CHAPTER ONE

It is nighttime and the house is eerily quiet after a day of receiving mourners and friends. Buffy is making her way slowly through the upstairs rooms. She checks on Dawn one last time and finds her cozied up with a stuffed animal in her bed, sleeping peacefully. Flipping off the light switches as she goes, Buffy encounters the open door of her mother’s bedroom. There is a coldness in there that reaches out to her, much like her mother’s warmth did when she was alive. She pauses there for a minute, taking in the lingering scent of her mother’s perfume, the sight of the numbers on her mother’s alarm clock glowing red in the dark. It’s all very still. She thinks of the time when Faith came bursting through the window. She had been able to dispatch that predator. But this one, the one that took her mother’s life, she never even saw. She could only define its presence in her mother’s exhaustion and despair.

She walks down the stairs, smoothing her hand along the banister and making slow, measured steps, trying not to disturb the peacefulness of the house. She is tired, but she won’t sleep. She has tried in the nights before, tried and failed and has given into tears. The sentiments of the past few days keep echoing through her mind in a spoken word gallery. She was doing so well…she looked so good the last time I saw her…she was such a good person…she was lucky to have you as a daughter…

Buffy is now in the living room. One of the intable lamps is on, but that is the only source of light. And there is the sofa. She has looked at that sofa a million times, but she has never quite viewed it as she does now. She cannot see her friends gathered there for Scooby meetings or movie night. She only sees the sofa as her mother’s catafalque. Buffy has not sat there since the day she found her. She could barely stand to see anyone sitting there after the funeral. How obscene to see people sitting there with their paper plates teetering on their laps. Many times she had to battle the urge to scream, “Don’t you know what happened there? My mother died there!”

“Mom?” she says. Saying the name startles her, as though she has heard someone else say it. She says it again, observing how her lips come together, slightly vibrating in the M sound, and how there is a natural, rising lilt of expectation as though she is counting on an answer. She says it over and over, while slowly approaching the couch. Her eyes are blurring with tears and the back of her throat aches. When she finally gets to the sofa, she collapses in heaving sobs, saying the word, “Mom”. She nestles her head on the back of the sofa and lets the tears roll.

But outside the window, there is something. Through the blinding veil of tears, she sees something…something black and white and dappled with blots of moisture. She blinks her eyes a few times. The image becomes clearer now. It is a man. No, not a man. She instantly recognizes the crown of bleached white hair, the pale, sun forgotten skin. The mouth that always looks as though its about to curl into a sneer. This is not a man. This is Spike.

There is a surging anger in her now as she gets up from the sofa and heads for the door. She is angry about being snapped from a moment of indulgent grief to have to attend to the business of getting a vamp off her property. She throws open the door and he is right there, waiting to be invited in.

“What do you want?” she says through her teeth.

“I just thought you might be lonely,” he says.

There is an apologetic look on his face, but she cannot see it for the look of the growling, perverse vampire which resides directly behind the façade. She can only and always see that.

“How can I be lonely? You’re always around! I’ve forgotten what being alone is. You know, sometimes it’s like my life is this big ‘Where’s Waldo?’ book. Only it’s called, ‘Where’s Spike?’. I know you’re in every picture of every page of my life.”

“I didn’t come here to start something with you,” he says.

“Well you know that’s how it always ends up. At least you should know after one hundred and fifty times. Really, Spike. I don’t know if I should congratulate you for being such a trooper or stake you for it. But I’ve just about had it. No! I have had it. I’m tired of you seeking me out when you know I don’t want to see you---ever! Anywhere! Except maybe in a pile of dust at my feet. I want this to stop, right now, right at this moment. OK?”

He waits to speak, letting her cool down, giving her time to load up for another barrage of insults and accusations.

“Are you finished?” he asks.

“Are you?” she says indignantly.

“Look, I just wanted to tell you how sorry I am about your mother.”

Her mouth flies open. “How did you know?”

“The funeral today. I was there.” There is something akin to emotion in his eyes and then deep embarrassment. He looks down at his shoes. “It was sort of on my turf, you know.”

Buffy flinches at the fact that her mother and Spike are new neighbors by proxy and instantly thinks she should have chosen another cemetery across town. But this one was closer to her home.

“I wanted to go to you today,” he continues. “I saw how sad you where. I couldn’t bear to see you like that and not put my arms around you, hold you----

“Stop! Stop it right now! I don’t want to hear anymore,” she says, trying hard not to let his words sway her from her “Spike is evil” stance.

“It was all I could do to keep from rushing over to you.”

“Stop it!”

“Buffy, I can’t stand to see you in pain. Ever since I first realized I loved you, seeing you hurt makes me hurt worse than this bloody chip when I hit someone. That night, on the back porch, when I saw you crying over your mother…I came to you with every intention of killing you, but I couldn’t. I couldn’t make myself.”

She remembers that night. The shotgun in his hands. The sizzling hatred in his eyes. The sound the gun made when he cocked it and aimed it steadily at her. But the gun didn’t go off. She is remembering the look on his face when he saw her tears. She had never seen it before. She could have almost said he looked sorry, or terrified that he was seeing her in a new light and didn’t know quite what to do. But he knew exactly what to do. He was there for her. She remembers the awkward pat on the back and how strange it made her feel to have him that close and know he wasn’t trying to kill her for once.

“You were the first person I told,” she says. “About my mother.”

“I know,” he says.

“I don’t know why I told you.”

“Because I asked.”

She folds her arms and leans heavily against the door frame, too exhausted to say anything.

“I just want you to know that I’m a decent fellow. No matter what you think. Buffy, I’ve changed. You know that. And I’m sorry if I’ve been coming on too strong. Chaining you up under my crypt wasn’t the best idea in retrospect. Vamps usually go for that sort of thing, and I should have known you wouldn’t like it. Because you’re you. You’re this thing I can’t get out of my head. And I’m caught between wanting it out almost as much as I want this chip out and loving having it with me.”

