Bugger.

He can't lose her. Losing a CIA bird - not the way to keep the bloody US government out of his head. His own adventures in drowning, and what little Buffy told him about what the old bastard the Master did to her, have left him with a horror of this death for anyone, let alone a girl he's responsible for. Besides, it'd be a right shame to lose such a feisty thing. So he pushes up from the bottom and grabs her, momentum propelling them both to the surface. She's a dead weight in his arms, and he has to hold her with his legs to keep her head above water as he braces himself across the narrow tunnel, feet against one side of the wall, shoulders against the other.

With water clogging his ears, the salt making his eyes water - and even for a vampire it's practically pitch-black anyway - he's no way of telling if she's gone or not. The bloody awkward position makes it almost impossible to reach out and check for a pulse. There's no way he can do anything much to help until he can reach her properly, and the weight from the iron in his pocket's dragging him down.

But he's nothing if not resourceful - he wouldn't have survived if he wasn't.

So he tucks his head forward and manages to flip himself upside down and re-catch the girl between his legs. With Syd still braced above the waterline, he gets one of the horseshoes out of his pocket and probes the salt sodden stones with supernatural speed and strength until he finds a weak spot. He scrapes the hell out of his fingers doing it and the salt's like the California sun on his skin. But he's burnt before and this is a warm glow compared to the inferno behind him. He gets the iron wedged firmly into the wall and twists to get Syd's foot supported on it, before surfacing himself and trying to rub the salt out of his eyes and shake the water from his ears.

He can hear her heart beating, which is a definite relief, on more counts than he wants to think about right now. With less weight in his pocket he can float well enough to try and bring her round.

Checking her head for bumps and breaks, he frees the wig. The golden hair sinking into the depths until he can't see it anymore really gives him a wig as his girls would have said once. But they're lost to him, as lost as the wig is to the girl in his arms. He can't see much of what she looks like in the Stygian depths they're stuck in, but he'd bet on brunette - which brings other pains, so he tries to push the memories away, and promises himself a nice anaesthetising drop from his flask once he's got her up and running.

He gets one arm round her shoulders and uses the other to tap the side of her face. "Come on, love, wakey, wakey. Don't make me try the old mouth to mouth thing, cos I ain't got a sodding clue how to do it. Didn't exactly teach that when I was a kiddie."

She must have been coming round as she starts coughing and her arms come up and grip him hard enough to hurt. Between coughs she manages to croak out, "Thought all schools taught that?"

He holds her unconsciously tighter. "Be a right good idea, pet. But a bit after my time though."

He'd swear she was smiling. Between coughs anyway. "Don't look that old."

He can't help smiling himself. "Should see the portrait in the attic, pet."

He's glad he can't see it himself, but he can feel her smile through the body in his arms, before she shifts into take charge girl, and it all feels bloody brilliant -

Until her foot slips off the horseshoe as she twists in his arms checking out the whole stuck-at-the-bottom-of-a-well situation. She's pulled underwater again. He dives down again to catch her, pull her up and guide her foot to the support. He can feel her react to the salt and use him as support while trying to get it out of her eyes, ears and nose. He tries to lighten the mood. "Didn't think that guns were that heavy, love, know you aren't, feel just right."

The slap is a mere tap. Not a crushing blow, not an ineffectual brush - just right against his skin. And understandable accompanied by what he can hear of Syd's frustration that her microphone's died from their dip in the brine. But that doesn't stop her and there's promising unzipping noises from her fleece. One foot on the iron, the other hooked round his hip, which feels pretty damned good - given the circumstances, she snaps a case open and shut, and brushes his face as she puts something on her own. Then she asks, "What am I standing on?"

"One of the horseshoes, pet."

"This is Inca stonework; look at it. There's no mortar. How did you get it in there?"

Bugger.

She'd wait for an answer. She certainly wants one. But the water's leeching the heat straight out of her, and the Englishman's already cold where she's touched his skin. She's beginning to freeze and the salt's burning her hands and face. An explanation on how he got something as thick as a horseshoe into stone with no gaps between the courses will have to wait. The night-vision shades Marshall included in the OpTech briefing shows all to clearly just how dire their predicament is. The need to use the Marshall Maglite before hypothermia takes fine motor control from her hands has to take precedence.

Flipping the flashlight switch shows the blocked top to the shaft and gives her a target to aim for, before she braces herself on the horseshoe and Spike and presses the switch for the grappling hook. It shoots up the well-shaft and lodges securely in the rubble. She clips her belt to it, reaches down Spike's chest to his belt, clips him on to the rope and tells him to, "Hold on."

And they both fly up the shaft.

