Chapter Text
Los Angeles, the evening of the apocalypse
"Angel, it's me."
He gripped the receiver, sagging in his chair, beyond relief. "Buffy. Tell me."
"It's over. We're done. The Hellmouth is closed again." A laugh, on the edge of grim. "By the rubble that was once Sunnydale."
"The town is–"
"Gone. Into the sinkhole. They're saying it was an earthquake. Odd how everyone in town got out before this mysterious earthquake struck."
Angel let go of a breath he didn't know he was holding. "Everyone got out?" It sounded so unlikely. Miraculous. But Buffy was miraculous. "All of your crew too?"
"Not all. Several of the potentials died."
The little girls. Not so little, of course, but still, they were only teenagers. "That's hard, Buffy. I'm sorry."
"And Anya. Xander is – just broken."
"I'm sorry," he said again. Inadequate. "Still, it's great that you–"
"Spike."
"Spike is there with you?" he said. Of course. Spike Triumphant. The lion rampant. The champion. Crown him with laurels and kisses. "Well, tell him, you know. Good show. All that. No hard feelings about the amulet. I'm sure he wore it well."
"He's gone."
"Gone?" Angel echoed stupidly. "You mean he left with the amulet?"
"No. He was–" another laugh, this one inutterably weary. "He was the mysterious earthquake. He took them all. Like Samson. Pulled the city down on top of them. Burned them all up and buried them."
"And he–"
"Didn't get out."
He couldn't speak. He'd told her that the amulet was volatile. But Spike– Spike was a survivor. Charming, unscrupulous, ruthless, and goddamn lucky. Darla used to joke that after the end of the world, two species would survive, the cockroaches and Spike, and the cockroaches' days would be numbered. "Are you okay?"
"Yeah." Her breathing was a bit ragged. "You should have seen him. He was so full of joy. I'd forgotten that– how joyous he could be, when he was fighting. When he was in danger. When he was living."
Unbidden, Angel remembered it too– when Spike laughed, when he sang, joy radiated from him like the forbidden sun. Sometimes it was after a great kill, sometimes just after a great fight, sometimes just because he was in the world still and he loved it always. It was what Angel envied most in Spike, and what Angelus loved best, even as he tried to stomp it out. Love of life, even in unlife. Only Spike, of all the vampires he had known, knew joy.
"Did you see him die?"
"No. He made me leave. And then the world collapsed on him."
"He might–"
She didn't even let him formulate the thought, much less the phrase. "Angel, don't. There were fires everywhere. They were coming from him. They consumed him. He's gone."
Gone. Angel tried to corral his scrambled thoughts. "Where are you? Do you need a place to stay? We have plenty of room."
"Thanks. That's– that's a good idea. We've got a busful. We'll drive up tomorrow."
Angel seldom drank anymore. But he was Irish, or had been long ago, and he owed Spike an Irish wake. He found a bottle in the cupboard, and pawed through his old LPs till he found the CD Spike had proffered during a moment of amity in Sunnydale during that time he was Angelus– just a single moment, vanquished as soon as he said, "Here. Give this a listen and maybe you'll grow some musical taste along with all that hair." After that intro, Angel refused to listen to the music, and now had to use a thumbnail to slice open the cellophane before he could put it on the CD player. But then it was as if Spike was there with him, belting out the stupid song, all angry joy, all merry mayhem. "I don't want to be buried, in a pet sematery... I don't want to live my life again..."
An hour later the song was playing again, and he was drunk, and he thought of Drusilla and wondered if she were dead too– she must be, poor mad Dru, without Spike to take care of her. Or she would be, if she heard of this, if she heard that her bright dark knight, her passionate darling boy, was lost to her forever.
He punched at the stop button, and in the sudden silence, he thought, my boy is gone.
He meant Connor. And he meant Spike. And he whispered it aloud. "My boy is gone."
He heard someone behind him, coming in through the open office door. It was Fred, and her hand was gentle on his shoulder.
"My boy is gone," he said again, looking up into her face. And then, in bemusement, "And Spike is gone." In a low voice, he added, "Wicked little Will."
He knew she didn't understand, but her hand was sweet, brushing at his face, and he leaned into it, breathing in the faint perfume at her wrist, sensing the pulse just behind it.
He closed his eyes, letting Fred's warm hand cup his cheek. In the darkness, he could imagine Spike, the fire everywhere around him, that sharp beautiful face aglow, the eyes blazing, the mouth curving in an exultant smile. From somewhere in the depths of his memory came the words of an old hymn: Ransomed, healed, restored, forgiven– and for just a moment, he let himself hope that it was true.
