Title: If I should die before we wake

Disclaimer: I own none of the characters or situations, or concepts, or anything, really.

Summary: After the events described in Deconstructing Hell, Spike, Andrew and Dana are menaced by a shadowy threat to Spike's life. You should read DH first.

Rating: T, because Spike is violent, rude, crude, and the bad guys are worse. Well, that's a lie. The bad guys are never worse than Spike. Oh, and some of the characters are downright naughty in this chapter.

Chapter 14: Floppidus demons

--

"What kind of demon are you?" Dana asked Clem.

He looked up from the crate he was unpacking. "Uh, what?"

She put down another crate next to the one he was working on. It seemed kind of funny that she and Illyria, the little girls, were the big strong ones, and Clem, the large demon, was the weak one.

"Demons have names for different kinds, right? Fyaarl, Deathwoks, all of them. What kind of demon are you?"

"Um, I'm not sure. Book learning was never my strong suit," said Clem.

"What?" Dana frowned. "I never went to school, and I know I'm a human. And a Slayer."

"Well, Spike used to say I must be a Floppidus demon," said Clem. "But he was just being funny. My parents never mentioned a name. Well, besides my last name."

"What's that?"

"Fitzpatrick."

"What?"

"Well, we're Irish," said Clem defensively. "What's your last name?"

"I forgot," said Dana sadly. "And then I burned down the mental ward I escaped from, and all my records. Spike said if we had my social security number we might be able to find out, but that burned down too."

"Oh," said Clem. "Did you say mental ward?"

Illyria returned from Clem's truck carrying a crate under each arm. "She's the crazy Slayer."

"Oh, right! Didn't you cut Spike's hands off?"

"You cut his hands off once, nobody forgets!" complained Dana, turning back to go get more crates from the truck.

"These are the last two," said Illyria. "I believe we will need to wear the traditional garb for this ritual."

"Ugh," said Clem. "That's not… pleasant."

"It isn't?" said Dana, turning back with her eyes wide.

"Well, not for me. An awfully lot of… urk. Very tight skin. Excuse me, I'll just, uh, start getting the spell ready."

Illyria took a deep breath. "Spells like this require an internal strength, a strength of being. A focused spirit."

"Is that a problem?" asked Dana.

"I don't believe it will be," said Illyria. "Except for the focus. You are, much like Spike, a fractured soul. You tend to go in many directions."

"Oh. Like Spike?"

"I do, in fact, like Spike."

"That's not what I meant."

"I know."

Illyria headed back for the now-empty truck, leaving Dana alone to stare out into the forbidding yet oddly mangy woods around them. Clem was trying ignore her.

"Actually, I love Spike," Dana told the demon.

He looked up at her sadly. "I don't think Spike can love, sweetpea. Not any more."

"He said that. That he had been burned out. But I do love him. And he said maybe he could love me. I don't know. Do you call people pet names like Spike does?"

"Not a lot," said Clem. "One of his habits that didn't rub off on me."

"But you called me sweetpea."

"There are some situations that call for pet names, no matter what."

"Oh."

He continued sorting out the equipment, and heaved a sigh. "Last time I did this I had help," he said. "I'm not sure I remember everything. Fortunately, Spike took some very good notes."

Dana sat down on the wet grass, running her fingers over the long, overgrown blades. "Spike and I used to have ice cream together, in the mall, before everything went bad. At least once a week we'd take off and just eat an ice cream. We haven't done that since all this started."

"This job of yours, Slaying, will kill romance," said Clem sympathetically. "I remember the last Slayer Spike dated. That was a disaster. She nearly killed him a couple of times… no, wait, she did kill him that last time."

Dana scowled. "I met Buffy a load of times before I met Spike, and I was never jealous of her then. I even liked her. Now I'm retroactively jealous."

"Big words."

"Spike taught em to me."

"He's good at big words. He knows what they mean, and what they feel like. He can use them. He's all poetic."

--

Dawn didn't like being lied to. It made her feel all betrayed and fuzzily angry.

Worse yet, she knew she had the power to have Riley's head crushed like a grape. Between the eight Slayers in the room and the four more in reserve, if she said the word he was a dead man.

