When i started this fic, i didn't have an outline ready or a clear idea of where i was going. Now i do, and there's a warning i need to give. It's fairly spoilery for what is going to happen, so click only if you don't mind being spoiled. Just FYI, there's 9 chapters left after this one. The warning is there.

Also, i am off to France for a couple of weeks, so there won't be an update before mid-August. Sorry about that.

Spike’s forgotten cigarette was reduced to ashes between his fingers, and when he realized it, the small movement of his hand made it crumble onto the floor. He looked at the gray flecks absently as he pulled out his pack and Zippo and lit a new one. He didn’t care about a bit of dust, or ashes as they may be, but the Slayer might. Maybe he’d clean that rather than giving her the opportunity to complain about it.

Of course, at that moment, he would have welcomed snarking from her. He would have welcomed just about anything, really, as long as she stepped out of her room and talked to him. Even just walking out of her room would have been a nice improvement.

After her breakdown, when her tears had finally stopped, she had carefully extricated herself from Spike’s arms and offered him her hand to help him stand. She had avoided his eyes when announcing she would take a nap before it was time to go out and patrol. She had closed the door of her room behind her, quietly as though to apologize for leaving him out.

It had only been two in the afternoon then, and now it was past five. For three hours, there had not been a single noise from the room. Not a step, not a whisper, not a sob. Spike was worried – worried that she was in pain and that she didn’t want his help, worried that every minute that passed in silence would make it harder for him to reach her again – but after the way she had reacted to his intrusion in her room earlier, he wasn’t sure how much worse it would get if he tried again.

Beyond the worry, though, another nagging feeling was rising, relentlessly piercing through despite Spike’s attempts to quiet it down. He could have been in her bed, right now. If he had only pushed when she was too broken to give even a token resistance, when she had needed him enough to consent to just a little bit more, he could have taken what he had wanted for weeks, now. He could have had her.

It was the second time he had let her get away rather than risk facing her regrets later on. He was beginning to hate what he had become since he had started wanting her. It should have been an easy story between them, insert tab A into slot B, whether it was stake and heart, fangs and neck, or cock and cunt. Instead, he found himself acting in strange ways, to accommodate her own strange moods. The killing of demons and vampires, he didn’t mind much, nor was it too much of a chore to be careful about feeding without the Slayer knowing about it. But watching her, taking small steps when he could have simply taken her? That wasn’t him. That wasn’t Spike. He couldn’t even bear to think about who would have acted like this, in another life.

The ashes of another forgotten cigarette fell to the floor as Spike called himself names in his mind and imagined plunging into a body as welcoming as it was hot. The fantasy became so vivid that it was all he could do not to simply open her bedroom’s door and make it happen.

The unexpected knock on the door was almost a relief, distracting him from himself as he wondered who it could possibly be. He had been thinking about ordering food for the Slayer, that would at least have given him an excuse to intrude on her solitude, but he hadn’t done it yet.

He opened the door, ready to curse the intruder, whoever it was, back to where they had come from, and hesitated when he found on his doorstep a woman. Blonde, probably in her forties, she reeked of nervousness but blinked and frowned when she saw him. He knew who she was before she even opened her mouth.

“Hello. I would like to see Buffy.”

After witnessing how the Slayer had reacted earlier to questions about her mother, Spike glared at her without even realizing he was, and his hands clenched into tight fists; it wouldn’t have taken much for him to clench them around her neck.

“What did you do to her?” he asked, his voice coming close to a growl.

Her eyes widened in surprise for a brief moment before she frowned again. “What did I…” she started, sounding outraged. “What did you do to her?” Her voice was becoming shriller with each word. “She’s a minor. I could have you arrested on kidnapping and statutory rape charges. And I will if you don’t let me see my daughter right now!”

When she slipped a hand in her purse, he thought she would retrieve a stake; instead, she pulled out a cell phone, and added in a warning tone that she was calling the police. Spike had to struggle not to vamp out and simply get rid of her. The only thing that stopped him was that he didn’t know whether the Slayer would have thanked him or staked him.

“Spike?”

The voice didn’t sound at all like the Slayer’s, and when Spike turned to her, he discovered that it was more than her voice that he didn’t recognize. The Slayer he knew, the Slayer he had fought more times than he cared to remember, the Slayer who could answer him blow for blow when others would have been on the ground and pleading for it to stop, this Slayer was gone. In her place stood…a scared little girl. She wore an oversized flannel shirt, looking very much like a child wearing her father’s clothes. Arms wrapped around herself, eyes big and shiny, she had never seemed as young as she did at that moment. Spike wanted nothing more than to close the door and hold her until she stopped shaking. Until she was the Slayer again.


