A Raising in the Sun

by Barb Cummings

 

Genre: Drama

Rating: PG-13

Disclaimer: All belongs to Joss and Mutant Enemy, and naught to me.

Summary: Post "The Gift", spoilers for everything under the sun; Pairing: None, 'cause of that inconvenient Buffy being dead thing, but it’s S/B in spirit



Chapter 6

The angle of the late afternoon sun left the porch of Giles' apartment in shadow as Willow came up the walk.  She caught a glimpse of her reflection in his window and for a moment didn't recognize the self-assured, tastefully dressed young woman in the glass.  Over the summer she'd made an effort to get herself some of what she thought of as 'grown-up clothes', but she still felt like an impostor wearing them.  Inside she was still wearing plaid jumpers and regrettable flowered hats, and she was still nervously expecting the rest of the world to notice any moment.

As she drew closer to the door she could see Giles and Tara inside on the couch. Tara?  What was she doing here?  Giles was pouring milk in his tea (ugh) and Tara was talking earnestly.  She edged closer to the window.  "...I think this whole thing is really getting to her," Tara said, taking a bite of her bagel.  She put the bagel down and began fidgeting with her teacup, turning it round and round in the saucer on her knee.  "She missed a class today.  Willow doesn't miss classes even for apocalypses."

"She did seem a trifle distracted last night."  Giles took off his glasses and rubbed his eyes.  "Not that I can blame her.  This has been an extremely distressing situation."

"I just hope... the last few days she's been... I think..."

Rats.  Tara knew her too well, and Willow had never been any good at deception.  Stunningly bad at deception was closer to the mark.  And while Spike was a master of half-truths and unerring verbal jabs at an opponent's sorest spots, maintaining a complex web of lies was not his style, either.  If this went on much longer she'd get nervous and he'd get careless and both of them would spill everything they knew like a broken pinata.  Unless Dawn sat on both of them first.  Dawn was the one who was really good at sneaky stuff.  But they only had to make it through tonight...

Willow realized that her grown-up high heels were sinking slowly into the damp earth of the flowerbed under the window--not that Giles had ever bothered to improve on the sad collection of elephant's-ear and nondescript viney things that the landlord had put in--and stepped away from the window and onto the porch.  She knocked on the door hard.  After a minute, Giles peered through the peephole.  "Ah.  Come in, Willow."

He undid the latch and Willow did so, trying to look cheery and unsecretive.  She bounced nervously across the room to the couch, dumping her book bag on the couch and kissing Tara on the top of her head.  "Hi, sweetie!"  She sat down on the couch and snagged Tara's half-finished bagel.  "I'm so glad you're back, Giles!" she said through a mouthful of pineapple cream cheese.

Giles looked slightly embarrassed at the excess of emotion.  "It's good to see all of you again.  I did miss all of you.  Even Xander, which disturbs me more than I can say."

Willow examined him covertly.  Giles had been as broken up over Buffy's death as Spike had been, though he'd dealt with his grief far less flamboyantly than the vampire had.  The trip seemed to have done him some good; recovered from the transatlantic flight, at first glance he seemed to be his usual composed, tweedy self.  On second glance, he still looked... old.  Or maybe just very, very tired.  It wasn't that he'd gone grey overnight or anything, or even that there were obvious new lines on his face.  More as if something vital had gone out of him with Buffy's death, and he moved as if twenty years had dropped on his back.

With forced cheer Willow said, "It's been pretty quiet up till now, except for--oooh, did I tell you I finally got that sunlight spell to work last month?  It's really great, except it doesn't aim very well yet and I almost incinerated Spike by accident.  So what did you want to ask me about?"

Giles took a sip of his tea and set the cup down.  He looked serious.  Not good.  "Several things, actually.  I wanted you to be the first to know that I've decided to return to England permanently."  At her little cry of distress he shook his head very slightly.  "I haven't a purpose here any longer, Willow.  A Watcher with no Slayer is rather a useless appendage.  To be brutally frank, I've not had a purpose here since Buffy started college.  Had we ever gotten the opportunity to begin a true exploration of the source of her power that might have changed, but with Joyce's illness and dealing with Glory..."  He made a dismissive gesture.  "And you--you're an extraordinarily talented researcher, and you and Tara have far exceeded my modest magical talents."

