Chapter 10

Negotiating Vespasian's return took the rest of the waning night. The eastern sky was streaked with peach and gold by the time the little cavalcade of dark cars pulled away. Dawn sat curled in the back seat of the DeSoto, huddled in her windbreaker, and watched their taillights dwindle to an ant-trail of red sparks in the distance. It wasn't really cold, but she was shivering with exhaustion.

Giles and Buffy stood out on the shoulder of the road watching them leave, Spike a dark watchful presence at Buffy's shoulder. At last the brightening sky drove the vampire back into the car. Spike exhaled loudly as he dropped into the driver's seat; he looked as tired as Dawn felt. Not just tired, old--old as Mom, old as Mr. Giles. The faint morning light, which made it through the blacked-out windows, showed up the little lines at the corners of his eyes. Despite that, he looked as happy as she could ever remember having seen him.

"You almost killed that guy that shot Buffy," she said.

Spike draped one elbow over the back of the seat and looked at her. His eyes were half-lidded and a small smile quirked his lips. "Yeh."

"And it doesn't bother you at all, does it?"

"Nah." Spike considered. "Well, it bothers me I had a nice dinner in hand and didn't think to swallow." His long pale pink tongue flicked out, licking the last traces of the guard's blood off his chin, looking for all the world like a cat polishing cream off its whiskers. Dawn wondered if it were disturbing that she didn't find that disturbing.

"Would it bother you if you had killed him?"

"Dunno, Nibblet." His ice-blue gaze fixed on Buffy through the cloudy windshield and he chuckled. "Oh, who'm I kidding, he shot your sis. I'd've loved it." He leaned back and massaged his temples. "Head still hurts, though. That was a bitch of a shock."

Dawn nodded, biting her lip. She rested her chin on her clasped hands and thought for a while. "So if when he shot her I... kind of wanted you to kill him, that's pretty evil, huh?"

The scarred eyebrow rose. "'Kind of' wanted me to kill 'im? Bite-size, as evil goes, the words 'totally lame' spring to mind." He gave a little hiss of pain; his left hand was starting to smoke ever so slightly. He gave it a shake and shifted position to avoid the worst of the filtered sunlight. He rolled down the window a fraction and shouted "Oi, Slayer, can we cut the sightseeing tour short? Some of us want to avoid spontaneous combustion!"

After a lingering look at the point where the road disappeared over the horizon, Buffy turned and walked over to the car. Giles followed her. In stark contrast to Spike's mood, he seemed broody, in a stiff-upper-lip British way. Now that the immediate danger was over, Buffy had a lost look in her eyes, as though she'd run out of script and wasn't sure what to do next. She got into the front seat and looked over her shoulder at Dawn, then at Spike. Spike looked perfectly content to stare at Buffy all day. They'd all run out of steam at the same time.

"The first order of business is to get in touch with your father," Giles said, stepping into the breach. "Take us to my apartment, Spike. We can call Anya from there and find out where the others are."

It had been only six hours ago that they’d driven along this highway, and it felt to Dawn as if it had been in another world. No one said much. Spike, eager to get out of the sun, drove with his usual reckless abandon and then some, humming some creaky old Ramones number. Buffy laid her head against the window and closed her eyes. Giles brooded on the seat beside Dawn, sitting tensely forward on the old leather as if to relax in this particular car would be some sort of unforgivable personal lapse. He winced a few times when Spike cut another car off more closely than usual, but said nothing.

"A lot of stuff happened while you were dead," Dawn ventured into the silence. She leaned forward and crossed her arms on the back of Spike’s seat. "I can’t believe no one’s said this yet--I missed you, Buffy. It sucked that you were dead. I’m glad you’re back."

Buffy ducked her head and said nothing.

"Did you miss us? While you were dead, I mean."

"Dawn..." Giles said warningly.

Dawn turned on him belligerently. "What? Are we all just supposed to pretend she was in Bermuda or something?"

"Certainly not. Your sister deserves time to--"

"I don’t remember." Buffy stared down at her hands. Her voice was low, even, almost emotionless. "What it was like. If it was like anything. If I was even..." Her fingers curled, fists clenching. "All I know is... there was nothing more I had to do. Ever." There was longing in her sister’s voice, and that, more than anything she’d seen or heard tonight, creeped Dawn out. Buffy flexed her fingers and looked up, her changeable eyes grey in the filtered light. "I don’t feel... real."

Dawn shivered, but plowed on determinedly. "Neither did I, last winter. If you wanna obsess about it for the next six months, fine. I know obsessing’s your thing. But you know what? Mom was right. Soup does help. Glowy energy fields don’t need soup, and neither do dead people." She glanced at Spike. "Most dead people. But live people do. My advice is have some soup. Chicken rice is good." Dawn sat back and folded her arms with a decisive nod. Buffy stared at her as if she’d just sprouted antlers, and Spike gave a bark of laughter.

