Hey everyone, harmony910, or Tara Summers, again! This is my second chapter I've written, hope you like it!

Chapter 15

Dawn sat down at her desk, arranging herself so that her bulging stomach wouldn't get in the way, and began to write in her diary. She felt like it had been forever since she had done so, but she thought that if – god forbid – anything happened to her, someone might read her diary and know what she wanted.

"I'm writing this in case anything should happen to me during or after my baby's birth. This wonderful precious thing growing in me has made me think. In the past few years, I've really grown up. My sister died instead of me, and that somehow made me more mature. I survived the destruction of Sunnydale. Everything – including Connor and Spike's deaths – has made me more mature.

"With this new found maturity, I came upon a name for my sweet little baby. If it's a girl, I wanted to name her Arianna. I've always liked that name; it's just so cute. And if it's a boy, I want to name him after the man who made my child possible: Connor. If anything were to happen to me and someone were to find this diary and read it, that is what I ask. Please make my wish come true."

Dawn sat the diary aside and wiped a tear from her eye. All this talk about death and maturing is too depressing. I need to get something to eat. She waddled from her room and made her way to the kitchen downstairs. Willow, Tara, Faith and Illyria were in the kitchen. No one made a sound; it was as if they were making some sort of tribute to Spike by being silent.

Dawn cleared her throat and turned to Willow. "Does…Buffy know…about Spike?" Willow shook her head sadly. Dawn sighed. "I think I should be the one to tell her."

Faith grabbed her arm. "Dawn, I don't think that's a good idea."

"What's not a good idea?" Buffy asked as she came into the kitchen. She looked at everyone's somber faces. "What? What happened?" she asked, suddenly panicked. "Dawnie, what happened?"

Faith, Willow, Tara, and Illyria cleared out, knowing that Dawn would prefer to be alone with Buffy when she broke the horrible news of Spike's death. "Buffy…I don't know how to tell you this. I'm…so sorry." Dawn began to cry.

"Dawnie, please, what happened?"

"It's…Spike. One of the vamps last night…they decapitated him, and…he's dead!" Dawn began sobbing all over again.

Buffy was silent, and her mouth hung open. The feelings that rushed through her head made Buffy feel like her head would explode. Her lower lip began to quiver. And then the dam broke. Floods of tears flowed from her eyes as feelings for Spike – feelings that Buffy had thought she'd gotten rid of – came back when she learned of his death. In the silence of the kitchen, Dawn and Buffy held each other, weeping.

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Angel sat in his room, blinds and curtains drawn, all lights off. No matter how much he wanted to deny it, Angel was upset that Spike had died. Not as much as he was when Connor died, or when Darla had died to save Connor, but he was still upset. "So much grief in the past few years. I don't think we can handle anymore," he muttered to himself. Someone knocked on the door. "Go away!" he cried. But they didn't, and Tara entered his room. "Tara, I'm sorry, but I'd prefer to be alone."

Tara shook her head. "No one deserves to be alone." She made her way to his bed and sat beside him. "I-I don't know you that well, but I think that you just need to cry. Crying i-is helpful, you know."

Angel shook his head. "I'm not supposed to cry. Vampires and grown men don't cry."

Tara placed her hand on his. "That's where you're wrong. Everyone cries. When Buffy leapt off the tower to save the world and we found her body, Giles cried. And so did Spike. Everyone cried. That's how we let it go. It's not healthy to keep all those bad feelings bottled inside." She embraced Angel in a hug.

That's what did it for Angel. Someone he hardly knew was willing to help him grieve, and she'd even given him something that people rarely gave him: a hug. In the dark, Angel wept on Tara's shoulder. And he felt…slightly better. She's right. It isn't healthy to bottle it up. Tara rocked him slowly as he let his feelings out.

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Buffy entered the living room, wiping her eyes with her hands. She'd had Dawn round everyone up and herd them into the living room for a pep talk. "Okay everyone, this has gone too far. We have to stop them. We have to avenge Connor and Spike. They will pay for this." Buffy looked everyone in the eye, lingering slightly on Angel. His eyes were red, and the area around them was slightly swollen. Like he's been crying, she thought. She flashed him a half-smile of encouragement. He gave her one back. "We're going to find these guys and kill them all."

