------------------------------
“…Buffy?” Spike spun around, gaze darting frantically. “Buffy!”
Where the sodding hell had she gone? She’d just been there. He was certain of it. He looked around again. For that matter, where the sodding hell was he?
“She’s pretty worried about you.”
Spike whirled again, coming face-to-face with…Fred? Stunned, he stood gawking like a school boy in a brothel.
Fred smiled indulgently. “Thing is, she shouldn’t be. She’s only going to mess things up.”
Giving his head a quick shake, Spike resisted the urge to pinch himself; but only just. “Fred…” He squinted then straightened. “Hang on. You’re not Fred.”
“You always were a lot smarter than most people gave you credit for being.” She tilted her head. “It’s probably the hair.”
“Yeah? Well, I’m not too inclined to take fashion hints from somethin’ that can’t even wear its own body. Speakin’ of…” He leaned forward, voice dropping to a dangerous level. “Get. Out of. Her. Face…Now.”
“Fred” laughed lightly, slapping playfully at his shoulder. “Oh, stop it, silly. We don’t have time for things like that. Haven’t you even wondered where you are?”
Spike frowned as he shot a sideways glance at his surroundings. He had been, actually, just before the appearance of the thing that looked like Fred. But he’d been momentarily sidetracked. Truth was, he’d never been that good at multi-tasking. He’d always been more of a straight-to-the-kill, focus-on-the-goal type vampire. Which was odd, since his thought processes weren’t the most structured, and he loved nothing so much as a good, chaotic brawl. But even then, he usually took it one brawl at a time. The soul hadn’t affected that part of him much, merely made him a little more discriminating about what kind of chaos he embraced.
He sniffed. “Matter of fact, I have. Doesn’t look much like LA.” Didn’t look much like anything he recognized. It seemed to be some kind of void, filled only with the two of them and an endless, shifting sea of mist and fog. Everything, including the not-Fred, was cast in a soft, pink glow.
He hated pink. Such a bloody ridiculous color. Didn’t have the balls to be red, wasn’t good enough to be white. He couldn’t imagine anything worse than living out the rest of his days bathed in such a namby-pamby hue.
That’s it. Must be hell.
“Oh, stop it. You’re not in hell. God, Spike, sometimes you’re such a drama queen.”
“Oi! Out of my head!” He glowered at her. “Nobody invited you to go pokin’ about in there. Wouldn’t catch Fred doing something like that. She had more respect for people. She was something special, not like some nosy, pain-in-the-ass, pale imitation.”
Not-Fred merely folded her arms, looking enormously amused.
“Anyway, ’s warm enough to be hell,” he groused. “Snuffed it, didn’t I? In the big battle. So, what are you…some kind of gatekeeper?”
“What I am isn’t important, but you’re not in hell, and you’re not dead. At least, not in the strictest sense of the word.”
Spike sighed. Apparently, gutting a Kaznar demon would be easier than trying to get information from this bloody bint. “So where am I, then?”
“In between.”
“In between,” he echoed, eyebrows quirked as he waited for more. When it didn’t come, he clenched his fists and his jaw. “In between what? Life and death? Good and evil? Clay and Ruben?”
Not-Fred shrugged. “Just…in between.”
Spike snorted. “Bloody typical. You get your rocks off givin’ me a bunch of nothin’ and I’m left flapping in the wind. You can at least tell me about the others, right? What happened to them? What happened with the battle?” He sobered. “Did anyone survive?”
“What’s the last thing you remember?”
Head cocked, he squinted into the nothingness. “Remember the alley. Remember the fight. Remember a bloody weird sound and a big wind.” He stopped, his brow furrowed. “And…a room. With people.” He frowned harder, trying to recall. “Rupert…and Red. And Illyria, too, I think.” His gaze turned back to hers. “I wasn’t in the alley.”
She smiled. “Nope. You were there…in England. They pulled you out, you and Illyria.”
“Or maybe I only imagined them,” he challenged. “Like I’m probably imaginin’ you.”
“You are such a knucklehead.” She laughed lightly, her tone affectionate. “They were real enough. So am I, just not the way you see me now.”
Giving that some thought, he slowly nodded. “Fair enough. What about the others, then…Angel and Charlie?” He swallowed. “Are they dead?”
She shook her head and sighed. “Why do you always jump to the worst conclusion? You’re dead, they’re dead, none of this is real…there are other options, you know.”
“Really. Why don’t you tell me about them then?” he asked, sarcasm in full swing.
Before his eyes, all semblance of Fred vanished. The body was still there, but the face was a blank mask devoid of any emotion. The voice, when she spoke, was deeper than before – more like a cross between Fred and Illyria.
“Prophecy is not set in stone, and destiny can be rewritten. You taught us that, William.”
For once, Spike was at a loss. Before he could recover his snark, the being in front of him morphed into Illyria.
“She meddles in things she does not understand. This cannot be allowed, or the prophecy will be altered and a new page written.”
Spike shook his head, bewildered. “Prophecy? What prophecy?” He squinted. “Is this about that shanshu bugaboo? And who is this ‘she’ you’re talkin’ about?”
“She will call you back. You must not go. Whatever happens, you must resist.”
“Who the hell are you talkin’ about?” Spike yelled, his patience snapping.
Her head tilted. “The Slayer.”
That stopped him cold. “The…Buffy? You’re talkin’ about Buffy?” Worried now, he started to pace. “What’s she got to do with this? Is she all right? Not hurt is she? Woman never could mind her own business. But she’s okay, right? Otherwise, she couldn’t be meddlin’ in whatever it is you won’t tell me about.”
He looked up to find Not-Illyria striding away. “Hey! Hang on there…answer me!” He started after her. “Blue! Answer my bloody question! Is she all right?” He started jogging, trying to catch up, but even though she seemed to be moving at the same speed, the distance between them grew. He finally gave up and skidded to a stop.
“Blue! Don’t leave me here like this!” he bellowed after her. “I need you to tell me! Blue!”
An instant later, the leather-clad figure was swallowed up by the pink fog.
-------------------------
“I swear, Giles, he knew me. He woke up! He said my name! And it wasn’t just the fever talking.”
“I believe you, Buffy. Unfortunately, he seems to have slipped away again.” Giles rose from his seat at the bedside where he’d been examining an unresponsive Spike. “It is quite encouraging, however, and he no longer has a fever. Did something happen?”
