A Terrible Thing by Herself

Part One

PART ONE



It was because Willow was once more in touch with Oz that Buffy found herself in this small provincial Vietnamese city, where the old French colonial buildings sat out like ruined cakes in the rain.

It was a pitiless rain, like hot water poured from a bucket. The air smelled bilgy, which was the smell of the river. She'd already seen the river, already crossed it.

It was strange seeing Oz, although not so much strange seeing him here, because he was the sort of person it wasn't really strange to meet anywhere, which was something Willow had always known, and used to say. He rose from his chair beneath the cafe awning and waited unmoving for her to reach him, and fold her umbrella, and realize that she was nearly soaked despite it. His hair and eyebrows were a reddish brown. He didn't look much different than the last time she'd seen him, on the campus at Sunnydale U, what, five years ago now.

"Hey, Buffy. You're lookin' like a grown-up."

"It happens."

He made no move to embrace her, so she sat down. The waiter came up, and Oz spoke to him in Vietnamese, which wasn't surprising either. He brought a second bottle of the local beer that was already open on the table.

"You know not to drink the water here," Oz said, as if it wasn't a question.

"I've traveled a lot recently."

"Willow said."

"She's even got you on the look-out for slayers, huh?"

"I'm happy to do what I can." Oz squinted, looking not at her, but across the shabby square. The traffic consisted of older cars, and bicycles, and carts drawn by a few varieties of animal, and sometimes by people, who biked them or dragged them on foot. Buffy wondered if he was looking out for someone else. He wouldn't be looking out for ... well, of course not. Because that was why she was here. Anyway, it was the middle of the afternoon.

There was a pause. Buffy tried to wait it out, but finally said, "Do what you can. Right."

"Yeah. Which is why I figured I'd better get in touch now. Because when she gave me the whole post-Sunnydale wrap up, Willow said he was dead."

Buffy swallowed some beer. For the past day and a half, since Willow's phone call, she'd been thinking of this, obsessively. It made a headache behind her eyes that wouldn't go away. He was dead and she'd processed that, it was finished. Finished, though the whole damn thing was nothing but unsatisfactory, truncated and inflamed, like a severed digit that wouldn't quite scab over. Just stupid, the whole sorry thing was just stupid.

Since then, she'd put all that kind of stuff aside. Meaning to come back to it later. Much later. Eventually. When she had more ... more something she didn't seem to have right now. What? She was busy.

The label of her beer bottle was wet as her trousers that were sticking to her legs, wet as her sandals. She peeled the corner back with her fingernail. "He burned. There's no way he survived it."

"Yeah." Oz paused again. Buffy tried to recall if he'd been given to strange pauses. "The other night. I got a little banged up." He held up his left hand now, to show the plaster cast on his wrist. "There's just the one hospital here—it's only a little infirmary, really. They told me there was another white guy there. Even if they hadn't told me, I'd have figured it out after a while, because he started yelling the place down. They asked me to try to talk to him. No one there has much English."

"So you talked to him."

"It was him, Buffy. I pretty much recognized his voice even before I saw him. His colorful phrasings."

Lots of English guys had colorful phrasings. She'd learned that, if she'd learned anything, since Sunnydale went down. It couldn't be him. He was dead.

"Why would he be in the hospital?"

"The nurse said it was his stomach. An ulcer. But it sounded like DTs."

She wanted to say that vampires didn't get ulcers, or DTs, probably, and anyway, they wouldn't go to a hospital if they did. All they ever wanted in hospitals was the plasma delivery. But all she could do was peel the beer label and try not to remember how it felt, his hand in hers, that intense heat, and how he'd looked at her and said No you don't. She was trembling, and it appalled her, that Oz might see it. That she saw it. She was supposed to be over all of that, that big rotten mess.

He was dead.

"He was pretty disorderly, and didn't want to stay in the infirmary. He didn't seem to know me, actually, but he wasn't in a state where I could really talk to him. He has a guy, a sort of servant, named Nguyen. Together we got him back home. Then I emailed Willow."

"And here I am," Buffy said.

Another one of Oz's now customary pauses. "... Will thought you'd be happy. Not that he's ... messed up ... but that he's ... you know ... alive."

She flung the bottle so it smashed against the blank cafe wall. "He's not alive. He's a goddamn vampire." Her chair tipped backwards as she rose. "Take me there."




There was no change in the rain. It made its own dimension, nearly stifling, the steady tattoo of its falling giving her the feeling that she'd gone a little deaf. Oz led the way; it wasn't far from the cafe. Dai Phuong—at least, the part of it that concerned them, as foreign travelers—was small, just a few streets leading off the central square, before it petered into slums in all directions. Oz said the name of the place meant 'end of the road'.

What would he be doing here? This wasn't a place he'd want to be.

"This is it." Oz whispered. The door they stopped in front of was made of adjustable wooden slats, as was the covering of the glassless window beside it. Both set into a faded blue stucco wall, part of a hundred-year-old building erected by the French, and repurposed so many times since that it was hard to tell whether it started out as a warehouse, a bureau, or an apartment house. Everything that went on in the street must be plainly audible to anyone inside, and vice-versa. How did people live that way? How did people live with this heat? Already it coated her with despair. "Do you want me to stay?"

Buffy's irritation rose—surely Oz knew that he could hear even the minutest whisper, that he could certainly smell them as well. Oz especially should know all about the smell thing. It occurred to her only now that she'd neglected to ask him a thing about himself.

Still, he hadn't seemed to expect it.

"I'd better do this alone."

Oz melted away without goodbye. Wishing he hadn't been quite so fast to take her at her word, Buffy furled her umbrella. The second floor of the building had an overhanging balcony that sheltered a few feet of the cracked pavement from the rain, which ran thick in the gutters of the poorly-paved street.

Lifting her hand to knock, Buffy paused. Her slayer sense was quiet; no here be vampires tingle. Maybe he was out. It was day, but in this rain, there was no danger on that score.

Except that Oz had told Willow, who had told her, that he didn't go out. That he'd been in this crazy place for months and didn't leave his room.

"Spike." She pitched her voice through the slats, trying to sound reasonable, calm. "I'm here to visit you. May I come in?"

Silence at first. Then, as she was about to call out again, a rustling, almost a scrabbling.

"Spike?"

"No Spike here."

She knew the voice. It was raspy and low, but it was his. It made the skin of her nape crawl, the heat rush up into her face, her heart wait a long terrible moment before committing two stumbling beats at once. She had to take hold of herself. That voice she'd never thought to hear again. That she heard, still too often, in her dreams.

"C'mon, Spike. I've come a really long way. And it's pouring." And the surreality quotient is climbing dangerously high here.

The door was locked. She rattled the knob. Of course she could demolish the matchstick thing with a kick, but that wasn't the point. She was afraid of what she'd see; picturing what Oz had described and wondering if she was picturing it right, because that wasn't Spike, Spike wasn't a patient.

" ... Spike's gone. I don't have ... I don't have him anymore."

Fuck that noise. "I'm coming in." A sharp turn of the knob demolished the lock; the flimsy door swung open into the unlit room that reeked of manfug, tobacco, and liquor, stale stinks that almost felled her. At first she couldn't see anything at all. Feeling along the wall, her hand encountered the windowslats; she opened them. This didn't help much; the overhang outside blocked what light there was. But she made out the general proportions of the room, the untidy bed draped in mosquito netting, the bedside table crowded with bottles, the slowly whirling ceiling fan, the rattan armchair with a shirtless man slumped in it.

He stared at her through a tangle of brown hair, the glass arrested halfway to his lips, nearly shrouded in untended beard. In the gloom, he gave off a sickly glow, like a mushroom in a dank cellar.

She stared back. No way, no way this could be him. No vampire could ever look ill in so ghastly, so human a way.

Darting forward without thought, she plucked the glass from his hand.

He surged out of the chair and knocked her down.

The room abruptly flipped, she only dimly registered him at the new angle, stepping over her—his bare foot and ankle, the fluttering pajama leg—then throwing himself on the bed. There was some clinking, the springs protesting, the sounds of renewed pouring and drinking. The glass she'd appropriated had rolled away unbroken; she could see it resting against the baseboard. The walls and ceiling were a brownish yellow, mapped with cracks and dark patches of damp.

"What are you doing?" She rolled to her feet to confront him, sprawled like a stoned pasha amongst too many stale pillows.

"Ought to know better than to get between a man and his booze."

The rage was so hot in her she only wanted to scream at him, to scream and scream. "You're not a man—!" She stopped.

Because the hell of it ... he was.




His skin was hot and slick with fresh sweat when she put a hand on his arm. He'd been sweating all along—they both were—but their first encounter made him reek more, of fear, of dread. He shrank back from her touch, but not before she felt the life in him. He was doing his best to destroy it, but it was there.

"No no no. Not even gonna ask what the fuck you're doin' here, slayer. Really don't want to know."

He wouldn't meet her eyes. Now she didn't know what to do; her towering rage was suddenly gone, and without its support, she felt helpless, defeated. Here she was in a bad far-away place, and her friend was in this terrible trouble—she didn't even know yet entirely what kind, but look at how terrible, smell how much. And this was the kind of thing she'd never been good at. Taking care of people. That was always her mother's department. Or Dawn's. Dawnie was good at looking after her friends.

Spike, who was, in those two or three awful months, her only loyal, pure, undemanding friend.

"Spike." She sank down on the edge of his bed. "You didn't die? Why ... why didn't you tell me?"

"Spike's gone."

She cast about for some answer to this, glancing around helplessly at the standing lamp with its yellow shade, the table where Vietnamese newspapers were spread amidst more bottles, empty or nearly empty.

"What shall I call you then?"

He didn't answer. All her instincts with him: to force him to look at her, force him to talk—they were old, bad instincts and no longer served.

He went on drinking, his eyes closed, already feeling with the other hand for one of the bottles on the nightstand.

The kitchen was primitive, but there was a sink. She found a cloth, a bowl. Filled it with what passed for cool water.

When she tried to touch the wet cloth to his shoulder, he jerked away.

"Please," she said, amazed at how humble she sounded. "It'll feel nice. You're all clammy."

"Get out of here. Didn't call for you. Don't want to be touched."

When did Spike ever not want to be touched? Especially by her?

"I'll go if you answer my question."

"No need to call me anything."

"Not that question. I want to know what happened to you, after ... after I saw you last. We ... we all thought you perished down there." Why was that so difficult to say out loud? A wave of embarrassment heated her skin all over again. He'd sacrificed himself for her cause, for her, and she'd ... pretty much taken it for granted that he'd do that. She'd done a pretty good job of not dwelling on that too much since, getting on with the moving on. After all, what was past and gone was, etc. But here he was, and the whole damn thing slammed down on her again. All the things she could've done differently.

"Far as you're concerned, he did. Fuck off now."

He sounded so tired, like it was more effort than he could gather just to pronounce his words.

This was a mistake. Coming here. He was telling her the truth—Spike was gone. Because the Spike she'd known would never have spoken to her like this. Spike would be—despite himself—curious about her. Interested.

"All right, I won't impose on you. But just tell me ... are you here ... living like this ... of your own free will? Do you have enough money? Because if you're broke, or sick, or someone's got something on you ... I'm not just gonna leave you to it. I want to help."

"I'm livin' my bleedin' life. He will live until he dies."

That sounded like some kind of quotation. "Who? Who will live until he dies?" Like this was any kind of life.

"The vampire with a soul." He began to laugh, and then to cough, and then he snatched the basin from her hand and was sick into it.



"I don't know what to do."

She didn't expect Oz to be able to tell her. He put more hot sauce on his noodles and stirred them around with the chopsticks. The hotel where they were both staying—the only one in town—was ostensibly air-conditioned, but the dining room was mostly "cooled" by ceiling fans going at such a pace that Buffy's hair blew around her face until she pulled it back with an elastic. There was an ancient, noisy window unit in her room that she'd set going as soon as she got back, in the hopes that it would be cool enough by time she'd eaten to maybe get some sleep. Her skin felt dirty even right after she washed. The air everywhere had an unpleasant thickness to it. Still, there was a little relief in being away from the rank odor of Spike's apartment.

It was still raining.

"Did you see Nguyen?"

"No. He doesn't live there too, does he?"

Oz shook his head. "He looks in most days. Straightens up, runs errands."

"Buys the liquor, you mean."

"Yeah, and the food."

