The cavern was illuminated with rank upon rank of black candles, tall pillars and short squat votives crowded together on ledges, a great waxen pipe-organ with flames guttering low and sullen on each black and curling wick. Stalactites of drippings festooned the cavern walls. Willow watched a droplet of wax roll down the side of the nearest candle, slow, and freeze in the cool air. It smelled of licorice.
One of the eyeless men--the leader, Willow guessed, though they all looked identical--knelt before her, his bald leathery head bent in obsequious reverence. A dozen or so of his companions milled about at the opposite end of the cavern, having taken their fawning to a discreet distance after she'd singed a few burlap robes. Harbingers, they called themselves, and that name was naggingly familiar, but she couldn't exactly stroll into the Magic Box and play Research Girl right now. She'd made them fetch her a bench to sit on. It looked as if it had been ripped out of one of the old Initiative labs--there were bolt-holes in the bottoms of the legs and the slate-blue leatherette upholstery sported some fairly nasty-looking claw-marks on one end. Better than bare rock, though; if she was going to play Evil Overlord, there were going to be amenities. (She was pretty certain that her current situation was in blatant violation of Evil Overlord Rules #22, 50, and 54, but she had #29 down pat.)
"It's very simple," Willow said to the eyeless man. "You and your boss can't do diddly-squat without me. So let's ditch the cute little manipulation games, 'kay? Tell me exactly what the frilly heck is going on and maybe I'll just, you know, do something radical like help you. Not loving the mini-Armageddon concept." She avoided the creature's lack of eyes, her fingers picking at mildewy stuffing through the rents in the bench. "You're all pissy because I didn't kill Dawn and Spike didn't kill me and Buffy didn't kill Spike, but is any of that what you really want? No. What you want is to re-balance the Balance. Am I right?"
The Harbinger raised his mutilated head and did the staring-into-space thing that passed for looking at her. "What we want," he said in his dry grasshopper whisper, "is to overwhelm this entire plane in a firestorm of destruction, and enslave those we do not slay outright for an eternity of torment." A rictus which vaguely resembled a smile distorted his face for a second. "However, correcting the Balance is an acceptable short-term goal."
Willow swallowed. Never let them see you sweat, or stutter, or... even some of Spike's liquid courage would be nice right about now. "OK. So the problem is there are too many good guys running around. This can't just be happening because I brought Buffy back from the dead. There's been two Slayers ever since she died the first time."
Raven-harsh laughter rang in her ears. "No. It is not just happening because you brought the Slayer back to a life she'd willingly renounced, but your rash actions in doing so precipitated the present situation nonetheless. Why do you think fate drew Daniel Tanner to you, to make you our agent? That, too, is balance." The laugh chopped off short and he struck the butt of his staff against the cavern floor, speaking a word that grated like the stone-on-stone scrape of an opening tomb. A many-leveled game board shimmered into being in front of her, Salvador Dali channeling Harry Potter. Pieces advanced, retreated, fought and died, and with every move the configuration of the board shifted around them, an ever-changing pattern of action, reaction and consequence.
"Even this is a simplification, but the Balance, you see, is not a simple see-saw," the eyeless man said. "One piece for every living and unliving creature in this world. Any one of whom can, at the right time, in the right place, make an immeasurable difference. But there are certain individuals who, by virtue of power or determination, are recognized as warriors for one side or another."
Willow gripped the edge of the bench and leaned forward, studying the pieces in fascination. There was Buffy, sword in hand, the white queen. Giles and a mini-Willow flanked her, clad in bishop's robes and bearing ancient tomes, and there was Xander carrying a knight's lance. Opposite them was the black king--the Master, with Darla as his queen and a court full of minions. A new figure entered the fray, black and white entwined: Angel and Angelus frozen in a terrible struggle, the man pinning the demon. The board shifted; Angel staked Darla and Buffy crushed the Master's bones. Another shift and Spike roared onto the board with Drusilla, a black knight in the service of a new dark queen. Angelus ascended the throne, the new black king, and Spike interfered with his queen's move to allow Buffy check and mate.
Willow watched as Faith threw aside her white sword for Mayor Wilkins's obsidian knife, and stood at his right hand. Angel departed for the far ends of the board. Maggie Walsh died at the hands of her own creation. Faith changed sides again, Anya peered out of a castle that looked suspiciously like the Magic Box, Dawn arrived out of nowhere, neither black nor white, but a brilliant green. With each move and countermove the board changed, the dark pit at its heart slowly becoming a level plane, and an ominous upthrust of squares, like the burgeoning of a newborn volcano, began to form in its center.
The eyeless man looked down upon the board, his slash of a mouth dragging lines of his wrinkled countenance down with it. "Historically the Slayer fights alone, but Buffy Summers has drawn others to battle at her side. It was for her sake that Angel rejoined the fight on the side of the Powers. It was through his intervention that Faith did likewise. There are not only two Slayers, but the side of Light commands the vampire with a soul, and controls the Key, which was never intended to take part in the great struggle at all. Further," the Harbinger's voice took on a tinge of disgust, "Buffy Summers has suborned one of the greatest dark warriors of our age."
Willow blinked down at the tiny figure of Spike rearing back on his motorcycle, a jet-black anomaly among the assemblage of white pieces, and didn't bother to suppress a snort. "Spike? Near brush with sharp pointy teeth here! I'd call him part of the solution, not part of the problem."
"You are alive, are you not?" the Harbinger said. "Therefore he is part of the problem." The tiny figure of Buffy fell to its death from a miniature tower, and the swelling in the center of the board ceased its expansion until mini-Willow pulled mini-Buffy through a glowing portal and into play once more. "Being what he is, he cannot change sides. The human soul is a mutable thing; a demon's essence is carved in diamond."
"But Angel--"
"Angelus did not change; he was subdued. William the Bloody is--" He clenched fleshless fingers into scarecrow fists, and hissed in tones of loathing, "--trying to do the right thing. Being what he is, his motives cannot but be selfish--he fights for good to sate his craving for battle, to gratify his vanity, to bring happiness to those he..." the loathing distilled into pure acid, "...loves." The eyeless man pronounced the last word as if it were poison and his lips would wither to speak it. "But still, he is trying. That in itself is... unprecedented. It shakes the foundations of the possible."
On the board, Spike saved Daniel Tanner from a pair of anonymous vampires, and the Hellmouth boiled up like a witch's cauldron. "That's it?" Willow slid off the bench and dropped to her knees beside the board. She picked up the tiny jet figure and turned it over in her fingers. Weird to think that Spike without a soul was a bigger problem than Angel with. "That's what messed everything up? It's all Spike's fault for slacking off on the homicidal mania?"
"No more or less than it is the fault of Buffy Summers's renewed existence on this plane. Either one is unbalancing. Together they threaten disaster."
"What if we just teleport one of them to Maui or something?"
The eyeless man managed to convey complete contempt without moving a single facial muscle. "Insufficient. They must either be removed from this plane, or enticed to our side. Else..."
The vision of Sunnydale as a blasted field of corpses flooded her senses once more, heat and crow-calls and the stench of rotting flesh. Willow gripped the game-piece tightly, its tiny sharp projections digging into her palm, and fought with her heaving stomach. "Your side."
"If you say so." The Harbinger's smile was edging into Hannibal Lecter territory. "The former would be simpler, the latter of more long- term benefit. To some extent the Balance is self-correcting. When it skews too far to one side, random factors combine to provide individuals with opportunities to act so as to increase the presence of whichever side is lacking. But the individuals presented with such opportunities must choose to take advantage of them."
Willow frowned. "Like Spike did when he helped Buffy defeat Angelus... or when he turned against Adam... or when he held out against Glory, or..." Spike, it seemed, was large with the answering when opportunity knocked. She was beginning to see why the Black Hats might be peeved with him--not exactly the most reliable of employees. The Harbinger nodded grimly and Willow narrowed her eyes. "Wait a minute. Losing my magic bringing Buffy back...that's one of these random factors, isn't it?"
The smile became an incongruously prissy smirk. "Your reputation for intelligence is well-deserved. And you, unlike your comrades, realize that maintaining the Balance is more important than petty hopes of victory for your side. Who, then, is the more virtuous?"
Suck-up. Still, in the midst of stomach-churning fear and guilt it was a comforting thought. Just because the eyeless guy was evil didn't mean he couldn't be right. Spike had gone against his home team three or four times and had ended up helping save the world each time--why couldn't she do the same? Unlike Spike, she wasn't running off half-cocked in a passion to do the right thing for all the wrong reasons. She'd thought this out. She was responsible for this mess; it was up to her to clean it up. She looked up at the Harbinger. "Removed from this plane, or converted, huh?" Willow closed her eyes and reached out for the cords of power binding her to the remnants of Tanner's band, reeling them in. Deep within her was the sound of satisfied laughter.

Spike had never tackled brooding as an art--for one thing, Angel had staked out that emotional territory and guarded it with dog-in-the-manger ferocity for the last century, and for another, a proper brood required a an attention span Spike didn't possess. A day or two of deep brown study, tops, and he'd be exploding with the twitchy compulsion to do something. The closest he usually came was a sulk, preferably accompanied by getting good and smashed. Right now he regretted his lack of expertise.
They liked him. Tara'd said so, and Tara, of all people in the world, wouldn't lie. But they didn't trust him, not with the chip gone, not even Niblet. The knowledge was a gnawing ache in his gut, all the more painful for his inability to explain its presence. Buffy loved him. She lay draped atop him now, the afghan-wrapped chrysalis of some arts-and-crafts-minded moth, deep in untroubled sleep only inches away from the fangs which had come so close to meeting in Willow's tender neck. If that wasn't trust, what was? And shouldn't that have been enough, that Buffy trusted him with her life?
Except, of course, that he knew better than anyone that there were plenty of things Buffy held dearer than her own life. Her sister. Her friends. Her world. Her sodding duty, however weary of it she claimed to be. She'd entrusted him with Dawn once, and he'd failed her, and was bidding fair to do so again. His arms tightened fractionally around Buffy's shoulders and he timed his breathing to hers, drawing just enough air into his unresponsive lungs to fuel the low frustrated rumble in the depths of his chest. Each heartbeat marked a moment he'd never have with her again--each one to be seized and drained to the utmost. Holding her was a small slice of heaven, but...
...it wasn't enough.
Not good enough. Not for her. Never good enough. Got to find a way to do better.
A sharp little elbow jabbed him in the ribs as Buffy stirred in her sleep, and the top of her head bumped against his chin. She'd been catnapping for an hour now, and he had no intention of waking her; she'd gotten less sleep last night than he had. Too late; a second later the chrysalis heaved, stretched, and split open. Buffy's tawny-blonde head emerged from the fuzzy blue and crimson folds, staring into the empty spaces of the night--kindred to the empty spaces behind her eyes. The windows of her soul had the shades drawn again. She looked down at him as if at a stranger, and the afghan bunched beneath her clenched fingers. Her nails bit cresents in his chest through the intricately knotted yarn.
"Am I here? Is this real?"
Her voice was a lost thing in the wilderness. God, for an enemy he could fight, something with spines and scales he could pound into jelly and know that it would never trouble her again! Nothing to do against this foe but endure, while emptiness mocked him through her eyes. He cupped her face in both palms and smoothed one hand across her forehead, pushing the tangled locks of hair away from her face. "Shh, love. It's real. You're real--were you dreaming? You're awake now, pretty pet..."
For a moment she remained frozen in his grip, and then, to his enormous relief, a hint of spring appeared in the winter grey of her eyes. Buffy melted against him as the thaw spread through the rest of her, wrapping her arms around his torso. "Sorry," she whispered. "Just one of those... spells."
"I know, love. I'm here."
