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Her feet just trod on, weary but unfeeling as her body shutdown the hurt. There was nowhere to go, nowhere to stop that would lessen the stabbing pain in her heart and head. It was nothing but instinct that drove her to the airport, that got her onto a plane and flying across the world to only the Power’s knew where. Her eyes saw very little as signposts rushed past, as roads became repetitive and boring. As the sky remained blue and cities looked comically small. It was all left to chance until something snagged her attention and she saw her feet on torn tarmac, and sensation rushed back to her person in a rush that was completely disorientating.

He’d stood right here. She could feel the left over presence of Spike as if he was standing there fighting with her right then. As if he was sticking out his lip and sneering at her to show how very much he wanted to strip her and show her the depth of his devotion. Yet he wasn’t. There was no scorch mark, no leftover ashes to show her this was the place—and that in itself seemed odd.

But she knew. As well as she knew her own name and the failure that was her lovelife. She’d lost Spike right in this spot as he succumbed to death.

She’d thought she had no tears left to cry. Thought every single last drop of water had left her in her hysterical fleeing from Giles’s house. As usual she was wrong. They surged to the back of her throat as she struggled to hold them back, dug in and forced their presence. And her cheeks were wet. Her eyes were blurred, and so she didn’t see the sweep of leather as an Angel seemingly dropped from the sky.

She choked and fell to her knees and cried for all she was worth, screaming inside at every word that attempted to fall from her lips. One left. One vampire with a soul—and finally she felt it was the wrong one. Maybe not wrong for the world, but certainly wrong for her. And yet she was dragged to her feet, and they kept to blissful silence as she was lead away, longing looks still at the spot on the pavement emphasising to her where she had finally and thoroughly lost Spike.

She spent her days and nights locked inside a hotel castle, silence imprinted on every wall, and kept in by every door. The world didn’t exist inside, and nobody ever spoke. It was what she needed to keep the pain in her heart festering.

She never acknowledged Angel. Never even really looked at him. Not as the weeks passed by and they shared space but drifted like strangers beyond each other’s grasp each day. He didn’t offer and she made no demands, yet still a black cloud rained down on their heads just for being in the same room.

She never saw him feed. And he never left the hotel. Never went to replenish whatever blood reserves he must have had, though when she took the time to notice, he looked haunted and hungry. It was almost welcome. The threat. The possibility that this could be it, because Buffy just knew Spike had to have made it to Heaven this time. Because she believed in something. Not life. Not faith. But Spike, and the Power’s capacity to make things finally right.

They had to give her back Spike. And if she could drift in a place that was warm and made her feel loved, Buffy knew it would have to be Heaven in Spike’s arms. And this time she couldn’t be finished, because there was so much she still needed with him. So much to share and qualify. So much truth to lay bare.

One morning she looked—and raged. Hate swelled out of nowhere as she waited and waited, waking every morning in a soft bed and her neck unmarred. A venture downstairs found him brooding and it was suddenly the one thing that she couldn’t take. How dare he? He had life. He had existence and he wasted it by being guilty. Who did he grieve for? She knew how much he’d hated Spike. And that hate was left in the air—unfettered and misguided. Spike wasn’t there to wield such a weapon, but she felt more than up to the challenge.

Her lips hardened as she watched his morose slump of shoulders. Resented the opportunity he had to sport a black leather jacket. Felt like pulling every one of his hairs out painfully, and breaking his perfect nose. And it was enough to crack her voice, tear away her reserve and finally call to question the stupidity of what they’d done. Not that she knew precisely what that was exactly, except for that everyone seemed to be dead.

Except Angel. Lucky lucky Angel with the undeadness and the home.

Buffy had never felt such rage. Not even the night she’d pummelled Spike half to death for trying to save her from a life in prison. Not the night she’d found Willow leading her sister into the pits of hell for a magic fix.

She was so mad she could have easily staked Angel, just for existing where Spike didn’t.

“You bastard.” And it exploded into the stale air like the bullets that had almost killed her but took from them Tara. Laced with hatred, despite the scratchy disuse of her voice as it targeted Angel and shot him to the wall.

His raised, shocked eyebrows did it. Moves she could never forget had her smashing a table for an immediate makeshift stake and she ran to take him out. To plant wood in his chest so he could look just like Spike in her life. Gone! Then maybe she could find how to embrace peace. If he wasn’t going to eat her in her sleep, she’d kill him by virtue of not knowing when to die and stay dead.

