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

Buffy examined her ravaged plate. "I think superhuman strength agrees with me," she decided.

"Really?" Dawn studied her apprehensively. She'd been waiting, Buffy knew, for a return of the rattled and sore shell of the Buffy three years past. How to tell Dawn that she didn't have the heart to hate herself anymore?

At length she reached a hand across the table, linking her fingers with Dawn's. "I'm glad to be here," she said, and Dawn's expression brightened and relaxed, dissolving tension that Buffy now only noticed by its departure.

"Me too."

They tucked into their food again. "Is it hard to get back into the routine? Of slaying?" Dawn asked around a mouthful of pancake.

Buffy snorted rather indelicately. "What slaying? There isn't a vamp to be found in the city. Spike must be patrolling all night, every night."

Dawn gave her a pointed look, which Buffy ignored. It had taken everything she had to convince Dawn not to promptly stake out Spike's apartment when they were released from Fairview. The rent was being paid and the dog was being fed (information courtesy of a singularly awkward conversation with Angel) and Spike had sworn he was no longer beholden to her. Granted, that had been before his most recent and monumental self-sacrifice on their behalf, but she had a feeling that the words still held a place between them.

They'd changed the rules somewhere along the way, and Buffy was glad but she wasn't sure whether they'd settled on family or fuck off. She knew which one she'd chosen. Spike, however, wasn't around to make his opinion on the subject known.

Of course, that didn't mean she couldn't look for him. Discreetly. "I want to come with," Dawn cajoled that night, as Buffy shoved stakes and a brand-new hand axe into the Lulu Guinness messenger bag she'd picked up at a sample sale downtown. Angel, upon escorting the sisters home from the hospital, had taken one look around their apartment and written Buffy a check. At first she'd considered the idea of Angel-as-sugar-daddy to be too, too weird, but after the dozenth tight-lipped lecture on why Spike should have let she and Dawn die in their beds, she felt much more inclined to spend his money.

The fact that Angel was very likely right didn't soften her stance. So easy for him to say that Spike should have kept his gift and condemned Dawn. So very fair and just and honorable. But afterlife ethics left Buffy cold, weighed against the girl beside her.

"I don't want to spook him," Buffy countered. "And you said you saw him the other night, outside that club as you left."

"Yeah, but he took off before I could collar him."

"Collar him? Who are you, Jack Bauer?" That necessitated a collective moment of silence in honor of the hotness that was Kiefer, but Dawn quickly resumed her badgering.

"I don't want to lose him again, Buffy!"

She'd flounced off before they could talk it out, although Buffy had successfully shoved several bills into Dawn's pocket for cab fare. She briefly relished the irony that Angel's cash was now helping to keep Dawn safe. Not that he would have objected, she knew. But Buffy had accepted, at last, that Angel's glacial and elevated worldview didn't mesh with hers. Not when it came to the people she loved.

So it was that a week to the day after her eyes had flown open as she lay among stiffly starched hospital linens, after she'd felt the ancient energy zinging again through sinew and bone, she now stood at the mouth of a squalid alleyway while at the other end, Spike danced with death.

When he had staked the last vamp, she clapped. He whirled around.

"Sorry," she said. "Couldn't resist."

He scowled at her but she stepped forward anyway, until they were nearly toe-to-toe. "Hi," she said. "I'm Buffy, the Vampire Slayer."

He nodded. "I'm Spike, the vampire."

"That's the rumor. Not that we found out firsthand, since you haven't been by."

"I have," he said, and then seemed to reconsider. "I've been...around."

"Around? Is that Spike-speak for spying on us from the sidewalk? There's a tree outside our bathroom window, if you'd like to stand outside it all night. We don't have a basement anymore, but Dawn's offered to chain you up in the storage locker. She seemed pretty enthusiastic about the idea, actually."

"Said quite a few nasty things to her. Things I'd thrash anybody else for saying. I imagine she's right pissed with me about now."

"Well, yeah, but not the way you think. Mostly she just misses the man who saved her life."

"Not a man anymore. Not too broken up about it either, so you might as well save the sermon for someone who cares. Maybe the Moral Majority bloodsucker would be interested."

"Angel? I think he's sorry enough for all of us." Spike's snark almost, but not quite, concealed the hurt beneath. Angel's disgust with the whole situation had been apparent from the start, but his rage at Spike had taken even Buffy aback. He and Spike had built a hard-won friendship over the past year, and she sensed they both felt its loss keenly.

"Yeah? And what about you?" He rolled his shoulders, slipping - with no small amount of relief, she thought - into the role of Big Bad. "Come to cry over my corpse?"