"Sometimes I think they're what's real. That I'm still dead, or I was never alive at all and all this is--" She broke off, racked with a continuous shiver. He'd never thought of her as fragile, or someone to be protected in a physical sense, but she felt so small like this, clinging to him like a burr. "I keep thinking--if I could remember. If there was some connection between me now and and me then. Something to fill up the empty place. I'd know. I'd be sure I was real. But there's nothing."
Your fault she's like this, you selfish tosser. Your soul that fetched her back. Spike's teeth met in his lower lip, and the unsatisfying tang of his own blood flooded his mouth. Sodding guilt. He hated it; freakish, unnatural thing, what business had he feeling anything like it? In the last year it had infiltrated his mind and heart like an emotional bindweed, getting into everywhere it wasn't wanted. "Love," he whispered, miserable, "I'm..."
Her fingers on his lips silenced him. "Don't be," she said. "Not now. I want to be here. Believe that."
But she was still shaking, the shiver muted through the enveloping blanket. He tucked the afghan's folds around her shoulders, stroking her hair and crooning softly as if she were a nervous animal to be soothed. Gradually Buffy relaxed beneath his touch, the last of the tension easing out of her shoulders as she snuggled into his embrace. "I did dream something," she said, a frown drawing a pair of tiny lines between her brows. "You were in it. You, and Willow, and...something else. It was your birthday. There was a party. You were sitting at the head of the table, and you had a crown on, and Willow gave you a present. It was a beautiful box, all tied up with a big red bow, and when you opened it up there was this... this... this grail kind of thing, a golden cup."
A wave of deja vu washed over him. He'd heard those words, or something like them, before--long ago and far away. Something Dru had said, maybe, but he couldn't remember, and like much of what Dru said, it didn't make any more sense the second time around.
Buffy went on, "It shone and shone, and you picked it up to drink out of it... and I knew that whatever was in the cup was going to kill you. Burn you up." Her eyes sought his, haunted. "I tried to take it away from you, smash it, but you said you needed it--you were crying, oh, God, like your heart was going to break--" Her voice cracked. "And you raised the cup, and you drank, and you--you screamed, and there was light everywhere, and--and--you were gone."
Spike brushed his lips across her forehead, kissing away the worry- lines, and summoned up a century's worth of experience in the fine art of handling women prone to prophetic nightmares. "Ah, is that all, sweet? You got any idea how often I've set myself afire? Takes more than a little charring round the edges to do Spike in. You even sure this dream's one of the special Slayer jobbies, and not just come of fretting over your sis all day?"
An almost-smile flashed across Buffy's face and she scrubbed at her gritty eyes with her knuckles. "No, the nightmares about Dawn have a lot more whining for Kleenex and Seven-Up in them. It felt like a Slayer dream. But usually the Slayer dreams are more with the Cecil B. DeMille, not so much with the David Lynch. What time is it?"
Spike glanced at the sky and consulted his internal clock. "Getting on for ten."
Buffy struggled free of the afghan and sat up, stretching. Her nose wrinkled disdainfully at their general air of disheveled sticky mess. "We have got to stop doing this in places with no running water."
"Sorry, pet. I can kick the head off a sprinkler if you like."
"Ooh, chivalry is not dead! C'mon, Grr-Kitty, let's go get cleaned up. The night is young and we have multiple asses to kick."
"Grr-what?"
"Don't blame me. Blondie Bear was taken."
Spike dropped the rumble an octave and growled, "Call me either one where anyone can hear you, chit, and I'll bloody well bite you."
Buffy's eyes glinted at him beneath lowered lashes, and ooh, yeah, there came the pouty lip, plump and pink and very, very biteable. "Threat or promise, Spikey?" She leaned over the side of the sarcophagus and began rummaging for her clothing. "We need to make the rounds and see if anyone's got goss on Willow. If she's pulled a Saruman on us she may be hiring orcs." Spike's eyebrow went up. "What?! I saw the movie! He's the... the other beardy guy." She paused, shirt in hand. "I don't even know how to feel about Willow right now. Mad, and worried, and did I say mad? I kind of hate asking Tara to..."
Spike laced his hands behind his head, licking the bitten place on his lower lip. "Yeh, not the most fun in the world, hunting down your nearest and dearest. Supposed to meet Clem at Willy's at eleven anyway; got business, and as of midnight Sunday last he owes me fifty quid. By the way, there's a Krallock demon in town we could do in any time we've a spare evening. Get me a fag while you're down there, love?"
Her reply was slightly muffled. "You don't need a cigarette."
Spike grinned. "Yeh? Came so hard that last time I thought my balls'd turned inside out. Believe me, pet, I need a ciggie." He could feel the heat rising in her; it was such a turn-on making her blush. For all her uninhibited verve between the sheets, Buffy liked to pretend a certain degree of innocence... or perhaps it wasn't pretend after all; part of her allure was the constant sense that he could astound her with her own body's capacity for pleasure. "Possibly three or four. Come on, world'll end at least six more times before you can expire of my second-hand smoke."
Buffy abandoned her search and flung herself across him, straddling his hips, and pinned his arms over his head. "Uh uh. It's my sacred Chosen One duty to fight evil, and smoking is evil. All those TV ads say so."
Spike regarded her for a second, catching his tongue-tip between his teeth, then twisted out from under her without warning and reached for his duster. Buffy dove after him, grabbed the other flap and managed to get a hand into one pocket. "Hah!" She waved the half-empty package of Marlboros triumphantly in the air, sending a few white cylinders flying gracefully into the night.
"Bloody hell, give that back! Do you know how much those things cost when you're not nicking 'em?"
Buffy stuck out her tongue, doing a little nyah-nyah lap-dance that set her breasts jiggling enticingly, and fuck if he wasn't packing wood again. She broke into a smug grin. "Make me."
"Grrrraarhh!" He lunged for her. Buffy ducked inside his reach. Her fingers were digging into his ribs, skittering up and down over every sensitive spot she'd discovered in the last week and a half, and Spike's growl metamorphosed into a shriek of laughter. "Bloody--YIII!! Buffy! No! Not that! Not there, oh Christ, fuck, YOW!" They flipped over the side of the sarcophagus and landed in a tangle of discarded clothes and afghan. Spike's teeth were just laying claim to one pert little breast when Buffy's purse rang from somewhere underneath the small of her back.
"Where'd it go, where'd--" Buffy flailed around for the cell with one hand, keeping the cigarettes at arm's length while Spike considered the delightful prospect before him. He gave the aureole a few preparatory circlings with the tip of his tongue and hummed as the delicate flesh crinkled beneath his touch. Buffy's eyes rolled back as she finally found the cell phone. "Hello? Tara? Yeah, I was just about to call you." She made furious get-off-me! gestures at Spike, who ignored her blithely.
"See, vampire here, love." He blew on the damp spot and turned his attention to the other breast, coaxing the nipple higher and harder, relishing the little involuntary jerks of her hips under his weight. "Got the world's biggest oral fixation--deprive me of my fags 'n I've got to suck on something..." Spike vamped out and caught her nipple between the points of his fangs, nipping and savaging with a rough relentless delicacy, until he could feel the blood pounding beneath the translucent skin. Reverting to human shape, he drew one sensitive little raspberry nub into his mouth with a growl, suckling avidly until the wild look in her eyes let him know it was time to switch off. With the cell in one hand and his smokes in the other Buffy was helpless to retaliate, and her every little wriggle and gasp went straight to his resurgant cock.
"Static?" Buffy squeaked. "No, that's Spike. Yes, I found him, and we had--a-ah!--long talk. He's, uh--oh!--looking for his cigarettes. Filthy, filthy habit. We were about to sally forth and--oooooh!--comb the underworld. But we can get his laundry off the couch first. Uh! Bye!"
Buffy dropped the cell phone, clasping the back of his head and pressing him closer, her fingers buried in his curls. A long wordless moan urged him to make a more thorough mouthful of her. The cigarettes fell from the nerveless fingers of her other hand, and Spike immediately snatched them, rocked back on his heels and stuck one into the corner of his mouth with a smirk. "Tsk, Slayer, lyin' down on the job? What happened to sallying forth to comb the underworld?"
Buffy glared, panting hard, then burst into giggles. Spike glanced down at himself; Little Spike was bobbing enthusiastically against his belly, desperate for more attention. Buffy rolled over, hiccuping with laughter, and shimmied across the pile of clothes to give it to him. "Isn't smoking supposed to stunt your growth?"
Once Buffy's expert assistance rendered him once more capable of zipping up his jeans in comfort, Spike lay in lazy repletion, chin on hand, and watched her dress. She sat on the side of the sarcophagus with her shirt half-buttoned, the modest swell of her breasts visible over the abbreviated lace of her bra--she was small and firm enough to go without if she wanted, but that flash of the forbidden always made his heart yearn to race, so he was glad she sometimes didn't want. Her hands moved in sure, graceful arcs, combing out her hair. A hundred strokes, he thought; lucky brush, in such intimate daily contact with that cascade of spun sunlight. He loved her hair, the sheen and bounce of gold silk above and the musky tangle of chestnut curls below; all that's best of dark and bright indeed, and who was he to sneer at unnatural blondes?
He ran a toe along her bare ankle and Buffy looked down at him for one moment of perfect radiant content, and then trouble entered her eyes once more. "Is it always going to be like this? I mean, eventually do we get to the point where we can touch each other without precipitating an exchange of bodily fluids?"
Silly question. He'd be wanting her when she was wrinkled and grey--stake him now and his restless dust would follow whatever wind stirred her clothing. "'Spect eventually we'll wear each other out and be reduced to one or two shags a day like everyone else."
"I guess. This, with us, totally refuses to suck. And I feel skeezy enjoying myself even a little when Tara's home worried sick and Willow's... whereever, doing whatever."
Ah, yes, the Summers guilt complex reared its annoying yet endearing head. "I'm worried about Red too, love, but since we weren't planning on hunting her tonight I can't see we've set the schedule back any."
Buffy looked at him, curious, and though he wasn't sure what he'd said to prompt it, she smiled, one of those glorious light-up-the-room smiles he'd happily endure a week-long John Tesh concert to see. She
stuffed the brush back in her purse, buttoned her blouse up and slipped her kicky little suede ankle boots back on--where the hell had she gotten those? Sometimes he suspected Dawn wasn't the only light-fingered one in the family. "It's funny. The first time we ever kissed, that time Willow messed up that spell...the moment we touched, nothing else mattered. I was sure it was the spell. But it keeps happening. Now I get to worry that it's because of whatever freakazoid demony secrets are lurking in my sordid Slayer past."
Spike allowed himself a nostalgic moment: Memories of their torrid clinch while the battle with the Chumash spirits raged around them had provided him with wanking material for the next year. He sat up and began pulling on his boots. "What of it if it is? Say you've a vamp fetish, say I've a Slayer fetish--good on us. Bloody brilliant luck for the both of us we met."
Buffy shook her head. "You know, I've got to stop listening to you. If I do it long enough, you start to make sense."

The Zagros demon in the purple knee brace was leaving the bar as the motorcycle roared into the parking lot. It snuffed the air as they pulled up, and shuffled hurriedly out of their way as Spike swung Buffy off the seat. Buffy watched it limp off across the unusually-full parking lot, eyes narrowed. "Scales the exact same color as the Bridesmaids' Dresses From Hell, I swear!" she muttered under her breath, her haunted expression segueing into a fresh pout at Spike's chuckle. "Oh, sure, you can laugh--all you have to do is show up in something black. What a sacrifice."
"Innit, though? Just goes to show what an altruistic bloke I am. 'Course I also have to be polite to Harris. Bad form to eat the groom on his wedding day." Spike offered her his arm; she took it, and he matched her quick glowing smile--a week and a half of shagging each other senseless in every position two exceptionally athletic and limber people could manage, and this simple public touch still lit him up like an electric torch. He didn't have to put on a show of swagger as they strode up to the front door; he was escorting his lady and for that reason alone he was king of the world.
