---
Isolation
---
---
Part Three
---
When Angel dreamed, he dreamed of wheels.
Wheels and gears and turning things, like the giant wooden spokes in medieval clocks. Turning and spinning forever in cycles, rolling and clicking out their exact rythms in perfect measurements-- pulling forward, bit by bit, inexorably heading to a future which was just another revolution of the wheel.
Spinning out their anger in the quiet, musty dark, shut away from the world behind walls and locked keys. Turning forever-- moving constantly in their cyclical dances, but never reaching further than that small, focused scope.
It was horrifying in a way he couldn't hope to explain when he woke. Something about that certainty-- that rythmic, clinical passing of the wheels. He was bound to his fate. He had a destiny, and it pulled forward and tied him to the gears and crushed him through, only to raise him up again, the shadow of that downward spiral always waiting in the end to tear him to shreds.
He started upright in bed, sweat clinging to his bare chest. He gasped for the air he did not need, and looked around the shadowed, simple darkness of his room. He lived in genteel aceticism. The walls a plain white, the floor bare save for the tibetan carpet, pools of faint track lighting flowing over it where they cast a dim glow over the cases of asian pottery.
Relieved by the dream's surcease, for a moment he just was himself.
But then his hand brushed against the cotton of the sheets, and he remembered the sheets in her hospital bed. Remembered the time before that-- it seemed like a hundred years ago-- when they had lain side by side, drifting to sleep with the innocent baby resting between them. A sweet, sleeping baby full of potential and silent dreaming.
And he wondered, somewhere deep and quiet in his mind, what the child had dreamed of, in the time before he had known enough of the world to strike out at it.
And so it all pulled on him, pulled him away from sleep, and he thought he could see the gears heading for him once more.
He wasn't going to be able to sleep any longer, so he swung his legs out onto the floor. When he looked up, he jumped straight upright in alarm.
The apparation had suddenly appeared in front of him, wearing her most expensive chanel perfume.
"It really is disconcerting when people do that..." he said, calmly.
"I don't think you'll be taking me much by surprise anymore," Lilah said smoothly, "So I figure I should return the favor while I have the chance."
She walked across the carpet, her neat high heels silent against the pile. Her trim, grey suit hung over her delicately, and her floral scarf flowed from her neck like waves of grass in the wind.
She stood next to the window, hand trailing close to the window pane, tracing the grain back and forth. She looked up at him, gave him a cool smile with perfectly made up, dead lips.
"Great." he said, "So nice of you to stop by. We should really do this less often."
She smiled her sardonic smile.
"Funny."
"So what do you want?"
"Oh do I have to want anything to check in on my contact and associate? Just looking in to see how you were doing,. After, well... you know."
She shrugged a femine, precise little shrug as she said it, smiled at him with measured affectation.
"I'm touched," he responded, "So glad we had this little talk. I think I'll go back to sleep now."
"Yeah that's probably a good idea. But you don't seem to be sleeping so good lately, have you?"
He didn't reply.
"Yeah, you'd better rest up. Gotta fight the big fight-- need to keep up that superstrength of yours. Eat all your veggies or... whatever it was that you eat."
"I'll manage somehow."
She walked to the open doorway, and as she went through the arch, paused, and turned back.
"If it makes you feel better," she said, "I haven't seen her around my particular little corner of hell."
---
Spike was limping. He had been walking for hours, and the painful swelling of his sprained ankle was slowing him up. He knew the vampire had to have driven-- car or motorcycle-- something, to get to the lakeside, but he didn't want to stay to look for the vehicle, in case there were more of them waiting for him, there.
It was ridiculous. They should be easy to take, but, truth be told, he wasn't sure if he could survive them, if there were more.
And any way he sliced it, he didn't think he was back here just to die again twelve hours later.
He leaned hard on a long branch he was using as a crutch. One eye was too swollen to see through, and the dark night took on an unreal, flat quality. Like the ink drawings in Grim's fairytales. He wondered if he'd just forgotten that the world was this dark, or if it had gone blacker since he'd burned through and died.
He dragged himself down the dusty side of the abandoned road away from a town that wasn't there anymore. But somewhere, the world had to start up again. It had to. There would be a rest stop around here somewhere. He could reach something real. More than scrabbly brush and the asphalt caked with sand.