"Oh, he eats?" She let out a bitter laugh. "Well, I guess I saw a little evidence of that." She'd poured the contents of the basin down the ... not a toilet. There was no toilet, just a hole in the floor in the bathroom. She'd seen arrangements like that in various places in Europe, so she shouldn't have been surprised. When she emerged from the bathroom, Spike was asleep, or pretending to be. She'd let herself out, closing the broken door as best she could.

"Do you have any idea what's going on? I mean, you know he's human now, right?"

Oz didn't know. Oz didn't know because he'd never actually touched him, and in fact, he wasn't wolfy anymore, thanks for asking. He didn't say that—thanks for asking—or even imply it, but Buffy didn't need to be guilted to feel guilty. Not at the moment, anyhow.

"Congratulations?"

He nodded.

"Is that a hundred percent good thing?" she asked.

"It's a solid ninety," Oz said. "And I don't know what's going on with Spike. But one thing I picked up during my tenure as a Scooby—anything's possible, y'know?"

"I just don't understand why he didn't get in touch with me."

Of course Oz didn't know the whole history, and even if Willow had filled in the details for him, he still wouldn't know, because Willow didn't know everything either. Willow had her own perspective, of course, not particularly hostile towards Spike, but not ... not the same as Buffy's own. And there were things—lots of things—Buffy had never told her. Things that were private, or that she didn't want to talk over with herself, let alone anyone else.

"He's ... depressed."

Well, duh.

"Guys ... when they're depressed ... often they just want to be on their own." Oz proposed this as if for her inspection and approval.

"Guys are jerks."

"Often," Oz allowed.

She hated this. She couldn't eat. How was she supposed to sit here and eat while Spike was wasting away in that disgusting room? How was she supposed to allow him to do that?

"Maybe we could move him here. The hotel is a little more comfortable—"

"How will we move him? I mean, if he doesn't want to come."

"I'll tell him it's cooler here."

Oz raised an eyebrow.

Buffy let the spoon drop into her soup. "Well, what? What am I supposed to do? I mean, you got me here, so you tell me!"

She liked being angry; it was easier.

"I thought you guys should know about this. I really can't ... can't advise."

For the rest of the meal, she asked him questions about his travels, and tried to be pleasant. Afterwards, she phoned Giles back in England.

"What does The vampire with a soul will live until he dies mean to you?"

There was a silence on the line. Then Giles said, "Where are you calling from?"

"I'm in Vietnam. I forget how to say the name of this place. It's very hot and it's raining. I don't think I'm ever going to be dry again."

"Vietnam? Not with Angel?"

Why would he ask that? "No, not with Angel."

Angel was a little bit of a sore point, still. She'd heard all about how he'd gone evil, allying himself with some big cosmic dark forces. Once, from that Big Evil Law Firm, he'd called on Giles and the council for help and after some deliberation, Giles had refused it. After that last time she'd seen him, before the battle with the First, she had no desire to get in touch with him herself. That whole encounter left a bitter aftertaste, it was a place in memory she didn't like to have to go.

"What then, Buffy?"

She was surprised Willow hadn't filled him in—supposedly they were tight like that these days. Much tighter than she was with Giles anymore. "Spike is here."

"Spike?"

She waited for Giles to finish his exclamations of amazement and incredulity. When he did, she went on, "Oz came across him. He's not a vampire anymore. He's human. And he said that to me, like it was a thing he'd been told. The vampire with a soul will live until he dies."

"It sounds like a prophecy, but it's not one I'm familiar with. I'll have to do research. At any event, what's he doing in Vietnam?"

"Trying to obliterate himself with booze is what it looks like, but I don't know what he had to come out to this shithole to do it for."

"I see. Or rather, I don't. What ... what do you propose to do, Buffy?"

"I came here to help him. But he doesn't want any help. He doesn't want to talk to me. So I don't know what to do. But I can't just leave him here. Giles, he's sick."

She waited for Giles to give her some version of the Spike is unworthy of your attention and care speech.

But all he said, in a quiet serious tone, was, "Shall I come out there and help you, Buffy?"

Tears sprang to her eyes, and she almost said yes. Yes, yes, yes, please, rescue me, Giles, the way you used to! But then she thought about Olivia, and the baby. What was the point of taking Giles away from them? Spike wouldn't be any more glad to see him—much less, in fact.

"No, I'm probably better on my own. Just ... if you can find anything out about what happened to make him human, that might be useful. I'm going to visit him again tomorrow. Maybe I can find a doctor who'll make a house call."

The air conditioner in her room labored noisily, but the temperature still had to be at least eighty when she went inside. The bed was lumpy, and she didn't care to look too closely in any of the room's dark corners.

In the middle of the night, the sudden silence woke her up. She lay startled for a long moment, then realized that the power was cut. The only sound was the insistent ssshhhh of the rain. Rising, she opened the french-style windows onto the night. The town lay in darkness. For a moment the air outside felt almost cool against her face. Staring into the black, she wondered how Spike had received such a prize, and why he seemed to hate it so much.



In the morning, she brought Oz to the infirmary with her, to interpret. The place was run by Vietnamese nuns. At first the head nurse didn't want to give out much information about Spike. Buffy said, "Tell her I'm his wife," slipping her ringless hand into a pocket. The nurse, who beneath a tight wimple had one of those inexorable, humorless faces, sort of like a female Quentin Travers, gave her a severe looking over, but finally she went to fetch Spike's file.

"By the way, you're Madame Smith now, so smile and nod when she calls you that."

"Smith? As in Smith Is Not My Real Name?"

"Apparently. Did Spike ever have a real name?"

"He must have, but I never knew it." I never asked. It seemed absurd to her now that she never had. No wonder he didn't believe her at the last. She hadn't behaved like a woman in love. The world being on the cusp of ending was no excuse, really. She just hadn't been able to bring herself to unbend that much, and she'd assumed somehow that it wouldn't matter, because Spike had always accepted her—cherished her—just as she was. That he might like to be cherished a little in return hadn't occurred to her at all.

The nun returned. She wouldn't let Oz actually see the file, but they talked for long enough that Buffy began, despite her desire for information, to feel impatient.

Finally they were crossing the courtyard again. Buffy tried to dodge the puddles, but her sandals were already soaked. The rain had stopped, but the sky was low and steely, and there was an ominous stillness to the heavy air.

"So?"

"He has a serious bleeding ulcer, and cirrhosis, and something wrong with his heart."

Something wrong with his heart. Right. He broke it for me. "What wrong?"

"I didn't get everything she said. It sounded like she was saying he had things wrong with him that he's too young for. She said that if you really were his wife, you'd take him home to America where they know how to treat these things."

"If I was? Huh. Smart nun."

"But she said he also has an uncanny strength. That he should have died a few days ago, when Nguyen brought him in. They all thought he'd die, the way he was bleeding internally. She said the Lord spared him."

"The Lord wouldn't know what to do with him, I'm sure He's in no hurry to take on that responsibility."

The rain began again. There was no preliminary pattering, it was like a sluice opening. They were drenched at once, and ran for the cafe.

There Oz told her that unless she wanted him to stay, he was going to move on. There was someone waiting for him in Bangkok.

"Someone you're in love with?"

His face lit up then, for the first time.

"That's really good, I'm happy for you," she said, and thanked him. This time they hugged; Buffy was glad they hadn't before, because now it meant something. They weren't really friends, she might never see him again, but he'd been good to her, and she made sure he knew she appreciated it.

"One last thing before you leave," she said, letting go of him slowly. "There's something I want to get, maybe you can show me where ...."





She held up the bottle so he could see the label. Jack Daniels. She'd paid quite a bit of money for this, even with the exchange rate, in a shadowy shop she'd never have found without Oz's help. When she was sure she had Spike's attention, Buffy opened the bottle, took a long swig, then held it out to him.

After giving her a long blank stare, Spike accepted it and drank.

"So," she said, dropping into a chair. "What are we drinking about?"

He didn't answer, not that she expected him to. But today he seemed accepting of her presence. He was, once again, sitting up in the rattan chair, wreathed in smoke from the noxious Chinese cigarettes everyone smoked here, wearing nothing but the thin peasant trousers she'd yesterday mistaken for pajama bottoms. Of course Spike would never actually own a pair of pajamas.

His eyes seemed sunken in his skull, ringed in grey. The beard—and how strange it was to see him with that!—clung to hollowed cheeks. She could see his ribs, and a convexity where his abs once were, and sinews in his neck she was sure hadn't been there before. But he still had most of his muscle tone. Yesterday, when he'd knocked her down, he'd done it as if his strength was never in doubt.

Sweat trickled from her armpits, and down her back, making her squirm. The ceiling fan only seemed to accentuate the terrible heat. Between that and the smoke, it was almost impossible to get a breath. She held a hand out, then, after a few seconds, snapped her fingers.

He started, bringing his gaze reluctantly to her face. She indicated the bottle, leaned forward to reclaim it. He watched her incredulously as she took another drink. She didn't choke or make a face now. She'd learned to hold her liquor, and even like it. Although usually she didn't get started this early in the day.

"So, William." She paused. Was he going to answer to that, now?

"Sound so damn snooty when you say that."

At least he was talking.

"I don't mean to." She passed the bottle back to him.

Spike held it for a moment, contemplatively, gazing into the neck as if down into a microscope.

Then he threw it. It didn't hit her, but it came close enough that she wasn't sure if he'd meant it to or not.

"Get the fuck out. Just get the fuck away from me. Got nothing for you, an' want nothing from you. Don't make me say it again. Don't put me through it an' through it an' through it."

He wasn't shouting—his voice was almost a croon. He seemed to shrink into the chair, to become smaller and frailer. Curling away from her.

Buffy got to her feet. "Spike—William—whatever—you know if things were the other way ... if it was me who was abusing myself like this ... you wouldn't leave me."

"Please."

That one word was so full of pleading, almost a sob. Buffy blushed, for herself, for him. He was sick, exhausted, didn't want her to see him this way, and he was powerless, or thought he was, to do anything about it. How could she threaten him with her return, day after day, how could she force him back to health, when her presence was so oppressive to him?

But she couldn't leave. She knew she'd stay here as long as it took to either see him better, or see him into his grave.

Madame Smith.

"What's your real name?"

He raised his face, squinted at her.

"Your family name," she prompted. "I know it's not Smith, you phony bastard."

He shook his head.

"Fine, I don't care! But you can't hold out on me, Spike! How did you survive the hellmouth closing?"

"Didn't."

"Then ... then why are you here now?"

"Wouldn't you like to know."

"Spike, I would. I really would."

His snort was full of disdain. "They're all dead, you know."

"Who is?" The ubervamps? The new slayers? She was a little bit afraid of the clarification. "You know, most of us got out. The Scoobies. Dawn. Faith. Your sacrifice saved us."

"Talkin' about the L.A. lot. Utterly decimated. All went down fighting. Angel's dusted, you know."

It was as if he'd struck her in the chest suddenly with a club. Her breath hitched, and failed her. She couldn't even begin to hide her reaction, and knew he was watching her, watching her with a greedy kind of satisfied anger. She felt the weight of his gaze even in the midst of her surprise and the torrent of grief that rose up to engulf her. She couldn't feel her body. Spots danced in front of her eyes. She thought she might faint, and that it would be good to faint.

Somehow she got herself up, and out.

In the downpour, she turned her face up. The tears came, hotter than the hot rain.



She'd lost some time. It was mid-morning when she'd gone to Spike with the bottle of Jack, and it was late afternoon now. Her eyes felt shrunken in their sockets, her whole body ached, and she couldn't account for all her movements. Couldn't account for the incredible sadness that came up and up in inexorable slow bubbles that burst painfully in her chest, over and over.

She hadn't cried like this for Spike, when he died so that she could save the world. Hadn't lost control of herself this way at all since her mother died. Felt that everything was shit, that there was no place to go, no home anymore.

Nothing had startled her this way either, since her mother. She remembered that mute incredulity of discovery, how it seeped and then crashed over her and then seeped again and crashed again, the cruelty of it, how it could repeat and not be any less.

She wasn't prepared for how much she still loved Angel. How awful it was to know he was gone.

She was in the cafe now. A policeman had brought her there. He'd found her wandering in the depths of the slums, by the river. A lost tourist. She hadn't understood a word he said, but she'd let him herd her back to the French streets, and put her in a chair here. She nodded as he lectured her incomprehensibly, and she offered him some money, which he first refused and then took. He said something to the cafe man before he went away.

The cafe man put a beer in front of her.

