Past Grievances

"Xander found himself a girl?"

Willow nodded enthusiastically and grinned at her friends surprise at the situation. "He won’t say much about her, but he did say that he met her at the ranch, and by some amazing coincidence she’s moving to Sunnydale!"

"Wow!" Buffy remarked, still rather stunned at the situation. "Xander a girl. A real girl."

"Oh, come on. Xander can get a real girl. Easily." Buffy raised one eyebrow at Willow and grinned evilly. "Yeah, you’re right Will’. Let’s look at his track record of female interest." Raising one hand she began to count on her fingers. "Praying-mantis lady. Inca Mummy girl. Whacked out Slayer in love with vampire. Brainless cheerleader. Red headed witch in love with werewolf. Is that all of them?"

Willow gave Buffy an exasperated look but then began to laugh as well. "I guess you’re right - he hasn’t had the best of luck. But we should support him with this." "I know, I will! When does he get back from break?"

"Tonight!"

Buffy sighed. "Okay, I’ll be nice and all - but if she fits on the list of whackos he’s previously been in love with, she’s a gonner."

Willow adopted an offended look and asked, "Since when am I a whacko?!" "Who’s a whacko?" Both girls turned to see Giles enter the reading room, a large pile of books balanced in his arms.

"Willow." Buffy answered calmly. Willow playfully hit Buffy in the arm in response and the two friends shared a grin. Giles, however, simply raised an eyebrow, and dismissed the their antics as he piled the books he was carrying onto the table.

"Oh, Buffy, I’m glad I ran into you. There’s something you should know."

Buffy sighed and rested her elbows on the table. "What now? Big demon? Evil prophecy?"

"Angel."

Both Willow and Giles noticed the Slayer’s face fall at the mention of the vampire’s name as she sunk back into the arm chair. "Oh."

"Yes. He’s, uh, coming to Sunnydale to help me with a prophecy I can’t decipher."

Willow and Buffy both looked at him in awe, causing the Watcher to shift uneasily. "What?"

"You asked Angel for help?" both girls chimed together. "Despite our previous relationship, I am a professional and I believe he can shed some light in this rather difficult situation. I can behave like an adult occasionally, as shocking as the idea must be to you."

Buffy gave him an impressed look before looking down at her watch and cursing. "Damn, I’m meeting Mum for lunch. Gotta dash."

Picking up her bag, she ran out of the room, throwing a wave over her shoulder as she passed through the doorway.

Angel stood in the door way of Giles’ office at the university library for some time as he tried to gain the courage to announce himself. The Watcher was sitting at his desk, reading a book and sipping a cup of tea as he waited for the vampire. Finally, Angel knocked on the door.

There was a moment of silence as the two men studied each other, finding their ground in the uncomfortable situation.

"Come in." Giles finally asked and gestured for Angel to enter.

"Thankyou." Angel replied as he came in and sat down beside Giles. "So, what’s up?" he asked, jumping into business immediately to avoid any further tension. Picking up the book her was reading, Giles passed it to the vampire. "This. I think it could be serious..but I’m just not sure how." Angel nodded in understand as he took the book. "I’ll have a look at it."

"Hey." Angel’s head snapped around immediately when he heard the voice behind him. Standing up quickly, he almost knocked the chair as Buffy came into view. "Hey," he replied, swallowing deeply. Then Willow appeared behind her and she waved at the vampire. "Hey, Angel." Angel smiled in return, "Hi Willow, it’s nice to see you." Angel had always been glad of Willow’s presence because she was the only one of the group who hadn’t condemned him and had always been supportive of his relationship with Buffy. Sure, it was mostly because he’d saved her life that time Faith’s new Watcher went slight psychopathic, but he appreciated it anyway.

"When’d you get in?" Buffy asked, trying to come up with a decent form of communication.

"Tonight. I’m helping Rupert with this prophecy."

"Yeah, he said."

"Don’t you two have to go and meet Xander?" Giles interrupted as he poured himself another cup of tea.

"Oh, yeah," Willow exclaimed, "Xander. Buffy, we’d better go."

"Yeah, sure......"

"Hello?!" Everyone froze as the familiar voice rang out from within the main room of the library. Xander was back. At the sound of his voice, Buffy and Willow scrambled out of the office to meet him, desperate to begin interrogation before he could even sit down. "Xander! You’re back...." Willow’s voice trailed off as she ran out to greet him, to find that he wasn’t alone. Buffy ran up behind her, and bumped into her friend as Willow stopped dead in her tracks.

"Oh, you’ve brought a friend!" Buffy exclaimed as she too noticed the girl standing beside Xander. He, in turn, wrapped arm around his companion and grinned wildly. "Ladies, this is Kate."

Both Willow and Buffy took a moment to be rude and stare at the girl beside their friend. Kate was definitely a piece of work. Her blonde, shoulder length hair bobbed neatly around her shoulder, her figure was slim and shapely, and her bright blue eyes almost bore holes in the two girls. Finally, she spoke. The words forming out of her perfect mouth with her perfect white teeth. "Hi."

"Kate, this is Willow, one of my oldest friends, and Buffy, slightly less old but just as friendly." Buffy and Willow smiled weakly as, in turn, they both shook hands with the new comer, both girls with defences at an extreme overload.

"It’s a pleasure to meet you," she told them politely, "Xander’s told me so much about you."

Kate smiled back before turning to Xander and saying, "You were right ; it’s not surprising they were voted most beautiful and intelligent in highschool." With her words, both girls melted immediately. "Xander, she’s so nice!" Buffy exclaimed as she scooted across to take hold of one of Kate’s arms.

"And so pretty!" Willow added as she copied Buffy’s motions, the two leading Kate away from Xander to sit down with them at the table.

"Yeah, she’s a catch," Xander agreed with a overly self-satisfied grin as he followed them into the heart of the library. But Buffy and Willow ignored him as they began to bombard Kate with all of their questions.

"Where do you come from?"

"What school did you go to?"

"Where did you two meet?"

"How do you put up with his terrible fashion sense?" "Um, excuse me?" Xander suddenly interrupted, "We do have time to talk about this somewhere that is not here. We just came to collect you guys so we could all go out together."

"Willow," Giles called out as he and Angel came into the room, "We need your help."

"What is it?" Willow replied as she turned to face them. As he entered, Angel had had his head buried in a book, completely engrossed in its contents until he looked up to face Willow. "Can you translate this Latin into...." Suddenly, Angel became deathly pale and dropped the book in his hands. Everyone in the room looked at him as the volume hit the floor with a deafening thud, the shock evident in the vampire’s eyes.

"Angel," Buffy stood up and gently place a hand on his shoulder, "Are you okay?"

"Uh....I...." Angel found he wasn’t able to answer as he stared at the girl sitting at the table between Willow and Buffy, stunned by what he saw. She had the same hair, the same figure, and the eyes - they were unmistakable - but it couldn’t have been.....

"Angel?" Buffy called to him again, shaking him slightly this time. He broke his eyes away from Kate to look down at Buffy, suddenly sobering up from his silent state of confusion.

"Sorry," he said suddenly, "I just...suddenly have a headache." "Can you even have headaches?" Xander observed coldly from his position behind Kate, who turned to glare at him convictingly. He in return gave her a guilty look and then sighed loudly.

"Kate this is Angel. Angel this is Kate."

Kate stood up and extended her hand to Angel, who was still looking rather ill. He took it with a hint of caution, but Kate’s smile beamed as she said, "It’s lovely to meet you Angel."

"Likewise." he replied quietly as he withdrew his hand and stepped back so that he was closer to Buffy.

"Angel?" she said again, "What an interesting name. Is it short for Angelus?"

Kate couldn’t help but notice the sudden look of dismay on the faces around her as they all looked to Angel.

After a momentary silently, Angel calmly replied, "Why?" "Oh, it’s just that it was one a rather common name in my corner of the world." Kate replied reassuringly, realising that she may have hit a sensitive note amongst her new boyfriend’s companions.

"And what corner of the world would that be?" Giles asked curiously as he knelt down and picked up the book that Angel had dropped.

"I’m originally from London," Kate replied, "but I lived in Ireland for a few years as well. My father tended to move around a fair bit."

"Ireland?" Buffy asked, slightly surprised, and Kate nodded.

"In Galway."

"Is that in the fighting bit or the....other bit." Buffy then cursed her self internally and bit her lip nervously, hoping that the Xander’s new girlfriend wouldn’t think her too much of an idiot.

"It’s on the west coast of the Republic of Ireland. Northern Ireland is the ‘fighting’ bit."

"Sorry to break up this geography lesson," Xander interrupted as he looked down at his watch, but we have other places to be."

"He’s right, we should go," Willow agreed, "I’ll help you with that Latin tomorrow Giles."

"Yes, of course," he agreed with a nod, and gestured for Angel to follow him back into the library. Angel did so, but not before throwing a meaningful glance at Buffy who had a slight frown on her face.

"Okay!" Xander announced loudly as he threw his arms around Kate and pulled her against him, "Let’s get out of here and do some partying!"

Kate laughed, and took his hand as followed him to the door, Willow and Buffy closely behind. Buffy did need to be pushed a little bit as she glanced back towards to library office but Willow wouldn’t let her stay.

"It’s not worth going there again, Buffy." she whispered as she forced her best friend through the library door.

Angel looked up suddenly as he was jerked away from his thoughts and back into reality.

"Is everything alright?" Giles asked, suddenly becoming concerned with the vampire’s sudden withdrawal.

Angel nodded blankly, causing the Watcher to be even less convinced and Angel knew he wasn’t fooling him.

"It’s just...." he paused and then shook his head, looking back down at the floor, "Nothing. Never mind."

"No, tell me." Giles insisted, standing up so that he was at eye-level with the other male. He watched as Angel considered it for a moment, before finally answering, "It’s just that she...she reminded me of someone."

Giles frowned visibly and sat down on the edge of the desk, still keeping his eyes firmly fixed on Angel.

"Kate? She reminded you of someone you know."

Angel nodded. "Yeah. Someone I knew a long time ago."

"Who?"

Angel looked up again ; his expression suddenly changed and he stood up straight, coming away from the wall to return to the desk where Giles he placed the book he had been reading earlier.

"It doesn’t matter." he told the Watcher as he sat down again beside the desk and began to skim through the book again. At this point, Giles decided to give up and returned to his chair, also returning to the task at hand. But he didn’t realise that Angel had lost interest in the task - in the prophecy. He was too busy wondering. Wondering how it could possibly be a coincidence. Just a coincidence - with those eyes.

"This place is great!" Kate yelled over the loud music at the Bronze as Xander handed her a drink. Dingoes At My Baby were playing and Willow and Buffy were transfixed at the front of the stage so they could tell everyone around them that they were close personal friends of the good looking boy on lead guitar. Xander and Kate curled up on a couch beside the bar and sat back to watch the band.

"They’re good," Kate observed as she sipped her coffee, and Xander nodded.

"The one with the red hair..." he paused to point out Oz, who was standing in his usual place on the right hand side of the stage, "He’s Willow’s boyfriend." Kate passed him an impressed look before returning her attention to Buffy and Willow who were dancing enthusiastically. "You’re friends are really nice." She told him as the band finished the song and everyone in the Bronze dealt out a large round of applause.

"Can we come here tomorrow?" Xander laughed and wrapped an arm around her before saying, "Katie, sweetie, this is the only place in town to go. Of course we’ll come tomorrow."

She smiled up at him radiantly before resting her head against his chest, listening to the sound of his heart beat as the band began to play again. Xander tangled his arms around her slim frame and held her against him, sighing in contentment as he did so. For the first time in what seemed like forever, he was happy.

*****

After staying with Giles until midnight, Angel took a pile of books with him back to the mansion in order to read them there while the Watcher went home to sleep. The prophecy Giles had located was obscure and Angel was having trouble deciphering just what it meant ; but he agreed with the other man’s concern. It was definitely something to keep an eye on.

"And on the evening during which the moon turns to blood, the world will come to a halt," Angel read aloud the echo of his words booming around the cavernous rooms of the abandoned mansion. He flipped through another few pages, trying to see if he could translate any more of the Latin with Willow’s help, but he was too out of practise and decided to give up for the night. Dropping the book onto the ground, Angel slumped back into a red velvet arm chair, suddenly worn out by the hours of research. It was just about dawn but he didn’t really want to rest just yet. He’d been avoiding it all night, even though he had spent all day travelling to get to Sunnydale. Despite being exhausted he wouldn’t let himself close his eyes - because he knew when he did, he’d see her. She’d plagued his thought all night ; ever since he’d seen Kate, Xander’s new girlfriend. It was amazing how, after not thinking of her once for so many years, the appearance of one simple girl had rekindled the fear inside him. When he didn’t have his soul, when he was a ruthless, killing vampire - he told himself that he’d gotten away with it. That he would never be caught or punished. No revenge exacted. But now, he wasn’t so sure.

He wondered for a moment if Kate could possibly be a distant relation - but then he groaned in disgust as he remembered why it wasn’t possible. Lifting one hand to his forehead, he tried to block out the images that bombarded his tired mind - but they wouldn’t go away. All he could think about was the blood.

*****

Oz, Buffy, Willow, Xander and Kate sat down on the grass outside the Sun Cafe, soaking up the early morning sun.

"You see, I told you it wouldn’t take a full two hours to show Kate around town," Xander grumbled as he lay down, crossing one arm over his eyes to shield him from the sun’s blinding rays. "Now we have to wait for half an hour!"

"Well, yeah. But you’re the one who wanted to come here and then forgot that this cafe doesn’t open until noon, so it’s not entirely our fault," Buffy told him as she stood up to brush the grass off her skirt. Turning to Willow, she asked, "Was I the only one that noticed that Angel was acting kind of strange last night?"

"No, I noticed." Willow replied as she took a sip from the bottle of Coke she was holding.

"Angel’s always strange," Xander told them from his positions on the ground, not noticing the glare the two girls gave him in response.

"So, who is Angel?" Kate piped up. Xander sat up immediately, ready to give her his side of the story, but Buffy intercepted him before he could even open his mouth.

"Shut up Xander." She warned, before turning back to Kate with a polite smile and answering, "He’s an old friend of ours."

"Friend of yours, Buffy," Xander corrected and Buffy rolled her eyes in response. Kate, however, nodded with a look of understanding. "Enough said." The Slayer passed the other girl a look that said ‘thankyou!’, then began to move away from the others, walking down the short distance of the grassy verge to the sidewalk that lined the street. Raising one hand to cover her eyes from the sun, Buffy watched the various people walking down the busy streets of Sunnydale. Then as one of those people began to get closer to her, Buffy began to think she recognised them through the blinding rays. Then that very person called out to her.

"Buffy!"

At the sound of her name, Buffy closed her eyes and sighed dramatically. "Of all the people in Sunndydale," she mumbled to herself before plastering on a smile and replying, "Hey, Giles."

When Giles reacher her, he was panting, obviously worn out from looking for her. Or that’s what she thought he’d been doing. "Where’s Willow?" he asked straight away. Buffy frowned mockingly and, putting her hands on her hips, answered, "That’s all I get? ‘Where’s Willow’? Not even a ‘hello Buffy’?"

Giles skilfully raised one eyebrow and glared at her ; usually he would have played along, but on this particular occasion he was in too much of a hurry. Buffy sighed again and pointed to the grass where her friends were sitting. "She’s right there Giles." Giles smiled sheepishly for missing the group of kids on the grass outside the cafe, before rushing over to Willow.

"Hey Giles." Willow greeted the Watcher with a smile.

"I need you to come to the library. Now." he told her sternly.

"Now?"

"Now." Giving her his hand, he helped her up, and hurriedly began to pull her down the street in the direction of the university. Willow managed to turn her head and give the others an amused smile before waving over her shoulder. As they disappeared, Buffy returned to be with the rest of the group.

"He thinks he’s the smartest guy on the planet," Buffy told them, "But I think the truth is, he’d be lost with Willow and her evil little mind."

Oz smirked and stood up beside Buffy to watch his girlfriend being dragged away by the Watcher. "So would I." The two exchanged a grin before returning to be with Xander and Kate.

Xander and Buffy all entered the university library about an hour after sunset to find Willow, Angel and Giles all sitting around a table in the centre of the room, all looking extremely frustrated.

"Hey guys - how’s it going?" Buffy asked as she came and sat down next to Willow. The red head let out an aggravated sigh and threw the book she was reading onto the table.

"Terrible." she told her friend simply. Buffy frowned - it usually took an awful lot to make Willow this upset when it came to not being able to do something, so she knew it had to be bad.

"Willow’s been able to translate the Latin," Giles told her, looking up from his own unbelievably thick volume, "But Angel and I just haven’t been able to make anything of it."

"Bummer," Xander announced as he sat on the table between Buffy and Willow, "Are you gonna come out Willow?"

Willow sighed again and looked to Giles, who nodded. "You should have a break Willow," he told her, but she wasn’t convinced.

"I don’t know," she told them, "I’m not even half way through this material about roses."

"Roses?" Buffy repeated, "There’s a rose now? What kind of prophecy is this, Giles?"

Giles took of his glasses and rubbed his eyes tiredly before answering her. "I really don’t know Buffy.

There’s alot about blood and the moon and, for some reason, roses." "Where do the roses come in again?" Angel asked, his face full of confusion.

"Here," Willow said as she picked up her book again, "When translated, it says ; The lover’s rose will bleed into a river of tears once again, and on the evening during which the moon turns to blood, the world will come to a halt."

When Willow was finished reading, Buffy made a distinct face. "Ew. What’s that supposed to mean."

Giles shook his head in exasperation, "We don’t know."

"Come out with us, Will’." Xander said again, this time almost whining, "You can do this shit tomorrow.

Besides, Kate and Oz are already waiting for us at the Bronze."

Willow nodded and slowing stood up, negligently pushing her chair away."Alright. You win."

Xander grinned wildly and was about to say something victorious when the sound of the library doors crashing open violently. Giles leaped up immediately, almost expecting to see that the doors had been ripped off his hinges. Instead, he saw a tall, blonde vampire in a longer leather coat, looking extremely pissed off.

"Hi, Spike," Buffy greeted the vampire saucily, trying her best to annoy him - knowing that the last thing he wanted was to be in her company.

"Hi, Slayer," he grumbled as he came towards the group at the table. Then he saw Angel, sitting calmly across from him. Without stopping first, he turned on his heal, and immediately began to walk away, calling out over his shoulder, "Bye, Slayer."

"Spike! Stop!" she called out just before he reached the door. When he didn’t, she added, "I’ll call the council!" That seemed to work as he stopped in the doorway, hanging his head in silence for a moment before turning around again - looking even more annoyed than when he’d first got there.

Slowly, he made his way back towards the table, his hands in the pockets of his jeans as he stared at the floor.

"When I got a phone call at mid day today, which by the way is when all good little vampires are asleep," he stated, still not look up from his feet, "I was told my help was needed in deciphering a prophecy. I was not bloody well told that he would be here!"

"Spike, just sit down," Buffy told him with a roll of her eyes. The vampire sighed loudly, his face a mirror of his disgust, but he did what he was told. He and Angel managed to maintain a permanent glare between them as he followed the Slayer’s instructions, and Giles settled back down at the table.

"Right. Willow, take a break and go to the Bronze with Buffy and Xander. Angel, keep looking up those references to the ‘river of tears’. Spike, You are going to go to Willie’s."

The look of anguish the crossed the blonde vampire’s face almost made the others in the room laugh, it was so pitiful. "You must be kidding," he moaned, but Giles only nodded in compliance.

"Have fun Spike," Buffy chimed as she jumped up and hit him on the back, receiving an adamant snarl from the vampire, and she laughed as she took Willow’s hands. As she pulled Xander away from the desk, she turned to wink at Angel who smiled mischievously in return.

When the three teenagers were gone, Spike turned back to Giles who had now returned to the book he was reading. "So, what am I supposed to be beating Willie up about, now?"

"There will be no ‘beating up’, Spike," Giles told him without looking up from his book. "You will take him this translation of the prophecy and see what he’s heard." The Watcher held out a piece of paper to him which Spike took and briefly skimmed his eyes over. "What if he doesn’t know anything?"

"Get him to keep an ear open for the next couple of days." Giles replied and Spike’s face fell again.

"That would mean I’d have to go back."

Giles nodded and gave the vampire a less than convincing smile, the Watcher obviously pleased with himself for the grief he was causing the constricted enemy. Spike rolled his eyes and folded the piece of paper up before shoving it into a pocket of his coat.

"See you later, then." he told the other two men as he turned and exited the library as quickly as possible.

When he was gone, Angel laughed heartily. "Whatever the Watcher’s council has on him - it must be big."

*****

Spike pushed his way through the plastic strips that covered the entrance to Willie’s bar, grumbling as he did so, about pushy Watchers and bitchy Slayers. The room was dimly light, most of the light only coming from the neon lights about the bar. The room was empty ; not even the owner himself stood in his usual place behind the bar. Settling himself down at the bar, Spike reached over the counter and found a glass and a bottle of vodka. As he poured himself a shot of the clear liquid, he heard a door behind him open.

"Hey, we’re not open for another hour."

Spike lifted the glass to his lips and swallowed the vodka before turning around to face Willie. The bar owner’s face visibly fell as Spike came into the light. "How’s it going, Spike." Willie managed to stutter out, suddenly wishing that he still kept a stake in his back pocket like he used to.

Spike grinned evilly in response. "Oh, never been better Willie."

Trying to act cool, Willie nodded with a smile and rounded the bar until he was opposite Spike.

"So, what are you doing in this part of town. Respectable vampires like you don’t usually come in here."

Spike bit his lip as he ignored the urge to rip out the annoying little man’s throat, knowing the Slayer would have his hide. "I’m looking for some information, Willie. I’m told you can help me out."

Willie moaned dramatically and poured Spike another drink. "I don’t know Spike - I’ve been trying to get out of this game. You know that."

"Don’t give me that crap, Willie," Spike told him as he pulled the folded piece of paper out of his pocket and threw it across the counter to the human, "Tell me what you know about this."

Willie sighed loudly and picked up the paper. Sitting down behind the counter, he began to read it as Spike downed a third shot of vodka. The vampire noticed when Willie frowned and suddenly became curious.

"You know something?"

Willie scratched his nose and stood up again, his courage beginning to return all of a sudden. "Well, I don’t know, Spike. This information doesn’t come cheap." Spike sighed loudly and reached into a pocket, pulling out a pile of rolled up notes, held together by an elastic bad. Counting out a hundred dollars, he passed it to the bar man, saying, "Tell me what you know, Willie. Then I’ll go."

