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“Don’t be such a baby, Spike,” I exclaimed. “I’m driving a whole fifty feet. What’s the worst that could happen?”

Spike groaned. “It’s my baby! No one drives her but me.”

I scoffed. “And driving it to the door so you can jump in without becoming Kentucky Fried Vamp isn’t a good enough reason? Hell, it will be half mine after you marry me anyway!”

Spike stared into my eyes. “Say that again.”
I cocked an eyebrow at him. “Which part specifically?”

He wrapped his arms around me and leaned his forehead against mine. “You know what part.”
I grinned at him. “The part where after the whole ‘The World is Gonna end’ fiasco you’re going to marry me? Make an honest woman of me in the eyes of the human law?” I kissed him softly. I could feel his body tremble as he tried to refrain from taking more. I looked up into his lust darkened eyes. “So, are you going to let me pull the car up, or are we going to stand here in the hotel entryway all day?” I asked sarcastically.

He handed me the keys.

…

I watched as Cordy and Spike were sparring, arms crossed and walking in a circle around them, giving them a wide berth, so as no to get caught in the crossfire. Watching Spike fight has always been a guilty pleasure. He was slender and lithe, which was very deceptive. I know I had underestimated him the first time we fought and I knew Angel still had, at least, until they had fought for the cup. I didn’t want Cordelia to make the same mistake about her opponents and be taken down off guard. As they turned and punched and kicked, I had to remind Spike not to hold back. I could sense his hesitation through our bond and I could see it in his movements. Minute, but it was still there. ‘She’s a Slayer,’ I reminded him telepathically. ‘She can take it. She needs to be prepared to face amazing fighters and you holding back won’t teach her anything. You are the best, that’s why I trained with you. Now let go and show it!’

He whirled to face me. “Okay, Slayer. Let’s see you do it while I’m talking in your head. Right distracting, you are.”

I smiled sweetly at him.

…

“Get back here, you bleached menace! I’m gonna stake you if I ever get my hands on you” I screamed as I chased his flapping duster through Wolfram and Hart’s lobby. Three days until our vacation and this is the kind of stunt he pulls?

“Yeah, luv, that’ll make me stop bloody running!” he quipped over his shoulder. He leaped up the stairs and stood on the railing of the balcony as I screeched to a stop on the floor below him. “Oi! Come on, Slayer! That the best ya got?” He smirked down at me.

Fred and Lorne came running from the direction of the elevators as I growled up at my mate. “What’s going on Buffykins?” Lorne simpered.

I noticed the two standing next to me for the first time. I flushed with embarrassment.

“Go on, Goldilocks. Tell your mates why you’re chasing me about, screaming like a soddin’ banshee.” He smirked at me. He didn’t think I’d do it.

He thought wrong.

I turned to Lorne and Fred and whispered, “We were having a quickie in the supply closest and the evil fiend stole my underwear!” We looked up at the vampire in question. He grabbed my thong from his back pocket and, grinning like a Cheshire cat, spun it around his finger. We all burst out laughing, including Spike.

“Of course, he’s not the only one with collateral.” I pulled the keys to the Desoto out of the pocket of my jacket. I watched with amusement as he fumbled through his pockets of his duster, like the keys I was taunting him with weren’t really the keys to his car. He came up empty. He jumped down with preternatural grace to land in front of me.

Quirking an eyebrow at me, he asked, “Wanna trade?”

“Let me think…panties or a car…what shall I do?” I winked at him and strode to the elevator. I glanced over my shoulder to see that Spike hadn’t moved. “Coming?” I asked.

…

We had been training hard the past few days and I was more than convinced Cordy could hold her own against any vamps or demons that had an issue with her. She would study meditation and demon lore with Giles for a few weeks and then come back to L.A. Wesley and I had discussed the Slayer dream slightly and we had both assumed we would need backup and all need to leave L.A. when this was all over, whichever way it went down. He would be receiving a house and a car from the Council, just like Cordy. Although I was going to try to convince Fred to leave with us when the time came whether or on she and Wes got together, I thought it would be better to ask closer to the time when we needed to leave.