Buffy froze. “Something? What…something?” She surreptitiously tugged at the sleeve of her robe, making sure it still covered the cut on her forearm.
“I don’t know. Some…sign that he was coming out of it? Something you said, something you did differently? Anything out of the ordinary.”
Buffy licked her lips, which had suddenly gone very dry. “No. Nothing out of the ordinary.”
For a vampire.
Giles gave a slight shrug. “I’m at a loss to explain it. There’s something else a bit strange, as well. It almost seems as if his injuries are healing at a faster rate. Not that they were really healing at all before, other than a very slight improvement with some of the lesser cuts and bruises. But looking at him now, I can tell the difference. Perhaps we should try the intravenous feeding again.”
“No!”
He was startled by her vehemence, and Buffy offered a weak smile. “It’s just that…if he is improving, and I think you’re right, then we don’t want to do anything that might interfere with that. Right? I mean, you’ve been feeding him and he didn’t get better. Last night, you didn’t and he did. Maybe we should hold off a little bit. See what happens.”
She waited, holding her breath, until Giles slowly nodded.
“Perhaps you’re right. We don’t know what we’re dealing with. For all we know, he may not be responding in a way that’s normal to a vampire. As long as he doesn’t get worse, I don’t suppose there’s any harm in waiting a bit.”
Giles moved toward the door then stopped. “Buffy. Promise me, that whatever happens in here, you won’t take any unnecessary risks.” He turned to look at her. “If anything should happen to you, even if Spike recovered because of it, do you really believe he would thank you? How long do you think he would stay in this world, knowing he had been the cause of your death?”
Buffy’s shoulders sagged. She should have known. “I was careful, Giles. I didn’t let him take too much. I won’t give him more than a little at a time, I swear. And there’s no real danger. He couldn’t even do it on his own; I had to help him. Believe me, he’s not a threat.”
“Now, perhaps, but what about later as he grows stronger? How much of a threat will he be then?”
“I can handle it. Trust me on this, please.”
He stared at her solemnly. “It would seem I have little choice.” At the door, he paused. “Buffy, I know your blood replenishes itself faster than that of a normal human, but there are limits. Please, don’t forget that.”
“I won’t,” she promised, and smiled reassuringly.
It was only after the door had closed that her smile faded away.
-------------------------
Over the next three days whenever the fever appeared, Buffy “encouraged” Spike to feed. Each time he did, the fever quickly abated. A small part of her acknowledged that she got off on the erotic nature of the feedings more than a little, but mostly she avoided thinking about that aspect, focusing instead on Spike’s rapidly improving condition. Rapidly improving in the physical sense, that is. No matter how hard she tried, there was no further sign of recognition on his part, no random moment of lucidity to give her hope. Trying to suppress her bitter disappointment, she redoubled her efforts.
She was equally discouraged that the coven seemed no closer to locating Angel, despite Willow’s continued attempts to reassure her otherwise. When they spoke on the phone, Willow seemed eager to cheer her up. Maybe a little too eager. Something in her voice smacked of desperation, and it gave Buffy the sinking feeling that all of their efforts wouldn’t be enough. That Angel was lost to them forever, and that Spike, somehow tied to his fate, would slip away from her without any hope of stopping it.
Late at night, as she lay beside him, she couldn’t help wondering if it already might be too late. That even if he came back all the way, it wouldn’t be to her. Other than that brief moment of recognition, her name never passed his lips. His fevered monologues were filled with references to his life in LA, but nothing about her. Nothing about Sunnydale. Nothing to indicate he’d ever had a life before last year.
Through his disjointed ramblings, she gathered bits and pieces of the time he’d spent away from her, but the picture they formed was a hard one for Buffy to accept. Plagued by nagging questions, one in particular, she knew that if she really wanted to help Spike, she had to get an answer.
Even though it might be one she didn’t want to hear.
-----------------------------
She found Illyria in the garden, bent over a large yellow flower that Buffy didn’t recognize, studying it with an intensity that gave new meaning to the phrase “communing with nature.” She looked strangely at home among the colorful flower beds, far less alien here than she had seemed in the formal parlor of the house.
“Did he love her?”
The demon lifted her head and with one fluid movement rose to face Buffy. “Her.” The tilt of her head was quizzical, though it didn’t sound like a question.
“Fred. Did Spike love her?” Buffy stood with fists balled, staring her down.
Illyria regarded her silently, the breeze playing with her blue-tinged hair. Buffy was about to repeat the question when she spoke. “Yes.”
The answer caused a strange constriction in her chest. “Was that why he stayed in Los Angeles? To be with her?”
Illyria seemed to study her much the same way she had examined the flower. “You ask why he stayed, but what you really wish to know is something else. You wonder why he did not seek you out. Humans are predictable.” Something flickered in her face. “All but one.”
Buffy took a deep breath, reminding herself she was there for information, not to antagonize. “So, what does he call you?
“He has many names for me. It is his way.”
“If you’re talking about ‘love’…or maybe ‘pet’…sorry to break it to you, Illyria, but he uses those a lot.”
“Perhaps. He did not use them with me.”
Oh.
Buffy looked away.
Probably didn’t use Goldilocks, either, considering.
Her eyes swung back as her chin rose. “Did he call you Blue? Was that one of those…many names?” A cold stillness settled over her. She knew the answer, had known it, really, from the moment he’d first started calling out to her. But there was always a chance…
“It was.” Illyria’s expression gave nothing away. “I called him Half-Breed, in the beginning. I would not call him that now.”
“So, you two were…close?”
“Yes. Frequently. I enjoyed our intercourse. I liked the noises he made when I hit him. He challenged me. And he took me out. He was the only one.”
Buffy realized then that suspecting something wasn’t as bad as knowing it. She’d thought the not-knowing would be harder, but she’d been so wrong. The chill in her heart should have numbed her, robbing the truth of its sting, but it knifed through her, cutting and slashing with stone cold clarity.
“I would have claimed Spike as my pet, but Angel would not permit it. Perhaps it would be allowed now.”
Suddenly, Buffy wasn’t cold anymore. She burned with fury and disbelief. “Your pet?” She spat out the word. “That’s all he is to you?”
“You are angry. Why? I would do him great honor. It is no small thing to belong to me.”
“First off, bitch-god, Spike doesn’t belong to anyone. Second, if he did, it would be me. So if all you can offer him is a collar and a leash, then back off!” Tossing her head back, Buffy barked out a harsh laugh. “God, I don’t know why I was stupid enough to think you could help. He doesn’t need you! He’s not some thing, some lap dog. He has feelings and –”
She froze.
