“Feeling better?” Buffy ventured, gulping at the blade Spike was twirling between his fingers. A delicious combination on fear and anticipation shuddered through her body.

“Right as rain, luv,” he agreed, smirking even wider when she tested the cuffs that held her.

“Uh…good to hear…” Buffy leaned her head to one side to find the source of the amused giggling. Drusilla, also nude, had as wicked a look on her face as Spike did. That look promised pain but, oh, sweet pleasure as well…

“Someone’s been a naughty girl,” Dru sing-songed.

“Naughty, indeed,” Spike agreed. “I think she needs to be punished, don’t you, pet?”

Dru clapped her excitedly. “Oh yes,” she agreed.

Buffy got nervous at that, trying to shift uncomfortably on the bed, but found herself unable to move enough to do so. She wet her lips, looked back and forth between them. “What are you…?” Suddenly, she found herself unable to finish her question. She didn’t know whether it was because she didn’t want to spoil the surprise or she just didn’t want to know.

Spike sighed and knelt on the bed between her feet. Slowly, he crawled over her body, pale skin sliding over powerful muscles. Buffy couldn’t help but gasp in eager anticipation of that beautiful body descending upon hers, taking her hard…

Spike set the knife down on the mattress beside her, sniffed the air and grinned. “Excited to see me?” he teased.

“Mmm,” she purred in agreement, wanting to thrust up against his rock-hard erection but frustratingly unable to move that far.

He leaned in close and licked a sensuous line up the side of her face. “Want me to give it to you?”

Buffy had played enough games to catch the double-meaning. But, yeah, if he wanted to punish her for what she’d done, he was well within his rights. “Yes,” she agreed breathlessly, inwardly steeling herself up in case pleasure wasn’t her reward.

“Don’t worry, luv,” he murmured in her ear so softly she could barely hear it. Sitting back, he took up the knife once more, studied her. “You know what it does to me to see one of my girls hurt?” he asked curiously, head cocked to one side. Lightning-quick, the hand with the knife whipped out, leaving a shallow cut on her right arm.

Buffy hissed at the brief sting of pain and felt her demon trying to rise up to the surface again at the scent of blood. “No,” she replied, proud of the steadiness of her own voice.

“Cuts me too, luv,” he informed her. Her eyes widened and a gasp escaped her lips when he mirrored the cut on his own body, slicing his left forearm.

Drusilla whimpered and cooed, sitting at the head of the bed now and gently stroking Buffy’s hair.

The tip of the knife found Buffy’s collarbone and trailed it lovingly. “You think you can trust someone,” Spike began casually, blue eyes distant, “think you know ‘em…”

Buffy shivered, unsure of what he was going to do.

“And then,” his voice hardened, and once more the blade drew blood, just above her breast this time, “they do somethin’ to hurt you you never believed they’d do.”

Buffy saw the raw pain – and maybe even a little fear – in his eyes then, and she so wanted to console him. Promise him the world, and assure him it wouldn’t happen again. She winced when the knife cut the flesh of his upper pectoral muscle. Strange how the wounds he inflicted on himself seemed to hurt more than the ones on her own body…

Spike sighed wearily. “I get why you did it, pet,” he informed her conversationally. “Really, I do.” He turned to look at Drusilla and smiled softly, remembering times long past. “I remember how it feels to love someone so deeply but fear that you’ll never truly have them…”

Drusilla smiled back, looking almost innocent then. She reached out to Spike with one hand, and their fingers clasped lightly. And, for a second, Buffy saw them as they both could have been. Two pure, innocent humans consumed by love for each other, happy together until their inevitable deaths. There was a sad poetry to their loss, and a beauty that in these new unlives they could have so much more than either ever could have during a mortal life-span.

But then their fingers drifted apart again, and the brief spell was broken.

