Chapter 29:

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"You shouldn't be up." Her voice is full of matronly chiding as she enters the room to find him sitting on the edge of the bed, awkwardly pulling on one of the clean black t-shirts that had miraculously appeared at his bedside.

He grunts in acknowledgement of her worry but continues dressing, reaching over for the new black socks that he knows he didn't buy and trying to ignore the still painful protests of his body.

"Ah-ah." She snatches the socks from his hands and fixes him with one of her most endearingly annoyed expressions. "No socks for you, mister," she tells him with concerned authority. "You are not going anywhere."

He grabs for the socks but she snatches them away, and he finds himself groaning in pain as broken ribs and shredded flesh cry out in angry protests at the sudden movement. "Luv," he rasps, his voice still raw and malformed through his broken throat. "Buffy, please."

Her face softens at the sound of his obvious pain and her little hands find their way on to his shoulders. They are warm and caring through the thin cotton, gently encouraging him to lie back down, and he finds himself almost submitting to her gentle insistence.

"No, pet." He pushes back despite the pain it causes, and forces himself to his feet. "I gotta get moving."

"Moving? You're moving? Where are you moving? Why?" Oh, she's lovely when she's confused, with her shiny pouting lips and perplexed frown.

His lips quirk in affection and he can't help but reach out to brush the peaches and cream skin of her cheek. "I gotta get a shift on. She's got enough of a bloody start on me as it is. Can't be lounging around here." He's too distracted looking around for his boots to notice the tears that have sprung up in her eyes. Only when she makes a strange little gasping sound does he notice that she is staring at him with big wet eyes.

"You're leaving?" He isn't used to hearing her voice so very small and unsure; it takes him by surprise and he finds himself at a loss as to how to react.

"I gotta," he tells her when finally he manages to speak. "She's out there, she's alone and she's a mess and we've seen what she's capable of. Don't think it's a great idea just to let her wander the streets, do you?"

Slayer mode. It's quite a sight to behold and he doubts he'll ever truly get used to it. Doubts he'll ever stop being surprised by the way she can go from frightened girl to warrior in charge in the blink of an eye. "You're right," she tells him firmly. "I'll get Willow to do a location spell, and then we can head out with at least some idea of where to start looking." She pauses. "We'll call Faith once we know where we're going and get her to send the nearest backup team."

"Buffy." It's little more than a croak but it stops her in full stream and she looks at him expectantly. "You're not coming with me. You can't."

Her eyes widen and her patented indignation flares brightly. "Oh, I think I can." She shakes her head angrily. "Because there is no way in hell I'm letting you just walk out of here on your own in that condition."

His own irritation rises to meet hers and he closes his eyes and grits his teeth for a second. "Not your call, pet." But she'll need more than that. She's a stubborn bint and she'll need a reason; fortunately, he has several. "Besides, not like you can just take off. It might take months to find her. If she doesn't wanna be found, it could take years."

"It doesn't matter." She seems adamant in her decision. "I'm coming with you."

"Didn't you hear me, you stupid bint?" She's being ridiculous, and if he has to piss her off to make her see sense then that's fine. Not like he hasn't done it before. "It could take years. You just gonna up and leave 'Bit and the Scoobs? You gonna leave your snuggle bunny behind? Because there is no sodding way in hell I'm going anywhere with the poof."

"I heard you." She has that look in her eye, a look Red would probably call 'resolved face' or something equally idiotic. "But I don't care, I'm still coming. Besides, I'm not with Angel anymore."

That little revelation hits him just as he's about to speak, and he closes his mouth with a surprised snap. Not with Angel? What the hell is she talking about? The two of them are bloody soul mates and all that bollocks. He gave up his own soul so the two of them could be together, so there is no buggering way they aren't together now. "What?"

"Angel and I are finished," she states matter-of-factly. "So there's no reason why I can't help you."

He's still stuck on the fact that she and Angel have broken up. The conversation has its own momentum and he's carried along with it. "Yes there is. You saw how she reacted to you. She's already out of her bloody gourd and the sight of a slayer ain't exactly conducive to calmness in vampires. So, no, you can't bloody well come and why the hell are you and Angel finished?"

Suddenly all the anger is gone from the room, drained out in a sudden swirl and replaced by that question hanging expectant in the air as it waits for whatever answer it might bring. She swallows hard and the golden skin of her throat catches his eye for a moment. She's nervous—hell, scratch that, she's scared. Whatever has happened between her and Angel, she's afraid to tell him and that just doesn't make any sense.

"We're finished because…" She breaks off and her eyes fix on her hands, which play nervously with the hem of her sweet cotton flowered blouse. Then she draws in breath and he can see her gathering her courage. "We're finished because I told him…" Another pause, but this time she stamps down on the fear so hard he can virtually see her do it. "I told him I'm in love with someone else."

……………………………………………..

So there it is, the revelation of the century. Her heart is pounding in her chest like a drummer boy on speed and she can barely hear anything over the rushing in her ears.

For a moment he wears a mask of confusion, squinting at her uncomprehendingly and she finds herself at once mentally willing him to catch up and wishing she hadn't opened her big stupid mouth. Any moment now he'll realise what she's trying to say and then she'll know one way or another if he still loves her.

