By the time morning came, Spike already regretted letting the Slayer go. It was hard to remember, now that she wasn’t in front of him anymore, why it had seemed like a good idea to postpone their fight. Hard, also, not to bow his head when the memory of Drusilla shamed him. She didn’t say a word in his mind, simply stared at him, but he knew what she would have said to him; the same thing he was telling himself. The Slayer had killed his Dru, taken his princess away from him after merely a century when they should have had ten times longer together, and she deserved one thing, and one thing only – death. Courtesy shouldn’t have been part of it, or Spike’s own pride wanting a good fight from her.

He finally managed to find sleep, but even there Drusilla followed him. He dreamed of their second night in Cleveland, when he had returned to their new lair with good news.

“Found the bird, Princess.”

Even though Spike kept his voice quiet, his exultation carried through his words. The rumors had been true, and there was indeed a Slayer guarding this only partly active Hellmouth. Soon, he would bring the Slayer’s blood to Drusilla, and then she wouldn’t spend so much time anymore lying down on their bed, too weak to go out most of the time, or to hunt for herself on her best nights. Soon, she would be herself again, and they would reclaim the night together.

Lying beside her, he held her to him and murmured against her brow.

“She’s a scrawny little thing but she’s a Slayer, all right. She’ll make you all better, you’ll see, when I bring her to you. And you’ll drink her dry, won’t you Princess? For me?”

Drusilla let out a quiet moan. She brought a hand up to cup his face, and her nails were slight pinpricks of pain on his cheek.

“She wore gold in her hair,” she breathed. “It stung my eyes.”

Used to her ramblings, Spike accepted them as he always did and tried to get her to talk. Sometimes, her dreams were too jumbled to make sense of them, but sometimes they were worth every achingly patient minute he spent trying to get her to tell more.

“Who did, luv?”

“You know who, silly,” she chided. “She wore gold and she danced under the stars.” With a hiss, Drusilla turned into Spike’s embrace, scrambling until she was kneeling astride him. Her eyes were dark and accusing when she looked down as him. “You danced with her.”

“I only dance with you,” he promised, soothing. “You know that, don’t you? I am your Spike. Yours.”

He hadn’t been inside her for too long, and to have her kneeling over him like this, pressing down on his growing erection, was distracting to say the least, especially when Drusilla started rocking against him as though in a trance.

“You will dance, and dance again, and the stars will weep. And then you will take her blood, and the Slayer will be yours. She will taste sweet and strong and you will forget all about Princess.”

Spike’s attention returned in full when Drusilla mentioned the Slayer. He looked at her intensely, barely noticing that she looked so sad.

“Dru?” he cooed. “Luv? Was that a vision? Did you see me kill the Slayer?”

He had known he would do it, of course, he had no other option if he hoped to restore Drusilla’s health. But it was one thing to want something badly enough that you were ready to do anything for it, quite another to be told by a seer that it would happen.

“You said you’d give her blood to me,” she whined, leaning down to bury her face against Spike’s neck. “But you’ll keep her all to yourself and forget me. Bad Spike.”

She bit down on his neck and Spike ground his teeth. Closing his arms around her, he let her drink from him without saying a word. It was usually difficult to get her to feed; he wasn’t going to interrupt her now. When she had stopped – too soon, as always, she never fed enough anymore – he murmured to her.

“You’re my Princess and I promise I'll bring her blood to you. Make you strong again, make you whole. Then you and I will dance again, you’ll see. Like before. Forever.”

He continued whispering comforting nonsense to her until she had fallen asleep against his chest. He grinned the whole time. He would soon add another Slayer’s name to his record, his Dru had foreseen it.

It was late in the afternoon when Spike woke again. Emotions swirled through his mind, brought forth by his dreams. Drusilla’s loss was a beacon of pain, demanding vengeance and protesting against any more delays. The memory of her words felt bittersweet; she had claimed he would forget her after he killed the Slayer, and while he had no intention of letting go of her memory, he couldn’t continue to dwell on the past. That might have been one more reason why he had pushed back the moment of the Slayer’s death for so long. Killing her would put a final end to Drusilla’s influence on his life. And yet, he would do it. There was no other path.

He had followed her to her motel the previous night, and he returned there at nightfall, unsure whether he had changed his mind yet. If she walked out and provoked him into a fight, he wouldn’t refuse. She was already gone however, and he was left to snack on a trucker and contemplate his options. He could hunt her down. He had done it before, and it wasn’t complicated since he knew her scent so well. Or he could hold to his word and offer her a last night to live. She hadn’t shown Dru as much consideration of course, and he berated himself for even thinking about it.

In the end, his decision was made when he noticed two furtive shadows crossing a street. They caught his gaze because he was still hungry, but it didn’t take him long to realize that they were vampires. They didn’t seem to be hunting though, and, curious, he started after them. If the town was to be his, he needed to know what the vampire population was like, now that the Master was gone. He wasn’t one for competition, and they would either need to understand that and head out of town or become dust. The sooner Spike spread that message, the better.

The day after her fight against Sunnydale’s Master, Buffy stayed in, lying on her uncomfortable motel bed, the television playing as background noise. The fight was replaying in her head, move by move, step by step, and she couldn’t figure out what she could have done differently to escape the Master on her own and not owe her life to Spike. She hated that she had stumbled like this, and hated it even more because Spike had witnessed her weakness. She knew already that he would taunt her about it, when they met next. One more barb to his arsenal, and one that she couldn’t answer to.

She left the motel only in the evening, an hour or so before sunset, to go grab something to eat before patrol. The money Spencer had given her when she had left Cleveland was slowly running out, and she grimaced at having to dine once more on a greasy, tasteless burger and fries. She had gotten used to it in Cleveland, but that didn’t mean she liked it.

