Part Two

*Again, thanks to my sister Jean, who originally made the killing list.*

Buffy put her glass down and stared at their enemy intently. They were quickly running out of ideas. "Decapitation."

Dawn nodded slowly. "Lead paint chip poisoning."

"Drinking household cleaning products."

"Faulty silicone breast implants."

"Falling into a deep fryer."

"Syringe with air bubble."

"Trapped inside tanning bed."

"Rodents of unusual size."

Their enemy stood at the other end of the room, tossing her blond hair over her shoulder and then back again as she shamelessly flirted with two boys. Earlier that evening Kirstie had approached them, smiled, and innocently said that she hoped to see Dawn at the next school dance. "You know, if you can manage to find a date, it would be really great to see you there." Then she grinned and sashayed away to flirt with Mike, the same boy Dawn had been talking to a few nights ago. Buffy instantly hated her as much as Dawn did. At least Cordelia had had the decency to be direct with her insults.

Anya approached their table carefully balancing three sodas.

"Oh, I bet you can help with this," Dawn said.

"Help with what?"

"We're figuring out creative ways to kill Kirstie," Buffy explained.

Anya handed the drinks to them and sat down. "Covered in pollen and locked in a room full of bees," she suggested.

"This is why you're the pro," Buffy admitted with a nod of respect.

"Well, I'm through with talk," Dawn said, standing. "I'm gonna go *accidentally* spill my soda on her shirt."

"Dawn, I can't let you do that," Buffy warned. She reached out and removed the glass from Dawn's hand. "This is Sprite. Take my Pepsi; it'll stain more."

"I think I'm becoming more evil in my old age," Buffy said when Dawn had walked away.

"Join the club," Anya said. "And speaking of badness, there's something I need to talk to you about."

"The Pine-Sick demon?" Buffy asked. "Hallie already told me about it. I didn't see it earlier tonight, but I'll do another patrol tomorrow."

"It's called a Pineseehc," Anya corrected. "And no, that's not what I meant. I need to..." She frowned and squirmed in her chair. "I've never done this before. It's all gross-feeling."

"Never did what?"

"Apologize." Anya leaned across the table so that she could look into Buffy's eyes. "I'm really sorry. About, you know...the Spike thing."

"Anya," Buffy said, shaking her head. "We're so totally past that."

"I know, I just had to say it." She leaned backwards and resumed her usual comfortable pose. "And I hope you appreciate it. I don't feel sorry about a lot of things. Over a thousand years of cursing people, and I don't feel bad about any of it." Her eyes flickered downward. "But I feel bad about hurting you."

"You didn't know."

"But if I had -"

"I know."

Anya looked up with a hopefully smile. "So we're good?"

Buffy nodded.

"Good." Anya gestured to the dance floor. "Wanna go dance together and make all the guys drool?"

"Hell yeah."

*

The Summers house was dark and silent. All of the lights were off, and the only sound was the steady hum of the refrigerator. Then a key jangled in the lock, and the structure was suffused with giggles.

"And Anya just looks at the guy and says, 'Maybe if you were a little less ugly, we'd be a little more interested in whatever it is you're talking about.'" Buffy tossed her keys on a table and laughed again.

"She is so much fun," Dawn said. She hung her jacket by the door and yawned. "Mind if we skip the Peanut tonight?"

"And I miss my daily ass-kicking?" Buffy gasped with mock horror. "Okay, but you better play tomorrow after patrol. Or else I might actually begin to develop some self-esteem."

"Well, we can't let that happen. Night, Buffy."

"Goodnight."

Buffy moved into the darkened kitchen and took a few fat-free pretzels out of the cabinet. It was three a.m., too late to go out for a quick slay, but much too early to go to bed. She opened the back door and stared out into the darkness. There was the faint scent of something familiar out there, but she couldn't quite pinpoint it. Stuffing the last pretzel in her mouth, she walked outside and stood on the back porch.

The house closest to Buffy's was occupied by an old woman who turned her nose up at Buffy whenever she saw her on the street. Buffy could only imagine what interesting sounds the woman had been treated to during their years in Sunnydale, and didn't blame her for her coldness. But someone must have been visiting her today, maybe for a summer barbeque, because Buffy could smell some sort of fruit coming from beyond the fence. Oranges, or maybe cantaloupes.

She sat down on the steps and thought about the evening. It had been fun, as most of their nights out were. Occasionally they were interrupted by a vampire attack, but most of the time she, Dawn, Anya, and any one of Dawn's friends who tagged along had a good time. And she and Anya had developed a friendship, despite any issues that may have hung between them. After their brief conversation tonight, those issues were ready to be forgotten. Except that Buffy had forgotten about them already.

