AWAITING SERENDIPITY

CHAPTER TWO

His instincts warned him of a nearby demon mere seconds before the sound of fighting reached his ears. Spike didn't let himself hope that it might be her; this was not a skilled fight.

For one thing, there were too many yelps.

He resisted the urge to roll his eyes at the scene. A huge, ugly looking demon had pinned Harris to the ground, now attempting to tear his head off, while all three female companions made various amounts of noise about it.

Spike launched himself at the pair of them, grabbing the demon and, ew the bloody thing was slimy, used his momentum and growing disgust to unlatch it from the boy. He ended up rolling with it onto the ground, feeling its slime and smell imbue his clothes within seconds. This properly pissed him off; he made to snap the things' neck by-

'Spike no!'

The Witch's voice resonated in his head, the sensation nowhere as painful as, let's say, a chip being triggered in his brain, but it still felt extremely uncomfortable, not to mention intrusive. That was enough to make him hesitate. The foul smelling demon took advantage of it, breaking free of his hold, crushing in a few of his recently healed ribs in the process.

"Just hold it!" Willow shouted, using her voice this time.

"I was holding it, you bint!" Spike roared as he rolled sideways to avoid another blow, before using most of his lower body to swipe at the creature's legs.

It fell to the ground once more, soon pinned to the earth. Spike knew it wouldn't last long, even when Harris joined him and used his weak body to add some pressure.

"Now would be a good time, Will!" Harris grunted.

"Release!"

The spell sent both men flying, hitting the ground a few meters away. There was a flash of bright light, followed by an odd ripple, as if someone had thrown a stone into the pond that made up the fabric of this reality.

And sure enough, where there had been a demon a moment ago, there was nothing left but some residue goo on the grass…as well as all over Spike's front.

"Oh, god, please tell me we're almost done with this bunch," Harris was saying, sounding seconds away from spewing all over his girlfriend's shoes, as she helped him stand back up.

"They are rather putrid," she agreed. "That one the other night was bad enough. It was all over Xander's hair, and it wouldn't come off with regular shampoo. I only agreed to have sex with him in the tub, with plenty of bubble bath."

"That's…neat," Willow said, making a face Spike had come to associate with Harris's sex life. "There should only be two left, though, and the others species still roaming the town are supposed to be harmless, so we don't have to rush as much for those."

"I vote for hazmat suits," Harris rose his hand, before flicking it several times, trying to get rid of its runny layer, his girlfriend making more disapproving noises at being spattered with demon jelly.

Spike wasn't doing any better, trying to wipe his fingers off on a tombstone. He'd stopped breathing a while ago, but when he made to speak, the smell filled up his lungs again, and his cracked ribs seared. "Glad to know nothing will ever stop the two of you copulating, but why the bloody hell did you feel the need to shout in my noggin, Red?"

Willow made a face, halfway between a grimace and an apologetic smile. "Quicker and more efficient?" When he tilted his head, unconvinced, she added: "I had to act fast, and telepathy is more suggestive. I didn't want you to kill it."

"More suggestive, eh?" He said, approaching the couple of witches, and they both wrinkled their noses at his stench. "I'm very fond of my free will, Rosenberg. I'd recommend you leave it alone."

"Yeah, 'cause otherwise, he's gonna annoy you to death," Harris felt the need to butt in.

Spike turned his head to glare at him. "Next time, I'll let it rip off your head, boy," he said calmly. "And I might just have myself a snack on your brain stem." The idiot had the good sense to keep his trap shut. Spike looked back at the redhead. "What d'you do to it, then?

"I sent it back."

"Back?"

"To its own d-dimension?" Tara offered.

"Still not making any sense, pet."

"Sky going kaboomy?" Harris chimed in again. "Dimensions getting all…entangly, with demons pouring out? Rings any bells?"

Spike frowned at him, his patience wearing thinner by the second. The condescending note in Harris's voice made him deeply regret not letting him lose his head. "Oh you mean, the stuff that happened after I was thrown off a eighty feet tall tower while trying to save the Nibblet? Yeah, didn't catch most of that."

