Dawn said, "So?"
That was literally the first word out of her mouth. The first word out of anyone's mouth actually, since there was an appropriate tumbleweed-quality silence after the great revelation. Silly teenager, interrupting our requirement to let crucial information hang in the air for - what? three minutes minimum? - allowing it the time and space it deserves to process itself in our lowly mortal brains.
Here's what happened. It was my idea to drop back in before going home, check with Dawn like she asked us to. I told her how everything was taken care of with wormboy, as spell reversal is a fun little perk (one of just a handful) of having an ex-ex-demon for an ex-fiancé. I told her Buffy would be back soon, Nancy would be back roughly never, and the bleached thing that wouldn't die would stay away if he knew what was good for him. (Which apparently was unnecessary information to a girl who'd already threatened to set him on fire in his sleep. Between that and "So?", Dawn could be my new personal hero.)
That's when Buffy came in, dropped a stake on the table, and flinched a little upon seeing the two of us watching TV. We all nodded some 'hey's at each other.
"Did you finish your homework?" she said.
"Didn't have that much," Dawn said, casually turning off the 'Spongebob' episode that neither of us quite wanted to admit we were invested in.
Buffy nodded. "Well... did you eat enough? I think I'll make-" Ah. She tried, bless her, to make an easy escape, only to be cut off mid- hospitality.
"Spike went home?" asked Dawn in the most falsely innocent tone she could. "Or back to the school?"
"He went... somewhere," and it was obvious she really didn't know where.
"What, you didn't check up on him?"
"*Dawn*-" she started, but the heat faded off, like she didn't even have the energy to be defensive. "It's complicated."
It was that vague little non-answer that made me open my mouth. "Doesn't seem that complicated to me, Buff. You keep up the secret late-night rendez-vous with the evil undead, and we'll just wait around for the fallout - you coulda warned us!" (A little part of my brain said I should lower my voice and I was being a dick, but even that part agreed I was basically right.)
"Xander, please. It's not that late, and it- slipped my mind..." it was a bad lie, that second part, and she knew it. "Look. I don't know why I didn't say anything, I was still - reacting to all of it, and- and now you know. So... I am sorry." She added that in like she could hear a question, or an accusation, that no one asked.
"Well... are you okay?" said Dawn quieter, sincerely. I sunk into my chair a little because I knew she'd become the grown-up of us in a matter of seconds.
"Sort of. I dunno." (As much as I wanted her to say, "Yes, of course I am, you dummies" you have to admire the honesty of it.) After a beat of staring at her shoes, Dawn went to her with a silent good-for-one-irony- free-hug offer. Buffy took it. Tension lifted.
"Well if he comes back here, he answers to me, and possibly to my heavy toolbelt," I offered. The girls smiled their best let's-humor-the- sarcastic-carpenter smiles. "I mean it. I have no problem getting help in horrible apocalypse prevention, wherever we can get it. But I want it on record that I'm opposed to Spike setting foot through that door again. Guy doesn't even knock? I say we break out the garlic and the ancient texts. We'll have him de-invited faster than you can say... you know, whatever mystic Latin hoo-ha you have to say to de-invite him."
Buffy's smile faltered. "Xander, we're not, um... there's something else."
So then she said it. She said it after a lot of hemming and hawing, and scrunching her eyebrows, and rambling something about a church before she cut herself off. She took a breath, looked up, and said, "He got his soul back. On purpose, I think."
And Dawn said "So?" Without even *near* the three minutes minimum to process that, she said "So?"
Buffy said, "A soul, Dawn." (Like she didn't catch it the first time.) "It means... I don't know, it's like- a conscience. Remorse, guilt, humanity, I think... guys, I just saw him and... he's not all that sane right now. He- he had a total meltdown back there, after Ronnie..."
She trailed off at that point, or maybe I just stopped listening, until she shook her head and sighed, "I thought you should know." I guess because neither of us did much besides pause and gather it all in, Buffy went upstairs. Dawn put the TV back on. I went home. There really isn't more to it than that.
I get this feeling I have to defend myself now, a silly idea maybe. I have to defend the fact I'm not singing hymns of praise and joy to pave Spike's road to redemption. Like maybe it makes me a bad friend or something. But then I think, no. No, I'm not being a bad friend to Buffy, 'cause she's not singing either. There's not even a hum of praise and definitely no joy - just exhaustion, worry, and defensiveness. So if my lack of enthusiasm isn't affecting her, then who am I being a bad friend to? Spike? He's not my friend. So it's fine, I can have my confused and pissy reaction guilt- free.
