The sidewalk was strung with luminescent pearls of lamplight, knotted in place by shadow.  Night's stage-curtain had fallen, lending the street a mystery and romance that day denied it.  A car cruised past, engine shaking with the automotive death-rattle of a loose piston, and for an instant its headlights tore the backdrop of darkness asunder and bared the to view the rust-streaked, corrugated metal flanks of warehouses, and the battered chain-link fences fringed with gone-to-seed foxtails, crushed soda cups and cigarette butts.  And one slim blonde girl, whose self-contained gaze forbade questions as to what she was doing walking alone in such a place, at such a time: Move on, mister.  You don't want to know.

Buffy watched as the car turned a corner and darkness swallowed it, engine-rattle, tire-hum and all.  For the first few blocks she'd half-expected Spike to roar up on his bike and either pick a fight or try to make up, but she'd walked far enough now that that seemed unlikely.  Her footsteps were the only sound in the world.  Maybe he and Clem had business which didn't (gasp, horrors) concern her, or maybe he'd decided to relieve his feelings by picking a fight with someone else.  And we're homesteading in Psycho-Buffy Territory when the idea of someone else fighting Spike makes you jealous. 

Buffy trailed her hand along the fence surrounding the Sunnydale Tool & Die workyard, her fingertips gradually going numb with bouncing against the links.  Had she done the right thing, walking out on Spike like that?  There was no handy dandy Vampires Are From Mars, Humans Are From Venus or Slayers Who Love Vampires Who Love Slayers Too Much for her to consult, and she was scraping the bottom of the introspection barrel with a spoon.  Should she have chewed him out?  Given him a pat on the head and assured him that compared to not ripping Willow's throat out, this was minor league?  But it wasn't.  Even she, Research Avoidance Girl, knew that Krallock demons were dangerous, because... her fingers hooked in the aluminum mesh, bringing her up short.  Because Spike had told her so, on Sunday night.  And she, she'd blown the whole thing off.  Tra la la, Buffy's got a party to go to, let the boys handle it.

Of course Spike hadn't told her about the bet then, and had probably only mentioned the Krallock demon because he was certain she wouldn't be patrolling that night.  And then they'd both forgotten about it, what with the world ending again and all.  He  had been holding out on her.  Buffy right, Spike wrong.  But the truth was, if she'd found out about the bet before the Willow Incident, she'd have shrugged it off with an eye-roll and a wrist-slap: That's just Spike.

She'd put up a good show of confidence for him, but what had happened last night was...paralyzing.  Right now she should be considering the possibility that this was really it, the very best that Spike could manage.  That the question wasn't if he'd slip up, but when and how.  That in the end, trying wasn't enough.  That sooner or later it was going to be someone besides Willow backed up against a wall in a dead-end alley, and...

...and she couldn't.  Literally couldn't; her mind veered off and refused to go to the World Without Spike.  She thought instead about the Slayers whose lives and deaths were recorded in Giles's journals, not the ones who'd thrown caution to the winds and followed their hearts to whatever dark end awaited them, but the others: the good girls, the ones who'd listened to their Watchers and beaten and bound their midnight
yearnings into submission.  The ones who'd never known the touch of cool fingers on heated flesh, the ones who, if they'd ever looked into inhuman eyes and seen their own souls reflected there, had resolutely looked away again and turned those betraying mirrors to dust.

Between the lines of their Watcher's reports, they didn't sound happy, those long-gone sisters of hers, but happy wasn't part of the Slayer fringe benefits package.  If the only choices were Faith's fall into darkness or Kendra's sterile devotion to duty, then maybe slipping back into the numb grey fog that still lurked around the edges of her mind would be a welcome relief.

As she approached the intersection with Wilkins, she heard voices--meaningless parrot-clamor, heedless of who or what heard it.  Buffy froze, hand straying towards her purse to caress the hard deadly length of ash-wood concealed therein.  She so wanted to kill something right now, something big and fast and deadly, something that would make her sweat and scream.  With swift noiseless grace she faded back into the shadows between streetlights and crouched low, stake at ready.

"...don't wanna, too bright, too bright..."

"...told you the mind, the brain, it doesn't match, we need to find the painted part--red, you see? Right there..."

"...walking, keep walking, you know where the lines are..."

"...soon, soon, you can't keep a revolving door open like that!"

A small crowd of people in shabby clothes shuffled down the middle of Wilkins Boulevard, weaving in and out of the double yellow stripes of the left-hand turn lane in a Pied Piper gavotte.  There must have been a dozen of them, unshaven men and wild-eyed women of all ages and ethnicities, their only commonality the distinctive odor of eau de landfill.  It was the crazies, all of them, tumbling along like human lemmings towards some invisible cliff.  The sparse Tuesday night traffic whizzed by on either side, the blat of horns and drivers' fervid curses cheering them on.

Peachy.  She was craving a face-off with Godzilla, and opportunity knocked wanting her to babysit Pikachu.  Should she try to herd them out of the street, at least?  Tanner and the others who'd been in the alley during Willow's interrupted spell looked cognizant of the fact that they were walking down the middle of a major thoroughfare, and not at all happy about it.

"...get it off and do something?" the man in the yellow windbreaker asked.

Tanner shook his head and gave the pendant around his neck a vicious yank which ought to have broken the slender silver chain, but didn't.  "You saw what happened when I tried.  Hell, even if I could get it off, I couldn't match her power.  Especially with that thing backing her up.  If she lets up for a minute maybe I can call up my met tet and see if there's anything he can do, but..." He raked a hand through his lank hair and glanced down the street.  "Fuck.  If a truck heads down here, we're roadkill."

Tara's geas was still in effect, then, and he wouldn't be able to bring any magic to bear.  Buffy crept closer to the intersection, keeping to the base of the fence.  There was a better than good chance that 'she' was Willow, and that following the crazies would provide a guided tour of the Secret Underground Lair.  Maybe she should call Giles or Tara and tell them...