It took him a week to find the courage to drive out to the crater. The journey through the night was cool, quiet, the highway rushing by in the darkness, his headlights showing only more roadway ahead. The devastation that Spike wrought came up so suddenly that he had to jam on the brakes, and his car skidded to a stop twenty yards from the ring of boulders.
He left the lights on and walked down the road. The closer he got, the more he smelled smoke, dust, ashes. And something else–
She was sitting on a rock, staring down into the abyss. Without turning, she said, "I knew you'd come tonight."
"Dru," he breathed. "How did you know?"
"The little stars told me."
She turned her face, up to the night sky, and he looked up too, at the sharp points of light above. Dru had a connection to the cosmos– part of her madness, of course, but it was always there, and she reached up now, and he could almost feel her fingers scraping against a star. "That one there. That's my darling, darkling boy. Do you see him?"
"I see. Dru, how did you get here? Where did you come from?"
"A long way," she said vaguely. She shrugged, and the red velvet shawl fell away, revealing shoulders bare in a black satin evening gown.
A white orchid was pinned to her bodice. She would dress up in her best for an occasion like this.
"And you knew to come here?"
She glanced over at him, as if he'd asked something foolish. "I know where my boy is. I always know that."
She rose to her feet, teetering in her high heels on the rock, her hand still stretched out above her.
"Dru, be careful." He approached her hesitantly. "Don't like having to climb down into that crater and carry you back up."
"Oh, I won't fall. I just want to say goodbye to Spike." She plucked the orchid from her dress, and tugged off a petal. It gleamed cream and white in the headlights. She opened her fingers and let it drift down into the crater.
Angel held his breath. Dru understood what he did not– how to celebrate. How to commemorate. She dropped petal after petal, humming to herself, staring down into the darkness below.
"I'm glad you're here," he said as the last petal floated away. It was crazy. But it was true. Everything between them had fallen away– Spike, Darla, evil, vengeance. Just for the moment, they were just– Spike's family.
"I'm glad you're here," she echoed, reaching into her bag. "So I can say goodbye to you too."
And she jumped from the rock onto the ground in front of him, light as a petal. There was a wooden stake in her hand.
Instinctively Angel stepped back, vampface sliding into place. "Dru–" He put up his hand to deflect the blow– but it never came. Instead she extended the stake, blunt end towards him.
"Go ahead, Daddy. It's time to say goodbye."
He dropped his hand. Shook his head.
She said, annoyed, "You have to do it. You sired me."
He couldn't.
It made no sense. Dru was a killer, and a nastily efficient one. If he let her go, she would kill more. But he just couldn't take the stake from her, just couldn't dust the childe Angelus once loved, not like this, not so soon after Spike.
Dru sighed with exasperation. "Spike wouldn't do it either, I know. Even though he always loved me better than you did."
And then, in a sudden motion, she cupped the end of the stake in her palm and jammed the point into her chest. For an instant, he saw her pretty face alight, and then it dissolved.
The breeze picked up a bit of the dust and diffused it over the crater.
Angel stumbled back to his car, choking on her taste. He sat there for a half hour, his door open, his lights illuminating the grave of the last of his line. I am all alone now, he thought. No one left in the world remembers me.
Los Angeles, 5 months later--
It was late. Time to head home. No reason to head home, though. So the security guard's knock on his office door was a welcome distraction.
"Sir, there's someone downstairs. I don't know him. So I didn't let him in."
The guards were all trained not to invite anyone in, even to the wide marble lobby. Never knew which invitation might open the building to an infestation of vampires.
"So what's his name?"
"Wouldn't tell me his name. But he asked me to give you this. Said he'd wait."
Automatically Angel reached out. The guard opened his fist and poured a chain into Angel's hand, then left the room. With a sense of dread, Angel dangled it from one finger, gazing at the amulet hanging below. The setting was as pristine as it had been the evening he'd given it to Buffy. But the jewel no longer winked seductively. All the power was gone.
Someone must have found it in the rubble that was Sunnydale, and used some sort of spell to track the owner – Angel-- down. He dropped the chain and amulet into his coat pocket and opened his desk drawer to withdraw an envelope full of bills. A thousand should do it.
What he was going to do with the stupid thing, he didn't know. Give it back to Buffy? Stick it in his safe, and take it out once a year on the anniversary of Spike's death?
But he couldn't let it go.
He reached into his pocket and curled his fingers around it, imagining that he could feel its final heat. Spike's heat. But it was cold and slick and unresponsive.