"Way to bring up bad memories, An," Buffy muttered.

Because after those bad memories, there was the bathroom floor. And after the bathroom floor, there was the evil best friend, and the him being gone, and the end of the world, and all she wanted now was to have it all be over with, finally, and be able to stop thinking about it.

In a way, she knew that it would be easier if he never came back. But in a way, she still wanted him back.

Buffy sighed and, for the thousandth time, wished for a normal life. In normal life, she would meet a guy when he borrowed her pen in school, not when he approached her in an alley and said he was going to kill her. In normal life, he would ask her out to the movies, not come to her for help with killing her ex-boyfriend because he was screwing his girlfriend. In normal life, she would ask him to help her with Chemistry homework, not come to him for comfort when she rose from the dead. In normal life, she would get angry at him for talking to another girl and not call him for a week, not get angry at him for dumping a dead body for her and beat his face in.

In normal life there would be no bathroom floor memory, reminding her over and over again that the only man who loved her was inherently evil.

Inherently evil. She ran the phrase through her mind as the warm wind brought the scent of cantaloupes closer. Inherently evil and in love with her. At first she hadn't believed it was real, and perhaps it hadn't been, not back then. But when she first came back, she was convinced that yes, he really loved her.

What had never occurred to her before now was how to rectify that. Inherently evil, and in love with her for real.

Back when they had been sleeping together (and now, still now, in that damn dream), the idea haunted her. The idea that she was so messed-up that a dead person loved her. It was an insult.

An evil thing loved her. She was so worthless that only an evil thing could love her.

An evil thing loved her. She was so extraordinary that an evil thing could love her. He was so extraordinary that, even as an evil thing, he could love her.

Sometimes, Buffy thought, when you fall in love, it's like getting hit. Sometimes falling in love is more cerebral. But sometimes, the *right* times, love is just seeing someone. It's not a sudden realization, but a gradual feeling, entering without acknowledgement or words, so that when you look at them, when you finally *see* them, it's almost a surprise that you love them.

But not really.

"I see you," she said.

"Wasn't hiding."

He looked the same, but then vampires didn't age, so she shouldn't be surprised. He leaned against the porch railing the same way he'd always stood, with the cool-guy pretense just barely hiding the apprehension behind his eyes. He wore the same clothes that had always been, in all honestly, much too tight for a heterosexual man to wear, but which she hadn't minded because he could make them look so damn good. But for the first time she was looking at those snug pants with something other than lust. She was seeing....she was *seeing*.

Her long stare made him frown questioningly. "Something bad happen?"

She was jolted into reality by his question. Where were we again? She thought. Oh, right. Spike back, uncomfortable situation, can't think of stuff to say. 'Every night I kill you?' Probably not the right time to get into that.

"Apocalypse, death, misery, the usual. But lately, not so much, so..." She shrugged.

"I heard," he said. "Well, some of it, at least. And I'm sorry...about Tara." The threat of a sincere moment brought his hand to his pocket instinctively, and in a moment a lit cigarette was between his lips. "I gotta admit, she was the only one of the lot of you who didn't, on occasion, act like a complete idiot."

Buffy smiled. "Have to agree with you on that one." She moved her head to look at him. "So let me guess. Vampaholics Anonymous convention in Las Vegas, last-minute speaking invitation, no time for goodbyes?"

Spike shrugged. "Figured you've had your full share of big dramatic moments."

She lifted an eyebrow at him skeptically. "We aren't having one now?"

"Hell, no," he said, just barely managing to suppress a smile. "I just came here for my jacket."

"Why don't you get it tomorrow night?" she asked. "Stop by around eight and then come patrol with us?"

"Your friends won't mind?"

"Since they're in England, probably not," Buffy said. "Giles took Willow to be 'rehabilitated' by some coven, and Xander went with. So it's just me and Dawn."

"Dawn's patrolling now?" Spike asked, genuinely surprised by this.

Buffy nodded. "She's pretty good too. And I know she'd like to see you." He hesitated. "Come on," she prodded. "Fighting, bloodshed, scary new demon with unpronounceable name."

"How can I resist?" His chin went down and his eyebrows went up.

Yep, Buffy thought, hasn't changed a bit.

But she had changed. She had seen him, with that same quiet revelation that had helped her become best friends with her sister.

But for them, it was way too late for friendship. So what was this?

"I'll see you tomorrow then," he said, and then he was gone, leaving behind only the scent of his smoldering cigarette to obscure the smell of cantaloupes, as it rapidly dissolved.

"See you," she said softly.

(tbc)