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She was laying on her side hugging her pillow to her chest and trying to sleep when he came to her.

She didn’t feel the bed sink beneath his weight as he joined her there. Her first clue that she was no longer alone had been his familiar fingers tracing the bare expanse of her lightly tanned shoulder before his hand curled around her upper arm as he moved to kiss the nape of her neck with his cool lips.

“Spike,” she sighed with all the absolute rapture she felt at being with him again.

“I’m here, luv,” he assured her as his hand slid down her arm to move over her hip and upper thigh. “Didn’t really think I’d ever leave you, did you?”

“I was so afraid you wouldn’t get back to me,” her eyes grew moist and she pressed her face into the pillow she held to keep the tears from falling.

His arms came around her tightly and his lips kissed their way from the back of her neck to her waiting lips.

“Nothing,” he said between kisses, “nothing will ever keep me from getting to you again.”

“I love you so much,” she whispered against his lips. “You have to believe me this time, Spike, I love you so much.”

“I know you do, luv. I’ve always known just like you’ve always known I love you right back,” his words were so soft and gentle even as his hands began moving harder over her body.

“I need you, Spike,” her body started grinding urgently into his hands and touch. “I’m so empty without you. So incomplete,” she rolled onto her back and pulled his body between her legs and over her. “Fill me again,” she begged. “Please, Spike, make me whole again.”

“Anything,” he whispered into her ear as he joined their starving bodies together, “anything you need, luv, I will always give it to you.”

“I just need you,” she wrapped her legs around his gently thrusting hips and slid one hand into his bleached blonde hair as the other lovingly traced his cheekbones and soft lips. “I need you so much, Spike.”

As she said those words his beautiful blue eyes opened wide and went away from hers, turning to stare intently at something just beyond her that she could not see.

“No,” she sobbed as she recognized this moment all too well, “Spike don’t leave me again.”

But it was happening and her tears and pleading did nothing to stop it.

“I’ll always love you, Buffy,” he said as his body began to burn and dissolve into ash above her.

Her grasping fingers went through his image as her mind wanted so badly to stay in the dream as she screamed out his name.

Buffy sprang upright in her bed with tears streaming down her face and both her hands outstretched in their attempt to pull him back to her – to hold him a little longer.

Staring at those hands she pulled the left one in and cradled it against her heart. She still felt the heat there from having held his burning hand before he made her leave to save her life. She still remembered the way that hand had begun to crumble away in hers as she didn’t want to leave without him – didn’t ever want to let go of him again.

She had let go, though, and she’d have to live with that the rest of her life.

~*~*~

Standing outside her sister’s room in the hotel suite they were staying in while in Germany, Dawn wondered as she did every night since they’d left the ruins of Sunnydale if she should go in there and try to offer some kind of comfort.

As always, though, she just stood there and listened to Buffy sob until her voice broke over Spike’s name, which was said often and with such longing during these nightly sessions.

Two months, Dawn thought as she turned to go back to her own bedroom.

For two months they had been traveling the globe to help all the new ‘slayers’ in the world adjust to the powers they now had thanks to Willow’s spell and while Buffy was “fine” during the day, every night she cried out for Spike.

Checking the alarm clock on her bedside table she saw it was after 2 am and did a quick calculation to figure out the time in Los Angeles.

She was pretty sure it would be about 5 pm, so she picked up the telephone and dialed the long series of numbers that would connect her to Willow’s apartment in LA.

“Hello?” asked a female voice after two rings.

“Hi, Kennedy, is Willow there?”

“Sure, let me go get her,” Willow’s lover said before apparently putting the receiver down and going in search of the redhead.

“Hey, Dawnie,” the Wiccan said a moment later when she came to the phone. “What are you doing calling this late? It’s gotta be like tomorrow there.”

“That’s kinda why I’m calling,” Dawn sighed. “She’s getting worse.”

“Still with the crying all night?” Willow asked with worry in her voice.

“I can’t keep going through this night after night, Will. She talks to him. Every night, she talks to him like he’s there then she wakes up screaming and crying for him and I just can’t keep seeing her like this,” the teenager choked out with a sob.

“Dawnie, I know you hate hearing this, but maybe you shouldn’t be traveling with her. Come back to California and stay with me or Xander or even your father.”

