He'd spent a long time staring at the ceiling, going over what Buffy had said, trying to remember. He was going over it, again and again, not like Spike could force himself to remember something. Spike had finally drifted into something that wasn’t quite sleep - more like floating in thick black water - without any memories to go off of, he couldn't even dream. He had almost gotten used to the idea that he'd rest during the day and wake in the night, when his eyes shot open, light still leaning oppressively against the window behind the curtains in that bedroom.

  The first real sign of trouble came when the front door slammed downstairs, the noise jarring Spike to action before nightfall. He was off the bed in a heartbeat, bare feet silent on the carpet, every sense snapping awake. Instinctively he sniffed at the air as he made for the door, catching the scent: cheap aftershave, the metallic tang of fear-sweat under that. He heard heavy, angry footsteps, Spike's hand landing on the door. Got to protect her.

  His thoughts assailed him long before his consciousness could catch up, about to burst down the stairs, when he heard the voice.

  "Buffy, we have to talk." Whelp. Spike had thought derisively, paused at the door... Buffy didn't need protection from that whelp; carefully, intentionally, Spike released the door handle...

  "Xander, it’s late. Go home." Buffy spoke, her voice flat, low, impatient, Spike thought there was a tone of warning underneath the layer of it.

  "I’m not leaving until we finish this conversation." Xander said in a forceful tone. Spike stayed by the door, listened in. Buffy's fine. This is her friend, she can handle him. She's not in danger. The man told himself, didn't even know why he thought to protect Buffy at all, why Spike felt this instinct to go down to where they were. Buffy was a perfect stranger to Spike after all, he'd only just met her a few nights ago from his point of view, even despite all he'd been told.

  "You’re not thinking straight, Buff." Xander decided, he had more to say to her too, only just getting started.

  "He’s a vampire. No chip. No soul. No memories to keep him in line. And you’re letting him sleep in Joyce's old room like he’s some houseguest." Spike heard Xander say, but one part hit him harder than the other accusations: No soul?

  "We don't know the chip is gone, and before that, he saved Dawn’s life." Buffy said. Spike put a hand to his chest, and lent his head against the door, as he heard Buffy and Xander argue down the stairs and by the front of the home.

  "He tried to kill us for years before that! You forget that part? Because I sure as hell haven't. I feel like I'm the only one not gone completely loopy over 'Innocent Spike'!" Xander said. Spike felt confused at all what that man said, not for the first time. Spike didn't remember hating them, didn't remember trying to kill Buffy, or anybody. Spike’s hands curled into fists at his sides. Nails biting into palms. He forced himself to stay still. He didn't feel, innocent...

  "I haven’t forgotten anything." Buffy's tone sharpened. Buffy was pragmatic; no dusting Spike unless he proved dangerous. Peachy, his immortal existence permitted on the caveat that he was not a rabid dog... It was sort of comforting really.

  "Then why is he still breathing? You know, so to speak- I'm saying why are we playing nursemaid to a blank-slate serial killer?!" Spike’s hands curled into fists at his sides. Nails biting into palms. He forced himself to stay still. Spike didn't feel innocent at all; since waking up, Spike had felt a constant need to be good, to not slip, to try and not to crush and ruin everything he'd touched or laid his hands on. From the first second Spike had been trying to do good, because he felt so so very marred. He didn't even try to tell himself it was all in his head - how should Spike know?! For all he knew, he was the worst thing to have ever darkened their world. And from the way he'd been isolated, the signs were pointing to him being precisely that dark thing.

  "Because he's choosing. Every day. Ever since he woke up. Every hour. He’s choosing not to be what he was." Buffy's voice dropped, a dangerous edge to it. It made Xander scoff, short, bitter.

  "Choosing. Right. Until the first time he gets hungry enough. Or angry enough. Or remembers how much fun it used to be to snap necks for sport." Xander said, voice dripping in that sardonic, mocking, cynical tone. Spike wondered, if he deserved that tone, and the silence that followed from Buffy and Xander after that, if he'd deserved their hatred. Spike waited in the dark, wondering if Buffy would say anything more, leaning against the door, almost wishing to hear shouting, if it meant that Spike didn't have to stand that silence any longer... He almost missed the ringing...

