Lounging in the decrepit old lawn chair, her legs casually hooked over its
arm, Buffy decided this was the most perfect in a series of perfect
afternoons. The air was warm, but not hot, Dawn aced her first math test of
the year, and no icky portents had reared their ugly heads. Life was good.
Even Xander sprawled in dirty work clothes under the oak tree assumed an
idyllic air, quilted as he as in equal amounts of sun and shade from the
light sifting through the tree's foliage. He reminded her of a painting, or
a style of painting. Momentarily, Buffy wished she had paid more attention
in art class. Filigree? No, that was something else. Fauvism?
"I'm bored," Xander complained from the grass. "I want some action."
"You said the bugs gave you the willies," she reminded him, wondering that he didn't want to sit back and soak up the calm while it lasted.
"I'm thinking the Massacre will be non bug related. Blood and mayhem I can handle. Tell me, when does the Evil That Stalks the Night think this thing will happen?" Thus breaking his resolution to not bring the vampire up again. Ever. Only we masochists can take root and grow into happy flowering shrubs here on the Hellmouth, Xander decided.
"Spike doesn't know. Suturanin demons don't follow the same rules of temporal time as we do, so he's having trouble with the calculations."
"Or so he says." Xander squinted up at her. It didn't take a prophecy for Buffy to see where this was going.
"So says Willow," she countered. I see your vampire and raise you a best friend, she thought. Buffy was betting he wasn't going to argue against the sacredness of Willow.
"Willow," Xander began in an argue-y tone. Oops, wrong call. Apparently he was going to argue against Will.
"Hey! Willow!" Xander exclaimed jovially, suddenly noticing their friend walking towards them from the house. "Pull up some grass. We're talking about the portent that isn't."
"Hi," Willow said, smiling at Xander on the lawn, Buffy in her chair, and Tara sitting cross-legged under the oak tree, hands folded in her lap. I'm going insane, Willow thought. Then Willow's Insane Vision of Tara gave a shy smile and Willow decided maybe madness wasn't so bad.
While Willow stared dreamily at the oak tree, Xander and Buffy exchanged the latest and greatest in a long line of concerned looks. If there was ever a concerned look Olympics Buffy was positive she and Xander were good for gold.
Once Buffy had almost called Spike to see how he dealt with Willow in London, but as she dialed she realized her comfort level with the morally ambiguous undead, while too high for Xander to handle, was just not that high. Sometimes she thought talking to Spike might be easier than talking to Willow. Her best friend's face used to be open and readable, but that was years ago. Even Willow's gothic make-up and moody ensembles upset the Slayer; Buffy missed the patterned, tacky clothes of Willow's past.
Oblivious to her worried friends Willow was still gazing at Tara, noticing all the little details she had forgotten over the past few months: the way Tara's eyebrows feathered at the edges, how she smiled a little even when she was worried. I wish you were real, she thought at Figment of Willow's Imagination Tara. I wish you could forgive me.
Tara clasped her hands together nervously, as though not sure what to do. "I do forgive you," she said at last in her low, careful voice.
Willow's heart leapt painfully. This was all in her head and putting words she wanted to hear into Tara's mouth was deranged. Tara, living, breathing, not dead Tara would never have forgiven her. But the Tara under the tree was nodding, as though encouraging her to believe.
"Willow?" Xander asked his friend, who was still staring distantly in the direction of the oak.
He wanted to ask what was so cool with the tree, but he couldn't do that because it would be - gasp - personal. Perish that thought. Out on the bluff, with little mystical green flakes of anger exploding around him, it had been easy to babble his heart out to Willow. Now, in the naked light of normal life he couldn't find the perfect words to unlock all her new mysteries. Say something banal, he ordered himself.
"Do you want to weigh in on the whole end of the world question?" he asked, because what could be more banal than the apocalypse that cometh?
"Portent! Right," Willow jerked herself back into the land of the living. "I, uh, was thinking I should be able to write a program to translate the Ratsgninrom manuscripts. It'll be kind of hard but, you know, doable."
"That's our little computer wiz," Xander said, happy that Willow seemed to have un-tranced. "See? Who needs Spike?"
"Pick a new tune Xander," Buffy groaned. Not that Spike's return to Sunnydale was infusing her life with joy, but she was pretty sure that, on some level, Willow needed Spike. Someday she might even get up the nerve to ask her friend why.
