Before Nightfall

by kenzier

Prologue: Acts of Man

And when the acts of man
Cause the ground to break open
Oh, let me inside, let me inside, not to wait

– Midlake

The moon was nowhere to be found. The blackness of the night was blacker than almost any she'd ever seen. Despite the stillness of the darkness around her, she knew now that they had to move. After today, she would stop waiting.

It was this thought that woke her after only a few hours of sleep. It wasn't quite panic, but it was a call to action moving inside her, refusing to keep quiet.

Today, Glory had made good on her promise. Well, somewhat anyway. "Next time we meet, something you love dies bloody."

She didn't love Spike, nor had he died, but he loved her and he could have died, if not by Glory's hands then by her own. This was enough to force Buffy to acknowledge that Glory had meant what she said. Not that she had ever doubted it, but damn if Glory hadn't taken her time. So much had happened since then.

Now she had no options, couldn't wait until it played out on its own. Next time, it would be someone she did love, and eventually it would be Dawn.

Dawn. Dawn. Dawn. Buffy was certain today was the day. She could see the picture in her mind of Dawn being ripped from her arms, taken somewhere she could not follow, disappeared from her life forever. Dawn had been given to her to protect. Despite the familial ties that the monks had created, truly Dawn was more her child than her sister, and now with her mother's death, this feeling had grown stronger than ever.

From the moment she walked into his crypt, it had taken all of her concentration and patience to keep from beating the remaining unlife out of Spike and demanding that he confess his crime, tell her about how he'd ratted them out to save his own skin. To stand there wasting precious seconds, listening to him babble, waiting for the awful truth to spill out, it made the real truth that much more unnerving. Moments before, she'd been standing outside of his door, trying to convince herself that even if he did tell Glory about Dawn, it would be wrong to kill him.

When she left him, the sun was shining brightly, and she realized it was hanging at just the same angle it would be when school let out at 3 o'clock, a cast so familiar to her in years past, something she'd always associated with freedom. She suddenly felt extremely nostalgic and peaceful. It was a beautiful spring day, and maybe there was still some promise to this life after all.

Unfortunately, her relief only lasted a few short hours. She was the Slayer—to be at ease too long felt like she was doing something wrong.

She hadn't known how to tell the others the truth about Spike—Dawn especially. They deserved to know, but at the same time, some part of her felt that only she could truly understand his actions, that only she would know what slot to drop this in. Dawn would feel vindicated, Willow overly empathetic or even guilty. Xander would find a way to make it his own, to find the cynicism or irony in it. Only Giles could possibly see it for what it really was.

When she returned to the Magic Box, she told them plainly and quickly then promptly collected Dawn and left, not waiting to hear their reactions.

For her, Buffy Summers, Slayer of the Vampires, she had decided to accept it only for what it appeared to be and study it no further. She refused to allow it to become a paradigm shift of any kind. Her moral compass was woven into the fabric of her being and a lovesick bloodsucker with a penchant for romantic gestures would not be the thing to unravel it. After all, he was still a murderer.

Granted, it was that internal pull toward rightness which finally forced her to acknowledge the realness of his feelings. She knew she couldn't ignore them just because they were inconvenient and contradicted her forthright stance regarding the pure and uncomplicated evil of vampires.

She wondered what her mother would say. Her mother had liked Spike. But her mother didn't have to make the hard choices she had to make. She had been free to explore flights of fancy, including playing mother hen to a soulless fiend—one who's primary goal was to steal the life of her first born child and tap dance on her grave. It seemed unfair that Joyce had always had a soft spot for Spike while holding onto a measure of distrust and fear of Angel. Maybe it was because Spike could only kill Buffy while Angel could truly hurt her.

Living in her mother's house without her mother was an awful curse. Sitting now as she was, on the white wicker loveseat that her mother had so considerately purchased for their front porch (something that only a mom would know to do), blanket covering her lap, it was impossible not to think of the mornings that they would migrate their plates and bowls and mugs outside to enjoy breakfast in the dry California heat.

She felt her eyes ache a little as tears attempted to force themselves out. Suddenly, she sensed the vibration of her teenage sister tromping downstairs. She knew it was Dawn because of her propensity to clomp like a Clydesdale when climbing or descending their old, wooden staircase (which was not very forgiving of such inconsiderate plodding).

Buffy sat quietly and waited to see how long it would take Dawn to find her. She thought of playing hide-and-seek with Dawn when they were children, when they had just been two ordinary girls—not a Slayer and a Key.

She had finally gotten over the anxiety of remembering that someone had violated her mind to implant such idyllic memories. For awhile, the disgust and vulnerability would shake her every time she thought of the past that had been created for her. She feared that she would never be able to forget that the memories were counterfeit, that they were not what she had felt or thought, but rather they were dreamed up by a monk who probably spent a great deal of time imagining what a life beyond his robes would be like. But memory and nostalgia are strong. She could remember feeling the feelings, and for Buffy, this was a huge deal. She trusted her gut far more than her intellect.

She heard the heavy creak of the front door, and saw Dawn peer outside, a bewildered look etched on her face as she searched for her. Buffy felt guilty then, admonishing herself for not recognizing how such a thing might affect Dawn more deeply than it normally would.

"Dawn."

Dawn started and gasped and then immediately appeared both relieved and annoyed in a way only a teenage girl could.

"Sorry. Didn't mean to scare you."

"Oh, sure. Says the stealthy Slayer sitting in the dark wearing all black."

"That was quite an accomplishment in alliteration."

"Huh?"

"Nothing. It's one of those things you start noticing only after taking a college lit course. Like how everything is either an allusion to death or Hell or God."

"Sound like a guidebook to Sunnydale."

"Perhaps it should be mandatory coursework then."

