“You still have blood left, right?” It was one of the first questions she asked him every night. It usually popped out within a block or two of the Magic Box, and was always followed by a visual inspection gauging the degree of improvement in his condition. Tonight was no exception.

“Yeah, I’m good.”

“Are you – have you tried drinking regular blood yet?” Dawn asked cautiously.

“Been drinkin’ it every day for a while now,” he assured her, which was true. It just wasn’t the whole truth. “I’m gonna be fine, bit.”

It wasn’t as easy to put one over on her as some people – some vampires too – seemed to think. “Have you tried drinking regular blood plain?” she probed.

His averted eyes told her everything she needed to know. She folded her arms protectively across her stomach.

“I’m scared, Spike.”

That was the truth. He could almost taste her fear hanging in the warm summer air. Not too long ago, he would have savored it. Still would, if it was someone else’s fear. Anyone really, who wasn’t Dawn.

“Hey now,” his deep voice soothed her. “I’ll not have you worryin’ yourself sick about me. I’ve been around a long time, luv. Gonna be around a lot longer.”

“You almost died.”

“Pish,” he dismissed. “Just got some bad blood or somethin’.” They both knew that was pretty unlikely, but since they had no idea what had really happened, Spike thought it an effective dodge. He let his eyes catch hers. “’Sides, my girl saved me, didn’t she?”

Dawn brightened as he’d known she would. “Yeah. I guess I kinda did, didn’t I?”

“Sure did. Still can’t believe you snuck through the sewers to get to my place like that. I oughta beat you bloody for doin’ somethin’ so stupid and dangerous.”

They’d been over this before. He tried to sound parental and disapproving, and even though real fear for her safety stabbed through him, admiration for her fearlessness still colored his tone.

Anyone in their right mind would be, if not downright scared witless, then pretty damn nervous about navigating the town through the underground tunnels. Most of the beasties known to man, and more importantly, a good many not known to man, resided there, or used them to traverse the city. That Dawn had broken into the Magic Box in order to get her hands on the maps in Giles’ office, had charted the course to his crypt, and had then forced herself to take that course alone, all in an effort to save his evil hide, was still a source of raw wonder to Spike. Further, the first couple visits, even though he had no memory of them, hadn’t even been for the lofty purpose of saving his life. They had just been to see him, to be at his side while he was going though whatever it was he was going through.

To be there for him.

‘You stayed with me at the hospital,’ she’d told him. ‘It was my turn to be there for you. And they wouldn’t let me anywhere near you. So I had to find another way.’

In his entire unlife, no one had come close to taking on that kind of danger for his sake. Dru had taken some risks, yeah, but Dru was a killer. Dawn, though – an innocent child – so unable to defend herself… That this child, this young girl, would do something like that for him…

He didn’t understand it. At least, he wasn’t sure…But he knew how it made him feel. And he knew he’d never felt this way about another being. Her actions…If he hadn’t already pledged his protection, his life, for her, he would have done so after finding out what she had done. Up until the night of Buffy’s death, she may have, for the most part, still been just the Slayer’s kid sis to him, he wasn’t really sure. But now she was herself.

His girl. Dawn.

And he loved her more than anything on this earth, felt a fierce protective loyalty to her. That she seemed to feel the same way about him…Well, he was still having some trouble working his mind around that one.

Dawn had become quite adept at listening in on conversations others didn’t want her to hear. Gotta protect the kid, she thought disparagingly. From eavesdropping, she knew that Spike couldn’t keep any blood down. She knew they’d tried all kinds of blood, even straight-from-the-vein-Watcher blood.  And like the others, she had worried and agonized over Spike’s health, the only difference being that her reasons for doing so actually involved genuine affection.

It wasn’t until she’d been getting a pork roast out of the freezer for Tara to prepare for dinner one evening that Dawn had found the cure they needed. There, nestled in among the frozen packages of hamburger and the extra half gallon of Chocolate Chip Cookie Dough ice cream sat a few dozen packets of frozen Slayer blood.

