Previously: Spike made a wish and got buried in a cave in. Anya and Buffy barely escaped with the baby. Willow helped Xander and Dawn without using magic. Despite vengeful influences, Buffy decided to dig out Spike.
The Sacrifices
Chapter 21: Exhumation
They had been digging for a long time. Nearly got buried themselves as the ground around them was unstable and threatened a landslide. The dirt was loose and offered little resistance. That made it easier to dig through and more dangerous. The hole they made was much wider than the original, with sloping sides so it was less likely to collapse on them, or so Buffy hoped.
Then they hit large rocks in their digging. They had to left some of them all three together.
At one point the baby decided to assert herself and started to howl. It prompted Buffy to stop digging and Anya to ask if she had come to her senses. Buffy denied it.
The cheerful way Halfrek was digging worried Buffy. Halfrek tossed stones and dirt aside with enthusiasm and Buffy thought she heard her humming. Buffy had imagined vague and unidentifiable horrors waiting for them. But it was only Spike.
"Well, this was not worth the menial labor," Halfrek announced as they pulled Spike from the ground after what seemed like hours of digging but was probably a lot less. He was only half out when Halfrek started to shake the dirt of her clothes and climb out of the crater they had made.
Spike was covered with dirt. His eyes were open and blank. They stared up at the sky. It was still dark but starting to turn red to the east as the sun creeped up under the horizon, like a shark under water. The blood mixed with dirt that was caked to Spike's skull looked black. Buffy couldn't tell exactly what kind of injuries it concealed. When she reached through the blood and dirt to feel the back of his head, it felt soft and she drew her hand back feeling sick.
"Is this what you meant? Is it what you expected?" Buffy asked Anya without taking her eyes off Spike.
Buffy expected him to blink or move, but he didn't. And the glasslike eyes told her maybe he never would.
"No. But I guess it makes sense," Anya said as she stared down at Spike.
Buffy looked up at her with her hand still covered in Spike's blood mixed with dirt.
"This makes sense?"
"When it comes to wishes it does. They are hard to predict. But it all makes sense in the end," Halfrek said sounding cheerfully optimistic. She was a true believer in vengeance.
Buffy shook her head.
"You have to be in the business to understand," Halfrek said.
Buffy noticed that they were speaking in hushed tones, like they didn't want to disturb him. Seeing how close it was to sunrise, Buffy got out her cell phone with the hand that didn't have bloody clumps of soil sticking to it.
"How did it go?" Buffy asked into the phone as she wiped her hand on a patch of grass. She was only half listening to whatever Xander said after he told her that the other baby was safe.
"Can you come and get us?" Buffy asked and she told him where to find them.
Dawn looked at the baby stuff that was strewn all over the living room. They would probably have to get rid of it, maybe dump it somewhere so no one could connect them to the baby. With all this sneaking and dumping, it was almost like they were doing something wrong. Dawn considered how much easier it would have been for Willow to just magically plop the baby back in LA. Or maybe not. When Willow had done that to Dawn, it made her feel disoriented and sort of sick. Definitely not recommended for children under two years of age.
"Do you miss it? Being able to do anything, the power," Dawn asked Willow.
There was a pause. Willow picked up a few baby things and put them in the diaper bag. It looked like she was thinking hard about the right answer.
"I miss being able to help. But the power, I'm mainly afraid of it now," she admitted.
"Join the large and terrified club," Dawn said and looked at Willow, waiting for her reaction.
Willow wasn't sure what to say. Dawn looked at her like she was supposed to say something though. Knowing that any promises she made might be turned into lies if she slipped, Willow didn't think she had anything reassuring to tell her.
Promises would be a jinx anyway, magnifying any small slip into a big betrayal. The only way she could put Dawn's mind at ease would be to not fail her again. But that took too long. Dawn seemed to want some kind of token of good Will now. Willow would have apologized but "I'm sorry I tried to snuff you out of existence" seemed... Necessary, Willow realized.
Just as Willow was about to speak, Dawn looked away like she had given up and started picking up the baby's things and throwing them in the bag wit a little more force than was necessary. Willow moved so she was in Dawn's field of vision.
"Dawn. I'm sorry. I'm sorry I scared you. Scare you," Willow corrected herself. "I love you and I don't want anything to happen to you."
"I know," Dawn said simply. "I get some of what happened. Tara. How that could push you over into doing stuff. But it went so far, that's what I can't get on my own."
"I don't know if I want you to get it. I don't know if I really get it," Willow said doubtfully.
"Not reassuring. I guess I just want you to talk. I want an 'It's 4am and all is well'. A weather report in Willow land."
"You know you can't trust the weather report," Willow pointed out.
"I still want one," Dawn insisted. Willow felt put on the spot. It wasn't exactly like she was hiding from her true state of mind. But she did want to keep her emotions back and out of her way. Definitely not displayed all over the living room.
"It's kind of dark in here," Willow said and Dawn looked around at the reasonably well lit living room.
"I mean in here," Willow said putting a hand on her chest.
"Overcast with a chance of evil?" Dawn asked.
"Just overcast. It's hard to share that. I don't want to dwell on things like that or spread them. Be all black cloud of grief and doom," Willow said and managed a weak smile. Dawn just waited and looked at her.