Angel hadn’t moved until the stake was almost at his chest, and then a twist and a shove sent Buffy careening into the wall behind him. It calmed the Slayer slightly, but not Buffy. Buffy needed to vent and she had a vampire at the ready. Where once Spike was her punching bag for all that was wrong in her world, now it was Angel, and he had a whole lot more flesh.

Eyes blurred with resentment and grief, Buffy felt the first punch strike home and beyond that was pure slayer instinct. She wanted him to hurt. She wanted him bleeding and bruised. She wanted him dust.

Yet when the moment came, something stronger than her kept the stake back, gave her a moment to think and helped Buffy loose her fingers from the wood and left her to cry brokenly as it cluttered uselessly to the floor.

“How could you?” was implored past bleeding lips, terror at being alone and lost making Buffy bite hard to stop herself from screaming.

“How could I what? Save the world?” Angel’s eyes were glued to her lips, the scent of blood driving him almost crazy now that his self-imposed prison of people and silence was broken. His ability for control seemed impaired with the strength of slayer blood freely shed.

Buffy snorted. Then laughed hysterically as if she’d been practising ever since Spike had abandoned her in the Hellmouth.

“Saved the world? I seriously doubt it. Especially not on your own. How could you keep him from me?”

Something dark shadowed his eyes and Buffy shrunk back, wondering if this was it and he would kill her, and before he even bothered to offer answers. Explanations.

“You kept him away from yourself,” he told her, his voice dripping with disgust. “Seeing you with the Immortal was enough to turn both of us off.”

“Oh my God. You are such an idiot. Do you KNOW how much crap I put Spike through because he didn’t have a soul?” She snorted as a small hint of uncertainty rubbed away the darkness that had been taking over Angel. It made her want to rush him and force it to come back. Bring back her death sentence so it was close by her side once again. “Why on earth do you think I would dishonour what he did for me by being with a creep like the Immortal? It was a job. I was being the slayer. Doing Giles’s bidding—because don’t I always?”

The depth of his stupidity shocked him, though it really shouldn’t have. He hadn’t been ready to have Buffy back in his life back then—had been more than ready to think she’d waste her time baking with another of his enemies. But Spike should have known better. He should have guessed how Buffy worked a lot better than him, and should have left to be with her, seeing through her capricious decision and altering it by revealing himself to her. It was Spike’s fault for…

“You have got to be kidding me. You’re going to blame Spike for this, aren’t you?” Buffy laughed at Angel’s start of surprise at having been caught in exactly that thought. “And of course you weren’t at his ear at all saying ‘let her be happy.’”

He was slightly ashamed—not enough to cripple him though.

Angel raised chocolate puppy dog eyes and implored at his future to understand what it had been like for him.

“If you couldn’t have me, then Spike certainly didn’t deserve me either. Is that the way it was?”

Damn, she was getting way too good at this guessing his motivations crap.

“He knew you! He should have guessed what you were doing.” He couldn’t help the whine that took over. He was suddenly full of whine, and no one was around except for Buffy to hear it.

Buffy just rolled her eyes and built that little wall of irritation and anger at her friends and watcher a little higher.

“Spike was insecure. He lost so many times in the name of love that when he finally was offered it, he didn’t believe it was real. God, he probably thought it was The First trying to pull him away from REALLY SAVING THE WORLD.”

“I saved the world. I totally saved the damn world. You’d be living in demon central if it wasn’t for me.” Angel was mad, and he felt slightly tipped towards irrational.

“Oh really? Then where is Wesley? And all the others? And SPIKE?” Buffy screamed, feeling the hysterical bubble surging inside to be the only way to stop her ending this conversation with the picking up of her stake.

“They helped. But it was me. I gave up the shanshue and I gave up Cordy and my son. We all have to make sacrifices, Buffy.”

He actually looked like he believed it was all him, that the others had barely been sidekicks in his grand plan to do whatever the hell he’d done.

“You arrogant selfish ass. You think you’re the only one who lost? I’ve never hated anyone more than I do right now, so if you have half a scrap of intelligence left in that pea soup brain of yours, I would seriously make with the decision to stay away from me.”

It was the crackle of magical energy in the air that stopped them this time, curbing the words that would distance themselves more from humanity. The crackle of something that heralded the arrival of the unexpected.

And it smelt indelibly of miracles.





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