Chapter 4

Buffy stood in her room, watching her motionless reflection in her mirror. After her frenzied disfigurement of her hair nearly six months ago, it had finally begun to grow out again, and now lay neatly curled and styled around her face. She had spent little time on her makeup, but never really did, thinking natural was better. She looked at the room reflected behind her, at the dozen or more outfits strewn across the floor and bed. It had taken her close to an hour to pick this ensemble, and now that it was on, she was thinking it hadn't been the best choice. She was wearing a black dress, short and sleeveless, maybe a little low cut. And it suddenly looked too date-y. That wasn't what she was going for, and she was now thinking maybe she should change….

"Xander's here." A second reflection suddenly appeared in her mirror, and she smiled weakly at Dawn.

"Tell him I'll be just a minute."

"It's done," Dawn said as she plopped onto Buffy's bed, scooting the piles of clothes over for space. "I thought you'd need a few minutes….maybe a pep talk or two."

Buffy smiled with more strength this time. "Thanks, Dawn. But I'm okay." She frowned at her outfit. "Is this right? Should I be all dressed up and hair-done when it's just Spike? I mean this isn't a date!" She said quickly. "Just a get together of four…sort of friends that are going to work out their differences. Nothing major."

"No, nothing major. You know, an ex-demon that's no so "ex" any more. A groom that left his bride at the altar. And an attempted rapist that was supposed to care about you….and other people."

Buffy looked at Dawn, who was staring down at her shoes. Sometimes she wondered if what Spike had done had hurt Dawn more than it had hurt her. Buffy was an adult. She knew what Spike was, and as much as she tried to convince herself he wasn't evil, he had proved her wrong. But Dawn had looked up to Spike, loving him completely, and thinking he loved her back. And then he had gone and shown her that her love had been misplaced, and she was left wondering why she had never noticed it. Buffy didn't know what to say to her though. Nothing she could think of would take away the pain.

"Spike is a demon, Dawn." She finally uttered, trying to make herself believe it as much as her hurt sister. "We should have realized that we couldn't expect great things from him."

"But he did do great things!" Dawn exclaimed. " He helped you in your save-the-world crusade lots of times. He was here for me and the gang when you were….gone, and he fought a god for us!" Dawn looked down at the floor. "What changed?"

"I don't know," Buffy admitted. She had been constantly wondering the same thing. How had he gone from a person that wanted to help her and claimed to love her, to someone who could hurt her so deeply. But that was just it, he wasn't a person. She had to stop thinking of him that way.

"Why is he trying to come back? To be with us again?" Dawn asked, standing up and walking over to stand next to Buffy.

"I don't know that either. I wish I could give you answers, Dawn, but I don't have them myself." She finally turned away from the mirror and looked at Dawn, trying to make her smile natural. "That's what I'm doing tonight. I'm going to get answers. Even if takes a beating from me and my pent-up rage to get them out."

Buffy started towards the door and glanced out, to where she could see Xander pacing at the bottom of the stairs. At least she wasn't the only one nervous anymore. Buffy whirled back to look at Dawn uneasily. "Do these shoes look okay?"


Xander and Buffy sat in silence in his car, both too caught up in their worries about tonight to talk to each other. They were meeting at the restaurant, which they thought was best. They hadn't wanted to start fighting before they even started the date, which had looked very likely.

Buffy sighed and leaned back in her seat. There she went calling the night a date again. And it wasn't a date, she assured herself. Just a friendly get-together….with a possibility of ending in fists and blood.

She groaned inwardly as she saw the restaurant up ahead, and hesitated before getting out of the car after Xander had parked.

"It will be okay, Buffy," Xander said, breaking the silence right before they got out.

"Now why are you so calm?" Buffy asked with a teasing smile.

"Well, I have gone through extensive pep-talks in front of the mirror and finally have gotten myself to a state of numbness. I am hoping the night goes quickly, before it wears off." With that he got out of the car as Buffy sighed. Why hadn't she thought of that?

