Dawn detoured around a tombstone and shifted the bag of groceries from one hip to the other. "You could have left me off at Lisa's."  Lisa and Megan had agreed eagerly that it wasn't necessary to burden Lisa's mom with excess information about their night out, and had agreed somewhat more reluctantly to tell Lisa's mother that Dawn had gotten sick and gone home early--Megan obviously suspected the two of them of being off to have further adventures of which she was being left out.

Spike took a final drag off his cigarette and sent the butt spinning into the night.  "Could've.  Didn't."

Dawn shot him a sideways look under her lashes.  Something had unnerved him there at the end, as they'd escaped the park; he was stalking along, head down, duster flapping behind him, doing the 'I'm a predatory creature of the night and don't you forget it!' thing big time--a difficult effect to achieve while carrying a styrofoam cooler under one arm, even if it was full of pig's blood, but Spike had had a lot of practice.  "I thought we weren't going to add to my sister's worries."

"That," Spike said, "was before you left the car."  He looked down at her and his voice softened.  "Not that we didn't appreciate the hand, Bit, but if anything'd gone wrong you could have ended up roughly as bright as Harris.  Your chums--they had no idea what they were getting into, did they?  Not the best choice for backup, pet.  For bloody stupid planning I'm bound to make you suffer, and I can't think of anything calculated to cause more suffering than forcing you to endure your sister's company when she's good and brassed off."

Dawn punched him in the arm.  "You really are evil."  She stuck her lower lip out and added in lower but still perfectly audible to vampires tones, "And if you think enduring Buffy's presence is a good punishment for stupid plans, no wonder you come up with so many of them."

He chuckled, his mercurial spirits on the upswing again.  "Pet, I still don't buy that you could spot a kukri knife in a dark boot and completely miss the full can of petrol right beside it."

"I told you, it was behind the cooler!"  She wasn't going to live that one down for quite awhile.   "Anyway, it's not my fault you drive a car that gets, like, three miles to the gallon."

Spike looked wounded.  "Twelve, I'll have you know!"  As they approached the crypt he stopped in the middle of the path, frowning, and put a restraining hand on Dawn's shoulder.  "Half a mo'.  We've got company."

Dawn looked ahead.  Tawny golden light poured out through the windows of the crypt--someone had lit the candles, which meant that the visitor was either human or some other kind of demon--vampires wouldn't have needed the light.  A darker shape moved behind the iron crossbars of the window.  Spike pulled Dawn off the path and into the shadow of a nearby elm.  "See if you can stay put this time."

He glided off towards the crypt, a shadow among shadows, all business now and infinitely more dangerous-looking for it.  Dawn set her bag down and folded her arms across her chest, tucking her hands into the sleeves of her sweater against the chill.   With all that had gone on already tonight, she was far more on edge than she liked to admit, and letting Spike out of her sight was the last thing she wanted to do.  She stood on tip-toe, trying to see what was going on inside, but the angle was wrong and the candlelight too diffuse to make anything out.

It was with great relief that she saw the vampire's pale head re-appear in the crypt doorway.  "All clear, pet.  It's just your sis."

"Oh, great.  I was hoping it was only a flesh-eating demon."

When Dawn entered the crypt Buffy was hovering beside the stairwell to the crypt's lower level, arms folded, head down, carefully not looking at Spike.  Spike was setting the cooler down by the refrigerator, carefully not looking at Buffy.  Dawn expected her sister to go into lecture mode immediately, but to her surprise Buffy just acknowledged her presence with a nod.
        "I put her in your bed," Buffy said.  "I hope that's OK.  Tara's down there with her now."
        "Yeh, no problem."  Spike ran a hand through his hair and bent to fiddle with the lid of the cooler.  "Still housebroken, isn't she?"

The two of them were not looking at each other so hard Dawn wouldn't have been surprised to see scorch marks in the air between them.  Ooh, this was new.  Dawn tried not to stare too obviously as she set the grocery bag down on top of the mini-fridge and began pulling things out.  Buffy'd said they'd had a fight.  What kind of fight left you acting like that?  Buffy'd always claimed that Spike considered a punch in the nose third base.  "Her?  Her who?  What's wrong?"

