Buffy wasn’t sure how long she’d held him, but it didn’t matter. As far as she was concerned, time stopped the instant he said her name; but the wrenching sobs seemed to have cascaded down to shuddering gasps, which to her, didn’t sound all that much different. But, that could have been because she was trying to keep some kind of hold on her emotions, for his sake.

When he seemed to quiet enough to actually listen to her, she asked, in a whisper, “Spike, do you think you could sit up, if I helped you?”

He moaned in protest and his trembling hands tightened, ever so slightly, at the nape of her neck. Buffy swallowed hard and closed her eyes as she turned her nose into the flesh between his neck and shoulder, she spoke breathlessly, tasting the bitterness of his fear as it bled from him, “Spike, you don’t have to let go, just hold on tight,” she said as she gently took his hands from around her neck and held them in her own. Her hands never left his as she slowly pulled him along with her until his legs were swung over the side of the bed and he was sitting upright as she knelt on the floor next to the bed, with the Parsons chair at her back, “Now,” she began softly, “can you sit on your own, or do you need some support?” she averted her eyes, suddenly overcome with an awkward shyness at the way he was looking at her, “Maybe some pillows…?” she chanced a look at him, and her heart leaped into her throat.

Spike said nothing, only looked at her with the kind of wonder she has only seen once before, the night she came back from the dead for the second time. For an instant, she couldn’t breathe. The pain in his eyes was unbearable. And, she looked away again. Oh God! It hurts to even look at him! If I can’t take it, what must it be like for him? And, as she looked away, she felt a rush of shame run through her. He needs you, and you can’t even * look * at him? Way to go Buffy! If he never speaks to you again…

Spike let out a shuddering sigh, one that was laden with tears.

She can’t even look at me. Why should she? I don’t deserve it. Know I don’t. This is just a dying wish. Something we both want. A dream. It needs…But I need, too. It’s dying; and so am I, without it. I know it. Can’t let her see…

He stared at the place where their hands were joined. She’s so soft. And… And, he noticed something different. Something that made him believe that, maybe- just maybe… “No chains,” he whispered, staring down at the white gauze that covered his wrists, his voice choking with pain, “No chains,” he sobbed, disbelievingly.

“That’s right, Spike,” she said softly, her voice wavering from both anger and sorrow, as she forced herself to look at him, “no chains,” she looked at his downcast eyes and slumped shoulders, and her heart broke for him, “I’m sorry I didn’t get to you sooner,” she swallowed the tears that were tightening her throat, “I know that…” her voice trailed off as she caressed his palms with her thumbs. I’m so bad with words, Spike. You’re so much better at this. Tell me what you need…please?

Suddenly Spike looked up at her, his eyes wide with fear and moist with unshed tears, “The key,” he asked desperately, his voice hoarse, “did you find it?” he closed his eyes as if trying to pull information from deep within him; his forehead creased with effort and worry, “I remember something but…” he shook his head and sighed, defeated and chagrinned that he had failed her yet again. Everything was in a fog of pain now, and in a place he couldn’t reach, “Sorry Slayer, it’s gone now. Did you find it?” he asked again in a timid voice, a voice she knew did not fit the vampire she knew, looking at the wrists that were once encased in metal, but were now covered in soft, yielding, clean cotton.

Buffy smiled sadly, unable to keep the tears from falling now, “If there was a key, I didn’t find it.”

His eyes widened a little as he tried to process what he had heard, “Then if…you have to lock me up,” his face became hard and unreadable. The distant haze that clouded his normally expressive eyes sent a chill down Buffy’s spine, “Slayer, lock me up,” his breath was heaving, almost to the point of hyperventilation, “before the Watcher gets what he’s after…”

Buffy wasn’t sure what to do, but she knew that she had to stop the panic that was rising in her, watching him struggling with the ghosts of what Travers had done to him, “Spike, I don’t know what he did,” her resolve steeled, seeing the despair that was so deep within him, and she said, squeezing his hands a little, hoping to give him confidence, “but there is no way that man will ever hurt you again.”