I hadn’t exactly told Wesley the whole dream. Just that there was a slight apocalypse coming, but we would have the chance to stop it once it was initiated. I didn’t want to tell him that his boss and friend was the one who would start it all. How do you tell someone that anyway?

We had been training for a few hours. It was late and Spike and I had been teaching Cordy to fight with the scythe. She was eager to go out and test it on the unsuspecting demon population. We headed toward the elevator in the lobby, not talking, so as not to disturb the silence that had settled over the building. It wasn’t often, but sometimes, at night when we left and all was quiet, you could almost forget that it was an interdimensional evil law firm. You could almost pretend it was any old building.

As we neared the lobby, I felt a wave of alarm from Spike. I grabbed Cordy’s arm and motioned for her to be silent as we turned and regarded my lover. His eyes had a hardened glare and he cocked his head to the side, as if listening to things neither Cordy nor I could hear.

‘What is it?’ I thought to him. I could really see where this whole telepathic stuff would come in handy.

‘Vampires. Two. One is the Great Poof himself, but there’s another. Familiar, possibly family. Not Dru though.’ Spike was thinking short disconjointed thoughts. I caught the meaning though. Angel was in the lobby with someone and we may have a fight on our hands. The Aurulian family was renowned for it’s powerful vampires.

As quietly as we could, we crept to the corner and peaked around, down the stairs to assess the situation. Angel and another dark haired vampire. “Lawson,” I heard Spike breathe.

I turned to him with questioning eyes, but he inclined his chin, indicating I should follow his gaze. Tethered to a beam that ran across the ceiling by a thin gauge wire were Fred, Wesley and Gunn. They were standing on rolling office chairs, gagged, with the expanse of wires about their necks.
This ‘Lawson’ was standing in front of them, his back to his captives, facing Angel. And he was monologing! A sure sign that the bad guy thought he had the upper hand.

I grabbed the scythe from Cordelia and motioned for Spike to give me a lift up onto the beam that ran over our heads all the way across the lobby. ‘Go distract them so I have enough time to discreetly cut the wires,’ I thought to my mate. I crept along the beam and stole a glance back down at my vampire. He was crouched on the floor and animatedly whispering to Cordy. Making a plan of attack, I surmised. I tried to pay attention to what the new vampire was doing. I needed to be aware of his position so he couldn’t hurt anyone before I had time to cut the wires. If I hurried and hacked them, he could hear it and kick the chairs from under one of my friends and behead them.

I concentrated on his voice. It was pleasant and I wondered momentarily what he had been like before he died, something I had been doing a lot lately.

“We all need a reason to live, even if we're already dead. Mom, apple pie, the stars and stripes. That was good enough for me till I met you. Then I had this whole creature-of-the-night thing going for me. The joy of destruction and death and I embraced it. I did all the terrible things a monster does, murdered women and children, tortured fathers and husbands just to hear 'em scream, and through it all... I felt nothing. Sixty years of blood drying in my throat like ashes. So what do you think? Is it me, chief? Or does everyone you sired feel this way?”

I edged along the beam until I made it to the first wire…Wesley’s. I used the scythe to begin sawing through it. I didn’t want the cut wire to fall to soon and let Lawson know what was going on. I just hoped Spike would hurry.

I didn’t have long to wait.

“Yeah, Captain Forehead isn’t the best of mentors, is he, Sailor Boy?” Spike glided down the stairs, his duster sweeping out behind him dramatically. Cordelia followed silently in his wake, trying her best to look meek and not like the qualified killer she was. She kept her eyes trained on everything but the hostages. No one wanted to spook him into murdering them.

“Well, hello Spike,” Lawson said amiably, turning to fully face the blonde vampire. “I never expected to see you again.” He peered curiously between Spike and Angel. “And I certainly never expected to see you here, with him after he threw us off that submarine.”

Wesley’s wire fell and Lawson didn’t notice. Wes looked up at me in surprise. I put a finger to my lips and mouthed to him not to move. I scooted to Fred’s wire and started sawing at it, keeping my eye on the goings on beneath me.

Spike cocked his head to the side. “Things change, Sailor Boy. Peaches and I fight on the same side now.” Spike smirked at his grandsire. “Well, pretty much, anyway. And as much as I enjoy seeing his misery, those are my friends, too and I can’t bloody well let you kill them.”