"Willow," Buffy said, her voice flat.  "She's--last night, we found Willy the Snitch wandering around in the middle of the highway, acting like one of Glory's crazies.  Tonight Willow ran into the guy that did it.  At least I hope so--I'd hate to think there were two of them running around.  Willow has left the building, sanity-wise."

Spike abandoned the no-eye-contact game and looked right at her, startled.  "Would the bloke she ran into be a skinny dark-haired git about so tall?"  He held a hand a few inches above his own head.  "Dresses like  Babbitt on a bad day?"

"Failing the cultural literacy quiz here, but yeah, that sounds like  him."  Buffy rubbed her forehead and pulled her hair back from her face, still avoiding the vampire's gaze.

"Is Willow going to be OK?" Dawn asked.  "Tara can fix her, right?"

"I don't know.  I hope so.  Willy recovered, so..."  Buffy frowned at Spike.  "How do you know what Mr. Brainsuck looks like?"

With a common problem to focus on, the uncomfortable tension between the two of them dissipated like morning fog.  "Harris and I crashed his picnic in Weatherly Park."  Spike knelt down, opened the cooler and began transferring his blood to the fridge.  "Showed up running like Old Nick was after him.  His name is Tanner, he was one of Glory's lot, and he's still got a whole crew of nutters with him--they pulled a bait and switch on Harris, got him to go poncing off after a damsel in distress--"

It was Buffy's turn to raise an eyebrow.  "Followed by his faithful vampire companion?"

Spike gave her a dirty look.  "Couldn't let the bleeder wander off on his own, could I?  Wouldn't last ten minutes, and you'd skin me for it.  Though in his case, damned if I know what difference losing his mind would make.  From what this Tanner bloke said when he tried his Tibetan memory trick on yours truly, if he ran into Will by himself, she'll get over it.  Put those biscuits in the crate there, Pigeon," he directed Dawn.  He examined the contents of said crate and held up the remaining bottle of whiskey with a frown.  "Oi, I had two of these in here!"  He sniffed suspiciously.  "Slayer?"

Buffy groaned.  "I don't have time to explain right now, but it was vitally necessary."  A ferocious light entered her eyes.  "This guy went after you and Xander?  Xander's all right?"

"Eh--a bit knocked about.  We dropped him off at the emergency room to have his hands seen to.  Anya's with him.  And I'm just fine, thank you for asking."

Buffy ignored him.  "Dawn, why exactly are you here?"

"It was vitally necessary?" Dawn said with a weak grin.  She held out a box of Ritz crackers.  "Hungry?  We can make peanut butter cracker sandwiches."

They ended up making up a plate full of crackers, cheese and apples to take down to Tara, Spike grumbling the whole time about not having signed on to feed the multitudes.  Dawn held it carefully in one hand while climbing down the glorified ladder which served as a staircase to the lower levels.

Spike's downstairs was bigger than his upstairs, including the original lower level of the crypt, several rooms dug out beneath the cemetery, and access to the tunnels running all over Sunnydale.  Though he had indeed gotten rid of the pile of moldering skulls (Dawn rather regretted the loss; the skulls had been pretty cool) the atmosphere was still leaned more towards the Addams Family than Better Homes and Gardens.  There was real furniture down there now, but whenever he'd run into a coffin in the course of his excavations, Spike had hauled it out and incorporated it into the decor.  Dawn occasionally speculated on whether or not the end tables still harbored their original occupants, but had never gotten up the nerve to ask.

The bedroom was off the main room through a low, irregular archway.  It was a weird combination of comfortable and creepy.  The floors were blanketed with a haphazard collection of oriental rugs.  There was a bookshelf, a nightstand with an old-fashioned pitcher and basin, a coffin-cum-blanket chest, and a wardrobe which, at a guess, housed Spike's extensive collection of black jeans and t-shirts.  Another coffin or two hung drunkenly out of the packed earth of the walls by way of decoration.  The room was dominated by a huge old four-poster bed in dark wood, complete with canopy in hunter green and cream swirls.  In the middle of the vast expanse of counterpane Willow was curled, small and waifish with her auburn hair in flyaway wisps about her face.

