Not too long ago, as reckoned by a vampire -- even one who can't decide exactly
how old he is on any given night, depending on how cheesed off he is with his
Sire -- Spike fell. Hard and fast and all those other romance novel cliches, for
a sniping, infuriating, holier-than-thou loser whom he'd once detested -- and
should still, if Spike were any kind of a decent evil bastard. That descent into
madness, though, had ended in a roll on the basement floor and a mind-blowing
fuck, and had left him with the unexpected gift of a warm, corruptible boy who
licked chocolate peanut butter off Spike's face and snored in his ear.

Now, he was falling for Xander again. On the whole, if Spike could have
concentrated enough to remember it, he would've preferred the first experience.
This time, there wasn't any chocolate.

He plummeted, arms flailing, scrabbling for purchase on wet gray nothing that
slid cold through his fingers, misted on his skin. Nothing to touch, nothing to
see -- just endless twilight and wobbling imaginary shapes behind his eyes, that
disappeared when he tried to focus on them. He could have been falling for
seconds, or hours, or years, with nothing to pass the time there in the fog. He
called something -- a name? His own or another? Or was it something else -- a
question? Who, what, when, where, why... Even himself. They all flew from his
lips. Gone. Sucked into the void.

He did remember...something. There had been fire. Fire and light and screaming,
he remembered. He'd known that feeling, that pain that had screeched in his
skull, but a thousand voices had shouted back at it. [Not fair! Didn't *do*
anything! Didn't *hurt* anyone! Just wanted to touch!] Laughter, high and
musical, familiar as the pain, though older -- then silence. No real answer, not
that he'd expected one, but the electric torture had finally faded out, to be
replaced by something even worse: nothing at all.

The emptiness, the silence, drowned out everything, even his own familiar mental
gadflies. Couldn't hear himself think, couldn't think to wonder why.  It
terrified him, because it meant the smart-arsed little voices that lived in his
mind had nothing to say to him, or they were gone entirely-- burned out of
existence. Alone even inside himself... Jagged bolts of panic up and down his
spine as he continued to fall. He almost welcomed the fear, because it gave him
something to concentrate on.

Without warning, that fear was gone. No room for it in the space of [shit!] and
whoosh and shudder as he hit bottom. Couldn't see, could barely feel, but he
just knew he was spread out all over the ground -- smashed flat as a vampire
pancake, and gooey with it, blood like chocolate syrup running out and away.

But he wasn't, he realized after a moment. Not pancake-smashed. Not smashed at
all, except maybe cider-smashed, fourteen sheets to the wind as he scrambled to
his feet and swayed. Saw nothing beyond the sudden swirling colors in front of
his eyes, heard nothing beyond the ringing in his ears and the silence in his
head, but he was still alive. Undead. Whatever. He would have kissed the ground
if he had a clue where his lips were.

*****

Slap and splash of feet on wet pavement, and what a surprise-- Xander's running.

Damn, but he's good at this -- something to be proud of, yeah? Kept his ass
alive on more than one occasion. Maybe even saved Buffy's, Willow's, when he's
run to someone else for help, or for weapons, or to spread the word: "Badness on
its way," so they could all deal with it together. He's not an athlete, could
never be, can't pace himself, just runs until he falls -- but it's meant
something in his life. More than just yeah, Harris is a pussy, like we didn't
already know.

Not here, though.

This is the nightmare-place, which he dimly knows, and he's never saved anyone
here, not even himself. This place is feet on road and heart in mouth, with the
taste of stale vomit at the back of his throat. This is thinking he should stop
and laugh, soon, at Miss Scary Thing 2000 and her dead-fish smile and her 'I
think you'd better run now,' like she's the be-all-end-all compared to some of
the shit that's chased him in the past. Yeah. He'll do that. 'Cause it's funny,
right? He'll stop and laugh. Maybe a little later, like after he's dead. Then
he'll have plenty of time.

This time could be different, though. He might get away, no matter that he never
has before, on this road. He might find a place to hide. He's big now. He's a
grown up. He's a man. No little pj-wearing boy-legs here-- they're long and
strong, scattered with dark hair. And he really is good at this; he knows
running, knows his feet and hands, knows lungs and stretch and sweat and how
long he can go without doubling over and clutching his stomach and gagging on
his own breath. Knows everything, so well that he can run with his eyes closed,
lost in this rhythm of fear and flight.

Flee or fight? It's never been a question, not in this place -- but this time he
might just be fast enough. He might win.

He knows he's lying, but he runs anyway, head down, wet hair flopping in his
face. He doesn't need to see what's up ahead -- there's never anything new.

*****

Just when balance had returned to Spike, when he'd begun to sense rock beneath
his feet, rain pattering on his skin, sentences beginning to form in his mind
complete with subjects and predicates, it happened. Wham! Something slammed into
him, hard, and he was swaying again.

It wasn't that falling, screaming terror of being alone, come back to get
reacquainted -- this was real. Real as the ground, real as blood in his mouth,
real as the echo of pain in his head. Something touched him, flesh to his flesh,
and in that instant, everything changed.

Everything. Changed.

Everything... changes.

Warmth against him, behind him. Body. Muscle. Bones. Skin. Not alone, and
there's a faint cheer from within his skull. Not alone inside, then, either. The
other, the not-Spike, presses against him, hands scrabbling at his shoulders.
Scratchy chin against the side of his neck. Wide chest at his back. Stomach,
hips, thighs, hot and hard down the length of his body.

Hardness of more than muscle -- stiff, insistent cock slides in the rain-slick
cleft of his naked buttocks.

Naked. He's naked. Like Adam with the fruit in his mouth, he knows it for the
first time, and calls it good, echoing a first-father long cursed into memory.
Naked. God. Skin against skin. Wet skin against his back, his arse, ticklish
backs of his knees, and [God, are you there, did you give this to me? This warm
body against me, this breath on my neck?] Warmer than anything in the cold rain.
Sweet, familiar, strange and sharp. [Is he mine?]

Rapture. Someone once told him, years past believing, about the Rapture, and he
had laughed, and scraped her mouth with his fangs, and said it was over, long
over, and they were all that was left on the earth. She'd believed him, had
whispered a bloody novena into his kiss, but he knew nothing, then. This. This
is it, this warmth, this man, *this* the holy terror, and he could stand here
forever, leaning back into this touch.

But there's no forever, there's only now. Panic -- sudden, fast, furious.
Screaming fear and shame and cold air on his neck where there was warm, and none
of it belongs to Spike. Sparks tzot-tzot the length of his spine again,
goosebumps knobble his skin -- all from the outside. The other. He can
feeltastesmell it pouring from whoever is pressed against him, naked skin
shivering, shaking, building until he wants to scream, until he thinks that body
will knock him over just to get him out of the way.

Instead, the world explodes. Or perhaps the world stays still, and he explodes.
Flies apart, pieces of him shooting off like shrapnel -- then pulled back
together. Sucked whole and solid into one quivering, thrumming body, no sign of
the other one to be found. Lost in the dark? Pushed on past him? Gone, yet not,
his skin still warm from the presence, and then...

He's running. Abrupt and awkward from a standing start, but fast as he can, fast
as that body had been moving when it slammed into him. Running blind with
something hard beneath his feet and big, cold raindrops splatting on his head
and the scuff in his ears of soft-soled shoes on asphalt. No time to question
why he's suddenly clothed; only time for running, mindless as a hunted fox.

Footfalls ring out behind him, louder than his own. Loud as thunder, loud as
breaking bones or bootheels on stone, and it just now occurs to him *why* the
one who hit him had run so fast.

[It's coming...]

Words and thought and the knowledge of his own name [Spike, my name is Spike,
once it was Will, but not now...] return with the realization, but so does fear,
and this time it's his own. Bad. Wrong. Worse than anything. Worse than a cold
bed. Worse than falling. Worse than silence in his head. That silence is gone,
anyway. A single mind-voice chants its counterpoint to the footfalls in the
distance -- an endless litany of bugger and fuck and bloody sodding hell, gotta
run, it's gonna touch me. If it touches me...

Spike runs, and behind him, something laughs. He almost thinks he knows it.

*****

BANG! Bang-thud-a-bang.

Tara sat up with a start, her heart thudding almost as loudly as the sound she'd
heard. She realized with a flare of guilt that she'd fallen asleep, sitting in a
chair by the sliding doors, watching the rain. [Maybe it was thunder?] Willow
was still clacking away at the keyboard, so maybe she hadn't heard anything
after all.

After Willow's weird little laughing jag, she'd returned to the computer with a
vengeance. All of her nervous energy had faded away, leaving behind it a calm,
focused drive to search for answers. The photos she'd found in Spike's jacket
had disappeared into Willow's pocket with not another word spoken about them.

[She has to have figured it out,] Tara had thought, but she hadn't dared to
break Willow's good mood by asking -- and it scarcely mattered, at the moment.
Instead, she'd tried to help with the research -- but a few moments of watching
those fingers fly over the keys was all it took for Tara to realize Willow was
in her own groove. She'd called Wesley a few times on the cell-phone, early on,
and asked Tara to run though the list of dream-related spells she knew, but
after that, it was back to typing and clicking. Willow didn't need anybody
hovering over her shoulder, no matter how politely she insisted that Tara
*wasn't* a distraction, so Tara had taken a seat by the window, to wait.

The sky on the other side of the water-streaked glass had been gray as the thing
that surrounded Xander, though far less disturbing. The rain had glowed a misty
silver with the city lights behind it, and she'd thought absently how different
it was from home. There, twilight would have been long gone, the house far
enough from town that the dark just swallowed it up when the sun went down. The
patter of the raindrops was the same, though, that old lullaby against her
bedroom window, soft and low. Eventually her eyelids must have drooped as she
watched and listened, as they were drooping again now.

Thud-bang-thud-thud-thud!

Tara blinked, and saw Willow jump in her seat. She hadn't imagined it --
somebody had knocked on the door, and now they were pounding. Willow must have
been so into her rhythm that she hadn't heard it at all, the first time.

"I'll get it." As if she could make up for her dereliction of
doing-nothing-helpful duty, Tara rose to her feet and hurried over to open the
door.

In front of her stood two dripping-wet people and one dry one, with a folded
umbrella over his wrist and a stack of books in his arms.

"What took you guys so long?" Cordelia pushed past Wesley, then Tara, without
waiting for an answer, and walked directly over to Xander's bed, peering over
the rolled wooden footboard at him.

"I was just gonna ask you that," Willow responded, standing up and stretching.
"It's been forty-five minutes since I talked to you last. I was about to call
again just to make sure you hadn't run off the road."

"Sorry," Wesley held up the pile of books as he walked in. "We had to stop at my
place, as well as Cordelia's." Willow was across the room to take them from him
in seconds. Tara ducked out of her way and into the bathroom to raid the towel
rack. Wesley was still apologizing as she came out. "The traffic was horrendous,
as well. People in Los Angeles drive like idiots, in the rain. It's a wonder
more of them don't get killed on the freeway than in the alleyways."

"Especially when they let *some* people drive who have no concept of what the
phrase 'Angel, for God's sake, pick a lane' means," Cordelia said, turning
around to face them. Her tone was light, but her face was pale beneath the
California tan, her eyes clouded. She accepted a towel from Tara with a
distracted, "Thanks," and carefully wrung out her long hair into it. Then she
flicked the wet ends in Angel's direction. "I mean, just because *you* could
walk away from an intimate encounter with a Mack truck doesn't mean the rest of
us wouldn't suffer from severe tire damage."

"He was...er...passing, Cordelia," Wesley said. He gave a worried look in
Angel's direction, as if he didn't quite believe his own explanation.

"Uh-huh. That usually involves signaling. Or so the DMV guy said, the first
three times I took the test. Ooh, for me too? Thanks again." Cordelia grabbed
the second towel from Tara's hands, the one she'd meant for Angel, and wrapped
her hair up in it. Then she moved to the chair where Tara had been sitting, and
flopped down into it. "This...sucks. Why couldn't the
Powers-That-Can't-Just-Send-An-E-Mail have bopped me with a vision? Preferably
*before* Xander decided to sleep with the enemy? I wouldn't even have bitched
about the headache, this time."

She was staring beseechingly at Angel, as if she thought he knew the answer, but
Angel said nothing. He just stood there, water dripping from his leather jacket
and the wilting brown spikes of his hair. Wesley had already bent over Willow's
computer, studying the screen with great interest, but Angel stood silent in the
middle of the room. Tara started to offer him a towel as well, but he shook his
head. Not really at her, she realized a second later, but like he was just
waking up. He walked over to Spike's bed, and gazed at the still, pale form with
an intensity that she could feel, though she couldn't begin to guess what he was
thinking.

