“I was torn out of there. My friends pulled me out. And everything here is bright and hard and violent... Everything I feel, everything I touch... this is Hell. Just getting through the next moment, and the one after that... knowing what I've lost... They can never know. Never.”

Spike sat, speechless, in the alley long after Buffy left him there to go back inside the Magic Box. The sun was too high in the sky by that point for him to get very far, but truth be told, he didn't even notice its lethal rays.

Gobsmacked didn't even begin to cover it. Flabbergasted, confounded, blown away, or dumbfounded either. Well, maybe dumbfounded. Spike, who as hard as he had tried to leave William behind, still prided himself in being a thoughtful man—vamp—had only begun to start wrapping his head around Buffy's revelation.

Heaven. The Big H. It wasn't really something he had thought about in years; after all, he just assumed that vamps by their very nature were excluded from the pearly gates so there was no point to pondering about it. When Drusilla had first turned him all those years ago, the man still inside the beast had wept for the loss of Paradise. Raised a good Christian, in life he had always trusted in his eternal reward. The loss of this through one chance encounter in an alley seemed at the time too great to fathom at the time. And then the love of the hunt and the thrill of the kill, the years of reveling in just taking whatever he desired be it material, sexual, or homicidal, had dulled the thoughts of Paradise Lost to only a whimper from the corner of his mind, a whisper to be trotted out only during the most maudlin of drunken stupors.

He lit each cigarette from the last, smoking it right down until he could taste the chemicals when the filter started to melt. He sat, and smoked, and stared at the place Buffy had been--what was it, five minutes, or three hours ago?

Of course she would have been in Heaven. She was the fucking Slayer. She was all that was good and right and pure in the universe. It didn't matter if it had been the door to a hell dimension that had killed her; the Powers wouldn’t have allowed their Slayer to be sent to Hell.

And now her friends, soddin' Scoobies--Spike found himself getting angrier, and the anger shook him out of his daze--hadn't even bothered to try and find out for sure before doing that bloody resurrection spell, had they? They had just assumed that she’d been in a hell dimension and yanked her back to this world. The same world she had thought with apparent relief had been done with her.

As much as the time without Buffy had pained Spike, this was worse. Much worse.

When his questing fingers finally delved inside an empty Marlboro box, he made his mind up. Yanking his duster up over his head, he darted for the sewers, casting not a single backward glance at the alley. Liquor might not fix things, but it made a damn fine anesthetic until the time at which he was ready to deal.

* * *

Buffy shivered, pulling her leather jacket tighter around her as she navigated the crumbling headstones in the oldest section of Restfield Cemetery. The usually-mild winters of southern California seemed to be creeping in colder and earlier this year, and she found herself longing for sunshine and warmth and comfort.

Something like what she had left. What she had left and could never have back--no, bad Buffy, can't think about that.

Still, the cold seemed to seep into her very bones, and despite the long-sleeve shirt, sweater, and leather jacket she had bundled herself in, another involuntary shiver passed through her.

The moon had defeated the sun hours before, and she had begged away from the Scoobies with the excuse of patrolling. Not that she had actually wanted to patrol, but she had been desperate to get away from the forced camaraderie of her friends. They meant well, really, they did, but they chattered when they were anxious, and they had been oh-so-nervous today, trying to convince her--and themselves--that everything was fine. She knew they sensed her awkward quietness and were attempting to draw her out, which just led to even more chattering, until Buffy had realized she’d never felt so alone in a room full of people.

They hadn't been talking to her so much as they had been talking at her, and between the noise, and the cold she felt seeping into every pore in her body, she had felt like she had to--leaveimmediatelydearGodgetmeoutofhere.

As annoying as the talking was, they had also taken to hovering over her, and the constant scrutiny had been the last straw. She supposed she couldn’t blame them for worrying, but reassuring them that she was going to be fine was draining on a whole different level, and none of them had picked up on the fact that she kept shying away from them until she had finally called it an early night and grabbed her jacket, slipping out the front door while muttering something about “going to hit a couple cemeteries.”

That seemed to reassure them, a sign that things were normal. Just the good ol’ Slayer, back on the job.

There weren't many creepy crawlies out tonight, and she was grateful she didn't have to put too much thought into patrol. She dusted a fledgling or two early on in the evening, and now it had been just crickets and some light fog for two straight cemeteries. It was probably better that way, because Buffy felt more ill-at-ease fighting now than she had when she had first been Called.

It was her same body, sure, and her same mind and training, but there seemed to be some kind of disconnect between the elements that resulted in her movements feeling not quite as smooth as they had been before, like she was a creature of reaction rather than action. Which was not a good way for a Slayer to be.

Maybe after spending several months floating happily as some sort of amorphous being, being stuffed back into this... this... skin suit was what was throwing her off. Her motions weren't fast enough, and there was the slightest jerkiness to her movements that she had never remembered existing before. Stupid, uncooperative limbs. Don't want to be working tonight any more than I do.

Working. That’s what it was, wasn’t it? She might not have been sitting behind a desk, but she toiled away nine to five just like any other working stiff. Just with the AMs and the PMs reversed. And no lunch breaks. And a suck-ass retirement plan. Oh, and no pay. They could refer to it as her ‘calling’ as much as they liked; at the end of the day she still hadn’t made the slightest dent in the huge stack of bills at home, and she certainly didn’t purposeful. She felt used, drained, worn out. Numb.

Numb except for the pervasive cold.

* * *

Spike stumbled home through Restfield Cemetery sometime after midnight far soberer than he would have liked. He had attempted to drown his sorrows in a bottle of Jack Daniels at Willie's, but unfortunately he had run out of cash long before he had run out of sorrows. And Willie had long ago stopped accepting Spike's word as negotiable currency.

So here he was, regrettably cognizant, finding his way alone through a damp, shadowy cemetery long after the witching hour.

Nothing like being something that Goes Bump In the Night to make you impervious to the other things that Go Bump. Thinking about that cheered him slightly, and he was only two mausoleums and one tacky weeping cherub away from his crypt sweet crypt when he heard the sounds of a fight.

Hoping like hell it was some violence he could get in on, he gathered his coat around him and followed the sound of punches being thrown.

Coming into a clearing, he came upon the Slayer fighting a vampire he knew from his occasional poker games. Damon wasn’t a bad sort of bloke, really, but he did owe Spike two Persians and a nice tabby, and had taken to sneaking out the back door of Willy’s when he saw the blond coming in the front. So Spike felt no obligation to help him as he struggled with Buffy.

The blond vampire leaned against a sturdy elm as he watched the fight, and the longer he observed, the more it seemed to him that things were off.

For one thing, the fight was taking entirely too long. While Damon was no fledge, he was as mediocre a fighter as he was a poker player, and Buffy should have been done with him in under two minutes. But she was still fighting, trading blows and wielding her stake in an odd, artless way. Usually she used her stake like an extension of her own arm. But tonight it just seemed like a random object somebody had shoved into her grasp and told her to defend herself with.

Defend herself. The light clicked on in Spike’s brain. That’s what was wrong with this picture. Buffy—the old Buffy, the one he liked to think of in his private moments as his Buffy—always fought on the offensive. She lunged, parried, and staked with a grace that thrilled him in its poetry. She was a warrior, and she always struck first. But tonight, she was half-heartedly blocking Damon’s clumsy swipes, and she hadn’t let loose with a single pun or taunt.

As Spike was processing these facts, the unthinkable happened.

Buffy aimed a spinning roundhouse kick at the other vamp’s head, overshot, and as her foot missed the mark, Damon whirled behind her, yanking her elbows behind her and pinning her back to his chest. The Slayer’s head dropped forward as she struggled to free herself for a moment, and then slowly went still in his arms. The vamp was so startled by her sudden lack of fight that he loosened his grip, and in that time Spike had leapt to her side, ripping her out of the other vamp’s grasp so quickly that Damon’s talons sliced across her exposed palms.

As the rich, heady scent of Slayer blood filled the air, Spike threw Damon to the ground and wrenched his head from his shoulders, turning back to Buffy before the vamp dust had even settled.

* * *

Pain lanced through Buffy. Sharp, stinging pain forced its way down through the numbness and the cold, and she stood staring down as the blood pooled in her cupped palms. It was the first thing she had felt—really felt—since her return. She stared, fascinated as the cut, not a deep one really, went from a red line across her hands to a thick red mark, and then red droplets slowly pooled in each palm.

To say Spike lost his shit after dusting the other vamp would be the understatement of the century.

“ARE YOU OUT OF YOUR BLOODY FUCKING MIND, SLAYER??? ARE YOU COMPLETELY DAFT? I KNOW THIS WASN’T WHAT YOU WANTED, BUT REALLY? YOU WANT A TOSSER LIKE THAT TO FINISH YOU OFF?”

Buffy head popped up and she stared at Spike, jaw agape. He had been very gentle, even tender with her since her return, responding to her apparent skittishness. This was the first time he had shown her anything other than deference.

Spike knew he had slipped into gameface the moment he had started yelling, but quite frankly, he didn’t care. He seized Buffy by the arms and shook her. The fury flattened the faintest stirrings of bloodlust that the smell of her open cuts had aroused, and he continued ranting.

“ALL THOSE YEARS SPENT CHASING YOU, DANCING WITH YOU, AND YOU’RE GONNA LET SOME WELSHING WANKER WITH LIMP FANGS OFF YOU? AFTER ALL THE TIME I’VE PUT INTO THIS, THAT’S HOW YOU WANT TO GO OUT?”

Buffy stared up at Spike for a moment frozen, and then tears started falling. She didn’t scrunch her face, she didn’t sob, and she didn’t sniffle. She just stood and held his gaze as all the pain, all the misery, and all the regret were given form in her hazel eyes and ran down her cheeks, dripping down onto the arms that gripped her.

Spike held his anger tight, close to his heart. It helped to fight away the thought that he almost witnessed her demise—again. He didn’t notice he had slipped back into his human face until he realized he could barely see the small blonde in the dark of the cemetery any more. He pulled back and loosened his hold on Buffy’s arms, staring at her silently as the last of his anger ebbed, once again replaced by worry.

“Let’s get you home, luv. You don’t need to be here tonight. I can finish patrolling on my way back home.” He waited for an answer, and knew when Buffy had come back to herself, for she wiped her tears on the cuffs of her sweater and wouldn’t meet his gaze any longer.

