AN: Re-reading the chapter I posted last night, I realized that it sounded like I was referring to the Judge in the scene with Dru and Angel. Just to clarify, the goof in the rock is Acathla. But since I get confused and muddled about the two anyway, I was thinking of the Judge while writing it. So apologies if that confused people. If no one noticed, then cheers. I know the two aren't exactly one in the same and the mythology is different, but I'll just mess Acathla a bit so that he fits Dru's descriptions. That's the great thing about fanfic, isn't it? Manipulate the circumstances so that your mistakes are as good as gold.

Chapter 20: All One Can Give

Charles Hathaway had worked at the Sunnydale Museum of History for twenty years. Antiquity and archeology fascinated him----more than that, it consumed him. It was his passion to pick apart seemingly meaningless pieces of aged and petrified stone and fossils until they finally gave insight into days past. He was a lonely, single man of 45 who spent long nights mulling over chippings of limestone and old chunks of earth, thinking that if he found out the secret of these old relics, the loose little pieces of his life would be filled. So when the huge boulder with ancient engravings arrived from an excavation outside of town, he was ecstatic and blind with excitement. It was the biggest fossil that he had ever seen. And obviously it held some sort of meaning, judging from the mysterious encryption covering the whole surface. It enraptured him so much that he was still at the museum at 1:45 in the morning, trying to decipher the meaning of the rock.

He was so intent on looking at close-up photos of the stone's written code that he didn't notice the slight stream of whispers that emanated from it. It was an unsettling, low whisper that filled the air with an ugly rumble. Suddenly his ears pricked up, sensing something, and he turned to gaze at it, a small spreading cloud of fear blooming in him. Slowly, he got up and neared the rock, bringing one hand to touch the writing on the surface. The quiet rumbling of voices got louder and louder, but Hathaway had the impulse to rest his ear against the stone and fill it with the frightening sound. Suddenly, a cold hand gripped him from behind with force. In horror, Hathaway turned, but another deathly chilled hand smothered his screams, and before he knew what was happening, a pair of fangs had lunged into his neck, drawing the coppery life force into a voracious mouth.

"Dru?"

Drusilla turned, her lips still stained with the mulberry-colored liquid while the limp body fell to the side. Angel surveyed his childe with satisfaction, then gazed with awe at the rock that seemed to fill the room. "Save some for Daddy," he clipped, nearing the rock and reveling in the storm of voices.

Buffy ran haphazardly into the cemetery with a stake hanging carelessly from her hand. She had been sprinting through the town without direction for a couple hours. She couldn't stop her legs from running, even if she tried. She felt a burning despair rise in her chest and it seemed like it would only find relief if Buffy kept moving. To still would mean that Buffy would have to deal with maelstrom of emotions that felt like they could break her if she let them. So her legs kept propelling her forward.

She couldn't go home. She didn't want to face her mother and her gentle questions or her concern or slightly stern reprimanding when she arrived home late. She didn't want to face the prospect of curling up into a fetal position on her bed and crying her eyes out for hours.

So she was here at the cemetery, praying that there were still a few stray vamps to dust. She needed to slay, now more than ever. She never felt so much pull to her calling than now. She had unleashed a violent demon to onto Sunnydale and it was all out of the selfishness of her own desires. She had to make it up to society. She had to make up for what she had created. She would stake ten vampires to make up for the one she didn't.

And much simpler than that, she needed to kick ass. It was a release, it was way she could let out all the chaotic anger and pain without having to face it. So with an unsteady hand, she raised her stake, poised for a fight.

A slip of shadow darted from a tombstone in front of her. Edging it carefully, she gritted her teeth, rejoicing in the presence of prey. With feather-like, silent steps, she padded over to the tombstone, guarding herself on the other side of it. Suddenly with lightning speed, she reached her hand up over the tombstone and grabbed the vampire and flipped him up in the air so that he flew with his legs up over his head onto the other side of the grave. Getting up quickly, she straddled him in an iron-grip and held the stake to his chest. And then she realized it wasn't a vampire.

"Bloody hell!"

Buffy whipped the stake up quickly. "Spike?"

"Of course it is, you bloody cow, get the hell off me!"

She scrambled off of him and knelt in the grass. "What are you doing here?"

"Prolly the same as you. Searching for some ruddy beastie to kill."

