The sight of her sister slumped over her desk, half-buried in files and books, was too much for Dawn to resist. She crept quietly closer, using the stealth techniques Buffy had been teaching her all summer, and positioned herself for optimum audio impact. A deep breath, a clenching of diaphragm, and then, "BUFFY!"
Buffy shot up out of her chair like a bottle-blonde rocket, and Dawn had half a second to reflect that maybe scaring the hell out of a sleeping Slayer wasn't the best idea before her sister lunged at her, eyes glassy and unseeing.
"Buffy, it's me!" Dawn shouted as she deflected a Slayer-strength punch, using her sister's own momentum and disorientation to power her out of arm's reach. But Buffy recovered quickly and Dawn went sprawling as her sister tackled her, case files and contraband fashion magazines flying as they hit the desk.
"Buffy!" Dawn repeated, struggling, and heaved a sigh of relief as Buffy froze suddenly, her eyes beginning to clear.
"Dawn?"
Dawn snorted. "Ah, I don't think duh even scratches the surface here."
Buffy blinked, shaking her head a bit. "Um. Sorry. Dreaming."
"Yeah, well, can you get off me now before Principal Wood comes in and wonders why you're trying to smother your sister?"
"Sorry." Buffy levered herself upright, then extended a hand to Dawn, who took it with an injured air.
"Man," Dawn commented, brushing herself off theatrically, "no more Pizza Pig-Outs for Buffy, if you're gonna be doing that."
"Whatever." Even through her confusion, the response was automatic. "You weigh more than I do."
Dawn sniffed. "Only because I'm taller. I'm going to grow up to be an Amazon, and kick your ass."
"Uh-huh." Buffy raised an eloquent eyebrow. Then, as a vague impression came back to her, "Speaking of which, did I notice you got in a pretty decent move there at the beginning?"
"Yup," Dawn responded proudly. "Threw you halfway across the room—"
"Before I regrouped and squashed you like a bug." After all, sisterly pride was one thing, but…
Dawn shrugged, undeterred. "Yeah. There was that part, too."
"Still," Buffy couldn't help smiling, "a year ago I would've just squashed you. You'll be an Amazon in no time."
"Got a good teacher."
Buffy gave her eyebrow another workout. "You still can't patrol without me."
Sighing, "Girl's gotta try." Then, as Buffy began gathering up her scattered paperwork, "Ooh. Getting blood on the top secret files, there, champ."
Buffy glanced at her knuckles, realizing she'd left a significant portion of them on the sharp edge of the desk. "That'll teach me to fight when I'm asleep."
"Yeah." But Dawn's mind had already jumped to something else. After a brief pause, she blurted, "What do you think Spike's eating these days?"
"Don't want to know." Buffy made a conscious effort to keep from cringing, to continue the seamless motion of sorting papers. She hated hearing anyone say his name aloud these days. It made him real, and she didn't want him to be real, locked away muttering in the basement, wrestling with the soul he'd sought for her. Wasn't her fault. And it wasn't something she wanted to discuss even with Dawn, who might be the only one to understand how she had dreaded and secretly hoped for his return. I wanted him to come back so we could resolve things. That's all. To make a clean break. Civilized. And now he was anything but, and she didn't know how to treat him, what to say or feel, and she just wanted it all to go away…
She realized Dawn was still looking at her, expecting something more in response. She forced a laugh. "What--you see blood and you automatically think of Spike?"
"No. Well, sometimes. This time because it reminded me of when they brought you back, and he came looking for me, and saw you…"
"How long was I gone?"
"One-hundred and forty-seven days yesterday. One hundred and forty-eight days today. 'Cept today doesn't count, does it?"
And he looked at her like he never wanted to look at anything else, ever.
Buffy slammed the door shut on the memory. "I don't remember. I was pretty confused."
"Me, too." Dawn hesitated, then stepped closer. "I still kinda am. Buffy, what are we supposed to do with him? I mean, he hurt you, and I don't get that, and I'm so mad at him, but now he's got the soul, and he's all grubby and wacko, and what are we supposed to do?"
Mind-reader, Buffy accused her sister silently. But she still didn't want to talk about it. She didn't realize that Dawn could see the familiar shutters closing behind her eyes.
Bye, Buffy, Dawn thought regretfully, and she knew the conversation was, to all intents and purposes, over.
"I don't think we're supposed to do anything." Buffy had perfected the art of not caring, now suddenly engrossed in an apparently fascinating book jacket. "You can choose to do whatever you want. But he's a big boy. He can take care of himself." And so can I.
