Axis

by Fallowdoe

--- part one ---

"He had such sad eyes," she said, as they walked together.

"Who now, pet?"

"In the book you gave me-- Grant's memoirs... there was a picture of him."

He didn't respond, save to nod, the corners of his lips raising slightly as he did so.

They walked under the branches of a tree along the sidewalk. A car drove past in the gentle, predawn gloom.

It wouldn't last long. The air had a smell of dew and fog that would soon burn away in the morning sun. But for now, there was a misty perfume to the air, and there was a quiet broken only by their footfalls, and the early birdsong.

Buffy shifted her weapons bag to her other shoulder. They hadn't talked much. They'd worked, yes. Somehow-- how strange did it seem?-- they hadn't talked about anything that happened before. She wondered if they had anything they could really say about it at all.

Instead, they fell into a habit. Patrolling in the dark, and, at dawn, he would leave her at her door. If anyone asked-- and they had-- loudly-- she wouldn't be able to explain why it seemed ok.

They paused in front of her house, and she sat down on the step. He looked up for a moment at the pale blue of the sky above her, and sat down with her again.

"He'd never counted the dead, you know," he said suddenly, looking over the rooftops across the street at the rising rim of golden sunlight.

"I don't think it helped much-- for him. That's what you were seeing..."

And then the silence. Buffy's eyes trailed to the vines that had begun working their way up the foundation. They looked rich against the stone.

The warmth of the light fell over them suddenly, flowing like water over the rooftops and onto the grass.

They couldn't find much to say, but didn't feel like searching for the words. They were just silent, and she turned to look at him as he sat in the morning sun. He didn't seem much different, though it was strange to see him in the daylight. He was squinting into the sun, as if he were trying to read something there.

"You know, Buffy," he said quietly, "It's a lot brighter than I'd remembered."

At that moment, a light went on in the house. He stood up swiftly.

"Guess this is where I get off," he said, and turned to walk down the pathway. Dawn opened the door.

"Buffy."

"Hey, Dawnie," her sister said, smiling at her slightly.

"I heard the noise outside."

"Oh."

Dawn watched Spike, frozen in place, his back turned to her.

"Are you hurt?"

"No, Dawn, I'm fine..."

"Good."

---

Willow walked tentatively into the bedroom. Very little had been moved or changed.

She opened a drawer, fingering the soft knit of a blue sweater, and thought a moment. She could hear Dawn in the next room, chattering on the telephone. Buffy was outside.

She hadn't pulled the blinds, so the light was grey and diffuse. She thought it would seem horrible... the loss there, of more than just a life but of what that life had meant inside of her. That was the worst. Ever since she'd started to get better-- no, maybe only because she knew it *was* she getting better-- she was aware of the cold and horrifying truth that when she gave in to her anger with power... that she had killed the part of her that was Tara. She killed the love in her. In the middle of it, when she'd hated so much, she wasn't sure if she had even remembered who Tara was.

She pulled the sweaters from the drawer and folded them into a waiting cardboard box. Bookshelves needed to be emptied, and closets. It was time to put the ghost to rest.

And she thought it should seem painful, to be in that terrible room.

But it felt warm.

She sat down on the bed, clutching a pile of clothing to her chest. Her temples, usually weighted with a dragging, dull pain, were free of sensation. Like a child momentarily relieved of a heavy burden, she began to cry out her relief, openly and freely.

The faint perfume of Tara's hair seemed to play in the clothes and linens around her.

She curled up on the bed, suddenly tired, clutching the shirts and sweaters close as she cried.

---

Her black hair clung wet against her cheeks, and her normally pale skin was colored with welts and bruises. She took a second to take stock of her surroundings, and chose a course of action.

They would cross the river soon, and would try to surround her. Best to move fast now, and take them out one by one if she could evade them. She wasn't sure if she could survive another direct confrontation. She had barely made it out as it was.

Pulling herself to the bank from the river mud, she bolted for the underbrush of the forest. She would keep off the main paths, make it harder for them to find her. And then she ran swiftly, with silent grace, into the dark of the trees. The pain in her arm thrilled through her, less pleasant than foreboding as the gravity of her situation pushed through on her wandering thoughts. It was broken in perhaps two places.

She ran through the branches, listening carefully to the sound of her pursuers. They were still far enough behind her. As she skirted the edge of a clearing, she paused and smiled at the stars that shone down on her there. She reached her hand up, her good arm straining towards the crystalline light.

An arrow pierced her hand and she screamed. She could see them in the distance, her eyes detecting their black clothed shapes against a blacker night. She tried to calm her mind, to see in it what they were planning for her, but the raw panic had taken hold. Her bare feet moved deftly across the moss covered river stones, through which ferns sprouted and waved gently in the wind. The sound of falling water filled her ears as a woman landed before her, striking her to the ground as she reached for a stake.

Drusilla screamed and lunged forward onto the woman, whose companions were coming closer now. They struggled in the woodland mud, and Drusilla dragged them closer to the rocky edge of the falls, the sharp drop into the white and bubbling continuance of the river below them. She broke the woman's neck in the same motion she pushed them both over the edge.

She wept as she fell against the pulverizing rocks, and as she hit the surface. She cried yet more as she dug herself deep into the river mud, against the crags and beneath the crushing water, to hide, to heal, and to wait. She clutched against the mud and the rocks and sobbed violently, her lungs filling with the water.

Why did they have to chase her? She hadn't done anything wrong.

--- part two ---

Tara was standing at the end of the punt, guiding the vessel through the rich, slow flowing water. Long, waving branches draped the bank, and a black swan landed nearby. The spray from its wings splashed Willow's face, and the droplets were ice cold on her cheek. Tara chuckled gently as she wiped the water away.

"You've gotten all wet," she said, smiling kindly as she guided them further down the river. Willow gestured towards the swan.

"Well, you know-- bird."

It was feeding, throwing itself headfirst beneath the surface.

"She's beautiful, isn't she? She's been waiting for you."

"I've been... away, So have you." Willow said, a nervous tremor entering her voice.

Tara knelt beside her, and reclined against the floor of the boat. The sound of the water continued, but somehow, the boat suddenly was their sleigh bed, and Tara was sadly playing with a strand of Willow's hair. Willow idly noted the box of sweaters she had packed where it rested on the new carpet..

"Shouldn't you-- shouldn't you be somewhere else? Somewhere new?" Willow asked. She didn't wonder how Tara came to be there or why. It just... was. And suddenly she could hear bizarre cries in the distance, plaintive and searching.

"I wouldn't want to be anywhere else. Not yet."

"What are those sounds?" Willow asked, listening to the eerie cries.

"Those? Peacocks. Somewhere off shore," Tara said, gesturing towards the far wall and the windows. She didn't seem to see them, and trailed her hand against the edge of the bed as if it were the river.

The sound of glass shattering broke the moment. Willow started up in the bed, scattering the pile of clothes she had fallen asleep folding. She felt safe and rested for a moment, before reality settled on her again.

Dreams. At least this one had been more pleasant than the ones this summer. She shook her head clear, stood and looked around.

She saw where the new window was shattered-- just as it had on that day.

---

Buffy loosened the tightly compressed roots of the rose bush, shaking them free. The dirt covered her hands, staining them an earthy brown. She lowered it into the hole she had dug, and covered it with the appropriate soils and fertilizers. The row of bushes she had planted before this rested against the house's foundation.

Pulling out all the heavy growth that had accumulated around the foundations since her mother died took most of the afternoon, even with her greater strength. The uprooted vines and weeds rested in a pile on the newly mowed lawn.

She breathed in the stifling afternoon heat, and unconsciously wiped a hand across her brow, leaving a trailing stain there. The screen door opened, and she looked up. Willow was standing there.

"Hey Buffy," she said softly.

"Hey."

"Isn't it a little late for those to bloom this year?" Willow asked, gesturing to the roses.

"Maybe... but sometimes things can grow late... how are you doing up there?"

"Ok-- I'm ok..." Willows voice trailed off a moment.

"I... I uhm, well, this might seem weird, but-- well not that you don't understand weird-- not that I mean that you--"

"Wil, it's ok. What is it you need?"

"I was wondering if I could stay there. I mean, tonight."

"I... guess it's ok. Dawn might want some company while I'm out working. But are you sure it's a good idea? I'd think it'd be--"

"Uncomfortable."

"Yeah."

"I want to... I feel closer to her there. I remember what it was like before...."

Buffy's eyes trailed to the porch stairs.

"I understand," she said, wiping her hand off on her jeans before touching her friend's arm gently, "Maybe you'd like to help me finish planting these? It'll go faster together."

---

They met there again, as if by an unspoken pact-- by the statue of the angel, who outstretched her right arm, holding a laurel crown over the grave she guarded.

There were no vampires. The cemetery was quiet and empty. Spike felt quiet and empty, as he walked among the stones.

The soul had given him quiet, and silence, and introspection. All of which he had had before. Perhaps it just called his attention to them in greater measures. Or perhaps it wasn't the soul that did it at all. Perhaps it was just him, his brain devising a new trick to underline the ways things went wrong. He mused on it as he walked beside her.

He found it difficult to look at her anymore. For the first time, he wasn't sure what she was thinking when he looked in her eyes. He avoided her gaze, afraid she might read him more clearly now that he felt so confused.

Instead, they walked, looking forward into the night for any trace of movement among the stones. The names were familiar to him now, carved on their faces. They were like old companions, comfortable in their way, well known now from the countless times he'd walked among them.

"You see anything?"

"No," he said, lighting a cigarette, "S'quiet." He continued down the dirt path, but she suddenly stopped.

"What's it like?"

"What, love?"

"I mean... does it feel different? Now that you've-- now that you're changed?"

He looked down at the ground, dropping his cigarette and stepping on it only half-burnt.

"No."

He wasn't good at lying. It seemed ironic somehow, that he never had been. And now she turned to him swiftly, seized his shoulders, and stared into his eyes.

He tried to avoid the eye contact, as he had since he'd returned. She thought he would confide in her-- tell her everything-- but he seemed unable to make sense of it, unable to come up with a way to put it into a logical order. Perhaps simply that he walked with her, fought with her was confidence enough.

His eyes had that look-- the one she'd seen reflected in her mirror and in her friend's expressions that previous year. She felt that way because she had been revived... and now he stood before her, revived, and despairing.

He shook himself free and turned from her. He put a hand to his temple.

"We could keep going, make another sweep. Nothing this time 'round, then we should probably just head home." He headed down the path, toward the iron gates.

"Spike..." she said softly. Her tone sounded strange. She had said his name many times, but never before like this-- it was an exclamation of pure pity. She felt somewhat distant as she said it, but she wanted very much to understand.

