Description: Buffy's not feeling well, Spike won't go away, and Dawn knows
more that she should. The Scoobies lives are about to be changed forever.
Rating: PG-13
Pairing: Buffy/Spike (did you think otherwise?)
"No, no, no, no, NO!" Dawn screamed. Her once sleeping body was racked with a feeling of dread and hopelessness and her skin plagued with goose bumps. Throwing her arms frantically, the youngest member of the Scooby Gang was jostled from her bed and landed on the floor with a resounding thud.
Willow was at her bedroom door in seconds. "Dawn? Dawnie what's the matter?"
But she couldn't answer her friend's question; all Dawn could do was shake and scream. "God no! Please no! Oh God!" Pulling her knees to her chest and hugging them tightly, she began to rock. "Please God, don't let it happen. Stop them, stop them!"
Willow rushed to her side, scooping the girl in her arms and pulling her tightly against her own body. "Dawnie what's the matter? Don't let what happen? Please Dawn, you're scaring me."
"What's the matter?" Giles asked. He, Tara, and Spike had all appeared in the doorway seconds before, just in time to watch Dawn's hysterical behavior.
"I don't know, I heard a sound and she was in here screaming," Willow explained.
"I can see them. Please don't hurt them." Dawn cried.
Spike kneeled in front of the shaking girl and braced his hands on her shoulders. "Who can you see, Bit?" He'd never seen the girl act like this and it was beginning to worry him.
"The twins," Dawn blurted, "They're gone. They took them!"
Silence fell on the room as every mind struggled to grasp what was said. Someone had taken the twins? Kidnapped them? How could this have happened?
"W-what?" Tara stuttered.
"Shit," Spike breathed, jumping to his feet he dashed out of the room and down the steps taking them two at a time. He hit the bottom and grabbing his blanket that lay on the banister, was out the door.
"What should we do?" Willow asked, her voice was shaky and tears threatened to spill out down her cheeks.
"You two stay here and take care of Dawn," Giles instructed, "I'm heading to the hospital with Spike." Without another word he was out of the room. The sound of the front door slamming quickly followed.
"What do we do?" Tara asked. She kneeled on the other side of Dawn's body and looked to Willow.
"Help me get her onto the bed." Together the two witched hoisted to girl onto the bed and laid her head gently on the pillows.
"Willow?" Dawn breathed. She blinked her eyes several times before her vision focused on the red head in front of her. It was like she had been pulled out of a trance. Everything came rushing into her field of vision at once.
"Dawnie are you okay?" Tara asked.
"I can see it all. The twins.someone took them." Tears were streaming down the younger girl's face and onto her shirt.
"How can you see it?"
"I don't know. I've been having these visions. I can see things before they happen." Dawn sat upright in the bed and dropped her head into her hands. "I saw Buffy in the alley, just before we all found out that she was pregnant. I saw the cult people doing some kind of ritual. I saw the twins being taken somewhere by these guys. I don't know where, but they were crying and there were lots of them. All in black cloaks." Fresh tears began to seep through her fingers.
"We've got to d-do something." Tara whispered to her girlfriend.
"Let's get to the Magic Box. We can do a locator spell," Willow suggested.
"What about Giles and Spike? Shouldn't we let them know?"
Willow stood from the bed and helped the crying Dawn to her feet. "We'll contact them once we get there. Let's go."
It was a good thing that Spike didn't have to breathe, because he had run down the street to the nearest sewer entrance and kept running until he was back at University Hospital. The mechanical doors slid out of the way just in time as the bleached blonde came barreling through the front doors and took an immediate left. Up three flights of steps and down a long corridor he ran without ever stopping for a breath. Nurses and doctors alike jumped out of his way shouting at the vampire's retreating form.
By the time that he got to Buffy's room, she was already dressed. She stopped dead in her tracks when he burst through the door. "Spike," she cried and the tears rolled down her cheeks.
He ran to her, getting there just as her legs gave out and the Slayer crumpled to the floor. "It's all right luv," Spike pulled her body tightly against his own and stroked her blonde locks gently. Both vampire and slayer sank to the floor in a heap.
"They're.gone," she managed to sputter between sobs.
"I know," Spike said.
Buffy pulled away and looked up at him. "H-how do you know?"
"Niblet, she could-" Spike searched for the right word, "I guess she can see things." Pushing himself to his feet, Spike lifted Buffy to hers and wrapped his arm around her waist. "Come on," he pulled her towards the door.
