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The door to the Magic Box burst open, causing everyone within to jump. Willow’s head shot up out of whatever book she was reading. Xander, who had been dozing quietly with his head on the table, lurched to wakefulness with a startled sound. Anya, who had been using him as a pillow, sounded even less pleased than he did. Even Spike and Giles, normally unfazed by the abruptness of life on the Hellmouth were startled. Only Angel, amongst them all, was already up on his feet and headed towards what had suddenly appeared in the doorway.

Though even he was not prepared for it.

“We need your help,” a scorched and battered Dawn told them. She was both bloody and bruised, her hair a tangle of slime and blood from a head wound and her clothes were soiled beyond all recognition.

For a moment, everyone just stared at her uncomprehendingly. Dawn’s expression took a on frantic, angry look before she barked, “NOW!”

That command, like a gunshot, set everyone else on their feet. Angel had a head start; he took Dawn’s arm, placed it around his shoulder and helped her stagger from the doorway to a chair upon which she collapsed in a heap. People began buzzing around her, a thousand questions from their lips:

“Bloody Hell, what’s all the noise about-?”

“Where’s Buffy, Dawn, what’s happened? Is your mother-?”

“Alec? Is Alec with you, Dawney-?”

Dawn brought her hands up over her ears, squeezing her eyes tight and trying to blot them all out; there were so many voices, so many people demanding to know things from her, demanding answers from her, it was more than she could bear.

And then the questions abruptly ceased.

Buffy and Joyce, in even worse shape that Dawn, slowly came into the room, cradling a large bundle in their arms, wrapped in black cloth. Wisps of smoke trailed lazily off it and it reeked of fire and death.

Spike looked confounded. “What in the blazes…?” he began.

And then, a sleeve came loose from the smoking bundle, declaring that the cloth was actually, a jacket - a full-length black woolen duster.

And then they knew. Then they knew everything.

“ALEC!” Giles cried out and rushed to Buffy and Joyce.

Spike moved faster; grabbing, nearly tearing the bundle out of the exhausted women’s arms and, shoving his way past everyone else, stalked to the table. With a single, brutal movement, he swept the table clear of books and leftover pizza; it all came crashing down to the floor.

“Baby…?” Willow whispered, staring with wide, uncomprehending eyes, her face the chalky white color that only comes with severe shock.

Xander rushed over to Buffy. Anya looked on, a little irritated at her boyfriend’s show of concern. “Buff, what happened?” he asked fervently. Buffy looked at him, her expression shell-shocked and it shook Xander to the core to see it. His friend, the Slayer, Buffy, looked broken.

She didn’t say anything, just shook her head, sat down in a chair next to Dawn and Joyce and stared at the smoking bundle now on the table.

“Mate?” Spike whispered quietly, his teeth gritted with the effort of keeping his tone level. He took a firm hold of the cloth and tensed his arm, ready to jerk.

A hand as cold and strong as his, clamped down on his arm. “No!” Angel shouted, squeezing Spike’s arm into immobility.

“Piss off ANGELUS!” Spike roared. “He’s my best bloody mate!”

“You can’t-!”

“Get out of my way, I need to see my son!” Giles roared, stalking past them all, prepared to shove his way heedlessly past the two furious vampires to get to the man in question.

Angel spun around and grabbed the man. “Rupert, no, you can’t just yank it off!” he yelled at the Watcher; the effort of attempting to grapple both a grieving father and an enraged vampire clearly beyond him at the moment.

The three men’s shouts ran together into a miasma of noise.

“He’s my son!”

“Rupert, listen to me! If he’s burned-!”

“Let go of me you great, flaming ponce before I tear your fangs out the back of your head-!”

“He’s right,” that voice, Buffy’s voice, dead and hollow but audible over everyone else, silenced the argument. The three men stopped to look at her and she slowly raised her head to face them as she spoke, “He’s right, Angel’s right, Alec was burned.”

Willow sobbed aloud then; the confirmation that the smoking, reeking bundle was indeed her beloved broke through her shock and shattered the young woman’s composure. She sank to the floor, weeping.