She pressed her lips together, sealing in the anger that still knotted in her stomach at the memory of Spike cradling Dawn's frail body in the alley, the frantic drive home and her sister's pale, drained face framed in lavender pillowcases.  No.  She wanted--needed--to talk to Willow alone before calling in the cavalry.  Needed to make sense of this.  As the procession meandered through the intersection like a flock of inept sheep, Buffy left the cover of the fence, melting from shadow to shadow in pursuit of her skittish prey.

Three blocks later, Buffy crouched behind a mailbox watching Tanner and Windbreaker Guy kneeling in the gutter and yanking free the grate covering the mouth of a culvert running under Wilkins.  Buffy waited until the last pair of plastic flipflops and grubby Nikes had wriggled through the dank entrance, then darted across the street.  She dropped to her haunches beside the culvert, avoiding the clots of oily black sludge they'd kicked out of the pipe, and peered inside.  The fetid odor triggered an involuntary stomach clench.  Something considerably deader than Spike had set up shop down here at some point.  Tres ick.

The culvert was black as midnight, and she'd gotten out of the habit of carrying a flashlight with her for peering into dark icky holes.  Why bother, when she had a faithful vampire companion to whose eyes midnight was clear as noon?  Alas, FVC's eyes inconveniently not present.  Well, so what?  She'd patrolled without benefit of Spike's enhanced senses for years.  If the sanity-challenged could do it... 

With a grimace of disgust, Buffy crouched down and crawled into the culvert, shuddering at the squish and slurp of mud and slime beneath her hands and knees.  By feeling carefully ahead on the tunnel floor when she came to a fork, she could track the crazies by the churned-up sludge in the bottom, but it was slow going.  The sounds of the scuffling feet and crazy-babble ahead of her grew steadily more distant.

Through the culvert, down a shaft, into a larger tunnel echoing with Pillip Glass arpeggios of icy water droplets and glowing faintly with phosphorescent slime--by the time she could stand upright again, Buffy could see her hand in front of her face, an inky shape occluding the twinkling constellations of algae.  A T-intersection led her into a better-lit tunnel; it zig-zagged past several small openings which, on investigation, proved to lead to recently-abandoned demon lairs.  Other than the faint marks of the crazies' muddy footprints, there was no sign of current habitation.

"Willow?" she called.  Her voice echoed willow, willow back to her, a thin, lost shadow of itself.  "Willow!  It's me.  If you're in here, I just want to talk!"

The tunnel continued to grow drier and lighter, and Buffy passed several heaps of Initiative-themed trash--shreds of old uniforms, crushed circuit boards, crumpled-up rations wrappers.  She was pretty sure this was too far away from the UC Sunnydale campus to be part of the main Initiative complex, but they'd had access tunnels leading all over town just like everyone else.  Someday an earthquake would hit just right and Sunnydale would undergo a dramatic re-enactment of the closing scenes of Paint Your Wagon.  Hopefully sans the musical stylings of Clint Eastwood; there was only so much evil you could take, even on a Hellmouth.

Up ahead, a tawny flicker familiar from years of tomb-crawling spilled out into the corridor--candles, lots of them.  Must be somebody evil; the black hats had an unreasonable prejudice against Southern California Edison.  The tunnel terminated in a massive archway of granite blocks, piled one on the other without enough room to slip a knife-blade between them.  The stone was the rich dark red of venous blood, glittering with mica inclusions which gave it a liquid sheen in the candlelight.  Each block was incised with symbol which Buffy could describe with exacting technical expertise as hinky-looking.  She felt a fleeting regret for the days when Giles had patroled with her on a regular basis; he probably could have told her whether she was looking at 'Abandon Hope All Ye Who Enter Here' or 'Ladies -- Gents.'

Beyond the archway the tunnel expanded into a vast, shadowy cavern with several other visible entrances.  Buffy's thumbs prickled as she flattened herself to the wall and edged closer, suppressing more ick-noises as the light revealed more details about the post-slime-crawl state of her clothes (the state of her hair didn't bear thinking about).  The cavern was filled with people, or things, or things that looked like people.  It was impossible to get a clear idea how many there were; everyone was rushing around like an out-take from Koyanisqaatsi, and opposing ranks of candles set squadrons of shadows battling across hall.  The air was smoky and redolent of licorice and sewer sludge.

Tanner and his band were encamped just inside the archway to her left.  One or two of them were wandering aimlessly around the perimeter of their territory, but most had collapsed to the cavern's sandy floor and sat in huddles of two or three, rocking back and forth.  Tanner himself was standing watch, his expression that of a man convinced nothing he can do will matter.  He was stroking his stubbled jaw with one hand and muttering under his breath.  She caught '...ou cheval ...' but her half-forgotten high school French wasn't up to deciphering the rest.  His eyes never left the far side of the cavern, where a crowd of withered-up bald guys in the requisite tatty robes were--

Withered-up bald guys.  Withered-up bald guys with bone-and-feather-draped staves and their wrinkled kid-glove flaps of eyelids sewn shut over the gaping empty sockets staring back into the maggots curling in their own brains--Buffy whipped back around the corner and pressed both palms flat to the wall, breath hissing through her clenched teeth.

Harbingers.  Servitors of ultimate evil.  Well, big fat hairy whoop with a cherry on top.  Last time they'd shown their faces in Sunnydale, she'd kicked their scrawny asses, and she'd do it again.  And there, surrounded by Harbingers like Scarlett O'Hara by beaux, was Willow, enthroned on a scuzzed-up lab bench.  Plain old ordinary Willow in batik and Birkenstocks, tucking a strand of burning auburn behind one ear as she studied some kind of Star Trek tri-d chessboard thingy laid out on the cavern floor.  Anticlimax much?  How dare she look so normal, so--so Willow?

OK, so maybe the long black shadow trailing from her shoulders was a smidge on the over-dramatic side.  Willow bent to move several of the figures around on her gameboard and sat back again to study the effect, nibbling on a thumbnail.  "By George," she murmured, "I think we've got it.  You don't really have a George vibe, but it would be better than Creepy Eyeless Guy."

The Harbinger hovering at her shoulder gripped his staff and looked constipated.  "Exalted Vessel, this is unnecessarily risky."

