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I paid the cab driver and got out. I grabbed my suitcases and stared appraisingly at the enormous hotel in front of me. The previous Watcher’s Council had spirited lots of money away in safety deposit boxes all over the world and I was thankful in that moment. When I had made the reservations, I made sure the room was big enough to really live in for a few weeks if necessary. It had a living room separate from the bedroom. I had never stayed in a place like this. There was even twenty our hour room service. I went in and got my key. My room was on the eighth floor. Fancy, eh?

I wasted some time hanging up some of my clothes in the closet of my room. I had seen the other council plane landed only a few minutes ahead of mine. I knew I had taken the faster jet, but I had honestly thought they would be here well before me. I looked over the clothes that were left lying on my bed. I wanted to change and fix myself up before seeing Spike. I was so nervous. Deciding on an outfit would at least give me something to think about rather than what I was going to say to Spike when I saw him.

I pulled on my new black leather pants. They were low cut and tight, but I could still kick demon ass in them, I had tried. Of course, they also showcased my now prominent hipbones, but I had been eating more lately, maybe I would regain a less skeletal shape. Next came my recently favorite shirt. I bought it a few days after getting to London thinking that Spike would have liked it. It was a tight black shirt that came to an inch or two above my belly button. In red letters across my chest it said ‘Sex Pistols’ and there was a tear in the cap sleeve where a vampire had tried to bite me through it last week. Very posh. I laced up my boots and cast an appraising eye over myself in the bathroom mirror. I kinda looked like a blonde version of Faith. I remembered back to when she came to help us out the last time at the Hellmouth. She asked if I was the evil Slayer and if she was the good one now. I found myself wondering if she was wearing pastels at that moment. I laughed to myself as I grabbed my jacket and my room key and exited into the night.

“Fred, I’m in the lobby. Where am I supposed to go?”

“I’ll be right there to get you. I’m in Angel’s office for a meeting, but we’re all waiting on Angel and Spike to get here anyway.” I could hear her walking. “Oh, there they are, I guess the meeting will be starting in a minute.”

I heard someone speak to Fred in a familiar British accent. My heart leapt into my throat. “Hey, Science girl. Who ya talkin’ to? Don’t we have a bloody assembly?”

“I’ll be right back. Go ahead and start without me,” came her easy reply. To me she said, “Okay, I’m in the elevator. Did you hear him?”

“Hearing him makes it much more real,” I admitted quietly.

The elevator door opened and I saw my new found friend for the first time in person. Our eyes locked as we both hung up our cell phones. I smiled at her and waved. She ran straight at me and before I could react, she had wrapped me into a hug. After getting over my initial shock, I hugged her back. She reminded me so much of Willow, all slender and frail and yet smarter than most people I would ever meet.
We clamored into the elevator and she hit a button. Then she turned to me.

“You look different than I thought you would,” she said.

I smirked at her. “Didn’t think I’d look so haggard?”

“No, I thought you would be taller.”

My smirk softened into a real smile. “Yeah, you’d think a vampire Slayer would be someone important, noticeably. But we’re just girls.”

“Sometimes, I forget that,” Fred whispered.

“Lucky you,” I whispered. Then I felt something familiar and sorely missed. It was an unmistakable sensation I never thought I would experience again. “My god, I can feel him.”

“What?” Fred’s confusion was plain on her face.

“As a Slayer, I can feel when vampires are nearby. It’s like a defense mechanism. Like Spidey sense. I feel it kinda like a tingle at the base of my skull. Not Spike though. I could tell he was unusual the first time we met. Spike has always felt different to me,” I explained.

“What does he feel like?” Fred asked in a hushed voice.

“A shiver down my spine.”

We exited the elevator and I followed Fred across a large lobby until we stopped in front of a set of double doors. “This is the Angel’s office. I need to be in the meeting in here,” she explained. She gestured to a door across the lobby. “That’s Wesley’s office. If you want you can hang out in there and I can come get you when the meeting over. Angel’s secretary went home for the day, so I you want coffee or something, you’ll have to wait fend for yourself. Of course, you are more than welcome to come in here. It sounds like Angel and Spike just got inside.”

“I’m just going to listen for a few minutes,” I said.

She nodded and went inside. I stood with my ear to the doors to listen to the events unfolding inside. I heard Spike say, “Nibblet! And…. oh, for the love of…”

Then I heard a male voice and bit my tongue to suppress a giggle.

“Spike? It's you. It's really you! My therapist thought I was holding onto false hope, but... I knew you'd come back.” I clapped a hand over my mouth to help keep silent and cracked the double doors just enough to peak in. “You're like... you're like Gandalf the White, resurrected from the pit of the Balrog, more beautiful than ever.” I watched Spike being hugged by the smaller man. “Oh... he's alive, Frodo. He's alive.”

I heard Angel ask derisively, “You two know each other?” I couldn’t see him, Spike was standing in the way, but I’d wager he was smirking.

“Uh, yeah. Um... We—we saved the world together. I mean, Buffy helped, but... it was mostly us,” the other man said.

The timing was impeccable and I just couldn’t resist. I threw open the doors and took three commanding steps into the room. I faced the group, folded my arms across my chest, kicked out my hip and said, “Now, in all fairness, I think Spike saved the world and the rest of us helped. Except you. You really didn’t help. You were, like, the precursor of the whole thing anyway.” All the shocked eyes in the room turned to me. Fred was stifling a laugh with her hand. I nodded to the two watchers, one in front of Spike and the other seated at the table. “Andrew, Miss Summers,” I said with a smile.

Dawn smiled warmly at me and waved. “Hi Buffy!”

My eyes fell on Spike, who stood dumbfounded. His eyes lit up as I smiled shyly at him.

“Hello, cutie,” he said softly.





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