Spike woke up hungry. Every last bit of him was in pain; supernatural cold
still raged in his entrails, wrapped around the broken bones, wafted in his
ruptured lungs and poured out of the deep slashes in his chest and back.
Opening his gritty eyes he found Buffy standing over his body like an
avenging angel. He hoped she was getting a good chortle out of this.
"Those are not sexy wounds," she said, sitting next to him on the bed, antiseptic and bandages in her small hands. "We cleaned up most of the blood this morning. Can I take a look at your back?"
Spike wanted to tell her not to touch him, but before he could work out the words Buffy was pushing him gently upright. The cuts along his back had bleed into the sheets, gluing him to the white cloth. He hissed as she pealed the sheet away from his skin, ripping open the lesions.
"Oh, god." Buffy sounded adorably horrified for someone who had seen bloody death for the past six years.
"D-d-Drusilla was p-pr-pretty pissed," Spike chattered out. There was more to say, but the stuttering was too frustrating. He could hardly talk. Spike tried to think of some plausible explanation why he should be so cold but could not think for the pain. With his delinquent, frozen mind he tried to remember a time when he had been in greater agony. There was not one. Then Buffy started in with the disinfectant on his back. Yeah. Okay, that hurt a little more.
"B-Buffy st-s-stop that. I-I-I-I d-don't n-n-n-ee. I'll he-heal. "
There was no reason to put up with hot, burning alcohol pouring in his wounds except to annoy him, or appease her. Spike stopped arguing. The smell of Buffy's blood, flowing millimeters below her skin made the demon want to make its presence known. Feeling his face shift, Spike strived to work the demon back down before Buffy was done torturing his back. In an odd way her ministrations made him forget about the rest of the pain racking his body.
"Okay," Buffy said easing him back down onto the bed. "I think you're going to survive. Eventually."
Spike looked awful. Buffy thought Glory had beaten the crap out of him, but bitchy hell gods of bad home perms had nothing on Drusilla. In some ways, with the blood mostly washed away, he looked worse. Now she could see in intimate detail the jagged, torn flesh peeling away from the muscles of his stomach and back, and the bone of his left knee white and exposed through the shredded cotton of his jeans. How he had gotten home was incomprehensible. Buffy was distracted from cataloguing injuries by his shifting face, flowing from human to vampire and back so quickly his eyes remained a murky green.
"H-hungry," Spike stammered. When was the last time he had eaten? Not that he could do anything about it now. He had just about enough strength left lay down and die, so it looked like Harris was finally going to get a chance to chop off his head after all.
"Dawn went to get you some blood, from your crypt." Buffy laid a comforting hand on his cheek, one of the only places Drusilla had not lacerated.
The demon won. Spike's face solidified into a series of hard, animalistic ridges. Fangs heavy in his mouth, he knew he only had to turn his head and bite. Somewhere he must have the energy for that? One little taste, then she would kill him and this unending moment would stop.
Under Buffy's hand Spike's skin was glacial. She moved suddenly, and Spike cursed having lost his chance. Somewhere beyond his line of vision Buffy was shuffling around, opening something wooden and hinged. Probably the weapons chest. Spike tried to follow her but could not get his head to move. Too tired. Too much pain. Once this chill was gone he would feel it more. Why was he so bloody cold?
Buffy came back trailing blankets and a heavy down comforter. Gently she wrapped the layers around him, tucking the blankets close to his body, doubting it would stop his paranormal chill. Spike's yellow eyes never left the ceiling, his demonic face unyielding. She could not tell if the weight of the covers was hurting him or not.
"Spike?"
He didn't shift or blink. She rubbed her palms against her jeans. I have this problem, Buffy thought, about making the right decisions. I never do. Nervously she leaned over the vampire, knowing he would be able to smell her uncertainty.
Too tired to move, Spike had no option other than to stare at the Slayer, whole and alive and demanding his attention.
"I want to thank you for saving Xander's life. I know it's about the last thing on your list of priorities. Drusilla - I know what she meant to you. How hard it must have been."
So he had done it then? He had killed Drusilla. Spike could still taste dust on his lips, but it seemed like a dream, far away and inconsequential. He wanted to cry and scream his anger, but more than that he wanted Buffy open and bleeding. Without blood he could not heal.
