Chapter 15:  Three Excellent Questions

“I warn you,” Andrew intoned, his nostrils red and flaring. “Consider your next move very, very carefully.  'Tis a matter of life and death.”

A clawed, quivering hand angled slowly through the darkness. Andrew drew in a sharp breath as he watched the misshapen paw swivel in mid-air, then plummet towards the black matrix betwixt them. His eyes widened anxiously as it peeled back a slender tile, twisted it slowly skyward.

A chill hush descended over the room. Melvin tapped a finger impatiently.

Flashing a sly grin, Andrew suddenly flipped over a card: a moon-walking dinosaur skeleton wearing a single, silver glove. Without missing a beat, he topped the beast with a “Famous Defense” Power Keeper card. Melvin roared a stream of profanities, the ghastly tangle of heads snapping and twitching in unison.  “Lucifer’s sweet ass hole!” he roared.

“Hey, hey, hey,” Andrew sputtered, slashing a finger across his throat. “Ix-nay on the Elling-yay, mister.”

“Aww c’mon... seriously, where the heck did that thing come from?”

“What did we just talk about? M-O-M, remember?”

“Uhhhhh...” The demon furrowed an enormous brow. “Manage... our minuses?”

Andrew’s eyes narrowed to slits. “Yes, young Padawan. Manage. Our. Minuses. A game of cunning and imagination, ‘Battle Monsters’ is.” He fanned his deck out masterfully across the dining table. “All the top tournament players keep their weakest monsters and their most potent spells in reserve, patiently waiting for the moment when they can be combined for maximum bad-ass-ed-ness. In this case, all my Wacko Jacko-saur needed was a defensive spell strong enough to nullify the powers of your Hanging Judge.”

“But, what if I used my Infinite Dragnet of Doom?”

“An interesting proposition... but, no. No, I would have merely countered with my Mindless Legions enhancement and it’d be bye-bye Judgie-boy.” Andrew tapped his chin thoughtfully. “But this... all this is academic. You must unlearn what you have learned.”

“Yeah, yeah, I know. I’m trying but...”

“No!  Do, or do not. There is no try.”

“Uhhhhh...”

Andrew felt a surge of emotion ripple through him. “Luminous beings are we! Not this crude matter.” He patted one of the demon’s slimy tendrils.  Instantly regretted it.

Melvin snorted at him. “Dude, how come you talk like that? You get dropped on your head or something?”

“Huh? Oh, that. That’s nothing, nothing. Just a little something I picked up from my travels.  In the Orient.”

Melvin shrugged and went back to shuffling the sad remnants of his deck. “Man, they’ve been in there for a long time, huh,” he muttered. “Maybe you should check on them. They seemed kinda... I dunno. Mad.”

Andrew sighed wistfully.  “Oh silly, silly satanic hellspawn.  I know it may appear that way to the casual observer.”  He stood, heart swelling with pride as he gazed across the access road towards the rundown army bedroom-thingee they’d been so gently advised to vacate.  “Yet, beyond those doors are gathered four of the greatest champions the world has ever known.”

Melvin yawned and blinked wearily at the window. “Uh-huh. Yeah, you keep saying that... ”

“Oh, they may ‘quarrel’ from time to time,” Andrew continued, his  voice suddenly ripe with a Shakespearian swagger. “But in the end they will always stand united against the hideous forces of darkness... um, no offense... and emerge from the battlefield hand-in-glorious-hand, forged together in the bonds of duty, friendship and flawless, immortal, storybook love.”

“Wow. Seriously?”

“Oh yes, my oily ally” Andrew replied, clutching his fist dramatically. “In fact, I suspect they have already set aside their petty differences, and are even now in the midst of plotting the cunning stratagem that will bring our enemies to their very knees...”

***

“YOU! Are UN! BELIEVABLE!”  The Slayer was actually shivering with rage, now. Her eyes bounced around the room, unconsciously searching for something old and precious to destroy.

“I’m unbelievable?” Giles replied, his own voice leaping several decibels. “Well, that’s BLOODY RICH! Considering the PRESENT, BLOODY COMPANY!” He jabbed a finger at Spike, who had been reclining silently in the shade of a nearby bunk for the last ten minutes.

Buffy pounced, snarling like a jungle cat. Xander intercepted her at the halfway mark, offering his empty palms as a shield. “Stop,” he managed to say.

