Angel took yet another worried glance in Spike’s direction.  He looked asleep but…  The keening had intensified to something eerie and unnerving.  Tears squeezed past the closed eyelids and swept over the younger vampire’s face.

“Spike?”  No answer, nothing beyond the keening.  “Spike,” slightly harder.  Angel reached across and grasped Spike’s forearm, giving a brisk shake.

“No,” came the hushed, semi-cognisant response.

“No what?”

“Is death…”

“Spike?”

“Forever?  Not forever.  No.”

“Is death forever?” Angel frowned.  What kind of question was that, coming from a vampire?

“No,” Spike pleaded.  “Not forever.”

“Spike, get back here,” Angel shouted.  “William!”

Spike jerked to full consciousness, looked around himself with panicked eyes.

“Fuck, no.”

“Were you asleep?”

“What?”

“Were you asleep?”

“No.  No.  I was…”  William?  Living his fear.  Living his…world?  “I don’t know.”  Spike wiped his face, tipped his head back, staring at the roof of the car, breathing hard, trying to calm himself.  “We’re not there.”

“Soon.”

“Oh, fuck.”

“So, if you weren’t asleep…?”

“I was…”  William.  Living his fear.  “Just getting spacey,” Spike responded shakily, not prepared to give William up to Angel.  “But I saw…”  What if he knows?  What if William knows?  He knows that Xander…  There was a long thought-riddled pause.  “I couldn’t see Xander’s face.  I knew it was him but I couldn’t see his face.  It’s not that anything was in the way.  I just… couldn’t see.”

“You’ll see the real thing soon.”

“What if—”  The panting renewed, Spike helpless to prevent it.  “He’s dead.  I’m too late, he’s dead.”

“Someone would phone.”

“He’s dead.”

“Stop it, you don’t know that.”

“But we – I…  I saw…  I didn’t see…”

“Spike,” Angel began wearily.  “You don’t have premonitions.  You assume, you fantasise, you dread, you dramatise, you overreact.  No precognition, visions, extra-sensory perception…”

“Fuck you.”

“Time and place, boy.”

Spike glared and a relieved Angel smirked.  The smirk disappeared fast as Spike punched Angel spitefully hard in the thigh, all sharp knuckles.

“Can’t you tell me some lies, you bastard!”

“Lies?”

“You’re not about to get precious are you?  You killed, maimed, raped and tortured your way around Europe but the whitest…”

“He’s going to be fine,” Angel butted in.  “Absolutely fine.”

“How absolutely?”

“Awake before we get there, on his feet by tomorrow.”

“You think?”

“Home by the end of the week.”

Spike threw him a withering look.

“Fucking liar.”

…

The moment Spike closed his eyes he was sucked back into the nightmare scenario: beside the bed, holding Xander’s cooling, lifeless hand, still unable to see the face of his love however hard he tried.  No comfort to be found, he scrabbled around in his own mind, yelling furiously for William to bring the perverse fantasy to a halt before both of them lost their tentative grip on sanity.

No answer and Spike was trapped and he was helpless and his Xander was dead.  This is not reality.  William’s reality is…  This is not…  Spike forced himself to take some control, to not be helpless, carefully putting aside Xander’s hand and rising, turning and finding, not Angel behind him, but himself, the core of his humanity, the man he last saw in a mirror over a century before.  Spike and William stared at one another for a long, shell-shocked moment before saying, in perfect unison…

“Make this right.”

Spike wanted to tell William that he didn’t know how, that he wasn’t the one who made everything better, Xander was the one who made everything better, but his doppelganger’s eyes were empty of hope, pleading for a scrap of reassurance.

“Xander,” they said together, a statement of love, loss, need, desperation, harmony.  “Xander,” who made them whole and healed them and gave them as much life as they would ever have.

