FOOLS FOR LIFE:

CHAPTER 46: ANYTHING FOR LOVE

** **

Buffy woke and bolted upright, taking in a deep breath of air like she had been underwater for too long.

"Buffy! Easy! Easy there.."

She looked up and saw Willow sit on the bed. She looked at her, a bit bewildered. Tara and Dawn were there too. "How do you feel? Do you remember what happened?"

Remember..she was trying to remember...when she did her eyes grew wide with alarm. "SPIKE! The room! The guardians! What..what happened? How did I get here?"

"You..you sound normal again," Dawn said with a little relief. Buffy looked at her, for a moment not understanding her.

Then she heard her own words back in her head and sighed. "That's a US of A accent.."

Then her face turned to alarm again and she looked at Willow. "I'm....I'm cured? How? What happened. How long have I been here?"

"About two days. The curse wasn't lifted instantly. You stayed asleep and gradually your heart rate got back up, your body temperature got back to normal and uh...ahem, your teeth too."

Buffy felt her teeth with her tongue. No more fangs. It wasn't until now that she realized how natural part of her had started to find it all. The accent, the smoking...even the teeth had not felt weird after a while.

She flashed back to Spike, tied up on the ground, by her..sinking her teeth into his neck while holding him down. She remembered the ecstasy when his blood had filled her mouth....

"Buff? You okay?" Willow asked, seeing her zone out.

"Yeah, I think so..I....just a lot to take." She rubbed her eyes for a moment.

"Willow, what happened, do you know? How did he do it? Did he tell you?"

"I....he called me before you were cured. And after you went down during your fight with him. He told me what happened, what he'd done, the deal with D'Hoffryn, you two fighting with the endless rooms..or one room. Yeah he solved that one. Sort of by accident. He banged on the door in frustration and got his blood on it. That solved it. Blood spilt in a selfless need, something like that. The door opened and there was a different room that had the stone."

Buffy fell back into her pillow. "Huh, what do you know. I guess that's lucky then. So he did save me in the end. Is he okay now?"

She glanced outside, noting it was dark, and she couldn't help but feel a little pang at his absence. Why wasn't he sitting by her bed like a loving suitor was supposed to? Then she noticed the silence in the room.

Tara and Willow exchanged looks.

"What?" Buffy asked.

Willow touched her hand and said, "Buffy, there's.....more....."

** **

"Look! You can't return a Dalgol egg after you've used it? Are you nuts?"

Anya sternly looked at the young man with the dorky glasses standing in front of her.

"But-but it didn't work. I didn't get any big-...uh, I mean taller."

She leaned on the counter in an unmovable way and stared straight at him. "That's because you don't USE a Dalgol's egg for such spells! That's not my fault! Or the egg's!"

"But...I'm.."

She sighed and her eyes darted to a lower area of his body as she said: "All shriveled up?"

He looked up at her in horror. "How do you...! I mean no! I mean..."

She rolled her eyes. "Go look in the back. I have new Hell hound's testicles in."

The young man flustered at the word. She looked at him. "What? Yes, I said testicle, and unless you want yours to STAY the size of raisins, you better go buy it!"

He cleared his throat and stammered. "Back r-row?"

"To the left, in the corner, next to the bookshelves."

He hurried over there like he was on fire.

Anya sighed and shook her head. It wasn't easy running a shop like this. She got back to the boxes behind the counter that had just come in. She'd have to log all the contents and make sure everything she ordered was there. She opened one box and stopped.

It had several Orbs of Thesulah in it.

She picked one up and looked at it.

Paper weights. Useless now. But it reminded her of a few days ago.

He'd been right, this way had been quicker. She remembered when Spike had called her and asked for her help. He'd asked her not to tell the rest of them until it was over. She wasn't sure why she had done it. Maybe because he had been right, and there was a bit of a bond between them, two demons not quite fitting into the Scoobie clan.

Or maybe because she still remembered that night with him. Even more than the sex, what he said had helped her. She really had needed someone to be sweet to her and he had..

Then the door opened and she heard Willow's voice.

"I just think..."

"I know Will, you've said so several times in the car. For the hundredth time, I'm fine! You said Anya would be able to tell me better than you, so..."

Willow sighed. "Me and my big mouth." Tara gave her shoulder a little squeeze.

Anya looked at them as Buffy walked up to the counter. "Well, looks like you're up and running again."

Buffy nodded, a little uncertainly. "I guess that's also thanks to you."

Anya shrugged a little. "Yeah well, you people usually wouldn't get by without me. Nothing new."

Buffy smiled. "Thanks...."

Anya thought of saying something again but she looked at Buffy without sarcasm and just nodded.

"Can we..talk?" Buffy asked.

** **

A little later the two of them were sitting in the back room where Buffy's training gear was kept. Two cups of coffee steamed the air around their faces.

Buffy searched for the words. No, the words were there, she searched for a way to say them without her voice cracking a little.

She couldn't believe it. In spite of everything she'd seen of him, everything he'd said, and everything she'd felt when part of her WAS him....she still couldn't believe it.

"So...he..he."

"He got a soul. For you," Anya cut her off, wishing she'd get to it already.

"And he got Angel to wish it...?"

Anya nodded. "Wasn't that hard either."

Buffy smiled a sad smile. The only person in the world who would wish a soul on Spike, with feelings rooted in anger. And of course Spike would have known what buttons to push. Those two had known each other way too long.

"And you...."

"Fulfilled it." Anya's face turned a little darker as she thought back. "He..screamed."

Buffy swallowed. "Did it...hurt?"

"I don't know. I'm just the wish granter. But with what you yourself know about Angel, we can guess it's something...we can't imagine. I saw his eyes light up and his body shiver. Then he grabbed his head and screamed..and fell to his knees."