But he has a gift for perception equalled only by his gift for misinterpretation. She sees his mistake in every line of his body: in the stiffening of his back, the expressionless mask of indifference brought down just a moment too late to cover the hurt on his face, the overly-casual way in which he casts his eyes away from hers on the pretence of searching the bedside table for his cigarettes.

"Well," he drawls as best he can through his broken larynx, hurt and disdain resonating in his voice. "All the more reason to stay put. Get some action with your new honey." He leers unpleasantly at her and she almost rolls her eyes at his predictability. "So, who's the unlucky chap? Anyone I know?"

And this is exactly one of those moments she had thought about while she broke Angel's heart. Because right now, with his infuriating century-old inferiority complex coming out to play, she finds herself wondering if he was put on the planet specifically to be a pain in her ass. Why the hell does she always end up on the receiving end of his insecure defensive crap? Oh, that's right: because she loves him. Because even now when she'd cheerfully kick his scrawny ass into the middle of next week, she loves him. Tenderness swells in her breast at his ill-handled vulnerability, and she finds herself smiling softly through her irritation.

She takes a step towards him and he leans back to watch her with guarded curiosity. "Silly vampire," she murmurs softly as she reaches out a hand to trace the bruises line of his jaw. "It's you. Who else could it be?"

Awe. Not a word she often has call to use but it's the only word that could be used to describe his expression, or maybe "wonder" would be better. She's not sure. Giles or Willow would probably know but she's never been big with the dictionary fun. All she knows is that his eyes are telling her all she needs to know, that yes he still loves her and yes her admission has touched him deep within his heart. He still loves her, and she could cry with relief.

"Buffy?" Awed. Yes, she's definitely going to go with awed; she can hear it in the tremble of his voice. She smiles through tears she hadn't realised she was shedding and nods her confirmation. She loves him.

Then, wrong, his face contorts with angry pain and he spins away from her just as his fingers had threatened to delve into her hair. He lets out a growl and throws his hands in the air in exasperated rage. "God, Buffy, you unbelievable bitch."

"What?" This was not the reaction she had been expecting. She had steeled herself for the possibility that he no longer loved her, had pictured with fear in her heart his soft regretful expression as he shook his head and told her he was so sorry but she just wasn't the one anymore. She was not prepared for this eruption of disbelieving anger.

"You can't—you bloody well can't do this to me now." He seems almost panicked by her confession, frustrated and scared.

"I don't understand." Her voice is so small she's surprised he can even hear her.

"You can't offer me everything I ever wanted—not when you know I can't take it. You can't do that, Buffy. It's just too bloody cruel." And now his face mirrors her own pain and she realises that, yes, she does have the worst timing in the world and no, of course he can't stay, and how stupid was she to hope that he could.

"I'm sorry." She bites down on her lip in a futile attempt to stop the flow of tears that she knows are turning her face wet and blotchy.

"She's my responsibility, Buffy. My girl, my child, my bloody fault that she's the way she is." He shakes his head and looks at her with resigned, tear-filled eyes. "Thought you of all bloody people would get it. It's a question of duty."

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Chapter 30:

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She knows that she was crying when his lips met hers, that her tears turned the kiss salty and bitter. She was crying too when he'd laid her down with heartbreaking care on his narrow hospital bed and trailed reverent kisses over her throat.

She hadn't stopped crying, couldn't stem the tears even as she'd parted her legs in invitation and held his eyes with hers as he'd entered her. He'd hushed her and tried to kiss away the relentless flow of tears but she hadn't been able to stop, all she'd been able to do was smile sadly at him and whisper that she loved him.

She'd had a right to cry; her heart was breaking, after all. Not the clean, painful break that should accompany their parting, but an aching, bittersweet agony as it crumbled in his oh-so-gentle hands. He'd told her he had to go and she'd know it was the truth. He'd told her there was no place for her at his side when he left, and even as she understood his reasons, it had felt so much like rejection that she'd turned away from him to catch her pain in her open hands as she'd slumped down on the bed.

He'd moved to go then, her own tears mirrored in his azure eyes, and she hadn't looked up until his voice, hoarse from damage and tears, had broken through her dejection. "Take care, luv," he'd whispered, and somehow it had been far more than any eloquent declaration of love or regret.

She'd caught him at the door, her hands grasping his arm, eyes wide and pleading. "Stay," she'd begged, and his eyes had burned with sorrow even as he shook his head to deny her. "No. Tonight," she'd explained, guiding him unresisting back into the room. "Just stay tonight."

He'd acquiesced, of course, had pulled her to him and peppered kisses on the salty wetness of her face as she'd begun her whispered litany of "I love you"s.

"God, Buffy," he'd murmured against her skin. "Still love you so bloody much." His words had cemented certainty to the intuitive knowledge, and she wasn't sure if it had made it better or a thousand times worse.

He'd kissed her with a sort of desperate tenderness. He'd studied her face as he moved above her, and she'd known he was committing every detail to memory, marking each new laughter line and blemish onto his mental photograph of her. It was then that she had known he wasn't planning on coming back, and she'd cried a little harder and dug her nails into his arms until she'd created little crescent moons of red that she'd wished more than anything would leave scars on his flawless skin.

She'd sobbed as she came, calling out his name just as he'd grunted hers into her neck, and he'd rocked her until the tears had turned sluggish and she'd finally fallen asleep cradled against his chest.