Spike reached forward to touch the pale face; his fingers sank into the image, inadvertently destroying its cohesion.  Symbolic.  Was it symbolic?  Xander’s face was…  Spike turned back to the figure on the bed, its features unimaginable, face unimaginable so he couldn’t see it, and William expected him to…

“I can’t make this right,” he whispered hoarsely.  “This is your world.  You’ve killed him.  You make it right.”

“I cannot.  I must follow your heart.”

“Do I believe he’s gone?  That I’ve lost him?  Do I believe?”

“Make this right.”

“I can’t.”

“Then…there is no hope.  No hope.”

The damaged, insubstantial form of William disintegrated; a glance proved Spike to be quite alone with Xander, the room itself melting into a shapeless, timeless void.

It was a bad dream in slow motion.  Spike attempted to lift Xander’s hand from the sheets but it was crumbling into dust, into the dust of a long time dead, and Spike’s attempts to hold it together, make it entire, make it strong and intact and part of his Xander were futile, and Xander was long dead and slipping away and…

A resounding slap across his face brought Spike to full consciousness.  He gasped, dragging rough breaths into his trembling body.

“You were screaming,” Angel told him grimly.

“Don’t let me close my eyes again,” Spike said in the hoarse whisper he’d brought from inside his head.  “Angel…”

“You’re okay, Spike.”

“Xander’s gone.  Dust.”

“Someone would call.”

Spike nodded, felt more streaks of wet on his cheeks.  As surreptitiously as possible he let his hand creep toward Angel, taking the hem of his grand-sire’s jacket and screwing it into his fist.  Angel decided not to notice, in much the same way as he refused to notice Spike shaking all the way to their destination.

…

The hospital was nothing like he – William – had envisioned, Spike kept reminding himself as they exited the elevator on the third floor.  The directions to find Xander had been given to Angel and, at this precise moment, the older vampire’s hand was wrapped around Spike’s wrist in a bid to stop him chasing off and wildly searching for his partner.  But Spike recognised voices and tugged Angel in their direction, listening intently.

“Whoever runs that site, I want them out.”  Patrick.  “Let it be known that I’m looking for a resignation, I’ll give them a reference, but I want them out.  Otherwise I’ll find them and sack them and make sure they’re unemployable in this state.”

“Pat, they didn’t mean for this to happen.”  Jake.

“What then?  Just a bit of fun?  They didn’t have any right to put that material about Alex on a public website!  Respect for his privacy aside, it made him a target for exactly the kind of scum that caught up with him.”

“We don’t even know…”

“Humour me.  Get rid of the site, get rid of the people involved.”

“Pat…  I don’t want to believe that any one of our people would hurt Alex.”

Patrick and Jake looked over to the doorway as Spike and Angel entered the waiting room.

“Spike…”  And Patrick was across the room, taking Spike’s freezing hands in his own and automatically rubbing them.  “Alex is next door.”  Patrick used the contact to pull back Spike before he had a chance to dash off to find Xander.  “They asked us to leave so they could carry out a few tests,” Patrick explained in a low, calm tone.

“He’s alive,” Spike said haltingly.

“Yes, he’s alive,” Patrick assured emphatically.

“Out of danger?” Angel asked.

Patrick was unable to speak, his hands stilling as he gripped Spike’s in mutual support.

“It’s not good,” Jake answered after taking a deep breath, face becoming a little greyer.

Angel nodded thoughtfully.  Spike pulled away to turn his back on them and lean against the wall that separated him and Xander.

There was a brittle pause before the other men finally introduced themselves to one another, Angel claiming to be Spike’s cousin to make the connection a little easier.  Patrick seemed obscurely familiar to Angel; Spike had jokingly insisted that this was Xander’s big brother who had been stolen away by the faeries at birth, but beyond the colouring Angel couldn’t see a resemblance.  Besides, this man had soft edges and a quality of peace about him, even in these circumstances, that Angel could never reconcile with the Xander he knew.  He smiled to himself, thinking of the spitfire he had accepted as his grand-childe’s own.

