Disclaimer:  I don’t own or profit from BtVS.  No copyright infringement intended.

Spoilers for Buffy vs. Dracula. 

Remember When

Chapter One

September, 2000

Spike popped up from behind a tombstone like a demented whack-a-mole, and Buffy barely checked the instinct to smack him back down.  Oddly, it wasn’t the Slayer that reacted, but the very girly response usually accompanied by a screech of ‘Eww, what is that icky thing?  Kill it!  Kill it!’  It was her Slayer reflexes that actually stopped her from smooshing Spike like he was a spider in a bathtub. 

“What do you want, Spike?”  If eyeballs made noise, Spike would have heard hers rolling all the way up in her head.  She had a long thrall-filled night and all she wanted to do was get to her medicine cabinet for some extra minty Listerine to wash the taste of vamp blood from her mouth.

“Hmm, lets see.  Peace on Earth, the cure for world hunger…your soddin’ toy soldier’s head on a platter.”  Spike flicked his cigarette butt, just barely missing her nose.  The unexpected action made her hesitate a step, before she marched on, a scowl firmly deforming her pretty lips.

“Gees, what flew up your butt?”  These little conversations with Spike were always such a joy.  You’d think she was Spike’s own personal complaint office.  Well, maybe that wasn’t exactly true.  Spike didn’t complain, like say Xander.  Instead, he took great pleasure in pointing out the misbehavior of the so-called white hats.  For some reason, it tickled him pink when they did something he construed as being morally gray.  Like he was one to talk.  Spike’s moral compass was so screwed it pointed south.  As in straight down to hell. 

She knew with absolute certainty he could never be trusted, especially with her family.

“I jus’ don’t ‘preciate you sending your hunny to threaten me in my own crypt,” he snarled.  Spike was genuinely angry.  Not a big surprise there.  As far as she knew he only had two modes.  Angry and lascivious.  And drunk.  But she didn’t know if drunk was so much a mode as it was a state of being.  There was something else under the snark she couldn’t quite place.  It almost sounded like fear, but she knew that couldn’t be right.  She had never seen Spike afraid of anything.  Not even Angel.

“What are you talking about, Spike?  I didn’t send Riley to do anything.  Besides, I can do my own threatening, thank you very much.”  Buffy was insulted.  She wouldn’t send someone out to do her dirty work for her.  It stank of cowardice.  Besides, she took pride in her skills.  She’d been honing them for years now.  She especially liked doling out threats to Willy.  He made this ghastly choking sound that was kinda funny.

“Don’t I know it,” Spike muttered bitterly under his breath, and Buffy’s lips quirked up at the corners.  Yah, she had a reputation to maintain.  She couldn’t do that if someone else was out there acting in her name.

“I heard that,” she spat.

“Wasn’t trying to hide it, you bint.”  Spike tucked a cigarette in the corner of his mouth, cupping his hands as he lit it.  He tilted his head back as he took an angry drag, his eye lashes fluttering as the nicotine soothed his nerves.  Buffy glared at him, and he blew a thin stream of blue smoke into her face.  Coughing, she drew back her fist to pop him in the nose, figuring her first instinct, girly or not, to smack him down was the right one after all, but he was already out of reach, having danced this particular dance before.  For once, Buffy didn’t pursue.  She was just too tired and wanted to go home.  Sighing, she rolled her shoulders, and continued down the path.  Spike fell in step beside her, just outside of striking distance.

“So I hear you ran Drac out of town.  Bugger owed me eleven pounds.”

Buffy blinked.  “Wow, news travels fast on the Sunnydale demon grapevine.” 

“Yah, well.  Been a slow Tuesday.”

It had only been a few hours since the showdown at Dracula’s castle.  The prerequisite Slayer/Watcher debrief was more stilted than usual.  Buffy had no intention of telling Giles she drank vampire blood, and the Watcher was more than disconcerted at the mention of the three sisters.  After that there was a round of reassuring Xander he was no one’s butt-monkey and Anya’s subsequent questions of what role a butt-monkey fulfilled in society and if there was income or orgasms involved.

The hardest part of the evening was trying to reassure Riley she wasn’t under Dracula’s thrall anymore.  Honestly, Buffy didn’t think she’d ever been.  At anytime she could have summoned the strength to resist him, but like he said, she hadn’t wanted to.  Even when he was in her room, and she was still caught in a dream-like state, she could have stopped him from biting her.  She knew what Dracula was offering when he brushed his fingers over her scar.  Complete and total ecstasy.  Something she hadn’t felt since Angel bitten her.

It wasn’t fair to Riley, and she was sure he suspected something deep down.  Sex with him was good.  It was normal boy on girl sex.  It could never hope to compete with the bliss of a vampire bite.  After all, he was only human, and that wasn’t such a bad thing.  That was exactly what she wanted.  So what if it left her a tiny bit….unresolved?  A little late night slayage took the edge off.  Those were just the facts.  But said facts didn’t need to come to light.  There was no reason for them too.  All it would do was hurt Riley and injure their relationship.

That craving, the deep, dark, fetishist desire she had to feel her blood rushing through her veins until she was lightheaded was something she could never confess to anyone.  Not Riley, not her watcher, and certainly not the rabid killer bouncing along by her side with angry, kinetic energy.

She frowned as he balanced himself on the curb like a kid playing high-wire.  “Wait.  What were you saying about, Riley?”

“Nuthin’.”  He tossed his butt into the gutter as they turned up the walk to her house.

“Spike,” she hissed and they both heard the threat she was so proud of in her voice.

“Nah uhh.  I didn’t realize Captain Cardboard was tryin’ on independent thought for size.  Don’t want to get him in trouble with the superhunny for just tryin’ to find his balls.”

They were outside her front door, a pool of yellow light flooding around them before tapering off into darkness.  Red-hot anger seared Buffy’s brain and she hauled Spike up by the labels of his leather coat.

He could feel her warm breath on his cold cheek and he watched in fascination as her eyes darkened from gold-flecked hazel to a dark jade.  His cock hardened and he knew when she hit him it was going to make him feel so much better.

“Now, listen here,” she snarled.

“Hands off the leather, luv.  It’ll bruise,” he interjected, cutting off her insult.

“I’m gonna bruise you so friggin’ hard your jacket’s gonna whimper in pain.”  She hauled him closer as she hissed her threat, their noses nearly touching.

“Promises, promises,” he whispered, his cheeks hollowing as he pursed his lips with glee.

The door slammed open, startling them apart.

“Are you two bickering again?”

“’Lo, Nibblet.”  Spike smirked as he smoothed down the labels of his jacket.

“Shut up, Dawn.  We don’t bicker,” Buffy huffed, automatically taming her hair with a nervous hand.

“Nah,” Spike answered.  “This is just fore—“

Buffy slapped her hand over his mouth before he could finish saying foreplay.  His blue eyes laughed over the edge of her palm, but he made no move to shy away.  His tongue slicked between his lips, tickling the center of her palm.  Buffy squeaked, pulling away to hastily rub his spit off on her jeans.

Dawn rolled her eyes and abandoned her post at the threshold.  “Mom!  They’re home,” she screeched as Buffy and Spike stamped the mud off their boots before coming inside.

“Seriously, do you have to scream?”  Buffy reprimanded as she turned her back to Spike so he could help her jacket off.

“Well, duh.  How else is she going to hear me?”  Dawn flipped her long brown hair, nearly catching her sister in the face.  Spike hung Buffy’s jacket up in the hall closet, and his next to it.

“Right.  Of course.  How thoughtless of me.”  Buffy waited until Spike was done, before lacing her fingers with his.  He brushed his lips along her jaw in quick, loving kisses before whispering something dirty in her ear. 

Dawn’s eyeballs rattled, and she decided not to wait for their lovey-dovey moment to be over.  “So did you get Dracula?”

Spike flicked the shell of Buffy’s ear with his tongue before drawing away.  “Yep.  Your big sis staked the poncy bastard good an’ proper.  Course the berk kept trying to rise again.  He never had much in the brains department.  He’ll be moving on before first light.  No one says no to the Slayer when she’s in superbitch mode.”

They followed Dawn into the kitchen as he spoke.  As they passed the counter, Dawn waved her hand towards a large pickle jar.  “That’s two quarters.”  She paused, scrunching her nose.  “Does berk count?”

“Nope,” Buffy replied with a pop.

Sniggering, Spike delved his hand into his front pocket where he kept a roll of quarters handy.  He popped out two coins and tossed them into the swear jar with a clank.

