matter. He felt inordinately proud of the boy, despite the frisson of fear that served as his own warning. They had no real reason to fear Angel, but for some reason Giles was concerned that their normal playing field had been forever altered.

“He’s been missing for more than a week now,” Xander reminded, reluctant to lose the chance to hunt Angel down like the rodent he fully believed the vampire to be. “What makes you think he’s even still in town?”

Giles wasn’t sure why, exactly, but he was willing to bet his life on the likelihood that Angel wouldn’t have left Buffy completely behind. He had no idea what was going on but, good or bad, he was convinced the vampire still lurked behind a corner somewhere in Sunnydale.

“Let’s just say I have a hunch and leave it at that, shall we?”

Another one of Xander’s accepting shrugs and they were free to load up with weapons and head out. Giles took one last glance at his library and felt nostalgic. He had no way of knowing if he would return—if finding Angel would equal his last days on this earth, but there was something deep inside of him that made him desperate to locate the demon and put an end to his interference. Something deeper than his commitment to Buffy’s mission. With his own nod to himself, Giles followed Xander out.

Chapter Ten

Angel didn’t know where he was.

Crumpled uncomfortably on a stack of old, wafty clothing, his mouth tasting like bile and his body smelling just fractionally better than the pile he’d slept on, Angel stumbled to unsteady feet and groaned. He didn’t remember hangovers being quite so incapacitating as a vampire, but then, he had difficulty recalling ever drinking quite this much before. He might have been a drunkard in life, but once he’d encountered Darla he’d been drunk on blood rather than booze.

He was weak, as if he’d been drained of his normal vampiric strength and left in an alley like a helpless human. His top lip curled up in disgust, despite knowing somewhere in the back of his brain that he shouldn’t feel that way—that humans weren’t the thing he loathed anymore. Humans were friends—girlfriends—and he’d sworn to serve and protect and save the world whenever the occasion called for it. He ran those thoughts around his head like a newsreel and then accepted, in a daze, that it was the biggest load of bullshit he’d ever tried to convince himself. There was no human that thought of him as a friend, and no human girlfriend—not anymore. Not since he’d tried to kill Buffy.

Had killed Buffy.

He’d been drinking to try and stave off that hard fact—that he’d more than likely killed Buffy by burying one of her own stakes in her back. The guilt had been overwhelming, but now that he barely stood, relying heavily on the wall behind him to keep him upright, that guilt seemed to have taken a fast train to Who-gives-a-fucksville. Angel wasn’t sure what he felt right now, other than sick. And apathetic.

And aware that he was about to be found if he didn’t hide himself fast.

“I’m telling you, Giles. We have to do something. She’s not going to talk unless we make her.”

Angel hid in the dark—a thing he’d learned to excel at in the centuries since he’d been dead—and clamped down on his impulse to leap out and gut the boy. The man, he’d leave to watch as the teen spewed up his own blood and tried to stuff his intestines back inside. Again, something niggled that this response was wrong, that it should have appalled him, but Angel shrugged it off irritably, feeling his whole body start to shiver uncontrollably.

“And if we try to force her, she’ll never talk to us at all. Perhaps she’s confiding in Willow as we speak—and rather loudly, I might add. If Angel was around here somewhere he’d have been warned thoroughly by now. But please,” Giles encouraged, sarcasm dripping from his tongue, “do continue to vent about your frustrations regarding Buffy’s refusal to reveal her whole life to you.”

Xander effectively shut up, but threw a resentful glare at his would-be mentor. Would-be in that he hadn’t anything Giles would be interested in training—no book smarts, no super-powers. All he had was his average Joe commonsense, which in this Hellmouthy world apparently wasn’t worth a damn except to keep himself alive.

They wandered on down the alley, peering intently into every shadow, the silence between them broken only by the clomping of Xander’s footsteps. Angel gradually materialised, looking after them thoughtfully. The way they’d spoken… Buffy’s alive, he realised, feeling a curious lack of anything. He wondered if her precious support group knew that she was now Spike’s whore—Spike’s replacement of the sire she’d killed.

Fury erupted inside Angel and he staggered drunkenly over the pile of rags that had serviced him through the darker hours of the previous day. How fucked up was he that he’d gotten so drunk he’d collapsed in an open alleyway? Not only could he have been at risk from every violent vagrant in downtown Sunnydale, but he’d left himself open to becoming extra crispy from the sun, if not just turned to dust.