Dawn, sitting across from her with her head down, looked up at the crying red-headed girl in a heap on the floor in front of her. Dawn slowly, painfully, reached out and touched Willow’s shoulder. Willow’s hand snaked up and took hold of it, squeezing tightly through painful, shuddering cries.

Suddenly, she looked up at Dawn: eyes wet but now-filled with a crazed, desperate light. It matched Willow’s tone as she spoke, “Dawnie? He’s okay though, right? Alec’s okay? I mean, we can fix him, right? Right, Dawnie?! Right….?!””

The last word was sobbed out, but Willow still desperately, agonizingly, maintained eye contact with Dawn, frantically searching the other girl’s face for some…small shred of hope.

And then Dawn began to cry.

With an agonized wail, Willow tried to scramble to her feet, grasping unthinkingly at the air in vain for purchase as she tried to hoist herself up, staggering to her feet

“ALEC!” she screamed. Her feet slid out from under her and Willow crashed hard to the tile floor. Bruised, and blinded completely by her tears, she would not be stopped though. Instead she crawled, clawing her way across the floor, her nails bent back and then broke with loud, snapping sounds, but she didn’t even seem to notice. So determined was Willow to go to him, to Alec, that if she had to break every bone in her hand, in her body, she would still go to him.

And then Dawn, half-staggering, half-sliding on her feet and knees, came to a skidding halt in front of Willow, bent down low and gathered the other girl in a tight hug.

“Let me go! Let me go! I have to go to him, I have to fix him! I have magic! I can fix him! I can save him! LET ME GO!!” Willow snarled and thrashed and screamed; Dawn held on tightly to the other girl until the fight drained out of the witch, and she crumpled, shuddering silently, her body curled in the fetal position.

And Dawn just held her as they grieved for the man they both loved.



“In Vietnam,” Angel began, “I served under this…crazy colonel with air cavalry, first of the ninth. He loved napalm, used it all the time.” Spike and Giles just listened, the latter took off his glasses and squeezed his eyes tight at the mention of ‘napalm’.

“One night, he used too much; the wind caught it, something caught it, I have no idea what. But it blew back on us and a couple of the guys on the ground took it full on.” Angel swallowed; a dry, reflexive swallow full of anxiety, and continued. “I remember… what they looked like, lying there on the ground. I remember watching the medic trying to tend to these… smoking, peeling objects that used to be soldiers.”

“This little stroll down memory lane going anywhere, mate?” Spike asked quietly.

“I remember there was one who’d pulled some canvas, some tarp that’d been near when he’d gotten burned. He had it pulled over himself like a blanket, probably because the breeze on his skin felt like hell. And after it’d been a while, the medic came and pulled it off him.” Angel looked up at them both sharply before finishing.

“And his face came off with it.”

“Oh…sod!” Spike said, breathing out hard.

“Get me a pair of scissors. And some cool, but not cold, water,” Giles instructed with a voice sharp enough to draw blood, “and some alcohol, please. And also the scissors, from the first aid kit in the back.”

“Yeah,” was all Spike said as he went to get them.

Giles turned to Angel. “How many of those men survived?” the Watcher asked the vampire calmly.

“None of them did,” Angel told him simply, looking him right in the eye. “Including that colonel. He had a little accident the next night.”

Angel’s tone left absolutely no question as to what or who had been responsible for the colonel “accident”.

Giles’s tone also left nothing to question, he turned to look at the smoking shape on the table, and replied,

“Good.”



Hours later later, the last thread was cut and it was time.

Giles had worked with all the care and skill of a surgeon; gently snipping and cutting away at cloth that had bundled and stuck and clung until it formed a cocoon, within which, his son lay, possibly dying if not already dead. The only sign of life was the occasional shifting from inside the bundle and every now and then, a wheezing, whispering breath, like dead leaves blowing in a weak breeze.

Giles put the scissors aside; there were faint traces of blood upon them. Not all that needed to be cut away could be separated from flesh.

The librarian-turned-shopkeeper looked more like a combat surgeon now: his sleeves had been rolled up, tweed had been cast aside and his glasses were smudged with blood and smeared with sweat and grime.

