She was dressed the next time he saw her, hair pulled up neat and tight, long sleeves, a scarf wrapped around her neck, no skin bared but face and fingers. He wasn't sure if just a few minutes had elapsed, or an hour. His body, scraped up off the kitchen floor, felt immensely heavy, but still too weak and light a stem for his head. He'd have liked to pull it off. He'd have liked to die, except that death now was meaningless, just one more piece of cowardice.

Standing in her bedroom door, Buffy looked at him like he was a stranger. A stranger who had spit on her. They were standing on either side of her parlor, which he'd been skirting out towards the stairs when Willow appeared, blocking his retreat, talking in her blue streak way.

Probably trying to cover for the swamp of weirdness she'd just walked in on. Slayer planted there staring at him. Him planted there, being stared at.

Then he realized Willow was talking about the alley, about going to the alley, because the key to his amnesia had to be there, and she was ready to take them.

And Buffy, her jaw dropping as she began to speak like an automaton's, said, "He doesn't have amnesia anymore Will. He's back now."

"Really?" She wanted to light up, Red did, with the good news, except the harsh dissonance in the room, in her friend's voice, confused her. Her eyes flared with happy light, but she hesitated. Then she said, "Are you sure?"

Buffy's bruised face went darker still. A flush of chagrin. Her anger at him, at herself, was a match for his own.

"We're sure."

"Uh ... " She was checking them now like they were a tennis match, which was kind of funny because neither of them was moving. "So ... okay. Spike, how do you feel?"

He couldn't speak.

Buffy said, "He feels fine." Her voice was a shard.

"Because he looks fine," Willow said. "You both look, uh, just great."

Buffy said, "Spike's not staying."

At this, the witch's face seemed to grow, eyes getting huge, mouth opening. "He—what are you talking about? Buffy—you guys—"

"When they charged forward." His voice astonished him. "I didn't go." He hadn't meant to speak; he had no air, his tongue and palate were sere. The words fell out like dust-balls. "Angel an' the others. Went into it. An' I didn't. They died. An' I didn't."

Willow was staring at him now as if he'd turned into something incredible, a Belisha beacon, an elk. "You did not."

Suddenly there was nothing more crucial than impressing her with his cravenness. "Tellin' you—"

"Well, I don't believe it!" Shouting like he'd told her off.

"It's true!" Cunt.

"If that's what you think, then you still have amnesia." Willow was in motion now. She started up to him, full of confrontation; he thought she was going to take him in hand, but she veered abruptly, stalked instead up to Buffy. "You believe this?" To Buffy's stare, she cried, "Are you crazy? When has Spike ever refused a fight?"

He roared then. "Tellin' you I failed! Was a fucking coward!"

Willow barely glanced at him. She had Buffy by the arms, as if to steady her, or to shake her. "Buff. You do not believe this. You've kept your faith in him all this time, you know him—so why am I having to holler at you about this?"

Buffy blinked and turned a little, still jerky and slow like a busted robot. She whispered something. Willow leaned in closer. "Huh?" Flipped a glance over her shoulder towards him. Then back in Buffy's face again, "Please. That is crazy-talk, that is proof that he's still not back in his right mind. Don't even think about it. Right now that doesn't mean anything."

"You didn't see—you didn't hear what he said—!" Buffy's cry sounded like a child's, on the edge of a tantrum.

Willow bristled. "Spike, your Spike, would never succumb to despair." Then she was pulling her, dragging the slayer towards him. "I'm taking us to the alley. We are going to solve this thing. We are going to restore you, Spike."

Buffy dug in. The rug bunched up under her feet. She yanked free. "Wait!"

Willow crackled with purpose. "For what?"

Buffy raised her eyes, trying to connect with his, but he couldn't look at her. She spoke to Willow. "You know what's wrong with him?"

"His energy is all wrong, out of phase. It's worse now than it was before—this insanity proves it!"

"How do you know?"

"I feel ... something I can't describe. Because it's literally undescribable. We've got to go now."

"Just let me get my axe."



Buffy admitted the ease, the instantaneousness, of teleportation. Undoubtedly there were times when it was the only way to travel. But she didn't like it. It wasn't just that it gave her the heaves, and an after-effect worse than jet-lag (she wasn't subject to the regular jet-lag everyone else got, some slayer-power thing she thanked her stars for). Even quick as it was, she was never able to get through it without experiencing a moment that felt exactly like dying.

Later, she'd swear it lasted a whole lot more than a moment.

