Series: Mortal Allies

Story Title: Episode 3, Postcards From the Edge

Chapter 11: The Big House

By: Passion4Spike


Author's Notes:

Thanks to everyone who is reading and extra slobbery doggie-Spike kisses to everyone who has left a comment or a 'like'/'kudos'. It seriously means so much to me, like sugar cookies for my muse!

As always, my everlasting gratitude to Holi117 and PaganBaby for their betaing, encouragement, idea-bouncing, banner-making, and for all their efforts to keep me mostly on plot.


Chapter 11: The Big House


** X-X-X-X-X **

Mexico.

Following the pixies, an empty bottle of tequila in his hand, Spike stumbled back into their hotel room to find Dru, naked and clean, curled up on the floor around the splatters of blood he'd left behind. She looked up at him dreamily as he closed the door and slumped back against it for support. His head swam and seriously considered sinking to the bottom of the ocean and taking up residence there.

"My Spike bleeds so prettily," Drusilla cooed in a wistful voice, running her fingers over the dried smears, smudges, and splashes of red on the white tile. "A masterpiece of life and death," she asserted, rising from the floor like a languid cat and prowling over to her childe. She took the empty bottle from him and set it down before lifting his hand to her lips, kissing his scabbed knuckles gently, lovingly.

Spike reached out and drew an unsteady finger along the remnants of a deep gouge he'd left on her breast. Her soft, creamy skin was still covered in nearly healed scratches, bites and cuts, just as his body was. Wounds he'd reveled in giving her. Wounds she screamed for. Wounds she craved.

Wounds that made the liquor in his stomach threaten to join his blood on the floor. 'Monster enough for ya now?'

He dropped his hand and closed his eyes against the reminders that scarred her skin. It seemed so long ago now – that alley, the fury, the green eyes – lost in the fog of alcohol. He shook his head, trying to get the inexplicable shame and sorrow to sink into the miasma of tequila, where it'd hopefully remain. The head shake had been a mistake. He wobbled where he stood, but his lover's strong hands steadied him.

"The pixies have brought you home to mummy," she whispered between delicate touches of her lips to his cool flesh. "Where you belong."

Spike couldn't help but feel comforted beneath Drusilla's ministrations, her soft touch, her lilting voice, her delicate lips. He felt the last knots slowly unfurl from his belly and chest, loosening the strangle-hold of green eyes that tequila hadn't yet vanquished. His eyes fluttered open to watch her soothe his nearly mended wounds, her silken, chestnut hair falling in sensuous waves around her bare shoulders, her long nails, so deadly and cruel, giving way to tender fingertips. He listened to her hum a comforting tune, something old… a child's lullaby that he couldn't quite place.

With unexpected kindness, she led him to the bed, and Spike followed as if in a dream, lost in the sweet attention of his sire, such a sharp contrast to their brutal coupling in the alleyway. He made no protest as she undressed him, her hands a balm against his ravaged skin. He let her lay him down, sinking into the embrace of the soft mattress, imagining it was a cloud and Dru was an angel. She kissed his skin reverently, taking away the old sting of the bites and gashes that peppered his body. Spike's lids fell closed, and the accusing green eyes faded completely, vanishing in the mist of Patrón, coupled with his sire's strange, but welcome tenderness. He let himself get lost, as well, floating in the gentle perfection of her lips and fingertips, of her body pressing against his, of her murmurs, and the soft song she hummed.

Spike inhaled, able to draw a deep breath for the first time in what seemed like days, and let it out in a contented sigh as he drifted off into the welcoming darkness of sleep.

** X-X-X-X-X **

Spike chased the green-eyed girl through the streets and alleyways, past churches and brothels, street vendors selling cheese-laden quesadillas and sugar-coated churros. His boots crunched over gravel and sunk in the sand, slipped through slick mud and echoed off red bricks. Dogs barked as he passed, a cat darted across his path, rats scurried away, taking shelter in the sewer drains. The moon was big and bright – he could see her clearly – just ahead, always out of reach. She'd disappear around corners, but only for a moment, then he'd find her again, running, always running, her bare feet silent, her heart pounding in his ears as if it was his own.

