Spike took a deep swig from the bottle and held it out. "What happened to your eye?"

"Evil guy stuck his thumb in it."

"Bad luck."

"You were there."

"Wasn't me, though, was it, Harris?"

Xander made a You wish face, and took his own swig. "Buffy would expect me to say at this point that it was thanks to you I'm not completely blind."

"Buffy would expect that, huh?"

"Well, only because it was you who got me out of there before he could go for the other eye."

Here he was, years removed from his parents' dank basement, living in his own high-tech swinging bachelor pad in an ancient Scottish castle, and yet once again having to babysit the crazy vampire. This time when Buffy had texted him from out on the grounds, saying Spike needed a drink and some distraction well away from her, he'd known better than to protest. He owed her, and if this was how he had to work off the debt, well, he'd work it.

It wasn't like he was seeing any swinging action in the swinging bachelor pad.

Typical really, that he'd be shacked up in the middle of nowhere with over a hundred nubile young women, and too honorable, or too shy, or just too pathetic, to get him some.

"Don't tell me," Spike said. "Just does my head in. An' I probably won't remember it in the morning anyhow."

"Suit yourself." Xander turned up the TV volume.

"S'like I've got blinders on," Spike said. "Can't look backwards, or sideways. Can barely see forwards, either, since I don't know what any of this bloody is or what I'm doing here."

"It sucks, man, I get that." Xander turned the volume down, pushed the bottle back to Spike's end of the coffee table.

"Willow's really got the mojo to fix this? Or you lot just too afraid of her that you let her muck about as she likes?"

Spike might not know shit right now but he was still weirdly astute. "Kind of both," Xander said, shrugging.

"Oh, glorious."

The knock at the door came as a relief. Maybe Buffy had changed her mind and was going to take him away again.

Xander opened it to Dawn, with a manila envelope under her arm. "Can I come in?"

Buffy hadn't said anything about keeping her sister away from her vampire, so Xander bowed graciously and let her pass.

"Hiya Spike. Do you know who I am?"

He gazed unsteadily up at her—he'd had enough to drink by now that his eyes were red, his movements a little tremorous.

"You ... you're the little sister. Grown up, you have."

"Right, I'm Dawn. Can I sit with you?" She dropped onto the sofa, closer to Spike than Xander would've liked, but as Dawn sometimes reminded him, he wasn't the boss of her.

"I brought some pictures to show you."

"Dunno if I want to look at any pictures. Gettin' drunk, y'see."

"I don't think this will interfere. It might help, that you've loosened up."

Xander said, "Hey, maybe this isn't such a good idea."

"Maybe not, but it could dislodge something. We don't know. Just let me try for a minute."

Xander fingered the stake concealed in his waistband, under his shirt. Spike had to know, since he'd successfully broken Buffy's nose, that the chip was inactive. He didn't like him so close to Dawn, with the chip inactive.

"Buffy said you didn't remember some important people from your, uh, unlife. But I thought maybe seeing some pictures would spark your memory, so I printed out some images from the Council database."

The first one she laid on the coffee table in front of Spike, was, it took Xander a moment to realize, Spike himself. He stood against one of those old-timey studio backgrounds of a waterfall in a glade, his chin tipped up defiantly at the camera, dressed sort of like a lumberjack in his Sunday clothes—the overcoat too large for his small rather skinny frame. His hair was shaggy and long and fell in his face, not quite concealing a bruised and blackened eye. One hand was concealed behind his back, the other balled in a fist.

Spike took this in slowly, his eyes widening, inspecting the picture from the upper left corner to the lower right, as if it was a page of type.

"Is that little shite supposed to be me?"

"In 1881. This is the earliest picture of you in the archive. Taken in Yorkshire."

"Yorkshire."

"What were you doing in Yorkshire?" Dawn asked.

"Up to no good, no doubt."

It was clear he had no idea.

Dawn took out another picture. Same backdrop, same photography studio's curly-wurly signature logo at the bottom. A slim but stately blonde woman, laced tightly into a dress criss-crossed with stiff ruffles and frogging, and crowned with an enormous feathered hat, stood beside ... holy crap. Beside Angel. The name burst from Xander's lips before he could stop himself.