But his hands were steady, remarkably steady, as was his expression through it all. One could almost think he were cutting swaths of fabric to be tailored into pants, rather than what might be his only son’s burial shroud.

“There. It’s done,” he announced to no one in particular. Everyone however was huddled around the make-shift operating table, now splashed with puddles of water and alcohol, all of it having a slight red tinge that no one tried to pay attention to. No one had made a sound: not a weep, nor a moan, nor a question or even a breath, it seemed. All was still.

“Do it,” Buffy finally said in that dead voice she’d had since she arrived.

Giles nodded and gestured to Angel as he spoke, “Angel, will you please hand me those tweezers?”

Angel took the instrument from the first aid kit and, wordlessly, passed it to Giles.

Giles gingerly gripped a corner of the fabric and slowly, carefully, began to pull. There was a sound, like cellophane wrap being pulled apart and everyone shuddered at it, save Giles, who remained calm and focused as ever.

Inch by agonizing inch, Giles gently peeled bits of fabric away from his son’s mangled body. The sound grew louder and the smell grew worse. Little tendrils of steam rose from where Giles parted the fabric: it was incredibly hot and more than once, Giles pulled his hands back, red and stinging.

At a drawn-out instance of the tearing sound, the form suddenly gave a little start.

“You’re hurting him!” Dawn cried out. Joyce shushed her as Giles waved the young girl’s concerns away with an irritated shake of his head, struggling to retain his focus.

“Rupert,” Angel said quietly and pointed.

Fresh blood snaked a path out from underneath the bundle, leaking onto the table to mix with the alcohol and water that had pooled onto the table. Soon, the only color there was the black of the cloth and the red of the bloody water.

“Is he dead?” Willow asked in a whisper. These had been the first words she’d spoken since her collapse earlier than evening.

Giles raised his eyes to meet Angel’s. The vampire nodded, they both had the same thought.

“The dead don’t bleed,” Angel told them simply.

“Then he’s alive,” Dawn whispered breathily.

Giles didn’t answer them: it was time. Carefully, he pulled back the last bit of cloth from the area he thought was his son’s head.

And then he almost died.

Steam rose up from Alec, thick and nauseating; like barbequed meat left out in the sun too long. People coughed and wiped at eyes that suddenly stung and were teary or they swallowed back gorge and tried not to be sick at the smell.

The sight was worse.

Alec didn’t even look human anymore: his skin was charred dead-black, it flaked off with the slightest contact. Ears, nose, lips, hair, were all gone. Just gone.

“Son….” Giles whispered, broken-hearted.

Xander threw up then; Willow and Dawn clung to each other and trembled violently, Joyce behind them, a hand over her mouth in horror at the sight, but ready if her daughters needed her. Even Spike swore and averted his face from the sight.

Only Buffy, Anya, Angel and Giles kept their gaze fixed on the form.

“That looks like it hurts,” Anya observed simply. Spike glared at her until she shrugged and went to go help keep Xander from vomiting out any internal organs.

“How did this happen?” Giles asked very quietly.

Everyone turned to face Buffy, even Dawn and Joyce, who had neither seen what had happened nor had received any kind of explanation from Buffy.

Buffy swallowed hard now and opened her mouth to speak,

“I-“

“Dad?”

The voice was weak, but it was alive and it was Alec’s.

Everyone crowded around as Alec opened one eye and looked up at them all: the sclera was a yellowish-red mixture and the pupil had been damaged, leaving the eye a ruined looking thing, but it saw them all. He saw them all, it focused and he appeared able to recognize them.

‘Dad?” Alec called out again; he tried to shift, to bring his hand up to reach out towards the sound of his father’s voice. A withered hand pulled itself free of the fabric, leaving bits and pieces of tissue behind and reached for Giles.

Giles took it very gently and laid it back down: it was like holding ash in his hands, the slightest pressure and bits of charred flesh would come away. Giles could feel things shifting and liquefying under his touch and he cradled his son’s hand tenderly.

“I’m here son, don’t move, you’ve suffered terrible injuries,” he told his son calmly.

