Previously on Buffy Season Noir:
 

Anya looked at the paper, then at the pregnancy strip. Strip, paper. Paper, strip. "Okay," she said at last, as it sunk in. And then, with giddiness, she tested out the words in her head: "Mom. Mama. Mother. Moeder. Mommy dearest."

The Grauth's bullets hit Kerry first as she spun to face the arriving guards, knocking redly against her chest and sending her to her knees, and with that same slow force struck Jason, who was leaping to catch her.

Spike paused for dramatic effect, removing his gloves to light a cigarette. "He's getting the treatment...permanent makeover from human to demon. Special reward for friends of the state."

Willow looked sickened, her brows lowering in a frown and her lips parting as if she were tasting something unpleasant. "They're turning them into Grauth?"

"There was something else," Xander recollected, caught up by his thoughts. "They said Naziren was a half-breed, part human."

Spike frowned. "You turn up anything yet?"

"No," Buffy said. "I looked through his desk, but I didn't see anything that looks like plans for a Weimaraner."

"Wynariver," Spike corrected with a look that asked if she was putting him on.

"Whatever. I just call it magic-sucking-thingy for short."

Xander loosened his grasp, recognizing the pudgy face and trying to put a name to it. High school. Clock tower. Swimsuit calendar. Bad thought, wrong thought. "Jonathan?" he said, startled to a gape. And then a rush of relief and bizarre, unexpected affection flooded him. "Man, is it good to see you." He clapped the guy on both shoulders.

Jonathan, still cringing from the attack, looked doubtful. "It is?"

"Clearly you've been wasted in menial labor." Euphemia's hands were raised as if frozen on their last clap, but now she gestured to one side. A Grauth gentlemen bowed himself forward. "This is Major Strauch, who runs our Officer's Club--and many other fine establishments in town." The major inclined his head at the compliment and Euphemia smiled at him, then back at Tara. "He'll be your new patron, dear."

"Patron?" Tara said faintly, beginning to look as sick as Willow suddenly felt.
 
"You will be a prized addition to our stage," the Major said. "We will make you the toast of the Reich."

Walking toward the hearth, Travers mused with no real depth of interest, "Who do you know in America?"

Giles followed, still peering at the letter, and absently took a seat in one of the wingback chairs while Travers stood warming his backside in front of the tiny fire. "No one."

They scrambled and broke apart like waves before the onrushing rig, and the noise of its engine and their yells merged together with the sensation of tumbling into damp shrubbery, and as Buffy whirled for one last try to hail the driver, she saw the truck slam into the barrier, its front half vanishing, followed quickly by the rest. No blue fire appeared, no boom of impact; not even a whoosh of air kicked up the dust around them--it was just a big nothing.

In the steam baths, rank disappeared. At least you might think so if you were ignorant, young, foolish. Naziren was none of these things. Men stripped off the trappings of rank, but rank never disappeared. Across the bath from him, General Nilec leaned back against a step, a wet towel draped around his shoulders while a young human woman rubbed lotion into his bald scalp. He was grizzled, muscle tone loosening in his arms, his eyes framed by ridges that thickened with every passing year. But he hadn't slackened his grasp of power, and Naziren didn't drop his guard.

When he was still in the academy, Naziren had killed another student in a duel. They'd been sparring for months with words, the spiteful wormling insulting his mother and his bloodline, while Naziren in turn cast aspersions on the worm's intelligence, character, honor, and tailor. One day when Naziren was returning from the practice fields, entering the academy by one of its long archways, he saw ahead of him on the flagstones his gryalf, dragging itself along by one good set of talons, the rest of its body twisted and wet with blood. He'd stopped and stared but he hadn't gone to it. For a moment he thought the weather had changed around him to winter, but it was his own coldness, and he felt the attack before it came, saw the shadow of the sword across the stones, even though later he realized there could have been no shadow. The light was wrong.

He'd worn his defeated adversary's wig for weeks afterwards, hating it but determined to adhere to tradition and make the most of his victory. To this day he carried around a lock of the silky false hair, ribboned in his pocket like a keepsake of love. Naziren often reminded himself that an enemy's attack can come at any time, and that the man who holds hostages to fortune is setting his own trap.

"I'll never understand," Nilec said, "how the puny human spirit can imagine and create such magnificent devices. Saunas, rollerball pens, Palm Pilots, skyscrapers. And these--" Naziren opened his eyes to slits to see Nilec holding up his fluted drink. "Mimosas, they call them. The color comes from the juice of oranges."

"Humans are like ants." Naziren watched Nilec sip his mimosa. "They achieve en masse more than each could alone." He didn't believe that, but it was what the general wanted to hear. Sketching likenesses between Grauth and human nature would be unwelcome and unwise, even if their plans for humanity did extend to absorbing its brightest members in one way or another.

"Oranges must go on the import list," Nilec mused while inhaling the fruity scent of his drink. "A weekly truckload, at least, until we can accommodate growth."

Naziren never overlooked an opportunity to gather intelligence. "The Civic Defense Barrier will remain open then?"

"It must. We are not yet self-sufficient, and privation is spreading." The sourness in Nilec's voice told Naziren everything he needed to know. Self-sufficiency had been their goal; hydropods and hothouses had been established in guarded locations all over Sunnydale, but their success so far had been limited. "The past week's runs have gone without incident. They will continue."

Even Naziren wasn't immune to the lure of visions conjured by this news. He pictured the vast supermarkets and legendary malls of Los Angeles, row after row of motion pictures, electronic toys, sugared figs, automobiles. It was human decadence, and it might be their downfall, but he wasn't prepared to judge a thing decadent without first sampling it.

"Would that our plans were entirely without incident," Nilec went on, and Naziren lifted his gaze and smiled. He'd been waiting for the purpose of their meeting, something more material than oranges and the social excuse of a steam room. The general's clipped tone said he'd reached his point. "Liyoge is worried. One of his officers has gone missing--a member of the surface force, Illamar Clude. I want Intelligence to look into it."

The surface force had paved the way for the invasion, but were not considered combat-trained; its members had earned nominal posts in the New Reich, largely clerical. "He's important?"

"He is nobody. But he helped recruit the vampire."

Aurelius was always 'the vampire' to Nilec, an epithet laced with suspicion and distaste. "Ah." This was enough to hook Naziren's interest, because wherever Aurelius was, a whiff of slayer hung near. He wondered if Aurelius had killed Clude--he could hardly be blamed if so. This world, like the many below it, overflowed with mediocrities, wastes of skin and air. Of course, Aurelius didn't need air. But the principle applied. Aurelius was like him; a man who'd improved beyond his origins, who saw opportunities and sank his teeth into them.

"Find out what happened to him, Colonel."

Naziren nodded. "Yes, sir." Behind the general, his human servant massaged his shoulders now, her hands close enough to snap his neck if she'd had the strength. "And the slayer, sir?" The girl didn't even look up--perhaps the word meant nothing to her. The general, however, glared over the rim of his drink.

"The slayer?"

"Should we continue the search?"

"Have you found her?"

"Not yet."

"Then your question is pointless. Borrow men, do what you must. But, Naziren...don't let your failures undermine your successes. You have many obligations commanding your attention." A smile deformed Nilec's lips, muscles resisting their own effort. "Intelligence is the nerve-system of the Reich. If you're having trouble fulfilling your duties, I can fill your post at any time." And fill the ground with you, he left unsaid.

"I'll double the squad seeking the slayer," Naziren said, unconcerned by the threat. Standard management techniques. He picked up his own drink from the seat next to him and considered it, wondering if there was a way to make the ice stay cold while the room stayed hot.

"Whatever it takes."

"Rest assured we will find her, general. She is one girl, cut off from anyone who could help her. Slayers work alone and think with tooth and claw, like animals. They don't act strategically--and they don't raise rebel armies."

The slayer's sweaty man-child was fighting up a storm. Spike couldn't help but notice, especially when that storm chucked a body his way, nearly knocking him off his pins. Unbalanced, he fell forward a step into the arms of his opponent, who grabbed as if to steady him. Their eyes met during the false embrace, the Grauth looking startled and then afraid. He was struggling to disentangle himself and unholster his gun when Spike snapped a bite from his neck, stripping the flesh down to glistening bone. Like elephant hide, with an aftertaste of WD-40. He spat, let the body drop, and turned to gauge Harris's progress.

In the dim, forgiving glow of the alley lamps, the human seemed less of a lightweight than usual, body jerking in a graceless way like a puppet's on invisible strings but evading the worst of the guard's blows. Before Spike could decide whether to help or light a fag, the other man's knife blade flashed once in a compelling arc that left the Grauth's neck and the Grauth himself gaping at the insult. Spike watched with interest as the demon staggered toward him, one bloody hand trying to hold his neck closed, the other outstretched. For a moment he thought he might have to move back a pace, but the timber crashed a few inches short of his boot tips.

"Neat job," Spike said, impressed enough to say so. Xander, not looking at him, crouched and wiped his blade clean on the guard's coat, then sheathed it.

When he stood, the light fell on his face and Spike thought it looked deader than his own. He'd got his magic mirror now, had a reflection to compare, and Xander was white as the moon on a ghost's fingernail. Stubble and shadow edged his jaw, like an artist had been too rough with the charcoal.

"You've got something on your..." Xander finished the thought with a gesture. Spike raised his brows and touched his own face, spreading gore across one cheek with his fingers, then took out a handkerchief and swiped at the mess. It wasn't as bad as it could be. "Good thing they've got low blood pressure," Xander said, echoing his thoughts with a deadpan--almost vampiric--display of humor.

Spike cracked a laugh, feeling tricked into it, and Xander's attention drifted a few degrees right. "Behind you," he said with no change of expression. Swiveling his neck, Spike saw a figure at the far end of the alley, twenty feet away. "He'll sound the alert." Xander's voice was tense but steady, like Angelus when he was warning of some ambiguous danger, possibly a threat, possibly an amusement.

With a little growl of menace, Spike sprung down the alley toward the guard, who was fumbling to lift a whistle to his lips like a London bobby from a time before walkie-talkies and cell phones, when a single piercing shrill would bring runners out of the fog. Back then you never wanted to scrag the constabulary--far too risky, for too little gain. It was different now though, the killing permitted, righteous even, and Spike flew at the guardsman on boot soles that barely touched the ground and dropped his hand between mouth and whistle the moment before they could meet.

"Sorry, old chap." The whistle crumpled in his fist, along with a few demon fingers. "Can't let you do that."

"Sir!" Recognition came from the Grauth in a gasp that Spike made his last, twisting his neck to one side with casual savagery.

A presence at his shoulder made him shift and snarl, lips drawing back from his teeth, but it was just Harris, eyeballing the body with a connoisseur's interest. Spike let his face shift and settle.

"Sir!" the boy said, in a voice mild enough not to carry, then grinned at Spike as if it were the best joke ever.

That was...weird. Which of them was he mocking? Split the difference, Spike thought, preparing to bare his fangs again before he remembered he couldn't kill humans. Nothing like a behavior-modifying piece of government metal to help you keep a sense of humor. And it wouldn't do him any good with Buffy if he offed the cheeky bugger. The way to a woman's heart was occasionally sideways, through her friends.