But through the silence of the night, and the pain of his ribs, he was afraid he was the only one. That they'd failed and there was nothing but he and the vampire he'd killed in the whole of the world and that it had all been for nothing. And he was back to see it was for nothing, to make up for failing... because the other place had been too sweet for that, too quiet and peaceful and *finished*.
He had to keep going. There had to be something out there.
Somewhere.
---
Buffy wiped the blood from the gash on her forehead, hissing a bit as the salty sweat on her fingers stung the wound. As she took out her keys, and unlocked the door again, the florescent lights of the apartment hallway buzzed unpleasantly, moths fluttering back and forth against the surface.
The television was on, blaring incoherently in the background, suggesting enthusiastically that Buffy seek the advice of qualified psycics. It was casting flickering light across the darkness of the living room. Dawn was on one arm, sprawled on the sofa, dozed off. The morning light had almost spread across the sky, which was painted a fine and deep blue.
"Dawn..." Buffy whispered, dropping her light weapon's bag and laying a hand gently on her sister's shoulder, "Dawnie, it's time you got to bed..."
Her sister blinked against the glare of the television, eyes opening blearily. And then she started, fully awake. She looked at her sister, reaching out to her face.
"You're bleeding," she said, her voice soft and muffled with sleep.
Buffy smiled softly.
"Yeah," she said, "Don't worry about it, it's nothing serious."
And she walked into the adjoining kitchenette, and ran cool water over her face. It felt good, wiping away the travel and the battle sweat. And she sensed Dawn's shadow in the doorway.
"It is too something serious," Dawn said, her voice exacting and bitter.
"Dawn, sweetie, I'm fine, there's nothing to be upset about-- now go to sleep."
"No," Dawn replied, "You don't get it. I thought we were going to have our lives again, like it was before--"
"Before Sunnydale?" Buffy asked softly, "Dawnie-- it can't ever be like that, you know that."
"But you were so *happy* and I thought--"
"Dawn," Buffy said softly, sinking into a kitchen chair, "I need to tell you something."
She played with the corner of a lace-edged placemate, and Dawn suddenly realized, looking at her sister's hands, that the dust and grime under her fingernails had been alive earlier in the evening.
"I saved a girl's life tonight," she said plainly.
Dawn stood silently, watching her, and her face softened a bit.
"Her name was Christy," Buffy continued, "And if I hadn't gone when I did, she would be dead. If I sat and watched cartoons with you, her sister wouldn't ever have gotten to do that with her ever again. Not ever."
"Dawn, you're right. It is serious-- It's serious, but not because I'm bleeding. It's because no matter how many of us there are, we've all got the power. The power to save them. Christy would be lying in that alley now, cold and alone and dead and gone. I needed to save her, because even if there are others out there for me, there was no one else out there for her. This is the work I have to do"
"You can't do it all..." Dawn whispered, remember her words on the tower that seemed so long ago.
"I know," she said softly, her hazel eyes wisened and gentle, "But I can do all I can."
"And don't worry sweetheart, we're not losing anyone we don't have to," Buffy said, half to herself, reaching out to stroke her sister's hair. She had that distant look in her eyes, the one that Dawn couldn't read. Except tonight, that very disassociation made her understand what her sister was thinking. Because she always got that closed-off look when they were talking about him.
"It's because he's dead..." Dawn said, softly, "It's because of what happened..."
Her sister was silent a moment. They hadn't spoken about it at all since that day, months ago. The refridgerator hummed behind them.
"No Dawn," Buffy replied, quietly, "Not like how you mean it..."
But there was something almost whistful in her voice, something Dawn didn't really understand as her sister spoke, half smiling, her hand in Dawn's long hair, holding onto the locks gently, but firmly, like some kind of tender lifeline.
"But really... if a vampire can give his life to save the world, Dawn, can't we give up a Saturday night to save one girl?"
And Dawn began to realize her sister no longer saw duty as a burden, but as a chosen banner hanging over them all. And there was love in it, as well as pain and death.
"Yeah," Dawn said, her eyes suddenly wet from remembering her sister on that tower. She was always on that tower, somewhere in Dawn's mind. She could lose her at any moment.
"Yeah, we can..." Dawn said, "But the things is-- the thing is that it could become forever so easy..."
And that's when Buffy hugged her.
---
Angel was driving fast through the California desert, the tinted glass of the sportscar shielding him in cool, shadowed darkness from the morning light.
They'd wanted to send a driver. He'd wanted to check this out himself.
