Chapter Nine

“Are you coming or not?” Buffy asked over her shoulder. The question was rhetorical; she knew Spike wouldn’t stay behind.

“Shouldn’t we get weapons?” asked Spike dubiously, glancing back at the house.

“We’re not patrolling, we’re just walking,” Buffy told him—not for the first time. “I’ve got my emergency stake. We don’t need anything else.”

She continued walking, and Spike hurried up to catch up. “So patrolling’s later?”

Buffy rolled her eyes. He was like a dog with a bone, if the bone involved swords and battle axes. “We don’t have to patrol—I told you, this isn’t the Hellmouth.”

“And there aren’t any scary beasts or world-shaking apocalypses?” Spike clarified. He just wanted to be sure, what with the world’s tendency to end and all.

“That’s right.”

Spike walked beside her in silence for a moment. “So this is a perfectly nice, normal little town, sounds like.”

She made a sound of agreement.

“So why are you here?”

Buffy stopped in surprise and looked at him. “Why am I here?” she repeated. He just stared at her curiously. “Where else would I go?”

Spike shrugged. “Dunno. But I can’t really see you just doing nothing.”

“I’m not doing nothing, I’m—I’m being normal,” Buffy insisted, exasperated. “I’m going to school and—and being a person. Like other people.”

“So you’re not patrolling?”

“Well, not often—”

“So you do patrol sometimes?”

“Now and then—”

“But nothing big?”

“Right!” said Buffy with relief. Spike could be pretty dense when he wanted to be, which was whenever he wanted to annoy her. But, ha! Without the one-in-all-the-world weight on her shoulders, she was very nearly unannoyable. Or something like that, but an actual word that made sense. “But nothing big ever happens, so I don’t have to patrol a lot.”

“How many Slayers are there now?”

Buffy blinked at his abrupt change of topic. “Uh, I don’t know … thousands?”

“You … don’t know?” repeated Spike. Seemed a mite cavalier to him.

“Well, we’re trying to find them,” Buffy defended. “Willow helped the Council of Watchers—there aren’t many of them, but they’ve re-formed—set up a guidance spell to help locate new Slayers, so the Watchers are out making with the locating.”

Hmm. Made sense, but … “Why’s Giles with you?”

Why was he with her? What kind of a question was that? “Wha—what? Why wouldn’t he be with me? Where else would he be?”

“With one of the thousands of Slayers who doesn’t have a Watcher, and actually needs to learn about fighting and researching and all that rah-rah, go-team, fight-evil stuff,” Spike said dryly. “Instead of, say, the only Slayer in the world with an assload of experience, who does what she wants anyway.”

Buffy stared at him for a moment without answering, then resumed her walk, mumbling under her breath.

“What? Didn’t catch that, love, human hearing now, remember?”

“I didn’t ask Giles to stay,” Buffy muttered.

Okay, maybe that was a sore point. “Never said you did,” he soothed. “Just wondered.” After a minute he added, “Where are the other Slayers?”

“Wherever they want,” Buffy said without looking at him.

Spike raised his eyebrows. “And Rupert was okay with that?”

Buffy hesitated. “Actually, uh, he didn’t like the idea.”

Spike was unsurprised. “What’d he want to do? Have some big Slayer factory like at your place last spring, only super-sized?”

“Something like that,” admitted Buffy. The very thought of it made her ill. She’d told Giles again and again how she felt about it. She told him the girls needed their families, their friends. Needed lives. That pulling them away from that was obscene, that they’d become automatons, like Kendr—

Okay, that wasn’t fair. Not to Kendra, or to all the other Slayers who were just like her. Just like her because that’s all they were allowed to be.

And just like her because they were dead.

Spike had been right when he’d said, years before, that her family and friends tied her to life. Without them she would have stopped caring, stopped trying. She would have been an automaton, like Kendra, or a psycho, like Faith.

She would have been what she was like after she’d been resurrected, only sooner.

She couldn’t let that happen to all those girls. They’d argued about it for weeks, but finally Giles had given in. The girls could choose. “There’s a training program for the new Slayers, in England, but it’s voluntary,” said Buffy. “Some of them are there.”

“How many?” Spike asked.

“Not many,” Buffy admitted.

“Can’t blame ‘em, really,” Spike said.

“Yeah,” Buffy sighed. “The ones who don’t go through the program, the council tries to fix them up with local martial arts and weapons experts, so they’ll know how to take care of themselves. And there’s a—a—” Buffy broke off, her face pinkening. It sounded a little stupid—okay, more than a little. “A website for Slayers, so the girls can—shut up!” she demanded as Spike began guffawing. “Stop laughing!”

Spike turned away from her in a futile effort to get his snickering under control. “I’m not laughing,” he lied. “I was—appreciating the magnificence of the sunset.”

“With laughter?” Buffy scoffed.

“I’m extremely appreciative,” Spike choked. Buffy glared at him, but he didn’t see it. After a moment he was composed enough to face her again. “So, a website?” he asked, as if he hadn’t been laughing at the idea.

Buffy ground her teeth. “It’s a way for everybody to share ideas and strategies, and bitch about being chosen, and argue about who’s stronger, and get all bond-y and stuff,” she said. “I mean, what’s the alternative? A big Slayer school? No one would be happy, and pretty soon they’d all hate each other, and hate slaying. That will come soon enough by itself,” Buffy added with a trace of bitterness.

Buffy resumed walking, stomping a little. What to do with the Slayers had been argued so many times that Buffy was sick of it. She wasn’t right about everything—she knew that, no matter what Dawn said—but pulling the girls away from their families and putting them into some kind of a big Slayer factory would have been her worst nightmare as a teenager. They were finding them and trying to help them. If the girls didn’t want to go to through the Slayer training program the council had set up, that was fine. If they didn’t want to slay, that was fine, too. No one was making them do anything.

They’d been drafted for a reason, and that reason had passed.

“I almost—” Buffy broke off abruptly. She’d never told anyone, and nobody needed to know. She felt guilty even thinking it.