Besides, not that he was keen to admit it, but there were other reasons for keeping Harris around. He wasn't an entirely yawning expanse of patheticness these days, and Spike had gotten into the habit of taking his existence for granted, the way you learn to accept your lady love's annoying pets.

Relaxing his hackles, Spike offered a "Piss off." As a social gesture.

"Yet another species of demon that doesn't go poof," Xander said, who'd returned to studying the body. "Inconvenient. Your kind now--self-cleaning, like an oven. Speaking on behalf of humans, we appreciate that."

Spike yanked the corpse up by its uniform front and tossed it behind a dustbin, out of view of anyone who might pass on the sidewalk. He was already moving off when he realized Xander wasn't following. Turning, he saw the other man kneel by the body, knife in hand, and slice open its tunic. The silver buttons holding it closed clinked against the blade.

"What are you doing?" Curiosity made his tone almost polite.

"I've been thinking," Xander said, baring the Grauth's chest. "We need a sign. Something that says, 'Demons go home.'" He caught Spike's frown. "Like Zorro--champion of the oppressed--leaves his signature on evildoers--a scar in the form of a blazing 'Z'--yadda, yadda, yadda."

The poor sod was one couplet short of a sonnet, Spike thought, and tilted his head to watch in interest as Xander slashed a squiggle into the cooling skin. The dubious results didn't exactly convey threat, more like palsy. "What's that then--some kind of vicious eel?"

"It's a snake," Xander said, biting off the last word. "Don't tread on me." He considered his handiwork with grim satisfaction, then shined a testy look at Spike. "It's an American thing. You wouldn't understand."

"What, sic semper tyrannis and all that?" He narrowed his eyes at Xander's expression. "I had a public school education, you dozy Yank twat."

"So did I." Xander stood, putting his knife away again.

"Sure you don't want to nab a few teeth?" Spike asked. "Maybe an ear?" He grinned an evil grin. "Be a nice new hobby for you. All serial-killerish and colorful. More fun than collecting stamps."

"I'm not you, Spike." Xander's temper flared with unexpected force. "I don't kill for fun." His reaction called to mind the lousy old days when taunting was Spike's only way to keep his hand in and his edge honed. He'd always been able to count on the kid to kick up a pretty fuss. Snipe his wobbly manhood or scorn his taste in beer, it was all the same game, same results. A slow simmer, then a blast.

Spike eased into the human's personal space and didn't overlook the slight flinch. "Not so sure about that. I saw you a minute ago, all gingered up and goin' for the throat like a hungry fledge." Xander averted his eyes, but Spike could hear his heartbeat pick up, his breath hitch. "Got a fire in your belly these days. You might as well--" Stiffening, Spike scowled at the visitor. "Sod. The hell. Off!"

"Hey!" Xander's hands came up to square off an irritable defense. I'm not the one making unrequested editorials."
 
"Not you," Spike said, waving at the haunt, who stared unblinkingly back. "Stupid bint keeps following me around all Banquo's ghost, trying to pitch a sob in my chest because I--never mind. Not important."

Xander's hands stayed up, fingers spread wide like butterfly wings. "You are so freaking loco. What the hell are you talking about?" His gaze traveled in circles around the alley, passing over the spook without pause, though she was less than a foot away.

"You can't see her." Spike's per diem of patience was draining fast and he spoke in distinct syllables. "She's a specter, a phantasm, a revenant."

"A ghost." Xander tipped his head, and Spike imagined the feeble clink-clink as two cheap coins of thought rubbed together. "You're being haunted--wait--you're being stalked?" As the information sank in, his amusement seemed to increase, but when Spike didn't answer, his smile dipped and flattened. "So who'd you kill?"

"No one," Spike said tightly.

"Oh yeah," Xander returned in a casual tone Spike didn't buy. "She's someone else's memento, but she's just got a little crush on you."

"Could happen."

"You're such a liar."

When Xander began to turn away, Spike shadowed his movement with a sidestep and nearly bumped chests, locked into a reflex of anger that he disguised with a smirk. "So are you, pet."

Xander returned his stare, but he said nothing.

Dawn missed her puppy. Okay, she'd never actually had a puppy, but she could picture him in her head, a golden retriever with big clumsy paws and eyes lost under a sleepy overhang of fur. He'd leap on her when she came home, painting her jeans with mud, and she'd scold him, no no no, but his happy yips would soften her willpower to mush and she'd pick him up, cuddling and cooing while he licked her face. She'd name him Sunshine or Toto or Happy, or something else less ironic.

With her luck, some vamp would have him for dinner just as she got attached, or Angelus would come back and do those horrible things she wasn't supposed to have ever heard about. But she wanted a life where things at least had a chance of being good, where there wasn't twenty-four hour darkness and demons with guns on every corner. Where she hadn't been ripped out of her home and sent scurrying underground to live in some dank ex-military facility that might as well have been a prison, where rats nibbled your toes at night.

They'd all die here, and Dawn would record each stupid, pointless death one by one. Dear Diary, another shooting today...

There should be a pool, she thought. And everyone could place their bets to predict the next one to go after Kerry and Jason. Maybe it would be her. She'd be gone, ripped apart by bullets or fangs or dogs, and people would cry a bit, but would she even make it on a commemorative stamp? Oh, no. She'd be gone and the universe would ripple and smooth out again, because she wasn't even supposed to have been here in the first place. She was the invention of screwy old monks who clearly hadn't given any thought to the existential havoc they were wreaking.

Dawn hunched her shoulders and drew up her knees. She had a bad attitude, according to Sister Buffy Know-It-All, which was why she sat on the sidelines writing sour nothings in her diary (not her old pink one with the Powerpuff Girls, but a tattered and grubby collection of paper she'd knifed holes in and bound together with twine), watching the training session instead of letting Buffy boss her around with everyone else.

Surreptitiously, to uphold her pretense of uninterest, she followed the movements of the others with her eyes. The practice room had been sectioned off in a corner of the Initiative bay, its hard floor covered with mats stolen from the university gym's supply lockers and transported through the tunnels over the course of one exhausting night. The mats were stinky, but in a familiar and reassuring way that reminded her of P.E. class; people's feet made soft thwapping sounds as they tried to imitate Buffy's combat demonstration. Jonathan, the clumsiest, was turning moist and pasty with effort, but huffed unstoppably as he mirrored a series of kicks. Dor and Marcos were acting all tough, giving hi-keeba shouts in complete seriousness as they extended their legs.

Dawn wanted to roll her eyes, but couldn't quite muster the derision. Buffy thought she wasn't taking things seriously enough, but she was. She just didn't lay high odds of kicking a machine gun out of some grey-neck's hand. Against guns you needed other guns, and like everyone else now she wore one on her hip, loaded and ready. Besides. She had cramps and didn't feel like shouting and hopping around today like some big lame-o.

"Balance!" Buffy yelled, effortlessly storked on one leg, her body tipped down and sideways as she monitored her followers' performance. "Don't lock your knee--let your weight come to rest on the ball of your foot. Watch the torque!"

At the end of the row, Kethas wobbled on one sneaker, jerked his head up to see what he was supposed to be doing, and overbalanced into a heap on the mat. Buffy straightened, looking impatient with this failure. She clapped her hands once to stop the group's kicks, and like a line of chorus girls they came to attention. With a few words she instructed them to pair up for combat moves and then took a defensive stance across from Dor, lasering the girl with cool eyes.

Dawn's head dipped again as she wrote. The sound of flesh hitting the padded mats started up again, and the high, choppy notes of Buffy's voice seemed to match the scrub of Dawn's pencil across the paper. It was almost relaxing. I wish Tara were here, she wrote. I worry about her all the time. She shouldn't be out there playing spy games. She can't even do magic. In the background, bodies danced and grappled. Dawn hunched her sweater closer around her shoulders against the ever-present chill that their space heaters couldn't dismiss.

I feel like the world turned upside down, everything flipped from heads to tails like a bad coin toss, and now we're these earthworms grubbing around underneath the dirt. It's so different, I can't even imagine mo--

Something cracked, a scream tore the air, Dawn's pencil skittered off her paper, and everything came stumbling to a halt on the mats. Dor sat on the ground cradling her arm and crying. "Crazy bitch!" she wailed up at Buffy, whose face had opened up into a wide, anxious expression that Dawn never liked to see. It meant things had spun out of her sister's control.

"Oh god, I'm sorry," Buffy said. She dropped to her knees and reached out to examine the girl's arm. "Dor--"

"Stay the hell away from me!" The crack of Dor's voice was almost as sharp as the sound of bone breaking.
 
Dawn pushed to her feet and hurried over. The guys were just standing around in dumbstruck confusion, while Willow called, "What's going on?" as she left her work to join them.

"What did you do?" Dawn asked, displacing Buffy from Dor's side. The arm wasn't horribly mangled, but it was starting to swell. Dor kept it bent inward like a coat hanger, tucked close to her body as she rocked in place to comfort herself.

"I was deflecting a blow. I misjudged." Buffy's voice had quieted as if she'd already accepted the injury as some normal accident. It should have settled Dawn's own fears, but they boiled up into blistering anger. She wanted to punch her sister and make it count, show her how it felt, but she would never be able to do that. Ever. She hated being the youngest Summers, the freak in human shape who had to be protected by everyone, the non-slayer.

"You should try to be more careful of the little people," Dawn said coldly. Next to her, Dor sniffled and glared in wet punctuation. "The rest of us weren't chosen to be mutants with troll-like muscles." She didn't look at Buffy's face to see if the blow was successful.

"Here, let me see," Willow said, kneeling and gentling Dor to turn toward her, lift her arm.

Buffy rose, ignored by the others except for Jonathan, who gave her a direct and unexpectedly understanding look. Unable to take comfort, she walked away. Slayer tension still coiled in her body, asking for release. She resented Dor's inept fighting, Dawn's sibling grudges, the amateur and pointless nature of their rebel efforts. Her own most of all. She couldn't remember the last time she'd done something with the certainty it was right.

Her body felt over-heated and thwarted. Standing in the middle of the Initiative's vast, abandoned base, hearing the other's voices echo off the concrete, she felt for a moment that she was lost in some underground parking garage, and she thought about malls. Manicures, hair cuts, iced lattes. She could barely imagine L.A. any more or the social butterfly she'd been, flitting from party to spa, tanning bed to swimming pool, attending classes only to see her friends and so that someday she could make a stylish living as an event planner or personal shopper. She'd left all that behind, and after every night spent in a graveyard it seemed further and further away. Each night spent turning off her feelings, killing things who'd once been her friends and teachers and neighbors, she moved closer to understanding death, until she dreamed only in the shadow world.

