What am I going to do?

With no answer to that question, Spike wandered between truck stops, diners, and fleabag motels, eventually following I-80 as far as Chicago. He spent a month there laying low, keeping his ears open and occasionally fishing for news, before he finally let himself relax. Either Wolfram & Hart's reach didn't extend as far as the Windy City, or he simply wasn't important enough by himself for them to waste resources pursuing. He'd made it. He was free.

Exhausted, heartsick, and desperately lonely, but free.

The first thing he did once he was absolutely certain he'd managed to get clear of LA and all its fallout was get thoroughly pissed, absolutely blind drunk on a bender that lasted three days, followed by a hangover that had to have gone for at least seven. That was all right, though; in fact, it was rather the point. Sometimes a fella needed to get things out of his system and liquor was as good a way to flush it out as any. 'Specially if you threw in the handful of demons he brawled with on a bet and enough Ramones and Sex Pistols to get himself thrown out of two hotels in as many nights. Sod 'em anyway, places rented by the hour and he was finally safe to look for better.

Unlike his road-trip drinking, he was aiming this time to let himself feel rather than numb himself to the pain, and Spike felt, God did he ever, roared and wept and fought and mourned as balls-to-the-wall as he did everything else in his unlife. When he finally sobered up and the last of the hangover was gone, not only was his head clear, but his heart was on its way to mending too. He still hurt, and knew he would do for a good while yet, but that was all right. Family deserved to be remembered. Pain let you know you could still feel pleasure, eventually.

The second thing Spike did, now that he could drop the paranoia, was turn his attention toward this odd little… coincidence, maybe… that had been following him around, a whole series of wee little events that had started – he cast his mind back – at least as far back as Nebraska, if he was remembering right. It was one thing to be exhausted and half-pissed and hear something different from what your waitress was really saying. It was quite another to find himself on the receiving end of the same bleeding message over and over and over again.

There was a truck driver on the pay phone outside Lincoln who said "she needs you" just as he was walking past, and a pair of them in a diner near Omaha who dropped "go to her" in their conversation while he was on his way to the cash register. There was a batch of giggling college girls somewhere in Iowa who crashed right into him, not paying attention at all, silly bints, and amongst all the "sorrys" and "excuse mes" one girl looked him dead in the face and told him he really needed to go to her, because she needed him.

The toll booth operator just outside Chicago, who said "she needs you" in the same tone of voice one usually threw out a "have a nice day," was more than a little creepy, but probably the absolute weirdest incident took place in the middle of his booze-and-brawl spree. This adorable little Gaixo demon chippy with a cute ass and a snack bowl full of roast crickets sidled up next to him at the bar as he was ordering his third, or maybe his fourth, bottle of Jack.

"I don't usually give readings for free," she said, and he remembered that Gaixos tended to spawn a lot of seers and oracle in their little burrows, "but every time I look at you I get these two messages, and they're driving me up the wall." She smiled at him, munched a cricket. "Want to hear them?"

He looked her up and down and shrugged. She really did have a cute little ass. "Well, the first one is that there's someone who needs you, a girl, and it's really important that you try to go to her."

Spike felt a cold little shiver run down his back, covered it by taking a swig from his fresh bottle of JD. "And the second?" he asked.

"The second one," and here her smile went from adorable to hot, "tells me that you're a really great kisser, and if you let me have a good one you'll be able to get at least five hundred bucks from the betting that goes on when my boyfriend picks a fight with you." She tipped her head discreetly toward some kind of Asian kamui who was watching their conversation intently.

"Is that right?" asked Spike. Stepped right into her personal space as he did.

"My readings are always right," she said. Still with that smile, and still with that great ass.

So Spike did – leaned in and "gave her a good one" as she put it, his free hand sliding down and around to cup that luscious little bum – and the boyfriend did, and the betting did and it was a grand night all around.

Weird about that first message, but grand.

So once he was finally all sobered up and cleaned up, he sat himself down and thought about the message. Well, inasmuch as there was anything there to really think about, anyway. There was really only one "her" in his life, after all; Fred or Illyria may have counted at one time, even Dru not too long ago, but of course they were all gone now. The Slayer, though – or maybe now she was just the oldest Slayer, who knew – God help him, Buffy would always be the one who filled his heart. He'd found her and given her up, and it was the hardest thing he'd ever done. But giving her up when she didn't love him wasn't the same thing as getting rid of her. She was in his soul now; he'd never be free of her. Wouldn't want to be.

