"Well Buffy," Giles said in a satisfied tone, leaning back and surveying the wreckage of his sitting room, the tall stacks of dirty dishes occupying his kitchen. "For your first attempt, I think this Thanksgiving went quite well."
Buffy blushed, smiled as she looked down at the pumpkin pie she was slicing.
To anyone else, the last two hours would've looked like a sheer disaster, what with the Chumash attack and the near destruction of Giles' flat before Xander, Anya, and Willow had come crashing back in, shouting about using the warriors' own weapons against them. Buffy admittedly hadn't felt a pang putting a stone knife into the Chief's chest, dissolving him and his raiding party altogether, but it had taken some considerable consoling afterward to get Willow settled down at the table. Indeed, Xander and Anya seemed a little jumpy too, even after they'd cleared the mess of broken glass and furniture away from the table and gotten it set again, passing anxious looks at each other over the turkey as Giles carved.
Still, mouthfuls of mashed potatoes and gravy, cranberry sauce and peas had soon replaced it, anxious tension slowly draining away as the weight of too much turkey began to spread warmth and sleepiness. That soft, happy feeling of family spread too, of being with people you cared about and sharing a meal and small talk, of just being together on the holiday. It was a feeling she'd chased for a long time after her father left and she'd moved to Sunnydale, a feeling that she as pleased to find had settled into her life again as though it had never gone.
Happy, content, cared about.
She supposed now was as good a time as any to ruin it again.
"So, we need to talk," she said, sitting down as the last plate of made it down to Giles at the other end of the table.
Willow jumped in her chair, gulping comically, and Xander's hand froze midair, causing a large glop of whipped cream to splatter on impact with his plate having fallen from so great a height. Buffy quirked an eyebrow but decided to ignore the odd behavior, focusing instead on her Watcher, who was looking at her with a calm sort of concern and understanding that she found both comforting and reassuring after all these years.
"This Initiative thing," she began, and felt herself bristle when all of her friends seemed to collapse with relief. "I don't like it."
"What's not to like?" Xander asked with what Buffy felt her stomach sink to hear the naïve tone of hero-worship in his voice. "The government's finally lending a helping hand, pitching in with the Slaying. I thought you'd love that."
"I don't," she snapped, and someone dropped a fork with an abrupt clink, the mood taking a swift nosedive with her declaration. "They're not slaying, and the things they are doing… Giles, it's not right."
"Buffy, I understand your concern," the Watcher began, taking off his glasses, and she knew where he was going because that was his I know better voice, the one she hated. She wasn't a child anymore, had more than proven herself, and this time she knew that she was right.
"Don't do that," she said quietly, and everyone stilled, surprised at her rejection of the coming advice she so often bent to. "Please. We've talked this around in circles, gotten as much information as we can. We know they're not slaying down there; they're experimenting and torturing and… and it makes me sick! There are demons down there that are har…"
Buffy cut herself off with a choked breath, curling her fingers tight around her fork.
She didn't want to go there, not right this minute. The good-demon, bad-demon argument wouldn't get her anywhere right now, and she had a point she needed to get across. Now was a good time to choose her battles.
"It doesn't matter," she continued, dragging a hand through her hair. "I've got a really bad feeling about this."
"What exactly are you worried about Buffy?" Willow asked, and Buffy could see the smarty-girl wheels turning in her friend's head. "I mean, like Xander said, it seems like they're just taking some of the load off you…"
Buffy felt her stomach go ice cold, and she knew from the way her friends leaned back from her that she'd slipped into her Slayer's mask, the hard eyes that had seen a lot and knew they'd have to fight through more.
"They are nothing… like me," she said, slowly, coldly, deadly, and Spike's speech from that day in the golf park all came flooding back to her, reassuring her that that was true. She wasn't like them.
"They aren't killing to protect," she stated, "Not killing clean or fast. This doesn't feel right - something's wrong and I know better than to ignore that feeling anymore."
"Perhaps you just feel weird because Spike and Angle are back in town," Anya mused casually, but then she paled as every eye in the room flashed to her in a handful of shocked and upset faces.
"Anh!" Xander hissed, and she looked at him with the wide-eyed, honest confusion that she so often did.
"What?" she demanded. "With two master vampires in Sunnydale, I'm sure Buffy could feel them."
"You… you saw Spike?" Buffy squeaked, and everyone looked at her with surprise but the ex-vengeance demon.
"Yes, he saved us earlier in the park from one of those Indians."
"Anya!" Xander yelped again, this time all indignation and maybe even a little fear.
"What?" she asked again with blunt candor, "That thing turned into a bear - it would have eaten us if Spike hadn't killed it. And all in all, he was much more helpful than Angel was; he figured out to use their weapons to kill them."
"Spike… Spike saved you?" Buffy warbled. She was shocked, dumbfounded, and half of her didn't believe it, but then Willow was confirming it and telling the whole story, Angel included. She wasn't sure the tale made it any easier to comprehend - she still found herself stuck, sitting there unable to move or speak as her brain looped around and around.
