"You mean it? You're not just messing around with me?" Dawn widened her eyes dramatically and prepared to jump and down. "I can really go?" In the month and a half they'd been in central Indiana, Buffy hadn't allowed Dawn to go anywhere other than school. But it was time, Buffy thought, to let her little sister go. She'd been through so much on the Hellmouth; it was time for her to lead at least a semi-normal life.
"You can really go," Buffy said, crossing her arms over her chest and trying to keep her voice stern. What she really wanted to do was laugh, to show how happy it made her to see her sister overjoyed. No matter what had happened, how she'd came or where they'd been together, there was no one Buffy had left whom she loved as much as Dawn. "But…"
Dawn groaned. "The words of doom," she said, flopping onto the couch. "But what?"
"But I have to meet him first. And he has to pick you up while it's still daylight outside. And you have to take the cell phone." Buffy pressed her lips together, trying to stem the flow of rules that wanted to pour from her mouth. "Anything happens, you call me."
"Yes, ma'am," Dawn said, sketching a mock salute and hopping from one leg to another. It would be her first real date with a guy who wasn't—well, she hoped—any sort of prowling "beastie". Rubbing a hand absently at the ache in her chest, Dawn's Cupid-bow mouth turned into a frown.
She missed Spike.
It wasn't something she talked to Buffy about, because she'd heard her sister crying at night, weeping herself to sleep in the wee hours of the morning. When the Slayer finally got to sleep, she called out for him. So Dawn kept her mouth shut, knowing whatever she felt was fractional compared to her sister's suffering.
"Well, what're you waiting for?" Buffy asked, shooing at her sister. "Go get dressed so I can get ready for work." As her sister scampered away, Buffy concentrated on her work for the evening.
The class had grown from twenty to thirty people, and each class brought new questions, new challenges, and new tests of Buffy's self-control. She tried to avoid sparring with her pupils, but it wasn't always avoidable.
After seeing Dawn and her lanky, basketball-playing date off with a smile, Buffy started the walk to the fitness center, pausing occasionally to stretch. She was stopped, one leg stretched lithely over a fire hydrant, when she heard steps behind her. More out of instinct than actual fear of harm, she whirled to face whomever was approaching her, hands in the ready position, feet splayed for balance.
"Miss Summers!" The girl stepped back, also falling into a ready position. "Buffy."
"Kelly!" Buffy straightened, brushing at the skirt she'd thrown over her leotard as she looked at the loner from her evening class. She wondered if there was any way to make her movements seem like something more casual, but worried about it less when she saw Kelly making the same struggle.
"Sorry," the girl mumbled, pushing her dark, curly hair out of her face. "It's just—"
"Instinct," Buffy finished for her. Curling her fists until her fingernails bit into her palms, Buffy went out on a limb. "Have they given you a Watcher yet?" More to the point, genius, are there even enough Watchers alive to deal with all the Slayers now? But she was too busy watching the girl's reaction to worry about logistics.
Kelly's eyes flew to hers, large and dark and painfully easy to read. Eyes of a girl who didn't understand what was happening to her, eyes of a girl who was afraid she'd always be alone. "You're really her, then. You're really the Slayer."
"No," Buffy said, walking so the girl would follow her. "I'm really a Slayer, and I'm guessing you are, too."
"But…" Seeing her teacher's look of discomfort, Kelly bit her tongue and kept it simple. "I guess I am. I got this letter, you know? Instead of a Watcher, because—"
"They're still rebuilding the Council. I figured." She wondered how long it would be before Giles would be called back, and Wesley, to recoup and plan. The slice she felt in her gut wasn't sadness, though, as much as it was regret. It was almost as though they, especially Giles, were already gone to her.
Kelly wanted to say more, but couldn't. She'd spent weeks and weeks alone, breaking things on accident, wanting to pick a fight for the sake of fighting, just to get that horrible feeling out of her system. And then finally, like a true Gen-X-er, she'd started surfing, ducking in and out of chatrooms and finally settling in with an ultra-exclusive mailing list of girls who had the same problem.
Girls who were Slayers.
And eventually, the rumors starting seeping through about girls in California, led by a Slayer who made the rest of them look like babies carrying candy. A Slayer who had lived longer than any other before her and who had a band of people so loyal they could not be broken. Rumor even had it she had a pet vampire of sorts.