The noise hit him the minute they stepped inside--the jukebox was blaring "This Kiss" over the din of a few dozen shouted conversations in half as many languages. On a normal Tuesday night, Willy's place boasted half a dozen customers, lurking in the corner booths or holding up the bar, but tonight every booth and table was packed, and part of the crowd had spilled over into the normally closed-off storerooms in the back of the building, much to the disgruntlement of the kitten poker crowd.
Spike scanned the crowd for Clem, but the Sharpesi demon was nowhere to be seen. The crowd wasn't the usual mix of vampires, demons, and a few down-and-out humans looking to score a suck job or just too fried to care who they drank with, either. The percentage of the weird and unusual had gone way up. A pair of Serevus demons, (obviously from out of town, judging by their matching I VISITED THE HELLMOUTH AND ALL I GOT WAS THIS LOUSY T-SHIRT attire) were posing beside the jukebox, their leathery wings poking through slits in the back of the shirts and fanning the smoky air. The tall, thin, bile-colored demon Spike recalled from their last visit was squinting at the Serevi through the viewfinder of a cheap 35mm camera and urging them "Closer! The wings are still cut off!" The looks of wariness, fear and just plain huh? at the sight of him at the Slayer's side, instead of a respectful three paces behind, were still pure gold. Word of Buffy's break with the Council was all over town by now, but no one was quite sure what it meant.
Willy was swiping a rag around a glass behind the bar, with the effect of redistributing the smudges in new and interesting patterns. He looked up as they approached, the tip of his long thin nose twitching. "Hey, Slayer," he said, guarded. "Or is it just Miz Summers now that you're a free agent again?"
"It's always Slayer to you, Willy," Buffy replied, leaning against the bar. Spike settled into a hipshot slouch behind her, arms folded across his chest. "Busy," she said, as the vampires on either side of her grabbed their drinks and abandoned their stools. "What is this, triple coupon night?"
Willy shrugged. "Bad stuff in the downbelow, Slayer. Or good stuff. Either way, the Hellmouth's not real reliable-like these days, and it's messin' up a lot of prime real estate. You need a place to crash for the day, Spike, I'm rentin' out the storeroom. Only fifty bucks a day, and cheap at the price."
"That would be the storeroom with the windows that let in the nice sunbeams around tennish?" Spike asked. "Grand-dad didn't recommend the view."
"Suit yourself. What can I do you for? Got a nice fresh shipment of--"
"We need some information," Buffy interrupted. "Willow Rosenberg. She disappeared Monday night, and we think she's gotten into something over her head. Have you heard anything--"
"Yeah, well, my memory ain't none too good since that no-good skunk messed with my mind." Willy set the glass down and picked up another one. Spike observed with interest that the one he'd set down was now actually dirtier than the one he was cleaning. "Not to mention the recent unpleasantness with the Hellmouth. All these folks on the move, it's easy to miss one girl." At Buffy's hard-edged look, he added hastily, "I'll tell ya anything I know, Slayer, you don't have to bust up the place. But things is kinda hazy these days. I'm just sayin'."
The corners of Buffy's mouth went pinched, and her hand started to travel towards her purse. Willy was fishing for a bribe, but considering the current strained state of the Summers financial empire, Spike was fairly sure she didn't have enough to make The Snitch pony up, and he wasn't inclined to part with any more of his own hard-earned dosh than absolutely necessary. "This shouldn't strain even your limited mental capacity, mate," Spike said. "Wiccan bird--red hair, green eyes, so tall, yen for the ladies? Seen hide nor hair of her, or not?"
Willy smirked. "You're asking me?" He threw a conspiratorial look at Buffy. "Last time the witch went missing, Chip Boy here--urk!" Glassware went flying and the bartender's legs spasmed in a frog-kick as Spike heaved him over the bar. Spike cocked his head and smiled, very deliberately letting the man watch his face distort and his canines lengthen and sharpen. The room went silent, as if someone'd flipped the mute button on the whole chattering lot of them, and every head swivelled to the tableau beside the bar, taking in the fact of Spike holding Willy at arm's length a foot above the floor and not collapsing in agony.
"You might think," Spike said pleasantly, "That this trick's working 'cause I'm not meaning to hurt you. Could just be I'm just holding you here for the Slayer to whale on, not that either of us'd do something that uncivilized--oh, wait." He drove his other fist into Willy's gut while Buffy watched with critical detachment--not hard; barely a love-tap by vampire standards, but Willy gave vent to a very gratifying 'oof!' "Yes, we would."
"Spike, he can't tell us everything he knows with a crushed windpipe. Let him down." Spike let go immediately and Willy dropped, staggered, and narrowly averted a fall by grabbing the bar. Buffy pushed that delectable lower lip out. "Besides, I'm not having any fun. Next time I get to be the bad cop."
Spike stepped back with an elaborate bow. "Deepest apologies, pet. Ladies first."
Buffy shot him a flirtatious smile and rounded on Willy, grabbing the bartender by the lapels. She wasn't tall enough to hold him off the floor, but she got her point across. "So?"
Willy rubbed his throat, and jerked his head in Spike's direction. His protuberant eyes were showing a greater than usual amount of white around the edges. "So he's...uh..."
"Are we talking about Spike?" Buffy inquired, giving him a shake. "I don't remember us talking about Spike."
"Look, honest, Slayer, I don't know! It's like a Rwandan refugee camp down there. Your Willow could be anywhere--but..." He hesitated, and continued in a lower voice, "May not mean anything, but the first folks to start moving, a couple of weeks ago, before all this got so bad? They weren't movin' away from the Hellmouth. They were kiting out of the section of the caves closer to where those Army guys were set up a few years back. If your pal's involved with something, it may be setting up shop there."
Buffy let Willy go and exchanged a look with Spike while Willy made a hasty retreat to the relative safety of the area behind the bar. Neither of them had any very fond memories of that particular area of Sunnydale Underground. Spike pulled a twenty out of his pocket and slapped it down on the bar. "Right, then. Clem comes in, we're at the table over there. O-neg and Guinness, make sure it's the hospital stuff, and don't think I can't taste the difference. You want anything, pet? I'm still flush with nice clean eyeball money."
"Diet Coke." She eyed the glasses on the counter. "In the can, please. And I could go for some nachos."
"You heard the Slayer." Spike lapsed back into human shape and gave Willy his most charming and predatory smile. "Keep the change."
They headed for the table, loaded down with drinks and Willy's Kitten Surprise nachos. Willy's limited menu was sadly devoid of blooming onions, and Spike wondered exactly how high on the evil meter breaking a few of the owner's fingers until he agreed to feature it would register. Probably fairly high, going by the glowing sense of anticipation the thought of doing it produced. Maybe he could just threaten finger breakage; contemplating that only gave him a small happy.
Spike set his blood and Guinness down, delivered Buffy her Coke, pulled out a chair for her and slouched comfortably down on his tailbone. Buffy perched on the edge of her seat and picked up a nacho, nibbling on the edge. "We can recon the caves--" she yawned. "Tomorrow, I guess. Maybe Tara will be able to narrow it down to, oh, only fifty or sixty miles of tunnel by then." She looked at the nachos, then down at herself, eyes large with sudden doubt. "You'd tell me if I was getting fat, right?"
That made it official; he was absolutely, positively The Boyfriend-- bizarre changes of subject and the most dreaded question a woman could ask a man all wrapped up in one. "Is there any answer to that which won't get me staked? 'Love, hate to tell you, but you're in grave danger of ballooning up to a size two?'"
She smacked his arm. "I'm serious! I've been eating like a horse lately. Do these pants look tighter to you?"
Spike favored her with a lascivious grin. "Yeh, and the strange thing is, seein' you in 'em always makes my trousers tighter, too. Think it's psychological?"
Buffy rolled her eyes. "You like getting slapped around, don't you?"
"Depends on who's doing the slapping." He waggled an eyebrow at her. "Still got those manacles under the bed, you know."
"And once more, we enter into 'ew' territory. Like I'd ever let you chain me up again."
"Thinking more of letting you chain me up."
She snorted, but there was a gleam of--anticipation? curiosity?--in her eyes. Make a note of that one for the one-month anniversary. Buffy scooched her chair over, leaned into his side and gave his biceps a squeeze as he slipped an arm around her shoulders. "You're a big ol' pervert, and if you ever tell anyone I even thought about it the world will find out that you purr when I scratch your lumpies. Hey, there's Clem."
"I do not--oh, you're thinking about it, then?" Spike sat up and waved Clem over, and the bile-colored demon's flash went off right in front of them, a hot needle in his light-sensitive eyes. "Watch it, wanker!" He was half-way into game face, blinking white and violet splotches from his vision and lunging over the table when Buffy caught him by the collar and yanked him back to his seat.
"Chill, Spike. Save it for the nasties."
"Sorry, sorry, sorry!" the creature babbled, its pale bulging eyes darting back and forth between them. "Finger slipped, wrong button, there's no film in it, please don't--" Wrapping the camera in batrachian fingers and clutching it to its boney chest, the demon backed off--a gratifying change from their last encounter, to be sure. A that moment Clem bustled up with a pleased grin, his skin-flaps wobbling, and the would-be photojournalist made its escape.
Clem beamed at him. "Hey, Spike! You're looking good. For a dead guy, anyway. Here's that list you wanted. There's only five of them so far, but once people start seeing that you can come through I think-- oh, my." He gaped at Buffy. "You really are going out with the Slayer? Who was that guy?"
"Dunno. Some arsewipe who picked a fight with us a couple of weeks ago, and now apparently wants an autographed photo." Spike perused the list: five names, five potential customers. In time, he hoped, they'd be seeking him out through Anya's advertising, but right now he needed a jump-start, and a little industrial espionage--er, word of mouth never hurt anyone. "Been dealing with Teeth, this lot?"
Clem snagged a chair from the next table and plopped himself down. Buffy waved him towards the nachos and the demon grabbed a handful and crunched them down. "Yeah. Except for that last guy; he's been going to Rack."
Buffy frowned. "Should I know these people?"
"Yeh, you should," Spike replied. "But you don't, so listen and learn."
Buffy smiled very sweetly at Clem and kicked Spike in the shins. "Spike and I are--hey! That's not why he owes you fifty dollars, is it?" She turned on Spike with an outraged glare. "Were you making bets with him over whether or not I'd go out with you?"
In hindsight, that was when it all began to go pear-shaped. "I bloody well was not!" Spike retorted, indignant. "That would be--" Ungentlemanly was the word that leapt to mind, but would blow his badass reputation completely.
Clem held up a conciliatory paw. "Oh, no, nothing like that! It was just a little wager on that Krallock demon that blew in from Seattle. Some of us--us demons, you know--didn't believe you'd really stopped working for the Council, so I bet Spike you'd kill it before Sunday night. But you didn't, so--" He fished a wad of crumpled bills out of the folds of his tunic and handed them over to Spike with a cheerful, saw- toothed smile. Spike took them with a sense of dread; something was about to go terribly wrong.
"Krallock demon?" Buffy asked, her eyes sharp as throwing daggers. "The one you just told me about tonight?"
Oh, buggering hell, this can't be good. Spike became extremely interested in the foam on his beer. "Uh... yeh. Since you're not working for the Council anymore," he cleared his throat significantly to remind her that Clem was right there with his great flaps of ears twitching like weathervanes, "didn't figure you'd need to know from me." He ran a finger around the mouth of his glass and licked beer suds off it.
Buffy grew ominously quiet. "Even if I'm not working for the Council any longer," she said, "don't you think I might need to know about the big boys in town?" There was a tightness in her voice he couldn't quite analyze. "After all, Krallock demon... I'm not the big expert you or Giles or Anya is, but aren't they on the large and vicious side?"