If she'd been less of a social butterfly, would slayerhood have become this group project? She treasured them, they were her family, but being a part of them just gave her more opportunities to let people down. She didn't want to hurt people or get them killed as she tried to figure out the best plan, as clumsily and messily as if she were trying different recipes for chicken cacciatore. People weren't chickens; you couldn't experiment and there weren't any to spare. She could throw herself away though, and that's how she wanted it to be--a leap from a tower, one grand gesture to save the world. Slayers were supposed to do that when the time came; the knowledge resided in her bones. All this intrigue and guerrilla fighting meant she'd failed to head the enemy off at the pass and would it be so very wrong to blame Willow? Who'd diverted history? Who'd kept Buffy from doing her job?

The apocalypse was spreading. They had no handle on it, it was getting away from them.

Buffy's heart was beating to be let out of her chest, but there was nowhere for it to go. Her feet took her toward the exit anyway; when all other plans failed, she could still patrol, covertly in her fake signum, masquerading as a good little third-class citizen of the Reich.

"Hey," Xander said as, half blinded by distractions, she just about smacked into him. He was carrying a box and she forced her gaze up to meet his, afraid of seeing questions there and being asked to explain herself. Let the others tell the story.

She would have brushed past with an excuse; then Spike stepped into sight. His uniform always froze her for a second as her instincts processed whether or not he was enemy, and on her hesitation he swept in, cape swinging with a flourish worthy of Darth Vader. His boots held a fresh polish, the kind you could get for a single dollar from one of the human boot-blacks now lining Main Street, and his cheeks held the flush of fresh blood, which you could purchase by the glass anywhere. He clasped a cardboard box in gloved hands that had broken a thousand girls and he nodded at her, eyes dipping below the brim of his cap like a flirtation. There was a freckle of blood on his jaw.

"What's wrong?" Xander asked. His flat tone made her look at him again, focusing for a moment as she tried to pry out what was behind it, but his face said nothing. His eyes were dark and his cheeks were chapped from the cold, and he had on jeans and a red plaid jacket that brought to mind some farmer just coming out of his apple orchard, except that she could see the strap of his gun.

"Dor broke her arm." Buffy paused, then forced herself to say, "I broke her arm."

"Oh." Xander paused too, as if something were expected and he couldn't figure out what, then moved away toward the nearest table with his box.

"Tough luck," Spike said with perfect indifference, but he tweaked a tiny frown at Buffy before following Xander, and she let herself pretend for a second that he was concerned, for her sake.

Drawn by curiosity despite herself, she joined them at the table. "Supplies?"

Spike made only infrequent visits, sometimes with trumped-up excuses and a gleam in his eye, but more often with food and provisions. He could snap his fingers and requisition the most expensive delicacies from the city's dwindling stores--pears preserved for months by magic, tins of cocoa mix, Hostess Twinkies--no questions asked. He could throw handfuls of Grauth dollar-sticks at vendors, sweep groceries into a sack and hand them to Xander in the middle of the street in full view of anyone and say, "Eat up, precious, you're looking peaked." No one blinked.

"Sort of," Xander said in answer to her question, and gave Spike an odd look she couldn't interpret. He opened the flap on one box then stepped aside as she stepped up.

Buffy stared inside, recognizing the contents several long seconds before understanding reached her brain. She reached in and lifted out a purple cable-knit sweater, and had to twist to catch a falling hairbrush whose tines had caught in the weave. Her hairbrush, from her dresser at home. Her sweaters and blouses, folded neatly, and under them a randomness of items that her hands sorted through: rolled socks, perfume, Mister Gordo, a bone-handled knife that Giles had given her, a framed photo of her and Willow and Xander, a picture of her mom....

She held the last item, the unexpectedness of her mom's smile shocking her, making tears well up. Spike's voice beat against her ears in little snatches, like surf coming and going against rocks: "...grey-necks rolled in...your place...bloody Mardi Gras, but I cleared them out...saved what I...sitting around, gathering dust...meant to bring them by sooner."

With the picture in her grasp, she pushed past them and ran.

"Well, that went swimmingly," Spike said, casting a glum and baffled look after Buffy's retreating figure. "Thought she'd be pleased."

Proving that all men, even dead ones, were dumb when it came to women. "She misses her home, Spike," Xander said with an edge of anger, then released a sigh. "She'll be okay." He tacked on the reassurance before he could catch himself. "Just give her some time."

Absently returning a sweater to the box, he thought how annoying it was that his only male friendship was with Spike, tried to discard the word friendship, and felt it cling like a wad of flavorless gum. He stole a glance at the vampire, who was still brooding like the Angel knock-off that he was. Not even a germ of a soul to his name. It made you wonder. What if it wasn't the soul that got them, but the girl?

"Where are you going?" he asked, as Spike dithered on the threshold of the tunnel down which Buffy had fled. The vampire was looking into the darkness, and for a moment he almost passed as normal boyfriend material, just another confused guy faced with tears, unsure whether to stay put or pursue. "Trust me," Xander said, which earned him a glance. "Don't. Those were the tears of a solitary Buffy."

"Yeah," he acknowledged reluctantly. "Not like her, though."

"Haven't you picked up a few crumbs of insight about female behavior in the last hundred years?" Spike furrowed his brow at him. "Didn't Dru ever cry when you kissed her?" That came out more caustic than intended. Vive la snark. "I mean, wasn't she a bit girlish and unpredictable sometimes?"

"Sometimes?" Spike repeated with a flat laugh and a scowl. "She was utterly bat-raftered barmy. Cried at everything or nothing--when she broke a doll, a neck, a nail." After his first burst, his words slowed to remembrance. "Twisted herself up like a handkerchief, all white and weepy. She'd stay like that for days, plucking posies from thin air. Wouldn't eat anyone I brought her--"

"You know what," Xander said, holding up his hand as a stop sign. "Question retracted."

Dawn came over, bundled in a heavy sweater with her hands tucked into opposite sleeves, and her hair in plain braids that made him think of Laura Ingalls Wilder as played by Melissa Gilbert on Little House. Not that he'd had a crush on Laura or a fetish about pig-tails, though if he had, that was perfectly normal for a ten-year old boy. Come to think, Willow's childhood infatuation with petticoats ("Do you think they wore anything else under there?") now made a lot more sense.

"What's this?" she asked, reaching one thin hand toward Buffy's things, then drawing it back.

"Odds and ends of Casa Summers." Spike shoved the other box closer. "Got some stuff of yours here too, Nip."

"Yeah?" Dawn tossed her braids, playing it cool, but her face shone and she gave in with a sudden, grabby gesture and a hop. "Gimme!" Several squeals followed as she unpacked girlish underthings that Xander tried not to look at and dearly wished Spike hadn't handled. He turned the suspicious eyes of a big brother on the other man, who rolled his own and shrugged.

"Now there's a proper reaction," Spike said, barely getting the words out when Dawn yelped, "My fluffy pens!" She extended a handful of tufted, candy-colored markers toward Xander with a gleeful grin, then tossed them aside to dig further into the box.

Spike slid out of her orbit and Xander did too. He looked over at where Willow was fixing a sling around Dor's arm, before turning his attention back to the less living. "Hey," he said, "are you--" But Spike was a pair of heels vanishing into one of the security boltholes that riddled the underground base.

Xander went along (he had the padlock key, and it just didn't pay to argue) and they climbed without speaking to emerge in the shrubbery. Spike dipped into his pockets and drew out cigarettes and lighter. Xander, for lack of anything better to do, watched.

"New brand?" he asked. He was the master of small talk.

Spike held up the cellophaned pack: black, bearing a red dragon whose wings circled up to touch tips above its head, the label trimmed in gold, promising "Victory."

"Official state cigarettes," he said dourly. They exchanged a rare glance of dry understanding and no comment.

"And where exactly do our demons grow tobacco? In the sunny subterranean fields of Hell?"

"Dunno. One of the many mysteries." Spike tapped a cigarette into his mouth.

"Maybe I should take up smoking," Xander mused, as Spike cupped his lighter. "Of course, I still have working lungs." Dark eyes glinted at him, and after a deep inhalation Spike handed over the cigarette. Smoke ebbed from his lips and nose like plumes of brimstone. What the hell, Xander thought, giving it a few tokes while Spike watched with a tolerant, smileless amusement that should have been irritating but didn't even break skin. The smoke burned just as it had the three other times he'd tried this, and he kept it up until he coughed, then handed it back.

"Thanks. That hit the spot...no, wait, I think it ran through the spot with a burning hot poker."

"Don't worry. Other vices in the sea."

"Murder. Mayhem."

"Hummels. Quilting."

Xander focused on wry not-smiling, somewhere in the direction of not-Spike. Leaves rattled in the trees above, and the smoke of a distant bonfire was carried to them on the wind. They both turned their heads at the same moment, squinting off into the darkness, listening, but there were no screams.

"You smell that?" Xander asked, knowing that if he could, the vampire had already beat him by a nose. "Fire."

"Could be anything. Or nothing." Spike's voice dropped to a low, facetious roll: "Kids having fun." His gaze flickered up and pinned Xander in place. "Leave it alone." A warning, but without menace.

He realized he'd been gripping the hilt of his knife, and forced his hand to relax and slide free. "I didn't want to kill anything else tonight anyway."

Spike tipped his head and cut his eyes down again, smiling at some private joke. After another contemplative drag on his cigarette he said, "You know...you and I are a lot alike, Harris."

"In what warped, parallel universe that is so very not this one?"

In the ensuing pause, Spike's face grew startled as if he'd just heard his own words. He took a deep, cleansing breath and nodded. "On second thought, scratch that."

Anya had been in waiting rooms before and she knew that waiting was the purpose of the rooms and the people in them. That didn't make it any less stupid. Waiting was boring and hard on the nerves, especially when you were surrounded by strange pregnant women and you'd forgotten to bring a book. She folded her hands and looked over at the lap of the woman next to her. It was a massively fat lap, as if a watermelon had crawled up inside and were trying to burrow out of the woman's chest.

"Does that pass the time?" Anya asked, nodding at the woman's lap--her knitting, actually--and feeling indescribably anxious about how the needles flashed and clicked and clacked so close to her little unborn spawn, and what the hell could she be making that was red, tubular, and four feet long, a chimney? "I've thought about taking up knitting, because there's so little to do now in the evenings, with no more broadcast TV. I've been reduced to watching Xander's tape collection." She was talking mostly to herself, one listless finger corkscrewing her hair. "I started keeping a log of the historical inaccuracies in Xena: Warrior Princess, but the binder got too heavy. The dental hygiene alone..." She trailed off. "Knitting, though. Is it fun?"

"It keeps me from going insane," the woman said.

Anya took another, closer look at her. The woman, more a girl, had hair that wisped the edges of her face the way cotton candy gathers around the sides of a floss bowl, then flared into long curls. At the crown, three months of outgrown bleach marked the date of occupation as clearly as a tree ring. Her face was wide and low with over-plucked brows and cupid lips and to Anya it seemed as if she'd hung a vacancy sign behind her eyes months ago and left no forwarding address.

"You aren't from around Chernigiv, are you?"

The woman dragged a blank stare away from her knitting, letting the needles pause at Anya's question.

"From the eastern bank of the Dnieper?" Anya went on, brightly seeking common ground. "It's just that you remind me of an old friend--old, old, old friend, really--who used to work the northern Ukrainian regions. Beautiful country."

