He's got to be okay, Buffy pleaded with herself as she sprinted, barreling through the double doors from the main reception.
The super smiley receptionist had said Ben only clocked in minutes ago. His shift didn't even start for another half hour, he might even still be changing into his scrubs.
All I've gotta do is find him…
She shouldered through the swing doors leading to the nurse's station. But he wasn't there.
A lump came into her throat, heart hammering, feeling as though every passing second was a death sentence.
She ran down the hospital's hallway, checking supply closets, and bathrooms, the locker rooms, everywhere. But there was nothing. No one.
No Ben, no Spike.
Not here, not here, not here…
She huffed, and her eyes lit on a list of hospital departments. Frantically, she scanned for where Ben might reasonably be, skimming over specialist sections until landing in the ICU.
He did those walking rounds in the ICU sometimes, right? He was there when mom was in recovery, and when Riley's heart nearly exploded through his chest like a bad horror movie…
She bit her lip and decided to take the shot.
She ran back down the hall, jabbing the button for the elevator before noticing the handwritten sign stuck to the doors. She swore, and turned towards the stairwell instead, pushing the door open—
It thunked against something heavy.
The blood fell from Buffy's face, dropping with trickles of icy dread into her gut, making her legs weak as her eyes landed on the body lying with its head tucked behind the door. She didn't even need to let it close to know who it was.
"B…Ben…"
Oh… No…
His neck had been turned almost fully around. A monstrous twist of his head made the skin taut over the jut of bone that clearly shouldn't be there.
"Oh my God…"
His legs were sprawled halfway up the steps. Wet steps, she noticed but in her panicked hyperawareness she could see his boots were completely dry, and Buffy swallowed, reading the staged accident for what it really was.
Several flights below the sound of a door closing sounded like a coffin lid in the stairway's silence, and Buffy scrunched her eyes, knowing who had just let it fall shut behind them.
Too late.
Spike knelt in Buffy's room.
Hands red up to the wrists in blood.
And dish soap.
It had been a brisk walk through the sewers, and a full sprint from under the manhole cover to the Summers' front porch with his coat over his head, before he'd gotten the front door open and slammed it shut against the sunlight trying so hard to incinerate him.
He'd chosen Revello over the inescapable daylight drenching Restfield (or sitting in the sewer until nightfall, and he'd decided against spending his last day that way).
It had taken a moment or two for him to settle himself, before deciding to hunt down a bucket and sponges, located under the kitchen sink.
Now he was kneeling on Buffy's carpet—boots off by the front door, duster slung across her bed—as he scrubbed.
It was something to do while he waited. He needed something to do.
He reckoned her watch probably wasn't ticking any longer, and that she'd figure out the electronics in his head weren't ticking either. It would only be a matter of time before she found his first victim in the light of this brave new world.
He doubted any promises that Ben would be his last (apocalypses notwithstanding) would hold any muster for her. Girl was too full of black-and-white ideals. Surrounded by them too. Council. Giles. Friends.
It was hopeless.
It didn't matter though. Worth the sacrifice. For her. And Dawn. He could hope and pray for Joyce too… but it was something. Better than the alternative that still had its whole fist around his throat… the images kept coming…
…watching her plummet…
…watching her crash into the concrete…
Spike sniffed hard, forcing those false memories back, and scrubbed harder.
Cold water was the trick. He'd remembered that from countless times getting the gore out of Dru's favorite dresses.
They hadn't had time to soak the stain, but alternating scrubbing with dabbing was working well enough.
The red mixing with the tan of her carpet was creating a putrid peach color as it lifted out, but maybe she could get some frilly rug thing to cover it.
He sighed to himself.
In all his wildest fantasies he hadn't ever expected the last hours would be spent cleaning the Slayer's carpet, but it needed doing and he didn't want it to be her doing it after everything else. After whatever else would be coming his way. Saved the world, sure, but he was under no illusions about a welcome party from her and her entourage about his methods.
She'd do what she'd have to do.
He wasn't going to put up a fight, but killing him would probably take it out of her a little.
At least he hoped it would.
He took the bucket to the bathroom and poured the pink soapy water down the sink. Ran the tap and refilled it for a second assault.
Dead.
Ben's dead.