Then a hand on Spike's arm, and she could have told Angel it wouldn't work.
Neither would shaking Spike, or yelling his name, or shifting his own face into
demon-mode, as liquid as the rain outside, and growling at him -- though Angel
tried them all in the next few minutes. Everyone in the room turned to watch,
when they heard the half-animal growl.

No reaction. No movement. The same as it had been for an hour and a half, now.
Until Xander kicked at his covers again, and Spike's still-booted foot jerked in
perfect synchrony. Angel started, bending closer to look at Spike's face, then
over at Xander. It wasn't illumined in a flash of lightning, or anything so
dramatic, but as Tara looked at the gold eyes, half hidden under the folds of
his vampiric brow, she knew. *He* knew.

Then Angel straightened to his full height and turned fully around to face them,
and something like lightning did spark in those yellow irises. Tara decided she
definitely didn't want to be around if he ever did turn evil again. But the
strange planes and furrows melted away, and his face looked more human than any
of them, for a second. Confused, like he hadn't really believed anything Willow
had told them on the phone, until he'd seen it himself, and now...

It was gone as quick as it came-- but there was that spark, again, in brown
human eyes. He was suddenly all business, glancing back and forth between Willow
and Wesley, who stood there with books in their hands, now.

"Are they in danger?"

"They might be," Wesley answered with a nod. "We can't be sure."

Angel nodded. "What do we do?"

"We...um..." Willow looked at Wesley, who nodded -- then she took a deep breath
and looked back to Angel. "We wait."

*****

Spike's running.

It's not the running that's the problem. He's chased down hundreds of victims
foolish enough to think they had a chance, that they could hide from something
that sees in the dark -- that they could travel faster than the dead, and yes,
the dead do travel fast, Mr. Stoker. They've been wrong, and he's been happy to
prove them so. He's even chased Dru, games of tag in the forest or the jungle or
down a windy London street, her laughter floating back to him mixed with
snatches of nursery rhymes. 'Run, run, as fast as you can, can't catch me, I'm
the gingerbread man...'

But this is different, because he's running *from* something-- only he doesn't
know what. Just that if he slows down, it'll get him. If he looks back, it'll
get him.

It's not right; William the Bloody doesn't run from anything, except demons at
least five feet taller or three feet wider than him, or have more teeth than he
can count in a single glance, or... He's got a list of rules, somewhere.
Unwritten, like his lengthy essay on how to bollocks-up conquering the world in
two easy steps, or his treatise on why a real man would never bleach his hair
with anything that doesn't burn your nose hairs off when you sniff it. But the
rules exist all the same, and nowhere do they say 'Run like your head's on fire
and your arse is catching, from something you haven't even seen.'

So why can't he stop? He's back to himself; he knows his name and his current
hair color and the fact that he once tried to justify using 'blancmange' as a
rhyme for orange, when he was quite, quite drunk and writing limericks on a wall
in Marseilles. The panic's still there, still burning his throat, but he can
swallow it enough to think, so--  Why. Can't. He. Fucking. Stop.

Why are his legs pumping, feet splashing in puddles on the road, as he runs
towards something in the distance, just slightly brighter than the gloom that
surrounds him? He can finally hear, finally see, not that there 's bugger-all to
hear or see but road and dark and that light in the distance.

It's not exactly safety, but it's something. It draws him, and he runs faster--
though not on purpose. His body just moves more quickly, jerking him along with
it. Heart pounding, blood rushing through his veins, pulse echoing in his
temples. Breath in short gasps, as if his lungs are conditioned to running
*from* things, and...

Bloody hell. Lungs. He's breathing.

*******

Spike's breathing. There's air. There's blood. Inside him. Pumping, not sitting
still and doing its little magic vampire
I'm-not-gonna-tell-you-how-I-keep-you-walking-and-talking thing. He'd stop still
and stare at himself, if he could. But he can't make his legs stop moving, mouth
stop holding that panic taste of copper and battery acid. He runs on towards the
brightening light, because he can't *stop* running.

He can listen, though, to the alien beat of a pulse in his ears. Something he
hasn't felt since he looked into Dru's round, mad eyes a hundred and twenty
years ago in London, and saw them turn gold as she darted for his neck. He can
feel that same pulse in his throat now, feel his chest rise and fall with the
rhythm of his footfalls on the road.

Something's wrong with this. This isn't him. He's a vampire, and vampires don't
breathe -- he's pretty sure it was in the manual. How? He can't concentrate on
how. He can fight the streaks of pure fear that try to tell his mind not to
think, to just run blind like his body, and he can conquer those, but it takes
all he's got. No energy left for how.

The lights ahead glow brighter, and he can see outlines of a city, in the
distance.

Nah, not really a city. Not like L.A.  Not like London, not even the London of
his youth. Just a town with delusions of grandeur. One main drag and a bunch of
suburban neighborhoods clustered around the center, as if being close to the
brightest lights can protect them from what walks down those streets at night--
or runs down them. The university off in the distance, and beyond it, the
vineyards and the sea.

He can't see any of that, but he doesn't have to. He knows it. It's the shape in
his head of the lights, the buildings. The battered and beaten metal sign
looming out of the road ahead of him, that should have Rod bloody Serling
standing behind it, telling him which way to turn, but instead it says 'Welcome
to Sunnydale. ' Too bad he can't stop to run it over. Kick it down. Something.
It's tradition.

Spike laughs as he runs past it, into the city, into the rain-misted lights and
down empty, lonely Main Street. Laughs inside, since his body won't let him
laugh for real. Laughs at the sign, laughs at himself. William the Formerly
Bloody lives -- resides, rather -- in a town with a Main Street. In someone
else's basement, with a warm human lover who no more belongs to Spike than the
bed they sleep in or the cable they pirate.

He knows this much, just as he knows he shouldn't be here now, passing the Sun
Cinema, dark and shuttered, the marquee as blank as his memory of where he
*should* be, or how he got here. Spike laughs again, in his head, but it sounds
hollow, and echoes too loudly in his skull. Or are the voices in his head
laughing back at him? He feels his body shiver as he moves through the heart of
town, the rain pouring down on him. Can still feel the terrifying pounding in
his chest, his instincts telling him to wise up and ignore it, as if this
stubborn body will let him. Need to look around -- check all the shadows.

Mustn't get complacent. Not safe just because it's familiar. How long ago did he
learn that, at familiar hands? Familial hands. Not a human to be seen on the
streets, like for once they all know something nasty's out and about. Much
nastier than a pathetic crippled vampire who can't bite up anything worse than
cartoon cereal. No hunting, no stalking, no riling up the townsfolk anymore, not
for Spike -- and not smart enough to even lock himself in the basement and
cower, like they're doing. No, he's out playing lamb to the slaughter, for
something he can't even turn around to identify.

[Wait! There! Someplace safe!] his body screams at him. Run, thwap, rubber soles
on asphalt, then on concrete, as he jogs up the sidewalk. Takes the front steps
of the ruined Sunnydale High building two at a time, crosses the courtyard and
he's standing, stopped, finally stopped, at the skewed front doors.

Safety? This is supposed to be safety? Running *towards* the Hellmouth? [Body,
what the hell are you thinking?] Giggles in his mind, from the snarky little
voices, and Spike thanks whatever gods look after insane demons that they
haven't disappeared after all.

Still, he can't let them *know* he's actually glad to hear from them. [Mind,
what the hell are you thinkin'? We are vampire. We don't giggle. Especially
hysterically.] One of them snaps at him. [We don't breathe, either, you
thick-headed git.] But he can't quite wrap his mind around what it's trying to
tell him, or which one it is. Still-- whatever the thing that's chasing him is,
it's out *there*, and it's not inside, which is reason enough to go in, as if he
has a choice in the matter, when his body's already yanking on the doorhandles,
and tumbling into chaos.

The doors slam shut behind him, and it's nothing like he expected. Brightly-lit
hallway. Surrounded by laughter and shouts, swallowed up in a crowd of pushing,
jostling bodies, moving along with them. Touch of warm shoulders and arms.
Squeak of locker doors. Smell of students and teachers and chalk dust and teen
spirit. Wrong, wrong, wrong, like all this has been wrong...

Not right-- these halls should be dark, burnt-out, should smell like fear and
cordite and fried snake, which smells vaguely like chicken. Spike remembers this
place -- dark and silent and the world was ending, and the sky had fallen on
him, and somebody pulled him out from under it.

Now it's like that world's been turned on its head, and he's walking on that
darkened sky, the earth above it bright and loud and teeming with life. The
student-body is an animal unto itself, writhing its way through the halls,
sweeping Spike along with it. An electric bell rings, somewhere in the ceiling.

"Hurry, we'll be late!" comes a young girl's voice from somewhere in the melee.
It's familiar. Willow? He tries to shout for her, shout 'Red?' but nothing comes
from his lips.

The crowd-snake thins out as it undulates further down the corridor, until it's
only his own uncontrollable body that's pulling Spike along. There, at the
junction of the next hall, a classroom door. Slightly ajar, and he hears the
girl's voice raised in laughter, within. His body moves toward it, and the
fear-shivers calm, just a bit.

Before he can get there, though, a flash of silver. Dark blur out of the corner
of his eye, and Spike's feet stop moving. If he could control himself, he'd be
frozen by what he thinks he saw, but can't have -- as it is, his head turns
towards the wall of its own accord.

To see the hallway and its contents reflected in the scratched-up depths of a
full-length mirror.

Reflected. He stares at it, transfixed by the image before him. It blinks when
his eyes decide to close and open. Runs a hand through sweaty rain-drenched hair
as he feels his own hand making the same motion. Straightens his button-up
shirt. But it isn't him.

Dark eyes, big enough to suck him into the mirror, muddled with uncertainty.
Dark hair, long and falling in his face, water dripping down his skin. Blue and
green print shirt, the collar open a few buttons down to show the tanned throat
beneath. Stubborn chin above it, and thin lips twitch nervously, though they
look full enough when he pouts or frowns or sucks on his own finger-- or someone
else's cock. Not that he's doing any of those things, but Spike has seen them
all before.

Just never echoing Spike's own motions in a silvered surface that he's never
expected to get any use out of, ever again. But then, it *isn't* him.

Spike studies himself in the mirror. Not himself. Xander. Xander in the mirror.

Not even the Xander he knows, not quite. Something wrong with the body before
him; tall enough, but too slender. The hair too long in the wrong places, the
paisley print shirt an older sort of loud than the tropical ones the boy wears
now. The brown reflected eyes are soft and huge, like somebody's just let him
know Bambi's mum doesn't make it to the end of the flick. And there's something
else...

There, on his forehead, where the sweat-damp hair is sticking. Something written
there, stamped red on his skin. It tickles Spike's memory even as his hand --
Xander's hand? -- reaches up to rub at the letters.

V-I-C-T-I-M ...

Xander in the mirror frowns back at him, when his scrubbing motions do nothing
but make them stand out more. Red letters against pale skin, still wet from the
rain, or from the sweat dripping down from his long bangs. "I'm not..." Spike
hears, as Xander tries to comb that fringe of hair down to hide the marks. The
lips in the mirror move. Spike's lips move -- but the voice is Xander's. It
cracks on the last word.

[What is this? Which of us am I? Is this the Red King's dream, or mine?] And all
of a sudden, as a soft nineteenth-century voice starts misquoting Alice at him,
he knows. This isn't real, though it's real as anything, at the same time. The
working lungs, the beating heart, the uncontrollable limbs -- it makes a lunatic
sense. It's a nightmare. He's dreaming he's sharing Xander's body, like the hero
of too many bad B-grade sci-fi movies -- or one of old Rod's little half-hour
monochrome mind-fucks. He's trapped inside his lover, who can't even hear him
trying to shout. Be a good flick, if he were curled up with Xander watching it,
bowl of M&M's on the armrest between them -- but he's not.

If he's dreaming, he should be able to wake up, yeah? He tries. Thinks really
hard at the mirror. [My name is Spike. I'm dead, but still kicking. My hair's
peroxide-blond, I've got cheekbones to die for, and I'd sell my left tit for a
good hot fudge sundae. I'm dreaming, and I want to wake *up*.]