“Don’t make me hurt you, Xander!”

“Oh, what?!  So you can hurt him instead?!" he cried.  "Don’t you think you’ve done enough of THAT already!” It stalled her momentarily, and Xander seemed to sense the opening.  “Besides. Giles has a little bit of a point, here, right? I mean how do we even know he is who he says he is?”

“He is who I say he is. That should be good enough.”

The vampire's voice came creaking out of the darkness. “Any chance I get a say in all this?” he whispered.

Rupert slammed a table with his fist, freshly enraged. “You’re DAMN RIGHT you do! And you had better start saying it fast if you enjoy sleeping with your eyes closed, love.”

“Keep talking like that,” Buffy said, “and I’ll break your jaw.”

Giles seemed to realize he was riding a very fine edge, backed off a step. “Buffy,” he said, forcing an air of rationality into his voice. “Look, you’ve obviously been through quite a bit of... that is, I’m only trying to...”

She cut him off, cackling. “No, no, I get it, now!  You’re only trying to protect me, right?  Why, how incredibly noble of you, Giles!  Guess that’s why you never mentioned Kennedy’s Bitch Army, right?  Or Willow’s little whatever-the-hell-she’s-doing!  Or HIM!”  The last word practically exploded off her lips, shattering into a hurricane of unsettling echoes.

A fresh flame shot up in the Watcher’s eyes. “I don’t know how many times I have to say it, Buffy, but I did not know about HIM!”

Xander threw up his arms.  “Okay stop, everybody, STOP!”  Scowling, he stormed the vampire’s makeshift nest. “SPIKE!  WHEN?!  WHAT?!  WHEN?!”

An immense hush swept over the room. Buffy shot Spike a glassy look as he rolled slowly upright in bed, groaning from the effort. His drawn, white features pierced the shadows like a phantom as he spoke.  “Right.  Well, if y’want the abridged version...” He started counting off fingers. “Saved the bloody world.  Died.  Got brought back. Saved the bloody world.”  Ignoring everyone’s goggling stares, he clapped his hands once and sank back into the darkness.

“Um,” said Xander. “Think we might need a bit more detail there, bub.”

“Agreed,” added Giles sharply.  “You’ll forgive me for saying so, but that sounds like a load of utter...”

“Giles,” Buffy snarled.  Steeling herself, she took a step towards the bunk.  She could feel his eyes track her approach, and tried to meet them softly.  “Spike,” she said, so low that only he could possibly hear. “Can’t you just tell me what happened?”

“What’s the bloody difference?”

She frowned. “There isn’t any ‘bloody difference’.   I’m not… I just...”  He was only a few yards away.  She could make out one of the gloved hands pawing at the hole in his breastplate, nursing a wound there.  “Did you really die?”

There was a long silence. “Yeah.  Yeah, I died.”

Somewhere behind her, she heard Giles groan.  She ignored him this time, took another tentative step forward.  “Well, I mean.  How long have you been aliv... back.   How long have you been... back?”

She waited.  The vampire emitted a low, bitter laugh.

“Pointless,” sniffed Giles. “It’s pointless. He’s never going to tell us. Even if he is William the Bloody...”

“Giles," she said. "SHUT! UP!” Spike was up and moving even before she could finish that last word. Displaying a burst of preternatural speed, he made a beeline for the front doors, blew them wide with a boot. “Hey!  Where are you going?”

“To sleep. Can’t catch a wink with you barmy hens clucking about.” He paused with his hand on the latch and shot Buffy a venomous stare. “Mind you don’t follow me, love.”

Then he was gone, the door almost slamming off its hinges in his wake. The remaining trio froze momentarily, each lost in his own heavy orbit.  Buffy smeared a hand across freshly damp cheeks, snorted back a sob.  Xander sat heavily on a trunk, picked a staring contest with the floor.  Giles seemed content to just play dead. He didn’t move a muscle.

“You have no right to treat him that way,” Buffy finally said, to no one in particular.

“He is dead.  Remember?  Dust.  You said so yourself.”

“So was I, once.”

“That was different, and you know it.”

“I know it’s him.  I can feel it.”

“Why?  Because you shagged him?”

That one stopped her cold. She studied the Watcher’s weathered face for a moment.  Hit the rewind button.  Made sure she’d heard right.  “Excuse me?”

