Gone! In a heartbeat. No. Less. Light pulsed and flashed blindingly. The scent of ozone hung heavily on the air, and an eerie, high-pitched scream rent the deathly-still night, tearing painfully at his ears. And then she was gone, as if she had never been there at all. “No!” A ragged cry sounded from somewhere, a painful tormented keening that left the listener heartbroken. It was long moments before he realised that the grief-ridden cry was being torn from his own throat. ***** She had thought that she had known what pain was; after all, pain was all that she had known since she had been dragged back here to this world. Pain, or numbness, but nothing in between the extremes; she wasn’t entirely sure which of the two was worse. The only time things were bearable was in the dim light and the quiet, soothing company that she found, ironically enough, in a crypt. That was where she belonged. With the dead. Only her friends wouldn’t allow her to stay there, no more so now than when she had been in heaven. If she was gone too long, they asked questions. If they found her talking to Spike, there were the glares and the worried looks, the nasty, cruel words spoken when they thought she could not hear, the spiteful cruelties directed towards the vampire who had fought at their sides and protected them over the summer months. So she put on a happy face, tried to make them believe that everything was alright, that she was happy to have been brought back here—to where everything was hard, and harsh, and a constant daily struggle. She couldn’t tell them, couldn’t let them know what they had done; it would break them, she knew that. It would just cause more pain. And then there would be more of the sideways glances and the worried looks. No, she couldn’t tell those who were nearest and dearest to her the truth about where she had been; the only one she could tell was Spike. He didn’t look at her like he expected her to ‘get over it;’ he didn’t give her pitying glances when he thought she wasn’t looking. He was just there for her. He allowed her to be quiet and still—not pushing her for conversation or asking her to be all right, not asking her to be… anything. Just allowing her to ‘be’. He offered her peace in a world of pain. Now, there was no peace that could be offered, and the pain she had known seemed meaningless—an empty echo in contrast to the excruciating agony that currently gripped her. Gone! She was gone. In less time than it took to draw a breath, her world was turned upside down, and she learned the true meaning of pain. ***** They had been walking through the early evening, Dawn chattering away as usual, and both of them had smiled indulgently at her enthusiasm. Spike distracted Dawn whenever her nattering touched upon something a little too raw, a little too close to the painful wound that Buffy carried in her heart—where she had been while she was ‘away’ for the summer. Anyone watching them would have thought they were a happy family out for an early evening stroll, albeit a stroll through the unlikely setting of one of Sunnydale’s many cemeteries. And there, in that setting, Buffy knew one of the moments of almost-happiness that she had experienced so rarely in the weeks since her resurrection. For some reason, time spent with Dawn and Spike was like that; it was strange to her that, amidst the mayhem of Dawn’s relentless noise and boundless energy, she was still able to find peace. Not that time alone with her sister and her former enemy was a common event; her friends seemed to feel the need to surround her at all times. She knew that their actions stemmed from concern, worry, love; she knew this, but it didn’t make it any easier to bear. One moment, Dawn had been regaling them with a story about an unfortunate classmate and a pot of paint in art class that day, her face animated as she recalled the incident in every minute detail. In the next, a blinding light had incapacitated them all, a shrieking high-pitched wail accompanied by the distinctive scent of ozone hanging heavily on the air. A large red demon had appeared before them; watched through tear-blurred eyes by her companions, it had snatched Dawn up before either of them could move and, in yet another light-accompanied scream, had vanished as quickly as it had appeared, Dawn’s terrified cries for them to help her echoing plaintively in the still night air. ***** Spike forced himself to his feet, his ears still ringing from the strange, siren-like wail, his eyes streaming—whether as an after-effect of the light or from the grief that filled him at the loss of Dawn, he couldn’t say. He couldn’t think far beyond the fact that she had been taken, this little girl who had become, over the last few months, his world, his only reason to continue after the slayer’s death. He staggered to where Buffy lay, curled tightly in a ball, her sobs wrenching further at his already aching heart. He knelt, gathering her into his lap and holding her tightly against his chest as he soothed her gently, stroking her hair and murmuring quietly. He made meaningless sounds of comfort until he had succeeded in calming her enough that he was able to break through the grief that gripped the girl to reach the slayer within. “C’mon, love. We need to move, Buffy. Need to find a way to get her back.” His words cut through the miasma of pain and grief—‘get her back’—and she latched on to the phrase with all the tenacity and determination of her former self. The Slayer picked herself up from the ground. “Let’s go,” she said firmly, drying her tears with a rough swipe of her hand. “We’ll stop by my place and call the others; my guess is the Magic Box is the best place to meet up. Whatever we do is probably going to involve hocus pocus of some variety. At least we know Willow is up to it,” she continued bitterly. tbc |