William opened his eyes to find the bed empty, the comforter thrown back, a divot in the pillow where her head had rested.
“Buffy?” he said, sitting up. His instincts were sharp enough to know that things weren’t right. The Flat felt empty around him.
He checked the bathroom first, knowing the she hadn’t been feeling well. When she wasn’t there, he tried the kitchen. Then the garden. Followed by the basement. All the while he called for her, yelling until he’d worn his throat raw.
Afterward, he stood in the entry hall, on the balls of his feet, stricken terrified by the knowledge that she wasn’t in the house. He remembered then one place he had not checked.
“Roof,” he said to himself. He raced upstairs, to the cramped attic stairway and outside to the rooftop.
She wasn’t there either. William ran to the ledge and looked down to street level. Xander’s Volvo had left its usual spot. William tried to force himself to breathe, to think. His brain had clicked over to frenzy mode. He was trying to click it back.
Xander, he thought. They were taking him to the airport. Maybe Buffy woke up and went with. But without telling me? Didn’t seem likely, but he had ways of finding out.
William hurtled down the stairs, slipping on the landing and almost banging his knee on the banister. In the hallway, he grabbed the phone and dialed Dawn.
She answered on the fourth ring.
“Dawn,” he said before she could speak. “Is Buffy with you?”
“No,” Dawn said brightly. “She’s with you. Remember, she wanted to nap and then we were going to watch that new ice skating movie when we get back. You know, the one with the girl in it who looks just like me…”
“She’s not here,” William said.
“What do you mean she’s not there?”
“She’s not here!” he shouted into the phone.
Silence on the other end of the line. Dawn pieced together what William already knew.
“Maybe she’s wandered outside,” Dawn said.
William closed his eyes in relief. He hung up the phone and dashed out the front door.
For many on Meteor Street, their first introduction to William was a frantic pounding on their doors, right at supper time. He went on in his hoarse voice about a blonde girl, yea high, name of Buffy, and had they seen her? And when they said they hadn’t, he bounded down the slick sidewalk to repeat the process at the next house. He had checked every house on both sides of the street. He checked the wide alley that ran the length behind the houses, and the narrow ones that went in between. He looked everywhere, and nothing.
Dawn had been the one the phone the police. Two men turned up, took statements and left as if it was all a matter of routine for people to simply disappear.
After the initial hysterical storm, the four who remained – Dawn, Giles, Andrew and William – sat around the dining table, each adrift in their own separate tragedies, like drowning swimmers with no hope of rescue. It was late now. The night sky shifted from dull pink flush to slate in a span of minutes.
In William’s mind, one thought turned over and over, curling in on itself. How could I fall asleep, when I promised…?
Giles was the first to speak. He said, “If there were magics involved. A spell, perhaps...”
“I fell asleep,” William broke in.
Giles paused, considering. Then he said, “Things aren’t always what they seem, Spike.”
William turned his head. “They are exactly as they seem. I failed, and she’s gone.”
Gone. The word reverberated in the hollow room like bell tolling.
Dawn said, “Where could she go?”
“She could literally be anywhere,” Giles said.
Dawn sat forward, but still spoke with the quietness of a person sitting beside a sickbed. “How do we find her, Giles?” she asked. “Where do we even begin?”
Andrew flicked nervously at the bandage that still covered the nub of his wrist. He said, “I could ask Nighna.”
“Where do we begin that doesn’t involve more pain?” Dawn re-phrased.
“No. It’s good,” William said. “If demons are involved, she would know it.”
Andrew got up, half-turning to leave.
“No,” William said, also getting to his feet. “I got this one. I’ve got anger needs managing…”
Giles stood as well. “And I’ll contact the coven. If we’re dealing with something powerful enough to take Buffy, surely they would have felt it.”
Dawn remained seated while the others filed from the room. After a few seconds, she said, “I’ll call Xander.”
Everyone froze, then looked at her.
Dawn swallowed hard. The lump in the back of her throat ached like choking down a block of ice. “He should know,” she finished.
Giles nodded. When they had gone, Dawn carried herself into the seldom-used parlor and collapsed into the sleeper sofa. She pulled out her phone and numbly punched up Xander’s speed dial.
She got his voicemail. Of course she would. He was somewhere over the Atlantic, probably asleep and dreaming sugary dreams of Maya.
Only, this news wasn’t voicemail kind of news. It was face-to-face news at best. At worst, it was long distance call news once he had safely landed at International Airport-Houston.
Dawn closed her phone and put it on the arm of the sofa. She dug the heels of her hands against her eyes and gave them a good, hard scrub.
She thought she should be crying. She should be crazed. But all she could do was sit there and rub her eyes like a sleepy child.
And all she could think was, Where is she? Where could she be?
Buffy sat with Dawn until morning, until the girl – consumed by both grief and exhaustion – fell into a near catatonic slumber.