Oh god.
Illyria said something in response, though it barely registered. Who she was yelling at – the demon god or herself? All those things, all those terrible, terrible accusations. She’d been guilty of all of them, and never once had she apologized to Spike. Even at the end, when she’d known how wrong she’d been, Buffy had never actually said the words. Deep in her heart, she’d still thought of him as hers – as something, or someone, to own. As a vampire, less than human and therefore less worthy of her consideration.
The kind of consideration she had freely given to another vampire.
Oh god.
Raising her gaze to meet Illyria’s, she searched for an answer, some reassurance that she wasn’t the same Buffy who had looked at Spike as her personal property to do with as she would. But no answer lay there.
A noise on the gravel pathway broke the silence. As Buffy turned, a slightly out-of-breath Xander slowed to a stop.
“You’d better hurry,” he said. “Something’s happened.”
------------------------------
TBC in Part 5
------------------------------
Willow’s excitement practically vibrated through the phone line. “We found them, Buffy! They’re in a level four dimension!”
Fist tightening around the receiver, Buffy glanced at Giles and Xander hovering nearby and at Illyria lurking in the background. They were all gathered in the book-lined study that served as Giles’ private retreat. “That’s great, Will. But what does that mean – ‘level four’?”
Success made Willow extra perky. “It’s a trans-dimensional classification system developed by the Osara. They’re sort of…dimensional nomads, I guess you could say. They assign different levels based on all sorts of factors – environment, cultural and technological development, indigenous species…even odds of surviving if you go there. Well, especially odds of surviving, which is something you really, really need to have a good handle on when you’re popping back and forth between dimensions all the time. Do you know they go through dimensions just like we’d walk from one room to another? It’s pretty cool,” she enthused.
“Willow. Point?” Despite her worry, a faint smile tugged at Buffy’s lips. Willow might have changed a lot since their high school days, but some things invariably stayed the same.
“Oh. Sorry. Runaway train of thought. Um…basically, the level assigned tells you the degree of badness you can expect.”
“Pretty handy. So, a level four is…?” Buffy left the question hanging.
“In layman’s terms? Sort of halfway between Sesame Street and Day of the Dead.”
“Great. In a way that’s really not.” She sighed. “Especially since that covers a whole lot of territory. Why couldn’t we have Sesame Street? I like fuzzy blue things and big-but-cuddly yellow birds.”
“Sorry. It could be worse, though. It could have been a level nine. Only…um…we won’t talk about that right now, ’kay? ’Cause, one, we don’t have time, and two…you really don’t want to know.”
Somehow, Buffy didn’t doubt that. “So this dimension where Angel’s trapped…you can open a portal, right?”
“Right. It’ll take us a couple of days to make all the preparations and gather the energy we need, but we can definitely open it.” Willow’s voice was firm. Then she hesitated. “We just don’t know how long we can keep it open. Could be a day, could be a minute, which means you may not have enough time to find them and get out again. It mostly depends on how much juice it takes to open up the portal.”
Running through possible scenarios, Buffy frowned. “What if you opened it long enough for someone to go through, then closed it? Could you keep opening it every so often…like automatic redial?”
“Sure, but like this first time, we’d need at least a couple of days in between each opening. Maybe longer, since the more times we do it, the less energy we have to draw on. And…there’s another problem. Time passes differently in some dimensions. If we close the portal, you could wind up staying there a lot longer than it would seem like on this side. A lot longer.”
Slowly, Buffy nodded, then remembered that Willow couldn’t see her. “Understood. I guess we’ll just have to deal with that if and when it happens. In the meantime, start doing whatever you have to do to get that portal open. Let us know when you’re almost ready.”
Willow agreed and she hung up, turning to Giles who was now seated behind his desk, watching her expectantly. “How soon can Faith get here?”
Giles stared. “Faith?”
“Willow said they’ll need a couple of days to get enough mojo flowing to open the portal, but when they do we need Faith here and ready to go. There’s no way of knowing how long they can keep it open, so every second counts.”
Xander frowned. “Okay. Wait. What am I missing? You’re sending Faith? You’re not going after Angel yourself?”
Buffy shifted, bracing against the bleak pang that knifed through her. It was superceded by a deeper ache that left no doubt where her priorities lay. “I can’t leave Spike.”
No one spoke. Then Xander coughed.
“Well, Houston, I’d say we have a problem. Faith and Wood have gone walkabout in Australia. No way we can reach them in time.”
“Unfortunately, Xander is correct.” Giles rose, moving from behind the desk. “Under different circumstances, Willow might be able to contact them, but from what you’ve told us, any such attempt on her part would most certainly delay the opening of the portal and could even hinder the efforts of the coven. It simply isn’t an option.”
Xander peered at her intently, seeming to choose his words with care. “I know you’re worried about Spike. I get that. But he’s…okay, so he’s not fine, but he’s here. And he’s alive, more or less, and getting better every day, right? Giles can look after him while we’re gone. It probably won’t take us any time at all. Much as it pains me to say it, Angel’s a smart guy. I’m sure he’s doing everything he can to stick close to where they landed. We’ll pop in and right back out. It’ll be like you’re taking a little dinner break.”
Giles was conspicuously silent. Buffy looked away, reluctant to meet his gaze. Unlike Xander, he knew what lay behind Spike’s sudden improvement, and he probably suspected the same thing Buffy feared – that without slayer’s blood to counteract it, Spike was dangerously vulnerable to the recurring fever.
Such was Buffy’s quandary, boiled down to its most basic level. If Spike died because she went after Angel, it would be her fault, and if Angel died because she didn’t – also her fault.
It didn’t matter that Angel was perfectly capable of saving himself. It didn’t matter that her blood was no more potent than donated blood from thirty-odd slayers less than five minutes away. If one or the other died, it would be because she had failed him.
Suddenly, her emotions were bouncing back and forth faster than a Ping-Pong ball. A moment ago, she’d been certain of her choice. Now, doubt wormed its way in, turning her resolve into so much Swiss cheese. As her uncertainty grew, so did her anger at being expected to choose one over the other.
Buffy clenched her fists. That’s exactly what it felt like – a no-win choice, carefully engineered by the same powers that Giles had railed against. For what purpose, she had no idea, though it didn’t really matter.
