The first part of coming back home had gone well, and for that Buffy was grateful. Her mother had welcomed her with open arms and put to rest her daughter’s fears that their last words still stood between them. She had even been bordering on smothering, but that certainly was to be expected. They had talked and cried, and after months of near constant solitude, it almost felt like too much for Buffy.

Now came the second part, meeting the Scoobies and seeing if they could forgive her for running away and leaving them to deal with the Hellmouth. From what Joyce had said, they had been patrolling, with or without Giles, ever since she had left. Her mother had hinted that someone else was helping them, but she had not been more explicit than that, and Buffy was a little curious. What imported most to her, however, was to know that she still had friends. She wasn’t sure how she was going to explain to them why she had left. She hoped they didn’t push the issue too much, or at least not too soon.

The summer in LA had been long and very lonely. For the most part, it had been full of regrets and pain over never having found closure in her loss of Angel. She hoped that being back in Sunnydale wouldn’t make things even more difficult than they had been so far.

A noise caught her attention, and she silently walked a bit faster. Soon, she could see a man, dressed in black, who appeared to be looking for something. With a familiar knot in her stomach, she followed him. After a few seconds however, she stepped on something and made some noise, and the man spun toward her and attacked… with a stake. She didn’t let the oddity stop her and quickly disarmed him, only then noticing the cross hanging from his neck and his familiar features. At the same instant, he recognized her and froze in surprise. After a few seconds and senseless babble, Buffy was relieved to see Xander smile. If he smiled, it meant he wasn’t too upset with her, right?

She didn’t have time to test that theory, because a vampire erupted from a nearby crate. Lunging at them, he sent them all crashing to the ground. She struck her head on the concrete and was stunned for an instant. When she came back to her senses, she could hear people running toward them, toward where Xander was still fighting the vamp. Before she could do more than get to her feet, another vamp was throwing himself in the mix. A vampire she recognized all too well, one that she very much had hoped never to see again.

First, get Xander out of there, she told herself, then stake the two vampires.

The plan changed when her friend managed to stake the first one. Only one left, then. Taking hold of his arm, she yanked Spike away from Xander, noticing as she effortlessly wrestled him to the ground that more of her friends were there. Without a second thought, she plunged the stake down. Her friends’ shouts surprised her and slowed down her movement. But not enough.

“Buffy no!”

“Don’t dust him”

“He’s on our side!”

Still with a knee to the ground beside the blond, she stopped her arm, the stake having penetrated the vamp’s chest only an inch or so, not enough to dust him, but certainly enough to hurt. He wasn’t moving though or pushing her away; he was looking at her blankly, as if daring her to finish what she had started.

“What do you mean, he’s on our side?” she asked the assembled gang, her hand still wrapped around the stake.

Willow took a step forward, her hand reaching toward Buffy.

“He’s been fighting with us all summer,” she explained. “Let him go, OK?”

Frowning, Buffy pulled the stake free and took Willow’s hand to stand. Keeping a dubious eye on Spike she gave her friends a strained smile.

“Hey guys.”

Their gazes fluttered between her and the vamp, who was now standing with a hand pressed to his chest. She was mildly disappointed when their first words were for him.

“You OK?”

“That looks like a nasty wound.”

“Need help?”

In turn, the blond – well, not so blond anymore, his roots were definitely proving his hair color was anything but natural – nodded and shook his head at Cordelia’s, Xander’s, and Oz’s statements.

“I’m fine,” he grunted and let his hand fall away from his chest as if that would prove it, burying it instead in his jeans’ pocket. There was something about him, about the way he was looking down, avoiding everybody’s eyes, that simply didn’t go with the Spike she remembered.

“So, you’ve enrolled the enemy in the good fight?” she tried to quip, regretting the words as soon as they passed her lips.

Eyebrows rose and confused looks were exchanged.

“Yeah, well, you made a truce with him first, didn’t you?” Xander asked, sounding uncomfortable.

“I did,” she admitted, pushing the memory of that night as far away as she could. “But it was a one time thing, and he was supposed to leave town for good. Weren’t you?”

