She’s been in this room before, standing over this bed and speaking in riddles that don’t make sense until long after. She’s made the bed hundreds of times with her sister at her side. She’s thought little of it, most of the time.

But this time, the girl she remembers standing opposite her is lying on the bed, eyes wide and trusting- such an odd expression for her- and her body still and rigid, dark marks patterning across her skin and her clothes and climbing rapidly toward her face. “Gotta go, B.”

“It’s not what you think,” she hears her voice protesting. “We have no choice. There’s nothing here.”

“There’s more there than here,” Faith agrees, but it sounds more like an argument. “It’s why we live. It’s why we die. Do you see it?”

She follows Faith’s gaze to the doorway, where their two vampires stand watch, eyes fixed on the girl in the bed. Buffy doesn’t step forward because she knows she can’t, not while the bed stands between them. “I don’t.”

“Look harder,” Angel growls, and his voice sends a low shiver down her spine. She squints at him, past him, and catches sight of two yellow eyes, long, narrow slits glaring directly at her. She stumbles backwards, and there’s Spike, his hands resting on her back, supporting her steadily. His arms don’t encircle her, don’t take her in, and she senses that this fact isn’t as important as her body seems to think.

“It’s wrong,” Faith whispers. “But it shouldn’t be.”

She stares at her sister slayer, stares at Angel and Spike in the doorway as the Spike at her back remains, stares at the set of eyes before her, and wakes up with a start as her alarm blares in her ears.

“Dammit,” she mutters, the faces of her dream still fresh in her mind. She’d gotten back late last night, going home with Willow meaning that they had to wait for Orkanel to wrap up his work for the night before they were all flown back on the company jet, and Buffy hadn’t been able to sleep on the way back, too caught up in her roiling thoughts to focus on napping.

Yes, it was a moronic, callous move on Spike’s part to hold out on her, to carry on a secret life that he must have known would hurt her. If he’d only said something…mentioned it beforehand…if she’d had some warning…

No. She sighs, pulling herself out of bed. She wouldn’t have been happy with it even if she’d known what Spike was up to. She couldn’t stop him, no, but she wouldn’t have trusted him the same way, wouldn’t have put all her faith and friendship in someone so involved with the last two people in the world she wants to see. 

Maybe it would have been better that way.

She toys with the idea of skipping work and getting some more sleep, but the thought of being alone with her thoughts today is a terrifying prospect.

Because as much as Spike had screwed up, she’d done worse. Faith’s life is in danger, and all she’d been focused on yesterday had been pushing away the one person who could help her help Faith. As many issues as she and Faith have, she doesn’t want to see her dead, not like Simone is. She can’t lose anyone else.

She can’t lose Spike.

Her thoughts are moving in circles now, caught between Faith, and Spike, and Faith and Spike, and Faith, and Spike, and back again until she’s staring determinedly at her reflection in the bathroom mirror and willing away her confusion.

I don’t want Spike, she recites to herself. I don’t care if Faith wants him. I don’t care that Spike’s been spending all his time with Faith and him. 

I care that he didn’t tell me.

And yet, she still can’t put them all out of her mind at work that day, can’t help imagining the cozy scene between the three of them in Gi… in Giles’s old place, laughing together and researching and murmuring to each other how petty she’s being by sending Spike away. They won’t hate her- there’s too much complication there for hate- but whatever little bits of respect had remained before now would be long gone, even from Spike.

She touches her forehead, remembering his final goodbye to her the night before. It hadn’t seemed like he was finished with her. And this is Spike. He might not love her anymore- and she still feels a pang at that- but she can’t imagine a world where he’d give up on her like this, all because of one argument. 

He’ll be back. He has to be. And they’ll figure out what’s wrong with Faith together.

--

It's with careful optimism that she heads back to her apartment after work. She's worked a late shift today, and while Spike won't always be waiting outside for her, he's just as likely to be lounging around in her apartment, watching the Discovery Channel with rapt fascination and eating her out of chips and home. 

