A/N: A bit on the angsty side. Sorry about the long time between updates!
She sent them all away hours ago, presumably to do research on the invisible people-possessing demon.
Dawnie's gonna get possessed, and then it'll be Xander's turn.
She felt a twinge of guilt for not telling them exactly what would happen. For not protecting her sister, her friends. For letting them get hurt.
But this demon was already loose. She didn't know another way to stop it.
Better the evil you know.
No, no! That wasn't true. How could she even think that? She'd seen what was ahead. And anything, anything, would be a better alternative. Anything. That future had hit rock bottom. So she could only go uphill with any changes, right?
Changes. Right.
She really should make a list.
~ TO DO: ~
Get rid of hitchhiker demon.2. Get steady job (NOT at Doublemeat Palace). Give retail another try. NOT construction. Those lousy chauvinistic bas—
3. Swing by Doublemeat and slay "old lady" that likes cherry pie.
4. Find Nerd Herd. Eliminate as necessary (jail? Mexico?).
5. Fix basement. Call plumber first this time.
6. Ask Wills & Tara for tutoring help before going to classes.
7. Make sure Dawn stays in on Halloween.
8. Make sure Xander doesn't get "musical-happy."
9. Try to get Wills & Tara to talk things out; get Willow to ease up on magick.
10. Have a talk with Dawn about the kleptomania.
11. Have a talk with Angel. Kick his ass…even if he doesn't know what he did wrong…or, in a manner of speaking, will never actually do. But still—he was a blockhead and…and…yeah.
12. Talk to Xander about Anya. Tell him to talk to her before rushing things.
13. Have a REAL talk with Spike. Do NOT jump him in any alleys, abandoned buildings, cemeteries, backyards, etc.…until said talk.
14. Get Giles to stay.
Buffy sucked on the pen for a while, racking her brain for any other things that had happened that year.
Oh, right! Riley.
15. Make sure Spike doesn't harbor those Suvolte demon eggs.
16. Get Riley to remove chip.
17. Think of more things to do.
That was basically it. The other things that had happened…they would all be prevented. Every last one.
Now for the long run:
17. Think of more things to do. Warn Council about possible rise of the First. Tell them to monitor the Potentials, maybe gather together and give them real training. Best-case scenario: Sunnydale.
18. Get Willow to track Caleb. Find out where he is, and then kill him before he can do more damage, ASAP.
19. Guard the seal. Make sure no one digs it up.
20. Find the vineyard. Get the scythe.
21. Have Will & Tara do the spell. Make the Potentials all Slayers. That takes care of the army needed to win…or at least temporarily incapacitate. Whatever it was that happened to the First.
She put down the pen. There! That was a good list to work on. She ripped the piece of paper off the pad and tacked it to the corkboard.
***
He blinked and raised his head. The effects of the hangover chose that precise moment to hit full-force.
He dropped his head with a thud.
Wait a minute…no thud. He wasn't on the hard floor of the crypt, where he'd assumed he had probably passed out last night. No, he was on something soft…the bed? A neatly made bed, no less.
How'd he end up there, if he'd passed out drunk last night? And judging from the sheer size of his headache, he'd probably broken the record on "passed-out." So…
The events of last evening drifted in and out of focus, disconnected and fragmented. The alcohol…smoking outside, beneath the window…Buffy…
Buffy! Back. Buffy was back. And he could tell it was daylight now, which meant…yes, she had come back last night. Just several hours ago.
And, and…the flashes of images.
Yes. She'd been here. He could still smell her lingering scent. She had been here. In this very room. Her hands had touched these very sheets.
Oh bollocks.
She'd been here whilst he'd been drunk.
The vampire had an urge to rip his hair out by its bleached roots.
And I can't even remember what I did last night. When she comes by to stake me, I won't even know what I've done to piss her off this time.
Just bloody great.
Spike loved to brood as much as the next soulless vampire—and one had to admit, morose musing and self-berating on the topic of how once-trusty Jack Daniel's had just ruined one's un-life was a bucket of fun—, but he couldn't help wondering why, if he'd royally pissed the Slayer off last night, he wasn't in an ashtray at the very moment. Why was he still undead?
Maybe, just maybe, he'd already been stone cold when she'd come around. That was the only possibility. The vampire knew that if he'd been halfway coherent, he'd have said some things that the Slayer could do without hearing.
But no…he remembered smelling her perfume. And not just the lingering traces of it, mixed in with her scent.
And if he thought hard enough, between the attacks of the migraine pounding his skull in half, he could halfway recall speaking to her in the dark. Last night…
Oh bollocks. He'd said all the sappy bits, poured out his shriveled, dead heart. Practically shoved it on her lap.
Had she laughed?
***
She climbed the stairs, up to her room. She needed to restock her weapons…or at least change.
Anything to stop the thoughts racing around in my head. Or, to be more exact, the thoughts that I'm repressing and trying not to think about. Because thinking is bad. Very, very ba—
'Cause one could never be too careful on a daytime patrol. Yeah, just when the sun shone with all its glory and one thought it was safe, bad things would happen.
That's the good ol' Sunnydale spirit.
The Slayer opened the door—and stopped.
"D-dawn? What are you doing in here?"
The teen turned from the bulletin board, an unreadable expression on her face.
At least her eyes aren't white.
"This." Dawn furrowed her brow, holding up a somewhat crumpled piece of lined paper. "What is this?"
Buffy's stomach did a flip-flop. She could suddenly taste the pancakes from breakfast, with a syrup of bile and stomach acid for extra flavor.
"N-nothing," she said quickly, willing her body to move and snatch the flimsy piece of notebook paper away from her sister before her secret was out. But she couldn't force her limbs to cooperate. And it didn't help that the cat was pretty much already out of the bag.