Swallowing it in one go, she motioned for another. Her thirst was sudden and terrible. While she waited, she felt at her neck, at the delicate raised scar there. Was that all that remained of Angel, the only bit of proof left that he'd existed?

She didn't know anything. The battle Spike referred to—which side was Angel on? Did Giles know about this? Had he kept it from her, tried to trick her the way he and Robin had tricked her, in trying to eliminate Spike?

Maybe Angel's death was a good thing for the world. She didn't know. Not that it would be any easier to bear if that was the truth.

Her cell phone was slick and warm in her hand—everything here was slick and warm, there was nothing that felt refreshing to the touch.

What would she say to Giles? What did you know and when did you know it? Why didn't you tell me?

No. She put the phone back in her pocket. Because if she asked all that, she'd have to ask herself why she hadn't gone to L.A., to find out what was really going on with him.

In the old days, she'd have felt responsibility for that.



"How can you know what happened to Angel?"

He roused, blinking, lifted his head for a moment from the pillow, then let it drop as if it was far too heavy. He lay on the bed as if shot. "Saw him go down with my own eyes."

"Wh—where?"

"Told you. In L.A. Big battle there was. Good an' evil, dukin' it out."

"Why is this the first I heard of it?"

"We'd have liked some help. Your lot thought the old man changed sides, an' wouldn't talk to us. Did you even know that?"

No. She wasn't in daily touch with Giles then. She was getting on with her life. Taking a break. Leaving the slayage to the newbies for a change.

"Not you. You were busy bein' party girl."

"I—"

"Out on the town in Rome, you were. Footloose an'—but you weren't fancy-free, were you? Dating the Immortal. How's that going?"

"How could you know that?" She almost started crying again; her chest and face were so congested.

Spike got up on his elbows. His grin was ghoulish. "Wouldn't you like to know."

It occurred to her that, in some way or other, he did still give a shit.

"What I want to know is what happened."

"World didn't end, no thanks to you an' your lot. That's all there is to it. You're not the one girl in all the world anymore, so it's no concern of yours. An' I'm nothin' you need to keep your eye on anymore either. I'm just a fellow wants to get on with his private life."

He'd managed, with his careless, barbed remarks, to pinpoint just exactly why she'd been so damn bored for the last year. But she couldn't look at that now. "So you. You were there? In the battle? With Angel."

"He fought well, he always does."

"And you? What did you do?"

He turned away from her, fumbled amongst the empty bottles, dirty glasses, and overflowing ashtray on the bedstand. Buffy looked around, found a bottle on the other table with a few fingers of brown liquid left in it, and brought it to him. The shards of the JD still lay on the floor, the spilled whiskey adding its aroma to the miasma.

"I thought you had a guy who does for you."

"Bastard hasn't been round today."

He didn't speak to her while she worked. She moved slowly in the drenching heat. First carrying all the dirty glassware and ashtrays into the mean little kitchen. Cleaning up the broken bottle, getting rid of the numerous empties, and the mess of newspapers. She knew he was watching her, but she didn't return his glance. There was a lot to do here, and once she began, she wanted to do it. There was something vaguely abasing about doing Spike's housework, but it was a feeling she welcomed. After her lost afternoon, there was a welcome specificity in washing things, sweeping, putting things right.

Finally she approached him again. "If you'll go sit in the chair, I'll change the bed. That is, if you have another set of sheets."

He nodded towards a chest under the window.

"Maybe you want to have a bath while I do this."

"Not lettin' you crawl into bed with me after."

This remark stirred anger as listless as his raised head when she first came in. It collapsed as quickly. "Like I'd want to. Have you looked at yourself lately?"

He grumbled something that she couldn't quite make out as he moved past her towards the bathroom. It was only after he'd slammed the door that she realized it was "Knew you wouldn't."



He stayed in the bathroom so long she began to think he was hiding from her. Finally he cracked the door and asked her to pass him some fresh clothes. When he emerged, it was obvious he'd made an effort: hair and beard combed, skin reddened where he'd scrubbed at it. He'd put on a shirt.

"That feels better, doesn't it?"

He shrugged.

"I went out for some food. Hot soup." The market place, with its medley of vivid aromas and stinks, was almost outside his door. She'd wondered, as she straightened the room, how he stood the noise just on the other side of the thin wooden slats. But perhaps he liked it. Perhaps it was company of a kind. "Go sit down, Spike."

"Stop calling me that."

"What shall I call you?" She sounded sharper than she intended.

Lover? Sweetheart?

"Don't see as you have to call me anything."

"Don't start that again, I'm mad enough at you already. Sit at the table. You can begin drinking and smoking again in a half hour, but for now, we're going to have a meal."

She'd found bowls and chopsticks and the soup spoons made of china they used here, and set, if not an attractive table, at least a neat one. The pho steamed in the center.

He was already sweat-streaked again, and regarded the food with apprehension, like a balky horse. The skin beneath his eyes and nose was green.

"Dunno if I can."

"Spike—" She started again, more gently. "William. You have to eat. You have to support yourself on something."

"Why?"

"Because you do."

"My stomach's all cut up inside."

"Have some of the broth, at least. Beef broth won't kill you."

"Would prefer it if it did."

"C'mon." She served out the pho—a small amount for him, more for her. Laboring in the heat had roused her appetite.

"Don't you get it, you stupid girl? Not interested in supporting myself. Not interested in any of this. Told you once already to just go away."

"I really don't care what you're interested in. I'm interested in seeing you eat, and I'm the slayer, so what I say, goes."

This might have worked, perhaps, if she'd kept her tone lighter, if she'd smiled. If she'd stayed out of his personal space by refraining from moving the bowl and spoon closer to him.

She hadn't yet figured out the extent of his frailty. He was plenty strong enough to upend the table. To throw a chair at her head. Which clipped her on the temple; she went down.

When she could see again, a middle-aged Vietnamese man was bent over her, staring into her face. She rose slowly, fighting her dizziness. Her stomach bucked and heaved. He began talking to her, his voice fast and agitated. She gestured to get him to move back. This must be Nguyen. He seemed upset by the overturned table, by her presence. The door stood open. Spike wasn't there.

Nguyen herded her towards the street. The door slammed behind her.

Okay, so far, this wasn't going well. Every encounter ended with him hurling something at her, something that hurt.

And it hurt to see him in so much pain. Wanting to die. Spike never wanted to die. She'd seen him at some low ebbs in the past—newly chipped. Insane in the high school basement. But he'd always clung to his sense of self, always wanted something.

There had to be something he wanted besides drunken oblivion and death. There had to be.

What was she going to go back there with tomorrow? What could turn this situation around? Walking back to the hotel in the relentless rain, her head aching, Buffy searched for some new idea.



The first year, she'd concentrated on getting Dawn settled, on getting to know Dawn better. She'd also concentrated on doing all the things she'd felt deprived of all her life, because she was the slayer. She learned to ski at Gstaad, and to do deep-sea diving in Tahiti. She met attractive new people, partied and shopped. Money was no longer a worry—Giles, via the reformed council of watchers, gave her a lump sum, carefully invested to yield a nice income, as a retroactive payment for years of service. Then about nine months after the fall of Sunnydale, her father died, and there was more money from that for her and Dawn. She didn't slay, and she didn't get involved with Giles' work with the new slayers. There was no need to, or so he told her, and so she told herself. She was free now, her life expectancy was that of any healthy woman, and she could do anything she liked. Many ideas occurred to her, as she flitted around, and she meant to look into them very seriously. Going back to college. Doing some serious volunteer work, like maybe building houses for homeless families. Joining the Peace Corps. Perhaps joining Xander in Africa, where he was searching for slayers. She would decide on something, once the novelty of all the freedom wore off a little.

That was the first year. The second year, she still hadn't made her mind up about anything, she was still flitting around. The fun was less fun. Xander was still away, Willow was working hard with the council, and the coven. She wasn't at the center of her friends' lives anymore. There was nothing to be the center of.

She'd walked away from being the slayer before, but something always came up to pull her back in. For the last few months, she'd wondered once in a while what it would be this time, and how soon. Yet she'd made no move to contact Giles. Didn't want to give up her freedom, even though she wasn't doing much with it.

For a long time she didn't think about Spike at all. Her mind just closed up shop on the whole struggle with the First. It was as far away and unrecalled as her time in first grade. Once in a while he'd turn up in a dream, but the details melted away as soon as she awoke.

It was Dawn who brought that to an end. About six months out, she started wanting to talk about Sunnydale, talk about the last few years. She was troubled about her existence; the whole key thing. She worried that she'd been unkind to people. Anya. Andrew.

"You were never unkind to Andrew. I never heard you be unkind to either of them. I don't know what you're talking about. You're just inventing things to feel bad about."

"Spike. I was so mean to Spike."

Somehow, hearing his name pass her sister's lips shocked Buffy down to the ground. She stiffened all over, was on the verge of rapping out an order to be quiet about him.

But why? Why shouldn't Dawn talk about Spike? Talk about anything she needed to talk about?

"I never forgave him. I forgave him in my heart but I never told him. We were good friends, and then we weren't, and then he thought I hated him." Dawn paused. "He thought we all hated him. Yet he was brave and willing anyway."

"I didn't hate him. He knew that."

Dawn looked startled. Then she said, "... I didn't mean you," and walked out of the room.

After that, Spike appeared in her dreams more often. Now she was celibate again, she had frequent sex dreams about him. She thought about him while she masturbated, because somehow ... he was just who she pictured when she felt sexy, when she imagined herself having sex.

One night she woke up gasping, in tears. She cried for hours, a deluge of weeping that seemed bottomless. She'd understood, in a deep physical way that made it hard to draw breath, that Spike was dead. Her body ached with missing him. She didn't feel finished with him, she was far, far from finished. He'd died misunderstanding her, and there would never be a chance to put that right.

She never discussed this with her friends. But when she turned down men who were interested in her, she gave her mourning as an excuse. Gave the impression that there had been a fiancé ... a soulmate ... whom she could not betray by moving on.

It didn't hurt that this made her seem rather alluring even as she was saying no.



Returning to Spike's apartment in the morning, Buffy found it shut up. She waited around for a while, making a minute inspection of every stall and cart in the market, distributing small coinage to beggar children. The rain was a fine mist that barely seemed worth repelling. Spike didn't return.

He didn't show up all day, or all evening.

It wasn't easy, making the rounds of Dai Phuong's bars, when she didn't know where they were, and didn't speak the language. She was conspicuous.

She didn't find him.

But she was so convinced that he was off somewhere on a bender that it wasn't until the third morning that it occurred to her to check at the infirmary. When the idea arose, it gripped her in a panic—what if he had died? What if he was in a coma? She'd miss her chance again— She took off at a run.



She had to wait in the bare reception room, on a wooden bench under a huge crucifix, for the head nurse. Buffy already knew she didn't speak English, but hoped she might make herself understood to the nun in French. She'd done French in high school, and picked up a little conversation since in her travels. Carefully she assembled some sentences in her mind, ready to spit them out when the woman appeared. Je m'appelle Madame Smith. Mon mari, Monsieur William Smith, il est ici?

Like it was credible, that she'd lost him. That she was even married to him. She knew the nun didn't buy that before. And Spike wasn't going to back her up on it either. He'd probably shout the place down denying that he even knew her.

If he was here, and conscious.

His name couldn't be Smith, could it? What a let-down that would be.

It turned out that she didn't need to say any of her painful French sentences; the nun appeared in the doorway, and beckoned to her at once.

Spike lay flat on his back in bed in a tiny bare white room, featureless as a cell except for the identical crucifix hanging over his head and the ceiling fan revolving above. His eyelids were nearly black, his face oddly sunken and shrunken. Buffy cried out at sight of him. "He's dead!"

The nurse said something she didn't understand, and prodded her into the room. A single straight-backed chair stood beside the bed.

There was an IV fixed to his neck, and another in his arm, dripping fluids into him. Fixing on these, Buffy understood that he couldn't be dead, because if he was, these things would've been removed.

"Il y a eu une hémorragie sérieuse. Il dort. Reposez-vous avec lui."

Then she saw that his chest was just barely rising and falling as he breathed. "Merci," she murmured, slipping into the seat. Spike's hand lay flaccid on the blanket. She curled hers around it. The nurse withdrew; Buffy listened to the firm tapping of her steps down the corridor. When they were gone, the only sound was the thin whirr of the fan overhead.