“He needs a doctor,” Angel spoke up.

“He needs a big, black suit of bloody armor is what he needs: complete with iron lung and chest-mounted Lite Brite,” Spike put in.

There was a short jerk from Alec and a quiet sound came from him: a laugh.

“Vader-worthy, huh?” the boy whispered weakly. Then Alec started to shudder and cough, Giles reached out to hold him, to keep him from tearing his fragile body apart with coughing.

“Son? Son? Stay with me,” Giles urged.

“It hurts, dad,” Alec replied.

“I know, son, I know it hurts: you’ve suffered damage to your lungs through heat and smoke inhalation, along with carbon monoxide-“

“No, dad. Not my lungs. My shoulder. My shoulder hurts, dad,” Alec strained to look at his father through his one ruined eye as he spoke,

“Only my shoulder hurts, dad. Nowhere else, just my shoulder.”

“He’s suffered heavy nerve damage, Rupert,” Angel said quietly, taking Rupert aside. “There’s a good chance he can’t feel anything anymore.”



“Alec?” Willow whispered. Alec’s eye swiveled in its socket to peer at her.

“Hi,” he rasped.

“Are you, I mean, how do you-?” she couldn’t finish.

“Extra-crispy, love,” he replied, a touch of humor in his voice.

Willow laughed quickly. “Is there anything I can do?” she asked.

“Not until we know that none of my body parts are going to come off, if played with too roughly,” he replied and then winked at her, a painful-looking but entirely roguish, wink; as good as any vaudeville showman, playing to the crowd, could have mustered.

And Willow laughed again, this time heartily. Even Alec chuckled weakly. She bent down low and with infinite tenderness, kissed his charred black brow.

“I cannot lose you,” she whispered to him.

He looked up at her then: his one good eye burned but intent as he said simply,

“You won’t.”

“The dead don’t bleed, but neither do cauterized wounds,” Giles said with finality, taking his leave of Angel and coming back to the table, he caught Willow just as she was settling back on her heels. “Just now, Willow, when you kissed him, did he feel it?” he demanded.

Willow gaped at Giles: his demeanor suddenly possessed a volcanic intensity as he impaled her with his stare, his tone was as sharp and cracking as a whip. “I don’t know,” she stammered by way of reply. “I just-“

And with a jerk of his head, Giles shunned the young girl and focused on his son.

“Son, when she-?”

“Yes, dad, I did,” Alec answered.

“Which shoulder hurts?”

“The left; front and back. Like a snakebite.”

“Pair of puncture wounds then, through the front and out the back? Clean through?”

Alec shook his head. “No,” he told his father. “No, shoulder’s broken, but I can feel something wriggling in the wound.”

“Spike, knife,” was all Giles said in reply.

A flurry of movement and Spike, who had been hovering around the table with everyone else, put a butterfly knife in the other man’s hands, blade gleaming.

“It’s sharp, mate,” the English vampire warned.

“That’s the plan,” Giles confirmed as he scrapped the edge of the blade at Alec’s shoulder, clearing away dead skin. Alec winced suddenly and Giles put his glasses back on as he peered at what he had uncovered: a pair of bloody wounds; symmetrically spaced, deep and red.

“There we are,” Giles said with a sigh.

“Big snake,” Angel commented as he joined Giles in scrutinizing the wound. “There’s the source of the blood loss,” he added, pointing at the leaking wounds. Giles nodded and braced himself.

“What are you going to do?” Willow asked.

And in a single fluid movement, Giles slide the blade into the wounds.

Alec lurched nearly upright but Angel had been prepared for the reaction: he clamped a hand down on the wounded boy, as firmly as he dared, holding him in place and keeping him from thrashing under his father’s ministrations.

“What are you doing?” Willow cried out.

“You’re hurting him!” Dawn echoed.

Giles ignored them both; he worked the blade all around the wound, digging deeper and deeper as he prodded and pushed.

And then he felt something push back.

“Jar,” Giles demanded.