"I wish...I wish you hadn't lost what you did. You'd earned it. But I don't care whether or not you breathe or show up in the hall mirror. You're here. That's all I ever -"

"Liar," he hissed.

"No!"

"You want some groveling housebroken vamp and even that won't be enough, not for long." Suddenly he was in her face, gripping her arms in a way that would have been painful and bruising just a few days ago. Tawny eyes raked over her. He bent his head and she felt fangs nip warningly at her neck.

"This is me," he grunted. "Animal. Monster. You think you can tame me? You turn me more savage than ever. You come near and all I know is fucking, fighting, protecting what's mine. I saw you and got so hard, needing to be inside you, pound you against that wall or the fire escape or the ground, doesn't matter. You do that to me." Abruptly he pushed her off. "I can't love you halfway, Buffy. I can't be with you and Dawn and not be with you; tried to make you understand that. I'm the thing in the dark corner of your sweet bedroom, I'm the vampire that won't regret it because it makes me strong enough to love you." His voice cracked. "And you never wanted that before so why would you now?"

She stayed where he'd left her, refusing to back down or advance. "You don't know," Buffy said tightly. "You don't know how I mourned you when you were gone. You, Spike. Animal. Monster. Is it so hard to believe? That I could love you as you are?"

He snarled at her, acting deliberately, she knew, his most feral and demonic. "I see, then. You fancy you're doing some good turn, looking past my unfortunate defects. You'll leave the room when I feed, you'll cover up the windows of your sad little flat. You'll settle. Christ, you really think I want to go back to that? You and me, sharing one life between us?" She could sense his fervor growing with each word, heard the choking despair and frustration she remembered too well.

"You can't imagine what it's like, Buffy. Being a slave to this - this thing between us. After time and miles and telling myself things were changed, I was changed and then finding that I'm still helpless. Weak. That meeting with the Powers - that was the easy part. Could do that every day with a smile on my face. But watching you turn away? Over and over again?"

He broke off. "Be ready again, in a bit. Soon. Just now...I'm tired."

And Buffy understood that. The weariness of duty, because there had been a time when she had felt nothing else. Spike's compulsion was Buffy, just as hers had been the world. And he would return to it, just as she would, but the dread rolled off him in waves and it broke her heart that had been so lately mended. She had to tread carefully, knowing what she did now about the vulnerability beneath Spike's façade of ambivalence.

But he wasn't going to get a free pass, either, not from her. And she suspected that bluntness would do more than pale denials and her chafing heedless claims of "It'll be better. I swear."

"Give me some credit," she told him. He frowned.

"I stood by while you sneered at us, called us names and acted like we were too silly and stupid to even breathe the same air as you. It wasn't easy, Spike. And yeah, I didn't keep it up very long 'cause of the unexpected roadkill factor, but I was proving it to you. And maybe it's wrong to be mad when you saved my life and Dawn's but I am. What were you thinking?"

"What was I supposed to think?" he shot back. "Years we've been going through the same old shit. I come over all human-y one morning and suddenly I'm the man of your dreams."

"You were the man of my dreams for a long time before that," she replied rigidly. "You just weren't around to see it. You were off in L.A., 'moving on' and 'starting over' and probably shagging that - that freakishly tall genius-girl!"

"Shagging - are you talking about Fred?"

"She's all sweet and breakable and I bet she knows all that stuff you used to try to talk to me about when I'd pretend I was asleep -"

"I'm not having sex with Fred!"

"And I'm smart too, you know. I went to college - for a while - and I help Dawn..." She lost steam, peering at him suspiciously. "No?"

He allowed his body to slide down the wall until he was sitting on the ground, gangly limbs sprawled haphazard across the pavement. Buffy stood over him.

"We could have died. Dawn and I could have died and we would have lost our last chance. And did I mention the part about us being dead?" Piqued, she couldn't help but deliver a not-so-gentle prod with her foot. "What would you have done then?"

He looked up at her, his gaze matter-of-fact and resigned. In this, she saw, he was no longer unsure. The day she and Dawn died would be Spike's last, living or unliving. He would have finally consented to join them, be at their sides in death despite what she suspected was his conviction that they wouldn't be spending eternity in the same place. Flattering and tragic, definitely, and as grand gestures went it ranked pretty high. But she was utterly sick of sacrifice.

Spike drew his knees up, propped his bent elbows on them. He looked staggeringly young, but Buffy knew every contour of his face and noticed lines that hadn't been there before. The very faintest valleys across his brow, that would deepen and then recede as he shifted in and out of game face. They'd never disappear entirely, though. His stint of humanity was marked on him now, through these keepsakes of their ordeal. She knew without a doubt he'd treasure them as war wounds. And in a small secret place inside her, Buffy would as well.