He ran and ran, but she never got any closer. She looked back over her shoulder, her dark hair flying, chancing a glance at her pursuer. Her green eyes seared into him like hot pokers, making him stumble and fall… and fall, and fall. He fell through blackness, which froze him, and sunbeams, which burned him, the cold and the heat ripping him apart in a painful game of tug-o-war.

His chest exploded with the searing agony of feeling caught between worlds, not belonging in either. Not monster enough for the dark. Too monstrous for the light. He screamed as his ribcage burst outward, rib bones shattering into thousands of blood-soaked shards of white. The sharp splinters stabbed into his heart as his body bowed and convulsed, neither alive nor dead, but lost between the two.

Spike jerked awake expecting blood and gore, only to find his sire beside him, cooing soothingly into his ear. He curled into her, slipping back into the tequila-fueled sleep that gave him no rest. And he ran. He ran after the green-eyed girl.

** X-X-X-X-X **

Sunnydale.

Buffy came rushing into the library half-an-hour late for her interview with a vampire. "Sorry!" she called immediately as she hurried to the table where Angel was waiting.

He looked up, setting the book down that he'd been reading to pass the time. "Thought you weren't gonna make it," he said, standing automatically as she dumped her bookbag on the table.

Her stomach knotted a bit when she realized he'd been reading one of the Watcher's Diaries they'd been using to put together the Slayer timeline to match up with his. He couldn't just read 'Blood Rites and Sacrifices' or 'Carpe Jugulum' like a normal vampire? She rolled her eyes – no, he couldn't, because Snyder and the Moo-Nazi book brigade, under 'orders' from some Hansel and Gretel demon, had confiscated most of Giles' books… even the fiction! They were then handily used for kindling to try and cook one Slayer and two witches. Luckily, they hadn't taken the diaries, which were literally irreplaceable. The Council really should look into scanning their books onto computer files, or come into the nineteenth century, at least, and photocopy them.

Oh, also luckily, and no thanks to the vampire who loomed across the table from her, they hadn't managed to parboil her, Willow, or Amy.

The only huge plus to come out of the last few days was that Buffy's mom was so guilt-ridden about trying to kill her only daughter that she'd taken Buffy on a shopping trip. It was a welcome change to the normal 'guilt-trip' routine which usually involved intervention meetings arranged behind Buffy's back instead of shopping sprees in her honor. Even though it rarely got cold enough to warrant it in California, she'd gotten a super-soft, light pink, faux-fur, long-sleeved pullover to wear to the Ice Capades show later in the month with her dad. It was cozy and warm and would be perfect for the chill of the arena.

On the downside, Amy was now a rat. Literally. But she had a snazzy new exercise wheel and no gym membership required. Gotta love the Hellmouth.

Buffy shook her stray thoughts off and started pulling her own journal from the bag. "Spike's not been feeling good. He doesn't want to eat or patrol, I can barely get him to walk around the backyard," she explained. "I was trying to get him to eat something… even brought him a burger, but he just took a couple of bites and fell back to sleep."

"I'm sorry to hear that," Angel said flatly, still standing.

"I'm sure you are," Buffy replied sarcastically, sitting down and opening her journal to the next blank page.

"I am!" Angel insisted, taking his seat again across from her. "I don't want anything to happen to him… I just wish he'd stop peeing in my shoes."

Buffy sighed and slumped slightly in her chair. That actually was not an unreasonable request, she just hadn't figured out how to get the dog to give up that particular preoccupation. "Mom's taking him to the vet tomorrow. I really can't figure it out. He doesn't seem to be sick, just really tired."

"I'm sure he'll be fine in a couple of days," Angel offered placatingly.

"I hope so," she sighed, looking down at her book, trying to focus on the mission. She really wanted to ask him where the hell he had been when the whole town had been reenacting the Salem Witch Trials in Sunnydale's City Hall. It might've been handy to have a vampire on their side in that fight. Of course, she had told him to stay out of her slayage business multiple times, so maybe that was what he'd been doing – actually listening to her for once. On the other hand, it seemed like giving a hand in a dire, about to be roasted like a pig on a spit, emergency, might warrant a little breaking of that rule.