Again, she cannot say anything. Her mind assembles some retort, but her mouth can’t form the words. Vaguely, she is saying in her looks, “Go away. Get out of here. I don’t want you. You are here and I don’t want you here. You were there…you were there that night when I needed someone…you were there…you are here…I need someone…”

“Well,” he says. “Like I said, I didn’t come here to start anything with you. And I’ve probably said too much. I’ll be on my way now. And again, I’m very sorry about your mother.”

He turns and walks away. She watches him go down the steps without looking back. She has always hated the way he walks. His gait is somewhere between that of a pimp and a NFL linebacker. But there is something different about how he’s walking now. His shoulders are hunched in defeat. He has been beaten back again. She has been really harsh with him lately. Her words lately have been worse than her throws and punches when he was chip free. But he has deserved everything. He needs to be treated badly. He’s a killer. If he didn’t have that chip, there wouldn’t be a person left with a jugular in all of Sunnydale, she says to herself. But he didn’t come here tonight to kill her. He didn’t come here to insult her or belittle her about her life, her poor choice of boyfriends. He just came to say he was sorry.

How could he be sorry? He has no soul…

“Spike,” she says. She can hear herself say it and it makes her shiver, like someone has drawn a cold snowball down her back.

He turns around instantly.

She moistens her lips and leans further into the door frame. She can’t even think lucidly anymore and it surprises her when she hears what she’s saying. “Do you want to come in?”

She expects to see a certain victory in his face, but instead there is shock. “Are you inviting me?”

“Yeah,” she says. “I’m inviting you.”

They are seated now in the kitchen, at the table. There is silence. The refrigerator has just cycled off. When it does that Buffy is reminded of how loud it really is. And how quiet the night can be. She is still bewildered that she would have invited Spike in and looks at him, sitting there across from her, and binds her thoughts together in a neat bundle. She knows where all her stakes are. She knows her crossbow is under her bed. She has an axe in her closet. She’s twenty years old and she has an axe in her closet and she uses it sometimes. That seems strange even to her because she’s lived this life for so long she should be accustomed to seeing the gleaming blade of the axe next to her Eddie Bauer pants.

“I think about that night all the time,” she says.

Her shoulders are sagging and she is tracing an invisible line on the table with her finger. Spike watches her do this, watching the finger. Her fingers are small, puny. She has such power but she is so slight it seems he could pin her down with just a glance. But she could trounce him like he was nothing at all in a minute and he’s aware of that every time they meet.

She’s always beaten me, he says to himself.

But I think tonight I could win if I wanted to.

“I think about what you told me outside the Bronze,” she continues.

She is weak like a kitten. She couldn’t swat a fly now. She has been beaten down by all that has happened. She couldn’t possibly be thinking about her weapons now.

“About how my ties to the people around me have made me stronger, made me different from the other slayers. The Scoobies, my sister…my Mom.”

She is so delicate and light like a buttercup. I could clip her between my two fingers, hold her up to my chin…

She rubs her face with those little fingers and her eyes widen for a second, only to narrow and fall to that invisible line she has been tracing continuously.

“I feel like I’m losing,” she says. “All those ties are disappearing.”

I could hold her up to my mouth and kiss her. She is too weak to protest. She is too despondent to care.

“I can’t lose. I can never lose. I’ve always thought that’s what drives me, but you were right. It’s the people in my world that keep me alive, keep me fighting.”

But I want her to care. I want her to care very badly. I want her to know me, to see what I’m really like. This man, this…vampire. Have I stopped thinking of myself as being a vampire? She hasn’t…

“She was so pretty right before she died.” She is onto a different thought now, going about the way people do when their thoughts are too numerous to sort out. “Dawn and I were watching her get dressed for her date, making jokes. God, I love what Kevin Spacey says in

American Beauty, about how he wishes that people knew when they were going to die. What day it would be and all. And how.”

But maybe she has. She’s just talking to me like we’re old friends. She’s never talked to me like this before. Except on that night, when she told me about her mother. She wants me to understand her. She’s…letting me in a little?

“I never thought it would end like this. I always thought I could protect her from anything. Maybe I have started to see myself as being untouchable. I remember when I went into the Initiative, and how they all marveled at the number of vamps I had slayed, all by myself. I never even thought about the numbers of vamps I slayed until I told them about it. It’s just what I do.”

You could slay me. You with your little hands and your little fingers wrapped around a wooden stake, twisting mercilessly into my chest. Your little finger, tracing an invisible line. Where is that line going? It’s not a barrier. She’s not drawing the line between us. She’s drawing it towards me.

Finally she looks at him. She has no malice in her stare. There is helplessness and fear. She has the look of someone who has just been told that there is nothing left to live for, that there is no hope, no salvation, only torture, pain, and death.

“I have absolutely no clue what I’m going to do next. I mean, this is so big. How am I going to take care of this house? How am I going to pay the bills? How am I going to take care of Dawn and go to school? It’s so, so big. And I haven’t had time to think about any of it. Mom died and it was like, screeching halt! But now, I’m like, what next? I can’t have her back. I have to go on. But I don’t know how.”

“Buffy,” he says. He reaches for her hand. That’s all he can do. His fingers clamp around hers. She doesn’t make an effort to withdraw them from his grasp, but fear grips her eyes. That is enough for him to let go. “I want to help you.”

Her hand is still on the table. Without hesitation, he reaches for it again.

“I want to help you.”

He watches her eyes. There’s a gold band around the green that’s reflecting the light. She doesn’t blink for…forever. She doesn’t move. It looks as though a spell has been cast on her.

What comes out of her mouth next is too startling to him he’s glad that he’s sitting when she says it.

“I need you,” she says, almost in a whisper. “I need you to help me take care of Dawn.”

He runs his thumb along the underside of her hand. “I will, Buffy. I’ll help you anyway I can.”

Buffy swings open the door of the Magic Shop. It’s late afternoon and her classes are over. Dawn is following her. She hasn’t said a word for several blocks and Buffy has to check and see that she’s still behind her. She is, but many paces down the street.

“Dawn, are you coming?”

Her sister nods slowly, staring at the toe of her shoe.

She waits patiently at the door for her sister to play catch up. Meanwhile, Giles strides to the door. He is disheveled today and there is a pencil behind his ear. When he reaches to embrace her, the pencil slips from its perch and bounces in a happy ping on the floor. He bends to retrieve it, apologetically, almost.