Counting the money personally, Willie grinned. "Okay. There have been a couple of vamps in here, talking about a rose. I mean, says here - the lover’s rose. Maybe it’s the same thing."

"What rose, Willie. Be specific."

"Well, they said they’d just been to this place..." "Where?" Spike asked as he counted out another fifty dollars. Willie quickly took the money before Spike could change his mind and added it to the pile. "I’m pretty sure it was that city in England. London, is it?"

Spike’s suddenly eyes became wide. "London? They were talking about the Tattooed Rose?"

Willie nodded. "Yeah. Yeah, that was it."

Without another word, Spike got up quickly and headed towards the exit.

"Hey, what about another drink with you old pal? I could tell you some juicy gossip about Drusilla!" Willie cried out from behind as Spike walked to the door. "Go to hell, Willie," Spike called out as he disappeared through the door, leaving the other man alone in the empty bar.

When Spike came back to the library, he found Angel alone. "Where’s the Watcher?" he asked his sire as he sat down at the table.

Angel nodded towards the office. "He’s sleeping. He’s been at this all day."

Spike put his feet up on the table and lounged back in his chair, staring up at the ceiling as he said, "I had an interesting chat with Willie."

Angel raised a questioning eyebrow and smiled. "Oh, really? I find that hard to believe."

"Yes, well, I would too if I hadn’t been there. But it’s true." Angel waited patiently for Spike to continue, but he didn’t. He just continued to stare at the ceiling, possibly concentrating on the ornate paintings above him.

"So, what did he say?" Angel finally asked.

"Oh, not much."

"Not much? Spike, what did he say?"

Spike turned his focus away from the ceiling to look at Angel, his eyes blank as he stared at the other vampire. "Well, he did say that some vamps had just come in from London. Apparently they were talking about the Tattooed Rose."

Angel’s face fell like a tonne of bricks. He sat up and stared intensely at his childe for a moment, trying to take in what he just said. "What?" he finally managed to choke out.

"You heard me," Spike replied coldly.

As they fell into a chilling silence, neither vampire was aware that Giles had been listening intently to what they were saying from behind his office door. When they stopped speaking, he opened the door and entered the main room of the library.

"So, Spike," he said, accidentally startling both vampires as he suddenly appeared from behind them, "Did Willie know anything?"

Spike looked at the Watcher for a moment, before returning his gaze to Angel. Giles didn’t miss the look that passed between them, and recognised it as a question. "No," Spike finally answered, "The moron was a clean slate, unfortunately."

"What a pity," Giles replied, as he came to sit down at his place at the table. "I guess you can go now then, Spike. Unless you want to stay and help us with the prophecy that is." "Do I have a choice?" Spike asked hopefully.

"Yes."

"Then, I’m out of here." Launching out of his chair, Spike was out of the door faster than either Giles or Angel could track. When Giles turned his attention back to Angel, the vampire was concentrating on another book. The Watcher waited for a few minutes, wondering if Angel was going to tell him what Spike had just divulged. But eventually, he realised that he was not meant to have heard the conversation between the two vampires, and decided to continue on with his research without asking any questions.

He didn’t have to ask to know the truth.

*****

Once he’d left the library, Spike made his way towards the Bronze. He was hungry. Sure, he’d promised Buffy that he wouldn’t feed off anyone, but he figured what she didn’t know wouldn’t hurt her - and so far, that little arrangement had been working well for everyone. Except his victims, maybe. But it wasn’t like they were going to tell the Slayer.

He’d always liked the Bronze. The loud music. The dim lighting. The dozens of possible food sources.

It was fast becoming his favourite place to hunt. Not only because it was so easy, but because he was doing it right under the Slayer’s nose and getting away with it. When he was inside, he stuck to the shadows under the balconies, attempting to stay out of sight incase the Slayer was still there. After a few minutes, he did see her, on the dance floor with Willow. He looked over to the bar to see Xander talking to a girl. He spoke to her a little bit before kissing her on the hand and moving away to join Willow and Buffy on the dance floor. When he was sure the three were lost in the crowd, he made his way towards the girl Xander had been talking to.

Spike froze. He considered going away, but if she’d known he was there, he decided there was no point.

Carefully stepping around some fifteen year old holding four cups of coffee, Spike sat down next to her.

Over the past two hundred years, not much had suprised Spike - hell, even when the Watcher’s council told him his options, he wasn’t that shocked. But he wasn’t ready when the girl beside him turned around to face him. He bit back a gasp as her burning blue eyes met his own and she smile beautifully. When he didn’t answer, but just continued to stare, she kinked one eyebrow. "Well?"

Seeming to have recovered suddenly, Spike grinned then. "No thanks, love."

She held out one hand to him and said, "I’m Kate."

He looked down at her hand in suspicion but took it anyway. "Spike." For a moment, she turned away to glance at her three friends on the dance floor and Spike followed her gaze.

"So, what’s with the clueless boyfriend?" he asked her when she turned back to him.

He’d expected her to be offended, but she only smiled politely before the bar tender brought her another drink.

"He’s good to me." she told him, lifting the glass to her lips, "It’s a nice change."

Spike didn’t reply this time, he just leant his elbows on the bar and stared at her. He couldn’t help it - his eyes were fixed on her as if he feared that she’d disappear when he turned away. Kate noticed his state of deep concentration on her and grinned broadly. "What is it?"

Spike shook his head and sat up again, looking down at the counter as he asked, "So, you’re friends with the other then, too? The blonde and her sidekick?" "Yeah. You know them?"

Spike rolled his eyes and gave an extremely exasperated sigh. "Yeah, love - I do, unfortunately. I know your little friends all too well."

Kate smirked and took another sip of her drink, before asking, "So, I guess that means you don’t like them?"

Moving toward her, Spike came as close to her as he possibly could without the faces actually touching.

Then he whispered, "I detest them, pet."

Remaining just an inch away from his face, Kate smiled and asked, "Then why are you here?"

"Oh you know - just hunting around for a good looking girl to have a drink with. I can avoid them at the same time."

"Very multi-talented," she told him, then stared intensely into his eyes for a moment before asking, "And what about Angel? How do you feel about him?" The expression on Spike’s face didn’t change, but Kate could see the spark of hatred in his eyes as she mentioned the other vampire’s name.

"I’m surprised your boyfriend hasn’t told you all about him. He despises him nearly as much as I do." Spike said as he leant back until he was sitting up straight on the bar stool again.

Kate simply shrugged her shoulders. "I did bring it up this morning, but Buffy managed to change the subject pretty quickly. It’s obvious she doesn’t like to talk about it."

Spike laughed coldly, knowing very well why Buffy would want to keep the situation a secret. "It’s simple really," he told her, "She fucked him. He went psycho for a little while. Then he was cured and moved to L.A. so he’d been away from her. Her relationship with him is a Pandora’s Box. Everyone time it’s opened, shit happens."

"Wow," Kate answered, not quite sure what to say about what she’d just been told. Then she asked, "Would she have told me, do you think? Or is it a secret?"

"Oh, it’s a big secret, pet. Last time Xander told someone, he and that someone tried to..." he stopped in mid sentence as he realised his mouth was running away with him. "I don’t think you should be asking me this."

Kate nodded before turning back to the bar and finishing off the rest of her drink in one mouthful. She slammed the glass back down before standing up, straightening her skirt and turning to him with a polite smile. Moving closer so he could hear her over the loud music, she whispered in his ear - "I’ll tell you what Spike. You don’t tell my ‘little friends’ I was asking about Angel, and I won’t tell them that you went hunting tonight."

When she pulled away to face him, the look on his face was undistinguishable. His eyes were wide as she grinned, taking his silence as an agreement to her terms. "It was nice to meet you Spike. I’ll see you around." she told him as she patted him on the shoulder and walked towards the dance floor to be with Xander. Still sitting at the bar, Spike watched her go in silence. To the others around him, he must have looked like one of the laughing clowns at a carnival - his jaw dropped in shock. He took a mental note to avoid this girl.

Not only because she knew way too much about him, but she also held a very similar resemblance to some one he hadn’t thought about in a very long time. With those eyes, she looked just like...shaking his head to bring himself back to reality, he stood up slowly and began to move away from the bar. It was impossible and he knew it. But despite the impossibility of the situation, he decided to just go back to his apartment on the edge of town. Suddenly, he’d lost his appetite.

It was just after sunrise when Angel finally decided to go to bed. Until that point in time he had still been trying to get his mind around the prophecy, but still to no avail. He threw the book he was reading onto the table and turned to go upstairs when he heard a noise behind him.

"What do you want, Spike?" he asked, not needing to turn around to know who it was. When he did, he

saw Spike was leaning against the door, his pale features mostly hidden by the shadows the dim light of the

room.

"You know what I want, Angelus," Spike replied as he pushed himself away from the door and slowly stepped into the light. "I know you’ve seen her." Angel frowned at first, confused as to what he meant, but it quickly sunk in soon enough.

The older vampire lowered his eyes to the floor to avoid those of his childe. "Yes, I’ve seen her."

The grin that crossed Spike’s face was distorted by anger and bitterness as he sat down at the table, not looking up at Angel in his fury. "You could have warned me," he whispered angrily.

"She’s just some girl, Spike." Angel replied.

"She’s almost an exact copy." Spike corrected as he calmly picked up one of the books that Angel had been reading. There was a deafening silence between them as Angel moved to sit down at the table as well.

When he finally did look up to gaze upon Spike, the other vampire seemed to have calmed down about, but Angel knew to tread carefully. Especially when it came to this subject.

"I don’t know how to talk to you about this," he told Spike, "We never discussed it. You never..."

"No." Spike said suddenly, interrupting his sire, mid-speech, "That is incidental."

Angel sighed and slumped back into his chair. "I really wish you wouldn’t quote from ‘Silence Of The Lambs’, Spike. Makes that film twice as scary."

"Don’t change the subject Angel."

"I’m sorry, Spike - I just didn’t think to tell you." Spike didn’t respond - he just got up and began to move toward the end of the table where Angel was sitting.

"She’s not just a girl, mate." he told his sire, "She knew who I was."

"Maybe Buffy had been talking about you with..."

"She knew I was a vampire."

Angel’s face fell like a tonne of bricks as Spike came to stand directly in front of him. As the blonde vampire leant against the table, he waited for the other to reply, but Angel said nothing. He just stared down at the floor, the mechanics of his mind working at an insane pace as he tried to understand what was going on.

"Well?" Spike asked as he began to get impatient, but Angel just shook his head.

"I don’t know, Spike."

Spike leant forward so that he and Angel were almost touching, before whispering, "I don’t care. This is your bleeding mess - clean it up."

Angel’s eyes became wide with the implication of what Spike had just said. "Surely you not saying she’s..."

"Wake up, Angelus!" Spike snarled, "First the rumour about the Tattooed Rose and now this bloody girl - something is going on!"

Angel lowered his sad eyes again and nodded. "Do you think they’ll find out?"

Spike sneered and pulled away from Angel, his face twisted by an angry grin. "Afraid your girlfriend will despise you if she knows?"

Angel grimaced visibly, knowing that it was partly true, but he didn’t want Spike to know that.

"They’re not stupid, you know." he told the other vampire. Spike raised one humoured eyebrow as he stood up again, not saying anything as he made began to make his way to the door. Behind him, Angel suddenly called out. "Spike - you can’t pretend you don’t care. Not to me." Spike stopped at the door, obviously trying to contain his rage, before turning around to come back a few feet towards Angel, one finger pointed at his sire to make a point.

"I’m nothing like you Angelus. I don’t give a shit what those moronic humans think!"

Angel turned his head away, but he could still feel Spike’s eyes burning into his flesh. He cursed himself silently for pushing the blonde vampire too far - he should have known not to go to far when it came to her.

When he looked up again, Spike seemed to have calmed down a little, but Angel knew he was still walking on a thin thread.

"I’ll make you a deal, Angel," Spike finally said, "If they do find out - which I extremely doubt - but if they do start asking questions about the bloody ‘Tattooed Rose’ ; you don’t tell them who she really was, and I won’t tell them what you did to her."

Angel simply stared at him for a moment, trying to decipher where he was in this arrangement. He stared down at the table in silence, and Spike could see the torment in his eyes as the older vampire weighed up the odds of crossing his childe this time.

Finally, he returned his gaze to Spike and nodded. Spike didn’t acknowledge Angel’s decision - he simply turned and left as quickly and quietly as he had entered, the only sound in the room the rustle of his leather coat as he departed. When he was gone, Angel sank back into his chair and closed his eyes tightly. He hadn’t been sure if teaming up with Spike on this issue was such a good idea - in almost two hundred years they’d never once discussed it, so now he wasn’t quite sure how to handle the rather sensitive subject. As he sat in the hollow silence of the near empty room, Angel began to fear like he never had in almost a century. What if Spike was right? What if something was going on? What if the she’d come back to haunt him?

"Any luck?" Willow asked Giles hopefully as she and Buffy entered the library the next morning, but the Watcher only shook his tired head before taking a sip of his third cup of coffee.

"It’s completely baffling me. I can’t even understand why, either - this is not the first time we’ve encountered a prophecy of this kind."

"Maybe Angel has more luck," Buffy suggested as she pulled herself up to sit on the counter of the library front desk. Giles nodded unenthusiastically and took another sip of coffee, seriously doubting that the vampire had discovered anything much either. A few moments later, the library doors opened with a loud creek as Xander and Kate entered, hand in hand.

"Good morning," Xander chimed, "How are my favourite vixens?"

"Not feeling very vixenish," Buffy told him, "Giles still hasn’t got anywhere with the prophecy and now it’s starting to bug me, too."

"Did you have a good time last night?" Giles asked from behind the counter, and Xander nodded wildly.

"It was raging, huh Kate?"

Kate nodded happily in response. "Raging," she agreed, "Meeting your British friend was especially interesting."

Xander’s girlfriend watched with interest as every eye in the room suddenly glued to her in both amazement and concern.

"Spike!" Willow squeaked, "What was he doing at the Bronze?"

"Wait, wait, wait," Buffy said to her friend in her calmest voice possible returning attention to Kate, "When you say Spike, do you mean ; about twice as tall as me? Bleach blonde hair? Cheek bones that could start a war? Way too much leather?"

Kate laughed lightly at the Slayer’s description and nodded avidly. "That’s the one. He said something about hunting for a girl to have a drink with - I think that was it." Buffy’s face fell immediately and she sighed loudly, placing one hand against her forehead in distress.

"Spike was hunting." she groaned mournfully, "I should have known."

"What are you going to do?" Willow asked, but Buffy only shook her head.

"Don’t know, don’t care right now. I’ll worry about it later."

Kate, by this point, was frowning in confusion at the conversation going on and asked, "Did I say something wrong?"

Xander shook his head and wrapped one arm around her in an act of worldly wisdom. "Nope. It’s just that Spike is a very bad boy - avoid him at all costs, okay?" Kate was still confused, but nodded in agreement anyway.

"Don’t you have lectures to go to?" Giles suddenly piped up as he went back into his office to pour himself another cup of coffee, and the four teenagers sighed sadly.

"Back to the salt mines, my dear?" Xander proposed, and Kate took his and nodded solemnly. Buffy jumped off the counter and looped her arm around Willows as the four students walked out of the library, leaving Giles alone to overdose on caffeine.

When they were gone, Giles poked his head outside the office to make sure he was alone, before dashing

over to one of the computers. Taking out the instructions Willow had given him to look up information on

the internet, he began to load a search. Taking a sip of his fresh cup of coffee, Giles tried to relax back into

his chair, wondering how long it was going to take him to find a reference to the Tattooed Rose.

*****

Spike could tell Buffy was pissed from the very moment he walked into the library that night. He wasn’t even going to go in that night, such was his concern of seeing Xander’s new girlfriend again, but he wanted to talk to Angel. When he entered, the Slayer was sitting on a table, a knife in one hand which she was using the sharpen the wooden stake she held in the other. Stopping about three metres away from her, Spike looked upon her curiously, his defence mode flaring up immediately as she pretended to ignore his presence. Then he looked across the table to Willow, who was sitting at a computer. She, however, did not pretend to ignore, and looked up to him as he came into the room. As his eye caught hers, she stared at him intently and mouthed the words, ‘You’re in trouble!’

Rolling his eyes and groaning loudly, Spike threw his arms up in surrender and exclaimed, "What could I possibly have done now?!"

Finally, Buffy look up at him and raised a questioning eyebrow. Cutting straight to the chase, she said, "You went hunting last night Spike."

"Excuse me?" Spike asked, putting on the most offended, yet innocent voice he could come up with.

"Don’t lie to me Spike, I know you fed on someone last night." Taking his un-life in his hands, Spike crossed the small distance to sit beside her. "And I suppose you have body to prove this?"

Buffy frowned, annoyed that he was right - there was no body. She was about to come up with an excuse, but he continued, interrupting her.

"And I guess you have a witness to me committing this terrible crime?" Buffy sighed mournfully, knowing that Spike was right again - and she didn’t like it at all. Once again she tried to speak but he wouldn’t let her.

"AND I suppose you failed to ask Angel if there was evidence of my kill when I saw him last night AFTER I left the Bronze."

Buffy froze momentarily before standing up and spinning around to face Angel, who until this time, had remained silently at the far end of the table beside Giles, not interfering in the conversation between Spike and the Slayer.

"You didn’t tell me you’d spoken to him last night." she told him.

Angel looked up over the large volume he was reading and calmly answered, "You didn’t tell me you’d suspected him of feeding. Which he didn’t - I’d have known."

Buffy let out a exasperated cry and slumped into the chair behind her, frustrated that Spike had foiled her once again - but she still suspected that he’d been out hunting anyway. He just hadn’t fed, that was all.

"Now," said Spike as he leant up against the front desk of the library, "Is there anything else you want to accuse me of, or can I go in peace?"

Buffy was about to shoo him away when an interesting question came to her. "Wait, why are you here, anyway?"

"I wanted to talk to Angelus," he replied with a lazy shrug, "but I’m not in the mood anymore."

From his place at the table, Angel quietly let out a thankful sigh, being extremely glad of the blessing after their argument that morning. Buffy, however, was not finished arguing, and was about to being a list of abuse before Xander came into the library.

"Good evening, all," he greeted before noticing Spike. "Ah, the bleached wonder. I have a message for you."

Spike raised one questioning eyebrow at the boy and stood up straight to face him. "A message."

"Yeah. Kate said something about your asking her what her favourite place in London was."

"I did?" Spike wasn’t quite sure what was going on, but already he didn’t like the story that Xander was dealing out.

"She wanted to me tell you that she’d made up her mind and it was....it was...."

"Look, boy," Spike interrupted as he became tired of Xander’s rambling’s, "I don’t particularly care what soppy, sentimental, human feelings your girlfriend has about the bloody place, so..."

"The Tattooed Rose!" Xander suddenly cried out, "That was it I think." Everyone in the library watched with great interest, the look that became plastered on Spike’s face. The horror in his eyes was evident as his jaw slowly dropped in shock. "What?"

Ignoring his question, Xander decided to deal out the little speech he’d prepared for the vampire about the new love of his life. "Look, Spike - I know you’re supposed to be on our side and everything now, but in my opinion you’re still a blood sucking demon...and..." He faltered momentarily as he forget what he was going to say, but soon picked up his trail of thought. "Well, what I’m trying to say, is stay the hell away from my girlfriend!"

The blonde vampire, by this time, had seemed to have slowly come out of his state of shock, and as he looked up at the boy infront of him, his lips kinked into cruel smirk.

"Oh, don’t worry," he assured Xander, "I can promise you I have no desire to ever see that girl again."

As he turned away from Xander and began to head to the door, Buffy noticed that Spike looked back shortly to look at Angel. When the blonde vampire was gone, she turned to look at the other. The same look of fear that had been on Spike face’s only a few seconds earlier was now intently fixed on Angel’s as well.

"Angel, is there something you’re not telling me?" she asked him, but Angel shook his head vigorously, avoiding looking at her as he did so. Buffy watched in a slight state of confusion as he slowly stood up, slipped on his jacket, and muttered something almost incoherent about needing to talk to Spike.

As he silently began to talk away from the group, it was Giles who called out to him for an explanation.

"Does Spike know something about the Tattooed Rose that you don’t, Angel?"

At the mention of the Tattooed Rose, Angel stopped suddenly. His body rigid and tense, he didn’t turn around to face the Watcher, as he quietly replied, "I don’t know what you’re talking about."

"You knew when Spike reported back from Willie." Giles told him as the vampire remained frozen infront of the library doors. "What is it that you’ll discuss with your enemy but not with us?"

At this point, Buffy turned back to see Angel where he was standing by the exit, and slowly stood up to approach him. "Angel, what’s going on?" she asked quietly. Ever so slowly, Angel turned around to face her. The terror in his eyes was clearly evident and Buffy moved to touch him, to comfort him, but he abruptly pulled away from her.

"This is between me and Spike." he ground out as he backed away from the Slayer. "It has nothing to do with the prophecy and nothing to do with you - so stay out of it." Without another word he was gone - the library left doors swinging after his swift departure. For long and arduous moments, Buffy stood staring at the doors as they slowly came to be still, before turning to face the others. She looked urgently to Giles.

"What was that about?"

"When Spike came back from Willie’s, Angel thought I was asleep in my office," he told her, "But I was awake and could hear every thing they said. Spike told him that a rumour about the Tattooed Rose had been going around. It was obvious that just the mention of it scared the hell out of Angel, and when I came in, Spike lied to me and said that Willie hadn’t known anything."

From her place behind one of the computers, Willow spoke up. "Maybe we should just let it be and trust Angel on this one."

"Who else votes no on this one?" Xander asked, raising one hand to prove his point.

"I have to agree with Xander on this one," Giles told them. "I think it still could have something to do with the prophecy - and I still don’t trust Angel to keep something to big from us."

He looked to Buffy, then - concerned that she would be hurt that he still didn’t trust Angel. But instead she simply nodded. "I agree. He’s obviously scared and I want to help him."

"So what do you we do?" Willow asked, pointing out a question that was slightly harder to answer. Buffy shrugged her shoulders in response. "Research?"

"Anything?" Giles asked Willow five hours later, but the red head only shook her head. By this time, both Xander and Buffy had gone to sleep on one of the couches in the reading room, leaving their friend and the Watcher to work on their own. All they had been able to decipher so far was that there was a pub in London called the Tattooed Rose - but beyond that, they were stuck.

"Me neither," he told her as he sunk down into the chair beside her.

Willow nodded sleepily and went to wake Buffy and Xander, eager to get home to her own bed. In her absence, Giles yawned and rested his elbows on the table, staring blankly at the computer screen. Suddenly, something of interest caught his eye - the newspaper article that Willow had just pulled up.

