When the nurse came in with the digital thermometer, as dawn was pinkening the edges of the venetian blind, she gave him a startled glance, but said nothing about his bedside presence, probably because he'd had the forethought to filch a white coat with somebody's identity badge pinned to it, off the back of a chair in the blood-bank.

Having reviewed the words for all scatological functions as well as the various objects in the room, he and Bakhita had both been dozing for a half hour; fatigue had come down on him like a hood, so it was a struggle to come to. After the nurse left, her shoes going squidge squidge squidge on the lino, Spike closed his eyes again, hoping to get a bit more kip before the breakfast trolley arrived and the doctors came by on their rounds and he'd have to figure out what to do next.

But punchy as he was, sleep didn't return. His head was full of Buffy.

He thought of ringing her, then realized he didn't know her number. Stupid. Made him feel like a runaway child.

Girl was probably furious at him, after he'd demolished her kitchen and called her nasty names and fled into the night. That was mannish of him for sure.

She was only trying to protect herself, and really where was the shame in that? Lonely woman who'd lost all hope gets her man, of course she does everything she can think of to hang on. Besottedness was a state of being which garnered his most solemn respect. Even if the beloved was ... not really a man at all, only some broken monster. Was bloody sad really, but then they were both in the same boat. He was besotted too. Her fear of the "real" him, this Spike character's anger and rejection, floating between them like a threat, made him leery of himself. What kind of a venal jack-ass was he really, not to want this woman? So she was quick with her fists, and beat him sometimes ... they didn't make blues songs out of circumstances like that for nothing. There was something to it that wasn't quite all bad. At least, when the girl was a vampire slayer an' the fellow was a vampire. Stood to reason, didn't it?

And really, what would be gained by her answering his questions, telling him what she was protecting them from? He still wouldn't know himself. And any fool could guess that their past, whatever it was, must've been fucked up and fraught. So what? It was over now.

God, he wanted her.

Right now he just needed to be taken in her arms, to beg her pardon, be forgiven, then shagged back into a more cheerful state of mind. There was a lot to be said, wasn't there, for living in the ever-present moment, casting eyes neither forwards nor backwards? If she thought he could make her happy, wasn't that all there need be to it? Love the girl. Work. Could be a fine life.

More footsteps, stealing up to the bed. Spike opened his eyes.

"What are you doing here?" They both said it at once. Then the awkward patch afterwards, waiting for the other to speak.

During which Bakhita woke, focused on Buffy with a wide smile, and said, "My leg it fucking hurts like bitch, yes?"

"Uh—"

"Good, pet. But you want to say, 'My leg fucking hurts like a bitch'."

"What, you're teaching her to swear?"

"Can't call yourself fluent in a language if you can't talk blue. You're here early."

"We—Giles wanted to convince them to x-ray her leg again, otherwise they'll never think she's remotely ready to be checked out. I came along because ...."

"You didn't sleep all night anyhow?"

Bakhita watched them, understanding plenty without knowing all the words.

"We can't talk in here. Tell her that Giles will be looking in shortly."

Spike conveyed the message in Arabic, Bakhita nodded. He followed Buffy out into the corridor. She was wearing the same clothes as the day before, a sloppy grey hoodie on top, hair scraped into a messy ponytail, circles under her eyes, nearly the same level of turmoil clouding her aroma as when they'd fought before.

Exquisite.

He caught her back against the wall, going for her mouth. She pushed him off.

"We have to talk—"

"Sod talk. Need you now."

The words made their impact in a palpable astonishment; he saw them—or something—dissolve her resistance, and the next second she'd grabbed him, hustled him across the corridor and through a door.

"Oh Spike—yes—"

Her hands were everywhere, taking possession, mouth gasping as she pressed kisses into his.

They were in the gimp loo, with the deep shallow sink sticking out of the wall; she was already scrambling her bottom onto it, spreading her legs, pulling up her skirt.

It was then, grasping her to him by the arms, hands closing around the stuff of her grey hoodie, that a bomb went off in his head.

—grey stuff in his hands, pulling at it, grappling, struggling—intractable obstinate goading—pushing pleading forcing—

Then he had the door down—torn from the hinges—was scissoring across it, away from her, in the grip of a blinding blindsiding pain he couldn't evade because it was him, detonating in an endless stabbing loop in his head. Ran pell mell, through the human stink, too much odor, too much light too much sound too much everything. Get away get away get away.

Only when he'd gone to ground in a custodial closet down in the bowels, pitch-black and tiny, stinking of chemicals that masked every other smell, did the eruptions lose some of their immediacy. Tailed off from happening now now now into flashes of memory he still couldn't control. No coherent sense or order in the flood of sensation, no beginning or ending, just an affront, a violent despair, beating a harsh tattoo in his skull. His whole mind shied from examining it. So bright and awful, an awfulness that pierced all through him, chisel to the head, a migraine of the whole body, making him shy and curl and groan.




