She’s grouchy and snippy and he’s tense and unsuccessfully tamping it down. It isn’t a good match.

“This wasn’t your decision!” she snaps angrily at Spike. 

“Think this is something I’m looking forward to? No, it was yours,” he says calmly, following her as she storms through his ship, shoving bugs aside- barely concealing an automatic shudder as she does- until she finally makes her way to his shoddy excuse for a bridge. “Remember?”

“Not now! Not like this!” What had given him the right to make this decision for her? And while she’d been touched by his faith in her almost three hours before, now she’s looking for someone to blame, something to rant about as they near Faith and Angel. “You screwed up everything!” 

And Spike is stubbornly refusing to lose his temper, and that’s frustrating her even more. “You’ll thank me later.”

She whirls around, ready to punch that taut look off his face, but he’s already turned away and busied himself with something on the nearest console. “It wasn’t your right. You’ve been taking away my choices all night tonight! First you steal my demon, now you kidnap me and force me to go…to go there!”

“Didn’t steal your demon,” Spike informs her, narrowing his eyes at something on the window in front of him. “Big Ugly ran off the mo’ I tried to land on it. You can go try to get yourself killed again tonight.”

“You didn’t kill the demon?” Now she has reason to be furious, and she’s glad for it. “That thing is going to go off and kill more…more…vampires!” she finishes lamely. “Or…or just get them mad and encourage them! And then people are gonna die!”

“Vampires?” Spike frowns at her. “That’s what’s been biting them?” He eyes her warily. “You didn’t get chewed up, did you?”

She shakes her head irritably. “That’s not the point! The point is, you just-“

“Oh I get the point here, love.” And it’s with a measure of relief that she can see the annoyance building on his face. “Come.” 

He’s got his hand on her arm and is dragging her into the next room before she can object, slamming the door shut and slamming into her with a blow to the head so sharp that she sees stars. She barely has time to give him a wounded look before he goes for her face again, and it’s all she can do to block his fist and kick him in the gut instead. “What the fuck are you doing, you idiot?”

He beams stupidly, rocking back and forth on the balls of his feet with that gleeful carelessness that he always gets when they fight. Whatever had been bothering him before, it’s gone now. “Come on, Slayer. You want a fight? Give it to me.”

She hurls herself at him again, anger and confusion propelling her forward until they’re sparring back and forth, blocking blows and fighting dirty and if Spike keeps up this sick fascination with trying to make her nose bleed, she’s going to remind him who started that in the first place, and…

…And now she’s jumping on him as he spins away from her, legs wrapped around him as he staggers forward and into a wall, and then they’re both falling to the ground, loose-limbed and breathing hard. Spike’s still laughing, and her irritation has melted away with the battle and she can’t help grinning a little, too, rolling off of him so that they’re side-by-side, lying on their backs and gazing up at the ceiling as they wind down.

This is all she needs, a forced unwinding before confronting her demons, and now she’s relaxed and a little closer to ready. Spike knows, of course. He always knows exactly what she needs, and she can’t help but feel a wash of affection toward him for gifting that to her again. Why are you so frustratingly perfect sometimes? Sometimes. When he isn’t being an ass or a perv or lying to her or not giving her his unconditional support-

I am so spoiled. But she rests her head against the side of his chest anyway, unable to keep the grin off her face even when the ship shudders down in landing procedure. 

He nudges her. “What is it?”

Her grin widens. “Nothing. Want to go…?”

And then reality sets in again, and she springs away from him so quickly that she skids backwards against the wall. “Spike!”

He blinks up at her, eyes lidded over and sated as though he’d just- not thinking about that!“Hm?”

“Spike! I’m all sweaty and gross and now we’re here and Faith’s going to see me like this and that’s not okay!” She folds her arms reprovingly. “How could you do this to me?”

He makes a face. “You look gorgeous as always, pet. Much better than Faith.”

She can’t keep the smile off her face. “Really?” 

He takes her proffered hand and pulls himself up. “Absolutely. Girl looked like she was on death’s door last I saw her. Harris is more attractive than she is right now.”

“Idiot.” She bats away his hand playfully, pushing aside selfish relief and the nagging reminder that there’s another person she doesn’t want to see looking like this. “How are we doing this? Mad dash through the sun?”

He nods. “You first. Get the door open, I’ll come running.” He leads the way back to the entry door on the bridge, snagging a suspiciously familiar-looking blanket from a shelf near the entrance.

“Is that mine?”

Spike ignores her. “We’re in the farmhouse just behind Faith’s place. Go in through the back door.”

“Don’t order me around.” But she squeezes his hand and pushes the door open, overwhelming dread rushing over her the moment she glimpses the little flat and the carefully tended garden- one she knows neither Faith nor Spike would ever have the patience for cultivating. Which means…

“Buffy.”

