Disclaimer: Everyone belongs to Mutant Enemy, etc. Story title borrowed from a R.E.M. song g>.

Categories: Spike, Dawn, vampish babysitting

Rating: PG-13 (for language)

Archival: My site only, please. You're welcome to link to it at http://alanna.net/fanfic/gardening.html

Spoilers: Pre-"Bargaining"

Summary: "Three months ago, someone would have bounded downstairs, ready to drive him out of the house with a shout or a stake. These days, nobody much cares anymore."

Feedback is the "B" in my B-Positive: wisteria@smyrnacable.net

GARDENING AT NIGHT
by wisteria




Dawn shuffles toward the front door, listing left like a drunken sailor. Her spine is bowed by the weight of the books in her backpack.

"Gonna break your back with that thing," Spike mutters.

A half-year ago, he imagines she would've tossed her hair and found some adolescent way to tell him to go screw himself. This morning she doesn't turn around. "I'll be fine."

Sure you will.

"Seriously. Read an article in some rag that said it could cause damage to your vertebrae." Wasn't in a magazine, to tell the truth. Oprah. Or one of those damn shows. Daytime television is the fourth circle of the Hellmouth, just below manufactured pop and above tanning beds. But he wasn't going to tell her that. Well, maybe he'd tell her about the circles one of these days.

She finally turns to face him, a grave -- wait, bad choice of words -- serious look on her face. "We're all gonna die someday."

Kid has a point.

He shrugs, hoists his coat over his head, and hotfoots it behind the door when she opens it, out of the way of UV fantasias. The mini-blinds glow like pokers between the closed slats. Spike clenches his fist to keep from swiveling the blinds open to watch her leave. A good old sunburn might feel charming.

He's been burning for the past three months, anyway.

But instead he repeats his mantra that Dawn needs him. Nobody else does, but she does and it's all that matters.

Technically, though, she doesn't need him. If she arrived home to find an artfully arranged Spike-shaped pile of ashes on her front porch, someone else would come along to take up the slack. Maybe Willow and Tara would get him a decorative urn, but he doubted it.

So he shuffles upstairs, looking for something to pass the time until he gets home and he has to watch her again. At half-ten, he's drawing fang marks on the necks of the models in one of Dawn's magazines. He never fancied her the fash mag type, but there you have it. They smile back at him in vapid black-and-white, his mind leaching them of their color. The desire to see color anywhere but in his imagination faded three months ago.

Once the magazine is thoroughly defaced, he tosses it aside. He'll replace it that evening. Dawn makes him feel guilt.



"You'd think someone as ancient as you are would be smarter, Spike."

Dawn has the most irritatingly insouciant voice sometimes.

"Yeah, well, I was too busy doing stuff to bother reading books about it."

"So? That's no excuse." He half expects Dawn to stick out her tongue at him.

"And you'd think someone as smart as you think you are would come up with a better retort."

She doesn't respond. Ha. Proved right.

He stands up and starts pacing the living room, glancing at the clock to see when the rest of the Cartoon Crew will get back from their ineffectual so-called "patrolling", as if it will do a bit of good. The Bot is with them, but the less time spent thinking about her, the better.

Damned if Dawn can take a hint.

"Get on the Internet or something and find out just what this hypotenuse thing is. I still don't get it."

Spike grates his teeth. "The last person who tried to order me around is now making friends with eels." Or was the guy tossed down a well shaft? Damned if he could remember.

"What are you gonna do? Bite me?"

Apparently he is fulfilling his obligation to Buffy by turning her kid sister into a real bitch-in-training. In his best vamp voice, he booms, "Bugger off upstairs and turn on The Discovery Channel or something."

"Screw you!" Her voice approaches hysteria, and her brow furrows the way her sister's used to. "It's my house, Spike."

"Who taught you such filthy language?"

"You did!"

He stalks off to the kitchen, through with her crap. The fridge is like a tuberculosis victim on antibiotics: it refuses to cough up any blood. Dammit, what with the kid in the next room, he can't go out for some. There's some Bactine upstairs. Maybe he can just poke her elbow and get enough for a fix. He could patch her up afterward. It's the least she owes him.

