Rain hammers the living room windows, framing the stillness inside with an uncomfortably loud staccato. A suffocating static that blankets around them.

"How did you get back in?" Buffy asks after a few heartbeats, moving her body in front of Dawn's instinctively as cold blue piercing eyes swing her way. The anger in them stiffens her spine, and her hands twitch, ready to curl into fists.

Those two little scars at her neck itch violently. Throbbing as if all her fighting instincts are distilled down in the tissue there.

Is that because they're his? Buffy thinks sluggishly around the chaotic thudding of her heartbeat, their playful banter from earlier now feeling distinctly sour in her mouth, adrenaline thrashing its way through her veins. Or is that just a… Slayer thing?

"You invited me in." Spike swallows to relieve some of the tension building in his throat. "You must have."

"I don't believe you," she says bluntly, eyes narrowing tighter. Suspicion sinks in, poisoning the amity that had existed between them, corrupting their morning together into new interpretations; the way he'd grinned hungrily at the sight of her scars. The way he'd touched them like he didn't lament their existence...

The perceived duplicity makes her skin crawl.

"Did you already know who you are?"

"No!"

His outcry practically cuts her question off, and does nothing to assuage the mistrust bubbling in her head. In the weak, watery light filtering through the rain outside, she suddenly sees how hard and sharp his teeth really are.

Buffy keeps her eyes fixed on Spike. "Dawn, go to your room."

Dawn starts to protest, but her voice is drowned out by Spike's competing outrage.

"I was invited!" he insists, trying his best to convince her as she leans further away from him. "I didn't break in!"

"No way," Willow stutters from the floor, rising slowly like he's a tiger who's just figured out his cage is unlatched. "You did something. Messed up the… the spell or whatever and knocked us all out."

Spike's jaw tightens, teeth grinding, as he turns to her.

"If it's a spell gone wrong, I think I'm looking your way, little witch," he sneers, flicking at the bowl of herbs they'd found burning on the coffee table with emphasis. "Someone's been playing with something they shouldn't have."

His words jolt something in Buffy's mind that sets nausea swelling in her gut.

She hadn't felt abused when she woke up in the morning. No bruises or tenderness to give away anything untoward, but still the idea persists that he'd wanted more than to just sleep next to her, seeing as he'd obviously passed out with his lips pressed against her neck. Two very sinister possibilities spring to mind. It doesn't pay to be naive.

"Dawn. Room. Now," Buffy growls, brooking no room for argument. Dawn slinks off the couch, and Buffy rises to her feet, ready to block Spike's path should he decide his amnesia-patient act has run its course, and lunges for her sister. Dawn trips up the stairs to her room, slamming the door behind her, and Buffy swallows around the thoughts she doesn't even want to think, let alone say aloud.

"We woke up in my bed," she says steadily. Calm and low enough should prying teenage ears be listening in. Ignoring Willow and Tara's widening eyes as they take another step back in shock. "Were you there to… to-" Her lip curls in disgust at the words she can't finish.

She doesn't need to. If she thought he looked angry before she was mistaken. He stands to face her, blue eyes burning with rage, the phone's plastic cracking in his clenched fist.

"I may not be a good man," he says, his voice dark and quiet and full of fury. "Hell, seems I'm not even a man, but let me make one thing perfectly clear, luv; if I broke in to hurt you, I would notbe wearing your clothes, and neither would you."

The swing of her fist jolts his head back with a crack, blood spurting from his nose. He groans, stoppering it with the heel of his hand, and through his almost closed eyelids he sees her other fist flying towards him. With a blood soaked hand he catches her by the wrist before her punch can connect, squeezing the bones in her arm hard.

"Would you knock it off!" he shouts in her face, spraying blood across her cheeks. "I'm not here to hurt you!" He flings her arm away and dabs at the blood under his nose with the back of his hand.

"How can I trust that?!" Buffy shouts back, smearing his blood off her face. Somewhere far off she thinks how natural that action is. A sleeve across a bloody cheek like she's done it a thousand times. "How can I believe a word you say?"

"BECAUSE I'M STARVING!"

There's blood in his teeth, gushing from his nose, and he can taste the salt, can feel it calling to something that until now had stayed strangely dormant. Can feel a second set of teeth in his head desperate to push down and sink into something warm and wet and red. Tear into muscle and lap at the nectar underneath.

