Jagged, brilliant, sharp, aching bursts of confusion. Chaos. Flashes of red, blurs of motion, none of it purposeful or driven, just staggering, just senseless, jumbled. Just making it worse. Hands, a flurry of hands like birds, like those caged birds Dru used to keep until they died because she never fed them, never remembered that they were living creatures, never realized because there were others, always more, always replaceable. Her whimper and her whim, he was a slave to both, and

Yes, pet, I will bring you another, of course I will, I'll take care of everything, please don't fret, my love, I'm sorry I upset you, I shouldn't be so harsh, forgive me? …

Flailing arms—his? Something soft but solid yielded with a yelp and a crunch and yelling

Dawn! Oh my God. Talk to me, Dawnie! Buffy, she's—

Should have felt good, once would have felt good, now only that ache of wrongwrongwrong and damned and

Is she okay? Xander?

fuck Spike was so tired, couldn't they just let him sleep, for once just stop killing and ripping and bleeding the world dry and it takes so much out of you, being evil, it hurts and hurts and hurts

Dawnie, it's Xander. Can you open your eyes? Look at me. Open your eyes and look at me.

Look at me, little one, look at me before I take your life because it's better that way, and he's taught me well, my sire's sire, to make them look before going in for the kill so that you can drink up that fear, that gut-wrenching horror in their eyes, the knowledge that you are God and you are End, the thing that woke them in the night screaming for their mummies, the rejection of their plea for salvation

Buffy, she's not waking up. There's blood. She hit her head, and I think her nose is broken

and when they cry his love laughs and dances and twirls in the streets chanting about burning embers and rivers of blood and he secretly thinks that there's something missing in him because there's no giddiness, even when they breathe their last into his cold flesh, there's only

Girls, go upstairs now. Xander, take Dawn and find Willow; she'll help, I can't leave him like this, he'll hurt himself

hollow and black, hollow and blood-red that turns black in the shadows

And that would be such a goddamn tragedy, for him to hurt himself like he's hurt your little sister? Wow, Buffy, I'm

Bitter, so bitter.

Xander, for God's sake don't do this now, just take care of her, please! Take care of her

Of course. Always take care of her, always care for them, his loves, his weaklings, his frail, sickly mum, delicate and terrible and breakable Dru, implacable Buffy with the fragile heart encased in steel lest she find out what it is to be one of the un-Chosen destroyed by worship, wide-eyed Dawn, the child of his soul, the blue-eyed marvel who loved a monster with such innocent abandon that he'd wept more than once when he failed her.

"Dawn, where's—the birds are all bleeding, and I—she's—he's cut her and she's fallen out of the sky and it's just bits now … I've broken them, my sweets, it's all hollow—" He can't find the right words, the ones he wants, they dance away like Drusilla on those dizzy nights after a kill and he's reaching but nothing comes and Buffy is … Buffy is …

Pinning him down. Her face drifts in and out and into his frame of vision, hovering above him like a fallen angel, lips pursed tight, sweat standing out in little beads of silver on her brow as she straddles him and holds him still even as his struggles beneath her weaken and cease. He tries to move his arms, but she is relentless, his angel of stone.

"Spike," she says, and it is a question, and it is tender.

"Love…" What have I done? he doesn't ask.

"I need you to stop fighting me now. You're okay, you're home."

Home.

She looks troubled, so troubled, and he wants to comfort her but he's so afraid to know the truth. She gives him a rough sketch, not the full-color version, but it's enough. Turned against the girls, no rhyme, no reason; supposed to be teaching them, but snapped and tried to … tried to …

He remembers long silky hair caught up in his fist, a fragmented burst of girlish screaming, the resistance, the scuffle, the ancient killfire in him igniting unchecked, and someone (himself?) watching from the shadows, cheering him on.

His hands catch his eyes, not the flesh but the spatters of bright red decorating the knuckles, and he is horrified and mesmerized, and (There's blood)

"Bit, where is she? What did I do? Buffy, what did I do?"

Buffy tosses a guilty glance over her shoulder, toward the stairs and the door and the ones she truly belongs to, up where heroes live and love and fight monsters like him to the death, to dust. "She's okay, I think," she says, and it's almost apologetic, that tone, so odd. "You were out of your head, Spike. You were holding onto Vi, I think it was, about to—um—to bite her, and Dawn tried to help, and she got too close, and … she's going to be fine."

Never hurt her, never, not my Bit.

He tries to sit up but she forces him back down, stern now, softness fading. "Listen to me. You've got to stay here. I'm going to check on Dawnie, and I'll be back for you. But right now … you've got to stay here. Please."

Her eyes tell him that her friends would dust him on sight now.

"Buffy?"

A voice from the top of the stairs, hesitant, timid. One of the new ones.

Buffy shoots him one more pleading glance before turning to look at her. "Yeah?"

"They're taking your sister to the hospital. She's awake now, but Willow says the bleeding worries her. She thinks Dawn might have a concussion."

"I'll be right there."

She kisses Spike before she leaves. And she chains him to the wall. He doesn't protest.

xXxXx

"The ER people know me by name now," Dawn sulked as Xander helped her in with an arm around her waist and deposited her on the couch. "It's getting embarrassing."

"Well, the last one was on you," he said, shooting her a pointed look that made her wonder about a statute of limitations on pissiness. His tone hardened. "But this time … this time the responsible party's going to pay, count on it."

She stretched her long legs out in front of her and leaned back against the cushions. "What happened?" she asked softly. "I mean, why did he just—"

"Why? Because he's a monster, Dawn, that's why," Xander said, his voice coming out much rougher than she was accustomed to hearing it. "And we kill monsters, that's what we do. If Buffy's too out of her mind to do it, then I'll do it for her. Anyway, it's nothing for you to worry about. You need to rest now."

He left her there wondering where all the Potentials were but grateful that the house seemed relatively peaceful for a change. Her head throbbed (though they'd pronounced her concussion-free, thank God, or she would have had to stay overnight for observation) where she'd smacked it on the concrete of the basement floor, her unbroken but severely swollen nose felt hugely disproportionate on her face, and her top lip (also swollen) was still stubbornly seeping copper-tasting blood into her mouth. All in all, she felt like shit.

Buffy finally came up and fussed over her as a good sister/guardian should, but it felt oddly hollow, forced, and Dawn knew it was more for show than anything, and that the large portion of Buffy's mind (and possibly her heart) was down in the basement with their unstable, now-proven-dangerous former ally.

"Xander's going to kill him," Dawn said to Buffy's back as she turned from her frenzied pillow-fluffing and antiseptic-applying and headed for the kitchen to make some hot cocoa. Buffy froze and slowly faced Dawn, her expression unreadable.

"He didn't mean to hurt you, Dawn."

"I know. I think I know. But I doubt that matters to Xander."

"Do you think he's right?"

"Xander?" Dawn frowned, shaken by the question. "I don't know."

"Spike hurt you. Do you want him to die?"

Dawn shivered under Buffy's intense stare. She didn't know how she would answer the question until she had. Her response was steady, firm, absolute.

"No."

Buffy nodded, her eyes softening. "He hurt me too," she said. "And I don't either."

xXxXx

Please let me know your thoughts. There is more in the works if you'd like me to continue. (And probably even if you couldn't care less, but the blatant plea for reviews works better the first way.) So please review!