"Spike. It's me, it's Buffy. Talk to me."


Another roar.


Why, she wondered, did vampires roar? It was kind of odd. They weren't lions. So why sound like lions?


And why hadn't she gotten some clothes back on them both before trying this? What was her rush?


Next thought: this had worked a lot better when it was about getting Angel to bite her so he wouldn't die.


That was the last coherent thought she managed before the rain of blows started.







Dry as the desert. Her mouth. Nose. Eyes. Couldn't open them. Huge whanging pain in the back of her head. Body one big ache, that as she came to, resolved into a whole constellation of aches. Biggest of all, at her throat.


She tried to rise. Nausea gripped her; her head felt at once huge and lighter than air. Rolled, and fell. Crack. She gagged, forced her gorge down, forced herself to roll again, onto her belly. Tangled in—something, ropes of seaweed.


Sick. She was going to be sick.


No. No no no I am the slayer and I am not going to barf.


Opened her eyes at last to find herself on the floor, beside the training room sofa she'd just plunged off of.


The tangle a wool throw rug with fringes.


Steps on the stairs then. She wanted to look up, but it was too hard to move.


"Oh no—what happened down here? Buffy!" Steps hastening across the wood floor, and then something swung in her line of sight, orange. Hands on her shoulders.


"Told you I was dangerous."


Willow said, "Help me lift her up. No, wait. I'll do it, this is gentler."


Nothing touched her, yet suddenly she was borne up off the floor, supported at all points, the rug covering her. She seemed to be floating, sailing. Tried not to turn her head. Failed. Bitter stuff splashing out of her open mouth.


"Ugh!" Willow jumped back. "It's okay, Buffy. I'll clean it up later. Try to hold it together for a minute, I'm moving you upstairs."


She couldn't see them, the way she was facing, just her progress, across the training room, up to the main level. Heard the footsteps, Willow's and Spike's, trailing after her.


Then she was lowered onto the wide deep sofa in the living room, against a pile of cushions. She could see them now, the little bit of magic flash dancing around Willow's fingers, and beyond her, hovering in the distant doorway, Spike. Still wearing his game face.


"I'm going to be—"


A wastebasket appeared, more magic, just in time for her to be sick into it. She fell back.


"You lost a lot of blood," Willow muttered. "You should get a transfusion."


"No hospitals. I just need to rest."


"How many presidents?"


"Shrub. It's 2005. My head hurts. There's only one of you though."


"Good. I guess you'll be all right." Willow gestured behind her. "He'll make you some hot tea."


"Is he all right?"


"He's not the one I'm worried about."


"Will, it wasn't his fault. I provoked him."


"Why would you do that?"


"Because he'd gotten lost again, and I thought getting him to vamp out would make him realize he wasn't ... William Pratt. So I provoked him. It was a stupid stupid thing to do. I should've been more patient."


"Pratt?" Willow started to grin, but cut it off. "He said he was William Pratt?"


"I guess that's his real name? He never seemed to know that before. He regressed, it was weird, and scary, he was declaiming all this poetry at me—"


"Declaiming! No wonder you had to punch him."


"Ha ha. Okay, basket—"


The last bit was nothing but bile. Bringing it up left her too dizzy to talk any more.


"Just rest, I'll talk. You're going to want to know why I'm here—Spike called me with your phone. A couple of hours ago. You were unconscious for a while. He said he almost dra— uh, he had a taste."


From the kitchen, she heard the whistle of the kettle.


"I'll get your tea."


"No, Spike. Let Spike."


Willow cast a dubious look over her shoulder. "Just don't move." She padded off into the kitchen.


The ceiling was very white. A lot of things in this very over-designed minimalist house were white. Buffy stared at it, trying to reassemble the whole event. She couldn't recall being bitten. The pain at the back of her head suggested she'd fallen on it hard. Had she already been out when he went for her throat?


And when did he come back to himself? Before he bit her? During? After?


Willow reappeared with a steaming cup.


"Where is he?"


"He ... he doesn't want to disturb you."


Disturb. There's that word again "Spike!" Her intended shout emerged as a rasp. Willow helped her sit up, put the cup in her hands.


"Just drink this."


"Spike!"


He reappeared then. Again coming no further than the doorway. Too far off. In his clothes, she noticed, down to the boots. Still wearing his fangs. She glanced away.


"What wrong with him?" She tried to whisper this, but it came out, loud and blunt, and made her wince.


"He said he's ... having a little trouble controlling his face."


Buffy wanted to say, Oh go away. Just go away and leave us together and I will kiss him better. I will love him better. I will never ever hit him again and we'll both be better.


"Spike."


"Don't want me near after I savaged you."


"Spike." She stretched out a hand. Wanting to cry, to have a good lose-it-all childish tantrum until he came and held her, held her while she wept it all out against his neck. "I'm sorry."


"Lost the time," he said. "It's no good. Can't trust me." He wouldn't move into the room. She flexed her fingers imploringly, but he wouldn't come to her. Willow gathered her hand down, placed it back around the cup.


"Spike, maybe you can get Buffy's robe, or her clothes or something?"


When he'd gone upstairs, Willow leaned in close. "I think it's time for the two of you to come back to Scotland. We can try to help him, and if there's more trouble like this—you won't be all alone."


"I want to be alone. I know him. No one else knows him or cares."