The mood changed instantly.

Spiked sighed, keeping from rolling his eyes again at the way the four humans were now avoiding each other's gazes. What rubbed him the wrong way was that what he sensed from them wasn't grief. Or not the kind of grief he'd expected to sense, so soon after it all happened.

There was…unease.

"So that nasty bugger came from another dimension?" He asked Tara, as she tended to be the least annoying of them all.

"Y…Yes," she nodded. "Most of them were sent back into their own world when…when the p-p-portal closed, but s-some of them…"

"They'd already wandered off too far from their gate," Willow finished, apparently unwilling to give her girl a few extra seconds to do it herself. "We didn't want to kill them. I mean, we figured, if we'd been the ones accidently sent to another dimension, we wouldn't want to be killed just for, you know, being there. So, yeah. Just, trying to do the right thing."

He stared at her, taking in her piss poor excuse. Trying to do the right thing.

"Alright then," Spike said, whatever curiosity he'd had about the whole topic having been efficiently squashed by their so-call righteousness – when he'd just call it an attempt at feeling less guilty about something else. "Why are you four helpless idiots in charge of this little rescue mission, though? Where's the Slayer?" He almost congratulated himself for managing to sound disinterested.

Their shifty attitude resumed, although they did exchange some glances this time.

"She's…" Willow started, but her voice trailed off.

"On leave," Harris finished.

"On leave," Spike repeated.

"Like, unpaid holidays," Anya offered. "That is, if her calling involved her getting paid for her services in the first place. Which it doesn't. So, technically, she's just staying at home all day, refusing to talk to any of us."

"Anya," her boytoy protested.

"Well it's the truth, isn't it?" Anya carried on, annoyed. "Even when she does let us in, she just sits there and doesn't say anything. I still think she's gone catatonic again."

"She hasn't," Willow said. "I told you I've checked. She's just…"

"She's grieving," Tara spoke softly, meeting Spike's gaze, and the sadness in her eyes let him know that grieving was an understatement for the state the Slayer was in.

It broke his bloody heart.

He wasn't exactly surprised by what they were saying. As soon as he'd been strong enough to leave his crypt, he'd resumed what had been his favourite nighttime activity a few months back: staring at her bedroom's window while he littered the ground with cigarette butts, letting his imagination go wild.

Here's how it usually went:

Buffy found him lurking in the shadow of that big tree. She didn't say much of anything, as he tried apologising for his shortcomings. She was never impressed, and always dusted him.

That had been the basis for scenarios 1 to about 259, those first few nights Spike spent outside her house. The settings may vary, usually details in their conversation, but the end result remained the same.

A pile of dust.

He'd not seen her leave the house once. He'd caught glimpses of her, when she opened the door for her mates, but most of the time, they'd let themselves in. Every evening, they showed up, one couple or the other, as if afraid to face her on their own. They never stayed long, looking more miserable on their way out than they did on their way in.

He'd figured she was bound to start patrolling again, soon, though; it'd taken her a while after her mum's death, but she'd gotten back into it.

Scenarios 260 to…whatever hundreds he was up to now, usually happened in a cemetery. He would 'stumble' upon her during a chase, or right after. In his most optimistic setups, she'd walk by his crypt. The rest remained unchanged, for the most part. He tried apologising for letting her down; for failing the Nibblet.

She always drove a stake through his heart.

Now one might ask why he didn't just barge into her house and talked to her, told her what happened, how he'd tried, how he'd gotten up there and almost freed the Bit. But he couldn't.

'cause he'd gotten up there alright.

He'd also been thrown off the sodding tower and broken half his bones in the process, too in pain in the aftermath of his fall to realise what her Watcher'd been up to and put a stop to it.

Truth of the matter was, he may be boisterous, obnoxious and hotheaded in most situations, to the point where he'd once chained her up to confess his feelings to her, that part of him had become quite meek of late. Something in him ached for the Slayer and her loss, turning him into a bloody coward.

Since he relied on She-Who-Usually-Hung-Out-In-Cemeteries-A-Lot to go back to doing just that, Spike now spent most of his nights patrolling himself. His reputation in the demon community was already abysmal anyway, permanently stuck in that grey area where he wasn't part of either world.