As he stared at it intently, a spark of hope glimmered in his eye as he read the information on the scream.

In the reading room, Willow and Xander were at the arduous task of pulling a very tired Slayer off the couch when a joyous yell from the main room of the library surprised them and caused the to drop her again.

"I found something!"

*****

When Spike finally got home that evening, he slammed the door behind him before dragging himself over to a couch and collapsing on it. After he’d left the library, he’d noticed he was being followed by Angel, but had easily managed to lose him in the cemetery before his sire had been able to talk to him. He was tired of talking to Angel. Then he’d gone to the Bronze again, knowing very well that Buffy and her friends wouldn’t be there to interfere in his hunting. But when he got there, he looked around him and just didn’t feel all the hungry. His appetite still lingered somewhere unknown, and this latest shock hadn’t helped at all.

As he lay on the couch, one arm slung over his eyes as he tried to relax, he didn’t hear the door opening - nor did he hear the intruder enter and close the door behind them. "Hello, William."

Almost leaping out of his dead skin, Spike jumped off the couch immediately and turned to face the intruder faster than they could’ve blinked. In the bad lighting of the room, he could only just see the figure standing at the door, and was not yet able to recognise it as someone he knew.

"No one’s called me that in over a hundred years," he told his mystery companion as he raised his hands in a battle stance, ready to take on the uninvited guest.

"Pity," she said as she stepped into the dim light, "Such a lovely name."

Spike tried to bite back the gasp of horror that built up inside him as the intruder stepped into the light, but he was unable to, such was the surprise of seeing her. Infront of him, stood the girl that the Slayer and her friends called Kate Wilson. She watched with interest as he dropped his battle stance and began to laugh.

"What are you doing here?" he managed to stifle out, stilling chuckling as he sat back down on the couch.

Kate shrugged. "I missed you."

Spike looked up at her again, taking her in as she stood before him. She was wearing a long black dress, made completely of leather, the lack of any straps showing off her pale shoulders that were slightly covered by her long blonde hair. As his concentration faltered, Spike noticed that her hair was quite a bit longer than before and soft curls now replaced the dead-straight locks he’d become aquatinted with at the Bronze.

When he did not say anything to her, she cocked her head to once side, pouting slightly.

"Didn’t you miss me too?" she asked as she began to move closer.

As she did so, Spike let out a short, humourless laugh, answering, "Why on earth would you think that?" Raising one slender eyebrow, Kate slowly sat down on the couch next to him - so close that she was almost on top of the vampire as turned to him and snaked one hand up to his face. More gently than he’d ever experienced in over two hundred years of existence, she leant forward and place a light kiss on his lips ; so light that they were barely touching. The innocence of the kiss, however, quickly began to decrease as it became more passionate. As Kate’s mouth melded against his, Spike slipped one arm around her waist to hold her to him, momentarily forgetting who he touching and why he shouldn’t.

Finally, Kate slowly ended the kiss, gently tearing her lips away from his to sit back slightly and look into his eyes. A small smile spread across her face as she stroked the side of his face, breathlessly whispering, "I’ll take that as a ‘yes’."

With her words, Spike managed to regain his bearings and pulled away from her. Standing up, he paced a few metres away from the couch, keeping his back turned to her as he raised one hand to his lips - feeling where hers had just been.

"What do you want?" he asked as he turned to face her. Kate smiled sensuously and relaxed back onto the couch.

"The same thing that you want." she told him.

Spike rolled his eyes and gave an exasperated sigh, letting her know that she was beginning to annoy him. "And what exactly would that be?"

The smile on Kate’s face suddenly disappeared and was replaced a look of severe seriousness as she answered his question. "Blood."

Spike’s eyes narrowed suspiciously as he attempted to focus in on her in the darkness of the room, completely confused by her statement. He looked to her for more information, but she only stared at him - waiting for him. Finally, a look of understand sparkled in his dark eyes.

"You want HIS blood."

Slowly, the expression on her face unchanging, Kate pulled herself off the couch.

"It’s finally time," she told Spike as she moved ever closer to him, "He’s plagued this earth for too long, William. Both you and I know it."

As she reached him, Spike made the defensive move of attempting to step away from her, but she quickly grabbed hold of his right hand. "There’s no need to be afraid," she whispered soothingly, reaching out to take hold of his other hand. "I’m not asking you for anything."

"Then why are you here?" he snapped back at her, "I didn’t need this - not now! Things are bad enough as it is."

Spike waited for her to go away, but she didn’t seem to have beem intimidated to his outburst. Kate simply sighed sadly in response, but dared to raise one hand to touch his cheek.

"I just thought you’d want to know the score," she told him. Spike closed his eyes tightly to the sensation her gentle caress caused him to feel. He didn’t want to think of how he’d missed this. Missed her touch.

Suddenly, she pulled away from him, but didn’t he didn’t open his eyes in her absence. He kept himself in darkness as he heard Kate make her way to the door and then open it; he her pause to turn and look at him once more from the doorway.

Angel was alone in the mansion, sitting in a large armchair infront of the fire, trying to take his mind of everything by reading a book. He had been quite successful so far, too. But as he sat in silence in the darkness of the room, he was suddenly disturbed by a quiet, yet distinct sound. At first, it was hardly audible, and so he tried to ignore it. Gradually, however, as time progressed, the sound began to get louder. Putting down his book, Angel stood up from his chair and looked around the room. There was nothing around him making the noise, and so he decided to make his way out into the hallway.

As he did so, the noise suddenly stopped - just as he had placed his foot through the doorway. He paused, waiting in a frozen silence to make sure he could no longer hear it. When it did not continue, he resolved to return to his book.

"I’m going crazy," he muttered to himself as he sunk back into the comfortable arm chair, trying to draw his attention back to the volume he was reading. After a while though, the silence was broken again, and Angel was sure he could hear the noise, once again echoing through the mansion. It was louder this time - it sounded like a tap dripping. Quickly getting up, he dropped the book onto his chair and made his way out into the hallway.

This time, as he left the room, the noise did not stop - if anything, the dripping sound got louder. Making his way down the hall way, he followed the sound, trying to guess where it could have been coming from.

Eventually, he realised that it was coming from his bedroom. Treading quietly, he made his way to the room where he slept, until he was standing at the open door. He noticed instantly that the lamp beside his bed was on, and he frowned as he remembered turning it off before he had left the room.

That, however, was when he noticed her ; lying in his bed. As crept over to the bed, to examine the body tucked under the white sheets - the golden blonde hair that was fanned out across the pillow. Letting out a heavy sigh, Angel smiled and shook his head. Sitting down beside her on the bed, Angel reached out one hand to gently touch her on the shoulder.

"Buffy?" he called to her as he touched her, "What are you doing here?" When she did not respond, he was about to speak again, when he remembered the dripping noise that was now incredibly loud. Then, he noticed the sheets. They were no longer white, but quickly becoming stained a dark red.

Angel gasped as he looked down at the floor beside the bed and saw the pool of blood that was accumulating on the stone tiles. In horror, he realised, that she was bleeding.

The bed by this time was covered in her blood and Angel grasped her shoulder frantically as he tried to wake her.

"Buffy?!" he cried as he pulled her limp body across the bed and into his arms. Brushing away the blonde hair from her face, her gasped suddenly. Lying in his arms, blood pouring from wounds on her arms, chest and neck, was Kate Wilson - as she stared up at him with an evil grin.

When Buffy entered the mansion, the first thing she could hearing was Angel moaning in pain. She knew immediately that he’d be in the room in which he slept, and quickly dashed off to get to him.

"Angel!" she yelled as she ran down the hallway, terrified of what she’d find when she got to her destination. When she did get to his bedroom, he yanked open the door, almost pulling it off its hinges as she tried desperately to get to him as soon as she could. As she burst into the dimly lit room, Buffy opened her mouth to call to him again, when she saw him - lying on his bed. Angel was tossing and turning, almost ripping the sheets as he writhed in his sleep - Buffy knew immediately he was having a terrible nightmare and quickly went to his side. Taking hold of his shoulders, she attempted to shake him awake while she continued to call out his name. Suddenly, without warning, his eyes snapped open, a deep gasp escaping his lips as if he was struggling to breath. His gaze flickered to her leaning over him, her eyes filled with concern.

Reaching out, he touched her cheek with the palm of his hand. He opened his mouth to say something, but then stopped himself from doing so, as if he’d changed his mind. Buffy, however, had already noticed and asked, "What is it?"

"I just wanted to make sure you were real." he whispered as he lowered his hand before trying to sit up. As he did so, Buffy moved away slightly so that she was sitting on the end of the bed, watching as he took his head in his hands - staring down at the sheets that covered him. Buffy didn’t know that he was looking for blood.

"What were you dreaming about?" she asked him after he seemed to have calmed down, but Angel only shook his head.

"Doesn’t matter," he told her, but Buffy wasn’t convinced. Resuming her position right beside him again, she reached out to touch his shoulder.

"No, Buffy!" Angel told her, raising his voice to her for what seemed like the first time ever, slightly shocking her. Turning away from her, he leaned against the wall, trying to contain his anger as he sat silently on the behind him. "If you get involved in this, I can promise you that you will get hurt - and I don’t want that."

Still not ready to give up yet, Buffy got off the bed and tried to reach out to him again, trying to let him know she was on his side ; but again he brushed her away. "Get out." he told her quietly.

"Angel, please...."

"Get out!" This time he turned as he yelled at her and Buffy stepped away immediately as his game face slipped over his human mask. She could tell immediately that he meant it this time.

Buffy could feel the tears burning in her eyes, but instead of crying infront of him, she resolved to get out of the room as quickly as possible. As she ran out, Angel groaned mournfully, sliding down against the wall until he was balled up on the floor - his head between his knees, trying to control the demon raging inside of him.

He heard Buffy slam the front door of the mansion and shivered at the sound. Curling into him self further, Angel lay down on the floor and tried to close his eyes. But it didn’t help - every time he opened them, her blood was still on his hands.

*****

Just after two a.m., Giles picked up the phone in his office and punched in the numbers he had located after an hour of making other phone calls to various people in London. He tapped him fingers on the desk as he impatiently waited while the phone rang. Finally, a sleepy voice answered. "Hello?"

"Ah, hello. I was wondering if you could help me, I’m looking for an Eliza Riley? She’s the owner of a pub called the Tattooed Rose."

"Nah, sorry," the voice on the other end of the line answered, "She don’t live here anymore. She moved to the States."

"Really?" Giles asked enthusiastically, "Do you have any idea how I can get in contact with her?"

Hanging up the phone, Giles scribbled down the information. He went to reach for the phone again when he stopped, realising that the club wouldn’t be open at that hour in the morning and neither would the patron appreciate being woken up. Folding up the piece of paper with the name of the club written on it, he stuffed it into his pocket. Putting on his jacket, he decided that maybe it was time to finally go home and get some sleep for the first time in days.

"Hello. My name is Rupert Giles, I’m a historian at the Sunnydale University."

"What can I do for you Mr. Giles?" the woman asked. She didn’t sound to happy at receiving the phone call but was being polite enough anyway.

"Is this Eliza Riley?" The woman on the end of the line affirmed that she was and Giles would have jumped for joy if he had the energy.

"I believe you know a murder case I’m interested in. The Tattooed Rose."

Suddenly, Eliza Riley’s voice picked up in immediately and she became overly enthusiastic. "Yes! I know everything!"

Sighing thankfully, Giles asked her if she’d be interested in coming to Sunnydale to speak to him about the case and agreed without even taking time to think about it, promising she’d been there by the afternoon the next day.

When Giles hung up the phone five minutes later, he couldn’t help but laugh. He hadn’t thought it would be so easy.

The next day passed without event. Xander, Oz, Buffy and Willow all helped out with researching for Giles during the day, but success was limited and the Watcher was still racking his brains when it came to the prophecy. Kate had come in shortly to bring in some lunch for Xander, at which point everyone had to hide their books and close down their web pages on ancient prophecies and monsters and pretend to be doing something else.

As the day began to come to a close, Giles had given up trying to decipher any more of the prophecy and came into the main room of the library to sit down next to Buffy. "Did you speak to Angel?" he asked. He could tell instantly from the expression on her face that she had and that it had not gone well.

"Not for long." she admitted, keeping her eyes focused on the book in her hands instead of looking up at her Watcher. Giles lowered his head and stared down at his hands, trying to figure out what to say to her that would make her tell him more.

"I’m worried about him, Buffy," he told her finally, "I don’t like that we don’t know what’s going on."

Buffy nodded, he eyes remaining lowered, "I know. But he’ll tell us when he’s ready."

Suddenly, she slammed her book closed before looking up at him, startling Giles with her sudden movements. But he relaxed when he saw the wide grin on her face.

"In the meantime, I think we should ask Spike." Giles couldn’t help but laugh and nodded as a sign of agreement. He had to admit, in his own humble way, he enjoyed Buffy’s tormenting and teasing the vampire perhaps even more than she did occasionally. He may have had to obey the Council’s orders in allowing Spike to become part of their elite group, but he didn’t have to like it.

"I’ll call him immediately." he told her and went to do so in his office. A sly look crossed Buffy face as he left and she noticed Willow grinning at her from across the table. Buffy quickly replaced it with a look of innocence, issuing a laugh from her friend before everyone went back to work.

*****

When Spike was arrived an hour later, everyone in the library couldn’t help but be a little surprised by his appearance. The vampire was looking extremely dishevelled ; his hair was a mess, his shirt was buttoned up in the wrong places, and seemed to have forgotten his leather coat - something they thought he never took off at all.

"Not sleep well, Spikey?" Buffy asked playfully as he entered the library. She was expecting a snarky comment or atleast a snarl. Maybe even a growl to make their pittiful existence seem worth while - but he delivered neither.

"Didn’t sleep at all," he muttered as he crossed the room and sunk into a chair at the table upon which he leant forward and rested his head on his arms. "But isn’t that what vampires do during the day?" Willow asked. Spike mumbled something incoherent and the two girls frowned visibly.

"Come on, Spike," Buffy whined as she came over to sit next to him, "It’s no fun if you don’t fight back."

Sitting up slowly, Spike leant back into the chair, lolling his head back to look at her. "Fighting back is pointless," he told her. "When you fight back, bad things happen."

"What are you talking about?!" she exclaimed, "You thrive on bad things!"

She was extremely disappointed when he just shrugged, a state neutrality taking over his body as he dropped his head back to stare at the ceiling. At this point, Giles came into the room from his office and noticed the vampire.

"Oh, good. You’re here, Spike. We have some questions to ask you." Spike rolled his eyes and groaned loudly. "Great. Fire away - just make it quick. I haven’t slept in two days."

Giles was about to ask why, but decided to leave it until later and consciously stored the question at the back of his mind. Coming over to the table, Giles stood behind Buffy and leant against the back of her chair.

"Alright then. First of all, what is the Tattooed Rose and why did you lie to me about it."

When Spike simply continued staring at the ceiling, Giles was considerably surpised by the vampire’s reaction. He had been expecting an outburst similar to that which Angel had displayed, but instead the vampire seemed to remain entirely calm.

"I don’t think I can help you with that, mate." he answered, and Buffy gave an over-exaggerated sigh in response. "Why the hell, not?" she asked pointed. "Because, pet," he told her as he slowly raised his head to reach into one pocket, "It was before my time."

As he pulled out a packet of cigarettes, Buffy snorted trying to hold back a laugh as a joke came to mind, but Giles quickly put one hand on her shoulder, knowing what she was thinking and squeezing tightly to tell her that it was not the time.

"We know you know something, Spike - and you also know why it scares Angel so much," Giles told him as he released his grip on Buffy.

After pulling out a cigarette and lighting it, Spike sat quietly for a moment, contemplating his answer as he stared at the cigarette burning up in his fingers. Finally, he sighed and sank back into his chair. "Alright."

"Is this a yucky story?" Willow asked suddenly as she took her place at the table to hear Spike out - he chuckled and took a deep drag on the cigarette.

"Yes, it is, pet. But if you really want, I’ll leave out the gory bits." Willow nodded enthusiastically and Spike shook his head sadly. The red head never let him have any fun. "The Tattooed Rose," he began, "may be a bar in Sutton now, but first it was person."

"A person?" Giles asked, not noticing that the interruption was annoying the blonde vampire, "How interesting."

"Yeah, it’s God damn exciting, isn’t it," Spike replied sarcastically before returning to his story. "Her name was Adia Riley - girl in her late teens, they say. She’s supposed to have been his most brutal kill to date."

"Who’s kill?" Willow asked him quietly, already with a slight suspicion of what the answer was.

"Angelus?" Buffy asked, her voice catching slightly in her throat. Spike nodded solemnly and Buffy bit her lip as sign of annoyance with herself for not thinking of it before. "The details vary depending on who tells you." he continued, "Especially about the way she died. Some say she drowned; others say she bled to death ; someone once told me he..." he stopped suddenly when he noticed the rather distressed look on Willow’s face and internally decided against her putting a silence spell on him. "Sorry, luv. Forgot - no gore."

"What else?" Buffy asked, ignoring Willow as she put her hands over her ears. Spike shrugged, a look of intense thought crossing his face as he tried to remember all the various things he’d been told over the years. "All else I know, is that she’s famous for the tattoo."

"Tattoo?" Buffy asked, now becoming quickly confused. "They say, that when she was found, the thing the police noticed first was the tattoo on her back. Everyone in the vampire community knew that tattoo, and knew that he’d put it there..."

"Why?" Buffy asked, this time causing Spike to groan mournfully as he leant forward and put his head in his hands as a sign of exasperation.

"If you stop asking so many bloody questions, I’ll get around to it in a second," he told her, and Buffy quickly sat back in her chair, mouthing a sarcastic ‘sorry’ in response.

"They knew she was his victim, because it was an exact copy of the one on his back." Spike paused suddenly, and his features become overwhelmed by a serious frown. "No other vampire in history has ever done it. Left a calling card, I mean - it’s just not in our nature. To this day, no one knows why he’d felt compelled to mark her. To claim her as his and then not change her." By this point, Buffy was beginning to feel ill and was about to tell him that was enough when he said, "But I’m told that’s not what outraged the town’s people so much that Angelus fled London."

"What did?" Oz asked, now becoming curious from his position behind Willow as he held his own hands over hers to help her block the story out. But Buffy didn’t care anymore and stood up out of her chair, muttering, "It doesn’t matter. He’s told us enough."

"Apparently she was pregnant." Spike replied, purposely not biding by the Slayer’s instructions. This time, Buffy turned an interesting shade of green and sank back into her chair, covering her face with her hands.

She sat silently, not saying a word as Spike’s story sunk in. "Are you okay?" Willow asked from her side of the table. Buffy nodded without looking up, still hiding her eyes with her hands.

"No wonder he’s feeling so bad." Buffy whispered as she finally look up again to Willow. "No wonder he didn’t want me to know."

"Well, pet, you knew what he was when you fell for the prick," Spike pointed out as he took one final drag on his cigarette before stubbed it out on the table. "That’s the price you pay for loving someone you can’t keep."

Deciding his job was done for the night, Spike got up again, tucked his cigarettes into his pockets and turned to Giles. "I’ll be going to get some sleep, then." he told the Watcher who just nodded in silent response.

"Wait!" Buffy called out as he walked towards the door, causing him to stop and turn to her again - the look on his face telling her that he didn’t really appreciate being kept at the library any longer.

"What?"

"What did you mean?" she asked, "When you said it’s the price for loving someone you can’t keep? What’s the price?"

Spike shrugged solemnly and stared down at the floor, his eyes becoming glazed over as he considered what to tell her. "I don’t know, pet. Seemed like a smart thing to say at the time."

Buffy watched him curiously as he turned again and walked out though the library doors, leaving her question unanswered. While the other buzzed around, discussing the new development, Buffy promised her self she’d ask him again later - because it was obvious he wasn’t telling her the truth.

*****

Spike left the library with a feeling of melancholy - he just couldn’t understand what was wrong with him.

Once upon a time, lying to the Slayer and her friends and then getting away with it would have thrilled him to no end - but this time was different. Maybe it was because he knew deep down that, as usual, they find out as they always did. He’d managed to mislead them - but for how long?

As they waited at their table at Carlington Restaurant, Buffy turned to Giles to look at him seriously. "Are you sure about this woman, Giles?"

"Yes." Giles told her assuredly. "There are absolutely no records about this bloody Tattooed Rose thing and she’s the only lead we’ve had."

"Giles. What about the prophecy? Have you forgotten about the world coming to a halt, and all that?"

Giles turned to Buffy, an exasperated look on his face, and Buffy quickly got the message that she was asking too many questions.

"Look," he told her, "I think this may indeed have something to do with the prophecy, and because we can’t find out anything else about it, we may as well go with what we have. I mean..."

"Mr. Giles?"

Buffy and Giles turned immediately to look at the woman standing infront of them. Giles nodded.

"I’m Eliza Riley."

Standing up quickly, Giles offered her his hand and she shook it firmly before turning o Buffy.

"This is my...ah...assistant. Ms. Summers." Buffy smiled politely she looked Eliza Riley over. She was a short woman, probably about thirty-five, with long brown curly hair and eyes so green that Buffy instantly thought of Kermit the Frog when she stared into them.

"Please sit down, Ms. Riley," Giles told her as he pulled her chair out for her.

"Oh, call me Eliza," she replied as she sat down and Buffy and Giles also took their places at the table.

"So," Eliza said, shrugging her shoulders with a happy grin, "What do you want to know?"

"Everything." Giles replied quickly. "Tell me everything you know about the Tattooed Rose and the victim.

It is something that both Ms. Summers and I are very interested in and have not been able to find anything about it. No records - nothing."

"Oh, that’s because of the fire of 1845." Eliza explained as she relaxed back into her chair. "The record hall of London in which all the records of the Tattooed Rose was burnt to a cinder - nothing was left at all.

Except this." Reaching into the briefcase she had brought with her, Eliza pulled out a cardboard file which she handed to Giles.

"These are records that were saved by my great, great, great...well, you get the idea - grandfather. He was a policeman at the time and became interested in the case - it had been declared closed over twenty years before hand, but he was just curious. You know how it is." Giles nodded as he took the filed from her placed it infront of him.

"A police report and a newspaper article - written on the year’s anniversary of her death."

Leaning forward over the table, whispering so that only Buffy and Giles could hear her, she told them, "I’m a distant relative of hers, you know."

"Really?" Buffy asked, trying to sound impressed, and Eliza nodded avidly, obviously very pleased with herself.

"Yeap. I mean, there’s no documented proof - what with those reports not including any names and all, but the story about the Tattooed Rose has been handed down in my family for generations."

"My, this is...interesting," Giles managed to gasp out as he began to read the police report.

