Spike’s head was reeling from the breathtakingly sharp blow Xander had just dealt him – and racing from the sight of the vengeance demon across the room, which he had noticed in the bare instant before Xander had last hit him.

He kept his eyes closed, his head turned to the side, even after he had recovered from the blow – afraid that some instantaneous glance on his own part, more instinctive than careless, might give Anya’s presence away if he dared to look up. His breath was coming quick and shallow, as he fought back the rising sense of sick fear in the pit of his stomach – a different fear than the usual, ordinary fear that Xander usually inspired in him…

…a fear that this was his very last chance at rescue, and somehow, no matter how hard he tried not to – he was going to blow it.

*Stupid,* Xander’s words echoed in his mind. *So stupid – can’t do anything right…*

Had Spike had a bit more of his old perception and knowledge back, he might have realized that the insult was a word-for-word echo of the ones Xander had heard from his own father all his life.

Not that it would have made any difference to him, all things considered.

*Kill him, Anya,* he thought with a desperation and an intensity of hatred that surprised even him, though he still did not dare to look up. *Please – kill him…kill him now!*

“What’s the matter, Spikey?” Xander taunted him as he crouched down beside him, getting right up into his face as he grabbed his hair and slammed his head into the wall again. “You look a little scared.”

As the colored haze slowly cleared from in front of his eyes, Spike finally ventured a look up into his tormentor’s dark eyes – ever aware with his periphery vision of the girl who was slowly slipping up behind him. Her fists were clenched at her sides, ready to deliver a powerful blow as soon as she was close enough, but she did not seem to have any other weapon.

Perhaps she would not need one.

But – Xander had the gun.

A gun would not kill a vengeance demon, Spike *did* remember that – but it would certainly stop her long enough to prevent her from doing any damage to Xander. And if that happened, Spike knew that there would be little hope of help for either of them.

His wide blue eyes focused fully on Xander’s glittering, maliciously gleeful gaze – and he gasped out in a weak, raspy whisper, “Do it – just do it…”

Xander drew back slightly for an instant, his eyebrows raised appraisingly as he looked down at his victim thoughtfully for a moment – unaware that Spike had not really been talking to him at all.

And in the next moment, Spike’s skull exploded with devastating, deafening pain, as Xander brought the pistol down sharply against his temple, before moving in close again to snarl close to his face, “*Don’t* talk – how many times do I have to tell you, you little idiot?”

Jerking his head up again, he demanded in a mocking tone, “You want me to, Spike? Is that what you want me to do? Or are you forgetting – this thing won’t kill you, Spikey! You *want* me to shoot you in the head again?”

Dizzy from the blow, Spike’s head lolled back slightly against the wall, his eyes closed as he mumbled the words out in a soft moan of pain and urgency. “K-kill…please…please kill…”

Again, misunderstanding, as his ex-fiancee crept ever nearer to him, Xander laughed harshly. “No – not yet, Spike. You don’t deserve that kind of leniency – not after everything you’ve done. I’ve got a lot of stuff I want to do to you yet, before I kill you!”

“Do it,” Spike whispered, his voice stronger, though still a bit slurred, as he pulled himself back up to a sitting position, his head leaned against the wall as he forced his eyes open just slightly, glancing vaguely past Xander. “Please -- *do it*!”

Anya was only a few feet behind the boy now – and Spike could smell the salt of her silent tears, even if he could not see them – knew instinctively that this was very hard for her, seeing for herself the truth of how far Xander had fallen, how deep into his hatred and depravity he had allowed himself to descend.

Relief flooded through Spike’s heart as out of the corner of his eye, he watched her raise her fist to strike.

Xander slowly stood up straight, giving the girl behind him pause, as she moved slightly back, not wanting to alert him to her presence too soon.

