“No Dawn, for the last time, no”.

“But why?” Dawn was using her best whiny teenage voice, and had been using it for at least the last hour. Buffy’s resolve hadn’t wavered however. She had once been a whiny teenager herself, though it felt like a lifetime ago now. She knew that Dawn would give up in the end. Or she hoped she would.

“But I already invited him! You know, before you were... back. I can’t go back on it,and I don’t want to either. I want him here!”

Buffy was struggling to wrap an awkwardly shaped piece of carpentry equipment. What it did exactly she had no idea, but she hoped Xander would. Despite her frustration over her chosen presents weird, unwrapable, pointy bits she managed to reply pretty calmly, in her best mom voice.

“Dawn, I don’t care what you told him, he is an evil vampire, not a happy go lucky elf, he is not coming here for Christmas.”

Dawn shrieked and Buffy couldn’t suppress a shudder at the harshness of the noise. Dawn didn’t seem to notice however. “Buffy! Spike hasn’t been evil in like forever! He’s my best friend and I want him here for Christmas!”

Buffy felt hot all over at the mention of his name, and her traitorous heart began to beat more quickly. “I said no Dawn.”

Dawn jumped off the sofa and over dramatically stamped her foot. “You always treat me like a little kid, like my opinions don’t matter or something. Spike never treats me like a kid, he treats me like a friend. If you even knew half of what he did for me when you were gone you wouldn’t be such an ungrateful bitch!”

“DAWN!” Buffy was shocked, Dawn had been angry with her before, more times then she could count actually, but she had never spoken to her like that before, with such venom in her voice.

“Whatever Buffy. You might be my sister, but Spikes my family too. I’m spending Christmas with him, whatever you say.”

Dawn turned and stomped up the stairs before slamming her door as loudly as she could. And then slamming it again for good measure.

Buffy rubbed her aching head and sighed. Why did everything have to be so complicated? Why did Dawn have to have such warm feelings for the peroxide formally evil undead? For that matter, why were her own feelings for him so complicated?

She hated what he had been, she resented what he stood for, she respected him as a warrior, she found him trustworthy as an ally, she found him frustratingly hot as a man.

She knew he was a monster, but, in the most secret recesses of her heart, she thought of him as a man.

Since she had been back everything had been so harsh, so bright. Everything apart from him. In him she found the comfort and solace she craved. The silence and peace that she had been torn from. When she was with him she felt almost whole again, and she hated him for it.

She had gone to see Angel, hoping that it would be him who brought her back to life again, but he hadn’t. He hadn’t helped at all. Not because he hadn’t tried, but because he couldn’t.

She needed Spike. She needed him and she wanted him and it was driving her mad.
And now they had kissed. They had kissed and she had run away. She had run away because it was so much more real then she had claimed, it was too real, and it frightened her. She felt warm again, and every minute she was away from him the coldness was seeping back. But she couldn’t be around him, she couldn’t let it happen again. It was wrong.
But if felt so right. She was torn. Like the wrapping paper. Damn.


What did Dawn mean by what she’d said? What had Spike done for Dawn while she was gone? Xander had said Spike had patrolled with them all summer, but that was hardly unusual, and he did it because he loved the violence, not because he wanted to fight the good fight. So what had Dawn meant?

Buffy sighed and abandoned wrapping Xander’s present in favour of Willows, a nice easy square photo frame.

Even though festive spirit was really the last thing on Buffy’s mind she felt she had to make the effort, had to pretend, for her friends. Since they found out that she had been in heaven they had been even more wary round her than they were before. She was so sick of telling everyone she was fine, of their constant stares and concerned looks. She decided that if she acted normal they would treat her as though she was and leave her alone.

In the spirit of pretending to be over it all Buffy decided to do what old Buffy would have done, and find a nice photo to go in the frame.

She flicked through the nearest album and her eyes came to rest on a picture of her, Xander and Willow, in Buffy’s first year at Sunnydale High. She didn’t really look that different physically. Her hair was longer, and she’d lost her chubby teenage cheeks, but other than that she was pretty much unchanged. Despite that Buffy barely recognised herself. She was not that girl anymore.
That girl had died, plunging off a tower to save the ones she loved. That girl had not been brought back from the grave. She was someone else now and she was tired, so very tired, of pretending to be the girl her friends had loved and missed and wanted her to be.


Her heart, which she was trying so desperately to ignore, whispered that she didn’t have to pretend with Spike. With him she could be herself, and he loved her anyway. He didn’t expect anything from her, he didn’t make any demands. But he had always been like that.
He didn’t try to protect her or control her life like Angel had. He didn’t put her up on a super slayer pedestal from which she was not allowed to fall, like Willow or Xander. He didn’t expect too much of her and then leave her, like Giles, and he didn’t need her to be mother, friend and sister like Dawn did. With Spike she could just be Buffy, no matter who Buffy might be, and that would be enough.

Buffy shook herself mentally, this was not a good road to walk down if she was trying to get Spike out of her head and heart.
She bypassed the pictures of her and her best friends, they just didn’t seem right somehow. She searched for a picture of Willow and Tara, that was nice. That was safe.

That wasn’t what she’d found. Partway through the album pages of old photos had been removed and replaced, and as Buffy looked at them her heart began to swell almost painfully.