“Things are a bit wild around here today. Anya and I are preparing for tax time. Anyways…” He sighs. “How are you?”

“Doing all right. Went back to school today. Dawn too.”

“How was that?”

She shrugs. “I can’t remember anything from the time I woke up. And Dawn’s counselor thought she was ready to come back, but…I don’t know. She’s not dealing at all.”

Dawn is now in the Magic Shop. She is standing to herself, arms at her side, like a doll.

“You all right, Dawn?” Giles asks.

She doesn’t answer him. She stares at him like she’s trying to figure out what he just said. But there is nothing else from her except a mesmerizing emptiness in her stare.

“Giles, I need to talk to you. Do you have a minute?”

“Sure, sure. Let me…let me just…” he reaches for a clip board on one of the tables by the entrance.

“Don’t touch that!” Anya calls from somewhere. “That’s where I stopped with the inventory!”

“Oh, yes, right. The inventory.” He replaces the clipboard, giving it peevish glance. “I thought the taggis root was $1.75 an ounce.”

“Nope, $2.00. Our supplier’s prices went up again.”

“If this is a bad time, I could come back,” Buffy offers.

“No, no. I needed to take a break from all this anyway. Let’s go to the training room.”

The sun is bright in the training room and throws beams down on the floor in yellow stripes. Buffy sits down in one of the beams and throws her head back, letting her hair feather down across her back. She then draws her legs up and hugs her knees, staring ahead.

Giles regards her carefully, thinking that he has never seen her look so small and so lost. It terrifies him.

“I had a visitor last night,” she says.

“Someone I know?”

“Too well,” she says.

“Someone human?”

“Not the least bit. It was Spike.”

“What did he want? Oh, that was a stupid question. What does he always want from you?”

“He said that he wanted to tell me he was sorry about Mom.”

“Oh?”

“It was really weird. He really acted like he was sorry. And we talked. For a long time. It was so weird having him there in my kitchen not threatening me or trying to chain me up---

“In your kitchen?” Giles sputters.

Her eyes widen and her face flushes. “Yeah.”

“Buffy, you invited him in?”

“I did. But it was OK. He didn’t hurt me. Nothing was broken. And when he left, he didn’t come back.”

“Why would you invite him in after all the trouble he has caused you? That’s not like you.”

“So I slipped. Willow and Tara can reinstate the spell if he steps out of line again.”

“And he will. That’s his nature. You should know that by now.”

“Giles, he was being nice for once. He let me talk. He let me vent, get everything out. And he listened. It was just so good to have someone there.”

“I offered to stay after the funeral.”

“I know. And I thought I’d be OK. But I wasn’t. I fell apart, actually. And I looked outside and there was Spike. So he got the invite, got to listen to Buffy rant.” She hesitates before saying the rest. “There’s more.”

“You didn’t…” he can’t finish, because the idea of something happening between the two of them is making him too nauseous to speak.

“What? No! He touched my hand. That was all.”

“That’s enough.”

“Anyway. I told him that I may need help protecting Dawn. And he offered to look after her when I’m on patrol. Actually, he offered to patrol for me, but he has too much fun killing his own kind. So on the nights when I’m patrolling, he’s going to come over and watch her for me.”

“Buffy, this is madness! What were you thinking?”

“I was thinking about Dawn. She needs someone with my strength to protect her. Spike’s got it.”

“He’s also prone to evil and violence at a moment’s notice. Not the sort of creature I’d want looking after my only sibling.”

“OK, Giles, then what would you suggest? Sending her to Angel?”

“No.”

“Putting her in a convent?”

“No. But surely there must be other ways to deal with this.”

“Well, I couldn’t think of any at the moment. And I can’t think of any alternatives now.”

“Yes, but Buffy---

“I know what you’re thinking. This has disaster written all over it in big, Sesame Street letters. But I think it might work out. It might.”

Giles can only shake his head. “I think you’re putting an opening in a wall that should be kept closed.”

“You’re probably right. But this is all I can do for now. We’ll just see.” She sets her chin down between her knees. “We’ll just see.”

“Buffy, I don’t like this,” Dawn says as she watches her sister gather up her stakes for the night’s patrol.

“I know you don’t, but there’s nothing else I can do,” Buffy replies, checking a stake for signs of wear.

“Having that…monster in the house while I’m trying to sleep. I mean, it’s like, the at home Blair Witch Project or something.”

“Spike promises to be good. If he isn’t, he knows what he’s in for,” she says, spinning the stake in her hand.

“What if that chip in his head de-activates while he’s here? What if he vamps out on me? What if Harmony comes around?” Dawn draws in a breath. “What if Dru comes back?”

“Look, if any of those things happen, Spike knows his new home will be a Dust Buster. Don’t worry. I’m in control.”

Dawn follows her sister down the stairs, still yapping about her fears. Buffy is too tired to respond. They’re the same questions she’s been asking herself. She is scared. But at the same time, she thinks she knows it will be all right. She keeps telling herself that anyway.

There is a knock at the door. Dawn draws in another quick breath.

“He’s here,” Buffy says.

She opens the door and finds him there, looking like a confident suitor. All he was missing were the flowers and the candy.

“Hello, sweetbreads.”

Buffy rolls her eyes.

He strides across the threshold and makes eye contact with Dawn, who quickly hides behind her sister.

“Aw, don’t be shy. We’re old friends, aren’t we?”

“Don’t start with her, Spike. Or it ends right here,” she says, producing a stake from her coat pocket.

“Oh, and then who will look after little bits, then? Xander? ‘Oh, let me be helpless in a million ways, but be funny while I’m doing it.’”

“Spike!” Her eyes flash a warning.

“All right, all right. I’ll keep quiet.”

Buffy turns to her sister. “Go to bed on time. No TV past 10:00. And don’t forget you have a quiz in math tomorrow. I looked at your homework and saw that big fat D you got last week. Gotta work on that.”

Dawn’s eyes are transmitting about a billion distress signals at once. Buffy lays a hand on her sister’s cheek and smiles. “You’ll be all right.” And then she fires her voice over her shoulder. “Won’t she, Spike?”

