"So he's completely round the twist again, and now he's prepping our meals? This is a good idea how?"

Spike paused in his kneading, hands sunk deep in the bread dough. The voices carried easily from the empty dining room, two doors away. He wasn't used to hearing forceful male voices in the castle. Andrew sounded like a girl half the time and Giles almost never raised his.

"He's fine! For the last ten days, he's been completely sane and rational. And sweet. He likes to work."

"He likes to work? That's not how I remember it. And I don't know if I want him with his undead fingers in my—"

"Would you pipe down? He can probably hear you."

He waited for Harris and Dawn to come through the door. But their voices receded. He went on pounding the dough.




"How's ... how's your sister?" It was the next day; he'd debated with himself for quite a while before asking.

Dawn raised her head from her school books.

"She's ... I guess she'd okay. You know, in Malta."

"In Malta? That slang for somethin'? I know 'In Coventry', but not—"

"Um ... she left for Malta last Tueday, on a mission. I assumed you knew."

"Didn't." He resumed chopping up the salad. Tossed her a ring of red pepper, which she caught neatly out of the air and put to her lips.

"I thought she'd left you a note or something."

"No."

"You can call her up, she has her phone."

"She'll be busy."

"She would want to talk to you."

"Can wait for her to get back."





The next day around noon he was awakened by Mrs Ambler's brisk knock on his bedroom door. "Spike—phone for you."

He opened. "For me?"

The housekeeper thrust her mobile at him. "Don't be on long, I'll need that back."

"Who'd be calling you wanting me?" But she'd already stomped back towards the kitchens.

Then he heard her voice. "Spike?"

"Buffy."

"You don't have your own phone, we should do something about that."

"Really not necessary. Where're you?"

"Still in Malta. Dawnie told me you didn't know. I'm sorry about that. I wasn't sure when I left ... I should've written you a note, or had her tell you."

"You all right there?"

"Fine. Some over-ambitious mage opened a portal, and now there's a dragon infestation. Every time we think we've cleared it out and closed the portal, it pops open again like a jack-in-the-box. It's messy, but kind of fun, actually. Good experience for the squad. Listen—"

"I'm still here."

"I need to talk to you."

"Yeah."

"But it seems like all our encounters so far just make things more difficult for you."

"I'm not so bad now."

"I can be back late tomorrow if you say it's okay. Otherwise ...." He heard her breathing against the phone, thought how odd it was, that she was so far away and her little sighs and hesitations were being beamed up to a satellite and back down again. What a world this was. So full of mysteries. Buffy Summers being Mystery Number One. "But if you can't see me, then I—I could go take care of some stuff in Rome. For a few ... for a while."

''Course I'll see you."

"Please don't just say what I want to hear."

No. Been expectin' daily that you'd put your head 'round the door down here an' say hello to me, but I don't blame you for bein' sore."

"... oh. Was I supposed to—? I thought you ... You were the one who said ...."

"Never told you to keep away."

"It felt that way to me. But I'm not 'sore'. Spike, I miss you every single minute. Every second." She paused. "You have every right to be angry at me, but I hate hearing you sound so ... flat. That is so not like you."

"I'm all right. They're keepin' me busy an' everyone's been right friendly."

"Please, if you're not ready—if you prefer—I can go—"

"Why're you so stuck on me? Haven't I brutalized you over an' over?" The words burst out before he could weigh them; the problem that lurked in his mind every waking moment, that populated the unrecalled business of his dreams. A problem he tried hard to push aside, too much for his enfeebled powers of reason. To bury in work and chat with the girls and a level of patience that surprised him, feeling alien like so much else he experienced in these enigmatic days.

Down the phone, she yipped. "What? No!"

"Startin' to suspect I'm not the only one who doesn't remember things rightly. The evidence I've got says--"

She cut him off. "That's what we need to talk about. But not on the phone like this. Please say you'll sit with me when I get back and let me explain."

"This is your home. Wouldn't keep you from your home."

She was silent then for so long he thought maybe the connection had dropped. Then she said, "Okay" and "Bye" and he heard only air.



The phone was hot and slippery in her hand, from being pressed between sweaty palm and sweaty ear. It was hot here, the dragon exhaust making it hotter. She was sitting in the shade, by herself at a crummy back-street cafe, with a bottle of exorbitantly-priced imported beer in front of her, and she wanted to put her head down and cry for the next seventeen days.

It was almost certainly too late. Though she was getting the feeling that that was only the story of her life, at least, of this resurrected, not-meant-to-be portion of it. Everything coming around just a little too late, making for Maximum Pain Levels.

Telling him she missed him produced a sensation like pushing a rusty knife into her own guts and stirring it around. Not to mention his. Here she was again, imposing herself on this destroyed man who Just. Couldn't. Take It. Being near her brought him out into emotional and physical agony. At the beginning she'd thought she could help him, but now ... now it felt perverse, a selfish yearning to put her own need for him, his attention, his presence, his body against hers, above even his own well-being.

She didn't have to live at the castle. There were plenty of places she could relocate, other slayer squads she could head up. If he was comfortable there in Scotland, she could let him have that place, that comfort. He deserved to be at ease, to be looked after. He'd served, he was a hero.