The idea of her blood in his mouth leaves him hollow, though. Makes him sick and sad and full of an aching emptiness that he knows instinctively shouldn't be there.

"If I wanted to fucking eat you, or rape you, I would've done it by now. I don't, Buffy. I don't know why we ended up where we did, but it's the goddamn truth." His tongue wipes away the blood on his upper lip. "I think we can both admit I wasn't exactly unwelcome this morning."

"You're unwelcome now," Willow says coldly, taking hold of Tara's hand and squeezing it reassuringly.

"Fuck off! This is your mess," he snaps, pointing to the mess of magic paraphernalia littering the coffee table, "yours and your girlfriend's, you're not pinning it on me!"

"I find myself unfortunately in agreement," says a second male voice from the door, as an older bespectacled man comes through it, startling them all with his unannounced presence. I

"Giles?" Buffy breathes with a slight sigh of relief of another puzzle piece slotting in. He nods, shutting the door behind him.

They make room for him as he takes his place around the coffee table, eyeing the debris with a disapproving glower.

He shakes his head ruefully. "What on earth has been going on in this house?"

The two witches shuffle awkwardly, keeping their distance from the blood smeared vampire as he slumps down on the far end of the couch, away from everyone in a lonely angry lump.

"We-we think he broke in, and did something with our memories," Tara mumbles from behind Willow, holding her hand all the more tightly as Spike snorts through the blood in his nose.

Giles raises an eyebrow at Spike as he grips his freely bleeding nose between pinched fingers, glaring sourly at Giles, clearly waiting for further accusations to land on his shoulders.

"I sincerely doubt it," Giles says with a roll of his eyes, but doesn't elaborate any further. "Where's Dawn?"

"Here," pipes a tired sounding voice from the stairs.

Buffy huffs, exasperated. "I told you to go to your room."

"You're not the boss of me," growls Dawn as she digs her heels in, practically seething with teenage resentment.

"Actually, Dawn, I think you'd better join us," Giles says with careful neutrality, motioning her down the stairs. At his invitation she stomps down and takes a seat on the opposite end of the sofa, away from Spike, tucking her legs up sulkily.

Giles picks up the pen from next to the phone directory, still open on the table, and bends over the bowl of mushy herb sludge until what he's looking for surfaces from the slurry. Eight crystals glint amongst the plantal confetti, five an inky black and three clear.

He straightens his back, and drops the pen back on the table, deep concern etched around the lines of his eyes.

"I think all of you had better sit down," he says, before leaving the room and heading for the kitchen.

Tara and Willow take up the armchairs, leaving Buffy the only available space between Spike and Dawn. She takes it, giving Spike as wide a berth as possible.

Despite her prickly attitude, Dawn leans a little closer to Buffy, angling for reassurance.

"We're going to remember, aren't we?" she says quietly so only Buffy can hear. Buffy turns her head but Dawn won't meet her eyes. She swallows, and Buffy can practically see the lump in her throat. "We're going to remember her dying…"

Buffy glances at the diary still held tight in her sister's hand.

"Do you think-" Dawn's voice wobbles dangerously, her eyes suddenly watery with unshed tears. "Do you think he can make us just… not remember that part?"

Buffy's own eyes sting. She doesn't blink, but carefully tilts her head back until her vision stops swimming.

"I don't think it works like that, sweetie," she says, the endearment slipping from her so naturally as her fingers lock with Dawn's hand and squeeze.

God, I wish it did.

I wish I could go back to this morning and just be Sunny, girlfriend of Charlie. Not a Slayer, no vampires, no fate of the world, no dead mom.

I wish that so much.

Dawn's head rests on her shoulder, her whole frame shaking silently as she huddles into Buffy. Spilled tears dampen the neck of Buffy's sweater. "I don't want to remember."

She sounds desperate and resigned at the same time, her voice almost pleading like a frightened little kid waiting in a doctor's office for an injection. Knowing there's no way out but just needing to check that it really truly has to be done, because it seems so unfair. In fact all five of them have the look of patients in a hospital waiting room; waiting for some terrible unknown's arrival, and unable to escape it.

"Me neither," Buffy says, feeling the dead weight of dread starting to squash her into the sofa cushions.

Spike turns, hearing the rasp of tears in her voice and she meets his gaze. There's so much fear in her that there isn't enough room for anger. Not enough room for suspicion as desperation seems to fill all the edges of her mind.