“I’m through playing this game with you, Buffy,” the Watcher groused.  “You’re an adult now.  High time you put away your toys and started growing up, yes?”

She felt something hot slither to life in the pit of her stomach.  “Toys,” she repeated thoughtfully.

Rupert Giles crossed his arms and sniffed, suddenly old-womanish.  “Fine.  Perhaps it was slightly more at the end, but whatever that was is gone, now.  And for all we know, that thing out there is some sort of trap.”

“Giles,” Xander sighed.  “C’mon, don’t do this, man.  Please.”

“I mean, you’re not exactly a neutral party in this, Buffy,” Giles continued.  “Are you?”

“Neutral party,” Buffy murmured, nodding her head in amazement.  She crept closer, prompting Xander to launch into his ridiculous Slayer keep-away routine again.

“And I’m sorry, but I’m not prepared to let your guilty conscience get us all killed.”  The Watcher’s old arrogance had returned full flush.  He was standing arrow-straight.   For the first time in a decade, he seemed to tower over her.

“Why are you like this?” she whispered softly. “He saved all of us.”

“Mmm.  Yes.  Quite accidentally, as I recall...”

“He has a soul.”

“So did Hitler!”

It was her turn to pour on the super-speed this time, feet barely grazing the floor as she closed the gap.  In an instant she had the Watcher pinned to the wall, hands scrambling dangerously close to his jugular.  Xander pounced, struggled frantically to peel her off.

“Andrew,” Giles gasped finally.  “Andrew knew he was back... told me... in the castle...”  The Watcher stared blankly as she released her grip, his face hardening into an unreadable mask.

“Andrew,” she repeated, feeling oddly shaken by the notion.  “That’s a lie. He wouldn’t...”  She glanced at Xander, but he was no help at all.  Her old friend seemed more exhausted then anything else.  And she caught a twinge of something darker there.

Was it jealousy?

“Acta est fabula,” chirped a distant metallic voice. “Plaudite!”

***

Buffy padded quietly down the trail, her bare feet smarting on bits of rock as she went.  Silhouettes of mountains loomed in the distance, carving jagged black heartbeats through a firmament of stars.

It hadn’t taken much squeezing to get the full story.  Truth be told, Andrew seemed relieved and a little thrilled to finally tell it, despite the somewhat less-than-amused demeanor of his audience.  They had listened in stunned silence as he recounted Angel’s version of the events, how the amulet had arrived by mail at Wolfram & Hart headquarters and squirted out a familiar vampire in non-corporeal form.

Some of the tale had been wrenching, and Buffy had shielded her eyes when Andrew spoke of the vampire’s severed hands.  Other parts were just plain weird.  She had the feeling that Andrew was purposefully leaving things out, or not explaining them the right way, or something. She let it all pass. He seemed nervous enough, and there was a tenderness in the telling that made it sound a lot like truth.

Eventually, Giles began to fill in the blanks from the Council’s perspective - however lame and incomplete that seemed to be.  Still, Buffy listened intently, taking care to remember the Englishman’s recent flexibility with the facts.  His explanation of the ‘Senior Partners’, for instance, wasn’t the least bit logical, nor was his threadbare account of the Circle of the Black Thorn.  The info-overload was somewhat dizzying.  The same names kept popping up over and over.  Some were familiar, others not so much.  There had been casualties - Cordy and Wes, and someone named Charles Gunn.

There were lots of dead bad guys, too.  He rattled their names off like a grocery list, but none of them rung any bells. There was a lawyer named McDonald who’d left Wolfram & Hart for a time, and had offered the Watcher’s Council certain mysterious services during his absence.  There was something called a ‘Shanshu’ that Rupert Giles was either unable or unwilling to explain.  And, of course, there was an earthquake in L.A. - the Big One, the one that made all the news.  Her heart sank when she heard it mentioned again. She remembered the brief, strange call the evening after, remembered that tone in Angel’s voice when he said everything was “okay” that said ‘Everything is the exact, polar opposite of okay.’  She had almost gone to him, then. Almost.

In the end, the details hardly seemed to matter. There was a prophecy. There was an apocalypse. There was a fight.

Wasn’t there always?

The Watcher’s tale stopped there. Whatever kind of sources he had in L.A. apparently hadn’t survived to tell the rest.  He’d looked directly at her then, his eyes threatening tears.  He swore once again that he didn’t know, and promised he wouldn’t have told her if he did.  She thought it was very British of him.