"That's not true!" Willow protested.  "Maybe the magic part, but Giles, you've got twenty years of experience and that's something it'll take me twenty years to get!  And what about the shop?"

He chuckled dryly.  "I'm flattered.  But this visit reminded me of how much I miss living in a place which has weather."

The two witches' eyes met.  "We can do weather."

Giles flicked an eyebrow at the window, through which could be seen the relentlessly warm, bright, perfect late October day, and allowed himself a restrained shudder.  "Please don’t.  The Council has a research position available in Cambridge," he went on, "And after the last five years... I have to say that the prospect of spending some time dealing solely with dry, uninvolving facts has a certain appeal.  Anya's proved more than capable of running the shop."  He paused, lost in thought for several moments.  "But I'm not leaving immediately.  I've agreed to take on one last project here."

"A big, complicated, years in the making project?" Willow asked.  "I hope?"

Giles smiled slightly.  "Months in the making, perhaps.   The Council would like me to put together a formal report on the behavioral changes we've observed in Spike since the Initiative inflicted the chip on him."  He set his teacup down on the coffee table, leaning back and steepling his fingers in front of his chest.  "Willow, you've been an invaluable research assistant, you have a remarkable capacity for synthesis, and Spike appears to respect you.  I'd be honored if you'd be my co-author."

Willow's eyes went wide and she clapped her hands together with delight.  "Oh!  I'd love to!  Er,” she straightened and put on the Grown-Up Face.  “Thank you, Giles.  I’d be honored to participate.”  Her expression went thoughtful.  “I hope the Council isn’t asking how well the chip worked, cause that's hard to say when we don't know what the Initiative scientists were shooting for to begin with." 

“Very true.” Giles tapped his glasses against his chin reflectively.  "Spike was code-named Hostile 17, and we’ve no inkling what happened to Hostiles one through sixteen.  We’ve never run into another chipped vampire, though one without the, er, support system Spike had after his escape quite likely would have starved to death.  Unless... I wonder.  Those...er... women Riley was involved with.  Perhaps we should make some effort to see if any of them were former guests of the Initiative.  It would be instructive to find out how they reacted.”

Willow winced.  Buffy had been rabid about the vampire brothel for a week or so after Riley’s abrupt departure, but none of their investigations had turned up any leads as to where it might have moved to.  In discussing the matter with her much later, Spike had privately opined that they’d moved out of Sunnydale altogether, the only prudent move a vampire could make when the Slayer was on the warpath.  “Yeah.  If we could find any of them.  A statistical sample of one is practically useless."

"That is a problem," Giles admitted.  "But a detailed case study of Spike is infinitely better than no information at all.  Besides, it's a good opportunity to add to the Council's storehouse of vampire lore in general."

"I thought that the Council knew everything about vampires already?"  Tara asked curiously.  She’d kicked her shoes off and drawn her feet up under her on the couch, and Willow was momentarily distracted by how cute her toes looked peeping out from beneath the hem of her skirt.

Giles' lips quirked.  "It's astonishing the amount of new information that comes to light when you have one tied up in your bath for a week."  He stirred his tea absently.  "It's not surprising, really; the Council is dedicated to wiping vampires out, not celebrating their lives and times.  Not to mention that in the past it's been all but impossible to safely converse with a vampire for any length of time."

Willow giggled.  "We'll be doing 'Interview with the Vampire'!  And Spike hates Anne Rice."

"Well, we'll make the attempt."  Giles' voice was dry.  "Angel was always reluctant to talk about himself at all, whereas the difficulty with Spike is in getting him to stop talking about himself.  We'll probably be faced with the task of winnowing out a few, er, colorful exaggerations."  He took off his glasses and began polishing them.  "In a way it's a pity that we can't have a more typical specimen to work from, but then, we know so little about vampire society that we don't even know for certain how atypical he is."

Willow bit her lip.  "Atypical?  Angel's got the soul, but what's atypical about Spike?  I mean, besides the whole Buffy thing."  And would whatever it was cause strange reactions to soul-retrieval spells, and what was an un-strange reaction to a soul-retrieval spell anyway?  Angel had been a mile away when she'd done his, and there was no one living left who'd been witness to what his reaction had been.  Maybe what had happened to Spike last night had been perfectly normal.