Dawn had become accustomed, over time, to ignoring the packets of her sister’s blood. They’d been there since shortly after Angel had tried to drain her, kept on hand because of Buffy’s fear of hospitals and her high risk profession. Apparently the incident with Angel had spurred her sister into some sort of decision to keep a supply close at hand. She knew Buffy and Giles kept them ‘updated’, replacing aging packets of the emergency stash with fresh on a fairly regular basis. Dawn knew they were there, knew why they were there, and beyond that, had always chosen to pretty much ignore their existence, because of the general eeeww factor of the presence of human blood in the family freezer.

Tara, like Willow, believed there was a lot of comfort in food, and had been cooking up a storm since Buffy’s death. She had innocently sent Dawn to fetch that roast, bringing the young girl face to face with her sister’s blood, and Dawn had known. Just known. She’d known that here was the cure they were looking for.

Slayer blood.

Buffy’s blood.

Nothing would be more potent for Spike. She knew that, sadly, there was nothing remaining in this world that he would crave more, desire more. Dawn had been positive that it would cure him.

And it had.

She hadn’t talked to anyone about Buffy’s blood. She just didn’t feel up to the arguments she might face. Objections from Xander were a certainty. The possible reactions of the others were less certain, and she wasn’t going to let anything – or anyone – get in the way of helping Spike. The pain over losing her mother and her sister in such a short space of time had brought to life a firm, strong resolve in her mind. She was not going to lose anyone else. Not if there was anything she could do about it. Anything at all.

She hated herself for being so – angry – with them. With her mother and Buffy. Her father too. How could they leave her all alone? How could they? Her mother’s abandonment had been unwilling. But she’d still left, hadn’t she? And Buffy, even though she had been saving the world, had chosen to leave her. She’d chosen to leave her. Even worse, Buffy had known what their father was like. How – uninvolved. How careless. And she’d still jumped. She’d known Dawn would be left all alone in the world, and she had still jumped. Dawn didn’t know if she could ever forgive her for that. And she knew her anger at dead people only proved again that there was something wrong with her – that she wasn’t a good person. After all, only someone really bad, or probably even evil, could feel this kind of overwhelming anger at her own dead mother and sister, right?

When Spike hadn’t shown up at the funeral, she’d been devastated. Him, too? Probably he had only cared about her because of Buffy, she tried to tell herself. Just like the Scoobies probably did. She’d thought there was something between her and Spike – some sort of tie. Something that had been growing for months. And after the way he had looked at her just before Doc had thrown him off the tower, and the way he had held her hand, touched her, soothed her at the hospital afterward… She’d been so sure he loved her like she loved him. But when he hadn’t contacted her again, hadn’t been at the funeral…

She was furious with him the night of the funeral. She’d sat there, not even listening to the words of the minister. All she’d wanted to do was find Spike. Find him, and fly at him, and claw at him, and scream out her rage and her pain at his betrayal. She’d accepted the words of comfort offered by the others, and hadn’t even heard them. Somehow, the words had lost meaning and structure in the time between leaving their mouths and reaching her ears. All she could think about was finding Spike – and maybe, maybe even killing him…

When she had found him the next day, she’d been terrified by his condition. But she’d also felt, guiltily, a tremendous sense of relief. He hadn’t left her. He was sick, hurt, and he hadn’t been able to get to her. But he hadn’t left her.

And she was gonna do whatever she had to do to make sure that whatever was wrong with him didn’t take him away. From her.

Getting to, and into, the vampire’s crypt, with her sister’s blood had been almost scarier than her first trips. Probably, she thought later, because this trip meant more. She’d already gone into the tunnels on two other occasions in that terrible week since she’d first found Spike, but that didn’t make it any less frightening. Sneaking out of the house, past the trusting Tara, was easy. But the trip through the dark streets of Sunnydale, the entrance into the tunnels as close to the crypt as she could manage and the short trip through them until she actually emerged into the lower level of the crypt was truly terrifying. Her heart hammered wildly in her throat the entire time, and the queasiness and nausea of real fear made her wonder at times if she would make it. Only the grim determination to get to Spike – at first just to be with him, and on that last trip with the hope of curing him – had made it possible for her to keep going.