“Looks like I’ll have those new Doc Martins by the end of the month.”  Dawn wiggled her hips as she danced over to the stack of plates left on the counter by her mom.  Without being told she picked them up and danced her way into the dining room to set the table.  Buffy rolled her eyes at her appalling taste.  The menace she was dating had a horrible influence on her baby sister.

“Since you called me the ‘B’ word you owe an extra quarter.  That means you only get one more tonight or Mom’s gonna have your hide.”

Spike wrapped his hand around her waist, his fingers digging possessively into her hips.  He pulled her close, inhaling deeply as her sweet scent enveloped him.  He dipped his knees ever so slightly, nestling his hard cock into the warm heat between her thighs. 

“Later tonight I’m gonna take you upstairs and---“ he whispered the rest in her ear, reveling in her breathless giggle as he told her exactly how he planned on fucking her.  He pulled away and dropped five more quarters in the jar.

“Buffy.  Spike.  How did things go with Dracula?”  Joyce breezed in from the dining area.  She stopped at the stove to stir the bubbling red sauce that smelled like heaven. 

“Brilliant,” answered Spike.  “I finally got my eleven pounds from the bugger.  Gonna take the Slayer out for ice-cream later.”

Joyce shot him a long, exasperated look.  “Language, Spike.”  He looked down at his dwindling roll of coins.  He was going to need to stop at the bank tomorrow night before they patrolled.  He tossed another coin in the jar.

“I’m fourteen,” Dawn whined as she followed her mom in from the dining room.  “I think I can say bug—“  She was ground to a halt by a dirty look from Spike, which was somehow more effective than her own mother’s.

“Sorry, mum.”  Spike tried to look contrite, but on him it just came out impish.  Joyce shook her head and pulled out a bottle of red wine.  She handed over the bottle along with a corkscrew.  Without protest, Spike opened it.

“Buffy dear, would you take the salad and breadsticks out while I put together the spaghetti?”

“Sure thing, mom.”  Buffy rounded up the baskets off the counter.

“So, we’re going out for ice-cream?”  Dawn bounced in front of Spike, her smile dazzling.

“Sure thing, Nibblet.”

“Dawn.  I think Spike and Buffy would like to have a little time alone,” Joyce reproached as she tossed the noodles with the sauce.

“’s okay, mum.  Wanna treat my girls with my not so ill gotten gains.  You should come too.”

Joyce merely shook her head.  Spike spoiled them all rotten.  “I’ll take advantage of the peace and quiet and take an extra long bubble bath.”

Spike grinned unrepentantly, rocking slightly on his heels.  “Then I’ll be sure to keep them out extra late.”

Joyce just shot him a look, and took the bowl of spaghetti out to the table, leaving Spike to pour the wine.  He got out three pieces of stemware and poured modest portions.

“What’s it taste like?”  Dawn asked at his elbow.  He picked up the last glass, pouring a swallow of red liquid.

“Like grape juice.  Want some?”  He offered it to her.  She peeked up at him from beneath her fringe of bangs.  She looked so young, it made his heart clench with the memory of the first time he saw her.  All of twelve years old, full of spitfire and courage as she tried to protect her sister.  She hesitated and he cocked his scarred brow.

His challenge tweaked her adolescent pride and she swiped the glass from him, nearly fumbling when it was lighter than expected.  Bravely, she gulped the wine down, her face screwing up in childish distaste.

“Spike!”  Buffy growled from the doorway.

“That so does not taste like grape juice,” Dawn spat and ran to the sink to rinse out her mouth.  Buffy veered towards the fridge to pull out a bottle of Welches.

“What?”  Spike snickered as his Slayer continued to shoot him little glares of death.  “I have to get my evil in somewhere.  Providing a minor with alcohol fits the bill with the added white hat bonus of teaching her it’s nasty.  She won’t be drinkin’ wine for a long time.”

“You hope.”  Buffy poured her sister a tall glass of grape juice and shooed her off to the dining room.

“She better not or she’ll have to deal with me.”

“Ohh, the Big Bad making sure little girls don’t get drunk.”  She flashed him a smile.

The certainty he absolutely could be trusted with her family evident in every nuance of her body.

“Damn straight.  Where there’s drunk teenage girls, there’s usually drunk teenage boys and as far as I’m concerned my little nibblet is going to stay virginized for eternity.”

Buffy rolled her eyes, and picked up her glass, leaving him to carry his and Joyce’s.  “You’re terrible.  You know she’s gonna wanna date soon.”

“Over my dead body.”

“Good thing you’re already dead,” she sniggered, bumping him in the shoulder.

“Ha, bloody, ha.”

“Spike!”  He cringed at Joyce’s sharp tone.  Repentantly, he placed her glass in front of her, setting his down beside Buffy’s.  He trudged back into the kitchen and tossed another coin in the jar.

“Bloody, buggering, fuck,” he muttered under his breath, peeking over his shoulder to make sure no one heard him.  He added another three quarters and threw the spent coin wrapper in the garbage.  At this rate Snack Size was going to have her Doc Martins and a Sex Pistols t-shirt by the end of the month.

His lips curled into a satisfied smile as he entered the dinning room to sit down and have dinner with his family.

Disclaimer:  I don’t own or profit from BtVS.  No copyright infringement intended.

Spoilers for Halloween

A/N:  The first couple of chapters are going to be Spike/Dawn friendship centric.  There will be plenty of Spuffy later in the story, but in the beginning the intention is for Dawn to be the conduit for Spuffiness, as her presence affects character attitudes.  S2 will remain basically cannon with major changes in Becoming I and II.  Keep in mind that Buffy is sixteen so her thoughts are less than mature, and well, Dawn is twelve.  I don’t remember much about being twelve, it being somewhere in the foggy, distant past for me, but I do seem to remember the phrase, ‘that’s not fair’ being pretty central to my every thought.

Remember When

Chapter Two

October, 1997

Buffy left the old, smelly, clerk guy to wrap up the totally awesome dress for her while she searched the isles for accessories.  She was going to look like one of those beautiful, old-timey women who waltzed in candlelit ballrooms.  Angel would go ga-ga over it.  For once she would be delicate and feminine and womanly.  The kind of woman Angel was used to championing.

Once upon a time, she would have been one of those girls who needed saving.  Small, fragile and perfectly coifed in the newest style, she was a vision of femininity.  But after her Calling, she was the one to do all the saving.  Which was totally fine.  She was all onboard with the having of superpowers, and girl power and you know, stuff.  But…

Buffy was loathed to say it, but when you were stronger than your hunny it could make you feel less than girly.  Worse, it made you doubt if your guy even saw you as a girl.  Guys were super sensitive about that sort of thing.  They were usually all about the saveage of the damsels, but if she was fulfilling the guy role of Prince Charming, then what role was Angel supposed to play?  Clearly, he decided on broody, cryptic guy.  And, hey!  It totally worked for him.  ‘Cause, he was Hot with a capital H.

She told Willow that Halloween was a get out of jail free card to remake yourself into anything you desired.  Well, for one night, Buffy wanted to be an honest to goodness girl again.  She wanted to swish around in long skirts with an hourglass figure and push up boobs that would make Angel’s eyes pop out of his head.

She smiled as she picked up a package containing a long brunette wig.  She was gonna go so girly she’d barely recognize herself.  After all, Angel liked brunettes didn’t he?  Buffy looked at the hair in the package.  It was a little lighter than Dru’s, but it would do.

“What’d ya think?”  Dawn popped up in front of her holding a package.  Buffy examined the sexy Little Red Riding Hood costume critically.

“A world of no.”

“But, Buffy!”  Dawn screeched at an unholy octave designed to get her way.  While Joyce may have relented, her mature ears being more sensitive, Buffy was still safely ensconced in the less than mature stage of her life, and could withstand the tactic she had employed herself not that long ago.

“No.  Mom would kill me, then you.  And as much as I would love to get rid of you, like a bad rash, I’m not willing to sacrifice myself.”  Buffy used too many words and Dawn stopped listening somewhere around…No.

“But, it’s cute,” she pointed out.  Having just got her first training bra, Dawn now felt it was time to delve headfirst into womanhood which included showing off said boobs.  She couldn’t understand why the other women in her family didn’t seem to agree.  Especially her sister.  If Buffy’s skirts got any shorter all of London and France would see her underpants.

“No.  It’s sexy.”  Buffy countered.  “You’re too young for something like this.”

“I’m twelve.”  Dawn stomped her foot in a flurry of youthful indignation.

