II.

Spike took her to an old building that was a residential hotel. He’d rented a room for a week, a minor annoyance and reminder that he really did need a permanent mode of transportation.

Being late as it was, the manager was nowhere to be found. Though he wasn’t supposed to have overnight guests, he couldn’t bring himself to care since he was leaving tomorrow night. Ooh you rebel, Spike thought as he rolled his eyes.

He led Faith up the stairs to room 302 and put his key in the lock. “This is me, pet. Ain’t much but it’s shelter during the day.” It was a spartan room with a narrow bed, a ratty armchair in front of a television set, a bureau, tiny closet, and sink beneath a mirror. “There’s a shared bathroom and shower down the hall. Can’t miss it.”


“One bed,” Faith smirked, “That’s gonna be a fun arrangement.”

Spike snorted, “Only if you make it fun, luv.”

She cocked an eyebrow at him and he shook his head. “Relax, Slayer. I didn’t bring you round to take advantage of you. Don’t wager your man would fancy you bedding down with his mum’s murderer.”

Faith let out a heaving sigh, “Damn man, lighten up. Nothin’ wrong with a little harmless frustration. It ain’t like Robin’s my ball and chain.”

Spike just shrugged out of his duster and threw it across the chair. He dragged a huge duffel bag out of the closet. The bottom of it was lined with stakes and a couple huge knives in leather sheathes. He started pulling his meager wardrobe off the hangers (black tee-shirts and the odd button down shirt) and then went to the bureau to retrieve his jeans, all of them black denim save one that was a blue so faded it was nearly gray.

Faith sat on the bed and watched him intently. After a few moments, she ducked around his pacing form as he packed and began going through the pockets of his duster. Finding his wallet and pack of smokes, she settled back on the bed. He ignored her blatant invasion of his privacy, knowing that she wasn’t about to steal from while he was in the room and if she did he really didn’t care. He had plenty of savings, left over from being on Wolfram and Hart’s payroll.

She did, however, nick a cigarette from his pack and sighed lustily as she lit it. “How the hell do you have filtered Lucky Strikes? They’ve been off the market for years!”

“Got connections,” Spike grunted as he stuffed thick black socks into a pocket compartment of his bag. In truth, they were easy enough to order online.

“Hm,” Faith intoned as she began snooping through his wallet. She pulled out a California driver’s license.

“Cute picture,” Faith chuckled before frowning in confusion. “John Simon Ritchie? I thought your real name was William.”

Spike shrugged, “It is. Peaches thought he was bein’ clever puttin’ Sid Vicious’s given name on my fake ids.”

“Oh yeah,” Faith nodded, “Knew it sounded familiar. Could be worse, y’know. He coulda tried to rig it so your name was literally ‘William the Bloody.’”

“Wouldn’t have put it past him,” Spike muttered, “Guess it just pissed me off since the wanker knew my real name and it’s not like something exotic.”

“So what is it?”

“Sorry kitten, that belongs in the past. Man I was is dead and buried. Left him behind in a London cemetery.”

Faith just pouted at him and continued to study the license. “Born July 18, 1981,” She continued with an ironic chuckle. “Boy, Angel really went all out.”

“What? You expect it to say the truth?”

“Well, were you really twenty-seven when you were turned?”

“Yeah, but get this,” Spike couldn’t help grinning as he stopped to gaze down at her. “Peaches’ id clocked him at twenty-five but the git was pushing thirty when he was turned!”

Faith grinned, “Never figured him the type to care about that sort of thing.”

“You kiddin’ me?” Spike was starting to pace as he ranted a little. “Always pissed me right off, how Buffy used to call me vain and self-absorbed when she’d fallen all over Peaches. He fuckin’ epitomized those words!”

The room got quiet at the mention of her name. Faith’s lips parted, and Spike made a cutting gesture with one hand. As he went back to packing the silence reigned, broken only by the sound of late night traffic.

++++++

Tokyo was one of the loudest cities Buffy had ever visited. As she drank tea at a tiny cafe in the Shibuya district, Buffy thought she heard a Dir en Grey song blasting from a passing car. She smiled ruefully. Thanks to living and interacting with so many different young women Buffy knew an awful lot about music these days.

Spike would be so proud.

The errant thought made her sad. She missed him terribly but had never summoned the courage to go find him. How ironic: Buffy could face down an army of demons with only marginal fear, but romance and relationships left her trembling with terror.