"I'm not sorry I did it," he said. "And I won't be weeping over my lost humanity anytime soon. I make a good vampire, you know. Only thing I was ever really good at."

Kneeling beside him, she waited until he met her eyes. "You bought Dawn's life with your own. Did you think I'd be angry? That I'd send you away, after all this?"

"What about you? You were normal. Happy. I took all that 'cause I couldn't bear to watch you - again -"

"Newsflash, Spike. I didn't want to die. I mean, yeah, there was a time a couple of years ago when I wanted to be dead, but there's a subtle difference between the two and besides, I got over it. And if you think I've been happy lately? Wait'll you see what's in store."

Such a temptress she was; she must have known that her joy was his own, that her laughter carried with it all that he'd been seeking for so long.

"How can you be sure? That I'm what you want?"

"Who I want. And I had a lot of time to reflect on the subject. You can stay or go but you can't make that decision for me. I won't stop caring if you walk out of our lives." She laid her cheek on his arm. "It's not about the packaging, Spike. That doesn't matter to me anymore. It's about all the things you've done that brought you to this point. Those things haven't gone away just because you're a vampire again. I love your journey and your destination."

She took his face in her hands, so lightly. A tender touch was not what he expected from her.

"Won't you come home?" she asked him.

"Come..."

She tugged him up. "Home," she repeated. "Your home. Our home."

Home. With warm loving girls inside and arms that would gather him close. It was what he had wanted, always wanted since before he'd become Spike and was merely, unfortunately William. And the fact that he was getting what he wanted - after this long year of asceticism and the still-raw image of Buffy in a hospital bed while machines breathed for her and the desperate deal he'd made with the Powers - the fact that Spike was getting what he wanted made him tense and prickly. He didn't answer her.

She led him out of the alley and he followed, but at a distance; wary of her gentleness and the unfamiliar sheen around her that resembled wisdom. Hope was the thing with feathers, after all, and though she wouldn't recognize the speaker he wondered now if she might not appreciate the sentiment.

The apartment was quiet and dark when she opened the door. He folded his arms defensively as she invited him in, but it didn't seem to bother her in the least. Rather, her face seemed to light up, he'd say in anticipation if that wasn't so bloody incredible.

Of course, being Buffy, she took 'incredible' and turned it on its head. "This is the beginning," she said. "I won't forget this moment. This invitation."

"Not even if you have to revoke it someday?" he asked.

"You won't let that happen." She sat him on their ratty couch, and it sunk in then how colorless her life had been. Oh, he'd seen the signs before but refused to accept them. She'd been lonely, withdrawn from the world. And the idea that his presence, as cruel and hurtful as it was, had somehow revitalized her was astonishing. Humbling. Grinding him down into powder but at the same time showing him the power he wielded. He hadn't known. He hadn't known.

Restless, he stood and prowled the apartment. "Where's Dawn?" he asked.

"Out." Buffy smiled wryly. "You'd probably know where better than I would."

Yeah, he did, and he felt far more capable of dealing with that than with just about anything else. He was lost, off-balance from the last few days. Confusion had settled deep in his marrow and there was no frame of reference for whatever came next.

Then he looked into the kitchen, where Buffy was puttering around. Doing easy, ordinary things like putting away dishes and wiping down the countertop and before he realized what he was doing he found himself on his knees before her. His arms wrapped around her and his head pressed close against her stomach. Surprise didn't keep her from raking her fingers through his hair, crooning soothing meaningless words meant to comfort.

"I was so scared," he rasped. "You were lying there, they said you were already gone and what if I couldn't fix it? What if it was like last time? What if -"

He'd failed. Again.

"Shhh, Spike. You didn't. You saved us. Me and Dawn both." But he was caught up in the memories, lashed to his own guilt.

His hands roamed over her body, fingers splayed across her abdomen and then under the waistband of her jeans. He tugged mindlessly and then her hands covered his, freeing the buttons and dragging the material down. She gasped and shuddered when his mouth found her, his tongue tracing her through thin cotton. He felt her legs buckle as he backed her against the cabinets and gripped the back of her thighs, holding her steady. Wouldn't let her fall this time.