“And that would be my point.”  Buffy threw the package onto a nearby shelf with flourish.  “C’mon.  We’ll see if we can’t find something at the Supermax on the other side of town.  They’ve got more kid stuff.”  Buffy walked back to the counter to pay for her costume.

“That’s so unfair.”  Dawn snarled, stomping behind her.

“That’s life,” remarked Buffy with wisdom stolen from her mother.

888888

Dealing with snot-nosed eight and nine-year-olds?  So not her thing.  Top it off by being chaperoned by her big sister?  So putting the unfair into her life.

And that was before Lady Elizabeth put in an appearance.  Dawn didn’t know what was going on, but it was buckets of wrong.

“We must stay close to the menfolk.  Especially, the one with the musket.  They will protect us.”  Buffy dragged Dawn into the house with a surprisingly weak grip.  Dawn stared at her sister, a little bug-eyed.  What the…Menfolk?  Seriously?

“Buffy, what happened to ‘go girl power?’  You know, Slayer and all.”

“I have no idea of what you speak.  Now stop prattling and come along, little sister.”

Well, some things never change.  Even while thinking she was Princess Peach, Buffy was still bossy, and though she couldn’t remember her own name or what a car was, she sure as heck knew Dawn was her sister, and had bossing rights over her.  Dawn supposed the ‘suitable’ Red Riding Hood costume Buffy picked out for her was kinda old-timey with its fake ribbon corset covering her collarbone and flouncy skirt that went to her knees.  They sorta matched.

Princess Buffy, as Dawn was starting to think of her, wasn’t comfortable around Angel, which she thought was hilarious.  She never liked Buffy’s boyfriend.  He did that creepy, lurky thing that really wigged her out.  Then there was his bumpy problem.  Dawn knew about vampires and Buffy’s slayage gig since last year.  How could she not?  Seriously.  Sneaking in and out of the house every night might get passed mom, but not little sisters.  After whining, wheedling and threats of blackmail, Buffy had confessed everything.  Then made her pinky swear on her Hello Kitty diary not to tell mom or Buffy would make a point of standing outside her classroom door every day to pick her up after school instead of staying a respectful distance at the curb.

Their whole secret sister society almost got blown late last year, when Buffy got home earlier than usual and Dawn, who’d been ransacking her sister’s room for counter blackmail material, had to quickly hide in the closet or else get caught by an irate older sister.  She figured she could sneak out while Buffy did her nightly bathroom ritual.  What she didn’t count on was Mr. Lurkypants following her sister through the window.

Dawn had no idea who he was, but by the way Buffy was cuddling up to him her big sis sure knew him.  Then they kissed, and Dawn screamed the house down.

When mom burst into the room, Mr. Bumpy was gone and Dawn was bawling in Buffy’s arms.  Buffy told their mom it was all her fault for telling ghost stories under the covers, and that Buffy’s tale of the Green-Eyed Maniac freaked Dawn out.  Mom yelled and grounded Buffy for a week, but allowed her to stay with Dawn.  She was too freaked out to protest when Buffy crawled into bed with her and wrapped her arms around her.  They stayed like that all night, Buffy whispering all the rules for vampires and how they didn’t apply to Angel, because he had a soul.  Dawn never bought it.  She knew there were plenty of bad guys out there with souls, and she didn’t like how Angel looked at her sometimes.  Like she was the annoying kid sister he wouldn’t mind eating.

So when Mr. Bumpy freaked Princess Buffy the - H E double hockey sticks – out, Dawn followed her sister right into the black of night.  Even if it was really scary out there.  Cuz that’s what family does.  They stick together.  Buffy taught her that.

Thing was.  She was only twelve.  Yah, she didn’t like to admit it, but it was a handicap.  When the stinky, yucky pirate guy grabbed Princess Buffy in the alley they were running though, Dawn snatched up a broken two-by-four and hit him square across the back.  ‘Cept it didn’t really work out.  In fact, the guy didn’t even feel it.  Persistent in a way that only a Summers woman could be, Dawn kept whacking him, while falling back on the secret weapon all twelve-year-old girls possess—screeching at decibels that made dogs howl.

Suddenly, the pirate was tossed away like he weighed less than a trash bag full of shredded paper, and Buffy collapsed on the ground in a heap of velvet and lace.

“Buffy!”  Dawn leapt to her side, searching for wounds.  Another perk to being the Slayer’s baby sister and secret sidekick; she totally knew what wounds looked like, having watched Buffy patch herself up more than a couple of times.  Not seeing anything obvious, Dawn patted her sister on the cheek.  “Ohmigod.  Did you faint?”  She asked her unconscious sister.  “I’m so totally never letting you live this down.”

“Well, well.  What do we have here?  Slayer surprise.”

Dawn glanced up at the man with the weird accent.  He was dressed in a punk rocker costume, which she had to admit, he pulled off.  Especially, the jacket.  She wondered where she could get one and if her new blackmail fodder of a fainting Princess Buffy was enough to purchase one.  Sometimes it was hard to put a price on sibling extortion.

“You know, Buffy?”  She rabbited over and tugged on the guy’s sleeve.  “You gotta help her.  Something’s happened and now she’s all girly Princess Buffy.  You called her Slayer so you must know how strong she is usually.  Please, help me to look after her until she’s better.  It’s not safe.”  Dawn added the last part solemnly.  She may be twelve, but she wasn’t dumb.  Really, she wasn’t!

“Hands off the leather.  You’ll bruise it.”  The guy shook her off, and Dawn jumped back with an eep.  She shot a quick glance at the mouth of the alley where a horde of carousing imps passed by.  The guy shouldered by her and hauled Buffy into his arms and strode off.  Dawn  practically had to run to keep up as he headed towards a warehouse.

“Thank you so much for helping.  I don’t know what would have happened if you hadn’t shown up.”

Spike tuned the little girl out.  Normally, she would have made a nice bite-sized snack, but he had a four course Slayer buffet laid out for him and he didn’t want to taint her taste with an appetizer.  She still smelled of power, but it was all wrapped up and stifled by the magic running rampant in the air.

He kicked his way into an abandoned warehouse, smiling when he saw it was being used as a flophouse.  He laid the Slayer out on a ratty couch that was home to more than a few mice and went back to block off the door so they wouldn’t be disturbed.  When he came back, the fresh-faced girl with brown pigtails and big blue eyes was tucked up next to the Slayer, fussing over her.

The little girl brushed a brunette curl off the Slayer’s brow and Spike frowned.  The magic turned the wig into real hair, and while it was longer and tousled into feminine curls they really didn’t suit the Slayer.  She was a warrior, not some milk-mouthed maid.  Besides, he preferred her blonde.  It made her look like a Valkyrie.  A beautiful warrioress ascending from the battlefield, escorting fallen warriors to the great big mead hall in the sky.  Fucking gorgeous, that’s what that was.  He shook off the romantic thoughts and glared at her mousy brown hair.  Not that her looks were going to stop him from eating her.  She was going to taste good going down either way.

“---that’s what you do for family.”

Spike suddenly tuned into the little girl who had prattled on non-stop since the alley.  This was the first thing she said that was remotely interesting.  Family was always interesting to Spike.

“What?” he snapped.

The little girl sighed and rolled her eyes in a way that had him reconsidering his earlier distaste in eating her.

“I said, that normally I would have followed Buffy’s first rule, but I figured in this case the ‘Golden Rule’,” the girl used air quotes, “overrode it.”

Spike planted his feet and crossed his arms.  Slayer rules.  This oughta be good.  “And what’s that?” he asked with a smirk.

“What?” the girl asked bewildered.  “The first rule or the Golden Rule?”

The little girl really was kind of precious with big blue eyes and a smart mouth.  Spike bet she’d taste like confectioner’s sugar going down.  He figured she must be the Slayer’s little sis, but he hadn’t given the family a second thought after the disastrous fight at the school.  Going after the family wasn’t his style.

“All of ‘em.”

“Oh.”  Snack Size sat up perkily, folding her hands in her lap as if she was about to recite a long memorized memorandum.  “Well, there’s the basic, don’t ever, ever invite anyone into the house and don’t go out after dark, rules.  Those get kinda tricky ‘cause mom don’t know about the whole vampire thing and sometimes we have to run intrafurnace.

“Interference,” Spike corrected automatically.

“Yah, that.”

“You mean the Slayer’s mum, don’t know about her being Chosen and all that rot?”

“No.”  The little girl shifted.  He stared her down and he could literally see her defenses collapse.  She leaned closer to the Slayer as if to protect her from his scrutiny.  Brave little bint.