This was all way too complicated. Even she had to admit that Angel knowing when his help would be wanted or not would be nearly impossible for him to figure out. It was nearly impossible for her to figure out.

"Okay," she said after a few moments, getting down to business. "Uh, we got through 1900 and Beijing. Spike killed the Slayer… Dru and Darla were there, Boxer Rebellion, yada, yada, yada. Do you remember where you went after Beijing?" she asked, looking back up at him, her pen poised to start recording dates and places.

"Okay… uh, yeah, Beijing… give me a minute. It was a long time ago."

"Did you leave Beijing with anyone, or alone?" Buffy asked, trying to jog his memory.

"Alone…" he admitted. "Darla… she told me to leave when I couldn't… prove myself to her."

Buffy's brows rose, a small smirk forming on her lips despite her worry about Spike. "Performance anxiety?"

Angel huffed out a breath and rolled his eyes. "She wanted me to kill a baby!"

"Oh a different kind of performance," Buffy acquiesced, letting her amusement fall. "So, she told you to leave – where did you go?"

Angel closed his eyes, apparently searching his memories. Buffy wasn't so sure his memory was that bad, but she waited – it had become a habit over the course of these interviews – only sighing once more before he began speaking. "I snuck on a ship, stayed in the hold the whole time. Didn't know or care where it was going. Ended up in France. I got off and got on another ship to England. Spent some time in London, then Dublin, then took another ship to New York," he related, opening his eyes finally to look at her.

Buffy was scribbling all this down in the journal in front of her, all business now. "So, what year did you go to New York?"

"About… 1902," Angel said, but he didn't sound too sure. Buffy was used to that and didn't bother to ask him if he was asking her or telling her.

"Okay, 1901, London and Dublin, 1902 New York. Did anything happen I need to include here? Did you meet up with the old gang at any point? Any deaths or exceptionally morose brooding?"

Angel rolled his eyes. "No, no, and no," he answered curtly. "I really don't know why you need this – I wasn't hunting, wasn't hurting anyone, I was just minding my own business. Why does the Council care?"

"Like they'd tell me?" she scoffed, rolling her eyes. "They just want the whole history of Angelus, and, we had him here in Sunnydale just last year, so Giles said to document as much as I could all the way up to current. You know how he is! If I don't do this, he's gonna have me scrubbing the floor with a toothbrush or something."

"I think they just do that in the army," Angel grumbled. "And probably only fictional armies."

Buffy arched a brow at him. "You saw 'An Officer and a Gentleman'?"

Angel rolled his eyes. "No, I read 'Im Westen Nichts Neues'."

"I'm West In what now?" Buffy asked, her brows furrowing.

"'All Quiet on the Western Front', 'Im Westen Nichts Neues' in German," Angel explained, as if, duh! Who didn't know that?

"Oh. How American of me," she grumbled. "So, you speak German?"

"Enough to get by," he hedged.

'And read a whole book in it,' she thought. "What other languages do you speak?"

"Uh… a few. French, Spanish, Italian, Latin," he listed.

Buffy wrote that down. "What about… uh, Chinese? You were in China, right?" She hoped that sounded casual.

"No, not really," he answered. "We usually just found someone who spoke English and Chinese – or whatever language we needed – and turned them… minion interpreters."

"Handy," she deadpanned. Though it made sense, she'd never thought of that. She really wanted to ask him if he spoke Romani – the gypsy language the curse had been in – but wasn't sure how to work that in without setting off flares. Why hadn't she asked him that when they were covering Romania? Stupid! Spike said Angel did, but it would be better right from the vampire's mouth.

"Okay, uh, New York, 1902, nothing unusual happened. How long did you stay there?" she asked, getting back to the timeline.

"Maybe five years," he provided.

"Okay, New York 1902 to about 1907, then where?" she continued.

Angel sighed. "Uh… I went down to New Orleans for a while, Savannah, Chicago, Missouri… Mexico for a while," he rambled.

"Whoa, hang on. Can you be a bit more specific on dates and any, you know, highlights or lowlights to include in the travel guide?" Buffy requested. "And, pretty sure Mexico is a sorta big place, can you narrow that down for me?"

