Chapter 11: Trust

"Forgiveness means letting go of the past."

- Gerald Jampolsky

Red and Tara were fighting.

It wasn't the sort of thing Spike would have ever guessed would affect him so strongly, but it felt profoundly wrong. Giles was a stuffy ponce, Anya made inappropriate yet hilarious remarks, Dawn got into trouble, and Red and Tara were together. Them being apart just wasn't how the world was supposed to work.

He hadn't been sure the exact cause of their argument until Dawn confessed to him, in tears, that she had mentioned to Tara a fight the two had had, but Tara hadn't remembered it.

"They're going to split up because of me," she insisted, her lower lip trembling. "I hate my stupid big mouth."

"It would have come out eventually, pet," he tried to reassure her. In truth, he wasn't at all sure the witches would be able to work it out. Messing with someone's mind was seriously dark magic. "And besides, the girl deserved to know."

"She's gonna leave us, I know she is." Dawn sniffed. "First Buffy, now Tara."

"Hey now," he protested. "Buffy came back."

She gave him that Look that it seemed someone was going around and teaching teenagers the world over. "Not by choice. You heard her; she was happy where she was."

He put his arm around her shoulders, ignoring the twinge from knowing Dawn was right. "Look, pet, what's done is done, and Buffy knows that. It's a hell of a thing to leave behind-" He paused. "No pun intended. She's going to be here for you, take care of you and fulfill her calling. But you've got to be patient with her. Be understanding of everything she's going through."

Dawn sniffed. "I have problems too," she said mulishly. "No one pays any attention to me, but I have angst and inner turmoil and all that other stuff. Nobody sees me."

Spike called upon the gods of parental figures everywhere and begged for a little patience and understanding. "I know, pet," he said. "And it's not fair that you don't have your mum and an ordinary sister to take care of you. But people can be blind to other people's problems when they have their own weighing down on them. It's selfish, but it's human."

She tucked her knees to her chin, looking like the little girl she wasn't anymore. "I guess Buffy's problems are worse than mine," she admitted, and Spike had to drop his eyes for a moment so she didn't see the astonishment on his face. Who would have thought, a teenager thinking of someone other than herself?

"Doesn't mean you don't deserve happiness, too, pet," he said gently. "Hey, how about this: I'll talk to Buffy, see if we can plan a 'Dawn' day for you."

She gave him a radiant smile, reminding him again why all the Scoobies, not to mention her sister, worked so hard to make her happy. "Could we, Spike?" she asked eagerly. "It doesn't have to be anything special; I just want some family time, you know? Just me and you and Buffy."

"You want me to be there, bit?" he said in surprise, feeling a rush of warmth that she considered him family, after everything. "Not Red and Tara, maybe? Or Xander and his girl?"

She shook her head firmly. "I love all of them, but I just want one day with the two of you." Her eyes were suddenly watery, and Spike started at the rapid mood changes adolescents could go through. Thank the gods his own puberty was an extremely hazy memory.

He slid his arm around her and said comfortingly, "We'll make it work, pet."

Spike gasped and sat bolt upright on his cot. Murder. Terror. Hopelessness. He had caused them all.

His nightmares came less frequently now, or else he wasn't remembering them as well, but the despair and horror were always there, lurking in the back of his mind.

Breathing too quickly, he swung his legs over the edge and paced back and forth. God, how was he supposed to keep going through all this? He just wanted to stake himself and have it over with.

He heard the front door slam upstairs and glanced at the clock on the wall. Probably the Scoobies leaving for that evening's meeting at the Magic Shop. He hadn't planned on going, but as long as he was awake and not likely to see sleep again anytime soon, he'd make himself useful. He could use a distraction.

Yawning his way up the stairs and into the Summers' living room, he almost tripped over Red, who was kneeling in front of the fireplace, murmuring "…for Buffy" before she froze and jumped up.

"Spike! Hi!" she yelped, nudging a bag of herbs behind her with a foot. "Wow, I thought you had left with Buffy and Tara. Obviously not, though, because hello, right here." All this was spoken so fast that he could barely understand the girl.

He tilted his head and surveyed her. He honestly hadn't meant to look intimidating, just trying to assess the situation…well, that, and why the bloody hell she was doing a spell on Buffy without her permission.

Okay, so he might have been a little angry.

"Red," he said flatly, and raised an eyebrow at her, waiting.

It almost worked; he could see her resolve start to crumple before him, but that backbone she'd sprouted in the past couple of years held, and she lifted her chin. "Sometimes people need help, but they're too proud to ask for it. This is just to make it so Buffy forgets a little bit of her pain since, um, her resurrection."

He had to give her credit, if he hadn't known her so well, if he hadn't always had a talent for reading people, he'd have probably bought it. Not that she was lying; he knew very well she was a terrible liar. However, she could bend the truth with the best of them.

He crossed his arms. "And the rest of it?" he prodded, and she looked to her shoes, blushing furiously. He had her.

