Chapter 6

For the second time in twenty-four hours and a painful number of months, Winifred Burkle's scent filled the air. From her perch on the dresser Paloma caught it, her gun-metal eyes growing wide with wonder.

"Fred?" Spike whispered, and a smile began to break over his face. "Fred?"

The girl's blue-tinged features were suddenly suffused with expression. She stared up at Spike. Then with a hoarse shriek, she threw her arms around his neck and clung as if she were drowning.

Fred. He wrapped his arms around her thin frame and squeezed as tight as he dared, burying his face in her hair and inhaling deep lungfuls of her. Joyous laughter bubbled up out of him, and he struggled to blink back tears.

Oh, Pet, I've missed you.

So delirious was he that it took several moments before he realized that she was absolutely terrified. Her breath was coming in wheezing pants; her fingers dug into his back, grasping handfuls of fabric and pinching his skin. Sweat poured from what few parts of her body weren't covered by that damnable catsuit, and in spite of its thickness he could all but hear her heart pounding.

He pulled her head up and pushed the hair away from her face and saw that the alien blue eyes were almost bulging from their sockets. They jerked from one corner of the room to the other before lighting on his face and fixing there. Twice she tried to speak and failed. Then at last her voice, FRED'S voice, tore from her throat in an agonized plea.

"TAKE ME WITH YOU!"

"Mother of God," Paloma murmured. "Pobrecita! Poor little thing."

Spike's own throat tightened painfully. Someplace bad, then, as he'd feared, someplace that had reduced her to begging like a child to be taken away from it.

"I am, Sweetheart. You're safe now. Not gonna leave you behind." He gave her cheek a kiss and laid her head back on his shoulder and began to rock her as if she were a baby.

"We'll be in the living room," Michael said gently, rising from his chair.

"Huh? ...Yeah," Spike answered, becoming vaguely aware of the rest of the room. Paloma and Dilip had already slipped out, quiet as cats.

At length Fred cautiously raised her head and looked around in bewilderment.

"We're at a motel, Luv," Spike explained, "Had to find some people who could bring you back." He paused. "Do you remember what happened? How you got to the place you just came from?"

She stared at him blankly. He repeated the question, and this time she appeared to understand, to try to focus and pull her wits together.

"...I was sick."

Her words came in hitches.

"I was sick and my stomach hurt. When I woke up it was black. Everything got black...I couldn't see or hear. Anything. But I was awake. Sometimes I fell asleep, I think. I didn't want to be awake. I couldn't feel myself...there weren't any walls. Is that right?"

"How long were you there?"

"'Til now."

Shit. Months it was she'd been trapped, then, in some kind of damned cosmic sensory-deprivation tank. First the bloody slave dimension, and now this. It was a wonder she had a sane thought left.

He began to fill in the blanks for her then, to explain as gently as he could that a creature had killed her and taken charge of her body, that they'd left Wolfram & Hart in a shambles, that Gunn was in hospital and Lorne had taken a powder and they wouldn't be returning to L.A. anytime soon. The hardest part was telling her about Pryce. After that he didn't try to explain anything more; he simply held her close as she wailed out her grief. Finally she was spent and slumped against him, exhausted; eventually she slept.

For Spike, sleep didn't come as easily. Only in recent years had the deaths of anyone mattered to him. Mother, of course; and Joyce's passing had saddened him because Joyce had been one of the few people to show a bloke kindness without caring what he was. Tara had been right decent, too, most times, and so had poor Anya. Losing Fred had been particularly painful, though. Not once had she ever distrusted him or spoken a cross word, and a sunnier bird had never existed. The milk of human kindness, that was Fred. The ache left behind in his heart after her death had never diminished.

Seeing Buffy die had been the worst of all. The world became a cold, bleak place, sleep with its accompanying dreams almost as much a misery as waking. When she returned he had wanted more than anything in the world to hold her but it hadn't been allowed because he was a MONSTER, and MONSTERS were not permitted to participate in human affairs or to soil a person with their touch.

Now, though, there were no Scoobies to drive him out, no flat, numb stares to hold him at bay. There was only the girl, newly resurrected. Suddenly he hugged her to him fiercely and sobbed through gritted teeth, wetting both their faces with hot, scalding tears.