“No worries, my sweet Spike,” Dru purred as she held Dawn’s back against her front with supernatural strength. “Your princess knows all about the naughty soldier boys. I don't believe in science. All those bits and molecules no one's ever seen. I trust eyes and heart alone. And do you know what mine is singing out right now?”

Spike gulped nervously as he watched Dru’s finger toying with Dawn’s bare neck. Dawn’s eyes were drooped and her breathing was labored. He wasn’t sure if Dru had put her in a thrall or had hit her over the head, but either way, the girl was helpless as a kitten – a semi-conscious kitten.

Drusilla kept talking, seemingly unaware of Spike’s concern and discomfort. “You're a killer. Born to slash ... and bash ... and... oh, bleed like beautiful poetry. No little tinker-toy could ever stop you from flowing.

“Don’t you want to be a family again, my Spike?” his sire asked when he simply stared at her. “You’ll be a king. William the Bloody, slayer of three Slayers … no demon would dare challenge you, and with me by your side…”

Dru was still talking, but Spike had stopped listening. “Three Slayers?” he blurted out finally, interrupting her.

Dru’s eyes flashed wide with glee and she giggled like a school-girl, bouncing on the balls of her feet. “The Slayer will be here soon to collect her key, my Spike. So simple it’ll be … you need do nothing more than distract her. I know how distracting you can be…” Dru purred, leering at him. “While you’re toying with her, I’ll finish her. Chop! Chop! Pretty messes of red ribbons all over the floor! It’ll be like Christmas! Red from the Slayer and green from her little key splashed all over the walls! Then our destiny awaits, my love – just like Miss Edith whispered to me.”

Spike’s stomach lurched and his throat went dry. He needed to try and get Dawn away from Dru before his lovely dark plum got bored with the game and ended her. He had just started to step forward towards Dru when the door to his crypt burst open again.

“Spike! Have you seen Dawn?” Buffy began talking before she’d even gotten inside.

Spike’s eyes went wide as they flicked between Buffy and Dru. Dru had scurried back behind the door, into the shadows, dragging Dawn with her. He knew Dru would need her hands free to carry out her plan of chopping Buffy into messes – which meant Dawn’s time was short. He could see a victorious smile curl Dru’s lips as she raised her hand to finish Dawn with a slash of her long, razor-like, fingernail across the girl’s throat. In that split second, Buffy had moved between him and Dru as she stormed into the crypt, as she always did, like she owned the bloody place.

Spike’s demon rose without conscious thought and he barreled towards Dru with a deafening roar of anger and fear. An involuntary shriek of surprise escaped Buffy’s throat as Spike came at her, all fists and fangs, a dangerous growl emanating from his throat. On reflex, she reached for her stake to defend herself and had pulled it out of the back of her jeans just as Spike reached her.

Spike saw the stake aimed directly at his heart and he turned his body at the last possible second and hit Buffy with his shoulder, like a linebacker bowling down a running back. In a flash of pain, the stake embedded into the flesh of his bicep as he slammed into the Slayer and the chip fired in his brain, blinding him with lightning-bolts of pain. His roar of anger turned to a scream of agony in that instant. He clutched his head with the hand of his uninjured arm, but somehow managed to stay on his feet. Buffy tumbled to the floor, losing her grip on the stake, which was now slippery with blood. Spike bounced off her, spinning around once from the impact, before lunging blindly at the shadows behind the door.

He hit Dru and Dawn about waist level and both brunettes buckled in the middle. Dru’s hand, which she had been bringing down in a wide, arcing slash, missed Dawn’s neck and instead raked painfully over the girl’s chest and shoulder. Spike smelled the blood immediately and roared again, sounding like a lion intent on protecting his pride.

Still half-blind from the chip, Spike yanked Dawn away from Dru with a violent jerk, and shoved the semi-conscious, bleeding girl towards Buffy. He half-expected the chip to fire again when he did that, but thankfully, it didn’t.

Buffy was just getting back to her feet, demanding to know what was going on, when Dawn hit her like a human cannonball. “Dawn!” Buffy screamed in surprise, her eyes wide with confusion, fear, and adrenaline. Buffy wrapped her arms around her sister and stumbled backwards, trying to catch her balance. Unable to compensate for the extra weight of her sister, and the power with which she’d been hit, Buffy tumbled to the ground again, shielding Dawn from the fall as best she could.

