Faith was in an utterly foul mood. Moreso than usual.

She had had a miserable day the day before, having her suspicions about Spike's unfaithful loyalties confirmed, and then losing him completely when he had managed to escape her. She had been denied even the satisfaction of punishing him for his treachery.

And she had had so many fun ideas, too, she pouted.

At the time, unable to pursue him because of her own injuries, she had told herself that it did not matter. He could not get far, and her minions would find him soon enough. Now, however, she was starting to feel otherwise. For all the utter reckless abandon with which she seemed to live her life, she was terribly paranoid and afraid, almost all the time, of falling victim to some unexpected attack, most likely from someone she had begun to trust. Therefore, she liked to know that those around her were under her power. Variables outside her control made her nervous.

Spike had become a variable outside her control.

She picked up the phone and dialed a familiar number.

"Hello?"

"It's me," Faith said shortly, aware that she would need no further introduction to the person she was speaking to. "Listen. We've got a problem." Her silent partner listened as she explained the events of the night before, recoundint how she had caught Spike going through her things, and what he must have discovered, judging from the crumpled papers she had retrieved from his pocket, which she now held in her hand.

"That could be a big problem." Her partner's voice was very unhappy.

"Yeah," Faith replied dryly. "No kidding, genius." Her tone brightened a little as she added, "But no worries, Sugar. I have an idea. I think it's time you paid our golden girl a little visit? Don't you? I bet she's really missing you right about now."

There was a brief silence on the other end of the line.

"What? Don't you wanna go see your girl?" Faith's voice was innocently mocking.

"Well...yes," he admitted. "I can't think of anything that would bring me more pleasure." There was a malicious glee in his low voice. "But -- how should I explain my just suddenly turning up at her door?"

"Not a problem," Faith's tone was smug and sure. "I've got it all worked out. Now here's what you need to tell her..."


"Morning, Will!" Buffy's voice was a little too bright as she met her friend at the doorway to her bedroom, just as Willow was on her way to the bathroom. "How are you feeling?"

Willow's sleepy eyes narrowed on her friend's innocent, hopeful smile, and her forehead crinkled slightly in a frown. "Tired," she replied. "Confused. A little suspicious," she admitted. "What's up, Buffy? What's going on?"

She was *that* obvious already? She was totally screwed.

"Um, Will," buffy said, hesitantly, looking away from Willow's penetrating gaze. "I -- I need to talk to you about something..." *There is absolutely no way I'm going to be able to find a way to tell her...*

Suddenly, a shrill little scream sounded from down the hall and around the corner, where Buffy's room was located. A moment later Dawn rounded the corner, wide-eyed and shaking.

"Buffy," she began in a voice that was timid and hesitant, and still trembling slightly. "Why is there a half-naked vampire chained to your bed?"

*That oughta get it done,* Buffy thought with a sigh of grim resignation, wondering desperately why Faith could not have decided to try to kill Spike at some time when he was wearing more than just a pair of jeans. Slowly, anxiously, she raised her eyes to meet the rising anger and realization in Willow's glittering green eyes.

At just that moment, a bright-eyed, smiling Xander stepped out of the bathroom with a towel around his waist -- then stepped back quickly in surprise at the sight of the three girls gathered in the hallway just outside the door.

"Oh! Um...hey, guys..." he mumbled sheepishly, blushing visibly. "I'll just, um...go find some...clothes." He started to move awkwardly past them down the hall, then stopped when he noticed the tension that surrounded his friends. "Is...um...is something wrong?" he finally ventured to ask.

"Nope. Everything's just fine," Willow replied with a bright smile to rival that one that had just faded from Buffy's face. As she spoke, she took out the stake she always carried with her now, even when she was sleeping, and started purposefully toward Buffy's bedroom door.

Just as Spike had feared.

Buffy was stunned for a moment by the immediate violence of Willow's reaction, but then sprang into action, quickly catching up with her friend just at the door to her room, grabbing her raised arm and spinning her around to face her.

Willow's eyes widened, startled that Buffy had actually physically moved to stop her, an outraged accusation in her eyes. "Buffy, why is he here?" she demanded furiously, pointing a trembling finger through the open doorway at Spike, who was now sitting up as best he could with the cuffs around his wrists, watching the tense scene warily, his eyes wide and more than a little fearful.

"Will...calm down," Buffy said, keeping her voice calm and quiet. "Just calm down and let me explain."

"Calm *down*?" Willow's voice rose even higher, with her anger. "That's a *murderer* in there, Buffy! He *killed* the man I was in love with, and you're telling me to calm down about the fact that he's in your bedroom?"

"It's...not like that," Buffy replied softly, haltingly, feeling a flush of shame creep up her cheeks. She was telling the truth...and yet, she had the strange feeling that in a way, she was not.

