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Swan Lake	By : JLH Category: AtS/BtVS Crossovers > Slash - Male/Male > Spike(William)/Xander > Spike(William)/Xander Views: 6685 -:- Recommendations : 0 -:- Currently Reading : 0
Disclaimer: Don't own BtVS or AtS nor make any money from stories etc, and bow down to their original creators Joss, et al., plus all the wonderful online writers who continue to give the Buffy/Angel verse characters life.

Chapter List
- 3
- 4
- 5
Part 7
Eventually the decision was made. Connor was understanding, particularly when Spike paid his share of the rent to cover the next six months, “Just in case you can’t find another lodger or this whole thing goes to pot.”
Finally, meagre possessions packed, he was driven to the airport and given a heartfelt hug goodbye from his human ‘brother’.
He was going back to the ‘old bligthy’.
______________________________
Nothing could have prepared Spike for what came next.  
He had not expected to be welcomed into to Surrey Coven let alone the inner sanctum of the Watchers’ Council HQ, though his phone call to Giles from the USA two weeks previous (initiated by Connor who gave the initial explanation as to Spike’s ongoing survival) was surprisingly pleasant, he inquired of Dawn, Buffy, Willow, even Andrew and all seemed positive. Giles alluded to the difficulties Xander had been experiencing without going into detail.  
Giles offered him lodgings at a flat he owned in Soho, for a small fee to cover housekeeping. Spike graciously accepted insisting he was unsure of the duration of his stay, but was good for the funds regardless of time. After the worry of Xander, Giles found the contact welcome, and almost hoped that the two men might meet, and perhaps, though it was a long shot, just perhaps Spike could assist the troubled ex-Watcher.  
Spike met Giles at the ‘green door’, storming through in a swirl of leather and black denim with a minimum of baggage.  
He waited until they were driving down the freeway – the I1 – before he broached the issue that had been bothering him for days, if not weeks, “So what’s up with the boy… What’s up with Xander!?”  
Giles yanked off his glasses, which Spike pulled from him and voluntarily polished using his own duster’s inner satin lining, then handed them back, repeating his question, “So? What’s up with the boy?”  
“He’s not who you knew Spike. He… has problems…”  
“Problems how?”  
“It’s not really my place to..”
  
“Oh leave off watcher, boy’s in trouble, obviously so I’m inquirin’ why? Friend of sorts, fellow white hat that sort of thing. Bloody hell Watcher I lived in the boy’s godforsaken basement for good on six months… and yeah I care, so spill.”  
Spike, who himself had survived more tortures and, yes… deaths than he would care to mention but this was not his boy, not Xander, he bounced back always, and yes Spike really did care. What could possibly bring the boy to his knees, what could have been so terrible that he was ‘out of commission’.  
The old Watcher stared at Spike for a good minute or so then seemed to come to some conclusion. “He, well he has had a breakdown of sorts.”  
Spike was furious with the namby pambying of the problem so called it, “Has or hasn’t he had a mental breakdown, Watcher!”  
Giles pulled over the car into the next fast food outlet on the side of the M1 and led the vampire inside. After purchasing both of them Earl Grey tea he sat heavily and stared into his cup as though it held the answers to the universe. Finally he looked up.  Giles paled under the intense scrutiny of the vampire. Xander was a friend and Giles’ erstwhile son, becoming so whilst the boy was still at school, and more so of late as he blossomed as a Watcher and collector of the newly found Slayers. But Spike was right. This was not just a normal meltdown due to battle fatigue, it was more than that, so Giles simply bent his head and let tears that had been too long held… fall.  
If it had not been for Spike’s keen hearing he would have missed it, “We, that is the council pushed him too far, his last message was all normal, too normal… I knew what we were sending him into… A war zone… Oh he’d been in that before, but this one was a little more ‘difficult.’”  
Spike’s ire was raised, “Difficult! What is more difficult to tip the boy over? Come on Rupert, you are taking to the thing that goes bump in the night! I’ve been most people’s worst nightmare, caused more than a few back in the day… What did you send him into?”  