"No n-no no, n-n-n-no," he said, because suddenly the gods of the dark realms were answering his desires. Buffy was leaning towards him and the demon cackled while the soul cringed, too exhausted to put up a fight.
"D-d-d-don't. Don't p-please," Spike pleaded softly.
By the time Buffy kissed him Spike was crying, not out of anger, but at his own futility, immobile and helpless and being kissed by Buffy who could only mean to mock him. Funny, he conceded. Cruel enough for one of my own jokes. Should take a bite and show her what a monster I really am. Instead he choked the demon back before she cut herself on his fangs. As soon as the Slayer let him go Spike turned his head, closed his blue eyes, shutting out her face, trying to ignore her warmth on top of his frozen body. When her fingers brushed his tear streaked face he growled.
"Uh?"
Buffy turned her head at the noise. Dawn stood in the doorway clutching a mason jar of blood to her chest.
Ever since Dawn had left the crypt things seemed to be moving slowly, like those dreams where she tried to run from the faceless baddie and it was like sprinting through the ocean: exhausting and cumbersome. It took forever for Buffy to move away from Spike's blanket swathed body and stand in front of her sister. Dawn saw Spike's tear filled, azure eyes staring first into space and then focusing on her. She did not wonder what had happened before she entered the bedroom. Her mind was too full of the things she had seen at the crypt. All the important parts of her were still standing in the crypt, shaking with horror and fear.
Buffy took the blood out of her sister's trembling hands.
"Sweetie?" Buffy asked. Dawn's eyes slowly registered her sister's face. "Dawn what happened?"
Unhurriedly Dawn's gaze slid away from her sister across the floor, up the bed, and met Spike's, staring at her impotently from under his piles of blankets.
"In the hall," she whispered to Buffy. No, not the hall because vampires heard every little thing, didn't they? And this was not a little thing. "The living room," Dawn amended. That should be far enough away. Normally Dawn had every confidence that Spike didn't need her protecting, but seeing him laid out broken and dead made her want to cover his ears and shield him from what she had to say.
Anya was downstairs folding the blankets Willow had covered Xander with the night before.
"Willow's at the hospital," Anya said, placing her perfectly square folded blanket on top of the pile of them at her feet. With my car, the demon thought. The bitchy witch is driving my car, so I suppose I do care something for Xander after all. "I want to do something. Is there anything to do?"
Buffy extended the jar of blood. "Help feed Spike. His fingers are broken. I don't think he's going to be able to hold anything." And he can't sit up, and he can't really speak.
Anya took the jar, seemingly happy to be useful, and trotted up the stairs.
"Now," Buffy said, embracing her jittery sister, "tell me what happened."
______________________________________________________________________
Dawn had gone to the crypt after breakfast, walking fast in the early morning chill. The monks had given her memories of Drusilla, a thin, pale woman with beautiful black hair. She didn't understand how someone so small could hurt Spike. Well, Buffy could, but other vampires had never been that much of a threat to him, right?
The dew on cemetery grass soaked through her canvas shoes, making her feet feel annoyingly squishy. She wondered how long it would take Spike to heal from whatever it was Drusilla had done to him. Not long. Yay for the mystical powers of the undead. Un-life would be so cool, if it wasn't for that whole annoying instant evil thing. Except now he had a soul, so problem solved. Not that the soul was enough according to a certain 'oh I'm so cool and righteous because I save the world all the time' sister of hers. Sometimes Dawn thought Buffy almost forgave Spike. And why not? She forgave Angel pretty fucking fast. Other times Buffy's looks towards Spike were so cold and murderous Dawn wanted have a cheery little bonfire with all the stakes at the Magic Box. What if Buffy staked him while she was gone?
During training Dawn had once tried to talk to Spike about how unreasonable Buffy was. "Has it occurred to you that if you don't spend less time thinking about your sis and more time practicing you're going to end up dead?" he demanded in an icy tone. Hefting her crossbow back to her shoulder Dawn had decided the schizophrenic duo deserved each other.
The door to the crypt swung open silently. Dawn had tried to convince Spike to do something to give the door a creepy squeak. At the suggestion he had given her one of those looks that meant, "If you're only going to say stupid things please shut the fuck up." The first thing Dawn noticed was that the inside of the crypt smelled funny.
