If she'd said anything else.

Or if her voice had merely been firmer. If she'd looked at him instead of at the broken crockery when she spoke.

He might not have gone off.

But as it was, that one pleading little sentence was a match to tinder.

"Failing me? Why the fuck would you think that? Because you're lyin' to me with every word you do an' don't say? Because you tell me you've never been afraid of me but there's fear in your every look?"

"Spike—"

"Am I your project? Your charity-case?"

"No!"

"You're so scared I'll kick you to the curb when I remember who you are, why don't you just tell me an' we'll see where we are?"

"Willow said it would be dangerous—to your mind, to your sanity—for any of us to tell you things! You have to remember it yourself!"

"An' meanwhile I'm your fuck-toy an' cuddly Mr Golliwog all in one. That's bloody convenient for you an' your needy little cunt, isn't it?"

He saw her start towards him, violence in her staring eyes. Multiple flashes of her strobed through his head in that moment, flaring and dying, leaving him no wiser about times or places or causes, only that it was her long habit—to silence him with her fists.

His roar filled the room, echoing through his body, giving him strength. The chairs flew like nothing, paper airplanes—the crockery they smashed colliding with the sideboard, less than nothing in themselves, but the flying furniture arrested her trajectory towards him. She gaped. He needed something else, lest he strike at her. The table now, oaken, ancient, heavy—upending that was better—the crack and crash as it hit the stone sink answering his rage, stoking it.

And then she tackled him, and they staggered 'round the wreckage, grappling, too close for real blows. She was chanting "Stop stop stop stop."

Here it was again, the wild instinct to turn and tear. Make the kill. So easy. So natural. So satisfying.

He got in a rabbit punch, ooooof and she was off. He bolted, not for the door, but the top of the tower. Heard her scrambling up the narrow stairs behind as he jumped up on the battlement. Moat below, dark valley spread out around him. Wind like wine.

He leapt.



"A domestic disturbance?" Willow's brows crawled up towards her hair.

"Can you just find him for me? He's left the castle."

"Do you want to find him?" Willow knelt by the table, the massive wood surface cracked into two, now blocking half the kitchen. "Do you know how old this is? I was told it was assembled in these rooms, over five hundred years ago, it could never be moved."

"Except by super-heroes."

"Buff ... what happened?"

"I told you. We had a spat."

"Did he—"

"No, he didn't touch me. He fricasseed the furniture, and then he left, air-borne. I thought I was going to vomit, seeing him take that flyer."

"Vampires can do that."

"Well, duh. I know he's not lying mangled on the edge of the moat. He's AWOL."

"I'm not so worried about him," Willow said. "I'm more concerned about you. What did you two ... spat ... about?"

"Just ... c'mon, Will. It's private."

"Really?"

"Really."

"No, I mean, really? You're still gonna do that? I thought we talked now. That we were girlfriends again."

"We are."

"I know why you didn't confide in me back in Sunnydale. Either before I went evil or afterwards. I get that, I totally do. But now? Have you really talked to anybody?"

"Please tell me you're not reading my mind."

"Really not. Can't. Wouldn't. But I know you, Buff. You repress. I've figured out that whatever was going on between you and Spike, before he went off and came back souled ... was a lot more than you've ever told anyone. And last year ... there was a lot more going on then, too. I can guess some of it, but I shouldn't have to."

"I told Tara."

At this, Willow paled.

"When you ... when you two were broken up. One night, after I'd been out all ... I told her I was involved with Spike. She said it could be all right, that it was something I could have if I wanted. But I couldn't hear that. I couldn't think it."

"She never said."

"It was a confidence."

"You fell in love with him, didn't you? After ... after I brought you out of your grave."

Buffy shook her head. "I couldn't. I mean ... I couldn't love anyone or anything then. That was what was so awful."

"Maybe you couldn't love anyone who was only human."

You always hurt the one you love, pet. Her gorge rose at the thought. "I thought he was defiling me. I thought I couldn't stop him. But it was me. He wanted to love me and take care of me and I only ... and he let me. Everything, he just let me."

"He hurt you though. That night, in your bathroom."

She almost smiled into Willow's questioning look. "I couldn't begin to tell you what a long time coming that was. You have no idea the things I did to him first. I was an equal partner in driving him as mad, as miserable, as I was."

"And then he went looking for his soul."

"And then he went looking for his soul." What resonance those words always had for her, echoing, reverberating, the awe of it, the wonder. The one vampire in all the world, all of history, to seek out his own pillory, to face up to his own past.

Buffy rubbed at the broken wood with her thumb. Winced at the splinters she drove into the pad. "His love for me, was, in its way ... perfect. Whole and pure and glittering. Like a diamond. How can anyone face up to something so ... distilled? So perverse? I killed it, Will. I starved it out of him, little by little. So by the time I ... when I knew ... it was too late."

"How can you be sure about that? I don't think—"

"His devotion, at the end. It wasn't for me. It had, what's the word? Trans ... transmogrified. It was for everyone. It was about the whole world." I want to save the world. When he'd said that to her, back at the beginning, they'd neither one known how true it would be. "He knew he was going to die, he wanted to. It was all he wanted." She did smile then, her lips twitching. A laugh she couldn't control. "No other desires left. None. He was only full of glory."

"No other—do you mean—"

"What?" She was laughing merrily now, breathlessly, she couldn't rein it in. "You thought we were lovers, in those final days? You thought we were packing in every last second of sweetness we could grab together? Oh Will. Oh my God. How little you know."

When Willow took her in her arms, the frantic laughter gave way to sobs.




Now this was the stuff. There was nothing like a gang of drunken Scotsmen to take your mind off your troubles. An hour ago they'd jumped him with fists and bottles in a pub garden just for swaggering-while-English; now they were all roaring football songs together at the Toad & Hammer across the square, brawl forgotten, sloppy mates for life in a sea of lager. When the barman called time he was feeling no pain, floating an inch off the sticky floor. Tumbling out into the cool night with his posse, shouting, chanting, tormenting this stupid sleepy little village that was too quiet, too sedate. Four of them overturned a car in the side-street. Nothing loathe, Spike picked it up, easy as scooping a beetle off the ground, and hurled it into another. An alarm whooped, lights went on in windows. The shout of astonished approval this earned from his new friends bore him up like a lashing of junk-laced blood. They were his now, he was their leader. They sailed round another corner, into another crowd of pub-leavers; the thump and crack of instant battle, stink of blood, vomit, beer filled the air.

No coppers showed. The fight gave out of its own accord, the participants scattering at some voiceless signal. He was running through an alley with three or four others, left, left, right, kicking at rubbish bins, glorious noise, then in at a garden door.

"All back to mine," his new host slurred, fumbling at the door of a tiny brick house, finally throwing it open with a bang.

"Me too?" Spike said.

"Aye!" And he was in.