And it wasn't exactly like dying.

But she got the indescribable part.

You couldn't describe it because the mind couldn't comprehend it. Passing through it was sheer agony. Afterwards, all she would clearly summon back of the throes was a disjointed memory of getting her tonsils removed at the age of three, when two big doctors had had to hold her down while a third clapped the anesthesia inhaler over her face. It was as if, while they traveled from Scotland to California, she was reduced to nothing but that single pinpoint of consciousness, everything else she was or ever had been or ever might be smeared in nonexistent colors across a foul plain of horror so profound that just the mere intimation of it made her scream.

It was her screaming and Willow's, echoing off the dank charred alley brick, that announced their arrival.

They were splayed in a heap on the dirty broken pavement, as if they'd been slammed there.

"Uh, ouch."

Buffy said, "So it's not just me?" She grabbed the axe closer.

"It feels like this to you every time?"

"Bad, but never that bad. What just happened—happened to you too?"

Willow was scrambling up, gingerly, like an old lady. "Let's not talk about it, okay? Where's Spike?"

Spike lay on the dirty cracked pavement a couple yards off, face-down, twitching. Looking at him, Buffy had an uneasy sense that what she'd just gone through, the sensation her mind refused to contain, was due to them having somehow come through him, the disorder of his mind.

And with this idea came the nausea, and when she was done horking, the idea was gone. By then Willow was at work, pacing up and down, taking little hovering flights into the air. She'd pulled a small instrument out of her pocket, something that looked like a gold sextant crossed with a gyroscope; it glowed and floated before her. Spike was still on the ground. Buffy saw him try to get up, and flop back like some unseen bully had shoved him down.

Before she could open her mouth to ask, Willow volunteered: "This is bad."

"What's bad? What it is?"

"There's some big instability here. Spike's caught in it."

"Caught? What do you mean caught?"

"Maybe the better word is bound."

"Oh, sure, let's have the better word. Why didn't you detect this when we were here before? And what can you do about it?"

That's when the air—except it wasn't the air, it was the space that contained the air, the reality that contained the air—shook like a square of Jell-o, then froze.

A small flock of pigeons that was crossing through, hung in the air at eye-level. Buffy stared at them.

Then came the voice.

"You can do nothing."

The birds were fixed, but she could move. Buffy spun to see the figure that strode toward them. Some kind of demon, blue, leathery, female and no taller than she was.

Willow cried out. "Oh shit—Fred Burkle? What happened to you?"

"You address the shell. Fred is gone."

"Where? Who are you?" Willow seemed intimidated, which was a look Buffy hadn't seen on her in years. It wasn't reassuring.

Time to be the slayer. She could move, and did, wielding the axe, putting herself between the demon and her friend.

"At last I have located my pet." The demon gestured, and Spike rose; not by himself, but levitating into the air. His pose was stiff and frozen, and Buffy could see that he was in pain but unable even to cry out. The demon looked him over. "He is altered. The top was yellow."

"What are you talking about? Leave him alone."

She had enormous mesmerizing eyes. When she trained them on Buffy, Buffy found herself on her knees.

"You will bow to Illyria."

Behind her, Willow squeaked: "You're Illyria?"

Buffy said, "You know her?"

"Not like we've met. But I've heard about her. She, uh, caused the death of Fred Burkle, and overtook her body. She's a god. It was her coming into being in this dimension that Angel was trying to prevent. When Giles wouldn't send help."

"Oh great." Buffy tried to rise, but couldn't.

Illyria gestured again, and Spike whooshed over their heads, coming down on his feet, and then falling hard to his knees before the blue demon. "You should have awaited me, half-breed. I returned for you and you were gone."

Buffy saw Spike try to respond; his muscles flexed, but he couldn't move. His face was caught in a still grimace, half fanged-out. All he could do to was roll his eyes.

"Leave him alone."

Illyria looked at her again, and once more Buffy felt the power that came through those bug-eyes, like the spectrum spilling from a prism. The body, slender and small in its leathery covering, was merely the thinnest visible edge of some staggering concentration of authority. "These females are inconsequential, and may depart this place."

The flapping of the pigeons overhead broke the silence; the frozen moment was liquid again.

Buffy leapt up. "I'm not going anywhere. What is this?"

Willow cleared her throat. "Majesty, it was by your mighty act that the armies of the apocalypse were diverted from this place, wasn't it?"

Illyria's head pivoted like a bird's.