"Don’t be daft, Nibblet! Cream of tomato, no contest."

The closer they got to home, the deeper Giles’ frown became. Dawn and Spike regaled Buffy with contradictory and obviously much-edited accounts of what they’d been up to over the summer. Buffy listened to them, slightly bewildered by references to events and people she’d missed out on, occasionally startled into a smile in spite of herself.

He felt slightly guilty that he hadn’t kept closer track of Dawn, but his charge had always been Buffy; he had no responsibility towards her sister. Technically, he could have returned to England and made his report to the Council within a week of her death, received reassignment, and never seen Sunnydale again. He hadn’t wanted to go that far, tempting though it had been to cut every tie cleanly and at once, but his major emotion when Willow had volunteered her parents as Dawn’s temporary guardians, and when the Rosenbergs had accepted, had been relief. Which emotion had only increased when he’d been told of Hank Summers’ return to the States. There had been days when he could barely stand to look at the girl. Sometimes it was still hard. He resented her for being alive when Buffy was dead, for seducing Buffy from her Slayer’s duty by her very existence, for having been slipped into their memories like a cuckoo--and like a cuckoo, pushing the true Summers to her death. None of that was Dawn’s fault, and as an honorable man he tried not to hold it against her... but it was there nonetheless.

Dawn felt it, too. With him she was always reserved, wary, the polar opposite of her casual rapport with Spike--and perhaps, Giles thought a trifle bitterly, that rapport wasn’t surprising considering that at various times both Spike and Dawn had almost been the death of Buffy. He dismissed the thought immediately as unworthy, but he still wished that two of them would just shut up.

Spike stayed in the car with Dawn when they reached the apartment, citing a lack of interest in bursting into flame. Buffy followed Giles inside. She looked around at the piles of books and papers which drifted over almost every available flat surface. After two months away, there was still a thin film of dust over everything, and the place had an air of desertion and neglect more than of scholarship. Buffy wrapped her arms around herself. "Home sweet home," she said under her breath, then, "You haven’t said much."

Was that hurt in her voice? Giles shifted a pile of last year’s Miskatonic Journal of the Paranatural to get to the telephone. "I--I truly don’t know what to say. I’d be lying if I claimed I’m not... pleased to see you again, but..." He fumbled with his glasses, avoiding her face. "Buffy... my dear girl... can you forgive me for not wanting you back--not this way?"

She sat down on the arm of the couch and began picking at the frayed ends of the bullet hole in her shirt sleeve, pulling out long raveled threads and working them into fuzzy little balls between her fingers. "Yeah. I mean... yeah. Willow brought me back, didn’t she? That’s why she was all comatose, right?"

Giles nodded. "She and Spike, and your sister. I believe she meant well," he added. "Willow always means well."

"I don’t think I wanted to come back this way either." Tears welled up in her eyes, but didn’t spill over. He hadn’t seen her weep since her mother’s funeral, and that had been only a few lone, stoic tears. All her grief and anger had been bundled up and channeled into saving her sister’s life... and now what? "I was finished, Giles. My whole life got wrapped up in a neat little bow. Now... now it’s all untied again."

His eyes slid away from her face, from her eyes, not because her eyes were changed by death, but because they were not. Tell Giles I figured it out. Sometimes those words had been all that had kept him going through the long summer. None of the others knew why. They hadn't been privy to that final conversation in the training room, hadn't realized just how deeply she'd sunk into despair that last night. She hadn't allowed them to see it. The others had seen her cast iron hard; so few people realized how brittle cast iron was. He had comforted himself that she had, at least, found a measure of peace in death. Now they'd taken even that from her, for the sake of their own selfish comfort, and he’d failed to stop them.

Giles felt his throat constrict. Deal with it, Dawn had said, but that was easier said than done. Buffy made a small, sad questioning noise deep in her throat, and he cursed himself. She didn't deserve his cowardice. He forced himself to look at her. She was back, however damaged, and she was still the girl--the woman, now--whom he loved as a daughter. He took both her hands in his. "My dear girl," he whispered. "I am so sorry. And so glad."

Her eyes searched his face, and then she hugged him tightly, thin strong arms exerting only a fraction of the pressure of which they were capable. Careful of him and his merely human frailty. "It's all right, Giles." She sighed and squeezed his hand, her mouth firming though her eyes were still weary. "I'll... go home and have some soup." Resigned. She was here, she would go on. This was, after all, Buffy Summers. Of course she would go on. Giles drew away from her hastily, lest emotion get away with him, picked up the phone, and dialed the number of Anya’s cell.

Tara opened the door to Giles’s knock late on Friday afternoon. "How is she?" he asked.

"Better," Tara said. "Sitting up and eating a little." She glanced back into the room. "You’re not the first one here, though. This may not be a good time for..."

