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Author's Chapter Notes:
Reminders about the Spike/other.
Chapter Two

Spike helped Anne close up the kitchen for the night and make sure everyone who was staying over had a cot before heading up to the apartment over the shelter. He prowled around the small apartment, at a loss to understand his restlessness and decided to blame it on Buffy’s arrival stirring up his anxieties about his past.

Most of the time he was quite happy living over the shelter with Anne. Something about being loved completely for himself fed a need that he didn’t understand and hated to admit to, but that he couldn’t deny. She had found him wandering, hurt and confused, after some sort of battle in which, apparently, everyone else from Angel’s group of fighters on the side of good had died. She had taken him in, welcoming him into her home and, eventually, into her bed. Anne told him as much as she knew about his life, but it was very limited as she had been in LA since shortly after his aborted attempt to eat her group of vampire worshiping friends and she knew nothing about his life in Sunnydale after she left.

He went back over what he knew about Buffy the vampire slayer, and his relationship with her. Anne told him how Buffy had held a stake to his lover’s heart and how he had immediately called off the carnage at the threat of danger to the strange but beautiful Drusilla. He wondered briefly where that vampire was and if she was still in the world or had become dust at some other time. And what had changed that he and the slayer had gone from bitter enemies to friends? Good enough friends that her sister loved him.

He pondered what sort of relationship the slayer had with his grandsire, and what could have kept them apart all these years if they loved each other.

(Damned if I would have let anything keep me from her if I loved her) he growled to himself, startled by the vehemence of the thought.

The unease brought on by his visceral reaction to thinking about Angel and Buffy went away as soon as Anne came up the stairs and he promptly put it out of his mind as he went to help her prepare the evening meal. While she poured his blood into a mug for the microwave, he pulled a plate of left over Chinese food from the fridge and waited to put her dinner in the oven.

They ate their respective meals in companionable silence, broken only by the occasional comment about one of the people below. Suddenly Spike froze and lifted his head to scan the room.

“What’s wrong?”

“Slayer’s here,” he responded, getting up from the table.

Anne looked at him in surprise before asking as casually as she could, “What makes you think so?”

“Can feel her.” His reply was short and did nothing to alleviate her sudden apprehension.

“Since when can you feel slayers?” she asked, trying to keep her tone light.

“Can feel this one. Best go let her in, I suspect. She seems like the kind who would just kick down the door if it didn’t open fast enough.”

As he spoke, he could feel Buffy standing just on the other side of the door and he heard her heart rate going up as she raised her hand to knock. Anne was already opening the door when Buffy’s fist came down on it and she flinched away as it barely missed her face.

“Oh my god! I’m so sorry!” Buffy’s babbled apology broke the tension that had held them in it’s grip since Spike had sensed the slayer’s approach and Anne quickly assured her she was fine while Spike pulled out a chair and offered the slayer a glass of wine.

“Wine?” Buffy gaped at him. “You drink wine?”

“Well, Anne does. Point is, we have it if you’d like some.”

He missed Buffy’s flinch at the “we”, but Anne did not. She closed the door and moved to his side, putting her arm around his waist possessively. Once again she noticed that Buffy was wearing make-up and had changed her clothes into tight fitting pants and a leather jacket.

Buffy perched uncomfortably on the seat of the chair, looking as though she wanted to bolt any second. She smiled tightly as she turned down Spike’s repeated offer of something to drink, and twisted her hands together nervously. As she did so, Anne caught a glimpse of the scarring on Buffy’s left hand and she grabbed it and turned it over.

“You’ve burned your hand,” she said almost accusingly. She felt Spike stiffen beside her as he clenched his right fist tight.

“Yes,” was the terse answer as Buffy pulled her hand back.

Anne did not give up. “Spike has a burn like that on his right hand,” she said. “Show her, honey.”

Reluctantly, the vampire opened his fist to show the ropy scar tissue that covered the palm of his hand. Buffy bit back a gasp as they compared scars.

“So,” Anne said brightly, “Looks like you two touched the same thing back there in Sunnydale. Was that when Spike saved the world?”

The vampire was staring at the almost identical scars on their hands and almost missed Buffy’s whispered, “Yes. We both touched the same thing.” She didn’t look at Spike, keeping her eyes focused on their hands until he closed his fist again and turned away.

“Must have been bloody hot,” he muttered as he moved across the room.

