When the word first reached her that Spike had somehow emerged alive from the debacle in L.A., Buffy didn't credit it. Andrew had always had an ... enthusiasm for the vampire. It went with his enthusiasm for the tall tale.

When further word came confirming the first word—Faith was on the scene—a frisson she'd have liked to call joy but that was really dread coursed through her, beginning at her tingling scalp, ending at her twitching ankles. Spike hadn't perished, Spike had been working with Angel—who had not emerged, alive or otherwise, whom Giles maintained had gone to the dark side.

She made up her mind there and then that Spike's surfacing was no reason to leave Scotland.

Then came a further bulletin. He's got amnesia.

If anyone, Faith's message said, could jog Spike's memory, it would be her.

And we need to help him why? Buffy thought. But she packed a bag.

At the entrance of the Council's L.A. facility, off a freeway ramp not far from the waterfront, which from the outside looked an awful lot like the kind of featureless big-box warehouse favored by smugglers and terrorists and other clandestine organizations operating on a semi-underground basis, she was met by one of the local slayers on duty, who led her through a series of featureless corridors, into a large cold cement room, part of which was walled off with strong bars.

Spike, dressed in green scrubs too large for his slender frame, lay on the floor of this cage, knees drawn up, arms wrapped around himself like a shivering child, apparently asleep. Buffy saw that he was bruised and scratched all over, injuries she would've attributed to the big battle, except that vampire healing should've cleared those up days ago.

During the plane trip she'd listened to music and paged through a big stack of magazines and worked on some lesson plans for the advanced slaying workshop Giles was prodding her to start, and just generally willed herself to stay in the moment. So she wasn't really prepped for the heart-juddering shock of seeing him again, intact, alive.

He looked exactly like she remembered, or—no, not exactly like she remembered, because memory was a distorting medium. He looked exactly as he always was, this first fresh unexpected sight of him bringing back again for her, all the big and little details of him she'd hadn't known she'd forgotten.

Regarding him through the bars, she made the decision she'd been resisting during the journey: what her stance would be, to this This Situation. To Spike Returned. A few facts came together, interlacing like cards when you shuffled the deck, with that clean ththththwap that sounded so tough and efficient. One, that the last time she'd seen him, Spike had turned away her declaration of love, with disbelief. Two, that his death had turned out to be distinctly temporary. Three, that a year had passed, and he'd never let her know he was alive. Had, in fact, sworn Andrew to keep schtum about it, which, amazingly, he had. And four—the cards slid together into one thick rectangle she could tap hard against the table, and done—Spike had been right.

She hadn't loved him. She'd depended on him at the end. She'd mourned him afterwards, longer and harder than she'd mourned Anya or the young slayers, but ultimately, not all that long. And then she'd gradually stopped thinking about him. To the point where, before she got the first call about him, she wasn't sure how many months it had been since he'd fallen from her daily train of musings. After all, who ever thought about what they weren't thinking about?

"Why is he locked up like this?"

Her guide shrugged. "We don't really have anyone who can babysit him. He's constantly agitated, when he's awake he bashes himself into walls and screams. So we had to cage him, and they've been putting sedatives in his food. His blood, I mean. Supposedly he's more 'comfortable' that way, but I guess it's mostly to keep him quiet, because we're pretty short-handed here. I mean, lots of indians, right, but hardly any chiefs. You can give him his next feed if you want. The stuff is in here." She pointed to a cooler in the corner.

"How'd he get here in the first place?"

"One of the slayers came across him unconscious in the wreckage at the end of the battle, and recognized him through the burns. Vi, I think her name was. She had to go back to Cleveland with Faith, they left yesterday."

"So, uh ... it's not just that he has amnesia. He's insane."

"Well, I don't know what he's normally like. But basically, he's a very ravenous, very pissed-off vampire with a really bad case of PTSD, and he doesn't talk. We didn't know whose side he was fighting on. There was a motion to put him out of his misery, but Faith said that wasn't such a good idea. Not 'til you'd seen him, anyway."

"Not 'til I'd seen him," Buffy echoed.

"Yeah. Faith said he used to be, like, your pet vamp." The girl shrugged. "I dunno what that means."

"That Faith. Ha ha. Such a kidder." Buffy frowned. "Okay, now get lost. Please."

She'd heard him whimper before, and she'd heard him cry out before, and she'd coped with him being all flaily and fangy and out of it before, but that didn't really make this any easier.

When, upon rousing, he threw himself headfirst into the bars, and picked himself up and did it again, she got the point of the sedation.

"The battle is over! Stop fighting!"

He trembled all over, emitting a low irritable growl.

"Calm," she said. "Let's just be calm." She approached the bars, hands peaceably upheld.

He focused on her—slowly, as if his eyes weren't working too well.

"Spike. You're okay."

He scrambled into the corner farthest from her, snarling and staring. His yellow eyes were feral, no sign of sanity, let alone recognition.

This was like that time Angel came back from hell, an animal she'd had to chain up.

"Easy now. Easy. You're safe."

The other slayer had left her with the key to the cage. When she opened it, taking care to be slow, to make gentling sounds and keep a friendly, nonthreatening smile on her face, his snarl angled up into a roar.

"It's okay. It's okay. I'm not going to hurt you."

Before she'd closed half the distance between them, he pounced, knocking her over, scrambling out of the cage to throw himself with a sickening clang against the outer metal door. He bounced, fell, sprang up, threw himself again. When she reached him, blood was streaming in his eyes.

But when she touched him, he froze.

"Spike, it's me."

The growl rumbled through him, like he was an idling engine. He kept his head turned away, but as long as her hand stayed on his arm, he was still.

When she let go, he hurled himself once more at the door. His body hit with a dead dull thud.

"Stop. Okay? You're hurting yourself." Once more she curled a hand around his shoulder, and once more he froze. Still not looking at her, still fanged out. She hit the intercom button.

When the other slayer reappeared on the far side of the locked door, Buffy said, "I'm taking him out of here. The confinement is making him crazy. Don't argue with me, I outrank you."

Arm in arm, she led him back the way she'd just come, to the plain glass doors of the warehouse, overlooking the parking lot, and a jumble of similar buildings It was just after sundown. The other girl glanced around at them. "I probably shouldn't let you do this, but like I said, we're short-staffed. I hope you know what you're doing."

"He shouldn't have to be a prisoner."

"He's an out-of-control vampire."

"He's not out of control right now."

"Where are you taking him?"

"Does it matter? He's with me. That's all you indians need to know."

"I know you're supposed to be the boss of all of us, but ... he tried to tear the throat out of everybody who went near him. I don't think this is a good idea."

She couldn't bring herself to look at Spike, or at the girl she was addressing. Buffy kept her eyes on her parked rental car, gleaming in the yellow sodium lights. "I won't let him hurt anyone. If it turns out that he's got to be ... I'll take care of it." Without waiting for anything more, she pushed the door open, and tugged Spike through it.

He stopped just outside, lifting his face into the warm, tarry evening air. Buffy watched him then. His nostrils flared. He seemed to be surveying the sky. When he found the thin sliver of moon, he stared at it as the seconds lengthened. Her hand was still curled around his arm.

"See? No more cage."

He leveled his gaze on her now, the golden eyes glinting, lips pulled back around the fang array. He was still trembling, shivering almost, as if he was cold, as if he was in pain.

"You know me, right?" He must know something, given that her touch, and presumably her scent, was enough to calm him.

His growl renewed itself, and he broke from her, loping fast across the parking lot. Okay, maybe this was a bad idea. She took off after. Spike ran with his head up, looking around, turning to right and left. It only took a few moments for her to recognize that he wasn't fleeing her—he was searching. A burst of speed caught her up with him. Again, her hand on his arm brought him to a stop.

"I don't think you're going to find them. Anyway, we're pretty far from the epicenter of the battle. And I'm sorry, but I don't think anyone else survived."

The after-the-fact intelligence about the L.A. battle was sketchy, and she didn't understand it very well. Giles had claimed Angel had gone bad, allied himself with some local branch of Big Evil, Inc, but she couldn't bring herself to believe that, anymore than she could quite bring herself to believe he was really gone forever, even though for the last year she'd barely given more thought to seeing more of him than of Spike, whom she'd known to be dead.

Supposedly.

She was resolutely not thinking about that meaning Angel was dead. She wasn't ready to plunge into mourning again now.

What Spike had to do with any of this was still a big goose egg to her.

And for all she really knew, what Spike was searching for right now was simply prey. A sedative-free kill.

His face was such a blank. Plucking his arm, she drew him back towards her car, and this time he followed passively enough.

She thought—how not?—of the time she'd rescued him from the torture of the First. He'd looked at her then, and said, I knew you'd come for me.

He'd known that, and later on he knew better than to take her declaration at the moment of their parting for more than he believed it ought to be. It irritated her, when she went over it. How complacently he'd said, No you don't. Like he always comprehended her more thoroughly than she did herself.

Even if, as she slowly understood later, it was true.

She turned to face him, tugged his hand.

There was nothing in his eyes but banked, apprehensive wildness.

"I came for you again, Spike. It's me, it's Buffy."

The words emerged from her lips on a bolus of pain she was not at all prepared for. This reunion, with someone dead, someone she'd assessed, and filed away in the less-trammeled sections of memory, an enemy who became a sort of ally, even, for a little while, a sort of friend; a curiosity, a strange presence she'd never quite known how to relate to. An incident of a few years in her life, past, done, over. This return brought with it a base dismay, which she felt in her sinews, in her mind like the oppressiveness of an oncoming illness. Like the time when she'd been too depressed to really know herself. She recognized that dreaded shadow, and wished she'd never come here.

He didn't answer.

With resolve, she put the dread away from her, and led him back to the car.

She used the car's GPS to steer her to the hotel she'd chosen—L.A.'s tangle of freeways and streets made no particular sense to her otherwise. As she slowed for a light in an old part of downtown, Spike sprang into sudden motion, throwing open the car door, crashing out, rolling and tumbling to his feet, streaking into a run. Quickly as she could, Buffy curbed the car and ran after him. She was just in time to see him disappear behind a hulking abandoned building, ruined by fire. The smell in the alley when she reached it told her that more had happened here than a blaze. Spike was pacing in a tight arc, hands held to his head. His dive from the car had torn his thin scrubs, in the stray bits of light she saw the glitter of blood from the fresh road burns. He wept, paced, pushed his forehead against the greasy bricks in one particular spot, inhaling deeply, then springing back to do it all over again.

"Is this where you fought?" Is this where Angel died?

Spike went down on his knees, body curled over like a Muslim at prayer, and for a moment this seemed to give him relief, until he shot up again, and again pressed himself against the wall, scrabbling at the brick.

"What happened here? Can't you speak at all?"

He dove past her, into a heap of charred, wet, filthy garbage piled against the burned-out building. She tried to tug him out, as he rooted through the smelly junk, but he resisted, and then she saw why.

He emerged holding something in his hand, someting as charred and broken and dirty as everything he'd dug through.

But then she saw what it was.

The hilt of a heavy sword. The blade broken off almost at the base. It fit Spike's grip like it had been made for him.

He held it aloft, as if its shining blade was intact, as if he was making some last promise to himself before the onset of battle.

Buffy stepped toward him.

Spike's back arched; for a moment it was as if the sword hilt was a hook he dangled from. Then with a cry, he threw it from him, like something red-hot, and crumpled to the pavement.

"Spike!"

He lay where he'd fallen, his face in a puddle. She pulled him around, onto his back. He was still fangy, but otherwise vacant. She laid a couple of light slaps on his cheek, wary that he'd lunge for her throat when he came to.

He grimaced, the stirring of his arms and legs more like a convulsion than a return to consciousness. When the amber eyes flew open, they stared past her, full of unfocused horror.

"Left me here. All gone an' left me."

"Spike! Spike, who left you? What happened?"

But he was gone again, his whole body rolling in the grip of some unseen force. She couldn't hold him. He shook and flopped, groaning like a tormented animal.

Then whatever it was, abruptly let go. He lay still. The bumps and ridges were gone, revealing a bruised human face smeared with blood and filth.

She'd forgotten, also, the effect of his eyes, the clear blue depths of them. When they opened, they were like a doll's empty and stark, and she was afraid that he'd been left vacant, the last bit of his mind somehow scooped out and gone.

She leaned in close to him, laid her fingers softly on his torn forehead. "Spike."

He blinked, his lips working, a cough rattling his chest. He turned his head, the eyes focusing out of infinity, to find her.

"Are you back now, Spike?"

"Bloody hell."

Relief flooded her. "You're all right now, Spike. C'mon, let's get out of here."

He shied away. "Who the hell are you?"

"I'll be right outside the door."

She left him to soak in the brimming steaming tub in her hotel bathroom.

