~*~

Epilogue (6 months later)

~*~

Buffy spent a miserable summer. The man she had loved, she’d sent to hell and the man she felt she could love, maybe even was starting to love already, was gone from her life forever.

Joyce watched as Buffy seemed to grow older before her eyes and it broke her heart. It hadn’t helped that Hank decided his secretary was a better companion than his only daughter and had hied off to Mexico with her instead of having Buffy for her planned summer visit.

Her friends had been there for her though and she had gone Bronzing and to the beach and done all the other fun things they could think of to try to cheer Buffy up. It was surface cheer, however, and they all knew it, even if they didn’t all guess the real reason.

The demon population seemed to be lulled by the hot summer and there was precious little slaying needed. Buffy felt she could use something to kill most days.

Finally, just after school started and Buffy began her senior year, Angel did what he always did best: he dropped into her life from nowhere. No one had an explanation for how the souled vampire returned from the hell dimension that he claimed had been his home for hundreds of years. Buffy helped him return to sanity and health and then calmly suggested he would probably do better in a larger city.

Angel had been filled with remorse for his actions as Angelus and was more than a bit hurt that Buffy no longer seemed to love him. Still, with the dangers of any try for happily ever after with the Slayer, it made sense for him to leave. Angel headed for Los Angeles as soon as he was able to travel.

"I’ll always keep watch over you, Buffy. You’ll always be my girl," he had said before leaving.

"I’d prefer you didn’t, Angel. I’m not your girl anymore. You killed that girl in a mansion on Crawford Street." Angel winced at her words, even though they were emotionless in tone.

"Maybe some day we can be friends, but I’d rather just have you off somewhere fighting the good fight, somewhere I’m … not."

In the end there had been no tears, much to the Scoobies’ surprise. Joyce, however, nodded sagely to herself. Yes, Buffy had a broken heart, but it wasn’t because she missed Angel.

"Buffy," Joyce called to her daughter one weekend morning after Angel left. "Your father seems to have realized he cheated you out of a summer vacation. A guilt demon must have attacked him in Mexico. Anyway he sent a check for you to use to take a nice trip after graduation."

Buffy poured the milk over her cereal and shrugged. "That’s nice. Guess that means he doesn’t plan on coming to the ceremony either. Good thing I didn’t push too hard for a shot at valedictorian," Buffy snarked

"Buffy Anne Summers, you stop being so negative!" Joyce refused to admit Hank had virtually abandoned his child within a year of their move to Sunnydale.

"You know, I was just thinking back to last year when we were trying to find where Angelus had moved his nest." Buffy tensed up at the mention of the time that she tried her best to not think of, except in her dreams. "Before Spike said he could track them, Mr. Giles said something about a locator spell that could be used to locate a specific demon if you knew who you were looking for."

"Well, we didn’t need it. Spike did fine." Buffy nearly choked on his name.

"I was just thinking that after graduation, perhaps we could have someone do one of those spells to see where Spike and Dru wound up. Maybe you could take that after school trip and go see him, see how he’s doing." Joyce watched Buffy from the corner of her eye, noting the slight tremble in Buffy’s hand as she spooned up cereal.

"Not a good idea, Mom." Buffy took a deep breath and decided to level with her mother. "Look, I know you mean well. It’s just…I think I could love Spike. Maybe I already do a little." Buffy saw her mother’s smile of triumph at having guessed correctly.

"That’s just it though. It’s just me. Spike loves Dru. He left with Dru. If I show up, it won’t change a thing except make me have to see him all happy with that Loony Toon and wonder why." Buffy poured the rest of her cereal in the garbage disposal, suddenly not hungry. "Best to leave it in the past. I’m young, I’ll get over it."

Joyce sighed sadly and wished there was some way for fate to take a hand. She just knew that somewhere Spike was probably feeling much as Buffy was.

~~~

Spike had another shot of single malt and closed his eyes. He had taken Dru to Tierra del Fuego as he had planned, and as he had feared, it wasn’t nearly far enough away from Sunnyhell. They had moved about Argentina then north to Brazil, finally settling in Paracura on the Atlantic coast.

It was a fairly demon friendly town with an entire neighborhood of various demons. In fact, it was in a taverna in that neighborhood that Spike had caught up to Dru with her latest lover, a Chaos demon.

Dru had never forgiven him for taking sides against her daddy. She had tried to dust him for at least the first week after they left Sunnydale. Finally she had taken to nasty taunts, accusations and extreme unfaithfulness. In fact, she seemed to delight in picking the most disgusting paramours possible and flaunting them directly in front of Spike.

It didn’t help that every time he closed his eyes he saw a shining blonde girl filled with fire and heart, a girl he’d never see in the flesh again.

He had been wrong. Dru didn’t need him. She did quite well without him, in fact.

She was constantly nattering at him about one fault or another. She didn’t understand why he hunted and fed but no longer killed. Frankly he didn’t understand it either; it just felt wrong somehow.

Dru said the Slayer was all around him, all the time. Said he tasted of ashes and burned like the sun and it disgusted her. She used that as the excuse to keep Spike from her bed while filling it with everything that walked, glided, flew, slithered and oozed.

Spike looked at the third empty bottle in front of him. He had tried to pour himself into oblivion after that last, humiliating fight in front of Drippy Boy, Dru’s antlered lover of the moment. Spike wished he could set the clock back before all this misery began. He would go back when Dru loved him…before Angelus returned…before meeting a Slayer that would likely stake him if she saw him again, instead of throwing herself into his arms.

By his fifth bottle, Spike had the germ of an idea. What he needed was to prove to Dru that Buffy Summers was nothing to him except a Slayer he had made a pact with to keep the world filled with Happy Meals. He also needed something to make his wicked goddess love him again.

By his sixth bottle, Spike had decided the best place to find the answers to what he needed was in a small town in California called Sunnydale.

He popped the "Kiss This" cassette in the deck of the DeSoto and sang off-key with the Sex Pistols as he headed north to his destiny.


~fin