He swallows, wiping the blood on his hand onto his jeans as best he can before venturing to touch her, the tips of his fingers just barely grazing the back of her hand. For half a second it seems like she'll actually let him sink his fingers between hers.

They jerk apart as Giles comes back from the kitchen, holding a sealable plastic bag. He picks up the bowl of herbs and crystals, shaking the contents of the bowl into it. A look of distaste pinches his mouth into a narrow line, and Spike is more than sure his eyes flicker to Willow.

"I apologize to you all," Giles says before dropping the bag on the floor. "This won't be pleasant."

One hard stamp shatters the crystals inside into glittering dirty shards. He winces as the screaming starts.


It's Tara who speaks first. One deafening cry of "NO- WILLOW!" half-finished from the night before. Her knuckles whiten painfully over clenched hands as the memories rush in.

It was late at night. Shuffling sounds downstairs had pulled her out of her unconsciousness. As she rolled over to wrap an arm across Willow, her hand met with an empty bed. The shock of finding no one—where a someone should be—jolted her awake, and the soft padding of footsteps muddily caught her attention.

She pulled a sweater over the nightgown she was wearing and slipped out into the dark corridor. Muttering interrupted the natural nighttime silence of the house. Rhythmic and…

A spell.

Willow's doing a spell, she thought, angrily.

Things were slipping from bad to worse. Will's need was getting drastic, finding excuse after excuse to use magic. Laughing them off as just a playful little spell, no biggy, why are you so angry Tara, I have it under control Tara, why can't you just have fun with me Tara-

"What are you doing?" Tara said from her perch on the stairs, staring down at Willow as she knelt over a smoldering bowl-

"Oh, God Willow, no. NO!" she hissed, spying the Lethe's Bramble, candles, and crystals arranged on the coffee table. A single glass of water placed in the center of a candle circle looks strangely out of place. "You promised-"

"Tara, it's not what it looks like," Willow stuttered, hiding an empty plastic bottle underneath the coffee table. Tara hones in on it as candlelight plays across the plastic.

"What is that?!" she whisper-shouted, flying down the rest of the stairs and snatching the bottle out of Willow's hands. "MOON WATER?! This is from the week she- you're doing it, you're actually doing it! YOU PROMISED! WHAT IS WRONG WITH YOU!?" She crumpled the bottle in a tightly gripped fist as Willow rolled her eyes.

"Look, just go back to bed! It'll all be fine in the morning, you'll see. It'll all be fine in the morning!" She pleaded, gathering up the crystals and quickly dumping them in the bowl, burying them underneath the bramble flowers-

Her fury stuttered out into panic.

"Willow, no! That's too many- stop! You're going too fast, you're going to-"

The scent of burning flowers filled the room, the herbs in the bowl suddenly sparkling with an orange crackling light as billowing gray smoke spewed forth in an unstoppable wave.

"OH GOD!" Tara shouted, fanning the smoke-

"I didn't mean to! I-" Willow panicked, trying to fan the smoke away from her face, but it split into five fat tendrils around her waving hands. One snake-like coil wound around her, up her arms and straight into her mouth as Tara screamed-

"NO- WILLOW!"

Willow fell, suddenly dead on her feet. Her head hit the coffee table with an ugly crack just as the second tendril sought out Tara, clogged her mouth and shut off the lights-

-Leaving her blinking in an armchair as rain hammers the windows. She gasps, sucking air into her lungs as every memory she'd ever kept in her head suddenly seeks purchase in her slippery, empty mind.

Someone is howling.

Dawn.

Her name is Dawn and she's howling for her mother. Thick, heaving sobs rack her tiny frame in juddering shakes as she rolls into a ball on the sofa. The sound of it—like a wounded animal being torn apart—fills Tara with utter rage as she turns her eyes to Willow, whose mouth is opening and shutting under the furious glower of Giles-

"I didn't-" Willow manages in a terrified croak, "I didn't mean to- it just- it went wrong, is all- I can fix it-" Her eyes bounce from Giles to Buffy. "I can fix it. I- hey, that's my shirt!" she blurts out as her eyes linger on Dawn-

Tara flinches into the armchair as Spike suddenly hurls the coffee table into the fireplace. It splinters into pieces with a deafening crash, clearing a path towards Willow, looking for all the world like he wants to tear her limb from limb with his bare hands.