"Will you tell us, Majesty, the glorious tale of your triumph?"

Buffy stared around. "Will!"

Willow shushed her. "Majesty! We humbly implore, tell us of your magnificent conquest."

For a split second Illyria seemed flummoxed, and Buffy thought it very likely that in the next second both she and Willow might cease to exist.

But her patience held. "The half-breed Angel was not without honor. His cause was just." Her eyes sparked. "But he was deceitful. By his deceit, I was weakened. By his deceit, Wesley was killed. Thus in my grief I came to this place. I took my vengeance on all these pests."

"How did you take this glorious vengeance, Majesty?" Willow said. "Was it by opening the portals that bled the worlds together?"

"You know much," Illyria said.

Buffy couldn't tell if the god was impressed or pissed off; she seemed to examine Willow as through an invisible magnifying glass.

"With my last energies, I shunted them to a place of retribution. I saw them all cut down, turned to ash, their ashes decimated across time and space. I have since recouped my power—now it is greater than it has ever been. Within me cluster entire universes. Time refracts around me."

Gods did love their exaggerated declaratives, but Buffy had a sense that this was only the truth. Like Spike's slivers of memory, they were experiencing only the barest tip of this god-head, manifesting here.

Willow nodded. "You are indeed magnificent. But still you mourn."

Illyria's face crinkled into a sort of affronted sniff. "I was only beginning to enjoy Wesley. He is irreproducible. His loss has made a hole at my core that nothing can fill, in this world or any other. His erasure offends me. Grief offends me."

Willow said, "Yes, grief is very hard."

Buffy waved the axe. "If you're so powerful now, controlling time and dimensions, then you can bring Angel and his people back. You can bring back this Wesley." Wesley? Could she mean her old watcher Wesley Wyndham-Pryce? Huh. Gods went for the darnedest guys.

Illyria's voice rose up into a boom. "Those who are destroyed are destroyed forever. Their particles eternally scattered in time. What is done thus cannot be undone, even by my magnificence."

Willow said, low and deferential, "And that's why you were so angry at Angel, because of your terrible loss. That's why you didn't try to spare him at the last moment, the way you spared Spike."

Spared Spike? Buffy opened her mouth—hadn't Spike asserted that he'd held himself back? Hadn't he insisted he was ... and she'd believed him.

How could she have believed him?

Illyria drew herself up. "Angel caused me to be diminished. But as his larger cause was just, with my last energies, I sent them all out of this dimension, to be crushed."

Willow made a deferential little nod. "Except Spike."
"I did not desire his death. He was stubborn, would follow his leader. Three times I repelled him as he rushed the portal. Then when I returned for him here, he was gone. He is a rebellious pet, and will take much taming. I will restore his more pleasing appearance and take him to my Seat, where he will distract me from this grief."

"So I was right," Willow said. "Spike wasn't a coward."

"I care for no coward!" Illyria gestured at Spike, raising his paralyzed form to hover again in the air, then letting him go. He came down with a swimming motion, roaring, and barreled at her, sinking a punch that would've staggered even Buffy. Illyria took it like a tap.

"Blue Bitch! Sayin' you did this?"

Illyria tossed her head, the blue hair flaring out. "You have heard me." He came at her a second time; she froze him again. "Do not annoy me, half-breed."

Buffy tried to go to him, but though she could move, and there was nothing explicitly blocking her way, she couldn't get anywhere close.

The situation though, was clear as clear.

"Spike, you heard her. You weren't a coward. She kept you from following Angel."

"You will not speak to my pet. You females will depart."

"I'm not your bloody pet. You cheatin' murderous twat." He came at her again, and this time Illyria turned him aside with a gesture that was almost tender.

"I will set you as the lord of worlds, to amuse you. You will know pleasure and beauty in my service. Come, we are done here."

Oh shit. Buffy stepped forward. "Majesty! Spike is my mate."

She turned, her head cocking with that unnerving insect swivel. "He is a half-breed. He cannot mate with your kind."

"Not in the fertilizing my eggs sense, okay. We're lovers. We cherish each other, the way ... the way you cherish Wes. If you take Spike to console your grief, you will cause endless grief to me and to him. If Spike is grieving, how can he distract you?"

"I know that he will. I care not for anything else."

"But is that really the right way to honor Wesley? To separate Spike from his beloved? The way you and Wes—"

"It is not for honor that I claim my pet. What means honor to one who is no more?"

