October 2, 2001
"Another?" the bartender asked.
Xander nodded. "Yeah, thanks."
The Bronze wasn't the same without Buffy, so Xander came here because they didn't card. It was a dive off the corner of Main and Barrow, home to a jukebox, darts, a broken pool table, but most importantly, alcohol. Blessed oblivion, where he could forget how Buffy was trapped in a hell dimension.
The bartender poured, Xander downed it, took a look around at the blurry and tilting bar, and fell off the stool. Everything churned in his stomach as he crawled to the bathroom, making it just in time to puke in the shit-stained toilet. Even with an empty stomach, he continued to heave until he passed out.
Willow walked into Hannigan's and gave the bartender a wan smile. "Thanks for calling, Derek. Did he make it to the bathroom?"
"Yeah, Will, on all fours. I'd have cut him off earlier, but he never looks drunk until it BAM hits him," Derek said, washing a glass.
"Yeah. I'm just glad this won't be a problem much longer." Willow patted the bar and made her way back to the men's restroom where Xander lay between the toilet and the wall. A noxious odor permeated the air, like five day old sun-baked puke and refuse, but Willow was familiar with it by now. This had been happening since Buffy died.
As she flushed the toilet, Willow wondered if she should use magic to carry him out since the noise of the commode didn't make an eyelash flutter. She hated seeing him this way. With his parents' alcohol problem, this was not a good road for Xander. But soon he there'd be no reason for him to drink. Buffy's return should get him back to normal.
She had learned her lesson on using magic to make him sober. His anger that first night had scared her. The glass had missed hitting her face by an inch before shattering on the wall. It'd been the hard way ever since. Anya refused to come get him anymore, claiming too much vomit on her clothes, but Willow suspected that it hurt her to see him this way.
She shook him and shouted, "Xander!" but a wiggle of his pinky finger discouraged her. Time to pull out the big guns. Willow walked back out to the bar and told Derek, "Give me a pitcher."
Derek nodded and did as she asked. "You'll have to hurry. The cops see you leaving past close..."
"I know." She took the pitcher back to the bathroom and dumped the ice and water on Xander's head, shocking him awake, but not sober.
"Wha?" Xander shot up.
"Hey there. It's time to go home," Willow said, pushing his wet hair back. "Tomorrow's the big day."
"Ayn?" Xander asked, surprised that his fiancee was here.
"No. It's Willow." She pulled him up by his arm.
"Oh, hey, whoa." He stood up but toppled forward and just caught himself before doing a face-plant.
"Let's try walking," she said, as she put his arm around her shoulders.
He put most of his weight on her, they stumbled out of the bar and got him to his car. At least he didn't have to work tomorrow. There was not getting him to his apartment tonight. His back would be knots the next day, but his bed was the backseat of his Toyota.
When Willow got home, she saw that Spike had fallen asleep on the couch again.
She was just about to pass him and go upstairs to bed, when he said, "You shouldn't keep picking up after him you know."
It was time to tell Spike. She had kept it from him when she hadn't known if they could get the supplies they needed. With the way he cared for Dawn and helped patrol, he deserved to know. "It won't be a problem after tomorrow."
"And what miracle happens tomorrow that will cure Harris of his perpetual buzz?" Spike asked, thinking she had found some mystical hoodoo that wouldn't work.
"We're bringing Buffy back."
Spike gaped at her for a moment before collecting himself and nodding. "When were you going to tell me?"
"We got the last ingredient today. I didn't want to tell you before that in case we didn't. I'm not telling Dawn in case something goes wrong. And we can't tell Giles because he'd try to stop us. This is dangerous magic and he-"
"I get it. No need to explain. I want to be there."
"We'll be setting out from the Magic Box as soon as it closes tomorrow night. Giles can babysit Dawn." Willow wanted to wrap the conversation up when Spike surprised her.
"So you have shovels and everything at the Magic Box?"
Shovels? Then it hit her: they needed to dig up Buffy's grave. "Look, I've gone over everything, okay? The shovels were the only oversight. We'll get them tomorrow during Anya's shift."
"You'd better be sure, Red. You botch this spell and things'll get messy. And then you'll have an unhappy Big Bad on your hands."
A crash at the door signaled the Buffy Bot's arrival. "Willow. I need service. I think my feet broke."
Spike pulled the Bot inside. "You daft bint."
The next day was agony. Willow fretted over the spell, re-checking everything; paranoid she'd overlooked something. Time got slower with every passing second.
They headed out early to dig up the grave. Willow found that it was easier said than done. Other than Spike, who worked non-stop, the rest of them had to take turns digging. Midnight hovered, and they hadn't gotten Buffy out of her grave. The temptation to use magical energy on excavating the coffin, niggled at Willow's fingertips. Relief flooded her when Spike hit something solid and wood sounding.
It was time to do this. Things had to improve with Buffy back, right? With her rotting corpse lying in the grass, everyone saw her recompose from the ritual. Buffy gasped, breathing again for the first time in four months, just as Willow passed out from exhaustion.
With a sigh, Buffy turned onto her side and snored. Xander, Anya, and Tara watched her in awe. "She's really back," Xander said as he knelt next to her. He stroked her hair. Being able to touch her made her resurrection real rather than the dream he'd been having for months. "We need to get her home." He scooped her off the ground.
"Giles needs to see her," Anya said.
"Buffy's his daughter for all intents and purposes. We need to get her to him," Tara said.
Spike couldn't bring himself to speak. But he knew Buffy would want her best friend taken care of, so he picked up Willow and tossed her over his shoulder in a fireman's carry.