There's a very very simple rule I've stuck to, and it may be the most important and unalterable rule of my life. Do you know what it is?
I don't like vampires.
Now maybe you think that I oversimplify. Mr. Harris, you'd say, because you'd address me formally in my head, aren't you being kinda silly? Surely you like some vampires. What about the really nice ones with muscular bodies who wear leather?
No, I can't say I like any of them. It's a pretty easy rule of thumb. Here's a girl, nice smile, attractive, volunteers at a soup kitchen and enjoys long walks on the beach. Sounds good so far. What's that? Her favorite food is the blood of the innocent? I'm sorry, I have to say I no longer like her. Too much baggage. *stake, poof* Simple as that.
You see, Buffy has a habit of making things very complicated for herself. She has a two-word job description. It's not that hard to follow. I see it very clearly, I always have.
Once upon a time, I had a normal life. I went to school, hung out with my friends, and fudged my way through American Lit like everybody else. I did not know the shortest routes to the morgue, and the school library was an exotic land of danger and mystery through which I'd never tread. Then... well, I could go down the cheesy road and say something like 'she came along' and 'nothing was ever the same'. What actually happened was that she came along, I watched one of my best friends (let's get real, *only* friends) bare fangs and growl at me, he exploded into dust four inches from my face, and *then* nothing was ever the same. If you want to get technical about it.
Over the next few years, I learned all I ever needed to know about vampires. (I don't exactly regret this, by the way. I like being on the inside where I can help better than the mass-ignorance-is-bliss alternative.) I learned this myth that vampires are animals, when actually they're worse. Animals kill for food and survival. Demons kill sometimes for food, occasionally for survival, and mostly because they like it. Angel killed Ms. Calendar to torture Giles. The Master's guys killed Jesse because it was more fun than just leaving a hostage alone. Vampires are instinctive sadism walking around in bodies that should've died in the 19th century. I don't like them.
But amazingly, this can sometimes be an unpopular opinion. Lately Buffy gets this look - she averts her eyes slightly, and she keeps herself very still and tight-lipped for a few seconds. This is her Spike look. Her Angel look was a bit more emotional and sometimes involved swallowing or widened eyes, but the looking-away part was the same. It used to be her glancing at Willow, away from me, because yours truly just wouldn't understand. And Willow would glance back at me, through me, without communicating a syllable in my actual direction. A quiet nod of "Yes, Buffy, you're right, he wouldn't understand."
What happens is that the soul thing comes in, and all that stuff she explained to Dawn - remorse, conscience, guilt, whatever. You know what I think they should do with that remorse? I think they should take it and dust themselves before they fuck up and hurt anybody else. That's what I think.
So I guess they were right. I probably wouldn't understand. And I hate that.
I hate it so much that sometimes I want to tell Buffy there are some things I do understand. For example, I want to tell her the girl I lost my virginity to tried to break my heart easy, and when I didn't let her, she tried harder. I want to tell her what was going through my head when I was pinned to a cheap motel bed by somebody who could kill me in a fraction of a second. I tried to make it okay, I tried to think about the first time and how good it was, but all I could think about was Miss French the Giant Insect Lady for some reason, and it wasn't sexy. I want to tell her there was kissing and groping and shoving and biting and hands squeezing my neck and I was scared, I was scared, and I wanted it to stop.
(Freeze frame: I'm well aware that Angel saved me that night. You might think I owe him something for that. Like, at the very least, I should stop saying that vampires with souls should dust themselves. Well, shut up. No one asked you. I have a personal right to hold myself together with hasty generalizations, and by God, I'm going to use it.)
It did stop, and I want to tell Buffy how I was lying on that bed alone for an eternity, trying to understand it, trying to deal with the fact that funny crazy-hot Faith (who I was sort of in love with in that bullshit 18- year-old virgin way) could hate me so much. That maybe it was my fault, or maybe she was just nuts, or maybe I was having a long vivid nightmare. I was lying there, staring at the ceiling, waiting for my body to assure me that when I got out of bed, I wouldn't throw up.
And I want to tell her this because I saw her in the bathroom. Nobody else did. It was... wrong. I mean, it was natural disaster levels of wrong. Believe me, I'd seen Buffy in every possible state of disarray before. I've seen her with her ass kicked, miserable, catatonic, spellbound and stupid, even pretty scared. I've seen her dead body lying on the ground twice when, frankly, once was too many times. But I saw her in the bathroom that night, and it was new. I saw her look... small. Lost. Hurt. Lots of words that are not meant to go next to "Buffy".