"What is it Giles?" Buffy asked as she noticed his face become an entirely new pale shade of white.

"Oh, I know," Eliza told him, knowing instantly what he meant, "It’s unspeakable isn’t it. I didn’t get my hands on these until ten years ago - until then, when my mother used to tell me the story, she’d say that there were no words for what he did to her. It wasn’t until I read that report that I realised that she was right."

"May I keep these with me for a little while?" Giles asked, and Eliza nodded in response.

"Yeap - just don’t lose ‘em. It’s all that left of her." Giles nodded understandingly and began to continue his conversation with Eliza and Buffy sat back in her chair, silently sipping her glass of coke. Ignoring the adult’s conversation, she mused at the situation. If there was nothing left of this girl, then why was Angel so afraid of her?

*****

"This is fascinating," Giles exclaimed as he and Buffy left the restaurant, his nose buried in the file Eliza Riley had given them. The woman had talked non-stop over dinner, and the Slayer was now suffering from a mild headache, completely tired of Giles and their dinner guest reminiscing and London - Buffy never liked a conversation she couldn’t be a part of.

Across the street from them, Buffy could see Xander, Kate, Oz and Willow waiting for her at the ice-cream parlour. Issuing them a wave as a signal she was ready to go, she turned to Giles.

"You look this stuff over tonight and then tell me about it in the morning. Okay?"

Giles nodded, still not looking up from the police report he was reading.

"Yes, alright. Have a nice time at the Bronze." Checking first for any cars, Buffy ran across the road to meet her friends. By this time, he four friends were waiting outside and she greeted them with a beaming smile.

"Success," she told them happily.

"Really?" Willow asked as the group began to make their way to the Bronze. "What kind of success?"

"Another newspaper article - an old one - and a police report."

"For what?" Kate asked, curious as to what the other four seemed to know about that she didn’t. Xander sent Buffy a desperate look and she quickly searched her brain for a plausible answer.

"Oh...just some research we have to help Giles with...for extra credit." she finally managed to stutter out, cursing herself for not being a better liar - it was always getting her into trouble.

"So that’s what you lot have been up to for the past couple of days!" Kate exclaimed, sounding like someone who had finally found the position for the last piece of the puzzle as the mystery unravelled, and the other nodded in confirmation. Buffy sighed thankfully, realising that she’d come close to letting the whole thing slip. She liked Xander’s new girlfriend, and didn’t want her to become involved in the hellmouth aspect of Sunnydale - not yet.

The five teenagers continued to walk through the brightly lit streets of Sunnydale, chatting happily about some incident that had occurred in the university caffiteria with a bucket of cockroaches and somebody’s idea of a practical joke.

"Hey, isn’t that Angel?" Kate asked suddenly, and the rest of the group turned instantly to see where she was pointing. Sure enough, walking through the park across the street from them, was the vampire in question. He hadn’t noticed them and was moving slowly through the trees with his eyes glued to his feet, a look of severe concentration on his face.

"Are you gonna say hello?" Oz asked Buffy, but the Slayer shook her head grimly.

"Not tonight," she replied bleakly and moved to continued in their path to the Bronze. The other knew better than to ask any questions as to why Buffy didn’t want to speak to her ex, and so followed her, and soon Angel was out of sight.

"Yeah!" she replied as she gathered up the bag and moved to follow them across the road - this time, however, she didn’t look to check for traffic. Buffy didn’t notice the car until its headlights were directly on her and she heard Willow cried out.

"Buffy - look out!" As she turned to face the car, seconds before it came in contact with her, every thought but the instinct to move was whirling around in her mind. Most of all, she was thinking about how much she wished Angel was there. As the cars brakes came on, Buffy squeezed her eyes shut, waiting for the moment of impact.

But it didn’t come.

As the car came to a halt, Buffy felt a pair of strong arms wrap tightly around her, turning her away from the vehicle. She heard a thud and then was tossed onto the pavement, her mystery saviour still holding her.

At the side of the road, her friends had watched in amazement as Angel had appeared out of nowhere, dashing out infront of the car, and moving Buffy so that he was hit by the car before both were propelled to the side of the road. All four ran quickly to where Buffy and Angel were lying, his arms still wrapped tightly around her as they lay on the side of the road. As they made their way over, Buffy looked down at Angel ; he was staring back up at her, a look of panic in his eyes.

"Are you okay?" he asked quickly as he moved to sit her upright. She nodded weakly but held onto him tightly anyway. Buffy didn’t know where he’d come from, she hadn’t even realised that she’d followed them, but she was terribly glad that he had.

"Are you crazy?!" Xander suddenly yelled out from behind them, "One of these days you’re going to get yourself killed, you know that, Buff’? Then who would be my body guard?"

"Shut up, Xander!" Willow exclaimed and hit him in the ribs before proceeding to help Angel lift Buffy onto her feet - the Slayer was dazed, but she wasn’t hurt. "Maybe we should get her inside and get her a drink," she suggested and Angel nodded. As he and Willow headed into the Bronze, each on either side of Buffy, Xander and Oz quickly followed ; Oz asking Buffy various questions to determine if she was injured and Xander continuing to complain about how careless she was. As they dashed off to get Buffy into the Bronze, Kate hung behind slightly to speak to the driver. The others had completely ignored him, but she assured him that everything was alright and told him to go about his business.

When the offending car was gone, Kate turned to the follow in the direction of the Bronze; as she did so, she swore softly to herself. "Damn it!"

It had taken Spike forever to get to sleep. He had tried all day, and yet he was still plagued by consciousness as if it was an incurable disease. When he finally did close his eyes, however, he dreamed.

And when he dreamed it was of her. Of holding her. Of making love to her.

She was so real - so soft, so warm, so beautiful as she lay naked on their bed. He loved the way her skin felt under his hands - he was never able to stop touching her. She was like a drug to him.

And the sex - it was even more addictive. She was the most passionate person he’d ever known, both emotionally and physically and it may have been what he adored about her the most.

And now he dreamt of her again for the first time in over one hundred year.

He could feel her writhing beneath him as he moved inside her , could feel her tiny hands running sensuously up his back, could hear her swearing her undying love for him....

Spike screamed as he woke up.

*****

"Are you sure you’re okay?" Giles asked as Buffy sat down in his office the next evening.

"Yeah," she replied tiredly. The Slayer had taken the day off to stay home in bed to recover, but for was still exhausted having not been able to sleep. "I’m a bit sore, but no damage. I was lucky Angel was there."

At the mention of the vampire’s name, Buffy couldn’t help but the notice the look that crossed Giles’ face.

"The deal with the file Eliza gave you." she explained, and Giles nodded, opening his briefcase to pull out the file containing the police report and newspaper article. Taking out the newspaper clipping, he handed it to her and said, "Read this."

Buffy looked down at the article for a moment, slightly confused, before asking, "What about the rest? She gave you more than this."

Standing up straight, a looked of determination enscripted on his aging face, Giles bit his lip and said, "No."

"No?"

"And before you give me the lecture about not being your father, I must remind you that I am your Watcher, and I know what is best for you."

Buffy lowered her head slightly so that she was looking up at him with a slightly devilish grin, amused by his rambling. "And that means, what exactly?"

"I don’t want you reading that report."

The grin on Buffy’s face disappeared only to be replaced with an annoyed pout. "Why not?"

Giles looked down at his feet then, not looking at her as he tried to decide what to say to her on the delicate issue. "Eliza was wrong," he finally answered. "There ARE words for what he did to her, and they are in that report - I don’t want you to see it."

Buffy considered arguing with him, but the painful look on his face told her that maybe for once it wouldn’t be such a bad idea to just obey his wishes. She did, however, pout disappointedly as she nodded in agreement.

"So, can you tell me anything new?" she asked, trying to change the subject.

"Yes, I definitely can," Giles replied enthusiastically and came around behind her to look over her shoulder at the article.

"This part." he said, pointing to the place on the report before reading it aloud. "Police were not only baffled by the death of the victim, but also by the disappearance of her husband just over a week later. He was never found, and authorities soon gave up all hope of finding him alive ; some suspecting that he may even have committed suicide."

"A new twist." Buffy noted as she continued to read the article. "The police report says she was found next to the Themes," Giles continued, now beginning to pace across the small space of his office. "Now, it may be a reach, but perhaps that has something to do with the prophecy."

"What? The river of tears, thing?" Buffy asked, looking up from the newspaper article, and Giles responded with a nod.

"Yes - I’m becoming more and more convinced that this whole thing has something to do with it. Did Angel say anything to you? Anything of help?"

Buffy shook her head sadly. Angel had said absolutely nothing to her at all - almost literally. He’d looked after her at the Bronze before taking her home - he’d barely even said goodnight before disappearing back into the night faster than she could bat an eye-lid.

"This whole thing is so creepy," Buffy finally admitted, negligently tossing the paper she was holding onto Giles’ desk. "It’s like his past has come back to haunt him - again." Giles considered saying something to the effects of ‘Well, that’s what happens when you’re a murderer,’ but the look on Buffy’s face was so pittiful, he stopped himself and tried to drag his mind back to the subject.

"I’m going to call Eliza again - ask her some more questions now that we’ve read this."

"Good idea," Buffy responded with a weak nod, and Giles knew immediately that she couldn’t really care less. Even if he’d only mentioned Angel’s name once, he knew the Slayer was a lost cause upon hearing it.

*****

Eliza Riley’s hand was shaking as she slowly reach down to answer the telephone. She lifted it to her ear even slower before gasping out a breathing, "Hello?"

"Eliza - it’s Rupert Giles. From Sunnydale University." "Oh yes - I remember. Listen, Mr. Giles, I’m very busy at the moment...."

"Oh, this will only take a moment, I promise," Giles interrupted, failing to notice the distress evident in Eliza’s voice. "I need to ask you a couple of questions about the file you gave me."

"Oh...the files...okay."

"It’s about the victim’s husband - it says in the newspaper report he was never found."

"I don’t know anything about him," Eliza replied quickly, "No one does - his files were destroyed too."

"Oh. Not even a name? You see, we can’t seem to find anything else at all about the murder case in the form of newspaper reports or anything like that. It’s absolutely impossible to find anything on Adia Riley or the Tattooed Rose."

"I can’t help you Mr. Giles - I don’t even know who Adia Riley is. I told you all that you know. Good evening."

As Eliza hung up the phone, Giles stood in the office library stunned - the receiver still in his hands as he looked to Buffy with a look of amazement. "I wonder what all that was about." he told her as he hung up the phone.

Back in Eliza’s hotel room however, the scene was a little less relaxed. As she put down the phone, she hung her head in shame and said, "Are you happy now?"

"Yes, pet. That was very well done."

Eliza turned around to the face the man sitting in an armchair infront of her door and he grinned back at her almost evilly as he realised that he’d won - at least for now. She watched with eyes full of fear as slowly stood up, he long leather coat falling down around his ankles as he stepped towards her.

"Why are you doing this?" she asked as she cowered in the corner of the room, terrified of what he would do to her.

"It’s alright, love," he told her reassuringly, "I’m not going to hurt you. You’ve done me a favour - so you get to live."

"I don’t understand..." she whimpered as she slowly slid down the wall, curling herself up into a ball as she began to cry, still not in belief that he wouldn’t harm her. Stopping a few feet away, Spike crouched down infront of her and examined the weeping woman as she shuddered in fear.

"I don’t owe her anything, Eliza," he told her as he lifted one hand to gently brush a lock of brown hair away from her red face. "I’m not doing this for her - I’m doing this to free myself. He has to pay...and I want to be apart of it. But if that pesky Giles and Buffy get in the way - if they find out the truth, the game’s all over for both of us."

Looking up at him with tearfilled eyes, Eliza sobbed loudly, but didn’t pull away from him.

"Who has to pay?" she asked quietly.

Raising one eyebrow in amusement, Spike began to laugh at her stupidity. "God damn, woman! You should know - you’ve been searching for him all your life." Suddenly, Eliza stopped crying and her eyes became wide as she stared at him intently. Biting her lip in silence, she tried to decided whether to ask the question. Whether he would hurt her if she did.

"You know who I am...don’t you?" Spike finally asked, and she nodded slowly. Spike acknowledged her response with a slight grin and stood up again, reaching down a hand to her. Cautiously, she took his hand and he helped her up. When she was standing, Spike leant forward until his face was as close to hers as it possibly could be without touching her, then raised one hand to cup her tear stained cheek.

"This is just between us, okay?" he whispered, and she nodded vigorously in reply.

"Yes, I’m promise," she sobbed, and Spike smiled. Then, he pulled away from her, turning his back to her before moving towards the door. He didn’t look at her again before he left, nor did he say anything to her. He just closed the door behind him.

When he was gone, Eliza fell to the floor again, and began to sob hysterically.

"That was so strange," Buffy said as Giles as they discussed the phonecall, having received no helpful information from Eliza at all. Giles nodded with a frown of concern, and was about to discuss it further with the Slayer when he heard a scream from the main room of the library. Giles and Buffy quickly dashed out the office to find the source of the cry as soon as possible, but both stopped immediately when they saw who had been in distress. Xander was standing on the table at the centre of the room, Kate slung over his shoulder as he spun around and around in circles.

"Do you give up?" he asked the girl hanging down his back.

"Xander!" Giles exclaimed, making the teenager stop dead in his tracks, "Put Kate down this instant!"

Xander made a severe face to show his disappointment, but did as he was told anyway. As she as she was back on her feet, Kate jumped down onto the floor before passing Giles a grin.

"Thanks."

Oz and Willow had entered the library with the new couple and the red head dashed over to her friend to embrace her.

"I wanted to come and see how you were going, but I had tutorials," Willow explained, but Buffy shrugged it off.

"It’s okay Will’, I’m fine. I just needed some rest."

"You were lucky," Kate told her as she leant against Xander who was now on the floor, sitting on the table, "You could easily have been killed, Buffy." "I know - luckily I had Angel."

Kate managed a slight smile as she nodded ; Buffy noticed the melancholy disposition of Xander’s girlfriend, and was about to ask her what was wrong, when the library doors banged open again.

"Speaking of the living dead," Xander announced as Spike walked into the room. Kate giggled quietly at his joke, not understanding that he had meant it literally. Spike’s eyes were focused on Buffy and Giles as he entered the room, and as he approached them, he opened his mouth to say something - but then he saw her.

As Kate came into his sight, he stopped suddenly to stare at her. "What are you doing here, Spike?" Buffy asked pointedly when he continued to stare silently at Kate.

"Hello, Kate." Spike said slowly, ignoring Buffy’s question - ignoring everyone else in the room for that matter.

"Hello, Spike." Kate replied with a beaming smile, "It’s so nice to see you again."

Spike raised on eyebrow mockingly, knowing it was a lie. He knew he was a threat to her. She knew he could blow her cover at any time he liked - but at a price.... "Spike!" Buffy yelled, this time getting his attention and the vampire looked to her immediately.

"What?"

"You. Here. Why?"

"I’m supposed to check in every Friday, remember?" he explained and Buffy hit her forehead with her hand, swearing. "Shit. I forgot."

"Are you sure you didn’t hit your head, Buffy?" Xander asked, but upon receiving an elbow in the ribs from Kate, he whined, "Well, getting hit by a car is a pretty traumatic experience."

"How would you know?" Willow asked him, and Xander glared at her, making his friend laugh.

"You got hit by a car?" Spike asked, surprised, a slight smirk appearing on his face. Pulling a stake from her pocket, Buffy held it up and grinned back - Spike quickly stepped back and held up his hands in a sign of apology.

"Now I’ve done the checking thing," he continued sheepishly, "I’m gonna go."

Turning quickly on his heal, Spike began to make his way out of the library. Any other night, he would have stayed to try and annoy the Slayer for a little while - but not tonight. Not while she was there.

At the thought of her, he walked faster. It’s okay, he told himself, just a little further and you’ll be.....

"Hey Spike!"

Spike froze as Kate called out to him and groaned quietly. He’d almost made it. Slowly, he turned around to face her again and shrugged. "What?"

"Thanks for the favour."

Spike frowned in confusion. "Favour?"

"Yeah - helping me get rid of that unwanted trash from England. It was on the verge of interfering with my plans."

Spike stared at her for a moment ; not because he didn’t know what she was talking about, but because he didn’t know how she’d found out about his visit to Eliza Riley so quickly. He just nodded and turned away again, dashing out the library as quickly as he possibly could. While everyone else in the room was wondering what on Earth had just happened in front of them, Kate just smiled. She had him.

*****

After she left the library, Buffy couldn’t help but want to pay a visit to the hotel in which Eliza Riley was staying. From what Giles had told her, there was something strange about his conversation with the night club owner. It took her no time at all to find out Eliza’s room number, and quickly made her way to suite seventeen. As she knocked on the door, Buffy was sure she could here someone running around in the room, and decided to call out to the occupant.

"Eliza? It’s Buffy Summers."

When no one answered, she tried the door handle, and surprised to find it open. Slowly pushing the door open, Buffy poked her head around the corner to see inside the room. What she saw, was Eliza Riley running madly around the room, picking up her things, and throwing into a suitcase lying on the bed.

"Ms. Riley?"

"Not now, Buffy." Eliza answered hurriedly as she continued packing up her things, not even looking up to see Buffy enter. Surprised by the hurry the other woman seemed to be in, Buffy stood silently in the door way for a minute, before finally coming into the room. "Ms. Riley, is everything alright?"

"Yes," Eliza replied with a sob as she closed and zipped up her suitcase, "But not for long. Soon everything will be over." "What are you..."

"Listen to me!" Eliza exclaimed as she picked up her suitcase and dragged it off the bed, "You need to get away from this place now - it may not be safe here. God only knows what she’s going to do!"

"Who?!" Buffy asked, as Eliza passed her, running into the hall, but Eliza didn’t answer. She just kept running, quickly disappearing out of the Slayer’s sight, leaving the younger woman completely confused.

"Oh, Giles is going to have a field day with this!" Buffy sighed as she closed the hotel door and followed Eliza’s path down the hall.

Spike sighed mournfully as he stood outside the Sunnydale University library. He had tried so very hard to stay away, but he hadn’t been able to. He had heard her calling to him for hours, and finally he had given up ; deciding that whatever she had in store for him couldn’t be so bad, and that he should just get it over and done with so he could get on with his undead life. Pushing open the double doors that lead into the library, Spike took an unneeded breath as he entered the room. It was dark in the large room, only one light above the doorway showing him the where he was going. The library appeared to be empty as he came to the centre of the room, looking around to see any signs of life. Or death.

"Hello, William." a voice behind him called, and Spike jumped, the sound surprising him unexpectedly. As he whirled around to see her, he growled quietly.

"You’ve got to stop doing that." he scolded, but she only laughed at him. He just stared at her for a little while, taking in her appearance as he waited for her to say something. Her long white dress fell elegantly around her feet as she stood at the top of the stairs that lead to a level of stacks, her blonde hair this time arranged carefully on top of her head. She looked at stunning as ever. "Was it you?" he finally asked, painfully tearing himself away from his private reverie. She gave him a questioning look, and he sighed tiredly. "Did you try to kill the Slayer?"

"I thought you wanted her dead?" she replied with a coy smile, "Or have you grown to like Buffy, all of a sudden?"

"Because this time you’ve gone too far, Adia!" Spike spat out angrily, "She has nothing to do with this!"

"Yes she does, Will’." Adia replied calmly, refraining from following in his example of raising his voice to her in frustration.

"If anything happens to her, it will be my ass on the line - you do realise that, don’t you?"

"Yes, but don’t worry - nothing is going to happen to her." Spike groaned in exasperation and closed his eyes, trying to block her out. He could hear her moving closer to him, but he turned his back and tried to ignore her. "It’s okay, William," Adia whispered soothingly from behind him, "You don’t need to get involved in this."

"It wasn’t you fault," she told him as she gently placed one hand on his shoulder, but he flinched away from her touch immediately - turning to face her again.

"No - it was yours," he ground out, and Adia could see the rage in his eyes as he spoke. She stepped away from him, the hurt in her eyes evident as she did so.

"Do you think, for a second, that I’d have left that night if I’d have known what would happen?" she asked him angrily. "Do you think I’d have hurt you like that, on purpose?"

"You knew it was dangerous, Adia!" he yelled back at her, "But you ran out anyway. You gave him exactly what he wanted!"

"I’m not the only one," she hissed back at him. Spike stood silently for a moment, staring at her with cold eyes, her words ringing in his ears.

"What is that supposed to mean?" he asked finally, the bitterness in his words evident as he spoke.

"You fell into the trap, William," she replied quietly, her pain evident in her voice, "In one moment, you betrayed everything you believe in - you betrayed me...because you went to him! You went to him, because you were weak!"

"Of course - I didn’t have you!" he screamed at her, and stepped back again in a reaction of fear. She remained deathly silent as he words echoed around the library, their truth acting like daggers in her heart.

She could feel the tears burning in her eyes, and eventually, they began trickling down her pale cheeks. Adia turned away from Spike quickly - she didn’t want him to see hercry. She knew he didn’t care anymore that what he was would delight in causing her agony - especially because they both knew she deserved it.

She didn’t look back at him as she began to slowly walk away from him, heading in the direction of the library doors. But he called to her again as she left. "I may have been weak - but you were a lousy wife."

Adia lowered her head as she slowly turned to face him again. As he glassy eyes met his, she smiled weakly at him, whispering,

"But you loved me anyway." Spike’s face became emotionless as he stared at her. His words had been intended to hurt her more - to continue to make her pay for what she had done to him, but instead they only brought the truth. She continued to stare back for some time, until she finally gathered enough strength to turn away and to walk out the door. To walk away from him forever.

When she was gone, Spike just stared at the place where she had been, the doors swinging loudly the only sound in the silent library. Reaching one hand into his pocket, he pulled out a pack of cigarettes - took one out and lit it. Breathing in the nicotine and revelling in the rush it gave his dead body, Spike tilted his head back to exhale the smoke. He stood like that for some time, staring up at the painted ceiling, trying to decide if what had just occurred was a dream. But he knew it wasn’t. God wasn’t that good to creatures like him. Taking the cigarettes from his lips, he ran a shaking hand through his hair and walked towards the exit, deciding that the only thing that could calm him down was a good dose of blood from someone stupid enough to be out on the streets at two o’clock in the morning. He didn’t notice the eyes staring at him through the stacks behind him as he left.

*****

After Spike had gone, Giles slowly remerged from his place in the stacks. The conversation that had just passed before him was still ringing in his ears, leaving him in a complete state of shock. He went over their words over and over again as he slowly stumbled down the stairs, making his way to his office. Reaching into his pocket for a large set of keys, he fumbled with them to open the filing cabinet where all his ‘special’ volumes were kept. Pulling out a large pile of them, almost straining every muscle in his back in the process, he dumped the books on his desk before sitting down in his chair. Staring down at the thick volumes infront of him, Giles sighed - he had an awful lot of research to do.