Without any conscious thought, his base, primal, demonic instincts in full control, Spike scrambled atop Dru. Without a moment’s hesitation, he wrenched Buffy’s stake from the muscle of his bicep. The grotesque squelching sound it made was only partially obscured by the curse that exploded from his lips as he pulled it free. In one fluid motion, he raised it above his head and plunged it into the vamp that had threatened his two Summers girls. For a split second, Dru’s eyes went wide with fear, then seemed to, for perhaps the first time in over a century, become clear and coherent. “Oh, William! Not our destiny – yours alone,” she rasped out before exploding into a cloud of dust.

Spike’s chest heaved with fear, pain, and exertion as he looked down at the pile of dust that was all that remained of his sire. The woman he’d loved for more than a century, the woman he had believed was his destiny, the woman that had made him what he was, was gone. He felt tears well in his eyes as a distant memory flooded over him. The memory of another woman whom he’d loved and also staked flashed over him: his mother. Spike’s head bent forward, he sat back on his heels, and his upper body crumpled down atop the dust almost as if he were doing a child’s pose in yoga. Sobs wracked his frame and tears flooded down his face unchecked as anguish overtook him.

“Spike?” Buffy questioned tentatively as she approached him cautiously. "My God, Spike ... are you ... what ..." she stammered in confusion.

Spike stiffened and clenched his jaw against the raw emotions that were flooding through him, but he didn’t trust himself to speak.

Buffy reined in her emotions and went into full Slayer mode – all business. “Spike … Dawn’s hurt. I have to take her home. Are you … ok?” Buffy asked, kneeling down next to him and laying a hand on his back.

Spike nodded, never looking up at her. “Niblett gonna be alright?” he rasped out finally, his voice cracking despite his best effort to hold his anguish in check.

“Yeah – I think so; she’s mostly just scared. Look, I’m gonna take her home and I’ll be back, ok?” Buffy offered. "Will you be ok until I get back?"

Spike shook his head vehemently, still facing the floor. “I'm fine. Stay with ‘er,” he insisted.

“Spike … I …” Buffy looked at Dawn, who was curled up on the floor trembling with fright. She had a long gash along her chest and shoulder that was bleeding and painful. Buffy shook her head and finally just said, “Ok,” as she stood up and went back over to help her sister.

At home, Buffy got the story of what had happened from her sister. Dawn said she’d been on the way to Spike’s crypt ‘to hang out’ when she’d almost literally run into Dru in the cemetery. Dru had done something to her that made her feel sleepy and woozy. She could hear and see what was going on, but couldn’t manage to do anything about it.

When Buffy came back to Spike’s about an hour later, the crypt was dark. She fumbled around and lit a couple of candles, enough to see by, and found that Spike was still on the floor in the corner behind the door. He’d fallen over onto his side and was curled in a fetal position, still clutching Buffy’s stake in his hand. His arm had stopped bleeding, but the wound was jagged and caked with dark blood and vampire dust.

“Spike,” Buffy said gently, kneeling down next to him and laying a hand on his arm. “C’mon, Spike – let’s get you cleaned up, ok?” she cajoled, shaking him slightly.

When he didn’t answer or move, Buffy sighed and sat down Indian-style next to him. His back was to her and she really couldn’t see much of him, other than the dried blood on his arm. “Do you want to talk about it?” she asked.

He didn’t move or answer.

“Dawn told me what happened. I know it was all Dru,” she offered.

Still no reply.

“I can imagine what you’re feeling. I mean … I know she left you and all, but … you were together a long time. I know when Angel … changed, I had a chance to dust him once and … I couldn’t do it. Then … when I had to kill him to close Acathla's vortex …” Buffy stopped and swallowed hard. Angel probably wasn’t the best subject in the world to talk about just now, she realized. “Anyway … thank you.”

“Dusted two people I’ve loved now,” Spike whispered, his voice cracking with deep, aching emotion.

Buffy’s brows lifted in surprise. “Two?”

