Fred woke up with a pain in her side and aching limbs.
It was dark and she could smell blood, gore and ashes all around her, covering her in grime. Where was she?
After awhile, she realized that the weight on her abdomen was a body – someone was draped across her. Fred squealed softly and managed to wiggle out from under the deadweight.
She was in an alley, and the first dim rays of light were peaking out from behind the metropolis skyline. It was breathtaking, the dusty red sky, the shimmering glass buildings, the dragon soaring and spiraling around the city spires…
Dragon?
Fred quickly looked around her, more specifically, at the bodies strewn through the alley around her. Demons, for the most part, but there were two things that caught her eye – and stole her breath away.
Pinned against a wire fence was Gunn – several stakes were protruding from his chest and a deep gash ran down his side. He was dead. He had been for quite awhile, her senses told her, by the way his blood-soaked clothes had dried and cracked.
Tears streamed down her face as she limped over to the fallen warrior, pulling him off the fence and lying him respectfully down on the pavement. She paused for a moment of prayer as she rested a trembling hand over his face, closing his clouded eyes.
Then she turned back to the other corpse that had caught her eye.
It was the black leather clad body that had been draped protectively over hers.
Spike.
More tears trickled down her face as she rolled the vampire champion over onto his back and gazed at his drawn and pale face.
Of course there was no heartbeat or any other sign of life – why should there be, he'd been dead for over one hundred years after all… but something told her that he couldn't be gone. Maybe it was just denial, but she couldn't stop thinking it.
'If he were really gone – he would have dusted, wouldn't he?'
Shaking the bleached vampire gently, Fred called his name.
It was a long time before she stopped, and it was only because she felt the brightening light of morning on her face and small tendrils of smoke started rising from Spike's prone body.
Dragging him away from the fatal sunlight, Fred found an unlocked door into one of the empty buildings bordering the alley and shoved him in.
Whatever had happened, she thought suddenly, Angel is probably out there… and Wesley. Fred dragged Spike to a corner where sunlight shouldn't reach him and where anything bad shouldn't find him, she went out in search for her friends.