Giles took off his glasses and seemed to look just a little older than Spike remembered, “We didn’t realize, not how bad it had become, machetes dismembering children, guns cutting down the innocent, hand-made bombs blowing up… I can’t begin to explain, Xander has tried but it was just too much. He dealt with it in his usual style but the last time he came back with a potential… he was lost. It was the last straw…”  
“That broke the camel’s back… yes… and it seems to have been a long time coming wouldn’t you say?” Spike gave a near subsonic growl and took another look at Giles and his defeated demeanour, paused a moment then pressed on.   “So… that’s it, boy get’s checked in to a mental institution and all’s well with the world? You have got to be kidding me!”  Spike was on a roll, and the Watcher seemed happy to have someone angry rather than defeated for a change.  
“Harris – the boy who had faced down Angelus, the boy who had run with the Slayer for seven years, and from all reports, the boy who had brought more Slayers back to the coven, the Watchers than any other individual on the planet, that Alexander was waning, on his watch, and I’m havin’ none of it…”  
Whatever was bothering the boy, he, Spike, needed to know.  Screw Angelus, her ladyship Illyria and all else besides. The boy had, strangely, been there for him in the last few hours, of course minus the half hour shag with his ex prior to their successful closing of the hell mouth – and Spike’s burning to a crisp notwithstanding – but they had shared a sort of friendship.   
So Giles and he shared what they knew of the boy, now man, over tea.
“So you see,” he concluded, “We, that is I, thought you might bring him some balance. A sense of himself… I don’t know Spike, just… a connection to who he was.”  
Spike lit up a cigarette as they returned to the car before answering, “I’m happy to try.”  
“That’s all we ask.”  
The rest of the journey was in silence, the old watcher reflecting on the last two years and Xander’s problems, the vampire just wondering what he had walking in to, so it was hardly a surprise that Spike was barely in the door of the coven before he dumped his bags unceremoniously in the hallway, and demanded to know the way to Xander’s room.
The old coach house had been renovated and incorporated into the ground floor of the large double story house, the coven, via a long hallway. Giles had emphasized his concern that little could really prepare Spike for the defeated character he was to face as they took the rather grand Georgian hallway and proceeded to Xander’s ground floor rooms.  
The boy, no man, was slumped over a table when Spike entered the room without invitation, and Giles immediately retreated.
.
Spike knew the boy was asleep, but ventured there was more to it.   Spike could not help but think… There was no one – not a single individual – that would take the boy down. Not now. Not ever, and yet…
Xander didn’t even bother to lift his head, favouring his elbow as speaking point, “Come to cheer; to wax lyrical; to rejoice at the fall of the great white hat?! Well here he is… broken…. Done and dusted… you must be thrilled. And can you do a guy a favour, was planning on me but always figured it would be by demon…. Just drain me, at least let my life-source go to a good cause yeah?”  
“And that’s exactly why I can’t! F*&$ sake Harris! What the hell do you think you are doing? Depression? OK, Been there done that – and quite frankly seem to remember you reminding me at the time of all the bad things I had done – so… what have you done that entitles you to be so… ?”  
“Got them all killed didn’t I… all the would be slayers… would have had normal lives until I showed up… Enticed them to their ‘true calling’ and their untimely deaths… Stupid Harris, they came, they saw, they fought and died. Always the same scenario…”  
Spike struggled to cope with the waves of pain that emitted from the boy… man in front of him. He had seen ‘broken’ before, and this was the epitome of it. The question was, whether or not Xander could come back from it. He immediately dropped his brash tone and interrupted quietly, “There was just you, pet, wasn’t there, just you? An’ you were tryin’ to help even though the whole bloody place was goin’ to hell in a war zone. Bloody crazy places wars. Good for killin’, maimin’ and aught else, no place for a watcher on a mission. Trust me now, I know … been there, too many bloody wars – in the literal sense. Watchers should ‘ave pulled the pin on the whole cocked up continent, bloody wankers.” 
Xander failed to react, other than to stifle a sniffle, then slowly raised his head to stare rather blankly in Spike’s direction. “Why are you here? Did Giles or someone send for you? Cause it’s a lost cause. I got them killed, I saw the girls I was supposed to ‘retrieve’ violated and dismembered, I saw babies beheaded in front of their mothers, and the fathers shot in front of their sons. I carried a ten year old five kilometres to the nearest hospital run by ‘Medicine Non frontiers’ only to have him die in my arms. Maybe I am crazy, but can’t I just rest now? Won’t you do it for me?... I need to… I tried you know? Tried to off myself… all it got me was a couple of stints in the crazy house… but you know, don’t you Spike, there’s no going back… Please just finish this for me… I’m begging you… just finish it.”  Xander finished his diatribe with a pleading look and trickle of silent tears from his good eye.  