~*~

On that last night, Xander had already gone upstairs by the time she arrived, and thankfully she didn’t have to linger just out of sight in the tunnel for whoever was on watch to slip upstairs. Hanging there in the darkness made her feel extremely vulnerable. For a moment when she first entered the crypt, she sank to the floor, shaking with a dreadful mixture of fear and relief. She forced herself to take deep cleansing breaths, determined to gain control over her trembling body the way her mother had taught her to during the awful first months of her parents separation, when she’d been prone to panic attacks.

Finally, Dawn had set aside the stake and the cross she’d been clutching with desperate tightness, one in each fist. She rose, removing a packet of Buffy’s blood from one of her mother’s big old purses which she had slung over her shoulder and across her body, as she crossed to the mat on the floor where Spike lay. She’d thawed and warmed the blood at home, and though it probably wasn’t at that perfect 98.6 degrees, it wasn’t cold either.

God, he looked so awful. Like a skeleton, really, with skin stretched tightly over it. She was so afraid of losing him. Of losing one of the few people in her world who had not abandoned her. If she could do anything to prevent that… Grimly, she snipped open a corner of the bag containing her sister’s blood with the scissors she had brought along.

Spike’s eyes popped open, and she didn’t know if it was the sound she made as she settled in next to him on the floor, or just some reflex on his part. Or – he couldn’t have scented the blood, could he? His eyes met hers, and there was one of those brief moments of recognition deep within them.

She tried a smile. “I have something for you,” she told him.

His nostrils flared slightly as she dipped her finger into the fluid, then she brought it to his mouth, coating his lips with the blood.

He didn’t move, didn’t even lick at the blood.

She tried again. And then again. Nothing.

She tried to control her fear and panic. Please, please, please…

Finally, she forced her finger past his lips and into his mouth, smearing the blood directly onto his tongue.

Okay, she thought, this just officially moved to the top of the list of Most Totally Gross Things I Have Ever Done. Do it, she told herself. Don’t think about it, just do it. You can do this, Dawn. You can.

And – she got a reaction. She saw his mouth move, saw something in his eyes change. She repeated the motion. Again, and then again.

She almost cried when he began opening his mouth in anticipation of the next finger of blood. After ten minutes of feeding him in that manner, when he lifted a hand and reached toward the bag, pulling it closer to his mouth, she felt tears fill her eyes. And when the bag was at last empty and he showed no signs of bringing anything back up, she lowered her head into her hands and released some of the terrible tension and fear wracking her body by letting a few of those tears flow. Then she collected herself and pulled another bag of blood out of her purse.

An hour after he’d finished the second bag, she left him sleeping, and returned home.

In the morning, she got the welcome news that he was up and moving again. Though he was grossly thin and, according to Willow, for the first time really looked like the walking corpse he was, he seemed to be otherwise okay. He hadn’t fed in front of them, refusing the offered human blood. But otherwise, he seemed able to function quite normally. Or well, like Spike, anyway. Stand, walk, scowl, sit, turn on the telly. Everything but talk. And smirk.

He didn’t say a word to anyone, or in any other way respond to their comments and questions. For the most part, she was told, he acted as though he was alone in the crypt. After enduring a couple hours of Scoobie chatter, he had laid down on his bier, an action that had resulted in blessed silence. Apparently they thought he wanted a nap.

Dawn insisted on being taken to see him. Now that he was up, she couldn’t imagine what objections the others could come up with to keep them apart. Apparently her imagination needed work, because, with the exception of Tara, they’d all came up with at least one.

He was still too sick, he didn’t look good, he might frighten her, he was a vampire, for God’s sake. Blah, blah, blah.

But in this Dawn put her foot down, very openly, and very firmly. She would see him, and if they didn’t like it, they could take their objections and shove them up their...