They walked up to the building where Xander opened the door for her and she stepped into the air conditioning and the music that was supposed to be calming, but yet just set her nerves on end. She kept her eyes on the hostess, who smiled at them as they approached.

"We're here to meet some…people. It's a reservation under Anya Jenkins," he said.

The hostess looked down at her list, then smiled knowingly. "Ah, yes. We have a special table for you this evening." She picked up two menus and barely gave Xander and Buffy the time to exchange worried and anxious glances before they were forced to follow her or lose her.

She led them all the way through the restaurant until she came to the back doors. She held them open for Buffy and Xander to walk through, and then hurried on through herself. But by then,

Xander and Buffy no longer needed a guide to know where they were going.

In front of them sat a table, with a lace cloth over it and four glass chairs sitting around it. There was a vase with a rose in the center of the table, as well as two candles. Buffy looked at the vacant table, then to the hostess. "I didn't know this restaurant had outside dining."

"Oh, not usually. But your dates requested this special." She laid down the menus and lit both of the candles before smiling once more and wishing them a pleasant evening. She then hurried off.

Xander and Buffy seated themselves and looked at each other. "Well…" Xander said. It had been a minute and forty-three seconds and already they had ran out of conversation.

"I wonder why they're late."

"Oh, we're not late!" A voice said from behind them. They turned to see Spike and Anya hurrying toward them. Anya was dressed in a very loud red dress and smiling very cheerily as usual. Buffy's eyes were more drawn towards Spike though, despite Anya's eye-catching dress.

He was dressed in a suit. Nothing fancy, just a black suit with no tie, but she couldn't take her eyes off of him. Mostly because she barely recognized him. Last year he had tried to go with different outfits other than his signature black, but she couldn't help but think that he had finally hit the mark with this suit.

She turned away from him as Anya quickly sat down. She smiled. "We aren't late," she repeated. "We were just waiting for you over by the pond. " She pointed to the small body of water in the direction they had come from. "You were the ones that were late, we just got bored and went to throw tiny pieces of bread at the ducks. I don't know how the elderly can entertain themselves all day with that sort of thing, I find the activity entirely overrated. So, how are you?"

Buffy nodded and smiled at Anya's apparent lack of anxiety over the whole event. "Fine. This…" She looked at Spike as he finally sat down next to Anya. "…is lovely. How did you set this up? The…outdoors and everything."

"Oh, it was very expensive," Anya assured them quickly, as if telling them that made it so much more romantic and impressive. "We had to do a bit of begging, and I'm not ashamed to say I had to show a bit of cleavage, but now we have a nice dinner, away from other people."

Buffy looked from Anya to Spike. "Why would we want to be away from other people?"

"Well, we just thought if words came to blows, we didn't want any words yelled at high-pitched tones to fall on young and impressionable ears. Like kids….or waiters."

Buffy nodded understanding Anya's blunt, but thoughtful point, and looked at the rose on the table. "Uh….I found that in the grass over by the pond," Spike said quietly. "There was a bush, and…I thought it would look nice."

Buffy looked from the pale red rose to Spike, who was looking at her imploringly, and smiled slightly. "It does. This whole thing is wonderful. I'm glad you did this, because…there are things that I'm sure we all want to say."

"Oh, yes!" Anya jumped in. " There are many uncomfortable accusations and declarations to be made, but I was thinking we could enjoy our rather expensive and not completely un-nutritious meal before we start all the fighting and the yelling."

As everyone agreed to Anya's suggestion, Buffy couldn't help but envy Anya's outlook on the whole thing. The way she saw it, there had been awful things done in the past by the four people sitting together, and the only way to work through it and move on was to have the arguments, possibly the fights and fist-to-cuffs, and that was all there was to it. Buffy saw the whole thing as a headache. Something that needed to be done, but that she wasn't entirely upset about the prospect of missing it. But she was here now. Some part of her needed this, and she was going to see it through to the end.

Through every awkward and uncomfortable moment.