"Look-- Buffy don't, I'm--"

A woman materialized from the darkness and kicked him in the jaw. He bowled over and the woman turned to Buffy, who tripped her as she attacked, and grabbed Spike's arm, pulling him up into a full run. Two others started pursuit. She could hear still more in the distance.

"Where did they come from?" Buffy muttered as they fled for better ground.

"I don't know-- vampires?"

"I think so...I'm not sure."

And an arrow chipped the stone of the mausoleum behind them. Another came at a different angle, but Spike and Buffy were sheltered behind a memorial bench.

"Right then. Can't stay here. I'll try to circle 'round and catch them from behind."

"You go right. I'll go left." And they went.

Buffy stalked low, trying to guess the locations from which the fire had come. She didn't have to travel far before she came upon several of the group. She attacked.

She knocked one of the women down against a headstone, and she sat against it stunned a moment. The other two attacked with daggers. She disarmed one with a kick and ducked to dodge the swing of the second. The woman kicked her to the ground, and as she was about to jump up for a second pass, they looked in each other's faces.

The woman was small and had light brown hair, tightly braided. She looked about thirty. A small gold cross hung around her neck, glistening in the moonlight. The strange, severely dressed woman squinted a moment in amazement as she looked at Buffy, made a gesture to her companions, and they ran away into the night. They vanished again as Spike ran up to her, calling out her name.

"You allright Slayer?" he asked, offering his hand to pull her up. She stood on her own, looking into the dark.

"They weren't vampires. She had a cross. And she just looked at me and they ran away."

"Strange..." he replied, scanning the distance beside her.

"Very."

--- part three ---

Spike lightly shifted the angle of his sword blade, and aimed the point directly for Buffy's heart in a full lunge. Buffy parried Spike's thrust, dropping her sword to his right low guard as she swiftly retreated, a bead of sweat running down her forehead. She extended her sword tip, trying to use his own forward momentum to strike his thigh. But he swept his blade down in an elegant gesture, knocking it out of line beside his leg.

The blade would have gone past his body, leaving her defenseless, but she caught the motion as it came, stayed her forward momentum, and arched her tip over his in a delicate, swift twist. He fluidly moved to counter, and she found herself backed closer to the wall than she felt comfortable. Then, as his blade moved towards her waist, she dropped low on her knees, catching the blade with her own, holding it above her head, and then sweeping it back to her right side as she jumped up again. She thrust forward, landing her sword point hard on his throat.

He gagged a moment, and pulled off his fencing mask. He flexed the rubber tip of his epee against his shoe, bending the blade in an arch.

"Oh! Sorry! Too hard!"

"Nothing I can't handle, Slayer. 'Sides, bruises make me look all manly." He raised his eyebrows, and gave her a characteristic smirk.

"What did you notice about what happened there? What decided that in my favor?" Buffy asked, turning to the group standing at the far wall of the training room. A crowd of several others were practicing drills together at the other side. They would switch places after they demonstrated and then taught the skills in small groups.

No one answered. They had come relatively far, but she was going to stick with teaching them on weapons that couldn't injure anyone for another few weeks. Then they could move on to light arms, perhaps the proper use of a stake for the promising ones. It was amazing how quickly it had caught on-- mostly, at first, her former high school classmates came. But they brought their friends. Some even brought their parents. It had just grown from there. She sold gift certificates. They needed to stay alive on the Hellmouth, and she was the one who knew how to do it. And it was just an extension of her job to help prevent victims even before she had to rescue them.

Spike was exactly what she needed-- someone to divide the work with, to provide observations she may have missed, and to provide individual instruction when the enrollment grew too large for her to handle alone.

"It's tempo people--" Spike responded to Buffy's question, "Every action you try takes time, and you create a sort of rhythm with the time you're using makin' them and alternating between them. Makes a kind of dance-- Buffy here broke the tempo at an appropriate moment, and caught herself an opening with it. Breaking it in the wrong moment-- exposing your inside line to your opponent-- that gets you dead. Keep your balance, work for an opening. Works just like in the drills we taught you last time."

"And you have to remember," Buffy continued, "Even injuring a vamp will help you-- you don't have to kill every time. In fact, I'd really rather you didn't try. That's my job-- your job is to stay alive. Your first objective is to avoid any contact with the bads-- when the contact happens, it is to get away. Breaking the tempo of the fight can give you a chance to do that. Spike and I will do some hand-to-hand and show you what we mean, then I'll give you some exercises to work on in pairs."

She unzipped her canvas fencing whites from the shoulder, slipping the jacket off absently as she walked to the corner table. There she picked up a small, lacquered box, and wound the silver key on its side. She opened the lid, and walked to meet Spike in the center of the room. The music box began playing its delicate notes, the theme from Love Story. Buffy had never seen the film, but the melody was beautiful, if a bit sad, and it had been in Anya's storeroom, gathering dust.

Spike moved forward, she moved back in a nervous start. She felt strangely exposed before him, but swallowed down such tentative feelings as he aimed a swift blow for her jaw. She tilted her head to the left, and it went wide. The movement of air around it spirited past her cheek. And the gentle tune played on.

This was strange-- this was new. His eyes were intent on assessing her movements, and yet the old passion was in them. Skill and concentration had always combined with emotion for him, as they did for her, such that they found it difficult to land attacks, for the other would anticipate the motion. It was strange, yes, and yet, it was familiar-- comfortable. He seemed a bit more himself than he had been as she spun towards him, attempting to force him off balance and make him fall. He deftly moved from the side, listening to the delicate, threadbare tune of the music box, letting its rhythm define the fight.

"I think you'll notice," he said as he moved, "That our Slayer is leaving her left side exposed when she attacks."

Caught in the moment, Buffy hardly heard his words. She saw his eyes as he circled her. This was the man she knew, the spark that she had once hated-- the persistence of the life in those eyes, that seemed to mock her once, then began to challenge her in ways she could never have imagined before. She loathed those eyes, feared them, loved them desperately at times-- she fought against them, and with them, and for them she had nearly lost herself. But she was found now, and the beauty and the horror of their shared past reflected in her mind like a distant dream. If nothing else, she found she missed those eyes.

The music chimed around them and the world faded around it.

Since he'd come back, his eyes had seemed lost in worry and doubt and things she was not sure she knew or clearly understood-- but in this moment they gazed lucidly upon her, intent on a task. And that very intensity communicated itself to her own movements. No wonder that, no matter what happened to them, they seemed to end up together again.

She moved to attack, swiping towards the left of his jaw, and he caught her arm when she compromised her balance in doing so. He then pushed her forward and against the wall, pulling her neck to the side with one quick motion. He paused, and looked up.

"So we're one for one tonight?" he said, loosening his grasp on her shoulder and smoothing the strands of hair that fell over it in a vaguely conciliatory fashion. She looked in his eyes and they froze a moment. He didn't avoid her gaze, and she became keenly aware of his presence so close to her.

The moment passed, and she smiled at him and nodded down to his chest, where she had pinned the stake she had palmed during the fight. He smiled back broadly, and backed away, picking up a water bottle.

"Should have known you'd have the last word in it," he said, chuckling, "Well, isn't that my girl,." He didn't realize what he'd said, and she didn't move to correct him. She simply smiled slightly to herself, turning to the group that stood, looking somewhat perplexed, before her.

"Ok guys, now Spike is going to show you some drills while I go over and teach the advanced group individually."

---

The heady scent of earth, moisture and flowers filled Spike's nostrils as he walked home to the cemetery that night. It seemed more beautiful than any evening since he had returned. A warm breeze blew across his neck, sprinkled with a few cool raindrops, and the welcome silence of the darkness gave him a sense of peace that had long evaded him.

Being with her, really with her-- that seemed rare and impossible. But sometimes, when they were thinking of something else-- like strategy in a bout, he *did* feel close. He felt like the unfathomable distance that they had forcefully placed between each other-- the distance he had told himself time and again was impossible to cross-- that it shrunk away to nothing and left them alone, together, and at peace.

Just in a brief time-- the mere flash of moments, he had known her and known peace. He'd learned so much, and ached to talk to her again, to see her and tell her everything he had discovered, everything he felt. Sometimes-- most of the time-- he felt the horrible pain of it. But this was the joy. It was too much to hold in, and the night echoed his mood as the wind surged through the branches and played in the leaves.

He wondered, idly, if he should worry that his closeness to her brought him such happiness, when there was so little reason he should be allowed to be happy.

But it didn't seem to matter as he opened his crypt door, as he stood in it a moment, simply smelling the perfume of flowers as it blew by on a breeze, and listening to the rushing wave of the branches, where the leaves sounded like the current of a heavy waterfall.

He heard a sound of movement from inside, and a familiar voice called out to him.

"You've all changed, my William-- you're burning all over." The weary, but eternally feminine voice lilted from inside the crypt. It echoed against the stone walls. He froze where he stood.

She crawled through a shadow, pulling herself up on the stone floor, reaching one hand out from the darkness.

"But you can't leave me... you never could... I've been so frightened. There's been a terrible ripping like an ocean.... and I left all my dolls behind."

She had come back. He felt his will rise up against her, was prepared to throw her to whatever fate she had come to deserve. But somehow, something else moved with that steely pillar of anger. It undermined its root. He didn't know its name, didn't know what it could be. It felt a bit like when Dawn looked up at him from her textbook, as she did when he left the training room, and turned away. It was a new thing to him, and tore a hole in his determination. His legs felt weak, and he leaned against the doorjamb, staring out among the rows of silent stones.

When he heard the sound of her tears, he felt himself bite his lip. He turned to look at her. She could see his anger, and the conflict working within him. Her desperation made her continue, unsure even if she cared any longer should he leave her to die. At least, if they tore her apart bit by bit, she would know what it was like to cross over.

His face contorted when he saw her, beaten and bruised. One arm fell at an unnatural angle, and some of the skin was gone. What remained of her dress was stained with mud. She was so emaciated she seemed unable to stand. He wondered how it was she managed to survive this long, and find her way to his crypt. Having known her for so very many years, he was unsure if she even remembered.

She wept, straining a hand out to him, and then collapsed onto the stone. He stepped towards her, looking down on her from above. Then, he kneeled down beside her. He reached out, fingering a piece of her long hair tentatively.

"You're afraid," she whispered, "You're afraid of your own light."

He felt a wave of guilt move through him as he realized how much he pitied her. This was a creature, lying on his floor, weeping. A creature who couldn't entirely care for herself, who didn't know when to stop killing, when to move from place to place. This was the woman who had watched clouds move with him on a rooftop one spring evening, years ago. She could paint watercolors, and draw quite well. She knew how to embroider, and tended to hum old hymns as she worked. She loved violets, and preferred baroque inventions to classical opera. They sounded like time, she used to say.