Spike's hand felt no more infused with life than it ever had, but when she squeezed it, she could feel a thready pulsing. Softly she laid her palm on his chest, and felt the beating of his heart. Probably it was only her imagination that it seemed indolent, reluctant. Now she was so close to him, she could smell the sour sickness of the beleaguered body. What surprised her was the tenderness that yawed open in her at these sad details. She'd been afraid—she only realized it now—that her feelings for Spike were only erotic, and that without sex there would be nothing. But this wasn't so. His illness made her feel wild with fear, but she knew she would be glad to have him, even ill or disfigured, if only he would stop pushing her away. She didn't think she'd ever felt that way about anyone before. There was something squirmy—embarrassing?—about it. She wasn't sure.

He didn't stir for a long time. The grey light in the room shifted, darkened. At dusk—what would've been dusk, if not for the rain—Spike's eyes opened.

"Sweetheart," Buffy breathed. "Oh God—how are you?"

It was as if he was holding his breath.

"Are you in pain?"

"Always."

She could barely hear him. His eyes fell shut again. Buffy ran out into the corridor, calling for help.



As the days elapsed, no one made her leave. A nurse brought her food from time to time. In the depth of the night, she lay on the floor and napped. Spike mostly slept; when he wasn't asleep, he wouldn't talk. But Buffy experienced something like serenity in her uninterrupted vigil. Hour by hour she grew bolder, took liberties. From merely holding his hand, to twining her arm around his. Resting her head on the pillow so she could murmur to him, touching her warm mouth to his cool cheek. Putting her fingers—very gently—through his hair. Spike made no protest, by word or movement, against these gestures, which gave her enormous pleasure. He didn't react when she called him sweetheart the first time—a word that burst from her without premeditation—or any of the subsequent times she called him that. She talked to him in low, warm tones, careful to say nothing that would upset him or force him to think. Mostly she repeated, in different ways, the soft assertion that he would be all right, that he would be taken care of. She was in a sort of ecstasy of tenderness, in which neither the bedpan-and-catheter realities, nor her own fatigue, made any impact on her.

He was very ill indeed. The next night there was another crisis, more bleeding, the doctor called for. But by some miracle he didn't die, and she began to think maybe this would be a turning point. He'd get dried out, and be more reasonable.

But on the fifth morning, when she returned to his side after going for a wash, he was alert once more, and frowned when she came in.

"You can't stay here."

"It's all right, Spike. I'll stay for as long as—"

"I don't want you."

She didn't know how to answer this; it was like talking back to a punch.

She took a step back, grabbed on to the door jamb on either side.

"The thing is, I want you."

"That's nothing to me. Get out."

"You never left me alone when I wanted you to. You stalked me for years, you enjoyed how uncomfortable your love made me. Well, turnabout is fair play."

"You're fucking joking."

"Not, actually."

"Dunno what you want from me, but you'll never get it."

"I want you to talk to me. And look at that, you are."

She tipped him a little smile of victory, but he was so angry now that he'd gone papery; his eyes filled, he gasped. He couldn't lift his head from the pillow.

He had no energy to battle her. Weak as a day-old kitten, in pain ... and her presence tormented him.

"All right, I'll go. Get some rest, Spike."



It was morning when she left him; she returned in the late afternoon.

The transformation was extraordinary. When she'd left him, he'd seemed ill unto death. Now he was sitting up, still not looking ready to stand up and walk, but as if he'd crossed back over the line into tenacious life. Someone had given him cigarettes; he smoked fast, tapping the ashes with a quivering hand.

He didn't look happy.

"I'm sorry, I had to check on you."

"Never mind sorry. Come in."

This surprised her. She sidled up to the bed.

"You look better. Amazingly better. But you shouldn't smoke."

"Listen to me, Buffy." He caught her hand, but it wasn't an affectionate gesture. His squeeze was tight, almost threatening. Where did he get the strength? "Listen to me. I'm not going to fulfill whatever fantasy you've got about me now. You can call me sweetheart an' be Mother Theresa all you like. You think you're responsible for me, because of what happened before, but you're not."

"You know ... it really hurts me, you talking this way." She'd never have admitted anything of the sort before, not in the old days. Suddenly it didn't seem so important, defending herself. She wanted to reach him, however she could. "I guess I understand why you hate me, but it seems unfair, when I'm trying to make up to you—"

"Bloody hell. Don't hate you. But I'm not out to please you anymore, either."

"Spike, you don't have to please me. Why do you think I'm here? I'm told that the man I love, who I thought was dead, is alive. So I come to where he is. You of all people must understand that I couldn't do anything else. You must understand that I have to do whatever I possibly can do for you. I can't do less!"

"Poor Buffy. You always are too late."

"No! No! How can you say that to me!" He'd let go of her hand; now she seized his. "Spike, please tell me you don't still think I was lying! I have never cared for anyone as much as I care for you right now! Don't—don't—insult me this way!"

He seemed stunned. " ... not insultin' you, Slayer. Go easy. Just ... yeah, I get it, I think I do. An' I feel sorry for you."

"NO!"

"I've got nothing for you anymore. I wish you hadn't found out about me, hadn't come. I'm not going to be here long."

"Where will you go? Where?"

"Gonna die."

She wanted to scream him down, but the way he said those two simple words, struck her silent. Her legs turned to water. Lungs shriveled up into two tight fists. She folded to her knees, too overwhelmed even to cry.



After that, things happened fast. In a burst of manic energy, Spike checked himself out of the infirmary—this consisted of yanking out the IVs, lurching up from the bed with more determination than strength as the sweat stood out on his greenish face, demanding his clothes in barked French, and refusing to wait for the doctor. He ignored Buffy's attempts to restrain him, or even persuade him to at least slow down. Once reinstalled in his apartment, where Nguyen had refreshed the liquor supply, he set to work on drinking as if trying to make up for the dry days in the hospital. An hour later, he was incoherent.

He didn't tell her again to leave him; mostly he ignored her. She stayed with him, sitting opposite, thinking mutely of what he'd said with such matter-of-factness. When he passed out, Buffy went back to her hotel room.



"I may have some information on that prophecy, but it's sketchy."

Buffy stared up into the whirling blur of the ceiling fan, her mobile glued to her ear with sweat. Giles sounded like he was right next door, and at the same time it felt like she'd never be able to return to the world where he was. The world of heroes and villains she used to inhabit, which from here was starting to look really sane and regular. Why had she been so eager to give that up? This now was a limbo, everything tinged with ambiguity. "Tell me."

"Wesley Wyndam-Pryce was working on this pretty extensively. Unfortunately he's dead—"

"I know about that." And for some reason knowing it hurt, like she'd discovered some huge forgotten responsibility. She didn't want to dwell on it. "They all are, Angel's whole circle. Which I guess you know. We missed the boat there, Giles. But let's talk about that later."

He was silent for a moment; she could imagine him pursing his lips, parsing her remark about the boat. It was so tempting to blame everything on him—he'd heard from Angel and turned him down and didn't tell her—but what was stopping her from checking in with L.A. herself? Nothing but indolence and a lot of feelings she didn't want to feel.

"Wesley's papers have not been recovered, but in the last few years he wrote occasional letters to his father, which I've been able to see. After extensive translation work on an ancient scroll, Wesley deduced that the vampire with a soul, would, if he worked actively on the side of good, and turned the tide in a great battle to come, achieve shanshu. Shanshu, as far as Wesley could determine, means both to live, and to die. His interpretation was that after a certain length of time and certain events set out in the prophecy, Angel would be restored to life as a reward for his good actions."

"So that's what he will live until he dies means."

"That's what Wesley believed."

"But Spike said Angel went down in this battle. And he's the one whose heart is beating."

"The prophecy never mentioned Angel by name. It referred to the vampire with a soul. Spike's regaining his soul—that was a wildcard."

"There's got to be more to it than that. There's a lot Spike isn't telling me."

"So you haven't learned any more? You sound very tired. What's happening there?"

"Nothing good. He's had two serious hemorrhages in the last week, but he's back in his smelly little room, drinking again."

"Buffy. Some people will do that. Some people—"

"Giles. This isn't some people. It's Spike. He's not like this. He's never been like this."

"He's a human being now. Alcoholism—you don't know, Buffy. You've never seen it up close—"

She didn't believe Spike was an alcoholic—at least, he certainly wasn't when he was a vampire. He drank sometimes to excess then, because he was bored or unhappy. But he always stopped when something more interesting engaged him.

There was a willfulness to what he was doing now that suggested the same thing. If there was something more attractive than killing himself slowly, she believed he'd be perfectly able to stop.

She just didn't know what that could be, if her love wasn't it.

It was so strange, to be near him and not feel the mute impress on her consciousness—and her conscience—of Spike's love. She'd learned, first in disgust and then in some emotion too complex and uneasy for her to parse, to rely on it as an absolute. She'd used it for her own purposes. She'd tested it, over and over, and found it unflagging.

And now it was, without preamble or explanation, just gone.

Leaving her disoriented, unsure of herself, groping in the dark.

She'd never known how much she'd come to define herself by Spike's attention, until now. Even in the last few years since his "death," she'd still regarded herself, in some obscure, unquestioning way, as his. Plighted to him.

"Giles, it's not what you're saying. That would be the tail wagging the dog. The liquor, it's a symptom. I'm just not sure ... exactly what the disease is, yet."

"All right then. You know I'm ready to come if you think I can be useful to you. Or to send other help, whatever you need."

"... thank you. I just don't think it would be any use. I need to find out what happened to him."

"When you do, fill me in."

"Yes. Goodbye, Giles."



"Is there someone else you'd like to see, someone you'd like to keep you company? Besides me?" Buffy couldn't think who to offer him. Anya was dead, and anyway their liaison had only lasted that one night; Buffy couldn't recall Anya making much time for Spike when they were all holed up in her house together. She couldn't recall anyone making time for Spike. Well, except Andrew, but Spike couldn't possibly miss his pestering. She reached. "Maybe Faith? I could track her down." This was by no means certain, nor was the assertion she went on to make, "I'm sure she'd come." She couldn't imagine Faith here. She'd take one look at this set-up, at him slumped in the rattan chair like a pile of soiled laundry, and snap 'Later for this.' "Or Dawn. Would you like me to call Dawn? I know she'd be glad to—"

"Don't want to see anyone."

"She wouldn't be angry at you anymore. She forgave you, it bothers her that she never got to—"

"Don't want anyone."

He didn't want her, but he tolerated her. The way he tolerated the heat, the awful humidity that made her feel she'd been bundled into a sodden blanket in a steam room, unable to escape. He drank steadily all day and during long stretches of wakeful night, and barely moved. Sometimes when she glanced at him, he was in tears, but he never sobbed or wept aloud.

His unwashed body gave off a meaty smell he'd never had as a vampire. From time to time he'd lurch to his feet and urinate into a chamber pot that was kept under the bed. He made no effort to conceal himself; all the impetus was on her to turn her head, or get up and walk out if the loud rushing sound, the strong odor, was too much for her. He never touched the pot; Nguyen emptied it when he appeared, or Buffy did, holding it out at arm's length, when she couldn't stand the thought of the brimming thing half-concealed by the trailing sheet.

It was so odd, Spike pissing. Of course he never needed to before, and she'd never really wondered how it was that he could drink beer and not need to pee it out. Where did it go? He didn't sweat much either. Hardly at all, even when they'd been fucking for hours.

She remembered, when she was with Riley, how he'd always get up at a certain point after love-making. If they were at his place, where the bathroom was right off the bedroom, she'd be able to hear the heavy stream hitting the water; it was a sound she always disliked, was embarrassed by. Didn't like seeing the toilet seat standing up either, when she went in there.

She'd lived in a household of women only for so long that she'd forgotten that that was normal too.

Nothing with Spike was normal. For a while she toyed with the idea of asking him what it was like, having human bodily functions again. But there wasn't going to be any good answer to that—clearly he hated his body, his life, himself, or else he wouldn't be here anaesthetizing himself like this. So, not a useful line of questioning.

She hadn't yet asked him any of her other smoldering questions. She was waiting for an auspicious time. Mostly she asked if he was hungry—sometimes he'd consent to eat, but usually afterwards he'd vomit. Though it made her retchy too, she stayed with him through these bouts, breathing through her mouth, sometimes closing her eyes.

Once she tried to talk to Nguyen, to enlist him as an ally. But if he understood any English, he kept that carefully concealed. It was obvious though, from the way he looked at her, that he viewed her as an interloper. Perhaps he feared she'd rob him of his meal ticket. Spike did have money—this was another facet of the mystery. Once she saw Nguyen give him bank documents to sign; an hour later he returned with an envelope full of multicolored bills, which he showed to Spike before putting it into a tiny safe set into the wall.