Spike grinned slightly at the look the young waiter gave him when he ordered a very rare steak. Even thought he now had a soul, this new outlook on everything around him, he still was a vampire. He still craved blood, and needed it to function, and since not many formal Sunnydale restaurants served blood, he had to settle with a slice of uncooked meat. It made him cringe, just thinking about it, but he couldn't eat nothing. He knew how uncomfortable people got when they were eating in front of someone who wasn't. It was something he'd learned about the human race, but never really understood.

But his mind wasn't really on his food. His mind was only on one thing, and that was the beautiful woman in the black dress sitting to his left. She was avoiding looking at him, and he understood perfectly well her reasons for doing so. He sometimes couldn't believe what he had done himself. Only the memory of her screaming made it all seem real again. As he looked back on that moment he remembered what he had felt. It had been like at the same moment one part of him wanted to hurt her, while another just wanted her to feel what he felt, and still another part just wanted to hold her and stop the pain that he guiltily realized he himself had been causing.

The relationship they had had the year before had been nothing but pain and pleasure. There had really been no emotions in the equation. Just trading off who hurt who. And what made it all worse, was that he had, and still did, love her more than anything. The chip, while not capable of giving him feelings, had been sort of a cage to the demon in him. And while the demon had been caged up, the human left in him had come out, and fallen in love. Just one little happening, realizing he felt love, and it set off a whole chain of events.

First, he realized he cared for someone else, Dawn. He noticed that he that he wanted to help Buffy more, sometimes not just to impress her or be with her, but just to help. He noticed things like sadness and pain when she wasn't around, and he noticed extreme jealousy for one particular farm boy that he would have rather pummeled at the risk of his head exploding in pain, than be like. But still, he had found himself doing good things for others…and not even when he was asked.

The last definite sign that he had changed, it had come to him the day Buffy died. Because even without her, even with the hole he felt in his existence without her around, he had still not left. He had stayed, for another person. For Dawn.

That brought him out of his reflective trance, and as the waiter brought out their meals, he turned to Buffy. "So, how has the lil' bit been doing? I reckon I hurt more than just one person with what I did. More then two…"

He saw Buffy noticeably swallow as she tried and force herself to look at him. Still, all he got was a glance from her green-gray eyes before she answered him. "She'll be fine. She's hurt. But she'll be fine."

"I'm sorry," he finally said to her. " I didn't do what I did on purpose…."

Buffy cut him off with an angry glance. "What? You slipped and fell on top of me and the momentum tried to undress me?"

"Hey! None of that!" Anya insisted harshly. " We agreed: nice dinner, then fiery talk and raised voices. This looks very good. Let's not let it go to waste." She smiled and promptly started to eat. Xander glanced from Buffy to Anya, then shot a vengeful glance at Spike, before following Anya's example, and started to eat.

Buffy was surprised when Spike too started to eat, and she was left as the only one not joining in. But she suddenly found herself not hungry. She didn't come here to eat. Even though it was a restaurant, she came here to talk, and she was going to do it.

"Why?" she whispered. " What made you do that?"

Spike looked at her, even though she was looking down at the pasta she'd ordered, watching it grow cold. She could feel his eyes in her, penetrating her skin to where she was too vulnerable to sit like that any longer. She raised her eyes to his and watched his every expression as he gave her the explanation she'd been dying for.

"I never wanted to hurt you, Buffy. That was never my intent. I came to you that night to apologize. All I wanted was for you to understand that what happened with me and Anya was…just a mistake. You yourself told me to me to move on. In some way, I might have just been trying to follow your orders when it came to Anya."

"That is so…." Buffy began to say, but she was surprised when Anya cut her off.

"No, Buffy." She said, for the first time sounding forceful and serious. " Let him speak. We always have to sit back and listen to you. You and Xander, always correcting us and ordering us around. Giving us lectures and reprimands, telling us what we are and what we're doing is wrong. For once, it's our turn to speak too. Obviously the dinner is going to go to waste, at least let it be over something worth while. Am I the only one that wants to hear him say what he's thinking?"

"Yes." Xander looked at Anya, throwing his fork down in anger, trying to make an impression.