They set silently off towards Revello Drive, and he couldn’t help but notice that when she reached her walkway, she shoved her bloodied hands into her jacket pockets, no doubt to keep them out of sight of prying witchy and sisterly eyes.

“Hey,” he stopped her as she started up the steps, “you, um… you do need to bandage those, okay?” It sounded lame the second it left his lips, but he didn’t want to just give her up to the dark, silent house.

She turned around and looked at him, giving him a small, sad smile. “I know. I just don’t want them to worry. See, Slayer healing…” She took one hand out of her coat and waggled it at him, demonstrating that the cut had already been reduced to the narrowest of slashes, and the bleeding had all but ceased.

He couldn’t quite bring himself to smile in return. He tilted his head to the side and studied her. “I know we’re not exactly best pals, but you really scared me tonight.”

Buffy shifted on the stair, uncomfortable with the open discussing of emotions as ever. “I just… I don’t know. I was just so, so tired, and for a moment… I don’t know…” She took a minute to gather her words. “For a moment, it just didn’t feel like I could go for a second longer.”

Seeing his worried look, she added, “But I’m better now. Just call me Resilient Buffy.” When that failed to get a laugh out of either of them, she reached her free hand towards Spike. For a moment, he thought she was going to touch his face, and then she seemed to lose all nerve, and the hand fell back to her side limply. “Thank you.”

Spike was taken off guard by the sudden display of gratitude. “I just…”

“Wanted to save me so you can kill me yourself?” Buffy finished, half-joking.

“No!” Spike retorted sharply. “Don’t know what I want, but it’s not that. You know that. Haven’t wanted that in a long time, you daft bint. Now go take care of your hands.” He was about to storm away in frustration, but Buffy found her nerve this time.

One slender finger traced his cheekbone so lightly he thought he had imagined it until she gave him her own head tilt.

It looked far better on her than it did on him, in his humble opinion.

“I know you don’t want to kill me any more.” With that certain statement, she turned and walked up the stairs, never looking back as she closed the door quietly after her and the porch light blinked out.

Spike stood in the darkness for a moment, skin still burning where her touch had been. Then he turned in a whirl of leather and headed back towards Restfield, head full of more questions than answers.

* * *

Buffy tiptoed gently into the house, being careful to toe off her boots before going up the inside staircase so that her stylish-yet-affordable footfalls did not wake her sleeping housemates. As she tossed her keys onto the table in the foyer, a huge stack of papers caught her eye, forcing their way back into her consciousness.

A stack of papers all stamped “Past Due.” Nobody had mentioned them to her yet, and she hadn’t had the strength to ask, but she knew what they were. And that they were yet another thing she needed to take care of. A drop in the bucket, really. The weight on her grew heavier.

What were they thinking? Did they really believe that this world, this cold, dark, numbing world with its noise and its needs and its demands—did they really believe that it was better than where she had been?

She stealthily made her way past Dawnie’s room, and skillfully navigated the squeaky board outside the master bedroom. As a teenager, she had always taken the window out of her room rather than try and sneak past that one noisy floorboard, but once Joyce had been made aware of her slaying, they had developed a tacit agreement: Buffy could come and go as she pleased, no curfew, but she had to at least come in quietly and make a good show of trying not to wake Joyce.

Except now, there was no more Joyce, so no more agreement. Buffy felt the sudden urge to tread loudly on the floor--if she was gonna go into hock over this house, she could damn well make as much noise as she wanted—but she resisted the sudden burst of childish spite.

She entered the sanctum of her bedroom and tossed her coat on the chair, gingerly shedding her patrolling clothes as her eyes adjusted the dim lamplight.

The silence was deafening.

It was funny; all day long she had been wishing for nothing more than to be left alone, and now that she finally was alone, all she could sense was the deathly quiet of the house, and she felt like the last person left alive.

Sorrow swept over her like a wave, and she crumbled to the edge of the bed. Alone was one thing, but lonely was another, and this was by far the loneliest Buffy had ever been. The silence felt like it was smothering her, and she fought the urge to scream to break its spell.

Tears started to tumble down her cheeks unbidden, and she did her best to ignore them, trying to ride out the cold chill as it passed through her. She forced herself to continue with her bedtime ritual and crept over to the pajama drawer in her bureau.

As her hand closed around the drawer pull, pain lanced through her, reminding her of her forgotten wounds. The nerve fibers in her hands tingled, and she stared at her palms for a minute. It was one of the first sensations she had really felt, all the way down deep inside her, since her return.

She flexed her hands, curling and uncurling her fingers, feeling the gentle stinging from the not-quite-healed cuts. She stretched her hands out, and she could feel the burn faintly travel up her arms.

The pain was solid, real. It felt like an anchor. It was a reminder that she was still alive. Could still feel.

She tossed her pajamas on quickly and climbed under the covers, pulling the extra blanket and coverlet up over her chilly limbs for a good measure.

* * *

Buffy didn’t know where she was but it was cold. Cold and dark. And there was no air. It felt like she was suffocating. She couldn’t see and she couldn’t hear. She couldn’t feel anything at all. There was the faintest odor, unpleasant and so distant it was unidentifiable. Her blood rushed to her ears until it was roaring in them, and then she couldn’t breathe at all. Blackness… nothingness…

And that’s when she woke up, hands at her throat, scratching and gasping for air.

When she realized she could actually breathe, and the choking sensation subsided, she inhaled great lungfuls of air greedily, sucking them down and then expelling them just as loudly into the empty room.

Her breathing started to return to normal, and she rolled over to look at the bedside digital clock. It felt like it had been hours—days even—that she had been trapped in that dark, airless space, but in reality she had slid into bed, fingers still wriggling, less than an hour ago. It felt like a year.

She listened for a second to see if her panic had awakened anyone else, but the rest of the house slept soundly on, oblivious to her plight. Poor Dawnie, grateful just to have her sister back, but sensing something was wrong. And the two witches that had co-opted her mother’s bedroom. Her dead mother’s bedroom.

Tears welled up in Buffy’s eyes, and she slipped noiselessly out of the room, padding down the hall to the bathroom, vaguely remembering her promise to Spike to do something about her hands. She had no idea where the Bactine had been stashed, so soap and water would have to do.

She stood in front of the bathroom mirror staring at herself for a long time.

It didn’t look like her at all. She looked thin and sad and old. Her hair hung around her face in lank, non-lustrous ropes, her skin looked dull, and her eyes… they just looked flat. Her friends had mistakenly yanked her out of heaven and gotten this strange… doppelganger, one who looked like she had lived twelve lifetimes in the same time of Buffy’s one.

She stared at the mirror, transfixed, until the unfamiliar image seemed to melt away, and she could see forever. The hum of the fluorescent mirror lights faded into the background, their harsh glare unnoticed, until she was just a little girl with no reflection, standing alone on a sea of cold tile.

All her senses receded until it was just her useless shell of a body, frozen in place.

The numbness was deafening.


TBC



End Note: A special thank you to Mari for her beta work, and amasirol, whose lovely email gently inquiring about the status of this fic is what got my off my duff and made me put fingers to keyboard again. You ladies rock!

It was closer to lunch than dinner the next day when Spike found his way back to the Magic Box. He had spent hours tossing and turning way past dawn, and had finally given up on sleep, resigning himself to hours of ‘Black Adder’ reruns on BBC America until he had finally nodded off into a fitful sleep in front of the 'repurposed' TV and stolen cable box he had fixed his crypt up with.





He darted through the front door, coat over head as per usual, and scanned the room for the Slayer. Anya, having raising her head hopefully from behind the register, looked back down in obvious disappointment at the lack of a paying customer. Tara, as always the politest of the merry band of misfit toys, gave him a quick shy smile of acknowledgement before returning to searching the herb shelves. The other witch and the whelp were hunched over a table piled high with dusty tomes and takeout boxes, undoubtedly researching the Monster of the Week.





Xander looked up long enough to throw out, “And what do you want today, oh bleached menace?” But the bite was absent from his tone, and Spike was similarly apathetic to their usual dance of mutual dislike, preferring to just lope over and snatch a slice of cold pizza out of the open pizza box.





“Hey! Who said you could have that?”





Spike swallowed the piece in two bites. “Hello, does evil mean nothing to you anymore? ‘Cept since you haven’t given me any help since those ponces took my soddin’ fangs, I’m relegated to low-level evil. And since Inland Revenue wasn’t hiring…”





“That’s covered in garlic! I thought vampires couldn’t eat garlic, Toothless.”





The boy had gotten entirely too complacent in his presence. “Why don’t you rub yourself in it and we’ll find out?”





Anya perked up at that thought, “Ooh, and maybe there could be oils involved?”





Spike and Xander both turned to look at the ex-vengeance demon in confusion. Spike spoke first. “What are you on about, woman?”





“You know, with the ‘rubbing’ and the ‘eating’ that you mentioned. It could be both erotic and healthy, if you considered using olive oil instead of one of the higher-fat…” She trailed off as the two men turned back at each other, mentally aghast at the turn this conversation seemed to have taken without their permission.





“Ahn, honey,” Xander tried desperately, “remember we spoke about keeping our inner monologues inner, and only expressing the stuff that we’re sure needs to be shared?”





Anya twisted her mouth into a disgusted expression and went back to balancing out the register, muttering occasionally about ‘stupid human conventions.’ Spike could sort of sympathize with her on that one.





Even though the Slayer was not physically present, he could scent her on the air, and the occasional worried glances being thrown towards the closed door of the training room told him the rest of the tale.





He made his way into the back area, not bothering to knock, not that it would have mattered. Buffy was balancing on one leg in some sort of yoga pose, but her expression was anything but relaxed. As he made his way around the mats, he slowed, stopping several feet further away than he had intended. She appeared to have spaced out while exercising, and now she just stood virtually motionless, eyes open but not seeing anything in front of her. She emanated anguish and isolation, and as he took the remaining steps towards her, he again caught the faint, rich smell of Slayer blood.





Odd. Her wounds should have been long closed by now at the rate she had been healing last night.





But sure enough, the closer he got to her, the stronger the scent became, and by the time he reached her mat, it was almost dizzying. His taste buds itched and his fangs tingled, and he realized at the worst possible time how ravenously hungry he was.