He reached out a hand, pausing over her moment. The hand that hovered there fell, and touched her forehead, her cheek. He stroked her hair gently, and she pulled her head onto his knee, sobbing.

"It's ok... hush now..." he whispered, "It's ok..."

--- part four ---

Spike sat at the bar in the Bronze, listening to the music flow over the crowd, and breathing in the humid smell of cloves and dust in the air.

He sat in front of his beer, but didn't drink it. He simply tuned out the cacophony of voices around him and concentrated on his thoughts.

She needed a place to hide, to be hidden. He had carried her into the sewers, that he had come to know so well. One of the secret places was a little stone room, carved out of the living rock, hidden behind a dark corner deep in the heart of the tunnel mazes. He had put her there almost a week ago. Since then, he had made it considerably more comfortable for her. A narrow bed, covered in translucent silk drapings. Soft pillows. A single, battery powered light. He'd brought her roses, but they withered quickly in the stale, airless shadows of the chamber.

What was he doing? The absurdity of it hit him all at once, and the knot that had settled into his throat the past few days constricted and flailed like a restless serpent.

He had avoided Buffy as much as he could, and she had noticed. But he couldn't lie well, not to her, and she would know. And he didn't want to lie to her, didn't want to face her... not like this. At the same time, he longed to beg her compassion, collapse at her feet and bear all of his fears before her. But he had promised-- he had sworn to protect the woman who even now languished in the darkness, and to do that, he had to stay away.

Perhaps he should have stayed away before. For some reason, Buffy seemed to accept him, and that was an unexpected, precious gift that he was grateful for. It had made the constant pain of contact with the others bearable, because simply by being there-- by training and patrolling with him, she was giving him the gift of her time and concern.

Harris often looked at him warily from across a room, but, oddly perhaps, had refrained from any comment. But Dawn... her eyes. Whenever he was near her, he saw it in her face, in the clipped words. She hated him. He couldn't even indulge in the cold comfort of self-pity, because he also hated himself.

He chuckled bitterly as he reached for his glass, and managed to knock it over, the rim shattering as it hit the hardwood of the bar. He turned on his stool and stared into the crowd, into the lights falling on them. He wondered who these people were. All of their faces were young and fresh, though some, he was sure, were older than he was himself. And some were just beginning their lives, and didn't yet know what was out there among them.

Better watch out, he thought, still chuckling to himself. The people next to him at the bar were looking at him strangely.

Watch out. You never know when we might turn on you.

---

Buffy walked through the dance floor, scanning it for sight of her friends. Between the masses of moving bodies, she could make out their shapes, moving together in the distance. Willow and Xander were dancing, chatting together. It looked comfortable, appropriate. Like nothing was wrong.

A teenage girl, dancing with her boyfriend, bumped into her, and she muttered a vague apology. Buffy found she had frozen in place, stopped in the middle of the floor, staring across it like an idiot.

As she stood there, she saw the familiar frame, pushing through the crowd, moving to the exit. She struggled through the press to come closer to him.

She reached out and caught his hand, and he turned to see her. She stood before him, her face clear and open and expectant. When she saw his expression, the wear and sadness in his face, that open and questioning look tinged with concern. The music lilted in the background... a strange combination of bassoons and percussion, and a woman's plaintive voice. Modern and ancient, blues and lament, floating lucidly-- humming through the air.

She tilted her head to one side, and stepped closer, so he could hear her over the music the speakers blared around them. She leaned up to his ear on her toes, and did not let go of his hand.

"You should let go," she said simply. His head fell, and the blue spotlights outlined the curve of her collarbone as she continued.

"I don't know if I know entirely what it's like for you... but I know a little bit, from what's happened to me. Please, Spike, let go. I'll be here..."

He reached out tentatively and placed a nervous hand on her shoulder, and pressed his cheek against her own. She felt his breath tremble against her neck, and realized he was crying, softly.

She twined her fingers through his where she held them, and reached up to his face with her free hand, turned it and pulled back slightly to look at him. A tear fell down his face unbidden, and turned to evade her burning gaze.

She caught his cheek with her hand, and pulled him down to her lips tenderly.

"Don't," he choked, pulling away. As he walked out, pushing through the crowd, she looked after him.

It felt strange to see him so lost.

---

"Buffy," a warm voice called from behind her. Xander walked up to the table at which she sat, thinking.

"Hey," she uttered quietly. The music drowned her out. He sat down beside her.

"Look I know I was a jerk to you a while back Buff-- I've been trying to keep quiet, I know you can take care of yourself-- but I have to say it," he said in a spurt, "I care about you too much not to have noticed, and watching that little display... well, I need to say it."

She looked across the table at him. Her face was unreadable.

"Aren't you worried? At least a little...? I mean, with everything that happened before. I don't want you getting hurt again. I'm so tired of seeing you hurt. How do we know Spike wouldn't--"

"He wouldn't," she said simply.

"But, Buffy--"

"Xander I understand what you're saying, and I'm lucky to have people who care so much... but it's different now. I don't know if I can explain it."

"He doesn't seem too much different to me. Quieter, sure. Less fun to hurl insults at? You betcha... but Buffy, he's still Spike."

"I know... but he's hurting. Who knows what the soul has changed for him. He needs someone to understand. I can't just leave him. I won't."

"Ok," Xander said, patting her shoulder affectionately, "But... just be careful, ok? Until we can be sure we can trust him."

"Ok," she said, staring over Xander and into the crowd.

---

"What's it like?" Willow whispered to her companion. They sat side by side on the bed, their faces and hands pale against the night darkness. Tara stared forward, somewhat sadly, wouldn't look at Willow. She rapped her feet nervously against the bed frame.

"What's what like?" she asked gently, the breeze from the window was moving her hair, brushing it over one cheek from where she had tucked it behind her ear.

"Dying," Willow said simply. She wanted to know.

She could faintly hear Dawn and Buffy laughing together in the kitchen below. Something about an art contest, and that a portrait of a Rashk demon wasn't the best entry. Especially decapitated. They had asked them to draw things from life, though, Dawn had asserted, and Buffy had just left it sitting there in the parking lot. It was a still life. Her sister countered that there is nothing live about a decapitated Rashk demon. And they dissolved to laughter again.

"Well..." Tara said, "I'm not really sure-- I was too busy dying to notice I guess, you know?"

"I guess..."

"Wh-- what have you been doing... since I've gone?"

"Nothing," Willow said sadly, remembering, "Nothing..." She couldn't tell her.

"You should go to the multicultural fair again this year... see the dragons."

"It's over... it was before you-- before. I guess we forgot to go."

"Oh. I'm sorry. Time feels-- different now."

"No-- don't apologize."

Tara nodded and fell silent, looking down, watching her bare feet rap against the bed frame. Then she looked up suddenly, straight forward.

"I have to go now," she said.

"Go?"

"Yes," she said sadly, "But I will see you here again. I don't have much power to be seen yet... you might have to help me."

"I can help you. I will."

"Thank you," she whispered. And she was gone.

Willow sat alone in the darkness of the room, listening to the comfortable, domestic chatter from downstairs, feeling bitterly empty once more.

---

She started violently as he washed out the wound. All the small ones, and the bruises, had healed. The deeper ones would be a long time in healing. Some hadn't even entirely closed yet. And so he cleaned them.

As he worked on her back, she sat on the edge of the bed he had brought her. She reached up, and touched his fingers where they rested on her shoulder. The warm yellow glow of the lantern dimly illuminated them in the cold dark.

"You're in pain, my William. You've been crying. I can always tell."

He paused a moment, and decided to speak.

"It's been hard, Dru... " He gently bound the wound he had cleaned on her shoulder blade, and pulled the strap of her sling back into place beside the padding, "Now put out your arm for me."

She stretched out her good arm, and he pulled back the bandages, and soaked a cloth in peroxide.

"I sometimes think I can hear moles in the earth," she said, looking at the walls around her, "But the stones cannot abide them..."

As he placed the disinfectant on her wound, he felt certain he had made the wrong choice.

She screamed at the pain in surprise, and batted with her fingernails at his cheek. The shallow cuts stung and welled up with blood.

She reached out again towards them, as if she could repair the damage. She looked near tears, and let out a delicate whine. He took her hand, and sighed.

"It's allright-- just give me your arm and stay still for me, can you do that?"

She nodded.

He worked a while longer, and left her a brush for her hair. He had also left her, for the night, with an appropriate supply of blood.

He closed the heavy, stained metal door behind him. The door of what he acknowledged to himself was her cell. He worked a moment arranging the lock and chain he had fastened to the outside.

She listened to him work on it, and limped over to the cold surface. She leaned against it, hearing the rattle of the chains echo against the metal.

"What is it, love," she called to him just as he turned to leave, "Don't you trust me?"

--- part five ---

"I was concerned for you and keep that part In these days, irrespective of the heart: And not for friendship, not for love, but cast In that role by the presence of the past." --J.V. Cunningham

---

"Read more, Spike... it's nice to hear you read to me..." she whispered, reclined against the pillows, half asleep. She was stronger now, far closer to her recovery, but still seemed to cling to him, fervently, like a child who had been through some painful experience. She was curled in a quiet ball, lulled into a deceptive gentleness by his words.

He had come to her when the isolation and afternoon silence in his crypt had threatened to drive him over the edge of all reason. Simply, he had been lonely. Since it was day, she was listless and tired. But she clung to his company all the same.

""And now, as you see, this story is nearly (but not quite) at and end," he read, turning the worn page. He wondered, as he did so, what Buffy would think of his having held onto the Lion, the Witch, and the Wardrobe since it had first been published. She'd probably laugh, in her good-natured way. It was a sound he'd heard often since he'd returned, and hardly ever before. It was a good thing. She was better.

She'd probably wonder, rationally enough, what sort of place it had in the keeping of the evil dead.

But it was something about the language that spoke to him-- something about it that had always made him feel free. It reminded him of something ineffable in his human past.

"These two Kings and two Queens governed Narnia well and long, and happy was their reign."

Drusilla shifted in place and settled again, and he continued, seeing her watch him from half-lidded eyes.

"At first much of their time was spent in seeking out the remnants of the White Witch's army and destroying them, and indeed for a long time there would be news of evil things lurking in the wilder parts of the forest-- a haunting here and a killing there, a glimpse of a werewolf one month and a rumour of a hag the next..."

He paused and watched her, realizing she had fallen completely asleep.

"But," he said softly, "In the end... all that foul brood was stamped out..."

And he closed the book, and watched her in silence. She was whispering, through her sleep, some incoherent poetry, in a demonic language he did not know.

---

Buffy dismissed her afternoon students, and sat down heavily on one of the benches, near the window. The room was more spacious and better suited to its purpose, since its rather necessary renovation the last spring. The light fell muted across her shoulders, onto the dull surface of exposed brick, onto the wooden surfaces of the bench and the floor. It felt good to be awake and surrounded by people. One or two students were starting to show some particular promise, and it felt good to know that she was able to help them achieve something. It made her feel like she had achieved something herself.

