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Along Came a Spider
by Elizabeth
E-mail: uhmidont@yahoo.com
Fandom: BtVS
Spoilers: Through Season Five
Summary: Keep your friends close...
Rating: PG
Disclaimer: Joss, not I. One line in this story is from the episode "Innocence " and was written by Joss Whedon.
Distribution: List archives/site. Otherwise please ask.
August 2001
He watches Dawn's throat.
A pulse beats there, nestled in the hollow of her skin, and looking at
it ignites a bright hot buzz in Spike's head; little lightning flashes
streaking across his sight every time he blinks.
Pain has always grown on him.
Angel comes, dressed in black and weeping, as soon as he hears
Buffy is dead. I loved her, he says. I can't believe she's gone. Spike
listens outside, leans against the wall with a cigarette slowly burning
out between his fingers. Giles and the others told him to stay away
but he refused. He knew they'd just come up with some sort of spell
to keep him out anyway.
He hears Dawn ask, "Then why did you leave?" and smiles.
To kill this girl, you have to love her. He waits until they all come
outside and asks Angel if he remembers saying those words. Angel
punches him in the face.
Dawn looks at him, bright-eyed and stricken. He knows she's thinking
about how very much she loved Buffy. How very much Buffy loved
her.
"Not you," he says.
But he doesn't mean it.
**
Dawn brings him blood sometimes.
She brings him the kind he likes, lifts it from the blood bank that sits
across town. He taught her how to pick the lock so she could break in
at night, but she says it's easier to volunteer and just take a few bags
with her when she goes. He sees a lot of Buffy in her when she hands
him the bags, in the way her nose wrinkles up, mingled outrage and
interest.
He likes the slippery plastic feel of the bags, the way they give under
his teeth so easily. It's almost like skin. And inside is the tangy iron
taste of humanity, a million heartbeats trapped and waiting just for
him.
"Want me to tell you what the sky looks like?" she says as she hands
him a bag.
She asks him that once in a while. She seems to think he misses
seeing clouds. She tells him that Buffy showed her how to see shapes
in them when she was little.
"But that never happened, did it?" she asks.
"No," he says. "It never did."
"And she knew that, didn't she?"
He doesn't miss the sky at all. He shrugs, rips into the bag and drinks.
**
He takes her to Buffy's grave every week.
They go on Thursday night. He watches some execrable sitcom with
Dawn first, some show she likes, and then they walk to the cemetery.
They sit there, in the dark, and he tells her stories. Sometimes they're
true, sometimes they're not. Sometimes he talks about Buffy, a little.
Sometimes Dawn cries.
"I miss her," she says.
He hugs her when she says that. He always forgets how warm human
skin is, the burning hot feel and scent of it rising up through her
clothes and into him.
"I do too," he tells her and looks at the stone bearing Buffy's name.
"She loved you. Don't ever forget that."
He knows he won't.
**
They talk about Joyce, sit in Giles's apartment and look at photo
albums. They never discuss her while they sit in the dark where
Buffy's body is supposed to rest.
He would raise Buffy if Dawn asked. She never has, and he thinks it's
because she knows what his answer would be.
She says she isn't strong like Buffy. He agrees, but never tells her so.
"You're strong," he says. "You're a survivor."
"I am?" she asks, and wipes her eyes with balled-up fists.
"I am," she says, and looks up to meet his eyes. "I'm sorry."
"Don't be," he replies.
He means that not everyone can be a hero. He knows.
He sort of tried.
**
The line of Dawn's back is tiny. Her bones are still growing. He can
hear them, if he listens closely. They crackle and pop as they stretch,
as cells multiply and spread.
He once gave a girl's spine to Dru. The human back is easy to open,
and a spine is easy to remove. Dru didn't realize that the bones would
break.
**
She says he makes her feel safe.
He smiles and calls her niblet.
"Just a nibble," Dru used to say when she brought home a snack. "It'll
take away the edge."
**
She says she has trouble sleeping, that Giles's apartment is too quiet,
that Xander and Anya's is too loud. She says she feels like she's in the
way at Willow and Tara's.
"I feel like I don't belong anywhere," she says, and closes her eyes. He
can see the light blue tracework of veins across her eyelids.
"I'll take care of you," he whispers, and means it.
end
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