Go ahead, hurt me like that
I'm not afraid to sweat, cause I like the pain
And it's familiar to me
And more gentle, than most men will ever be
But don't get me wrong
I don't wanna be friends…

“Nicotine Love” – Jewel


The stairs are steep down to the main room of the safe house and my legs ache as I step, feeling sore and full and wonderful and all the things a girl feels when she's been made love to by her boyfriend all night. I lick my lips and taste him- remembering how I drank the sweet saltiness and made him groan. Remembering how he surged inside me and almost made me break. How he whispered my name as his tongue dragged around my nipples. How I didn't dream. For once.

A small Christmas tree is set up by the fire where clusters of people sit, involved in conversations about nothing and everything. Most sound so depressing that I block them out. No one looks at me. Bronwen told me they haven't announced that the Slayer is back and they don't plan on it until we can come up with a viable plan to take back the earth from the demons. I suppose I just look like another one of them, anyway. Lost, without a mother, without a home, my eyes sunken with knowledge and my shoulders heavy with weight. The weight of the world, as Willow said so long ago.

Willow…

Shaking my head, I glance around for Dawn and Spike, but don't see them. I left Angel asleep upstairs, eager to let him rest, see him at peace. I fed him in the middle of the night, by the light of a watery lantern, sitting naked in bed, with him between my legs. He leaned against my breasts, and I tipped the cup to his lips, watching the dark redness disappear into his mouth. I stroked his chest tenderly, and felt his fingers enclose my wrists gently. Later we took another bath. Then we made love in the quiet stillness of the bedroom, the cold stars burning outside as he kissed me and I pressed my face into his shoulder so he wouldn't see me weep.

As I step into the darkened kitchen, I shrink back into the shadows when I spot Spike and Dawn. She sits in his lap, as he feeds her from a cup, slight rivulets of blood dripping down past her fangs to her chin.

“You need to eat more, pet,” he whispers softly, his fingers caressing her flat belly as he urges her to take another sip. “You're getting weak.”

“How can I be weak with you here?” she murmurs, turning so she can kiss his lips lightly. He drapes his arms around her, locking them around her back, but keeping a firm hold on the cup.

“You shouldn't say things like that,” he bemoans quietly. “If I hadn't turned you—“

“I'd be dead right now,” she says and then cocks her head to the side. “Well… deader. I wanted… I don't remember it… but I it was beautiful. So pretty. All the veins and the cold mouth and hands… you're crying! Did I cry?”

I wince when I see him drop his head to her breasts and weep. “Yes… you did. For your sister. For your life. The life I took away.”

“I was sick,” she strokes the back of his neck with such tenderness that I'm shocked. “I remember how cold it was. Don't you want me to be better, Spike? You said you did. I think… didn't you? You said her name. She left me. You didn't…”

“She gave you a gift,” he whispers. “She gave you everything. I gave you nothing. I gave you pain.”

“No…” she protests, and touches his chin, lifting his face to hers. He kisses her, and I lean back, my pulse pounding. “You gave me such a pretty thing. I want to hurt things, but I'm too tired. Why am I so tired?”

He doesn't answer, simply brings the mug of blood again to her mouth and forces her to drink the viciously still liquid. She chokes slightly, but accepts it, and the back of my throat stings with suppressed tears. I think that I know this girl, but I don't want to. She's supposed to be my sister. She's supposed to be happy, girlish, singing boy band songs in the shower and eating bacon for breakfast. Dawn loved bacon. This thing probably doesn't even remember the taste.

When we were children she loved to build sand castles. I liked to ride my bike over them. It's funny that she became the killer. Funny. Right. Can I blame her for becoming a monster though? Maybe it was me. How long can a young girl live with a sister who makes death her art… and remain untainted? Not long, it seems.

Rubbing my forehead, I wish for the fiery ache behind my eyelids to go away as I watch Spike cup Dawn's face in his large hands and say softly, “You should go rest. I'll come in later to check on you, luv.”

She presses her cheek to his momentarily, and then gets up, leaving the room through the back door leading to the other bedrooms. Spike bows his head when she leaves, and then stands, silent for a moment. Suddenly his foot connects with the chair and it flies through the air, landing with a crash against the window, shattering the glass.

I wince, the cold air seeping through from the hole in the building making goosebumps appear on my uncovered arms and legs. A shiver skates down my spine as I gaze at Spike's desolation. How can a vampire- without a soul- feel so much pain? Clearing my throat, I edge into the room.

His head snaps up and he glances at me without any expression at all on his face. “Slayer.”

