Author: nivcharayahel

Title: "Lullaby"

Rating: PG-13 for language; talk of suicide

Spoilers: through 6.2 "Bargaining, part 2"

Acknowledgments/Disclaimers: To Joss Whedon and Mutant Enemy, for this lovely universe to play in. Title and epigraphs from James Agee's "Lullaby." Inspiration from Audra McDonald, who sings a lovely version of this poem on her album Way Back to Paradise.

Sleep, child, lie quiet, let be:

Now like a still wind, a great tree,

Night upon this city moves

Like leaves, our hungers and our loves.

Sleep, rest easy, while you may.

Soon it is day.

~Spike~

From Dawn's windowsill, he watched her sleeping—and wasn't it just a sign of these strange, slayerless times that none of the White Hats conferring in the livingroom over her fate objected to his standing guard over her troubled dreams? Nearly seventy-two hours since . . . it had happened, and Rupert had finally had to sedate Dawn in order to get her to rest. Spike had sat behind her on the bed and embraced her while she struggled against them, and the look on Rupert's face as he jabbed the needle into the girl's arm . . . . There was a story there, Spike was certain, and the part of him that was still evil wanted very much to know it, to store it away for future schemes, for when he'd get the Slayer once and for all, and her little friends, too—

Only he wasn't the Big Bad anymore. He was hardly more than the Petty Annoyance these days, if he were to be brutally honest about it. And there wasn't a Slayer anymore, either, or at least not one worth mention. Only a crazy, dark-haired girl doing penance in a cell somewhere in the Central Valley. And, once Willow got her operational again, there was the Buffybot, which might serve (for a time) to fool the Hellmouth's less-than-upstanding denizens into thinking that the Slayer—that Buffy—was alive and well and kicking ass. But there was no telling how long the charade would last, and in the meantime, every time Spike looked at it, he would be reminded of his folly—of the absurd notion that plastic and microchips and a really good set of data files could ever replace flesh and blood and spirit, could ever quench his desire to possess her.

Dawn stirred, clutched her small stuffed pig close to her chest, and let go a soft, keening sound. Spike remained at the window, motionless, and hoped that she would drift into a deeper sleep if left alone.

He had retreated so deeply into the thicket of his disturbed thoughts that he nearly yelped in surprise when Dawn spoke his name.

She was sitting up in the center of her bed, pale moonlight casting silver on her hair and face. Her eyes were hidden in the dim light, but Spike could smell the salt of her tears.

Wearily, he shuffled to the edge of the bed and sat. He refused to look her way, would not touch her.

"You should be asleep, Nibblet. 'S not good for the complexion to go without your beauty rest, you know."

"Spike?" Her voice caught on a sob, and he found himself swallowing a knot of pain in his own throat before he could answer.

"Yeah, Dawn?"

"Do you think . . . Buffy . . . she didn't have to—" Spike did look at her now, and her lips were pinched tightly together, a dam holding back words she couldn't unsay.

Spike was still perverse enough to want to hear her say them. "Didn't have to what, pet?"

Quietly, so that even he could barely hear her, Dawn said, "She didn't have to die, did she? She wanted to die. No one else will say so, but I'm right, aren't I? Buffy killed herself."

"Seems to me she had to do it. Saving the world—kinda her job, you know—"

"I'm the one who was supposed to die!"

True enough. But Buffy wanted it more, he thought, then felt an unaccustomed stab of guilt. "If you'd died, Buffy would have died too. At least this way, one of you lives." Before Dawn could protest, he put his hands on her shoulders and carefully pushed her down on the bed. "You really need to sleep." He tucked the blanket firmly under her chin.

"I know, I know. Buffy would have wanted me to." She pulled her hands out from under the blanket and groped around blindly, until Spike saw what she was looking for at the foot of her bed and handed it to her.

"Thanks," she said sheepishly. "It's stupid, I know. But Mr. Gordo was Buffy's, and—"

"Shhh. Go to sleep. Before Rupert comes in here and clucks at me for keeping you up."

"Okay."

Spike went back to the window, looked out across the street. The sky was already changing colors, from the washed out black of a suburban night to the bruised purple-grey of pre-dawn. He'd have to leave her soon, sneak off after she fell asleep, find a safe place to hide. He felt like such a bastard.

"Spike?"

"What?"

"Sing me a lullaby?"

He'd never have Buffy now, if he'd ever had the chance before. And his demon wanted to scream, to kill—or, barring that, to run away. But the Victorian poet and gentleman that still lurked within Spike's unbeating heart recalled that he had made a promise to a lady, and some things—like duty and knight-errantry—had remained stronger than the exigencies of his unlife. And so, for now, Spike guarded the girl. And though he did not yet respect her as he had her mother, or love her as he did her sister, when he killed again, it would be for her.

"What would you like me to sing, pet?"