His movement caught Buffy's eye and she started out of her reverie, realizing she was no longer alone in the room. She wobbled slightly before lowering her leg gracefully to the floor, focused on his face and, discerning his worried expression, gave him a weak smile intended as reassurance.





Her small gesture caught him unawares, and concern trumped hunger. "Luv, are you okay?" Sharp blue eyes did not fail to notice the way she reflexively tugged the sleeves of her thermal shirt further down over her wrists.





"Let me see your hands. Didn't you clean them?" He reached for both hands, but Buffy jerked them back as if stung.





"Spike! Stop babying me! I'm fine." Her tone was not convincing in the slightest, but she obviously didn't want to talk, and he had seen enough of her hands before she yanked them back to know that those cuts at least weren't still open.





“Just wanted to see if you were okay after… last night,” he finished defensively.





Buffy still had that same faraway look he had seen in Restfield the previous night. He had seen the same look in veterans returning from war; on the battlefield it was referred to as the ‘Thousand Mile Stare.’ “I’m okay,” she whispered.





He wanted to say something, offer her something that would make her feel more present, but he had nothing, and so he turned to go. Her voice stopped him. “Spike?”





“Yah, Sl—Buffy?”





“Can you just… stay for a bit? Not talk or anything, but just… stay?”





He had no idea what to do with that, but it was certainly nice—if unfamiliar—territory to have the Slayer requesting his presence rather than his absence.





“Sure, luv,” he settled himself on a stack of gym mats and stretched out, watching her as she ran through her exercise routine. It was a comfortable silence, nice and utterly bewildering.





They stayed like that for along time, alone together.





Alone. Together.





* * *





Buffy was floating. She was drifting, buoyed by occasional breezes. She was warm and peaceful and loved. Nobody needed anything from her, and she was finished. There were no more obligations and no more demands. She felt at peace with the world and herself. She no longer had a corporeal body, but she was more than mists and vapors. She just... existed.





This level of being was the first peace she had known since being Called almost seven years ago, and it was perfect. She was never hungry, and never tired. She never wanted for anything. Her entire being (or non-being) was just suffused with a comfortable calm far beyond anything that she could have imagined.





It was the physical and mental equivalent of eight-hundred thread count sheets and perfect spiritual enlightenment.





Time had no meaning, and she had no knowledge or care if she had been there for days, weeks, or even years. She was safe here, free to just exist. And the warmth, the warmth made the comfort that much more cocoon-like, enveloping her and making everything that last little degree of perfect.





Other beings floated around her, and they only added to the feeling of peace and comfort.





Without warning, a fissure started to appear in the clouds, a gray crack that started snaking its way through their existence. A dull rumbling was building in the distance, and she could hear the other beings around her murmuring in a rising wave of unease.





A chilling breeze swept through, the first noticeable temperature change since her arrival, and her feeling of foreboding increased.





A bolt of lightening split the sky, and the crevice started tearing its way through the clouds with a terrible screeching noise.





Buffy somehow knew that the abyss had come for her.





Sure enough, the vapors around her parted and she felt herself being pulled by some terrible, inextricable gravity towards the gray rift, which split apart in time to suck her down and swallow her whole.





Agony. She was aware of agony. Pain exploded through every fiber of her being, until she couldn't feel anything else. Ligaments formed, muscles re-grew, and new tendons lashed them to the bones. Skin regenerated and made the form new again. Blood started flowing through her, heart beat gaining on a steady rhythm that started an icy thaw.





All of a sudden, awareness swept through Buffy, and she realized she had a physical form again. The pain started to subside, and the fog that had been occluding her vision cleared.





She was lying down, that much she knew, but she was in pitch-blackness, and the feel and smell were wrong for her bedroom. The air was rank and musty and completely still, and as she raised stiff and aching arms, she met wood resistance. Satin-lined wood. About eighteen inches above her body.





Oh God, she suddenly knew where she was. Panic raced through her as the smell of dank earth and decay rocketed through her senses. My coffin. I'm in my coffin. I'm buried alive in my fucking coffin.





She beat frantically at the lid, struggling with the tightness that was squeezing her chest. Finally she managed to drive one fist through the lid, uncaring when she felt the splintered oak tear into her hands. She clawed more pieces out of the wood, and it finally gave in a flood of dirt and rocks. She tried to breathe, sucking dirt into her mouth and nose instead. Oh god, have to get out, have to get out, pleaseletmeout...





Her grasping hand finally met with cold air, and she was able to drag her head and shoulders up to the surface, gasping huge lungfuls of cool, crisp, clean air. She spat the dirt out of her mouth, coughing as she struggled to pull the rest of her body out of her grave.





Her grave. Damned if those weren't the two strangest words in the entire English language when put together. She was lying besides her own grave, two feet from her own headstone, coughing up mouthfuls of grave dirt.





She tried to get her bearings, but her recently renewed senses were on overload after so long of being unused. The sights and smells and tastes of this place were overwhelming and oppressive.





She struggled to her feet weakly, and stood for a moment, transfixed by her headstone. Buffy Anne Summers.1981-2001. Beloved Sister. Devoted Friend. She Saved the World. A Lot.





She had, hadn't she? She had saved the world over and over again, and it appeared it was still not done with her. Anguish--the emotional kind this time--swept over her in a wave, and she had the fleeting urge to try and dig her way back into the freshly turned earth. If she just dug far enough, surely she'd be able to--





The sound of a nearing motorcycle engine ripped the cemetery apart, and Buffy instinctively knew she had to run and hide. She gathered the long skirt of her burial dress around her and stumbled off towards a thicket of trees, trying desperately to tune out the fuzziness that still invaded her vision and hearing. Got to get away, got to hide...





Buffy woke up screaming.





She was clutching at her throat again and screaming. The sound died in her throat as she struggled to even her breathing out.





She had lain down to take a nap before heading out on patrol, and she must have slept longer than she intended. Judging by the lack of footsteps clambering to her room, she guessed Willow and Tara must still be at the Magic Box. Dawn was sleeping at Janice's, and Buffy felt a sense of relief at not having to explain her somnolent screaming fit to anyone.





Buffy lay still for a moment, waiting for the panic to recede, and when it finally did, the same cold despondence set in. She reluctantly swung her feet over the side of the bed, propelling herself into the bathroom to try and clean up a little before patrol.





She stood in front of the mirror again, staring, until she couldn’t meet her own gaze. The reflection seemed to be a mockery of what she had become, which was nowhere near what she had once been. The first—no, second time around. I guess the third time isn’t the charm after all.





Three lifetimes. And she was only twenty years old. She was shaping up to have more lives than a cat, a thought that was not pleasant by any stretch of the imagination. She was so exhausted at her third life that a ninth didn’t bear considering.





Her gaze was drawn unbidden to the toilet tank, and she sank sideways onto the seat’s closed lid, stretching one arm down under the tank.





When her fingers closed around the wad of toilet tissue she had taped there the previous night, a combination of dread and relief raced through her veins. Tearing the pouch free, she brought it up to her lap almost reverently, clearing the tissue away and lobbing it towards the trashcan.





Harsh bathroom light reflected off the razor blade, torn out of one of those disposable pink jobbies that always seemed to be lying around the bathroom in a household of four women. She stared at the blade for a minute as if hypnotized.





It was so surreal, this whole experience.





She shucked her shirt quickly, letting it fall to the cold tile as she listened for the sound of footsteps. None.





And relief was closeohsoclose…





The first swipe of the blade across the flesh of her inner arm brought pain, immediate and brilliant in its intensity. Blood welled in the gash, and started to ooze down her arm.





She was careful to avoid the previous evening’s cuts, which had already more than scabbed; they were well on their way to being completely healed. As the sharp pain ebbed to a dull throb, the feeling of relief overtook Buffy.





The pain was sudden, bright and intense. It had a definitive beginning and ending. It anchored her to this existence, making her feel more real and present. The pain cut through the numbness she had been feeling since her return. It was the only thing that had. And it would be gone within hours.





Unlike her other pain.





Each cut relieved some of the pressure, some of the pain and the guilt she lived with every day. It gave it form and bled it from her body.





One more. Buffy was back on the tower, knowing the rift to the hell dimension was open and making her decision. Dawnie reading the decision in her face, pleading with her, begging her to stay. Regret at leaving her little sister behind, but also profound relief at the end in sight. No more fighting, day after day. No more having to be quicker and more clever than the latest evil in Sunnydale. Spike had been right; she was tired. So, so tired.





Another. Angel standing in front of the statue of Acathla as the vortex opened up. The sudden shift in his features as she watched Angelus disappear, replaced by a bewildered Angel. Sorrow, knowing she was doing what she had to as she plunged the sword through his chest. Bafflement and betrayal flashing across Angel's features before he was sucked into hell.





Four. Merrick. It had been a long time since she had thought about her first Watcher consciously, but he was always hanging around her subconscious, a constant reminder of what could happen to Giles if she wasn't fast enough, if she didn't train hard enough.





Just like Jenny.





Jenny was cuts five and six. Her own inability to kill her lover, even though she had known what he had been capable of. She hadn't been strong enough to stop him until after the fact. And she knew her friends still held it against her. She could see it in their eyes on the rare occasion the Gypsy's name came up. And then there were Jenny's eyes. Dark, dead eyes staring accusingly up at her as her head lolled around limply on her shoulders, like a life-size rag doll.





Seven. Mom.





Oh God, Mom.





The pain of watching her mother get sicker. The powerlessness of not knowing what was behind it. And when they finally found out, it being something she couldn't slay, stake, or otherwise vanquish. The agony of watching her get better, only to come home and find her dead on the couch, a final twist of the knife held by cruel fate.





Joyce, Jenny, and Merrick were dead, casualties of her inability to be the Slayer everybody thought she was. Or thought she should be.





Not all the casualties had left physical corpses behind. Angel was gone--chased off three lovers, now, hadn't she? Couldn't save Angel, couldn't make him want to remain in Sunnydale with her. She rarely thought of Parker and their night together, but now, when her feelings were so raw, he felt like another failure. Another headstone in the Buffy Summers Cemetery of Personal Inadequacies. And then there was Riley. He was a good man, a decent and kind man, but she hadn't been good enough to make him want to stay, or strong enough to ask him to.