Giles looked over the top of Tara’s head and into the room beyond. The blinds in the twin windows were drawn, and the swags of filmy material which were normally draped decoratively along the tops had been let down to provide what scant extra coverage they could. Willow was sitting up in the bed, several textbooks scattered around her. The bruises round her eyes had darkened to a spectacular purply-black, and the whites of her eyes were a bloody crimson. She looked rather like a hung-over raccoon, and she was in full Willow-panic. "Three days," she was saying. "Three days! Do you know how much vital lecture time you lose in three days? I’ll never catch up! I’ll get Djuna Barnes mixed up with Anais Nin! I’ll be Behind-the-class Moron Girl for the rest of the semester!"

"You won’t get to the Left Bank lezzies for another three weeks at least. All you’ve missed so far is George and Percy." The rasping North London tones dripped disdain. The vampire was sitting cross-legged on the foot of the bed, squinting down his nose at one of the books. "Listen to this rot-- ‘Dust to dust, ashes to ashes/Into the tomb the great queen dashes.’ I could bloody well do better than that."

"Spike," Giles said. "I didn’t expect to see you here."

Spike shrugged, tossed the book aside and got to his feet with that mixture of bravado and wariness which meant he’d been caught at something he didn’t want to admit to, though whether it was reading one of Shelley’s less brilliant works or being something approaching thoughtful towards Willow wasn’t entirely clear. He shoved his hands into his duster pockets and attempted to look nonchalant. "Just happened to be passing by. I have to meet the Slayer in..." he looked at the clock, "five hours, and thought I’d see if Red’d croaked on us. I’ll clear off and let Rupert pay his manly yet sensitive respects."

"No, Spike, do stay." Spike's posture began shifting further into wariness at the quiet menace in Giles' voice. "Quite fortuitous finding you here, really. While I'm pleased to see that Willow's recovering, this is more in the nature of an, er, business visit. One which involves you and Willow both." He took of his glasses and held them up to the light,

then rounded on both of them in a fury. "What the bloody hell were the two of you thinking?"

He looked from the vampire to the witch, lips tight with disgust. "I'll be frank, Willow, I hold you most responsible for this. I'm disappointed to find Spike involved, but I can't be surprised that a demon whose natural bent is towards evil would want to get Buffy back at any cost, bugger the consequences to her or anyone else. You, though..." He shook his head angrily. "You have no such excuse."

He was gratified to see shame blossom in Willow's eyes for a moment, but it was quickly extinguished by defiance. "You know, I'm not exactly the first person to bring Buffy back from the dead! How come when Xander uses CPR it's all 'Yay Xander, you the man!' but if I use magic it's 'Oooh, Willow's gone all Dark Phoenix?' It's just anti-magic prejudice is what it is, and it's not fair." She scrunched down in the pillows and looked around pitifully. "I feel sick. I think I'm going to throw up."

Tara twisted her hands together. She was obviously miserable, but as implacable in her own way as Giles. "Science works with the world. Magic works around it. Can't you see the difference? W-willow... you know I love you more than anything, but I can't--I can't just let this go. You how I feel--you know how Buffy felt about spells like this--"

"And it would have been better to let Bryce get her?" Willow cried in frustration. "Because sooner or later he would have. He didn't have to try Raising Buffy in the place where she died, you know, it's easier here, but he could have done it in--in--Laguna Beach! Anywhere! We could have messed up this try, but what about the next one, and the next? And the longer it took the worse shape Buffy's head would be in when he finally did get her. All right, fine, the original spell was full of evil badness, but I didn't use the original spell! And fine, I screwed up the spell I did use! I am a big fat screwup and I almost got Spike dusted! You think I don't feel like crap about that already?"

"No, I'm afraid I don't." Giles voice was arctic. "Or at least, I don't believe you'll feel that way long enough to let it sink in and make a permanent impression. You were terribly sorry after your attempted cursing of Veruca, or casting the my-will-be-done spell, yet here you are, employing black magic again. And yes, it would have been better to let Bryce get her. The violation of Buffy's spirit would have been of equal magnitude, but at least your own soul would have remained unsullied--you do realize, don't you, that simply casting this type of spell is enough to bring you to the attention of powers best not named? I've personal experience in this area, you may recall. At best, you've condemned an innocent soul to who knows what hellish--"

"Oh, give me a bloody break," Spike snapped. "My innocent soul's been a football for powers best not named for a hundred and twenty years and you've never given a toss before today, so let's skip the crocodile tears on its behalf now. It probably appreciates the change of scenery. If souls appreciate anything at all, which I doubt, as I can't imagine a disembodied moral compass being all that much fun at parties."

