Chapter 8


The gym was a storm of furious activity, SITs fighting each other across the length and breadth of it. And in the middle was an embattled Spike struggling to defend himself while still trying not to damage his assailants too badly.

Buffy fought her way towards the core of the fight where a group of SITs were attacking Spike. Girls kept being flung out of that whirlpool, but they were Slayers and he wasn’t trying to kill them. They hit the floor, rebounded onto their feet and flung themselves back at him. They had stakes in their hands, Buffy saw. Real wooden stakes, not the rubber practice ones. They meant to dust him.

Other SITs were trying to stop them, but they were outnumbered. More SITs were running through the main doors of the gym, shouting questions. Vi was already there in the midst of the storm, yelling at the attackers and fighting to keep them away from Spike.

Buffy reached that seething mass and grabbed a SIT in her path. She didn’t know whether this one was on Spike’s side or not; she just flung her out of the way and bored right in, spraying bodies to right and left. Spike and Vi were handicapped by trying not to hurt their attackers. Buffy, in a perfect rage, had no such compunctions. If there was a doubt whether someone was friend or foe, she just struck her to one side. If they were clearly attacking Spike, they got knocked cold or flung clear across the gym. She didn’t care if any of them broke bones. They were Slayers. They would heal. And they had dared to try to kill Spike.

In the center of the melée, Spike was battling Kennedy while Vi tried to keep other SITs away from him. Kennedy’s face was contorted with fury and murderous intent. With her long black hair whipping around that snarling mask, she looked like a gorgon, more like a demon than Spike did because he still hadn’t gone into gameface. His tee shirt was ripped both front and back from where Kennedy had slashed at him. There were bleeding gashes on his jaw and chest and back where the point of the stake had cut his flesh.

There was a flash of blinding light.

“Everybody stop!” Willow’s voice commanded, hugely amplified.

The gym was shocked into stillness. Except for Kennedy. She was intent on dusting Spike and nothing was going to stop her.

Buffy did. She grabbed Kennedy’s right arm as it slammed the stake down straight at Spike’s heart. With complete deliberation, Buffy broke Kennedy’s arm in two places. Kennedy screamed. The stake fell from her suddenly powerless hand and clattered onto the polished wooden floor.

There were gasps of shock and horror. Everybody was frozen, SITs still holding each other in furious grapples. Only Spike moved. He raced across the gym and took one flying leap up onto the mezzanine. In a blink of time, he had ripped the mezzanine door open and grabbed at someone behind it. The next moment, two snarling, entangled bodies rolled across the mezzanine, then fell over the rail and onto the gym floor. They separated for a second on impact, then rebounded to their feet and flew at each other in full gameface. Spike and Angel viciously trying to kill one another.

“You broke my arm!” Kennedy screamed at Buffy. “What kind of Slayer are you?”

“I told you. Anyone who tries to hurt Spike gets busted up! I don’t care if you’re a Slayer or not.”

“He’s a vamp!”

“Yeah,” one of her followers hissed. “Vamp lover!”

The SIT holding that girl struck her across the mouth. “You shut up! He helped us! He killed two of the Chiriwans trying to kill us! How could you try to kill him?”

“We had orders!”

“My orders were that no one hurts Spike,” Buffy snarled. “You took Kennedy’s orders? I rank Kennedy!”

“You rank nothing!” Kennedy snarled back. “You’re just another Slayer, no different from the rest of us, for all you go throwing your weight around.”

“She’s the Slayer,” said Vi. “We take her orders, not yours.”

“Yeah,” said Rona behind her.

Kennedy looked around. All the full-Slayers were there now, ranging themselves at Buffy’s back, and the rest of the SITs were hurrying into the gym. Kennedy and her followers were now vastly outnumbered, though most of the SITs looked bewildered, not committed one way or the other.

“She doesn’t give the orders here,” Kennedy snapped. “She’s not our boss. Giles is.”