She worked quickly and efficiently, being careful to avoid the brachial arteries in both her arms, and when it finally felt like enough, she deposited the gory razor at the edge of the sink and looked down at what she had done.





The lines were clean and parallel, and the blood had already slowed to a mere trickle, leaving what resembled red train tracks on the inside of both arms from armpit to elbow.





All of a sudden, the feeling of relief was usurped by pure shame.





What am I doing?





What have I done?





Nausea climbed from her stomach to the back of her throat, and she was barely able to fling the seat up on the toilet before she was hunched over it, dry-heaving the lunch she hadn’t eaten.





Once the spasms subsided, she hurriedly went about cleaning herself up, carefully swabbing the cuts with disinfectant before slipping back into her shirt. First death by vampire, second death by hell dimension. Third death by bacterial infection just seemed kind of… anticlimactic. Not to mention tacky.





She carefully washed the blade clean, being careful to avoid its sharp cutting edge, rewrapped it, and secured it back beneath the toilet tank with the same surgical tape she often used to doctor the cuts and bruises she acquired while slaying.





She washed her face, pulled her lank hair back into a quick ponytail, and steeled herself to go out and police the world most people didn’t know existed.





* * *





half-life [haf-lahyf, hahf-] –noun


1. The time required in radioactive decay for matter to disintegrate by half.


2. The time at which a medication in the body has lost half of its efficacy.


3. The brief period where something has ceased to flourish but has not yet died.










TBC…










A/N: Inland Revenue was, until 2005, the income tax division of the British government.





A/N 2: The “thousand-yard stare” is a term coined during World War II for combat-weary soldiers that appear to be staring off into the distance, a sign of dissociation. It is often associated with Post-Traumatic Stress Disorder (PTSD).





A/N 3: Definitions paraphrased from: http://dictionary.reference.com/browse/half-life

Spike stared at the cell phone in his hand, taking a moment to marvel at it. His first time around, telephones had been a new technology, not in every household, and heavy enough to be more suitable as a bludgeon than an instrument of communication. To have a phone that he could take everywhere in his pocket, well, that was just... neat. He ran one calloused thumb over the metal and plastic, reveling in its smooth newness, when suddenly the blasted thing lit up and started making an electronic noise that sounded suspiciously like the refrain from "Baby One More Time."

Knew I shouldn't have let the Bit program the damned thing. Spike flipped it open and pressed it to his ear, not bothering to check the Caller ID. There were only a limited number of people who had this number, and out of those, fewer still would deign to call him.

An out-of-breath girly teenage voice asked him, "Spike, is she with you?"

"No, luv, she's not here. What's wrong? What's up?" Spike tried to keep the rising notes of panic out of his voice in order not to alarm Dawn. "Bit, what happened?"

The tiny voice from the phone's small speaker sounded slightly calmer. "Nothing happened. I mean… It's probably nothing..."

"But...?"

“I came home not too long ago, and... when I was brushing my teeth, I saw some bandages in the bathroom... they had some blood on them... I thought she’d hurt herself patrolling..." Dawn had calmed even more by then; as if hearing the words come out of her own mouth had convinced her that she was probably overreacting. Spike was not as confident about that. “It’s probably nothing…” she repeated, trailing off.

“I’m sure big sis is fine,” he said, lying through his fangs. “You know she occasionally gets a little banged up on patrol. She probably just got scraped up and stopped home to change clothes.” He had already turned back towards the cemetery section of town to look for the Slayer.

Dawn agreed. “I guess… hey, when you find her, cuz I know you’re going to look, can you tell her I’m gonna stay at Janice’s again tonight? Her parents just got this huge new TV and…” Her voice faded out to white noise in Spike’s ear as he walked; he tuned back in only when she asked him The Question.

“Spike… do you think she’s going to be okay?” Her small voice broke his heart.

“This is a big change, being… back like this, Bit. She just needs time.” God, he really hoped that wasn’t a lie too.

“But you’ll check on her?”

"Dawn," he spoke slowly, enunciating carefully, "do you have any idea which cemeteries she was doing tonight?"

"I dunno, you'd probably know better than I would. Out of the two of us, you're the only one who's allowed on patrol." She didn't bother trying to keep the sour note out of her voice.

That was another battle for another night, though. "Bit, I'm over a hundred years older than you. And plus, hello, vampire here. So when you're at least a century old, and gain some sort of supernatural powers, we can discuss this again. Figure it'll be around the same time you'll be old enough to start dating."

He snapped the phone shut on the teenager's indignant squawk, and headed across town. If Buffy was hurt, and still stubbornly insisted on patrolling, he had to find her before her recent--and unattractive—death wish led her to a sticky end. Going on instinct alone, he headed back towards Restfield at a fast clip. The Slayer's scent got stronger as he neared the front gates, and he knew he had guessed correctly.

Weaving between headstones, the faint Slayer scent of vanilla, jasmine, and power intensified. But it was also joined by two other interlopers. Salt and copper.

Spike quickened his pace until he was almost at a dead run, vaulting over tombstones and dodging low-hanging branches as he followed the scent of blood and tears. As he rounded into a clearing where he himself had spent several quieter nights, he pulled up short so quickly that he almost went sprawling with the diverted momentum.

Buffy was lying sprawled across the base of one of the cemetery's larger statues. It was a six-foot high marble angel, weeping stone tears, and its arms were raised high into the sky. With the huddled blonde lying curled at its base, sobbing, it appeared as if the angel was praying for Buffy's deliverance.

The angel itself--Spike called him Chip--stood beseeching the heavens over the prostrate Slayer, as Spike stared for a moment before approaching. He carefully wound his way around Joyce’s grave. It was the only one in the cemetery that he steadfastly refused to tread over. It just seemed wrong.

"Sla--Buffy, luv, are you hurt?" No response.

"Buffy?" He knelt before the sobbing figure and placed his hand on her arm, trying to get her to look up at him.

When she finally raised her tearstained face to look up, he almost wished she hadn't. Her face was a masque of misery and pain, and huge tears rolled unchecked down her cheeks as she looked dully at him from behind a curtain of disheveled blond hair. Still she said nothing.

“Buffy. Are. You. Hurt?” he asked her, voice low, enunciating every word with care.
She shook her head, causing the mass of hair to fall further over her eyes. Spike reached out one arm to help her into a seated position, watching thoughtfully as she shrank away, wrapping her arms tighter around her torso.

“Luv, I just want to help,” he pulled her by the shoulders. “I won’t tell your mates you got hurt if you don’t want me to.” She allowed him to sit her up, but quickly drew her arms back to her body. He let her, and they sat in silence for a moment.

“The smell of your blood is making me dizzy, Slayer. Want to tell me what you did?”

Vampiric hearing did not miss the Slayer’s sharp intake of breath, and the tears started fresh. She slumped against Spike’s shoulder and started sobbing.

Surprised and unsure of what to do, he tentatively wrapped one arm around her, drawing her close to his chest. She allowed him, burying her face into his black t-shirt until he could feel her cool tears dampening it to his skin. She shivered, and he pulled her in tighter, wishing he had some body warmth he could share with her, but he had to play the hand he had been dealt.

After a moment or two, the tears seemed to abate, but Buffy didn’t pull back. If ever there was a sign that she had reached her breaking point… Spike was reminded of the night he had shown up to kill her the year before, and found her silently crying on her back porch. She had allowed the vampire to comfort her then, too, by merely not shrinking away from his touch, even though he had started that particular encounter by pointing a loaded shotgun at her head. That had been uncharacteristic, but tonight’s level of trust was just… unprecedented.

He noticed the blonde was shivering, and reticent as he was to pull away from her, he was just about to shuck his leather duster and wrap her in it when he felt the tingling he associated with another vamp. No, not one other vamp, several other. Bollocks.

He tapped her on her shoulder. “Luv, we need to move. We’ve got several vamps incoming and seeing as you’re smelling all plasmically delicious and are in no state to fight, we have to go… now!”

Still Buffy didn’t react, so when the tingles grew stronger, he scooped her up and took off in the opposite direction.

* * *

Tara had become used to odd things happening in Sunnydale. It was kind of par for the course. Demon of the week, spells gone awry, impending apocalypses. Apocalii? She had become fairly good at not reacting overtly. Still, when she had set about cleaning up the living room at 1630 Revello Drive while Willow finished up at the Magic Box, the last thing she’d expected was for the front door to come slamming open, courtesy of one vampire bearing an armload full of slightly soggy slayer. Kind of a fangy version of An Officer and a Gentleman.

The expression on Spike’s face, however, made any amusement in her heart short circuit.

“Spike? What’s wrong? What happened?”

“Gonna need your help with this one, luv.” He carefully maneuvered up the Summers’ narrow staircase, trying not to bang the Slayer’s head or feet into the walls. Tara followed silently, a sense of foreboding creeping slowly up her spine. When they reached Buffy’s bedroom, he dumped her unceremoniously on the bed, and it wasn’t until he started tugging her jacket and wrestling her sweater off that Tara found her voice.

“Spike? What’s—"

“DAMMIT!” He gave up trying to be gentle and tore the emerald green knit off over the Slayer’s head. Buffy didn’t react at all, just sat with her head and arms hanging limply. “Get over here, Glinda,” he started trying to peel the thermal shirt off one arm, “Gonna need you to work the other side.”

Tara stepped forward to ask what he was talking about, but the words died on her lips as she saw what Spike’s actions were revealing. A ladder-like pattern of narrow, even cuts ran up the inside of both of Buffy’s arms. They were no longer bleeding, but the dried blood had crusted and started adhering the sleeves of Buffy’s shirt to her arms. Spike was trying to avoid pulling at the scabs by peeling the shirt up slowly, but several of the cuts had already reopened.

The brunette stared, aghast. “What happened? Who did that to her?”

You did, Spike had to bite his lip to keep from bursting. You and your blind, selfish Scooby friends. But he knew that the resurrection spell had not been the gentle Wiccan’s idea. She didn’t have the blind arrogance and disregard for the natural order such a spell required, she had only followed her redheaded lover’s lead. And he knew she was badly shaken by what she was seeing now, and just starting to cotton onto what their magic had actually wrought. So he chose to say nothing, an option he did not often exercise.

By each taking an arm, they had worked Buffy down to her bra and jeans. Spike paused, suddenly realizing that he had Partially Naked Slayer in front of him, and unsure of how to proceed. He went for the button on her jeans, then stopped uncertainly. Buffy didn’t react, just kept gazing at the floor with that eerie, faraway look.