"Oh..." A low, hoarse cry from deep inside her, and she was pulling him up. "My bedroom. I mean - do you...? Only if you're sure -"

"Yes. God, it was too close, too close..." The agony was fresh in him, so hard to reconcile with her healthy-hot flesh. Then when he found himself in her room, feasting on her with his eyes as she undressed him and then herself, other memories surfaced. This act had been shame and resentful release for her before, slow shriveling defeat for him. He was frantic to take her but even as he crawled forward onto the bed something cowardly inside him hesitated. He buried his face in her hair. She knew nonetheless.

"We're making something different." The vow was shaky and choked: she was weeping. He brought his hand to her face in wonderment, fingers following the tracks of moisture.

Is it really you? he wanted to ask, but instead what came out was, "Is it really me?"

She smiled through her tears. "Yes. It's you. Still, always."

His fingers drifted down, to the signal fire at her center. "This is my home." He couldn't keep the question from his voice.

In response she arched beneath him. "Come inside," she murmured. Running those small dear hands up and down his hips encouragingly, but he didn't enter her. He was aching with it, torn between their past and the primal need to possess.

"You don't trust me yet, do you?" she asked softly.

His love for her was, forever, rooted and irrefutable. But trust had been bled out of him. They were still moving together fluidly, his cock impatient and his demon straining at the leash. She shifted upwards again but then paused, raising her lips to his ear.

"I want to do something we've never done before."

A hundred scenarios raced through his mind, and just as many didn't because he and Buffy had been diligent in their pursuit of the depraved during that awful-beautiful year. He wasn't feeling too inventive at the moment, but he supposed -

Blood. One instant the air around them had held nothing but the competing perfumes of Buffy's soap and shampoo and own heavy musk; the next the unmistakable, undeniable rich scent overwhelmed him. He thought at first that it was his, because hell, these days it usually was. But no, this was infinitely headier and more vibrant.

"Fuck -! Buffy, love -" He pulled back, eyes raking over her body in an attempt to find out where she was bleeding from and how; how he'd managed to damage her already and fuck, fuck, fuck...

Except the minx was smiling at him. With just a hint of mischief in the curve of her lips and he couldn't help it, he was rocking even more furiously against her as panic sunk its claws in his heart.

"What have you done?" He took her by the shoulders and shook her roughly. "Idiot girl, what have you done?"

"It's okay," she was saying, but he'd finally found the ragged, self-inflicted cut and the underside of one breast. For too long - a few seconds that stretched into eternity - he simply stared. Blood welled enticingly against her satin skin, and he wanted nothing more than to latch on and never let go, never ever let go...

"Let me give this to you. Please, Spike. You want it and I have it and it can be good."

He shook his head jerkily. "I got it, yeah? You made your point so just -" He forced his attention away, to the tiny sliver of light that peeked beneath her bedroom door, to the starkness of the white walls, to anything that wasn't her ripe loveliness and its cardinal path leading down, down to his destruction.

"You can take what I'm offering. It's not a test."

"Yes, it is. It is." He was harder than he'd ever been before; not from the prospect of her blood but from the offer. His hands fisted, bunching the sheets around them. "You think I'm like Angel? You think I'm gonna nobly restrain myself? I told you -"

"I heard what you told me. I listened, Spike. And I want to give this to you." She lifted her hand and painted his lips with her gift. "Animal. Monster. You're welcome in this bed."

He was faltering, and she made it sound so simple and when he dared to glance up he saw that she craved this as badly as he did. And he couldn't make sense of it. He dropped his forehead down to hers.

"I don't know how to be loved," he whispered.

For some reason that started her tears flowing again. She brought his head down to her breast. "That's okay," she whispered back. "I'll teach you. Like you taught me."

He closed his eyes, surrendered.

It was ecstasy, sacred and carnal at the same time. He suckled at her as her arousal surged and filled the air around them. It was like it had never been, since even his first night in darkness. It was his first taste of heaven.

Her muscles went taut around him, the pleasure ramping up mercilessly. A single thrust and he was inside her, all the way, raising his head to watch. Little soundless moans escaped her as he moved, fingers pinching one crimson-stained nipple.

"Am I yours?"

So strange that the plea came from her and not him. He cradled her head in one hand, marveled at how the fragile skull fit into his palm. "Your breath is my blood," he gasped. "I am yours."

She climaxed, capturing his mouth while her gaze never strayed from his face. And the way her eyes got so wide, the way she brought her own wavering hand up to meet his at the spot he'd fed from, the way she tilted her hips to draw him further in so he could feel each tremor from the inside out - it was all too brilliant and wonderful to be sustained. He drove into her harder - and oh, she was still coming, still - and finally emptied himself. He didn't stop moving, though; not until she reached for him again and he nestled, spent and suffused with a foreign peace.