Since the—incident—in the alley, he'd been anxious, a little hostile, but mostly biddable. Not only did he have no idea who she was, where they were, or anything about himself, he also didn't remember the cage in the Council HQ, or her arriving to take him out of it. He might as well have been born in that alley, except that he had speech. His personality seemed unfixed—one moment he'd be typical back-talking Spike, the next, he'd exhibit a strange old-fashioned cautious kind of courtesy. Either way, he was clearly wary of everything, including her, not daring to try her patience with too many questions. Whatever effect her touch and scent had had on him before seemed gone with his earlier wildness. He betrayed not the slightest hint of any previous familiarity with her. They'd returned to the car, stopping at an Army-Navy store to get him a new outfit, then at a butcher shop for blood, before arriving at the hotel, where she hustled him quickly across the lobby and into the elevator before anyone could object to his half-naked, besmirched presence.

When she checked on him ten minutes later, peeking in through the cracked door, he was huddled beneath the water as if it was a blanket. Chin-to-chest, silently crying.

All the forces of her instinct urged her to just shut the door and leave him be. Get Giles on the phone and find out whom she could pass this problem off to. Delegate, delegate, delegate. She was Slayer Number One, she wasn't expected to deal with nagging little off-side details like this.

The sight of his weeping made her own eyes burn.

Before she could stop herself, she'd barged in. "What's the matter?"

He started, with a little splash, put his hands up before his face. "Please—"

She realized he was being modest. Hastily, she turned her back. "I, uh, actually can't see you, under the water, from where I'm standing. And ... I've seen you before. Not that ... not that it matters."

"You know me."

She hadn't really emphasized that, since the alley, because insisting on the You're Spike, I'm Buffy thing somehow felt pathetic, and he hadn't asked. After the first thing he'd said, he'd avoided questions about identity, hers, his. Answered her queries about what he knew, what he remembered—which was nothing—and didn't volunteer.

"I'm sorry. You wanted privacy." She started to leave.

"Wait. You know me?"

"For years." She knelt beside the tub, touched his cheek. "Smell me. Don't I smell familiar?"

"Everything smells so strong. I don't know why."

"You'll remember me when you smell me. You always—" Always loved my aromas. My various aromas. You'd tell me about them, until I punched you in the nose to shut you up. She passed her fingers under his nostrils, and then, a little bolder, pressed her palm to his lips. The intimacy of this touch, the presumption of it, made her flush. He seized her hand, pressed it there, took a long searching inhalation. Let it drop.

"I'm sorry, Miss."

"Don't call me miss. Why do you call me that?"

"What ... what should I call you?"

"My name is Buffy. Buffy. Buffy Summers. The slayer? None of this is registering at all?"

"Know fuck all!" He struck at the water, splashing her. She drew back.

"Okay. It's all right. It's probably temporary." Like your demise. She should call Giles. Recruit someone to take this over. This situation. She went to the door, and paused there.

"Back in the alley, when you found the sword hilt—how did you know where it would be?"

He stared at her, and the tears came down out of his eyes, but all he could do was shake his head.

He was a stranger. A stranger wearing the face of a departed enemy-turned-ally, someone she'd never sufficiently understood, never sufficiently credited, whom she'd finally been able to box away, undigested, unrecalled.

No point asking this confused, frustrated man the questions that belonged to Spike. And this was curiously a relief, because were she to ask him Why didn't you tell me you were still alive? there would be an implication that it mattered, that she cared, that there was something further she wanted. Yet she didn't want that implication to exist between them.

Probably, Buffy thought, that was why he'd never contacted her. The same instinctual recoil from anything that might jar the bruise.

Or indifference. Just indifference, really, could explain it all. Time passed, emotions cooled into effigies. He'd moved on, as she had.

The man who wasn't really Spike emerged from the bathroom wrapped in the terry robe, a towel slung round his neck. He moved slowly, uncertain of his welcome, looking around the spacious room as if wondering why there wasn't more of it. "I'm hungry."

"I have blood for you."

"Blood? Are we both going to sleep here?"

There were two beds, separated by a night-stand. She'd thought of getting a second adjacent room, but was leery of leaving him alone, in case he flipped out again, in case he left it and went and killed someone, to satisfy his hunger, his innate urge for violence.

She rose, took up the coffee pot she'd poured the blood out into. "I think it's better we stay together. For now."

"This is awkward."

You think so? She poured out a cup. He cocked his head. The aroma. All the things he could smell. He sidled towards her.

"Is that for me?"

She offered it. Taking the cup, he looked into it, sniffed it. Hesitated. "I don't understand this."

"It's okay," Buffy said. "You're a blood drinker. This is what you need."

His eyes flashed gold, the ridges rising. He gave out a grunt, and felt at his face. "What's—what's happening—feels strange."

"It's all right," she said, trying to put even more gentleness into her voice. "Drink it."

He didn't drink. He held the cup out at an awkward angle from his body, and looked at her. "Who are you? How do we know each other?"

"We were once comrades at arms."

"Soldiers?"

"Kind of."

"I can't remember anything like that." He brought the cup beneath his nose again. Sniffed it. "I wouldn't think girls took up arms."

"Some do. Go on and drink, it's all right, really."

"Blood-drinker."

"Vampire," she said, soft, soft, as if the word might shock and offend him. "You're a vampire. You have been for a long long time. But you have a soul." She didn't know if this was still true, but it made her feel better to say it.

"That's why ...." He put the cup down, and his amber eyes rolled, like those of a rearing horse. "I want to—I've got this urge to—"

"But you're not going to hurt me," she said. "You know you can control yourself, and I know it too. Yes?"

Hesitantly, still exploring his face with his fingers, he nodded.

"We can just sit together and talk, and you can drink."

Slowly, he reached for the cup again, and this time, drained it. She approached him with the pot, poured out the rest. "Refill." She tried to smile, but he wasn't looking at her. "What do you remember? Anything at all?"

"We fought together in a war?"

"Yes. A while ago."

"Something must've happened to me then and that's why I'm lost."

"Not then. More recently. A different battle."

"When I try to think, it makes me feel sick. That can't be right."

"Sick how?"

"I don't know. Here," he touched his forehead. "And here." His belly. "I want to go outside. Hate bein' locked up."

It wasn't yet midnight. They left the hotel on foot. She noticed that being out in the night air, under open sky, seemed to ease his well-behaved anxiety.

They walked at random. After a while, he said, "What's my name?"

"You call yourself Spike. I don't know your real name." She was reluctant to say 'William', there was something in the word that embarrassed her now. No reason to share that.

She yawned. The jet-lag was catching up with her. Back in Scotland, she'd be training, teaching. Dawn and Willow and Xander felt very far away, not just because the air here was warm and dry whereas at the castle it was always cool and moist. Not just that.

They walked for a long time, aimlessly. She waited for him to speak, to ask questions, but he seemed instead to be reading the breeze, to be, perhaps, otherwise leary of finding things out. When they encountered people, he gazed after them sometimes with a longing look, but she wasn't sure if this was loneliness or appetite.

In a park, they were in time to interrupt another vampire's dinner. Looking up from the ashes, stake in hand, she met his horrified stare.

"What the fuck did you just do?"

"That vampire was going to kill that guy."

"You murdered him." Spike crept forward, put his boot out squeamishly to toe at the ashes in the grass. "Bloody hell."

"It isn't murder, it's a slay. It's what I do."

"I'm a vampire."

"You have a soul. Don't worry, as long as you control yourself, you won't get slain."

"Long's I control myself?"

She was afraid he was going to cry again, he looked so devastated. He sat down abruptly, face buried against his up-drawn knees. She waited a few moments. When he didn't move, she prodded him gently. "Hey, c'mon."

"Why should I go with you? This's well out of order."

She forced her temper down. "It really isn't. It's just because of the amnesia, that this doesn't make sense."

"You kill my kind. Shit. An' that's what I am? Some kind of animal that jumps punters in the dark an' drains 'em? I mean, that's normal?"

"You haven't done that in a long while, Spike."

"I'm called Spike. I have done it."

"Well, yes."

"Want to do it now." As he spoke, the ridges rose, his eyes flashed. "Would you come at me with that stake if I did?"

"You're not going to. Please, let it go. I know this is painful and hard for you, but it's got to just be temporary."

"So you say. Know nothin' of the sort."

"Well neither do I, but it's better to hope, right?"

At four in the morning they went into a diner. She ordered coffee and pie for both of them, but when it came, he pushed the pie away, and said, "Don't I take tea? I think I take tea."

When it came, he sipped and for a moment his expression smoothed into pleasure. Then his brows knit again. "Why are you here?"

"You need help."

"But why you?"

"I told you. We used to be—"

"Used to be. Not anymore."

It was hard to look at him, because his face was full of things she didn't like to recall, the house on Revello, the smell of cigarette smoke, her mother's voice, the loneliness before battle, the absence after resurrection. He was still blond, still had all the little expressions that came back to her now in an inventory of past ambivalence and attraction and revulsion, ultimately so jumbled up she couldn't make a decision about them.

If she'd known he was in Los Angeles, she wouldn't have sought him out. She was sure of that.

Dawn might have. But not her.

"I think everyone you were with lately ... I think they all perished. I think that's what happened in that alley."

When she brought up the alley again his eyes went vague and the corner of his mouth twitched, but he had nothing to say.

When they left the coffee shop it was time to get back. She was for calling a cab; she'd lost all sense of how they'd come. But he stopped her. "I know where we need to go."

"You know! Good. Something's coming back to you."

"No. But I can feel our way."

She followed him. He moved fast now, not like before, coursing along, keeping to the shadowy side of every block, tracing their route on the air. Long before she expected it, they were back at the hotel entrance. The wind had picked up. Spike turned and faced into it. "I can smell the sunrise coming. Makes me feel funny. Disappointed."

"Are you tired? I could sleep."

Eyes closed, he let the air bathe his face. "I don't know why I'm here. By myself. What am I supposed to be doing. It doesn't feel right."

"I'm here too." She reached for his hand, but he moved out of reach.

"It doesn't feel right," he said again, and went inside.

The earth opened under her feet, and the fire flared, her senses whirled, tilted, and delivered her back to her pillow, wet with tears. It took a moment for her to discern that the sobbing she heard wasn't her own. Slipping out of bed, she went to him. He was curled with his back to her, shoulders shaking. He didn't wake when she touched his arm, but as the warmth of her hand registered on him, his quaking eased. She crawled up onto the bed, fitted herself to his back, and slept again.

When she woke, she was in the wrong bed, alone. She didn't remember getting in with him. She heard the shower running. Her pajamas were undisturbed, no wetness between her legs. Nothing else had happened.

To distract herself, she sent texts. To Giles, to Willow, to Xander, to her sister. She was going to ask for help, but what she asked for was a little time, and promised to check in again later.

When he came out of the bathroom, Spike stopped and looked at her, sitting up cross-legged in his bed, the phone in her hand. "I don't think that's where you belong."

God, had she really just crawled into bed with him? She recalled it now, her own bad dream, his sobs, her instinctual desire to seek and offer comfort—to get him quiet so she could sleep again. He was beneath the sheet, and she'd lain on top of it, spooning him, not skin-to-skin, but as close as on those last couple of nights, when they'd lain together in their clothes, waiting with patient resignation for the crisis speeding up to meet them, waiting perhaps for their deaths. Not talking and not making love and not asleep, but still somehow as satisfied together as ... as they were ever likely to be. Ever meant to be. Disappointment, compromise, entente. Those were some of the words she'd use, to tell the story of her and Spike. Not that she ever did.

She hadn't gone to bed with anyone since Spike. Not because of Spike. Because of reasons that had to do only with herself. She was certain of that.

"I'm sorry. There were nightmares. I guess it felt like the thing to do at the time."

"I don't know you."

"I get that." She didn't get it, really, because his blunt rebuke hit some unknown tender place in her. He doesn't know me, this isn't Spike. All their old shorthand, of both cruelty and kindness, didn't work here.

"What are you going to do with me?"

The blunt question startled her. "I don't have a set plan, I thought we'd ... hang out. I'm sure you'll regain your memory soon, and then you can do whatever ... whatever you want. Look, I know you don't remember this either, but before I came for you, you were in custody, with people who didn't know you, and it was making you crazy. I got you out of there. You're not my prisoner, but I can't just leave you on your own."

"Who are you? Still don't quite suss that. Buffy. Miss Buffy Summers. The girl who carries around a stake."

She took a breath. Why did this feel so risky, just telling the truth? "You're a vampire, you know that. I'm the vampire slayer. Which is how we originally met."

She tried an encouraging little smile, but his expression soured. "Ha bloody ha."

"You asked, I'm telling you. The slayer helps keep the world safe from Big Demon-Apocalypsy Evil, a team of which you used to be a charter member. Years back, some stuff happened, you started batting for good, you got a soul. And then you died saving the world, last year."