The only reply was “No! Not now. Not ever. You are the strongest, most annoying man on the planet and you don’t get out of that, that easily. You wouldn’t let me do it, neither with the bloody chip, nor post soul, so now it’s time to turn the tables. Fuck you Harris, didn’t really come here for this but I bloody well ain’t leavin’ with you in this state.”  Spike hauled the reluctant man up by his armpits and shoved him toward some French doors that he hoped led to somewhere outside.   
“Where are we going?”  
“To look at the bloody night sky, and if you have a problem with that, I promise to bite you – and not in a kind way!”
Part 8
Spike leaned casually on the concrete balustrade of the small outdoor patio and waited. Xander came to a halt just outside the doors and stared rather forlornly into the darkness beyond where Spike stood, apparently unwilling to go any further.
Waiting for Xander to make any sort of comment, Spike stared upward, noting that only a few stars managed to peep out from behind the thin veil of cloud.
Silence abounded for what seemed endless minutes with the vampire intensely aware of Xander’s tense, still figure silhouetted by the light from inside.
Ultimately it was the human who broke the silence in a barely audible, “The nights were always alive with noises over there.”
Spike raised an eyebrow and was about to make a comment but decided against it as the brunette’s stance relaxed a little, hospital pale arms winding around a too thin torso to grasp the dull grey sweater in a protective hug as his gaze seemed to wander though still unfocussed.
“I never thought places worse than Sunnydale existed you know?” Xander gave a derisory snort, “Yeah right… Oh I knew humans could be vicious and unpredictable… heck I watched the news. But in the States it’s always guns and drugs and money, and an occasional random mass murder-suicide by idiot teenagers with a misguided grudge against their classmates or something… at least there you’re pretty much safe if you put your mind to it.
“Africa was different… you just didn’t know… Religious differences, territory battles, famine and disease, power and money, hell, even tribal squabbles going back hundreds of years… And the whole place is like the ‘haves’ and the ‘have nothings’. Just throw in a few corrupt politicians and a fanatic or three, add firepower (usually supplied by outsiders wanting something from the outcome) and stir.”
Spike stared hard at the man in his midst as Xander finally began to move toward him as if sleepwalking.
“I thought I’d seen the worst of people, you know? I mean…” His good eye closed and face screwed up as if in pain, Spike noticing for the first time that the sunken empty socket was without patch or prosthetic.
“… I just used to think demons or magic or something ‘other’, you know? But anything we saw back there was… I met this ex SAS guy last time I was in… you know… the hospital. He’d done two tours in the Gulf war, and one in Afghanistan before he volunteered for the UN Peace Corp. Got posted back to Afghanistan, lasted six months before he… lost it. Sent home for ‘R&R’ for… Anyway… He was a really nice guy too…”
Spike was still processing the ‘was’ in the final sentence when Xander seemed to switch gears mid thought and turned to stare hard at Spike as if willing him to pre-empt what he was about to divulge. Spike met the scrutiny with what he hoped was a steady, noncommittal gaze and waited. The voice that had been flat and without emotion began to change to one filled with anger and pain as he continued.
“Have you ever been in a war zone Spike? Wait, of course you have. Except these places… it’s not like regular war, whatever that is. It’s like there’s no rules, none. And all I was there for, was to try to find these potential Slayers when everyone and everything around was totally f#@%ed, human f#@%ed. Not just guns and bombs, but machetes and knives and disease and starvation… and there were…” Xander began to shake as memories of the horror flooded in, his stare becoming as intense as his emotions took over.
“It wasn’t even the first or the second or even the twentieth one I retrieved and sent back here, it wasn’t that I didn’t have the right contacts, or the resources to get them out safely… Her name was Halla, it means ‘unexpected gift’, kind of ironic really considering her Slayer status was pretty much unknown until... well you know that bit I guess. Wills and Giles told me to be ultra careful – they always said that. Still, it was my decision to leave Farah (the slayer assigned to me) in Algiers, safe ‘cause the Democratic Republic of Congo? Not the easiest of places on a good day, even with the UN Peacekeepers around. I figured I’d be OK doing an in and out, quick mission, so I flew into Bunia from Kampala with some of the UN forces.
“The UN’s there to try to stop the ivory trade and control the radically political insurgents along the eastern borders - well all the borders really. The militants are armed and/or paid for the ivory by smugglers (some of whom are even corrupt government officials) who don't care how many elephants or people get killed or where the guns end up, just that they get their booty out and onto the black market.