Not human, but not entirely monster either.

And so he killed. He couldn't confront her and unburden himself in the hope that it would appease the itchy guilt currently festering under his skin, but he could at least make sure someone held the fort while she got back on her feet.

"And the Watcher?" Spike eventually asked the sorry gang in front of him.

This caused the heaviest silence yet.

"Back to England," was all Harris said, in a voice so tense Spike didn't need to wonder if they knew what the old man had done.

"I'm in charge of the Magic Box, now," Anya added with a satisfied grin.

"Whoopee," Spike did roll his eyes at that, before turning to face the witches again. "Call on me if you need some real muscles."

He started striding off.

"Why would you even help us?" Harris called out to his retreating form.

Spike didn't bother with a reply.

…

The colors were too bright.

She couldn't remember a time in her life when she didn't see them, these waves of energy surrounding every living things – or even inanimate objects, if she focused hard enough. Her mother had taught her early on how to read these colors, how to interpret their meanings; how to use them to gauge the mood of a situation, to tell an honest person from a liar.

Tara had only spent a couple of days trapped in darkness, but her return to sanity had been harsh, and bright.

There was relief at being in control of her own mind and body again, but what she'd regained in physicality, she seemed to lack in spirituality. Her ability to sense others and their emotions had not gone, on the contrary. She appeared to have come back more sensitive, not quite able to control this extra dose of awareness yet.

"Well, maybe you kinda…sorta…got a bit of Glory-ness in you?"

Willow's words when Tara mentioned it to her did nothing to soothe her. She understood what she meant; Will had showed her how she'd mapped both hers and Glory's essences to take back what had been stolen – a feat that made her feel immense pride in her, having planted the seed for this particular skill.

And yet, like everything else when it came to Willow and magic these days, she'd gone beyond what most practicing witches would do. She'd used Tara's spiritual teaching about energy and auras and made it her own, twisting it in such a way that it came out more powerful; darker, too.

What Glory had drained from Tara was indescribable, yet Willow had succeeded in draining it right back. The idea that she might indeed have taken a bit of Glory along with it was repulsing, yet it made all kind of sense.

In the hours that followed her reawakening, when she'd had to cope with being her again while trying to help the rest of the Scoobies deal with Dawn's sudden disappearance and Buffy's near catatonia, Tara had longed for her mom, in a way she hadn't in months. Her mom would have been able to make sense of these distorted feelings she was experiencing; at the very least, she'd be able to help her find her center again, help her create the right balance, embrace all these emotions and messages she was receiving from all ends.

Now that things had settled down a little, she also found herself wishing Giles hadn't left so abruptly – although his motives were understandable, if not excusable in any way. Without the former Watcher here to guide them, they were just five young adults in the midst of several emotional traumas, trying to figure out how to deal with the fallout.

It wasn't all bad, though.

When it was just her and Willow in the dim moonlight, the over-stimulation caused by her raw chakras dimmed, too. She was allowed to rely solely on her regular senses, then, to breathe in Willow-smells, and caress Willow-skin, almost able to reach that inner peace she used to find so often and so easily in her arms.

Almost.

"Maybe I should call Angel."

Tara looked up from the cards she'd spread on the floor. Willow's current position was…odd, for lack of better word. She'd put the Buffy Bot on the bed to reattach its head, after complaining that the floor was hurting her knees...which had led to Willow more or less lying atop its chest as she worked on the minute wires in the machine's neck.

When it came to calling Angel…Tara understood Willow's reasoning, to some extent. She had called him after Joyce's death.

"I don't think it would help, this time," Tara said, unable not to feel increasingly uncomfortable watching her girlfriend straddling a mutual friend of theirs – even in robot form.

"Probably not," Willow agreed. "Best that could happen would be Angel trying to smooch happiness back into her. And by 'best' I mean 'worst', since, you know, the 'smooching happiness' would probably lead to the 'now I'm gonna go murder what's left of your friends' shenanigan."

