thismaz | Bewitched, Chapter 37, plus epilogue

Title: Bewitched, Chapter 37, plus epilogue
Pairing: S/X
Rating: Overall NC-17
Summary: And so it ends. The consequences of Dru's spell are all consequenced out.
Word Count: 5,505
Betaed by

sparrow2000 and DJ, for which, many thanks. Thanks also to Sparrow for conflabbing on plot twists and forms.
Comments: Are greatly appreciated, loved and cherished.
Disclaimer: here.

The prologue is here, with a link to the other chapters, or you can find the whole thing, in reverse order, in tags, or in the correct order, in memories. There's a menu of links on the right hand side of my main journal page.

If you were reading this story before it went on hiatus, after chapter 27, there is a recap post here with a link to chapter 28 and all chapters following.

Many thanks to

katekat1010 for allowing me to use her original manip which you can find here.

Chapter 37

They had been researching for almost three hours when Spike stomped in through Giles' front door. "Ugh!" he said, loudly and dramatically. "That bastard gives me the creeps."

Xander looked up from the sofa. "He gives you the creeps?" he asked in exaggerated disbelief.

With a grin, Spike crossed the room and bounced down next to him. "You say the sweetest things," he said.

Carefully putting the book he'd been reading before Spike's entrance down on top of a pile of others that they had already gone through, Giles asked, "Did you find out anything useful?" his repressive tone calling an abrupt pause to their teasing.

Digging in his coat pocket, Spike pulled out a computer disc. "Here," he said, flicking it at Giles' head. Giles managed to catch it. "Mission statements, design schematics and I don't know what else. All Maggie Walsh's dirty laundry. He's spicing the dish, so there should be something useful on there."

Turning the disc over in his hands, Giles asked, "He just gave it to you?"

"Yeah. Come on, mate, we're in. That tells us everything Adam wants us to know: full plans of the layout, including the location of all the cells, details of the original grand plan and info on what he's doing instead. He's even marked which door he'll open for us. Oh yeah," he added, turning to Buffy in the chair opposite, "and your soldier's thrown in his chips with the big guy."

"What?"

"Sitting there, large as life, chatting to Adam, he was." He sounded supremely not bothered and leaned back with his hands behind his head, stretched his legs out and put his feet up on the coffee table. In spite of his studied air of relaxation, Xander saw that he was watching Buffy carefully. "Sorry to break it to you and all," he said, "but facts are facts."

Buffy's expression shifted towards the end of Spike's little speech and Xander felt him stiffened, readying himself to react. Xander made a note to mention that later, if Spike got on his case about any aspect of their eventual plan and his own part in it. Leaning over, close to Spike's ear, he whispered, "You're not sorry."

Spike replied out of the side of his mouth, "I know," he muttered, "but polite fictions were more important than truths, when I was young."

Xander gave a snort of amusement that he tried, unsuccessfully, to disguise as a cough.

Meanwhile, Giles had wandered casually across the room, to stand behind Buffy's chair. He laid his hand gently on her shoulder. Buffy broke eye contact with Spike to glance up at him and he gave her a sympathetic smile. "It may not be as it appears," he suggested. Looking across at Spike, he asked, "Did he say anything to you, while you were there?"

Buffy relaxed and Xander felt Spike do the same. "Now you mention it," he said, "he was looking a bit more wooden than usual. One word answers, glassy eyed, that kind of thing. I didn't ask."

From across the coffee table, Buffy audibly gritted her teeth. "Anything else?" she demanded.

"Er, no. Oh wait, yeah - Adam's reanimated the Witch and some other bloke." Buffy looked puzzled. "Your professor," he clarified. "Plus, one of the soldiers is more than half demon now - don't match any better than Adam, but with the human bits being dark, it doesn't show so much."

Buffy gave a horrified gasp. "Oh my God, Forrest," she said. "I saw Adam kill him. That must be why Riley went..."

Spike shook his head sadly. "Loyalty's a noble thing. Guess your soldier really loved his men, eh?"

