A/N: This is an example of how important feedback is for writers. Spike'smate triggered this :-) beta'd by ebineez01

He's sitting on the Summers' couch, listening to the niblet, and if he closed his eyes for just a moment he could probably imagine Buffy coming though the door right now. Dawn tries to get rid of him, but no way in hell is he going to leave her on her own. Which proves to be the right thing to do when all hell breaks loose in Sunnydale.

The moment Buffy meets his eyes he's absolutely sure that he's snapped. This has to be what going insane feels like. It's finally been too much, the grief and the despair must have gotten to him, because the being stepping down the stairs doesn't just look like Buffy – it feels like Buffy. It's what he begged for night after night, 147 nights in a row, but it can't be. So he obviously went bat shit crazy, and now his broken mind is imagining what he wants most in all the world. Buffy alive. Who cares about being sane if he can feel this. Happiness. He didn't think he'd ever feel this again, but now happiness spreads all through him, warm and soft, and he feels like dropping to his knees and dissolving into tears.

And then the look on her face registers with him, and the blood on her knuckles, and his heart breaks for her. What she had to do. What she had to go through. The panic of waking up in a coffin, the pain of digging her way out of the ground. All he wants is to pull her into his arms and never let her go, but he's scared to touch her. His chest tightens when she lets him take her hands, when she asks him and that number springs to his mind, and he can feel the tears well up in his eyes when he tries the little joke about day 148 and she doesn't even smile. She's right there, and he's touching her, and she lets him, but she feels – off somehow. Changed. Different. So far out of reach that he doesn't know what to do. How to get to her. He tries words, desperate to make a connection, and she's honest with him.

And then her so called friends invade her house and he feels like throwing the whole lot through a wall, chip be damned, but he just flees. He storms off, emotions raging, unable and unwilling to hold back the tears any longer. What have they done. What were they thinking. Brainless bunch of children, raising the dead. But she's back. He got her back. Buffy is alive. She'll be OK, she'll be herself. Oh God he got her back. He stops and crouches down, burying his face in his hands, and it doesn't even bother him that he's shaking and sobbing and laughing and that the tears just won't stop. Buffy is alive.