It had been dark when she'd woken and instinct had told her that dawn was still many hours away. She hadn't said anything, had just watched him with silent resentment as he'd slipped on his duster in the low light seeping in under the door. He hadn't kissed her goodbye, and for that she was grateful. It would have been too much and she hadn't wanted to cry again. He'd just nodded and forced a grimace of a smile she couldn't match and then he'd been gone, and for all her good intentions, she had cried again.

That's how Dawn had found her, huddled against the iron headboard with her knees drawn up to her chest and fat silent tears rolling unimpeded down her blotchy face. Mercifully, her sister hadn't asked her anything, had just seemed to understand without the need for explanation and she had been proud of her little Dawnie, all grown up and full of compassion.

"You okay?" Dawn asks gently, and she nods against her baby sister's chest, snuggling deeper into the warm nest of sympathy she finds there.

It's nice. It's nice to just let Dawn take care of her. They both took Comfort 101 at the Joyce Summers School of Mothering, but she thinks it's Dawn who will graduate with honours. "Ready for some cocoa?" Dawn asks, rubbing her back with a little vigorous burst.

She pulls back with a sniffle and wipes her runny nose along her sleeve, ignoring Dawn's appalled, "Gross, Buffy!"

"Hot chocolate," she demands with a tiny wavering smile. "Now, please."

……………………………….

He has no idea where he's going. She could have gone anywhere; she has a two-day start and is infinitely quicker and stronger than he is. And he desperately wants to turn back around crawl back into bed with Buffy and never get up again.

It's all her fault anyway. Her fault he grew this bloody conscience in the first place, without which he could cut Carlotta loose and leave her to whatever fate has in store for her. But no, his own personal inner Buffy Summers tells him that's wrong, that the only right thing to do is turn his back on all her elysian promises and do what little he can for his poor and tortured daughter. Looks like her martyr complex is bloody contagious.

She loves him. The thought intrudes on him for the millionth time since he left her. Buffy Summers loves him. He still can't quiet believe it, even though he saw it bright and clear in the numb anger of her devastated eyes as he left her. He left her. He's got to be the biggest bloody wanker on the planet. He left Buffy.

The urge to get back on his newly-acquired motorbike and race back to her is almost irresistible. They could find Lotta together just like she said. Yeah, that's right. He could take her away from all the people who matter to her on a mission that would probably get her ripped to shreds by his other girlfriend. "Brilliant. Great plan, Spike." Several heads turn as he berates himself aloud but he doesn't give a shit. "Why don't you do that? Git!"

"What the hell are you looking at?" The menace in his sudden growl is enough to make the little demon mumble an apology and turn its eyes to its drink.

"Want some information," he tells the barman, a scarred human with cold, murderous eyes and flat, shovel-like hands. "A girl—vampire—real strong, probably scared, bit crazy. You heard anything?"

The flinty eyes study him with hard appraisal for a moment; then the man speaks in a voice surprisingly soft for such a dangerous looking man. "I heard." With a subtle tilt of his head he draws them to the quiet end of the bar and leans forward so that they can talk in whispers.

"Heard about a crazy Spanish chick got cornered by a bunch of Flavroks looking for a bit of fun." He knows Flavrok fun and the growl that escapes him stops the barman for a second. "Don't stress, man," he continues, a sudden flash of amusement in his eyes. "They didn't get their fun and they lost more than their wedding tackle for their trouble. Word is they couldn't tell which bits were which when they found them."

It's a relief, but he knew she could defend herself. It's what she might do when she gets hungry that has him worried. "Any word on victims? She been hunting?"

"Not that I've heard, man. And I hear everything so if she is she's keeping it on the down low." That must mean she's not hunting. She's nowhere near sane enough to be a subtle hunter. There's hope for her then. Hope that she's not utterly lost, that part of her remains.

"Word is she skipped town last night headed west. Don't know if it's true."

"Cheers, mate." The crumpled bills hit the counter as he rises and he's gone too quickly to hear the muttered, "Good luck," the barman throws after him.

……………………………………..

She had hoped she would never see her sister this way again. Why is it, she asks herself for the thousandth time, that when things fall apart they fall apart so damned hard?

And Buffy is not the only one hurting. Directly or indirectly, they have all been affected by Spike's fleeting return into their lives.

Angel should leave. There is nothing for him here and yet he stays and clings to a love whose time has passed. Stays and tries to convince Buffy in a multitude of ways, from quiet support to demands and tearful pleading, that with Spike gone, her place—the only place she can belong—is with him. He won't succeed. She suspects he knows that much, and yet he tortures himself and Buffy by trying.

Willow and Kennedy, too, have been affected, and Buffy's granite-hard resentment does nothing to help the witch's already heavy conscience. They are leaving tomorrow, heading early towards the Hellmouth, travelling north to continue a fight neither of them would dream of abandoning.

She and Giles suffer by virtue of Buffy's pain. Giles is so concerned and gentle, and yet always, she suspects, fighting the relief that Spike is gone. His surrogate daughter's unsuitable suitor has left, and despite the fact that he feels her pain like his own and gives her nothing but sympathy, a part of him is glad.

Poor Buffy. So often those two sorrow-ridden words flow unwelcome through her mind. So sad, so angry. She wonders whether, if Spike had not stayed with her that last night, if he had just left to find his broken child, Buffy would have been okay. Perhaps she could have coped better if she had believed his love for her was dead.