Tara looked up as they entered; she was sitting on the edge of the bed, watching Willow with a heartbreaking expression.  Willow broke into an agitated wail when she saw Dawn.  "Oh, the shining, the shining, come over the sea with the brightness inside..."  She reached out, fingers crooked, raking the air with both hands.  Dawn cringed back.  She'd thought this was all over.  She wasn't the Key anymore, she was just Dawn Summers, dammit!  Wasn't it ever going to stop?

"I don't think it's a good idea, everyone being in here at once," Tara said, taking the plate with an apologetic look.

Buffy circled the bed; Willow had half-crawled, half-slumped over to the side opposite Tara, and was pawing aimlessly through Spike's pile of bedtime literature, shoving things under the bedstead at random.  "Come on, Will, sit up."  Willow ignored her, and Tara leaned over, took her lover firmly by the shoulders and pulled her upright.  Buffy shot a helpless, guilty look back at the others.  What on earth did she have to feel guilty about? Dawn thought bitterly.  She couldn't stop staring at Willow's slack, horrible, yearning face.  She felt sick to her stomach.
        "Come on, Bit," Spike said, taking her arm.  "We'll give them some air."

Guilt or no guilt, she was exhausted, and it was a relief to collapse on the couch in the main room, though it was one of those stiff, fancy drawing-room type divans and not exactly built for comfort.  Spike sat down on the end opposite and watched her, head on hand.  Dawn tucked her arm under her head and stared across the room at the niche in the wall where Spike had once kept that pathetic shrine to her sister--the shrine was long gone, but the niche still had a couple of defiant snapshots tacked up: one copy of the picture of her and Buffy and Joyce which stood in the Summers' living room, but mostly a series of goofy pictures of her and Spike making faces at the camera that they'd taken at one of the four-for-a-dollar photo booths at Sunnydale Mall.  Someday she'd find someone to explain why vampires wouldn't reflect in anything, but photographed just fine.  "So--counting Willow, how many people have ended up dead or insane because of me?"

Spike snorted.  "Zero.  Don't recall you holding a gun to anyone's head and forcing them to suck anyone else's brains out."

She rolled over and stared up at the vaulted ceiling, lost in darkness and cobwebs. I'm fifteen years old, I didn't really exist until those stupid monks shoehorned me into everyone's memories a year ago, I know that ho-bag Kirsty is badmouthing me to Kevin in first period history, Mom's dead and dad never calls, my sister is a vampire slayer and my best friend is a defanged vampire.  "Spike--when do I get to stop feeling like shit about existing?"

Spike leaned back, laced his hands behind his head, and pursed his lips.  "It's been a long time, but I seem to recall that stage lasting from approximately age thirteen to age twenty-eight.  'Course between you and me, Bit, I was a bit of a wanker in my breathing days."

"What happened at age twenty-eight?"

"Dru killed me."

"Oh."

"All things considered, I don't recommend it as a cure for weltschmertz."

"Guess I'll pass."

Spike leaned over and pulled an afghan down from the back of the couch, tugging it over her shoulders.  "Get some sleep, pet.  Will'll be fine."

Spike was slouched in the middle of the long gold couch when Buffy came out of the bedroom, one booted foot propped up on the coffin in front of it, the other folded under him.  He was balancing a book on his bent knee, head cocked back a bit.  Spike reading.  She was still trying to get used to that.  It wasn't anywhere near as bad as Giles' place, but once you knew to look for them, Spike had books stashed all over the crypt--tattered Remo Williams paperbacks and lurid romance novels rubbing spines with Shakespeare; Dorothy Parker living in literary sin with Hunter Thompson.  They'd always been there, but somehow she'd never noticed before--before having died.

Her sister was curled up on the far end of the couch underneath a black-and-red crocheted afghan--more or less; Dawn's long-legged, coltish body didn't curl very compactly any longer.  Her feet, still in their straggle-laced sneakers, hung off the couch, and her glossy chestnut hair fanned out over the arm.  She was making a very soft noise as she slept,
somewhere between a snore and a sigh.  Buffy, unwilling to disturb her, walked over as quietly as she could and sat down beside Spike.  His eyes flicked up as her shadow fell over him, then down to his arm's-length perusal of the book again.  He seemed to have gotten over the impulse to hide it and pretend he'd only been watching Bob Barker.  Not that that would work very well when the television was upstairs.  "How's Will?"