“I get why you did it,” Spike repeated a bit huskily, attention all on Buffy now, “but, luv… ‘ve always been here for you. Don’t you see it? We’ve always been one…”

Buffy was so caught up in the drowning blue of his eyes that she barely even felt the cut to her inner thigh. Spike mirrored the motion on his own body as he had before, and not even he could keep from wincing at the knife that close to his most sensitive bits.

Drusilla even turned away in an uncharacteristic display of squeamishness.

“Can’t you feel it?” Spike practically pleaded with Buffy, tossing the knife aside and lying his body over hers. 

The thin lines of blood on their flesh lined up perfectly, pressed together, stung, but also felt amazing. Buffy gasped as she felt their essences mingling, and in that moment she knew that he was right. They were one and the same. And he and Dru were as well. And it wasn’t a conflict of any sorts. All three of them belonged together, like this.

“Yes,” she whispered, practically weeping at the intensity of the moment. Her tears stained his cheek as they pressed together. Or maybe it was his tears on her cheek. She couldn’t tell anymore because it just didn’t matter. “I can feel it…”

A shudder of relief and ecstasy shook Spike’s body, as if he’d been afraid that she wouldn’t get it. “There’s my clever girl,” he whispered, his voice ragged. “Always learns her lessons so well.”

She couldn’t help but smile. “Only because you make them so much fun, with physical aids and everything,” she teased lightly.

He laughed, and then he kissed her, and she kissed him back, and it was the most perfect thing she’d ever experienced.

Somehow he’d slipped inside her, and she could feel him filling her to completion, but that wasn’t the source of her pleasure. One-by-one Drusilla released the chains that bound her, and she wrapped her limbs tightly around his body, kissing him with everything she had, everything she was.

Never, in all her decades of existence, had she realized that lovemaking could be this sweet…

Willow watched the sun’s rays slowly retreat back through the metal slats in the blinds. She’d opened them the previous morning, thinking that the sun would come take her in her sleep. But she’d been restless in bed without the familiar form of her lover by her side, and she hadn’t slept a wink.

And, when it came to that final moment of decision, Willow didn’t want to end her unlife.

Especially since Cordelia’s killer still lived. Her hands clenched into fists at the very notion, and she wondered for the thousandth time if she’d made the right choice. Would the pain she felt now be any less if she’d watched Xander’s limbs writhe in agony, heard his pleas for mercy, seen his body crumble to ash?

With a hiss of pain she realized that her nails had cut so deep into her hand that they’d drawn blood. A wave of rage took over her, and she ripped at the sheets before her, shredding them with demonic claws.

Echoes of Cordelia’s final cry sounded through the room, and Willow drowned them out with death and destruction. That was what she was good at, after all.

When the bed was bare save scraps of fine emerald silk and the mattress spilled its filling, creating a fine dust in the evening light, Willow turned back to the window.

She watched the sun fade from her life, and she mourned.

And then she turned back to her power because that was all she had left. Like a vengeful fury, she stormed from her room, naked and uncaring. The few minions that were foolish enough to stare got their heads separated from their bodies.

Pathetic, worthless males… Lechers and traitors, the lot of them…

She entered the library in a violent explosion. It was a good thing Dalton had chosen that one night not to be present because otherwise she’d have ripped him limb from limb.

As it was, Willow snatched up the first spell book she found. From the most dangerous section she owned, of course.

Flipping it open, her rage switched from physical to metaphysical. Deceptively calm on the outside – although still incongruously nude – Willow sat down, book in lap, and read.

And read.

And read.

She would show them all. She’d become so terrifyingly powerful that even the Order would tremble at her feet. She’d make them pay for the decision they’d forced her into, and then she’d take her revenge on that boy anyway.

A slow smile spread across Willow’s lips as she read. Power might not be able to warm her heart, but it warmed her hatred quite nicely…

Dalton hadn’t said a word all day. He’d simply sat in the corner chair of the small room he’d been given for his stay and engrossed himself in the pages of an old tome.