"Are you sure you’re going to be okay pick up you dad on your own?" Xander asked nervously as he passed Kate the keys. She was on her way to pick up her father from the bus station in Georgetown, about an hour’s drive away before he came to Sunnydale to move into their house. Kate smiled at her boyfriend radiantly, but Xander was sure he could see sadness in her eyes.

"What’s the matter?" he asked, raising one hand to gently touch her cheek.

"I’ll just miss you, that’s all."

Xander laughed and wrapped both arms around her, holding her close to him as he placed a kiss on the top of her head. "Don’t be so dramatic," he told her playfully, "I’ll see you tomorrow."

She looked back up at him with an unconvincing smile as she pulled away to open the car door.

"You’re right," she told him as she climbed into the car, closing the door behind her. As the ignition of the car hummed into life, Xander leant down to look in through the window.

"See you soon," he told her, and she nodded, reaching out to take one of his hands before kissing the palm.

He waved to her as the small car pulled out of the driveway, and watched with a sad sigh as she disappeared down the street. He laughed at himself for a moment for being so silly - he’d said it himself - she’d be back the next day.

In the car, Kate watched Xander in the rear view mirror as she pulled away. For a moment she was sorry that she’d lied. She momentarily spared a moment to how he’d feel when she didn’t come back, but it soon passed. What she was doing was more important.

*****

At lunchtime, Giles was still sitting in his office, his head buried in some ancient text. He hadn’t had any sleep at all, but the adrenalin the discovery had created within him kept him awake easily.

As he looked through the final volume in his pile, he scribbled something down on the sheet next to him. He sighed thankfully as he collapsed back into his chair, extremely proud of himself. The information had been there the entire time but it had been a miracle that he’d was able to make the connection.

He knew Spike wasn’t going to like it, but now Giles was convinced that the prophecy was connected with the Tattooed Rose - the vampire would just have to grin and bare it.

*****

It was around sunset when Angel got out of bed - for the first time in almost a week he had been able to sleep properly and he was extremely thankful for the rest he’d received. He’d had no tormenting dreams, no visions of blood, and no images of her drifted into his mind. Padding into the large dining room in the centre of the mansion, Angel searched for a clean shirt.

"I was sure I left one somewhere," he mumbled as he rummaged through the mess he’d been putting off cleaning up.

"Looking for something?" a voice called out from behind him, and Angel froze immediately. Slowly standing up straight, he turned around gradually, praying to the God he didn’t believe in that what he expected wouldn’t be there. But she was.

"Adia..." he whispered as he looked upon her. Standing in the door way, Adia was watching him intently and she could see the fear in his eyes. He was nearly cowering as she entered, quietly gasping unneeded breaths as she came into the room. She knew why, of course - because there was no way he could ever mistake her for anyone else. When she came through the doorway, he saw Adia Sullivan - not Kate Wilson.

He knew it was her from the moment she spoke - she’d come back for him. "Don’t say hello or anything," Adia suddenly said, indignantly, tearing Angel from his private thoughts and returning his focus to her. He didn’t say anything in reply, he just continued to stare at her in silence.

"Well, your manners haven’t improved, I see," Adia pointed out as she began to walk towards him, but she stopped when he instinctively took steps backwards to make sure she kept her distance. She laughed gently and gave him a beaming smile.

"It’s okay, Angel." she told him reassuringly, "I’m here to help you." Angel, however, was not so reassured and shook his head as he moved to step back further.

"I know it hurts, Angel," she continued as she began to move towards him again, "I know what it’s like to be forbidden access to the person you love the most. I know what you’re going through."

Suddenly, Angel froze. As she stepped towards him, he stood perfectly still and just stared at her - studied her.

"What are you talking about?" he finally said, and Adia grinned. "Oh, come on, Angel - you’re way too old to be getting the speech about the birds and the bees!" Then she moved closer to him, so they were barely a metre a part and leant forwards slightly, whispering, "I know you want to her. I know you want to take her."

Adia watched with interest as a solitary tear trickled down the vampire’s pale cheek, knowing she’d struck a chord within him. She reached out one hand him, holding it out in silent offering.

"Let me help you Angel - I can take away the pain. I can take away the agony that the knowledge of knowing you can never have her creates inside you." Angel looked down at her small, outstretched hand - remembering the last time he had touched it.

Remembering the blood stain on his face from where she’d touched him when....

"Angel?" Adia called out to him again, and now the tears in his eyes were falling freely down the side of his face - the agony was too much. With a bitter sob, Angel reached out and took her hand, before falling to his knees infront of her. As he wrapped his arms around her waist, sobbing against the lower part of her chest - letting his tears stain her snow, white dress, she gently ran a hand through his hair in an attempt to soothe her.

"I’m so sorry, Adia," he finally managed to gasp out between sobs, "I’m sorry."

Looking down at him with a grim sadness, Adia held him to her, whispering, "It’s okay. Soon, it will all be over, and the pain will fade."

"When?" he asked, tightening his grip around her tiny waist. "Sooner than you think, my darling," she whispered soothingly, smiling down on him. But Angel’s eyes were closed as he cried against her, trying to hold onto her as if she was a life raft. His eyes were still closed when on of Adia’s hands left him, and he didn’t see her pick up the vase on the table beside them.

The last thing Angel thought of as the porcelain crashed down over his head, was the immense pain. And then everything went black.

"So, let me get this right," Xander said as he paced up and down in front of Buffy, Willow and Oz in the library, "Giles called an emergency meeting...and he’s not here?"

Buffy nodded and Xander swore softly. "Typical."

"Yeah, well none of us are happy to be here, boy," Spike spoke up from his position at the end of the table.

The vampire had his feet up on the table and was quietly smoking a cigarette, trying to ignore his annoying company. Just then, the library doors opened, and the man in question entered the room.

"It’s about time!" Buffy announced as Giles came into the library and he gave her an apologetic look.

"I’m sorry, I was held up by...where’s Kate, Xander?"

"She went to Georgetown to pick up her dad. Why?"

"Oh," Giles said, sounding extremely disappointed, "I had hoped she’d be here."

"What’s the deal, Giles?" Buffy asked, ignoring the significance of his questions about Kate.

"I’ve made a break through with the prophecy," Giles announced as he put his suitcase down on the table and everyone around him looked at him with great suprise.

"What?" Willow asked enthusiastically, desperate to know what Giles had finally been able to find out.

"There was no such person as Adia Riley at the time of the murder," Giles told them. His announcement was greeted with four looks of amazement and one of concern.

"So - there was no Tattooed Rose?" Xander asked, suddenly sounding slightly disappointed.

"Oh, no, she existed," Giles corrected him quickly, "Just not in the context we first thought."

"So, what are we saying," Oz asked, "That we’ve been researching the wrong stuff?"

"Well, sort of. It would certainly have been of great help if Spike had told us the truth in the first place."

Everyone in the room turned to Spike. The vampire looked like a kid who had just been caught shop-lifting; fear and disappointment etched into his pale face.

"Did you lie to us, Spike?" Buffy asked sternly. He opened his mouth to answer, but Giles interrupted him before he could speak.

"No, he didn’t lie. He just didn’t tell us the whole truth." Spike smirked at the Watcher’s response and put his cigarette to his lips. He knew he was in big trouble.

"It must have been a task, Watcher," he told Giles, sounding slightly impressed as he tilted his head back to exhale the smoke in his dead lungs. Giles nodded in the affirmative, remembering the hours of research, phone calls, and internet surfing.

"It was rather like an adult’s game of join-the-dots, really," the librarian replied, his voice reflecting just how pleased he was with himself for managing to out do the vampire.

"Okay, does anyone want to tell me what’s going on, here?" Buffy asked, sounding rather indignant.

Spike sighed loudly as he tipped his chair backwards, staring back at the ceiling as he said, "Buffy, Buffy, Buffy - rule one of war. Know thine enemy." Slightly thrown off track by the use of her real name, Buffy asked, "Is that the first time you’ve ever used my real name?"

"For example, I know everything about you," he told her, dismissing her question as irrelevant. "I know where you were born, which kindergarten you went to, you grades in highschool, the name of you first boyfriend...it’s a tactic."

"So, what do this have to do with anything?" Buffy asked. This time, Spike sat up and turned his chair around to face her. Looking her dead in the eye, he asked, "What do you really know about me, huh? That Angel was my sire, that for a century I went by the name of William the bloody, I got my nickname by torturing people with spikes?" Stopping suddenly, Spike laughed.

"Spike!" Buffy exclaimed, annoyed that he had drifted off track. Rolling his eyes, Spike stood up and looked to Giles.

"I don’t have to do this," he told the Watcher, but Giles raised one hand in a silent signal to stay where he was.

"I know you’re not too happy about this, but I’m sure the Watcher’s Council would be even less happy to hear that you haven’t been cooperating."

Spike glared angrily at Giles for a moment, his rage obvious in his eyes as he tried to control the urge to just snap the pesky Watcher’s neck. Groaning mournfully, he gave up collapsed back into his chair.

"Gee, whatever the Council has on you, it must be big," Oz observed as he watched the vampire recede back a more docile mode of behaviour. The teenager, however, decided to keep his mouth closed as he was shot an evil glare.

"Back to the point, now, I think?" Giles offered as he sat down at the table opposite Spike, and the vampire sighed quietly. He knew he had lost.

"I lied when I said it was before my time," Spike told them, "The Tattooed Rose, I mean. It was before my time as a vampire ; I was still human when it happened."

"So, you do know about it, then?" Willow asked, and Spike nodded, not looking up at the five humans around him. He decided then and there, that he had to tell them the truth, but he didn’t have to pretend that he liked it.

"You see, for centuries, people have been passing down the story, but from the words ‘go’ - it’s been told wrong."

"How do you mean?" Buffy asked, now becoming slightly interested - and almost hopeful that perhaps Angel would be redeemed.

"What roses?" both Buffy and Willow asked in unison, causing the blonde vampire to groan quietly and place his head in his hands.

"A dozen red roses were scattered around the scene of the crime," Giles explained, gaining surprised glances from the two girl. "It was in the Marshall’s report. One was imbedded so firmly in her hand, that when it was removed, the flesh bled from where the thorns had been."

Buffy then turned back to Spike again. "What do you mean it wasn’t about her? If it wasn’t about her, who was it about?"

"The law enforcement in England in the beginning of the nineteenth century was pretty lousy," he explained tiredly, his lack of enthusiasm obvious, "They just assumed that the murderer had been obsessed with her and then killed her. They didn’t think for a second that there would be another connection."

"What connection?" Buffy asked. Spike didn’t answer straight away, he just stared down at the cigarette in his hand, watching it burn down towards his fingers as he tried to decide how to answer the question.

"Spike?"

"He wasn’t obsessed with her." he finally answered, "Obsessed with her death maybe, but not with her. It was someone else."

Leaning forward across the table, Buffy reached out to touch his hand. She hand expected him to flinch away from her, but he didn’t - he just stared down at where her skin touched his. "Who, Spike?" she asked.

"Her husband." he answered quietly. Buffy raised one confused eyebrow in surprise.

"What?"

"Buffy, remember what I said about knowing your enemy?" he asked, and she nodded vigorously. "Well, if you had done your research about me from the start you wouldn’t be asking me these questions."

When she still did not make the connection, and Giles still seemed to be the only one in the room who knew what he meant, Spike sighed loudly in disgust. "If you’d done your research, Slayer, you’d have known that when I was still human, my name was William Sullivan."

There was a moment of sudden silence as the blonde vampire’s words sunk in, his company in a slight state of disarray at his statement. Xander simply looked at him in confusion, Oz and Willow took on a stunned-mullet persona, and Buffy suddenly lept of her chair. Spike watched her with great interested as she began to pace the length of the table.

"Wait, wait, wait. William Sullivan, as in Adia Sullivan, as in...as in..."

"She was my wife," Spike said quietly, finishing the sentence for her as he stubbed out his cigarettes on the table.

"Wow," Oz muttered as he watched the vampire pull out an another cigarette and light it carefully, showing absolutely no emotion in his face or movements what so ever. "That means it was you Angel was after."

Taking a long drag on the cigarette, Spike tried to relax back into his chair as he avoided eye-contact with anyone else in the room. "He wanted a companion," he explained to them, "A partner-in-crime, if you will.

And I turned out to be the lucky suck he chose." "Then why did he kill her?" Giles asked and Spike suddenly looked up at him for the first time since he’d stated the truth. The vampire rasped out a bitter laugh as he slowly stood up from his chair.

"Don’t you get it? Angelus was the cruelest fuck to walk this Earth in centuries," he said coldly, "It wasn’t enough for him to just kill someone he had an eye on. He had to torment them, victimise them - there was nothing he liked better than to do the Darth Vader gig by taking them from their pointless, Christian lives and turning them to the ‘dark side’ before he took ‘em." From his position beside Willow, Xander suddenly got a very impressed look on his face.

"A vampire that’s seen Star Wars - now that’s not something you see every day." But he shut up when Willow elbowed him in the ribs, giving him a ‘shut the hell up’ glare.

"So he killed her, and then he killed you too," Buffy concluded. "So the police were wrong - her husband didn’t commit suicide. He just got drained dry and then turned into a vampire."

"They weren’t wrong." Spike suddenly said. Buffy looked at the vampire with a look of serious confusion, but he had his back turned to her as he leant against a book stack. She was about to ask him what he had meant, when Willow apprehended her, grabbing the Slayer’s wrist before she asked the question. Her red-headed friend, unlike herself, knew exactly what Spike had meant.

"You did commit suicide, didn’t you Spike?"

Still keeping his back to them, Spike nodded. "Yeah. I was a sappy fucking human once, too."

Xander at this point shook his head in confusion and stood up to stand beside Willow.

"That doesn’t make sense," he told Spike, "If you topped yourself, then how did Angel manage to turn you into a blood sucker?"

His question was met by a short silence as Spike continued to smoke quietly in his corner of the room, but eventually he turned around to face them. Buffy could see the pain in his eyes before he even spoke and was about to tell him not to bother answering the question, when finally, he did.

"I didn’t slit my bloody wrists or anything, dim wit," he told Xander coldly, "I just gave up. That’s all."

Willow still seemed to be the only one of the band-wagon, and understood exactly what he was trying to say.

"You gave yourself to him," Willow concluded for him and Spike passed her a strained smile, nodding solemnly.

"I couldn’t live without her - so I gave him what he wanted."

"I can’t believe you did that!" Buffy suddenly erupted, surprising everyone else in the room with her sudden outburst. "How could you just throw you life away like that? I know your spouse was dead, but it happens every day to millions - most ordinary people more on." The others were expecting Spike to get angry with the Slayer for abusing him so, but instead Spike just shook his head sadly, lifting the cigarette in his hand back to his mouth.

"You see, Slayer, Angelus always had a habit of taking what was mine. He knew that if she died, so would I. It’s God damn embarrassing for a demon like me to admit; but once upon a time, William the fucking Bloody gave his heart and soul to someone and then she went out one night and never came back."

"But you had you whole life..."

"I’m not finished!" he yelled back at Buffy, interrupting her attempt to reason with him about his decision, "You may have had to learn how to live in this world without being able to fuck the love of you life when ever you choose, but you’re forgetting something - atleast you still have him around. Adia was gone forever!"

Buffy’s mouth, poised open to continue to argument, snapped shut as Spike’s eyes burnt into her own. Slowly, he walked across the room, keeping his gaze firmly upon her as he moved towards her. As he closed in on her, he raised one hand to make a point.

"So, don’t you go telling me that I should be an efficient little vampire by taking your example and moving on, because you don’t know jack shit about what happened. You can’t even let go of someone that’s still alive...kind of, anyway....so why should I have made the effort to let go of someone that was dead. She was the only woman I had ever loved and she took my heart to the grave with her."

Once he had finished his attack on her, the two enemies continued to stare at each other intently until Spike saw a solitary tear fall down Buffy’s cheek as she looked down at the ground. He couldn’t help but look down at her with disgust - she was everything he had been one hundred and eight-five years ago, when he accompanied the local Marshall down to a pier beside the river. She didn’t know how to let go either.

"I’m sorry," she finally whispered and Spike stared at her in amazement. A small part inside of him, the part that could only just be claimed as human, wanted to place a reassuring hand on her shoulder and tell her it was okay ; but the rest of him decided that he would just let her cry.

"Are you gonna tell us how it happened?" Willow suddenly asked, breaking the silence that had filled the library as Spike moved away from the Slayer.

"I’ve told you enough against my will for tonight, I think, pet," he answered, but when he looked up at Giles, the look of calm denial greeted the vampire and told him that he wasn’t going to get away with it.

"You don’t want to know." he told them, but the Watcher wasn’t convinced.

"If this really does have something to do with the prophecy, I want to know everything."

Spike frowned and looked across at the others in the room. Buffy had sat down by this point and was facing the wall as she tried to stop crying, Willow and Oz were staring at him with great interest, and Xander was busing carving initials into the table with a pocket knife. "Alright," he finally conceded, throwing his arms in the arms in a gesture of surrender, then turned back to point at Willow. "If you had trouble with the G-rated version, you might wanna leave the room for this one, love."

Willow did consider leaving the room, but in the end, bit her lip and wrapped Oz’s arms around her waist before nodding to Spike as a signal that she was going to be brave. The vampire chuckled quietly at her determination as he sat back down in his chair. He always knew the little red head had guts.

"Okay," he told them with heavy sigh as he lounged back into his chair, "If it means saving my ass from the Watchers, then you win."

Chapter 18:

"Riley was her maiden name," Spike explained as he lit another cigarette. Giles considered pointing out to him that he was smoking in a public building, but decided that the information the vampire could give was more important. "She was eighteen when we got married and the most stunning fucking girl in the entire of England - half the young men in London put a claim on my head when I asked her to marry me.

"We’d been married about a year, when I met Angelus. From the beginning she didn’t like him - sensed that he was trouble; and in the end she was right. Someone once told me it was the whole pregnant woman intuition thing."

"How far along was she?" Willow asked, trying to yelp too loudly when Buffy pinched her arm and gave her a dirty look. ‘Don’t ask that!’ the Slayer mouthed to her friend. Spike however, didn’t notice as he was too busy trying to remember the tiny detail.

"I don’t know...two months, something like that."

"Then what happened?" Giles asked, trying to drag the conversation back to the more relevant point.

"He became a fixed figure in our lives," he told them with a slight smirk, "Neither of us had a real choice in it - he was just always there. Adia hated him. It eventually got to the point where we’d argue about him, almost every day until....until it happened. That’s what I hated the most when I was still alive - the last thing to pass between us was an argument. She ran out in the middle of the night, you see."

"And that’s when he got her?" Xander asked, and Spike nodded solemnly.

"I waited up for her all night. It was the first time she’d ever gone out on her own at night since we were married and it scared the shit out of me. Then at about two that morning, the Marshall came."

"You had to go down to the crime scene and identify her?" Buffy asked, looking rather grossed out and Spike nodded. "Ew."

"The blood was probably the worst thing," he continued, taking a long drag on his cigarette, "It was every where. Angelus always did accredit himself as an artist."

"So, what does this have to do with the prophecy?" Xander interrupted, becoming impatient with the vampire’s drawn out story, turning to Giles for an answer. "How do you know this is relevant?"

"I witnessed a conversation last night here in the library...." Giles explained, and Spike’s gaze shot to him immediately. The vampire began to laugh as the realisation came to him - he’d put himself in this shit.

"What’s so funny?" Buffy asked, but Spike didn’t answer her, he just put his cigarette to his lips as he tried to calm down.

"So, that’s how you figured it out?" he asked Giles, and the Watcher nodded incredulously. A cruel smirk crossed Spike face as he shook his head tsk-ed the other man. "And here I was thinking you were a fucking genius, when really you were just in the right place at the right time. How bloody ironic."

At his response, Buffy mouth fell open in a state of disbelief. She seen some freaky things in her time - hell she’d even been in contact with ghosts before - but this was getting a little out of hand.

"Okay, let me get this right," she said calmly, placing her hands on her hips in defiance. "Spike’s dead girlfriend, who departed this Earth nearly two centuries ago - has come back for a visit?"

"Exactly."

Buffy couldn’t help but contain the laugh that erupted from her mouth as she sunk back into her chair. As she continued to laugh hysterically, Xander leaned forward towards Spike to whisper, "I suppose she’s come back to collect your dirty laundry, huh buddy?"

This only made Buffy laugh harder, but Spike didn’t find it particularly amusing. Taking one last drag on his cigarette, he stubbed it out on the table before answering, "No. She’s come back for revenge."

Suddenly, Buffy stopped laughing. Her face was still red from her almost hysterical display, but her face had become quite stern. "Revenge?" she asked quietly, and Spike nodded calmly.

"From the moment I saw her at the Bronze that night, I knew what she wanted. Why she waited a hundred and eighty-five years, I don’t know - but she made it very clear."

"What do you mean, when you saw her at the Bronze?" Buffy asked, now becoming more confused than ever. Spike sighed dramatically and rolled his eyes in exasperation.

"Haven’t you figured it out, yet? There was no innocent reason why Xander’s new girl freaked the hell out of Angel so much. Mind you I had the same reaction."

"Was she exactly the same?" Giles asked, appearing to be the only one in the library that knew what Spike was trying to say. Spike nodded.

"Pretty much an exact copy. Just a little more modern. Maybe others wouldn’t have recognised her, but neither of us could have mistaken her for any one else - with those eyes..."

"Hang on...what does my girlfriend have to do with this?" Xander asked angrily, getting annoyed that he didn’t understand a conversation that seemed to involve him.

"Are you saying she looked like Adia?" Willow asked, and Giles nodded in affirmative. "So, you think that Kate is like a distant relative of hers?"

Spike groaned and collapsed forward onto the table, trying to resist the urge to repetitively hit his head against the hard wood. "Don’t you get it?" he asked tiredly, looking up to face the red head, "There is no Kate Wilson. Kate IS Adia!"

Spike and Giles watched with great interest, the various reactions of the group of teenagers. Both Buffy and Willow looked incredibly grieved by the news, Oz raised his eyebrow and looked rather impressed, but Xander was another story.

"Wo, wo, wo," he exclaimed as he leapt out of his chair like a jack-in-the-box. "Why is there this common place assumption that I always fall for paranormal freaks? No offence, guys," he said quietly to Buffy and Willow, but both girls lifted their hands as a signal of acceptance.

"None taken," Willow told him with a faint smile.