Sending Faith after Angel had seemed an ideal solution. While there might be plenty of people who could rescue him, only Faith would fight as hard for it as Buffy herself. Normally jealous of the strange connection between Angel and Faith, she had abruptly found herself in the confusing position of counting on it. Now, she had to regroup.
If their positions were reversed, Angel would stop at nothing to get her back. Buffy knew that, and under normal circumstances she would do the same for him.
Only, these were hardly normal circumstances, and Angel wasn’t the only one in trouble.
Illyria stepped forward, eyes locked on Buffy’s face. “I will retrieve Angel…and Charles, if he lives.”
“No offense to anyone, but…shouldn’t we all go?” Xander glanced around. “Giles excluded, since somebody needs to stay with Spike and no one in their right mind would trust me with that assignment. We should probably draft a few of our friendly neighborhood slayers, too. I mean, who knows what we could run into there?”
“I have walked in worlds you could never imagine. I do not need assistance.”
Buffy finally spoke up. “We have two days to decide who’s going. Spike is getting stronger; he could wake up any time.” She looked at Giles. “I should check on him now.”
“There’s no need. Mrs. Hudson would have called us if his condition had changed. There are still things we must determine, arrangements to be made.”
“We’ll settle it all tomorrow.”
“Buffy…”
“Tomorrow, Giles.”
She left a reverberating silence in her wake.
-------------------------------
Spike felt as if he’d been walking for hours, though as far as he could tell time had little meaning anymore. He didn’t know how long he’d been there, had nothing to mark the passage of days, couldn’t even say if such a concept existed in that realm.
Frustrated, angry, and bored beyond sanity, he longed for something to kill or maim, a bottle to smash, or a wall to punch. Anything to dispel the massive amount of energy building to a Hiroshima-sized explosion. Stopping dead in his tracks, he threw back his head and howled with rage.
The sound was swallowed by the shifting mists almost as soon as it left his throat.
Fuck. Fuck.
Fuck.
His chin dropped to his chest, shoulders slumping in momentary defeat. How many times had he been through this already? Caught in an endless cycle of buildup and release that jangled along his nerves like a metal spoon clanging against a tin cup. And in between the rounds of nettlesome nothingness lay vague recollections of something else – a sudden flush, an inexplicable weakness, a loss of consciousness, murky dreams that eluded his memory. And the sense, each time he came to, that something precious had slipped from his grasp.
Head lifting, Spike scanned the nebulous haze around him. Fists clenched and jaw squared, he resumed walking.
And the cycle began again.
--------------------------
“He did not feel worthy.”
Buffy stopped, hand resting on the door to Spike’s room. Illyria emerged from the shadows of the hallway.
“What?”
“He did not seek you out when his body was restored to him. He did not feel worthy.”
“That’s crazy.” Bewildered, Buffy shook her head. “He sacrificed his life to save the world. How could he not feel…?” Trailing off, she frowned. “He actually told you that?”
“He spoke of it to the shell.” Illyria moved closer.
Okay. Confused now. “He went to the beach?”
Illyria halted, face reflecting a hint of uncertainty for the first time since Buffy had known her. “Perhaps. It has no relevance. He spoke to the shell…Fred.”
“Oh.” Buffy knew she had no right to resent Illyria for that, but she did. She hated that stinging reminder of how close Spike had been to someone who wasn’t her.
Even more, she resented having to stand there in the hallway listening to Illyria. Tomorrow she’d be forced to choose, to make a decision she didn’t want to contemplate right now. Tonight, she only wanted to be with Spike.
“You are torn.”
Surprised, she searched Illyria’s face. It hadn’t sounded like an accusation, but she felt oddly defensive. “You’re not?”
Illyria’s chin raised. “No. There is nothing I can do here.”
“Maybe not, but still—”
“Before the battle, each of us was charged with a task – one suited to our individual strengths. It is the same here. I do what I must, as do you.” Illyria paused, ice-blue gaze going first to the door then to Buffy’s arm, where it lingered a moment before locking with hers. “I will not fail. Nor must you.”
Buffy’s breath caught in her throat as the significance of Illyria’s words sank in. She knew. Somehow Illyria knew. Almost before she could process that thought, she heard the familiar cadence of Xander’s footsteps fast approaching down the corridor. Illyria turned at the same time she did, and Buffy wondered if the demon welcomed the interruption as much as she did.
“Sorry to interrupt the girl talk, but Giles wants you downstairs,” he told Illyria, then backtracked as her chin rose. “What I meant to say was, Giles humbly begs the honor of your presence to help with some questions that no one other than your exalted exaltedness could possibly be able to answer.”
Illyria’s head tilted and her eyes flashed. “Do not mock me, human. My tolerance is not without end.” Then, with a last long look at Buffy, she was gone, striding down the corridor.
Buffy waited until Illyria was out of sight before turning to Xander. “Those questions – do they have anything to do with Spike or Angel?”
“Yeeeah…about that. I lied.” At her raised brow, he shrugged. “It was that or tell her to go away. In which case, she’d snap me like a toothpick or grind me under her heel till I cried like a baby. Not a pretty picture.”
Buffy snorted softly. “So what happens when she finds out you sent her on a wild Giles chase?”
He shrugged, waving the question away. “I’m not worried. If Giles rats me out, I figure I have plausible deniability on my side.”
Buffy nodded absently, her mind already inside the room with Spike. She’d been gone a lot longer than intended and now she was antsy to get back to him. The phone call from Willow, her encounters with Illyria, the conflicting emotions stirred up by news of Angel’s whereabouts and worry over Spike – all of it pulled at her patience, twisting it taut. Reaching for the doorknob, she stopped when Xander’s hand touched her arm.
He took a deep breath. “Listen, Buffy…I know we’re not officially talking about this until tomorrow, but Giles thought we should call for backup, just in case. He contacted Vi, and she’s on her way.”
She frowned. “What about Cleveland?”
“Things are quiet enough right now. If anything comes up while she’s gone, Rona’s got the junior slayers to help out. We, uh, thought about calling Kennedy, too, but that’s a little dicey, what with the breakup and all. Willow’s adjusting okay, but Kennedy…not so much.”
“Right. Bad idea. Can we talk about this later?”
Buffy entered the room, trailed by Xander. Mrs. Hudson, who’d been with the Giles family for decades, was seated in a chair, quietly knitting away. Her plump face broke into a smile as Buffy approached the bed.
“I was beginning to think you’d taken up residence in the hallway, lamb.”
Buffy smiled. “No, too drafty. Thanks for sitting with him.”