"We don't know why he's there," Buffy said. "If he is there and you're not lying." She looked up at Giles "I don't believe he's joined forces with Adam, no matter what Spike says."

Giles didn't appear to know how to respond to that. "Buffy..." he began, only to trail off indecisively.

Xander raised his hand. "Er, guys," he said. "Computer disc?"

Casting a last scowl in Spike's direction, Buffy said, "I'll swing by the school later and check on him."

"Yes, of course," Giles agreed, leaving Buffy, to hand the disc to Tara who slotted it into Willow's laptop.

There was a moment's silence, while Willow clicked and typed and paused and clicked again, before she looked up over the top of the open lid. "There's a file called Info" she said. "Most of it looks like a whole bunch of stuff we already know about 314. But the last paragraph is all about a final phase where Adam manufactures a bunch of creepy cyber-demonoids like him. There's a special lab." She paused and her eyes widened. "It's date stamped for tomorrow," she said.

"Tomorrow?" Buffy exclaimed. "Well, I work best under pressure. If Adam fed Spike this disc, he wants me to know about his evil-guy assembly line. This lab, it's in the Initiative?"

"It doesn't say, but I'm guessing it has to be. I mean, the containment cells..."

Giles pulled his glasses off. "A Trojan horse," he said. "Very clever."

Nodding, Buffy got up and went over to look at the screen. "Yeah, and if Adam's gonna make sure the demons attack the Initiative from the inside..."

"Demons versus soldiers. Massacre, massacre," Xander said, finishing her thought.

Hooking his glasses back over his ears, Giles joined the girls, leaning forward to peer over Willow's shoulder, even though Xander knew he hated reading from a screen. "If we can trust this information," he said, looking up to fix Spike with an appraising stare. "We only have your word it's good."

"It's good," Spike said. "Or as good as we're going to get. It's not my veracity you should be questioning, mate. You're mad if you think I'd encourage Xander to walk into a trap, even if I'd not stop the rest of you."

Giles eyes widened and he froze halfway through the act of straightening up, an arrested expression of understanding on his face. "If he's handed all this over," he said eventually, finishing the move and running his hand back over his head, "he must be ready to start on his final phase. We could try and warn the base, but I doubt they'd listen."

"And he wants me there," Buffy said. "Probably figures I'll even the kill ratio."

Willow was frowning at her laptop, clicking her mouse furiously, but she looked up at this. "He's not worried you might kill him?" she asked.

Buffy shook her head. "No, he's really not."

Glancing back down at her screen, Willow said, "This is gonna take a couple of hours, guys." She shrugged helplessly. "There's a ton of technical specs and I don't know what's important. But at least I've seen the original blue prints of Adam's design, so I kinda know what I'm looking for."

"Very true," Giles agreed. "And there were some loose pages of notes that might make more sense in tandem with this new information. I'll fetch them." He began to root around on top of the bookcase by the wall and had just pulled a sheaf of papers free when there was a knock on the door, which was immediately followed by Oz's entrance.

"Hey," Oz said, sketching a small wave. "Ummm... There's no good way to say this, but Riley's gone and he's taken the radio."

In the general commotion that followed this announcement, Xander jabbed Spike hard with his elbow, to keep him quiet, but he couldn't do anything about the smug smile on his face. Luckily, Buffy was too busy questioning Oz to notice.

They spent the rest of the night and most of the next day on more research, Willow mostly on the computer, the rest of them going through Giles' books again. Even Spike knuckled down and joined in. They were not looking for anything in particular. It was more a case of hoping for a lucky break. Searching for serendipity, Giles called it and from the way Spike snorted and Willow gave a wan smile, Xander figured that was Giles' attempt at lightening the depression that slowly settled and deepened as the hours passed with nothing useful to show.

At one point, Buffy left to patrol the streets and check the school, in case Riley had returned. Xander ordered takeaway, which they ate as they read. They slept in snatches.

