Buffy is unquiet in her body. She stalks through the low, wight-fingered fog of London's graveyards with a small axe over one shoulder. Spike glides beside her, silent.
Vampires are scarce in this town, these days. Only foolish near-fledges, abandoned by their sires, dare hunt, but Buffy requires exercise, so out she goes.
She's lucky tonight. Behind a crumbling crypt, half-hidden by foliage, a scruffy gaggle of demons tries to raise an equally scruffy minion. Spike glances at his love, then backs up against an obelisk and folds his arms. Buffy unships her axe.
She's still the most amazing thing he's ever seen. Her pale hair scatters from its loose knot as she whirls, weapon twisting and doubling back. As the last vamp falls, Buffy staggers, just a little, but Spike doesn't reach to steady her. He only draws in close behind and combs her hair with his fingers, then binds it again with a cord. She leans for a moment against his chest before moving off, without words, toward the gate.
Outside the cemetery Buffy pauses, looks to the right and to the left, and frowns.
*
Spike's independent streak shrinks.
In the early years he used to look like an on-and-off lover to anyone who wasn't watching closely, dividing his time, much as Buffy did, among London, Chandrapore, L.A., and wherever else the Council needed transitional support or sudden backup. Whenever they happened to be home at the same time, they'd fight as often as possible, and everybody at headquarters would sneak down to the training cage to watch.
Now he's at home almost always. "You're all domestic," Dawn laughs. Spike messes around in the kitchen, figures out how to make ratatouille and sangria. On the couch, Buffy hauls Spike's feet across her lap, plays with his toes while she reads her magazines.
They laugh a lot, goof off, but he watches her with disquiet eyes. She knows he's watching and dislikes it, but she doesn't say a thing.
*
In the spring Buffy goes up to the Giles' estate, the long-time hub for Scoobies once and future, and carefully guarded sanctuary for Slayers in need of healing and homemade soup. While Buffy talks to Dorothea and helps the witch and her nieces measure and store their winter-dried herbs, Spike flies to L.A. and a different kind of home.
"Will you follow her?" Angel asks.
Spike presses his palm against the windowpane and says nothing.
"You have that right, I think," his sire insists. "You're more stubbornly alive than most of the humans I know; you should be allowed to flip the other side of that coin. In blood and in love, you've paid your debt, Spike."
"Who's counting?" Spike wonders.
"If you do stick around ... I know you have family in London. But if you need--" commiserance, a proper hunt, a savage fuck, a rest... "I'll be here."
*
"I'm going crazy," Buffy sobs, bedridden. "I have to fight. I have to --"
Her lapdesk splinters in her grip, and she stares, startled, at the blood rising in her palm.
"I'm so strong," she wails, "and so goddamn helpless. It makes no sense."
To the Council she's a hero turned curiosity: a Slayer blazing with unfathomable and ever-accruing power bound to a mortal frame over-weary of the burden. Spike snarls at all visitors, lets well-wishers through at Dawn's insistence, but unerringly bans the would-be documentarians from the premises.
Dawn keeps a locked journal.
*
In the year 2043, May, Apocalypse rises. Buffy, too, rises, and calls for her axe.