Previously: After first having a positive pregnancy test, and then being told by a doctor that there was no heartbeat, Buffy continued to spiral downward into depression. Meanwhile, Giles arrived from England to see what was going on, and Dawn decided to act out by going to see the Trio. Jonathan helped Dawn escape, and Spike carried her home. Across town, Willow visited Tara after being thrown out of Buffy's house and then Xander's apartment.

Chapter Ten

Willow was sat, cross-legged, on Tara's double bed. Across from her, Tara was struggling for words. Hurt was written all over her face.

"I'm sorry," Willow told her.

"Are you?" she inquired, with earnest.

Willow bit her lip.

"Do you know why I'm mad? Please, Willow. Tell me you understand."

"I, well… You haven't been around. So you don't know what's been going on, and-"

"I'm mad," Tara interrupted to say, "Because you really hurt me. More than once. And it could have been so easily avoided. I'm mad because you haven't properly apologized to me, and your actions made me feel the need to leave the first place I ever lived that truly felt like home. I'm mad, Willow, because this is the first time you've seen me since then, and instead of stopping for one minute to think about how I might feel about you turning up on my doorstep, you've complained non-stop about problems that you helped create. You've been bitching about people that you brought into my life – people I began to trust, like family – and people I now can't connect with properly any more because not being with you makes it awkward." Her voice starting to crack, Tara was only just able to conclude, "I'm mad because I love you so damn much, and sometimes you don't seem to care at all."

The room was suddenly silent around them. Willow was completely and utterly speechless. When the phone rang she considered it the finest blessing she could imagine.

Sniffing away her unshed tears, Tara picked up the receiver, listened for a moment and then handed it to Willow.

Spike had sat Dawn down in a chair and was carefully inspecting her ankle.

Giles, hovering behind him, had no inkling as to why she was upset, but he was trying to push aside his immediate instinct that Spike was the cause. Nothing, it seemed, was as it appeared. Buffy was coping even less than when he'd left town in an effort to get her to stand on her own too feet, and Spike had taken on a bizarre mothering role.

"Stop crying," Buffy instructed Dawn.

Dawn, Spike, and Giles all stopped what they were doing – what they were even thinking – and turned to face her. She hadn't said a word since they had come in, and she wasn't even looking at them now.

Her voice slightly stronger this time, Buffy said, "If you push the tears down and pretend they aren't there then they don't hurt so much."

Dawn had stopped crying just from the shock of such out of character advice, delivered in voice wholly devoid of emotion, but as soon as Buffy stopped talking she burst into tears herself. Spike was at her side in an instant.

"Hey, now, luv," he soothed, wishing he could tell her it was okay, or that she didn't need to cry. But crying was exactly what she needed to do. Evidently, bottling things up was getting to her.

Dawn went to hoist herself up and out of the chair, so she could go to her room away from the sight of Spike and Buffy being tender, but as soon as she moved an inch Spike called out to her, over his shoulder.

"Don't," he said. And then he turned around to face her, while his arms remained tightly wound around Buffy's shoulders. "I'll take you up in a bit, Niblet. Don't think yer ankle's broken, but it's got a bad sprain al'right. You shouldn't be putting weight on it."

Removing her hands from the arm rests, Dawn crossed her arms across her chest and insisted, "I'll be fine," complete with the patented Summers' pout.

Suddenly Spike sprang up from where he was knelt in front of Buffy, and turned to face Dawn properly; the action causing Buffy to look up at him in shock.

Pointing back at Buffy, he snapped, "Don't you see what all this, 'I'm fine' bollocks is doing to yer sister?! None of us are bloody fine, and the second both of you get that through yer thick skulls we can maybe begin to start processing everything."

As soon as he finished ranting Spike regretted his words. Dawn looked away from him, while he felt the air behind him shift. He closed his eyes, knowing Buffy was going to go upstairs and was unlikely to talk to him for a week.

When she passed him, however, she paused. In a shaky voice, that he could only make out due to his advanced hearing, she said, "I don't want to be alone tonight."

Then, after a brief nod of reply, she was gone.

Mid-way through the emotional chaos in the living room, Giles had slipped into the kitchen to make a phone call.

"Hello, Willow? I'm glad I caught you. Is now a bad time?"

Glancing around, Willow saw Tara awkwardly standing there, waiting to finish the conversation they'd put on hold.

After a moment, Willow turned back to face the wall and asked Giles, "What's up?"

Spike carried Dawn up to her room just as he said he would. When he then went to leave her room, however, she finally spoke to him again, stopping him in his tracks.

"Aren't you going to yell at me some more?" she asked.

"No," he told her, softly yet with conviction.

"Why?" she pressed. Her voice was so small; like her sister's had become, recently.

He sat on the edge of her bed and said, "Because there's no point. Reckon I know why you went there. And I reckon you know it was a bad idea, and that you won't be doing it again. Can't surely say I have the right to lecture you, knowing all the shit I've got up to when I've been outta my tree with worry."

A brief moment of silence followed and then, "Thanks, Spike."

By the time Willow had ended the call Tara had given up waiting and had gone into her bathroom to change for bed. When she returned her face was impassive. Willow went to say something, but she held up a hand in warning.

"Can we not do this right now?

Willow gulped, then gave a small nod. As much as she wanted to give her side of things, she also felt completely drained. Eying the bed, she began to hesitate over the beginnings of a question.

"The couch is free," Tara pointed out, before she got any further. "I'll get you some covers."

Spike and Buffy lay side-by-side in her bed, neither with any notion of sleeping. They hadn't spoke since he entered the room, but when she started to toss and turn he reached an arm out and pulled her to his side. She calmed against his touch instantly.

"Thank you, Spike," she murmured.

To be continued...