"Now, just a second, here," Xander broke in, coming to stand between them, holding up one hand in a gesture to halt them, his other hand holding his towel closed. "Will -- Buffy's right..."

Willow turned a disbelieving look on him, incredulous, before he went on firmly, "She *does* deserve a chance to explain. Now...Spike seems to be chained up pretty securely -- even if it *is* to Buffy's bed for reasons I do not want to attempt to comprehend..." His raised eyebrows and speculative tone told Buffy that he was not completely without his own suspicions. "So he won't be hurting anyone in the very near future. Okay? So let's everybody just chill out."

He paused for a moment, looking between them carefully, releasing a deep breath when neither girl said a word or made any move toward the other. "Now, why don't you guys just go downstairs to the living room. I'll, um...put some clothes on," he said with a small, nervous laugh at the awkward situation he was still in, "and when I come down -- we can talk about this. Okay?"

Once again, Xander was proving to be the voice of reason and fairness in a very volatile situation. Buffy was grateful that he was willing to actually hear her out before he started making judgments, unlike Willow, who seemed to be extra-judgey lately, she thought with no small resentment.

She just hoped that Xander's non-judgeyness would continue *after* he heard her explanation.

"And don't start without me," Xander ordered with mild sarcasm as the girls headed
down the stairs, considerably more subdued. "I wouldn't wanna miss this or anything." He paused before adding, "And I don't want you two to kill each other while I'm not there to stop you."

It occurred to him with a shudder as he returned to his bedroom, that if the Slayer and the increasingly powerful young witch really wanted to kill each other, there would be nothing he could do to stop them. Fortunately, that did not seem to occur to either of them, as they obediently made their way down the stairs and to the livign room to wait for him.

By the time he joined them ten minutes later, in a clean, dry t-shirt and a comfortable pair of jeans, his hair still damp from the shower, both girls seemed to have calmed down quite a bit. They were seated on opposite ends of the sofa, each wearing her own sullen expression.

Dawn -- who had not been upset to begin with, once the initial shock of the whole "half-naked vampire chained to her big sister's bed" thing wore off, was eyeing them warily from the armchair across from the sofa.

Xander sat down on the edge of the coffee table, facing his friends and drawing in a deep breath. "Okay. Buffy," he began in a carefully even, calm voice, looking at her expectantly. "Why is Spike chained to your bed?"

Dawn made a little clearing sound in her throat, and he sighed, looking down for a moment, before adding, "While not fully dressed?" His tone was even and patient, like a schoolteacher speaking to a child.

Buffy had the insane and utterly terrible urge to laugh out loud.

"God, why is everybody making such a big deal about the whole shirtless thing?" she demanded in frustration. "It is *so* not a big deal! That's how he was when he got here! And he is *not* chained to my bed! He's chained to the bedpost, on the *floor*!" she corrected emphatically.

"You guys make it sound like some weird, kinky...vampire bondage...fetish...thing," she finished the awkward statement -- awkwardly -- distracted suddenly by the mental image of a kinky vampire bondage fetish thing involving Spike. Quickly she forced her wide eyes back to Xander. "Which...it's so...not!" she informed them all, a note of defensiveness in her voice.

"He came here because he found out about something that Faith is planning. Something *really* big," she told them, a little calmer, and felt gratified and relieved when their attention was diverted from the vampire upstairs to the much more important -- and less humiliating topic of Faith's evil scheme. Quickly, she filled them in on exactly what Spike had found out.

"We *so* need Giles right about now!" Buffy added at the end of her account, with a heavy sigh.

The others were quiet, still taking it all in. Xander nodded his agreement.

"That still doesn't explain why he's chained to your bed. Post," Willow amended with an irritated roll of her eyes before Buffy could object.

"Well," Buffy began with a slight grimace. "he kind of...got caught. Taking the information. Faith tried to kill him, and he barely got away."

"So he came *here*?" Willow's voice was incredulous. "He expects *us* to protect him?"

"He must be *really* short in the friends department at the moment," Xander shook his head with a short humorless laugh of disbelief.

"He expects *me* to protect him," Buffy amended Willow's comment calmly, a firm resolve in her voice. "In exchange for his help."

"What help?" Willow asked in exasperation. "He can't find out anything else. He got caught," she pointed out.

"He's an experienced fighter," Buffy replied immediately, hoping it didn't show that she had thought out this explanation carefully the night before. "He's almost beaten me many times. And he knows Faith's operation inside and out. He can tell me how she's gonna react -- help me anticipate her next move." She paused, then went on, encouraged a little by their silence. "He can be useful to us. We have to take Faith down. And it that means working with Spike to get it done -- that's just what we'll have to do."

