A/N: Well, I think this is it for Crushed. Amazing as it is, my second fic is ending. It's a sad time, and a happy time. It's also a little surreal, as I'm finishing my second (and much longer) fic before my first, but whatever. I want to send a shout out to a few people who've supported me the whole time but there are so many of you, and I don't want to miss any of you, it'll just have to be a generic thank you. Review this final chapter. If there is enough demand, I may get started on the sequel pretty much right away as opposed to my current plan to shelf it in favour of finishing a pair of my other fics.

SQUEEEE! This story has been nominated at the Love's Last Glimpse Awards for Best Saga.

Whoever nominated me, I love you. Of course, I would not object to others nominating me or any of my stories for any award. Call me shallow like that, if you will. I'll still want the award.

Disclaimer: Hah! I laugh in the face of the people with the correct rights to this. I've been writing this fic since the 23rd of July and have never done anything vaguely resembling a decent disclaimer and the supposedly mighty evil monkey army that attack those who betray or steal from Joss Whedon are yet to show. I'm beginning to doubt their wrath...

Momentous Times

The tension in the room was palpable. William wasn't sure who this Angel fellow was, but even he felt the fear and the worry that everyone else felt for the vampire. He hadn't been as shocked as he'd imagined when they mentioned he had a vampire self, nor when they explained how he was something of a time traveller. He assumed they were things he had accepted before the spell that made him forget. As it was, William was the least surprised and the most surprised when Buffy spoke.

"Then I'll let him feed from me" she announced calmly, despite her pale face. William had long since decided that he would just accept things as they were, so after he got over the initial surprise of her letting a vampire feed from her, it seemed perfectly in character for the heroic Buffy. At least it did from what he'd been told. It appeared that the others didn't quite see it the same way.

"What? Are you crazy?" Xander nearly exploded. "I don't want him to die, either, but he's a vampire! And evil, soulless vampire!" The Slayer turned and faced Xander directly.

"Who loves me."

"He can't love, Buffy! He doesn't have a soul!"

The two friends stared at each other, Xander's face a mixture of confusion and anger juxtaposed sharply by Buffy's calm, collected demeanour. Surprisingly, it was Tara who spoke next, not Buffy.

"An evil soulless vampire who protected Dawnie under torture." Everyone stared at the blonde witch in surprise. She never spoke up at these meetings. Xander opened his mouth to argue further, and Giles cut him off.

"Regardless, this is not Killer Of The Dead. This is just one of the main ingredients." Giles cleaned his glasses briefly, before placing them on his nose once again. "There is nothing to say that, even were you to let Spike feed from you, he would be healed."

"I have to try," Buffy said, her voice not quite masking the complex emotions underneath.

"Do you trust him?" Joyce asked quietly. Buffy smiled at her mother tremulously and nodded. Joyce smiled wanly in response, before going into the kitchen and returning with a few handtowels. Buffy began her trek down to the basement, followed by Joyce, Dawn and a curious William, the others either not wanting to see or not wanting to intrude or, in Anya's case, not being able to because of the four people preventing her from following.

When she reached the bottom floor, Buffy walked over and sat on the cot, next to Spike. The vampire whimpered slightly and shifted. Taking a deep breath to steady herself, the Slayer picked up the vampire's head and held it to her neck. After a long moment, Buffy let out a breath she hadn't realised she'd been holding when Spike hadn't bitten her.

"Bite me, Spike" she whispered to him. She was surprised when the vampire shook his head, albeit weakly. "Do it!"

"...Buffy..." he murmured in a plaintive tone, still shaking his head softly. Buffy felt her heart melt at the same time it was seized in fear. While a touching and reassuring thought that Spike refused to feed, even when almost completely out of it, she was more worried that he would die if he didn't feed. In her panic, she reacted in the same fashion that had always managed to provoke his demon. She punched him.