She got up and went out to the kitchen to make herself some tea, wishing guiltily for tea bags while the teakettle heated.  Giles and Spike both would go off on rants about the superiority of properly brewed loose tea at the drop of a hat, but she couldn't taste much difference herself.  Then she recalled that Giles wouldn't be here forever.  She could deal with loose tea until then.

The kettle whistled and she poured the hot water into her cup.  "Quite a number of things," Giles was saying as she returned to the living room.  "He's retained an extraordinary number of human traits.  Far more so than Angel, really, even if half of them are vices of one sort or another.  Living under the influence of the chip seems to have strengthened them."  He looked thoughtful.  "He's displayed behaviour bordering upon the truly selfless on several occasions, which ought to be impossible for a soulless creature.  The Council's question is, would any chipped vampire have the same potential for change, or is Spike unique for some reason?  Not that it's practical to chip vampires en masse, even if we could reproduce the technology..."

"Dawn thinks the chip acts like a soul," Tara said.  She hugged her knees.  "I don't see how it can."

"No, the chip only prevents physically aggressive behaviour towards humans.  Hardly a moral compass."

"So it's not like Spike could have little pieces of soul left by accident or something?" Willow asked nervously.  Maybe he was just allergic to the presence of his old soul... he'd seemed to recover once it was contained in the Orb.

Giles tilted his glasses down and regarded her over the top of the lenses.  "I sincerely doubt it.  No, it's more likely that his human personality was simply exceptionally well-suited to amalgamate with the demon soul which ousted his original human soul.  One of the most intriguing things we’ve learned in the last few years is the degree to which the original human personality can survive in some vampires.  If William the Bloody was indeed the unregenerate blackguard that Spike's represented him as, it's not surprising that he was the perfect host for a demon.  As a consequence, the human aspects of his personality have survived--preserved in amber, if you will--rather than atrophying over time or being subsumed in the demon’s bloodlust.”

Recalling Spike's offhand comment about her invented version of his youth being more exciting than the real one, Willow had her doubts about the unregenerateness of Spike’s human self.  "But if he was a poophead as a human, why would the chip bringing out his human side make him a better person now?"

"There are a few flaws in the theory," Giles admitted.  "But I think it's worth pursuing.  Pity we can't include Harmony in the study.  She'd be an invaluable source of data, as you knew her before she was turned."

Willow nodded.  "It's hard to tell the difference between vampire Harmony and non-vampire Harmony.  Except for the blood drinking thing, and Xander and I always kinda suspected..."  She glanced towards the window.  The sun was starting to go down at last, and she and Spike still had to figure out how to get Dawn away from her father's place on a school night.  She jumped to her feet and grabbed her book bag.  "Giles, this is really exciting!  In fact, I think I'll go talk to Spike about it tonight--you know, set up a schedule, work out a list of questions--"

Tara sat back against the couch cushions, tossed her honey-blond hair back over her shoulders, and pinned Willow with that I-can-see-right-through-you look which could be either incredibly sexy or, as now, incredibly guilt-making.  "I thought we were going to work on the disguise spell for tomorrow night."

"We are," Willow said, uncomfortably aware of how unconvincing she sounded.  "Just... later.  I promise.  I'm going to take a sick day tomorrow and... we'll get everything done then."  She gave them both a little wave and a feeble grin, and dashed for the door.

Tara watched her go and heaved a sigh.  "You see what I mean?"  she said.  "I'm really afraid th-they're up to something."



“So,” Xander said an hour or so later, when he and Anya and Tara and Giles were all gathered around Giles’s kitchen table.   “Let me get this straight. What you’re saying is that for the last couple of days, Spike has been rude and secretive and Willow has been lost in research.”  He laced his fingers together and leaned forward with an expression of dire seriousness.  “And this differs from their normal behavior how?”

Tara blushed and ducked her head.  “There’s more than that.  I was cleaning up the dorm room yesterday, and I found this under Willow’s desk.” She reached inside her purse and took out two sheets of crumpled paper.  She laid them out carefully on the kitchen table.  One was obviously much older than the other, slightly yellowed, with faded dot-matrix printing.  A number of notes were scribbled in the margins of the newer one in blue ballpoint.  They were in Willow’s neat handwriting.

Giles reached over and took the older paper, which consisted only of a list of spell components, some of which were crossed off, and smoothed out the wrinkles, an old pain growing in his eyes as his fingers traced the faded lines.  "Good Lord..."  He looked up.  "These are the items necessary for the ritual Jenny Calendar developed to restore Angel's soul."