“Don’t you go thankin’ me now. I’m happy to do it. Poor lad hasn’t stirred, though I do think he’s resting a bit easier since you came.” Regarding him fondly, she clucked sympathetically under her breath. “It’s a shame, it is. Such a handsome fellow. Who would have thought I’d be carin’ so about a fierce vampire? But he’s wormed his way into my heart, he has, with that fine face of his and that poor, lost soul.”
As she rose to greet them, she beamed kindly at Buffy. “Mr. Hudson would tell you I’ve a soft spot for strays and an even softer one for lost causes. But don’t you fret. Your lad ended up here for a reason, and you’ll sort it out…you and Master Rupert. I’ve a good feeling about it.” Nodding to Xander, she gave Buffy’s arm a comforting squeeze. “I’ll just be on my way now. I’m sure he knows you’re back and is that much happier for it.” Suiting action to words, she promptly bustled out the door.
In her wake, Buffy suddenly felt drained and strangely lethargic. Worried about Spike, resentful of Illyria, uncertain about Angel’s fate and the choice she had to make – her thoughts seemed to flounder in that pit of quicksand she called a brain. Making it as far as the bed, she collapsed into the chair.
“I didn’t know.”
She blinked and looked up to find Xander watching her.
“How you felt,” he clarified, shrugging self-consciously. “I mean, I knew you cared about the guy. Never could understand why exactly, considering—” He broke off, shaking his head. “Erase that last bit, okay? It’s not what I came up here to say. The point is, I never realized until you got here how much he really meant to you. Still means.”
He knelt beside her, bringing them face-to-face. “I’m sorry we made you feel like you couldn’t tell us.” Stopping, he shook his head ruefully. “No. I’m sorry I made you feel that way. I swear I’d take it back, if I could.”
Buffy responded automatically. “Xander—”
“Don’t.” His voice was quiet. “You’re going to let me off the hook, and you shouldn’t. I was angry back when I found out, for a lot of reasons. Mostly because I wanted you to think and feel the same way I did. Scoobies good. Vampires bad. A chipped vampire who thinks he can be one of us? Not even in the realm of possibility. I was wrong, and I’m sorry for it.”
Buffy stared, searching his face. “So what changed?”
A self-deprecating smile curved his lips. “My perspective. Time has a funny way of doing that.” With his head turned toward Spike and only his eye patch visible to her, Buffy couldn’t read his expression. “As long as I’m being honest…and please, god, somebody kill me before I say this…he really wasn’t that bad. If you don’t count the frequently-trying-to-kill-us part, the endless snide remarks about my manhood, the irritating smirk, and that whole…thing…at the Magic Box, that is. But, you know…after the soul…it was better.”
Buffy’s gaze dropped to her hands, carefully folded in her lap. “It was better before, too. It took me a long time to understand, but he was trying, Xander, he really was. None of us would see it. Instead of encouraging him, we just made it harder to keep going in the right direction.”
Suddenly Xander was facing her again. “Hey…back up there, bucko. Let’s not get carried away. I may be running along behind the Spike bandwagon, now, but you’re not going to convince me that if only we’d welcomed him into the fold with open arms, all those pesky ‘evil’ issues would’ve vanished into thin air. You can tame a tiger, Buffy, but at heart, he’s still a tiger. At least with the soul, Spike is more like a…cranky pussycat. A really dangerous cranky pussycat, but one that can be domesticated.
“And, yeah, I’ll grant you he was trying, and, in hindsight, we could have made it easier for him than we did. But, hey,” he countered, offering a lopsided smile, “if being good were easy, everyone would do it.”
Buffy glared. “Xander, I’m not stupid. I know it wouldn’t have solved everything. I’m just…we could have tried, okay? And we didn’t. We were awful to him, not because of what he did or anything he used to do, but because of what he was.” She bit her lip. “And because he stayed there and took it.”
Suddenly earnest, she caught his gaze with hers. “Why did we do those things?”
Xander’s face assumed a help-me expression. “Things in general, or particular things?”
“Stupid things. Hurtful things. Things that make you lie awake at night wishing you could take it all back, make it like it never happened.”
“Ah. Those things.” He shrugged, smiling sadly. “Why does anyone? For the same reason we keep doing them, I guess…because there never seems like another way. By the time we figure out there is, it’s too late. We’ve lost the chance and, for most of us, there’s no getting it back.” A soft huff of laughter escaped, tinged with a trace of bitterness. “You’d think we’d learn.”
Hesitating, he added so softly she could barely hear, “I hurt her, Buffy. I hurt her so bad. She never really got over it.”
The pain in his voice stunned her. “Xander…”
“I miss her, you know? Every day. I thought it would stop. Thought I could fill up that empty space with other things, other people. Didn’t work. It’s still there – part of me. Doesn’t hurt as much anymore, and it’s not like it’s all the time. But it’s there, and I wouldn’t want it gone because it would mean losing her all over again.”
Buffy felt her eyes fill with tears. What could she say – that she knew how he felt? That she had the same kind of regrets he did? It was pretty self-evident and the whole point of his confession to her. Speaking it aloud wouldn’t change anything for either of them; it would only serve to trivialize his pain. Just as any words of comfort or contradiction would make her a bigger hypocrite than she already was. All she could do was gaze wordlessly back at him.
As if he recognized her dilemma, Xander offered another sad smile, his hand resting briefly on her shoulder before he rose. At the doorway he paused. “I’ll never forget her, and I’ll sure as hell never stop loving her. I just wish…that she’d known.”
He stared at the floor, pent-up breath escaping in a deep, shuddering sigh. Then his gaze rose and locked with hers. “I’d give anything to tell her that to her face. Even if…” He trailed off, glancing at Spike. “Even if she couldn’t hear me.”
The door closed quietly behind him.
------------------------------
TBC in Part 6
-------------------------------
CHAPTER SIX
An hour later, Buffy lay beside Spike, limbs entwined in a tantalizing union of
fire and ice. It had always surprised her how well their bodies fit together,
her form filling an invisible niche carved only for her. As if they’d been made
for each other on the most intimate of levels.
Spike had said as much once, but the words he had used held no pretense at
romance, rumbling in her ear with a carnal earthiness bordering on the obscene.
They were dark and sweet and unbearably dirty, and at his last whispered
utterance, she’d come. Nails digging into his back, helpless and keening, so
hard she’d almost passed out. Time had stilled, lurched forward, and resumed,
great gasping shudders leaving her weak and pliant in his arms.