Lawson shrugged. “They’re just humans, chief. Why do you care about them?”

Spike stalked around the edge of the room, nearer to Angel, drawing Lawson’s attention away from his hostages. “Because there is a bloody easier way to live your unlife than running about alone for sixty years. You have to find people to connect with. Friends. You need to be part of something. Without that, you’re right. You don’t feel a soddin’ thing.”

Fred’s wire was finished and I moved on to Gunn’s. To their credit, they hadn’t moved a muscle to draw Lawson’s attention and Spike was keeping him busy with insight, like he had done to me and the Scoobies so many times. I was almost through Gunn’s wire. I knew I could have quickly chopped through it, now that I was at the end, but I wanted them to have the chance to get away before anything resembling a fight happened. The wire snapped and I jumped down from the beam, landing gracefully behind the unaware vampire.

He whirled around, hearing me land. I ushered Fred, Wes, and Gunn into Angel’s office, my eyes never leaving the chocolate brown ones of the vampire in front of me. “Hi,” I said softly. “I’m Buffy.”

His eyes widened in confusion and to my surprise he answered. “Lawson.”

“Well, Lawson, if you have an issue with Angel, join the club, and I’m sure we’re all okay with you formally challenging him. But my sense of honor, and I’m sure Spike’s as well, is affronted by the hostage taking. Where’s your sense of fair play?”

He looked at me like I was insane.

Angel tried to catch my eye. “Buffy, you’re a Slayer. Aren’t you going to slay him?”

I shook my head slowly. “This is your fight, Angel. You turned him and he’s obviously pissed at you for it. I’m not going to get in the way of his revenge. I would want revenge on the person that turned me too. This is your deal.” I said that not only to Angel, but to let Spike and Cordy know that I didn’t want them to interfere. In Lawson’s eyes, I could see a multitude. Inner pain and strength, yes, those were there, but I could also see he hadn’t come here to win. He came here to die. To be killed by his sire. I grabbed a stake from my back pocket and handed it to him.

Spike came to stand by me. When he put his arm around my waist I knew he could tell too. These were the last moments of Lawson’s unlife.

The young vampire looked between the two of us. “Is this what you found to make unlife worth living?” He gestured to me.

“She’s part of it, yeah. Makes my world Technicolor, she does. But it’s not just her. I love her sister as if she was my own and I have friends, kinda. Makes life worth living. You haven’t learned that in sixty years? You’ve been wanderin’ about since we parted ways on the beach without ever takin’ a lover or belonging to a group? Bloody sad, that is. Tell you what. When you dust Peaches, we’ll discuss you fighting with us. Give you a soddin’ purpose, it will. But right now, you have a vendetta to settle.”

Lawson nodded slowly and turned to face a somber Angel, who stood with his own stake, I assume provided by Cordy. She came to stand with us, on the other side of Spike. We all knew she still had feelings for Angel, even though she would never act on them. She and I had discussed it after training a few nights ago. She was angry and disappointed in him for what she called the “evil empire debacle.” I felt like there was something else. Something she wasn’t ready to tell me. I could wait. After all, I had a lot of time.

Spike casually put his arm around my fellow Slayer’s shoulders in a silent show of support. I glanced over at her. She looked grim and worried. I wished I cold tell her in that moment that Lawson was going to lose, but then she would have had me explain that look. That look of someone that was ready to die. And Lawson was. I wasn’t ready to explain that. Maybe Spike could give her that lesson. After all, he had been the one to tell me.

Angel and Lawson circled each other slowly. Lawson lunged, kicking the stake from the larger vampire’s hand. For mere seconds, it looked like Lawson had the upper hand, but Angel beat him back. Grabbing the hand in which the younger vampire held the stake, Angel turned it and angled it back toward Lawson’s chest. The two combatants locked eyes as the sire slowly inched the stake towards his childe’s heart. Lawson’s arms shook was he tried to keep the wood from his chest, but Angel was just too strong. The sailor exploded into dust.

“So, Sailor boy finally came back for a yo-ho-ho,” Spike snarked.

Angel turned to look at him. “Finally did.”





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