Even before the sun had risen, the basement felt stale and stifling. Much as she felt an obligation to stay with the girl who was the shadow of her sister, Buffy didn’t feel she could remain in the basement. Not underground like that, with the heat and the squalor. Not with the salty sweet tang of her sweat in her nose.
Buffy climbed the stairs, into her old house, and up again into her bedroom.
It was a husk, like the rest of the place. Time and lots of feet tread the carpet bare, except for the rectangle where her bed had been. It was shabby and prickly, but Buffy collapsed there. She felt a weird sense of vertigo as she lay staring at the ceiling, as though she could feel the world turning on its axis. Inside her intestines felt slick and oily, like she’d just eaten a double order of chili cheese fries from the Double Meat Palace.
Buffy rolled onto her back and covered her face with her arms. She didn’t want to cry, but the tears had minds of their own. If she didn’t let them out, they would stage a coup and strangle her. So she let them flow.
There was too much. Too much to process. Too much to deal with. All she could do now was try to sleep. And maybe, when she woke, wasn’t there a chance she’d be home?
Buffy ran her hands down her body. They came to rest in the shape of a triangle over the swell of her tummy, where the baby rested in its own serene oblivion.
Three months, she thought. Three months today.
Buffy closed her eyes. Soon, she dropped into the welcome darkness of sleep.
Buffy managed to sleep the entire day. She woke, feeling stiff and sticky with sweat. As she sat up, she realized that she was not home as she hoped. Nope. She was till in Sunnydale.
She went downstairs to check on Dawn. The girl was still sleeping. Seemed to keep a nocturnal schedule, Buffy noted.
Buffy went out to the back porch in an effort to cool off. It was sweltering inside, and she was all itchy from carpet sleeping.
She sat on the top step and laced her fingers behind her neck. She remained there while time crept along, the shadows drawing longer and deeper pools of black across the disaster of a backyard. Buffy remembered how her mother had kept the gardens so neat, the lawn so trim. She would tie her hair back in a manky paisley scarf and don heavy gardening gloves and head out before the sun had fully risen to weed and prune and edge. None of it appealed to Buffy at all. But then, seeing what inattention did for the yard gave her reason to reconsider.
She was reconsidering thus when he appeared at the garden gate. Buffy heard him and looked up in time to see him set a bag of groceries down on the hedge. He moved forward, swallowed for a moment by shadow. He reappeared on the sidewalk several yards away. His eyes, flickering like candle’s flames in the moonlight, never left hers. She suddenly found it very difficult to breathe.
“Well, looky here,” he said, pausing on the path. “Prodigal Slayer’s returned. Gotta say it’s… unexpected. Points for originality.”
Buffy got carefully to her feet. She stared hard at him, at the sameness and difference of Spike.
He cocked his head to the side. He drew his lips into his Joker’s grin. He walked forward, deliberately pacing his steps while he spoke.
“You know,” he said. “When you jumped, it was fine dive. A 9.8, at least. But you only get the silver, see? On count of, you didn’t stick the dismount.”
He stopped at the base of the stairs, looking up into her face.
“Spike,” she whispered.
He shoved her. The unexpected force of it sent her sprawling. He took the steps and was above her in seconds. She leapt to her feet, fists up to defend, trying to be ready for anything.
“Oh, wanna fight, do you?” He growled “Gladly. Can’t tell you how long I’ve wanted this.”
He lunged in. She sidestepped him.
“Spike. Wait!”
He attacked again. Buffy parried, backing off, going Akido.
Spike vamped out. “Done waiting,” he said. He slammed his fist into her face, really connecting this time. Buffy stumbled, shoulder to the wall. He grabbed her arm and twisted it behind her, pushing her face into the cracking paint.
Buffy broke the hold. She spun, planting a foot into his chin. He danced back.
He looked surprised when he touched his chin and found his fingers red with blood. “Lucky shot,” he said.
Spike roundhoused. She caught his leg and wrenched it forward, pulling him off balance. His other leg buckled and she rode him down. He hit the rotten boards of the porch with bone shattering force. Buffy vaulted on top of him, pinning him with the strength of her thighs.
Spike looked up at her. In the span of seconds that followed, his face ran through the full cycle of emotions until it settled on the sick look of sorrow.
He put his hands on her hips and eased her back while he sat up. Buffy slipped sideways to kneel beside him.
“It can’t be you…” Spike said.
Buffy blew out a shaky, relieved breathe. “I know it can’t,” she said. “But it is. I am…”
Spike touched the raised white scar that wound a twisted path down the side of her face, all the way to the line of her jaw. She was aware at once how cold his fingers were.
“Where have you been?” he said.
Buffy sat back on her heels. She warred with the tears that threatened; this time she won.
“A better place,” she said at last. It was really all she could say.
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