The soft satisfaction in his gaze had ignited her rage faster than warm winds
whipping up a California wildfire – white-hot fury flaring into a scathing glare
and a swift shove that sent him tumbling backwards onto the stone-cold floor of
the crypt’s lower level. Before he could untangle himself from the cocoon of
sheets pinning his legs, Buffy had scrambled from the bed, scooped up her
clothes, and disappeared through the trap door above. Her last sight of him –
sprawled on the floor, bewildered, angry, and painfully resigned – was etched
bright and harsh in her memory.
He’d never said those words again.
Eyes squeezed shut, brow crinkled, she tightened her grip on his shoulder,
nuzzling his neck as she burrowed her way deeper into the one-sided embrace. So
much hurt, so many regrets, and only a waning hope of ever making it right.
A grim-faced Giles had admitted earlier in the day that he was no closer to
finding the cause of Spike’s condition than when he’d started. The few likely
leads he’d unearthed had all hit a dead end, and though he’d promised to keep
trying, his sympathetic gaze had spoken volumes, leaving Buffy with nothing to
cling to but her own belief that he’d been poisoned during the battle.
Only that, too, seemed to be going nowhere. It was impossible to cure Spike all
at once, as she had with Angel, without being drained near the point of death.
Instead, she had hoped to do it in stages, letting her blood replenish itself
between feedings and stubbornly ignoring the little voice urging her to call on
the other slayers for help. Each day she fed him, and each day he improved.
Bruises faded, cuts and abrasions healed, but her undead sleeping beauty refused
to awaken.
Now, it seemed that her blind determination to be the one to save him could cost
them both dearly.
Leaning in on one elbow, she studied his face, taking in everything from the
scarred brow and angled sweep of his cheekbones to the full, lush curve of his
mouth. She’d always thought him beautiful, reluctantly at first, even angrily.
The very idea that evil could wear such a striking face had seemed outrageously
perverse. Later, when she’d discovered just how striking the rest of him was,
the true irony of it hadn’t been lost on her.
Over their turbulent months together, her attraction to Spike had grown, and
with it, the conviction that she was…broken. That only something equally dark
and perverted could feel the primal stirrings his mere proximity awakened in
her. That only someone hopelessly depraved would willingly seek out his company.
She’d hated him for making her want him. Hated herself more for giving in.
And then the true horror hit. She’d found herself loving him in an almost
helpless, compulsive way, as if his raw hunger and unremitting devotion demanded
it. It was something she couldn’t accept, something she had to hide -- from
herself, her friends, and most of all him. To feel that way about someone who
had killed with impunity, who had slaughtered innocents and laughed as he’d done
it, had seemed the ultimate betrayal of her duty, her birthright, and everything
she believed.
She’d loved Angel before she’d ever known that side of him. Spike, she’d known
and loved anyway. Foreknowledge made it infinitely worse.
The bitch of it was that she still felt that way. Just days ago, after stumbling
across damning evidence connecting Paulo to some less-than-benign activities,
she hadn’t hesitated. Italian authorities, human and otherwise, might have been
willing to look the other way, but she couldn’t. The relationship had ended, and
so had The Immortal’s latest sojourn in Rome. It hadn’t been easy for her, but
it had been simple.
With anyone but Spike.
“There should have been some kind of warning, you know?” She smiled crookedly,
fingertips skimming lightly across his forehead. “The first time we saw each
other. Or…scratch that. The first time I
saw you -- you being all stalker vamp
and all.” Head tilting to one side, she studied his face. “Just seems like there
should have been something. A lightning bolt from the blue, big movie
soundtrack, message from the Surgeon General…anything to clue us in on the mega
drama to come. But that would have been too easy, right? And nothing with either
one of us has ever been easy.”
She rested her head on his shoulder, snuggling closer. “We are
so not your typical Hollywood love
story. Girl meets boy, girl finds out boy is an evil, bloodsucking fiend whose
big turn-on is to kill her and her kind, girl kicks his ass and generally makes
his life hell but still falls for him anyway. Only, by the time she realizes it,
it’s too late.”
She frowned. “Actually…I think we are
your typical Hollywood love story.”
Falling silent a moment, she pondered the possibilities, then sighed. “Would it
have made any difference if we’d known…or would things have happened pretty much
the same? Like maybe we were fated or something. Only…as long as we’re being
honest here? I think a part of me did know, or should have known. I could tell
you were different right from the start. Felt it, even before I realized what
you were. It was the first thing that popped into my head when you stepped out
of the shadows.”
She bit her lip. “Well…okay…it was more like, ‘Oooh,
pretty.’ Followed by ‘Sooo
hot,’ ‘Oh my god, what a sexy British accent,’ and ‘Hello! Fashion
intervention!’ I’m pretty sure ‘Uh-oh, trouble’ was mixed in there, too, but
that only registered after you threatened to kill me.”
Buffy glanced up, searching for some flicker of awareness as she sent her hand
on a leisurely journey down his torso. It finally came to rest splayed across
his taut belly. “C’mon, Spike,” she wheedled. “Don’t you want to wake up and
gloat? Here I am, confessing I had the hots for you from day one, and you can’t
even manage a little smirk? That’s beyond wrong on so many levels.”
Falling silent again, she held her breath, against all reason letting herself
hope, willing to believe for one fraction of an instant that he might actually
respond. That his eyelids might flutter, his head turn, and his eyes open to
find her lying there beside him. That he might smile and gather her close, and
she would know everything between them was finally okay.
But he lay there, unresponsive and stubbornly out of reach. Her eyes closed
tight against a rush of bitter disappointment.
“God, you’re such a pain in the ass. But you’re
my pain in the ass, and I’m not letting you go. Do you hear me?” she
whispered fiercely. “Not. Letting. Go. You think you’re the only stubborn one in
this relationship? You have no idea.”
And that was the crux of it all, wasn’t it? He had no idea. He’d gone to his
death, or so she’d thought, certain that nothing more than pity had moved her to
say the words. She couldn’t stand knowing he’d believed that, couldn’t bear that
she’d done nothing to convince him otherwise.
How many times had he professed his love for her, and how many times had she
thrown it back in his face? Even as she’d finally acknowledged his feelings,
right before everything had gone to hell, she’d done it with unconscious cruelty
and a condescending compassion that had cut him to the quick. She hadn’t meant
to be callous, hadn’t even realized it until much later, but the truth weighed
heavily on her now.