Tara hunched her shoulders and drew her sweater closer around herself, shivering a little.  "Do you think she's trying to give Spike back his soul?  That might not be too bad."

Giles shook his head, baffled.  "Perhaps.  The last time she cast that spell she lost control of it completely.  Would Spike cooperate in such a thing?  He’s never given any indication that he wants it back.  And why would she be undertaking such a project now?"  He picked up the other, newer sheet of paper, his brows knit.  The concern in his eyes grew as he skimmed over the contents.  “Tara, this is most alarming.  I don’t recognize the ritual, but the powers called upon here...”

“Spike would cooperate because Buffy’s coming back, and he wants to be soul-having when she does?”  Anya’s words were utterly matter-of-fact as always.  “Well, don’t stare at me like that, she is.  Unless we stop them.  And do all of us really want to stop them?  I know you’re going to do it, Xander, but you don’t want to.”

Tara looked stricken.  “Oh... she wouldn’t...”

“Damn.”  Xander’s fist clenched as though he wanted to slam it on the table, but he didn’t.  “Oh, damn.  Maybe she wouldn’t, but what do you bet Spike would?  And God knows why, but Will’s always had a soft spot for Spike.  Hell, if any of the rest of us had walked in on him trying to stake himself last year, he’d be blowing in the wind right now, if you get my drift.”  He sat back, his voice growing bitter.  “Why the hell does he always do this?  You play a little pool with someone and start getting the idea that he’s maybe perhaps not evil incarnate any longer and then he goes and chains Buffy up and tries to feed her to his ex, or starts cheerleading for a human sacrifice!  Why?”  He switched positions in his chair.  “NO SOUL, moron!”  He switched back, smacking himself in the forehead with the heel of his hand.  “Ohhhhh, riiiiigght!” 

Anya laid a hand on his shoulder sympathetically.  “There, there, honey.  Unlike some people, I’m really human now and therefore have a soul... I think... and will never, ever hurt you.  Unless you cheat on me.  Then I’d kick you in the kneecaps.”

Giles’ expression was grim.  “I have difficulty believing that Willow would be knowingly involved in something like this.  Preventing a suicidal vampire from ending his existence is not precisely in the same league as aiding that vampire in performing... or preventing the interruption of... a dark ritual involving the deaths of five innocents.  Willow can be rash, even vengeful when angry, but she’s never deliberately harmed an innocent.”  He began fiddling with his glasses again, his eyes fixed on the middle distance.  “The hypothesis that Willow and Spike want to give Spike his soul back would fit what little evidence we have.  Assuming that they intend to allow Buffy to be brought back is more of a stretch.  In the unlikely event that Buffy is brought back, she would, I presume, still harbor no romantic feelings towards Spike.  And even were she to fall into his arms, if Willow restores his soul that would merely put them in the same situation she’s in with Angel.  None of this quite adds up.”

“Spike might let someone die to get Buffy back, but I know Willow wouldn’t,” Tara said.  “And if Spike’s planning something that awful, why would he want to get his soul back just in time to make him f-feel horrible about it?”  Tara had retrieved the page with the incomplete spell on it and was still studying it.  “Th-this is strange,” she said.  She tapped the paper with a finger, tracing several of the handwritten notes.  “Willow’s making really extensive changes in the original ritual here, and here.  Not so much in the words, but in the spell components--look, here she’s changed the salt out for quartz crystals.  That’s...”  Her quiet voice faded out entirely, and little puzzled lines appeared between her eyebrows.  “Added an invocation to Thespia... OK, I can see that... but this part where she’s adding a triune repetition of the censor circling the ritual space... and the... Why would she be doing that?”  She set the page down in frustration.  “I wish we had the rest of this spell!  It looks like...”

“WHAT?” Xander asked, impatient.

Tara bit her lip.  “All the things she’s added here... they’re not exactly changes in the basic spell, but they’re all things calculated to... intensify the effect of the Laws of Association.”

Giles and Anya nodded.  Xander said “Again I say, what?”

