Every time you were expecting to reach out and forgive this
I was hardened by the look upon your face
Dawn and Xander sat huddled in the bathroom, their gazes roaming around the room, as if by avoiding looking at each other they might be able to pretend they weren't huddled in the bathroom, hiding from Buffy and Spike.
It had been bad enough that Buffy had called Xander in the middle of the night, waking him out of a really great dream about the Coors beer twins and some chocolate Reddi-Wip. But then to have to come over in the cold moist night, get whupped upside the head with the fact that Spike was human, and then have Buffy shouting and hurling things, was all just a little too much to take. He didn't even truly understand why she'd called other than that she wanted someone to share her outrage in the fact that Spike was human and that Dawn had known -- and was keeping it secret, as well.
When he'd arrived, she hadn't even greeted him, just bellowed that Spike was human, to which Xander had only been able to reply, "What? He's what? Why?" in that shrieky small voice he got when he was well and truly wigged out. Spike had kind of flinched, as though he'd already been lashed with the Wrath of Buffy a few hundred times. He kept glancing off to the side while Buffy told Xander the story as far as she knew it, and then bullied Spike into telling the rest. They'd all stood there speechless while he laid out the rest of story, complete with visit to Giles and Willow (prompting a "Giles! Willow? No fair!" from Xander), and Angel and Wesley (prompting an "Angel! Wes?" from Buffy), and then they had all sat down on the couch together, plomp, while Spike stood facing them from behind the coffee table, head bowed and little shaky, like some guy who hated public speaking.
And that's when Buffy had started throwing things around, not directly at Spike but close enough -- books, tchotchkes, food, basically anything she could get her hands on. "Oh god, here we go with the acting out," Dawn had said, rolling her eyes, which made Xander want to challenge exactly what that meant and ask had she been watching too much Oprah or something.
"It's all subliminal," Dawn insisted.
"I think you mean subconscious," Xander had remarked, in between shouts from Buffy of what a cruel selfish non-disclosing jerk Spike was.
"I think you're both a couple of witless prats," Spike had said from behind his arms, which were covering his face to ward off blows from flying objects. "For god's sake, help me out here."
Xander had calmed Buffy down just long enough for her to excoriate all of them for keeping something so gigantically important from her, whereupon she recommenced stomping around and shouting about the injustice and the deception and how she didn't have any say in the matter and yet people were messing with her life and turning human when they weren't supposed to. Xander had never actually seen this; Giles had told him once of a couple of good throwing fits, but mostly when Buffy got pissed, she stood and glared at you with her arms crossed, giving you that "I could kill you with my little finger" withering stare.
Dawn suggested calling Anya, because after all, it wasn't like there was a plethora of demons-turned-humans hanging around town. Spike had heartily endorsed the idea, in between ducking and covering. "Since I'm trying to get back to vamphood, myself, maybe she can curse me or something."
That, of course, had stopped the room dead. "You're what?" Dawn had shouted at exactly the same time as Buffy, and the two of them stood side by side, never more obviously sisters than in their mutual hips-turned-out, arms-crossed-over-chest outrage.
Suddenly, weirdly, madly, Xander had felt sorry for Spike. Like in a brotherly way, like in a "chicks will kill you, man" way. He didn't want to give points to Spike for anything, but... sometimes he was aware that there really was a pretty fine line between them, and Spike had been right about all the things he'd said in the bar, much as Xander hated to admit it. That all this was happening to him because he'd wanted to try to do right by Buffy, someone Xander truly did love, somehow made him sympathetic for the first time in like... ever, because Xander got that, the whole "make myself good enough for you" thing. He also got why Spike hadn't wanted to say anything about it, since it had all been so effed up. The fact that Spike hadn't had control over any of it... yeah, that Xander definitely got. You wanted to keep that sort of failure on the down-low. Buffy and Dawn were girls; they'd never understand that guy thing about keeping your problems to yourself and trying to appear cool, calm, and collected. It was enough to make Xander want to high-five Spike and give him one of those smooth gangsta handshakes or something.
So Spike had spilled the rest of the story in a really rushed way, and since Xander got lost in the pronouns and the weird English slang he had taken Dawn's arm and said, "Let's let them work this out themselves." He steered her upstairs under a barrage of shouting -- because Spike was starting to shout back now, and even though he wasn't a vampire anymore, it was hard to not think of him that way -- and they closed the bathroom door. That was about a half hour ago. It would get vewy vewy quiet in the house, and then suddenly there'd be a thunk from somewhere on the main floor, and then more of Buffy's screechy voice, and then a bunch of Englishy-sounding expletives from Spike, then silence. Rinse, repeat.