Spike shook his head, completely distraught, seeming not to hear her, “…No, you don’t understand. It wants to kill you,” his voice trailed off as he tried to push the influence he felt from it down- and away from her. He did not want to put her in danger, but it was so strong, he wasn’t sure how much longer he could hold it at bay.

Speaking again, his voice was hushed and cracking under the strain of the effort it took to maintain control. He looked at her eyes, searching. Hoping she would understand, “It’s so much stronger than me now, and angry. And now with…” Buffy could feel his hands shaking as she held them, “I’m not right, Buffy. If it got control of- if I couldn’t stop it,” he heaved a deep body- wracking sigh, and she could see the tears running freely down his face, “It’d be me that does it, Love. Me. I can’t do that, Buffy. Don’t you understand? It would kill me.”
*******************************************************************

LONDON, ENGLAND-

Giles’s hands were shaking as he read the texts that had been liberated from the vault beneath Council headquarters. The vault that Travers had the audacity to lock with the keycode, “Endgame.”

Endgame indeed. If he was brazen enough to… “Dear Lord!” Giles gasped, looking up at Willow, unable to hold the ancient parchment in his shaking hands any longer, he let it flutter silently to the table.

Willow looked up to see a look in Giles’s eye that she alone had put there once before. Fear.

“My God, Giles…What did you find?” she asked, knowing that, somehow, she would dread the answer.

“I found the writings of an Unhesine monk…”

“Monks,” Willow muttered, “not necessarily a good thing, in some cases.”

“Nor in this case, it seems. The Ukesolrill is not, in fact, a disembodied spirit, as I first thought. It is, rather, a predator, made specifically to hunt vampires.”

“Yeah,” Willow nodded, “Kind of figured that. I mean, it is what the Slayer does.”

Giles shook his head, “No Willow, you misunderstand. The vampire, in its natural state, has no natural enemies. And, when the last of the demons were being driven back in the fight for control of the earth, in a desperate bid to stay in control of its environment, a vampire mixed with a human, thus creating the vampire as we know it. A hybrid.”

“Yeah, so…?” Willow’s eyes widened in confusion.

“The vampire had no natural predator. And now, because it had mingled its essence with a human in order to hide in the human world, it looked like a human. The Unhesines, who it seems, later would become the Watchers, decided to manufacture a predator for the vampire- the Slayer- by placing this conjured entity inside a human form. A female was chosen because they were, traditionally, seen as the more docile gender and would offer less resistance to the entity. The ‘Soul Killer’ was meant to numb the girl’s nurturing nature, to make it easier for a girl to kill something that, at least outwardly, looked like she did.”

“And, when a Slayer dies…?”

“The Ukesolrill is returned to where it came from, until the next Slayer is called. According to this,” he looked down at the parchment, “the energy, as it were, is renewed, for each Slayer. Each Slayer, in a sense, makes it stronger.”

“Where does it come from, Giles?”

“That, I do not know. There are legends about mystics, but…”

“And Travers knew about these legends, these mystics?”

Giles nodded, “He did.”

“And if he put the Ukesolrill… if he attached it to Spike…” Willow put her hand to her mouth, in shock, “Giles, we have to get back to Devon.”
*************************************************

I’m so tired. Don’t you understand? I have to keep you safe? “Buffy please…”

She shook her head, “No, Spike. I won’t put you in chains. That makes me no better than he was, Spike. I won’t do it,” she slowly got up from the floor of the bedroom, “You look tired,” she said as he collapsed against the pillows as she gently pushed him back onto the bed, “Why don’t you get some rest?”

Fear sliced through Spike and he felt the thing growing stronger inside him; felt the light growing ever dimmer, “No- stay, please?” he whispered, his words slurred with exhaustion, “It’s weaker…when you’re here. Don’t really know…why.”

“That’s all right, Spike,” she gave a little smile as she sat on the Parsons chair, crossing her arms, “You don’t have to know why. And, you don’t have to worry, because I’m not going anywhere.”