“What, pet?”

Buffy hesitated. “After Sunnydale—after it was all over—I looked at the survivors. They were all so excited. I mean, they were happy to be alive, but it was more than that. They were all jazzed about their neat new superpowers, and the feeling of invincibility, and I knew it wasn’t going to last. Pretty soon they’d start to feel it.”

“It?” queried Spike gently. He was pretty sure he knew where she was going. He usually did, as long as he wasn’t the subject.

“The responsibility. Duty pressing down on you night and day until it’s crushing you. And nobody can help you, no matter how hard they try. And then they’re angry that they can’t, like it’s something you’re choosing, and then they can’t take it anymore, and you’re alone. Ultimately, you’re alone. So I thought—if Willow did it, she can undo it.”

“Un-Slayer them?”

“Yeah.”

Spike studied her. “Why didn’t you?”

She didn’t answer for long time, and they walked in silence. “When I turned eighteen, the council put me through this test,” she finally said.

“Test? You mean like with Glory, when they asked your friends and your sexier enemies how you were doing with the slaying?”

“I mean like they drugged me so I lost my strength, then released an insane vampire who grabbed—okay, long story short? They took my Slayer power and then made me fight a vampire.”

“They took your power?” repeated Spike. He couldn’t imagine it—the Slayer without her power? Buffy without her power? He couldn’t picture it; he’d always seen her so confident. Knocking gods around, dispatching ghoulies without breaking a sweat. Throwing him across a room and kissing it better. Or not, sometimes. She’d never been just an ordinary girl to him. Didn’t know why she’d want to be.

“It was—awful,” she said softly. “To have that power and then lose it. I didn’t want them to know what that was like. You can’t imagine how horrible it was.”

Spike eyed her. “That I can,” he said, his voice even. Had she forgotten his chip so soon? He’d been leashed, turned into something tame. Unable to kill even to feed, to say nothing of killing for entertainment purposes. Of course, now he could hit people all he wanted. They just probably wouldn’t notice.

She swung to face him, surprise and a trace of embarrassment on her face. She couldn’t believe she’d said something so stupid. He’d adjusted to it so well—after a rocky beginning, he’d adapted as if it were his natural state. Even with the restraint, she’d known he was powerful and dangerous. A force to be reckoned with, despite what she’d sometimes said. “I’m sor—”

“Doesn’t matter,” Spike dismissed diffidently. “So tell me, what’s the point of this definitely not-a-patrol walk?”

Buffy smiled tentatively. “Just thought you might appreciate a little time away from the others,” she said. “You’ve been around them for a whole day and a half—I was concerned your head might explode or something if you didn’t get a break.”

Spike nodded and didn’t answer. Buffy glanced at him thoughtfully, wondering if he bought it. Yeah, it was nice to be away from the house sometimes. God knew, there were so many people around it felt like Potentials 2: Electric Boogaloo.

And if they were alone—if they were away from the others—the thaumogenesis demon wasn’t around. Not hiding in one of them, at least. If it attacked when they were alone she wouldn’t have a problem dealing with it. But in the house—well, it was so big it took a few minutes to cross. And a lot could happen in a few minutes, especially to someone who, instead of the strength of a vampire, now had the strength of a short, skinny guy.

“And,” Buffy added. “I’ve found a place that serves a great bloody onion.”

“A … what?” Spike asked, slightly repulsed.

“Isn’t that what you like, a blood—blooming onion,” Buffy corrected.

Spiked eyed her. “You know, there was a time when I would have enjoyed a bloody onion. I mean, a regular blooming onion, but dipped in—”

“That’s enough!” Buffy said.

Spike chuckled and relented. “Okay. Lead on, McDuff.”

Being contrary, she immediately halted. “Spike?”

“What?”

Buffy hesitated. “Are you … glad you’re alive?” God knows, she hadn’t been the happiest little resurrected girl in the world.

“Yeah, pet. Real glad,” he told her, smiling faintly.

She startled him by taking his hand, and tentatively squeezing it.

“So am I.”

***

Willow barely touched dinner. Andrew had made it—baked ziti, which she’d once dreamed of eating in Italy with John Cusack—and it smelled good, but her stomach was in knots and every time she tried to lift a forkful to her mouth her throat closed up.  

The others ate like nothing was wrong. Even Kennedy, who kept sending her glances when the rest weren’t looking. She knew something was wrong; why shouldn’t she? They were lovers. They sensed things about each other, right? Like when someone was sick, or blue.

Or when things were ending.

Suddenly Willow wasn’t in the house on Laurel Drive, but in Xander’s long-gone apartment, with Tara sitting beside her. Willow, suddenly realizing that Tara was breaking up with her, and desperately trying to change her mind. Willow saw herself wring the concession out of Tara that they’d give it a week, and saw herself cling to it like it was a life preserver.

For the first time Willow felt, sharply, what Tara must have been feeling, and nausea overwhelmed her.

“Excuse me,” she muttered, shoving back from the table and hurrying from the room. The others stopped mid-bite and stared after her, and before she’d even cleared the room she could hear another chair scrape along the floor and knew it was Kennedy, following her.

Willow was shamefully glad that she reached the bathroom before Kennedy caught up with her.

Willow shut the door and locked it, leaning against it in relief. It was pathetic to be so happy to be away from your girlfriend, right? Yay for locks.

No, it was more than pathetic. It was wrong. Kennedy—she was special. An Amazon, a warrior. Willow was still amazed that Kennedy had been drawn to her.

But that didn’t make things any better. She was glad she’d known Kennedy, glad they’d been together. But she wasn’t glad anymore, and she was sick of pretending. She didn’t love Kennedy. The woman she loved was buried in the same hole in the ground as Joyce and Anya and Grampa Harold, and Willow hadn’t even had a chance to mourn her properly. She couldn’t pretend things were okay between her and Kennedy anymore.

They’d never been okay.