Tara took over, gently moving Spike aside as she made quick work of Buffy’s shoes and socks. “Spike?”

“Yeah?” He awkwardly averted his eyes as more flesh was revealed.

“Go run a tub. I need to wash these out to make sure they don’t get infected.” The sound of denim hitting the floor made Spike head out to his task.

“I got the tub, pet, and then I have to make a phone call or two, make some arrangements,” he hollered from the bathroom, testing the water to make sure the temperature was warm enough, but not scalding. “Can you get her into the tub by yourself?”

Tara already had the underwear-clad Slayer on her feet, and was leading a silent Buffy down the hall. She kept one arm around Buffy’s shoulders and shooed Spike away with a wave of her hand. “Go, do what you have to. It’s gonna take me a few to clean her up.” She parked the mute blonde on the toilet and when she reached for the slighter woman’s bra strap, Spike took that as his cue and skedaddled.

“Gauze in the cabinet. Peroxide under the sink. Be back in a bit, Glinda!”

“Spike?” The witch’s soft voice barely reached the vampire’s ears as he headed for the stairs. He paused, listening. “Oh God, Spike, they’re on her legs too…”

The vampire closed his eyes for a second, trying to rein his emotions in. The gentle sound of female tears followed him to the door.

* * *

When he returned twenty minutes later, Tara had already cleaned Buffy up, and gotten her partially redressed. The Slayer sat on the edge of the bed, dressed in track pants under a short robe.

Spike strode over to the closet, grabbed a gym bag and started grabbing clothes from Buffy’s dresser. Few shirts. Few pants, shorts. Workout clothes? What the hell else do blasted women wear? It’d been so long since he'd had to dress Dru, and Buffy didn’t really favor those easier-to-work Victorian dresses anyway.

As he stood befuddled by the large array of pajamas, Tara had managed to get Buffy out of the robe, and she was just finishing up wrestling the unresisting blonde into a bra when Spike turned back around.

“Apparently it’s far easier to get someone out of these things than into them…” She muttered, then blushed furiously when she realized what she’d said aloud. Spike managed to curtail a surprised chuckle, but could not stop the corner of his mouth from quirking.

The witch turned her still-red face to the task of sliding Buffy into a t-shirt. “Spike?”

“Yah, love?”

“What are you packing for? I mean, where are you taking her?”

The vampire grabbed handful of socks, stuffed them into the already-packed gym bag, and turned back to face the two women on the bed. Buffy had let her head drop onto Tara’s shoulder, and the Wiccan was gently stroking her hair, trying to soothe her.

“Need to get her away from here. This place… it’s not good for her right now.” He walked over to the women and knelt in front of them, brushing the Slayer’s hair out of her face. “How about it, Buffy? Want to get away from here for a bit?”

Hazel eyes studied Spike for a while before the blonde head bobbed once, coming to rest on Tara’s shoulder again.

So tired. Just so tired.

Spike’s gaze shifted to Tara as he examined the inside of Buffy’s arms. Tara had done a good, albeit slightly clumsy job of doctoring the Slayer’s wounds with bandages and tape. “I’m kind of out of practice… I usually do the patching up stuff with herbs and poultices, but…” The witch looked worriedly at the smaller blonde on her shoulder, “it just seemed wrong to do it with any kind of magic…”

Spike felt a little more of his respect for her return. “’Preciate that, luv. ‘M gonna start getting us out of here; I’d like to be long gone before the others get back.”

Tara nodded as she hefted Buffy’s freshly packed bag onto one shoulder, leaving the vampire to maneuver the Slayer back downstairs and outside.

Spike’s DeSoto sat in the driveway, freshly gassed, and still covered in a fine layer of dust from the abandoned garage where he’d been keeping it. The motorcycle could have sufficed for the trip there, but once they arrived, he didn’t want to be limited to solely moonlight travel under fear of flaming death. Besides, it felt good to have the old behemoth back on the road, blacked-out windows and all.

He managed to get Buffy belted in nice and tight on the passenger side, and then took the proffered bag from Tara and tossed it to join his own hastily packed rucksack in the backseat. Tara shut the passenger side door, and touched Buffy’s hair sadly through the open window.

“Spike? What do you think you’re going to do for her?” That was what he always respected about the Wiccan; it was a simple question, not a challenge or a rebuke. There was no emphasis on the ‘you’re.’

He was silent for a moment, then sighed, turning the keys in the ignition. The DeSoto’s powerful engine roared to life, and he thought about the question while waiting for the noise to even out. “Don’t rightly know, luv, but I have to try something.”

She nodded in agreement. “I hate to, ah, bring this up, but once word gets out that the Slayer’s away…”

Spike sighed and lit a cigarette, blowing the smoke out his open window. The cherry tip glowed red in the dark interior of the car, illuminating the sharp angles of his cheekbones and lips. “Have your woman fix the ‘Bot. And don’t tell me she can’t do it. If she can bring a bloody person back from beyond, she can damn well fix a bunch of wires and circuits. Don’t care if she uses magic or technology. Enough people have seen her since the ‘Bot was destroyed to know the Slayer’s legitimately around.” He fixed his gaze back on the woman beside him.

“Why do you think this is happening?”

Buffy appeared not to have heard Tara’s question, and Spike bit his lip. Some secrets are so big they belong only to those they happen to. It wasn’t the vampire’s truth to tell. “Hopefully she’ll be able to tell everyone someday.”

Tara raised a brow slightly at the implication that the vampire already knew what was eating the Slayer up inside, but she merely nodded. “Where are you taking her?”

“I know a bloke… he’s got a place a bit away from here where we can hole up for a bit. Said I can use it while he and his family are abroad.”

“Where is—“

Spike cut her off. “Witch, you have to ask yourself at this point, do you trust me? You’ve known me for two years; you’ve fought beside me all summer. I need you to look into your heart, and ask yourself if anything about what happened tonight makes you think I’d harm one hair on her infuriating little head. And whatever you decide, just know I’m leaving here with the Slayer in two minutes.”

He met her gaze steadily over Buffy, who was gazing out through the painted-over windshield. Tara studied the planes of his face for a minute until her bluish-green eyes met his azure gaze. Wordlessly, she kissed Buffy on the cheek and straightened, stepping away from the side of the car. “Take good care of her, Spike.”

“You know I will. Just tell the others—“

“Let me handle the others.” There was quiet strength and resolve behind the words. Spike nodded, glad he wasn’t going to be around when the shit hit the fan tonight. Wouldn’t mind being a fly on the wall though.

“Right then,” he turned to Buffy, “you ready, ducks?”

Still no response. “Call my cell if you need anything, Glinda.” He shifted the car into reverse and backed out into Revello Drive, the car’s powerful engine the only thing breaking the still of night as he headed east, out towards the desert.

* * *

They drove for hours in silence, and as they hit the California state line the sun started to bleed over the edge of the horizon. Spike was careful to stay out of the way of the few scattered beams that permeated the scratched-out view through the windshield.

Buffy remained quiet but awake. She neither spoke nor slept, just sat like a forlorn statue in the passenger seat. It reminded Spike of the awful days before her death when Glory had finally gotten her hands on Dawn, just after things had gone completely pear-shaped. That Buffy had just sat and stared also, but it was the shock that had made her go catatonic. This Buffy scared him more.

To see the Slayer with no fight left in her small but powerful body broke Spike’s heart more than her occasionally cruel treatment of him ever had. Usually she radiated power and fire, but both had ebbed to the point that they felt like distant memories of the girl she once was.

Spike drove and smoked, deep in thought. He knew where they were going, but that was all he knew. How he was going to remotely fix the girl, he had no idea.



TBC



A/N: Thank you for all your kind reviews. They’re like caffeine for my muse!

The sun had already broken over the horizon by the time they reached the hand carved, overly quaint sign that read “Now Entering Deux Rivières,” and Spike tried desperately to squash his impulse to flatten the sign on his way into town. Old habits dying hard and all that.



It always amused him that the town had a French name, was settled by primarily Italians (after driving the Native Americans off the land), and was now being reintegrated with an influx of immigrants from Sonora and other northern Mexican cities. Who says we’re not a bloody melting pot? And now, he was the British Invasion.



The heat was fast rising in the midst of the Arizona desert, and already wavy heat lines were radiating off of the few paved roads left on the way to their destination. Squinting through the windshield, Spike finally located the turn-off labeled “Caldwell Ranch” and swung the wheel hard to the right, gritting his teeth as the DeSoto protested the transition from blacktop to packed sand and clay.



“Ranch” was somewhat misleading. To the best of Spike’s knowledge, in the fifteen years since his friends had purchased the place, there had been no livestock, no crops, and the barn was used solely as a garage for when Sam decided he wanted to tinker with one of the many old clunkers he housed there, much to his wife’s chagrin. In fact, the only thing remotely ranchlike about the two-story white house with north-and-south facing windows was the split-rail fence that ran around the edges of the property.



They pulled up the long driveway slowly, and Spike eased the car into the large overhang on the side of the house, throwing it into Park only once the DeSoto was firmly centered in the shadows of the overhang. He turned to Buffy and said, “We’re here, ducks.”



She picked her head up from its rest against the car door and started to uncramp her legs to get out of the car. It worried him that she hadn’t once, in all the hours they’d been traveling, questioned where they were going or why. It also worried him that he could only answer one out of those two questions.



She got out of the car and stood, waiting silently, as he grabbed their bags out of the back and slammed the door shut. He felt around the wooden doorframe for a moment, finally feeling the small metal key exactly where Sam had said it would be. He unlocked the side door and Buffy shuffled obediently through, still taking no notice of her surroundings.



“How you feeling, luv?” He desperately wanted to elicit some sort of response from the Slayer, who seemed to have achieved some sort of walking comatose state. She shrugged slightly, and said her first word in hours.



“Tired.”



At least it was something. Spike nodded and led Buffy across the light wood floors. Since the last time he had seen it, the house had been entirely redone in mission-style furniture, all blond wood and earthy tones, oranges and browns with the odd splash of turquoise for contrast. It was sparse and lovely, and he was sure he smelled a woman’s touch on the whole thing.



