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The ringing phone broke into my sleep like a siren. I groaned and leaned across Spike’s sleeping form to grab the receiver.

“If Dawn isn’t hurt and the world isn’t ending, I’m hanging up.” I moaned into the phone.

“Buffy, we need to talk.”

“Giles,” I opened an eye and glanced at the clock. 9:30 I had only been asleep for three hours. “I was awake for almost forty eight hours straight and I have the jet lag from hell. Can whatever this is about wait a few more hours? I really need the sleep. Please?” I begged him.

“No, this can’t wait any longer.” My watcher’s voice was stern and his annoyance echoed over thousands of miles.

Damn. “Okay, just gimme a minute to wake up. I’m gonna set the phone down and go to the bathroom and then we can talk.” I looked up into Spike’s open but sleepy eyes. I put a finger to my lips to signal him not to speak and crawled out of the bed. I grabbed my cami off the floor from where it had fallen barely three hours before. I hadn’t wanted to get out of bed again to put it back on, but I just couldn’t have a conversation with Giles in the nude. That would be wrong. I pulled on my underwear and grabbed some pajama pants from my suitcase. When I had shimmied into them, I saw Spike’s eyebrow lift and I grinned. Little cartoon Dracula’s graced the black fabric of the pants. Dawn had picked them out, thinking they were funny. I had agreed.

I sat down on the edge of the bed. It was so to early for this! I hit the speaker button. Thank God for speakerphones. They saved me from having to repeat everything that was said. I wasn’t going to keep Spike out of the loop as long as he could stay quiet until the appropriate time. “Alright, Giles, what’s the sitch?”

“Your friends and I are concerned about your sudden departure to L.A. We wanted to remind you that if you are starting up a relationship with Angel again, he is the CEO of an evil law firm.” I stifled a giggle with my hand as Spike growled and let Giles continue with his tirade, unaware. “ You haven’t had the greatest luck with men, and you tend to get distracted from your duties. And what with your responsibilities to the budding Council, we all feel it would be unwise to take up with someone of his nature,” he finished.

Wait a second. “We?” I asked. Then the realization hit me. “Am I a conference call? When did this happen? Is this an over the phone intervention? Are there going to be a bunch of ‘I’ statements now?”

I heard a familiar giggle on the line. “Dawn? Is everyone in on this call?”

“Yes,” Giles’ stern voice intoned. “Xander, Willow, Faith, Andrew and Dawn. Although the last two didn’t think they needed to be here for this. Something about already knowing what was happening and that we are blowing it out of proportion and we should mind our own business. But since neither of them would inform us as to what was really going on, you will have to explain.”

“Andrew? Dawn? You couldn’t defend my honor or anything?” I mock pouted.

“Hey, you hid it, you spill it, drama mama,” Andrew snarked.

I was silent. Now, I had avoided telling them about the cause of my trip because I knew how they would all react. Giles would say ‘Oh dear lord’ and clean his glasses, Willow would wring her hands and stammer, and Xander would wig. How was I supposed to be honest and open with my friends when I knew they would be upset with what I was going to say?

“Come on, B. Whatever’s goin’ on, you can tell us.” Well, maybe Faith would understand. She was more open-minded than the rest of them.

All right big tough Buffy, it’s time. I dove right in. “I started having these dreams that Spike was alive and in L.A. I kept having them. Major repeat-o-vision. I called here to talk to Wesley about them.” I heard Giles snort his derision. “He was in the dreams, I thought he would be able to tell me if they were real, or if I was just…you know…pining. But when I called here, Wesley was out and I talked to Fred instead.”

“Oh, I love her!” Willow exclaimed. Sheepishly she added, “Sorry.”

“What did ya find out, Buff?” Xander asked.

I took a deep breath. “I found out that the amulet Spike wore at our ‘final battle’ said with finger quotes, made its way back to Wolfram and Hart. It was mailed there or something. When Angel opened the package and the amulet fell out, Spike’s essence was released from it. Guys, he’s back,” I finished quietly. I watched Spike as he tried desperately not to laugh.

“Oh, dear lord,” Giles said. Predictable.

“Spike’s alive?” Xander said disbelievingly.

“No. Still bloody dead. Just back, whelp,” Spike chuckled.

“And in your room! Really early in the L.A. morning,” Xander exclaimed.

I said nothing. What was I supposed to do? Deny it? Kinda useless at this point. Well, might as well take a dominant role. “Yes, he is Xander. Are we gonna have an issue or are you ready to let me make my very own decisions yet? I’m a big girl. I tie my own shoes and everything.”

“Hey. backing up quickly, hands in the air. I’m not judging, just grasping,” Xander backpedaled.

Spike snorted.

“Good,” I replied. “I’m tired of the judging. I don’t really care what any of you think about Spike anyway. I mean, I’d love your support. You’re my friends and you mean a lot to me. But if you can’t handle it, that’s cool too.” My voice dared them to say something derogatory.

“Good for you, B. You tell em’.” Funny that after everything that’s happened between us, Faith was the one that had my back. The world was an interesting place sometimes.