Dawn's memories, her very worst ones, were of walking into Willow's bedroom and finding Tara's body unnaturally silent and still. People should not lie on the floor like toys whose batteries have run out.
This was not at all like finding Tara. Someone had a grand old time destroying every piece of furniture Spike owned: the TV was smashed, the stuffing ripped out of the comfy chair, the granite tomb was broken in half. Moving though the wreckage, Dawn wondered if Spike had lost his temper again. Then she stepped on something soft and giving, a mass of wrinkled flesh.
Eyes adjusting to the dim light, Dawn realized what the strange smell was. It was Clem, all over the floor. Blood and flesh intermingled with the broken pieces of Spike's furniture, and glued wads of yellow legal paper together on the counter. Clem's head rested severed and bleeding on the open pages of Spike's big book of manuscripts, his vacant eyes staring at nothing.
Feeling not at all like a dangerous demon hunter, Dawn quickly lost her breakfast, throwing up bile and acid on the stone floor amid the rest of the mess. There was nothing to do but sprint to the refrigerator, grab a jar of blood and scurry home. She wished she had run sooner. There had been too much time spent at the door gazing uncomprehendingly at the scene and now it was burned in her mind.
______________________________________________________________________
"The doctor said no driving, concussion boy," Willow said from behind the wheel of Anya's car.
"Will, do you even know how to drive?" Xander asked, bracing himself against the dash with the hand attached to the arm that wasn't broken.
He was such a baby, Willow thought. She was barely doing seventy. What was the speed limit anyway?
"Well, I did a lot of steering in your car that one day. And there was that thing with the semi!"
Xander looked aghast. Okay, so now Mr. Funny was the only one who could makes jokes?
"I'll go real slow. I promise, snails will pass us," Willow promised, pumping the break peddle.
Xander sagged against his door, drumming his fingers impatiently on the cast. His arm hurt, the bites on his neck itched. Being the damsel was not fun.
"Where is the evil fiend now? Bleeding to death in his crypt?" Xander asked hopefully. It had been a mistake, his mistake, to invite the vamp back into the house. If Buffy was hurt because of that.. Tough slayer, strong slayer, and he loved her more than Twinkies and chocolate milk, but she was brain dead to have not staked the demon already.
Willow rolled her eyes. "Yeah, after he hauled you home we shoved him back out onto the street. Don't get all fraternal. He's at Buffy's. "
"Wait. With Buffy?"
"And Dawn, Willow affirmed. She was dutifully watching the road and missed Xander's wide-eyed look of terror.
"The chip is out. He'll kill them."
"No -" Willow wasn't sure if she was refuting Spike's chip free state for that he wouldn't hurt the Summer's sisters.
"Will, yes. He hit me when we were in the Master's cave and this time there were no pretty fireworks in his head."
"Maybe he just didn't notice it with all the other pain?" Willow glanced at Xander's face. His look of intense horror made her happy to turn back to the road. It wasn't like the chip worked on the Slayer anyway, and Dawn would be fine, she told herself. For one thing there was instant goodness (or at least instant not so evil-ness) of the soul. Right?
Xander fought back the urge to hit something, like the window, because he was already in enough pain. Sometimes Willow's hopefulness about Spike was too much for him to bear. Especially now. What happened to the nihilistic, goth Willow they had all come to fear and love? Don't change the paradigm on me now, Will, he pleaded.
"He bit me like I was a huge juice box o'blood," Xander confessed as though he had done something shameful.
"Oh," Willow whispered. Biting the Scoobies was un-good. Add to the negative column all the stories Spike had told her about how much he missed his days of destruction and it looked like badness was about to ensue. "I guess we should start passing the snails then."
______________________________________________________________________
Dawn had crawled into bed beside Spike and was wailing her sorrows into Buffy's pillow. Spike wished she would mourn somewhere else, like Chechnya. Heartless winters, pervasive war, decimated cities: the renegade province would be the perfect backdrop for Dawn's agonies. At least in London Willow had been kind enough to sniffle quietly to herself. Clem was dead, and the vampire felt bad about it, but right now he felt worse for himself.
Sitting on the edge of her bed Buffy stared hard at the pair and wanted to cry for completely different reasons than her sister. It was all she could do to keep from wrapping her fingers in Dawn's long hair and dragging her away from Spike's corpse. Now was not the best time to harp on the evils of extra-species relationships when her demonic best friend for the summer had just been ripped into bite sized morsels.