Spike had… saved her friends.
Saved her friends.
"Buffy? Buff?"
"What?" she asked flatly, distractedly, blinking her way back to paying attention.
"You're…" Willow said cautiously, twiddling her fork between her fingers. "I mean… you're not… mad that Angel's here are you?"
"What? No!" she yipped indignantly. "Why would I care that Angel's here?"
"Well, it's just that he's…"
"Skulking around anonymously?" she asked with disdain, her brain still occupied with more important things, too much to even be surprised that she truthfully didn't care that Angel was around, that the hurt she once felt where the dark and brooding vampire was concerned had dissipated into nothingness. "Yeah that's new."
"Wait, you…" Xander began, looking at her like he wasn't sure he knew her anymore. "You are mad! Are you seriously more upset that Angel's here than Spike?"
"At least Spike never made a secret of his stalking!" Buffy snapped in the younger vampire's defense. And strangely enough that was true. Suddenly she was hit by the fact that she had a great deal of respect for him because of that and it felt horribly, horribly obvious. "If Angel wants to go back to creeping in the dark and not telling me stuff for my own good, let him," she continued, still distracted by the feeling. "Spike's honest, and he's never pretended to be something he's not - I'll take a straightforward baddie over a waffle-y good guy any day!"
A brief silence followed her impassioned declaration and she realized that she'd probably just come off way too strong, but she just couldn't seem to care. Especially since now she'd begun wondering exactly which category she wanted to place Spike into and because Spike was pretending.
Wasn't he?
"It was kinda weird," Willow said slowly after a while in her thoughtful voice, intruding carefully and tentatively into the quiet. "He did save us. And he didn't even know it was us till after."
"And he even gave us the axe to take bring back in case we needed it," Anya added with a smile, but then the expression slowly turned down into a frown and she lowered her fork. "But I think we made him mad."
Buffy froze.
"What did you do?" she asked slowly, immediately fearful for more than one reasons. "I, I mean… is he gonna… go after you guys now, or… How mad did you make him?"
"It was Xander's fault," Anya offered a little spitefully - apparently the two hadn't quite reconciled yet then. "But I think he was more hurt than mad."
"Hurt? He got…"
"Jeez, it's just Spike!" Xander exclaimed, throwing up his hands in a burst of confused exasperation. "If he wants to go around fighting other demons, I say we let him. It's not like he's doing it to help out. He's probably just bored, or, or… planning something. I say if he wants to risk getting himself killed fighting something that's not Buffy, more power to him."
"He risked getting himself killed saving us!" Anya said coldly, her eyes like flint as she glared at Xander.
Buffy choked down her own protest, surprised at Anya's vehemence. Ex-demon or not, she had rarely shown any commiseration with her fellows, hardly ever stood up for herself let alone another.
"You think he can't do a good thing just because he's a demon?" she asked venomously, and Xander swallowed hard, the sallowness of his recent illnesses returning as his eyes went wide as saucers.
"Wh… no, I mean, yeah, I…" he stumbled, panic showing through in his voice. "It's not the same Ahn, you know that! I didn't mean you. It's different, it's Spike. I mean, look what he's done…"
"Would you like to hear some of the things that I've done Alexander Harris?" Anya asked quietly, sweetly, dangerously.
"Woah, ok, you know what?" Buffy said loudly, jumping up from her chair so quickly that the thing almost tipped. "I have to go."
Time to break up this disaster-fest before it happened. If Anya and Xander were headed for a massive, fiery, ten car pile-up, and Buffy had suspected it was coming, she would prefer not to be close enough to turn herself into crispy collateral damage. She had no idea how either of them had thought that Xander's bigotry towards demons and Anya's significant history as a pretty bad one, whose specialty was ruining men to boot, would ever be able to live happily ever after. If one of them didn't change they wouldn't, and since the change would have to be Xander's by default, Buffy wasn't sure how much hope there really was.
And that was sad, even if it was true.
"This was nice," she said, not just to change the topic to something safer but because that was true too. "The dinner, I mean. Thanksgiving."
Crossing over to Giles' counter, she searched around for the plastic wrap, grimacing at the mess. "Sorry to eat and run," she mumbled, snatching up the box from behind a dirty bowl. "But um… yeah. I really do have to go."
"What, to see Angel?" Xander asked, watching her with a frown. "Cause I think he already left for LA."
"No," Buffy growled, pulling the clear film over the extra pumpkin pie. "Why would I want to go see Angel? We're over guys, ok? I'm going to see…" Buffy paused, her hands gripping the pie tin. "Umm, Will. I have to go see Will. I… I promised I'd bring him some pie since he… doesn't have a lot of family."
"You're still seeing that guy?" Xander grumbled, and Buffy narrowed her eyes.
"I'm not seeing him," she said slowly, a hint of a warning in her voice. "We're friends. And even if I was seeing him, it's my choice. It's Thanksgiving - let's just be thankful for what we have."
