Three days alone with Illyria, since they'd been banished from Wolfram & Hart. Fred received phone calls late at night that she imagined could be anything from senior partner counter offers to moments of weakness from old friends. She chose to unplug the phone instead of finding out. On hindsight, Fred realized that her apartment was about as ill suited for housing a god-king as she was serving as his Qwa'ha Xahn. She'd rejected her science and settled for this improvisation, giving up all that she thought she knew and instead making it up as she went along.
It had to stop.
She had nothing left to show him. No more art books, no more science books, and no more day trips to the ocean or the zoo or the botanical gardens. She distrusted him around children and animals, couldn't get him to sit through a hand of cards, and hadn't even tried to interest him in television. She had nothing more to give.
Or, she thought stubbornly, nothing left she would be willing to give.
On this night, he had demanded space. The confines of the apartment had finally closed on him, surrounded for days by walls and paper and a gaping lack of purpose, so Fred had brought him here to her apartment's rooftop and would have shown him the vastness of what he had left to discover by pointing out the distance of the stars – had the city smog not obscured them all. Instead, he had peeled off his gloves – the most that he could do to show her that the remains of a human being still existed under his suit. That suit, part living exoskeletal tissue, part dead animal hide, so representative in its miscreation for everything that had happened, that Fred could not bear to touch it. He had touched her instead, with those cold, stained fingers and tilted his head at her.
Fred's throat nearly closed with the sweet reminder of the gesture. "I forget who you really are when you do that."
"More to my benefit. I will continue."
"I really wish you wouldn't!" she cried.
"Winifred Burkle. Surrogate Qwa'ha Xahn. When will you understand that you reap the best of all possible worlds in me? I am the epitome of your desires and more," he made something approximating a smile. "If only you would allow us a full examination of each other."
"Never," she whispered, shaking her head firmly and her whole body shaking with her. "You're as good as dead, don't you see that? I'm finished. You won't get any more from me."
"Never is much longer than you have anticipated," Illyria said. "It is exactly the length of time until I die. Your human body will last for a much shorter duration, without my intervention."
Fred gaped at him. "Whoever said that I wanted to live forever?"
"I want it," he said. "Therefore I will persevere to make it so."
"Yeah," she whispered bitterly. "Good luck with that." She gazed over the side of the building. Of the two of them, perhaps she'd been planning the wrong journey over the side. It could be over quickly. Death should really take longer, Fred thought. For all the biological work to make a life, first the nine months, and then the cells regenerating every seven years, not to mention the manifestations particular to ensouled vampires -- the careful maintenance of the body against sun, the trials endured to win the soul. It didn't seem anywhere fair that a stab wound or a decapitation would take seconds. Or an infection that called itself Illyria.
"Your guilt for the half-breed is misplaced," Illyria stated. "You have given more to this world in his ending, in what you presume to be your failure, than in his rescue. You have imposed this suffering upon yourself, magnified over ten settings of the sun, while he in his end, felt nothing."
Fred reared back with a kind of vicious snarl. "How can you say that? I know he felt something!"
"Confusion. Misunderstanding," Illyria paused as though visualizing the words in the air. "Shock, that the close of his life came to pass so quickly. Not pain."
She could not quite believe it. Blood didn't come from confusion.
"You're delivering a tomb? Here?" she had asked in disbelief when the delivery detail had called her. "How big is it? Shouldn't it go to Wesley's department instead? I mean, it sounds more historical than scientific…for me, huh? Well, okay, if you say so." She hung up the phone on her lab's desk and felt warm hands embrace her from behind.
"If there's anything going to Wesley's department," his voice tickled her ear. "I would rather it be you than some dusty artifact."
Fred turned around, smiling. "Hello there. What are you doing here?"
"I missed you," Wes said. "And since the workday hasn't officially begun, I saw nothing wrong with starting it right."
"Missed me," she scoffed gently, snubbing his nose with hers. "I saw you half an hour ago."
"And what a trial it's been."
Fred looked into his eyes, wondering why it had taken so long to bring them to this point. However had she missed the bloom of this rose before?
If only she could kiss him enough, she might figure it out. And so that's exactly what they did against the solid steel of her desk that morning. Every peck a mission to discover, to reveal some taste, some hint that they'd committed a moist mistake in their displays of affection. Yet every press of their lips, each swirl of tongue, only kept the promise.
"Fred?" she heard a different British voice call out to her from the lab. "Big fuck-all delivery for you, Fred."
"It's Spike," she whispered to Wesley. "I should go," but Wes merely toed the door of her office closed and pressed her into the wall behind it.
"Come on, Fred," Spike continued. "Know I haven't been 'round your parts here as of late, since getting cured of the ghosties. Reckon that ought to change. No hard feelings and whatnot?" Through the haze of kisses, she heard his footsteps pace along the floor. "Hello. What's this?"
A low expulsion of something that sounded like the whoosh of steam escaping hissed from the lab, a sound that caused both Fred and Wes to look at each other in surprise, listening. After a few moments of silence, Wes shook his head.
"It's nothing. Probably just Knox or one of the others, starting the first experiment of the day."
"And Spike?" Fred asked.
"I'm sure he's as good as gone," Wes mumbled, pressing his lips into the hollow of her throat.