"Saving the world."

"Yes. You really did. I know it sounds weird."

"Not dead though, am I?"

"I didn't know you survived—or were revived—I'm not clear on that. You were here in L.A., but I can't fill you in on anything more recent, because I don't know. I've been in Italy, and Scotland."

"An' what got you started on that, slaying vampires?"

"I had the potential, I got called. There's this whole supernatural One Chosen Girl in Every Generation thing. Well, there was—now there are thousands of slayers. But until a year ago, there were only two. Really there's just supposed to be one. It's a long story. But it's not like I saw something about it in CosmoGirl and thought, 'Oh hey, I'd like to spend my teen years fighting vampires!' It happens, sort of like becoming a vampire happens. Well, even less volitionally than that."

His eyes went wide. There it was again, that look of sickened horror. "So that's why—"

"Why what?"

"You ... there's this ... shimmer ... you give off, I feel it like a vibration all through me when you come close. Rattles my sinews. It's ... disturbing."

"Does it hurt you?" Spike had never said anything like this. Even at the height of their sexcapades, he'd never mentioned shimmers or vibes or disturbances.

His lip curled. "Isn't it supposed to?"

"I don't want to hurt you. We stopped being enemies a long time ago."

"No, it doesn't hurt, exactly. It ...." He frowned, appearing to try different words, like keys, none of which fit this particular mechanism. "Disturbs."

"Okay, I don't want to disturb you," she said. He inclined his head, a formal little nod, of acknowledgement, like he accepting but not really accepting an apology. It gave her a strange feeling in the pit of her stomach. Not disappointment, exactly. She stepped back, held up her hands. "I'll keep my distance."

Okay, now I really should call for back-up. Hand this one off. Since I disturb him. She could bring him back to Slayer HQ, where he could interact with the others—maybe Willow could figure out a way to return him to normal. Once he was cured, he'd probably want to work with the reformed council, in some capacity. Preferably on a different continent. There were plenty of slayers who could use a little vamp-muscle. And she could get on with what she'd been doing.

She didn't call though, because she was afraid Giles would just tell her all over again that Angel had gone evil, that Spike had never been trustworthy, that all the evidence now pointed to him having gone rogue too.

She wasn't ready to really get to terms with Angel's death yet. She needed to put that off a while.

And maybe if she brought him to Scotland, they'd stick him back in a cell, and he'd freak out all over again.

She'd just have to give this a little more time.

In the hotel restaurant, which had no windows, she ate, and the man who wasn't really Spike sat across from her with more tea and rifled through all the newspapers he'd bought at the hotel newsstand. She'd told him, as they sat down, that she didn't really keep up with current events, a remark both off-hand and ironic, and mostly just thoughtless. She expected him to ask questions about what he saw in the papers, but when he folded the last section and laid it on the unused chair beside him, he said, "Nothing in there seems to have to do with my dilemma. You, and what I can't remember."

"We operate pretty much underground."

"The lights out there are so harsh. Bright. I have this idea that they're brighter than they can possibly be. That there's more of them than there should be." He moved the spoon around in the saucer. "I think I'm very far from where I started out."

"Well, you have moved around a lot. You're very old."

He glanced up.

She felt like it was her job somehow to open an infinite matryoshka doll—each one giving on to the next, none of them final or definitive or different, smaller and finer on into infinity. "You've been a vampire for a long time. Since the nineteenth century. It's the twenty-first now." She'd already noticed that he wasn't flummoxed by the technology surrounding them—he'd turned the TV on in the room, instinctively got the location of the light-switches. His lostness didn't extend so far, or at least there was a part of him that retained its orientation in the present. Yet he seemed to have in mind some earlier, gas-lit time.

"And all my associates are dead."

"There was an apocalyptic battle fought here last week. Your side won, but ... there were losses. Do you remember Angel? Big tall broody vampire guy? Apparently you were hanging around with him this past year." She had this on Andrew's authority. It still spun her around, that Andrew had known, and kept silent, because Spike had told him to.

He shook his head. "What was my side?"

"There are differing opinions. But I know you were still on the side of the good. Angel was still on the side of the good. He beat the bad ones back, which is proof enough for me. I don't care what Giles says."

Spike turned to gaze out across the other unoccupied tables, towards the check-in desk, where a few people were lined up with their luggage. He mused, gripping and releasing the spoon. "Sounds like a fairy-tale. How do I know any of this is true?"

"Believe me, I wish it wasn't."

"You're an odd girl." He turned back to her now, one brow raised, head slowly tilting in a familiar way to take her in.

How could he have all his mannerisms, and not be himself?

"You said, before, that you'd seen me naked. Were we lovers?"

"No!" She forced herself to slow down; her mental arms were frantically flapping. "Like I said, we've fought side by side, and so I've seen ... stuff." The lie tantalized her, heating her cheeks. Maybe he could tell she was lying. But she didn't want to have to describe what they'd been to each other, it wouldn't help this blankened man to know any of that ugly stuff, and when he regained his memory, he'd understand why she answered this way. He'd prefer it.

When he regained his memory, they'd be parting.

The waitress came back to ask if he wanted more tea. Her manner was flirtatious; she barely acknowledged Buffy's presence. Spike listened to her banter with a willing smile, as if the girl was exemplary of what he'd have liked from Buffy—something lighter, something easier.

"We'll take the check," Buffy said, her request cutting across the girl's chat. The waitress drew herself up stiffly, and walked off.

"Oh ho," Spike said. "Didn't like that a bit, did you? She fancied me."

"She did. And while I really have no wish to keep you from getting laid, I can't let you make any dates while you're in this state. I don't know what you'll do."

"What I'll do?" His face fell. "Oh. You think I'll rip out her throat."

"I don't think that. But it's a risk."

"Know that rippin' throats is what I want. But at the same time, know that if I do ... I'll regret it right after. Hell, during. Regret it sharp."

"Okay, but I can't let you go off alone with her or anyone. You were completely out of your mind not that long ago. If you fall into that state again, you'd be in trouble."

For a second, his pout convinced her he was back—he'd been faking all along, playing her, teasing her. She knew that look. It made her want to slap him. It made her want ....

"You'd better be right that I'll snap out of this soon. Should be allowed to get my end off when I want to, if I'm not a prisoner, like you say."

She got up. "I recommend exercise, and cold showers. Let's go."

When it got dark, she proposed they go on patrol. She didn't know if this was a good idea in this situation? It was no worse than any other, to try and show him something of what they'd been talking about. The slaying in the park the night before had happened so quickly, and he hadn't been part of it. She wanted to try to get him involved, reawaken his affinity for the physical acts of hunting. Maybe slinking around in the shadows looking for demon trouble would awaken the real Spike.

Maybe, she thought, palming her stake, he'd get carried away, and attack someone, and she'd have to slay him. End of situation.

She meant to go back to the park, but as they waited for a light, Spike's attention was drawn to a seedy bar with a knot of young people outside, loud rock music issuing from within every time the door opened.

"Could murder a pint. Stop here."

"We're looking for demons, not to get you drunk."

"Why shouldn't there be demons in there as well as anyplace else? C'mon now." He was already out of the car, and once again she had to park in a hurry and follow him.

By time she got inside, he was belly up to the bar, jaw thrust out as he bobbed his head to the beat, two glasses of beer in front of him.

"You know this song?"

"Sure." With a grin, he crooned, " I'm not present/I'm a drug that makes you dream/I'm an Aerostar/I'm a Cutlass Supreme/In the wrong lane/Trying to turn against the flow/I'm the ocean/I'm the giant undertow .... Brilliant, that is."

"When did you first hear it?"

"When it was new."

"And when was that?"

He shrugged. "Dunno, dozen years back?"

"Where were you? What was going on?"

He wasn't grinning anymore. "Don't. Bloody. Remember. Would if I could, yeah?"

"Okay, sorry. Thanks for the beer."

"Have a dance."

"What?"

"Sorry I snapped at you. Dance with me."

"Dance?"

"Girls love to dance. You're a girl, aren't you?"

"But ... yes. Yes, okay, I'm a girl." There was no point saying Since when do you dance? and no point—really really no point—in replaying in her head that time, full of beer and boasting, when he'd told her all she'd ever wanted to do was dance with him.

They'd danced. They'd had their dance.

He was tugging at her wrist now. The bar floor was crowded with couples. The music was fast, not the kind that involved touching, and that was good because she'd promised not to be too disturbing.

Never mind that maybe he was disturbing her.

It turned out Spike could dance. Not so well that the floor cleared to watch his moves, but credibly enough. And it didn't take Buffy long to notice that the gazes of some of the women near them were straying from their own partners to hers. Even bruised up, Spike in a tight black teeshirt cut a dramatic figure under the colored lights. He was smiling again now, involved in the groove to the apparent exclusion of all else. Little by little, Buffy relaxed. She hadn't danced in a long time, had forgotten the simple pleasure of it, movement that wasn't about fighting or training to fight. The tight pressing awareness of weirdness, uncertainty, anxiety, lifted. This wasn't Spike, he was just some guy, who was trying to be agreeable to her, who wanted to have a good time and for her to have a good time with him. Having a good time right now wasn't going to effect the outcome of The Situation any more than staying tense and focusing on patrolling would.

When the music stopped she was covered in sweat, feeling light and happy. She followed Spike back to the bar, where he ordered two more beers. She clicked glasses with him—"To your memory!"—and drank hers down in a few fast gulps.

He signaled the bartender for another. "You're a girl can hold her liquor, that's good."

"I wasn't always." She thought of telling him about the time he'd gotten her drunk on JD from his hip-flask, taken her along to watch him cheat at kitten-poker. Miserable as she'd been then, that evening had since taken on a sheen of humor. But she stopped herself. "Do you like this beer?"

"It's all right."

"What's your favorite kind?"

He took a long musing sip. "The pint some other bloke stands you."

She laughed. "I'm treating you to these."

"You're treatin' me to everything. Don't like that—I'll pay you back, once I'm myself again."

"Don't worry about it. This all goes down as expenses."

"Expenses? Whose expenses?"

"The Council of Watchers." She had to lean in to talk to him, now the loud music had started up again. She knew he'd be able to hear her all right, but she couldn't hear him.

"That's the organization you work for?"

"More like the disorganization, and I don't work for them. We comprise the slayers, and those who assist and guide them."

"Remind me again what a bunch of disorganized vampire slayers want with a vampire. Why are you helping me? If you are helping me. Still not real clear on that."

"Because you're an ally and a comrade. And we take care of our own." Mostly. Unless they're Angel and his people.

"Your own." She could see that he still lacked any real comprehension of what that meant.

With a shrug, he drained his glass, set it on the bar. "C'mon. This is a good song."

He wanted to escape back into the music. She didn't blame him.

They poured out of the bar with the closing crowd, into an early morning grown cool and breezy; she shivered in her sweat-moistened shirt. They'd been dancing right up until the music was cut and the lights turned on; she was giddy, laughing at Spike's teasing. People dispersed in all directions, and Buffy's neck tingled. She tapped his arm. "This way, quick—"

The familiar sensation led her around the corner, into an alley, where she found the familiar sight, two vampires with two young women backed into the corner formed by a dumpster and the bar wall. It was like a continuation of the dance, moving in, teasing first, quipping, getting the demons to turn on her with a snarl, and then a kick, a twirl, one, two, dust. Slotting the stake back into her rear waistband, under the hem of her top, she told the women to run. They jostled past Spike and were gone. He stood staring at her, his eyes amber though there was no sign of bumps or fangs. With a laugh he came towards her. "Get it now. Christ, you're amazin' when you're doin' that."

Before she could move out of the way, he'd backed her against the wall, arms up on either side of her shoulders, and lips close to her cheek. "An' you smell like sheer heaven."

She entirely meant to duck out of the way and put him off, had not the slightest intention of lifting her mouth to his, of curling her hands around his arms, tipping her head back and taking his kiss.

Not the slightest intention.

He was polite, inquiring, lips and tongue not too wet, not too intrusive. She recognized it, though—that flare in her own lips, her skin answering his slightest invitation, lighting up with a desire that traveled quickly to her core, making her squirm and groan—that effect he always had on her that cut through her judgment, her reticence, even, once, her disgust. He inched closer, gently persuading rather than aggressive, his body against hers, so she could feel the knot of his excitement against her belly. That was Spike—watching her fight got him hot.

Violence of all sorts got him hot.

"I thought I disturb you."

"Find I can stand it." He put his hands on her then, turning her softly, backing her towards the sidewalk. "Not here, though. You're not a girl for a dirty alley. Want to have you in bed."

Her whole being forked around this proposition. She trembled as she said, "Listen, I don't think we should."

"You have a boyfriend?"