Clem nodded vigorously. "They sure are! Why, when it showed up for poker night last week--this was after you took off for L.A., Spike--it bit Ralphie's head clean off after he bluffed it into folding on a straight when all Ralphie had was a pair of fours." Clem shook his head ruefully. "Man, that Krallock sure doesn't like vampires! Dust everywhere. We were sweeping Ralphie out of the furniture for hours."
"Gathering I needn't to go into mourning for Ralphie." Buffy's tone didn't lighten any. "But let me get this straight, Spike. You kept from me the fact that there was a dangerous new demon in town--a demon that for all I know has been snacking on sweet little old ladies and their poodles every night for the last week--so that you could win a fifty dollar bet?"
Spike squirmed. "Well, yeh." He was getting all defensive and bothered, and wasn't sure why. This was demon business pure and simple, and done in defense of her little scheme, too. Mostly. "Don't know what your knickers are in a twist about. All I bet on was you wouldn't kill it by Sunday, 'cause of, you know; whether you knew it was in town to begin with never came up. Never suggested to 'em you knew it was there. 'S not cheating--much, anyway."
Buffy had drawn away from him and was sitting up very straight, looking at him with huge wounded eyes, and Spike frantically reviewed the last several minutes of conversation, trying to figure out what was wrong. Krallock demons, large, dangerous, poodle snacking, little old ladies, not cheating, much... Oh bloody buggering fuck.
It was the little things that got him.
Hadn't he used up his quota of irony yet? Nobly turn aside from warm-blooded murder and trip up on a stupid sodding sin of omission. Not a little thing to her, though, those hypothetical old ladies. "Harris and I were going to take it out Sunday night," he said, painfully aware of how feeble he sounded. "We just got distracted by the Hellmouth going arse-up on us. And it's not as if we've had time to hunt the bloody thing anyway! In fact--"
"That's not the point! You kept something from me that affects my job--my real job, not whatever I end up doing to pay the bills." Buffy drew a deep, dejected breath and let it out. "And people could have gotten killed. Maybe they have."
She wasn't even angry, and that was the worst part of watching the walls that had recently been breached between them slamming up again behind her eyes. She was just... resigned. As if she didn't--as if she couldn't expect better of him. This is the way the world ends, this is the way the world ends, not with a bang... Spike sat there, gripping his glass, eyes glued to the scarred tabletop as Buffy rose to her feet and slung her purse over her shoulder. Get mad at me, love. Flay me up one side and down the other. Hit me, threaten me with stakes, do something, say something. Angry means we've got a chance, angry means you think I could've done better...
"I'm tired, Spike," she said. "I'm going home."
He looked up, met her eyes, his own all anguished desperation; she turned her head aside, as if from the sight of some terrible wound. "Buffy, look, I cocked up--"
"Yes, you did." She was going to leave him his pride, for all it was worth; no stomping out, no public humiliation. Small favors. Buffy bent over and dropped a chaste kiss on his forehead, and when she straightened her eyes were bright with emotion, fathomless pools fringed with jet. "I love you," she whispered, fingertips so very gentle along the side of his face, the line of his jaw. "I do. I will always..." Her voice cracked in two, shattered into shards so painful he could see her throat closing in agony around them, and how could he soothe away pain he'd caused? "But this is one of the times it's very, very hard."
The room was spinning, and Spike squeezed his eyes closed to shut out the sight of the hurt in hers, and found himself dragging in huge harsh lungfuls of breath. As wounds made by words go, not so deep as the grave nor wide as a church door, but 'tis enough, 'twill serve...
She was gone when he opened his eyes, and Clem was shaking his shoulder. "Spike! Hey! Spike, are you OK?"
Spike gave one short bitter bark of laughter. "Yeh. 'M okay. Just okay."

He was sitting in Buffy's living room. He wasn't exactly sure why; everyone else had gone home or to bed. "You can get the phone, can't you, Giles?" Buffy asked as she waltzed out the door. "Of course," he answered, though he was really quite tired. She tossed her hair and smiled at him, and he didn't have the heart to complain. The phone rang the moment the door closed behind her.
"Is Dawn there?" Breathless, giggly girl-voices; Lisa, Megan, Janice, who could tell them apart? "She skipped school and giant snakes ate the cafeteria, and only the Key can fix it."
"She's indisposed," he said, but the other line was ringing.
"Hello, it's just me!" Clem, cheerful and faintly
apologetic. "I need to get this stuff to Spike." The demon's wrinkled paw emerged from the receiver, holding a bouquet of squirming eyeballs. "Can you take a message?"
"I think it might be better if--"
rrrring! "Mr. Giles? Have you seen my daughter? I have to tell you, if you've let Willow go off to destroy the world on her own I'll be forced to report you to MOO. I didn't sign her permission slip."
He was juggling three or four receivers now. "Giles!" Buffy chirped through one of them. "I found Spike, and it's OK--he made me a vampire, and we're going to get married and live happily ever after, except not so much with the living. Giles? Giles? Are you there, Giles?"
Giles woke, his heart pounding, and lay there for a moment, clutching his pillow and coming to the groggy realization that the shrill insistent ringing in his ear was coming from the telephone downstairs and not the remnants of his dream. He groped for his glasses on the bedside table, crawled out of bed and staggered downstairs, barking his shin against a box full of books. He swore bitterly, and grabbed the receiver, expecting news of Willow, erupting Hellmouths, or gods on parade.
What he got was Quentin Travers. "Rupert, are you mad?"
Giles slumped against the breakfast bar, putting one of the leaning towers of books in grave danger of toppling, and squinted across the darkened living room at the time on the VCR. "Very possibly." He'd gotten home past midnight, stared at the pile of notes and journals on the kitchen table for a moment, and very deliberately turned his back on the whole mess and gone upstairs to bed. He ran a hand through his hair. "Quentin, it's three in the bloody morning over here, and I have a beast of a headache. Can't this wait?"
"How long have you known that Buffy Summers has been... involved..." Travers invested the word with such concentrated bile that Giles was surprised the phone lines didn't corrode, "with a vampire?"
Damn. Giles picked up the phone and sat down on the couch. "Involved? Are you referring to Angel?" he asked, schooling his voice to blankness.
"You know precisely to whom I am referring. In the last several weeks our local sources have been claiming that Buffy Summers is carrying on a public affair with William the Bloody and that you are not only aware of the situation, you condone it. At first I dismissed it as unfounded rumor, but within the last hour I've received a copy of a photograph of the two of them in a... compromising position, and I can no longer ignore the matter. We've had our differences, Rupert, I won't pretend we haven't, but all your past betrayals of the Council have been in the name of a misguided devotion to your Slayer. But this..." Travers sounded genuinely grieved.
"Is still in the name of that misguided devotion," Giles replied coldly. Why couldn't he be having this conversation at nine A.M. after a strong cup of Earl Grey? Travers knew exactly what time it was in Sunnydale, he had no doubt. "In my considered judgement, Buffy's association with Spike is doing her more good than harm at the moment. Should that perception ever reverse itself, I am more than prepared to take the appropriate steps to end it."
There was a hissing silence on the other end of the line. "I'd hoped that your researches would have borne more fruit by now. It would make explaining the situation less... traumatic. There are reasons--"
"The extreme likelihood that the Slayer's powers have a demonic origin of some sort? Yes, I deduced that some time ago, Travers." Giles suppressed an urge to smugness; Travers would only trip him up with it if he gave in to overconfidence now. "I fail to see its bearing on the current situation."
Spluttering. "You fail--? Good Lord, Rupert, what do you think's driving her to this unhallowed liaison? We've seen it happen again and again--the power grows with age and use, and if it's not channeled correctly, disaster! The Slayer who gives in to her baser urges and engages in this... this miscegenation, invariably destroys herself."
"Odd." Giles fought down a flare of anger. "My research indicated that a number of them were destroyed by the Council."
"All Slayers die sooner or later. The point is, they can die in battle for us, or against us. Buffy Summers has been teetering on the edge of rogue status for years--"
"No, Travers," Giles hissed, his hand tightening on the receiver. "That's not the point. I've seen Buffy die twice. Until you can say likewise of a Slayer you've Watched, don't presume to tell me what the point is. She will die. But she can die whole, as a warrior, fighting for people she loves and a cause she believes in, or she can die broken, with despair chipping piece after piece of her soul away long before her body ceases to breathe." He realized he was shaking with anger, and took a deep breath, calming himself. "I don't pretend to understand why Spike is necessary to her. I do not approve of Spike taking the place he has in Buffy's life. But so long as he poses no danger to Buffy or the others, it is not my place to approve or disapprove."
He waited tensely for the response to that. Did the Council's unknown informant know of the chip's deactivation? If so, that would narrow the field considerably, give him some idea who was peaching on
them. Travers sighed. "The Council does not react well to extortion, Rupert. This... work stoppage of hers is the second time Miss Summers has resorted to it to gain her way with us, and in light of this new
information we will not--no, we cannot stand for it. A desire to provide for her sister is one thing. Shirking her duties in order to... cavort with a demon, the very creature it is her sacred duty to eliminate from the world--that, sir, is a very different matter.
"Because of our past friendship, Rupert, I'm giving you a chance I'd give no one else--a chance to do your duty. Buffy Summers has gone through a tremendous amount of trauma in the past year, quite aside from her return from the dead, enough to push the stablest person to the edge. She needs help. Help we can give her."
Giles closed his eyes and leaned back against the couch cushions. "Indeed. Your concern for her welfare touches me, Travers. Do go on."
An eager note slipped into Travers's smooth dry voice. "I can have a Council team in Sunnydale within forty-eight hours. Counselors, parapsychologists, and so forth to examine and develop a treatment program for Miss Summers, and a few of the more...physical types to deal with the vampire. The creature's still cooperating with you, I presume; as it's unable to attack humans it should be easy enough for you to capture and restrain it."
They didn't yet know about Spike's unleashing, then, though Giles couldn't imagine Spike keeping it a secret for long. "Mmm, yes, so it should. Considering that our last several personal encounters with
Council representatives have left me inclined to trust you only slightly more than a soulless creature of evil, perhaps you should explain to me why I should want to?"
The question seemed to floor Travers. "Rupert, why do you think the Council exists? Why do Slayers have Watchers? To record their triumphs and failures to be sure, but first and foremost to guard against just what is happening now. To channel their abilities into a form which will aid humanity." His tone was deadly serious. "You've faced a rogue Slayer. And Faith was half-trained, undisciplined, sabotaged by her own passions. Do you really want to face another one, this time a Slayer who is, as you've pointed out yourself, the most experienced and determined of her kind for a century? Allied, moreover, with one of the most vicious and deadly vampires the line of Aurelius has produced? It is your sworn duty to protect the world--with her, but also, if need be, from her, should Buffy Summers decide to throw her lot in with the demonic strain of her heritage." Travers cleared his throat. "And on a more mundane level, if you aid us in containing the vampire for study and in gaining us access to Miss Summers, I'm prepared to accede to Miss Summers's demands for a salary."
"I see." Giles sat silent for awhile, watching the shadows of branches move across the drawn curtains. Travers's offer deserved half-serious consideration, if only because Spike was, after all, a vampire, and potentially dangerous for that reason alone. Still, Spike was a vampire who had saved his life once, however self-serving his reasons had been, and while Giles would have had no qualms about sending Spike to a dusty death should it prove necessary, turning him over for vivisection seemed... tacky. And there was a more important factor as well. "Quentin... regardless of my opinions of Buffy's personal life, I will not lie to her on your account again for any price. I'm afraid I couldn't possibly accommodate you without discussing the matter with her first, and I think we both know what her response would be."
"Ah." It was rather chilling that Travers sounded perfectly calm, as if this had been the answer he'd been expecting all along--well, it may have been. "Then it is with very great regret that I must inform you that your association, and that of Buffy Summers, with the Council of Watchers, is over."