“The Laws of Association.  They’re some of the basic tenets of spellcrafting.”  Tara got that perky magic-geek look which presaged an incomprehensible lecture on insect doubles or the like.  “The Law of Similarity is ‘Like things produce like things’, or that an effect resembles its cause.  Using the Law of Similarity, you can produce an effect by imitating it. That’s why I straighten out something bent as a component of my truth spell; it symbolizes straightening out the subject’s words.  And that’s the reason Buffy was able to... to die in Dawn’s place, because Dawn was made from her essence, and her blood and Dawn’s blood both produced the same effect on the portal.

“Then there’s the Law of Contact or Contagion, ‘Things which have once been in contact continue to affect each other, even after physical contact has been severed.’   The Law of Contact is what’s behind a lot of location spells and the like--if you have something that touched what you’re looking for, it will lead you to it, and like that, but it’s used for other things, too.  Anyway, the things Willow’s changed here are all things that would boost the effects of the Laws of Association on this spell.  And that’s really dangerous.”

“Um... if these are the basic tenets of spellcasting...” Xander sounded dubious.

“Used judiciously, yes.  Like anything else, they’re subject to abuse.  If I understand the technique Tara’s describing correctly, it would be most useful when one is working with less than optimal components,” Giles said. 

Tara nodded.  “Right.  A location spell works best if you have a personal item to focus it.  If all you can get is something that wasn’t very personal, then boosting the effects of the Law of Contact will help the spell to succeed.”

“Ah! It’s like overclocking a CPU,” Anya said.  “Souped up like that, the spell will pick up correspondences which would ordinarily be too faint to make it work.  You get much better performance.”  She shrugged.  “Until it all melts down into a heap of slag because you don’t have a large enough heat sink.”

Xander went pale.  “Like that computer Will built a couple of months ago and tried to clock the processor up to two gigs...”

“Yeah,” Tara whispered.  “Like that.  She's going t-to get k-k-killed or w-worse!" She choked on tears.  She hadn't wanted to break down; she wasn't someone who could cry prettily.  Her nose got red and her eyes got bleary.  Giles, unconcerned with aesthetics at this point, pulled a handkerchief out of his waistcoat pocket and handed it to her.

"Right, then.  It may not be clear precisely what Willow’s intentions are, or how Spike’s involved, but obviously we need to have a discussion about this."

Tara blew her nose.  "Y-yes..."

Giles stood up decisively.  "Come on, then.  We’ve got to find her now; we can’t afford any surprises tomorrow tonight.  Tara, call home and see if Willow’s there; if not, we’ll go check the crypt."



Silence, broken only by the scrape of Dawn's fork as she pushed her mashed potatoes around on her plate.  Hank Summers chewed glumly and watched the top of his daughter's bowed head.  "So how was school?"

Dawn’s attention diverted itself briefly from her potato sculpture and she shrugged, a barely visible lift of one shoulder.  "OK."

God, it was Buffy at fifteen all over again.  Polite, superficially cheerful, and as distant as the moon, off in a world of her own.  A world full of vampires and demons and things that went bump in the night which had ground Buffy up and spit her out and damn it, what was wrong with living in the world of cell phones and Mid-East crises for a change?  Any day now the phone would start ringing with grim-sounding teachers or God forbid, police officers on the other end of the line.  "Mr. Summers, we need you to come pick up your daughter..."  He'd been through that once, and he didn't need it again.  Not with Linda already pissed off about the prospect of his daughter coming to live with them.  Only three years, he'd repeated over and over again, only three years till she'll go off to college, dammit, Linda, she's my daughter...

Whom he didn't know from Adam.  "I thought we might go shopping tomorrow.  Get you something for your new school..."

The minimalist shrug again, accompanied by a roll of her eyes.  "I'm not Buffy, Dad.  You can't buy me with shoes."   There was more humor than hostility in her tone.  Good sign.  Dawn looked up from her plate, cautious entreaty in her eyes.  "Dad... when we go back to L.A. can I come up here on weekends sometimes to see the gang?"

So she’d reconciled herself to moving.  Better sign.  Hank got up and collected their plates and dumped them in the sink.  It was Dawn's turn to wash up, and he weighed the pros and cons of reminding her of the fact when they were having a halfway civil conversation.  He couldn't wait to get home and have someone else take care of this domestic crap for him again; since he wasn't on a company expense account for this trip, he'd thought he'd save a little taking this place for the month instead of staying at a hotel, but at least a hotel had maid service.  "Your friends at school?" he asked warily.  Dawn gave her hair an offhand flip and attempted to look nonchalant.

