September

September 2001

"I'm cold," Dawn said quietly.

Spike pulled his attention away from the television set and stood from the couch to take off his coat. Dawn helped him drape it over her, then leaned against his shoulder when he sat back down. She slid her arm around his waist, and in turn he curled his arm around her. Dawn pulled her legs under the coat, and their eyes went back to the television.

Spike knew he wasn't helping to her keep warm, but it was the thirteenth of September, and the comfort of another's touch seemed to be more important than it had two days ago. He rubbed her shoulder, absently brushing her long hair to one side.

"How many people caught it on camera, do you think?" There was a new view of an airplane plowing into a skyscraper.

He shrugged. "New York City. Lots of tourists, lots of camcorders."

They fell silent again, listening to the lack of news. Dawn had gone back to school that morning, and Spike was babysitting while Willow and Tara stayed after class for a candlelight vigil at UC-Sunnydale. Everyday life was beginning to creep back in, but it was an uneasy fit. Dawn lifted the remote from Spike's knee and changed to a different news network.

"I'm glad they're not here to see this," Dawn said in a small voice. He didn't reply, just kept rubbing her back. What could he say? Nothing could make him glad that Buffy and Joyce were gone.

"They had souls," she said eventually. "How could they have that much hate?"

He knew she meant the hijackers of the four airplanes. "Dunno, Bit," he murmured. It was true; even as a demon, he hadn't understood why evil worked to bring about hell on earth, hadn't understood that unwavering focus on destruction. "Someone told me once that you hate what you can't understand."

"But they think some of the hijackers lived in America for a while," Dawn said. "Didn't they see that we're good people?"

Spike slowly rubbed her back and tried to think of the best words. "You're the haves in a have-not world. I was around for the twilight of our empire, when we British were the most admired and hated people on the globe. When you're so powerful, and you don't use that power equitably, for the good of all, people blame you for what's wrong in the world." Dawn started to say something, but Spike overrode her, wanting to get the thought out. "Those terrorists see you saying one thing, doing another, and wonder why Allah doesn't smite you. They get to thinking, if Allah won't act, it must be because he's waiting for them to prove their faithfulness by doing it themselves."

"That's crazy."

"It's senseless," he agreed, "and I'm greatly oversimplifying."

"I hate the people who did this."

"Hate's what started this."

"Be angry, Spike! Jeez! You don't even care, do you? I mean, you're not American."

He raised his eyebrows, surprised by this. "Yeah, I care. New York's one of my favorite cities. Lived there for a while in the forties and seventies. And DC is a lovely town, not that it has anything to do with it. Anyone with compassion or empathy has to be shocked by this, whether they're British or a bushman – or Saudi."

Dawn sounded grouchy. "Stop being all reasonable."

His eyebrows went up again. "Don't recall I've ever been called reasonable."

She lifted her head from his shoulder. "I just want to get the gang together and go beat the crap out of the people who did this. We slay demons; we can take them."

"Yeah, I'm always up for a righteous brawl. But this isn't our purview, Nibblet. I believe you're the one who told me I can't go around killing humans."

"Yeah, well, you have my permission now." She scowled at the smile on his face and laid her head against his shoulder again. Dawn picked up the remote control and surfed until she found an episode of an innocuous eighties sitcom about hapless parents and their wisecracking kids. "I can't watch any more news," she explained.

He didn't reply, just slouched down further on the cushions, getting comfortable. Sunset was getting near, and Tara had said to expect them back sometime around eleven o'clock. Just a few more hours of big brothering, a quick patrol, and he planned to go back to his crypt and crash. He hadn't slept since Tuesday, staying at the Summers house while Dawn was out of school. The hot showers were nice, but living with a herd of emotional humans was almost as draining as traveling with Darla and Angelus.

The show the Bit had found was no doubt comforting to her in its bland familiarity, but it didn't capture his interest. Dawn was as toasty as a bedwarmer full of coals, and, with the warmth and sleepiness, he found himself drifting. As always, his thoughts turned to Buffy, and he relived those last, companionable hours before her death; felt again the way his insides liquefied and his throat knotted with fear as he met Dawn's eyes, not because he was about to be thrown from the high tower, but because he was leaving her alone and Buffy had counted on him to protect her. Then the sight of the Slayer's body on the ground in the morning sunlight, unapproachable as always.

This time he saved Dawn by doing a fearless flying side kick, knocking Doc right off the platform. He went off, too, but snatched out with the uncanny reflexes of a demon and grabbed the edge. Two fingernails peeled back with bright, wet pain, but he crawled onto the ledge and freed Dawn. Glory defeated, Buffy dashed up the haphazard stairs and pulled Dawn into a fierce hug. She gave him a quick hug, too, and he smiled, grateful, as he watched the sisters embrace again. Buffy turned to include him in their circle, her arm going around his waist, the wind whipping as the three of them stood high above her friends, and she gave him a soft kiss. She deepened it, touching his lower lip with her tongue before pulling reluctantly away.