As soon as they got to the edge of town, they knew something was wrong. The scent of smoke had gotten stronger, and now they had another crisis on their hands. Burnt out cars, looted stores, and screaming people greeted them at every turn. Demons on motorcycles had taken over the town in less than two hours. This forced the group to hole up at the Magic Box.
Xander lay Buffy on the couch in the store proper while Spike settled Willow onto the couch in the training room. Spike wanted nothing but to check on Buffy, sit with her until she woke up, yet he felt weird being around the others. He sat on the floor, back against the couch, legs stretched out in front of him, and talked to the unconscious witch.
"Hell of a night, eh? Raising the dead, burning town, puking up snakes, and some people just sleep. Wonder how old Rupes is dealing with it. Oh bugger, someone needs to go rescue him and Dawn."
When he joined the rest of the group in the main shop, Spike found he wasn't the only one who had had that idea. Given his vampire stamina, he got volunteered for the rescue mission.
It took half an hour for Spike to get to the Summers' house. While not on fire, it'd still been thrashed. Most of the windows broken, the front door missing, a thieving hurricane had killed the damn place. The smell of blood guided him to a heap of Giles. Spike, knowing wounds, could tell that Giles's leg was a goner. He had to apply a tourniquet above the knee while paying attention to the sounds of the house in search of Dawn.
After a couple false starts, Spike found Dawn hiding under the kitchen sink, folded in on herself. "Hey Li'l Bit, we need to get out of here, yeah?"
Dawn flew out from her hiding spot and clung to Spike with shaking limbs and gasping sobs.
The shit news was that the Magic Box was nowhere near the hospital. The worse news was that there was a cavalcade of demons between the Summers' house and saving Giles. Dawn blathered on, and he would've listened to her, but this crisis left no such luxury. Finding transportation was the most important thing and coddling a scared teenager fell low on the list of priorities.
They located an intact car a block and a half away, a Mini Cooper whose size helped them navigate half-blocked streets and alleyways. Spike tended to Giles's wounds, not just his leg, but the other wounds. Dawn used skills she'd picked up over the summer stealing cars to get them to the hospital. If Dawn had something useful to do it shut her up.
The ER's chaos was no competition for his Niblett's temper tantrums, getting Giles the medical attention he needed.
"Where the fuck were you?" Her voice carrying over the screaming disaster victims as she shoved him and pounded on his chest. "Giles better be okay, or I'll set fire to you in your sleep! You piece of shit!"
He waited until she finished her tirade and then told her Giles would lose his leg and his other injuries were scarring. While he knew he explained this, he never remembered the words or tone he used. What he remembered were her devastated tears.
Dawn's life had been crap, and Spike felt terrible for her but he needed sleep before he could pay attention. The last twenty-four had drained him more than he thought possible in such a short span of time. His ass dragged to the point of leaving the decisions in the hands of a criminally inclined teenager. So when her sobs subsided to hiccups, he hit her with: "So should we stay here with Giles, or meet up with the group?"
Her attack this time came as busting his knee out with a kick that'd take out a Fayrl. It'd take Spike at least a week to heal. He needed to steal a brace and continue taking care of the current crisis. "Wanna put your kleptomania to work and get me a brace?"
A grunt and an eye roll told him he was on his own. So he slid to the floor and scooted toward the supply closet when the ER waiting room filled with demons. With an eye roll and a grunt of his own, Spike gestured for Dawn to hide while he did what he could about the latest threat of the evening. Using vampire speed, he smashed a chair and used a length of wood as a makeshift brace, tying it to his leg with strips torn from his shirt. Another piece of broken chair served as a weapon - not the most effective he'd ever wielded, but better than nothing. The humans scattered like cockroaches when a light went on. It worked to his advantage, allowing him to fight the demons with the efficiency he'd once used to dispatch his victims. After taking out four demons on his own, a truth hit him so hard it left him stunned long enough for a Hellion to render him unconscious.
Between Xander, Anya, and Tara, no decision had got made on what to do next. For the last two hours they had argued with punctuations of long silent periods. They were in the middle of one of the latter when Anya noticed that Buffy's eyes were open. This left even Anya without words and she kept hitting Xander in the shoulder and pointing at Buffy.
Up to now, Buffy hadn't moved, so no one had noticed that she wept. While tears and snot ran across her face, she made no sound, not even a sniffle. The tears sent everyone into a panic. Xander, while trying to be gentle, bordered on hysteria as he pleaded with her to be okay. Behind him, Tara wrung her hands and made pathetic high-pitched noises in her throat. Anya researched the spell they'd used to resurrect her, hoping to find something they could fix.
But before they made any headway, the front windows of the Magic Box exploded in a shower of glass. Demons poured in, growling and shrieking. Anya grabbed Tara while Xander picked up Buffy and they headed to the basement where the trapdoor into the sewer was.
"Buffy please please please please please snap out of it. No laying down on the job."
"She needs a hospital." Anya looked at the fork in their path, then led them into the tunnel on the left.
Willow's eyes fluttered open. The effects of the spell lingered, and she was groggy and disoriented. As she blinked away the fog, she realized someone was carrying her, and not gently. Whoever it was, had slung her over their shoulder. For a moment, she thought it might be Spike, but then she realized there were claws digging into her thigh. Willow tensed, the truth of her situation hitting her like a truck - a Hellion carried her.
Still too limp to struggle, Willow knew magic was out of the question. She needed time to recharge. For now, the only course of action open to her was to concentrate on drawing power into herself. Eventually she could strike back - assuming the demon didn't rip her apart first. It dug its claws deeper into her thigh and growled.
'Don't panic,' she told herself. 'Don't panic…'