Three… Four… Five…

Fighting for good. Saving the world.

Six…

For friends. For Dawn.

Seven…

Punch. Block. Kick. Parry.

Eight…

For Her.

Nine…

There were ten. Weren’t there ten? Where was the other one?

“Spike! Spike, help!”

“Anya!” Spike practically flew to Anya’s side and staked the remaining vampire she was struggling with. “Anya. You ok?”

“By ‘a bit’ you mean a lot right?” Anya asked as they made their way back through the graveyard to the Magic Box. She pulled her coat a little tighter around her, feeling a sudden chill. It was a beautiful night, but the truth behind their conversation and the horror of it all made Anya shiver.

“A lot,” Spike agreed simply, his expression closed. He hadn’t said one word about it since it had happened. His face always remained impassive whenever anyone mentioned that night. Or her. They were starting to worry about him.

****

“Hey. How’s my precious?”

“Shhhhh. She’s asleep,” Tara scolded Spike as he and Anya entered the store. She nodded towards the table in the centre of the room and Spike crept slowly across to where Dawn lay, curled tightly into a ball, fast asleep. He smoothed her hair gently and bent down to kiss her forehead.

Giles entered from the training room in time to catch the action, and his expression softened slightly as he watched Spike’s obvious affection for the girl. The only time the vampire ever showed any emotion was when Dawn was around. For the rest he trained and he slayed and helped to save the world, but he never talked about why.

His routine was always the same. He’d go out with Anya, Xander, Tara or Giles to patrol; return in time to check on Dawn and make sure someone took her home to bed, before he locked himself in the training room for the rest of the night.

None of them questioned it. They were all a little afraid. They had accepted that he wouldn’t hurt them. That he needed to help, despite his own personal demons, or maybe because of them. But they had never seen him so removed before. So completely lacking in the life force he had always possessed, even when dead. And it scared them.

****

Spike quietly let himself into the Summers’ house, just before dawn. He saw Willow and Tara curled protectively round each other on the couch, as they slept and smiled sadly at the peaceful picture they made.

The two witches walked sleepily to the door, opening it carefully so that the rising sun wouldn’t affect Spike. They kissed his cheek as they exited, reminding him that they were his friends now. That he could always turn to them if he needed help.

****

“Dawn! Breakfast!”

Dawn dragged herself sleepily from her bed and rubbed the sleep from her eyes. As she stood she glanced at the picture on the dressing table in front of her. She sat with her mom and sister in the park, all of them smiling brightly.

She remembered that day, remembered how Willow had taken the picture of the three of them while Xander stood behind her pulling stupid faces to try and get them to laugh.

She looked away and pushed down the pain she felt every morning at her loss. She gathered some clothes for school and went to the bathroom to wash and change.

****

Dawn looked panicked. “No! No, God no. Six will be fine. You’re my legal guardian, you have to be there anyway.” Spike smiled at her obvious dread of the forthcoming meeting. “And I gotta go so,” Dawn grabbed her bag and coat and sprinted from the kitchen, “Bye!”

****

Once Dawn had left for school Spike dragged himself upstairs, exhausted. He needed sleep. As he moved slowly along the corridor he felt the same wave of pain he felt every morning. He paused outside Joyce’s room and shut his eyes tight to try and block it all out just a little longer. He turned to Her room and gritted his teeth as he opened the door and stepped inside.

****

After Buffy’s death her friends had gathered around one another, finding comfort in each other’s company, struggling on as best they could, knowing they owed it to her to help save the world, to continue the fight.

Spike felt alone.

It was worse now than ever before. At least she had been there, somewhere, in the past. Now she was gone and Spike couldn’t bear to even hear her name spoken. For the first week, until the funeral, he had stayed with them, practically living at the Magic Box, helping with the preparations. They had held the funeral at sunset, knowing that he wished to attend. Needing him to be there as much as he did.

For the next three weeks however Spike locked himself away in his crypt. He sat and stared into space, not moving, not talking. The others worried about him. They took it in turns to drop by and sit with him, to try and get him to talk about it.

