Disclaimer: see chapter 1

5: BRING HER BACK
"BUFFY!" Spike screamed, bending over her and violently shaking her shoulders He scooped her up, cradling her in his arms, sobbing over her. He hadn't cried so hard since she'd jumped off of Glory's tower. He remembered how he'd failed to save her.

But this time it was different. He'd do something, anything, before it was too late.

Spike stuffed his feet into his shoes, grabbed his keys, duster, and spare shirt, and rushed the flailing Slayer out the door.

Spike was in a hurry, but nevertheless he gently laid Buffy on the seat beside him, using his duster to support her head. He turned the keys in the ignition, and drove off, wishing he'd had the forethought to bring a pair of pants for Buffy.

"Why isn't she dressed?" Angel demanded. His gang remained mum, each member secretly praying that they wouldn't have to be the one to explain. "He drives her here, and rushes her inside, screaming, telling us that she's dying. And all she has on is a shirt!"

"And a pretty pair of panties," Gunn added, not altogether helping.

Wesley stood a ways off, next to a woman who greatly resembled Fred. The blue-haired Illyria was wearing Fred's face, but she did not possess Fred's grasp of human customs. "Is this normal for your kind? You told me clothes are always worn except when performing mating rituals." Illyria ran her fingers through the hair in her face, brushing it back. Wesley could nothelp but notice the mannerism borrowed from Fred.

His body stood close to Fred's, but his mind was light-years away from Illyria. He did not want to know her, or to see her...And yet he needed to. Because Illyria was the last that remained of Fred. "I...believe that's...exactly what they were doing," he informed the Old One.

"Of course," exclaimed Illyria, smacking the butt of her palm against her forehead. Another Fred thing. Wesley knew he had not taught her Fred's body language, and some distant part of him wondered what her innate knowledge of it meant. Could some part of Fred have remained with Illyria, apart from her body? Wesley didn't explore the question; he was mourning. He didn't have time to ponder things.

Spike burst into the room. "Red says she's gone," he shot at Angel. "All holed up inside that pretty little head of hers." After a few moments of tension, he sighed. Angel was really the vampire to be dealing with the situation.

"Well? Is she working the case?" Angel wanted to know. "Is she trying to bring Buffy back?"

"Did we fly Red and her honey all the way here to do something else?" Spike reminded the CEO, even thought the reminder sounded more like angry shouting.

"No, but – Spike." Angel tried to calm himself, wondering if that counted as "perfecting his block of wood mystique." He then went on: "We don't even know why she's gone again, do we?"

Spike thought about that. No, they didn't know, although he suspected that he was at least partially responsible. Responsible for Buffy being gone. Then he thought of Dawn, back in Italy, having no idea what happened. And of Giles, who probably didn't even know Buffy was in America, based on Buffy's past demonstrations of her Watcher-consultation skills. They deserved to know what had happened...but he wouldn't tell them until he'd gotten all the answers.

Spike suddenly started walking in the direction of the door. Angel glared at the peroxided vampire vindictively. "I'm not walking out on her, if that's what you're thinking," Spike informed him. "There's a particular demon I've got a few words to say to."

"Now we come to that last one. It's the simplest question, but it has a really complicated answer." Dawn spooned ice cream out of the cardboard container. "I guess it all has to do with how much he loved her.

"It goes back almost to the beginning. Okay, so saying 'love' might be stretching it a bit for the first year or so, but it was starting. Spike planned to kill another Slayer. He planned to be Buffy's biggest, baddest enemy. He studied her, learned every single secret about her. He understood how she made her plans and knew when she was impulsive. He was totally obsessed. In his hatred, Spike knew Buffy better than Angel ever did."

Xander was playing the part of an amazing audience. The things Dawn told him where shocking and hard to swallow, but he needed to keep listening. He knew it was silly, but he felt like he owed it to Spike. It seemed he should get to know the guy who'd saved them all, even if it had to be a posthumous relationship. He'd come to respect Spike just enough for that.

"Spike understood Buffy. When he was evil, it got him nowhere. They hated each other. It was completely mutual. But with the chip, he started hanging around the Scoobies, and getting to know all of us better. Especially Buffy. Seeing so much of her only nourished his obsession, and seeing how she treated her friends changed the way he felt. The Slayer wasn't his enemy anymore, and he didn't hate her. She was almost like his...ally, or his associate. And he loved her. He knew her, he understood her, and he loved her.