"I just want to make things better…" she said quietly to the floor, where there rested two little bundles of herbs, not one. Suddenly, it all fell into place for him. A forgetting spell for Buffy, and another to make her girl forget the other forgetting spell she'd done on her.

"So control your girl like a puppet, that's your dating philosophy, yeah? Sounds like a technique I think some demons would approve of."

She glared at him, eyes flashing. "I'm not controlling her! It'll make her happier, that's all."

In a twisted way, he could see what she meant, and he certainly was out of practice at making moral judgments. But his soul wanted to, and wasn't that one of the major purposes of the damn things?

"I'm not human," he said slowly, staring at her, willing her to understand. "And I've spent a lot more time without my soul than with it. But even I can tell what you want to do is bloody evil. "

"You can't tell me you wouldn't help Buffy forget her pain," she said in disbelief.

"I wouldn't do a damn thing without her permission," he told her heatedly. "Otherwise, it wouldn't really be about her; it'd be about me. You don't get to take people's choices away just because you think it would help or that it would make life easier for you."

Before Red could react, he'd grabbed the bags of herbs and threw them down the garbage disposal, shaking salt on them to cancel out any lingering magic.

Brushing past her, he grabbed a bottle of pig's blood from the fridge and threw his head back as he took a swallow. "I'll give you a pass on Buffy, Red. But you need to tell your girl what you were planning. Or I will."

The witch's face went white with fury. "How dare you-" she began. He felt the prickle of dark, dangerous magic stirring in the air, though he didn't know if it was an intentional threat or just a side effect of her emotional state.

He tilted his head, aware he was still in game face, and that there was blood on his lips. "Gonna try a spell on me, Red? Fair warning, magic gets wonky around vampires, and who knows what having a demon and a soul inside me might do. Might backfire on you, kill you instead of me."

She took a step back. "I wouldn't-" she started to say.

"Yeah," he told her flatly as he walked back toward the basement. She didn't try to stop him, something lost and confused filling her eyes. "The way you are right now? You really would."

Spike hadn't thought the tension between Red and Glinda could ratchet up any higher, until it did. "She's upset because I'm upset," Tara told him the next day as she sat down next to him on the couch. "But she doesn't really get it, you know? She doesn't understand how what she wanted to do was… wrong. Almost…evil." She shuddered.

He nodded and tried to look sympathetic, even reaching out awkwardly to pat her on the knee.

"Thank you for making her tell me," she said quietly, and he jerked. He hadn't realized Willow would admit that her confession had been forced out of her. "I knew she hadn't really had a change of heart," Tara explained. "I made her tell me exactly what happened."

He scratched at the sofa, feeling horribly guilty. "'M sorry it's caused you pain, though, pet."

Tara shook her head. "No, of course I'd rather this than my memory being tampered with." She frowned. "Again. But you did the right thing, Spike, you really did."

"You gonna leave her?" He immediately wished he'd asked more delicately, but Tara was truly a girl who could take just about anything in stride.

"No," she said. "I don't think she's past hope. And I want to help her get better. I mean, I'm furious with her, but I love her. I told her a month without magic, we'll see how she does." She laughed uneasily. "I might be joining you in the basement for a while, though."

He smirked, nudged her shoulder. "Bed's a bit tight, love. Maybe I'll let you have it and go cuddle with Red, get my disgusting man parts all over her. Probably the worst punishment she could imagine."

Tara smiled. "Yeah, maybe."

He dropped the playful act. "She loves you, Tara. Truly, madly, deeply, all that. Her number one priority isn't magic, it's you. You can get through this."

"You think?"

He nodded. "I've been love's bitch often enough. Trust me, if there's anything I know, it's love."

Tara smiled at him, and they sat in comfortable silence for long minutes. Then, without warning, she took his hand in both of hers. "Spike… I just wanted to say, I don't know what Buffy would do if you weren't here. Truly. You're the only one who can ever seem to reach her. So I just want to thank you, from the bottom of my heart, for all you've done, in case she never does." She looked faintly embarrassed. "I know I'm not as close to her as the rest of you are, but she means the world to Willow, and that makes her important to me, too."

He wanted to protest that he had to be the single person on the planet who deserved forgiveness the least. "Don't deserve that, but thanks anyway, love. Not the friendship, not the forgiveness, any of it."

Tara shook her head, her blond braids flying. "It has nothing to do with deserving it, Spike. You just have it. From all of us, but especially from her." Then, shockingly, "She does love you, Spike, even if she never says it. I can see it clearly. What I don't know is if she can ever love you in the way that you want."

His throat was suddenly tight, his unneeded heart pounding. "'S more than enough," he said gruffly. "More than I ever dreamed of."

He tried to shy away from that train of thought, from the little voice that whispered to him, pointing out that Buffy had loved a vampire with a soul before, why couldn't she do it again? Maybe it was because it brought her nothing but misery, he thought back acerbically, but the little voice merely became softer, never entirely vanishing.

After all, forgiveness was one thing, but love was something else entirely.