That suited Xander just fine.

The fear and adrenaline of seeing Willow at her utmost nastiness were beginning to wear off, and a gentle numbness started taking their places. But not an all-encompassing numbness. No, that would be far too generous. Instead, only those distractions he had clung to were washed away, leaving him with the clear image of Cordelia’s death, playing in horrifying slow motion, over and over again his brain.

Her eyes…

God, her eyes in those final moments. Xander slumped to the floor and curled against the wall, whimpering. Everyone had always said that vampires had no conscience. But he imaged those eyes would haunt him for a good long while.

Accusing him, hating him, mocking him…

Because, in the end, Cordelia had chosen Willow. Despite everything he’d done for her, all he could have given her, that bitch witch’s brainwashing won out. Xander hated Willow even more for that – for wrapping Cordy so tightly around her little finger that his sire had given up her life.

And, in those moments, he made a promise to himself. He promised that one day he’d find the power to destroy Willow once and for all. He’d make her pay for what she’d done to Cordy.

Because the thought that this was largely his fault was unbearable. As was the notion that Cordelia had ever truly loved Willow. Lies were always safer, especially if you believed them…

He looked to Dalton for the first time, then, assessing the other vamp. He felt weak and relatively powerless, just like Xander. But Xander had seen him wield power that had made Willow tremble. Power that one day he might learn to use.

He licked his lips in anticipation. “Just what does this Order of yours want with me, anyway?” he asked, his voice sounding loud and hollow in the quiet room…

Buffy purred and curled around Spike’s body, smiling when Drusilla lay down behind her. This felt wonderful, wrapped between her two lovers, safe within their protective arms.

“Pet?” Spike murmured sleepily, looking up at her with big, blue eyes.

“Yeah?” she asked with a soft smile, reaching up to caress his platinum curls.

“Don’t do it again,” he grinned.

Buffy scowled at him. “That’s a given,” she sulked, annoyed.

Drusilla giggled and sighed. “Our poor dark pixie. Poor, poor pretty thing caught in the middle,” she sighed, one arm reaching over Buffy to rest on Spike’s waist.

Buffy started at that, recognizing the words from the prophecy Dru had spoken back in England. “What are you talking about?” she asked, confused. “What about Cordelia?”

“Loved by both and caught between them,” Drusilla smiled that knowing smile. “They loved her so, but they hated each other more.” She sighed. “If only they’d loved each other better…”

Buffy shivered. “You weren’t talking about Spike at all,” she realized with sudden relief. The thought that that prophecy could loom up yet another day was something she’d been afraid to consider.

Dru just looked at her blankly, false innocence on her face.

Buffy frowned. “Wait a minute… You didn’t remember that trance. How can you…?” she trailed off, confused. “You knew all along?” she asked, confused.

“Mommy cannot imagine what her darling girl is referring to,” Dru shushed her with that mischievous smile.

“You knew it wasn’t Spike that was going to die the whole time,” Buffy accused. “You let me believe… Why?”

“If I hadn’t seen Spike die, would you have stopped in time?” Dru asked curiously.

Buffy frowned at that. “Did you see him, or didn’t you?” she demanded.

Riddles and enigmas swirled in the backs of Dru’s eyes. But the elder vampiress merely yawned and went to sleep.

Buffy’s brow furrowed at the conundrum before retiring into the arms of her family once more. She was starting to see why Spike had stayed with Drusilla for so long. Such mysteries would surely take an eternity to unravel…

The ceremony that made Willow Master of the Hellmouth was surprisingly magic-free. Just a bit of ritual combined with millennia’s worth of bureaucracy, tweaking every little detail. Spike yawned when the liturgies kept going on and on and…

Drusilla scowled at him and tried to look prim in her seat. Almost as if the leftover Catholic instincts from her nunnery days were kicking in and ordering her to behave herself in church.