Strange, that for someone who had saved the world some six or seven times, she hadn't really felt like she had accomplished much before this. And it wasn't just her... they wouldn't be where they were without him.

He had a way of looking at things, of finding the hidden shape and meaning to them. Perceptive, and, somehow, intuitive... it was the women who were supposed to do that, but she had always been the direct one. She saw things as they were, or as she thought that they were. Pure logic. But he saw things with his mind and imagination. He even saw her there.

She missed him.

He could look at the same student and realize that, if they overextended on the attack, it meant somehow that they were losing confidence of their own aim... or that they were concerned about losing control of the bout... or simply that they were overzealous in pulverizing their opponent. He seemed to always see what was in their minds, and she saw it, appreciated it, and missed it.

But whatever it was he needed to work through, he needed to do it in his own time. She would give him the space he seemed to require. At least, for a while.

She got up, and walked to the door. Then she froze.

A sandy-haired woman was leaving the shop, a paper bag in hand. Her hair was pulled into a severe french braid, and she wore a simple shirt and pants in charcoal grey.

Buffy waited a moment, and then ducked out of the store, tracing the woman's movements.

---

Drusilla felt the sun setting, and it stirred her out of deep sleep, and into dreams. Dreams for her were fluid things. They spoke in voices to her-- they weren't simple manifestations of thought or wish or fantasy-- they were conversations.

And this dream was a conversation in images, a symphony of colors and feelings. And it spoke to her in ways she could never have hoped to describe. It was trying to describe them-- trying so hard to make them manifest and comprehensible to others-- that was the supreme effort. It rarely worked. And the words she could use to describe them were inadequate. She was far less mad than those around her suspected. Though any with her gift must be a little mad. She saw things differently, melted fluidly into other worlds than this, and saw them in ways the mind could not interpret without fear and trembling.

And now she saw her own future, more in feeling and color and image, that she alone could translate, deep in her gut. In her sleep she was as active as in her waking hours, and as the sun set, she saw the hours that were to come.

She started awake, jumping upright in bed as her eyes snapped open.

Pressing on all sides was the certainty she was in terrible danger.

She groped in the darkness for the lantern he had left her, she turned it on, and it pierced the features of the night with its muted glow. And in the patterns it cast on the wall and on her bed curtains, she saw the hunters converging on her hiding place. They would use talismans, and portents, and the power of their own prayers. And they knew her and where she was. If she didn't get out, she'd be dead.

She tore out of the bed, lunging at the door. She suppressed the pain, suppressed the fear, and let the dream-vision, that hovered over and through her still, guide her motions. She looked over the door, and looked for a way to unscrew the hinges. The bolts were rusted in place. She swallowed hard, willing the panic back down into her stomach.

It would take all her strength and resolve to save her now.

---

Spike sat in the crypt, impatiently, watching the dusk turn to dark from his open door. The dry heat was playing through the air, and made it hum with a nearly electric life. He'd found himself noticing the weather more now, enjoying the small variations. He thought of England a moment, how in the Cotswolds the variations were many and dramatic. He remembered the river and the trees clustering around it, and how they looked through different seasons and weathers. Those river trees had seemed new every morning.

He imagined, for a moment, what Buffy would think of that countryside. Would she miss her bright and weatherless sunshine? Would she sit on a wall, over a bridge, watching the swans feeding there? He wondered what she thought of rain, as he sat motionless in front of his book. He wasn't reading it.

He stood up, began pacing. It tended to bother people when he did that, but there was no one around for him to perturb with his nervous habits. He dropped his book on the top of his television. He'd watched a great deal less of it since he'd returned. He'd had more to do.

But now, he felt restless. Something nagged at his brain, and filled him with forbodeing. Having learned to trust instinct more often than not, he went to check on Drusilla. She might just be stirring now, as the darkness welled over the stones in the graveyard, and the cooler night air began to permeate his crypt.

He walked into the tunnels, his feet retracing the familiar route without his paying much attention to them.. He'd used them considerably less, now, but this entire town was ingrained forever into his memory. He knew its heights, depths, and corners.

He passed a stone where someone, at some time, had spraypainted the initials 'IG'. He wondered, as he always did when he passed, what they meant. They looked lonely in the darkness of this underworld.

He moved a rusted trapdoor cover, and deftly jumped through it. He landed with an unconscious grace in the darkness. Even the light from the sewer gratings had dwindled to the faintest gleam perceptible to the vampiric eye.

And he followed the path left, and right, and around a corner.

And he found himself face to face with a door, fallen off its hinges, and an empty room. He swore out loud, his face full of sinking foreboding, and scanned the space for any hint of her presence.

He turned, looked around through the darkness, and ran into the black maze of corridors in pursuit of her.

--- part six ---

"Yeah, I found where she was going," Buffy said, twirling the phone cord absently around her finger, "What was the stuff she bought for, anyhow?" She listened to Anya's sprightly, rambling explanations with a feigned patience. It had been a long day, and tracking always tired her. At least she hadn't been discovered.

"Can you figure out who the locating spell was for?" she asked. She knew the answer would be no.

"Ok. I need to go back now, I didn't want to stay there longer without any weapons... yeah, I will. Thanks, you too," she said, dropping the phone onto its cradle and running up the stairs to change and prepare. She wasn't sure what she was getting into, and found herself wishing Spike was around to watch her back.

She reached the landing and walked swiftly towards the bedroom door, when she froze in place, a familiar sound flowing from her mother's bedroom. Feminine laughter floated faintly from behind the door, and she remembered the soft soprano lilt as it danced through the air.

She turned and walked to the door, and froze again.

"Veni, lumen cordium, dulce refrigerium, lux beatissima..."

"Oh my God..." she whispered, and burst open the door.

Willow started, and dropped the glass bowl she held, and the water sprayed her as it landed on the carpet.

"Oh my God..." Buffy said, frozen again at the door.

"Bu--Buffy it's not magic."

"What are you doing?"

"Buffy, stop, it's not magic."

"What the *hell* do you think you're doing?" Buffy snapped, seizing the single candle from the floor, shaking it out as she clutched it with violent urgency. The hot wax fell across her hand, but she barely noticed.

"Buffy-- Buffy stop! Listen to me!"

"Do you think you're going to try to get her back? What are you trying to do to her? Are you insane?" She yelled the words, stepping towards Willow. Willow, still on the floor, scrambled back towards the window, leaning on back on her hands and staring at her friend with entreating desperation and some fear.

"Buffy it's not magic-- I was meditating, to make it easier to hear her... it was just meditation there's nothing magical there-- nothing. It's nothing, I swear..."

"Is this why you wanted to be here? Is this what you've been *doing* in here? What were you thinking, do you want to get us all killed!?!?"

"Buffy it's not like that-- she needs me," she said, tears welling in her eyes, "Think how she died... she can't move on, she's stuck here... she wants to be with me... she asked me to help her be with me-- she wouldn't ask me to do magic, you know she wouldn't."

Buffy stopped, her lip trembling with a strange combination of anger, fear, and sympathy.

"I know you think she's asking you these things..."

"Buffy, I need her... I need to talk to her-- things came out so wrong and I need the chance to change it. Everyone should have the chance to change it, and this is the only way..."

"Look. I need to go, I have something I need to do. I'll come by your dormitory later, we'll talk." Buffy reached down, took Willow's hand, and helped her to her feet.

"Ok," Willow said tremulously. Buffy placed the candle she'd been clutching in one hand on the dresser, and walked to the door.

"And Willow... I'm going to have to ask you to leave now," she said, fingering a necklace, still resting on the dresser, that Tara had placed there some four months ago.

---

Spike looked around the expanse of tombstones. The arms of the tree above him made a sound like musical laughter, and he looked up. He exhaled heavily, and looked up where Drusilla sat in it.

"Dru... thank God..." he called to her, standing in the fresh night air of the cemetery. After circling the tunnels and searching the streets, he'd come back here, to the crypt. And here she was, resting lightly on a nearby tree. Her skirt flew about her ankles in the wind, and she stretched herself across the length of the branch like a cat.

His relief bordered on hilarity,

She sat high in the branches, her skirt covered in the leaves and flowers she had plucked from all around her. She wove them into garlands idly, singing to herself. She dropped a pale white blossom down to him. It floated softly to his feet.

"Right then, Ophelia. 'Been looking for you everywhere."

"Everyone looks for me..." she whispered, staring intently at one small offshoot next to her on the tree branch.

"I wish I could make a cocoon. Wind myself up and change into something else. Something with colors and fluttering wings," she said, touching the shoot with uncharacteristic gentleness. She plucked it, and, in one, swift motion, she leapt to the ground. She landed silently in front of him, smiling. She offered him the stick she held in her hand. On it was a little green cocoon, bright as a small piece of jade.

"It's beautiful," Spike said, smiling back at her gently. He found himself enchanted by it-- what would normally seem nothing seemed to be a miracle, because, in her eyes, it was. It was a little living jewel, a momentary poetry, lauding the brevity of seasons. He saw these things in her eyes, could read them there from long practice.

She had a way of seeing the world that was at the same time lovely and terrible.

"I think I'll keep it," she said, "Make it grow... it's bursting to come out and be in colors..."

Spike placed the thing back into her hands. He was beginning to feel suspicious. Drusilla rarely commented on the potential of hidden life. She had something in her mind, and that was never good. It had brought him to the point of which he was now certain.

"You should go now, quickly," he said gently, "You've gotten better... you can escape to somewhere remote now."

Drusilla touched his arm with a strange tenderness.

"I see things, Spike... I understand what I didn't know at all once... and I don't want to be alone. Not anymore," she whispered, "I can't do for myself... I was wrong to let you go... I need a family."

He sighed, looked at the little green cocoon, like a jewel hanging from the dry wood.

"I won't go with you, Dru," he said softly, "I can't. Not anymore. You know that."

"I know... you're not mine now... but she will be."

"What? What did you do, Dru?"

"It's so small... but it shelters quite well... I should have made her a cocoon"

He grabbed her by the shoulders.

"What did you do?"

"They wanted to kill me. But I saw them before they tried and I knew their plans for me. I turned it against them and they fell like a song..." she hummed a few bars and smiled at him sweetly.

"But she was too pretty to kill. She was strong and brave, and perfectly suited to me." Drusilla smiled at him as if communicating some private joke.

"And love," she said softly, "I couldn't have done it-- couldn't have survived them all-- not without you..."

He felt the rage welling up from him with his horror, but he wasn't sure to whom they were directed.

"My good William, my precious, you've always been my knight..."

