Author's Note: Okay, so, the first one was supposed to be a stand alone. Oh well.


It's early afternoon in the repaired magic shop. I'm pacing, Anya's cleaning, and Xander and Willow are sitting close at the table. It still hurts Willow to be here, you can tell, but I think she keeps coming because it feels like punishment. She told me she thinks she deserves all she can get, and I can't really argue. So we meet here, still. Mostly because it's where the books are. Even though it hurts Willow to see the changes she's caused, even though it hurts Xander, too, being here reveryday, with Anya.

Me, I'm actually okay with it. All of it, most of the time. The memories are dulled, almost comforting. The pain is grounding. It feels good to remember because it's over now. But for Willow, it's too close. Maybe still for Xander too. He doesn't talk about it much, at least to me. Maybe to Willow. I don't know what happened, not exactly, that day with them, up there at the foot of the freshly unburied temple, but now he and Willow are closer than I've ever seen them. I'm not the focus way I used to be, but I'm dealing. It's better, in a lot of ways. Not so much pressure. Everything's really been pretty much okay.

Or at least it was until Spike came back. I didn't tell them-well, I told Dawn, who immediately began making my life a living hell. . . you know, again. . . until I disclosed every single detail, right down to Spike and my misguided macking. Two days later she managed to calm down and stop chattering about how great it was he was back, and how she was sure he'd be bursting through the door all midday flame-y any minute. When it became pretty obvious he wasn't, she stopped mentioning it at all. I mean, aside from the couple of Spike-induced sisterly bonding sessions we had in the middle of the night when she found me crying at the kitchen table. She'd pet my head and tell me he promised, of course he'd be back, he didn't take his coat, remember? But I could tell she was a little hurt too. That he hadn't asked about her, hadn't been back to see her. She was weirdly understanding about it though, and I couldn't help feeling like it was unfair he got so much allowance when I had gotten so little. But I guess Dawn's all over the whole guilt-and-atonement thing these days. She still owes Anya a few afternoons in the shop. Her and an ever-repentant Willow both.

I didn't, however, tell her about the soul thing. It was beginning to feel like a dream. The whole thing was beginning to feel like a dream. After that whole asylum incident, I'm a suspicious girl. Can you blame me?

But now here he is, standing in front of us, cocky and defensive as ever with his thumbs tucked in the waist of his black jeans. His black tee fits just as snug, and his signature red silk button-down hangs open across his chest. The training room door is still open. There's no blanket, no smoke.

I can't look him in the eye after the other night, but it seems like the feeling's mutual, cause his focus is squarely on the wall behind me.

Xander finds his voice first. "Spike!" He's on his feet and trying to look threatening, standing protectively over Wil. I see Anya roll her eyes and go back to dusting.

"What of it?" Spike sneers.

"It's very nice to see you. How'd you get in?" Anya asks.

Bless Anya's heart.

"It's daylight out," Xander asks snidely. "Shouldn't you be dust?"

Spike smirks. "What? Didn't Buffy tell you? Got a soul now, sun don't burn." They all stare at him while I look at the floor, and he rolls his eyes. "Came through the sewers, you nits." He grabs a handful of popcorn from the bowl. "Soul part's true though."

Just then Dawn is in from school, the store bell ringing, the now-familiar thud of her bag by the door, her voice calling, "Okay, I'm ready, what's the latest creature crisi-Spike!" And she's throwing herself into his arms and he's hugging her back, looking so genuinely glad it breaks my heart. Partly because he's never looked like that for me. Or maybe he has and I never wanted to see it. I just know he didn't the other night. Then it was more sloppy anger, if self-directed, than joy. You know, the usual.

I guess this is too much for Xander, still suffering from the loss of Dawn's childhood infatuation-- despite how aware of Dawn's lack of childhood she's been sure to make us of late. "Well. Spike," he starts his taunt, and I think he's missed circumstances that let him swagger that way. "Back to terrorize the womenfolk some more? I mean, Dawn's what, 16 now? Close enough, right?" The intimation in his voice is sick in my stomach, and I'm both ashamed that for a minute I believed it, and worried that my body automatically revolts from believing Spike capable. Because he is. Or was. Or. . . something.

Dawn glares, poisonous. "Xander!"

" 's okay, bit," Spike says, and untangles her from around his waist. He nudges her towards a chair. She flounces down and slides low, shooting Xander another look before crossing her arms and setting her jaw.