Then he sighed and took the elevator down to the lobby to pay the scavenger off.
Dusk was deepening into night, and in the shadows under the awning, the figure leaning against the pillar outside was dark and formless. For just a moment, Angel hesitated at the glass doorway, not from fear, but a typical urban distaste. The man was sick, or drunk– no help for it, though. The money would go a long way towards curing him– or getting him drunker.
He motioned to the guard to take up a post near the door. Then he turned the lock and went out to the flagstoned entrance. "Here you go," he said, holding the bills out.
The man pushed away from the pillar. Turned towards Angel. Hesitated, then stumbled forward. Instinctively, Angel raised his fists, letting the bills flutter to the ground. He heard a quiet snap as the guard behind him drew his gun.
Then he heard the whisper. "Angelus." And the man fell against him, and Angel shoved him back, raised his fist to punch– and suddenly remembered that night six years ago, at the Sunnydale school, when after decades apart, Spike had seen him, and said his name in that wondering way– said Angelus and grabbed him in an embrace. The last moment of honest affection between them, and it hadn't even been honest on Angel's part.
The guard was shouting something, moving fast. "No!" Angel cried. His arm was all that kept the man from slumping to the floor. "It's all right! I know him. He's– Just back off."
He eased the body gently down, angling the back to rest against the plate glass window. Then he stepped back, gazing down at him "Jesus. Jesus." It was something between an curse and a prayer. The man's head was bent, but there was no mistaking the battered leather coat, or the lethally lean form, or the blaze of golden white hair under the harsh floodlights.
He knelt down, and forced the head up. The face was filthy and blistered, the cheeks more hollowed than before. "Will," he whispered. "Open your eyes."
Slowly the eyelids fluttered, and then Will was looking back at him– the wounded boy he'd known so long ago. Angel took a deep breath and hoisted him up in his arms. "Come on in. We'll fix you up."
He'd been through this a time or two himself– clawed his way out of a grave of one sort or another– and he knew what Spike needed most. Warmth and blood. And after that– "Take that money." Holding the dead weight of his grandchilde in his arms, Angel gestured with his head towards the bills lying out in the still night. "Find a store. Bandages. Antiseptics. And–" He looked down at the t-shirt and jeans that had absorbed much of Sunnydale's dust. "Get him some clothes."
The guard stooped to collect the bills. "But– I don't know what size."
"Spike!" Angel said sharply.
Spike's eyes opened. "What?"
"What size jeans do you wear?"
It was a stupid thing to be asking a man just resurrected, but Spike didn't protest. He just whispered, "Thirty-two inseam. Thirty-two waist."
For that alone, Angel thought, I should drop him. "Shoe size?"
"I don't know." Spike groaned. But with an obedience generally foreign to his nature, he guessed, "Ten?"
The guard shook his head, but headed out the door to look for a store still open this late.
Angel bypassed his office and carried Spike into the guest apartment on the 7th floor. In the bathroom, he set him gently on the floor, and turned the bath faucets on. "You're all banged up, aren't you, lad?" he said soothingly as he pulled off the leather coat and tossed it into the bedroom. "Don't mean to hurt you, but you're shivering– need to get you warmed up." He didn't pull the t-shirt over Spike's battered head, just yanked on a hole in the front and ripped it down the middle, then slid the sleeves off. He was reminded, painfully, of undressing a sleeping Connor, just like this, carefully, lovingly. Boots, jeans– Spike groaned once as the belt buckle dragged past a scrape on his knee, but he didn't make another sound until Angel set him naked down into the warm bathwater.
Then he sighed, and slid under the surface, seeking, no doubt, the ease and the heat on his face too. Angel turned to gather up the discarded clothes– vampires couldn't drown, after all, as they didn't breathe. But then he heard the choking, and whirled around. Spike was sitting up, water streaming from his hair, his chest convulsing. "Bloody hell," he muttered between coughs.
"You're... breathing." Shanshu.
"Shit."
But at least he was revived now, dashing the water from his eyes and gazing around him with confusion. "Angelus," he said again, focusing on Angel.
Angel slid to the tiled floor, sitting Indian style in front of the tub. "Tell me what happened, Spike."
"You called me Will before."
"Sorry. You just looked like– you used to."
"Everything hurts."
"Yeah. Looks like it." Mesmerized, Angel watched the pale hard chest rise and fall, automatically counting the bruises there– fresh bruises. Either someone had been kicking the shit out of him, or he'd been under a city recently. "Stay with me here, Spike. Tell when– when did you ... wake up?"