Indirect sunlight flooded every room in the house, giving the illusion of far more space than actually existed. Not that it was cramped by any stretch of the imagination. As he navigated his way towards the staircase with Buffy trailing, he could feel a breeze blowing through the slightly-open windows left by the owners. He was somewhat indifferent to temperatures, but he imagined such a breeze might feel nice to someone with slightly warmer blood than him. Someone like the blonde who was currently ignoring it.



Buffy followed him dutifully up the stairs, her light footfalls echoing Spike’s the whole way. When he reached the top of the stairs, he steered her through the first door at the top. “In here.”



She trailed into the room, ignoring the dark, hand-carved furniture that was crammed into the master bedroom. While the other rooms had been sparingly decorated, this one was a monument to extravagance, full of dark woods and stark white linens. She drifted to the edge of the enormous mahogany sleigh bed and sat, hands in her lap.



Spike stood, uncertain. “You going to be okay? Need help with anything?” Buffy shook her head and flopped over onto her back, fully clothed. “At least let me take your shoes off, Slayer. We are guests, after all, don’t want to get your sandy shoeprints all over these posh sheets, do we?”



She allowed him to remove her shoes and socks, and turned sad eyes to him. “Spike?”



“Yes, luv.”



“I’m so tired.”



The multiple levels of her meaning weren’t lost on him. A heart didn’t need to be able to beat to be able to break, and Spike felt just as broken and powerless as Buffy did in that moment. “I know, Slayer. Just sleep for now, okay? I have some stuff I need to do, and then I’ll be in the bedroom down the hall, other side of the loo.”



She gave a slight nod and her eyes drifted shut. Spike stood watching her for a moment, wishing he could just curl up besides her, truly invited and truly welcome. And then he sighed and gathered himself to go about his task.



* * *



Spike had just finished gathering all the sharp knives, razors, and other cutting implements and locking them into the boot of the DeSoto when a wave of tiredness swept over him, so strong it was practically dizzying. He made his way back into the house, up the stairs, and had just reached the doorway of the second bedroom when he stopped dead in his tracks.



The second bedroom had been redone recently, too. For the eight-year-old boy who was its usual inhabitant. And the centerpiece of the renovation, aside from all the NASCAR posters and racing stripes that adorned the walls, was the junior-size bed fashioned after a red sports car.



Great. Just bloody fucking fabulous. Resigning himself to squishing into the plastic-framed monstrosity, at least for tonight, he had just tugged off his Doc Martens when he heard a whimper.



By the time he reached the hall, the whimpers had escalated to full-blown sobbing, and in the three steps it took him to get to the master bedroom, screaming had followed.



Buffy lay in bed where Spike had left her, screaming, hands clawing at her throat. She was obviously asleep and dreaming, but she was stiff with terror and starting to toss her head back and forth, gasping for air.



“Buffy! BUFFY!” Spike’s tone started soft, but got louder as it became evident that his voice wasn’t penetrating the Slayer’s sleep terrors. She started to thrash in bed, waving her hands and punching the air above her, meeting some invisible force of resistance. Tears were pouring down her cheeks as the screams had subsided to whimpers. Spike was overcome with pity and grief as he understood.



He perched on the edge of the bed next to her, gently touching her arm and speaking with a low, soothing voice. “Buffy… Slayer… you’re not where you think you are…” She whimpered again but the tears slowed and her arms gave one final thrash in the air against the invisible coffin lid. “You’re in your bed, safe… not gonna hurt you any more…” She whined and started shivering, still twisting her head to and fro.



“Oh, luv,” he said sadly. He swung his legs up on the bed and attempted to draw Buffy into his chest, but she resisted, pulling her head back and arching away from him, and her cries got louder as she started to panic again.



“Okay, luv, hold on, hold on.” He moved around to the other side of the bed, molding himself loosely against her back, carefully settling himself behind her so she wouldn’t feel trapped again. She gave one last, low whimper and then leaned back against his chest, while he wrapped one arm loosely around her waist. She shifted several times, giving small, kitten-like mewls, and then fell into a deep, thankfully dreamless sleep.



Spike tucked her head under his chin and as he finally succumbed to sleep, her name left his lips in an almost inaudible whisper. “Buffy…”



It sounded like a prayer.



It was.



* * *



They both slept all day, and when Spike awoke again at nightfall, he was ravenous. He inched his way out of the king-size bed, careful not to jostle Buffy, and headed down to the kitchen to settle the nourishment question.



Rooting around in the freezer, he found three large bags of O-negative, and he popped two in the microwave. While he waited for the blood to warm, he read the hastily-scrawled note Delyla had left him on the fridge.



To restart delivery, call the local butcher –a number that Spike recognized as a local exchange was scrawled below--and tell them you’re at our place. He knows what to bring, and he’ll leave it in the milk box on the front porch. You know how to reach us. Hope this works, William.

Love, D&S.



It amused him to this day that she still insisted on using his proper name. Something about the way it sounded with an Italian accent gave a lyrical lilt to the hated moniker from his old life. Plus, like many men, Spike could forgive a beautiful woman almost anything.



Rummaging in the cabinets, Spike found almost all canned goods. Since the family had been leaving for abroad when Spike caught Sam by phone, they had used up all the perishables, leaving mostly canned goods and other nonperishable items.



He cobbled together a tray of food for Buffy with chicken noodle soup, canned peaches, and some Saltines, and brought it back up to the bedroom. But standing there, staring down at the sleeping girl, he just couldn’t bring himself to wake her. She just looked so, so weary, even in her sleep. He set the tray by her bedside, so she could eat whenever she woke up, and went back downstairs to see what else Sam and Delyla had done to the house.



* * *



By the end of the second day, Spike was at his wits’ end. Buffy hadn’t moved from her spot on the bed since she had lain down, and it had been almost forty-eight hours. He could tell she wasn’t sleeping; her breathing was too quick and shallow. She just lay on her side, and as he came around the side of the gigantic bed, he could see that her eyes were half open, not looking at anything. Plus, two days without a shower in the desert heat and she was starting to smell more than a tad ripe.



“Slayer.” Nothing. No movement, not even in response to the sound of his voice in the silent room. He tried again. “Buffy.”



Again no response, and he perched on the bed next to her, directly in her line of sight. She started to roll the other way, and he caught her around the waist, slinging her over his shoulder like a sack of potatoes. Enough is enough.



“Spike! What--”



“You didn’t want to go with the easy way, so now we’re going to do this my way.” He headed downstairs as she flopped on his shoulder. The old Buffy would’ve beat him around the head for such a stunt, but this one just flopped limply around as he cut through the kitchen and burst out onto the back patio.



The sun had not yet broken through the night sky, but Spike could smell that dawn wasn’t far off. The mercury had already begun to rise, and the sounds of the local fauna stirring to life were the only thing that disrupted the quiet.



Spike drew up on the edge of the in-ground pool and dumped Buffy unceremoniously into the water. She broke the surface with a startled yelp and bobbed under. The backsplash got him too, and he was pleased to feel that the water was too cold to be comfortable yet.



A sputtering Slayer surfaced, blonde hair matted to her face as she fixed Spike with a vaguely indignant glare. Good then. Got some fire left in her yet.



“What the hell, Spike?” She quickly stroked to the side of the pool, but as soon as she placed both palms on the pool’s concrete apron, Spike stepped over and trapped one of her hands under each of his boots. He kept his weight in his heels so that he wasn’t crushing her hands, merely preventing her from getting enough leverage to lift herself out of the chilly water.



“You need to choose, Slayer,” he bit out, squatting in front of her so that he could look her in the eyes. He balanced carefully, and was pleased when the chip didn’t fire. “You need to make a choice right this bloody moment.”



She looked up at his cerulean eyes and stopped trying to free her fingers, struck by the depth of emotion warring across his features. Anger, fear, and… what is that?... Resignation.



“What are my choices?”



“Choice A. You agree to work with me instead of against me on this little trip of ours, I extend my arm down, help you out of this pool, and we both forget the last two days ever happened.”



Buffy said nothing, staring back up at him. Of course the little bint would want to know all her options. Can’t ever make it easy, can she?



“Choice B,” Spike stood and stepped back, freeing her fingers, and crossed his arms across his chest. Buffy made no move to hoist herself out of the water. “You let go of the edge of the pool, sink to the bottom, and drown. You get the end you’ve been craving since you came back, and no one has to know it was your choice. Hell, no one ever has to know what happened to you. You get to die an anonymous death that no nosy friends can bring you back from.”



She found her voice. “And you?”



“Doesn’t really matter now, does it, Slayer? I mean with you being dead then ‘n all. But since you asked, I’ll tell you. I wait for the sun to rise; feels like it’s only a few minutes away now.” The sun was indeed just starting to crest over the horizon. Buffy could see the first rays creeping over the edge of white clapboard, nearing where she and Spike were locked in their showdown.



“Why would you do that?”



Spike stepped back onto her hands and leaned down towards her again. “You know I’m a demon, right? I mean, you and your mates are always reminding me and such.” She furrowed her brow, not sure where this was heading. She could feel the angry energy radiating off the vampire as he leaned even closer in to her.



“Yeah, so?”



Bitch had to challenge him right to the last, didn’t she? “When I was human I was a good man, a moral man. I knew right from wrong and I always chose right. Then, when I was turned, right and wrong didn’t matter any more, and I just always chose what I wanted. That’s the beauty of vamp life; any little whim or indulgence you can think of, you can partake of. No repercussions, no guilt. Over a hundred and twenty years I lived guilt-free, taking what I wanted, living how I wanted, always getting what I wanted.



“Until I met Buffy Fucking Summers. Over a century of getting what I wanted when I wanted it, and suddenly the only thing I wanted in the entire universe, I couldn’t have. I couldn’t kill you, you wouldn’t let me love you.”



Buffy had the distinct feeling that the vampire would have been pacing had he not been standing on her hands.



“So? Doesn’t that mean you should let me drown?”



“Listen closely, woman, because your daft little mind seems to have taken a detour; you are the only thing in a hundred and twenty plus years that I’ve wanted and not been able to have. Do I strike you as a vamp that always takes the easy road?”



The sun was edging further down the side of the house, and Buffy eyed it warily as it started to encroach on the cement surrounding the pool. “Spike…”



“Don’t care, luv. Now listen, and listen good, cuz this here’s the important part: I don’t just love a challenge, I live for a challenge. I may be reckless, I may be cocky, I may have nine million other character flaws that you would be happy to chronicle for me any day other than today,” he straightened back up, which put him dangerously close to the sunline.



