They were alone in the big empty dining hall, just Dawn and Spike at the end of one long table, each with a steaming cup, the only light burning at the other end of the room, so that when she looked in, Buffy saw just their dark outlines, and shadows on the wall. They leaned towards each other, talking inaudibly.

Maybe, she thought, it would turn out finally to be the two of them who would get together. Dawn and Spike, who had no ugly baggage to unload. She was still a little too young for him, but Spike could wait, he had nothing but time.

All that time he didn't seem to want.

Maybe he wouldn't want Dawn either.

Maybe he really didn't want anything, with Angel gone, except one more battle he could perish in.

He'd been with Giles and the others in the study for hours of debriefing on both sides. She'd longed to go in, but couldn't make herself open the door. Instead she'd paced up and down in the corridor outside, went up and down to her rooms five times. Finally came back to find the meeting broken up, Giles and Willow together talking quietly. They'd filled her in.

"Did he tell you what Angel was up to? That he hadn't gone evil?"

Giles rubbed his eyes. "He told us—finally—about the Circle of the Black Thorn, about Angel's plan."

Buffy could tell by Giles' tone that he knew he'd been wrong, and was annoyed at himself, and wasn't ready to admit it yet, to apologize. She longed to rub it in herself, to force him to say he'd made a monumental blunder, but she was too tired to start.

Spike was angry: over Giles' refusal to send slayers at Angel's call, over missing the battle. Even listening to Faith on the phone, testifying to him that she'd gone to L.A. with a squad and seen the battle through, found him on the scene when it was over, didn't entirely mollify him. Faith hadn't seen Angel fall, but she was sure, like the rest of them, that he was dead. Spike had finally believed their version, Willow told Buffy, but reluctantly. "I don't think he feels it. Something in him's really still convinced that the battle is going on right now while he's not there. He can't shake it, doesn't really want to shake it, but he made all the right reasonable noises finally."

"All the right reasonable noises." The phrase rang funny in her ears. "But he doesn't remember anything that's happened since the alley."

"No."

"Do you think this is the result of your spell?"

Willow dropped her gaze. "Honestly? No. Maybe it was Dawn, showing him those pictures. Or maybe ... I don't know. I hope this progress is permanent, but we can't be sure it'll last. Like you said, it might be another crack—a big wide one, but one that could close again."

Buffy almost hoped it would. The selfish fearful little girl in her wanted the other Spike back, the one who so openly loved her, who knew he needed her, because she was his sole connection to a strange world.

How bitter and unbearable all their shared sweetness turned without his collaboration in it. As if she'd made it up, a stupid little impossible fantasy of a nonexistent love.

Now, as she stood hesitating in the dining hall doorway, Spike turned in his chair. "Oi—who's there?"

Dawn said, "It's Buffy. Come sit with us, Buffy."

Her boots might as well have been nailed to the floor. She couldn't pick up her feet. Couldn't cross the distance. Spike didn't want her to come.

"Buffy." Dawn got up, started towards her. She withdrew from the doorway, from the sight of Spike, and waited for her sister to emerge.

"What's the matter?" Dawn whispered.

Buffy couldn't answer. Her throat had closed into an acrid knot.

Dawn put an arm around her. "Do you want me to tell him? About the two of you? I could tell him about it, all the stuff from these last weeks, so when you go in, he'll ...."

"He'll what? He'll pretend for a little while that he cares at all? That it's got anything to do with him? Why would he do that? To please you?"

"Oh Buffy, no. Is that how you think it'll be? Why? I think he'll take it as wonderful news, that you two were—"

"No. Don't you say a word to him about it."

" ... okay. Of course I won't if you don't want me to. But I think you're being dumb."

"Did you ask him why he hid from us for a solid year?"

"No. I thought ... I thought I would leave that to you."

"Dawnie, I'm not jealous. I'm glad you're friends, I'm glad he likes to be with you. He's got to be so lonely right now ...."

"Buffy, that's Spike in there. He loves you. Why don't you just go to him?"

"He can only think about Angel right now. About the mission. He doesn't want to talk to me."

"But you're both mourning the same death."

Her eyes burned. She swallowed, blinked. No crying, not now, not until she was safely alone.

"I'm going up to my rooms. Will you make sure Spike has somewhere comfortable to sleep, and everything he might want?"

"Of course I will. But—"

"Go on. Don't leave him sitting there alone."

He hadn't come to her. There was nothing stopping him from coming out and talking to her, but there he stayed, at the table. Buffy gave her sister a little push, back into the dining room, and walked away.




Spike turned the empty mug in his hands. "So, I've had amnesia."

"Well, you still do. But before you didn't remember much of anything. Now you don't remember only the last few weeks." Dawn peered at him. "Do you? I mean, really nothing?"

"Was in the alley. An' then I was in Willow's book-lined room."

"Damn." Dawn took up his cup. "I'll heat you some more."

"No, I'm all right. So, what've I been doin' here while I was ga-ga?"

"You weren't ga-ga. Well, only intermittently. Really, all told, not so much."

"So what've I been doing?"

"Kitchen work."

"Eh?"

"You wanted to be useful, so you were helping in the kitchen. Bu—I mean, first they tried you with training the girls, but you couldn't do that."

He drummed his fingers on the table, and stared at them as if the process would divulge something. "Why couldn't I?"

"Because facing the slayers made you violent. You broke a girl's leg in three places when she jumped you. Oh, she's okay now. She's one of your biggest fans here, in fact."

"So I've been out of my mind an' good for nothing."

