"But why can't I go and buy a new dress?"  Dawn whines as her sister goes to the closet and pulls out another armload of dresses.

            "I told you, Dawn,"  Buffy tries to reason with her sister,   "I'm between paychecks right now and Dad hasn't sent his support payment yet.  You're just going to have to make do with what I have here, OK?"

            The invitation to the dance was given and accepted.  Travis would be picking up Dawn, with his Dad at the wheel of their 2001 Volvo station wagon, on Friday night.  This is Monday afternoon.  There is really no time to shop for a good dress, Dawn consoles herself as she looks at the assortment of taffeta and shantung formals on Buffy's bed.  All the good dresses had already been moved from the shops.  Anything left over would be a duplicate of someone else's gown and she didn't want to be someone's twin at her first high school dance.  But she can't hide her disappointment as she peruses the dresses that marked the milestones of Buffy's high school experience.  They bear the scars of her sister's calling.  The peach tea-length gown with the spaghetti straps is flecked with a few dots of dried blood.  The white gown with the fitted bodice is gray with vampire dust and the area under the arms tinged with perspiration.  The teal dress with the full skirt and the giant bow on the back…well, that is just plain ugly.

            "Here, how about this one?  I wore this when I was May Queen,"  Buffy says, holding the sea green dress up to her sister's chin.

            Dawn instantly wrinkles her nose and says in an exaggerated TV announcer voice,  "Sessions presents Sounds of the '90's with all your favorite hits from artists like Tone Loc and Roxette."

            "OK, OK…a little dated.  I get you.  Then what about this one?  It's got kind of a new Millennium flair to it,"  Buffy says, holding up the black silk number with spaghetti straps.  "Little black dress.  Never goes out of style."

            "Um, Buffy, I'm going to a high school dance, not a cocktail party."

            "You're right.  It is a little mature for freshman year."

            Dawn is now rummaging through the dresses like a complacent yard sale regular.   "This one's not too bad,"  she says, pointing to a mauve, velveteen knee-length dress with cap sleeves.

            "Oh, I always liked that one too.  And I think I still have the shoes to match.  Why don't you go try it on."

            "OK,"  she says, holding the dress to her and exiting the room.

            While Buffy is putting some of the rejects back onto their hangers, thinking that it might be best to just shove them all into a garbage bag after all the bad reviews they got, Spike appears at the door, holding a mug. 

            "So how goes Becky Sharpe's preparations for Vanity Fair?"  he asks.

            "Becky who?"  Buffy asks.

            "Never mind.  Guess Thackery was a bit before your time.  He was almost before mine."  He walks into the room sipping slowly.  "Why don't you ever wear some of these?"

            "I don't know.  Most of these would not be appropriate dress for my line of work.  Although I've worn some of them when unexpectedly called in for duty."  She holds up the white dress with the uneven hemline.  "You see this one?  I wore this for prom my sophomore year at Sunnydale.  What a memorable night that was.  I was all looking forward to my first prom at my new school and surprise!  Giles said, 'You can't go to the prom.  You have to fight the Master and die.  The books say so.'   So I fought the Master, he killed me, I came back, I killed him and then I got to go to the prom."  She sniffs the bodice of the dress.  "Eww…you can still smell the sewer water I drowned in."

            She was speaking so matter-of-factly, like dying was all in a day's work for her, when Spike's skin crawled when she said, "I died" and "I drowned."  He remembers when the words "I'm going to kill the Slayer" made up a huge majority of his vocabulary.  It was the one thing he dreamed of every night and the first thing he thought of when he awoke every day.  The call to kill her didn't just come from his own desire to make her Slayer number three with a bullet.  It was chanted all around him.  First from the Annointed One before he taught that little shit that he doesn't take orders from anyone and secondly from his sire.  He remembers Dru's dream-like coos in his ear, "Kill her for me, Spoike…kill her for me."  There was nothing more than he wanted to see this girl drowning in her own blood.  Over the years he had devised a number of cruel fantasies in which he took her life.  He once imagined cutting off her head and having it stuffed and mounted on his wall.  He then thought about just snapping her neck, leaving her skin untouched so that it could be used to upholster the furniture in his crypt.  As he recalls these things, he watches her as she so carefully handles a dress of delicate lace, marred by four slashes near the neckline.  He looks at her face and forces himself to remember she is just a young girl still.  Her face today is full of cares and she frowns deeply.  Her eyes are shadowed with two twin pools of shimmering gray.  The eyes that sparkle with gold are a little dimmed by the memories of so many would be happy events shrouded by violence and destruction.  Spike knows he has played a rather significant role in some of the more unseemly moments of her life.  He hunted her for years.  He remembers saying very clearly one night that he would make her neck his chalice and drink deep, only to wake up days later so much in love with her he couldn't think of anything else.

