Dawn froze, blinking in sudden blindness. Her eyes adjusted and she found Spike sitting on her bed. His hand was on her nightstand next to the lamp he had switched on.

If looks could eviscerate…

Dawn looked away, face flushed with shame. Her brain was scrambling for excuses she could use, but she could barely hear herself think over the pounding of her heart.

Spike simply stared at her.

"Spike-"

"What in the hell is wrong with you?"

Dawn flinched.

"Do you have any idea how worried I've been? I wake up to find you gone! I was seconds away from bursting out of here when I see you strolling up to the house like it's a bloody sunday afternoon. I was sure, I was so sure that something had come in here and snatched you away, that you were bleeding out somewhere or getting eaten by some…gahh!"

Spike snatched up one of her pillows and threw it across the room. It smacked into her closet door with a dull thud and dropped to the ground.

"Spike, I'm so-"

"-don't you dare say you're sorry! Don't you know that it's my job to protect you? Where the hell were you?"

"I was out with some friends."

"Oh, out were you? You and your mates traipsing about the bloody graveyard for kicks? Friends like that boy? Who the hell is he?"

How did he know I was in a graveyard? Damn it, vampire sense of smell.

"He's just someone I know from school, nothing happened."

Spike scoffed. "You think I don't bloody know that? The boy's lucky I can tell he wasn't touching you or I'd be ripping his spine out through his throat."

The flint was struck. The tinders sparked.

Dawn scowled. "Spike, you're not my freaking dad-"

"-Damn right. I'm actually here and a part of your damn life."

"People my age go out, Spike. It's what we do."

"They don't sneak past their damn sitters at all hours of the night-"

"-uh, yeah they totally do."

"Not when they know they live on the damn Hellmouth-"

"-well it's not like I could tell you. You would never have let me go out.-"

"-Of course I wouldn't have. You know better than anybody what goes on after dark. And here you are, lying to me."

Dawn swallowed. "What are you talking about?"

"Oh please, you've been fighting. You still reek of fear, adrenaline, and you've been rolling in the dirt too. What the hell were you thinking?"

"I wasn't fighting! We were just telling scary stories-"

"-scary stories? You must be joking."

"Really good scary stories. In the cemetery…" Dawn winced. That was almost as bad an explanation as the truth.

"Exactly! In the cemetery!" Spike's eyes were wide and he started pacing, rms gesturing emphatically. "Well that's all bloody well and good then. You and your teenage friends, who have only one braincell to share between them, went to a graveyard in the middle of the night to tell scary stories. I'm astounded you came back at all."

Yeah, when you put it like that, it does sound like the dumb teenagers that get killed in the beginning of every horror movie ever.

"I didn't just go off. I took precautions." Dawn slid her backpack off her shoulders and dumped it. Crosses, stakes, and bottles of holy water clattered to the floor. "See? I went armed…"

"Armed? Armed? Thinks she's bloody bitty Buffy now does she? You're just a scrawny human girl, stake or no stake. You think a vampire is gonna have any trouble tearing you to-"

The embers were smoldering, deep inside her.

"-I wasn't alone! It was a bunch of us, and we all stuck together, strength in numbers. Besides, my friends wanted to go out and they were gonna do it with or without me, so I figured they'd be safer if someone who actually knew about vampires was there."

Spike slammed a fist into the wall. A cloud of plaster kicked up as he punched right through it. Dawn flinched away.

"You think I give a crap about your friends? Let 'em all get cooked in a stew for all I care. You're the one I was worried about. But here you are, showing me no respect. How am I supposed to keep you safe when you go running off-"

"-hey! It's not your job to protect me. I don't need anyone coddling me." The heat was in her now, in her head, in her heart, burning away all rationality.

Dawn crossed her arms. "You want to talk about respect, Spike? What about me? Where's my respect? I'm so sick of you guys treating me like I'm some helpless child-"

"-You are a helpless child-"

"-who can't take care of herself! I'm fifteen now, and I've been living on the same Hellmouth as the rest of you for going on six years. I can protect myself just fine."

Actually, considering the night's events, that was maybe a bit of an exaggeration. If tonight had any lesson, it was probably 'backup is always better than no backup'.

Spike's jaw dropped. "Don't need anyone to protect you? Should we roll out the bloody damn scoreboard? How many times have you gotten kidnapped? By me even?"

"Well maybe if you guys actually let me help, actually let me learn about this stuff, I wouldn't get kidnapped so many times."

Spike snarled and jabbed a finger at her. "No. Your sis didn't want you anywhere near this stuff. She died to protect you! You don't got a say in the matter anymore. I told her, I promised her I'd protect you and that's what I'll bloody well do if I have to lock you in a convent myself!"

The pain dropped into the furnace, made her burn all the hotter.

"It's my damn life, Spike, and you must still be drunk if you think you can tell me what to do. Protect me? Let's get real here, you can barely protect yourself. If I wasn't here to take care of you, you'd be drowning in a pool of whiskey and your own vomit right now."

Spike looked away from her, looked down at her carpeted floor. His expression, its defeat and resignation cut her. Sliced through flesh down to bone. Dawn hadn't meant to say that, meant to say any of it. She wanted to apologize, but she couldn't. The words were ash in the fire.

So she stood there, scowling, arms crossed, hoping he would scream at her, yell, say any of the things she deserved.

Instead, he simply shook his head.

"Do what you want." His voice was as cold as his lifeless body. "I'm done with you."

