Spike knelt down by the bleeding man’s side to check if the bloke was really dead.

Buffy was still standing there, staring at her hands, until Spike’s movement caused her to snap out of her brief catatonia-like state. “Don’t you touch him!” she hissed at Spike as he put his hand to the man’s neck to confirm what he already knew.

Buffy’s eyes were ablaze, burning feverishly like her cheeks. “I know what you want,” she continued. “You think, oh, he’s dead anyway, now I can eat him.”

“Well,” said Spike, who had to admit this was a nice brand of logic. “But, no, I just—“

“Don’t touch him!” Buffy hissed again.

“Hey,” Spike said, raising both hands in the air as he got up again. “No touching.”

Buffy ignored him completely. She was still staring at the dead brigand on the soggy woodland soil. “I killed him,” she said again, sounding almost surprised now.

Spike sauntered over to her. “Buffy, you had no choice. He would’ve killed you.”

She didn’t even seem to hear him. “We have to bury him.” She coughed once, superficially, trying not to give into another coughing fit.

Fuck, Spike thought as he reached her and caught the glazed look in her eyes, staring at the dead body on the ground but not really seeing it. “She’s delirious.” It seemed there was no reasoning with her. Spike knew that healthy Buffy wouldn’t have liked killing a human either, but at least she would’ve been able to see it wasn’t her fault. Kill or be killed, that was the case, and she better goddamn realize it or it would kill her after all.

“We have to what??” Spike blurted out. He took Buffy by the shoulders and forced her to look away from the dead body on the path. “What we need to do, is get out of this forest. Get you to a bed. Be inside before sunrise. What we *don’t* need to do, is bury the soddin’ bastard who tried to kill you.”

Buffy’s coughing fit hit home and she doubled over in what was the worst fit she’d had so far. Spike was still holding her as her body shook with coughs. He smelled it before he saw it, as she stood straight again, on the corner of her mouth. Slayer blood. “Bloody hell!” Spike muttered. She was coughing up blood now. This was really bad. “Buffy, we have to get out of here,” he said urgently. “We need to get help.”

“No, we need to…” Buffy’s words trailed off into the night. Her face seemed small suddenly, and much too pale. The strands of wet hair clinging to her forehead contrasted starkly with the whiteness of her skin and the feverish glow on her cheeks.

Spike thought quickly. He was extremely worried now. The horse, he thought. Where had Home gone? Last he remembered was being thrown off the stallion’s back, as it got stabbed. “It must have run away.” Home couldn’t have gone far with that hurt leg. They had to try to find it. Most importantly, they had to get out of the forest, but it was obvious Buffy wasn’t up for a long walk. They needed the horse. Seeing that Buffy was in no condition to start roaming through the forest in search of the stallion, Spike figured he better find the horse by himself. “Buffy,” Spike said quickly. “You stay here. I won’t be gone a minute. Just gotta find Home, then we’ll go.”

“Hmm,” Buffy said, finally noticing him again.

“Stay,” Spike told her, as he dashed off into the dark. “Not more than five minutes,” he told himself. “If I don’t find him in five minutes, forget it. I’ll come back later.”

He ran down the path in the direction he thought Home had fled. Turning a corner on the winding road, surrounded by the dark silhouettes of the trees, the faint small of blood hit his nose. Scanning the path with his vampiric sight, he could discern a trail of small drops of blood leading off the path into the bushes. Broken branches pointed him further in the right direction. For a couple of minutes he made his way through the bushes, following the hurt horse’s trail. He knew he should get back to Buffy, maybe shouldn’t even have left her, but they needed that horse, and he was so close now.

After what seemed ages but couldn’t have been more than five minutes, he arrived at a small clearing. The scent of blood was thicker here, and unconsciously Spike licked his lips. Home staggered as the vampire drew closer, sensing the danger, perhaps. But Spike, despite his hunger, managed to control himself as he cautiously approached the horse.

