Pretty much just imagine that Joss' Buffy world ended with the rescuing of Spike at the end of 'Showtime'. After that point, I've pretty much gotten angry with the way things have been going. I mean, 'Potential' pretty much sucked ass. And I don't really like the way the writers have made Spike more weak than Williamy, so I'm fixing it. Mwahahahahaha!!!!!! Go me! Yeah, so, enjoy. ; )
The night was cool as the Scooby gang descended upon the Summers residence. The house was in disarray - the front door was broken, furniture was smashed, and the overall feel was that a plethora of evilness had stormed the casa. Oh, wait…
Willow sighed as she righted the coat tree. They were really going to have to find a way to protect the house from the ravages of the Bringers. Her hands trembled as she tried to straighten the sweaters and jackets that hung precariously to their perch. She was still shaken from the night's activities, having watched in silence as her best friend fought the Ubervamp to the death. The night would be a lot better, she decided, if she just tried to get some sleep for once.
Kennedy came up beside Willow and tugged on her elbow, thinking the same thing. She smiled concernedly up at the witch, and Willow returned it with a tiny upturn of her mouth. 'Good enough for me,' Kennedy thought, and pulled Willow to the stairs.
In the living room, Dawn and the potential Slayers, Rona, Chloe and Vi were putting the room back together, vacuuming the broken glass and splinters of wood from the floor and their makeshift beds. Dawn was at work replacing fallen pictures, resetting them in their usual places on the mantle and the side table.
One was particularly destroyed, glass shattered and frame bent, the one of her and Buffy together, donning matching skating outfits and waving back at the cameraperson. Had it been their mom or their dad? It had been so long since those happy days, she couldn't even remember. 'Besides,' she reminded herself, 'it never really happened, did it?' Angrily, Dawn tossed the picture and frame into the box marked "Fixables" and grabbed a broom to help with the cleanup.
Anya busied herself in the kitchen cooking up some tiny delectables for their young boarders to devour. Well, cooking is really an overstatement - she was opening bags of frozen fries and breaded shrimp and chicken strips and dumping them onto baking sheets to stuff in the oven. Then she started mixing different salsas and other such dipping substances to give the snack some pizzazz.
She was congratulating herself when Xander walked in, tossing his jacket on one of the chairs and mumbling to himself about the manners of evil, eyeless men and that they should be more careful not to break down doors that could just as easily have been opened by turning the doorknob. He began to dig through the kitchen drawers, not hesitating to emphasize his tirade with clanging metal and slamming wood.
Anya, slightly perturbed at the abundance of noise being caused by her ex-fiancée, said, "You know Xander, slamming around in the kitchen is only going to result in the breaking of more of Buffy's things, so if you don't want to fix anything more, just finish the job you're working on."
Xander slammed one final drawer with a calming sigh. "An, I'm trying to fix the door, but I don't have any of my tools with me right now and I need a screwdriver." He grabbed his coat and shrugged it back on. Anya frowned.
"Where are you going?" she demanded.
Xander shot her a tired look. "I'm not gonna leave the door hanging off its hinges while Buffy and Dawn and all the Slayerettes are trying to get a good night's sleep. I'll just…feel safer when I've got it all fixed up."
"Oh," she replied. "Well, then, I guess you should hurry along. I'm going to make sure the girls get to bed soon so they can have a nice long rest after their exciting yet frightening evening." The oven dinged then, and Anya bent to remove the trays of snacks before they burnt.
"Don't worry though, Xander, I won't leave until you or Buffy come back. I wouldn't want to leave the girls unattended." The pair shared a look, his grateful for her understanding and selflessness, hers proud of it.
"Just be careful, k? The First might be pissed that Buffy killed his buddy and do something revenge-like." She nodded her agreement as she scraped her delicacies onto plates for the girls.
"You too."
Her unexpected voicing of even the slightest concern for him made Xander sigh inwardly. God, he missed her. And it wasn't just the fact that they were no longer together, she had become so quiet and vengeful that she didn't even seem like the same woman anymore. Of course, that didn't make him love her any less.
Xander turned and headed for the back door, pulling it open to find coming up the porch stairs a tired-looking Buffy dragging beside her an even more tired-looking Spike.
Buffy groaned under the weight of her baggage as Spike thoroughly stumbled on the stairs, nearly toppling them both to the ground. "Xander, a little help here?" Buffy gasped out. Slack-jawed, shaking his head as if trying to wake himself from some nightmare, he rushed out to carry Spike on the other side. Together they dragged a barely conscious peroxide-blond vampire into the kitchen, propping him up on a chair.
"My God, Buffy, what did it do to him?" Anya asked, a spatula in one hand and an oven mitt on the other. Buffy didn't even notice her friend's strange appearance as she busied herself checking out his wounds.
"I-I'm not really sure," she admitted, voice shaking slightly as she took in the full tattered state of her ex-lover. His head lolled back, exposing the untouched white skin of his neck, the only part of his body that seemed unmarred with cuts or bruises. Her fingers traced one of the large gouges on his chest, wet blood and clotted blood both adhering to her warm touch. Spike hissed in pain as she grazed a fresh scratch and she barked at Xander to help her get him to her room.
Xander grabbed Spike's legs and Buffy lifted him under the arms and they headed to the front stairs. As they rounded the corner, Anya close on their heels, the teens in the living room finally realized that there was something intriguing going on in their midst. Dawn gasped in horror as she realized what was happening.
"Spike!" she ejaculated, rushing to her friend, trying to see his face. "Holy shit," she murmured when she saw the bloody pulp that was left of her confidante. "Is he dead?" she squeaked, tugging at Anya's sleeve.