That wasn't good for her mental equilibrium. Especially with that little voice in her head screaming 'pop it like a zit!'

"You mean you and Connor were plotting against me all along?" she asked sweetly.

"Dawn, you know I appreciate your help, but Spike was adamant that we not risk the lives of any Slayers."

"Screw that!" yelled Dawn. Andrew, sitting at the other end of the table, winced. "I have a crack team of the best warriors on earth, and you guys are having us warm the bench out of some misguided chivalry?"

"Spike… wanted to do it himself." Riley's face was stretched very thin. "I'm sorry I lied to you, Dawn, but … I'm not in charge of the vampires, did you know that? They're a loaner from Spike. An army of vampires, and he loans them to me. Do you know who the government would kill to have control of that army? Anyone, anytime. Seriously. So I thought a little white lie to you guys was the least I could do. It's not like it's the first time I've lied to cover Spike's butt."

There was a silence after that little speech. Andrew squirmed a little bit. He was distinctly uncomfortable with the anger in the room, and even more with the feeling of agreeing with Riley.

He didn't want to be agreeing with Riley right now. That was dangerous. That was the path to getting his face punched by a Slayer. And that would hurt. A lot.

Dawn sighed. "Where's Spike now?"

"He and Connor split up, as near as we can understand. Connor said the secondary mission is active again—God help us all—and Spike said that Illyria and Dana were in danger. He took the majority of the vampire army with him."

"Wait, I'm still not clear. Did Spike actually give up the powers from Illyria?" asked Andrew.

"I'm not sure," said Riley.

Andrew glanced from Dawn to Riley. He knew that the Slayers might hesitate at the command to kill a human, even coming from Dawn, so that was Riley's one chance of living through this meeting.

Of course, Andrew might be becoming slightly pessimistic.

Riley's wife, Sam, pushed open the swinging double doors and strode in, Harmony behind her. "Harm says we have a problem, and we need to be mobilizing international forces in Hamburg."

"Not the food, the place in France," said Harmony earnestly.

"Germany," Sam corrected. "I already called the NATO team, but Spike took the other vampires through an interdimensional portal-way to get there first. Our team won't be ready to go for a while. In the mean-time, Spike gave us some cool new toys."

"A mansion in New Orleans that's invisible to outside scanners, and an interdimensional hopway that can jump you across the world in a heartbeat!" said Harmony cheerfully.

"Yeah," said Sam. "Enemy headquarters is now our headquarters. Oh, and a lot of refugees from the hurricane had been captured and herded into cells. Spike saved them all."

"Good deeds all around, yay!" said Harmony. "Oh, and I failed the human blood detector at the door, but I have a note from Spike saying it's okay."

"Spike let you snack on the bad guy? That's gross," said Andrew, before he could stop himself.

"Um, no, not exactly," said Harmony, suddenly very nervous. "But he assured me it's all for a good cause. Fighting the good fight and all that. He has a soul, and he said it's okay, so it wasn't wrong, right?"

Andrew frowned. "Who did you kill?"

"See, I didn't kill anybody, either. The chip never fired. And I was nice about it! I kept him alive!"

"You had to eat one of the refugees in order to get in good with the bad guys!" gasped Andrew. "Harmony, how could you?"

"What? No! I, um, lied to get out of that. Told them if they hurt him for me it would hurt me, chip and all, but if they killed him for me it might dust me."

"Then whose blood did you drink?" snapped Riley, missing his wife's head-shake. Sam gave an aggrieved sigh.

"I've already debriefed her. I don't think we need to go over this again. It's fine, Spike's note explains it all."

Dawn had been paying close attention. "She drank Spike's blood," she said shortly, harshly.

"What?" said Riley, shocked.

"I get it," said Andrew. "Bona fides and it kept them from punishing Spike. Right?"

"Right!" said Harmony, relieved.

Riley shook his head. "Sometimes, I don't get you guys at all. How bad is the Hamburg situation? Did the bad guy escape? Are we in retrieval mode?"

"Um, we're in full-force apoc mode," said Harmony. "Spike's plan B turned into a bad plan, as it turns out. And nobody was surprised. Big yawn."