She directed her last words at Spike, but he still wouldn’t say a word or look straight at her. He merely shrugged.

“Well, he wasn’t so well after the soul thing, and…”

“Wait! Wait a minute! What soul thing?”

Incredulous and slightly sickened, Buffy heard the tale of Willow trying to perform the gypsy spell again and succeeding, except she had cursed Spike not Angelus. She heard the Scoobies saying how Spike was patrolling with them. She heard, but her mind quickly wandered as she stared with an increasingly colder gaze at the vampire.

The soul meant nothing. She couldn’t let it mean anything. She had done that mistake once, trusted a vampire, let him in, and painfully learned her lesson. She wasn’t going to do it again. And she couldn’t believe that her friends had been blinded by a word. By a soul.

“I was on my way to see Giles,” she announced, looking at the four humans and deliberately ignoring the vampire. “Wanna come with me and catch up on the way?”


The five humans walked away, without a glance toward him, and Spike watched until they had disappeared. The Slayer was in the middle, her friends around her as if nothing had happened, as if she hadn’t spent three months without sending them news. He suspected her mother had welcomed her warmly too, and that the Watcher would also. He envied her. 

He didn’t try to delude himself into believing the humans were his friends. He knew that for them he was simply convenient, extra muscle and protection that walkie-talkies, code names, and all the stakes in the world couldn’t replace. He had stumbled upon them a couple of nights after his first patrol and had helped them deal with a spot of trouble. They had thanked him, but kept their distance. No one had suggested that he joined their patrol, and he hadn’t. Not that night. But when two nights later he had crossed paths with them again, he had tagged along and they hadn’t protested. He wasn’t blind though, and he knew they were never completely relaxed when he was there. And it was good that they weren’t.

Thinking that he probably had time for his nightly cup of chocolate before the Slayer was done with her Watcher, he started to walk toward Revello. It probably would be the last one, he mused sadly. Seeing how Buffy had reacted to his presence, she probably wouldn’t appreciate too much knowing he regularly talked with her mother, even if he never actually stepped inside the house. And Joyce wouldn’t need to talk so much now that her daughter was back.

He went as far as the driveway and then changed his mind. As he touched absently at the hole in his chest that had come so close to being the last wound he’d ever receive, he realized the fronts of his shirt and t-shirt were bloodied. And, although red on red or on black wasn’t so noticeable in a dark street, he had no doubt that Joyce would notice if he took his usual seat on her back porch. Knowing her, she would ask questions and offer to help him. He couldn’t afford to accept it. Couldn’t let her see.

He stopped by the liquors store on his way to the mansion. In exchange for his help, Giles provided him with a few dollars each week, enough to buy blood from the butcher, enough to get a cheap bottle of booze if he skipped a few meals every now and then.

Back home, he paid his nightly respects to the stone in the middle of the main room. After that first night, it had become a ritual to stand in front of the statue for a few moments and remember Dru falling through, soon followed by Angelus. It was right here that his unlife had changed dramatically. He couldn’t forget it, but he had learned to live with it and managed to help the humans. For that, he had to shove down the never-ending buzz of voices that echoed in his mind and force himself not to listen to them when they told him it was useless. That he was useless. However, once a day, he would let himself hear the voices, let them remind him that he was nothing but a pathetic demon and a murderer. He very much deserved the mental punishment.

When he had endured as much as he could, he retreated to his room. It was as bare as it had been that first night, kept uncomfortable on purpose. He shed his bloodied shirt and t-shirt, and took a few swigs of alcohol before daring to look down at the mess that was his chest. Gingerly, he touched the edges of the stake wound, wincing at the pain, welcoming it. One thing was sure, even after three months the Slayer still had good aim. Then his fingers slid to the other marks around the wound. The oldest cuts were barely noticeable, while the most recent were still an angry red on his pale skin, crisscrossing all over his heart.


Not gonna talk about that. And I wish you wouldn’t either. Nobody’s business but mine. No, I’m not going to explain anything. If you can’t figure it out, it’s your problem. And you’d better stop insisting before I…

Anyway.