She licks dry lips as Spike drops a friendly kiss on the top of her head. “You’ll be fine.”

She steps out into the not-quite English sunlight and hurries toward the cottage ahead.

And she probably should have expected it, but it still shakes her when Angel opens the door. 

She stares at him. He stares back, and for a moment, she envies his poker face. There's nothing in his expression, just a solid wall that shields her from his emotional depths. And she knows that her face is awash with painful, dangerous memories, and he can see it all. 

"Buffy," he says blankly. 

Then she's blown to the side by the whirlwind of energy that is her partner, smoke already trailing from the top of his head as he barrels into the house. "Knew there was a reason why I only visited after nightfall," he says ruefully, and she stretches out an automatic hand to steady him. She feels him shift his other arm and reach out to bump his hand against hers comfortingly, and it's just enough to pull her gaze from Angel's.

She closes her eyes briefly, feeling his own still burning into her. "You got in okay?"

"Yeah." Spike nods to Angel, and she can sense the suddenly returned rigidity in his stance beside her. It surprises her at first, accustomed as she is to Spike's carelessness about the Twilight situation, but then she remembers- this is how it's always been, hasn't it? Angel and Spike, wary and caught up in macho pissing contests that have little to do with her and everything to do with their shared history. 

Unbidden, her fingers move to encircle his risk in a replica of the comfort he'd given her, and she can feel him relax as they face their shared fear. "We've got news about Faith," Spike announces. "Thought we'd both come and talk to her."

Angel jerks. "Faith? She's not..." He gestures helplessly at the open stairwell in front of them. "She's not doing well." The mask falters for just a moment as Buffy turns to stare at him again, and it's only Spike's hand on hers again that pulls her away. 

"Buff-" Angel stops mid-word, his voice strained and his eyes blank. "I-" 

"Please don't." Her voice escapes her lips in a faint whisper, and catches on the second word. “I can’t…”

She turns deliberately, focusing desperately on the rest of the house. She can’t do this now, not the anguished, tear-filled discussions by which her relationship with Angel has been defined since they’d first clashed when she’d turned seventeen. She has too much to worry about with Faith and Spike to work things out with Angel.

She’s in the same room as he is and is still thinking coherently, which she counts as a step forward. “The…the house looks the same,” she remarks quietly. Well, not quite the same since the last time she’d been there, when Faith had turned it into a disaster area hunting for the book Giles had left her- and hadn’t she wondered then what Giles was thinking, giving his books to someone with absolutely no respect for them?- but it’s as tidy as it had been the few other times she’d visited, small and homey and peaceful. Angel’s influence. 

But it still feels like Giles, and that hurts all the more when she’s standing with her back to the vessel of his death. The vessel she’d unleashed. 

She’d killed Giles through her own rashness and thoughtlessness. And that fact has never been more real than now.

A loose arm slides around her waist, gentle and firm, and Spike’s voice is murmuring in her ear, “You slipped away, love,” pulling her back to the present. She swallows and nods and allows him to steer her back to Angel. She stares at her former lover for a moment, watching the flash of pain that crosses his face at the sight of Spike’s possessive grip on her, and finds that she can’t hurt for him, too. Not when she’s hurting for the rest of the world.

“Thanks,” she murmurs, pulling away from his grasp. She knows Spike well enough to guess that needling Angel must be one of his favorite pastimes, and while there’s a part of her that hates refusing Spike anything, especially when he’s being so supportive, she rebels at the idea of him pretending to care to get a rise out of his rival. “I’m going to-“ She gestures to the stairs.

“Right.” Spike is staring at Angel now, something dark and regretful in his gaze, and she hurries away before the mood gets any heavier.

Faith’s room is open and she’s lying still in what must have once been Giles’s bed, her eyes lidded with exhaustion and her face pale but for the faint beginnings of a familiar dark pattern crawling up her neck to just below her jaw. She hasn’t looked this bad, not since-

“You put me in the hospital?” a hoarse, wry tone emerges from Faith’s dry lips, and Buffy realizes that she’s spoken aloud. “Bygones and all that, right? S’cool.” 

Buffy’s stomach drops. “Faith…”

A marked hand pops up to wave weakly. “Hey, B. Nice of you to drop by.”

“I should’ve come earlier.” She should have, and it has not nearly as much to do with Faith’s illness as with the fact that she’s been letting someone else she cares about- as irritating and obnoxious and frustrating as the other slayer is- slip away from her.

Faith twitches her head in a shake. “Nah, I get it. It can’t be easy to be around Big ‘n Broody down there.” She jerks a thumb at the doorway. “I know I signed up for outcast camp when I took him, but hey- it’s nothing new for me, y’know?” 