            He had come to Sunnydale to kill her, but instead he fell in love with her.

            Now when she's a bit late getting home from patrol, he paces the floor, worrying that the delay in her return means that she's lying somewhere dead and that he should have been there to save her.  Now when she comes home, battered and bruised and he applies ice to whatever is broken or contused, he wonders how much more her little body can take.  Her size has always been the great deception of her nature.  When he first saw her dancing at the Bronze, he thought he could take her in five easy moves, she appeared so delicate and harmless.  But he wasn't prepared for her strength, her stamina, her all-consuming need to win.  She was a fierce adversary, every bit his equal in battle.  He always knew that.  He thinks sometimes that's why he fell in love with her.  He knew he could never beat her.   But as she returns from her closet after putting back a few of the dresses, she smiles at him and once again he feels that rush, that same energy pulsing through him the day he knew for the first time that he could never kill her because he didn't want to live a day without her.

            He reaches out to touch her hand as she's about to return to the closet.  "Buffy…"  he says softly.  His fingers grip hers and she looks up at him, a bit taken back.  "I'm sorry."

            She knows instantly what he's talking about.  And she is so grateful she can't speak.  It's not often she hears these words.  "Thank you" she hears to the point of ridiculousness.  "You've got to do this" occurs on a daily basis.  But the "I'm sorry's…" they are raritites.  Hers is a thankless job.  The benefits are lousy, the pay is nonexistent, and there are no opportunities for advancement, unless one considers death and ascension into heaven a promotion.

            She finds her eyes are a little misty and she turns away shyly, flicking the runaway tears from her cheeks as she sits down on the bed.  Every day she finds a new reason to love him.

            Spike sits down slowly next to his suddenly quiet love, letting the taffeta of one long-lost high school memory crinkle under him.    He doesn't have to even ask what she's thinking about.  He looks down at the quilt of clothing lying on the bed; the patchwork of Buffy's high school experiences.  And here is Dawn, just embarking on her teen-age years, wearing Buffy's cast-off's.  Suddenly it doesn't seem a bit fair at all.  There is nothing to be done now about Buffy's past;  it is gone, lived, set.   Dawn should have something new, something that is hers.  This is her young life.  She is not the Slayer.  She is her own, wonderful person and she deserves to have something that belongs only to her.

            Dawn appears at the threshold now, wearing Buffy's dress.  It is much too short for her and she tugs subconsciously at the hem as though hoping to stretch it to her knees.

            "How do you I look?"  she asks warily, wrinkling her nose.

            "Fine, Dawn,"  Buffy says, her voice a bit hoarse from emotion.

"You look lovely, darling,"  Spike says, while inwardly he replies, "Borrowed."

            "I don't know if I want to show this much leg, though, at my first high school dance."

            "You're a little taller than I was in high school,"  Buffy notes.

Dawn glimpses the time on the clock radio by Buffy's bed.  "Oh, shi---, I mean, shoot!  Shoot!  I said shoot!  I told Amelia I'd meet her at the library in ten minutes.  I gotta run.  Spike?  Will you give me a ride to the library?  I know it's still kind of light out, but if you wore your cloak?"

"Yeah, Nibblet.  I'll fire up the DeSoto.  No problem."
            "Thanks.  I'll just be a minute."