“There, there,” he said as he reached the snorting stallion, whose long mane shone even in the bleak bit of light the young moon provided them. Spike patted Home’s neck, trying hard not too scare the nervous horse any more. After Home seemed to have calmed down a little, Spike quickly inspected the wound in the stallion’s leg. It didn’t seem too deep, but as he took the reins and made Home follow him back through the bushes, it was clear from the horse’s limping that he would not be able to carry Buffy, let alone both of them. “Bugger,” he cursed. But, despite the fact that Home now proved more of a problem than a help, Spike didn’t have the heart to leave the horse behind. He had to get the stallion to a place where its leg could heal, and most of all, a place where Buffy could get better. At the thought of her and her quickly worsening illness, he hurried along faster. First house they came upon, they would seek shelter, he resolved as he paced down the road. Thankfully Home trudged along quietly, even though the injury must be causing the horse some pain.

Two more turns. It started to drizzle; a cold mix of rain and almost-snow, and the ground slowly became muddier. He’d been gone too long, he worried. It had taken him at least 15 minutes in all to get the horse back. One more turn…

Spike stopped dead in his tracks. Home’s reins slipped from his hand as he beheld the scene that greeted him.

“Buffy!” he yelled, astonished. “What the bloody hell are you doing?”

She was sitting on her hands and knees, fingers clawing into the dirt, scraping the hard, nearly frozen layer of ground underneath it. Beside her lay the dead brigand, covered with the blanket that had lain around her shoulders earlier, when they’d still been on Home’s back, traveling north. Tears were streaming down Buffy’s face and evaporated quickly into thin air as they reached her burning cheeks. Spike was at her side within seconds. Grabbing her arms, he pulled her up, forcing her to look at him. “What are you doing?” he repeated, more concerned than ever. Had she gone out of her mind? She looked at him, and again he wasn’t sure if she saw him, or someone else that occupied her dream of delirium. Stifling another painful cough, she spoke, voice trembling. ”I killed him. He has to be buried.” She held up her hands, helplessly. They were bleeding. Her fingers, her nails, small trails of blood mixed with dirt.

“Buffy!” He didn’t know what to do except get her out of here. “We have to go.”

Spike tried to pull her with him, but she protested, momentarily strong again. Then the effort of resisting his strength became too much for her and her legs gave way. Collapsing against him, she nearly passed out. “That’s it,” Spike said, and wrapping his arms around her, he lifted her off the ground. She was light as a feather, like a thin, frail bird in his arms. With one hand, he snatched the blanket from the dead guy. Thankfully there wasn’t too much blood on it. He covered the Slayer with the blanket to shelter her from the snowy rain, and carried her over to Home. Taking the horse’s reins, he began the long route out of the forest, leading the horse, and carrying his love. For that, he had to admit by now, she was.

~*~*~*~

The thick forest gave way to sloping stretches of waving grass, here and there adorned with small groves of young cork oaks. The track was joined by another sand road here, this one broader and deepened with cart-ruts, which were slowly getting filled with ice-cold rainwater. The drizzle had turned into rain soon after they had left the scene of the fight, and as Spike led an exhausted Home out of the woods into the open air, a tough wind sprang up, bending the grass and the sweeping stems of the trees. The vampire felt pretty near exhaustion himself. He had been walking for nearly two hours now, was soaked and shivering from the cold. The sweet load he was carrying as carefully as he could had become heavy. Buffy hung in his arms, still but for the moments her body shook with coughs. The blanket wrapped around her had long stopped protecting her from the cold, as it had got sodden with rain, and he had shed the thing about an hour before, leaving the brown heap of fabric on the wet forest path.

In the distance, the sky grumbled with thunder, increasing Spike’s worry. The fields were good, more chance to find a place to stay here, a farm, or even another shed, to shield from the weather. But if there was going to be a thunderstorm, the plains were the last place one wanted to be. Spike was the most worried about Buffy though. At first she had still been speaking, her words jumbled, and as incoherent as Dru’s loony-speak, as she hovered on the verge between wake and the delirious dream world of high running fever. At least it meant she was still there, with him. Still conscious. But the last half hour or so, she’d been silent, eyes closed, completely lost in her feverish dreams.