"Haven't we gone through this before, Travers? Without a Slayer, what do you intend to--"
He could hear the frosty smile all the way across the globe. "That, Rupert, is no longer any of your concern." And the line went dead.

The sidewalk was strung with luminescent pearls of lamplight, knotted in place by shadow. Night's stage-curtain had fallen, lending the street a mystery and romance that day denied it. A car cruised past, engine shaking with the automotive death-rattle of a loose piston, and for an instant its headlights tore the backdrop of darkness asunder and bared the to view the rust-streaked, corrugated metal flanks of warehouses, and the battered chain-link fences fringed with gone-to-seed foxtails, crushed soda cups and cigarette butts. And one slim blonde girl, whose self-contained gaze forbade questions as to what she was doing walking alone in such a place, at such a time: Move on, mister. You don't want to know.
Buffy watched as the car turned a corner and darkness swallowed it, engine-rattle, tire-hum and all. For the first few blocks she'd half-expected Spike to roar up on his bike and either pick a fight or try to make up, but she'd walked far enough now that that seemed unlikely. Her footsteps were the only sound in the world. Maybe he and Clem had business which didn't (gasp, horrors) concern her, or maybe he'd decided to relieve his feelings by picking a fight with someone else. And we're homesteading in Psycho-Buffy Territory when the idea of someone else fighting Spike makes you jealous.
Buffy trailed her hand along the fence surrounding the Sunnydale Tool & Die workyard, her fingertips gradually going numb with bouncing against the links. Had she done the right thing, walking out on Spike like that? There was no handy dandy Vampires Are From Mars, Humans Are From Venus or Slayers Who Love Vampires Who Love Slayers Too Much for her to consult, and she was scraping the bottom of the introspection barrel with a spoon. Should she have chewed him out? Given him a pat on the head and assured him that compared to not ripping Willow's throat out, this was minor league? But it wasn't. Even she, Research Avoidance Girl, knew that Krallock demons were dangerous, because... her fingers hooked in the aluminum mesh, bringing her up short. Because Spike had told her so, on Sunday night. And she, she'd blown the whole thing off. Tra la la, Buffy's got a party to go to, let the boys handle it.
Of course Spike hadn't told her about the bet then, and had probably only mentioned the Krallock demon because he was certain she wouldn't be patrolling that night. And then they'd both forgotten about it, what with the world ending again and all. He had been holding out on her. Buffy right, Spike wrong. But the truth was, if she'd found out about the bet before the Willow Incident, she'd have shrugged it off with an eye-roll and a wrist-slap: That's just Spike.
She'd put up a good show of confidence for him, but what had happened last night was...paralyzing. Right now she should be considering the possibility that this was really it, the very best that Spike could manage. That the question wasn't if he'd slip up, but when and how. That in the end, trying wasn't enough. That sooner or later it was going to be someone besides Willow backed up against a wall in a dead-end alley, and...
...and she couldn't. Literally couldn't; her mind veered off and refused to go to the World Without Spike. She thought instead about the Slayers whose lives and deaths were recorded in Giles's journals, not the ones who'd thrown caution to the winds and followed their hearts to whatever dark end awaited them, but the others: the good girls, the ones who'd listened to their Watchers and beaten and bound their midnight
yearnings into submission. The ones who'd never known the touch of cool fingers on heated flesh, the ones who, if they'd ever looked into inhuman eyes and seen their own souls reflected there, had resolutely looked away again and turned those betraying mirrors to dust.
Between the lines of their Watcher's reports, they didn't sound happy, those long-gone sisters of hers, but happy wasn't part of the Slayer fringe benefits package. If the only choices were Faith's fall into darkness or Kendra's sterile devotion to duty, then maybe slipping back into the numb grey fog that still lurked around the edges of her mind would be a welcome relief.
As she approached the intersection with Wilkins, she heard voices--meaningless parrot-clamor, heedless of who or what heard it. Buffy froze, hand straying towards her purse to caress the hard deadly length of ash-wood concealed therein. She so wanted to kill something right now, something big and fast and deadly, something that would make her sweat and scream. With swift noiseless grace she faded back into the shadows between streetlights and crouched low, stake at ready.
"...don't wanna, too bright, too bright..."
"...told you the mind, the brain, it doesn't match, we need to find the painted part--red, you see? Right there..."
"...walking, keep walking, you know where the lines are..."
"...soon, soon, you can't keep a revolving door open like that!"
A small crowd of people in shabby clothes shuffled down the middle of Wilkins Boulevard, weaving in and out of the double yellow stripes of the left-hand turn lane in a Pied Piper gavotte. There must have been a dozen of them, unshaven men and wild-eyed women of all ages and ethnicities, their only commonality the distinctive odor of eau de landfill. It was the crazies, all of them, tumbling along like human lemmings towards some invisible cliff. The sparse Tuesday night traffic whizzed by on either side, the blat of horns and drivers' fervid curses cheering them on.
Peachy. She was craving a face-off with Godzilla, and opportunity knocked wanting her to babysit Pikachu. Should she try to herd them out of the street, at least? Tanner and the others who'd been in the alley during Willow's interrupted spell looked cognizant of the fact that they were walking down the middle of a major thoroughfare, and not at all happy about it.
"...get it off and do something?" the man in the yellow windbreaker asked.
Tanner shook his head and gave the pendant around his neck a vicious yank which ought to have broken the slender silver chain, but didn't. "You saw what happened when I tried. Hell, even if I could get it off, I couldn't match her power. Especially with that thing backing her up. If she lets up for a minute maybe I can call up my met tet and see if there's anything he can do, but..." He raked a hand through his lank hair and glanced down the street. "Fuck. If a truck heads down here, we're roadkill."
Tara's geas was still in effect, then, and he wouldn't be able to bring any magic to bear. Buffy crept closer to the intersection, keeping to the base of the fence. There was a better than good chance that 'she' was Willow, and that following the crazies would provide a guided tour of the Secret Underground Lair. Maybe she should call Giles or Tara and tell them...
She pressed her lips together, sealing in the anger that still knotted in her stomach at the memory of Spike cradling Dawn's frail body in the alley, the frantic drive home and her sister's pale, drained face framed in lavender pillowcases. No. She wanted--needed--to talk to Willow alone before calling in the cavalry. Needed to make sense of this. As the procession meandered through the intersection like a flock of inept sheep, Buffy left the cover of the fence, melting from shadow to shadow in pursuit of her skittish prey.
Three blocks later, Buffy crouched behind a mailbox watching Tanner and Windbreaker Guy kneeling in the gutter and yanking free the grate covering the mouth of a culvert running under Wilkins. Buffy waited until the last pair of plastic flipflops and grubby Nikes had wriggled through the dank entrance, then darted across the street. She dropped to her haunches beside the culvert, avoiding the clots of oily black sludge they'd kicked out of the pipe, and peered inside. The fetid odor triggered an involuntary stomach clench. Something considerably deader than Spike had set up shop down here at some point. Tres ick.
The culvert was black as midnight, and she'd gotten out of the habit of carrying a flashlight with her for peering into dark icky holes. Why bother, when she had a faithful vampire companion to whose eyes midnight was clear as noon? Alas, FVC's eyes inconveniently not present. Well, so what? She'd patrolled without benefit of Spike's enhanced senses for years. If the sanity-challenged could do it...
With a grimace of disgust, Buffy crouched down and crawled into the culvert, shuddering at the squish and slurp of mud and slime beneath her hands and knees. By feeling carefully ahead on the tunnel floor when she came to a fork, she could track the crazies by the churned-up sludge in the bottom, but it was slow going. The sounds of the scuffling feet and crazy-babble ahead of her grew steadily more distant.
Through the culvert, down a shaft, into a larger tunnel echoing with Pillip Glass arpeggios of icy water droplets and glowing faintly with phosphorescent slime--by the time she could stand upright again, Buffy could see her hand in front of her face, an inky shape occluding the twinkling constellations of algae. A T-intersection led her into a better-lit tunnel; it zig-zagged past several small openings which, on investigation, proved to lead to recently-abandoned demon lairs. Other than the faint marks of the crazies' muddy footprints, there was no sign of current habitation.
"Willow?" she called. Her voice echoed willow, willow back to her, a thin, lost shadow of itself. "Willow! It's me. If you're in here, I just want to talk!"
The tunnel continued to grow drier and lighter, and Buffy passed several heaps of Initiative-themed trash--shreds of old uniforms, crushed circuit boards, crumpled-up rations wrappers. She was pretty sure this was too far away from the UC Sunnydale campus to be part of the main Initiative complex, but they'd had access tunnels leading all over town just like everyone else. Someday an earthquake would hit just right and Sunnydale would undergo a dramatic re-enactment of the closing scenes of Paint Your Wagon. Hopefully sans the musical stylings of Clint Eastwood; there was only so much evil you could take, even on a Hellmouth.
Up ahead, a tawny flicker familiar from years of tomb-crawling spilled out into the corridor--candles, lots of them. Must be somebody evil; the black hats had an unreasonable prejudice against Southern California Edison. The tunnel terminated in a massive archway of granite blocks, piled one on the other without enough room to slip a knife-blade between them. The stone was the rich dark red of venous blood, glittering with mica inclusions which gave it a liquid sheen in the candlelight. Each block was incised with symbol which Buffy could describe with exacting technical expertise as hinky-looking. She felt a fleeting regret for the days when Giles had patroled with her on a regular basis; he probably could have told her whether she was looking at 'Abandon Hope All Ye Who Enter Here' or 'Ladies -- Gents.'
Beyond the archway the tunnel expanded into a vast, shadowy cavern with several other visible entrances. Buffy's thumbs prickled as she flattened herself to the wall and edged closer, suppressing more ick-noises as the light revealed more details about the post-slime-crawl state of her clothes (the state of her hair didn't bear thinking about). The cavern was filled with people, or things, or things that looked like people. It was impossible to get a clear idea how many there were; everyone was rushing around like an out-take from Koyanisqaatsi, and opposing ranks of candles set squadrons of shadows battling across hall. The air was smoky and redolent of licorice and sewer sludge.
Tanner and his band were encamped just inside the archway to her left. One or two of them were wandering aimlessly around the perimeter of their territory, but most had collapsed to the cavern's sandy floor and sat in huddles of two or three, rocking back and forth. Tanner himself was standing watch, his expression that of a man convinced nothing he can do will matter. He was stroking his stubbled jaw with one hand and muttering under his breath. She caught '...ou cheval ...' but her half-forgotten high school French wasn't up to deciphering the rest. His eyes never left the far side of the cavern, where a crowd of withered-up bald guys in the requisite tatty robes were--
Withered-up bald guys. Withered-up bald guys with bone-and-feather-draped staves and their wrinkled kid-glove flaps of eyelids sewn shut over the gaping empty sockets staring back into the maggots curling in their own brains--Buffy whipped back around the corner and pressed both palms flat to the wall, breath hissing through her clenched teeth.
Harbingers. Servitors of ultimate evil. Well, big fat hairy whoop with a cherry on top. Last time they'd shown their faces in Sunnydale, she'd kicked their scrawny asses, and she'd do it again. And there, surrounded by Harbingers like Scarlett O'Hara by beaux, was Willow, enthroned on a scuzzed-up lab bench. Plain old ordinary Willow in batik and Birkenstocks, tucking a strand of burning auburn behind one ear as she studied some kind of Star Trek tri-d chessboard thingy laid out on the cavern floor. Anticlimax much? How dare she look so normal, so--so Willow?
OK, so maybe the long black shadow trailing from her shoulders was a smidge on the over-dramatic side. Willow bent to move several of the figures around on her gameboard and sat back again to study the effect, nibbling on a thumbnail. "By George," she murmured, "I think we've got it. You don't really have a George vibe, but it would be better than Creepy Eyeless Guy."