"Oh, stop it, Xander. I don't want to hear it either. You were always on me about…."

Buffy drowned out Xander and Anya's rather loud ramblings and turned back to Spike, in a lower voice saying, " I never meant to give you orders. I just wanted you to move on, like I was trying to. Every step I took I found you holding on to me, dragging me back. I thought if you moved on, maybe I could too." She closed her eyes. "I didn't expect it to hurt so much when you
did."

Spike tried to touch her hand and she jerked it back. He sighed and looked into her eyes again. "I never wanted to do that, sleep with Anya. The night I went there, I just wanted a spell, something to help me move on. And then she pulled out the liquor, and then it all went downhill. The mutual pain we were feeling, the alcohol, the thought that we were unwanted. It was….just a lot."

"You know this wasn't what I wanted an apology for. Not that apology makes up for anything, but it's a start."

"I know that, but Anya, and what we did, I've been waiting to apologize for it. I feel like I let you down in that, and that just set off a whole string of things to apologize for. Like….the bathroom."

"Yeah, good thing to apologize for. Let's hear it."

Spike smiled. " I was stupid, you know that, pet? Crazy over you, and crazy over so many things. Crazy over the fact that I wanted to be with you all the time, just to hold you or see you, and then to know that you didn't return those feelings. I was crazy over thinking that I would walk to the ends of the earth for you, for Dawn, and that you would never do the same for me. Do you know how hard that is? Loving someone completely when they don't love you or care about you?"

"This is sounding less and less like and apology and more and more like an attack on me for not loving you. Give me one reason why I should."

"I'm not saying that, Buffy. I'm trying to tell you what I felt. I can't help it if a little bit of truth is in there too." Buffy looked away from him at that, but he continued. " When you finally gave in, let yourself be with me, I thought maybe there was a chance, a chance that you'd really been lying to me and yourself all along. That maybe you really did love me. I let it go to my head, I s'pose. I let myself believe there was a chance, when there really hadn't been. And every move I made was to try and show you that I cared, that we should be together. Then you….it ended. And it was sort of a shock to my system. On moment I had you, the next you were gone, telling me to stay away."

"You were like a temptation for something that I didn't need, Spike. The only way to get rid of it was to get rid of you. The darkness you offered let me hide, but eventually I had to come back to the land of the living. And you around….just something that made me want to go back into the shadows all over again."

"And if I had cared, I would have known that." Buffy looked up at him sharply. What had he just said? Suddenly she was finding it hard to remember, and he'd just said it. But it had sounded so alien. So—non-Spike. Spike didn't seem to notice it however, and continued on with his story. "Well, when I tried to apologize to you about Anya, and you just shot it down, I guess something sort of snapped. The monster in me sort of let loose."

"New flash Spike, there is only one person inside you."

"That's not entirely true, luv. I have the demon in me, but that's not all that I am. I still have some of the man in me that I used to be. That's the part of me that loves you. And the part of me that is never could have stood to watch you get hurt. But the demon, it was sort of being dragged around by a leash, and got tired of it. And I couldn't hold it back, no matter how much I loved you."

"So what's to stop you from doing it again? Hurting me? And how can I trust that I'll be able to stop you next time?"

Spike looked down at the grass beneath them. There was something that would stop him now. Something back in him that was making him act like a man instead of a monster. But he didn't know how to tell her…or if he even wanted to. He didn't want the soul in him to be the only reason she wanted to be with him.

"Oh, Xander, that's ridiculous," Anya concluded from her and Xander's side of the table. "You know it is! There are bunnies in this world. With their floppy ears and cotton tails." Anya shuddered. "You can't say that there isn't a surplus of them as of late."

Xander smiled. "See, that's what I mean. Even with your odd fear of bunnies, and your strange money fetish, I still love you Anya."

Anya pursed her lips and crossed her arms over her chest. "Enough to marry me?" she asked angrily.

"Anya…." Xander stopped, realizing he didn't to know what t say. He looked over at his plate of cold food and out of the corner of his eye he saw Anya get up. " Wait!" he called out thinking she was leaving. But she didn't walk to far away and quickly came back, a package in her arms.