Giles failed to rise to the bait. He continued polishing his glasses and said mildly, "Spike, I realize that attempting to make you understand, much less accept the point we're trying to make here is very likely impossible. But for the sake of argument, let's grant your--" Damn it, he was not going to fall into the easy, comfortable assumption that the vampire in front of him was in any real sense a continuation of the human being who’d died in his creation over a century ago. "William’s soul is no worse off than it was before. Supposing you hadn't a lovesick vampire with a spare soul conveniently at hand, Willow. How exactly did you propose to cast this purportedly harmless spell?"

If Willow scrunched any further down in bed she was going to disappear entirely beneath a pile of cushions. "Um, well, I wanted Spike to vamp me so we could call my soul back and use it. Except Spike wouldn't do it."

It was a wonder that he didn't snap his glasses in half. Giles groped blindly for a chair and sat down. "Willow... does the fact that this spell requires actions which even a creature of evil finds objectionable tell you nothing?" His head dropped wearily to one hand. "It's not that the return of one person from the dead is so evil a thing of itself. It's the things that we convince ourselves are an acceptable price to accomplish that return. Had you succeeded, what then? Would Buffy thank you for making her first duty upon her return the obligation to slay the creature you'd become? And should Tara or Xander, grieving for your death, then descend to yet more vileness to return you to life? On and on and on, horror feeding new horror?"

Willow had grown white and faint in the dim light. "But it didn't happen like that. It all turned out all right."

Tara shook her head. "Bad means make a bad end. Somewhere, somehow, this is going to come back to haunt you."

Willow's expression grew bitter. "And I suppose you'll all be like, yay, Willow's got it coming."

"No!" Tara cried. "Never! Why do you think we want you to stop and think about what you're doing?"

"I did think!" Willow yelled, rocketing up out of the pillows and then falling back in a severe coughing fit. "I thought all summer," she croaked when she could talk again. "I thought about how Buffy was the best person I ever knew. I thought about how if it wasn't for Buffy I'd be dead, or a vampire, or a twenty-year-old computer geek with no life

watching everyone else I knew get killed or turned into a vampire! I thought of all the people who're gonna die because she's not here to save them and I thought about Dawn, and Spike, and you all eating your hearts out because she was gone, and you know what? I didn't do anything! Because it would be wrong! But if she was going to come back no matter what then I wanted it to be her friends that did it, not some poophead in L.A. who wants to brainwash her into being his personal Buffy action figure!"

Giles said, very softly, "Every death leaves grieving people and unfinished business. Buffy is--in the long run--no more or less important than anyone else. To pretend otherwise is the height of selfishness, and to use our own pain to justify causing more pain is the height of evil."

"What do you want me to say? That I'm sorry she's back? 'Cause I'm not!" Willow was starting to sob and Tara looked so utterly defeated that it was painful to see.

Spike's lip curled. "Oh, lay off Will, the both of you!" He exploded into a flurry of pacing in front of the bookshelves and came to a halt in a flare of black leather. "You want to blame someone, blame me. She wouldn’t’ve gone through with it if I hadn’t jollied her along." He gave Giles a narrow-eyed glare. "You asked me once, Rupert, if there mightn't be some higher purpose in this crackerjack prize I've got in my skull." He tapped his temple with one forefinger. "I laughed. I'm still laughing. Higher purpose? Bollocks. The Powers That Be don't give a flying fuck about good for its own sake. Nor evil for its own sake, come to that. It's all about balance. Creation and destruction, the Worm Ourobouros. One Slayer dies, the next is called. One vampire gets staked, another rises. We. Don't. Matter. So we might as well look out for the people we love, because the Powers won’t--they’ll have you up a tower chucking them into oblivion for the sake of their bloody balance. Good? Evil? Sod 'em both. I don’t care about balance. I care about Buffy. And Dawn. And God help me, the rest of you pillocks. And so does Will."

"Are you quite finished?" Giles asked mildly.

"Bloody right I'm finished!" Spike snarled, heading for the door.

"Then perhaps you can explain to me why caring about Buffy means completely ignoring her wishes and returning her to a world she left voluntarily? She found peace, Spike. You and Willow stole it from her."

The vampire's face, while still human, remained quite capable of expressing demonic anger. "Cheer up, Watcher. Something with big sharp teeth'll be along in no time to give it back to her." Spike flung the door open and stormed out, slamming it behind him. There was a long uncomfortable silence; Tara reached out one tentative hand to her lover's face, but Willow turned away, avoiding her touch. A moment later a knock sounded. Tara looked at Giles, and got up to open the door again. Spike stood there, sucking on his cheeks. He held out a hand. "Blanket!"

Somewhere in the last few days, the tide of reality had deserted Hank, washed him up on some strange beach and left him stranded. The apartment was still the same. He still had an appointment with the realtors tomorrow morning, to put sale of the house on Revello Drive on hold. His allotment of personal time would run out and he'd be due back in L.A. in a week, and the Alpert project was still going to be sitting on his desk gathering dust because Simmons didn't have the initiative God gave a kumquat. But he was sitting in a red vinyl upholstered booth at Denny's at ten P.M. on a Friday night, and there was a vampire sitting across from him on one side and his formerly dead eldest daughter (not a vampire, everyone assured him) on the other.

