Despite the sun-blocking technology of their vehicle, Buffy and Dru had both insisted they stay in the sheltered back sleeping area during the scorching days. Spike, who apparently had no problem with the most intense sun anywhere on the planet – or who at least pretended that the baking sun didn’t bother him – drove during those two days.

It had seemed a blessing for all concerned when they finally reached the coast, however, and they dove into the nightlife of Lagos with newfound vigor. Buffy had still been weak from her ordeal, and for several days she’d just lain in the bed of the old colonial mansion they’d ‘acquired’, while Spike and Dru brought her all sorts of treats.

On the fourth day, she’d gone out to hunt on her own, although she’d felt Spike’s presence nearby, watching her to make sure she was well enough. Her silent shadow had been comforting for about a week before she’d started to get annoyed, and one day she’d ducked into a side alley before he could see her and nabbed him as he passed by. After one very stern lecture and several impromptu orgasms that had assured Spike that she was as fit as ever, she’d been left to her own devices.

Until tonight.

They’d known the Order would eventually find them, of course. It had eternity and quite a lot of manpower. What they hadn’t expected was the identity of the ‘hunter’ who finally found them.

“Will our boy bring us back in chains, then?” Drusilla inquired curiously, lounging back on the divan.

Spike snorted. “Will he get his ass kicked tryin’, you mean,” he retorted.

Xander just grinned, shrugged out of his coat, and took up the only available armchair in the room. “Dalton told me to find you,” he conceded. “Unofficially.”

“Unofficially?” Buffy repeated curiously, her arms wrapped lightly around Spike from behind as they sat together on the bed.

“Officially,” Xander agreed, “you’ve all committed horrible crimes against the Order and its laws. Well, except Buffy. Caleigh is officially outraged and has every man she can spare searching up and down Egypt for you. Although we were a bit iffy about that last part for a while,” he conceded. “I mean, we hoped you’d have the common sense to go elsewhere, but…” He shrugged.

Buffy and Drusilla gave Spike smug little looks. He snorted; after all, he’d known that would be the first place to look, too. He just hadn’t cared whether they were found.

“And unofficially?” he demanded, squirming in annoyance in Buffy’s arms. He didn’t try to break free, though. Heaven forbid. He just figured she should know that he deserved a nice, lengthy apology. Preferably with blindfolds and multiple blowjobs…

Xander’s expression turned serious, and he stared down at his hands. “Caleigh knows you’re the ones who put her in power. In fact, it seems she figured it that way.”

A low growl grumbled through Spike’s chest. “Shouldn’t have trusted that bitch…”

“Why not, my sweet?” Drusilla asked innocently. “All she ever did was warn me in time to save you.”

Spike muttered, pissed that he couldn’t find some specific grievance to pin on the new Order leader. Things just weren’t right in the world if he hadn’t made an enemy out of the big cheese.

“In all fairness, Dalton played a bit with you, too,” Xander offered. “Played with me, too. Funny. No one ever bothers to figure out who sired Council members. They’re not Masters, so no one gives a hoot.”

“That li’l twerp is Caleigh’s?” Spike repeated in disbelief.

“Oh, yes, indeed.” Drusilla sighed and laid her head back against the pillows, causing her long hair to cascade over them in a dark wave. “He tried to hide it from me, you know. When he let me into his mind…” She giggled. “Silly boy doesn’t realize that I know all…”

Frankly, by this point, all Buffy wanted was to never have to deal with the damn Order again. “So they’re not out for our blood, then?”

Xander shrugged. “They have to keep up appearances. And, really, would it kill you to lay low for a few decades?”

“Yes.” Three voices in unison created a rather startling effect.

Xander just laughed. “I told them you’d say that. But they still wanted to make their offer. You’re, uh…not planning on overturning things, are you?”

Spike snorted. “Never wanted to go to that hellhole in the first place. Couldn’t drag me back if you tried.”

Drusilla’s expression was more melancholy, but she nodded as well.

“I’ll deliver your message,” Xander agreed.

“You’re leaving us once more, then?” Drusilla sounded terribly disappointed.

Xander frowned. “I have my place for now,” he answered slowly, considering his words carefully.

“Saw the light in your eyes during the mayhem, mate,” Spike pointed out. “Must get right boring playing errand boy to all the snoots. No excitement in that.”

The younger vampire shrugged. “I make my own fun,” he retorted, giving Buffy a little eyebrow waggle.

She smiled in response, understanding part if not all of his reasons for staying.

“Besides,” he added, “it’s a new regime. Maybe they’ll be less dull than the old one.”