Which is blocked by what must be half a church worth of stone.

Both of them try to shift it, but it's impossible. She can't feel a draft of fresh air and that would be worrying, but she thinks the hypothermia will kill them before the lack of air does. Though it could be a close run thing. She looks at him and asks, "The water. Was there an exit?"

He shakes his head, but on his, "But I didn't have too much of a feel around. Too busy finding you," she nods and presses the descent button. The water seems even colder it seems this time round, and she can feel it take its pound of body heat. The cracks where the water comes in are so tiny that they'd drown trying to chip a way through, even if there was air on the other side. So she grips onto Spike and they power up the tunnel again, this time stopping half way through when Spike yells.

The trusty Doc's hit the wall as they did the amazing up and down trick, and vampire ears catch the welcome sound of hollow .

He tells her. He can hear disbelief that his ears could be that good warring with the tell-tale chattering screaming out her need to get out of the water and get dry as fast as humanly - or vampirely - possible. But the reflected light from the torch-gizmo shows her nod.

He can see that the stone's one of the normal shaped, rather than the bloody bizarre Inca things. He gets the remaining horseshoe out from his pocket and starts chipping away at the mortar. She braces him and rummages in her inside pocket, coming out with a Zippo. He'd kill for a ciggy, but they did nearly kill them both and he's smoked his last packet already. Besides, any left over in a stray pocket are going to be more salty than a packet of Walkers Salt and Vinegar, let alone soggy, very soggy.

She tells him to let her have her turn, so he braces her as she flips the Zippo.

Which turns out to be a very nice little blowtorch.

Alternating him beating and scraping the crap out of it and her burning and melting gives them a nice loose stone, though it's bloody hard work on both of them. Eventually he's able to kick it into the space behind the wall, which gives them a key to breaking open enough of the wall to make a hole big enough to crawl through. Resulting in a game of, "Ladies first."

"No. I know how to use the ascender, you don't. I need to get the Pieta. Where is it?"

He tells her and she unclips him, braces him as he goes head-first through the hole in the wall, down into what seems to be a small stone room. He pockets the Zippo and the fancy shades she hands him before going for a dip. She's down for a scary amount of time, but a whoosh brings her back to him, and the relief is marvellous. He's not losing another woman for not trying hard enough.

He reaches up to take the statue from her, and stands back to let her get through the narrow hole still attached to the rope. A clickity-click releases the top of the gadget and leaves her holding the torch and minus the rope.

Syd checks out the room with the torch. As the beam of light reaches a door it catches two mummies, crouched in front of it, hands caught forever in denial of death covering their faces.

Spike catches the almost infinitesimal start Syd gives on seeing the mummies. He also catches the creak and break of long dried skin and bone as the mummies start to stand.

Attack of the Killer Inca Mummies - definitely not something in the brochure, Wes' little talk, or clearly anything Syd's been expecting either, given the shocked expression on her face. But girl's tough and ready for action. As long withered fingers reach for her throat, she spin kicks it into the wall.

Its mate's fingers grip Spike's own neck. Not a good call on its behalf, since breathing's optional and it's not hitting the nerves that might knock him out of commission. Still, thing's well stronger than human and it bloody well hurts. Not enough though to stop him from reaching round to grab its head and twist - hard.

Gunfire echoes round the chamber as Syd tries the Glock on hers, with a marked lack of success, unsurprisingly given the circumstances. She gives up fast when the bullets go straight through it and ricochet round the stone chamber.

He's about to choke out, "Hand to hand," when she does just that. She drops the gun and combines kicking the shit out of the mummy with beating it over the head with the torch. From there he's in a disco by Dante. He can hear cracking, tearing of long dead sinews, the crunch of bones, from both of his and Syd's new friends. As the light dances around the room he sees Syd's got a knife out and cutting as well as beating the crap out of hers. He tears a chunk of hair off his, trying to break something pretty much as strong as he is. As a chunk of scalp comes away, he has to get another grip. Kicking the thing into a wall, he does, and the head finally rips off.

He turns to help Syd, but the hands are still throttling him. "Oh, bugger".

She's going to throttle someone. Prophetic manuscripts with her face on are one thing. Landing inside a horror film is quite another. She's not sure who chose not to tell her the latest fun twist in her life, but she'll work on it when she finally gets this thing to die again. She can feel the gunshot holes as she slashes the mummy, but with an equal lack of success in stopping it. Kicking it into the wall's keeps its fingers from her throat but takes energy than she can't afford to lose, soaking wet as she is, and it's still not enough to take this thing down.