Spike nodded slowly and went silent. Buffy waited; she didn't push him. The silence in the crypt drew out for a long while before Spike spoke again.

"Dru and … me mum. Long time ago it was. Still hurts though,” he offered solemnly, still not moving.

“Your mom? She was … she got turned?” Buffy asked, aghast.

“Yeah … I turned ‘er,” Spike admitted dully. “Prat I was, thought I could save ‘er, yeah? Sick, she was; dying.”

“Oh, Spike, that’s…” Buffy let her voice trail off. She couldn’t think of an adjective to describe it. She knew Angel had killed his whole family, but to turn your mother because she was dying? To actually try to restore her to ‘health’, to save her, by turning her? That seemed incongruous with what most vampires would’ve done. There was a kind of twisted compassion to it; vampires didn’t have compassion, twisted or otherwise.

She thought about her own mom and a ray of understanding beamed into her heart. What he’d done suddenly seemed a little less twisted. What would she do to cure her mom? What wouldn’t she do? Still, she wasn’t a vampire – vampires didn’t think that way … did they?

“What happened?” Buffy asked finally, unable to finish her previous sentence. Her brows furrowed with concern as she waited for an answer.

Spike’s head shook slowly against the cold floor of the crypt, stirring up small motes of vampire dust.

“It’s ok … you don’t have to,” Buffy offered, laying a hand on his arm.

“Thought she’d be like me, I did. Didn’t know I was …” Spike stopped and shook his head, leaving the thought unfinished. “Ended up just turning ‘er into a monster. She was a good lady … lot like Joyce: strong and fair, always had a kind word, my mum. Didn’t deserve that, she didn’t.”

Buffy brushed a tear away as she took in his story. “You … you haven’t really always been bad like you told me, have you? You tried to save your mom … you loved her.”

Spike sniffed and rubbed at his eyes with dirt-caked hands before pushing up stiffly and turning so he was facing Buffy. He leaned his back against the wall, wincing in pain when he moved his left arm where the stake had ripped his flesh. “No,” he admitted shamefully. “Was a right git as a human; bit of a git as a vampire, too. Reckon William the Bloody showed ‘em though; got my revenge in the end, didn’t I?”

“You could’ve gotten revenge tonight, too,” Buffy pointed out. “Why did you protect us?”

Spike blinked at her. Tears were still gathered in his eyes and they glimmered in the low flickering light of the candles. “What else would I have done?”

Buffy looked at him like he was insane. “You could’ve helped Dru; maybe actually gotten rid of me for good. I wasn’t ready for an attack – she could’ve easily killed me if you’d just followed her plan,” she explained. “I didn’t know Dru was even there.”

Spike furrowed his brow and shook his head. “Do you think I could a’ done that to you? To the Niblett?”

Buffy rolled one shoulder in a shrug. “You’re still a vampire – chip or no,” she pointed out.

“Buffy, you haven’t heard a bloody word I been sayin’ to you these last weeks, ‘ave you? Didn’t I say I’d help you? Fight with ya? Didn’t I show ya I was serious? Didn’t you believe me?” Spike asked. He was torn between being angry at her and hurt by her distrust.

Buffy nodded. “Yeah, Spike, I heard you and I … believed you … but … this …” she waved her hand at the dust on the floor, “…was Dru.”

Tears gathered in Spike’s eyes again and he clenched his jaw, trying to push them back. “I. Know. That,” he ground out before closing his eyes and taking a deep, shuddering breath.

Buffy waited for him to compose himself again. She watched him, but didn’t prod or hurry him as she waited. The emotional pain he was in was evident. The love he felt for Dru was also written all over his features. Souls are overrated, he’d asserted that night in the alley, but her experience with the soulless Angelus seemed to refute that theory. But, here was a soulless vampire who had chosen to protect not only Dawn, but Buffy, the Vampire Slayer, at extreme personal sacrifice. Here was a soulless vampire that had tried to save his own mother from certain death by endowing her with the power of the demon. Was Spike the exception that proved the rule? Buffy’s face was a study in confusion when Spike finally opened his eyes again and began to speak.