That was it. She wasn’t going home that night. Not to the apartment they shared. That was Kennedy’s. The house on Laurel was Willow’s home now.

Willow turned on the faucet and patted cold water on her face, willing herself to calm down. She’d be relieved, later. After she’d hurt Kennedy. After she’d made her cry and shout. After Willow wished she hadn’t said anything, she’d be relieved. They both would. Kennedy had to know it wasn’t working. They argued, and she sulked, and Willow smiled fake smiles, and there was all this tension. Deep down, they’d both be relieved. They would.

Kennedy was waiting when Willow opened the door. “Are you all right?” she asked, frowning.

Willow tried for a confident smile, but it melted off her face. Who was she kidding? This was going to be rotten, and nobody was going to be relieved. Kennedy was going to be upset. She was going to make a scene. Everybody would come in to see what was wrong, and Willow wouldn’t break up with her, because she wouldn’t want to embarrass Kennedy in front of them. Maybe it should wait ‘til they got home.

Looking into Kennedy’s face, Willow knew she could tell herself that every night and put it off again and again. In five years, she’d still be telling herself to wait until they were alone. “It’s over,” Willow heard herself say, as if from a distance.

“What?” said Kennedy in surprise.

Willow flinched. “It’s—us. It’s over.”

For a moment Kennedy looked at her, stunned. Guilt rushed at Willow, and she shut her eyes against the sight of Kennedy’s hurt expression. When she opened them Kennedy’s face was as clear and blank as the Bot’s. “Okay,” said Kennedy, her voice just a little thin. “You’re the boss.”

She turned and walked down the hall without another word, and then Willow heard the snick of the front door shutting quietly.

After a moment Willow released the breath she’d been holding. She stood in the hall a few more minutes, as if something were going to happen. The ground start shaking perhaps, or the wind rattling. Or more likely, Kennedy coming back in and demanding to know what Willow meant by over.

But nothing happened, and Willow finally went back to the dining room. She cleared the table with Dawn and Xander, then helped Giles load the dishwasher while the others went off to watch TV. Nobody asked where Kennedy was, or why Willow was so quiet. It was as if they knew.

Willow wandered out the front door and walked to the sidewalk. She peered down the street, eyes straining. She couldn’t see Kennedy, of course. Even if Kennedy had been hopping backwards on one foot, she’d be home by now.

Willow hated not having someone to talk about it. Why did Buffy go out? Why did Buffy pick tonight of all nights to go out with Spike, instead of staying home like she usually did? Sure, Spike had just come back and everything, and maybe they wanted a little alone time, but sometimes other people needed Buffy time, too. Especially Willow, especially when she’d just broken up with her girlfriend.

Well, it’s not like Buffy knew you were going to do it, her nice, rational brain pointed out. You didn’t even know you were going to do it tonight. If you had, you would have packed a bag, right?

Bleh, thought Willow in discontent, wandering back to the front step and sitting down. Her brain was right as usual. But this … this was just so sudden, and she wanted to talk to someone about it. But she was being selfish, wasn’t she? She had a whole houseful of people to talk to. Kennedy—Kennedy was alone in Santa Rita. She’d only really had Willow. Now she had no one.

“Willow?”

Willow started at the sound of her name, then relaxed as she realized it was just Xander. “Yeah?”

“Is everything all right?”

Willow turned to face him. “Everything’s fine,” she said weakly.

Xander looked skeptical. “You sure? ‘Cause you don’t really sound that fine, on the Brace-Goldsmith Fineness Scale.”

“Kennedy and I broke up,” she said without preamble.

Xander looked at her curiously. “Whose idea was it?”

“Mine,” she sighed.

He nodded, dropping down beside her. “Would congratulations be inappropriate?”

Willow winced. “Xander—”

“I know, I know,” he said, waving his hands. “But you don’t have the look of someone who just ended a perfectly happy relationship.”

Willow crinkled her forehead. “How do I look?”

“Relieved.”

“I’m not relieved, this is a very emotional time, and a very serious one, and I can’t—can’t just be—god, I am relieved,” mumbled Willow guiltily, dropping her head into her hands. “And I shouldn’t feel this way!”

“Why not?”

“Because Kennedy’s out there, feeling bad, and I’m the reason why,” Willow said forlornly.

Xander chuckled and pushed a wing of brilliant red hair behind her ear, then dropped his arm around her shoulders. “You’ve always wanted to make things right,” he said. “Like when we couldn’t keep our hands off each other, you wanted to make sure we didn’t ruin what we had with Cordy and Oz, and tried to fix it.”

“Look how well that turned out,” muttered Willow, recalling the disastrous aftermath of her de-lusting plan—Spike had kidnapped them, Oz had broken up with her temporarily, and Cordelia had dumped Xander for good. He’d been alone then, the same way he was alone now.

“Yeah,” murmured Xander, lost in recollection for a moment before returning to the present. “But if we were meant to be with them, they’d still be here.”

“Kennedy’s here.”

“Just because someone’s here doesn’t make it right.”

Willow folded her head into the crease of Xander’s shoulder, wrapping her arms around him. They’d both lost a lot. They all had. “Just because someone’s not here doesn’t mean it was wrong,” she said softly.

Xander squeezed her shoulders. “Remember what Buffy said, way back when we were in high school? That our love lives were doomed because we lived on the Hellmouth?”

Willow smiled faintly. “Yeah. She was kind of right, wasn’t she?”

“Yeah. But we’re not on the Hellmouth any more.”

Willow studied him. “What do you mean?”

“I mean we’ve got a chance at a new life here. It’s time we started living it.”

“Easier said than done,” Willow sighed.

Xander was silent. She was right. She usually was.

What the hell was it with all of them? Willow was hung up on Tara, he on Anya. Buffy living like a nun and then hooking up with Spike again. It was like they were just going through variations of their old lives. There had to be something more.

They just had to learn how to find it.

