He couldn't take any more apologies. Any more of her claiming of blame for what he'd done, for his condition, or anything. She was brimful. It made it hard to look at her. She got very silent very quickly, feeling reproached. Took the drive to the hospital, twenty-five miles with him lying in the back beneath a blanket—no use waiting for the ten p.m. sunset, visiting hours would be long over then—without speaking. He could feel her smouldering. Knew he ought to tell her what Giles had said, but some perverse irritated pique kept him from speaking. He had no good reason to be angry at her, but when did a body ever need a reason to indulge in ire? He knew that, though he didn't know much else. Why be any angrier now than he'd been two days ago or three, at her refusal to fill him in?

Giles had said it was Willow's opinion—a witch, not a doctor, but then he was a demon, not a man—that he shouldn't hear suggestions. It was bloody clear that he'd been a brute and a monster, chockful of murder and mayhem. No secret to that. But why should this slayer, who seemed to be all that was righteous, claim him as the love of her life? More there, more to her, than met his too-innocent eye, perhaps. The getting of the soul—he still didn't entirely believe in that, squishy sort of Christian idea he couldn't imagine all these intelligent people taking with such solemnity. If it was true, what could that be about? He couldn't invent a story to fit the slim so-called facts, and the more he tumbled them about in his mind the more absurd they seemed.

Were they playing him, the whole lot? Why bother? He was a vampire, they killed vampires like termites. Was it information they hoped to get, something about this battle in L.A. he'd been on the right or wrong side of, locked up in him, inaccessible and necessary? Was this whole thing in aid of ferreting that out?

Yet Buffy didn't seem eager for him to come back to himself. Otherwise wouldn't she be all over trying the magical solution, trying it now? And for that matter, what was stopping them from forcing him to submit to the witch's ministrations?

So, no. He couldn't have anything they needed in that line. It was what he had that she alone needed, this Buffy Summers who made pretty speeches about his heroics but wouldn't tell him what they'd once been to each other.

Who was so sure he'd hate her, leave her, when he knew everything again. And yet she'd fallen for him—plummeted, you could say. Some times while he fucked her she put him in mind of a drowning girl, or a girl wishing she could drown, wishing she could submerge and never come up.

How many times could he ask her, when she refused to answer?

"Look, just let me say it." She spoke from the front seat, facing forward, her voice tight and brittle. "I get that you don't want to hear it, but I apologize. I shouldn't have assumed you were ready for the sparring. Maybe you never ever will be, and that'll be okay. I want you to know that."

He thought of asking what, if he was no longer a fighter, his role in her life was going to be. But knew the question would discomfit her, and whatever answer she came up with wouldn't really enlighten him anyhow. "Don't worry, pet. We're both feelin' our way."

On the surgical floor, they were shown to the right room, and found that Andrew and a few other girls had gotten there ahead of them, with flowers and balloons, though the language barriers kept the visit subdued. But when Buffy looked in, they got up to leave before she'd even opened her mouth.

The patient was tucked up neatly in bed, her dark head forming a staring pupil against the white pillow, the white gown. They'd put her in traction.

Spike stayed out of sight behind the bed-curtain while Buffy greeted her, doing the usual speaking-slow-and-loud thing that everyone did when they didn't expect to be understood. Bakhita listened to her apologies with a yearning uncomprehending look, full of stymied willingness to understand. She answered in her own language; probably just as slow and loud and with as little effect on Buffy.

But he understood. "She wants the books that she keeps by her bed."

"Huh?"

Spike sidled into view, hands held up before him.

"أهلا وسهلا, أنا آسف مشان عمل أنا اعمل, آسف أوي, أنا في جيب كتاب أنت عاوزا."

Bakhita, whose fists clenched at the first glimpse of him, became incredulous, then animated, when he spoke. Exclaiming her surprise, accepting his apology, explaining that Andrew had managed to convey to her, by using a translation program on his laptop, who he was, and why he wasn't to be slain, or blamed for hurting her. She asked him to sit, to please talk to her, there was no one else in this place who could.

Buffy said, "You speak Dinka?"

"It's Arabic, pet. An' I've got a smattering. I ..." A piece of information, not really a memory, detached itself from the general fog and rose up to his grasp. "Spent some years in Alexandria before the Second War, learned the lingo in the street." He repeated this to Bakhita, who laughed and told him that explained why his accent was so malformed.

"Well, gee. This is good. I ... I'll leave you to it for a while. I can call the castle and tell them to bring her stuff."

She walked out, stiff-backed. He was tempted to follow, to placate her. But placate her for what? Knowing a language she didn't know? He slipped into a chair, accepted a grape from Bakhita's hand, and for the first time his remembered experience, felt that he was an equal in the exchange with another person. The two of them were strangers, at a disadvantage in situations they didn't entirely understand. Lonely and confused. Able to make each other laugh—he with his bad constructions, his absymal accent, she with her reconstruction, using her hands like puppets, of their thirty-second battle royal. She was more than ready to forgive—seemed almost proud of having been bitten. As Buffy had predicted, she was pleased to take it as an experience, something that would fortify her when she faced her next real threat.

When Buffy reappeared, he was reluctant to go. She made him promise to come back the next day. He told her she'd almost certainly be back at the castle by the end of the following day—that slayer healing will surprise you—but that they would talk again, whenever she liked. Buffy stood with arms akimbo, waiting this out.

"Anything you want me to tell her for you?"

Buffy frowned. "Did you tell her I'm—"

"Sorry, yeah, we covered that."

"Right. I'm not supposed to be sorry. We should go. Apparently there's another contingent of visitors on the way."

Back in the car, she was quiet for ten minutes.

"You ticked off at me for knowin' her lingo?"

"Of course not."

"What then?"

"Are you really not going to tell me what happened in the study? With Giles?"

"Sure I'll tell you." He supposed he couldn't avoid this any longer, that his peevish urge to hold back, to put her at a distance, wasn't right, strong as it was. "He's a fair man, your Mr Giles. He's going to give me other work, since I'm not fit to train slayers."

"Other work?" The idea seemed to stun her. "That's what he told you, that he's going to make you work?"

"Told him I want to. A fellow needs to work, pet. Can't live on love, good as that is."

She said nothing, and a couple of seconds later, she switched on the radio, booming techno that resounded in the small closed space, cutting off any further conversation.

In her kitchen, she began assembling the ingredients for supper while he sipped at some warmed blood. Not until she took a ceramic bowl from the cupboard and set it down so hard on the table that it cracked and separated into two pieces in her hands, did she break her silence.

"I feel I'm failing you."

TBD

Author's note: In case you see a line of gobbledygook characters in the story, you should know it's supposed to Arabic.