Eventually, sometime around late morning, it seemed that Buffy had had enough. She closed her book with a snap and stood up. "This is hopeless," she said. "Let's start again with what we know." She paced as she spoke, obviously thinking aloud. "According to the plans Jonathan had," she said, making Xander proud of her with the calm way she said Jonathan's name, "Adam's power source is a uranium core embedded somewhere inside his chest. Probably near the spine."

"So, what about magic?" Willow asked. "Some kind of, I don't know...uranium extracting spell?"

That caused Giles to give a snort of reluctant laughter, but in the end the final plan was even crazier. Nobody was more surprised than Xander when in reply to his, "Yeah, don't tell me: dumb idea," after he made his flippant summary of their needs, Giles replied, "Actually, anything but..."

It turned out that flippant and crazy were good, in this case. With something to work with, they got down to planning the details. It all came together remarkably fast.

Xander pointed at the map spread out on one end of Giles' desk. "This is Lowell House. The backdoor we used, is here." His fingers skimmed across the surface of the map and stabbed at a spot in the woods north east of the campus, "Spike's escape door is here," and another south east of that. "Where are these caves?" Buffy pointed at a spot just north of Elm Street. Spike reached over and placed his finger east of hers and Buffy pulled her hand away. The four points made a flat diamond shape. "Looks like he's got his own backdoor into the initiative," Xander observed.

Giles nodded. Turning to Willow and Tara he asked, "Can you pull up the floor plans Spike said Adam supplied?"

Willow clicked her mouse, scrolling through the menu of files on the disc. "Yes, I saw those. It's difficult to tell from the filenames, and there are so many of them. Hang on. Sort by file type. Okay. I just open this and... oh yeah!"

They gathered behind her and studied the plans over her shoulder. "On the principle that up is north..." Giles said. "The lift, I mean elevator, from Lowell House would be this entrance here?"

"Yeah, and the entrance in the hills must be this one at the end of this corridor," Xander added. "Which puts..." He paused to look over at the map. "Based on the distance from Lowell house to the entrance in the woods... Adam's cave... about, here," he finished, pointing at a spot at the bottom of the screen below the floor plan.

"Oh," Willows said. She sounded disappointed.

"We don't know how long the tunnel is from Adam's cave," Giles said. "And this certainly tells us which part of the Initiative to concentrate upon."

"That's 314," Buffy said, pointing at a suite of rooms near the bottom of the screen. "And this is the part I've been in, officially. The armoury's here. That's the com station. Riley told me the main Control Centre and the Commander's Office are..." She hesitated, her finger hovering over the screen. "Here. West of the barracks. Right under Lowell House."

Meanwhile, Willow had opened another window in the top left corner of the screen and she and Tara were reading another file. "He wants us to use Door C." She paused, studying the screen. "This one," she said, moving her cursor over one of the exits on the floor plans. "And, umm, once we're in, all the outer doors will lock," she read, following Tara's pointing finger.

"That's the one we used last time," Xander said.

"But not the one we're going in by," Buffy announced. She stood back so she could address them all equally. "We're going down the lift shaft," she said.

"We are?" Xander asked. "But..."

Buffy's smile was confident, even cocky. "We want to get to the control room, don't we?" she asked. Xander nodded. "So what better way than to trip the alarm and make them take us there?"

It sounded good, but Xander immediately spotted a problem. "What about Spike and Oz?" he asked. "If we do that, they can't be part of our group, but we'll need them there."

"True, we'll be very vulnerable during the spell," Giles agreed. "But the doors won't lock until Adam knows we're in."

Spike edged up close on Xander's other side. "I choose Door C," he said. "What d'you reckon, mate?" he asked, turning to Oz. "Looks like we're going in first."

Oz nodded thoughtfully. "Only way," he agreed.

Xander was surprised and a little alarmed by the suppressed glee in Spike's voice. "As long as you make sure the soldiers don't see you," he said. He turned so he was standing facing Spike and lifted his hands to cup Spike's face. "If we do this," he whispered. "The chip. You've given away any chance of getting it out."

Spike raised his own hands to cover Xander's. "Don't worry about me, love," he said. "We'll work it out."