*Why is she hesitating?* Spike wondered with anguished frustration. *Just do it – just hit him – please – please…*

In his heart, he knew that this had to be terribly hard for her, no matter what had gone on between them – because Anya had loved Xander, with everything she had. And Spike knew better than anyone – that sort of love didn’t go away so easily, no matter how badly the object of that love treated you.

“Can you tell me what’s wrong with this picture, Spike?”

Xander’s cold, soft voice sent a chill of dread down his spine – and Anya froze, her eyes going wide behind him, as both she and Spike were suddenly sure that he must know she was there – must have been simply feigning ignorance.

“No, of course you can’t, stupid,” Xander shook his head in false pity – before drawing back a heavy foot and launching it viciously into Spike’s unprotected stomach. “I told you,” he reminded him as he prepared for a second kick, “to *shut up*!”

The second blow never landed.

Before Xander could connect with Spike’s battered torso, Anya’s fist had collided with his skull with an audible crack, as the boy crumpled backward to the floor, a couple of yards away from the vampire huddled on the floor. Clambering over him as she struggled not to collapse herself from the sheer power of her emotions, Anya crouched down in front of Spike – who had broken down into shattered sobs of mingled relief and anguish.

“It’s gonna be okay,” Anya assured him, though her voice quavered with her own tears, streaking down her face. “Spike, it’s okay – he’s out – we’re gonna be okay…”

As the vengeance demon put her arms around him to help him up, she was taken off guard to find his arms suddenly wrapped around her, his grip shaky yet strong, as he rested his head on her shoulder. Deep, wrenching sobs still shook him as he clung to her, too relieved and grateful and just simply overwhelmed to even begin to get up just yet.

Anya froze again, surprised at the soft, warm, teary feeling building up in her chest at the sound of his sobs, and his tentative, pleading embrace – surprised that Spike’s pain mattered so very much to her at all.

After all, she reasoned – she had her own pain to deal with at the moment. She remembered the early days of her humanity, when such concepts as sympathy and compassion still seemed so foreign to her, and thought how annoyed she would have been then by Spike’s unthinking interruption of her attempts to dwell on her *own* hurt.

So why was it that now, when she was a vengeance demon again, and supposedly unfettered by “human” emotions – she found her heart breaking more for Spike than for herself?

*Huh. Go figure.*

She shrugged the question off, and just held him closer for a few moments.

“Shh,” she soothed him gently. “It’s gonna be all right…he’s unconscious – he can’t hurt you now…”

“G-gotta…” Spike gasped out without raising his head. “Gotta – get out…”

Anya frowned, her attention drawn back to their predicament by his words. The door was still magically locked, by whatever spell Xander had performed. She could easily teleport herself back out, but she had a feeling that it would be a while before Giles managed to break the spell thoroughly enough to allow them both to leave the room.

She sighed as Spike raised his head from her shoulder, and she glanced dubiously toward the door – and she felt the vampire go rigid under her arms still wrapped around him, in the moment before she saw what he had already become aware of.

Behind them, Xander had risen to his feet again – apparently not so very unconscious as she had thought – and the gun was held tightly in his shaking hand, aimed in the general direction of her and Spike.

“Damn,” she muttered with a sigh. “I didn’t *think* I pulled that punch.”

Xander’s smile was ironic, bittersweet, as he shrugged and remarked, “I’ve seen you hit a lot harder. Guess you must still feel something after all, huh, Sweetie?”

Anya did not respond at all, her expression solemn as she glanced between his face and the gun, her body taut with apprehension as she wondered what he planned to do – and if she could somehow find a way to stop it.

“Of course – whatever I once felt for you, Anya – it’s long gone now. I thought watching you two together – seeing you *touching* that – that…” Xander’s voice trailed off in disgust as he shook his head, looking away from the two of them as Anya instinctively pulled back from Spike, shaking her own head in denial of what he was insinuating.

“Anyway,” Xander went on before she could speak, meeting her gaze again. “It’s still every bit as disgusting as it was the first time I saw it.”

“Xander – that’s *not* what this…”

“Shut up, Ahn.”