"But this song's so pretty," Xander countered. "It's my favorite. Besides someone has to keep shoving quarters into the jukebox of sanity."
Leaning her head against the back of her chair, Buffy laughed loudly in the quiet summer afternoon. There was no way that even the quipy mind of a Slayer could respond seriously to that little run-on analogy.
"Oh, Spike's all right. You just have to get used to him," Willow said, beaming widely at the tree where Tara, looking warm and alive, was blowing her a kiss.
Xander had a brief mental debate. Defending Spike was bad, but responding when other people spoke was good. She even looked happy beneath all that industrial grade mascara. From the ground he grinned wildly at Buffy. Look at me, he wanted to say. I made Willow smile!
______________________________________________________________________
They moved into town quietly. It was not hard to go unnoticed in Sunnydale. When people saw something strange they simply turned their faces away and forgot about it. The interlopers questioned among themselves whether it was the nature of humanity to ignore that which it could not accept? Or was it simply the Hellmouth emitting some sort of energy or pheromone to induce the residence into a state of amnesic pliability?
Not that they cared. As long as things were working in their favor there was no need to question it. And when things stopped working for them? Well, then it was time to leave.
"No, no," she said, leading them down through the tunnels. It frightened them when she spoke like this, as though she heard every word that had ever passed their lips. "We've come home," she smiled. "We're never leaving again.
It was dark in the passageway, but their sharp eyes could still make out the white of her hands moth-like and inquisitive in the air as she lead them farther down. At each intersection she paused and sniffed before slowly turning and choosing her path. Nobody questioned her. Some had, once, but the dead were best forgotten. Life was, after all for the living, or for those who moved with a simulacrum of life.
Finally she led them to a large chamber with a throne and a pool of water. There were torches and bones but nothing smelled fresh.
"It was a sanctuary," someone observed.
"It was a church," she corrected. "Then it was a prison. Now it is happy because we are making it a home."
"How did you know it was here, Mistress?"
She covered her eyes with her long fingers. "I saw it in a dream," she whispered.
______________________________________________________________________
"I'm trying to save the world. I don't have time to analyze the allegorical elements of the Lady of Shallot. I hate poetry," Buffy griped to Willow.
It was two months since Willow pulled her dazed and confused routine on the lawn. At this point the Slayer decided the only normal thing about Willow was that they had gotten used to her weirdness. Not that normalcy had ever been the big with them. Stalking though cemeteries looking for vampires and talking about school? Not high on the list of norm.
After she did her usual sweeps, they were supposed to meet up with Dawn and Spike at his cemetery. Letting Dawn patrol with Spike. When had she had time for the lobotomy? Dawn did deserve some sort of reward for training so hard, Buffy would cop to that, but did it have to be quality time with a murderer? Was this really the latest and greatest idea of positive reinforcement?
"Victorian Poetry is not the class for you. Why did you sign up for it?" Willow asked. Dressed for slaying in jeans and a maroon jacket she looked more like "normal" Willow, the Willow that Buffy remembered.
Buffy tried to haul her mind back to the topic at hand. She was thinking about Spike and they were talking about school.
"I needed a lit credit and thought, well, poems are like little books. Tiny books. Books so small I can read them before I have to go out for slaying. Plus - rhyming. I mean it's got to be easy. Who can take anything seriously when it rhymes?"
Willow tried not to roll her eyes. Buffy was incredibly smart, why did she insist on playing dumb so often?
"I take it the Victorians were serious rhymers?" Willow said, playing along.
"Mucho serious. I'd like to kick one of those stupid Victorians in the head," Buffy complained. Then she realized that wasn't an unobtainable goal. With hard work and perseverance she might be able to convince herself that Spike was the evil responsible for 19th century literature. Or not.
"We have a Victorian," Willow ventured, following her friend's line of thought.
"Yeah, well. I haven't kicked him so far. It's a little late to start."
Technically, Buffy supposed, she had plenty of opportunities to kick Spike's ass when they trained, but she got her share of bruises too so it hardly counted.
"I'll kill him for you," Willow offered, hoping her friend wouldn't take her up on it. "I am prepared to go back to hating him if you want me to. I bet he wouldn't expect it if I threw a balloon of holy water at him-or-or shoved him into sunlight. Which probably would have been more flamie before he had the soul."
