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Spike really tried to hold it back – tried so hard not to give in to the wave of emotions that threatened to overwhelm him – the tears that painful experience had taught him could only result in more pain and punishment.

But then – his rescuer, this powerful woman now holding him in her arms, seemed to have no intentions of hurting him.

When the other girl had told him to take off his clothes, it had been all he could do to fight off the panic enough to make himself obey – because no matter what, he knew that he had to obey – or things would only get worse for him. Yes, they were being kind to him *now*, but he was certain that it could not last if he dared to defy them.

So, with a sinking feeling in the pit of his stomach, he had dropped his jeans to the floor – and dropped to his knees before them, waiting for his punishment, and wondering desperately what he had done wrong this time to deserve it.

*Always deserve it,* he reminded himself miserably. *Bad – always bad…*

And then – she had thrown his world into confusion again, gently urging him up off of his knees, and taking him into her arms, her soft warmth surrounding him, holding him close to her and soothing him gently – making him want to believe, more than anything, that she really would not harm him.

But – she had made him take off his clothes…surely that meant…that *always* meant pain…

The warm moisture he had felt suddenly dropping against his skin took him by surprise, and he drew back from her gentle embrace – immediately sure that she would hurt him for his resistance.

But she did not.

He could smell the salty tang of the moisture on her fingertips – recognized it. He had shed enough tears of his own over the past few months to know the scent of someone else’s sorrow. They only thing he could not figure out was – why. He could smell no blood but his own; she was not hurt, not that he could tell.

He had done everything she had told him to do – so – why was she crying?

When she pressed his outstretched, seeking hand gently against her damp cheek, allowing him to feel for himself what he already knew – Spike felt a strangely familiar sensation run through him – a ghost of an old emotion…and suddenly, all he wanted was just to be able to stop her tears, to make her not be sad – not cry.

His touch seemed rather to make her tears come faster, and she pulled him into her arms again. Spike was terribly confused, uncertain, not sure what he should do; but as she held him close to her, gently caressing his back in a comforting way, speaking to him softly in a tender, reassuring tone…

It suddenly became clear in his mind – with a sense of disbelieving wonder.

Was it possible?

Her tears – were for *him*.

A sense of awe and gratitude came over him, and he found himself leaning into her embrace, resting his head on her shoulder and desperately accepting the comfort she was offering – comfort he knew that he did not deserve…but he could not resist it. It had been so long since he had been treated with any kindness at all – longer than he could remember – and he craved the affection, the warmth of her touch, more than anything – more than blood.

And as she held him close to her, one fact came through to Spike with sharp, blinding clarity.

He would do whatever it took to please her – whatever he had to do to hold onto this sweet tenderness she was offering to him.

He knew that he did not deserve it – but he never wanted to let it go.

************************************

“Okay, Sweetheart,” Buffy sniffed back the last of her tears, reluctantly disentangling herself from the vampire’s desperate, clinging arms. “Let’s go ahead and do this – while I still can, okay?”

Spike reluctantly drew back, though he was still leaning slightly toward her, as if he still wanted to be in her arms.

Despite the emotional pain and confusion of the whole situation, Buffy felt a bittersweet warmth steal through her at the realization.

“It’s okay,” she reassured him, reaching out a hand to gently touch his cheek. “It’s okay, Spike – I’m not going anywhere.”

He flinched automatically as her hand touched his face – and then leaned into the touch, a soft, yearning sound like a sob in his throat – a sound that tore at her heart.

“You must be so exhausted, Sweetie – let’s get you taken care of…so we can all get some rest, okay?” she sighed wearily, as she took him gently by the arms and pushed him slowly backward, guiding him to lie back down on the couch. “It’s okay – lie down, Spike – I’m not going to hurt you, I promise…”

Hesitantly, the wounded vampire obeyed, pulling his trembling legs up onto the couch and lying back. He did not seem anywhere near as panicked by the request as he had been the first time she had made it – though his entire body was taut with tension, and he reached up with a shaking hand, seeking the reassurance of contact with her.

Buffy’s eyes welled with tears as she knelt beside the couch, taking his hand and guiding it to rest on her shoulder. “I’m right here, Spike,” she whispered comfortingly. “It’s okay. I’m going to take care of your – your legs – make you feel better – but I’m gonna be right here beside you. You can – you can touch me, Spike, the whole time – so you know. I’m not gonna leave you.”

Buffy knew that he could not have understood much of what she had said, but he seemed to get the general idea. His cool hand rested weakly on her shoulder, as he made a visible effort to relax.