"Everything was barbed wire and blue berets when we arrived and the town seemed peaceful and fairly well off - they even had a school and university there - but I was warned by the soldiers that outside the zone could 'get messy'.
"I found a driver with an old four wheel drive truck who was willing to take me where I needed to go, for a fee - the Council was paying so… anyway…
“It was wet season and we were driving out onto the flatlands, so that made a quagmire of what passed for the road out to the village in the Apanwaza region where Willow had located Halla, the new Slayer. It was only around a hundred kms but took us a day and a half of digging out bogged wheels, avoiding debris and occasional the dead animals to get there. I should have guessed there was trouble ahead on the second day when the driver got spooked as we crossed the Aruwimi River. We were met on the other side by a band of gun-toting young boys who demanded we pay them for our ‘safe passage’, and ‘accept’ their offer of two of them accompanying us on our journey west.
“The village was only just visible from the road, just a few houses made of tin and whatever materials could be found in the scrubland around. I should have guessed there was something wrong straight away, there was no smoke from fires or human noises, but I figured I’d been in too many places where... Anyway... The boys with the guns sort of grinned at me when I jumped from the truck, but I didn’t take much notice at the time – except for the fact that they had their guns at the ready, but again with the ‘normal’ I guess.”
Spike focussed on the brunette’s hands and noted that the shaking remained even as he began mechanically rolling and unrolling the hem of his t-shirt. He contemplated commenting that a lone Scoobie in the scrubs of middle Africa was hardly the wisest of travel plans, let alone venturing on a mission in an unstable war zone to pick up a random newly emerged Slayer. But Xander’s voice had dropped to barely above a whisper, and Spike realised that this was something beyond a normal travel log, perhaps the only time Xander had divulged fully what had happened to anyone, so remained silent.
“It was too quiet, well apart from a few chickens and goats wandering around, and a mangy dog or two sniffing at things. Villages usually have... you know... at least a few people at home even if the majority are out tending their farm or whatever. But there was no one, just mud and animals and quiet. So I walked through the mud and into the first hovel. There were some cooking pots on the floor and what looked like the start of a meal being prepared, but no one around.
“I was kind of aware of the truck engine still running, but figured Lhawi wasn’t going to risk us getting stuck there any longer than he had to.
“By the time I had been to the third house I knew there was something really wrong. There were signs of a struggle and blood on one of the outside walls. I think I picked up a hoe as I walked into the fourth place, and that’s where I found them...”
Tears began to flow from Harris’s good eye and leak slowly from the maimed scar of the missing one, and Spike fancied the man was going pale as the memories overtook him, but the whispered recount of the experience did not stop.
“They were there. Bloated bodies and bits of...” Xander’s voice hitched but he continued, “There was a foot, a child’s foot, tiny... and one body with no hands or head... I... and the flies... and the smell! Ghod! The smell!!”
Xander gripped the edge of the balustrade, turned suddenly and promptly threw up into the garden. He coughed a few more times, roughly wiped his sleeve across his mouth, then bent further to rest his forehead on his arms.
Spike knew the smell Xander described too well and was assailed by memories of his own. Images of he and Dru stumbling past just such a scene in the Dardanelles during WWI, him cursing their vampire sense of smell and the stupidity of humanity, Dru alternately trying to dance to the 'pretty lights' of the artillery fire and trying to pull away from Spike as he guided her around the carcasses of too many men.
He pulled himself back to the present and waited, somehow gleaning that the worst of the story was yet to come. He knew better than to touch the man, but instinctively moved closer as Xander took a shuddering breath and let the man continue.
“I... I couldn’t... I’d seen bodies before hundreds of them, blown up, gun shots, dead in the street, even witnessed an execution style... but these were just... butchered, every last one... I... I didn’t lose it then, at least I don’t think I did, but it’s all a bit of a blur really. I know I found a little can of oil, for cooking I think... tipped it out over the pile of... over... them and set it alight... set the whole house alight. When I stood back to watch, that’s when I saw... her. She was face down near the edge of a clearing that led towards a track.
