Chapter 1

Take place soon after Blue on Blue episode

.Depressed about being lonely and feeling used, Spike sat at his kitchen counter, swirling the glass of ice. He reached for the bottle of scotch and poured another glass. He took a swallow as he sat deep in thought about his lost relationships.

"Should have learned from the first time I dated her years ago not to trust her. Sorry Mac, I will keep an eye on her somehow, I promise!" Spike thought to himself. Spike missed Mac and wanted some kind of connection to his first mentor. His daughter Leslie had used Spike for a quick fling after her dad's death but it had left Spike lonely and heartbroken.

Spike had envisaged a future family with her and felt that he could have lived up to his promise to look after her for Mac. But this was not going to happen since she married someone else while they were still dating.

He poured another glass as another thought entered his mind.

"I can't believe she did that to me! She put the team and her brother in danger. Part of her must have wanted David back since I turned her down for the weekend fling. She had to go and meet up with him again even after he almost landed her in a foreign prison. What was she thinking? Why was she still talking to him?"

Spike was thinking how he had been used by Natalie for the evidence depot heist.

"She didn't have to tell David about my computer skills."

Her actions had nearly cost his team their lives, not to mention hers and his. This made him think of his Dad, Mac and Lou.

"Anyone who gets close to me just ends up leaving me. I must be cursed."

He liked Natalie but he believed that she had used him as a status symbol to show that she was not without a male in her life. She pushed hard but the relationship was not going to work and they both knew it.

"Lou, I wish you were here buddy! I want to talk to you, just too much to think about."

Spike poured the last drop from the bottle into his glass. He missed Lou the most, his best friend, the one and only person who, in Spike's mind, kept life alive. But now he was gone and there was no one to go to clubs with, to go to movies with, go snow skiing with, or to just talk with to help clear his mind. Spike couldn't talk with his own family as they didn't approve of his career choices.

Spike also missed his teammate cum big brother Wordy who had transferred to the Guns and Gangs unit. The two just kept missing each other attempts to connect because of conflicting work schedules and Wordy's family obligations. "Another person who has left me," Spike thought as he downed the brown liquid, grabbed a bottle of whiskey, poured a glass and stumbled to his couch.

Spike was still upset over his mother going back to Italy after his father's death. He hadn't told the team that his sister and nephew had also moved to Italy. He hadn't wanted the team, mainly the Boss, to worry about him. This left Spike with no blood family on this side of the earth and he was feeling very lonely.

"Maybe I should move to the old country too?" But all those years of defending his career choice would go by the wayside. Then he could just imagine his family saying, "Why couldn't you have done this while your dad was alive!"

Spike remembered the time when he and his father had had a heated argument. He could recall his father's exact words to him: "You've made your choice in life. You say this choice of career makes you happy, then just be happy with your choice of killing me forever. You will not be around to take care of your Ma with this career. I cannot believe that I raised such a disrespectful son."

Spike gazed into the amber liquid thinking about his father's words. "I guess in a way that's true, but Ma left me."

His days off now mostly consisted of him just moping around the quiet apartment. Reading and going to the bookstore or the music store was his new norm. Tonight, as Spike was thinking about life and relationships, he decided that he was going to be the best uncle he could be to Greg's, Ed's, Wordy's and soon Jules and Sam's kids, until they, in their turn, would leave him too, to continue with their own lives.

But tonight Spike was going to try to drink away the pain of his solitude, alone as usual.

Just as Spike closed his eyes to listen to the music playing on the stereo, the door bell rang. "Who could that be?" he wondered.