But this woman, the aerobics instructor—this woman was a loner who had no one other than her little sister, so Kelly had shoved the suspicions out of her mind even as she watched her self-defense teacher do things that were impossible when she thought no one was looking.
"I have so many things I want to ask you," Kelly finally confessed as they neared the fitness center. She put a hand to her forehead and groaned. "That sounds so bad. You know, I'm just so confused." Shocked at the tremble in her voice, she shook her head. "Never mind."
Buffy put a hand to the girl's arm and thought of her introduction to Sunnydale, the strange flip from popular girl to troublemaker, the feelings of solitude even when she was surrounded by people. "My sister's out on a date tonight. If you want to come back with me, have a cup of—" Did she even have anything in the house? "A cup of anything, you're more than welcome."
Kelly nodded enthusiastically then halted just outside the classroom door. "Doesn't your sister know?" she whispered.
Buffy felt a genuine grin spread over her face as she pushed open the door. "Boy, does she ever."
~~~
"I don't understand why you're making me do this," Spike groused, flipping through a book. "I know most of this shite already."
"True though that may be, I need you to know your stuff," Laramie said, pacing the room. He hadn't yet told his new friend the details as to what was going to happen, the only way to accomplish what he was asking. He figured they'd take care of the small details first and let the big ones… sort themselves out. "I'm training you. Don't you want to be able to find her as soon as you make it back?"
"Bloody hell, you sodding fruit!" Spike pushed the large book away from him, drained and angry. He spent mornings and nights convincing his mother he was okay, he was only William and spent his days convincing Laramie that he knew just as much if not more than the dark Watcher. He was getting fed up. He was feening for the Slayer. "Of fucking course I want to find her as soon as I get back, Ramie. I want to find her now. I want to find her yesterday. In point of fact, I'd like never to have left her at all!" Shaking, he sat back in the chair and let out a shaky breath.
"Do you
think I don't know what it's like?"
Ramie sat down across from him, his black hair flowing around his
shoulders. "William—"
"Don't call me that." It made things too hard. Had she ever called him by his name? Why couldn't he remember?
"Spike," Ramie corrected, also understanding that particular pain. "I want you to listen to me, because I will only tell you this once. We do not have much time." He had explained to Spike as best he could that time was variable between realities. Between the reality where William lived on and the one where he wreaked bloody havoc, time was completely unpredictable. So, ten minutes could have passed for Buffy. Or ten years.
It didn't matter to Spike. If he found her when she was 75 and doddering, he would take care of her. She would still shine, and he would still die for her. A million times over, even if she only had minutes left to live.
"I understand you. I know how you feel. I know how you hunger to be next to her, and hunger to avenge every wrong that has been done to her. That you ache to protect her, I know. It kills you not to know. It kills you to think she's moved on." Spike started to lunge across the table and Ramie stopped him with an upraised hand. "Because to love a Slayer is unlike anything else."
Spike's anger and hurt dimmed in comparison to his confusion. "You?"
Ramie rubbed his eyes and tried to push the pictures away, push the sounds and feelings away. But he would share to help this man do what he could not. "Yes. I was young, William, and callow. I thought I could love my Watch and protect her, guide her at the same time.
"I could not, and because I could not, I watched her die. I watched her light extinguished by one such as you were."
"I'm sorry," Spike rasped, tasting smooth skin under his lips and wincing. "I'm sorry, Laramie."
"I would forgive you did I not understand you, sympathize with you. For loving a Slayer means everything, wanting to consume her, belong to her, make her belong to you. And even a vampire can see that light, be consumed by that strength. A Slayer is like no other." He took a drink of his ever-present coffee and vowed to finish his tale. "And I did everything I could to overcome my grief. I became the rogue Watcher, the dark one who breaks all the rules. I was not always Laramie, Spike."
Understanding dawned on Spike and he nodded. "Laramie… he who weeps for love."
"It seemed a fitting name to choose. The man I was before Laramie is dead. And so not only do I understand your impatience with me, I understand both of you, Spike and William."
As he turned his back to an amazed Spike, he added, "I agreed to help you both."