Spike had no choice but to carry on. He had to nearly drag along Home, who wanted to stand still every odd step. He was cursing the soft spot in his heart that he had for the black stallion, for this rendered him unable to just leave the animal behind, which would have made things somewhat easier. He also cursed the weather, and the goddamn tornado that had got him and Buffy in this god-forsaken soddin’ age in the first place. But most of all, he cursed himself, for giving into Buffy when she wanted to travel this doomed night. For not trying harder to make her stay in bed, where the ill Slayer belonged.

Buffy’s ragged breaths made him feel more helpless than any moment he’d ever been unable to fight somebody back because of his rotten chip. He couldn’t stand it that all he could do for her was carry her, trying to find her a safe haven. The thunder, still in the distance, echoed over the fields again. They had seen no one on their way so far. Of course, no one in their right mind was out on a night like this. Just as he started to despair slightly, the outline of a house loomed up in the dark ahead. Spike hurried along, quickening his pace again. Coming closer, he could see it was a small farm, with a yard in front of it and what seemed to be a shed or a stable next to it. All was dark behind the windows.

Spike rushed up to the place, and, supporting Buffy with one arm, pounded on the door. Silence. He knocked again, almost hard enough to knock the wooden door in. Following this second attempt, Spike heard the faint murmuring sound of voices inside. Then a yell, and just as he was about to knock again, the door was set ajar. In the small door-opening a nervous- looking bearded man appeared, carrying a candle in his one hand, his other hidden behind the door. The man no doubt had a weapon of some kind in that hand, ready to strike at whatever danger the nightly visitors would prove to be. Spike understood the farmer’s logic. No good person would be exploring the middle of nowhere in the middle of the night. The man was right, too. But Spike figured he should get points for good intention, anyway.

“What do you want?” The man asked gruffly with a thick dialectic accent.

Even though Spike had a really hard time understanding the man’s language, he got the meaning. As a reply, he simply held out his arms, the limp body of the Slayer in them. “She’s very sick,” he said in his best mix of Italian, French and Latin. “She needs help.”

The farmer opened the door a little further, and Spike stepped forward, eager to get in and shelter Buffy and himself from the pouring rain. After taking one look at Buffy’s pale wet face, and seeing the coughs erupt from her lips, the farmer shook his head determinedly. “No. I have children. We cannot take her in. They’d get sick too.”

Spike didn’t quite understand the sentence, but the gestures that accompanied the man’s words made his meaning quite clear. Spike sighed in frustration. Why, why couldn’t these people just help them? “She’ll die,” he said, trying to remain a sense of civility in his tone. “You *have* to help us.”

The farmer shook his head again. The soft tinkle of a woman’s voice behind the door made him turn away from Spike and Buffy for a moment. He exchanged a few words with his wife, and then turned back to them. “She’ll die anyway. If we take her in, my children die, and so will we.” After a pause, the man added. “I’m sorry.”

Spike growled with frustration. He could kill the guy for not letting them into the house. She wouldn’t die, she really wouldn’t. Not if they helped them! He could feel the tide of anger rise inside him, bringing forth the demon that only wanted the destruction of those he didn’t care about. Maybe it wasn’t such a bad idea really, to kill them all. Sure, it would make his head hurt like hell, but at least it might save Buffy. Because the one thing that was most important now was to move her out of the rain. Find someplace warm, sheltered, and hopefully safe for her to recover. But oh, how she’d hate him, if she did recover, and found the carnage he had created. The blood stains that wouldn’t be completely washable from his clothes, for they didn’t have washing machines or special soap. The little bodies of the children in the yard. Spike frowned at the last thought, unable to stop the surge of revulsion that went through him. Stunned, for a second or so, as he realized that he hated the thought. He hated the thought of killing the children. And he probably… he might not be able to do it.

But this guy, this stupid bugger of a farmer who’d rather let Spike’s love die miserably than invite them into his home, this guy he could kill. As the rage inside him hit boiling point, Spike thought nothing would give him more satisfaction than ripping out the farmer’s throat. Nothing except seeing Buffy skip healthily through life again, of course. But to chop this man into pieces… it would be pure joy. Not to mention the warm blood he so longed for, hungry as he was. All the thoughts raging in his head were quickly replaced by pure blood craving as soon as his eyes locked on the bearded man’s neck.