"No. You roll out a mean bread dough."
Spike plucked at this clothes. "Dressed me like some old duffer an' stuck me in the kitchen. Suppose Giles's been enjoyin' that. Year that's gone hasn't made him any less of a twat. Foolish bugger."

"Spike, he didn't know. All the signs pointed to Angel being on the wrong side."

"An' blah blah blah."

Stupid Buffy, wanting her to keep quiet. If she could just tell him, Dawn thought, it would be all right.

Of course, he hadn't actually brought up Buffy yet at all.

"Sounded like Faith's got her own thing goin' at the Cleveland hellmouth. She came to help Angel despite orders. Bit removed from central command here, s'a good thing. Think she'll have room for one more?"

"You want to go to Cleveland?"

"After L.A. Got to go back there an' see it for myself. Got to do a reco after Angel. If he pulled through it somehow, the demon grapevine on the spot may have some word. If he didn't ... well, a hellmouth's the place for a fellow of my inclinations."

The hell with Buffy's instructions. "What about my sister? You're going to at least talk to her, aren't you?"

"What about?"

"What about? Spike!"

"She an' I said our respective pieces way back in Sunnyhell, Niblet. No need to drag through that again. Ancient history."

Stupidass. Who are you trying to protect? Her? Yourself? Probably yourself. Coward. She didn't say it, though she yearned to.

Spike yawned then, head tipped back, mouth open wide. His eyes flashed orange, the fangs starting out, so that for a moment he looked like a lion. "Could lay my head down right here an' go to sleep, I'm so drowsy. Got a bed for me anywhere in this pile?"

You sleep with Buffy. God, she should just say it. Just send him up there. She's waiting for you.

"Sure," Dawn said, scraping back her chair. "There was a room set up for you while—when—look, it's through here." She took him to the little maid's chamber off the kitchen where he'd installed himself while her sister was in Malta. Some of his things, not that he'd recognize them as his, were still there, and the bed, though made, ought to smell of himself, which Dawn figured would be comforting, if this Spike was susceptible to that kind of comfort.

"It's kind of spartan," Dawn said. "If you'd prefer, I've got a spare bedroom in my little suite, I'd be happy for you—"

"No, this'll suit me fine. It's just for the one sleep. I'll be leavin' this tomorrow."



They'd given him such odd clothes—wool trousers, white shirts. Some sort of mockery there? And, as he discovered while he was washing, they'd shaved down his hair to nothing but a velvety fuzz. Sort of treatment received by officers taken prisoner in those WWII flicks on late-night telly—not outright mistreatment, but just enough to show who was the subjugated. Was a larf, really. Why bother? Why bother with him at all?

Well, they'd needed their intel. Which they'd got out of him today, so that was that. He'd be free to go, disappear back into the grey area of it all being the same endless mission, but he'd be buggered if he'd ever take orders from Rupert.

On the little table beside the single bed, a few books were piled. He looked through them, the character swimming before his eyes as he repressed another yawn—each one had a place marked. Was he the reader?

The Odyssey. Metaphysical poets. Anna Karenina. He was half-way through it. And at the bottom of the pile, an old paperback, water-stained and cello-taped, a Maigret story by Georges Simonon, translated into Arabic. Odd. As he handled it, a slip of paper fell out. A note, hand-written in the same language

My friend Mister William, This is for your language practice. You will tell me about what you read, and I will do the work you set me and tell you all about Valley of Blood in English. I think you will like this story, it has seven corpses. You are a very good teacher. Your friend Bakhita.

Teacher?

So he made the bread and taught English to at least one slayer. Still rather like those gentleman prisoners in the old films. Funny, he hadn't used his Arabic in years.

His head still ached. As he turned out the light, pulling the sheet up over his shoulder, he was sure he'd be asleep in a moment. But with the dark all around him, images swam up beating at his exhausted consciousness. Was this somehow Angel's doing? Maybe the old man had planned all along to cut him out at the finish, deprive him of the final glory? It was in his power, wasn't it, to get him teleported out at the last second?

Would he? Shit. They weren't mates, but Angel had trusted him there at the end, he'd recruited him like he'd recruited the others. Why boot him, then?

Maybe for her.

The voice that spoke in his head startled him. It was his own, but he didn't recognize it. Which was—crazy. Either he was or he wasn't, it was or it wasn't, or .... His head buzzed with fatigue, rang inside like a struck bell, so he couldn't follow his own train of thought anymore. Yet sleep wouldn't come.

Alice swimmin' in her own tears, I am. Drownin' in 'em.

The voice echoed, the voice that was him and nothing to do with him. For her. For her.

With a groan, he heaved out of bed. Looked around for a bottle. If this was his room, there'd have to be one, right?

There, on the under-shelf of the bedside table, a bottle of Jack, half full, with a tumbler inverted on it.

He didn't bother with the tumbler.

When he'd drained the whiskey, he laid his head again on the thin pillow.

—Dunno where I am. Didn't expect to see you.

—Me neither. I'm glad you're here.

—Where are you going?

—Noplace. This is noplace, it doesn't matter. So it's all right.

—Is it then? Glad I found you here. Can I kiss you?

—Love. Yes. Oh. Oh.

—There's time? Even for this?

—Especially for this. Oh lover. Oh God. Hold me.

—Got you. Sweetness.

—Don't leave me.

—Thing is, I'm not really here.

—I know, but ... couldn't you?

—Don't really know each other anymore, do we?"

—That's not true. Oh. Oh fuck. How can you say that when at the same time you're—

—But we aren't. We're a million miles apart.

—Come inside me. God I need you.

—You said it didn't matter.

—Not anywhere else, but here.

—You said this was noplace.

—Well, yes. Yes. Yesyesyes—sweetheart—yes.