The teen frowned, hurt shining through her blue eyes. She shook her head and let the paper drop, pushing past the Slayer on her way out.
Buffy wished that the floor would open up and swallow her.
Where's the Hellmouth when I need it?
***
Willow grabbed yet another book from the pile and began searching for a clue as to what was going on.
"Um, I was just wondering…did anyone else think that Buffy seemed a little…strange?"
The redheaded witch snapped around to glare at Xander. He held up his hands defensively. "I'm just saying."
Willow relaxed about an inch. "Buffy's perfectly fine," she said a tad dubiously. "She's just…she needs some time to…to readjust and all."
Xander nodded, but the witch could tell that he didn't completely buy it. And because her best friend was hesitant, she began to doubt her own convictions.
"Why, Xander? Is something wrong?"
Please, Goddess. Don't let there be anything wrong. Don't force me to…
"No, no, just a feeling."
The ex-demon by his side snorted loudly. "Oh, please, Xander." She turned and regarded the rest of the congregation as her fiancé groaned audibly and buried his face in an open book. "He's just suspicious because of what Spike was talking about last night. And the vampire's right, you know. Even if he does steal all the Burba weed in stock. Raising people out of Hell is seldom good and doesn't come without consequences. Well, maybe once or twice."
A slight crease appeared on Willow's smooth forehead.
"Spike? What did you tell him?" she demanded, perhaps a mite too quickly. Tara frowned.
"Willow, chill. We didn't tell him anything. We just saw him hanging around Buffy's house last night, that's all. He was acting a little strange."
She didn't "chill." On the contrary, Willow's frowned deepened. "What do you mean, 'strange?' How strange?"
Xander shrugged and spread his hands as if to say, "duh."
"Hello, this is Bleach-boy we're talking about. Never exactly normal. And why're we talking about him anyway?"
Anya shrugged. "I'm bored with all this talk." She gave Xander a nudge and a mischievous grin. "Let's, you know…go. Now."
"Ahn, we're researching, remember? We have to find out what this demon's all about. Why it's going around possessing and freaking everyone out."
The ex-demon just shrugged. "They can do it without us. I wanna have sex, Xander, and I wanna now."
Xander cringed. "Ahn. Don't you remember that little talk about private things that should remain…private?"
She just shrugged again. "Well, I tried to avoid bringing up sex, but you didn't listen—"
Anya found it difficult to talk through the hand clamped over her mouth.
"Uh, we should be going now. Be back in a few." He cautiously removed his hand. A mistake.
"It had better last longer than a few minutes mister, that's all I'm say—"
***
"So, what's the list?" Xander asked, straightening his shirt.
"Possible hitchhikers," Anya replied, rearranging her hair. She took a seat and gave a bright smile to the two Wiccans. "Demons that might have come out of Hell at the same time Buffy did."
Xander just sighed. "No, I mean the list of what Tara and Wills find out about the hitchhiker."
"Skaggmore demons, Trellbane demons, Skitterers, Large and Small Bone-Eaters. That's what we have so far. Five species of demons that have been known to move trans-dimensionally. Two of them may be invisible in this dimension, and, uh, two others can perform spells to alter perception," Willow announced.
"Well, that's four. What's the other one like?"
"Uh, like the others, only dripping with viscous fluid," Tara clarified.
Anya wrinkled her nose.
"So, should we concentrate on how to kill those, or should we try to find more?" Xander asked.
"I'm not sure. Maybe...maybe some of us can, uh, keep going finding more, and the others can look into ways to get rid of the ones we have."
"Good idea," Willow said with a nod. "I'll look into what Buffy suggested. That maybe this…thing…came from thaumogenesis."
"Whatto-whatty-sis?" Xander demanded.
"Thaumogenesis. It's when doing a spell actually creates a being," Tara clarified.
"Oh." Anya nodded. "So Spike was right. We did this. I knew the spell would mess up some way. Especially when looking at our track records."
"Hey, it's just a suggestion," Willow said defensively, unconsciously bristling at the allusion to her past mess-ups. "It's probably not thaumogenesis anyway. I'm just taking a look, making sure."
Anya shrugged. "Whatever you say."
***
The Slayer headed for her destination at a snail's pace. She needed to find Dawn and explain. Somehow.
I knew I shouldn't have made a stupid list and left it lying around. Okay, pinned to a board in my room. Which is supposedly private. But still…
It wasn't like she was searching for her sister, exactly. She knew where the young girl was, where she had to be. Dawn could always be found there when she needed comfort.
Guess the Summers sisters have that in common.
She knew that if she didn't pick up the pace, Dawn would end up blurting out all she had read. Which would seriously complicate things, if not blow them to smithereens.
Yet Buffy Summers hesitated at the gate.
Maybe it's just because I've never been here in broad daylight before.
But even as the thought formed, she knew she was lying. She knew that it was as much facing him as explaining to her sister that was keeping her from entering. And she knew that she'd probably be much more relaxed with a few shots of whiskey.
Wow. I got my most desperate wish granted…and I'm milling around in his backyard, trying to come up with a rationale for getting the hell out.
Well, it wasn't like he wouldn't take care of Dawn. Her sister was safe in his place, so technically she didn't have to go in there and collect her, right?
She swallowed hard. What was she afraid of? This was what she had wanted, right? Dawn's little discovery was unfortunate, but it was nothing that couldn't be explained away. There were many perfectly reasonable-sounding ideas on that list.
And she wasn't afraid, no siree. The Slayer couldn't afford to be afraid.
She strode purposefully through the tombstones. But mere yards away from the familiar crypt, she slowed and stopped. It was like moving through molasses.
She didn't want to go in there.
She didn't.