Buffy turned slowly to stare at her. “Giles ordered you to kill Spike? Giles authorized this?”

“What did you think he’d do with you buying everything that vamp says? The way you’re acting, it’s like that thing has got a thrall on you. Or maybe it’s just the way he fucks that makes you willing to sell us all down the river.”

“What the hell are you talking about?”

“Did you think we wouldn’t find out?” Kennedy flung at her. “Willow told Giles. You’re planning to split us all up, so we wouldn’t be an army anymore. And it was all his idea. Spike’s. Willow admitted it! Of course a demon wouldn’t want an army of Slayers. His kind wouldn’t be able to fight us if we’re grouped together. Of course he wants us alone and vulnerable. Together we’re powerful. Invincible! He doesn’t want that.”

“Power,” said Willow, putting down the megaphone she had used and coming slowly across the gym. “That’s what you want. Just like Giles. I never saw that before. I shut it out. You want to be top dog, want to have that power. If the Slayers were spread out across the globe, you’d lose that. You’d only be one among many.”

“You’re taking her side, aren’t you?” Kennedy accused. “You always take her side!”

“I’m not choosing one of you over the other. I never would,” said Willow sadly. “I just try to choose what is right.”

Kennedy laughed scornfully. “Would you have said that to your sainted Tara?”

Willow stared at her as if she had never seen her before. “Loyalty is of the good. But not when it conflicts with what is right. Tara taught me that. She walked out on me when I was doing wrong, even though she loved me. Tara would never have wanted me to choose her above what’s right.”

“So you’re saying I’m always wrong?”

“Not always. But this time you are,” Buffy said quietly. “Dispersing the Slayers was only a suggestion. You’ve all overreacted. You because you didn’t want to lose the power. Giles because he wants to stay in control. Angel because he wanted an opportunity to dispose of Spike. Willow, break them up, would you?”

Angel and Spike were still trying to kill each other on one side of the gym, but they were so evenly matched that neither could get the upper hand. It hadn’t seemed urgent to stop them.

But now when she turned to look at them, she realized that Spike had somehow achieved a choke hold on Angel. He had an arm around Angel’s throat from the back and he was steadily bending Angel into a backwards arc despite Angel’s attempts to throw him off. In a few seconds, Angel’s spine would snap. It wasn’t a killing move and Spike clearly did not mean to kill. But he definitely meant to break Angel’s back. Even for a vamp, that would be painful and Angel would be months recovering. Buffy knew that because she had once put Spike in a wheelchair with just exactly that.

“Whoa! Willow, now!”

Willow hurriedly whispered a few words under her breath, then placed her hands together and slowly spread them apart. Spike found Angel suddenly pulled out of his grip. Angel whipped around to face him, then found his feet sliding on the polished wood of the gym floor. Both snarling furiously, they found themselves pushed inexorably away from each other.

Spike realized what was happening first and spun to face Buffy.

“Saving him again, Slayer? You realize that’s he’s the one who set this up, don’t you? Watcher might have ordered it, but I’ll bet you anything Peaches is the one who talked him into it.”

Buffy knew he was right.

“Where is Giles?” she asked grimly.

“Up there.” Spike jerked a thumb at the mezzanine. “He was hiding with Peaches before I yanked the poof into the open. He’s still there.”

“Giles, come out,” Buffy called. “You wouldn’t like it if I have to come up there and drag you out.”

Giles walked through the mezzanine door and crossed to set his hands on the railing. He had his head raised proudly and there was no trace of shame or guilt on his face. He made an actually quite impressive figure, standing there glaring down at them from on high. Buffy looked at him reproachfully, coldly angry and bitterly hurt.

“Why, Giles?”

“You let him claim you,” said Giles harshly. “Angel knew it the minute he walked into the Hall. You couldn’t hope to keep it hidden from another vampire.”

There were gasps of shock all across the gym. The SITs let each other go and stood staring. Even Kennedy, hugging her broken arm protectively to her, looked stupefied.

