This is the use of memory:
For liberation -- not less of love but expanding
Of love beyond desire, and so liberation
From the future as well as the past. -- T.S. Eliot, "Little Gidding"

"This isn't about us."

"You and Nina?"

"Me and you. This is a dangerous mission that's only gonna get worse if we don't put aside our differences."

"Partners, then?"

"Just like old times. You want a drink?"

"God, yes."

They ended up sitting in silence for another twenty minutes after Andrew left, neither wanting to be the first to admit defeat and leave. Absolutely nothing in the room was familiar to him except the scent -- none of the clothes or books, none of the smaller personal touches -- but it was enough to make Spike twitchy. He recognized nothing there, but at the same time there was something achingly familiar about the room. Buffy, he thought. After so long, there he was, in her space, and he couldn't stand it. Just as he was about to storm out of the building, Angel heaved a sigh, stood and left without looking back. Gratified that he was the last one to leave, Spike took one last look around and followed. He found Angel standing on the corner, sniffing the air and squinting up at the stars.

He nudged Angel's shoulder to get his attention. "Right. We off, then?"

"Soon enough," Angel muttered. But he merely stood there, solid and immovable as one of the countless statues that dotted the city. Spike thought to remind him that the night wasn't getting any younger, but decided against it. It would serve the old bastard right if he moped and brooded himself into an early date with the sunrise. Just as Spike was ready to take off without him, Angel finally spoke again. "What do you say to that drink? I mean, a real drink this time."

Spike decided that at that point he would have taken a drink if The Immortal himself had offered it to him. "Yeah, alright."

"Good. I know a place."

And they were off. Angel did indeed know a place -- he always managed to know a place, no matter where in the world they were. This time it was some hole in the wall populated mostly by local vampires, a small basement room with crooked walls buried beneath a larger structure that Angel told him was the demon equivalent of a bed and breakfast. No stylish crowds, no bright lights, no loud dance music, just a smallish group engaged in some vigorous soaking in various types of alcohol. It was perfect. The two of them hunched over a small table and settled in for some serious drinking, avoiding eye contact.

Two hours and three bottles of whiskey later, it was the most beautiful bar Spike had ever seen. Unfortunately, Angel, who had clearly been trying for some kind of world record in silent brooding, chose that moment to break his silence in order to get the room to join him in some pathetically sappy love song, and after a few choice words from the bartender they were tossed from the establishment.

Clutching their half-finished bottles, they stumbled upstairs and secured a room to sober up in and weather out the approaching day. Angel collapsed into a chair and Spike sprawled on the bed to try to get the room to stop spinning. He was half-asleep when Angel spoke.

"Sorry about that. Getting us kicked out, I mean."

Spike rose up on his elbows and squinted blearily across the room. "Well, what do you know. It talks. And here I've been thinking that I've been drinking with a piece of marble all evening. You know, when you set out to sulk you really do a world-class job of it."

Angel winced at the volume. "Maybe I just wanted to avoid your yapping. God, do you always have to talk so damn much?"

"Hey! I let you alone down there for a good couple of hours. It's not my fault you're the most antisocial creature I've ever met. Your only job down there was to drink in silence, and you couldn't even manage that. You have got to be the most miserable drunk I've ever been with."

Angel leveled a glare at him. "And you're still talking. I can see why you ended up with Harmony. Only the two of you would be able to stand each other's voices."

"Okay, that's it." He tried to stand up and quickly gave up, collapsing back down on the bed with a thud. Luckily Angel decided to join him on the bed, saving him the effort of focusing across the span of the room. They lay side by side, staring up at the cracked plaster on the ceiling until Spike remembered why he had been trying to get up in the first place. "I don't want to hear about Harmony, okay? Not like you haven't made a lot of bad choices in the sex department yourself. What was that little thing between you and Eve last year?"

Angel snorted. "That one was a spell. And anyway, it's not quite as many mistakes as you've made, I bet."

"Well, yeah. I'm sure it's hard to make bad relationship choices when you're spending decades acting like a monk who's too miserable to get a happy. How's that working out for you, anyway?"

He wasn't quite able to escape the clumsy blow, and it landed across his shoulders before he could roll completely away. Luckily Angel was as drunk as he was and both of their reflexes were off. When they settled back down again, Angel stared up at the ceiling for a few moments before speaking.

"Your...thing, with Buffy. Would you count that as one of your mistakes?"

Spike turned his head to look at him, but Angel merely stared straight ahead, his face even more unreadable than usual.

"My thing. Can't even dignify it by calling it a relationship, can you? Look, I already told you. I know she didn't really love me. I know we weren't going to end up happily together like some bloody fairy tale. So would it kill you to even acknowledge that we might have had more between us than just sex?" His eyes were stinging with the threat of tears, and he hurriedly blinked them back before taking another swig of whiskey. Not the best choice, he knew -- drinking brought out his maudlin side -- but he needed a distraction. "And no, to answer your question, it wasn't a mistake. Probably the only right thing I ever did."

"Yeah. It got you your soul."

"And that just kills you, doesn't it, after all this time? Yeah, I got my soul. My choice, my decision, but it hasn't exactly been a load of laughs. I mean, do you even care why I did it? After what I..." he choked off before he went any further. No need to get into the details of what went wrong between him and Buffy, although he wondered how much Angel knew or suspected. He sighed. "So, yeah. My soul, present and accounted for. Let's all celebrate." He raised the bottle to the ceiling in salute before lifting his head for another swallow.

"I can't believe I'm telling you this, but she was proud of you."

Spike rolled onto his side and squinted at him. "Buffy, you mean?"

"Yeah." Angel turned to face him. "And if you ever ask me about this again I'll deny it, but…she was proud of you. Of your soul, of what you did. She said you saved the world. I saw her briefly when she came to L.A. after Sunnydale was destroyed."

"Well, I did save the world. Like I've been telling you all night." Although he forced an air of nonchalance, Angel's admission had left him staggered, with a warm glow in his stomach that had nothing to do with the alcohol he'd consumed.

Angel rolled his eyes. "Because being gracious is just too much to expect from you, isn't it? I should have known better." He sighed and collapsed onto his back again. "You want to know the truth? Seeing her here, on her own, being a woman as well as the Slayer...it feels like an ending. Not the end of the story, but the end of a chapter. Not to give that little weasel Andrew too much credit, but he's right. Who knows? Maybe she's still baking. Maybe she's done baking already and has decided...but the point is, I need to be living my own life. What we had together...we'll never have that again. Maybe we'll only have memories. Maybe we'll have something even better eventually, but we could never go back to the way we were six years ago. And to tell the truth, I don't even want to."

Spike stared at him for a minute. "Well. When you do decide to talk, you're certainly Mr. True Confessions, aren't you?" His voice softened. "But yeah, I know what you mean. Moving on. It sounds well and good, but talking about it's a bloody sight easier than doing it, you know? And I can't say it hurts any, knowing that she's not with you either." He gave a short laugh. "Pretty funny, after all this time. Here we are, full circle, suffering the slings and arrows of outrageous...Immortals. Or something."

"Yeah. Or something."

They lay in silence for another few minutes, and just as Spike was getting ready to drop off to sleep again he found himself nose to nose with Angel. "What are you doing?" he slurred blearily, right before Angel dropped a brutal kiss on his mouth.

"Coming full circle. You have a problem with that?" Angel's eyes were dark and impenetrable, and Spike stared at him for a second before answering. His tongue was numb from the alcohol, and he could taste the whiskey on Angel's breath. The kiss was as familiar as a kiss could be when compared to hundred-year-old memories.

"I must be more drunk than I thought, because not as such, no."

And that was all the talking to be done that night.

 

Morning, or close enough to it. The threat of sunlight was in the air. A hangover the likes of which he hadn't seen in a long time was pounding his brain into mush. A hard, heavy body was pressed up against him, lying sprawled half on top of his back. What in the bloody hell...?

He cracked an eye open and found himself face to face with the top of Angel's head. Oh, terrific. And as if that wasn't bad enough, the pale grey light at the uncovered window made his head ache and reminded him that someone should get up to cover it. His head and stomach protested mightily at the mere suggestion of standing up, so he settled for an elbow to Angel's stomach. The vampire in question merely grunted and grabbed him around the waist, burrowing his nose into his neck. Great.

"Get up, you great oaf. Shut the curtains before we both fry."

Angel finally pulled away and squinted at him. "Spike? What are you...what did we...oh my God. We didn't, did we?"

Spike groaned. "Looks like it, doesn't it? And I'm no happier about this than you are, but if you don't go close the window I'll stake us both, starting with you."

Angel dragged himself off the bed and yanked the curtains shut, and Spike caught a glimpse of bruises and bite marks all over his naked back and ass. He could feel a similar scattering of marks on his own body, as well as an all-over deep body ache that let him know he'd been used hard and given as good as he'd gotten in return. Ignoring his churning stomach, he staggered to his feet and scrambled for his jeans while Angel collapsed back on the bed with a moan.

"I can't believe we did that. I am never, ever drinking that much again." His head suddenly shot up. "Spike, I swear, if you tell anyone..."

Spike snorted from across the room where he was pulling his boots on. "Yeah, not the first time I've heard that one. Don't worry, your secret's safe with me. This wasn't exactly the most shining moment of my existence either. Last night was...last night. Just a little, you know, drunken nostalgia. Male bonding. An isolated incident, never happen again."

"Please tell me you didn't just say 'male bonding', because I might have to find the energy to kill you. And I'm right there with you on the isolated incident bit. Because as far as I'm concerned, this never happened."

"Right. Never happened. Never gonna happen again."

"Nope. And...where are you going, anyway?"

"Out. I've seen what you're like with a hangover. You think I'm going to stick around for the show? I'll meet you at the plane."

With that, Spike staggered down the stairs into the dirty back alley behind the building. He managed to get his arms into the new leather coat and made his way to the end of the narrow lane before his body decided that he wasn't quite as up to the task as his brain had originally thought. He stumbled to the nearest doorway and managed to get to his knees before he passed out.
 

He awoke with his right hand on fire. With an undignified yelp he shied away from the shaft of sunlight that had done the damage, cursing aloud the entire time. A quick glance around showed him that, out of all of the alleyways in the entire city, he had managed to hit on one of the few without a source of running water. In desperation he rolled his new coat around his hand and smothered the flames, realizing too late that it left him with a brand new hole in the leather. Fabulous. He might as well have hung on to his old one.

At least an hour had passed since he had collapsed there, judging by the shadows, and he could hear the stir and bustle of the city outside his tiny alley. Fortunately, no one seemed interested in investigating the Vampire Flamb. Unfortunately, not quite enough time had passed for him to have completely sobered up, and as soon as the flames were gone he cradled his burned hand against his chest and slid down a wall of the alley, well away from the early morning sunlight. Staying vertical was simply too much work, so he let himself collapse over onto his side, smashing the side of his face against the rough stones. He felt like a puppet whose strings had been cut, and the thought reminded him so much of Angel that he smirked, until he remembered how and why he'd ended up in this mess in the first place.

Stupid Angel. Stupid Rome. Stupid Immortal.

He should have known better by now not to drink when he was having woman problems. It wasn't the first time he'd woken up on fire, after all, although the sex with Angel thing was a bit of a change. Not exactly a first time for that one either, but not something he'd engaged in in over a hundred years. He should count himself lucky. The last time he'd been that badly drunk, he'd decided that the best possible course of action was to go out and get a soul.

Stupid Buffy.

It was all her fault, of course. He didn't know how, precisely, but he'd figure that one out once his head cleared up. In the meantime, he'd nurse his unreasonable grudge, thank you very much. And he'd get the hell out of this damned city as soon as it was safe to move. He could never understand why Angel had such a fondness for the place -- the sheer density of consecrated sites and corner churches made his hair stand on end. The only good thing to say for it was this cramped alley, which, now that the sun had risen enough, protected him quite nicely. He decided that as soon as he could stand he was heading into the sewers. In the meantime, he dozed on the dirty pavement, fingering the SPQR on the heavy manhole cover and waiting for his legs to start obeying his brain.

Senatus Populusque Romanus. Were there vampires in ancient Rome? Must have been. Senatus Vampirusque Romanus. Except that I don't think any vampires would have been interested in any damn senate, except as a food source. And I suppose His Benevolence, The Immortal was wandering around as well. Just like him, the poncey bastard. Ille Immortalis. Ille Aeternus. Shut up, brain. God, my head hurts.

He smelled her before he saw her. As he lay there, curled up on himself with drink and self-pity, he caught the scent that had been haunting him ever since he'd set foot in her flat. He squinted against the sunlight reflecting off the pavement and caught sight of a pair of legs entering his alley. Strappy sandals and pink nail polish, with that one scar on her left ankle he would have known anywhere, and he couldn't hide the disgusted moan. Of course. Of course she'd have to find him when he was like this, filthy and hung over and shagged raw by Angel. If it wasn't so pathetic he would have laughed. His only hope was that she would manage to miss him somehow. Of course, that would require more luck than he currently possessed.

"Spike? Are you there? Oh my God, Spike, are you okay?"

And there she was, kneeling in front of him, her hand hovering over his head as if afraid to touch him. He wanted to grab her and kiss her. He wanted to disappear completely. He wanted to say something incredibly smooth and self-assured, but when he opened his mouth all that came out was a croak.

"Oh...bloody hell."

It wasn't supposed to be like this. He didn't know exactly how their reunion was supposed to go, but he was damned sure it wasn't supposed to involve him lying in a Roman alley with a scorched hand and a bad hangover. He had expected...what, exactly? In his best dreams he had pictured tears and kisses, and in his worst nightmares he had imagined a look of disgust and disappointment on her face before she turned away from him.

Reality, as he knew, was always somewhere in the middle. He blinked up at her and saw that the tears were there, but so was the look of disappointment. Bugger.

Her hand finally made contact with his head. He closed his eyes for a moment from the sheer joy of connection, right before she tightened her fingers in his hair and yanked his head sharply up.

"Ow! Hey!"

She let him go with a snort of disgust. "You'll live." She settled back on her heels and glared at him, winding her arms tightly around her torso. She was shaking slightly, and he couldn't tell if it was from anger, shock or relief.

"Buffy," he breathed, and then realized that, since reality seemed to be deviating rather badly from his fantasies, he had no idea of what to say next. "Yeah, uh, hi," he finished weakly, and shut his eyes in disgust. Naturally, it was exactly the wrong thing to say to her.

"Hi? That's what you have to say? God." She pushed off from the dirty ground and stalked away. He had a moment of panic that she was walking away from him entirely, but she turned around and began pacing back and forth. He tried to watch her face, but her quick pace left him dizzy. Instead, he zoned out and listened to her breathing while he waited for her to marshal her thoughts. He had a feeling it wouldn't be the best idea to interrupt her, so he winced and silently pulled himself semi-upright to slouch against the wall. He wished she would touch him again, even to hit him. He was starting to get the surreal feeling that she was some incorporeal phantom. It wouldn't be the first time.

As if she had heard his thoughts she wheeled around and planted herself in front of him. Her mouth was pursed and her eyebrows raised, and she wore that pinched expression he'd come to recognize from when she was Take-Charge Buffy.

"Just so you know? Right now? I can't stand you. Just so we're clear on that." He nodded mutely. "Good." She grabbed his unburned hand and yanked him roughly to his feet, letting him go as soon as he was standing more or less upright. "If I'm going to talk to you, you need to get cleaned up. Come on."

"Yeah, about that....Don't suppose you happen to have a nice, sun-proof car waiting just around the corner?"

"Not so much. Besides, have you seen how they drive around here? We're taking the sewers. Which means you owe me for my shoes on top of everything else."

 

In the end, they spent less than half the trip below ground. Spike followed Buffy back through the doorway into the building he had stumbled out of, and then out through the front entrance into another shaded alley. After a few minutes of weaving in and out of seemingly empty buildings, Spike managed to catch her eye and raised an eyebrow in question. She shrugged.

"The demon quarter's been pretty quiet since I've been in town, but I still check it out on patrol. I guess they're not interested in having a Slayer bother them, so apart from the stupider ones everyone's been more or less well behaved. It's mostly the tourists who cause the trouble." She fixed him with a glare.

"Ah. So, I guess Andrew managed to spill the news after all, did he?"

She wheeled around on him. "Okay, so even Andrew knew you were around? What, were you just planning on never letting me know?"

"No! I mean, yes! I mean...it's complicated, all right?" He stepped back and ran his hands through his hair in frustration, wincing from the still unhealed burns. He saw Buffy's face soften momentarily at that, and she grabbed his hand and studied it for a moment before unceremoniously tossing it aside.

"Complicated? What's so complicated about picking up a phone? Or, ooh! One of those nice, old-fashioned pens? It's not like Angel didn't know where I was."

He was starting to get impatient. So far, this little European jaunt had resulted in the loss of his coat, his romantic illusions and his pride. He couldn't even bring himself to think about the badness that was the sex with Angel. "Well, let's see. Being non-corporeal was a bit of a complication. So was losing my hands. And maybe I've been a little busy. Did you think of that? Or have you been too busy with the new boyfriend?"