Nothing, except Xander looking back at him, young and scared and far too edible.
Hot fudge indeed. [Needs to find a vampire to protect him. Be the only one to
eat him up.] He can't tell what part of him is thinking it. Which voice. The
demon, the man, the peanut gallery. [Such a *little* boy, in this big scary
world.]

"I'm not," Xander's voice says again with Spike's throat, with Spike's tongue,
and Spike thinks, [Not what? Edible? Oh, yes, believe me, you are.] But Xander
shakes his head, brushing his brow with his fingers, frowning.

"You should leave the narcissism to those who possess something worth studying
in a mirror, Mr. Harris. Don't you have a class to get to?"

A little dash of panic again, because the body knows this voice. Spike finds
himself spinning around to face...a bald head bobbing a few inches under his
nose. It's a troll, he thinks at first. Not like Heimarr, the towering Norse
buffoon he met in that bar in Copenhagen -- but an honest to god Three Billy
Goats Gruff troll, the tiny sort that hides under bridges and snaps you up, snip
snap snuff, with its sharp little teeth. A troll in a suit.

"Don't you have a tombstone you're supposed to be rotting under, Snyder?" he
hears, feels Xander say, defensively brave.

[Snyder... I know that name... Snyder...] Xander's voice in his memory: 'I
should introduce you to Principal Snyder.' Night air rushing past them on the
way to Giles's flat to play Quiz-Kids and eat pizza with the Scooby Gang, Spike
concentrating on keeping his demon and its territorial rage in check, barely
hearing his lover try to make conversation. 'No, wait, he's dead. But then, so
are you. You could do lunch and discuss my dreary home-life...'

The little man snorts. "Somebody's gotta keep things in order around here. It's
not as if *he* could handle it."

He points down the hall. Another man, taller, stout, stands next to a row of
lockers, playing with a strange yellowish dog-creature that jumps up
energetically to lick his nose.

"He says it followed him to school. There are rules about that. Rules!"

The tall man pats the laughing dog-thing on the head; laughs along with it.
"Down boy! That's a good doggie..."

It rips his head off. In one gulp. Spike's impressed. The blood fountains from
the man's carotid artery, spattering the floor. Strangely, it doesn't make Spike
hungry, in his dream of Xander's body, of what Xander would be thinking; he just
finds it aesthetically pretty.

"See!" Snyder says. "That's what tolerance and understanding get you. It's no
way to run a school. Now I'll have to get a custodian to come clean that up, and
you can never find one when you need one..."

The laughing thing turns its face towards them, and Spike can see what it is.
Not dog at all, but round-headed hyena, gold eyes flashing above a grinning,
blood-drenched muzzle. 'I ate a pig once,' Xander confesses in Spike's memory.
'I was kind of possessed...' It laughs, in bubbling silver circles, faster and
faster. He knows this laughter.

Spike blinks at the bulky, headless form that still stands somewhat forlornly in
the hallway. Blinks again when Xander's voice says, "I didn't do it. I wasn't
there. I never bit anybody's head off." He sounds like he's apologizing for
something, all the same. The hyena still laughs.

The large man's body stumbles around for a bit, then drunkenly weaves its way
down the hallway and out of sight, still trailing blood. The hyena turns around
fully, apparently finished with that meal -- but it's licking its lips. Looking
hungrily at Spike and the strange, short man, who gives a knowing look.

"You didn't do it, Harris?" He laughs, short, sharp, nothing like the crazy
looping laughter of the hyena. "No, you weren't there, were you. Not your fault.
Never your fault. You're just the whipping-boy."

"I'm not. You don't know me." Spike feels the surge of anger before it reaches
Xander's voice. "You don't have any idea what I am."

"Don't I?" Flash of an image in front of Spike's eyes, almost too fast to focus
on -- the faded blue of Xander's light summer blanket. Not like his own memories
-- more like what he'd felt at Woodstock, second-hand acid-trip coursing through
his veins. Barrage of sound, feeling, smell, all packed up into a second's worth
of experience. Scent of fabric softener. Cramp in crabbed hands clutching the
blanket. Denim under his naked stomach and a hard bulge against his side, his
own as hard and hot beneath him. Cool air over his bare arse and a rush and
SMACK and he's back in the hallway staring at the sneering, balding stranger.
"Whipping-boy."

"It's not the same." Spike's head shakes from side to side, but he can't tell
from the voice if Xander believes what he's saying. If he, Spike, that is,
believes what... Whatever. Personal pronouns make no sense, so he discards the
need to worry about them.

Especially with worse things to worry about -- the hyena gives a strange snarl,
as if it, too, is unsure, then the sound changes. Of all the noises in the
world, Spike can recognize *that* growl. The body is frozen, Xander's mouth
uncharacteristically still.

[Run, dammit, boy. You're bloody good at it when you have to be, dragged me
along just fine on the way here, so do it now!] This animal isn't what's been
chasing them -- Spike can tell that, though he still has no idea what it was --
but that doesn't make it any less deadly. And he *knows* it's a dream, but...
But if he can't wake up and it eats him-them-him, is he any less dead?

"Um... I think I have a class to get to..." Xander babbles abruptly, taking the
body a step towards the classroom door. There's a sudden, bone-crushing grip on
his/their upper arm.

"How fast do you think you can run, whipping-boy?" the little man asks. "Faster
than that?" He points at the laughing animal, whose mouth opens to reveal rows
and rows of sharp, white teeth. Too many. Spike's eyes, Xander's eyes, flick to
the classroom door again.

"I don't have to run faster than that," Xander whispers.

Eyes close against his will, and Spike's trapped in darkness for a too-long
moment, before the second rush of images comes. Running again. Running, running,
through a cemetery, an arm heavy over his shoulder, someone's hand reaching
around the body between them to clasp his free one as they all three run.
Then... The weight gone, the hand in his, small, warm, still there, but nothing
between them, and the sound of snarling in the night.

It's gone. His eyes open, and he swallows hard. "I don't have to run faster than
the monster," Xander says. "I just have to run faster than you."

Snyder frowns, but his grip loosens, dissolves into mist. Spike's hand goes
right through him as the body takes off running for the door at the end of the
hall, the one with the frosted-glass window. The hyena's laughter echoes behind
him, but he doesn't look back. He can't look back, because Xander chooses not
to.

"Harris, you can't keep running forever!" Snyder calls after him over the
chortling hyena, and something that sounds like the crunching of tiny
troll-bones.

"Can too," Xander mutters as they slip in the back door to the classroom. "Can
too, can too..."

The door shuts silently behind him, and the body crouches down. Walks, silly,
like a duck, hiding below the level of the other students' heads. There are
giggles. Someone hums "Be Kind To Your Web-Footed Friends."

It's insane. Insane to be trapped in some parody of Xander's body, that speaks
to strange little Ferengi-like men in the hallway in Xander's voice, and runs
from slavering hyenas with Xander's legs. Sneaks into Xander's classroom so the
teacher won't catch them coming in late. Spike is already losing the clarity
that he'd had moments ago. Forgetting that it's a dream. It's just him, in
Xander's body, sharing this space. Trying to get to a seat, somewhere up ahead,
without anyone grassing him out.

"Hey Harris -- walkin' kinda funny there. Rough night in the old basement? I
think they sell a cream for that somewhere..."

His head whips around -- to shush the braying voice, hopefully -- but Spike
feels his throat gulp at the sight of the large youth slumped lazily in the desk
he's just passed. A sort of man-mountain-thing, with three cheerleaders draped
over him, giggling and cooing. He's seen the kid before, somewhere. A photo. Pic
of Xander and Jonathan the supertwerp, and this one, all decked out with weapons
for the graduation party. But...

Spike and languages -- spoken, whispered -- gestured. Body language. Always good
to know what's likely to get you beat senseless if you chat up the wrong sort of
twelve foot demon because your bird fancies a threesome. A little faerie that
whispers in your ear, Dru says. Gaydar, the humans call it. Spike thinks it's
funny, since half the ones who say they have it couldn't tell if their own
mother was bent or not.

This one makes Spike's little shoulder-faerie sing the Hallelujah Chorus. So why
as many birds hanging off him as a hyena has fleas?

The hulking football player winks and leans down to look Spike in the eye.
"Gotta maintain the image, bud. Got another two years before *I* get to come
out." Then he sits back up and whispers something in one cheerleader's ear.
Tinkerbell hand-waving motions in Spike/Xander's direction. She titters
appreciatively.

"Don't listen to him," a familiar voice says softly. He looks up to see Tara, in
a desk near the front of the room, motioning him up. "He's just here to confuse
you."

Isn't everyone? Willow, sitting in front of her, is young -- far too young, hair
down to her waist, parted in the middle. Tara shouldn't know her like that.
*Spike* shouldn't know her like that, except for rifled photos in Xander's
shoeboxes. The room is full of students, some Spike recognizes -- at least one
he's positive he ate on parent-teacher night. They're chattering, tittering.
They all seem to be laughing at him. The body moves on, though, stealth-crawling
up the aisle towards her.

Tara's brushing Willow's hair, Long strokes, from the top of her head to the tip
of the burnt auburn length. She motions him to sit across from her, and the body
-- Xander -- complies. The seat ahead of Willow is empty, but a large piece of
notebook paper has the word "SAVED" scrawled across it, and lies on the desk.

In front of Spike, of course, is the Slayer. She turns around and waves.

Willow chatters excitedly to Tara, occasionally glancing at him. " ... I threw
holy water at one of them. And it worked, even though I'm Jewish-- I wonder what
that's about? And then Buffy threw this cymbal at this one who had Xander and
crash-bang! Poof! Slayer one, vampire none! You should've been there. Well, not
really, cause, y'know, terrifying, but still..."

Spike feels himself tap Willow on the elbow. "Hey, Wills, I thought Library Guy
was all about us *not* telling people Buffy's the Slayer." Xander's voice in his
mouth. Still strange, and suddenly strange again, to be speaking to Red with it.
As strange as Xander's name once felt on his tongue, back when it was all
'droopy boy' and 'donut lad.' Spike feels, hears it again: "Oops. Guess maybe I
said that a little too loud myself, there."

She looks over at him and smiles. "No, it's okay. This is Tara. She's my
girlfriend. She knows all about this stuff. Tara, this is Xander."

His eyes blink. His mouth speaks. "Your *girlfriend* ? But...um... what about
me? I mean, what about Oz?"

Willow shakes her head at him, still smiling. "Oh, I've decided to give up on
men -- they're too hairy. But boys are fine --  I'm gonna concentrate all my
efforts on being a mom. Tara's gonna help me -- we've got a kitten together, and
everything. We're getting married next week, and then we're gonna adopt you."

"Excuse me?" Spike feels himself frown. "I'm not a boy." Willow looks at him
gently. "I'm *not*! Anyway, how are you gonna study for your PSAT's, if you
adopt me and have to spend all your time ironing my clothes so they don't get
all wrinkly from being out in the rain?"

"No problem. Tara knows this great spell. Works even better than irony. I mean
ironing." Willow tilts her head and looks at his face. "See, he needs a mom,
Tara. He's got something all over his forehead." She reaches into her knapsack
and pulls out a tissue. Spits on it, and rubs it across Spike's brow. Xander
squirms.

"It won't come off -- I tried."

"No, it's all gone, really, Xander," Buffy chirrups. Her nose wrinkles, then
twitches, then starts to grow longer. Just a little bit. Almost enough to make
it a real nose.

Xander's hand rubs Spike's forehead. "You don't have to lie to me, Buff. I know
it's still there."

"Xander, it's *gone* -- honestly." Willow calls across the room, and Spike's
eyes follow, so he can see someone he hadn't, before. Harmony, sitting in a desk
by the window, putting on lipstick. The shades are pulled down, the whole length
of the classroom, the only light coming from the overhead florescents. "Hey,
Harmony, let me borrow that mirror, please."

"Excuse me? I think not -- you let your boyfriend be mean to me." Harmony snaps
the compact shut, but holds it in her hand. Pouting. Spike knows that pout --
he's slapped it off her face a dozen times, and she's come back for more. But
she's a child, now. Model's face rounded with baby fat.

"Hey, I dumped him, didn't I? And it's not like you need it anyway. You can't
see yourself in it."

Harmony huffs and tosses that long blonde hair back over her shoulder. "I can
pretend. I've gotta look good for my date tonight -- my boyfriend's taking me to
France."

