Hi again! This is my second fic, and it's gonna be a multi-chapter one. I'm not sure how long it will be, since I don't have it all planned out yet. It starts out during "After Life," after all the drama goes down, and goes AU from there.

Disclaimer: I do not own Buffy the Vampire Slayer, and only intend to use the characters for entertainment purposes.

Spike's boots squelched unpleasantly through the muddy puddles as he trudged through Restfield. The cold water seeped quickly through the holes and his socks. He cursed himself for not nicking a new pair of boots after the last time this had happened. He ran his hand through his hair, trying to make the unruly curls lie straight, but it was no use. The water had freed them from their oppressive gel prison, and nothing could force them back in.

Looking longingly at his nice, dry crypt as he passed, he resolutely hunched his shoulders and kept walking. For every step he took, he could feel the dead, stale pig's blood combining with the Jack Daniels he'd just had at Willy's. It made his stomach hurt, but he didn't mind. It was a welcome distraction.

Finally turning onto Revello Drive, he slowed his footsteps until he finally came to a stop underneath the tree he hadn't stood under in exactly one hundred and forty-seven days. Hands trembling, he reached into the pockets of his duster, only to find his cigarettes mushy and soaked. He didn't really want to smoke just then, anyways. It was really just habit that made him reach for the pack. He'd rather just be, in this moment that he dreamed a thousand different times, a thousand different ways, but never imagined would actually happen.

He breathed in, his heightened senses taking in the fresh scent of rain, the smell of crushed grass and weeds where he had carelessly trodden on the yard, and, fainter than all the rest, blood. Her blood. It crusted and scabbed on the outside of her hands. He could smell the dirt and decay that still clung to her. He could hear the pounding of her heart, uneven, unsure, and afraid.

Turning his face up to the sky, he let himself weep. He let out the tears that had been threatening to fall since he'd looked up those stairs, seeing the bot until he caught a whiff of her, heard the blood pounding through her veins. His whole body shook with the force of his emotions, and he dimly remembered crying like this when he saw her body, crumpled and defeated, at the beginning of the summer. The poet in him acknowledged the rightness, the balance, in these actions, and for once, he didn't try to force down that part of himself. Instead, he embraced both halves of himself for the first time in over a century. He let his demon half feel the very life essence of the girl upstairs, listen to her heart beating, and smell the scent of her skin and hair and blood. He let his long-lost human half feel the sharp loss of her, and the even sharper realization that she was really and truly back. He was overjoyed by that, yet couldn't help but feel his dead heart clench at the memory of when William, an innocent, naïve boy, had to crawl his way out of his own grave. At the time, he had been fueled by the hungry strength of his demon, but he could still feel the cold terror of being buried. He did not wish for her to be subjected to the same thing.

If only they had told him. He would have stopped them, of course, which is why they hadn't. But if only they had told him to be at her grave that night, he could have dug her out. He could have used his hands, the same hands that had clawed and pushed frantically at the earth in exactly the same way. He could have saved her the pain of waking up alone, unloved, underground. He would gladly live through being buried alive again, just to save her from it.

He loved her. He had never been so sure of that. Oh sure, he had known for months. He'd been telling Buffy that for months. But inside, the demon was always whispering his uncertainties. It made him wonder how a vampire could love. It made him wonder what kind of vampire could love the Slayer. It wasn't until he let his two halves come together in this anguished grief and joy that he, Spike, both demon and human, could see that he loved Buffy with all his heart and metaphorical soul.

From their mystical place in the sky, the Powers That Be smiled.