He cringed as he said it, but he was just too damned exhausted to censor his words. This entire affair was already in shambles; better to just cut his losses, find his way to the Wolfram & Hart jet and lick his wounds in private. His defenses were just too low at the moment, and he felt sick and close to tears. He was half way to turning around and bolting out of there when he realized that Buffy was staring at him with her mouth open.

"Okay, I have no idea what you're talking about. Non-corporeal what? Huh? And the boyfriend thing? So not going there right now." Her voice softened a bit. "Look, if we're going to fight about this can we find some place more comfortable to do it in? And you could really use a shower. And...hey, is that a new coat?"

It was official. He had left surreal several exits behind and entered the realm of the truly bizarre. He needed time to catch his mental bearings. After a brief pause he merely nodded dumbly at her and followed her down a set of ladders that led, finally, into the city's labyrinthine sewer system. Luckily Buffy seemed sure about where they were, because he had completely lost his sense of direction. They walked in silence, Buffy giving the occasional grunt of disgust at the messier parts, until he decided to ask a question that had been bothering him.

"So if Andrew didn't tell you, how did you know I was here?"

She sighed impatiently. "Well, let me see. You and Angel start a fight at a club that I'm at, you get involved in some kind of street brawl involving explosives, you get thrown out of a demon bar for obnoxious behavior, and I'm not supposed to know you're here? Let's face it, the two of you aren't exactly subtle."

He couldn't help smirking in agreement, but when she turned to him her eyes were once again bright with unshed tears. "I kind of figured Angel would do something like this sooner or later, after I caught one of his guys trailing me. But I had no idea you were around until last night, none, not until I suddenly found out that two of my exes, one of whom is supposed to be dead, were wandering around the city." She sniffed. "I wasn't sure it was really you, you know, not until I found Angel this morning. Because I kind of figured that, after everything that had happened, the Spike I knew would have at least had the decency to let me know that he wasn't really most sincerely dead after all."

He couldn't stand it. "Buffy..." he started, but she cut him off.

"I told you, we'll talk later. Not now."

After that they continued without speaking, and sooner than he expected they were exiting into the basement beneath Buffy's building. At the entrance to her flat she turned to him.

"Come in, Spike."

He followed her inside without mentioning that he'd already been there twelve hours before. She disappeared into one of the back rooms, reappearing a few moments later with a towel and a plain white t-shirt, which she handed to him. He raised his eyebrows at the second article.

"It's clean, and it's better than what you've got on right now. You can have the shower, it's right through there. Oh, and Dawn and Andrew will both be out until later tonight."

He didn't want to think about how he'd ended up there, or where Angel was at the moment, or who this borrowed shirt belonged to. His brain was still struggling to play catch-up. Deciding that lots of hot water was really the best solution at the moment, he headed for the shower, dreading the conversation to come.

When he emerged, feeling cleaner and slightly more able to face the world, he found that Buffy had changed and sacked out on one of the couches. Before falling asleep she had moved it so that it was blocking the front door, as if afraid that he might walk out and disappear if she gave him half the chance.

It was the first occasion he'd had to really look her since she'd found him, and he took the opportunity to study her appearance. She looked wonderful, healthy and tan, positively glowing. She had gained some weight and lost that tired, starved look she had seemed to perpetually wear for the last few months he had been around her. Her hair was longer and blonder, and she reminded him so much of the young woman he'd become obsessed with back in Sunnydale.

She looked absolutely amazing, and he was indeed half tempted to find some way to steal out of the flat and leave her in peace. She was doing just fine without him, and it didn't seem like his sudden reappearance in her life would do anything except make her stressed and miserable, and he couldn't stand for that. But there was the fact that, for whatever reason, she clearly wanted him there, even if it was to yell at him some more. It was either face Buffy or go back and find Angel. It wasn't much of a contest. Grabbing an extra throw from one of the chairs he settled onto the floor, following her example by falling sound asleep.

Spike awoke to the smell of warm blood, and opened his eyes to find Buffy standing over him with a mug in her hands. She handed it to him.

"Here, I thought you could use this. How's your hand?"

"Better, thanks." And it was, tingly and itchy but mostly healed, along with his hangover. He took the mug from her and began drinking, only mildly curious as to how she had managed to obtain blood for him. He decided that, as far as important questions went, it was far down at the bottom of the list. There were approximately a million things he wanted to ask her, but since he temporarily couldn't think of anything besides How've you been? and Are you glad to see me?, he decided to let her take the lead in their discussion.

Finishing the blood, he looked up to find her sitting cross-legged on the sofa staring at him. She looked away and gave a self-conscious laugh when he caught her.

"You know what? I had this all planned out. There was going to be talking, like adults. No hitting. Maybe some yelling. And now I don't even know where to begin."

The fact that she seemed to be as unsure as he was left him somewhat relieved, and he smiled back before moving to sit on the opposite end of the couch.

"You know," he began carefully, "between the two of us we could probably write a book: Small Talk for the Recently Reanimated: How to Handle the Formerly Deceased."

She laughed out loud at that, and the sound warmed his heart. It was the carefree laugh he'd barely heard since the awful business with Glory and her mother's death had seemingly drained all of the joy from her life. It was the type of laugh he hadn't heard at all during their torrid affair, and he quickly dropped that thought rather than examine it too closely.

"The only problem is that you're still dead," she said, and then gave him a worried look. "You are, right? Dead? I mean, with the blood-drinking and everything I kind of figured...."

"Yeah, no change in the vampire status. Except that I'm all the way back now, and if you want a good description of hell on Earth, let me tell you about hanging around Angel and not being able to hit anything."

"Okay, is this about that non-corporeal business? Because I want to know what's up with that."

Encouraged by her apparent interest he began relating bits and pieces of what had happened to him from the moment he'd first appeared in Angel's office, completely out of sequence and in whatever order he happened to remember. Buffy listened with a frown of concentration, occasionally stopping him with questions when his narration became too confusing to follow. Her focus was unnerving, and he had a hard time looking at her without remembering the last time she'd looked at him with such fixed intensity: the moment she had held his hand while the Hellmouth collapsed around them. The memory brought him to a sudden silence, and he looked away while he attempted to collect his thoughts. He was completely shocked when he felt her reach over and grab his hand, holding on to it tightly.

"Is it hard being back?" Her voice was soft, and as he couldn't bring himself to look at her he focused on the feel of her warm hand in his. "I remember what it was like, being brought back suddenly like that. You helped me. I don't think I ever told you how much you helped me in those first few weeks, just listening to me, and I want to help you too if I can."

"It's a bit different, pet." His voice was rough and his throat tight, and the only way he could speak was if he kept his focus on the chair across the room. "You were in heaven, being a hero and all. I wasn't. I don't remember anything, just suddenly appearing like no time had passed at all. And it took me a while to learn that I wasn't supposed to be there. It wasn't a reward, or a second chance, just me being a pawn in some game I wasn't interested in playing. The only reason I held on so tight was because the alternative was so much worse. No rest in the great beyond for me, I'm afraid."

"I can't believe that," she said firmly. "You're a hero, Spike."

"You weren't there, alright?" Sitting next to her while she was being so kind was suddenly unbearable, so he pulled away from her and began to pace. "You think that completely washes over everything I did before? I could feel hell pulling me in, and there was no way to stop it."

"I'm sorry," she whispered. "I wish I had known. But Spike...I know what you think, but I think you're wrong. I don't know how it all works. Sometimes I think being in heaven wasn't a reward at all, more like some kind of cruel joke to make me miserable when I came back. But what I do know is what I've seen you become. And I still believe in you."

He was stunned silent by her confession. She had changed so much in the months since he'd seen her. The burden of being the only chosen champion had been lifted, and her calm self-assurance amazed and humbled him. She was the woman he had fallen in love with, fully and completely, no longer needing to hide behind a general's shell. He was glad he didn't need to breathe, because he didn't think he could have managed it if he'd tried.

She exhaled loudly, breaking the tension. "Okay, enough with the speeches," she said with a self-deprecating laugh. "I know they're not exactly my best attribute. So, you and Angel, huh? I wish I'd been a fly on the wall for that confrontation. Well, for some of it anyway. Because I could see what you two were up to last night, and I so don't want to know the details. So was that a vampire thing, or are you gay now?" she chirped.

He gaped at her and the abrupt change in the tone of the conversation. "What? No! That was...that was being drunk, and making bad decisions, and...and I don't know what you think happened, but you're wrong. Nothing happened. Nothing at all."

She gave him a jaundiced look. "Uh huh. If you say so."

"I'm serious! And I've been with Harmony, haven't I?" He winced, knowing he'd conveniently forgotten to bring that one up, and plowed on ahead, hoping to distract her. "And I wouldn't exactly go throwing stones about the dating situation, pet."

"Harmony, Spike?" Damn it, she'd caught it. "Because, okay, I don't want to tell you who to hang out with, but...Harmony?"

"Hey, it was just the once, alright? Well, just the half, anyway, given that she tried to kill me in the middle of it. You try getting your body back all of a sudden and see what stupid things you do."

She merely rolled her eyes, but her voice was steely. "And you know, you don't have the right to lecture me about who I've been seeing, especially since you couldn't even bring yourself to tell me you were back. I really don't think you can have anything to say about The Immortal when...Harmony? No comparison there."

He snorted. "Yeah, she may not rate high on the old intelligence scale, but at least she's not some pretentious Eurotrash bastard who goes around taking what doesn't belong to him."

She stood up and glared at him. "Okay, that had better not be me you're talking about. I make no apologies for who I choose to date. I never claimed he was the love of my life, and it shouldn't matter to you anyway. Am I not allowed to have a fun, casual relationship? Especially since, again, you couldn't be bothered to come see me, or even say hello."

It looked like she wasn't planning on letting him off the hook with that one. "Look, I did try, alright? Made it down to the docks and everything, once I wasn't tied to that damned building anymore. I just...it was complicated."

"Yeah, you tried that one already." She crossed her arms. "Uncomplicate it."

He sighed and paced for another minute before answering. "Look, I went out a hero. And at that moment everything seemed so clear. I knew, for the first time in my life, who I was, and what I was supposed to do."

"I know," she said softly. "I felt it too."

He looked up at her. "Did you? I thought maybe, when we were...I wasn't sure. And then suddenly I was back and nothing was clear any more. I didn't have a purpose, I didn't have a place, and I wasn't sure about anything. And I needed to find that out for myself."

She sounded hurt. "Okay, self-analysis is always of the good, but does that mean you couldn't even pick up a phone?"

He sighed. "Buffy...being around you, being with you, was...it was the most exhilarating experience of my life. It defined who I was, and it almost tore me apart. I needed this."

"Okay, I get it." He didn't think she did, not from the way she sounded as if she was about to cry, and he rushed to reassure her.

"It's not...Buffy, I've changed, but I haven't changed how I feel about you."

"And how do you feel about me?" She was staring at him with that fierce intensity again. "Because I'm beginning to think you don't really know. I trusted you, Spike. More than anyone else last year, I trusted you. I relied on you. I thought you trusted me too, that you saw who I was. Believe it or not, after everything that happened between us I thought we were actually becoming friends, and that meant more to me than you know."

He was aghast. "I did trust you! I still do! How can you doubt that?"

"I don't know! Maybe because you'd rather cling to some fantasy ending than face reality?"

It was all falling apart. He tried one more time to explain himself. "Buffy, you know. I told you, that night you were kicked out of your house. How I feel about you...it's because of who you are, not because I expected anything from you in return."

She snorted. "So, what, now you're so noble you'll just walk away selflessly? Where have I heard that one before? You know what I think? You don't love me. You've been in love with some image of me. You think you know exactly how I feel and how I would've reacted to seeing you again. And that's just...how dare you? After everything we went through, how dare you throw it back in my face like that? After...after what I said to you at the end?"

He had had enough. "I know you didn't mean it, okay? I was trying to let you off the hook!"

His words fell into a dead silence. She looked up at him, and her face was completely pale except for two spots of color high on her cheeks. Her voice was pinched and tight.

"I was wrong," she spat at him. "You don't know me at all." She gave a bitter laugh. "It's funny. Angel couldn't love me without a soul, and it looks like you can't love me with one."

It was the last straw. After one incredulous look he stormed out of her flat without so much as a backwards glance, slamming the door behind him.

Spike decided that it was a good thing he hadn't been counting on the plane ride home being particularly comfortable. True to form, Buffy picked the seat with the best view and left him and Angel to sort out what was left. He wasn't sure he was ready to spend hours next to Buffy, but there was no way in hell he was going to let Angel plant his big ass next to her and monopolize her time. Unsure of where to go so that he'd be close but not too close, he threw himself into one of the chairs in the rear of the plane. From there he'd be able to simultaneously keep an eye on matters and continue his sulk, which made it the perfect spot. Angel settled down near the front, as if determined to stay as far away from both of them as possible. It was Buffy who finally broke the silence once they were in the air.

"We're going to be hitting some sunlight eventually. Do these windows come with shades? Or do you guys have some blankets or something?"

"Necrotempered glass," Angel grunted.

"Necro-who?"

"Some kind of magic," Spike interjected from the back. "Just like his office. Keeps all the little bloodsuckers safe as houses. One of the nice perks of making a deal with the devil, isn't it?"

Angel glared at him but said nothing, and Buffy raised her eyebrows before turning back to the window to watch the lights of the city disappear beneath them. After several more attempts at light conversation that were answered by grunts from Angel and silence from Spike, she gave up and focused on the darkness outside. Spike surreptitiously watched the back of her head. He wanted to beg her for a straight answer as to why she was there, but at the same time he was afraid that whatever she had to say would not be what he wanted to hear. Instead of giving in to his need to question her he merely listened to her breathing. After the plane had ascended enough that the countryside below them was completely invisible, Buffy unbuckled her belt and headed for the restroom in the rear, catching Spike's eye on the way. He wasn't sure what to think. Did she want him to follow? Did she want to talk to him in private? Hell, did he even want to talk to her at the moment? It seemed that the passage of time and the presence of a soul had diminished his ability to read her, as well as given him the nasty habit of overthinking his actions. He hated that development. At this rate he'd soon be putting on weight and running an evil law firm in no time.

While he was trying to make up his mind what to do, the bathroom door closed behind Buffy. As if he had been waiting for just this opportunity, Angel wheeled around and glared at Spike.

"A deal with the devil? What in the hell is your problem?" he hissed.

Spike settled back into a slouch and shrugged. "No problem at all. Just making sure we're all on the same page. Wouldn't want to give anyone the impression you're still playing as a Knight Templar. You've moved up in the world! You should be proud of what you've accomplished, so give yourself a little credit." He smirked at Angel and settled back with his arms folded behind his head, waiting for the fireworks. Unfortunately, Angel wasn't biting.

"Spike, shut up," he said in a weary voice. "You don't know what you're talking about, so why don't you leave it alone for once?" Spike saw him steal a glance at the door that had closed behind Buffy, and the proprietary nature of the look infuriated him.

"Fine. You go about your business, but don't think I'm going to let you drag Buffy into your mess."

Angel snorted. "What, so you're her protector now? Why don't you just let her make her own decisions? She doesn't need you."

It stung, even coming from Angel, but he managed to cover it up with a pout. "Back to fighting, are we? And after we managed to get so...close. I'm hurt, really."

"I thought we weren't going to ever mention that," Angel said in a furious whisper, after another glance at the closed restroom door.

"Oh, so that's the way you want it? Fine."

"Fine."

"Fine!" Spike snarled, determined to get the last word. They sat in heavy silence for a minute. He thought about dropping it there, but he couldn't resist one last dig.

"So, how about you toss me one of those little bottles?"

"No!"
 

Buffy ended up napping for a few hours and awoke when they were over the Atlantic. She groaned when she found out that the human-compatible food supply was limited to non-perishable snacks and sodas. Angel gave an apologetic shrug. "I'm sorry. If I'd had some warning that you were coming I would have arranged something." He checked the time and grabbed the phone while Buffy picked through piles of packaged peanuts in mild disgust. "I want to check on how Gunn's doing with the Capo's head."

"Oh right, the head." Spike had managed to forget all about it. He was feeling wired and jittery, and the remaining hours he would be trapped on the plane stretched endlessly before him. He knew the best choice for all concerned would be to keep his mouth shut and do his best to ignore the other two until they were on the ground. He had never been very good at choosing the safe option. "Hey, you should check up on the girlfriend while you're at it. What's dog girl's name, Nina? She in for 'treatment' this week?"

Buffy's head had shot up at the magic word. "Girlfriend?" She turned toward Spike. "He has a girlfriend?"

"Oh, yeah," he nodded nonchalantly. He didn't need to look at Angel to know that he was seething. "Cute thing, too. Well, except for being a werewolf several nights a month. Blonde, petite...you know," he said in mock surprise, "I think he might well have a type, your Angel."

Buffy looked Spike up and down drily. "Uh huh. Case in point."

"Yeah....wait, what? No! I mean, that is, I didn't mean...." He was stammering, damn it. Served him right for opening his mouth in the first place. Buffy had turned to give Angel a lethal glare. He looked a bit sheepish.

"It's not...she's not my girlfriend. I mean, okay, she kind of is, but it's not like...."

Buffy cut him off. "Okay, when we get back we're so going to have a little talk about you interfering in my love life, because clearly you don't have a lot of room to complain. I can't believe the two of you. What are you, twelve? You're allowed to date, but not me?"