With a snarl, Spike's demon face exploded forth, yellow eyes flashing, and still the vampire didn't attack or try to feed. Buffy could see that he wanted to, and at the same time he was stopping himself. Stopping himself for her. She bit her lip hard, and was rewarded with the metallic scent of her blood. As she'd hoped, this sent Spike into a weak frenzy, and when Buffy arched her neck, he lunged in.

Buffy's feeling of triumph evaporated when, instead of sharp fangs in her neck, she heard a pained roar. Her eyes snapped open and saw the vampire writhing in pain, pushing his head back into the pillow. The chip. They'd forgotten, in all the panic and fear, they'd forgotten he had a government built lock on his demon. He was unable to hurt any human, or attempt to, without intense pain.

"Get a knife!" she barked at her sister, who bolted up the stairs. Buffy stroked Spike's head, smoothing his hair, while she waited for her sister to return. Spike's moans lowered to whimpers, and were ceasing completely when a breathless Dawn returned with a knife. Gripping the knife tightly in her left hand, Buffy slash vertically down her right wrist, hissing in pain before pressing the now bleeding wound to the vampire's mouth.

Feeding from an already wounded person seemed possible and didn't set off the chip, as Buffy felt an unsettling, slightly unpleasant rush through her body. It felt as though someone were vacuuming her insides, which given that a vampire was sucking her blood from a cut on her wrist was not entirely inaccurate.

She felt the pulls become stronger and lengthier as Spike regained some semblance of control and reprieve from his pain, and she began to feel light-headed and a little dizzy.

The sound of blood pumping near Spike's ear had reminded him how long it had been since he'd fed from a human, through the fog of pain that he was in. He felt an intense urge to feed when the pulse that sang to him so beautifully was pushed against his lips. One thought stopped him from feeding. Buffy. His Golden Goddess, his lovely Slayer. If he fed from a human, she'd never be his. It'd prove what she'd said all along, that he was evil, that he didn't deserve to touch her.

So he restrained himself. Even when something struck him in the face, and he felt himself respond with rage, his game face coming on, ready to rend and tear. Then, cruelly, the pulse had been jammed in front of his unseeing face, and it was all the harder to resist with his demon so close to the surface. So hard to restrain himself with his implements of feeding at hand.

Still, he'd resisted. For Buffy, to be worthy of her respect if he could never have her love. He'd take what he could get. But when the sharp, alluring, metallic smell of blood had permeated the air, not even Spike's formidable will could withstand the pressure. He surged forward, guided by smell and sound, only to have his pain tripled when the chip fired, igniting with blue-white pain in his skull.

Then he'd felt a warm hand running through his hair, soothing him and his pain, a bittersweet torture with the intoxicating scent of blood in the air. He'd allowed himself to be eased, the gentle rhythm against his skull relaxing.

Then the sharp, mouth watering scent of fresh, human blood saturated the air, Spike felt all peace he had gained from the head stroking disappear in an instant. He was immensely surprised when he felt a warm arm, sticky, sweet blood flowing copiously pressed against his mouth.

He did what all vampires do. He drank. The blood was intoxicating, like hard liquor to someone who had been forced to drink unclean water for years, nearly overpowering him in every sense of the word. With every pull of the blood, each one deeper than the last, he felt the pain receding and his awareness being restored.

He began to savour his first live human blood since the Initiative caught him. Female, he noted. Young, strong. He'd had blood like this before. He was filled with nearly mindless terror when he remembered where. Slayer blood, in the Boxer Rebellion. Which meant he was feeding from Buffy.

His eyes opened sharply, and he saw the Slayer. Dropping her wrist, he stared when the blood continued to flow, staining the white sheets red. His mind barely working, he looked around blindly for something, anything to stop the bleeding. He looked up into Joyce's concerned face as she handed him a tea-towel.

Spike frantically used the small hand-towel as a bandage, wrapping it around the Slayer's wound firmly, before hefting her body up in his arms with newly restored strength. He ran up the stairs with staring eyes. He caught a familiar scent as he emerged from the basement.

