The coven had offered him a flat, and having seen their little hovel Spike
was glad he had turned them down. Instead he found a loft in an abandoned
building, too expensive for the owners to fix up and rent, too expensive to
tear down and build something new, but it cost him nothing. Everything else
he bought. They had been good for a while; put things in lockboxes in banks
so they would have something when they got back. He and Drusilla. In the
Bank of London he found money that wasn't even in circulation anymore,
diamonds his darling had stolen, pearls, rubies, the arm of one of her
dolls (what was that doing in there?) knives, bits of hair, his collapsible
silk top hat (so that was where that had got to.) He took it all. Sold what
he could and brought the rest home with him to keep or burn or drop in the
Thames as he pleased.
By the time he brought Willow home the place was all tarted up. There was a bed, table to eat at, leather couch, the gas worked, the shower showered. It should be habitable for a human.
"Twenty four hours and I pulled it together for you, love," Spike told the unconscious girl as he laid her on the bed. "I wonder what they did with you in the meantime. Nothing to make you too happy, I'm sure."
He examined her filthy face. He supposed he could bath her, but then he remembered the last time he had seen a woman in a bathroom: Buffy terrified and pinned against the tiles. Remembering her crying, begging him to stop, bile would have risen in his throat if it could have. Instead he clenched his hands under his arms and waited for the nausea to fade. He left Willow to make a slow, steady circle of the apartment to make sure all the heavy drapes were closed before falling asleep on the long couch.
______________________________________________________________________
"How do I look?" Willow asked in the morning.
She was perched on the edge of the coffee table next to his head. Willow looked awful: dirty and exhausted, dressed in the same filthy black clothes she had on for the binding ritual. Spike gave Willow a groggy, hateful look that would have frightened her in some other lifetime. He hauled himself onto an elbow.
"You're hair's gone all wonky," he said. Why was she asking him this?
"And do you know why?" she asked pertly.
"Do I care?" He didn't care. He really really didn't.
"Because the evil demon doesn't have a mirror in the bathroom. Or in any room."
"It's a loft, Red. There's pretty much only one room," he sighed and fell back. "I'll get you a mirror tonight."
"And a clock?"
Spike didn't use a clock. He could feel the sun rising and falling in the sky. Bloody needy humans.
"And a clock," he agreed.
"Oh. Okay then." She said and wandered back over to the bed. Spike might have savored this conversation more if he had realized it was the last normal one they would have for quite a while.
Willow didn't say much of anything for the next couple of days. She curled up on the bed (his bed. Why hadn't he thought to get two beds?) And she cried until her face was puffy and distorted and she had to blow her nose in the sheets because he hadn't thought to buy tissue or toilet paper because he didn't need them.
He tried, once, patting her shoulder awkwardly and asking if there was anything he could do. She just moaned and turned away from him. So he sat in the far corner of the loft and read Broinberg's Thesis on the Soul and Lady Chatterley's Lover. He oscillated between the two books as he drank disgusting cold pigs' blood out of a chipped mug. Looking at the warm girl on the bed made his stomach rumble.
______________________________________________________________________
"How is she?" Giles asked the next week, his fingers nervously ripping apart the paper napkin on the table in front of him.
Giles and Spike were sitting in a pub down the street from the loft. They had intended to meet in the apartment, give Giles a chance to talk with Willow and see how the spell had affected her. As soon as the Watcher entered the room Willow had begun to scream and shake. He and Spike left her in the loft, crying quietly into her pillow, having decided it would be best to talk elsewhere.
"She's quiet," Spike admitted. "Doesn't want to talk. She seemed fine just after she woke up then she just started crying and hasn't bloody well stopped since."
"Ah," Spike frowned as the waiter brought them their drinks. "Warm beer. Oh how I haven't missed that."
"Mild amnesia is common with spells such as these," Giles admitted, not touching his own drink. "Almost any spell where the caster seeks to, uh, alter the fundamental nature or structure..." he trailed off.
"Yeah. Buffy was pretty dazed when she came back."
"And, and yourself? With the soul?"
Spike considered lying, because it was his business, wasn't it? But then he would have to remember the lie, if it ever came up again, and there was no point in wasting that much energy for no reason.
"I thought I was in the alley again the night I was turned. I was looking around for the woman I had been speaking to. She was so beautiful...and then I remembered everything all at once. Every thing I had ever done or had done to me. It took the wind out of me I can tell you."