When the light strobed across his tight-shut lids, he flinched. He'd dug himself in to a tight metal frame, chucking out a bunch of toilet rolls to lever himself as far into the corner, into the dark and close and small, as he could get.

But she'd found him.

"Spike. What ... what are you doing in there? What happened?" Tentative, voice gentle as doves, but he couldn't uncoil himself, wouldn't look at her.

Wouldn't, couldn't, shouldn't. When she knelt there, amongst the tumbling paper cylinders, and touched his arm, he pulled himself in tighter.

"Spike, you can't stay in here. Please come out."

Mustn't. Mustn't be touched, not by her. Not unless it was to slay, to end. Why hadn't she?

What was wrong with her?

"Sweetheart, whatever it was ... it's over now. We have to go."

Hands over his face, heels of palms digging into flesh. Small small small. Couldn't stand the noises. Noises wouldn't stop.

Then another voice, another presence. "Buffy, let me." Shuffling, scrambling, then another, larger presence, different smell. Giles. "William Pratt. Do you hear me? If you don't want to attract the attention of the authorities here, who will detain and try to examine you, you must come out of there, and come quietly out to my car. Can you do that?"




The place suited him. Subterranean, no windows, plenty of space, not unpleasant smells, always something to do, and as much company as he could like. The girls were constantly hungry. He helped get out four meals every day, but still they'd appear in the kitchen at all hours, wanting to rummage in the larder, the fridges. They'd all gotten the message from Giles, that he was to be treated as a comrade, and most of them seemed willing enough. He liked watching them eat. Liked their jokes, tolerated their questions, most of which he couldn't answer. Some of them would ask him to fang out, wanting a good look, even wanting to touch. Mostly they were kind, some a bit diffident. They'd heard that he had his moments of batshit crazy, but none seemed fearful of him, only appropriately cautious, not wanting to set him off for his own sake rather than theirs.

He slept in a snug little room that had once belonged to some under-kitchen maid who'd been housed close to the fires she had to tend first thing in the morning and last thing at night.

His trip to Edinburgh had been postponed, but he had new kit all the same, wool trousers, white cotton shirts and undershirts. Things that felt proper, satisfactory. Every other day he polished his new boots, enjoyed handling the brush, the neat little can of blacking, the soft cloth. He got rid of the yellow hair one day, letting Andrew, strangely eager, go at him with the electric clippers, purring it off to leave a soft short furze that reminded him, as he ran a palm over his head, of the felt on a snooker table.'

He worked, and waited for something more to come back to him. Willow and Dawn kept reassuring him—he hadn't described the content of this latest crisis—that his memories would come back. "You're not going to get better overnight," Willow said. "It's going to be a process. Gradual re-integration. And ... you probably don't have a lot of happy memories in the first place, so ... it's going to be a hard process. But you're not alone."

He wasn't alone. He was a minor, humble, grateful member of this enormous complex household. Doing the tasks laid out for him by Mrs Ambler, who ran the castle's domestic matters with a cool, rather humorless precision. She was unimpressed by his demonhood and potential insanity; cared only that he did his jobs the way she wanted them done, and when he proved competent, letting him be to get on with them. He learned the tidy satisfactions of being a servant, having a place.

He had his choice of spots to spend his evenings, on the other side of the baize as he joked to himself—watching telly or playing Xbox with the girls in the lounge, or a hand of cards with Dawn, who made a point of visiting him every day too, working at her studies in the late afternoons at one end of the vast work-table while he shelled beans, scoured pots, ran the mop across the wide stone floors. (She was disappointed but understanding about the change in his appearance.) Helping Bakhita with her English, the homework she brought back from the local high school, improving his Arabic a little too. Hours out of doors at night, sometimes walking the local lanes with Giles or Willow, or just on his own, down to the village where he'd have a pint or two, not with the louts but in the old men's pub, their burred impersonal talk a kind of sop as much as the lager.

The only one he didn't see was Buffy.

Not quite what he'd intended, when he told her he couldn't live with her, couldn't sleep with her.

But that seemed to be how she took it.

He didn't quite know why he couldn't. Still didn't understand what it was he'd remembered, if it was a memory at all and not some brutal haunting, an astral punishment for he knew not what. It had receded into a recall of pain without the pang itself, except sometimes. Sometimes as he drifted into sleep, or out of it, it struck, gale-force. Chopped off at both ends. The horror in it being the sense of yawing over something bottomless, vast, dreadful, in the grip of an unassuageable, obscene and defiling need.

He knew nothing else about it. Except that it had to do with him, and with her, and that he couldn't touch her now, and wondered that she ever wanted him to.