  "I know you're scared." Buffy said, quieter then, when at length she'd decided she ought have spoken again.

  "I know, you all must think I'm crazy, that we might just be forced to stake him anyway. You think I’m not scared? You think I don’t wake up every hour checking the doors? Checking on him?" Spike heard Buffy speak and wished he wouldn't. Spike walked back toward the centre of the bedroom, hands at his sides.

  "Then dust him." Xander said. Flat. Final. Simple as that, huh? Spike raised a hand to his temple, fingers scratching at the scar in his eyebrow that he didn't remember, wishing he hadn't heard everything passing between them even now. But Spike could not unhear Xander, not then, and not when he spoke on:

  "End him, before Spike decides to end one of us." Spike felt the words land like a punch to the sternum. Not surprise. Just… confirmation. The thing he’d been waiting for since the mirror. He looked at that bloody thing, mocking him, empty. Spike was about to pretend to sleep, but there was no way he would ignore the voices coming up the stairs still. Xander wasn't letting go.

  "You’re the Slayer, this is what you do. You end monsters before they end us." Xander reminded her, Slayer, a word that Spike didn't fully understand, didn't know what he was missing out of that equation.

  "He's not a person, you know that. He's a vampire - a thing that learned how to wear one -and you’re letting him sleep upstairs like he belongs here!" Xander said. So that was it then, mystery solved, Xander had lain it all out before her. Xander went quieter then. More careful. More dangerous.

  "Buffy, we're your friends. You really going to stand here and tell me it's better to protect that evil dead than all of us? It's not worth the risk!" Xander tried to reason with her, his reason, his voice rising as the mocking nature that Xander had been hiding under wasn't enough to keep hiding the anger that lay beneath the carpet.

  "It's only because he doesn’t remember how powerful he is. How much he enjoys it. And when that comes back - and it will come back - you won’t get a warning. He'll kill someone. Attack one of us." Xander pressed. Spike wondered, powerful? That part felt true. He felt… raw. Unarmored. Like something important had been stripped out and left him exposed.

  "Spike's not attacking anyone." Buffy said, voice clipped.

  "He hasn’t hurt anyone. He hasn’t even tried." She was going to say more, took a breath to do so, but Xander offered words before Buffy could.

  "Yet." Xander had said immediately.

  "That’s the word you keep skipping. Yet. And he kills someone we love? Can you live with that? If he kills Dawn?" Spike felt something inside him go very still. Not fear. Not even confusion. A gut instinct that made him turn. This was the math. This was how it ended. The man had known it the moment he had seen the men trained crossbows on him and wore murderous looks for Dawn. Spike was a risk. A liability. A loaded weapon nobody remembered how to disarm. Spike made for the door.

  "Look, you don't wana make Dawn hate you, she thinks he's a good guy, I get it." Xander said, and whatever Xander indicated then while he and Buffy were together, it made Buffy inhale sharply, her heart slowing, steady, the vampire heard it and his muscles coiled by pure instinct. Spike's nostrils flared in irritation, his lips pressed together and his jaw clenched so tight that the muscle jumped before he could try and help himself.

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  "I can be the one to do it, make Dawn mad at me, then you can pretend you-" Spike stepped out of the shadows. Started down the stairs. Deliberate. Letting each footfall announce him. Xander and Buffy both turned, Xander’s face went white. Then red. He had already been holding a wooden stake in his hand and his fingers tensed around it until his knuckles whitened.

  "You want to finish that thought?" Spike asked, eyes sharp as he glared at the whelp, but his voice was low. Calm. A deep rumble, like thunder that heralded a deadly storm. Buffy stepped half in front of Xander. Like she was protecting him, from Spike.

  "Go on. Say it to my face." Spike spoke, didn't know what came over him. He'd been ready to accept that he was a loose cannon. He'd listened when Buffy told Spike he was a monster.