Spike has his doubts about that one. Willow does too, apparently. "On a school
night?" She sounds older. Stronger. The Red he knows, though her face is still
young and pale and nervous. "I bet you don't even *have* a boyfriend. Just give
me the mirror, already."

"I do too. He goes to another school. You wouldn't know him." Harmony grimaces,
but snaps the compact shut and tosses it at Willow, who opens it and shows Spike
his reflection. Xander's reflection. Same bruised dark eyes. Same suspicious
frown.

Nothing written on his forehead, though he saw the word as plain as day, in the
mirror in the hall.

"See? Mom-spit gets everything off."

[You're not his mother. He has a mother. Though he might be better off with you,
come to it.]

She reaches into her purse and hands him a Hershey Bar. "Here -- eat this.
Chocolate always makes you feel better."

Xander doesn't take the chocolate bar. "No. Um. No, thanks. Not always." Fingers
rub at Spike's forehead. He can *feel* the word, still there, still burning on
his skin. What's it mean? Whose victim? Not Spike's.

"I'm *not* ! Dammit, I'm *not!* Why can't he see?" He can hear Xander's voice
saying it, but his own lips don't move. His own throat doesn't buzz. The sound
just hangs in the air.

Spike tries to frown, though the body is already doing so. Why couldn't *who*
see? [Blind as a bat, you are,] his mind-voices taunt. [Wonder whatever happened
to those spectacles you won't admit you ever wore?]

There's a cough from the front of the room, and Buffy tugs on his sleeve.

"Keep it *down*, Xander. You want big-ears to hear us from the library and make
us go fight things? I just wanna be a kid, today." She's suddenly dressed in
teen-sized Osh-Kosh B'Gosh overalls, fluffy hair in two pigtails. "I don't
*like* to kill things."

"Not like *some* people..." Spike hears a voice say softly in his ear. Not
Xander's, but familiar. So familiar. No one seems to hear it but him. Is he
losing it, more than usual? His eyes flick left and right, as if his body has
the same idea. "Paranoid. You *are* crazy, Xander..." the voice whispers at him.
"Just as crazy as Dru."

And what's wrong with that? Crazy's good, crazy's fine. Crazy's... [Wonderful,
when you're not cradling him in your arms and hoping you've not lost him... Shut
up. Shut up. Sod off.]

"I'm not." Xander says again.

"You know, if you keep talking English, the teacher's gonna yell at you," Buffy
tells him. Pokes him on the arm. "You have to speak French. Like me. Veuillez
permettre aux poissons de continuer de danser. Je suis très attiré à lui."

Something about a fish? The teacher would rather they talked about waltzing
fish? A glance from the Xander-body around Buffy at the person sitting up front.
A smooth dark head of hair, bent over a book.

Then she looks up. "Oui, Buffy. Tres bon." Sparkling insect eyes, and waving
antennae. Her head descends again.

Spike's Xander-head bends low, whispering. "She's not the French teacher. She's
the biology teacher!"

"She's subbing. And her *name* is French. Work with me, here." Buffy rolls her
eyes, and turns to Willow. "So... do you think he'll be here? He's *always
late." Only she says it in questionable French: "Le pensez-vous serez-vous ici?
Il est toujours en retard."

"I don't know -- he had a big night on Friday, what with the staking and all.
But I can't believe he wouldn't show up today. I mean, it's all anybody's
talking about!"

"Who's *he* ?" Xander asks with Spike's mouth. "And I am *not* a retard."

Tara frowns. "What do you mean, who's he?"

Harmony laughs from her seat by the window. "Everybody knows who he is. What are
you, new?"

"He's only the coolest guy in the school," Cordelia says. She sits across the
aisle, on the other side of Willow, and snatches Harmony's mirror away. "Which
would explain why you don't know him, of course." Two tiny red dots on her neck,
and Xander blinks when Spike would have. Recognizing them for what they are,
though neater than most would be. She accentuates them with a skinny lip pencil,
until they're huge, though still perfectly round. "There -- now everybody can
see the hickey he gave me on Friday."

"Oh, as if he's *even* interested in you," Buffy tosses her ponytails. "He
walked *me* home on Friday night, after the Harvest."

Harvest. The word rings a strange tingling bell in Spike's head. Nothing he's
ever associated with Sunnydale, specifically. Something old. Angelus, blathering
on about his grandsire. Some half-crocked prophecy that had Darla running home
to the Master for three years to help research, and in the end, slinking back to
them. Tossing her hair the same way Buffy had just done, saying he was off his
nut and she'd much rather travel to places with clean sheets and a decent
skyline.

"But who *is* he?" Xander's voice, Spike's mouth.

"You know him, Xander. We talk about him all the time, Xander. He's our best
friend in the world. Besides you, of course," Tara says. "Don't you remember?"

"But I really don't..."

"Maybe you're crazy..." the whisper that no one hears. "Maybe you forgot him.
Can't be that everybody else did. Has to be you."

Spike looks at the empty seat, because his head turns that way. 'SAVED.' For
who? He'd never heard of any best friend of Xander's, besides Willow and the
Slayer. [No accounting for taste *there*.]

"Shh..." Willow says to Tara. "Xander's got...problems. We don't... Ohmigod,
there he is!" She squeals and points to the front door of the classroom, just to
the left of the bug-teacher's desk.

A tall shadow outside it. The body blinks. Spike can *feel* his heartbeat get
faster. "No," Xander whispers. "Dammit, you can't come here. Buffy's here."

Whatever it is, Spike's suddenly shaking in his seat. Something bad. Something
he doesn't want to see. Something that makes him want to run, now, but he's
petrified by Xander's immobility.

And there's a knock.

"Oui, je sais que vous êtes là." The teacher answers without looking up from her
book. "You're late.  Do you require an engraved invitation?"

"Well, kinda, yeah..." A young male voice, nothing special about it.

"No-- don't let him in!" Xander jumps up from his desk. Spike can feel the
tension singing in his too-tall, not-quite-balanced-right body.

"Xander, what's wrong with you? He's your friend! You go bowling with him,
remember? Xander?" Willow pulls at him, but Xander is standing. Backing away
from the door. Looking at Buffy, who's grown smaller and smaller, until she *is*
a child, in her blue overalls.

"You can't let him in."

"En français, Xander."

"I don't know the French. But you *can't* let him in!"

"But she doesn't have to." The whisperer is back. High and almost whining.
Silver. Rainy, like the rain he can hear pounding on the shaded windows. "You'll 
let him in yourself. You always do."

"No," Xander whispers back. Spike's throat muscles clench. Teeth grind, then
bite at his lips. "No." But it comes. Pouring forward from his mouth, like
everything in him is being sucked out, in this one sound. Spike knows that
feeling, knows the loss and the weakness and the letting go.

"Come..."

No.

"In."



The lights go out.


Part Six: Dark Places

It's dark. Pitch cold black dark. No sound of rain on glass, no graysilver
twilight. Just dark. He's alone, as you can only be in the dark, no matter who's
around you. No matter *what's* around you. [Don't move -- it'll hear you. Don't
breathe, don't... don't just stand there, dipshit. Gotta run. Gotta hide.]

When they'd done nuclear attack drills in school-- and even the most
stick-up-the-ass teachers couldn't hide a cynical eye-roll at this -- they'd
been told to sit in their desks, and put their arms over their heads, just like
for an earthquake. Don't look, because you might be staring at the explosion,
and go blind. Forget that the school would go up in flames, that if they were
close enough to be blinded by a modern nuke, they'd be ashes anyway. Just don't
look. That'll save you.

He knew it was ridiculous even then, though now there's a faint echo of laughter
in his head, from the professional grunt who told him where to place the charges
for maximum effect when he blew the place up himself. Still, it's a foxhole,
sort of. A way to pretend. He slips into a desk, quiet as he can, and hides,
with his eyes closed and his arms over his ears. [I can't see you, I can't see
you, I can't see you...]

*****

Spike used to be afraid of the dark. Once. Back when he was human and frail and
small and all he had to fight off the bad things that lived in it were a worn
stuffed lamb to clutch and the bedclothes pulled tight over his head.

He hasn't been afraid of the dark for a long time. Time came when he got too old
for hiding under the covers, and if he still feared walking home alone at
night... Well, he didn't have to say so, and later, he became one of those bad
things, himself.

Still, Spike wouldn't curse a candle right about now, no matter that no
mostly-sane vampire cares much for fire. Torch, flare, access to a light-switch;
he's not picky. Spike waves his hands around him, feeling for a desk, a chair, a
door. Anything. Anyone.

Nothing. No one.

"Xander?"

It comes out in his own voice. Unsure, rusty with being held inside another
throat for...however long it's been, but his voice. Spike's voice. Spike's
accent, Spike's word. His. Spike's mouth.

And everything changes again.

Spike was free. His hands belonged to him again -- he could move them around,
not that he could see them, but he could feel the expected swoosh of air. He
could hum, and laugh, and listen to the bitter echo in the darkness that
stretched out around him.

Bitter, because he was free, and only in his freedom, did he realize he was
alone. Xander hadn't answered. Xander, his bizarre dream of Xander's voice and
hands and reflection, wasn't there.

His body felt the chill, with no blood to warm it. The silence was deeper, with
no sound of breathing in his ears, no cracking tenor voice in his mouth, only
his own. "God, I could use a smoke." He laughed again, at the sound. "Or a
light. I'd settle for a light."

It glowed in front of him, orange in the black.

"And the morning and the evening were the first day..." Spike muttered as he
walked towards it. [Deja-vu, cept it can't be Sunnydale, unless they've set the
place on fire.] That thought warmed him a little. Couldn't tell how far away it
was, except that it got bigger, after a while. Brighter. A pillar of flame,
rising up, too bright to stare directly at for long, yet lending no light to its
surroundings -- or there was just nothing else there for it to light up.

As he walked, he thought he heard things, familiar voices floating around in the
darkness.

"Here. Drink this. And stop it." Sharp, female, his Sire's little cheerleader
with the take-no-shit crossbow in his face.

"Stop what?"

"Brooding."

"I'm not..."

"Right, you're not brooding. You're sitting there -- on top of a bag of M&M's,
by the way, just thought I'd let you know, so you're not surprised when you
stand up and have chocolate all over your ass -- thinking, 'God, he looks so
helpless lying there, and it's all my fault, my kid and his buddy got attacked
by a monster, and the world's gonna end and Gucci is gonna discontinue the
padded loafer, all because I was smooching Wesley behind a potted plant, for lo,
I am Angel, and I am responsible for all. But you're not brooding."

"Well, not the Gucci part." A crinkle of something, and faint, faint smell of
chocolate. "Um, you... potted plant?"

"Boston fern. Drink your blood. I promise not to tell the Powers That Be that
you were playing tongue-twister with Wes, if you promise to inform me before you
do anything *really* stupid, so I can at least call Willow and have her wait
outside the door with the Ritual of Restoration handy. *And* if you promise to
stop brooding."

"I'm not brooding. I just...don't like waiting."

"Willow says..." The voices faded away, as Spike walked closer to the fire. He
shook them off, like the memory of rain on his hair. They seemed unnatural, had
no place here in the dark. A dream of something happening to someone else.

He couldn't be sure how long he walked, except that the light grew bigger and
impossibly brighter -- but at last he stood in front of the fire, and looked.
Had to look, though what he saw made him wish he'd stayed in the dark.

It was a pyre. A stake in flames. Virgin tied like Joan of Arc at the center,
writhing in her bonds, dressed in white, and screaming soundlessly. Except she
wasn't Joan. Wasn't a virgin of any color, not since Spike had still been young
enough to hide beneath the blankets.

It was Dru, tall and proud in the red-orange glare, for all her body squirmed.
The flames lifted her hair, air currents twisting the curls serpentine around
her face, covering wide-open eyes. Red lips open too, calling someone's name.
Not his. It might have been Father, it might have been Daddy, but it wasn't
Spike. It wasn't even William.

He almost reached, anyway. Almost walked into the fire for her. He'd done it
before, and he would, he still would, after all of it, if he had to. But...

No mostly-sane vampire cares much for fire. It burns dead flesh faster, can
bring the true death of ashes and emptiness, in seconds, leaving nothing. You'd
have to be crazy not to fear it, not to scream and run, not to beg for help.
You'd have to be crazy, to laugh as the flames caressed your skin.

He'd seen her do just that in Prague, though. Scream and laugh at the same time,
sing as the orange tongues of fire flicked across her wrists, climbed her dress
and darted for her hair. The figure on the pyre smiled, now, too late, but it
was wrong, and he knew.