“This is my fault,” Spike said to nobody in particular.  “I should have been here.”

“You can’t blame yourself,” Jake responded immediately.

Spike turned back to them with a frown.

“Can’t I?”

“Alex wouldn’t want that.”

“I should’ve been here.”

“What could you have done?” Jake asked, unknowingly salting Spike’s rawest wound.  “He was on site, you wouldn’t have been with him.”

“It’s like you’ve always said,” Spike told Angel with a bitter smile.  “I’m good for nothing.”

“Don’t do this,” Angel said softly, crossing and laying a hand on Spike’s shoulder.  The younger vampire shrugged it off.

“You’re so cold.  Xander’s warm.  I need warm.”

Spike glanced expectantly over at Patrick, watching as the man understatedly opened his arms to him.  The expression on his face said that he didn’t doubt for a moment Spike’s response to the offer, dark eyes welcoming as the vampire made his way across the room.  Without hesitation Spike slid his arms around   Patrick’s neck and moved close, letting the human hold him, shivering in waves as the warmth seeped into him, knowing it had been a comfort for Xander more times than his partner would be likely to tell.

“It’ll be okay,” Patrick reassured him.  “We’ll get through this.  Anything you want, I’m here for you.  We’re here for you.”

Spike risked closing his eyes as Patrick’s hands stroked comforting circles on his back; he felt Angel’s stare cutting into him like a laser, and knew that he was looking for William.  But William had, thankfully, withdrawn and taken his nightmare with him.

“Holy shit, guys, I got here fast as I could,” Rafe announced as he chose that moment to arrive, throwing off his coat and hurrying straight to Spike.  The vampire felt a massive hand squeeze his shoulder and recognised it as family.  “Spike, you doing okay?  This is…  Jesus H Christ, I’d like to get my hands on those…those…”

Angel was just enjoying a similar scenario in his head when Rafe bustled over to introduce himself, shaking Angel’s hand until he’d loosened every joint up to the collar bone.  Angel studied the man with interest: there weren’t many people who made Angel feel physically small but this mountain of a man did.  Face of a bruiser but eyes full of pain for his friend.

“I can’t get my head round this.  Who would want to hurt our Lex?  Like, if they didn’t steal anything…”

Jake handed him a hard copy of one page of the website Spike had found.

“You think this’d be enough to stir something up?  Cora had it sent over.  She…wondered.”

Rafe took the page and sat, scowling at the content as he read.

“What is it?” Angel asked.

“There’s a site on the internet for the employees of our company.  Someone wrote about Alex and Spike.  The original piece was harmless enough…”  Jake caught Patrick’s glare.  “…although it’s a gross invasion of privacy.  Some of the later comments were pretty nasty.  All anonymous, naturally.  Posted since the last time any of us looked at the site; we didn’t know they were there or we’d have dealt with it.”  Jake went to the farthest chair and dropped into it, face in hands.  “I can’t believe someone we know hurt him.  I don’t want that to be true.”

Rafe finished reading and handed the paper to Angel.

“So what?” he muttered.  “So fucking what?  He likes a guy.  So fucking what?”

Angel read: ‘Bad news for anyone still hoping to snare the company’s most eligible bachelor.  Sources tell the editor that Sexy Lexy has a new lurve interest: slim, blond and beautiful.  And know what, girls?  You can forget ‘why not me?’ because this babe allegedly has the equipment we keep in the bottom drawer as standard fittings.’  Ignoring the rest of the paragraph he looked at the comments posted.  A couple from women tempted him to smile, but he was grim-faced as he read the homophobic barbs.

“You seem pretty sure that Xander’s lifestyle instigated the attack.”  Angel directed the comment to Patrick.

“One of the men was heard to use the phrase, ‘Dirty fucking queer’ repeatedly,” Patrick said through clenched teeth.  “That seems quite conclusive.”

“But that doesn’t necessarily point to the website’s involvement.”

Patrick took a deep breath, tried to be rational.

