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At a harbor, Dana watches the sunset. Her toes tip in the tide. She remembers how she and her mother always watched sunsets together. She remembers how her mother always slept during sunsets. She doesn't remember her mother. She remembers how her father taught her to swim in the ocean. She remembers how her father always dreamed of swimming in the ocean, but her never did. She doesn't remember her father.
She sways her right hand to roll the severed head of a harbor security guard. It falls into the water and dyes the water around her toes red.
Soon Dana feels tired. She remembers falling asleep to her mother's lullabies. She remembers being deaf and falling asleep to the vibrations in her father's chest. Red sunlight fades. Brown rust remains. She remembers brown makes you sleepy. She promises to never sleep again.
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Buffy walks through the corridors of the new high school basement, a brown paper bag gripped in one hand. Dull lights shade the walls.
"Spike, Spike," she calls out. There is no response.
She comes upon a door that seems familiar from the last time she was down here. She opens it, surprised to find the hinges turn silently. The first sliver reveals only blackness, but as she opens more the hallway light illuminates Spike lying on the concrete floor. He lies curled, eyes closed, clothes and hair disheveled. He mummers, whimpers something undecipherable.
"Spike," she says again, while stretching her free hand to the side and flicking a light switch.
His eyes open to her last call, but then quickly shut against the dull light. He pulls his hands up to cover his face. His hands are covered in burns, tight red skin and several blisters.
Buffy says, "Oh God! Are you burning yourself with a cross again?"
His eyes still closed, he grins slightly and says, "No, I accidentally grabbed a steam pipe."
Oddly relieved she asks, "Why are you down here? What's wrong with a crypt."
"Too quiet." He rolls on his back and opens his eyes to the ceiling. "When I hear voices upstairs they drown out the ones inside."
Buffy stands, staring down at him. She doesn't know how to talk to him anymore. All words seem useless for this situation. And even though useless, she finds herself caring over words as she had never done with him before, worried that they can hurt in ways that weren't possible a year ago. She then realizes that she selfishly misses that freedom of expression that they once shared, for better or worse, and now might never share again.
"Here, I brought you blood from the butcher's shop". She kneels next to him and places the bag on the floor. Spike looks at the bag and then back at her with some surprise. He sits up and carefully opens the bag with his burnt finger tips.
Buffy says, "Here, let me help." She pulls a plastic container out of the bag, takes the lid off, and motions it towards Spike. He holds out his hands, but she places the cup past his hands near his lips. He stares at her again.
"Don't worry it doesn't bother me," she says.
He presses his lips to the edge and she tilts it. The blood spills into his mouth, and she continues to tilt the cup as the flow ebbs until the cup empties.
He says, "Thank you". The voice is confused yet grateful.
She stands and asks, "How have you been eating?"
He looks away shamefully, and after a few moments says, "They should be paying me for it. Not a squeak down here now." She realizes he has been draining rats. He looks back up at her and adds, "but I always wash my mouth out afterwards."
Understanding he doesn't want to talk about it, she goes to something more general, hopefully where he can lead to a topic that he's more comfortable with. "How have you been?"
His tone dulls. "Today's a quiet day. Yesterday, I bashed my head against that wall till the boy with hammered knee caps went away." He gestures to a wall with a large brown stain reaching the floor. Slowly his voice wavers. "First year here, Dru found him practicing football alone at night. Heard him making fake crowd cheers. I can still hear the crack." He makes a small mocking hammering motion. Then with venom in his voice, "And the crowd goes wild, I said." Another swing ending with his hands returning to cover his face. He starts to sob, but quickly bends down and savagely rams his head on the floor.
"Spike!"
He does it again, then she grabs his shoulders before he finishes the third fall. Blood is dripping from his forehead.
He looks her in the eyes and says, "What? You want to know more? How I held him up, made him dangle his feet to kick one more goal, and then..."
"Stop!" She slaps him.
His head jerks back and returns. "Hit me harder!", he demands.
"No."
First, in a begging tone he says, "1971, I found a little black girl crying and scratching at her skin 'cause a white boy she liked called her 'nigger'. I skinned her alive." They both pause. "Nothing?" Then in the accents of a wish, "1989, amputated an anorexic of arms and legs and made her a permanent fixture in her fat neighbor's plumbing. Not enough?" Next, almost like a joke, "Did you know I was a Nazi? Perfect hearing for finding Jews in attics. What, too historical for a dumb bitch like you?" Finally he whispers cruelly, "If I had finished raping you, I was planning on waiting for Dawn and fucking her too."
She kicks him in the face so hard that when he lands he rolls for another seven feet.
He gives something between a groan and a scream then yells, "Not hard enough Slayer!" He stands, leans his back against the wall and closes his eyes.
Buffy shouts, "What the fuck do you want from me? To spank you and call you a bad boy?"
"Well, now that you mention..." His eyes open and look at her. "NO! I want the voices to stop!" He cradles his head in his hands and slides to the floor.
She looks at him for a few moments, and feels pity and obscure guilt. She knows that she can't comprehend what he is going through and she wont pretend. But she also knows that she wont leave him to this.
"Spike, I came to ask if you wanted to help me. When I died, another slayer was called in L.A. Apparently she's a little psycho, escaped a hospital, killed two guards, and now she's wandering around and I gotta find her."
Silence. He just lies on his side facing the wall.
"Do you want to help me?"
Silence.
