A/N: This has, without warning, turned into a sort of flip side to my WIP, "Fireflies." In that one, the attempted rape never happened, but Spike still left town and got the soul. If you like this story, you might like that one, which I'm determined to finish as soon as possible. It's basically the same story from a different angle. Hope you like this chapter. More to come.

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No one was speaking to Dawn. Not that she cared, really, but she kind of hoped the silent treatment wouldn't last much longer. A stony-faced Xander (and who knew there could be such a thing?) had hauled her to the emergency room and waited while they tended her injury. Turned out she didn't need stitches, but the thick bandage that now mummified her hand made even the simplest maneuver, like pouring a glass of milk, virtually impossible.

She cursed loudly as the carton slipped to the floor and began gurgling its contents everywhere. Grabbing a dishtowel from the counter, she squatted down and began to mop up the mess with her good hand, beginning to feel the slightest twinges of self-pity as no one came to help her.

Buffy hadn't even asked how things went at the hospital, which kind of stung, though Dawn would never admit it. And Dawn certainly didn't find "Xander's staying over while I patrol tonight, so don't even try to leave the house" to be an acceptable show of sisterly concern.

When a shadow fell across her and the rapidly spreading puddle of milk, Dawn looked up through dangling strands of hair and had to brace herself before she tipped backward in her precarious position.

"You're just slopping it around. Move."

Struck speechless, she did as she was told. She watched expressionlessly as he knelt down clutching a roll of paper towels and finished cleaning up her spill, back muscles working beneath his black tee-shirt and hair glinting platinum under the harsh fluorescent light. When he was done, he got up, tossed the sopping towels in the trash can, and busied himself at the counter making a drink.

Not looking at her, he took a deep swig of his Scotch on the rocks and said, "So what's the damage?"

"What are you—?" Dawn had to shake herself out of her dumbfounded reverie. "Oh. This?"

He spared her a withering glance usually reserved for the profoundly and incurably dimwitted. "Yeah, that. Didn't have to amputate, I see. Though it'd serve you right if they had."

Dawn's tongue felt too big for her mouth. "You'd like that, wouldn't you?" she said inexplicably, then resisted the urge to shake her head at her own patheticness.

He rolled his eyes. "Yes, Nib—Dawn. I live for the day you lose some appendage or other. It's what's kept me going this long."

"Oh, is that it? Because I thought it was the sadistic mindfuck you and Buffy call a relationship."

He looked up sharply, but his words and tone remained calm, disinterested as ever. "No one ever called it that."

"Mindfuck, or relationship?"

"You got some mouth on you, little one."

"What can I say? I learned from the best."

He raised his glass to her. "Can't argue that. May I ask at what point during my absence you grew into such a right bitch?"

"I'm my sister's sister."

He smirked. "That you are."

There was a long silence as Dawn stared at him and he studied the ice in his glass. At last she found her voice. "It's not going to work," she said, distantly grateful that the words came out fairly steady.

He didn't respond, but the faintest twitch of his mouth confirmed her suspicion that he knew exactly what she was talking about.

"I'm not going to let you just come up here and pretend it's like it used to be. I won't stand around and spar with you. We're not friends anymore, Spike. You screwed that up, turned it to shit, along with everything else you've ever touched."

He made no indication that he'd heard her, but he reached for the bottle of Scotch and took it with him as he opened the basement door and descended into the darkness.

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The sneaking out the window routine was getting old. Luckily, when Buffy wasn't home and Xander was on Dawn Watch (which in itself was oh-so-ridiculous and embarrassing and pointless, she kept trying to convince them), it was unnecessary. These days, Xander inevitably drank one too many beers and sacked out in front of the TV in the living room, leaving Dawn free to walk right past him out the front door. As long as she was back before Buffy, it was a perfect setup. Time enough to meet up with Janice and this weekend's "boy toys" (Janice called them that, and Dawn thought it was a seriously lame and juvenile label, but she'd be damned if she'd tell Janice that because it was Janice who found the boys, while Dawn just clammed up around members of the opposite sex and wouldn't even be able to get a guy to talk to her if left to her own devices), have a little fun at the Bronze, and get back before anyone was the wiser.

She had just closed the front door silently behind her, thinking Sorry, Xand, but I've got to have some semblance of a normal life, and it's not my fault you people have a super-heightened fear of mortality from years of monster-hunting, when a voice spoke from the darkness.

"Oi. What's your rush?"

Stifling a reflexive scream, Dawn spun around to see Spike lurking in the shadows of the front porch, barely visible except for the orange glow of his cigarette coal.

"What the hell are you doing? You scared me."

"Then I can still do something right. What did Harris say when you told him you were going out on the town?"

Dawn glared, and Spike smirked. They faced one another across the dark porch in a silent stand-off.

"You wouldn't sell me out. It's not your style," Dawn said at last. Then after a thoughtful pause, she added, "And I think you know you'd do well to stay out of Xander's way. He doesn't have any qualms about killing you. Buffy's got him on a short leash as far as you're concerned, but I don't think it would take much to break it."

The smirk broadened into a leer, and he took a long drag on his cigarette. Exhaling a noxious cloud of smoke, he said, "Jesus, Dawn, but I have been away too long if you think threatening me with Buffy's whelp will make me cave. Grasping at straws there, pet." His eyes locked on hers and his semi-smile faded. "But Harris or no, Buffy wants you home tonight. Safe."

"And you're her right hand as always," Dawn said sarcastically.

"I'm whatever she needs me to be."

"She needs you out of her life. We all do."

"Keep saying it, Bit," he shot back. "Maybe one day soon you'll believe it."

Dawn stiffened. She opened her mouth to formulate some kind of stinging retaliation, but then Janice's car drew up to the Summers' curb and idled there, and Dawn glanced from it to Spike, weighing her options. Spike watched her with offhand curiosity, but she didn't mistake that for indifference. He would win this battle, if she turned it into one. No way would he let her go, and risk letting Buffy down.

With a sizzling glare, Dawn started down the porch steps. His hand closed around her upper arm, and when she shook him off with more force than was necessary, she didn't miss the flicker of guilty horror that passed across his features (fingers clawing at terrycloth, feet sliding on tile, echoing screams, pleasespikepleasedontdothis) as he let go and took a small step away from her.

"You go down there, then," he said, an almost imperceptible tremor in his voice. "Tell your little addle-brained friend you're not coming and then get back in the house, and we'll all go about our respective pseudo-peaceful existence and each pretend the other is something they'll never be again. Right?"

With a sinking feeling she couldn't quite ascribe to anything in particular, Dawn turned away and went to explain to Janice that she was on her own. When she finally went back up the path and into the house, Spike was nowhere to be seen.

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