Andrew’s small voice was barely audible when she’d stood to leave.  “I felt so bad,” he whimpered.  “And it never stopped, Buffy. The feeling bad part. But I promised...”

Now, she felt miraculously small and delicate moving through the rough Romanian landscape. Her breath shot out in pinched white puffs as she scouted the rim for signs of the vampire. Her mind swam with memories and vague, unfinished stories.

Too much to process. Always had been. Kinda why she’d left in the first place.  As the One and Only Slayer, she’d always taken more of a point-and-click approach to the job: Bad Guy come. Slayer fight Bad Guy.  Bye-Bye Bad Guy.   The Awakening had changed that little math problem forever.  The Chosen Ones hailed from all walks of life, all backgrounds. They spoke dozens of languages, formed scores of nasty little cliques and subcultures.  Voted on stuff.  It was a lot like she remembered high school being, and it wasn’t long before Buffy Summers began to feel like an outsider all over again.

Of course, they would’ve never said so to her face.  The Legend of Buffy Summers loomed large over Faith’s army, like a shorter, blonder Mount Rushmore.  But it became increasingly clear that the girls were on their own adventure, now, and it was very different than the one of the problem child who burned down a school, and her band of misfit geeks.

Rome had helped a little. Those first months at the villa introduced her to a new kind of warmth, the countryside weaving its soft spell on her. The evenings had been particularly nice; the two sisters carousing in the quiet, rustic parlor, Dawn practicing her Italian and Buffy practicing her wine.  Following an old, uniquely European custom, she’d gradually learned how to exchange happiness for comfort.  Before long, eating had become as important as breathing, and whenever the two would go out dress-hunting, she’d quietly revel in having plumped up a pleasant size or two.

But, soon enough, even the shopping became a dreary chore.  What had begun as mad, giggling raids on the Via Borgognona eventually cooled to a steady, selective drumbeat of acquisition. Catalog stuff. Web stuff.  Before long, their home was piled high with the finest silverware, the most luxurious fabrics, the French-est designs. Weeks flew by, the days blended. Little by little the Summers sisters began to inhabit their strange new lives, and Buffy rarely felt anything more or less than content.

Then one sunny afternoon, in the sixth month of her self-imposed exile, everything changed forever. She had begun to remember.

It all started innocently enough. They’d been picking through a cramped boutique on the Piazza di Spagna, searching for the perfect espresso machine.  The girl had fallen in love with the bitter black bean during her downtown boy-hunting excursions, and she had a birthday coming up.  As Dawn perused a line of matching drinkware, Buffy tried to practice her butchery of the Italian language with a cute store clerk.  While they chatted, he’d made a passing remark about Buffy’s lovely young companion, and asked for her name.

She’d stared at the girl for what felt like an eternity. And didn’t have a clue.

Over the next few weeks, the memories returned: slowly at first, then in red, raging tides. It was Hemery that had spoiled it, really. She had kept trying to place her sister in her life back then, recounting the days she had strolled the school’s wide, white hallways. But the piece named “Dawn” simply would not fit into the puzzle of L.A.

She’d remembered one blazing September afternoon in particular, how her blouse stuck to her still annoyingly flat chest.  How she had squatted on the curbside with a frizzy-haired brat named Halley Winterbottom, choking on her first-and-last-ever joint.  There were no such things as monsters or destinies that afternoon. They were just a couple of California teens, swapping hormone-drenched gripes about how sucky it was being an “only child.”  For whatever reason, the memory of that afternoon struck hard in her and refused to let go.  Birthday parties arrived next; then Christmases, and Fourths of July, and a thousand lame family dinners.  By the time the real Sunnydale had reappeared on her radar, the monks’ spell was long broken.  The Key had been unmasked, once and for all.

She had tried to ignore it, at first.  Pretended it was a stupid detail, that it didn’t matter, anyway.  After all, she’d known the nature of her sister’s “birth” for a long time.  But it was useless.  Nothing had changed, and everything had.  Their evenings together suddenly seemed cooler, the nineteen-year-old’s scattered ramblings somewhat less than adorable.  Yes, the girl was still her blood. But Elizabeth Summers didn’t have a sister anymore.