There was a short silence before Xander finally spoke. "As much as I hate to admit it -- because you know I hate Spike as much as you do, Will..." He turned apologetic eyes on his friend. "...she's right. If she's going up against another Slayer -- a very dangerous, psychotic one at that -- it might be a good idea to do it with someone else to back her up -- someone who can fight and wants to take Faith out as much as she does."

Despite her hatred for the vampire upstairs, and her overwhelming desire to just go up there and stake him right then and there, Willow had to admit that Buffy did have a point.

She did not admit it. She did not say a word. But her silence was her grudging consent.

"I didn't want you guys to not be safe," Buffy went on quietly. "That's why he's chained up in my room. I wanted him where I would know if he tried to get loose or anything. As long as we're working with him, I promise, he's either gonna be with me, or chained up," Buffy assured them.

*Or both,* a wicked little voice in her head suggested, a voice that sounded surprisingly like the low, seductive voice Spike had used with her earlier.

*No!* Buffy emphatically told herself. *There will be no fantasizing about the gorgeous vampire chained up in your bedroom!*

And she managed to stick to that resolve.

For about ten minutes.


Once Willow and Xander left for work, Buffy let Spike free of his chains, and the two of them sat down to do some strategizing. She thought it was best to wait until her friends left, for the safety of all concerned. While they had grudgingly accepted her decision, she knew that it would not be wise to push things by forcing them to interact with Spike when they did not have to.

Dawn seemed very uncomfortable around the vampire, despite the chains, and his battered appearance, and kept to her room once Buffy unchained him -- with the warning that if he so much as *looked* at her sister she would rip his heart out with her bare hands and stake him with a toothpick before his very eyes. Slowly.

By the time afternoon rolled around, they were simply waiting for darkness to fall. It had been decided that Spike would accompany her on her evening patrol. It could only be of the good to have *two* excellent fighters instead of one, Buffy thought.

All they had managed to come up with that day was a list of the vamps that Faith had had working for her, whom Joyce might have known and invited in, unaware that they were no longer the people that she had known. Buffy was shocked by the number of people she had known -- teachers, fellow students, friends of her mother -- that had been turned under Faith's reign of terror.

"So much death and destruction," Buffy said quietly, a troubled frown on her face as she shook her head slowly. "So many friends -- gone."

Spike said nothing, just nodded slowly in acknowledgement of her pain.

Her eyes were suddenly fixed on him, accusing. "And you helped her."

"I only helped her in order to destroy her, love. I was never really on her side," Spike reminded her calmly, not raising his voice or becoming defensive. "I only did it to get close enough to hurt her."

"And all the time -- you just *watched* her kill all those people, or have them killed..."

"I couldn't have bloody stopped her, pet," he broke in. "She's got a lot of vamps that *are* on her side -- and I'm sorry, but all of them against one of me didn't sound terribly pleasant, love."

Buffy could not argue with that, though she had her doubts as to whether or not he would have cared to help Faith's victims, had the odds been stacked more in his favor. She was silent for a moment, looking away in thought, before she glared back at him sharply, her eyes angry.

"And Oz?"

He suddenly understood where this was going, with a very uncomfortable feeling. She was looking for something to blame him for -- some reason not to trust him, to break the fragile, tentative alliance that they had formed, though he had no idea why she had to look for a reason to mistrust him.

As if being mortal enemies was not enough.

"Look, pet," he spoke up suddenly, just a slight edge to his voice at last, his tone expressing much more courage than he actually felt. "If you don't want to do this, I'll just be on my merry way. Take the chit on by yourself. Won't bother me. I'll be on the road out of Sunnyhell for good." He shrugged, trying not to let her see how much it *did* bother him.

He knew that if he walked out that door alone, he would not last ten minutes. He could try to make it out of town once and for all -- but he would never make it to the city limits.

Buffy stared at him for a long moment. The truth was, she knew that she needed him, as much as she hated to admit it. What she really wanted was not to blame him, but to find some reason not to -- some explanation for the offenses that made her friends despise him so much.

And the reason why she wanted so badly to be able to absolve him of guilt was troubling to her in and of itself.

No...she most definitely did not want him to leave.

She had just opened her mouth to respond to his challenge -- clearly a bluff, as he had nowhere else to go -- when the doorbell rang.

She sighed as she rose to answer it. "*That's* never good," she muttered as she neared the door, reaching for the stake in her back pocket automatically.

She opened the door, thinking that it was really a little early for Faith and her gang to be out in force, and actually a little grateful for the distraction from her troubling thoughts.

And then all thought flew away in a moment of mingled shock, joy -- and an incredible sense of utter relief -- as her breath escaped her in a single whispered word.

"*Giles!*"