Buffy had a salad, which she toyed with. Spike claimed to have eaten already (Hank didn’t ask what) and ordered a Budweiser after much complaining about the restaurant's alcohol selection. He kept stealing Buffy's croutons, which she had segregated on the rim of the salad plate as if they were poisonous insects. Hank had teriyaki chicken, but he couldn't taste a thing.

The demon had jumped them in the parking lot. It had been eight feet tall and purple and covered with feelers--or quills, or antennae, it was difficult to tell. It had ripped the front bumper off his car with one hand--or paw--and come after them swinging.

He'd frozen. Buffy and Spike had rolled their eyes, gotten out of the car, and killed it. Killed it with effortless grace and dispatch, left its corpse to dissolve into eerie blue flame in the handicapped space, and strolled into the restaurant still arguing about the fact that he'd recorded Passions over her mother's collection of General Hospital tapes during the summer. They weren't even breathing hard. Or in Spike's case, at all. There wasn't enough coffee in the world to allow him to deal with all this. Hank wondered, as the waitress freshened said coffee, if she had noticed the spot of green ichor on his shirt sleeve. People in Sunnydale, he'd found, purposely failed to notice a lot of things. He couldn't blame them.

He didn't know why Buffy wanted Spike here to begin with. Spike wasn't providing any clues; he slouched bonelessly in the booth, nursing his bottle of inferior American beer, a faint smirk on his angular face. His eyes never left Buffy's face for more than a moment, drinking in her presence as if it were the blood he lived by.

Buffy.

Hank hadn't seen her in almost two years. He hadn't meant that much time to slip away, but it had. She was different. Not back-from-the-dead different. Different with the inexorable accumulation of small changes that any human being acquired in two years, two years of pain and responsibility he still couldn't quite comprehend the extent of. Her hair

was longer. She was dyeing it blonder now. She was much thinner than he remembered, her body all hard wiry muscle, her face overwhelmed by those huge intense eyes. They weren't his eldest daughter's eyes any longer, eyes that had lit up with glee at the Ice Capades. They were the eyes of a woman who expected life to hurt. There was tenderness in them when she looked at Dawn, and something indefinable when she looked at Spike--though she didn't look at him often; Buffy's attitude towards the vampire was that of a commander towards a trusted second. She expected him to be there. He was. No questions asked.

When she looked at her father, there was only measuring... and pity. No laughter for him in those eyes, no smiles in that generous mouth. And once again, she wasn't dead, and after two hours of explanations he still had no idea why. Hank Summers ran a hand through his hair. "I don't understand," he said for the fifth or sixth time. He couldn't think of anything else to say.

Buffy sighed. She folded her hands in front of her on the table and fixed him with an unnervingly steady gaze. "I don't either, Dad. But I'm here."

He rubbed his eyes and sat back to let the waitress take away his barely-touched chicken. "Buffy... I can't tell you how glad I am of that. But I don't understand why you're so obsessed with regaining custody of Dawn. You only got custody to begin with because I was out of touch. I know you love your sister. I know you feel responsible for her. If your mother laid some death-bed guilt trip on you about taking care of her, or about not letting me--"

A low, menacing rumble, as of a large carnivorous animal taking notice of something small, annoying and edible, emanated from Spike's corner of the booth. Hank looked over at him, trying to suppress the nervous twitch the sound elicited. Spike smiled at him and bit a crouton in half. Somehow even his human teeth managed to look unpleasantly sharp. Hank tried another tack. "The thing is, honey, you're not that much older than Dawn. You've got the house, and the sale of the gallery took care of the mortgage and the hospital bills your mother's insurance didn't cover...but you have no job. You have... you have no legal existence." He shook his head. "Look, I know I let you down. I let all of you down. But I'm here now, and you're my daughter too. I have a responsibility to both of you, not just Dawn. Once you get the... the back from the dead paperwork taken care of...don't you want to go back to college, at least? A college diploma is--"

"Pretty much a waste of a perfectly good sheep. Dad," Buffy said gently, "Me. Slayer. Early expiration date. The odds I'll be dead again before I graduate are so high Spock couldn't calculate them. No Slayer has ever, but ever, lived past twenty-five."

Spike stirred briefly, but said nothing. Buffy went on, "Dawn told me that the Knights of Byzantium were playing 'find the Key' all this summer, trying to unleash her power--"

"Power? Dawn? I thought you had--" This was not fair, damn it! Why did they keep springing these things on him?

Buffy looked disconcerted. "Me Slayer, Dawn Key." She bent over and whispered to Spike, "He doesn't know about Dawn being...?"