“Yes, because Dalton is such an exciting, charismatic character,” Spike retorted with a sarcastic roll of his eyes.

“If not, I can always quit,” Xander conceded.

“There is that,” Dru agreed dryly, rising to her feet and gliding across the room to perch on the arm of his chair. “And that silly girl of yours?”

Xander squirmed uncomfortably at that. “She’s Harmony. She did what everyone expected.” He shrugged the incident off.

“Caleigh’s not stringin’ her hide up for Christmas?” Spike asked skeptically.

“Vengeance is overrated. As is punishment, really. So, she’ll betray everyone and everything when she thinks it’s in her own best interests. At least she’s predictable. And, given some of the vampires back home, that’s almost as good as loyalty.”

Drusilla’s hand came up to caress his cheek, and she studied his face. “You’ll find your destiny,” she promised. “One day…”

“Given the source,” he joked, “I’d say it’s written in the stars…”

Beyond the lights of the city where farmers still worked their fields as humans had been doing for millennia, the stars shone brightly in the blackness, a dance of tiny lights before Dru’s eyes.

“They last forever, you know,” she murmured softly to her two companions, eyes never leaving the midnight vault above them.

“Well, actually…” Buffy began.

Spike coughed pointedly.

“Er…right. Forever,” she hastily amended.

“I could’ve been one of them, you know.” Drusilla sounded wistful, as if she were in mourning. Although only the heavens knew for what. Her girl suspected in the back of her mind that perhaps Dru had held some affection for Cassandra, and her Spike thought that perhaps she was feeling echoes of Buffy’s loss. Best to both leave them with their illusions. “Ruling within those hallowed halls, I could’ve persisted for millennia…”

Spike snorted. “Unless the Dareians picked another war. Which you know they will. And weren’t the Honovins rattlin’ sabers with our emissaries just last spring? And don’t even get me started on the bloody Order of Tan…”

“I would have persevered,” Drusilla insisted, cutting off his little tirade. “True immortality. It’s something so few of us ever find.”

“Better off without it, luv,” he retorted. “What’s the point of existin’ forever if you don’t ever live?”

Her lips quirked into a smile. “I suppose that’s another sort of immortality,” she teased him lightly, turning her gaze back to earth and her beautiful boy. He lay back on the grass, posture and expression cocky, and she knelt down before him, crawled up the length of his body. “You’ll be infamous long after we’ve all faded to dust, my William. Such a bad, bad boy they’ll never forget…”

He grinned. “I thought I behaved myself quite well, considerin’ the trick I pulled on Heinrich way back,” he countered, proud of his mischief.

Dru laughed, and even Buffy chuckled. “Oh, you’re hopeless, my sweet, and I love you for it.” Her lips descended on his slowly, savoring his taste.

Buffy watched Dru partake of her childe’s lips with a wistful sigh. She could still feel the ache in her chest, the void where her own childe had once been. But, if nothing else, their latest little adventure had at least distracted her and kept her from dwelling too much over these last few weeks.

“You never really get over a loss like that. You can always feel it if you look. But if you don’t go looking for the pain all the time, it doesn’t hurt so much.” Xander’s last words to her before he’d left to return to the Sanctuary that evening. And all too true, she was beginning to realize.

“We’re leaving our girl out,” Dru chided Spike when his hand somehow managed to worm it’s way down her pants.

Buffy shook her head and laughed at the suddenly contrite expression on Spike’s face. She could only dimly remember a time now when their mating would’ve made her jealous; it felt like lifetimes ago, and it was. “I like watching,” she said coyly, resting her chin on her folded arms as she watched them.

“You like joinin’, too,” Spike pointed out. She let out a little squeal when he caught her wrist and pulled her over into his lap.

Drusilla’s fingers curved lazily around one long dark lock of Buffy’s hair. “Our pretty girl, returned to us.”

Spike sighed and lay back, pulling Buffy up so that she straddled his chest. His fingers played up and down the bare flesh of her thighs, drawing her skirt up around her waist. The scent of her arousal hit him hard, and he bucked up only to find that Dru’s hands had been busy as well, and she now had his bare cock in her hands. “My girls…” he whispered huskily, catching the cheeks of Buffy’s ass in a bruising grip and pulling her sex down over his face.

Buffy let out a little gasp of ecstasy, and her body arched back when his tongue pierced her folds. He was pressing exquisitely delicate kisses along her slit now, and his thumb had found her clit and was playing with it idly. And, oh god, this was heaven…

She heard him moan beneath her, and his whole body bucked, driving his tongue even farther inside her. In the back of her mind, some dim sense of awareness of her two lovers let her know that Dru had mounted him behind her and was riding his cock slowly.