Of course, he’d needed to hide. Spike was going to be on the warpath for the crime committed against him—for Angel’s dismissal of code. He couldn’t remain sweet, soppy and soulful for much longer or Spike would have his dust sooner than he could say the slayer was a vamp whore. To survive, Angel had to look out for himself. And he did want to survive, he found. Years of standing blindly in one spot, achieving nothing unless some government agency was waving certain death in his face, he’d done nothing but exist. He’d long ago stopped living and it was time he remembered what he was. What he’d been made for.

He’d killed Darla for the Slayer. And the Slayer had repaid him by killing his childe.

Hot needles of anger speared through him, banishing the liquid haze he’d been in since he’d woken up to find that she’d sent her ineffective goons after him. They wanted to hunt him down? They didn’t know the meaning of the word. He wasn’t afraid of them; Spike was a different story. Spike could hunt—had been taught by the best. To win this war, Angel needed to change.

The soul was already battered, not registering with him like it used to. He felt the edges of it shrivel inside him and Angel smirked. It felt good to be less of a do-gooder. To see the world in the regular shades he’d been used to. The shades he’d created in his reign of horror.

There was sadness that he stood on the edge of his evolution without his family—the women dead and dusted and the male out for his blood. Spike was no loss, but the women…Darla had known what the world was about, had willingly taken the risks that lead to her death, but Dru... She’d been an innocent when he’d tortured and turned her and an innocent in the end, blindly following Spike in her weakened state when she should have come to him instead.

The pain welled in his chest and a tormented cry echoed down the alleyway. There was no other sound in response, no quickened footsteps and Angel realised belatedly that he was lucky Giles and Xander had wandered elsewhere to continue their search for him.

He was alone; that’s all that mattered now. Alone and changing. This was becoming a different world to the ones he’d known as a proper scourge and a whipped, souled wimp. He could make himself anew while he battled for his life. And if he could remake himself, he could remake his family.

At least a mate. He could find someone to walk beside him, to experience his enlightenment alongside him, and that way he stood a chance at beating off Spike. He didn’t fancy succumbing to clan rules, the code so old he’d not even thought of it when he’d embedded the stake into Buffy’s back. The Slayer. She wasn’t Buffy to him anymore, not now that she’d accepted Spike’s cold come into her body. Not now that she was covered in his mark.

Angel stood tall, strong, and only wobbled from inebriation slightly. Yellow demon eyes peered ahead of him into the night, and seeing no threat, he embarked on his new path. Alone, yet seeking, searching. He’d find her somewhere, the one who’d share his bed. He’d find her and he’d show no mercy till she’d capitulated to his every whim.

Oh yeah, the world was looking up, and at last, it was going to be his.

~ * ~ * ~ * ~


Buffy looked up into the sky and wondered how long it would take her to count every shining star she could see. All night? A hundred nights? Suddenly the idea held a whole lot more appeal than sitting down with Willow and unloading everything that had gone on in her head, and heart, over the last however long. Since Spike had left town, the days ran into each other; the nights were as indistinct as the last and she had no way of being able to tell anymore how long it had been since Dru had impaled herself on Buffy’s stake.

“Ah-hem.” Willow cleared her throat loudly, obviously, and Buffy screwed her eyes closed tight. Star gazing wasn’t going to happen tonight, and quite frankly, star counting had been a completely dumb idea, probably brought about by sleep deprivation.

Nerves consuming her, Buffy turned around and really looked at her friend. Willow was perched expectantly on a headstone, her heels bouncing back against the name of the poor person who lay beneath the earth. She looked innocent—so innocent that Buffy started to wonder if telling her closest friend everything she was feeling might be a mistake. But who could she confide in? Giles? Somehow she didn’t think he’d quite get the whole sexual element of her thing with Spike. Her mother would flip—if she could even get past the whole killing someone with a stake issue when she didn’t know about the supernatural secrets of the Hellmouth. And Xander? Xander was already making snide comments to her face. If he knew the truth, Buffy doubted he’d ever speak to her again. Or be able to look her in the eye.

Feeling the sting of tears and knowing she’d run out of time and excuses, Buffy flopped onto the grass. She’d picked this place for a reason—all the occupants surrounding her had been laid to rest for over twenty years. There was extremely little risk of interruption of the undead variety, and now Buffy wondered what she was thinking. Subconsciously she knew she had to unload some of the burden to someone, and Willow was the choice that made the most sense. Willow was really her only choice. It was tell all or slowly go insane—and then she’d be no better than Drusilla herself.