“Vampire,” I mock and open the door of the refrigerator, taking out a bottle of water. My hands shake as I uncap it and lift the rim to my lips, taking a long drink.

“Better leave some of that for the starving orphans out there,” he warns me, smirking. But there's no humour in his eyes. They are dark, cold, freezing me out like the first snows of winter.

“Don't you have an elsewhere to be?” I snap, and he arches a brow.

“Didn't you come in here? Invading my space?”

“I was looking for a drink,” I tell him and he smiles slow.

“Of what? Water? Or maybe something else? What's the matter, Slayer, Angel not fill your mouth up enough last night?”

I flush. “You're disgusting.”

“That's me,” he agrees, leaning back against the wall with indolent grace. “What's the matter, you can't handle it? Don't tell me you're not an experienced little lady, Summers. We all heard the screams coming from your room last night.”

“Shut up,” I snarl, and smash the bottle down on the table, feeling the edges crumple a little beneath my fingers. “Get out of my sight, Spike.”

“Now why would I do that?” he wonders aloud. “Am I getting under your skin? Is that it, Slayer? Maybe you're not quite as immune to me as you like to pretend.”

“I never said I was immune to you,” I reply coldly. “But don't for one second think you have any effect on me, whatsoever.”

“You're trembling,” he comments out of the blue, and my stomach twists at the look in his eyes. “Come here.”

“No,” I stay where I am, little shivers arcing through my body from the frost-touched air swirling through the window. He laughs, but the sound is choked, and he shrugs out of his jacket, coming over to me, his pale as milk flesh glinting in the relative darkness. Curving it around my shoulders, he leans down and whispers against my ear; “Or is not the cold that's making you tremble, Slayer?”

“Wouldn't you like to know,” I bite off and tilt my head back, our eyes locking.

“Does it scare you?” he breathes, his finger curling around a lock of my hair.

I ignore the pants coming from between my lips, replying coolly, “What?”

“Me. You,” he pauses and then grates out, “this”, yanking me forward and kissing me. His hands lock around my back and I whimper, the side of the table hitting my hip as he presses me down onto the hard surface and rips open my shirt.

The water bottle breaks and the icy liquid splashes down my thigh, as freezing as Darla's arctic flesh. “You want this,” Spike groans. “You want to forget…”

I moan as the sharp edges of his rings scrape my nipples, the hot rush between my thighs catching me unawares as I realize that he's right. I do want this. I've wanted it for months, for reasons I don't understand. But I need to forget. I need to be the person who woke up in that gutter and died inside as she saw the charred remains of the world. Angel's opening me up again and that can't happen. I can't let him. I need to forget. How else can I live?

My lips swallow him as he tugs up my skirt and pulses against my belly, which rumbles with hunger and need and sickness. My hair spills over the sides, the ceiling distorted- wrong. The world spins and I feel his tongue rasping against my neck, his fingers inside me, the vaguely smoky scent of his flesh filling my nostrils and mouth and eyes until I can't see, I can't breathe and it's Spike--- and ---

Angel.

The vampire sleeping upstairs. Sleeping and dreaming. Of me. Of our life together.

“Stop,” I whisper, my voice thin and reedy even to my own ears. “Stop!” I cry, pushing him off me as fast as he grabbed me and gathering the tattered edges of my shirt around my reddened breasts. Everything hurts and I feel tears prick my eyes suddenly, threatening to drip down over my cheeks and reveal the weakness I abhor.

“Fucking tease,” Spike mutters, his chest rising and falling with un-necessary breath.

“Please… just go…” I press my hands to my eyes, bowing my head to my knees.

“Buffy…” he says, his voice softer, quieter… intimate.

I shy away from it, crying, “Please. Go. Spike, just go.”

I hear his sigh, but he leaves. I curl up on the surface of the table and wonder what's happened to the girl I used to be. Before he left. Before I killed him. Before Faith. Before I died.

