Chapter 4

The crypt's thick stone door opened with a groan. "Spike?" Anya asked as she walked in. She wiped her hand off on her skirt more out of reflex than from any dirt. Spike's crypt had always been the cleanest place in the cemetery, even before Tara started spending time in it. Now it was almost spotless. There were days when she wished Xander were half as neat, usually after she found a bowl under the couch with three-day-old ice cream caked on the bottom. Of course Xander never sat in a black room staring at a muted TV, so it all evened out. She took a hesitant step closer to Spike's chair and saw the vampire sitting with his hands clasped in front of his nose, almost in prayer. He didn't move, and she wasn't sure if he had heard her, so she repeated, "Spike?"

"Shut the bloody door," Spike muttered without looking back.

"All right," Anya hoped she kept the quiver out of her voice as closed the door with one hand and reached for the stake Faith had given her with the other. He didn't sound threatening, but she wasn't taking any chances. "Don't suppose you want to tell me why? Or are we doing that old horror movie thing with the perky young blond girl who wanders around alone in a dark room?"

Spike grunted. "You might be perky, but you're a few centuries too old to be called young. And we both know the blond came from a bottle."

"You're in a bad mood," Anya said in a huff. She still didn't know all the rules, but she knew he'd just broken a major one. Of course, the only reason she knew it was a rule was from the time she'd asked Buffy about it when she first joined the gang. Actually her exact question had been 'do you use a chemical product, or does your hair get blonder along the way because of a Slayer thing?' She never saw a room empty out that quick again.

"If you don't like it, then go. Let me rest in peace."

"No." Anya took a few steps further into the crypt and wished her heels didn't make so much of a racket on the stone floor.

"Didn't think it would be that easy. How about the scotch in the refrigerator, then?"

Anya sighed, but went to get the drink anyway. Spike stayed quiet while she searched for a couple of reasonably clean glasses. She finally found some and scooped them up in her right hand while she grabbed the bottle with her left. She walked over to him and held out the bottle. "Here."

Spike took it from Anya and pried the cork loose. He was about to drain the bottle when he saw the two glasses that Anya was still holding. "What, you want some too?"

"It would be the polite thing."

Spike snorted. "Like either of us care 'bout that," he said, but he took her glass and filled it anyway. She offered him the second glass. He just grinned and took a swig right from the bottle.

Anya made a face at him as she sat down on the couch next to his chair. She lifted her glass and gave it a sniff. To her surprise, the scotch actually smelled good, not at all like the back alley concoction she'd been expecting.

"Twenty years old. Paid a pretty penny for it, too." He shook his head and took another swig. "Never paid for a thing in the old days. Just took it. Damned rules."

Anya took a sip and the scotch burned in all the right ways on its way down. "And there are so many."

"'Course that only makes breaking them more fun." Spike gave her a knowing look.

Anya nodded and took another sip. "Most of the rules are stupid, anyway."

"Yeah." Spike finished off the bottle, but didn't look any happier. "You know what the worst thing is about being undead?"

"Drinking the blood? I don't know how you can stomach it. I'm so glad I was a vengeance demon, it was so much cleaner."

Spike shook his head and a faint smile pulled at his lips. "You get used to it. After a while it becomes like a fine drink. Except with blood the younger the better. To a point, anyway. I never drank babies like dear old dad. No, the worst thing is you can never get properly plowed. Only time I ever came close was the first time Dru left, and then I had to drink all the way from Brazil to Sunnyhell."

"The same's true with me and mine. The younger the better, not the drunk thing. No one hates like the young." She said it matter-of-factly and with a faint hint of professional pride. Then she realized what she was saying and the warmth vanished. She downed the rest of her glass in one swallow to try and get the feeling back, but it didn't help.

Spike didn't help either. "We're both damned, you know," he said and sunk deeper into his chair. "The fiery pits and all that rubbish."

"I know," Anya admitted, her voice small.

"Can't even fool ourselves with redemption. I'm not stupid. I can save the world from now to doomsday and it won't make up for what I did. And the worst thing is, until a few years ago, I didn't care."

"It was so much easier then, wasn't it?" Anya agreed, half sad that she'd lost that feeling and half sad that she'd ever had it. "At least you didn't fool yourself into thinking you were doing good. The Patron Saint of Scorned Women." She spat out her old title as though she was trying to get the taste out of her mouth.

Spike got up to get a second bottle from the refrigerator, then came back and filled Anya's glass again. He sat down and lifted the bottle in a toast, his eyes haunted. "To cruelty."

Anya lifted her glass and her voice cracked. "To murder."

"Horror."

"Torture."

"Hatred."

"Death."

"To brutality in every shape and form," Spike finished and downed his bottle while Anya did the same with her glass. "It didn't help, did it?"