Not that I'm the greatest role model, Buffy admitted. She laid her palm across the vampire's pale forehead as though testing for a fever. Under her hand Spike's flesh was still unnaturally cold. Unnaturally colder, because intimacy with Spike had always been like cuddling with a Popsicle.
Spike closed his eyes, blocking out the sight of the evil sisters. His teeth were still chattering despite the heat of Buffy's hand tracing a line from his forehead, down his cheek. Yes, yes, you're very warm and tasty. Now fuck off, Spike thought.
In the swath of sunlight spilling across the bed his skin glowed luminously. The blankets, worthless for warmth, had been thrown onto the floor, allowing the light to lay bare all his sever edges. To Buffy's eyes he looked thin and helpless and safe. Had she looked that frail to him, pinned on the bathroom floor? At that thought the Slayer snatched her hand away and Spike sighed in relief.
"Buffy!" Xander shouted in wild alarm from the bedroom door. Despite the painkillers and the arm in the cast he still managed to launch himself across the room and yank the Slayer away from the bed and the deadly demon. The two friends tottered for a moment before falling onto the floor in an unceremonious heap. Thanks be to modern medicine, Xander thought, because that didn't hurt as much as it should have.
"Are you okay?" he demanded surveying her neck. "Any puncture wounds?"
"What?" Buffy was looking thoroughly un-amused with her new view of the ceiling.
"Fido lost his leash. The chip's out," Xander frantically explained. Of course, the chip hadn't worked on Buffy since she'd been resurrected, but Xander couldn't seem to squelch his sense of dire urgency. Dawn, right. He should have rescued Dawn instead.
"I know," Buffy said hauling herself back to her feet. "He told me."
Dire honesty hadn't been an egalitarian move on Spike's part. Laboriously he had stuttered out his story in the hope that Buffy would haul her snack- sized sister out of his bed and let him die in peace. No such luck for the formerly evil undead. At that point Buffy reasoned if Xander didn't rank as a meal then Dawn was safe, for now. There would be time enough to re- evaluate their proximity when Spike was back to room tempter.
Still on the floor, Xander opened his mouth to argue some more but was interrupted by Anya's sudden appearance between him and the Slayer. Buffy hoped she would have some awful news to relate and change the subject. That would be good. Explaining her questionable decision making skills to Xander? That would be bad.
"Well, the crypt certainly was disgusting," Anya said, standing at the foot of the bed. Dawn lifted her puffy face and glared at the demon. Anya either didn't notice the girl's look or didn't care.
"I found your book. It's kind of stained now, but here it is," she handed Buffy the manuscripts, its pages warped and soaked with blood. And it was still wet. Poor Clem, Buffy thought, cringing as she accepted the tome.
"My very own book of the apocalypse, thanks, Anya," she said, trying to be grateful. Then something else jumped out of Anya's arms and raced under the bed.
"What was that?" Buffy demanded, wondering if small fluffy demons were portents too.
"A cat," Anya said. "I found it feeding off the remains. That can't have been very hygienic."
"Feeding?" Dawn exclaimed. Not Dinner! No! The cat loved Clem. She loved Clem, and she was crying again.
"D-di-dinner," Spike stuttered out.
Of course it was. Buffy had forgotten about the kitten poker.
"You were going to eat a kitten?" Buffy demanded, smacking the top of his head with the flat of her hand. Bad vampire! Buffy added mentally. Spike's grimace was annoyingly forbearing, as though an irritating child had just struck him.
"Dinner is Spike's kitty. It's a pet," Dawn sniffled, wiping her nose on the sleeve of her shirt. Faster than a speeding bullet Dawn the Vampire Rescuer jumps into action. Wait, Buffy thought. That's my shirt.
"Oh." Buffy was flummoxed. Spike was keeping pets? Clem was dead, Spike was chip free and the world promised to end someday soon. Of everything on that list the only one she had any control over was the apocalypse. Why was it only the big things she could wrap her hands around when it was the little things that made up everyday life? And what the hell am I supposed to do with you? Consolingly she ran her fingers through Spike's curling hair, as though to make up for her petulant smack.