When Willow finally voiced her anxiety that Spike was no longer feeding the Scoobies decided that it was time to act. One month to the day after Buffy had died, Willow took Dawn to see Spike.

“I just came to say goodbye,” she said softly as she knelt down in front of him. “I have to go and live with my dad. Apparently no one here is close enough to me for me to stay with them. I probably won’t see you again. Don’t you even want to say goodbye?”

Her words shocked Spike out of his catatonia. He looked at Dawn properly for the first time since she had entered. He saw the dark shadows under her eyes and the pain radiating from her body and pulled her into a fierce embrace. Dawn clung to the vampire as though he were her only lifeline and Willow sighed in relief at the sight. Things would surely get better now.

For the next week the Scoobies, including Spike, tried to find a way to keep Dawn in Sunnydale. Spike told the others about Buffy’s last request of him about Dawn, without ever mentioning the Slayer’s name. The others agreed that Spike and Dawn should be allowed to stay together. Not only because of the vampire’s strength, but also because of their increasing dependence on one another.

After a heated conversation with Willow, Tara, Anya and Xander, Giles decided to call in a favour from an old friend. He had papers made up, giving Spike a legal presence in the country. He gained a family over night. A brother in L.A., which Spike had fiercely protested at first, and a wife.

When Giles had shown Spike the fake marriage certificate, the vampire’s first instinct had been to laugh. Finally he had what he wanted for so long - Buffy as a permanent presence in his life and her friends’ belief that he truly loved her - and she was dead. The irony of it all made him almost hysterical with laughter. But it had worked. He won custody of Dawn.

****

Spike closed the bedroom door behind him and sat down on the edge of the bed. When Dawn had insisted that Spike move into her house with her, he had been unable at first to even venture upstairs. The living room and kitchen had brought back enough painful memories to him.

But the first day Dawn had returned to school Spike had been unable to resist the pull any longer. He had started his routine that day, finding some sort of comfort among her things.

Now, like everyday, he stared around the room that had remained unchanged since the day Buffy died. In fact the only difference in the room at all was the fact that Spike now slept there. The doors to the wardrobe remained open, waiting for the owner to return; the weapons chest, now completely devoid of weapons, was pushed to one side underneath the window. A cross still hung from the lamp on the bedside table and Mr Gordo still sat among the pillows of the bed.

Spike picked up the toy pig and inhaled her smell that still lingered on her clothes and possessions. As the memories came flooding back and the pain and anger and guilt reared their ugly heads once again, the tears Spike had spent the night pushing back rushed to the fore and poured down his face. He wept for hours as he did every morning, not hearing or acknowledging anything in the real world, simply concentrating on the pain.

****

“No!”

****

Willow inhaled sharply. It was the first time he’d said her name. Almost said her name. “Spike… Um, it’s ok you know. If you want, you can talk about her. I’m always happy to listen.”

For a second Spike considered doing just that. Telling Willow everything so that maybe the pain would lessen somewhat. He opened his mouth to speak and Willow leaned forward slightly in anticipation.

The doorbell rang.

“I’m not ready yet!” Dawn called, “can you get the door?” Spike stood and moved slowly towards the front door. “On second thoughts, Willow, can you answer please?!” The vampire scowled and yanked the door forcefully open.

“Hi,” the boy standing nervously on the porch greeted Spike. “Um, I’m uh, Kevin.” He pulled at the collar of his shirt as the vampire continued to stare at him unblinking. “Uh, is Dawn ready?”

Spike stepped back and gestured for the boy to enter. Willow appeared in the doorway of the living room and smiled reassuringly at the boy. “Hi, I’m Willow,” she greeted offering her hand for him to shake. She caught Spike’s gaze over Kevin’s head and moved her gaze meaningfully back and forth between the two of them.