Just then the woman diverted his attention. The door swung wide open, and she stood on the threshold, big and frank in a nightgown that much resembled a long white sheet. Wordlessly, she held a hairy brown blanket up to Spike. It seemed like real fur, heavy, and most of all warm. The simple gesture washed the wild blood-thirst from Spike’s mind.

Taking the blanket, the woman helped him wrap it all around the Slayer. Now the farmer himself spoke up again, his words a little less harsh. “What’s wrong with your horse?”

Spike turned to glance at Home. The horse looked pretty miserable, soaked, his beautiful head hanging down. “He got hurt in his leg. He can’t walk well,” Spike explained, pointing at the horse’s leg.

The farmer handed the candle to his wife and stepped out into the mud bare- footed to take a look at the stallion. Expertly, he checked the wound, then looked up again. “There is a monastery down that way,” he said pointing in the northern direction. It’s about a mile away. They have a sick bay and can take care of her there. We cannot take you in,” he said again, apologetically.

Spike nodded, but groaned inwardly. A monastery, of all places! A haven of all things holy and sacred, filled with bloody crucifixes and monks and prayers at every fucking part of the day. Just his kind of place. Bloody hell, he thought, things were so much easier when I still hated her!

~*~*~*~

An endless mile’s walk later, Spike stood in front of the massive oak doors of the large monastery. The farmer, eager to be able to help at least a little, had put Home up in his stable with his only other horse, an old work-mare, and had promised to take care of the stallion’s leg wound. Before he left, Spike had given the man one of his pieces of gold. He made it clear to the man that this was for the trouble he took, as well as for Home’s food. But the underlying reason, he had to admit, was to make sure the man wouldn’t sell the horse off. Spike knew people.

Buffy had not spoken at all during the walk to the monastery. She was covered with the pelt and still drifted in a world of her own. Meanwhile, the thunderstorm had slowly encroached on them, lightning setting the sky on fire in the west. It wouldn’t be long before the storm would be all around them. Thankfully before it got that far, they had reached their destination. Spike didn’t waste any time and accompanied the sound of the heavy brass knocker with a yelled demand. “Open up!”

Surprisingly quickly, a small square window within one of the two doors was opened. Another candle, and a pair of weary eyes looked at him from under the hood of a monk’s habit. Spike used one hand to gesture at Buffy. “You have to help us,” he said, in his usual mix of languages.

The monk nodded that he understood him. Spike sighed, relieved. At last. But then, to his surprise and utter frustration, the monk shook his head. Pointing at Buffy through the window, he said to Spike: “There are no women allowed in this monastery.”

“WHAT??” Spike fumed. “No women… she’s dying, you idiot. SHE NEEDS HELP! Which part of that do you not understand??”

The man looked at Buffy again, then back to Spike. He seemed to think for a moment, then he spoke up. “Wait here.”

The monk disappeared and Spike kicked the gate hard. Much too strong to give way. He cursed loudly, and huddled closer to the high walls of the building, in order to better shield Buffy from the ever worsening weather.

About five minutes later a different pair of eyes appeared behind the window. “This is the woman?”

Spike looked up in surprise. The man spoke French! He quickly replied in the same language. “Yes. She’s very ill. Please, you have to help us.” Did he really just say please? Pleading with a monk now? Oh boy, you’ve got it bad, he thought.

The monk remained quiet for a moment. At length he said calmly: “Let them in.”

“Thank god,” Spike muttered in English, eliciting an approving look from the eyes behind the window. Perhaps the man even understood a bit of English.

A narrow, low door within one of the two larger doors opened, and Spike quickly stepped over the high threshold, clutching Buffy firmly in his arms. The gate opened up into a small brick courtyard, surrounded by walls with many tiny open windows in them. A few torches lit the yard, the nearest of them attached to the small guardhouse next to the gate.