"Fine." She walks through the doorway, but before closing it she says, "You know, I thought that maybe you could go to Angel. Explain what you've done to yourself, and maybe he'll help you."
At first there's no reply. She turns off the light.
Surrounded by darkness he confesses in a small voice, as if to the wall, "I already tried. He wasn't there. He's never there when you need him. He always leaves."
"Spike." He echoed a thought that had tormented her so many nights that, until then, it had lost its meaning.
He turns over, facing her. "Don't ever tell him I said that."
"Get up Spike. I'm not leaving you alone."
Buffy walks over to him and holds out her hand. Spike grips it, and she helps him up. They walk out.
"And besides," she adds, "I need you to drive."
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It is night. Buffy's car leaves Sunnydale and merges on the highway towards Los Angeles. Spike is in the driver's seat. His hands, now bandaged, tremble slightly and then he grips the steering wheel to cease the tremors.
Buffy notice's and asks, "Are you going to be ok to drive to L.A.?"
"Yeah." He keeps memories of the things he has done with cars at bay. "So, a new Slayer. That makes three, right?"
"Yep. And only one that isn't homicidal. What are the chances?"
"What's the little lady's name?"
"Dana."
"Dana. So, when you said crazy, are we talking scary hallucinations mixed with slayer strength, or lucidly loves to tortures kittens and puppies."
"Honestly, I don't know. I'm hoping the first one."
"Nice intel you got working for ya. Do you even know where to look?"
"She escaped from [_] Psychiatric Hospital. We'll start there. I'm familiar with the area." He notices a slight change in her tone at the end, but soon disregards it.
"Don't start thinking about using me as a hunting dog. You have any idea how bad that city can smell?"
"Well, you're always using your nose to rudely invade people's privacy, why not make it useful for once."
He doesn't reply, and they lapse into an awkward silence.
Minutes later, Spike breaks the silence with, "So, besides all this, how have you been?"
She looks at him for a moment, surprised at his attempt, in spite of everything, to make small talk.
Defensively, he says, "What?"
"It's nothing. I've been worried about Willow. I wish she'd come home."
"I heard about Red. Went all black when her girl died. Well, wouldn't we all?" He wants to avoid such subjects and quickly shifts with, "How are the rest?"
Understanding the shift, she answers, "Fine, I suppose. Dawn's normal. I can tell Xander still misses Anya..." She stops and eyes Spike, and then changes the focus away from Anya. "But, you know, it's that time of year when we're all waiting for something big to happen. We just smile at each other, deal with our small problems, and try to savor moments before something takes them away. "
Another long pause.
"We're terrible at small talk."
For some reason that causes Buffy to laugh, and it doesn't stop soon, so Spikes helplessly starts to chuckle too. It lasts longer than it should, but it feels good, like a wordless communication. Then it ends awkwardly and they listen to passing cars.
Buffy asks, "You said that you've already tried to ask Angel for help, but he wasn't there. What did you mean?"
"Well, his original place was burnt down. So then I asked around and heard that he moved into a hotel, the Hyperion or Helion, took up the whole place, center of operations and all that. Heh, the poof always needed space." Buffy wonders why she was never told anything about the fire or the move to the hotel. Spike continues, "But I looked around and he wasn't there. Then I'm told no one has seen him for over a month."
Before any panic, Buffy assures herself by saying, "I'm sure he's fine. If something happened, Cordelia would have told me."
"Cordelia? That sounds like someone I've threatened before. Brunette, tall-ish, great body?"
"More or less. Mostly a bitch." Spike senses some jealousy in her answer, but he wasn't sure which vampire it was for. "She was a classmate of mine, remember? She worked for Angel last time I saw him."
"I didn't exactly hang around with his employees. I snooped and left. Yeah, now that we're talking about the last time we saw Angel. He's going to try to stake me on sight."
"Wasn't it that night you kid-napped Willow to make that love potion? Sure, he'll try, but not anymore than usual."
Spike's voice starts to become softer, more hesitant. "After you took the ring of Amara I knew that you'd send it to Angel."
"Oh," She asks herself why she had never considered that. "What did you do?"
He takes his eyes off the road to her for a moment, then back. "I tortu... I hired a professional to torture him." He looks back at her, and she just stares at him stilly, gathering her emotions. "You hate me for that one."
"How bad?", she demands with a hard voice.
"Well, you've seen him since. It's not like he's missing limbs and teeth."
"How bad?"
"Bad, real bad. Hot pokers, lots of 'em."
"God damn it, Spike!" She turns her face away from him and rests her head on the window with a slight thud. He notices her fists clenching till they're white. "I'll be honest right now, I want to beat the hell out of you."
He slows the car and parks it on the side of the road.
He says, "Go ahead. I deserve it."
She just looks him in the eye, and thinks about punching his head through the window.
He goes on, "What? Want to do it outside? Fellow travelers may find it strange."
"Just drive, Spike." She turns away, and focuses on the landscape to her right.
He merges back into traffic.
"I'm sor...", he begins to say, but stops. "Never mind."
She merely looks at his reflection in her window. That was the closest he had come to saying sorry, and it wasn't even for something he'd done to her. "Good. For now, that word means nothing to me from you. Tell it to him."
Again, another long silence.
Then Spike says, "Don't tell Angel about the soul."
She's surprised. "Why?"
"I'm not ready."
"Ready? What is it with you and making a grand entrance for this thing? You know what, fine. But there goes the main reason for him not killing you."
They pass a sign saying they're getting closer to Los Angeles.