Giles cleared his throat and Xander looked around guiltily. Tara was smiling at him while Buffy had an expression of vague distaste on her face. Willow was studying the computer screen with extra intensity. It was left to Giles to observe thoughtfully, "That's true. And if you do this, I might even begin to believe that you do have Xander's best interests at heart."

Spike snorted. "Your generosity overwhelms me, mate."

Giles smiled. "Good," he said. "So it should."

*****

Getting into the Initiative was easy, and strangely exciting - lowering themselves down the elevator shaft on a rope, praying no one decided to use it in the traditional manner while they were doing so. Getting caught at the bottom required no effort at all. They were immediately rounded up and, according to plan, escorted by three guards to Colonel McNamara's office in the central command station.

As they were herded through the main control room, full of banks of monitors manned by a couple of very young looking soldiers, Xander slowed his pace to give Willow more time to study the hardware. It was a tactic that earned him a shove in the back with the flat of a rifle that sent him tripping over the threshold into the Colonel's office.

In contrast to the control room, the office was free of high tech equipment, although three telephones - red, white and green - sat on the huge dark wood desk.

The Colonel looked up when they were ushered in. "I didn't expect to see you again," he said, sitting back in his big leather chair and regarding them with satisfaction. "But I can't say it's not a pleasure." His eyes fixed on Giles. "And who are you?" he asked. "Are you encouraging this delinquent behaviour?" Xander managed not to laugh, remembering a younger and very much delinquent Giles. Not that the Colonel would necessarily recognise any difference.

Buffy stepped forward. "Colonel-"

She never got a chance to even begin her speech. As if their arrival was the signal Adam had been waiting for, which it was, even if not how he'd planned it, at that moment the lights went out.

No sooner had the emergency lights flickered on than one of the young soldiers from the control room stuck his head around the door. "Sir, the power grid's down. Backup's not responding." He paused before adding, "And we're locked in."

The Colonel got up. He signalled the guards to herd Buffy, Willow, Giles and Xander over to the far side of the room and headed for the door but before he reached it the second technician arrived. "Sir, the containment area's been breached. Hostiles are loose."

The Colonel glared at Buffy, as if he thought she was responsible for the glitches in his systems. "How many?" he snapped.

The soldier blanched. "All of them, Sir."

Buffy folded her arms across her chest. "It's Adam," she said. The Colonel looked at her but didn't say anything. Taking advantage of the moment, she continued, "Look, I'm the only one who can stop him now. Just let me handle this. Get your people out of here."

For a moment Xander thought he was going to see sense. "All right," he said, signalling the guards over to his side of the room. It made the realisation that he was ignoring her completely, more disappointing. "You men follow me," he ordered. "We've got to secure the armoury, now!"

The guards took up position behind him and Buffy went to follow.

"Not you!" he barked. "You stay here." Turning to the two soldiers from the control room, he said, "These people are under arrest, understand? Keep them here!" Barely waiting for their acknowledgement, he swept out of the room.

The young soldiers were obviously more geeks in uniform, than trained fighters. It took Buffy no more than a moment to knock them out.

"Adam's expecting me to head for the cells," Buffy said as they crowded back into the control room, "to keep the demons contained. He's going to be waiting somewhere that's not there. Willow, find me the way through to where he is."

Willow was already in front of the console pushing buttons and typing commands. Xander went and stood behind her. The image on the monitor next to Willow's position was split into four, each cycling through a sequence of views of the Initiative. "It's started," he said. Pulling out his cell phone he called Tara in Buffy and Willow's dorm room. "Go," he said, giving her the command that would send her into every building east of Lowell House to sound the fire alarms.

Willow gave the screen a quick glance, pulled a face and turned back to her own monitor. The others gathered behind Xander and they all watched with sick fascination as the carnage escalated before their eyes. One camera was knocked out when a soldier was thrown bodily into it. A shot of a stairwell showed a demon slash twelve inch claws across another soldier's stomach and the soldier seemed to be looking straight into Xander's eyes as he gave his last silent scream before disappearing from their line of sight. Elsewhere a fire was raging and Xander thought he could see men writhing in the flames. He was glad when the picture changed, to show a soldier firing a machine gun and the demon that was charging him fall to the ground.

