*

"Oh, god – the pancake mix."

Buffy stared at the kitchen counter in dismay.  She'd woken up early, crept down the stairs with utmost care, set up all her waffle-making tools.  She'd even remembered to open both front and back doors, creating a cross-breeze that would take care of any pesky charring incidents. 

"AND took the batteries out of the smoke alarm…" she moaned, dropping her head onto the counter.  But none of that changed the fact that the box of pancake mix was, at that very moment, hanging high up on the wall of the crypt.  Unless, she thought bitterly, Rune or one of the wilier cats had knocked it down; in that case, the pancake mix was probably an inch deep all over the crypt floor, the cats, Clem...  She groaned again.

"Good morning to you too, sunshine."  Xander announced, strolling in through the wide open door. Buffy jerked upright at the sound of his voice, pouting.

"Nooooo.  This morning is sooo not good," she wailed in reply, waving her hands at her counter of preparations.  The waffle iron blinked insolently in response, and Buffy yanked the plug from the socket.  That'd teach it.

Xander froze and sniffed; it was a conditioned response to evidence of Buffy cooking.  But no scorched smell tainted the air, and Buffy herself was looking remarkably neat and tidy.  No splashes of milk or smears of flour…  "The electricity isn't working?" he hazarded.

"No, I forgot the stupid mix at Clem's, and now the stupid cats are probably covered in our breakfast."  She scowled, and Xander almost laughed at the sight.  Hair in pigtails, wearing an oversized shirt and a pair of men's pajama pants, practically stamping her foot in irritation – sometimes he forgot what a tiny girl she was.  Only at times like this, when she was acting like a toddler, did her size really strike him.  Grinning in spite of himself, he set his tools down just inside the door. 

"Buffy, I'm pretty sure we can scrape together something to eat," he chuckled, rounding the counter.  There wasn't much to clean up; she'd pulled a lot of stuff out of drawer, but none of it was actually dirty.  "There's definitely enough food around for all three of us - it'll just have to be a little less homemade, more storebought."  She trailed after him as he collected the various bowls and measuring spoons, sighing gustily as he tucked them back into the cupboards.  At the tenth pointed exhalation, he turned and pushed her towards a stool. 

"Sit, I'll throw something together."  There was a package of English muffins around here somewhere, he thought.  Somewhere in the back of one of the bottom drawers, maybe…?

"Eugh."

Buffy leaned over the bar, her head poking over the lip of the countertop.  "What?"

"You don't want to know."  Xander deftly lobbed the truly moldy muffins into the trashcan, wrinkling his nose.  He moved on to the next drawer.  "It may not be fancy, it may not be attractive, but there has to be something in here that'll tide us over till lunch…"

"But…"  At her tone, Xander stopped rummaging and looked over curiously.  "But it's Dawn's first day home," she finished miserably.  Xander paused, watching Buffy fidget on the other side of the counter.  She slouched, twisting a paper towel in her hands.  "Mom would always make pancakes when we had vacations from school, it was a thing."

"Ah," Xander replied.  There wasn't really much he could do when she got like this; his own mother wasn't the paragon of virtue Joyce had been, and he really didn't know what to say.  But he could try.

"Is this why I heard Sarah MacLachlan coming from your room when I got up this morning?"

"What?  It's the music of deep thoughts," Buffy said defensively.

"Yeah – or the music of spiraling depression," he responded, a little exasperated.  He got up from the floor, knees popping loudly.  Dawn's warning was still fresh in his mind, and he wondered for a moment if he should just shut up and let it go.  But he'd caught something the night before, a hint of where she'd been, an indication of whom she'd met on patrol.  And something in him wanted to see if she could be trusted to tell him. 

Or, more importantly – if he could be trusted to hear.

After a moment, he decided to forge ahead.  "Were you deep-thinking about your mom, or about something else?"

Buffy hesitated.  Something about the way he was standing told her that he knew, knew that she'd met with Spike.  And she, for one, was feeling a little rebellious this morning.

"I was thinking about Spike," she said defiantly.  She waited for the blast, but Xander just nodded.  Buffy looked at him warily, but continued. 

"He was at Clem's.  We walked for a while, talked about stuff, and then I came home."  She straightened in her chair.  "We talked about a lot of things, and then he walked me home.  So I was with him for a while last night."

"I know."  Buffy tried to pull condemnation out of that word, some other typical Xander-reaction, but there was nothing.  He stated it flatly, almost tonelessly.  If her back had been to him, it would've sounded casual.  But standing face-to-face, with his dark eyes pinning her down, his expression intense and neutral… She quailed a little.