Her shoulders slumped.  "Same old.  I wish we knew how long before we found him Willy'd been hit.  It would give us some idea how long Will's going to be..."  She felt tears welling up again.  "Oh, god, the things I said to her!  If that's the last thing she remembers of me..."

"Ah, love..."  Subdued, Spike closed the book and tossed it over onto the coffin; it hit the curved lid with a thump and slid off.  His hand hovered just short of her shoulder in that way he had of not quite touching her.  "Haven't exactly been thinking the happiest thoughts about Will myself lately."  His arm finally settled on the back of the couch, behind her.  Still not touching, but the tension in his body was palpable.

A mewling noise came from the bedroom, followed by the wordless murmur of Tara's voice.  Buffy shuddered, straightened, and looked over at the door.  "Spike--"

"Buff--"

"Me first," she said, rushing the words out.  "I'm tired of missing my chances to say things.  If I'd talked to Willow weeks ago and tried to work this out--"

He made a small impatient noise.  "Guilt runs in the family, does it?  Love, this isn't your fault--"

"Shut up, Spike, this has nothing to do with Willow and I want to get this said.  I was out of line last night.  Not for wanting you to pay for your own blood, but for--for--"  She stopped, stiff with frustration.  "This is so hard to explain!  For trying to--to force you to..."  Spike sat up a bit straighter, head cocked in perplexity.  Buffy gnawed on her lower lip.  "I didn't want the reminder," she said at last.  "I was forgetting there, for a minute, who you are.  What you are.  I don't want to do that."

His flinch was barely perceptible.  Buffy cringed.  "No!  I don't mean it like--why do I suck at this so much?!  I don't want to forget it because--because I don't want to forget anything about you.  Spike, you've changed.  A lot."  Enough?  God, I don't know.. .  "Sometimes I can't believe how much."  She swallowed, hands clasping convulsively in her lap.  "But you did it by yourself.  I can't jump in now and make you--"

The intensity in his voice was terrifying.  "You know I'd do anything for you, love..."

"That's the problem!  It wouldn't be real, don't you see?  And if there's ever going to be anything between us--" (and oh, did his ears prick up at that) "It's got to be--there can't be any lies.  For either of us.  I--the loving me, I know that's big, bigger than I can really--but I can get love from a lot of places, Spike.  You give me honesty, and that's...  Never change that.  Never.  No matter what else--"

Spike didn't say anything, just sat there, attentive, gaze riveted to her face, waiting for her to finish.  She couldn't deny, deep down, that it was a bit of a rush, this power she held over him, the more so because she knew it left her balanced on a knife's edge.  Spike might be love's bitch, but even he had limits, as Drusilla could attest, and there was no guarentee she wouldn't push him to those limits, someday.  The loa's inhuman voice rang in her ears.  What do you want him to do?

"You don't have a soul.  I can't ever pretend that you do.  But you do have a mind.  So promise me something, Spike.  About the blood.  In fact, about everything."  She drew a deep shuddery breath.  "Do what you think is right.  Even if I don't like it--even if I hate it, even if I hate you.  It--it's got to be real, what I see when I look at you."

Spike sat there for a long time, studying her with those incendiary blue eyes.  At last he sighed.  "You don't make it easy on a bloke, do you, Slayer?"

She managed a shaky smile.  "It's part of my charm."

"Maybe Harris will trade me for the flower problem."

"Huh?"

"Long story."   The corners of his mouth twitched.  "I was going to tell you I'd decided to give up the nummy people snacks for good, but in light of new information p'raps I should reconsider."

Buffy stared, floored.  "Um."

The twitch turned into a grin.  "Close your mouth, Slayer, you'll catch flies.  I don't bloody well want to, you know.  Imagine living on oatmeal with all essential vitamins and minerals added for the rest of your life and you'll get some idea of what the pig's blood diet is like."  He laced his fingers together and rested his chin on his hands, dark brows knit, obviously thinking hard.  "Tell you what," he said at last, "I won't drink anything that I don't know for certain came from a willing healthy donor."  He quirked an eyebrow.  "Blood from Willy's stable of drunks tastes like sodding turpentine anyway."