"I'm from Dayton."

"Oh." Anya politely removed her attention as she mulled over the snub, and let her gaze wander across the other inhabitants of the waiting room. So many big-bellied pregnant women in one place made her feel like just one more pod among pods, existing merely to split open some day and deposit a ripe, messy lump of life on the ground like the women used to do in Sjornjost, the rabbit-cursed village of her birth. She herself barely showed yet, she decided after assessing her own stomach. That was something.

But the dull, downturned faces of the other women were freaking Anya the hell out. Every one of them looked ill-used and ready to toss herself off a bridge. She'd seen their type thousands of times during her vengeance career, and the itch to drum up business remained strong even after retirement. Worse, their grimness made her dread the next seven months to come.

"So how far along are you?" she asked the woman next to her, desperate for distraction.

"Three months."

"Oh my god!" It was like some kind of horror story, like Aliens or The Fly, and damn Xander Harris for keeping his extensive video library in the shop cellar. Anya boggled openly at the belly, which apparently had some kind of mutant agenda of its own. "That can't be normal."

To Anya's confusion, the woman's face softened. "You poor thing. Haven't they told you?"

"Told me what? Who told me?" One hand instinctively pressed to her stomach, fingers splayed.

"...Jenkins? Anya Christina Emmanuella Jenkins?"
 
Anya tuned in to the official voice that had been calling her name. "Here," she said sharply, getting up from her chair to face the nurse with her clip-board and smock and salad-bowl hair cut. Her name tag declared her "Alice."

She let Alice escort her into the doctor's examining room, where framed Monet prints hung on pastel walls like memories of happier times.

"I appreciate the doctor seeing me on such short notice," Anya said, hopping up on the examining table at a gesture from the nurse. She talked as her blood pressure was taken. "I didn't have an ob-gyn lined up and of course, what would it matter, since all the human doctors are god knows where. But I'm sure Doctor Lyrwor knows what he's doing. It's all the same no matter what the species, right? You push and shove and the man holds your hand like a big ape if he even bothers to come at all, and after some screaming and cursing out pops this bloody, bawling infant who in the normal course of things will someday make you regret ever riding the rooster in the first place."

"You can roll down your sleeve."

"The doctor--he's good, isn't he?" Anya took sudden hold of the nurse's hand, feeling like a girl of twelve again, pleading for reassurances from the village midwife. "Lady Elked recommended him and I--I didn't know anyone else."

Nurse Alice withdrew her hand and glanced toward the door, then looked at Anya as if she wanted to speak her mind but didn't dare. After a moment's hesitation, she said, "If the baby is meant to be born, he's as good as any." She left with an abruptness that gave no time for a response.

"Well, that's cryptic and not at all comforting!" Anya yelled after her. Left alone, she twisted her face in indecision rubbed her hands absently across her belly. During her brief wait she noticed a rack of demonic medical instruments on the wall, and underneath it a shelf of flasks filled with unlabeled potions. The human skull on the end didn't elevate the confidence rating of the collection. As she was descending from the table with the intent to bolt, the Grauth doctor came in.

"Sit," he said gruffly without lifting his eyes from the chart he was reading.

"You know, I'm feeling much better now. It was probably just a bad clam, or--"

"Sit."

She sat back down and let herself be circumnavigated with a cold stethoscope. The Grauth told her to breathe deeply and listened while she did. When he'd finished this, he examined her abdomen, thick fingers moving with care across her skin. The professionalism took the edge off her nerves; the intimacy sharpened them again and made her shudder.

"This doesn't look good at all," he said, straightening and giving her a cold glare.

Anya's heart lurched. "What?!"

"I'm not seeing the progress I'd expect, given your condition. Your chart says you're two full months along. The fetus should be much larger as it enters its third trimester." He used a poster on the wall to illustrate his words, tracing its images of fetal development with one finger. "By now, the augmentation program should have stimulated the baby's growth."

"Augmentation program," she repeated, confused.

"Adherence to the program is critical. Your previous doctor should have told you all this. If you haven't been taking your supplements, you have put the baby's life at great risk. Participation in the program is an honor and abuse of its terms a crime against the Imperial State." He paused, studying her with narrowed eyes. "The life of every Grauth child is sacred."

"There's been a misunderstanding. I'm not in any program. It's not a Grauth baby, it's a human baby. All human."

"That nurse is an idiot," the doctor said, curt and annoyed. "Wait here."

But that was enough for Anya. She slipped out of the examining room after he'd left, heading down the hall in the opposite direction of his retreating white coat and then making her way out the back. "Free government medical coverage, my ass," she muttered to herself as she took the stairwell. She should have known better. There was no substitute for a good midwife.

"They asked me how I knew--my true love was true--I of course replied, something here inside--cannot be denied. They said, some day you'll find, all who love are blind--when your heart's on fire, you must realize, smoke gets in your--"

"Enough, enough," called the show director, clapping grey palms together. The tinkling piano that had been easing Tara through the verse fell immediately silent, and Tara hung onto her microphone stand with a sweaty palm, awaiting another criticism.

It wasn't her singing this time, though. "The seamstress is here," Malivia said. Her impatient finger snaps harassed Tara off the stage and over to where she and a tiny, pin-tucked crone stood waiting. "We must get this eyesore fitted properly." It was hard to tell whether she meant the dress or Tara.

Malivia pulled at the shoulder straps of Tara's gown and gathered the fabric tighter to her bosom as she showed the seamstress how she wanted the gown altered, pinching enough skin in the process to provoke a yelp.

"I don't know if it can be salvaged," she said in a tone befitting tragedy. "But we will try."
 
Tara rubbed the sore skin above one breast as if by sympathetic magic she could genie her troubles away.

"Wipe that sulk off your face," Malivia ordered, and Tara obediently schooled her face to show nothing instead of whatever expression it had been wearing that the Grauth decided to interpret as a sulk.

"Yes, ma'am."

Fuck you, ma'am, Tara thought as she followed the seamstress to the dressing room, wishing a pestilence of boils on Malivia and wishing even more for magic to back up her hex. She hadn't had such evil thoughts since high school when Vaughn Finley used to trail her down the hallway with torments and cat-calls.

If this occupation didn't end soon, she feared her aura might never come clear.

Once in a while when the sun was high overhead, you'd have reason to enter a dark building: you'd stand on the sidewalk and open an exterior door, daylight blossoming into the dimness, and it would take several moments for your eyes to adjust, to distinguish drapes from walls and chairs from the people in them. Now Willow couldn't remember the last time she'd stepped from sunlight into shadow. Darkened theaters and clubs used to be like caves, or oases where people took refuge from the unending California heat; now inside was no different from outside, both blended together in monochrome. Even the neon sign hanging over the side entrance of the Peacock did little to dispel the night.

"It was nice of you to bring cookies," she said to Buffy, glancing at the brown paper bag her friend carried as they crossed the threshold of the club.

She was pretty sure she'd managed to say that without a grudging tone, but Buffy ducked her head in what Willow recognized as the standard Summers apology for inadequate gestures. "I know she probably eats better than we do, but..."

"But she's not eating with us," Willow finished. Soreness made her add, "Plus there's that whole mortal peril thing."

Touching her arm, Buffy stopped her at the edge of the stage, out of sight of the white-jacketed waiters who skirted empty tables, setting them up for the evening ahead with pristine napkin teepees and vases of night-blooming jasmine.

"Will, you know how hard this is--for all of us. Don't make it harder."

Any hardness was in Buffy's voice though, and it was unexpected. Willow had prepared to hear more regret and gotten resolve instead. "I'm the one making it hard? You put my girlfriend on the front lines to sing and dance for demons and spy and maybe get killed, but I'm making it hard."

"I took advantage of an opportunity--"

"Oh come on, let's speak plainly. You took advantage of her, Buffy."

Buffy clearly regretted having spoken. "We shouldn't do this here," she said, looking around for anyone who might have overheard their conversation.

When a moment's tense face-off turned to silence, they continued to Tara's dressing room aside a narrow corridor that ran behind the stage. A human man passed wearing a shabby vest over rolled-up sleeves and carrying a footlight; when he glanced at their signa Willow experienced a fraught second of possible betrayal and exposure--just one of dozens like it in any given day--and then he disappeared behind them without challenge.

The world had become an old black-and-white movie, war and intrigue and a chanteuse in the wings, and Willow wished she could walk off the set as a director yelled "Cut!" and then wake up next to Tara in her dorm bed, risking nothing except a reprimand from the R.A. for minor infractions of snuggling against student housing policy, and she'd say, "I had a dream you were singing in a nightclub, and there were these demons...." And they'd giggle about it and kiss and have frosted corn-flakes and go happily to class.

It wasn't lost on her that she'd made this world through inaction.

Buffy knocked on the dressing room door, pushing it from ajar to open with her knuckles. "Hey," she said, and Tara turned slightly, careful not to pull her skirt from the hands of the small woman who crouched at her feet, pinning a hem.

Tara's eyes went straight to Willow, and Willow put on a smile and almost dredged up enough heart for a cheery greeting, then a lump came to her throat and the moment got away from her. Tara smiled back though, in a guarded, hopeful way.

The dressing room was small, crowded with racks of gowns, a folding screen, counters of make-up jars crushed cheek to cheek, and a divan hiding under a distraction of flung robes and throw pillows. Only the dressing table mirrors and lights made the room look larger. Willow's eye was drawn to a vase of red roses. What had seemed a profusion was merely a dozen, but there was a card tucked into them, unopened. Rage blossomed in her chest with enough force that she almost raised a breath of magic, only to feel it throttled as the nearest wynariver kicked in. The flowers remained unblasted and she seethed with a sense of her own impotence.

"We just came for a quick visit," Buffy said with a clear, carrying voice and a glance at the seamstress that indicated the words were for her benefit. "Old friends, bringing cookies." She handed the bag to Tara and they exchanged significant eye contact over the seamstress's bent head. "Fortune cookies," Buffy went on. "Sorry. It's the only kind you can find these days. For some reason there are, like, a million of them left. But hey, they never really go stale."

Tara smiled again in a perfunctory way, then glanced down at the seamstress, her face revealing a flash of cold anger so unlike her that it took Willow's breath away. "You can go now," Tara said, as commanding as a queen, something close to a sneer in her voice. When the woman rose her human heritage was obvious, making her Grauth features all the more horrible. She left the room without taking her kit, but closed the door behind her. Tara sank down into a chair, and Willow and Buffy followed suit.

"That woman. Is she--what is she?" Willow asked.

"Niche," Tara answered, the word so plain and blunt that she was clearly over-familiar with it, though Willow had never heard it before. "Part human, part Grauth. She's a family retainer of Malivia's."

"Wait," Buffy said. "She lived...down there? How is that possible?"

"Humans in hell?" Willow said with a half-shrug. "Not so much new."

"They use human beings as servants." Tara fiddled with the clasp of a necklace as she spoke, working it between her fingers, across the satin lap of her dress, as if hoping to break it in the semblance of an accident. "Having Grauth blood is a sign of prestige. She thinks she's better than us," she said with a little chin jerk at the door through which the seamstress had left. "The niche call our kind mud-dwellers. Rude old bitch." At their startled expressions she complained, "She jabs me with pins every chance she gets."