"Buffy..."

"No. I don't want to talk about this now, not when I'm tempted to toss you out of this plane without a parachute." She wheeled around and caught Spike mid-smirk. "And you're no better than he is, so don't even start!" She glowered at both of them in turn and nodded in satisfaction when they remained silent. "Good. Because this is not the place, and...ooh, you have honey-roasted!" She grabbed at the bag and settled back in her chair, munching happily. Spike caught Angel's eye and gave him a look of exasperation, their differences forgotten in the face of the Mystery that is Woman.

 

It was official, Spike decided. The flight would never end. Wolfram & Hart had cursed the plane, and they were doomed to spend eternity caught in some hideous Sisyphean hell dimension that consisted of an endless cycle of strained silences and occasional questioning glances from Buffy at both Angel and himself. It made him want to scream. He'd been sitting for hours, and if he didn't get the chance to engage in some random violence soon he wouldn't be responsible for his actions. Luckily, they finally landed in L.A. without further incident, Spike ignoring the pilot's request to sit down and fasten his seat belt.

As the plane pulled to a stop, Buffy looked askance at the Wolfram & Hart town-car waiting for them. Angel gestured outside. "We can put you up while you're visiting. There's plenty of space. Or I can drop you wherever you want to go." He waited for Buffy's nod and ducked out the door after a glance at Spike.

Spike made to follow him, but Buffy grabbed his sleeve. "You know, I was hoping we could talk. Maybe improve on our last conversation a bit. It's part of the reason why I'm here." She seemed suddenly shy, almost nervous, and he couldn't figure out why. For the first time he wondered if he was currently as opaque to her as she was to him. He couldn't stop himself from untwisting her fingers from his sleeve and instead holding her hand tightly in his own.

"Buffy, I said some things...hell, I've been saying some things for a long time now. And I'm not quite sure what I mean when I say them anymore. I'm sorry for what happened back there. Believe me, it's not exactly how I planned on meeting you again."

She nodded. "You know, I had this plan where I was going to give you your space. But the way I see it, you've had your own space for a long time now. I'm still not entirely sure why you never let me know you were back, but I know you had your reasons and I want to find out what they were. It's like...I know you, but I don't know you. Last year you changed, and with everything that was happening I never got the chance to really get to know the new you. And it's like you were the same, just...more so. Or something. After Angel and Angelus, I was expecting...." She shook her head and laughed slightly. "I don't really know what I was expecting, but, as usual, you managed to surprise me. And so I'd kind of like to get that chance to finish getting to know you."

Once again, she had managed to stun him into silence. He had seen this focus and determination from her before, but rarely directed at him. One of the last times he'd seen it was when he was chained in her basement, listening to her in disbelief while she told him she believed in him. He had thought that, after their last encounter, she would be well glad to be rid of him. He realized he hadn't given her nearly enough credit.

Afraid to say the wrong thing, he merely murmured, "I'd like that too, Buffy."

She smiled and pulled him to the door of the aircraft. He followed her outside, not even realizing that he still held her hand tightly clasped in his.

 

Buffy dropped his hand before they reached the car, and Spike wondered if she was worried about what Angel thought. He tried to catch her eye as they climbed into the vehicle, but she avoided his gaze by focusing on the lights of the city around them. He wanted to know if she regretted her earlier openness with him, but there was no way to question her with Angel sitting right there.

Six months ago he would have done everything in his power to leave this city without a backward glance, but as they pulled into the garage of the Wolfram & Hart building, he couldn't help feeling a sense of relief, as if he had been away for a long time and finally come home. The thought bothered him. Since when did he consider this place home? He had fantasized about Buffy suddenly appearing in L.A., but her actual presence beside him was disturbingly surreal. He couldn't help wishing for a moment that she had remained in Rome, but he banished the traitorous thought as quickly as it had appeared. He should be happy that she was there, that she clearly wanted to be around him, but he felt more confused than anything else. As he slouched behind Angel and blinked at the fluorescent lights, he tried to recapture the feeling of holding her hand in his. He had a hard time believing it had actually happened. By the time they reached the elevator, he had managed to sink back into a moody funk.

At least an hour remained until sunrise, but already the office was buzzing with various legal types running back and forth, very few of them human. From his days as a ghost, Spike knew that the building was never deserted and that business never stopped for the night. He wasn't surprised to see Gunn there to greet them, although at least Harmony was nowhere to be seen this early in the day. Thank God for small favors.

"Angel, you're back. The Capo's all set to begin the ritual, so everything's okay on that end." He raised his eyebrows and handed Angel a folded piece of paper. "The Immortal sent his regards along with the head."

Angel took the note with a sour look and crumpled it into his pocket without reading it. "Great. I'm just glad the damn thing is finally out of our hands. The next time you come to me with threats of demon family wars, you're taking care of it yourself." He turned and gestured to Buffy, who was inspecting the lobby with interest. "Buffy Summers, Charles Gunn."

Gunn extended his hand after a questioning look at Angel. "Nice to meet you. I've heard a lot about you. The original Slayer, huh?"

Buffy took his hand. "Yup. Accept no substitutes. I've heard about you too."

Gunn gestured at the office. "You here for business, or is this a personal visit?"

"A little of both, actually. I ran into the guys in Rome, thought I'd do a little catching up."

"Oh yeah?" Gunn folded his arms and gave Spike and Angel a quick glance, clearly noting the scrapes and bruises that still lingered after their encounters with The Immortal's henchmen and with each other. "Have they been fighting again? Because that never ends well." He gave Spike a second look and smiled. "Well, this is different. Pretty soon you'll graduate to actual colors."

Spike looked down at himself, noticing for the first time that he still wore the white t-shirt he'd obtained from Buffy. "Yeah, don't count on it. Temporary measures in an emergency, nothing more."

Angel gave an impatient sigh. "Look, I've got to take care of some stuff. Gunn, would you mind making sure that Buffy's got a place to stay while she's here? And where's Wes?"

As if on cue, Spike saw Wesley appear out of one of the nearby offices, closely shadowed by Illyria. It didn't surprise him that he was there at that hour -- he didn't think Wesley actually left the building any more -- but he was shocked by his appearance. It looked like he hadn't slept in days, and if possible, he was even more haggard looking than before they had left. He felt Buffy stiffen beside him, but Wesley didn't appear to recognize her as he walked up to Angel.

"Angel, you're back."

"So they keep telling me." Angel lowered his voice. "What's happened?"

Wesley straightened up a bit. "Nothing I couldn't handle. Just some visitors. I'll tell you about it later." He turned and noticed Buffy for the first time, and his face betrayed mild surprise.

"Buffy? I thought you were assisting the Council in Rome?"

"I was. Now I'm here." Her reply was automatic, and Spike noticed that she kept glancing at Illyria, who was inspecting her with the intense fascination she usually reserved for houseplants and petri dishes. "And I guess this must be Illyria?"

Illyria walked closer and stared at Buffy for a moment. "This one smells of power." She turned away dismissively. "Your power is as nothing compared to the might I once held. I have seen your type of warrior before. You reek of humanity and are as fragile as the dust. You do not concern me." She glanced over at Wesley, who was watching the exchange with interest. "I do not wish to be here. You will accompany me." She strode away in the direction of the elevators to the science labs, and after an apologetic glance, Wesley trailed after her.

"And...yeah. That would be Illyria." Angel shrugged tiredly at Buffy. "You should be grateful. She's usually less sociable than that to strangers. Look, if you don't mind I'll talk to you a little later." He gestured at Gunn. "You mind taking care of her?"

"No problem." Gunn pointed towards the stairs as Angel disappeared into his office and shut the doors behind him. "This is the quickest way. We'll take the elevators up there and find a place where you can rest and get cleaned up."

By the time they made their way to the floor with the guest suites, Spike had become edgy and irritable. Buffy still wouldn't look at him, and even managed to stand on the opposite side of the elevator from him. It was time to take matters into his own hands. He turned to Gunn. "Look, I know where we're going. I'll get her settled in."

Gunn shrugged and stifled a yawn. "Suits me. I've got an early meeting I need to get ready for anyway." He nodded to Buffy. "Again, nice to finally meet you. Sorry to run, but I'll catch up with you later." He accepted Buffy's answering nod and pressed the button to descend as they exited the elevator. Once they were alone in the hallway Spike turned to Buffy, but she was already inspecting the doorways around them.

"So which one is mine? My internal clock has gone insane on me, which I think means it's time for a rest." Spike reached for her shoulder, but she jerked away and started pacing back and forth. The gesture reminded him of those bad times after he had regained his soul when she could barely stand to touch him, and the memory was like a knife in the gut. So, that was the way she wanted to play it. Fine, he could do that. He was used to it, after all.

"Pick whichever you like, these ones are all empty. I'm sure someone will bring your bag up soon." He kept his voice even, determined not to let her see how much her rejection hurt him. She took a moment to poke around several of the rooms before settling on one.

"This one looks okay. I think I'll grab some real food and maybe get some sleep now." She hesitated at the door and looked back at him, her face pinched and tired, and Spike couldn't help the hope that welled up in his heart that she might want him to stay. He stepped forward.

"Buffy," he began softly, but before he could get anything else out she interrupted him.

"Later, Spike." And with that, he was looking at the outside of her closed door.

The flash of anger was familiar, but he knew better than to confront her at that moment. He stared at her door for another moment, and then with a muttered, "Fuck this," he stalked away.

 

Too frustrated to stay at Wolfram & Hart he made his way to his basement apartment to wait out the daylight. After a few hours of restless dozing he lit a cigarette and paced, kicking at the furniture. He knew it was a mistake, her coming here. Better that she had stayed in Rome. Better that I had stayed in L.A. in the first place. What the fuck was I thinking, racing out there like an idiot? He needed to go out and get drunk, and then find something especially vile to kill. As soon as it was dark enough he was heading out. With any luck he could avoid both Buffy and Angel for the next couple of days until he had his head clear again. It was the best plan he had.

He had always come up with really shitty plans.

As soon as the sun set he grabbed his coat and threw the door open, coming up short when he found Buffy standing there, her hand-raised in mid-knock. Once upon a time he would have sensed her heartbeat and breathing as soon as she'd entered the building, but he had been so caught up in his own misery he hadn't even noticed her arrival. The realization that, once again, he didn't know her as well as he thought he did depressed him.

"Spike. Gunn told me where your place was. Can I come in?"

It was only then that he realized he was still standing stupidly in the doorway, and he moved aside to let her pass. She wandered around the small apartment, poking at the video games, before turning to him with a forced smile.

"It looks...really nice!" she offered gamely.

He sighed heavily. "Yeah, it's no comfy crypt, but it's a place to live. Want anything to drink?" She shook her head, so he gestured at the sofa and went to grab a beer for himself, straddling one of the kitchen chairs. "So. What do you want?"

She crossed her arms and fixed him with a determined stare, as if daring him to keep up his attempt at apathy. "Well, I thought maybe we'd try that talking thing again."

He looked at her in disbelief. "Oh, you did, did you? Well, maybe I was all ready before." His voice was getting tight, and he took a swallow of beer to cover it up. Damn it. Why did she have to come here just as he was recovering his equilibrium?

She dropped her eyes and sighed. "I'm sorry. I didn't mean to blow you off like that. I just...it was really weird, being there. And I was tired." She softened her voice. "I thought you understood, after what I said on the plane...."

He stiffened his back, determined not to give an inch. "Well, maybe I'm really tired right now. Did you think of that?"

She looked at the coat he'd tossed on the table when she'd caught him on his way out the door, and raised her eyebrows at him. Fuck. Busted. He stared back at her while the silence thickened around them, and finally she stood up decisively.

"Look, I don't know about you, but I could really use some action. Want to go kill something?" She gave him a challenging look and he exhaled in relief.

"God, yes," he said fervently, and grabbing his coat he followed her out, closing the door behind him.

 

They wandered the darkened streets and alleyways in a fairly comfortable silence. The familiar motions of accompanying Buffy on patrol calmed Spike's nerves. It was only after an hour had passed that he realized that, to all intents and purposes, it was really Buffy accompanying him on his patrol. It was an intriguing thought. The night was fairly quiet, and while roaming around they fell into light conversation. Buffy told him about what she'd been up to in Rome, carefully avoiding anything of a romantic nature, and in return he related Angel's adventure as a puppet. The fact that the story made the big lug look like an idiot was of course only a bonus. When she finally stopped giggling they stopped and rested on some crates in an alley behind a nightclub, Buffy kicking her booted heels against the wood in a series of soft thumps while Spike sat beside her.

"So, Wesley," she began. "Wow. He looked, uh...."

"Bad?" He supplied.

"Horrible," she agreed enthusiastically. "I mean, I almost didn't recognize him. You should have seen him when he was back in Sunnydale. He was tweed guy. He was a mini-Giles. In fact, he could out-Giles Giles."

He chuckled. "Yeah, I can imagine. He's been through a lot recently, though, what with Fred and..." he almost found himself mentioning what he'd overheard about some recently resurrected memories, but he held his tongue. That was Angel's story to tell.

Buffy shivered. "That was weird. She...it...gave me the creeps. Were they...did he love her?"

Spike nodded without looking up, and started when he felt Buffy's warm hand on his shoulder.

"Did you love her?"

Was that hesitation in her voice? He couldn't tell. After a moment he nodded again. "Yeah. Not like I..." loved you, he almost said. Loved? Or was it love? He wasn't ready to answer that, so he hurried ahead. "Not romantically, or anything like that. She was kind to me, when I first appeared. She tried to help me, she listened to me, and she had no reason to. She was a good person. And in the end, we all failed her."

Buffy tightened her fingers briefly before releasing him. "I'm sorry," she said softly. "I'm sure you did everything you could. It wasn't your fault. Sometimes people die and we can't do anything about it. You didn't fail her."

The subject was starting to hit a little too close to home, so he stood up to pace and light up a cigarette. "Well, you've seen what we got in return," he said lightly. "Her Blue Highness, the ex-god-king. Tough old bird, that one, but not too big on the manners. She's managed to keep Angel on his toes."

"Yeah." She suddenly sounded even more hesitant. "So, what's Angel up to these days? You mentioned a deal with the devil." Her voice was deceptively light and casual, as if she was asking about the weather. She had always been a horrible actress. He felt his stomach drop.

"Is that what you're here for, then?" He couldn't keep the note of bitterness out of his voice. "Just come to pump me for information about the ex, is that it? Well, you can forget it. If that's all you're after you can trot on back to Rome." He half expected her to stomp out of the alley, but she merely rolled her eyes at him.

"Oh, please. You know that's not all I'm here for. Since you seem to be conveniently forgetting, I'm here for you too." She settled back. "It's just...Giles has been curious about what's been going on here, especially after Andrew's report. Can you blame me for wanting to know?"

He eyed her suspiciously. "Well, I'm not about to go ratting him out now, am I? You want to know, you can talk to him yourself."

She squinted up at him. "Since when do you two get along? I thought you didn't like each other."

He snorted and resumed his pacing. "No love lost there, believe me. But we've come to an understanding. It's not that I particularly like him, but I do know him, as much as I sometimes wish I didn't. He's..."

"Family," she finished for him.

"Yeah, family," he agreed after a moment's thought, and then frowned at the look of wonder she was giving him. "What?"

"I don't know. Like I said, it's like I know you and I don't know you." She shook her head and laughed. "I guess I'm still stuck on the whole soul thing, after all this time. I just kind of went with it at the time, but I guess if I had really thought about it, I would have pictured Spike and Bizzaro Spike, or something."

"Like Angel and Angelus?" He snorted. "I'm not him, Slayer. I don't know where you got the idea he was supposed to be the only mold for Vampire With Soul. And I don't know why you go on about him like they're two separate people. As far as you're concerned, soul equals good and no soul equals bad, and ne'er the twain shall meet. It's not quite that simple."

"What, are you trying to tell me you were a good guy without one?" she challenged him.

"Hell, no," he scoffed. "And I'm not trying to say that I'm one now. But having seen it from both sides, I'll wager it's not as clear-cut as you've been taught. There's more of the devil in your Angel than you'd like to think about, although he did a pretty good job of hiding it from you." He shook his head. "It's that Council's influence, I bet. Always black and white rather than shades of grey."

She was staring at him with a small frown on her face. "You know what? I think you may be right." He gaped at her, and she rolled her eyes. "What? I can admit it. I've been thinking about it a lot over the past couple of years. It's not like you suddenly turned from a frog into a prince. It's more like you...grew up." At his questioning look she hastened to add, "And I didn't mean for that to sound condescending. I was just thinking of Faith when I first knew her years ago, all with the 'want, take, have' and the easy morals. Or lack thereof," she finished with a laugh. "And now things are different. With her, and with you."

The remark surprised him. "I don't think it's the same thing."

"No, not really, but...I'm trying for this analogy thing. Which I've never been really good at, by the way. It's like you both got older, or more mature, or something. Well, yeah, older in her case, but not yours. And I don't really know that I'd go with 'mature' either, given that you're both still pains in my ass at times, but....I'm not making any sense, am I?"