"Oddly, I knew a night of dinner and talking would eventually lead to the necessity of gift-exchange." She smiled brightly and held out the package to him. " This is yours….from me."

Xander looked at her curiously while taking the package, but he didn't reach to open it yet. "Why exactly did you do this?"

"What? The dinner? Well, I figured we had to eat, being human and all, and wanting to stay, you know, alive, and since we've had recent relationship problems, I just thought it would be nice to do it all at once. Eating and talking."

Xander shook his head. "No, I mean the present. Why did you get it for me?"

"Well, you haven't even opened it yet! Go on, open it."

Xander looked down at the package, then at Anya who was smiling at him expectantly. So he slowly began to unwrap the box, then tore at the tape. Last, he pulled out all the crape paper stuffing, and looked down at the gift on the bottom of the box.

It was a hammer. It was carved oddly, with designs in the wood. And it had a golden cap on the end of it, and the head was very large, and he could tell how old it was by how worn it looked. But the tool was strong, and very expensive from the looks of it.

"It was used by a carpenter nearly 200 years ago," Anya informed him excitedly. " He used it to build a lot of homes after Sunnydale…well, I don't know if it was called Sunnydale then….but when there was this big fire, a lot of homes were burnt down. The guy built back homes using that hammer for all the homeless people. He's credited with saving a lot of
lives."

Xander looked at the tool with awe, partly because of the skill involved in making it, and partly from the history it had. "Where did you get this?"

Anya smiled, somewhat nervously, and shifted in her seat. "What do you mean? I got it…where you buy stuff. A store that sells goods. Expensive goods," Anya assured him.

"This is….Anya this is great." He finally took his eyes off of the hammer to look up at Anya. "Thank you. Very much."

Anya smiled a very triumphant smile and Xander wrapped the hammer carefully and placed it back into the box. "You're welcome! I thought you'd like it."

"No, I love it. Really, thank you."

Anya continued to smile, and suddenly it felt like old times with them again. Like their past had just been erased and they were once again happily together, sharing a night with only each other, until they heard yelling from the other side of the table.

"Spike, come off it! You're lying to me! Africa? You went to Africa? Why on Earth would you go there? Long lost monkey pals of yours? Some natives that you lost a bet to? Huh?"

"I went to see a demon." Spike said calmly.

"Why? What did this demon do for you?"

"It's complicated, Buffy. I can't really…I don't want to tell you just yet."

"Fine. Then why were you there for an entire four months? Tell me that."

Buffy couldn't believe it was her as she sat there yelling at the breathless man before her. She sounded jealous! She sounded hurt that she'd been left alone for four months while he was off on some safari in the Sahara. She sounded hurt…and maybe she was. She was hurt he left, just disappeared on her and her sister. This had been building for too long, and now it was bursting open, and it was coming out all wrong.

"I was there…healing."

"Oh right. I forgot. You were the victim. You were the one that had the traumatic experience. You were the one with wounds that needed to be healed."

Spike looked at her sharply, and Buffy realized what she said. Saying that she was hurt meant that he was capable of hurting her. And if he was, then she had to care about him, if only a little.

From the side of her, she heard someone clear their throat, and turned to see Anya whispering to Spike. He glanced at Buffy once before getting up from the table and walking towards the pond. He came back quickly, holding a wrapped present in his hand. He sat down and handed it to her. She looked at it without taking it.

"What is that?"

"It's something that I wanted you to have." He looked down at it somberly. "I guess you don't have to take it if you don't want to."

Buffy looked at the present, then at Spike's sullen face, then reached out and took the present from out his grasp. She set it on her lap, and slowly realized the entire table was watching her. Her fingers shook slightly as she unwrapped the gift, and pulled out its contents.

A necklace. It was old, she could tell that much, but very well preserved. It was gold, maybe not real gold, but it certainly looked that way. It had designs of vines twining around its length, and it had three small stones embedded in it. And she knew by look that they were rubies. It wasn't too big, definitely not gaudy, but it drew attention. It was breath-taking.

