A/N: Okay, we're chronologically at the beginning of season five of Angel (BTVS Season Seven is where Spike dies) just to put it all in perspective. RNR PLEASE!
Angel sat behind his desk, he had a million contracts that were stacked up, letters and suspicious looking packages to open, calls to make and people to kill, he was so near the end of his rope and then Harmony and the rest of them had to come in and suddenly demand his attention away from all this!
"What?" Angel groaned, putting his pen down and trying to remember how to not explode at people that actually cared about, "What is so much more important that you need to interrupt me when I'm already so far behind that I'm probably never going to not have paperwork for the rest of my un-life."
Harmony pursed her lips, "It's Buffy . . . she-" She looked at Wesley.
Angel stood up, "What about her? Is she okay? What's going on?"
Wesley and Lorne exchanged looks, "She's here."
Angel quickly walked around his desk, "What, like here in LA? Or here as in here?"
"She's waiting in the lobby." Gunn said, pointing to the door.
Angel rushed past them and there she was, holding some bundle in a paper bag, he sighed with relief,
"Buffy!"
She turned and looked at him as he walked over, he hugged her then stepped back,
"How did it go? Is everyone okay? I heard Sunnydale was toast but you're here so . . . "
Buffy swallowed and glanced at her feet before handing him the bag, "Almost everyone is okay, we got out."
"Almost?" Angel asked, "What is this?"
"He left it on the bus." Buffy said quietly.
Angel undid the bag in confusion and pulled out the black leather trench that reeked of tobacco smoke, whiskey, and Spike, "Why would you bring this to me? Does Spike know y-?"
He froze as everything fit together, he looked at her, begging her with his eyes to tell him that Spike would soon follow the trench, but Buffy didn't say anything of the sort,
"I . . . I'm so sorry, Angel, the necklace . . . he stayed behind and saved all of us."
Angel blinked as his mind tried to keep up, "He's . . . you mean, Spike's . . . "
"He's gone." She said, shaking her head.
"That necklace I gave him . . . the one meant for me . . . it . . . he . . . ?" Angel shook his head, "Dead?"
"Yes, dust." Buffy murmured.
The world froze. Everything stopped. The bag fell from Angel's numb fingertips and suddenly he felt like the floor was giving out from under him and he was falling, Spike . . . William, his William, was gone? For good? He wouldn't just pop up, smirking smugly with a 'gotcha!' in that obnoxious cockney accent? Angel wouldn't walk into the penthouse to here that godawful music blasting his state of the art stereo system to hell? Or find empty bottles of alcohol that Spike had swiped? Never again hiss in pain from stepping on a stray cigarette butt?
Angel didn't realize that he'd collapsed until he heard Buffy talking to him, he stood up, gameface on, "GET OUT!" He roared.
Buffy backed up, her eyes wide, "Angel . . . "
"GET THE FUCK OUT!" He roared, swinging at her, "You were supposed to protect him! I trusted you! Get out! Now!"
He didn't wait to see if she followed his orders but retreated instead to the penthouse, locking the elevator to stop anyone following him and then knelt on the floor and howled, he felt like someone had staked him over and over, purposefully missing his heart and thus prolonging his agony. He sobbed uncontrollably into the coat as the realization that he'd failed sunk in like ice into his very core and he was so cold and hollow.
Angel stood and stumbled into Spike's room, looking at the unmade bed, the clothes on the floor, books everywhere, scraps of paper and candy wrappers littering the floor . . .
Nevermore, the raven cawed.
Angel sat on the bed and cried some more, he'd never felt like this before . . . maybe because he hadn't lost anyone really since getting his soul and now he'd lost the one person that he'd loved like this, his boy, his William was gone . . .
"Forever." Angel whispered to the silent room and suddenly he felt like the walls were closing in, the silence was suffocating him . . . but he couldn't leave the room, couldn't leave it, it smelled of Spike, it was Spike, everything in here had his special touch to it, altered somehow by his presence to make it special, to leave the room was to leave Spike behind again . . . to be forgotten and lost.
Angel laid back, touching the pillows and pulling the trench to his face, breathing in deeply the scent that had been fused into the leather from over twenty years of wear.
It was another day and a night before Angel finally set the jacket down on the bed, closed the door and locked it behind him and went back downstairs after a shower and a quick cup of blood. He sat at his desk and immediately began to immerse himself in his work. No sense losing everything else in his life . . .
Angel hadn't slept, everyone could tell he was avoiding them and the penthouse and everything, he was closing himself inside his office and working all day and this carried on for some time until Gunn, Wesley, and Fred went in for an intervention,
"Angel?" Wesley knocked on the door he'd already opened.
"Yeah?" Angel asked, not looking up from his papers.
"We need to talk." The English man said slowly, Gunn and Fred stood on either side of him.
"If it's about that contract I sent it to your office." Angel said, stilling scribbling away.
"Angel, it's not that," Fred said gently, moving to the desk, "It's about all this."
"Look," Angel said, putting his pen down, "I know I'm behind but I'm doing my best."
"That's just it," Gunn said, rubbing the back of his neck, "You need to stop, to take a break."
Angel shook his head and went to his computer, typing furiously at the keyboard (funny how a few days and nights of straight working on the damn contraption made him a whizz at it), "No, I can't stop."
"Sure you can," Fred said gently, "We have a whole team of people to-"
"No." Angel snapped, slamming a fist on the desk, denting it a little, "No . . . I can't. I can't stop even for a second. It's just . . . just too hard."