He turned and walked out. Dawn stood there, statue still until she heard her front door slam shut. Then she walked to her bed and collapsed. She buried her face in her pillow.

What's wrong with me? Why do I attack people who just want me to be safe?

Once the fire started to rage, there was nothing it wouldn't burn.

Spike made a big show about being tough, but it was a show. He had a poet's sensitive soul. Dawn lay there and continued to berate herself.

Then she reached into her bedstand and pulled out a pocket notebook. Referencing her forearm, she scribbled Clark Kent's phone number into it and placed it back into the drawer.

At least it seemed Spike hadn't picked up on Clark being from the spooky side of things. He had been right, as far as Dawn could remember, she and Clark never actually touched each other.

"I have this problem with being touched." he said.

Maybe that's why Spike couldn't detect anything weird. Or maybe it was weirdness that wouldn't show up in smell. Maybe Clark was like Buffy after all, a normal human with superpowers.

That was a more comforting possibility.

Dawn wondered if Spike would tell the others about what had happened. She didn't think so. Spike tried to duck the Scoobies whenever possible. They all worked together, but Spike never made any secrets about how little he liked them.

He had been telling the truth, he was only still around for Buffy. Because he thought protecting her was what Buffy wanted.

I think it's his pride that's mostly wounded. Spike can hold a grudge like no one, but I can make him forgive me. As long as it takes, whatever it takes. I just have to find Buffy first. Once I find Buffy, everything will be okay again.

Drained, extinguished, Dawn reached up and with a click turned off her bedside lamp.

Once she found Buffy, everything would be okay again.

...crap, how am I gonna explain this hole in my wall?

Dawn took her seat across from Clark at the Coffee House cafe.

He raised an eyebrow at her. "It bruised?"

"Wha-, okay, how did you know that? Also that thing you did when we first met, when you could tell I was lying, how did you do that? Is that part of your whole...you know…" she waved a hand at his face "situation."

"No, I'm just…" he sighed. "Actually, yes. I've got better senses than most people. I can tell you went especially heavy on the makeup right where the vampire hit you last night."

Dawn groaned. "Getting past the Scoobies was nerve wracking. I was sure one of them was totally gonna notice."

Clark took a sip of something dark and steaming in a mustard colored paper cup sporting the shop logo.

"Coffee?" Dawn asked.

Clark's nose crinkled. "Ew. No, hot chocolate."

His eyes shifted around and he leaned in close, whispering. "So…how do we...how should we proceed?"

"Well," Dawn said, grinning "we don't proceed like a couple of Cold War spies in a B thriller movie."

Clark frowned at her. "Says the girl still wearing her sunglasses indoors."

"Sorry," Dawn said, pulling off her pink-framed sunglasses, but she was still grinning. "But you don't need to get all 'cloak and dagger-y'. No one's listening to us, and if they did and overheard us talking about something spooky they'd just assume we were kids talking about some game or movie."

"Is that right?"

"Pretty much. Especially in this town. People just see what they wanna see."

Clark looked out the window. The cafe was near a bunch of strip centers, the whole area was basically what passed for a shopping district in Sunnydale. Plenty of foot traffic on a saturday morning.

Dawn wondered what he was thinking about.

She leaned against the table. "So, what we need to do is find out where Buffy is, find out if she's really Buffy, and what she's doing here."

Clark turned back to her and nodded. "What do we know?"

"Jack. With a side of squat. We know she was at your house..."

"And that she was fast."

"Yeah well, mystic destiny super powers, remember?" Dawn frowned. "How fast?"

Clark shrugged. "It's not like I had a speedometer on me at the time. Seventy, maybe eighty miles per hour...I take it from your face-"

"-doesn't sound like Buffy." Dawn shook her head. "I think the fastest Buffy's ever clocked was like, thirty-five or forty."

Which means...it's not her, right?

Maybe, maybe not. It wasn't a lot to go on, and the reading wasn't exactly iron clad.

"How fast can you go?" Dawn asked.

Clark squirmed a little and looked away.

"Sorry, nevermind. It's none of my business."

"That's okay," Clark said. But he still didn't answer the question. "So, you said before that there are demons and things, right? Could one of them do this?"

"Maybe…" Dawn huffed. They were going nowhere fast.

What would the Scoobies do right about now?

"Usually when Buffy or her friends needed to find out about a baddie, they'd go to Giles. He's got this whole library of books about demons and stuff."

"...can you ask him?"

Dawn bit her bottom lip. "No...I'm...they don't exactly know what's going on."

Clark nodded. "Well, is there anyone else we can ask?"

Spike…

"No."

Clark gazed out the window again, finger tapping on the table. "So, we have don't know anything, and we don't have any sources of information."

Dawn watched the steam curl out of his cup. "Sorry. You're here trying to help me out and I'm useless."

Clark shook his head. "Not at all."

He stiffened suddenly. Dawn looked at him, expression questioning.

"I...think I may have just had a terrible idea."

"Well, they say there are no bad ideas in a brainstorm."

Clark looked away. "They say that, do they?"

Sounds serious.

But Dawn was desperate. "Clark, just tell me what it is."

Clark nodded. "Well...we don't know what it is. So I think the first thing to do is try and figure out what it's not."

Dawn nodded. "Right, okay...that makes sense. How do we do that?"

"Well, I don't know anything about all this stuff but...I think that maybe the fastest way for us to find out if it's really your sister resurrected or something else pretending it's her-"

Dawn felt something cold move through her.

"-would be to dig her up and take a look."