He shrugged. "Slipped our minds."

"Oh. Anyway, they wanted Dawn dead. And they aren't the only ones, or the worst--some of them want Dawn alive. Spike killed two Tromor demons someone sent to kidnap her in August. Dad, what are you going to do if something like our parking lot Barney shows up on your doorstep? 'Cause if you take Dawn, they will. Even if you take me and Dawn, they will-- especially if you take both me and Dawn. What we went through with those guys at the factory? Easy, Dad. I do that sort of thing in my sleep. Can you live a life like that? If you take custody of Dawn and let the two of us move in with you, you're getting two sets of mortal enemies for the price of one. Mom did it. She hated it, but she... she coped."

"Oh, I'm sure Daddikins here can do the same," Spike drawled. "Not to mention the expensive bird he's shagging. She'll love the addition of demons to the household." He stretched, every muscle in his lean body rippling beneath the tight black t-shirt. He clasped his hands behind his head and grinned, running the tip of his tongue over his teeth. "In fact, I'm looking forward to chatting 'er up. I did promise the Bit I'd come to L.A. if she went, and she's always good for an invite. Makes you feel all tingly, dunnit, knowing old Spike can stroll into your place any time he's in the neighborhood--OW! Bloody hell, Slayer!"

"Shut up, Spike," Buffy said sweetly, as Spike examined his hand to see if the fingers still worked. "Idiot vampire ramblings aside, Dad, this is something you need to think about." She looked serious. "I'm really angry with you for not being here when we needed you. That won't go away any time soon. But... you're right, you're our father. No court in the world would give me custody now that you're back if you want to contest it. We need to think about what's best for Dawn. I'd be an idiot to try and keep you out of her life..." Her eyes dropped, and for a moment she was only twenty, and vulnerable. "Or mine. But take a good look at the parking lot and tell me if you're ready to have us in your life full time."

Hank waited until she looked up again and met her eyes. "Ready? No. Who could possibly be ready for something like this?" He spread both hands flat on the table and shook his head. "But it doesn’t matter if I’m ready or not, does it? It’s here. You’re here." He glanced at Spike. Your... whatever the hell he is... is here. "Dawn doesn’t want to move, and whatever she thinks, I don’t really take maniacal joy in ruining her life. If you really think you can handle taking care of her on your own... I’m willing to give it a try. Just remember you don’t have to be completely on your own. I’m willing to help out any way I can. You’ll be getting the child support checks for her from my bank, same as Joyce used to." He managed a smile. "I’ll even spring for tuition if you decide to try for that diploma after all."

Buffy swallowed, as if she hadn’t expected this reaction. "Wow. Thanks. I’ll have to reconsider my spare-the-sheep position."

Spike wandered onto the outside patio for a cigarette while they were busy at the cash register, and Hank watched Buffy watching him through the multiple shadowy reflections in the plate glass window, none of which were Spike’s. "Hon..."

For the last two days he’d watched her drifting from one room of the apartment to the next as if hunting for something she'd lost, her eyes moving ceaselessly from object to object. Now and again she'd pick something up--a toothbrush, a magazine, a ball-point pen. It didn't seem to matter what it was; she'd stare at it in puzzlement and turn it over and over in her hands, as if she were trying to re-learn all the shapes of things. She was watching Spike like that now, with an intense, focused concentration. At last she started and looked up at him questioningly. "Yeah, Dad?"

He nodded at Spike. "Why’s he here? Not just here, now, but..." He waved a hand. "In your life at all? I’ll be honest, that’s the main thing I worry about all this. I just don’t like him."

For a moment Buffy’s laugh was almost the carefree giggle he remembered. "You’re not alone. I don’t even like him half the time. But..." Hank wondered if she realized just how much her eyes softened as she spoke. "I trust him. He was the only one I could trust all the way there for awhile." A small smile curved her lips. "Besides, he’s like the cat in that song. He just won’t leave. Believe me, I’ve tried."

Hank took his credit card back from the cashier and tucked it away in his wallet. He wasn’t entirely reassured. Buffy went ahead of him on the way out, and through the glass, darkly, he saw Spike turn, his lean sardonic face lighting up at her approach. He tossed his half-smoked cigarette, scattering orange sparks across the asphalt, and opened the door for her. Hank honestly expected to see her take the vampire’s arm; it would have been the most natural followup in the world. Spike didn’t offer, though, and Buffy didn’t seem to expect anything of the sort. They walked out to the car and surveyed the damage to his front end. As they passed the smouldering carcass of the purple demon, it struck him for the first time what a little guy Spike really was, as small for a man as Buffy was for a woman.

Somehow that failed to make either of them a whit less intimidating.

Buffy, hands on hips, kicked his dislocated bumper with one high-heeled foot. "You have Triple A, right?"