He'd been awakened once again by a nervous but steady rapping on his apartment door. His annoyance had risen to levels that would probably involve beheadings if there was an axe handy.
But the rapping wouldn't cease. And it was one of the swarm of personal assistants, looking at him nervously. She was hopping back and forth in her carefully polished, Prada heels, clearly uncomfortably around him. He could hardly blame her.
"Yes?" Angel had asked, the doork opened partially. She took a step back, phone in her hand.
"Mr. Angel..." she'd began, "Mr. Angel, I'm sorry to interrupt you, I know it's late... early..."
"Yes?" Angel asked again, a bit colder this time.
"I'm sorry to wake you, but he wouldn't stop asking for you-- do you-- do you know someone named Spike?"
And so he was driving out to the middle of nowhere to collect a dead vampire whom he had spoken to some hours ago on his own private line, the one they'd kept the number from the hotel open to, so they could keep in touch with their old contacts...
He'd asked him straight out why he hadn't called Buffy instead. He only half believed the voice on the other side.
"I..." Spike had said, the voice pausing a moment, rasping like he was in pain. It was a confused tone, strained. Like he was half on the edge of something drastic.
"I don't know where she is," he burst out, then, "There's only you."
He sounded on the verge of tears. It was profoundly uncomfortable.
"Wait there," Angel had responded, taking the intruiging if somewhat disquieting bair, "I'll come."
He hadn't decided to go yet, though. Not really. He hadn't decided to go entirely until minutes after he'd hung up-- after he'd walked halfway down the steriles hall.
It could be anything, really. Could mean anything, really. And his instinct was humming in the back of his skull. Something was wrong with this. Beyond the resurrection from death-- that was old hat. In their little circle, who hadn't done that a couple of times? His bones were warning him that this was something new. Something serious.
No, he could leave Spike or what claimed to be Spike there at the gas station that, for looking totally anandoned, had happened to have a phone. He hadn't decided.
It was when Lilah turned the corner of that hallway and headed towards him, the determined look on her face, that he made the decision.
"Don't go to get him."
Angel decided to go get him.
Oh they'd bantered, back and forth. He asked her how many times she intended to visit this morning. She might give him the wrong idea about the professionalism of their relationship. She'd laughed at it, but her eyes were steel.
"As a matter of professional courtesy," she had said, piercing him through with the gaze, "I am asking you not to get him."
"And are you telling me not to get him so that I won't go or so I will go just to spite you?"
She smiled.
"Haven't you already made up your mind about that?" she stated calmly, "I'm just making it clear you might not want to see what's behind door number three..."
"What do you know about this?"
"Not much more than you," she said, "We're still working on it. We'll have more later on. We already have Wesley working with his team, trying to dig something up... metaphorically, of course."
"Of course," he said distantly, turning in the direction of the carport.
And as she walked away, ordering a passing assistant to bring one of Mr. Angel's cars around, she tossed her head back to him, smiling, her tone dancing with the fiesty, sharp, sarcastic humor he sometimes respected in her.
"Let's just say that, from what I know about this now-- that somebody up there *likes* you..."
---
When he pulled up to the lonely, dusty old station, with each corner and crevice filled with sand, the white paint peeling away from the old aluminum siding, which rattled in the wind, he saw a figure sitting in the shade under an old, dry gas pump. Its legs were folded, it was staring forward with an almost meditative silence, out past the station into the barren horizon. He noticed the sunlight dancing in a soft pattern across the bruised brow, and something began to rattle around in the back of Angel's mind that troubled him.
The figure looked up as the car quietly pulled up alongside.
It was him. Definately him.
Badly beaten, but in much of their time together, that had been the case.
It was Spike. Head to toe. The head, though, was crowned in the soft brown curls Angel remembered from the early days of their aquaintance. The feet were bare, crusted with sand. One of his ankles was a bloody purple, swollen and clearly injured. He held his right arm tight against his side, clutching it below the shoulder with his left hand. Half his face was a mass of bruises. His shirt was covered in dried blood, which Angel could smell, with some disquiet, was not Spike's own.
He rose and limped to the car, dragging the bad ankle beside him, leaving a trailing line in the sand. When he slid in, he collapsed into the seat, seemingly exhausted. He leaned his head back, closing his eyes a moment with a strange combination of relief and dread at the company he now kept.
"Who could you possibly have pissed off that much in the last half a day?" Angel asked, and then paused, considering this.
"Well, it is *you*, of course..."