“Right as rain,” he says. “I’ll be a good babysitter. Won’t chat on the phone. Won’t raid the fridge.” He rubs his stomach. “I ate before I came. O Neg. Fresh from the dairy. Or dairy maid, as it were.”

She makes for the door, but before she leaves, she turns to Spike just one more time. “If anything goes wrong---

“Yeah, I know. Stake to the heart. Goodbye Sunnydale, hello Satan.”

“Just checking,” she says. “Bye, Dawn. I’ll be back soon.”

After Buffy’s departure, Dawn and Spike stand awkwardly in each other’s presence. Dawn switches her weight from hip to hip, squirming in the vampire’s stare. He smiles and heads for the sofa. Before Dawn can protest, he leaps into the air and lands on the cushions like a pole vaulter.

“Don’t sit there!” Dawn says.

Spike is surprised by the anger in her voice. It sounds so out of place, coming from someone so small and so young.

He gets to his feet. “Why? Did somebody piss on it or something?”

“That’s where…that’s where…” she can’t say it.

Spike tries hard to interpret the hesitation in her voice. Then tears appear in her eyes and he knows instantly.

“Oh,” he says in a hollow voice.

All of a sudden there is nothing in the room but Dawn’s grief. It is filling the room with its resonance, its power. It is wrapping around Spike’s throat and threatening to cut all of his oxygen off. It is enveloping him, and everything else, making it more of a force than life itself.

Finally, he says, in a small, barely audible voice. “It must be scary being without your mother all on a sudden.”

Dawn swallows hard as a few tears escape her eyes. “It is.”

Buffy is moving slowly down her street. She is sore and she thinks she dislocated her shoulder when she threw a vamp over a tombstone. She is looking for her house. She is wondering too what went on while she was gone. She had trouble focusing tonight. She couldn’t fight very well. She kept thinking of the what ifs. What if he’s going through my underwear drawer? What if he’s wearing my underwear on his head? What if he’s touching my sheets, sniffing my clothes, beating off to pictures of me, getting his spooge all over the place…eww!

“This was a bad idea,” she says to herself. “Bad, bad, bad idea to have the Big Bad in my house while I’m away.”

She keeps saying “bad” as she’s walking, until a passerby looks at her funny. And she continues on for home.

The house is quiet and dark when she enters. Spike is on the floor in front of the TV, watching a home shopping channel.

“Buffy, do you have this Showtime Rotisserie?” he asks.

“No,” she says.

“You really should get one. It’ll roast a turkey, a chicken…anything. And you can cook veggies on top too. It’s brilliant.”

She is not so tired that she can’t find this amusing. A vamp going on about the wonders of modern kitchen technology. She smiles and he returns the look. For a minute he looks kind of sweet, like a kid watching cartoons on Saturday morning, waiting for his mother to make pancakes.

Mother

And the smile disappears from her face.

“Any trouble while I was gone?” she asks.

“None at all.”

“Dawn in bed?”

“I think. She hasn’t been making much noise lately. You gotta talk to her about her music, though. Pitiful stuff. Maybe I can loan her some Sex Pistols.”

“I think she’s a little young for punk, Spike.”

“Oh, no. She’s at the right age.”

She sits down in a chair, letting her purse fall from her arm. She runs her fingers through her hair, collecting a brittle leaf that must have gotten stuck there while she was fighting. The two of them are silent and Spike watches her, wondering what she’s thinking. He feels comfortable, at home. Almost feels like warmth.

She yawns and lays back in the chair.

“Tired, slayer?”

“Yeah,” she says, closing her eyes for just a second. “This one vamp in the north sector just wouldn’t be killed. Big guy. About six four. Like a piano turned on its side.”

“I think I know that bloke. Did you get him?”

“Yep.”

“Good. He was next on my list.”

She smiles at him again. It is a labor intensive act at this point.

“I suppose you want me to leave now,” he says.

Did she?

“I’m going to bed soon.”

He nods. “I’ll be on my merry way, then.” He gathers himself up from the floor and grabs his leather duster from the hearth.

She watches him slip into his coat. That coat belonged to a slayer. It’s a trophy from one of his kills. White hot hate begins to glow in her and she is no longer smiling.

Spike senses something has changed in her and begins fretting.

“What? Did I do something wrong?”

She frowns. “No,” she says. And then, “Yes.”

“What?”

She doesn’t respond. She stands up and opens the door for him. “You’d better get back to your crypt now.” She is saying this for his own protection. She is aware of the stake inside her pocket. It can still be used.

He studies her for a moment. What did I do now, he thinks. Why do I inspire her hatred even when I’m not doing anything at all?”

“All right. I’m going. I’m going.” He turns to her before he leaves. “When do you want me back?”

“I don’t know. I’ll give you a ring.”

“In other words, don’t call us, we’ll call you sort of thing.”

“I guess,” she says. She doesn’t want to talk to him anymore. It’s an effort now.

When he is out on the porch, he tries to speak to her again. But she allows him only to say her name. And she sends him away.

She spends the next few minutes checking everything in the house, making a mental note to herself to buy a padlock for her underwear drawer if she finds anything missing. But everything appears to be just how it was before she left. She checks on Dawn one last night, washes her face and crawls into her bed to feign sleep for a few hours before school.

“I hope last night wasn’t too totally weird for you, Dawn,” Buffy says as she slices some banana into her cereal.

“It was kind of weird at first,” Dawn replies, munching on her cornflakes. “But then, it was kind of good too.”

“What do you mean?”

“We talked a lot. About…what happened with…you know. And all that stuff. He’s a good listener. He really made me feel like he was understanding me, what I was going through and all. It was kinda like talking to my counselor, but different, because my counselor at school wears these really, really big glasses and always has lipstick on her teeth. But it was cool to talk to him. He’s just enough on the inside to understand, but just enough on the outside too.”

“So that’s all you guys did? Talk?”

“Oh, and then there was the fire.”

Buffy’s heart begins to race. “What fire?”

“Just kidding. Really it was fine. We talked and watched TV. And he said this really, really funny thing about cable companies having a bias against the undead, or else they’d wire the graveyard. He really can be funny sometimes.”