The monk who had been guarding the entrance had a smooth face and piercing dark eyes that glimmered in the moonlight. The other looked much older, the lines in his face speaking of a lifetime of hard work. The man looked smart, Spike thought. Smart in a learned way. He reminded him a bit of the Watcher, back home in good ol’ Sunnydale, and it didn’t surprise the vampire that the monk spoke French. Motioning to Spike to follow him, the older monk led them through a side door into one of the hallways, leaving the younger to guard the gate.

From that point on, things happened quickly. The monk, apparently of some authority in the monastery, gave some orders and others came rushing in, preparing one of the small monk cells for Buffy. A woman in the building was barely acceptable, one of the men explained to Spike, but they couldn’t possibly have her in their sick bay with the ill men. Spike raised his eyebrows skeptically at this, but remained quiet. At the moment he was happy enough to have her inside, and cared for. The three monks who were helping left for a moment, telling Spike to take off Buffy’s wet clothes, and put her under the blankets of the cell’s bed wearing nothing but her undies. Consequently they appeared again, and the Slayer was forced to drink some kind of hot, herb-like drink, which was said to help her get better. Lastly, the monks promised they’d pray for her. There was nothing more they could do.

Although Spike secretly scoffed at the praying remark, he was thankful for the monks’ help. God knows they needed it. Or, she did, anyway. The three left and Spike knelt down by Buffy’s side. Her breath was still raggedy, her cheeks still burning, and pearls of sweat gracing her forehead, but she seemed a little more peaceful now. Still, 20th century antibiotics wouldn’t have been a bad thing to have now. “Fuckin’ Middle Ages,” Spike cursed, for the nth time this horrible night. Outside the walls he could hear the storm rage, surrounding them on all sides now. Inside everything was quiet. There was no window in this cell, just narrow slits to allow the smoke from the torch on the wall to escape. The light threw flickering shadows on the thick brick walls, painting a surrealistic picture of primitive dancers around a fire, and for a moment, Spike felt as if he shared in Buffy’s delirious dreams. Then the voice of the old monk behind him snapped him out of it.

“My name is Fra Fillippo,” the monk said.

Spike turned around. “Spike,” he introduced himself without hesitation, not caring how strange the name must sound. After a split second, he put out his hand, which the monk shook.

Looking at Spike thoughtfully, Fra Fillippo said: “I have heard of you. Of you and the young woman.”

“Have you, now?” Sarcasm. How could the guy possibly have heard of them?

The monk didn’t miss the tone. Calmly, he said: “People travel slowly in these parts, but tales fly.”

“That so? And I suppose we’re in those tales?”

“There are stories going around in the villages. It’s because the woods are crawling with bands of brigands again. After the Black Death, eight years ago, their number diminished greatly, as did that of all of us. But now they are regaining strength. It’s no safe time to travel, so, the story goes, the Lord God,” the man paused to make the sign of the cross. Then he went on: “He sent two angels. Two fair-haired angels of sweet revenge, who posses unearthly strength and slaughter all highwaymen. I know the story is about you.”

Spike uttered a chortle. So this is how legends are born, he thought. After 125 years, he should have noticed. Two times, *two times* he and Buffy had come upon a band of highwaymen, and they’d slaughtered exactly one brigand. Accidentally. And that one, the people who spread the story couldn’t even know about yet. It had only happened tonight. So, the only thing he could think of that had started this ridiculous tale, was that one of the group of brigands they’d come upon that first day, at the gates of Rome, had blabbed about their encounter. Out loud, he said, “Angels huh? Are they bloody stupid?”

Angels. He couldn’t be further from it, and she… he glanced at the Slayer, she was no angel either. But closer, much, much closer than he would ever be. Always fighting the good fight, which he strangely found himself wanting to fight too, just to be with her. To earn her sparse approval, and strengthen the strange friendship between them, which he knew was really love but didn’t dare to call by its real name yet. If she died, would she go to heaven? he wondered. If there was a heaven, of which he was ever doubtful. All that mattered was here and now anyway. Well except if that here and now was six centuries before than the here and now you were used to, but hey. The concept still stood, and he usually wasn’t one to muse on the hereafter much. But if there was a heaven, he thought she would most likely go to it. And he didn’t like that thought one bit. It’d be great for her of course, heaven. Whatever that meant. But if there was a heaven, there would probably be a hell too, and if there was a hell, he knew he’d go to it, if he ever got dusted. And that would mean that they would be separated, forever. Heaven and hell. Day and night. Good and Evil?