Taking a deep breath, Buffy stared at the grass as she twisted it with agitated fingers, and told Willow her tale.

Chapter 11

The night held its silence like an alcoholic held his liquor. Buffy sat on the grass, her eyes breaking from her friend, and tried to keep from shaking. Her fingers had seemingly lost all feeling and she heard, rather than felt, the pick up of wind as it swept through the cemetery around them, fluffing her hair but not cooling her fear.

“He raped you?” The words sounded old, as if Willow had had them rolling around in her head for the whole of her life. She was incredulous, and obviously frustrated, so instead of continuing this conversation with the back of Buffy’s head, she chose to remove her butt from the headstone and force herself into Buffy’s field of vision on the ground.

The Slayer’s face was like an emotionless mask, and it added to Willow’s worry. She had so little experience with anything like this; how on earth was she supposed to react?

“I’m not sure I’d call it…rape, exactly.” Buffy spoke slowly, her thought processes obviously unsure and Willow squawked like a bird caught in a tangled and bushy tree branch.

“Well, what on earth would you call it? He…he forced you into sex after torturing and nearly draining you, and then again later after he pretty much killed you. Buffy, you do understand that...this thing between the two of you…it’s not healthy?” She paused, turning over various phrases and words in her head at lightening speed and discarding every single one of them. “It’s really not.”

“I know,” Buffy admitted, and the diminutive slayer seemed to shrink even further into herself. “But neither is going out to slay vampires and demons every night, Will. Nothing about my life is healthy…or normal. I know I can’t make you understand this—I’m kind of struggling to understand it myself. But as brutal as this thing is between me and Spike…there’s something else I’m just not explaining right. Some kind of…connection.”

Willow fell back, her arms bracing her against the hard ground. That was one thing Buffy had absolutely right. She wasn’t explaining this in any way that Willow could accept without wanting to set Spike on fire and throw holy water onto the blaze. Except she was kind of getting the feeling that if she attempted anything harmful to the vampire Buffy might take her own revenge—on Willow.

More scared than she’d ever felt before, Willow looked hard at her friend. She took in the pale skin, the expressionless eyes, the twisting fingers and the small—very small—animation that came upon Buffy whenever the Slayer mentioned Spike’s name. Suddenly she had no doubt that Buffy was right, and that maybe this situation defied proper explanation. Maybe the life Buffy was destined to lead was going to be filled with such tremendous complications that none of them had the vocabulary to describe it.

“Are you saying…” Willow stopped, twisting her own hands now, terrified of Buffy’s answer to the question she had to ask. “Are you in love with him?”

The pain in Buffy’s eyes stripped the redhead of breath.

“I don’t think so,” she all but whispered in reply and huge tears finally started to trail down her cheeks. “I know I feel hate, but then I feel this need to be with him too. Like he’s ripped out a part of me by leaving. Like he took all I had to offer and it wasn’t enough.”

Willow swallowed hard. “He’s an evil vampire, Buffy. He’s lived over a hundred years killing people—probably children—and he’s done it with a twisted freak at his side. Okay, so the freak obviously had had enough of that kind of life for her to take herself out on your stake, but you aren’t responsible for that. You have to know that.” She paused to drag in breath. “You don’t owe him anything.”

Seeing Buffy cry was unbelievably difficult, and Willow felt her own tears choke her.

“I know.” The blonde covered her face with her hands, appearing to anyone who passed to be a pathetic teenager with dramatic love problems. “I still need him, though.”

Willow understood, then. She understood more than she ever would have if she’d lived to reach a hundred. Buffy didn’t need words anymore. All Willow had that Buffy might need was a shoulder to cry on and a willingness to listen whenever she might require it. So as angry and confused as she felt, Willow threw all possible censure out the window and hugged her friend. Who was she to give advice anyway? She wasn’t a counsellor, or a slayer. She had no idea what kind of trauma Buffy had experienced at the hands of an infuriated and grieving master vampire.

There was one other part of this story that was confusing.

“Buffy, what about Angel?”

“He tried to kill me, Will,” she spat with venom that seemingly came from nowhere. “What about him?”