"Yes, well. I have to admit I would have expected a more dramatic change."
Spike touched the place where Tara had pressed her fingers over his heart. "Oh, there are changes mate."
Giles looked unconvinced "I expect we will discover whether that is true or not in time. Meanwhile, I have something else that might interest you."
"Interest me more than looking after a hysterical girl? Oh what, pray tell?"
"We recently came across a text. It appears to be some sort of prophecy from what I can tell, which is hardly anything at all. I'm having some trouble with the translation. Do you recognize the language?"
Spike accepted the book thrust across the table at him. It was wrapped in a heavy cloth to protect the fragile, cracked leather. Inside the pages were crumbling to dust and the brown ink, he narrowed his fine eyes, well it was readable, barely.
"Yeah, I can read it. It's written in a dialect of Suturanin. Very obscure. It'll take someone a lot of time to work this out."
"But you can do it?"
"Me? Oh bloody hell. First I'm a babysitter and now I'm a bibliopole?"
"Penitence and all that rot," Giles reminded him smugly.
"Right," Spike said, wrapping the book again. "Neat."
______________________________________________________________________
When he entered the loft the smell of blood made his mouth dry with thirst. Had some glorious homeless person found his way up here to die and leave him a nice fresh meal? Spike's thoughts ran wild with this kind of idiocy until he realized it must be Willow. Stupid, stupid witch. He lunged through the expansive loft. There was blood everywhere. Running towards the bathroom he skidded on a slick wet puddle of the stuff and fell. It smelled so good. He paused for a moment, considering having a taste, before launching himself upright and storming into the bathroom.
Willow was in the tub, naked, unconscious, and letting the blood from her slit wrists cloud the warm water.
"You have to do something," Tara said, standing next to the tub, a lost and lonely little ghost.
"No shit. Really?" Spike growled, hungry and annoyed.
And scared. Oh shit. If she died he supposed he could have a meal, if there was any blood left in her, but he really didn't want her to die. For one thing he would have to explain the whole thing to Giles. For another, well, she made really nice cookies. As he lifted Willow's limp form out of the water he tried to decide if that was enough of a reason to save someone's life. And he had promised to. There was that of course.
He carried her out to the bed, Tara trailing behind wringing her pale hands. He wrapped Willow in the velvet quilt to keep her warm and began ripping up the sheets for bandages. He hadn't thought to get any of those either. Not very sodding thorough, was he? No wonder none of your bloody plans ever worked, he berated himself.
"Stupid girl," he muttered, wrapping Willow's wrists tightly, "She cut them the wrong way."
"She took aspirin to stop the clotting though," Tara said. It was eerie the way she stood next to him not generating any heat. Was that how people felt around him? Like someone walking over his grave. Ha. Ha.
"Wait," Spike said sharply. "You were here? You saw her?"
"She watched me die," Tara said, reaching a hand towards Willow's face and retracting it. Another wave of nauseating pity swept through him and he didn't know if it was for Willow, or Tara, or for himself. Either way he crushed it down into the small dark hole along with his growing hunger. It was all he could do not to go into game face, and that wouldn't be much help considering what he had to do next.
"I'll take her to the hospital," he told Tara. "She hasn't lost that much blood. She's going to be fine." He hoped she would take a hint and dissipate or whatever it was that ghosts did, but she followed him all the way there.
Tara stood next to him when he called Giles from the hospital payphone.
"Yeah, she's fine. No. Don't come down. At least we bloody well know not to leave her alone now," Spike could not tell he if he was joking and apparently neither could the Watcher. There was an awkward silence. Tara looked so stricken he had to turn away. Bloody stupid, he thought.
"Hey. There is one thing you could do. Send on some of her togs, can you? All she has is what she had on at the ritual and that's pretty. well she was wearing it when she started playing with the knife. Yeah? Good. Thanks." Spike hung up the phone and turned back to the ghost.
"Don't you like your present?" Tara asked him, ducking behind her veil of hair.
"The thing is, pet, I haven't really had a lot of time to try it out." And it itches, he added mentally. And what if it doesn't work?
"Oh. Oh, I see. Yeah," she smiled nervously and darted her eyes to the side so she didn't have to look at him.
"I'll give it a try soon, Okay? Want to make sure Red is feeling better first though, right?"