“Here,” Xander replied as he emptied out a tiny jar of herbs he’d taken from one of the store displays and handed it to the man. Giles took it with a grunt of gratitude.

Meanwhile, Anya frowned at Xander.

“You know, that’s shoplifting?” she said testily. Xander, trying to remember how much he loved his girl and also how amazing she looked naked, put on the kindest tone he could as he addressed her,

“Ahn…” he began.

“…shut up or I’ll kill you,” Spike finished for him, with a growl.

“What he said,” Xander added, turning his attentions back to what was happening on the table and doing his best to ignore Anya’s look of extreme displeasure.

“Just saying…” she muttered to herself.

Meanwhile, Angel held at the ready whilst Giles poked and made tiny, stabbing motions with the knife over and over again. Finally there was a crunch and something bulged momentarily up from underneath Alec’s burnt body.

“What the hell is that?” Spike asked flabbergasted.

“Let’s find out,” Giles replied. “Angel?”

“Spike, take over,” the vampire instructed. Spike nodded and took Angel’s place at the thrashing boy’s shoulders, holding him down as best he could without hurting him.

With his free hand, Angel helped Giles coax the wiggling bulge closer and closer to the surface, out from underneath Alec’s skin, and with his other, helped the Watcher gently coax the unknown object towards the hole in the young man’s shoulder.

A final stab and the wiggling stopped. Alec went rigid, then limp. Giles looked up and shot Spike a sharp, inquiring look.

“Still among the living, Rup,” Spike assured him.

Carefully, Giles pushed the blade as deep into the now-still object as he could. He felt resistance, resistance and then a pop. Little rivulets of black, foul-smelling fluid began to dribble out of the wound.

Giles spoke, without taking his attention from his work, “Angel?”

“On it,” came the reply. Angel dabbed gauze, cleaning as much of the reeking ichor away from the open wounds. It was a safe bet that the substance would do Alec little good if any appreciable amount was left to seep into his bloodstream.

“What’s happening?” Willow asked. Dawn looked up, too.

“I think we hit the prize at the bottom of the box,” was the only response offered, courtesy of Spike.

With slow, steady hands, Giles pulled the knife out, bit by bit until he felt resistance. Angel reached up and peeled the flaps of bloody skin back, making the hole as large as possible without hurting the boy further. Giles nodded his thanks, and pulled the last of the blade out.

A bizarre hybrid of flat-worm and leech was skewered on the tip of the knife. It was about three inches long and darkish-red in color with streaks of black and green.

“What the hell is that?” Spike repeated.

Suddenly the thing gave a shudder and lurched, flexing. Spike jumped back as did most everyone else save the Summers’ women and Angel.

“It’s still alive!” Xander yelled.

“No, it’s not,” Angel said quietly. “It’s moving, but it was never ‘alive’.”

“Alcohol,” was all Giles said.

“We’re out,” Angel informed him.

“Here,” Spike said, thrusting a flask at Giles, “keep it. 1814 was a terrible year for scotch.”

Giles nodded his thanks and placed the worm/leech in the jar. It was still thrashing, trying to wrest itself off the knife blade. But when Giles poured the scotch onto it, it began to screech, a thin high-pitched wail.

Dawn and Buffy both lurched at the sound. Angel caught the reaction and frowned in question, but neither of them offered any sort of explanation.

“Little bastard can’t hold his grog,” Spike said with a sneer at the thing drowning in scotch. Giles said nothing. Instead, he sealed the jar, and putting it and its thrashing contents to the side, took the flask and splashed it over the wounds in his son’s shoulder. They bubbled and fizzed, and putrid yellow foam began to rise from them.

“Infection,” Angel commented dispassionately.

“Yes, fortunately for us though, these creatures seem to respond poorly to alcohol,” Giles replied.

A few moments later, it was all over. Alec laid still and his breathing seemed easier.

“He still needs a doctor,” Angel commented.

“No…” Alec’s voice replied.

Everyone stopped to look at him. Both of his eyes were open now and he certainly seemed more coherent.

“No, not a doctor,” he insisted, his voice sounding stronger with every moment.

“Son, are you certain?” Giles asked, concerned.