            Buffy watches her sister leave with an encroaching sadness eclipsing her face.  She picks up a coat hanger from the floor and begins batting at her thighs.   "I wish I could buy her a new dress,"  Buffy says.  "I wish I could buy her all the things she wants and needs.  It's just so…hard, you know.  Sometimes it's like…pay rent or rent from Blockbuster?  There just isn't enough money for extras these days."

            "Maybe there's something I can do to help,"  Spike offers, putting his arm around her.

            "Well, they are looking for a bus boy down at the Bronze.  We could use the extra paycheck.  Think you have what it takes to wipe down tables and take the garbage out?"

            "That's not exactly what I was talking about, but, please, bookmark that for a later discussion.  What I meant was, I might have a few pennies saved up somewhere.  Or something worth a few pennies down at the pawnshop."

            "Oh, honey.  I don't want you to do that.  You had to sell your medieval cross-bow last month so that I could break even.  I feel guilty enough about that."

Spike gives a "It's nothing" look and strokes her arm.  "I'll scare something up.  The bloke who runs the pawn shop on Elm has been practically begging me to sell him the Winchester rifle I won in a poker game with Frank and Jesse James."

 "You knew Frank and Jesse James?"

"Oh, absolutely.  Though I only had an opportunity to hang about with them once.  I've never told you this story?"

"Uh uh,"  she says as she shakes her head slowly.

"Oh, well.  Let's see…how to begin…Just about two years after I had been made, my ex and I were bored of the London scene.  We had heard tales about what was going on out in the West in America.  The lawlessness, the gunfights, the Indian slaughters.  It seemed like our sort of place.  We arrived in the summertime.  It was hot as hell and sunny all the soddin' time so we spent most of our days indoors.  Luckily, most of the mayhem didn't start until well after dark, so we didn't miss much.  Dru had disguised herself as a whore and was working a brothel for her late night noshings, so since she was otherwise engaged, I made nice with some of the locals.  It happened one night that Frank and Jesse were in town.  I had heard much about their treachery and was intrigued that two humans could cut such a swath of violence and destruction.    At a saloon, I introduced myself and the two brothers made sport of my foppish attire and proper manners until I grabbed a barmaid and ripped her throat open without spilling a drop of blood.  Yeah, I know.  You're not a fan of the spilling of blood even when it doesn't occur.  But that woman was probably raging with syphillis and would have driven countless cowpokes to madness and blindness.   So I was doing humanity a favor.   After that, I was their honored guest.  I sat down to a lively game of five card stud with the brothers, and two other shifty-looking blokes who smelled of tobacco and prairie dust.  We played several hands and the evening grew a bit long.  I was kept in rapt attention by all the tales of his triumphs.  Amazing fellow, that Jesse.  I offered to make him immortal, but he assured me that he already was…"   Spike sees the non-impressed and very much "you're stake-worthy" expression on Buffy's face.  "And I can tell this isn't the sort of story you like, so perhaps I should take Dawn to the library now."

"Well, don't take too long,"  she says, a naughty glint governing her sage green eyes.  "This is the first night of Dawn's post-grounding and I don't have to work."

"I know that, love.  I'll be back in plenty of time to make you scream,"  he promises, reinforcing the pledge with a slight pinch to her backside.

The black DeSoto pulls into a well-lighted space in the darkened parking lot.  Long after the engine is shut off, the occupants of the car sit there in silence.  There is a tangible fear in the air, shared between them.  It didn't seem so real when they were on the road, but now, so close to home, the dread they are experiencing clutches at them with calloused hands and they are beginning to suffocate.

"So what are we going to tell her?"  Dawn finally says, twisting her well-chewed straw from her long-finished Coke between her teeth.

Spike sighs.  "I don't know.  But just let me do the talking."

"Don't worry.  I'm planning on going straight to my room."

"Fine, and leave me holding the bag on this one?  Some partner in crime you are,"  he says, pulling his keys out of the ignition.  "Come on, Nibblet.  We've kept her waiting this long.  If we let any more time pass, I'm going to be a stake house and you're going to be grounded until you're thirty nine and holding."