Angel rolled his eyes and leaned back in the chair, closing his eyes in concentration. "Okay," he began, New Orleans… Mardi Gras… I stole a gator out of a roadside zoo and drained it."

"Eww… What did it taste like?"

Angel shrugged. "Chicken."

** X-X-X-X-X **

Mexico.

Spike covered his head when something began hammering much too loudly and much too near. "Sod off!" he yelled when he realized it was someone at the door. When the banging continued without respite, actually growing louder, he flung himself up and across the room, still starkers, and yanked the door open. He was ready to rip the intruder's head off and shower in their blood, but froze when green eyes met his.

"Buffy…?" he gasped. A tidal wave of emotions from shock to joy to alarm to elation rolled through him, stopping him from saying more.

The Slayer's eyes went wide as they slid down his body, her face flushing as red as the chili peppers so prevalent in the local cuisine. "Spike… you're naked."

He looked down at himself and shrugged, getting his jumbled emotions under control, or at least slightly subdued. He squared his shoulders and ran a hand down to scratch his stomach, drawing Buffy's eye to is bellybutton… and below. "Yeah, well, it's how I sleep. Know that, you do," he replied with a smirk.

"Um, right," she replied, her heart rate thudding like a crescendo of fireworks in Spike's ears.

"My eyes are up here, Slayer," he pointed out, the smirk growing.

Buffy's wide eyes shot back up to his face, heat radiating from her skin in waves, also reminding Spike of those tasty, 'muy caliente' peppers. "You look okay…" she rasped, sounding confused.

Spike's brows went up. "Okay!?" he asked incredulously. "I look a helluva lot better than 'okay', Slayer… least that fluttering heart o' yours says so."

"No, yeah, I mean… I just meant… you're... ummm… yeah, better than okay," she spluttered, her face bordering on spontaneous combustion.

He curled his tongue against his teeth a moment before asking, "So, were ya just in the neighborhood, thought you'd stop by, or did you just miss ogling my hot, tight little body?"

Buffy cleared her throat and found an interesting spot on the doorjamb to stare at. "You… your postcard," she stuttered, holding up the item in question which featured a bottle of Patrón.

Spike's brows furrowed. What the fuck was she on about? "That's not from me."

Her eyes widened and she looked back at him, carefully keeping her gaze trained on his face or, at least, above the waist. She turned the card over for him to see the message. 'Slayer, please help me,' was scribbled in an unsteady hand, the letters spaced randomly, some sized much larger than others, with no punctuation or signature. "You're telling me that's not from you? You're the only person I know in Mexico who calls me 'Slayer'," she pointed out. "In fact, you're probably the only person I know in Mexico, period."

Spike's mouth dropped open and he grabbed it from her hand, his eyes glued to the words, then the postmark, then back to the words. He flipped it over and looked at the picture, demanding his pickled brain remember. The bar. The tiny bottles that weren't bottles. Bloody hell.

"Spike? Are you okay?" Buffy asked, her voice full of concern.

The vampire shook his head, never lifting his gaze from the postcard. "I dunno…" he admitted, clenching his jaw against the raw emotions that surged through him again. Not monster enough.

"Can I come in? Maybe make less with the nudity?" she asked, still trying to keep her eyes averted as much as humanly possible from the naked vampire standing in front of her.

A stab of panic twisted in Spike's gut as he looked back at the bodies piled like cordwood in the back of the room. "Just give me a mo'," he requested, slamming the door in her face.

Spike yanked on a pair of jeans, not bothering with the buttons, grabbed his smokes and lighter, and opened the door again, preparing to step out into the hall, but Buffy had other plans. As soon as the door opened again, she pushed in, knocking Spike back a few steps. "Oi! Didn't invite you in!" he objected, moving to cut off her field of vision.

"One: it's a hotel room, no invite needed, and two: not a vampire, double the no invite needed quotient," she pointed out, sliding past him to see what he was hiding from her.

"Bloody hell! Were you raised by sodding wolves? It's not polite!" he objected, trying to move back in front of her, but it was too late, she was past him, already staring at the neat stack of bodies. Hair in an array of colors and styles fell lank from the tops of the lolling heads that faced her, each lifeless body piled atop another like split pine, waiting to be burnt.