Right when I saw her, there was this moment - actually more than one, and I will probably never tell this to anyone as long as I live - I acknowledged inside that she was lying. Spike hadn't failed. People don't look that defeated after victory. So I'm standing there, trying as hard as I can to muster up the same kind of blind rage I had when I found out Spike was having *consensual* sex with someone I love, but all I can do is feel everything shifting and spinning and was she in pain and could I have helped and why did I have to snap at her this morning. As of today, I'm still recovering from those moments.
I got it later though. I could understand. It wasn't until she was pulling herself together and heading out to beat up some nerds, but pure denial finally kicked in and actually led to realistic thinking. I was wrong. Of course I was. Because she is Buffy, brave tough superhero. This isn't a "Lifetime" movie, this is a mighty morphin' power slayer kicking into gear against an idiot with a chip in his head. Of *course* she wouldn't have let him touch her unless she wanted him to (P.S. still so, SO not adjusting to the concept that she ever wanted him to). She kicked his ass hard and sent him packing. Case closed.
As for the way she looked, I got that too. I figured it out. She looked like that because it didn't matter that she made him stop, like it didn't matter that Faith didn't end up killing me. The trying is the important part. Spike tried to rape Buffy, and it didn't matter to her that he didn't succeed.
So it doesn't make a difference to me either.
I can be a really good, forgiving guy. I know I can. I saved the whole world with forgiveness once. But Willow was my best friend since kindergarten. Anya was very possibly the love of my life. Spike was a vampire (see: sadism, instinctive) we've all collectively known for about five years - and for three of those years, he was repeatedly trying to kill us. (See, again, he tried, and it doesn't matter that he never succeeded.) It's not exactly the same thing.
This is all the stuff I was thinking on the ride home, assuring myself that I am not a heartless man. Everything's okay if I can keep going back to Angelus, Spike, Faith, Jesse, the bathroom, over and over. Until the tiny bewildered guy in the back of my mind speaks up again, because he can't get over how after everything, after *every thing*, Spike had to go and do something unarguably decent. He had to smash the world to pieces and then dabble but-I-really-do-love-you in Elmer's Glue.
And somewhere inside, I'm just thinking...
So?
That was literally the first word out of her mouth. The first word out of anyone's mouth actually, since there was an appropriate tumbleweed-quality silence after the great revelation. Silly teenager, interrupting our requirement to let crucial information hang in the air for - what? three minutes minimum? - allowing it the time and space it deserves to process itself in our lowly mortal brains.
Here's what happened. It was my idea to drop back in before going home, check with Dawn like she asked us to. I told her how everything was taken care of with wormboy, as spell reversal is a fun little perk (one of just a handful) of having an ex-ex-demon for an ex-fiancé. I told her Buffy would be back soon, Nancy would be back roughly never, and the bleached thing that wouldn't die would stay away if he knew what was good for him. (Which apparently was unnecessary information to a girl who'd already threatened to set him on fire in his sleep. Between that and "So?", Dawn could be my new personal hero.)
That's when Buffy came in, dropped a stake on the table, and flinched a little upon seeing the two of us watching TV. We all nodded some 'hey's at each other.
"Did you finish your homework?" she said.
"Didn't have that much," Dawn said, casually turning off the 'Spongebob' episode that neither of us quite wanted to admit we were invested in.
Buffy nodded. "Well... did you eat enough? I think I'll make-" Ah. She tried, bless her, to make an easy escape, only to be cut off mid- hospitality.
"Spike went home?" asked Dawn in the most falsely innocent tone she could. "Or back to the school?"
"He went... somewhere," and it was obvious she really didn't know where.
"What, you didn't check up on him?"
"*Dawn*-" she started, but the heat faded off, like she didn't even have the energy to be defensive. "It's complicated."
It was that vague little non-answer that made me open my mouth. "Doesn't seem that complicated to me, Buff. You keep up the secret late-night rendez-vous with the evil undead, and we'll just wait around for the fallout - you coulda warned us!" (A little part of my brain said I should lower my voice and I was being a dick, but even that part agreed I was basically right.)
"Xander, please. It's not that late, and it- slipped my mind..." it was a bad lie, that second part, and she knew it. "Look. I don't know why I didn't say anything, I was still - reacting to all of it, and- and now you know. So... I am sorry." She added that in like she could hear a question, or an accusation, that no one asked.