She studied him in turn.  This is Spike, technically evil vampire.  Someone I shouldn't like, shouldn't trust, shouldn't want--and do.  "Okay.  That's a decision I don't have to stake you for."

He snorted.  "Ah, I should have guessed that was the downside to your little do-as-you-like speech."

"Hey, I have to be all with the honesty too."  Buffy stared at the cover of the fallen book, but it was upside-down and the lettering was too faded to make out anyway.  She closed her eyes and let her head fall back against the crushed-velvet upholstery.  There was only a breath between them--literally; Spike inhaled sharply as her hair tickled his arm, and she felt his ribs brush lightly against her shoulder.  Spike used breath the way a writer used punctuation, for emphasis, for clarity.  Every rise and fall of that black-clad chest meant something: there were no unneeded breaths.  Lucky her, she had to inhale all the time and there was no way he could tell which breath was spurred by mere need of oxygen and which from the imperative to draw as much of his scent into her lungs as possible.

Admitting to the attraction, even if only to herself, had probably been a mistake.  Do you think maybe you could go back to trying to kill me on a regular basis, Spike?  It's way more effective than cold showers .  Eyes tight shut, she could still map out the lineaments of his body relative to hers--nothing mystical or romantic about it, just that around Spike her Slayer's sense for a vampire's presence grew incredibly intense and specific: not just 'vamp nearby!' but 'Spike, right here!'  It had been that way with Angel, once.  Maybe it would be that way with any vampire she was around for a long enough time.

He wouldn't make the first move; he knew she didn't love him, and that she'd never act on the desire he'd always known was there.  She wouldn't make the first move; she knew she couldn't possibly get involved with another vampire, especially a soulless one, most especially Spike.  So they could go on like this forever, dance at arms' length in the exquisite torture of one another's presence, taunt one another in the desperate hope that one of them would snap, and somehow the results wouldn't be the other's fault. Or she could back off, return to a life where Spike was just another thing out there in the dark, put them both out of their misery.

Except that the thought of life without Spike in it had all the appeal of day-old Tab.

And wasn't she supposed to be being honest, here?  She didn't love him.  But she was no longer at all certain that she couldn't love him.

"There's no way this isn't going to hurt, is there?" she said softly.

Spike didn't ask what she was talking about--he always knew.  "Eventually?  Yeh.  But Christ, love, what doesn't, eventually?"

"Well.  Someone once told me to risk the pain."  Buffy leaned over--only an inch or two, all that was necessary--and closed the distance between them, sliding her arm behind him, her hand burrowing between the small of his back and the couch.  Every muscle in his torso twitched in response to her touch, and he let out a long hissing sigh.

She'd done this before.  A year ago, with Riley.  A lifetime ago, with Angel.  Even once with Spike, under the influence of Willow's mis-cast spell.  She had loved the dead before, and her body remembered what she had tried to forget in the arms of the living.  Familiar, the cool weight of his arm slipping down to rest on her shoulders, the room-temperature body next to hers slowly warming with her heat.  Familiar, her own heartbeat sounding the all louder in her ears for lack of any answering beat in the chest beneath them.  Familiar, the sensation of irregular breaths drawn and held far too long for human comfort, and the faint earthy scent of male vampire.

And different, the whipcord leanness of his body, the ease with which they fit together, the way his shoulder was the perfect height for her head.  Different, the contours of his face beneath the blind explorations of her free hand, the angle of his jaw, the elegant jut of his cheekbones and the hollows beneath, the scar running across his left brow, legacy of another Slayer, long ago.  Different, the long cool fingers, nicotine-stained, slightly callused, drifting across her own cheek and brow.  Different, the crisp stiffness of his gelled hair and the way it sprang into traitorous curls when mussed.  Different, the smell of leather and tobacco, whiskey and shaving soap that was uniquely Spike.

God, it felt good to touch him with no ulterior motive, felt as if years worth of tension were draining out of her through every square inch of their close-pressed bodies.  Buffy opened her eyes, looking up into Spike's face, watching as astonishment and adoration and lust and (ah, for him too) sublime relief chased across it, and whatever he saw in her face (and she herself had no idea what the huge giddy bubble of emotion expanding outwards from her center was composed of) it couldn't have been too bad.  Citrine fireworks burst and faded in the blue of his eyes, but his features were still entirely human.  "Change," she said.