Willow just squeezed harder. She wasn’t quite sure what she wanted to know about Angel anyway.

“Are…are you gonna tell Giles?”

Buffy looked up from the comforting embrace, a very clear ‘are you kidding me?’ expression on her face. Willow giggled. As serious as the situation was, she couldn’t imagine Giles handling all the nudity and sexual segments of Buffy’s tale.

“So what are you going to do?” If it were up to her, Willow would run screaming for the hills, or at least leave Sunnydale. But it wasn’t her and Buffy didn’t have that luxury of burying her head like Willow was so apt to do.

The Slayer shrugged, pulled away and wiped her wet face on her sleeve.

“Slay?”

And just like that, Buffy leapt to her feet, clutching the stake that had lain idle on the ground beside her, and attacked a wandering vamp.

Willow nodded to herself. Yeah. What other choice was there?

~ * ~ * ~ * ~


He had always loved L.A. The sounds and smells of a frenetic city, the exotic blood to be tasted, and the bars run by bewildering demons. He hadn’t been here for a few years but despite that, Spike hadn’t expected anything to change. And it hadn’t. From a vamp’s point of view, everyone looked as succulent and deserving of death as ever they had. From Spike’s point of view, however, it seemed to be another story all together. So far he’d drunk more than his fill—of bourbon. Copious amounts of that had flowed to his gullet without any grief at all—but then he didn’t need it to do anything but try and crush his grief with something resembling oblivion.

He’d tried to feed since he’d been in the big city. Several times, point of fact. So far his belly had rumbled sickeningly every time he’d come within striking range of blood, so in the end he’d given up and dedicated himself to getting highly sauced. He figured he’d had such a rich diet of slayer blood recently that it’d tide him over for a while anyway.

He sat in a bar now—one run apparently by a human, and one that was most likely a drug runner or a mob boss. Whichever, the human surrounded himself with scantily clad women and too many blokes with serious tattoo issues and guns at their hips.

He caressed his current drink and stared into the mirror behind the bar. All he could see was the colour of L.A. nightlife, and all it did was turn his stomach. Spike realised finally that he shouldn’t be here. He’d run from Sunnydale with a monkey on his back, fear breathing down his neck. He’d wanted somewhere neutral to grieve his dark princess, somewhere where the slayer wasn’t, and so he’d come to this place, renowned for its ability to allow a body to become lost. And all it did now was feed his fury.

A seductive hand settled at his shoulder and Spike jumped. He hadn’t seen her in the mirror and so knew immediately. He barely twisted to the side, seeing little else but long raven-coloured hair and gritted his teeth in agony. Before her bum had fully positioned itself on the stool beside him, he’d turned to her and snarled. “Fuck off.” She flashed yellow eyes back at him, but he was imposing enough that she backed away, leaving him once again in his chair, contemplating his life and how alone he was.

Profound frustration ripped through him and Spike roared. He glared at every patron that surrounded him, wanting to wreak havoc but not having the will to do it. At last he settled on the barkeep, the guy’s eyes round and terrified as Spike’s imbalance registered with everyone around him. “What the fuck are you all looking at?”

He stood, and with a calmness he didn’t expect, he picked up his bottle of bourbon—unpaid for—and hurled it at the back of the bar, relishing the scream of security alarms and the shattering of glass as bottles of booze and the mirror exploded. He laughed hysterically, turned and found one of the drug guy’s goons holding a revolver to his nose. Spike vamped out and snapped the weapon from the git’s hands, registering the wanker’s fear and feeding himself with it. With a flick of his wrist he turned the gun to the beefy bloke’s forehead, his finger liking the unfamiliar metal in his hand as he positioned it just right between the nit’s protruding brows.

“Let you in on a little secret.” He smirked, feeling the impending carnage ignite his blood like the old days. “Shouldn’a looked.”

The trigger released easily, and Spike laughed again as brain matter blew out the back of his victim’s head and splattered over the patrons behind him.

The screams of hysteria were music to his ears. With a parting ‘bird’ at the owner’s furious expression and a meaningful flash of fangs, Spike swaggered from the bar, black coat swaying around his boots.

The cool night air was a welcome relief. Within seconds the mindless violence fled his mind and Spike found himself returning to the Hotel. Wasn’t that destroying people wasn’t fun, because it was, but he found that he just wasn’t in the mood. He was never in the mood, he realised. Not since Dru had sacrificed herself for him to find the Slayer. Barmy bitch. It still made fuck all sense to him.