“Oh, sod it,” he groaned inwardly. One more round of these kinds of thoughts and he would qualify for official broodmanship. Be a good little colleague to the Great Brooder, also known as his poof of a sire. No thanks. “You don’t believe this story, right?” Spike said to Fra Fillippo. The man seemed smarter than that.

“Indeed, I don’t.” The monk said. In the same calm tone he used for everything he said, he continued. “I know what you are. What you *really* are.” A slight case of stress on ‘really’, nothing else to indicate the man’s meaning.

Spike turned to look at Buffy. He didn’t reply.

Quietly, Fra Fillipo went on. “You are an unholy creature. She isn’t, but you are. Not of God, but of evil, of the night. Yet you love her. I don’t know how, but I know you do. It’s why I let you in tonight. You love her, so you can’t be fully evil.”

Spike’s mind was spinning. How could the monk be so perceptive? It wasn’t like he thought that quality was reserved to him alone, but damn, this was extreme. And, even more so, how the hell did the man know of him, of his kind? Vampires, even though he hadn’t called it that. Of the night, indeed. So many questions, yet as they turned and tumbled they filtered themselves until only one question remained. Eyes still fixed on Buffy’s sleeping form, Spike said: “Will she get better?”

The monk took a moment before he answered. Finally, he replied: “She’s strong.”

~*~*~*~

And she was. By the end of the night, Buffy woke up out of her fever- induced slumber. Within the course of two days, the coughing fits became less bad and further apart. Her cheeks turned from fever-red to simply Buffy-color, and when she talked it was mostly coherent. She was getting better. The monks of the monastery called it a miracle, but Spike knew it was her Slaying powers at work. Quick healing apparently meant quick recovery as well. Of course, she still slept for the main part of the day, and was not by any means ready for more journeying yet after that second day. But by the end of the week, she was getting there.

Spike spent every night at Buffy’s side, watching over her, talking with her when she was awake. Sometimes softly kissing her lips, and always loving her. He’d pretty much accepted that he felt this way about her. It was weird, yeah. Wrong even, maybe. Or that’s what she would say. But it didn’t feel wrong. Not at all, despite the whole enemies to the core thing. They weren’t really enemies anymore anyway. Friends, and really more than that. He’d realized that much during the past two days. But it wasn’t time yet for Buffy to know it.

The nights at Buffy’s side were his excuse for his sleeping during the day. And for not taking part in the many prayers in the chapel every day and night - besides Fra Fillippo none of the monks knew what he was.

A monk’s cell just down the draughty hall from Buffy’s room was assigned to Spike. The first day, he had still been too worried to sleep. Staring up at the ceiling, thinking irrationally, that cross hangs there pretty fuckin’ dangerously above my head. What if it falls down…? And turning around in bed, feet below the crucifix, still not sleeping. After she got better, he slept during the days, and the moments that he didn’t, he talked with Fra Fillippo, who turned out to be an amiable bloke despite the whole Middle Ages fear of God thing they all had going here. He knew a whole lot too, that guy, and even though he knew what Spike was, he wasn’t afraid of the vampire. Or maybe he was just so overjoyed to finally have someone to discuss worldly matters with that he couldn’t care less about the danger Spike was. Well, if it wasn’t for his bleedin’ chip that was, but Fra Fillippo didn’t know about the 20th century tinker-toy that messed with his head. It could never be explained to him. Spike thought it a pity that the man was holed up in this monastery, unable to do anything with all that knowledge and insight except think on it some more.

Every night, at dusk, just after he first checked in on Buffy for the day, Spike sneaked out of the monastery, allegedly to take a walk. In reality, he was hunting for blood, and no small animal was safe while he was on the prowl. He’d rather have spared himself the headaches and gotten blood from a butcher’s shop, but unfortunately there was no such thing nearby, and taking the blood from the meat at the monastery itself would be too suspicious. And as he had said to Buffy, that night he’d caught the hare; rabbits or pigs, what was the difference? Only that they didn’t have to kill the pigs themselves. Well, that and his consequential headaches.