“She told mom and dad when she first got Chosen and they thought she was looney toons.”  Wide-eyed and loopy looking the little girl waved her hands around her head.  Spike snorted.  Baby bint had no idea what true insanity looked like.  “They put her in a hospital for crazy people.  Then dad left.”  Snack Size looked away.  She now had her sister’s head in her lap, seeking and giving protection at the same time.  These two were tight despite their age difference.  He could see that.  Losing big sis would destroy li’l sis.  Best to kill them together.

“So she told them it was all made up so they’d let her out.  Then me, her and mom moved here after the divorce and Buffy got all Chosen again.”  She paused, a petulant little frown puckering up her face.  She took a deep breath, and looked him right in the eye.  “It’s not her fault.”  Snack Size raised her chin defiantly, daring him to say something mean.  He just cocked his brow.  Did the little girl really think she could challenge him?

“So the rules,” he prodded.

“Oh, right.”  She scrunched her nose up as she thought.  “So the first rule is Run.  Run away as fast as you can.  Don’t wait for anyone else, no matter who I’m with.  Even if its Mom or Buffy.  Especially if its Buffy, cuz, you know, she’s usually with the superpowers and stuff.”

“Right.”

“Anyways, I’m supposed to run to the nearest house.  Not a public building like a school or library, but a house.  I’m just supposed to burst right in, even if it’s a stranger’s cuz vamps can’t come in.  So when Angel scared Buffy into running out of the house, I should have stayed.”  She said the last part mournfully, darting little fearful glances at her unconscious sister.  Big sis really had the rules beat into the little one’s head.  Good thing, all that.

“Princess, here, was scared of tall, dark and broody?  Color me shocked,” Spike sneered.  He fished out a fag and lit it with flourish.  Snack Size watched the glint of his zippo with interest.  Likes shiny things does she?  What a little magpie.

“I know, right?”  She giggled.  “Normally, she’s all, ‘oh, Angel.  You’re so big and handsome.’”  She clasped her hands over her heart and fluttered her eyelashes in such a way it made Spike crack a smile.

“You don’t like the Great Poof?”  Spike observed.

Snack Size’s cute little smile melted away and she fidgeted nervously with the hem of her skirt.

“Buffy says he has a soul,” she said loyally.

“But?”  It just tickled Spike pink that Angel’s whole soul routine didn’t seem to work with the innocent little girl, yet here she was spilling all the family secrets to the Big Bad like he was her own personal bleedin’ diary.

“He looks at me funny sometimes.  Buffy says it’s a predator thing and not to worry about it ‘cause he’s good now.  But it still weirds me out.”

“How does he look at you?”  Spike shifted.  He had a feeling he knew where this was going.  Snack Size looked about the right age.

Dawn’s nervousness ratcheted up a notch and Spike watched as she pressed her knees together and tucked her ankles back in an unconscious defensive stance he had seen many women take over the years.  Especially, when faced with Angelus.

“Dunno.  Kinda like how Coach Hewlett looked at his peewees.”  She leaned forward as if she was imparting a secret.  Something she probably overheard from the adults when they were talking in hushed whispers.  “He was a bad man,” she said in a conspiring tone.

Spike knew she had no idea in what way Coach Hewlett was a bad man.  He felt an odd sort of gratefulness in his chest for that.  He knew in this century, little girls weren’t nearly as innocent as they had been in his youth, but this girl was pretty close.  Sure, she knew what went bump in the night, but she didn’t know what kind of threat a truly bad man could be.  Spike may be the Big Bad, but he sure as hell wouldn’t be introducing her to those kinds of evils.

“So, anyway.  Running away is the first rule, but like I said I think the Golden Rule totally overrides it.”

“And what is the Golden Rule?”  Spike was curious to find out what was so important to the Slayer that it overrode all the other rules that were clearly designed to protect her mum and baby sis.

“Family first,” Snack Size chirped as if reciting the gospel and Spike blinked.  If Spike had rules, which really he didn’t, that would be his Golden One too.  Of course, it only extended to himself and Dru.  Angel and Darla could sod off for all he cared. 

“Buffy thinks I’m some stupid, little kid.”  Spike refocused on the girl who was still prattling on, her apple cheeks flushed with anger.  “She’s always telling me, family first, family first.”  The girl threw her hands up in the air.  “But what she’s really saying is me, mom and the rest of the world, first.  Buffy always puts herself last.  I mean, yeah, she’s totally obnoxious, and she’s always snooping in my business, but she’s still my sister and she’s not herself right now.  Someone has to look out for her for once, right?”  The little girl curled her fingers into her sister’s long hair.  She had a sad look in her eyes that was too old for her years.  It made Spike wonder if she knew about a Slayer’s life expectancy.

“Right,” Spike agreed softly.  He took a deep drag from his cigarette to soothe his nerves.  For a ball of fluffy nothing, baby bint had spunk, he’d give her that.  His gaze flittered to the still unconscious Slayer.  She must have learned it from big sis.  He’d never come across a Slayer with as much fire as this one, not even that gal in New York.

Suddenly, the idea of eating the Slayer in front of her li’l sis was less appealing.  Plus it wasn’t very sportsmen like.  Maybe, he should wait until the Slayer was back to her old self and Snack Size wasn’t around.  He shifted his weight uncomfortably.

“So any other rules,” he asked more to distract his own thoughts than anything else.

“Well, there’s the second rule that applies if you can’t run away.”

“What’s that?”

The little girl gave him a hard look that was pure, unadulterated Slayer and Spike knew it was the same look big sis gave li’l sis every time she repeated the rule to her.

“If you’re still breathing, then you’re still fighting,” the girl intoned without a hint of waver.  Something close to pride bloomed in Spike’s chest.  “Never let them get you down.  Never let them get their fangs in you.”

“Sounds about right, Snack Size,” he agreed with a smile.  “Though your such a dainty little thing…” he trailed off.

She popped to her feet.  “Oh, Buffy taught me loads of dirty tricks,” she beamed, coming to stand in front of him.

“Like what?” he asked indulgently. 

The girl crinkled her nose.  “They’re kinda icky.”

“Nothin’s icky if it saves your life.”  He dropped his spent cigarette to the floor and stomped it out with a twist of his boot.  He hooked his thumbs in his belt, rocking back on his heels.

“That’s what Buffy says.”

Spike felt a tremor at that, but he couldn’t exactly identify what it meant.  It shouldn’t be surprising that he and the Slayer agreed on so many points.  After all, behind their titles of Slayer and Vampire, they were still just warriors.

Snack Size held out her hands like sideways claws, her thumbs curled inward at a sharp angle.  “She says to go for the eyes.  To keep pushing my thumbs in not matter how much they scream or how icky it gets.  I told her I’d totally hurl, but she gets this really bitc---err, mean look on her face, and tells me I’d better not if I want to live ‘cuz as soon as they are on the ground I need to refer to lesson the first.”

“Run away.”  Spike nodded and Dawn agreed.  “Sounds good, but don’t forget the ears.”  He reached out, tweaking hers.  “They pull off surprisingly easy.”

“Ewww,” Her little nose scrunched up, and Spike smirked with a hint of human fang. 

“What else?”

She shifted, her face heating up like a furnace.  The girl really had the corner market on blushing.  Her whole face went red.

“Idontwannasay,” she mumbled and Spike found himself pitching forward on the balls of his feet to hear.

“What was that?”

“It’s embarrassing,” she hissed and Spike’s lips twitched into a smile.  This oughta be good.  He could only imagine what the Slayer taught the girl.

“Too bad, I want to hear it.”

“Well, you aren’t the boss of me,” she spat, her hands flying to her hips.  Ha, bloody, ha.  Someone had preadolescent attitude.  He definitely knew she learned that from the Slayer.  Right down to hand placement.  Maybe, she wasn’t as sweet as he thought in the first place.

“Guess, I’ll be off.  Good luck with the not being eaten and all that rot.”  He started towards the door, and as predicted she leapt after him.

“No, wait.”  She tugged on his sleeve.

He stopped, dropping a meaningful glance to his arm.  She snatched her hand away from the leather like it was scalding.  He folded his arms and waited for her to speak.  She shifted her weight, looking at anything but him.

“Buffy says when fighting a girl, that kneeing them in the---“ She vaguely motioned between his legs without actually looking.  “Works just fine, cause they aren’t expecting it, but it hurts us just as bad as it hurts guys.  Well, maybe not as much, but you know…still with the ouchies.  Anyways, when a guy attacks he’s expecting it.  It’s like the classic girly attack.”