Anya was quiet for a moment – before a slow frown of gradually smoldering anger and indignation began to come over her face. Releasing Spike completely, she rose to her feet, facing her ex-fiancee with her arms crossed defiantly over her chest – and placing herself discreetly, but completely, in the path of the pistol, blocking any shot Xander might attempt to take at Spike.

“No, Xander Harris,” she said in a voice of soft but firm conviction. “You are not my fiancée anymore. You don’t have the right to tell me to shut up.” She paused, shaking her head at the wrongness of that statement, as she amended, “You *didn’t* have the right, then, either. And you’re not going to stand there and point a *gun* at me and think I’m going to just sit there and take it. I don’t think so, Xander…”

“My God, Anya, will you just *shut up*?” Xander snarled, suddenly taking full aim on her, his face contorted with anger and frustration. “Do you have any *idea* how *infuriating* you can be? Damn it, Anya, sometimes you just make me wanna…” His voice trailed off, as he shook his head again.

But Anya was not ready to let it go.

Her eyes narrowed in anger as she took a step toward him and demanded, “Sometimes you wanna what, Xander? Hit me? *Kill* me?”

She glanced down at the gun in his hand with more disgust than fear, as she said, “Go ahead, then. Do it.”

“Anya…” Xander’s tone was warning, but shaking slightly, as he glanced wildly around the room, his eyes darting to the door momentarily – his mind obviously racing as he tried to come up with some way of getting out of this, now that his cover was quite obviously blown.

At least – to anyone inside this room. Was there a chance that he might still convince those outside the room?

His ex-fiancee took another cautious step toward him.

Anya shook her head slowly, meeting his eyes with a bold fire in her own. “I don’t think you really want to do that, Xander. I just think you can’t handle things being outside your control.” She paused, frowning, before she amended, “No, not so much your control, as your – your petty little world view. You just can’t handle the thought that something’s not quite the way you always believed it was…”

“Anya, I’m warning you, if you don’t shut the hell up and let me think…”

“Well, let me tell you something, Xander Harris!” she overrode him without hesitation, stepping closer to him, her voice rising as she went along. “Not all demons are as evil as some *humans* are – and Buffy Summers makes mistakes, she’s not the be-all and end-all of everything – and I *don’t* have to sit down and keep my mouth shut and do and say everything just the way you think I should in order to be the perfect girlfriend or wife or *human* that you think I should be!”

“*Shut up*!” Xander roared at her in fury, his firing arm straightening in thoughtless preparation.

Anya’s eyes widened in shock, as she saw the crazed expression in his dark eyes, and knew in an instant that he actually was going to pull the trigger.

Spike had already seen it.

Even as the final furious words were leaving Xander’s lips, Spike had leapt to his feet from where he crouched behind the vengeance demon, listening to the conversation, and lunged toward the boy. Without thought for his own safety, he threw himself at the boy, knocking him off balance, just as he pulled the trigger.

Xander’s gun arm lowered as he was knocked forcefully to the ground, changing the trajectory of the bullet from what would have been a straight path through Anya’s skull – to instead send the shell tearing through the right side of her stomach. The vengeance demon dropped to the floor with a hoarse moan of pain, her hands clutching at her stomach as blood pulsed from the wound.

Spike was still trying desperately to get his hands on the gun.

He had just reacted, in an attempt to save Anya – but now that he had started, he knew that his only hope was to get the weapon away from the boy, and he desperately fought to take it from him.

His face twisted into a hideous mask of rage and hatred, Xander’s jaw set against the pain of the fall, as Spike lunged toward his outstretched right arm, trying to get the gun. He buried his left hand in the vampire’s disheveled blonde hair, twisting viciously and eliciting an agonized cry at the pain of the cruel pulling at the wound that Xander had deliberately damaged and worried at every chance he had gotten to do so.

It was possibly the weakest spot Spike had – and Xander’s best chance at overcoming the vampire.