“A Slayer letting a vampire claim her!” Giles’ voice rang through the suddenly completely silent gym. “Letting him have power over her like that. You crossed the line when you consented to that. Did you actually think that such a thing would be permitted? What a blessing I asked Angel to come over for a consultation! We would never have known otherwise!”

“Traitor!” whispered Kennedy.

Buffy looked around at all the horrified faces. All the SITs were in the gym now. So were the full-Slayers, their duties abandoned, and even some of the Wicca, their eyes holding that faintly distracted look that said they were relaying what was happening to the others.

“That’s between Spike and me! It’s no one else’s business!”

“It is our business!” thundered Giles. “A Slayer—and that one you, our most influential Slayer!— under the control of a vampire? That cannot be allowed!”

“He tricked you, didn’t he, Buffy,” Angel said.

“Maybe he thralled her,” whispered one of the SITs, trying to find some excuse.

“Spike doesn’t have a thrall and he didn’t trick me.” Buffy turned to look at all of them. “I chose to let him claim me! I love him and I want to be bound to him.”

“No!” said Angel. “He’s done something to you, Buffy!”

“Why should you think that? Because I choose him over you? I told you he was in my heart, Angel. But you didn’t want to know what I meant by that. You managed not to hear, just as you always do, to just ignore whatever you don’t want to have happen. Well, I’m telling you flat out. I love him.”

“What you think you feel does not matter,” said Giles. “A Slayer cannot be tied to a vamp. Especially with a one-way claim, as you have allowed.”

“You don’t understand, Buffy,” said Angel. “Of course he wouldn’t have told you. If it had been a full claim you would both have power over each other and the holds would have cancelled each other out. But a one-way claim like this allows him complete control over you.”

“The claim must be broken,” thundered Giles.

“A one-way claim can be broken,” nodded Angel. “It’s not like a full claim, which is unbreakable. But there are only two ways. Either by death or by the vampire relinquishing his claim.”

“And since it’s unlikely that Spike will relinquish the claim,” said Giles grimly, “the only option is...”

“I will not let you kill him!” snarled Buffy. She looked angrily around at all of them. “He died for us in the Hellmouth! Only a few days ago, he put his life on the line one more time defending all you SITs from the Chiriwan! How can you think he wants to hurt us now? I won’t let you hurt him! I’ll die first!”

“I relinquish the claim!” said Spike suddenly.

Ever since that night there had been that thread of connection between them, a warmth, a little sizzling electric shiver of awareness and joining that hinted at the far more profound joining that a full claim would be. That died now. Abruptly, as if a cord had been cut, and the emptiness that was left after it was gone was shocking.

Buffy spun to face him. “Spike!”

“They won’t ever let it go, pet.” He took her face gently in his hands. “A Slayer can’t be tied to a vampire. Peaches, the Watcher, the Council, they won’t let it happen. Not gonna let you sacrifice yourself for me. Your life is here. You have to live with these people.”

“My life is with you!”

“No, Slayer, it isn’t. I guess I always knew that.”

“Always?” Then her eyes widened and her hands closed suddenly on his wrists. “Peaches! You called Angel Peaches! Your memory’s come back, hasn’t it?”

He nodded. “Most of it.”

“You remember!”

“Too much. We’ll talk about it later. I’m going back to the flat.” He looked around at all the hostile faces. “All of this, it isn’t my business. It’s an internal matter for you Slayers. I’m only a vamp and I’ll make things worse for you if I stay. I have to think. When you’re done, come home and we’ll talk.”

He kissed her lightly, his lips cool and sweet. But she could feel him withdrawing himself. Then he was stalking out of the gym, scooping up his duster on the way.

No one made a move to stop him. They all knew she would have killed anyone who tried.

“Well, that was easier than I thought,” said Angel with some surprise. “He relinquished the claim. I didn’t think he would do that. I thought we’d have to dust him to set you free.”

He came and set his hands lightly on her shoulders, smiling widely.

