Buffy looked at Willow. Willow seemed equally thrown, equally speechless.

Spike saw them checking with each other. "What's goin' on here? You two got some scheme brewin'? Maybe this's some kind of cosmic time-out you pulled so you can help? Because we're gonna need all the help we can get. We're outnumbered about fifty-thousand to one."

Another glance at Willow, who had gone all rabbity. Buffy cleared her throat. "Uh ... I'd better just tell you straight out—the battle was over weeks ago. The world didn't end but ... we believe you're the only survivor from Angel's team."

Spike's double-take pierced her again. " ... weeks? Can't tell me that—was there just a second ago, in the pourin' rain, Angel an' me an' Charlie an' Blue, we were—we were—" He stared into his lap, feeling at himself with his hands. "Oi—where's my leather? These aren't my clothes. An' I'm bone dry." Leaping up, he grabbed Willow, shook her. "What's this mischief? What've you done?"

Willow whispered, and Spike flew backwards to bounce off the bookcases.

"Will! Was that necessary?" Buffy went to him, but Spike was already on his feet again, ducking around her as if she wasn't quite there.

"This is well out of order! Put me back there! Need to get back an' fight! Losin' time, here!"

Was it her imagination, or was he not really looking at her? Looking everywhere but where she was standing right in front of him? Maybe it was only his agitation, his confusion.

"Spike, that's the thing. There's, uh, lost time. Since you were found after the battle, you've had amnesia."

"I—what?" He wheeled around to face her, and for one second their eyes caught, before he looked away.

"You were found in the alley after the battle, by a squad of slayers Faith was leading. You were badly burned, and ... PTSD ... and you'd lost your memory. That was about six weeks ago. I came to get you, I've been with you ever since, and Willow has been trying to restore your memory, magically. At your request, I hasten to add."

"That's bollocks, because the battle's just gettin' started! An' I'm missin' it!"

Silently, Willow held up her laptop, showed him first that day's date, then the news stories she'd archived out of Los Angeles after the battle, about a catastrophic chain of subterranean natural gas explosions that burned a ten block radius of downtown, around the hulk of a disused 1920s hotel.

By time he'd seen the fifth or sixth one, the tears were coursing down Spike's cheeks.

"Hey, it's okay," Willow said. "Angel and the others didn't fight in vain. The apocalypse was averted."

"They're all gone an' I'm here in some stupid castle an' you say that's okay?"

Willow gave him her all merry and bright face. "You fought—you prevailed! You're alive—aren't you glad?"

He'd lifted his hand, as if to dash the laptop to the floor; Willow's question froze him. "Are you insane?"

Buffy stepped forward. "Spike, listen—"

As if she was invisible, inaudible, he swept past her, out of the study. The slam of the door reverberated through Buffy like a canon shot.

"What ... what just happened, Will?"

"I don't know. My spell kicked in, maybe? Or ... he just suddenly got it all back on his own?"

"But he doesn't have it all back. He's still in L.A. He doesn't know about any of this here." The childish panic threatened to engulf her like rising flood waters.

"Maybe ... the rest'll kick back in soon. This is real progress."

Buffy went to the door. "Or maybe this is just another temporary memory sliver and an hour from now he'll be somebody else."



"Spike! Hey—where are you going?"

He didn't know where he was going—he didn't know where he was.

He drew up short. Here was Dawn Summers, grown tall as a giraffe and fair as a gazelle, emerging from behind an arras in one of this maze of huge ridiculous stone rooms.

"Bit! You here too?"

"Bit?"

Christ. The last thing she'd said to him back in Shitdale, wasn't it about setting him on fire if he got too near her sis? He retreated back up a step. "Dawn. Shouldn't—didn't mean to—don't presume—"

"You called me Bit. Oh my God—Spike? Spike, are you really back with us now?"

Laughing, she flew at him, her trajectory knocking him back to sit hard on the step, with her suddenly sprawled in his lap. "I knew it, I knew it, I knew you'd be all right! Oh this is wonderful! Where's Buffy, does Buffy know?"

Apparently her hard feelings of the year before were all forgotten now.

"You know what I'm doin' here?"