As Spike let out an animalistic cry of pain, Xander responded by twisting harder, holding him back tightly as he brought the gun down across his face – once, twice, three times – and then released his grip, allowing Spike to fall to the floor on his hands and knees, moaning with the pain…but already trying to get up again.

Enraged by the turn of events things had taken, Xander spared no strength as he kicked Spike again, several times – until he had stopped trying to get up, holding up a single hand in what was either a defensive or a plea for mercy.

Xander was not feeling particularly merciful at the moment.

He yanked the dizzied vampire to his feet, again by his hair, and shook him viciously, holding the gun in his face. Spike let out a strangled whimper of pain and fear, his trembling hands raised in front of him in a gesture of surrender.

“You *ever* try to hit me again,” Xander snarled. “And you’re gonna…” He paused, giving Spike a careless shrug and a mean-spirited smile. “Heck, what am I saying? You’re gonna pay for *this*!”

Xander put the gun away in his jacket, satisfied that Spike was too badly shaken to do anything more at the moment, and took out instead a second vial of powder, this one blue. He started to open it – and then stopped, as his gaze fell on his fallen ex, lying on the ground, struggling with one weakened arm to raise herself up, while the other hand still clutched at the spot on her stomach that was still gushing blood.

As he watched, she collapsed again, gasping for breath, unable to rise.

A slow, troubled frown came over the young man’s face, and he glanced toward the door.

With a sigh, he took out a third vial, this one matching the first he had used, and repeating the incantation he had used before, threw it across the room where it shattered against the door, the contents of the tiny bottle mingling with the contents of the first.

Spike barely had time to realize through his pain and confusion that Xander had just broken his own spell, when the boy was pouring the blue sand in a hasty circle around them both, as he muttered some almost unintelligible Latin words.

Anya watched helplessly – as both of them disappeared before her eyes.

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

Hearing the crash of the bottle against the door as the spell was broken, Angel nearly knocked the Watcher to the floor in his rush to get to his childe – who had somehow vanished from the room.

Anya, however, was still there.

“Anya!” Buffy’s voice was full of concern as she rushed in behind Angel, crouching beside the girl and glancing with horror between her face, and the bleeding wound in her side. “Anya, what…oh my God…we have to get her to a…I mean…” Her voice trailed off as she remembered that Anya was not exactly human.

Giles was at Anya’s other side already, before anyone had even seen him move, the moment he had heard Buffy speak her name.

“It’s all right,” he said in a voice that had an air of authority, despite its taut and trembling sound. “I can help her. Let’s just – give her some room…”

“Spike,” Buffy whispered suddenly, her eyes meeting Anya’s hazy ones urgently. “Anya, what – what happened to Spike?”

“X-xander – took him,” she slurred out weakly. “Magic…”

Angel swore violently, his fist hitting nothing as he swung it out in a violent reaction of frustration. “We have to find him! Where did he take him?”

“D-don’t know,” Anya whispered, her voice growing weaker with the exertion – but Buffy noticed suddenly that there was an odd little smile growing on her face.

“What? Why are you smiling?” she demanded, a wild hope rising up in her. Surely Anya would not be smiling without a reason – unless she was…

“Delirious,” Giles explained softly. “Don’t mind her…”

“No, I’m not, R-ruper…Giles,” Anya slurred, though her voice still held an element of stubborn defiance. “Not d-deleerus…just…might not need to s-save him…”

“What are you talking about?” Dawn demanded, her voice high and shrill. “Of course we need to save him…”

“Chip’s not working…”

Everyone fell silent at that, stunned to varying degrees by that announcement.

For his part, Giles had somewhat suspected as much. Following Anya’s train of thought, he smiled grimly, “He could quite possibly save himself,” he remarked.

Buffy was silent for a long moment, considering. “Yeah,” she said softly at last, her green eyes wide and serious as she looked up at her Watcher. “But does he *know* that?”