They were all of Dawn and Spike.
The first one had been taken in Spikes crypt, it was even homier then it was now as there were balloons, actual balloons, scattered around, and banners on the walls. Dawn and Spike were sat together on his moth eaten couch, Dawn was about to blow out the candles on a cake.
The cake was a funny shape, and strangely iced in black and red. In far from perfect letters it said ‘Happy Birthday Dawn’. Next to the cake were a couple of presents, also wrapped in black and red. Dawn looked close to both tears and laughter, and Spike was looking at her with such affection and concern that it took Buffy’s breath away, and made a tear of her own roll down her cheek.

Dawns Birthday. Dawns birthday was at the end of August, though she had been a bit unaware of time at first it would have been about two weeks, at the most, before Buffy had been brought back.
There were other pictures of the same day, some just of Dawn, some just of Spike (looking so ridiculously cute in a party hat that Buffy had to laugh through her tears) and some of them together. The ones of them together were usually at a funny angle, as though Spike had been holding the camera himself as he took the picture.

Buffy realised what that meant. Her friends had not been there. Her friends had not been at Dawns party, and they had not thrown her one themselves. They had probably been so occupied in preparing the spell to bring her back that they had forgotten Dawns birthday altogether. But Spike hadn’t, Spike had remembered, and he had realised how hard the day would be for Dawn and he had tried to make it fun.
Buffy wiped a tear away with a shaky hand. There were other pictures.
Spike and Dawn at a fairground. Dawn’s hair was a little shorter than it had been in the birthday photos, and Spike looked thinner. She knew they had to have been taken not long after she’d died. In one Dawn was holding a grotesque looking teddy-monster thing that Buffy had noticed in her room but hadn’t bothered to ask the origins of. Spike had won it for her. In another Spike had made himself a candyfloss beard, no doubt to make Dawn laugh as it was having that effect on Buffy.

There were more; a fancy dress night at the cinema (Spike in fishnets was a sight to be seen) a bonfire at a beach somewhere (they were roasting marshmallows) there were even some of them playing poker with Clem (minus the kittens thankfully). It was just so normal seeing the two of them together like that, like a brother and sister helping each other to heal.

No new pictures had been added to the album of Dawn with any of her friends. Not one.

What had they been doing while Dawn was going through hell? They had left her alone, and she had sought solace with the one person who had really understood what she was going through, someone who really couldn’t be described as soulless anymore.

There was a final shock. At the back of the album, framed with gold ribbon, was a sketch. It was of her and Dawn. It was her in the drawing, but such a beautiful version of her. Buffy couldn’t believe how incredible it was. She looked vibrant. Alive. Powerful. Special. She knew without doubt that Spike had drawn it, it was a picture of her as he saw her, and it took her breath away. Dawn looked older somehow, and Buffy was struck anew with just how much she had gone through in her short life, and how grown up she had all of a sudden become.

She fleetingly wondered if being amazing at drawing was a trait of all vampires, or if it was just one belonging to the two very special, but very different, ones she had in her life.

Underneath the drawing, in an elegant and yet somehow ragged script were the words ‘Always with you’.

Buffy couldn’t take anymore, she broke down.
She cried for her old life, and the girl she used to be. She cried for her friends, for their loss and their short sighted actions. She cried for Angel, her first love who could never reach the woman she’d become. She cried for Dawn, for all that she’d suffered. She cried for her mother. She cried for her mom most of all, and for so many things.

Then she thought of Spike, and her tears stopped. She jumped up, and without even trying to sort out her face, which had grown puffy with all the crying, or finding a jacket, she ran out of the house, stopping for only a second to pick up something she had spotted hanging over the door. She ran.


Spike flicked aimlessly through the channels but nothing was holding his attention for long. All he could think about, as was so often the case these days, was Buffy. How was she? How was she feeling? What was she doing? How was she coping with the bloody stupid and ultimately depressing holiday season?
He was missing the nibblet too. She had said she’d pop in and see him today, and it wasn’t like her not to turn up.

Right on que there was a timid knock on the door. Spike stiffened. No one knocked when they came to see him. Dawn usually walked on in, as long as it wasn’t too early (she’d learnt her lesson after coming over once before he’d been dressed. A scarring incident for both). The same was true for Clem. The soddin scoobies only came to see him if they needed muscle, and in the middle of the day that wasn’t too likely. And Buffy... Buffy always kicked her way in... but he was almost sure... he could sense her... Buffy?

Spike got to his feet but kept his hopes clamped down. It couldn’t be Buffy.
He opened the door, standing out of the sunlight, and there she was.

Her eyes were red and swollen, her hair was everywhere and were they... bloody hell she was in her pj’s. She had never looked so beautiful.

Buffy looked at him. Really looked at him, as though for the first time. The indirect sunlight illuminated his flawless skin, and brightened his beautiful eyes. The awe on his face at the sight of her was obvious, so was the love. He was breathtaking. He might have been far from perfect in the past, but right here, right now, he was perfect for her.

He went to speak, but Buffy cut him off.

With a shaking hand and hopeful smile she held a sprig of mistletoe over his head.
Her voice was raw as she said “Merry Christmas Spike.”

Then she leaned in and kissed him. It wasn’t like their first kiss, raw and desperate, it was gentle, tender, just as full of passion, but this time it was full of something else as well.
Now Buffy was sure. She felt it in his heart, she felt it in her heart. She felt it in their heart. Love.

She had been torn from heaven, but she had found a new sort of paradise, and she wasn’t going to let it go.



Not everyone was happy with what they got for Christmas that year, but Buffy was. She sat on the sofa (well, she sat on Spike who was on the sofa) and she watched Dawn have a fairly rubbish, but very energetic, go at charades.
Buffy snuggled closer into her love, the man who controlled his monster and had filled her emptiness.

She looked at her family and she smiled.