"I COULD FUCKING KILL YOU!" Spike kicks a still almost-in-one-piece section of the coffee table out of his way and it explodes against the living room wall. "YOU STUPID, BRAIN-DEAD, DELUSIONS-OF-FUCKING-GRANDEUR LITTLE GIRL! I COULD KILL YOU! DO YOU HEAR ME!?"

Willow tries to bury herself further into the armchair to get away from him, turning her head and closing her eyes, bracing herself as he continues his tirade. Even with a chip in his head his verbal battering makes her want to hunch in on herself.

"DO YOU THINK YOU CAN JUST DO WHATEVER THE HELL YOU WANT!?" He screams at her, spittle and blood flying from his mouth. "If I had this fucking chip out of my head, I swear-"

Giles pulls him back by the elbow, his face cold with his own immaculately contained anger.

"Whilst I agree with the sentiment, Spike, I think it's best if you leave now."

"What?!" Spike spits, furious eyes turning cold with disbelief.

"This house is now at capacity for hysterical emotions. I suggest you take yours someplace else."

"I'm not leaving," Spike growls, blood stained teeth bared. "Buffy, tell him I'm not-" he turns to see dead eyes in a dead face and the words clog in his mouth. Dawn is rocking back and forth in Buffy's arms as she cries out choking, drowning sobs, but Buffy's face is just a mask for a hollow empty wasteland. So void of emotion, she looks like a shop window mannequin.

Oh no… oh sweetheart no…

"Buffy-" he tries again, pleading shamelessly, but she doesn't even blink. "Tell him I'm not leaving."

Her eyes still won't meet his. There's no tears there.

There's nothing there.

She closes them as Dawn chokes on her tears, the only sounds escaping her are the lurching sudden breaths in.

Giles squeezes Spike's shoulder gently, and it's the gentleness that suddenly flares fresh anger in him.

"Go now." Giles says even as Spike shrugs his hand off with a violent heave of his back. He throws open the door and steps out into thick Sunnydale rain. Coatless and uncaring. The air practically ripples from the slam of the door behind him

"H-he didn't have his coat," Tara says unthinkingly, still struggling to put any coherent thoughts together other than the absolute obvious.

"The clouds are thick enough he won't need it," Giles replies. "Help me get Dawn to bed, Tara."

They manage to untangle Dawn's arms from Buffy, and Giles lifts her up, carrying her like a baby as she weeps into the suede of his jacket. Buffy follows behind like a zombie, herded by Tara, abandoning Willow to the chaos downstairs.

Tara pulls back the duvet of Dawn's bed and Giles lowers her gently into it. She tucks Dawn in gently, stroking her tear-dampened hair off her cheeks.

"I-it's ok, sweetie," she whispers as Dawn sobs pitifully. "It's just shock. T-try and get some sleep, ok?"

She stays on Dawn's bed, stroking her back through the covers as Giles joins Buffy on the landing. She looks beyond pale. Her usually golden complexion looks paper thin and sickly.

"Buffy," he starts but she doesn't look up. There's an unusual flatness to her eyes, like two glass marbles with no spark of life underneath. He clears his throat to try and reach wherever she's receded to. "I expect… coming out of a spell like that must be traumatizing." He prompts, and is rewarded with nothing more than a slight flinch of her eyelids. "I think we should discuss what to do about Willow-" She somehow seems to retreat further into herself, the shell of Buffy becoming even emptier.

Giles sighs, and takes his glasses off to clean them, mostly so he doesn't have to see her so… broken.

"Maybe another time," he mutters, and herds Buffy gently into her room.

The curtains are still drawn, the bed still unmade from whatever state she woke up that morning and she slumps down onto the sheets. Eyes barely blinking.

He squeezes her shoulder, awkwardly trying to instill reassurance, but it's obvious whatever little comfort he can offer would just be swallowed whole by the fathomless misery she's housing.

"I'll come by tomorrow. Try and catch some shut eye," he says as he tucks the blankets up around her.

He turns to leave, casting a quick glance around the room for anything else out of place, any magic accouterments or potentially catastrophic charms-

There's a dark heap of leather over her chair. Black, and worn, and immediately recognizable, even without the lingering smell of cigarette smoke.

With a steady hand Giles takes it with him.


A/N: thank you a bazillion to my betas RavenLove12 and foxfaceinthewindow!