Tears welled in her eyes as she took it all in. The death. The destruction. The pain. The blood. "How many?" she whispered.

"Buffy," he breathed, interspersing himself between the Slayer and the array of victims piled up for her inspection. The green-eyed girl lay artfully draped on her back atop it all, dark hair cascading down toward the floor along with her limp arms, accusing eyes open and staring. "It's not what you think," Spike defended, trying not to look at the one that haunted his nightmares. "Not all dead, are they?" he pointed out, going over to lift one head up by the hair, drawing a moan from the owner, a middle-aged woman with grey just starting to creep into dark tresses.

"But mostly dead…" Buffy pointed out, blinking back the tears.

Spike sighed, running a hand back through his sleep-tousled curls. "Tried, pet, I tried… but… Dru…" He picked up a Styrofoam container with dried blood crusted in the bottom to show her. "Even bagged it much as I could!" the vampire defended piteously. "Tried t' steer Dru away from the tots."

"I'm sure Lisa and her family appreciates your efforts," Buffy sneered.

A fiery dagger twisted in Spike's gut. 'It's not fair!' The bloody container fell from numb fingers. 'It's not fair!' His heart plummeted. "Buffy, please, pet..."

Green eyes met his. Not Lisa's; Buffy's. Shimmering. Angry. Hurt. Disappointed. Indignant. Accusing. Then they hardened into stone, green granite flashing with fury.

"You wanted to be a monster? Congratulations," she seethed. "You got your wish." Buffy flung herself at him, stake suddenly in her hand, coming straight for Spike's chest.

He raised his arms, blocking her thrust, grabbing her wrist and just barely stopping the stake from penetrating his skin. Her momentum tumbled them both to the floor and they began to struggle in earnest. Spike's demon rose with a roar and he lunged for her neck, still keeping the stake from plunging into his breast. Buffy put an arm up and clasped her fingers around his neck, halting his attack, his fangs poised to sink into her flesh.

The two warriors struggled against each other. Strength against strength. Fangs against wood. Vampire against Slayer. They rolled over the dried masterpiece of blood Spike had left on the floor, first Buffy on top, then Spike. Fangs nipping at her soft skin, pine digging at his.

And then they were free-falling through space, through starlight and sunbeams, rolling, twisting, spinning out of control. Darkness and light flashed over their bodies like strobes as they plummeted, locked together in a life-and-death struggle, each fighting for control.

Too monstrous for the light.

Not monster enough for the dark.

Spike gasped, jerking up to a sitting position in bed, his eyes wild as he scanned the dark room. He was alone. No Slayer. No Dru, either. He rubbed his chest, sure he'd find blood from the stake breaking his skin, but found nothing. He looked around for the piles of bodies, but again, there were none.

The rattled blond took a deep breath and let it out slowly, swinging his legs over the edge of the bed. He grabbed his smokes from the bedside table and lit one with trembling fingers, taking in a deep draw of the soothing nicotine. The vampire braced one elbow on his thigh and dropped his forehead into his hand. His fingers massaged his aching head as he tried to remember. He'd gone to a bar. He'd gotten utterly pissed. When was that? A day ago? A week? He couldn't remember how he got back here. He remembered Dru, she'd been loving and sweet. Or had he dreamed that, like he'd dreamed about Buffy? He looked down at himself – he'd been cleaned up, most of his wounds were healed – Dru had done that.

"Right… Dru was real, the Slayer wasn't," he confirmed aloud, taking another drag on the cigarette. "What about the bloody postcard?" he wondered to himself, shaking his head as he dropped it back into his hand. "You aren't that much of a ponce, are you?"

Spike sighed.

Of course he was.

"Bugger me."

** X-X-X-X-X **

Sunnydale.

"How are you progressing?" Giles asked Buffy after Angel left.

"I think he's purposely dragging this out," Buffy replied, rolling her eyes. "We only made it to the thirties," she admitted, pulling out the printout that Willow had made of all the Slayers, their cities and dates that they'd found so far. "We already know about Xin Rong in China in 1900," she continued, looking at the chart.