Xander, always quick to take her side, insisted Spike was to blame. ‘If he loved you half as much as he claimed, he would be with you.’

Buffy wasn’t so sure about that. She’d treated him so poorly when they’d been together, only truly softening toward him after he’d gained a soul. There was a good chance that he figured coming back to her would garner him the same treatment. Spike was love’s bitch to be sure but even he had a breaking point. Though he’d loved Drucilla with his entire being, her rejection of him had eventually pushed him away for good.

It put a bad taste in Buffy’s mouth to compare herself to the madwoman but she couldn’t deny the parallels. On top of their shaky history as lovers was the high profile “relationship” she’d had with The Immortal. In truth, all he’d been was an informant but she’d used a lot of feminine whiles to pay for that information. Though Buffy had never slept with him, the “dates” at fancy restaurants had fueled rumours that she just hadn’t had the energy to deny.

Anyway, there had been benefits to being considered The Immortal’s girlfriend. Vamps and demons had spilled their guts much more readily, and a whole new upper crust of society had accepted her like never before. Guilt eventually caught up to her, though....

Buffy was tired of being a user and now all she wanted was a true life partner.

She was pulled out of her introspective reverie by a softly accented voice. “Buffy Summers-san?”

She blinked and looked up at the young woman who stood before her. Her mind fished for a name as she got out of her chair to greet her. Buffy held out a hand without thinking and mentally kicked herself when the girl bowed at her.

“It is an honour to finally meet you,” she said. Reika, Buffy remembered suddenly.

“Likewise Reika, er...san?” Buffy stumbled as she bowed quickly. Honourifics confounded her.

Reika chuckled good-naturedly, “Forgive my formality. Old habits die hard.”

“No problem,” Buffy smiled, “We’re all good here. It’s me who should apologize for taking so long to meet you. You’ve been in charge of the Tokyo branch for how long now? A year?”

Reika waved away her words, “You’re here now. That’s all that matters”

“Thanks,” Buffy coloured with mild embarrassment. She never imagined wishing for the old days when it was she and her friends against the demon world, but some days she did.

+++++

Faith woke up around eight in the morning. Spike was asleep in the armchair. A heavy, dark blanket covered the window, blocking out the sun’s deadly rays.

She’d slept in her tank top and panties. Spike had been a modern gentleman, unfazed by her near nudity but polite enough not to make any off-colour remarks. She was a bit perplexed by it, still too accustomed to guys acting like pigs around her.

Faith stretched languidly, pulled on a her jeans, and got out of bed. She stealthily moved about the small room as she located her shoes, stole a cigarette out of Spike’s pack, and the key for the front door.

Faith had a lot to do before nightfall but was in desperate need for a caffeine fix. She was pretty sure she’d seen a cafe at the train station and decided to make that the first stop.

As Faith stepped out onto Main Street, she blinked rapidly. The California sun was bright and during the day it was so easy to forget about how different things were. She half expected to see Buffy walking down the street with her friends. This town was so similar to Sunnydale it was creepy.

She took her cell phone out of her pocket and speed dialed Andrew. The line crackled a bit as he answered.

“What’s up, my dark sister Slayer?” Andrew asked.

“I found him,” Faith replied curtly.

“Who?”

“Who do you think?”

There was a long pause before Andrew gasped, “You found Spike? How is he?”

“Kind of on the bitter side,” Faith said, “Are you sure this is going to work?”

Andrew made a soft, cliking sound with his tongue, “Well of course he’d be bitter. He’s got a lot of pride to him, but he loves Buffy. Devotion like that just doesn’t die. It’s like when Integra ordered Alucard to drop all his restrictions. He totally could have ripped her throat out but he took out her enemies instead and still acknowledged her as his master.”

Faith rolled her eyes, vaguely embarrassed that she understood what he was babbling about. “I don’t really think that’s a great comparison, Andrew.”

“Okay fine, but Spike did get his soul for her and that’s a big deal. Before that, he willingly fought on the side of good and even if his reasons were a bit selfish, he was denying his true nature.”

Andrew had a point but Faith was still a bit skeptical. Spike hadn’t exactly jumped at the idea of coming back to their fold. “I don’t know, man. He hasn’t asked after B. once. Maybe this is a lost cause.”

“Don’t worry,” Andrew insisted, “I’ll arrange Buffy to go to New Orleans on the pretense of meeting with the watcher advising the Slayer enclave that’s there. You take care of the rest. Oh god, this is so cool! Like a Bond movie!”