Ben's dead…
Buffy swallowed, struggling with the roulette wheel of emotions. The little black ball of her feelings kept bouncing from relief to horror to guilt to exhaustion to anger—just pick one!
With force, she kept herself in the waiting room chair, glancing at the wall clock as Dawn's head pillowed on her shoulder, Giles standing on her right. Willow, Tara, Xander, and Anya lined the rest of the wall, waiting on news of her mother.
They'd not asked about her sprint from the Magic Box yet—or why she was already at the hospital when they brought Dawn back for the time Joyce was expected to be wheeled out of surgery—but questions sat heavily in the air like a fog.
She ignored them.
Things had happened so quickly after she'd called out for help in the stairwell. Nurses materialized out of nowhere, trampling through the spilled water on the stairs and bustling Buffy out of the way, efficiently removing her from the scene.
She'd overheard someone label it as an accident and watched numbly as that hypothesis had been passed on to security and then the police until it was a solidified truth. There were no security cameras in the stairwell. That point hadn't gone unnoticed by her, but in characteristic Sunnydale fashion the easiest answer had been accepted blindly, and by the third go around Ben's "accident" became gospel.
No one was out on the hunt for a pale man wearing a leather coat and a permanent smirk.
Not yet, she amended, her gaze dropping to her lap, her hands clenched there, her leg bouncing impatiently. Not yet.
It was a losing battle, trying not to fidget. Trying to stay calm. Trying to force herself to stay in the horrible plastic chair that was too narrow to be comfortable.
The Spike situation could wait.
She was certain it could.
It was daylight. Even if… even if he was going to test the bounds of his newfound freedom there were hours and hours between him and a non-incinerating prowl-o'clock.
She was diligently ignoring the rock-hard lump in her stomach that was trying to tell her he wouldn't be on the hunt, even when the sun set. She wasn't allowed to believe that. To believe in that.
That's how Slayers ended up ex-Slayers.
The rule was to expect the worst and then you're never surprised.
I saw the worst. We both saw the worst, she thought, the memory of her mother's dead eyes still clogging her lungs to breathlessness. If Spike hadn't—
She closed her eyes and bit her lip.
He killed Ben, she reminded herself, trying to tamp down that rising bubble of emotion that was way, way too close to feeling like gratitude. That was a supremely not allowed emotion.
For you, argued that voice she was starting to really hate.
Dawn shifted against Buffy's shoulder and Buffy sucked her lip into her mouth and bit down on it. For her.
'Killed for me' is not a point in his favor! He's a killer. It's easy for him! Not killing for me would be the gold sticker achievement on the do-good report card! You wouldn't thank a shark for biting a surfer in half, even if that surfer was super bad news! Or attached to super bad news!
(Wait, so is the surfboard evil…?)
Buffy shook her hard, and—suitably chastised—the voice in her head finally shut up.
Except for the minutest little mumble of "but there were no bite marks…"
…That means something…
A doctor in surgeon's scrubs entered through the swing doors, ending the internal debate as Buffy rose shakily to her feet, dislodging Dawn's head which only resettled groggily against the linoleum chair.
"We've clipped the bleed," the doctor announced without preamble, "and chances are she'll make a full recovery but she'll be staying here for a few days for monitoring."
Buffy sagged as sighs of relief sounded from the group behind her.
"Thank you," she uttered on an out-breath to the universe at large, all the prayers she'd been making for weeks suddenly answered. Exhaustion made itself loudly known in every atom of her body as her eyes closed in relief.
"She's still under sedation, and will be out for a while," added the doctor. "I'd go home and get some rest if I were you."
"Yes," she mumbled, relaxing as Giles' arm circled her shoulder.
"I can take you and Dawn back to mine," he offered, but Buffy shook her head, digging the heel of her hand into her eye.
"No, home. Home is… Home is fine."
"What about the whole… Glory thing?" Willow asked as she tried to shake Dawn awake. "You were telling us something, before the full sprint?"
"It's not a problem—"
"Something important," Giles interjected, his eyebrows furrowing in confusion. He removed his glasses, pinching the bridge of his nose. "I think I had trouble concentrating at the time. Forgive me, Buffy, what was your news about Glory."
"It doesn't matter—"
"Oh!" Xander exclaimed. "Ben! She had Ben!"
"No," Buff replied, "she—"
"She didn't have—," Anya started, and then her eyes widened. "Wait… You were going to kill Ben!"