Walking into the building, Spike ignored the nervous looks from the patrons and staff and made his way to the elevator. He punched the number five button and then shoved his hands in his pockets. He rode in the box alone and for that he was grateful. Hated the things—always had since he’d been caught in a burning building way back in the day. Five floors gave him a quick out if he had to smash a window to jump or race down to the basement if a fire broke out in the daytime.

The bell pinged and the doors slid open, Spike strutting toward his room with the key in his hand. He swiped it and kicked the door as it clicked open, slamming it shut once he was inside. And once there, he had no clue what to do. No need for room service, and watching the telly or soaping his day from his back held just as little appeal. What he wanted was…with a moan of uselessness he realised that what he really wanted was Buffy.

The fucking Slayer.

She was in his head, thrumming through his body like a flash flood of irritation. He’d left that town of Hell because he’d vowed not to hurt her anymore—not when his natural bent was to fuck her stupid and half kill her for making him want her. Half kill her for making him care that he was hurting her.

Feeling thoroughly defeated, Spike stripped and headed to the shower. He turned on the faucet, hot as he could take it without his flesh boiling from his bones, and tried to shut down his thoughts for just one minute.

He remembered her eyes the most. And her shining hair. He probably should have admired her athletic physique or the way she fought, but it was how haunted she’d looked throughout their time together that had struck him. When he’d first set eyes on her she’d been nothing more to him than his next slayer kill—until Dru had proclaimed her to be much more than that and pinioned herself on the stake. He knew the Slayer hadn’t intended to kill his sire. That she’d been just as shocked and scared when her only chance of surviving the swarm of Spike’s minions crowding for her blood had committed suicide unexpectedly.

Dru said she’d led him to the one where he belonged, making Buffy out to be some kind of grace. As much as he despised her for making the decision without him, he could kind of see her point. If it was grace he was wanting, Buffy would be a start. But it wasn’t what he wanted and he was fed up with every Tom, Dick and Harry trying to turn him into something he wasn’t and had no intention of ever being.

Well, Dru was dead. There was fuck all could be done about that. He’d taken the Slayer with the intention of torturing her to death, making her pay the ultimate price for being in the right place at the wrong time, but instead he’d fucked her, taken her innocence and positioned her in his clan. He’d made her his, whether he’d meant to or not. Which brought him right back to Angel.

Peaches had had no business interfering. He’d out stepped his ranking, his bounds and Spike knew that it was his right to make his elder pay—and pay dearly. Eventually, he would. Right now, he just didn’t have the energy. Right now Spike had to find where he’d left himself and where he fit into the world now that his dark princess was gone.

He’d barely begun to grieve—for Dru or Buffy. Barely begun to work out why he’d run and what he was going to do next.

The next minute Spike almost wept as the relentless thoughts stopped torturing him and fell blessedly silent. He was swamped by exhaustion, and his throat hurt. Turning off the spray, he towelled himself dry, relocated his bed and fell face first into the plush pillows.

Maybe the sense of it all would come to him tomorrow.

Chapter Twelve

When she reached her front yard, Buffy stopped in the dark and stared up at her bedroom window. She could have sworn she’d left it wide open, being that the thing emitted the most teeth-clenching screech whenever she slid it up. It was nowhere near wide open now. On a sigh, the Slayer jumped up and caught hold of the tree, swinging up to the roof below her window, leaving her then to slid through the gap like a human slinky and roll to the floor. As soon as she stood, Buffy knew she’d been duped. The window hadn’t slid down of its own accord. The pane had been lowered on purpose.

“Care to explain where you’ve been? Why a young girl has been wandering the streets at this time of night?”

Joyce Summers sat in the chair by Buffy’s bed, her face carefully clear of the anger that Buffy knew simmered beneath the surface.

“I…um…thought it was a nice night for a walk?” Buffy knew the excuse was doomed the second it rolled from her lips and wished she could drag Giles up and force him to confide in her mother about the nasty things that went on in the dark in Sunnydale.

Joyce took to her feet, and swayed ever so slightly before fixing Buffy with a piercing mom-glare that, unfortunately, wasn’t so new. “Young lady, you are grounded.” She took a breath, anger making her shake along with whatever alcohol had filled her glass tonight. “You will go to school and come home immediately after. You will not go out with friends, and your friends will not come over here. Until you can learn to not give me a heart attack every single day, you’re to stay in this room. Understand?”

