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Author's Chapter Notes:
I posted the previous chapter earlier in the week, so if you haven't read it, do.

A lot of the response has been shock and dismay. I hope you guys are still on board and I commend you for sticking with this difficult story. Thank you!
Spike parted ways with Tara the next night. Oz was laconic as he gave Spike a credit card.

“I don't want to know what you're doing with this, but I can tell you it will always be paid,” Oz said.

Oz's action was motivated equally by guilt over Buffy's death and gratitude at never having to worry about Veruca again. Spike took the blood money with a nod.

Tara had been livid that her new friend had essentially enabled her brother's descent into hell, but no one seemed willing to listen to her arguments. After dropping Nina and Oz off at the tattoo parlor, Tara had driven Spike to the dock with the hopes of talking him out of his decision. It hadn't worked.

Spike's last words to Tara before he left on a boat to London were, “Forget me.”

Gentle, sweet Tara had slapped him across the face. He took the blow without reacting and then left. A few seconds later her car peeled away, leaving him standing alone with his suitcase. No one seemed to see Spike slipping among the men loading freight. He was able to secret himself in the cargo hold where he hid from the sun for his entire voyage.

While he sailed, the only one to keep him company was Buffy. It wasn't hard to find her in his subconscious. As soon as he closed his eyes, she was there.

She was sitting on the red comforter that covered his bed in the Pittsburgh apartment where they met. Buffy's arms were open, waiting for him. Spike had gone to her and wept against her chest. It all felt so real with the scent of her skin enveloping him and the warm touch of the sheets Spike thought he might never stop crying.

“Are you really here?” he asked.

“Mostly. I don't really look like this anymore and this place isn't here, but the me part is real. Tara explained some things when she came to see me. She chose your grandmother's house. Tara said it was the most vivid memory she had, so that's why we were there.”

“So I made this place?”

“Yeah. This is the way it looked when we were together-together the first time, isn't it?”

“Think about it a lot, I guess. How I could have made it better for you.”

“Oh, Spike,” she said, touching the side of his face and tracing his bottom lip with her fingertips.

“Do you know what happened to you, Buffy?”

“Yes. Dying didn't hurt. It was over before I could even feel anything.”

“You want me to stop before I start, don't you?”

“Of course, but we don't have to talk about that tonight. Just be here with me, let me make it better for you,” Buffy said.

Spike kissed her slowly, his mouth lingering in a way he'd never done before. When they'd had sex before it had always been a clash. No matter how hard he tried, Spike always managed to rush things. Not then, though. Spike worshiped his memories of her, running his tongue along her body. She felt softer, more perfect than anything he'd ever touched before. He spread her legs and slid his cock home, moving on top of her as gently as he could. When the pleasure became more intense, her face and the room grew indistinct. Her body was shimmering beneath him and he saw her true form. Buffy was a glowing orb of golden light and he was melting into it; absorbed completely by her soul. It was more than anything he'd ever felt and for an instant, Spike was at peace.

It didn't last.

He woke up with his grief gnawing at him and his blood lust heightened, wedged between two wooden crates. He crawled across the floor after a fat, gray rat wishing he could have the chance to kill all the members of the council twice.

***

Spike was soaking in the bathtub at his apartment in Pittsburgh and Buffy was washing his feet. Over the past few weeks he'd noticed that her face had taken on the aspects of the photographs he'd salvaged from the clapboard farmhouse. He was starting to forget what his Buffy actually looked like, relying on the still images to fill in the blanks.

“What's it like when I'm not here?” Spike asked.

She dragged a washcloth across his thigh.

“There's nothing here. I become a part of you, see everything through your eyes. It's kind of like that movie 'Being John Malkovich,'” Buffy said.

“I never saw that,” Spike said.

“It was good. The live version kind of sucks, though,” she said squeezing water onto his stomach.

“What do you want, love?”

She tilted her head and washed his chest.

“To move on, with you. It's selfish, but I want you to come with me to the next part. Plus it would have the added benefit of saving a bunch of people's lives. Sure, they're incredibly crummy people, but they're still, you know, people.”