"How could plan B hurt us?" asked Riley.

"There's a plan B?" asked Dawn quietly.

--

Spike followed the vampires on their mad dash through the trees. Their senses were better than his, so he had to trust that they could tell where they were going. He could see nothing but a pulsating darkness and the occasional tree, and his nose was telling him nothing.

Sometimes he missed being a vampire, and he wondered if that was wrong.

Well, he didn't miss the bloodlust screaming inside his head, or the need to hide from the daylight. Just the good things, really.

Good things. He looked around himself as he ran, examining dispassionately the dark creatures of the night on this mission with him. They were doing good deeds solely as a means to survive and thrive in a world which was suddenly more hostile and dangerous than before, in a world with many Slayers.

They weren't good, and they weren't friendly. They were monsters. No matter how they dressed it up. Most of them couldn't even function with a soul if they were given one. There had been early experiments. And it would be inhumane to stake an enemy that had come to you for help, even though Spike knew it would end badly.

So they chipped them, and they worked them. It wasn't quite right, but it was what they did.

"Ahead!" growled a not-quite-human voice from Spike's left. He assumed they were onto the scent.

He really wished Illyria could have given him some better instructions than 'somewhere in the woods.' It would have sped them up, and right now he had a strange feeling that every second might count.

Besides, he already knew they were too late. He'd felt the tugging somewhere behind his belly button nearly a minute ago.

They crashed into the clearing. Illyria was wearing her leather armor, and Dana was wearing a bathrobe. Clem was, oddly, hugging both of them. Spike halted the others. "Set up a defensive perimeter around the clearing!" he barked. "I don't want anything getting in!"

"That was fast," noted Illyria. There was concern on her face, and for once he couldn't make a comforting comment to her in his head while making a snarky one with his mouth. He wondered how he could handle that.

"Well, love, we're buggered," he said. "Turns out this is actually a bad idea after all."

Dana stared at him. "What? I thought this was your big plan to save the world!"

"The baddie wasn't who I thought he was. He was a balance demon, and that's eight kinds of trouble."

"We've shifted the balance in the favor of good," said Illyria. "Every time we do that, we attract new enemies. I see. That is… phenomenally unfair."

"Tell me about," sighed Spike. "Bloody unfair! On the plus side, it looks like we took out Boris' main base of operations and killed all his vampires. Oh, but he escaped, and is actually stronger and tougher than either Connor or I. Of course, I wasn't that much of a challenge, all things considered." He coughed, then glanced back over his shoulder. "I don't think we should be sticking about here."

Illyria sighed. "Clem has a truck. There's a road. Shall we?"

Spike glared at Clem. It was a fairly hostile glare. "Clem, is that my shirt?"

"You said I could have your stuff?" squeaked the demon.

Spike sighed. "Yes, but that shirt is … evil. Very evil. Burn it as soon as possible. And by the way, you're looking good. Very floppy."

Dana couldn't for the life of her understand why a shirt that had been signed by Billy Idol was evil.

--

Dawn wasn't sure how this sort of telephone conversation was supposed to be handled. 'We may have caused the end of the world, and I'm getting married.' That sounded whiny, needy, and as if they were just getting married because the world was ending.

There had to be a better way to put it.

Don't pick up, she begged mentally. Be busy. Don't pick up.

"Hello?" said Buffy sleepily.

"Buffy? We have a situation," blurted Dawn.

Andrew sighed, looking at her with those too-large too-puppyish eyes. She knew he wanted her to tell Buffy about them, but that was just a little too soon, a little too fast, and she couldn't do it.

"What? Situation?" Dawn could just imagine Buffy sitting up in bed. "Do I need to get Giles and start planning for something? Does this have to do with the call from Riley asking us to evacuate the castle?"

"Yes… but don't call anybody yet. I wanted to have a little chat first, and there's nothing we can do yet."

"Nothing we can do?"

"Spike's back on our side… again. Sort of. And there's all kinds of weirdness. And… Andrew asked me to marry him."

"Andrew what? When? Huh?"

Andrew sighed, and hugged Dawn, leaning close so that he could hear Buffy.

"Um, Buffy… last night."

"Isn't that a bit fast… wait a minute. Did you say last night?"