“She was older, I figured the grandmother or something, I thought it must have been her that put up a fight - two dead militia boys nearby kind of indicated someone had at least. There was a gun shot wound in her back but I rolled her over anyway... and as I did... as I did her ::hitch:: her stomach... and all the... it just all spilled out, all over my boots and into the mud. They had... it was... Her face was sliced but you could still see... And I couldn’t just leave her there, but I couldn’t move her either, not without... ::hic:: I tried to dig a bit of a hole with the hoe but it was too muddy, so I went back to one of the huts and got a few of the thin blankets there and rolled her back over, and kind of just put them over her. I pulled some branches down from the scrub trees to pile on top.
“It was raining again and the driver started yelling something to me. As I turned to head back I thought I saw something in the trees, and there she was. I don’t know how or why, but I knew it was the Slayer I had come for, Halla.
“When I got closer I saw she was still alive... somehow she was still alive. She didn’t move when I approached her, just sat there in the mud with a sort of blank stare. She was spattered with blood and bleeding from a huge gash down the arm holding a broken chair leg. There was one of the militia rifles in her other hand but she didn't raise it, so I squatted down in front of her and, just talked to her quietly, said everything was going to be OK, that I was Xander and I knew she was Halla, that she was OK, that I was…
"But there was more shouting from the truck and I knew we had to get out of there. When I grabbed her good arm to pull her up, she let out an almost silent scream and shoved herself backwards. I thought she was going to attack me but instead she dropped the chair leg, grabbed what I thought was a bundle of rags she had been cradling in her lap and struggled to standing with the gun pointing at me.
"Something must have clicked for her then, I don't know, maybe just the fact I was a westerner or… I just dunno… Anyway, she eventually lowered the gun and followed me back toward the truck. As we rounded the building I had set on fire, I saw what all the shouting was about. There were three older men with guns standing around my driver who was kneeling in the mud apparently pleading with them, one of the gun barrels only inches from his head. The two boy soldiers we had come with didn't seem to be around.
"I tried to back away, hoping they hadn't spotted us, but the driver saw, and then it all happened so quickly…
"He shouted a warning, then the shot fired and he fell to his side, executed, in the mud. In those few seconds Halla had shoved the bundle at me as she pushed past cocking her weapon as she went, and opened fire. It must have been a rapid fire assault rifle because the magazine was empty before I could even register what was going on or move. The militia men must have been surprised too, 'cause they only got off a few round before she mowed them down and collapsed back onto me.
"One of the guys was still alive, screaming on the ground, by the time I pulled from under her. She tried to move but her leg was shattered, one of their bullets had torn through her thigh. She kept pointing to the truck and the carnage in front of it, and I realized the injured man was still trying to reach for his weapon which had fallen along side him somewhere. So I… I… ran forward and picked up the gun and… I was going to… I don't know… but then he sort of saw what I… and went to grab something from his belt… and I shot him… and he stopped… time, noise, all just… stopped.
"I really don't remember anything from there until I was carrying her into the hospital some time at night back in Bunia. I don't even know how we got into the truck, or crossing the damned river, whether we saw anyone, or paid anyone or got bogged again, not even how long it took really… But then I was waiting in a white room outside the operating theatres and someone was shoving a hot tea into my hand, and I just sat there, for hours, while people rushed in and out…
"Then there was a young doctor with bloodied scrubs and a mask around his neck standing over me, and he was saying sorry… that they had done all they could, but the leg… and the blood loss had been to great… and together with her other injuries… and they had tried but couldn't save her… And then a nurse was there saying the baby in the truck, the bundle Halla had been holding in the bush and which I had apparently brought with us, had been dead for days. And that our driver’s body had been delivered back to his family – I didn’t even remember putting it him in the back of the truck… Then she led me to another room where I was to wait and give a report to the UN officer who would be there within the hour…
"After that it's all just blank. I don’t really know how I got back to Algiers, but I did, and then we were on a plane to Heathrow, and then… here… And I just… It was all just… wrong.”
Xander turned, the look of utter desolation and grief so evident it caused Spike’s breath to hitch. This time he did reach out and just managed to catch the human as legs gave out. He gentled Xander to the cold paving stones and sat beside him cradling the now sobbing man to his shoulder, rubbing small circles on the too thin upper arm, still not game to break his own silence, opting to wait in case there was more pain that needed to be expressed.
After many minutes, and a shirt sleeve wet with Xander’s tears later, the brunette began to speak again. This time it was accompanied by Spike’s soft, rumbling purr as he continued his comforting action against Xander’s skin.