"So you think Adia’s come back for Angel?" Buffy asked, the fear evident in her voice.

At her question, Xander was slightly annoyed that he was being ignored, and cried, "Hey!Did anyone listen to a words I just said?"

"No," Spike replied with a shake of his head, trying desperately to block out Xander’s whining, "She never left. She’s finally going and she’s taking him with her."

"We have to stop her!" Buffy exclaimed as she launched out of her chair, but Spike shook his head at her.

"We can’t, Slayer. The prophecy has been ordained - you can’t stop what has been written."

"I don’t care!" Buffy yelled back at him as she ran over to the cupboards at the far wall of the library where Giles kept all of her weapons. Almost tearing open the door, Buffy began to pull various instruments of destruction off the shelves.

"What are you doing?" Spike asked exasperatedly from behind her as she hurled as many weapons as she could into a bag.

"I’m going to save Angel. No body - dead or living messes with him and gets away with it." she answered simply as she tossed a cross bow into the bag beside her, but Spike only laughed at her.

"Those will be useless to you Slayer," he told her with a slight sigh, "You can’t kill someone who’s already dead."

"I’m not taking any chances," she replied and closed the cupboard as she took out the last wooden stake she had. Picking up the bag, she brought it over to the table before walking over to Spike.

Pointing the stake at him she said, "You are going to help me save him whether you like it or not. I don’t care if you were once all up close and personal with this bitch, but don’t you dare forget that you’re on our side."

Spike raised one eye brow as he stared at her, and then at the stake in her hand, before he put once hand to his forehead in a sloppy salute. "Yes, ma’am"

"Good. Let’s go." As she picked up her weapons bag, the others in the room took it as a sign that they were to follow into battled without any questions and all got out of their chairs to follow her out of the door. Behind them, Spike dawdled slightly as he tried to get his head around the night’s events.

He knew he had two options. He could help the Slayer, Angel would live and the Watcher’s Council would spare him from humiliation, but on the other hand he’d probably be haunted by Adia for the rest of his un-life. Or, he could help Adia, rid himself of his prick of a sire, and then run away from Sunnydale and the whingy Slayer forever. The Watcher’s Council would probably have his hide - but they were, after all, human. They couldn’t be around forever.

As he followed the Slayer and her friends out to the carpark of the university, he silently planned his own actions for the evening.

*****

Climbing into Giles’ car, Xander leant forward and tapped Buffy on the shoulder.

"You don’t believe this crap do you, Buff’?" he asked her, but the look she gave him delivered little hope that it was all a joke. "Well, I don’t, for the record." he announce incredulously, "I’ll bet you anything, Kate arrives back in town tomorrow with her dad." "Whatever you say, Xander," Giles replied as he began the engine. The car pulled out of the library car park just after eleven o’clock, closely followed by Willow and Oz in his van. As they drove away from the university, Buffy bit on her nails as she tried to come up with a plan.

She wasn’t ready to lose Angel to

Spike’s ex-wife and she was prepared to do anything to save the only man she’d ever loved.

As they made their way to the mansion, Buffy turned to see Spike, who was sitting on the back seat of Giles’ car beside Xander. She was about to ask him a question, when she was annoyed to find him fast asleep. She considered verbally abusing him awake, but she couldn’t help but heave a sympathetic sigh for the vampire ; she did, after all, know how he felt. Having your dreams haunted by an ex-lover was definitely not fun.

*****

She lay on the bed, arms outstretch to him in a silent offering. Spike sighed happily as he sunk into her embrace - she was so warm, so welcoming. He couldn’t imagine a more blissful heaven.

He didn’t let a single thought enter his head as he dissolved into that pure instinct - the desire to lose himself in her. To take what was his.

When she kissed him and held him close, he felt alive. He had purpose. This was how it had always been - this burning flame of desire between them. They rarely talked when they made love ; they were way too deep in passion, too buried to talk, and the depth of it was almost overwhelming.

And then her legs hooked around his hips and he went in - strong, piercing - and they both sighed aloud.

Only when they were joined together did feel complete. At peace. It was if they needed each other to feel human. They kissed passionately, totally locked. And it was violent. Beautiful. And it hurt - the feelings she evoked within him tore at his dead heart as he loved her. His heart was bleeding.

But the pain became a pleasure, and the pleasure took over ; she became him and he became her, and the whole world melted into a whirling whole-bodied seizure of debauchery and perfection - and then they were still. This was the only time he felt safe. Felt complete - when her heart was beating inside his chest. He couldn’t live without this - and he never wanted to let her go again. And he whispered, "I love you, Adia..."

Spike woke up with a start as the car came to a halt outside the motion.

Buffy nodded and turned away to open the passenger side door. Beside him, Xander smirked.

"What kind of dreams do vampires have anyway? Ripping people’s throats out ; that sort of thing?"

Spike looked up at the boy with an evil grin, leaving forward towards him to whisper, "I would tell you, but you’re too young?"

Xander’s jaw dropped as Spike pulled away from him and practically kicked open the car door.

"Figures," Xander mumbled as he too climbed out of the car to help Buffy with her weapons bag.

In the process of loading her cross bow, Buffy looked up at her Watcher with a sad grin. Rolling his eyes with an exasperated sigh, Giles whispered, "I’ll take that as a no, shall I? Buffy, God only knows what kind of powers this girl has. She could kill any of us and we won’t be able to defend ourselves with weapons."

"Uh, love," Spike interrupted from his position, leaning against the hood of Giles’ car, "I told you before - you can’t hurt her."

"So, we should just let Angel die instead?"

"Buffy - we don’t know how to fight this!" Giles exclaimed, throwing her hands up in the air.

Buffy stared at him intently for a moment, realising with great annoyance that he was right - something she always hated, but them a faint smile cross her face. "You’re right, Giles," she replied coyly, "We should ask Spike. Oh, Spikey?!"

There was no answer and Buffy snickered at the blonde vampire. "Come on, Spike. You’re not going to sulk now, are you?"

"Are, Buffy...just who are you talking to?" Xander asked her, and Buffy spun around immediately in the direction of Giles’ car. Spike was no where to be seen. "Shit!" she screamed, throwing the cross bow down onto the ground in her fury, "I should have known better than to take my eyes of that fucking bastard!"

Trying to calm her friend down, Willow placed a hand gently on Buffy’s shoulder in a soothing motion. "It’s okay, Buffy. We’ll save Angel."

"You bet we are!" Buffy exclaimed as she picked up the cross bow and a series of wooden stakes, "And then I’m going to stake Spike! Come one." Despite the lack of a plan, the others knew better than to argue with her and followed the Slayer through the front door of the mansion. Once inside, Buffy looked up the various passages and hallways, trying to decide in which of the many rooms Adia would be holding him.

"Oz and Willow ; you go down that hall. Giles, Xander ; that one. I’ll go through to the main hall. And ifyou see Spike, kill him."

"Um, Buffy, I know you don’t wanna hear this," Xander interrupted as she turned to walk away, "But what if they’re not here."

"They will be," she mumbled as she continued to walk away from the rest of the group, who were left to look at each other with concern before they followed the Slayer’s instruction and took their assigned paths through the mansion.

"Be careful!" Giles called back to Oz and Willow and they separated, the young couple stopping to look back at their friend and the Wathcer. "I think Buffy might have underestimated this situation."

Once Willow and Oz were out of sit, Xander turned to Giles and whispered, "If you’re so doubtful about this whole situation, then why are we doing this?"

"Well...."

"Shit!"

The cry echoing around every inch of the mansion that interrupted Giles and Xander’s conversation, had them quickly running to the source of it.

"That sounded like Buffy," Xander exclaimed as he and Giles burst into the indoor garden of the mansion, both desperately searching the room for the blonde Slayer. Willow and Oz followed them shortly after to find Buffy kneeling in the middle of the garden, holding something in her hand. All four dashed over to where she was positioned with great concern.

"Buffy, are you okay?" Willow asked anxiously - the Slayer nodded.

"Yes, I’m okay," she replied quietly as she lifted up the object in her hand so the others could see. "But Angel’s not."

Taking the object from her hand, Giles put on his glasses to study it. It appeared to be a fragment of white porcelain, stained extensively by a dark red liquid. "It’s blood," he observed as he passed it to Willow.

"She has him," Buffy told them as she stood up slowly. "We were too late."

Wrapping one arm around her shoulder in a comforting motion, Xander held her to him closely. "It’s okay, Buff’. We’ll find him."

"I suggest we go back to the library," Giles told them as he took the cross bow from Buffy. "We can decide what to do there."

"Do you think she’ll kill him?" Buffy muttered as Xander and Willow attempted to push her towards the door.

"Maybe," Giles answered solemnly, "But I highly doubt he’s dead - if she just wanted to kill him and be done with it, she’d have done it here. There are no ashes - only blood."

"See, that’s good." Willow told the Slayer, but Buffy didn’t seem so convinced as she was guided through the door. She sighed heavily and rested her head on the red head’s shoulder in exhaustion, whispering, "When I find Spike, I’m gonna practise my vasectomy skills on him..."

When Willow arrived at the university the next morning, she made her way through to the library through the car park. Just before she reached the building, however, she stopped suddenly.

Raising one hand over her eyes to shield her eyes from the sun, she was just able to make out the figure leaning against the side of a car.

"Hey - you’re here early!" she yelled out to Xander as she approached him. She noticed quickly, the solemn look on his face when he did not answer her. "What’s wrong?" she asked, as she stopped beside him ; the teenage boy looked up at her with a strained smile as he twirled a set of car keys around his fingers.

"Kate said she’d meet me here this morning as soon as she got back with her dad." he replied, trying as much as possible to keep a straight face. Willow placed a gentle hand on his shoulder and tried to look sympathetic as his cool exterior began to melt. "She’s not coming, is she Will’?"

Willow shook her head sadly and nodded as she looked down at the ground.

"I’m sorry," she muttered, but silently cursed herself when the words that came from her mouth sounded so very pathetic.

"Do you think it’s true? What’s Giles said about her?" Willow heaved a deep sigh and shrugged as she leant beside him against the car, wishing that she’d paid more attention in her brief stint in the psychology department of Sunnydale university.

"I don’t know. Maybe if she hadn’t gone missing, and then Spike..." As her words trailed off, Xander looked up at her with concern. He was surprised to find a look of what appeared to be some kind of sublime happiness on his friend’s face and frowned.

"What?"

"I’ve got it!" she squealed, jumping up and down excitedly. Grabbing him by the hand, and without explaining, Willow proceeded to drag Xander towards the library. He considered protesting, but his heart just wasn’t in it - what ever it was that had the red head excited was probably worth it.

*****

The first thing Angel noticed as he became conscious, was the throbbing pain in his head. He felt like some one had hit him over the head with a heavy object. But as he tried to move, and found he couldn’t, the realisation hit him. He had been hit over the head with a heavy object.

Groaning loudly in pain, Angel forced himself to open his eyes, terrified of what he’d see. When his surrounding came into focus, however, they were not what he’d been expecting. In front of him, were rows and rows of chairs, reading back into the darkness to the point where he couldn’t seem them anymore.

He wasn’t quite sure where he was, but if he hadn’t known better, Angel would have thought that he was in an auditorium of some sort.

Suddenly, a set of lights lit up from the back of the large room, temporarily blinding him they were so bright. Angel’s first instinct was to cover his eyes with his hands - until he realised that he couldn’t move his hands. He looked to his hands and soon realised the reason why. They were tied up with rope - as were his feet.

It was with horror that he quickly noticed what he was tied to. He was hanging, crucifixion style, for a large wooden cross. He strained against the bonds, trying as hard as possible to free himself ; but the attempt was useless. He was stuck.

Satisfied that escape was not a present possibility, Angel tried to take in his surroundings. He could no longer really see the rows of chairs that had been evident in the darkness, but now he could see around him much better. He appeared to be on a stage, it’s sides draped with deep red curtains and black drapes. Angel slowly realised that he was in an auditorium - he was in a theatre. "Surprise!"

"How perceptive you are, Angelus," she replied. He still couldn’t see her, but he began to suspect that she was at the back of the theatre where his vision was hampered by the blinding stage lights.

"What’s going on, Adia?" he called out to her, still searching for her in the darkness. But suddenly he saw her, a dark silhouette slowly emerging from the back of the hall.

"It’s very simple," she answered as she approached him, coming down the centre aisle of the sitting section.

"We’re going to play a game. It’s called revisiting the past." As her words rang in his ears, Angel tried to ignore the fear they evoked within him. He watched carefully, silently, as she reached the stairs beside the stage and slowly began to come towards him.

"You see, Angelus," she began to explain, "when someone is killed in the manner I was, you are given certain option. You have certain obligations."

"What are you talking ...."

"Shut up!" Adia yelled back at him, cutting off his plea. "What I was trying to say, what that I have been waiting a very long time for this."

Angel waited in silence for a moment, making sure she’d finished speaking as she came and stood in front of him on the stage. When it was obvious she was only going to stare at him, he rounded up the courage to talk.

"You didn’t have to lie to me to get me like this," he told her solemnly, "You could have just hit me...hell, killed me and been done with it."

The confusion on Adia’s face was almost so believable that Angel had to try hard not to laugh. He knew she was only toying with him.

"How did I lie?" she asked innocently, looking up at him with her deep blue eyes.

"Buffy." he replied You said you could take away the pain." Adia laughed suddenly as she came to understand what he meant with a beaming smile.

"Oh, Angel, I didn’t lie," she reassured him as she moved closer so that was able to touch him. Placing on hand on his chest, she whispered, "I can take the pain away. Where you’re going, you’ll quickly forget her."

"I still don’t understand what you’re trying to do, Willow," Giles exclaimed as he watched Willow hurriedly sit down at a computer in the library.

"She went and got one of those looks she gets when she’s had a brilliant idea," Xander explained to the Watcher as he also watched Willow with great interest. "You can never get anything useful out of her when she’s like this."

"Kate left in her car right? And she must have needed it to transport Angel - so if we find her car, maybe we’ll find her and Angel."

Giles frowned at the jittery red head as she concentrated on the computer screen. "Willow, you haven’t been hacking into the police data-base again, have you?" Willow tried not to look guilty as she smiled back up at him innocently, shaking her head, knowing very well that he wouldn’t believe her.

"Well, if anyone asks, I wasn’t here," Giles told here with a heavy sigh and Willow went back to work.

"So, Will’, how does his work exactly." Xander asked.

"We put in an alert for her licence plate number, and the police will start looking for the car. When they find it, they’ll report back and we’ll know where she is before the head-police-people even realise that they didn’t put out a call for that particular car in the first place."

Xander smiled and gave her look that was halfway between being confused and impressed. "Way to go, Will’."

"Do you honestly think this will work?" Giles asked, not being able to stop his obvious concern for the reliability of the plan from slipping out amongst his words.

"Well, it’s better than moping around wishing we knew what to do," Willow told him sternly as she continued to type. Xander raised one eyebrow as he sat down beside her.

"Like Buffy?"

Willow sighed dramatically as she gave Xander a foul look. "The life on the man she loves is in danger - he may even be already dead! She has every right to feel mopy because there’s nothing she can do right now, Xander."

*****

Buffy carefully examined the photos on the floor infront of her. They were of her and Angel at the prom - the only pictures she had of him. Now she was beginning to wonder if they were the only ones she’d ever have.

She hadn’t gone out since she’d got home after leaving the mansion. She completely useless just sitting at home while her lover was somewhere dying, but she knew there was nothing she could do. Not yet.

A knock came on her door, and Buffy quickly shoved the photos under a cushion before answering.

"Come in, Mum."

"Are you okay, sweetie?" Joyce asked as she crept into the dark room. Buffy had pulled the curtains together tightly and then put a blanket over them to block out the sunlight.

"Leave me alone," Buffy whispered hardly, turning away from her mother. Joyce adamantly gave up there and then, deciding that arguing with her daughter when she was happy was dangerous enough, let alone when she was locking herself in a dark room and refusing to talk to anyone.

"I’ll be downstairs if you need me," she told her daughter as she quickly slipped out the door. When she was gone, Buffy curled up on the floor beside her bed and began to cry.

*****

"This is it!" Willow cried excitedly as she stared at the information on the screen. It had taken nearly three hours, but the illegal hack into the police system had paid off. "Have they found it?" Giles asked anxiously and Willow nodded happily.

"Yeap - address and everything."

"Well, where is it?!" the Watcher returned in exasperation as Willow scribbled down the information on to a piece of paper. Passing it to him, he quickly slipped on his glasses to read the address that Willow had managed to dig up.

"Xander, call Buffy," he order the teenager without looking up from the paper, "Tell her we’ve found it."

*****

While there was a feeling of great excitement in the library, far away on the other side of Sunnydale, Angel could not share in their contentment. He was too afraid. He was still unsure of what exactly was going to happen next ; but he was sure of one thing - he was going to die. After two hundred years, the consequences of his most brutal kill had finally caught up with him.

"It’s all a matter of perspective, Angelus," his assailant told him as she crossed the stage. "Eventually, the little fish turns around and eats the big fish. The circle of life is not unbreakable."

Angel watched her carefully as she moved past him, her long white dress flowing around her legs and she walked. She couldn’t possible have realised, Angel told himself, that the her beauty was punishment enough. He had killed one of the most beautiful women that ever lived.

"My beauty didn’t save me from you two hundred years ago, Angelus." Adia told him as she disappeared into the wings and off stage. Angel frowned unhappily as he realised that she could read his thoughts - it made the chance of his escape, let alone survival, even less likely.

"If you can read my mind, you must know that I’ve paid for my crimes," he told her as he heard her rustling about off stage. "Not a day goes by I’m not haunted by them - I never expected you to forgive me."

As Adia reappeared on the stage, Angel noticed the faint smile on her face as she stared at him intently.

"Oh, I know, Angel," she told him as she slowly walked towards him, "I know that the thought of what you did to me repulses you. I know that, in your mind, you’re apologising to me over and over again."

Angel nodded desperately as she closed in on him, praying that she’d understand. As she did so, Angel came to realise that her hands were behind her back. Hearing his thoughts, Adia knew he was intrigued with what she was hiding from him.

"Oh, this?" she inquired innocent as she brought her hands out in front of her. "This is to teach you, the I’m not the one you should be apologising to."

Angel eyes widened as the long, silver dagger in her hand came into view and she held it up close to him for effect.

"What do you mean?" he managed to gasp out as she gently placed the tip of the blade at the base of his throat. Adia smiled beautiful as she leant forward so that she could whisper in his ear.

"It means, my darling....did you ever spare a thought for the ones that you really hurt when you killed me. Did you think I’d ever forgive you for what you did to them?" She paused dramatically as she dug the tip of the dagger slightly further into his skin, as far as possible without actually drawing blood. Angel winced visibly as the blade came closing to breaking into his flesh, wishing that she’d just kill him and stop the torture.

"It means, pet," she continued, slowly, "that you really should be apologising to my unborn child and the man to whom I gave my heart. I’m reasonably over it, I have had a long time to come to terms - but will my baby and my husband ever forgive you?"

Angel closed his eyes tightly as her words rang in her ears. Biting his lip, he knew she was right. He knew that this wasn’t just about her anymore. He knew that this was when the pain started.

"Are you sure that’s the place?" Buffy asked Willow as she jumped into Oz’s van, inbetween Giles and Xander. Looking back at her friend from the front passenger seat, Willow nodded with a smile.

"Yeap. Unless she’s gone some where in past two hours, she should be there."

"Let’s just hope she didn’t just dump the car," Oz pointed as he pulled out of the Summers’ drive way.

"Do we have a plan?" Willow asked as the white van tore through the streets of Sunnydale in the fading light. Buffy nodded and opened her bag. Xander looked over her into the bag to look at its contents and gave an impressed nod. The Slayer sure as hell knew her weapons.

"We get in. Find Angel. Get him out of there. Put Mrs. Spike six feet under...again."

"If that’s possible..." Giles began to suggest, but he quickly closed his mouth when Buffy gave him her best ‘don’t give me this shit now’ look. The Watcher simply nodded and decided to sit in silence until he was called upon to speak.

"Spike?" Xander asked, but Buffy simply shrugged lazily.

"I don’t know. I don’t care. Just as long as keeps out of my way."

"But what if he tries to help her?"

"Why would he? I mean, why would he care about her anymore - he’s a demon."

Turning around in her chair, Willow looked to Buffy cautiously, her face clearly showing the dilema of whether of not to ask the question burning in her brain. "And what if Angel’s..."

"Don’t even think about it Will’." Buffy told her sharply, interrupting as if she knew what the other girl was about to say. Willow gave an apologetic smile and turned back around in her seat. Now was definitely not the time to upset Buffy, the red head decided immediately.

*****

"You’re dicing with death, mate." Spike muttered as he stood in the shadows across the street from the condemned theatre. He was still tossing up whether to enter or not - it wasn’t an easy decision.

He could either leave - and save his ass. Or he could go in - and get her out of his life forever. Entrance it was.

He was about to cross the road when the headlights of a familiar van flashed across the shadows, and Spike had to hide behind a tree so as not to be seen. He watched carefully as the Slayer and her friends piled out of the white car, their arms filled with various weapons. Spike couldn’t help but smirk - despite his warning, the Slayer still insisted on trying to take Adia on with weapons.

*****

Angel tried desperately not to think about the pain. But it was hard. Even images of Buffy quickly dissolved into nothing as he listened to the drip of blood on the stage.

At the side of the stage, Adia was watched him carefully, the blood stained dagged resting carefully on her lap - creating a dark contrast between the red of his blood and the snow white of her dress. After making three incisions across his abdomen she had stopped for a moment ; as is to stand back and admire her work.

He recognised the patterns of the wounds well, and knew what was coming next. She was hurting him, exactly the same way he had hurt her, and from the amount of blood she had lost, he knew that he wouldn’t survive much more.

"Hurts, doesn’t it?" she suddenly asked, waking him from her dreamy haze. He looked up at her weakly, trying to focus in on her through blury eyes. "Don’t worry," she said in a comforting tone, "Soon you’ll pass out."

Slowly stand up, knife still in hand, she began to come over to him, slight sauntering in her walk as if she was over confident. Carefully, she took the dagger and slide it through the waist band of his jeans, letting it rest there as she raised her hands to his face. Gently taking his head in her hands she looked up into his eyes with great intensity.

"Of course you realise, that by the time you did this to me, my child was dead. I guess I was just lucky you didn’t wait as long as this before finishing me off."

"Adia, please..." Angel whispered hoarsely, but she ignored his plea. Taking the dagger from his waistband again, she moved it so quickly that in his poorly state, Angel didn’t even see it. He didn’t realise that she’d cut him again until he felt the pain in his wrist. He cried out as the blade cut through his flesh. But no sooner had the pain begun to face, another incision was made on the other wrist, and Angel screamed.