Buffy would never admit it to anymore, but sometimes she did find him amusing, even if the things he said were at her expense. The boy could be witty. But he could also be dangerous. And he was in her house last night.

I left my only sibling alone with a vampire…and they watched TV. It sounded like a story in one of those supermarket tabloids. But it was true.

And nothing happened.

“When are you patrolling again?” Dawn asked.

Buffy hasn’t seen her sister this cheerful in days and her happiness is almost blindingly apparent. She knows what Dawn really wants to know is, when is Spike coming back. She hadn’t left an open invitation for Spike. But her sister’s pleading eyes told her that she really should get in touch with him again.

“Soon,” Buffy says. “I’ll be patrolling again soon.”

“Tonight, maybe?”

“No, not tonight,” Buffy says. “It’s Friday, and we’ve been cooped up together for a while. What say us chickens get out and see a movie or something. Crouching Tiger, Hidden Dragon is playing at the multiplex. I’ve heard it’s really good.”

“I’ve heard it’s really subtitled, too.”

“Reading is good, Dawn.”

“Can’t we see that new movie about David Arquette and the big, drooling dog?”

“You know, as much as I’m into the whole doofus-paired-with-slobbering-canine genre, I think I’ll pass on that one.”

CHAPTER TWO

“That was incredible!” Dawn is saying for the twentieth time as she and her sister are exiting the movie theater. It’s a little past ten on a Friday night and people are out in force to see the movies at the Sunnydale Multiplex. Buffy has heard her sister pour on nothing but adulation the whole time the movie was on and she sees this trend continuing throughout the evening.

“I thought you would like it,” Buffy said.

“I mean, the whole thing was great. The story, the way it was shot---everything.”

“Probably won’t win as many Academy Awards as the David Arquette flick, but it’ll hold its own at Oscar time.”

“I mean, Buffy…do you think you could do some of those moves that the girl did in the movie?”

“Oh, yeah. Totally. And I do,” Buffy says. “All the time.”

“Could you even do that spinny thing she does in the air?”

“Well, no, I probably couldn’t do that. Mostly because I’m a person and not a digital effect.”

They are heading now for the downtown district. It’s about ten blocks to their home and Buffy wants to get back soon. Always, in the back of her mind lately, she’s been thinking, “I’ve got to get home…I’ve got to get home…what if Mom came back.” She is finding that the grieving process is sometimes as much about self-deception as it is about loss. There is a part of her that still thinks that this all hasn’t really happened, that the past few days have been some sort of test for her, something that the Watchers’ Council dreamed up in one of their more sadistic moments. What would you do without your Mother? You have a week to figure things out.

Well, I’d probably ask a vampire to come take care of my sister…

Spike approaches the counter at the Sunnydale Stop and Gulp convenience store.

“Pack of Marlboros in a box,” he says. “Better make that two.”

The blasé and rather corpulent clerk reaches overhead for the two packs and places them on the counter.

“You know, you ought to read the warnings on these things sometime. You might learn something.”

“Well, since I’m not planning on being an expectant mother anytime soon, I think I’ll be all right. And the carbon monoxide---love the stuff. It’s the air I breathe. And the health warnings…” his face convulses into vamp mode and he watches as the clerk suddenly, seemingly makes a mental note to file for workman’s comp. “Don’t think I have to worry about them either.”

He reaches for the packs and stuffs them into his pocket as the clerk begins to lose all speech capabilities. He wipes the vampire countenance away before turning around and walking out of the store.

So, what to do tonight, he wonders to himself as he strides down the main street. In the days before el chippo Diablo, that answer would be easy. Killing was always on the agenda. So many necks, so little time, was his motto. It has nearly been two years since he had been the Initiative’s guinea pig and sometimes it was hard for him to remember the life he had before. He was certain that if those who knew him in the old country could see him now they would think, “How sad, how pathetic he is. Watching soaps on the telly all day, chain-smoking, besting other vamps and demons. Mooning over the slayer…”

The Slayer.

He could go to her house, he said to himself. He had been invited back in. She had invited him back in to sit at her kitchen table. He had held her hand, that tiny little hand. He remembers her eyes. Spike constantly watches her eyes whenever he’s around her because she reveals more than she knows when she’s looking at him. Sometimes there’s only blind hatred, but other times there’s something else that he cannot define. It’s as though she’s mentally adding up why he’s in this world and what place he has in it. And then sometimes it looks as though she’s trying to see him, really see him. And those are the times that give him hope. He must have questioned Dawn about a hundred times about her sister’s feelings for him. And always, the answer was, “She pretty much hates the ground you walk on” or some variation of that.

He had been trying so hard, maybe a little bit too hard, to win her over. Why did she think he was killing vamps in the cemetery? Did she think that he got off on that sort of thing? Well, he did. But also, he wanted her to know that he could be on the side of right sometimes. He had the capabilities to be put to good use. Why didn’t she see that? He had helped her many, many times in the past year. He had helped her and the other Scoobies topple Adam and the Initiative. He had almost single-handedly saved her from being killed by a gang of demons at the magic shop. He had shown her that her goody-two shoes boyfriend wasn’t what he seemed.

That was a mistake, he thinks to himself as he lights a cigarette. I shouldn’t have taken her to that nest to show her what Riley was up to when he wasn’t being a big, self-righteous pain in the ass. What had he been thinking? In the back of his mind, he had dreamed that she would be grateful to him, that she would have leaped into his arms and said, “Oh, you’re the only one I can trust now, Spike.” Nothing like that had happened. On the contrary, she had reacted with such a frosty rebuff he was still feeling the chill.

“I never should have told her that I loved her,” he said to himself. “I should have waited. Let her get Captain Cardboard out of her system.”

At that moment, something grabs him and he is instantly lifted off his feet and plunged into the darkness of an alleyway. His back feels the hardness of a stone wall, not before his head is nearly knocked senseless by the force of being driven into it. His shoulders are pinned and his feet dangle precariously above the ground. He struggles to see in the blackness, and can discern a figure before him, black and hulking and smelling of every waste product on the West Coast. He is too dazed to think and as he maneuvers to free himself from the creature’s grasp, but he is pinned once again, this time by arms thrust from either side. Three against one, he quickly assesses. I guess I had this one coming…

“We’ve been looking for you, Spike,” a voice snarls in front of him.