"Well... are you okay?" said Dawn quieter, sincerely. I sunk into my chair a little because I knew she'd become the grown-up of us in a matter of seconds.
"Sort of. I dunno." (As much as I wanted her to say, "Yes, of course I am, you dummies" you have to admire the honesty of it.) After a beat of staring at her shoes, Dawn went to her with a silent good-for-one-irony- free-hug offer. Buffy took it. Tension lifted.
"Well if he comes back here, he answers to me, and possibly to my heavy toolbelt," I offered. The girls smiled their best let's-humor-the- sarcastic-carpenter smiles. "I mean it. I have no problem getting help in horrible apocalypse prevention, wherever we can get it. But I want it on record that I'm opposed to Spike setting foot through that door again. Guy doesn't even knock? I say we break out the garlic and the ancient texts. We'll have him de-invited faster than you can say... you know, whatever mystic Latin hoo-ha you have to say to de-invite him."
Buffy's smile faltered. "Xander, we're not, um... there's something else."
So then she said it. She said it after a lot of hemming and hawing, and scrunching her eyebrows, and rambling something about a church before she cut herself off. She took a breath, looked up, and said, "He got his soul back. On purpose, I think."
And Dawn said "So?" Without even *near* the three minutes minimum to process that, she said "So?"
Buffy said, "A soul, Dawn." (Like she didn't catch it the first time.) "It means... I don't know, it's like- a conscience. Remorse, guilt, humanity, I think... guys, I just saw him and... he's not all that sane right now. He- he had a total meltdown back there, after Ronnie..."
She trailed off at that point, or maybe I just stopped listening, until she shook her head and sighed, "I thought you should know." I guess because neither of us did much besides pause and gather it all in, Buffy went upstairs. Dawn put the TV back on. I went home. There really isn't more to it than that.
I get this feeling I have to defend myself now, a silly idea maybe. I have to defend the fact I'm not singing hymns of praise and joy to pave Spike's road to redemption. Like maybe it makes me a bad friend or something. But then I think, no. No, I'm not being a bad friend to Buffy, 'cause she's not singing either. There's not even a hum of praise and definitely no joy - just exhaustion, worry, and defensiveness. So if my lack of enthusiasm isn't affecting her, then who am I being a bad friend to? Spike? He's not my friend. So it's fine, I can have my confused and pissy reaction guilt- free.
There's a very very simple rule I've stuck to, and it may be the most important and unalterable rule of my life. Do you know what it is?
I don't like vampires.
Now maybe you think that I oversimplify. Mr. Harris, you'd say, because you'd address me formally in my head, aren't you being kinda silly? Surely you like some vampires. What about the really nice ones with muscular bodies who wear leather?
No, I can't say I like any of them. It's a pretty easy rule of thumb. Here's a girl, nice smile, attractive, volunteers at a soup kitchen and enjoys long walks on the beach. Sounds good so far. What's that? Her favorite food is the blood of the innocent? I'm sorry, I have to say I no longer like her. Too much baggage. *stake, poof* Simple as that.
You see, Buffy has a habit of making things very complicated for herself. She has a two-word job description. It's not that hard to follow. I see it very clearly, I always have.
Once upon a time, I had a normal life. I went to school, hung out with my friends, and fudged my way through American Lit like everybody else. I did not know the shortest routes to the morgue, and the school library was an exotic land of danger and mystery through which I'd never tread. Then... well, I could go down the cheesy road and say something like 'she came along' and 'nothing was ever the same'. What actually happened was that she came along, I watched one of my best friends (let's get real, *only* friends) bare fangs and growl at me, he exploded into dust four inches from my face, and *then* nothing was ever the same. If you want to get technical about it.
Over the next few years, I learned all I ever needed to know about vampires. (I don't exactly regret this, by the way. I like being on the inside where I can help better than the mass-ignorance-is-bliss alternative.) I learned this myth that vampires are animals, when actually they're worse. Animals kill for food and survival. Demons kill sometimes for food, occasionally for survival, and mostly because they like it. Angel killed Ms. Calendar to torture Giles. The Master's guys killed Jesse because it was more fun than just leaving a hostage alone. Vampires are instinctive sadism walking around in bodies that should've died in the 19th century. I don't like them.
But amazingly, this can sometimes be an unpopular opinion. Lately Buffy gets this look - she averts her eyes slightly, and she keeps herself very still and tight-lipped for a few seconds. This is her Spike look. Her Angel look was a bit more emotional and sometimes involved swallowing or widened eyes, but the looking-away part was the same. It used to be her glancing at Willow, away from me, because yours truly just wouldn't understand. And Willow would glance back at me, through me, without communicating a syllable in my actual direction. A quiet nod of "Yes, Buffy, you're right, he wouldn't understand."
