When the word first reached her that Spike had somehow emerged alive from the debacle in L.A., Buffy didn't credit it. Andrew had always had an ... enthusiasm for the vampire. It went with his enthusiasm for the tall tale.


When further word came confirming the first word—Faith was on the scene—a frisson she'd have liked to call joy but that was really dread coursed through her, beginning at her tingling scalp, ending at her twitching ankles. Spike hadn't perished, Spike had been working with Angel—who had not emerged, alive or otherwise, whom Giles maintained had gone to the dark side.


She made up her mind there and then that Spike's surfacing was no reason to leave Scotland.


Then came a further bulletin. He's got amnesia.


If anyone, Faith's message said, could jog Spike's memory, it would be her.


And we need to help him why? Buffy thought. But she packed a bag.







At the entrance of the Council's L.A. facility, off a freeway ramp not far from the waterfront, which from the outside looked an awful lot like the kind of featureless big-box warehouse favored by smugglers and terrorists and other clandestine organizations operating on a semi-underground basis, she was met by one of the local slayers on duty, who led her through a series of featureless corridors, into a large cold cement room, part of which was walled off with strong bars.


Spike, dressed in green scrubs too large for his slender frame, lay on the floor of this cage, knees drawn up, arms wrapped around himself like a shivering child, apparently asleep. Buffy saw that he was bruised and scratched all over, injuries she would've attributed to the big battle, except that vampire healing should've cleared those up days ago.


During the plane trip she'd listened to music and paged through a big stack of magazines and worked on some lesson plans for the advanced slaying workshop Giles was prodding her to start, and just generally willed herself to stay in the moment.


He looked exactly like she remembered, or—no, not exactly like she remembered, because memory was a distorting medium. He looked exactly as he always was, this first fresh unexpected sight of him bringing alive again for her, all the big and little details of him she'd hadn't known she'd forgotten.


Regarding him through the bars, she made the decision she'd been resisting during the journey: what her stance would be, to this This Situation. To Spike Returned. A few facts came together, interlacing like cards when you shuffled the deck, with that clean ththththwap that sounded so tough and efficient. One, that the last time she'd seen him, Spike had turned away her declaration of love, with disbelief. Two, that his death had turned out to be distinctly temporary. Three, that a year had passed, and he'd never let her know he was alive. Had, in fact, sworn Andrew to keep schtum about it, which, amazingly, he had. And four—the cards slid together into one thick rectangle she could tap hard against the table, and done—Spike had been right.


She hadn't loved him. She'd depended on him at the end. She'd mourned him afterwards, longer and harder than she'd mourned Anya or the young slayers, but ultimately, not all that long. And then she'd gradually stopped thinking about him. To the point where, before she got the first call about him, she wasn't sure how many months it had been since he'd fallen from her daily train of musings. After all, who ever thought about what they weren't thinking about?


"Why is he locked up like this?"


Her guide shrugged. "We don't really have anyone who can babysit him. He's constantly agitated, when he's awake he bashes himself into walls and screams. So we had to cage him, and they've been putting sedatives in his food. His blood, I mean. Supposedly he's more 'comfortable' that way, but I guess it's mostly to keep him quiet, because we're pretty short-handed here. I mean, lots of indians, right, but hardly any chiefs. You can give him his next feed if you want. The stuff is in here." She pointed to a cooler in the corner.


"How'd he get here in the first place?"


"One of the slayers came across him unconscious in the wreckage at the end of the battle, and recognized him through the burns. Vi, I think her name was. She had to go back to Cleveland with Faith, they left yesterday."


"So, uh ... it's not just that he has amnesia. He's insane."


"Well, I don't know what he's normally like. But basically, he's a very ravenous, very pissed-off vampire with a really bad case of PTSD, and he doesn't talk. We didn't know whose side he was fighting on. There was a motion to put him out of his misery, but Faith said that wasn't such a good idea. Not 'til you'd seen him, anyway."


"Not 'til I'd seen him," Buffy echoed.


"Yeah. Faith said he used to be, like, your pet vamp." The girl shrugged. "I dunno what that means."


"That Faith. Ha ha. Such a kidder." Buffy frowned. "Okay, now get lost. Please."








She'd heard him whimper before, and she'd heard him cry out before, and she'd coped with him being all flaily and fangy and out of it before, but that didn't really make this any easier.


When, upon rousing, he threw himself headfirst into the bars, and picked himself up and did it again, she got the point of the sedation.


"The battle is over! Stop fighting!"


He trembled all over, emitting a low irritable growl.


"Calm," she said. "Let's just be calm." She approached the bars, hands peaceably upheld.


He focused on her—slowly, as if his eyes weren't working too well.


"Spike. You're okay."


He scrambled into the corner farthest from her, snarling and staring. His yellow eyes were feral, no sign of sanity, let alone recognition.


This was like that time Angel came back from hell, an animal she'd had to chain up.