---

Buffy shifted on her perch on the roof, muffling the noise of her crawling as she reached for the sky light. Pulling herself up to its rim, she peered down into the darkness of the room. There were no lights on.

"Great, they don't believe in electricity," she thought to herself, "I've been chased by the Amish."

She squinted, pressing her face closer to the glass. She could hardly make out the shapes within. She wiped at the dusty glass with her sleeve, cursing the obstructive streetlights and their glare.

It was difficult to make out what she saw. What she thought was a desk, some indeterminate shapes... a couch. What she recognized as a holy circle was painted on the floor. The white paint glowed in the light of the street lamps. It was smeared and obscured in places. And then something stirred in the dark room, and the old instincts stirred in the back of her skull. Then the whole image reconfigured itself in her mind, like a visual puzzle, and she saw it for what it was.

She kicked in the glass, and leapt down inbetween the bodies. The shape moved to run away.

"Hold it right there," she said abruptly. She had a stake aimed to strike. The sandy-haired woman froze. She reached up and touched her own face, her own feral fangs and seemed to shudder a moment.

A small glimmer of light caught Buffy's attention. A cross lay on the floor, the chain broken. She looked up at her companion, and saw the burns on her neck.

"She didn't even take it off me..." she said, "It's the first thing I felt when I woke up."

Buffy's stance softened. The vampire wasn't going to run.

"What's your name?" Buffy asked.

"Sarah," the woman responded, chuckling bitterly at the sound of her own name.

"What happened to you, Sarah?"

"We were hunting her... but apparently she was hunting us. She caught us in the middle of the ritual, we weren't ready."

Buffy was amazed at the calmness of this fledgling. She seemed full of despair rather than anger. Most fledglings could think of nothing but the kill.

"Who did this?"

"She should have killed me... she could have. She knew-- she just knew what I knew... It was like she anticipated my every move..."

"Who did?"

"Who else?"

Sarah laughed outright, a touch of hysteria in the sound.

"Speak the name of the devil, and she shall appear..."

Buffy grabbed her by the shoulders, and threw her against the wall. Sarah couldn't stop laughing even in the violence of the impact.

When she said the name, Buffy struck clean. As she walked out, the dust swirled among the assembled dead. Drusilla's victims.

---

She rushed down the alleyway, unsure of what she was doing. And what should she do? Should she tell Spike? She should... he'll need to be prepared if she tries something. She leapt over a fallen crate and began a full run into the main road. A voice from behind stopped her.

"The fledgling?"

She paused, and swallowed hard.

"Dust."

"Good..." he said simply. He was looking straight at her, she could feel his eyes on the back of her neck. It felt uncomfortable.

"So you knew... you *knew*. That was why they chased us in the cemetery-- that's why they left when they saw me, because they knew she was coming to you-- because they thought that I was her..."

She wheeled around, the old fire burning in her eyes.

"I couldn't just leave her," he said, his tone even. He did not move.

"You did what-- helped her? Watched after her? What-- no, I'm not sure I want to know," she said, "But people are dead now. She killed them. Even if they were out to kill her, too-- it happened."

"I couldn't leave her..." he whispered. Unwilling to defend his actions, he simply stated the fact.

Then she tilted her head to the side, inhaled deeply, and wound up to strike in her frustration.

With a lightening speed he grabbed her hand as it sprung, bent the elbow and pulled her back against him. He spoke into her ear, over her shoulder.

"You still leave your side exposed in the attack," he said. She stood still in his grasp. He released her, and she turned to speak to him again. This time, the anger had faded, and sadness filled her eyes.

"You know what it's like here, Spike, our lives are hard. And sometimes-- sometimes I don't have anyone but you..." she whispered, "In this fight, you're all I have. And how can I trust you...?"

He looked down, remembering Dawn and her wounded eyes.

"With her... with all that she was to me... if I just left her to die, would you trust me then?"

It was all he could say. He reached out one hand, tentatively, towards her. And she bowed her head, and whispered softly.

"No."

And she walked away, leaving him standing in the alley, alone.

--- part seven ---

"Buffy..." Willow said, as the door opened and Buffy entered. The sounds of the hall fell muted with the disparate slam when the door fell shut behind her. Willow had been sitting on her bed, in the dark, her stuffed bear clung close to her chest. She had been idly stroking its chenille fur, and thinking. No, thinking was not a good word for it. She simply let memories fall in on her and around her of all that had happened, trapped in the feeling they produced. There was nothing cerebral about it. It was an outpouring of grief, confusion, and not a small amount of loneliness.

She forgot all that when she saw her friend's face. Her eyes were red, her face looked drawn. It snapped her from her reverie, and suddenly all she had been lamenting fell away and she could only see Buffy.

"What happened to you Buffy? Are things ok?"

"Oh you know," she said, swallowing, trying to project strength and authority again, "Same demons, different day..."

"Yeah..." Willow responded. She looked at Buffy intently, trying to read in her face what was wrong. It was like a shadow had passed over it. Buffy turned and broke the moment, turning Willow's focus her own, internal darkness.

"I thought I'd come by, like I said earlier."

Willow bowed her head.

"Will... what was that? What's been happening to you?" she asked, sitting down on the bed next to her.

"I..." Willow started, and immediately burst into tears. Buffy put a conciliatory arm around her.

"You what, Will? What do you need to tell me?" Buffy asked, gently.

"It's true Buffy... it really is. She's there."

"Tara?"

"Yeah... she's stuck. Like, a ghost, you know? Well not like a ghost... she is a ghost, and she needs me," Willow found it difficult to speak, and was surprised at her own gasping voice, breaking through her sobs. She entreated her friend in a hollow whine, begging her to understand.

"Giles thought Jenny had come back... when she died..."

"But it's not like that-- not at all. She's there, I can see her."

"In the room?" Buffy asked.

"I think so... maybe the whole house. But look at what happened-- we'd just come back together, we'd just made things start to go right. And then it's cut off, it goes wrong-- what more unfinished, aborted life could there be? She couldn't leave. Not yet. She told me."

"How did she tell you?"

"She can be seen... I felt her, dreamed her at first... but she's there. She broke the window... or it broke when she came, because that's the moment she's trapped in. And she wanted me... no one else ever wanted me and she wanted me, even when she died Buffy-- how can it be wrong? I couldn't let her go-- I couldn't just leave her. I couldn't!"

Buffy looked down at the institutional, dormitory carpet, remembering her earlier encounter. Her friend lost herself in sobs, shoulders shaking under Buffy's arm.

Couldn't just leave her, no. The words sounded bitter in her skull. Couldn't leave her. Of course not.

Neither woman spoke, and there was no sound save the dull hum from the hallway, and Willow's sobs. Over time, though, those tears began to subside. Willow furrowed her brow, trying to grasp something that was passing through her mind.

"Buffy," Willow said, breaking her from her thoughts. Her tone was suddenly serene, as if a puzzle had come together and the last piece was in place. Or if a painful splinter, pushing into one's heel, had suddenly fallen away.

"Buffy..." she said, her tone steadying and her eyes dry, "When she talks to me, I feel... accepted. Like I can get over, you know, everything that's happened... like with just a little effort, that things can get better than I ever thought they could. I just needed someone to forgive me..."

"We all forgave you," Buffy said gently, stroking Willow's hair, "As soon as it was over, we all forgave you..."

"But it wasn't real, not to me," she responded, "You were still scared of me, I saw the fear in you when you found me today... you can't trust me, but she just loved me. No awkwardness, no fear... just love. And that makes everything possible... like I can do anything and choose to be better in the future... and I want that, I want it so damn bad Buffy..."

She looked for confirmation in Buffy's eyes. Buffy looked back, affected and earnest and hopeful.

"I'm sorry," Buffy said, "About today... I hurt more than I helped. It's just hard... you know, not to be afraid-- not to think the worst, like other people might do wrong considering everything what's happened before... but I need you to forgive me, too, for things... it's still hard sometimes, for me, being back. I do things the wrong way. I've done wrong... so much wrong. But I'm sorry... And I want to help."

Willow smiled.

"That's ok," she said, "And it'll work out... we'll help each other."

"Ok," Buffy said, smiling back tenderly.

---

Drusilla was crying. She was sitting on the stone wall, outside the cemetery, and she was lonely. He'd thrown her down in his eagerness to run off. She'd tried to stop him from going. He didn't even look at her when he pushed her aside.

But she'd kept the cocoon safe, she could smell the life in it. It was almost ready to hatch, it was moving inside and she could hear the rustling... and then it would fly away.

And her Spike... he'd gone off. He'd gone off to kill her new pet... he would never have done that before...

Well, perhaps if he'd been very angry with her. Or jealous. But he was neither. He was something new...

No, there was no malice there, no jealousy. She didn't understand it and didn't understand him, which frightened her. And she knew he was frightened too, frightened of the burning light that was dancing around him in electric jolts. Like baby fishes... She sometimes thought that if she touched him she would fall to ash.

She hopped down from her perch, still lost in her fitful thoughts. Sometimes she uttered half-sentences out loud, exclaiming her frustration to the dark.

He didn't want her to have her fledgling. It was dreadfully wrong. How could he go and kill it and make her cry? He knew she needed somebody. She'd have to go get another.

Would he just try to kill it again? She couldn't go alone... and she knew he couldn't come with her.

But he hadn't killed her. No, he wouldn't do that. Because he'd loved her, once. He was very sentimental that way...

And she smiled, and ran off down the road, her footsteps clattering delicately on the pavement. She hadn't felt so well in quite a while. Things seemed to be taking a turn for the better.

She was very, very clever, when she put her mind to it. And she would get everything she'd wanted.

---

Spike was alone. He sat in his crypt, on a worn armchair. Typical, really. He threw his open flask at the wall in frustration. It spattered the stones, sending the insidious odor across the room.

Buffy sat in this chair once, her legs tossed over one arm, her back leaning against the other. Her hair hung in wild strands down her shoulders and across her cheek. She had still been flushed, and her naked flesh was beaded with perfumed sweat. She looked like some wonderful pre- raphealite painting. Flaming June. Glorious youth against the course, worn old upholstery. The memory was lost in the past. It seemed unreal. Like it had happened years ago.

And he remembered, when he'd just returned, when he'd been half mad with confusion, how he had been sleeping in this chair when the door opened. Dawn. Her eyes. She threw the coat at him and had walked briskly away. The door had hung open behind her. And that he carried with him.

And now he sat in the dark, alone, drinking. Just like he had at the beginning, because he always came back to this. Old habits die hard.

---

Dawn put down her physics equations. She was remarkably good at them. It was in her blood like nothing else. The door to dimensions, the mystical portal. It knew the way reality wove itself together. And now it learned to articulate it in its most basic form, learning the human names for the rules in her blood. Force equals mass times acceleration. Torque. Gravity. She was mastering the skills of college-prep.