So now here they were, Xander sitting on the toilet, Dawn on the edge of the tub, looking around the room as if studying its design for a new coffee-table book on Sunnydale bathrooms.
"You know, normal kids are asleep at three-thirty in the morning," Dawn said idly, trimming her fingernails with the clipper she'd dug out of the basket on the counter.
"Neeeever gonna happen," Xander said.
"Normal kids whose sisters aren't demon killers with vampire ex-boyfriends."
"Like I said."
"It could happen. Someday. I'm going to go to college in like Florida or something. Maine."
"You have no evidence that there isn't a hellmouth on the east coast, you know. I hear there's one in Cleveland."
Even up here it smelled like someone was burning toast downstairs.
"Man, I never thought I'd feel sorry for Spike, but geez, what a story. I've never seen Buffy act like that, either. I get that she's mad and all, but... the guy's kind of been through a lot, you know?"
"Yeah," Dawn sighed. "And he did it all for Buffy, so you'd think she'd at least appreciate it."
For some reason that made things clearer. He wasn't supposed to be encouraging Dawn to feel sorry for him, even if Xander felt that way himself. That had become his job the past few months: keeper of the Spike Did a Bad Thing flame. "But Dawn, he tried to rape her. That's not exactly... it's not like it's romantic or anything." He'd learned over the summer that if he got all lecturey about it, she would get defensive and take Spike's side no matter what. The weird thing was that Buffy did it too. No matter how hard he tried to wrap his mind around it, their easy forgiveness of him just boggled the brain pan. So he mentioned it as off-handedly as possible, even though it never got him very far.
Dawn just shrugged.
Xander unrolled the toilet paper again, then started rolling it back up. "Oh!" He remembered he hadn't called Anya, so he dialed her number. She answered in a sleepy voice peppered with scorn. He held the phone away from his ear for a while as she bitched him out for expecting her to come over to the Summers house -- to which she had not been invited in quite some time and of course that had everything to do with her demonhood even though she'd been the wronged party here and they'd just taken him back boo-hoo as if he'd done nothing like the unspeakably cruel thing he'd done to her ON THEIR WEDDING DAY-- in the middle of the night. Or morning, actually, since it was past three now.
He turned his back so he wouldn't have to see Dawn's carefully raised eyebrow and smirky mouth, and attempted the mollifying approach he'd so skillfully honed over the years they'd been together. Appeals to her uniqueness always worked, and he could sense her giving in when they heard an incredibly loud crash, a door slamming, and then total silence downstairs. "I gotta go," he said, and closed the phone. When he turned back to Dawn, she was sitting there with her mouth open.
This was not good, was all Dawn could think. "What if Buffy stakes him?"
"Well, then she'd kill him," Xander replied, kind of stunned, "but not in a vampirey way. She can't do that."
"God, do you think she'd be so mad at him she'd forget?"
"Nah. Oh god. Do you think they're... you know... with the rough sex, and that's what the noise is?"
"Ew!" Dawn squinted. "No. She'd never do that with me in the house, anyway. I might see something that will upset my virgin eyes."
"Why is she so mad at him, anyway? I just don't get this level of Buffinsanity -- she's never been like this before."
Dawn stared at him. Sometimes, even though Xander was mostly pretty cool and she'd had a major crush on him when she was little, she was astounded by his cluelessness. No wonder he'd ditched Anya at the altar; he was every bit as much of a 'tard as the dorks in her class were. You'd think a couple of years out of high school would have given him some wisdom.
"Because he did the worst thing he could ever do to himself all for her, you tool."
Xander's shoulders sagged. "What's that supposed to mean?"
"Angel already had his soul when he met her. Every time Spike does something that's like the stuff Angel did, he does it for her to make her love him, and she can't handle that being the object of love thing. It freaks her out that Spike wants to be good just for her."
Xander made the fish face, where his mouth went open close open close and his eyes were all walleyed. Fish face always made her giggle. "You're scary for a kid your age."
"I wish you guys would remember that when you're treating me like I'm a baby who has to have a sitter! Geez. I'm sixteen, I'm not even that much of a kid, anyway."