Willow's eyes flashed--no figure of speech, they really flashed.  "Maybe.  That's why you chose me, isn't it?"  She bared pearly teeth at the Harbinger.  "I take unnecessary risks."  She moved another playing piece.  "We'll need Dawn to get the job done, of course." She glanced over at Tanner.  "Take your pals, get the Key, and bring her here."

Tanner blinked, expressionless, and his muttering trailed off. "Why?"

"Look, Mr.  Tanner, I'm sorry, but I really don't have time to argue about this."  Willow got up and strode over to face Tanner, chin tipped defiantly and hands on hips.  "If you do what I tell you to, all your friends will be cured, I'll break that little geas you've got going there, and incidentally, we save the world."  She reached up and patted his shoulder.  "And if you don't do what I tell you, I'll turn you into a weasel and your buddies into chickens and we'll see how well you all get along."

Tanner regarded her with a mixture of loathing and pity.  "When?"

"As soon as possible.  I want to do some test runs before we do this for real."  Willow rolled her lower lip between her teeth.  "You'll need to get cleaned up.  Don't hurt her, and don't scare her more than you have to.  If you can get her to come with you on her own, great.  Tell her Buffy wants her, or you've found me--be creative."  She began pacing.  "I'm not the bad guy here.  I know what I'm--"

The noise behind her was a tiny thing, no louder than the sound of a grain of sand scraping against stone under the pressure of a bare toe.   Buffy whirled and snapped a straight-legged kick into the midriff of the Harbinger behind her.  He doubled over with a grunt and Buffy used the momentum of her recovery to slam the heel of her hand into the nose of her second assailant, who howled in agony and staggered backwards, painting the blood-colored stone with Jackson Pollack splatters of the real thing.  Buffy slammed the first one head-first into the wall and turned back to face the archway; Willow had frozen mid-turn, mouth an O of startlement, eyes popping in surprise.  "I really hope there was a two-for-one special on at Henchmen R Us, Wills, 'cause otherwise--"

"Darn it, Buffy!"  Willow stamped a foot in frustration and thrust out a hand.  "You're not supposed to be here yet!  Thicken!"

Willy the Snitch was, quite possibly, the world's foremost authority on the effects of alcohol on vampiric physiology.  In twenty years of tending bar on the Hellmouth, he'd gathered volumes of practical information on the subject.  Vampires, for example, didn't really have a greater tolerance for alcohol than humans.  It was just that, given their lack of circulating blood, it took longer for the stuff to percolate through their systems.  They could appear unaffected for hours, sometimes, until booze met brain, and then they'd go from stone cold sober to completely plastered in a matter of minutes.  Willy had known to a nicety exactly when the combined effects of the half-dozen Cuervo Gold shots she'd downed would hit Darla like a load of twenty-four karat bricks, and the precise level Angelus's bottle of cheap-ass Irish whiskey needed to fall to before it was safe to press him about paying his tab.  His talent had saved his life on more than one occasion.

He fervently hoped that this was one of them.

"...'n you know what the bloody bitch of a bloody Slayer says?  'It's hard!'  Hard, she says!"  Spike pinned Willy with an irate glare, tossed back another three fingers of bourbon and slammed the shot glass down on the bar.  "Like it's been a bouquet of bloody posies for me!  Gimmenothershot."

Willy complied, sloshing a few drops over the side of the glass.  Nerves.  Two hours and thirty-three minutes since Spike had strutted in at the Slayer's side, and he was nostalgic for the good old days of the chip already.  Spike was harder to get tanked than some vampires--for one thing, despite being a comparatively small man, he had a high tolerance for the sauce, made higher by his unvampiric habits.  Most vamps only drank to blend in with human prey, but Spike actually liked the stuff and put away as much as a human on a regular basis.  Plus he tended to eat solid food with his liquor.  However, if Willy was any judge, despite the severe inroads Spike'd made on the pretzel dish, the transition from random outbreaks of violence to sobbing into his glass and reciting Shelley was only a shot or two away.

Chilly fingers clamped down on his wrist with enough force to make the bones grind together, and Spike yanked his left, non-pouring hand up and shook it in front of Willy's face.  "Are these broken?" the vampire demanded.

"Uh...not yet?"

"Bloody right!  And not gonna be, either, 'cause yours truly's a white hat now."  Spike released his wrist with a self-righteous sniff and Willy massaged it surreptitiously.  Ow, ow, ow...  Spike leveled an index finger at Willy's sternum and poked him in the chest.  "'Nless you really piss me off.  'S fair, innit?"

"Very fair.  Couldn't ask for better."  Except that Spike got really pissed off at stray breezes.  "Uh...Spike...about your tab..."  This was, after all, the good bourbon, and Spike had long since exceeded the change from his twenty. 

"Haven't broken any fingers in ever so." Spike's eyes clouded with wistful nostalgia.  "Make such nice noise when they come out of the sockets, too.  Pop-pop-pop!"

"What I mean to say is, it's on the house."  At least until Spike passed out, at which point Willy could roll him in peace and quiet.

"No fun for poor old Spike, not a lick, not a nibble.  'S what she'd want.  But Carrie Nation doesn't think I can do it," Spike continued dolefully.  "She's the Slayer, y'know.  All responsible-like."

Willy nodded, attempting sympathy, an emotion he was as ill-equipped as most vampires to express.  "Eh, well, dames... you can't trust none of 'em."

Spike grabbed him by the lapels and hauled him across the bar for the second time that night, nose to flattened nose and eye to bloodshot golden eye.  "Can't trust the Slayer?  Did I just hear you insultin' my lady?" he snarled.  "Trust 'er with my life, with my heart..." He let go with his left hand to give his chest an illustrative slap and Willy canted abruptly to one side.  Spike let him drop and sat down with a thump, half-sliding off the barstool.  He gripped the edge of the bar for a second, looking faintly surprised, and then hauled himself upright, gazing at Willy with earnest, tear-filled eyes (which looked damned weird in vamp face).  "But she can't trust me.  'Cause 'm evil.  Almos' ate Red, y'know.  An' the hypoth--'naginary ol' lady."  He frowned.  "She never brought me cookies."

"Ain't no one perfect," Willy said consolingly.

