Spike tore up the stairs with Tara right behind him, and threw open the closed door to Dawn's bedroom. The sight that met his eyes was like a scene directly taken from his recent nightmares.
Dawn and Buffy struggled with each other, grappling for control in what appeared to be a life-or-death battle. At first, Buffy's back was to them as she shoved Dawn down on the bed, lunging for her throat in a gesture that was chillingly familiar to Spike, though he had never imagined that he would one day see it from Buffy. That was the moment in which he knew beyond all doubt that what he had feared had become reality.
The Slayer had been turned.
Suddenly, with a surprising burst of strength, Dawn rolled over on top of her sister, gripping her wrists in an attempt to hold her down, revealing her hideous demonic visage to the eyes of her friends as Buffy snarled and snapped at her little sister. Spike saw something drop onto Buffy's face, and realized with an intensity of sorrow that Dawn was crying as she fought her own sister for her very life.
He shook himself out of his frozen state, and was just about to leap into the fray, to Dawn's rescue, when the girl delivered a surprisingly powerful uppercut blow to her sister's jaw, slamming her head back. Then she backed up a step, pulling her up by the wrist, and slung her forcefully into the wall.
Before Spike could even consider the just-plain-weirdness of that, Buffy was rushing Dawn again, knocking her to the floor with a vicious punch to her face. Amazingly, the girl was not stunned; did not even seem phased by the blow. She just kept fighting against her older, stronger sister.
Shaking off his shock, Spike sprung into action, reaching down to yank Buffy up off of Dawn and throwing her against the wall again. She may have been stronger than he was, especially with him injured as he was now, but she was still very light, and the force of her body hitting the wall was dizzying to her.
She shook her head a little, then looked back at her opponents. Dawn and Spike stood together, like two great warriors facing down their enemy. Buffy was very strong and could possibly have taken them on, but did not seem to want to. With a menacing hiss of seething rage, she turned suddenly and leapt out the open bedroom window. Rushing to it, Tara watched as she landed, catlike, on her feet, and took off at a run into the night.
Spike stood staring at the place where Buffy had been, breathing hard, a hard expression in his eyes. "Then they weren't just dreams," he said to Tara. "Prophetic, it seems." She did not respond, just kept staring out the window. Suddenly his eyes grew wide as he remembered what the shock of seeing Buffy as a vampire had taken his attention from.
He slowly turned his head to look at Dawn in utter amazement. She was looking back at him, too, her own wide eyes welling up with tears, her lip trembling, and suddenly she threw herself into his arms, sobbing desperately. As he held her, placing light kisses in her hair, whispering comfortingly to her, Tara turned from the window and walked slowly across the room to face Giles.
Her face solemn, she spoke with her back turned to Spike and Dawn, and too low for the girl to hear. "Where is the new Slayer you mentioned, Giles?"
"We – we don't know," Giles replied, shaking his head slightly in astonishment at the events he had just witnessed. "We hadn't been able to locate her as of yet."
Casting a look back at the distraught teenager in Spike's arms, Tara said quietly, "I think you just did."
As the silent, shell-shocked little group made their way down the stairs, Xander appeared at the bottom. "There you are! Where'd everybody go?" he asked, sounding annoyed to have been abandoned. But his expression changed when he saw the looks on their faces.
"What happened?" he asked. "Dawnie? Is she okay?" he directed the last question at Tara, a worried frown on his face.
"You'd better sit down again, Xander," Giles sighed.
Tara and Spike sat on the couch with Dawn between them, as Xander took a seat in the chair. Giles remained standing as he turned to address the small huddled pseudo-family on the sofa.
"When did she arrive?" he asked quietly.
"Just a few minutes before you got here," Tara replied expressionlessly, staring off into space, still trying to comprehend all that had happened in the last few minutes.
Xander was confused. "Who?"
Spike took a deep breath before answering softly, since no one else seemed able to, "Buffy."
Silence reigned for a long moment, before Xander said, with cruel hope rising in his voice, "I thought she was dead."
"She is," Giles broke in, in a tired, defeated voice.
"What – but – you said…" Xander's eyes widened in understanding, then narrowed again in fervent denial as he looked around the room at the others. "No – no way! Not Buffy!" Now his voice sounded nearly panicked in his desperation not to believe it.
"It's the truth, Xander. We all saw it. She – she attacked Dawn," Tara insisted softly. She felt sorry for Xander; Buffy had always been his idol of sorts, and in his black and white universe, she could not imagine anything else that could turn his world upside down like this had.
"What?" His voice was trembling with shocked disbelief, presented at last with evidence that he could not deny. "But – but she's the Slayer! How could this – I mean…"
"Have you ever heard of a Slayer being turned before?" Spike asked the Watcher, his eyes serious and worried.
Giles shook his head slowly. "It's never happened. No one knows what would happen if a super-human being such as a slayer were to be turned. Therefore it seems no vampire has ever dared to complete the act of turning with a slayer. It amazes me that one apparently has, now."