"No, I get it," he said, and sighed. "Having a soul...well, it's harder this way. Everything is more complicated. Choices aren't as simple, and there are more voices in my head to listen to and sort out. I guess it is kind of like growing up. Goodbye black and white, hello grey." He smirked. "First growing up I've had to do in over a hundred and twenty years, and I can't say the process has been easy. 'When I became a man, I put childish ways behind me,'" he quoted softly, and smiled at her.

She gave him a soft smile in return. "Remember when you had the chip removed? I told Giles you could be a good man. And I was right."

"Is that so?" he murmured, once again astonished at her openness. It was exactly what he'd always wanted from her, and after the past couple of years it was more than he'd ever hoped to see. Her eyes were luminous under the streetlights, and under the intensity of her gaze he could almost feel his heart beating again. The moment was shattered when a scream broke out from nearby. With a quick look at each other they headed for the main road, Spike in front and Buffy following.

They followed the noise of a struggle to a nearby alleyway to find two vampires just about to start feeding on a whimpering woman. Leaving Buffy to handle one of vampires, Spike took the other. The Slayer definitely hadn't lost her technique while she'd been away, and he couldn't stop his eyes from lingering on her ass as she spun and kicked. A blow to the back of his neck tossed him to the ground and reminded him not to neglect his own battle. He managed to dust his vampire after another couple of minutes and found that Buffy had finished before him and was checking the weeping woman for injuries. Apart from some shallow scratches she seemed to be fine, and he was about to suggest a celebratory beer with Buffy when he took a closer look at the woman and rolled his eyes.

"Oh, for fuck's sake..."

He grabbed her by the arm and shoved her toward the entrance of the alley. As she stumbled away, still hiccuping with sobs, he called after her, "Yeah, that's right! What did I tell you about walking around like that? Exactly how stupid are you anyway? Next time there might not be a next time, so watch yourself already!" He shook his head in disgust and turned around to find Buffy gaping at him.

"What?" he asked testily. "Do you know that's the second time I've rescued that one? Doesn't have the sense God gave a box of rocks, the daft cow. Would serve her right if I let her get eaten next time."

Buffy was still making fish eyes at him. "Okay, you know that thing I said about you growing up? Forget I said it." She strode past him to the end of the alley, turning to quirk a smile at him. "You coming? Those can't be the only vamps making trouble in L.A. tonight."

He grinned and followed her into the night.

Spike didn't see much of Angel for the next week; he appeared to be closeted in his office, occasionally in conversation with Hamilton, of all people. Once in a while he caught glimpses an increasingly ghost-like Wesley wandering the halls, often shadowed closely by Illyria, but he rarely stopped to talk to either of them. Gunn seemed to be growing increasingly restless and moody. On several occasions he seemed on the verge of confiding in Spike, but stopped himself before he voiced whatever suspicions he had. Angel's small group of followers was beginning to disintegrate, pulling away from each other and becoming immersed in their own worlds. Spike was curious, but he couldn't say that he minded too much. The distraction of the others, in particular Angel's current preoccupation, allowed him to spend an increasing amount of time with Buffy.

Buffy too seemed aware of the air of secrecy and suspicion surrounding the entire office. She didn't ask any more direct questions of what Angel was up to, but Spike could see her quietly observing everything that was happening around her. He wondered if she had tried spending more time with Angel, or if she was somehow in secret contact with the Council, reporting on what was happening at Wolfram & Hart, but he didn't ask her intentions. He was too worried about straining the air of comfortable familiarity that had sprung up between them.

By unspoken consent, Buffy usually ended up stopping by Spike's apartment soon after the sun set. Together the two of them would wander L.A. for several hours each night, sometimes in conversation, but more often than not simply enjoying a companionable silence. These hours were some of the best Spike had known over the past year. Between invigorating fights with random vampires and demons, there was talking -- actual talking, of the kind they had begun to experience in those months before his death. It was both wonderful and disturbingly surreal, and he had the vague feeling that he was waiting for the other shoe to drop.

A week of these nighttime patrols left Spike feeling increasingly restless. Each slaying was another chance to surreptitiously watch Buffy fight, and he was having a hard time dealing with the effects that her presence had on him. She embraced her battles with the joyous zeal that had attracted him to her in the first place, and which he hadn't seen in evidence for several years. She seemed to be doing her best to be emotionally open with him, and on occasion the friendliness would veer slightly into subtle flirting on her part. She was exactly the woman he had always pictured her to be. He should have been elated.

Instead, he was terrified.

The one subject that both of them had managed to completely avoid during their conversations was the matter of what had passed between them immediately before he had died in the Hellmouth. He tried to forget about it. He tried to focus on the fact that Buffy was there with him voluntarily, and seemingly very content, but the more he tried to put it out of his mind the more it plagued him.

I love you.

No you don't, but thanks for saying it.

As long as she had been on the other side of the world, he had been content to settle for what he considered to be the most probable interpretation. She had been proud of him, and knowing that he was about to die, that was the way she had expressed it. It was not meant to convey any kind of promise or romantic intent. It would be cruel to hold her to such loaded words expressed in the heat of the moment. It stung a bit, but as long as he didn't have to actually face her he had been fairly content to cherish those words as a bittersweet memory of everything they had been through together.

As often as he had pictured it, he'd never really counted on seeing her again. He had already started to bury his love for Buffy in the same mental grave that held the memories of Drusilla and his mother. Encountering her had been a profound shock to his system. Buffy seemed to have come to terms with his resurrection more easily than he had dealt with her sudden reappearance in his life. He had the impression that, for once, she was waiting for him to catch up to her. The whole thing was unreal enough to be disturbing. He knew that he was over-thinking the whole thing, but he didn't really know how to make himself stop.

If Buffy had any doubts about his feelings for her, she was hiding them well, for all of the talking they did. Part of him was desperate to ask her what her plans were for the two of them, but he decided that the safest thing would be to keep his mouth shut. He'd always had spectacularly bad luck when it came to pressing the issue, and if he went by his history he'd be sure to ask or say the wrong thing at exactly the wrong time. So he contented himself with the pleasure of her company, and when he took her hand on the way back from patrol one night, she merely smiled and squeezed his hand in return.

They made their way back to the Wolfram & Hart building in near silence. Spike couldn't believe that he was walking down the streets of L.A. holding hands with the Slayer like they were a couple of teenagers out on a date. As they walked in the building and headed for the elevator, Spike had a sudden wish that Angel would conveniently pop out of one of the offices and catch them together like that.

They made it up to the guest suites in peace, and Spike bent down to give Buffy a chaste kiss on the cheek. "So, yeah. See you tomorrow, I guess." He turned to leave, but she wouldn't let go of his hand.

"Spike..."

And then she was kissing him, one small hand curled around the back of his neck, and after one frozen moment he was kissing her right back. His lips and neck were almost painfully oversensitive where she was touching him, and his hands felt numb and clumsy in comparison. After a long minute she pulled away and looked at him. Her eyes were bright and she had two spots of color high on her cheeks. She gave a breathless laugh.

"Wow."

"Uh huh. Wow." Yeah, that was smooth. His hands were starting to shake now. What in the hell was wrong with him? He was better than this.

"So, do you want...?" She was panting a bit, and he couldn't stop staring at her lower lip.

"Yeah, okay." And with that he was inside her suite, pushing her up against the door and resuming the kissing. He couldn't stay in one place for long, nuzzling her cheeks and pressing nipping little kisses down her face and across her neck. He could taste the salt on her skin, and the smell of her dragged up all the sense memories he thought he had firmly buried. Buffy sighed in response, wrapping an arm around his back and holding him tightly against her while she squirmed. After a few minutes she pulled his face up and kissed him firmly on the mouth before walking him backwards away from the door.

There was a king-sized bed in the next room, but they never made it any further than the couch. She pulled him down next to her and grabbed his face again, biting on his lips with a fierce intensity. When she moved away to yank her shirt over her head, Spike was unable to move a hand to help her. His head was buzzing and throbbing, and there was a cold, remote voice in his mind saying, This isn't real. This isn't really happening. And then she was settling back down on his lap, pressing her breasts up against his chest, and although the roar in his head increased the voice was blessedly silenced.

His brain was refusing to cooperate, and he was only able to take her in in brief glimpses. He caught flashes of her navel, her thin shoulders, her breasts which were fuller than he remembered. His hands traced random patterns over her back, and he kissed and sucked at her breasts while she did her best to pull the coat off his shoulders. Eventually he leaned back briefly in order to lose the coat and shirt, moaning as she leaned up to press her torso against him. And then, oh god, she was rocking against him, and he had to grab her hips to stop her before he came in his pants.

He swung her to the side so that they could lay lengthwise across the couch. They struggled with the buttons on their pants, getting in each other's way, before he was able to yank off her boots and jeans and follow with his own. He had to take moment to gape at her as she lay there naked, offering herself to him, and when she grabbed at him impatiently he dropped down to kiss her again.

He knew there was something he should be saying or doing to make this good for her, and was he really the same guy who could spend hours bringing her to one orgasm after another with a smirk on his face? It could have been another lifetime as far as his present body was concerned. His hands were shaking again, and all of his finesse seemed to have dribbled away along with his brain cells. At least Buffy didn't seem disappointed. She merely grabbed his shoulders and began to whine, "Now, now, now..."

Now. He could do now. He maneuvered himself into position, and almost before he had given himself time to prepare, she had grabbed his length and he was pushing himself inside her. And even as he was moaning and thrusting into her, the sense of unreality returned. He had to make this perfect, because she was perfect, and how could it be perfect when he was unable to say a coherent word? It was exactly what he'd always dreamed of, so why couldn't his brain shut up so that he could enjoy the sensations in peace?

After so long without her he was embarrassingly close to the edge, but he did his best to hold himself together a little while longer. And then, just as he was thinking that he might have managed some semblance of control, Buffy leaned up and kissed his neck, murmuring in his ear, "I love you."

He froze.

I love you. No you don't, but thanks for saying it. I love you. No you don't. No you don't. Noyoudon'tnoyoudon'tnoyoudon't.

"No, you don't," he whispered.

She was still writhing against him, and it took her a moment to hear him. "What?"

He swallowed. "No, you don't."

Buffy pushed him slightly away, trying to look at his face, but he was keeping it turned away from her.

"Spike, did you hear me? I said, I lo..."

"No, you don't," he interrupted a little louder. "But thanks for saying..."

She pushed him violently away before he could finish. He fell back against the other side of the couch, his erection gone. Buffy was panting with anger and still vibrating from her potential climax. She sat up and opened her mouth, but nothing came out. And now the unhelpful voice in his head was back. Fix this. You ruined everything. Fix it.

He could think of nothing to say. He could barely stand to look at Buffy, her eyes gone wide and dark and her chin wobbling slightly. He felt like a monster. He was a monster. He stood up and reached for his pants.

Buffy was taking deep, hitching breaths, as though trying not to cry, and the sound was magnified in the otherwise silent room. He watched out of the corner of his eye as she grabbed a pillow from the couch and used it to cover herself.

"You don't believe me," she whispered. "You still don't believe me." Her face had gone pale, and she let out a bitter laugh. "After everything, I can't believe it. Or maybe...maybe it's about what you feel. Or don't feel anymore, in this case."

He couldn't let this continue. "Buffy," he began, but the words dried up in his throat. I love you and I want you and I'll always love you and I don't understand this and I ruined everything and I'm so sorry. Amid the jumble of his thoughts, the voice in his head stood out loud and clear. Fix this. You have to fix this.

And so he did the only thing he could think of at the moment. He grabbed his coat and tore out of the building, leaving Buffy behind.

He ran all the way to his small apartment, barely seeing the street around him. The sound of his own feet against the pavement seemed dull and muffled, and his throat was tight with unshed tears. The voice was back, and it was mocking him. You ruined it, you worthless piece of shit, and now you've lost her. He finally reached his apartment and slammed the door behind him, sliding down it to sit puddled on the floor. It was only then that he allowed the tears to come.
 

Spike spent the next several days holed up in his apartment, drinking steadily in an futile attempt to forget about the mess he had made between himself and Buffy.

Spike, I'm proud of you. You're a good man. I love you.

No, you don't.

He could barely stand to think about what had happened. The sense memories of the sex itself, the feel of her body and the smell of her skin, were completely overpowered by the image of Buffy sitting there afterwards, clutching a pillow to her chest with tears in her eyes. Her look of hurt and disappointment was burned into his brain, and it made him want to tear his hair out.

He had thought he had it all figured out. He'd come to terms with being in the world and apart from Buffy. He'd managed to convince himself that, although he would always love her, he was starting to lose the burning passion that had eventually driven him to get a soul. Hell, he'd done the noble thing and stayed away from her entirely, rather than force the issue based on words said out of gratitude, respect and friendship. And love? No, not love, or at least not the kind he'd always had for her.

Being trapped for months in an incorporeal state, away from Buffy for the first time in a long while, had given him the impetus to reexamine their time together. Every detail -- his pathetic initial overtures, her depression and self-hatred, their use and abuse of each other, and finally the tentative respect and reliance they'd achieved right before the end -- had been laid out for clear examination. It was as if his new soul was a lightbulb, throwing all of his memories into stark relief and enhancing the annoying habit of self-analysis he seemed to have picked up along the way. He had prided himself that he had the whole Buffy-Spike thing figured out. He had clearly been dead wrong.

He still couldn't figure out why he'd managed to fuck things up so spectacularly. It was everything he'd dreamed about, right? Having the girl and having the words. Except she didn't really mean it, did she? And even if she did, you've managed to ruin everything. She's probably gone back to Rome.

He couldn't bring himself to believe that she might actually have been telling him the truth. He knew she cared about him -- she was there in L.A., wasn't she? -- but that was all there was to it. It was platonic love, companionship love, even (he shuddered at the thought) Scooby love. Right. Because platonic friends say "I love you," in the middle of sex all the time. He groaned. That bloody bitch. What the hell did she expect from him anyway, just throwing it at him like that?

He tried the thought on for size, just to see if it fit. Buffy loves Spike. It felt unnatural. He realized he had been waiting all this time for the other shoe to drop. He had been expecting her to finish the sentence the way he'd imagined it countless times: I love you, so let's be friends. I love you, but I have my own life. I love you, but it would never work. I love you, but I can't forget everything you've done to me.

His brain was in a complete muddle, so he tried for something simpler. Spike loves Buffy. Except that that somehow felt strange as well. As far as he was concerned, he'd never stopped loving her, not really, so why did it all feel so odd? He cringed, remembering Buffy's words.

Maybe it's about what you feel. Or don't feel anymore, in this case.

At the time, he'd been appalled that she would think that he didn't still love her, because that was simply one of the constants of the universe. Doubting it felt like heresy. But he had spent so much time agonizing over what Buffy felt that he hadn't thought much about what his own feelings were, and the doubts were beginning to gnaw at him. Perhaps he was more in love with the memory of being in love with her. He didn't think so, but he couldn't make heads or tails out of any of this any more.

Enough of this. He was clearly overthinking things, which had never been his strong suit at the best of times. Maybe it was time he did what he was best at and simply went with his gut.

Unfortunately, his gut was demanding less whining and more beer, and he eyed the empties stacked on the table with disgust. He had a sudden memory of drinking at the Bronze, trying to impress Buffy with a pair of khaki pants and some rather pathetic attempts at flirting. He smiled grimly, remembering his abortive attempt at a date with the Slayer. Oh, she'd seen right through him, and her fury at his audacity had been tempered only by her disgust with him. She'd been absolutely convinced that he was incapable of feeling real love. Actually, she hadn't been entirely wrong -- not that he couldn't feel love, but he recognized now that what he had been feeling at the time was closer to lust and obsession than actual love. However, that was beside the point.

The fact that she had denied what he was feeling had been the worst cut of all.

Spike sat bolt upright, shocked into sudden sobriety by a startling realization. You did the same thing to her. For all of your fine intentions and noble self-denial, you did the same fucking thing to her. Once the thought had entered his head, it wouldn't leave him alone. He started pacing in consternation, unable to believe how stupid he'd been. Good show, Spike. Maybe you should try listening to what she's saying rather than what you expect to hear. God, I'm an idiot

It was time to get off his ass and fix things, time to track Buffy down and attempt to straighten everything out. Even if she'd gone back to Rome, even if she never wanted to see him again, he had to try. He wan't going to figure out any more by moping in here. It was time for action -- not that he knew exactly what he was going to do, but that had never stopped him before. Spike grabbed his coat, threw open the door and walked right into Angel's fist.

The impact sent him sprawling back into the apartment, and Angel followed him through the door to grab him by his collar and give him a rough shake.

"What in the hell did you do to her, you son of a bitch?"

Spike shoved him away, rubbing his fingers under his nose and licking the blood off. "Are you talking about Buffy?" he asked carefully.

Angel snorted. "No, I'm suddenly concerned about the delicate feelings of Harmony. What the fuck are you playing at?"

Forcing an air of bravado to cover up the sudden rush of shame, Spike got to his feet and straightened his shirt. "Look, whatever's happening between Buffy and me is none of your business. So why don't you bugger off and go back to playing CEO?"

"It is my business," Angel snarled. "I know her. I can tell when something's going on with her, and she was fine until she started hanging out with you."