They left Hank to wait for the tow truck, and walked down the dark quiet streets shoulder to shoulder. Downtown Sunnydale wasn’t large enough to bother calling a cab. Buffy wasn’t going anywhere in particular, and Spike seemed content to follow her lead. He didn’t say much, which was a relief. Summoning up several hours worth of concentration to deal with her father had drained her. It was so difficult to focus. She still felt like a ghost, unconnected with the world around her, and the world wasn’t helping.

With her feet on autopilot it wasn’t surprising that they ended up on Revello Drive. The house at 1630 was dark and silent, the lawn dry and brown from a summer's neglect. The realtors seemed to have kept it mown short, at least. Buffy stopped at the foot of the walk and looked up at her bedroom window.

"Better view over there," Spike said, pointing to the bush a little further on with his cigarette.

Buffy snorted. "Ooh. Stalking advice from the pros." She started up the walk. Spike followed her. The porch seemed big and empty and echoing with all of her mother's potted plants gone. She peered in the nearest window, but it was too dark inside to see how much of the furniture was left. She stroked the window frame with one hand. "This isn’t right," she said, perplexed. "This was blue. They repainted it." She gave a despairing little moan, feeling irrationally betrayed. "Why did they repaint the house? It looked fine the way it was!"

She folded slowly down onto the porch steps, her breath coming in ragged gasps. "I can’t believe they repainted the... my house. And Dad’s back and Dawn’s t-taller than I am, and--" And all of a sudden she was shivering uncontrollably, curled into a tight defensive ball on the steps. "I can’t do this! I don’t know how to--"

There was the light pressure of a hand on her shoulders. It disappeared, then returned with a little more confidence. Spike sat down beside her, and she had a weird flash of deja vu. Then she remembered that she really had lived through this moment before, except this time Spike wasn’t lugging a shotgun. The thought made her dissolve into hysterical giggles. The hand on her shoulder made another hesitant movement, and she heard Spike make a sound which could only be described as a to-hell-with-it sigh. His arm slipped round her shoulders. "Cry it out, pet."

She was about to say that she was laughing, not crying, but the desperate noise in her throat could have been either, and there were tears rolling down her cheeks. She didn’t cry for long, only a few choked, terrible sobs with her face buried in his shoulder, her fingers clutching the fabric of his shirt. Not even a real hug; more as if he were a rock she were clinging to in a rough sea. In a way he was. The world had gone on without her, but Spike hadn’t changed. He wasn’t older or taller or wearing weird new clothes, and all right, he needed to touch up his roots but she’d forgive him that just this once and he still smelled like leather and smoke and earth...

Realizing her face was still smashed into his shoulder, Buffy straightened up self-consciously and wiped her eyes with the back of her hand. Oh, yay, she thought, rubbing at the smears of mascara with her thumb, hello Raccoon Woman. "Sorry," she said, then cleared her throat and tried again. "Sorry. Didn’t mean to get salt water all over the leather."

Spike let go of her without hesitation--much hesitation, anyway--and glanced down at his duster. "It’s seen worse." He watched her for a moment, and at last, satisfied that she wasn’t going to collapse again, lit another cigarette. Silence stretched between them as the minutes passed; he smoked thoughtfully and she stared at the cracks in the front walk. Once or twice his arm brushed hers as he removed the cigarette from his mouth to exhale, and Buffy found herself thinking almost wistfully that if this were some other guy on some other night it would be nice to be able to lean on his shoulder for more than one brief weak-willed moment. It was a very comfortable shoulder.

"Buffy... I’m sorry."

She pulled her hair back from her face and twisted it into a knot at the back of her neck. "What?"

"Shouldn’t’ve done it. Helped Will bring you back." He ran his free hand through his hair. Spike was still supporting the Southern California hair gel industry single-handed, Buffy noted, but he hadn’t gone back to keeping it slicked completely flat. Spike had curly hair. Who’d’ve thunk? "I hate it when Rupert’s right," he muttered.

She bit down on her thumbnail and was silent for a while. "No. You shouldn’t have. Why did you?"

"How many people have I killed, Slayer?" He didn’t wait for an answer, but continued, "Twelve or fifteen thousand, I figure. Not a record. Not even close." The whiskey-and-sugar rasp of his voice was hypnotic. "But enough. I'm not going to try and convince you I care deeply about each and every one, ‘cause I don't, but just the once, I had the chance to give life instead of taking it. How often does a bloke get to do that, barring failure to make sure Little Willie's wearing his raincoat? And that last’s not a situation yours truly’s ever going to have to worry about."

Buffy blew out her cheeks and looked up, studying the way the light from the street lamp played chiaroscuro games across the planes and angles of his face. She could never forget what Spike was. Spike never let her forget, and in a way she was grateful for that. "Tell you what: I forgive you. But third time’s the charm. Next time I go, I want you to promise me I won’t come back."