Chapter 10

Sometimes, Xander thought, he hadn’t given the basement enough credit. Admittedly, it was a dump and reeked of cat urine and something that smelled like moldy bread. And it was within easy, inconvenient hearing distance of his parents and their drunken arguments. And there was no heating or air conditioning, and the TV only got two channels, and every single moment he spent in there he felt vines growing around his ankles, tying him there to the basement, the bottom rung of the Harris family, never to escape. Like quicksand, except in the basement, you only wished you were dead.

But when he went into the basement at the end of the day, when he took off the clothes from his job-of-the-week and crawled into bed or just tried to listen to some scratchy old 45s and forget who he was, he didn’t have to clench his stomach against the sight of the woman he loved, tauntingly out of reach. Out of reach because she was dead, but there because she wanted to kill him, too. Just more slowly than she’d gone. Death by torture. Slow, but effective.

“You know what’s nice about being dead?” Anya asked idlely. The question prompted a rush of nausea in Xander, and he didn’t answer. “You get to see your old friends. You’d be surprised how often Hallie and I play cards. And my mother—she’s always fun. It’s been years—well, a millenium, give or take a century. I’m finding out all these things about her I never knew. It’s very exciting, really.”

After a moment Xander asked quietly, “Have you seen anyone else?”

“Who? You mean like Olaf? I don’t think he’s dead, is he? Just hammerless. Besides, I don’t think troll gods go to the afterlife. Possibly troll Valhalla. I’m not really sure.”

Xander flinched. “No, I mean like … Joyce, or Tara. Or maybe, uh … maybe my parents?”

Anya looked at him curiously. “Oh, are they dead?”

Xander flinched. Why, he had no idea; it wasn’t as if they were any kind of parents to him while they were alive. He’d survived, become a man, despite them, not because of them.

No, that wasn’t right, was it? They’d made him the man he was. The man who’d be so afraid of life, of the future, of ties to others, that he’d told Anya, when she’d looked at him, radiant with expectation, that he couldn’t marry her. They could have no life together.

Yeah, his parents had molded him all right.

So what the hell did he care if they were alive? That one day he’d gone over to their place and found it abandoned, drawers and boxes left open, because why bother making the place neat if you’re leaving? It was them in a nutshell: careless, gone, no word. No thought to the son they left behind. The son who’d always been an unwelcome afterthought.

God damn them, he cared.

“So you, uh, haven’t seen them?” he clarified, avoiding Anya’s question.

“No,” Anya replied simply. Before he could release the breath he didn’t know he was holding she added, “But then I was never really close to them, so I doubt they’d come all the way to see me. I mean, we’d most likely just sit around and stare at our shoes, and then your father would say something inappropriate, and then your mother would become upset, and then I’d think how unfortunate it was that I wasn’t a vengeance demon any longer, since your mother would undoubtedly be saying all the horrible things she wished would happen to your father, and then the next thing you know—”

“Fine, fine, you haven’t seen them,” said Xander hastily. He’d almost forgotten how she could make him regret asking a question.

“Well, if you regretted asking me anything, you never had a problem just taking it back, did you?” asked Anya acidly. Reading his mind in death as she never could in life.

Xander shut his eyes and pressed his lids together he saw stars. She’d be gone when he opened them.

What if she wasn’t?

Xander didn’t want to open his eyes. He didn’t want her to still be there.

“You’re going to be that way about it?” she asked huffily. “Go to all the trouble to conjure me and then don’t want me to be here? Fine, have it your way!”

“What is this, a Burger King commercial?” demanded Xander crankily, opening his eyes.

Of course, she was gone.

Xander fell back on the bed and mumbled, “I have got to get a life that doesn’t include dead people.”

He hadn’t thought he’d see her again. He didn’t know, but that talk with Willow—if Anya was just a figment, like she kept saying, why hadn’t she disappeared? He’d had his big breakthrough about getting on with life; it was the feel-good hit of the year, and why was she still coming around?

She didn’t do anything bad when she visited. She didn’t threaten him, or hurt him. Not physically. She didn’t do anything. She was just there. But he never knew when she was coming or going, knew only that he’d feel all depressed and exhausted when she left. It was slow and painful, like Chinese water torture, or a Rob Schneider movie.

She was controlling his life now more than she had when they were engaged. And hard as it was to believe, they’d broken up—he’d left her at the altar—a year and a half ago. If she was really just a figment, why in the hell was he having so much trouble letting go?

Maybe she wasn’t a figment at all.

“This is it,” muttered Xander, shoving his feet into slippers. “I can’t take it anymore.” He hurried down the stairs, and made his way across the house to the library.

He’d never liked the library. The one at Sunnydale High had been all right, mostly because he hadn’t thought of it as library; it has been more like a living room, except without a TV. Which was actually the most important part of any living room, so maybe the whole analogy was kind of lame. But this place was … sterile. Cold. Uninviting. It was like distilled Giles, except for all the good Giles parts.

Okay, maybe that analogy wasn’t too great either.

It was weird to be in the room. The only times he’d gone into it were when he’d been helping Giles with something, which wasn’t often. Their post-Sunnydale life had been pretty uneventful. Except for the whole scary thing the night before, of course. And all the exciting Anya visits over the last few months. Which was absolutely, positively not connected to the other thing.

Right?

“A little research never hurt anyone,” muttered Xander, heading over to the first bookshelf. Of course, the library at the school’d had a card catalogue, which made things easier in theory. In reality, the Dewey Decimal system was one of the greatest frauds ever perpetrated on the unsuspecting public. Everyone pretended it was great, but nobody knew how to use it. He didn’t even think Giles did.

Xander walked up to the nearest bookcase and eyed the volumes. Unfortunately, there didn’t appear to be one titled When Dead Girlfriends Attack. Finally he just grabbed a book at random and sat at the desk, flipping through the index. Gherkin, Ghirjonh, Ghost, Ghoul—wait, gherkin? There was no way he couldn’t look that up.