"Why did you come to Vietnam? To this town?" Buffy asked. "Do you like it here?"

"Nobody likes Dai Phuong. S'a cesspool."

"Why then?" Maybe he had some history here. She didn't know about his past—only about the two murdered slayers. If he'd been to China, perhaps he'd spent time in southeast Asia as well.

He shook his head, but just when she thought he was going to doze off, he opened his eyes wide and looked at her. His face was so thin now, his eyes so glassy, that his stare had something horrible about it. "Thought I'd do a bit of seeking, see? Try to learn what it's all about. Go up to those lofty spiritual places in the clouds, where they supposedly know what's what. How to find enlightenment."

"You mean, like, in Tibet?" This was unexpected—exciting, even. She leaned forward. "You were going to meet a guru? Learn to meditate?"

"Yeah. Seemed like the thing to do, after ... after."

"So—what happened?"

"Got this far, an' thought, what the fuck."

He'd always had this—call it a talent—to rock her back with words. The difference now wasn't so much that he'd honed his skills, as that she was so wide open. Years ago, she'd thought he was pathetic, and had no qualms about telling him so.

He was pathetic now, in an entirely different way, but she could no longer begin to summon that old disdain. Her stomach was a tight knot; fear and frustration. She wanted to shake him, make him be clear, make him be the old Spike she knew how to cope with.

He stared blearily at his knees, the bottle clutched at the end of his dangling arm. Like he'd already forgotten they were talking. Forgotten she was there. Buffy's eyes compulsively traced a vein that bulged up on his shoulder, down to his biceps and into the crook of his elbow. His pallid skin was slick; he looked deader than he ever had when he was undead.

It was so hard to talk to him; Buffy had to gather herself before every attempt. After a while, she said, "Would you still like to go there? I'd take you—" Hastily she corrected herself, "I mean, I'd go with you."

"Fucking hell, what sort of a nancy d'you take me for?"

"I don't. You brought it up first! I just—"

"You'd clean the floor with your tongue if I asked you to now, wouldn't you? What the fuck's wrong with you, Slayer? 'Stead of hangin' round where you're not wanted, you should be off doin' your job."



She wanted to return a sharp answer: who are you to tell me what my job is? but the words stuck in her mouth, and then they didn't make any sense anyway. No one knew better than Spike what her job in life was, or used to be. The job she'd walked away from.

She was supposed to be free now, because of the power sharing—free to realize her potential. That is, the potential she had back when she was a normal girl most concerned with lipgloss and whether she had the right boys—and the right number of boys—on her string. She'd never really thought about what she wanted to grow up to be, in those days. She'd more or less expected that she'd go to college, then marry somebody suitable who would give her a house with a pool, and a convertible, and she'd maybe work for a couple of years and then quit to start a family, trading in the convertible for an SUV. Her teengirl ambitions never went much further than the need to be the girl with the best boyfriend.

"Well, so should you!"

He sneered. "What's my job meant to be, then?"

"What ... whatever you were doing with Angel, before ...." She frowned. She didn't know what that was, not a clue. "You still haven't explained to me how you weren't dusted in the hellmouth, let alone—"

"Was dusted in the hellmouth. Burned up from the inside out."

Surprising—maybe it shouldn't have been—how hard it was, despite his matter-of-fact tone, to hear this. She didn't want to picture it. She knew what a burning vampire looked like. She'd heard their agonized screams. "So how'd you get around that?"

He snorted with real disgust. "Purely 'gainst my will, I assure you. Ended up at Angel's when someone mailed him back the amulet. Dunno who did it or how. Thing belonged to The Senior Partners at Wolfram & Hart, which is all you need to know, really. I was trapped inside it somehow. Was just a ghost for a while. Walkin' through walls. Havin' to watch the others run that demon law firm an' tell themselves they weren't getting corrupted by it. Couldn't leave the city, was tied to the place. Had no choice then but to keep company with the old Poof. When I was corporeal again, there were other reasons to stick close. An' when it came down to him an' his lot makin' their big move, tryin' to bring the whole thing down, 'course I signed on."

"... so there was a battle. They weren't corrupted? They fought on the right side?"

"Yes. And ... no. 'Course there was corruption. Rottenness shot through an' through the lot of 'em, and believe me, it hurt 'em all. Makin' that bargain with the Senior Partners cost Angel more'n' he ever imagined. But they fought the good fight when the time came."

And they all fell. Only you were spared."

"No, I wasn't." His anger was back; not at her, but at the forces that manipulated him. "Was beheaded by some great smelly Orc with a bloody huge sword. Had time to think it wasn't near as much fun as flaming out with all the power of the universe surging through me. But stands to reason dyin' for glory wouldn't be as good the second time. Shouldn't have been a second time. Didn't want one. I was supposed to be through. Wanted to be, by then."

"And after?"

"I dusted. No more Spike."

"Yet here I am, talking to Spike."

"Told you. I'm not him. They took him away, left only me."

"... yes. I heard you." She wasn't entirely sure of all he meant by this, though she could guess. "You're still answering to—"

"Too polite, I guess ... an' too annoying ... to correct you every bloody time."

This rebuke made her flush. "Okay, okay, William. So—"

"Woke up in a room in Angel's old place, that hulk of a hotel, few days later. Weak an' full of needs I'd long since forgotten, my heart tryin' to fling itself out my chest. Was alone there." He took a long swallow from the bottle in his hand. "... been alone since."

She knew what it was, to believe you were finished, entitled at last to peace, then to come to in a strange place. On the infrequent occasions when something reminded her of it, Buffy recalled all the terror of that confined awakening as if it was fresh. His story made her shudder, and filled her with pity. But she knew better now than to express that pity. "That's what I don't understand. Why didn't you—"

"What? Ring up your lot? You've never known what it is, have you, to live, day in, day out, among people that loathe an' despise you. Why would I run back to that? Just because they're the only familiar faces left? Pardon me, didn't feature bein' part of Rupert's cabinet of curiosities—the vamp who got made into a real boy. Not that he was ever curious 'bout me before."

She couldn't deny that Giles had despised him, or that Xander had, although she didn't think that either of them did on the day of his sacrifice. Or that they would've despised a newly-human Spike. But there was no point getting into that with him. "I can understand that."

"Doubt it. Don't think you ever gave it a thought—what it was like for me, those final few months. When I thought it would be better I go—you kept me there."

"I did. But c'mon Spike ... if you'd really wanted to leave, you'd have left. You were glad to be there."

"Never heard you say a word to your friends when they were rude to me."

She blushed, and knew he saw her. Part of her wanted to laugh, at the whole idea of the Big Bad's wittle fweelings being hurt because some thoughtless young people were rude to him. But it was true. He'd returned to them with a soul, a soul he'd fought for and won, and no one had ever expressed the slightest wonder, let alone amazement or respect. No one had asked him to tell his story. "Okay, yeah. I didn't and I should have. But I'm sorry that you misunderstood me so thoroughly."

"Don't think I did."

"That you believed I wouldn't drop everything to go to you, if you only let me know you were there! Either before this ... shanshu thing ... or after."

"Yeah, well."

"I admit it, okay! I thought ... I thought when we made love that last night in my basement, that you understood. You've always seemed to understand me, Spike. But I should've told you. I should've shown you more clearly, how much I—I wanted you. Esteemed you, adored you—listen to me, I'm saying what you've always wanted to hear! I wanted a future with you, afterwards. I was afraid to hope for that. And I guess I was afraid to say any of this out loud, but God, I felt it. That's haunted me, since. All the things I never got to tell you." She hoped this might garner some acknowledgement from him. The Spike she'd thought she knew would've blissed out on this confession.

This Spike lit a cigarette, and blew out a long stream of smoke. "Give the bleedin' violins a rest now, Slayer. They're gettin' on my nerves."



His casual cruelty wasn't like the Spike she'd first known. In those days, he'd enjoyed baiting her; even at his coolest, he was red hot whenever they were together. Nothing off-hand about it.

Now he took her loving words—the confession that cost her all kinds of pride and self-possession to say—as if they were nothing more than tiresome.

Behind the shroud of mosquito netting, he slept. Buffy wandered around the room, looking at his things. There wasn't much, but he'd been here long enough to accumulate a couple piles of books—some in English, some in French, all at least thirty years old, and most of them at least beginning to mildew. There was a radio, but no television. She looked for something familiar: the duster. His old scuffed boots. Found nothing like that.

This was so bad. She shouldn't stay here, to be treated this way. Wasn't it time to go home? What would any of her friends say about a woman who hung around trying to change a man, a man who wasn't interested, or kind, or healthy?

She knew what she'd advise anyone else, in her place. That's not love. It's stupidity.

She really should go back to Rome. Get seriously started on whatever the next phase of her life was going to be.

There was a deck of cards. Buffy laid out a game of solitaire on the table, and poured herself a finger of bourbon into a clean glass.

She was in the midst of her twenty-second game when Spike got up. With her back to him, she listened to him curse, and scratch, and cough, and piss, and groan because his belly pained him.

"Found the cards, I see. Deal us out a game of gin rummy. You know how to do that, don't you?"

She nodded, concealing her surprise. Opening a new bottle, lighting a fresh cigarette, he took the other chair. "Five hundred dong a point. Ante up, Slayer."

"I'm not playing for money."

"Yeah you are. Make it interesting."

"Kittens were interesting. This is just ..." She shook her head, but pulled out the wad of small denomination notes from her pocket. The money here was all paper, and was something like 13,500 dong to the dollar. It was like play money.

Something ought to be done about feeding him, but she was afraid that if she suggested that, he'd get angry. Maybe after a round or two of cards.

They played in silence. Spike smoked hard, holding his head at an angle, squinting. In the light of the flickering 40-watt bulb that hung over the table, he was cadaverous, his cheek and clavicle bones in deep shadow. He winced frequently, touching his stomach each time. Buffy restrained herself from remarking on it.

After a half hour, she said, "I'm surprised to find you here, in Downpour Central. I'd have thought a former vamp would go someplace sun-drenched. So you could find out at long last whether you'd freckle."

"Told you why I'm here."

"Yeah, but that doesn't explain why you don't leave."

"Play your hand."

"I'm not going to let you win all my money. You'll only spend it on booze."

"Don't need your money."

"You used to. Who's bankrolling you now?"

"There's an account. Was there when I began this life. Found a passport, an' various cards an' statements laid out for me on the dresser. When I spend it, they top it up."

"They?"

He shrugged. "Dunno who. Don't care."

"It might be blood money. Evil money. Wolfram & Hart money."

"Probably is. Don't care."

"I'm surprised you'd touch it. But I guess you don't spend much. Your wants are simple, I see. You like squalor, although I guess you don't exactly thrive on it. This isn't even top shelf bourbon, and really, with the exchange rate what it is here, you could buy anything you want for peanuts."

"There's nothing I want."

She trembled inside, but decided to go on pushing. "I thought you wanted to be dead. So ... why aren't you?"

"Will be soon enough. Now be quiet an' play."

He won two hands, she won one. Neither of them was being aggressive about it. Spike had taken over custody of the pack; he didn't ask her, as they finished each round, if she was up for another, just kept dealing. Another hour went by in near silence, before Buffy tried again.

"So you got the reward that Angel was supposed to get. Is that why you're doing this to yourself?"

He ignored her. They made a few plays, he drank down another glass of bourbon.

"I'd have thought you'd relish taking the top prize away from Angel. You with the big rivalry."

No answer.

"You think you didn't deserve it? I mean, whether Angel did or not, that's a separate question. You really think you were unworthy? C'mon, Spike, you stepped up. You stepped up big time. And nothing forced you to. You got that soul of your own free will. Which means you had a conscience even when you were supposedly nothing but evil. I've met a lot of vamps in my time, and none of 'em ever had that. I could argue that makes you more—"

"Shut yer gob an' play, or get out."

"But I want to understand what's happening here. You say you want to die, but why are you taking such a slow way about it?"

"Don't recall consulting you."

"So why did the Powers give you the Shanshu, and not Angel? Do you have any theories?"

"'Spect it was my beaux yeux."

"Maybe." She made an elaborate shrug. "Probably the whole thing was a mistake. Angel was supposed to wear the amulet. Instead, it was you. Administrative cock-up. I guess that's why you feel so guilty."

"Fat lot you know about it."