"Oh yeah? Why don't you just let her make her own decisions? She doesn't need you," he echoed spitefully, watching Angel's face tighten. He knew he was pushing his luck, but the thought of some honest violence was exhilarating after all of his recent moping. As usual, Angel managed to disappoint him.

"You are such a selfish bastard, you know that?" He turned away and began to pace the length of the apartment. "I don't have time for this. Everything's falling apart, and I don't have time to clean up your messes on top of everything else. You like to play at being the hero, but when it comes right down to it? You can't see beyond yourself at all."

Spike knew that Angel wasn't specifically talking about Buffy, but the comment hit a little too close to home. Despite himself, his voice softened. "Is she okay? Is Buffy okay?"

Angel merely crossed his arms and gave him an inscrutable stare before heading over to the table and grabbing one of the remaining bottles of beer. He leaned against the counter and took a few sips, ignoring Spike's question entirely.

"I know what you're thinking, but this isn't about some competition between you and me. It isn't about who gets the girl." He fixed his eyes on Spike. "I care about what happens to her, and from what I've seen she's unhappy, and it looks like you're the cause. You'd have the same reaction if you were in my shoes."

After a moment, Spike sighed. "Yeah, I guess so." His head shot up. "And I didn't hurt her...I mean, nothing physical. That is, I didn't do anything to her she didn't want..."

Angel winced. "I don't want to hear the details, alright?" He snorted. "And believe me, I don't think you hurt her physically. She could kick your ass without breaking a sweat."

"Hey! Well, yeah. Look, I know I've done some stupid things in the past, and apparently I haven't stopped doing them. I fucked up, and I hurt her. And now I want to fix it. I'm not sure if I can, but I've gotta try." He clenched his jaw in preparation of Angel's response, but Angel merely looked at him and sighed.

"Do what you have to do, but do it soon."

Spike squinted at him. "I kind of figured there would be more fireworks. You'd try to beat me up, I'd kick your ass again, something like that."

Angel stood. "There's more going on here than you know, Spike. So do me a favor, alright? Figure out what you want. Figure out what side you're on. If you're planning to run back to Rome with Buffy, get out of here. Live for yourself. Have the time of your life. But if you want to fight the fight here? Well, I can always use an extra pair of hands." He turned and left, and Spike gaped at his retreating back.

"So...are you saying you want me around?"

"Hardly," Angel tossed over his shoulder as he reached the door. "But I figure any help is better than none at this point."

With that, he was gone. Spike spent a moment pondering the reason behind Angel's cryptic request, but he put it aside for the time being. It was time to go find Buffy.
 

On his way over to the Wolfram & Hart building, Spike began to have a few doubts about his plan to confront Buffy directly. By the time he reached the main office suite, he was almost ready to turn around and head back out, maybe find something to kill to calm his nerves, before attempting any kind of rational Buffy-related discussion. Illyria, when he bumped into her, seemed to be in a similar mood.

After days of sitting around and -- well, not brooding, definitely not that -- he found he had almost missed Illyria. There was something so soothing about falling back into the habit of needling her. It appeared that her interactions with Wesley as Fred left her at a loss, and he could certainly sympathize with that. She seemed in need of some action, and to tell the truth, he could do with a bit of bit of violence himself, just to clear his mind before dealing with more serious matters. Just as he was about to suggest a round of sparring, he caught sight of Angel and Wesley near one of the offices. Not quite ready to face Captain Cryptic again, at least not until after he'd seen Buffy, Spike was just about to duck into one of the empty conference rooms when he overheard the words "Boretz demon". Perfect.

He wandered over just as Wesley was describing the girl who had been killed. Angel shot a quick look at Spike and raised his eyebrows briefly, as if surprised to see him there, before shrugging and turning away.

"Well, there's not much we can do about it now, huh? This girl is just one more statistic." He merely looked bored, but Spike saw his eyes dart over to where Hamilton was ushering a couple of important looking suits into Angel's office suite, including at least one vampire. Interesting, that. After spending so much time with Buffy, it seemed that he'd missed some things during the past few weeks.

Wesley was looking increasingly dismayed. "The statistic's name was Stacey Bluth," he said, handing a paper to Angel.

Angel glanced at it quickly. "Well, you know, we can't save everybody, and we can't sweat the small stuff," he breezed, tossing the paper back.

"Angel?"

Buffy was standing at the end of the hallway, a look of disappointment in her eyes. Angel's spine tightened almost imperceptibly, and Spike nearly felt sorry for the bastard. There wasn't much worse in the world than being on the receiving end of one of Buffy's disapproving looks. She hadn't looked at Spike yet, but he could almost feel the waves of disgust coming off her, and he figured some of it was probably directed at him. Still, it was nice to have someone else bearing the brunt of Buffy's wrath these days, and he'd let Angel get his fair share for once.

"Buffy," Angel replied in an almost apologetic tone before hardening his voice. "What, are you still here? I'm kind of busy."

"Excuse me? Busy? You've been busy for over a week now. What the hell is up with you?" Her voice was creeping into a higher pitch, and Angel threw a quick glance at his closed office door.

"Important meeting, if you don't mind," he bit out, and started to walk away.

"Angel." Her voice softened, and she laid a hand on his arm to keep him from leaving. "What's happened to you? I can't believe you're talking this way."

Angel blew out a long breath and rolled his head back in annoyance before pulling away from her. "What can I say, Buff? I grew up. Time to live in the real world."

"Angel," Wesley began in a low voice, but he was cut off.

"Wes, I've got a United States senator waiting for me, so just find out whatever you can about this Boretz thing and we'll talk later, okay?"

"Listen, you need some Boretz killing done, I'll have a go," Spike interjected. "Me and the blue meanie can take care of it."

"Fine, whatever." And with that, Angel disappeared into his office and slammed the door behind him. Wesley stared after him with an unreadable expression on his face.

"Yes, thank you, Spike," he said distantly. "Call me if you find anything. I'll be in my office learning what I can." He started to turn away, but Buffy charged up and grabbed the paper from his hands. She studied it for a moment before waving it in his face.

"So, what, people are getting killed three nights in a row and I'm just now finding out about this? You're wasting time sending out memos when people are dying? What in the hell kind of operation are you running here?"

For the first time in days, the abstract expression cleared from Wes's face as he sharpened his gaze at her. "This isn't your place, Buffy. I'm doing what I can in the best way possible. I'd thank you to remember that we're all on the same side here."

She raised her eyebrows at that and folded her arms across her chest. "Are we? Because your boss sure doesn't seem to think so. I thought you guys were big on the whole 'helping the hopeless' thing. Or does that not work in the corporate world?"

"Buffy," Wesley began in a low voice. "Things here are...complicated."

She stared at him in disbelief. "Oh, you so did not just say that. I swear, if I ever hear that phrase again..." She trailed off and stalked away, only to return a few steps later. "Look. I may not be the only one anymore, but I'm still the Slayer. You should have let me help. Or are you going to try to keep me out of this, like everyone else around here seems to be doing?"

"I am no longer your Watcher," Wesley answered in a low tone. "If you feel the need, I'm sure Spike could use some assistance with hunting this creature."

"Hey!" Spike was used to being ignored, but this had gone too far. At this rate, the bossy little bitch would decide to take control of this expedition herself. "Perfectly capable of taking care of this on my own, thank you very much."

Buffy threw him a quick glare, and he almost felt his balls shrivel from the coldness. "Yeah. Because you're doing such a good job handling everything on your own. Or, let me guess. You've spent the last several days drinking and sulking."

His temper flared up. Oh, that was it. He had come here with the express purpose of making things right between them. He hadn't been exactly sure what to do about it, but he was sure some abject groveling would have been involved. Now? Well, she could take her prissy little attitude right back upstairs for the time being, because he'd be damned if he'd stand for that.

"Fine," he bit out. "You can tag along."

"Fine!" she answered in return. "I'm going to change my shoes. Wait up for me, or I'll kick your ass." She jogged off towards the stairs, and Spike rolled his eyes at her back. She still drove him absolutely mad, no question about it. Not for the first time, he wondered what particular quirk of personality attracted him to the really batshit ones. And speaking of....

He turned to Illyria. "Guess we're off, then. Wanna go find something to hit?"

 

Buffy reappeared in ten minutes, wearing a pair of boots that did not appear to be noticeably different from the ones she had changed out of, and carrying a large dagger. She caught Spike looking at it and shrugged.

"I found it on the wall of some room. I figured no one was using it, so more for me."

"Do you even know what a Boretz demon looks like, or how to go about killing it?"

She raised her eyebrows. "The way I see it, there are very few things that won't respond to a good beheading," she stated calmly before heading off to follow Illyria.

It was odd. They were back to patrolling as if nothing had happened between them. If it wasn't for the lingering tightness around Buffy's mouth and the presence of Illyria striding ahead of them, he could almost believe that the awful events of the other night had never taken place. They traveled in silence until they reached the abandoned amusement park. Illyria disappeared into the maze of decrepit equipment, and Spike was about to follow her when Buffy grabbed his arm, hauled back and hit him in the nose.

"Ow! Bloody...fuck!" For the second time that day, he grabbed at his face in agony, wiping the blood away. She had obviously gone insane. It was probably a side effect of hanging around Wolfram & Hart for too long. "What in the hell was that for, you crazy bitch?" He cringed as soon as the words left his mouth, remembering too late that he actually had done something to deserve it.

Buffy crossed her arms and shrugged. "You know, I did the talking thing. I did the listening thing. I tried for mature, but you're obviously not ready for that. I thought I'd go with what I know works."

She had him there. He winced and prodded his nose. "Yeah, well maybe you can lay off the face next time." He figured this was a good a time as any to try to repair the damage he'd caused. "Buffy..." he began before trailing off in dismay at the murderous look in her eyes.

She snorted. "Let me guess. You had a whole speech worked out, and now you can't remember a word of it, and you're so so sorry and it'll never ever happen again."

"Well, yeah. I mean, no! I mean, I am sorry. Didn't exactly have a speech planned, though. I just...I wanted to fix this so badly. I didn't really have it worked out yet how I was going to do that. Figured I'd wing it."

She rolled her eyes. "Yeah, and that always works out so well."

He shrugged. "I don't know. I seem to remember a time or two when me being spontaneous worked out in your favor." He ventured a small leer in her direction, and her shoulders relaxed slightly as she began to pace. He eyed her warily, unsure whether or not she would try to punch him again, and after a moment she rounded on him.

"You're a moron."

"Yup," he agreed readily.

"You're grossly immature, and you have major issues."

"Absolutely."

"And you're completely, utterly clueless."

"That I am, pet."

She sighed. "Just so we're on the same page."

He stepped closer to her, wincing when she pulled away from the hand he extended. "Buffy," he said in a softened voice. "I know you don't want to hear it, and I can't say I blame you, but I am sorry. I'd do anything to take back what happened. I hurt you, and it's killing me."

She stiffened her spine, but he could see that her eyes were bright. "I'm angry, Spike, not hurt." He looked at her for a moment in disbelief, and she sighed in defeat. "Okay, I'm hurt. It's just...when I pictured it, us together again, that's really, really not how I thought it would go." She wandered around the perimeter of the vacant lot, kicking at discarded equipment. When she spoke again, it was barely above a whisper. "That's not how I thought you would react when I said...you know. So I want you to tell me if I'm making a mistake here."

"What? Buffy, no! This is not...it's not you, it's me." He winced. God, he didn't think he could be more inane if he tried.

"Yeah, well, it doesn't do a lot for a girl's ego when you bail out in the middle of the good stuff." She gave a short laugh, but it was brittle, and she refused to look at him. He couldn't stand it any more. Bracing himself for a possible blow, he stepped in and grabbed her by the shoulders. She stiffened but didn't pull away, and he allowed himself to run his thumbs over her collarbones while he breathed her in.

"You're right. I'm a moron, and I wasn't ready."

She finally looked up at him. "You could have said something, you know. I mean, you seemed to want it just as much as me. Pardon me if I can't interpret your weird mixed signals."

He sighed and glanced at the wreckage around them. "Okay. You want it straight? How about a good fight? What do you say we find a nice abandoned building around here. Get back to our origins. Let you get your rocks off, so to speak." He leered at her again, and was heartened to see her mouth quirk into a smile before she pushed him away.

"We're so not dealing with this right now. You're not off the hook, but at this second we have demony things to kill, and..." She trailed off and sniffed the air. "God, do you smell that? Something that bad has to be supernatural."

He inhaled deeply and nodded in agreement. "Yup, there's a Boretz somewhere around. Looks like we're in the right place." He called out after her as she started to walk away. "Buffy? I'm glad you're here. And I'm glad you stayed. I thought you might have gone back to Rome."

She contemplated him for a moment, her face entirely unreadable. "I probably should have. And a year ago, I definitely would have. But for whatever it's worth, I'm here now." She spun around and headed in the direction Illyria had gone. "Besides," she tossed over her shoulder, "I want to know what's going on around here."

As Spike followed her, he saw her almost crash into Illyria, who had reappeared from behind a stack of crates. Buffy gaped at her.

"Were you listening in on us?"

Illyria spared her an insulted glance before continuing her study of the surrounding area. "I have no desire to contemplate the intercourse of inferior creatures."

"Well...good, then," Buffy said uncertainly. "Time to look for this Boretz thingy, I guess."

Illyria dismissed this and looked at Spike. "Angel does not think the casualties of this creature are important enough to avenge. It does not serve his interest."

The pungent scent of the Boretz was distracting him. It seemed to be coming from all around him, and it made tracking difficult. He squinted at Illyria, only half paying attention. The bird had the ability to ramble like no one he'd ever met. She seemed to have Dru's ability to speak for hours without saying anything. "What's that, then? What are you on about?"

"I've seen this before with many rulers. Your leader has been corrupted."

"Okay, first of all? Not my leader, thank you very much. And second, what the bloody hell do you mean, corrupted? Not that I don't think the sod could end up being a megalomaniacal bastard. It's just that if he did...I'd know it. I'd feel it."

Illyria looked at him contemptuously. "I speak as I find. History dictates it. A corrupted ruler on such a path sees treachery and betrayal all around him. He cannot suffer intimates and will eventually turn against them."

Spike smirked. "Guess I don't have to worry about that, 'cause Angel and me have never been intimate. Well, except that one time...."

"Spike..." Buffy was studying Illyria with a furrowed brow. "I think there's something to what she's saying. I mean, have you seen him lately? With the not sweating the small stuff? This is not the guy I knew. As much as I hate to say it, I think something's going on here. I don't know if it's the evil law firm, or a spell, or whatever, but Angel's changed. I'm worried."

Spike studied her coolly. "So, looks like you're not just here for me after all. And I'm telling you, you're wrong."

"Why?" Buffy asked in exasperation. "Because you want me to be wrong? I've seen what happens to friends when they become obsessed with power, and it's not pretty. And since when are you Angel's defender anyway?"

"Look, it's not that I love the guy, but I'd know if he was treading on the dark side. You may know him, pet, but my history with him is a bit longer than yours."

Her eyes darkened. "That was Angelus."

"Different name, same guy. Soul or no soul, there are more similarities than differences between the two. I know his tricks, and we have an understanding. Believe me, I'd know."

"Oh yeah? And what if you're wrong? What if she's right, and Angel really has been corrupted?" She gestured at Illyria, who was studying Buffy with her head cocked to one side. "We can do something. We can, I don't know, stage an intervention or something," she finished weakly, and sighed. "I don't know. But we have to help. I should be telling all this to Giles. I think he's been worried about Angel for a while now."

Spike snorted. "Yeah, let's tell the Watcher. We know he just loves the vampires, and he always has our best interests at heart." He hardened his voice. "Stay out of it, Buffy. Bring in Giles, and you'll only make things worse."

Buffy was glaring openly at him now. She looked over to Illyria for support, who raised her eyebrow.

"Mark me," she coolly predicted, "he will murder one of you."

The stalemate was broken when a filthy, bleeding man stumbled out from a niche in a stack of debris. It took a moment for Spike to recognize the guardian of the well. "Actually," Drogyn gasped, "he already has."
 

They ended up bringing Drogyn back to Spike's apartment. Buffy had mostly been silent during the walk back, and after Spike got off the phone with Wesley, he found her sitting on his bed, absently cleaning the dagger she had used to kill the Boretz. After a moment's hesitation, he moved to sit next to her.

"They're on their way."

She nodded but didn't reply, tightening her shoulders and rubbing strenuously at a stubborn spot on the blade. He itched to grab one of her hands, but decided that it was probably wiser to avoid annoying an aggravated Slayer holding a sharp object. After a minute he tried again.

"You know, I think it's clean."

She blew out a loud sigh and turned around to sit cross-legged on the bed, peering past Spike to catch a glimpse of Drogyn sitting on the couch, Illyria watching him like a hawk. "I don't want to have to say it," she stated flatly.

"What, 'I told you so'?" He focused on a crack in the wall rather than look at her. "Don't know for sure what's going on here yet. Can't say that everything's as it seems."

"Yeah, maybe." She lowered her voice, glancing once more into the outer area. "Look, I don't want to be right. Maybe this guy's not telling us the whole story."

Spike could barely speak past the lump in his throat. "Told you, he's a truth teller. If he says it happened, it happened. You can see for yourself that he was attacked."