"Charmed as always. Turns out, though," Spike said, his voice hoarse, but obviously his own, "That vampires aren't as friendly as we might remember them."
But banter spread thin over the tension, and confusion, and the filtered light streamed through that special, slightly tinted glass all around them. Spike tapped the glass lightly.
"Nice setup."
"Thanks."
"Helping the hopeless must pay better in the big city... Here, mostly gets you blown up..."
Silence. Silence stretching over the long minutes and into nearly an hour. They had pulled out onto the interstate now, and the cars swarmed around them like shiny, colorful locusts. Spike was staring out the window, forehead pressed lightly against the glass. The world flew by him at a swift and brilliant clip.
They passed a car, on the highway lane beside them, the backseat tumbled full of young children. They waved at him through the windows. Or so he thought. They might be waving at something else.
He was pondering whether or not they had been waving at him when Angel spoke again, breaking the quiet with a tired question that sounded like he only half cared what the answer was.
"So," Angel sighed out, sick of listening to what could only be the steady heartbeat and breathing of his companion, "What happened?"
And looking out at the world beyond the car, something occured to Spike. These were cars full of lives-- of people all around him. Like hundreds of little candle lights making a blazing fire.
These people would be dead if he hadn't died. None of this would be here.
He smiled. He'd done something. He had really managed to do something. Something big, with that sense of vastness he'd dreamed about with his pen in his hand, so long ago. It felt right. It had all come out just right.
And some of the heavenly glow seemed to remain in him that he'd thought, in the night darkness, that he'd lost forever. It wasn't far away. It moved on the polished wood and leather of the dashboard. It was in the warm sun outside. It fell on him and soaked through his skin. Softly-- so softly and gently across his bruised flesh, with sweet and painful tenderness.
And he realized he was ignoring Angel's question, and Angel was glancing over to him, watching him smiling broadly like an idiot through the bloody mess of his face, staring at something out the window.
He turned to his companion and straightened his expression. He cleared his throat.
"Don't exactly know," Spike said.
And he paused a moment before he spoke again, his tone quieter, his voice soft like when Angel remembered he'd speak when he was trying to calm one of Drusilla's fits.
"But I can tell you..." he said in that soft and gentle tone, that sounded a thousand miles away, "It was amazing..."
---
When Angel dreamed, he dreamed of wheels.
Wheels and gears and turning things, like the giant wooden spokes in medieval clocks. Turning and spinning forever in cycles, rolling and clicking out their exact rythms in perfect measurements-- pulling forward, bit by bit, inexorably heading to a future which was just another revolution of the wheel.
Spinning out their anger in the quiet, musty dark, shut away from the world behind walls and locked keys. Turning forever-- moving constantly in their cyclical dances, but never reaching further than that small, focused scope.
It was horrifying in a way he couldn't hope to explain when he woke. Something about that certainty-- that rythmic, clinical passing of the wheels. He was bound to his fate. He had a destiny, and it pulled forward and tied him to the gears and crushed him through, only to raise him up again, the shadow of that downward spiral always waiting in the end to tear him to shreds.
He started upright in bed, sweat clinging to his bare chest. He gasped for the air he did not need, and looked around the shadowed, simple darkness of his room. He lived in genteel aceticism. The walls a plain white, the floor bare save for the tibetan carpet, pools of faint track lighting flowing over it where they cast a dim glow over the cases of asian pottery.
Relieved by the dream's surcease, for a moment he just was himself.
But then his hand brushed against the cotton of the sheets, and he remembered the sheets in her hospital bed. Remembered the time before that-- it seemed like a hundred years ago-- when they had lain side by side, drifting to sleep with the innocent baby resting between them. A sweet, sleeping baby full of potential and silent dreaming.
And he wondered, somewhere deep and quiet in his mind, what the child had dreamed of, in the time before he had known enough of the world to strike out at it.
And so it all pulled on him, pulled him away from sleep, and he thought he could see the gears heading for him once more.
He wasn't going to be able to sleep any longer, so he swung his legs out onto the floor. When he looked up, he jumped straight upright in alarm.
The apparation had suddenly appeared in front of him, wearing her most expensive chanel perfume.
"It really is disconcerting when people do that..." he said, calmly.
"I don't think you'll be taking me much by surprise anymore," Lilah said smoothly, "So I figure I should return the favor while I have the chance."
She walked across the carpet, her neat high heels silent against the pile. Her trim, grey suit hung over her delicately, and her floral scarf flowed from her neck like waves of grass in the wind.
