Upon later pondering, no one in the basement could venture a guess as to how long Dawn had been missing before Xander called their attention to her absence with an alarmed "Uh, Buff?" and a pointedly questioning scan of the room. In the ensuing search, exasperation quickly ratcheted up to concern, then worry. The general vibe was approaching panic by the time Buffy returned from a frantic and fruitless sweep of the upstairs.
"She's not up there; I checked everywhere. Do you think she could have left the house? Where would she go? No one saw her leave the basement?"
"Don't you think one of us would have thought to mention that by now?" Anya asked distractedly, bending over to check behind a large cardboard box as if expecting to find Dawn crouching there in an ill-conceived game of hide-and-seek.
Buffy glared at her, and Xander quickly jumped in with the voice of reason. "Look, we were all distracted by the—that—maybe she just got bored and left. She's a teenager; they're fickle, right? So black magic and blood and big balls of red energy just didn't compare to hanging out at the mall with her friends, and she bailed; it's not that far-f—"
"Buffy," Giles interrupted, and the glasses came off and he was wearing his I-hate-to-be-the-one-to-mention-what-we're-all-thinking expression. "We have to allow for the possibility that Dawn—" He paused, racking his brain for a phrasing that wouldn't up the alarm quotient tenfold.
"What?" Buffy prodded, and of course she would make him say it, even though it wasn't necessary, because something as innocuous as her fifteen-year-old sister's wandering upstairs without telling anyone wouldn't spawn the kind of base panic that he now saw in her eyes.
"It's possible that she—" He paused once more, glancing meaningfully toward the proverbial elephant in the room.
"—got sucked into the spell," Anya finished bluntly.
"What?" Xander blurted in a tone which indicated that he, for one, might not have considered this possibility. "That's crazy! Wouldn't we be able to see her? She'd be in there with them, right?" He gestured toward Spike and Willow, then looked back at Giles, shaking his head. "Unless … what are we saying here, Giles?"
"I don't know, Xander. This kind of spell is unpredictable; I couldn't say with any certainty what might happen to one who tried to intervene. It's possible that Dawn was transported corporeally, where Spike and Willow are only mentally engaged."
"Okay, I'm with you, Giles, but what does that mean?" Buffy demanded. "How can we get her back?"
The silence hung heavy in the air.
xXxXx
She's swimming in darkness, tinged red at the edges, and fear is there, but muffled and unimportant now. Pain, too. It's nice, she decides, to know the sting of both in a detached manner, to recognize them from an academic standpoint completely separate from her, from these soothing depths where nothing can touch her ...
But even as she basks in this strange comfort, cold strong hands are grasping, clutching, squeezing, shaking, and she's being pulled helplessly toward the sharp clarity of the waking world—or whatever passes for it here. She senses something—desperation?—and hears words but doesn't comprehend them, perhaps by sheer force of will, because she doesn't want to understand. She clings fast to the place where nothing matters, even as she slips relentlessly away from it.
"Wake up, Dawn, do you hear me? Wake up!"
The words are punctuated by a sharp shake that snaps her head back on her shoulders, and kneeling next to Spike, Willow gasps. "Hey, don't!" she starts, reaching to take Dawn from his arms. She freezes at the sound of the low threatening growl rumbling up from his throat as he tightens his grip on the girl. Willow settles for brushing a long silky lock of hair off Dawn's forehead, her brow furrowed with concern.
"She's so pale, Spike, I—"
"She's fine. She'll be fine, won't you, sweetheart? 'Course she will."
"What if he—you—that—comes back?"
"I'll tear its fucking head off."
"Okay, but I don't know if that's an option, Spike, I mean, he was you. He looked like you, he's going around sucking the life out of people in this freaky mind carnival—I don't know how we can defend ourselves against that!"
He spares Willow a fleeting glance and in it she sees the dichotomy of William and William the Bloody, gentle and wounded and uncertain, fierce, unbreakable, and merciless, a dizzying jumble of contradictions that mesmerizes her and makes a shiver zip down her spine. Oh, there is power, she thinks inexplicably. They're right to trust him.