"Easy now. Easy. You're safe."


The other slayer had left her with the key to the cage. When she opened it, taking care to be slow, to make gentling sounds and keep a friendly, nonthreatening smile on her face, his snarl angled up into a roar.


"It's okay. It's okay. I'm not going to hurt you."


Before she'd closed half the distance between them, he pounced, knocking her over, scrambling out of the cage to throw himself with a sickening clang against the outer metal door. He bounced, fell, sprang up, threw himself again. When she reached him, blood was streaming in his eyes.


But when she touched him, he froze.







"Spike, it's me."


The growl rumbled through him, like he was an idling engine. He kept his head turned away, but as long as her hand stayed on his arm, he was still.


When she let go, he hurled himself once more at the door. His body hit with a dead dull thud.


"Stop. Okay? You're hurting yourself." Once more she curled a hand around his shoulder, and once more he froze. Still not looking at her, still fanged out. She hit the intercom button.


When the other slayer reappeared on the far side of the locked door, Buffy said, "I'm taking him out of here. The confinement is making him crazy."


Arm in arm, she led him back the way she'd just come, to the plain glass doors of the warehouse, overlooking the parking lot, and a jumble of similar buildings It was just after sundown. The other girl glanced around at them. "I probably shouldn't let you do this, but like I said, we're short-staffed. I hope you know what you're doing."


"He shouldn't have to be a prisoner."


"He's an out-of-control vampire."


"He's not out of control right now."


"Where are you taking him?"


"Does it matter? He's with me. That's all you Indians need to know."


"I know you're supposed to be the boss of all of us, but ... he tried to tear the throat out of everybody who went near him. I don't think this is a good idea."


She couldn't bring herself to look at Spike, or at the girl she was addressing. Buffy kept her eyes on her parked rental car, gleaming in the yellow sodium lights. "I won't let him hurt anyone. If it turns out that he's got to be ... I'll take care of it." Without waiting for anything more, she pushed the door open, and tugged Spike through it.


He stopped just outside, lifting his face into the warm, tarry evening air. Buffy watched him then. His nostrils flared. He seemed to be surveying the sky. When he found the thin sliver of moon, he stared at it as the seconds lengthened. Her hand was still curled around his arm.


"See? No more cage."


He leveled his gaze on her now, the golden eyes glinting, lips pulled back around the fang array. He was still trembling, shivering almost, as if he was cold, as if he was in pain.


"You know me, right?" He must know something, given that her touch, and presumably her scent, was enough to calm him.


His growl renewed itself, and he broke from her, loping fast across the parking lot. Okay, maybe this was a bad idea. She took off after. Spike ran with his head up, looking around, turning to right and left. It only took a few moments for her to recognize that he wasn't fleeing her—he was searching. A burst of speed caught her up with him. Again, her hand on his arm brought him to a stop.


"I don't think you're going to find them. Anyway, we're pretty far from the epicenter of the battle. And I'm sorry, but I don't think anyone else survived."


The after-the-fact intelligence about the L.A. battle was sketchy, and she didn't understand it very well. Giles had claimed Angel had gone bad, allied himself with some local branch of Big Evil, Inc, but she couldn't bring herself to believe that, anymore than she could quite bring herself to believe he was really gone forever, even though for the last year she'd barely given more thought to seeing more of him than of Spike, whom she'd known to be dead.


Supposedly.


She was resolutely not thinking about that meaning Angel was dead. She wasn't ready to plunge into mourning again now.


What Spike had to do with any of this was still a big goose egg to her.


And for all she really knew, what Spike was searching for right now was simply prey. A sedative-free kill.


His face was such a blank. Plucking his arm, she drew him back towards her car, and this time he followed passively enough.


She thought—how not?—of the time she'd rescued him from the torture of the First. He'd looked at her then, and said, I knew you'd come for me.


He'd known that, and later on he knew better than to take her declaration at the moment of their parting for more than he believed it ought to be. It irritated her, when she went over it. How complacently he'd said, No you don't. Like he always knew her better than she knew herself.


Even if, as she slowly understood later, it was true.


She turned to face him, tugged his hand.


There was nothing in his eyes but banked, apprehensive wildness.


"I came for you again, Spike. It's me, it's Buffy."


The words emerged from her lips on a bolus of pain she was not at all prepared for. This reunion, with someone dead, someone she'd assessed, and filed away in the less-trammeled sections of memory, an enemy who became a sort of ally, even, for a little while, a sort of friend; a curiosity, a strange presence she'd never quite known how to relate to. An incident of a few years in her life, past, done, over. This return brought with it a base dismay, which she felt in her sinews, in her mind like the oppressiveness of an oncoming illness. Like the time when she'd been too depressed to really know herself. She recognized that dreaded shadow, and wished she'd never come here.


He didn't answer.


With resolve, she put the dread away from her, and led him back to the car.