When they spoke, it was promises of love only they could understand. Commandments etched in the stone of their shattered language.

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

Buffy woke up alone. To the sound of - shouting? She retrieved her robe from the floor and rose.

"I can't believe you! You totally embarrassed me in front of my date!"

"Your date? You mean the drummer with his tongue down your throat? I'm overcome with remorse. Too bad - ow! Watch the bloody bootheels, will you?"

"You think just 'cause you're back to screwing my sister I'll fall in line too?" Dawn scrubbed at glistening, reddened eyes as she glared at Spike. "You can't make me do anything."

"Oh, no? I'm about to make you wish you'd never set foot out the house tonight!"

It was an impressive thing, really, the ability they had to reduce one another to screams and curses in mere minutes.

"Please. Like I don't know you guys were having the Official Reconciliation Boinkfest while I was gone. What do you even care, anyway?"

"What kind of imbecilic question is that?"

"Look, you got what you came here for. You can go back to pretending I don't exist." Grabbing her purse from where it had been flung onto the kitchen table, she turned. Spike was already there, though, and whatever she'd been about to say next was lost forever as he pulled her to him. A short scuffle, more for appearance's sake than anything else. Then Dawn was sobbing openly in his arms. It seemed like the conclusion they'd both been hoping for.

He picked her up and carried her to the couch, and she burrowed into his lap. He let her, wrapping one arm loosely around her shoulders while she cried and railed at him.

"Bastard! You're such a bastard! We needed you and you left!"

"Never forgive myself for it, sweet. But it won't happen again. Gonna shadow you and Big Sis 'til you can't abide me any longer." He kissed the top of her head and although he must have sensed Buffy's presence his attention never left Dawn.

"Bastard." There was little heat behind the word. Eventually she quieted, and Spike risked a chuckle as she wiped her nose on his shirt. "There's my wee beastie. Knew you'd give me what I had coming."

"I'm so going to kick your ass." She hiccuped and nestled closer. "Later."

"Sounds like a plan. How're the innards?"

"Gross. And...good as new." She glanced up at him sheepishly. "That was the deal, right?"

"You heard about that?"

"Duh, Spike. I'm not a little kid anymore. Not that I ever, technically, was..." She continued to stare. "You really gave it all up to save me?"

"That's right. You owe me your life, you vindictive little brat. And don't think I won't collect."

"Okay." She twisted around, until their noses were almost touching. "I never thought you would. For me, I mean."

"I know."

"Are you mad at me?"

"For staying out until four in the morning with a garage-band reject? Hell, yes. For the other, no. You recall when I taught you poker." He gave her a sly look and a nudge. "I walked out of that meeting with a winning hand, Bit."

"Well," she said, "you did get to keep the dog."

"That's the spirit."

Shifting, she settled herself next to him on the couch while he reached for the television remote. Digging a candy bar out of her purse, she offered him half. He broke off all but a few bites and began flipping channels, not bothering to evade her vigorous kicks.

"What about the soul?" she went on, popping chocolate in her mouth. "Did they let you keep that too?"

Spike froze, and now his eyes did seek out Buffy's. She smiled and crossed the room.

Dawn looked from Buffy to Spike and rolled her eyes. "Oh, sorry. Forgot I'm not supposed to use the s-word around here. Sheesh."

Buffy shrugged, plucking the remote from Spike's slack fingers. "The topic hasn't actually come up." Seeing that Spike had apparently lost interest in his food, she relieved him of that as well. "Tell me about the drummer."

"Vlad? He's funny, and his biceps are highly pleasing, and hey - he stayed upright the whole time Spike was threatening to remove all his internal organs. Bonus."

"I don't know," Spike blurted out. Dawn and Buffy turned to him.

"I can't - I can't tell if it's there or not. The soul."

Dawn yawned and sank back into the cushions. "Does it feel like anything's missing?" she asked reasonably.

He sat up and surveyed them, his two sleepy candy-coated girls. Dawn's head had drifted to his shoulder and for the first time he saw that Buffy's little feet were perched comfortably on his legs. The sofa was too small, he thought inanely. He wanted them never to replace it.

And he could even now hear the danger encroaching, if he listened hard enough; darkness drawn to the Slayer and the vampire and the still-sparkling Key. Could hear, too, Angel's admonishments about Spike's nature, about the mess and destruction that dogged his every step.

It didn't matter.

"No," he answered finally. "Everything's right where it should be."

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

Is it like this
In death's other kingdom
Waking alone
At the hour when we are
Trembling with tenderness
Lips that would kiss
Form prayers to broken stone.
- T.S. Eliot, The Hollow Men

The End.

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