“If done right, it can be pretty effective.”  Spike kept his feet planted wide apart.

“Yah, but Buffy says I’m too small and not really strong enough to pull it off.”

“So, what does she suggest?” 

If possible, the girl got even redder.  “She said for some reason guys don’t get as nervous when a girl puts her hands down there.”

Spike’s brows lifted.  Now where could this possibly be going?  Surely, the Slayer didn’t tell her innocent li’l sis to give out hand jobs to get out of trouble?

The little girl covered her flaming cheeks with her hands and Spike noticed her pink sparkle nails were a little on the pointed side.  Manicure from big sis?

“She said its better to twist and pull,” she rushed out.  It took a second to follow what she was alluding to and when he did, he grimaced. “She said it wouldn’t work as good on someone who’s wearing tight jeans like you, but if they’re wearing slacks then they’re fair game.”

“Huh.”  He shoved his hands in his pockets and pulled his jacket tight around his body.  Spike filed that little tidbit away on dirty pool for the next time he was planning on fighting the Slayer.  He might even concede to a pair of tightie whiteys beforehand just for the extra protection.

Suddenly, he had himself an armful of sweet smelling, baby girl and it just about freaked him the fuck out.  He shoved her away; running his tongue over his teeth to make sure his fangs hadn’t dropped

“What the fuck are you doing, little girl?” he snarled with all the menace possible in his predatory body.  She scrambled away, her blue eyes so big he was afraid he was going to trip over his feet and fall in.

“I just wanted to thank you for saving me and Buffy.”  She sniffled and it only made him madder.  Stupid little girl.  Didn’t she have any common sense?

“Dawn, come here.”

Spike glanced over to the couch.  The Slayer was perched carefully at the edge.  Her wig had fallen off and tendrils of blonde hair wisped around her face.  She was glaring at Spike with a mixture of implacable rage and cold terror.  He leered, rocking back on his heels.  He was gratified when her terror became more pronounced.  That’s right, baby.  ‘m the Big Bad.  She held out her hand and Snack Size scampered to her side.

“Slayer, you need to teach Li’l Bit not to get within snatching distance of the Big Bads.  She’s gonna end up someone’s tasty little snacklet.”  He was genuinely pissed off.  Snack Size shouldn’t be going around hugging strange men, even if they seemed human enough.  Christ!  Did the brat want to get taken?

Outside there was a ruckus.  The wooden crates and palates he used to block the door were being torn apart.  Buffy’s eyes skittered away when Angel called her name.  Spike barely displaced the air, he moved so quickly.  He caught the little girl by the shoulder, holding her before him as he stared down at the wide-eyed Slayer whose attention was now solely riveted on him.  Exactly where it should be.  Not on his poofter grandsire.

“I mean it, Slayer.  Keep Snack Size inside before someone decides to use her against you.”  He had no idea why he was giving the Slayer advice on anything, much less on how to keep her family safe.  A grieving slayer would be a sloppy slayer, then he could slide right in and have himself a real good day.  He couldn’t understand why the thought made him queasy.

“Let her go, Spike,” she demanded softly.  Almost as if she was afraid loud noises and quick movements would set him off.  She wasn’t wrong.

The last of the debris burst from the door.  Spike released Dawn and headed for an open window.  He knew he didn’t have a chance against the older vampire and the Slayer combined.  He launched himself onto the fire escape, but instead of leaping into the alley, he headed for the roof, extending his vampiric senses so he could listen.

“Are you injured?”  He heard Angel ask.  He assumed he directed the question at the Slayer, but he didn’t hear an answer.  Instead, the Slayer’s voice softened into a tone he never heard from her before.  Unsurprising, him being the enemy and all.

“You, okay?  Did he hurt you?”  Spike knew she as talking to Snack Size.

“No.  Why would he?”  Spike snorted.  The girl really didn’t have a lick of sense.

“Dawn, Spike’s a vampire.  A very bad one.  He’s dangerous.”  Spike smiled at the Slayer’s words.  After all, he was the Big Bad.

“He’s worse than dangerous.  You’re lucky he didn’t torture and drain you.”

“Angel,” Buffy snapped off his name with a hard edge.  Uh, oh.  Someone just earned themselves doghouse privileges.

Spike was furious.  Eat her, yeah.  That was fair.  But torture her?  She was just a little girl.  Torture was for bullies.  Men who picked on the weak, like the ones he staked with his namesake.  Little girls typically didn’t do anything to deserve being tortured.

“Did he do anything?”  Buffy was asking.

“No,” Dawn replied in a sweet, clear voice.  Spike could hear an edge of defensiveness and he wondered at it.  The Li’l Bit was probably worried about getting into trouble for breaking the first rule.  “All we did was talk.  He didn’t do anything except carry you in here when you fainted…like a girl.”  Wow.  It was truly amazing the amount of sarcasm twelve-year-olds could pack into a few simple words.

Spike snickered.  He could imagine the Slayer’s red-faced mortification.

“How long were we in here?”

“I dunno.  Like twenty minutes.”

“And he didn’t do anything?”  The Slayer was dripping with astonishment.  He could smell it all the way on the rooftop.  Spike commiserated.  He had the Slayer unconscious in his arms, utterly at his mercy, and she still lived.  Why?  Cuz he got distracted by a chatty little girl.  Someone, somewhere, hated him.

“He’s up to something, Buffy.  Playing you somehow.”

“What could possibly be the end game?” Buffy sounded somewhere between curious and awed.

“I don’t know.  To get the girl’s trust for some reason.  Maybe to seduce her to hurt you.”

“She’s twelve.”  Buffy was outraged and Spike concurred.  He could imagine Angel shrugging noncommittally and bile surged in his throat.  How dare the prick paint him with the same brush as him?  Spike liked his women to be women, not little girls.  Worse, now the Slayer would be eyeballing him with a whole new level of disgust when they next met on the battlefield.  Disgust, in general, didn’t bother him, but this kind did.

“The younger, the better.  More manageable,” Angel rumbled.  Spike fisted his hands, aching with the need to go back down and pummel his sire to death.

“That doesn’t really sound like Spike.”  Buffy sounded doubtful, and a tiny seed of hope flared in his chest.

“You don’t know him like I do.”

“We’ve fought,” Buffy interjected lamely, but Angel overrode her.

“Fighting someone isn’t knowing them, Buffy.”

Spike disagreed.  Fighting was an excellent way to get to know someone.  Who they protected and what they fought for showed their values as a person.  How they fought revealed their personality.  Whether or not they were wound tight or prone to fancy.  Sometimes Spike thought fighting far superior to conversation.  You couldn’t lie about whom you were while in a fight.  It was all revealed in the lines of the body.

“Well, I think you’re just a poophead.”

“Dawn,” Buffy gasped.  Spike covered his pleased laugh so Angel wouldn’t hear

“No!”  Dawn stomped her foot.  “Spike didn’t do a darn thing except help you and talk to me.  He might be dangerous like you say, but he’s nothing like Coach Hewlett.  He’s not a bad man like Mr. Bumpy over there is making him out to be.  I mean, gawd, project much.”

Spike tensed.  He didn’t know what he’d do if Angel attacked the little girl.  He shouldn’t, being all souled up and whatnot, but the Angelus he knew didn’t like to be smarted off too.  He guessed Snack Size had more of a handle on what it meant to be a bad man than she first let on.  Damn, prime time T.V.

“What are you talking about, Dawn?”

Spike resisted the urge to roll his eyes.  Maybe, the Slayer spent too much time slaying and not enough time being educated by Law and Order.

“Nuthin’.”  He could definitely hear her nervousness.  Angel must be giving her the hairy eyeball.  “Can we go home now?”

Spike didn’t wait to hear the answer.  He leapt to the roof of the next building, making his way back to Dru.  He hadn’t eaten that night, but it was just as well.  Too many snot-nosed little kiddies about anyways.  They’d probably give him indigestion.

Disclaimer:  I don’t own or profit from BtVS.

SPOILERS:  Lie To Me

Remember When

Chapter Three

Spike stalked down the sidewalk.  Soddin’ dozy woman.  Prattling on about blue-eyed pixies this and dancing sunshine that.  How was a man supposed to conduct business when his home life was in shambles?  There he was, trying to get that text translated, and Dru’s dancing around singing to the stars, throwing out accusations that he’s a bad dog.  Hells forbid, he’d snap at her just the tiniest little bit.  He was trying to save her after all!  You’d think the bloody woman would be used to a little bad-mouthing, being Angelus’ childe and all.  But no.  He gets banished to the doghouse.  Literally!  She didn’t let him out of that bleedin’ kennel cage for three soddin’ days!  If he didn’t love her so damn much he’d---well he didn’t know what, but fuck how much was a man supposed to stomach?

