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A/N I added this chapter after the original flow of events confused my fabulous proof reader April/ Hopefully clarity has now been restored. Let me know

the SpuffyRealm through no fault of it's own lost this chapter on thursday of last week so you may or may not have seen it before .
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He is dimly aware that everything is different. There is an air of anticipation about this place, a discordant sense of the inevitable. Perhaps if he were still as he once was, his preternatural senses would be able to pinpoint the cause, but now he feels it only in the white-grey moments between sleep and wakefulness, a strange ethereal understanding that is gone with the opening of his eyes. Something is coming, something big, and the world is shifting in preparation, readying itself.

Buffy has certainly been different since the night she patrolled with Spike, the night they discovered that the demon in their midst is no longer muzzled by human conscience. She has been alternately pensive and distant or excessively carefree and affectionate.

In the matter of Spike, she has exercised her rarely-exploited authority and issued the order that they all continue to make the vampire welcome. It irks him that she is so hard headed on the subject, refusing to allow even the slightest hint that the vampire is not to be trusted.

"This is a waste of bloody time." The vampire in question shatters the absorbed silence of the library with his usual carelessness, causing Giles to flinch visibly as the obviously valuable manuscript he had been reading hits the table with a loud thwack. "I'm gonna go out and get me some dinner."

He is not certain whether it is the underlying implication in the vampire's words, or the amused indulgent smile that Buffy flashes at him that causes his hackles to rise. "I don't think so." Although what he could do about it in this fragile human body, he isn't sure. "You can't possibly imagine we'd let you to go out hunting."

For three days Spike has tolerated Xander's persistent baiting and veiled threats with a mocking sneer and disinterested sarcasm. He has waved off Buffy's embarrassed, apologetic looks and generally ignored the boy with reasonable good humour, so perhaps the violence of his reaction to this accusation can be explained as merely the snapping of a notoriously short temper. But he is not Xander, and he has known Spike long enough to recognise the hurt swimming in his guarded cobalt eyes, to see past the flaking mask of anger to the raw insecurity beneath.

"What the bloody hell are you trying to say, mate?" The familiarity comes out like a curse as Spike advances on him, eyes igniting with sudden fury. "It doesn't bloody matter, does it? What I do is never fucking good enough for you. You were my sire, man! You were…" He spins away, his duster a swirling accomplice to the display of melodrama. "Well, sod it. I've spent too many bloody years trying to make you… Bugger it and bugger you. I don't need your fucking approval!"

It is then that Buffy chooses to intervene, placing herself bodily between them, her hand resting on Spike's chest in gentle restraint. She leaves her hand there far longer than necessary, looking up at the vampire with soft, solemn eyes. "Don't, Spike. It's okay, I trust you. We trust you."

When his body relaxes, she pulls her hand back—surely it is ridiculously jealous of him to imagine that she does so with reluctance—then her demeanour changes and she rounds on him angrily. "For God's sake, Angel, you of all people should know he's on our side. Remember the big Wolfram and Hart face off? He was right there, risking everything, just like you were."

"It doesn't matter, Buffy." How to make her understand? He remembers the strange opposing kinship of slayer and vampire, but she is as far removed from the raging hunger of the demon as she can be. How can a creature of light possibly understand that Spike cannot be judged now as souled beings are judged, on their words on actions? He must be judged solely on the evil which animates his long dead carcass. "He can never really be on our side, not without a soul. And I of all people should know that."

"He's not you, Angel." She is dismissing and exasperated, with perhaps just a hint of accusation as if she no longer believes that he is not accountable for Angelus' crimes. She must recognise the wounded shock in his eyes because her own soften with regret and she shakes her head slowly as if to deny her own words, her lips beginning to form an apology.

"About bloody time someone pointed that out." Spike interrupts, cutting off anything she might have said, and her impatient glare turns to the vampire. "You hear that, Angel? Huh? Not bloody you. Maybe you need a soul to stop Angelus from torturing his nearest and dearest…"

"Spike, please," she tries diplomatically.

He ignores her and ploughs on grinning in petty triumph. "But then again the soul wasn't much of a guarantee, was it? I remember a story about a basement fulla dead lawyers and something about a deal with an evil law firm that ended with some of the best people I ever met dying in various horrible ways. So if you wa—"

"Spike." This time her voice is a sharp reprimand, and he stops his tirade and looks questioningly at her, for all the world an innocent school boy with no idea that he's done wrong. She shakes her head and fights the smile that threatens her stern expression. "Can I have a word with you?" She indicates with her head that they should go out, and he follows her, obedient as ever.

………………

She is suddenly unsure why she brought him out here. Perhaps to defuse the situation, perhaps to chastise him for attacking Angel. Or perhaps the small, divisive part of her that knows him at least as well as Angel does, the part that recognised the hurt behind his anger, brought him here to offer comfort and reassurance. The point is pretty much moot, though, as soon as he opens his mouth, already confrontational.

"What's up, slayer? Did I scare your little boyfriend?" he mocks snidely "Peaches is a big boy; he can take it. Two centuries of killing'll toughen you right up."

"You'd know," she bites back, a glib automatic response that makes him sneer unpleasantly at her.

"Wouldn't I just?" he drawls. "'Bout the only thing me and your little snuggle bunny got in common, but that's not the point."