"Yeah. That thing. I thought I had a handle on the whole vampire with soul issue - it's not like I don't have experience on the subject. I am the experience girl. Unfortunately prior knowledge isn't helping so much. With Angel I looked into his eyes and I knew, I just knew he wasn't Angelus anymore."
"Not so much with Spike?"
Buffy shook her head. "I keep making lists. I mean he's translating that annoying prophecy, so plus, right? He took care of you in London. Bueno again. Still, what if it's all an act? Looking after you, the Watcher goodness, is just some standard Spike trick?"
"The classic Spike flavor was not known for its patience," Willow observed, toying with the stake she was carrying. She was going to feel really stupid if Spike morphed into the Big Bad again.
"Maybe that's what the demon gave him in Africa. Not a soul, just patience. Patience and light. Isn't that a Christmas song?"
"You're asking the Jewish girl, why?"
Buffy shrugged and laughed, glancing around for any re-souled vampires who might be lurking. She was going to be uncharacteristically honest and did not need him over hearing.
"I think the problem is I don't really want to kill Spike version 2.0. He's not un-helpful, he's good with Dawn, he doesn't creep around outside my window and tell me how cool the universe is with me in it." Buffy paused and decided to go on with the one hundred proof honesty. "In some ways I miss the creep factor. I was more comfortable with the creep factor. I knew how to handle it."
______________________________________________________________________
"Vampires 101, Niblet, the wood has to go through the heart," Spike said, leaning nonchalantly against a headstone.
Dawn re-loaded the crossbow and fired, hitting the attacking vampire in the stomach. Dawn's other attempts were sticking out of his arm, shoulder, and thigh like giant porcupine quills.
"Shit," Dawn swore, and reached for another bolt. Good thing Buffy wasn't around to criticize her use of language.
Finally thinking better of the fight, the attacking vampire began to hobble away, pulling Dawn's off target arrows painfully out of his body as he retreated. Obstinately refusing to give up she fired again, striking him in the back of the head with a sickening thump. As the vamp fell forward twitching on the ground, Dawn cringed and grabbed Spike's hand for comfort.
"That's just sadistic," Spike grinned. He tried detangling his fingers, but the Bit's grip was tight.
The kid was bloody awful. Somewhere between the Magic Box and the cemetery she had lost everything he and Buffy had taught her. On the ground in front of them the injured vampire flopped like a carp, bleeding and moaning loud enough to wake the dead. He really should put it out of its misery. At some point.
This was the seventh vamp whose death she had bollixed up, too many for the average night of hunting on the Hellmouth.
"Make it go away," Dawn complained into his shoulder.
Slaying sucked, Dawn decided. Worse, she sucked at slaying. In the training room she could shoot with consistent accuracy, but out here her hands shook and her arms jerked and Spike got lots of chances to laugh at her demon shish kebabs before killing them himself.
Maybe it was Spike's fault because, honestly, he was making her a little nervous. Nervous in the good light headed stomach sinking way, and nervous in the bad I hope he doesn't go all psycho and kill me way.
"How's she doing?" Buffy called, moving towards them through the forest of grave markers.
Then the Slayer saw her sister clutching at Spike's hand near a prostrate vampire. No! No touching the undead, Buffy ordered silently. At least Spike had the good taste to look properly horrified.
"Let's just say slaying doesn't run in the family," Spike said, finally extracting his fingers from Dawn's crushing grip. "She hasn't managed a clean kill all night."
Being too close to the girl, feeling her pulse against the palm of his hand, made Spike sickeningly nostalgic. Dawn was exactly the sort he used to like to play with, young and trusting and so very warm. The trouble with not feeding on live prey, aside from missing the hunt, was the cold. He was never going to have the fervid afterglow of a fresh kill, hot new blood temporarily heating his long dead body.
Buffy brandished her stake and stalked over to finish off the tortured vampire. Keep your hands off my sister or I'll stake you too, she thought at Spike.
"I know," he said aloud, interpreting her look.
"Don't worry, Dawnie. Slaying's a bitch for the non-mystically enhanced," Willow complained, daubing her temple with the sleeve of her jacket.
The wound was closing, but Spike could still smell the blood. Obviously she had not managed to duck fast enough from something. He fought a strong urge to lean over and lick the blood from her skin. Where was the soul during moments like this? Was it in hibernation?