She carefully gathered her supplied on the floor in front of her, without dislodging his gentle grip on her shoulder, then picked up the package of antiseptic wipes and set to work on his battered legs.

At the first touch to his raw, bleeding flesh, Spike flinched, letting out a soft cry of pain – and Buffy reached a hand up to cover his on her shoulder, murmuring soft words of sympathy and understanding before she went back to work on the rest of his wounds, taking her time, trying very hard not to hurt him any more than she had to.

The worst of it was getting the wounds cleaned – especially the more sensitive ones between his legs – but Spike at least seemed to have some understanding of the fact that she was not trying to hurt him, because he did his best not to cry out, and held tightly to her shoulder, his weak hand occasionally tightening, trembling with the pain of her work, though he bravely kept silent.

As Buffy soothed the sting of the antiseptic with cool healing ointment, and wrapped the wounds carefully with soft white bandages, she eventually felt Spike’s grip on her shoulder gradually relax, and the trembling of his pain-wracked limbs slowly subside with relief. His hand finally slipped from her shoulder entirely – and a moment later, Buffy froze, as she felt the soft caress of his fingers moving lightly through the ends of her hair.

When she stopped moving, Spike immediately withdrew his hand, and she could see him tense up slightly again, visibly drawing away from her – obviously afraid that he had done something wrong, angered her with his surprisingly intimate touch.

Nothing could have been farther from the truth.

There *was* anger building up in the Slayer’s heart – but it was most definitely not directed at Spike. Of course, she was furious with whoever had done this to him, and more determined than ever to track them down and make them pay for causing him so much suffering, for leaving him so broken and fragile that he hardly dared a simple touch without expecting to be punished for it.

But she was also angry at herself – for having done the exact same thing to him, not so very long ago. She could remember countless nights in her crypt, when she had allowed him to do all kinds of things to her body, touching her in ways that no one else could, to bring her to heights of pleasure and help her forget her pain.

But afterwards – in the quiet moments while she caught her breath, he would always reach out to her in tenderness and affection – a slow caress along the bare skin of her arm, graceful fingers playing idly through her hair – and without fail, she would abruptly cut him off. In those instances, Spike had been lucky if she had limited her sharp rebuke to words, and not struck out at him in violence.

She was ashamed to admit – there were times when she had.

*Why did he even keep trying?* she wondered, her throat closing up with the ache in her chest at the memory of that terrible time in her life. *After the first dozen times I hit him, or cut him down, just for trying to treat me like something more than the cheap whore I tried to make him see me as – why didn’t he just give up on me?*

She brushed fresh tears from her eyes for about the hundredth time that evening, her eyes softening on the frightened face of the trembling vampire lying on the couch, waiting for judgment for a single affectionate touch.

Cautiously, not wanting to startle him, she reached out a gentle hand to touch his cheek, ignoring his flinch and lightly running the backs of her fingers down his cheek, as he hesitantly turned his face back toward her, sightless yet stunning blue eyes wide with the desperation to understand her motives, the meaning behind this simplest of actions.

He was so badly damaged, reduced to the mental understanding of a very young child – and a *blind* child at that. Buffy could not help the sinking feeling of uncertainty in her heart, as she wondered just how much recovery would be possible for Spike – whether or not he would ever regain all that he had lost.

And in the next moment, she realized with unshakable certainty…

It didn’t matter.

“I won’t give up on you, Spike,” she whispered softly, allowing her tears to fall as he pressed his bruised cheek into her hand, now cupped against his face. “I won’t. You deserve nothing less than that from me…and I don’t care if you *never* get better – I’m not gonna leave you, or give up on you – ever…”

As she spoke, she took his hand in her own free one, and firmly, deliberately, drew it back to her soft, blonde hair, playing through it for a moment before closing his fingers around the ends gently.

“It’s okay,” she assured him. “You can touch me, Spike…I’m not gonna hurt you for touching me…I’m not gonna punish you for – for reaching out to me…” Her voice broke over the words, as she lowered her head, remorse filling her heart for having done just exactly that to Spike a few months earlier.

She hoped she could make him understand what she was trying to say – and apparently at least the general concept of her gesture got through, because when she removed her own hand, leaving his in her hair, he slowly, tentatively, ran his fingers down through her hair, his cracked, bruised lips turning just slightly up at one corner, a light beginning in his blind eyes that was all too familiar to the Slayer’s memory.