“But I don’t back down, and I don’t give up. You know and I know that if you get out of this pool, I will stop at nothing to make sure you get your life back. It doesn’t matter if you never love me,” the words tightened in his throat just a little, “it just matters that for once, in my whole existence, my real existence, I fought for what was right and good and pure in the universe. God knows I’ve taken enough of that out of it. I’ve taken my pleasures, and I’ve taken my pain. Can’t let you die, Slayer. Can’t make you want to live, either. Your choice.”



Buffy stared up at him, slack-jawed. He glared back with his jaw set, tension radiating off of his body. He moved his feet slightly so that she could pull her hands back, and she bobbed for a minute, kicking occasionally to keep herself afloat, deep in thought. The sun crested on them, and the tips of Spike’s hair started to smolder. She looked at him in alarm. He didn’t flinch, didn’t move, didn’t even blink.



Just stared at her with the same challenge in his face. He thought of something he had once heard. “Dying’s easy, luv. Living’s hard.”



The smoldering turned to a sizzle, and Buffy panicked, extending her hands to him. He leaned over, out of harm’s way, and yanked her out of the pool and into his arms. He wrapped them both in a towel retrieved from a nearby lounge chair—her, to calm her shivering, him, to put out the still-smoldering locks of his hair. Gonna have to trim that out.



Using the towel as a shield, he steered her back across the pool apron and into the house and the kitchen. Once inside, he tossed the towel to Buffy and patted the back of his head, assessing the damage. She wrapped the towel around her soggy clothes and waited for her shivers to subside.



She wrung as much water as she could from her shirt into the sink. “Damn vampire.”



“This really is a lovely place. I want to show you the house, and then once the sun gets lower this afternoon, we can head into town and get some food,” Spike grinned cheekily. Brushes with death always seemed to reinvigorate him. “Now that we’ve gotten all the drama aside, luv, want to see the place?”



A soggy balled-up towel to the side of the face was his answer, and he started laughing.



“Asshole!” Buffy said, starting for the stairs, and for a brief moment Spike had the sinking feeling she was heading right back to bed.



“Where you going, ducks?”



Her response had just enough annoyance in it to make Spike see the old Slayer shining through. “Well, since someone decided I needed an early-morning swim, I need to go shower.”



He bounced gleefully on his heels. “Good idea. Might want to scrub up twice, actually. Didn’t want to say anythin’ but you were starting to smell.”



The bathroom door slamming was his only response.







TBC







A/N: You can see the bed Spike almost slept in here (just cuz it’s funny): http://kidsfurnitureusa.com/cart.php?m=product_detail&p=31



A/N2: The line Spike paraphrases, “Dying’s easy, living’s hard,” is taken from “House, M.D.” (2004).

The town really was lovely, Buffy had to admit now that she had gotten a good look at more of it. Most of the perimeter seemed to be property like where they were staying, sprawling lots placed very far apart, but the center of town turned out to be a bustling little hive of dusk-time activity.

The center of town actually consisted of only two streets, Winding Water Way and Half Moon Street, named for the two rivers indicated in ‘Deux Rivieres,’ but the two streets were lined with an array of crafts stores, galleries, and specialty food stores that she found charming, if not a little anomalous for such a rural area.

After some brief hemming and hawing, they grabbed some food at a sidewalk café that boasted two menus, the Dieter’s Delight and the Good Grub. Predictably, Buffy ordered salad of some sort, and Spike got French fries smothered in cheese, chili, bacon, and jalapenos.

Buffy wrinkled her nose as she idly watched him eat, pushing her salad around her plate listlessly, eating a leaf here and there. It looked like rabbit food to Spike, but let the man who does not usually exist on plasma alone cast that stone.

He tucked into the fries with gusto, and when he caught her looking, he offered her a fry dripping in all sorts of ‘tasty glop’ (as per the description on the menu). She declined with a shake of her head and went back to her greens, finally pushing her plate away when she just couldn’t muster up any more appetite.

Spike looked at the leftover food disapprovingly, making a mental note to figure out a way to get some calories into the girl who was now looking so painfully thin. She had always edged more towards lean muscle, which was pretty much a given in her line of ‘work,’ but since her return, her clothing was hanging off her frame, looking pretty much like it probably did while still on the hangers in the closet.

“You should have some more, pet.”

She toyed with a few leaves, then dropped the fork again. “I tried; I’m just not hungry.”

Spike gave her the evil eye, debating whether to make a comment about woman and dieting.

“I’m not, okay?”

He decided to let it lie—for now—and motioned for the check, tossing a twenty on the table.

As she reached for the last sip of her soda, Buffy grumbled, “Don’t know why my weight is such a big deal. If I didn’t know better, I’d think you were trying to fatten me up to eat me.”

Spike choked on a fry in surprise, and Buffy blushed bright red at the unintended double entendre, grabbing her sweater and refusing to meet his eyes.

“You know what I meant.” She stalked down the street, cutting over the lawn of the town library on the way back to the parking lot where they had left the DeSoto, staying several steps ahead of the vampire the whole time.

“Sure do, luv!” He chortled, never able to resist the urge for some chop-busting. He lit a cigarette as he watched her attempt to put more distance between them. He found embarrassment on a woman who could kick his ass up and down the street just a little endearing.

She turned around to respond, and missed a half-buried root, hooking her foot on it and sending her pitching to the ground.

“Buffy, you okay?” He reached her in two steps, and by the time she rolled over onto her back, he could see that she was fighting tears, and her left arm sat at an odd angle from her torso. “Oh, that looks bad.”

She struggled to her feet one-handed, letting Spike hook her under the good arm to right herself. He took another look in the light from the street lamp.

“This looks dislocated, Slayer, I think you should pop over to the doctor and have him do a quick x—“

“NO!” Buffy’s answer exploded from her lips, and when he looked at her face in question, he saw something there he couldn’t place. She was suddenly rigid with… was that tension and maybe… fear? Given the set to her jaw, there was no way he’d be able to convince her to let the local doc to give her shoulder the once-over right now.

Giving up, he shrugged, helping her gently into the car. “So what do you want to do about it, luv?”

She ground her teeth; every little jostle was sending electric shocks of pain down the nerves of her arm and making her shoulder ache unbearably. “When we get back to the house, you’re popping it back into place for me.”

It wasn’t a question.

Well, that’s just fucking fantastic. It looked like he was in for a little dose of chip-induced searing pain instead of just a quiet evening with the telly.

* * *

Spike dumped the playing cards and snacks he’d bought at the convenience store on the dining room table and went to raid Sam’s private liquor stash, palming a bottle of Johnny Walker Blue before returning to join Buffy in the living room.

“This is gonna hurt a lot, pet,” he warned, tentatively approaching where she sat on the couch. He handed her the bottle, with reservations. He would have preferred not to be liquoring up the already-depressed woman, but this was going to be monumentally painful for both of them, and required a little liquid anesthetic.

She shrugged and took a giant slug of whiskey. “I know, just make it quick.” She made an adorably contorted face as the whiskey burned a path down her throat and turned her back towards him, bracing herself with both hands planted against the arm of the sofa.

Spike picked the liquor bottle up and took an extra-generous draught, gathering himself. This truly would hurt him more that it would her. The chip’s output seemed to be in direct relation towards the amount of force he attacked humans with, and the amount of force needed to reseat Buffy’s shoulder in its socket… well, he’d be lucky if it didn’t knock him unconscious.

He put one knee up on the couch, lining it up along her back to give himself leverage, then placed one hand flat between her shoulder blades, supporting her, and slowly wrapped the other hand around her left shoulder. She flinched visibly when his fingers made contact with the swollen and tender area, and he paused, reconsidering.

“Will you just freakin’ do it already?” she demanded impatiently.

He chuckled despite himself. “Bossy bint. I’ll do it when I’m damn well ready. What, does Baby like it rough or something?”

Her voice sounded both exasperated and strained, and he realized the pain must be getting to her. “Just. Do. It. NOW!”

He gritted his teeth and snapped her shoulder back towards him sharply, an audible pop and a Slayer’s whimper telling him that the joint was once again seated properly in the split second before Buffy’s head snapped back in reaction, driving itself right into his temple.

Pain shot through his skull at the impromptu head-butt, and he fell backward, fists pressed to his temples, onto the sofa, waiting for the ache to subside and his vision to clear.

Buffy slumped forward, hand on her injured arm, and caught her breath, sharp pains still firing through her arm. “Sometimes I really hate you.” The sofa cushions muffled her words slightly.

His reply was whispered so softly, she nearly missed it altogether. “And yet once again, I’m all you’ve got.”

As the pain in her shoulder subsided, she sat back up, and turned to look at Spike, who was still holding his head in his hands. Guilt pushed some of the pain aside. “Oh, Spike, your head… I’m sorry.”

He cradled his skull in his hands for several moments silently, not responding until she spoke again. “Are you okay?”

“’m fine. Just… my noggin is throbbin’, you know?”

Buffy nodded and went to the kitchen to get His ‘n Hers matching icepacks, and Spike stayed where he was for another minute.

The chip. Hadn’t fired. The chip hadn’t fired.

Oh bloody buggering fuck!

* * *

“How can you never have played poker?” he demanded, shuffling the deck with practiced ease.

Buffy set about counting out twenty-five pretzel sticks into even piles in front of each of them. “I don’t know. I used to play Crazy Eights and Go Fish with Mom when I was younger. And Dawn and I would occasionally play War. Just never really got the chance.”

The whiskey was already warming her belly nicely, and she was feeling a bit more… relaxed… at ease even. “Will you hurry up and deal? I have pretzels to win.”

The vampire narrowed his eyes slightly at her. “What’s the rush, Slayer? You got a hot date later?”

She stuck her tongue out childishly at him—yup, definitely starting to feel the alcohol—and he gave her a cheeky smile in return.

“The hands, in order of value, are high card, a pair, two pair, three of a kind, straight, flush, full house, four of a kind, straight flush, and royal flush. Got that?”

She nodded vigorously and snatched the whiskey off the table, taking another shot.

“Oi! Go easy on that! You don’t drink Johnny Blue like it’s Gatorade!”