"It'll get easier," Spike told Willow in his low, comforting voice. That was the voice Buffy thought the immoral fiend reserved only for her. Another illusion shattered. Add it to the list, Slayer.
Willow rolled her eyes, unimpressed by his platitude. Yeah, okay, Spike had to admit that was hardly the most profound advice he had ever come up with. Keeping Dawn from whining her way through the evening had been hard enough. Spike doubted he had enough patience to deal with Willow's masochistic dance too.
"Buffy staked five vamps tonight. Six months ago I could have killed them all with a thought. Now all I'm any good for is running away."
Dawn was shocked at the bitterness in Willow's voice. Did she really want to be all cruel and powerful again? Of course there had been fun bits too, with the magic. When Buffy was dead Willow used to magically finish all Dawn's homework so they could go party at the Bronze on school nights. Life sans Buffy had been more fun, actually, aside from the sadness and the missing her. That part had sucked.
Buffy kicked vampire dust off her new red boots, forever more to be known as her scuffed red boots, and turned back to her friends. Dawn looked trapped between Willow's wall of anger and Spike's Spike-ness. Walking back Buffy took her sister's hand with preternatural strength and drew her away.
While Willow was morosely staring out into the cemetery Buffy shot Spike a look meaning 'Is she okay?' Over their friend's head Spike shook his head 'No.' The Slayer resented the ease of these silent communications between them. On the other hand, Spike did win points for looking concerned. Well, the soul won points. Buffy wasn't ready to let Spike win anything.
The scourge of Europe fell in step beside Willow, and they strolled along behind the Slayer and her sister. Dawn, mortified by her failure, strode ahead of the group, leaving Buffy to linger in the middle, attempting to overhear Spike and Willow's conversation without looking like she was eavesdropping.
"What's the hardest part?" Spike sounded genuinely curious. "Is it that you miss the power? You want Tara back? Guilt? Help me out with this one, Red."
Bastard, Buffy thought. Part of her missed him when he was like this, the kind voice, the gentle tilt of his head. Don't think about this, she ordered herself. Do not ponder why you were attracted to an amoral monster. Listen to what Willow's saying. Stop wondering why she isn't saying it to you.
Willow shrugged and peered out into the dark graveyard looking for Tara. She had seen the specter a couple of times in the distance, but could not get close enough to talk to it again. Even her imagination was against her.
"Not really in the mood for a heart to heart, thanks anyway," she told Spike.
Immediately the vampire's tepid warmth iced over, his expression becoming distant and hostile. Behind his smooth façade, Spike longed to rip the witch's head off and have a well deserved drink. What happened to all her boo-hoo, you're the only one I can talk to crap? Well here he was, nauseated by his own concern for the selfish little bint and all ready to listen. Too late for her to tell him to sod off now.
"Maybe the hardest thing is being so useless, without the magic I mean," Spike hypothesized with mocking cruelty. "For one thing you're such a bloody idiot. Before you were all cozy with the dark magic everybody thought you were dead weight. I've got sharp ears. Heard the Scoobies bitching about it all the time."
"Cute with the reverse psychology, very subtle," Willow congratulated in a small voice.
"If you answer the question I'll shut up and put us both out of our misery," Spike offered coldly. Willow still didn't look at him, but she slid her arm through his, her fuzzy jacket tickling the inside of his bare elbow. Why was everybody touching him tonight? Keep your sodding hands off the Big Bad, he thought. Still, he didn't pull away.
"I think the hardest thing is just to live," Willow said suddenly. "You go through the day thinking of school and trying not to remember the badness and the smell and your mind gets stuck in those little places where you wonder how they get neon in the tubes or what the hell is up with the electoral college - I mean was that really the best voting system they could come up with - because those are safe little thoughts compared with other not so safe thoughts I could be having."
Next to her Spike suddenly vamped out.
"Do you still want me to kill you?"
Buffy would know by the sound of his voice thick through his fangs. Her back was tense and listening. The witch may have been too distracted to notice, but Spike saw everything about the Slayer. He wanted her to know what was happening with Willow, hoped Buffy would do something so he would not have to.
Willow turned and looked up into his demonic, yellow eyes. Was he making her an offer? Was it still tempting? She remembered meeting herself as a vampire. It was a toss up whether she was ready to be all skanky and leather just to stop missing Tara. "I forgive you," her vision of Tara had said. She would not forgive Willow for becoming a demon.