So many things to regret – the dawning hope in his eyes when she’d come to him
the night of Riley’s return; the anguish in his voice afterward as she’d turned
away. And later still, the silent accusation of his gaze when she’d pretended to
her friends that their cozy chat in the cemetery had been nothing more than a
cold interrogation.
An ugly part of her had relished that power to wound him, to make him pay for
his presumption and suffer for her pain. Words had been her weapons, and she’d
wielded them gladly, never once stopping to wonder if she should.
More scenes, bitter scenes played out in her head, shame bubbling up in her
throat like thick bile. Words and images careened through her mind, turning
cartwheels with raw abandon, crashing into unspoken regrets and lost
opportunities, tangling together until the muddled mess in her head at last
coalesced into a single coherent thought, and without even meaning to, she cried
it aloud.
“I’m sorry! God, I’m sorry!”
And just like that the damn broke, releasing a torrent of muffled words that
tumbled against his throat.
“Is that where it starts? It’s stupid, and…I don’t know. It doesn’t seem like
enough. There are things I have to say, but I can’t remember. I practiced them
over and over in my head, those first weeks you were gone – everything I should
have said, and it still wasn’t right. Good old Buffy is all about the quippage,
but when it’s something important, something that really matters…”
One balled fist gave a feeble, frustrated thump to his chest. “You’re the one
with the words…me, not so much. Unless it was to hurt you, and then it was easy.
Too easy. I don’t want to hurt you anymore, Spike…ever. And if you’d just come
back, I could show you…prove it to you. I could make you understand. All you
have to do is come back.”
Something damp touched her cheek, but she brushed it away.
“C’mon, Spike. You know I’m going to win this. I always do. I want you. Here.
With me. Safe and well. So you might as well save yourself the trouble and wake
up now. And…if things have changed…if you don’t feel the way you did
before…that’s okay. I’ll deal. Just as long as I know you’re all right. But you
can’t leave like this. Not without knowing. Not until you really believe. Even
if you don’t want to be with me anymore, you
have to know that you were loved. You deserve that.”
Voice breaking, she buried her face deeper in the crook of his neck. It scared
her, how out-of-control she felt, how very much she wanted this. For so long,
she’d kept the deepest part of her locked away, built walls to hold out the
hurt, buried feelings to deny the pain. It had worked so well, she’d convinced
herself she couldn’t love anymore, but she’d been so wrong.
She loved. Oh, how she loved.
“I don’t even understand why. Why you
loved me so much. How you could love me at all. It’s not like I gave you any
reason. Stupid vampire. I wouldn’t have loved me. I wouldn’t have been able to
stand me. And, okay, sometimes you deserved what happened to you, but most of
the time…with us…you really didn’t.”
More wetness now, dripping silently off her chin.
“I don’t know how to make it right, but I want to so much. I hate the way I
treated you. I hate that I didn’t understand what you felt…that I didn’t
want to understand. I hate that I hurt
you and didn’t care, and that I can’t go back and do things differently. But
most of all…more than any of those other things…I hate that I made you believe I
could never love you the same way you loved me.”
She felt lost and so far from slayer-like that she might as well hang up her
stake – as vulnerable and exposed as she’d ever been.
“Spike, look…you want me to beg? I’ll beg, okay? I’ll do anything it takes. Just
please, please come back.”
No flutter of lashes, no barely detectable moan -- only the relentless in and
out of useless breath as he mocked her with his absence.
She exploded. A white-hot anger she hadn’t even felt boiled up so fast and hard
her trembling body could barely contain it. Bolting upright, she grabbed his
head, holding it between her palms as she stared into his face. “Damn it, Spike!
You’re not a quitter! You don’t give up…you
never give up!”
And there it was at last – a slight flaring of the nostrils, a tiny parting of
the lips. She would have missed it had she not been so close. Her breath caught,
trapped in her throat. She was afraid to move, afraid to speak, afraid she might
have imagined it.
Then his head moved in restless delirium as the burning heat of his skin sent
her hopes plummeting. The fever had returned.
It was a bitter blow. Her anger resurged, and with it came a steely desperation
that sent her mouth crashing down on his. She pushed him back into the pillows,
hands roaming his body, touching, caressing, possessing as much of him as she
could. She peppered his face with butterfly kisses, murmuring words that made no
sense. Her mouth slid lower, tongue tasting the sweet hollow of his throat,
tracing along the taut muscles and strong curve of his neck.
Her hand closed around him, cupping and stroking, making him hard. Always so
hard…for her. Only her.
She shifted again, lips and tongue seeking out his nipple, mimicking the actions
of her hand as it teased and fondled him with sensuous deliberation. Though
still unconscious, his body responded as it had each previous time, muscles
tensing, chest heaving, the ragged cadence of his breathing unnaturally loud in
the silent room.
Just as she started to pull back and place her wrist against his lips, she heard
a sound that froze her in place. Her name – soft and barely recognizable, but
definitely her name. Hardly daring to hope this time, she looked up…and almost
sobbed with relief.
He stared back at her through heavy-lidded eyes, eyebrows drawn together,
nostrils flaring, panting hard. He looked confused, even dazed, but as her hand
left him, he uttered a low groan of protest, hips jerking in a desperate bid for
attention.
She laughed, eyes brimming with joyous tears, as she slipped her hand into his.
Leaning over, she dropped a soft kiss onto his hard abdomen…
And moved lower.
-------------------------
TBC in Part 6
-------------------------------
CHAPTER SEVEN
He was dreaming again.
Invisible hands roamed his body, touching, caressing, pressing into him and
around him. Nowhere and everywhere, never enough and too much. Leaving him
adrift. Setting him on fire.
Warm breath flowed across his cheek, essence of peppermint and mocha tickling
his eyelashes, grazing his brow. Half-formed words faded in and out, meaning
lost in a haze of sensation.
His head arched back, acquiescing to the moist tongue lapping insistently at his
neck. Licking, licking softly and steadily in the tender hollow of his throat,
curling against his skin, tracing patterns along tendons stretched taut beneath
the welcome assault. Soft nibbles and sharp nips joined the fray, sending tiny
eruptions of pleasure racing along nerve endings. Muscles clenched, breath
caught.