"Wait," Xander said, eyeing Buffy carefully. "You know about the chip and you're okay with it? You don't mean that we're just going to keep him?"
Everybody in the room looked at the Slayer expectantly and Buffy ignored them all.
"Those are not sexy wounds," she said, sitting next to him on the bed, antiseptic and bandages in her small hands. "We cleaned up most of the blood this morning. Can I take a look at your back?"
Spike wanted to tell her not to touch him, but before he could work out the words Buffy was pushing him gently upright. The cuts along his back had bleed into the sheets, gluing him to the white cloth. He hissed as she pealed the sheet away from his skin, ripping open the lesions.
"Oh, god." Buffy sounded adorably horrified for someone who had seen bloody death for the past six years.
"D-d-Drusilla was p-pr-pretty pissed," Spike chattered out. There was more to say, but the stuttering was too frustrating. He could hardly talk. Spike tried to think of some plausible explanation why he should be so cold but could not think for the pain. With his delinquent, frozen mind he tried to remember a time when he had been in greater agony. There was not one. Then Buffy started in with the disinfectant on his back. Yeah. Okay, that hurt a little more.
"B-Buffy st-s-stop that. I-I-I-I d-don't n-n-n-ee. I'll he-heal. "
There was no reason to put up with hot, burning alcohol pouring in his wounds except to annoy him, or appease her. Spike stopped arguing. The smell of Buffy's blood, flowing millimeters below her skin made the demon want to make its presence known. Feeling his face shift, Spike strived to work the demon back down before Buffy was done torturing his back. In an odd way her ministrations made him forget about the rest of the pain racking his body.
"Okay," Buffy said easing him back down onto the bed. "I think you're going to survive. Eventually."
Spike looked awful. Buffy thought Glory had beaten the crap out of him, but bitchy hell gods of bad home perms had nothing on Drusilla. In some ways, with the blood mostly washed away, he looked worse. Now she could see in intimate detail the jagged, torn flesh peeling away from the muscles of his stomach and back, and the bone of his left knee white and exposed through the shredded cotton of his jeans. How he had gotten home was incomprehensible. Buffy was distracted from cataloguing injuries by his shifting face, flowing from human to vampire and back so quickly his eyes remained a murky green.
"H-hungry," Spike stammered. When was the last time he had eaten? Not that he could do anything about it now. He had just about enough strength left lay down and die, so it looked like Harris was finally going to get a chance to chop off his head after all.
"Dawn went to get you some blood, from your crypt." Buffy laid a comforting hand on his cheek, one of the only places Drusilla had not lacerated.
The demon won. Spike's face solidified into a series of hard, animalistic ridges. Fangs heavy in his mouth, he knew he only had to turn his head and bite. Somewhere he must have the energy for that? One little taste, then she would kill him and this unending moment would stop.
Under Buffy's hand Spike's skin was glacial. She moved suddenly, and Spike cursed having lost his chance. Somewhere beyond his line of vision Buffy was shuffling around, opening something wooden and hinged. Probably the weapons chest. Spike tried to follow her but could not get his head to move. Too tired. Too much pain. Once this chill was gone he would feel it more. Why was he so bloody cold?
Buffy came back trailing blankets and a heavy down comforter. Gently she wrapped the layers around him, tucking the blankets close to his body, doubting it would stop his paranormal chill. Spike's yellow eyes never left the ceiling, his demonic face unyielding. She could not tell if the weight of the covers was hurting him or not.
"Spike?"
He didn't shift or blink. She rubbed her palms against her jeans. I have this problem, Buffy thought, about making the right decisions. I never do. Nervously she leaned over the vampire, knowing he would be able to smell her uncertainty.
Too tired to move, Spike had no option other than to stare at the Slayer, whole and alive and demanding his attention.
"I want to thank you for saving Xander's life. I know it's about the last thing on your list of priorities. Drusilla - I know what she meant to you. How hard it must have been."
So he had done it then? He had killed Drusilla. Spike could still taste dust on his lips, but it seemed like a dream, far away and inconsequential. He wanted to cry and scream his anger, but more than that he wanted Buffy open and bleeding. Without blood he could not heal.
"No n-no no, n-n-n-no," he said, because suddenly the gods of the dark realms were answering his desires. Buffy was leaning towards him and the demon cackled while the soul cringed, too exhausted to put up a fight.