"Okay, but still...I can't believe that Angel had anything to do with what happened to Fred."

He gave a bitter laugh. "What, so you're the believer now? You wait until there's actual proof to the contrary to start giving the guy the benefit of the doubt? Lovely."

She rolled her eyes. "So, which is it then? 'Everything's not as it seems' or 'it definitely happened'. Make up your mind, will you?"

"Well I don't know, do I?" He could hear the pitch of his voice going up, and did his best to bring himself back under control. He honestly didn't know why he was so upset about this. It's not like he'd sit around crying into his beer if Angel fell off the straight and narrow, and he still wasn't convinced that was what had actually happened. "I'm pissed off, is the thing. The way I see it, the bastard's either selling us out, in which case I kick his ass, or he's playing us for fools, in which case I kick his ass. Either way, it's a piss poor show he's running. Give me an honest fight any day without all of this cloak and dagger bullshit."

"So...either way, you get to fight Angel. And you're telling me that doesn't make you happy?"

He looked at her in disbelief and caught a hint of a smile. "You're joking," he said flatly. "This is serious, you know!"

She grinned. "I'm sorry, I know. Very, very serious. What can I say? I think eight years as a Slayer has given me a bit of a kinked sense of humor."

He couldn't resist taking the bait. "Not the only thing kinked about you, Slayer," he murmured, ogling her for good measure. She snorted and gave him a shove, climbing off the bed to dig around for her discarded jacket. She looked up at him from the floor, and he saw a shadow pass across her face.

"What?" he asked.

She blushed. "Just remembering the last time we were in this position. Or reversed, actually. You kneeling on the floor, me up on the bed. You telling me things I didn't want to hear." She looked down and shrugged. "And look how well that turned out."

"Best night of my life," he whispered.

She looked back up at him, and he wondered what she was seeing in his face. Her eyes were large and bright, and she was looking at him almost in wonder. It was as if the two of them were in a bubble. He couldn't hear anything from the other room over the beat of her heart, and he couldn't focus on anything but her eyes.

"Is this what you want, Spike?" Her voice was quiet. "Me, on my knees?"

The dirty response died on his lips before he could say the words, and instead he mutely shook his head and pulled her up to sit next to him again. She didn't pull her hand away, so he held onto it and ran his thumb over her knuckles. He swallowed hard.

"I kinda like us on the same level, actually."

She gave a soft smile and nodded, and to his wonder she leaned in and laid her head on his shoulder. After one frozen moment, he tilted his head so he could rest his cheek against her hair. He couldn't help the slight tremble that resulted from the warm breaths she exhaled against his neck. He wanted to just sit like that for several years, but eventually he couldn't resist murmuring, "Does this mean you're giving me another chance?"

She sighed and pulled away slightly to look him in the face. "Is that what you want?" she asked again. "Another chance?"

The abrupt knock at the front door shattered the moment, and he was suddenly aware that he was holding Buffy on his bed while the man Angel had apparently tried to kill was sitting in the next room. With an apologetic look he rose to his feet, and together they went to let the rest of the group in.

 

Drogyn reexplained what he knew to the entire gathering, causing more confusion than anything else, and in the end the general consensus was that it was time to confront Angel directly. Buffy refused to be left behind. Wesley in particular seemed reluctant to bring her along, but Gunn was adamant that some extra muscle couldn't hurt, and in the end she let them know forcibly that they could either bring her along or she'd follow. Noisily.

When the group finally ushered Angel into his office, Buffy kept to the back, quietly observing. Even though he kept most of his attention on Angel, Spike couldn't resist watching for Buffy's reactions. He had claimed that he knew Angel better than her, but the truth of the matter was that she had had an intimacy with him that Spike didn't like to think about too closely. He just hoped that it would work out in his favor this time, allowing her to pick up something in Angel's bearing the rest of them might have missed.

Spike noticed that Angel seemed content to ignore her after one baleful glance. He was in the middle of waxing poetic about power and business or some such when Gunn finally interrupted him.

"That Angel talking? 'Cause it sounds a lot more like Angelus."

Angel smirked at him. "Oh, if I were Angelus, half of you would already be dead, just for the fun of it."

"Not necessarily." Buffy spoke up for the first time, leaning against a wall with her arms crossed over her chest. "Angelus likes to play games. But you're not Angelus, are you?"

Angel eyed her steadily. "Are you saying you wish I was? That would be easier for you to deal with, wouldn't it? You'd love to have a convenient alter-ego to blame everything on." He glanced over at Lorne. "You want to know the truth? The truth is there's only one of us who ever understood how things really work. Lorne."

"Whoa," Lorne protested. "Can I not be the poster child for your nervous breakdown here?"

But Angel was on a roll. "You didn't judge. You didn't spend your life obsessed with good and evil. You do that, you get swallowed, lost in the minutia. Good, bad, Angel, Angelus -- none of it makes a difference. I wish it did, but, you know, an ant with the best intentions or the most diabolical schemes is just exactly an ant. There is one thing in this business, in this apocalypse that we call a world, that matters: power. Power tips the scale, power sets the course, and until I have real power, global power, I have nothing. I accomplish nothing."

"And I've heard that one before too." Spike tensed as Buffy walked up to stand in front of Angel. "You're doing this on purpose, all of this macho power crap. And maybe the rest of them buy it, but I don't."

Angel blinked at her for a moment, and hardened his voice. "Is that right? And why are you here again, Buffy? Come for the runner-up, is that it? And you can't even manage to make it work with him." He snorted with laughter. "Because, frankly, that's kind of pathetic, considering Spike will pretty much fuck anything that moves."

He had had enough. Ignoring Buffy, Spike rushed forward and took a swing at Angel. In his blind rage he missed entirely and went sprawling to the floor as Angel stepped out of his reach.

"Sorry, Buff," Angel declared smoothly. "But like I said, I can't worry about the small stuff."

Spike was tensing himself for another attack when Harmony walked tentatively in.

"Angel, that important phone call from...that guy about that thing, it's on line three."

Angel nodded, turning his back dismissively on Buffy. "We're done here. I have to take this."

Spike opened his mouth to argue when he caught Wesley's slight head shake. He rose fluidly to his feet and followed the rest of them to the office door. Before exiting, Wesley turned around.

"The small stuff that you can't worry about, would that include Fred?" he asked.

Angel's face was entirely unreadable. "I loved Fred."

"That's not an answer," Wesley insisted in a low voice.

"Then I guess you don't get one."

And with that, they were standing outside Angel's closed office door, studying each other in silence. After a minute Wesley spoke again.

"We do have an independent means of confirming some of our suspicions. I'm not saying he's entirely without bias, but at this point we have to take advantage of every resource available to us."

"You talking about our formerly tattooed jailbird?" Gunn asked.

Wesley nodded. "Why don't you and Spike collect him? Lorne and I will meet you in the interrogation room." He walked off Lorne in tow, and after a nod at Spike, Gunn took off for the elevators.

Buffy was staring at Angel's door, standing rigidly upright with her arms wrapped defensively around her torso. Afraid to touch her, Spike tentatively asked, "Buffy?"

She turned to face him. Her face was pale, her mouth set in a hard line and her eyes bright with unshed tears. "He did that on purpose. You know that, right?"

"Well, I don't care if he did!" Spike exploded. "That self-righteous bastard has gone too far."

She walked up to him and spoke in a low voice. "That's not Angelus. You know it, and I know it. He said what he did to hurt me and to piss you off." She looked down. "And I have to say it worked. There must be a reason for it."

Spike snorted. "Yeah, the reason is that he's let all this go to his massive ego. Finally got a head too big for his hat, that one. Which takes some doing, let me tell you."

She threw up her hands in disgust. "God, am I the only one seeing this? Is everyone else blinded by testosterone or something?" She lowered her voice again. "He's trying to make you suspicious of him, and it's working. We have to find out why."

He blinked at her and finally shrugged. "So say you're right. Do we just blindly follow along with his plan, like good little sheep? Not my style, and not yours either. Time to get some answers."

"Right." She followed him as he strode to the elevator. "So, where are we going again?"

Spike became more and more nervous as the elevator ascended towards the guest quarters. Buffy seemed to have forgiven his earlier actions, but he was unsure what she expected from him this time. If anything, she seemed as nervous as he was, and when they reached her room he hung back by the door, shaking himself out of his distraction and realizing that she was babbling.

"...and it's not long till daylight, and I need some rest." She looked over at him, and her gaze softened. "Come in, Spike. You don't have to hover."

He nodded and followed her in, looking out of the windows so he wouldn't have to look at the couch, the scene of his most recent shame. She seemed to sense his mood, because she followed him to the windows to stand beside him and look out at the city.

"It's so weird," she murmured. "Here I am, in L.A., standing next to one of my recently resurrected exes, in the building of an evil law firm run by another one of my exes. This definitely wasn't in the Slayer manual."

He looked at her. "There's a manual?"

She laughed. "Yup. Except that Giles figured I wasn't a manual type of girl, which I know is hard to believe. I finally got a look at the thing over the summer, when we were trying to reconstruct the Council's records." She snorted. "And I thought Giles was one for rules and regulations. I made them file it in the history section."

He grinned in return, and when she didn't object he took her hand and, cautiously, raised it to place a soft kiss on the back. He froze when she tensed up, but she didn't withdraw her hand. After a moment she moved to face him, raising her other hand to cup his cheek. He couldn't help leaning in to her warmth, closing his eyes briefly at the sensation.

"It was too soon, last time," she said softly. "I know you weren't ready, and...." Her gaze dropped. "This time, I don't know if I am. And I don't know what you're expecting, because I don't know what the rules are this time around. And you're not making it easy for me, not that you ever really made it easy for me."

"Hey," he interrupted. "No expectations. No pressure. I'd like to be here, in any way you want. And if you want to get some rest, I can wait out here and keep an ear out for Wesley's call."

She stifled a yawn. "A nap would definitely be of the good right now. But you don't have to wait out here. It's a big bed."

"Is that right?" He curled his tongue behind his teeth and raised his eyebrows. "Sure you trust me? Sure you trust yourself?"

She rolled her eyes and laughed at him. "Oh, please. I think I can manage to control myself around you." She tightened her grip on his hand and pulled him into the other room. He joined her on the bed, hesitating briefly before moving to curl himself around her with a hand on her stomach. After a moment she turned toward him slightly, tucking her head under his chin and sighing.

"Is this okay?" she asked.

He nodded. More than okay, actually. He could hear her heartbeat and smell the sweetness of her shampoo, and if he concentrated enough he could swear that he was able to detect the rush of her blood under his fingertips. "Never thought I'd be here again," he said hoarsely. "It's perfect."

She yawned again, momentarily burying her face in his shirt, and when she pulled back she tensed slightly. "What is it, Slayer?" he asked cautiously.

She wouldn't look at him. "Do you blame me?" she asked softly.

He was honestly bewildered. "For what? Can't see where you've done anything wrong."

She pulled him tighter against her, and it was a moment before she spoke again. "For leaving you there. In the Hellmouth."

"Told you to go, didn't I?" He couldn't believe she was thinking about this, after so much time. "Course I don't blame you."

She sighed. "I thought about it, after you were gone. I kept wondering whether I could have done something. If I'd been a little faster, or grabbed that thing off your neck and forced you outside." She gave a shaky laugh. "You want to know the worst part? I wondered if maybe you'd died thinking I didn't care enough to try to get you out."

"Hey now," he said quietly. "Not a chance." But she was on a roll.

"It's not like I sat around moping about it for months. In the daytime, everything made sense, and I knew you did what you had to do. But at night, I would sometimes have these dreams." Her voice was thick, and he knew she was holding back tears. "Sometimes you were there in the cave, and sometimes you were in the school basement, or in that chapel, hanging off a cross. And each time you asked me to stay with you, and I always ran away. And when I looked back you were going up in flames, or turning to dust or something. Sometimes you told me it was my fault, and sometimes you didn't say anything, and just looked at me. And then when I woke up you were really gone, and I started to wonder if I could have done something more, all those times...." She trailed off and sniffled, wiping her nose on his shirt.

"You did everything you could," he said gently. "I know what it's like to second-guess -- I did it myself plenty of times, after you...." He cleared his throat, curving his hand around her waist to pull her closer against him. "I think...I think things happened the way they were supposed to. I'm not a big believer in fate, but down there in the Hellmouth? At that moment, everything seemed so clear. I knew what I was supposed to do. And it hurt like hell, but at the same time I was at peace. For the first time in...forever, I think."

She nodded. "That's what I felt, up on the tower with Glory."

"And do you blame me for letting you jump?" She shook her head, and he continued. "There's no blame here either. I was doing what I had to do. I had to finish what I'd started, and I was glad that you were out of it. So don't go thinking on the what-ifs. Maybe it had to happen that way for us to wind up like this again."

"Maybe," she said, and fell silent for a moment. "You were...I don't know how to describe it. It's like you were seeing things that weren't there. You were standing in front of me, and it was as if half of you had already gone somewhere else. You were...glowing."

"Well, yeah. That would have been the rather fatal fire," he said, trying to lighten the mood, and she gave a sobbing laugh before hitting him in the chest. "Except that maybe I would have asked you to stay and die with me if I knew that you were going to spend the next year buried in Council records and shagging The Immortal." She was laughing outright now in between sniffles, and he joined her. After a moment she turned her wet face up to him, and her eyes shone wide and bright.

"In case I haven't told you? You're still an idiot, but I'm glad you're back."

"That right?" He focused on her mouth. "Think a little kiss is allowed, then?"

She nodded. "Oh, yeah. Kisses are definitely allowed."

He lowered his head, and her mouth was soft and warm against his. He was able to taste the salt of her tears, and she took in little snuffling breaths as he gently kissed her. When she pulled away to breathe properly he watched her lick her lips and sigh, and he rested his forehead against hers and closed his eyes. He raised his head when he sensed a change in the lighting, and opened his eyes to find the sun rising beyond the necrotempered glass. He stared at it in awe for a moment. The sight was still unusual enough that he had to repress his subconscious instinct to pull away from the light. He glanced down to find that Buffy's breathing had deepened and her eyes were half closed.

"Go to sleep," he whispered, and kissed her on the forehead. She nodded drowsily, curling up next to him, and he held her in his arms while he watched the sun come up.

 

Wesley's call came four hours later, and Buffy rolled over and blinked at the ceiling as Spike hung up the phone.

"Time to go?" she asked.

He nodded. "In a bit. We're supposed to meet in Angel's office in half an hour."

"Good. Time for a quick shower. I hate confrontations when I'm feeling grimy." She disappeared into the bathroom and he smirked at the closed door. When she came out they wandered down to Angel's office. Wesley let them in, and Spike looked around and raised his eyebrows.

"Thought we were having an intervention. Where's the victim?"

"Out," Wesley said shortly. "And I can't confirm where, but I have a feeling he'll be back here very soon. I thought it best to set the stage so that we begin with the upper hand." With that he picked up a shotgun he had placed on the desk, and Spike noticed for the first time that Gunn and Lorne were armed as well.

"Good think I always carry my weapons," he said, and held up his hands. Wesley nodded and turned to Buffy.

"Do you need anything?"

She shook her head and pulled out the dagger that she'd tucked into her jacket. "Still armed. But do you really think this is necessary?"

"We don't know," Wesley said evenly. "But I believe in this case that it's better to be safe than sorry, at least until we get some answers." He nodded at the conference room. "We'll be over here," he stated, and he and Lorne ducked behind a wall. Spike rolled his eyes.

"More cloak and dagger bullshit, is what this is." He looked over as the main office door began to open. Gunn yanked Buffy behind the opening door and gestured for Spike to duck down, but Spike merely shrugged, and used the element of surprise to catch Angel as he entered and drop him with a blow to the face. Gunn hurried to shut the door.

"That'll work," he muttered, and gripped his sword tighter as Lorne and Wesley came out from the conference room to join them in surrounding Angel.

"You might want to stay down," Spike threatened.

"Or what?" Angel rose to his feet fluidly. "Careful. You don't want to get yourselves hurt."

"We know what you've been doing," Gunn snarled. "Giving up the baby to the Fell Brethren, working for Senator Bitch, trying to take out Drogyn to cover up what you did to Fred. And for what? To get in bed with the Circle of the Black Thorn?"

In the end it came down to a fight, as Spike suspected it would. He hadn't anticipated that, even with Buffy's help, it would end with Angel's arm around Lorne's neck. He was confused when Angel pulled a crystal out of his coat.

"Let's finish this," Angel said. "Involvere."

There was a flash of light, and as Spike blinked he saw Angel release Lorne. "All right. We have six minutes."

Spike exchanged a glance with Buffy. "Till what?"

"The glamour collapses," Angel explained. "As far as anyone outside this room is concerned, we're still at each other's throats."

Wesley looked unimpressed. "Aren't we?" he asked cooly.

Angel was beginning to look flustered. It was the first crack in his armor that Spike had seen in days. "Look, we don't have a lot of time here, so I'm gonna have to make this short. Everything you think you know, everything you've heard, is a lie." He looked around the room as if for support, but Spike could see nothing but skepticism in the faces around him.

"Why should we believe you?" Buffy asked.

"Because I'm the one who told it." He glanced at Wesley. "Read any good books lately?"

