"Do you want to call the Bit and fill her in?" Spike asked Buffy, his eyes still locked on hers.

She shooke her head slowly. "No. No calling anyone -- not right now."

It was late, Spike noticed. It wouldn't be long before the sun started cutting its way through the sky. He wondered if he should go back to his room at the Hyperion or if he should just stay.

Buffy, as if sensing what he was thinking, reached up and stroked his cheek gently.

"Please... don't leave," she said. Her voice was shaky, afraid that he'd disappear again. She couldn't go through that pain again. She couldn't watch him walk away, wondering if he'd ever come back again.

"Then, I'll stay," he decided.

They sat in a comfortable silence neither of them wanting to say anything that would shatter the moment. Spike drank in all of her features, his eyes skimming her body starting at her head and ending at her toes. She was more fragile than he had ever seen her.

"Tell me what happened," he requested softly. "After."

She began worrying her lip, but agreed to tell him. Everything. He took her trembling hands into his own and squeezed them reassuringly.

"Okay," she said, steeling herself for the year's worth of events he had missed. "I'll start with the last time I saw you," she told him, her eyes tearing up.

He leaned in and brushed his lips against hers. It was feather-soft, but enough to give her the strength to go on.

"It's alright, Pet. Take your time. We have forever," he told her.

"Do we?" she asked.

He smiled. Of course, they did.

"I didn't want to leave you," she told him. "When I told you I loved you, Spike... I meant it. I meant it with my heart, my soul... with everything I am. I never knew I had the capacity to love that much. Not until it was too late."

"But it's not too late, Pet."

"I know that, now. And I will never lie again... not to myself, not to the people I love. I wasted too much time living a lie. Being the Slayer was the hand I was dealt in life. There was nothing I could do to change that -- other than die." She looked down at their joined hands. "And even dying didn't change my calling. But it changed everything else I felt and everything I was."

He could understand that. When Drusilla turned him, killed him and then brought him back as a vampire, he had changed. He had felt the change immediately. And when he was cast out of the portal and into the Hyperion after saving the world, he felt another change inside of him. It had nothing to do with the soul or with the choices he had made to become a do-gooder. It was a change that happens when a person dies. And the stark reality of the Hell to which he's returned.

"When Willow brought me back, the second time I died... that was supposed to be my time. Spike, it wasn't the wrath of Satan or the Hellgods who opposed my return. They weren't entirely the reason for the apocalypse." Her voice dropped to a whisper, as if afraid that by saying it outloud, something horrible would happen. "It was the wrath of God."

Her eyebrows furrowed in puzzlement when Spike didn't seem surprised.

"Did- did you hear--"

"Yes, Love. I heard you," he assured her.

"You don't seem--"

"You're rignt."

She stopped, stunned and stared at him.

"Wow."

He grinned. He knew exactly what she was thinking. First time for everything and all that rot.

"Tell me your take on it, Pet," he encouraged her.

"Well, from what I've been able to piece together from my memories and from some research I've done--"

He cut her off with an unexpected chuckle.

"Hey, I'm, like, a scholar and stuff now!" she insisted. "Besides, lots of down time. Nothing to patrol. And I'm not much for the social scene."

"Tell me again," he suddenly said. She smiled and reached up to wrap her arms around him. She pressed her lips to the smooth, alabaster skin just below his ear and then whispered, "I love you."

He held her tightly, consumed by a happiness and peace he had never felt before in his life or unlife. She pulled back to look into his eyes and told him again.

"I love you, Spike. I love you, William. I love you for who you were and for who you've become. I love you for your strength and for your passion. And I love you for your weaknesses, too. I love your sincerity and the way you never give up. I love how you kept me alive even when you thought I was dead. And I love how I kept you alive when I thought you were... before now."

He leaned down and nuzzled her nose with his, trying to hold back the nancy-boy tears that were threatening to spill from his eyes. His lips brushed softly over her cheek, her jaw and then found her parted lips. She slid her hands down his chest, letting them rest where his heart would be.

"I can feel it beating," she whispered. "I- I know it's not... but I can feel how hard it tries. How much you try to live, how much you love. Before -- " she faltered, trying to bottle up the past. "Before, I was so scared. You're very intense. You don't do anything half-way. And it scared me that someone who was dead, who had existed the way that you had for such a long time, it scared me that you could feel these things I couldn't even give a name." Her lips were still touching his as she spoke. He took the opportunity to slip his cool, velvety tongue into her mouth. God, she'd missed this. He caressed her warm tongue with his, tasting what could only be described as heaven on earth. She tasted like honey and light. He couldn't help but deepen the kiss, probing her mouth, unable to get enough until she broke away, breathless.

"Oh, right. The breathing thing," he remembered. "Tend to forget about that when I'm with you, Love. Sorry 'bout that."

She smiled. It didn't matter. She felt like she'd been holding her breath since she lost him. Drowning in Spike was a welcome change.

"It's okay." Her lips were still kiss-swollen, but he held back his desire to take them as his own again. He wanted to hear what had happened. He wanted to know what she'd sussed out about the co-existence of good and evil.

"So, you're saying that God was the mastermind behind the big showdown at the Hellmouth?"

"Absolutely," she nodded in agreeance. "God is the mastermind behind everything. And I'm beginning to realize that the love-hate relationship He has with the Devil, well... it mimcs the relationship we had. Good and Evil. We all thought that they couldn't co-exist. The truth is, they couldn't exist without each other."

"Is that right, Pet?"

"Absolutely. To paraphrase something I read on a bumper sticker, Shit Happens. So, if this... shit... this evil is happening, why? God is good. God is perfect. God can not do the wrong thing. Isn't that what we're taught in catechism? Isn't that what the bible tells us? God is the epitome of good."

He was beginning to see her point. God does what is right. So, then, if God is doing all this white-hat crap, why is there evil in the world?

"God created heaven and earth. God created Satan. So," she paused and grinned up at him. "Riddle me this, if God is the epitome of good, how can evil exist?"

"And if evil didn't exist..."

"There would be no distinction between good and evil. We'd be none the wiser. We'd be all 'vampires ate my baby?' Oh, well, that's all good. God willed it," she finished.

"Right, then," he was beginning to understand her theory. "And we would be conditioned to believe that since God is good, vampires eating babies is good, as well."

"Something like that, yeah. Good and evil have to exist together. It's kind of like God and the Devil have this little pact. The Devil doesn't throw at us anything more than we can ultimately handle, and God doesn't blow up the world to stop him."

"The Hellmouth -- "

"More than we could handle. And if you hadn't stopped it..."

"God would have."

She smiled. Now he was getting it.

"You saved the world."

"From God?" he asked.

It was kind of funny in retrospect. The fact that the First was able to create so much chaos and destruction was due to the fact that God thought that they could handle it. And when they no longer could do that, He stepped in. Of course, He hadn't counted on Spike.

"You took God by surprise," she explained. Her eyes were more alive than he had ever seen them. "You did something so selfless and so pure that even God couldn't deny that the evil that had once existed in you had died. You stopped God. If you hadn't made that sacrifice, there would be nothing. Time would have stopped and the universe would have exploded. And then molecule by molecule, it would have been rebuilt again."

"And God, being older than dirt, really wasn't in the mood to start from scratch, is what you're saying. So, He got lucky when I stepped up to the plate."

"Now you're getting it."

He cocked his head to the side and narrowed his eyes on hers.

"When did you get so smart, Pet?"

"While you were hiding from me."