Author's Chapter Notes:
CHAPTER PAIRING: Spike/Buffy, Willow/Kennedy, Willow/Tara

DISCLAIMERS: All BtVS characters are the property of Joss Whedon and Mutant Enemy Productions.
To say that Willow had a lot to work through right now would be an understatement. Goddess, where could she even begin? Even before Tara's death she had struggled between her growing power and her lingering self-doubt. The time she spent in England being 'rehabilitated' had definitely helped, but something still wasn't right. Maybe it was all the apocalypses and ultimatums the universe kept throwing at her; she didn't know.

That thing in Sunnydale with the scythe? Yeah, that was cool. That was incredible. And for all the times she and the rest of the Scoobies doubted and turned on Buffy (which they did a lot, she now realized), that was one brilliant plan from their little leader.

Only, they lost a lot in that final battle. And not just the obvious, like Anya. Some things lost weren't noticed til they were far, far away from Sunnydale. Willow sees that now. She lost Kennedy well before they arrived in South America. Really, she lost Kennedy the moment she gave her the Slayer's power. The girl was too competitive, too...naive? She had no idea what life was like. What Willow's life was like. This wasn't a comic book where heroes were heroes and saving the day meant everyone lived happily ever after. She was sick of the arguments and the stupid reactionary shit Kennedy was always doing. The last fiasco she got herself in was the limit. What had she seen in Kennedy anyway? The girl was bullish, spoiled, irrational, and selfish. The opposite of Tara.

It still hurt to think back to that day when her universe crumbled. There wasn't a moment that she didn't still feel Tara's sticky blood between her fingers. But, one amazing thing happened in South America. Tara came back. No, not in the flesh (oh, Goddess, how she wished). But her essence—that she felt return to her. Willow didn't remember when exactly it happened, and she had not used any magic since Sunnydale, so she knew it was not a spell. She could sense evil now, a heightened sensation she could pick up on in an instant ever since her 'dark' moment, and so she knew whatever this apparition was, it was not evil. It was not The First, redux.

With Tara back, she felt stronger, more focused. She ended the one-sided relationship that was Kennedy. It was time to return to being Willow, the Slayer's best friend.

When Andrew came to her to gather the potentials together, that's when she found out. Even though Kennedy was not there, he didn't seem upset enough about his charge. There was something about him that wasn't—how could she put this—nervous. He should be afraid to have to relay the news to Giles that Kennedy was off gallivanting in parts unknown. But she didn't sense that at all. What she was sensing instead was—oh, what was that prissy word they teased Spike for using?—effulgent.

Andrew had a secret he wanted to spill, and even though he gave her some weird Borg reason why he couldn't say, she managed to get it to slip. Spike was alive. Or, undead. Or, well, whatever the heck he was supposed to be.

Tara buzzed around her. The good witch always had a soft spot for Spike, even while the rest of them planned out his dusty demise. The energy from her crackled enough that Willow swore she could actually feel her ghostly lover's hands clutching her.

Who else knew? Angel's gang, but no one ever heard from them anymore—not since Sunnydale, anyway. And Giles. Giles knew about this and didn't tell anyone? Didn't tell Buffy?

When Andrew left, Willow had a heart-to-proverbial-heart with her dead girlfriend. They needed to find Spike. They were going to find Spike.

This is what ran through Willow's mind as she wound through the jungle, searching for the spot Tara had found for her. She was the Slayer's best friend, and now she was going to prove it.








"What the bloody hell is that?"

Spike crouched down beside the washing machine in the abandoned house, trying not to be noticed by...something.

"Never seen anything like this before," Gar replied in a similar whisper. He reached into his pocket and took out his cellphone, quietly taking photos.

"Don't tell me you're uploading this to YouTube, mate."

Gar frowned. "Just evidence. Research."

"Since when did Kailiff demons become Watchers?"

"Since we've been finding shit like this," Gar growled, snapping a few more shots from as different of an angle as he could. "How else are we going to know how to kill it?"

"Gee, I don't know. Sharp sticks seem to take care of that problem most of the time."

Gar shook his head. No wonder he was called William the Bloody. He was Bloody Annoying. "Well, go on then. Show me how that works." How the vamp managed to make it some 120-or-so years was a miracle.

Spike groaned loudly enough to be heard by Gar. He inched closer to the crack in the concrete floor. The basement was thick with the scent of mildew, and he was happy that he didn't need to breathe. No telling what kind of spores were embedding themselves in Gar's lungs, as he didn't have Spike's breathless luxury.

As Spike neared the crack under the utility tub drain, he clutched the stake he always carried with him. If this was anything like that bezoar thing Lyle Gorch told him ate his brother in Sunnydale, he knew it could be stabbed.

What he found was something less productive...or, he guessed, less reproductive. No eggs there, no big eyeballs, no movement. It was like a large mound of moss, deep green and furry.

Gar had slowly approached once Spike's smart-assedness wore off.

They both stared at the fuzzy pile.

"Well?" Gar growled.

"Well what? Your Spidey sense brought us here. I don't feel a thing." Spike put the stake back into his pocket.

Gar peered at the lump more closely.