Xander didn't break his gaze.  "You don't smoke," he said simply.  "And last night, when you woke us up, you kind of smelled smoky."  Again he fell silent.  Looking at her so evenly, so steady, like he had turned to stone.  But he breathed normally, and his muscles remained lax; not stone after all.

Buffy didn't like it.  It wasn't like Xander to bottle things up, to just keep his mouth shut.  Sure, she'd wished for it often enough, but now that he was doing it?  She wanted to push him until he'd yell, make him angry, make him say something stupid and cruel.  It was so much easier to ignore what he thought when he stated it so crudely.

He looked away abruptly, and Buffy felt herself sway in reaction.  Silently, methodically, he began to rifle through the kitchen again; Buffy turned back to the paper towel in her hands.  Or what remained of it – shreds of paper littered the countertop, and Buffy couldn't remember doing it at all.

The uncertain silence had softened when Dawn meandered into the kitchen, lurching slightly, but otherwise looking remarkably awake for 8 AM on a Tuesday.  Dawn was not a morning person; she tended to work on instinct and stream-of-consciousness before 9 AM.  Without pausing, she walked over to Buffy and wrapped her arms around her, completely oblivious to the vague tension hanging between her sister and Xander.  With Buffy sitting on the high stool, she was the perfect height for Dawn to burrow into her shoulder.  Buffy barely had time to adjust to the embrace before Dawn began to ramble.

"I just got the best-smelling deodorant.  It smells like the deodorant I got when I was 11, and you know how you got the 'Teen Spirit' kind, and it smelled funny, but you thought that was how all deodorant was supposed to smell, and then you got normal-smelling deodorant when you figured it out, and now I just got another deodorant and it totally takes me back."  She squinted down at the stick in her hand.  "I think it was bad then, because I wanted to smell older.  But now I'm old, so I get all nostalgic over deodorant."

And that was all it took.  Buffy began to laugh, delighted, ringing laughter that echoed around the kitchen, chasing off the shadows of grief and doubt that had gathered.  Xander's deeper timbre followed, a chuckling rumble.  A good sound that broke the ice between them.

"God – you are so weird."  Buffy beamed down at Dawn, who helpfully uncapped the deodorant and offered Buffy a sniff.  "Before I put my nose anywhere near that, has it already been in your armpit?"

Dawn rolled her eyes.  "Once.  Twice, at most."

Buffy made a face, but tentatively inhaled.  "Oh, yeah – I remember that."

Dawn hopped around the counter.  "Want to sniff?  It's funny-smelling," announced Dawn, holding out the stick to Xander.

He looked at her askance.  "Like, 'Eww! Try this, it's so gross' funny, or funny ha-ha?"

She smacked him lightly.  "Like 'Oooh, this is all nostalgic' funny."

"Oh."  He leaned forward.  "Ah!  Eau de Sarah Morgan!"

"Who?"

"Sarah Morgan – my girlfriend in sixth grade."  He waggled his eyebrows.  "We used to sneak off to the bookshelves together.  She'd read Plato, I'd draw in the margins.  And then I went to junior high."  He placed one hand on his heart and sighed melodramatically.

Dawn grinned.  "And what happened to her?"

"She went directly to Harvard."  He capped the stick and handed it back.  "Funny 'oh, weird', I think."

"Eh.  So," Dawn chirped, looking around the kitchen eagerly.  "Breakfast?"  She couldn't miss the guilty look that flew between Buffy and Xander.  "Or not?"

"Ah, we're having technical difficulties with that," admitted Xander.

Buffy clarified.  "As in, technically, we have no food."

"Oh."  Dawn thought for a moment.  "What about the frozen stuff in the fridge, the Eggos?  Or maybe cereal?"

Buffy shook her head.  "Had to chuck the Eggos when they froze to the ice cube trays, and we haven't had cereal since…" She paused.  "Since the last time you made Rice Krispie Treats, actually."  God, they were a healthy family.

Desperate, Dawn appealed to Xander.  "Do you have anything hidden away?  Anything?"

"Not unless you want one of the evil green hairy muffins of death."  He looked at the trashcan dubiously.

"Hairy?  Gew.  No.  And actually, never tell me something like that again, I have an overactive imagination." 

Well, Buffy thought, there was one choice that hadn't been mentioned.  "If you want, I guess we could go to the Pancake House…"  Not exactly haute cuisine, but hey.  At least it was sticking with the pancake tradition.  "It's not that bad at breakfast."