His mounting irritation was a result. Not quite the result she wanted, but a result nevertheless. "What do you think Angel would've done afterwards, if he got the Shanshu thing?"

That question earned her a look—a look that would've killed her by frying her every synapse, if it could.

Carefully, she laid down her winning hand, and scooped the money towards her. "Just so you know ... if it had been him ... and he'd come to me ... I wouldn't have married him or anything."

Spike growled. "Bollocks."

"It's true. All of that between us was over a long time ago, and it wouldn't have come back. But I guess I can't expect you to believe that either. You don't believe anything I say."

"You'd better go an' marry some fellow or other, Slayer. You won't be marrying me."

Oh ho. "I don't recall asking for your hand."

"Just lettin' you know you'd better squash any ideas you've been keepin' with all those 'sweethearts' you've been dolin' out."

"Noted. Deal again?"

"I'm done. Goin' to bed."

She was going to make another smart remark, but when he rose, Spike staggered and pitched forward; she caught him before he went sprawling. For a moment he was in her arms—not at all in the way she wished him to be. His hair and skin smelled bad—not just unwashed, but with the high funk of degeneration. A groan escaped him; he pushed her back. Something splattered on her, something bright red. Holding his stomach, barely keeping his balance, Spike bolted towards the kitchen. She heard him vomit, then cough, then vomit again.

When she was seventeen, she'd constantly imagined her wedding to Angel. Drawn pictures in the back of her notebook of the gown she'd have, the bouquet. Imagined him in a black morning suit, a white rose in his lapel. Imagined, over and over, the sweetness of their first married kiss. Their first married dance. Imagined her mother and Giles there, to watch it, and applaud, and eat from her wedding cake. Imagined how they'd float through the years on clouds of bliss, belonging to each other, never wanting anything or anyone else.

His blood made her shirt stick to her skin. "Spike—are you all right?" She ran to him. Je suis Madame Smith. Mon mari, Est-il ici?




He wouldn't go back to the infirmary. "Don't want to be stuck full of pins by a gaggle of nuns. Fucking nuns I used to eat for breakfast."

For the next few days he barely stirred from the bed. She sat with him as he dozed, fanning herself with a fan made of woven rushes she'd bought in the market, listening to the BBC World Service, sweating. Occasionally Spike talked in his sleep—nothing very coherent, but he always sounded angry. He drank water and didn't ask for liquor or cigarettes. Didn't ask for anything. But he was too weak to refuse her help when he needed to get up.



"Giles, can you get someone to find out who forged Spike's papers? Who's financing him?"

"He's being financed?"

"Not for much. But yes." She'd taken advantage of his long periods of unconsciousness to do a bit of ransacking, and now she was at the post office, the only place she could find that had modern tech. "I just sent you some faxes. Copies of his passport—his last bank statement. It's very small potatoes, and I don't think he's got any other hidden accounts. There's just enough to live month by month. But he says he doesn't know where it comes from."

"I'll try to get someone on it. The council's a bit short-staffed on forensic accountants at present."

This tiny joke made her smile. "Ask Willow to work her internet magic. And ask her to find out for me what Spike's real name is. I'm pretty sure it's not William Smith, even if that's what's on the passport."

"That may not be so easy. Why can't you ask him yourself?"

"That's what's not so easy. But I need to know."

"All right. I'll see what can be done." Giles paused. "How are you doing, Buffy?"

"I'm tired. I've been sitting up with him. But it's nothing to what he is. He's really suffering."

"Suffering that's self-inflicted."

This shut down her friendly feeling. "It's not that simple. Why do you have to pass judgment on him even now? You don't know—"

Giles was quiet for a moment. Then he said, "You're right. I don't know. I'm sorry."

"Listen to me. I don't think I'm going to say this again, or to anybody else. But I want you to know. Giles, Spike is the one. He's the one. Whatever else happens in my life ... there isn't going to be anybody else for me remotely as—as—" She'd been so steely, but suddenly her eyes filled. "I—I have to go. I can't leave him alone too long."

"Buffy, I understand. I understand that you need what you need. I hope ... I hope things work out with him."

"They probably won't. But I have to try."

"Yes. I'll call when I have the information."




On the third bedridden day, he asked again for the bourbon.

"Spike, you were vomiting blood. You can't just—"

"Don't tell me what I can't do, Slayer. You here to help me, or—"

"I'm not here to help kill you." But she rose and brought him the bottle. There didn't seem to be any point in refusing. Withholding it wasn't going to instill in him a will to live.

After the stuporous days, in the dead of night he was wakeful and even chatty. Volunteered little stories about Angel's crew, about a green demon named Lorne who wore amazing suits, and a woman who called herself Fred, who had a great scientific mind. He described how she was taken over by a god.

"A god? Like Glory?"

"Bit more reasonable. Not exactly a bad sort, as rogue gods go, except that it destroyed a dear sweet woman an' stole her body."

"Dear sweet? You had a crush on her."

"We all liked her, all us fellows. Adorable slip of a girl, an' smart as a whip. Was Wesley who was in love with her. Was in his arms she died."

"Oh. Poor Wesley." She still thought of him as the prissy watcher she'd had to slap down, though she'd been told he'd changed.

"Waited for her a long time, I think, while she didn't care for him, an' in the end never even got to fuck her. But knew, before he lost her, that she returned his love. So in a way, it was all right."

In a way.

She wanted to ask what Fred had done to show Wesley that she loved him back. How had she managed it so as to be believed?

But she couldn't ask. This Fred was dear and sweet—two things she couldn't accuse herself of being, not with him anyhow—so probably that accounted for it. Women like that didn't have trouble imparting themselves to their lovers.

Spike talked readily about some things, but when she asked him direct questions, especially about anything to do with the Shanshu, he ignored them. If she pressed him, he flared up, accused her of enjoying his suffering. "You're lovin' it, seein' me brought low. That's what you hang around for."

"No. God, no."

"Never wanted you to see me like this. Puny an' disgustin'."

"You don't have to be— If you'd just stop, you'd be—"

"I am puny. I always was. What do you think I ever was, when I was a man? Man or vamp—just runnin' fast as I could to stay in the same place. Puttin' on a big show. Load of bollocks."

"I don't think that's true. You're not seeing yourself clearly right now. You've lost your self-respect, but that doesn't mean it's true that—"

"You don't fucking know me. You never did. Never cared to."

"I care to now. I'm listening now. Please, Spike—"

"Leave me be. Too tired for this crap."



In the middle of the third night after the hemorrhage, he wept. To Buffy's surprise, he didn't pull away when she sat on the edge of the bed, put a hand on his arm. She could tell he was feverish, even through the sultry heat of the room. He should've been in a sweat, and wasn't. His crying produced no tears. She stroked his arm. Whispered. "What's the matter, Spike? Can't you tell me? Can't you let me share it with you, whatever it is? Maybe it isn't so bad. Nothing could be so bad that you have to punish yourself this way."

For a long time he cried, but would say nothing. At last, near dawn, he subsided. She thought he was asleep, when he murmured, "Just can't do it. Not me. Not me."



The next day he was up again, still weakened, still refusing food, but ready once more to play cards, and smoke.

Buffy cut the deck. The shuffling echoed the sound of the omnipresent rain. She dealt.

"How did you know about me and the Immortal? You spied on me?"

"Angel spied. Angel knew. Wasn't aware of it myself, 'til he shared a bit."

"I don't know how I feel about that." She did know. She didn't like it. But this wasn't the time to go into that.

"Had no business keepin' tabs on you, way I saw it. Doesn't say good things 'bout a man, when he keeps tabs on an ex. Anyway, had no call to be doin' it. He had a mistress."

"He did?" Her stomach made a shameful little seize.

"Pretty blonde, no surprise. Werewolf, bit of a surprise there." The corners of his mouth turned down. "Would've liked a mistress of my own. Didn't quite get around to it though, an' then everything fell to shit."

He threw out a card.

Buffy stared at it, through the thick smoke, while the room spun around her, and her heart pressed up into her throat.

"Spike. I'll be your mistress. I'd like to be."

She imagined slipping out of her chair, taking off her teeshirt, offering him her breasts. Saw herself getting on her knees for him. Wanted his two hands tangled in her hair while she took his cock in her mouth.

She would do it. It didn't matter that he was dirty and sick, she didn't see that, she just saw him. Wanted him. Wanted him to know how much.

She would do it.

She started to rise.

"Where're you goin'? Play your turn, Buffy."

"Spike—"

Then he laughed. "Haven't had a stiffy last three months at least. Got no use for a mistress now."

That laugh—nasty, mocking her and himself—made her cringe and flush. She dropped back into her chair.




The next morning, he was still in bed when she arrived, looking as if he'd lost a desperate struggle with the sheets. The room smelled of vomit, and there were flecks of dried blood on the pillow. His hair and beard were darkened with sweat; he rattled when he inhaled.

Buffy's heart sank. What should she do? Drag him back to the infirmary? And what then?

As if he'd read her mind, Spike said, "How long're you goin' to keep comin' here, Slayer? S'not doin' you nor me any good."

"I want to help you." The meaningless of this rang in her ears as she said the words. Spike hadn't lifted his head; his voice was half-muffled by the pillow. He coughed, his whole body shaking. He was shivering with fever. She approached, but he thrust an arm out to ward her off.

"Had a bitch of a night, feel like shit, can't stand your hoverin'. Go away. Just go away—least 'til later."

It was true that he was at his worst in the mornings, and at his best—a very poor best—in the late afternoons.

"I'll bring you something to eat, then. Later. Around five?"

"Five. Sure. Piss off, now."

The day weighed heavily on her. The rain was unchanged, so heavy that she couldn't maintain any enthusiasm for exploring the town—she'd seen most of it already. She sat in the cafe with one of Spike's books, slowly sipping beer and reading as the hours crawled damply by.

In the afternoon she checked her email at the public terminals in the tiny post office. There was a note from Dawn, who was in the midst of her university finals. Buffy hadn't told her about this trip; she wondered now whether she should ask Dawn to come here when her semester was over, even though Spike didn't want to see anyone. If he did die, and Dawn found out that she'd missed a chance to tell him about her forgiveness ... and maybe he would respond to her, if she was here. They'd been close while she was dead—closer, Buffy suspected, than anybody ever told her. Sure, that closeness evaporated when her affair with Spike began, but that didn't mean he didn't still have great untapped reservoirs of affection for her sister. The sight of her might bring that to the surface.

What if I bring her here, and she succeeds where I'm failing? What if Spike gets better for her, and they fall in love and Dawn marries him? How would I live with that? I'd have to live with it. I wouldn't be able to say anything. I'd be glad, glad he was alive and they were happy, and I'd be a really good aunt to their kids and—

This musing, coming out of who knew what crazy recess of her mind, left Buffy with a don't-know-whether-to-laugh-or-cry feeling. In some ways, she was still a schoolgirl, with schoolgirl preoccupations. Here she was mired in this heart-rending horror, and her subconscious served her up with what if my sister crushes on the boy I like?

This story wasn't going to end with wedded bliss for anyone. She could see that much already.

Sitting there in the stuffy post office, staring at the grimy screen, a wave of woe overtook her, so hard and sudden that she drooped and suppressed a groan. Something opened in her, and she got the Spike's-eye view: life was shitty. Nothing meant anything, nothing led anywhere, love was futile, death didn't soothe or solve anything, pain was omnipresent. You struggled along, and each time you managed to save the goddamn world just meant you'd have to save it again a little later, only it would be even harder, and life would be grubbier and stupider afterwards.

What was she going to do with herself? Even if she persuaded Spike not to die, what was that going to do, for her or for him? They weren't here to solve each other's lives—no one could do that for anyone else, anyway. And if all her purpose as a woman had come down to what was happening in this place—well, that had to mean she really was lost. He was maddening and pathetic, taking the boon he'd been granted—a boon Angel had strived towards with all of himself for years—and drowning it in booze-soaked self-pity. That was disgusting. If he was going to go on like that, he didn't deserve her help, or anyone's.

But she couldn't go back to skiing at Gstaad. She didn't know what she could go back to. Spike had become something that was appalling, but her love didn't know that, her love—dashed and defeated as it was—refused to lose all hope, wanted to be with him.




At five she went to his apartment, carrying a container of hot fish stew, and another bottle of Jack—which she planned to hold back, a reward for good behavior. If he ate, and didn't throw up, she'd break it out afterwards.

When she came in, the light was on beside the bed, the ceiling fan slowly whirling, the radio on low, playing the BBC World Service. He wasn't in the room.

