His voice entangled her dreams, and the pictures of his face, in anguish and hurt and resentment brought forward by his words, twisted, as he thrust them at her.

“Well, that’s bloody funny coming from you! ‘No more games’? That’s all you’ve ever done is play me. And keep playing with the rules YOU make up as you like.

You know what I am.

You’ve always known. And you come to me all the same…”

“Spike,” she moaned, feeling lost and alone in the sudden darkness of her own head.

She slowly eased her eyes open, her room was filled with sunlight. A whole new day had arrived and… she yawned, stretched a little and tried to remember.

What’s the use of HAVING dreams if you can never remember them? she thought, annoyed, then she turned her head and her eyes met Dawn’s.

“Hi,” her sister said a little hesitantly. “Eh, good morning,” she corrected herself and Buffy smiled.

“Good morning…” she answered and then she realized something. “Right, I’d almost forgotten. Time to get up and go save the world.”

She sat up and Dawn did the same, still looking at her rather closely and Buffy got a distinct feeling that the younger one had something on her mind. She turned to her sister.

Since Buffy’s birthday party from hell they had had some serious conversations about everything and even though things were still not ALL in place at least they had grown that much closer.

“Is there something you wanna talk about?” Buffy asked and Dawn looked rather guilty, not a good sign. “Don’t tell me it has to do with school and that you thought since I’m going back in time I won’t be in the mood to tell you my mind, ‘cause if you were…”

“You said ‘Spike’…”

Buffy almost bit her tongue off at that ever so subtle statement and she really didn’t want to ask, looking almost frantically around for some kind of excuse to get out of the conversation that seemed to inevitably be building. But she saw the look on Dawn’s face and even though her sister wasn’t as bull-headed as her at times, they still had the same blood in their veins and Buffy knew that this was not something Dawn would just let go.

“When did I say that?” she therefore asked, hoping that it sounded as careless as she had set it out to.

“Right before you woke up… You sounded all sad and, I don’t know, like you, I don’t know, missed him, almost. Like ‘Spike…’,” Dawn mimicked her and Buffy tried desperately to keep her eyes from growing. “Sorry I overheard it,” Dawn added. “It was just kinda hard not to.”

Ah, so that was where the guilt came from…Buffy thought. Oh God, how am I going to get out of this one? If I tell her why I might have had Spike in my head she’s going to hate me forever for using him like I did… And to have that be the introduction to the ‘sex talk’…

Buffy felt a shiver go through her at the thought of Dawn’s eyes looking at her with detest over what she had done to the younger one’s closest friend. She KNEW her sister would take Spike’s side and she would lose her. Lose her to that self-righteous, selfish, self-…

Missed him? HAH! Well, some parts of him… She felt herself starting to blush under her sister’s gaze and quickly pushed all that had to do with…that…out of her head, determined to be as truthful as possible with Dawn.

“Were you dreaming?” Dawn now asked, her look was quizzical but laced with an emotion that to Buffy looked close to humor. “About Spike, I mean,” she added and now Buffy was sure that she was partially teasing her.

She couldn’t help but smile a little.

“Well, I can’t remember,” she answered, relief being welcomed with trombones by her heart at the escape route her mind seemed to have found. She started to get out of bed. “Don’t you just hate it when you can’t remember what you’ve dreamt?” she added, turning back to Dawn.

“Oh, so you wish you could remember then?” Dawn asked and the teasing glint in her eyes increased.

She gets it from me, Buffy thought wryly; still, slightly panicking.

She let hear a laugh that sounded much too nervous and she coughed to cover it up, this making Dawn cock one eyebrow at her. Buffy plastered a smile on her face before saying:

“Don’t be silly.”

If she could make this conversation disappear simply by dragging it out so that it couldn’t ‘appear’ before it was time for her to go take care of this Fire thingy in England, then so she would.

She opened her closet, staring blankly at her clothes trying to remember WHY she had opened the door in the first place. What caused her to spin around with a surprise she couldn’t hide was what Dawn suddenly said next:

“What did you mean with ‘Sleeping with a vampire she hates’?”

Her voice was hurt and rather defensive. Buffy slowly sat down on the bed again, racking her brain trying to remember if she had actually said that. She swallowed, looking up at Dawn with such a lost expression that Dawn must have understood she wasn’t following because she explained, her voice now even more on the defense:

“When you were all Sunnydale-is-all-in-my-heady last week, when you were going Wacko Sister on me and tried to catch me to put me in the basement… You said that this whole thing, Sunnydale, me, the Slayer, was ridiculous and what was more real: a crazy girl in an institution or some kind of supergirl… and then you said, I can’t remember but it lead up to you saying ‘Sleeping with a vampire she hates’… What did you mean by that?”

She closed her eyes. She didn’t remember saying that to Dawn.

‘I don’t HATE you, Spike.’

“Dawn,” she said. “I was delusional, I don’t know WHAT I was saying but it wasn’t ME! I said that I didn’t have a sister, and you KNOW I didn’t mean that, that wasn’t me saying those things…” she repeated.

Dawn eyed her closely, looking rather disbelieving and then she turned her head in a defiant gesture.

