Disclaimer: Joss owns every character in here (well…with the exception of a few…), as well as does ME, Fox, etc. I use them, abuse them, sane them up (or not…), and then leave them as I found them. In this chapter, the part about the pile of shoes was a co-concept with ninquan@aol.com

Chapter Two: Resurrection

11:30 A.M.

New York City, New York

"God-DAMN!" The burly moving-guy stares at the spectacle before him. A truck that was supposed to unload neat, orderly boxes has just unloaded, right on 33rd street in the middle of a Manhattan morning, a pile of...shoes.

Shoes of all shapes and sizes, colors and styles. Silver platforms. Nike tennies in Knicks colors, blue and orange. Flip-flops from the 99-cent store across the street in an awful gaudy pink floral print. Strappy black stilettos. Bunny slippers. Orthopedic boots that are some sort of cross between Doc Martens and Dr. Scholl's. Snowshoes from the Modell's on the next corner. Swimshoes in blue and green.

Just about every kind of footwear under the sun. Or in darkness.

And emerging from this is some moving thing.

A man.

A man with unnaturally blonde hair--must be a haircolor freak from St. Mark's Place, the guy automatonically assumes--and pale pale skin--he must really be taking the underground thing seriously is the guy's next assumption--and a black tee-shirt. Ironically, once he tumbles out of the side of the eighteen-foot high pile and onto well-trodden black asphalt, his own shoes are long gone, leaving him in black socks that come up and under his slim black jeans and are filled with holes.

"I'm drowning in footwear."

The voice that says this is scratched and lilting with a British tint; it's cockney and upper crust at once. It belongs to a man who's been dead for 120-odd years.

Today, however, the man is alive. Blood courses through his veins. His heart beats. He breathes. The smell of blood from his hand catches his attention, and a part of him wonders why he didn't automatically notice it--and why it hasn't healed. Shrugging, he brings the wound on his fingers to lips that are starting to regain color and suckles it out of habit--and he finds himself repulsed by the taste, metallic and dangerous.

"Where the bloody fuckin' hell have I been?" Each word is punctuated by him stomping as hard as he can on the pavement. It hurts--could be that his boots aren't on. He's about to say more when he realizes that the strange warmth on his face is from the sun. He's done for. And yet, instead of cooking and being able to fit neatly into an ashtray, he is merely warm. In the sun.

Pretty damn cool for a dead guy.

"Yo, buddy," the mover calls to him, "do you know what you just did?"

"No, mate, I don't. But it was pretty tuff, I s'pose?" He laughs for a second, his back to the guy and to the abomination that is the pile of shoes outside of the Manhattan Mall.

"D'you even know your name?"

Does he ever know his name! It's the one thing he CAN remember.

Turning towards the muscle that stands where the man is, he grins dramatically, always one to chew the scenery.

"Spike."

While the mover stands slack-jawed, Spike retrieves the only pair of shoes that are connected--what were his boots--and steps into them, more happily than he'd like to.

He tries to decide where to go--the city's gone and changed on him since 1977--and finally starts uptown, to a friend's house. A nice little blood cousin, he knows instinctively. He takes a few tentative steps, no confident swagger left in his body.

"Hey, uh, Spike buddy, I think you dropped somethin'."

He turns around and takes what the guy offers. It's a little silver disc with jewels on it and a broken cord, and it is his. It's his amulet. And with the amulet his memories return.

Sometime in the afternoon

Sunnydale, California.

"I love you," she said to him, before the end of the world.

"I know you don't mean it," he'd replied. "But thanks."

It was all sort of blurry after that. His soul was...transcending him. Glowing. Not making him worry and lament, but helping him do something that would make up for all the evil he'd ever done. He'd get to save the world.

Buffy held his hand. It gave him the strength he needed to see it through to the desperate end.

When he knew that the last girl had left the building alive, he ordered his soul--his power--his self to finish the job and destroy the ubervamps, destroy the Hellmouth, destroy Sunnydale--destroy him.

Then bliss. Pure ethereal bliss. He was light. He was warmth. He was ether.