"We need to go back to the house and get weapons." They were almost to the door when Giles burst through carrying a large black bag.
"I've got weapons," he announced. "Tara, Willow and Dawn are headed to the Magic Box to do a locator spell. We should regroup there before heading out."
"Agreed," Spike mumbled pushing passed the Watcher and storming the hallway.
"Buffy are you all right?" Giles asked as the girl followed Spike.
"I'll be better when I've got them back in my arms," she said simply and left her hospital room, Giles in tow. None of the staff even realized they had vacated.
Willow and Tara were in the back room setting up for the locator spell while Anya and Xander stayed with Dawn in the shop. The poor girl had been so shaken by her vision that she'd done nothing but stare into space and cry.
"Are we ready?" Tara asked as she sprinkled the last bit of sand on the training room floor.
Willow looked around nervously. Normally doing a locator spell would seem like child's play to the highly advanced Wicca, but with everything that was happening, she was much more skeptical. "I think so," she went over the checklist in her mind one last time and, satisfied that everything had been taken care of, took a seat in the inner circle. Tara took a seat across from her. They two witched linked hands and began the spell.
"Blood of blood, heart of heart," Tara whispered over and over again.
"Taken without consent, lost amongst the crowd," Willow chanted while sprinkling a mixture of ingredients over a map of Sunnydale that was spread between the two. "Reveal to us the hiding place, reveal to us to resting place."
"Blood of blood, heart of heart," Tara echoed a little louder than before.
"Reveal!" Suddenly a bright, green light appeared in the center of the room, hovering inches above the girls. Their hands tightened together as a strong wind swept through the room causing the few candles that the spell required to blow out. But as suddenly as it had all started, the wind and light were gone, leaving only darkness to fill the room.
"Did it work?" Tara asked, her voice just above a whisper.
Willow dropped her girlfriend's hands and stared down at the map. It had been blown out of place by the wind, and by turning it right side up again she revealed a small patch of light surrounding a tiny portion of the map.
"It worked," she let out a breath she hadn't realized she was holding. Grabbing the map she rose to her feet and bolted for the door, Tara only steps behind her.
"Dawn listen to me," Buffy kneeled in front of her younger sister and took the girl's head in her hands, "this is not your fault."
"Yes it is," Dawn argued, "It's all my fault if I would have just told someone-"
"You couldn't have known, Bit." Spike sat next to the crying girl on the couch and draped an arm around her shoulders. Before either Buffy or Spike could get another word in, Tara and Willow came in from the backroom, the latter carrying a large piece of paper.
"Did you find them?" Buffy asked shooting to her feet. She followed Willow to the table and watched as the witch spread the paper out revealing a black and white map of Sunnydale. "What do we got, Will?"
"See this light? This is what the spell did; it found the twins using their auras. Good for us that these two have very strong spirits." She shared a momentary smile with Buffy before turning back to the task at hand. "They're hauled up in this warehouse here," she pointed to the rectangular outline around the glowing light. "It's surrounded by other warehouses, most of which are empty just sitting there. I figured we could go in at all sides."
"That'll work," Buffy said offhandedly staring at the paper. "Spike will come in from the north; Xander, you and Giles come from the south; Willow and Tara, the west end and I'll come from the east. We'll block off all exits and surround them."
"What about me?" a small voice asked. Everyone turned to find Dawn sitting on the couch, eyes swollen red from crying.
"You're staying here with Anya," Buffy told her.
"I want to come, I wanna help."
"Dawn," Buffy sighed but when she looked at her little sister all thoughts of argument fled her mind. The woman sitting in front of her wasn't the little sister she'd thought of as a pain; she had grown up. Her face read of nothing but determination and strength. Dawn wasn't taking no for an answer. "Fine," Buffy nodded, "You can come with me, and Anya," she nodded to the former demon, "you go with Spike."
Without another word, the Slayer got up from her seat around the table and walked to the backroom door. "We'll go at sundown, be ready." Then she disappeared into the darkness of the room.
Spike decided to give Buffy a little time alone to sort out her thoughts before he barged in on her. They had another hour till sunset, so he figured now was the best time to talk to her.
Poking his head inside the room Spike noticed nothing out of the ordinary. The vaulting horse sat in one corner, the couch opposite it, and the punching bag hung motionless from the ceiling.