Dawn smiled brilliantly.  "No, Buffy!  It's great, I love the Pancake House!"  Buffy shot her sister a look, but it was too early in the morning for Dawn to be using guile.  In fact, Dawn bounced a little on her chair, beaming at Buffy. 

"Can I have the chocolate chip ones?" she asked excitedly.  "Oooh, no, Buffy – can we do the split-thing, when you get blueberry and I get chocolate, and then we split them?  OOH!"  Her voice ratcheted up another octave as she spun to Xander.  "And you're here!"

"I am," he agreed, amused.

"So, can you get a different kind too, and we'll just share all of them?"  Suddenly, she lowered her voice, her tone turning intense and serious.  "There's this crepe thing, and you can get apple inside, and it's french…"

"And they don't burn the food?" Buffy added dryly.  "Because that immediately gives them one up on me."

"Hey – the crispy brown bit is good for you.  I always eat it."  Xander said, smiling widely.  She returned the look suspiciously.

Dawn just laughed.  "Yeah, but you pretend to eat anything we burn.  Like that turkey last Christmas?  The one that still had giblets in it when it was cooked?"  She turned to Buffy.  "Yeah, he totally didn't eat it, he took it with him to a site and left it in the middle of the woods for wild animals." 

"Oh, really?"  Buffy's pursed her lips thoughtfully as Dawn smirked. It HAD been suspicious, the way the entire thing had disappeared in one day – but Xander had insisted, and Buffy really didn't want the thing around anymore, so she wasn't complaining.  Then again, it wasn't exactly against her nature to needle Xander a little about it.

Xander just looked at Dawn pointedly.  "I'm glad you remember Christmas, missy, 'cause that's the last a certain young lady will see of Santa Xander if you continue this disturbing trend of confession and incrimination." 

Dawn stuck her tongue out at him, grinning, and Buffy snorted.  "So, it's the Pancake House?"

"Yep!  Lemme just go get dressed," chirped Dawn.  She jumped up from her chair, but belatedly remembered her weak ankle and awkwardly collapsed back against the counter.  "Augh."

Buffy was next to her in a second.  "Does it still hurt?" 

"No, no, I just forgot about it until I stood up," Dawn blushed.  "That was more of a spaz-out than an actual reaction, sorry."

"Drama queen."

"Oh, gee, I wonder where I get it from?"

Buffy gasped.  "Strumpet!  That's it, you go straight to your room."  She pretended to grab Dawn's arm and yank her towards the stairs, but Xander could see the way the grip actually supported Dawn, held her up.  For her part, Dawn put up a token resistance, waving her cast menacingly.

"You're not the boss of me!"

"Am too!"

"Am not… uh, are not!"

"'Am not'?!?  Illiterate goon!"

It was better having Dawn home, thought Xander.  Better for Buffy and, he had to admit – better for him.

"And I thought I was a picky dresser," Buffy muttered to Xander as she grabbed a sweater from the end of the banister and shouted up the stairs.  "Dawn!  Come on, you're not dressing for the prom, you're dressing for breakfast at a truck stop."

The reply echoed down the stairs.  "Truckers?  Oooh, baby!  Now I'm gonna wear the EXTRA hoochie top!"

"So I'll be bringing the 'Jailbait' sign again?" Xander shouted back.  He and Buffy waited for a reply, but apparently hunger had overridden humor.  They both drifted to the door as Dawn thumped down the stairs after them.

"Okay, so straight to the land of starch and sugar, right?"  Xander pulled the door shut after Dawn.

Buffy nodded.  "Yeah, but we've got to stop at Anya's first, grab a new ace bandage from the training room for Her Highness' ankle."

"What?  We've got tons of those under the bathroom sink!  And pancakes, ladies – priorities."

"Hey, I'm on your side.  But she's got these bizarre phobias, two of which are feet and bandages." 

"Wait wait wait," Dawn protested, hobbling down the front steps.  "Fine, I'll give you the foot phobia's dumb, but I have it, so there.  But I'm NOT scared of bandages.  The ace bandage is purely foot-phobic."  She sat heavily on the last step and pointed at Buffy.

"If I had a bandage phobia, I would've had to move out as soon as you started with the slaying.  No, I have a BAND-AID phobia."

Buffy smirked.  "Because that makes so much more sense?"

"Well, yeah, when your older sister seems to trail them behind her everywhere she goes!  Fuzzy, used, limp band-aids that stuck to my clothes when I went to school."  Dawn screwed up her face.  "Gross, bloody band-aids that she'd leave on the kitchen counter?  The WET band-aids I'd find clogging the shower drain?"

"Eugh."  Buffy made a face.  "Sorry."