That's when they heard the crash.
"The glassware," Fred realized and the two of them snapped to attention, Fred pulling open her office door to reveal the scene of destruction that awaited her.
The large shelving unit that had held the test tubes, the beakers, the Petri dishes, lay upended on the floor with Spike's hand still wrapped around one of the metal supports. Pieces of broken glass lay scattered across the floor and over Spike's inert body as he lay on his back, a thin stream of blood seeping from his nose.
"Oh, God. Let's get him."
"Lost 'm balance," Spike mumbled, eyelids barely fluttering open when she reached his side.
"Be careful, you'll cut yourself," Wesley warned as they tiptoed around the glass and over to Spike. Wes got his arms around his torso and tugged the prone body from underneath the metal shelves, leaving Fred to grab Spike's feet. More pieces of glass fell around them as they carried him to one of the metal examining tables.
"Special delivery," Spike slurred then gave a fitful round of coughs. Against the white of her lab coat, Fred could see the tinge of blood red in the spray of his saliva. "Think I broke it. Sorry 'bout that."
"It's okay," she said, picking some slivers of glass out of his hair. "Better you breaking it than the other way around. Can you stand up?"
His body jerked as though an electrical shock pulsed through him. "No."
"Whatever could've caused..." Wesley began, his eyes roving around the room and finally stopping on one object. "Fred," he said patiently. "What is this?" He indicated the sarcophagus in the middle of the lab, a small cloud of dust swirling in the air around it and dancing in the fluorescent lights.
"Stay away from it!" Spike yelled, half-sitting up. "Somethin' got out of it." He met Fred's eyes. "Out of it and into me." He slumped backward again and Fred watched his eyes roll back in his head.
She shot a look to Wesley, who nodded gravely. "I'll get them all." He raced out of the lab.
"So, here we are again, you and me," Spike croaked, blinking quickly to focus his pupils on her again. "Back where we started. Ought to stop meeting like this, the office tongues'll wag..."
"Spike," Fred breathed, looking over his body. For a creature that didn't need to breathe, he appeared to be panting – or how else to explain his chest retracting and expanding in an eerie imitation of respiration? As though some inner force had taken hold of his ribcage and shook it like the bars of a cell. Because of this, his near-delirium, and his strangely mottled skin – his complexion even paler and almost lined like fine porcelain – Fred could not shake the inevitable pall of dread sweeping over her. "Oh, Spike. What happened to you?"
"Dunno..." He clawed at the table, Fred didn't know for what until he settled on her hand.
She squeezed his palm between her sweaty fingers. "We're just gonna sit and rest here for a little while and everything will be all right."
"Liar," he opened one eye. "You're scared."
"I'm not scared," she frowned. "Wesley's coming back with all of them and they'll save the day like always. My boys. Think about that."
"Know we played this tune before, love," he croaked. "How 'bout once more for old time's sake?" He paused, running his tongue over his drying lips. "Help me?"
She nodded. "Always."
"Came, came out of nowhere…pushed a button, one of them crystals on the top…poof, out of nowhere…"
"Shhh," she whispered, even as the other side of her could barely resist knowing what happened, every detail. "Try to save your strength. Try not to talk."
"What is it?" he gasped, his eyes snapping wide open as though in surprise. "What's gotten inside me, Fred?"
"I-I," she shook her head. "I don't know. But I'll find out. I promise."
"Too late," he smiled grimly at her. "Wormin' its way in, it is…not much left to gut out of me…" His head slammed against the metal of the table and he let out a low moan. "Suckin' me dry. Guess that's right…after all…"
"No," Fred patted his chest with her free hand, touched his throat, his cheek. "No, just hold on a second."
"Don't know if I got one to spare," he muttered. "That, whatever it is," he swung his head toward the sarcophagus. "Had your name on it."
"I-I know," she squeezed his shoulder. "I'm sorry."
He shook his head limply. "Can't think of one better to take a bullet for. 'Sides, seem to be makin' a habit of it." He groaned deep in his throat as his body twisted on the table, his face contorted in a grimace of pain. "What say, love? Third time's a charm?"
His hand tightened around hers and for a brief moment, she wondered if he'd break it...wondered if she'd care.
"My turn," she whispered. "I'll save you next time, whaddaya say?"
"Right," he grunted. "But be quick about it, would you? Oh," he swallowed and his eyes flew open for the last time, looking straight at her yet not seeming to see her at all. "Bloody hell. Never mind."
His hand in still hers, instead of going slack, stiffened immediately into something like rigor mortis. But rigor mortis didn't give the sensation of a thousand feelers fluttering wildly under the skin. Horrified, Fred dropped his hand and heard it make a loud clang as it hit the metal of the table and she moved away, her grief already evaporating in the midst of her shock, readying herself to see anything happen next.
"Oh, wow, it's here already?" she turned around to see Knox behind her, standing in the doorway. "Oh, hey, boss," he stammered, scratching the back of his head and looking suspiciously surprised to see her standing there. "Uh, how are you feeling today, hmm?"
Fred straightened and turned around to face him slowly, hearing her heels crunch against the glass under her feet. Knox's expression, his delight in seeing the sarcophagus, made her whole body suddenly feel as cold and stiff as Spike's.
"Good morning, Knox."