The pictures kept flipping past, each showing more and more chaos. Sometimes the soldiers seemed to be winning, mostly they were just dying.

Xander was about to turn away when he spotted Spike racing along a corridor with a large, hairy dog on his heels. "Wait!" he cried, grabbing Willow's shoulder as the picture switched to another view. "Can we get that back?"

Buffy pulled him away and shoved him bodily behind her. "How we doing, Will?" she asked.

Ignoring both of them, Willow kept typing. Xander pushed around Buffy and fixed his eyes on the screen, scanning each image for another sight of Spike and Oz.

Eventually his frantic searching was interrupted by Willow exclaiming, "Eureka! Look! According to this, there's air ducts and electrical conduits all running into there. Right behind 314."

Xander looked at the technical floor plan on the screen, memorising the positions of the walls and doors.

"Okay," Buffy said. "Now we just have to get there."

They opened the door into the main hanger-like area with care and paused a moment to assess the situation. Then Buffy set off at a run and they followed, dodging and diving as they went. Buffy punched a demon out of her way, clearing a path and Xander could see the door she was heading for across the expanse of the floor. Halfway there, they paused for breath behind a burning console of some sort but there was no time to waste. Staying still would leave them sitting ducks. As soon as she had checked that they were all still together, Buffy was off again. Xander grabbed a semi-automatic from the hands of a dead soldier and followed, firing past Giles, Willow and Buffy at anything that looked like it might turn their way.

There was no time to take in the big picture of the fight, all Xander could do was focus on the area immediately ahead of them. He spotted another fallen soldier with a laser rifle lying next to him. "Giles!" he shouted and threw his gun to him when he turned in response. Giles caught it and immediately fired at a large hairy creature that was charging down on them from their right. Xander dived to the left and grabbed the laser gun. Buffy was trading blows with something green and scaly and they didn't have time for that. Xander trained his gun on it, praying that the sight hadn't been damaged. Buffy kicked out and the demon staggered back a couple of paces. Xander pulled the trigger and hit it with a blast in its midsection. It fell to the floor and Buffy started to run again.

A sound behind him sent Xander spinning on the spot, gun raised. Spike skidded to a halt, hands held up in surrender. "Easy, Sheriff. Watch where you point that thing."

Xander lowered the gun and offered him a sick smile. He jerked his head towards Willow's retreating back. "Come on," he said only then noticing the wolf limping at Spike's side.

They ran.

*****

314 was relatively undisturbed and it didn't take long to locate the hidden entrance to the uncharted back rooms of the Initiative. Finding something to barricade the door they had come in by was more difficult, but between them, Spike and Buffy managed to push a storage unit across it. Then it was a matter of setting up the spell and watching Buffy disappear through the new gap in the opposite wall. "How long before the ritual kicks in?" she asked, pausing and looking back with her hand on the edge of the opening.

Giles shrugged. "Five minutes, give or take."

She nodded and was gone. Spike closed the panel behind her and pushed a file cabinet against it.

It was difficult to sit down and breathe calmly after the mad dash across the main hanger, but when Giles lit the candle and Willow started to chant, Xander felt his heart rate slow in response. He took his card and laid it down, as instructed and wondered at the milky glow that was beginning to suffuse the room.

The moment of union was both shockingly sudden and as gentle as a ripple on a sunlit lake. They stood up. The thing facing them glowed with black light, jagged and scarred, a dissonance in the unity of the all. "You can't last much longer," it said.

They raised their hand. "We can. We are forever."

They knew the words, but they were unimportant, merely a means to focus the power of the whole. The unity gathered in them, repelling the energy directed at them and absorbing it, redirecting it into life.

The darkness rushed at them and they waited. When it drew near they reached into it and pulled free the spark. The darkness vanished and they looked at the spark until it faded.

Xander opened his eyes to see Spike leaning over him and to the feeling of Spike's hand stroking his hair back from his forehead. "You okay, pet?" Spike asked.