“I know.  But who else knew?  Where would they find out?”

“Or it may simply have been used as an insult.”

“Okay, yes, yes.  I’m just…sick about it.”

Pause.

“Who heard?”

“The night-watchman of the site Alex was visiting.  He interrupted the assault.  The police think if he hadn’t…”  Patrick’s voice trailed away; feeling a tremor he hugged Spike a little harder.

“This site still up?” Angel asked, moving back onto slightly safer ground after seeing Spike’s reaction, scenting the escalation of his fear.

“At the moment.”

“I’ll get a friend of ours to take a look at it.  See if she can trace these messages back to the senders.  Spike, I’m going to use the payphone to call Willow.”

Spike didn’t show any indication that he’d heard.  Angel waited patiently for a response: even if it was William – and if these circumstances couldn’t send Spike into retreat what could? – he’d eventually get something.  All the time he felt an unnaturally passive jealousy prodding at his chest.  Spike had once said that Patrick treated them all like his kids.  What he’d failed to tell Angel was that Spike behaved like his kid in return.  The human’s ease as he comforted Spike was unfathomable to the older vampire.  It would be a wonderful thing to be able to cope so effortlessly.

“Patrick called her, remember?  She’ll be on her way,” Spike volunteered flatly as he reluctantly pulled back from the heat.  “You may as well wait until she arrives.”  His eyes fixed on Patrick’s, and he almost recoiled from the sympathy he found there.  “Can’t get warm.”

Patrick instantly grasped the edges of his jacket front and held them open.  Spike slid his arms inside and around the man’s wonderfully hot torso.  Patrick wrapped the fleece as far around Spike as it would go then went back to circling his palm on Spike’s back.

“Patrick, I’ve noticed the way you are with your friends.  Has anyone ever jumped to conclusions and threatened you?”

“You mean…?”  Patrick seemed genuinely taken aback by the suggestion.  The motion of his hand on Spike’s back came to a halt.  “Is that how it looks?” he asked Angel.

“It could to some.”

“Fucking morons,” Rafe muttered under his breath.

“But…”  Angel watched Patrick’s shock turn to anger turn to resolve.  “No, I’ve never been threatened.  And, you know what?  This is who I am.  People want to get the wrong idea they can, but I’m not going to back off from my family because of some – some…”

“Fucking morons.”

“Precisely.  Spike, you never thought that, did you?”  Shake of the head, further burrow into the heat.  Patrick’s hand started circling again.  “God almighty.  What went wrong with people like that?”

“Fucking morons,” Rafe concluded this stage of the conversation.

Angel sat and looked at the picture on the web page.  Someone had caught Xander very cleverly.  On one of the work sites, obviously, as he was wearing a hard-hat and high visibility jacket; his body was facing to the left but his head was turning as he focused on someone to the right of the photographer, and he was on the verge of laughter.  Eyes bright and full of humour, the well-shaped mouth just starting to curl into a smile.  Angel conceded that the young man was indeed quite lovely, and felt sorry that he only ever saw him stressed and/or glowering.  Still, Xander stressed and/or glowering was rather impressive too.

At some point Spike had noticed him looking at the picture and come to join him, radiating the fast dissipating warmth he’d garnered from Patrick.

“Great picture,” Angel said as Spike lovingly touched the image.

“You never see him like that,” Spike reiterated Angel’s own thoughts.  “You never see him really happy.  But he can be…radiant.  For me.  He’s the beacon in my darkness.  Without his light I’m lost.”  Spike took the picture from Angel and studied it more closely, smiling.  “He’s beautiful, isn’t he?”  He wasn’t aware of the three humans nodding their agreement.  “He doesn’t believe me when I tell him.  He’s never going to get over what those drunken fucks did to him.  They didn’t deserve him for a minute.  They never deserved to walk this plain.  Except they birthed this one.”  Spike let Angel take the page from him.  “Did you know that when he was living in that bloody awful basement…”

“Spike.  No.”  Spike looked at Angel and waited for an explanation.  “You’re being indiscreet,” Angel finally supplied.

