"What'd he do, take the long way around the whole bloody continent?" snarled Spike to nobody in particular, as he impatiently stood in the open doorway of his crypt. The blond demon glared at the moonlit graveyard outside, his bad temper only increasing by still seeing no sign of the minion he'd sent out an hour ago, to find exactly what all the fuss was about in Sunnydale tonight.

*Halloween. Just the soddin' name makes me want to puke and then shove the biggest lit pumpkin I can find up the arsehole of some nancy-boy dressed up in one of those stupid costumes.* Spike then delivered one of his choicest sneers ever into the darkness beyond. The vampire absolutely loathed tonight's holiday, and his mood wasn't improved the slightest by having to wait for the only fledgling on hand to come back and tell him what the hell was going on in the town-

"William."

Totally unprepared for that, Spike whirled around in the crypt doorway, and he then stood there gaping at who'd just called him by his real first name. In her usual tattered Victorian dress, Drusilla also stood in the middle of the gloomy crypt, her placid face the same pale tint as her ragged clothing. She kept her calm stare upon the demon she'd sired over a century ago, who was himself starting to feel a bit worried.

For the last few days, the insane vampiress had ignored everything that was occurring in her vicinity, including Spike's latest plan to kill the Slayer, remaining huddled in one corner of the crypt while holding some sort of silent communion with Miss Edith in her lap. Recollecting that, the Englishman blinked and then he lowered his gaze to the woman's arms held limply at her sides, and Spike also saw that her hands were also empty. Frowning, the vampire looked past an unmoving Drusilla, to see something that actually made the hairs on the back of his neck prickle.

Tenderly placed in the corner where his lover had just been curled up, the doll treasured by the vampiress now rested on its rear, the limbs of this toy arranged to present Miss Edith in a sitting posture, her back to the crypt wall and her head positioned to stare straight ahead, right into Spike's bewildered face. In the next moment, just as the youngest member of the Scourge of Europe was beginning to become really uneasy, his view of this bizarre scene was blocked by Drusilla drifting nearer, her bare feet moving soundlessly over the stone floor.

"He won't be coming back, not after meeting the three-in-one and another soon after."

"Eh?" Nonplussed, Spike looked down into Drusilla's serene face observing him from her position where she'd halted within arm's length of him to then deliver that enigmatic statement. Cautiously, the former Londoner tried, "You mean, what's-his-name I sent out a while back? The bugger's gone to dust and all that? Well, no big loss, and that's what minions are for anyway. Look, love, could you be a tad more specific about the rest? Is there a new player in town, or-"

"William."

Abruptly shutting his mouth at hearing his name yet again, Spike now regarded with actual alarm the composed woman standing in front of him. Drusilla was…was…somehow, what he'd never seen of her during his lengthy unlife in the company of this tormented seeress that had been broken and turned by Angelus. Here and now, she looked…lucid. Rational. Sane.

Spike's current sense of utter stupefaction now kept him totally stock-still on his feet, even when the vampiress stepped forward and tightly embraced him. Still holding her arms around the motionless vampire, Drusilla, the trace of tears in her eyes alluding to her own name, now lifted her face, and whispered directly into Spike's dumbfounded features, "William, I forgive you for everything, all that you did, and all that you failed to do. Will you do the same for me, to find it in yourself, to forgive me, for everything?"

"I- I-" stuttered Spike, who then abruptly became silent in order to fully examine the woman holding onto him. The woman in his arms, as the vampire now performed his personal firm embrace of her. That simple action crystallized in Spike's mind the only decision he could possibly make, as he whispered down to his love, "I do forgive you, fully and completely. My Drusilla, my own." At those last words, William, who had been Spike, now lowered his head, to gently kiss the woman he worshipped.

He thought he'd never been this happy before, in either his life or his unlife, until to William's amazement, his joy actually increased at feeling his lover's lips pressed against his own turn upwards into a tender smile.

In that very moment, as previously foreseen by Drusilla, the intangible spell cast by Xander Harris in his new body as Mayor Richard Wilkins III several minutes ago then burst through the rear wall of the crypt, leaving no mark of its passage, until the enchantment went right through the unbeating hearts of the two vampires, far too quickly for even demonic creatures to notice or react, instantly ending their existences without the slightest pain.

The blank eyes of Miss Edith watched two clouds of dust hover for a moment in the crypt, until the mild breeze coming through the open doorway caused these particles to completely intermingle, and then drift slowly downwards to the stone floor.