She screws up her face in disgust, hoping against hope that he isn't using blood as a dip again. Last time, she'd yelled at him for eating salsa on the couch, only to fire up even more when she'd peered into his bowl and realized that it wasn't salsa. And while he'd grinned unrepentantly last time and told her she was cute when she was angry (and hadn't that infuriated her even more), today is more tenuous, the comfort gone and replaced with tension. If she berates him today, he might not come back. 

She inhales deeply and unlocks the door, plastering a smile onto her face. "Don’t tell me, it’s sharks again?" she wonders with forced cheeriness, heading for the couch. 

The empty, untouched couch. 

"Ohh..." she moans, sinking down onto it. "Spike?" she tries, glancing around as though he might be hiding behind the couch. 

Crap. The kitchen is untouched, her bowl of cereal still on the table- and Spike always cleans that up, complaining about the smell of the milk- and the three bags of blood she'd defrosted this morning still in a pile at the bottom of the fridge.

It's possible that he just hasn't come yet, right? It's only a few hours after dark, and Spike's been known to lag before. Or maybe he's just as tense as she is and he's lurking on the roof, waiting for her to go patrol so they can skip the pesky talking part. 

But that's not like talks-your-ass-off Spike at all, a nagging voice in her head reminds her. She ignores it, glancing warily at the fire escape. 

No. If that's how he wants to play it, she's not going to feed into this by confronting him on the roof. She's going to go out and do her job, whether or not she's just lost her best friend. Slayerhood comes first. That's never going to change. 

She changes quickly, shaking her head at how much of her thoughts are consumed by Spike. Even back when she and Willow had been close, when Xander had been her eternal support, she'd never given them as much thought as she always has Spike, since the year she'd returned from the dead. 

He's always been there on the periphery of her reflections, whether she's been wrapped up in the idea of finding him so he can use those nimble fingers to make her troubles disappear, or, much later, coming to terms with the intensity of her lo- of herfeelings for him. There had been little she'd given her full attention to, those last months in Sunnydale, other than The First and her vampire companion. Maybe that had been why the potentials had hated her, why G-Giles hadn't had faith in her. And she'd forced both out of her mind after Sunnydale, her sole focuses on building an army and rebuilding her relationships, little time for a vampire it had hurt to think of. 

And then he'd returned, and she'd jumped right back into that dangerous pit of Spike-thoughts so quickly that they had taken her aback. And the more he remains with her, the more he invades her dreams of the present and the future, her everyday life, her mind and soul...

There had been a time when that would have given Spike hope he wouldn't have been able to conceal, given him more ammunition in the "Buffy-love-me" brigade. Now, though, there's no more self-deception on either of their parts. There's no place for love in their friendship, just this caring that overwhelms Buffy sometimes with how deep within her it runs. Just the kind of relationship where she never gets bored of him, where he can brighten her day just by showing up, where she'd never admit it aloud, but she wants nothing more than to be comforted in his arms when she's in pieces...

She shifts from side to side, uncomfortable with her thoughts, and it's with immeasurable relief that she catches sight of a Gnarash demon up ahead tossing around tombstones and bellowing happily. 

She hurls herself into the fray, beating at the scaly demon with practiced skill and refusing to wonder why Spike hadn't joined her yet. He'll come. He always comes. Not that I care, she adds hastily, smirking at her own contrariness. 

The Gnarash's tail whips out to catch her and she takes advantage of the ploy to be shoved backwards, somersaulting against the wall of a crypt, pushing off, and propelling herself through the air toward his head, knife-first. 

He bellows in pain and tries to shake her off, but she twists her knife and he's cut short, melting into a puddle of purple goo below her. 

She falls with the demon, too quickly to move away, and before she can hiss out an "Oh, shi-", she's covered in sticky goo, the foot and knee where she’s landed in a crouch so deep in it that she needs to struggle to get free. 

Well. Tonight's just getting better and better, isn't it?

And then she catches sight of a shifting pile of freshly filled dirt, and there's a fledgling and two other vampires to deal with before she can worry about how awful the goo is, and soon after that, a nasty-looking demon she can't identify keeps her distracted with sizzling fireballs it's blowing from its mouths and by the time that's done, she's bloody and charred and the goo has evaporated away.