"Watcher!" he called out hoarsely, panicking in the extreme. When Giles, Xander, Anya, Willow and Tara all appeared, looking with shocked expressions between him and the limp, listless form of the Slayer in his arms, Spike looked outside. It was nearly dawn. "She needs a hospital. I can't get her there."

Giles and Xander rushed forward silently to carry Buffy between them to the car, and everyone in the house followed except Spike, forced to stay in the house due to the rays of sunlight just now slanting across the horizon. Spike watched as the bevy of cars drove away, heading to the hospital with all the Slayer's friends and family in tow. When they were out of sight, he dropped to his knees, tears welling in his eyes which he refused to let fall.

William sat in the back seat of Mrs Summers' car as they drove back to their home. Not his home, he had found out, he was staying with the inestimable Mr Giles, but seeing as Rupert had left his car at the Summers home, and seeing as he would not abandon his Slayer so soon after getting released form the hospital no matter how much she insisted he did, he, William and Dawn were in the back seat of Joyce's Jeep Cherokee Sport, with Buffy and Joyce in the front seat.

Buffy had woken shortly after they had arrived at the hospital, obviously unhappy to be there. The doctors had examined her and diagnosed her with severe blood loss, and ordered her to get bed rest. After being assured that Spike had seemed perfectly fine, they had managed to keep Buffy in the hospital until after lunch, when she had finally declared she was getting out of the hospital.

Joyce had signed Buffy out of the hospital while the Slayer assured her friends that she would be fine, and that they should go get something to eat and get some sleep. After a lot of protestation, they eventually acquiesced as Joyce returned, so it was merely the Summers' and the Giles' who were returning to the Summers home.

The car gently rolled to a stop and an anxious Slayer hopped out of the car and hurried to the house, followed more sedately by her family and friends. William entered the door behind the Summers women, and immediately felt like he had stepped into another world or something similar.

The air was thick with tension between the Slayer and the vampire, Spike still on his knees where he'd dropped hours ago. He looked at Buffy with haunted, apologetic eyes and guilt written in his very posture. William couldn't see much of Buffy as her back was to him, but her tiny form was tight with tension.

Joyce and Rupert tactfully left the room, heading to the kitchen to prepare some lunch for the children, but both Dawn and William stood where they were, just inside the doorway, riveted to the scene unfolding before them.

Spike slowly rose to his feet, his face carefully guarded and eyes glassy with unshed tears. He took half a step towards Buffy, which she mirrored, and stopped, only a small space between them.

"Why?" he asked, his voice ragged with emotion. There was a taut moment, Spike's question hanging heavily in the air, when Buffy took a step forward, stood on the tips of her toes, grasped the back of his neck and pulled him down, pressing her lips softly to his. After the brief kiss, she tilted her head slightly, smiling gently at the bewildered look on Spike's face.

"Because... I love you," she murmured softly. Spike looked at her blankly for a moment, obviously not wanting to even hope that this was real, and his eyes darted quickly to the bandage on her arm. When his eyes met hers, and saw the truth of her words written there, he grasped her shoulders and pulled her to him, eyes dancing with joy as he pressed their mouths together again.

William felt a small, warm hand slip into his own and he looked at Dawn, startled. She smiled at him, before leading him from the hallway into the kitchen where Joyce and Rupert were waiting. Taking a seat at the bench, next to Dawn, he noted dimly that her hand was still in his, and he didn't mind in the slightest.

.:End:.

A/N: My final Author's Notes for Crushed. Disappointed? Angry? Happy? Sad? Let me know in a review...

There will be a sequel, unless I suddenly die or something of similar nature. I also want to apologise fairly profusely for not having done anything with Two Weeks. I referenced a lot of these last chapters to what will be happening in that fic eventually, when I get around to it. So review, let me know what you think of the ending, my writing, my story or me personally. Solid reader response inspires me to begin now, rather than later.