She watches Buffy snap angrily at Angel, her voice harsh and resentful as if in that moment she actually hates him. Maybe she hates him for his lies, maybe for her own bad choice, or maybe she hates him for just not being Spike. No matter, it's gone as quickly as it comes and she is exhausted and regretful. "Sorry, Angel," she mumbles as she turns away.

A day or so ago she would have followed her sister, offered whatever comfort she could, but today she can't muster the strength. Can't face her sisters angry self pity or unpredictable moods. "God, Spike," she thinks, with less bitterness than might be expected. "You really screwed things up this time."

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Chapter 31:

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There is, she has come to understand, contentment to be found in almost any situation of life. She has learned in the two years since he left her that contentment is not a set of circumstances, a job, a home, a lover. No, contentment is a state of mind, an attitude of self.

It was a lesson hard learned in the first year after he left, a hard and dolorous year of impotent anger and numbing sorrow. A year of cracked porcelain smiles and unprovoked anger, of distancing herself from the very people she should have been drawing near.

She had been, as Giles told her when finally her behaviour exhausted his patience and he sat her down for the first in the series of hard talks she received at the end of that year, self-indulgent to the point of wickedness.

He had been right. His only mistake had been to indulge her himself for such a very long time. They all had, in fairness, none of them sure of how to deal with this hard, self-destructive version of her self.

It had been a tough year, one with too many lovers and not nearly enough love. A year of rushing headlong into danger not caring who was dragged along with her, of drinking foul-tasting spirits in tacky clubs filled with boys far too young for her, not one of which deserved the harsh education of her passing interest.

It was shortly after that talk with Giles—a long and serious lecture about consideration and responsibility that for the most part she ignored—that Faith and Wood had returned from their travels to settle on the Hellmouth. It was Faith who, finding her drunk and cantankerous, binge eating in an untidy apartment, summed up the entirety of Giles speech in one well-chosen phrase. "God, B, get a grip. It's been a year already."

Wake up call three had come in the unlikely form of Kennedy's clichéd but undeniably true appeal that, in continuing to ostracise Willow, she was hurting not only her girlfriend but herself as well, and, more importantly, all those around them. The two rings that left a missed call on the redhead's mobile was sufficient olive branch to bring Willow, nervous and hopeful, to her door, and that was enough for them both to know that they were better as friends than as enemies.

Finally, though, it was Xander who brought her to the resolution that she would not wallow a moment longer in the mire of self-pity that she had made her home for so many months.

"This is Claire," he'd introduced with a smile, a smile that for the first time in years had reached his one remaining eye. Claire hadn't lasted, of course, but the fact that she had existed was evidence enough that Xander was ready to at least attempt life without Anya. They'd made a pact that night over half a bottle of vinegary red wine, a pact to, "get over it and get on with it."

She hasn't had a one-night stand, a drink stronger than a glass of wine, or emptied the fridge since that night.

So here she is now musing on the finding of contentment as she watches Dawn and Xander in animated conversation with the latest in a handful of semi-serious girlfriends that have passed through Xander's life this year. She likes Rachel a lot; she is forthright without Anya's otherworldly bluntness and outspoken without being as openly rude as Cordelia, but she is enough like each of them that Buffy suspects she will last a good deal longer than her more recent predecessors.

There is contentment to be found, if you are ready to find it, in a job well done. In the occasional postcard from Angel, back in LA and working in PR with his fiancé, Emma. She likes to think that in a way he is living her normal life for her.

There is contentment in seeing Faith's swollen belly and Wood's proud smiles. In Dawn's academic achievement—and how come Dawn got all the brains? Contentment in finally letting go of anger and getting a friend back, in her watcher's pride and most of all in seeing the lives of her loved ones finally falling into place.

Love is not, as she once believed, a precursor to contentment, and perhaps she was meant to live her life without it. She has a sense now when she sees the happiness blooming around her like springtime flowers that everything is as it should be and she has found her place in the world.

"Hey, Buff." Xander's teasing voice interrupts her introspection. "I hear La-La Land's nice this time of year. Is it?"

"Ha ha." She smiles and rolls her eyes. "I was contemplating, not zoning. It's a whole different vibe."

His expression is serious and melancholy for a moment, but there is warmth and affection there, too, and she shakes her head at the implication. "No, Xander," she tells him silently. "I'm not thinking about him." But of course now she is thinking about him and as they pile into Xander's car she does zone out of their argument about which pizza place they should hit for lunch and lets her mind wander to the love she has come to realise she can live without.

She wonders if he has found his Lotta, if she is well enough that they can be together. If he cares for her like he cared for Drusilla for so many years and with so much devotion. For a long time she had been jealous of their imagined relationship, still too much in love with him to wish him happiness in another's arms, but she is older now and wiser, and she hopes that he has found whatever contentment his life can offer, just as she has.

She doesn't ask herself if he still thinks of her as she still thinks of him, because she knows that he must. He, too, she knows with absolute certainty, is as much in love with her now as he was when he walked away from her with his heart breaking in his eyes.

She talks about him now and then, with Dawn mostly and more recently with Willow and even Xander, who understands best of all that flawed love is perhaps the best love of all, and understands, too, that she may never let go of it. The others want her to move on, to date, "just for fun," and then maybe she'll "meet someone special."