Spike blinked, customary eloquence fled.  "Huh?"

"Change.  I want to see all of you."

He looked at her a moment longer, and then the bones of his face shifted beneath her fingers, his canines lengthened into fangs and the demon ridges emerged from his brow, lowering over eyes gone lion-gold.  She traced the new lines curiously.  She was unused to seeing him like this; unlike most vampires, Spike spent most of his time in human guise, but there was a strange, harsh beauty even in this aspect of him.  "There's something I've been wanting to ask you for a long time," she said, trailing one finger down his cheek.

His voice was husky. "Yes, love?"

Buffy stared deep into those leonine eyes and whispered in a voice as sultry as she could make it, "Why don't you have any eyebrows in game face?"

Spike exploded in snort of laughter, face melting back into humanity.  "Fuck you, Slayer."

She smiled--the teasing one.  "We'll see."

"Bitch."  Looking at her as if he wanted to eat her whole.

"Pig."  Looking at him as if she'd like nothing better.

"You've still got stupid hair."

Buffy twined her fingers in his own thoroughly disordered locks.  "You dare dis the hair, bleach boy?  This means WAR!"
     Spike leaned forward, eyes glittering beneath half-closed lids. "Bring it on, baby."  His hands slid down her back, fingers kneading the muscles along her spine.  He was growling deep down in his chest, a low purring rumble she'd only heard once or twice before (because really, how often was Spike relaxed and happy at the same time?)  The sound vibrated through her whole body, curling her toes as her arms locked around his narrow waist and pulled him closer.  Mmmm.  Toasty.  If this was what a relatively chaste hug felt like, God help her when they actually got around to the lip action-- waitaminute, lip action?  Who says there's going to be--

"Guys, Willow's--" Tara stopped, hand flying to her mouth, and the two of them broke apart guiltily.  "Um.  Awake.  Now."

Spike groaned.  Buffy whacked him on the shoulder and squirmed out from underneath him, her cheeks aflame.  Tara's eyes were darting everywhere and anywhere but the couch.  "I w-wasn't, uh, interrupting..."

"No," Spike grumbled, "But if you'll sod off for about fifteen minutes I can fix that."

"Don't start picking out curtains just yet."  Buffy tugged her blouse into place.  Ego much?  Once out of physical contact with the mind-altering substance that was Spike, the Ohmigod I did what with who on the same couch my semi-innocent baby sister is sleeping on? reaction was starting to set in. What, does he think one, uh, comradely, yeah, that was a good word for it, comradely, hug means I'm just going to swoon and tumble into his manly arms and--they are awfully nice arms, all muscley and...  Stop that!  Spike was just sitting there and grinning at her, doing that maddening thing with his tongue when Tara wasn't looking.  "I'm going to go talk to Wills, and then I'm going to take Dawn home, and--"

Big in-no-way-innocent blue eyes blinked up at her.  "Does she fancy a fireman's carry, or d'you want me to give you a ride?"

Damn.   "I'll think about it."

"You do that, love.  I know I'll be thinking about it."

Buffy glared at him to no effect whatsoever, and beat a hasty retreat to the bedroom.

Willow was Willow again, sitting up in the middle of Spike's bed and nibbling on crackers and cheese.  Tara had stayed out in the other room with Spike, abandoning Buffy to the mercy of her own good intentions.  "So..."  Buffy laced her fingers together on her lap and studied her nails intently.   "You're feeling better?"

Willow nodded, rolling the edge of the coverlet into little curls with one hand and unrolling it again.  "Better in the sense of not completely insane, yes.  Otherwise... pretty brain-fried."  She wrinkled her nose and lifted up a handful of coverlet.  "And I think Spike smokes in bed.  I'm going to smell like the Marlboro Man for a week."

"Hey, thanks to Mr. Possess-and-Run I practically bathed in bourbon.  Join me in a mutual 'ew.'"  Though in certain select instances the combination isn't completely revolting--stop that!  "Spike says he ran into the guy who did this to you.  His name's Tanner, or at least that's what he's calling himself.  Spike thinks he's one of the people Glory brainsucked.  There seems to be a whole gang of them on the loose."