She never told Dawn about it.  Instead, Buffy tried to outrun her life, dodge her own shadows.  More wine. More food.  More shoes.  More more, and faster.   She started bleeding lira like a Hilton sister on a Saturday night, and drinking like one too.  A liter of Chardonnay suddenly became the ultimate hangover cure, and it wasn’t long before lines of mysterious white powder started appearing on CD jewel cases and makeup mirrors scattered throughout the villa.

Then one night in a disco on the Via Blanco, a short, neckless man named Orto introduced her to the Dragon, taught her to chase it in folds of crumpled tinfoil.  The sensation had been nothing short of miraculous, the closest thing to heaven she had tasted since her death.  One kiss and the Slayer surrendered to the drug.  She had chased it relentlessly, after that.  And the Dragon, of course, chased her back.

If Dawn had any opinions about her sister’s murky new hobbies, she’d kept them to herself.  She opted to become a ghost, instead, and vanished for days at a time.  Buffy hardly noticed, barely cared.  Everything went gently downhill from there.  The numbness was a blessing - a freedom she’d rarely been afforded in her youth.

It was also horrifying to The Key, she realized, a reminder of bad old days she’d thought were long past. Soon, their heart-to-hearts dissolved into a sullen game of midnight phone tag.  Then one morning, there was a short note stuck to the fridge, a set of keys on the dresser. Silence.

Yes, it hurt.  But only barely, like a memory of pain.  And for that, there were dragons and wine.

And him.

The Immortal had outlived whole empires, floating glacially across an ocean of the dead. His curse, she’d eventually learn, was less magical than it was biological, a bizarre hiccup of nature. Yet, there was a sort of wonderous stillness within him, and it drew her as easily as the drug.  Down through the centuries, everything had become insignificant to him, punchlines to an old joke that only he knew how to tell.  Art and politics, war and poetry, love and hatred and suffering and redemption - all the aspirations that had driven human hearts for ten thousand years blew apart like sand on his lips.  She would listen for hours at a stretch, his deep, soothing voice reminding her that a human life was a short, meaningless string of moments between eternities.  Nothing more or less.   It had seemed like a lovely idea, at the time.

“Choose to spend them as you like,” he’d say, stroking her long blonde locks. “If with me, so much the better. I’ll enjoy them for as long as they last. Or, you could spend them chasing Dragons. Or slaying them, if you’d prefer. A million years will pass, regardless. And a million more after that.”

She had found something so gratifying about his world, a place where pain became futile, love impossible. In the course of his unimaginably long life, the Immortal had lost too much to comprehend what loss meant anymore. Given all the time in the world, time eventually ceased to exist for him, with each new moment becoming indistinguishable from the last. So he’d turned his attention to borrowing the moments of others, instead, trying to perfect them somehow. He was like a vampire in that way, if in no other. Time was like blood to him, and at that point in her life, Buffy possessed very little else.

No, she hadn’t loved him. The Dragon - ever the jealous boyfriend - made certain of that. But she admired him like no other creature, longed for the clarity of his old, terrible wisdom. She imagined an entire life spent slowly dying in his arms. There had been a strange sort of freedom about this image: releasing her whole broken existence into the hands of a gentle, undemanding God, watching her life empty out like water into the ocean.

Then one evening, it was over.  He was gone from her life as quickly as he’d appeared.  She’d been warned it would likely happen like that, instantly and in the most mundane way possible.  In this case, it had been in the middle of supper on the Via Cortello.  The Immortal had been recounting a rakishly funny story about a trip to Ethiopia in 1367, when he, suddenly and politely, excused himself from the table.  The blade was sharp.  Simply tucked his napkin neatly under a plate of half-eaten risotto, straightened his lapel, and sauntered out the front door into the dark Roman night.

She never saw him again. Didn’t try to.

Moments, she thought. We’ve missed too many of those, my love. Don’t fight me over the rest...

She found her old enemy crouched out on the far edge of the rim.  Stripped to the waist, his skin seemed to glow a metallic blue under the starlight.  She paused to study him from a safe distance.  His body was as still as a corpse, elbows propped lazily across his knees.  She crept closer, noticed his jaw clench when he picked up her scent.  But he didn’t turn. Refused to budge.

Typical.

Dreamily, she sat down next to him, her long army coat blousing out in a gray circle.  The vampire kept his gaze fixed steadily on the horizon while she drank him in.  He looked exhausted.  The ordinarily perfect coif leapt out in pale tangles now over the gaunt human mask.  He wasn’t breathing.