"When you can drink and vote, then you can stop calling yourself a kid."
"You can't! Drink, anyway."
"Do you think we should go out there and check? I'm actually -- gah! -- I never thought I'd say this, but I'm actually kind of worried about Spike. What if she chucks a flying star at him or something? Before, it wouldn't have mattered, but I don't think she needs to go all Faith Jr. just because Spike accidentally got human."
She sighed, because she seriously did not want to go down there. Dawn had been enjoying her evening; watching cartoons with Spike was always a good time because he made such funny comments that you were laughing at him before you even laughed at the jokes on the screen. And it made her feel all warm and fuzzy to have him there, close and friendly and stuff being like it used to be, not all tense and scary and everyone hates everyone OMG. And then Buffy had to go and spoil it all by saying something stupid like "You're ALIVE?" in that incredibly shrieky voice she got sometimes and made Spike leap off the couch like he was a missile that had just been launched and bark his shin on the coffee table and Dawn had fallen off the couch with her heart hammering in her chest as if she'd just been hit by a Taser. Way to ruin the nice cozy evening, you big dumb Slayer.
Of course, probably if Spike had just told her before, or if Dawn had just spilled the beans, then things might be a little calmer. But now they had to go down there with Buffy and Spike sublimating -- that's the word she'd wanted earlier! -- their whole rough sex sekrit love nest can't live with you can't live without you Thing through an argument and 1950s-style throwing things tantrums. She put the nail clippers back in the basket and squared her shoulders.
"Ready when you are, Sarge."
"Hoo-ah." Just as Xander opened the door they heard a terrible crash and then the sounds of oofing and puffing.
Oh god! Buffy was really beating the shit out of Spike this time, and there wasn't anything he could do! She pushed past Xander and raced down the stairs.
Except, weirdly, there were four people in the kitchen and Buffy and Spike had their backs to the hallway, fists up, and the other two people were -- well, maybe not people, but... things -- swinging these spiky balls on chains towards the two of them. Buffy quickly picked up a chair and held it seat bottom out as the ball crashed into the wood, then stuck there. She yanked hard and pulled the creature guy into the cooking island, then bashed him on the head with the chair.
Unfortunately that didn't slow him... it down. But some memory deep inside Dawn came back, she remembered everything that Buffy had taught her, and she and Xander both rushed for the weapons chest just as the other creature-thing sent the spiky ball crashing near Spike's head. Maybe he was human again, but he still had good reflexes, ducking just in time.
Xander tossed an axe at Buffy, who pivoted, swung, and sent the creature's head flying into the kitchen window, crash. Ew. They smelled bad on the outside, Buffy thought, but the blood-like substance was ten times worse. And kind of a weird greeny color.
Spike was crab-walking backwards trying to get out of the way when a sword came flying over his head, wielded by Dawn. She was swinging it around and around, just the way Buffy had taught her not to do. ("It's like those gangbanging guys who insist on holding their guns sideways. You can't hit the side of a barn, but they think it looks cool.") Still, her little sister pretty much effectively managed to drive it right into the thing's throat; it fell down, all burbly and oozing.
They all took a moment to regroup, panting. Buffy barked, "What the hell took you so long! Didn't you hear me shouting for help?"
Xander made squinty-face. "Uh, we heard you shouting, but we didn't know it was any different from you going medieval on Spike's ass before. It had that sort of girl who cried wolf quality."
Buffy waved her arm. "Do you know how long we've been calling for you?"
"We kind of tuned you out after the whupping you gave Spike," Dawn said in a totally pedantic way, and went over to her victim, pulling the sword out of its neck like she was a modern-day Arthur. Buffy half expected music to swell. "It wasn't till we thought you were trying to kill him that we came down."
"Why would I kill Spike?" Buffy hollered.
Spike made a show of gazing heavenward, and the other two followed suit. She really hated it when everyone ganged up on her. "It's not as if you haven't tried before," he said quietly.
"I would not kill Spike!" Buffy stomped her foot for good measure. "And anyway, apparently I don't have to." She glared pointedly at him.
Dawn and Xander turned. "What's that supposed to mean?"
"Uhh..." Spike scratched his head. "Well, apparently the Powers have a sick sense of humor and are killing me slowly. Or softly, something like that. I came back wrong."
Buffy stared hard at him, remembering with icy clarity those words from him in an alley one dark night, before all of this misery had started. And while she hadn't really come back wrong, if what he'd told her was true, Spike actually had (was he trying to one-up her?) and there was nothing anyone could do for him.