She doesn't humour them. She won't date for fun or for any other reason. What would be the point? She has found her contentment, and no consolation-prize love will improve it. No, she is happy as she is with her slaying and her friends and her family around her. She wants nothing to disturb her now.

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Chapter 32:

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She remembers vividly the day Angel arrived in Rome. She had been at Buffy's apartment drinking fine Italian coffee and telling her friend about her latest expedition—Astral projection to a plane of existence far more abstract than our own and actually kinda trippy—when he'd knocked at her door.

Buffy had known immediately. Whether it had been a slayer thing or a Buffy and Angel thing she'd never been quite sure, but she'd known even before he pressed her hand against his chest that he was human.

It had been a beautiful scene, a perfect Hollywood moment of lovers reunited. She remembers that she had felt honoured to witness it. It had been an illusion as it turned out, but who knew that then?

This is not an illusion, of that she is sure. It is neither perfect nor moving; it is awkward and painful and she wishes deeply that she were anywhere but here.

They make a lopsided triangle of stunned disbelief. Her just the two steps she took back away from the open door, Buffy to her right and deeper within the room, and him framed in the doorway like some life-sized portrait of the returning prodigal.

No one has spoken since his bleak, "Hey Red," when she opened the door. No one has moved since she took two steps back and let Buffy see clearly what she surely must have heard. She's not sure how long they will stay like this, trapped in emotional amber, but surely someone must act soon or it will set and they will never escape.

"Buffy." By all rights, the word is spoken far too softly for the slayer to hear, but the silence is so dense that the sound must carry because her body jerks as if slightly shocked and her eyes widen to huge saucers in her suddenly pale face.

The word frees her a little and she makes to escape a scene in which she has no place, but Buffy's eyes catch her mid-retreat, wide and panicked, and she stops, waiting to offer what support her friend might need.

Slowly, Buffy's dry eyes leave her and swivel back to focus on the man in the doorway. "Spike." It's more a croak than a word, and it offers neither welcome nor rebuff.

He leans heavily against the invisible barrier that Buffy has not yet removed and sighs a sigh so exhausted and desolate that she pities him with almost physical intensity. How is it possible that he looks so old? With his wild, honey-brown hair and dark-rimmed eyes. He has a scar on his right cheek, bisecting his unnaturally jagged line of his ever-prominent cheekbones. A scar on un-dead flesh? A blessed blade, perhaps, or mystical adversary.

There is no way she can know where he has been, and yet his gaunt face and weary pose tell the tale of his travels more vividly than words ever could. He has suffered, and the defeat in his eyes declares that it has been for naught.

"I couldn't find her." He speaks the words as though he does not believe them, and there is an effect of guilt in the slump of his shoulders. "I looked everywhere," he continues as if in justification. "I couldn't find her."

…………………….

She looks well, or at least she would if the blood had not drained from her face, leaving her temporarily pale and ghostlike. She has put on weight and it suits her, just a little softening of the hard bony angles she'd worn when he'd last seen her. Perhaps she is content.

He had heard her laughter as he'd stood outside her door, and had almost turned away. If she is happy here, then what good can his returning bring? Perhaps she has moved on, perhaps the roundness of her hips is the product of candlelit dinners and sunshine picnics.

He wishes she'd say something. Even if she turns him away, it would be better than this strange, oppressive silence. His lips begin to move, to say her name again although he doesn't know what for, when she interrupts him with an unexpected statement.

"Your hair is brown," she blurts out, as if that could matter in the slightest right now.

He frowns, and annoyance pricks at the edges of his numbed mind. What the buggering hell kinda thing is that to say to a chap who's just turned up after two years of a living bloody hell chasing shadows to the nastiest corners of the globe? "Yeah." Her eyes flash at his sarcastic tone, and the blood returns to her face in a rush that colours her cheeks to pinked radiance.

"I should go." He'd forgotten Red was there. Forgotten, too, somewhere along the long road of his journey, that she is to blame for so much of their pain. Maybe he'd just run out of energy, and hating her was too much like hard work to bother with.

They both ignore her as she brushes effortlessly through the invisible wall that to him is such an impenetrable barrier between him and the girl who has dogged his footsteps all across the globe.

"I'm fine." Another strange, blurted statement, but this time so nonsensical that he merely raises and eyebrow and waits for whatever explanation the crazy bint might or might not deign to provide.

"I'm fine. Here, being the slayer, and I have my friends and Dawn and I'm fine." Ah, so that's what she means. There is no place for him here, no room in her life for the complications he will inevitably bring.

He nods and fails to force a smile. "Sure," he murmurs and straightens up. What the hell had he expected? That she'd be waiting, a Spike-shaped hole in her life ready for him to just slot into? Funny how when it comes to love, a century of life hasn't made him any smarter.

Her voice stops him as he begins to turn away. "A-and how the hell dare you?" She's fuming when he looks back at her, hands set firmly on her hips. "How dare you come back here just expecting me to be waiting?" She throws her hands up in the air and gives a bark of almost hysterical laughter. "I have a life, you know. I worked a lot of things out while you were gone. I can live without you. Look." She waves her hands expressively around her pristine apartment. "See me living without you?"