Alec nodded before rasping, “Willow?”

“I’m…I’m right here, Alec,” Willow assured him, coming up to the table to stand beside him. “What is it?”

“A spell, that healing spell, you used it when I broke my arm a few weeks back,” he whispered.

Willow frowned. “Ummm, yes, I remember that. But that was a broken arm, baby, not…not all… THIS,” she said, helplessly gesturing at Alec.

“‘Size matters not’,” quipped Spike helpfully.

“She lied,” Alec retorted from his prone position, earning a grin from the blond vampire. Alec turned his attention back to Willow and spoke with fervency, “You can do it, Willow-Witch. I promise you.”

The young girl let out a long-heavy sigh. “Okay,” she said finally. Gently placing her hands on Alec’s chest, she closed her eyes and began to chant.

“Goddess Hecate, work your will and weave your spell. Mend bone and blood, knit skin and sinew, and mend heart and breath whole again.” Taking a sewing needle from her pocket, she pricked her finger and placed a drop upon Alec’s breast.

“With this needle, I do mend the heart of my heart,” she whispered. Then, she moved her finger slightly, dripping a single drop of blood on either side of the first, flanking it.

“With this needle, I mend the breath of my breath,” she continued. Finally, she dripped a single drop of her blood upon Alec’s brow.

“With this needle, I mend the soul of my soul,” she finished, pulling her hand away and watching intently.

Nothing happened.

Spike scoffed as he spoke, “Well, that was catchy, put it to music and you’d have a right nice-“

Alec’s entire body lurched into an upright position. He howled, the wail a sound of agony, ecstasy and overload. Everyone nearly jumped out of their skin.

“Uh, is this supposed to happen?” Anya asked.

“I have no idea!” Willow replied frantically as she turned her attentions to her lover. “Sweetie?”

And without warning, Alec dug both his hands deep into the flesh of his face and began to tear the black skin clean off. In great greasy handfuls, Alec pulled and peeled and tore at the skin, tossing it aside to splatter onto the floor.

“I’m going to throw up, again,” Xander announced.

“Yes. I am going to ‘throw up, again’, too,” Anya commented grammatically incorrectly, but, as it turned out, quite accurately, as it was both of them that vomited.

Alec brought his hands to his face and, in a final loud scream, dug his nails in at the brow and peeled every last bit of black skin from his face. The ruined mass sloughed off into a heap on the floor with all the rest. He sat there for a while and panted heavily, hands over his face, bits of black skin still clinging to his fingers.

“Son, are you all right?” Giles asked.

“Honey?” came Willow’s voice.

“Alec?” that was Dawn’s tremulous tone, he knew that instantly.

Slowly, Alec removed his hands from his face and looked up.

Bright red and raw, without a single hair upon it, Alec’s face was, nevertheless, whole.

“That feels a little tender,” he put forth mildly.

The entire room erupted in cheers. Willow dashed forth to hug him tightly.

“Careful! Careful, love. Still a little tender and crispy,” Alec warned her.

“But alive,” she whispered in his pink ear fiercely.

Alec smiled and nodded. “Aye, still alive, baby,” he assured her, also whispering.

“Never leave me!”

“Not in a million years, Willow.”

“I love you, Alec.”

“I love you, too.”

Willow smiled and kissed his tender cheek gently. “You better, or else I’ll turn you into a newt!” she threatened direly.

Alec sighed. “Yes,” he admitted, “I imagine you would.” And then they were kissing and hugging and laughing: two young people in love, who had come through the dark and found each other at the end.

A chiming noise sounded suddenly in the store, the bell on the little door signaling that someone had entered.

“Hey, what’d I miss?” Faith asked.

Everyone stared at her for a long time.

“What?” she asked defensively, holding up two large plastic bags. “I brought sushi,” she offered by way of placation.

“Good,” Alec commented straight-faced, “I can’t handle anything cooked right now.”



A short while later, Alec, who had eaten nearly his own body weight in sushi moments ago, and Willow had gone to bed. Everyone was thanked repeatedly for all their help with Alec, and everyone else in turn understood that the couple required some “alone time” after the ordeal and they were willing to oblige the couple.

