“What the hell are you doing here Spike?” The whiny sound of his ex-girlfriend’s voice annoyed him more than ever.
“Harmony, please.” Good ol’ peacekeeping Watcher.
“This is Spike? The Spike?”
“Wait a minute. Who’s-”
“Easy, slim. Easy. No one’s going to hurt you.” Regular lion tamer that one was.
“Ok, would someone please tell me who-”
“William the Bloody. He’s a vampire. One of the worst recorded. Second only to-”
“Me.” Well, the poof did have a mouth after all. He growled at him menacingly, “Where is she?”
“She?” Watcher. Still so inquisitive. Someone really needed to beat it out of him. Of course, the raging headache pounding away in his brain was far too reminiscent of that blasted chip, despite its charming new absence.
“Buffy you dolt. She was there, with me.” He deliberately emphasized this last bit, gauging his grandsire’s reaction to this last bit, unsure whether to be pleased by the cringe that meant he was hurt, or jealous that he still cared for her.
“What do you mean she was there?” At least the man was British, and had a bit of dignity left, not like that fellow over there who looked like he wanted to take a chunk outta him just for the fun of it. Like he could.
“I mean, she was with me when the Hellmouth went boom.” He turned back to Angel, his eyes a glowing amber, “What did you do with her? If you hurt her I’m gonna-”
Angel glared back, “You just don’t get it Spike. You’re not the only one who loves-”
With a growl, Spike came running towards him, and he braced himself for impact. He felt nothing however, and turned to see Spike standing in the middle of his desk.
The look on his face was priceless. “Bugger.”
With all the excitement, no one noticed the black and gray whirling cloud coming from the amulet, the sparks it emitted forming a human body. No one but Spike that is.
He rushed to the amulet, paying no attention to the people in his way, that is, he just strode right through them. He watched as the dust formed flesh, filling out the skeletal frame. Once the dust dissipated, he scooped the new arrival into his arms, holding them tightly to him.
As the bewildered head staff of Wolfram and Hart looked on, soft giggles were heard from the girl hidden by Spike’s duster. The vampire turned around, arms wrapped tightly around the blonde, and grinned to them. “I knew it. I knew she would come.”
Gunn looked skeptically at the small blonde in the vampire’s arms, “And just who is this?”
“Buffy.”
She smiled tentatively at the introduction, upset by the crest-fallen look on Angel’s face. Spike, however, was positively elated.
“She’s the Slayer.”
From the look on everyone’s faces, with the exception of Wesley, she felt the urge to explain, “Well, not the only one anymore. See, Will did this spell that made all the Potentials in to Slayers, so-” She stopped, seeing everyone’s blank expressions. She gave them all an apologetic look, “Maybe later?”
“Let me get this thing straight. Spike shows up in Angel’s office shouting about the Slayer, then she shows up, when they are both supposedly dead?” Gunn’s face was contorted with confusion, and sitting himself into a cushy armchair, he waited for an explanation.
Spike started in before anyone else could, the smirk on his face aimed directly towards Angel’s glowering countenance. “Well, Broodboy here shows up in good ol’ Sunnyhell, with some magical amulet thing for Buffy. Says he wants to use it, be her champion and all. She says no, gives it to me, and we all go off to fight the First. So while we’re down there, the pretty trinket gets all excited, uses me to save the world. ‘Course Buffy here couldn’t let me go all by my lonesome, so she stays with me. The next thing you know, we’re here, chatting to you people, when we ought to be, quite rightly dead.”
“Spike saved the world?”
“That I did, and you’d think a bloke could get a little peace and quiet after dying again and all. But no, someone’s always there to yank you back, ain’t it?” He noticed, far too late, the sudden quiet in the woman he held. Too late, he realized he had dredged up painful memories for her. Looking deep into her eyes, he stroked her hair back gently, “I’m sorry.”
She smiled back, rest stolen from her yet again. “It’s all right. It doesn’t matter so much anymore.” Their quiet moment went unnoticed by the others.
“Ok, there’s something I’m not getting here. If Spike can’t touch us, why can he touch Buffy?” Curious, Buffy slipped out of Spike’s arms and poked Angel, her eyes widening as she watched her finger go right through him, “I can’t touch anybody? What am I? A ghost?”