The Harbinger hovering at her shoulder gripped his staff and looked constipated. "Exalted Vessel, this is unnecessarily risky."
Willow's eyes flashed--no figure of speech, they really flashed. "Maybe. That's why you chose me, isn't it?" She bared pearly teeth at the Harbinger. "I take unnecessary risks." She moved another playing piece. "We'll need Dawn to get the job done, of course." She glanced over at Tanner. "Take your pals, get the Key, and bring her here."
Tanner blinked, expressionless, and his muttering trailed off. "Why?"
"Look, Mr. Tanner, I'm sorry, but I really don't have time to argue about this." Willow got up and strode over to face Tanner, chin tipped defiantly and hands on hips. "If you do what I tell you to, all your friends will be cured, I'll break that little geas you've got going there, and incidentally, we save the world." She reached up and patted his shoulder. "And if you don't do what I tell you, I'll turn you into a weasel and your buddies into chickens and we'll see how well you all get along."
Tanner regarded her with a mixture of loathing and pity. "When?"
"As soon as possible. I want to do some test runs before we do this for real." Willow rolled her lower lip between her teeth. "You'll need to get cleaned up. Don't hurt her, and don't scare her more than you have to. If you can get her to come with you on her own, great. Tell her Buffy wants her, or you've found me--be creative." She began pacing. "I'm not the bad guy here. I know what I'm--"
The noise behind her was a tiny thing, no louder than the sound of a grain of sand scraping against stone under the pressure of a bare toe. Buffy whirled and snapped a straight-legged kick into the midriff of the Harbinger behind her. He doubled over with a grunt and Buffy used the momentum of her recovery to slam the heel of her hand into the nose of her second assailant, who howled in agony and staggered backwards, painting the blood-colored stone with Jackson Pollack splatters of the real thing. Buffy slammed the first one head-first into the wall and turned back to face the archway; Willow had frozen mid-turn, mouth an O of startlement, eyes popping in surprise. "I really hope there was a two-for-one special on at Henchmen R Us, Wills, 'cause otherwise--"
"Darn it, Buffy!" Willow stamped a foot in frustration and thrust out a hand. "You're not supposed to be here yet! Thicken!"


Willy the Snitch was, quite possibly, the world's foremost authority on the effects of alcohol on vampiric physiology. In twenty years of tending bar on the Hellmouth, he'd gathered volumes of practical information on the subject. Vampires, for example, didn't really have a greater tolerance for alcohol than humans. It was just that, given their lack of circulating blood, it took longer for the stuff to percolate through their systems. They could appear unaffected for hours, sometimes, until booze met brain, and then they'd go from stone cold sober to completely plastered in a matter of minutes. Willy had known to a nicety exactly when the combined effects of the half-dozen Cuervo Gold shots she'd downed would hit Darla like a load of twenty-four karat bricks, and the precise level Angelus's bottle of cheap-ass Irish whiskey needed to fall to before it was safe to press him about paying his tab. His talent had saved his life on more than one occasion.
He fervently hoped that this was one of them.
"...'n you know what the bloody bitch of a bloody Slayer says? 'It's hard!' Hard, she says!" Spike pinned Willy with an irate glare, tossed back another three fingers of bourbon and slammed the shot glass down on the bar. "Like it's been a bouquet of bloody posies for me! Gimmenothershot."
Willy complied, sloshing a few drops over the side of the glass. Nerves. Two hours and thirty-three minutes since Spike had strutted in at the Slayer's side, and he was nostalgic for the good old days of the chip already. Spike was harder to get tanked than some vampires--for one thing, despite being a comparatively small man, he had a high tolerance for the sauce, made higher by his unvampiric habits. Most vamps only drank to blend in with human prey, but Spike actually liked the stuff and put away as much as a human on a regular basis. Plus he tended to eat solid food with his liquor. However, if Willy was any judge, despite the severe inroads Spike'd made on the pretzel dish, the transition from random outbreaks of violence to sobbing into his glass and reciting Shelley was only a shot or two away.
Chilly fingers clamped down on his wrist with enough force to make the bones grind together, and Spike yanked his left, non-pouring hand up and shook it in front of Willy's face. "Are these broken?" the vampire demanded.
"Uh...not yet?"
"Bloody right! And not gonna be, either, 'cause your's truly's a white hat now." Spike released his wrist with a self-righteous sniff and Willy massaged it surreptitiously. Ow, ow, ow... Spike leveled an index finger at Willy's sternum and poked him in the chest. "'Nless you really piss me off. 'S fair, innit?"
"Very fair. Couldn't ask for better." Except that Spike got really pissed off at stray breezes. "Uh...Spike...about your tab..." This was, after all, the good bourbon, and Spike had long since exceeded the change from his twenty.
"Haven't broken any fingers in ever so." Spike's eyes clouded with wistful nostalgia. "Make such nice noise when they come out of the sockets, too. Pop-pop-pop!"
"What I mean to say is, it's on the house." At least until Spike passed out, at which point Willy could roll him in peace and quiet.
"No fun for poor old Spike, not a lick, not a nibble. 'S what she'd want. But Carrie Nation doesn't think I can do it," Spike continued dolefully. "She's the Slayer, y'know. All responsible-like."
Willy nodded, attempting sympathy, an emotion he was as ill-equipped as most vampires to express. "Eh, well, dames... you can't trust none of 'em."
Spike grabbed him by the lapels and hauled him across the bar for the second time that night, nose to flattened nose and eye to bloodshot golden eye. "Can't trust the Slayer? Did I just hear you insultin' my lady?" he snarled. "Trust 'er with my life, with my heart..." He let go with his left hand to give his chest an illustrative slap and Willy canted abruptly to one side. Spike let him drop and sat down with a thump, half-sliding off the barstool. He gripped the edge of the bar for a second, looking faintly surprised, and then hauled himself upright, gazing at Willy with earnest, tear-filled eyes (which looked damned weird in vamp face). "But she can't trust me. 'Cause 'm evil. Almos' ate Red, y'know. An' the hypoth--'naginary ol' lady." He frowned. "She never brought me cookies."
"Ain't no one perfect," Willy said consolingly.
A tear spilled over and ran down one cheek, and Spike flopped bonelessly forward, banging his forehead against the bar. He moaned into the oak grain with impassioned frenzy, "Oh, Buffy, Buffy, I never meant to hurt you, love! Love you so much, m' brave, strong, beautiful bitch..." One hand encountered the bottle, and dragged it into view. Spike peered at the label with a muzzy frown, then slowly appeared to divine that the world wasn't sideways, he was. He sat up again, not without some effort. "But I did hurt her, Willy. Abused her trust. 'M a cad, Willy, 'm a bad, evil man." He took another slug of Jim Beam directly from the bottle and blinked through a fresh flood of tears. "Do anything to make it up to her, any-bloody-thing. Chuck Dru. Give up the killin'. Wear a soddin' Windsor." After a moment of contemplation, "No, wait, already done those. Gotta be somethin' else. You ever been in love, Willy?"
Willy considered. "As a man of the world, I can say for certain that chicks dig a paid-in-full bar tab." He made a stealthy grab for the bourbon, but Spike's reflexes were still more than sufficient to retain possession. "I knew this stripper name of Mabel, once," he said, reminiscent. "She did this thing with tassels that..."
"Faugh!" Spike waved a grandiloquent hand. "Mere amin--animal attraction! 'M talkin' love! Many-bloody-splendored thing! 'To love, and bear; to hope till Hope creates from its own wreck the thing it contemplates'--bloody hell, I'd have Red mojo my soddin' soul back, if tha's what it took, even if it turned me back into that sniveling li'l four-eyed, weak-livered, Pre-Raphaelite nancy-boy..." Spike sniffled in an excess of self-pity, contemplating the potential horrors of re-Williamization. "Make sure Red fixed the no-shagging clause first." He sighed heavily. "But 's gone, poof!" He drove his free hand into his duster pockets in a search for more cigarettes, shoulders slumped in dejection.
Willy eyed the bottle, calculated the white-knuckled intensity of Spike's grip thereon, and decided against trying to retrieve it. "Yeah, that's sad. Now--"
Spike's fingers, groping through his pockets, closed on something. His transformation was instantaneous and remarkable--from the Stygian depths of gloom, his eyes lit like sunrise and a huge, joyfully wicked grin spread across his once-more-human face. "But I've still got this," he said, voice hushed with the brilliance of his inspiration. He pulled his hand out of his pocket and opened it; in his palm was a small silvery disk covered with printed circuits. "If she can take it out, she can put it back in," Spike crowed. "That'll show the Slayer I mean business!" He rose with unsteady dignity, bottle still firmly in hand.
"Hey, maybe you should let Clem--"
Spike shot a withering glance across the room, to the table where Clem was still sitting, nibbling on the remains of Buffy's nachos and watching the show with a distinctly worried cast to his wrinkled countenance. "Bugger Clem! Got me a witch to catch." With that the vampire drew his duster round him with a flourish and stalked towards the door. A few minutes later, the roar of the Triumph split the night.


At Willow's word, the air turned to liquid glass and Buffy's rising arm dragged to a molasses-slow mid-air halt. Willow gestured again; the soap-bubble of force lofted into motion, and Buffy bounced slowly and gracefully through the archway into the center of the cavern. She forced herself to relax and hang limp in the grip of the enveloping air. She could breathe, barely, and move her eyes from side to side, but otherwise she might as well have been encased in Lucite, a Slayer-sized paperweight in the Hellmouth gift shop. Willow walked briskly across the cavern to meet her, and Tanner sidled after, eyeing Buffy with a look more calculating than the wise Evil Overlord would encourage in a henchman.
"Hey, Buffy." Willow looked harried and guilty and impatient all at once. Definitely overcaffienated. "I wasn't expecting you quite this soon, 'cause you've been so, um, busy with Spike lately and all, but I figured you'd be pretty testy whenever you got here, so--"
Oh goody. I know how I feel about Willow now. Mental clarity was a wonderful thing. "Testy? Testy is Giles after someone eats the last jelly donut. Me? Somewhere between 'mighty peeved' and 'crush, kill, destroy!' You almost killed Dawn!" Buffy lunged against her restraints, to no avail--the harder she struggled, the more tightly the spell gripped her. If she relaxed completely, would it loosen? Worth a try. Willow's spells usually burnt out fast. Except that this was New, Improved Super-Willow with Mega-Zapping Action.
New, Improved Willow did a cringy shoulder-hunch very reminiscent of Old, Unimproved Willow; then, recalling she held the upper hand, straightened angrily. "OK, we're having a little time-out here. Cooling-off period." She laced her hands together with a sidelong look at Buffy, her ire dissolving in a nervous laugh. "About last night, I totally didn't mean that to happen. I need you to know that. Not my idea. I mean, it was, the spell, but not the whole agonizing Dawn death part. The spell was supposed to help them, supposed to--I didn't think. Dawn doesn't have any magical talent, so channeling that kind of power was...rougher on her than...but I know what went wrong, next time I'll add safeguards, I'll--"
"Next time? Will, are you mental? There's not going to be a next time!" Buffy interrupted, appalled. Stop, deep breath, serenity now--not the time to get into recriminations. "Can you understand it's a little tough for me to buy that you're sorry about last night when I walk in on plans for a Key-napping? Plus, the friendly native greeting?" She made an abortive attempt to wave at the ring of hostile, eyeless faces ringing the cavern. "Not so friendly. Lacking the complimentary lei and poi basket. Willow...I know things haven't been the best between us since I got back, but I thought--I tried--I thought it was getting better. Please. Make me understand why you're doing this."
