Sitting on the counter, Willow watched approvingly as Spike liberally sprinkled blueberries into the cooking pancake. She darted a quick hand into the bowl of fruit.

"You do realize if you eat them all you won't have blueberry pancakes?" Spike asked, watching the batter bubble up until he was positive it was time to flip it.

Willow laughed. This was not Spike. Spike would not have cared about how many blueberries per capita her pancakes contained. He probably didn't care now, but he was pretending, and that was nice too. Nice, Willow thought. The Bid Bad was making her breakfast and it was nice.

The pancakes would be the first real food she'd had in the month since she'd been at the loft. Spike was all about take out. Tonight he thought she deserved some sort of reward. Sure, she was still miserable and teary most of the time, but she smelled good again. Working with her on the translation, well it wasn't fun, but it didn't make him want to shove flaming pokers into his eyes either. Willow was quick with the language, and better at picking out patterns than he was. Patience was not one of Spike's virtues, if he had any of those left.

So here he was, cooking. (Which was something he never did even when he needed to eat so why the fuck was he learning now?) Cooking because he thought it would make her a little less miserable and she burned all her pancakes and he seemed to not be terrible at it. Spike shook his head. He couldn't even muster up enough energy to be disgusted with himself.

"What does it feel like, to have your soul back I mean?" Willow asked.

Spike looked up at her slyly. Willow was dressed in her normal clothes again, the ones Buffy had sent. Examining the fuzzy purple sweater and plaid pants, Spike wondered if hospital scrubs hadn't been a more aesthetic fashion statement.

"You remember that conversation, do you? I thought that comment might have slid by."

"I remember. I was just feeling a little distracted what with the horror and the self-pity and all. Actually, the horror? It's still pretty much there." She was trying to keep her tone light for him. Did she really believe Spike worried about whether she was happy or not?

"That's good," Spike said, sliding the pancake onto the finished stack. The batter sizzled as he poured it onto the greased pan. "You should always care."

"So do you care? Now? I mean with the soul? I mean about all the people you've killed." Willow asked him in a rush, amazing herself by asking at all. All the time they had spent together since Giles had brought her to London and she had never asked him anything more personal than how to conjugate a verb form.

Now Spike gave her one of those hard, cold looks that made Willow want to run screaming from the room.

I'm not her sodding girlfriend, Spike thought. What makes her think she deserves answers from me? Because she doesn't. He didn't have explain anything to anybody. Well maybe to Buffy. She deserved an apology. No, what he wanted was to give her an apology. What she deserved was to be left alone.

"Yeah. With the soul there's a whole new fun emotional spectrum." Bloody hell, why was he telling her this? "I've done things as a vampire and regretted them. I regretted it when I hurt Dru. I regretted it when I hurt Buffy. And I thought that was guilt, but it wasn't. I feel.. You know that look of horror on Harris' face when he looked at me? That's how I feel now. I see myself for the monster. Which is bloody funny, actually, because when I got the damn thing I wanted to be more like a man."

He stopped. Willow was silent, having gotten more than she expected out of him. He sprinkled blueberries into the new pancake. His pale fingers were purple and stained. "But I don't feel too bad about most of the things I did. I'm not Angelus. That whole brooding 'oh what have I done' crap just isn't my style. I did horrible things. I had a lot of fun. Do I regret it? Sure. But I can't change it. I can't apologize to each of them. 'Sorry I offed you mate. Wish I could make it up to you.'"

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Buffy didn't exactly hop on a plane to England the next day. Xander wanted her to, of course, but there were reasons. Dawn needed her for one thing. And she really didn't want to go for another. She could have called. Giles had given her Spike's number. (Spike had a phone? A cell phone? She was more surprised by that then the possibility of him regaining his soul.) Buffy tried to imagine that conversation. No thank you. Besides if she went in person she could see Giles. And she had never been out of the country. The passport had taken a while to come through. That added to the delay. She told herself she would never know how angry she was unless she dealt with the situation in person. Buffy didn't know if she meant angry at Spike or Willow. She didn't give herself too much time to think about it.

It took her almost a month to plan the trip.