“Spike is my friend,” she mumbled and Buffy felt her heart ache, she wanted to reach out to her but didn’t want to deal with the pain if Dawn pulled away. “He’s a GOOD vampire now, and you can’t even see that,” she continued, looking up with the all too familiar anger in her eyes. “I know that he suffers for it, the demon in him fights to get out and it does sometimes but… but not to kill… and I know you just think it’s the chip,” her eyes filling with tears now, “but it’s not! And you can’t even SEE it!”

She scrambled off the bed and ran out of the room.

Buffy felt her shoulders slump and she hung her head, feeling so tired of the whole thing. The whole SPIKE thing that just kept circling and circling her brain and she didn’t seem to be able to get rid of it. So, would spilling the secret help? HOW could it help? It was over and done with, why not just move on…?

If she tried to explain it to Dawn… She would never understand how Buffy could’ve used Spike like that…Buffy herself could hardly understand it at times, for crying out loud!

“But you’re wrong about one thing, Dawn,” she mumbled, lying down on the bed again and with a sigh closing her eyes for a moment, just a moment. “It’s seeing it that scares the hell out of me.”


***


Willow woke her with a gentle shake.

Her eyes opened and she shot up into a seated position, looking startled at her friend.

“Woah, there, Buffy. Just me, the not so dangerous ex-witch, remember?” Willow said, holding her hands in front of her.

Buffy’s heart was racing. She remembered the dream she had just been snapped out of.

Ah, so that was the trick to remembering, waking up before it was all done.

She had been running so fast, away from something, away from something huge that was threatening to swallow her whole.

Now she tried to ease her breathing, letting a small smile grow on her lips she shook her head a little.

“Sorry, Will,” she said and Willow smiled back.

“It’s okay… Um. Dawn was pretty upset about something before, she was slamming around in the kitchen and woke me up, and Tara and Xander…” Willow watched Buffy’s eyes dress in such a guilty expression that she almost regretted bringing it up.

“We had a fight. Well, SHE had one with me,” Buffy said, voice low and then looking even more burdened as she added: “About Spike.”

Willow nodded, understanding, and then she sat down on the bed beside her friend.

“What did she say this time?” she asked and Buffy shrugged a little, trying to come off like it was all the same to her but looking more like she was about to cry than anything else.

“She just told me I should see that he’s not that terrible, awful scumbag that dragged his sorry ass into Sunnydale a thousand years ago, that he’s turned good through some kind of a miracle and that I should stop with the hacking already…” Buffy mumbled, tears now slowly filling her eyes just to spill over. “But see, she’s wrong about that. Because I’ve seen him do things that are so damned stupid, all the schemes he still has going, all the darn monsters he still hangs around with… She thinks he’s toothless not only because of the chip but through some divine interference with his VAMPIRE being? Well, screw that and screw HIM because he just HASN’T changed!”

Buffy wiped her tears away, irritated at them, annoyed with the whole subject.

“And still…” Willow said silently, “does those schemes make him the same as he was when he came here?”

Buffy looked up at her friend, not BELIEVING that Willow was actually sounding like she was siding against her.

“I talked with the terrible, awful scumbag yesterday about something that’d been on my mind for a while and Buffy… I know he tried to hide it behind that smugness and the shoulder shrugging but I could see how…relieved he looked, and almost happy. And it made ME feel incredible to think that in that dusty place where his soul used to be I just created a spark that wasn’t about hate or greed or being selfish…”

‘I love you, Buffy…’

She closed her eyes, concentrating the consistent echo of those words to stop, they did and she looked up again.

“Wow, Will,” she said slowly, “that sounds… I thought you didn’t like Spike, what’s with the whole attitude swipe?” she then asked and Willow smiled a little.

“I don’t know… I gave him a big old speech that I really don’t wanna let loose here right now, but it was basically about how I appreciate all that he’s done for Dawnie. You don’t know what he did when you were…gone last summer. He looked out for her in every way, you have no idea. And that’s kinda why I understand HER too, he’s like family to her now, Buff, whether you like it or not, and I just think you should consider that.”

“But I’m her BLOOD! Why does she always have to look at things from HIS viewpoint?” Buffy asked, her tears now drying canals down her cheeks. “It’s not fair.”

“Well, have you ever even stopped to THINK about Spike maybe deserving better treatment?”

“Oh, yeah, the Slayer puts on the silk-gloves for the frigging VAMPIRE!” Buffy snorted and Willow shook her head a little.

“I just think you’re being too stubborn on the subject, it almost sounds like you… Never mind. What I’m saying is that you treating Spike the way you do all the time gets to Dawn. Of course it does, and I KNOW you’ll see that if you only try to. She loves Spike, and I’m sure that in his own kind of way the feeling is mutual…”

“LOVE?” Buffy exploded. “Spike doesn’t love anybody but himself!”

Willow’s eyes widened at her friend’s words.

“I think you know that’s not true,” she said standing up.

“Of course it is,” Buffy pressed. “Because he CAN’T love. He doesn’t have a soul.”