Spike nods his head at Willow. studiously ignoring the threat that is Xander's withering glare. "Red. Sorry about your girl. An' the apocolypse an' all."

"Thanks," Willow says, and looks down at her hands.

He shifts his gaze. "How's tricks, Anya?"

"The store is doing very well," Anya tells him. "Xander is still angry we had sex."

"I. . . Anya!"

Finally Spike's eyes slide to me. "Slayer," he says. The epithet doesn't mean much anymore, though it sounds as venemous, as seductive, as it always has. He's curling his tongue behind his teeth in that way he knows I hate.

"Spike," I bite out.

He smirks, and it's been years since he's looked at me that way. So cold. "Must've missed me, Slayer. Unless there's some other lucky chap you like t' use that holier-'en-thou tone on?"

I give him my grimmest smile. "No. Just you."

" 'm touched."

Dawn looks at me like I'm crazy and goes back to being teenage and disgruntled. I deserve the scorn. It's like nothing happened the other night. It's like nothing's happened since. . . since high school. We're still enemies. Nothing changes. I don't know why the light does this, why it makes us act this way. Is it because once the sun rises I think I can be a normal girl, one who'd never even know a vampire, much less feel for one? Is it because once the sun rises he thinks so, too?

"So, Spike, a soul, eh?" Anya asks, and she's extra perky. As usual she understands human interaction better than we give her credit for. Also as usual she makes a not-so-good decision about what to do about it. It's the thing she and Cordy most have in common. "How's that working out for you?"

"He does not have a soul," Xander says.

"I do so!" He's so defensive.

"Look at him," Xander says, and again the ignoring abounds. It's like he and Spike are in mutually exclusive dimensions the rest of us somehow cross. "He's just as evil and disgusting as ever."

"You do seem a little. . . not-different," Willow ventures. "I mean, than I would have thought, with the. . . change and all. . ."

"What? You wanted puppy dog eyes an' poofy hair?" Spike sucks in his cheeks, runs a hand over his hair. I wonder if he's checking. "Yeah, I feel bad about stuff, all right? Some more 'an others." His voice drops to a mutter for the last part, and I feel my face burn. When he speaks again, his voice is fiercer. "But I'm not bleedin' Angel. I'm not gonna mope about it for a century. Boo hoo, woe is me, I hurt people. I can't very well do anything 'bout most of it now, can I? M' victims are all dead."

Xander makes this little disdainful voice in the back of his throat and Spike growls. Dawn sits up a little straighter, looks alarmed.

"That's it! I don't know what I was thinking, comin' here, tryin' t'. . . Bugger it."

He whirls around and storms back through the training room with Dawn after him, "Spike! Wait!"

It doesn't take long before the silence breaks.

"Can you believe that? The nerve of him?"

It takes me a minute to realize Xander's talking to me.

"I believe him," Willow says quietly, saving me from having to answer. She's still watching the training room door. "I don't think he's been sleeping much lately."

"How can you tell?" Anya asks.

"Kinda familiar look these days." Willow turns to look at us, smiles in that little matter-of-fact Willow way. "Seein' it every morning in the bathroom mirror."

I pull out a chair and sit down. I don't know what to think anymore, after Willow. She's my friend, but she did beat me up, almost kill my Watcher, and try to end the world. I can lie to myself and pretend it was the "dark magic" that did it, but it wasn't. It was Willow. Our Willow. She did so much damage, caused so much pain. And I still call her friend. Xander would say, yeah, but she's over it now. Spike. . . Spike will never be "over it." He is what he is, he can't give up being a vampire. You can't exorcise his demon; he is his demon. The darkness is in him, and living, not magic, is what triggers it.

But the way he's been living lately? Not so evil. There was the whole demon eggs thing, but I mean, that's no worse than Xander summoning the demon world's answer to the Lord of the Dance, right? And so he attacked me, it's nothing my best friends haven't done while possessed by hyenas. Especially now that there's this whole soul thing. It makes him different from what he used to be, doesn't it? It makes him like the people I love. The ones I'm allowed to forgive.

And there's the other stuff. The stuff I haven't told him yet.

I stand up suddenly, and both Xander and Willow look at me.

"Buffy, you okay?"

"Not. . . Yes. I just. . . " I laugh a little, try and smile at him. "It's nothing, really. I'll see you guys tomorrow, okay? I need to. . . find Dawn."

Because when I find Dawn, maybe she can help me find Spike.