"Buffy, no one's going to keep you from each other. But he's right, he's dangerous. It's dangerous for you to stay by yourselves." Willow smoothed her hair. "You're white as the proverbial sheet, chica."


"He's my man, Will. You get that, right?"


Willow smiled, and squeezed her hand. "I got that a while back. Maybe even before you did."








~~~



"Spike, what about those clothes?"


He was in tears when she found him. Willow, mindful of other times she'd been in proximity to Spike when he was in distress, kept her distance, ready to hold him off by magical force. Lips grimaced over the exposed fangs, tears rolled down the lumpy cheeks to drip off the incisors.


"She's going to be all right," Willow said. "And she's asking for you. So it's all right."


He raised his head, made a violent dismissive gesture of the hand. "Nearly dead, when I found her. Found her stuck onto my fangs, found my belly full of her life."


"Oh." She'd wondered about the sequence. He'd been vague on the phone, vague when she arrived. "Bad black-out, huh? What's the last thing you remember prior to, uh ..."


"Gettin' stuck into her throat? We'd been in bed."


"Oh. Okay. No need to say any more about that. Spike—maybe if you try to, you know, de-fang yourself? You'd feel better."


"Don't you think I've been bloody trying!"


"Okay, okay! It's just ... Buffy would like you to go to her, but, it would be easier, I think if—"


"Not goin' to her. Girl's not in her right mind. Promised she'd never turn on me."


"She said she hit you because she thought it would help."


He looked at her like she was stupid. "She won't do it, so you'll have to. Make it quick, yeah? Wave your magic little hand an' get it over."


"Wave my—what? Wait a minute. What are we talking about?"


"She thinks I'm retrievable. Said she'd never give up on me. Silly bitch, we can see that's not on. Do it."


"Spike, I'm not going to slay you."


"Know you could do it with a snap of those fingers."


"Yeah, I could. But I won't. Um ... are you feeling like you might have another episode? Is that what you're trying to say?"


"Trying to say I'm: No. Damn. Good."


"Look, I can put some magical restraints on you for a little while, if that would make you feel better. But there's no way I'm slaying you, so forget that."


He turned the full fierceness of his demon face on her. "You know it's only thing to do. Why won't you just do it?"


"Because she knows I'd have her head."


Willow turned. "Buffy! I told you to stay put!"


"I wanted Spike. He wouldn't come to me. Could you give us a minute, Willow?"


"Don't you leave us, witch."


"Please," Buffy said. She looked green, holding the rug wrapped around herself like a sarong, leaning in the bedroom doorway. Caked blood on her neck, hair in cavegirl mode.


But still Buffy even so.


"I'll be just outside the door," Willow said. She pulled it almost to, so she couldn't see, but could still perfectly hear, sitting on the floor with her back against the wall, what was going on just a few feet away on the other side.


Hear Buffy shuffle towards him even as he muttered at her to keep her distance, hear how she lost her balance and he leapt to catch her. Hear her one little glad sob and her lips against his skin and her whispered apologies. How she knew she'd made a mistake, how she should never ever have hit him and it was all her fault and how he should be glad really because he'd saved her life, he'd come back to himself in time and he'd saved her and she was fine and they were fine.


Spike growled as she talked, that kind of under-the-breath growling that still gave her the willies even with all the power she now commanded. Willow could picture them—she'd be looking without fear into that distorted face, not letting him turn away from her.


"I'm a time-bomb," he said. "Go off at any moment."


"No—it's only that I provoked you. I don't know what I was thinking. You have to forgive me. I swear I'll never do that again."


"You apologize too much. Bad sign."


"No. No. No. Don't say that."


"Bloody hell. Wasn't you at all really, was it? Was seein' myself in that TV thing."


A silence. Then—"You remember that? Spike, you remember? You said your name was William Pratt. You—"


"It's comin' to me now. Saw myself, only it wasn't what I expected. What I felt like. Did my head in."


"I know. And I was stupid, I should've waited, or called for help, instead I—"


"You're a vampire slayer. Stands to reason, what you did."


"No. I was foolish, but I know better now—"


"You an' me. Tickin' time bomb."


It was surprising at first, this whole turn of events, but really, Willow thought, when you remembered the whole thing with Angel, and then with Riley ... it made a kind of sense. Had a kind of inevitability. Back in Sunnydale, those last weeks in the house, she'd wondered if Buffy and Spike weren't, somehow in the midst of all that crowding and chaos, managing some stolen moments together. At the time the idea had felt slightly obscene, yet still possible. She'd been so intense about him then, intense and also intensely private. And in the year since, her complete lack of reference to him, not so much as an idle remark dropped, even when anyone said something about the old days ... she kept him close, Buffy did. Hidden away close in her heart. That was how she loved.


They were silent then, on the other side of the door. Willow heard it as a stymied silence, frustration, impasse.


Then Spike growled again. Nothing else for a little while, but that growl that was like breathing, and she imagined him, struggling with himself, with his mystery and blankness and love for this girl he thought he'd just met, and wanting to have an end put to it. Then Buffy whispering, and Willow couldn't make out what she said. Until she called out, "All right, Will. We'll go back to HQ. We're ready."


When Willow looked in, they were sitting arm-in-arm, at the foot of the rumpled bed.


Spike wore his human face again, eyelids red and crisp. Buffy was smiling. He looked a little bit, Willow thought, like he was in custody.