"D-d-d-don't. Don't p-please," Spike pleaded softly.
By the time Buffy kissed him Spike was crying, not out of anger, but at his own futility, immobile and helpless and being kissed by Buffy who could only mean to mock him. Funny, he conceded. Cruel enough for one of my own jokes. Should take a bite and show her what a monster I really am. Instead he choked the demon back before she cut herself on his fangs. As soon as the Slayer let him go Spike turned his head, closed his blue eyes, shutting out her face, trying to ignore her warmth on top of his frozen body. When her fingers brushed his tear streaked face he growled.
"Uh?"
Buffy turned her head at the noise. Dawn stood in the doorway clutching a mason jar of blood to her chest.
Ever since Dawn had left the crypt things seemed to be moving slowly, like those dreams where she tried to run from the faceless baddie and it was like sprinting through the ocean: exhausting and cumbersome. It took forever for Buffy to move away from Spike's blanket swathed body and stand in front of her sister. Dawn saw Spike's tear filled, azure eyes staring first into space and then focusing on her. She did not wonder what had happened before she entered the bedroom. Her mind was too full of the things she had seen at the crypt. All the important parts of her were still standing in the crypt, shaking with horror and fear.
Buffy took the blood out of her sister's trembling hands.
"Sweetie?" Buffy asked. Dawn's eyes slowly registered her sister's face. "Dawn what happened?"
Unhurriedly Dawn's gaze slid away from her sister across the floor, up the bed, and met Spike's, staring at her impotently from under his piles of blankets.
"In the hall," she whispered to Buffy. No, not the hall because vampires heard every little thing, didn't they? And this was not a little thing. "The living room," Dawn amended. That should be far enough away. Normally Dawn had every confidence that Spike didn't need her protecting, but seeing him laid out broken and dead made her want to cover his ears and shield him from what she had to say.
Anya was downstairs folding the blankets Willow had covered Xander with the night before.
"Willow's at the hospital," Anya said, placing her perfectly square folded blanket on top of the pile of them at her feet. With my car, the demon thought. The bitchy witch is driving my car, so I suppose I do care something for Xander after all. "I want to do something. Is there anything to do?"
Buffy extended the jar of blood. "Help feed Spike. His fingers are broken. I don't think he's going to be able to hold anything." And he can't sit up, and he can't really speak.
Anya took the jar, seemingly happy to be useful, and trotted up the stairs.
"Now," Buffy said, embracing her jittery sister, "tell me what happened."
______________________________________________________________________
Dawn had gone to the crypt after breakfast, walking fast in the early morning chill. The monks had given her memories of Drusilla, a thin, pale woman with beautiful black hair. She didn't understand how someone so small could hurt Spike. Well, Buffy could, but other vampires had never been that much of a threat to him, right?
The dew on cemetery grass soaked through her canvas shoes, making her feet feel annoyingly squishy. She wondered how long it would take Spike to heal from whatever it was Drusilla had done to him. Not long. Yay for the mystical powers of the undead. Un-life would be so cool, if it wasn't for that whole annoying instant evil thing. Except now he had a soul, so problem solved. Not that the soul was enough according to a certain 'oh I'm so cool and righteous because I save the world all the time' sister of hers. Sometimes Dawn thought Buffy almost forgave Spike. And why not? She forgave Angel pretty fucking fast. Other times Buffy's looks towards Spike were so cold and murderous Dawn wanted have a cheery little bonfire with all the stakes at the Magic Box. What if Buffy staked him while she was gone?
During training Dawn had once tried to talk to Spike about how unreasonable Buffy was. "Has it occurred to you that if you don't spend less time thinking about your sis and more time practicing you're going to end up dead?" he demanded in an icy tone. Hefting her crossbow back to her shoulder Dawn had decided the schizophrenic duo deserved each other.
The door to the crypt swung open silently. Dawn had tried to convince Spike to do something to give the door a creepy squeak. At the suggestion he had given her one of those looks that meant, "If you're only going to say stupid things please shut the fuck up." The first thing Dawn noticed was that the inside of the crypt smelled funny.
Dawn's memories, her very worst ones, were of walking into Willow's bedroom and finding Tara's body unnaturally silent and still. People should not lie on the floor like toys whose batteries have run out.