A little while later, he's antsy and about ready to start a full-blown whinging fit when he hears a voice in the next room.

"Spike?"

She sounds pathetic. Summoning his meager reserves of patience, he goes back into the living room. "Yeah, Niblet?"

"What's it like?"

Aw, fuck. One of the women is supposed to handle the sex talk. Left up to his inadequate faculties, Dawn would have a full collection of leather and V.D. before she got her driver's license.

He puts on his "huh?" face.

"I mean, being dead. What's it like being dead?"

Great. Only marginally easier than the sex talk. "I'm not dead."

"Yes you are."

"UN-dead. Remember? It's all in the semantics."

Dawn gives him a blank stare.

"Never mind." He says nothing else, hoping she'll just drop the subject like an addict at a craps table, but no dice. All he gets is that same stare.

"Okay, fine. Aside from the piss-poor body temperature and the lark of getting to take a licking and keep on ticking, my life ain't much different from yours. Well, 'cept for the fact that I'm gonna be here for a good long while."

"You didn't answer my question." She tries to look all brave and such, but he can see right through her.

"Sure I did."

"No, you didn't." Now the voice takes on a hard edge he doesn't think is normal for kids that age. "Buffy is dead. She isn't walking around like you."

"I expect she's not." The Bot doesn't count.

Dawn huffs.

"Fine, kid. I guess when you die you're just there. Everything stops. Nothing to do anymore but lie there underground."

He watches her body curl up like a comma. He saw the same pose on some doped-up club kid in New York twenty years ago, right before Spike broke his neck.

Her voice shrinks. "Do you think she's in heaven?"

"Damned if I know." She's too young to catch the rather unfortunate pun. "Ask your priest or pastor or wherever the hell you go to church."

She sparks up, but it quickly fades. "I was just asking a question. You don't have to get all mean with me!"

"Whatever. Figure it out yourself. I'm going out for a smoke."

Spike leaves her still curled up on the sofa, schoolbooks scattered like ashes around her.

In the cool night air, he ignores the tremble of his hand as he tries and fails to light his cig. Finally, he gives up and crumples the stick in his hand, watching the soil-thick tobacco stain his fingers. He looks up and focuses on the light-pollution-dimmed stars above him.

Last thing he wants to be doing is thinking about Buffy rotting away two meters under.

If there's even an afterlife, he rather hopes she's down in hell, kicking some damned arse. It would suit her well.



In a none-too-charming contrast to her name, Dawn has become a night owl lately. She saunters out onto the back porch, acting like she's Queen Victoria instead of the regent of her own fucking universe.

"Tara called. They wandered off too far tonight, and it'll take them a little while to get home."

He doesn't bother to look at her. "Following the white rabbit, eh?"

Dawn perks up. "Oh, you mean like in 'Alice in Wonderland'?"

"I was thinking more along the lines of 'The Matrix', but yeah."

He hears Dawn laugh. "I didn't think you went to the movies."

Well, no, but he's had far too much free time to catch up on Willow's video library. Really, the skirt should just invest in a DVD player.

"Anyway," Dawn babbles on, "cool thing to say, coz I was just going to ask you about Lewis Carroll."

Spike makes a show of sighing, even though he doesn't need to breathe. "Imbecilic toff, if you ask me. Make some sense already."

"Did you know him when you were alive?"

"Didn't go to Oxford," is all Spike says.

He can still remember Pater's tongue-lashing when Darling William wasn't asked to read at the good old alma mater. Spike né William was instead sent off to some second-rate London university, with instructions not to embarrass the family. Of course, that made him all the more determined to do so. After William's literal kiss of death from Drusilla, the old git didn't even notice he was gone for over two months.

Not that Spike is bitter or anything. Nope, not at all.

Fuck the lot of 'em.

Dawn refuses to take silence as a hint. "So, since nobody else is here and you said you used to do poetry, I need your help with this poem."

He scowls. "One: thanks a lot for your esteem of my worth." His voice drips sarcasm. "Second: I never told you any such thing, so just shut your gob."

"Sure you did." She's far too perky for nearing midnight.