"But," Tara began, frowning as she started to work it out in her mind. "you would think the vamps would want to do that…right? I mean, vampires have super-strength and stuff right? So wouldn't a Slayer who was turned be pretty much…unbeatable?"
"Possibly," Giles said with a cautious nod. "As I said, as it's never happened, there's no way to know for sure what the results would be. Such a – a creature would possess remarkable strength and power – but there's no telling which side of the balance she might be on, as far as good and evil. It's – it's mind-boggling!"
"You mean – there's a chance she might not be – evil?" Xander clutched at the slim hope eagerly.
"There has been – speculation – in the past," Giles said. "as to whether or not the essence of good in the Slayer that makes her the Slayer might war with the demon nature of the vampire, and as to which side might be victorious."
"But I thought when a person is turned, they lose their soul," Tara pointed out.
"Correct. But there's this theory that whatever it is that makes a girl the Slayer is other than her soul. Something unique and separate entirely, and that if a Slayer were to be turned, she might not lose that upon her turning. In which case there might be a chance that she could resist the evil inside her," Giles explained. Then his expression grew sad, as he added gently with a glance toward Xander, "But it would appear that we have our answer in this case. Buffy attacked her sister. She would never have done that if there was any part of her left inside."
Dawn looked up suddenly, her face red and tear-streaked, but a wild hope in her eyes. "Earlier – when she first got here – she was acting like – like Buffy! Like herself! She was crying and telling us how – how sorry she was for everything that's happened! Maybe there is still good in her!"
"It could have been an act, Bit," Spike said softly, trying not to hurt her too badly with the truth, his own pain obvious in his tone. The realization that the longed-for apology he had received may have been false was terribly painful to him.
Tara gently reached around Dawn to put a protective arm around him, in a subconscious effort to shield him from the hurt. "It's possible, though…right?" she suggested, looking to Giles as the expert. "I mean – if she's got good and evil both in her now…and they're 'warring' as you said…then couldn't she have attacked Dawn if the evil was getting the best of her…but still have good in her?"
Giles frowned. "I suppose that's possible. That's precisely the problem. At this point, anything is possible. There is no precedent for this, ever. We have no way of knowing what she wants, what she's thinking…how to handle this situation!" There was a helpless frustration in his voice.
His expression slowly changed as his eyes came to rest on Dawn. "And then there's Dawn," he said gently, his eyes softening as they fell on one of two girls not his own that he had come to unconsciously claim as his daughters.
"If she's so strong," Dawn said in a tremulous voice, clinging to Spike's hand, attached to his arm around her shoulders, "how could I fight her off like that?" It was obvious in her eyes and her tone that she already suspected she knew the answer.
"She was clearly a bit stronger than you, and a bit more skilled as a fighter. But then, many vamps possessed more skill than she did when she started out," the older man mused, looking away. He looked back at her suddenly, an odd light in his eyes. "Just to be able to hold your own, without any weapons, against an incredibly powerful vampire – only one person has the capability to do that sort of thing."
"One girl in all the world," Spike added softly, looking at Dawn with a new respect in his eyes…and a measure of pride. "Looks like that's you, eh, Bit?"
Dawn did not respond; she was staring straight ahead, trying to make sense of it all. The last few weeks had been hell on earth for her, terribly confusing and frightening, culminating with her having to perform a ritual that was potentially deadly for her sister, in order to save the world from the evil that was consuming her. And now, to be told that she was in that position again…her sister a vampire, and she…the Slayer? Was it possible?
With a soft little overwhelmed moan, Dawn leaned her head against Spike's chest, squeezing her eyes shut as if she wanted to hide. "I don't want to be the chosen one," she said in a small, anxious voice.
"Now where have I heard that before?" Giles said, a teasing note coming into his voice in spite of the seriousness of the matter at hand. The laughter faded from his tone, however, as he went on, "The fact of this matter is, Dawn…the thing about being chosen is…you don't get to choose. If you are indeed the Slayer…it's not something you can choose to do or not do. It's simply who you are."
"Buffy's the Slayer," Dawn whispered, her tears returning, pushing out from behind her closed eyelids. "Not me."
"Buffy's not the Slayer anymore, Dawn," Giles said, his voice still gentle but firmer. "We're not even certain if she's -- Buffy -- anymore!"
Just then the doorbell rang. The group looked around at each other anxiously. Spike held up a hand to indicate he would go, as the most battle-capable among them at the moment. He rose from the couch and went to the door, opening it cautiously.
From the living room, they could see him clearly, but not the person standing on the porch.
Spike's angry glare told them more than words could have. "What the bloody hell are you doing here?" he demanded. Then he leaned closer to the uninvited guest and said slowly and deliberately, putting as much menace as possible into his voice, "You're not welcome here."
There was a soft, cynical chuckle from outside the door, and a familiar voice which still struck a chord of hatred and bitterness in the heart of the Watcher said quietly, "Well, obviously I am."
And Angel stepped through the doorway.