A tear spilled over and ran down one cheek, and Spike flopped bonelessly forward, banging his forehead against the bar.  He moaned into the oak grain with impassioned frenzy, "Oh, Buffy, Buffy, I never meant to hurt you, love! Love you so much, m' brave, strong, beautiful bitch..."  One hand encountered the bottle, and dragged it into view.  Spike peered at the label with a muzzy frown, then slowly appeared to divine that the world wasn't sideways, he was.  He sat up again, not without some effort.   "But I did hurt her, Willy.  Abused her trust.  'M a cad, Willy, 'm a bad, evil man." He took another slug of Jim Beam directly from the bottle and blinked through a fresh flood of tears.  "Do anything to make it up to her, any-bloody-thing.  Chuck Dru.  Give up the killin'.  Wear a soddin' Windsor." After a moment of contemplation, "No, wait, already done those.  Gotta be somethin' else.  You ever been in love, Willy?"

Willy considered.  "As a man of the world, I can say for certain that chicks dig a paid-in-full bar tab."  He made a stealthy grab for the bourbon, but Spike's reflexes were still more than sufficient to retain possession.  "I knew this stripper name of Mabel, once," he said, reminiscent.  "She did this thing with tassels that..."

"Faugh!" Spike waved a grandiloquent hand.  "Mere amin--animal attraction!  'M talkin' love!  Many-bloody-splendored thing!  'To love, and bear; to hope till Hope creates from its own wreck the thing it contemplates'--bloody hell, I'd have Red mojo my soddin' soul back, if tha's what it took, even if it turned me back into that sniveling li'l four-eyed, weak-livered, Pre-Raphaelite nancy-boy..."  Spike sniffled in an excess of self-pity, contemplating the potential horrors of re-Williamization.  "Make sure Red fixed the no-shagging clause first."  He sighed heavily.  "But 's gone, poof!"  He drove his free hand into his duster pockets in a search for more cigarettes, shoulders slumped in dejection.

Willy eyed the bottle, calculated the white-knuckled intensity of Spike's grip thereon, and decided against trying to retrieve it.  "Yeah, that's sad.  Now--"

Spike's fingers, groping through his pockets, closed on something.  His transformation was instantaneous and remarkable--from the Stygian depths of gloom, his eyes lit like sunrise and a huge, joyfully wicked grin spread across his once-more-human face.  "But I've still got this," he said, voice hushed with the brilliance of his inspiration.  He pulled his hand out of his pocket and opened it; in his palm was a small silvery disk covered with printed circuits.  "If she can take it out, she can put it back in," Spike crowed.  "That'll show the Slayer I mean business!"  He rose with unsteady dignity, bottle still firmly in hand.

"Hey, maybe you should let Clem--"

Spike shot a withering glance across the room, to the table where Clem was still sitting, nibbling on the remains of Buffy's nachos and watching the show with a distinctly worried cast to his wrinkled countenance.  "Bugger Clem!  Got me a witch to catch."  With that the vampire drew his duster round him with a flourish and stalked towards the door.  A few minutes later, the roar of the Triumph split the night.

At Willow's word, the air turned to liquid glass and Buffy's rising arm dragged to a molasses-slow mid-air halt.  Willow gestured again; the soap-bubble of force lofted into motion, and Buffy bounced slowly and gracefully through the archway into the center of the cavern.   She forced herself to relax and hang limp in the grip of the enveloping air.  She could breathe, barely, and move her eyes from side to side, but otherwise she might as well have been encased in Lucite, a Slayer-sized paperweight in the Hellmouth gift shop.  Willow walked briskly across the cavern to meet her, and Tanner sidled after, eyeing Buffy with a look more calculating than the wise Evil Overlord would encourage in a henchman.

"Hey, Buffy."  Willow looked harried and guilty and impatient all at once.  Definitely overcaffienated.  "I wasn't expecting you quite this soon, 'cause you've been so, um, busy with Spike lately and all, but I figured you'd be pretty testy whenever you got here, so--"

Oh goody.  I know how I feel about Willow now.  Mental clarity was a wonderful thing.  "Testy?  Testy is Giles after someone eats the last jelly donut.  Me?  Somewhere between 'mighty peeved' and 'crush, kill, destroy!'  You almost killed Dawn!"  Buffy lunged against her restraints, to no avail--the harder she struggled, the more tightly the spell gripped her.  If she relaxed completely, would it loosen?  Worth a try.  Willow's spells usually burnt out fast.  Except that this was New, Improved Super-Willow with Mega-Zapping Action.

New, Improved Willow did a cringy shoulder-hunch very reminiscent of Old, Unimproved Willow; then, recalling she held the upper hand, straightened angrily.  "OK, we're having a little time-out here.  Cooling-off period."  She laced her hands together with a sidelong look at Buffy, her ire dissolving in a nervous laugh.  "About last night, I totally didn't mean that to happen.  I need you to know that.  Not my idea.  I mean, it was, the spell, but not the whole agonizing Dawn death part.  The spell was supposed to help them, supposed to--I didn't think.  Dawn doesn't have any magical talent, so channeling that kind of power was...rougher on her than...but I know what went wrong, next time I'll add safeguards, I'll--"

"Next time?  Will, are you mental?  There's not going to be a next time!" Buffy interrupted, appalled.  Stop, deep breath, serenity now--not the time to get into recriminations.  "Can you understand it's a little tough for me to buy that you're sorry about last night when I walk in on plans for a Key-napping?  Plus, the friendly native greeting?"  She made an abortive attempt to wave at the ring of hostile, eyeless faces ringing the cavern.  "Not so friendly.  Lacking the complimentary lei and poi basket.  Willow...I know things haven't been the best between us since I got back, but I thought--I tried--I thought it was getting better.  Please.  Make me understand why you're doing this."

Willow's brows knit and her pale face took on a sickly tinge in the smoky light.  She wrapped her arms around her middle as if her stomach hurt.  Buffy felt a stir of hope.  Maybe she was getting through.  "Buffy, I know I've done some questionable stuff.  Bringing you back.  It was wrong.  I understand that now.  It messed things up really bad, and I don't just mean the--the adjustment problems you're having--the Hellmouth, the gods wandering around, it's all connected, and if things don't change, what comes through the Hellmouth next will make that Harrier demon look like Casper the Friendly Ghost.  I've screwed up--there aren't any words for how badly I've screwed up!" The distress in her eyes burnt off, replaced by a supercharged version of Resolve Face.  "But I see it now.  All of it."  She glanced over at the chessboard thingy.  "I understand what needs to be done to correct the Balance."