Gherkin—favorite food of the lower caste of the Kneef demon; frequently used as bait when infestation is a problem. Huh. Well, he had always suspected pickles were evil. And mostly used as filler.

Back to business—Gherkin, Ghirjonh, Ghost. Page 327.

Ghost—noncorporeal entity which haunts chosen locations or persons. Although not inherently malevolent, the spirit reflects the character of the deceased, and hence may be evil. Associated with sensations of cold, strange sounds and smells, calling out the names of the living, the disappearance of small objects, and interference with electrical appliances. Standard removal procedure is exorcism by a member of the church.

“Ghost! You think it’s a ghost?” said a voice over Xander’s shoulder.

Xander jumped and slammed the book shut. Jesus, if he lived to a thousand he’d never get used to Andrew’s silent walk. “There’s no ghost,” he said hastily.

Andrew didn’t look convinced. “You were following the sentence with your finger,” he pointed out. “So you now you don’t think it was thaum—thaumo—that thing?”

“It’s thaumogenesis! Or … something.”

Andrew nodded. He knew exactly what was happening. Poor Xander! Visions of his lost love were tormenting him so terribly that he could no longer bear it. But he wasn’t alone. Andrew couldn’t bear to see him suffer in solitude any longer.  “Does it have something to do with Anya?” he asked sympathetically.

Xander froze, shocked. “What?”

“It’s okay,” he told Xander tenderly, putting a hand on his shoulder and nodded wisely. “I know.”

“You know? How could you—” Xander broke off as a scream from upstairs ripped through the quiet house. It was just like the night before.

This time, it was Willow.

***

Giles and Dawn were already in Willow’s room by the time Xander and Andrew got there. Buffy and Spike were there, too.

In bed with her.

“Why are you in my bed?” Spike asked, blinking his eyes against the bright light.

“Uh … that’s what I was thinking,” admitted Willow, keeping the covers up securely under her arms. Since she hadn’t planned to be there that night she didn’t have any night clothes, so Xander had loaned her a T-shirt to wear, which seemed pretty inadequate considering she was now sandwiched in between Buffy and Spike.

“’S my bed,” complained Spike, tugging at the covers.

“What is happening?” asked Giles, finally coming out of the horrified daze induced by seeing Buffy, Willow, and Spike in the same bed.

“Is this something I shouldn’t see?” asked Dawn, face reflecting her typical adolescent distaste. At least they all appeared to have clothes on. That was something, right?

Right. Like she wouldn’t be telling a therapist about this in five years no matter how it turned out.

“I’m not sure,” admitted Willow, trying to pull the covers back from Spike, who was holding on to them like a limpet.

“Do I have to threaten Spike or, uh, anyone?” offered Xander. Didn’t seem like it, but he felt he should make the offer.

“None of you hurt Spike,” Buffy demanded, clambering over Willow to Spike and patting the side of his head in an affectionate and somewhat painful way. “He’s all weak and human now.”

“’m not weak!” protested Spike, struggling out of the bed and raising his hands in front of him in sloppy mimicry of a boxer. “And I’ll fight anyone who says different!”

“You’re … drunk,” realized Giles in disbelief.

“That’s not true,” asserted Spike, his speech a little slurred. “We didn’t even finish the pitcher, and I can drink anyone under the table!”

Buffy wagged her finger at him. “You’re not a vampire, remember?” she lectured him. “You’re not superhuman any more.”

He looked outraged. “Just you wait ‘til we’re in bed, missy, and I’ll show you superhuman.”

Buffy caught Giles’s shocked eye and wanted to reassure him. “It’s okay,” Buffy whispered to him loudly. “We’ve slept together a bunch of times.”

“Lotsa different positions,” Spike mumbled, collapsing onto the carpet for a short nap.

Buffy bent and patted his rumpled curls. “Lots of positions,” she agreed soothingly.

“Okay, okay, enough, we get the picture,” Dawn said hastily. God, why hadn’t she worn earplugs to bed? Or taken Tylenol PM? She didn’t want to hear this stuff!

“I think it was enough several minutes ago,” Xander agreed, wincing.

“What are you all doing in here?” asked Giles in frustration.

“We went to bed. But Willow was already in the bed,” complained Spike from the floor.

“Oh … oh! Is this the room you used last night, Spike?” asked Willow.

He didn’t answer, so Buffy nodded for him.

Willow was a little embarrassed. “Oh. ‘Cause this was my room when, uh, when I lived here.”

“Oh yeah,” said Buffy blankly. “Up, Spike! Get up!”

Xander flinched. “Uh, could you not use those exact words?”

Buffy squinted at him. “Dirty mouth!” she exclaimed disapprovingly. Bending down to Spike, she tugged him to his feet and shambled out of the room with him. “Come on, we can sleep in my room.”

The others turned to watch them disappear around the doorway. A thud and a flurry of giggles suggested they might have bumped into the wall on their way down the hall.

Willow sighed after they’d left. “Okay. Goodnight,” she said to the others, who remained rooted in place. “You guys can all leave now.” Twelve or fifteen hours of sleep would help erase the memory of the entire night, hopefully, except maybe the part about not being with Kennedy any more.

The others muttered their goodnights—Willow was pretty sure she heard Giles mumble something about brandy—and filed out, leaving only Dawn in the room. “Dawnie? You okay?”

Dawn was silent for a moment before speaking suddenly. “Were you afraid?”

“What? When?”

“When Spike was there. I mean, both of them, but … you know.”

“You mean, did I think it was the demon?”

Dawn nodded mutely.

Willow shrugged helplessly. “I thought I was at Sunnydale High, and a giant duck was jumping on my desk,” she answered honestly. Dawn squinted at her. “I was asleep, remember? As soon as I came to I recognized their voices. And, uh, smelled the beer. So I was not so much afraid of the demon, and more afraid of being thrown up on.”

“I’m not afraid,” Dawn said out of the blue.

Well, that was a sudden transition, Willow thought. “Uh—okay, I didn’t think you were—”

“And I’m not afraid to go back to my room,” Dawn added a little too bravely.

