Doyle had never tried to take control of one of Drusilla's chimeras before, but desperate moments called for desperate measures. He felt stronger now than he'd ever felt since he died.

He didn't know how closely Drusilla watched the goings-on in her crazy little world, but he could be fairly sure that if he tried to contact Cordelia in his own form, she would stop him before he had the chance to say or do much of anything. In the form of Spike, perhaps he might be able to get through to her.

It was worth a try.

She couldn't say that she cared any more, either. She had lost everything she could imagine losing, her clothes, her pride, everything, and she was still stuck here in the darkness, going nowhere.

What more was left for her to give up now?

Lighting up another cigarette, the vampire asked conversationally: "So, what finally got to that mick of yours? I'd guess from your little running commentary to yourself that he's the reason why you're running this gauntlet of Dru's."

Cordelia didn't look up. There wasn't much point; it was too dark to see anything. She was still sitting with her arms wrapped around her body, waiting for something to happen.

Well, this was something, she supposed, and listening to Spike's blathering probably qualified as a form of torture. Wasn't she the lucky one, then?

After a moment, she muttered sullenly: "Not one of you."

"What is it you think you're going to accomplish, here?"

"Why should you care? You would have killed him yourself as soon as you had the chance."

"Just curious. Nothing else to do here in the caverns of my sweet Drusilla's fractured mind, now is there?"

"You can go play in her caverns all you want, Spike. Go for it. If you're not here to move this along, then why be here at all?"

Spike chuckled softly. "I may be dead, but I can still appreciate a good irony, now and then. Not to mention the beauty of the female form."

"Then don't mention it."

"Well then. Do you smoke?"

"Duh, no. Yellow teeth and phlegmy coughs do not enhance one's lifestyle. Provided, of course, that one has a life."

"Well, if we think about it a bit, we can probably make a drink or two appear. This place is convenient that way."

"Oh, sure. Like I'm going to have a drink with a vampire while I'm stark naked. I don't think so."

"Have you tried wishing yourself a robe or something? Might work."

"You're missing the point, Spike. Which is a shame, because I'd love to introduce you to something pointed, up close and personal."

"All right, tell me then. Nothing better to do. What is the point, as you put it?"

"I'm supposed to be giving up things. That's what I'm here to do. If I wish myself clothes and a drink, then I might as well forget about the whole thing."

"Would that be so bad?"

"What, dying? I guess you should know, right?"

"No. Forgetting."

Cordelia's head lifted sharply. "Oh, I get it now. That's what you're supposed to take away from me, isn't it?"

"What do you mean?"

"Don't play innocent with me, Spike. She knows that's what I'm still holding on to, doesn't she? That's the last thing for her to take away."

"What is?"

"My memories. But if I forget him, then what would any of this matter? What would anything matter, if I don't remember why I'm here?"

"Maybe that's what you call the point."

Cordelia half-laughed, harshly. "Spike, you have no idea. My body is stuck in a forever vision, and if I'm never going to get out of it, if I'm going to be coma girl, drooling my way to an ugly and disgusting death, at least it ought to mean something. At least I should be dying for something.... like he did."

"Do you think that made him happy, then?"

"Happy?" Cordelia flared back. "He's dead! But at least he got to choose, he had the chance to die as a hero, and he took it. If anybody deserves to come back, he does. He earned it. I'm just going to end up dying like a vegetable in a hospital bed. Where's the meaning in that?"

"What do you think he would do about it, if he could?" Spike asked quietly, in a voice surprisingly empty of sarcasm.

"What he would do? He's the goddamned hero. He's the one who would rather burn up in front of my eyes than let Angel go. Oh, I'm sure he'd be only too quick to rush right in if he could, save me and disappear again. Why doesn't anybody ask me what I want? Don't bother answering that, I already know. Nobody cares."

"You might be wrong on that part."

Cordelia was silent for a moment, and then sighed. "Spike, if giving up my memories of him would bring him back, I'd do it. But once I forget him, how am I going to know what I'm supposed to do, and why? How am I going to understand why I'm here at all?"

"You'll have to ask Dru about that one, but don't expect the answer to make sense."

He moved toward her, and she shrank back further, wrapping her arms more tightly around her legs. "What are you going to do to me?"

"I won't do anything unless you ask. Would you like to forget?"

"Sometimes I really wish I could. Sometimes when I wake up in the middle of the night and I can hear him scream in my mind, see him dying in front of me .... sometimes I really want to forget."

"I may be able to take your memories away, but only if you want to give them up."

He sat down on the floor next to her, but made no effort to touch her. She said nothing for a few minutes, then asked: "If you start taking away my memories, what happens then? Do I forget only some things, or does my mind get wiped out completely? Because if I'm going to go crazy from these visions anyway, maybe it doesn't really matter."

"I don't really know what happens next, luv," he told her honestly.

"Don't call me that. That's like .... like...."

"Like what?"

"Like when your good buddy Angelus made fun of him."

"Of him?"

"Doyle of course, idiot. He used to call me 'princess.' That's what brought the nightmares back again .... "

She began rocking softly back and forth again. "When he was all evil again, you know, he said, 'I'm nothin' but ashes now, princess.' And he smiled."

"Cordelia...."

"Spike, if you can take away that memory, that memory of watching him die .... go ahead."

"I'll try."

Very gently, he moved his fingers toward her forehead, seeing and feeling the rawness of that scene within her mind. He heard the sound of that scream again, echoing down through the months that had passed since, and all the emptiness that it had left behind inside her.

"I didn't know.... he didn't know."

"Just do what you're going to do, Spike. Take what you're going to take. Just do it, and get it over with."

In the moment when he reached out for that memory, and began to pull it away from her, their minds connected, and Cordelia gasped. He could tell that she was about to say something, and quickly, he placed his fingers over her mouth.

"Shhh. Don't say anything."

She fell silent, although he could see the confusion of partial recognition in her mind. He tried to be gentle as he worked on absorbing that memory from her, into himself. He had never done anything like this before, and he wasn't sure how, but he'd had access to her mind for months, walking her dreams. He knew where the memory was.

He just wasn't certain that he could remove it without doing more harm to her already overburdened mind.

As he began to try pulling the memory loose, drawing it away from her, she whimpered softly, and then sagged against him. He put his arms around her then, and realized that he was actually touching her, at last.

The feeling of touching her skin, of her nude body so close to him, overwhelmed him then. Even though the arms he put around her were Spike's arms and not his own, he could touch her, the one thing he had yearned to do for so very long, and it was too much for him. He held her close, pressing her to him, and she turned her face into his shoulder and let him hug her tightly. He felt her beginning to cry, and he couldn't stand it. As her body shook in his arms, he closed his eyes and pressed his lips against her face.

Her eyes opened abruptly, filled with tears and realization. All pretense of being Spike fled from him then, and as his lips neared hers, a faint, pale violet light began to glow between them, just enough that she could see his features changing. With desperate urgency, she threw her arms around him and met his lips with hers.

And as she did, the light brightened, and she collapsed, unconscious, into his arms.

Then the light went out.

In the darkness, as he held her limp form, he heard the sound of clapping. Then a reddish-tinged light began to fill the space around him, and he saw her.

Drusilla was standing there, clapping her hands in delight, watching him with a proud smile.

"That's a good dolly. Come to mummy now."

And with a sick sense of despair, Doyle realized that he had done exactly what Drusilla wanted him to do.