“Really? You Scientologists have gotten a little militant with your membership drives, haven’t you?” he replies coolly, though, if he had a beating heart, it would be racing.

He is forced once again against the wall and for a minute he sees stars.

“Shut up, Spike! You’re lucky that we got to you first. The others wouldn’t be so kind,” the voice says again.

“What do you want?”

“The word is out, Spike. You’ve been knocking off vamps at night. Helping the Slayer. Rumor is that you’re in love with her.”

“Slayer? Don’t know her. Is she a Scientologist too?”

“Don’t try to be funny,” the voice is closer now, like a knife blade against his neck. “I bet you have a stake on you, now.”

“Steak? Don’t be silly. I’m a vegan.”

“Search him!” the voice commands.

Briefly, his feet are reunited with the ground. One of the vamps holds him as he is stripped roughly of his leather duster. Once he is free of their grasp, he finds a window of opportunity to flee, but before he can take a step, something sharp pierces the skin on his chest, just barely.

“Then what you do call this?” the voice asks.

“How’d that get there?” he says. So this is what the end is going to be, he thinks to himself. Cornered by three smelly vamps in an alleyway. I always hoped for better…

“Did the Slayer give this to you?”

“No, I made it myself. You can tell by the craftsmanship and attention to detail. It’s a Spike original.”

“Then you’re to die by your own weapon. You can see for yourself that it really works.”

The vamp draws back his arm with the stake curled in his fingers. How does one prepare for this, he wonders. Does hell happen right away or does that come later?

In the seconds that he waits in agony for the final plunge, there is a blood-curdling scream of death, but it’s not his. His ears catch the sound of dust raining down on the sidewalk below. He squints to see a tiny figure, her own stake in her hand, at the ready for another kill.

“Did I interrupt something?” he hears Buffy say. And it is the most beautiful sound he’s ever heard.

The hands that had been holding him fast to the wall now tense, then fall away. Spike rallies himself to throw a punch, but his knees buckle, and he finds himself on the ground, his palms violently smacking the sidewalk. He raises his head weakly and sees that the two who were holding him are now approaching the Slayer. She is saying something to them. Her voice is strong without a twinge of fear.

Then the kicks begin. And the punches. The alleyway echoes with the sounds of her fists pummeling hard, her grunts and thrusts. One of the vamps is tossed next to him and lies there dazed, as Spike’s hand suddenly finds his stake is within reach. But he can’t quite get to it. Then he hears that terrible, gushing sound every vamp dreads---that sickening crunch of bone and sinew as chiseled wood meets heart and the vampire’s life is over. Again, dust powders the ground. Now the vamp next to him has successfully regrouped and he charges towards Buffy, tackling her from behind. Spike hears the struggle. There is something in him now that wants to fight, gives him the strength to rise and spring to action. Off the ground and running, he can barely see his target, but he hears the two in front of him. He reaches out in the darkness and his hand finds the woolen texture of a shirt drawn taut against a wide, muscular back. He pulls the stake back and then plunges it deeply into the body, the corpse disappearing in a howl beneath his curled fist.

Silence rules the alleyway and there are no words for a long time between the two of them. He has just saved her life again. And again, there are no thank you’s. He waits to hear those words every time and every time, his patience is undermined by her stubbornness.

But she saved my life this time…why?

She is moving now. Something on the ground has attracted his attention. His leather duster, lying now in a pile of dust that could very well have been his had she not intervened.

“Is this what they wanted?” she asks as she holds up the coat, shaking it free of the vamp’s remains.

“Nice to know some people in this town still have fashion sense,” he says.

She holds the coat for a moment before turning it over to him. But there are still no words of gratitude, from him or from her.

“Did you know them?”

“No. I don’t think so. They’re probably the same sort that broke into my crypt the other day. Smashed my TV. Tried to set the place alight. Stupid bloody vamps. Don’t even know that stone doesn’t burn.”

“How do you know that vamps did it?”

“They stole all my blood from the fridge. Either it was the work of vamps on a rampage or some bizarre tactics of a rather vigilant wing of the Red Cross.”

“Why are they singling out you?”

“Because some of the vamps in this town don’t like the fact that Spike wields a stake against his brethren now, I suppose.”

Together they walk back into the lighted main street, emerging as triumphant gladiators to Dawn’s cheering approval.

“Did you get them?” she asks.

“Yeah, we got them,” Buffy says. “You didn’t watch, did you?”

“Nope. I heard a lot, though.”

The three walk in silence, not really as an ensemble. Spike walks slightly behind, wondering if he’s being included in the excursion or if he’s being left behind without so much as a good-bye. Finally, he catches up to Buffy, touches her by the shoulder. She doesn’t turn or even acknowledge the gesture, but keeps her stride steady and her eyes straight ahead.

“Buffy,” he says. “Buffy, why did you do that?”

“Don’t flatter yourself,” she says. “I heard threatening voices in the alleyway and thought someone might be in trouble. I didn’t know it was you.”

“But even after you saw it was me,” he says. “I mean, it’s your birthright to protect the innocent, not other vampires, right?”

“It’s my job to kill vampires,” she nearly hisses.

“But there were four vampires in the alleyway. And one of them didn’t get a stake.”

All of a sudden, she grabs him and sends him swirling into a nearby lamppost. His face is pressed against the cold metal, her stake is pressed against his back. She leans her head near his and whispers in an icy, steely voice, “Sorry, Spike. Didn’t want you to feel left out.”

He manages a nervous, thready laugh. “Rough treatment for someone who just saved your life.”

She relinquishes her hold and he slips away from the lamppost. “You didn’t save my life,” she says, “I saved your life.”

“Oh, right. And the bloody vamp who grabbed you from behind. You had him sunk in the side pocket, didn’t you?”

“I could have had him,” she said. “I still had my weapon. I saved your life, Spike. Not the other way around.”