"Yesterday? Day before?"
"Where were you?"
Spike closed his eyes. "I don't know. I just ... walked. The amulet led me here. I don't know why. Home, I guess."
Home. That word made Angel's chest hurt. "It's been–" he counted in his head. "Almost five months since you–" What? Died? "Since you were buried. Were you there in the same place all that time?"
"Yeah. I don't know. Look, I don't remember anything. I just want to– rest."
Angel got to his feet. "Okay. Let me get you some blood."
He took his time retrieving the frozen A-pos and warming it in the microwave. Took his time puzzling this out. The goddamned Powers that Be, no doubt, playing games with mortality again. No one ever seemed to stay dead anymore. But the breathing– new twist. And the blisters. Spike must have been walking in the daylight. Instead of bursting into flames, he just burned, like any pale Englishman caught out in the Southern California sun.
By the time Angel returned with the mug, Spike had gotten out of the tub, wrapped a towel around his waist, and managed to get into the bedroom and the edge of the bed. Vampire healing still in effect? Or just once last great effort?
Angel glanced down into the mug of blood. Would Spike even need it?
But Spike took without comment, downed it, and then held out the mug. "Can I have some water?"
"Sure." Angel returned with the water, only to find Spike sitting there, eyes half-closed, shoulders sagging. "Why don't you lie down, lad?"
Spike drank down the water, handed it back, and obediently curled up on the coverlet. In a moment, he was asleep– as silent as ever, but with his chest moving slightly every now and again. Angel pulled the other side of the cover over him, turned out the light, and went back down to the lobby to wait for the guard– and for midnight, when it would be 8 am in England.
"Does Buffy know?" Giles asked.
"No one does. He came to me first." Something twisted in him as he said that. Pride? Tenderness? He was tired of loving. Tired of being tied to those few renegades left in his line, the troubled remnants of a past he rejected. But... Will had woken up, and come to him first. "I'm not sure where he was, or how much he remembers. He's pretty battered, but – but not like he's been somewhere exposed and starving for five months. He drank some blood, but didn't ask for more. He's not much gaunter than usual. And... he's breathing."
"Breathing." Giles inhaled. "Did you feel for a pulse?"
"Didn't think of it." Angel glanced back through the bedroom door, but decided not to bother him.
"Do you think they made him human? As a reward?"
Angel closed his eyes. "Spike wouldn't think of that as a reward. I don't know. He's already mending up. Just like always. But I don't know what he is now– I didn't sense him, the way I would usually. He just felt like some homeless drunk outside the door. Maybe it's because I thought he was dead, so I wasn't tuned in. But I – I didn't know it was him till he spoke my name."
"His mind is functioning then."
"He knows me at least." As Angelus... but best not to mention that. "And he knew about the amulet. But not where he'd been, or how he got here." He paused and then added, "He knew his size."
"What?"
"I sent someone out to get him fresh clothes. He told us what size to get."
"Well, that's the sort of memory that one doesn't lose. What happened that day at the Hellmouth– and what's happened since– that's what we need to know. And that, I suspect, is not going to come back to him so automatically. Post-trauma...."
They didn't like each other, for good reasons, and Giles was the last person he wanted to ask for advice. But Giles had known Spike for years– the latest Spike version, not the one Angel knew so well– and, more important, he knew Buffy. "What do you think I should do with him?"
"Debrief him."
The research wonk speaks.
"Okay. And after that?"
Giles said reluctantly, "I suppose we shall have to tell Buffy."
So Giles didn't want Buffy to know either. "Fortunately, she's gone off on that vision quest to Tibet. She won't be near a phone for weeks."
"Perhaps, by that time, Spike will be– recovered. And he will go off on his own, and do... whatever it was he did before he came into her life."
"Well, he can't do that again, considering it mostly involved murder and mayhem." Angel rubbed at his forehead. "Tell you what. I'll patch him up. Get him back on his feet. And give him some money. He's always been a wanderer. Easily bored. I'll suggest he might want to go back to Europe."
Giles didn't answer right away. Angel wondered if he was thinking the same thing– that Spike at loose ends, even now, might be a dangerous thing. Finally Giles said, "We can assume that he has been transformed. Once cannot experience what he has experienced without elemental change. He made a great sacrifice, and has been rewarded with a new life."
"Either that or he irritated the Powers so much, they sent him back."
"That is indeed a possibility," Giles said. "I could, perhaps, make some use of him, if his mental faculties are intact."
"Were they ever?"
