As Spike slept, Buffy sat up in Giles' bed—their last day there—and pored through the letters and keepsakes Spike had brought in the leather case from Brabant and Company. She marveled at her own interest in these old things—she'd never been a big fan of things more obscure than black & white screwball comedies on late night TV. Now she was reading the love letters exchanged by Spike's parents during their engagment in 1843, handwriting in neat copperplate, brown ink on crisp sheets, with the same compulsive attention she paid to the new weekly issue of Heat. His own letters to his mother, written from Cambridge, full of references to poetry, to friends designated only by their initials, to certain teachers and lectures attended and birds seen while punting on the Cam, filled her with wonder and mystery—it was a world she didn't really identify with, more of a Giles kind of world—but the sheer ordinariness of it floored her. Spike, her demon lover, her night creature, her great warrior, had once been a mild young man who covered his sandy curls with a boater hat in the summer months (there was a photo of him, posed on the river bank with two friends and their punt poles) and wrote poems that he sent to his mother (though there wasn't a scrap of his poetry amongst the papers—had it been destroyed or was Spike keeping it from her on purpose? There were other letters, exhaustive diary-like descriptions of walking tours through the Lake District, and in Cornwall, chockful of detailed descriptions of scenery (she skipped those), and vague lonely romantic longings, and after college, the grand tour through Europe with a friend referred to only as F. Anne had kept every scrap from her son's hand, the letters arrnaged in order, bound in ribbons. A few of her own replies were mixed in—William had apparently been more careless about keeping his mother's letters—and reading these made Buffy's eyes smart, plunging her into memories of Joyce, with whom she'd never had the opportunity to write exchange letters. She was almost sad that people didnt do that anymore.

She looked over and over at the few photographs. Spike's face never seemed less odd, staring out of them, in those strange clothes and hair. She fingered the ring he'd given her, thinking of questions she wanted to ask, recalling the glimpses she'd had, during his amnesia, of the more Williamish layers of his personality.

As she retied the ribbon on one packet of letters, she noticed he was gazing at her from his pillow.

"Good morning, sweetheart."

"How studious you are. There's no quiz, you know."

"Have you been watching me a long time? I thought you were fast asleep."

"I love watchin' you. It's sheer heaven to me, lyin' beside you, looking at you. Breathing you in."

The compliment made her tingle, flush. Spike put a hand up, cupped her bare breast, rubbed a thumb over the nipple.

"Now you've read those, you see what a silly milksop of a mamma's boy I was."

"You two were very good friends."

"Poor lady ... was a sad sort of life, really. Lost her little girls, widowed too young. She was consumptive the last few years, we both knew she hadn't long to live, an' her dearest wish was to see me married and to hold a grandchild in her arms, but I was too much of a bloody mooncalf to see to that."

"Why?"

"Set my sights too high. Loved a lady who was too haughty to look at me. Never gave a thought to any of the girls I could've had, though there must've been plenty."

"Well, I'm sorry. But not that sorry. I don't like to think of you having been married before."

"Come here, Buffy." He sat up. She gathered up the letters and pictures and stowed them carefully back in the bag, then moved into his waiting arms. Spike was quiet and rather solemn, and she knew that they weren't about to make love; he was going to talk to her.

"You know I've fixed it so you'll always have money to live on. It's yours, no matter what happens." He reached for something in the drawer on his side of the bed, a small clasp envelope. "In here's a copy of my will. An' this little glowy bit," he shook it out onto his palm, "long as it shines like this, I'm alive. Soon's I dust, it goes dull."

"No dust."

"Hopin' not. But you pay attention. Got this so you'll never be in doubt, since I'll leave no corpse if I'm killed."

"Yes, I see." She took the little jewel in her fingers. "I'd like to wear it against my heart.'

"Better to keep it somewhere safe, don't want to lose it. Though they have another just like it at Brabant & Company, if you do. We'll get a deposit box at the bank."