Anne watched Buffy’s face carefully as the vampire walked away, and this time she caught the longing and grief in the slayer’s eyes as Spike turned away from her. Her jaw tightened and her stomach clenched in fear as the tension in the room went up again. She watched the slayer shut her eyes tightly for a second, take a deep breath, and then visibly relax her shoulders and sit back in the chair.

“Okay,” Buffy said quietly. “What do you want to know?”

Spike turned and looked at her. “I want to know how I got from what I was when Anne first met me..." He sent an apologetic look toward the blond woman and was rewarded with a forgiving smile and a blown kiss. “...and what I am now. A souled vampire who fights evil and saves the world.”

Buffy met his eyes steadily and said, “Are you sure you want to know all this?”

“Bloody hell, Buffy!” he exploded, sounded more like the Spike she knew. “I don’t know anything about my life before six months ago when Anne found me wanderin’ around in an alley and brought me home. Of course I want to know it. I want to know everything. Wouldn’t you?” he challenged her.


“I suppose I would,” she agreed. “Even if I was happy where I was.” She shot a look at a surprised Anne, “I guess I’d want to know how I got there.”

“Right then,” he said pulling his chair around and straddling it. He rested his arms on the back of the chair and fixed his gaze on her face. “So let’s have it. Start with how long have we known each other?”

“Uh, since you came to Sunnydale to…um, okay, that’ll lead to more questions. About seven years. We met right after you got there. You were planning to kill me,” she added, meeting his gaze head on. “I was to be your third slayer.”

If a vampire could have blanched, he would have. “My what?”

“You are William the Bloody. Slayer of slayers. You’d killed two of them and planned to make me your third.”

“Not one of my better plans, it would seem,” he said wryly. “You look remarkably healthy for a dead slayer.”

Buffy gave him her first genuine smile. “Well, it went about as well as most of your plans,” she teased.

“Watch it, woman,” he glared back. “Could still make you my third conquest – er – kill.”

His stumble over his words took the edge off the mock threat and Buffy couldn’t control her giggle at his discomfort, bringing on another glare.

“I tend not to stay dead, anyway,” she said cheerfully. “So it probably wouldn’t do you much good to try.”

Suddenly they were more comfortable with each other, and Buffy quickly went on to fill him in on the highlights of his first time in Sunnydale. When she came to the truce they’d made and their unsuccessful attempt to prevent Angelus from opening Acathla, his eyes were riveted on her face as she described his escape with Drusilla while she sent her lover to hell to save the world.

“So, I ran away? I ran away and left you to face Angelus by yourself?” He looked so devastated that both women moved toward him sympathetically, Buffy drawing back at the last second as he automatically leaned toward Anne.

“That was the deal we made,” she said tersely, sitting back in her chair. “You would distract him and get Drusilla out of the way and I would let you take her and leave Sunnydale forever.”

“You had to kill him? Then who was I fighting beside all last year?”

“I had to let him get sucked into the hell dimension in order to close the portal. It didn’t kill him, he just was trapped there for a long time before it spit him back out several months later.”

“I ran away,” he mumbled, clearly still disturbed to hear that he would do such a thing.

“So did I,” Buffy said quietly.

Anne gave a little gasp as she realized where Buffy had run to. They exchanged looks and Anne unconsciously reached toward Buffy’s hand sympathetically. “That’s why you—“

Buffy nodded tightly, drawing her hand back out of reach.

Spike noticed the exchange but decided to wait and ask Anne about it later. He turned his gaze back to Buffy and said with sincere sympathy, “So, you and Angel – you were a couple then?” Again, his internal growl caused him to wonder about his relationships with them.

She looked at him and bit her lip. “For a while we were. But, we couldn’t…I mean, he didn’t want to…he left. He left and came here.”

Spike could smell the tears she was blinking away and remembered what Anne had said about Buffy’s love for the other souled vampire. He leaned forward and took her hands in his, wondering at her sudden gasp, but determined to say what he wanted to say.

“I’m so very sorry, Buffy. I realize this must be hard for you. To be reminded of him like this and to see me here…alive. I’m sorry, pet, I’m being very selfish to ask you to—“

“No!” the vehemence of her response startled them all. “I mean, no,” she continued more softly, gently removing her hands from his. “I’m fine with it. Not that I’m not sorry Angel is gone. I am. He will always hold a place in my heart. But he had long since stopped being the love of my life. I moved on a long time ago.”

He cocked his head at her and examined her rapidly coloring face for a second.

(Alright, so much for that theory of why she’s so emotional around me. If it’s not because I remind her of him, then what the bloody hell is it?)

“Right then,” he cleared his throat, “so I scampered off with my lady friend never to return. Then what?”