"No," she decided, sounding unhappy but certain.
"Well then, that's an improvement," Spike said, squeezing her arm against his side. His face rippled back into a mask of humanity smiling brilliantly down at her. For a moment Willow felt she had made the right choice.
"I'm bored," Xander complained from the grass. "I want some action."
"You said the bugs gave you the willies," she reminded him, wondering that he didn't want to sit back and soak up the calm while it lasted.
"I'm thinking the Massacre will be non bug related. Blood and mayhem I can handle. Tell me, when does the Evil That Stalks the Night think this thing will happen?" Thus breaking his resolution to not bring the vampire up again. Ever. Only we masochists can take root and grow into happy flowering shrubs here on the Hellmouth, Xander decided.
"Spike doesn't know. Suturanin demons don't follow the same rules of temporal time as we do, so he's having trouble with the calculations."
"Or so he says." Xander squinted up at her. It didn't take a prophecy for Buffy to see where this was going.
"So says Willow," she countered. I see your vampire and raise you a best friend, she thought. Buffy was betting he wasn't going to argue against the sacredness of Willow.
"Willow," Xander began in an argue-y tone. Oops, wrong call. Apparently he was going to argue against Will.
"Hey! Willow!" Xander exclaimed jovially, suddenly noticing their friend walking towards them from the house. "Pull up some grass. We're talking about the portent that isn't."
"Hi," Willow said, smiling at Xander on the lawn, Buffy in her chair, and Tara sitting cross-legged under the oak tree, hands folded in her lap. I'm going insane, Willow thought. Then Willow's Insane Vision of Tara gave a shy smile and Willow decided maybe madness wasn't so bad.
While Willow stared dreamily at the oak tree, Xander and Buffy exchanged the latest and greatest in a long line of concerned looks. If there was ever a concerned look Olympics Buffy was positive she and Xander were good for gold.
Once Buffy had almost called Spike to see how he dealt with Willow in London, but as she dialed she realized her comfort level with the morally ambiguous undead, while too high for Xander to handle, was just not that high. Sometimes she thought talking to Spike might be easier than talking to Willow. Her best friend's face used to be open and readable, but that was years ago. Even Willow's gothic make-up and moody ensembles upset the Slayer; Buffy missed the patterned, tacky clothes of Willow's past.
Oblivious to her worried friends Willow was still gazing at Tara, noticing all the little details she had forgotten over the past few months: the way Tara's eyebrows feathered at the edges, how she smiled a little even when she was worried. I wish you were real, she thought at Figment of Willow's Imagination Tara. I wish you could forgive me.
Tara clasped her hands together nervously, as though not sure what to do. "I do forgive you," she said at last in her low, careful voice.
Willow's heart leapt painfully. This was all in her head and putting words she wanted to hear into Tara's mouth was deranged. Tara, living, breathing, not dead Tara would never have forgiven her. But the Tara under the tree was nodding, as though encouraging her to believe.
"Willow?" Xander asked his friend, who was still staring distantly in the direction of the oak.
He wanted to ask what was so cool with the tree, but he couldn't do that because it would be - gasp - personal. Perish that thought. Out on the bluff, with little mystical green flakes of anger exploding around him, it had been easy to babble his heart out to Willow. Now, in the naked light of normal life he couldn't find the perfect words to unlock all her new mysteries. Say something banal, he ordered himself.
"Do you want to weigh in on the whole end of the world question?" he asked, because what could be more banal than the apocalypse that cometh?
"Portent! Right," Willow jerked herself back into the land of the living. "I, uh, was thinking I should be able to write a program to translate the Ratsgninrom manuscripts. It'll be kind of hard but, you know, doable."
"That's our little computer wiz," Xander said, happy that Willow seemed to have un-tranced. "See? Who needs Spike?"
"Pick a new tune Xander," Buffy groaned. Not that Spike's return to Sunnydale was infusing her life with joy, but she was pretty sure that, on some level, Willow needed Spike. Someday she might even get up the nerve to ask her friend why.
"But this song's so pretty," Xander countered. "It's my favorite. Besides someone has to keep shoving quarters into the jukebox of sanity."
Leaning her head against the back of her chair, Buffy laughed loudly in the quiet summer afternoon. There was no way that even the quipy mind of a Slayer could respond seriously to that little run-on analogy.