He said it to make her feel better and it must have because she graced him with a wild look of gratitude before fading away. The woman who was waiting for the pay phone stared at him suspiciously. Must think I'm bloody insane, standing here talking to myself, Spike thought. Well maybe I am.
They sent Willow home in clean teal hospital scrubs and she wore them while they waited for her clothes to arrive from California. She also borrowed one of his black tee shirts, and he didn't fancy having it back now that it smelled all human. At least she stopped crying. Thank heaven, well not heaven, but thank someone for that. Spike thought that things must get better from there.
______________________________________________________________________
"You once offered to turn me into a vampire," Willow said, sitting once again on the edge of the coffee table, next to his head. It was early morning the day after he brought her back from the hospital.
"Sod it all Willow!" Spike groaned. "Do you know the bleeding time? Vigilance is always wakeful, but this evil needs his sodding sleep!"
She pulled the pillow off of his face and he could smell her freshly washed skin. Yummy, he thought.
"Go back to crying," he said cruelly, "You were less of a pain in the arse when you were blubbering."
"Would you turn me now?" Willow asked him, her eyes clear and intent.
She thought it would make all the pain go away. Because Spike, hey! Not really a pain filled guy. Sure there was that weird Buffy obsession and he cried at the funeral and all, but on the whole he wasn't too busy repenting for his sins. Every moment she was awake Willow remembered the joy she felt at seeing Warren's body flayed and dead before her. If she were a vampire she wouldn't care anymore, right? She was pretty sure she was right.
Spike sat up on the couch. If Willow were straight she was positive the sight of his pale, sculpted torso would have impressed her. Like a statue, she thought.
"No, I won't turn you now. Can't for one thing," he said, tapping his forehead. For another, I'd be haunted for the rest of my eternal life by your translucent girlfriend, he added mentally.
"I know. The chip. But I could cut myself and you could drink, right? Then you cut yourself and I drink and, you know. you bury me. I rise again. Hey presto!"
"Hey presto!" He mimicked with a sneer and shook his head. "No. Thanks all the same. I'm not giving the Slayer any more excuses to turn me to dust."
"Right. Because it's All. About. Buffy," Willow snarked.
For a moment Spike looked completely at sea, and Willow supposed she probably shouldn't have brought up Buffy. Buffy and Spike, she thought, how sick was that? It must be lower on the scale than killing people, she reminded herself, or trying to destroy the world. Softly she began to cry.
"No, it's not about Buffy," Spike said, trying to sort out his reaction to her offer. Actually it was tempting. She was cute. She smelled nice. It would be good to choose a partner of his own. Someone who wasn't unstable like Dru or moronic like Harmony.
"It's about you. It wouldn't be good for you."
"You don't think I'd like it?" she sniffed and wiped her nose on the edge of the tee shirt she was wearing. No, he really didn't want that one back. Spike noticed for the first time how sallow she was. Her hands were shaking from exhaustion.
"I think you'd love it. Everybody loves it, the power and the hatred and, well you know what that feels like, right? You tasted the big evil." And he big evil was fun, Spike thought, but now was probably not the best time to bond with her over the joys of wanton destruction.
"The thing is, Willow, taking a walk on the wild side doesn't mean you have to throw away your soul. Everybody does things they regret. You deal with it. You move on."
You don't dream about raping girls on green tile floors or dancing with Dru in languid circles around the bodies of children fresh and sweet and dead. No, you don't do that.
"I tried to destroy the word. You.you're evil and you helped Buffy save the world. Twice."
"So you think you have me out eviled? Sorry, pet. No go. You may have been more powerful, but even with a soul I'm darker then you'll ever be." Oh, shit. There it was out of his mouth and floating between them. Red seemed to have missed it though.
"I hurt people I loved. I almost killed Giles. I."
"But he forgives you. They all forgive you because they love you. Tara does too. I mean she would. What do you think she would say if her death led to your becoming a vampire? She would never forgive you." Spike didn't know if it was the right thing to say but at least it shut her up.
Willow turned away from him and slowly stood up. He could not tell if what he had said did any good. Falling back onto the pillow Spike wondered if he should have turned her when he had the chance. They could have stayed away from America. If Buffy ever found out, well it wasn't likely she was going to leave the Hellmouth and track him down was it? At least Red seemed to have quieted down some. She wasn't crying anymore. Maybe he could still get some sleep.