"Why can't I go to London with you?" Dawn had griped as Buffy packed her suitcase. Buffy wondered why Dawn thought whining about something made her more sympathetic when all it really did was annoy everyone.

"We talked about this. We don't have the money for two plane tickets." That was a lie. They didn't even have the money for one ticket. Giles had paid for the flight.

"Trust me, sweetie. This trip? Not going to be any fun."

"Do you promise it'll be miserable?" Dawn asked, kind of joking, kind of not.

"Oh yeah," Buffy said, hefting her suitcase. "I promise."

Giles had greeted her at the airport with a hug and a tense smile. "You really didn't need to come," he told her. "Of course I'm happy to see you, but if you would rather not deal with..."

"Giles," Buffy cut him off. "I'm fine. I wanted to come."

She watched Giles carefully as he drove her to wherever it was Spike and Willow were living. At least her Watcher didn't change, she thought. He was her rock. Then again she would have said the same of Willow at one point.

"Promise me you won't change," Buffy said.

Giles laughed softly. "I think it is rather too late for that. I promise not to change in essentials, is that enough?"

"Promise me you won't try to drag the earth into a hell dimension and it'll be enough for me," Buffy sighed. "How is Willow? Have you seen her?"

"Yes, I have spoken with her once. Briefly. She's quite ashamed of herself. As, of course, she should be. I don't think she knows how to reconcile herself to her actions."

"And Spike?"

"I doubt he's overly concerned with making peace with the past."

That wasn't what she had meant. Buffy wasn't sure what she was asking so she left it alone. They drove the rest of the way in silence.

Buffy wanted to go in by herself, but when she saw Giles pull away from the curb she felt oddly abandoned. All grown up now, Buffy. Remember? Irritably she unbuttoned her light coat. London was supposed to be cold, but the late August night was warm and clear. Almost time for Dawn to go back to school. Time for her too. UC Sunnydale had accepted her for the fall quarter.

How am I going to pay for that? Buffy wondered. As she climbed the stairs of the abandoned building she considered asking Giles for a loan. Not a gift: a loan. She practiced the speech in her mind. "I promise I'll pay you back."

She wasn't even convincing herself.

There was only one door at the top of the steps. The lower floors of the building were a wreck of falling plaster and moldy timber. Buffy pushed on the door gently and hoped Willow was safe living here. Because living with Spike, wow that was safe. The door swung open easily. Shouldn't he think about getting some locks installed? This wasn't Sunnydale. There were Big Bads out there that weren't monsters, and he couldn't protect Willow against a human attacker. Could Willow protect herself without her magic?

The space was huge. And not un-nice, Buffy conceded, in that gothic, Dark Shadows style that Spike was fond of. There were candles everywhere. A huge bed was off in one corner, leather furniture, stacks of books, heavy velvet curtains tightly drawn, Buffy's eyes swept over the loft cataloguing everything. Wait. Why was there only one bed? Before she could begin to be horrified by that idea Buffy was distracted by someone laughing. A man laughing.

Moving further into the loft Buffy saw the kitchen area, and next to it the wrought iron and glass table where Spike and Willow sat surrounded by books and piles of yellow legal paper. Buffy had heard Spike laugh before. There was the cruel chuckle, the short guffaw, but she had never heard him tilt his head back and laugh honestly like he was now at whatever Willow was saying. She felt a sudden, irrational hatred towards them both. And what had he done to his hair?

Spike glanced up as she approached and looked properly horrified. His hand, which had been reaching for a wineglass filled with something red, jerked and knocked it off the table. Buffy was pretty sure the liquid all over the floor was blood. It better not be Willow's, she thought. Xander was right; she should have come sooner. Spike frowned and looked at the mess of blood and glass far longer than necessary. He was avoiding turning back toward her, which he did eventually.

"Slayer," he said, standing nervously.

That's what gentlemen used to do, right? Stand when a lady entered the room. Buffy ignored him.

"Buffy?" asked Willow. The former witch turned around.

"Oh! Buffy!" Willow jumped up eagerly and then stopped, as though unsure of what her own reception would be. Buffy smiled genuinely and hugged her friend.

"It's so good to see you, Will," Buffy said.