And now, one week after they’d arrived at the monastery, Buffy’s fever was all gone, and so was her cough. She had been outside in the courtyard earlier that day, enjoying the little warmth of the weak winter sun, and her cheeks had been rosy again, not from fever but from the cool winter air. Spike had got up halfway the day, and together they had thanked the monks profusely. They had given Fra Fillippo a piece of gold which he at first refused, until Spike had managed to wrench over his lips that it was to greater glory God’s, and for the chapel. Come nightfall they would leave again. They would pick up Home at the nearby farm first, and then continue their journey northwards, to France, in search of the Slayer of this age and time.

A few hours before dusk, Buffy and Spike were in the Slayer’s temporary room, left alone by the monks to discuss their travel plans. Buffy sat on the bed, her back leaning against the brick wall, a beautiful shadow in the little light that seeped through the creaks in the bricks. Spike was sitting next to her, inexpressibly happy that she was better. Also a very good thing was that she didn’t seem all that upset anymore about killing the brigand in the forest the week before. As Spike had expected, healthy Buffy saw it was self-defense, and thus justified. To his surprise, she had even thanked him, for taking care of her and not leaving her sick in the woods. As if he ever could’ve done that. She said she should have listened to him, back then at the inn, before that night. “Damn right you should have!”

Suddenly, Spike remembered the tale of the angels that Fra Fillippo had told him when they’d just arrived at the monastery. He had not told the story to Buffy yet. “Wanna hear something fun?” he asked. “It’s a tale that’s doin’ the rounds in these parts, apparently. The Fra told it to me,” Spike had come to calling Fra Fillipo ‘Fra’, ‘brother’, even though technically all the monks were called that. “Don’t ask me how it got into the world, I don’t know. I don’t even know if it’s about us, but the Fra thinks it is.”

“You’re making me curious,” she said, smiling. “Tell me.”

“Alright,” he said, and he told her the tale. She threw her head back and laughed, really laughed, for the first time since she’d gotten ill. So sexy, Spike thought.

“You, an angel,” she giggled, playfully slapping his arm.

“You’re no saint yerself, luv,” he said. Back to banter. This was good. “I know who you really are, underneath that beautiful innocent face of yours.”

She looked at him, a smile still in her eyes. “My innocent face is beautiful? You don’t think my depraved face is pretty?” she asked, mocked hurt. Why did she feel so free suddenly, free to make comments like that, to have… couple fun with him? Buffy had no idea. Maybe it had something to do with him having taken care of her, with the way he’d sat at her bed every night. With the way he looked at her, worried and caring, and, maybe even a little loving? And oh, maybe it had to do a little too with that one night, after the skinny-dipping, when…

Spike smiled, interrupting her thoughts. “I think all of you is pretty. Beautiful. Sexy,” the last word came out huskily, and suddenly it seemed the atmosphere had changed. Wonderful tension.

Buffy shifted slightly. “It’s a nice story,” she said, briefly bringing their conversation back to the tale of the angels.

“Yeah,” Spike said, “Even if it’s complete bullocks.”

Buffy nodded. “It gives them hope. The people, the travelers. That’s a good thing, right?”

“Yeah, I guess it is.”

“At least we’re doing something right.”

Spike grinned. “There’s other things we do right too, pet,” he said suggestively. Idly, he let his hand trail up her leg, under the skirt of her dress.

Buffy inhaled sharply, scooting forward a bit when his hand reached her thigh. “Hmmmm,” she murmured, “that feels good.”

Spike moved over to her and covered her mouth in a passionate kiss. She moaned as his fingers pushed past the waistband of her knickers. “Shh,” Spike whispered hoarsely as her hands moved down his back, pulling up his shirt. “Don’t let them hear now.” Quietly, occasionally biting their lips till they nearly bled to keep from crying out, they sunk into each other’s arms.

Continued...