"Yes—you're—wait a sec'. You don't?"

"Got plucked out of L.A. just as the end-game was 'bout to play. An' now they tell me it's been over for weeks. Can't be. Can't be that I shirked the bloody fight."

"Oh no." Suddenly alive to the awkwardness of her seat, Dawn slid off onto the step beside him. "You've forgotten the last few weeks?"

"No. I'm bein' played for a knave while the others fought an' fell an'—"

"Spike, you were in the battle. You were covered in it when they found you. Faith arrived with a squad and helped turn the tide, but so far as Willow could figure out, there were portals open there, worlds spilling together, and the apocalypse got shunted into another dimension. Some slayers found you all burned and buried under rubble. You fought to the end, there's no doubt about that."

Willow had told him this already—he resisted it again. Couldn't be true. How could he forget that? How could he have been there, soaked in cold rain, Charlie's blood on his hands, the thundering of the advancing demon army drumming in his ears, and then be here, and no idea of anything in between? Because there wasn't anything in between. He'd been yanked. That had to be it. "You weren't there, so how would you know?"

"No, but I spoke to those who were. That's part of my job now with the council, I interview the girls after an operation and create detailed records."

"You—you're still a kiddie."

"Please. I'm a college girl at St Andrews. I study ancient languages. And I'm already training to be a watcher."

"A watcher." He looked at her then—really looked. He'd been unfocused at first, full of flurry and distraction, but now he took her in, the way he'd done in the old days,when he was her friend. "Dawn Summers. You ... you've bloomed out wonderful."

The compliment, his steady serious gaze, brought up Dawn's blushes.

"You're not still sore at me," he said, "can see it in your sweet puss. So you tell me, honest now—what's this all about? Why'd they pull me out?" He pouted. "Or maybe you don't know. You're not in on it."

She explained again. Again he was shown the date—this time on a mobile phone. Again told that he'd fought, that his survival had nothing to do with failure, that he'd been stricken with amnesia. He listened, the despondency stirring in his guts, thinking of Angel, of Charlie and Illyria, that moment when they'd turned to the mouth of the alley to see it blocked by that great demon machine of an army. He'd been so ready.

Ready to fight, and die fighting. The right way. The way he'd been made for.

Now Dawn was saying something else; he'd lost track of her. "Eh?"

"Where's Buffy? Haven't you seen her since—since you got here?"

"Saw her, yeah, s'pose I did."

"You suppose?"

"I need to get out of here, Dawn. I need to get back. Maybe—maybe there's still some way I can—if Captain Imponderable knows I'm not there, he'll never let me live it— Shit."

It wasn't like she'd never seen Spike cry before. They'd cried together many times over that summer of Buffy's death; it was one of the most endearing things about him, that under the tough exterior was mourning as deep, anguished and single-focused as her own, that he didn't pretend to hide from her. The comfort of that, at the time, had been enormous.

But this was different. He wept out of anger, and a bitter seering frustration she couldn't approach. She didn't know what he knew, just the barest outlines of the L.A. situation. And that he seemed to be enraged because of once more being denied a final death was so terrible to her that she didn't want to think about it.

"Oh Spike, I'm sorry. I'm so sorry. But you did fight. You did. Please believe me, I wouldn't lie to you."

"Got to get back there."

"There's nothing left. It's all finished." She tried to slide her hand around his, but he clenched a fist and jerked it away. "Spike ... please ... haven't you spoken to Buffy? Buffy will—"

"Got no time for that. I need to go."

At the top of the staircase where they were huddled, concealed around the turning, Buffy listened, and was afraid to go to him. He wanted nothing to do with her, with any of them, he wanted nothing but to stand with Angel.

And Angel was dead.

Spike sprang to his feet. "Need a car, with the windows blacked. Where can I find such a thing?"

Dawn rose too, dithering. "Wait—wait—we can help you. We can take you back to the alley, if you want to see it. But you can't just go—you have to see Buffy."

He made no answer. Before Dawn could press him, Buffy heard footsteps in the hall below, and Giles' voice.

"Spike. I understand your faculties have returned intact. I congratulate you, and now I have some questions."