It slammed back into his head with startling clarity. Where he was. What was
happening. Too clear, like he still had cider in his mouth, pisswater though
Dru's brand might be. A drunk's clarity, where *everything* made sense. "S'a
good likeness," Spike said loudly, his voice not catching at all, and why would
it, since muscles don't get dusty from disuse, in dreams. "But you don't know
her as well as I do. Don't have the smile down. Too many teeth."

The fire blazed brighter for a second, sparks whirling up and around like
demented fireflies; then it shrank back down, and down, and down.

She stood across from him, flames vanishing, sucked into her skin. His once and
no longer princess, tangled waves of hair draped around her shoulders, white
frock not even singed. She shone in her own little circle, something sickly and
red, that, like the pyre, gave no light to her surroundings, no light to him. He
knew who it was, should have recognized *that* smile no matter what face she hid
behind.

"The dreamer's thoughts give me shape within, unless I choose otherwise,"
Reikoku said gently -- with Drusilla's mouth, Drusilla's voice. "You called for
the light; you gave me her face."

He stared at her, frankly studying his own memory of Dru, and thought she was
only partly right. His girl had never stood like that, never quite so
mock-humble, as if she was just about to bow. "Haven't had that dream in years,"
he muttered. Not even after Prague, when it had really happened. He hadn't
dreamt of Dru on fire since... He couldn't remember.

"Because I took it from you, long ago, as a favour to her. Only you would manage
to call it back, pull it out of my memory, looking for something to frighten
yourself with. Baka." The Japanese insult sounded funny in Dru's accent, but he
couldn't be sure he'd never heard her say it; she'd liked to play with language,
roll foreign words around on her tongue, then forget their meaning five minutes
later. Whereas that shit stuck around in *his* head forever. Baka. Idiot. Fool.

"S'pose I am." Spike nodded, memories, thoughts, falling into place within his
head, like he'd finally shaken them into a pattern he could recognize. He almost
felt awake. Logical. Drunk-logic, though -- he could tell there was something he
was missing, but couldn't see it. "Been you all along, has it?"

She jerked her head once, loose brown curls tumbling around Dru's thin face.
"Not as you mean it, no."

"Rei." The laughing voice in his, in Xander's ear. The familiar titter of the
hyena, with rings of shark teeth in its wide-open maw. [Course it was her.
Should've known it the minute I sussed I was dreaming.] "Game's over. Bugger
off. You've had your fun."

He was still startled that he could speak, and so easily, untouched by the
ever-present fear that had accompanied him while he'd dreamed himself in
Xander's body. So startled that when she lifted one hand to her mouth, he was
stilled by it. So elegant. So beautifully oriental, even in Dru's tall, thin,
European form. So much older than him, such a different sort of death she was.
He was almost as mesmerized as he'd been by Drusilla's eyes, once.

"It isn't me, Suppaiku. Not really." A half-hidden chuckle, still, in her voice.
She'd always been so *amused* by him, laughing secretly at something he'd never
understand. "I am just... how did you once describe the war, to me? It's a
banquet, Spike, and no one pays attention if you're dressed like the hired
help." Her hand took in the dark around her, one swift motion. "I'm just here
for the table leavings. I barely had to stir the pot."

"Sod the cryptic Betty Crocker metaphors, Reikoku." His fascination broke. Some
part of him had suddenly had it up the here with inscrutable oriental
cobbleshite. Call it lack of patience, call it just being Spike. He wasn't
getting any younger, and he had things to do. What they were escaped him, but he
was pretty sure he had things to do. "Just get out of my head. Kitchen's
closed."

She smiled, flashing those extra rows of teeth in Dru's mouth. Shook her head
again. "You don't understand, do you. Is it because you're a man? It can't be
inherent in vampires; Drusilla was never this much of a fool. But your little
boy, the one you say is nothing -- he is. Baka, just like you, down to the
stubborn insistence that he can run and run forever, fast enough to escape the
monsters that come in by his own invitation." She spoke slowly and clearly, as
to a child. "This isn't your head."

He couldn't make sense of it -- had reached the end of his drunken wisdom, and
could only stare at her. Rei-Dru sighed, and her sickly red outline flared.

"Do you understand now?" She grew taller, wider, morphed as fast as Dru herself
could switch from human face to monster, but it wasn't catlike golden eyes that
stared at him. Dark hair shortened, gray eyes darkened to liquid brown, and
Spike saw before him what he'd seen in the mirror. Young, vulnerable,
frightened. Xander.

He could hear an echo, somewhere on the other side of the darkness -- closer
than last time. Angel's voice. It *was* Angel's voice, had been before. When did
*he* get here? "I'll kill him. Have I mentioned that? Knock his brains out on
the floor and make him lick up the mess, set his hair on fire, stick his
eyeballs on a toasting fork and hold 'em over the flames til they pop, then rip
out his spine and use it for a really short bookrack."

[Hell, that was almost sweet. Sentimental old bastard.] Part of Spike was
distracted, a part that had craved that voice, saying those things to him, or
the like, for several human lifetimes.

But before him, he saw what he'd been missing, all through this long walk in the
dark, and not even his Sire's words could stop him from running to Xander.

"Yes, you've mentioned," Cordelia's voice. "And eww. If I didn't know that's
your way of showing you're worried about Spike, I'd --- Angel!"

Spike felt himself grabbed from behind. Invisible arms held him tight, kept him
from Xander. "Let me *go*!"

"Spike, are you... He's still asleep. Willow!" Angel's voice, so close, at his
ear, now.

"Tara, do you have the stuff ready?" Red. Hell, who invited them all into his
dream?

"Everything's here; we had it all in the bag anyway. I don't know if it'll work,
though, Willow. I've never used this spell to wake someone *up* -- just to make
them stay aware when they fall asleep."

"If it doesn't work, we wait some more. If it does, at least Spike'll be awake
-- and maybe he can tell us what's happening with Xander. Angel, are you--"

"I'm ready."

"Let. Go. Of. Me." Spike growled, straining to reach the Xander who stood in
front of him, one hand reaching up to cover his mouth, which wasn't like Xander
at all.

"Let it happen, Spike. Go to them," Xander said. Rei? Spike's mind was getting
fuzzier -- arms holding him back, voices in his ears of people who weren't
there. "You'll only confuse him, if you stay. It's almost over, anyway. Just
go."

Flash. Scent, stronger than anything. Strongest of senses for a vampire, and
*this* smell... Copper and salt and rich and red and sweet, so unbelievably
sweet. The first in the world, in his world, was Dru's, but this was older,
stronger because the first time he'd accepted it, he'd had a choice. Male and
known, completely known, in the dark, in a crowd, anywhere. Held in front of his
nose and FLASH.

Eyes half open in too-bright light, fangs breaking free, Angel's face leaning
over his shoulder, strong arms around him from behind. Spikecanyouhearme.

And a wrist, at his mouth. Single red pomegranate seed hovering just above his
lips, something that, contrariwise, would draw him back into the light for good
if he just opened his mouth and tasted. And it had been so *long*...

"Spike?" That voice. Face. Hair flickering between short and long. Like looking
at Angel through old, smoked glass, the white of the room distorted into a cold,
dank mineshaft, guttering candles everywhere, and Himself lying next to Spike,
both of them sated and surprised with each other. A vein, offered to him, and
once without hesitation, he'd lowered his mouth to it. "Will? Come on, come back
to us."

[He's tryin' to piss me off, see if I'll wake up just so I can thump him,] Spike
thought clearly, even as he had to beat down the part of himself that had never
stopped answering to that name. His eyelids flickered.

"Spike?" Tara's voice, tentative. Afraid. For him? Then more sure. "Morpheus,
clear the eye. Release the mind that walks your world. You have no hold."
Something sharp pierced the fog of Sireblood smell, for a second. Hensbane?

But then Angel, voice and scent so close that it drowned everything out. "Spike,
dammit, just wake *up*!"

Spike opened his eyes wide, saw both worlds at once. The hand before his mouth,
in the lighted room, the boy in front of him, in the dark.

"Not. Without. Xander." Spike turned his head to one side, felt the drop of
Angel's blood roll down his cheek, and closed his eyes.

Forced himself to fall back down into the darkness, Tara's voice following him.
"Morpheus, clear the eye. Awaken the mind that walks your world."

It came in a rush. The taste of cider on his tongue, the not-quite-drunk he'd
been since then, wiped away. Clear, truly clear, now. Memory whistled past him.
Words exchanged like cups of poison. Dull ache of confusion, of 'what did I do?'
and the stabbing pain in the center of his chest, and walking away.

Drinking, and sitting, hating himself. The girls coming in, rescuing him from
some imagined drunken stupor, and the words he'd spoken about Xander, bitter as
crushed bones in his mouth. Then, walking in and seeing her, there, monstrous in
ways he couldn't compete with as gray smoke coiled over his boy. The heartbeat
he didn't possess, freezing up in his chest.

Walking to him, and touching, and falling. Wind and rain and running and
thumping heart and teeth and animal growls and laughing faces that he knew only
in their older versions. Their deader versions, some of them. Some he'd never
seen at all, never even seen pictures of. Dark eyes in the mirror, and Xander's
voice on his tongue.

"Christ." He heard his own voice echo loud around him, then disappear into the
dark.

Soft white-noise laughter, in Rei's voice, now. "Hardly. I should say, it has
not *been* your head. Your dream. You simply bullheaded your way into your
boy's, and now, finally, you are separate again. Because he was finally
frightened enough to let go of you; let go of everything."

Something tore at Spike's ribcage, almost like a heartbeat-- only it had claws
and fangs. His own growling animal wasn't fooled by a soft voice, by something
that pretended to be harmless. It screamed at him. [mineminemineminemine...
shetouchedhimhe'smine] The rest of him, for once since he'd caged it below the
surface, agreed. No need to pretend that Xander was less than everything, not
now, not here. She knew, though apparently not enough.

"You *don't* touch what's mine," he snarled, as he finally understood.

His descent halted, and Xander stood before him again. Not Xander. Xander-Rei, a
thing too obscene for words. Spike stared at her, concentrating. [I control the
vertical and the horizontal around here, right?] He willed her to be as she
truly was, as he remembered her, and Xander's body faded into fog. Reformed, a
small, straight figure in leather, with long, long hair, and tilted black eyes.
[You can't have his face. He's mine.]

The Gaki sighed. "I've no intention of harming him. I told you -- he's doing
this to himself. It won't be long, Spike. Go back to your friends. Sit and wait,
and tell them the boy will wake up soon."


"Let Xander go," he ordered, gravel-mouthed, "or so help me, you'll find out
just how much I learned from the eyeball-popper out there -- and just how much I
taught him." He turned around, ready to lay hands on her throat, but there was
no one there.

"Spike, just open your eyes, and get out of my way. You're making a fool of
yourself."

"I'm not leavin' him alone with you," Spike snarled, and though he knew where he
was, knew he couldn't touch her, the demon was still screaming at him that there
was a point to be made. He lunged at her, hands reaching for a narrow white
throat.

"Be a fool, then, Suppaiku," she hissed. "Tilt at windmills, be his knight, try
to snatch him up and carry him away -- but it isn't me you'll have to save him
from."

He sailed right through her, falling again in the darkness.

"Baka."

Spike didn't know what direction to flip the bird in, since he couldn't see her
-- so he just told her loudly to fuck off, in Japanese. Followed by every other
insult he could think of in that language. Made for something to do while he
fell.


*****

Lights on. Have they only been out for a second? Xander looks for Buffy, to tell
her she has to grow up, fight the thing that's outside. Even though it's his to
fight, he wants to run to her. One girl in all the world, and it's not him, and
for a moment, he wants to believe Willow was right. That it's okay to let the
Chosen One do it.

Then he sees his friends, sitting at their desks. Buffy. Willow. Tara. Cordy.

"No."

He can't look at the room, can't look at his friends, can't look at what covers
the floor. [You invited it inside.] Can't look, so he doesn't. [Can't see
you...]

*****

Spike fell until he hit, same as before. This time, though, he knew where he
was, right away. He was back in the classroom -- and it was a charnel house.

A picture so pretty that the demon shouted loudly at him to get down on the
linoleum and just roll in the blood. He didn't, but Spike almost slipped in it
anyway, when one boot skidded in a puddle of red. His own boots, his own jeans,
his own coat slapping around his calves, own arm reaching out for balance. His
own nose, smelling the richness of copper-scented death, oxidizing as it pooled
around the bodies slumped in their desks.