"No, but—" A wince. Should've said yes, so much simpler. "I mean, it's not that I don't like you. But—I shouldn't take advantage of you while you're—" Even as she said the words, she felt their lameness. Memories dopplered through her head, every other time he'd put moves on her, every other time she'd succumbed or refused. Her skin went hot, a fevery feeling more about chagrin than arousal.

"Just because I've got amnesia doesn't mean I'm not in my right mind. Want to make love to you. Why not?" He closed in on her again, lips by her ear. "Know you want to. Can feel it, smell it."

"I know you can. I'm sorry." She didn't want to tell him her real reasons. That they'd once been—not lovers. Lovers was never the word. And because lovers was the absolutely wrong word, was why she was sure she couldn't go to bed with this man who wasn't really Spike. Because she had a history with his body—knowing it, using it, abusing it, for her sick consolations and frustrations. "Here's the thing. If we did it, I think that when you do regain your memory, you'll be angry at yourself. Angry at me."

He gave her that familiar head-tilted visual interrogation. "Aha. So when I'm not out of my head, I don't like you."

"No, that's not what I mean. It would be—I mean, our professional relationship—it wouldn't include anything like that."

"Pretty damn sure that whoever I really am would want to fuck you just the same."

"Well, maybe once you are back to normal, we can revisit this. But I'm certain you won't want to."

"Certain?"

"It would be a mistake."

He showed a slightly sneering little smile, meant to beguile. "How 'bout I declare amnesty? Won't blame you for it when I get my self back. If I get myself back. Will recall that it was my idea an' that you first turned me down, though your little heart made such a leap in your chest when I pressed up against you."

My little heart. Oh—! Even in this outlandish state, he kept his ability to seduce. And she, despite all their sad history, still wanted him, the way she imagined a brand-new user wanted junk, for that sweet, spinning, ecstatic pleasure. Wanted him never more than at this moment, when she could greedily take all of his deliciousness that her throbbing body now demanded, with nothing of their old disaster to cloud his experience.

She could fuck him again and he wouldn't know how awful she was being. How selfish, how predatory, how mean.

He took hold of her once more—his grip coaxing, not sharp. This time she didn't pull away.

He was quiet in the car, in the elevator. Kept right up behind her as they moved to their room, as she fitted the card key in the door, practically tumbling in. His whisper in her ear as he shoved the door shut behind them: "Let's see you strip off for me."

She pictured herself, giving him a little show. Culminating in straddling his thighs, pulling his big cock out of his jeans. How it used to fill her hands, how hungry she'd been for it.

And what if he came back to himself at that moment? Shit. She could picture it; his memory rushing back in like the wrath of God, and there she'd be, naked and spread out and vulnerable, caught right in the middle of Making use of me again. That's what he'd say. He'd be furious. Promise or no promise. He'd probably snap her neck right there.

She'd done things so wrong with him. It had been such a bad bad time, last year, but she should've been more careful. Pushed him much farther away much sooner. Or drawn him closer. As close as he'd wanted to be. One or the other, neither of which she'd been sensible enough to attempt. What she had done, keeping him dangling, keeping him useful, letting him make the supreme sacrifice after a last-second declaration she still flinched to recall—Crap crap crap, could she have done any worse?

He turned her to face him. "What's this?"

"I—" Shit. "I'm having second thoughts."

"Gettin' that, yeah."

She wondered what she smelled like to him at that moment. Different than a little while ago. Bitter, she was sure.

"There's something you're not tellin' me, here."

"I'm sorry I'm interfering with your ... your needs. Our needs." She took a breath. "Except that we're really not good candidates for taking care of each other's ... needs."

"You think that's all this is, me wanting a shag and you bein' handy?"

"It really doesn't matter."

"Feel drawn to you." His gaze seemed to have the power now to raise the gooseflesh on her whole body. "Gettin' fond of you."

"Don't get fond of me. I mean—it's like Stockholm Syndrome. You know what that is? Really, I'm not trying to be mean, it's just ...."

"Yeah, yeah, Stockholm Syndrome, right. Don't quite think that explains what ... what you been doin' to me since you found me."

"I'm not trying to do anything to you."

"It's that ... simmer, like I said."

"You said you didn't like it. You said you wanted me to keep my distance."

"Well, that was before ... before I got to know you a bit. Feels different now." He threw himself into a chair, turned his head into the hand his cheek rested on, murmuring into his palm, "Would be willin' to forget everythin' all over again after, if it meant I could make love to you now." Reacting to her expression, he waved a hand. "Never mind, pet, not gonna hector you. No good like that. Only want it if you do."

More harsh memories he didn't know he was springing. She wished she could go, be alone for a while to get her equilibrium back. But she didn't dare leave him alone.

"Listen, I am really sorry, and I'm not trying to make you crazy. But this is getting to be more than I can handle. I'm going to try to arrange for us to go back to HQ. I have to negotiate, to make sure you're treated fairly when we get there—which I'm sure I can do. There are other people there who can help you, you won't have to be, like hand-cuffed to me all the time. And—" her attempt at a light laugh sounded to her more like a honk, "there's lots of other slayers there, some of whom might want to go to bed with you! So you'll be better off all around."

He stared at her. "Do what you think's best, yeah, but don't want to go to bed with other girls."

Okay, okay, okay, subject change now! "I'm going to get on the phone. I—I think I need a little privacy for this, okay, so I'm gonna go into the bathroom. Will you stay here and wait? There's blood in the mini-fridge."

He was already reaching for the TV remote. "Whatever you say, Miss Buffy Summers."

Perched on the edge of the tub, the phone in her clammy hand, her body still emerging from the disorganization of desire, Buffy took a few deep breaths. This was ridiculous. Ludicrous.

The day before he'd been all bent out of shape because she'd come into his bed—onto his bed—to comfort him in his sleep, and tonight he was all over her wanting to fuck.

To make love. Which was not so much a Spike locution—she restrained herself from counting back in time the number of times he'd said the one or the other to her in Sunnydale—appalled that she could summon all the occasions up so easily, through her thick cloud of shame.

He was exaggerating, carried away on too many beers, on dancing, on seeing her slay. He'd come down, and tomorrow he'd probably be just as glad that she'd rebuffed him.

But she had to get them out of this strange pas-de-deux, stat.

It didn't prove so simple. When she called, she was told that the Council jets were all out on other assignments. She'd have to wait a few days, or come back on a commercial flight. But a commercial flight of that duration with a combustible vampire would be risky.

And then when she got Giles on the phone, he turned out to be not all that amenable to the idea that Spike ought to be helped. Even when she described what had happened in the alley—his anguish, the sword hilt, the one sentence he'd gotten out before falling into convulsions—Giles sounded mostly unmoved, though he made perfunctory sympathetic noises that came across as more condescending to her than sincere.

"He helped us save the world. Do I really have to remind you? We could. not. have. done. it. without. him."

"My dear, I do appreciate—"

"Don't my dear me with this, Giles! When Willow got in trouble and was all evil, you didn't just write her off, did you? Spike hasn't been evil in a long time, he's a comrade. We owe him."

"Bring him here if you think it's best, but I can't issue a blanket promise that we'll give him the freedom of the castle when we have no idea what state he's in or what he might do."

"You have no idea what state Xander is in or what he might do. Or my sister. Or anybody. Heck, me."

"Buffy, please be reasonable—"

"Let me talk to Willow. No—wait. Nevermind. I'll call her myself, later."

Though they'd rebuilt nearly all their bridges since the Black-and-Veiny thing, a tickle of mistrust of Willow remained. She didn't want to expose Spike just yet to Willow in Let's-Figure-This-Out-And-Fix-It mode. It wasn't clear that Spike's amnesia was magically-induced, but layering more magic on him now ... could be bad.

"New plan."

Spike took a couple moments to tear his gaze from the TV. He'd found some South American soccer match.

"Turns out you might not be so well-received back in Scotland as I hoped. Maybe things will go better if we get out of the city. There's a sort of safe-house slash retreat-house the Council has, up the coast. It's quiet there, lots of outdoors. You can swim in the ocean. I dunno, it might be conducive to you getting better."

"What'll I do, when I get better?"

"I ... I hope you'll work with the Council. You'll probably want to continue with the mission. You used to have a very strong, dedicated sense of the mission."

"Work with these punters you say won't receive me now?"

"It'll make sense to Spike."

"There's all sorts that's supposed to make sense to this Spike. Spike, Spike, who is Spike?" He made it into a little jeer, like a football chant.

She slid into the other chair near his. "Spike is a good man. He's someone who made a decision to turn his back on his demon instincts, and work to be a man. He succeeded beyond his wildest dreams."

"By dyin'."

"To save the whole world." She felt she was telling a story to a child, a child who was anxious and needed to be reassured. But it was her own heart that swelled as she issued these promises. She'd cheated him of the comfort he craved in his last weeks, had admitted him to a certain intimacy that was still short of the intimacy she knew he pined for. Couldn't give the love he probably deserved—love not being something a person could produce just because it would come in handy. At least now she was getting a chance, however painful and awkward and potentially disastrous, to show him a little kindness.

Though with this thought came the stinging sense that between her and Spike, mere kindness was another kind of withholding, another disappointment. Spike hadn't wanted kindness from her, at least without the accompanying lashings of blinding, passionate, full-on connection he seemed sure she was only holding back out of sheer perversity.

He tipped his chin at her, like a polite guest making small talk. "How'd I do that, then?"

"There was an amulet, that had to be worn by a particular kind of warrior—a champion. Not a plain human, not a mere demon. You insisted on being the one to wear it into the battle."

"So I put on a trinket, and that was it?"

"It required enormous courage. The amulet focused the force of your soul, your determination to beat back the invasion—and its power destroyed you along with the enemy. This vast vast army was all burned and buried, the world was saved, because you were there, with the amulet on, but you had to stay until the very end. You burned too."

"An' then I got better."

"Uh ... yes. The amulet was somehow restored to its source, and you with it."

"Its source?"

She tried to explain about Wolfram & Hart, about Angel, but having had the story only from Andrew, replete with exaggerations, elisions, and long wild-eyed hard-to-follow digressions during which spit built up in the corners of his mouth as he talked, she didn't get very far before Spike turned the sound up on the TV again with a shrug.

When the next commercial came on, he said, "So, we're goin' to this holiday house together, but it's strictly a hands-off arrangement."

"It has to be."

"Startin' to think this Spike bloke's in purgatory. Workin' off his sins in a long round of stiflin' frustration. Never thought the accomodations in purgatory would be so posh, though. Anyway, it's the mackeral snappers believe in all that." To her questioning look he answered, "Catholics, pet. Church of England, me."

"Really? Since when?"

"Dunno. Always. Not that I ever went in for it much."

"How do you know that?"

"Just do."

"What church did you go to when you were a child?"

He frowned. "Quit that. Interrogatin' me's not helping. Just makes me cross."

"Okay, okay." She sprang up. "I'm going to get my things together. We'll leave this evening."

Getting ready for bed this time was strange. He'd already seen her in her pajama bottoms and tank top ensemble, but now she felt like her mere presence in the room was an unfair tease. Unfair to both of them. He stayed put in the chair, with the TV on, when she finally slunk out of the bathroom and dived under the covers. She thought she could feel him not looking at her.

She knew he couldn't help smelling her, feeling her pulse; sometimes in the old days she'd felt like Spike could read her mind. He had to be aware, at least in part, of how full of bullshit she was. It was kind of amazing, that he stayed put. That he trusted her this much. She wasn't sure, if she was in his place, if she'd do the same.

The hours of the afternoon ticked by, and she dozed, awakening a couple of times an hour to the heightened blare of the TV ads, then drifting again. Spike barely moved.

Then he was shaking her. "Sun's down. C'mon, let's be off."

She pulled over abruptly. "Before we leave town—"

"Why're you stoppin' here?" He looked out his window at the dark burned-out hulk of a building that filled a whole city block.

"This is where you found the sword hilt. Where you had your second black-out."

"Oh joy."

"I think we should go back there again. The spot seemed to be ... pretty powerful. Maybe this time something there will spark something."

"Don't think so, pet."

She squinted sidelong at him. "Are you afraid?" Then in a gentler tone, "I'll be with you."

"Not afraid. Why should I be afraid of some place I don't even know?"

She thought his bravado rather telling, and didn't press him. They sat for a few moments in the silent car, as traffic flowed by them, and Spike looked at the building.

"Seems to be an old hotel."

"So I gather."

"This big battle, finished up here?"

"Yes. It's where you were found afterwards, and when I was taking you away from ... from the Council's HQ here, you leapt out of the car and ran back there when we were driving by. You don't even remember that?"

"Do nothin', do I, but dash your expectations on that score. Not as clever as you'd like me to be."

"It's nothing to do with clever. You were always clever—smart—you still are."