"Spike….this…why would you get me something like this?"

Spike shifted in his seat and looked up at her. " I told you. I just wanted you to have it."

"Did you get this in Africa?"

Spike paused, then nodded. " Yes."

"It's….I can't take this." Buffy forced herself to say. She slowly set it back in the box and put it on the table. " You know I can't take a gift like that." she looked away from him, wanting so much to just take it, put it around her neck and thank him. But she wasn't going to let herself.

"I know." Spike surprised her by saying. " Somehow I knew you couldn't let yourself accept a gift from me. It's okay, Buffy. I understand."

"Couldn't let myself accept it? Spike, I'm not taking it because I don't want it," Buffy again forced herself to say, looking away from him. "I don't want gifts from you."

Out of the corner of her eye, Buffy saw Spike move, and she turned to see him standing up, looking angry for the first time since he'd come back. "Fine, Buffy. You know, I thought this would maybe clear the path with us, help to make things just a little better. I've tried to bleedin' apologize, I don't know what to do to make it right again, but I'm trying and you're
not."

"Maybe that's because I don't want to try, Spike. You can't just come back from what you did. And I'm not even sure if I want you to be able too."


Spike looked at her with that look he seemed to always have around her. His eyes looked so sad, like he was lost and would never get back. His face just looked so melancholy, it almost made her want to take back what she'd said, but Xander interrupted her.

"Here, here," Xander added, raising his glass. " It's about time you shoved the fiend's nose in his actions."

"Attempted fiend," Anya added perkily.

Xander turned his anger on Anya suddenly. " Don't tell me you're defending that monster, Anya?"

"Well, he did feel sorry for what he did. You can tell by the puppy-dog eyes and the pouting lips. And he is trying to apologize, so I figure he's making a step forward." Anya glared at Xander. " He is setting a rather good example to follow."

"What? The attempting to rape people? Yes, quite an example."

"No, Xander. The trying to seek forgiveness for actions he clearly realizes were wrong."

"I do, Buffy." Spike added suddenly. " I know I did something wrong. I'm just trying to make up for it."

"And you think gifts are going to help?" Buffy stood herself, picking up the box holding the necklace. " This is so far from what you'd have to do to get my forgiveness, it's almost funny."

Xander slowly turned to look at Anya, his own face showing a lot of the pain Spike's had shown. "This gift…you got it to make me forgive you?"

"Well, I thought it would help clear the path….but Xander you're still the one with the more forgiveness to seek."

"What? For the wedding? Anya, all I've been trying to do is apologize for that."

"And obviously we've come very far!" Anya shouted at him.

"And so have we," Buffy said to Spike. He looked at her, this time with a mix of sadness and anger.

" I can't help that I'm the only one that's trying."

Buffy sighed. " And I can't help that you're the only one that wants too." With that she turned and started away from the table. She made it to the door when she stopped and turned to look back at Xander. " You're my ride."

Xander nodded before glaring once more from Spike to Anya, then turning and hurriedly making his way to Buffy. They left quickly, and Spike and Anya were left standing together by four uneaten dinners, two burning candles, a wilting rose, and four empty chairs.

"They took the presents," Anya said glumly.



Buffy once more found herself in front of her mirror. She looked slightly different than she had at the beginning of the night, and it wasn't just because her eyeliner and mascara was now smeared by tears. She thought it was partly because after so many months, she now had answers for why she had been attacked, and they had come as such a shock to her system.

He'd apologized, and he'd done it seeming completely heartfelt and truthful. Looking at her with those pleading blue eyes. Just wanting her to smile at him. But she couldn't do that. When one part of her wanted to forgive him, another just wanted to follow Xander's suggestion and get stake-happy.

I guess Spike was right, Buffy thought to herself. There is more than one person inside of you. And unfortunately, they never wanted to do the same things.

That was why, while she picked the necklace out of the box and strung it around her neck, clasping it behind her hair, one part of her was screaming not to, while another was smiling at her reflection.