“I have to do this, can't let them hurt anyone else the way they hurt you.”

“This isn't the way.”

“Can you think of any other way?” Spike asked, knowing her answer before she spoke.

“No, but that doesn't mean you should become the kind of creature that can do it,” Buffy said.

“I've already killed, Buffy, and if I'm dragging you to hell with me, then I'm going to make damned sure they precede me. The council didn't just ruin your life, they ruined mine. I could never start to deal with what had been done to me, what I am now. I'm damned. Even if I never hurt a living soul I'm damned.”

“This is about you being afraid I'll leave you behind, isn't it? And don't start with the denial because I'm all brainy with your thoughts here.”

“Why ask then? Why fight?” Spike asked.

“I have to fight for you. You won't let Tara in anymore at all, it's just us now and I'm not giving up,” Buffy said.

Spike grabbed her around the waist and dragged her into the bath. They splashed around for a moment before she succumbed to his kiss and relaxed against him. He could feel how badly she wanted him and knew she was beginning to hate herself for giving in every time he touched her. Spike savored the feel of her body against his as they lay in the warm water. She whipped off her clinging, white t-shirt and threw it on the ground and then stood so he could help her out of her shorts. He held her hand and she sank down onto his lap. She wiggled, displacing a wave onto the bathroom floor adjusting until his penis was sliding inside of her. Spike groaned.

“For someone without a body, you're so fucking tight,” Spike said.

“Very romantic,” Buffy said with a laugh.

***

Spike was kneeling before Buffy and licking the top of her right foot. The taste of her skin was growing faint. The left one rested against his throat, clad in a shiny, black boot with a pointed toe. She was naked, save for the boot and sitting on a pedestal made of white marble with a fluted, Doric column as a base while she filed her nails.

“You never told me you were into shoes, I thought it was just nail polish and stuff,” Buffy said, peering down to look at him.

“Didn't know. Quit trying to change the subject,” Spike said, kissing her big toe.

“Why does every conversation we have have to devolve into this one?” Buffy asked, throwing the file over her shoulder.

“Because I'm right, you know it.”

“You'll never get me to agree killing people is right.”

“But you're starting to think it's not entirely wrong.”

“Never. The council is needed, no matter how corrupt. Without them the world could descend into chaos,” she said, stroking his hair.

“I think they perpetuate the myth of their own necessity, you would've been fine without them,” Spike said.

“Better off, most definitely, but I wouldn't have been the slayer. Before my calling I was kinda shallow, it was all about clothes and boys. I had a wicked shoplifting habit going, too. I didn't really see myself in the context of the wider world until I was called. It ...promise you won't get all snarky.”

“Promise.”

“It taught me how to really love, I think. I mean I loved Dawnie and Mom and Dad, but I didn't really understand what it meant to give everything without needing anything in return. I love this world, and all the frustrating people in it and I'm proud to fight for it.”

“What did I teach you?”

“To have hope,” Buffy said.

“You didn't need me for that, love. You're the strongest person I've ever known.”

“You give me strength. I wish now you'd let me do the same for you,” she said.

Spike looked into her eyes, knowing that he couldn't. She read his thoughts and lifted her feet away, holding her knees to her chest. Spike woke up, staring at the ceiling of the ship.

***

Buffy had her back to him in bed. Spike knew she didn't want to see him at the moment. They were docking the next day and he hadn't changed his mind about his mission to destroy the council. Her speech had dwindled but he knew her thoughts as he read his own. He could feel her all the time, seeing from behind his eyes, her pain a heavy weight he carried all the time.

A weight he wasn't capable of releasing.

“Please, love.”

Spike forced her flat onto the mattress and looked into her eyes. They were the one part of her he never needed a photograph to remember. The way they hungered and ached would stay with him for several lifetimes. Spike pinned Buffy's hands above her head and kissed her unresponsive lips. When he pulled away, she finally spoke.

“You can still walk into the light with me. We could start over.”

“And if we can't?”