“The last thing she needs right now is for me to leave her too,” Dawn said with a quiet sniffle. “And I need to be with her.”

“Do you want me to try talking to her?”

“I do and I don’t. Every day she acts like it doesn’t happen and I still can’t bring myself to let her know that I hear her and know what she’s doing. If you talk to her she’ll know I know and I talked to you instead of talking to her and it’ll be a whole bunch of bad feelings.”

“Has Giles noticed anything?”

“Buffy kinda broke us off from him,” Dawn confessed while biting her lower lip.

“What? What do you mean ‘broke you off from him,’” Willow asked worriedly.

“She stills doesn’t trust him after what he tried to do to Spike. It got bad them trying to work together all friendly and like it used to be so they decided it would be better for her to work here and him to work somewhere else to get this job done faster.”

“Where is he?”

“He finished up Japan and Southeast Asia then went back to his place in England,” Dawn said, “I think.”

“Wow and you guys are still in Europe?”

“We’re taking our time to connect with these girls so they aren’t all freaked out by the whole superpowers to protect humanity from the undead and demons thing,” Dawn defended.

“Oh-kay,” the woman on the other end said with a little laugh. “Let me do a quick locator on him.”

Just like that Willow was off leaving Dawn sitting there twiddling her thumbs while she worked a quick mojo to find out where Buffy’s former watcher was.

“He’s not at his apartment, he’s in Westbury,” Willow said a few minutes later as she returned to the phone.

“Isn’t that where - ”

“The coven, yeah, but I don’t think there’s much of them left after the First,” the witch interrupted. “It looks like that’s where he’s set up shop for now, though, and I think you should go to him there.”

“Why? And how am I supposed to convince Buffy?”

“Why because it sounds like you need him and as for the how tell Buffy just that. That you think you should be with Giles right now. You both should be with Giles right now.”

~*~*~

With a scalding hot shower to revive her skin and icy cold water splashed over her face to try and dull the obvious signs of her sobfest Buffy was ready to put on her mask and face the day.

She purposefully avoided her reflection in the mirror, knowing that what she saw would prove the mask a lie and not a very good one at that.

“I bring you highly caffeinated and super hot coffee,” Dawn said cheerfully as she entered the bedroom moments after Buffy returned to it from her shower.

“Thanks,” Buffy gave her sister a slight smile and took the mug she was offering. “You’re all perky,” she observed between sips of the hot liquid. “You been drinking this stuff, too?”

“No, no coffee for Dawn,” her sister smiled then grew all serious and a bit nervous. “I’m attempting to gain brownie points.”

“What are you after?” Buffy sat down on the bed and waved her sibling to do the same.

“I want us to go to England and be with Giles.

“That’s direct and unexpected,” the slayer said with a questioning look.

“This flitting around the world that we’re doing it’s been really cool and fun, but it’s old and I’m tired and I miss the almost like a family vibe we had when Giles was with us so I wanna go to England and be with him,” the teenager confessed with her head dropped forward so her long brown hair covered her face.

“Oh,” Buffy blinked repeatedly and swallowed the hurt her sister’s words caused her.

“And it’s more than that,” Dawn took a steadying breath and met her sister’s gaze head on. “I hear. I’ve heard you every night since Spike … saved the world and I can’t take it anymore. You’re hurting so much and it’s hurting me so much not being able to do anything to help you and I know how being with Giles only reminds you of how he tried to kill Spike, but he was your watcher and someone you loved and trusted and he’s the only one who can help you right now and we need to be with him.”

Gulping down the contents of her mug, Buffy rose and walked slowly to the window in her room. As she stared out over the city – she couldn’t even remember where they were this week – she struggled with the pain any mention of Spike sent through her and the guilt she felt for now knowing that she hadn’t been at all effective in hiding that pain.

“Why didn’t you tell me sooner?” she asked with her voice breaking over the words as she looked at her sister.

“The first night I knew I couldn’t even try to comfort you and then the next morning you were all fine and dandy it never happened and that’s just how it kept going every night and every day and I just didn’t know what to say,” Dawn looked at her with watery eyes. “I miss him, too, more than I thought I would and it all hurts so much, Buffy. I wanna go home and Giles is the closest thing we have to that now.”

“I’ll make the arrangements you start packing.”





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