Willow's brows knit and her pale face took on a sickly tinge in the smoky light. She wrapped her arms around her middle as if her stomach hurt. Buffy felt a stir of hope. Maybe she was getting through. "Buffy, I know I've done some questionable stuff. Bringing you back. It was wrong. I understand that now. It messed things up really bad, and I don't just mean the--the adjustment problems you're having--the Hellmouth, the gods wandering around, it's all connected, and if things don't change, what comes through the Hellmouth next will make that Harrier demon look like Casper the Friendly Ghost. I've screwed up--there aren't any words for how badly I've screwed up!" The distress in her eyes burnt off, replaced by a supercharged version of Resolve Face. "But I see it now. All of it." She glanced over at the chessboard thingy. "I understand what needs to be done to correct the Balance."
Buffy searched her friend's face, hunting for some comforting sign that this wasn't Willow talking. No all-black eyeballs, no Vader-type wheezing, no wiggy little brain-slugs glommed onto her medulla oblongata. Damn. "Willow--we know that already. The loa said someone had to leave the playing field--and..." Buffy squeezed her eyes shut for a second. She couldn't bear thinking of the World Without Spike, but the World Without Buffy...heck, she racked up frequent flyer miles there on a regular basis. "--if that's what it takes, then...that's what it takes, but do you do know what you're dealing with here? These Harbingers channel the power of the First Evil. You remember the First Evil? Skanky-looking dude with an 'Ultimate Evil--Ask Me How!' button, almost convinced Angel to take a sunrise stroll? Beyond time, beyond space, beyond boring when he gets to yammering? You know, evil? You can't trust anything it tells you."
Anger sparked in green eyes. "I think the phrase is 'Duh?' We haven't been formally introduced, but I've gathered he's been pretty naughty. I'm not stupid, Buffy. I realize there are evilness issues. But hey, guess what, everything it's told me fits in exactly with what the loa told us. The Balance is out of whack, and you're part of the reason why. You and Spike. And all the rest of us, in our tiny insignificant not-nearly-as-important-as-the-Slayer ways, but mainly the two of you."
"Spike?" That made no sense at all. Spike wasn't--and she knew better than anyone--good, no matter how hard he tried. "How can he--Spike's just a vampire."
"Apparently that's part of the problem." Willow clasped her hands behind her back and began circling like an exceptionally diffident and apologetic shark. Tanner skittered out of her way, muttering under his breath again. He clutched Tara's pendant in one hand and scrabbled through his coat pocket with the other; it emerged with half a battered granola bar, which he began crumbling onto the cavern floor with quick nervous finger-spasms. "But I'm going to fix it. I'm going to fix everything."
"Fix? What is this fix? By using Dawn for your reindeer games again? I can't let you do that."
Willow stopped circling and brushed the hair from her eyes with a twitchy little grin. "Kinda figured. Hence the current immobileness of you. I understand where you're coming from, Buffy, but I can't let you interfere with this. This is too important, and, well, let's face it, you're not exactly focused on the world saveage these days, are you? You've kind of gone off the whole sacred duty thing. We saw it last year with Dawn, and now you're off on this kinky little slaying-for-fun-and-profit kick with Spike, and honestly? I don't know if we can count on you to make the hard decisions any longer."
She'd been thinking as much herself, but it smarted more coming from someone else. Willow snaked closer, growing more confident as guilt flowered in Buffy's eyes. Her voice dropped, her tone becoming intimate. "Like for instance last night." She ran a finger across the convex surface of the bubble with one hand, drawing patterns on air. "You want to know how close Spike came to killing me? And how much he was... enjoying himself doing it? Or would that make it too hard on you?" The gameboard was replaced by a shimmering vison of Spike licking Willow's blood from his finger with voluptuous pleasure. Buffy's stomach did a flip-flop.
"He stopped. He didn't...and you were trying to get him to...!"
"He stopped. This time," Willow said. "Maybe that kind of thing doesn't bother you. After all, up against a wall while a vampire goes for your neck? Your idea of a hot date, right? I'd have to dig a little deeper to shock the Buffster. Let's see what we've got in the Locker O' Repressed Spikey Thoughts--" A ripple of power, and she reached through the force-bubble to touch fingertips to Buffy's forehead. Buffy felt a sharp cold twinge in her skull as the scene before them changed.
Dull gleam of steel. Limbs white as milk splayed across the dark hunter-green of the bedspread. He watched her from the pillows, knowing eyes following her every movement. A well-treated slave, this, sleek with good feeding, the sharp angles of his bones all sheathed in smooth strokable skin and solid rolling muscle, his body a symphony of moonlight and ivory, rawhide and steel. The chains pulled his arms up over his head, so that the muscles of his chest and shoulders stood out in sharp relief. Long pale fingers curled around the links above the blued steel of the manacles, defenseless, almost tender (fingers that could snap a man's neck in three seconds flat). Tousled bone-colored curls, ice-blue eyes lazy beneath heavy lids and sooty lashes, cheekbones like twin scimitars--the lush mouth twitched and curved into a beckoning smile, and the heavy length of his cock, lying quiescent across one sinewy thigh, twitched to life and beckoned along with it...
A dark hot bolt of desire shot straight through her, nipples to groin, and Buffy gasped. Willow laughed. "Oookay, didn't expect that one. Vampires in chains. We're large with the kink today, aren't we?"
Buffy tried and failed to jerk her head away, her eyes riveted by the vision's slow, incendiary smile as much as Willow's spell. Spike. Chains. Sick. Wasn't it? All that strength, all that ferocity, all that inhuman devotion, willingly submitted to her command...could you call it a fantasy if you knew the subject thereof would do it in a hot second?
"I understand now," Willow crooned. "It's not the sex. It's a power trip for you, isn't it? This whole thing with Spike. Someone loving you that much, much less the thing you're supposed to kill, the thing that's supposed to kill you? Gotta be a kick and a half. And you'd do just about anything to keep it. I get that, I really do."
Buffy swallowed. "That's not true. You know that's not true."
Willow's smile was almost flirty, and her eyes were filmed with jet. "Really? You were ready to sacrifice all of us for Dawn. Let's say it's part of the truth. Bad guy's privilege."
"I thought you weren't the bad guy."
That wiped the smirk off her face. She was all the old Willow for a moment, and really angry. "I'm not! God, Buffy, what do you take me for? Best friend for the last six years ring any kind of bell? I'm doing this so you won't have to die again! So no one in Sunnydale will!"
Behind her, Tanner stumbled back a few steps and froze in place, shaken by volcanic convulsions. His head jerked back and the cords in his neck quivered with strain.
"Willow--" Buffy threw every ounce of impassioned sincerity she possessed into the name; she had to make this work, and never mind that her record for coaxing allies back from the brink of disaster was decidedly spotty. "Willow, if you're my friend, please, listen to me. For once in your life don't try to fix things. Let this go. All for not dying, here, but I need to know what you're planning, 'cause doing it for them? Ends, means, construct your own platitude."
"It's easier to get forgiveness than permission." Willow's smile was barely there at all, only a wry twist of her lips. "I learned that from you. But it's really simple, just like the loa said. You're a problem because our team's got too many players. Spike's a problem because he's scoring goals for the wrong side. So all I have to is send you back where I got you from, and then--"
"Excuse me? This counts as not killing me exactly how?"
"I didn't say killing! I mean send you back as is, like Angel with Acathla! Minus the sword through the chest. And not permanently, just until I can do the other stuff I need to do with Spike--but first I need Dawn." Willow nodded at the lead Harbinger. "Like I said, not stupid. I don't keep the bargain I made, I don't keep my power. And I need that power..." There was something scary-raw in her voice for a moment, and then she was casual again. "...to save the world. To save you." She sighed. "So. I need Dawn. I mean, her help. I'm sorry, Buffy."
"Willow, I can't let--"
Willow turned away with a dismissive flip of one hand. "You don't get it yet, do you? You don't have any say in it. You'll be staying here awhile; I'll try to make you as comfortable as--"
Behind her, Tanner's eyes snapped open and his chin went down. He grinned, running a lascivious tongue-tip across his teeth, winked at Buffy, and pulled the pendant over his head. As Willow strode away he tiptoed towards Buffy in a parody of stealth, swinging with pendant propeller-fashion in one hand. When the spinning chunk of amethyst hit the surface of the force-bubble a shower of purple and gold sparks flew up; the amethyst crazed and shattered, and the spell melted into the air it had formed of. Willow jerked in surprise as the spell-energy snapped and dispersed, and whirled on Tanner, her eyes dark with fury. Tanner turned the grin on her and waggled his fingers. "I tell you we put a thumb on the scales now and then, petite sorciere."
Buffy was in motion instantly. She dove for Tanner even as his eyes rolled back in his head, his joints unhinged and he fell rag-doll limp to the cavern floor, scooping him up and flinging him over her shoulder. Could she get the rest of the crazies out by herself? "Ignis magnum!" Willow screamed behind her, and a bolt of black fire shot past Buffy's head, close enough that a few stray strands of hair frizzled in the heat. Bereft of their leader, the crazies screamed and scattered, losing themselves amidst the milling Harbingers.
Stone shifted and rumbled, and a shower of dirt and pebbles rained down from the ceiling. Realizing that random blasts of power weren't the smartest thing to be lobbing about in a tunnel-ridden earthquake zone, Willow yelled at the Harbingers and the crazies alike, "Stop them!"
Buffy flung Tanner's body through the archway and rolled after him, kicking off a pair of crazies who pawed at her with mindless determination. The Harbingers held back, letting the crazies do their work for them. She didn't want to hurt them; they were doubly pawns in this mess, but there wasn't much choice. She sucker-punched the nearest one, kneed Windbreaker Guy in the groin, and oh, shit, they were gonna get Tanner and he was her last best hope for finding out what Willow was up to--
"Bloody hell," said an aggrieved voice from the darkness further down the tunnel, "might have known you'd go off and start without me." Spike's pale head emerged from the shadows a second later. He strolled up, slightly unsteady on his feet, and took a pull from the bottle he was carrying. Finding his supply exhausted, he tipped the bottle up to one eye and peered up into it with a sorrowful little clucking noise. He cocked his head and watched Buffy bang two crazies' skulls together with great interest. "Ah, that's not a Krallock demon. 'S all right, then." He gestured with the empty bottle. "Red in there?"
"What do you think? A little help, Spike?" Buffy snapped.
"Sure thing, pet. Jus' got something to take care of first. Show you I can..." Spike stepped around Tanner's prone form with exaggerated care, smashed the bottle smartly over the head of an oncoming Harbinger, and waved at Willow through the archway. "Oi, Will! Sorry about the bit in the alley, but you smelled bloody marvelous. 'M only inhuman, aren't I? About this chip, love, thought it over--it's a pain in the arse... well, in the head, but--YOW!" He belly-flopped to the ground as a jagged bolt of ultraviolet lightning scorched the air where his head had been, blinking up at Willow with utter confusion. "Not taking visitors, then?"
The blast hit the side of the archway and arcane energy coruscated across the stone; the deep-carven symbols glowed blue-white for a second and another ominous rumble shook the cavern. Buffy got a split-second glimpse of Willow staring up at the ceiling with 'oops!' written across her face in flashing neon letters, and then a gunshot crack of stone heralded the fall of a whole slab of rock from the cavern roof. The crazies abruptly ceased their attack as Willow withdrew her energies to concentrate on more pressing matters.
"Spike! Get out of there!" Buffy tossed the last of the crazies off, manhandled Tanner across her shoulders in a fireman's carry, and staggered off down the tunnel as the air filled with dust and smoke. The candles winked out behind her, and the ground heaved and buckled under her feet, throwing her to her knees. Buffy struggled up again, coughing. She couldn't breathe--stop, drop and roll? Or was that only for fires and not underground cave-ins? At least we're a Clint-free zone. A fist-sized rock bounced off the top of her skull and she dropped to one knee, biting her tongue. The dust was so thick she could taste it, coating her mouth with grit with every labored breath. This was the T-intersection--which branch? Her head throbbed and she couldn't breathe and--
The last thing she remembered as the world went from black to blacker was a pair of cold hands seizing her around the waist.