“All right,” Faith sighed wearily, “I’m renting a car. It’ll take about a week give or take since we’ll be traveling by night.” She ended the call without saying good-bye and shoved the phone into her back pocket.

Traveling by plane was too much of a hassle these days, ever since they’d ramped up security, and anyway she wanted to take the time to feel Spike out. Faith was a cynical woman and didn’t have the same unwavering confidence as Andrew. The situation needed some kind of closure, though, even if that closure was Spike telling Buffy off.

The part of her that still felt the bad blood between herself and Buffy thought that maybe, just maybe she’d deserve that. Yet the rest of her wanted them to reconcile. She understood Buffy’s fear and wanted her to exorcise it. The girl need to take a chance and stop taking the easy way out.

+++++

Spike woke up shortly after sundown to the sound of a TV program with volume set low. Faith was sitting on the floor with a couple boxes of Chinese take-out beside her.

“G’morning’,” she greeted him around a mouthful of fried rice, eyes glued to the screen. Glancing at it, he recognized that she was watching a Bruce Lee movie.

Spike smiled ruefully as he ambled over to the small refrigerator. Though vampires, like Slayers, were predisposed to fighting ability, Spike had stolen quite a few moves from viewing Bruce Lee films. Of course to most people, Spike had cooked up some cock and bull story about learning to fight from an honest-to-god ninja when he and Dru had visited Japan around the turn of the century. Few knew the differences between various martial arts, after all.

“Such a shame,” Spike murmured as he crushed unfrosted shredded wheat into a paper bowl, “The curse.”

“Huh?” Faith replied as she turned and gave him a weird look. It occurred to him that, given the limited time they’d spent together, Faith probably wasn’t used to his tendency toward non-sequiturs.

“Right,” Spike cleared his throat as he opened the refrigerator, retrieved a container of pig’s blood, and poured it over the cereal, “The curse of the Lee family, luv.”

“Oh yeah, that,” Faith replied thoughtfully as she nibbled at a fried chunk of chicken coated in bright orange sweet and sour sauce. “D’ya think it was real or just a coincidence?”

“Who knows,” Spike shrugged and took a bite of his blood and shredded wheat concoction. He winced slightly. Cold blood was awful, but he’d gotten somewhat used to it. Being a vagabond was difficult when not feeding on humans, but at least it eliminated having to get rid of bodies. “So what have you been doing all day?”

“Had to pick up a rental car and my travel bag from the motel I’d checked into when I hit town.”

Spike made a face, annoyed that Faith had failed to mention as much. Of course it probably wouldn’t have mattered all that much to Spike. Even the platonic company of a beautiful woman was better than none at all.

“Where are we going?” he asked. “You never said.”

“New Orleans,” Faith replied as she turned off the television and gathered up the take-out boxes. “We should leave soon. How are you going to get blood, by the way?”

“Lots more demon bars, pet,” Spike explained softly, “I’ll be fine.”

Faith frowned, “You really don’t feed off humans anymore? I mean, you could just drink a little bit, couldn’t you? That’s what they do at those bite clubs, right?”

Spike studied her thoughtfully as he chewed on the blood soaked cereal. There was no suspicion in her questions, merely honest curiosity. “Bite clubs tend to be a bit dodgy for my taste. For as many humans there are that willingly bear their necks, just as many are coerced or hypnotized into surrendering. Anyway, it can be difficult to stop once you start. The blood is the life but the victim’s death is the true thrill.”

“Do you miss it?”

“Course I miss it. You think a junkie quits because he stops liking it? He stops using because he realizes that it’s destructive.”

“That’s no comparison,” Faith shook her head as she shoved the remnants of her dinner into the garbage. “A junkie doesn’t need the drug to live.”

Spike smiled faintly, “A vampire doesn’t need to kill to live, my dear, and that’s a fact.”

Faith eyed him long and hard then shrugged. There was something in her gaze that was both thoughtful and rueful. “You’re smarter than you look, ya know that?”

Spike laughed and slipped an arm around her waist simply because he could. Though he wouldn’t take advantage of Faith in an erotic sense, he didn’t have a problem using her to get the physical contact that he craved.

She relaxed under his touch. They were one in the same in so many ways and maybe, under different situations, they could have been lovers. Perhaps not, though. Girl needed a man in her life that didn’t want to fuck her.

“Let’s get outta here,” Faith sighed, “Hellmouths make me bitchy.”


TBC...