He nods, ashamed now of coming here, of hoping…what? That she hadn't been able to live without him. "Sorry." His boots are interesting, so he looks down at them as he mumbles his apology. Very interesting. Worn and battered from the longest of journeys. He'll need a new pair because, just like him, they are completely worn out, practically falling apart.

"Two years." All the anger is gone from her voice, and it breaks with the sudden appearance of tears. "You've been gone two years."

As if he needs reminding. He's counted the days away from her, marked each one and hated it. Two years of knowing she loved him and living without her, of searching for another lost love and hoping all the while that today won't be the day he finds her, because then, one day, maybe—just maybe—he can find his way back to Buffy.

"I know," is all he can say, and it doesn't seem enough for her because suddenly she's right in front of him and her little fists are darting through the barrier to pound girlishly against his chest.

He grabs at them but she pulls away, retreating behind whatever power blocks the door and keeps his kind away from hers. "So what am I?" she asks, tearful and indignant. "The booby prize?"

He's at a loss for a response. She can't think that he's come to her in default. Surely she knows better than to think she could ever be second best to him, a consolation for Carlotta lost. Doesn't she know? How can she not realise that she is everything—absolutely everything—to him? All the time that he searched, all the demons he fought along the way, all the leads he so diligently followed, he was wishing that he could just abandon his duty and come back to her.

"If I were a good man," he begins without knowing were he is going, "I would still be looking for her. If I were a strong man, I wouldn't have given up so easily."

She's listening and he wishes he had thought of some eloquent speech before he dragged his weary carcass to her door, a sinner at the Abby gates crying out for sanctuary. "I'm not a good man. I'm not a man at all. I'm weak and I'm selfish and, God help me, Buffy, I couldn't stay away from you."

The pools in her eyes break their banks and crystals glisten prettily on her cheeks. "Spike." And it's too good, too bloody good to be true, but there's love in her big wet eyes and her voice trembles as she reaches for him, leaning across the threshold to take his face in her hands and hold his eyes with hers. "Oh God, Spike."

……………………………..

Was his skin always this cold? He'd never seemed as dead to her as he did leaning against her open doorway and professing his failings like an oath of fidelity.

She'd been so shocked—so far past shocked—in seeing him that she'd reacted with a defensive anger that was no surprise to her. Because part of her had wanted it not to be true, had wanted for him not to really be here, because wherever there is Spike there is love, and with it pain and craziness.

And she had thought that she had moved past the craziness of love, that she was master of her own emotions. She is not. In the first instant of seeing him, the serene contentment of her life had shattered like delicate glass in her suddenly clumsy hands. And, yes, she'll admit that she had been afraid, that she'd wanted the calmness back. That she had thought for a moment that love, even this great tumultuous love of theirs, would not be worth the risks.

And then he'd told her he couldn't stay away and his gravelled voice had been conflicted, and she'd seen her own fear reflecting in his murky, deadened eyes, and she'd loved him with an intensity that stolen all the air from her body and known that if she didn't touch him, she'd never be able to catch her breath again.

His skin is so cold, unnatural even for him, as if he had spent too long outside in the Cleveland winter, and perhaps he has. Perhaps he has stood outside her door for days. His eyes are bleak and tearless and he has never seemed so dead to her.

But it's okay because he is her Lazarus and she has always been a miracle to him. She can see him come alive in her hands, feel his skin warming under her hot palms even as that flame, the brightest she has ever known, sparks again faintly in his eyes. She can bring him back to life and she will.

His lips, too, are cold under hers at first, though not for long, because her kiss has revived him and he is eager and hungry and alive. But when he reaches for her, the house declares that he is still dead and bars the way. Foolish place. Don't the walls and doors and windows know that she has resurrected him? That while she lives she will never let him be dead again? "Come in," she whispers, and he does, reaching for her with needy, greedy hands as he pushes her roughly back into the warmth of her life.

"Missed you," he murmurs against her skin as his cool kisses scorch her throat. "Missed you so bloody much."

She makes a hoarse, guttural sound of agreement and claws at him in illustration. God, how she has missed him, too. How could she have been so foolish as to believe her hard-won contentment was worth even a fraction of the love-crazed happiness and misery he can bring her?

Her top is torn, although it hardly matters. What matters are his hands, assured and demanding on her breast as he kisses her. What matters is that he is here and she was not fool enough to turn him away.

"I love you." She is glad to be the first to say it. Gladder still when he freezes at her words and pulls her crushingly close, whispering that he loves her still so very much. But passion can only be forgotten for so long; they have been apart for two long years after all, and within moments their hands are travelling again, needy and desperate and oh so very good.

He sits her on the sideboard and mumbles a muffled, "Love you," as he parts her legs and pushes up her skirt. It's hardly the stuff of fantasy, a hasty shag on her hall furniture, but candles and rose petals can wait. Right now all that matters his getting him inside her. She breaks the zipper of his jeans in her haste but it's okay because now she has him in her hand and she can guide him past her dislodged panties and draw him into her body so easily.

He stills awe-filled eyes locked on hers and it is so reminiscent of their first time that she can't help but smile. Different, though, too. Very different, because now they are in love and he is smiling, too, and when he begins to move inside her she could cry with happiness.

She does cry afterwards, when he holds her still-trembling body and pulls her with him to lie on the couch. Cries and laughs and slaps his arms as feebly as a kitten when he teases her about the soft curves she has acquired in his absence. She knows they look good on her and she knows that he loves them.