'Where is she?' he wondered. Taking a few steps into the room, Spike looked for the familiar face of the woman he loved, finally finding her standing by the window. Careful to avoid the sunlight that poured through the opened blinds, Spike crept up behind Buffy and slid his arms around her waist.
"Spike," she sighed, leaning back into his embrace.
"Shhh," he whispered, "I'm here, luv."
"Spike I'm so scared," Buffy admitted. She never looked back at the creature holding her, just continued to stare out the window.
"Of what?" Spike asked, though he already knew the answer.
"Me," she answered.
"What?" Spike asked astonished. "How can you be afraid of yourself?"
"I'm not. I'm afraid of what I'm doing to the kids." Turning around, Buffy noticed the utter confusion marring Spike's face. She continued, "I'm afraid of what they'll turn out to be. And I don't just mean part vampire. Spike," she began walking towards the couch, "they'll never be normal. These kids.our kids, they'll never have a normal life."
"Not quite sure I follow you, luv." Spike took a seat on the couch and motioned for her to join him.
"It'll be a life filled with demons and death and apocalypse and.it'll be the life I hate." She stopped and took a breath trying to fend off the tears that clouded her vision. "I've always hated being the Slayer; always wished for a life other than this one. I didn't care what kind of life, just as long as it wasn't this one. And now.now I've dumped the same life on my children." As hard as she tried to fight them, the tears welling in her eyes were too much for even Buffy to contain. As they spilled down her cheeks, Spike wiped them away.
"Buffy, you are the most amazing person I've ever met." He desperately searched his mind for the words to put to his feelings. "If you weren't the Slayer, I don't even care to think about what would have happened. I would never have found you, never fallen in love with you, and we would never have the two beautiful miracles that we have. Luv," he grasped her hands in his own, "I love you with everything that is me, and I promise you that we will get them back."
A small smile spread across Buffy's lips. Moving her hands to the sides of Spike's head, she pulled his face to hers and kissed him. Their lips met in a fury of emotions, both having so much to say to the other but not having the time. When the two blondes finally pulled apart, both were gasping for breath, one out of survival need, the other out of habit.
"You promise?" Buffy asked, her voice no louder than a whisper.
"Promise."
Rating: PG-13
Pairing: Buffy/Spike (did you think otherwise?)
"No, no, no, no, NO!" Dawn screamed. Her once sleeping body was racked with a feeling of dread and hopelessness and her skin plagued with goose bumps. Throwing her arms frantically, the youngest member of the Scooby Gang was jostled from her bed and landed on the floor with a resounding thud.
Willow was at her bedroom door in seconds. "Dawn? Dawnie what's the matter?"
But she couldn't answer her friend's question; all Dawn could do was shake and scream. "God no! Please no! Oh God!" Pulling her knees to her chest and hugging them tightly, she began to rock. "Please God, don't let it happen. Stop them, stop them!"
Willow rushed to her side, scooping the girl in her arms and pulling her tightly against her own body. "Dawnie what's the matter? Don't let what happen? Please Dawn, you're scaring me."
"What's the matter?" Giles asked. He, Tara, and Spike had all appeared in the doorway seconds before, just in time to watch Dawn's hysterical behavior.
"I don't know, I heard a sound and she was in here screaming," Willow explained.
"I can see them. Please don't hurt them." Dawn cried.
Spike kneeled in front of the shaking girl and braced his hands on her shoulders. "Who can you see, Bit?" He'd never seen the girl act like this and it was beginning to worry him.
"The twins," Dawn blurted, "They're gone. They took them!"
Silence fell on the room as every mind struggled to grasp what was said. Someone had taken the twins? Kidnapped them? How could this have happened?
"W-what?" Tara stuttered.
"Shit," Spike breathed, jumping to his feet he dashed out of the room and down the steps taking them two at a time. He hit the bottom and grabbing his blanket that lay on the banister, was out the door.
"What should we do?" Willow asked, her voice was shaky and tears threatened to spill out down her cheeks.
"You two stay here and take care of Dawn," Giles instructed, "I'm heading to the hospital with Spike." Without another word he was out of the room. The sound of the front door slamming quickly followed.
"What do we do?" Tara asked. She kneeled on the other side of Dawn's body and looked to Willow.
"Help me get her onto the bed." Together the two witched hoisted to girl onto the bed and laid her head gently on the pillows.
