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

DISCLAIMERS: All BtVS characters are the property of Joss Whedon and Mutant Enemy Productions.
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Tara had a nagging feeling. So far their time in New York City hadn't yielded the kind of leads Willow had hoped. He wasn't here, of that Tara was sure. Even though they hadn't done any locator spells since that one in the Mayan ruins, she knew. The nagging feeling she had was that he was in a dark place-figuratively yes, but also physically. She had to try to find him.

With Willow sleeping a deep, well-deserved sleep, she searched out for him in the only way she knew how.




Bugger this.

Spike pulled the sheet back and sat up, dangling his legs off the side of the bed. He held his head in his hands. These dreams were getting to be too much.

Now Glinda was taking up residence in his head, appearing almost every time he closed his eyes. Sure, he liked the bird, but come on now. Every word she said to him sounded cryptic, and it was starting to make him nervous. Were these dreams supposed to be prophetic? In the visions she was constantly trying to comfort him. Maybe he just wasn't used to people acting that way towards him, but it unsettled him because it felt like it was supposed to mean something-like the way one is calmed before death. Yeah, that's the way. Were the fucking Powers-That-Be sending him a message that, indeed, his time was up? God, not this again.




"Oh, look at you!" Maria, Spike's landlady, exclaimed when he came downstairs to the restaurant. "You look like you've seen a ghost! Have you been eating? You're too thin. You need pasta. Come, here, eat," she rattled as she pulled him into the large kitchen. "Even your hands are freezing! Are the radiators not working again?"

Spike smiled a bit to himself. She took care of him, even though she didn't have to. He owed her, not the other way around. Still, it was nice. Reminded him of his own mum and of Joyce.

Maria served him up a steaming bowl of vermicelli topped with her rich red sauce and sprinkled with lots of fried garlic-just the way Spike liked it.

She smiled proudly when she saw him dig in. "Good for the heart," she said. Spike nodded in agreement as he ate. "And all that garlic keeps the vampires away."

He couldn't help himself then. "I wouldn't be so sure, luv. Vampires could get used to cooking this good."

Maria laughed her hearty laugh at that, pinching his cheek. Thankfully, the food warmed his skin enough to pass for being alive. Still, he couldn't help but feel like she was also preparing him for the end. What was going on?




He was somewhere near water. The magic rippled that way. Tara felt a pull westward. Judging from Willow's map, it had to be somewhere along the Great Lakes. But, what significance would any of those places have? Why would he settle there? Still, the pull she was getting was strong. Dark and strong, kind of like…




"A Hellmouth. Giles said there was an active one in Cleveland. Why didn't I think of that?"

Tara shrugged. She hadn't noticed that she was currently invisible.

"Duh," Willow answered herself, misinterpreting Tara's silence. "Because it's Cleveland."

But, then, a sudden realization hit her. "Oh God, he wouldn't know… Faith is there! With Robin!"

Willow panicked. She didn't trust the rogue slayer and the principal, not even after their participation in that final Sunnydale battle. And after all this work she and Tara did to find Spike, there was no way she was going to let harm come to him now.

But Tara had another worry, now that a Hellmouth was involved. With such a source of dark power, what effect had their spells made?




"Wow, I can just feel it rolling off of you," Stan said, holding his hands out over Spike's chest like he was doing reiki.

"Oh, sod off, you cripple," Spike spat. For a second he regretted saying that, but Stan didn't take offense.

"No, I don't mean feel like feel," he emphasized with wiggly fingers at his head. "I mean, there is some serious magic coming off you. Who'd you piss off this time?"

Spike shivered inside but kept his cool in front of his pal. He had been thinking the same thing lately, and Stan noticing only confirmed his suspicions.

"Don't know, mate. But getting a bit tired, yeah? Can't sleep a wink."

Stan thought for a moment, trying hard. "Maybe you just need to kill something."




"Sometimes I wish I could have just killed him," Buffy groaned.

Dawn glanced up from her book with wary eyes.

"…again, I mean."

"If I knew he'd be hogging the line with all his calls, I'd have done it myself," Dawn quipped. "Or told Spike that you wanted him to do it."

Buffy frowned at the mention of Spike. And at the conscious jab Dawn made at her, knowing full well that Spike would have done anything she wanted. It was so easy to make her regret her life's awful decisions these days.

"Even the monks hated him," Dawn continued. She pulled another licorice twist out and bit off both ends, using it as a straw for her glass of milk.

Buffy shook her head in her hands.

"I mean, they must have. Cuz all the memories they stuffed into my head of him suck. Like, full-on craptastic suckage, not tingly Spike suckage."

"Dawn!" The blood ran straight to Buffy's cheeks at that.

Dawn rolled her eyes. "Oh, come on. Like you did a great job of hiding that from me. Everyone on a Hellmouth knows you don't come home with bruised lips just from dusting vamps." Grown-ups were so dumb.

The girls sat quietly for a moment before Buffy's voice broke the silence, shakily: "I miss him so much, Dawnie."




Spike had taken a long walk to the lakefront, hoping some fresh (if you could call it that) air would relax him a bit.

It didn't do much.

Instead, as he walked up Hird towards his apartment, something cracked inside him. In the shadows of the parking lot between The Phantasy and the housing projects behind it, he saw a struggle take place. A demon, possibly a Lei-Ach, had a girl backed against the dumpster. If this was, indeed, a Lei-Ach demon, then that meant the girl was hurt and weakened, as these days they preyed only on the ones who weren't gonna make it. He slipped in closer, and the long blonde hair was all he saw before he felt the shift to gameface. The demon inside roared, hurling him into the creature. Spike's fists and nails rained down on the Lei-Ach, tearing at him, causing the demon's already blistering grayish-white skin to bleed profusely. Even after the poor girl (who, he later saw, was a junkie) had scrambled away, Spike did not relent. He couldn't. He had seen that blonde hair as Buffy's in those short seconds, and he gave every ounce of pain, heartbreak, and longing for her to this demon in the form of a vicious assault. The Lei-Ach didn't stand a chance, could barely get a swipe in edgewise. Blood coagulated in his long, stringy hair as he bitterly held onto his life. Spike cracked the demon's face into the asphalt, then swooped down to straddle him, fangs bared. A look of confusion passed by the Lei-Ach's eyes, at least that's what it appeared to be through the blood. The battered creature's black tongue slipped out slowly, as if to tender resignation and defeat.

Spike stopped, suddenly aware of himself. His way wasn't torture; that was Angelus's gig. So, what the fuck was he doing? He could taste the tears that had been coating his own face the whole time.

The Lei-Ach reached out a shaky hand, and Spike knew there was no way he was making it out now. The vampire lurched forward and snapped the demon's neck, putting him out of his misery.

If he wasn't sure before, he certainly was now. Someone, somewhere, had cursed him.

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