The sight of the crystal, winking in her palm, brought up her tears, that were ever ready these days to flow. "Spike, you can't die again. Not before me. Promise me you won't put me through that again."

"Not if I can help it. Hush. Don't cry. You an' me, we're goin' to work the mission together for a long long time."

"Yes."

"An' keep house, an' enjoy ourselves in our big bed. Yes? Show us a smile, pet."

She lifted her head; he lifted the tears from her eyelashes, sipped them from his fingers.

"Now listen, there's something else. Been thinkin' how to say this. I hope we'll never be parted by anythin' short of death, an' like we just said, that won't be for a long long while. But I want you to know ... should it ever come to pass, that you need somethin' else, somethin' more ... that you're sorry you tied yourself to me ...."

"What? Stop. No. No."

"Buffy, listen—"

"Don't you hear what you're saying? That you wouldn't fight to keep me, if I got some stupid notion in my head to leave you, which hello, is never going to happen? Because you still believe, deep down, that somehow you don't deserve me! Spike!"

"Is that what I'm saying? Don't think that's it. Will you listen, woman?"

"It is! It's how it sounds to me. I'm not going to let go of you, and you'd damn well better never let go of me."

"But if ... one day you might want to be a mum yourself, an' it would be wrong of me to stand in the way of it."

"How would you stand in the way?"

"You know I can't give you a baby. An' even if I could, how'm I fit to be a—"

"You think I'd leave you for that?"

He half-nodded, half shook his head, his eyes taking on that far-away stare that she'd become too familiar with in the weeks of amnesia, when he'd fall back into confusion. She feared he was doing that again now.

"Spike?" She took his face in her hands. He focused on her. "I trust and love you enough to want you for my husband, so why wouldn't I trust and love you enough to raise a kid with you? Not that ... I don't know if I'll ever be ready for a kid. It's never really been on my radar, y'know?" A new thought prodded her. A few minutes ago he'd mentioned how his mother had been denied grandchildren. "Oh ... is that what you want?"

"I'm just sayin' ... don't want to be an obstruction to you ...."

"Sweetheart, I probably wouldn't even be alive today if not for you. How many times have you saved my life?"

"Love takin' care of you. Makes me feel ...."

She leaned into him, foreheads together. "Alive? Spike, you're the most vibrant person I know."

"Just promise me, Buffy, you'll tell me what you want, whatever it is. Never want you to be unhappy."

"I can't promise to never be unhappy. But I'll try ... I'll try to never bottle myself up."

"An' if you get broody, you'll say so."

"Oh God. Yes, I do solemnly swear. But don't hold your breath."

"Got no breath to hold."

"Well, that's convenient."

"There's something else."

"I'm not sure how much more of this I can take." She tried to laugh, but it was more of a sob.

"Think you won't mind takin' this." He drew something else out of the bedstand drawer. "Dunno what your wedding dress is like, but I hope these'll go with it." He opened the square box, to show her an elaborately worked gold necklace, with earrings to match. "

"Oh—I've seen these before. In your mother's portrait."

"I gave 'em to her. They're yours now. If you—"

She rushed to cut him off with a smile. "If I like them yes. Yes I do. God, they're gorgeous. Can I wear them now?"

"You're naked, Missus Pratt."

"Does that matter? Can you still fuck me, with your mother's things staring you in the face?" She was already putting on the earrings. "How do they look?"

"Wondrous."

She held up her hair, and he clasped the necklace around her throat. "Like your bride gift?"

She rose and went to the mirror. A shiver took her, seeing the jewelry from the sepia-toned photo on her own body, the old good gold emitting a warm shimmer against her skin. "Very much. Thank you."

Spike followed her; passed his arms around her waist. In the mirror, her hair stirred where he burrowed his nose into it, to press kisses against her ear, down her neck. "Thank you," she repeated. "This is perfect."

His erection prodded her back. She turned to face him, took it in her hand. "I don't have a present for you. I ... I forgot I was supposed to get one."

"Mine's right here." He slid a hand between her thighs, gripped her sex. "You keep it for me."