Xander managed a nod and rolled his head to look around. Next to him Willow was pushing herself into a sitting position "Wow," she said. "That was..." before trailing off, because what that was, was beyond any words and Xander knew that too.

A crashing sound behind him caused Spike to disappear, but when Xander turned his head the other way, Spike was looking down at a dead demon at his feet. Oz had his fangs buried in its neck, but he released it quickly and backed away. Xander felt a hysterical urge to giggle at the sight of a large wolf trying to spit. If he'd been in human form, his distaste could not have been clearer.

"Nasty sort of fellow," Spike observed, brushing his hands together as if he was wiping them clean. He reached down and gave Oz's ear an affectionate tug. "Well done, mate," he said.

Xander began to struggle into a sitting position and looked around the room. Giles was leaning against the wall with his legs stretched out in front of him. He was looking up at Spike, his brow wrinkled in puzzlement. "What are you doing here?" he asked.

"Keeping the wolf in check," Spike said, nodding down at a now peacefully panting Oz. He looked around the group and raised his eyebrows questioningly. "So, the unkillable nuclear demon?" he asked. "Dead, yes?"

Giles' face cleared. "Yes, yes he is."

Spike grinned, reaching a hand down to help Xander to his feet.

A moment later, the filing cabinet in the corner began to rock. Xander and Spike went over to push it aside and let Buffy through.

"Buffy," Giles said, his pride clear in his voice. Her appearance seemed to be the thing he needed to start him moving. He rolled over onto his hands and knees and began to clamber awkwardly to his feet.

"And Riley," Xander added. "We weren't expecting to see you here."

Riley hesitated before entering the room, but took the necessary step and halted just inside. "There's no way out back there," he said. "Adam blocked the cave entrance." He stood up straight and stiff, almost at attention. "And I've still got men out there," he added, jerking his head towards the door into the Initiative.

"And we need to get out," Xander observed.

Riley looked around and Xander saw the moment he noticed Spike. "No time, Riley," he said. "Stand down!"

Finally upright, Giles intervened, surprisingly. "Yes," he said. "You were on different sides, but the war is over. Now all we can hope for is to save a few of the survivors."

Spike was bouncing. "Well, let's go save 'em, by gum," he said.

Outside in the main hanger, the carnage was appalling, but the space was virtually empty of life. The fight had obviously moved on. They went back to the control room and Riley put out a call on the PA system for a general retreat into Section C and then Buffy led a sweep through the corridors. Riley's presence was sufficient to ensure the few stragglers they saw followed, and slowly they made their way to the door above Elm Street, fighting every inch of the way but also gathering more walking wounded as they went.

Every new arrival was questioned and all told similar stories of running from their erstwhile prisoners. At one junction Riley signed off a group of three able bodied with instructions to "Check the brig." They left, returning a few minutes later to report it unlocked, like the rest of the base, and empty.

There were about thirty of them by that point, almost half being helped to walk or being carried. The remaining soldiers took point and they continued on their way to the accompaniment of gun fire and pained moans.

Xander concentrated on keeping between the soldiers and Spike and Spike, for once, appeared willing to be sensible and not attract attention to himself. Oz paced on his other side, still in wolf form. The soldiers were all too willing to stay clear of him.

There were bodies scattered everywhere and in every case they paused to check for signs of life. Xander also collected weapons and ammunition from the fallen, which he handed out to anyone who needed more.

He was leaning over a tangle of three bodies, extracting a clip and three hand grenades from the belt of a dead soldier when he became aware of Giles at his side, mostly because Giles gave a soft cry and fell to his knees next to him.

Xander reached out to him. "Giles, are you hurt?"

Giles tugged at the shoulder of one of the bodies, a man in civilian clothes who was lying on his front. Xander helped and together they turned him over. His face was unmarked, his eyes staring blindly up at the ceiling but his chest was a mass of torn and bloody fabric. "Oh god!" Giles cried. "Oh no, no, no."