“Hell couldn't be worse than being powerless to watch you do this,” Buffy said.

“I am the only one who'll stop those wankers. It's like your calling—“

“Don't you even try to compare this with slaying.”

“Let's not go round this again, love. Let's just fuck.”

“I'm not your fantasy and I'm not your whore,” Buffy said as she yanked her hands away and put them on his chest, shoving him hard. Spike toppled off the bed and landed on the floor of the ship, wedged between the two cargo boxes that had been his home for the past month.

“You can't stop me, love,” Spike said, aloud, “not until the last one is dead.”

***

When he finally set foot in the mother country, Spike began fulfilling his design.

Spike was too impatient and too worried about getting caught to inject any sense of suspense into his plan, so he went straight for Quentin Travers. He knew Travers on sight because Buffy did and with her death he was privy to all her memories. Spike had found the Watcher's flat in the phone book and followed the git to a lovely restaurant that had gotten three stars in the Michelin Guide called “The Fatted Duck.” Fitting, Spike thought, as he smoked cigarettes and loitered in front of the place. After a rich meal the old fool had had one too many glasses of wine to take proper note of his surroundings. Travers ate alone, no lover or spouse to complicate his consumption, which simplified things for Spike as well.

Travers trundled out, looking for a cab and Spike grabbed him. Travers made a soft, squeaking sound before Spike clamped his hand over the codger's mouth. Spike dragged him into an alley, away from the sparse, Tuesday night foot traffic. Travers didn't even struggle as Spike plunged his fangs into the elderly watcher's throat. Maybe it was because on the ship he'd had a steady diet of rats, but to Spike the old man's blood tasted like butter. As he drained the portly bastard, Spike could feel Tara's disgust and hear Buffy's voice begging him to stop. That didn't matter, though. Tara was in another country and Buffy was dead.

Buffy was dead.

At that thought, Spike shoved his hand into Quentin's chest and plucked out his heart like little Jack Horner popping out a plum from his Christmas pie. Then Spike had thrown the sloppy organ behind his back like a crumpled Big Mac wrapper. That was kind of a mistake, as he was covered in blood, but Spike hardly cared.

He dropped Travers' corpse in the alley and then went to council headquarters. The fools dealt with the supernatural every day, but didn't employ any magical security to guard their fortress. Spike used Quentin's keys and killed the ponce at the night watch duty before scouring the labyrinthine complex. He wasn't sure what he'd been expecting to find in the rows of auspicious, leather-bound books. He just knew the Watchers chronicled with the type of detail and lack of shame that made the Nazis so repulsive

He'd found Buffy fast, her life reduced to three, somber, black, encyclopedia-sized volumes. Spike scooped up the books and in a foolhardy move which was simply the latest of foolhardy moves, he scattered the petrol he'd brought along on the brown and white tiled floor of the library. Then he struck a match, lit a piece of paper and touched it to an incendiary puddle. The building went up with a roar. The scent and the heat were incredible; like the funeral pyre for a mighty forest. He could almost taste the tang of cooked flesh in the air from the centuries of bodies buried in those books. How many girls like Buffy had they sacrificed? It didn't matter now, Spike thought. They were all lost, all reduced to blackened ash. All but Buffy.

Spike didn't watch the structure collapse. He took his spoils and went to a crypt near Travers' flat where he had been hiding since the night before to read the purloined tomes. The men and women who'd sold his girl out had signed their names. There were exactly eighteen members of the council who'd autographed documents allowing for the murder of Willow Rosenberg, the deal with Angel that led to Dawn's murder and finally, the extermination squad sent to take out Tara, Buffy and Spike. Buffy had known each of them personally, all of them had attended Giles' and Dawn's funerals. Spike noted with little satisfaction that two of those people—Quentin Travers and Wesley Wyndam Price—were already dead. The rest of them sorely needed to atone, he thought. Their brazen disregard for the destruction of Buffy Summers' life didn't shock him so much as it made him sick. It occurred to Spike that it would have been easier to wait in the council headquarters and pick them off all at once, but then he was never one for strategic thinking. That had always been Buffy's thing.