“I think we’d better run a few tests to be sure,” Fred spoke up for the first time. Angel nodded almost imperceptibly, and she led them to the extensive laboratories of Wolfram and Hart.
********
“I’m getting electromagnetic readings consistent with spiritual entities, but there’s not ectoplasmic matrix.”
“Meaning?”
“Ectoplasm is what makes ghosts visible to the human eye. If they’re ghosts, then technically, we shouldn’t be able to see them. Also, ghosts generally absorb light and heat energy making the area around them a few degrees cooler. Spike and Buffy are radiating heat.”
Spike gave a lazy smirk to the woman at his side, “Here that luv? We’re making heat.” With a lewd glance at her, he drew he to him, thumb circling suggestively over her hip.
She pushed him away slightly, with a glance at her vampire ex-boyfriend, “Not here Spike.” She turned instead to the young scientist curiously watching the little byplay, “So, if we’re not ghosts, what are we?”
“Whatever he is, it's clearly tied to this amulet. Spike's essence, for lack of a better term, must have been held within it.”
“What I want to know is how they both came through.” Angel got off the counter he’d been leaning on, coming closer to the couple. “As far as I know, the amulet was supposed to be for one person. So how did both Buffy and Spike get their essence trapped in it?”
Wesley took up the questioning, “Did either one of you feel anything, the passing of time, nausea, anything that might have happened when the amulet released its energy or afterwards?”
“What? You mean my skin and muscle burning away from the bone? Organs exploding in my chest? Eyeballs melting in their sockets? No. No memory at all. Thanks for asking.” A small hand on his chest stopped him from rambling any further.
“I think he means other than excruciating pain Spike,” she teased lightly. “I wasn’t aware of time passing at all. All I know is that where we were was cold and dark.” Here she took Spike’s hand in her own, seeking comfort, “It was a place of shadows, faces I couldn’t see. It was so cold.” Her eyes had become distant with thought, “The only thing I knew was that I wasn’t alone. Spike was with me.” She looked up into the eyes of her silent audience, “He was always with me.”
The silence continued. Fred broke it with a quiet, “Wow.” With a sudden cough, Wesley seemed to regain his composure, “I think maybe we’d better get some of our magickal experts down here.”
Buffy snapped out of her sombre thoughts with the mention of magic. Eyes going wide, she was near the point of jumping up and down. “Willow! Oh, we have to find her, and Dawn, and Giles, and-”
Angel smiled at her. It was times like these when the girl she had been, the girl that died an early, watery death shone through the hardened Slayer. The girl he had loved. “We’ve already contacted them. They’ll be here in a few days.”
“How’s-”
“Dawn’s fine. She doesn’t know about your, uh, ghostliness yet though. I thought you might want to tell her.”
“Thanks.” Then she yawned. Smiling sheepishly, she asked, “Is there somewhere Spike and I could stay for the night? I’d go find a hotel or something, but you know, I didn’t really think to take any money with me when I burst into flames. And dying then coming back to life can be really tiring. Trust me, I know.” She earned herself a quiet ripple of laughter from the group, before Angel called Harmony down to bring them to one of Wolfram and Hart’s many office suites.
********
Buffy was becoming more and more irritated as the elevator passed one floor to another. Standing at the back of the elevator, she could see the looks the blonde secretary was sending the vampire beside her, and they sure as hell didn’t please her. Nor did she like the way she tried to bring up their old relationship or her innuendos to her availability. Her only comfort was that Spike seemed completely oblivious to the other girl. That, and she was the only one he could touch anyway. By the time the doors opened, she was ready to grab a stake she couldn’t hold and shove it into the heart of a girl she couldn’t touch.
Thankfully, Harmony seemed to have given up for now as she unlocked a set of doors down the next hall. The moment she opened the doors, however, Buffy’s mind was completely wiped of any thoughts of her former classmate.
The suite was huge. Beautifully decorated and furnished, she couldn’t understand the stormy look on Spike’s face. Upon asking him, however, she only received a quiet growl. “What bug crawled up your ass?”
“What did you think you were doing, askin’ Angel for a place to stay like that?”
“What do you mean-oh, wait. I get it. The two of you are busy playing jealous vampire again, and to tell you the truth, I’m sick of it. I’m sick of hearing all the bitching between you two. You’re the one I love, and if you don’t get that, then you can sleep on the couch.”