She’d been cut off pretty abruptly at that point by Giles, but her determination had apparently come across, and the next day she was allowed to venture to the crypt with Willow. The meeting was very quiet. Spike didn’t speak to either of them, but he returned Dawn’s hug and sat near her on the ratty old sofa. Dawn chatted a little about a movie Tara had taken her to, and about a party she was invited to at a friend’s house.

When she and Willow left, Spike moved forward and hugged her. She’d been a little surprised by that, trying to remember if he’d ever initiated any contact between them in the past. There had been that night at the hospital after, well, after the tower. But other than that one time, she wasn’t really sure. It didn’t matter. She returned the hug gratefully.

“Later,” he’d whispered to her.

In the future, whenever he was asked,  Spike would always insist he had no memory of anything that had happened to him after he’d placed Buffy’s body back on the slab at the morgue. His first memory of anything after that was of finding himself standing in front of the telly in his crypt, staring at a sleeping Harris, and wondering what the hell the boy was doing in his home. Spike had watched as he woke, gathered what few wits he possessed about him, saw Spike, and screamed like a little girl.

But as soon as Dawn had come to the crypt that afternoon to see him, he’d known what she had done. It had pounded through his brain with certainty.

Buffy’s blood – Dawn. Buffy’s blood – Dawn.

She’d hardly managed to get to her bedroom that night before he appeared at her window, knocking softly for admittance. It was still quite early, just after 10:00, and she signaled him to stay as quiet as possible when she let him in.

He’d been waiting for her, and he didn’t waste time in small talk. He came straight to the point. Why not? They both knew why he was there.

“You have more of the Slayer’s blood?” he asked bluntly.

Dawn just looked at him and nodded. She wasn’t sure she wanted to know how he was so certain it was Buffy’s blood she’d brought to him. He hadn’t ever tasted it before, had he?

“Yeah, but it’s downstairs – in the basement, I mean, and we’ll have to wait ‘til everyone is asleep before we can go get it.”

“Scoobies don’t wanna share the wealth, I s’pose?”

“Huh?” Dawn was confused. What would the Scoobies want with Buffy’s blood?

“Jes – ah, never mind. Figured they weren’t real likely to wanna share her blood with me.”

“Yeah,” she agreed, understanding now. “I guess that’s one of the reasons I didn’t ask them. I just brought it to you on my own.”

Spike’s eyes drilled into hers from the sickeningly skeletal angles of his face. “And don’t think we won’t be talking about that, bit.”

Dawn lifted her chin and crossed her arms. “Got something you wanna say about it? Say it now.”

He stared at her in silence, proud of her for standing up to him.

“That last night. I told your sis that, anything happened, I’d watch out for you. The Scoobies have been yappin’ at me for almost two days. Guess they feel they have to keep talkin’ even if I’m not sayin’ much.” Or anything, for that matter. “But I heard enough. They’ve got no idea what happened. Way I got it figured, you snuck into my crypt through the tunnels. Not real safe, pint-sized. Doubt big sis would approve.”

“Well, she’s not here is she?” Dawn said defiantly and Spike’s eyes went as cold and dead as he looked.

Dawn took a step back, appalled by what she had said, and her arms fell to her sides, bravado gone.

“I’m sorry,” she told him sincerely. “Sorry. I don’t know what’s making me so – nasty and bitchy.”

Seeing her pain, Spike forcibly swallowed his own.

“Genetic make-up?” he ventured, trying to lighten the mood. “God knows your sis had bitchiness down to an art form.”

Dawn smiled, even laughed a little. “Oh my god, yeah. The stories I could tell you about bitchy Buffy... I used to call her that, you know, in all capital letters: ’BITCHY BUFFY, BITCHY BUFFY’. It used to drive her nuts.” Dawn paused, remembering her own shrieks as Buffy chased her down the stairs. Her older sister only gave up the chase when Dawn ducked behind their mother for protection. Dawn paused, waited, blinked at tears, and controlled herself. “ Mom had her bitchy side too. Especially if you woke her up before 9:00 on Sunday morning.”