"Poor baby," Willow said gently, reaching out to squeeze her hands.

"First we learn about this treatment to Grauthify humans," Buffy mused. "Now we find out the Grauth started spiking the punch before they even got here."

Tara quirked her brows. "Is that important?"

"I don't know. You don't hear about many demons mixing with humans."

"The Grauth do have a racial supremacy thing going." Disgust entered Willow's tone. "You'd think they'd want to keep their bloodlines to themselves."

Buffy grimaced and shrugged. "Guess they like sharing the wealth." Attention wandering, she gave a critical pass to the dressing room then refocused on Tara. "So you're doing okay here? Because if you think you're in any danger, we'll pull you out."

Willow thought she saw a shadow of annoyance pass over Tara's face, but a second later it was gone and she was smiling reassuringly. "I'm fine. They don't beat me or anything. It's just..."

"What?" Buffy asked with a worried edge.

"It's like they're letting me drink from their water fountain, but they always remind me of it, you know? All they see is human skin, not me. I'm just this exotic freak." A little tremble touched her words.

It was hard not to simply yank her up and out of there, but Willow took a deep breath and squeezed her hands. "They're demons, sweetie. They're the underclass, they just don't know it."

Tara pulled her hands away, a flush rising to her cheeks. "Does it always have to be us or them?" she snapped.

The unexpectedness of her tone stung, and made something inside Willow flush to match her. "Honestly? Yeah. It does, Tara. We live, they die. They live, we die." Emotion confused her voice. "If you don't believe that, why are you even here?"

"You know me. Anything to help the war effort." Tara stood, turned away, and began brushing her hair in the mirror, all with quick sharp movements, an eloquent dismissal that made stupid tears rise and brim, a flash flood of misery that Willow struggled to blink down.

A man was filling the oil lamps along Canal Street as they cut through the park on their way from the club, and a horse-drawn carriage passed them in the opposite direction, traces jingling. A Grauth officer and a lady cuddled in the passenger seat, collars of fur coats pulled high against the winter air; their laughter tapering off as the carriage vanished around a bend of the path. It was as if time had been rolled back.

"She hates me," Willow mourned, her earlier temper with Buffy put aside after the turn of her lover's mood. "We left her there, and anything could happen. Did you see those roses? Some old grey-neck probably has a thing for her, probably sends her flowers after every show with creepy love notes. What if he asks her up to his room? What if she can't say no? She can't even do magic!" Real distress tore the words from her.

Buffy forced her to halt. "Okay, first, if she hates anyone, she hates me. And second--" There was an almost deadly hesitation before her voice firmed. "If some Grauth hits on her, she'll hit back, and she'll get out of there. She knows the tunnel routes, we've got it all set up." Linking her arm through Willow's, she drew her back on track.
 
"I need to figure out the wynariver. We have the plans--it should have been a snap to come up with a neutralizer. If we can't do magic, we might as well give up."

"You'll figure it out. We'll figure it out."

They walked for a moment, and then Willow asked quietly, "What was in the cookies?"

A sidelong look said Buffy was assessing her, maybe to take her emotional temperature. "Names. Grauth officers who frequent the club. If we can start establishing their routines and their," a little indrawn breath, "tastes, we might be able to use them. Or take them out. I'm not so picky either way."

"Spike got you the names?"

Buffy nodded.

"I don't like trusting him," Willow said bluntly, tone as cold as her breath frosting the air. "I know we have to, but when it's Tara's life on the line, all I can say is he better not fuck up."

They reached the edge of the park and paused at the gates, scanning the street that stretched on either side before them. Across the street ran a row of quaint shops, white stucco with red-tiled roofs and flowering window-boxes. Between a bookstore and a café a narrow alley held the entrance to an old sewer-tunnel that would carry them across town to the edge of the campus. A pair of guards could be seen at the end of the block, standing under a lamp, smoking.

"It's three minutes to curfew," Buffy said, checking her watch. "If they see us, they'll want full papers." She stuck her hands in her pockets and sighed. "We'll have to wait until they leave."

Maybe a minute passed as they stood with their hands tucked away, idly turning their heads here and there as if expecting at any moment a parade of circus bears and trick cyclists to wheel by.

Willow's gaze swept like the slow movement of a second hand until it landed on one of the ancient trees that flanked the gate. "How do you suppose they keep all the green things greening?" she brooded aloud. "All the plants should be dead by now."

"Magic?"

She gave Buffy a dry look. "Magic isn't a panacea."

"A who?"

"A cure-all. Magic can't solve everything. I mean, okay, it could, but it would take massive forces to keep the chlorophyll production going without sun." She turned the problem around to view all sides, twisting it like a Rubik's cube. But there were too many other questions. "None of it makes sense--I keep trying to figure out how it all works. A consumer-based society is a machine, with a million moving parts. Theirs should have thrown a gear and broken down by now, but Xander says they're selling state cigarettes and chocolate bars--and what about the fruit and vegetables? The markets are still full, and they should have run out weeks ago."
 
"It's a poser," Buffy admitted, swinging in place a bit like one of those musical flower pots Willow had wanted as a child. Five years ago her body language might have meant good spirits; now it was just an attempt to ward off the chill.

"I suppose they could be transporting goods up from Hell Thirty-Seven or wherever it is they come from, but that portal of theirs has to be a massive energy suck. No way is supply meeting demand. If they don't start importing from the outside world soon, they're going to--"

Two semi-trucks rumbled slowly by, featureless and anonymous except for the Grauth state seal on the side. Behind them trailed a military Jeep filled with Grauth guards, weapons up.

Willow and Buffy exchanged a glance.

"Come on," Buffy said, and dashed off, running parallel to the road behind the stone wall that bordered the park. Willow ran after her, sneakers hitting the turf with damp soft thuds in synch with her breath. They paced the convoy without too much strain but were forced to break at the end of each block until the escort had passed, and then run to catch up.

By the time they reached the Altimera Bridge at the southeastern edge of town, Willow had tapped her reserves and was dogging Buffy's heels blindly, oriented only by the sound of their footfalls. When Buffy came to a stop, Willow collided into her with a lungless squeak.

"Shhhh," Buffy said, grabbing her wrist and pushing her into the shadow of a rhododendron. Willow fell to her knees and wheezed, both hands flattened on the grass.

"'S okay," she mumbled. "Just a...cleansing vomit." With a groan, she collapsed vomitless onto the ground and rested her hot cheek there, a few inches behind Buffy's left shoe. Past it she could see the bridge, green and iron and riveted, its gated entrance dramatically shadowed by upturned spotlights on either side.

As she watched and allowed her brain to absorb oxygen, a soldier came from the guard house and approached the truck. From inside the cab a grey hand extended papers, which the guard took and examined closely. Other soldiers lined the gate, motionless with guns in hand until the inspection had been satisfied, and then they stepped aside and lifted the gate arms, allowing the truck to pass through.

"They're headed for the city limits," Buffy said.

Willow pushed herself off the ground with two limp noodles and staggered up to lean against a tree. "Uh huh."

"And the defense barrier."

"There could just be detention camps out that way. They might be bringing supplies."

"We need to find out for sure. If they've opened the barrier..." Buffy turned and looked at Willow with a zealous fire in her eyes. "I'm thinking it's time for a road trip."

"What's the meeting for?" Kethas asked, staring across the length of the room at where the adults were gathering. Willow's head moved now and then as she studied something spread on the table, just enough to keep the stripes of light dancing on her red hair. He kept an eye on her out of habit. Witches made him uneasy.

"Dunno," Marcos said, sharpening a knife ostentatiously with rough little scritches. Muy macho. "Another crazy mission. Ours not to wonder why; ours just to shut up and die."

"You said it." Dor had a notepad braced under her good arm and was doodling pictures of small blonde girls with knives in their chests, dangling from nooses, getting bayoneted. She looked bitter; worse, she looked bored. You didn't want to let yourself get bored around here in Kethas's experience. They'd make you clean the already spotless guns or patrol the tunnels just to give you something to do.

"You know what we are," Marcos went on. "Red shirts. Cannon fodder, man. We're here to stop the bullets, that's it. No shiny medals, no parade. We're just the cold-meat side dish waiting to be served up. Now, you never gonna see one of them getting kacked. You wait. They got a plan, it'll be us charging the hill. It'll be you, man." He directed his knife point at Kethas. "You lying there, grey-necks rippin' paper dolls outta your guts, and you're screaming, 'Mama, mama, I'm comin' to join you--'"

"Shut up."

The icy words surprised them all to silence, and their heads turned to Jonathan, who'd spoken. Kethas had forgotten the human was even present. Quiet, wide-eyed, and nervous, he lurked in corners like a mouse most of the time, but now he glared them down with contempt.

"You'd all be dead now if it weren't for them. So would I. They've put themselves on the front lines for years and never asked for medals. But they're heroes. So what if we're not? You want to leave? Go out and get dead. You don't need them for that." His mouth flattened as if to crush out every memory of every smile in the universe; he looked almost nauseated by emotion. "You people make me sick."

They watched him get up and walk away, leaving a complicated silence in his wake. Marcos held his knife and sharpening stone in his hands but didn't resume his task, while Dor's pencil worked a dark line back and forth across one square of paper. Both were expressionless, but Kethas thought they seemed shamed. Hard to tell with humans.

"Well, this is a feeble excuse for a rebel alliance."

Kethas turned just in time to see a vampire in Grauth uniform pull Marcos's head back and whip a knife to rest under his jaw. The blade gleamed against the panicky swallowing of his throat.

It was just Spike, but that wasn't entirely reassuring.

"Aren't you lucky I wasn't the real thing," Spike asked, the mesmerizing thoughtfulness of his voice suggesting he might still be. He considered his victim for a long moment, tapped his knife once against the skin--Marcos made a choking sound--then put it away.

"Never sit with your back to the door," he advised, tone roughening to irritable, and reached inside his coat to withdraw what Kethas, tensing, feared was another weapon, but turned out to be a carton of cigarettes. He dropped them in Marco's lap. "Not getting you any more, so don't smoke them all at once. If her blondeness finds out I'm corrupting your youthful pink lungs, I'll be a yard shorter."

"Thanks," Marcos said weakly.

Turning his head the vampire inspected Dor's drawings. "Tongue usually sticks out when you're hanged," he noted before crossing the room to the meeting.

The three of them looked at each other, then scraped their chairs around to face the door.

"I saw that," Xander said.

Spike weighed the idea of deliberately misunderstanding, achieved preemptive boredom. "Just teaching them a few life lessons."

Xander gave this a moment's even consideration, then said, "Good," and began to turn away.

"Oi," Spike piped, annoyance rising, "Stop acting out of character. Bad enough watching you go all Jean-Paul Marat on the grauts--you start being understanding, that's taking it too bloody far." His display of disgust was only half put on. "If I start to like you, I'm going to have you killed." Unable to get a rise out of the other man, he pretended to have an idea. "Here, look, why not take a shot for old time's sake." He tilted his face, offered a choice of nose or jaw.