From the parking lot, it appears that all the occupants of the apartment complex are sound asleep.  There is only one light on, third floor center.  Apartment 3C.  Yes, Buffy has waited up for them.  As Dawn walks to the stairs, her shopping bag from Neiman Marcus in tow, she thinks about how Travis will never see her in the petal pink satin gown she has chosen.  And she looks so good in it too.  The salesperson said so.  And Spike gave her a wolfish grin that had her thinking impure thoughts about her sister's boyfriend. 

It was so much fun.  But now it was over.  It was really over.

As Spike is putting the key in the lock, the door flies open, bringing him with it, into the palpable rage of Buffy's stabbing glare.

"Where the hell have you been?"  she says through gnashing teeth.  "It's almost two in the morning!"

Spike is quick to curtail his lover's anger, but she's not having any of it just yet.  His embrace is rejected with a shove that nearly sends him across the floor.

"Honey bunches of O's!  We're home now, isn't that the important thing?"  he asks.

She folds her arms and begins to pace as tears begin to roll down her cheeks.  "You don't know what you put me through tonight!  I was a basketcase thinking of all the things that might have happened to you.  I went to the pawn shop and the man there said he had seen you at about 4:30.  So I went to all the boutiques in town, the mall.  I went to the library and Amelia said that you never even showed up.  I was frantic at that point.  I called the police.  I called the hospital.  I even called the morgue…"  she says, wiping her face with the back of her hand.  "Now, where did you go?"

Spike and Dawn share a wary glance as though telegraphing to each other, "Where do we start?"

Finally, Spike says, "Sweetheart, Dawn said that everyone in school had probably already chosen their dresses and she didn't want to be wearing something someone had already picked out.  So we started thinking, well, why don't we just go somewhere else.  And that somewhere else just happened to be Los Angeles…"

"What!  You went to LA?  You drove to LA and didn't even fucking bother to call me and tell me that's where you were going?"

"Buffy, it was one of those spur of the moment things.  We were driving and we just suddenly ended up on the freeway.  Isn't that how it was, Dawn?"

"Yeah,"  Dawn says, nodding vigorously.   "Kinda freaky.  Like the freeway just sucked us in or something.  Might have been one of those demony dimension dealies.  Maybe you should tell Giles---

Spike pats Dawn on the shoulder, signaling that he's ready to take the baton.  "Darling, we got to LA 'round six.  We knew we didn't have a lot of time.  We found a mall and the Nibblet tried on every dress on every rack at every store while I sat and held her purse.  Bit of humiliation there, but there were others sharing the same agony.  She finally found a satin dress in Neiman Marcus.  And she looked so pretty in it that everyone in the store almost applauded.  I swear.  If I hadn't seen it with my own eyes… So I paid for the dress and Dawn said she was hungry.  So I took her to Sbarro.  You didn't want her to go hungry, did you?  We each had a slice of pizza and saw all these people queued up to see the pictures at the cinema.  So we took in the nine o'clock showing of Zoolander, nice, PG-13 rated fair, safe for the kiddies.  Then we got ice cream at Baskin Robbins and headed home."

Buffy is silent for a few minutes, her arms still crossed.  She is still a bit cross herself.  "Well, I imagine hundreds of horrible scenarios while you were gone, but none quite as frightening as the one you just told me about."  She sighs and rakes her fingers through her tousled hair.  "So at this mall, they had a Neiman Marcus, a Sbarro, a cinemaplex, and a Baskin Robbins.  But there was not a phone to be found to call a worried sister who got left out of the little, innocent jaunt to LA?"

"We really should have, Buffy.  But we thought you might be mad,"  Dawn says.

"Mad!  Why the hell would I be mad?  'Oh, you skipped town with my boyfriend?  That's great!   Send me a postcard!'"

Out of the corner of her mouth, Dawn says, "I told ya we should have gotten that cell phone at Radio Shack."

"And I told you I wasn't ready for wireless yet, Bit,"  he replies, before taking a try at softening Buffy up again.  "Honey, we are sorry.  We were having such a good time we just sort of…lost track of things."

"Well, it was all for nothing.  Dawn, you're grounded again!  No library, no movies and no dance on Friday night!"  Buffy bellows.

"Buffy!  No!   You can't ground me for this!  Please!  Be reasonable!"  Dawn begs, her eyes beginning to tear.