Spike growled quietly at her and the teenager jumped slightly, while Willow merely rolled her eyes. “I’m Spike,” the vampire began moving closer to the increasingly nervous Kevin. Willow’s eyes were begging him to be gentle, but Spike ignored her. “I’m Dawn’s guardian.” The boy backed up a couple of paces. “If you touch her I’ll nail you to the wall with a railroad spike.” Willow sighed heavily and hung her head. “You bring her home before 10.15, or I swear…”

“Ok, enough with the theatrics,” Willow interrupted as Kevin swallowed audibly. The young witch grabbed Spike’s arm and turned to the teenager. “He’s a little overprotective. Have a good time,” she finished as she pulled Spike back into the living room.

Dawn ran quickly down the stairs, glad that her date was still in one piece, and smiled brightly at him. “Are you ok? Spike’s a bit… He’s really sweet when you get to know him.” Kevin nodded but it didn’t really look like he believed her. Dawn sighed. “I’ll just be a minute.”

****

“Spike, just stake him already!” Xander called as his Slaying buddy continued to pound the newly risen vampire mercilessly. The brunette was sitting on a tombstone a few feet away, bored with the night’s events. He wanted to go to bed. He wanted to see Anya. More importantly he wanted to get Anya to bed. Surely Spike understood that. Maybe Xander should remind him. “Hey big guy. The macho display is seriously cutting into my happy time.”

Xander sighed. “You didn’t fail them. None of us did. Do you think none of us blame ourselves? That we don’t wonder what might have happened if we’d been a few minutes earlier, or if we’d tried something differently? You can’t blame yourself. Buffy wouldn’t want you to.”

He awkwardly placed his hand on Spike’s shoulder. He hadn’t been happy about Spike being around them from the start, and he’d been even more vehemently opposed when he found out about the vampire’s feelings and how he had initially expressed them. But over the last few months he had been unable to deny Spike’s affection for Dawn and the obvious love he had for Buffy, and the pair had formed a tentative friendship. They still fought with each other and taunted one another, but there was understanding there now. And Xander couldn’t bear to see any of them hurt any more than they already were.

****

Dawn ran up to her bedroom and slammed the door closed. Spike leaned heavily against the wall, cursing himself. This parent stuff was too hard. Especially for vampires. He walked through into the living room and sat down, thinking of some way to make it up to Dawn. Maybe he had been a little overprotective and maybe, just maybe, he shouldn’t have done what he had, but it was too late now. Now he just had to make things better.

“She did. I mean she said she did. But I know teenage boys. I was one once…” he trailed off as Willow continued to stare at him. “Alright, I didn’t do anything. You couldn’t in those days. But don’t you see, my whole idea of human life is based on what I lived through and what you lot live through. You didn’t touch or kiss or even spend any time alone with young ladies when I was growing up. And you lot are so damn nice, but you’re all faced with horror every day. Every time Dawn says she wants to go on a date, I’m going to be jumping back and forth between, ‘the boy’s going to hurt my little girl’ and ‘the kid’s a flamin’ hell beast’. How am I supposed to do it right?”

****

“Why do you hate me?”

Spike smiled, “It’s easy to talk when you don’t actually have to do anything. If Giles was looking after you, and you know he’d do exactly what I did, I’d be sitting downstairs with him, telling him to let you do your own thing, to trust you implicitly, just like Willow was before. But I’m your guardian Dawn. And that means when I see my little girl being manhandled by some obnoxious teenager, I’m going to react the way I would if some demon were attacking you. You’re lucky I didn’t kill the boy.”

****

“Spike!” Dawn screamed, and the vampire tried not to show his fear in front of her. His eyes flickered over her briefly, hoping that she was ok, or would be as soon as he got her down from there. He couldn’t smell any blood so chances were she wasn’t hurt. He could see her distress though and he could smell her fear. He pushed his own fear back as anger consumed him.

“Hello cutie,” Spike greeted as he approached, carrying a small posy of blood red roses. “Miss me?”

He laid the flowers down gently in front of the gravestone and sat down next to it, brushing his fingers gently over her name. “God I miss you Buffy.” He sighed heavily and closed his eyes. “It’s been bloody awful this past week. If you want to haunt me you know, you could at least have the decency to do it in person. One more damn dream, and I’m going to go flying off the deep end. I know you said it was hard; damn right it’s hard. Too hard.