“I told you I’d fight with ya, Slayer,” Spike began in a slow, deliberate tone. “That doesn’t mean sometimes, it doesn’t mean depending on who you’re fightin’, it doesn’t mean when I feel like it – it means I’ll fight with ya all the time, no matter what.

“I know you think I’m a monster and … I am – can’t deny it, can I?” he continued. “But … I …” Spike’s throat seemed to close up for a moment. He swallowed hard and what came out wasn’t what he had planned on saying. “I care about the Niblett and Joyce; wouldn’t want t’ see them hurt.”

Buffy nodded slowly, considering his words for a long moment. Finally, she said, “Dawn thinks … there’s more than that. More than you liking her and Mom. More than hot chocolate with little marshmallows. Is that true?”

Spike swallowed again. A moment ago he’d been ready to tell the Slayer that he loved her – it had been on the tip of his tongue – but a little voice in the back of his mind reminded him of the ‘let her come to you’ rule that he had set a few weeks ago. Now she was asking pointblank. Spike’s eyes wandered around the crypt, as if he’d find the answer lurking in the candlelight … and he did. “Well, if ya must know, the whiskey and fags ya got me don’t hurt,” he told her, a small smile curling one corner of his mouth.

Buffy rolled her eyes but nodded. “Well, I’d say you earned them tonight,” she replied, letting him off the hook.

“Do you want me to help you get that cleaned up and bandaged?” she asked, eyeing his arm.

Spike wanted to say yes, just to keep her near that much longer. It was more than his desire to be near her that pressed him to say 'yes'; despite telling her not to come back earlier, he really didn't want to be alone just now. But, to clean up they’d have to go down into the lower chamber, and he thought that might not be such a good idea with his 'Buffy shrine' lurking in the corner down there.

“No, I got it,” he declined reluctantly. “Just a scratch, it is. You stab like a bloody girl,” he chided her as he handed the stake back to her.

Buffy took it with two fingers. It was soaked in blood and caked in vampire dust. She made an ‘ewwww’ face and tossed it back into the corner of the crypt. “You can keep it; I have more,” she told him. “And, for the record, you tackle like Pee-wee Herman,” she retorted as she stood up.

“Pfffft!” Spike snorted as he took her proffered hand and she helped him stand up. “Seems t’ me you were the one flailing around on your arse like a fish outta water.”

“I just thought that was what you wanted. I thought you were making a pass at me,” Buffy asserted.

Spike cocked a brow at her. “Trust me, when I make a pass at you, you’ll bloody well know it, Slayer.”

Buffy gave him a sideways glance as she pulled the door to his crypt open. “Well that’s good. I’d really hate to miss it ‘cos I thought you were just trying to save my life or something silly like that.”

Spike bit his bottom lip and tried hard to remember why he wasn’t making a pass at her. She was close enough to touch. He’d just saved her life, after all – and her sister’s – now might be the perfect…

Spike’s brain froze. All the blood drained from it and settled somewhere south of his belt. Buffy’s lips touched his so gently that it would’ve felt like angel wings brushing against his skin except that it set his whole body on fire. Spike stayed frozen to the spot as Buffy pulled back from the soft, chaste kiss. She laid her small, warm hand on his cheek for a moment and whispered, “Thank you,” before turning and heading out into the night.

Spike blinked and swallowed, finally able to break free of the thrall she’d unexpectedly dropped over him with that kiss. You git! he chided himself as he closed the door to his crypt. She’d kissed him and he hadn’t even returned it – just stood there, hypnotized like a bloody virgin on prom night. He shook his head, touching a finger to his lips in disbelief. As the reality finally sank in, his chest swelled with exaltation – it felt like those angel wings were inside him, lifting his aching heart to heaven.

**~**

After leaving Spike’s crypt, Buffy took the long way home. She somehow seemed to think better when she was walking. To say that her black and white view of Spike had faded entirely into grey over the last few weeks, starting with his lessons about Slayers and their inner demons, would be an understatement. She’d never felt more confused about a person than she did about Spike at this moment.