And that hurt, a lot more than she was able to say.
"Dude..." was all Xander could say.
Dawn got shimmery tear eyes, but her lips were drawn in a thin line. That meant she was going to get huffy. "Why? What do you mean? Why would the Powers make you human and then just kill you?" she demanded, voice rising in panic.
"No one knows. And it can't be fixed. I was hoping to get turned back into a vampire because I wanted... I wanted to have at least something to offer. Superhuman strength, being able to go into a chamber filled with toxic gasses and rescue the fair maiden before she expires, that sort of thing. But in trying to find a way to do that, Wes and Fred discovered I wasn't quite put together correctly."
Buffy began the task of picking up the head and the shattered glass, because she'd rather smell icky creature smell than listen to Spike talk about this. It was like having memories made of broken glass, stabbing at her mind and heart every time those subjects came up. But Dawn and Xander just stood there, staring dumbly, and then joy of joys, Anya came into the house in a snit, stepping over the bodies like they were just piles of swept-up dirt.
"What are you doing here?" Buffy asked sharply.
"I'm asking myself the same question. I hope you didn't invite me here on the pretense of fighting off these loathsome... things." She stared at Xander with such hostility that it made him shrink backwards. "Or cleanup. God, you didn't invite me here to clean up after this?" she wailed.
"We thought maybe she'd have some, you know, good advice." Dawn was trying to be perky, obviously, but it was way off.
"Thanks, but no thanks," Spike said.
Anya glanced at each of them in turn. "What is this? What's going on? Why am I here?" She looked down at the floor. "And can't you please remove these vile creatures?"
Buffy rolled her eyes and dragged a body out the back door. They really, really smelled.
Xander was explaining it all when she came back in the kitchen. "Spike's a human again, and we thought, you know, that since people were having such a hard time dealing with it, that maybe, you know, reminding them that it's happened before..."
The news didn't even seem to faze her. "Oh, I see. I'm supposed to be a role model for ex-demons turned human, even though of course I was treated so badly due to my previous livelihood and in fact lost my humanity when I was humiliated at the one time I would have experienced one of those pinnacles of human achievement so important to so many of you. Why, yes, I have many things to say about the process of alternating one's lifestyle from demonhood to humanity. Would you like to hear them, Spike?"
"Uh... I'm good, really." He looked like he was almost ready to cry.
She rounded on Buffy. "I'm sure this is all your fault, what with the whole bad sex thing and the way you treated him."
"Hey!" Buffy snapped, but couldn't muster the reserves for anything else from the snappy retort arsenal. The big problem, of course, was that she couldn't quite deny that.
"An..." Xander said, and moved closer to her. "I just thought... maybe you'd want to know what was going on, and that if you were in on it, you could help. You have wisdom and insight. And you won't feel left out."
Buffy could see Anya melt under that. Well, who wouldn't? When Xander became totally aware guy, he was pretty good.
Spike was staring at the head lying in a pool of goo on the counter. "Guess I won't have to draw them from memory, will I?" He shuddered. "Disgusting tossers, aren't they?"
Buffy turned to look at the head as well, then her gaze went to the other body still lying on the door sill. She scowled.
"What is it?" Dawn asked.
"I... I think I know who these guys are."
"That's not an association I would admit to in certain company," Anya said. "At least as a vengeance demon you meet a better class of people."
Spike wondered if Buffy was starting to put it all together. "No, it's..." Buffy squatted down, patting the body as if searching for something, but she didn't find whatever she was looking for. She cocked her head. Spike found it all quite enchanting in an odd sort of way. He'd always liked her when she was in full Slayer mode, and he'd never seen her so sleuthy, really. Already the earlier part of the night, when she'd thrown things at him and thumped him royally for having the temerity to not tell her the unbelievable truth, seemed like a distant memory. He'd got used to that with her before, anyway -- she had her tantrum, and then she went on with it. Just one of the many things he loved about Buffy that he shouldn't.
"Oh! Oh god." Buffy's hand flew to her mouth.
"What? What? Oh god is not a comfort. Don't make alarming statements without providing more information," Anya cried.
Xander put a steadying hand on her shoulder. Not that it was possible, in Spike's experience, to calm Anya down once she got started.
"Slayer?" Spike prompted. "Wanna let us in on the top secret?"