Scooping her sweater off the back of a chair, she shrugged it on before picking up her purse and the rest of the pie. Turning on her group of silent, watchful friends, she looked to her Watcher with a gentle firmness that would brook no argument.
"Giles, contact the counsel," she said, and her Watched didn't respond, just listened. "I want this Initiative shut down. Nothing good can come from the government getting involved in this - I think we saw that with the Mayor. They don't understand, they're not…"
Buffy sighed, shook her head.
"I don't like this, and I… I've been having dreams."
"Slayer dreams?" the older man asked, sitting up straighter in his chair.
Because those were the magic words, the ace up her sleeve. She had been having dreams, yes, but this time around it wasn't the first Slayer's advice that felt most potent to her, it was someone else's.
"Dreams," she said again, nodding. "Nothing good's going to come out of this. If they're trying to turn demons into weapons, putting them on remote controls…"
"Yes, well…" Giles mumbled, going a little pale and pasty, his face the color oatmeal. "That… that could go very badly."
"Yeah," she replied with finality as she turned for the door, "And besides. If they're rounding up demons, who's to say they wouldn't be interested in a Slayer."
"Bollocks!" Spike hissed, touching his ribs gingerly.
He was lying flat on his back atop one of the stone sarcophagi in the lower level of his crypt, had been for some time, his t-shirt tossed across the foot of his bed while his duster was folded carefully. After making the slow, pained trip back to his crypt, he'd cleaned the long, shallow wound arcing across his abdomen and pasted clean strips of cotton over it, his healing just a little bit slowed from the lack of human blood his diet had recently consisted of. The pain from that wasn't much of anything, not for a quick slice-n-dice, but the broken ribs, the bruising from being clobbered by the heavy forearms of a bear as big as he was…
Spike felt his shoulders slump back against the smooth, cool stone beneath him as he collapsed in a sprawl, weary, aching.
Why had he done that?
Sure, it had started out like any other time, just looking for a good brawl with any baddie willing to take him on. And in his defense, he hadn't had a clue who he was saving till after the thing was done.
But if they hadn't been there…
If they hadn't been there, he would've cleared out. Bolted, run, gotten out before he got in too deep.
He would't have…
"You saved them."
Spike jerked hard, one hand clenching round the lip of the coffin at his side, the other going to his chest to calm the dead heart that felt like it had just leapt into his throat.
"Christ Slayer," he gasped, his eyes tightly shut, "Give a bloke some warning. Bout give me a bloody heart attack."
He expected the beat of silence, but not what came next.
"Sorry," a quiet voice murmured, and the sincerity there had him cracking an eye in her direction.
Her gaze was tracing over his bare chest, the concern on her face overriding surprise or accusation, and that was surprising. What with the way they'd left things, he didn't think the little Slayerettes would've told her the truth.
"You saved my friends," she said again, and Spike heaved a sigh, closing his eyes and shifting his shoulders to lie back on the stone more comfortably.
"Didn' mean to," he grumbled, grimacing against the pain in his chest as bones shifted. "Was an accident, that's all."
For another minute silence reigned, the only sound coming as the girl stepped closer, and he fought not to roll away or flinch even as delicate fingers lit on his torso, played delicately over his skin like a kiss.
"Are you ok?"
"Fine," he growled through clenched teeth, reaching out to take her wrist firmly and push her hands away. They weren't helping - in fact they were making things a little harder on a bloke, if you caught his meaning, dipping low on his abdomen to trace the bandage there. "Just need a little time to heal up some."
"Oh."
"What do you want, Slayer?" he sighed, shifting again and then stilling suddenly when he realized that he wasn't at all uncomfortable lying out before her like this, his chest exposed and vulnerable as he spread himself out with his eyes closed.
"I wanted to say thank you."
Spike lifted his head and glared in her direction, one eyebrow cocked.
"Why?" he asked suspiciously. "Told you, I didn't…"
"But you did," she interrupted, lifting her own head to meet his gaze instead of looking at her feet, and then shrugging. "Besides it is Thanksgiving, so…"
Spike waited.
Buffy heaved a sigh, frowned at him a little like she was just a tiny bit exasperated, but it was good-natured and calm, with none of the fire that had burned in her only days ago when he's made his frantic play for the ring.
"Thank you Spike," she said. "For saving them. And for what you did for my mom, and for…"
"For what?" he asked, curling upright into a sitting position, suddenly sure that this part of it was the most important, the part that he might actually care about.
Buffy blushed, her eyes flicking down and away before she shook her head. "Nothing," she said lightly, offering up the barest hint of a smile. "Just… thanks."
Turning back towards the ladder, Spike watched her go with a strange mix of emotions sitting heavy in his aching rib cage, suddenly more tired than he could remember feeling in a very long time.
"I brought you pie," she called over her shoulder as she started to climb, blonde hair swinging. "Get some sleep, ok?"
And then she was gone, her ridiculous sandals disappearing through the trap door and out into the night, startling a surprised chuckle out of him that echoed in the quiet of the crypt.