*

Usually, she found cocoa achingly sweet, too much sugar cutting the drink like a knife, stinging her tongue.  But this – this was perfect.  The sweetness hit the roof of her mouth and spread warmly, waiting until it left her tongue to declare the hint of chocolate beneath.  And all around, milk, which somehow gentled and refined the other two ingredients.  She swallowed again, gratefully.

"Good?"  Dawn asked from the other side of the couch.  Willow nodded, cradling the mug close to her chest.  She had never thought that she would sit on this couch again, feeling the warmth seep through this mug and into her palms.  There were some wishes that were too precious to really hope for, and this had been one of them.

"Good.  Because I need to set some things straight with you."

The tone of voice was enough to set her pulse racing.  Willow looked up, startled.  Dawn was watching her calmly, but with a sort of determination in her gaze.  Dawn had set her own mug on the coffee table and was so poised, so controlled – Willow suddenly got the taste of iron on her tongue, and it made sense.  There was something incredibly steely about the teenager's attitude. 

That was new.

"You do?"  No, that sounded too weak.  She cleared her throat, tried again.  "Is this something I should be discussing with Buffy?"

Dawn's lips twisted wryly.  "Yeah, well, she talks tough, but Buffy doesn't really like discussions like the one we're about to have."

And suddenly, Willow realized how the dynamics in the house had shifted.  Buffy had always been the impulsive one, reined in only by her friends and her mentors.  When she (and the guilt dug at her again, though she managed to ignore it) had destroyed much of that, someone had needed to step in, to become Buffy's compass.

The whiny child could not have assumed that role.  But this woman she was seeing now – she could. 

And clearly, she had.

Dawn spoke calmly, but the change was remarkable.  She placed her cocoa on the table and turned to face Willow, her face impassive. 

"I'm very sorry about Tara, Willow.  I think I said that at the time, but I'm not sure it got through."  Willow winced slightly, but Dawn continued.  "I don't want to draw this out, but I need to know what's going on with you.  Because if you're unstable at all, we're going to have to fix that before there's a situation when we have to rely on you."

It was odd.  Willow had imagined this question, but she'd always seen it asked in an accusatory manner.  Dawn's voice was smooth and even, her expression frank.  There would be no judgment here.

And so the tale tumbled out.  The blackouts, the temptation, the triggers, the guilt, all in one constant stream of confession that wove in and out of the room.  And little by little, the words didn't sound so bad.  Dawn nodded and sympathized, the cocoa was slowly finished, and the light began to fill the room so that even the shadows of memory were chased away. 

*

Buffy laid down the shovel and rubbed her hands together.  Her palms rasped against each other, dry and rough from digging so long, the familiar maroon welts of blood-blisters rising in swollen contour.  The needling pain the friction caused felt good.

"Just can't get away from the cemeteries, can I," she breathed, watching Xander as he carefully evened the freshly-turned earth.  Spike had retreated into the house when the sun got too high to bear – by then, they had excavated a sizeable chunk of the backyard.  Buffy and Xander hadn't missed his company; he'd silently taken the handling of the shrouded corpses upon himself, not allowing the others too near, and hadn't communicated in more than grunts until the girls were laid in the ground.  And then he'd vanished. 

Maybe he'd had enough of cemeteries too.

Xander looked over at her, his face streaked with dirt, and rested his wrists on the handle of his shovel.  "I'll go to the garden center, get some plants – something pretty.  It won't look any different from other flowerbeds; I've picked that much up from the site landscapers."

Buffy shook her head.  "I'm not worried about the cemetery look – though, god, how many bodies do we have buried out here?"  She stopped short when Xander's eyes flew open in alarm, his head twitching towards the neighboring houses.  She sighed, censored her speech. "I guess I just don't think it's worth getting creeped out about at this point – what's a few more?  Not to mention, no more pesky dragging – finally, a nemesis who delivers."

She'd retreated to the shade of one of the trees, and now leaned against the cool, smooth bark, closing her eyes.  She heard Xander meander over, then felt him settle down beside her.

"Hey – sometimes, things just go wrong."  Xander cupped her cheek, and the scent of the dirt caked on his hands was almost heady.  "You have to stop thinking of yourself as someone who can prevent all bad things from happening.  Sometimes, you can.  Sometimes we're ahead of the game, and those are the good days." 