“But you’re safe now, Buffy.”

Buffy hit him. He staggered backwards, tripped over his own feet and fell flat onto his back. Buffy swooped on him like a striking hawk. The stake that she had scooped from the ground swung high, then slammed down.

Angel yelled in shock. So did everyone else. Then everything went breathlessly still. Except for Angel’s gasp of pain, the whole gym was totally silent.

“I didn’t want to be free,” said Buffy.

She looked down with cold satisfaction at Angel pegged to the polished wooden floor of the gym. She had driven the stake right through the hollow of his shoulder and deep into the wood, fastening him to the floor like a butterfly on a pin.

“Maybe now you’ll listen,” she said. “I am tired of you interfering with my life. I am tired of you doing things to me ‘for my own good’. I am tired of you always doing what you want and never caring what I want. I keep telling you to butt out, but you never listen. Maybe the pain will finally make it get through to you.”

“Buffy!” exclaimed Giles, appalled. “He was only trying to help you! It was for...”

“If you say it was for my own good, Giles, I’ll pin you to the floor right next to him.”

“For God’s sake, Buffy! This is barbaric! You can’t do that to a man who...”

“But he’s not a man, is he? He’s a vamp. A disgusting thing. He’s not human. He doesn’t feel pain. He doesn’t feel love. He doesn’t feel at all. Isn’t that what you keep telling me about Spike?” She gave him a bitter, furious smile. “What’s the difference, Giles? What makes Angel worthy and Spike not?”

“Buffy!” Angel gasped. “I love y...”

“Do you? Your definition of love doesn’t gibe with mine, Angel. But who cares who you love? What matters to me is who I love. And I love Spike.”

“You can’t!”

“Want me to drive that stake even further into the floor? What has your ‘love’ ever done for me, Angel? Spike died for me. He got a soul for me. He sacrificed himself for all of us in the Hellmouth. You? All you’ve ever done is run out on me.”

“Buffy, that’s not fair!” Giles protested.

“I really wouldn’t use that word, Giles. When have you ever been fair to Spike? You’ve never given him a fair chance. The claim. Did you even consider waiting to see whether he would force me into evil? Make me to do wrong. No. You didn’t want to wait for proof. You just decided on a pre-emptive strike. You were going to dust him just because you were afraid. Innocent until proven guilty doesn’t apply to demons, does it?”

“Uh, Buffy,” Willow murmured hesitantly, wincing at the sight of Angel struggling to pull the stake out of his shoulder. “Can’t we discuss all of this after...?”

Buffy shrugged indifferently. “He’s a vamp. He’ll heal in no time. It’s just at an awkward angle so he can’t pull free easily. It’ll keep him out of the way for a bit.” She looked around at all the SITs. “What were you all afraid Spike would make me do? Smuggle demons in to kill you all in your beds? Get a grip!”

“He wants to split us up!” Kennedy flung at her.

“He wanted you independent, standing on your own feet!”

“We’re powerful when we’re together! An army of Slayers! A real threat to demons! He didn’t want that. So he was going to neutralize that threat! Make us just nothing!”

“We don’t need an army,” said Xander unexpectedly from the main door of the gym. “One Slayer by herself is an army. You don’t need to be all clustered together. I mean, I like having you girls around. It’s like being turned loose in a chocolate factory. But Spike did have a point. You’d be more effective spread out across the globe. Merciful Zeus, Kennedy! We were just kicking ideas around. All he did was suggest something and you want to dust him for it. Whatever happened to free speech?”

“That’s the first thing to go in a totalitarian regime,” said Willow. “And that’s what the Council is starting to turn into. I found out who sent those Chiriwan. They were sent by a group of Wicca Giles was harassing. Retaliation. They wanted to make our lives as miserable as we were making theirs. And they are white Wicca, not black. They were driven to it.”

“God!” Buffy flung up her hands. “We’re not fighting demons! We’re fighting each other! I’m done.”