Spike gave the shrug that was already becoming a familiar gesture, and sprang the door lock. "Let's get it over with then, if we must."

Despite his fear, he led the way, around to the back of the building, into the long smelly greasy alley. Buffy was nervous herself, and hung back a little, hoping that would make her anxiety less likely to transfer to him. He paced forward with his habitual swagger, the stride, she realized, watching him from behind, of a smallish man who always had to assert himself, to seem bigger than he was. Big Bad, he used to style himself.

When he reached the center of the space, near where she'd found him dashing himself against a particular patch of bricks the other night, he paused.

Buffy waited. Better not to suggest, to prompt. If something was going to happen, it ought to happen for him spontaneously.

He sipped the air, opening his mouth to taste it better, turning his head slowly, eyes closed. "Stench of death here's overwhelming."

"It's rank, yeah."

"You don't know a thousandth of it." He made a face. "There's more sorts of nasties died here than you've probably met up with in all your adventures."

"Think so? Anything else coming to you?"

He moved around slowly, taking soundings. It took some time for her to notice that as he ranged, putting on a good display of taking it all in, he kept shy of that one place. Passed it over and over without pausing, always contriving to be facing the other way.

When he'd trailed off towards the far end of the alley, she stepped over to make her own inspection.

It was too dark to see a lot of detail, but this section of the wall wasn't particularly stained, or broken. She tested it with her palms; it held firm. Everything smelled just as charred and icky here as everywhere else in the alley, as far as she could tell.

What a terrible place for Angel to have to meet an army, for Angel to have to go down.

"I can't believe you're gone." She whispered into the blank brick, leaning against it as her knees went watery. She'd always counted on Angel being somewhere, part of some potential future for her that she never took seriously anymore but clearly hadn't entirely dismissed.

"Eh?" Spike had drifted back towards her, was still a few yards off, but then he could hear a pin drop in the next street if he listened for it.

"Nothing."

He came a little closer; and his eyes went gold. Closer still and the ridges rose; she saw his fangs descend, as the low rolling growl reached her, skirling down her spine. She came around so her back was to the wall. "What?"

He didn't seem to hear her, or even to see her. Suddenly this patch, that he'd ignored up until now, engaged him utterly. He bent at the knees, as if planting himself against some onslaught, lips peeling back in a snarl. She sidestepped, got behind him.

"What is it, what do you see?"

Spike skidded backward, as if tackled and driven by something huge and heavy that flung and pinned him. His howl was the same she'd heard from numerous vampires in the seconds before she staked them, animal rage.

Buffy dove at him, grabbed his shoulders, and pulled him out out of range. Afterwards she wasn't quite sure why this had seemed the thing to do, but the effect was immediate. The howling stopped, Spike went limp, the game-face gave way to the human.

"Spike—!" If he started in again with the who-are-you-where-am-Is, she'd kick herself all the way to Santa Barbara for trying this.

But when his eyes opened, Spike immediately looked for her, tipping his head back to fasten on her where she crouched above him, then rolling with agile quickness up and over, snatching her into his arms, lifting her off her feet.

"Hey!"

He ran with her, out of the alley, and once clear, set her down. Oddly, he was panting.

"What's going on?"

"Can't look in there!"

"Look in where?"

The expression on his face, haunted, flinching, filled her with dread. He was still holding her; she let him. He buried his nose in her hair and took snuffing breaths.

"Spike," she murmured, calm and careful. "Look in where?"

"Eh?"

"You just said, can't look in there—where?"

"Dunno."

"You said—"

"Did I? Let's get out of here."

"Not until you tell me—"

Slowly, he let her go, put his hands to his face. "Feel like a steamroller ran over my head."

His eyes were moist with tears. He reminded her of a little boy, stunned by a sudden tumble.

"Gotta get out of this." He started off, in the wrong direction. She sped after, plucked his arm. "The car is this way."

He spun. Confronted her for another long moment that made her fear she'd lost him again.

"I'm not gone."

"You're right here. We both are. What?"

He seized her hands. "I'm not gone. Don't leave me alone."

She recalled then, her whisper into the bricks. Angel. Spike's hands were cold, and so white and dry, wrapped around hers. She squeezed his fingers. "Don't worry, I won't. I'm going to stick by you until this is over."

He blinked, and a tear tracked down his cheek. He brought one of her hands to his lips, sketched a cool kiss on the back that made her shiver. His murmur, "You are a sweeter lady than you know," sounded more like the man who hadn't wanted her to see him in his bath, than like any Spike she'd ever met.

Embarrassed, she fumbled free. "Let's go now. It takes a few hours to get to the safe-house."

Once they were well away from the old hotel and its spooky alley, Buffy said, "I think there's something here that doesn't want you to get near it."

Spike didn't answer. Since they'd gained the car, he'd been slouchy, slow, and curiously silent; when she glanced at him, she saw he was asleep, head tipped back, lips parted, brow knit as if in pain.

Here was a reason to call Willow. She could fly in and work some mojo on that place, get under the cloak of whatever the magic was at that spot. Without having to meddle with Spike himself.

As she sped up the Pacific Coast Highway, the traffic light late at night, the radio murmuring pop music, he stirred, and yawned.

"Hungry."

"Cooler's in the back."

He reached around. In the rearview mirror, she saw the lid lift, a blood bag float out and then disappear from the frame. When she looked back at him, he'd vamped out, and was using his left fang to tear with a curious delicacy at the plastic.

"Do you feel better now?"

"Could sleep for days." Bewilderment in his tone. He sucked down half the blood in one chug, and sighed.

"Anything coming together for you?"

Another sigh.

"Look, I have to ask."

"That so?"

Now she sighed.

He took another swallow. "Not like I'd keep it from you, would I, if there was anything to tell?"

"I really hope not."

A silence. He finished the blood, tossed the empty into the back seat. "You know I appreciate what you're doin' for me, yeah? I'm all alone an' lost, an' here you are, dropping everything to look after me. Even though I think you don't much care for this Spike punter."

"You're welcome. And that isn't true."

"Nah. Don't humor me. I'm not a kid, I can suss out a few things here."

He was putting her in her place—at her distance—again. Not that she could blame him, after how she'd given him the hot-and-cold treatment. After all the questions he'd asked that she'd deflected. He was far from stupid, he could see there were long stories, big truths, she was keeping back.

"I like you," she said. "I really do. You ...you're very easy to be with."

"Me."

"You, who I'm talking to right now."

"Ah. An' who am I?" The remark was meant to be rhetorical, issued in a dreamy voice as he turned to look out the window, into the night. After a few moments, he said, "Don't want you to call me Spike anymore."

This startled her. She turned the radio off. "It's your name."

"It's what this vampire fellow styles himself. The ripper of throats. Don't want to be called like that."

"Spike is who you are. Even when you got your soul, you were still Spike."

He frowned. "Spike's not me. This me you say you like—must be quite different, yeah? Spike doesn't fit. Name for some brute-ish animal, some bloody social deviant thug. Sure you don't know any other name for me? Spike was a man once upon a time."

His words struck her like bile splashing up into the back of her throat, foul thick and corrosive. Guilt and regret. A name. He wants a name, Buffy. Pick a name. Matthew, Mark, Luke, John. Moe, Larry, Curly. "It might ... it might be William." Might? Might? Shit, he'd remember this conversation later, when he was himself again, he'd match it up to the last time she'd said that name to him, when she was disposing of him, and he'd hate her. He'd hate her if he didn't hate her already. She had to force herself to ease up her grip on the steering wheel, and keep her eyes on the glowing yellow line. Breathe, breathe.

"William?" Little aura of surprise. "William. Will. That's not bad. Infinitely better than bloody Spike. From now on, call me Will."

She could've choked. "I'm used to calling you Spike."

"An' now you can get used to calling me Will."

"I'll forget."

"Try."

What was it in that one word that brought forth her tears? They spurted out, like iron filings drawn to a magnet.

Spike didn't move, but after a couple of beats, said quietly, "Pull over, girl."

Parked on the shoulder, heart hammering, she sprang out of the car. He left her alone for a few minutes, staying behind as she paced, the gravel crunching beneath her soles, struggling to get herself under control. She took out her phone. Someone, someone, she needed someone to take this off her hands. Who would come? Even Andrew, she believed at that moment, would be more help than hindrance.

A touch at her elbow made her spin around. "Don't have to tell me, what's got you so upset. But don't cry."

"I'm fine."

"Sure you are." His voice could be like this sometimes, so gentle. She remembered other times he'd spoken to her so soothingly, given her such generous permission to be herself in his presence and pay him no more mind than she would or could.

"I could drive for a bit."

"You don't have a license."

"Won't speed. Won't need one."

It was a relief, to relinquish control of at least this one thing, for a little while. She could tell it pleased him too, to slide into the driver's side, to command something for a change.

"W-W-Will."

She saw him smile. "Buffy Summers."

"Take the next exit, okay? I want to get some coffee."

The exit led to an isolated strip— a gas station with a convenience store, and across the way, a Subway, both lit up with remorseless fluorescents, the sight of which sparked more sad, anxious memories.

"Spike told me once—" She was getting it already, referring to Spike as some absent third person! Even if she still couldn't quite bring herself to address him as Will. "—that some demons like to stand under fluorescent lights because it makes them twitch. Me, I hate them." She almost added, Spike thought I was a kind of demon, and that I wouldn't admit it out of perversity. Because if I did it would mean I wasn't really that different from him, deep down. But no, she wasn't going to get into that. How her thoughts betrayed her!

As if he sensed that she regretted the topic, he said only, "Want your coffee from the shit sandwich shop or the Stop 'n' Rob?"

"Uh—Stop 'n' Rob, please. We should top up the gas tank too."

Twenty minutes later, when she pulled out from the convenience store lot, doing eighty up the freeway on-ramp, listening out for the sound of sirens she dreaded hearing, Buffy had forgotten this little exchange, his ironic coinage. She'd walked in, was getting her drink while Spike did the fill-up, and was as startled as the lone clerk when the mulleted guy coming out of the men's room pulled a gun. He herded her behind the counter with the cashier, and there was nothing her slayer powers gave her that could disarm him.

Spike came barreling through the entrance in full game-face, getting the guy to spin around, to point the gun at him. Earning himself three bullets to the chest as he ran at the mullet, tackling him to the floor. Together they'd disarmed and bound him—Spike administering a punch or two "for holding a gun on my girl, you tosser!"—then fled before the clerk could calm down enough to really think about what he'd seen: the fangs, the man who'd taken three point-blank gunshots without even slowing down, much less bleeding out.

He was bleeding plenty now, all over the back seat of her rental car. "Christ, this burns. Got bruises on my bruises already, an' now there's holes in my bruises."

"I don't think we should stop yet. Drink some more blood."

"Whatever I pour in'll just pour out again, I'm a feckin' sieve," he grumbled, but she heard him fumbling with the cooler.

"You saved my life back there. Thank you."

"You'd have been all right."

"I'm not Supergirl. If I get shot, I die. It happened like that, once before. I would've died on the operating table, except my friend, a witch, got the bullet out with magic."

"Yeah? You must've been bloody scared just now, poor pet."

His sudden touch on her shoulder startled her. She flinched.

"Ssssh. Slow down."

She eased up a bit on the gas. His hand stayed put, cupping the curve of her neck into her shoulder. Steadying her. "That feels good," she whispered.

"We'll make it. You're doin' fine."

They arrived just before dawn. Buffy punched the security code into the keypad with shaky fingers, waited for the gates to open, and drove the last mile up through the private woods, to where the house nestled amidst trees on an abutment high over the ocean. Inside, jelly-kneed, thirsty and faint, she went around pulling the drapes on all the windows.

When she came back to Spike, he was in the kitchen, taking off the blood-sodden shreads of his teeshirt. Sight of the ragged red holes in his chest drew a moan from her.

The bullets had gone clean through, the exit wounds on his back just as gory. She offered a rueful smile. "I can tell you your shirt is a total loss, hope it wasn't your favorite one."

"Think I've another couple just like it."

She dug out the first-aid kit—there was always plenty of bandages and salves in a slayer house. "I'll fix you up."

"S'nothin'," he insisted. "Leave it."

"No." Buffy dabbed at the wounds with a warm wet washcloth, feeling sorry when he gasped and winced.

She made him lift his arms so she could wrap him round with gauze. He stood patiently for her ministrations, and when she'd snipped the end and taped it down, he caught and drew her close.

"Dunno what I would've done if you'd been hurt. Or killed."

Her throat had gone thick and dry; she couldn't speak. She couldn't not thread her arms around his waist. "Little girl, little girl, you're all a-tremble. You're exhausted." He tucked her head in beneath his chin, rocking her just slightly, a lulling motion that drew the last of the tension out of her as if by some charm.