Willow walked over to the iron and glass kitchen table and unwrapped the book Spike had brought back from the pub yesterday. Her body was screaming for sleep, but she was afraid of the dreams flickering, waiting on the edge of her consciousness. She didn't open the book. It looked to frail to touch.
"Hey? Spike? What's this?" she called across the room, but he was already asleep. ______________________________________________________________________
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By the time he brought Willow home the place was all tarted up. There was a bed, table to eat at, leather couch, the gas worked, the shower showered. It should be habitable for a human.
"Twenty four hours and I pulled it together for you, love," Spike told the unconscious girl as he laid her on the bed. "I wonder what they did with you in the meantime. Nothing to make you too happy, I'm sure."
He examined her filthy face. He supposed he could bath her, but then he remembered the last time he had seen a woman in a bathroom: Buffy terrified and pinned against the tiles. Remembering her crying, begging him to stop, bile would have risen in his throat if it could have. Instead he clenched his hands under his arms and waited for the nausea to fade. He left Willow to make a slow, steady circle of the apartment to make sure all the heavy drapes were closed before falling asleep on the long couch.
______________________________________________________________________
"How do I look?" Willow asked in the morning.
She was perched on the edge of the coffee table next to his head. Willow looked awful: dirty and exhausted, dressed in the same filthy black clothes she had on for the binding ritual. Spike gave Willow a groggy, hateful look that would have frightened her in some other lifetime. He hauled himself onto an elbow.
"You're hair's gone all wonky," he said. Why was she asking him this?
"And do you know why?" she asked pertly.
"Do I care?" He didn't care. He really really didn't.
"Because the evil demon doesn't have a mirror in the bathroom. Or in any room."
"It's a loft, Red. There's pretty much only one room," he sighed and fell back. "I'll get you a mirror tonight."
"And a clock?"
Spike didn't use a clock. He could feel the sun rising and falling in the sky. Bloody needy humans.
"And a clock," he agreed.
"Oh. Okay then." She said and wandered back over to the bed. Spike might have savored this conversation more if he had realized it was the last normal one they would have for quite a while.
Willow didn't say much of anything for the next couple of days. She curled up on the bed (his bed. Why hadn't he thought to get two beds?) And she cried until her face was puffy and distorted and she had to blow her nose in the sheets because he hadn't thought to buy tissue or toilet paper because he didn't need them.
He tried, once, patting her shoulder awkwardly and asking if there was anything he could do. She just moaned and turned away from him. So he sat in the far corner of the loft and read Broinberg's Thesis on the Soul and Lady Chatterley's Lover. He oscillated between the two books as he drank disgusting cold pigs' blood out of a chipped mug. Looking at the warm girl on the bed made his stomach rumble.
______________________________________________________________________
"How is she?" Giles asked the next week, his fingers nervously ripping apart the paper napkin on the table in front of him.
Giles and Spike were sitting in a pub down the street from the loft. They had intended to meet in the apartment, give Giles a chance to talk with Willow and see how the spell had affected her. As soon as the Watcher entered the room Willow had begun to scream and shake. He and Spike left her in the loft, crying quietly into her pillow, having decided it would be best to talk elsewhere.
"She's quiet," Spike admitted. "Doesn't want to talk. She seemed fine just after she woke up then she just started crying and hasn't bloody well stopped since."
"Ah," Spike frowned as the waiter brought them their drinks. "Warm beer. Oh how I haven't missed that."
"Mild amnesia is common with spells such as these," Giles admitted, not touching his own drink. "Almost any spell where the caster seeks to, uh, alter the fundamental nature or structure..." he trailed off.
"Yeah. Buffy was pretty dazed when she came back."
"And, and yourself? With the soul?"
Spike considered lying, because it was his business, wasn't it? But then he would have to remember the lie, if it ever came up again, and there was no point in wasting that much energy for no reason.
"I thought I was in the alley again the night I was turned. I was looking around for the woman I had been speaking to. She was so beautiful...and then I remembered everything all at once. Every thing I had ever done or had done to me. It took the wind out of me I can tell you."
"Yes, well. I have to admit I would have expected a more dramatic change."
Spike touched the place where Tara had pressed her fingers over his heart. "Oh, there are changes mate."
Giles looked unconvinced "I expect we will discover whether that is true or not in time. Meanwhile, I have something else that might interest you."