Buffy searched her friend's face, hunting for some comforting sign that this wasn't Willow talking.  No all-black eyeballs, no Vader-type wheezing, no wiggy little brain-slugs glommed onto her medulla oblongata.   Damn.  "Willow--we know that already.  The loa said someone had to leave the playing field--and..." Buffy squeezed her eyes shut for a second.  She couldn't bear thinking of the World Without Spike, but the World Without Buffy...heck, she racked up frequent flyer miles there on a regular basis.  "--if that's what it takes, then...that's what it takes, but do you do know what you're dealing with here? These Harbingers channel the power of the First Evil.  You remember the First Evil?  Skanky-looking dude with an 'Ultimate Evil--Ask Me How!' button, almost convinced Angel to take a sunrise stroll?  Beyond time, beyond space, beyond boring when he gets to yammering?  You know, evil?  You can't trust anything it tells you."

Anger sparked in green eyes.  "I think the phrase is 'Duh?'  We haven't been formally introduced, but I've gathered he's been pretty naughty.  I'm not stupid, Buffy.  I realize there are evilness issues.  But hey, guess what, everything it's told me fits in exactly with what the loa told us.  The Balance is out of whack, and you're part of the reason why.  You and Spike.  And all the rest of us, in our tiny insignificant not-nearly-as-important-as-the-Slayer ways, but mainly the two of you."

"Spike?" That made no sense at all.  Spike wasn't--and she knew better than anyone--good, no matter how hard he tried.  "How can he--Spike's just a vampire."

"Apparently that's part of the problem."  Willow clasped her hands behind her back and began circling like an exceptionally diffident and apologetic shark.  Tanner skittered out of her way, muttering under his breath again.  He clutched Tara's pendant in one hand and scrabbled through his coat pocket with the other; it emerged with half a battered granola bar, which he began crumbling onto the cavern floor with quick nervous finger-spasms.  "But I'm going to fix it.  I'm going to fix everything."

"Fix?  What is this fix?  By using Dawn for your reindeer games again?  I can't let you do that."

Willow stopped circling and brushed the hair from her eyes with a twitchy little grin.  "Kinda figured.  Hence the current immobileness of you.  I understand where you're coming from, Buffy, but I can't let you interfere with this.  This is too important, and, well, let's face it, you're not exactly focused on the world saveage these days, are you?  You've kind of gone off the whole sacred duty thing.  We saw it last year with Dawn, and now you're off on this kinky little slaying-for-fun-and-profit kick with Spike, and honestly? I don't know if we can count on you to make the hard decisions any longer."

She'd been thinking as much herself, but it smarted more coming from someone else.  Willow snaked closer, growing more confident as guilt flowered in Buffy's eyes.  Her voice dropped, her tone becoming intimate.  "Like for instance last night."  She ran a finger across the convex surface of the bubble with one hand, drawing patterns on air.  "You want to know how close Spike came to killing me?  And how much he was... enjoying himself doing it?  Or would that make it too hard on you?"  The gameboard was replaced by a shimmering vison of Spike licking Willow's blood from his finger with voluptuous pleasure.  Buffy's stomach did a flip-flop.

"He stopped.  He didn't...and you were trying to get him to...!"

"He stopped.  This time," Willow said.  "Maybe that kind of thing doesn't bother you.  After all, up against a wall while a vampire goes for your neck?  Your idea of a hot date, right?  I'd have to dig a little deeper to shock the Buffster.  Let's see what we've got in the Locker O' Repressed Spikey Thoughts--"  A ripple of power, and she reached through the force-bubble to touch fingertips to Buffy's forehead.  Buffy felt a sharp cold twinge in her skull as the scene before them changed.

Dull gleam of steel.  Limbs white as milk splayed across the dark hunter-green of the bedspread.  He watched her from the pillows, knowing eyes following her every movement.  A well-treated slave, this, sleek with good feeding, the sharp angles of his bones all sheathed in smooth strokable skin and solid rolling muscle, his body a symphony of moonlight and ivory, rawhide and steel.  The chains pulled his arms up over his head, so that the muscles of his chest and shoulders stood out in sharp relief.  Long pale fingers curled around the links above the blued steel of the manacles, defenseless, almost tender (fingers that could snap a man's neck in three seconds flat).  Tousled bone-colored curls, ice-blue eyes lazy beneath heavy lids and sooty lashes, cheekbones like twin scimitars--the lush mouth twitched and curved into a beckoning smile, and the heavy length of his cock, lying quiescent across one sinewy thigh, twitched to life and beckoned along with it...

A dark hot bolt of desire shot straight through her, nipples to groin, and Buffy gasped.  Willow laughed.  "Oookay, didn't expect that one.  Vampires in chains.  We're large with the kink today, aren't we?"

Buffy tried and failed to jerk her head away, her eyes riveted by the vision's slow, incendiary smile as much as Willow's spell.  Spike.  Chains.  Sick.  Wasn't it?  All that strength, all that ferocity, all that inhuman devotion, willingly submitted to her command...could you call it a fantasy if you knew the subject thereof would do it in a hot second? 

"I understand now," Willow crooned.  "It's not the sex.  It's a power trip for you, isn't it?  This whole thing with Spike.  Someone loving you that much, much less the thing you're supposed to kill, the thing that's supposed to kill you?  Gotta be a kick and a half.  And you'd do just about anything to keep it.  I get that, I really do."

Buffy swallowed.  "That's not true.  You know that's not true."

Willow's smile was almost flirty, and her eyes were filmed with jet.  "Really?  You were ready to sacrifice all of us for Dawn.  Let's say it's part of the truth.  Bad guy's privilege."

"I thought you weren't the bad guy."