The thing about sleeping all day was it left you restless and bored all night. Dawn rolled over and pummeled her pillow, knowing that in five minutes this position would become as unbearable as the last. She pulled the sheet straight where her tossing and turning had bunched it up under the blankets and glanced at the clock. After three. Wonderful. She'd finally get tired in another hour and get rousted out of bed in another four. Just in time to be packed off to the Cultural Indoctrination Center, as Spike had not-so-affectionately referred to her high school during their summer of nocturnal excursions around Sunnydale.
In the last day those memories had gone all sepia-toned, as if Spike were someone she'd known in a distant, dissolute youth. She could pull them out and look them over like a collection of old photographs: This is a picture of me and my monster. But Spike wouldn't stay safely pinned to the pages of an album; tomorrow he'd be full-color and three-dimensional again and she'd have to tell him--what? Leave me alone? We can't be friends anymore? And how awkward would that be when Buffy was practically taking out ads in the Press saying "Relocated: William The Bloody, Esq. recently of Restfield Cemetery, to 1630 Revello Drive?"
The glass panes in her window vibrated; Spike's motorcycle was pulling into the driveway. It was rapidly establishing its own private grease spot next to the Jeep. If Spike started leaving the DeSoto over here too, driveway space was going to be at a premium, especially if Dad could be convinced that a car for her sixteenth birthday was an essential. Strangely, with all the angst over dealing with vampires, no one ever considered the parking issues. Dawn heard the sound of the front door opening, followed by a series of mysterious thumps, as of shins on furniture, and an indistinct but heartfelt string of curses. A moment later the footsteps started up the stairs.
"--be all right on the couch?" Her sister sounded wiped, far more so than she usually did coming in from patrol.
"If he's as knackered as I was after the old bastard took me over, he won't move till morning." Spike sounded unnaturally subdued too. "Well. You're sorted. Guess I should bugger off, then."
"You don't need to--I mean, one of us will have to keep an eye on him till Tara wakes up. Which could be me, if--"
The foot-shuffling was palpable. "I can hang about."
There was a short, awkward pause. "You're kind of a mess. If you want to use the shower first..."
"Oh." Startled. "Yeh, sure."
"You know where the towels are." Pause. "Spike?"
The door of the linen cabinet squeaked when the humidity was high. "Yeh?"
"How'd you know I was down there?"
An embarrassed clearing of his throat. "Didn't. Went down looking for Will. Wandered about a bit, sensed you, went to take a look."
Of course. "Do you have any idea how colossally huge the magnitude of the dopehood you've achieved is? She could have--"
Wince. "I'm accumulating clues." Rustle of terrycloth being pulled from the shelf, another awkward pause. "I just thought...if I had her put it back, everything'd all come right again. Worked about as well as the usual run of my plans, I s'pose."
"Oh, God, Spike..." Her sister heaved a sigh. "Maybe she could put it back, but I don't think it makes the top five on Willow's Things To Do, Worlds To Conquer list. Besides, it's not about the chip. It's about you. Look, you found out the Krallock was in town when, last Tuesday? And didn't mention it till Sunday night, and OK, I blew it off then, bad Buffy, but not the point! The chip didn't stop you doing that. The chip didn't even stop you from hurting humans if you really, really wanted to, and it sure didn't stop you from hurting Willow. You did that, all by yourself. Put the chip back in your head this minute and you're still... you. A lying, stealing, semi-employed cigarette-smoking poker cheat of a vampire. Who I can't imagine living without." A tremulous note entered her voice. "And you were driving that motorcycle around drunk off your skinny undead ass, weren't you?"
Spike sounded injured. "Yeh, so? I've driven a hell of a lot farther a hell of a lot drunker than that...ah." He heaved a matching sigh. "More hypothetical old ladies mowed under my wheels, eh?"
"Or you could have wiped out and broken every bone in your stupid unhelmeted body, because contrary to popular belief, when hair gel meets pavement, pavement wins!" There was a sharp thwack, as of Slayer palm meeting muscular vampire shoulder at moderate velocity, and then broken, indeterminate gulping noises from Buffy.
"Ah, pet, sweet, don't..."
"If you can't--if you can't..."
Dawn couldn't divine what her sister was freaking about, but Spike was better at translating Buffy-speak than she was. "I'm yours, love. To kill...or not. Haven't I said it enough? Rather die than hurt you, and if you really believe I can't, stake me now, before it's too late. Or say the word and I'll do it myself, eyes open, so the last thing I see is your face."
A muffled sob; Dawn could imagine Buffy, face pressed to Spike's chest, face screwed up in the way it did when she didn't want to cry and was pouring tears anyway. "No! Do you think that's romantic? It's sick! Willow's wrong, she's wrong, you're not my--I don't want you like that! I can't kill you! Just thinking about it tears holes in me!"
"And you wonder why I wanted the sodding chip back in my skull?" Spike demanded. "If there's anything I can do to save you pain, I'll do it. Do you understand? Anything!" He gentled in an instant, voice melting from sandpaper snarl to smoke and velvet. "But you could, love, you know you could. And if I--deserved it, I'd want to go by your hand. Fitting. Because you're the Slayer, and you are that strong. Because I love you. Because...because if I do ever hurt you like that, I'll owe you my death. But I'll fight every beastie in Hell, self included, before I let it come to that--believe that, Buffy. If you believe nothing else, believe I'll fight!"
Her sister's voice shook, but there was nothing weak in it. "I do, William. I do--you have to believe that! It's the times you don't realize you need to fight that--" She choked on another sob. And there was silence again, the ragged, gasping, salt-edged silence of two people with no answers holding one another tight against the monsters within. Dawn lay absolutely still beneath the sedimentary layers of sheets and blankets, hoping that Spike was too preoccupied to be listening to the telltale waking rhythm of her breath and heartbeat. Buffy laughed, a weak, pained little giggle. "You know, when I said there was no way this wasn't going to hurt, I was hoping for, I don't know, maybe a month's worth of carefree smoochies before my life turned into an Alanis Morrisette song again."
Spike's deeper chuckle had real humor in it. "Ah, well, there you have it, pet--'s the reason we've had to cram a month's worth of shagging into the past week."
Buffy's laugh was a little stronger this time. "Shut up and go take your shower. I'm still mad at you."
Dawn heard the ghost of a smile in his reply. "Mutual, oh she of the lone visits to barmy witches."
The sound of the bathroom door closing masked the faint creak of her own door opening. Buffy peeked in, her small figure a dark shape against the dim light in the hall. Dawn rolled over, stretched, and made ostentatious waking-up noises. "Buffy? When did you get in?"
"Just now." Her sister slipped inside, leaving the door ajar, as Dawn reached over and turned on the bedside lamp. Both of them blinked at the sudden flood of light. "We found Tanner. All the crazies, actually, but he was the only one we could snag. He's conked out on the couch, so fair warning." Buffy sat down on the side of the bed and brushed the backs of her knuckles across Dawn's forehead. "You're cooler," she observed. "How are you feeling?"
Dawn squirmed up from underneath the blankets, wrestled her pillow into submission and propped herself upright against the headboard. "Crummy, but better." She rubbed the sleep out of her eyes. Buffy's hair was a mess, and she looked as if she'd been liberally dunked in slime and then sand-blasted. Her face and the backs of her hands and her bare forearms were covered with scratches and scrapes. A swelling purple bruise marred her forehead just at the hairline, and tear-tracks smeared the dust on her cheeks. "You look snazzy. What happened?"
"Mayhem, destruction, the usual. You should see Spike; he was on top of me. Uh, not like that. I think he's got a cracked rib, but he's being all macho vamp." Buffy sighed and blew a lock of hair out of her eyes. "I tell Willow and I tell her not to play with magic in the house, but it's all fun and games till someone has a roof fall on them--no, I'm fine, Dawn, honest. That Tanner dude freed me, I saved him, Spike dragged us both out when oxygen became an issue--it's a whole big heartwarming team effort." Buffy slumped over and leaned against the headboard, rubbing the sides of her nose with both hands. "He wanted Willow to put the chip back in. His brain was probably affected by his alcohol stream being contaminated with blood or something, but why he thought she would--"
"She took it out."
Buffy's hands stilled, then came to rest in her lap. "What?"
"Willow's the one who took the chip out." Dawn drew her knees up to her chest and hugged them. "I'm pretty sure, anyway. Monday afternoon, when Spike came over? I went down to the basement and talked to him about it, and I'd just figured out that someone had done something to him without him wanting it, and Willow came down and...froze me, with a spell, and made me forget what I'd figured out." She unfolded, extending her legs stiffly and making blanket tents with her toes, trying to still the trembling of remembered betrayal and words as sweet and poisonous as antifreeze. "She just made me forget. Like it was nothing. Like I was nothing. And then she used me for that spell like I was just a--a battery!" She drew a hot angry breath. "I guess I'm AC and her spell was DC, though--when we did the ritual, the big green energy surge thing? Me, I guess. I must have messed the forgetting spell up. Everything's been coming back in pieces all day."
"Willow took...well, that just...figures." Buffy rubbed the back of one hand across her eyes, adding dark mascara-streaks to the dust and tear-tracks. "Good. I guess. In a relative way. Keep all your baddies in one basket, I always say."
Dawn's voice sounded thin and scratchy in her own ears, a million-year-old 78 RPM phonograph record to go with all those sepia-toned summer memories. "I thought--I thought she liked me. She was so good to me while you were gone--she talked her parents into letting me stay with them, she helped Giles find Dad, she and Tara... they did the daytime stuff with me. It was like--I wasn't Buffy's dumb little sister for awhile. I was somebody. And now she just takes it away--it's not fair! She's got a soul! Why is she doing this?"
Buffy slid an arm around her shoulders and pulled her into a hug, and it felt weird because she was taller than Buffy now by inches. "She does still like you. Somewhere inside. She's messed up, and we have to stop her--maybe we have to fight her. But she's still the Willow who's my friend, the Willow who was good to you. We just have to help her find that part of herself again."
"How can you love her?" Dawn asked. "How can you love him? When all that happens is they hurt you?"
She felt a shiver go through her sister's slender body. "Because when you don't love them...it hurts a lot worse."
Dawn bent her head to press her cheek to her sister's, and the two of them sat there together, lapped in golden light. The white-noise rattle of the shower shut off abruptly in the background (most likely it had occurred to Spike that using up all the hot water before Buffy had her turn was a Bad Thing) and when Dawn looked up a few moments later a slice of Spike--one sweatshirt-clad shoulder, the dark slash of a brow and one worried blue eye--was visible through the crack of the door.
She could never forget or ignore what she'd realized in the alley, but maybe it was like Willow helping Xander with algebra in high school; when you didn't know the answers, you talked to someone who did. Spike might have wanted her to say yes, but at least he'd asked the question, and taken her no seriously. She had choices. To treat him like the thing that he was, or the man he was trying to be--and was it terribly wrong of her to hold hard to the memory that Spike had never treated her like the thing that she was?
Her eyes met his and didn't fall away, and the look on his face was like someone lighting a bank of candles inside, a glow blossoming from match-sized to something that could fill up the whole room. Spike ghosted into the room and eased down on one knee beside the bed, his strong cool arm joining Buffy's warm one around her shoulders. His damp hair made a wet spot on her sleeve. Didn't matter. Dawn felt the steady beat of her sister's pulse, and the long slow rise and fall of Spike's chest as her head dropped to his shoulder, and almost sobbed in relief as hundreds of tiny clenched fists relaxed in her gut. Things could never be what they had been, but maybe they could be something else.
She was drawn from Buffy, flesh of her flesh and blood of her blood in ways no other sisters in the world could claim. Sometimes she hated that knowledge. Sometimes, as now, it gave her an obscure sort of hope.

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