A/N: yay. glad it wasn't too predictable to everyone. thanks for commenting! i promise, this is the last time i'll do the name listing. next time, i'll reply to the reviews using the new system. but … KelleyTheSelfToastablePopTart, Wentzie72, funkydevil206, spikegothicchick, pinkyblue-ice, General Mac, and Buffycoo999, I bake you cookies!

Disclaimer: not mine.

Rating: PG-13. Swearing, angst, violence. You have been warned …

Pairings: B/S eventually. W/T, X/A.

Distribution: Yeah, sure, take it. Tell me first, though.

Reviews: Yay! Reviews are happy. :D

Previously: Buffy and Spike discover that their stalker-turned-kidnapper is the crazed Hank. Willow, Angel, and the Sunnydale police force arrive in time to save the day ...

Buffy woke groggily. She blinked a few times and tried to bring her arm up to rub her eyes, only to find an IV attached to it. Looking around the sterile hospital room, she noticed a dark-haired woman was a clipboard.

The doctor, seeing Buffy shift, smiled. "Glad to see you're awake, Buffy. I'm Dr. Johnson. You gave us quite the scare for a while."

Still disoriented, she tried to sit up, and immediately noticed the pain that shot through her right shoulder. She felt the bandage wrapped around it and saw the sling her arm was in. Buffy suddenly remembered that she had been shot, and Spike had … "Where's Spike? What happened to him?" Buffy blurted out to the doctor.

Dr. Johnson frowned. "Spike? … Oh, you mean William Giles? He'll be just fine, though I think he's still sleeping. He's just a couple of rooms down the hall."

Before Buffy could respond, the door to her room flew open and a whirlwind of coltish limbs and long brunette hair flew in, unhindered by the flustered nurse who tried to block her way.

"Oh, my God! Buffy, we were so worried about you!" A sobbing Dawn threw herself onto the hospital bed to hug her sister.

"Oh, Buffy! Goddess, are you ok? Well, of course you're not ok, but how do you feel? Are you going to be better? I was scared that we wouldn't get you here in time and …" Willow babbled as she, too, ignored the nurse and walked in and hovered over Buffy.

She was followed by Tara, Xander, Anya, and Giles. Xander's reaction was similar to Willow's, Giles immediately took off his glasses and began polishing them furiously, and Anya – after asking Buffy if she would be ok – set about making sure her client wasn't permanently physically scarred (and if she was, Anya wanted to be sure that a little plastic surgery could fix it).

Seeing the doctor in the room, and thinking it was a hopeless situation, the nurse had long since fled.

Tara's gaze met Buffy's helplessly. Seeing the bedridden girl's plight, she tried to get the other's attention. "Um, g-guys, I-I think we should – You guys, shouldn't we let --? Guys!"

Unused to hearing Tara raise her voice, everyone in the room froze. Dr. Johnson chose this moment to step in. "I think Ms. --" Here she looked at the now-blushing shy girl questioningly.

"J-just Tara," she supplied.

Dr. Johnson smiled. "Ok, Tara, is right. Buffy's just been through an exhausting ordeal, and you should give her a while to rest and recover."

Willow, Xander, and Dawn – looking like children who had been scolded – hung their heads and said 'sorry.' Anya and Giles also sheepishly apologized.

"But, wait, the gunshot wound …" Willow began.

"It'll be just fine," Dr. Johnson said firmly. "It passed through cleanly and didn't hit anything vital. I can assure you that with time, she'll heal, as good as new. Now, we should all leave and let Buffy get some more sleep."

"But I'm all sleeped out for now. Please, can they stay for a few minutes?" Buffy asked beseechingly.

Dr. Johnson's resolve wavered when she was hit full-force with puppy eyes from several people in the room.

"I promise, we'll stop visiting the minute Buffy feels tired," Dawn added.

"Just a few minutes," Dr. Johnson finally gave in with that warning. "I'll be in the next room of you need anything." She left and shut the door behind her.

Eagerly, Willow and Dawn plopped on Buffy's bed, while Tara, Anya, and Xander found seats and Giles stood.

"So, are you sure you're feeling ok, Buff?" Xander asked.

"Yeah, being alive pretty much overshadows everything else right now," Buffy smiled.

"We were so scared for you and Spike, Buffy," Willow reiterated.

"Yeah, half of us were stationed outside Spike's room and half of us outside yours," Dawn added. "I called Giles on the cell as soon as you woke up."

"I thought Spike was just down the hall," Buffy commented.

"The halls are longer than the Great Wall," Anya said. "And no one was willing to leave to go get the other half."

Buffy giggled.

"Oh, I'm so happy you're ok," Dawn squealed as she spontaneously hugged her sister again.

"Gee, if only you were this happy about me being around all the time.

"I'm a teenager," Dawn reasoned. "It's my job to give you a hard time.

"Speaking of ok, Willow," Giles suddenly spoke up, "you never did finished telling me how you found Buffy and Spike and rushed them to the hospital on time."

