There was always a percentage of the girls—a slowly declining one, she was glad to notice—that watched her every move whenever she appeared among them. Buffy knew the girls were fascinated by her; she was the original, the most powerful, full of glamour and mystery and experience. There were so many of them, that she hadn't really gotten on a familiar footing with any of the new slayers. She taught them and advised them and sometimes bawled them out. They gossiped about her, assessed her, criticized her behind her back. Sometimes she knew what was being said, and sometimes she could only guess, and most of the time she didn't really want to know.

But in the days after she brought Spike into the castle, she was aware with something like paranoia, of how closely she was being observed, speculated on, discussed. Especially after Xander's abrupt departure with a small squad—answering a call from Faith for him to coordinate the big anit-demon op in Cleveland—something she might have horned in on herself, if not for Spike's presence, and despite Faith's resentment. Xander's anger and disgust about Spike's presence weren't exactly a secret; even though the op was real and Xander the one who'd have gone no matter what, his leaving forty-eight hours after Spike's arrival created a buzz.

It was easy to ignore for a couple of days—she thought of herself as being on her honeymoon, not really wanting to leave her rooms, except for those hours at night when they went out into the woods, so that Spike could have his air and his stars and his long run, making her labor to keep up as he tracked animals for the sport of it, moving swift and silent through the shrouded leafy dark. Then in the hour before sunrise, making love to her on a mossy rock by a purling stream, a location out of one of the romance novels the girls swapped in the laundry room.

But they couldn't hide out forever. She was aware that Spike was already concealing a restlessness that could only get worse. She was afraid to probe his thoughts too deeply. The morning after Xander left, she brought him down to the training room. It was her usual time for teaching, a good time to get him involved.

He'd resisted sparring with her out in the woods—she'd tried to get him going a couple of times, dancing around him, punching the air, coaxing playfully C'mon, try to get a kick in at me, just try, but he preferred, he said, to cover ground, needed to dispel himself ahead of the long daylight hours shut indoors.

The room was already full of girls n motion, working out amidst shouts and grunts and jokes and chanted count-downs. When they walked in, everyone stopped. Every head swiveled.

At her side, Spike stood frozen. She whispered, too low for any but vampire ears to hear: "Are they too much for you?"

He blinked. She imagined him taking them in, a huge roomful of slayers, through all his vampire senses. He was tense, planted back on his heels, motionless. Assessing.

Then his shoulders rolled, neck curling. He stepped forward with a smile. "Hello my darlings."

A shiver climbed Buffy's spine, distinct as fingers spidering up the cleft. It was him. He was back. This whole thing was over. He'd just reintegrated, bam, like that.

"Oh my God—Spike—"

He stepped forward, just out of reach of her reaching hand. "William the Bloody, the Notorious, the Reviled, at your service. Which of you ladies would like to take me on?"

No one moved. That's when he turned to her. Fanged out. "Shall we show 'em then, Buffy? Little demo for the troops?

Behind the fierce array, the puckish grin, his uncertainty glimmered.

She'd been wrong. He wasn't back. He was making it up. Doing what he thought she expected. He was, ha ha ... Vamping.

In front of all these keen observers, nothing was more important than to show him in his best light. Her emotions were nobody's business. She shook back her hair, took a stance. "Hand to hand?"

"As you prefer."

Later, she would tell herself again that it was all her fault, for not preparing the way. Not talking first to the girls. Not talking to him.

She hadn't anticipated the variables. What could happen.

What did.

That a Dinka slayer, six-foot-two at fifteen years old and with only rudimentary English, would impetuously seize the opportunity of Spike's turned back to launch her own attack.

Or that quicker than the eye could track, Spike would break Bakhita's long thigh bone in two places and then have to be dragged off her neck, the blood spattering from his lips as he screamed.

Three slayers held him down until Willow dashed in to put a stasis spell on him.

It took two hours for him to stop making the pitiful keen of an animal with its leg in a trap, for the game-face to finally fall away. Another hour in which he slept—at least, she hoped it was sleep, though it seemed like death. Buffy sat by him on the training mat, his hand wrapped in both of hers. The room had been cleared except for three slayers who stayed to keep a watch. It was all she could do not to tell them to get lost, but she knew they were there on Giles' orders, and that they wouldn't go. Anyway, it was probably better that they get this eyeful, so that later on they could tell the other girls how it was when the vampire came to, how after his initial confusion, his first thought was of the girl he'd hurt.

"They took her to the hospital. She'll heal." No need yet to tell him that he'd shattered the bone, that she was in surgery to have a metal rod inserted. She was a slayer, she'd be whole again in a week. "And she'll have this experience. She'll have learned something."

"Didn't want to teach her that." He groaned, struggling against the stasis that held him almost immobile.

"Did you ... did you have another memory, when she came at you?"

The mere question seemed to cause him pain. She couldn't tell if his silence was because he couldn't answer, or wouldn't. She smoothed a hand through his hair. "Spike, it'll be all right."

"I am a monster."

"No. It was my mistake, I didn't prepare the girls. You just weren't ready yet."

He fanged out. "I am always ready."

There was something so deadening, so despairing, in this display, that she couldn't find a quick answer. Spike turned his head away from her. She felt he wanted to crawl off, like that wounded animal, to hide himself.

Then Giles was there, with Willow. Released from the spell, Spike sat up. He moved like an old tired man. When she tried to help him, he waved her off. Rising slowly, a hand to his forehead. "How's the girl?"

"She'll recover," Giles said.

"Suppose you have somethin' you want to say to me."

