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After Spike helped Giles (when he was going through an awkward demon phase) things changed even more. He got his own place, (a crypt, but a nice one, as caverns for the dead go), and once Spike learned (to his great delight) that he could hurt anything not human he started to patrol with Buffy on a regular basis.


Xander, and even Willow, were against the whole thing initially, but for once Buffy didn’t care what they thought. Patrolling with Spike was fun, she didn’t have to worry about him not being able to take care of himself, like she did with her friends, and he could match her in strength and speed. They became a formidable team, though they fought each other as much as they did demons. Buffy looked on it as extra training, and though Giles thought it was ‘just not right’, even he had to admit, whilst polishing his glasses, that Buffy was learning from Spike.

Dawn had a massive crush on Spike at first, which irritated Xander no end, but she eventually came to see him as a big brother figure. He proved to be a lot more intelligent then Buffy had ever given him credit for, and was able to tutor Dawn in French (though he did try and teach her some dirty phrases) and English lit.


Joyce was very fond of Spike. But then, she had liked him when he had been purely evil, so it wasn't much of a surprise. She and Spike talked a lot. About what exactly Buffy wasn't sure, but Spike seemed to respect her mom, and enjoy her company so she never complained about it.



If Buffy had only had Glory to deal with that year it would have been bad enough, but then her mom got sick.
It was, without doubt, the worst time of her life. She had never felt so helpless. With all the ancient, powerful strength coursing through her body she couldn't do a damn thing to help her mom. And it hurt. It hurt so much.


The Scoobies and Giles were going to town on trying to find out what the hell Glory was up to, so if it hadn’t been for Spike Buffy would have been alone to deal with it all. He came to the hospital with her, held her while she cried, looked after Dawn and tried to cheer them all up with stupid stories and surprisingly good, but incredibly weird, food creations.



Buffy’s mom got worse. Then she got better. And then she died.


The image of her, lying on the sofa so cold and still, would haunt Buffy for all time. No one knew what she was going through. She had to be strong for Dawn, she had to be the slayer and save the world, but inside she was just so hollow. Inside she was a little girl who needed her mom. And her mom was gone.


Spike had been there to listen. He had given her time to grieve. He had looked after Dawn when she had felt unable to.
Then Spike had told her a story, a story of his own past, his human past. A couple of years ago Buffy wouldn’t have believed that the love Spike had felt for his mother would have stayed with him once he was sired. She knew him now. She knew that he was capable of love and affection, despite all Giles had said to the contrary. When Spike was William he had had to watch his mom dying, slowly and painfully, and he had tried to save her, in his own way. He had failed, and she had died by his hand and the haunting of it had stayed with him ever since.

He understood how she felt.


She could be alone while he was there, and let herself grieve for what she had lost, and it gave her the strength to carry on fighting to protect what she still had left to lose.


When Glory’s minions had taken Spike, thinking that he was the key, Buffy had been thrown into a rage the likes of which she had never known before. Though the others, except maybe Tara, all suspected that Spike would sell them out at once, Buffy never doubted him. She was worried, not about what he would tell Glory but about what Glory would do to him when he didn’t talk.


Buffy had been right to worry. Spike had been in such a state when they’d got to him that Buffy decided it would be better to take him back to her place. Giles and Xander had listed all the reasons why that was not a good idea. She listened. Then she ignored them and brought him home anyway.


That was where he ended up staying. Buffy found she liked having him round the house. She said it was because he was an extra pair of eyes and ears, an extra set of (wonderfully muscley) arms, which would help her protect Dawn. But really it was just because she liked having him there.

If it wasn’t for all the stress she was under and all the pain she was still feeling, she would have stopped for a minute and wondered why she liked having him there so much.


When it got down to it, to the end, Spike had been incredible. He had fought by her side. He had bled for her, he had tried to save Dawn. He had tried harder than anyone. It just hadn’t been quite enough.




Buffy was still a little uncertain of all that had gone on when she was dead (she still found it hard to say ‘when she was in heaven’), but she knew all the basic facts.


She had only been dead five minutes when Willow and Tara had moved into her house, and kicked Spike out. She understood why they felt they had to be there for Dawn. She did not, and would never, understand why they kicked out the one person Dawn had really needed and wanted.


Spike had carried on patrolling, he had looked after Dawn (when he had been allowed) and he had been to her grave to talk to her. He had come to her grave almost every night to talk to her about Dawn, and patrolling and how much he missed her. And how much he hurt. He had never told her any of this. Some of it she got from Dawn, some from a scornful Xander. The talking at her grave she actually remembered. She knew it sounded ridiculous, so she had never said it to him, or anyone else for that matter, but when she had been in heaven she remembered Spike talking to her, she remembered what he had said, and she remembered trying to project the thought to him somehow that even though she missed him, and everyone else, she was ok.


When she had been torn out of heaven, ripped from her comfort, her sanctuary, her reward, she knew Spike hadn’t been involved with it. She knew he would never have done that to her, or have doubted where she had ended up. It was to him she ran when she first crawled out of her grave.


Everything had been so harsh, so bright at first, but she could still see Spikes grief etched on every inch of him. The look on his face when he had seen her had been one of such profound amazement and joy that Buffy had dissolved into tears, which she hadn’t been able to stop for some time.


One of the first things she had done, when she was feeling able, was to remove Willow and Tara from her house and reinstate Spike. Willow hadn’t taken it well. Buffy didn’t much care. She didn’t hate her friends for what they had inadvertently done to her, she couldn’t, but she did resent them. She felt lost, and it wasn’t them who made her feel found.





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