Midnight came and went. Everyone else had squared away for the night as far as sleeping arrangements went and pretty soon, nearly everyone was asleep.

Nearly everyone.

Buffy sat on the front stoop of the store, staring up at the sky: the moon was bright and the night cool and crisp, a clear sky with no promise of the snow that surely had to come soon.

“You were awfully quiet in there tonight, lov,” Spike commented as he stepped out of the dark near Buffy. “Quiet during the bad times is one thing, quiet during the good times afterwards though…” Spike shook his head in consternation.

“So, Angel’s not the only vampire who can do that whole ‘I appear from the shadows’ trick, huh?” she asked in a tone that was usually reserved for starting fights. Spike nearly went for it; nothing got his non-existent blood pressure up like the mention of his grandsire’s name.

Instead he simply asked, “What happened out there tonight, Buffy?”

Buffy looked up at him in surprise. Not ‘Slayer’, not ‘pet’, nor ‘love’… Buffy. It was rare for him to call her that.

“I set Alec on fire,” she told him. She was surprised how easily it just came out of her.

Spike just nodded. “Okay, why?” he asked.

And so she told him all about that night and how it had ended. How Alec had just gone up in flames, how the force of the explosion, caused by all the methane and by the creature detonating as well, had nearly broken every bone in his body, how it had fused him to the wall, how she’d had to pull him free, and the way he smelled and looked and how he felt and what it sounded like.

“Okay, love. I hear you,” Spike interrupted as his lover’s tone grew more frantic. “A bad night all around.”

“Yeah,” Buffy replied.

“Doesn’t sound like you set him on fire though, baby,” Spike commented thoughtfully. “Sounds more like he did it to himself to deal with the beastie.”

“That’s what he said,” she replied dully.

“But?”

Buffy sighed. “He asked me to lie, well, told me is more like it,” she confessed. “He told me to not tell anyone that I’d done this, that instead the creature had burned him with its acid.”

Spike scoffed. “Safe bet that was before he realized exactly how thorough a mess the fire was going to make of him. A big difference between acid-burnt and crispy-critter,” he replied.

“He wanted me to lie, though, to all of you: to Willow, to Giles, to you,” Buffy went on as she looked up at Spike. “And he asked about it so…”

“…easily,” Spike finished, “casually.”

“Yeah.”

“And that bothers you.”

“It really does.”

“Why?”

Buffy thought a moment before answering, “Because the people we love, we should trust enough to be honest with.”

“Sometimes, the truth hurts, though, love,” Spike pointed out.

“I think lying just makes it worse,” Buffy replied. “Especially lying to the people you care about.”

There was a long silence after that.

“There’s no way Red’s spell could have done all that, that fast,” Spike said quietly.

“I know,” Buffy replied.

“What does that mean?”

“It means…we still have some work to do, if we’re going to be honest with each other,” Buffy answered.

“You love the guy, right? ‘Brother you never had’ and all.”

“I really, really do,” Buffy admitted, whispering now.

Spike wrapped an arm around her and pulled her close; she offered no resistance and soon lay against his chest out there on the doorstep of the store.

“Then take it from me, baby. Let him do this the way he needs to,” he advised. “After all, if these people are family, we can afford to let them keep a few secrets.”



Giles closed the door to the office and stood a moment, alone in the dark.

And then he promptly threw up.

For a while, he crouched there, hunched and heaving over the wastebasket next to his desk.

Tonight my son almost died, he thought to himself.

He opened the desk drawer with a key from around his neck, kept hidden under his shirt. There were three objects within the drawer, he removed two of them: a bottle of scotch, and a small crystal, about the size of a snow globe.

For a while, Giles stared at them both. Then, as if reaching a decision, he took the bottle in hand and began to pour a drink for himself. And then another. And another. And another after that.

When the last drop of amber liquid trembled and then fell free from the mouth of the bottle into the glass below it, Giles tossed the empty container aside carelessly; it clanked and rolled noisily against the floor.