Then suddenly they become serious in perfect sync, and understanding flows between them in the silence. No, it will not be easy to make a life together, and yes, they have much to talk about, so much left to work through.

What was it he'd said once? "You'll fight and you'll shag and you'll hate each other till it makes you quiver…" Right sentiment, wrong couple. Unless he was always talking about the two of them because she knows they will: she'll hate him almost as much as she loves him, they'll fight but not quite as often as they make love, and they'll make it work because it's worth it.

"I love you," she tells him with deliberate emphasis, and he smiles that boyish smile she adores so much.

"I love you, too, Buffy."


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Chapter 33:

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"Yuck!" Her pretty face scrunches up in exaggerated disgust. It's not as if she really minds, but she simply has to give them a hard time. "Every time I look at you two you're playing sucky face." She huffs and crosses her arms, knowing the twinkle in her eyes gives her away as so very pleased to see them together and happy at last. "Get a room already."

He smirks at her over her sister's shoulder, and she can't quite resist the childish urge to stick her tongue out at him. "Sorry, pet." His apology is insincere in the extreme, but it's more than she'll get from Buffy, who seems fascinated by the side of his throat. She traces her fingers up and down his neck and places sweet, squeaking pecks randomly over the pale skin.

He's distracted easily and in a moment she's forgotten and they're kissing languidly again. She hides a smile behind a disgusted curl of her lip and a theatrical shudder.

"You three ready?" Willow asks as she strolls in and drops her bag carelessly on the floor by the door. She shrugs negligently and tips her head toward the kissing couple in explanation. "They at it again?" the witch asks with an indulgent smile.

"Do they ever stop?" she asks rhetorically. "It's disgusting." She raises her voice enough to capture their combined attention.

"You're just jealous," Buffy declares, disentangling herself from Spike's arms and pulling herself off his knee with obvious reluctance, "because I have a boyfriend and you don't." This is the Buffy she loves, playful and childish and oh-so-sickeningly happy.

"And thank you Harmony," she intones, voice dripping with sarcasm. "You think you and Blondie Bear—" she keeps talking over his offended, "Hey!" her expression a picture of long-suffering irritation, "can come up for air long enough to get to this meeting? Faith's due in like a month and we have to reassign the rotas."

"Ooh, goody, extra killing! We're in." She pulls Spike out of the chair with a jerk on his arm that has them nose-to-nose again.

"Blood thirsty little thing, ain't ya?" Spike asks in a sexy drawl, and she can practically see her sister melting.

"Ah ah." She inserts herself bodily between the pair. "None of that, now. You." She points at her sister. "Go and put your coat and shoes on." Buffy pouts at the order but trudges of obediently. "And you." She spins on Spike and places her hands on her hips. "Don't encourage her," she orders sternly. "Lots of important slayer work to do today, okay? So no being sexy around Buffy until she's finished."

"Sexy?" he asks, with what would be a seductive leer if his eyes weren't full of platonic affection.

"Get over yourself," she replies haughtily with a roll of her eyes.

He grins wide and genuine at her little blush and throws an arm around her shoulder. "Sorry, nibblet. I'll be on my best behaviour. Promise." He sketches a cross over his heart with an expression far too serious and innocent to be trusted.

……………………………………

"Me?" Her voice rises, loud and shrill in the next room. "I'm being unreasonable? You've got some cheek, mister." He rolls his eyes at Willow and turns his attention back to the musty pages in front of him.

"Is that right?" Spike's temper snapped about five minutes ago and now every word is laced with a loud growl. "I'm not the one who won't listen to bloody reason."

There is one thing to be said for living in earshot of the Buffy and Spike drama. It makes your own relationship look like a walk in the park. He grins at Rachel, who shakes her head and gives him an amused half smile that tells him she's thinking the same thing: "Rather them than us."

"Bitch!" The exclamation is accompanied by a loud crash. Ah, the time-honoured slayer and vampire method of resolving disagreement. Beat the crap out of each other, then shag like bunnies. Well, whatever works for them.

"Think we should head out before this gets X-rated?" Willow asks without looking up from her book. Yeah, it's a pattern; they've all seen it before. Perhaps it's unhealthy, perhaps for them it's perfectly natural. He's long since done with judging anyone; he has more than enough to worry about in his own life.

"I reckon," he agrees. Rachel is already putting on her coat. "Pizza?" he suggests hopefully. But her stern look tells him he's not in luck today. Damn controlling women. Still, he wouldn't swap it for anything; he was just born to be whipped.

"Pasta?" he asks with dejected acceptance, and she smiles that soft, tender smile that never fails to warm him from the inside out. Yeah, she's all right, his Rachel. So the diets she keeps putting him on are a bit of a drag, but it's not like he can't sneak out for donuts now and then.

"I love you," he tells her suddenly, and she lights up a little at the spontaneity of it.

"Yeah, yeah." Willow pushes between them, grabbing Rachel's hand and his collar. "Can do without the soppies from you two, too. Come on, let's go find Kennedy."

………………………………..

She likes this time best of all. This time just after making love that they just lie together, sometimes for a moment, sometimes until they fall asleep; it doesn't matter. This is the best time.