"Spike?"

In the kitchen she set the food down. The bathroom door was shut. She heard the bath running. That was a good sign. He hadn't bathed in quite a while.

"Spike, I've brought dinner. Will you be finished soon? It's hot."

No answer.

"Spi—all right, William. William, sir, your dinner is served. Whenever you're ready."

Under the forty-watt bulb that dangled from the ceiling, she blinked back a headache as she assembled the bowls and spoons. Set the table in the main room and came back for the stew.

Then she noticed the glimmer on the floor. Going closer, she saw that water had seeped out under the door, was spreading slowly across the worn linoleum on the kitchen floor.

"Spike! What's going on in there!"

Still no response; she kicked in the bathroom door.

The place was awash in red. Bloody water steadily pouring over the side of the bathtub, half an inch deep on the floor. Blood splashes on the dun walls.

And in the overflowing tub, where he was submerged in red steaming water, Spike's slashed arms floated, still seeping threads of darker red.



Before the police herded the rubbernecking locals out, Spike's apartment was so packed that the doctor had to struggle to get through. It was Nguyen who had conjured all these rubbernecking witnesses when, after coming upon her keening over Spike on the bathroom floor, he hastened out into the market, calling for help.

Two policemen stood between Buffy and the apartment door, as if they expected her to bolt. She didn't understand what anyone was saying, the voices gabbled all around her, barely heard. Her eyes, her whole being, were fixed on Spike. She'd dragged him out of the tub, knelt with him on the flooded floor, trying everything she could think of to revive him. The only effect of her efforts was seemingly to expel the last thin dregs of blood from his torn arms. He didn't move or cough; no sound issued from his sunken chest. Lying now on a stretcher in the main room, covered to his chest in a sheet, he was white as a maggot, eyes half open, unstaring.

God I'm stupid. Why did I shoot my mouth off? Why did I say that about dying the slow way?

The doctor barely touched Spike's lips and neck before he rose and began writing something in a small notebook, talking out of the side of his mouth to the policemen. Two of them lifted the stretcher and started towards the street.

"What!" Buffy cried. "What are you doing—you're supposed to help him! Do something! CPR! Give him mouth-to-mouth—!" She surged forward. "I'll do it! Let me try once more!"

They caught her by the arms before she could fall again on Spike's body. Dragged her upright, held her. She could've torn herself free easily, but the doctor was looking at her now, shaking his head. He was an old man, all the lines of his face trending down, as if dragged by the weight of his experience. He shook his head. In English, he said, "Lady, this man dead. Four, five hour."



Whenever they fucked, it was hard, violent. She needed to work herself off on him, work off her rage and frustration and ennui. That he liked it too was just convenient.

Sometimes he complained about how difficult she was to keep up with. But always there was a note of admiration in his voice. And he liked the rough stuff just as much as she did—she knew that. She decided that was all she needed to know about him. He was good for this, and he could say no if he wanted to, but he never really did. He might say no, but his cock would spring up at the merest suggestion. She didn't have to consider his feelings, because she didn't really believe in them.

Once she let him tie her up. Not with the hand-cuffs, but with chains cased in velvet. Instead of spread-eagling her, he sat her up on the foot of the bed, spreading her legs wide, lashing her ankles to the bed-legs, binding her hands to the posts. These won't hurt you, love, he said as he fastened her wrists and ankles. As if she cared whether they did or not. She'd never asked him not to hurt her.

Such a pretty quim yours is, he said. Ever taken a good look at it?

She rolled her eyes. As if.

He brought out a mirror from his collection of junk, propped it up so that she was confronted with her reflection: her face, already a little reddened, breasts stretched taut by her upraised arms. And there it was, all that part of her that she in fact had never deliberately looked at, not like this, spread open to show everything. She closed her eyes.

Want you to look.

Yeah, well, you can't tie up my eyeballs, so I guess I'll do what I want there.

Gonna show you yourself at your most beautiful. Gonna show you how I love seein' you.

Kneeling before her, he began to kiss her there. At first, eyes squeezed shut, she repressed her urge to berate him—he wasn't doing it right, it wasn't hard enough, it was too slow. He was wasting her time with these kisses she could barely feel—she didn't have all night for this bullshit. His hands on her thighs, barely touching.

She wasn't going to look at what he was doing. Wasn't going to look in case he raised his eyes to hers. She didn't want him seeing her like that, tied up and powerless.

Her clit throbbed. He kissed it as lightly and indiscriminately as if it was her forehead, didn't stay on it. His lips went here, and there, and didn't stay anywhere. She flexed, tried to push herself against his mouth.

See yourself, he whispered. Watch yourself, sweetness.

In the mirror, she was alone. Though he was firmly planted between her thighs, there was no reflection of Spike to block her view. She could see the effect of what he was doing, see her pussy flex and twitch, see the wetness spread out from the center, the lips redden and pooch.

Then he feathered his tongue over her clit; it went hard and bright red. As he bore in deeper, closer, licked faster, she watched it all happen, the orgasm building up slowly from the root of herself. It was fascinating, the most amazing thing she'd ever seen. She forgot about the indignity of this, forgot that she'd ceded control. She came sobbing, transfixed on her image in the mirror.

He whispered against her belly as she panted and throbbed. You saw it, love, saw how you look to me. God I love you. I love you, Buffy. And when he kissed her mouth tenderly before undoing the restraints, she didn't bite or force her tongue against his. She kissed him back.

They never talked about that scene afterwards. Never did anything like it again. She gave him the heave-ho soon after.

On their last night in her basement, after their first long slow fuck, and after she sucked him off, and after the short nap she woke from angry at losing even ten minutes with him, he laid her back with a pillow beneath her hips. She understood what he wanted, and lolled her legs apart. Remembering what he'd said about her beauty, she flushed and smiled as he looked at her. Lay patiently while he looked his fill.

Afterwards, he kissed her repeatedly on her mouth, pausing sometimes to draw in breath, as if he would speak, and then going on again, as if he couldn't begin to say in words what he was telling her in kisses. She tasted herself on his lips and tongue, tasted his satisfaction with her, his love. They conversed in kisses, and she was certain he knew everything about how she belonged to him at last, how she would always belong to him from now on. How she wanted nothing else but to be his, as he was hers.

Her whole love affair with this man who was more to her than anyone else was contained in that single night. It was the only time she had to love him. The only time she traded shame for joy in his arms. When that night was done, there was no more.

Beneath the mosquito netting, curled up in the middle of her hotel bed, Buffy rocked herself in a fever, wrapped in the relentless shush shush of the hot rain on the other side of the slatted blinds.

There was no more.



When the room changed from pitch black to deep grey, so that she could see the outlines of things, she stopped pretending she'd ever fall asleep. Her whole body was cramped in on itself, an ache, a stone.

Her mobile phone rang.

"Sorry if I woke you. I didn't add up the time difference," Giles said. "I've got some answers for you. A William Merrit-Smith, whose birth was registered on July 10th, 1848, in the parish church of Canonbury—that's in London—and who died on October 12th, 1880, is almost certainly our man. He was the youngest son of Charles Merrit-Smith, a solicitor, and his wife Anne, whose maiden name was Banning. He was a solicitor also, employed in the family firm. There was an older brother, also Charles, and two sisters, also older. William was the baby of the family—ten years distance between him and the next oldest."

Buffy said, "Oh."

"As for the money, Willow did trace it back. By quite a circuitous route, the funds originate in a numbered Swiss account dating back to the early nineteenth century, and administered from that time to the present as a trust by a small firm of Dublin solicitors."

"I think that's the most times I've ever heard you say the word 'solicitor'."

"I won't bore you with all the details, but the money was Angel's."

"Angel's."

"He made these arrangements for Spike. In anticipation, seemingly, of what would happen."

"Seemingly."

"Buffy. Are you all right? You sound quite dull. Nothing's happened, has it?"

"I'm fine. I'm ... is that Merrit with one 't', or two?"

"One."

"One. Okay. Good. Thanks. Bye."

Merrit-Smith. Merrit-Smith. That wasn't bad. She wouldn't have hated changing her name to Merrit-Smith.

She never would change her name now. Never share a home with a man. Never have a child. Of all this she was certain.

He was the one.




The night before, she'd tried to follow Spike's body, but the police kept her back. She must come to the station.

At the station she was made to wait while an interpreter was sorted out, so she could be questioned. They put her to sit in the chief's office, where two shabby leather guest chairs faced a shabby desk, under the ubiquitous ceiling fan.

Buffy didn't want to be questioned. She wanted to rush to where Spike was.

Her heart seemed to be beating very slowly. As if it was winding down and would soon stop. She clasped her hands between her knees, laid her head on them. Curling up small seemed better, easier. It was harder to breathe that way, and if she couldn't breathe she wouldn't cry. She didn't want to cry in front of the police. Didn't want to sprawl on the floor and shriek and bang her head. That would be fucked up.

It might have been an hour later, or five hours—she had no idea—when a policeman drove her to her hotel on the back of his scooter. She'd tried to decline this courtesy—the walk would've taken ten minutes and not necessitated having to sit so close to a stranger—but the interpreter insisted, and Buffy didn't want to fail in politeness. Asians always thought Americans were rude.

There was a power cut as they rounded the corner away from the station. Buffy saw all the lights go out down the street, the windows fall dark. The bulbs seemed to glow for a few seconds, like fireflies winking out. Despite the darkness, her driver didn't slow down. She arrived spattered in mud, wet to her waist. The lights came on again as she crossed the hotel lobby.

They were all polite to her, in the police station. No one suspected her of lying, or of having had anything to do with Spike's death, which, the interpreter assured her, was most sad. She was free to make arrangements; the body would be released to her agents whenever her arrangements were in place. Though no one was unkind to her, Buffy had the sense that all these officials were irritated by the white foreigner whose suicide created extra paperwork.

Arrangements.

She didn't know how to begin to make arrangements. She couldn't even get out of bed. Eating was out of the question. She wanted a bath, but he had died in the bath, so she couldn't do that.

He might not be dead today if she'd said something different to him. If she'd just handled the whole thing in some other way—some way that a girl like dear sweet Fred would've instinctively known.

It occurred to her that she should've been angry—didn't suicide leave people angry?—but there was nothing like that. She could barely even cry now. Just lay staring up into the ceiling fan's blur, as her eyes leaked corrosive tears.

The banging roused her. It took a while to understand that it was someone knocking on her door. She had no idea what time it might be or how long she'd lain there motionless. Long enough that when she tried to move she felt rooted in place. Her muscles sang with pain as she got up, every one of them threatening to tighten into a charleyhorse; her legs didn't want to straighten, or bear her weight.

Through the spyhole she saw Nguyen. What was he here for? He might want money owed to him. He might want to make trouble for her.

"Go away," Buffy said. "I can't talk to you."

She started back to the bed, but the banging continued. A piping voice called, "Lady, Lady! Please you come!"

The young boy with Nguyen was the one who called out; she hadn't been able to see him through the peephole. When she opened the door he made a little bow and said, "Lady, please you come see."

Buffy glanced at Nguyen. His face was thundery, his eyes set in a squint. But he always looked like that.

"What is it? See what?"

"You come, you come, please."

So sure was she that they'd lead her back to the police station, which was also the jail and the morgue, that when they reached the turning, she went left while Nguyen and the boy went right. The child ran after her, splashing mud as he touched down in every puddle, and tugged on her hand.

They brought her to the infirmary.

A lick of satisfaction stirred in Buffy; yes, it was better that Spike be laid out here. It was cleaner and quieter, and the nuns would know how to treat his body. Whoever had decided this—the chief of police?—was admirably sensitive. She'd have to find out and thank him. And maybe the head nurse could help her with the arrangements.

When they'd crossed the courtyard and stood before the great wooden door, Buffy took out some money, tried to offer it to Nguyen and the boy. "Thank you. Thank you for telling me he's been brought here instead."

The boy blinked at the money, and didn't reach to take it. He shook his head. "You come see. Come see."

Nguyen led the way inside; the child tugged on her hand again, pulling her past the empty reception desk, into the inner sanctum. Buffy wondered why they didn't wait for someone to come; the nuns wouldn't like these civilians wandering around the place unaccompanied. She tried to catch Nguyen's eye, but he wasn't looking at her.

At a familiar door, the child stopped. "Lady, see."

Before Buffy could decide whether she was meant to knock, the head nurse came out, carrying a basin of soapy water with a sponge floating in it. She didn't seem surprised to see Buffy. She spoke in an approving tone to the child, who smiled as if he'd been petted, and to Nguyen, who nodded, and immediately taking the child in hand, started away.