Dawn stepped out on the mat.

"You think you'll go back to school soon?"

Buffy shook her head assuredly but with apparent regret.

"I wish I didn't have to go back either."

"I think that's pretty much status quo."

"I guess. But it just doesn't seem right. I'm sitting there in class and my teacher is all talking about the Bhagavad Gita and all I can think is how no one there has any idea about Glory or what might happen."

"You should let me worry about that. Whatever that is, it sounds very old and important."

"It's an ancient Indian philosophical text about a warrior that has lost his will to fight. I think they feel the need to arm us in any way they can."

Buffy laughed. Dawn crossed the porch to sit next to her. She looked thoughtfully out at the street, but it was clear something else was on her mind.

"Buffy, what's going to happen to Spike?"

"What do you mean?"

"Well, do you think Glory will come after him again?"

"I doubt it. I think it would be a waste of her time."

Dawn smiled a bit to herself then.

Buffy rolled her eyes. "What?"

"Nothing."

"I feel some kind of 'I-told-you-so' coming on here."

"I just think it's pretty cool that I was right."

"You weren't right. You were barely ballpark. Spike is still evil. And now he's not just evil, he's also incorrigible."

"And loyal and romantic."

"Look, sister, I'm not going to let you live your little crush vicariously through me."

"Please. I'm so over that."

"Then why are you still on about Spike?"

"Because he's my friend."

And suddenly, Buffy was strangely touched, She couldn't argue with that logic. Spike was different than Willow and Xander and Giles—from what she could glean, Dawn wasn't just Buffy's kid sister to him. Maybe it was because they were both outsiders in a way. Dawn lived in the shadow of Buffy's enormous life and her unusual origin only seemed to exacerbate her alienation. Spike in his best moments was only a fringe member of the group—tolerated by necessity, vampira non grata.

"I know. Tell you what: Willow and I will take him some blood tomorrow. Will that make you happy?"

"You don't want me to see him, huh?"

"It's…it's a bit hard to see anyone like that, no matter who they are. And the better you know them, the harder it is."

"I understand."

Buffy didn't even want to approach the heart of the matter—that the moment Dawn saw the damage that had been done to Spike, there could only be two possible reactions: that this was her fault and that this is what Glory would do to her if she ever figured out that she was the Key.

Dawn leaned into Buffy then, her head falling underneath Buffy's chin. She touched Dawn's thick, silky hair and they watched together as the silver moon glided out from its hiding place and illuminated the faces of the houses along Revello Drive.

There was nothing like getting beat to a bloody pulp to make you realize just how alone you really were. No one to take care of you, nurse your wounds, help you lift your head.

Spike had spent a good chunk of his evening recalling just how many people he'd pissed off in his long life. That was after the profound and miserable realization that there was probably not a single person on the planet that actually liked him right now. If he died at this very moment (which would have been a welcome blessing), he'd be just a name in some dusty old books that read like fiction to ninety-nine point nine percent of the world, barely missed by anyone at all.

What could he say? He wasn't drawn in broad strokes. He'd never been a hundred percent good or a hundred percent evil. It was a lot harder to make friends that-a-way, though it had never been this severe. He was truly riding the fence between two worlds—he desired the freedom to hunt and kill at will, desired the peace it would bring him—feeling the life drain out of a body in his arms, yet found himself desperately and passionately in love with the figurehead of goodness, the leader of the white hats who had made it her mission to put an end to so much of what he treasured. In her world, he could only be two things: dust or neutered. He would never be a person and he would never be free.

Oddly, he found this to be less of a dilemma than he'd originally envisioned. Despite the twists and turns his path had taken over the years, with all of the distractions of traversing the globe and all of the diverting temptations—the easy prey of the Russian famine, learning sleight-of-hand tricks from gypsies around a campfire, the Boxer rebellion, WWII, Haight-Ashbury and everything in between, he realized he was always supposed to end up right here. He just wished he hadn't had to be impaled on the finger of a god to be certain of it.

Love. It had always really been about that. And now, after all this time, he'd found her. He'd never been more sure of anything. Buffy Summers, golden-skinned, pink-cheeked California girl with a smart mouth and an endearing sprinkling of daffiness. She was just a girl, but in this town she was both the feared and respected queen of the underworld. She was…perfect. Charmingly, bewitchingly perfect. He needed her to be his. Nothing else mattered. Nothing ever had. She was only a fraction of his age, but her soul was ancient. He thought he must have been following it across time, across the whole world, and that was why Slayers had factored so largely into his life. Or maybe he was just waxing poetic as he had a tendency to do.

Regardless, he knew that there was no possibility that he would ever love anything more than he loved her. And she hated him.

Not that this was new. Not that it would stop him. After today, he could only hope that she hated him a little less than she did before, that this thing that he had done would grow inside her like a planted seed. That with enough time her gratitude might develop into affection.

The whole thing had already provided him with fodder for his daydreams. He was excited at just the prospect of being able to fantasize about how things might play out. There was a lot to work with now. He was already concocting elaborate fantasies about how working together to beat Glory would bring them closer and in a moment of danger and despair, her defenses would break down and she would let him in. He dreamed about being the one Buffy could run to, the one she could secretly trust more than she would ever say aloud. Alone here in the dark, he burned for her. He missed her touch without ever having felt it, was cursed with the sickening pain of being denied her love and affection although he'd never known it.

The fantasy wouldn't be enough, but he'd make it last as long as he could—it was the only thing that kept him going sometimes.

He'd been too out of it to light any torches or candles. He gingerly rolled onto his side and curled up, trying not to focus on the pain, whispering to himself that he was okay.

He had half a mind to be horribly depressed. As such, one eye produced a single tear of unabashed self-pity as the moon finally condescended to shed some light on him.