“Your mum? Really?”

Spike had fond memories of some of the times he’d seen Joyce in a temper, particularly wielding an ax. She’d been a damn fine woman, he thought. Fierce. He liked that. But his surprised, disbelieving tone encouraged Dawn to reminisce and she started to, slowly at first. Soon she was talking freely about her mom and Buffy. She sat on her bed, and Spike leaned against the wall near the window, listening. He nodded or injected an offhand comment here and there to spur her on. His interest ensured that she kept talking quietly until the house was silent and still. He didn’t rush her even then, letting her share her pain and her memories until she seemed to run out of steam and suggested herself that they should head downstairs to get the blood.

He’d been desperately hungry by then, anxious to feed. But even Dawn’s neck didn’t look appealing. He wanted his Slayer’s blood. Nothing else. Even the fact that it was apparently Buffy’s blood that had created Dawn, Buffy’s blood that ran through the young girl’s veins, didn’t matter. He wanted his Slayer’s blood. Just hers.

As he eyed the supply Dawn showed him in the freezer, his mind was already calculating how long he could make it last. The thought of mixing her rich blood with other blood – any other blood – revolted him. If he was religious at all, he’d think it sacrilegious to even contemplate such a thing.

But he had to be practical. For the next several weeks anyway, he had things to do, things to kill, one young girl to protect. And since he had no idea if he could keep down any blood but hers, he’d better at least try mixing it with something else, make it last as long as possible.

And savor every powerful, intoxicating drop.

~*~

Once they arrived at the Summers house, Spike was able to distract Dawn from her worries about his health by furthering her instruction in the many and varied forms of cheating at cards. The girl was a natural. Her ability to stack the deck was improving daily, and, even with those apparently genetically small Summers hands, she could palm an ace with the best of them.

He was damn proud of his girl.

Tomorrow was Saturday, and Dawn was expected at the Magic Box by 9:00 am. Although she helped out there more often, she was officially ‘on the payroll’ two evenings a week – Tuesdays and Thursdays , which seemed to be the big ‘magical needs’ shopping nights – and Saturdays. The little bit of spending money she was earning seemed to give her a small feeling of independence, and it was a safe job for her, working under watchful Scoobie eyes.

Tired out by the long day she’d had, she was in bed by 10:30. By the time the witches arrived home only half an hour later, Spike was practically climbing the walls. He’d never admit it to his girl, but being in the house on Revello Drive was agony for him. While Dawn was awake and distracting him with her chatter, he could bear it. But once she went off to bed, he felt as though the walls were literally closing in on him. Surrounded by photos of Buffy, memories of Buffy, and worst of all, catching elusive whiffs of his dead Slayer’s scent in the air, was, for him, a silent and extremely effective form of torture. He hated being in the Summers house, and had to brace himself every night when he walked in the door with Dawn.

Willow and Tara came in, greeting him as they always did. And, as had become his habit, he avoided their eyes, ignored their overtures, and left the house without a word to either of them.

Time to scare up something to kill. In the past, a decent spot of violence had always soothed him. No reason to think that wouldn’t be the end result again sometime soon.

~*~

From Mary: Just a note to acknowledge that I blatantly and shamelessly stole the idea of Buffy storing some of her blood from First Rabid’s great fic, ‘Cuore Della Notte’. Rabid still talks to me, though! ‘Cuore Della Notte’ has long been one of my very favorite B/S fics. Check it out at Rabid’s page, Rain On Dust (where Rabid is – Oh. My. God. – currently creating a page just for me!) : http://www.geocities.com/rabid1st/Cuoredellanotte1ffn.htm

‘Cuore Della Notte’ is also archived at Kimberly’s wonderful B/S site, Nothing Like the Sun:

http://www.nothinglikethesun.com/Other-Fics/Cuore-Della-Notte.shtml

 Go – read it, enjoy it! She writes an absolutely wonderful Spike. And we know how we all love that...