"Hush!" Adia told him sternly as he groaned loudly in pain. "This is exactly what you did to me, and I wasn’t this noisy!"

As he began to gain some kind of control over the pain, Angel looked up at her with solemn eyes.

"No. You didn’t make a sound." he confirmed quietly, the guilt strangely clouding the reality of the situation for a little while - until the blade of the knife cut quickly across his bare chest.

Angel couldn’t help but cry out as the dagger cut into his skin. "Please!" he cried as Adia lifted the dagger again. She stopped suddenly, lowering the weapon as the expression in her eyes became overwhelming with anger.

"Please?" she exclaimed, almost snarling at him in disgust, "Please?! I said please, too, Angelus - but that didn’t save me!"

Angel felt his heart sore as he heard his name called out, and for a moment, he thought it rather interesting that his salvation always seemed to come in the form of a petite, blonde Slayer.

Angel opened in eyes to see Adia spin around to see the source of the voice. At the back of the room, Buffy and her companions were lined up, each holding a set of weapons. Each looking deadly serious.

Adia, however, did not take them serious. Instead, she laughed.

"Buffy! How nice of you to drop by!"

"Cut the crap Kate...I mean, Adia," Buffy yelled back at Adia as she began to make her way down the central aisle of the theatre, "It’s over."

Adia merely smirked at the young girl below her and turned back to Angel. "Do you hear that Angel? She thinks she can save you."

"She will save me," he corrected weakly, trying to ignore the fact that very soon, he’d be dead from loss of

blood if Buffy didn’t hurry up and get him out of there. Adia, unmoved by the couple’s commitment to each other, simply rolled her eyes and heaved a deep sigh.

"Humans," she muttered whistfully, "So optimistic. Mind you, I was too, once. But look what happened to me."

"You turned into a skanky ho," Buffy interrupted as she came down the the front of the sitting section, raising her cross bow at Adia. "Let him go."

"That’s what I like about you Buffy," Adia told her as she stepped away from Angel, "You remind me so much of me - a couple of hundred years ago."

Buffy tilted her head to the side to give Adia a look of boredom as she lowered her cross bow, "Oh yeah, and how’s that?"

Suddenly, a look of complete and utter seriousness overtook Adia’s face - the humour quickly gone, replaced by a look of sadness as she replied, "We’d both do anything for the man we love."

Buffy stared at her intently. She couldn’t help but be attracted to the position the Adia was it - all she wanted was to get revenge for her brutal and heavily consequential death. But that quickly faded, and Buffy was back to not giving a shit about anything except Angel. "Yeah, except you’re in love with a fucked up, bleach blonde demon. You’re the one about to kill the man I love."

Blinded by fury with the woman on stage, Buffy raised her cross bow again and pointed it at her. "No he doesn’t."

As the cross bow ejected two arrows, a feeling of satisfaction filled Buffy’s heart. She was going to win and she was going to save Angel. Or was she?

The feeling of victory, however, quickly faded when Buffy did not hear the arrows hit flesh. Instead, without seeming to use any effort at all, Adia lifted both hands and caught the offending weapons just before they hit her chest.

"What?!" Buffy screaming in horror as Adia dropped the arrows to the ground, a sneaky grin crossing her face at the Slayer shock.

"Sorry Buffy. You can’t kill someone that’s already dead. Really dead."

Outraged, Buffy dropped the cross bow and moved to jump onto the stage. Leaping up onto the higher level, she wasted no time in attempting to charge Adia...but ran into something instead. From the back of the theatre, Giles and the other three teenagers watched in horror as the Slayer seemed to collide with some kind of forcefield and was consequently thrown from the stage onto the seating level below. Her four friends quickly ran to her side as she hit the ground, leaving her slightly dazed for a second.

"You’re not going to get in my way, Slayer," Adia announced from her position above them. Although a little shaken, Buffy looked at her intensely, her eyes filled with distress ; realising, that perhaps this was going to be harder than she thought.

Spike watched with great amusement as the Slayer was thrown from the stage onto the ground. He was liking this situation more and more by the minute. If Adia killed the Slayer as well as Angelus, he’d be getting rid of two enemies with one stone. He turned his attention back to the girl on the stage and grinned - he was feeling extremely proud. Adia was doing a brilliant job on Angel.

He sighed reluctantly as he stared at her thoughtfully - she was still as beautiful as ever. Even after a hundred and eighty-five years, he still wanted her. And it made him sick.

Spike didn’t know why, that for the first time in nearly two centuries, he was drawn to her. To the idea of her. She was just someone he had cared about when he was mortal - he didn’t feel that way about her now.

He couldn’t. But still the memories of her haunted him, like old ghosts looking for vengeance.

At the beginning, they were just of her. Being with her, making love to her...but now they took a bitter twist, and the dreams were no longer pleasant. For the past two days, all he could see was her blood...

*****

The young Marshall shook his head sadly as he stared down at the body lying beside the river. The blanket that had been placed over the girl was not enough to hide the morbid reality of the murder and he was dreading having to help out when the body was taken away. It was the third crime like it in a fortnight, but he was still getting used to churning feeling in his stomach the sight of the victims created in him.

As he stood in silence, staring at the figure infront of him, he head a quiet murmur develop from the crowd that had gather on the dock. Turning around, he looked amongst them to see what the fuss was about. And then he saw him - pushing through the group of people that had come to see who the latest victim was.

The Marshall sighed mournfully as he watched the man coming towards him. There was no denying now who the victim was. He had hoped that he’d been mistaken when he had caught a short glimpse of the girl before she was covered, but the appearance of the man he knew as her husband was a final confirmation.

The two men walked slowly towards the body, neither seeming to be in a rush to have to face the grim sight before them. Sullivan noticed the red roses on the ground, before looking to the covered figure on the ground - one small hand remained visible, stretched away from the body. He winced noticeably as he saw the one rose held tightly in the pale hand, blood seeping from between the fingers from where the thorn had broken through the skin.

"Are you ready?" the Marshall asked. Sullivan looked up at him suddenly, as if he had been disturbed, the look in his eyes an obvious sign that he had been momentarily detached from the reality of the situation as he stared at the body. He nodded silently and the Marshall proceeded.

The Marshall watched him carefully as he stared at the body on the ground. The young man looked about twenty-five, he was tall with hair so blonde it was almost white. He was definitely attractive, and the Marshall realised that it couldn’t have been hard for him to find such a beautiful wife.

Sullivan, by this time, had still not broken. He still seemed to be as calm as he had been when he first arrived no emotion etched into his pale face. He simply bent down beside the corpse and took her hand in his.

Beside him, the Marshall willed himself to look down at the picture before him, almost forcing himself so that he would be able to write a report for the doctor. He couldn’t help but feel ill at the sight before him.

He couldn’t even imagine why anyone would do such a thing. Trying to concentrate on the corpse, noting the amount of blood, he realised she must have bled to death - the wound to the neck would have finished her off altogether. Her long white dress was almost completely stained red The Marshall’s attention went back to her husband again to find the other man still kneeling beside his wife.

Although his exterior appearance still did not show any trace of distress or any other emotion, the Marshall knew that Sullivan was about to crack. Silent, the blonde slipped down to the ground beside his wife so that he was lying beside her, and gently wrapped an arm around her waist, holding her to him.

She looked so peaceful, he told himself as he stared at her. There was no damage to her face so she almost looked like she was sleeping, and for a brief second, Sullivan was able to believe that she was still alive.

"Sir?" the Marshall called out to him, waking him up from his reverie, and Sullivan slowly sat up.

"The coroner’s here, sir." the Marshall told him when he looked up at him, his face dimly questioning. Sullivan nodded dimly and stood up.

"I’ll help," he told the Marshall as two men in black approached them, carrying a stretcher.

One of the men in black took a handkerchief from his pocket and carefully wiped away the blood from her shoulder so the intrusive image was able to be clearly seen.

"It’s a tattoo," the same man reported and both Sullivan and the Marshall moved to look at it more closely.

"Did she have a tattoo?" the Marshall asked, but Sullivan shook his head. From the moment he had first seen the girl’s husband, the young man noted that he wasn’t exactly tanned, but in the short moments after the tattoo was located, the Marshall noticed as what little colour there was left in Sullivan’s face quickly drained away; leaving him as white as a ghost. "Sir? Is there something wrong?"

Sullivan shook his head wildly and quickly leapt up. "I have to go," he murmured as he turned away, "I’ll come into you office later."

The Marshall watched with great interest as Sullivan fled from the scene of the crime. It had been obvious, from the first moment he’d seen the mark on his wife’s back, that he knew what it was and what it had meant. Taking a mental note of it, the Marshall decided to let the other man go for the time being. He’d ask the husband about the tattoo later.

*****

A week later, William Sullivan returned home after spending another three hours being interrogated by the useless Marshall. He knew the answer to the questions, but he wasn’t about to tell the law who had kill his wife. He’d have been thrown into an asylum. As he entered the door, however, he felt the additional presence in the room immediately. It may have been dark, but he could still make out the figure sitting in the armchair beside the dimly glowing fire.

"Of course you know. I never thought you were stupid, William."

"So then - you’ve won." Sullivan replied quietly as he slowly walked towards the other man.

"Yeah, I guess I have. But you see, Will’," he paused momentarily as he stood up to face the owner of the house, "I always win."

"I can’t live without her, Angelus," Sullivan told the other man solemnly. "But, I suppose you already knew that. That’s why you did it, right?"

Raising one eyebrow sarcastically, Sullivan gave the dark haired man a disgusted look. "You know the answer to that, you bastard."

Throwing one arm around the younger man, Angelus grinned and told him, "I told you from the beginning William ; I can make the pain go away."

Sullivan looked up at him morbidly, staring into the eyes of the man beside him - he searched desperately, but he couldn’t find the truth in his claims he wanted so much. But it didn’t matter anymore - it was too late to fight now.

"Then do it," he whispered solemnly, and Angelus smiled cruelly. Pulling Sullivan closer to hi, he put his lips against the other man’s ear. So quietly, that the blonde almost couldn’t hear, the vampire whispered to him; "This won’t hurt a bit."

"I swear to God, when I get my hands on you, I’m going to kill you!" Spike was snapped back into reality by the Slayer’s hysterical shriek as she struggled to pull herself up the floor, ignoring the attempts of her Watcher who was trying to help her. Adia, however, only smirked at the distressed girl and turned her attention back to Angel.

"You’re girlfriend’s not very bright, is she Angelus?" With her words, Angel’s heart sunk - it wasn’t looking very good for him. If Buffy couldn’t help him, and Giles and the others couldn’t - he couldn’t even help himself - then what was he supposed to do?

The attention of the Slayer and her friends turned quickly to the side wings of the stage from where the voice had emerged, and for a moment, Buffy sighed in relief. On the stage, Adia remained facing Angel as a broad grin crossed her voice.

"Hello, my husband." she said cheerfully as she slowly turned in the direction of the black stage wings.

Standing just in the darkness of the shadows, Spike smiled back at her jovially.

"Hello, my wife. How’s it going?"

Adia shrugged lazily as she turned back to Angel. The vampire was now trembling - from fear and faintness as his blood drained from his body.

"I was just about to slit his throat," she told the blonde vampire as she raised the blade of the dagger to Angel’s neck. Angel winced and tried to pull away from the sharp edge, but Adia only laughed at his attempt.

"Sorry, Angel, darling. This is revenge. You slit my throat, I slit yours - that’s just the way it goes. I didn’t make the rules."

"An eye for an eye, and all that, hey Adia?" Spike enquired sarcastically as he moved into the light.

"Spike! Stop her!" Buffy screamed at the vampire as she ran to the side of the stage. Behind her, Giles and the others were carefully separating around the stage in an attempt to find a way to get near Angel.

Spike was silent for a moment, a look of great contemplation on his face as he considered her demand.

Finally, he scrunched up his nose and answered, "Um....no." Buffy’s eyes became wide as she tried to contemplate the idea of the vampire refusing her. Lifting her crossbow to point it at his chest, Buffy cocked one eyebrow.

"Let’s get something straight, Spike," she told him sternly as she loaded the crossbow, "Not only do you have to help him because if you don’t, I’ll tell the Watcher’s council and you’ll be up to your neck in shit; but I will also turn you into dust before you can even wave goodbye to your girlfriend."

Spike’s face fell, to only be replaced by a stern seriousness as he stared down at the petite blonde.

"You just don’t get it, do you, Slayer?" he asked as he moved slowly across the stage. "I don’t care about her. She was a part of my life when I was mortal." Looking up at Adia, he sighed deeply and stared down at the knife imbedded in his sire’s throat. "The truth is, I don’t want revenge for my wife..." he paused suddenly as he looked back up at the woman infront of him, his eyes and voice reflecting a certain sadness to her as he continued, "Or my child. This is about me. Me and Angel."

"Spike, I’m warning you..."

But the Slayer’s warnings fell on deaf ears as Spike slowly approached Adia, the couple staring at each other intensely as the distance between them diminished. "It was never about you," he told her finally, and Adia nodded in understanding.

"I know that."

"All he wanted was to be in control of me. He knew that killing you would make me his pawn forever - not just while I was human."

Adia turned her head to look at Angel carefully, studying the killer that had placed both her and her husband in this situation. She frowned at him slightly and for some reason, unexpectedly took the knife away from his neck.

"It was always about me, though - wasn’t it, William? It was always something else for him to torment you with, wasn’t it? The fact that he didn’t change me - just to annoy you."

Spike shrugged light heartedly, the sudden sombreness of his behaviour lifting again to his usual arrogant air of wit. He didn’t want to admit the truth of her words - and how much they disturbed her.

"I guess you’re right. But it doesn’t matter now." Lost in their own conversation, the couple had forgotten about the mortals in the theatre as they attempted to find a way to get to Angel. At the front of the stage, Buffy was trying to find somewhere that Adia had neglected to protect with the forcefield, but she wasn’t having much luck.

Spike watched her with great amusement as her attempts were thwarted again and again by the invisible wall and she was still no where near to getting anywhere close to her lover.

"Spike, please." she pleaded with him, dropping her cross bow to the floor in an act of submission. The vampire stared at her for a little while as he considered her situation. And for a moment, she seemed just like him when he was still mortal - about to lose the love of her life and there was nothing she could do about it. But the slight softness that had invaded his heart quickly faded as he reached into the pocket of his leather coat, and pulled out an object, holding it out to Adia.

"An eye for an eye?" he told her calmly as she slowly took the wooden stake from his hand.

Adia looked down at the stake carefully, her face completely serious as she considered his offer.

"Spike, no!" Buffy screamed at the vampire as she again tried to get to him but was still kept back by the forecefield that Adia had surrounded herself and Angel with. They both ignored her, however, as Adia first looked up at Angel, still conscious but barely with the amount of blood he had lost, and then back down at the stake in Spike’s hand. Slowly, consciously, she reached out and took the piece of wood from her husband’s hand.

"You can’t do this!" Buffy exclaimed from her position behind the forcefield, "What gives you the right to do this?!"

But her pleas fell on deaf ears as Adia slowly turned to face her. The look on her face was truly frightening - a mixture of pain and anger as she spoke.

"What gives us the right? We may not be like you anymore, Slayer - the vampire and the ghost - but how are we really that different? If you prick us, do we not bleed?" From his position on the stairs of the stage, Giles recognised the quote instantly and frowned.

"If you wrong us do we not revenge?" he stated, continuing the Shakespeare line for her and Adia looked to him; Giles instantly saw the resolve in her eyes and his heart sank for Buffy. Maybe even a little for Angel.

Adia was going to do it. At that moment, Angel looked up to see his assailant - even in his diminishing

condition, he knew what was going to happen ; but in that instant, he no longer cared - he just wanted the

pain to be over. He weakly lifted his head to look over to where Buffy

The horror on the young Slayer’s face was more than distinct as the woman in front of her lifted the stake up high, and Buffy screamed. "No!"

But her cry of terror was ignored - Adia thrust the wooden stake straight through Angel’s heart...

When Angel opened his eyes, he was in darkness. It surrounded him, enveloped him entirely to the point where he feared it would suffocate him. But atleast one thing comforted him - the pain was gone. In fact, he was entirely numb.

It was in this cold, dark silence that he remained for some time, trying to gather his senses, before he finally summed up the courage to speak.

"Where am I?"

And for a short while, only silence greeted him. He was about to ask his question again, when he was sure he could hear someone near by. Someone laughing softly, as if his torment was some kind of joke.

"Who’s there?"

As Angel stared into the darkness, desperately trying to seek out the source of the laughter, a small light started to resonate before him. Softly at first, so that it was barely able to be seen, but eventually it grew.

And with it, the vision of the woman kneeling infront of him grew also, making Angel gasp as her feature’s became familiar.

"Welcome, Angelus," Adia whispered as she leant towards him so that he could clearly see her. Trying not to swallow so deeply as to show his immense fear, Angel took a deep breath.

"Where am I?"

Adia smiled faintly, her eyes sparkling as she stared into his own, the gentle laughter in the light blue pools of colour clearly visible to the vampire - even in the dark. "This is the place between heaven and hell. It is no where, but it is everywhere. It doesn’t exist, but it is where we are."

Angel couldn’t help but stop the look of confusion that appeared on his face, and Adia laughed out loud as he quirked one questioning eyebrow. She understood why he was having trouble digesting this.

"It’s okay Angelus," she told him with a broad smile, "There’s no need to be afraid. You’re safe here. For now, anyway."

"I don’t understand," he replied, shaking his head solemnly, "Why aren’t I in hell? That’s where I belong, isn’t it?"

Adia shrugged lazily and bit her lip. Angel suddenly began to wonder if she even knew what was going on - if they were just as lost as each other.

"Things change, Angel," she told him quietly and looked downwards. Angel followed her gaze to stare at her hands. The were clasped tightly together and a small light was radiating from the gaps between her fingers. Frowning, he edged away from her slightly, afraid of what new weapon may be concealed within her grasp.

"I wanted you in hell," she continued, ignoring his movements of retreat, "But when you got your soul back, I was forced to make a deal."

Angel frowned as he continued to stare at the light in her hands.

"What deal?"

"When I died, I was given the chance to avenge my death. My husband’s death. So, for over a hundred years I waited...here. But then you changed."

"You were here for all this time?" he asked, slightly amazed as he looked around the darkness surrounding them. He had barely been able to stand being in the strange place for a few minutes let alone nearly two centuries.

"This is the crossroads, Angel," she explained calmly, "I had to wait here if I was to avenge my death, before I could finally go to heaven. Then she came along - and there was a sudden hope for you."

Angel closed his eyes tightly and shook his head. This was all too much for him to comprehend. "Adia, I don’t understand."

"Buffy." Adia told him simply, and with the mention of the Slayer’s head, the vampire’s head shot up instantly, his eyes wide as he stared at her.

"What does Buffy have to do with this?" he demanded, and Adia smiled faintly.

"Everything. Who do you think arranged the incident of her nearly being run over by that car?"

Angel stared at her aghast as she spoke, suddenly becoming outraged by her confession. "You tried to kill her?!" he exclaimed angrily, but Adia only laughed and shook her head.

"Because, if you passed, I would be forced to make you this offer." Looking down at the light in her hands, Adia held it up higher for Angel to see. As if mesmerised by it, Angel stared at it intensely, almost hypnotised by the soft glow.

"What is it?" he asked quietly.

"Something that was stolen from you. A long time ago." Looking to him, Adia took a moment to study Angel carefully as he stared at the light emanating from her hands. As she did so, she smiled at him gently, aware of the hope this situation could create for the both of them.

"Angel, you passed the test," she continued slowly and Angel looked back up at her in awe, "You’ve proved that you don’t belong here. Therefore, I’ve been told to offer you this."

"Offer what? Who told you?" Angel was still no less confused, and she was quickly adding to the brain-strain already giving him an extreme headache.

"The so called ‘higher powers’, Angel. They said that if you truly loved her, they would give you a second chance. That’s why you’re here."

"But you killed me...Spike, Buffy - they were all there. I’m dead. Literally."

Adia sighed gently and moved closer to him so that the faced were literally only inches apart. "Don’t you see, Angel," she whispered, "That was my revenge - you were my placebo. But that’s all I can ask of you.

I’ve taken what I’ve been offered, and it has brought you here. Now, the choice is yours."

Reaching out to take hold of her smaller hands in his, Angel looked her square in the eye, and said, "Adia, what are you offering me?"

"A second chance," she replied simply, "Everyone deserves one. Just say the word, and I can make it happen. But there are certain provisos."

Angel frowned then, waiting the conditions of his so called ‘second chance’ - afraid of what he might have to do. "Such as?"

"You will no longer be immortal. You will get sick, you will have to eat and drink again, and you will age. You will die, just like everyone else, at any time." Angel stared at her intensely as he words sunk in. Was it possible she was offering him what he thought she was? His mouth opened at random intervals as he tried to speak, but was unable to find the words, ending up looking like a goldfish more than a man. "But you will be able to walk in the sun, have children...you’ll have her. Now the question is, do you want it?"

At her offer, Angel didn’t think. He didn’t want to think. He just wanted it all - everything she was offering him. He didn’t care how he got it - and so he nodded vigorously, not taking anytime at all to consider his answer at all. At his eagerness, Adia smiled at him happily.

"We’re not so different you and I, are we?" she told him sweetly as she leant her forehead against his, closing her eyes. "All either of us wants is to be with the one we love."

"What about you?" he asked solemnly, "Do you get a second chance?" Adia shrugged as she sat back, staring down at her hands as she shook her head.

"I don’t know. Maybe."

Looking back up at him, the sad look on her face that had suddenly appeared quickly vanished as she noticed the look of wonder on his face. He knew he what was going to happen to him.

"I just want you to know, this is not about you," she told him quietly."I’m not doing this for you."

Angel nodded and tightened his grip on her hands. "I understand."

She smiled again at his response and returned her gaze to her hands and the shining light which was encased in her slender fingers.

"Are you ready?" she whispered, and took a deep breath before he Angel smiled back at her. She nodded slowly in response, before she leant forward and placed a gentle kiss on his cheek, whispering, "Goodbye, Angel."

And then the opened her hands, and light flooded the darkness...

As she literally watched her lover turn to dust infront her, Buffy screamed. She screamed herself hoarse as the piece of wood pierced his heart, watching helplessly as his bloody figure became made entirely of grey ashes, before slowly falling apart into a heap on the floor. As soon as the stake had gone through Angel’s heart, Willow had dashed quickly over to where Buffy was standing at the front of the stage and managed to catch her as the Slayer slumped onto the floor in a hysteric fit of tears.