"But I will if you want," Willow told Dawn who nodded and seemed satisfied.
"This is your chance to bat clean up. Make a clean sweep. Put your house in order," Halfrek kept saying as Buffy drew her eyes from Spike's unmoving form and looked perplexed.
Buffy was dragging Spike out of the hole they had dug. His head had dropped back as Buffy had him by the arms and his feet bounced on the ground. Anya didn't help. She just watched.
Halfrek looked down at Spike then at Buffy with the same expression.
"He is not a wounded bird, you know. But you can set his soul free. If he still has one. Let it fly away." Halfrek didn't sound at all impressed by the specialness of a soul as she facetiously fluttered her hands like wings.
"Do your part, slayer. Finish what was started," Halfrek said in that hypnotic voice she had tried to use on Buffy before.
"What are you talking about?" Buffy asked, but she didn't sound like she really wanted to know the answer.
Buffy left Spike. After wiping her hands on a clump of dry grass, she picked up the baby from the ground and held her, obviously resisting the urge to squeeze her too much. Buffy put her hand on the back of her little head and rocked her. Anya knew it was really to soothe herself, but the baby didn't seem to mind.
"He asked for this. And he didn't care how he got it. He nearly took all of us with him," Anya reminded Buffy.
Looking at Spike's demolished skull, Anya though that there was a chance that she was wrong. Maybe he hadn't wished away his soul. The cluster didn't need to crack open his skull to pry out a soul. That was just one way to do it.
"I thought the snake monster thing caused the cave in," Buffy asked obviously confused.
"It looks that way to the untrained eye," Halfrek said as Buffy rolled her eyes.
"The ritual wasn't complete. The beast had no business being there," Anya started to explain but Halfrek interrupted her.
"There is a procedure to these things. The Denekari beast appears wherever the ritual is performed. But the ritual has to be completed, and I don't see a scratch on that child," Halfrek said, but Buffy didn't look any the wiser for it. She looked over the baby again making sure she hadn't missed any wounds.
"Don't look so hard. A little scratch wouldn't do. It would be large wound. You saw those knives - plenty of blood," Halfrek assured her.
"Hey! There is baby sacrifice present," Buffy protested and placed a hand over the baby's ear pressing her other ear against Buffy's neck. The baby seemed more alarmed by the maneuver than by anything that was said and made complaining sounds.
Halfrek tried for a PG version.
"They call it up with the blood of a child born on the right day. Then before it kills them all for yanking it out of its warm nest, they give it the wish stones they collected into this ball. It seems to like that and it goes away. That's how it usually works."
Buffy nodded and bounced the baby a little. It made as much sense as any wacko cult ritual.
"This time the wish caused the beast to come up despite the incomplete ceremony. To start a chain reaction to fulfill your insane vampire buddy's insipid wish," Halfrek said and looked down at Spike like she was blaming him for wasting the opportunity to make something spectacular happen.
Anya wasn't sure Buffy got it so she summed up, "OK. The cluster called up the beast to cause the cave in to make Spike brain dead to put him out of his misery."
"Who swallowed the spider to catch the fly," Buffy continued.
"The cluster is famous for granting wishes in the most destructive way. It's the influence of the vengeance stones," Halfrek said proudly. "You're lucky Spike didn't make his wish in the middle of Sunnydale." Halfrek sounded disappointed at that.
Hearing this, Buffy turned to Anya.
"You might have mentioned to Xander how dangerous the cluster was before you disappeared," Buffy said with the nerve to complain after all Anya had done.
"I think I've done enough," Anya pointed out. Now she was even more filthy than before, and her nails were shredded. And for what?
"Oh, you've done way more than enough, sweetie," Halfrek said.
Anya just glared at her.But Halfrek didn't look phased. She was eyeing Buffy.
"The rest is up to her," Halfrek said holding Buffy in her gaze.
Buffy looked away. She was staring at Spike again then she turned her attention to the baby and walked a few steps further away.
Anya tried to sort out all the wish options. Spike couldn't get a handle on his soul. It was driving him insane. So he jettisoned it like an engine on fire.
It was understandable. Human emotions were so unpleasant. Humans just didn't have much choice in the matter. Spike took his chance to bail just as Anya had.
It was easier dealing with that turmoil from the outside, watching other women cry, not crying herself. Anya didn't want to be pathetic and only able to wish away her pain. She wanted to be powerful again and not to care. Anya was sure that Spike had wanted to get rid of his soul, be his old self too.
Or maybe she was just projecting. Option two: The novelty of being a raving lunatic had worn off - the new car smell was gone. He just wanted to be sane and snarky again. It was Spike's own brain that was making him miserable, so the cluster squished it. Problem solved.
Anya couldn't be sure. With his mind turned against him, he simply might have used the wrong words. Even sane people did that when making a wish. That's what made her so much more than a magic genie.
"He is a disappointment, isn't he?" Halfreks asked joining Anya in watching Spike not move.
"But isn't it heartening to see the jewels taken from vengeance demons continue their legacy of wish-granting. They are plucky little things," Halfrek said wistfully. It was enviable how she was always able to look on the bright side.
To be continued