[If this is Xander's dream, not mine, then... Bloody hell. Literally. What the
fuck lives in his head? God, no wonder he came apart on me when he had that
nightmare.]

Spike walked over to the nearest desk, and lifted Cordelia's head. The
hundred-dollar haircut swung bouncily away to reveal a savaged throat, the
ludicrous literary vampire-hickeys replaced with death as he knew it -- as he'd
dealt it a thousand thousand times. Great gaping, ragged hole, torn flesh, tiny
gobbets of meat. He let it fall into the pool of blood on her desktop. [It's not
real. She's not dead; she's out there annoying the Sire, more power to her.]

Willow and Tara were the same, bloodless white hands joined as if they'd planned
to work some spell to defend themselves. But Rei was immune to magic; whatever
dream-monster she'd sent after Xander would be just as well-protected from
Xander's imaginary witches.

[Vampire. Dream-vampire.] He winced. The thought hadn't escaped him; he didn't
need reminding from snarky mind-voice number whatever. [Why's she sending
vampires to chase him, of all things? Why would he be afraid of *us*, with all
the beasties he's seen?] He walked around, lifting heads, letting them fall,
hoping that the next one wouldn't be Xander. [It's a dream. It's his dream. He
won't be dead. Just need to figure out where he *is*, so I can wake him up and
get him outta here.] He focused on that, ignoring the grumbling thing that was
telling him to feast on the table leavings. [Not like it's real blood, moron.]

Spike the detective, he suddenly thought. Just his own brand of insanity, to
picture himself searching for Xander, wearing that gray fedora, the room in
black and white, the blood on the floor looking like the chocolate syrup they
really did use in old films. He could suddenly feel the pressure of the band
around his forehead, see the shadow of the brim. Spike reached up to touch the
hat he’d dreamed into place on his head, and almost grinned.

But the blood was still red and bright, and the desk where he and Xander's dream
body had sat was still empty, except for the still-wrapped bar of chocolate
Willow had offered, and Xander had refused. He hadn’t turned into Sam Spade,
with all the clues laid out in front of him – or if they were, he couldn’t read
them.

Spike pocketed the candy bar absently, aware that it was no more real than the
blood, than the hat, but unable to let it sit there, somehow. He looked across
the aisle; on the empty desk in front of Willow lay two pieces of paper. One
piece, rather, ripped in two: "SA" on the first fragment, "VED" on the second.
They hadn't been, had they. Not by witch-powers, and not by the Slayer in the
seat across from them.

Changeable ocean-coloured eyes stared at him, sightless and dull. The fighting
light was gone, that had always made him unsure if he wanted to kill or kiss
her, until she opened her mouth and let out that mind-bleaching whine. She was
still the child she'd been when he'd last seen her, before the lights went out
-- the little normal girl who didn't want to fight anything, who blew Giles off
when she first got to Sunnydale. Spike heard Xander's words again, in a darkened
fake-theatre, so many hours ago that it seemed like days. That little girl's
pouting mouth was forever closed, now.

"It's just a dream," he said aloud. Buffy wasn't dead -- and any regret he felt
at the sight of those lightless eyes was probably just because he hadn't gotten
to be the one to extinguish them. "Where is he?" he asked her, quietly. "What
happened to you? What's he running from?"

"Spike?"

He whirled around from Buffy's desk, his own reflexes working faster than his
mind's ability to recognize the voice. A head covered with pale blonde hair
lifted from a desk by the window.

"Harmony? You're alive?"

She nodded, looking terrified. Mindblown, and Harmony hadn't much of a mind to
blow. She sat up, and looked around at the classroom. "Well, not alive."

Spike smacked his forehead. "It's a vampire. Course it wouldn't touch you."

Harmony shook her head. "That doesn't matter. Not here. I just hid, and he
didn't see me."

"He, who? Who did this? And where's Xander?" Spike walked over to her, as he
asked.

Terror was suddenly replaced by an unattractive scorn. "Oh, *him*. The little
crybaby scaredy-cat. He *ran*. He's gone."

Spike grabbed her by the hair and drew her up, so she stood on tiptoe, face
strained with discomfort -- an old, familiar position. "Where did he *go*, Harm,
and what's chasing him? I don't have time to put up with your shit."

Her expression changed again. Frightened blue eyes looked straight back at him,
and he recoiled. Blinked and let go. Not because of any guilt at hurting
*Harmony* -- she'd known what she was getting into when they got together,
played the pain games as much as he had -- just hadn't been willing to admit to
it when called on it.

But.

This wasn't Harmony's dream, was it. He recognized that shattered look -- he'd
glimpsed it in dark eyes, by silver streetlight, as his lover shuddered in his
lap at Cordelia's place. He'd watched it unblinking, a few nights earlier, until
those eyes had finally fluttered closed, and he'd snuck off to go find the hand
lotion.

"Xander?" he said softly.

Wild shaking of the mussed blonde hair as she slid down into her seat. "Eww! Do
I *look* like a boy? Especially *him*. You're nuts!"

But this wasn't Harmony's denial face; it was Xander's -- and it wasn't just her
head shaking, but her whole body. Spike winced, flexed the hand that had hurt
her, almost cursing his lucidity, now. [Brilliant, Spike. You might as well be
the thing that's scaring him.] "Xan..."

"He's a freak, and a fraidy-cat, and he ran away. He *always* runs away. He used
to run off the playground when we were little, when the big kids came, and
Willow and..." Harmony lowered her head. "Him. Willow and him used to stick up
for Xander, but he didn't deserve it. He always screws everything up."

"Xan..." The shaking started again, and Spike stopped. Reached out a hand and
placed it atop her head, gently. Sure, still, of whose head this really was.
"All right. Harm. Who's 'him'? Somebody you all knew in school? Why's Xander
afraid of him?"

"Because. Because Xander fucked up. I told you. Lame-boy fucked up and let him
in, and lame-boy fucked up and let him go in the first place, and lame-boy
fucked up and couldn't... couldn't clean up his own mess. And *now* see what he
did." She pointed to the corpses all around her, of her friends. Xander's
friends. "Over and over. It just happens over and over, because he's too chicken
to stop it."

Spike leaned over the desk, and brushed aside the long strands of blonde fringe
hanging in her eyes. If he stared close, he could see the outline of the word
that Willow had scrubbed off, faint on the skin of her forehead. He looked past
that, though, to the eyes he knew, whatever color they might be pretending to at
the moment. "Tell me."

Frown. Blink, and SLAM. The room disappeared.

Dark again. Running through the cemetery once more, only this time he could see
Xander. Like the black and white film he’d been imagining before, grainy because
dreaming Xander couldn't really have seen himself, could only imagine what he'd
looked like then, as he fed it to Spike now.

The hand in Xander's was Willow's, so young and white and frightened in the
moonlight that her eyes were just dark holes in the pale face. The body between
them was tall, male. Beaky and gangly, and as young as the ones who carried him.
No one Spike had ever seen before, not on the streets of Sunnydale, not in the
raid on the high school, not in any of the pictures he'd rifled through in
Xander's albums or shoeboxes. Spike could see his throat, as that imagined movie
camera zoomed in. Bleeding chocolate-syrup wounds, closer to the neat little
fake bites on Cordelia's neck, than the raw mess it was now. Somebody'd been
snacking, and got interrupted, and now they were running.

Then there were snarls, the ones he'd heard in that brief flash in the hallway.
A male vamp closing in from the left, and from the right, a blonde in a short
skirt and sweater. In the darkness, it took a second for Spike to recognize it
as a Catholic school uniform. In the fuzziness of Xander's memory, it took two
beats longer for him to know the face, vamped and grinning.

Darla. He knew she'd been here, knew Angel had staked her, but it had never even
occurred to Spike that Xander had met her.

[Met her?] Spike laughed, painfully, as he watched it happen. Met her. Right.

He watched as Xander had his friend torn from his arms while she laughed, while
Willow shouted, "Jesse!" into the darkness, and Xander stood there, clutching
Red for all he was worth, lest somebody pull her away from him too. Then they
ran for a pool of light where Spike could see the slight figure of the Slayer
standing. Xander never looked over his shoulder, though Darla's laughter echoed
out of the night at him, until the end. Until he stared back into utter
darkness, with nothing visible but the tombstones.

And now Spike knew who wasn't "SAVED," didn't he. Someone who'd come back in
Xander's dreams to wreak havoc among his former friends. Normally, he'd say
'Hurrah, good times' to the havoc-wreaking -- but not here. Not in his boy's
head. He almost muttered an apology to Rei, for thinking she'd invented the
horror herself -- until he recalled how long Xander must have been asleep. [She
may not have written the script, but she's been making him watch the flick. Not
letting him wake up.]

Spike opened his eyes. He was back in the classroom, standing over the desk.
Harmony looked up at him, frowning again. "It's no big deal. The Hellmouth gets
kids all the time. *I* got vamped, and he never freaked out over me."

"You weren't his best friend. He wasn't holding your hand." Spike wiped the hair
out of her face, and looked at her forehead again. Then he bent down, and put
his hand on hers. "It wasn't your fault, Xan."

She stiffened. "I'm not Xander! You're as crazy as he is. Loony as that pretty,
perfect ex-girlfriend you never shut up about. Why don't you go find *her*? Go
read her the yellow pages or something."

"He's not crazy. And you're not Harmony." Spike spoke over the closing of his
throat, because he knew it wasn't really there. His mind only made him think he
had a throat to close, as he remembered the look on Xander's face, and him the
utter moron who couldn't pick it up, that he'd been rabbiting on about Dru at
lunch like it was her he'd barely missed staying in bed with that morning,
instead of the boy who'd sat next across the table from him.

He knelt next to the desk, and said to her -- to Xander, "Xan... It's over.
You're safe. None of this is real -- it's just a bad dream. All you have to do
is open your eyes and wake up."

"I'm NOT Xander! And it's not over. It's not safe. Nobody's safe. Leave me
alone!" She was-- that is, he was, Xander, though. The face melted and blurred
before Spike's eyes. Panicked dark pupils, huge in liquor coloured irises. Dark
brown hair.

"No. I won't do that." Spike leaned forward, and gathered the figure in the desk
into his arms. It really didn't matter what Xander looked like -- young, old,
girl, boy. "You *are* safe, Xander. I won't let anything hurt you. You just have
to wake up."

"No! You're not real!" Xander pushed Spike away with a force that he would only
possess in dreams, at least as long as he lived in a human body. Before Spike
could even rise from the sprawl he had landed in, Xander was running from the
room.

[No way. I'm not losin' you, not lettin' you get lost in the dark. Not again.
This time when you run, somebody catches you who loves you.]

Spike was after him in a second, racing out the door and down the hall. The
building was dark now, smelled of charred meat and death, as it should. He could
just see Xander's tennis shoes disappearing around the corner, and he followed,
picking up speed. He mightn’t be Sam Spade, but this, he could do. He tipped his
imaginary detective hat, as he passed the empty suit that Xander’s mouthy little
principal had been wearing, laid out on the floor.

They ran past lockers and classrooms. Past the empty library, where Spike could
hear sounds coming from the Hellmouth within that made him glad it had never
opened when he'd been around. Through the door at the end of the hall and out
into the rain again.

*****

It looks like Spike. It sounds like Spike. But it doesn't talk like Spike, and
it's telling him things that he wants too much to believe. It's okay. I won't
let anybody hurt you. Too easy to accept, but that's not Spike. Spike's using
him for a warm hole and somebody to share a bed with, and the echo of someone he
can't ever have back. Xander knows that, knows he'll settle for that, too. If he
lets himself believe anything else...

He used to let himself believe that if he just wished hard enough, he'd come to
school in the morning and everybody would be in their seats, no empty one, no
memories of the night that no one ever talked about, to show him why it was
empty. He'd lean over and poke Jesse in the arm and point out how short Miss
Wasserman's skirt was, and Willow would roll her eyes, and Buffy...

No. That way lies Xander in a rubber room, and he might be a little bit crazy,
but he's not that crazy. He knows. He knows what happened and he knows what's
chasing him with Spike's face now, and whose face is really under it.

Fine. He knows where to run. Knows it's always led to this, that this is what he
comes back to night after night, but never quite has the balls to face. This
time, though... It *will* be different. It might be faster than him, but that
doesn't matter, for once, because he's not running away. He won’t end up purely
by accident at Brookside Park, with Giles on the swing, with Spike sitting next
to him, arms open, waiting to almost rescue him in time. Not now.