“Everything back here was so… normal… but not, you know? The coven, the slayers in training, people I knew just carrying on with their lives… and I just… couldn’t. I just couldn’t… nothing seemed to have meaning any more, I didn’t have anything to… I don’t know… and they kept saying I should eat, even when it all tasted like ash, and every dream I had I’d see it… her… them… And the smells of cooked meat, of petrol or mud, it was all still there. And they kept asking what was wrong… asking me to explain what had *really* happened, as though I had missed something or that there was some monster or demon involved that I had not mentioned. Shit Spike!” Xander’s posture stiffened and he turned to stare directly at his vampire audience.
“I mean the coven and everyone here want to know about demons and possessions and magicks… and the psychiatrists want to know about my upbringing and all that ‘normal’ response to crisis situations stuff, at least they kind of got the in a warzone trauma thing I s’pose… And everyone kept telling me that I was important… and that what I did in life had a purpose… that I did the right things despite the outcomes, and that I need to ‘focus on being in the moment’ and ‘enjoy the now’… And it’s all bulls@#t! Arrrghhh!!! It doesn’t mean anything! I’m still here and I don’t know why, and there is so much wrong out there, and I just… I’m not… Urgh! You have to understand… I’m not worth it anymore. ‘M a lost cause or something. Nobody can… *F@#$*!”
Xander was shaking with rage and almost shouted the last rather incoherent statement, after which he seemed to lose all his energy, pulled slightly away from Spike and curled in on himself, forehead on his knees and arms over the top in a protective gesture.
Spike stared at his own hands in the silence that followed, smelled further tears and the scent of anguish and pain flowing from the boy. He understood. Not just the reasons for Xander reaching his breaking point, but the collective effects of being participant, or even simply bearing witness in a life of violence, whether voluntarily or by chance, involving the natural or the supernatural, and regardless whether actions were deemed courageous, selfless and successful, or maleficent, or simply foolhardy and doomed.
He contemplated his existence as human and the years post his vampiric state; the years with Dru; Sunnydale before and after the chip, then the soul; unlife as a ghost and then corporeal at Wolfram and Hart; and after. His own nightmares still plagued him, there were still times when he questioned his own purpose for existence. Memories of experiences and motivations, good and bad, often warred within, torturing his psyche if he let them. How had he endured? In the end, he just had.
He turned to examine the miserable figure of the formerly irrepressible boy he’d known in Sunnydale. What did a future at the coven or the Watcher’s Council really hold for the man now? While Xander stayed in this environment he was treated with ‘kid gloves’, seen as a wounded individual in need of care, someone to be rehabilitated and either sent back into harms way or ‘put out to pasture’ as it were, relegated to some sort of normalcy that had, for the ex Scoobie, never really existed.
Spike sighed and shook himself out of his reverie. He knew what to do, but it would take a number of phone calls and some convincing of Giles and the others before he could put his fledgling of a plan into place, and even then he was unsure of the ultimate outcome. Still, he was here and Harris needed him, he knew that much, and it was enough.
He stood and held out a hand to the man on the ground, “C’mon mate, reckon it’s time to get some rest somewhere horizontal and bed-like.”
Xander stirred, wiped his face with both hands and sniffed hard, grasping the offered hand and standing with a less than elegant groan. He stumbled a little as he began to transfer his weight and walk, giving a wry smile and rather derisory snort, “Foot’s gone to sleep, sorry.”
Spike pushed the man toward the small ensuite, “You do your human thing. I’ll just wait ‘til you’re settled then take my leave, okay?”
Spike moved back to the sitting room, closed the French doors and turned the main lights off. He heard the toilet flush and the sounds of a face being washed and teeth cleaned. He waited a few moments then moved to the door of the bedroom as a small table lamp switched on illuminating Xander’s gaunt but much more relaxed looking face on his pillow in the gloom.
“Right well… Reckon I’ll take my leave mate.”
Xander looked momentarily crestfallen, and bit his bottom lip a little before eyeballing Spike and in a small voice replied, “Please don’t tell the others all that stuff… I mean they know pretty much everything anyway, but they’ll just get all worried again… and…”
Spike’s hint of a smile held genuine understanding as he turned to leave, “Right you are. Sleep tight, ‘n I’ll see you on the morrow.”
As much as Xander knew nothing had been resolved, or that he was any the wiser as to why Spike was even here, he felt somehow a little lighter for Spike’s visit, his last thought before falling asleep was that he actually looked forward to a ‘morrow’ with a certain blonde vampire, apparently now friend and confidante, in it.
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Swan Lake