“Buffy, you’re forgetting the lessons I taught you. Lesson the first: a slayer must always reach for her weapon. He already had his at the ready. He had you from behind, love. You could have been drained dry.”

“Oh, please! I was about to flip him like a pancake! You were the one who was all helpless and struggling. Didn’t take me much effort to finish them off. What was your problem?”

“Buffy, there were three of them!”

“So? I staked a whole nest before.”

“And you didn’t kill all three. I killed the third.” He points at her violently with his index finger. “I killed the third!”

“OK, so you killed the third. But I killed the one who was about to make you Satan’s new boy toy.”

“Oh, yeah?”

“Yeah!”

“All right then!”

“All right!”

“Then I guess you saved my life!”

“Yes, I did!”

“Well, thank you!”

They have been shouting to the tops of their lungs. And now there is a hush. They are standing directly across from each other. She is so close he could touch her, but he doesn’t. He can feel something like a caress in her the words that come next.

“You’re welcome,” she says.

Dawn is off by herself, having watched the whole thing, wondering if her sister was about to forget her promise to their mother: I’ll never stake a vamp in front of Dawn. But Buffy would never stake Spike. Not now, not ever, Dawn felt certain, especially after witnessing their sparring up close. Buffy loves the fight, Dawn thinks to herself. It’s not so much the kill, but it’s the fight. And she loves to fight with Spike. She sees for herself how Buffy likes to toy with him, likes to feel the pain break across his face when she’s not even throwing a single punch. Buffy did nothing to inspire Spike’s love for her, but she has done nothing to discourage it, either. Dawn feels sure that if she merely ignored Spike, then he would go away. And she also sees what has really kept her sister winning all this time. She doesn’t give up, and she must always be right. When she feels herself losing, she climbs further, strains harder, fights stronger. And she also knows why Spike is so hooked on her. With her sister Buffy, he has finally found his match.

Although Buffy is clearly the victor this time, this does not keep Spike from trying for a rematch. He follows the sisters as they head for their home, as though he thinks of himself as part of their clan, as though he is one of them. He desperately wants to be, its seems, almost to the point of being pathetic. This little taste he’s had of being in Buffy’s house, invited in as a friend almost, has left him hungry for more. Dawn heard what he said in the alleyway, how the other vamps have been after him.

He’s not wanted anywhere he goes, Dawn thinks. He doesn’t have anywhere to go. And the other night he was sitting on my living room floor making me laugh. He acted like he belonged there. Or maybe I made him think he belonged there. But it’s no wonder he likes us better than the vamps. We’ll never kill him. Buffy will never kill him.

“Spike,” Buffy says at length. “I need you to watch Dawn tomorrow night. I have a feeling that during my downtime, the cemetery’s gotten full of vamps again. If there were three on you tonight, there are probably three hundred more where they came from.”

“Aww…I’m all a quiver. Out to nab my enemies before they have a chance to have a little pin the stake in Spike fun again.”

“Spike, let’s just get one thing straight. I am not protecting you. You are protecting Dawn. That is what I asked you to do.”

As a group, they have stopped walking. Dawn is at the end of the line, giving the vampire and his erstwhile slayer room to talk, room to spat, room to throw each other around until Kingdom Come. But she thinks that they have stopped fighting for the night.

“And I said that I would,” he said.

It is difficult for her to say the next sentence, but she squeezes it out, nearly closing her eyes as she does. Certainly she can’t place her stare on him.

“I saved you tonight because right now…right now I have to…rely on you. You’re the only one who can help me. I hate to say it, but you are the only one.”

Her desperation is etched on her face in broad strokes. In the lamplight she looks many years older than her twenty years. Her face is tired, careworn. The young woman has gone and left her house in a shambles. But still there is a vague confidence about her. And her devotion to her sister is no palpable for a moment, for just a moment, Spike envies her. She is the most human human he’s ever known. He was basking in this knowledge that he was the only one in the world she could rely on. He has guessed at that, and she just confirmed it for him. His life was worth something to her.

Vampires have only one person to fear…and that’s the slayer. This one may threaten and strut around with a stake she says is intended for me, but she won’t kill me now.

“Buffy, I gave you my word.”

“It’s the word of a vampire.”

“But it’s my word to you. And I…” He’s not going to say it again. He’s said it alone, he’s said it to her, many times, but there is no use. And he makes up his mind right then and there not to say it to her again until she returns the sentiment.

And he knows that it’s his time to leave. He could get down on bended knee and plead his case to the slayer once more, but tonight he feels pretty good about himself. His life is worth something to her. And suddenly it doesn’t matter that he’s going back to a ruined crypt where there’s no place to lie down and no place to store his blood. She needs him.

And he adores her more than ever.

The two sisters stand together as they watch him walk away. The tension in Buffy’s shoulders abates as he disappears into the darkness. Dawn’s inquisitives snaps the silence like a twig in the forest.

“I don’t know, Buffy. I’m starting to feel a little sorry for him,” Dawn says.

Buffy did pity him, but not the way Dawn did. She pitied him because he was a damn fool. She would never love him. And he would never stop loving her.

The next night, Buffy is returning from the graveyard. She was wrong in her estimation about there being three hundred vamps lurking about the cemeteries. There had to be twice as many as that. In the first hour she encountered five, the next, six more. As she’s walking, her stakes click together like pick-up sticks in her satchel and she almost feels like a little girl returning home from a play date, if it weren’t for the fact that she feels so aged and robbed of all energy. She hasn’t been in training for nearly a week and she fears it is starting to show. She wasn’t able to kick as well tonight, not as high, not as fast. Her instincts weren’t as keen tonight. She had to forcibly turn off her thoughts many times to keep her mind on the job. Three vamps got away and she didn’t even bother to chase them.

Maybe Spike did save my life last night, she says to herself as she walks.

She could feel the vampire’s breath on her neck, his arms gripping her tight. He had a grasp on her that she couldn’t wriggle out of anyway she tried. He was a strong one and he had caught her at a weak moment. She should have heard him sneak up behind her. No, she should have never turned her back to a vampire. That left her vulnerable, open for the kill. There was that moment when the vampire’s incisors touched her skin. Her weapon was in her hand, but she couldn’t do a thing with it. Her arms had been pinned beneath her in his terrible grasp. And then, all at once, the arms disappeared, the weight of the body as well. He had been killed. And the person she had to thank was Spike.