"He had a good mind, you know. A classical education, a retentive memory, and many languages, human and demon. I could assign him to some research. Provide a stipend. And a supervisor."
Spike the researcher might last an hour. His supervisor half as long. But at least– "At least it will get him out of this area. Out of–"
"Out of Buffy's life."
Angel closed his eyes. "I have to tell her."
"Of course. She does need to know. But there's no need to have him become her responsibility. She should be coming back from her vision quest ready to start a new life. And Spike– grateful as I am that he spared her another death– could only prove a distraction for her, just when she most needs to focus on her own future."
"I agree." It was disorienting, agreeing with Buffy's watcher. Allying with him. Then he realized this agreement indicated that Giles did not see Angel as another potential distraction to Buffy's future. Buffy must not have told him their plans-- "Maybe it will be best if we can get him squared away there in England before she gets back. That gives us a couple months."
As he was ringing off, Spike came, blinking drowsily, to the bedroom door, reknotting the towel around his waist. The bruises on his chest were already beginning to fade. His blond hair had dried into curls. He looked absurdly young.
"I had a dream."
Angel rose and went to him, taking his arm and leading him back to the bed. "That's good. You lie back down and tell me all about it. Get under the covers this time."
Spike slid under the sheet and pulled the coverlet up to his shoulders. "You going to sit down?"
"Sure." Angel dropped down into the easy chair next to the bed. "Now was this a dream, or a memory?"
"A memory, I guess." Spike's voice was tranquil, childlike. "I was climbing. Stones. Boulders. And I came out into the sunlight. I thought I was going to burn up, but I didn't. And I kept walking along the road. I had the amulet in my hand, and it just led me." He smiled. "I didn't know where I was going. I was glad to see it was you."
Now that, Angel thought, was perhaps the first time Spike had ever expressed such a sentiment. He wondered how much of the man's memories were gone. Most of those concerning their recent relationship, apparently. "I'm glad you found me."
Spike murmured, "What about Dru?"
"She's – not here." He had to start keeping track. What Spike remembered, what he didn't. Remembered Angel– or Angelus, anyway. Remembered Dru. "You remember you two broke up, right?"
Pain flickered across Spike's face, then faded. "I guess. But I still – you know." After a moment, he added, "She's gone, isn't she? I can feel it."
"Yes– she... She went to where you... died, and – staked herself."
Spike whispered, "I knew she was gone. It feels like... a chain breaking." He turned his head away. "She knew. And went there. And did that. After so long. She still loved me, then."
"I think... she never meant to go on without you. Not forever. And she sensed your leaving." Spike and Dru– they were creatures of such passion, hard and sharp and glowing. So many feelings stabbing them all the time. He never knew how they bore it. Maybe it was like the guilt that always pierced him, only in many different colors, not just dull gray. "I didn't know it when you were gone."
"Maybe I wasn't ever really gone." Spike rubbed at his face, then reached out the wet fingers and touched Angel's wrist, a childlike bit of affection that almost undid Angel. Spike had always been emotional, cursed with a nature that resisted moderation and a face that revealed every feeling. Drusilla must have put something wrong in the recipe when she turned him, because from the first Spike had been more human than vampire.
Angel turned Spike's hand over and, in the faint light from the living room lamp, saw the healing tears on the knuckles, the ripped and bloody nails. "You do know, don't you, that Sunnydale is no more?"
"Sunnydale?"
"The city. It's nothing but a crater and rubble."
Spike frowned, as if he was supposed to understand the significance of this but didn't. Sunnydale went into the not-remembered category.
Good.
"You pulled it all down."
Wonder dawned in Spike's eyes. "You mean– I destroyed a whole city?"
Angel couldn't help but laugh. "Yeah, you finally accomplished it. I hope it doesn't ruin your pleasure to hear you did it all for the greater good. Stamping out evil."
"Right. I remember now. I mean, that's what they told me. I'd done good. So I could go back home."
Angel squeezed his hand once more and released it. Rising, he said, "You need to sleep. In the morning, we can talk more."
"You're not– leaving?"
Angel thought of his empty flat, a few floors above. It seemed lonely and unappealing a couple hours ago. Now it would be a refuge from this new responsibility. But he couldn't leave Spike alone. He'd been alone himself, after a resurrection, and knew how disorienting it could be.
At least Spike returned fully clothed.
"Just going to bunk on the couch. Yell if you need anything."
Spike's voice drifted, unanchored, into uncharted territory. "Thanks, Angelus. For everything."
Gratitude. From Spike. Yeah, he was transformed, all right. And Angel wished he'd just transform right back.