One moment Spike was standing by the fountain with Angel, arguing with the great lummox about which of them had saved the world more (translation, which of them was more worthy to pursue Buffy's affections), and waiting for a complete stranger to show up and hand them a dead demon's head in a duffel bag; his life, Spike decided, had officially lost all dignity and meaning. The next, he was flying through the air, knocked clear across the little plaza and smashing into the stone wall on the other side, because the item in the bag turned out to be not a demon's head but an oversized bundle of TNT and a timer.

He was dazed, his ears ringing and the smell of rubble and dust blocking out everything else around him; he ached from the force of the explosion, the bits of flying stone that had caught him, and of course his impact with the ancient cobblestones. Spike couldn't seem to get his limbs to move in the direction he wanted them to go, and only managed to stay upright, once he'd finally gotten his feet under him, by staggering into a wall and hanging on for his unlife. So when he felt hands lifting him up, attached to blurred faces and voices muffled by all the ringing in his ears, it didn't occur to him there was a problem until he realized, belatedly, that they were helping him to head the wrong way.

"Hey," he said, still stunned and seeing double. Sort of lurched to one side, trying to get the people holding him up to turn around and go back they way they'd come. Whoever was holding him wasn't hurting him, but they weren't letting go, either, even when he started to struggle in earnest. "Hey," he said again. "This's – you're not –"

Somebody patted his arm companionably, which would have been fine except someone else threw a bag over his head. Completely disoriented, the people on him got him to stumble a few more steps before he bumped his hip against something, and then they lifted his legs and he felt himself falling sideways. Spike hit his head against something hard, and that was that. Briefly, he heard and felt the vibration of a car with its motor running, all around him. Then he just felt the pain go away, followed by the ringing in his ears, followed by pretty much everything else.

He woke to warmth and silence, which was unexpected, and pain which kind of was; he'd survived a bomb blast, after all. Still, as awareness returned so did the memory of being dumped into the boot of a car with a bag over his head – of being manhandled and kidnapped, sod it all. At least he hadn't been at the business end of a giant military taser, this time (bag him and tag him, came the unpleasant memory, the voice of a young idiot soldier somewhere behind his left shoulder, the recollection still too recent even after a few years had passed). Spike stopped his breathing and made sure his body was still completely limp, that he hadn't tensed in reaction.

Caution now; anger later, when it would do the most good.

Spike lay perfectly still, listening with everything he had in him, but he caught nothing especially ominous. Bit the opposite, in fact; faint traffic noises, voices laughing and calling to one another, the sort of thing you hear out on the street, batch of friends out for a pub-crawl; the soft tick and chime of a grandfather clock, surprisingly close by, in the same room, perhaps. No screams or moans or anything along those lines.

No nearby voices, no breathing, no heartbeats in the room with him, far as he could tell. Didn't rule out a vampire guard, of course, but things seemed promising. Spike risked opening one eye, then the other after a moment of waiting.

None of what he saw quite made sense; or, well, it did in that he could immediately tell what sort of room he was in, but this didn't seem quite the place to put someone you'd just knocked unconscious and abducted. Along the wall across from him, there was an antique sideboard made of dark wood, well appointed with a collection of crystal decanters and liquor bottles, a tray holding crystal tumblers, a silver-and-copper coffee service… and was that an actual absinthe fountain? The wall itself was light colored but hung with a large, heavy tapestry, keeping the room out of the bright-and-chipper zone. There was a pair of armchairs, which looked to be upholstered in crushed velvet, placed near heavy velvet curtains on part of the wall to his right. An end table near one chair held a couple of books and a lamp turned low; all of this on lush, thick carpeting.

Everything else was books. Floor-to-ceiling bookshelves, a couple of them fronted with glass, lined the walls everywhere he looked.

Spike sat up painfully, biting back a hiss as his injuries made themselves known. He wasn't tied up or chained to anything, nice change of pace there, and he was fully clothed apart from his leather duster, but his threads were definitely the worse for wear. The room was much larger than he'd first expected; some of the bookshelves lining the walls projected out into the room, dividing the space into smaller sections, and the carpet muffled sound, making the entire place sound and feel… intimate. Cozy.

Not exactly a torture chamber ambience, that was for sure.

Struggling to his feet, Spike limped around the room, exploring. The grandfather clock he'd heard earlier was in the other, larger section, at the opposite end of the room; there was a fireplace with a fire laid but not lit, and a few more chairs and small tables here and there. He had been lying on a chaise longue that looked as antique as all the other furnishings, except that it was upholstered in butter-soft suede leather. Everything was done in dark wood, deep greens and midnight blue, accented mostly with silver or brass.

A footstool or two, lamps here and there. A desk at one end of the space. No sign of Angel, or anyone else. No sign of his duster, either, come to that.

Spike spotted the door easily enough, but was debating with himself whether or not to try the knob. It might be locked, yeah, but more than that, it might be a trap. Be just his luck, that, try to step out and find himself hit with electricity or a contact spell of some kind; no, thank you. This could be some quiet space set aside by that busty Wolfram and Hart bird for him to recover, so she could get back to condescending and pinching his cheeks while pretending to adore him and Angel. It could just as likely be a setup by the sodding Immortal, another opportunity for him to… well, to mock and condescend. Rome seemed to be the place for that sort of thing, apparently.

But sod it. Spike wasn't a coward before the soul, and even if he'd learned caution he wasn't about to let his actions be dictated by anybody else.

So he screwed on his badass attitude and best sneer, did his best to disguise his limp, and opened the door…

…to be greeted with a bow by some bloke who'd clearly been waiting in the hall for him.

"Ah, signore, buona sera. Good evening. I shall tell il maestro you are awake," said the bloke.

Spike blinked.

I've been away from the BtVS fandom for too long. Hopefully you all will like this one now that I'm back.