  "It'll be worth a laugh." But when Xander had said that? That he'd stake Spike so that Buffy didn't have to, so that it would be Xander hurting Dawn instead of Buffy with her own hand, that had triggered him. The deceit that Xander had so carelessly offered up like it was normal, that made Spike's jaw clench enough it almost ached. Something about the way that would hurt Dawn, about how Xander pretended, bringing in deceit in the masquerade of nobility, it made Spike want to walk up and fight. Gone was the man who knew not what his purpose was as Spike glared at Xander where he stood behind Buffy as a shield. Xander's jaw worked. Trying to find where his courage's gone, no doubt. Spike thought, not so easy to kill a man when he was standing in front of you, rather than laying unawares during the daylight.

  "You’re a liability. She should have never given you her blood. Buffy should have staked you when you were unconscious or when your chip was misfiring. And she’s too soft-hearted to see it." Xander said at last, and when Spike heard it? It wasn't so horrifying. Now it was said out loud, it was a fraction of order, added to the decimals of chaos that had dominated in great degrees over Spike since the moment he had awakened.

  "Soft-hearted?" Spike scoffed. His mouth curved, one sharp incisor briefly visible, the motion holding no humour in it.

  "Mate, she's already promised to stake me good and proper the second I so much as twitch wrong. What does the Slayer need you to remind her for?" Spike said, leaning closer, glancing to Buffy as he spoke over her, only briefly checking that Buffy didn't have something to add to that, because Spike was fairly done with hearing Xander yell his qualms into the air.

  "Right bloody bold of you to stand behind the lady, and call her soft..." Spike snarled, he saw Buffy's hand come up to him though Spike chose not to take his eyes off of Xander. Spike had been determined to protect Buffy after all - but when her warm hand pressed to his chest, it made the anger falter. Xander’s eyes flicked to her. Back to Spike.

  "You drank Dawn's blood." Xander said when he saw the vampire's anger had faltered, jumping at the opportunity, hitting Spike with that when it might hurt the most, capitalising on the way Buffy stood beside him. Spike's eyes must have widened, because Xander seemed bolstered. Xander kept speaking.

  "She doesn't want to hurt Dawn. But the thing is, we're all hip to how this is gonna go. You've got a taste for her blood now, not just Buffy's. And she's just blinded by guilt. By gratitude. By whatever messed-up thing you two had going before you fell off that tower." Xander said, pulling on memories that Spike just didn't have. But he'd misstepped. Spike had decided, already, and nothing Xander Harris said about the past would change how Spike was feeling at present.

  "I would never hurt her." Spike ground out, leaning forward, close enough that Xander was forced to instinctively back up a step. He'd drawn on memories that Spike didn't have, calling on the idea that if the vampire had had a taste for the teenage Dawn's blood, that he would inevitably go after Dawn again. But Spike, Spike felt something cold and sharp twist in his gut. Not memory. Just… instinct. Spike would never hurt her. Spike would protect her, and Dawn. Spike was protecting Buffy.

  "I don't remember falling." Spike said, the lull created by his convictions used to speak, it felt grounding. For the first time since waking up, the man felt like he was holding onto something. Something tangible, real, measurable. There was something of value in how he acted, even if it couldn't make a change for what he'd been.

  "I don't remember whose blood I drank, who I killed, what was going on between me and Buffy." The vampire assumed, that had meant fighting. What else could a 'messed-up thing' between Buffy and him mean? Spike took a deep breath - but before Harris could speak, Spike went on quickly.

  "But I remember you firing a crossbow bolt into my side, when Dawnie was there right in it, protecting her when you had itchy trigger fingers! It was the first bloody thing I did, waking up with nothing but pain and the ringing in my ears. You call that what you like, but I know what it is. Even when I didn't remember promising - without knowing why - I’d keep the Bit safe! So if you think, for one sodding second, that I'll let you stand there and threaten to lie to Dawn, to make yourself feel better; because you're scared?" Spike's voice went icy then, the sort of winter quiet, that forced one to pay close heed or risk getting stuck in that storm.

  "You're dead wrong." His gaze never left Xander’s. Xander’s hand tightened on the stake. He looked to Spike as if he was going to make a try for it. Spike wouldn't let him. He had to protect them, he would do anything it takes to protect them, Dawn, and Buffy. Spike's fingers coiled, Buffy moved then, fast, her back to Spike and her hands closing around the wrists of Xander.