Buffy couldn't speak; she had no idea what to say to him, after everything that happened. She half expected that his next move was to try and beat the crap out her for what she did----or more precisely, what she failed to do. "Have you . . . have you gone home yet?"

Spike looked down darkly. "What home?" he muttered. "Everything I considered my home's been destroyed."

She knew it would come to that and again felt the seeping storm of guilt spread through her. "I . . . I'm sorry----"

"Save it Blondie," Spike interrupted, but not as harshly as she expected. "I don't want to hear it."

Buffy shook her head through tears. "Hear what?" she nearly whispered. "That I'm the reason your best friend and girlfriend are---"

"I said I don't want to hear it!!" he screamed with heartbreaking anger. He clenched his teeth and started pawing at the ground maniacally for no reason at all. "I was there too!! I know what happened!! You think I don't?! I'll know everyday, it'll haunt me every fucking day!!"

"I-I'm s-sorry Spike, god, I'm so sorry-----"

"Yeah, so you're sorry! What good is it to me?! Being sorry won't bring Dru and Munitz back to me!! Don't you understand?! Don't you see that?! And I'm left with nothing!! Nothing at all! I'm stuck with a father who doesn't care shit over me, I'm stuck millions of miles from my home and my true family, and most off all, I'm stuck with you!! The murderer of the two people who meant the most to me!!"

Buffy knew inside that it was true, but her mouth was forming resisting words of their own. "I d-didn't . . . I didn't mean to-----"

"It was you who turned him, wasn't it?" he suddenly asked in an abrupt whispering tone.

Buffy straightened. "How did you----how did you know that?"

"I went to the library. I read the curse. I heard what Angel said to you. I put two and two together." He was shaking with the kind of quiet anger that scared Buffy, despite her normal steely stoicism. She had no idea she was so fearful of him at the moment. Maybe because she knew that his blinding anger was justified.

" I didn't know---"

"Of course you didn't. You slept with a demon and thought it was the most non-twisted thing in the world. Cheers."

"What do you want, Spike?!" Buffy finally screamed. She was tired of this. She was tired of him constantly kicking her when she was down. She was hurting too. God, she was hurting. "What do you want me to do?! You want me to go back in time to stake Angel the first time I saw him?! Because I would, god how I would! I would go back in time and stake him in 1989 before he ever touched your mother just to save you the pain! I'd do it! But I can't! So what do you want me to do, what d-do you want me say?!"

Spike was shaking his head rapidly as he crouched in the grass. "I don't want you to do anything . . . I don't need anything from you . . . you hear me? Nothing. I don't need anything . . ." But suddenly, he clutched his sides as if in pain. "But god, it's not true . . . it's not true . . ." He buried his head in his hands and Buffy sat shocked and stared at him. He had begun to cry. He was so hard and soft in the same moment. He was all the extremes in one choked sob. But he wouldn't let Buffy hear it. His sobs were silent and choked and stifled. The only way she could tell that he was crying was the rise and fall of his sharp shoulder blades. Cautiously, she scooted slowly near him. He drew his head from his arms and he was beautiful, broken and harsh with his stormy blue eyes emitting reluctant tears. But there was nothing feminine about Spike crying. It was frightening and terrifying.

"I need to feel like it's not a mess," he was rambling incoherently. "I n-need to feel like I can breathe again. I need to feel like the world isn't ending. Can you give me that Buffy? Can you? I don't think so . . ." he buried his head in his hands once more, and this time Buffy slowly enveloped his shaking form in her arms. At first stiffly, because she didn't know if he would try to react violently to the touch. But no, he was still merely racked with sobs, so she relaxed him into her hold. A wave of shared sympathy and pain overcame her and made her feel like this was the only place for her. She never wondered how she and Spike, two people who had been such adversaries, had gotten to this point, crouched together in the middle of the night at a cemetery. She only smoothed his head like a mother comforting a child and cooed to him softly.

"It'll be okay," she lied. "Shhh shhh, it'll be okay."

Another AN: I know it might seem like Spike's motivations are a little confusing. I mean, he's calling Buffy a murderer one moment, and letting her hold him the other. But I figure if James Marsters was carrying this scene, he could have pulled it off, lol. And besides, I need to edge it towards the eventual Spuffiness, don't I?