“Red, you haven’t said anything yet. I know you don’t bloody approve of anything between the Slayer and me.” Spike probed.

There was a heavy silence on the phone, and then Willow spoke for the first time. “Buffy, when I realized I had feelings for Tara, I came to you because I knew you would be support-o-gal and not judge or condemn. And even though I know you don’t like Kennedy…you never say anything. You’re just happy that I am. The very least I can do is reciprocate. That and Spike? He saved all of our lives, and more than once. And he loves you. You could do a lot worse.”

I looked at Spike. The emotion played across his face as Willow came up to bat for him. It was obviously not what he had been expecting.

“Not to mention,” Willow continued, “if you’re going to pick a vampire, at least you picked the most human one we’ve ever met.”

Spike looked at the phone incredulously. “What? Bollocks!”

Dawn giggled. “Oh, come on Spike, you’re a crappy vampire!” she exclaimed.

“I bloody well am not!”

Willow stepped in again. “What I meant is, you eat human food, you retain human vices like drinking and smoking, and you embraced human emotion, even before you got back your soul. You’re more alive than some of the living people I know.”

“That and you weren’t even all that scary. I mean, come on, you were evil and you still helped Buffy save the world from Angelus,” Dawn quipped.

Spike scoffed at her belligerence. “Right then, I was a bad, bad vampire. Is that why you barely acknowledged me while you were here, platelet?”

“Hey, now, that’s not fair,” Dawn huffed. “Andrew launched himself into your arms almost the second you walked in the door. I wanted to feel like the responsible adult for once and not a giggling teenage girl, unlike some people.” Andrew could be heard whining over the phone line. It made me smile. It was just like old times at the house on Revello Drive.

“So, you’re a Watcher now, eh, bit?” He looked at the phone proudly, lovingly. It made my heart swell to seen how much he thought of my sister.

“Well, I attend the Watcher’s Academy. With as much as the First knew, I’m surprised the Academy wasn’t bombed allow with the Council building.” And then she added under her breath, “But they may as well have after what Buffy did.”

Vampire hearing yet again. “What did the Slayer do?”

“She basically destroyed the curriculum of the school. They are no longer allowed to teach the ‘Demons bad, humans good’ mantra. They also have to teach, what is it you call it, Buffy? The gray area?”

“Yep,” I nodded. “Some humans are evil, some demons are good. And while, we can’t kill the evil humans, we can learn to accept the good demons,” I replied.

“I hate to change the subject,” Giles stammered, “but Andrew and Dawn told us you were injured in the fight to contain Dana. Would you care to tell us what happened?”

At the mention of Dana, Spike busied himself looking at his hands. I watched with excitement and pride as he flexed his fingers and rotated his wrists for the first time since the surgery. The look of sheer delight on his face was beautiful, liken to that of a small boy at Christmas. I was distracted by the absolute joy on his face when I heard Giles clear his throat.

“Yeah, I got hurt, but not like Spike did,” I said quietly.

Spike looked up sharply at me. Had I said the wrong thing? Did he not want the Scoobies to know about his injury, like they would see it as a weakness? I just wanted to tell my friends above how they had reattached Spike’s hands and how amazing it was when I was surprised by a voice.

“That Dana bird cut my bloody hands off.” There was a multitude of shocked and surprised sounds, plus one ‘Oh dear Lord’ before he continued. “But the real reason I say this is, Wolfram and Hart put them back on. They reattached them. When the doctor came to talk to me, I asked him if this could be done with older injuries. Like, say, if someone had lost his or her eye…” he trailed off.

My jaw must have fallen right off my head. He had made an inquiry to the doctor for Xander. Xander who had never liked him, wanted to stake him and called him ‘Evil Dead.’

“Captain Forehead said if you’re interested, call and let him know. Wolfram and Hart will pick up the tab. I know you don’t trust these guys. I don’t bloody trust them either, but they did help me.”

Xander stammered a surprised “Thank you.”

“You are implying then that you are not employed by the firm.” Giles intoned skeptically.

Spike snorted. “Well, I tried to get the Great Poof to give me an office, but he would have none of that. I just wanted a place to call my own inside the building or otherwise. But I got a deal with the powers and I have an apartment now and everything. Some guy named Doyle gets these visions, I run about and save people. Help the helpless and all that. I met him in a stri…”

He turned red and stopped speaking, but something else he said had caught my attention. Doyle…why did that sound so familiar? I knew I had heard it somewhere before. If only I could think of it.

It was Xander, surprisingly enough, that came to Spike’s aide “So, Buff, you got hurt, too? How’d that go?”

“Like a bone saw through abdomen,” came my snarky reply. Better to put the ‘Doyle’ out of my head for now. I would probably remember it if I didn’t think about it.

“And how is it now?” Giles asked.

I pulled my shirt up and looked at said wound. “If I didn’t know any better, just at having seen it, I would guess it happened days ago, not hours.”

“See, Buffster? And you were all power-freaked about this whole immortality thing.”

Spike stared agape at me. “The whole what thing?”

So much for riding the mellow.





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