  "Alright that's enough." Buffy had spoken and Xander, he stared at her. Betrayed.

  "You’re choosing him over us?" He pulled his wrists out of her hands and backed a step away.

  "I’m choosing not to murder someone who hasn’t done anything to deserve it." Buffy said, and Spike saw the protest already forming on the whelp, Xander.

  "He's not a person-" Xander had almost said but Buffy's voice cut in, a hurt sound as it rang in Spike's ears from where he stood behind her.

  "Don't." Her voice cracked on that word. Just a fraction. “

  "If he turns - if Spike remembers and he’s the monster we're afraid of - I’ll do it myself. But it won't just be because of you feeling fear." Buffy said, nailing down her decision, decided after all she had heard Spike had said. Spike, for his part, stepped up behind her. He'd back her up. Xander looked between them. Face crumpling.

  "You’re going to regret this." Xander said spitefully, pointing his head at Spike, who did not move, save for his sharp eyes growing narrow.

  "Maybe." Buffy let her arms hang loosely, not arguing with Xander any more than she did already, not naive enough to think that Spike was going to be safe with her. Spike was glad for it, he didn't want her to believe he was no threat any longer. He might be.

  "But not tonight." Buffy added, the evening coming on: daytime had conceded, the light would fade and give night it's way, as Xander exhaled hard and turned. The daytime had no place in there then. Xander walked out, the door slammed behind him.

  The house felt bigger when he had left. Spike stayed where he was, glancing over at the closed door, then at Buffy. Buffy turned to face Spike, finding that he'd just been at her side, ready to fight if it meant he could defend something. It was without much thought that Spike gave a nod then, respectful, polite almost, in a way that, it seemed, she hadn't expected of him. Wrong thing to do, again. He turned without a word, Spike thought, she must have been furious, he ought to go back, he hadn't meant to make a scene, to make things worse.

  "You didn’t have to come down, you know that, don't you?" Buffy said. Spike paused on the first steps, half turned back over his shoulder to her.

  "You didn't need to do all that. For me." Buffy said. So Spike turned more fully, he'd try to explain, though it was difficult for the blank slate of his mind to quantify and Spike barely understood himself.

  "Bothered me, hearing him trying to trick you into doing something." He said, arms crossed as he lent against the banister of the stairs, Spike not knowing exactly how to put it; but he never pretended to be anything he's not. Spike could at least say he was being honest.

  "I meant what I said." Buffy said, apparently, Buffy was trying to be honest, too.

  "Spike, if it comes to it, I'll do it myself." She said. It made him feel that sense of order, again. Spike nodded once, slow.

  "Good." Spike said, made it simple. He wasn't going to argue, not in any particular hurry for that to happen mind, but it was good. Buffy had seemed to Spike to be someone willing to do what was needed.

  "He’s not wrong to be scared." Buffy said. It made sense. Spike frowned.

  "Yeah, so I keep being told." He said, straightening his arms and leaning off the banister. Feeling that then familiar frustration of nearly all things being confusing, Spike decided not to pick at that particular matter any more at that moment. He was going to head back up the stairs but Buffy, she spoke before he'd turned again.

  "But he’s wrong about you." At that, Spike looked at her again. Met her eyes. Green eyes, that had been so fierce and sure.

  "You seem sure." He told her, seeing the light in her.

  "Even if you might not be." He said, Buffy was sure of herself, but Spike wasn't convinced that was such a good thing. But it seemed there was naught else to speak on the matter. So he then he turned. Started back up the stairs.

  "I-I was going to go shopping! If, you need anything..." Buffy called out, Spike finding the words so unexpected, he needed to glance over his shoulder to make sure that his vampire ears hadn't just been hearing things.

  "I'll think on it. Let you know." He assured her, then he kept walking. Up to the dark room. Closed the door. To the bed. Sat against it. For the first time since waking, he didn’t try to remember. The man didn't want to recall all what he'd done. Not any more. Spike just waited, for the next slight. For the moment the past finally caught up and tried to tear everything down. For the next stab of him, of what he was, Spike sat there not knowing his self and felt that his life was going to always be cursed. There was a man who held the memories, ones he didn't have. Spike had felt like he himself was haunting himself.