Andrew rolled his eyes.

"Um, yes, I did."

"Andrew? You're still sleeping with him? And he wants to marry you? Good lord. And now I'm Giles. It's a good thing I was already sitting. Andrew? What'd you say?"

"Um, don't freak out…"

"You said yes? Wow. That's… well, it does make me seem just a little behind, but … wowwy. Tell him his timing sucks."

Andrew shook his head seriously.

"Yeah, I'll tell him. I, um, I'm glad you're taking it well."

"I'm still in shock. After I talk to Giles we'll come up with a plan of action, and if he's still alive after that then there will be a wedding."

"Oh. Okay." Dawn met Andrew's eyes and smiled. He gave a tiny, contented sigh, snuggling closer to her.

"So he's listening in, huh?" asked Buffy. "That's cool. Hey Andy…"

"Hurt her and you'll tear my heart out, I got it," said Andrew.

"We need some new threats for guys. Look into that, huh, Andy? Do some research."

"To threaten myself?"

"And guys who date the Slayers. We need to have resources, you know."

"Yes, yes, of course."

--

Spike drove like a madman, and Clem, sitting in the passenger seat, was whimpering.

Dana had ended up sitting next to Spike, squished between him and Illyria. It was a tight fit; Clem took up a lot of space. Every time they went over a bump she ended up most in Illyria's lap, which was just a little awkward right now.

"Wait, maybe this is a good thing," said Spike. "I mean, maybe it tips the balance the other direction. Eh?"

"Perhaps," said Illyria. They hit another bump and Clem made a groaning sound as Dana grabbed at the dashboard for support, but was still thrown sideways across Illyria's lap.

It stung more than a little bit, internally.

Worse was the easy way Illyria anticipated her and helped her reseat herself.

"I mean, think about it. I'm no longer a warrior with special mystical powers, and now Dana, one of the Slayers, has been linked to a hell goddess."

"That is true," said Illyria. Her voice was as cool and calm as ever, but now Dana could see how much that was just a front. Behind the voice she could feel a torrent of fear. Fear that they had unleashed evil. Fear that now Spike was vulnerable.

And anger. So much anger. Anger at Boris, anger at all evil, anger at the Powers that sent them all into a hopeless battle, angers at the Powers that wanted to maintain a balance of good and evil.

Dana didn't know how it was possible to maintain so much anger.

This is nothing. Spike makes me look calm and rational by comparison. Linking us often was a bad thing—we would feed each other's rage exponentially. Recursively.

Dana wasn't sure what that meant, but in Illyria's mind she could see the image of two snakes biting each other's tails. She thought that meant that they fed each other, which was a weird thought.

Or not. Because every time Illyria thought about Spike she'd reveal some other memory or thought of him, and each one was so breathtaking that she felt something tighten in her chest.

We eventually found a way to block the link enough to keep from going mad. That's why I never knew that he would take you for ice cream.

Spike turned them onto another road. "Clem, where's the autobahn?"

"Uh, turn left up here, then it'll be up past the mountains a ways. Didn't you girls bring a car?"

"We actually parachuted in from above," said Dana. "It was really cool. And saved a lot of time."

"Back when we thought it was urgent that we have a warrior with enough strength to kill a Male Slayer," said Illyria. "But that, of course, turned out to be stupidity."

"Hey, lay off!" said Spike. "Connor thought of it, so it must have at least seemed reasonable!"

"Seemed, but was not," sniffed Illyria. But Dana could feel the strong amusement, and the love that flowed behind the words. It was strange to be let in on half of their relationship like this.

We would often simply say nice things to each other telepathically while slapping each other down. It worked out very well.

And, oddly enough, not the important things. Dana had often thought that they must be planning something in that silence, but they didn't. They just chatted.

Neither of us have ever been good at plotting. We play it by the seat of the pants, most often.

Dana wasn't sure that they had done the right thing, no matter how long Spike continued muttering about balance and power. But she was also enjoying it immensely.

No matter how awkward it was to be able to feel Illyria's hand on her shoulder and at the same time feel her shoulder under Illyria's hand through the link. It was downright unsettling, a feedback loop of touch.