"So what is the point?" Suddenly she remembers why she used to punch him in the face so often. The man just keeps redefining annoying. "Is there even a point? Or is it just a chance to have a go at Angel?"

"Hey now, wasn't me that started it." He narrows his eyes and steps in and around her so that she has to twist her neck uncomfortably to face him. "Peaches the Wonderful was the one throwing accusations around, but then he can say whatever the hell he likes, can't he? 'Cos he's human."

"God, what is wrong with you?" She throws her hands up in exasperation. "You don't think you were even a little bit harsh in there?"

"Harsh!" He shakes his head in frustrated disbelief. "And he wasn't? Besides, I didn't say anything that wasn't bloody true. The great poof got 'em killed just so he could be the one that brought down the senior partners—good people, Buffy. All of 'em."

"Spike, stop it! You know why he made that deal and it wasn't just about bringing down Wolfram and Hart. It was about Conner. Maybe it wasn't the best thing he could have done, and he should have given the others a proper choice, but Conner is his family—"

"So am I!" The response seems almost accidental, and his anger fades into embarrassed and grudging honesty. "He's all I got left of family, and I'm sick and tired of not being good enough for him. Not evil enough for Angelus, not pure and lily-bloody-white enough for Angel back in LA, not human enough for him now."

He sighs and sinks with boneless grace onto the second step of the broad, sweeping staircase of the hotel lobby. Her anger flees with his, and she is drawn to sit beside him. It feels oddly familiar, like her back porch on Revello, but now it is her turn to listen, to be a good and supportive friend. Heaven knows she owes him a sympathetic ear for all the nights he let her unburden her troubles on him.

"Sometimes I feel like I spent my whole bloody life not being good enough." It is a soft admission, tired and resigned as if he has slowly come to believe in his own inadequacy. "Angel, Drusilla, you. Always coming up short no matter what I do. It's not enough."

"It's enough." And even she isn't sure if she is offering forgiveness or requesting it. Had it always been enough? He'd been trying—oh, yeah, he'd really messed up most of the time, but he'd always been trying and she'd never given him even the merest scrap of credit for it. How did her hand find its way onto his cheek?

His eyes harden and she feels him stiffen under her gentle caress. "I'm not him." His expression is guarded and suspicious, but he doesn't move away.

Her hand drops and she frowns in confusion. "What? Not who?”

His jaw clenches and he shakes his head annoyed at her lack of understanding. "William," he continues more softly. "I'm not the man you left in the hellmouth, the man you said… I'm not a man at all." He looks away at the last, and the tension seems to drain suddenly from his body.

His skin is cool under her fingers as her hand finds his cheek again in the gentle insistence that he meet her eyes. "It's enough."

Another shake of his head and a humourless huff of laughter: "Hardly." He looks into nothing with a deep sigh. "Never was." Then he smiles suddenly and her heart twists with the knowledge that the warmth of it is not for her. "'Cept for my Anjo, of course."

Another heavy sigh and he leans back on his elbow and studies the ceiling with distracted interest. "Lost a another Slayer today, yeah?"

And there it is again, the ever-present spectre of the disease that haunts this place. "Two," she corrects him, rubbing her eyes tiredly as she feels the weight of responsibility for the girls' condition settle heavily on her shoulders again. If she had not had Willow do the spell…

"Hey now, none of that." It seems he is still almost telepathic when it comes to her emotions. "No way you coulda known. No choice even if you had."

"I know." Intellectually, of course she does, but in her gut she cultivates the growing guilt. With every death, with every girl who slips painfully into coma, with every disappearing pack of Ibuprofen, she is feeding it, helping it grow until she fears there will be no room left inside her for anything else.

"The brat's getting the headaches, too." She didn't know that. God, Willow must be desperate. She buries her head in her hands, fighting off the despair welling in her heart, the drowning hopelessness of it. Their research is not going well, and with every hour and day that passes they risk losing another girl to the ravages of this mystical disease.

"I was thinking." His eyes are sad and serious and inexplicably resigned when she looks at him, and she feels an almost fearful compulsion to lighten the mood, to chase that despondent look from his eyes.

"Careful," she jokes weakly, but he doesn't smile, and she doesn't blame him because Carlotta is among those threatened.

"Red could do Angelus' curse on me, get me all souled up again, then we could try the spell."

She frowns, turning the suggestion over in her mind, surprised now that no one thought of it before. But it had been so hard on him, the weight of his crimes had left him so uncharacteristically weak, and it is only now that she sees him free of it again that she understands how it had sapped the life from him, how it had dulled his vibrant rainbow of colour until he seemed a faded watercolour image of himself. She doesn't want him to do it and she knows that it is a selfish thought, but she can't help but be saddened by the idea of dimming the raging brightness of him. "You'd do that?"

"Will I get a soul for the woman I love? You know I will." He looks at her and the determination in his eyes is absolute. "She's the only person who ever loved me, Buffy. She's my family now. How could I not?"

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A/N thanks for the reviews. I'm hope Buffy's confession about choosing Angel didn't upset to many people but we have to be realistic, we all saw End of Days (grr I hated that episode) and she really would have chosen Angel back then.

Thanks to CordyKitten and Pin for reviewing the last chapter, I wrote little messages when I posted this first time, but now they're gone.





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