"Oh, Spike's all right. You just have to get used to him," Willow said, beaming widely at the tree where Tara, looking warm and alive, was blowing her a kiss.
Xander had a brief mental debate. Defending Spike was bad, but responding when other people spoke was good. She even looked happy beneath all that industrial grade mascara. From the ground he grinned wildly at Buffy. Look at me, he wanted to say. I made Willow smile!
______________________________________________________________________
They moved into town quietly. It was not hard to go unnoticed in Sunnydale. When people saw something strange they simply turned their faces away and forgot about it. The interlopers questioned among themselves whether it was the nature of humanity to ignore that which it could not accept? Or was it simply the Hellmouth emitting some sort of energy or pheromone to induce the residence into a state of amnesic pliability?
Not that they cared. As long as things were working in their favor there was no need to question it. And when things stopped working for them? Well, then it was time to leave.
"No, no," she said, leading them down through the tunnels. It frightened them when she spoke like this, as though she heard every word that had ever passed their lips. "We've come home," she smiled. "We're never leaving again.
It was dark in the passageway, but their sharp eyes could still make out the white of her hands moth-like and inquisitive in the air as she lead them farther down. At each intersection she paused and sniffed before slowly turning and choosing her path. Nobody questioned her. Some had, once, but the dead were best forgotten. Life was, after all for the living, or for those who moved with a simulacrum of life.
Finally she led them to a large chamber with a throne and a pool of water. There were torches and bones but nothing smelled fresh.
"It was a sanctuary," someone observed.
"It was a church," she corrected. "Then it was a prison. Now it is happy because we are making it a home."
"How did you know it was here, Mistress?"
She covered her eyes with her long fingers. "I saw it in a dream," she whispered.
______________________________________________________________________
"I'm trying to save the world. I don't have time to analyze the allegorical elements of the Lady of Shallot. I hate poetry," Buffy griped to Willow.
It was two months since Willow pulled her dazed and confused routine on the lawn. At this point the Slayer decided the only normal thing about Willow was that they had gotten used to her weirdness. Not that normalcy had ever been the big with them. Stalking though cemeteries looking for vampires and talking about school? Not high on the list of norm.
After she did her usual sweeps, they were supposed to meet up with Dawn and Spike at his cemetery. Letting Dawn patrol with Spike. When had she had time for the lobotomy? Dawn did deserve some sort of reward for training so hard, Buffy would cop to that, but did it have to be quality time with a murderer? Was this really the latest and greatest idea of positive reinforcement?
"Victorian Poetry is not the class for you. Why did you sign up for it?" Willow asked. Dressed for slaying in jeans and a maroon jacket she looked more like "normal" Willow, the Willow that Buffy remembered.
Buffy tried to haul her mind back to the topic at hand. She was thinking about Spike and they were talking about school.
"I needed a lit credit and thought, well, poems are like little books. Tiny books. Books so small I can read them before I have to go out for slaying. Plus - rhyming. I mean it's got to be easy. Who can take anything seriously when it rhymes?"
Willow tried not to roll her eyes. Buffy was incredibly smart, why did she insist on playing dumb so often?
"I take it the Victorians were serious rhymers?" Willow said, playing along.
"Mucho serious. I'd like to kick one of those stupid Victorians in the head," Buffy complained. Then she realized that wasn't an unobtainable goal. With hard work and perseverance she might be able to convince herself that Spike was the evil responsible for 19th century literature. Or not.
"We have a Victorian," Willow ventured, following her friend's line of thought.
"Yeah, well. I haven't kicked him so far. It's a little late to start."
Technically, Buffy supposed, she had plenty of opportunities to kick Spike's ass when they trained, but she got her share of bruises too so it hardly counted.
"I'll kill him for you," Willow offered, hoping her friend wouldn't take her up on it. "I am prepared to go back to hating him if you want me to. I bet he wouldn't expect it if I threw a balloon of holy water at him-or-or shoved him into sunlight. Which probably would have been more flamie before he had the soul."
"Yeah. That thing. I thought I had a handle on the whole vampire with soul issue - it's not like I don't have experience on the subject. I am the experience girl. Unfortunately prior knowledge isn't helping so much. With Angel I looked into his eyes and I knew, I just knew he wasn't Angelus anymore."
"Not so much with Spike?"