"So this would be a bad day," Buffy said.  She tried to say it lightly, but her tone fell short of the mark, and Xander didn't let it slide.

"Buffy, you let the bad days get to you too much.  You're not psychic, and you're not invincible.  But sweetie," he pulled her closer, and she allowed her head to fall onto his chest.  It felt safe. "On your worst day, you do more things right than most people do on their best."

Buffy smiled ruefully, still tucked under his chin. "Xander, you never look at me as anything else but human." 

"That's because you ARE human."  The words rumbled through his chest, a comforting vibration against her cheek.  "You may be harder to break than the rest of us, and there are a couple of other bonuses thrown in, but..."  He broke off, frustrated.  "You don't see it!  You think that you have to be more, all the time, when you don't.  Human is your resting state, and it's what you should return to – not some higher thingie!

"Thingie?"

"You knocking my heartfelt speech?  Besides, it's better than doodad, which was the original choice."

"Nah, I like thingie.  I like you."

"I like you, too."

*

The attic was hot, but also windowless.  And to tell the truth, the blistering heat was kind of welcome. 

Spike had seen many things in his time.  Gore and destruction, entire periods of history when atrocity was the order of the day.  But they'd always been at arm's length before.

Maybe he was too close, because his imagination was working overtime.  Those girls, without their lips and eyes and hair – every time he had touched them, he had seen Tara, or Alicia... or, of course, Dawn.  Dawn without her eyes, with a raw red wound where each one had lain, now sightless and...

Kane had meant this to hurt Buffy.  Spike could only hope that his own weakness hadn't been spotted as well.

Spike was a fidgeter.  His hands flitted over various boxes and suitcases as he brooded, peering inside each one with idle curiosity.  It was a bizarre experience – each new container was like a time capsule, bursting with the strangest things.  Macaroni art.  Old elementary school t-shirts.  A fishing pole covered in Barbie stickers.  A tie-dyed hat that read "Camp Piney" in purple puff-paints.  A photo album of the Summers family, before that father of theirs left.

Sometimes he wondered if these were artifacts from before or after the Slayer legacy.  He wondered if it made a difference.

The fact that he cared about these relics from a human life, that they meant something to him...  Once he might have disdained this as a weakness, as clinging on to humanity.  He would have told himself to stop forming these attachments to a life that was no longer his, to leave it behind and advance to that higher, vampire plane.

Today, though, he feared the emotions Dawn and her family raised in him for different reasons.  Now, rather than worrying about how he would be hurt in the exchange, he was obsessed with the way his presence would affect those he loved.  

Briefly, he peered out of one of the ventilation slats into the garden below.  Buffy was huddled with Harris under a tree, their faces obscured by the angle of branches.  His heart froze for a moment – she'd blame herself, she always did, she'd tumble down into some sort of guilty morass and wallow there...

But then Harris said something, and she laughed.  A clear, happy laugh that made Spike jealous and delighted and heartbroken all at once.

And he didn't know how to explain that reaction at all.

*

Dawn didn't recognize the sound of the front doorbell at first.  To be fair, she wasn't used to it – people usually entered their house with their own key, or by hammering on the door, and every so often someone was launched through the window.  So it wasn't surprising that she didn't look up from her conversation with Willow until the third ring, a long, insistent tone that indicated someone was leaning on the buzzer.

Hard.

"Alistair, cut it out."

"They might be in the back yard!"

"Yes, they could be, but give it a second.  We don't want them sending us off as soon as we've arrived."

Dawn hesitated as the voices came through the door, then suddenly it all came flooding back.  Giles.  Giles sending people. 

Weird people?

"Dawn?"  Buffy murmured from the end of the hall, her face dirt-smudges and sweaty.  "Are you going to open it?"

But she didn't have to – suddenly the door swung inward, nearly knocking her off her feet, and leaving her face to face with an incredibly tall redheaded man.  A man who was only on a level with her because he was crouched down, apparently jimmying the lock to their home with the complicated metal wands arrayed between his fingers.

A man who, with a guilty smile, offered one word:

"Turnip?"

tbc