When he closed his eyes, he'd expected Buffy to be full of scathing reproach. Instead she'd been shivering in his bed. When he tried to touch her shoulder, the scene around them would shift to the bathtub where Wesley had shot himself. It felt like they were drowning. Spike was finally able to overpower Buffy's memories, and pull the thrashing girl into his arms. He kissed her forehead and face, trailing gentle kisses over her throat until she finally stopped shaking.

“He signed them all. Wesley signed them all.”

It was all she could say. In their place Spike held her while he slept through the day, waking up with empty arms. It was disorienting to fall asleep in a bed with his wife and wake up alone on a stone crypt. That day he decided to begin his search for Percy Green, beginning with the man's London flat.

When they heard about Quentin and their smoldering digs, Spike expected that the watchers would clump up like cooked white rice. Just as he thought, after the mass pants-wetting, they'd called a meeting. Spike had the good fortune to stumble upon the lot of them when he'd charmed his way into Nigel Green's home. Spike had thralled Green's wife when she answered the door.

The thrall was a trick he'd absorbed from his sire. Tara had helped him hone the skill while they were on the lam, never imagining he'd use the skill for a purpose such as this. Spike could hypnotize a person by offering that individual their fondest wish. Leslie Green's fondest wish had been to be loved. Nine out of ten times, most every thralled boiled down to love. He'd teased out the details of her broken heart and mended it for her with a penetrating gaze.

Spike wondered if he could have gotten away without using the thrall. Leslie Green was so eager for someone with light eyes and a rough accent to give her attention because her husband was a bit of a snob, ashamed of her lower class upbringing. He imagined that a few words and a flimsy excuse could have done the job just as well.

Spike put Mrs. Green to sleep, giving her a lovely dream of what might have been. Spike went downstairs and concealed himself in the hall closet, listening as Green came home with two other men. He held an unnecessary breath when he realized they might take off their jackets and put them in his hiding place. They didn't, though, and Spike figured they must have set their outerwear on the bamboo coat rack in the entryway.

The men didn't speak aside from colorless pleasantries, they just busied themselves with assembling tea and biscuits for the guests. Soon people were trickling into the place. Green didn't even seem to notice his wife's absence. Once the Watchers were assembled, the group convened in Green's living room, giving a roll call. Spike realized with equal parts hunger and dread that all fourteen of them were on his list.

“As you all know, Quentin is dead and our archives have been reduced to cinder. I've contacted our men in the field and they've all gone into lock down mode with their potentials. However, Locksley is refusing to bring the slayer here to help sort this. He's claiming things are more pressing in Rome. Somehow I doubt that. I think he's gone the way Rupert did at the end,” Green said.

A watcher whose voice Spike recognized as Lionel Drood spoke up next. Along with Buffy's memory of Drood's voice came the flavor of the lemon bunt cake his wife had brought to Giles' wake.

“Rupert Giles was a friend despite his understandable lapse in judgment and I think it besmirches his name to compare him to Oliver. We all know Locksley's interest in that girl is far from fatherly,” Drood said.

“Quite right. Now, to the matter at hand. Do we have any concept of who could have done this?” Green asked.

There were murmurs amid the crowd as they floated ideas. None of them mentioned Buffy, not that it surprised Spike. They probably assumed she was dead if another slayer had risen. One girl in all the world and that rot. Still, he couldn't imagine that their seers hadn't predicted all of this was coming. Maybe they'd had mass layoffs in the prognostication department. As the Watchers clucked like nervous chickens, Spike considered being a bit badass, drowning them after intoning that water found its way. They probably wouldn't know what the fuck it meant, anyway, plus he couldn't figure on how to make that all work. Better to just eat them, he thought.

Spike sneaked out of the closet and went into the living room, locking the French doors that led to safety behind him. He was still covered in the gore from Quentin Travers' murder; there might have even been a ring of red around his mouth. The group saw him all at once and conversation was snuffed out like a candle flame, plunging the room into silence.