Buffy tried to scrape up some French phrase, a greeting, a question. Her mouth was dry, her sight fizzled at the edges. She felt shame in front of this solemn important woman, who devoted herself to healing, to the exclusion of all else—she would think her a miserable failure. She'd let her charge commit suicide. Which was, Buffy recalled, a sin in her church.

The nun gazed at her with a strange fervency, then stepped aside to motion her into the little room.

Spike's body was in the same bed he'd occupied before. The blankets were pulled up to his chest. His arms were carefully dressed to the elbow, the bandages so white they seemed to glow in the listless grey light.

She stared, not understanding what she was seeing. Why had they put him here? Was it the usual thing in places like this, to tuck a corpse up in bed with blankets and a pillow? Maybe there was no room in the infirmary's morgue. Fatigue and grief had slowed her mind; thoughts were gluey and disconnected. She blinked, blinked again. The edges of things boiled in an unpleasant way. She was getting a headache.

Now that she'd seen him, she wasn't sure what the head nurse wanted her to do. Keep a vigil by the body? Probably she should now broach the subject of the funeral, the interment. She turned back to her, struggling to assemble a sentence. If she'd ever known the French for these things, she'd long forgotten it. She could only remember how to say excuse me or I'm sorry.

"Buffy ... "

It was as if something small and hard hit her in the small of the back, a pebble sharply flung. She shivered to her finger's ends and caught at the nurse's arm. Afraid to turn around, she kept her eyes fixed on the other woman's austere face.

Still cradling the basin of water, her eyes opening wider as if to encourage Buffy's own seeing, the nun put one large callused hand on Buffy's elbow, turned her back towards the bed.

"Maintenant vous voyez, Madame," she murmured. "C'est un vrai miracle, non?"

Trembling, terrified, Buffy let go of the nun's triumphant gaze, turned her bleary eyes back to the figure on the bed.

Spike lifted one feeble bloodless hand towards her. "Buffy. Oh God ... what's happening to me?"




She understood that she'd slapped him because her hand stung.

Understood that she'd screamed because the nurse was suddenly tugging on her. "Arrêt, madame! Du calme! Vous ne devez pas le déranger!"

"You fucking coward, I hate you! I can't believe you did that! I had to find you like that!"

"Madame, madame! Tranquillité! Ici pas Õtre un endroit pour les cris!"

Buffy spun to face her. "Je suis désolé! Excusez-moi! All right? Now please get out!"



He reminded her, in a disturbing way, of an animal. An animal that suffers dumbly, patiently, that conveys its pain only with its eyes and its stillness. This impression interfered with her sense of what to do next. She'd struck him and ranted, and now she was just looking at him while he looked back at her.

If he hadn't spoken already, she'd have feared he was mute. He regarded her with complete and sorrowful attention, like a dog. Outside the rain stopped, creating a sudden silence that was terrible to her.

"I'm sorry I hit you."

" ... doesn't matter."

"It matters. I'm so angry at you ... I just lost my shit. But I shouldn't have hit you."

They were both perspiring. Buffy's thighs stuck to the chair. Everywhere that her skin touched skin—even the insides of her elbows—was sticky and irritating. She hated this place. Of course he was crazy here, where it never cooled off, where you could never be really dry or clean or comfortable. This was a hopeless place.

"They said you were dead. I saw you dead."

"Didn't bloody take, did it?" He dropped his gaze then, and after a moment, closed his eyes. She started to speak again, then realized he was asleep.

Somehow she didn't want to hold his hand or lie beside him as she did before. Those felt like futile gestures, gestures that would weaken her. She thought again of going—to Saigon, where they had air conditioning—and then back home. Staying here was useless. He was just going to break her heart. She missed her previous ignorance of his existence. Ignorance was good.

She sat a little while longer, arguing with herself, berating herself. It wasn't that she wanted to leave him. She wanted nothing but to be here, to keep her attention fixed on him, as if that attention had the power to force him back into his old mold. It used to be, that whatever challenge she gave all of herself to, went her way. Because she was the slayer, with motives unmixed. It was some inner voice—a maternal, therapeutic sort of voice, the voice of stern articles in women's magazines about how Not To Be A Doormat With Your Man, that chivvied her to walk out before you drown.

She rose. It was time to cut this insanity short. He didn't want her anyway. She would go.

Spike flinched and cried out in his sleep. Another cry, and a convulsive spasm that launched him over the side. Buffy caught him before he fell out—it was like catching a loosely-tied bundle of sharp branches—and settled him back. His bony body quivered all over; he breathed in harsh sips, blinking. Watery eyes haunted, a fixed stare of incredulity and fear.

Dropping to her knees at the bedside, so she could look at him straight on, she wrapped her hand around his. "Don't be afraid. I'm here. I'm not going to abandon you."

"Christ ..."

"Oh Spi—William. I know it's hard. I'm sorry it's so hard. What do you need? Tell me what you need, anything, anything."

"Blow my brains out, won't come back from that. So what I need's a gun."




"How many times have you almost died?" She asked this as she walked back into his room. She'd gone outside, walked around the periphery of the infirmary's high walls. Paused in the blind alley at the rear to punch the stucco until both hands bled. She'd rinsed them in the outpouring from a downspout, and held them now, the skin raw and broken, at her sides. "Before this suicide attempt, you had the hemorrhage last week that everyone here said should've put you in the ground. And the one before that, when Oz found you, from which your recovery was also amazing. You don't eat and you subsist on bourbon and yet you keep on ticking."

"Haven't been well for some time."

"What does that mean?"

"I don't owe you any accounting of myself! You an' me, our business was done a long time ago!"

"Then why are you shouting at me? If you didn't care, you wouldn't yell."

"Fuck you."

"I don't think this wrist-slitting thing is the first time you actively tried to kill yourself. Tell me how many times you've tried to die."

It took an hour of needling and coaxing, but he finally admitted to a whole history of drunken mishaps, as he insisted on calling them, starting back in LA with the big gas oven in the Hyperion's kitchen, progressing through numerous overdoses and alcohol poisonings, the time he stepped out in front of an SUV and somehow bounced off the fuckin' windshield and landed ten yards away, bloodied but unbroken, and another time when he'd hung himself but the goddamn knot gave way. Three times. Nothing took, as Spike related it, and he always blamed it on being shit-faced. As if, had he possessed the will power to get really sober, he'd have managed to off himself for good by now.

Listening to this stream of frustrated illogic, Buffy realized what Spike either hadn't figured out yet, or—far more likely—refused to admit to himself. Human though he undeniably was, he wasn't going to be able to die. At least, not by his own hand, or of his own will.

"William, listen to me. You want to be finished—you can't take anymore. I know! I've been there! But you're not finished. And you're just going to have to suck it up."

"Not if I blow my head off. Not if there's nothing bloody left."

"If you get a gun—and I have no doubt you will if you want to, I've seen them laid out for sale in the marketplace—you know what's going to happen?"

"Nothin' you have to worry about, Slayer. Won't do it where you'll have to see."

"Don't you understand yet what's going to happen? You'll end up disfigured, and in a permanent agony compared to which your current state will feel like a picnic, and you'll still be alive."

He wouldn't look at her. She grasped his chin and turned his face. "Did you hear me?"

Spike closed his eyes.

"Fine! Ignore me! But you've got to know I'm right! If the Powers That Be were going to let you die, you'd be dead by now!"




She'd never mourned someone who was still alive, and wasn't sure how to go about it. It seemed to involved walking aimlessly in the rain, but then everything here was about walking in the rain, when it wasn't about sitting dully on an uncomfortable chair, feeling like your body was melting into the atmosphere.

She missed the way the sunlight lit up the Roman stone buildings in the late afternoon, so they seemed to glow as the sky went pink at the horizon. Missed the food there, missed her bed. Why couldn't she bring Spike back to Rome, install him in her bed, stuff him full of that food? You couldn't stay depressed for long in Rome, it was too beautiful, too exciting.

He wouldn't want to go there with her, or anywhere, and there was nothing she could do about that.

The river was a wide, odorous expanse of opaque brown, the rain hitting it at a hard slant. The small boats seemed to her unpracticed eye to be moored in an undistinguished jumble. The air smelled like frying meat, the water like ancient decay. Letting her umbrella rest on her shoulder, her sandaled feet planted carelessly in the thin mud, she stared at the opposite bank, while her mind flipped through possibilities that made her heart thump up and fall back as she considered and dismissed each one.

She couldn't keep him from getting a gun. She couldn't make him want her, want his unanticipated life. He'd warned her, in the very first moment, that he wasn't Spike any more. She could no longer ignore that. She'd known Spike in many moods, soulless and souled, triumphant and defeated, sane and otherwise, self-satisfied and suffering. But she'd never known him like this. Indifferent to her, wanting nothing but an end to his existence.

She could remember when she'd felt that way herself, in those early months after her resurrection. But the memory was flat; a mercy perhaps, that she couldn't anymore access the full dimension of that mental agony. Couldn't quite trace, either, how it was that she'd reclaimed her life again. The process was gradual and composed of all sorts of small details that were personal to her; she had no advice she could offer Spike. Not that he was going to listen to advice.

She knew what would happen. He would leave the infirmary against doctor's orders, he would go back to that terrible hole of an apartment, and a few days or hours or minutes later, he'd put a gun in his mouth and pull the trigger.

Who knew? Maybe, if he got a shotgun big enough, it would take.

If she didn't want to be the one to find the body, she'd just have to stay away.

Except that she couldn't.

Birds circled and cried over the brown water, diving and flapping, darting up again into the low grey. It was impossible to distinguish the sky from anything else; it was a tight-fitting lid, compressing everything into this atmosphere of super-saturated dread.

She ought to call somebody. Her sister, or Willow. But that would involve explaining, the situation and her reaction to it. And she could imagine what they would say, none of it of any use. She had no tolerance for the fuss of outsiders.

At her usual table in the cafe, as she drank a beer, an idea came to her that, unlike all the others, she didn't immediately dismiss. This was because it was an idea that wasn't going to solve anything: wasn't going to save Spike's life or give her what she wanted most, which was his love and his company as long as they both lasted in the world.

But it would be something, something consoling for her and maybe even for him in a way, though she wasn't sure about that. The problem was to talk him into it. She went back to her room to bathe and make herself as pretty and appealing as she could manage to be in the heat.




"No."

"Weren't you listening? I said I won't try to interfere anymore with ... your plans."

"It's bollocks, what you said. 'Course I'll die. Make sure of it this time."

"Maybe so. I said I won't try to stop you. But just give me this first."

"No." A pause. "Anyway, I can't."

"You could if you stopped drinking for a week or so, and ate a bit. You know you could."

"Don't want to stop drinkin' for a week or so."

"Except you will, so as to be sure you don't slip when you're firing the gun. Right? You want to be sure this time. Sober."

He shrugged.

"But I'm just asking you, do this one last thing for me. It would cost you very little really, to let me have it before you leave me, and it would give me something to go on with."

"By way of a soddin' souvenir? No. Can't do it, wouldn't if I could, an' what's more, you're no more fit to be a mother than Drusilla."

That hurt, but she forced herself to stay quiet.

"Besides, you don't want a bloody baby. You just want to go on fucking with my head for as long as I have one. Which won't be for long, but no bloody thank you."

She repressed a scream, squeezing her hands into hidden fists. "I don't know what I can say or do or be anymore to make you believe me about what I feel for you. But if I can't have a life with you, if I really have to accept that that's not going to happen ..." A sob came up her throat like a hiccup; she had promised herself she wouldn't get emotional in front of him, because he would only get angry at being manipulated that way. She'd thought she had herself under control, but the idea of losing him, of not even having this much contact with him ever again, stabbed her unbearably. She forced herself to go on, though her voice was thick now with unshed tears. "I want something that comes from us both, that I can love and care for and remember you by. Can't you accept that I'm honoring you by asking for this? This is my only chance to have a baby. You're the only man I could have a child with."

"That's bollocks."

"It's true. There isn't going to be anyone else for me, once you're gone. Oh shit." The tears burst from her in force, shaking her body, choking her. "Please. I need this. Please don't tell me no." She was amazed at how desperately she wanted something that in fact she'd given no thought to before that day. She hadn't so much as fantasized about childbearing in years and years. Once the whole slayer thing had really settled into her psyche.

Once she understood, if only subconsciously, that the only men she would truly l