That wiped the smirk off her face.  She was all the old Willow for a moment, and really angry.  "I'm not!  God, Buffy, what do you take me for? Best friend for the last six years ring any kind of bell?  I'm doing this so you won't have to die again!  So no one in Sunnydale will!"
    Behind her, Tanner stumbled back a few steps and froze in place, shaken by volcanic convulsions.  His head jerked back and the cords in his neck quivered with strain.

"Willow--"  Buffy threw every ounce of impassioned sincerity she possessed into the name; she had to make this work, and never mind that her record for coaxing allies back from the brink of disaster was decidedly spotty.  "Willow, if you're my friend, please, listen to me.  For once in your life don't try to fix things.  Let this go.  All for not dying, here, but I need to know what you're planning, 'cause doing it for them?  Ends, means, construct your own platitude."

"It's easier to get forgiveness than permission."  Willow's smile was barely there at all, only a wry twist of her lips.  "I learned that from you.  But it's really simple, just like the loa said.  You're a problem because our team's got too many players.  Spike's a problem because he's scoring goals for the wrong side.  So all I have to is send you back where I got you from, and then--"

"Excuse me?  This counts as not killing me exactly how?"

"I didn't say killing!  I mean send you back as is, like Angel with Acathla!  Minus the sword through the chest.  And not permanently, just until I can do the other stuff I need to do with Spike--but first I need Dawn."  Willow nodded at the lead Harbinger.  "Like I said, not stupid.  I don't keep the bargain I made, I don't keep my power.  And I need that power..."  There was something scary-raw in her voice for a moment, and then she was casual again.  "...to save the world.  To save you."  She sighed.  "So.  I need Dawn.  I mean, her help.  I'm sorry, Buffy."

"Willow, I can't let--"

Willow turned away with a dismissive flip of one hand.  "You don't get it yet, do you?  You don't have any say in it.  You'll be staying here awhile; I'll try to make you as comfortable as--"

Behind her, Tanner's eyes snapped open and his chin went down.  He grinned, running a lascivious tongue-tip across his teeth, winked at Buffy, and pulled the pendant over his head.  As Willow strode away he tiptoed towards Buffy in a parody of stealth, swinging with pendant propeller-fashion in one hand.  When the spinning chunk of amethyst hit the surface of the force-bubble a shower of purple and gold sparks flew up; the amethyst crazed and shattered, and the spell melted into the air it had formed of.  Willow jerked in surprise as the spell-energy snapped and dispersed, and whirled on Tanner, her eyes dark with fury.  Tanner turned the grin on her and waggled his fingers.  "I tell you we put a thumb on the scales now and then, petite sorciere."

Buffy was in motion instantly.  She dove for Tanner even as his eyes rolled back in his head, his joints unhinged and he fell rag-doll limp to the cavern floor, scooping him up and flinging him over her shoulder.  Could she get the rest of the crazies out by herself?  "Ignis magnum!" Willow screamed behind her, and a bolt of black fire shot past Buffy's head, close enough that a few stray strands of hair frizzled in the heat.  Bereft of their leader, the crazies screamed and scattered, losing themselves amidst the milling Harbingers.    

Stone shifted and rumbled, and a shower of dirt and pebbles rained down from the ceiling.  Realizing that random blasts of power weren't the smartest thing to be lobbing about in a tunnel-ridden earthquake zone, Willow yelled at the Harbingers and the crazies alike, "Stop them!"

Buffy flung Tanner's body through the archway and rolled after him, kicking off a pair of crazies who pawed at her with mindless determination.  The Harbingers held back, letting the crazies do their work for them.  She didn't want to hurt them; they were doubly pawns in this mess, but there wasn't much choice.  She sucker-punched the nearest one, kneed Windbreaker Guy in the groin, and oh, shit, they were gonna get Tanner and he was her last best hope for finding out what Willow was up to--

"Bloody hell," said an aggrieved voice from the darkness further down the tunnel, "might have known you'd go off and start without me."  Spike's pale head emerged from the shadows a second later.  He strolled up, slightly unsteady on his feet, and took a pull from the bottle he was carrying.  Finding his supply exhausted, he tipped the bottle up to one eye and peered up into it with a sorrowful little clucking noise.  He cocked his head and watched Buffy bang two crazies' skulls together with great interest.  "Ah, that's not a Krallock demon.  'S all right, then."  He gestured with the empty bottle.  "Red in there?"

"What do you think?  A little help, Spike?" Buffy snapped.

"Sure thing, pet.  Jus' got something to take care of first.  Show you I can..."  Spike stepped around Tanner's prone form with exaggerated care, smashed the bottle smartly over the head of an oncoming Harbinger,  and waved at Willow through the archway.  "Oi, Will!  Sorry about the bit in the alley, but you smelled bloody marvelous.  'M only inhuman, aren't I?  About this chip, love, thought it over--it's a pain in the arse... well, in the head, but--YOW!"  He belly-flopped to the ground as a jagged bolt of ultraviolet lightning scorched the air where his head had been, blinking up at Willow with utter confusion.  "Not taking visitors, then?"

The blast hit the side of the archway and arcane energy coruscated across the stone; the deep-carven symbols glowed blue-white for a second and another ominous rumble shook the cavern.  Buffy got a split-second glimpse of Willow staring up at the ceiling with 'oops!' written across her face in flashing neon letters, and then a gunshot crack of stone heralded the fall of a whole slab of rock from the cavern roof.  The crazies abruptly ceased their attack as Willow withdrew her energies to concentrate on more pressing matters.

"Spike!  Get out of there!"  Buffy tossed the last of the crazies off, manhandled Tanner across her shoulders in a fireman's carry, and staggered off down the tunnel as the air filled with dust and smoke.  The candles winked out behind her, and the ground heaved and buckled under her feet, throwing her to her knees.  Buffy struggled up again, coughing.  She couldn't breathe--stop, drop and roll? Or was that only for fires and not underground cave-ins?   At least we're a Clint-free zone.  A fist-sized rock bounced off the top of her skull and she dropped to one knee, biting her tongue.  The dust was so thick she could taste it, coating her mouth with grit with every labored breath.  This was the T-intersection--which branch?  Her head throbbed and she couldn't breathe and--

The last thing she remembered as the world went from black to blacker was a pair of cold hands seizing her around the waist.