"No," Anya answered with a shiver. This bottle of scotch did taste like it was made yesterday, but it didn't matter. "Though now I do feel woozy."

"Wish I did," Spike muttered as he balanced the bottle on the arm of his chair. "So much simpler in the old days."

"Until we came to Sunnydale." Anya fought back tears. "Where they took everything from us."

"Yeah. And what did we get in return? The illusion of redemption? Feh."

"Love," Anya answered for him and felt a flicker of warmth.

"That, too." Spike chuckled without humor. "She was almost mine, you know. Buffy."

"I know, but don't tell Xander."

Spike continued as if he hadn't heard her. "I worked it out a while back. You know we kissed the night we were singing. Busy night. Could've been the start of something. Then the night when Red took our memories I followed her to the Bronze."

"Stalked," Anya corrected without malice. "At least in this state."

"If it gets you through the night. Anyway, I was just about to make my move when you came out of nowhere and got to her first. I did a fade and waited. Figured you two would start screaming at each other and Buffy'd need a shoulder to cry on. It was quite a performance. Especially when you two got physical right in the middle of the club. And no mud in sight." Spike sighed once in disappointment. "I nearly did the noble thing when she slammed you into a table and almost gave you the business end of a stake."

"You?" Anya didn't even try to keep the doubt out of her voice.

"I can be noble," Spike protested. Then he shrugged it away. "When the price is right. But I didn't have to. Still don't know how you talked her down. Then you left together. I thought I'd just have to wait, but the next night Buffy came by and thanked me for helping her, but said the kiss was wrong."

Spike shook his head in disbelief. "She thanked me. Told her she knew what she could do if she really wanted to thank me, but she didn't even have the decency to hit me. I thought she'd come crawling back, but she didn't. Went to you two instead.

"And you know the worst thing. The thing that makes me want to stake myself? She's happy with you two. Happier than I could ever make her. Happier than I've ever seen her, even with the poofed knight. And now she's preggers and you lot are about to get married. Never thought it would last... Always thought I would get my chance..."

"So you've just been making time with Tara? Waiting for us to explode?" Anya asked in disgust as all the old vengeance demon instincts kicked in. When she realized what she was doing she felt even more disgusted, this time with herself.

"At first," Spike admitted without hesitation. "Ran into Tara one night at the Bronze and we cried into our beer. Then we did it again the next day. Third day she challenged me to a game of darts."

"Who won?" Anya asked, though she had a good idea.

"I did," Spike said and sounded offended at the question. "I have been throwing things for a century now. Give me a little credit. And while you're at it, get me another drink."

Anya didn't move this time and neither did Spike. Finally he just gave up. "Ah, no sense wasting all my good stuff in one night, anyway."

Anya dipped a finger into the last few drops of her scotch and ran it around the edge of her glass, just to listen to the crystal sing. "So what happened tonight?"

"What do you think happened?" Spike hissed. "I felt your baby. Yours and Xander's and Buffy's baby. Reminded me of everything I couldn't give her. Or Tara."

"So you went psycho?"

"If I'd gone psycho, you'd be dead. And me too, more than likely. I just took a page from your boy's book."

Anya's face darkened. "You're just jealous of him."

"Maybe, but at least my jokes are funny," Spike shot back.

"Do you love Tara?"

"Do you love Buffy? And Xander?" Spike didn't have to wait for an answer. "I loved each and every one of them. Cecily, Dru, Buffy and Tara. Despite what those musty old books say. Maybe being a vampire doesn't take away our souls, not completely. Just shuts them up."

"So why the big commotion?"

"'Cause sooner or later Tara's going to figure out what I can't give her. And I already know what she can't give me."

That shocked Anya into sitting almost ramrod-straight. "What?"

Spike seemed to sink deeper into himself. "Who am I?"

"What is this, a history test?"

"Really. Who am I?"

"William the Bloody. Spike. Dru's childe, Tara's lover. Any of these ring a bell?"

"I was - tried to be - a poet for Cecily, a demon for Dru, a man for Buffy, and a hero for Tara. So I'm unique. I'm the only vampire in the world who casts a reflection. Just my damned luck it's not mine."

"So, you're going to run?" Anya asked. "Take it from me. Doesn't help."

Spike shook his head and looked even more depressed. "I'm not. At first I was perfectly happy just having someone warm next to me, then we got to talking... Red was a bloody idiot for ever letting her go."

The hairs on the back of Anya's neck bristled at the bile she heard in Spike's voice. The vampire was the first person she'd heard in a long time who didn't sound sickeningly sweet when talking about Willow. "So you're not running away?"

Spike shot her a look. "Aren't you paying attention? If it was up to me… But nothing is, not really. You remember that incident with Travers?"