He opened his eyes to find Dawn staring gravely at his mouth, too close. Spike's heart sank as he realized the kiss had not been just a part of his dream. He had hoped to dodge this, even as he'd seen her infatuation building. "Was I turned into a frog, then?"

A reluctant grin crept across her mouth and she shook her head, her long brown hair falling over her face. For a moment, he thought his prepared line would do the trick, that Dawn would scoot away and things would go back to normal. Instead, Dawn moved toward him. Spike moved back an equal distance.

Dawn's expression shuttered, but there was a certain stubbornness in her eyes. She bit her lip and plunged in. "I know you love me, Spike."

"I do." He met her gaze. "'Course I do. I –"

Dawn shook her hair back from her face. "I love you. So there's nothing wrong –"

"There's plenty wrong," he interrupted. "I'm here to protect you, Dawn, even from me. Even from yourself."

"I want us to shag."

He winced. "Language, Bit."

"I want you to be my first lover."

He didn't know what showed on his face, but the impulse to flee the house, plunge his head into a tub of water, and scour his ears until it was physically impossible to hear these words almost overwhelmed him. But his voice was calm, reasonable, even. "No, you don't."

"Yes, I do." Dawn was adamant. "We love each other. You'll be gentle, so it won't hurt me; you can't get me pregnant; you're aseptic, so you can't infect me with anything, and…" her eyes dropped, "I want you to do the things the Buffybot told me you're good at."

"The 'Bot?" he echoed, stunned. "The bloody 'Bot told you–" He made himself stop, refused to think about anything in the robot's explicitly programmed response files. He forced himself to be calm once again, searching for words. Dawn had thought about this, obviously, and he could see where it made sense to her. Bloody hell, it made sense to him, if it came to that. They did love each other, and he'd do a far better job of initiating her than some pimply teenager. She was lovely and warm and sweet, and he could make her his forever. His soul shuddered in distaste, and he snatched at that emotion gratefully. Thank God he had the soul. Stupid demon. "You deserve better than a demon."

Her eyebrow rose. "You are better than a demon."

"I'm not good enough for you–"

"It was good enough for Buffy, her first time."

He bit down on his quick retort on how well that had turned out. "You don't want 'good enough,' Dawnie, you–"

"I know what I want!" she cried, her voice becoming shrill. Dawn closed her eyes for a moment, reining herself in, and he was impressed that she mastered herself so quickly. "You'd never hurt me, and it's just," she gestured vaguely toward the television, "anything could happen at any time. You could be dead tomorrow, or I could."

"I am dead," Spike said forcefully. Dawn pushed away from him, but he held her, not willing to have this conversation through her slammed-shut and locked-tight bedroom door. She scowled at him, but he ignored it. "I'm dead, I'm cold, I'm so too-old for you that it's laughable. You think of me as safe, Dawn. I'm not. Do you know how hard I have to try just to not bruise you each time I touch you?" He gripped her arms tighter and let his demon out, let it claim his features. He held her eyes with his yellow gaze. "If it weren't for this, I'd be moldering in a grave. I am a monster, and you know I'd die before I let a monster lay a finger on you." Loosening his grip, he brought his human features to the surface. "Even me."

"Let go of me!"

"No!"

"I'll get Xander, then. He loves me, too."

Spike's eyes were suddenly quite black. "Then I'll get an industrial-sized bottle of painkillers and slowly kill him over the course of weeks," he informed her in a pleasant voice.

"I'll pick some random guy, then, someone you don't know. I might get pregnant, or get gonorrhea, and it'll be your fault!"

"There's nowhere I can't find you, you try to sneak off."

"Let go! I'll… I'll scream!"

"Yeah?" he challenged her. "Like your neighbors have never heard screams from this house before." He twisted then and lifted her, meaning to frighten her with his strength and speed, settling her on the far end of the couch and kneeling in front of her, his coat tangling around her legs. "You and I are going to talk and get this sorted right now." Dawn glared at him and folded her arms, turning her head pointedly away. Spike sighed. "You realize, of course, that I can wait forever. Literally."

Patience wasn't one of his virtues, and Dawn was almost as stubborn as he was, but after five minutes and a quashed attempt to dash for her room, she finally broke. "I'm a monster, too. I thought we…."

"Hang about! You're no monster," he protested, surprised.

"Ball of glowing green energy, remember?"

"No, I don't, actually. All I remember is you, Bit, made with your mom's DNA, from your sister's blood. You can't deny it; you're a genetic Summers." She still wasn't looking at him, but he thought she was listening. Spike splayed his fingers over his chest. "I am a monster, so I recognize other monsters. You're no monster, Nibblet. You are a lovely girl, nearly a lovely young woman. You deserve much, much better than a dead night thing."