She stood next to the window, hand trailing close to the window pane, tracing the grain back and forth. She looked up at him, gave him a cool smile with perfectly made up, dead lips.
"Great." he said, "So nice of you to stop by. We should really do this less often."
She smiled her sardonic smile.
"Funny."
"So what do you want?"
"Oh do I have to want anything to check in on my contact and associate? Just looking in to see how you were doing,. After, well... you know."
She shrugged a femine, precise little shrug as she said it, smiled at him with measured affectation.
"I'm touched," he responded, "So glad we had this little talk. I think I'll go back to sleep now."
"Yeah that's probably a good idea. But you don't seem to be sleeping so good lately, have you?"
He didn't reply.
"Yeah, you'd better rest up. Gotta fight the big fight-- need to keep up that superstrength of yours. Eat all your veggies or... whatever it was that you eat."
"I'll manage somehow."
She walked to the open doorway, and as she went through the arch, paused, and turned back.
"If it makes you feel better," she said, "I haven't seen her around my particular little corner of hell."
---
Spike was limping. He had been walking for hours, and the painful swelling of his sprained ankle was slowing him up. He knew the vampire had to have driven-- car or motorcycle-- something, to get to the lakeside, but he didn't want to stay to look for the vehicle, in case there were more of them waiting for him, there.
It was ridiculous. They should be easy to take, but, truth be told, he wasn't sure if he could survive them, if there were more.
And any way he sliced it, he didn't think he was back here just to die again twelve hours later.
He leaned hard on a long branch he was using as a crutch. One eye was too swollen to see through, and the dark night took on an unreal, flat quality. Like the ink drawings in Grim's fairytales. He wondered if he'd just forgotten that the world was this dark, or if it had gone blacker since he'd burned through and died.
He dragged himself down the dusty side of the abandoned road away from a town that wasn't there anymore. But somewhere, the world had to start up again. It had to. There would be a rest stop around here somewhere. He could reach something real. More than scrabbly brush and the asphalt caked with sand.
But through the silence of the night, and the pain of his ribs, he was afraid he was the only one. That they'd failed and there was nothing but he and the vampire he'd killed in the whole of the world and that it had all been for nothing. And he was back to see it was for nothing, to make up for failing... because the other place had been too sweet for that, too quiet and peaceful and *finished*.
He had to keep going. There had to be something out there.
Somewhere.
---
Buffy wiped the blood from the gash on her forehead, hissing a bit as the salty sweat on her fingers stung the wound. As she took out her keys, and unlocked the door again, the florescent lights of the apartment hallway buzzed unpleasantly, moths fluttering back and forth against the surface.
The television was on, blaring incoherently in the background, suggesting enthusiastically that Buffy seek the advice of qualified psycics. It was casting flickering light across the darkness of the living room. Dawn was on one arm, sprawled on the sofa, dozed off. The morning light had almost spread across the sky, which was painted a fine and deep blue.
"Dawn..." Buffy whispered, dropping her light weapon's bag and laying a hand gently on her sister's shoulder, "Dawnie, it's time you got to bed..."
Her sister blinked against the glare of the television, eyes opening blearily. And then she started, fully awake. She looked at her sister, reaching out to her face.
"You're bleeding," she said, her voice soft and muffled with sleep.
Buffy smiled softly.
"Yeah," she said, "Don't worry about it, it's nothing serious."
And she walked into the adjoining kitchenette, and ran cool water over her face. It felt good, wiping away the travel and the battle sweat. And she sensed Dawn's shadow in the doorway.
"It is too something serious," Dawn said, her voice exacting and bitter.
"Dawn, sweetie, I'm fine, there's nothing to be upset about-- now go to sleep."
"No," Dawn replied, "You don't get it. I thought we were going to have our lives again, like it was before--"
"Before Sunnydale?" Buffy asked softly, "Dawnie-- it can't ever be like that, you know that."
"But you were so *happy* and I thought--"
"Dawn," Buffy said softly, sinking into a kitchen chair, "I need to tell you something."
She played with the corner of a lace-edged placemate, and Dawn suddenly realized, looking at her sister's hands, that the dust and grime under her fingernails had been alive earlier in the evening.
"I saved a girl's life tonight," she said plainly.
Dawn stood silently, watching her, and her face softened a bit.