"What the fuck ever. Just go." His cigarette is burning low and he has far more important things to mope about than the poetry of some ponce dead a hundred years.

When Dawn continues to blather, he has to curl his fist to keep from hauling off and slapping her. That wouldn't go over well with the gang, now would it? Spike grits his teeth some more and reminds himself that he has all day to be alone, and it's good to at least talk to the one person who doesn't treat him like shite scraped off jackboots.

"We have to read 'Jabberwocky' and underline all the nouns, but none of it makes any sense to me."

"Jabberwanky?"

"Jabberwocky!" she exclaims, all indignant-like.

Spike lets himself laugh. "I know what the poem is called. I just wanted to hear you say it again."

"Sod off, Spike!"

"Who the hell taught you such foul language?" he asks again in what has become a familiar refrain.

"YOU DID!" Dawn is now officially shrieking.

Too damned bad that he can't very well turn her. Having her around for another hundred years would be quite amusing, if he didn't dust her first.

"I'm teasing you, sweets. Get a sense of humor."

"Look, are you going to help me or should I just figure it out for myself?"

"Isn't that the point of education?"

In the time it takes Dawn to come up with a suitable response, he tracks the movement of a plane in the distant sky.

Finally, she says, her voice like sugary tea, "I would really appreciate your help, Spike, if you can."

He turns around. "Are you saying you don't think I'm smart enough to help you?"

Dawn actually stomps her foot, and if it weren't so dark, he'd think she was about to cry. "I'm trying really hard to be nice, but you're not making it easy for me."

He lets himself smile. "You don't have to be nice to me, Niblet. Just be yourself."

"Try telling that to the kids at school."

She sinks to the edge of the steps, her shoulders bowed and the paper dangling from her fingertips. If he squinted and consumed a few choice hallucinogens, he could believe it was Buffy herself there with him.

He walks over to sit next to her and holds out his hand for the ditto sheet. "Let me have a look at it."

"Thanks."

That's probably the first time in years that anyone has ever shown him sincere gratitude. Buffy thanked him once or twice, but he never quite felt she was being genuine.

He squints at the paper and begins to read the poem aloud, putting on his best Angelus-esque drippy brogue.

"'Twas brillig, and the slithy toves..."

Dawn actually laughs.

He hasn't made any human genuinely laugh like that in years and years, if memory serves.

Eh, he'll give it a few years. Maybe she'd be worth turning after all.



"Spike?"

"What?" He looks up at Dawn, all sleepy-eyed and too young looking in the wee hours of the morning. "And for that matter, why aren't you back upstairs? Can't you leave a person to rest in peace?" He chuckles at the unintentional morbid pun.

She scowls. "The others were making too much noise while they got ready for bed."

Spike doesn't respond. He's learned that the less said about the gang, the better. The kid's awfully attached to them, and whenever he lets the derision fly around Dawn, it usually smacks him right back in the face.

She curls up again on the sofa, and he takes a seat opposite. "Why don't you die?" she asks in that small late-night voice of hers.

"Thanks ever so for the consideration," he replies, his voice dripping sarcasm like AB-negative.

"I'm just curious. That whole vampire thing can't be much fun."

"It has its moments." And he's not about to elucidate them to her young ears.

A swath of stomach skin peeks through her torn nightshirt; it's something he doesn't care to see. She's probably as close to a little sister as his pathetic undead self will ever get -- as much as he hates to admit it -- but the whole boy/girl thing does make for awkwardness.

"Why do you ask, my little tatterdemalion?"

She scrunches up her face. "Did you just call me a demon?"

"Only at certain times of the month." Spike smirks. "And that's not what I said at all. I meant... oh, forget it. Seriously, though, why do you ask?"

"Well, if I were like you, I'd probably get someone to stake me as soon as possible. I mean, what's the point? It would get so boring after a while. Nothing to do except be mean to other people and rob the Red Cross."

"Ah, but there's the eternal youth thing." He quirks an eyebrow.

Dawn rolls her eyes. "Obviously you've forgotten just what youth is really like."

He concedes, "Well, it was a bit different back in my day, I'll grant you."