“Buffy!”

“No, Giles. I told you I’d walk if you tried to harm Spike. What does the man have to do to prove himself to you? He went and got a soul, he’s trying to do good, he sacrifices himself in the Hellmouth, he saves the SITs from Chiriwans, he relinquishes the claim that we both want. But it’s never enough. Well, I’ve had enough. I am so outta here.”

“And I’m coming with you,” said Willow, stepping forward to join her.

Buffy grinned at her. “We’ll be rogue demon hunters together.”

“All three of us,” said Xander from her other side.

“And it seems you have company, Will,” said Buffy, looking at the five or six Wicca who had filtered through the crowd of SITs and were forming themselves up behind Willow.

“The other Wicca are with us too,” said Willow in surprise as messages were relayed to her. “And, look, you’ve got your own company, Buff.”

The full-Slayers were arriving beside Buffy—Vi and Rona and Chao-Ahn and all the other Potentials. There was also movement among the SITs. An area of clear floor was emerging, a demarcation line between where Buffy was standing on the side of the gym near the main doors and where Kennedy was standing below Giles on the mezzanine.

When the movement finally stopped, there were only a handful of SITs hesitating beside Kennedy and most of those looked as if they weren’t too happy to be there.

“Money is definitely going to be a problem,” muttered Vi, looking around.

“We’re Slayers,” retorted Rona. “We’ll find a way to support ourselves.”

“Not by stealing,” said Buffy firmly.

“Of course not. Maybe we could hire out as bodyguards or something. Personal security. Hey, we could open our own security firm. That would be so cool!”

“Look at Giles,” murmured Xander. “He thinks the inmates have taken over the asylum.”

“Giles,” Buffy called. “Have we made our point? Or do we all walk?”

Giles’ lips compressed tightly. Then he raised a hand in defeat. “You’ve made your point. Do you want me to resign?”

“Can’t think of anyone better to run admin than you. But major policy decisions will be made by all of us. We’ll create a board or something. Maybe vote reps onto it. Slayers, Wiccas, SITs. A democracy, not a dictatorship, Giles.”

“You know, this might actually work out,” muttered Xander.

“I’ll want suggestions,” said Buffy. “Everybody think about the way they want things to go and pass along any ideas to me.”

“We’d better get anybody who’s hurt patched up,” said Willow. She didn’t look at Kennedy who was refusing to meet her eye anyway.

No one else was looking at Kennedy either. But there was a space around her as SITs stepped away. In a sense, she was being shunned. She had lost her ascendancy over them and would have to work to recover it.

The squad leaders moved to identify the wounded and get them over to medical. Buffy walked over to Angel and reached down to pull the stake out of his shoulder.

“Go back to L.A., Angel. And stay there. I don’t want to see you around for a while. If you try to hurt Spike again, I’ll put that stake through your heart, not your shoulder.”

Angel staggered to his feet and walked away without a word.

“Where are you going, Buffy?” asked Xander as Buffy headed towards the gym doors.

“Where do you think? I’ve got a vampire to hunt down.”

***

His memory had returned. Somewhere amongst all the crazy events—Buffy and the claim, the fight with the SITs and with Angel, all those strong emotions battering at him—somewhere in there something had broken through the block. Everything came cascading back, all of it, the whole bloodsoaked history of his life. He leaned against the mantlepiece at Buffy’s flat, his temple against the cool marble, his eyes closed, sorting out the memories.

It was both easier and harder this time. Easier because his soul had already had to go through this once, adjusting to the memory of a hundred and twenty years of blood and death. In that last year before he had burned up in the Hellmouth, he had come to terms with that. That balance that he had reached then came back to him now. He had adapted then. He just recovered that position, accepted what could not be changed.