Wesley looked startled. "You sent us the message?"

Angel nodded. "And the assassin to kill Drogyn. I told him just enough to lead Drogyn to think I played a part in resurrecting Illyria. The Black Thorn needed to believe my own people didn't trust me anymore. Including you." He looked over at Buffy. "I'm sorry about what I said. It was the only way to gain their confidence."

Gunn squinted at him. "So, all that power tilts the scales crap...?"

Angel began to pace. "It's true. We are weak. The powerful control everything...except our will to choose. Look, Lindsey's a pathetic halfwit, but he was right about one thing. Heroes don't accept the way the world is. The Senior Partners may be eternal, but we can make their existence painful. We're in a machine, and the Black Thorn runs it. That machine's going to be here long after our bodies are dust, but we can bring their gears to a grinding halt, even if it's just for a moment."

Wesley nodded slowly. "You want to take them on."

"About time we got our hands dirty," Spike muttered.

Angel wheeled around. "Let's be clear," he said firmly. "We do this, the Senior Partners will rain their full wrath. They'll make an example of us. I'm talking full-on hell, not the basic fire-and-brimstone kind we're used to." He turned to Buffy. "And that's why you have to leave."

She blinked at him. "Excuse me? You don't get to tell me what I do. Is this some idiotic excuse to try to protect me?"

Angel glanced quickly at the clock on the wall. "I'm asking you to do what you asked of me: hold the second front. In all likelihood this is going to end badly for all of us, and the Senior Partners might not be interested in stopping once they finish with us."

"But if I'd known earlier, we could have helped," she protested. "The Council has resources...."

"I couldn't risk them knowing," Angel interrupted. "Look, I'm almost out of time. You want to help? This is the way. Use those resources to keep fighting the good fight. You're the only one who can do that." She nodded slowly, and Angel looked around at the rest of them. "Power endures. We can't bring down the Senior Partners, but for one bright, shining moment, we can show them that they don't own us. You need to decide for yourselves if that's worth dying for. I can't order you to do this. I can't do it without you. So we'll vote. As a team. Think about what I'm asking you to do." He glanced at Spike. "Think about what I'm asking you to give."

Spike looked over at Buffy, her face pale and eyes bright, and for a moment time stood still. He had the chance to have it all, both the girl and the mission. He could see a vision of himself going on with Buffy to continue the fight. If he stayed...it would be an almost hopeless endeavor, wouldn't it? And couldn't he do more good, in the long run, by choosing the smart battles? He saw himself at Buffy's side, fighting her, loving her, living out the years with her, doing his bit for the forces of good. And he wanted it, he wanted it so badly he could taste it. His previous doubts were gone; he knew he loved her still, and this was his chance to do it right this time. Time to take off the amulet and follow her out of the hellmouth. Hadn't he done enough already?

Once upon a time he would have made the decision in a heartbeat, but he found himself frozen. His conscience was screaming at him for even considering taking the easy way out, the bloody useless thing. You know what you have to do. You have to finish what you started. His insides twisted, and he wanted to scream to the heavens at the unfairness of it all. He'd been given a second chance at life, at love. Why should he give that up for what was sure to be a quick and ultimately meaningless death? The clarity of purpose he'd once experienced in the moment when he'd felt the brightness of his own soul was muted and muddled, and he writhed with indecision.

But even as he agonized, he knew what he had to do. He had to go with his gut, like always, although part of him was shrieking at himself for being a fool. Time to make a choice. Except that he'd really already made the choice, hadn't he? When Fred had died he'd chosen to stay and fight. It was simply the right thing to do, and he still marveled that he was able to come to that realization. Without even realizing it, during the last year Buffy's pride in him had translated into pride in himself, in his ability to actually do the right thing at the right time. That's right. Pretty justifications aside, you know what to do. If you don't, you know you'll end up hating yourself. Fight the fight you've been given. Setting his jaw, he closed his eyes and raised his hand.

"I'm in," he said softly.
 

They ran through the garage on their way to the sewers and back to where Illyria had been left at Spike's apartment. The news that Angel had actually killed Drogyn had spurred them into action, and Wesley in particular looked grim. When they reached the sewer entrance they ducked inside. After walking for several minutes, Buffy stopped and grabbed Spike's arm before he could follow the rest of the group.

"This is stupid," she hissed. "What does he think he's doing?"

Spike shrugged. "You heard him," he muttered. "Taking the fight to the enemy and all that. I seem to recall you did it yourself."

She flushed angrily. "That was different. We didn't have a choice. And we had an actual plan. This? Is suicide." She started pacing, ducking under a low-hanging pipe. "This is such macho bullshit."

"Can't say I'm crazy about his methods." He rolled his neck in an attempt to loosen his muscles. The news that Angel had actually killed Drogyn had left him tense and vibrating with anger.

"He's deliberately provoking these Senior Partners, or whatever they are," Buffy continued. "Why now? Is this some kind of revenge for what happened to Fred?" She kicked at some debris on the floor. "Did he even bother to think through what happens afterwards? What if I wasn't here? Who would clean up his mess? Or did he figure that, once he'd pissed them off enough, all the rest of it was out of his hands?"

"Buffy," he began, but she interrupted him.

"So, what, he's sick of playing games? Wants to just go out in a blaze of glory?" She stopped in front of him and looked him in the eye. "Is that what you want? Is that why you're doing this?"

"No," he said firmly, grabbing her arms before she could begin pacing again. He found himself calming as Buffy's temper mounted. "It's not about revenge. Look, you haven't been here this year. You haven't seen what's been happening. Fighting from within the enemy's camp sounds all very well and good, but it doesn't work all that well in practice. People change. They become corrupted." He looked down at his feet. "Sometimes they die." He stroked his thumbs down the side of her arms. "Not that Angel's corrupt, mind you, but I can see it happening. This place will change you, despite your best intentions. Road to hell and all that." She smiled slightly. "Best to deal with it now. This Black Thorn group? They're the real players around here. Taking them down would be a real blow."

She leaned into his space, resting her hands on his hips, and her voice was soft. "But does it have to be like this? The fight doesn't have to end here. You can come with me. There's still work to do." She sounded so hopeful, and he had to close his eyes and turn his head away, as the temptation to just leave the sewers and follow her became nearly overwhelming.

"I can't," he whispered. He glanced down hurriedly when he felt her tense. She was biting her lip, and he hastened to reassure her. "Buffy, it's nothing to do with you. Nothing I'd like better in the world than to be with you, but...I have to do this." He had no idea how to further explain his earlier decision, and he was afraid that it would merely seem like abandonment to her. He shrugged helplessly. "I'm not saying Angel's got a perfect plan. But for me, this is the right thing to do. I have to stay, see it through as best I can."

After a moment she nodded, resting her head against the front of his shirt. "I get it," she said, and her voice was muffled. After another pause she sniffled and gave a shaky laugh. "Fine time for you to grow a conscience. And can you blame me? Last time you decided to do the right thing like this you ended up dead. Deader." She looked up at him. "I wish I could stay and help."

He smiled. "Would be nice, no argument there."

She sighed and released him, moving to the opposite wall and hugging her arms around her torso. "I still say Angel's being a major ass, but he's right about me going. Just in case..." she trailed off and bit her lip again. "It would be good to have a backup plan, since he's apparently too lame to come up with one himself." She lifted her chin, and the steel was back in her eyes. "Remind me to kick his ass when all this is over."

He laughed at that. "That's the spirit," he said, and leered at her. "Wouldn't mind watching, that's for sure. You know what seeing you fight does to me."

She snorted. "You're a pig, Spike." He saw her glance down the tunnel where the rest of the group had disappeared. "Okay," she said briskly. "Time to do this." She grabbed him by the ears and dragged his mouth down for a quick, hard kiss, releasing him before he had time to put his arms around her. She stepped back, and held him at arms length when he tried to pull her closer. "If I don't leave now, I won't be going at all." She looked him firmly in the eye. "I'll see you later."

It wasn't a question, but he answered it anyway. "Yeah, later. I promise." He took one last long look at her before pushing her in the direction of the Wolfram & Hart garages. He blinked at the entrance to the tunnels after she had exited, and he felt again the wild temptation to chase after her, get the two of them safely out of there before the whole thing went to hell. Contrary to what she might think, he had no death wish, and he shook his head at his own stubbornness. "Great. Fine time to be all noble," he muttered. Instead of following her, he clenched his jaw, straightened his shoulders and ran off towards his apartment.

 

He'd made his decision, and Buffy had made hers. He thought it was the right choice -- it had certainly seemed so at the time, all those hours ago -- but naturally, as soon as changing his mind was no longer an option, he began to have his doubts. Spike sat at the bar nursing his beer, an untouched glass of whiskey in front of him. It wasn't his first choice for how to spend what might very well be his last day, but it wasn't like he really had a better option at this point. He'd told Wesley where he'd be, just in case they needed him before the agreed-upon meeting time. Wesley had nodded absently and gone back to tending Illyria, and Spike had disappeared out his door without a backwards glance.

Buffy was gone. He had hoped that he'd see her one last time, but when Angel had arrived at Spike's apartment he'd told him that she'd taken her bag and disappeared from Wolfram & Hart, presumably on her way back to either Rome or London. It was the right thing to do, wasn't it? His mind kept circling back to that question, and he firmly silenced it with a final swallow of beer. No use anymore in dwelling on it. He picked up the whiskey and saluted the bartender before taking a swallow. As he did, someone in the crowd pushed him from behind, shoving him into the man next to him. Spike glanced around and looked back at the bartender.

"Nice crowd," he said dryly.

The man shrugged and refilled his glass. "It can get pretty ugly in here, I gotta warn you."

Spike slammed the shot back, giving an appreciative wince at the burn of the alcohol. "What I'm after. Couple more shots of courage, and I may make my presence felt."

"Your funeral," the bartender grunted, refilling his glass one last time.

Spike gave an almost manic grin. "Well, I never had a proper one." The bartender didn't bat an eye at that, and Spike turned in his stool to face the makeshift stage. Right. Time to put some ghosts to rest.

He took his glass with him as he made his way up to the front, elbowing past the burly biker who had just exited the stage. He was just buzzed enough to take the edge off, give everything a pleasant glow, which of course disappeared as soon as he sat in front of the microphone. He gave an internal shrug. Not like this lot would see him again, after today. Taking one last sip for courage, he closed his eyes and leaned into the microphone. The room settled down into something approaching quiet as he began to speak.

"My soul is wrapped in harsh repose,
Midnight descends in raven-colored clothes,
But soft...behold! A sunlight beam
Cutting a swath of glimmering gleam."

So far, so good. He didn't know if the crowd remained silent out of respect or out of horror, but it was too late to back out now. Taking a deep breath, he hurried a bit through the final lines before he could lose his nerve.

"My heart expands,
'Tis grown a bulge in it,
Inspired by your beauty..."

He cringed at the last word.

"...Effulgent."

For one heart-stopping moment there was complete silence. And then, before he could work up the nerve to open his eyes, he heard applause. Actual applause, a standing ovation, no less. He cracked his eyes open and looked at the crowd nodding respectfully.

"Yeah!" some random patron shouted. "That was great, man!"

He couldn't help the smug grin spreading across his face. Bloody awful poet, huh? He'd like to see the wankers who gave him the title face this particular crowd. He stood up, feet apart and chest out.

"Thank you!" he called out. "That was for Cecily. All right. This next one's called..." He trailed off as he got a closer look at one of the applauding figures.

Buffy was leaning against a pillar near the edges of the crowd, eyes sparkling, grinning from ear to ear. For a second he froze, then tried to shove the microphone back in the stand, fumbling and almost dropping it. A few eyes turned to see who he was staring at, and some of the applause began to be directed her way, some people clearly assuming she was the Cecily of the poem. Spike rushed off the stage and hurried her into a corner of the room, nodding at a few of the more vocal members of the audience.

"Slayer?"

She hadn't stopped grinning. He'd forgotten what an absolutely blinding smile she had.

"Wesley told me you were here." If possible, her smile got even wider. "Did you really write that?" She frowned. "And is 'effulgent' a real word?"

He thought briefly about lying, but just nodded his head and winced. "Yeah. And I know it was an arse job, so you don't need to say it."

She shrugged serenely. "I dropped out of my poetry class. What do I know?"

He couldn't help grinning in return, and for a moment they just stood smiling at each other like idiots. He wondered briefly why she was still in L.A., but at the moment he didn't much care. He dragged her against him, and she let out an undignified squeak before he covered her mouth with his. She moaned and opened her mouth, twisting one of her hands into his hair, and he pulled her closer. She tasted like beer and sweat, and his hands roamed freely over her back and ass. She didn't stop him, instead squirming in his arms and rubbing up against him. When she pulled back to breathe he latched on to the side of her neck, sucking hard, and she let out a guttural moan.

"Get a room, buddy!"

She leaned back, panting hard and blushing at the passerby who'd shouted at them. "What do you say?" she asked, looking up at him. "Your place, or...well, your place?"

He couldn't stop staring stupidly at her lower lip. "What? Yeah, okay." She nodded and started to walk away, and he tightened his grip on her wrist, pulling her back. "Wait, not okay. Wesley and Illyria are there."

She shrugged. "Not anymore. They were on their way out when I ran into them, looking for you." She started to walk away again, and again he yanked her back. "What now?" she asked impatiently.

The cloud of lust was starting to clear a bit from his brain. "What are you doing here?"

She rolled her eyes. "Not getting any younger, clearly. Come on," she insisted, tugging on his arm. "We'll talk about it on the way."

He followed her outside and into the nearest sewer, still holding tightly to her hand as they walked briskly in the direction of his apartment. They strode along in silence for a few minutes before she finally spoke.

"I got as far as the airport. I had this plan: get to London, find Giles, plan a defense. And then I realized that what I needed was right there in front of me."

He squinted at her. "You found a weapon?"

"Of sorts." She grinned. "A pay phone. I called Giles, filled him in on everything. It turns out he wasn't too surprised, actually. He's been keeping tabs on L.A. for a while now -- I don't think he trusted Angel, especially while he was at Wolfram & Hart. He didn't know what Angel was planning, of course, but he's been making preparations in case something happened here."

Spike gaped at her and slowed to a stop. "Is he going to help, then?"

She sighed and tugged at his hand. "Keep moving, it smells in here. And yes, he's going to help -- if he can. At the very least he'll be able to get the backup ready. As far as Angel's battle?" She shrugged. "He's not sure. He said something about a group of Slayers training about forty miles away, and mentioned a witch or two nearby. But nothing for sure." She crooked a smile. "He wasn't too happy about this, let me tell you. His voice did that pinched thing he does when he gets good and pissed."

"But Buffy...shouldn't you be there?" He held up his hand in defense when she glared at him. "Not that I'm not happy to see you, because I am. But I thought you said that Angel was right that you should go."

She was silent for a moment. "I was planning on it," she said quietly. "And when I got to the airport, I realized two things. First of all, do you know how long it is to fly from L.A. to London? I'd be stuck for hours, not being able to do anything. The best thing to do was get in touch with Giles and get the ball rolling."

"And the second thing?" he prompted.

She squeezed his hand but wouldn't look at him. "The second thing is that I remembered what I am now. Or more importantly, what I'm not. I'm not the only Slayer anymore. It isn't my job to be the sole defense against evil or anything, not now." She looked up at him, and her eyes were bright. "That's what you did for me, when you died. You set me free. Not that I don't fight anymore, but I can finally choose my own battles." She squeezed his hand again. "And I'm choosing this one."

He stared at her, unable to say a word, and her face flamed under his scrutiny. "If you come up with some crap about sending me away because it's safer, I swear I'll kick you in the teeth," she said defensively. "For so many years I've felt trapped by this calling, by being the Chosen One. A year ago I'd probably have run right to Giles and started planning. But I've done the general thing before, and I don't think I'm that good at it." He couldn't help smirking, and she smiled ruefully. "I did it because I had to, because I was the only one. And now? I'm not the only one. They don't need me, not for this, and I can't tell you how good that feels."

He sighed. "I don't know what to say. Part of me wants you here, no question." He smirked at the direction her eyes took on his anatomy. "And it's not just that part, either. But, Buffy...." He forced her to stop and face him, raising his hands to cup her face. "I want you here," he whispered. "I'll always want you. No helping that. But more than that, I want you safe, and I want you happy. You're free now. No early expiration date anymore. So don't go throwing it all away." He lowered his eyes. "I couldn't bear it."

She wrapped her hands around his wrists, holding him tightly. "Spike," she whispered in return, "there are no guarantees, not about anything. And I'm not throwing anything away. I'm here to help, because this is where I'm needed. You can use an extra pair of hands more that Giles can use my organizational skills."

"Don't do this for me," he pleaded. "If that's why you're here, don't."

She fixed her eyes on him. "And if I was? You're worth it." He blinked at her in awe and shook his head. She sighed and raised her hands to his cheeks, mirroring his gesture. "I'm here because I made a choice. I respected yours, now you have to respect mine. Got it?" He nodded. "Good."

"Good," he echoed. "So let's go then, unless you'd rather stay down here." She shook her head fervently and let him lead her down the sewer. Within ten minutes they had made it back to his apartment.