He was a mass-murdering, soulless vampire who had been muzzled by the Initiative. He’d somehow managed to adapt and worm his way into her life. He’d tried to kill all of them more than once, and the feeling of mutual disdain and loathing for Spike was fairly well-distributed amongst her friends. It was a feeling she’d supported quite vehemently up until recently. But something had changed; Spike had changed. In her eyes he’d swung from raven blackness, passed through grey, and tonight had landed quite clearly in the white-hat category. He had actually dusted Dru to save her and Dawn. How absolutely insane was that?

As Buffy walked through one familiar granite garden after another, she tried to wrap her mind around the concept that Spike was firmly on her side; it wasn’t a ploy or a scheme – he was on her side. To top it off, he’d shared something personal with her that was obviously still a raw, painful memory. He’d actually bared his … well, not is soul, of course, since he didn’t have one, but maybe his heart to her.

She thought back to Angel and how hard it had been for her to drag anything personal out of him. He never wanted her to know anything about his past, about things he’d done as Angelus. He was always trying to shield her from the reality of him and treating her like she was a child, like he knew best.  Isn’t that why he left? Because he knew what was best for her?  Spike didn’t hide what he was. The good, the bad, and the fangy were all on display for anyone who wanted to look. Buffy suddenly felt a kind of warm appreciation for Spike’s ‘what you see is what you get’ personality.

Buffy thought of the conversation she’d had with Dawn that morning during the ride to school. Buffy had been trying to discourage Dawn from going over to Spike’s crypt so much. He was a vampire, after all – Buffy didn’t think it was healthy for her to hang out there with him …

“Why doesn't that register with you? Crypt plus vampire equals bad,” Buffy had insisted.

“’Cause it’s just Spike!”

“Hanging out with Spike is not cool, Dawn, okay? It’s dangerous … a-and plus, you are only fourteen years old. You should be hanging out with kids your own age. Spike’s old enough to be your … grand-cestor … your long dead grand-cestor,” Buffy pointed out.

“It's just, he's got cool hair, and he wears cool leather coats and has the greatest stories,” Dawn sighed, dreamily.

“You have a crush on him!” Buffy realized.

“No I don't!” Dawn insisted. “I like him – he doesn't treat me like an alien. Mom likes him too.”

“Mom doesn’t visit his crypt,” Buffy pointed out.

“I like hanging out with him is all. And even if I did have a crush, he wouldn't notice in a million years. Not with you around,” Dawn revealed dejectedly.

“What does that mean?”

“Spike's totally into you. Oh, come on. You didn't notice? Buffy, Spike is completely in love with you,” Dawn informed her sister with an eye roll.

“What? He said that?” Buffy exclaimed, not sure whether to be horrified or flattered.

“He doesn’t have to say it. I’m not a kid – I have eyes,” Dawn retorted sharply.

“I have eyes too, and I’ve never seen any sign on his forehead that says ‘I heart Buffy’.”

“Yeah, well, you aren’t the most observant person in the world, are you? I mean … look at what happened with Riley,” Dawn replied harshly.

Buffy frowned as she pulled up in front of the school, not really having any retort to that. Dawn bounded out of the Jeep with a triumphant smirk. It wasn’t often she could actually get the last word in an argument with Buffy.

~~

Buffy sighed and dropped down onto a raised sarcophagus, rubbing tiredly at her eyes. Could that be true? What Spike had done tonight seemed to go beyond just a fondness for her mom and Dawn, and a desire to not see either of them hurt. She’d given him a chance to say it though, and he hadn’t – not even a hint of it. In fact, he’d suddenly leapt, further and faster than a long-legged spring frog, back to safer subjects like whiskey and cigarettes.

She sighed again and shook her head as she looked around at all the familiar headstones. She was possibly the only person in the world that could recite short epitaphs in her sleep. From the mundane and ordinary to the humorous to the just plain crazy, she knew them all.

Here lies an atheist, all dressed up and no place to go.

She drank good ale, good punch and wine, and lived to the age of 99.

I told you I was sick!

Here lies Ezekiel Aikle, Age 102. Only the good die young.

We all must die, there is no doubt. Your glass is running – mine is out.

“Spike probably knows them, too,” she muttered to herself, finding some strange comfort in the knowledge that at least she wasn’t the one and only freak in the world.