"Tempting," Xander admitted. "But ultimately homoerotic and disturbing, and no."

And then Little Red Witchyhood spotted them. "Oh hey, Spike's here--we can start." Gathering everyone to the table, she reoriented a map of Sunnydale so that they could see it. Spike wasn't looking though, because Buffy was watching him across the width of the table, her mysterious girly eyes speaking things to him he couldn't quite hear. He wondered if she was still upset about the trifles he'd salvaged for her, and it made his neck stiff, made him unsure what to do with his hands.

Plotting the overthrow of a demon government had its kicks, but if he could leave Sunnydale with Buffy that minute, he would. Abandon the town and everyone in it. She'd only to say the word. To hell with the rest of them and to pratting around in this Nazi fetish gear.

Frustration made his heart ache and bite itself. Terrible thing.

"You brought intel?" Willow asked.

He turned his dryest look on her. "Yeah, right," he drawled. "Intel." Taking off his cap, he was aware of all eyes pinned to him; he removed a folded sheet of paper and passed it over. "List of departure times for the supply carriers."

She compared it against the figures jotted in her notebook. "These match up with what we've observed, so it looks like they're running on schedule." Apparently for his sake, she added, "We've been timing deliveries through the south gate for the last few days--we think it's the only route in or out of the barrier."

"It is," he said.

Buffy studied him, face smooth but eyes troubled, as if she wanted to suspect him of betrayals and other bad things. She was always ready to slam the door on tender feelings, and wasn't as sharp at hiding them as she thought.

"Before, you didn't know anything about the deliveries," she said. "Now you're Mister Knowledge Person?"

He cast a lowering, half-embarrassed frown at her. "Told you, they kept me in the dark. This is need-to-know, top brass only. I poured two bottles of bloody expensive vodka into my source and still had to squeeze him like a sponge 'fore he'd confirm anything."

Buffy nodded, a grudging allowance. "Did you learn anything else?"
 
"Yeah." He gusted the word on a sigh. "The barrier's set up with detectors, warns them if humans pass through--out, not in. But since it's out we want...puts kind of a crimp in plans."
 
After a pause in which Buffy seemed thrown by the news, she raised her head and rallied. "Not necessarily."

It took a moment before he connected her words to the way she looked at him. "Now, hold on. You need me here. Important man on the inside, remember?"

"Not that important," Xander put in blandly.

"Send that kid, the Bracken." Spike gestured across the room. "It'd be good for him. Let him play the hero instead of sitting 'round here with one thumb up his arse and the other twiddling a trigger. You know, not much longer and one of those silly tots'll shoot off a foot."

Buffy stepped closer to the table, resting her hands on the edge; under the glare of the hanging lamp they turned almost white. "He's too young," she said, voice low enough not to carry. "And he's not someone I can rely on. He doesn't know Angel or L.A." She held his eyes. "Do you think I wouldn't rather go myself, or maybe send Dawn and give her a chance to get the hell out of here?"

From her perch on a crate Dawn brewed a mutinous stormcloud, but compressed her lips and remained silent.

"I know you're important," Buffy went on. "Which is why you'll need to pull this off and get back before anyone figures out you're missing." She turned to Willow. "What window of time will he have?"

And that was that, Spike thought, swallowing down any further argument and his own prideful nature. She commanded, he obeyed. He was always knight to some dark queen and he'd never tried to be more, except where reputation was concerned. God, he loved her; so much that he could barely pay heed to what the little witch was saying, but he made himself, to carry out his slayer's orders.

"There's an outbound transport every evening at five p.m., when the trucks should be empty. They return again around five in the morning with goods for the market. That's probably the best one to catch--the trucks for that run are large and the trip time suggests they're going to L.A. All the other transports are smaller, probably local pick-ups of milk or produce."

Willow began tracing a route on the map. "They leave the depot here," a finger tap, "and cross town to the south gate--Fernley to Minot to Buena Vista, then straight down to the bridge. There are three checkpoints along the way and another one at the gate. When they come back they take the same route to the depot and unload." She looked up from the map, cute face all a-crinkle. "It's the checkpoints we have to worry about. They do random searches."

"The best insertion point would be the gate," Xander said, eyes fixed absently on the map as if seeing through it to visualize what it represented. "But it's also the most well-lit, with no area for concealment. The depot's a converted Wal-Mart, fenced and patrolled, and they turn the trucks inside out before they go. Of the checkpoints, the last is our only real choice for play."

Spike, who remembered Xander the Younger back when he was just an oaf in geek's clothing and redolent of extra-crispy double cheese, opened his mouth to fire off a round of mockery at this military pretentiousness, caught Buffy's eye, rolled his tongue into his cheek, and bit down. She owed him.

"It has cover," Buffy interjected hastily. "They've built guardhouses under a railroad crossing, and there's plenty of trees and bushes--if we set up a distraction, you should be able to get on there."

He was putting his bollocks on the chopping block for them yet again, his fate in the hands of humans, no more than children. The git, the witch, and the woman who'd played merry hell with his heart. And for what? To fetch Angel, the brooding great bastard, who'd galumph in on a white horse wearing his mawkish soul on his sleeve and snatch Buffy away first chance he got. It was idiotic, it was laughable, it was pathetic.
 
"Right," he said simply.

"Here's a sketch of the checkpoint," Willow said, laying another piece of paper on top of the map. "Traffic goes both ways, south and north, and there are guards at both ends and along the overpass. Timing's critical. If we want to draw the guards' focus away from the trucks at the south gate, we'll have to be coming through the north gate while they're waiting for clearance. If we don't get it right the first time, we'll have to keep trying--we can't know if the plan's a go until we're through the gate and can see whether the trucks are in the southbound lane."

A contemplative silence fell and Spike raised his brows, curious to see who would be the first to point out just how buggering mental a plan it was.

"Okay," Buffy said, taking a deep breath. "I think we've got a chance of pulling this off, but if we don't--" A sidelong glance.

Willow pulled the map back. "I'll start figuring our escape routes, just in case."

She was joined by Xander, Dawn leaning forward with interest. Buffy came around the table to him, away from the others, and he stepped readily off to the side with her. He was always keen to soak up any personal, undivided attention she might bestow. Near to her he smelled perfume, some floral misty stuff that he remembered her wearing from months or years back. It must have been in the box, he realized; he'd brought it to her unknowing, and he felt a fool for not having done sooner.

He reached out to touch her cheek and she turned her face away, glancing at her friends.

It was worse than a blow when she did him over like that. His arm lowered by itself, slow, heavy, cold, and dead. Which he was, head to toe, except for that spark of hot anger she nourished in him. Hard, changeable bitch goddess, fickle slayer, twisting him all around with her flowery smelling skin and her--

"--are you listening to me?" she broke off to ask.

"Bring Angel," he repeated, jaw tightening as he worked the name around in his mouth. The words came out mild, but his bones felt like they'd achieved the tensile strength of steel.

"And Giles. We need the council's help on this." He nodded and she gazed up at him, grave and searching. "Spike..."

And here it came, whatever it was, some warning she felt bound to issue, or maybe a winsome, gently-worded plea that would exact promises from him, duties he'd be forced to carry out with gritted teeth. Maybe she wanted him to tote a love note to Angel Daddy.

And then she kissed him. Not a peck, not a token, but her soft palm pulling his neck down, her mouth open like an oven to engulf the dead. When she slid her other arm around the small of his back under his coat, he groaned, and when she let him go he was on fire. He wanted to fuck her, he wanted to leave that minute on his quest, he was torn and oblivious to anyone else in the room.

"I didn't thank you," she said. "For bringing those things from home."

He touched his tongue to the inside of his lips, tasting her kiss. "More thanks than that?" he asked, and what should have hit a lewd note came out starry-eyed and hopeful.

"It means a lot to Dawn...and to me." She was avoiding his question, however gracefully, and she'd moved back a step. But she hadn't let go of him yet, and he couldn't let go either. "You've come a long way without a soul," she said, her words quiet and only for him. "Don't let Angel bait you. To him, you're everything he used to be. He won't see who you've become. He won't understand."

Her favor puffed him up even as it constricted his chest almost too much to bear; he felt giddy, drunk, light-headed as William as his life-blood drained away. "I'll be a good boy," he said, smiling, offering his earnestness as a gift.

Her loving mouth might have been a trick, but without a cause he was no rebel. Without her, he was nothing at all.

A quarter mile past the spot where Buena Vista narrowed to one lane, a railroad embankment spanned the road, creating a rocky tunnel. On each side of the road leading up to it, untouched tracts of pine acted as windbreaks and baffling walls, protecting the businesses behind them. To the east, a clump of almost featureless office buildings sat embedded like Legos in shorn campus grounds, visible only as rows of evenly spaced windows in the dark. Westward, terraced offices could be glimpsed through the scrub.

Under the embankment, gated guardhouses were placed to monitor traffic both ways, foot and vehicle; above them, soldiers patrolled along both sides of the railway tracks, using the walkway as a lookout for anything coming down the road.

Lance Corporal Villek was on southbound watch, in theory the more important duty since it led toward the edge of town and the barrier, but in practice just as boring as northbound. No one had ever tried to escape, at least not yet. At first he'd held out hope. He'd seen a hundred films during training to prepare him for war, and on his arrival to the surface he'd believed that the dream and glory had finally come true. But the only humans he met were little more than cattle to be herded through his checkpoint. None looked like Ingmar Bergman or acted like Humphry Bogart, and everyone he challenged had their papers ready.

It was whispered that in some areas of Sunnydale rebel forces fought back, sabotaging the noble Grauth Reich. Villek wished he were there, in the thick of it. Guard duty degraded his soul. Also, he was getting corns.

Snow began eddying down on the wind and thickened to a heavy patter in the space of a blink. Villek, pleased by one more thing to complain about, was savoring his cud of discontent when Ganyar tromped over, boot soles squeaking on the snow, to share a cigarette. Together they watched a queue of humans shuffle one by one up the pedestrian walk and past the guardhouse, some carrying grocery bags for their masters or baskets on their arms, all with signa displayed prominently on their coats.

"Didn't think it'd be so cold," Villek said. "In training they said the sun baked the surface, so hot it'd be cooling for a thousand years. Sun every day, we were supposed to have. 'You'll be able to set your clock by it,' they said." He masticated his cigarette, puffing morosely.

"Give it a rest, why don't you," Ganyar said. "They tell you anything when you're green. It's just to make you fight." He looked around for an officer's presence and lowered his voice. "I hear it will be years before they open the barrier, maybe as long as five."

"Who says?"

"Those that'd know."

Ganyar liked to boast that he had a cousin who had a friend who had an uncle in the High Command. Unable to answer this, Villek snorted.

"Besides--doesn't matter when the day comes. Holy fire's not for the likes of us. We'll be long gone by then, wearing out our boot soles on the great stones of home."

"What?" The prospect alarmed Villek, mostly because it had never occurred to him before. "But they'll need guards here--they'll always need guards."