“I’m failing miserably with Dawn just like I failed you. It was Parent-Teacher night tonight. That was a laugh. You’d think people could come up with a more original opening line than, ‘I’m sorry for your loss,’ but apparently not in Sunnyhell. I felt like strangling the next bugger who told me what a wonderful young woman my wife was. Wife. Ha! I wanted to scream at them all that you wouldn’t touch me a ten foot pole, unless under a damn spell. But then they’d have called social services and I’d have to fight tooth and nail to keep Dawn.

“She’s doing ok. The principal told me she was concerned her grades were slipping and I had to stop myself breaking the bitch’s neck. Not that what I actually said was much better, although I have a feeling Giles would pretty much have said the same thing. Basically I asked her if she thought Dawn’s grief at losing her mother and her sister within months of each other was getting in the way of her academic achievement. She shut up pretty damn fast after that.

“So I was standing in what I assume was the student lounge, and I couldn’t help thinking about the last Parent-Teacher night I was at. Remember that? Joyce hit me with an axe. Bloody Summers’ women. All so damn loveable, even when smacking me around. That was the first night I wondered what it would be like to kiss you. You weren’t afraid of me, or if you were you didn’t show it. Standing there looking all sweet and innocent. And deadly. Shooting your mouth off in that smart way of yours, that made me want to do more to you than break your bleedin’ neck.

“Anyway, my main nibblet worries at the moment are all boyfriend related. By that read, I don’t want her to have one. How do human parents deal with this? I vamped out at the boy. Still no harm done, and she won’t be kissing anyone for a while so all’s well that ends well.

“I’m supposed to have a nice long chat with Willow tomorrow. Tell her all my problems. I think their main concern is that I haven’t said your name in three months. Not to them anyway. I only use it when I come here. It’s either that or break down crying in front of them and I’ve got my image to maintain you know. Well alright, it’s not much of an image anymore, but the thought of Giles or, dear Lord, Xander trying to comfort me is just too much. The little heart to heart I had to have with your ex was bad enough. Didn’t know soulboy knew so many words. Still gave me an excuse to get blind drunk. We both felt better afterwards I think. Not that any of us can feel much better. Not really.

“The worst part is the way they try and hide everything from me, as if I’m going to rip off one of Anya’s arms if I find her looking at a wedding dress catalogue. Hell I want her to look at the bloody things. I want Xander to make stupid jokes and Willow and Tara to hold hands and Giles to get excited when a new shipment of stock arrives. If it gets that desolate look out of their eyes for one minute.

“Yeah Xander and An, huh? Still think the girl can do better, but it’s her life. I suppose you’re going to say that someone who chains the love of unlife up in a crypt and tells her he’s going to feed her to his ex, shouldn’t be passing judgement. At least that’s what Anya said. Before Xander decided to develop some tact and shushed her.

“I don’t know if I’ve said this yet Buffy, or whether or not you’ll believe me when I say it now but, I’m sorry. There is so much to say and so many things I want to apologise for, I don’t know where to begin.”

“I’m not going to go back over everything we’ve been through and wallow in grief. I do that enough as it is. And I’m not going to apologise for trying to kill you the first year I was here because quite frankly, even if I was a little bit in love with you, I still wanted you dead at the time. I’m vampire. I’m never going to apologise for that. Or the other two Slayers. It’s what vampires do. It’s what I did. I’m proud of it.

“I won’t apologise for loving you. Never. One moment with you made my unlife worth um… living, and even when I ached from your words or your fists, I knew I was alive and I knew it was because of you. I’m sorry about what happened. It all just spiralled out of control. I can make excuses but I’m not going to. I was out of line. Of course your little de-invitation spell pretty much finished me off. I didn’t think I would ever feel as bad as I did at that moment. Not until I saw your broken body lying there in front of me.