"Her name was Christy," Buffy continued, "And if I hadn't gone when I did, she would be dead. If I sat and watched cartoons with you, her sister wouldn't ever have gotten to do that with her ever again. Not ever."
"Dawn, you're right. It is serious-- It's serious, but not because I'm bleeding. It's because no matter how many of us there are, we've all got the power. The power to save them. Christy would be lying in that alley now, cold and alone and dead and gone. I needed to save her, because even if there are others out there for me, there was no one else out there for her. This is the work I have to do"
"You can't do it all..." Dawn whispered, remember her words on the tower that seemed so long ago.
"I know," she said softly, her hazel eyes wisened and gentle, "But I can do all I can."
"And don't worry sweetheart, we're not losing anyone we don't have to," Buffy said, half to herself, reaching out to stroke her sister's hair. She had that distant look in her eyes, the one that Dawn couldn't read. Except tonight, that very disassociation made her understand what her sister was thinking. Because she always got that closed-off look when they were talking about him.
"It's because he's dead..." Dawn said, softly, "It's because of what happened..."
Her sister was silent a moment. They hadn't spoken about it at all since that day, months ago. The refridgerator hummed behind them.
"No Dawn," Buffy replied, quietly, "Not like how you mean it..."
But there was something almost whistful in her voice, something Dawn didn't really understand as her sister spoke, half smiling, her hand in Dawn's long hair, holding onto the locks gently, but firmly, like some kind of tender lifeline.
"But really... if a vampire can give his life to save the world, Dawn, can't we give up a Saturday night to save one girl?"
And Dawn began to realize her sister no longer saw duty as a burden, but as a chosen banner hanging over them all. And there was love in it, as well as pain and death.
"Yeah," Dawn said, her eyes suddenly wet from remembering her sister on that tower. She was always on that tower, somewhere in Dawn's mind. She could lose her at any moment.
"Yeah, we can..." Dawn said, "But the things is-- the thing is that it could become forever so easy..."
And that's when Buffy hugged her.
---
Angel was driving fast through the California desert, the tinted glass of the sportscar shielding him in cool, shadowed darkness from the morning light.
They'd wanted to send a driver. He'd wanted to check this out himself.
He'd been awakened once again by a nervous but steady rapping on his apartment door. His annoyance had risen to levels that would probably involve beheadings if there was an axe handy.
But the rapping wouldn't cease. And it was one of the swarm of personal assistants, looking at him nervously. She was hopping back and forth in her carefully polished, Prada heels, clearly uncomfortably around him. He could hardly blame her.
"Yes?" Angel had asked, the doork opened partially. She took a step back, phone in her hand.
"Mr. Angel..." she'd began, "Mr. Angel, I'm sorry to interrupt you, I know it's late... early..."
"Yes?" Angel asked again, a bit colder this time.
"I'm sorry to wake you, but he wouldn't stop asking for you-- do you-- do you know someone named Spike?"
And so he was driving out to the middle of nowhere to collect a dead vampire whom he had spoken to some hours ago on his own private line, the one they'd kept the number from the hotel open to, so they could keep in touch with their old contacts...
He'd asked him straight out why he hadn't called Buffy instead. He only half believed the voice on the other side.
"I..." Spike had said, the voice pausing a moment, rasping like he was in pain. It was a confused tone, strained. Like he was half on the edge of something drastic.
"I don't know where she is," he burst out, then, "There's only you."
He sounded on the verge of tears. It was profoundly uncomfortable.
"Wait there," Angel had responded, taking the intruiging if somewhat disquieting bair, "I'll come."
He hadn't decided to go yet, though. Not really. He hadn't decided to go entirely until minutes after he'd hung up-- after he'd walked halfway down the steriles hall.
It could be anything, really. Could mean anything, really. And his instinct was humming in the back of his skull. Something was wrong with this. Beyond the resurrection from death-- that was old hat. In their little circle, who hadn't done that a couple of times? His bones were warning him that this was something new. Something serious.
No, he could leave Spike or what claimed to be Spike there at the gas station that, for looking totally anandoned, had happened to have a phone. He hadn't decided.
It was when Lilah turned the corner of that hallway and headed towards him, the determined look on her face, that he made the decision.
"Don't go to get him."
Angel decided to go get him.
Oh they'd bantered, back and forth. He asked her how many times she intended to visit this morning. She might give him the wrong idea about the professionalism of their relationship. She'd laughed at it, but her eyes were steel.