"Yeah.  And Willow and Xander and Mr. Giles.  You know.  Xander and Anya are getting married in December and I'm supposed to be the flower girl.  It's lame, but I promised."

"I don't see why you couldn't come to the wedding," he said, carefully refraining from committing to anything else.  Dawn's eyes lit up.  "And I don't mind if you visit your school friends here, but frankly, some of Buffy's friends worry me.  They’re obviously involved in a lot of dangerous... games, or stunts, and you could get hurt.  Besides, they’re all so much older than you are."

A slight flush mantled her cheeks.  Her eyes dropped to her lap, and she began fiddling with the hem of her shirt.  "You mean Spike, don't you?  He probably won't be here.  He was talking about moving to L.A. himself," she said with careful indifference.  "He's got... family there."

Hank counted to ten.  "Dawn, I'm sure Spike is... very nice when you get to know him, but--"

Dawn folded her arms defensively across her chest.  "No, he's not.  That's why I like him."

In a matter of moments she'd gone from careful indifference to full-fledged hostile glare.  Hank sighed inwardly.  The rest of the conversation was doomed; no matter what he said now she'd take it as an attack on her... not boyfriend, please God, let it not have gone that far yet, but it was blindingly obvious that Dawn idolized the... whatever he was.  Hank didn't want to even think 'vampire' lest he start taking the concept seriously.  All right, the guy's hands were a little cooler than normal and he hadn't been breathing, but lots of people had cold hands and maybe he'd been holding his breath.

The part where he'd turned into a yellow-eyed demon with brow ridges and a grin full of inch-long fangs was a little harder to explain away, but Hank was sure he could do it if he worked at it hard enough.  "If Spike wants to move to L.A. I can't stop him," he said neutrally.  "It's a free country.  Can you blame me if I worry about a--" What, twenty-five?  Thirty-five?  Impossible to say.  "--much older man with no visible means of support who wants to hang out with a fifteen-year-old girl?"

Dawn shot back, "Considering that you never said a word about Buffy sucking face with Angel when she was only a year older than me--"

That tore it.  "If Buffy or your mother had ever seen fit to mention Buffy's so-called secret life to me I'd've had a lot of words to say, and if I ever catch you and Spike 'sucking face' his ass will be in jail so fast--"

Dawn's expression progressed from hostile glare to pure fury, but the further degeneration of his relationship with his younger daughter was spared by the ringing of the phone.  Dawn jumped up, the legs of her chair screeching on the linoleum, and ran to get it before he could get to his feet.  Hank slumped, head in hands.  Why did he let himself get sucked into these stupid no-win arguments with a teenager?  By definition, any argument with a teenager was no-win.  He should just keep his mouth shut and get a restraining order.

"Hello?"  Dawn said into the phone, winding the cord around one arm.  Her voice was shaking only slightly.  "No.  Not now.  Sorry."  She shot her father an unreadable look.  "Yeah.  Fine.  Dad thinks Spike's a pervert and I'm a pervert enabler, is all.  Yeah.  Right."  She slammed down the phone in its cradle.  "I'm going to my room."

So much for the dishes.  "Who was that?"

"Willow," Dawn spat.  "Want to star 69 and check?"



The tower was about a million miles high, and it vibrated under the constant battering wind.  The rope was cutting into her wrists, and her arms ached.  She couldn't see the ground, only the black spiderwebbing of girders and cable silhouetted against the roiling, blood-red clouds.  Lightning crawled through the scaffolding below, and every time it flared she could see that the old man had gotten a little closer.  Light glittered along the edges of the knife he carried, held out casually in one hand.

When he reached her, she would die.

There was someone on the catwalk behind the old man, and Dawn clenched her jaw as hard as she could don't say anything don't say anything don't say anything this time Spike can get the jump on him but it never worked, and she cried out "SPIKE!" in hope and terror, just as she always did, and the old man turned and saw the vampire coming, just as he always did, and it was all her fault for being such a feeble little coward...

And the two of them were grappling there, a million miles up in the air, and Spike was fast but Doc was faster and it had only been a few days since Glory had beaten Spike to a pulp and his ribs weren't quite healed yet and that was her fault too for being the Key and Doc's knife plunged into the vampire's back up to the hilt, right in the kidneys, and came out gleaming with blood Spike couldn't spare right now, and then Spike was falling, falling, and Doc was advancing on her with the knife dancing in the air between them...