"Oh.  That's good, I guess.  Or not good.  But useful.  I-I can't remember much after I started to talk to him.  It's all confused until I woke up here." Her haunted eyes reflected the candle flames, a muddle of light and dark.  "But I can check the name against the hospital's admissions records last spring and see if it matches any of the known victims.  Maybe we can find something that'll help us track him down.  Plus this thing that took over Tara--got to be a big clue, right?"

"Are you sure you're up to all that?"

Willow summoned up a wan smile and tucked her hair behind her ears.  "The Net Witch is all good to go."

"Well, that's good."  Buffy licked her lips.  "Will... I just wanted to tell you..."  This was her night for awkward confessions, it seemed.  "About what I said earlier.  I'm sorry.  Or not for what I said, for the way I said it--I mean, I was angry about what you did, but I shouldn't have--I should have tried to talk to you about it before, not--"

"Is it really that awful?" Willow broke in.  Her hands had clenched on the blankets.  In the dim light her eyes were the color of moss in deep water, and her voice sounded husky and smudged, like a bad recording.  "Being back here.  Alive.  Is it really so bad that you have to hate me for it?"

"I don't hate you!"  Buffy cried, taking the other woman's hands in her own.  "I could never hate you, Wills, and that's what makes this so--no, it's not awful.  It's not--it's not anything, really.  I just feel so... so flat most of the time.  Like I'm living behind glass.  And every now and then the glass disappears and I'm really in the world again, but the glass always comes back, and the good moments make the rest that much worse--I can't remember where I was when I was dead.  I can't even remember if I was.  There's this huge hole in me, and I can't..."  She trailed off in frustration.

"That's part of the spell."  Willow's voice was small and sad.  "I changed the part of the spell where it says 'the gates of Hell shall open,' 'cause, you know, pretty sure you weren't in Hell.  But mostly the Scroll of Aberjian was used to bring back people who'd been sent to, well, pretty awful places.   The Raising spell's designed to make the subject forget the pains of hell, so they're not completely wild and crazy.  Like Angel, when he came back?"

"So thoughtful of it.  So I get to forget the pleasures of Heaven, or the world without shrimp, or wherever I was?"  Buffy sighed.  "I guess it could have been worse."

"Yeah."  Willow blew hair out of her eyes.  "I could have done something really stupid, like bringing you back to life inside your coffin.  But..."  A pleading note entered her voice.  "Like you said this morning, it's getting better, right?  I mean, most of today was good, right?  So pretty soon you'll be fine again."

Buffy opened her mouth, but the expression on Willow's face, so full of raw, aching hope--Please don't tell me I've ruined my best friend's life --killed the words aborning.   "Yeah, Will," she said, very softly.  "I'll be fine."

After all, she wasn't really lying.  Maybe she would be, someday.

Dawn sat in the back seat of the DeSoto between Willow and Tara, lulled into a half-doze by the hum of the engine.  Occasionally Spike or her sister, up in the front seat, would make some meaningless comment about the route home, or getting together with the rest of the Scoobies tomorrow.  None of it was as interesting as the fact that Spike had his arm draped over the back of the front seat, his hand on her sister's shoulder, and was stroking the point of her collarbone with his thumb.  And her sister not only hadn't broken his nose but seemed to be scooching across the front seat, getting closer and closer to him.

"I've got my keys," Tara said as the car pulled into the Summers' driveway and the engine rumbled to a halt.  She got out and started up the walk to the front porch, stopping half-way.  "Willow, do you need help?"

"I'm--well, maybe.  Dawn?"

Dawn pried her eyes all the way open and got out with Willow on the street side.  Willow made her way rather shakily around the car, leaning on Dawn's arm for the walk up to the porch.  There was no weight to her, as if her ordeal had hollowed her out and all that was left was a Willow-shaped shell.  Dawn felt as if she could have picked her up and carried her as easily as Buffy could have.

Tara undid the lock and the deadbolt and ushered Willow inside.  "Where's Buffy?"