And it wasn't like this was some obscure prophetic rubbish of the sort the Powers usually liked to play with. "She needs you; go to her." Right then, he could do that, would be happy to, but for one minor complication. He had no bloody idea where she was.

On the other hand… in the month he'd been in Chicago, one of the bits of information he'd picked up was that a new Hellmouth had opened in Ohio, of all places. There were bound to be Slayers there, and where there were Slayers there were Watchers, and from there he ought to be able to track her down easy peasy. Long as the new girls weren't the sort to try and dust a bloke without letting him get a word in edgewise first, he should be fine.

He took a deep breath and pulled out his road atlas. It looked like he was off to Cleveland.

What am I going to do?

As it turned out, this wasn't a very hard question for Buffy to answer. Here she was, not three days after telling Giles exactly where he could stick his deceit, his manipulation and his hypocrisy, stepping off a plane in Cleveland, Ohio, where the English was American, the food was familiar, and the weather was way too cold in the winter time.

She'd have to remember to thank Andrew again. Deeply apologetic for his part in the whole thing, he'd made all the necessary arrangements on her behalf – her belongings, such as they were, would arrive in a couple of days, and once she checked in at the local "Slayer Center" they would take care of everything else. She could replace all those weapons that couldn't come through Customs, there was a paying job waiting for her as an instructor, and she could even live on site if she wanted.

Instant new life back in the States; just add Buffy.

So how come nothing felt new? How come nothing about this "fresh start" felt like anything except more of the same?

Buffy had finally stood up for herself and walked away from a relationship that she'd long since outgrown, and yet here she was, feeling as if she hadn't really been set free at all.

Why did she still feel so exhausted and sad and hurt?

Maybe it was because she wasn't really free of the Council, and never would be. Buffy still had responsibilities as a Slayer, and she couldn't walk away from those even if she never spoke to Giles again.

Or maybe she still wasn't done with her grief, even after all this time. She'd be going about her day and at random moments her heart would cry out, Spike, and she would have to stop and fight back tears yet again.

The thought that they could have had another year together...

Or maybe it was the travel, she told herself quickly. After Sunnydale was destroyed, she'd been essentially homeless, never mind the fancy hotels and apartments she'd stayed in over the past year. Pretty much everything she'd ever owned that might be of personal or sentimental value had been destroyed in Sunnydale, and she'd crossed Europe so many times that she'd gotten out of the habit of putting down roots.

Maybe she just needed to be in one place for awhile. Get a place to live that felt like a home instead of yet another hotel room.

That was one of the reasons she'd opted not to stay at the Slayers' new facility. It turned out Xander was now living only about two hours from the Hellmouth, and it only took a quick email to let her know he'd be more than happy to have her stay as long as she wanted. A commute from Cleveland to Toledo would be nothing to a girl who'd spent most of her childhood in Los Angeles, and this way she'd have privacy, plus a non-girly housemate who really, completely, understood where she was coming from.

She had a feeling she'd need that, more than anything else she would find here.

She couldn't wait to see him again. Xander, after finishing up a stint in Africa helping to track down freshly-awakened Slayers, had taken to his own new life like a duck to water. He insisted that no matter where you went, there would always be a need for someone who could build things or fix things, and that this was doubly true when living anywhere near a Hellmouth. Within a month of his return, his new company, "Anyanka Construction, Carpentry & Home Repair", had taken off and was beginning to flourish.

The fun part was why. Partly, Xander had a large enough staff to work two shifts on major projects, which gave him an edge over other companies – but mostly it was because his second-shift crew was mostly drawn from the local demon community, working alongside a handful of other humans "in the know".

In other words, Xander Harris had an in with a set of customers other builders would never get to touch. Even better for Buffy's purposes, he was popular enough with the demon crowd (using his status as demon magnet for the good, she thought with a smile) that he could get information and assistance that even Giles would have difficulty tracking down.

Or as he liked to put it, Brick Layer: 1, Council of Wankers: 0.

He'd grown so much since Sunnydale, the so-called ordinary guy who saved the world just by talking. She was itching to reconnect, to tell him in person how proud she was of him.

He'd grown so much; maybe he could show her how to grow too.