Buffy handed off the axe to Willow, and presented herself to the god open-handed. She'd put Spike just behind her, and once again stilled him. Buffy couldn't even catch his eye, and she was afraid that he wouldn't have looked at her if he could. "You loved Wesley, didn't you? You ... you wanted to be with him, to ... enjoy him."

"There was no opportunity."

"And that makes you so very sad."

"This will never end. It is eternal, as am I." Illyria's voice was low, but Buffy heard something thunderous in it, a melancholy as huge and unassimilable as the bad space they'd traversed to get here.

The bad space that was inside Spike's mind. That this god had somehow consigned him to when she opened her portals and caught him in her wake—purposefully, or as some careless side-effect of her huge inter-dimensional act, impossible to know.

"I'm sorry, Majesty. But Spike can't really substitute for Wesley, can he?"

Illyria frowned. "You have found him and think to appropriate him, but he was already mine."

"Um ... I didn't just find him. I've known him for years. And I'm not appropriating—"

Illyria seized her by the throat. Buffy kicked; the god's small hand squeezed her windpipe.

From the corner of her eye, she saw Spike move. "Oi! Blue, leave off!"

Still holding Buffy at the end of her outstretched arm, Illyria's head turned towards him.

Spike rushed at her, striking out. Buffy felt him pass through the god; for the moment that she phased, the clutch at her own throat was gone and she began to fall. Then Spike bounced off the brick wall behind, and she was once more arrested in mid-air, struggling for breath.

She kicked out again, and this time, the god let her go.

Spike confronted Illyria, fully fanged out, growling. "You did all this! You kept me from going with him! Took a snit an' killed my sire!"

His rage didn't seem to reach her, the energy of his passion somehow dissipating in the air, as if it came from something small and barely noticeable. He swung out again, and again his blow phased through her. She blinked slowly.

"I had no urge to punish you. You had no reason to choose death."

"You don't bloody know my reasons."

"This is of no importance. You will come with me now." She gestured, and once more Spike was forced to his knees.

"I won't. You may be able to squeeze my little mind like a bloody sponge. But you can't make me yours. You spared me, yeah, so you'd better spare me altogether. I've got work to do, won't be your toy."

"Mating with this female, that is your work?"

"No. My mating, an' this female, are none o' your concern. The work—you know what that is. What Wesley died for, an' Angel, an' Charlie-boy. The mission. You won us this battle—an' I thank you for that much. But the war's still on, an there's fewer warriors to step up on the side of right."

"This world is no more concern of mine. I will not revisit it for a billion billion billion centuries. You will forget it too, and be happy in my service."

Buffy tried to move towards him, but again, though there was nothing holding her back, she couldn't get close. "Will—what is she doing?"

Willow shook her head. Magic sparkled at her fingers' ends, but dripped off, ineffectual. "This is for Spike only."

Spike growled at her. "Y'know what Wesley would say if he was here? He'd tell you this was wrong. You know he would, an' you know you'd have listened."

Illyria's eyes closed. It was like fitting a hood on a hawk. For the moment that they were covered, Buffy was able to draw breath.

Then she opened them again, trained them on Spike with a terrible will.

He still struggled to rise. "The same pain you caused him, when you snatched Fred's life just when she'd begun to love him at last ... that's what you've got now. Some call that karma, but you an' me, pet, we know it's just how things are, yeah? Payback's a bitch, even for gods."

"Wesley would not summon this agony to me." For the first time, Illyria sounded less than sure of herself.

"You let in love an' you let in sufferin'. That's love's underbelly. That's how it works."

Illyria stared at him. She was holding him in place, even as she allowed him to argue.

Now she gestured towards Buffy. "You love this female?"

Spike didn't even glance. "S'the Mission I love. Love the Fight."

Illyria's mouth opened, but Buffy never heard what she said. Some invisible twister shook the alley, turning the air hot and dense and opaque.

When she could feel again, think again, Buffy was lying on the roof of a parked car, its alarm whooping. Sliding off, she saw Willow sprawled on the sidewalk a few yards off. They seemed to be streets away from the old hotel.

As she ran to her, Willow sat up.

"Are you okay? What was that?"

Willow coughed. "Pretty sure Illyria's left this dimension. Talk about snits."

"Where's Spike?" Buffy pulled Willow to her feet, looking around. The block was mostly light industry, a couple of streetlamps dark, parked cars. She concentrated into the night air, feeling for vampires, but there was nothing. "Did she take him?"