"If you dragged me out here to study photosynthesis, it's not gonna be pretty."

Gar gave Spike a threatening look before shoving him out of the way to take some close-up shots. "I'm telling you, whatever this is...or was.. It's got evil radiating off it."

Spike glanced around the basement quickly and saw a broom leaning against one crumbling wall. While Gar was continuing his photoshoot, Spike cracked the handle off of the broom.

"Oh, sure, now the Big Bads poke at dead things," Gar chided him.

"You got a better idea?"

Gar looked at the green pile again, and his features softened. His posture slumped slightly in defeat.

"Right, then." Spike tentatively prodded the unmoving lump with the broomstick. Although it looked like a mound of mossy earth, the body (if you could call it that) gave a little under the gentle force. Okay, so this wasn't just a clod of muck. Spike moved a little closer, reaching his hand out to touch it. Was that fur?

At the touch of Spike's hand, the fuzzy pile let out an ear-screeching sound, like that of an alarm. Gar almost dropped his phone in his attempt to cover his ears.

"Video this!" Spike yelled over the noise as he tried to brace for whatever he would soon have to defend them from.

The green glob emitted wave after wave of noise, though it made no move to strike. But after a moment of this, Spike noticed something had changed. Seeping from the crack that the thing had emerged from (or guarded, Spike wondered) was a thick black substance. Like tar. Only, tar that could eat through metal, as the steel legs of the utility tub were clearly illustrating. Didn't need to be an Andrew-level geek to figure that one out!

"Oi! Watch your feet, mate!"

Gar moved the phone to scan the floor, recording this new development. He retreated slowly—not afraid, no, Kailiff's weren't afraid, just being cautious—making sure he got every moment of this shit. He'd never seen anything like it. Spike had only nudged this thing; there was no way it had been stabbed, if this...stuff...was blood. Hell, this only started after Spike touched it, and all he did was place a few fingers flat on the side of the fuzzy pile.

The noise from the creature seemed to be transforming into a metallic hum, but Spike couldn't tell if that was real or just the result of having lost his hearing. If this fucking thing made him deaf, something was gonna pay.

Spike stepped back a few paces so that he was next to Gar again. He reached for a cigarette and lit it, hoping the surge of nicotine would give him an idea. That's how it usually worked, though the cigarettes were shit these days. He missed the Gauloises he used to smoke back between the wars. Such incredible ideas he used to have. Figured that was half the reason he and Dru cut such a delicious path across Europe back then.

Flicking his dying match to the concrete floor, he took a long drag. That did, indeed, present him with a solution—only this time it was because of the match.

He watched as the black sludgy stuff recoiled from the extinguishing flame.

"Gar! I got it!"

Spike tugged Gar out of the basement and towards Gar's Hummer on the street. (Oh, how Spike hated that tank. It always reminded him of the Initiative. The only way he kept himself from cringing was by imagining that he and Gar had slaughtered a few Initiative commandos to seize it.)

Once there, Spike reached for the vodka he had conveniently stashed between the seats. He went back to the house's foundation with Gar in tow. Gar figured out what he was up to. He liked it.

Gar kicked in the basement window while Spike tore at his own t-shirt. Not like anyone in this neighborhood would really pay much notice to them, but Gar kept watch. Spike stuffed a rag made from his shirt into the bottle of vodka. He pulled out his lighter this time and let the flame consume the top of the rag before he threw the bottle into the basement.

Even though the utilities had been shut off in the house, Spike had been able to smell the traces of the meth lab that was once prominent there. That would help this along nicely.

"Gar, now!" Spike yelled as he ran for the Hummer. They leaped in and peeled out as quickly as they could before the exploding house could cause them much harm.

Gar looked incredibly satisfied. He liked a big show of manly power. All Kailiffs did. Plus, it would keep some of these bastards on Warner Road in line. This was part of his territory too, and he liked to remind the low-lifes there that they were no match for him and his gang.

Spike was satisfied too, but for reasons he'd never share with Gar. His damn soul liked to stake its territory as well, and among those low-lifes on Warner were poor old folk whose neighborhood was destroyed. He saw that when he was in Cleveland in the '70s. Stopped feeding on them back then because their blood was so thin, so filled with resign. Now that he was back in an upgraded (he hoped) version, he was doing what he could. The houses on either side of that one had been abandoned, so he wasn't gonna lose any sleep over property damage. And even if one old biddy popped her clogs he still saved seven more. The Slayer never understood relativity, but he did—the soul didn't change that. So, yeah, he was satisfied.

But, he also knew that Gar was worried about him. Not that anyone else could really tell, he being a Mr.-Tough-Guy Kailiff demon. But Spike knew. The past few days Spike hadn't sensed much evil at all. How was that possible on a fucking Hellmouth? He had joked with Gar that he probably just had a cold. Or had food poisoning from eating Lake Erie fish. But the truth was that he was nervous something was wrong with him, too. And today he'd been having what he could only call heartburn, even though it had been over a century since he had felt that, so he wasn't sure. In a way, it was almost like that burning feeling he got in Sunnydale when that bloody amulet started to work.





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