Maybe she should study astronomy in college... then she could forget this world and get lost in another-- the equations, the puzzles that she was born to solve.

She had opened all the windows. It was uncommonly hot out, and she wanted the fresh air. A warm breeze floated over her where she sprawled.

She shifted on the couch. There was a Babylon 5 repeat playing in the background. Xander would have appreciated it.

"If one does the right thing for the wrong reasons," Bill Mumy instructed, "The work becomes impure, corrupted." She wondered if any demons had bones like that on their heads. And then she shut off the television. It was a boring weekday. She had nothing to do, and no one to do it with.

And there was a sound from upstairs. Hard and loud and violent. Slamming. One, two... three...

And then the windows next to her slammed shut of their own volition. Dawn jumped up, her eyes wide.

And the door flew open as a woman kicked it. And then a draft flew up and it slammed shut in the woman's face. Dawn gasped, and backed against the wall. The sound of beating on the door continued, and for a moment she was paralyzed. Then she darted fast for the weapons case.

She opened it, her arms becoming clumsy as she tried to work with speed. She scatted the axes and swords that were too heavy for her, and removed her sister's crossbow. She went to load it, wondering at the slow and uncoordinated maneuvers of her fingers as she tried to do so.

And the door was shattering and it fell apart. A shape stood outside, and looked in. It held a glass jar in one hand. There was a piece of a thin tree branch in the jar. The figure seemed to stroke the air in front of it, as if it were a solid surface.

And then a noise came like no other Dawn had ever heard.

Rustling... organic, quick rustling of leaves and petals. And the thing outside shrieked. The streetlight's glow faded as the windows were obscured, and the shadows of vines threw themselves in patterns across Dawn's face.

It struggled with the rose vines, that were climbing around the walls of the house. It tugged and tore. They formed a solid wall across the doorway. And then suddenly, there was darkness and silence.

Dawn stood up in the quiet, crossbow in hand, encased in her living bower. She walked cautiously to the door, arm steady and aiming outside. The vines were woven thick and heavy. She could only see a few points of light in-between them, like a dense lattice.

And a pair of bloody hands thrust out. They grappled with the vines, tearing at them. Dawn jumped back. And a perfectly symmetrical, dark eyed face peered through at her. It was riddled with scratches from the thorns. She aimed her crossbow between the eyes. The bloody hand gestured elegantly in the air, behind the little window, and the lips opened, and a mesmerizing voice lilted through.

"Oh," it said, the eyes full of wonder, "Such pure, green light... such beautiful green-glowing, glorious light..."

Dawn's breath trembled, and she fumbled for the trigger. But somehow, she never found it. She was staring at those glowing eyes.

"Look at me, dearie... that's right... see me... and now love, can you do something for me?" it said.

--- part eight ---

Buffy had walked home slowly from the dormitory, thinking. The thoughts flew around in her mind like birds. Fluttering, nervous. Willow seemed to hold a little pearl of wisdom in her words... but it can't be true. She wondered if the dark powers that she had chosen had driven her insane. It made too much sense not to consider it, regardless of how it frightened her. No one was acting as they should be...

Whatever that means.

She turned the corner onto her street slowly. It was very, very late. She didn't have to sleep much, but still the exhaustion bore down on her. Bitter anger had fueled her as she went to see Willow. Anger and pain and confusion. And she didn't want to deal with it all. But Willow, with her sad words, had stripped anger away.

Willow had such tiny, delicate fingers, Buffy thought. Small and white and innocent. Not the sort of hands that conjure dark power. Like Spike. You look at him, you see a passionate man, yes, but you wouldn't have ever thought such a powerful, smoldering rage could exist there... and yet she'd seen it. And she couldn't trust him. Even though she often forgot this. It seemed counter intuitive. Even now, it hurt like cutting into her own flesh to think of him and what had happened.

There was a tiny little part of her that, in thoughts of him, filled her with an exquisite, bittersweet pain.

The trees bent their arms over the street, and their rustling leaves made her feel more calm. That was something she'd learned from him, since he'd returned. Something about the sheer weight of beauty in ordinary things bore down on some buried romantic corner of his nature, and he would try to share it with her. But that was before. And it was wrong.

Even so, that little nagging part of her soul still loved him. And always would. It would almost be frustrating if it wasn't so sincere. The larger parts that felt hurt and anger pressed on her, demanding justice. And the sound of the leaves poured over her like rain as she approached the house.

And she froze in shock. Her house was gone.

In its place was a dark hulk of rich, green leaves, and rose blooms. White and soft. She could smell them as she ran up the path. The door was a shattered mess on the carpet. Broken stems lined the porch, where they had been torn from the entrance. A white blossom, tossed in among the wild vines covering the floor, had been bruised and stepped on.

She burst inside, uncertain of what to feel.

And it was dark, and empty. It felt unnaturally cold. There was a movement at the corner of her eye, and a sound like gentle bells. They rang and echoed in the frosty silence. She poised, ready to attack.

And the sound faded, and there was only darkness again. Buffy exhaled the freezing air, and she could see her breath in a misty trail.

A noise of footfalls on the stair startled her, she spun towards them.

"Buffy," Tara said as she ran down to the landing. Her shirt was stained with blood. Her face was frightened, insistent.

Buffy could see her, but at the same time, felt almost as if it were projected from within her mind... she could hear her speak, but it echoed from some dark place in her spirit. It wasn't frightening, or even shocking. Somehow, in that moment, it felt entirely natural she should be there.

It was difficult to understand her words, and yet the emotion, the desperate, frightened emotion communicated itself in every nuance.

"Buffy, something took her, it was a vampire. I tried to stop it but I'm not strong enough... it wants to hurt her. You have to help."

Tara tried to continue speaking, but somehow disappeared while she struggled for words. Buffy didn't see her dematerialze, and there was no puff of smoke. It was like she simply, while Buffy had been distracted by her own shock, had vanished. Her eyes lost their focus for a moment, and then Tara was gone. She didn't know exactly how.

But it didn't matter. What did she say... it was difficult to remember. It was as if she hadn't spoken in words, but directly into Buffy's heart... she strained to remember the message that Tara had conveyed only moments before. Feelings came first, pouring fear over her like icy water. And then the words, or the impression of the words. Their meaning.

Vampire. Dawn.

She bolted from the house, jumping past the porch stairs and on the path, landing in a full run.

---

Buffy bowled him over a tombstone in one blow, and pounced with a preternatural speed.

"Where is she?" she cried, striking again, throwing him back against the same stone. She could see the cracks and little fault lines it caused in the memorial. He looked at her earnestly, with some dread, and whispered softly.

"Gone," he said. She stared at him, shocked, eyes bright and desperate. She rarely looked this lost in a fight, he remembered. Only when he had just closed in for the kill, he could recall, the one or two times he had got that close... her eyes had that look of rage and animal instinct.

"What has she done?" he said. He was half certain of it already. The voice that came from him sounded calm, but was full of strange nuances. She could not hear them.

She threw him down, and he did not even brace for the kick to the stomach. He accepted the pain willingly.

"She took her," Buffy said, her voice wavering with anger. They both knew who she meant.

"She took her. Why would she take her... unless..." She remembered Sarah, with her burned neck and bitter laugh. She felt like her head had disconnected from her body, and she was floating above them, watching the action take place. He had gone there to kill the fledgling. But Drusilla thought he wouldn't kill Dawn... because he'd loved her. She knew this because he'd loved herself once, and she had been safe with him.

She was playing to his sympathy. It was disgusting.

He thought they might already be too late, as Buffy held him in an iron grip. He swallowed, anger swelling in his own gut. She might get her caretaker after all. She thought he wouldn't kill her. But if she did get that caretaker, neither would survive his pursuit. This couldn't happen, not to Dawn. It was the supreme irony that it would be her, who knew nothing of this.

He came to his decision and struggled in her grasp. It almost took her by surprise, and she was a moment late in tensing her muscles to hold him. He broke free.

He tried to walk away, and she moved to detain him, tense with rage. He seized her shoulders as she did so and pushed her aside. She sprung to attack.

She aimed a blow at his leg, but he gracefully evaded it. He was going to try to escape her. She could hardly believe it was happening.

But she suppressed any thoughts of betrayal and concentrated on his movements. He was hard to hit. He evaded her every action, easily detecting her feints. And she did the same. They had come to the point it was practically impossible for them to fight together in earnest. They knew each other too well.

She finally landed a blow to the jaw, and he reeled backwards before catching his balance again. He smiled bitterly, intent on finding a chance to break off the attack. He needed to get away. There couldn't be any time to spare. His impatience grew with his desperation.

"No music box this time, huh pet?" he said. She looked at him, her eyes wounded, and leapt back out of range as he tried to knock her down.

And they continued the rain of attacks, and faints, and disengages. They blurred together. And Buffy's rage faded as she fought, became hollow fear and sadness. The night was silent around them, as if courtesy demanded they be left wholly alone. She remembered the sublime joy of their training sessions, the humor in his attacks, full of sharp, physical wit. His eyes had been alive then. But now there was nothing. Nothing but a bitter sort of irony, and a desperation she understood too well.

But she couldn't let him get away. He couldn't run this time. He needed to tell her what he knew... even though she couldn't shake the feeling he knew nothing about it at all.

She couldn't think clearly about it, not now. He was here. He was responsible. He had to be. All she knew was that, somehow, he needed to produce her sister.

And when he landed a solid blow to her jaw, and caught her off balance, she almost thought it was inevitable. She landed against the chipped headstone, stunned. She could only see him run into the distance, vaulting over memorials like a cat, fading into the night.

She felt nothing. Just a dull, helpless void as she watched his receding figure, and struggled to find her breath again.

---

Dawn wept. The woman was talking to her, incoherently. She wound sheer silk panels tightly around her arms, her legs. She ached with the constriction.

Drusilla was fascinated, as she prepared the cocoon. The green child was full of secrets.

She was headstrong, though. It would take time to break her. But, in the end, she would want what she offered. She would thank her with blood and pain and trembling.

They always did.

---

Spike tore a hinge off the door with the force of his entrance. He left it hanging and jumped down to the lower level. He kicked open his weapons chest, and looked for something appropriate to the task ahead.

--- part nine ---

She could see only that she should run.

Drusilla was frightened. So she ran, ankle deep in water, through the sewer tunnel. In her arm she cradled a glass bottle, in which she held the trembling butterfly, newly hatched. It fluttered and thrashed in its glass prison.

Her second sight was failing-- she couldn't see what was to come, not clearly. It was as if the future were converging, falling into itself-- collapsing into one focused point. She could see nothing beyond that moment.

But she could still run. The water splashed around her ankles in delicate sprays in her flight. The sound followed her, echoing off the stones.