The first hours of the Slayer’s return were all pink champagne glasses and cake, but after that, it became rather sour. See, Joyce had that mask thing that turned out to be full of not so pretty magic. Turned people into zombies and wasn’t that a barrel of fun. Plus, from what I hear, the show started even before all that. Apparently, the initial warm welcome quickly reached freezing point, and the Scoobies and Joyce got their word in about what they thought of the Slayer’s attitude. I wish I could have been there to see that.
I didn’t, though, and only heard about it much later. I was patrolling by myself that night because I hadn’t been invited to the welcome back party. At least they had thought of telling me they wouldn’t be patrolling.

Without warning, all these people started getting out of the ground. Very creepy, let me tell you. I’ll take a vamp or most demons any day over a zombie. It didn’t take long for me to notice they were all going the same way, so I tagged along. And when the streets became a little too familiar for comfort, I ran ahead toward the Summers’ home. I arrived there, got a few dead things out of my way, and was stopped by that damn invite barrier when I opened the door. I could see the gang and the Slayer fighting, but more importantly, I could see the Bit on the stairs, scared as hell by a zombie walking toward her. I shouted for her to invite me in, something both her mother and me had repeatedly told her not to do, and she had enough presence of mind to realize that this was a good time to break the rules. I got rid of the thing, and took her away from the stairs since that seemed to be the rallying point of everything that moved. We hid in the dining room, and she clung to me with all the strength of a frightened twelve years old. It was nice that the monks gave me someone who trusted me so much. Better than nice. I wonder who invited me in, in the no-Dawn world. Whom I came in to help.

It turned not so nice when everything was over; we came out, and the Slayer saw that I was in her house and her kid sister’s hand wasn’t letting go of mine. Her smile disappeared rather quickly.

“What the hell are you doing here?” she snapped at me, before turning her attention to Dawn. “Get away from him. Now.”

As discreetly as I could, I freed my hand from the kid’s; and when she looked at me, I silently pleaded for her to do as her sister had said. She wasn’t happy, but she did what I wanted, stepping into her mother’s embrace.

I tried to explain why I was there, that I had tried to help and keep Dawn out of harm’s way, but of course, the Slayer wasn’t buying it. She rambled about my soul having changed nothing and that I was still a killer. Said that if I had really tried to help, I would have been outside where the action was, not hiding in the house. Accused me of playing an act with the Scoobies and now her family, all of it to get closer to them. Warned all of them about trusting me, and reminded them that a vamp with a soul was not safe in any way, or had they forgotten already?

In short, she was mixing me up with another souled vamp. Can we say issues?

I didn’t say a word and neither did anyone else. No one defended me. Not even my Bit, although she was upset. And I can’t say it was much of a surprise that they didn’t. Of course they all saw me as another Angel. What had I done to dispel that notion? I hardly ever talked to them, not trying to make conversation beyond the most basic exchange of information. I was there when they needed help, but never hung around to socialize. Never argued with any of them either, or joked, or anything. The only person I talked to was Joyce. One thing I didn’t do however was brood. You’ll never get me to admit to that.

I didn’t argue that time either. I left, and probably proved to all of them that she was right and I was just a clone of the big poof.

I didn’t realize that until I was halfway to the mansion. It made me madder than I had been in a long, long time. I wasn’t Angel. I had never wanted to be Angel. Even souled, I still couldn’t understand why he had left us, why he hadn’t allowed us to try and help him. Why he had never said a thing, and let Darla tell us what had happened to him. Even souled, I still hated him as much as I… right, then. That’s not the point.

Point is, I got angry. Very, very angry. Spent the rest of the night expressing my rage by finding and killing as many demons as I could. Quite a change from my routine of dusting a vamp or two every night. And I felt a lot better from it. I had a soul, yes, but I still had a demon inside of me, too, and it was the first time since the curse that I allowed it to come out and play. I think that’s when I realized that there was more than one way to be a souled vamp, and that I didn’t have to take the self-flagellation, woe is me, let me brood in peace route.

The Slayer thought I was like Angel? I was determined to prove her wrong. And I did show her, in more ways than one, that I was absolutely nothing like him. Except for the not so small detail of my feelings for her.