The thought of more separation, indefinite separation, filled her with despair.

God, love was tantamount to insanity. That was all it was. Complete and utter.

Willow had told her it was time to talk to him, and usually Willow was right about things. Usually these days, anyhow. But what if he flipped out again? What if even her mildest 'I' statements catapulted him back into madness? She couldn't get the image of him, folded into the bottom shelf of that metal-framed storage unit in the janitor's closet, his slender body shaking with terror, out of her head.

What had he remembered that brought that on? No way to know, but she could take a good guess.



He climbed the stairs slowly. Unsure of his right. The tower was her home, and she was away, and he'd said he couldn't stay in there anymore.

Probably the door would be locked. She hadn't given him a key. He wouldn't force it.

But at the top, he found the door didn't lock from the outside. Going in, he passed from the clammy cool of the stone stairwell to warmer air. The windows had been left uncovered; the night-time rooms still held the heat of the sunny day just over. Everywhere was evidence of her hasty departure. The bed strewn with rejected packing choices, the wardrobe doors left open. He went to close them, was drawn instead into the full-on scent of her that her clothes gave off. Couldn't resist burying his face in the tightly-packed garments. Rich, complex, layered. So exciting. Stirring. Activating. He went hard, breathing her in, skin tingling top to toe. In his head, a kind of flapping in the dark, like the wings of a hundred birds disturbed in their cote. Tears sprang to his eyes; he heard, more than felt, the crunching noise of his true face emerging.

What she did to him. Everything he was, she heightened. A certainty he couldn't ascribe, but here was ample demonstration.

He tried to expand on the memory he'd had in the hospital; urging it forward, backwards; something else must be there, the lead-up, the aftermath, so he'd know for sure what it was about.

Nothing.

That morning, when he'd been awakened, he'd been dreaming of two linked hands, in flames. He couldn't summon up the rest of the dream.

There was so much in the aroma. With each deep snuffing breath, ideas of ideas bloomed, like a million billion words all on the tip of his tongue, tantalizing, inaccessible.

His whole being was somehow about this Buffy Summers, but he didn't know how or why. He was afraid of her, and he wanted her, and he knew, the way he knew about things that had happened long before his birth, unwitnessed by him but no less real for that, that he'd committed crimes against her that ought to have had no outlet in forgiveness. Her desire for him was senseless, worse than senseless. Out of order.

Freeing his cock from his flies, he stroked off, inhaling her, pleasure/pain the emblem of her. Turned away from the wardrobe, grabbing up a pair of panties from the bed, wrapping the silky morsel around his shaft. Knees rattling, he spent.

Christ. The tears came then, anguished, grateful. He didn't know which. Didn't know what was to become of him, or her. Brilliant, awful, it was all a blur.

All night he lay across her bed, across her scattered clothes, the pillows redolent of her. As the sun rose, light spilling across the mountains, he forced himself to move. Couldn't defile her bed. He climbed up the battlement stairs, threw open the door. First air of morning, bright and cold and clear. In the shadow of a crenallation, he girded himself to do it. Three steps up and out into the open. Flame. He was pretty sure it wouldn't take long, it would hurt, but only for a moment. Then it would be finished, he would be finished, and his ashes would blow off and be gone.

He eyed it, the bright sun flooding the battlement, just a few feet away from where he stood. Eyed up the relief of ceasing to exist. What would happen to this soul they nattered about all the time? Would it end up in hell? Such fairy stories.

But then it was a bit daft, wasn't it, being a vampire who didn't believe in souls and hell. They all spoke of such stuff with real authority.

Well, he wasn't afraid of that. Couldn't be worse than his current existence.

He put a hand out. The skin bridled, reddening at once, bubbling, and then there it was, flame licking the fingers like he was made of papier machê. For a few seconds, he felt absolutely nothing. Took one more step, closer to the border between shadow and sun, arm thrust across it. Watched it burn.

Then he thought of her return. How she'd look for him. Expecting that talk.

She wouldn't know, none of them would know. Where'd Spike gone? She'd think—she'd think God knew what, spend God knew how much time searching, or—Spike snatched his hand out of the light, put out the flames with all he had, his own body and the stone wall. The stink, the pain, made him cough and moan. He stumbled back down the steps.

A note. He'd have to leave her a note, so she'd know, and not waste any more of herself on the lost cause of him.

As he blundered into the kitchen, he felt a presence.

Harris. Standing over the broken table, tool-belt on, tool-box by his feet. He started.

"What the—?" He darted forward, like he was going to meet him in a body slam. Then, seeing the charred arm, he pulled up.

"What's that? You start to commit suicide and couldn't man up enough?"

The hand, his forearm, throbbed, burned like they were still aflame. Spike couldn't draw breath to speak.

Harris, open-mouthed, stared. Put a finger up to point, tentative, instincts at war. "Shit, that's gotta hurt. Come here, I'll—"

He reached; Spike skirted back.

"I need to know. Who the hell am I?"

Stunned silence. Their eyes met, staring.

Then Harris cleared his throat. "I'd like to tell you."

"You got a bottle? Need a bleedin' drink."