Even if you're looking tired and haggard, Buffy thought. What is up with the circles around your eyes? Oh, shit. Way to channel Cordelia.

"Are you getting enough sleep?" she asked. Then Buffy remembered there was only one bed and wished she hadn't.

"Oh! I'm sleeping fine!" Willow said with too much energy. "Kind of nightmary and all with the nightmares and the waking up screaming. Actually not sleeping that great now that I think about it. How are you?"

Buffy realized she was making Willow nervous. "I'm great. Really good. I'm going back to school next month. Dawn's starting school in the new high school. Did you know they were re-building it? She was practically begging me to let her come see you. Nobody's mad, Willow. We all miss you."

Buffy looked at Spike. None of us missed you, she thought. He nodded, fully aware of what her glare meant. It was a lie anyway, about them all missing Willow. Anya, never one to just forgive and forget, had volumes to say whenever Willow's name was mentioned. Thank god she couldn't grant her own wishes or Willow would have been sent to a hell dimension or turned into a bowl of rice by now.

"I need to talk to Willow," Buffy told Spike, not looking at him.

"I'll leave the two of you alone then," he said, polite and expressionless. Buffy watched him circumnavigate a wide arc around her, pause at a bookshelf to recover his cigarettes and leave as though neither she nor Willow were in the room.

Willow twisted her hands together and looked nervous. "Hey," she said. "So, what's up?"

Buffy took Willow's hand and lead her over to the leather couch. "I need to talk to you about Spike." She paused. Xander was right, but she so did not want to have this conversation.

"How is Spike?"

Willow gave a nervous laugh. "Oh? He's really, kind of weird. Really weird. Do you know about the soul?"

Buffy rolled her eyes. "I heard a rumor. Do you think it's true?"

Willow bit her lip. She had never considered that it wasn't true. If he didn't have a soul why would he bother taking care of her? Hospital runs? Pancake cooking? Neither were really high on Spike's list of priorities pre- soul.

"He's still pretty scary," Willow admitted, "and kind of obsessive about bathing, but I'm pretty sure about the soul. He's been really nice to me. And the old Spike? I don't think he'd bother. And sometimes he laughs."

"I heard, when I walked in the door."

"Creepy, isn't it? The first time he did that I thought he cracked."

"He was already cracked," Buffy said darkly.

"True," Willow agreed. "He won't talk about you. Ever. It's strange because he used to be all 'Blah blah Slayer. Blah blah Love.' And then there was that thing with Anya."

Buffy cringed when she realized how much there was to tell her friend.

"The thing with Anya? Well, we were over by then. I was pissed and Xander went all homicidal, but if you want to be strictly technical they were both free agents."

"You looked pretty hurt."

"Yeah. I was."

"Is that why he left town?"

"No," Buffy sighed. She hated talking about this. "The night I went after.Warren, and Jonathan and whoever he was, Spike came to the house. I think he wanted to apologize for sleeping with Anya. Dawn told me later she yelled at him for hurting my feelings. In retrospect it probably wasn't her best move. We argued- Spike and I. He got violent and tried to rape me."

"You and Xander in the bathroom." Willow said, horrified, remembering.

"Yeah. Xander ran in right after Spike left."

"Tried," Willow repeated. "But he failed right? He stopped?"

"He stopped after I kicked him across the room."

"Oh," Willow looked ill. "Oh, Buffy, are you all right?"

"I'm fine. Really. But I'm worried about you. Spike can't hurt you, but you deserve to know what he is if you're going to be here with him. Not that we all didn't know what he was in the first place," Buffy looked around the vast room. "And where the hell does he sleep?"

"Here," Willow admitted with an awkward squeak, "on the couch. Buffy! You didn't think that I and he!" she gestured towards the bed. "I mean for one thing. Yuck. Boy. And for another the serial killer past kind of."

"Grosses you out? Yeah. I know." Or I used to know, Buffy thought. Willow was kind enough not to press the point. "It's okay if you want to stay here for a while. If you want to come home that's good too. What do you want to do, Willow?"

Willow pulled her eyebrows together, making her forehead wrinkle. She looked like she wanted to cry.

______________________________________________________________________

TBC