Amazing that in their line of work, with all that had happened—with all the death they had seen—there was never too much blood. One of the benefits of saving the world from vampires; blood was always a hot commodity, and usually gone in all the dead they came across. As though demons and fate went out of their way to purposefully censor minds that somehow remained impressionable from the raw horrors of life. The horrors even they had yet to see.

Which was why, in retrospect, the splatters of crimson that stained the vampire’s bedroom incited so much shock. It was real. If nothing else, that alone made it real. Shoved them through that final threshold from fantasy to reality that, even with all they had seen, had yet to cross.

Donna had rushed out of the townhouse the minute Buffy shrieked and brought back with her Willow, Giles, Josh, and Sam. The elder Watcher had ordered Xander and Wesley to stay back amidst their protest, not wanting them in the crossfire. Not wanting them to see Buffy like this.

And now…

There were gashes in her side, streaks of red raked down her arms. A mass of tears and screams as the vampire struggled to keep her down, ignoring every time she pierced his body with her teeth, digging her fingers into his sides until the white of aged bones winked through broken skin. His hair was stained with red, and there were claw marks at his throat. And he didn’t react to anything. Didn’t pay his own wounds any mind. He had her straddled at the waist, fighting her thrashing arms to pin her to the mattress. There was noise all around him, but he didn’t notice. His focus was entirely devoted to Buffy.

She was screaming in tongues; her skin saturated in blood.

And all through it, no matter what she did to him, Spike remained with her all along. It was a gruesomely beautiful sight. The vampire wrestling the woman he loved as she ripped through his skin, ignoring the tears that spilled down his face that were not for him at all.

“Shhhh,” he pleaded against her screams, his demeanor never firing above calm and gentle despite how she fought him. “Please, baby, it’s all right. ‘S all right.”

“Quod incepimus conficiemus!” she howled, wrestling an arm free and smacking him in a fierce backhand that, despite brute, failed to throw him off her. “Respice post te, mortalem te esse memento, vampir!”

He smiled poignantly. “Not really mortal, luv,” he said. “Jus’ look the part.”

The blonde grinned at him maniacally. Blood was splattered on her teeth. “Mundas vult decipi,” she rasped. “Eram quod es, eris quod sum.”

“Wouldn’t be so sure of that.” Spike struggled against the weight of her and pressed his body down until he was lying completely on top of her. “Shhh, sweetheart. ‘S all right.” It was difficult, but he managed to brush a kiss across her forehead, despite the claw mark she burned into his throat in rebuttal. “Come on, baby. ‘S all right. I’m here. I’m not leavin’. I’m right here.”

“Prepozen, vampir.”

“I love you. Buffy—”

“Ona dan!”

He smiled a watery smile, face crumbling at the sight of her. “Switch back to Latin, sweetheart?” he asked softly, running a hand across her cheek. “You’re not makin’ sense to me now.”

Perhaps the tenderness in the display, despite the splatters of blood that smeared every corner, was what finally drew his horrified audience out of their astonishment.

“Josh,” Donna whispered. “We gotta get him out of here.”

The elder Watcher nodded when the other man couldn’t, stepping forward to place a hand on the redhead’s shoulder. “Willow,” he said softly. “What’s holding him?”

“He’s vaulted. He asked to be kept in the same binding spell along with her.”

Donna shook her head. “That’s not what’s holding him in there.”

A guttural snarl trembled in the back of the Slayer’s throat, her eyes flashing dangerously. The next wail to escape her lips was in a language that no one in the room had heard before—in a language foreign to the very strain of humanity. Spike didn’t blink, didn’t move. Didn’t even register that he was no longer alone in the room. The full of his attention was with her, and the more she tried to scare him, the more persistent he became.

He was bleeding enough to make a vampire pass out.

“Willow,” Giles whispered urgently.

She nodded. “Yeah.” Her hands dropped to her sides, then extended palms out. And immediately the temperature in the room plummeted. It had nothing to do with power in that moment and everything to do with exigency.

Which was why it took so little to break Spike’s tie to the binding spell and cast him violently across the room. It all happened quickly—such to the fact that everyone, including the writhing would-be god, stopped in blank astonishment.

“Yeah,” Josh said after a moment, blinking when Donna broke from her haze to rush across the room and help Spike to his feet. “’Cause when a vampire’s battered and bleeding, throwing him around like a doll is what you wanna do.”

“Shut up!” his assistant hissed, encouraging the limping blonde to her shoulder. “You’re not helping, Joshua.”

It took a few seconds in the midst of the heavy atmosphere for Spike to realize exactly what had happened. His mind swam with the unspoken, and when his gaze finally landed on the bed he had just occupied, it didn’t take long to reach a conclusion.