She's silent for a moment, then the thinking-too-hard look shows up on her face again. "Spike, are you one of the bad guys?"

"Apparently."

"So I should just grab a pencil or something and stab you?"

Spike wants to chuckle, but sarcasm seems out of place. "Your call, though I'd prefer you didn't."

He waits for her to lob back something like 'don't piss me off, then', but she doesn't. The overhead light flickers with the footsteps above, as the others settle down for a long summer's night.

Finally, he says, "You're supposed to be in bed, girlie. Early to bed, early to rise, or whatever the hell it is."

Spike doesn't think she hears him, as lost in thought as she is. He's had an endless century-plus to think and think some more, but Dawn seems to have trumped him in only fifteen-odd years on the planet.

"Why are you still here?" Her words are barely above a whisper, but her eyes are curious.

"I was just about to le--"

Dawn cuts him off. "I mean, why are you still here in Sunnydale? You're not really into the whole vampire thing anymore, unless you're holding out on me."

The kid is hitting awkward question paydirt tonight. For the past three months, he's made a point of not chatting up that particular subject with her. He's figured she has just been taking his presence for granted, which is exactly how he wants it.

"No particular reason," he hedges.

Dawn sits up straight as a charmed snake. "Tell me."

Holy hell, she sounds just like Buffy. He squares his shoulders and dives in.

"One of the last things your sister said to me on that night was about you." Dawn's eyes open wide, so he continues. "Buffy told me she was counting on me to look after you, keep you safe."

They're both silent for a long moment. He feels a too-familiar prickling behind his eyes. Fuck all. There's a reason he hates to talk or even think about that moment. It's his curse that it won't leave him alone, night after night.

"So, you only hang around because you promised her?"

"'Course not. I've had a soft spot for you ever since I first saw you when you were, what, eleven or so."

Not entirely true, but he doesn't tell her that. Doesn't think she'd appreciate that a half-dozen times before the goddamned chip, he'd nearly bitten her just to piss off the Slayer.

"I don't need protection, you know. I can take care of myself, and the others are here all the time. I'm too old for a babysitter." Her voice is still small, even as she's trying to sound so big.

"I know." Another silence, then he shakes his head. "Too many beasties out there for anyone to be left alone, especially a weak little thing like you."

He waits for her to yell at him, but nothing.

As if on cue, he hears someone upstairs calling out for another to turn out the light. Female voice. He doesn't bother to try and identify it.

She finally gets up and walks over to stand in front of him. He can't quite look her in the eye.

"Well, thanks then, Spike. I'm glad you're here."

He attempts a smile but it doesn't work. "No problem. Cheers."

"Don't be offended, but I'm not going to give you a hug. Okay?"

That earns her a chuckle. "I'd be more offended if you did."

As she walks over to the stairs, he calls out, "I won't be here until tomorrow evening. Gonna take a bit of time off."

"Sure, okay. Sweet dreams," she replies like the child she still is.

Right. As if that were even an option anymore. As if it ever would be again.

When it sounds like she's reached the top of the stairs, Spike hears the same female voice ask who Dawn was talking to. Three months ago, someone would have bounded downstairs, ready to drive him out of the house with a shout or a stake. These days, nobody much cares anymore.

He wants to stomp out and slam the front door to show 'em who's boss, but that'd wake everyone up and they'd probably rescind his entry privileges. Spike doesn't particularly want his access to Dawn to be cut off. He's grown rather attached to the girl.

So Spike steps outside into the night, and he tries to summon that wicked streak he used to have. Jump-starting the cycle, he heads off toward a bar or any other decent or not-so-decent vampire hangout. Anywhere where he could be around his own kind and remember who he's supposed to be.

He needs to become himself again.


END (1/1)

NOTES: In four years of writing fanfic, this is my first attempt at anything not in the XF universe (I post there as "alanna", but I've been meaning to try out a new pen name.) I won't pretend to know even half of all there is to know about BTVS, but I'm having fun playing in a new sandbox.

Mil gracias to Sophia Jirafe, Melymbrosia, and Sharon for beta and handholding.

I'd love to hear from you! wisteria@smyrnacable.net