He picked up the glass full of scotch in one hand and the crystal in the other. Downing the drink in a single motion, he then turned his attention to the crystal.

“Hello, Ethan,” he said simply.

A beat and then a new voice spoke.

“Why, Ripper! After all these years! Why, I haven’t seen you since I changed you into a demon and your little slayer tried to gut you. How did that heal by the way?”

“May I assume then that it wasn’t a glamour I saw the Initiative hauling away like garbage?”

“Hmm? Oh, the white hats? No, sorry to disappoint: basic doppelganger spell. Just swapped my face out with some unfortunate sod and went on my merry way. I imagine that after the spell wore off, whoever the spooks did eventually lock up was quite unhappy. And they say no man is imprisoned unjustly in the Land of the Free,” Ethan’s voice chuckled darkly as he said this.

“I didn’t make contact with you, Ethan, so that you could laud your supernatural prowess,” Giles growled.

“No, I imagine you didn’t, Ripper,” Ethan admitted. “But judging by the way you’re speaking I’d be forced to say that not only have you had copious amounts to drink, dear boy, but it doesn’t seem to have improved your mood a lick.”

“I’m coming back out of retirement and going active,” was all Giles said.

There was a long silence.

“What’s happened?” Ethan asked; all traces of humor and jest gone from his voice.

“My son was very gravely injured tonight,” Giles explained.

“Diedre’s son?”

“Yes.”

A pause.

“Really no need to come to me with this, Rupert,” Ethan’s voice said through the stone. “Membership amongst The Brethren is for life, after all.”

“You heard about what happened between Quentin and I?” Giles asked.

“An over-blown bureaucrat with delusions of grandeur; no one has any reason to listen to a word that he or his cronies have to say, I assure you.”

“Then I have your support?”

Another pause, longer this time.

“Yes. Yes, Rupert, you have my support,” Ethan said finally. “I’ll pass the word that you’ve ‘come in from the cold’, as it were.”

“Just that easily?” Giles asked suspiciously.

“Just that easily,” Ethan confirmed.

“Tell me why.”

“Two reasons: One, I always liked Diedre, she had a good heart. Didn’t deserve what you did to her.”

“No. No, she didn’t. But she’s dead now, so helping me won’t mean anything to her.”

“Ah, but the boy. Helping her son, I believe, would be something she would appreciate.”

“Very well. And the second reason?”

There was a final pause; much, much longer than any of the others.

“You’re not the only one with something to lose anymore, Rupert,” Ethan’s voice said in a tone Giles had never heard from his friend-turned-nemesis.

“What do you mean?” Giles asked.

And then, Ethan laughed.

“Poor sport, Ripper, you’ve only answered one of my questions to my answering of two,” Ethan admonished the other man in that sing-song taunting tone he only took when he was about to do something really horrible.

Giles braced himself. “Ask,” he said simply

“Have you taken Lily out of her box yet?” came the response.

The crystal made a sound like wind chimes when it hit the wall, shattering into a thousand rainbow shards. Giles, struggling to regain his self-control, sat back down in the chair heavily with a sigh. He took his glasses off and pinched the skin at the bridge of his nose, taking long deep breaths, calming himself.

Then he reached into the drawer and removed the last item: a sleek, vicious-looking firearm.

It fit the man’s hand like a glove. His fingers explored every groove of its worked surface, remembering each niche and millimeter of surface, like a well-remembered lover.

Finally he turned it over and looked at the inscription underneath.

NEVER FORGET

There was a date and an etching of a flower, a lily, entwined amongst the lettering.

“Your favorite flower,” Giles whispered quietly to himself, lost in the past. “I’ve never forgotten. Not for an instant, not even at the end, not ever. I have never forgotten the words.”

Giles put the gun down and spoke into the darkness, into the dust where only ghosts could hear him.

“To the joy that magic brings, Diedre…” he said quietly.

And to magic joy brings back, Rupert he heard her voice, echoing from long, long ago, finish.

Giles spent the rest of that night like that: in the past, with only the dust, the dark, the ghosts, and Diedre’s lily resting on the table beside him, gleaming and ready to be used once more.





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