And immediately, his face set to anger; he rumbled a howl that somehow rivaled the insane ramblings of a god inside his Slayer’s body. “What the fuck do you think you’re doin’?” he snarled, making a mad-leap back for the bed that rendered him against the wall again. He didn’t bother to look to Willow for confirmation. It was manifest what she had done, and only served to make him angrier. “You bloody bastards! Let me back in! She needs me!”

“She’s tearing you apart,” Sam argued, eyes wide.

“Yeh. An’ I’ll take a chapter out of her book on the lot of you ‘f you don’ get me back in there now!” He flashed to the Witch angrily at that. “I swear on everythin’ holy an’ not, Red, ‘f you don’ let me get back to her right fuckin’ now, I’ll—”

Willow held up a hand, calm, her body language tempered and her breathing steady. That was nothing to say for the irate man beside her, who looked tempted to give Spike a piece of what he was missing in his cage with the enraged god for merely suggesting what he was suggesting.

The vampire wasn’t interested in Sam, though. And he seemed to be the only one who took offense. Even the Watcher looked sympathetic, which surprised him more than he wanted to admit. More than he would at present.

“Spike,” the Witch said gently, neutrally, “you’re not going to be any help to her if she rips your head off, okay? I’m here for her, too.” Willow cast a glance to the bed. “You have to let me help her.”

The Cockney glared at her for a few seconds, tempered only by Donna’s reassuring presence. It wasn’t much, but for whatever reason, he felt the waves of compassion and trust rolling off her in stronger form than anyone—aside his Slayer—had ever attempted to give him. Her hand was on his wrist. Grounding him with logic and tempering his demon from the irrational temptation to shove the interfering redhead across the room and make another mad leap for the bed.

It didn’t matter the next second, anyway. The Witch had entered the perimeter of her own binding spell and was tentatively approaching the writhing figure on the bed.

“Willow…” The strain to Sam’s voice echoed at an oddly shrill volume around the room.

“It’s all right,” Giles reassured him, even if he didn’t believe it. “She has to try.”

“Yeah, ‘cause all this is too William Peter Blatty for my taste,” Josh agreed.

Spike wasn’t listening; his eyes were glued on the Witch, his nerves calming the quenching taste of rationality. Somewhere between the light and the dark, he recognized help when he saw it. Through blood there had to be some sacrifice, and while his body fought similar strains to return to his Slayer’s side, he could do nothing but watch and hope that the redhead could provide them a sliver of hope with whatever she planned to do.

It didn’t last long. The second that Willow touched Buffy’s arm, her eyes went black with an overload of power and a terrible piercing shriek tore through her throat before the impact sent her forcibly to the nearest wall. The foundation rumbled and cracked, and she screamed again, her body succumbing to small convulsions.

Sam was at her side almost immediately, pulling her into his arms.

“Shhh,” he murmured, rubbing comforting strokes against her back. “It’s all right. You’re all right.”

She was. She was all right.

She was also unconscious.

“What happened?” Josh demanded, eyes wide. “Is she—”

“She’s fine!” Sam snapped, rising to his feet, the redhead curled possessively in his arms. “But she’s not doing that again.”

“Yeh,” Spike barked, “’cause you’re in a position to tell her what to do. Her best friend is dying!”

“And I’m sure she’ll be loads of help if she’s dead.”

Donna stared at him. “Sam, she needs—”

“We’ll take her back to the house,” Giles said softly. “Come on. We need to get her awake. Without Willow—”

“She’s not doing that again,” the Deputy Communications Director spat. And though it took a few seconds, the fatherly look in the Watcher’s eyes swayed his conviction and he passed off the Witch into Giles’s arms.

Spike’s glare refused to waver. “Who the fuck do you think you are?” he rasped as the elder man moved for the door. The spontaneity of the accusation caused everyone to stop; a sort of inherent knowledge that it was directed toward Sam’s panicked brashness.

“Someone who cares enough to know when something hurts someone, you don’t have them do it twice!”

That was it. The vampire burst into game face and moved forward quicker than anyone could have anticipated. The chip sent a sharp charge to his brain when he shoved Sam against the wall, but he brushed it off as a minor squick. It was gratifying to see a flash of very real fear banish the irrationality behind his objection, as well as the dual gasps that erupted from Josh and Donna. Being feared, especially in times like this, gave him a sense of indulgence—of power—that he desperately needed.