"Stop 'n' Rob. Guess they call 'em that for a reason," she babbled. She wanted to just close her eyes and stay held like this forever, with her cheek nestled in the cool smooth curve of his neck.

"All a-tremble, poor pet," he repeated, steering her backwards, prodding and leading her numb stumbling body, out of the kitchen, up some stairs, into a large airy room. Half-stupid, half-asleep, she let him undress her and put her to bed. Was it her dream, or did he hover for a moment over her, as he pulled the sheet up? She held her arms out, coaxing, and when he dropped into them, she cozied at once into that same good place, against the column of his neck, and was out.

Even before her dreams dragged her to break the surface of sleep, they were about nothing but thirst and the hot pressure of her bladder. Reluctant to turn on a light or even open her eyes, lest she lose the cottony warmth that would lead her back into slumber. Buffy found her way to the bathroom, feeling her way in the incomplete darkness, finding, with hands dabbing the air, the toilet, the faucet, the plastic tooth glass.

Slipping back into bed, she caught sight of the red numbers floating near her, the clock on the bedstand. It was early—she'd only been here a couple of hours. Scooting back to swing her legs in, she encountered Spike's outreaching hand. His whisper, groggy, aggrieved. "You there? Went an' took all my warm away."

She gave herself back to him, let him tug her in, his body a cool bolster she fitted herself against. He exhaled, his breath tickling through her hair. "Need you close, pet."

She scooched nearer, entwining their legs. His feet, even under the quilt, were icy. Already she was dropping away again.

The next time she roused, the clock said nearly ten p.m. Her mouth was once more ashy. Spike was gone. "Great, Buffy, you broke the land sleep record." Her body felt like it weighed two hundred pounds as she dragged herself out of bed. Everything hurt like she'd been pummeled.

Funny how that worked. How one little gun trained at her heart could cut her down to the same size as any other terrified woman.

She looked for Spike. Her first instinctual fear was that he'd bolted. Maybe taken the car and just lit out. But she saw out one window that the car was where she'd left it. And then out another, she saw him. Behind the house was a wide patio, with a kidney-shaped swimming pool set into it, whose underwater lights cast up an eerie blue shimmering on his white body. He was sitting on the end of the diving board, legs dangling. Hair and skin glistening—wet. He'd taken off her carefully wound bandages. From her high vantage, in the strange light, his bruises were invisible, and she could see only one of the wounds, a black nickel-sized dot, high on his back. Leaning on his taut arms, planted on the edges of the board between his thighs, he thrust his head a little forward, as if he was listening for something, or taking in some aroma on the air. Then little by little he leaned back, propping his arms behind him, then letting himself down on his elbows, and finally his back. Drew his knees up, feet side by side on the board. He lay there, motionless, exposed, one arm crooked over his face, like a sun-bather. Moon-bather.

Then he touched himself.

The patch of hair in his groin was the only dark thing on his pale body, except for the bullet holes. He'd spit in his palm, brought his hand into languid motion. Peering through the inch of parted drapes, eye pinned there, Buffy froze. Her nipples went hard, clit squirmed; the tremor of her thighs made her realize how tightly she was holding herself, like any movement would betray her.

She shouldn't watch.

She didn't know this man, he was dependent on her, he didn't know he was being observed. Those were just three reasons why it was wrong. And what had happened last night, the cuddling after the trauma was over ... physical comfort she'd been too addled and tired to resist. Nothing wrong with that, but nothing to presume on. Especially not as an excuse to spy on him taking another kind of comfort.

Buffy pulled herself away, careful not to jostle the drapes. Retreated to the master bathroom, where she ran the shower as hard as it would go.

Tried to think of anything but what she'd just seen—and everything she could so easily conjure from memory—as she brought herself off with soapy fingers, once, twice, a third time, until her knees buckled and she lay in the tub, legs open to the falling stream, lips parted to gasp.

She knew he was in the kitchen. She hesitated. What to say? It seemed important to say something, and to say it briskly, calmly, briefly. Something that would let him know that his embrace, his company in her bed, while completely acceptable and appreciated—at the time—shouldn't make him feel she expected anything more, or that she would offer any kind of continuation. Above all she must be firm, but kind, kind, kind. He was dependent on her, she reminded herself again, who knew how long this situation would last, she'd already turned him down and the reasons were no different now than they'd been two days ago.

The kitchen door swung open. "What you doin' loitering out here? Made coffee."

His smile was smooth, boyish, refreshed. Amazingly, his bruises were less; his hair, still moist, shone as if it had been newly blonded; his blue eyes sparkled. "You were quite the sleepin' beauty. Must be ravenous now. There's not much here. Could ring for a pizza, maybe?"

As if he had a string attached to her navel, she moved forward as he beckoned, through the swinging door, following him halfway across the spacious kitchen floor. He was wearing jeans, and the white towel slung over his shoulder hid the wounds. "Feelin' better? You were busy dreaming nearly all day."

"I don't remember any dreams." This wasn't at all what she meant to say. "How do you know I was dreaming?"

He shrugged. "Scent. Could feel the vibration of your eyes movin' in their lids."

Jeez. Remind me never to be a vampire. Too much information. "Listen, Spike—I mean." She stopped, overwhelmed by a hot flush of chagrin. "Sorry. Will."

He was pouring coffee into two mugs. With a glance over his shoulder, he said, "You're gonna tell me last night was just about you bein' so scared, an' me so ripped up. Don't bother. I know."

This was exactly what she'd been going to say, so why was she suddenly scrambling to backpedal? "No. No. No."

"Here." He extended the mug. She stepped to take it, he drew back at once, keeping his distance.

Why was this so confusing?

She wondered—if this wasn't Spike, would it be different? Really not Spike—some other man, with a different body, with no shared history however lost to him. Some other man she'd been assigned to protect, while he was under a spell maybe, or on the run from some vengeful demons. Would it be wrong to take advantage of him? If it seemed to be what he wanted?

She didn't know.

God, she didn't know. The question just whirled around her head like a flock of starlings, the twittering filling her up with confusion and embarrassment.

Spike was looking out the window, into a stand of firs that obscured the ocean horizon. Sipping at his coffee, he said, "You feelin' more tranquil now?"

"I'm all right. I'm used to ...." You never got used to it. Not really. Not to guns pointed at you.

"What are you supposed to be doing right now? I mean, if not for me."

"Could be almost anything. Training the new slayers. Or—traveling somewhere to fight some local threat. We try to monitor demon activity worldwide, and when we find some hot-spot, I go in with a team."

"So I'm keepin' you from your important work."

"I'm sure if there was anything that took priority, my phone would be buzzing."

"So I could lose you anytime."

Don't say 'lose me'. 'Lose me' is the wrong nomenclature here! "It's kind of hard to plan much of anything in advance, when you're a slayer. But don't worry."

"An' now we're here in this beautiful place—well posh it is, been down that long long staircase to the sea, an' saw what a big piece of ground we've got here, all walled off to keep the nasties out—or in. Now we're here, what's supposed to happen?"

"You're going to rest, and try to relax, and maybe that'll do the trick for you. And I'm going to get Willow—she's our chief mage—onto the situation in the alley. If there's something there, she'll find out what it is. And maybe that will help you."

He went on staring out, watching the fir branches stir in the ocean breeze, the coffee cup pressed to his lower lip. She found herself staring at his profile, at that lip, that she used to lick and suck in between her own, and kiss. The dismay was back, congealing in her ... why did it have to be like this? She hadn't had any of these lewd revisitings in the last year. Yet now, back in his prescence again, she couldn't stop her thoughts from swooping in on him from all sorts of oblique angles, all coming back to the one place, this greedy knowing nostalgia for his body, his ways of touching her, tasting her, fucking her. It was nothing to do with love, it was something far more base. He'd become for her the model, the reference point, of arousal, of release. The stock figure of her physical fantasies. And none of those fantasies came without an accompanying flare-up of gross unease.

"Haven't touched your coffee."

He was right next to her all of a sudden, his fingers wrapping around the forgotten cup in her hand. "S'cold now."

For a couple of seconds they endured a minor tug-of-war over the cup. Spike won.

"Help me. Yeah." He dashed the cup into the steel sink, where it broke, splashing onto the counter. "Tell me just one thing, Buffy Summers. If it's such a bloody mistake, why'd you sleep all day in my arms, with your lips 'gainst my throat, an' bathin' me in such a scent of contentment? Why'd you give me that for nothing?"

She had no answer, only an overwhelming irrational sense of his unfairness—she'd resisted observing him, but he'd taken in every one of her private secrets! Her heart threatened to explode, even as the pressure in her throat, a bolus of pique, resentment, embarrassment, threatened to choke off her next breath.

"Spike's not here," he said. "I'm Will. Why won't you deal with me?"

"It's not like that. I can't just pretend—"

"Spike's been wiped."

"He's inside you! I can call you whatever you say, but you are Spike!"

"All right, so I'm bloody Spike—do I deserve this from you?"

Shame pulsed through her like a drug released into her bloodstream. "You don't," she murmured. "That's the point."

"You act like this everytime some fellow just wants to take you to bed? Like a bloody traffic cop—come on, then stop. Maybe you get off on denyin' yourself! No wonder you don't have a boyfriend, teasin' bitch."

"That ... that really isn't fair."

He gestured at her—fatigue, disgust. "Tttcha. Know what you'd better do? Better recruit someone else to mind me. This here's not workin' out for us."

He might as well have driven a fist into her face. She couldn't look at him anymore. "I'll make some calls," she whispered, and fled.

Phone in clammy hand, Buffy sat on the edge of the bed, unable to assemble the least bit of purpose.

She'd brought this on herself. Why did she invite him into her bed? That she was exhausted, traumatized, half-asleep and just not thinking was of course absolutely no excuse. Half her life was spent in such a state. That there was something about him that was inexorably comforting, tantalizing, delicious to her ... wasn't his fault, and also was no excuse.

He was right, this wasn't working. She disturbed him, he disturbed her, and they had no business trying to coexist through this crisis while all this inappropriate indefinable feeling existed between them.

With gelid fingers, she touched the screen on the phone. It purred, and then was answered.

"Will." Not Will. Too many Wills. "Willow. It's Buffy."

"I know. Hey, how are you? Giles told me you were with Spike."

"I need some help." She explained about the alley, her voice echoing back to her, robotic. Why was it hard to breathe? Since when did she have so little rein over herself? "So I think you're the one who can find out what the hex is there. There's got to be something."

"Sure," Willow said. "I'm definitely intrigued. I've got some stuff I'm working on here but I could come to L.A. in a few days—is that soon enough?"

"The sooner the better. I'm hoping that if you can unmask whatever it is, Spike's memory will come back. The longer he's just sort of ... wiped ..."—She didn't like that word, but he'd put it in her head—"the harder it is for him."

"I get that," Willow said. She paused, then in a different tone, said, "How is it for you? I guess it's kind of bizarre, seeing him again, after ...."

"I thought he was dead. But this isn't the first time I've had people come back from the apparently dead. I'm dealing. It's not like." Not like when Angel came back? Not like I expect anything to come of this reunion I never remotely wanted? Not like I might be developing feelings for this Spike who doesn't know why he shouldn't have feelings for me?

"Not like what?" Willow said. "Buffy?"

"I just ... sort of feel for him, y'know? He's all alone. He doesn't know anybody, he doesn't know himself."

"That doesn't describe you," Willow said gently.

"No, I know. I just. It's. He was a champion. He was supposed to be at peace."

"Giles thinks he went rogue. Maybe whatever brought him back after Sunnydale was controlling him."

"Do you believe that?"

Willow paused. "Much as I respect Giles' opinion ... and I've been reading up on this Wolfram & Hart operation, and it's serious ... y'know, I just can't believe that of Angel and his people. I met them, I worked with them. They wouldn't have gone to the other side. Neither would the Spike I knew there at the end. If he was with them, it was for the mission."

Had Willow been there, Buffy would've thrown her arms around her. "I think so too."

"I'll get to L.A. as soon as I can."

"We're not there right now," Buffy said. "Spike needs rest and quiet, it wasn't doing him any good to be in the city. I might ask some other people to come spell me here with him, but we can keep in touch by phone."

Willow chuckled. "You don't want me and my magic fingers anywhere near him. Got it."

"Willow—"

"No, really, I got it. It's okay, Buffy. You stay well. We'll talk."

The call over, Buffy caressed the phone's smooth edges, wanting and not wanting to make another call. She should get someone else here. He'd demanded she do so. She could call Faith, and ask for Vi. Vi had found Spike after the battle, Vi knew him, and Vi had none of the baggage. She was a nice person, she'd take an interest, and she had the strength to cope if Spike got fangy or crazy or both.

So why wasn't she punching up Faith's number?

It wasn't like she'd have to know why she needed help.