"Maybe not," Ganyar said mysteriously. "Or maybe just not us. Why do you think they're--" He broke off talking just as Villek broke off listening, and both brought their guns up at the same time, still pointing at the ground but closer to firing level as they turned toward the ruckus at the northbound exit.

"Filthy whore!" someone yelled.

Villek perked up.

Earlier in the day they'd slipped out through the checkpoint, just two more unremarked humans within the stream of people leaving the city core on whatever business their Grauth masters set. Now in the five o'clock evening hour they were re-entering when most people were headed in the opposite direction, but there was enough foot traffic through the northbound gate to buffer their presence.

Willow linked her arm through Xander's as the line worked its way forward, and he spared a moment to smile down at her. Neither spoke. Alongside them, thin but effective wire fencing enclosed travelers in a security corridor, while several yards ahead the orange-and-white gate arms barred any attempt to exit without official inspection. When a person reached checkpoint, the first arm lifted to allow them entry, then closed, boxing them into a holding pen for review. Posted inside the box, a Grauth in uniform was meticulously examining papers, the business watched over by guards with guns readied. After being cleared, travelers were allowed to move forward through the tunnel to the other side.

The plan they'd come up with was a simple one, but Willow found it difficult to concentrate on anything for more than a moment. In front of her, a girl in a red coat holding her mother's hand kept turning to scrutinize her. When Willow waggled her fingers, the girl swiveled her head away quickly, laying her curls against the side of her mother's coat to hide her face. A few seconds later she peeped again, her eyes bright.

In the line behind them, a couple was trading whispers about food shortages and other gossip they'd picked up from the Grauth family they served. Ahead, the line shortened by increments of one or two people at a time. Each step closer deepened the sickening feeling in Willow's stomach and made her clutch at Xander more tightly. Over the last several years she'd been a thousand and one flavors of afraid; afraid of the future, afraid of death, afraid of what might happen to Tara and her friends. But rising fast on her least-favorite list was the helpless terror of having to pull off feats of derring-do without any magic. It reminded her of all those years in school when she was just a powerless little bookworm, writhing under the big stompy feet of every jock and cheerleader who took the unwelcome time to notice her. Take away her witchhood, and what was left? Red hair and cunning. Big deal.

"Our papers are still good, right?" she breathed to Xander.

The question was a nervous tic; she knew the answer, but he gave it to her anyway, leaning in as if to kiss her hair. "Another forty-eight hours," he murmured.

She jittered restlessly and they moved another foot forward. The only people in front of them now were the woman and her child, two pretty girls in long coats, and the man stepping into the security enclosure. The slow pace made her anxious--it would be pure luck if they'd managed to synchronize their passage through the checkpoint with the delivery trucks on the first go, but she was crossing her fingers because she didn't want to do this twice.

Eyes drawn back to the little girl, who was peering yet again over her shoulder, Willow smiled weakly. This was apparently enough to earn herself a show, and the girl raised her mother's hand as high as she could over her head to pirouette and then pose, slim as a needle under a phonograph arm.

"Candace," her mother hissed, distracted and yanking her daughter's arm. "Behave!"

Willow registered the fear in her tone at nearly the same moment the voices ahead began to rise.

"You have my papers," the man at the gate was saying with distress. "I am a skilled worker, specialist class--I'm an engineer. I help maintain off-grid electrical systems. All my permits are there--my exemption stamps are up to date."

In response, the guard held the passport bundle open, reviewing its contents for long, ticking seconds before he looked up with narrowed eyes. "Step out of line," he said, gesturing for one of the guards to release the latch on a side-gate into the fenced yard. Inside were more soldiers and a small shed that might have once been used for gardening, now hung with a sign in Grauth and English that designated it an Inquiry Station.

"Look, what's not there? Is something missing? I went to the registration bureau like they told me just last week."

Xander and Willow exchanged a tense look.

"Step out of line," repeated the guard impatiently.

The man gazed at his papers in the guard's hand and then up to his face as if trying to find some echo of humanity there. "I was supposed to travel with my supervisor, Lieutenant Grillyan--he's Grauth--but he was delayed. He told me to go ahead."

His head turned to gaze back down the line of people waiting as if expecting to see someone appear in his support. When his eyes passed across Willow's her heart seized up and she felt Xander's grip tighten, clamping her to immobility against his side. He had no gun today and she had no magic.

The man looked back to the guard and began to say, "He will be along soo--" as the guard swept the pistol up to his chest and shot him. Willow opened her mouth to cry out and ended up half-choking into the palm of Xander's hand. She struggled by instinct to free herself, staring widely as the man in the security box staggered back and was shot again, and a third time, each smart bang a blow to her ears. The man turned and collapsed against the wire fence facing the trees beyond it, fingers caught in the mesh. The Grauth guard uttered one sharp word in his own language, a command obeyed by the soldiers who stepped forward to collect the body.

"Don't," Xander said, taking his hand away from her mouth. "Don't."

She barely heard him.

The shots ripped all breath from Buffy's lungs and she drew her gun up, prepared to take out every Grauth within range. From her position on the slope the corridor below her was as well lit as a supermarket aisle, and she could see her friends trapped there, stiff and twined together as they watched the man get shot. She saw Willow struggle, Xander's head move closer to her as he spoke. They remained as motionless as the rest as the soldiers wrested the man's body from the fence and dragged it to the verge. It was left there heaped on the snowy ground.

After a few minutes the line lurched forward again, and a pair of young women entered the holding area. She could hear them weeping even from a distance, but they were passed through without challenge, along with a mother and her child. She lifted her rifle as Xander and Willow reached checkpoint, her view of the scene jumping in magnification as she put one eye to the scope. Willow's face, white and stricken, appeared up close. Her lips hung parted on visible breaths but she wasn't speaking, and her movements were clumsily robotic as she handed over her papers. Xander's shoulders were hunched as if to make him as small as possible.

The examination of their papers seemed to last forever. "Come on," Buffy said, sick with fear. "Come on." She adjusted her rifle to bring the guard's head between the crosshairs, her finger tightening on the trigger then releasing it again abruptly as the guard handed their papers back and waved them through.

There was nothing else for her to do now. She had no way to signal Spike or the others about what had happened. Their plan would have to be aborted for tonight, and it would take her several hours to wend her way through the sector, avoiding patrols until she could enter the tunnels and return to the Initiative. At least they'd made it through this one without losing a life.

Willow leaned into Xander's body as they walked through the underpass, knees weak. In the vehicle lane to their left, a shiny dark car rolled by, officer's permit on the windshield, state flag attached to the hood. Inside, a Grauth woman in fur and jewels laughed at some joke they couldn't hear before passing out of sight. The car's tail-lights blinked a few times and then it accelerated away.

Ahead lay nothing but the clear road, demarcated by a line of snow where the cover ended. A guard house blocked the view of the southbound road at first, but Willow kept her eyes fixed to it and gradually the edge of the building receded, revealing a stretched line of cars headed in the opposite direction, idling, headlights half obscured by snow, pipes gusting exhaust into the cold air. And she could see the trucks, far enough back in line that they hugged the slope where the trees were thickest.

She glanced up at Xander, who read her question and shook his head minutely.

Relief claimed her like vertigo. Being freed from her mission felt like being pardoned at the last minute from some dreaded stage performance and gave her a measure of clarity. But rage came rushing back in to fill the gap, and she saw the man again falling against the fence, blood pouring on the ground. It jerked through her, a memory loop she couldn't switch off. She glared stony-faced at a soldier they passed, and felt Xander jerk her arm under the pretense of drawing her closer.

"Cut it out," she said coldly.

Xander stiffened and dragged his feet suddenly, but they were almost out of the overpass, into the brilliant white freedom of the road. No corridors here, no dividers, only the sidewalk and the street.

"Willow--"

They breached the tunnel and came out into the open air. "Shut up," she said, voice rising with a quaver. She yanked her arm from his and left him to follow. "My god, a man was shot, a man, a man died back there," she turned and gesticulated in what felt like real hysteria, backing further into the empty road, "and it's nothing to you!"

She saw fear in Xander's face as he swallowed, dark gaze holding her own, and then he shook his head and said in an uneven voice, "You're a goddamn stupid bitch." The words lacked force but hung between them for a horrible moment while she breathed heavily and he swallowed again, until he worked himself up to say more loudly, "Stupid bitch." What might have been real anger sparked behind his eyes. He stalked forward, and she stumbled back along the road, trying not to slip on the wet snow.

"I'm not the stupid one," she yelled. "You--you're crazy, you're paranoid, all the time, no matter what I do, all you can think is, is, what if someone's looking at me, what if some man wants me, what if he takes me away! Waa waa waa, you're like a twenty-three year old baby--you can't keep a woman, and it's always someone else's fault!"

In her face now, Xander grabbed her coat lapels and shoved her into the snow. She skidded onto her ass, gasped with the shock of it, and had to push herself up again with cold hands. She couldn't remember if they'd planned that or if he was off script.

"Filthy whore!" he shouted, making her flinch. And she knew this part, her fingers fumbling at her coat buttons, she knew this and it was too late to stop.

"I'm a whore?" she yelled defiantly, desperately wrenching at her resistant coat. She should be taking a look to see if the guards on the overpass were watching, but her cheeks were hot and if she looked anywhere but at Xander she might lose her nerve. "I'm a whore?"

"You're like a sick dog in heat--tail wagging for it, teeth in every man you smell. Making a show of yourself. You might as well just take it all off!"

The tears in her eyes half blinded her, but Willow managed to rip off the maddening weight of her coat. "Fine!" she cried. "You want it? I will!" She thought she heard laughter and whistles in the background but her ears felt roasted with shame and a weird, perilous excitement. "Is that what you want?" She popped the buttons on her blouse, felt it tangle ridiculously around her arms and almost panicked before it fell to the ground. "Is that how you want it? You want me like this?" Her skirt dropped next and clung to one heel like a bad joke until, hopping to one side, she finally kicked it loose. Chilled and shuddering, she struck a defiant pose in the grossly inadequate lingerie she'd borrowed from Buffy.

Clapping from the overpass rained down and whistles were definitely audible now. Xander, who seemed to have lost his voice for a minute, regained it. "Get your clothes on," he ordered, looking dazed and sounding more like real, good-friend Xander, instead of the fake scary one, then shifted back into role to add harshly: "You're embarrassing me!"

A pair of guards ambled up, guns glossy and prominent in front of them, and eyed the scene with interested faces.

One turned to Xander. "Now, now," he clucked, "is that any way to treat a lady?"

When he heard the shouting start, Spike slid out of the bushes and crouched alongside the wire fence. Half-dead ivy scrawled its surface, sheltering him from view. The nearest truck was close enough to spit on, its cab just a few yards ahead; he could see the profile of a man in the passenger seat until the man turned, looking toward the location of the dustup. Spike waited until the guards on the overpass drifted away to get a better view, then slid through a gap in the fence he'd made and rolled under the truck. He had to shimmy and wedge himself across a set of beams bracing the undercarriage, and could already tell that jeans, jumper, and jacket would be useless against the cold.