“Buffy’s dyin’!” he screamed, shaking the terrified man again. The chip sounded once more but he ignored it. Ignored everything except his boiling outrage. “She’s fuckin’ dying an’ your girlfriend’s the only sodding one of us that can help! So ‘f touchin’ her blasts Red from here to the bloody Mississippi, I don’ give a fuck. If it makes you feel better, I can gouge your eyes out. Don’ care how much it hurts—you’re not standin’ in my way!”

Donna’s gaze widened in horror. “Spike?”

He whipped his head at her, snarling, eyes blazing. “The lot of you are in over your heads,” he barked. “’F you don’t save Buffy, you lose the bleedin’ world, then it won’ matter which of us are alive an’ which aren’t.”

Josh snapped to at that and took a hasty step forward. “Hey, he’s just—”

“Pissin’ me off. Get him the fuck outta here.”

“You can’t just—”

“Spiiiike…” The plea tore through the air, the last verse of a poem he had yet to complete. And just like that, the hostility drowned from the vampire’s eyes and he abruptly dropped his hold on the man and pivoted, almost certain his heart had started pounding after nearly a century and a quarter in hibernation. His breath caught when he read the pain behind her eyes. As though every mark she had inflicted upon his body only now thought to scream its agony. “Spike, where are you?”

Donna whimpered and covered her mouth.

“’m here, baby,” he said, anger replaced with anguish.

Her head whipped back and forth, her body arching off the mattress. “Left me. Left me.”

“No, sweetheart, I’m right here.” Without thinking, he had rushed to her side, breeching the former perimeter of Willow’s invisible wall to draw her into his arms. “Never leave you. I promise. ‘m right here.”

Within seconds, his t-shirt was saturated with tears, dampening the blood that had not yet begun to dry. “Left me,” she sobbed, clutching at him feverishly. “You left me.”

Spike pressed a kiss to her temple and shook his head, fighting the incursion of tears that immediately swelled in his eyes. “I’ll never leave you. Never. Right here. I’m right here.”

“Oh God,” Donna gasped, her gaze landing on the stupefied men at her left. “Okay. You two need to get out now. This is private.”

“How is he in there at all?” the Deputy Chief of Staff demanded. “Didn’t Willow—”

“Willow’s gone—she didn’t ground the spell. Really Josh, it’s pretty simple.” Easy enough for her to say. She motioned erratically for the door. “Now get out.”

“Are you coming?”

“Yes. Now get.”

“But what if—”

Her eyes narrowed. “Joshua.”

There was something inherent in that tone that he understood, and by the widening of his gaze, she knew that he knew. And that was all it took. The next second, they were bustled into the living quarters; the door firmly shut behind them.

Donna remained in the room a minute, glancing at Spike. “I’ll be here if you need me,” she said gently. “Just holler.”

He nodded, cooing comfortingly into Buffy’s ear, his lips caressing her forehead every few seconds. It wasn’t until the blonde was ready to follow her coworkers that he registered exactly what had happened and felt obligated to speak up. “Donna.”

She turned to him on tenterhooks.

“Thank you.”

A smile kissed her cheeks. “There’s nothing to thank me for,” she said, and was gone the next second.

And then it was just them. Lovers holding each other in a sea of blood, ignoring all around them. Indulging this with the knowledge that it might be the last.

*~*~*

“How’s she doing?”

Giles glanced up, unsurprised to see Sam waiting in the doorway. It had barely been ten minutes since he carried the unconscious redhead out of the townhouse, and as expected, the Deputy Communications Director was the first aside Xander to follow his footsteps up to the room Willow and Donna shared. He didn’t know exactly what was going on between the man from the White House and his other surrogate daughter, but he was beyond trying to talk rationalities out—whether they be between personal relationships with long-distance politicians or evil but chipped vampires. There were certain means to the world that put the insignificant objections on the spotlight and shoved them violently aside. Right now, all he cared about was that a man that he trusted was here who cared about the Witch. Cared about her enough to shove logics aside.

“She’s coming out of it,” he said gently, offering him the washcloth he was using to dab her forehead. “It won’t be long now.”

“What happened?” Sam blinked warily and took a step forward. In that, accepting the other man’s offering to not-so-subtly take his place at her side. “I mean, why did she react to touching Buffy the way she did? Spike hasn’t been—”

“Spike’s connection with Buffy is different than Willow’s,” he explained. “Spike is with her because he loves her. He’s there to keep her grounded. And I think the…whatever is happening to her…that Quirinias can differentiate between someone who’s there because he loves her, and someone who’s there to cast him out. Besides…” He quirked a slight brow. “Willow has power that she is not even aware of. Power that, I can imagine, will be tapped into far too prematurely. And…I do not want to think of the consequences.”

“Consequences?”