Dawn's face crumpled, but she pulled herself together. Her voice was barely more than a whisper. "Who else is ever going to love," she said, wiping tears from her eyes, "me?"

"If you've loved and been loved before, you'll have love again," he said easily. "Your mum and your big sis loved you. Willow and Tara love you so much that they're lying to social services just to keep you, aren't they?"

"But I w-want someone just for me!" she said, openly crying now.

"Oh, I understand about that," he said with a rueful smile. "But the loneliness you're feeling is a part of being human, Dawn. It's one of the things grownups bear."

"I don't want to be a grownup; I just…."

"You want; you don't want," he broke in, impatient with her youth. "You know what I want for you, Dawnie?" He took her hand in his cool one. "I want you to have a nice, safe, PG-rated high school life with dances and boys carrying your books. I want you to find someone who suits you so perfectly, it's like he's the other half of you. I want your first time to be on your wedding night to that man that you'll love forever. Not a first, but an only."

"That's a fairy tale," she scoffed, rolling her eyes.

"And that's what I want for you," he agreed, his voice soft now. "You deserve the fairy tale, because it's been too much of a horror story up until now."

She tightened her mouth, trying not to sob, but the grief was too much. She let him take her in his arms and hold her, and there was nothing sexual in the way she clung to him as she cried. These were bawling, ugly, wracking sobs that started in her center and shook her with pain as they made their way out. She grieved for the tragedy, for the loss and the pain of thousands, but mostly she grieved for herself, mourned her mother and sister and her own abrupt origins.

Spike held her until her tears were spent. At some point, he'd begun rocking her. Now he stopped and pushed her hair back from her face. "I don't know how you do it, Bit," he admitted. "But you do. You just keep on going." He got up from his knees in front of her and sat down beside her on the couch. This would be as good a time as any. "Now, I need you to listen.

"What you just suggested, it's dangerous. You are fifteen, and I'm an adult. If I were just a human, it would be enough to send me to prison. But I'm not human, and that makes it extremely dangerous. 'M no nonce, but if Xander even suspected that you had entertained such a notion, he'd happily crank up the Wagner and ride a wooden lance through my chest. You know he would, Dawn. And I can't fight back, can't defend myself against soddin' Xander Harris."

She stared at him, her reddened eyes widening. "But he can't! You have a…"

"He'd do it even if he knew. I'm not the only one who wants to protect you, Nibblet." He sighed. "You know I'm always straight with you, right? What you offered, what you asked for… it's very flattering, gets a man right where he lives. Gets him hard. There are plenty of grown men with souls who'd take you up on that offer. Do you think Willow or Tara would believe I wouldn't?" She didn't answer, but her fine brows drew together. "I promised to stay with you, Bit, but those two could keep me away. They're powerful enough to do it, no matter what you or I might want. And if someone like Glory came around, if something happened to you because they kept me from protecting you… I'd likely kill them, chip or not, witches or not." He took one of her hands in his again and frowned. "You understand, then? Your desire isn't wrong, Dawn, but it's the wrong time, and I'm the wrong person, for a lot of reasons."

She stared at their clasped hands. "I understand. I don't like it, but I understand." She sighed. "Why did those monks have to make me so young?"

"Easy. To bring out the Slayer's protective instincts."

The corners of her mouth curled down. "I hate being too young." She gave him a sidelong look. "Will you wait for me?"

"I will always be here for you, Dawn, as long as you can stand having me around." He raised his eyebrows and gave her a faint smile. "Longer, probably. But I think you'll change your mind about me, the older you get."

"No, I won't," Dawn disagreed, shaking her head so vigorously that her hair swung. "If I can't change your mind, I'll just have a Spikebot made for me." His head jerked back, and she looked up at him, all slyness and 'who's bad now,' the corners of her mouth lifting in a satisfied smile. It wasn't often the blond man was left speechless.

But he wasn't. "Don't bother. Just get a vibrator. Easier on batteries." It was his turn to smirk as her mouth fell open and her eyes widened incredulously.

"Omigod. I cannot believe you said that."

"There's some advice you won't get from the other adults in your life: masturbate. Often. Bit of the old hand-shandy will keep you out of worse mischief." He reclaimed the far corner of the couch, spreading his arms across the back with restored confidence. "What, you're blushing? The girl who just asked me for the Buffybot blue plate special can't handle the 'M' word?"

By now she was trying not to smile with shock and delight. Dawn wadded up his coat and threw it at him. "You're terrible!"

"My point exactly," he agreed. "And don't you ever forget it."

Next Chapter: Welcome Back, where Spike and Dawn come to terms with Buffy's return.