The thing about sleeping all day was it left you restless and bored all night.  Dawn rolled over and pummeled her pillow, knowing that in five minutes this position would become as unbearable as the last.  She pulled the sheet straight where her tossing and turning had bunched it up under the blankets and glanced at the clock.  After three.  Wonderful.  She'd finally get tired in another hour and get rousted out of bed in another four.  Just in time to be packed off to the Cultural Indoctrination Center, as Spike had not-so-affectionately referred to her high school during their summer of nocturnal excursions around Sunnydale.

In the last day those memories had gone all sepia-toned, as if Spike were someone she'd known in a distant, dissolute youth.  She could pull them out and look them over like a collection of old photographs: This is a picture of me and my monster.  But Spike wouldn't stay safely pinned to the pages of an album; tomorrow he'd be full-color and three-dimensional again and she'd have to tell him--what?  Leave me alone?  We can't be friends anymore?  And how awkward would that be when Buffy was practically taking out ads in the Press saying "Relocated: William The Bloody, Esq. recently of Restfield Cemetery, to 1630 Revello Drive?"

The glass panes in her window vibrated; Spike's motorcycle was pulling into the driveway.  It was rapidly establishing its own private grease spot next to the Jeep.  If Spike started leaving the DeSoto over here too, driveway space was going to be at a premium, especially if Dad could be convinced that a car for her sixteenth birthday was an essential.  Strangely, with all the angst over dealing with vampires, no one ever considered the parking issues.  Dawn heard the sound of the front door opening, followed by a series of mysterious thumps, as of shins on furniture, and an indistinct but heartfelt string of curses.  A moment later the footsteps started up the stairs.

"--be all right on the couch?"  Her sister sounded wiped, far more so than she usually did coming in from patrol.

"If he's as knackered as I was after the old bastard took me over, he won't move till morning." Spike sounded unnaturally subdued too.  "Well.  You're sorted.  Guess I should bugger off, then."

"You don't need to--I mean, one of us will have to keep an eye on him till Tara wakes up.  Which could be me, if--"

The foot-shuffling was palpable.  "I can hang about."

There was a short, awkward pause.  "You're kind of a mess.  If you want to use the shower first..."

"Oh."  Startled.  "Yeh, sure."

"You know where the towels are."  Pause.  "Spike?"

The door of the linen cabinet squeaked when the humidity was high.   "Yeh?"

"How'd you know I was down there?"

An embarrassed clearing of his throat.  "Didn't.  Went down looking  for Will.  Wandered about a bit, sensed you, went to take a look."

Of course.  "Do you have any idea how colossally huge the magnitude of the dopehood you've achieved is?  She could have--"

Wince.  "I'm accumulating clues."  Rustle of terrycloth being pulled from the shelf, another awkward pause.  "I just thought...if I had her put it back, everything'd all come right again.  Worked about as well as the usual run of my plans, I s'pose."

"Oh, God, Spike..." Her sister heaved a sigh.  "Maybe she could put it back, but I don't think it makes the top five on Willow's Things To Do, Worlds To Conquer list.  Besides, it's not about the chip.  It's about you.  Look, you found out the Krallock was in town when, last Tuesday?  And didn't mention it till Sunday night, and OK, I blew it off then, bad Buffy, but not the point!  The chip didn't stop you doing that.  The chip didn't even stop you from hurting humans if you really, really wanted to, and it sure didn't stop you from hurting Willow.  You did that, all by yourself.  Put the chip back in your head this minute and you're still... you.  A lying, stealing, semi-employed cigarette-smoking poker cheat of a vampire.  Who I can't imagine living without."  A tremulous note entered her voice.  "And you were driving that motorcycle around drunk off your skinny undead ass, weren't you?"

Spike sounded injured.  "Yeh, so? I've driven a hell of a lot  farther a hell of a lot drunker than that...ah." He heaved a matching  sigh.  "More hypothetical old ladies mowed under my wheels, eh?"

"Or you could have wiped out and broken every bone in your stupid unhelmeted body, because contrary to popular belief, when hair gel meets pavement, pavement wins!"  There was a sharp thwack, as of Slayer palm meeting muscular vampire shoulder at moderate velocity, and then broken, indeterminate gulping noises from Buffy.

"Ah, pet, sweet, don't..."

"If you can't--if you can't..."

Dawn couldn't divine what her sister was freaking about, but Spike was better at translating Buffy-speak than she was.  "I'm yours, love.  To kill...or not.  Haven't I said it enough?  Rather die than hurt you, and if you really believe I can't, stake me now, before it's too late.  Or say the word and I'll do it myself, eyes open, so the last thing I see is  your face."

A muffled sob; Dawn could imagine Buffy, face pressed to Spike's chest, face screwed up in the way it did when she didn't want to cry and was pouring tears anyway.  "No!  Do you think that's romantic?  It's sick! Willow's wrong, she's wrong, you're not my--I don't want you like that!   I can't kill you!  Just thinking about it tears holes in me!"

"And you wonder why I wanted the sodding chip back in my skull?"   Spike demanded.  "If there's anything I can do to save you pain, I'll do it.  Do you understand?   Anything!"  He gentled in an instant, voice  melting from sandpaper snarl to smoke and velvet.  "But you could, love, you know you could.  And if I--deserved it, I'd want to go by your hand.  Fitting.  Because you're the Slayer, and you are that strong.  Because I love you.  Because...because if I do ever hurt you like that, I'll owe you my death.  But I'll fight every beastie in Hell, self included, before I let it come to that--believe that, Buffy.  If you believe nothing else, believe I'll fight!"

Her sister's voice shook, but there was nothing weak in it.  "I do, William.  I do--you have to believe that!  It's the times you don't  realize you need to fight that--"  She choked on another sob.  And there was silence again, the ragged, gasping, salt-edged silence of two people with no answers holding one another tight against the monsters within.  Dawn lay absolutely still beneath the sedimentary layers of sheets and blankets, hoping that Spike was too preoccupied to be listening to the telltale waking rhythm of her breath and heartbeat.  Buffy laughed, a weak, pained little giggle.  "You know, when I said there was no way this wasn't going to hurt, I was hoping for, I don't know, maybe a month's worth of carefree smoochies before my life turned into an Alanis Morrisette song again."