"Willow?" Dawn breathed. She blinked her eyes several times before her vision focused on the red head in front of her. It was like she had been pulled out of a trance. Everything came rushing into her field of vision at once.
"Dawnie are you okay?" Tara asked.
"I can see it all. The twins.someone took them." Tears were streaming down the younger girl's face and onto her shirt.
"How can you see it?"
"I don't know. I've been having these visions. I can see things before they happen." Dawn sat upright in the bed and dropped her head into her hands. "I saw Buffy in the alley, just before we all found out that she was pregnant. I saw the cult people doing some kind of ritual. I saw the twins being taken somewhere by these guys. I don't know where, but they were crying and there were lots of them. All in black cloaks." Fresh tears began to seep through her fingers.
"We've got to d-do something." Tara whispered to her girlfriend.
"Let's get to the Magic Box. We can do a locator spell," Willow suggested.
"What about Giles and Spike? Shouldn't we let them know?"
Willow stood from the bed and helped the crying Dawn to her feet. "We'll contact them once we get there. Let's go."
It was a good thing that Spike didn't have to breathe, because he had run down the street to the nearest sewer entrance and kept running until he was back at University Hospital. The mechanical doors slid out of the way just in time as the bleached blonde came barreling through the front doors and took an immediate left. Up three flights of steps and down a long corridor he ran without ever stopping for a breath. Nurses and doctors alike jumped out of his way shouting at the vampire's retreating form.
By the time that he got to Buffy's room, she was already dressed. She stopped dead in her tracks when he burst through the door. "Spike," she cried and the tears rolled down her cheeks.
He ran to her, getting there just as her legs gave out and the Slayer crumpled to the floor. "It's all right luv," Spike pulled her body tightly against his own and stroked her blonde locks gently. Both vampire and slayer sank to the floor in a heap.
"They're.gone," she managed to sputter between sobs.
"I know," Spike said.
Buffy pulled away and looked up at him. "H-how do you know?"
"Niblet, she could-" Spike searched for the right word, "I guess she can see things." Pushing himself to his feet, Spike lifted Buffy to hers and wrapped his arm around her waist. "Come on," he pulled her towards the door.
"We need to go back to the house and get weapons." They were almost to the door when Giles burst through carrying a large black bag.
"I've got weapons," he announced. "Tara, Willow and Dawn are headed to the Magic Box to do a locator spell. We should regroup there before heading out."
"Agreed," Spike mumbled pushing passed the Watcher and storming the hallway.
"Buffy are you all right?" Giles asked as the girl followed Spike.
"I'll be better when I've got them back in my arms," she said simply and left her hospital room, Giles in tow. None of the staff even realized they had vacated.
Willow and Tara were in the back room setting up for the locator spell while Anya and Xander stayed with Dawn in the shop. The poor girl had been so shaken by her vision that she'd done nothing but stare into space and cry.
"Are we ready?" Tara asked as she sprinkled the last bit of sand on the training room floor.
Willow looked around nervously. Normally doing a locator spell would seem like child's play to the highly advanced Wicca, but with everything that was happening, she was much more skeptical. "I think so," she went over the checklist in her mind one last time and, satisfied that everything had been taken care of, took a seat in the inner circle. Tara took a seat across from her. They two witched linked hands and began the spell.
"Blood of blood, heart of heart," Tara whispered over and over again.
"Taken without consent, lost amongst the crowd," Willow chanted while sprinkling a mixture of ingredients over a map of Sunnydale that was spread between the two. "Reveal to us the hiding place, reveal to us to resting place."
"Blood of blood, heart of heart," Tara echoed a little louder than before.
"Reveal!" Suddenly a bright, green light appeared in the center of the room, hovering inches above the girls. Their hands tightened together as a strong wind swept through the room causing the few candles that the spell required to blow out. But as suddenly as it had all started, the wind and light were gone, leaving only darkness to fill the room.
"Did it work?" Tara asked, her voice just above a whisper.
Willow dropped her girlfriend's hands and stared down at the map. It had been blown out of place by the wind, and by turning it right side up again she revealed a small patch of light surrounding a tiny portion of the map.
"It worked," she let out a breath she hadn't realized she was holding. Grabbing the map she rose to her feet and bolted for the door, Tara only steps behind her.