“You came back because she broke up with you. You wanted Willow to do a love spell to get her back. My mom made you hot chocolate and you cried on her shoulder. Then you left again, but you were back less than a year later, looking for the Gem of Amara.”

“With or without the lady friend?”

“Um, without. She broke up with you again.”

“Can’t keep a woman, huh?” he joked, smiling softly at Anne who immediately moved behind him and wrapped her arms around his shoulders. She whispered something in his ear that made him smile again and Buffy shut her eyes against the pain of watching them together.

(Not like I ever went out of my way to make him happy, after all. All he asked for were crumbs and I gave him nothing. Even when I was giving him something, it wasn’t what he wanted. All he wanted was for me to look at him like she does. To touch him like that.)

One look at Buffy’s frozen face and Anne was reminded of her earlier concerns about why the slayer was there for Spike. She unconsciously clutched him tighter and he turned his head to give her a puzzled look. She shrugged sheepishly and let go him, moving back to her chair so that he and Buffy could continue their conversation.

The vampire wasn’t oblivious to the emotions rolling off the slayer and he asked her bluntly, “Buffy, if I ask you something, will you give me an honest answer?”

Her face took on a deer-in-the-headlights look as she stammered, ”uh…um…well, sure. Yes. Of course I would. Why wouldn’t I?”

Ignoring her rhetorical question, he asked softly, “How do we – you and I – get along?”

To his chagrin, her expressive green eyes once again began to fill with tears and he watched in dismay as her chin began to quiver. He waited while she visibly took a grip on her emotions and pushed them down so that she could answer him.

“It’s…it’s complicated,” she said slowly. “We fight a lot – we fight with each other and we fight together when we need to. We’re pretty awesome when we’re fighting something together,” she said with a watery smile. She stopped and when she didn’t seem inclined to continue, he pushed a little.

“So, that’s it? We fight a lot?”

His disbelief was palpable and she could feel him looking right through her as she shook her head from side to side.

“Buffy, I’d really like to know. You promised me an honest answer,” he prodded when she just continued to shake her head.

She raised her damp eyes to his and said firmly, “Sometimes, the most honest answer to a question is that I’d rather not answer it. Not right now, anyway.”

While Anne looked back and forth between the two, waiting for one of them to break eye contact, the two former lovers stared at each other for long minutes until finally Spike dropped his eyes and shrugged.

“All right, Slayer. I’ll wait. Let me try another one, then. Do you know why Drusilla broke up with me? Must have been something important to leave me after a hundred years being together.”

“Okaaay, see here’s the thing. I’m getting real uncomfortable here. That promise to give you honest answers? Turns out it was a really bad idea. Honest answers and Buffy? Not so mixy.” She stood up abruptly. “I’m just gonna go patrol now.”

“So that’s it? That’s all you’re going to tell me about my life? Because YOU’RE not comfortable?” She could hear the underlying anger in his voice and raised pleading eyes to his.

“I will tell you. I promise. Just…not right now, ok? Right now I have to go find something to slay. Maybe a lot of somethings.”

Without even looking at Anne again, Buffy got up and headed for the door, telling herself she just needed some more time to get used to the situation before she was honest with him. She hadn’t missed the hard looks Anne sent her way and knew that the other woman was far ahead of Spike in figuring out what was wrong.

(Not that she’d be able to figure out how messed up our lives have been over the years, but she obviously knows there is-was something there.)

Buffy didn’t bother to say good night to the angry vampire or his worried girlfriend, she just flew down the stairs and back out into the night running down the street just as she had earlier in the day. This time, she only had to go a few blocks before sensing a vampire nearby and she slowed her steps to allow the unsuspecting demon to catch up. She slipped a stake into her sleeve and began walking slowly, looking around nervously as though lost and confused.

When she felt the movement of air behind her that indicated the vamp’s approach, she whirled and smiled into his started eyes. Without so much as a quip, she let the stake drop into her hand, raising and lowering it to his chest in one smooth movement. She stared in disappointment as the dust floated away.

“Well, that didn’t make me feel better at all,” she grumbled, stepping through the dust and pushing the stake back up her sleeve. “That better not be the best this city can come up with.”

She vaguely remembered passing a cemetery on her earlier sprint away from the man she’d come to find, and headed in that general direction hoping all the fledglings weren’t already up and out on the town. She stopped once, sure she felt another vampire, but shook it off as being too far away and too faint. She didn’t notice the blond shadow moving along the rooftops and carefully keeping a safe distance behind her.





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