"Giles, this isn't his fault. I—"

"Don't."

Anger sparked at his pleading look. "No, you don't. Don't spin this accident into a shame spiral. You have nothing to be ashamed of. You are one of us, and you're not whole, and there's no one here who doesn't want to help you." A glance at the others. "Right, Giles? Will?"

Willow, bless her: "Absolutely right."

Giles, after a pause: "We must address your condition. In a practical manner."

"Lock me up."

"No! That doesn't solve anything."

"I'm a killer. I—"

"No. You're just not ready to be exposed to threatening situations. Any warrior who'd survived what you've survived, would've done the same. We don't punish that person, we care for—"

"I'm not a person, you silly bint."

"Mr Pratt, would you join me in my study? We can talk more comfortably there."

The name, Giles' tone, snapped him around. "Right. Lead on."

She followed, but Giles laid a hand on her arm. "Not you, Buffy."

"What do you mean, not me? You can't—"

"Can speak for myself," Spike said.

"I know, but—" How she hated having to relinquish control! "Giles. Remember what I said. Wherever he goes, I go too."



Spike looked around. The study might as well have been in-situ for decades; done up in donnish splendor, walls of books, old good rugs, heavy draperies, worn-in sofas, a huge desk heaped with material, the small computer set off to the side—its user clearly not a computing man.

An obscure thought wriggled through his mind, that he was here to be caned.

"Water? Ice?"

"Neat. Just a finger'll do me."

Giles handed him his drink in a heavy crystal glass, and took his seat not behind the desk but in the other leather club chair opposite Spike's.

"Didn't want to break that big girl. Couldn't control myself. She thinks I'm all right, but I know nothin' of the sort."

"Quite. Yet I think her assessment is correct. Post-traumatic stress. Complicated by the fact that you're a vampire as well as a man."

"As well?" Spike chuckled. "Girl's not here. Don't need to humor her."

"I'm not humoring her, or you. Everything she said when you two arrived, was entirely appropriate. I still don't know for certain what you were up to in Los Angeles after the battle in the Sunnydale hellmouth. Set that aside for now. Whatever has become of your mind, your soul seems to be intact. I'm going to proceed on the understanding that you are one of ours."

One of ours. The phrase echoed strangely in his head. "You didn't want to let me in this place. You didn't like the sight of me with her. Why not?"

Giles swirled the scotch in his glass, sipped. "Never mind that, Pratt. All water under the bridge."

"No one will tell me anything. An' call me Spike, I know you want to. Pratt's a bit of an unfortunate handle anyhow."

"Well, Spike. Willow believes that your chances to regain your memory organically are still good. But that it's best that we don't make suggestions which—"

"Suggestions?" He laughed. "That what we callin' 'em now, all my horrors? Tell me this much at least—I ever hurt you?"

"Physically? No. In fact, you came to my aid a time or two over the years."

"Saved your life?" he sneered.

"In fact."

They all kept saying that. He really might as well have been Jesus like Harris said, to hear how they all rabbited on, how they got that solemn po-face expression when the matter came up. Made him feel sick. "I'm no good to anybody in this state. Dangerous. Useless."

"No one is useless. You would like to be of use?"

Something in the question flooded him with a longing he hadn't yet realized. "Hate this feelin' like a bloody invalid. I'm able-bodied enough. Give me a mop and a bucket. Give me—"

Giles extinguished his smile in his scotch glass. "Work there is here, a-plenty."

"Well let me at it, then. Need to fill my days, do some bit of good. Just tell the slayers not to make any sudden moves around me. Not to come up on me from behind without makin' a loud noise first."

"We'll do that."

"Still think ... guess a vampire can't just go an' check himself into the laughing academy, can he? Too bad."

"You aren't really suggesting you want to be medicated?"

"Dunno what I want. Just ... whole thing seems ... dubious. Guess I'm in Harris's way of thinkin'. Isn't that a lark?"

Giles removed his glasses, rubbed at the bridge of his nose. "I've known Buffy since she was fifteen, and have found her to be a fine judge of character, often displaying insight beyond her years. This time I'm going to trust her judgment about you, Spike. I suggest you do the same." He rose then, extending a hand.

No caning. He felt he'd gotten off too easy. His senses told him Buffy was now hovering outside the study door.

"Anything else you'd like to say, or ask?" Giles said. "Of course we can talk again, whenever you like."

"No." A thought struck him. "Well, yeah. My kit's all wrong."

The other man's eyebrow shot up. "Your—?"

"Clothes. I need a suit of clothes. They tell me I'm dressed like I always do, but I don't like it."

He seemed amused, but quickly repressed it. "I have occasion to drive into Edinburgh day after tomorrow. You can come with me. The light will make it difficult, but you used to get about in the day, before. We can manage it."

"I've got no money."

"My tailor will put it on account. You will of course be paid for the work you do here—"

"Startin' out deep in debt. That makes a fellow feel human, all right."


To be continued...


Author's note: I want to thank my readers here--I'm new to posting at this site, and I'm not able to reply individually to all the comments, so want to acknowledge that I read and deeply appreciate ALL the feedback. Please leave a comment if you're reading. If you have a question about the fic or anything else, my email address is the way to reach me.

Also, in case any of you aren't aware, I post fic at livejournal and at insanejournal, as herself_nyc_fic. The livejournal comm is locked and can be joined only by those 18 or older. The IJ comm is open. I journal also as herself_nyc at both places. And finally, all my fics, including many not archived here, can be found at buggerthis.net.

Thanks!