“So talented, our boy,” Dru murmured, squeezing her eyes shut tight and rocking against her mate roughly. She collapsed forward with a gasp of sudden pleasure when she got the angle just right, and her head came to rest of Buffy’s shoulder, her nose filled with the scent of the other vampiress’ perfume. Time to pleasure both her lovers…

A strangled scream escaped Buffy’s lips when Dru’s hands found their way up her blouse to cup her breasts roughly. One minute caressing, the next squeezing hard. Rapid jolts of pain/pleasure that left her aching for more.

Head thrown back and leaning against Dru’s, she cried out into the night, and it seemed her climatic screech echoed infinitely out into the time. Through all times and all places. The oldest cry in both the demon and human vocabularies…

She came to at last, dimly aware that Spike was still lapping up her pleasure, that Drusilla’s thumbs flicked over her nipples. With a temporary gasp of exhaustion, she rolled to the side, lying down on her back with a blissful smile on her face and smiling up at the stars.

Beside her, she could hear Dru and Spike reach their own climaxes, felt the ground pulsating with the wild thrusts of their hips. And it was all so beautiful, so perfect. She’d thought once, that first night the three of them were together again, that the magic had been lost. But it hadn’t. She’d only learned that their love was only one wonderful fragment of her existence…

Turning her head to look at them, she smiled. “I love you,” she whispered. The fingers of one hand came up to run through Drusilla’s hair. “I love you both so much…”

A dark light lit up Dru’s eyes, and she rolled off Spike, crawling over Buffy’s body until the younger vampiress was cradled between them. “Magic words…” she whispered, kissing Buffy’s throat softly.

Spike purred and turned on his side to face her, his head resting in the crook of her throat and one hand spread possessively over the flat of her belly.

“I love you, William.” Buffy’s lips brushed dark curls before turning back to Dru. “And I love you, Dru.”

Drusilla just tisked and leaned in close. Whispered one word against Buffy’s ear.

Buffy frowned. “You’re kidding?”

“‘Drusilla’ is much better, isn’t it?” Dru grinned.

Buffy considered for a second. “No, I like it,” she decided. “I was just caught off guard.”

“Shouldn’t have been,” Dru murmured. Her hand came up to rest over Spike’s on Buffy’s stomach. “Finally told your mommy the magic words.”

Buffy’s brow furrowed. “I’ve told you I loved you before…?” But, as she thought about it, she couldn’t think of a single specific instance. In fact, she couldn’t even really define how she had come to love the other vampiress, just that it had crept up so slowly upon her that she hadn’t even noticed the change. Odd. Ah well, there was plenty of time to fix that now. “My bad,” she agreed with a little smile. “I love you…Abigail.”

“Love my sweet Buffy, too…”

Behind her, Spike muttered something incoherent that was probably a similar sentiment. And she would’ve sworn there was some bit about ‘even if Buffy is a silly name’, but she ignored it.

She lay back down, allowing their sleepy languor to comfort her.

“I could show you, you know,” Drusilla offered slowly. “’S been so long since we last visited England… My gravestone was still there last time, all bright and shiny.”

“’S a bloody slab of gray concrete,” Spike snorted.

Dru patted his hand affectionately, the way one would try to soothe a cranky child to sleep. “So long ago now…” she sighed. Dark eyes looked up at Buffy from under her long lashes.

“I don’t think I can right now,” Buffy answered softly. She felt Spike’s body stiffen behind her, watched Drusilla’s expression turn sad. Neither of them seemed surprised. Just disappointed.

“Our little girl has all grown up.” There was both pride and wistfulness in Dru’s voice.

“I was… Actually, I was planning on leaving later this evening,” Buffy confessed, almost relieved that they’d known in advance. She hadn’t exactly relished the idea of telling them. She’d almost been sure they’d try to stop her, that at least Spike would throw a hissy fit.

“Can’t even spend another day?” was his only protest, however.

She turned to him, her thumb tracing his cheekbone fondly. “I just need to…be alone for a while,” she assured him. “Not forever, but…”

“You’re tired of me almost gettin’ us all killed,” he snorted with amusement.

She giggled and rolled her eyes. “God, I think I’d die of boredom if you didn’t almost get us killed at least once a decade,” she teased.