Ahhh. “Dawnie? You want to spend the night here?”

“Yes, please,” Dawn replied immediately, and dove beneath the covers. She felt a little guilty—she shouldn’t be afraid to sleep by herself. She’d fought demons and monsters and was a full-fledged Scooby. She was tough! She was powerful!

And in a few days the demon would evaporate and she’d be okay to sleep on her own. Then she wouldn’t have to bug Willow, and—hey!

“What are you doing here?” she asked Willow in surprise. “Why aren’t you at home?”

Willow flinched. “I, uh, I am.”

“What? What do you mean?”

“Kennedy and I broke up,” Willow said quietly. “I’m moving back here.”

Dawn absorbed the news. She’d never really liked Kennedy. It was the first time she hadn’t liked someone one of the Scoobies went out with. “How do you feel? Are you okay?” asked Dawn carefully.

“I don’t know yet,” Willow admitted.

After a moment Dawn said, “I’m glad you’re back.”

She nestled her head in Willow’s shoulder, the way she used to when Willow babysat her when Buffy was supposed to be there but was secretly out with Angel, and Willow felt tears sting her eyes at the impossible familiarity of it—taking comfort in a make-believe past with a manufactured almost-sister. But it felt like home, no matter how strange it sounded.

“So I am,” whispered Willow.

Chapter Eleven

The sunlight streaked across Buffy’s room, unrestrained by the curtains she hadn’t bothered to pull. It fell across the bed, sloppy from the night before, and sliced across Spike’s face. It pulled him from his sleep as he felt it against his eyelids, piercing, painful, and realized, suddenly, that something was wrong.

The sun was burning him up.

“Jesus!” screamed Spike, diving off the bed into the shaded corner of the room. Frantically he reached up to slap the flames from his face and found … nothing. No fire, no burned patches. Not even a crispy eyelash. “What the hell?”

“What is it? What’s wrong?” Buffy asked groggily, sitting up in bed and rubbing her eyes.

The throbbing in Spike’s head told him well enough what it was. “Hangover,” he growled, feeling stupid. He’d enjoyed enough of them as a vampire to know what they felt like, although he’d had to drink a shitload more in the past to get pissed. Say, a fifth. As opposed to the lousy half a pitcher he’d had the night before. Pathetic human constitution.

Buffy was having trouble focusing her eyes, so she shut them and massaged her temples. “What did we do last night?”

“Drank a little,” Spike mumbled.

“I mean, did we have sex?” Buffy said, rolling her eyes before a shooting pain in her head made her stop all movement.

Spike groaned. Wonderful. His first time as a human, and he couldn’t even remember it. Assuming he’d even been sober enough to perform.

He glanced down at himself. He hadn’t gotten much of a sense of things, what with being worried about catching fire and all, but he was wearing his jeans. “If we did, it was extremely safe sex,” he offered, unsure whether to be relieved or not. He thought he was relieved. When he was sober, he’d probably be more sure.

Buffy didn’t seem to have heard him. “I hurt,” she whimpered, slumping back down and covering her eyes with her arms.

Tenderness shot through him. “I’ll take care of it, baby,” he told her, struggling to his feet and feeling his way, eyes averted, to the window. He fumbled around until he found the curtain pull, and shut the drapes. “Better?”

Buffy sniffled and nodded. “Still hurts,” she complained.

“I know how to do you,” Spike reassured her, blinking as he became acclimated to the dim light. “Hold on a minute, love.”

He made his way into the bathroom and rooted around in the medicine cabinet until he found a bottle of aspirin. He tucked it into his pocket, and slowly, carefully, made his way down the stairs into the kitchen.

He’d never disliked stairs more in his life. They were so high and steep—didn’t seem safe, to have something like that right in the middle of a house, now did it? A health hazard. Many more nights like the last one and they should look into having an elevator installed.

Xander and Willow looked up at him from their breakfast as he entered and shambled past them.

“Uhh,” he said by way of greeting.

Xander smothered a smile at Spike’s obvious discomfort. Just because the guy was no longer an evil rampaging vampire, and just because Xander had evolved and everything, didn’t mean he couldn’t enjoy the blond’s hangover. Schauden-something, there was nothing like it. “How you feeling there, buddy? There’s some eggs left, if you’re hungry. Scrambled, still kind of runny.”

Spike tried not to gag as he fought back nausea at the image. “That’s okay, I’m good,” he managed, rummaging through the refrigerator and trying not to smell the eggs or anything else. “Got what I came for.”

“Uh … yeah,” said Xander, staring at the bottle Spike had pulled from the refrigerator. “You know what they say about beer—it’s not just a breakfast drink.” Willow glanced at him. “Or, you know, in this instance it kinda is.”

“Hair of the dog that bit you,” said Spike, and Willow laughed a little. Spike glanced at her. Something about last night niggled at him … something odd … like she was out with him and Buffy, except not that. More like….

Oh, Christ. “Red? Did we, uh … get into bed with you last night?”

She gave him a kind look. “Yeah, you kinda did.”

“Sorry about that,” he mumbled, looking down at the bottle in his hand. The apology would have been easier if he hadn’t tried to bite her so many times. Bite her and worse. Kind of got in the way a little. “Didn’t mean anything by it.”

Willow nodded, blushing a little. Amazing how Spike could make her blush—she thought she’d gotten over that sometime around near-world-destroyage and everything. “It’s okay, I know you weren’t doing anything.”

Spike nodded and started past her before a memory jolted. “And, uh, it’s not because you’re not pretty,” he told her awkwardly, patting her shoulder with his free hand before drifting out of the kitchen, already working on the bottle top. As he disappeared, Willow could swear she heard him mutter that the beer cap was “made out of lead or something,” and maybe Buffy would have better luck with it.

“What in the heck did that mean?” Xander asked in puzzlement, looking at Willow’s blush deepen.