Anya turned and frowned at Dawn. "Of course not. If Spike was dead, they'd be carrying him in an ashtray, wouldn't they?" Though her reply was meant to be condescending and result in the girl heading back downstairs, Anya was dismayed to realize that Dawn was now pressing closer to her in an effort to see for herself that he truly was not dead. Behind them, the other girls were following timidly, unsure of what was going on but not wanting to miss out on any of the excitement.
Buffy kicked her door open behind her, and she and Xander manhandled Spike onto the bed. His deathly pale skin starkly contrasted the blue of her bedspread. In the hall, Anya muttered something about getting the first aid kit, but Buffy wasn't listening. She had left the vampire's side and was digging in her closet, tossing clothes on the floor left and right. Xander backed away, a concerned frown creasing his brow as he watched his best friend tear her room apart.
"Ah, Buff, what are you doing?" he asked her. She found what she was looking for and pulled an old quilt from her closet. Buffy dragged it over to the bed and began unfolding it. Dawn overcame her fear of Spike's death and joined her sister in wrapping him in the quilt. Anya entered the room then with the first aid kit, followed closely by Willow.
As Buffy and Anya began cleaning and dressing Spike's wounds, Willow saw his condition and gasped. "Oh, God, Spike!" she whispered. Beside her, Dawn was absently stroking the vampire's bleached blond hair, twirling his unruly curls around her fingers. Gently, the witch tugged the teen from her friend, and silently led all the girls back downstairs. With one last glance at his friends (and the guy he puts up with), Xander followed Willow out and closed the door behind him.
On the bed, Buffy poured peroxide on Spike's lacerations and Anya butterfly-bandaged them. They worked together silently - the women weren't really friends, but they both were part of the Scooby gang and cared about the wounded vampire in their own ways.
"If you want, I can go to the blood bank and pick something up for him," Anya offered. Buffy looked at her blankly.
"We have pig's blood here," she replied.
"Human blood will help him heal faster," Anya replied. "Pig's blood might not even be enough. His wounds are bad."
Buffy looked back at her patient, white as snow, still as death. If human blood would heal him better, he'd have it. And he'd have the best.
"Okay," she agreed, "but I don't think you'll be able to get any tonight." Buffy proceeded to roll up the sleeve of her shirt. She reached under her bed and dragged out a knife. "You might want to leave now."
Anya glanced from Buffy to the knife and back again before heading to the door. Behind her Buffy held her arm over Spike's prone body and pressed the blade against her left wrist. Anya paused at the door and turned back.
"You're making the right decision. Don't doubt that." With that final bit of encouragement, the ex-demon went downstairs to join the rest of the house. The door closed soundly behind her.
Buffy paused as she held the knife in position against her pulsing veins. This was not the ideal way for her to get good, healing blood into the wounded vampire, but it was the only thing she could do for him. 'Anya says he needs this, so I'll give it to him,' she reasoned with herself. She could feel her pulse begin to race at the idea of inflicting a wound on herself. She'd provided blood to two different vampires before, but that had come in the form of bites. If this wound scarred, it would look suspicious, suicidal. But this was a matter of life and death. She would deal with the consequences later.
Taking a deep, steadying breath, Buffy pressed the blade into her wrist. She bit back the pained moan that threatened to escape her throat. Red liquid oozed out of her wound and pooled around it, threatening to spill onto the quilt. Using her knife hand she tugged on Spike's chin, opening his mouth enough for her life to drip onto his tongue. A few precious beads dropped and awakened his mouth to her taste.
Instinctually, he swallowed them down. Encouraged by his reaction, she sliced her wrist deeper and pressed the wound to his mouth. His lips latched on of their own volition and he began drinking from her, his saliva working to prevent the wound from clotting. Buffy rested the knife on her bed side table and tried to make herself comfortable. The sounds of his drinking were a little disturbing to her. She almost wished that it was his fangs and not his tongue on her skin.
She was frightened to realize he was not shifting into game face, apparently too weak to perform even that basic task. With her free hand she tugged the quilt up around him, wrapping him in it as best she could. Buffy wanted him to feel safe and warm, protected. She didn't want to think of the nightmares that he might have if he felt like he was still in that cold, cruel cave.
Tentatively she touched his face. A soft, simple touch, one meant to soothe him but more than likely soothed only herself. She felt guilty for this. Somehow if she had been more careful, more dedicated, more prepared, he wouldn't have been taken from them. She still remembered the shock she'd felt when the house was attacked by the Bringers. How foolish of her to assume that she was the focus of the attack! And he had suffered for it. It seemed he was always suffering for her mistakes…
Buffy blinked back tears and realized that she was beginning to feel dizzy from the blood loss. Gently she eased her wrist from his mouth and almost chuckled to see the way he unconsciously struggled to capture it again. In that moment, Spike seemed so utterly vulnerable, so weak, and she couldn't help but be reminded of the way baby Dawn had once keened for their mother's nipple. Breastfeeding Spike…and that opened a can of eww, and she gave herself a mental slap.
She wrapped her wrist in bandages, making a note to clean the anti-coagulant from the wound after she debriefed the gang. Taking a Kleenex, she wet it with her tongue and dabbed Spike's mouth, wiping away the blood that had collected there. Once he was clean, Buffy checked to make sure the blinds were drawn and that he was securely wrapped in the quilt before deciding that he was safe enough for the time being.
Quietly she moved from the room, doing one last safety sweep and mental checklist before pulling the door behind her. She left it open a crack, afraid that he would wake and call for her and she wouldn't hear. Her eyes rested on his tormented face once more before heading down the stairs to face the barrage of questions she knew awaited her.