"Buffy eventually learned that the harmless vampire would do anything for her, for no prize. Just – for her. And I think she started to trust that. When Glory was looking for me, Buffy sent Mom and me over to Spike's crypt, so he could protect us. And she told me that the night before she died, when she and Spike were at the house, she made him promise to protect me. If anything went wrong. It did, and he did, with all the babysitting and helping you guys patrol and everything. He proved that she could trust him, even if he was a vampire without a soul."

"But wait," Xander interjected. It didn't sound right, it didn't sound like the Buffster he remembered. "I thought she DIDN'T trust Spike. Wasn't he always yelling at her about that?" Xander's memories did not include Buffy who was particularly pleased by Spike.

"Well," Dawn thought. She wasn't reciting anymore, she was analyzing the past herself. "Buffy thought it was wrong to trust someone like Spike, just like she thought it was wrong to love him. Sometimes I wondered if she did love him, but was just too screwed up to want to realize it. You know, she was so protective and everything. I didn't know what they were doing those nights when she didn't come home until I was eating breakfast. I just knew that she trusted him more than she trusted us, and way more than she wanted to admit to anyone. And that he'd do anything for her. He was almost crazy he wanted her so bad. One night I remember thinking, 'He'd do anything to get her to love him.'" Dawn remembered just what Spike had tried to do. "And I guess I was completely right.

"She never talks about that night, or about why he tried to...do that to her, but she did tell me that, in that moment, she had to admit to herself how much she'd trusted him. She'd trusted him with me and Mom, with little things like helping patrol, and with herself. 'The funny thing,' she said to me, 'Is that, even after he did that...I still trusted him. And I didn't even think about what that meant.'"

Dawn could see clearly in her mind that afternoon, when they sat on the porch at an Italian restaurant. Buffy, of her own accord, brought up Spike. That was the same lunch where she cried. The first time she really cried about what had been lost. Before that, only a few stray tears had leaked through. Dawn remembered the things Buffy had admitted to her that day.

She continued. "And I think that's really the answer. As bad as that was, it didn't really change anything – I was there to watch how it didn't. I swear, the night after the worm guy who ate the yorkie attacked us, Buffy told me about finding Spike at school. She didn't say much, but she thought she owed me an apology. But I didn't care, because I could tell that she was the happiest I'd seen her in so many years, despite the bad things we knew were happening."

Xander listened intently.

"And I think I know why. Spike wasn't the only guy who left...But he was the one who came back."

"Is that our guy?" Kennedy asked, pointing through a demonic crowd.

"Sunglasses? Undead mafioso? That's the son of a bitch." Spike vamped out.

The pair menacingly approached the vampire.

"Can I help you?" he asked haughtily.

In a flash Kennedy whipped out a stake and held it to the vamp's chest. "Like hell you can," she said through gritted teeth. "I hope you play by the rules, cos a pile of dust really isn't gonna help us much."

The mafia vamp smiled uneasily. He didn't like the way things were proceeding.

"You'd bloody better listen, or this Slayer will fix it so that you can't listen to anything ever again," Spike growled. "I did what you told me, and it worked at first. So why the hell isn't it bloody working now?"

The other vamp began to chuckle, but he caught himself. "It was what I'd call a...temporary solution. Your girl would be fine until her catatonia is triggered – "

"What triggers it?"

"Who knows? A word, an image, a thought...The poison makes her nightmares a reality too dreadful to handle. You may have cleaned the venom out of her bloodstream, but the drug's effects on her brain are lingering."

Kennedy turned to Spike. "Yeah, I wanted to ask about that. Angel told us what you did, but I don't get how she isn't dead."

The mafia vampire answered to fill Spike's offended and confused silence. "Her blood was full of the demons venom, which had poisoned her body. In effect, the venom that entered her bloodstream and impermiated her organs made her part demon. If the transformation had continued, her human body would have collapsed. And that would of course have led to her death. Clearing out the poisoned blood destroyed the source for further deterioration, but the poison has an effect that outlives its presence."

Spike grabbed the suddenly pedantic vampire's shoulders and threw him against the tabletop. "And what can you bloody do about that? He growled.

The informant smiled nervously. "I can do nothing." Spike slammed the other vampire into the table again. "But you – You can help her! Find yourself a witch, get her to take a stroll in your girl's brain...She'll be stuck repeating the memory that triggered her – have the witch convince her to come back."

Spike turned to Kennedy. "Can Red...?"

"Don't worry. Buffy will come back."

Buffy didn't understand what had happened to her, or what she was doing, wherever she was. She stood in a simple wooden doorway, which opened into a high school basement, which was crumbling.

In the middle of the falling plaster and concrete stood a short blonde woman, her fingers intertwining with those of a slightly taller blonde man.

"I love you," the woman told him.

"No you don't," he told her sadly. "But thanks for saying it."

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