"Uhm…" Tara said, a non-committal sound that finally drew Willow's focus from the Bot.

She frowned upon seeing her expression, sitting up. "What's wrong?"

Tara shook her head a little with a small, loop-sided smile. "It's nothing, it's just…this looks really weird."

Willow did a double take at the robot she was still straddling, looking back at Tara in offence. "Hey, no, ew, pillows!" She exclaimed, pointing at the pillows she had indeed put upon the Buffy Bot to avoid any unnecessary contact. "Plus, you know, the fact that right now, it's mostly just big chunks of metals with half a head attached to it!"

"I know," Tara said with a kind smile and a tilt of her head. "But those chunks of metals still look a lot like the real thing. Spike definitely found the right creep for the job."

There was a pause during which they remembered the initial purpose of the Buffy Bot. Next moment, Willow had clambered off both the robot and the bed with another repulsed sound, shaking herself off as if ridding herself of extra wiggins. Tara couldn't help but let out a small laugh at the scene.

Her smile didn't last long; too soon, an undefined sense of foreboding was taking over again, along with the brightness of Willow's aura. It had always been strong, but ever since Glory…there were dark patches where all there used to be was light.

Tara looked back down at the cards, refocusing her energy onto the reading.

"D'you think she's really gonna move?" Willow asked quietly, settling down next to her on the floor, resting her cheekbone upon her shoulder.

Tara nodded. She didn't need to read cards to know that. They'd let themselves into Buffy's house earlier today, having brought lunch with them – although the fridge was now too full to accommodate any more dishes their friend refused to even look at. They'd found her in the kitchen alright…filling up boxes.

"Are you asking about Dawnie?" Willow asked, almost in a whisper, a question Tara answered with another small nod.

Buffy's aura was the oddest of all, these days. It still held that vibrancy Tara associated with the Protectors of this world, but…it was the lingering green at the edges that troubled her. And it wasn't the green she'd spotted on those rare, good days Buffy had experienced.

This was the green Tara had come to associate with Dawn, especially when everything had been so dark and she had seen how vibrant her core energy was.

It made little to no sense, though, considering every trace of the girl had disappeared from their physical plane when she'd closed the portal.

Hence her current reading.

When Tara revealed the last card, Willow tensed against her. "Ugh, isn't tarot supposed to be subtle about things?" she asked with a hint of reproach.

But Tara shook her head, staring at the bony face of the skeleton, at the word 'DEATH' written at the bottom of the card. Unlike Willow, she understood its meaning within the overall reading.

It still didn't make any sense at all.

…

When Spike's door burst opened in an all too familiar way, snapping him out of the doze he'd been having in front of the telly, he almost fell out of his comfy chair.

Buffy stood in his doorway, her face set, gloriously vibrant and…grinning.

Grinning?

"Spike!" She exclaimed, and that was all the bloody confirmation he needed.

"What the –" Considering the Bot was as subtle as a Fyarl demon in a china shop, he easily dodged her first attempt at jumping him – literally.

"It's been forty-three days and eight hours since we last made love, Spike, I am very, very needy!"

"Get the hell away from me if you don't want to lose your head again!" He shouted at the bloody contraption before ducking yet another attempt.

Somehow her reflexes seemed even better than they were when Warren first delivered the robot to him, and she got close – too close, her tongue suddenly tracing his neck. He grabbed her shoulders and pushed her off. He was just about to throw her into the wall when hurried footsteps came to a stop at the entrance of his crypt.

"Oh, thank the goddess," Willow wheezed. "Tara, she's here!"

"Rosenberg," Spike growled, still keeping the Bot at arm's length. "What the bloody hell are you playing at?"

The witch had joined them, and with a flick of her fingers, caused the Bot to go stiff, eyes still wide open, grin frozen on her face. Spike let it go, not feeling an ounce of remorse when it hit the dusty floor, disgusted with himself more than he was with the thing itself. He'd ordered the Bot made in the first place, after all, even if it now filled him with disgust to know he'd ever touched it.

Tara had joined the party, already helping Willow carry the Bot to Spike's armchair, the two of them discussing programming and data errors.