It didn’t help that she kept calling his wrinklies into question for not killing the Slayer when he had her all, but trapped like a fish in a barrel.  Of course, pointing out that the reason he failed was because Drusilla allowed herself to be taken captive did not help his case.  Bloody buggering fuck, did she screech up a hell storm for that little reminder.  Why didn’t you protect me, Spike?  Why did you let her get away, Spike?  Why don’t you love me enough to kill the Slayer, Spike?  It was enough to put a bloke off his feed, it was. 

He rubbed his stomach, salivating when he caught the scent of something ripe and tart.  He melted into the shadow of an elm tree, listening to the quick staccato of a heartbeat and the panicked clatter of approaching footsteps.

Something young and scared entered the yellow pool of light from the street lamp and paused.  She gnawed her lower lip, gaging the distance to the next lake of light and the depth of the darkness between.  Something startled her, instinct maybe, and she swiveled her head towards the shadows where he hid.  Her glossy pigtails gleamed in the lamplight, picking up hints of gold and auburn.

“What are you doing out after dark, little girl?” he growled, prowling up to the edge of light, but not entering.  She jumped, pure terror etched on her pale face.

“Spike!”  She rushed out of the light, straight into the darkness where he stood.  “I’m so glad it’s you!”  She tugged on his leather sleeve, and looked up at him with complete adoration and trust.  If he could barf, he would have.

“Will you stop doing that, Snack Size.  You’re gonna bruise the leather.”  He yanked his arm away, glancing around to make sure no one saw him not eating the Slayer’s kid sis.  Fuck, how mortifying.

“Oh, sorry.”  She quipped, crowding closer.  If he didn’t know better he’d think she was snuggling up to him for protection, and that could not possibly be the case.  He knew for a fact, big sis warned her about him.  Big, bad, and dangerous were the precise adjectives used.  Was the girl lack-brained?  He peered down at her.

“Aren’t you violatin’ one of big sis’ precious rules?”

Dawn reddened, and now she was so close he could smell the salt stink of tears on her.  “Oh.  Out after dark.  It’s less of a rule, and more of a way of life.”

“Uh huh,” Spike drawled, demanding an answer.  Dawn shifted under his scrutiny.  He watched as she screwed up her face in a way that reminded him of the Slayer when she was getting ready to stake him good and proper.

“Could you walk me home?”

“No!”  Spike was appalled.  What was wrong with this sprog?  Was she dropped on her head as a tot?  He was the Big Bad, not a soddin’ boy scout.  Where did this brat come off thinking he was some sort of savior and not the monster who was going to have her for dinner?  “Didn’t your sister tell you?  I’m dangerous!”

“Oh, right.”  She actually sounded like she forgot.  Was it something about him?  Did he not slick his curls down tonight?  He swept his hands over his skull, relieved to feel that his unruly hair was completely under control.  What the fuck?  Was he losing his touch?  Maybe he should vamp out to remind her he was EVIL!

She shifted away and tucked her hands under her armpits defensively.  Spike felt a moment of gratification.  That was much better.  It wasn’t outright, pants-pissing terror, but it was better than the near affection she was displaying before.

“You gonna kill me?”

Eeeh.  Fuck.  What to say to that?  Was he?  Why hadn’t he?  They’d been standing alone in the dark for nearly five minutes.  She should be a luke-warm corpse on the neighbor’s lawn by now.

When he didn’t answer right away she asked, “You gonna kill my sister?”

“Yes!” he snarled.  Finally!  Something he could respond to.  He was going to swallow that bitch down like she was Slurpee on a hot day.  She would taste like candy and sex and everything nice.  Then he and Dru would fuck on her cooling corpse.  He’d paint crimson rosettes of Slayer blood on the hard, white flesh of his love and lick it off.  He’d pump his cock…Snack Size scrambled away.  Her usually flushed face was pallid, and he frowned.  The fear wafting off her was nauseating.

“Oh, well.  This is…um…awkward,” she stuttered.  She fidgeted under his hard glare.  Her entire body was canted away from him, but she didn’t make any move to run.

“Isn’t it time for you to start referring to lesson the first?”  He kinked his head to the side, watching her with narrowed eyes.

“Why?” she asked in a tiny voice, and his head almost exploded.  Why?!  He was soddin’ dangerous, that’s why! 

“I mean, you’d totally catch me in like two steps and I don’t think there’s a dirty trick in the book, I could use, if my sister can’t even beat you.”

Oh, well.  That was a bit of alright, then.  She did have a point.  Clever baby bint.  There was no way she could get away from him.  He exhaled gustily, feeling suddenly right with the world again.

“Let’s get you home.”  He strode towards her house, slowing his pace when she eventually scampered after him with her much shorter stride.  After a few minutes he glanced down at her from under the veil of his lashes.  Her head was lowered, and she was kicking a pebble along the walk.  The smell of her fear had dissipated, but she was still upset about something.

“So you gonna tell me what the problem is, Snack Size?”

“My name is Dawn.  D.A.W.N.  Dawn.”

Fuck.  She was a real bitch, just like big sis.  There must be some sort of Summers women training program they go through to learn how to wield axes and snark venomously.

His hand lashed out, grabbing her by the pigtail, and yanking hard.  She squealed, but it was quickly cut off when he leaned down to look her in the eye.

“I. Don’t. Care,” he annunciated carefully.  “’M the Big Bad an’ I’ll call you wot I want.  Got it?”

She swallowed, her eyes the size of Scottish lochs.  “Y-yah.  G-got it,” she stuttered.  “Snack Size is good.  I always wanted a nickname that wasn’t stupid like Dawnie.  Makes me sound like a New Kid on the Block.”

He released her, and she skittered away, putting at least a foot and half between them, but she still didn’t run away.  He started walking, and she fell in step a little behind him.  His stomach was feeling sour again, and he absently rubbed his hand over his midriff.  He really should eat something.

“Well?” he snarled, glancing down at her.  She blinked rapidly, fighting down tears while trying to remember what he asked.

“Oh.”  Her shoulders slumped.  “I don’t want to talk about it.”  She looked at him nervously.  “Is that okay?”  Now that he got it in her to mind her P’s and Q’s she wasn’t sure which were the P’s and which were the Q’s.  Little thing was jumpy as a cat in a dog pound.

“Fine.”  He waved her off, picking up speed.  He didn’t want to hear her stupid little girl problems anyway.  Since she’d been heading home when he found her, she couldn’t be running away, which meant all was well in the Summers’ abode.  Nothing there he could use against the Slayer when he squared off with her again.

“Kristy Fairfield is a jerk and a bully.”

Spike slowed, and the young girl caught up.  She launched a swift and completely ineffective kick at the too high grass of some sod’s lawn as they passed through the darkness to another pool of light.

“I thought she wanted to be my friend, but she only invited me to her stupid slumber party so she and her little gang of butt monkeys could make fun of me.”  She sniffled, wiping her eyes with the back of her hand.

“What’d they do?”

“Teased me and stuff.  Said Buffy was a weirdo ‘cause she got kicked out of her last school for setting fires.  And, you know, she’s always around when freaky stuff happens.”  She scowled, and Spike could see her twelve-year-old mind blaming her big sister for all her problems.

“Sorta her job, innit?”

“Yeah,” she pouted.  “I just wish I could tell them how cool she really is.  I mean, she saves people all the time.  She’d even save them though they’re a bunch of meanies.  It’s so unfair, yah know?”

“Yeah.”  He fished out a fag, lighting it with a snick of his lighter.  He knew how it felt to be helpless.  To be the butt of everyone’s joke.  That’s why he relished being the Big Bad.  Anyone who fucked with him got their heads twisted off.

“Teasin?  That’s it?  You risked life and limb runnin’ into the dark of night over that?”

He peered at her closely.  The Slayer’s baby sis was smarter than that.  Besides, six years at preparatory school taught him better.  If there wasn’t more to the story he was a monkey’s uncle.  Sure enough, she curled into herself like a dying flower.  She sniffled for a while and he let her be.  Maybe it was something she should talk to her sister about.

“They waited until I was asleep then they put my hand in a bowl of warm water so I’d pee the bed.”  She started wailing, and Spike felt the god-awful sound in his spleen.  Seeing approaching danger he tried to sidle away, but she was faster than she looked.  She latched onto him, smooshing her soggy face into his stomach.