“A little rude of you, don’t you think?” she asked, forcing in a chipper note.

“Was it, now?”

“Sure.  All zipping off without saying goodbye.”

“Yeah, well.  Wasn’t in a mood to play twenty questions with the Hardy Boys back there.”

“Wasn’t talking about back there.”

He seemed to think about the words for a moment, then nodded his head slowly.  They sat together for a long time like that, staring at the gaps between stars.  When he spoke again, his voice seemed very small and far away.  “There was.  Damn.  S’bit hard to explain...”

“I know.”  He stole a furtive glance at her, his brow creasing sharply.  “Andrew told me everything.”

“That so?” he marveled.  “Captain Quirk finally gave me up, did he?”

“You did a pretty good job of giving yourself up, didn’t you?”

He sighed at this, but seemed to accept it. Moving cautiously, she inched her body closer to his. Her calf brushed his thigh, and she shivered at the sudden electricity there. Life was frightening and intimate all at once, a very precise sensation that Buffy thought she’d never feel again.

“Yeah well. Sorry ‘bout that too,” he said, the voice a flat sheet of ice.

She could sense his old defenses rising up, walling him in.  She studied his too-blue eyes.  "What happened to you?”

For a moment, his head sank into the well between his legs. He allowed himself the weird luxury of a breath, then reappeared, gazing longingly at the night sky. “You know,” he said, “I been walkin’ the soddin’ planet for more than a hundred years. Never seen stars like these.”

“That’s...uh... Huh?”

“Not even when I was human,” he continued. “Back then, the night seemed like a holy sort of a thing. Full of magic and terror.” He suddenly looked at her, and she gasped at the hollow misery in his eyes.  “Ain’t no stars in LA, pet.”

“Spike.”  She leaned in close, grasping his knee and feeling somehow blessed when he didn’t pull away. “I need to tell you something. And I need you to listen this time...”

He seemed to sense what she was going to say, and cut her short.  “We fought hard. Gave a good show, we did.  Didn’t hold back. Wasn’t enough.” He almost spit the last word, and she thought she caught a flash of fang. “Shoulda seen this lot, Slayer.  Made Sunnydale look like Mansfield-bloody-Park.  But we kept ‘em back.  Held the line.  Angel even slayed his damned dragon.”  He closed his eyes and smiled, conjuring an image that only he could see. But when he opened them again, they were filled with an unspeakable blackness.  “But, it's like I said. Wasn’t enough. So we cut a deal, instead.”

"Deal?"  The moment he said it, a cold dread swelled in her chest. “What kind of deal?”

“Was the only way out for us, pet. There was this... prophecy. ‘Bout a vampire with a soul. Angel and me, we knew bugger all what it really meant. ‘Til it was too late, I s’pose.”  Spike squinted sharply, as though he were trying to remember something that happened a long time ago, and to someone else.  “Turned out bloody simple, it did. A sort of... fee. For services rendered…”

Buffy felt a dull horror creeping in from the edges.  “No,” she said, struck by the note of childish petulance in her voice.  Remembering what Giles said.

“Angel thought it was s’posed to be him...”

“Please... Don’t...”

“...an' maybe it was. But you’ve seen what a wanker he can be without one. Couldn’t take that chance, right?” He chuckled, eyes twinkling with a sinister glee.  Buffy’s brain was screaming, now. It dawned on her, what he was saying.  The truth of it smacked her chest like a hammer, and she was suddenly panicking, fighting to breathe. Her eyes clouded over, twisting the stars into violent splashes of paint.

He turned to meet her gaze.  The air of serenity about him was just another mask. She stared straight through it into his...

Soul?

What have you done?

He’d caught the flash of horror in her eyes, and grinned mercilessly at it.  There would be no more hiding for him.  Buffy had seen the hollowed out place in him that had briefly contained a man, saw that the fire was snuffed out, again and forever.  And now, he had decided to hurt her for it. “No worries, Slayer. It was easy, really...”

She should have run, then. Or screamed, or wept.  And she would have, if it weren’t for the song.  It came out of nowhere, sweeping down through her like a warm wind.  All at once, life seemed so simple and certain. So easy.  The vampire kept right on smirking, of course, sure he’d already won. He was still so cocky.