"Exactly, and you can just stop giggling right now, Mr. Please-Don't-Kill-Me-Scary-Clown."

"Ah, but a clown DID try to kill me, the phobia's justified," Xander pointed out sagely.  "So there's method to MY madness."

"Yeah," Buffy said, "but the clown tried to kill you after you were already afr…"

"Technicality," he claimed, waving her off.  "Now if we don't get to eat within the next twenty minutes, my stomach's going to climb right up my esophagus and eat YOU, so let's get going."  He opened the door of his truck for Dawn.  "The Magic Box incursion will be a brief operation – in, out, and the little one with the gimpy leg doesn't get out of the car because she spends too long sniffing the candles."

Buffy laughed as Dawn squawked in protest, but agreed.  "I'm in, I'm out, then we eat.  A minute, tops." 

"Shit."

Buffy was out of the door before the truck stopped moving.  She sprinted across the street, ignoring morning traffic in her panic.  Cars swerved, their horns sounding from inches away, but all Buffy could see was the front of the store.

Every display in the Magic Box had been ransacked.

Books lay littered on the shop floor, candles tipped over and crushed, the glass fronts of the display cases hung in jagged shards.  Buffy wrestled with the keys in the lock, barely able to tear her eyes away from the view through the window.  Oh why, WHY had Anya and Marcus decided to go on vacation this week?  And WHY had she agreed to watch the store?  Buffy's stomach dropped as she thought of what could have been stolen, could have been destroyed… Columns of figures in Anya's neat script began to scroll through her head, money she could never afford to repay. 

Suddenly, a huge crash sounded from inside.  Buffy gave up the struggle with the lock; in one swift movement, she pulled back and gave the door a powerful kick that nearly took it off its hinges.  Light poured into the store, and she rushed inside, blinking furiously to adjust to the dark.

The interior was a mess.  The vandal had been there a long time, from the looks of it.  Rare books lay open on the floor, and there had been at least one offering made.  The air hung heavy with incense and a thick, metallic, cloying scent that Buffy didn't want to identify.  Lights had been turned on at intervals, though she couldn't sense a pattern.  The shop, reopened only a year before, looked almost as bad as it had when… Buffy's mind skipped away from the thought.  But she, her sister, her friends had all spent so much time and effort bringing the shop back to life, to see it like this?  It was a wreck, pure and simple, and it made Buffy want to cry.

Until she heard the crashing sound again.

Well-honed reflexes guided her to the back corner of the shop and she sprinted, her feet lightly picking across the rubble on the floor.  It wasn't just a crashing sound, she realized – it was an active, ongoing sound, the rhythm of desperation and carelessness and it was getting louder as she approached.  It was only two more steps until she could see around the corner, then one, then –

She gasped.

Spike was halfway up the bookcase, his back to her, and he was ripping books down from the shelves in furious motions.  He'd cleaned out the first few levels, then climbed the bookcase like a ladder, balancing like a rockclimber as he violently swept the shelves clear.  Searching for something, making angry noises, not caring at all what damaged he caused.

Not caring at all.

She was on him in a moment, fingers dug deep into the folds of his jacket, dragging him off his perch with an outraged scream.  Power flowed down her arms, through her legs, coursed around her chest in bands that squeezed her heart so firmly, she thought she felt it burst.  The sensations were too much, she couldn't notice that Spike didn't fight her grip, that his back collapsed against her, that he could barely stand.  Spike was no longer a consideration.

She threw him out of the alcove, a terrible flight that landed him in the center of the store, and followed, stalking to his supine form.  She reveled in the sparks that clouded her vision, the way her muscles lengthened and flowed; she knelt beside him, marveling at her body's precision.  The way her hand so easily pinned his struggling form to the ground by the shoulder, grinding it into the granite floor.  She could push a little harder, she realized, and grind that shoulder to powder.

But there was no need.  Because her other hand knew exactly where a stake was hidden, and it flew to the spot, drawing out the long splinter of wood with instinctive finesse.  Pin the creature down, then pierce its heart, a simple stanza of thrilling verse.  She watched her own hands in fascination; they were so adept, so clean, so concise.

And then the image was marred.  A single hand coming up to grasp her wrist, a pale white hand.  At first she took no notice, intent on plunging the splinter through its target, but something was wrong.  The third hand was working in concurrence with her two, pulling the weapon closer, guiding it to the core.  But that was wrong, she knew – only two hands could do this act, only she could harness this power truly.  She pulled her strike.  The third hand had no right to be there, and she fixed it with a baleful stare.