“Oi!  Leave off!  You’re goin’ to ruin the leather.”  He tried to pry her off, but she was like a fledge on a first kill.  “I said—“ he shoved her hard, and she spun away.  “Leave off.”

She landed on her butt in the grass, sobbing big, fat tears and leaking snot.  Spike couldn’t stop his sigh.  The trick the brats played was pretty rough, especially on an adolescent girl.  He edged just close enough, and patted her awkwardly on the head.

“Listen, Snack Size.”  He was surprised when her sobs lessened.  It kinda warmed the cockles of his undead heart that the little girl wanted to hear what he had to say.  He searched for some tidbit of wisdom to share.

“There’s a bloody lot of wankers in the world.  You being human an’ all, you can’t just go around twisting heads off so you gotta learn how to avoid them.”  Spike was proud of himself.  The advice he gave seemed reasonably doable for a human.  Avoiding after all wasn’t the same as fleeing.  It was just good strategy.

“What if you can’t?”  She wiped her eyes with her hand, and when she looked up at him with big, wet eyes he felt helpless in a way he hadn’t in over a hundred years.

“Then you gotta give as good as you get.  If they’re bitches, then you gotta be a superbitch.  Just watch your sis.  She can give you lots of pointers.”

Dawn frowned up at him, her nose crinkling.  She reminded him of the Slayer when she found something particularly repugnant.  He was the recipient of that look just the other night when he showed up to the little party her friend threw just for her.  He almost had her, but he hesitated.  For the barest second he wanted to know if the look of disgust on her face was because of what Angelus said to her.  He had the almost overwhelming urge to blurt out that he would never touch Snack Size like that.  But then the little bitch had to go and hold a stake to his Dru’s heart, and all thoughts other than getting her between his teeth flew right out his head.

“Mom says I should walk away when someone’s being mean to me.”

“Bollox.  Turnin’ your back just makes you a target.”

Dawn threw up her hands in pure exasperation.  “Well, what should I of done?” she snapped.

Spike eyed her, taking the last long drag of his fag before he threw it at her feet.  It bounced, the cherry-red tip nearly singeing her leg.  She squeaked and scooted away.  He deliberately stepped on the butt with heavy, buckled boot, stomping it out with a slow twist of his foot, his thick tread grinding on the sidewalk.

“For starters,” he drawled.  “You shoulda called the Slayer to pick you up instead of running out into the night where any number of beasties coulda made a meal of you.”

“Yeah.  I know.”  She rubbed her eyes one last time, and wearily pulled herself off the ground.  Spike paced her as she slowly made her way down the walk.  “Buffy is going to be so peeved.”

Spike scoffed.  Peeved didn’t even begin to cover it.  He imagined the Slayer’s eyes flashing red with rage once she finally caught up with baby sis.

“What else?”  Dawn asked.

Spike curled his lip, considering the question.  “Well.  Whenever your in someone’s territory its always a good idea to get a lay of the land.”

“What’s that mean?”  Her brow quirked.

“It means, snoop.  I’m sure you’re good at that.  Figure out their secrets and what not.  Know their weaknesses.  It’s too late now, but you shoulda read her girly journal if she had one.  Woulda gave you ammunition.”

She gasped, her little mouth rounded.  “I couldn’t do that.  It’s---“

“Evil?” he quipped, his scarred brow cocked.

“An invasion of privacy,” she finished primly.  “And kinda evil,” she conceded.

“All I’m sayin’ is a little revenge goes a long ways.  Soon you’ll get a rep and no one will bugger with you.”

“Is bugger British for the ‘F’ word?”

Spike rolled his eyes, but didn’t have a chance to answer.  He smelled rage, fear and power.  He pulled to a stop just outside a ring of light.

“Slayer.”

She appeared under the street lamp, her hair gleaming like old gold in the light.

“Please don’t hurt her, Spike.”  Her hand tightened around her stake, which was pulled tight to her chest.  When Kristy’s mom called to tell them Dawn had run off, Buffy’s first reaction was disbelief.  There was no way her kid sister could be that stupid.  Especially, so soon after Halloween.  But here she was, sauntering down the walk with Spike of all people, and Buffy had to wonder if their mom had done drugs when Dawn was in utero.

Buffy’s second, and all consuming reaction, was fear.  Spike was the one enemy she had serious doubts about defeating in a fight.  He had her fair and square at the school, and if her mom hadn’t come along there’d be another Slayer rolling into the Hellmouth right about now.  Buffy mentally rolled her eyes at that.  She wondered if she was the only Slayer in the history of ever to be saved by her mommy.  She had begged Giles not to include that little tidbit in his journal, but nooo.  It had to be recorded for prosperity and all that crap.  He was such a stickler for details.

She had also begged him not to mention how she was turned into a girly girl on Halloween, but again, no can do.  Although, Buffy had to admit the tale would have made no sense without that little detail.  How else could it be explained that she and William the Bloody were in a room together for twenty minutes and hadn’t kill each other?  But honestly, it didn’t explain why she wasn’t dead either.

The Slayer of Slayers literally had her at his mercy, and he hadn’t touched a hair on hers or her little sister’s head.  It was just…weird.  Unnatural.  Friggin’ freaky was what it was.  Buffy honestly didn’t know if she should be thanking him or staking him.  And to top it off, the only reason she escaped the trap Ford lured her into earlier this week was because she was able to use Drusilla as leverage against Spike.  She still wasn’t sure how that happened.  For a split second Spike had been distracted, looking at her like he wanted to say something.  Like, actually talk to her.  But she kept a cool head and jumped at the opportunity for escape when she saw it. 

She totally Spidermanned her way up to the mezzanine where Dru had been standing and took her hostage.  That had been a truly heart stopping moment.  When Spike turned around, the flicker of emotions across his face had been mesmerizing.  Love for his lover, fear for her life, and all encompassing hate for Buffy.  The fear and hate were to be expected.  It had been the love that had thrown her.  Soulless demons weren’t supposed to love.  But, maybe there’d never been a demon like Spike before.

Spike was one weird vampire, and it was his unpredictability that made him so dangerous.  She honestly never knew what he was going to do next. 

It was all very confusing so she settled for asking him nicely to not hurt her sister.  Except maybe she hadn’t asked as nicely as she thought, because something distinctly malignant flashed in his eyes.  He jerked Dawn in front of him, wrapping his long fingers around her tiny neck.  Dawn, the stupid brat she was, didn’t look as scared as she should be

“’Fraid I’m gonna take a bite out of Snack Size, are you?”

His tongue curled behind his teeth in a way that made Buffy feel really, really dirty, and suddenly her fear took a whole new turn down a really grody alleyway.  He must have seen it on her face or smelled it in her sweat or whatever gross thing vampires did, because his face went colder.  If that was at all possible.

“She’s twelve!  Just a little girl,” Buffy stuttered.

The look of pure disgust he shot her made her feel ashamed.  He shoved Dawn towards the light, taking a step back into the darkness.

“Damn straight, Slayer.  She’s just a girl and I like my women to be women.”  His hot gaze raked over her, his lips twisting in a way that told her, he thought she fell into the little girl category.  She couldn’t pinpoint why it infuriated her, but it did.  She hadn’t been a little girl since she got called all those months ago, and she was going to be seventeen in a few months.  That definitely put her in the woman category.

She pursed her lips, holding out her arms to capture Dawn in a hug.  She did wonder sometimes if she acted a little immaturely.  Angel seemed to think so from the time to time.  He was always hiding things from her as if he thought she wasn’t smart enough or mature enough to handle it.  She had to admit she was still learning things.  Not just school things or Slayer things, but life things.  For instance, on Halloween she learned she should never try to change herself to make others happy.  That was a life lesson her mom had been trying to drill into her for years.

“Angel said—“ She tried to defend herself, but Spike’s snarl was so loud the neighbor’s schnauzer started to bark.

“I know what that lying sod said.  Didn’t your mum warn you about miserable gits carrying tall tales?”

Buffy didn’t know what to say to that, so she redirected her attention to Dawn.  After a quick hug, she thrust her sister back by the shoulders to shake her.

“What were you thinking?  You know the rules.”

“I know.  I’m sorry.  I really am.  And Spike totally reamed me for it.”  The young girl sniffled.  Buffy shot Spike a look of pure astonishment.  Spike shuffled, lighting a cigarette so he’d have something to do with his hands.  He took a drag, and the orange wash of light made the plains and hollows of his face look demonic.  Buffy blinked, returning her attention to Dawn.

“You still haven’t told me what you were thinking.”