“You must know I’m sorry for the way I behaved… stalking you, I suppose. And making that robot. I just wanted to be near you. I know I went about it the wrong way and hurt you again. And even if this makes it worse I have to say, that one kiss… that one moment with you, no spells, no tricks, that was all it took for me to realise… No machine could ever replace you. Nothing and no one could ever make me feel the way you make me feel.

“What I really want to apologise for is failing you. I didn’t keep my promise. I didn’t protect her the way I should have done. It should have been me… my dust scattered to the four winds, not you. Never you. It was my fault…”

As Spike trailed off, his eyes filling with tears, Buffy slowly leaned closer and kissed him gently.

“It was not your fault.” She kissed him again as he tried to argue with her.

Neither of them spoke for several minutes and Buffy rearranged herself so that she was leaning back against his chest, his arms around her waist. Finally she spoke.

“You know what I was thinking when I was up there with Dawn? I looked at my baby sister, so willing to die to save the world and the people she loved, and a million and one images flashed through my mind in a second.

“I saw my life. My real life. The one without Dawn. I saw myself being called to be a Slayer, my first pathetic struggle with a vampire and my glorious battle, which unfortunately included burning down the gym. I saw my parents fighting, separating, divorcing.

“I met Xander, Cordy, Willow, Giles and Angel all over again. I died; I killed the Master. I relived my first meeting with you, Angel and I made love and he lost his soul. Met Oz, relived Jenny’s death and the nightmare that followed. Mom finding out I was the Slayer and throwing me out of the house. You and me battling against Angel and Dru. Sending him to hell knowing he had a soul again.

“I relived the whole ordeal of senior year with Faith and the Mayor; Angel leaving me, for my own good. I met Riley and you arrived back with that thing in your head. Willow’s spell, which gave me pretty much the happiest night of my life. At least, I’ve never smiled that much before or since. I made new friends, Anya and Tara.

“I remembered seeing Dawn for the first time; feeling my world change around me. Everything shifting to accommodate a sister. I remembered mom getting sick, finding out about Dawn, having one more thing to worry about. Glory. Finding out about Riley. You telling me you loved me. Finding mom. I remembered the look on your face when I invited you back into my house.

“And in that one moment, as I looked at the sun rising in the distance, I felt the most beautiful kind of peace. You were right Spike. You’re always right. I wanted it. I wanted the peace. I knew what I had to do and I knew that my part was the easiest. What I had to do was going to hurt less. If Dawn or any one of you had died, but I had survived, I wouldn’t have been able to go on. My friends and family, as you pointed out, were all that was keeping me alive. I picked the easy way out.

“As I did it, as I fell into that blinding light I regretted all the things I was never going to get to say and do. I wasn’t going to see Dawn grow up and go to college. I wasn’t going to be able to tell Giles that I loved him like a father. I wasn’t going to be able to see whether Xander and Anya got married and had kids. I wasn’t going to tell Willow how much I loved her and how proud I was of her and Tara. I wasn’t going to be able to see Angel again and remind him how much I loved him.

“And then it hit me. The one thing I wanted to say above all else. The one thing I really needed to say before I died and it was too late. But now I’m here and it’s not too late. I told you, you were right Spike, and I didn’t just mean my death wish. There were feelings… are feelings. Things I hid because I was afraid; because I knew that if I let you in and you hurt me, that I would feel worse than at any other time in my life.

“But I also wanted to tell you, you were wrong. You’re not a monster. And I was an idiot for ever believing any different. And you should never, never, never, say never.”

She had turned around in his lap when she started to tell him the things she wished she’d said three months ago and was now gazing steadily up at him. Tears ran unheedingly down his face as he frowned in confusion. “What?”

“You said you knew I’d never love you. You were wrong.” She kissed him again and he kissed back, barely suppressing the passion that raged inside him, only for her. Eventually she pulled back. “Don’t blame yourself. You’re keeping your promise. I don’t blame you. You did nothing wrong.” She stroked his cheek and whispered softly into his ear, “Close your eyes and count slowly down from ten.”

He did as he was bid, and when he opened his eyes again, she was gone.

The End