"As a matter of professional courtesy," she had said, piercing him through with the gaze, "I am asking you not to get him."
"And are you telling me not to get him so that I won't go or so I will go just to spite you?"
She smiled.
"Haven't you already made up your mind about that?" she stated calmly, "I'm just making it clear you might not want to see what's behind door number three..."
"What do you know about this?"
"Not much more than you," she said, "We're still working on it. We'll have more later on. We already have Wesley working with his team, trying to dig something up... metaphorically, of course."
"Of course," he said distantly, turning in the direction of the carport.
And as she walked away, ordering a passing assistant to bring one of Mr. Angel's cars around, she tossed her head back to him, smiling, her tone dancing with the fiesty, sharp, sarcastic humor he sometimes respected in her.
"Let's just say that, from what I know about this now-- that somebody up there *likes* you..."
---
When he pulled up to the lonely, dusty old station, with each corner and crevice filled with sand, the white paint peeling away from the old aluminum siding, which rattled in the wind, he saw a figure sitting in the shade under an old, dry gas pump. Its legs were folded, it was staring forward with an almost meditative silence, out past the station into the barren horizon. He noticed the sunlight dancing in a soft pattern across the bruised brow, and something began to rattle around in the back of Angel's mind that troubled him.
The figure looked up as the car quietly pulled up alongside.
It was him. Definately him.
Badly beaten, but in much of their time together, that had been the case.
It was Spike. Head to toe. The head, though, was crowned in the soft brown curls Angel remembered from the early days of their aquaintance. The feet were bare, crusted with sand. One of his ankles was a bloody purple, swollen and clearly injured. He held his right arm tight against his side, clutching it below the shoulder with his left hand. Half his face was a mass of bruises. His shirt was covered in dried blood, which Angel could smell, with some disquiet, was not Spike's own.
He rose and limped to the car, dragging the bad ankle beside him, leaving a trailing line in the sand. When he slid in, he collapsed into the seat, seemingly exhausted. He leaned his head back, closing his eyes a moment with a strange combination of relief and dread at the company he now kept.
"Who could you possibly have pissed off that much in the last half a day?" Angel asked, and then paused, considering this.
"Well, it is *you*, of course..."
"Charmed as always. Turns out, though," Spike said, his voice hoarse, but obviously his own, "That vampires aren't as friendly as we might remember them."
But banter spread thin over the tension, and confusion, and the filtered light streamed through that special, slightly tinted glass all around them. Spike tapped the glass lightly.
"Nice setup."
"Thanks."
"Helping the hopeless must pay better in the big city... Here, mostly gets you blown up..."
Silence. Silence stretching over the long minutes and into nearly an hour. They had pulled out onto the interstate now, and the cars swarmed around them like shiny, colorful locusts. Spike was staring out the window, forehead pressed lightly against the glass. The world flew by him at a swift and brilliant clip.
They passed a car, on the highway lane beside them, the backseat tumbled full of young children. They waved at him through the windows. Or so he thought. They might be waving at something else.
He was pondering whether or not they had been waving at him when Angel spoke again, breaking the quiet with a tired question that sounded like he only half cared what the answer was.
"So," Angel sighed out, sick of listening to what could only be the steady heartbeat and breathing of his companion, "What happened?"
And looking out at the world beyond the car, something occured to Spike. These were cars full of lives-- of people all around him. Like hundreds of little candle lights making a blazing fire.
These people would be dead if he hadn't died. None of this would be here.
He smiled. He'd done something. He had really managed to do something. Something big, with that sense of vastness he'd dreamed about with his pen in his hand, so long ago. It felt right. It had all come out just right.
And some of the heavenly glow seemed to remain in him that he'd thought, in the night darkness, that he'd lost forever. It wasn't far away. It moved on the polished wood and leather of the dashboard. It was in the warm sun outside. It fell on him and soaked through his skin. Softly-- so softly and gently across his bruised flesh, with sweet and painful tenderness.
And he realized he was ignoring Angel's question, and Angel was glancing over to him, watching him smiling broadly like an idiot through the bloody mess of his face, staring at something out the window.
He turned to his companion and straightened his expression. He cleared his throat.
"Don't exactly know," Spike said.
And he paused a moment before he spoke again, his tone quieter, his voice soft like when Angel remembered he'd speak when he was trying to calm one of Drusilla's fits.
"But I can tell you..." he said in that soft and gentle tone, that sounded a thousand miles away, "It was amazing..."
---