Wesley and Illyria had indeed left, and a glance at the clock told him that they had over four hours until Angel had asked them to reassemble. Buffy peered into his eyes, then pushed him gently back against the door.

"Are you here with me?" she asked solemnly.

He nodded. "I am."

"Good." She hesitated slightly. "I mean, if you just want to talk, or something..." She gasped as he spun her around so her back was against the door.

"Not a chance," he said growled. "I've got you right where I want you, Slayer."

Her brilliant smile was back as she leaned into him and fixed her mouth on his neck. He gasped like a fish while she sucked on him, his fingers grasping her shoulders tightly, his erection back in full force, and when she pulled away from him she licked her lips sultrily.

"There," she said. "Now we match."

He stared at her for a moment, and her eyes widened at the look on his face before he grabbed her up and tossed her over his shoulder. She yelped in surprise as he walked across the room, and she was laughing by the time he dumped her on the bed.

"Caveman much?" she asked with a smirk, blowing her hair out of her eyes. He gave her a leer in return.

"You know it, baby." He leaned over and started to crawl up the bed towards her. She scooted away playfully and he grabbed for her and rolled her on top of him. Unfortunately, he forgot how small his bed was, and before he knew it they were tumbling over the side and crashing to the floor in a tangle of limbs.

"Ow!" he groaned, sitting up gingerly, and he noticed Buffy's shoulders were shaking. "Slayer, you alright?" he asked in alarm.

She turned to face him, and he saw that she was laughing, an intense, silent laugh that left no room for sound or air. He raised his eyebrows and she began to laugh even harder, wheezing and gasping as she forced air into her lungs. He had no idea what was so funny, but it was so infectious that he started to laugh as well. Within a minute they were both gasping with laughter, shaking and crying with the force of it. It took a few minutes before they had calmed down enough that he could ask her.

"What...what's so funny?"

She shook her head, unable to stop smiling. "I have no idea."

He rolled his eyes in amusement and pulled her over to him, kissing her forcefully. She kissed him back passionately, still laughing as she pulled away to breathe. He couldn't stop smiling in return, and he realized that he'd never had this with her. Sure, they'd done just about every position in the book, but he'd never had this easy intimacy with her. They'd never laughed together during sex, and he found that he liked it more than anything. He ran his fingers over the crinkled skin at the corner of her eyes, and pressed kisses to her smiling lips. She was touching him in return, running her fingers through his hair and finally reaching up inside his shirt to scratch at his chest. He jerked when she hit a sensitive spot, rising to his feet and pulling her back on the bed.

"Let's try this again," he said, and she nodded breathlessly before diving back onto his mouth. In between kisses he wrestled her shirt off, and she did the same for him. He couldn't believe how warm she was as she squirmed on his lap, her chest flushed and wet where he'd run his tongue over it. He leaned back so he could watch her as he used his fingers to tug on her nipples, and she stared in his eyes as her breathing deepened. There were no voices in his head this time, no more doubts and insecurities, and his face hurt from smiling at the sheer joy of it. He rolled her onto her back and began to tug at her pants at the same time that she reached for his. Naturally they got in each other's way and started laughing all over again, and he had to stop and kiss her as a result. He laced his fingers through hers, and she arched her back and rubbed her breasts against his chest.

"Yeah, that's right," he muttered hoarsely. He moved down to take one of her breasts in his mouth, and she gasped and began rocking up against him, rubbing her thigh against his erection. He had to close his eyes and bite his lip in an effort to regain some control. Damn it. He had to stop before he made a fool of himself. He wanted to make it good for her, wanted to bury his tongue between her legs and make her come a few times, and he wouldn't be able to do that if she kept rubbing against him like that. He was trembling with the effort to control himself, and she pulled her hands free and wrapped her arms tightly around his back.

"It's okay," she soothed. "This is perfect. I want you, Spike." He kissed her gratefully, and realized that she was right. It was perfect. Not because of the surroundings, or because of any fancy moves he was using, but because she was there with him, fully and completely. In that moment he was so happy he felt like his heart would burst from his chest, and he knew exactly what it was that had caused Angel to lose his soul. Before he could think about that mood-killer any longer, she had pushed him onto his back and yanked his pants down. She tugged her own jeans off and straddled him, rubbing herself against him but not letting him penetrate her yet. He threw his head back with a groan, twisting his hips desperately and digging his fingers into her thighs. He raised his hands to massage her breasts, pinching at her nipples until she finally, finally grabbed him and lowered herself onto him.

"Oh!" she said in a high, breathy voice, slamming her eyes shut and tilting her head back. He almost came at the sight, but he managed to wrap his hands around her ribs and grind up at her as she pushed down on him. She felt indescribable. The usual words -- "hot", "wet" and "tight" -- were certainly applicable, but paled in comparison to the actual woman that moved on top of him, smiling down at him. Part of his brain was babbling in confused awe that she was even there with him, but the other part was at peace. He knew he was right where he belonged. His scattered thoughts were interrupted when she tightened around him, smiling wickedly, and in retaliation he clenched his stomach muscles and sat up suddenly.

She groaned and bit at his shoulder at the change in angle, winding her legs around his waist and her arms around his back. "That good?" he gasped, and she nodded frantically. He held her tightly against him and began to rock her -- he didn't think he'd ever been this close to her before. He reached down between them and pressed his thumb against her clit so she could rub herself on him, and she scrunched up her face and began to keen. If he didn't know better he would have thought she was in pain, but she dug her fingernails in his back and moved faster against him. And he knew the one other thing he needed to do to make this absolutely perfect.

"I love you," he said hoarsely. She had time to give him one blinding smile before her climax hit. She tightened around him almost to the point of pain, clenching her teeth, throwing her head back and stiffening her entire body, and he followed her with a load groan.

They leaned against each other when it was over. Buffy was panting hard, splayed soft, loose and wet in his lap. Spike rested his head on her shoulder and rubbed her back with arms that felt like wet noodles. He continued to rock her gently as they calmed, pressing kisses to her shoulder and the side of her neck. "I love you," he kept whispering over and over. He felt like the words had been bottled up for years, and he was almost frantic to let them out. After a few minutes she lifted her head and cupped her hands around his shoulder blades.

"I love you," she said in return, looking him in the eyes. "And you'd better believe me this time."

He nodded and leaned forward to kiss her gently. "I believe you," he whispered, and he did. She had left him with no other choice.

 

They had time to play a bit longer and shower before the rest of the group reassembled at the appointed time. Angel arrived first, and he gave a slightly sour look as he entered, sniffing the air and frowning. Spike knew the scent of them must still be heavy in the air, and he had to bite back a smug look. He figured it must be obvious even without the smell. Buffy was glowing, and he knew he was probably grinning like an idiot in return. Angel looked confused.

"Buffy? You're here."

She nodded. "Yup. Backup plans are taken care of, so I'm here to fight."

Angel hesitated, but Buffy repeated herself firmly. "I'm here to fight. And I know you can use the help."

After a moment Angel nodded. "Just please tell me I'm not early," he said.

Spike couldn't resist digging the knife in just a bit. "Why? Afraid you interrupted something?"

"Shut up, Spike," Buffy shot at him, but her voice was teasing. Angel looked profoundly uncomfortable, and more than a little tired. He let out a sigh of relief when Gunn and Lorne showed up a few minutes later, followed shortly by Illyria and Wesley. Buffy placed a couple of kitchen chairs next to the couch, and Angel waited for them all to get settled down before speaking.

Spike was grudgingly impressed at how Angel had managed to divide up the tasks, taking into account the strengths and weaknesses of the rest of the group. It appeared he had put considerable thought into this, and the thought of having a detailed plan eased the knot in his stomach a bit. Angel finally turned to him.

"Spike," he started.

"Right." Spike rose to his feet. "First off, I'm not wearing any amulets. No bracelets, broaches, beads, pendants, pins, or rings."

Angel raised his eyebrows. "Fine. All you need is a rattle."

Spike blinked in confusion for a moment before he remembered. "Ah, the baby."

Angel nodded. "And a legion of the Fell Brethren." He looked over at Buffy. "You're with him."

"Done and done," Spike replied as Buffy nodded.

"So I guess we're not going back to the office after this?" Gunn asked as they all got ready to leave.

Angel shook his head. "The alley just north of the Hyperion. Everyone who makes it meets there. If we do any damage at all, the Senior Partners are gonna rain hell on us. So be ready."

Lorne was the first to leave after pulling Angel aside quietly for a moment, followed by Gunn, Illyria and Wesley. Spike walked up to Angel as Buffy went searching for her coat.

"What do you think all this means for that Shanshu bugaboo? If we make it through this, does one of us get to be a real boy?"

Angel crossed his arms. He looked more tired than Spike had ever seen him, and he seemed to have aged ten years in the past week. "Who are you kidding?" He gave a twisted smile. "We're not gonna make it through." He glanced back at the bedroom where Buffy was digging for her coat. "I didn't want her here," he said quietly. "I want her safe."

"So do I," Spike said in a low voice. "And I'll do my best, but she's the Slayer. How about letting her watch your back?"

Angel shook his head and sighed. "Just take care of her, whatever happens. And I think, right now, the Shanshu is the least of our concerns."

Spike raised his eyebrows. "Well, as long as it's not you," he said, but Angel didn't take the bait. "Right then," he said, and walked to the door. He turned to wait for Buffy, and saw that she had taken Angel's hand and was whispering to him. He was mildly surprised that he felt no stab of jealousy, but at the moment the certainty of having Buffy's love left no room for doubts. He stepped slightly outside the door to give them more privacy, looking at the floor when he saw Buffy stand on her toes to give Angel a gentle kiss. He looked back up and tightened his shoulders as they came towards him.

Angel straightened his coat and nodded at both of them, but kept his eyes fixed on Spike. "I'm glad you're here." And he walked past them without another word, his coat swirling behind him. Buffy sighed.

"He certainly likes to make a dramatic exit," she murmured.

Spike smirked. "That he does." He took Buffy's hand and rubbed his thumb softly over the knuckles. "It's gonna be pretty bad out there," he said gently. "Last chance to back out."

Buffy shook her head, reaching up to straighten his collar. "Too late for that." She squeezed his hand and gave him a crooked smile. "Come on. Let's go be heroes."

 

The lair of the Fell Brethren was not difficult to find. It turned out to be located in a converted warehouse only ten blocks from the apartment. Spike crouched down low on the roof of the building opposite, Buffy next to him. She was squinting at the entrance.

"I see two guards," she said, pointing.

Spike nodded. "Looks the same to me. One robe for each of us -- very handy, I have to say. That'll make it easier for us to get inside."

They climbed down and, after a brief struggle, were in possession of a robe each. Spike led the way inside, falling into line behind a procession of several of the brethren. He had no idea where they were headed, but he figured it looked better than wandering aimlessly. He surreptitiously sniffed the air for the odor of human, doing his best to ignore Buffy's distinctive scent. As it turned out, luck was with him. When he passed by one of many closed doors he heard an infant's cry. Falling behind the group, he ducked into the room, Buffy close behind him.

Buffy reached into the crib and picked up the baby, giving a worried look when he started to whine quietly. "Here," she said, handing him to Spike. "I don't think he likes me."

Spike took the infant from her with an eye roll. "Scared of a baby, are we, Slayer?" He looked down at the bundle he held. "Hello, Junior, the name's Spike," he introduced himself. "And lucky for you, I'm on a strict diet." The baby quieted instantly, giving a toothless grin. Buffy gaped at him.

"How did you do that?" she whispered fiercely. Before Spike had the chance to answer, the door to the hallway reopened to show several of the Fell Brethren.

"Place the holy vessel back in the bassinet," one of them ordered, drawing a sword. Spike looked at Buffy, and as one they shrugged off their robes and leapt into the fight.

It was a short battle, and when it was over, Buffy stared at him. "You actually held the baby while you were fighting?"

Spike looked down at the baby. "What? He's fine, isn't he? And you'll notice those brothers aren't eager to hurt him. Probably the safest thing to do is keep hold of him."

They made it safely out of the warehouse after disposing of the rest of the Brethren, Spike stopping Buffy at the entrance to the nearest alley.

"Look, I'll take him to the foster family. It's a one-man job at this point. We can meet at the alley."

She nodded, looking upwards as thunder rolled threateningly. "I'll catch up with Gunn. He sounded like he might be able to use some help."

"You remember where he is?"

She nodded and ran off just as a heavy rain began to fall. Spike gave the sky a sour look. "Great," he muttered, wrapping the infant in one of the discarded robes and heading for the main thoroughfare.

It took almost an hour to make his way to the alley once he'd disposed of the baby, and he had a moment of panic when he realized that he was the only one there. He cursed himself for his stupidity in separating himself from Buffy, and he had just made up his mind to go in search of her when he saw Angel run up, bleeding from numerous cuts and carrying a large sword.

"Boo," Spike called, stepping out of the shadows.

"Anyone else?" Angel asked, looking around.

Spike shook his head. "Not so far."

"Buffy?"

"With Gunn. You feel the heat?"

Angel nodded. "It's coming."

Spike straightened himself up. "Finally got ourselves a decent brawl," he said, but was distracted by two figures entering the alley. Gunn was running towards them with a stagger, and Spike could smell the blood on him from a distance. Buffy was running slightly behind him, as if ready to catch him when he fell.

Gunn lifted his axe in salute. "Damn! How did I know the fang boys would pull through? You're lucky we're on the same side, dogs, 'cause I was on fire tonight. My game was tight." His voice trailed off and his legs gave out. He almost collapsed before Spike and Angel were able to lead him to a crate. Now that he was closer, Spike could see the numerous wounds covering his body. He seemed to be losing blood at an alarming rate. Spike gave a quick glance at Buffy.

"He was hurt before I got there," she said in a low voice. "He'd already taken care of almost all of them." She gave Gunn a measured look, warrior to warrior, and nodded in respect.

Spike studied his injuries with concern. "You're supposed to wear the red stuff on the inside, Charlie boy."

Gunn merely shook his head. "Any word on Wes?"

At that moment Illyria jumped down from the top of the chain-link fence, landing lightly on her feet. She was drenched from the rain, and she looked shaken, if it were at all possible.

"Wesley's dead," she stated flatly. Spike looked down in shock. He knew that the danger was there, but he had somehow maintained the faint hope that all of them would make it through. He hoped that the man was finally at peace. He saw a look of anguish pass over Angel's face before he was able to control his features. Buffy lowered her head. Illyria still looked shaken and confused. "I'm feeling grief for him," she said, as if surprised by the emotion. "I can't seem to control it. I wish to do more violence."

It was then that Spike noticed that a background hum that he'd taken to be nearby traffic was growing progressively louder. He turned his head to the entrance of the alley to find an enormous crowd assembled. There seemed to be countless hordes of demons of all shapes and sizes; the narrow alley prevented him from making a good estimate, but he would guess in the hundreds at the very least. He only recognized about half of the assembled creatures, and he wondered how many of them originated from another dimension. He caught sight of an enormous flying demon with scales and wings pass overhead, and he turned and watched it for a moment before focusing on the approaching crowd. He almost laughed, partly in defiance, partly in despair. For the first time, he felt like he actually had something to lose.

Gunn stood on shaky legs. "Okay. You take the thirty thousand on the left...."

"You're fading," Illyria said bluntly, but with a note of something that might be compassion in her voice. "You'll last ten minutes at best."

Gunn smiled. "Then let's make 'em memorable."

They fell into a rough line behind Angel as the hordes began to move towards them. Spike was suddenly distracted when he felt Buffy twist her fingers in his shirt and pull the collar down.

"What are you doing?"

She let him go as if satisfied. "Just checking to make sure you're amulet-free." She caught his glance, and he saw the same mixture of excitement and regret in her eyes that he was sure she was seeing from him. He wanted to kiss her one last time. He wanted to spend the next ten years telling her that he loved her. A part of him desperately wanted to pull her out of this alley, but he held his ground. She looked back at him and grabbed his right hand with her left, lacing their fingers together. His throat tightened as he recognized the gesture, and he nodded and squeezed her hand briefly before releasing it. There was no need for words. He knew exactly what she was trying to say.

The demon hordes were getting closer, and Angel had tightened his grip on his sword.

"Anything in terms of a plan?" Spike asked.

Angel didn't look away from the approaching mob. "We fight," he said tersely.

"Bit more specific?" Spike clarified sharply. The demons were almost a stone's throw away now. He saw Buffy out of the corner of her eye glancing up at the surrounding rooftops, as if expecting last-minute help to appear out of the heavens. He didn't know what old Rupert had tried to do, but it looked like he hadn't been able to come up with anything in that short a time. They were alone, five against hundreds, possibly thousands.

Angel glanced back quickly, and Spike caught a slight smile. Even with the howling mob in front of him he looked to be at peace. "Well, personally, I kind of want to slay the dragon." The horde rushed towards them, and Angel raised his sword. "Let's go to work."

Spike felt his face burn and shift as his true features emerged. He heard Gunn yell defiantly even as he bled his life away, and watched through the pouring rain as the dragon flew overhead. He saw Angel's muscles tense under his coat, and he could smell the odors of the various demons that approached them. He threw a last, fierce smile at Buffy and saw her grin in return, and then the battle was upon him.

 

THE END