Dawn looked over her shoulder.  "Still in the car, I think."  She squinted over at the car; a vague shape moved behind the blacked-out windows of the DeSoto.  "Buffy?"  She hopped down off the porch, walked back over to the driveway, and rapped sharply on the windshield.  "Buffy!  You in there?"

The car lurched in place, the shocks protesting, and for a second a hand was plastered to the windshield.  BEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEP!  The blat of the horn was followed by a muffled yelp.  Dawn jumped back as the door flew open.  Spike tumbled out backwards with Buffy on top of him, her hands clutching the lapels of his duster, engaged in major kissage.  Red-hot, desperate, someone's-coming-back-any-minute face-sucking.  Spike hit the ground with a thump that would have knocked the air out of anyone who'd needed air, but neither of them seemed to notice the change in scenery.

"Aaaaahhhhh!!!"  Dawn clapped her hands over her eyes.  "If you guys don't break it up I'm going to need a parental advisory warning for my own driveway!"

Buffy drew back with a gasp, her eyes wide and stunned, and looked around, obviously trying to figure out how they'd gotten from the front seat to the driveway.  Spike folded his arms behind his head and lay there on the concrete with what was quite possibly the most self-satisfied smirk in the history of the world, in no hurry to get her off of him.  "Um," Buffy said.  "I, uh, we slipped."

Dawn rolled her eyes.  "Duh.  Are you going to come in or make out in the driveway all night?  Do I need to get the hose?"

Her sister met Spike's speculative grin with the Look Of Death, scrambled to her feet and dusted off the knees of her jeans.  Spike heaved a melodramatic sigh and followed suit, getting back into the car.  "See you tomorrow, love?"

"Uh.  Yeah.  For the date.  I mean meeting.  I mean at the Magic Box."

Buffy looked more than a little dazed as the DeSoto roared out of the driveway, to the probable annoyance of the neighbors.  "So, uh, Dawn--you saw the, uh..."

"Mutual tonsil swabbing?  Hard to miss."  The situation cried out for a little more sisterly hassling.  But Spike probably needed all the help he could get in light of the way Buffy's last vampire affair had ended up.  Or heck, any of her affairs.  Soul or no soul, Angel had been kind of a tool--blowing in with some useless, cryptic warning, getting Buffy all worked up, and disappearing again.  Until Buffy'd boned him and he'd lost his soul and gone on a murderous rampage, anyway.  Riley had been really cool for awhile, but then he'd gone all weird and left.

"It's not what it looks like," Buffy said.  "It's--something else."

Dawn opened her mouth, looked at Tara, who was still standing saucer-eyed in the doorway, and shrugged.  Buffy was freaked about the whole lack of soul thing, and maybe she had a right to be--she'd seen pre-chip Spike kill people, rip their throats out and drink their blood and toss them aside like used juice boxes.  Dawn had only heard a lot of stories.  Of course she'd seen him kill demons and revel in every blood-soaked minute of it, and if that guy who'd shot Buffy hadn't died it certainly hadn't been for lack of Spike trying, so it wasn't like she was completely naive about him or anything, and even post-chip Spike could be seriously scary when he put his mind to it... but she still liked him better than Angel.  At the best of times Angel'd been stiff as a board with Dawn, as if eleven-year-old girls were some sort of weird alien life form he wasn't sure he wanted to communicate with.  It had been fun stalking him and Buffy and popping up from behind the bushes with the perennial cry of little sisters everywhere-- "Whatcha doooooin'?"

"Buffy..."  Tara seemed to have gotten her voice back.  "Are you sure th-that..."

Buffy shook her head.  "No.  Not sure of anything."

Dawn put a hand on her sister's shoulder.  "Whatever it is, I'm good with it."  Buffy looked up at her, startled (and how cool was it that Buffy had to look up at her?  Ha!)  "I love you, dope.  And I really like Spike.  So I want you both to be happy."  Despite noble intentions, she couldn't quite repress a snicker.  "And you sure looked like you were happy."
         For some reason that made Buffy look even more surprised.  "I was?"  She closed the door behind them, started up the stairs, and it was only chance that Dawn was close enough behind her to hear her repeat softly to herself, "I was."

Part 8

Part 10