"Dawn listen to me," Buffy kneeled in front of her younger sister and took the girl's head in her hands, "this is not your fault."
"Yes it is," Dawn argued, "It's all my fault if I would have just told someone-"
"You couldn't have known, Bit." Spike sat next to the crying girl on the couch and draped an arm around her shoulders. Before either Buffy or Spike could get another word in, Tara and Willow came in from the backroom, the latter carrying a large piece of paper.
"Did you find them?" Buffy asked shooting to her feet. She followed Willow to the table and watched as the witch spread the paper out revealing a black and white map of Sunnydale. "What do we got, Will?"
"See this light? This is what the spell did; it found the twins using their auras. Good for us that these two have very strong spirits." She shared a momentary smile with Buffy before turning back to the task at hand. "They're hauled up in this warehouse here," she pointed to the rectangular outline around the glowing light. "It's surrounded by other warehouses, most of which are empty just sitting there. I figured we could go in at all sides."
"That'll work," Buffy said offhandedly staring at the paper. "Spike will come in from the north; Xander, you and Giles come from the south; Willow and Tara, the west end and I'll come from the east. We'll block off all exits and surround them."
"What about me?" a small voice asked. Everyone turned to find Dawn sitting on the couch, eyes swollen red from crying.
"You're staying here with Anya," Buffy told her.
"I want to come, I wanna help."
"Dawn," Buffy sighed but when she looked at her little sister all thoughts of argument fled her mind. The woman sitting in front of her wasn't the little sister she'd thought of as a pain; she had grown up. Her face read of nothing but determination and strength. Dawn wasn't taking no for an answer. "Fine," Buffy nodded, "You can come with me, and Anya," she nodded to the former demon, "you go with Spike."
Without another word, the Slayer got up from her seat around the table and walked to the backroom door. "We'll go at sundown, be ready." Then she disappeared into the darkness of the room.
Spike decided to give Buffy a little time alone to sort out her thoughts before he barged in on her. They had another hour till sunset, so he figured now was the best time to talk to her.
Poking his head inside the room Spike noticed nothing out of the ordinary. The vaulting horse sat in one corner, the couch opposite it, and the punching bag hung motionless from the ceiling.
'Where is she?' he wondered. Taking a few steps into the room, Spike looked for the familiar face of the woman he loved, finally finding her standing by the window. Careful to avoid the sunlight that poured through the opened blinds, Spike crept up behind Buffy and slid his arms around her waist.
"Spike," she sighed, leaning back into his embrace.
"Shhh," he whispered, "I'm here, luv."
"Spike I'm so scared," Buffy admitted. She never looked back at the creature holding her, just continued to stare out the window.
"Of what?" Spike asked, though he already knew the answer.
"Me," she answered.
"What?" Spike asked astonished. "How can you be afraid of yourself?"
"I'm not. I'm afraid of what I'm doing to the kids." Turning around, Buffy noticed the utter confusion marring Spike's face. She continued, "I'm afraid of what they'll turn out to be. And I don't just mean part vampire. Spike," she began walking towards the couch, "they'll never be normal. These kids.our kids, they'll never have a normal life."
"Not quite sure I follow you, luv." Spike took a seat on the couch and motioned for her to join him.
"It'll be a life filled with demons and death and apocalypse and.it'll be the life I hate." She stopped and took a breath trying to fend off the tears that clouded her vision. "I've always hated being the Slayer; always wished for a life other than this one. I didn't care what kind of life, just as long as it wasn't this one. And now.now I've dumped the same life on my children." As hard as she tried to fight them, the tears welling in her eyes were too much for even Buffy to contain. As they spilled down her cheeks, Spike wiped them away.
"Buffy, you are the most amazing person I've ever met." He desperately searched his mind for the words to put to his feelings. "If you weren't the Slayer, I don't even care to think about what would have happened. I would never have found you, never fallen in love with you, and we would never have the two beautiful miracles that we have. Luv," he grasped her hands in his own, "I love you with everything that is me, and I promise you that we will get them back."
A small smile spread across Buffy's lips. Moving her hands to the sides of Spike's head, she pulled his face to hers and kissed him. Their lips met in a fury of emotions, both having so much to say to the other but not having the time. When the two blondes finally pulled apart, both were gasping for breath, one out of survival need, the other out of habit.
"You promise?" Buffy asked, her voice no louder than a whisper.
"Promise."