Fingers drifted in a languid dance down his abdomen, stoking the fire burning
fierce and hot in his belly. A hoarse shout burst from his throat as they closed
around him, weaving a spell of golden-honey warmth that left him wild and
rampant with need. Ruthless in their devotion, they teased and soothed, tickled
and stroked, worshipped and adored, always unhampered by clothing that
invariably dissolved into the hazy edges of these dream encounters. His voice
broke as he whispered her name.
Velvet heat descended, driving him upward, grunting and gasping, blindly seeking
more. He closed his eyes to the shifting mists and dreamt of a blonde head
poised above him. Hands rose, fisting in silken air, as he rode the swell higher
and harder, breaking and surging, until at last he shattered and came apart,
like flotsam caught on the crest of a wave and jetsam forever lost to the shore.
His head rolled to one side as he lay prostrate on the ground, chest heaving,
weak with repletion, but still hard and aching. Despair rose in his throat, a
sense of loss so keen he thought he might choke on it. Any moment, he would
wake, and the dream would fade. No memory to warm him, nothing to hold on to –
all alone with only a hollow space inside. Trapped in an endless void of
nothingness.
A feather-soft caress grazed his hip.
He froze, too afraid to hope that it would come again. When it did, he nearly
exploded with relief. Muscles tensed, straining in anticipation as teasing
strokes segued into a steady stream of cascading touches, propelling him to
great shuddering gasps that left him teetering on the brink. Head arched back,
lips moaning her name, he waited for the plunge…
That never came.
Quivering and bereft, he breathed a low, agonized groan, protesting the abrupt
abandonment. His eyes flew open, searching wildly for his phantom lover, then
widened as the air in front of him rippled, parted, and reformed. Nebulous
shadows coalesced into firm flesh that settled over him, taking him in, covering
his nude body with hers.
Bending, she brushed against his chest, arching and mewling, hips rising and
falling in mindless rhythm. His arms locked around her, pulling her closer, skin
against skin, as they flowed together like cool cream and warm molasses. Adoring
hands swept down the length of her back, following the sweet curve of her ass,
squeezing and kneading, then gliding lower still.
Mouth covering hers, he opened wide to swallow a welcoming moan as his fingers
slid home. At the same time, his tongue plunged between her lips to taste the
velvety depths with a frenzied need that screamed of desperation.
Another shift, and he was above her – forehead to forehead, eyes fixed on hers
with single-minded intensity. He thrust harder and faster as her nails dug into
his biceps and she rose to meet him with an unleashed fervor that matched his
own.
At some point, a bed had materialized beneath them, a fact that registered only
now in a distant part of his brain. A familiar hunger began to build as her head
pressed back into nonexistent pillows, baring her throat to him, egging him on
with soft cries and the haunting beat of her pulse. In the space of a breath, he
felt the change take him over, smooth forehead gliding into ridged brow. Loosing
a long, low growl, he tried to turn away, but soft hands caught and framed his
face, denying him escape.
Her frenzied movements slowed and stilled as he waited for the inevitable,
knowing with near-fatalistic certainty that not even this dream Buffy would
accept that part of him. But in the depths of passion-darkened eyes, a
smoldering spark ignited, and with a quick lunge her mouth crashed into his.
Heedless of his razor-sharp fangs, she devoured him – deep, endless kisses with
warm trickles of slayer ambrosia teasing at his tongue.
When she finally came up for air, he found his gaze riveted to her mouth and the
tiny beads of blood glistening on her lower lip. With another low growl, he
leaned in, claiming the droplets in one possessive sweep of his tongue. As he
pulled back, she looked at him with heavy-lidded eyes, hand lifting to trace the
curve of his mouth.
“Mine,” she whispered.
He froze in mid-thrust, hand halfway up her thigh. Then the word erupted in his
mind like molten lava shooting into the sky, and with a strangled cry, his mouth
descended on hers in a feverish kiss that surpassed all sense of time and place.
Clarity spiraled away in a blur of ardent gasps, desperate kisses, and savage
movement. When he at last came to himself again, he was buried to the hilt, her
legs locked around him, his fangs penetrating her neck. With each greedy pull of
his lips, his mouth filled with the hot, sweet tang of slayer’s blood, while
beneath him, she writhed and panted, hands tangling in his hair, holding him
firmly in place.
He shifted slightly and her grip tightened. Fingers twisted and pulled, urging
him on. Ever obedient, he bit down harder even as the speed and force of his
thrusts increased.
She rewarded him with an arched back and a high keen, heels beating a wild
tattoo against his backside as he drove them ever closer to the brink. She met
him thrust for thrust, hips undulating, seemingly unfazed by the relentless way
he went about possessing her.
Just when he felt he would surely dust from the sweet agony of it all, a final
explosive thrust sent them rocketing over the edge. Her frantic cries of release
rang in his ears as his own pleasure crested, the sheer intensity of it crashing
over him in great shuddering waves. Unable to contain it, he tore his fangs from
her neck and threw back his head, a loud roar of fulfillment erupting from
somewhere deep in his chest.
He rode the wave down, chest heaving, muscles trembling, her hands falling away
from his shoulders as she relaxed beneath him like butter melting in a pan.
Lowering his head, he saw her gazing at him with a heartrending tenderness he’d
never found in those hazel depths. It spoke to a part of him he’d tried hard to
bury along with the hellmouth.
She blinked slowly, as if awakening from a deep sleep, then sighed and stirred.
Questing fingers reached up to touch first his mouth, then the still-tender mark
he’d left on her neck. She smiled, eyes brimming with unshed tears.
“I knew you’d come back.”
Her arms reached up, twining around him as she pulled his head down, guiding him
back to the golden curve of her neck. He went willingly, aware on some level
that she would soon be gone, dissolved into the ether, and that he would
inevitably wake to the bleak loneliness of his own personal hell. He wouldn’t
question; he would only feel.
Fangs sinking into her tender flesh, he marked her for a second time, his eyes
closing as he began to drink. But with each heady pull at her neck, something
niggled at the edges of his mind, until at last it cut through the gossamer haze
enveloping him.
He jerked, as if a vial of holy water had been splashed in his face, and pulled
free, his vampire visage vanishing beneath a crush of horrified confusion. The
next instant, he was across the room, back pressed against the door, his chest
heaving in full-bloom panic.
Buffy sat up, seemingly heedless as the sheet slipped down around her waist, and
gazed back at him, the contented glow in her eyes fading to uncertainty. Her
hand rose, halfway reaching out to him.
“Spike?”
He fled out the door, his name echoing behind him.
-------------------------
TBC in Part 8