"Willow, I need you and Tara on the witchy-ness. Locate them, no matter what it takes. Got it?" The girls nodded. "Good. If you need it, I'm sure Wes and Giles can help." The two former Watchers nodded in agreement. "Everyone else, you're on weapons crew. Gather up all the weapons you can possibly find, and if they need to be fixed, fix 'em. I want to be as prepared to kick these guys' asses as possible." Everyone nodded and set off to do the job that had been assigned to them.

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The vampire master looked on as the sorcerer he had hired chanted a spell that few people knew. This spell would make his plans complete. "They'll never see it coming," the master muttered aloud. He turned to his minions and cleared his throat. "Tonight is the night. We must kill the new being before it is born, and that time has come. So prepare yourselves!"

"M-master? There are several hours until darkness falls; it is still daylight," one of the master vampire's assistant pointed out.

Instead of being angry for the assistant pointing out a mistake, the master smiled a toothy smile. "That is being taken care of."

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"Oh boy," Faith muttered as she looked out the kitchen window. Buffy and Dawn hurried over to see what was going on. "Something really freaky is going on with the sky."

As the three girls watched, the sun rushed through the sky as if the day were on fast forward. People outside were going through their days in fast forward also, not seeming to notice the extreme change in speed. Buffy glanced at the wall clock and the stove clock. "The clocks are changing that quick. Maybe whatever's going on only affects outside the house."

"Well if so, we might need to start worrying," Dawn stated.

"Why?"

"Maybe the fact that the quickness of time has stopped, it's dark outside, and there are about twenty-three vampires on the front lawn." Sure enough, hidden in the darkness, only the golden hue of their eyes glowing, were a large handful of vampires. Dawn grabbed her stomach, a look of pain on her face.

"Dawn, are you okay?" Buffy asked. Dawn nodded. "Are you sure?" She nodded again. "Good. Go get the others. We're gonna fight." Buffy grabbed an axe from beside the kitchen counter, tossing a similar one to Faith.

"We gonna kill these guys off this time? I'm not big on losin' another person, B," Faith stated.

"We're losing no one. Every single vamp on that lawn is going to be dust by the time we're done with them." Buffy flung open the front door, not wanting to damage the house even more than it already was, to take the fight outside.

"Give us the vessel! The new being must die!" one of the vamps cried.

Buffy stepped forward. "Why don't you come and get her? Or are you afraid?" she taunted them. Maybe not a good idea for taunting. I really don't want Dawn to get hurt. And so the fight began; both Angel and Buffy's crews had mixed together and were fighting side by side. The only people missing were Tara, Willow, and Dawn.

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"Is there anything I can do to help?" Dawn asked. The witches shook their heads. "Oh. Okay. I'll just…sit here."

"Platelet," a whispering voice called to her. Dawn looked towards the kitchen doorway, where the voice had come from. Her breath caught in her chest when she saw who it was.

"Spike?" Willow and Tara looked up. Dawn glanced back at them, then back at Spike, then back to them again. "Don't you see him?" They shook their heads. Dawn rose from her seat – with a slight struggle from the sudden weight gain she had experienced in the past few days. "Spike, is that you?"

Spike's ghost didn't respond. "Platelet, your sister needs your help. You have to run out and help her."

"But…I might get hurt…"

The ghost shook his head. "No, don't worry. I'll protect you. Remember? I said I'd never let anything happen to you. Not again." Dawn was assured that it was really Spike. No one else knew he had told her that. She hadn't told anyone.

"Okay. I'll go." She headed out the doorway and straight into the fight. No one on the good side had been killed; that was a good thing.

From behind her, Dawn felt two pairs of arms grab her arms to hold her back. "Buffy!" she screamed as she was shoved into a waiting car.

"Dawn!" Buffy yelled back as she ran after the car. But it was no use. Even the Slayer couldn't keep up with a car going seventy miles per hour. Dawn was gone.

Dawn's eyes stung with tears. "Spike tricked me," she muttered louder than she'd meant to.

One of her captors laughed. "You mean you actually thought that it was him? Now that's funny!"

The other one shook his head. "It's just a little matter of sorcery. You'd think someone like you would know that."

Dawn cried even harder, tears of pain from cramps mixed in with tears of hurt feelings. And then Dawn stopped crying. Something…had happened.

Her water had broken.