Green came at him first and Spike snapped his neck. Two others followed and Spike did them the same. The remainder ran at Spike all at once. The vampire whirled like a deadly dervish, turning men to corpses. There was a stack by the time he was done.

Spike glutted himself on their blood until the leftovers soaked through the posh Persian rug on the parquet floor. The collective screams of the corralled watchers could not rouse Mrs. Green from her slumber. Spike stripped the corpses of any cash and jewelry, then stolen upstairs to take a bath in the Green's sunken, marble tub. Spike realized he hadn't had a real wash in more than a month, not since the morning Buffy died. He felt his chin and knew there was stubble, but he had no inclination to shave.

He filled the cream-colored tub with Mrs. Green's lavender bath salts, feeling guilty for leaving bloody footprints on her clean, white floor. Spike lowered himself into the steaming, purple water and watched the blood drift off his pale body. He leaned back and closed his eyes.

Buffy was huddled beside their bed with her arms wrapped around her knees. He knelt beside her, but she continued to stare forward. She flinched from his caress, but that didn't stop him from smoothing a few strands of her hair.

“You enjoyed it,” Buffy thought.

He scratched his chin and cocked his head at her.

“I did.”

“You're never going to touch me again.”

“Hmm. Somehow I doubt that, love. Can feel you, remember? Even when I was ankle deep in their blood, you still wanted me,” Spike said, dragging her towards him. She squirmed but his hands found her anyway, cupping her breast.

“Stop it.”

“Make me.”

Spike kissed her neck as Buffy writhed.

“Damn you,” she whispered.

An instant later he was splashing in the bathtub, scattering red beads of water everywhere. Spike drained the bath and then showered off the rest of the filth. Spike gathered up his belongings and then dressed in one of Nigel's tweed suits while Mrs. Green slept on. He stuffed his bloody clothes, the money, the Watcher's cell phones and a few valuable-looking things into a suitcase he found in their closet and then gave one last glance to the lady of the house. Spike wished he'd left her at a hotel, so she wouldn't have to wake up in the morning to stumble into the massacre downstairs. He shook his head, realizing there was nothing for it now, then left.

Spike knew the remaining Watchers would hear about his party and scatter, making it more difficult to pick them off. Again he wished he'd done them all in one go before he burnt down council headquarters. Who knows, he might have been able to get staked in a blaze of glory. Save him from Buffy's sullen disillusionment when he tried to sleep.

Spike used Green's phone to text the remaining Watchers on the list. The only one who fell for his ruse was Lydia Chalmers. They messaged back and forth for a bit. Lydia had been down with the flu, which was why she hadn't been to the meeting. Spike told her he'd stop by shortly to give her his news. Then he'd looked up her address and walked to the house Lydia rented.

Spike knocked on the door and Lydia invited him in without looking.

When Spike walked into her foyer, Lydia froze like a little rabbit under the shadow of a hawk.

“Hello, cutie,” Spike said, sauntering over to her.

She wore tortoise shell glasses and had on a white, lace nightgown that barely covered her ass. Lydia and Nigel seemed close, which was probably why Mrs. Green was so lonely. Buffy had a nightgown almost like the one this Watcher wore, but the clincher was Lydia's long, blonde hair. Spike had to touch that hair. He grabbed a fistful and then showed her his other face.

“You were at Dawnie's funeral,” Spike said, slamming Lydia's head against the wall, “you brought flowers.” Spike smashed her against the wall again. “The slayer never knew you helped make that funeral possible, did she, pet?”

Spike held her at arm's length. Lydia was covering her face with her hands and blood was spilling over her fingers from the cut Spike opened on her forehead.

“I swear I didn't know, we didn't know what he would do—“

“Right,” Spike said, releasing Lydia so she could scramble away, “you only thought you were killing a seventeen-year-old girl who trusted you implicitly. Bully for that then.”

Spike pounced on her again and bit into Lydia's arm; not a killing blow, just something to amp up her fear. Then he let her go again. Lydia staggered to a small table in the hall and yanked out a drawer; wood shrieking against wood. Objects scattered on the floor, including holy water, a cross and a stake. She snatched up the stake from the floor. Spike continued to advance on the cowering woman and she backed up.