Past Buffy's house, past Willow's, lights out. No welcome there, but why would
there be, when they’re dead, back in that classroom. Across sidewalks and over
gutters and down alley shortcuts that he knows from years of running, in dreams,
in life.

For once, he's not running from; he's running to.

*****

Spike ran, never looking at anything but Xander’s shoes, flashing white in the
distance. Familiar parts of town, bathed in the sheen of rain, fading as Xander
passed, because the dream was only concerned with what Xander could see.

He thought he had an idea where they were going, at one point, when he caught
sight of a familiar drive, a suburban house, story and a half, Bel Aire parked
neatly at the back. There. Home? Xander’s illusion of a safe place?

But Xander paused for a second only, by the basement window, almost long enough
for Spike to catch up, then was off again. As Spike came near the open window,
coat slapping against his calves, he heard the sound of smacking, steady, flesh
on flesh. Growled and slowed, almost stopped, thinking this time – chip or no
chip, if they hurt him…

Then, a voice more familiar than anything asked in a hopeless muddled English
accent, "What am I punishing you *for*, Xander?"

Time froze, for a second, and Spike wondered just how stupid you had to be, to
join Angel’s little detective agency. As stupid as him?  “Fine, I get it, all
right?” Spike shouted after his fleeing lover. “You think it’s all your fault.
But it’s not real, Xander. It was a long time ago. Just bloody stop!”

But Xander didn’t stop, didn’t act like he even heard, so Spike ran again,
faster now, hearing his Docs scuff in the grass and on the gravel and down the
road.

*****

Away from home, just needed to check on the place, make sure everything was
okay. Away and splashing down the street where he's always been going, where he
goes all the time, when his eyes are open and he’s meeting Buffy, Willow, Anya
there. Rhythmic thudding behind him on the road, didn’t lose the thing with
Spike’s face, but then he didn’t expect to. He knows where he’s going, wants it
to follow.

Music getting louder in the distance as he hits the bad side of town. Bad side,
like there's a good side, like there's anything good about the Hellmouth on a
Friday night. Lights of the Bronze shining like a beacon.

[Betcha didn't think I'd come here, didja. Didn't think I had the ‘nads. Well,
why the hell not? If it’s gonna be anywhere, might as well do it here.]Heavy
beat, not of feet behind him now, but synthesized drums, from inside.

He knows it didn't happen quite this way. The song was over, ending as he and
Willow and Giles climbed from the car and snuck around back, as he’s doing now.
But he'd heard enough, to remember it now. He’d known the song already, had the
words playing in his head over the silence and the sound of his own heart
beating as the door opened and they’d slipped inside. [How are you feelin'... do
you feel okay? Cause I don't...] He pulls on the back door. It isn’t locked.

Only him now, only Xander, as it always should've been. This is *his* deal.
Buffy can kill the guy onstage, fine. Throw a cymbal at somebody, whatever.
Giles, Willow... This isn't their job. It's his. He was the one who didn't keep
an eye on Jesse in the first place, and that was his job, right? Not my day to
watch him, they'd always joked, but it *was* his day to watch both of them, and
he'd only held on to Willow, and now...

Now he's here. In the dark, with the music and the bodies, pushing at each
other. Here, and there's a stake in his hand, and he has a job to do. “Have you
come to kill what's left of my smile?” someone sings from the speakers, but he
thinks maybe it’s already dead.

*****

Where? Where was he? Spike pushed his way through the crowd, past the press of
faceless, dancing teenagers. Literally faceless, as if they didn't matter to
Xander, didn't star in this particular flick, so his mind didn't have time to
draw eyes and noses on them.

It was the Bronze, but tilted. Out of sync. Music too loud, dancers moving in
slow motion. The sweat and stink of too many people not perfume in his nose, but
madness. The dance club was lit eerily, lights flickering on and off.

“I wish I could’ve saved you…” the teenage whine-band moaned, and the lights
went red. People screamed, and Spike could sense panic. Pushing and running. He
moved to the dance floor, cutting through the crowd as if they – or he – didn’t
exist, to see what it was.

Vampires. There were vamps in gameface out there. Not really doing anything but
growling, shoving, causing pandemonium -- which was good enough entertainment,
but you'd think they’d be biting, draining, tearing it up. Or at least pushing
people up towards the stage where the Slayer, somehow alive again because
Xander’s dream didn’t have to make sense, stood in the spotlight, next to a vamp
at least a foot taller than Angel. Frozen.

Spike could've kicked himself for even bothering to look, for not figuring it
out sooner. He’d have to turn in the detective hat and admit he was the sidekick
in front of all and sundry, at this rate. Frozen. Because they were
window-dressing. Props, in Xander's nightmare. The only place anything would be
happening was where Xander was. Everything else was a distraction.

He looked around for something that looked real, not random. Listened for actual
words, over the pounding of the music. A scream -- a loud, familiar one.
Cordelia's voice, followed by shouting. "Get *off* me!"

That’d be it, then.

*****

Xander knows the words by heart, though he never told them what he said, though
he doesn't ever dream about this part, just running from it. Until now. The
words live in his head, here, at this hell-place that's just... the Bronze, out
in the real world.

"Jesse, man. Don't make me do it." Here, now, he’s a kid again, Valley-speak in
his mouth, sweat in his eyes.

The thing with its back to him, the thing that followed him here, stands up from
where it’s crouched over Cordy. Turns around. Looks him up and down.

"You again? Man, don't you have anything *better* to do? You could dream about
naked chicks or something, you know." Jesse's face is human. Smiling, even
though it's more of a sneer than a real smile.

"Jesse. I know there's still a part of you in there." Even now… even though he
knows it’s not real, hasn’t ever been real, Xander wants to believe that it’s
true.

A part of someone who played in the sandbox with him when he was six. Who made
up the sharks that live there, because he had the longest legs, and could jump
from one edge to the other the easiest. Who loaned him milk money and always
gave Xander half of his Nutty Bar at lunch, and laughed at him when he broke it
apart and licked all the peanut butter off before he ate the chocolate-covered
wafers. Who brass-balled his way into the back room at Video Hut to rent
‘Sinderella,’ freshman year, when Xander was too much of a chicken.

"Or dream about naked dudes, if that's your thing now," Jesse goes on as if
Xander hadn't spoken. "But this," he points at Cordy, at the darkness, at the
stage, back at Xander. "It's gettin' old, bud. Hell, even *I'm* sick of it, and
I *like* terrorizing girls. Or would’ve, anyway, if I hadn't got staked.”

“Wh-- What?”

“Dude, you're almost twenty. Get over the trauma, already. I'm dead. Everybody
else moved on. What's wrong with you?"

There's a script, dammit. There's a song playing, there's heat and light and
bodies, and there's Jesse standing in front of him. He's supposed to vamp out
now, and Xander's supposed to try to kill him, and fail. Like he always fails,
at the important things. He's not supposed to be talking like this. How can
Xander answer that speech with what he really said, when no one was looking,
while everyone was watching Buffy?

He does anyway. "Jesse, I don't wanna kill you. I don't wanna lose you, man.
What am I supposed to do?"

Why doesn't Jesse say what he really did, which was, "You kill me, Xan, or you
die. That's really all there is."

Instead, he says, in Spike's voice, "You wake up, Xander," as he starts to turn
his head. Then he collapses into dust.

*****

The stake in his hand was a good one; he'd crafted it from the memory of one the
Slayer had held against his chest, while he taunted her about her love life. He
could feel the scratch of wood on skin, even now. And it worked the way they're
supposed to work, the way every stake he'd held in the last six months had
worked on every one of his fellow vamps whom he'd slain, post-chip.

The boy started to whirl, as he said the words, then, POOF.

"It's over," Spike said gently, as Xander stared at him in shock. "I told you --
I won't let anybody hurt you, ever again. Not even you."

Xander said nothing, just stared at him, open-mouthed. Looked from the stake in
Spike's hand to the one in his own. Finally, he moved forward, and Spike opened
his arms.

Xander hit him, a hard right to the jaw. "Dammit! Look what you did!"

Just like before, in Xander's dream world, when he needed strength, he had it.
Spike went down, the stake in his hand clattering to the floor. Xander followed
swiftly, throwing his stake away as well -- but he wasn't seeing to Spike, or
apologizing. He was gathering up the pile of dust on the floor, sweeping it into
his hands.

"Come on. Come back. Come back!" He was almost in tears, his voice raw and
hoarse. Xander threw the handful of dust into the air, and in the outline it
formed, Spike saw fear.

[He's mad. He really is broken into little pieces.]  As the lean, tall shape
reformed itself in front of Xander, Spike heard laughter over his shoulder.  He
sat up, to find a hand being offered to him.

Darla's hand, extending from the white sleeve of that kinky schoolgirl uniform.
Her face was human now, as it hadn't been in Xander's memory of the cemetery,
and as haughtily beautiful as Spike remembered it.

"Of course I look like you remember her," Rei agreed. It hadn't occurred to him
that she could hear his thoughts, but of course she could. It was all thought,
here. She'd known what he was thinking all along, told him to back off, but he
wouldn't listen. "You're providing my features," she reminded him. "The boy is
too busy resurrecting his friend, so that he can fail to kill him again."

Spike rubbed his jaw, the dream punch as painfully real as the one Xander had
thrown at him at his own request, on Giles' front porch, under the lamplight.
[Think, Phillip Bloody Marlowe,] he snarked at himself. [What is it. What am I
missing? Why didn't it work for me to kill the kid? Why's Xander brought him
back?]

A soft voice answered him, from deep within his own head. [Why does he come back
here, Spike? He has nightmares, yes, of course, lots of people do, but why this
boy, chasing him? Why over and over, as he said? Why?]

Because he wanted to.

"He's... not a boy," Spike said slowly. "He's not mad, either."

*****

Xander holds the stake up. He knows how to use it, has known for years now,
though he only had a vague idea back then. He's not Buffy, but he can defend
himself. "Come on, Jesse. Let's...just get this over with." If he drags it out,
maybe it'll last a little longer, this time.

But this time it's Jesse who sticks to the script. "Okay... Let's deal with
this. Jesse was an excruciating loser who couldn't get a date with anyone in the
sighted community! Look at me. I'm a new man!"

"Yeah. Look at him, Xander."

The voice is Spike's, but Spike can't be here. Spike can't have staked Jesse for
him, like some random moron had done it the last time. That was just his own
mind, coming up with newer and loopier ways to make him fuck this up. This voice
now, it isn't real.

"None of it's real, Xander. It's a dream. But I think you know that."

There's laughter, from Miss Thing, who's wearing the bitchy girl vamp's face
now, smiling blonde and pretty and just another distracting thing to throw at
him. It's not mocking, though. It's appreciative, admiring of what his
dream-Spike said.

"Very good, Spike. You figured out after two weeks of sleeping with him, what it
took me a whole night to determine."

Spike, on the floor, rubs his jaw. Picks up the hat he was wearing and puts it
on his head -- and why is Spike wearing a hat, in this dream?  Especially
Xander's hat. "Well, you're the professional. I'm just his lover. Remind me to
kill you, by the way, when this is over. I told you, nobody fucks with what's
mine." He starts to stand.

"Hey, is somebody gonna kill *me* here, or what?" Jesse asks with a growl.
Xander looks, and sees the face that looks like Spike's, but not, yellow eyes,
wrinkled brow. Jesse's holding his hand out, and in it is Xander's stake.
"Cause, y'know, I've got things to do."

Xander tries not to take it, but Jesse presses it into his hand.

"It's time. I've been waiting for you to get here for years, bud."

*****

"But he does this to himself," Rei said. "I told you -- I'm only collecting the
leftovers. This is a hell of his own invention -- in a way, it's much more
creative than Gaki-do."

Spike held out his hand, then, and grasped her outstretched one. Stood, and
looked at her. Subject of enough of his own nightmares, but here, in this
half-lit place, he had to wonder why. Whatever Darla had done, she was dust, as
was the boy who stood before Xander. *They* were the ones who were still alive,
or what passed for it. He and Xander. Angel. Even Dru, wherever she was, and the
Slayer, at a hotel in Santa Barbara shagging her brains out with Agent
Huckleberry Finn. And Xander had found his own way of coping with that.

He spoke past Darla's face, to the one behind it. "Xander may've invented it --
but you pushed him to it, tonight. He said he didn't need the bravest, wisest
knight in all the land to tuck him in, before he stomped off upstairs. He never
heard that from me, and he's barely met Dru."