"Where Tara went to that scary place?"

"Yeah. Scared her more than anyone else. Thought I'd gotten 'er off the idea that she was out of control, though." He shook his head and finished off the second bottle. "I'm the biggest idiot 'ere. And that's saying something."

"Hey!"

Spike smiled and took the empty bottle by its neck. "I just didn't want to see it. Today she froze when one of those muck demons attacked Faith. That's why I knocked the new-but-not-improved Slayer out of the way. Though it was a blast." Spike's mood seesawed again. "She's still afraid of 'erself. That's why she's…"

"What?"

"Nothing. Forget it."

Anya almost pried, but all the openness of a moment before was gone. "So what's that have to do with…"

Spike shrugged. "Nothing. Tell your mates not to worry about ol' Spike. 'e can take care of 'imself."

"Do you know your accent gets worse when you've been drinking?"

"If you think this is bad, you should 'ear Angel. Sounds like those Lucky Charms commercials."

Anya felt a little better hearing him joke. "So you're not going to do something stupid?"

"Nothing I can think of," Spike said.

Anya nodded and got up. She managed to get over to the door without swaying too much, which thrilled her no end. But she stopped before she got to the door and looked back in worry. "Did you mean what you said? About us being damned?"

Spike shrugged. "Does it matter? Nothing we can do about it."

Anya nodded and walked out the door. She jumped when it slammed shut behind her. She shivered from a chill that had nothing to do with the night and wrapped her arms around herself, but it didn't help any more than the scotch had. When she looked up she saw all her friends waiting outside the door, armed to the teeth, with Buffy and Xander right up front.

"Are you all right?" Buffy asked as she took a step forward and looked Anya over from head to toe, trying to see if there was even a scratch on her. She let out a soft sigh of relief when she didn't see anything.

Xander saw the look in Anya's eyes before Buffy did, and his hand tightened around a stake. "Did he do anything?"

"What? No, he didn't…" Anya tried to blink away the tears before they gave her away, but to no avail.

"Is everything good in there?" Faith asked in worry.

"As good as it is out here," Anya said and tried to smile, but it was too much. She fell forward into Buffy and Xander's arms. "Take me home," she begged through her tears, which felt so odd. It was only the third time in three years that she'd cried; the first two were when Joyce died and when Xander left.

Buffy and Xander hugged her tight and led her away without saying a word. They were halfway to the cemetery gates when she heard Faith say, "You think I should?"

Then Giles answered, "No. I doubt that he's a danger to anyone but himself now."

Anya barely remembered getting home and didn't have a clue as to how she'd ended up in her white cotton pajamas. It almost seemed as if she'd teleported herself from the graveyard to her bedroom, which was another trick she missed from the old days. But it didn't really matter, not anymore.

She was sitting in their bed, her knees pulled to her chest and her chin on her knees, staring down at her red toenail polish. She wondered if all those Sunday morning television sermons were right, if the hell fires had the same dark red shade to them.

Then she felt something tugging gently at her hair, over and over again. She ignored it as long as she could, until her curiosity finally got the better of her. She turned just enough to see Buffy sitting behind her with an old faux ivory brush in her hand. Buffy smiled at her as she ran the brush through Anya's hair again, but didn't say a word.

Anya tried to smile, to say something to get rid of the worry in Buffy's eyes, but she couldn't. She wished, not for the first time, that she could joke her way through her pain the way Xander did his. She knew why he did it, not to make himself feel better but to help everyone else, but her jokes were never any good. So she just sat there in silence.

She also sometimes thought that Xander could hear her thinking about him, because he chose that moment to walk through the door. He had three spoons in one hand and a carton of ice cream in the other. "Triple chocolate with brownies. There's so much sugar in this baby that I'm the only man who has ever eaten an entire carton and lived to tell the tale. Guaranteed to make you feel better." He set the ice cream down on the bed, right in front of Anya's feet, but she didn't move a muscle. Finally he frowned at her. "At least it will if you eat some of it."

"It's good," Buffy gently prodded as she ran the brush through Anya's hair again. "Better than what Spike gave you."

That sunk in. Anya half-turned to Buffy. "How did you know?"

Buffy smiled and waved her hand in front of her face. "I can smell it on your breath."

"Oh," Anya said and made a face at the idea of stinkiness, especially if it came from her.

"You might as well tell us," Xander said as he sunk down on the bed in front of her. "You know, we have ways of making you talk."

Anya sighed and broke down. "Why do you let me stay?"

Xander and Buffy stared at Anya, then looked at each other, and then went back to staring at Anya. "Because we love you, you know that," Xander said.

"But I'm a monster. A damned thing."