Spike's deeper chuckle had real humor in it.  "Ah, well, there you have it, pet--'s the reason we've had to cram a month's worth of shagging into the past week."

Buffy's laugh was a little stronger this time.  "Shut up and go take your shower.  I'm still mad at you."

Dawn heard the ghost of a smile in his reply.  "Mutual, oh she of the lone visits to barmy witches."

The sound of the bathroom door closing masked the faint creak of her own door opening.  Buffy peeked in, her small figure a dark shape against the dim light in the hall.  Dawn rolled over, stretched, and made ostentatious waking-up noises.  "Buffy?  When did you get in?"

"Just now." Her sister slipped inside, leaving the door ajar, as Dawn reached over and turned on the bedside lamp.  Both of them blinked at the sudden flood of light.  "We found Tanner.  All the crazies, actually, but he was the only one we could snag.  He's conked out on the couch, so fair warning."  Buffy sat down on the side of the bed and brushed the backs of her knuckles across Dawn's forehead.  "You're cooler," she observed.  "How are you feeling?"

Dawn squirmed up from underneath the blankets, wrestled her pillow into submission and propped herself upright against the headboard.  "Crummy, but better."  She rubbed the sleep out of her eyes.  Buffy's hair was a mess, and she looked as if she'd been liberally dunked in slime and then sand-blasted.  Her face and the backs of her hands and her bare forearms were covered with scratches and scrapes.  A swelling purple bruise marred her forehead just at the hairline, and tear-tracks smeared the dust on her cheeks.  "You look snazzy.  What happened?"

"Mayhem, destruction, the usual.  You should see Spike; he was on top of me.  Uh, not like that.  I think he's got a cracked rib, but he's being all macho vamp."  Buffy sighed and blew a lock of hair out of her eyes.  "I tell Willow and I tell her not to play with magic in the house, but it's all fun and games till someone has a roof fall on them--no, I'm fine, Dawn, honest.  That Tanner dude freed me, I saved him, Spike dragged us both out when oxygen became an issue--it's a whole big heartwarming team effort."  Buffy slumped over and leaned against the headboard, rubbing the sides of her nose with both hands.  "He wanted Willow to put the chip back in.  His brain was probably affected by his alcohol stream being contaminated with blood or something, but why he thought she would--"

"She took it out."

Buffy's hands stilled, then came to rest in her lap.  "What?"

"Willow's the one who took the chip out."  Dawn drew her knees up to  her chest and hugged them.  "I'm pretty sure, anyway.  Monday afternoon,  when Spike came over?  I went down to the basement and talked to him about it, and I'd just figured out that someone had done something to him without him wanting it, and Willow came down and...froze me, with a spell, and made me forget what I'd figured out."  She unfolded, extending her legs stiffly and making blanket tents with her toes, trying to still the trembling of remembered betrayal and words as sweet and poisonous as antifreeze.  "She just made me forget.  Like it was nothing.  Like I was nothing.  And then she used me for that spell like I was just a--a battery!"  She drew a hot angry breath.  "I guess I'm AC and her spell was DC, though--when we did the ritual, the big green energy surge thing?  Me, I guess.  I must have messed the forgetting spell up.  Everything's been coming back in pieces all day."

"Willow took...well, that just...figures."  Buffy rubbed the back of one hand across her eyes, adding dark mascara-streaks to the dust and tear-tracks.  "Good.  I guess.  In a relative way.  Keep all your baddies in one basket, I always say."

Dawn's voice sounded thin and scratchy in her own ears, a million-year-old 78 RPM phonograph record to go with all those sepia-toned summer memories.  "I thought--I thought she liked me.  She was so good to me while you were gone--she talked her parents into letting me stay with them, she helped Giles find Dad, she and Tara... they did the daytime stuff with me.  It was like--I wasn't Buffy's dumb little sister for awhile.  I was somebody.  And now she just takes it away--it's not fair!  She's got a soul!  Why is she doing this?"

Buffy slid an arm around her shoulders and pulled her into a hug, and it felt weird because she was taller than Buffy now by inches.  "She does still like you.  Somewhere inside.  She's messed up, and we have to stop her--maybe we have to fight her.  But she's still the Willow who's my friend, the Willow who was good to you.  We just have to help her find that part of herself again."

"How can you love her?" Dawn asked.  "How can you love him?  When all that happens is they hurt you?"

She felt a shiver go through her sister's slender body.  "Because when you don't love them...it hurts a lot worse."

Dawn bent her head to press her cheek to her sister's, and the two of them sat there together, lapped in golden light.  The white-noise rattle of the shower shut off abruptly in the background (most likely it had occurred to Spike that using up all the hot water before Buffy had her turn was a Bad Thing) and when Dawn looked up a few moments later a slice of Spike--one sweatshirt-clad shoulder, the dark slash of a brow and one worried blue eye--was visible through the crack of the door.

She could never forget or ignore what she'd realized in the alley, but maybe it was like Willow helping Xander with algebra in high school; when you didn't know the answers, you talked to someone who did.  Spike might have wanted her to say yes, but at least he'd asked the question, and taken her no seriously.  She had choices.  To treat him like the thing that he was, or the man he was trying to be--and was it terribly wrong of her to hold hard to the memory that Spike had never treated her like the thing that she was? 

Her eyes met his and didn't fall away, and the look on his face was like someone lighting a bank of candles inside, a glow blossoming from match-sized to something that could fill up the whole room.  Spike ghosted into the room and eased down on one knee beside the bed, his strong cool arm joining Buffy's warm one around her shoulders.  His damp hair made a wet spot on her sleeve.  Didn't matter.  Dawn felt the steady beat of her sister's pulse, and the long slow rise and fall of Spike's chest as her head dropped to his shoulder, and almost sobbed in relief as hundreds of tiny clenched fists relaxed in her gut.  Things could never be what they had been, but maybe they could be something else.

She was drawn from Buffy, flesh of her flesh and blood of her blood in ways no other sisters in the world could claim.  Sometimes she hated that knowledge.  Sometimes, as now, it gave her an obscure sort of hope. 

Part 30

Part 32