What he could not accept was what he had tried to do to the woman he loved. Flashes were coming back to him—vivid, annihilating. That bathroom with its cold, sterile tiles. Her face, tearstained and desperate. And he trying to force himself upon her. Thinking that her ‘no’ would turn to ‘yes’ if he only persisted, because it always had whenever he had tried before. Thinking in his desolation and his despair that everything would be all right if he were only within her again; she would see then, she would understand that they loved each other.

‘Great love is wild and passionate and dangerous,’ he had said to her. ‘It burns and consumes.’

It had consumed him, turned him destructive to the one being he wanted only to cherish.

‘I could never trust you enough for it to be love,’ she had said. ‘Ask me again why I could never love you.’

She had been right not to trust him.

She had changed since he came back out of the amulet. She said she loved him now; she let him make love to her. But his memories of the past couple of weeks were blurred and fragmented. There were holes there. The past had come back in agonizingly vivid focus. The present was fuzzy. And the appalling vision of that bathroom kept superimposing itself over everything he looked at.

He heard her footsteps hurrying up the stairs and turned his face away. He should have gone. He had been so off-balance he hadn’t thought, had needed some quiet place to hide in, lick his wounds, sort his head out. But he should have left before she came back.

But when had he ever been able to leave her?

Buffy flung the door open, gasping from her run to get here. Spike had taken the car because its necro-tempered windows shielded him from the sun and she had had to come on foot since Caxley’s winding bus route was too slow. She hadn’t wanted to wait to call a cab to the Hall and she hadn’t passed one on the way. Slayer speed was enough anyway.

She had been really afraid that he wouldn’t be at the cottage, that he might have collected his things and gone. But he was there. She saw his duster thrown over a chair in the small hallway and his Docs lying on their sides below it. There was blood on them, his own blood, and he must have yanked them off to avoid spoiling her rugs.

“Spike?”

There was no answer. Then she saw him, leaning against the mantlepiece, his head down, not looking at her.

“I thought you might have gone,” she said breathlessly.

“When have I ever gone, Slayer?” he said. “Even when I should.”

“Spike...”

The phone rang.

For a moment she was tempted to smash it. Then she gave a little hiss of exasperation and picked up the receiver.

“What!”

“I’m s-sorry to interrupt, Buffy,” Willow stuttered. “But I’m in contact with that bunch of Wicca. The ones who sent the Chiriwan? And I need to know what you want me to do with them.”

“Mend fences.”

Willow gave an audible sigh of relief. “Oh, good. They were worried about punitive action. I told them that there’s been a...a palace coup.”

“Willow.”

“Well, a change of management, if that sounds better. I told them that everything’s different now and you wouldn’t punish them. They want to talk to you.”

“Fine. Set up a meet. For tomorrow, not today. Anything else?”

“Nothing we can’t handle. Oh, by the way, the consensus of opinion among the SITs so far is that they like Spike’s idea. They don’t want to be an army. They like the thought of being independent.”

“Well, good.”

“There will always have to be a core support group of course. Wicca, admin, researchers, that kind of thing.”

“Giles and you can handle that. Caxley Hall can be headquarters.”

“Xander wants to stay with the support team. He says he likes having a lot of girls around him.”

“I should be surprised? Look, Will, can’t we discuss this all tomorrow?”

“Oh, sure! Sorry!”

“If there are any more crises, you handle them. Just don’t call back.”

“Er...right.”

Buffy hung up the phone, then yanked the cord from the jack. Her cell was in the back pocket of her jeans. She pulled it out, removed the batteries and tossed them out of the window.

“No more interruptions.” She turned and locked the front door. “There. They’ll have to break it down. And if they do, I want you to gut them.”

She hoped he would laugh, but he only said in a dull voice, “Whatever you say, Slayer.”

“We have to talk.”

“If you want.”

“You’ve remembered, haven’t you?”

“Yes.”

“All of it?”

“Enough.” He turned his head and looked at her, his eyes haunted. “All too much.”

“And all the wrong things,” she said under her breath.

“Don’t!” he said, jerking away as she put out a hand to him. “Don’t touch me!”

“Spike...”