Buffy shook her head. "I keep making lists. I mean he's translating that annoying prophecy, so plus, right? He took care of you in London. Bueno again. Still, what if it's all an act? Looking after you, the Watcher goodness, is just some standard Spike trick?"
"The classic Spike flavor was not known for its patience," Willow observed, toying with the stake she was carrying. She was going to feel really stupid if Spike morphed into the Big Bad again.
"Maybe that's what the demon gave him in Africa. Not a soul, just patience. Patience and light. Isn't that a Christmas song?"
"You're asking the Jewish girl, why?"
Buffy shrugged and laughed, glancing around for any re-souled vampires who might be lurking. She was going to be uncharacteristically honest and did not need him over hearing.
"I think the problem is I don't really want to kill Spike version 2.0. He's not un-helpful, he's good with Dawn, he doesn't creep around outside my window and tell me how cool the universe is with me in it." Buffy paused and decided to go on with the one hundred proof honesty. "In some ways I miss the creep factor. I was more comfortable with the creep factor. I knew how to handle it."
______________________________________________________________________
"Vampires 101, Niblet, the wood has to go through the heart," Spike said, leaning nonchalantly against a headstone.
Dawn re-loaded the crossbow and fired, hitting the attacking vampire in the stomach. Dawn's other attempts were sticking out of his arm, shoulder, and thigh like giant porcupine quills.
"Shit," Dawn swore, and reached for another bolt. Good thing Buffy wasn't around to criticize her use of language.
Finally thinking better of the fight, the attacking vampire began to hobble away, pulling Dawn's off target arrows painfully out of his body as he retreated. Obstinately refusing to give up she fired again, striking him in the back of the head with a sickening thump. As the vamp fell forward twitching on the ground, Dawn cringed and grabbed Spike's hand for comfort.
"That's just sadistic," Spike grinned. He tried detangling his fingers, but the Bit's grip was tight.
The kid was bloody awful. Somewhere between the Magic Box and the cemetery she had lost everything he and Buffy had taught her. On the ground in front of them the injured vampire flopped like a carp, bleeding and moaning loud enough to wake the dead. He really should put it out of its misery. At some point.
This was the seventh vamp whose death she had bollixed up, too many for the average night of hunting on the Hellmouth.
"Make it go away," Dawn complained into his shoulder.
Slaying sucked, Dawn decided. Worse, she sucked at slaying. In the training room she could shoot with consistent accuracy, but out here her hands shook and her arms jerked and Spike got lots of chances to laugh at her demon shish kebabs before killing them himself.
Maybe it was Spike's fault because, honestly, he was making her a little nervous. Nervous in the good light headed stomach sinking way, and nervous in the bad I hope he doesn't go all psycho and kill me way.
"How's she doing?" Buffy called, moving towards them through the forest of grave markers.
Then the Slayer saw her sister clutching at Spike's hand near a prostrate vampire. No! No touching the undead, Buffy ordered silently. At least Spike had the good taste to look properly horrified.
"Let's just say slaying doesn't run in the family," Spike said, finally extracting his fingers from Dawn's crushing grip. "She hasn't managed a clean kill all night."
Being too close to the girl, feeling her pulse against the palm of his hand, made Spike sickeningly nostalgic. Dawn was exactly the sort he used to like to play with, young and trusting and so very warm. The trouble with not feeding on live prey, aside from missing the hunt, was the cold. He was never going to have the fervid afterglow of a fresh kill, hot new blood temporarily heating his long dead body.
Buffy brandished her stake and stalked over to finish off the tortured vampire. Keep your hands off my sister or I'll stake you too, she thought at Spike.
"I know," he said aloud, interpreting her look.
"Don't worry, Dawnie. Slaying's a bitch for the non-mystically enhanced," Willow complained, daubing her temple with the sleeve of her jacket.
The wound was closing, but Spike could still smell the blood. Obviously she had not managed to duck fast enough from something. He fought a strong urge to lean over and lick the blood from her skin. Where was the soul during moments like this? Was it in hibernation?
"It'll get easier," Spike told Willow in his low, comforting voice. That was the voice Buffy thought the immoral fiend reserved only for her. Another illusion shattered. Add it to the list, Slayer.