Not so sure about that, Dawn frowned inwardly, but left her sister to her work.
***************
I'm in a dank, disgusting basement with walls that move, built right over the Hellmouth, where zombies tried to kill me not too long ago, carrying a container full of blood to a crazy vampire. Wonder what kids at other high schools do when they're skipping class? The erstwhile Key shuddered, trying to ignore the distant skittering of rats. At least she hoped they were rats. And she hoped they were distant. She shuddered again, clutched the Tupperware container tighter, then grimaced and let go as she realized what she was clutching. This sucks. Couldn't have gone back to the crypt, couldja, Spike? Nooooo, had to be the most ickifying, creepy, evil-infested—
She stopped suddenly, listening.
"Can't pay… not enough coin, the Muse doesn't pay in pound notes… hafta pay, hafta work, I can be a hard worker if someone would just teach—"
"Spike?" she called tentatively, beginning to move as quietly as possible in the direction of the voice.
The muttering fell silent for a moment, then, "Can't be here, never hurt you, oh God, I failed, but it's not the same, you're not playing by the rules…"
She walked faster, turned a corner and found him, huddled against the wall, arms wrapped around drawn-up knees. His eyes flicked up to her, and the naked fear in them shattered what few reservations she had about coming here. He tried to scrunch further into the wall.
"Spike, it's OK." She tried to keep the wiggins from her voice. It was so weird to see him like this… He'd always been the one taking care of her. Wasn't supposed to be the other way around. She knelt in front of him, set the container on the ground. "It's just me. I thought you might be hungry."
A little of the fear left his eyes, and he looked closely at her. Tentatively, he reached out a trembling finger to touch the fall of her hair. "Dawn?"
"Yeah." She tried to smile a little, and he echoed it, the ghost of a curve playing around his lips.
"Forgot your torch," he whispered conspiratorially.
Her forehead wrinkled. "Huh?"
"Gonna burn me, you'll need a torch." He sat up straighter, businesslike, and began to lever himself to his feet. "Lots of wood around here, though, we can make one—"
"Spike." She caught his arm, flustered, before he could stand. He cocked his head at her, genuinely confused and even a little disappointed.
"But you promised."
Something twisted in Dawn's gut. "I…" She sighed. It wasn't supposed to be this complicated. "I'm not gonna burn you, OK? Not right now. Just…" She shoved the container towards him. "Just eat. It's getting cold. And I snuck into the faculty room to heat it up, which wasn't easy, so don't waste it."
He eyed it warily. "Can't," he whispered, shaking his head.
She rolled her eyes, frustrated in spite of herself. Florence Nightingale wasn't her style, and he obviously wasn't taking care of himself—the shadows in his cheeks and around his eyes stood out like bruises. "The pig is pork chops by now, Spike. It doesn't care. Just eat."
He held out for another moment, the hunger sharp and desperate in his eyes. Finally, he snatched up the container, peeled back the lid, and retreated to the corner, his back to her. She made a face at the greedy slurping sounds as he downed it in record time. When he was finished, he carefully replaced the lid on the container and sat in silence, his forehead pressed against the angle where the walls met. When he finally spoke, his voice was rough, but controlled. "Thanks."
"Better?" The wild, strangled sound he made in reply told her just how relative a term "better" had become. "Right. Sorry."
"Don't be." He shrugged, turned his head enough that she could see his profile, sharp and haggard. "Sweet thing like you, couldn't know what this is like. Shouldn't know."
Dawn's mouth hardened. "Don't say I'm sweet. I'm still mad at you. And as soon as you're sane enough to give me some answers, I've got a lot of stuff to yell at you about."
He gave a short, bitter laugh. "Sane as I get, here, pet. Holler away."
Taken aback, but crossing her arms defiantly, "OK, then. Why?"
"Why what?"
"Why'd you leave?"
That clearly wasn't the question he was expecting. He turned around to face her, squatting on his heels, arms dangling over his knees. His expression was an odd mix of surprise, fear, and a kind of suspicion. "How could I have stayed?"
"You're supposed to be answering, not asking more questions!"
He looked down, began tracing patterns on the floor with a finger, but his voice remained low and steady. "I hurt her. Couldn't stand myself. Couldn't stand my own skin. Couldn't face her again, had to do something…."
Dawn felt angry tears, delayed for months, start to sting her eyes. She knew he could probably smell them--it was how he'd always anticipated her nightmares, that long summer without Buffy--but she refused to let them fall. "We needed you."
One shoulder came up defensively, and he flinched away as if she'd hit him. "Don't."