Dawn gave him a glare. "Great. Spike was supposed to get to figure that out himself."

Spike squinted at the figures, at the big glowering man in the dark suit with its fat elaborate cravat. "Buffy said somethin' 'bout an angel. She didn't mean this tosser?"

Dawn gestured at Xander to keep still.

"He's a right bruiser, he is. This lady's a little bit of all right, if you could peel her down a few layers. She's got a cruel mouth, though. Vampires, these two?"

"You don't recognize them? Look harder."

"This is her angel? Couldn't be. Got a mug on him like a pervert schoolmaster—a right Squeers, he is. Look at those fists. Sledgehammers." He glanced back at the photo of himself. "You reckon that one blackened his eye? Could be."

"Probably," Dawn said. "You were all together then."

"What, me with them? Don't look like much of a fun couple, do they?"

"There was a fourth in your party." Dawn set down the matching photo of Drusilla like the final card in a tarot layout.

God, even in a sepia image over a hundred years old, she still gave Xander the creeps. Those eyes buggling at him across time. She stood stiffly, as if she'd just been scolded, slightly hunched, almost furtive. Her clothes were velvet, a little disheveled when you looked at them closely, her hair tumbling over her shoulders. She wore the same hat as Darla, as if someone had insisted on plunking it on her head for the record. She looked miserable and completely mad.

Now Xander looked expectantly at Spike. He'd have to know her. You couldn't take care of the same girl for over a century, only to have her betray you in the end, and her face not strike some chord inside you, even if your brains were made of scrambled eggs.

"Sad bird," Spike murmured. He glanced at Dawn then with the expression of a dog who's just done a trick.

"Not always." Dawn took another sheet from the envelope.

This picture was taken in front of a backdrop of some kind of amusement park or fantasy city. At the bottom was stamped A Souvenior of the Great Coronation Exhibition ~ Great White City, Shepherd's Bush, London ~ 1911. The Drusilla in this photo, beautifully and neatly dressed in white lawn, was slightly blurred with laughter, her arm threaded possessively through that of Spike, who posed proudly in a linen suit and boater, his neck enclosed in a high celluloid collar, chin thrust out in what seemed to be his habitual stance.

Spike laughed. "Ain't they elegant!"

"I guess the coronation brought a lot of tasty tourists into London, huh?" Dawn said. "You must've had a field day."

He sobered. "Guess so. Who's she, then?"

"You tell me. You must know."

"This that Estella, Carmella, what was it? Slayer mentioned."

Xander grunted. "Do you think you're fooling us for a second?"

"Eh?"

"Estella, Carmella. Crap. You know who that is, Spike. C'mon, man. You know."

"Here's some more." Dawn laid unfolded a bigger sheet, on which she'd gathered together a myriad smaller images, snapshots, photo-booth strips, that taken all altogether looked like the record of one couple's manic weekend of playing dress-up. Here was Spike in a grey tailored suit, his hair black, there he was with blond stiff tines and eye-liner, white arms bare, there again in a kind of zoot suit, head nearly buried under a fedora, and in every shot she was there, with her googly eyes and toothy smile, thin body somehow twisted as if she could never hold still, and their bodies, their hands, always touching.

Christ, Xander thought. This is really all Drusilla's fault. If she'd just stuck by him ... Spike wouldn't be here, and Buffy wouldn't be in love with him. And okay, we'd probably all be dead and the world be in hell, but at least ....

Spike said, "This is my girl. Where's she gone to?"

"What's her name?" Dawn asked.

"Don't know. Can't think." He grabbed for the bottle.

Dawn slid her hand over his. "Just wait a second before you do that. Please just try to remember, Spike. For me."

"You? An' what are you to me?"

"You protected me. Looked out for me. Like the best big scary vampire brother an orphaned girl could have. Please try."

He stared at her, and Xander thought—or maybe it was just because he was in so much suspense—that something flickered in Spike's eyes, not at the sight of Drusilla, but of Dawn, Dawn's guileless, pleading, open face.