“I was just going to go in for some vanilla, but if you want to bust out the toys and get kinky, love, by all means.”

He slapped the weapon from her hand and she whimpered. Spike caught her wrist and had another taste. They went on like that for the better part of an hour before Chalmers was too weak to play the mousey anymore. By then, they'd made it up the stairs and into her bedroom. Spike scooped up the dying woman and finished her off, feeling ashamed of himself. Spike threw her body on the ground and went back to his crypt.

The moment he closed his eyes and rejoined Buffy, she punched him in the face. The blow began a battle unlike any they'd ever had. In life they'd never physically fought, or even sparred, just played hide and seek games while on patrol. This was a knock down drag-out . Spike saw the slayer on display and though she was coming at him from the depths of her frustration, her prowess thrilled him. They circled around one another and then coupled in violence. It was a replay of his scene with Lydia except with a participant that could fight back. He felt all Buffy's hurt, her disappointment and her love for him. Her brutality came from that place she longed to make him understand.

They tussled all day, until he was mentally exhausted. He could feel her vigor waning and Spike flipped Buffy onto her back. She groaned and then he pressed his mouth to hers. She opened her lips and let his tongue get past her teeth. He wondered if she would bite it off and if that would have any impact on his actual tongue in the corporeal world.

She didn't.

Buffy let him kiss her, let him take her clothes off. The first thrust had her blossoming into light that swallowed him up. Spike knew how much she hated and loved him in that moment, how much he'd disappointed her. He floundered, lost in that overwhelming brightness until suddenly everything went black.

The next night Spike woke up feeling as though he hadn't slept. He knew Oliver Locksley was probably in Rome, so Spike decided to check the home of the remaining London-based Watcher on his list, hoping for a clue. He found Reginald Butler's apartment empty, but traced the scent signature of the man outside. His nose led Spike down the street.

“No one's bollocks are that big,” Spike thought, as he followed the trail into a club two blocks from Butler's flat. Apparently, Butler's were. The black-haired Watcher was getting pissed at the bar. Spike looked around the packed room and realized for the first time that he was standing in a gay bar. Maybe it would be easier to get Butler alone after all, Spike thought. Spike stalked the man, watching Butler put away two shots. Butler was solidly built and youthful despite being middle-aged. He looked like he could put up a fight. The Watcher rose from his bar stool. Reggie danced through the scintillating throng, colored lights reflecting off his black, slicked-back hair. Then Butler stepped into the bathroom alone. Spike saw his chance and followed.

Reginald was standing at the row of white urinals on the left side of the dingy john. Spike sidled up next to him and then remembered that as a vampire, he didn't urinate.

“I got an itch I think you might be able to scratch,” Spike said, raising his eyebrow.

Butler zipped up his fly as he eyed Spike. Then he pivoted so they were face to face.

“How stupid do you think I am, Spike?” Butler asked, as he produced a stake out of the sleeve of his leather jacket and jabbed the pointed tip toward Spike's heart.

Spike barely dodged the weapon, but snagged his attacker's wrist, using the momentum to twist Butler's arm back.

“Stupid enough to announce you're coming at me,” Spike said in the other man's ear as he dragged him into a stall and locked the door.

The Watcher arched his back and tried to break the hold. The bathroom was empty, so Spike decided to act swiftly.

“I knew Travers was a fool to think you were dead. What do you hope to gain in all this? The prophecy won't redeem—“
Spike cut Reginald off by snapping his neck. Spike drank deeply from the dead Watcher's throat, then he propped Butler's body up on a toilet and slithered out before anyone noticed. Spike didn't care about the prophecy, the secrets, the hand of destiny, the why of wherefore. They were all concoctions of the piece of shite council. All of him knew—even the parts of his soul that didn't belong to Buffy or Tara—that he wasn't a righteous man, no matter what he said to his wife. He wasn't even a man anymore, simply an instrument of wrath.





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