"Don't need you? Don't worry about you? It's too late for that, Spike! You can't play cards with me and save my life and tell me stories and then expect me to not even care when you're gone!"
He backed up towards the wall, hunched over. "You can't care, you shouldn't, Dawn, please--" His voice was starting to shake, but all the pent-up hurt and frustration was pouring out of her like a volcano erupting, and she couldn't stop it.
"Well, I do care! And I want you to explain it to me! Spike!" She grabbed his shoulders, hanging on doggedly despite his attempts to twist away. "Explain it to me, dammit! How could you do it? How could you hurt her like that?" Tears spilled over, dripping off her chin. "You hurt the one person I thought you'd never touch and then you left and I want you to tell me why!"
She was shaking him, sobbing, screaming, and then his face suddenly distorted into ridges and fangs and he roared, rising to his feet, breaking her grip with such force she sprawled backwards. "Because I'm wrong, all right?" he yelled, a growl roughening the words. "That's what you all want to hear, isn't it?" And she saw his eyes were wild as he scanned the room, addressing an absent audience. "I'm dark, and I'm bad, and it's in me, this hate and anger and twisted beast and it's in me, and it'll never be gone." Before Dawn had time to blink, his eyes were blue again, features smooth, though contorted in pain. "And now he's here, too, burning like crosses, and her eyes, looking at me, stop looking at me!" He threw both arms up in front of his face, retreated to the corner, curled around himself and rocked back and forth, back and forth.
Dawn lay exactly as she'd fallen, panting, tears still leaking, too stunned and horrified to move as he muttered and twitched and rocked. Finally, softly, "Spike?"
He jerked, but wouldn't look at her as he continued to murmur, too low for her to hear. She crept closer, and she could just make out, "Quiet, stay quiet quiet not real not real not real not real…."
She reached out to touch him, but he cried out with such fear in his voice that she withdrew her hand immediately. Tears started fresh. "I don't know what to do, Spike… I don't know what to do…."
"Quiet quiet quiet quiet quiet…" in an endless litany.
At last, she wiped her eyes, sniffed, and slowly rose to her feet. "I've gotta go… figure stuff out. But I'll be back, OK? I'll be back."
If he heard her, he made no sign, and the sound of his desperate murmuring followed her all the way out, up the stairs, and into the light.
***********
He was in almost the same place when she returned two days later, and he watched her with flat eyes as she approached him solemnly, placing a paper bag in front of him like an offering.
"Hi."
"Hi." His voice was rough, as if all of his years of smoking had suddenly caught up with him. His legs stretched out in front of him, arms hanging listlessly at his sides, she could still see the exhausted tension in him.
"Little less with the crazy today?" she offered tentatively.
He lifted a shoulder, eyes flicking up to the ceiling and back. "Comes and goes."
"Yeah." She shifted from foot to foot, awkwardly, then took a deep breath and squared her shoulders. "So. I've been thinking."
"Yeah?"
"Yeah. And… I don't think I'm ever going to understand what happened with you and Buffy, even if you could explain it to me in a remotely sense-making way. It's not like there's really any good excuse anyway. And I hate that you hurt her, and I can't forget that. But," and she crouched in front of him, "you were always there, last summer, and… we've been through stuff together, and there aren't a lot of people who care about me, and you felt bad enough to get a soul, which is obviously no fun at all…" She wrinkled her nose, tossed her hair in annoyance. "This all sounded way better in my head. The point is, Spike, I love you. I can't help that. And I don't want you to be alone."
She watched him closely, half-expecting him to flip out, but he just sat there, staring at her with an expression she couldn't read. Deliberately, she moved closer, her arm just barely touching his as she rested her back against the wall next to him. He was perfectly still, in the way only vampires and corpses could be. After a moment, reassured by his apparent lack of craziness, she tipped her head to the side and rested it against his shoulder.
She felt his chest rise and fall in one of his unnecessary sighs. "Hungry?" she asked quietly, eyes fixed on the paper bag.
"Nah," he whispered. "Had a rat earlier."
There was a hint of the Spike she knew in his voice, and she couldn't hold back a tiny giggle. It felt good. "Missed you," she said, so softly he might not have heard it without his enhanced senses.
He didn't say anything, but suddenly the tension drained out of his body, and she felt dampness creeping into her hair where he'd rested his cheek against it. Closing her eyes, she prayed fervently to whoever was listening that everything would turn out all right.
*************
A/N: I'm having italics issues. Sorry if anything seems weird; and if anyone knows how to fix this, please feel free to email me! In the meantime, sorry.