"Self-cleaning demons. I like," she comments, wandering down the road that connects to the next cemetery. There's a howl up ahead and she races forward, grateful for some more mindless violence in favor of brooding over a no-show. Which she is not doing. Not. At all. 

She comes in to a brawl between what looks like two Korash demons, a Vor'nisker, and three vampires, all of whom turn to stare at her the moment she appears. "Slayer," one growls, and then they're charging at her all at once with the mindless fury that almost always works to her advantage.

Almost. 

She wistfully recalls the Scythe and its long reach as she snatches her knife and her stake, slashing open one Korash's innards on her right as she dusts a vampire on her left and kicks at the second Korash straight ahead, letting out a strangled gasp when he slices at her knee with a long claw. The second vampire backs away immediately, and she can see his wary face and the circular bites along his neck illuminated in a streetlamp before he tears off. 

The Vor'nisker has taken advantage of her assault on the second Korash to finish what it started, and now the two demons are tussling on the ground. She casts one last glance at them both and makes a hasty decision, following the marked vampire across the path and through the streets. 

The vampire gapes over his shoulder and speeds up, darting around the edge of the closest crypt and taking off in the opposite direction of Buffy’s apartment, toward the dark construction sites and empty lots that she’s never seen the need to patrol. But she’ll take any distraction she can get tonight, so she ignores the throbbing pain in her knee and follows him at top speed, dodging poles and sliding through fences until they’re deep in areas Buffy’s never before ventured to, areas where the back of her neck crawls from the vampire activity around her, where there’s a strange prickling sensation in her stomach and a sudden, instinctive terror that startles her in its primal awareness.

And suddenly, the vampire’s hurtling back toward her, eyes wide in panic, and she’s so startled by its return that it’s able to shove her aside and flee easily before she can turn to stop it. “Hey! What’s-“

There’s a low roar and her heart starts pounding, the incomprehensible terror stronger than before. Something’s coming, something enormous and terrifying and dangerous…

It appears, climbing over a small shed and roaring again, all wild brown fur and long yellow fangs, and her dazed first thought is,Oh. So that’s what it is, because its teeth are at the end of a long snout and in the perfect circular pattern that she recognizes from the necks of tens of vampires.

Her second thought is borne of an ancient sort of terror that speaks only one word in her mind, over and over again.

Run!

She stumbles backwards, struggling to remain calm, and reaches for her knife- and she’s regretting leaving her crossbow behind tonight now more than ever- trying to keep her shaky arms still long enough that she can get a good grip on it. She can’t see much more of the demon, not like this, just that slavering mouth and those yellow slits glaring out at her beyond it, and if she gets a shot…

She throws the knife, but the shot is wobbly, and she barely nicks the side of its mouth before the knife falls to the side and the creature lets out a furious howl, charging forward at her.

Run!

This time, she yields to the terror, trying to get her petrified body to move faster and more nimbly, but the creature’s too close, its teeth are snapping at her boot, biting through the rubber and millimeters away from her foot, and she slides to the ground, unable to flee anymore.

The demon lets go of her boot and rises above her menacingly, its massive form illuminated in the bright beams of the ship behind it, and she tenses, waiting for its next attack. She’s not done yet, even if her stomach has dropped long ago and her whole body is quivering with fear. It’s just a demon. It’s just a demon, she reminds her body forcefully as the creature rears back to attack, blocking out the ship’s lights-

Wait.

The ship’s- 

Her eyes narrow and the quiet calm of a potentially fatal decision made falls over her, just strong enough to give the terror pause. She can do this. If she has backup, she can… Spike, that had better be you, because if I die over this, I’m so gonna kick your ass. 

And she shoots up and head-butts the demon on the side of his jaw, putting all her force behind the blow, enough to budge the massive creature above her and shut herself down completely.

Concussion, she thinks dazedly, sinking to the ground. Spike? 

And everything goes black.