Shit no. Because Faith would know. Faith was the one who'd insisted they tell her about Spike in the first place.

Faith had always read more into things between her and Spike than were really there.

She'd call. A little later. Meanwhile, the house's lowest level had a slayer gym where she could pound out her aggravation against the fast and heavy bags, expend her rage at herself on various pommels and agility testers. That was what she needed now. That would clear her out, make her able to talk to Faith, to Vi, with the right tone of self-command. The big work-out montage always set her right when nothing else could.

She was halfway to her suitcase for her sweats when the knock at the door froze her.

"Buffy." His voice strangely muffled from the other side.

"What do you need?" She meant to go to the door, to open it smartly and confront him like the number one slayer she was. Instead she fell back into her seat at the edge of the bed, willing him to stay out.

He entered sideways. "Was well out of order just now. No call to say what I did."

"It doesn't matter," she said dully. "You were right." Now would be a good time to develop a sudden power for instant teleportation.

He sidled closer, then abruptly knelt on the floor by her knee. Didn't touch, but looked up into her face, his own palely uncertain. "Wasn't least bit right. Presumed too much. Forgive me."

Her voice was thick and resistant. "I don't understand ... I don't understand why you want me anyway. I'm not nice to you. I'm not ... friendly."

"Dropped all to see after me, saved me from the Devil knows what. Call that nice enough. An' you're drawn to me too, just as strong, 'neath all your histrionics. A bloke likes that in a girl."

This kindness might as well have been a scimitar in her guts. "Don't."

"Started gettin' to me the minute we met. You jumble me up, Buffy Summers, you call to me. Who's to explain such things? Wouldn't press it, if I didn't know was mutual. Indiscreet of me, yeah, but you give it off so strong, you know, feels absurd to play like I don't notice it. All unmoored as I am, can you blame me for wantin'—"

She couldn't let him go on. "Spi—" Clench. Flush.

"Will."

"All right, Will. It's just too hard."

"Think it's any easier for me, man doesn't know his own bloody surname or date of birth? But feel I know you. Feel it dead strong. Know my own mind, even if not my own history."

"Say I let these feelings develop. Say I let myself get involved with you." Just floating the idea so specifically filled her so full of longing she was panicky and faint. Where had this come from? A few days ago she'd been cool and dry and desireless as ... as a husk. A demon-ass-kicking husk. It was working for her. "Didn't it occur to you ..." She tried to swallow it down, tried to deliver herself calmly. "... didn't you think of how it'll be for me, when your memories come back, and ... and you're angry at me for taking advantage of you? Spike can't consent to this."

"Why should I feel different than I do right now? Nobody's put up in amber. All that's happened to me last few days, it'll still have happened whether I get my memories back or no."

"You've figured out that there's a past to this."

"Not stupid, so, yeah. Got my strong suspicions." He smiled, a smile sweet and coaxing as a breeze across overheated skin. "Can't imagine what could be so awful that I couldn't change my mind about you. Is it really so bad as that?"

She nodded, and shook her head, and nodded again, more firmly. "I can't risk it. I can't. I get torn up, every time I try, it hurts too much."

"Try what, pet?"

Don't ask that. Don't make me say.

"Ah, sussed it right then, I did. You are fallin' for me too." His gotcha tone was as clement as his smile, as his fingers gathering her hands into his. "Brings me out of the wilderness, that does, pet."

"You're killing me." It emerged as a plea, but she was already capitulating, tugging him up onto the bed with her.

"Ah, yeah, that's it," he said, as she pulled him close. "Let me drive a bit, like you did last night. Lemme take care of you. You need a bit of seeing to."

It took all her reserves of strength to keep from bursting into loud raucous sobs. All she could think of was disaster, shame, the awful inevitable pain that would follow this surrender. Because he would remember, it could happen at any moment, and Spike would dash her away and leave her, and then everything that made her able to go on with her lopsided half-lonely life would be nothing against that final crush. She'd never be able to raise her head after that.

Love was her great vulnerability. Love was what finished her. Her life, her self, just wasn't made for it.

Staring at the ceiling, trying to deny her hunger for his caresses, the urge to stare forever into his eyes, Buffy held herself together, at least until he'd lightly drawn up the hem of her shirt, fingertips cool and tantalizing on her belly. She held her breath, as if that would keep back the deluge. But when she felt the first cool velvety impress of his lips on her bare breasts, the dam broke, and she flooded into sobs.

"Sssh, sssh. Why all this? Pet. Just relax, it can't be so bad as this."

He touched her lashes, webbed with thick tears. He was still smiling, gentle and fond, waiting for her. "It's not easy bein' Buffy Summers, is it? Thought I had my own troubles."

How could she tell him, his good-nature was disembowling her? Buffy closed her eyes. Took long ragged breaths, trying to get calm.

Calm, calm, she would be calm. She was the slayer, she was strong and in control.

When she opened her eyes, he was still right there, up on his elbow above her.

"Better?" he said.

She nodded. "But I'm not quite ready to do this yet. Can we wait?"

"Wait for what?" Then, restraining his disappointment, "'Course we can wait."

"You know I want to. Just ... sex is a big step."

"An' you've just taken the biggest. Admittin' to bein' in love with me." He quirked a half-grin. "A total stranger."

"You're not a total stranger. I wish you were."

"Wish I was," he echoed. His expression changed, as if part of this was only now becoming vivid to him, that he contained so many assocations for her he was himself entirely ignorant of. He went solemn, and with a respectful gesture, pulled her shirt down again to cover her breasts and belly.

They remained sprawled together, lightly touching. Buffy put her hand up to his hairline, smoothed fingers through the curls there. "There's so much to feel just like this," she said. "It's kind of overwhelming for me."

"Is it?" He sounded pleased. She envied him his in-the-momentness. With no past goading him with expectations and rue, he could luxuriate in the present, anticipate pleasure to come.

"I'm afraid." I've just handed you the power to destroy me.

"Don't want you to be afraid. Afraid's no good to me. Anything else goin' on in here?" Light finger laid on her heart.

"Happy," she gasped. She repeated it, to make sure he understood, even though she was still in tears, still quaking with little sobs. "But I'm afraid to be happy."

"Hasn't worked out for you before."

"That's an understatement." How surreal it was, to have this conversation with Spike. Looking into those eyes she so thoroughly knew, and telling him what he ought to know about her, used to know, would know again. That she was a walking disaster of the heart.

"You're a brave girl. This time'll be different."

"It's never different."

"Tellin' you it will. You mind me, now."

He was so solemn, scolding, that a laugh erupted out of her final sob, burbling up with as little intention, drawing forth more tears. He chuckled too, and drew her closer to him. Half sprawled on him as she was now, she felt his erection trapped in his jeans.

"Does it excite you when I cry?"

The question startled him. "At this point, everythin' you do gets me hard." He brushed at her tears. "Don't need to do anythin' about it. Said I'd wait."

"I know. It's okay." She shifted herself, so her head still rested on his shoulder. "It's been so long since I just ... did anything like this."

"How long?"

"Long."

"Who was the man? Anyone I ought to know?"

"Ought to. But don't."

"You like plaguin' me with mysteries."

When you remember me again, you're not going to want me. Why am I letting myself in for this? She couldn't drag herself away now. It would've been like going out an airlock.

"I want to ask you to tell me about yourself, but of course you can't. That's weird." Angel, loving her, had wanted to share as little of his past with her as he could. He'd deflected most of her questions, plied her with kisses when she got too inquisitive. "There's nothing good to say," he'd remind her, and she'd pout, comprehending and not comprehending.

The clean deft naivety she'd been capable of, ten years ago, shocked her now.

"Can tell you how you make me feel. Can ask to hear all about you."

She'd never remotely had a conversation like this with Spike. Had resented his declaratons, his inventories of her charms. Refused the few questions he dared put to her over the course of their head-on collision affair, and of course never dreamed of asking him for information. Who wanted details of the pit of filth one was wallowing in?

Oh God, how can I do this to him?

"Soon," she breathed.

"When you're ready," he agreed. "Pet, you've no idea what this's like, right here. All lost I am, but feel like I've found home."

"So do I." She could do it again, tuck her face in against his neck—why did that feel, above any other possiblility, like the most consoling, the most delicious place she knew—and be held. Spike seemed contented too, to idle like this, unpressing. She breathed him in, familiar faint tang of clean undead flesh, notes of chlorine from the pool, and shampoo. What did he smell? He'd said, a little while ago, that she'd had an aroma of happiness. Like a secret confession, given only to him.

After a long silence, she murmured, "Do you really think of Spike as gone? Wiped. I mean ... aren't you really him? Beyond ... underneath ... I don't know how to say it."

"Not a philosopher, you."

No, not a philosopher. But you talk like him, and you move like him, and—" You kiss like him.

"Well, yeah, know I must be him, somehow. All I meant, before, is it's no good holdin' back because somethin' you're nervous about might happen someday. You can't know if it will or won't. An' I can't know if I'll ever get my memories back. Do know I've come to love you, an' don't want to put that off."

"You've been so patient."

"With all you're not tellin' me."

Curl of disquiet in her belly. "That too."

He shrugged. "Each day, seems to matter less and less, my past, yours, anybody's. Without mine in my own head, what's your testimony to me? Hearsay. Could tell me Spike hated you like poison, but I don't hate you, so what'd I do with the information?"

"You can't really mean that you like being cut off from ... from everything you know. You haven't given up on wanting to be cured."

"No." He frowned. "Don't mean that. Makes me feel small, an' lost like I said."

"I still need to help you recover."

"You're doin' all sorts for me."

"It's just, the consequences, when you do—"

"Hush. Love, you're tremblin' again. Hush. Am I really such an angry an' retributive fellow when I'm at home?"

"I can't even begin to explain."

"Don't fret yourself. Let's go out, get a breath of air."

She washed her face, then followed him outside, along the trail through the thick trees that led to the stairs down to the Pacific. A long, switched-back wooden staircase, bolted to the cliff, the view amazing all the way down, dark restless ocean. He held her hand, leading the way, and she walked just behind him, feeling like a trusting child. At the bottom they took off their shoes, rolled up the bottoms of their jeans. Spike took her hand again, and tucked it into the crook of his arm. The gesture felt old-fashioned to her, reminding her of the little glimpses he'd given her in the last few days, of the man he'd perhaps been before he was turned. Parts of his personality he'd repressed, but didn't know to repress now? Traits that were William's. She didn't want to ask. Anyway, it was lovely to stroll this way, to feel him looking at her like she was precious, the ocean wind blowing her hair back, the sand moist and crunchy under her feet.

"There's only right now," she said. "That's all there is, isn't there?"

"All we need."

They approached the edge of the water, where the waves broke into lacy foam, and the wet sand was startlingly cold under her soles.

This was the romantic beachy get-away she'd never had, with Angel, with Riley, with anybody. She hadn't fantasized about anything like this since she'd come back from the dead. Since then, her musings about what would really content her, informed by memories of heaven—actual heaven, not just things anyone could say were heavenly, stupid approximate ignorant word—all had to do with, she realized now, oblivion. Some kind of oblivion beyond effort and responsibility.

Death, really. Where other people daydreamed about moonlit strolls on the beach with a beautiful lover, she conjured pleasant moments of unexistence.

"What're you thinkin'?"

It was what the lover in the story, the movie, always asked. She laughed. "You don't want to know."

"But I do. Don't ask for what I don't want. You'll learn that about me."

"I already have. Okay, if you must know, I was thinking about being dead."

"Don't want you to think of that."

"But I was. I was remembering it."

"Been dead, have you?"

"Oh yes. A lot, actually. Well, twice. The first time didn't last very long. The second time though, I was very much elsewhere, and else ... wise."

"Elsewise?"

"Completely at peace, enfolded in love."

He stopped, and pulled her into his arms, tucking her head under his chin, encompassing her in his embrace. "Like this?"

No. "Yes."

In her pocket, her phone began hollering at her like a cat with a grievance.

She fumbled it out. "Sorry."

"You got to jet off an' kill beasties?"

Quickly scanning the incoming messages, she shook her head. "No." There were texts and emails, from her sister, from Xander, from, unexpectedly, Faith. Also Giles. They scrambled up to sit on an outcropping of flat rock, just out of reach of the plashing eddying tide. She let Spike look over her shoulder at the photos the screen displayed of each of her correspondents. Maybe some recognition would spark.

"Who's that pretty girl?"

"My sister Dawn. She is pretty, isn't she?"

"Exquisite, yeah." He stared. "Do I know her?"

"You do. When I was dead, you helped take care of her."

"Did I? Ahhh. An' who's that bloke?"

"Xander. You know him too. You know all these people, actually. And they're all interested in how you're doing."

They're the world, starting to encroach on this private little illusion of ours. Starting to make it impossible.