“If Willow succeeds in banishing Quirinias…and even if she doesn’t…she will be channeling more magic than she ever has before, and I am not talking about increments.” The Watcher sighed. “The difference in banishing a god and doing the sort of magic that she is accustomed to is akin to wading in a swimming pool and winning the gold in the Olympics. One customarily works up to what we will inevitably ask of her. She is going to leap in blindly to more magic than anyone should ever have to channel at one occasion. The chances of…” Giles glanced down, removing his glasses for the habitual polishing. “We cannot lose Buffy,” he said. “If we lose Buffy, we lose the world. And…but at the same time…Willow can lose herself just as easily.”

Sam licked his lips, unaware of how hard his heart was beating. “Giles—”

“These are my children,” the other man murmured. “Buffy and Willow…I’m gambling both of them. I have to look at it objectively. Think of the world. Not think about how if I don’t let Willow do this, I lose Buffy and the world. If I do, I risk losing Willow to something she cannot begin to fathom. Every Watcher has lost his Slayer…if they hadn’t, we wouldn’t be here. Slayers are subjects of time. Buffy has already outlasted the average life expectancy for those Chosen. She isn’t the oldest, by any means…but she is getting there. And I will have to lose her.” He exhaled deeply, unable to keep from trembling. “I just suppose I never thought it would actually happen. Buffy has always prevailed. Always. She has more talent, more raw ability, than any Watchers have ever…I knew it would come eventually…I simply never thought it would happen now. With this. Finding Faith? Who knew that this would be…” He glanced down and shook his head. “I’m gambling the lives of my little girls, Sam. And the world is what I’m gambling against.”

A brief silence settled the room; Sam brushed locks of hair away from Willow’s face. “And there’s no other way,” he said. “You can’t harness the power to banish Quirinias. Is there no one else?”

“No.”

“I thought perhaps Anya, since she is a former demon—”

“Anya doesn’t have power anymore. She is human. She has experience and knowledge to her credit, but she doesn’t have power. Willow is the only one here who has a chance of getting…of anything.” A deep breath. “And we’re running out of time.”

*~*~*

It was a brief interlude. The quiet of the townhouse surrounding them, her quivering breaths crackled the air, and he cradled her. Two broken beings, drenched in blood. Melded together in tears they shared. Spike rocked her gently, quivering hands drawing hair away from her beautiful face. The soft exploration behind her touch making his insides quiver with tortured sorrow.

God, they had to make this all right. If she died…if he lost her…there would be no recovery.

If she died, he died with her.

“Spike,” she whimpered, skin trembling. “God. It hurts.”

How simple it was for his heart to break.

“Buffy—”

“Hurts so much.”

“’m here, baby. I’m not leavin’.” He pulled away and kissed the tears off her cheeks, saying nothing for the shower pouring down his face. “’m never leavin’. I love you so much.” Spike shook his head, clutching her tighter to him. “Should’ve been me. God, one move.”

Buffy stiffened against him, grasp on his forearms tightening. “No.”

“Sweetheart—”

“Couldn’t. Not…one of us.” Her hand slid down his arm, fingers lacing through his. “Together,” she whispered, pressing her palm to his palm. “Can’t be anything but together. I love—”

Spike choked a sob and shook his head, mind swimming with the weight of what she was about to say. The confession. The words he yearned to hear. Not now. It couldn’t happen now. Not like this. Not when it felt so much like a goodbye. “No.”

“No?”

“Tell me after. Tell me when you’re better.” He brushed his lips against her forehead again. “Tell me when the world is saved. Don’ tell me now. Don’ tell me when…jus’ not now.”

Buffy searched his eyes for a long moment. The battered, purplish glow of her beautiful face breaking his heart. It wouldn’t last. In minutes—in seconds—the hazel eyes he loved so much would be gone again. Replaced with that insidious blaze of reddish gold that reminded him of slaughtered angels. “Okay,” she whispered. “Okay. But if—”

“No.”

She licked her bleeding lips as her eyes fluttered shut. “If…you know. Right? You know without me saying it. You know?”

Spike studied her for a long minute, the very last of his resolve crumbling.

Buffy loved him.

Buffy loved him, and she needed him to know.

Just in case.

And for everything in the world, he could not deny her this. He could not deny her anything, let alone the line between now and forever.

“Yes,” Spike whispered, hugging her close before pulling away again. It was important that she knew that he meant it. “Yes, I know. God, I know.”

A smile crossed her broken face, and she nodded her understanding. Her gratitude. The wealth of love burning behind her eyes was a sight he would never forget. Never.

Never, because it felt too much like goodbye.


TBC

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