Despite Spike practically promising that he wouldn’t come to her until the next night, she kept expecting him to show up during her patrol, and more than once she turned to look back and catch him stalking her. She was almost disappointed that, when she returned to her motel late that night, he hadn’t walked out of the shadows with a sarcastic comment. At least, if he had, it would have been done and over by now.

When she saw the ambulance in the parking lot however, and when she overheard cops mentioning neck trauma and blood loss, a shiver ran down her spine. It had to be a message from Spike, letting her know that he knew where she was and would be there the next night.

Then again, maybe she was obsessing too much about him. After all, this was the Hellmouth, and until her arrival vampires had roamed the streets freely at night.

Her night and the following day, once more, were restless. It wasn’t her fight against the Master that was playing over and again in her head anymore. Instead, it was all of her fights against Spike, all the close calls on both sides, all the small mistakes they had both made. She hoped to be able to use some of his most blatant weaknesses, but the realization that she herself had given him openings so many times was not reassuring in the slightest. Bit by bit, her confidence eroded, and it was hard to even try to clutch at the remnants of it.

It was late in the afternoon when she listened to the clenching in her stomach and stumbled outside to the phone booth. She dialed as she had two nights earlier, without thinking about it, the number coming easily under her fingers. The phone only rang twice, and when a woman answered Buffy forced herself to speak. Her voice was small, like that of a child.

“Hi mom.”

She could hear the sharp intake of breath on the other side of the line, and a whispered, “Thank God”, before Joyce replied with trembling words.

“Buffy, honey, I’m so worried, please—”

“I’m not coming home,” Buffy interrupted her, knowing what her mother had been about to ask. “I can’t.”

“Why not?” Joyce protested, the tears getting closer to the surface. “You can always come home, baby. You know that, don’t you? I’ll always be there for you and I’ll make it better. Whatever it is, Buffy, we can fix it if you just come home. Please?”

For an instant, anger flared inside Buffy and she wanted to snap that she didn’t need to be fixed, didn’t need doctors or drugs. But that wasn’t why she had called, she reminded herself, and swallowed back the recriminations.

“I’m not coming back,” she repeated. “But I just wanted you to know… I’m all right. Really. I’m OK, now. So you don’t have to worry about me. Just know that I’m fine.”

And I miss you, she wanted to add. I wish I could really come home.

All she could say however was, “Be careful at night, mom.”

Hanging up was harder than it had any right to be.

Returning to her room, she took a long shower before dressing for patrol. She put on a pair of dark jeans and a deep red top. She shined her boots before slipping them on, and checked her crossbow carefully, choosing a handful of well-polished slim stakes to tuck into the ammunition slots of the strap. Packing the few possessions she had around the room, she slung both her duffel bag and crossbow over her shoulder and went to pay what remained of her motel bill.

She had decided to wait for Spike in the same graveyard where he had offered her a truce. She liked the symmetry of it. She had no doubt that he would find her, wherever she was. What she hadn’t expected was that she would meet anyone on her way there.

The car parked a little ahead of her and Giles walked out, glasses in hand, to come to her.

“Miss Summers, I am glad I have found you, but I have a feeling I am too late.”

She frowned at his words, wondering what he meant, if he could know and how, but he explained himself by pointing at her duffel bag.

“You are returning to Cleveland, I see. Your Watcher was adamant to have you back as soon as possible, although I’ll admit I had hoped…”

She didn’t bother to correct him – whatever happened with Spike, she wasn’t planning on returning to Cleveland, and Spencer could die of rage for all she cared – but her frown did change into questioningly raised eyebrows.

“That is…” Giles hesitated, a little flustered. “You could really do a lot of good here, and I am sure the Council would approve your transfer. If you wanted to, of course. From the few words I exchanged with your Watcher, I had the impression that a different setting and different people might be more pleasant for you. And I could arrange for you to go to school here, have a more normal life—”

Buffy had heard enough. She shook her head.

“I’m the Slayer,” she reminded him harshly. “There’s no such thing as normal for me.”

He seemed stung by her reply, and it was too easy to believe that he had only had her best intentions at heart when making his offer. She sighed.

“It’s… nice of you,” she forced the words out with some difficulty. “You’ve been all right while I was there, so thanks. But I need to go, now. I have a rendezvous.”

He didn’t try to stop her when she strode past him, and for that she was grateful. Things were hard enough as it was.

She reached the graveyard just as the sun was sinking past the horizon. She found a good place for a fight, a space with fewer gravestones over which to trip, and put down her bag behind one of them, out of the way. Sliding the crossbow strap off her shoulder, she shrugged out of her jacket before flinging it onto her bag. Then she took the weapon in her hands and inserted a thin stake in the channel, preparing everything to shoot. By sheer habit, she patted her belt and the two stakes tucked in. She was ready. All she needed now was an opponent. She didn’t have to wait long.

The wind carried the scent of his cigarette to her before her other senses kicked in and she turned toward Spike instantly, feet squarely set, crossbow in position and waiting for him to be closer so that she’d have a good chance at dusting him.

“Come on,” he said, his voice loud enough to carry despite the distance. “We haven’t waited all this time to end it with a toy. You and me, Slayer. Stake and fangs. That’s how it should be.”

She didn’t lower the crossbow immediately, and instead waited until he had come within a reasonable range before gently placing the weapon on the ground. It was her decision, and she might have reached it without his words, or so she tried to convey with a look.

She pulled a stake free from her belt and gripped it with a familiarity born from countless nights. Now only a few yards away from her, Spike flung his cigarette to the ground. He was smiling, and it irritated her. She didn’t want him to think it would be that easy.

Without warning, she launched her first attack.