"Yes, I can ground you for this and I'm going to!  Now get to bed.  You have school in six hours."

"Buffy, I know it was wrong for us not to let you know where we were going.  Things just started happening and---

"Dawn, if you don't put away that shovel, you're going to dig yourself right into another week of grounding.  Now get to bed NOW!"

Dawn quivers in Buffy's stare for a few moments before her mouth comes open to a protesting sob.  She aims her eyes at Spike before fleeing the room.  "You promised me…you promised!"

At the sound of Dawn's door slamming shut, Spike moves to touch Buffy, but she backs away.

"Don't!  I don't want you near me,  I don't want you touching me, I don't want you talking to me, I don't want you to do anything but leave this house right now.  I'm so mad at you I could break that coffee table and stake you with every splinter.  Spike, if this is what you meant by coming home in plenty of time to make me scream, I wish you had warned me!"

Spike feels the scalding of her hatred towards him and it feels like old times.  Bad old times.  This is in some ways just what he expected, but not this harsh, not this cruel.  "Buffy…"  he begins softly.  "Don't be like this.  Honey, I told Dawn you wouldn't ground her because you would know that she was safe with me.  I promised her, actually."

"Well, you shouldn't have promised her that.  Now she knows what a liar you can be,"  Buffy says, turning away.

The back of his throat starts to burn.  He blinks away the early tears in his eyes and even though she has warned him not to with every action and every word, he touches her shoulder.  "Buffy, you did know that she was safe.  With me."

Her shoulders tense and then sag under his hand.  "Yes,"  she returns slowly.  "I know you wouldn't hurt her.  But I was thinking about other things while you were gone."  Her body heaves and suddenly she convulses in a heavy flood of emotion.  "I thought, what if you had been in an accident?  I started thinking about what I would do if I lost the two most important people in my life…"

"Oh, God…"  Guilt courses through his body.  Why didn't he think about this?  Why didn't he think she might be worried that something had happened to them?  He had put her through torture without even giving it a second thought.  I am a demon, he thinks.  I am a demon to make my love suffer hell…He encircles her with his arms, drawing her trembling form against his.  He nuzzles her cheek softly, keenly aware of the hot tears drenching her skin.  "I'm so sorry…I am so, so sorry.  But we're all right, Buffy.  We're safe at home now.  All three of us.  Our little family."

"I just couldn't stop thinking about how lost I would be if something h-happened to you.  I lost my mother.  And that's a pain I'm still trying to get over.  If I lost you and Dawn…"

"You didn't lose us, love.  We're here.  We're all right, Buffy.  We're all right,"  he says, kissing the side of her face.

She turns in his embrace, wrapping her arms around him, nestling her face in the soft cotton of his shirt.  He is so solid and so near.  He is all right and he is with her.  And at that moment she can't think of any place where she'd rather be.  But even as she holds him, that distant worry drifts back into her mind in a taunting whiff, like the scent of the dank water that soiled her prom dress when she died years before.  What if I lost him

"I know why you're really mad,"  he says mischievously, stroking her hair.  "You're just mad that I took your sister out on a date before you."

She has to laugh at this and it is a relief to feel something rising from her chest that isn't a sob.  "Yeah, what's that all about?  You're supposed to be in love with me."

"And I am.  Completely."

"And I am too,"  she says.  She breaks from his embrace to take his hands in her face for a brief kiss.  "Completely."

"So I don't have to leave the house now?"

"No,"  she smiles, swiping her face with the curl of her hand.  "But you're not completely forgiven yet."

"What about Dawn?"

"She's not either.  But she's not grounded anymore."

"We should tell her that now.  Don't want her crying herself to sleep thinking of poor Travis keeping her corsage in his fridge for all eternity, dreaming of what might have been."

"Yeah, we should.  But Spike?"

"Yes?"

She presses a finger to his lips, allowing them to caress the tip in a kiss.  "I want you to promise me you'll never, ever do anything like that again.  Make that your last trip on the irresponsibility train, will you?"

He smiles.  "I'm throwing away the schedule as we speak, love."