Knife thrusts through eye-sockets, straight through to the brain, following through with a thrust to the heart - nothing works. She snatches a glimpse of Spike pulling one arm off his and trying the beat it to death with it approach - nothing. The arm's still trying to get him even as he uses it as a club. And there's something seriously weird with how long it's had him by the throat. She might have missed him snatching a breath, but she doesn't think so.

But cutting the fingers off of hers is a more immediate priority - if not a good idea.

If she gets out of here, the sound of fingers skittering across stone, the feel of fingers climbing her is going to haunt her. They're on her face when she hears Spike scream.

He's never been one to listen to traveller's tales in the demon bars, or find Percy's book collection great bedtime reading. Too busy telling his own, and he prefers something a bit more physical before crashing. But he's been around a bit, he's heard things, and if tearing the things to pieces ain't working, something else has to. He can't remember where it comes from but there's something tingling in his memory about mummies and light. Bloody things woke up when the beam off the torch hit 'em. Nothing else's working, so it's worth a bash, he thinks as he bashes his mummies head into the wall with its own arm. So he shouts out to her, "The Torch! Switch it off!"

Then there's blessed darkness.

And the thing is suddenly magnificently dead. All he can hear is his own panting, Syd's heart thumping a bit off, her breathing too hard, and things falling onto the floor with a chitter.

Bloody brilliant.

Ok, they're stuck in a pitch-black room, with two pieces of beef-jerky with attitude that could come back to un-life anytime they switch the light back on, but a bloke can't have everything.

She's finished swatting the things off her when she hears him ask, "You ok, love?"

"Yeah, thanks. Great idea. But we'll need to put the flashlight back on to get outta here." And she needs to. She's losing even more heat from the sweat from the fight chilling on her wet clothes. She knows she's close to hypothermia.

"No handy dandy gizmos to vaporise the buggers?"

She can't help smiling through the shiver. "Sorry."

"Anything near you they might have dropped? Plaques, bit of sparkly stuff? "

There's not, but she can't help asking, "Why?"

"Um, always are in the horror films, innit?"

Ok, she's positive he has more intel, or at least familiarity, with this kind of thing than she has. But, he's her best shot at living through this and getting her mission accomplished. Besides, he's her partner in this and he's proved himself thus far, so she's got to trust him, at least some. "Can't feel anything, other than fingers that is."

She can hear him sniffing hard. Must be the dust. "You're near the door, right?"

She moves slowly closer to the wall and feels along it, finding the door. "Yes."

"No blankies or anything where Herky and Jerky were? Nothing to keep 'em in the dark?"

She can feel him gathering something. Something that sounds dry, and crunches under what has to be heavy boots.

She feels around on the floor. "Nothing. Maybe in the other room." She's got to get the light on, maybe a fire. She's so damned cold she'll be useless in another fight very soon if she doesn't do something. There's still nothing from the wire, it has to be fried. If she's in this state, Spike must be too. They've got no choice but to take a calculated risk.

She feels around the door, but there's nothing clearly labelled trap. But this whole Tomb Raider gig isn't her. It might be Spike's. Marshall would love it, and right now she wishes she were facing the kind of door Marshall's got her through so often. But she's nothing but her own wits, an Englishman that's clearly more than he seems, and the need to get the mummies covered to drive her forward. So she pushes the door open hard, dives forward to avoid any Tomb Raider rip-off arrows.

And hits more long dead bodies.

Lying on stone leaches more heat she can't afford to lose. Her teeth are fighting her formidable willpower over starting the chattering stage of hypothermia, and she's losing the battle against both. But she's not about to admit defeat - she never has, she thinks, and, God, she wishes she knew that for certain, but as far as she knows she hasn't - and now is not the time to start. So she forces out, "More bodies," before having to focus on her stopping her jaws chattering together so hard that she'll need yet more work-related dental.

More of what can only be Spike gathering up the mummies they just dismembered coincides with yet another, "Bollocks."

Reaching forward to reconnoitre what she can while her hands still work in the stone freezer, Syd bites back a shudder when her hands press into something, something long dried and dead, and all too identifiable. But it's worth it. The thing feels lighter, much lighter than the mummies that tried to take her and Spike apart. Pulling back and further along she feels a metal helmet that feels like something out of Latin American History 101. Forcing herself along to the next one she feels what has to be a heavy wool cloak - just what they have been looking for and something that reads more European than Inca. She pulls at it, and the teeth chattering at the ripping are all early-stage hypothermia, it has to be. She shouts to Spike and slides the cloak along the stone floor to him.

Once he reports, "All covered up for a nap, pet," she retreats.