"Anya! Shh!" Buffy snapped, her skin prickling as a passing nurse slowed down in her hurried trajectory, casting a curious glance back at the group.
Oh my God, Anya's going to get me arrested!
"Was it maybe Glory was going to k-kill Ben?" Tara piped in.
"But why would Glory kill Ben?" asked Xander.
"Glory is Ben," mumbled Dawn, oblivious to the revelation in her half-drowsy state in the chair, shifting back into sleep against her hand, hair falling over her eyes.
Buffy felt the truth hit everyone like a bomb, a small explosion of silence that left everyone's eyes blinking as whatever had been running interference severed in their minds its last hold on the group's consciousness.
"Glory is Ben," Giles said, testing the words.
Heads turned to Buffy, a myriad of confused expressions.
"It's kinda like those Transformers toys," Buffy muttered, rubbing a hand across her brow. "You know like how if you press a switch it's a cute little truck, and then if you flip it around it's a hell god that wants to eat your sister?"
Giles nodded slowly.
"That's certainly an interesting complication."
"Uh… No, that's helpful! It's good! We can work with that!" Willow said brightly. "Maybe we can find something to trap her in Ben permanently. Jam the transformer switch?"
"Maybe a curse? Something that disables the… the doubleness?" added Xander.
"The logical solution would be to just do Buffy's Kill Ben plan," said Anya, blind to Buffy's eye roll.
"Whoa, hey, Ahn, there's got to be a better way to—" started Xander.
"Okay, look—" Buffy tried again.
"We have to take this seriously," continued Giles over her, "our foremost objective should be—"
"Guys, we don't need—" Buffy sighed.
"We'll hit the books," interjected Willow, taking Tara's hand. "There's got to be something we can use to—"
"Guys! Ben's dead!"
The debate finally broke.
Silence stretched.
And stretched.
And stretched some more.
Xander broke it.
"You killed Ben?"
"Oh my God, would you guys keep it down?!" hissed Buffy, her temper snapping as two more nurses passed by. "I did not kill Ben! Spike did!"
Another shocked beat.
"How?" asked Tara.
Buffy swallowed.
"Broke his neck. It was quick," she answered quietly, before realizing that wasn't what Tara meant by asking.
"But his chip," started Willow. "How did he—" And then her gaze fell to Buffy's watch. As did everyone else's. "Oh."
"Oh…" agreed Xander.
"Well," contributed Giles after a heartbeat. "That's uh… resolved things succinctly, I suppose."
The group stood in stunned silence.
"Great!" Anya finished. "Very efficient almost-apocalypse," she added to the incredulous stares of the rest of the gang. "No clean up. Yay."
"Ahn—" Xander sighed.
"No, she's right…" Buffy said, wearily. "It is 'yay'. N-not… Not 'yay-yay', I mean obviously it's not great but… However we got here…" She searched for the right words, but nothing could encompass everything she'd seen.
The horror of it.
The finality of it.
So she settled on; "It would've been worse. It would've been a lot worse."
"...Do we want to know by how much?" Giles asked.
Buffy met his gaze. Held it. And shook her head firmly.
Only the minutest flinch of Giles' cheek told her he understood that the 'worst' was exactly what he was thinking and not saying.
Buffy turned back to the group, fracturing the tension between them.
"You guys get some rest, okay?" she said to the group, ushering a still mostly asleep Dawn out of her chair and into her coat. "I don't feel very the-world-is-still-here celebrate-y, but you guys do the celebrating for me?"
They nodded in awkward harmony.
"We'll catch up later," Willow said. "You guys go home and rest."
Buffy tried to smile and found she just didn't have any smiles left.
She slung her arm around Dawn's shoulders and started for the door.
"Buffy," Giles said quietly, stalling her a moment, his hand on her other arm. He cleared his throat. "If it had been me... if I had to make that choice… I think I would've done the same," he managed.
Buffy let go of Dawn's shoulders for a moment to squeeze the hand over her forearm.
"You did."
Giles winced ever so slightly, his eyes lighting on the tight punctures in her neck, and acknowledging the evidence supporting that particularly grim truth.
He sighed.
"Spike's chip—"
She cut him off.
"I'll handle it."
And didn't dwell on how heavy the stake in her jeans pocket suddenly felt.