The three men with them, however, although concerned for the Slayer, had become transfixed with the scene in the centre of the stage.

They watched in wonder as the wooden stake fell limply from Adia’s hand and she suddenly collapsed.

Beside her, Spike managed to reach out and grab her before she hit the ground, both of them falling to the floor. What disturbed them the most, however, was the sudden appearance of injuries all over the body of the blonde girl. He dress was now stained with her own blood which was seeping from various wounds across her abdomen, chest, arms and neck. While Buffy continued to sob loudly with Willow beside her, trying her best to comfort her friend, Spike lifted Adia into his arms and cradled her, uncaring as her blood began to stain his clothing. She was conscious, but only barely as she stared up at the man who was once her husband. Spike stared back down at her, his eyes cold and lifeless as he went through the motions of reliving his wife’s death. But suddenly, she smiled.

After a short silence, she whispered, "Surprise..." Spike frowned in confusion, and was about to ask her what she meant when a small gust of wind burst through the theatre. Looking up momentarily, he watched as the wind swept across the stage, tossing about the pile of ashes that had once been his sire. But as it died down, Spike, still looking at the place where Angel’s ashes had been, was forced to close his eyes and shake his head ; wondering for a moment if he was imagining it. But he wasn’t. A matter of feet in front of her, the ashes swept away to slowly reveal a body lying on the floor. A very familiar one at that. He looked dead at first, but the unconscious man then suddenly opened his eyes and breathed in deeply. The sudden gasp for air was heard by Buffy as she cowered on the floor at the front of the stage and she looked up instantly towards the direction from which the desperate sound had emanated. As she stared at the sight infront of her, Buffy’s eyes grew wide and her breath caught in her throat.

"Angel!" she cried and quickly stumbled to her feet before dashing across the stage to where he was lying.

Kneeling beside him, she tried to calm her self as she reached down to take hold of his hand. As soon as she touched him, Angel seemed to snap into reality and immediately focused his attention on the girl beside him.

"Buffy?" he whispered, and Buffy smiled, trying to hold back a sob as the joy overwhelmed her. Pulling

himself into a sitting position, he threw his arms around the Slayer and held her to him tightly as she

continued to cry. For a short while, the lovers simply clung to each other as Buffy sobbed into Angel’s chest until suddenly, she became stiff and sat back back quickly to face him. Angel frowned as he looked into the Slayer’s red eyes to discover her confusion. Placing one hand on his chest, Buffy remained deathly silent as she felt the rise and fall of his chest. She looked up at him in a state of wondrous confusion, and Angel knew the question she was about to ask. This was what reminded him.

"Adia!" he suddenly gasped out, surprised the Slayer with the sudden question. She frowned wistfully for a moment, before looking across the stage to where Spike held Adia, about three metres away. As quickly as he possibly could, Angel tried to stumble to his feet, but found he wasn’t able to when a dizzy spell hit him.

Realising his intent, Buffy wrapped one arm around his waist in aid for him to stand up, before helping him hobble across the stage. His legs eventually gave out under him just before he reached the couple and Buffy was unable to hold him up as he slumped to the ground. With what energy he could muster, he reached out over the short distance to take Adia’s bloody hand. As he did so, the blonde stirred and slowly seemed to become conscious. Her head weakly tipped to the side to face him and Angel tried as best he could to stomach the scene before him ; knowing that he was the one that had done this to her.

"Adia..." he whispered, but she silenced him by raising her hand to gently touch his cheek. She smiled at him and he gripped her hand tighter.

"I know," she answered weakly as a single tear slid down Angel’s cheek, before she slowly pulled her hand away. With the small about of strength she had left in her dying body, Adia turned her gaze back to the of Spike’s. The blonde vampire was staring down at her, no emotion at all visible in his dark eyes as he remained silent. She tried her best to remain calm as their eyes met, but she couldn’t stop the tears as they began to well in her eyes.

"I’m sorry I left..." she sobbed quietly, but Spike just held her to him closer, his calm exterior still ever present as she slowly bled to death in his arms.

"It doesn’t matter," he replied flatly, "It was over a long time ago." But Adia shook her head sadly as she feebly lifted one hand to caress her husband cheek.

"But it does matter," she whimpered softly, "For a hundred and eighty years I’ve waited for my revenge ; and now...I’ve finally realised what it was all about. It was never about Angel."

"You." Adia whispered softly, gently rubbing her thumbs again his pale lips, all the while smiling up at him lovingly. "It was always about you."

Spike smirked slightly at her response before he looked coldly up at Angel.

"She forgave you then?"Angel weakly opened his mouth to answer the other vampire’s hostile question, but his attention was drawn back to Adia as she began to cough. Spike still seemed to be unmoved by the situation of the woman in his arms, but despite his better judgement, holding her up closer to his chest in a bid to make her more comfortable.

"It was time to move on," she managed to gasp out as she clutched Spike’s leather jacket like a life line. "It was time for a second chance."

"I thought we didn’t get second chances? You and I?" Adia sighed gently as she rested her head against his shoulder and tried to ignore the dizzy feeling spreading throughout her body as she felt her life slipping away. But she didn’t want to go anyway - not yet - not without making him understand.

"You see, William, I’ve been dead for years. My soul left this place nearly two centuries ago - my body was bound to catch up eventually."

Spike stifled a weak laugh at her response ; all the while trying not to look into her eyes as he felt his control slipping. "You don’t change, do you Adia? Two hundred years and you’re still babbling."

Adia shook her head weakly, but with a slight grin. "No. No more babbling. There’s no need anymore. My work is done."

Spike looked up at Angel then and smirked. Shaking his head with a dissatisfied smile, he exclaimed, "If you were going to reward the prick for being so fucking evil, did you have to screw us all up first?"

"If you mean Xander - I needed to get close to you and Angel. He’ll forget soon enough. I never intended to screw you up."

"What about him?" Spike asked, gesturing towards Angel, was still securely fasted within Buffy’s embrace. "Is he..."

The girl in Spike’s arms paused as she stared up at him in silence, her eyes filling with tears as she whispered, "It was the only way for us to be together..."

The blonde vampire simply stared down at the bleeding girl in his arms, for a long time, in complete silence. Eventually, he let out a short laugh as his mocking eyes looked down into hers with great amusement.

"You just don’t get it, do you little girl?" he grated out through clenched teeth, "It’s over. It’s been over for a long time. I don’t care about you anymore." Spike had expected Adia to be hurt by his harsh confession, but he didn’t see any of the agony he’d expected in her eyes. And gradually, he was sure that a small smile was growing on her face. He frowned at her, but her grin only grew and her eyes sparkled as she continued to stare into his.

"Don’t try lying to me, my love. I know everything..." suddenly, Adia began to cough and Spike quickly moved to hold her up, pulling her closer into his chest. Slightly out of breath she managed to choke out, "It’s funny, really. It hurts more the second time." She shuddered as she spoke, a sudden coldness coming over her. From the back of the stage, Xander had noticed and come closer to the couple on the floor, shrugging off his jacket in the process. As he handed it to Spike, who carefully wrapped the black material around the girl in his arms, Adia looked up at the boy with a definitive sadness.

"I’m sorry," she whispered sadly, "You know why I did it, don’t you?" Xander didn’t speak. He just looked down at the ground and nodded reluctantly. She was never his, he decided, and slowly backed away.

Adia returned her gaze to Spike as he attention returned to the blonde vampire as he frowned at her solemnly. "Do you understand?" she asked quietly, brushing her thumb gently against his pale lips.

When he did not reply, only continuing to stare at her with a distinct silence, Adia began to crumble.

Clutching at his leather jacket as if it was a lifeline, she tried to pull him closer to her ; tried to pull him into her as she tried to make him understand.

"I let him live, because it would make way for you...I have a ticket for two souls..."

"You’re forgetting, Adia," Spike interrupted hastily, "I don’t have a soul."

Spike expected her to be disappointed. Upset. Something like that. He hadn’t been expecting her to grin wildly as his comment. She laughed suddenly, but began to cough again with the sudden movement of her chest. Trying to hold her up, Spike waited impatiently for the reason for her great amusement.

"Don’t you see...you do," she whispered, but he only rolled his eyes and smirked. Adia, however, was not discouraged by his attitude to her confession and persisted. "Why do you think you haven’t been able sleep during the day? Why do you think you haven’t been able to feed?" With her words, Spike began to pay a little more attention, a look of great concern crossed his face as she continued. "Why do you suppose it is, for the first time in over a hundred years, every waking moment you live - you think of me?"

Spike stared down at her mutely, looking almost like he had just been slapped in the face. He shook his head then and looked away from her, avoiding her eyes. "Don’t be stupid."

Adia reached up one hand to his cheek and forcefully turned his head to face her as she looked up at him with a look of sheer desperation. As he looked down into her pale blue eyes that were quickly welling up with tears, Spike felt himself begin to melt.

"Please," she whimpered quietly as he embraced her more tightly, "I love you! Please tell me you still love me!"

For a short while, Spike stared down at her in silence. Watching her carefully, studying her as she breathing became rapid, and he could hear her chest beating wildly in her chest. He looked into her eyes and suddenly felt a terrible stabbing pain in his chest as he noticed the tears that were now rolling down her pale cheeks.

He hated to admit it to himself, but seeing her like this was slowly killing himself. He attempted to shake his head in denial, the powerful pull of her eyes was too much for him as his will began to fade.

Without saying a word, he slowly lowered his head, and gently brushed his lips over hers.

Lowering himself further, he pulled her far into his embrace and buried his head in her neck - holding her quietly as she continued to bleed beneath him. As he felt her begin to slip away, he whispered something quietly in her ear.

He did not move from this position for some time as the others in the room watched on in silence. Angel, who had perhaps been observing them more carefully than anyone else, and had witness the small movement of Spike’s lips as he whispered in his wife’s ear. Now, he noticed suddenly that Adia’s hand, which had been positioned at the back of Spike’s neck, holding him lovingly to her, began to slip. He watched in horror, as the fragile, thin hand slowly fell from the blonde vampire, and onto the floor beside her. His eyes widened as he waited for her to move - for a twitch of a finger, or the rise of her chest - but she was still.

Angel was not the only one who had noticed the change, as Buffy pulled herself closer to her lover to whisper in his ear. "Is she..."

Angel nodded solemnly and slowly fell back into the embrace of the Slayer behind him - thankful that he could still feel her warmth against him. For a long time, no one spoke ; everyone was quiet as they observed the silence of Adia’s death.

After a long silence, Willow was the first to come back into reality. Slowly coming up behind the vampire lying on the stage, she carefully reached out to touch him. She jerked her hand away immediately, expecting him to react violently to her touch - but she was surprised when he did not move at all.

"Spike?" she called out gently, and frowned in confusion when he did not respond. "Spike...she’s gone."

When he still did not speak - did not move. Willow looked up at Oz, whose look of concern mirrored her own as he came over to stand beside her.

"Hey, Spike, man?" Oz called jovially as he came and lay a hand on the blonde’s shoulder. Still, the vampire did not respond, and so Oz pulled a little harder on his shoulder, until at last - Spike finally did move. But, not quite as the red headed couple had been expecting. Willow stepped back in surprise, as Spike’s body rolled over when Oz touched him, before slumping onto the floor beside Adia’s corpse. She gasped suddenly as he collapsed beside her...and she saw the blood.

"What is it?" Buffy called out as her friend let out a small shriek, quickly clambering to her feet in order to go to Willow. The other girl pointed mutely at the vampire lying on the floor, he mouth opening and closing like that as a gold fish as she battled to find the words. Buffy looked down to where Willow was pointing, and when she noticed what had frightened the redhead so much, she gasped also.

"Spike?!" she exclaimed as she fell to her knees beside the vampire, lifting his head onto her lap so could further examine the wound on his neck. The Slayer stared down in amazement at the bite mark on Spike’s pale flesh before looking up at Angel in bewilderment. "He’s dead!"

From behind her, Xander smirked carelessly. "Of course he’s dead - he’s a vampire."

"No I mean it!" Buffy cried as the blood pouring from Spike’s neck began to stain her hands, "He’s really dead."

Both Xander and Giles by this time came closer to see for themselves, and were just as confused as Willow and Buffy to see the two puncture wounds in the vampire’s neck as he lay lifelessly in Buffy’s arms.

"Good, God!" Giles exclaimed as he crouched down next to Buffy, "How is this possible?"

He looked up at Angel, who was now on his hands and knees as he weakly crawled over to where the Slayer was still cradling the dead vampire in her arms. As he looked down at Spike, his mind drifted back - thinking of how he looked just like he did nearly two hundred years ago, on that cold night in London, when he had died.

"Angel?" Buffy whispered to him, "What happened?" Without looking up at her, Angel sighed softly as he stared down at Spike - the blonde’s hand still tightly entwined with that of his wife. Slowly reaching out to touch the cold skin of Spike face, Angel shook his head gently, before whispering, "He told her he loved her...."

Buffy Summers let out a heavy sigh as she stared down at the two fresh graves infront of her. Throwing a single red rose onto the earth infront of each headstone, she couldn’t help but muse at how uncanny it was that, she - the Slayer - actually kind of missed Spike. Well, she missed kicking his ass, anyway.

"It’s so strange," Willow told her friend as she stared down at the two ornately engraved head stones, "I can’t believe he did it. I mean he...he was...Spike." Buffy couldn’t help but laugh at the red head’s observation, but she was right afterall. She couldn’t even begin to contemplate what had changed Spike so gutturally, that he would sacrifice himself the way he did.

Buffy paused thoughtfully as she crouched down beside the graves of Spike and Adia, staring down at the newly formed mounds of dirt, remembering what Angel had told her and how it had made her nearly cry.

"He said, that when she pardoned him, it basically meant that she got a free ticket for Spike. Only prob was, that he didn’t have a soul - so she had to give him one."

"So he did still love her?"

Buffy nodded mutely. "That’s pretty obvious I guess. He gave up everything to be with her..."

She looked up at Willow as she stopped, suddenly, and smiled at the other girl, the tears in her eyes evident.

"That kind of commitment could set a girl up for life," Willow observed with a slight grin.

"Yeah," Buffy agreed, "It does feel wonderful." As she stood up, Buffy frowned and put her hands on hips. "However, It’s all very well being romantic, but I don’t think Spike realised the trouble he was causing when he pulled this little trick on us. I still can’t believe we managed to convince the police that it was just an argument between a married couple that got a little fatal!"

"Yeah, the cops in this town are pretty thick," Willow agreed with a grin. She had known it would only have been a matter of time before Buffy got over swooning about Spike before she got back to hating him.

The red head turned, then, to see Oz walking towards them. When he reached the two girls, he wrapped his arms around Willow’s waist and kissed her on the cheek. "Are you ladies ready to go?" he asked, and the both nodded.

"Sure thing," Buffy informed him. But before moving away, the Slayer turned back to the graves infront of her one more time and raised a finger as if to make a point. "Just as long as Spikey here stays in the ground this time!" Oz and Willow passed each other a quick grin turning to lead Buffy back to the car where Xander, Giles and Angel were waiting. Angel - he looked so beautiful in the sun, the Slayer observed as she walked towards him. When she reached her lover, he tenderly wrapped his arms around her and kissed her on the top of her head.

"Did you say your peace?" he asked, but Buffy only raised one eyebrow at him in defiance.

"That manic bleach blonde never gave me any peace - why the hell should either of us start now?"

Angel laughed softly and held her closer to him. "What about you?" she suddenly asked, looking up at him cautiously, hoping he wouldn’t take her question the wrong way. But, too her relief, he smiled.

"Yeah - Adia and I sorted everything out. And Spike...somehow I don’t think he’d want it that way."

"That sounds like good old Spikey," she agreed as she buried her head into his chest, "He always did reign supreme when it came to chaos."

"Are you two ready to go back to the library?" Giles asked from behind them, and Angel nodded with a slight smile. Keeping one arm firmly wrapped around Buffy’s waist, he lead her to the car. When all but he had piled into either Giles’ car of Oz’s van, he stopped suddenly to stare across the cemetery. He could see the two grave-sites in the distance and he sighed quietly. He smiled gently as he realised his wrong had become a right - Adia and William Sullivan were together again.

*****

"I just wish we hadn’t buried the sod in that leather jacket," Buffy complained as they group entered the library after returning from the library, "I always secretly loved that thing. If he hadn’t been such a bastard, I would say that he was almost sexy in it."

"But he loved it too - that’s why we buried him in it," Oz replied with a grin as he followed the Slayer through the swinging doors. Buffy waved her hand in the air frivolously , muttering something about details.

"I wouldn’t worry about it, Buff," Xander told her as he came up beside her, "It wouldn’t have fitted you."

Xander grinned as he waited for her to lash back at him for making a comment about her height, something she’d always hated, but was heartily disappointed when she said nothing.

"Buffy?" he called out to her, but the Slayer seemed to be distracted by something else and had not heard her friend’s intended insult.

"Are you okay, Buffy?" Angel asked as he came up behind her, but Buffy only nodded her head as she slowly walked to the table in the middle of the room. As she did so, the others noticed what had caught her eye so suddenly. A small white envelope was on the table, propped up by a volume on vampires, Buffy’s name etched on the paper in a thin, doctor-like script.

"What is it?" Willow asked as Buffy picked up the envelope and examined it. The Slayer shrugged and began to open it. Pulling out the piece of paper inside, she unfolded it quickly and started to read its contents.

When she continued on in silence, the others became restless and Xander came behind her to read over her shoulder. "What does it say?"

Buffy hesitated for a moment, but eventually began to speak. Slowly, and quietly, she read aloud - "Dearest Buffy. I lied to you. When I said you shouldn’t fall in love with someone you can’t keep, I didn’t know what I do now. There is no such thing - if you truly love some one enough, and you’re able to prove it - then you’ll be allowed to keep them forever. Keep you nose clean - Spike."

There was a short silence as Angel came to Buffy and took the piece of paper from her. He skimmed over the writing and was instantly able to confirm that he knew the writing. The letter had definitely been written by Spike. He looked up at Buffy and she was able to see the response to her unasked question.

"But how?" she asked, but Angel just shook his head mutely and shrugged.

"You know Spike, Buffy. It was impossible to get rid of him entirely..."

"William O’Riley! Don’t pull your sister’s hair!"

Buffy O’Riley’s voice could be heard half way across town as she called out to her son in the playground.

He in return, turned to her and gave her a pathetic look of disgust. "Adia started it, Mummy!"

Buffy rolled her eyes as she put down the picnic basket on the grass under a large tree. "Yeah, I’ll bet she did, sweetie." she replied without sympathy as she collapsed in the shade. As much as she loved her kids, she had to admit, having twins was more often than not a nightmarish hell. Even when Angel was around to help her out. As if her thoughts had summoned him, her husband suddenly appeared, coming over a hill as he approached his children. With a playful roar, he scooped up his daughter and threw her over his shoulder, before taking his son’s hand. Adia protested loudly to being picked up, although giggling almost hysterically simultaneously, while William skipped merrily along side his father as they approached the tree under which Buffy was sitting. Reaching out her arms to him, Buffy’s son clambered onto her lap and wrapped his arms around his mother’s neck before kissing her on the cheek.

"Are you having a good eighth birthday, my darling?" she asked as she kissed him back and the small boy nodded energetically. "Adia?"

"When are we having cake?" the small girl replied as he father put her down on the ground, and both of her parents laughed.

"You certainly have your priorities straight, don’t you beautiful?" Angel told his daughter as he picked her up and pulled her onto his lap. Adia smiled up at him cheekily and rested her head on his shoulder as she watched her mother open up the picnic basket.

"Did you have a good day at school?" Buffy asked her children as she pulled a large white box out of the basket, and both nodded mutely with wide eyes as they examined the box in her hands. Suddenly, a small frown developed on Adia’s face as she exclaimed, "Mrs. Elston said I have a strange name."

"Who’s Mrs. Elston?" Angel asked as his wife passed him a knife to cut the cake with.

"Our submarine teacher."

Angel chuckled quietly and kissed his daughter on the top of her head.

"You mean your substitute teacher?"

"Well, it was your daddy’s idea, not mine," Buffy told her as she opened up the box to expose a large cake in the shape of the number eight, completely covered in thick pink icing.

"Your names are very special," Angel told the children and he took the knife in hand and began to cut into the cake, "You were named after some...people we used to know."

"Why?" Adia asked as she quickly managed to scoop up a bit of icing on her finger without being caught.

"They were crazy," Buffy replied light-heartedly as she grinned mischievously at her daughter, who by this time was licking the pink confectionary off of her finger with a guilty smile.

"They died shortly before your mum and I got married," he told them, brushing off Buffy’s remark. "I kind of owed them something, and when you were born just over a year later, we decided to name you after them."

"So, what’s it like being eight?" Buffy asked, changing the subject as she passed Angel a faint smile.

"The same as being seven," William replied quickly, before looking up at his mother and asking, "How old are you Mummy?"

"I’m twenty-eight," she answered and her son then turned to Angel before asking the same question.

"Two hundred and fifty-four." he replied without hesitation, and both of his children laughed loudly. Angel, unseen by Adia and William, winked quickly at Buffy who grinned broadly in response as she served a piece of cake to her son.

"How come he gets the first piece?" Adia whined, and Buffy rolled her eyes.

"Because he was closest to me, that’s all. Here - there’s yours." Adia and William both stuck into their cake as their parents shared a tired smile.

"So, William, what’s this I hear about you pulling your sister’s hair again?" Angel asked as Buffy passed him a piece of cake.

"So?" the boy replied with his mouth full of cake, making it hard for Angel not to laugh as he tried to be authoritative.

"So? Why?"

"Yeah, why?" Adia complained mimicking her father’s question as she continued to eat the pink icing off of her own slice of cake.

"You just don’t get it, do you little girl?" William replied suddenly with one raised eyebrow, "I don’t care about you anymore."

Buffy and Angel looked to their son in surprise as his cold answer rang in their ears ; those words ringing a bell in the back of their minds. Both were wondering where his strange, and slightly more than an eight-year-old-answer had come from, when Adia responded –

"Don’t try lying to me, my love. I know everything." Their parents watched in shock as a quick, playful smiled was exchanged between William and Adia, before they returned to eating their cake. Buffy looked at William, and then at Adia, before returning her attention back to Angel, and she could see instantly in his eyes, that the same memories were flashing across his mind.

Back to over nine years ago, when a bleach blonde vampire lay on the floor with his dying love...

Angel looked up at Buffy and saw his shock mirrored in her eyes. And as their children began to chat merrily about a food fight in the school cafeteria that day, their parents remained in a state of bewilderment both asking the same question. How...