Buffy had only intended to lie down for a moment and calm her mind and racing heart, but she fell asleep as soon as she rested her head on the pillow. Her fight with Spike hadn’t been that hard, but the breakdown that had followed had left her confused and exhausted. Her sleep was thankfully dreamless, and only ended with the muffled sound of a knock.

At first, she thought it was Spike knocking on her door. She sat up and instinctively grabbed the shirt at the foot of the bed, pulling it on against the shiver of cold that was clinging to her – and trying not to think that Spike’s arms had felt more comforting that the familiar soft fabric. She couldn’t allow herself to go down that path; nothing good could possibly lie ahead. As soothing as his embrace had been, she had to tell him that it wouldn’t lead him anywhere.

The sound of a woman's voice froze her just as she was standing, and the cold spread over her. It couldn’t be her mother, Buffy assured herself. But as she stepped to the door and opened it quietly, she already knew it was.

She didn’t want to see her. She truly didn’t. Still, she found herself compulsively walking toward the entrance, slow, reluctant steps that took her too close. All she could see was Spike’s back, and the fury barely contained in the rigid set of his body. Wrapping her arms around herself, she said his name softly and he turned to face her.

His eyes darkened, as he looked at her, and she shivered at what she could almost have seen in them. He was angry. She had caused his anger often enough to know as much. But this time, the anger wasn’t directed toward her. Rather, he was angry on her behalf.

The wave of warmth that submerged her was almost enough to make her dizzy. It was also enough to strengthen her. She couldn’t hide anymore, not if her mother knew where she was, so she might as well face her. The simple fact that she wouldn’t be alone to do it was intensely comforting.

“Let her in, please.”

It took Spike so long to react that she thought he wouldn’t listen to her, but, at last, he stepped aside, one small step, and Buffy forced herself to look past the door and at the woman covering her mouth with her hand.

“Oh my God, Buffy!”

In three hurried steps, Joyce was in front of Buffy and hesitating only a second before hugging her. Buffy tried and managed not to push her away, but answering to the hug in kind was beyond her.

“You’re here! You’re really here. It’s all right, honey, it’s over. We’re going home. Everything—”

“No.”

Buffy’s body tensed and her mother pulled back.

“What—” she started, but Buffy didn’t let her finish.

“I’m not going anywhere.”

Joy drained from her mother’s face, slowly replaced by anger.

“Oh, yes you are,” she snapped. “I’ve been scared out of my mind for months. Do you have any idea what it felt like not to know if you were all right or lying in a ditch? Do you have any idea how much it hurt every time the private investigator said he had no new lead?”

“I called,” Buffy tried to argue, and her mother snorted.

“You called, yes. Twice in two years.” Without warning, Joyce grabbed Buffy’s arms, the grip of her fingers almost painful, and it was all Buffy could do to stop herself from striking to get her away. “I’m not leaving you here to live with a punk. What were you thinking? You don’t know what you’re doing.”

She started shaking Buffy, now, probably not even realizing what she was doing. Buffy did not – could not – react.

“You’re still my daughter. You’ll always be my daughter, whatever happened, and I—”

Whatever else she was going to say was drowned in Spike’s growl. He pulled Buffy’s mother away from her and stepped between the two of them. Looking at Buffy through the golden eyes of his demon face, he tilted his head to one side.

“You’re OK?” he asked, very quiet.

Buffy realized she was shaking and made an effort to control herself. She nodded, unable to say a word, and Spike briefly reached out to caress her face with the tip of his fingers. Only then did she realize her cheeks were wet. She hurriedly dried them with her shirt’s sleeve and nodded again, hoping that this time she’d be more convincing.

Spike turned away from her and toward her mother, who was standing only two feet back, her face very pale and her body frozen in shock.

“You will not put your hands on her again,” he said, his voice low and dangerous. “'That clear enough for you?”

Joyce blinked and shuddered. Looking away from him, she found Buffy’s eyes and gave her an imploring look.

“Buffy? What…what is going on?”

That simple question brought back the memory of telling her parents the truth about who she was and what she did; the memory of the incredulity in their eyes, slowly turning into something so very much like pity; the memory of days spent trying to repeat to them and to whoever would listen that she wasn’t lying, wasn’t crazy, and that she just wanted to go home.

All that was over, now, Buffy realized with a jolt. She had meant what she had said about not going home. She missed her mother, she always would, but the cut was too deep to heal, and she was finally ready to accept that. She felt strangely relieved by that realization.

“I told you before,” Buffy said calmly. “Vampires exist. And you’ve just pissed off one of them.”

The look on her face was not as comical as Buffy would have imagined it would be – and not nearly satisfying enough.