She’d have to educate him.

“Spike,” she said.

“...like signin’ over a car...”

“I need to tell you something...”

“One soul, slightly used... ”

“...and you need to listen to me this time.”

“No!”

“I lo-“

“IT is GONE!” He was standing, now. Crying. Roaring. Something was still singing in Buffy’s chest, and she was still listening. She stood to meet him.

“I don’t care,” she said.

“You LIE!” he screamed, his face a twisting mask of agonies. She advanced slowly but forcefully, suddenly realizing how close they were to the edge of the cliff. “You’re a LIAR, Buffy!  An’ you stay THE FUCK away from ME!”

“Not gonna happen,” she said, filled with an otherworldly calm.  "I’ll never stay away from you again. Deal with it.” These words seemed to break him finally, and his face contorted into a hideous scowl of rage.

It wasn’t much of a plan. She just charged.  Spike was faster, still her most dangerous prey after all these years. He spun easily out of reach, fangs snarling down.  They circled at sword’s length, then, a mirror image of their very first fight.  Only this time, he was the terrified one.  His yellow eyes darted wildly in the darkness, and for a moment she saw them flash longingly towards the steep, tree-lined abyss below.

Praying for strength, she sprang again.  He met her head on, this time, limbs blazing with hatred.  The world fell apart around them as they fought, melting into a blur of desperation and shame and rage and fear. Spike was stronger than she remembered, more ferocious.  He whirled like a blade as they danced, answered her open arms with brutal, slashing blows that rung through bone.  But the song kept its beat, drove her forward, demanding that she win or die trying.  When he missed wide with a hook, Buffy pounced, sending them both crashing to earth.  They rolled to a stop an inch from the edge of the cliff, the vampire gaining the upper hand. He pinned her to the cracked stone, gnashing his teeth.

“This what you want, you stupid cunt?” he screamed.  “Want me to hurt you?!”

Buffy stopped fighting back, felt herself go limp in his grasp.  “Spike,” she said, more forcefully this time. “I need to tell you something…”

Once again, the words seemed to strike the creature physically. He howled with rage, clapped his hands to his ears. Buffy took advantage of it, rearing up like a viper, and in the next moment their positions were reversed.

His fangs melted away, then, leaving the wreckage of a man she never knew in its place. The misery there was unreal, a swirl of emotions a human face didn’t seem designed to convey.  He was whispering.  She could barely understand him through their tears.  “S'gone lamb, so stupid, no spark, no more spark we’re sorry, fresh out luv, so sorry, we're so sorry, luv, we’re so sorr...”

She kissed him.

It wasn’t easy.  There was a sudden, bitter awareness that it never would be.  His lips were cool and dry at first, like bands of marble.  She strained at them ferociously, pried them in half.  There was a familiar taste inside. She explored it, her red tongue gliding across an old, beloved landscape.  The lost years revealed themselves. He still smoked Morleys, still gargled shyly with a spoonful of Crest.  She felt her body soften when she located the fang, hidden high in a firm socket of flesh above his left canine.  She lapped at it gently, enjoying the throaty little growl that her mouth still provoked.

She gasped when he kissed her back, gripped his hair in her hands.  Life was violent and supple again, all at once.  They used everything they had left.  He kissed with his entire body, a hundred muscles pleading at her like a chorus. She could feel her soul swimming in their mouths.  An old door flew open, love pouring out like blood. The world fell up.

An eternity passed. She forced herself to come up for a single breath.  Tried to put it to good use, for once.

“It’s okay, dummy,” she whispered. “You can have some of mine.”

***

She brought the field glasses up again. The lens took several seconds to adjust, gears whining as the two fuzzy green shapes on the ridge slid back into focus. She zoomed in, and felt a tingle in her belly when she recognized the man’s face. It was just too perfect.

“Lieutenant Sykes,” she barked. “Get the troops in formation. We’re moving out in thirty minutes.”

“Sir!” Sykes snapped a salute. “I can have them ready in five, sir!”

Kennedy smiled. “Unlikely, lieutenant. We have a bit of prep work to do. Tell the troops I need the flamethrowers fueled up and primed to go.”

“Sir, yes sir!” She turned to leave.

“Oh, and Sykes,” Kennedy sneered. “Have them carve some stakes, too. Sharp ones, enough for everybody. We’re going to have ourselves a little history lesson tonight."