Standing back up once through the door, her hands brush his for a moment, before he grasps one. It's a nice feeling, if not at all warm. He must be in the same state as her. They have to get out here, or at least get some sort of fire going, warm themselves back up before it's too late. But to do that, they need intel on what else is in that room. She squeezes his hand and him returning it feels far too good. She's been so very alone way too long. But, "Business. Need more intel." She takes the flashlight from her pocket. "Gonna have light for five seconds. Ready?"

Another squeeze to her hand tells her all she needs to know.

Five seconds later tells her the rest.

It's a scene from one of the Hammer Horror films he and Dru enjoyed back in the day. Sarcophagus at one end, bits of tomb robbing priests and soldiers out of Darla's first century litter the floor, there's both open and sealed stone coffers and pots everywhere - Wes and Giles would have a field day. But more importantly - no more Herky and Jerky's. At least not without him doing anything that decades worth of Hammer reruns would indicate to be Incredibly Stupid. Ok, there's no way that at some point he won't do something Incredibly Stupid, but so far, Result!

Except for the complete lack of an exit other than the blocked tunnel they've just crawled out.

Checking all the mummy bits are safely covered up, he sees a finger crawling its way half-way up his boot. Kicking it off, and stomping on it until its still moving paste, makes him let go of Syd, but the smile on her face at his antics makes it all worth it.

Until he sees her shiver. He's seen death by freezing in meal after meal over the last centuries, in alleys after alley. He's not seeing it here. "Need to get you out of those wet clothes, pet."

She holds her hand against his forehead, and it feels so nice that someone cares that it hurts. "You too." It's a visible effort for her to talk. "You're freezing. Both need a fire. Dry clothes, blankets, something to sit on, not the stone - make it worse." He can see she's going to say more when another mummy finger makes it onto her boot and she ends up doing the Inca Mummy Shuffle.

"Reckon we need to burn those buggers, Syd. Might be the only way to get rid of 'em so we can get out, and we will get out. You all right stopping 'em getting out, while I take a looksie at Tut's treasure and if there's anything in there we can use?" At her nod, he strides into the other room.

Where there's more cloaks to rip off bodies, which he does and slides them back to Syd. She uses two more to cover their little friends, and he hears her drop her sodden fleece on the floor and sneeze before wrapping the dusty cloth round herself. It's a good call that he took on the raiding the mummy's tomb job. Not that he takes more than a cursory look at sarcophagus guy, he's got a plaque on him and Spike knows better than to break it, though there's some pretty sparklies that his girls - if they were still his - and Wes would love. The coffers are more immediately useful, and no one human would be able to shift them, let alone lift them one handed. Which ok, showing off, but does give him a free hand to check for Tomb Raider traps - they have to be here after all, he's already got the kick-ass bird with guns and nice tits.

But he doesn't encounter any poison arrows, spears coming through the floor or swinging axes aiming to give him a haircut. There are coffers full of long dried plants and mushrooms, which he knows he should recognise but doesn't, along with what smells like lime in golden vials and enough statues and ceramics for Wes to need a new storage vault. The broken pots with a faint scent of maize beer remind him of his last trip through Peru with Dru. He's no bleeding clue what the massive heap of knotted string in a wooden chest is, but it's flammable so he doesn't care. But most importantly, in the last two stone chests, are soft warm alpaca blankets, feather-work shawls and a pile of thick llama-wool tapestries. "Sorted, pet."

So is she. With the sodden fleece off, she's shivering less. She has the mummies totally covered, and the foot that tried to kick the last cloak off safely in the dark. Her cloak's dusty but at least its dry, and the arm-full of warm blankets in Spike's arms is even more promising. She takes the top one off the pile and spreads it on the floor a couple of feet away from the mummy heap, before subsiding thankfully. He drapes a cloak made of woven feathers round her shoulders. She must look a sight, but it feels great. Her feet are freezing in her soaked boots, and she wants nothing - other than getting out of here - more than to take them off and warm them back up. "We need a fire. And I've been thinking, we need to put the mummies on it in pieces so the firelight doesn't wake all the parts at once. Burning and trying to tear us limb from limb at the same time doesn't appeal. Anything in there we can use?"

"Dunno, love. Nice bit of destruction with a can of gasoline, I'm your man. Campfires, not really my thing."

"Not a boy scout then?" She'd bet anything he wasn't, and she blames the part of her that must be from her mother's side of the family that finds that not unappealing.

"Been called a lot of things in my time, pet. Boy scout's not one of 'em." He has a lethally disarming smile. She knows exactly what he's doing as well as he does. But she's not immune, and it feels strangely good to have a man look at her like she's a woman - and have it not be all mixed up with the guilt of it being her man who's married to someone else doing the looking.