Buffy smiled at Spike’s predicament and reached over to take his hand in hers. Their fingers clasped lightly, played with rings and caresses. Thighs brushed casually.

It was amazing how much faster tedious events went when they were at each other’s side.

Willow remained cold and rigid throughout, eyes never once straying to where Xander fairly cowered in fear in the back of the room. Blank eyes watched Dalton as he made his pronouncements. And, only once the deal had finally been completed with the bond of blood, did she allow herself a small smile.

The Hellmouth was all she had now. And, oh, she would rule it…

Xander fled as soon as Dalton was done.

Leisurely, Buffy, Spike, and Drusilla followed. Buffy caught Xander’s hopeful but fearful eyes on her, but she ignored him. She’d felt sympathy for him once, and it had made her trust him. But now it was too obvious that he’d wanted Spike dead from the beginning. And that was a betrayal she wasn’t likely to forget anytime soon.

They left the mansion behind to enjoy the last few hours of night together.

Drusilla twirled about in the night breeze and then, on one pass, snatched the ribbon right out of Buffy’s hair.

Buffy let out a little exclamation of protest before chasing after her sister, laughing all the while.

Spike chuckled when Dru managed to pirouette perfectly away from Buffy’s lunges. After Buffy’s first few tries, he jumped in to help.

The three of them ended up at the top of a small hill in Shady Hill Cemetery, tangled on the ground as they fought over the ribbon and laughing out into the night.

Finally vanquished, Dru collapsed atop them, head in Spike’s lap and feet in Buffy’s. “I feel like visiting some place with thunder next,” she sighed. “Wind and bright lightning that cuts across the sky.”

“Sounds lovely, pet,” Spike agreed, handing Buffy her hair ribbon back with a small smile.

“I’m game,” Buffy agreed, tying her hair back in place and giving Dru’s foot a playful swat in retaliation.

Drusilla just laughed. “Our golden girl is complete once more,” she announced, fingers angled in a little picture window through which she looked at Buffy’s restored ponytail.

“Or not so golden at the moment,” Spike chuckled, pointedly tapping her hairline where the brown was starting to grow back in.

“Speak for yourself, rootboy,” Buffy retorted.

Spike sighed and lay back, bringing Drusilla’s head to rest on his stomach. “Think ‘m getting tired of the bleach,” he announced. “What would you girls think of black?”

Buffy sniffed. “But it’s so pretty white!” she insisted.

“You could always compromise and dye it gray,” Dru teased.

Spike tried to scowl down at her. She couldn’t see, of course. “Thanks ever so for the helpful suggestion there, pet,” he retorted sarcastically.

“I still want to see it red,” Dru pointed out.

Spike snorted. “You go redhead, and I will,” he shot back.

Buffy shuddered. “No thank you. I’ve had enough of redheads for now.”

Dru seemed to sober at that. “Poor pixie,” she said sadly, “so full of hate… It really is best that we leave before her eyes stretch further.”

“We’ll worry ‘bout it all tomorrow,” Spike announced. His hand reached out for Buffy’s, and she lay back on the grass as well, turned at an angle so that their heads were almost touching. “Right now I just wanna enjoy the night…”

They were silent, then, staring up at the stars – and, possibly in Dru’s case, speaking with them – listening to the sounds of night, savoring each other’s touch.

And when the first pink line of the sun touched the horizon, they reluctantly got up to go, banished within closed walls once more.

Buffy took Dru’s hand and helped her up. Smiled mischievously, and then shoved her into Spike so hard, they both toppled. “Race you home,” she shot back at Dru, already taking off with a laugh.

Dru mock-growled at ran after, Spike trailing behind their little race to the mansion. Dru caught Buffy right at the threshold and felt the childish impulse to stick her tongue out. She did so.

And Buffy laughed and kissed her.

“My childe should know by now that mommy always wins,” Dru scolded.

Buffy smiled softly. “I wouldn’t have it any other way,” she whispered, “sire…”