Buffy looked back up at Giles, who was standing at the end of the table, listening. "By the way, Angel says he doesn't speak Chinese, so…" she shrugged. "Might've been hard to woo a Chinese Slayer."

"Hmm," Giles replied as he started walking back over towards his office.

"But he was in Ciudad Juárez, Mexico in 1923 when the Slayer, Maria de Castilla, was in El Paso. Those cities are, like, right next to each other," Buffy continued as Giles disappeared into his office a moment.

"Oh, yes?" he asked back over his shoulder.

"Yeah, and we know he speaks Spanish," Buffy continued. "And he was in Chicago in 1927 when Mildred Meyers was the Slayer there."

"Uh-huh," Giles replied absently, coming back out of his office with the big blue crystal he'd had Buffy using to hone her focus.

"Yep," Buffy replied. "And he was in Hollywood when Greta Garbo was the Slayer in the '30s," she offered, testing him.

"Oh, was he?" Giles continued, setting the crystal down on the table in front of Buffy.

Buffy rolled her eyes, put the chart away, and closed her journal. "Yep, and he saw Amelia Earhart off from Miami in 1937."

"Fascinating," Giles agreed, finally looking at Buffy. Suddenly his face clouded with confusion. "Amelia Earhart was a Slayer?"

"Earth to Giles," Buffy groused impatiently. "You haven't been listening to me at all. I think you need to do the focus-y thing tonight instead of me."

"I do beg your pardon," he apologized. "I must have too much on my mind."

"Yeah, I know, loss of all those old books was major trauma… not like the fun of nearly getting burned at the stake," she agreed with an eye roll. "I'm surprised you can even breathe in here without all that mustiness floating around."

Giles removed his glasses and began cleaning them. "Yes, well… some of them were quite rare… possibly irreplaceable, while quarrelsome teenage girls are rather less so," he deadpanned, placing his glasses back on his nose.

"As if," Buffy grumbled. "You'd miss me if I was gone," she pouted.

"Perhaps a bit, but only after the initial respite from constant pop-culture references and the mangling of the English language has been enjoyed," he agreed dryly, not cracking a smile. "So, have you learned anything conclusive about Spike's theory?"

Buffy rolled her eyes then rubbed them tiredly. "Well, from what Willow and I have found, in the 150 years before being cursed, Angelus had only crossed paths with a Slayer once. In 1888 in London. There are some gaps in the Slayer records that we still need more diaries for, but just once in all that time? He wasn't big on path-crossing."

"Indeed not," Giles agreed.

"Especially considering we know of five times after the curse… so far. Beijing, Mexico, Chicago, New York, and Sunnydale. And we still have, like sixty years to cover," Buffy revealed.

"It sounds almost like he had been purposely avoiding Slayers as Angelus," Giles observed.

"That's kinda what I thought," she agreed. "So, after the curse, he'd either gotten very bad at avoiding them or…" Buffy let her voice trail off, shrugging. She didn't want Spike to be right. She didn't want to be even more of a dupe and a pawn and a naïve fool than she already felt. But the evidence was starting to stack up against that hope. Of course, Angel being in the same city as the Slayer five times – that she knew of so far – wasn't proof that he was seeking Slayers out. It could've just been his bad luck.

Awfully bad luck.

She wondered how many times Spike had been in the same city as the Slayer over the years. How did he even find her? It had to take forever to travel in those days. Unless he was already close, how could he even get there before she'd already passed the torch to someone else? From all the names and dates they'd uncovered so far, the majority of Slayers didn't last more than a few months, some not more than a few hours, one, according to the diaries, lasted all of five minutes.

With her eighteenth birthday fast approaching, Buffy was already becoming one of the longest-lived Slayers they'd documented. Maybe she could ask the Slayer of Slayers… if he ever called her back, that is. Which he hadn't. That was another worry that she was trying not to think about — was he just ignoring her, or was there something terribly wrong? But she hadn't worked up the nerve to call him again; she'd made a big enough fool of herself the first time.

"Well, perhaps we should put that aside now and continue your concentration training," Giles suggested, moving the large blue crystal in front of Buffy on the table.