Shallow cuts, shallow cuts...

And the knife sliced into her, still wet with his blood, drawing lines of fire and ice across her stomach...

And she died.

Dawn woke with a breathless scream, sitting bolt upright in bed, heart pounding.  That was the good version of the dream.  In the bad one, Buffy died.  She sat there for a moment, whimpering a little, until her breathing returned to something approaching normal.  She looked over at the nightstand. The glowing blue numbers on her clock radio read 12:36.  She hadn't intended to fall asleep, though she hadn't slept well for the last few nights.  She'd thought that her mad-on at her Dad would keep her up if nothing else did.  She wished he’d just shut up about his stupid obsession with Spike being after her.  It was hard enough trying to ignore the small mean part of herself which whispered that if Buffy never came back, maybe someday Spike would notice her that way, without Dad forcing the subject.

She shook her head violently.  No.  She loved her sister, she told herself fiercely.  Doing the spell would squish that small mean part of her dead, dead, dead.

Swearing softly to herself, Dawn kicked off the covers and got out of bed.  She was still fully dressed.  She got down on her knees and rooted around under the bed for her sneakers and the fanny pack full of emergency supplies she'd hidden there earlier, pulled them out, and opened her door very carefully.  She'd taken the precaution of oiling the hinges back when they'd first moved in; you never knew when you might want to escape parental supervision.

She tiptoed into the living room.  It was dark; Dad went to bed after the ten o'clock news.  She sat down on the couch and began putting on her sneakers in the dark.  Not too dark--the floodlights in the parking lot made pale rectangles out of the curtained windows.  She stood up, her heart tripping faster again, and catfooted over to the front door.  Her palm was sweating as she turned the doorknob, very, very carefully, and pulled the door open, biting her lip at the scrape of it dragging across the carpet nap.  Down below, illumined by the sickly yellow parking lot lights, was the black bulk of the DeSoto, made even more ominous by the blanked-out windows.  Closing the door behind her just as carefully, she started down the stairs.

Spike and Willow were waiting at the foot of the stairs, and judging from the number of cigarette butts littering the sidewalk, had been there for a while.  "Oi, Nibblet, 'bout time," Spike grumbled, tossing his latest fag to the ground in a shower of orange sparks and grinding it out.  "We were about to go in and liberate you."

"Sorry.  I fell asleep.  Let's go."

"Bad thought--we need a plan for if the Van Guys show up at the warehouse tonight," Willow said.

Spike chuckled nastily.  "I don't think they will.  I put the fear of yours truly in 'em on last night's patrol."

Willow looked aghast.  "Spike, you didn't--"

They'd taken about five steps towards the car when her father's voice behind her said "Dawn, where do you think you're going?"



Hank Summers might not be accustomed to living with teenaged girls in the throes of an unsuitable crush, but he prided himself on the fact that he wasn't a complete idiot.  He remembered all the trouble Joyce had had with Buffy sneaking out to wander around Sunnydale in the middle of the night--Lord knew why, since except for a couple of seedy downtown clubs, the place practically rolled up its sidewalks at sundown.  So now, standing on the landing and looking down on the escape in progress, he wasn't terribly surprised.  Pissed off, but not surprised.

"...come on, Will, all I did was find a pay phone and call bleeding 911," said the voice Hank least wanted to hear at this moment, sounding somewhat aggrieved.  "And then scarper when the ambulance showed up."

"You moved him with a head injury," Willow replied sternly.  "That's not nice."

Spike looked affronted.  "Look, it's hard enough giving up the evil thing, but if you expect me to be nice on top of it--"

Hank restrained a sneer.  The sight of Dawn gazing adoringly at that bleached-blond poseur was enough to make anyone sick to his stomach.  Spike might radiate the sort of superficial charisma that took in impressionable teens, but ten to one the British accent was fake, the coat was vinyl, the 'evil thing' was limited to dealing coke to pay for the plastic surgery because no one was born with cheekbones like that and he damn sure wasn't a vampire.  "Dawn, where do you think you're going?"

The three of them stopped dead. "The complex laundry room," Dawn said, cool as a cucumber.  "Spike brought your sweatsuit back."