She smiled, a small, sly Darla-smile. "We spoke. He's very brave, your boy."

He snarled, though this time he knew better than to bother letting the beast
have reign. "You messed about with his head, Reikoku." A little grin of his own
made its way to his lips. "Only I'm allowed to do that. You… If I *ever* see you
again, I'll happily kick you back into Gaki-do so hard your great grand-mum'll
get dragged down there with you.""

"But it's about to end. If he plays this dream through to its end, I can take it
away, as I did yours. That I get a free meal, a delicious one, is merely a
side-effect -- he'll be free of this nightmare forever. Isn't that what you want
for him?"

Spike stared coldly at her. "It's his head. He's a grown man. It's not about
what I want." With that, he turned away. Walked over to the two who stood next
to the wall, the imaginary dead boy, the real, living man.

"Xander?" There was no answer, but Spike hardly expected one. He tapped the
vampire on the shoulder. "Er. Jesse, right?"

"Yeah, man. You mind? We got something happening, here."

"I'll just be a minute. Have a Coke and a smile and relax."

Jesse blinked, as real as Xander wanted to make him, and slowly moved out of
Spike's way.

"Xan..."

Now Xander looked up at him. "I have to kill him."

"No, you don't. You don't have to kill him." Spike put his hands on Xander's
shoulders, and watched as his lover changed. The shape of his haircut, from long
in front, to long all over. The width of his frame, the muscles in his chest and
arms. Spike could *feel* it, spreading out across Xander's body.

"I do. I've gotta. It's gotta be me. Nobody can do it for me."

"No. Nobody can do it for you -- but you don't have to do it, Xander." Spike
pulled him close. Felt the warm body stiffen in his embrace.

"I'm not a little kid. I'm not crazy. I *know* he's dead. I know. You don't have
to take care of me."

He tried to pull away, but Spike held on. "No. You don't need anybody to take
care of you. You manage just fine on your own. Think I might need somebody to
take care of *me*, mind you… Your brain's a scary place." A shudder against him,
and Spike touched his hair. "Xander, you don't have to kill him."

Xander shook his head, as wildly as he had when he'd been Harmony, in the
classroom. "I *know* he's dead! I told you. But here, he's not, and I'm s'posed
to..."

"Why can't you do it, then?" Spike whispered. "You know he's dead. You know it's
not real. You *know* it's just a dream. So why can't you kill him?" He knew the
answer, but it wasn't him who needed to hear it.

"Because..." Xander whispered quietly.

"Come on. You can tell me. It's just me, Xan. Nobody else who matters can hear."
Rei stood off in the distance, white checks in Darla's uniform glowing under the
light. Waiting to eat her fill. Not if Spike could help it. And Jesse… was
frozen in the light, forever standing with the face of a monster, just out of
Xander's reach.

"Because it's the only way I can have him." Xander's dream breath was warm
against Spike's face. "Out there...nobody talks about him. Nobody remembers he
was real, not even Willow. Sometimes I think I imagined him. But here, even like
this, he's real. Even if he's a monster, at least... at least I can see him."

Spike hadn't been keeping the monsters at bay, sleeping with his arms around
Xander every night -- at least not all of them. He'd just been keeping Xander
from seeing the one that he wanted to see, even if he didn't know it when he was
awake. The one he was willing to brave the nightmare to see again. Spike
tightened his arms around Xander, and closed his eyes.

"You think I'm crazy. You're not even the real Spike, you're just me, and you
*still* think I'm crazy. Like her. Like Dru."

"No. No, luv, I don't."

"And you think I'm a wimp, 'cause I couldn't kill him, and somebody else had to
do it for me. Not even on purpose. Just brushed him up against the stake and
ffft. Gone. Xander, the fucking coward, who can't stake one vamp at point blank
range. You only hang around me because I remind you of Drusilla. "Cause it makes
you feel less pathetic, if you can take care of poor loony Xander."

Once, the words had made him turn away, but now, Spike knew what was prompting
them. "No. I don't. I don't think you're a wimp, or a coward. I think you're
about the bravest person I know, for comin' back here, walkin' into hell night
after night, just to see somebody you loved."

The Bronze darkened around them, Jesse looking once at them, then fading away
completely. The only light was the soft red glow that surrounded Rei. Spike
watched her shake her head once, then smile, then she, too, faded, and they were
left in darkness. There was only Xander, in his arms.

"I'm afraid," Spike heard, after long silence.

"There's nothin' to be afraid of. You just have to wake up now."

"That's what I'm afraid of. I don't wanna lose this. Don't wanna forget him.
Don't you get it? I *am* crazy. Fuck, maybe I do need to be taken care of. But
who the hell would want somebody like me?"

"I do. I want you. You're mine." Spike whispered it into Xander's skin, the
things he'd been afraid to say for so long.

"But you're not real." A sudden, hard push away from him, and Spike was staring
at Xander as he knew him now. "That's not real, it's just what I want to hear.
You're not even a good fake-Spike -- he'd never say things like that. Get away
from me. Go."

"Xan--"

"You're not real! Go! Get out of my head!"

The lights went out again.

 *****

Spike opened his eyes, to find himself lying in bed. [Just a dream. Just my
dream, after all,] he thought for a moment. But his arms were still around
Xander, and he'd never yet had a bad dream while Xander lay next to him.

"Spike's awake!" There was a joy he hadn't expected, in Willow's voice. She
leaned over the bed, smiling widely. "Spike, you did it -- or one of you did.
She's gone!"

"Gone? Huuhhh…who?" he yawned. Tired. For all the dreaming he'd been doing, he
was tired as all hell. Spike laid his head down on Xander's chest. Fuck who knew
what. They'd sort it out in the morning. "Gone?" He blinked sleepily. "Hey,
how'd I get over here?" He'd been knocked across to the other bed, right?

"You ran over to Xander, when we tried to wake you up," Tara told him. "Angel
couldn't even stop you."

"Yeah, *that* spell didn't exactly work like a charm," Willow said, sounding
momentarily disappointed. Then she was cheerful again. "But who cares -- the
ghostie's gone, anyway! She just kinda… dissolved, a few minutes ago. Did you
chase her away?"

"Yeah, kinda. I guess. Hey, Xan, budge over," Spike murmured. But Xander
wouldn't. Spike looked up at his face. His eyes were closed. Spike sat up, never
letting go. "Xander?" No answer.

"Hey, Xander, come on. Wake up. Everything's okay, now." Willow was leaning over
them, shaking Xander's shoulder. Spike growled, lightly, and she stood back,
brow furrowing. "Spike?"

"What do you *mean* everything's okay? My boss is dating one of my
ex-boyfriends, an evil vampire is cuddling up with the other, and Lindsey
freakin' MacDonald knew about the second one before I did!" Cordelia shouted
from the other side of the room. "I can *not* be the last to know something like
this. It's not allowed!"

"Cordy, shut up," Willow said.

"I'm not your ex-boyfriend," Angel's pet Watcher protested quietly. "And Angel
and I aren't dating."

"No, you're just making out behind the potted plants. And you and I went out.
Once."

"Cordy, *Wesley*, shut *up*." Willow's voice was suddenly strident, loud.
Commanding. Spike could picture the leatherette vampire version Xander had told
him about, suddenly. "Xander still hasn't woken up."

Then, Cordelia was quiet. Spike felt a hand on his shoulder, and was about to
risk a chip-zap to growl a lot more meaningfully at Willow, when he smelled the
faint scent of dried blood on the wrist, and the utter familiarity of the owner.
"Spike?"

"Sod off. I'll talk to you later." Spike pulled Xander upright, and spoke
straight into his face. "Wake up." Nothing. "Fucking hell, Xander, open your
eyes. It's over. The ghost's gone, the good guys won, everybody's throwing a
great whopping party, and you're missing it."

Tara walked to the side of the bed, and laid her hand on Xander's hair. "I don't
think he's really asleep, Spike," she said, worriedly. "He's just… not awake."

Spike growled, again. "I *know* that, Madame Cleo. He's staying in there on
purpose."

Willow moved to her side. "But… he can't be. Why?" She sounded hurt, like Xander
was doing this just to get at her.

"Because it's the only place he can get things that you won't even bloody talk
to him about!" Spike snapped, uncaring at the moment whether she deserved it or
not, and knowing full well that she wouldn't understand him.

He turned his head away from them. Away from all of them, away from everything
except the man in his arms. "Xander, I know you can hear me. So you have a
choice. You can either listen to me make an ass of m'self in front of all of
your friends, or you can open your eyes and tell me to stuff it -- but I'm not
lettin' go of you, and I'm not shutting up 'til you do." Silence, except for
rain against the glass doors, and he was staring at closed eyelids. "Fine. I
warned you, mind. I don't do lengthy speeches, so if I start repeating m'self,
somebody jog me, and I'll throw in a bit of Much Ado About Nothing, or
something. Here goes."

Deep breath. He could do this. Didn't matter who was listening. Didn't matter
what they thought, or what happened to him after. Just Xander. "I don't think
you're nuts, except in a good way. I think you're bloody stupid for not ever
telling anybody what was wrong, but not insane. I do think you're crazy, though,
if you decide to spend the rest of your life inside your skull with a dead boy,
when there's live people out here who love you. Least one who misses him as much
as you do, I bet. He'll be there, next time, if you want to go back, Xander."

Even if it meant Spike sleeping on the floor every night at the foot of the bed,
guarding him from the real monsters while he met with the one he wanted to see.
Assuming, of course, Xander didn't send him packing, for letting Princess Vision
Girl and the witches hear all this. The witches, who made small sounds of
surprise, as one or both finally twigged to what he was talking about -- but
Spike looked only at Xander.

"I don't think you're a wimp because you couldn't kill him -- it wasn't your
responsibility, Xander. I think you even know that. But if you're too scared to
come out and face the fact that it was really me in there, and everything I said
was true, then yeah. You *are* a coward."

There was a stirring in his arms, but the eyes remained stubbornly closed.

"Because this isn't about Dru, Xander. This was *never* about Dru. It's about
you, and it's about me, and when I said I wanted you, I meant it. Not for sex,
pet. For you. I never meant it to happen, but it did, and there's nothin' I can
do about it. I'm sorry if it pisses you off, but there's at least one dead
person out here who loves you too."

A flicker of the eyelids. He was trading his dignity for an eyelash-flicker.
Just a flicker, as Spike gave up everything he'd been holding so close, so
afraid to tell for fear that Xander would… would what, own him? [Hell, I wore a
bleedin' Hawaiian shirt for the man! Might as well tattoo property of Xander
Harris on my arse and be done with it.] Besides, what dignity did he have left,
now?

"I know you heard me, you stubborn son of a bitch. You can't hide in there
forever. I'm gonna keep sayin' it over and over til you tell me to stop, no
matter how much it embarrasses you -- I love you."

Another flicker, a small squirm, and somewhere Cordy was saying, "Oh, that's so
sweet! In an utterly depraved and obsessive way."

"You can be as big a jackass as you like. You can boot me out of your head for
sayin' it, but that doesn't make it not true. You can kick me out of your flat,
out of your life, for sayin' it in front of your friends, and if you tell me to
go, I will. But I'll still love you."

And Spike was not going to blubber in front of these people. He was *not*. Even
though he could feel the little pricks in his eyelids that signaled something he
hadn't done in mixed company in over a hundred years. He wouldn't, couldn't. Not
in front of Angel, who'd told him once that it didn't mean he wasn't a man. He
*knew* that -- had known it ever since -- but he'd never give the Ponce the
satisfaction of knowing he'd taught Spike any lasting lessons.  Unless, of
course, Xander didn't open his eyes in about five seconds.

"You're a moody, irritating, neurotic science fiction geek with absolutely no
taste in clothes, and I'm runnin' out of things to say between the I love you's,
so I might have to start quoting Shakespeare any second now, and scarin' the
kiddies. But I love you anyway, and if you're good and wake up for me, I think I
have a chocolate bar in my pocket. Now, open your eyes, dammit, or I swear I'll
turn you over my knee and spank you within an inch of your life, government chip
be damned. I--"

"Spike?"

"What?" He didn't dare stop talking now. He was on a roll. "I was just getting
to the bit where I say 'I even love your saggy old boxer shorts.'"

"I heard you the first time." Xander opened his eyes. "Did you say you had
chocolate? I'm hungry."


TBC