“He’s just being nice,” she mumbled, hoping he’d let it drop. She’d told the others, years before, about Spike’s failure to perform when he attacked her after first being chipped, but she hadn’t shared her fear that it was because she wasn’t bitable. Partly because it was stupid, but mostly because it made her feel like a wallflower again, and after a couple of years of not being one, she didn’t want to feel that way again.

She didn’t think anybody would mistake her for a wallflower now. Wallflowers almost never dated musicians, or tried to end the world, or helped save the world. Or were loved by really neat people.

She wasn’t anyone’s wallflower.

But still, they didn’t have to know about her little bitability-inadequacy fear.

“So what’s the plan for the day?” Xander asked, to her relief; he’d accepted her answer.

“A little homework, a little settling in, a little … going over to my place—Kennedy’s place—and picking up my stuff?” Willow suggested hopefully. “You’re not working today, right?”

“No, I try not to work on Saturdays,” Xander agreed dryly. “It’s a little reward I give myself. Also, I usually give it to the guys, otherwise they might try to disembowel me. Or possibly something less pleasant.”

“What’s less pleasant than disemboweling?”

“Well, dating springs to mind.” Which, when he thought of it, really wasn’t the most tactful thing he could have said, so he hurried to add, “Sure, we’ll get your stuff.”

Willow smothered a sigh of relief. She could have asked Buffy, but things were always so tense between her and Kennedy—it would have been snap, snap, snap, the entire time. Usually Willow was able to handle it, but she just wasn’t up to it now. Just seeing Kennedy would be bad enough.

For a moment panic threatened to swamp Willow. She didn’t want to see Kennedy again, couldn’t. It would be unbearably uncomfortable.

And now that she thought about it, it was probably completely unnecessary. Willow really didn’t need her things at all. She could get new clothes, right? And new furniture. And new books, and magic supplies, and personal photos, and god, who was she kidding? She had to get her stuff. There were no two ways about it.

“Maybe we can phone first and make sure she’s out,” Willow said hopefully, getting up and putting their empty dishes into the sink. That would be better, right? It would be uncomfortable to do it with Kennedy there. Instead Kennedy would just come home and it would be over. More over. Over-er.

“Fine with me,” Xander said. “Think the truck will hold everything?”

Willow smiled a little weakly. She had to do it, but the thought of going over there, separating her things from Kennedy’s, nauseated her. It just seemed like too much, too hurtful to Kennedy, like insult on top of injury. But what was the alternative? “Too bad we didn’t keep the school bus,” she joked.

“Maybe you should make a list to be sure you get everything that’s really important,” suggested Xander.

Willow raised her eyebrows as she followed him out of the big kitchen. “Look who’s being all organized,” she marveled.

Xander winced. “Yeah, I’ve got a little more practice with the whole bitter breakup thing,” he reminded her.

Willow didn’t respond. He didn’t really have more experience in the area. His were just more final. He’d broken up with Anya and Cordelia for good, but she’d been lucky enough to reunite with Oz, for a while, and with Tara. For one day—one wonderful day….

The sound of the front door slamming barely registered, so lost was Willow in her thoughts. It wasn’t until she bumped into Xander that she snapped back to reality.

Xander was frozen, staring. At Kennedy.

“Hey,” she said casually.

Willow stared at her, horrified. Kennedy? Wasn’t that some kind of breech of breakup etiquette, just dropping by and everything? It wasn’t right, not at all. “H—hi,” she answered, faltering.

Xander stared at the two of them. It was awkward as hell. Kennedy’s body was stiff with pride, and Willow seemed to be shrinking back, as if she could disappear if she just tried hard enough.

Actually, Xander reminded himself, she did know how to do that, so it wasn’t really all that out there.

The two women continued staring at each other.

“I’ve got to, uh, see about the—the thing,” Xander said, backing out of the room. “Will? Call if you need anything.”

Neither woman bothered to watch his exit. Willow wished Kennedy had looked at him, so she wouldn’t be looking at Willow with that long, opaque stare that Willow couldn’t read at all.

For a moment, stupidly, Willow wondered if she’d imagined breaking up with Kennedy. ‘Cause she had—right? Otherwise she wouldn’t have spent the night at Buffy’s; she would have gone home, with Kennedy.

Right?

“We broke up, didn’t we?” Willow blurted out. The second the words were out she clapped her hand over her mouth, horrified.

Kennedy’s mouth twisted bitterly. “Yeah, we broke up.”

Ouch. Okay. “Then why are you here?” asked Willow, unsure. Kennedy just continued to stare at her. “I mean, it’s kind of awkward. And it’s completely my fault!” she added in a rush. “My fault, but still, it’s … you know, awkward.”

Kennedy studied her silently, and Willow began to squirm a little under her close regard, which wasn’t so unreadable now. Kennedy had never looked at her that way before. Cold and implacable. Actually, it was how she usually looked at Buffy.

Finally Kennedy broke the silence that followed Willow’s little speech. “You may have broken up with me, but Giles is still my Watcher,” she said coolly. “I don’t really know how you thought this would work out, but I’m not going anywhere.”

***

Buffy wandered into the kitchen, feeling almost normal. Slayer metabolism—it was a good thing, as insane-o craft queens and future felons said. Once Kennedy left, Buffy thought she’d go down and hit the bag a little, get her aggression out. She couldn’t play-fight the way she used to with Spike; she’d just hurt him. He didn’t have the strength and stamina he used to.

Idly she wondered if all his old stamina was gone. Because five hours? Very nice.

She’d left Spike in the living room, reading old magazines while Andrew mumbled to himself and worked on his new game design and Dawn laid out her many bottles of nail polish and arranged them according to color, then according to preference, and then according to order in which she would wear them and would, perhaps, actually do her nails before the afternoon was over.

Spike said he wanted to catch up on things that happened while he’d been away. He’d held up a Newsweek to convince her of his deep nature, but she could see one of Dawn’s Soap Opera Digests peeking out from beneath the stack of magazines. Like he cared how the economy was doing, as long as he knew whether whoever was doing … whatever on Passions, she thought in amusement.