I don't know.

~~~~

As I walk up the stairs to my room an hour later, I try and breathe out, finding the air too thick. It's not right. None of this is right. So intent am I on the floor that I knock into someone and have to grab the railing for support.

Glancing up, I am surprised to see Arion Prentiss. He nods to me. “Congratulations, Ms. Summers- on bringing Angel back to us.”

“Thanks,” I respond and wave my hand in the air. “And call me Buffy. Seriously, the whole Ms. Summers thing reminds me of school.”

He smiles slightly and nods again. “Of course- Buffy. And you call me Arion. Mr. Prentiss sounds awfully… smug.”

“It's a smug name,” I joke, grinning. “Look… we never got to finish talking. I've been thinking about it some more… and I have some questions.”

“Of course,” he motions of me to sit down on the stairs, and he joins me, scratching the back of his head in an absent gesture. “What would you like to know?”

“I just… you said, that Slayers come from… something not human? Then why don't they still? As far as I know I came along the normal way.”

His eyes glow and he looks at me. “I don't know. The first Slayer was the only one borne of the Morrigan and the raven. From war and blood and feathers, was she formed. After that, the girls were always found in the form of a human girl. Up until about a hundred years ago, Buffy, the Slayers could… assume the form of an animal.”

“Excuse me?” I ask, shaken, my hands twisting in my lap.

“They were shape shifters- capable of changing between that of an animal and a girl. Some call them skin walkers. They would hunt as animals and girls- using their powers for the Slay. It was—“

“Buffy?”

It's Bronwen. I look up and see her standing at the bottom of the stairs, looking up at us with worry in her eyes. I know why. I know my face is about thirty shades of pale right now and my body is shaking like a leaf to the wind.

“Hi Bronwen,” I greet her, standing. Arion brushes off his pants and leans over to murmur under his breath;

“We'll talk some other time. Have a good day, Buffy.”

“Thanks,” I answer weakly, my mind whirling with all the new information. “Do you have some news, Bronwen? You've got FYI face.”

She raises her eyebrows at my slang but the corners of her mouth turn up slightly. “Yes, actually. We're planning on departing for London in a little over an hour. We must get back before the weather worsens. Will you get Angel ready?”

“Of course,” I assure her quietly. “He'll be fine, anyway. He's just a little weak.”

“Understandable,” she nods. “Meet us downstairs, Buffy.”

“Will do,” I grin, and turn to go upstairs.

~~~~

Leaning back against Angel's chest, I sit between his legs with a voluminous blanket covering my body and snuggle close. He sleeps, his head against the canvas, which still smells of mold. His hands hold my body loosely, and I wish I could get closer. He still feels like home, after all these years.

I avoid Spike's eyes. He sits across from us, with Dawnie resting against him, her eyes closed, her face drawn. Darla is in the corner, where she likes to stay, sipping something that I suppose must be blood. Her lips are shiny. I'm too tired to object to her presence, and feel the motion of the truck winding it's way through Ireland's hills lulling me into oblivion.

The field is full of flowers and a hot, hot sun burns my back. I get up from where I sit by a cluster of rocks and see Willow, her hair brilliantly red as she weaves poems with her words and the sparrows flock around her.

“Will!” I call, a smile piercing my lips at the sight of her. My old friend.

She smiles gently. “Hey Buffy. I haven't seen you in a while. I let everyone else do the dreaming.”

“Why hasn't Giles…?” I trail off, but she understands, and the smile slips from her face.

“We're not in the same camp as Giles, Buffy. I don't know where he is. I'm sorry.”

“I understand. It s'ok,” I answer, my throat filling with bitter tears. “Why are you here? Has something happened?”

She strikes a match against the smooth stone she rests upon and I watch it flicker, realizing with horror that it signifies my friend's lives. It's not strong anymore. The flame doesn't burn bright. “I'm trying to get to you. I need some time.”

“You're making mistakes,” she whispers. “Being reckless. And that's going to come back to haunt you.”

I think of Spike and his diamond eyes and teeth against my nipples, breathing out in a harsh pant. “I don't… I don't know what I'm doing. I just get… Will, I miss you. I miss my life.”

“You haven't really had a life. Not for years, Buffy,” she informs me sadly. “You were just waiting to die. That's not living.”

“What do you want from me?” I protest. “I tried the best I could. I didn't want the things that happened to me. So many people left and I just—“

“You died so long ago,” she cuts me off. “And we missed you. We couldn't go on. Xander never could. I tried to get you back. We're sorry that we failed.”

“I'm sorry too,” I lie. “I'm sorry for everything.”

The match still burns, and the smell of sulphur and ash wafts over my skin, staining it black. “But I'm going to save you. I have to.”

She gazes into my eyes and then her hand comes up, and she swirls it in the air, causing everything to shift- melt—and she sighs, “We shall see…”

I fall through the eyes of the raven, screaming, screaming… into nothing.

(I'll never forget, I'll never forget) (I love you. I try not to—but I can't stop)

(Every Slayer's got a death wish) (You're beneath me)

(I just wonder if you'll like it as much as she did…)

(Close your eyes)

So I can kill you…

~~~~

I wake with a jerk, icy sweat dripping into my vision, causing it to blur. As I burrow down into Angel's arms, I wonder if the sweat is really tears, and decide I don't want to know.

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