Anya shifted a little. "I can still...hear him. It was a scream that..that..."

"Came from the depths of his soul..?" Buffy said softly.

Anya nodded.

"Probably literally. He crumbled into this little ball in the sand. And shivered more. I didn't really know what to do. Then he looked up, looking terrified, or hurt or....I don't know. And for a moment I thought he didn't know where he was. I wondered if he'd gone mad. He looked around with his body shaking and suddenly after a few seconds of that, you could see..realization hit his face."

"Realization?"

"Who he was, where he was..what had happened...I don't know."

"What he'd done...." Buffy added.

Anya shrugged. "Yeah...who knows...he grabbed his head again and pulled it down into the sand. He stayed there making sounds that may have been sobs, but I couldn't even really tell."

"What did you do?"

"He had asked me to stay and help him focus on what he had to do in case he'd be....disoriented. Well, he certainly looked disoriented to me. So I bent down and shook him. Told him he needed to snap out of it. He looked up at me as if he didn't understand. So I slapped him."

"You....never mind. Okay...you slapped him."

"Yeah, it worked a little. I dragged him to the car where you were sleeping. I asked him if he remembered you and what he had to do. When he saw you lying there his face changed."

Buffy swallowed again. ".....how?"

"He bent over you, still shaking, he mumbled your name. He rested his head on yours for a moment, biting down whatever was going on inside him. I saw..tears stream down his face. Then he kissed you and tore himself away."

"He walked over to the entrance in the rocks. He almost fell again. Then he ran into the room, almost falling with every step. I didn't go inside, but...I looked through the door."

"And he did it."

"He wished you would heal from the curse, something like that."

Buffy smiled a little. She had wished she would remember everything. That's why he didn't wish just for the wish to be 'undone'. He didn't want her to forget either. That's why it took a day or two. She healed. It wasn't wished into oblivion.

"And then?"

Anya sipped her coffee. "I walked back to the car and saw him stagger out a little later. He was clutching the stone to his chest like it was his heart. He fell back to the rock wall and I went to him. He was still shivering, like he was in pain..and he was still crying. I was about to ask him if he was okay, you know, in that redundant way you people do, when he told me to drive you back to Sunnydale, to your house. I asked why he wasn't coming with us, but he just closed his eyes, forcing out more tears and tried to catch a breath to talk again. 'Deal's not...finished. I...have to...' "

"I nodded to let him know I understood. D'Hoffryn would come for the stone now. But I don't think he would have come with us even if that wasn't true. He just looked at the car and gritted his teeth. He clenched his fists and sobbed. Then he said "Tell....tell her..I loved her...I really did....But...also..tell her...she w-was..right."

"What?" Buffy's eyes, had teared up as Anya spoke and now they grew wide. "What did he mean? Right with what?"

Anya shrugged. "I don't know! You tell me! You're the one who should know. Then he just told me to go quickly. And...I did. I didn't know what to do. He wouldn't come with me."

"And...that's the last anyone has seen of him?" Buffy asked already knowing the answer.

"Yes. Willow and Tara have been by his crypt, but..."

They were interrupted by the sound of the bell ringing, meaning some customer had entered the store. "Oh, we're uh, done right? I mean you probably don't need me for emotional support."

Buffy smiled weakly and shook her head. "It's okay. Thanks for telling me and...just thanks, again."

Anya nodded and walked back to the store. Buffy sat alone and thought of Spike. He got his soul back. For her. Never would she have thought....

She wondered what he had went through. She knew Angel had crumbled mentally under the guilt of decades of torturing innocents. And now that she'd had Spike's memories..she knew that William had been a sensitive, nice guy.

What was he like now? He couldn't be that person again completely. But, what Anya had said...what had he gone through for her? And what had happened to him?

She imagined him in the desert, wandering aimlessly, traumatized with the experience, not knowing where he was going, forgetting the sun was coming up over the landscape....

Tears started to drop now.

She thought back of her affair with him. All passion and naughty sex. Kinky pleasures she'd never admitted she wanted so much....using him while all the time she was the love of his life. She knew it now because she had felt it, she could still recall some of the memories she'd had. She thought of the time Glory had tortured him and nearly killed him and he'd refused to talk.

For her.

'Were you that sensitive and nice a guy, William?' she thought to herself. 'So that even without your soul, as a monster you could love..?'

She thought of all the times she had rejected him, pushed him away and kicked him down. Now after the past few days....seeing all of that through his eyes....things had changed.

She remembered feeding on him. Both when she took him by force in a messed up state of mind, and when he'd let her and she'd done it...knowingly.

She knew the very idea of that act would once have made her gag and spit in disgust. Just the notion of it. And she knew if she tasted blood now it would be horrible to her. She had been cursed when she did it, but she was cured now.

And yet the only way she could remember it, even now....was as intimate an act of love as she'd ever experienced.

The door creaked open and Willow walked in. "You okay?" she asked gently.

Buffy looked up, her face teary and wet. She tried to nod a 'yes' since words would obviously not come, but even as she did she felt her mouth pull wider and she started to sob.

Willow sat down with her and held her.

Buffy cried.

She let herself cry now without holding back or concern for appearances. She cried out of guilt, out of worry, out of several days worth of experiences that were too much to take.

She cried for him, for what he went through for her....she who had given him rough sex at best, and utter disdain and hurt at the worst.

She cried because she realized that no matter how much she and Angel had loved each other, she knew that Angelus, his soulless self, would never, ever have done what Spike now had.

She cried when she thought he may be dead in the desert or gone for good.

She cried for a missed opportunity of love. Now possibly lost forever...

** **

TBC!

(And don't think I couldn't have written "The End" there....if I'd wanted to)