When Spike loudly cleared his throat, they looked up at him. "Sorry," Willow said, with a matching smile. "I was working on her core programs. I meant to delete the whole, uhm, 'Fun time with Spike' software, but I accidently activated it instead."

"Yeah, figured that much m'self, thanks," he growled, going straight for the open door, careful to avoid the streaming sunlight, shutting it close with a bit too much force. "Why would you even turn the sodding thing back on? I thought that it losing its head to Glory was a good way to leave it."

The witches exchanged another one of those 'looks'.

"Xander stopped by Willie's last night," Willow said. "Apparently, the demon community is starting to notice Buffy hasn't been out and about these past few days. They don't…no one…knows what really happened, especially with…well. They don't know the full story, but they obviously realize something happened at that tower. There's a rumor going around that Buffy…"

"That she died that night," Spike finished for her.

His statement was met with silence.

"The Bot isn't a long term solution, but it's p-p-practical," Tara offered quietly. "At least until Buffy…"

Another set of heavy looks. "What?" He demanded more than he asked.

"Buffy, she's…"Willow started, a bit breathless. "Well, we stopped by for lunch a couple days ago and she's…packing."

"Packing," he repeated.

"Her house," Tara clarified. "She didn't say…" another unfinished sentence, and Spike could just see it, the two witches watching the Slayer putting items into boxes, asking her what she was doing, what her plans were, where she was going to go, only to be met with muteness. "She's obviously planning on moving out."

"Leaving town?" Spike asked.

Willow shrugged a shoulder with an uneasy pout, and Tara shook her head a little: "I don't think so? I've done a reading and…she's going to move, but I can still sense her being here in the upcoming months."

Spike had spent enough decades with Dru not to ignore anyone with any kind of sight. "Anything else your cards told you?"

There they went again with the meaningful glances. He clenched his jaws, waiting as patiently as he possibly could. "Well?"

"There is…something," Willow said, hesitantly. "It's all a bit blurry, but definitely not not there, if you know what I mean."

"I don't have a bleeding clue what you're saying half the time, Red. Why not try making a proper sentence every once in a while."

"It's Dawn," Tara said, and an heavy kind of silence briefly settled between them at the name. "I asked about Dawn, because something's off. She's disappeared from this reality when she…" Pause. "There's no more physical traces of her ever being in their home, no record of her at school or anywhere else, and there was no b-b-b-b-"

"No body," Spike offered, not unkindly. "I know, pet. I was there when we figured that one out."

"She's gone, yet she's not," Tara continued. "All of us closest to her, who had our memories altered the most…we still remember her, to a certain degree."

"What d'you mean?"

"The memories are…fading, for some of us," Willow said, uneasily.

"You're forgetting her," Spike rephrased, not even trying to hide his indignation.

"It's not like we have a say in the matter," Willow defended herself. "I still remember her, and I still feel like my best friend's little sister just died, but the memories…" she shook her head. "It's getting…fuzzier. Anything beyond nine months or so ago, it's all…foggy."

Spike stared at the witch, not really seeing her anymore. He thought back to his oldest memories of Dawn. He'd been sitting in Buffy's living room, during that first truce that had changed everything, making small talk with Joyce.

He'd spotted the kid before her mother did, crouched in the stairs, peering at him through the railing. He'd stared back, narrowing his eyes, trying to scare off the brat without a single word.

"I like your coat," she'd said instead. "It's cool."

So much for scaring her off. He'd dropped the scowl. "Thanks, Nibblet," he'd said, before Joyce had ordered her back upstairs.

There was nothing 'foggy' at all about that memory.

"You reckon she'll fade away, then?" Spike asked, lighting a cigarette, trying to bury the ache thinking about the kid had brought out. If she did fade away, eventually disappeared from everybody's memories…maybe it'd be for the best.

"In time, maybe," Tara answered. "But, like I said, something's…off. When I asked about Dawn, the cards…" She shook her head.

"That bad, uh?"

"That's the thing," Tara shook her head again. "I didn't see death, or fading. I saw rebirth."