Buffy shook off her wandering thoughts and tried to refocus on what it was she was trying to sort out: Spike. She took a deep breath and huffed it out loudly. His odd behavior and self-sacrifice weren’t actually the most disturbing things about Spike. The most disturbing thing about Spike was his ability to read her like a ‘Dick and Jane’ book. See Buffy. See Buffy’s demon. See Buffy’s demon run all her boyfriends off.

That uncanny ability to see inside her wasn’t actually anything new. He’d done it more than once, and it wasn’t just her that he could read. He had some innate ability to look inside people and see their true hearts. It was creepy and more than a little bit disturbing.

She’d been able to ignore it in the past, writing it off to luck or … well, maybe vampire senses or something, but that changed in the alley behind the Bronze. He had not only read her, he had reached in with his words and unlocked a hidden door that even she didn’t know existed. She’d fought to close it and lock it back up. She could usually keep it contained, keep the darkness confined, when she was awake, but the thoughts and feelings in there had been flooding into her dreams. The erotic dreams that combined sex and violence both frightened her and aroused her at the same time.

Spike’s words from the alley seemed to haunt her: “‘Ave you ever really fucked him, Buffy? I mean fucked, with a capital ‘F’? Ever really let loose? I reckon you don’t even know how t’ let go … t’ just be.”

She shuddered as she remembered the dangerous, low rumble of his voice when he’d asked her that. Just the memory of it started her body tingling again. She hadn’t answered him, but she knew the answer as well as he did: no. No, she had never fucked anyone like that. Even when she and Riley were under the spell of the haunted frat house and had had sex for hours, she still maintained that sliver of control, knowing if she really let loose, she could seriously hurt him … or worse. She’d never shown Riley her true power; not when they were sparring or training, or during sex. She'd always held back – she'd held back everything. She’d gotten so good at holding back that it became second nature to keep her true-self hidden, physically and emotionally.

And with Angel … well, she had been seventeen and it was her first time. There were a thousand things going on: he had been getting ready to leave for God knew how long, maybe forever, Spike and Dru had raised The Judge, ‘who could not be killed by any weapon forged’, yada, yada. She wasn’t thinking about letting loose that night; she was just … well … trying not to suck at it. She was trying to remember everything about Angel in case that was the only night she ever got to spend with him. As it turned out, it had been, but not for the reasons she’d thought.

As Buffy sat in the dark silence of the cemetery atop the cold, hard stone, she had to wonder what it would be like to be with someone that she could really lose herself with. That someone could never be Angel, she told herself, and, with a sudden shocked epiphany, she realized that … she didn’t want it to be Angel.

It wasn’t Angel’s voice she heard in her head that sent shivers down her spine and blood thrumming in her veins – it was Spike’s. It wasn’t Angel’s face she saw in her jumbled, erotic dreams – it was Spike’s. It wasn’t Angel’s hands she longed to feel on her body – it was Spike’s. It wasn’t even Angel she wanted covering her back in the upcoming fight with Glory – it was Spike.

“Oh my God,” she murmured, her eyes flashing as wide as saucers, shining white in the dark of the moonless night that surrounded her.

She suddenly had an image flash in her brain of a harried seamstress cutting out a large swath of bright, multi-colored, leopard-print fabric in the shape of an asexual gingerbread person. The old woman then took the fabric-person and peeled the front and back of it apart, as if peeling the backing off a sticker.  When she had two nearly identical fabric-people, she tossed the brightly-colored, front half at a man that looked an awful lot like Spike, but who had longish, light brown hair and no scar over his left eye: pre-vampire William. It seemed to be consumed by the man’s body, the bright colors fading into him until they could no longer be seen. At the same time, the seamstress tossed the muted, pastel-toned back-half at Buffy and the same thing happened: it was completely absorbed into her.

“Here you go, kiddies,” the old, warty seamstress called, sounding remarkably like the Wicked Witch of the West. “You each get half – cut from the same cloth, you are,” she informed them as she rubbed her hands together eagerly and began to laugh like a maniac. Muwhahaha…

“You are losing your mind,” Buffy admonished herself, standing up and starting for home. “You’re just … over-tired. Things will look differently in the morning.”

**~**