This was not at all like finding Tara. Someone had a grand old time destroying every piece of furniture Spike owned: the TV was smashed, the stuffing ripped out of the comfy chair, the granite tomb was broken in half. Moving though the wreckage, Dawn wondered if Spike had lost his temper again. Then she stepped on something soft and giving, a mass of wrinkled flesh.
Eyes adjusting to the dim light, Dawn realized what the strange smell was. It was Clem, all over the floor. Blood and flesh intermingled with the broken pieces of Spike's furniture, and glued wads of yellow legal paper together on the counter. Clem's head rested severed and bleeding on the open pages of Spike's big book of manuscripts, his vacant eyes staring at nothing.
Feeling not at all like a dangerous demon hunter, Dawn quickly lost her breakfast, throwing up bile and acid on the stone floor amid the rest of the mess. There was nothing to do but sprint to the refrigerator, grab a jar of blood and scurry home. She wished she had run sooner. There had been too much time spent at the door gazing uncomprehendingly at the scene and now it was burned in her mind.
______________________________________________________________________
"The doctor said no driving, concussion boy," Willow said from behind the wheel of Anya's car.
"Will, do you even know how to drive?" Xander asked, bracing himself against the dash with the hand attached to the arm that wasn't broken.
He was such a baby, Willow thought. She was barely doing seventy. What was the speed limit anyway?
"Well, I did a lot of steering in your car that one day. And there was that thing with the semi!"
Xander looked aghast. Okay, so now Mr. Funny was the only one who could makes jokes?
"I'll go real slow. I promise, snails will pass us," Willow promised, pumping the break peddle.
Xander sagged against his door, drumming his fingers impatiently on the cast. His arm hurt, the bites on his neck itched. Being the damsel was not fun.
"Where is the evil fiend now? Bleeding to death in his crypt?" Xander asked hopefully. It had been a mistake, his mistake, to invite the vamp back into the house. If Buffy was hurt because of that.. Tough slayer, strong slayer, and he loved her more than Twinkies and chocolate milk, but she was brain dead to have not staked the demon already.
Willow rolled her eyes. "Yeah, after he hauled you home we shoved him back out onto the street. Don't get all fraternal. He's at Buffy's. "
"Wait. With Buffy?"
"And Dawn, Willow affirmed. She was dutifully watching the road and missed Xander's wide-eyed look of terror.
"The chip is out. He'll kill them."
"No -" Willow wasn't sure if she was refuting Spike's chip free state for that he wouldn't hurt the Summer's sisters.
"Will, yes. He hit me when we were in the Master's cave and this time there were no pretty fireworks in his head."
"Maybe he just didn't notice it with all the other pain?" Willow glanced at Xander's face. His look of intense horror made her happy to turn back to the road. It wasn't like the chip worked on the Slayer anyway, and Dawn would be fine, she told herself. For one thing there was instant goodness (or at least instant not so evil-ness) of the soul. Right?
Xander fought back the urge to hit something, like the window, because he was already in enough pain. Sometimes Willow's hopefulness about Spike was too much for him to bear. Especially now. What happened to the nihilistic, goth Willow they had all come to fear and love? Don't change the paradigm on me now, Will, he pleaded.
"He bit me like I was a huge juice box o'blood," Xander confessed as though he had done something shameful.
"Oh," Willow whispered. Biting the Scoobies was un-good. Add to the negative column all the stories Spike had told her about how much he missed his days of destruction and it looked like badness was about to ensue. "I guess we should start passing the snails then."
______________________________________________________________________
Dawn had crawled into bed beside Spike and was wailing her sorrows into Buffy's pillow. Spike wished she would mourn somewhere else, like Chechnya. Heartless winters, pervasive war, decimated cities: the renegade province would be the perfect backdrop for Dawn's agonies. At least in London Willow had been kind enough to sniffle quietly to herself. Clem was dead, and the vampire felt bad about it, but right now he felt worse for himself.
Sitting on the edge of her bed Buffy stared hard at the pair and wanted to cry for completely different reasons than her sister. It was all she could do to keep from wrapping her fingers in Dawn's long hair and dragging her away from Spike's corpse. Now was not the best time to harp on the evils of extra-species relationships when her demonic best friend for the summer had just been ripped into bite sized morsels.