“How can you touch me? How can you even want to look at me after I tried to...” He broke off, unable to even say the word. “After that bathroom.”

“That doesn’t matter any more.”

“It mattered. That last year. You couldn’t look at me without seeing it.”

“But then you died, Spike. And I wasn’t able to look at you at all. Beside that, nothing mattered. All I wanted was to see you again. See you in front of me. See you alive. ”

He turned to stare at her. “You’ve forgiven me. How can you forgive me?

All that guilt and self-blame back again. What he had laid upon himself. What she had laid upon him.

“We were both at fault, Spike. I have so much to be ashamed of myself.”

“No. What I put you through...”

“And what did I put you through? I used you and didn’t care about how that made you feel. Hit you and scorned you and abused you even though I knew you loved me. While fucking you the whole time. I drove you to it. Drove you right around the bend.”

He shook his head. “I was a monster.”

“No! Or if you were, so was I. Three months of abuse. Three months of...of emotional rape. Can you forgive me, Spike?”

“Buffy...”

“And then the year after that. Still letting you carry all the blame. Loading more on you. Doing so much that hurt you. And then you died. You sacrificed yourself in the Hellmouth. For me. I knew then. I knew...” She came and took his face in her hands. “I meant what I said in the Hellmouth. I love you.”

“Oh, God!” His hands covered hers, pressing her palms to his face. There were tears in his eyes. He closed them to hide that, breathing harshly through his mouth. His forehead fell against hers and she felt his breath shake against her face.

“I love you, Spike. So much. When I thought you were dead, I didn’t...I didn’t want to go on.”

“Oh, God, Buffy! I love you so much!”

And there it was in his eyes. That love and tenderness and devotion she had always dismissed so cavalierly. She had found it so easy to call it obsession. But now she knew the difference. Now that she loved him. Now that she knew what love really was. The change was in her, not him. That tenderness, that caring in his eyes had been there even when he didn’t have his memory back.

He caught her to him. She met him halfway. Their arms closed tightly around each other with a force that would have broken bones on anybody human.

“It’s a bloody miracle,” he muttered.

“No, the miracle was you coming back. The miracle is that you love me again.”

He kissed her desperately hard. “I wouldn’t know how to stop loving you. Even when I didn’t have my memory, something bound me to you. I couldn’t break away, didn’t even want to. Couldn’t leave even when I knew I should, after I remembered.”

She held him fiercely close, her arms tight about his neck. “No guilt. None. We’ve both made mistakes. We’re both at fault. Can we forget all of that? It doesn’t matter. It’s in the past. Can we start fresh?”

“Not if it means going back to the beginning. Can we go on from here?”

“Oh, please.”

She leaned against him heavily, her bones turning to water. He laughed a little and scooped her up, headed towards the bedroom.

“I can always count on you to know what I want,” she murmured and kissed him.

He nearly walked into the door frame, banged his shoulder against the jamb and laughed aloud. She watched his eyes turn at once black and vividly blue as his pupils widened and the irises narrowed. The shadow in them was gone, she saw with delight.

They lay on the bed, caressing each other delicately, still too caught up in wonder for urgency or haste. Rediscovering each other in slow kisses, hands drifting over each other’s faces and bodies, stroking away clothes, sliding with tenderness and love over bare skin.

“Giles and Angel,” he said suddenly.

“Don’t think about them. They’re no danger now. Angel’s gone back to L.A. Giles has resigned himself to no longer being the boss. I think he’s even relieved the weight’s off and everyone’s sharing the load.”

He shrugged them both away. They weren’t what he was thinking about. “We did it the wrong way around.”

“What do you mean?”

“You should have claimed me, Buffy. Then they wouldn’t have thought I could control you. You’d have been able to control me and they wouldn’t have felt threatened by that.”

She started to smile, rolled him over onto his back and slid her lips over the underside of his jaw, down the long cord of his neck, felt him shudder violently against her.

“I don’t think I need to ask what you’re getting at.”