Willow rolled her eyes, unimpressed by his platitude. Yeah, okay, Spike had to admit that was hardly the most profound advice he had ever come up with. Keeping Dawn from whining her way through the evening had been hard enough. Spike doubted he had enough patience to deal with Willow's masochistic dance too.
"Buffy staked five vamps tonight. Six months ago I could have killed them all with a thought. Now all I'm any good for is running away."
Dawn was shocked at the bitterness in Willow's voice. Did she really want to be all cruel and powerful again? Of course there had been fun bits too, with the magic. When Buffy was dead Willow used to magically finish all Dawn's homework so they could go party at the Bronze on school nights. Life sans Buffy had been more fun, actually, aside from the sadness and the missing her. That part had sucked.
Buffy kicked vampire dust off her new red boots, forever more to be known as her scuffed red boots, and turned back to her friends. Dawn looked trapped between Willow's wall of anger and Spike's Spike-ness. Walking back Buffy took her sister's hand with preternatural strength and drew her away.
While Willow was morosely staring out into the cemetery Buffy shot Spike a look meaning 'Is she okay?' Over their friend's head Spike shook his head 'No.' The Slayer resented the ease of these silent communications between them. On the other hand, Spike did win points for looking concerned. Well, the soul won points. Buffy wasn't ready to let Spike win anything.
The scourge of Europe fell in step beside Willow, and they strolled along behind the Slayer and her sister. Dawn, mortified by her failure, strode ahead of the group, leaving Buffy to linger in the middle, attempting to overhear Spike and Willow's conversation without looking like she was eavesdropping.
"What's the hardest part?" Spike sounded genuinely curious. "Is it that you miss the power? You want Tara back? Guilt? Help me out with this one, Red."
Bastard, Buffy thought. Part of her missed him when he was like this, the kind voice, the gentle tilt of his head. Don't think about this, she ordered herself. Do not ponder why you were attracted to an amoral monster. Listen to what Willow's saying. Stop wondering why she isn't saying it to you.
Willow shrugged and peered out into the dark graveyard looking for Tara. She had seen the specter a couple of times in the distance, but could not get close enough to talk to it again. Even her imagination was against her.
"Not really in the mood for a heart to heart, thanks anyway," she told Spike.
Immediately the vampire's tepid warmth iced over, his expression becoming distant and hostile. Behind his smooth façade, Spike longed to rip the witch's head off and have a well deserved drink. What happened to all her boo-hoo, you're the only one I can talk to crap? Well here he was, nauseated by his own concern for the selfish little bint and all ready to listen. Too late for her to tell him to sod off now.
"Maybe the hardest thing is being so useless, without the magic I mean," Spike hypothesized with mocking cruelty. "For one thing you're such a bloody idiot. Before you were all cozy with the dark magic everybody thought you were dead weight. I've got sharp ears. Heard the Scoobies bitching about it all the time."
"Cute with the reverse psychology, very subtle," Willow congratulated in a small voice.
"If you answer the question I'll shut up and put us both out of our misery," Spike offered coldly. Willow still didn't look at him, but she slid her arm through his, her fuzzy jacket tickling the inside of his bare elbow. Why was everybody touching him tonight? Keep your sodding hands off the Big Bad, he thought. Still, he didn't pull away.
"I think the hardest thing is just to live," Willow said suddenly. "You go through the day thinking of school and trying not to remember the badness and the smell and your mind gets stuck in those little places where you wonder how they get neon in the tubes or what the hell is up with the electoral college - I mean was that really the best voting system they could come up with - because those are safe little thoughts compared with other not so safe thoughts I could be having."
Next to her Spike suddenly vamped out.
"Do you still want me to kill you?"
Buffy would know by the sound of his voice thick through his fangs. Her back was tense and listening. The witch may have been too distracted to notice, but Spike saw everything about the Slayer. He wanted her to know what was happening with Willow, hoped Buffy would do something so he would not have to.
Willow turned and looked up into his demonic, yellow eyes. Was he making her an offer? Was it still tempting? She remembered meeting herself as a vampire. It was a toss up whether she was ready to be all skanky and leather just to stop missing Tara. "I forgive you," her vision of Tara had said. She would not forgive Willow for becoming a demon.
"No," she decided, sounding unhappy but certain.
"Well then, that's an improvement," Spike said, squeezing her arm against his side. His face rippled back into a mask of humanity smiling brilliantly down at her. For a moment Willow felt she had made the right choice.