“Right.”  A long pause, lasting until Spike turned to look hard at Angel.  “You have to love your child.  You love your child.”

Angel met the challenge in Spike’s eyes and responded gently.

“Yes.  Yes, you do.”

The grudging acceptance on Spike’s face gave Angel the courage to slide an arm around the thin shoulders and pull him close, experiencing great satisfaction as the resistance faded to nothing and his grand-childe finally leant on him for support and comfort.

Click of a door, voices in the corridor, and they were all on their feet.  The doctor appeared, was introduced to Spike, Angel and Rafe, and began to explain Xander’s condition.  But all Spike wanted was to get to his partner, pushing past the doctor and into Xander’s room, very deliberately shutting the door behind him and hoping the others would take the hint.  As he faced the bed all urgency dissolved, replaced by another crippling bout of fear.  It was all he could do to walk the distance to Xander’s side without his legs giving out.

“Darling Xander,” he murmured as he ghosted his fingertips over the ravaged face.  Darling Xander was virtually unrecognisable.  Darling Xander was destroyed.  A sheet was draped at Xander’s waist, leaving his entire upper torso exposed.  Rapid, flighty glances, all that Spike could stomach, hinted at the extent of the injuries to Xander’s body.  “I’m frightened to touch you much.  Don’t want to cause you pain.  Everything must be pain right now and—”  Sharp, sharp breath.  “Is this how you felt?  When I showed up?  Did you feel like you’d never be able to close your eyes again without seeing something that made you want to scream?”

Unable to stop himself, avoiding the extensive damage and the ventilator tubing, Spike kissed and stroked the isolated patches of unmarked skin before curiously ruffling the goatee and smiling sadly.  Voice trembling:

“Bet you looked smashing, love.  Before this.”  Leaning down, Spike pressed his face into Xander’s hair, smelling blood and street grime and gasoline and antiseptic and beneath all that was the scent of his Xander.  “Can you hear me, Xander?  Know I love you.  Hear me and know I love you.”

He didn’t want to cry.  If Xander could hear, was aware of him, he needed to be strong and positive and offer the kind of support that Xander had provided when Spike had been in too similar a situation.  But if the sight of Xander wasn’t enough to break his resolve, his other senses forced him to bear the scent of corruption, the appalling sounds of a failing body struggling to function despite massive injury.

“Oh, my love,” he whispered as the tears began to fall.  “My love.”

…

An hour of privacy, broken only by a nurse taking various readings, was followed by a light tap on the door; Angel peered in.

“Spike?”

“Yeah.  Come on.”

Spike sat beside Xander, clutching his hand, watching Angel’s silent approach and looking for the moment when he saw Xander, appreciating the fury beneath the surface as the older vampire’s demon reacted much as Spike’s had to this violation of its own.  Angel dismissed the inner voice that told him he had no right to and took Xander’s free hand, stroking the bruised flesh in a copy of Spike’s actions.

“Want me to tell you?”

“No.”  Pause.  “Yes, you’d better.”

“Firstly…  It isn’t the medication keeping him under.”

“I know.  Coma.  I can feel.”

“The internal damage…”

“I was right the first time,” Spike cut in sharply.  “I don’t want to know.”

Angel nodded his acceptance.

“The doctor said he’s surprisingly strong.  Strong but deteriorating fast.  She was trying to say he should already be dead.”  No response.  “How much of your blood does he take?”

“Some.”  Spike shrugged, knowing his perceived evasiveness would be irritating Angel no end.  “Can you imagine having him and bringing it all to a halt to check how much blood he’s taking?”

“I’m not criticising you.  I’m trying to figure how we can get some more into Xander before his systems fail.”  Spike looked up, wide-eyed, mouth open.  “That is not a good look on you, Spike.”