"Interest me more than looking after a hysterical girl? Oh what, pray tell?"
"We recently came across a text. It appears to be some sort of prophecy from what I can tell, which is hardly anything at all. I'm having some trouble with the translation. Do you recognize the language?"
Spike accepted the book thrust across the table at him. It was wrapped in a heavy cloth to protect the fragile, cracked leather. Inside the pages were crumbling to dust and the brown ink, he narrowed his fine eyes, well it was readable, barely.
"Yeah, I can read it. It's written in a dialect of Suturanin. Very obscure. It'll take someone a lot of time to work this out."
"But you can do it?"
"Me? Oh bloody hell. First I'm a babysitter and now I'm a bibliopole?"
"Penitence and all that rot," Giles reminded him smugly.
"Right," Spike said, wrapping the book again. "Neat."
______________________________________________________________________
When he entered the loft the smell of blood made his mouth dry with thirst. Had some glorious homeless person found his way up here to die and leave him a nice fresh meal? Spike's thoughts ran wild with this kind of idiocy until he realized it must be Willow. Stupid, stupid witch. He lunged through the expansive loft. There was blood everywhere. Running towards the bathroom he skidded on a slick wet puddle of the stuff and fell. It smelled so good. He paused for a moment, considering having a taste, before launching himself upright and storming into the bathroom.
Willow was in the tub, naked, unconscious, and letting the blood from her slit wrists cloud the warm water.
"You have to do something," Tara said, standing next to the tub, a lost and lonely little ghost.
"No shit. Really?" Spike growled, hungry and annoyed.
And scared. Oh shit. If she died he supposed he could have a meal, if there was any blood left in her, but he really didn't want her to die. For one thing he would have to explain the whole thing to Giles. For another, well, she made really nice cookies. As he lifted Willow's limp form out of the water he tried to decide if that was enough of a reason to save someone's life. And he had promised to. There was that of course.
He carried her out to the bed, Tara trailing behind wringing her pale hands. He wrapped Willow in the velvet quilt to keep her warm and began ripping up the sheets for bandages. He hadn't thought to get any of those either. Not very sodding thorough, was he? No wonder none of your bloody plans ever worked, he berated himself.
"Stupid girl," he muttered, wrapping Willow's wrists tightly, "She cut them the wrong way."
"She took aspirin to stop the clotting though," Tara said. It was eerie the way she stood next to him not generating any heat. Was that how people felt around him? Like someone walking over his grave. Ha. Ha.
"Wait," Spike said sharply. "You were here? You saw her?"
"She watched me die," Tara said, reaching a hand towards Willow's face and retracting it. Another wave of nauseating pity swept through him and he didn't know if it was for Willow, or Tara, or for himself. Either way he crushed it down into the small dark hole along with his growing hunger. It was all he could do not to go into game face, and that wouldn't be much help considering what he had to do next.
"I'll take her to the hospital," he told Tara. "She hasn't lost that much blood. She's going to be fine." He hoped she would take a hint and dissipate or whatever it was that ghosts did, but she followed him all the way there.
Tara stood next to him when he called Giles from the hospital payphone.
"Yeah, she's fine. No. Don't come down. At least we bloody well know not to leave her alone now," Spike could not tell he if he was joking and apparently neither could the Watcher. There was an awkward silence. Tara looked so stricken he had to turn away. Bloody stupid, he thought.
"Hey. There is one thing you could do. Send on some of her togs, can you? All she has is what she had on at the ritual and that's pretty. well she was wearing it when she started playing with the knife. Yeah? Good. Thanks." Spike hung up the phone and turned back to the ghost.
"Don't you like your present?" Tara asked him, ducking behind her veil of hair.
"The thing is, pet, I haven't really had a lot of time to try it out." And it itches, he added mentally. And what if it doesn't work?
"Oh. Oh, I see. Yeah," she smiled nervously and darted her eyes to the side so she didn't have to look at him.
"I'll give it a try soon, Okay? Want to make sure Red is feeling better first though, right?"
He said it to make her feel better and it must have because she graced him with a wild look of gratitude before fading away. The woman who was waiting for the pay phone stared at him suspiciously. Must think I'm bloody insane, standing here talking to myself, Spike thought. Well maybe I am.
