Spoilers: Through Season Five
Summary: Keep your friends close...
Rating: PG
Disclaimer: Joss, not I. One line in this story is
from the episode "Innocence " and was written by Joss
Whedon.

Along Came a Spider
By Elizabeth
-----

He watches Dawn's throat.

A pulse beats there, nestled in the hollow of her
skin, and looking at it ignites a bright hot buzz in
Spike's head; little lightning flashes streaking
across his sight every time he blinks.

Pain has always grown on him.

Angel comes, dressed in black and weeping, as soon as
he hears Buffy is dead. I loved her, he says. I can't
believe she's gone. Spike listens outside, leans
against the wall with a cigarette slowly burning out
between his fingers. Giles and the others told him to
stay away but he refused. He knew they'd just come up
with some sort of spell to keep him out anyway.

He hears Dawn ask, "Then why did you leave?" and
smiles.

To kill this girl, you have to love her. He waits
until they all come outside and asks Angel if he
remembers saying those words. Angel punches him in the
face.

Dawn looks at him, bright-eyed and stricken. He knows
she's thinking about how very much she loved Buffy.
How very much Buffy loved her.

"Not you," he says.

But he doesn't mean it.

**

Dawn brings him blood sometimes.

She brings him the kind he likes, lifts it from the
blood bank that sits across town. He taught her how to
pick the lock so she could break in at night, but she
says it's easier to volunteer and just take a few bags
with her when she goes. He sees a lot of Buffy in her
when she hands him the bags, in the way her nose
wrinkles up, mingled outrage and interest.

He likes the slippery plastic feel of the bags, the
way they give under his teeth so easily. It's almost
like skin. And inside is the tangy iron taste of
humanity, a million heartbeats trapped and waiting
just for him.

"Want me to tell you what the sky looks like?" she
says as she hands him a bag.

She asks him that once in a while. She seems to think
he misses seeing clouds. She tells him that Buffy
showed her how to see shapes in them when she was
little.

"But that never happened, did it?" she asks.

"No," he says. "It never did."

"And she knew that, didn't she?"

He doesn't miss the sky at all. He shrugs, rips into
the bag and drinks.

**

He takes her to Buffy's grave every week.

They go on Thursday night. He watches some execrable
sitcom with Dawn first, some show she likes, and then
they walk to the cemetery. They sit there, in the
dark, and he tells her stories. Sometimes they're
true, sometimes they're not. Sometimes he talks about
Buffy, a little. Sometimes Dawn cries.

"I miss her," she says.

He hugs her when she says that. He always forgets how
warm human skin is, the burning hot feel and scent of
it rising up through her clothes and into him.

"I do too," he tells her, and looks at the stone
bearing Buffy's name. "She loved you. Don't ever
forget that."

He knows he won't.

**

They talk about Joyce, sit in Giles's apartment and
look at photo albums. They never discuss her while
they sit in the dark where Buffy's body is supposed to
rest.

He would raise Buffy if Dawn asked. She never has, and
he thinks it's because she knows what his answer would
be.

She says she isn't strong like Buffy. He agrees, but
never tells her so.

"You're strong," he says. "You're a survivor."

"I am?" she asks, and wipes her eyes with balled-up
fists.

"I am," she says, and looks up to meet his eyes. "I'm
sorry."

"Don't be," he replies.

He means that not everyone can be a hero. He knows.

He sort of tried.

**

The line of Dawn's back is tiny. Her bones are still
growing. He can hear them, if he listens closely. They
crackle and pop as they stretch, as cells multiply and
spread.

He once gave a girl's spine to Dru. The human back is
easy to open, and a spine is easy to remove. Dru
didn't realize that the bones would break.

**

She says he makes her feel safe.

He smiles and calls her niblet.

"Just a nibble," Dru used to say when she brought home
a snack. "It'll take away the edge."

**

She says she has trouble sleeping, that Giles's
apartment is too quiet, that Xander and Anya's is too
loud. She says she feels like she's in the way at
Willow and Tara's.

"I feel like I don't belong anywhere," she says, and
closes her eyes. He can see the light blue tracework
of veins across her eyelids.

"I'll take care of you," he whispers, and means it.

end

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