"I know who these guys are. I've run into them before. They're minions for the First."
"The first what? National Bank of Heebiejeebie?" Xander asked.
Spike gave him a speaking look for making such a lame remark. Way below his usual standards.
"No, the First. Like with a capital F. The First Evil. It tried to destroy Angel after he came back. Bad juju. Really bad juju. I never had the chance to find out if it was as all that as it said it was. And even though I kind of kicked its ass, it said it would be back and would destroy us all. Guess I didn't take it seriously enough. Maybe I should be more careful about who I mock."
Well, that was jolly good. "Picked a great time to lose my powers for evil, didn't I?" Spike said dryly.
Buffy exhaled with a big loud sigh, her face creased with frown lines. "Don't beat yourself up about that. If this First thing is what it says it is, all the powers in the world won't be able to stop it."
From behind him, Xander said in a squeaky little voice, "Yay team."
She glanced at them all in turn. "I think we gotta get the big guns. It's time to call Willow and Giles."
The crystal shimmered in the fall light, reflecting the green grass of the field beneath it from its bottom side. Willow watched as it formed a new prism, then grew another, then another, each one circling round and round. It hung in midair, bouncing just a little in the good stiff Devonshire breeze. Off in the distance she heard a cow moo. When the clouds finally cleared all the way, the sun hit perfectly upon the crystal, amplified by its constantly changing shape. Refracted beams split out in all directions, forming a kaleidoscopic tangle of prisms. She spoke a few words of the incantation and then--
Pow! Her head exploded with images of blood and ichor and axes and suddenly there was Buffy besieged by some seriously wicked looking vampires and there were dead bodies everywhere and Spike was dying. He was exploding in a thousand fragments of light like a lava lamp had been blown up. She clutched at her temples, stumbling, the crystal exploding into shards all over the place as if it was shrapnel from incoming artillery fire. Pieces hit her face, her arms, cutting through her coat and sweater. Willow fell to her knees, and the vision passed.
After a few minutes of trying to get herself together, and pull the pieces of crystal from her skin -- and now the knees of her jeans were really wet and gross, and that just didn't help at all -- Giles huffed up beside her. "Willow! What on earth?" He took a handkerchief out of his pocket and wiped her face and neck. "Dear god."
"Giles. Oh god. That was like the worst hangover headache ever."
"What happened? I thought your exercises had been going so well."
"It wasn't that, I didn't lose control or anything. Well, I mean, it wasn't a me thing. I got... wow, I got a vision. Of everyone back in Sunnydale and it was really most sincerely bad. People were dead, Giles. People we knew... everyone. Something really terrible happened."
"What from?" He made a puzzled face, though that seemed to be pretty much how he always looked at her lately.
"I don't know, but it was bad. Really scary vampires, I think. Spike was molten. It was all jumbly and edited super fast. I couldn't tell what was happening." She stared at her shaking hands.
"Spike was molten?"
"Yeah, or something like that. Glowy and blowing up."
Poor Giles. He obviously thought she'd gone round the nut or off his twist or whatever it was they called it over here.
"We have to go home. Like, now. Something bad is going to happen."
"But Willow, you don't know that. This... this vision, it could be anything. Triggered by the kind of things you're experimenting with. You don't know what caused it, and being rash could backfire. You're making so much progress."
"Not to go all Luke on you, Yoda, but if something bad is happening to my friends, I have to be there. I can't leave them alone."
Giles pursed his lips. "If anything bad were happening, wouldn't we have heard? Surely Buffy would have contacted us."
His mobile phone rang.
"Okay, that was kinda freaky." Willow quirked her eyebrow at his sour face. "You gotta admit, it's funny."
Giles just gave a librariany look and answered. "Buffy," he said seriously, though she could see he was trying hard not to smile, what with the tell-tale muscle twitch on his cheek. "What a pleasant surprise." He listened for a while, made noises of demurral and interest, agreed with something, told her it would be okay. And when he rang off, he didn't return eye contact for a few minutes.
"Okay, spill. Witchy-Witch has ways of making you talk, mister."
He pinched the bridge of his nose. "It seems something rather big is happening in Sunnydale. Danger's afoot and all that rubbish. And Buffy's having prescient dreams about an impending disaster."
"Time to go home?"
Giles nodded. "Time to go home."
End Ch. 7
11/11/04
My lovely cover art by X. Don't take or distribute in any way.