“That’s it,” she whispered, taking her hand from his face and closing it gently around his free hand as she used her other hand to gather up the equipment she had used to treat his wounds, and place the items one by one on the coffee table. She had done all she could for him for the moment, treating every wound she had found on his body.

The head wound, she had not yet touched. From the look of it, it appeared to have healed up on the outside, scar tissue on either side of his head revealing the trajectory of the bullet that had passed through his mind, wreaking such havoc on its way. It bothered her that it still seemed to be sensitive to the touch, but she really did not know what else she could do about that particular wound just now.

*I *really* need Giles,* she thought with a sigh.

Just as she was finishing up, she heard the front door open again, and turned quickly toward it, relieved to see that it was just Anya again. The vengeance demon had a blue plastic Wal-Mart bag in her hand, which she set down on the table next to the first aid supplies.

“Those should be the right size,” she remarked, looking over Buffy’s work appraisingly, nodding slightly in satisfaction. “Much better,” she stated. “He should be able to start healing up now…”

Buffy glanced down to take in the thin frame of the vampire, covered nearly head to toe in bandages. He was still naked, but it did not appear so, due to the huge amount of white cloth bandages that covered every part of his body.

“Let’s save those,” she decided quietly. “They’ll be difficult to get on and off for a while, until some of the wounds on his legs and – until they heal up,” she amended at the last moment, looking down uncomfortably, swallowing back a fresh feeling of rage at Spike’s attacker, before meeting Anya’s eyes bravely again. “I’ll be changing the bandages and stuff quite a bit – so let’s just throw out the old ones, and put those away.”

“Okay,” Anya nodded, accepting the practicality of that plan. After a moment, she asked, “Where’s ‘away’?”

Buffy frowned, biting her lower lip, her hand still gently caressing Spike’s, his hand still running through her hair as she considered the dilemma of where the vampire would be sleeping.

“I wouldn’t recommend leaving him alone,” Anya pointed out. “He might wake up in the middle of the night and be pretty confused. We still don’t have much idea of what’s going on in that head of his beyond the basic instincts like fear and hunger. Who knows what he might do if he woke up all by himself?”

Buffy nodded slowly, acknowledging the accuracy of Anya’s words. There was no way that Spike could be left alone.

“I’ll give him my bed,” she decided finally. “I’ll make a bed on the floor upstairs and sleep beside him. That way if he wakes up, he won’t be alone.”

Anya nodded slowly, a slight frown betraying the fact that there was something she wanted to say, but was not saying – a rare condition for Anya, indeed.

It did not last long.

“Why don’t you just…”

“Because that’s not a good idea right now, Anya,” Buffy cut her off before she could even finish the statement. “I could move in my sleep and hurt him…and besides, I don’t want to cause any – confusion, right now…”

A soft little huff of disbelief drew her eyes to Anya’s incredulous face, as the vengeance demon replied, “Please! Like a little bit more’s gonna make a difference at this point! And besides…” Her voice softened, her expression becoming more serious as she added, “…he’s been kept as a prisoner for who knows how long…doesn’t seem to remember anything else…I would think that a little *positive* human contact could be just the thing for him.”

Buffy looked down again, feeling her cheeks flush with the discomfort of the situation.

Anya’s eyes widened with alarm, as she misinterpreted the Slayer’s reaction. “He’s not – I mean – they didn’t…”

“No,” Buffy quickly assured her, shaking her head emphatically. “No, there was no – it didn’t look like – that – happened.”

“Well, that’s a small mercy,” Anya remarked softly, looking down again at the blonde vampire on the bed, whose hand in Buffy’s hair was gradually stilling, as he succumbed to his utter exhaustion. “One less thing he’ll have to deal with. Good thing.”

“Yeah,” Buffy replied, a strange coldness coming into her voice, as she looked up at Anya with an almost frightening, humorless smile. “Because whoever did this is going to pay for *everything* they did to him – and that’s *really* something I’d rather not do.”

For possibly the first time since her human existence – the vengeance demon was shocked to silence.

Buffy shook her head slightly, shaking herself out of her vengeful thoughts – sighing when she saw the stunned expression on Anya’s face. Turning back to Spike, she gently lifted his still arm from behind her and laid it on the couch at his side.

The only pang of regret she had at the moment had nothing to do with her words to Anya, and everything to do with having to disturb his rest when he had only just managed to fall asleep.

“Come on,” she sighed softly, as she rose to her feet. “Help me get him upstairs.”