“Mmm, Tab,” Buffy murmured, opening a bottle. Was it wrong that she started the day with beer, and proceeded on to Tab? Somehow that just seemed off. And probably some time she should actually think about food, but that time was far, far in the future.

Her carbonated beverage musings were interrupted by Willow walking into the kitchen. “I told you, not today,” Willow said over her shoulder. Xander followed her into the room a moment later, trailing after her as she got a bottle of water out of the fridge.

“Today’s perfect,” he argued. “Cut it off fast, cut it off clean. And we know she’s not there, right?”

“I said no!” Willow snapped, shutting the refrigerator door with a bang. “Leave it alone, Xander. We’ll do it another day.”

Xander opened his mouth to argue further, then shut it abruptly. She knew what she was doing, or at least what she wanted. And he was nobody to give breakup advice, was he? All he needed to do was go upstairs to remind himself of that one. “Fine,” he told her finally. “Whenever you want to do it, Will. Just gimme a shout.”

Willow managed a smile and nodded at him gratefully before he left the room. He was the best friend she could ever have; sometimes she felt guilty because she wanted to share things first with Buffy, ask her opinion first, when Xander had always been there for her. His advice wasn’t always the greatest, but it was straight from the heart. It was the only way he knew how to do things.

It was what made him special.

“Will? Is everything okay?” asked Buffy gingerly as Willow sat down across from her.

“I broke up with Kennedy,” Willow told her without preamble. She hoped her forthrightness would preempt any big talk about it—last night she’d wanted, desperately, to talk to Buffy, but Kennedy coming by the house had rattled her. So she really couldn’t listen to any condolences, becau—

“Thank god, I don’t know how you stood her this long!” Buffy exclaimed. A moment later she realized what she’d said. “Oh god, Will, I’m sorry, I meant—”

To her surprise, Willow laughed a little. “That’s what Andrew said when I told him,” she admitted. “What, were you all just counting the days?”

Buffy looked sheepish. “Umm … no?”

Willow rolled her eyes. “Liar.”

Contrition nipped at Buffy. “I’m sorry. I know it had to hurt.” She couldn’t resist adding, “Even if it’s really really for the better.”

“Yeah,” Willow sighed. Everyone seemed in agreement about that, except maybe Kennedy. Whom she’d be seeing regularly for the rest of forever, apparently.

“Do you want to talk about it?”

Willow shook her head. “I think I’m talked out for the moment.”

The sharp ringing broke the silence in the kitchen. “Dawn will get it,” Buffy said to Willow as she got up and crossed over to the phone. In fact, Dawn would probably hurt anyone who picked it up before her.

Willow ignored her. If she and Buffy sat there together much longer, Buffy would eventually badger all the details out of her, and she was too darn tired and frustrated and … and something to deal with it now. She’d been so rattled when Kennedy had walked in that Xander had taken her out to lunch to settle her down, but it hadn’t worked. Especially since she had a latte with lunch. She’d just make it through the day, and tomorrow, when things had settled down a bit, she’d tell Buffy everything and they’d eat ice cream and bond and be all best-friendy. Maybe Dawn could join them. But not today.

“Hello?” she said, picking up the receiver.

“Hi, Willow!” exclaimed a cheerful voice. Willow smiled, immediately pegging it as Fred Burkle, the really smart girl who worked with Angel and Wesley. Really really smart. Chris Epps smart, although hopefully Fred wasn’t sewing dead bodies together or anything. Willow had met her a couple of times now, and sometimes Willow thought she’d never liked anyone as much as she did the wispy brunette.

Except Buffy, Willow thought guiltily. And Xander, and Tara. And Oz. Well, she just liked her a lot, okay?

“God, it’s been so long,” Fred continued. “Why don’t you come by for the weekend some time? I could show you Wolfram & Hart—it’s got everything! It’s like being a kid in a candy store, except all the candy can kill you if you’re not careful. Okay, that doesn’t sound good, but it really is, mostly.”

Willow laughed. Fred was so cute. It was impossible not to be happy when you talked to her. “That sounds good,” Willow admitted a little shyly. They’d had so much fun before, and Fred was so adorable. Hey, maybe next weekend I can—okay, focus, Willow lectured herself. You just broke up with someone, that doesn’t mean you have to leap into another relationship right away. Besides, we’ve still got to keep our eyes out for the thaumogenesis demon—make sure it didn’t make a move towards Spike....

Buffy automatically tuned Willow’s voice out once she realized the call wasn’t for her; she had her own stuff to think about. She was still a little embarrassed about the night before.

It had all gone exactly according her plan, except not. Spike hadn’t wanted to drink alone, so they got a pitcher—mistake number one. Buffy hardly touched it, knowing what alcohol did to her. Besides, she wanted to remain alert, to prevent anything from happening to Spike. And he exercised impressive self-restraint as well, pacing himself nicely and inhaling most of a blooming onion and a plate of jalapeno poppers with no help from Buffy.

Neither of them wanted to get drunk. Unfortunately, both of them had, very quickly.

Okay, that was probably the only mistake, but it was a biggie.

God, she was lucky. If something had happened—if the demon had attempted to strike—she couldn’t have done a damn thing; she’d been too smashed to think clearly, much less dispatch a baddie.

After a few moments she became aware of Willow saying her name.

“Will? What is it?”

“That was Fred,” said Willow dazedly.

“Fred? Fred from L.A.?”

“Yeah.”

“What’d she want? A little quality quantum physics appreciation between kindred spirits?” suggested Buffy.

“Actually, she had a message for Kennedy,” said Willow quietly.

“For Kennedy?” repeated Buffy in surprise.

“Yeah. Apparently they talked earlier. She wanted to tell her—” Willow broke off.

Buffy waited expectantly, but Willow didn’t continue. “Wanted to tell her…?” Buffy prodded.

“That she found out more on thaumogenesis.”