They exchanged looks of concern and pity then Lorne stepped forward, "Angel, I know you think this is the answer, that working like a middle-aged man with a mortgage and four kids is the key to forgetting what happened, but this will only prolong it and then you'll collapse under all the build-up."
Angel stopped typing and closed his eyes, " . . . I don't expect any of you to understand."
"Of course not," Wesley said, "But if you recall . . . we were all there and helped look after Spike, we all care about him and we're here for you if you'd let us in."
Angel looked at them and it all came back, so many memories . . .
Angel smiled to himself when he walked by Lorne's office, seventeen year-old Spike was singing for Lorne and he had such a lovely voice . . .
Thirteen year-old Spike and Gunn shouted over a soccer game at the Hyperion and funny thing was, Angel had thought as he watched through his office window, Gunn didn't like soccer.
Fred laughed at fourteen year-old Spike's jokes and kissed his forehead, giving him a big hug and the vampire blushed and shouted at Angel to stop laughing, ya wanker!
Sixteen year-old Spike rolls his eyes as Wesley lectures about a demon they were hunting and glares at Spike when he catches the vampire mimicking him behind his back, asking Angel to get a handle on his protégé.
Cordy . . . poor Cordy . . . thirteen year-old Spike sitting at her hospital bedside after the Connor incident, his eyes trying to stay open as he murmurs poetry and begs her to wake up . . .
And finally . . . seven year-old Spike hugging Angel so tight, " . . . Daddy."
Angel sobbed into his hands and shook his head, "I-I can't! I have to do something to make u-up for this!"
Fred hugged Angel and looked helplessly at his other friends as they stood about awkwardly, "It wasn't your fault . . . " she said, "Handsome man."
Angel laughed bitterly, "I gave him that . . . that damn necklace and look what happened!"
"Blaming yourself is not going to fix this-" Wesley started only for Angel to snarl, standing up (knocking Fred away in the process) and grabbing a manila envelope off his desk,
"SHUT UP!" He roared, "Nothing is going to fix this! He's dead! He's gone forever! That's a hell of a lot longer for a vampire than a human!"
They stood in stunned silence as Angel continued to rant, savagely ripping open the envelope only for the contents to fly out onto the floor, Angel blinked and stared at the necklace for a split second before he recognized it and then it started to glow.
"Angel, what's-?" Gunn started.
"I dunno!" Angel shouted, he wasn't really trying to shout at Gunn but suddenly there was a deafening howling sound and ashes and embers started to swirl out of the necklace like a tornado and it took a second before a figure began to materialize, then the howling became less of a tornado sound and more like a scream and then-
"AAAAAAARGH!" Spike howled and gasped as his body finished rebuilding itself and he breathed heavily.
Angel's eyes widened and he quickly looked at his friends to make sure that they were seeing it too and he wasn't just imaging it because that would make sense since he hadn't slept in he couldn't remember how long, he slowly moved closer to the shaking young man on the floor, Spike looked about twenty years old as he crouched on the floor, dressed in the same black shirt and jeans complete with leather biker boots.
"Spike? . . . William?" Angel said gently, trying to rein in his urge to run forward and scoop the younger vampire into his arms and never put him down again.
Spike slowly looked up at Angel then his lip pulled back and he hissed at Angel, shocking the entire group further by leaping at Angel, then everyone just about dropped their jaws on the floor when Spike passed right through Angel!
Spike stood facing the wall for a moment in utter shock then turned around, "Wot the bloody . . . ?"
"Missed you too." Angel muttered, looking and feeling extremely disappointed.
"Sorry, force o' habit, Da." Spike murmured, "I was afraid you were one'a them nasties. . . . Wot happened?"
"You died." Angel said moving to pick up the necklace, "But now you're back."
Spike raised an eyebrow and moved to the desk, waving his hand through it, "Mostly . . . "
Angel and Spike looked at each other for a moment, then Spike walked up to him, passing his hand right through Angel's chest,
" . . . I can' . . . can' touch ya?"
"Guess not . . . " Angel murmured.
Spike sat in his bedroom, staring at the wall, his trench folded up next to him as he mulled over what Fred had said about him being there but not a ghost and a lot of other things that he couldn't be expected to remember.
"Shoulda never left it on the bus . . . feel naked."
Angel stepped into the room, "Kind of weird to see you without it."
Spike looked over at Angel, "Da . . . what's gonna happen ta me? I mean, when I was poppin' in an' out down there . . . is that gonna keep happenin'?"
Angel sat next to Spike, wishing he could hold his boy, put a hand on his shoulder, anything at all to comfort the poor kid, "I don't know, I really have no idea, champ."
Spike looked at Angel then shifted closer, his side going into Angel's and he made a choking-sobbing sound in his throat, "'m scared, Da . . . I's not fair, I was dead, I was a hero! I finally proved I was a good vampire an' . . . an' now 'm back only, i's worse, i'sn' at all wot a hero should have happen to him . . . "
Angel shook his head, "If it's any concelation, I missed you."
Spike smirked looking up at Angel, "Didja really?"
"Yeah," Angel smiled a little, "I tried to work really hard to keep my mind off how much I missed you. Got so bad everyone tried to pull an intervention on me."
"Wot'd ya do?" Spike asked, his blue eyes gleaming mischievously.
"Nearly bit their heads off." Angel smiled, "Don't worry, Will, we'll fix this, I promise."
"I'll hold ya ta it then, Da." Spike murmured, letting his head hover near Angel's shoulder.
A/N: SO. MANY. FEELS! So Spike's back (I really could not bear to leave Angel in that depression for more than half a chapter collectively) and we all know what bad shit happens after that. RNR!