Catastrophe

by

Princess McPhee

Disclaimer: I don't claim. Not mine. Bow to Joss Whedon.

Author's Note: Feedback may decide whether I finish this, so please tell me if you loved it, hated it, or somewhere in between!

Summary: An AU version of the events after 'The Weight of the World.'

Rating: PG, so far.

Nothing was said about it in the morning. Spike and Angel avoided each other even more studiously than usual, and shot glares across the breakfast table. Buffy tried to pretend nothing happened, and ended up forcefully cheerful. Dawn just sat back and watched the soap opera that was her family and friends, in a remarkably placate mood.

Gunn drove Buffy and Dawn to the hospital later that day, Buffy for her physical therapy, Dawn for her checkup. The doctor had hinted that the brace on her arm might be able to come off soon, and she was excited and ready for that to happen. Plus, he'd said that it might be time to change casts on her leg, and Dawn always relished that. It meant a chance to expose her wrinkled skin to fresh air, and a chance to scratch all of those built-up itches.

Dawn did indeed get the brace off and her cast changed. Unfortunately, the new cast was just new, not really any different, and she was going to have to stay in the wheelchair for at least another few weeks. Pouting, sulking, and just generally in a bad mood, she allowed an orderly to push her up to the waiting room for her sister's physical therapy, where she sat in silence until Angel arrived.

When Buffy came out, looking tired and frustrated, the first thing Dawn felt was the tension in the air. It was so thick it could be cut with a fang, and Dawn didn't doubt that they were both sensing it, too. They were just still attempting to ignore it, while Dawn knew that was a futile gesture, and was just trying to be patient until they saw that, too.

Moving slowly, Angel pushed Dawn towards the elevators and waited for Buffy to come with them. The Slayer moved slowly, tiredly, and Angel wore his usual brow-twisting expression of concern as he witnessed this. "Are you okay, Buffy?" He asked.

She shook her head absently. "What? Oh, I'm fine."

"You sure?"

"Yeah."

The walk to the car was quiet.

When they returned to the hotel, Spike was nowhere to be found. Angel didn't say anything, but Dawn could feel it in the air, she doubted that Spike had been back since just before sunrise when he'd left in the morning. Most vampires would leave their dwellings at sunset, she knew, but Spike was an unusual vampire. She wasn't worried yet, just wondering where he was. And what the heck a flammable creature did during the daylight hours.

Buffy decided to take a nap when they returned to the hotel, and somehow got an idea in her head about how her sister must need one, too. But, as tired as she was, Dawn was having none of it. "I'll just play video games," She told Buffy.

"Dawnie, you were up late last night, you need some sleep."

"Buffy, I'm not going to take a nap. I'll go to bed early, if I must."

"Alright. But you must."

"Must what?"

"Go to bed early!"

Dawn waved her sister off without looking at her. "Fine. Now go, you'll be less grouchy when the sun's down." She could feel her sister's gaze pounding into her back after she said that last bit, but she was neither afraid nor guilty for having done so, so she just ignored it. Buffy didn't like to be reminded of how like the vampires she was. But Dawn knew that the Slayer was more similar than she liked to admit.

Vampires liked violence, right? So did Buffy, she just fought on the other side of things. Vampires lived at night. Buffy was at best grouchy during the day, and sometimes downright bitchy. She slept more easily with the sun up, and she was distracted easily when there was light about. At night, she was razor-sharp. Dawn had seen her sister in various modes throughout her life as a Slayer, and she'd noticed the things that Buffy hadn't wanted to.

The younger Summers' wasn't quite sure why her sister insisted on denying so much to herself. Obviously, she didn't want to think she was anything like a vampire, but as current company evidenced, Dawn thought, not all vampires were bad. And when they weren't killing people or trying to suck the world into hell, Spike and Angel were pretty cool. They both had super-strength, and good fashion sense. They got to live at night, which pretty much put them right into the middle of the whole party scene. They fought for good, but they got to have their cool growly-faces. All in all, she thought they had it pretty good.

Of course, Angel was tortured by his soul, and Spike was simply reigned in by a computer chip, but besides that...

Dawn had thought a lot about Spike and the chip. Since Joyce had died, Buffy had become more and more distant, and with the Glory threat around, she had placed more and more of Dawn's well-being in the vampire's hands. For a while now, he'd had the power to do with her what he wanted. Even if he couldn't physically hurt her, Dawn knew there were other things he could have done. Obviously, Spike hadn't wanted her hurt, since she wasn't.

Buffy insisted that if and when the chip stopped functioning, Spike would return to his ways, become the same heartless killer that he used to be. But Dawn had never seen that side of the vampire, and though she believed it had existed, she was also firm in her belief that it was gone now. Besides, it wasn't like he'd ever hurt Dawn. From the moment she'd met him, in the Summers' living room three years ago, while he and Buffy were working side by side for the first time, against Angelus, he'd felt protective of her, and she'd known it.

Dawn didn't know it, but Spike had never been much for hurting kids. When hunting, he'd eat whatever he could find, and sometimes used children for playing with because it delighted Drusilla, but for the most part, kids were safe from William the Bloody. For some reason, even after his transformation, they'd still held a special place in his heart. If he'd thought about it, he probably would have realized it stemmed from his little sister Elizabeth, the only person in the world who had accepted him when he was human, but he didn't think about it.

He'd tried to keep it a secret from Angelus and Darla, and Drusilla while they were still living with the former two, but of course they had found out. Several times Angelus had made him feast from local schools or daycare centers, because he would not allow any blood of his to act in such a way "unbefitting a vampire!" but it only made Spike's resistance towards the idea stronger, and when Angelus and Darla left him and Dru, one right after the other, he no longer needed to fight with anyone. Dru certainly didn't care, as long as he didn't interfere with her choices for meals. And even if he did, she would cry and put up a fuss, but Spike had quickly become adept at calming her.