“What?  Is my amazement showing?  Amazement that my arse-wipe of a sire could be…”

“Don’t go there,” Angel growled, hint of yellow staining his irises.  “Xander first, fight later.”

Spike took a breath, tried to think straight.

“Would it work?”

“Might send him into shock, but if he’s used to it in quantity…”  Angel left the statement hanging.

“He’s used to it.”  Something occurred to Spike.  “Your blood is stronger.”

“Yes, but it’s foreign to him.”

“Not to me.  I can feed from you…”

“And Xander can reap the benefits through your blood.”  Angel ran a finger over the ventilator tube.  “We need this out.”

Spike forced down the sudden panic.

“Can’t we…I d’know…inject him?”

“That really will kill him.  This has to go.”

“It’s too much of a risk.  That ventilator might be all that’s keeping him going.”

“But if he could hang on long enough for you to feed him…  Look, Spike, it is a risk, but he’s going to die anyway.  If by some miracle he doesn’t he’ll probably wish he had.”

“You don’t know that.”

Angel’s hand hovered over the right side of Xander’s face as he recalled the doctor’s words.

“The neural damage is extensive.  I do know this side of his face will never bear expression again, and I do know he’ll lose the sight in this eye.  Your blood can stop that happening.  His brain may be damaged, his spine certainly is.  Look at him, Spike.  Look at him.”

“All right, you’ve made your point!”  Spike’s voice cracked; he had no choice but to gamble with Xander’s life.  “We’ll do it.  But after Red gets here.  In case it goes wrong.  She’ll need to say goodbye to him, even if it’s like this.”

“Willow should be here soon.  Beth and…umm…”

“Moira.”

“…Moira arrived ten minutes ago.”  Spike nodded, glad of their presence even if he couldn’t bear to face them right now.  “Spike.  There’s one final option.”

“No.  He told me he didn’t want that.”

“These aren’t the circumstances…”

“The answer’s no!  Why the fuck do you care anyway?”

Angel swept around the bed to Spike’s side, seeing his boy flinch away before he could stop himself.  He knelt beside Spike and waited until the younger vampire recovered enough to scowl at him.

“You need him.  Therefore I need him.  You claimed him.  Therefore I claimed him.  You care for him.  Therefore…”

“I love him,” Spike taunted.  “Let’s see you therefore that.”

“Do you want me to turn him?”

“Do you want me to rip your throat out?”

“You don’t have to lose him.”

“Turning him is losing him.  You can’t understand.  That woman of yours can be so bloody strange you wouldn’t notice she was turned until she explored your jugular.  You don’t understand what makes him Xander.  It can’t be replaced by a demon.”

“But with the right magic…”

“No.  It’s what he tried to tell me, what I tried not to see because I was desperate to hang onto him.  No magic can guarantee it’s him.”  Spike’s voice dropped even lower.  “If it’s not him I’m finished.”

Angel stood and wandered back to the opposite side of the bed, staring at Xander, unaware that he was stroking the still hand again.  Spike witnessed the caress and fought back a possessive snarl, studying his grand-sire and understanding the expression on his face.

“You want to save him.  I think I know why.  But it can’t be at any price.”  Angel gave a brief nod, following the instruction that was Spike’s quick gesture toward the door.  “Let me know when Willow gets here.”

Another nod and Angel started to leave, pausing as he gripped the door handle.

“I’m sorry, Spike,” he said under his breath, knowing his grand-childe would hear.  “About Xander.  About…”

“Leave us alone, eh?” Spike replied as quietly.  “Might be all the time we have.”

Back to the loneliness and the horrific sucking and puffing of the ventilator, insistent beeping and humming of the other machines that Spike couldn’t bear to even look at in case he made sense of something and was told what he didn’t want to know.  He moved his chair, got as close to Xander as he could without disturbing him in any way, leant on the bed next to him.  As his fingers rested on the pulse in Xander’s neck he quietly, stiltedly began to sing…

“You see this guy, this guy’s in love with you…”

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