Buffy was there in an instant, pulling him away and onto his feet. "Giles," she urged. "We have to keep moving." She looked down and Xander saw her blanch. She slipped an arm around Giles' waist and her voice was gentler when she said, "Come on."

Giles allowed himself to be guided away. Xander grabbed the last ammunition clip from the soldier's belt and followed.

When they finally reached the doors to the outside, they had to blast the lock to open them. Meanwhile, Riley and his men brought down the ceiling behind them, to slow any demon pursuit. As they staggered out into the clean night air, it seemed unbelievable to Xander that they had survived.

Epilogue

Heavy construction vehicles began to arrive the next day. Xander never found out what was done, but he knew enough about construction work by then to make a guess, based on the number of concrete mixers that trundled through town and up to the campus.

A whole section of the school, east of Lowell House, was shut off to traffic, the authorities using the fire alarms that had led to a general evacuation of the campus as their excuse. Oz moved in with Xander and Spike for a few days and Riley was hauled away by the military to make his report. He reappeared three days later, looking tired. "Honourable discharge," was all he'd say on the matter. Oz went out and bought large quantities of alcohol with Xander's money and somehow Riley ended up staying the night. He wouldn't look at Spike, unless he had to, and he certainly never spoke directly to him, but for some reason that Xander couldn't understand, he hung around, sleeping on the floor in Spike's old room, while Oz slept on the mattress.

Two days later they left together. Oz smiled in reply to Xander's question as to where they were heading. "I don't know," he said. "It just seems like the best thing to do. I'll go up to the campus first, see Willow. Then..." he shrugged. "Maybe Iowa?"

Later that evening, Xander met up with Buffy, Willow and Tara at the Bronze.

"He's gone then?" Xander asked, when Tara went to the bar.

Willow nodded. "Yeah."

Reaching towards her, Buffy said, "I'm sorry Will."

Willow relaxed into her hug. When she pulled back, she looked sort of sad, sort of at peace. "When I'm sixty I'm going to Istanbul," she said. Studying her face, Xander decided not to ask.

That night, once his breathing had returned to normal, Xander turned his head on his pillow and looked across at Spike. "Are you staying?" he asked.

Spike rolled onto his side, facing him. "Was planning to," he said, reaching over and pinching Xander's ear, making him squeal and pull away.

"Good." Xander reached out and stroked a finger down Spike's cheek. "I'm sorry about the chip," he said. "But I'm glad too, because you'd have left if you..." He stopped and stared at Spike. "When?" he asked.

Grinning, Spike pinched his nose, gently this time. "Told you Adam didn't understand vampires, pet. Seems like you don't either. I'm not going anywhere." He paused and his cocky expression faltered. "Unless you-"

"No!" Xander interrupted him before he could finish the question. "I trust you." Spike's smile returned. "But I want you to promise not to turn me. And I want to know the truth about vampires. All of it."

"Could take a while, pet."

"We've got time. And Willow's got a spell."

Spike leaned forward and dropped a kiss on the tip of Xander's nose. "Yeah, we've got time," he agreed. "All the time in the world." Xander stretched and curled his body into Spike's side and Spike ran his hand down Xander's back, to come to rest lightly on his butt. "Want to come to LA, pet?" he asked.

Xander tilted his head up to look at Spikes face. "Why?" he asked in return.

"Oh, no reason," Spike replied airily. "Was just thinking of going to see Angel about my ring."

The end

Note: Some bits of dialogue borrowed and adapted from episode 4.21, Primeval, Pt2.

Note 2: If you've enjoyed this story, please pause a moment and let me know. It is always lovely to hear that people have enjoyed what I've written. I won't write any less if you don't; it's just really nice for me. *g*

Current Mood: satisfied

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Flat | Top-Level Comments Only

From:

shakatany.livejournal.com

Wow what a journey!! This will definitely join the ranks of Spander classics. When you started it way back when did you think the story would wind up the way it did?

You could do a series of stories of Spike and Xander's adventures together once you've recuperated and feel up to it - each story could be complete within itself so there's no need to tie yourself to another long opus.

Shakatany

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Bewitched, Chapter 37, plus epilogue

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