Rather than feeling devastated at such a punishment, Buffy felt a tremendous sense of relief. Not having to front up to Giles every night; trying to ignore how much her introverted response to Spike’s connection to her was hurting her friends. Not having to face the vampire population of her town and have the vast majority of them eye her strangely and slowly melt into the night’s shadows rather than face her and her stake.

Not having to walk the darkness alone, suffering Spike’s absence like it was a gaping wound in her heart.

It all seemed to be of the good, rather than make her want to rail and scream about the injustice of parental rights to punish their teenagers.

Buffy nodded, trying to look suitably chastised and surly at the same time, but collapsing to her bed the second her mother trounced from the bedroom. Tears stung at her eyes and Buffy willed them not to fall, feeling a twinge in her gut for the constant source of weakness that made her want to mourn Spike’s absence. It was only now, with her mother’s unsteady footsteps receding down the hall, that Buffy realised what this confinement would mean.

The one thing she’d been avoiding like the plague since Spike blew her from his life, leaving her alone as he reclaimed the night without his dark princess at his side. It had to give him a tortured sense of pleasure that he’d left behind a semi-broken slayer to guard the Hellmouth.

Above all else, Buffy wished she could deny the truth of that. That she was strong, collected, the Slayer.

Long, endless hours faced her and Buffy released the tightly wound emotion that balled inside her, making her suffer the escalating pressure of fear and failure. Sobs rushed out of her, hard and raw, and Buffy buried her face into her pillow, the cells of her body feeling tight, anxious and hot. She hated this, hated Spike, but was so torn and conflicted that her own body rebelled against her heart and her brain. Nothing felt right anymore; nothing felt simple. She’d unloaded some of it onto Willow, but even an oblivious Chosen One could see how much use that likely wouldn’t be. Her friend looked even more confused and bewildered than Buffy herself was, which meant one thing. Resoundingly clear, Buffy would have to deal with this on her own.

She just hoped she could work out how.


~*~ * ~ * ~ * ~

He never noticed until he was right up close that every girl he stalked was the Slayer. Blonde hair, green eyes, cute and pert in all the right places. For the first time ever, being the slayer likely saved each and every one of their lives.

An annoyed growl rumbled from his throat and Spike kicked a can in the sidewalk with disgust. Fuck, he was starving. Two weeks without feeding was taking its toll. Two weeks of not seeing her was doing his head in. Two weeks of failure to make a plan was going to get him killed.

Down an alleyway, hidden from passers-by, Spike heard a yelp and then the sloppy slurping of a vamp feeding in the dark. In the blink of an eye he was there, his mouth salivating at the smell of freshly spilled blood and before he could process what he was doing, he tore the vamp away and latched onto the bleeding throat, groaning as the hot source of life flowed into his mouth. The body dropped at his feet when he finished, allowing the haze of hunger to abate slowly and the fog to clear from his head. A furious vampire stood before him, ready to strike, and just as he charged, Spike sidestepped and snagged a broken sliver of wood on the floor of the alley and threw it with frightening accuracy at his brethren’s heart. The thwarted vampire turned to dust and Spike shook, wondering at his inability to keep his most basic needs met and thoroughly losing the plot. Wasn’t the first time he’d killed a fellow vamp; was the first time he’d stolen his dinner, though.

A build up of frustration and self-disgust rushed through him and Spike slammed his fist into the alley wall, again and again until the agony of broken bones countered his other agony of staying away from Buffy. He didn’t want to go back; couldn’t if he had any sense. The Slayer might have been suffering some kind of traumatic amnesia regarding his evil self and her destined role in his destruction, affording Spike infinitely more control over her than normal circumstances would have warranted. Under the normal expectations of a slayer meeting a vampire. By now she’d have taken her friends and her watcher aside and revealed exactly what Spike had done to her, and he doubted he’d be able to achieve a quiet re-entry into town. Not that that was anywhere near his style anyway. No bloody way. If he was going back to Sunnydale, it was with the Desoto’s engine roaring. With the pedal to the mettle and a Welcome to Sunnydale sign nicely flattened under his car. He might have Buffy’s gang try to turn him out, but what chance did they really have against a monster like him?

Of course, there was no way he was going back to Sunnydale, or Buffy.

Was there?