He grinned up at her and placed a gentle kiss on her lips. He was so sweet on her tongue just then that it almost pained her to break away, but she did so nonetheless. “Besides, we had plenty of fun over the past few weeks to last me a good, long time,” she teased.

Drusilla laughed at the mock-offended expression on his face and hugged Buffy tighter to her. “Poor, poor Buffy. Such a rough time you’ve had of late.”

“I’ll deal.” Now that the words were finally out, she felt strangely energized by her plan. On her own really and truly, no one else’s whims to respond to but her own. “After all, I plan to live forever.” She let a hint of fang show in her grin.

“Don’t we all?” Drusilla added with a wistful sigh. But then her mood brightened once more. “You must stop by for tea, of course, whenever you’re near.”

“Tea and biscuits,” Buffy promised. She leaned in and nuzzled Dru’s brow. The two women embraced for a long moment before pulling apart. And Buffy could almost have sworn she saw tears in Dru’s eyes. Strange, that fond expression. Something in it really did remind her of the mother she’d once had so long ago. All those years of Dru calling herself ‘mommy’, and finally Buffy spotted the fundamental truth in the title.

With a little blush, she straightened her skirts, pulling them back down around her knees where they belonged. She needn’t have bothered. She caught Spike in a last, passionate embrace, and it was only a matter of time before he’d yanked her skirt right back up, his thumb catching her clit roughly for one last farewell orgasm.

Their lips slanted over each other’s violently, and she let his mouth drink down her scream of release. Only seconds later she pulled away, panting, her forehead pressed to his in a gesture of tender affection. “I’ll miss you, my loves…” Reluctantly, she pulled away, straightening her skirts yet again with a satisfied little smile.

“Only one rule,” Drusilla cut in sternly.

Buffy cocked her head to one side. “What’s that?”

“Must never say good-bye. Because eternity will always bring us back together.”

Buffy smiled. “Right.” She blew them one last kiss and was gone into the night.

“Was beginnin’ to think one of us would end up holdin’ her hand forever,” Spike grumbled unconvincingly, lying back into Dru’s arms. “’Bout time she went off on her first solo adventure.”

“Second,” Drusilla corrected absentmindedly, fingers running lightly through his hair.

“First voluntary solo adventure,” he corrected, sounding annoyed. He buried his face in the curve of her neck, breathing deep of her scent.

Drusilla startled at the wetness that brushed the flesh of her throat. “Oh, William, my sweet…” She rocked him. “Are you…crying?”

“Don’t ever cry,” he insisted sullenly. “You should know that by now.” He didn’t abandon his hiding spot against her throat, however.

“Of course not,” she cooed to him softly, planting light kisses in his hair.

They sat like that in silence for some time, Drusilla looking up at the stars and smiling softly.

“You planning on buggerin’ off, too?” he finally built up the guts to ask.

“I think I would like to visit England again,” she commented thoughtfully. “Revisit all the romance of the past. The alley where we first met… If you’ll come with me, of course,” she offered.

Gratefully, he smiled up at her, and if his cheeks were still slightly damp, she didn’t comment on it. “Wouldn’t miss it for the world,” he agreed, kissing her briefly. “But what about…?”

She hushed him with a fingertip to his lips. “When the time comes, she’ll know where to find us. Just like we always know where to find each other, my love. Some bonds cannot be broken.”

He smiled. “Can’t argue with that.”

Auckland was cool and pleasant this time of year, with clear skies that showed an endless canopy stars. Stars from the other half of the world. Stars she’d never have seen had her brief existence ended back in California.

Buffy smiled up at them as she entered the local vampire clan house. It was a small place; apparently, a bit of a skirmish better two rival factions had broken out earlier that year, and the city’s undead population had been cut almost in half. They’d rebound soon, though, she had no doubt. But until then…

She grabbed the nearest minion by the front of his shirt, dragged him up so that they were eye-to-eye. “Who’s in charge around here?” she demanded.

He squeaked and flailed wildly for a few minutes, but it was enough for her to get something about their boss being in the back room.

“Thanks.” She smiled overly brightly and sweetly as she dropped him back on his ass and made her way boldly through the rather stunned gang in the entrance room. Too stupefied to stop her, apparently.

She felt a momentary pang when she saw the leader. His hair was shockingly white, and he appeared almost as a ghost of her past. But she could feel Spike and Drusilla, distant yet still impossibly close. She felt a moment’s wistfulness, but shook it off. She’d see them soon enough; right now she was having too much fun…

“Hi,” she hauled him up almost as easily as she’d tossed about his minion earlier, “my name is Buffy Summers. And I’m in charge now…”