"It hurt her," he says, and his voice is perfectly flat, perfectly steady, perfectly reasonable. "It's as good as dead, no matter what that means for me." His attention falls back to the girl in his arms, and his gaze doesn't soften at all. "Niblet, you listen to me, now. I'm not fucking around, and you know it. Wake up."
"Go easy, Spike, I don't think yelling at her is gonna—" Willow begins, and as he turns to snap her into silence her eyes widen and she directs his attention back to Dawn. Her eyelids are fluttering, long dark lashes brushing softly against too-pale skin, flashes of blue beneath.
"Dawnie?"
"That's it, that's my girl," Spike murmurs softly. "Come on, now. Open your eyes and look at me."
She awakes with a start, a pitiful moaning cry as her feet scrape and flail against cobblestone, her gaze fixed on him, panic pouring off her in waves. He loosens his hold on her but when his hands close on her shoulders she screams, a piercing glass-shard of noise in the stillness, and in his surprise his hands slacken and she slips out of his grip, scrambles to her feet, and tries to run.
"Dawn!" he shouts, and catches her easily as her sickeningly weak knees buckle and she goes sprawling toward the ground.
"Let me GO!" she screams, and the terror in her voice is like ice in his nonfunctioning veins, and for a moment he's not sure he didn't do this to her. Does it truly matter if the perpetrator was Spike in his right mind or a version of him coaxed out by the First to do away with the only people in the world who matter to him? Hardly. Dawn will be just as dead either way, eventually, because he is a killer and always will be and if he doesn't do her in himself he will be responsible for whatever harm befalls her, whenever the day comes that he fails them again. Inevitable, that.
She is right to run from him, to scream and claw and kick to escape. He's taught her well.
Willow appears next to him and perhaps the sight of her ought to have calmed the younger girl. Perhaps, once, it would have. Not so any more. (You cry because you're human … but you weren't always … it's time you went back to being a little energy ball … no more tears, Dawnie.) All the magic-control training in the world can't erase some things. Sometimes forgiveness, even when sincere, holds exceptions. Willow sees this, the echoes of fear and betrayal, and it stings. Like always.
She tries for a comforting smile but it feels crooked and wrong and probably looks more like a grimace. "Dawnie, it's all right, it's us. You're going to be okay."
From Spike's bracing grasp, Dawn's gaze flits back and forth between them like a trapped animal.
"You're weak, love," Spike says in what he hopes is a soothing tone, easing his trembling burden back to the ground but keeping a solid grip on her this time. "You've lost a good deal of blood. Now I'm going to let go of you, but first you've gotta promise me you won't try to run away again. Yeah?"
Peering at him with impossibly wide blue eyes, she seems to look straight through him, straight through to his … soul. She needs more, he knows—he owes her more. And all he can offer is words that sound cheap even to his own ears.
"It wasn't me hurt you, sweet, you know that," he says. "We're in one buggering mess, here, and all I know is I'm getting you out of it in one piece, but I need you to trust me." For a moment he's tempted to look away from her because it's ludicrous, isn't it, to ask that of her. Trust me—I'm a demon. Trust me—I'm a rapist. Trust me—I've put many a gory end to someone else's pretty little girl with eyes just like yours and relished their fear and their tears and their pleas for mercy as they died. Trust me—I left you once before when you needed me most, and I'd do it a thousand times over if it meant your safety or hers … I'll die to keep from killing you, even if it's only a trick of the Hellmouth. If you let me back in I'm sure to break your heart. Trust me.
After a lifetime her head moves almost imperceptibly in what could be classified as a nod of assent. Spike's eyes close just briefly in a moment of utter, utter relief.
"It really wasn't you," she says, voice shaking and soft and very unlike her normal one, making him fight an urge to scoop her up from the ground and smother her with good intentions.
It's not a question, but he shakes his head as he takes her hands in his. "It wasn't me, Bit." A declaration once avowed to another Summers echoes in his mind, and it's no less true when applied to this one, so he repeats it.
"I don't hurt you."
They are sitting on the ground, all three of them—under the premise of waiting for Dawn to regain some strength but actually at a total loss as to how to proceed—when a distant shout pierces the silence.
"Dawn! Dawnie, answer if you can hear me!"
Buffy.