Spike held his gaze. Shifted a little closer to Dawn, sniffing.

"Yes, smell me if that'll help." She sat up straighter, as if that would make her aroma more telling.

"You ...." He frowned, then grimaced. "My bloody skull's splittin'."

"I'm sorry," Dawn said.

But he leaned in closer, sniffing her neck, her shoulder. Xander wanted to wallop him off.

"... you'd be on the rag ... little spitfire, sassing me an' burstin' into tears when I'd get cross ... smell drove me crazy an' at the same time ... same time I'd ...."

Xander was on the verge of protesting this coupling of Dawn and blood and Spike's appetite, but before he could open his mouth, Spike shot up from the sofa, stumbled over the table, overturning it, and bolted out into the corridor.

When Marla and Jean tackled him—Xander had them standing guard outside—he was roaring and snapping, his face a feral mask.

"This is one of those times I wish the Vulcan Neck Pinch really worked," Xander said.

"You want him unconscious? I can put him unconscious." Marla brought down her fist, and Spike went limp.



"Right before he spazzed out, he seemed to be having a new memory."

"That wasn't a new memory Dawn, it was an old, disgusting fantasy."

Buffy looked from Xander to her sister. "Guys, not helpful. Tell me what happened, no embellishing."

"It wasn't a fantasy. I think he was remembering me in the summer you were dead, Buffy. I got my first period about a week after we buried you, and I was all freaked out already without needing to mainline hormones on top of it. My system was all wonky, I swear I had about seven cycles in those four months, but I was afraid to tell Willow and Tara. Spike was looking after me a lot, and I was pretty moody with him. I think that's what he was talking about."

Buffy turned to him. "Could that be it? What did he say, exactly?"

"I don't know ... something about spitfire and sass. I'm not sure. Sorry, Buff."

"I am sure," Dawn said. "He was definitely getting a memory of me, of that time when he and I were together a lot."

"And whenever he gets a memory, he goes psychotic. Great. Where is he now?"

"Marla put him back in the cells."

"Oh, perfect."

When she got down there, he was curled tightly in the furthest corner, scrabbling at the wall, growling.

"Spike." He looked up when she drew close; the growl ongoing, but in his yellow eyes now there was more pain and bewilderment than danger. Kneeling beside him, she stilled the frantic hands in her own. His fingers were bleeding. His face was bruised where Marla had clocked him. "Spike, I'm sorry this is so hard."

He quieted, as he had back in L.A. when she'd first gone into his cage.

The sun had already risen, so she couldn't lead him outside, but Buffy coaxed him out, up the stairs, and back to Willow's study. He breathed growls in and out, as if he needed the air, the sound a low sawing of woe. But he let her hold his hand, followed her willingly.

Willow said nothing when she saw him, just pointed them to the sofa. "I'm almost ready. Just double-checking my equations."

"If it doesn't work this time, I think we'll have to ...." Buffy stopped. Have to what? They were already doing their utmost.

Beside her, Spike stirred, trying to tug his hands free. The game-face fell away as Buffy looked at him. His blue eyes were watery, exhausted. "Christ. Christ. What hit me?"

His voice, issuing calm and reasonable from cut and swollen lips, gave her a thrill of relief.

"Does it hurt a lot? I can give you some tablets."

She started up; he caught her wrist.

"You— Where am I?"

The question, his expression, pierced her like a blade; she stifled a cry. Back to the beginning again. All progress erased.

Willow hastened towards them. Spike turned, took her in, looked back at Buffy again. His mouth opened.

"Bloody hell—Buffy? Willow."

"Spike. Yes, it's us. You know us?"

"Do I know you? What sort of silly question is that? Where are we?"

"In my study. In the castle?"

"Castle. What castle? How'd you get me here?"

"Uh ... where should you be?"

"Was where we arranged to meet—alley behind Angel's place for the big showdown. You lot were givin' us the snub. Changed your minds last minute? Where's Angel an' the others? They get out too?"