Maybe she likes it best because it was the worst time for them for so long. She remembers vividly the panic that used to infuse her mind when it was over. It was like she couldn't breathe, or maybe she was breathing too much and the oxygen was making her dizzy and nauseous.

She remembers how he'd try to hold her. Not tight, never tight enough to keep her in place. Less a demand than a plea, a simple, "stay with me," silently asked through the gentle pressure of his arms.

"No." Her body would scream its denial back at him in jerky, hasty movements. Up, dressed and out without a single look back. She'd looked at him once as she'd left, and it had been a mistake: lying on his back, one arm thrown over his eyes, beautiful and naked and so utterly defeated. She'd known looking at him then that every time she left like that, she stole a little piece of him. She likes to think now that in these perfect moments of afterglow she is giving those pieces back.

"What you thinking?" His voice is a contented purr and he stretches catlike and languid against her.

"Lots of things." He cracks one eye open to peer at her questioningly. "That I love you and I'm sorry."

"Ah ah, pet, none of that. You know the rules." The rules, yes. Their golden rule. They made it at dawn or just after—she can't remember—but for dramatic effect she likes to say dawn on the morning after the night he'd come back. They hadn't made love after that first scrambling need for connection that had found them rutting frantically on her sideboard. There'd been far too much that they'd both needed to say.

"So this is the rule," he'd proposed after they'd talked—talked literally all night. She thinks they said more to one another that night than they had in all the time leading up to it. "No more sorrys." God knows he'd been right. They'd both apologized enough that night to last them a lifetime. Even one as long as his.

"Okay," she'd agreed. Then a thought had struck her and she'd frowned. "What about new sorrys?" He'd given her that look, annoying and adorable at once, that told her she'd lost him. "Like if I do something wrong tomorrow, I need to be able to say sorry. And you, too, because no way you aren't gonna screw up."

He'd looked offended but he'd indulged her all the same. "Okay," he'd corrected himself. "No more old sorrys. What's done is done. Deal?"

"Deal." She'd sealed it with a kiss, of course, and then they had made love again, slow and languid and filled with breathy declarations of love and promises of eternity. It was after that that she'd enjoyed her first afterglow with him, and had decided that it was that time that she liked best of all.

"My bad." She gives him a smile. He's half asleep already but he returns it for a moment before closing his eyes. She'll watch him sleep for a while before she joins him, just to enjoy the best time a little bit longer.

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Epilogue:

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There is a legend. A legend of a creature in the mountains, a creature so powerful that even the greatest of Dakhannah's knights will not face it.

They say that she was spawned in the age of slayers long before the Great Reckoning when men still walked the earth. Some say she was the last slayer, some that she was the first. Others say she was the offspring of the Great Slayer and her Demon lover.

No one knows the truth. She is legend and she is reality, for she has been seen. I myself have seen her. She comes in times of imbalance when the scales of dark and light tip too far. She comes and balance is restored. It was she who brought the demon horde of Caramine to its knees and saved my people from annihilation. It was she who, millennia before my birth, cut down the Sun Wizard and freed the dark servants of Ramina from his power.

Yes, she is real enough and removed by virtue of her great power from the shackles of good or evil. She merely is, and such concepts are beneath her. That is why my people call her "Estandia," which means, "Of both light and dark."

I was fascinated with her legend long before I caught a glimpse of her as my mother fled the massacre of the Caramine. I have asked many tribes and races for their version of the tale. Each is different, and I am resigned to never knowing for certain which is truth.

I have heard one tale, told by the elders of the Shanroc people, that she was a warrior of light punished by the powers for giving herself to a demon and cursed with immortality. Another story goes that she was once one of the gods, cast out for loving a mortal creature and set upon the earth to do the work of all the gods, good and evil alike.

I prefer to believe what you have read here. That she was loved once and loved well in return. That she sacrificed herself for love and it was that sacrifice that saved all who have come after her. Perhaps she knew when she hid from her perusing lover in the mineshafts of what was then Russia, when she evaded him in Istanbul, that one day it would be his love for the Great Slayer that would be the key to defeating the all-destroying power of the Gahna. Perhaps she did not, and she merely wished him happiness.

One thing is certain, and I know this because I have seen it, too: she still weeps for him. Only the brave and the foolish venture up the mountain. My mother tells me I am both. But I did go, and I saw her as clearly as I see my mother now, sitting by the fire much as she was then. She was as beautiful in the flesh as she is in the paintings of the great artists of the past. With her midnight hair and golden eyes, her feet and hands cloven like the fossils my brothers and I unearthed as children and mother told us were the bones of ancient goats.

I think she knew that I was there, but she did not drive me away. She sang a song in the strange tongue of creatures long since extinct, and even though I did not understand the words, I knew it was a sad song. A melancholy tale of lost love and loneliness. There were tears on her face as she sang to the stars, and I think that she was crying for him.

And as I listened I wondered at the strange twists and turns of fate and love, twin conspirators in our destruction and our redemption. And I asked myself is love fates greatest weapon in our subjugation? Or is it love in all its bewildering power that breaks the iron manacles of fate and gifts us mastery over our own destiny?

Mother says I am a foolish romantic but I don't care. I believe in Estandia and I believe in the Great Slayer and her Demon. I believe that love has saved the world before, and that it will save the world again one day. I believe it is the only force that can.


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