The damn-sure-not-a-vampire nodded.  "Yeh, I did.  Ta ever so.  We'll just nip out to the car and get it."

"We can even fold it for you when it’s done," Willow put in with an eager nod.

Hank regarded them all evenly, arms folded.  "You just do that.  Dawn, you come back to bed."

Dawn looked at Willow, pleading in her eyes.  "Don't you have some kind of forgetty spell or something?"

Willow grimaced and shook her head.  "I'm afraid I've been concentrating on blow-things-uppy spells."  She brightened.  "I can put him to sleep, though."  She took a breath.

"Wait," Dawn interrupted.  "He'll hit his head.  Dad, I'm really sorry, but we're going to have to knock you out.  Spike, go up and catch him--"

"Whatever you say, Nibblet," said a voice in his ear, and Hank jumped.  Spike couldn't possibly have gotten up the stairs and past him so quickly, but there he was, lean and dangerous and lounging against the metal railing.  "Any time, Red."

Willow looked up at him very apologetically.  "Sorry, Mr. Summers, but this is a matter of life and death."  She raised her hand and spoke a Word, and the world went black.

When he came to, he was lying on the couch.  His head was perfectly clear, no dizziness or pain from where he must have been cold-cocked, but he couldn’t move.  After a second he realized that this was because his wrists and ankles had been bound up in duct tape. “We’d better go,” he heard Willow saying.  She sounded jittery.  “It’s a half-hour drive out to the factory, and we need to be there by two.”

There was the harsh ripping sound of more tape pulling free from the roll.  “Not his mouth!  He needs to breathe!”

Dawn’s voice.  What the hell...?  He wasn’t stupid; he knew that she resented him.  He could deal with normal teen-aged rebellions, the sneaking out at night, the arguments.  Maybe not well, but he could deal.   He’d dealt with Buffy through worse.  But Buffy’s violence had never been directed against her own family.  His gut clenched with fear and anger.

“Nasty habit, that,” Spike said.  “He doesn’t need to yell, Nibblet.  I’ll leave his nose free.”

“Well... OK.  Just you be real sure you don’t hurt him.”

OK?  What have you done to my Dawnie, you rat bastard?  If he kept his eyes closed maybe he’d learn something.  Were they intending to rob the place?  There really wasn’t anything worth stealing here, though he supposed they could fence the television and the microwave for a few bucks.  He managed to turn his head and squinted through nearly-closed eyelids.  Dawn was sitting on the kitchen table, swinging her feet, while Willow stood at the foot of the couch and watched with a worried look while Spike ripped the last piece of tape free of the dispenser and finished tying up his ankles.  He leaned over and inspected Hank with a smirk.  “Looks like Daddikins is awake.”

Hank gave up the pretense of unconsciousness and glared at his captor.  “This is assault, damn it!”

Spike just grinned.  He was obviously enjoying himself, even if the other two weren’t.  “I’m sorry, Dad,” Dawn said.  “But Willow’s right.  It’s life and death.  We’ll be back by tomorrow morning, I hope, and... and I really hope you’ll see why I had to do this.”

He fought to keep his voice level.  “Dawn.  Sweetie.  This is not some game.  This is serious.  This is a crime, Dawn.  You’ve got to let me go.”

His daughter looked down at him, worrying a lock of hair between her teeth, obviously torn.  She shot an anxious glance over his head at Spike.  The supposed vampire, still holding a mouth-sized swatch of tape in one hand, looked back at her and raised an inquiring eyebrow.  It almost seemed that he was awaiting Dawn’s say-so.  Dawn’s anguished look resolved into determination, and she nodded.  Spike slapped the tape over Hank’s mouth immediately, deftly avoiding Hank’s attempt to bite his fingers.

Dawn hopped off the table and came over to the couch.  She bent down and placed a hesitant peck on her father’s forehead.  “Bye, Dad.”  Then she was gone, following the others out the door and into the night.  The moment the door closed behind her, Hank began to struggle against his bonds.  He rolled off the couch, banging painfully into the coffee table.  High overhead on the kitchen wall, the phone loomed like the Holy Grail.  If he could get over there, stand up, knock the phone off the hook and tap out 911, he wouldn’t have to talk--they’d send someone to investigate an off-hook phone.  He began worming his way across the floor.

Continue to Part 7

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