What happens is that the soul thing comes in, and all that stuff she explained to Dawn - remorse, conscience, guilt, whatever. You know what I think they should do with that remorse? I think they should take it and dust themselves before they fuck up and hurt anybody else. That's what I think.
So I guess they were right. I probably wouldn't understand. And I hate that.
I hate it so much that sometimes I want to tell Buffy there are some things I do understand. For example, I want to tell her the girl I lost my virginity to tried to break my heart easy, and when I didn't let her, she tried harder. I want to tell her what was going through my head when I was pinned to a cheap motel bed by somebody who could kill me in a fraction of a second. I tried to make it okay, I tried to think about the first time and how good it was, but all I could think about was Miss French the Giant Insect Lady for some reason, and it wasn't sexy. I want to tell her there was kissing and groping and shoving and biting and hands squeezing my neck and I was scared, I was scared, and I wanted it to stop.
(Freeze frame: I'm well aware that Angel saved me that night. You might think I owe him something for that. Like, at the very least, I should stop saying that vampires with souls should dust themselves. Well, shut up. No one asked you. I have a personal right to hold myself together with hasty generalizations, and by God, I'm going to use it.)
It did stop, and I want to tell Buffy how I was lying on that bed alone for an eternity, trying to understand it, trying to deal with the fact that funny crazy-hot Faith (who I was sort of in love with in that bullshit 18- year-old virgin way) could hate me so much. That maybe it was my fault, or maybe she was just nuts, or maybe I was having a long vivid nightmare. I was lying there, staring at the ceiling, waiting for my body to assure me that when I got out of bed, I wouldn't throw up.
And I want to tell her this because I saw her in the bathroom. Nobody else did. It was... wrong. I mean, it was natural disaster levels of wrong. Believe me, I'd seen Buffy in every possible state of disarray before. I've seen her with her ass kicked, miserable, catatonic, spellbound and stupid, even pretty scared. I've seen her dead body lying on the ground twice when, frankly, once was too many times. But I saw her in the bathroom that night, and it was new. I saw her look... small. Lost. Hurt. Lots of words that are not meant to go next to "Buffy".
Right when I saw her, there was this moment - actually more than one, and I will probably never tell this to anyone as long as I live - I acknowledged inside that she was lying. Spike hadn't failed. People don't look that defeated after victory. So I'm standing there, trying as hard as I can to muster up the same kind of blind rage I had when I found out Spike was having *consensual* sex with someone I love, but all I can do is feel everything shifting and spinning and was she in pain and could I have helped and why did I have to snap at her this morning. As of today, I'm still recovering from those moments.
I got it later though. I could understand. It wasn't until she was pulling herself together and heading out to beat up some nerds, but pure denial finally kicked in and actually led to realistic thinking. I was wrong. Of course I was. Because she is Buffy, brave tough superhero. This isn't a "Lifetime" movie, this is a mighty morphin' power slayer kicking into gear against an idiot with a chip in his head. Of *course* she wouldn't have let him touch her unless she wanted him to (P.S. still so, SO not adjusting to the concept that she ever wanted him to). She kicked his ass hard and sent him packing. Case closed.
As for the way she looked, I got that too. I figured it out. She looked like that because it didn't matter that she made him stop, like it didn't matter that Faith didn't end up killing me. The trying is the important part. Spike tried to rape Buffy, and it didn't matter to her that he didn't succeed.
So it doesn't make a difference to me either.
I can be a really good, forgiving guy. I know I can. I saved the whole world with forgiveness once. But Willow was my best friend since kindergarten. Anya was very possibly the love of my life. Spike was a vampire (see: sadism, instinctive) we've all collectively known for about five years - and for three of those years, he was repeatedly trying to kill us. (See, again, he tried, and it doesn't matter that he never succeeded.) It's not exactly the same thing.
This is all the stuff I was thinking on the ride home, assuring myself that I am not a heartless man. Everything's okay if I can keep going back to Angelus, Spike, Faith, Jesse, the bathroom, over and over. Until the tiny bewildered guy in the back of my mind speaks up again, because he can't get over how after everything, after *every thing*, Spike had to go and do something unarguably decent. He had to smash the world to pieces and then dabble but-I-really-do-love-you in Elmer's Glue.
And somewhere inside, I'm just thinking...
So?