Sam and Josh were having a much more enjoyable morning doing whatever it was they did on a regular basis. Monday was shaping up to be a very average day, as far as they went, and they were looking forward to getting together at lunch to go over what they had learnt the day before.
Josh was dramatising what he had seen of the spell, and C.J and Donna's fight, using his fries and a few lettuce leaves. Donna watched them from Josh's doorway for a moment.
"It didn't do like that," Donna said, as the chip representing her flew across the table and onto the floor.
"C.J and I weren't at full strength, so we weren't throwing each other. And she's taught me how to land."
She picked the chip up off the floor and threw it in the waste paper basket, then sat down on the desk.
"We're patrolling tonight, do you want to come?"
"Patrolling?"
"C.J and I will be doing a tour of a few cemeteries and making sure that none of the dead people are undead people."
"Like Spike," Sam said.
"Well, no, Spike had a soul," Donna said.
She was going to launch into the explanation of Vampires and souls and demons and evilness that C.J and Toby had provided her with, but decided against it. Sam and Josh had both just accepted her statement and looked as if that were the limit of their imaginations.
"Do you want to come and see me and C.J kill Vampire's tonight?" she asked.
Josh looked at Sam, who shrugged.
"Yeah," he said.
Donna left them to find Margaret.
While C.J was preparing for her second briefing of the day, the Scooby gang were just waking up.
It took Buffy a few moments to work out where she was. The room was pleasantly dark, and she felt comfortable, but it was not familiar. She rolled over and came face to face with Spike's still, sleeping form. She watched him for a few moments, but he didn't wake, so she got out of bed and went in search of a towel and a shower.
He hadn't undressed her, which was good of him, but she felt a bit pressed into her clothes now.
Everyone else appeared for breakfast within the next half an hour or so, even Spike, who sat in the darkest corner of the room. Willow spent her time planning their afternoon's sightseeing while the other packed and prepared themselves to return home.
Spike wished them all an enjoyable afternoon and sloped towards a television. He decided that he'd watch the briefing, observe the Slayer in her natural habitat. And it truly was.
C.J had as much confidence behind the Press Podium as Buffy had holding the blunt of a stake. But the Press were idiots, Spike decided. There was something jointly dumb about them. They didn't really care about the news, or the strange deaths that had hit their city over the last weeks. They were much more interested in putting this calm, intelligent and confident woman and the spot and ask her questions the President's state of mind.
He saw it coming. The mongrels played off each other and suddenly the room was silent and she had nowhere to go but back off the podium and into the arms of, well, the people she was supposed to stop this happening to.
Hardly a happy thought, Spike thought as stood up and paced across the room. When Buffy had had her confidence cut from under her she had she had run to him, and question about how to learn from her mistakes.
Spike sighed. He wanted to go back to Sunnydale where he could take his crypt back over from whoever had nicked it in three days he'd been gone.
As far as he was concerned, dealing with the nasties on the Hellmouth was preferable to ever noticing anything political.
The others had pretty much the same idea. Half a day looking at the sights in the capital had been nice. But not as thrilling as even Willow had thought it would be, given that they, with the President, his wife and their staff had raised the dead in the basement the day before.
"Do we have to read anything more?" Anya asked. "I'm hungry."
"And tired," Dawn added.
Willow grimaced.
"Okay, we have dinner now," she said, putting a line through the list she'd made of things to see.
"I'm older than anything built here," Anya said, trying to justify her reaction.
Several people near them eyed her and moved away.
"Well, I am. And you can come back with Tara and actually visit the White House if you want to. I've missed a lot of sales coming here, we need to reopen the shop."
"We still have five and a half hours until the plan leaves," Giles said.
"But we need to pack, and actually get the airport, and check in that could take, oh, all of an hour and a half?"
"We'll have dinner, and then head back, okay?" Willow suggested.
"Sounds good," Buffy said, grinning. Everyone felt better, then and locked on to the search for food.
Buffy was even looking forward to the familiar sights of Sunnydale.