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It was late when the group finally dispersed. Mostly stunned expressions coloured each face, while others, like Anya and Angel, merely looked interested in and perplexed at the events that had unravelled.

Spike had kept the desolation he felt from the images conjured in the spell to himself. He felt torn in two, not sure anymore which Spike he was or could be. He couldn’t help harking back on the fact that it had only been a week ago that he stood in the sun, wondering if he would freckle, and focused entirely on killing the Slayer. He wondered now if there were signs even then that he hadn’t paid attention to, reasons he ignored any attraction, because he couldn’t deny that Dru had warned and rejected him for none other than the Slayer. He knew that after over one hundred and twenty years with his Princess he would not have been thrown away just for his obsession to kill the girl. She had seen more. He nearly choked on his cigarette when her words came back to him, haunting in their truth, making him feel hollow with dread.

‘You taste like ashes,’ she had warned him. Could she really have been predicting his death? Did she cut him off to save herself the pain of losing him, or had he really lost her to Angelus and she no longer cared about who he held in his heart?

He found it difficult to accept that he had prior warning of what he would come to feel for the Slayer. Buffy. Her name felt weird in his mind, let alone on his tongue, but he was oddly elated at the honour of calling her now by name. Hope of love had always sustained him throughout his life and unlife, but in his elongated past, he had never experienced a requited love. Not one that could fulfill every romantic bone in his body. But at last it seemed obtainable, and he was simply mesmerised by the possibility of holding such a beautiful flame of gold in his arms, and hearing words that would bolster his heart into beating. Beating for her. His soul, sought and set to glow for her.

He knew that the Watcher saw him as a puzzle yet to crack, and he had the horrifying thought that he would become not only a footnote and a few pages of historical significance to future Watchers, but a redemptive bedside story for all future slayers. Well, if they didn’t all come to at the same time thanks to Red’s spell and the Watcher’s Council being bombed cinders blowing on the perpetual London wind.

He hadn’t let on to anyone in the room that he felt again the wash of ruin and anguish, even the insanity, that he had experienced the first time round with regaining his soul. He had hoped that it would be easier on him this time, having paid his penance and dealt with the issues of death, murder and destruction that his demon and lack of soul had inflicted on the world for those one hundred and twenty years. The rising tide of gurgling red and the subtle shaking of his body proved to him that it was not going to be an easy merge this time round, either.

So far, he was relieved that Buffy was overcome with guilt for her own future actions, and had thrown herself wholeheartedly into relaying the battle information that could help them in the future. Her preoccupation saved him from central attention, and now that the majority of them had left he felt panic start to bubble again and his body succumbed to bone-jolting shakes. Closing the door behind him, he bypassed the bed he had slept in earlier to crumble into a corner of the room and covered his head with his hands. His mental acuity dimmed as he unwittingly surrendered to the ghosts of his past and his body began to rock back and forth in an attempted soothing gesture. Not successful. Images slammed into him in a violently driven slide show and he clenched his jaw in an effort to control the onslaught and the screaming guilt and pain he wanted to let go of. The rumble in his chest built and built until he could hold it no longer and the tones of his growls bounced around the room, summoning more to arrive and bay his repentive sorrow.

He opened his eyes and saw them: the victims, the enemies. The fun he had had, the torture he had witnessed and revelled in, if only for show to his elders, trying to gain parental approval. The bodies he had fed from appeared in the study, throats torn and gushing with blood pouring freely to the carpet and he jumped forward to try and stop the flow to remove the stains before they became as embedded in Rupert’s flooring as they were in his own soul. He grabbed sheets from the makeshift bed and started rubbing frantically, sobbing hysterically and shouting for them to stop, to get out.

He was unaware when the door slammed open and the three remaining from their momentous night looked at his agitation in horror. Buffy was the first to move, collapsing beside him and trying to embrace his violently arcing body into the security of her arms. At first he pushed her away, his mind fractured and lost, until something far back reminded him that this smell, this softness, was his home. He could be quiet there, safe; she could hold the ghosts away for a short time, enough time for him to rest before they came to visit once more. His body went limp in her arms, not attempting to hold her back but accepting the charity that she offered, his wet face rubbing on her neck like a fearful and repentant puppy.

Buffy raised guilt glistened eyes to Angel and Giles, who remained shocked in the doorway.

“What’s wrong with him? He seemed so, Spike, before. What’s happened to him?”

Her voice broke with her confusion and emotion. She looked to them for answers, but inside she knew, and hated herself for not expecting it. So buried in her own memories of the future and the tremendous pain she inflicted on the ones that loved her, she had intentionally distanced herself from Spike, stupidly thinking that the Powers intended on giving him an easier ride this time out. Perhaps that had been the intention but their own trip into his soul’s past released memories and reactions that should have remained covered. Too late now the damage was done. She should have expected some reaction to his receiving the soul. This was a different Spike to the one she was yet to fall for, not yet tempered or controlled by the love he felt for her, but the events and memories of present and future Spike had become jumbled and she had trouble working out who and what was which.

She held him tighter to her as she felt his arm hesitantly snake around her waist and she kissed his platinum hair as she vainly sought for solutions. Her mind clicked back on something Giles had said about Angel’s appearance. Wasn’t Cordelia’s message something about how he was to help with Spike? Buffy had never felt so stupid in all her life. She had two souled vampires in the same room and she was wondering how she alone planned on making it better. Why did she always think that she was the answer to everything? The guilt sunk a little further into her psyche.

As if he could suddenly read minds, Giles tapped into her and rushed to reassure.

“Cordelia said that Angel was to help you with Spike. Buffy, he needs both of you.” She nodded in sudden understanding and turned wet, pleading eyes to her first love.

He was already at her side and looking at Spike with his own anguish mirrored in his features. Buffy looked on first in fascination then jealousy as Angel tilted his head to Spike’s neck and started a series of growls and licks that calmed his troubled Childe even more. His understanding of Spike’s torment was paramount and Buffy acknowledged that he was probably the one who could offer the most help in Spike’s adjustment, but it did little to lower her rising jealousy of seeing him touch and taste what she so much wanted to herself.

Between the two, Spike had become so relaxed that he barely sniffled before falling asleep against Buffy’s shoulder. They managed to relocate him onto the bed and were about to move out of the room when his whimpers renewed. He thrashed around as if searching for someone and mumbled ‘home, home, Buffy is home. Where is she, where is she?’ he called in such a desperate voice with tears falling down his face, cracking her heart as he called for her. Gently she glided back onto the bed beside him, tucking her smaller frame firm against his chest, her arm holding him tight, her legs tangling possessively with his, and at last he settled.

Not even turning to see if Giles and Angel remained, she asked them to take care of patrol. She sighed on hearing the quiet click of the door closing behind them as they left. They were alone, and she began to cry for all the pain that was felt in the room right then, as well as the pain she feared they could not stop in the future. Useless tears, they needed action, but she was too emotionally exhausted to worry more about it now; just concerned about the vampire her arms lovingly embraced. And on they fell into troubled slumber.





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