"Well, go on an' tell 'em. I'll give you a bit of privacy." He shifted around, so his back was against hers; they leaned together, propping each other. She let her head rest on his shoulder, before remembering the gunshot wounds.

"Does this hurt?"

"Not a bit. Go on, I'm lookin' out to sea." He chuckled. "Beats bein' all at sea, though I'm still that too, aren't I?"

"Probably not for much longer," she said, knowing she'd passed the turning point of hoping he'd recover. When he recovered, she'd be caught, and punished.

Dawn's email alternated mundane news about TV shows and slayer gossip with questions about where she was and what was wrong with Spike and was he really alive and what was he like and could Buffy tell him please that she forgave him? Xander's text said only that he was thinking about her, that Martha and Steffi were making progress with the nunchuks, and if it wasn't too much trouble could she bring him a couple boxes of Oreos when she came back, because they didn't have any American cookies at the shop in the village and he was sick of Hob Nobs. Giles just wanted to know if all was well at the safe-house and did she need anything.

Faith's message was a little video of her, sticking out her tongue, rolling her eyes, grimacing, and then saying she assumed Spike hadn't ripped her throat out yet so he must be less crazy now she'd abducted him from the L.A. headquarters. "You'd better be makin' some serious time there, B, or else you're even more pathetic than I always knew you were."

Sorry you had to hear that," Buffy said, slipping the phone back in her pocket. "Faith's a fan."

"Who's she then?"

"Slayer Number Two."

"Didn't sound like she looks up to you much."

"Your fan, I mean."

"What was she talkin' about, you abducting me?"

"When they called me to come to L.A. to see you, you were in a bad way. Incommunicative, and violent. They had you locked up and sedated. I made an executive decision that you'd be better off with me, away from there."

"Good call."

"I think so. But you were the one who bombed out of my car in traffic and led me to the alley. That's where you woke up from the crazy. I don't know why."

"So went from a wild animal that wouldn't talk, to this."

"Trauma can do that." He'd been crazy when he got back from Africa. All those weeks cowering and hiding in the high school cellar—where she'd been all too happy to abandon him, as she cringingly recalled. Though then he'd been mostly quite gentle, and had plenty to say, none of it making the least bit of sense.

He lolled back, his head rolling against hers. "Wonder if I'll be sorry, to remember what happened to me. To the others, whoever they were. Maybe it was such a horror that it's better it's all gone."

She suspected that could turn out to be the case, but still she couldn't just agree with him. She'd always been someone who believed in facing facts, dealing with reality. Hated being tricked or lied to or hoodwinked. If it was she who'd been robbed of memory, no matter how devastating, she'd want her mind back.

Even if it meant losing your peace of mind? REALLY?

"You're musing."

"I am, and I shouldn't. Like we said before, we only have right now, and it's all we need." She turned to face him. He was waiting to receive her, drawing her face close in his two hands, smoothing the wind tumbled hair away from her mouth. The rock was hard under her folded knees, but his kisses were silky and absorbing. After a little bit, he drew her across his lap, a more comfortable angle to taste her mouth, to offer his. She hadn't kissed like this since high school, nothing but mouths, no progression to more serious action, and with a sense that nothing could be more serious than this gentle persistent penetrating exploration of lips and tongues and teeth. She could feel that he was smiling as he kissed her; she could feel the tenderness brimming up in him. His hands petted her blowing hair, cupped and adored her face, her neck, but went no further. She held his head in her outspread hands, smoothing the hair under her thumbs that felt like the feathers on a breast of a bird, detaching from his lips to press hers to the points of his cheeks, to his lids, the lashes fluttering, the whorls of his ears, hard shield of his forehead, and lower down, nibbling along the sharp jaw, to the tempting hollows beneath. She nipped at his adams apple, and drew a gasp. Made a shallow experimental bite at the curve of his throat, was rewarded with a louder gasp, and when she drew back, a flash of gold-eye.

"Oh, you like that." Why this reminder of his vampirism charmed and excited her, she wasn't sure. But it did.

Fingers on her chin, tipping her face up again, redirecting her efforts back to his mouth. More languid, fervid kisses. Her body pulsed with warmth, despite the chill night ocean air, yet somehow the intense throbbing was easy to ignore in favor of this limpid concentration of mouth on mouth. Spike's mouth was the only mouth, and it was hers, hers to possess and enjoy. He wanted nothing else but her hypnotic kisses. They were in the same place, shared the one desire.

When had that ever happened before?

It was only the leading edge of morning that drove them from their perch. Spike could smell it before she detected any change in the color of the sky. "Come, sweetheart."

Again he held her hand as they hastened along the beach.

"Am I your sweetheart?" She asked the question like an eager, silly child, already embarrassed to be requesting compliments, but unable to quell the urge. He smiled, squeezing her fingers.

"Are you my sweetheart? Silly girl."

She'd barely eaten anything in she couldn't remember how long. Hunger crashed in on her now, a rude and offensive guest in the house of her fluttering, hovering, delicate desire. In the kitchen she made a thorough inspection, found more coffee though no milk to put it in it, and in the freezer, toaster waffles and sausages. A bottle of maple syrup, caked and stuck to the shelf it rested on, turned up inside the fridge door. A veritable microwave feast. While she assembled things, Spike again attacked a blood bag with one sheepish fang. She took it from him, and removing the frozen sausages from the turntable, put it in to heat. "Nicer this way."

"Ah?" He smiled. When she poured the heated blood into a mug and gave it to him, he looked so pleased, as if she'd just prepared a ten course meal that had taken all day.

It occurred to her suddenly to wonder if William was any more accustomed than was Spike to a routine receipt of routine kindness.

She ate, thinking, no one ever has to know I sat on Spike's lap while I ate breakfast, and then he kissed the sweet maple flavor from her lips until it was all gone, and then just a little longer to make sure.

She expected, from prior experience, that he'd press her for sex. He'd agreed to wait, but she could imagine him thinking, well, that was HOURS ago. He'd been constantly seductive in those months when she'd succumbed to him and could not stop; every time he saw her, he tried for whatever he could get.

"I just want you to understand ... it's not going to be today."

If his surprise was feigned, it was an awfully convincing job.

"Never thought it would be."

"I'd like you to sleep with me though, but only if you want to."

"If I want to!"

"Okay, good. I just ... just wanted to get that straight."

She wanted to think her reluctance had to do with keeping a decorous pace to this strange impulsive affair, not rushing interactions that contained a delicacy she wasn't used to in her experience. But she knew it was much more about raw fear. The less she permitted herself, the less Spike would have to rage against when his memories reappeared. She thought of him like a valley in deep fog. River, trees, roads, settlements, everything still there, intact beneath the encompassing mist. That mist could burn off at any time, and there he'd be, with her right up in his face. You're sick, he'd say. Even now, still puttin' me to use.

"You don't trust me to keep a promise?"

She didn't want to say I know what you're like.

"It's good, havin' you in my arms, making me all warm, an' breathing you in." He gathered her closer, buried his face for a moment in her hair. "Eases me. Think about what's to come, how I'll possess you an' make you mine, but you already are, aren't you?"

"As much as I can be anybody's."

"Still parsing it fine."

"Spi—Will. You know I can't help it."

"Gettin' that, yeah."

She kissed him again, to show that she meant no distancing. He tasted her lips each time as if they were new to him.

"What still beats me a bit ... what's a fine strong warm woman want with a creature like me? Perverse, rather, vampire slayer fallin' for a vampire."

"Lots of people meet their dates in the workplace." The joke sounded flat as soon as it left her lips. It came to her then, that Spike had once said something like that to her, on one of the numerous occasions he'd tried to refute her essential disgust at him, to assert that they were meant for each other. "My first lover was a vampire. It never really occurred to me to be put off by him. He was very attractive to me, his temperature and his ... presence ... just seemed like part of him. Not something lacking. It's like that now." She curled her fingers around his hand. "And you must know you're very handsome."

"Am I?"

"Don't fish."

"Can see I've got a tight enough body, but dunno what I look like. Could have a mug like a monkey."

"Well, you don't." She gave him a teasing prod in the ribs. "You have a fair sharp face, a full mouth, and the bluest eyes of any I've ever seen. C'mon, you've got to sense this—the way people look at you."

"Way you look at me."

"How do I look at you?" she asked, a curl of tension flexing in her belly.

"Most of the time? Like I'm a nuisance an' a worry. But some times? Like you'd like to eat me up bite by slow bite."

"Well there you go. You know perfectly well you're not ugly."

He was quiet for so long then she began to grow antsy. Time to get moving again. Except that his arms were folded around her hips, and she didn't want to be the first to pull away.

"Who was this other vampire? Your first lover?"

"It was a long time ago, he's gone."

"You slay him?"

"No." She didn't want to explain. Already sorry she'd brought Angel up. That was the trouble with this ... every question he might ask her brought up things too difficult to confront while she was trying to enjoy this amnesiac idyll. It was sick, carrying on a kind of shadow-play of a love affair with a man who'd been nine-tenths erased. What did it say about her, that she could unleash love only for someone whose personality was so abraded? Always in secret?

Another memory popped into her mind, sudden and grievous.

Buffybot.

How disgusting that had been.

Wasn't this nearly the same? She'd been given a life-size, functioning replica of Spike, like him in all the ways that would be pleasing to her while conveniently sans all incriminating backstory and acid opinion. A veritable living doll, programmed for affection, gratitude, and pleasure free of all complications. To be enjoyed until she got caught, which would have to be very soon now.

And to think she'd exerted so much energy into letting Spike know they had nothing in common.

His lips tracing through her hair, to nibble on her ear. "Sorry I asked."

She slipped off his lap. "I really need to go out and buy provisions. Can you do without me for a little while? Before I go—how are your wounds? Healing up? Let me see."

He pulled off his teeshirt.

"Good, they're almost gone."

"Don't suppose they'll scar," he said. "How's the back?" He leaned forward for her inspection.

She laid a hand lightly on his protruding spine, brushing fingers across the black scabs. Then couldn't resist leaning in to inhale the nape of his neck, where the hair feathered away into smooth skin the color of paper. When had she ever had time to cherish anyone like this? It embarrassed her, the number of whims that skirted through her mind concerning him, some of them more suited to a little girl adoring a wonderful new doll than to a mature slayer in love with a broken vampire. She let her cheek rest against his nape, knowing that its warmth would give him pleasure, as would the tickle of her hair against his bare back.

"I think if not for you, that guy would've shot up the place. If you'd been facing the other way, and hadn't seen him ...."

"Did see him. Saw him in plenty of time."

"I wonder why you were the only one they found."

"Eh?"

The blurted question discomposed them both.

"After the battle. Angel was gone, and the others ... did you survive because you fought best? Because you were facing the right way?"

Beneath her touch, Spike shuddered.

"Maybe I was the one coward. Maybe when they ran ahead, I ran back."

"No, not you. Never."

"No?"

"I'm sure. You wouldn't have done that."

She could feel him straining to think, probing his own blankness. "Would hate to think so," he said. "But what do I know?"

His uncertainty chilled her—he'd been putting up a very brave face, but the amnesia was a burden on him. How would it be, to try to manage without any real grasp on your sense of self?

"You'll just have to take my word for it." Another kiss. "Now I really should go shopping. I need nonfat yogurt, you need blood. I'll just be a couple hours, tops. Wait up for me, okay?"

"Always, pet."

Odd to be alone, carrying out mundane tasks. She'd been with him barely a week but already she'd completely inverted day for night, and Spike had somehow become her whole world; leaving him alone gave her a pang. The ordinariness of the sunny day, small-town traffic, parking lots and bright stores, had an edge of the surreal. It couldn't be true, but looking around her as she did her errands, Buffy felt like the only person who was on her own, not part of some couple or family or at least chattering to someone else on a cell phone.

How long had it been since she'd finally dropped her old fantasies about 'the normal life'? She certainly hadn't been thinking that way since the fall of Sunnydale, and probably long before that. Since her resurrection. She could remember herself before, how preoccupied she'd once been with those longings, with her sharp sense of deprivation. But all it was now was a memory. Could it just be adulthood that had revised her, or was it that she'd been dead for months, and wasn't meant really to be alive again at all?

Some times, when she lay in bed waiting to doze, she would wonder if she really was. In the strictest sense.

She hurried. Willow would come to L.A. in a couple days, Spike might get his memory back at any moment. She didn't want to miss any more of her sweet time-out with him than was strictly necessary.

Later on, she'd want to cherish every bit of it.

She expected to hear the chatter of the TV when she came back in. In the silence, she assumed he'd fallen asleep while he was waiting. She put her purchases away, then went looking for him, first in the huge low-slung living room with its vast stone fireplace, where he might've dozed off on one of the sectionals. No Spike. She ran up to look in the bedroom. He wasn't there either.

The safe-house had once been