“Take me, Slayer.”

“A one-way claim? You’d let that happen?”

“You let that happen. You own me, Buffy. You always have.” He drew her head down and kissed her painfully hard. “I want it.”

“Mm. You know what I want? A full claim. A mutual claim.”

“Buffy!”

“You wanted it before.”

“Of course I want it! I’ve always wanted it! But...”

“It would keep you safe. When we’re linked in a full claim, if you die, I die. Isn’t that right? Giles, Angel, Kennedy, anyone—they couldn’t kill you without killing me.” She bent and kissed him lovingly. “But that’s not why I want it.”

He rolled her over until she was lying on her back, smiling up at him. His eyes were an incandescent blaze of blue light as he looked down at her. She could feel him vibrating with intensity against her.

“Why then?” he whispered.

“Want us joined forever. Want us mates. We belong together. You’re the other half of me and I’m not losing you again. If you die, I die. That’s the way I want it.”

“God, Buffy! I’ve wanted it all my life! It was worth burning up in the Hellmouth to have this at last.”

She kissed the junction of his neck and shoulder, then smiled at him and bit hard, licked at the slight seep of blood that welled up. “Mine.”

“Oh, God, yes! Always yours!”

“Now you.”

“Buffy,” he breathed. Then he pushed her hair aside, stroked her neck.

She saw the look of helpless wonder and awe on his intense face. Then he bent and his fangs slid painlessly into the vein. She felt that rapturous draw as he sipped at her blood. He raised his head, his eyes flaring.

“Mine,” he said.

“Yes. Yours.”

Something caught them up, far more piercing and profound than even that unbearable rapture that came when he took her blood. An ultimate joining, like their hands interlinking and those sunfire flames burning around and through them.

“Spike!” she gasped in shock.

She saw him smile, then his mouth was on hers and he took her hard.

“Oh, yes!”

That was right. That was what was needed. Mind and body and spirit all linked, every cell mating and re-tuning itself to align with the other. Becoming one being. Driving each other higher and higher towards that pinnacle of joy.

Perfection.

Her brain splintered, whited right out.

Eons later, she came drifting out of that blankness to find him lying heavy and spent beside her, holding her tightly and looking as thunderstruck as she felt. He too hadn’t known what it would be like.

“Everything I ever wanted,” he was muttering. “To come back to this! It was worth dying.”

“Nothing’s worth your dying. I have you now,” she said fiercely. “Next time we go together.”

“That next time’s gonna be a long time coming if I have anything to do with it,” he growled. “Not gonna let you die.”

She wound herself around him, purring. “We’ll have each other’s backs.”

He was smiling oddly. “You’ve mated with a vamp.”

“Really? I didn’t realize. Gee, what a surprise.”

He bit her shoulder lightly in punishment, his fangs pricking but not breaking her skin. “Slayer with vamp. There might be repercussions.”

“We’ll deal.”

“One of which might be that we may pick up each other’s traits.”

“I’m gonna pick up your taste in music? Eww.”

“Hey!” They grinned at each other. “No, listen. You might pick up my immortality.”

“What!”

“The claim linked us completely. You might be an immortal Slayer now. And I might be able to walk in the sunlight.”

She stared at him. “Are you serious?”

“Oh, yeah. You can be killed, I can be dusted, but neither of us is gonna die of old age.”

“When you said we’d be together forever, never to be parted, you meant it literally,” she said with blank incredulity.

“I’m never gonna lose you,” he said with satisfaction and kissed her.

“Or I you. I like that.” Then she laughed. “Giles is gonna have a cow.”

“There is an upside for him. We’ll always be around to take care of his baby Slayers.”

“Then we’re going to have to make sure things go our way. Eternity’s a long time to live with certain mistakes.”

“But it also gives us plenty of time to deal with them.”

They looked at each other with confidence and hope and shining joy.

“This brave new world. We’ll shape it,” she said and kissed him. “Together.”


The End