He didn't know how long this had lasted, this state, but he knew that it ended too soon when he landed in a giant shoe-mound next to the mall, as a human to boot.

11:48 A.M.

New York City, New York

At this very moment, however, all he can think about is her. Buffy. The way she would put her hair into an absentminded ponytail. God, he always loved that hair. Or the way she looked at him when they were making love in his crypt. Powerful and helpless at once. Or the way she asked him to hold her, that last night before the showdown. The feel of her body against his that night alone makes him want to cry.

A shudder runs through him and he nearly drops the amulet once more. He stuffs it in his pocket and continues his baby steps, until a looming and familiar figure accosts him.

"Well, well, what d'you know. I got a poofter with hair that grows straight-up coming to watch the shoes." He grins lopsidedly--he and his grandsire never got along so great anymore. He wondered if it was about Dru, about Buffy, or about the fact that Angel's bloody stupid. He preferred the last one.

"I don't need to take this bull from you now. I just needed to see if it came true." He crosses his arms defensively and stays in the shadows.

"What came true, Angel-boy?"

"The Shanshu prophecy. You know that as well as Buffy does. Or is this a true-love only thing, hmm?"

"Oh, you think just cause I'm the champ I'm gonna be a savior to your psyche? I'm still the same old chap, in case you didn't notice." He takes out a cig from his back pocket and flicks his lighter open.

"You're the same old chap, but you're a human, and those things really WILL kill ya now," Angel snaps from his shadows. Spike raises his mangled right eyebrow, but he stamps out the cigarette. "Look, I really can't stay--" he motions around him, at the receding shadows "--but there's a branch of Wolfram and Hart here, and I think they can help you out." Angel hands a card to Spike, who takes it with a snatch that makes Angel's hand start smoking in the sun.

"Uh, sorry there," he offers.

"Look, I'd better get underground for a few hours, sun and all..."

"Yeah. Well, you go do that, I'll go to the evil lawyers."

"Fair enough. Say, aren't you a little...cold?" Angel tilts his head slightly, and Spike realizes that he is actually pretty cold, and not in the much more pleasant vampiricly cold way.

"I s'pose." However cold he is, though, he won't let Angel think that, just cause he can be killed in many more ways now, that he too is now a nancy-boy.

"The 'evil lawyers' can get you somethin'." He nods a little, still barely showing an emotion.

"G'day then," Spike mutters, already on his way to the address on the card.

"You know, Spike, I think she really does love you," he shouts.

It seems like everyone's telling him that these days. He ignores it and keeps on walking. He needs to get to this place, and he needs to get to Buffy. Whether she loves him or not is, at this point, unimportant.

12:27 P.M.

New York City, New York.

Spike barely pays any attention to the snobs at Wolfram and Hart's Manhattan branch. All he does listen to is the information they have on Buffy's whereabouts. Since Angel gave them direct orders, they open up a filing cabinet just for him--one filled with files of names he knows all too well.

Emerson, Anya.

Giles, Rupert

Harris, Alexander.

Rosenberg, Willow

Summers, Dawn.

Summers, Buffy.

The last one is the only one he cares about. Well, maybe Dawn's. The others can go to hell for all he cares.

"The Hellmouth in Cleveland has returned from a period of dormancy," the stiff-upper-lip Briton in pinstripes sitting across from him says in a very fruity tone.

"So, you're tellin' me that the other Boca del Infierno that I risked life and limb--well, limb anyway--eradicating WASN'T the last one?"

"Well...yes."

"Gotta hand it to the girl. She's got a bleedin' amazing sense of where to settle down. What about the little bit?"

"Little bit?" The Brit shifts uncomfortably in his chair, despite the fact that it's the closest thing to an armchair that the office has.

"Dawn, you fruitcake."

"Oh, yes. She's living with her father now--"

"And Buffy allowed that?" Concern for the girl surprises him. He remembers distinctly how Buffy fought to keep her under her own care, and now it seems she gave up the fight.