They sent Willow home in clean teal hospital scrubs and she wore them while they waited for her clothes to arrive from California. She also borrowed one of his black tee shirts, and he didn't fancy having it back now that it smelled all human. At least she stopped crying. Thank heaven, well not heaven, but thank someone for that. Spike thought that things must get better from there.
______________________________________________________________________
"You once offered to turn me into a vampire," Willow said, sitting once again on the edge of the coffee table, next to his head. It was early morning the day after he brought her back from the hospital.
"Sod it all Willow!" Spike groaned. "Do you know the bleeding time? Vigilance is always wakeful, but this evil needs his sodding sleep!"
She pulled the pillow off of his face and he could smell her freshly washed skin. Yummy, he thought.
"Go back to crying," he said cruelly, "You were less of a pain in the arse when you were blubbering."
"Would you turn me now?" Willow asked him, her eyes clear and intent.
She thought it would make all the pain go away. Because Spike, hey! Not really a pain filled guy. Sure there was that weird Buffy obsession and he cried at the funeral and all, but on the whole he wasn't too busy repenting for his sins. Every moment she was awake Willow remembered the joy she felt at seeing Warren's body flayed and dead before her. If she were a vampire she wouldn't care anymore, right? She was pretty sure she was right.
Spike sat up on the couch. If Willow were straight she was positive the sight of his pale, sculpted torso would have impressed her. Like a statue, she thought.
"No, I won't turn you now. Can't for one thing," he said, tapping his forehead. For another, I'd be haunted for the rest of my eternal life by your translucent girlfriend, he added mentally.
"I know. The chip. But I could cut myself and you could drink, right? Then you cut yourself and I drink and, you know. you bury me. I rise again. Hey presto!"
"Hey presto!" He mimicked with a sneer and shook his head. "No. Thanks all the same. I'm not giving the Slayer any more excuses to turn me to dust."
"Right. Because it's All. About. Buffy," Willow snarked.
For a moment Spike looked completely at sea, and Willow supposed she probably shouldn't have brought up Buffy. Buffy and Spike, she thought, how sick was that? It must be lower on the scale than killing people, she reminded herself, or trying to destroy the world. Softly she began to cry.
"No, it's not about Buffy," Spike said, trying to sort out his reaction to her offer. Actually it was tempting. She was cute. She smelled nice. It would be good to choose a partner of his own. Someone who wasn't unstable like Dru or moronic like Harmony.
"It's about you. It wouldn't be good for you."
"You don't think I'd like it?" she sniffed and wiped her nose on the edge of the tee shirt she was wearing. No, he really didn't want that one back. Spike noticed for the first time how sallow she was. Her hands were shaking from exhaustion.
"I think you'd love it. Everybody loves it, the power and the hatred and, well you know what that feels like, right? You tasted the big evil." And he big evil was fun, Spike thought, but now was probably not the best time to bond with her over the joys of wanton destruction.
"The thing is, Willow, taking a walk on the wild side doesn't mean you have to throw away your soul. Everybody does things they regret. You deal with it. You move on."
You don't dream about raping girls on green tile floors or dancing with Dru in languid circles around the bodies of children fresh and sweet and dead. No, you don't do that.
"I tried to destroy the word. You.you're evil and you helped Buffy save the world. Twice."
"So you think you have me out eviled? Sorry, pet. No go. You may have been more powerful, but even with a soul I'm darker then you'll ever be." Oh, shit. There it was out of his mouth and floating between them. Red seemed to have missed it though.
"I hurt people I loved. I almost killed Giles. I."
"But he forgives you. They all forgive you because they love you. Tara does too. I mean she would. What do you think she would say if her death led to your becoming a vampire? She would never forgive you." Spike didn't know if it was the right thing to say but at least it shut her up.
Willow turned away from him and slowly stood up. He could not tell if what he had said did any good. Falling back onto the pillow Spike wondered if he should have turned her when he had the chance. They could have stayed away from America. If Buffy ever found out, well it wasn't likely she was going to leave the Hellmouth and track him down was it? At least Red seemed to have quieted down some. She wasn't crying anymore. Maybe he could still get some sleep.
Willow walked over to the iron and glass kitchen table and unwrapped the book Spike had brought back from the pub yesterday. Her body was screaming for sleep, but she was afraid of the dreams flickering, waiting on the edge of her consciousness. She didn't open the book. It looked to frail to touch.
"Hey? Spike? What's this?" she called across the room, but he was already asleep. ______________________________________________________________________
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