She shivered and made a face at the taste of the liquor. “I don’t care what color Johnny is. It’s gross.”

“A, it’s damn good whiskey. And B, if you don’t like the taste of it then quit drinking it!”

“Don’t wanna. Wanna drink and play cards.”

He tilted his head and looked at her. “What say we make this more interesting?”

She squinted at him. “What do you—hey, my clothes are staying on, mister!” She pulled her neckline higher in exaggerated propriety.

Spike laughed. “Didn’t mean strip poker, Slayer. I mean a wager. In addition to the pretzels, every time someone wins three hands in a row, the other person has to tell you a secret they’ve never told anyone else, ever.”

Buffy eyed him up, running through the deal in her slightly warm and fuzzy brain. This could totally work to my advantage. She had every intention of asking him deeply personal questions when she won, and giving him crappy token answers if she lost, like the name of her imaginary friend in first grade.

Spike won the first two hands easily. Buffy was visibly trying to run through the order of the hands in her head, and couldn’t get a rhythm to her betting. When he gleefully slapped the third winning hand face-up on the table, she rolled her eyes and tossed her losing cards down, mentally running over any innocuous truth she could pacify him with.

“I’m not really a blonde.”

“Not exactly news, Slayer. I’ve seen your roots. In fact, I’m looking at ‘em now.”

She glared at him briefly, then gave him a victorious smile. “You didn’t say it had to be a good secret, just one we’ve never told anyone else!”

Okay, so she’s going to play it that way? Spike shuffled and dealt, purposefully betting into the next two hands, and then folding and letting Buffy have the win. As she triumphantly slammed the third winning hand down on the table, he leaned back in his chair slightly, appraising her silently.

“Well? I won, so make with the truthiness, mister!” She demanded.

“Ask me a question and I’ll answer it.” Shit, he should’ve thought that one through a little better. There was a dim chance Ol’ Johnny was making Spike his bitch tonight too.

Buffy made a big show of propping her head up on her hands and assessing Spike, trying to pick just the right question.

“What’s one thing that you’ve never done that you’ve always wanted to?”

He answered immediately. “Make love to a woman in the sunlight.”

That shut her up for a minute. “You’ve never… not back when you were… wait, did you—“

He cut her off. “One question per win, Slayer; anything more’s cheating.”

She huffed and took over the deal, questions still flying through her mind. If he’s never had sex in the sunlight, that must mean that he was a virgin when he was… ohhh…

She tried to picture Spike as a sweet, virginal human and failed miserably. As much as Spike talked, he had never really given her many insights into whom he had been as a man. Into William.

She had always pictured him as something of a street punk, a tough guy very much like the vampire he’d become. But every so often—and she doubted he realized this, and she’d certainly never tell him—when he was very tired or very emotional, his accent took on a more Giles-y aspect, something closer to what she thought she remembered hearing her Watcher refer to as “North London.”

Spike took another drink of the whiskey, feeling a pleasant tingling starting in his toes and working his way up. Using Buffy’s distraction, he won the next hands easily, and then pointed at her across the table. “You! Same question!”

Crap. “Could you repeat the question?” she inquired politely, buying time by taking another drink. Her limbs and muscles felt much looser, and the throb had all but disappeared in her reset shoulder.

He laughed, seeing through her. “It was your question, Slayer, but I’ll bite. What’s one thing you’ve always wanted to do but never had the opportunity?”

She chewed on her lip, weighing her possible answers, and it was just as Spike had taken a giant mouthful of liquor that the answer escaped despite her better judgment.

He continued prodding when she didn’t respond. “C’mon, out with it! Everyone’s got at least one thing they’ve been dying to try, but haven’t—“

She worried her lower lip with her teeth as she tried to think of her possible answers, and she realized that for a woman who’d done so many things that other people never would, she also had not done a lot of things that other people had. It was just as the blond vampire had taken a truly heroic mouthful of liquor that the answer escaped despite her.

“Doggy style.” The second she said it she turned fuchsia and clapped a hand over her mouth, as if trying to shove the words back in.

Spike choked, coughing the remnants of a mouthful of expensive whiskey onto the tabletop, and kept sputtering until Buffy got up and thumped him on the back.

“Thanks ever so,” he wheezed out, trying to breathe normally. Buffy sat back down with grace, trying to pretend she had just told him something innocuous, like her shoe size.

There was no way Spike was letting this go. “You mean you never—“

“No.”

“I guessed not with Angel, and that little boy your freshman year didn’t look like he had it in him, but not even with Soldier Boy?”

Buffy wished she could take it back. Or shut him up. “No. Riley was all about… not experimenting…”

It was on the tip of Spike’s tongue to ask Buffy how that was experimental, but he didn’t want to press his luck, seeing as she was already opening up to him. Didn’t want to put the cork back into that particular bottle yet.

She started to shuffle again as a way to refocus her attention and give her cheeks time to cool, and the repetitive nature of the activity seemed to settle her. They sat in silence for a couple minutes, reordering the cards.

“Do you really hate me?” Spike cursed his own big mouth for breaking the silence. And for asking a question he only really wanted one of the two possible answers to.

Buffy glanced up at him, puzzled for a moment, and then her eyes cleared when she realized to he was referring to the moment back on the sofa.

“When I said it before, no, I was just in pain.”

“And the first time, back with Angelus—“

“Yes.” The vampire’s chest tightened a little. Served him right for asking the question in the first place. “Yes, I did hate you. I hated you a lot at that moment.” Leave it to the Slayer to twist the blade. “I hated you for being able to put your Sworn Enemy thing with me aside to get Dru back. I hated you so much for putting love ahead of evil.

“I despised you for being able to do what Angel couldn’t.”

The two blonds stared at each other across the table, the weight of the confession hanging in the air, until Buffy couldn’t take the tension and popped to her feet, announcing something about needing more pretzels before scooting into the kitchen. Spike started reshuffling, and she returned, more composed, and plopped herself, slightly wobbly, back in the chair.

She followed his hands with her eyes as they danced over the deck. He was clearly a practiced card player, and the grace and ease with which he shuffled was extraordinary. She found something immensely calming about the motions, and focused on his as the cards with fluffy little cartoon kitties on the back slipped between his fingers.

“When I was fifteen, right after I was first called, and still living in L.A…”

Spike ceased his shuffle, sensing import to Buffy’s words, but the loss of the motion seemed to make her lose her nerve, and as she struggled to find her words, he resumed the gentle movement.

Her courage returned, and she continued, “I was out one night in the cemetery, fighting this fledge, and I wasn’t very good yet. You know, I had all the speed and the strength and the blah-bliddy-blah that you get as a Slayer, but no idea how to harness it, you know? So I was fighting this vamp, and I got tossed over a tombstone, and next thing I know, my arm’s all… making with the broken. So I manage to stake him, run back home, and Dad takes one look at my arm and drives me to the ER.”

The words were virtually flooding from the blonde’s lips by now. “So we get to the ER, and the doctor takes one look at it and knows that it’s broken, but they still have to do an x-ray, you know, to make sure it’s a clean break and all that?”

She paused and the vampire nodded. He didn’t know from squat about x-rays, but agreeing seemed reasonable.

“So they take an x-ray of my arm, my whole arm, and they find two other partially healed fractures from other slaying incidents. One I didn’t even know about. And a whole bunch of bruises and stuff. Anyway, so apparently, it’s protocol when you get a child in that’s… I mean, when there are unexplained bruises and fractures…”

Spike’s heart sank as he got as a feeling of dread rose in him. He thought he knew where this story was going, and it was nowhere good. “Go ahead, luv,” he said softly. “’S’okay.”

“So they separated me from my dad, put us in different rooms, just kept asking me the same questions over and over. Who did this to you? Is somebody hurting you? You know it’s all right to tell us. We can protect you…” Her voice trailed off as she choked back tears.

Spike wanted to reach for her, comfort her, but he didn’t know if that would break this… whatever it was that was prompting Buffy to talk. So he kept shuffling the cards slowly, the sight and sound easing her further.

“I was terrified. They had three people crammed into this little tiny exam room with me, and they wouldn’t let me see him, and I started crying because I didn’t know what was going on, and they wouldn’t answer my questions as to what they were doing, and so I just stopped talking. And since I wouldn’t talk at all, they ended up calling the child welfare people… cut to three hours later, after they finally let me call my mom…”

Spike felt rage. Pure rage. Hunt-these-people-down-six-years-later-and-make-them-eat-their-own-spleens rage.

Buffy’s voice become clearer again, as she realized she did want to finish finally telling this story to someone.

“So anyway, Mom comes down to the ER, all righteous indignation, and makes an ugly enough scene and threatens some legal-type stuff if they, and I quote ‘Don’t stop scaring my little girl over some goddamn old cheerleading injuries.’ So they end up letting me go home with them after all these vague ‘call us if you ever need anything; your mom and dad don’t need to know’-type warnings and hotline numbers. Dad didn’t speak to me for two days after that, and Mom… she didn’t know what to think.” She stuffed a couple of pretzels in her mouth for emphasis. “I think that was the beginning of the real end for them.”

Spike didn’t know what to say, and so stuck with silence, companionably noshing on a couple pretzels from his own stack.

They played a couple more hands, Spike winning easily, as he noticed the Slayer’s eyes starting to droop. “C’mon, luv, why don’t we call it a night?”

Buffy squinted at him, the liquor fogging her vision just a tad. “But I was just about to stage my big comeback,” she protested.

He chuckled. “It’s late, you’re a little drunk, and we’ve eaten most of the betting chips. C’mon, bedtime.”

Buffy grumbled but got to her feet, rolling her neck and wincing slightly when her shoulder ached with the motion. “All right, but I demand a rematch at some future time of my choosing.”

She shuffled off towards the stairs, and Spike extinguished the lights, following her up the staircase.

He paused at the top, not knowing where she expected him to sleep tonight. He stood awkwardly in the hallway for a for a few minutes, unsure if he should presume to be sharing the bed with her tonight, or if he should head back to the little stupid racecar, or—

Buffy reappeared in the hallway, teeth brushed, and closed her hand around his wrist, leading him into the enormous master bed beside her, folding herself delicately up against him. Decision made.

As he lay there, waiting for sleep to claim him, arm wrapped lightly around her slender waist, he could almost believe that this was real.

Almost.



TBC