“You’re not an outcast.” Not like Buffy is, in a world where even her most trusted lieutenants from years previous won’t work with her anymore. 

“Yeah? The other slayers- the ones who still see themselves as slayers, even- are holed up five miles away from here. You know how often they’ve visited? Once, and that was to order me to keep ‘my vampire’ out of their patrolling territory. I’m a traitor again…practically as bad as you.” 

There’s a definite smirk on Faith’s face at that observation, but Buffy swallows her natural indignation at Faith’s (well-deserved) accusation and instead schools her features into something more somber and murmurs, “Thanks. For doing what I couldn’t.”

Faith blinks up at her, and Buffy can tell that she’s surprised. “Buffy…” She doesn’t finish the sentence, and that’s kind of okay, because Buffy gets it, and now they’re both quiet, morose and lost in memories of a simpler time when nothing was simple but at least it was all on a smaller scale, somehow, and the bad guys were defeated and no beyond their little group knew the cost.

“I’m going to stop this thing,” Buffy promises. “Is there anything you can tell me? Anyone suspicious you’ve met recently? Any places you’ve-“

But Faith is shaking her head weakly. “There’s nothing. This came from nowhere. I just woke up sick one morning, and Angel spotted the markings on my leg. A few days later, I couldn’t get out of bed. And now I’m dying, right?”

“You’re not going to-“

“B.” Faith’s voice is knowing. “You wouldn’t be here if I wasn’t going to die. What happened?”

And she can’t lie to a doomed ally, so she tells her about Simone in halting tones, skipping nothing because they can’t afford to sugarcoat the truth. Faith doesn’t look that far behind Simone, and that alone is enough to fill her with dread. “I don’t know what else we can do, or where Simone’s been that you both could have developed the same virus, but I’m going to figure it out.”

There's so much that Faith can retort to that, so much she can use to attack her sister slayer. Buffy's got no leads, no ideas, and she's waited far too long to claim to be worried about Faith now, right? But they've both matured, more than Buffy would have ever suspected was possible before the Twilight fiasco, and Faith takes her by surprise. "Of course you will," she murmurs. "You're the hero."

She closes her eyes and Buffy bends to brush a kiss against her one-time friend's forehead, brushing away matted hair stuck to Faith's skin with sweat. She can't recall the envy and longing that she'd felt toward Faith since Giles had first turned to the other slayer, not anymore. Not when she’s Faith’s last hope. 

She moves from the bed quietly, Faith’s light snoring already ringing in her ears and the low tones from downstairs drifting up to the stairwell.

“-Before or after you decided to jump the villain train?” Spike’s asking Angel coolly, and she freezes, a hand reaching out to squeeze the banister as she listens.

“That’s irrelevant,” Angel retorts. “Didn’t see you complaining much. You’ve got what you’ve always wanted, haven’t you?”

Spike’s voice is icy cold. “You have no idea what I want. Or what I have.”

“You’re going to lose it,” Angel murmurs. “Buffy’s in just as much danger as Faith. This virus…we both know it’s specifically affecting slayers. It could be her next.” A dark chill settles over Buffy and she turns to descend the stairs abruptly.

“I’m never going to let that happen,” Spike is growling when she reaches the bottom floor, and both vampires jerk abruptly at her intrusion. 

She moves to Spike immediately, touching his clenched fist and watching the tension slide away. “Hey.”

He smiles at her. “Was Faith able to tell you anything?”

She shakes her head. “Nah. But I’ve got some ideas.” It’s a lie, of course, but Angel doesn’t need to know that. And Buffy doesn’t plan on giving up until Faith’s okay, so it doesn’t matter.

But he knows. It’s odd. They’ve spent more years apart than they’d ever spent together, and yet, he can still see straight through her to the scared, helpless girl beneath the façade. “There’s a slayer base not too far from here,” Angel says abruptly.

“Five miles.” She’s staring up at Spike, her fingers toying with his sleeve as she addresses the vampire standing behind her. “Faith said.”

“Right. You can…you can try talking to them. It’s some of your old lieutenants, I think. And Andrew. They might know something.” Angel’s voice is even as he speaks, and she can’t choke out a response.

Spike says it instead. “Thanks…you big idiot,” he adds, almost as an afterthought borne of the realization that he’s being too civil, and Buffy can’t help but grin.

She turns just in time to see Angel smirk, and it fades away as quickly as it comes. “Just…help her, Spike. She doesn’t deserve this.”

It takes Buffy a moment to realize that he’s talking about Faith, not her, and the embarrassment of that error forces the words from her. “We will,” she says firmly, meeting Angel’s eyes. 

“Thank you.” His words are simple and sincere, and for the first time in a year, she feels like she might someday be able to forgive him his sins. 

Her own, she isn’t as sure about.