White.  White, but horribly mangled.  Blue-gray-white lines ran through it, as though the hand was fueled by chalk instead of blood.  A lattice of ravaged skin, moldy white and purple, stretched tight across knucklebones so stark, they could only belong to one who was starving.  Was he starving?  Unwillingly, her mind followed the logical line – from hand to arm, arm to neck, neck to face. 

And something snapped.

"Oh my god, Spike."  Buffy breathed.  She realized that she had a stake in her hand; she tossed it aside and leaned forward, desperately searching the vampire's face.

If it could even be called a face anymore.

His skin was so tight.  She reached out to follow the line of his cheekbone, but stopped at the last moment – it looked like the skin might split at a touch.  By contrast, his eyes had almost swollen shut and were weeping milky tears.  He was blinking, though.  Frantically.  She avoided his eyes for a moment longer, skimming her gaze over his swollen lips, the slight froth at the corners of his mouth, the two deep punctures where his fangs, at some point, seemed to have gone straight through his lower lip.  She had never seen him injured like this.  She felt helpless.

"Kane…"  The name came out in a hushed gust of air, and Buffy missed it.  She quickly bent over his lips again, tried to encourage him by brushing a finger against his brow.  Her hand came away covered in his hair.

"T's Kane."  She was close enough to hear this time, and also close enough to smell.  The word was borne on a wind that stank of decomposition and garlic, almost causing her to retch.  She swallowed firmly – every motion of his tongue was an effort, she could tell, and anything beyond guttural noises would be beyond him. 

His stiff and crabbed hand suddenly pushed her away, and she obeyed, sitting back on her heels anxiously.  All at once, a strangled sound wrenched from him and he writhed, the froth at his mouth foaming even more furiously, the white tears coursing down his face in hissing trails that left scorched red tracks behind them.  It lasted only seconds, and then he was still again.

Buffy pulled herself closer and met his eyes.  They were still blue, though the whites had darkened to a dingy gray, flecked in places with yellow.  But he was still in there, and fighting enough to focus on her.  To draw her in.

"Kane, can Kane help you?" she guessed desperately.  Unconsciously, she caught his twisted hand in hers, making repetitive soothing gestures against his wrist.  He snarled in response to her question, and she tried again.

"Kane did this?"  Yes, that was it, and he told her so by staring her in the eye, holding his body absolutely still for one whole second – a massive effort; as soon as he relaxed his will, the tremors started anew, shaking his body relentlessly.

He didn't expect to be saved, she realized.  He wanted her to avenge him, to act on his last words, to –

"Oh, God… Anya's gonna flip.  Buffy, what the hell – oh, holy shit!"

Xander froze in the doorway, a silhouette backed by the rising sun.  One hand carried a wrench, obviously pulled from the bed of his truck only moments before.  But the scene he faced didn't make any sense; Anya's shop looted, Buffy on the floor and close to tears, and Spike – twitching and gurgling, apparently unable to control his body at all. 

It wasn't something that could be taken in easily.

He was so confused that he didn't think to stop Dawn as she stepped out from behind him, her own stake held at the ready.  He heard the girl breathe Spike's name, saw her lurch down the few stairs to the shop floor.  He knew that something was going to happen, and that he really should try to stop it.

But that kind of intuition never gives enough notice.  So all he could do was stand and gape as Dawn cried the vampire's name again, her arms extended to him with fingers splayed wide. 

And then the watched as her ankle collapsed and she slammed to her knees.  The skin stretched across her kneecaps split like tissue paper, even though they landed on soft carpet and scattered papers.  He felt himself lunge forward as Dawn's head rolled back, her arms dropped to her sides, and her now-kneeling figure began to tip over.  But he was at least five feet away, and she was falling fast.

Buffy saw her sister fall, but didn't make sense of it until the skin on Dawn's knees split.  Then all of Spike's words about fragility, of mystery illnesses – all of it flooded back.  Buffy watched as Dawn's eyes left Spike's form and rolled back in her skull, her mouth falling open as she lost consciousness.  And she began to fall forward, headlong towards a spot where the stone floor peeked through the carpets and papers, and Buffy realized that her sister's skull would shatter like an egg.  She lunged as well, briefly wondering how to get around Spike.

But there was no need.  As Dawn pitched forward on the balance of her knees, something slid between her and the jumble of sharp-cornered books and boxes, something's firm hands caught and cushioned her head before it came to rest on a thumping chest.  And by the time Buffy and Xander had reached the spot where Dawn had fallen, Spike was cradling her to him, murmuring her name through undamaged lips, and brushing back her hair with nimble fingers.  Whole again, and weeping.

TBC