"You still have my Zippo." He digs through his pockets and hands it to her. "We need something dry to start the fire, then something for the flames to catch. Then the big stuff. Once it's going, we can burn the mummies, piece by piece. Anything in there that fits?"

"Loads of dried-up plants, tons of strings, some wood. Hey, them blokes next door, they're all dried-up, might burn up nicely. Come complete with built-in fire-irons with the swords, and all."

She can't help just looking at him. She knows the English have this weird sense of humour, heck, Sark's a prime example of the species, but this is just plain bizarre. But it might just work.

She follows him into the other room, gathers up what has to be Inca record keeping strings, barely manages to avoid cringing when Spike pulls off a helmet off one of the dead conquistadors - complete with head - before dumping the head in a corner to fill the helmet with leaves. They put both in heaps by the blanket and pull the rest of the body through to the improvised campsite. He goes back for more kindling while she stifles her inner grad student to burn the lost - if un-readable - records of the Inca Empire, not to mention the rest of the artefacts.

Which burn beautifully.

By the time he's brought back most of the rest of the plants, tapestries, and the wood he's broken up, she's got a surprisingly fragrant fire going and her boots, socks and jeans off. Unfortunately, she's also got a blanket over her from the waist down and designs on his coat.

"The coat stays on. It's not going on the fire. Not an option! Been through a lot together, we have!" And there's not much more that a bloke and his coat can do than save the world, burn to a cinder, and then come back from the dead together. If he wasn't going to give up the coat for Fred, in favour of the goat suede Italian designer duster wannabe she wanted him to get, he's not giving it up for Syd. Not that Fred's designs on updating his wardrobe are going to be an issue anymore. She's not going to forgive him. Blokes like him don't get second chances.

"The coat is dripping water on the blankets. No-one is going to burn it, but take it and the rest of your wet clothes off, before you get hypothermia. I don't know how you're still not shivering as it is." Spike loves a woman who knows what she wants.

But if she gets too close she might find out what he is, and she can't. "English, pet. Born with anti-freeze in the blood."

He hears her mutter, "That would explain Sark."

"Bloke up top?" At her nod he continues, "'sides, don't reckon you'd want me to get my kit off. Not wearing anything underneath."

"Your mom didn't tell you always to wear clean underwear in case you were in an accident?"

"She's been dead a long time, love. Bloody long time."

And it still hurts as much as it did when he drove that walking stick into her heart. So he channels it into skewering a mummy arm with a Toledo blade Peaches would trade the Poof-mobile for. Thrusting the sword into the wall-hanging covered pyre is therapeutic. But watching the arm writhe and burn brings pains and memories he desperately wants to forget pouring back like the flames that consumed him.

Her voice is strangely quiet. "I'm sorry... I know how hard that is."

"Doubt it."

"I lost my mom when I was six."

Which pulls his gaze from the fires and back to her. "God, love, I'm sorry. I'm a bad, rude man. Look, I'll do as I'm told, right?"

"Right. I won't look, and you have lots of blankets to choose from." He can hear her try to sound positive, mission girl. He can see her staring into the firelight and her pain is all to palpable, and familiar - both his own and his girls, all of them but his lost Fred.

So he tries to cheer Syd, since she's all he's got. "Not really my look, but for you, pet."

He's out of his clothes, wrapped in a surprisingly soft blanket, with another round his shoulders, before she talks again. "She came back."

Sitting on the blanket next to her he can see the truth in her face and it mirrors his own. "'S rough. Know that. Mine did too."

She must see that he's telling the truth because something softens in her, something with nothing to do with the faint sense of something familiar in the smoke. "Is she still around?"

He needs a gulp from the flask he took from the duster before answering. "Went bad. I had to kill her."

She pulls his head down to rest on her shoulder, and strokes his hair. The comfort is balm to a tired soul. They sit there together for an age, her stroking his hair and putting more plants on the fire. He knows the scent's familiar, but he's locked in the past, and nothing else matters but the warmth of the fire, and her hand soothing the pain if not away at least to the constant dull ache that he can make sure no-one sees.

At least until she stops, and he feels tears trying and failing to fight their way out of her, a sensation he knows all too well from Buffy. He looks up at Syd, and strokes her long brown hair attempting to give the comfort Buffy never would let him give.

Syd's voice cracks with pain. "Mine always was, I think. She betrayed everything, everyone. I had to shoot her." After a nip from the flask, "I didn't kill her. I missed."

He can't take the pain he feels in the body he's resting against. He can't take anymore of the pain in his own heart. It's too much, so he kisses her.