Not that I'm the greatest role model, Buffy admitted. She laid her palm across the vampire's pale forehead as though testing for a fever. Under her hand Spike's flesh was still unnaturally cold. Unnaturally colder, because intimacy with Spike had always been like cuddling with a Popsicle.
Spike closed his eyes, blocking out the sight of the evil sisters. His teeth were still chattering despite the heat of Buffy's hand tracing a line from his forehead, down his cheek. Yes, yes, you're very warm and tasty. Now fuck off, Spike thought.
In the swath of sunlight spilling across the bed his skin glowed luminously. The blankets, worthless for warmth, had been thrown onto the floor, allowing the light to lay bare all his sever edges. To Buffy's eyes he looked thin and helpless and safe. Had she looked that frail to him, pinned on the bathroom floor? At that thought the Slayer snatched her hand away and Spike sighed in relief.
"Buffy!" Xander shouted in wild alarm from the bedroom door. Despite the painkillers and the arm in the cast he still managed to launch himself across the room and yank the Slayer away from the bed and the deadly demon. The two friends tottered for a moment before falling onto the floor in an unceremonious heap. Thanks be to modern medicine, Xander thought, because that didn't hurt as much as it should have.
"Are you okay?" he demanded surveying her neck. "Any puncture wounds?"
"What?" Buffy was looking thoroughly un-amused with her new view of the ceiling.
"Fido lost his leash. The chip's out," Xander frantically explained. Of course, the chip hadn't worked on Buffy since she'd been resurrected, but Xander couldn't seem to squelch his sense of dire urgency. Dawn, right. He should have rescued Dawn instead.
"I know," Buffy said hauling herself back to her feet. "He told me."
Dire honesty hadn't been an egalitarian move on Spike's part. Laboriously he had stuttered out his story in the hope that Buffy would haul her snack- sized sister out of his bed and let him die in peace. No such luck for the formerly evil undead. At that point Buffy reasoned if Xander didn't rank as a meal then Dawn was safe, for now. There would be time enough to re- evaluate their proximity when Spike was back to room tempter.
Still on the floor, Xander opened his mouth to argue some more but was interrupted by Anya's sudden appearance between him and the Slayer. Buffy hoped she would have some awful news to relate and change the subject. That would be good. Explaining her questionable decision making skills to Xander? That would be bad.
"Well, the crypt certainly was disgusting," Anya said, standing at the foot of the bed. Dawn lifted her puffy face and glared at the demon. Anya either didn't notice the girl's look or didn't care.
"I found your book. It's kind of stained now, but here it is," she handed Buffy the manuscripts, its pages warped and soaked with blood. And it was still wet. Poor Clem, Buffy thought, cringing as she accepted the tome.
"My very own book of the apocalypse, thanks, Anya," she said, trying to be grateful. Then something else jumped out of Anya's arms and raced under the bed.
"What was that?" Buffy demanded, wondering if small fluffy demons were portents too.
"A cat," Anya said. "I found it feeding off the remains. That can't have been very hygienic."
"Feeding?" Dawn exclaimed. Not Dinner! No! The cat loved Clem. She loved Clem, and she was crying again.
"D-di-dinner," Spike stuttered out.
Of course it was. Buffy had forgotten about the kitten poker.
"You were going to eat a kitten?" Buffy demanded, smacking the top of his head with the flat of her hand. Bad vampire! Buffy added mentally. Spike's grimace was annoyingly forbearing, as though an irritating child had just struck him.
"Dinner is Spike's kitty. It's a pet," Dawn sniffled, wiping her nose on the sleeve of her shirt. Faster than a speeding bullet Dawn the Vampire Rescuer jumps into action. Wait, Buffy thought. That's my shirt.
"Oh." Buffy was flummoxed. Spike was keeping pets? Clem was dead, Spike was chip free and the world promised to end someday soon. Of everything on that list the only one she had any control over was the apocalypse. Why was it only the big things she could wrap her hands around when it was the little things that made up everyday life? And what the hell am I supposed to do with you? Consolingly she ran her fingers through Spike's curling hair, as though to make up for her petulant smack.
"Wait," Xander said, eyeing Buffy carefully. "You know about the chip and you're okay with it? You don't mean that we're just going to keep him?"
Everybody in the room looked at the Slayer expectantly and Buffy ignored them all.