She'd have to leave the girl. She didn't want to... but things were falling apart, that much she could feel in her bones. The girl was perfect... and would be able to help her... she could see the bright green energy that fell from her. She had eternal wisdom in her blood. But she would have to leave her all the same. She could find someone else that would love her.

"Where is she?" he said quietly, standing still behind her. She had been so caught up in her thoughts, in her desperation, she had not heard him approach. A wave of peace fell over her, and her angry mind quieted as she felt his presence at her back.

Drusilla paused. She opened the lid of her glass jar, and watched the fluttering creature escape up through the sewer grate and into the night air, its small form receding into the ghostly distance. She reached one hand out after it, and smiled softly.

It was allright.

Then she turned to look at him, standing gravely before her. She dropped the glass jar. It shattered, and the current carried the pieces swiftly away.

---

Willow walked up to Buffy's house quietly. She needed someone to talk to.

Sometimes, when she was alone, the silent hours pressed on her like a suffocating weight. Everything felt heavy, prolonged. Time compressed around her, choked her, and she could not struggle out of the despair. The only time she was at peace was in that room...

She had to make Buffy understand. She had to get in there.

She froze on the asphalt. The vines covered the house like a fairy-tale castle.

She walked up to the house, holding her breath. A freezing cold draft flowed from it, playing about her ankles as she walked across the porch.

It was all darkness inside, and silence. And as she looked around, her fingers going numb in the extreme cold, she grew certain of a bitter truth.

Tara was gone. Forever.

These flowers were the remenant of her passing.

And she had nothing here. The dull certainty went through her, and she was numb.

She picked up one of the now wilting roses from the ground as she walked away.

---

With the long strain of hours, Dawn felt disconnected from the pain in her shoulders. She didn't know how long she had been hanging there, bound at the wrists, suspended high in the stale air. The empty, negative space around her pressed close with shadows, and the solitude was overwhelming. She felt as if everything normal, warm, and safe in her life was a distant, far away dream.

The effort of pulling herself up on her restraints, so that she could take breath, was beginning to feel useless, futile.

She was keenly aware of the water dripping from a pipe on the other side of the burned out warehouse. Drip, drip, drip... she counted them, timed them until they stretched into infinity. It was the only sound.

She opened her eyes. Through the haze in front of them, she could see the blue gloom falling over indiscriminate shapes in the darkness. Windows, high near the ceiling, let pale moonlight through the soot encrusted panes. It was like she was looking through layers of gauze. In fact... she remembered that she was... she vaguely remembered being wound in them, being talked to and petted all the while... as she wriggled in place, shots of pain ran through her joints, and she felt the constricting silk bind her in like some strange mockery of a cocoon.

She was strung up high, high from a pipe running the length of the building. The chain and pulley hung from it, and the dull reality of them-- their strong construction, their clearly defined shapes seemed strangely out of place as she began to slide into another world. The simple sight inspired her, with its blunt reality, to pull up on her ropes, force her arms forward and up so she could take another breath.

But she was losing any sense of hope. Of course it would always be this way in the end. The heroes would always save you, in the nick of time-- except for the last time.

But still... because she couldn't quite let go, she breathed in again. Her shoulders burned agony with it.

And then, a noise. A desperate, loud noise from below. The boarded up doors quivered on the far wall, below her. She swallowed, hard.

She had come back, and it was time. The moments between the sounds of splintering wood stretched out in Dawn's mind, and her mind cast about, trying to focus on the details of the large, sparse room. As if that focus could hold her in the moment and protect her. The tense silence, the echoing attack on the door. The floor far below her, schorched and dirty. It seemed like the moment stretched into an eternity.

The noise tore through the empty space, overwhelming the silence. Its pace was fast and raging. And then the boards broke.

Dawn closed her eyes, sliding into reverie as she sank on her restraints.

The visions that filled her mind were of mountains and light, and birds calling in the wind.

---

Spike rushed through the shattered boards. The space smelled of ash and soot, petrol and death. Even now it stood like a hulk in the night. A rat ran across his shoe as he walked forward, with trepidation, looking for the lost girl.

He found her. She hung about twenty feet in the air, tied to a chain. She was surrounded in Drusilla's silk bed curtains, like a shroud. They wound tightly around her, and, in their creamy white volume, hung like an angel's train down into the dark air. They moved slightly in the cool drafts from the broken windows above. The motion swam and trailed in the shadows.

"Oh God..." he whispered, and ran to stand below her.

He threw himself to his knees on the soiled earth below her.

He worked the mechanism, lowered the chain on the pulley, bringing her slowly to the concrete floor. The fabric swirled and floated around her.

She sank silently onto the floor before him. Immediately his hands flew to her skull, catching her swiftly at the base of the neck, before her head could fall to the hard concrete.

"Dawn... Come on, Dawn..." he whispered, fervently unwinding the fabric from her limp body. Panic was beginning to seize him, and he tried to stay it, to keep from tearing wildly at the shroud. He peeled it away, the whole time holding her upright in his arm.

"Dawn... please... Dawnie..." he said, without realizing he'd never called her it before. His voice cracked as the his fear swelled beyond his ability to control the tone.

The soft veils fell from her face. She was pale. Her lips were washed of their color. For a moment, the dread certainty of her passing filled him... or worse. If she rose again, he swore he would not be alive to see it.

Her lower lip twitched in the darkness. In his panic, he had ignored the faint signs of life in her... she took a shallow breath, and stirred in his arms.

She opened her eyes halfway, as if it took all of her effort. She started a moment, and seemed to revive slightly as she saw who held her.

"Spike...?" she whispered, her voice hoarse and tired. Her eyes welled with tears as she began to come to herself. He could only nod.

"Spike..." she said again, tears running freely down her cheeks. She tried to put her weight on her arm, but winced as the pain coursed through her nerves. Her arm gave out beneath her, and he deftly caught her again.

And somehow, that one failed motion, that one little cry of pain, broke him. Everything poured out from him, the horror, the despair... all he had ever known and caused and endured.

He clutched her close, and she pressed against him, tears of relief and pain falling swiftly down her cheeks. He pressed his forehead against hers, his own tears uncontrollably passing through him in heavy sobs.

"I'm sorry..." he whispered, looking at her and through her in the same moment.

"I'm sorry..." he said again, combinations of abstract images, memories, feelings filling his mind, "I'm sorry... I'm sorry..."

He clutched her in his arms, as he desperately beseeched her with a sobbing voice.

"I'm sorry..." he repeated, losing all of himself in the words.

--- part ten ---

"With thee conversing I forget all Time." --Milton

---

Buffy woke from a light sleep.

She rolled onto her side, her blanket falling softly from her back. It was slightly stiff from sleeping in a strange position. The coolness of the air sunk into her skin. She stared at the wall, the dim light falling on it, slightly luminous in the predawn glow. The first birds had just started calling, and she could hear them outside. The quiet serenity of their songs calmed her heart.

The fresh air rolled in with the wind, tinted with that particular soft, dewy coolness the early morning brings. Calm and silent, yet electrically charged, full of a strange life, full of contemplation and solitude and comfort.

Buffy's heart was at peace with the morning, and the coolness that worked into her bones from around her energized and soothed her at the same time. So she simply laid there, and let the growing light roll over her, and thought about everything that had brought her to this moment, and this place.

She breathed in that perfumed, morning air, and let memory move over her like a tender hand.

---

It had been a few weeks, she remembered, since that night. Since she'd been taken, and since she had run through her broken front door to see him sitting on a chair, her sister cradled in his arms. She had been crying softly against his shoulder. Buffy had just returned from her own searches, fruitless. She had gone back to collect some prudent weapons and look for more evidence. The rationality involved hardly occurred to her at the time... she was lost in action, desperate and frightened and enraged.

The look on his face, as he sat there, had been like nothing she had seen before. At the time, she hardly cared. It was with frantic relief, a relief that jolted her heart like a gunshot, that she reached for Dawn. And he had simply placed her gently in Buffy's arms, and walked away without a word. And she knew he'd disappear after that, and wasn't sure if she would have cared if he ever came back.

But she'd said that before. It never worked out that way.

And so when, one night, as she hunted prey in the cemeteries, she happened to come upon him, it did not surprise her.

She caught him by surprise, though, she knew. He had tried to slip away undetected. When confronted with each other, the particular way he tensed his shoulders communicated his discomfort. He froze as only the dead can freeze. No movement, no breath. He froze completely where he stood, staring away from her. She studied his profile in silence.

He was troubled by all that had happened. She'd become better at reading him since he'd come back, but this was obvious in every facet of his expression. His eyes looked tired and distant. Worn. He had been thinking, she was sure, of little else in his solitude.

But something about the set of his jaw, about the way he stood there, quietly, made her feel that he had found some sort of resolution, some sort of peace in it all, even if that same resolution left him isolated, alone. He had found some indeterminate, ineffable part of his own spirit that had previously confounded his understanding.

He was himself, now, and more than himself.

He turned to go. When she tried to talk, she wasn't sure if she could summon the breath to form her words. It was like a dream, in which she would try to call out, only to find her voice had gone dry and dead.

But the words came, faint and thin at first. But they came.

"She wouldn't just have gone," she said, "Not without what she wanted... she wouldn't have gone away unless--"

He paused, and then looked up at her. A slightly bitter look passed over his face, which seemed to dissolve itself into a faint, irresolute resignment.

"Unless someone made her," she continued.

Buffy wondered, vaguely, what making her gone would have entailed, before it was over. Torture before death, perhaps, and in expert hands. He broke the silence with a clipped sentence.

"I wouldn't know anything about that," he said, as he turned and walked off into the night.

---

Her life had fallen back into its normal patterns, as it invariably, inexorably did.

As she pulled her blanket up around her shoulders in that dim morning light, she thought about how subtle it had been. Dawn recovered quickly. No permanent injury, but one arm still needed that ever familiar sling. Other threats had come and gone. Most too boring for words. The vines covering the house had somehow faded away, but no one had noticed exactly when, or how.

Her mother died, and things returned to normal so fast. Even if the pain still haunted her like a dream you can't shake when you wake up. She died herself, and rose again, and even then she did not curl up, lose herself in her thoughts, and forget the world outside her skull forever. Somehow, she floated about her life, and things became whatever passed for normal. Again, only the dream remained.

So normal happened very quickly now.

And so, only the night before, she had been sitting in the Bronze with her friends. And Dawn was dancing with Xander. He was throwing her back and forth to a swing beat. It would have seemed violent if its exuberance weren't so glaring. Anya was somewhere nearby, shaping her fingernails. And Buffy sat and watched, and missed him.

She shook her head, tried to concentrate on the music. But the ghost of memories clung to her, and she didn't know how to resolve them. She lost herself in thought for a long time.