"Apparently so." The sunlight catches the agent's grey hair and Spike notices with--is this a ripple of pleasure even? --some emotion that it falls on his own hand, and his hand absorbs it gladly. "Can hands be glad?" He mutters idiotically to himself.

"Sorry?"

"Uh, forget that. The Slayer's in Cleveland, that's all I needed to know." He gets up from his incredibly uncomfortable chair and stretches his legs.

"Her being a Slayer is inconsequential now."

"No kidding." Buffy is the Slayer, whether there are two or a billion of them. Like everyone around him, he knows that Slayerness is a part of Buffy, and it's still important to him. Anger starts to bubble up, but he keeps it down below his surface. No need to make an enemy out of this one.

"We can get you transportation there. Fast, secret. Free." At the last word, Spike realizes that he has no money. "Monetary assistance is also available for you, sir," he adds, as if he read his mind--not an impossible thing at this law firm. This is no Binder & Binder, here.

"How soon then? I don't fancy being stuck in an unfamiliar place for however long it takes you nancy-boys to do your processes and paperwork." Folding his arms against his chest, his moving, breathing chest—the whole humanity thing has yet to sink in—he tilts his head at the lawyer.

"Whenever you want, Willia—"

"It's Spike, or sir, or whatever you want, just for God's sake not William." He chokes on the name, having far too many bad associations with it, and sputters for a moment before turning a glare onto the lawyer.

"As I was saying, you can leave as soon as you wish. You might want a change of clothes, but that's your prerogative." The man's eyes shifted skeptically up Spike's frame. The used-to-be-vampire had to agree. The shirt, the jeans, all of it was dusty and in need of mending. "Sir?"

"Yeah?"

"Angel has instructed me to give you a note for Ms. Summers, if that's where you're going." His 'if' sounded more like 'because,' since Spike, usually so crafty and stealthy, is becoming obvious. Maybe a side effect of humanity. And he dislikes it.

"Is this the whole seal of wax, official deal, or is it more of a cheap cologne-scented business?" Spike wants to hit something. Hard. Feel shards of something. If he was still a vampire, the bumpies would be popping up right about now. He's a human, he's weak, and he's beginning to remember why he loved vampiness so much.

"Neither. Just an envelope, that is to be given to her unopened. If it is opened—" If Spike opens it, he's too polite to say "—it's probably not extremely important."

Spike shrugged.

"Whatever you say, mate. Now, about this clothing thing…"

6:17 PM.

Cleveland, Ohio.

Rather crumbly, this brownstone. Dilapidation city, he thinks. I'll get her the hell out of here, into a nice little flat. Her and the little bit. Strangely enough, he doesn't want a cigarette. He's cold, even in the new leather duster given to him by the people at Wolfram and Hart. He would've picked the locks, but he has keys, also provided by the lawyers. Some lawyers. Probably most of them are witches and demons in disguise.

His breath clouds in front of him, sending a thrill through his soul. My soul. When he gets to the apartment door, he turns the key and finds a pair of bodies moving together, smashed up against the doorframe for the kitchen. At the door's being slammed shut, the people unlock, and Spike gives each the once over, one with wide eyes, the other narrowed. Faith, the other Slayer. She gets a smile; she was friendly, kind even. And he is damned—again—if she isn't sexy as hell. Then Robin Wood. Son of Nikki. Attempted Spike-murderer. He's the one who gets a slight snarl.

"You're alive?" Faith squeaks, unlike her usual tone. "I mean, yo, you're not dead. That's cool."

"It's a long story. I'll tell you, if you're a good girl." He chuckles, throaty and short, before looking to Robin. "'Ello."

"You're human." Disbelief singes his voice.

"Damn right I am. I'm not here to make the small talk though." Glance to Faith, who's comfortably leaning against the doorframe as if she had been there for hours. "Where's Buffy?"

"That's what we'd like to know. She's been gone since last night." Faith shuffles her weight.

Impossible.

She's gone? Missing?

He's searched for her. He came back for her, he thinks in his soul of souls.

And she's not here.

He decides to blame the door.

Then he leaves, a half-gone door, a stunned Slayer, and a confused boy in his wake.