"Yeah, Wills," Buffy asked, remembering seeing the redhead at the mansion, " what did happen?"

"Well, when we were at the Bronze that night, Angel called your" – Willow looked at Buffy – "cell when you and Spike went, um …"

"Snuck off to copulate!" Anya interjected cheerfully.

Dawn was about to ask what 'copulate' meant when she saw that everyone had turned bright red and Giles was choking. She felt it best to keep quiet.

"Um, yeah, well," Willow continued. "Angel called and said that the DNA found on some of the clues matched yours or Dawn's. We thought it was impossible, but then Angel gave us this theory that Fred – Winifred, who was working on the case with him – had come up with."

Xander continued, "She noticed that you had no surviving members of your family, but the only one to be buried unidentified was your father. He had a history of violent behavior towards you and he was the only one with reason to want to hurt you."

"I'd sent him to jail," Buffy noted quietly.

"Exactly," Willow nodded.

"But how did you know where they were?" Giles asked.

"Oh! That was Fred, too," Anya stepped in. "Really, she was the only woman on the team and the only one to figure it out. I've always thought --"

"Ahem. Ahn, the story," Xander reminded her.

"Fine," Anya pouted. "So Fred realized that the Crawford mention haunting began a few days before Hank's funeral. Remember that time Angel came by your house, then left because someone on Crawford street had an issue about that old house?"

Buffy nodded.

"The family was scared because they saw and heard movements in the house," Anya explained. "And they found items missing from their house, and saw a man sneak into the old mansion. The man's description matched Hank's."

S-so, Angel was going to check out the old mansion, but W-willow insisted on going with him because she said you guys used to play games there and she knew it well," Tara took up the story. "Then, of course we all had to go."

"By then, you and Spike'd been gone sorta long – even if you were going to boink each other," Dawn wrinkled her nose at that thought and Buffy turned an interesting shade of beet again. "So we got worried when we could find either of you."

"We rushed to the mansion, and helped with the search. I swear the policemen jumped into every room yelling 'freeze, police!'" Willow rolled her eyes. "It was sorta lucky you were in an isolated room or else you'd've heard us."

By the end of the retelling, Giles had turned quite pale. "Oh, dear, I feel as if this is all my fault. If only I'd made better sure that Hank was forever incarcerated. Or, or I'd --"

"Giles, it's ok," Buffy soothed. "You didn't know what would happen."

"Well, yes, but as the oldest adult, I should --"

"There wasn't anything you could've done. Hank would have found some other way to get to us," Buffy reasoned. "So stop beating yourself up. None of us did anything wrong and it's over now."

"When did you grow up so much, Buffy?" Giles smiled. He walked over and hugged her with one arm kissing the top of her head. "I don't know what I'd lost you or Will."

Buffy smiled and hugged him back with her unharmed arm. Then she frown as she though of one last question. "What happened to Hank?"

"You didn't know?" Willow asked.

"What?"

Hank's dead. The police shot him because he was going crazy with his gun."

Buffy mourned for a moment for what might have been. But she knew that she couldn't ever change or save Hank.

"Wow. It's finally over," Dawn said.

"Yeah, Buffy agreed, "it's over."

"I dunno. Don't ya think it just seemed sorta anti-climatic?" Xander mused absently.

He suddenly grew aware of the glares being aimed at him. "Not that I'm complaining, of course," he hastily assured his friends. "I just glad that--"

"Xander, shut up and kiss me," Anya ordered, deciding it was the best was to save him from talking himself into being murdered. Her boyfriend happily complied, thankful not to have dug further into the hole he created.

The other people in the hospital room smiled at seeing the couple together.

"W-well, d-do you think we should go out and let --" Before Tara could finish, they heard a loud sound of a crash outside the door, follow by colorful cursing. Familiar, colorful cursing.

"Oh my gosh, is that Spike?" Buffy gasped. She struggled to get up.

"Wait, Buffy, he was still sleep last we checked him," Willow began.

The door banged opened, and a disheveled bleach-blonde stumbled in. An orderly, who was protesting that he wasn't well enough to be walking around, yet, followed him. The nurse outside Buffy's room had decided to give up on this lot. She stepped aside and let him in.

"Is Buffy alright?" were the first words out of his mouth.

"I'm fine," Buffy answered, glancing up from where she sat. "Spike, are you sure you should be out of bed, yet?"

"Probably shouldn't," Spike admitted, stumbling over to lie down on Buffy's bed. "Just 'ad to make sure you were alright, and to tell you that …"

"What?" Buffy asked.

"I love you," Spike mumbled, already half asleep with sedatives.

Buffy looked down at him, hand automatically with his unruly hair, with surprise and happiness. "I love you, too."

Everyone 'aww-ed' at the scene before them. Spike snuggled closer to Buffy's side and fell asleep.

wwhhhheeeeeee! one or two more chappies left ... i live off reviews ... :D

le faye