Buffy sighed and put her journal and pen back in her bookbag before taking a deep breath and letting it out, starting the now-familiar process. "I still think Faith needs some of this focus. Where the hell was she when we were burning at the stake, anyway? She could headline in Vegas as the next Houdini the way she vanishes into thin air. Where the hell does she go on these disappearing acts?"

"I'm afraid I don't know," Giles admitted. "She does seem quite…"

"Quarrelsome?" Buffy suggested cheekily.

Giles snorted lightly. "To say the least. Come along, now… find the flaw," he encouraged.

The practice Buffy had been doing focusing on the crystal had made this particular exercise second nature to her now. It only took a moment for her to find the flaw and for her mind to quiet, to fall into it, for everything else around her to disappear.

Giles waited for her body to go slack, for her eyes to glaze over. "Buffy?" he asked gently. "Can you hear me?"

When she didn't reply, he carefully removed a leather-bound case from his bag and opened it, taking out a syringe and a vial. He filled the syringe carefully, called her name one more time, cleaned the skin on her arm with an antiseptic wipe, and injected her with the serum. When everything was put back into his bag, and all was as it was when she'd fallen into the trance, Giles waved his hand in front of the crystal to break her concentration.

Buffy blinked and jumped a little in her seat. "Sorry… I must've zoned out," she apologized. "Spike hasn't been feeling well and I'm just worried…"

"It's quite all right," Giles cajoled. "We'll try again tomorrow. I hope it's nothing serious with Spike?"

Buffy shrugged, standing up and picking up her bag. "Mom's taking him to the vet tomorrow. He won't eat, doesn't want to patrol… nothing," she explained.

"The vet? D-do you believe that's necessary?" Giles asked with concern. "Perhaps it's just a little bug he's picked up. He does regularly bite into vampires and demons, after all. Even a Guardian of his caliber must have a reaction at some time or another. It'll likely pass in a few days," the Watcher suggested.

"I hope so, but better safe than daisy food, right?" Buffy pointed out.

Giles' brow furrowed a moment, then cleared. "Pushing up daisies..." he translated. "Yes, indeed," the man sighed, looking concerned. "You say he's not eating properly?"

"Hardly at all..."

"I have some of those treats he enjoys. Perhaps he'd eat them?" Giles suggested, reaching into his bag and pulling out a Ziploc containing several pieces of what looked like beef jerky.

Buffy took them from him, shrugging. "I'll try. Thanks."

"Certainly. I hope he feels better," Giles replied, giving her a tight smile, though his eyes didn't quite meet hers. "I'm sure it's nothing to worry about."

Buffy nodded but didn't look convinced. "I hope so. See you tomorrow. Oh! I forgot to tell you, my dad's taking me to the ice capades next Friday for my birthday – it's kind of a thing we do. Then I'm staying the weekend in L.A. – much absentee dad-guilt shopping is on the menu – so I won't be here to patrol for a couple of days."

Giles nodded stiffly. "That, uh, sounds enjoyable."

"I know, dumb girly stuff – but I am still a girl! At least until the nineteenth," she quipped. "Then, apparently, I'm suddenly an adult. My juvenile record will be expunged. Next time I get arrested for murder, they'll put me in the big house. Go me!"

"Yes, the big house, indeed," he agreed, giving her another forced smile. "That will be… yes… quite good."

** X-X-X-X-X **


End Notes:

For the piecing together of the Slayer timeline, I used the Wiki page that lists all the Slayers (some are canon, some are from 'alternate, dubious, or non-canon sources', which usually means licensed novels).

In some cases, I filled in blank spots both in Angel's timeline and the Slayer's with my own ideas. The 1888 meeting of a Slayer in London is from a Buffyverse non-canon but authorized novel called 'Blood and Fog', which I haven't read, but I ordered one cheap from Amazon, just to see what exactly happened in it and decide if I want to use it later.

Thank you sooo much for reading! I love and appreciate you all!

The last chapter of this episode will post on Saturday. I will start posting the next episode, which is complete at 38 chapters on Sunday, so you won't have to wait long since this one ends with (evil, sarcastic voice) just a few things left unresolved.