Taking this as not only a personal threat, but a threat to their relationship, he sat himself down beside her. “I’m sorry luv. Really I am. It’s just hard to be around some guy your girl used to love. Again.”
She finally got what he was feeling. He feared Angel would take her back like he did Drusilla. “You’re not going to lose me Spike. I’m not going to be taken away like...her.” She could not bear to say that name, the reminder that Spike’s heart had once belonged to another. “I’m yours, remember?” She moved closer to him, sliding onto his lap, into the circle of his arms. “Always yours.”
********
Buffy could hardly keep herself from alternately bouncing up and down and pacing with worry. Every now and then her movements were punctuated by Spike’s exasperated call of, “Damn it woman! Would you just hold still!” This would be followed by a glare and continued bouncing or pacing. Finally, the doors to the weird two-sided elevator opened to reveal a red-headed witch and a brunette teen. The pair’s faces instantly lit up upon seeing the blonde more-than-ghosts. Before anyone could stop her, Dawn was running into her sister’s arms. They both felt a brief spark of contact before she passed right through her. They stared at each other, wide-eyed, one from the shock of passing through her sister, the other from the momentary contact they had. Dawn’s eyes filled with bright tears, “Buffy?”
She longed to put her arms around her little sister, comfort her in her confusion, but her inability to do this was just the reason she was upset. “Dawnie. Me and Spike, we came back different. That is, in the non-body having kind of different. But it’s going to be fine. Fred’s working to fix it, Willow is here for you, and-”
She shook her head, wiping the tears away. “It’s all right. I get it. I should be happy, you know? You guys are back, not...dead.” She attempted a smile for her ‘dead’ sister, before moving on to Spike, her eyes tearing up again.
Willow stepped forward, wanting to greet her friend. “Hey. We, uh, we all moved to Cleveland, you know, new Hellmouth and all. Giles is out in Europe, getting the new Slayers together. He’s going to start a Slayer school.” Here, she looked down for a moment, the tears brightening her green eyes. “We all missed you Buffy. Especially Dawn. It was so hard. Giles took it pretty bad too.”
She felt a pang of pain at the mention of her Watcher, her father. “I’ll be back. I mean, now that you’re here, Spike and I will be all corporeal again in no time.”
Her red-headed friend took this opportunity to speak of lighter things. “Yeah. You know, you’re a legend with the new Slayers, you and Faith? It’s kinda funny really. Some of them think the two of you are gods or something, and the others think you’re some kind of myth.”
The Potentials. She’d almost forgot about them. “Did they make it? From the fight?”
“We lost a lot of girls. And Xander...we couldn’t find Anya. He’s been devastated over her.” She thought of the quirky, blunt ex-demon. While annoying most of the time, she felt hurt at the thought of losing her. Her friend. “I’m sorry.”
“Well, everybody’s different. Especially you. Everyone’s so worried about you, and they all wanted to come see you. But we’ll have you corporeal again in no time, and then you can come back with us.”
“We will come back with you.” She stressed the plural, making sure that her friend knew she did not intend to forsake her relationship with the bleached wonder standing not too far away. Not again. Said Bleached Wonder caught this part of their conversation, and his heart rejoiced to hear it.
“Of course. You know, you. And Spike.” Despite Willow’s inclusion of Spike in the whole, let’s go home deal, Buffy could feel the tension in her voice at the mention of Spike. Willow seemed to notice her discomfort, and quickly changed the topic. “So, Angel said he wanted our help to get you guys all touchable again, even though you can touch each other. And are living in the same room, which means you can-”
She laughed, and Willow was happy to hear it, the laugh none of them ever thought they would hear again, and she smiled too.
“Come on, I’ll take you to the labs. You and Fred are going to have a ball, her science, your magick. Me and Spike’ll be normal in no time.”
I hope so Buffy. I hope so. Willow shook her head of such thoughts, and focused instead on the task laid out in front of her, her mind motoring away. Making people corporeal? Not as easy as it sounds. How long is it going to take to figure out how to do it? Years? Months? How long until the solution to Buffy’s decides to rear its pretty head and show itself? Is there even an answer?
But she was wrong, a rare moment for the smart young witch. Quite wrong.