Suddenly, she sensed a familiar presence behind her, a large, warm hand fell gently to her shoulder. She looked up, and saw Xander there. His face was atypically grave. His eyes, though-- they had calmed so much since the previous spring. They were gentle as they looked at her.

"You should forgive him," Xander said. He sat down beside her.

She looked at him a second, as if she could not process his words. A few moments passed, and she responded.

"I should what?"

"Forgive him. Spike," he said again. He gesticulated in a strange fashion unique to himself, as if trying to communicate his thoughts in the motion of his hands. She just stared at him, confused, surprised, and slightly defensive.

"Hey," he continued, "Buffy. You know I don't like him. And you probably know, 'don't like' really isn't the phrase for it I came up with in my head. And I reserve the right to rag on him in the future at my own discretion... but you really should."

She remembered how Xander had hated him more than anyone else. Except sometimes... sometimes he would say something, extend some sort of understanding and empathy towards the creature. Even years ago. Heartfelt Xander. Sometimes a heart can learn cruelty. But kindness is its nature.

"And why is that, Xander?" Her voice was dry, and posed to sound aggressive. She didn't know what he was trying to do, and wasn't much in the mood to be played with. Or ministered to.

Even so, a thrill of warm pain glowed in her stomach, spreading up her chest and through the veins of her arms. No one had talked about him since, and it was strange to hear his name. Dull sadness, bare anger, and a sense of vague, almost gentle nostalgia passed over her as he continued to speak. The contradictory emotions tore at her.

"Because, well... because of what he did. I wasn't expecting it... if I had been, I don't think I would have let it get to me, but it snuck in on me and it did. And I can't deny it Buffy-- he didn't do these things out of some disinterested pursuit of Evil."

"I know that," Buffy said, "It's not like he woke up with a checklist... but how can I trust him? He did this out of something... something emotional that pulled him wrong. He always gets pulled wrong. Love I guess-- I don't know..."

"Mercy," Xander said, "Compassion. He knew her, I mean really knew her. He saw her like a person, Buff-- he knows everything about her. Little things. He couldn't choose to let her suffer, because to him, she was like a person."

"How is that supposed to make me feel better?" Buffy asked, "How does that make any of this ok?"

"No, not ok. Thus the forgiving part."

Buffy looked intently into her friend's face, trying to read what sort of intentions there were. But there was nothing... nothing there but an earnest sort of tenderness. It made her uncomfortable, cut a hole deep in her shell.

"But you see Buff, to him she was a person. And that means he was acting like a person, too. A real person, Buffy... not evil, not hurtful. Acting like an actual human-being-like person. Merciful. Self sacrificing... he was willing to give up everything just for compassion. And I couldn't feel more weird saying it Buffy, but I can see this eating at you. And damn it, I love you and I don't want that... and I see it. I really see it. As soon as I thought about it and realized what it was, I couldn't deny it because it's true. Imagine how annoyed that made me. But it was mercy, Buffy. Mercy."

She remembered being showered with water from the mall sprinklers, years ago, kicking a shadowed figure brutally and coolly walking away. And then what followed, what he did-- what she was responsible for from that momentary inability to harm him. There was no mercy in her actions, then. Just attachment.

The music shifted, a new melody floating through the smoke-filled, misty air.

Buffy didn't realize her eyes had watered until her hand was already brushing the moisture away. Xander took her hand and squeezed briefly. Then Dawn and Anya bounded over, carrying drinks with bright umbrellas in them, discussing with some conviction the importance of unnaturally bright coloring to the commercial success of any beverage.

---

Buffy went to breathe in the quiet of the alleyway. She felt like someone had torn a hole in her gut and all of her emotion had poured out of the wound. She leaned against the rough brick wall, and let her head drop to her hands.

She inhaled, taking in the slightly raw air. The darkness was empty, spare. She pressed her fingers against her temples, the wind nipping at them as it flowed past. The ground was dirty asphalt. Dead leaves mixed with broken glass, stray paper, and familiar dust. A single crate sat alone beside the service entrance. The lonely scene looked like a minimalist painting. She sank onto the crate, and inhaled again.

The sensation of his presence went through her like an electrical charge.

She smelled the familiar smoke and leather and the slightly sweet, faint musk. Her hands paused where they rested on her temples, and then she slowly pulled them away. They fell to her lap, and she looked up at him.

He stood there, a distance away, partially hidden in the shadow that fell across the alley. It divided him in half.

His hands were at his sides, and he stood facing her. He was starting straight into her eyes, and he nodded, slightly, as if assenting to her gaze. As if asking her to do something.

He laid himself bare. She could see everything he was feeling in his eyes. And it was then she realized he was offering himself to her, completely. Just as he stood. The gesture gave him a strange sort of strength. By giving everything up, away, and to her in that moment, he had somehow found the strength to accept it if she rejected him. Even then, she was certain, he would have some kind of peace.

And she simply watched him as he stood there, his fingers trembling slightly. The bitter wind rose up again, in a heavy swell, and played with their hair, and some random flyer flew up from the tired ground, and caught itself on his leg before it soared into the shadows.

Buffy stood, unsure of what she should do. She needed to look at him. Really see him close. So she rose, and walked slowly up to him. He watched her come, but did not move. He simply followed her with those strangely youthful eyes.

She leaned in very close, studying his face. He was trembling faintly under her stare.

And she watched him, and thought. She was uncertain. She searched his face as if she could read an answer there. A cold little snake of apprehension moved in her throat, with fitful irresolution.

She decided not to hold onto it.

She moved, suddenly and swiftly, pressing up on her toes, pulling his head against her shoulder in a warm embrace. Something seemed to pass through him, and he wrapped his arms around her waist, hands pressing softly on her back, just clinging to her, gently. One of her hands trailed in his hair, and down the back of his neck. As she held him, that writhing, apprehensive snake faded away, and her mind was serene.

And then he slowly pulled his hands up to her jawline, pulling back, tracing it with his fingers, gently, like she might break. He brushed a stray hair from her forehead, their eyes locked in the intimacy of the moment. And very gently, falteringly, he pressed his lips against hers.

It was strange. It did not feel to her that it was romantic... or not in the usual sense of the word. Eros paled in the expression of that tremulous contact. He was trying to tell her something there were no words for. The kiss communicated what he couldn't express, what neither could ever speak of.

The wind was cold as she closed her eyes, letting him kiss her with this alien tenderness. It was like he had broken since she'd last touched him, fallen away from himself and then crawled back up again.

A long time passed, and he finally moved to pull away. She slid her hand up his back and to the side of his face, holding him there in the moment. Then she pulled him into a deeper kiss, the sensation crackling palpably around her.

It reminded her of when rain beat against her back and arms in the vibrant power of a storm, cool and alive and all encompassing.

And they stayed there, locked in the kiss, as the wind blew through the alley and the night.

---

And that's how it had happened. She sighed softly at the memory, emotion welling up again in the early morning light.

Buffy sat up, letting the threadbare blanket fall to her lap. The blue light was thinning, becoming brighter as time crept closer to dawn. She fingered the edge of the blanket absently. He must have brought it up while she was sleeping.

She could feel little fitful sprays of water tickling her back, as they flew through the crypt door. It still hung on its broken hinges weakly, and had flown open in the night.

It was raining. Lightly, yes. The sound was hardly audible as it sprinkled delicately against the stones. But it was raining, and the smell of damp earth floated through the cool, dark space. It filled her nostrils as she inhaled deeply, stretching her neck and back. They cracked, and the stiffness of sleeping on hard stone eased slightly. Somehow, they had fallen asleep where they fell, together. She rolled to her side on the blanket, gazing out of the open door.

He was watching her, quietly. He had found a vast well of quiet since his return.

She looked at those quiet blue eyes, watching her. And she wondered if she was making a mistake. But somehow, as a soft roll of thunder rumbled like a purr in the distance, she didn't think so.

She rose, the thinly woven blanket falling to the ground as she stepped to the door. She let the water spray lightly against her naked skin. The shadowy blue light played on it, moving in the curves of her body as she leaned against the door jamb, just watching.

He walked beside her, trailed his arm around her waist, and leaned his cheek against her shoulder, taking in its soothing warmth.

---

They walked together again, as they had long before.

The rain was nothing but a soft mist, now. Fog rose from the pavement, which would soon be cut by the morning sun.

"I saw her standing there, the other night. Outside, below the window," Buffy said.

"Willow?"

"Yeah..." A car passed by, and sprayed water onto the pair. The soft, rustling sound of its tires against the moisture was like the rustling of the leaves overhead. Spike reached up and plucked a leaf as they walked, turning it around restlessly in his fingers.

"I don't think she's better... I mean, not yet. She doesn't know..." her voice trailed off as she thought about what she was trying to express.

"What, love?"

"Well... she doesn't know that it couldn't be that way. Tara wasn't where she belonged. She found a way out. She couldn't just keep the dead-- she couldn't just keep someone in a cage for herself..."

"She didn't know she had to let go," he said, softly, losing himself in his thoughts, "I mean, she should have let go. Sometimes you see something, and it's so damned bloody beautiful it makes you hurt... but you can't try to hold onto it. That makes it ugly, takes its life. She should have let go..."

"It's sad," Buffy said, "It's so sad what happened to her. To them."

"No," said Spike, "It's life... wild and clumsy and painful as hell. But it's not sad. I mean, Tara's home. Where you were, once..."

"No I don't mean that," she said, stopping, as they came to the pathway in front of her house, and looking up into his eyes, "I mean sad that they didn't get the time to say the right things. It wasn't finished That shouldn't happen."

"Time does as it will," he responded, twining his fingers through her own, "Life. That does whatever it's going to do. And we can't see everything 'cause we're like bloody ants on the surface of a bloody globe. All movement."

"So where's the resolution? Where can we look at something and say, 'There, it's done. The story's over.'?"

At that moment the door opened. And they stood together, hands entwined, arms connected like a low arch, breaching the small distance between them, as they faced each other. They turned their heads towards the noise.

"Hi," Dawn said. She'd been sleeping very lightly these days, and had been upstairs, listening to the rain on her windowsill.

"Hey Dawnie," her sister said, smiling at her fondly. Spike was looking at her, trailing his eyes from her face to her feet. His expression was a strange combination of love and dread. He froze in space, as Buffy let her fingers slide out of his grip, and walked up to the porch, and her sister.

They walked inside, and Buffy turned to close the newly repaired door, when Dawn, who had paused a moment, pushed forward.

"Hey, Spike...?" she called to the receding figure. He stopped.

"I'm thinking of making hummus and pastrami enchiladas, since I'm awake. You want to join the experiment?"

He chuckled softly to himself, turned around, and walked up the path towards her.

---

The End

Better Buffy Fiction Archive Entry

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