Dawn didn't know any of this. She just knew that from the moment she'd laid eyes on the fearsome vampire, something had told her that she was safe in his presence. She wasn't deluded, even as an eleven-year-old she'd felt his power, understood his capacity to hurt and maim. But she'd just as clearly felt his instincts to protect a child, and because Dawn looked a little like the long-dead Elizabeth, he felt it all the more clearly. She was sure that she would never have to fear for her safety as long as Spike was around.

But whether he'd stay around very long with Buffy treating him the way she was, that was the question. Because as much as her sister loved to deny it, Dawn knew that Spike's feelings for the Slayer were real. She didn't know how exactly her sister felt about the vampire, but she did know that Buffy constantly treated Spike as though he were beneath her. The vampire was persistent, but Dawn knew that eventually he'd give up and move on to something easier if Buffy didn't show signs of bending, even in the slightest way.

Well, she decided, she'd just have to do something about that. Because whether Buffy wanted Spike around or not, Dawn did. Partially for the vampire, because she knew he was an outcast in the demon world and would be forced to live a lonely, solitary life, but more for herself. Dawn didn't have many friends, but she felt like Spike was one of the true ones, and she wanted to keep him. As selfish as her reasons might be, she was going to get her sister to stop treating the vampire like dirt.

It might take all summer, but Dawn Summers' name was summer. It was her lucky season. And her mother had always told her that her middle name was stubborn, hadn't she? Well, it was time to live up to that reputation.

Days passed, and Dawn was starting to get more worried. Not worried that Spike was hurt, she was sure that the vampire could take care of himself, but worried that he'd abandoned them. Worried that she'd lost her only friend left in the world besides Buffy. And as much as she loved her sister, it wasn't the same as real friends who didn't have to be her parent, too.

Despite the fact that Spike was equally as protective of her as Buffy was now, and her mom had been before she died, Dawn felt that the relationship she had with the chipped vampire was completely different. Mostly, she thought, because Spike listened to her. When he wanted to do something together, he asked her opinion. He didn't treat her as if she were five, or made of glass that would shatter at the slightest touch. In short, he treated her like a friend, even though he had the protective instincts of an older sibling or a parent.

Dawn told herself that Spike wouldn't leave her without saying good-bye, but as the days went by, she started to lose that belief. Still, hope told her that Spike could come back at any time, and she slept lightly during the night, each time hoping that this would be the night he'd return. Just stomp in the door like nothing happened, throw his coat over the back of the couch, and smirk at her. And then he'd call her his 'Little Bit', or 'Platelet', or another one of his silly little nicknames, and all would be forgiven and forgotten.

Meanwhile, Buffy was wrestling with similar emotions, though her reasons for having them weren't nearly as clear as her little sister's. She wanted Spike to return for Dawn, but as the days wore on, she slowly considered the fact that maybe she wanted Spike to return for her, too. She didn't love him, she never could, she told herself, but she enjoyed his company. Missed the challenge of verbally sparring with him until they both realized the insanity of their fight and broke out into fits of laughter. Missed, surprisingly enough, his constant baiting of his grand-sire, which was always remarkably effective due to the knowledge of each and every one of Angel's weak points. And, she slowly concluded, she just missed his presence in her life.

She was confused, too. Neither sister was entirely sure why Spike was gone. The time in question had just been a truth or dare game. Nothing particularly deep about it. But maybe it had just been the spark that started the fire, and the game had simply caused Spike to realize something he'd been denying or hadn't understood before. Buffy had had plenty of times where that happened to her at the most inane moments; she understood the sensation.

But when day three passed with no sign of the vampire, she didn't care anymore why Spike was gone, she just wanted him back. Her mobility was much better and she no longer required help to take a shower or dress, which she was immensely grateful for, but she still needed assistance getting around, and being that close to Angel more often than either of them had anticipated, was slowly frying the nerves in both of their bodies.

As Dawn put it, the 'thing' she had with Angel was... complicated lately. The sparks still flew insanely hotly, but neither of them felt the burn as much. Having resigned themselves to this life, they simply did their best to quietly ignore them and get on with their lives.

A life never together, yet never quite apart, Buffy thought wryly. It was poetic and romantic and beautiful... and why didn't they tell you at the end of those incredibly sad poems that they read in ninth grade, how painful it really was? How the hurt never really went away, and that once you were tied to someone that deeply, bound by your soul, that you could never really leave them behind? And how it wasn't romantic, it was terrible and cruel and the worst kind of torture the world had ever invented?

Silent tears streamed down her face, and she absently wondered how she'd gotten from thinking about Spike to thinking about her former relationship with Angel, and high school poetry. And then she realized, that Spike and Angel were, in her mind, forever and unquestionably linked. That she never looked at Spike without seeing a little of her former lover in him, and how she never laid eyes on Angel without thinking about Spike, whatever reaction that might evoke at the moment.

The Slayer reached up and wiped the tears away, her body still as she lay in bed, in the dark. Dawn was snoring softly on the bed across the room, but Buffy knew that a single move would wake her. Her sister hadn't been sleeping well since Spike left, and probably wouldn't again until he was back.

If he came back, she corrected herself.

No. He had to come back. Not for her, as much as she wanted to spend more time around him and try to resolve these conflicting feelings she had for him, but for Dawn. Because her sister had lost enough people that she loved in her life, and this year had been the worst of it. And she didn't care if it damned her soul forever, trying to get a vampire back to be best friends with her sister, she was going to hunt Spike down and return him to Dawn if he didn't come back on his own.

The only question was, how long should she wait for him?

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