As he settled into place, oil dripped onto his nose. He closed his eyes, face set in lines of disgust and resignation.

"This had better be bloody well worth it," he said to himself.

Dawn brought a mug of tea to Willow where she sat buried in shawls and blankets. "No more coffee," she apologized. "But we still have enough tea-bags to build a fort. A small one. A fort for mice."

Willow slipped one hand through the blanket fold and took the mug. "Thanks."

Taking a seat on the edge of a crate, Dawn picked up Willow's other hand and rubbed it. It felt cool and soft and bony like her mother's had when she'd gotten sick.

"So, Spike--he made it out?"

"We think so. He didn't meet up at the rendezvous point."

"My plan worked, huh." Dawn didn't feel especially proud of that. Actually, she wished she could take back her lunatic idea. It was obvious how bad it must have been; though Willow was trying hard to shrug it off as easy-peasy, she looked like she did after a bad bout of magic--pale and limp and nauseated.

Xander came over and sat down, and after a moment when no one said anything Dawn found a reason to excuse herself. "Hey, look," she said, "I have no tea. I'm tealess. I'll just...tea off."

He stared at the floor as Dawn left, his head cocked, listening to her scuffing footsteps until they blended with other noises across the room. "What the hell were you thinking?" he asked, calmer than he felt.

"That's a dumb question," Willow said with the same false calm. He knew her face too well to miss the strain in it. "But I was going to ask you the same thing. Why did you push me? They could have shot you, Xander, and not thought twice about it--they shot a man for nothing, for not having a, a piece of paper or for just being there at the wrong time--and you pushed me!" Her voice had risen at last, outrage covering for a fear he shared. He pictured the bullets striking her chest, sending her to the ground like a puppet with cut strings.

"You started it," he pointed out, but his throat was rough and the humor fell flat.

"We might not have had a second chance."

They pondered events for a few seconds. Willow took a sip of tea; Xander dug some dirt out from under a nail and noticed tremors in his hands. Adrenaline was wearing off and the day felt as long as it had been dark. Tiredness washing over him, Xander realized aloud: "That was an incredibly stupid plan."

"Yeah...don't say that around Dawn."

"We need to mark this on the calendar so that next year on the anniversary of this stupid plan we can not do it again. Also, I'm getting a tattoo." He flexed one hand, touched the back of it, trying to make the tremor go away. "Right here. It'll just say, 'Hell, no.' I'll know what it means."

"And then when people push, you can say, 'Talk to the hand.'"

She did a bad Senor Wences imitation with one fist and gave him a wan smile, and it hurt too much, the death she hadn't died, the unspoken things between them, the past eight rotten years, the everything. He half tumbled off his chair--a scrape and a clatter--and fell to his knees in front of her, letting his head come to rest in her lap.

"Xander!" she gasped urgently, just as if he'd been shot.

Her mug rolled somewhere and covered him in honeyed tea and she stroked his hair for a long time, telling stories from their childhood as if she were sewing them back in.

The road rushing by under Spike's backside would have kept him awake even if he'd wanted to rest. He'd hitched a lot of creative and usually illegal rides in his life. His first choice of travel had once been a nice sleeper car, and then a car became something you could drive yourself and he never went back, embracing speed and independence over comfort, except when Dru got fed up and tore into a screaming tirade. Dru liked a nice cozy choo-choo. But cargo bays, wagons, livestock vans, tramp steamers, refrigeration cars, oxcart, and once in the keel of a zeppelin--he'd circled the world by whatever means expedient, usually when alone and whenever a proper ride was too risky.

Frankly, it always sucked. Tonight his driver seemed to be popping bennies, the trucker's friend, and Spike noticed that sometimes the road below picked up a white, wavering ribbon for a mile or two as they veered lazily across the lane divider.

"Slow down, you bastard!" he yelled, his words caught and flung away in the current of air. And then another drip of oil smacked into his face and he seethed.

Buffy walked down the hallway between the old demon containment cells. The kids had been setting up house inside, dragging in abandoned office furniture and boxes to outfit them. The cells were large, but in each one the furnishings had been squashed back into the corners like cramped little mouse nests, as if all that white space was too much to think about. She stopped at Dawn's cell, where Dawn was sleeping, a lamp on by her bedside. Stepping in around piles of clothes, she looked at the wall behind the camp mattress, now decorated with the dribs and drabs from home that Spike had brought. A picture of mom; of dad; one of Dawn and herself, heads together, grinning.

If her mom was here, what would she do? Make hot soup, mend blankets, hold Dawn's hand, soothe her fears...fight like a fury if she needed to. Buffy could do that, but she didn't want to forget the rest. She didn't want to be just General-in-Chief Summers, working the troops until they dropped.

Crouching a moment, she took a fluffy pen from Dawn's lax hand and then, with greater care, dislodged her diary. She set it closed on the floor by the mattress and pulled the thin blanket up around her sister's shoulders. The blankets were getting dirty; she didn't even know where the dirt came from. It was a thought her mom might have had.

Back in the hallway she passed Kethas's room; he was sitting up on his mattress, back to the wall, headphones on, reading the same comic he'd been reading for two months. He didn't look up.

At the edge of Dor's and Marcos's room she halted and stepped back. She'd intended to apologize again to Dor for breaking her arm, try to find some friendly words that wouldn't antagonize her. Something to keep her spirits up. But Dor already had something for that, someone; she lay on her good side, arm crooked close to her ribs, while Marcos kissed her, and the movement of their bodies under the blanket hinted at more than Buffy wanted to see.

She turned away and leaned against the wall with her own arms folded around her, letting the antiseptic whiteness of the corridor leach warmth from her body. Glancing down, she moved her left hand slightly to uncover the claddagh ring she'd put on. She couldn't have said why she had. Just because it still fit--that didn't meant anything. She wore her heart pointed inward, and that was exactly how it felt.

She moved the ring to her other hand, heart out.

Spike had wanted very dearly to kill the delivery truck driver, but as it would have also killed his chances of getting a ride back, he controlled himself, shook loose the seven pounds of road grit embedded in his arse, and cleaned off the minstrel mask of oil that had covered his face during the trip--as he imagined it, anyway, since when he tried to look at himself in the cracked and age-spotted mirror in the warehouse bathroom, he discovered his face had got lost.

"Oh, right," he said. No private vanity mirror for him here. He stared into the blank glass trying to fix his hair for far longer than was sensible, imagining he could see something if he worked hard enough, before giving up and snaking through the back of the warehouse. At the rear bay doors he halted in the shadows, fascinated by the line of late evening sun across the floor. Seven o'clock at night, give or take a tick, and the bloody thing was still hanging up there, beaming goodwill down on all humanity and death rays on all vampires. Getting to the Hyperion would mean going underground.

Funny. For the first time ever, he was missing Sunnydale.

"Do you take cream?" Angel asked, turning to his visitor and holding up the creamer.

Rupert Giles looked up distractedly from the journal he was holding. "Er, no."

"Sugar?"

"No. Just plain, please." He lowered his head again slightly but his eyes remained fixed on the vampire, narrowing over his glasses as he watched him prepare the tea. Giles was still adjusting to the whole vampire-with-a-soul revelation, and the picture of the undead handling sugar cubes with silver tongs was disorienting. Also, he wasn't entirely comfortable with the proximity of the creature to a beverage he intended to drink--although he supposed he should trust Wyndam-Pryce not to let a guest be poisoned.

"You've kept meticulous records," Giles said as Angel joined him, glancing up as the other man slid a mug across the table to him, steam wafting the familiar scent of Earl Grey.

"Wesley," Angel said. "He keeps the books."

"Of course." Giles rested his hand on the open pages. "I haven't been able to find any reference to a 'Buffy Summers,' or for that matter to any of the other names in the letter I received."

"But you think she's a slayer."

Giles hadn't decided yet if he found Angel's direct gaze unnerving or encouraging. He nodded once, angling his head to evade that focus while he gave the idea more thought. He was hesitant to commit himself fully to belief yet. "The letter does make that claim."

"I thought the council kept records of its own."

Affront and defensiveness stirred in Giles even though the remark had been neutral in tone. It was a sore point for an archivist.

"We do. There is a suggestive gap in the chronicles between the accounts of Faith and the previous slayer in line. However, these things do sometimes occur. Not all slayers have been identified first as potentials. If one is called from outside our auspices, she might survive for a time...and die before we can locate her."

"Sounds like this one's still alive."

"Which makes no sense," Giles pointed out, frowning. "As Faith would not have been called unless a previous slayer died." He allowed a measured pause. "You said that Faith--"

"I told you. No questions about her."

"Right," Giles murmured.

Angel sat silently for a few moments, shoulders hunched as he considered the untouched tea on the table, boxed in between his restless hands. Then he seemed to come to a decision, raising his eyes to Giles. "I've been having dreams lately. There's a girl, blonde. We fight and...do other things. I don't know her name, but I feel like I know her."

"I've been having dreams as well," Giles said slowly. More astounded than he wanted to admit, he tried to piece together what it might mean. "This puts a new light on matters."

"Magic," Angel said in his laconic way. "Maybe a memory spell."

Cordelia appeared in the kitchen door, drawing both men's eyes. "You might want to come out here."

They trailed her to the lobby where Wyndam-Pryce and his friend Gunn were keeping an angry man at bay with raised cross-bows. Their captive was blond, unremarkably dressed, and not especially formidable. But then most vampires appeared innocuous on first glance.

The ex-watcher turned his head a notch at their arrival but didn't lower his weapon. "We were just arriving when what should we find our doorstep," he said, his voice dry and melodious. "A vampire gift basket."

Giles felt pleased to have his suspicion confirmed; he hadn't come across many vampires since giving up field work and accepting a research position with the council--as apparently he'd done at some point, without really remembering how, when, or why. He took the opportunity to consider this new example of the species with interest, from a safe distance.

His identity revealed, the vampire gave Wyndam-Pryce a look of dislike so eloquent that Giles wondered if there was history between them. Then again, demons weren't an affable sort, generally speaking.

"Spike," Angel said.

"Spike," Cordelia affirmed to the room at large.

The demon tipped his head and smiled.
 
 

Notes: So, it's been a while. Many apologies for the long delay. It was extremely depressing, and I can't believe it lasted most of a year. Moving on before I start thinking about it further.

There's not much to say about this one except that everyone in the story cried more than they were supposed to. Plus I think I ended up spending more time wandering down slightly self-indulgent sidepaths than focusing on major plot points I wanted to develop, which resulted in some imbalances. But I still have...nine more stories...to go....

Moving on now.

Thirteenth episode in an alternate season 8, with an AU season 7 in between; everything branches off from "Gone." Standard disclaimers, for the love of Joss who said go forth and write fan-fiction.

Corrections of typos or bloopers always welcome.

Do not archive. Links are fine, though. My new LiveJournal is here, the main noir page is here, and my nominal homepage is here, at least if you aren't reading this page in frames.

Feedback always welcome at eliade @ drizzle.com for those of you generous enough to write to someone who doesn't write back. Except for the stories.