Now Willow stared at her relentlessly, then she suddenly averted her eyes and mumbled:

“Everything is so easy summing it up like that, isn’t it? I was hoping you’d want to talk to me about this but I guess not…”

“Talk about what?”

“Nothing, Buffy. Just get dressed and come down, okay? Sarah is waiting for you and Spike. Wake him up on your way down, will you?” with that she walked to the door and was disappearing when Buffy said:

“But I… Where is he sleeping?”

“In Dawn’s bed,” Willow said over her shoulder and Buffy stared with hazy eyes at her bedroom door closing.

That’s where Sarah slept, she thought dully.

Then she reminded herself that she didn’t care what he did, that it didn’t matter, that she WANTED him to move on with his life, or unlife.

She pulled on a pair of jeans and a sweater, and after combing her hair quickly and brushing her teeth briefly she exited her room, walking slowly down the hall to the closed door of Dawn’s bedroom. She drew an unsteady breath, Lord how she hated the sudden feeling of invading his space, and then she turned the doorknob and let the door gently slide open.

He was still sleeping heavily, she recognized the breathing, as she took a step inside and softly closed it behind her.

The room was close to pitch black, the windows covered with thick blankets letting only a small slit of sunlight in. She turned to look at him.

His chest was heaving slowly up, slowly down, and she almost smiled, she had always found it a little amusing that he seemed to breathe without thinking about it even though he didn’t need to… She hesitated a moment before sitting down on the bed, he was on the other side of it and she sunk down on her elbows, looking intently at the silhouette of his face.

“He always was beautiful when he slept,” a voice suddenly sounded from the right hand corner and she was on her feet in a heart beat, looking as innocent as she could as Sarah got up from the chair she had been sitting on. “But I think he’s even more beautiful now, his face is somehow more etched, more profound,” she continued, stopping before the Slayer.

Buffy had scarcely been so embarrassed.

“I…um, I…” she stuttered. “Willow asked me to wake him up…she said that you were ready to leave and that you were waiting downstairs…” she finally blurted, voice low, and she could see that Sarah nodded, Buffy’s trained eyes were already growing used to the shadows in the room.

“I was, but then I remembered I had left this,” her hand gently brushing up and against the small chain hanging around her neck, “on the nightstand and I decided to get it, lest I should leave it…”

Buffy nodded, feeling her cheeks burn and eternally grateful for the darkness surrounding them.

“I’m sorry,” she then said. “I didn’t mean to disturb…I’ll let you wake him.”

But Sarah put a hand on her arm stopping her from leaving.

“What do you think my relationship with William is?” she whispered and Buffy swallowed, a little taken off guard by the question.

“Hmh…Well, I suppose I think you’re close friends…I mean, you seam close. VERY close, I guess.”

Sarah’s voice was almost conspiratorial when she whispered:

“Do you think our relationship is of the flesh?”

Buffy almost burst out laughing at the choice of words, it sounded so formal, especially used on Spike. That brought memories back that she didn’t want at the particular moment and so she hurried herself in answering:

“Yes, if you want to put it that way…”

“Bloody hell, what are you going on about? Can a person… or an UN-person get some sleep around here?!” Spike’s grumbling interrupted her and both the women turned to look at the vamp who seemed to immediately have gone back to sleep.

Sarah motioned for Buffy to open the door and they stepped outside.

Both blinking in the sudden light Sarah smiled at her brightly.

“I just wanted to clear this up, Buffy. Me and William…We’re lifelong friends, and NOTHING more. Last night we talked for a while… just like we did sometimes as children, and, well, we didn’t DO anything else than that. Heavens, that would be rather scandalous, not to mention on the border to incestuous,” she added with a rather disgusted look on her face.

Buffy couldn’t hold back the blooming relief that seemed to spread though her chest and out into her every nerve. She smiled back at Sarah, careful not to have it reflect the gratefulness she suddenly felt towards the lady. Then she sighed at herself, this whole Spike thing didn’t look like it was going to leave her alone for a while, did it?

Still, a part of her was jubilantly happy and she tried hard to suppress it but it was difficult; with having memories and desires and impulses and secrets to suppress as well.

She shook her head a little and turned her attention to Sarah’s necklace. The pendant was a small oval silver-locket with a pretty pattern encircling a P.

She frowned slightly, directing her eyes in Sarah’s again before asking:

“P? Shouldn’t it be an S?”

Sarah smiled, shaking her head.

“No, it’s for ‘precious’, William’s nickname for me… He gave this to me on my sixteenth birthday.”

Buffy looked at the locket again. Then she couldn’t help but let a small smile cross her lips, he did like his nicknames, didn’t he?

“Well, you go wake him up, I’ll be waiting downstairs,” Sarah said and before Buffy could protest she was walking away.

Buffy looked at the door, now feeling like she didn’t know exactly where opening it might lead.

She drew a breath and once more entered the room.

She left the door open, the light from the hallway placing itself on his bare chest, glittering slightly in the heavy silver chain around his neck.

She looked at him, feeling the ever so familiar hunger, but then made herself look away and raised her hands bringing them together in three loud claps as she cheerfully exclaimed:

“Rise and shine, Spikey, it’s a whole new day!”