He didn’t answer immediately. After a long, considering moment he nodded, his pale killer’s eyes fixed on her with frightening seriousness, and held out his hand. "Done." Buffy quelled a residual shiver as she took it; it was no light thing to extract a promise from a demon to make certain you stayed dead. They shook on it. His hand--large for someone his size--engulfed hers, his grip cool and light but very firm, a subtle reminder that Spike was almost as strong as she was.

"I just don’t know how I’m going to put everything back together," Buffy said, her voice very low. "I don’t feel like I belong anywhere any longer." She looked down at the steps they were seated on, tracing her fingers over the cement where it was worn smooth with years of passing feet.

"Ah, well, I know a little about that. I'm a vampire. I get off on killing people. It's my sodding purpose in the universe to be a force of death and destruction. And I can't do it any more. You've ruined me for it, the lot of you--" He gave a derisive snort, blowing smoke through his nostrils. "No. I've ruined myself. I’m not evil anymore. I’m just... not good, and neither heaven nor hell will claim me." He shrugged. "You get used to it, after awhile."

She smiled a wan little smile. "What, no ‘It’ll get better?’"

His laugh cut through the sable night. "Better, Slayer?"

She couldn’t help a smile. "Oh. Right. Who am I talking to? How do you do it, Spike?"

"Do what?"

She made a vague gesture with one hand. "This. Going on. Dad asked me why you were here, and I told him you just wouldn’t go away. No matter how many times the world kicked your ass, you just bounced back again." After Dru left him, the Initiative chipped him, the demon population of Sunnydale turned on him, I disinvited him, Glory all but tore him to shreds... and I died. Damn it, it wasn’t her fault he’d fallen in love with her. She knew, looking into those eyes, feeling the barely perceptible tremor in his body when they touched, of the control he was exerting to keep from just grabbing her and... no, don’t go there, Buffy. That was something else that hadn’t changed. On either side. "When I think about it you’ve had just about as sucky a last couple of years as I have."

He cocked an eyebrow and took another drag on his cigarette, chuckling. "I wouldn’t say bounced back, love. More like crawled. But y’know..." He grinned suddenly, ground out his cigarette and bounced to his feet. "C’mere. I want to show you something."

He stuck out his hand again and she took it, curious. He helped her to her feet and took off down the walk, cutting across the dry dead grass to the bush where he used to stand, night after night, staring up at her window. He stood behind her and placed both (large, very strong) hands on her shoulders, turning her away from the house to face across the street to where the streetlamp poured out its cone of golden light on the pavement below. "Look up there," he whispered, pointing. "See?"

In the lamplight were dozens of tiny moths blundering about the glowing bulb, a whirling, dancing, spinning cloud. "I used to stand out here and watch sometimes when you’d gone to bed. It’s a lot like life, that. We’re all flying around, no idea where we’re going or what it’s all about, just knowing that there’s something glowing and glorious and bloody effulgent just out... of... reach." He’d drawn closer with each word she felt the cool, whisper-light brush of his breath travel from her ear and across her cheek. "And then BANG!" Spike clapped his hands together in front of her nose and jumped back, laughing as she started and shrieked. "You smack into a glass wall and you’re ass over teakettle into the dark again."

"Spike, you asshole!" she yelled, swinging wildly.

Spike dodged the half-hearted blow easily, still laughing. "I felt for the little buggers. They’re dying up there. But from down here... look at ‘em!"

Buffy stared up at the flickering cloud of insects. "I don’t get it."

His laughter had devolved into a deep-down contented growl that was almost a purr. "You always were a bit thick, Slayer. What’s to get? It’s beautiful, innit?"

"Bugs keep you going?"

"No, nitwit. I wasn’t just larking about that time I told you I liked the world. It’s got... bugs, and street lamps, and they look bloody marvelous if you just look at ‘em the right way." For a moment his voice changed and he sounded young, earnest, almost shy. "In the midst of death, it’s a beautiful world, Slayer."

Buffy stared at him, trying to figure out what, if anything, she could say in response to that, when she felt a familiar tingle along her nerves. A dark figure was staggering towards them across the neighbor’s lawn, golden eyes flashing cat-green in the lamplight, fangs bared. Vampire, new risen, probably hadn’t fed yet, drawn irresistibly to the scent of the nearest fresh human blood...

"Beauty, and killing things," Spike said reflectively. "I think that about covers it." He looked down at her, then over at the approaching vampire with a wolf-grin, and extended a courtly arm. "Shall we, Slayer?"

For some reason words she’d said to another vampire, years ago, flitted through her head: When I kiss you, I want to die. For all that she often felt like killing him, she couldn’t ever remember feeling like dying when Spike was around. A smile curved her lips, and she felt around inside her purse for a stake. "Yeah. We shall. Come on, Spike, let’s go."

The End!

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