Last night she had been too proud to utter the words. They never even occurred to her. She had to put on that act, that “Girl Power bit” as Spike once called it. “I saved your ass, Spike. You didn’t save mine.” If she had told him that the opposite were true, she would never hear the end of it. She could never put herself in a position of owing something to him. There could be no weaknesses in the Buffy foundation. She had to be strong and straight all the time. If he knew that he has actually saved her life…

She didn’t want to think about it.

She enters the house and all his quiet. It’s a Saturday night and Dawn usually stays up to watch Saturday Night Live, but this night she has gone to bed early, it seems. But then Buffy glances at the time on the VCR and realizes it’s after one o’clock in the morning.

Damn, no wonder I’m so tired, she says to herself wearily.

But it appears that no one else is up either. The TV is on, but no one is watching it. She sees Spike’s white head glowing in the dark over the top of the chair he is sitting in, but he does not move, even when she says his name.

“Spike?” her mouth is dry and her voice comes out in a rasp. In her irrational, tired mind she thinks he might be dead. But if he were dead, he’d be dust.

She makes a half-circle around the chair until she sees him, full-on. He is sound asleep. His mouth is slack, slightly open, and there are small, hushed sounds like a muted ocean roar coming from the opening between his lips. She has never seen him sleep before and for a moment, she is enchanted. It is a novelty to see him this way. She has wakened him from sleep before, but has never taken the time to study him, see what he’s like when he’s not animated and full of the anger that possesses him most of the time she’s with him. His brows are slightly knitted, as though something is concerning him even in the peacefulness of this drowse. His left hand is tucked under his chin; the other, nestled in his lap. His left leg is crossed over his right, which dangles to the floor. His instincts are as keen as hers, and she wonders if he is just pretending to sleep, but she detects no motion from him. And the sound of his slumber is lulling her to sleep as well.

But then, the eyes flutter and he sits bolt upright in the chair. His eyes focus on her immediately. And the smile that greets her is a scold sent her way, for standing there and watching him for so long and not saying a word.

“That’s it,” she says. “You don’t get your $5.50 tonight, Spike.”

He stretches and moves his hips over the seat of the chair, almost seductively. “Sorry. Must have drifted off.”

“Must have. You were snoring so loud the neighbors called.”

“And what did you tell them?” he asks, playfully.

“Vampire in the house,” she says.

He smiles. “Vampire in the house.”

She smiles too. She hates it, because sometimes, there’s something about him that just makes him smile. When he’s in her house this late, and after he’s looked after her sister all evening, he seems so different. There’s no monster in him. It’s easy to forget who he is because he’s trying so hard to be someone else. She forgets easily. Without that chip, he’d spring up, bury his mouth in her neck, bite deeply, empty her quickly. But with the chip, he’s sitting there, calmly, a bit drowsy, rubbing his face like a cat.

“I didn’t get much sleep today,” he says. “There was more trouble at the crypt.”

“Oh?”

“Some vamps had heard what had happened last night.”

“God. Are you guys on the internet or something?”

“It’s a small town, babe. Vamps hear things. We have ears, not modems.”

“What happened?” she is suddenly aware that her question makes it seem as though she cares.

“Well, as the sun set, I was sitting there, minding my own business, when the door came crashing down. There were just two of them this time. Two I can handle. Don’t worry, pet. I dispatched them. Had the stake at the ready.”

Whenever he makes a point, Buffy has noticed that his jaw does this funny shift, like a flinch, only slower. And he purses his lips afterward. It is a smug, self-satisfied look but tonight, she interprets it differently.

“They know about you, don’t they? They know that you have been helping me.”

He doesn’t respond automatically. He purses his lips again and drops his eyes.

A sudden, clear thought develops in Buffy’s mind. Oh, my God! He’s really risking his life for me! It’s not a question of killing other vamps for the fun of it. He has to now. Because of me!

“Oh, my God,” she says. And she repeats it several times.

There are several reasons that inspire her continued exclamations. For one, she has told herself over and over again that Spike has no soul. He cannot feel. He cannot own a conscience. His life is the kill, is the blood. Even with the chip in his head, he still wants to kill. She can still feel his anger, his resentment for being tamed against his will. He is feral and cagey, restless in his desire to do evil, she has always said to herself. And that’s what makes him dangerous. He’s the clichéd timebomb waiting to go off. But tonight he is sweet and giving and good to her. Good to Dawn. Good to see him sitting there in her house, in her favorite chair, looking sleepy.

“Spike, why…” but she knows the answer. She asked him for a favor. And he would do anything in the world for her.

He stands up then. He stands up, and she feels instantly dwarfed, a pygmy against a Brobdignagian. He reaches for her face. He cradles her chin in his hand. She grabs his wrist, not wrenching it away, but just holding it there.

Again, he has to look into her eyes. Though it is dim, he can still see the gold rings around the green and they seem wider. Her eyes are giant pools of harnessed green sea, churning.

“What are you thinking?” he asks.

A slayer never reveals what’s she’s thinking to her prey. But he is not her prey now. His hand his cupping her chin and she is holding it there.

“I’m thinking that…you should stay here,” and she wonders who is saying that when she hears the words. She can feel her lips moving, but it seems astounding even to her that she has just invited him to stay. “If you’re going to protect Dawn, I need you alive.”

The shock filters through him, the after effects shifting around in his mind, playing out on his face in a series of slight, silent movements.

“Pet,” he says.

There’s enough fight in her left to volley that term of endearment. “Don’t call me that,” she says.

He leans his head in close, whispering into her ear, “What do you want me to call you, then?”

Buffy feels his lip rub against her earlobe and his breath flows down the canal in a gush of passion. She closes her eyes, briefly, and dizziness causes her to sway slightly. His arms go to her shoulders to steady her.

“What do you want me to call you?” he asks again.

Something in her snaps to attention, though his longing for her is flowing through her like a raging river. As she’s about to be taken down by his desperation, she eases her stance through her lips.

“Call me Slayer.”

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