"No, you're not," Buffy said as she put down the brush and scooted around the bed so that the three of them were sitting in a circle.

"I am," Anya insisted. "You know what I was."

"That was a long time ago," Xander protested, but his eyes were on the bedspread.

"Four years isn't a long time. Not even to you," Anya countered. "Willow told me once how you treated Angel, and he didn't hurt nearly as many people as I did."

"I hate it when people throw me back at me," Xander muttered. Then his eyes lit up. "He was still a vampire, and you're human."

"Is that all?" Anya asked. "I'm okay because I have a heartbeat and get sweaty and Angel doesn't?"

"No… Yes… No…" Xander offered, but he didn't have an answer any more than she did. So he reached, "You've never tried to kill my friends, that's a plus."

Anya finally tore her eyes off the red toenail polish so she could look into his eyes. "I tried to kill you."

Xander shrugged and tried to laugh it off. "So? Everyone's tried to kill me once. I think it's part of the Scooby initiation."

"This isn't funny, Xander," Anya shouted at him as all her anger finally found a release. She slid her legs down so that she was sitting cross-legged and waved her hands over her body. "Isn't this why you love me? Because of how I look? Admit it, if I was all wrinkly you wouldn't have given me a second look."

"I'm not joking." The smile dropped off Xander's face like it'd never been there. "At first, yeah. I went out with you 'cause you were beautiful, but do you really think I would've stuck around for three years if that was it?"

Anya stuck her chin out. "Why not? I've seen it happen."

"No, you saw the absolute worst of humanity, men and women, for a thousand years. You never saw the people who worked out their problems. Who never needed vengeance." He grabbed her hands and squeezed down on them for emphasis, but was careful not to hurt her. "I love you because you're you. Because you're just as crazy as I am."

Anya yanked her hands out of his and scrambled away from him until her back was flat against the wall. "But you don't know ME! I was a monster for a thousand years! You've helped kill beings who haven't done a tenth of what I've done."

"You're right," Buffy said, finally speaking up. "You were a monster." Anya looked at her in surprise and Xander in betrayal.

"Buff, really not helping," Xander whispered.

Buffy ignored him and kept her eyes locked on Anya. "Key word, were. Now you have a chance, just like Angel." Saying her first love's name hurt, even after all this time, but she pressed on. "You don't think he went through this? He told me once that he could never wash the blood off his hands, but that didn't mean he could stop trying."

Anya shook her head. "But I'm not even trying. He's a hero, I just run a store."

Xander jumped in. "So? I'm just a carpenter, but we're all fighting the good fight."

"You didn't kill anyone."

"Is that a fact?" Xander asked her, his voice tight. "What about when I summoned the singing demon? Like it or not, people died because I was an ass. And then there's Wi…" He tried, but he couldn't say her name, not now.

"That's different. The demon was a mistake, and you only did what you did to Willow to save me."

"I didn't stab Faith to save the world." Buffy tried to wipe the feeling of the knife in her hand off on the bedspread. "Or to save Angel, even. I wanted her to hurt as much as she hurt me. So we all have blood on our hands."

Anya shuddered. "But not like me."

"What do you want, forgiveness?" Buffy asked and Anya didn't meet her eyes. She wanted it, but knew she didn't deserve to ask. She didn't have to.

"That's not a problem. I forgave you a long time ago," Xander said.

"You can't," Anya said it in a low, pathetic moan.

"Sure I can. I was almost one of your victims, and one of your victim's victims, so I count. And I forgive you."

There was hope in Anya's eyes when she looked up again, but it flickered as unsteady as a candle's flame. "What about everyone else?"

Buffy reached out and took the ex-demon by the hand. "You want their forgiveness, then earn it."

"How?"

Xander took Anya's other hand. "By doing what you're doing. Be a good person, help save the world, maybe give to a charity every now and then."

"Give?" Anya said in a new panic. "But it's…"

"Anya," Buffy and Xander said together.

Anya sighed and rolled her eyes. "All right."

They sat there quietly on the bed, still holding hands. "Just think," Xander began, "we have so many issues that any one of the three of us could make a shrink cry." Buffy and Anya shared a glance, and then reached for the pillows that were scattered around the bed. "Come on, ladies, it was a jo…" A pillow, the first of many, hit him in the chest and cut off the rest of the sentence.

The pillow fight helped a bit, not as much as the ice cream; especially after they found a way to eat it that didn't require spoons, but it did help a bit. Still, it was a long time until Anya went to sleep that night, even with her two loves wrapped protectively around her, and she knew she wouldn't have slept at all if she were anywhere else. Her last thoughts were of Spike, wondering if Tara was doing the same thing with him right now. But she somehow knew the vampire was still sitting alone in the dark, staring at the snow on the television screen.