Dawn pulled away, crossing her arms defensively.  Her lower lip pooched out, and Buffy cringed.  Spike saw it and chortled.  Chortled!  Like a friggin’ turkey.  The bastard knew what was coming.

“They were mean to me,” she whined at decibels designed to make people’s eyeballs twitch.  Buffy’s cringe worsened.

She could hear the hurt in her baby sister’s voice, and see the remnants of tears on her face.  She had to check herself before she went ballistic.  Oh, how she wanted to march over to Kristy Fairfield’s house, and punch the little brat square in her perfect upturned nose.  What was the point of superpowers, if you couldn’t use them on those who deserved it?

This was all her fault.  People thought she was weird, and that back splashed onto Dawn.  She couldn’t help being the Slayer, and it wasn’t like she could announce it to the world. Inexplicably, burning down a school gym, for instance, gave her a less than stellar reputation.  Those inexplicable oddities were hard to hide, especially from the youth of Sunnydale.  The adults were pretty thick, but the kids could definitely smell rats.  A big, fat undead rats.  And they took it out on Dawn.

“I told you not to go.  That Kristy girl is a B.I.T.C.H.”

She stiffened when Spike’s chuckle drifted through the night, twining its way around her lower belly, and making a very uncomfortable beeline south.  She was only supposed to get those kind of tinglies around Angel.

“Tell me, Slayer.  Is it less nasty if you spell it out?  If I tell you to F.U.---“

“Shut up, Spike.”  Her gut clenched.  She hated the fact she found him even the littlest bit sexy.  In her defense it wasn’t her fault.  It was his voice.  He could make dog crap sound sexy with that accent.

He laughed, tossing his cigarette away as he turned to leave.  Suddenly, Dawn darted from her side.

“Dawn!” she screamed, snatching at thin air.  Spike spun at the sound, and Dawn launched herself at him, twining her thin arms around his middle for a quick hug.

“Thanks, Spike,” she said, scooting away before he could shake her off.  Buffy almost couldn’t stop her completely inappropriate giggle at the look of appalled outrage on his face.

“Oi, Slayer!  You gotta tell her to stop doing that!  It’s—it’s not proper, I tell you.  If she keeps going around thowin’ herself at beasties she’s gonna get eaten.”

Buffy schooled her face into an implacable mask as she looked at her sister.  “Spike’s right, Dawn.  You can’t be doing that.”

“But it’s, Spike.  He’s a total sweetie.”

“Bloody, buggering, fuck!” Drifted from the shadows, followed by an exasperated, “Women!”  Then he was gone, swallowed up by the night.  Buffy pulled Dawn close, suddenly feeling exposed.

“C’mon, Dawnie.  Lets go home.”

“Kay.”

Her sister snuggled in close as they hot-footed it home.  Buffy couldn’t shake the feeling of being watched as the walked, but whenever she looked over her shoulder all she saw was deep, dark shadows.

Disclaimer:  I don’t own or profit from BtVS. 

Spoilers:  What’s My Line?

Remember When

Chapter Four

Buffy was exhausted.  Her hair and clothes smelled like smoke, and she was covered in soot and blood.  She shimmied up her tree, quietly entering her room.  It was too late to take a shower without waking up her mom, but if she was quiet enough she could wash up in the sink.

She hauled Angel back to his apartment with Kendra’s help, and she had never been so glad to have another person present when she was with him.  She could tell he wanted to talk about what happened, but she honestly didn’t know what to say.  She was still trying to process her own emotions.

Spike was dead.  She didn’t know how she felt about that.  Of course, there was a sense of relief.  After all, he had been trying to kill her since he came to town.  He ruined parent teacher night, struck a deal with Ford to trap her, and worst of all he put Dawn in danger when he summoned the Order of Taraka.  All so he could capture and torture her boyfriend, and use him for some bizzaro ritual to heal his crazy girlfriend.

Just the thought of it made her blood boil.  Honestly, she was more pissed off about him siccing the maggot monster on her house than she was about him kidnapping Angel.  Because, and this was the real gut twister, she felt betrayed by him.  How sick was that?  She felt betrayed that a blood-sucking fiend of the night followed his natural inclinations and tried to hurt her and her family.  The fact she felt that way, only proved she was losing her edge.  Because Spike was not a good guy.  He just wasn’t.  And if she ever needed a refresher course on the evilness of vampires, then all she had to do was remember his last words to her. 

She turned on the bathroom sink, hissing as she ran her hand under the tap.  The sharp sting of the burn that ran lengthways on her palm brought tears to her eyes.  She watched her reflection in the bathroom mirror as a single tear cut a swathe through the soot on her cheek.

“Snack Size been takin’ any late night strolls lately?” 

She could hear his voice in her head as clearly as if he was in the bathroom with her.  She closed her eyes, the sense memory of smell the strongest.  The wood decay from the rotten floorboards and broken pews, dustiness from the heaps of canvas laying about, underpinnings of varnish from when the church had been lovingly seen to so many decades ago.  The scents of leather, whiskey, tobacco and the cloying hint of Drusilla’s perfume she always associated with Spike.  Later, all that was burned away with the lung itching odor of smoke and blood.  Behind her eyelids she could see the tumble down church, Angel and Drusilla strung up like sides of beef, a ceremonial dagger thrust through their hands.  The fire casting devil caricatures on the shadowy walls.  It was all so vivid.  She didn’t know if she would ever forget this night.

Oh, how his comment lit a fire under her ass, reminding her why she was so mad at him in the first place.  It was bad enough he’d come to her town causing all kinds of mayhem, but he’d gone too far.  The crunch as she popped him in the nose was satisfying.  As was the tingle of excitement in her belly when her blow barely snapped his head back.  Fighting with Spike was always such a pleasure, and if anyone found that dirty little secret out, she’d kill them.

 “What do you care, you jerk?  Because of you some disgusting maggot monster has been camped outside my house for two days.”  She pushed him back with a series of blows, her tirade punctuated with pants of exertion.  “What if Mom hadn’t been out of town?  Then Dawn would have been there instead of staying at Janice’s.”

Spike retaliated with a rounded punch to her ear that staggered her.  He followed up with a kick to the ribs, and she heard more than felt something crack.

“So what?” he snarled.

So what?  He hadn’t even cared.  There hadn’t been a flicker of remorse in his ice blue eyes.  Why had she thought he would care?  Because he didn’t kill them on Halloween?  Because he escorted Dawn safely home when he could have left her corpse cooling on their front porch?  Just because Dawn had developed a weird kind of hero worship for the guy, didn’t make him into something he wasn’t.  Spike was a soulless killer.  A killer that Dawn happened to like more than Angel who had a soul.  If that wasn’t a world of wrong then Buffy didn’t know what was.

Clean, she pulled on her bathrobe and headed for her bedroom.  She quietly closed the door, relying on the moonlight from her windows to navigate the shadowy room.

“Wha’cha doin’?”

Buffy nearly jumped out of her skin.  She glared at the ambiguous shadow on her bed, before tightening the belt of her bathrobe, and heading to her dresser for some pajamas.  Stupid kid sister always sneaking around.  It was a wonder Buffy had any secrets with the super sleuth pester brat always nearby.

She stalled for time by searching for her most worn, comfy pjs.  She was going to need as much comfort as she could for what was about to come.  She knew as soon as the organ collapsed, Spike’s death wasn’t a secret she was going to keep from Dawn.  She dropped her robe, dressing quickly before turning around.

“You’ve been fighting.”  Buffy’s bruises were a mottled purple now, but would be gone in the morning, and mom would be none the wiser.  Dawn dropped down to all fours and fished around under Buffy’s bed.  She pulled out a first aid kit, expertly flipping it open.  Silently, Buffy sat on the bed, extending her hand palm up.  She watched with sad eyes as Dawn tsked over her burn, salving it with silvadene and wrapping it in pretreated gauze that wouldn’t stick to the wound.

When Dawn was done, and the kit hidden away, Buffy scooted over on the bed.  “I have something to tell you,” she said solemnly, patting the bed beside her.  Dawn obediently sat, but instead of leaning into Buffy, she curled her coltish legs up so her knobby knees were under her chin.  Her eyes were big and blue and Buffy thought she might already know what she was going to say.

“There was a fight tonight.  Angel was in danger.”

“You saved him.”

It was less of a question, and more of a statement of unquestionable faith.  It warmed Buffy that her little sister had so much belief in her abilities.  When Buffy first explained what she did, Dawn was only eleven at the time.  Buffy went through the whole spiel.  Chosen One, Vampire Slayer, warrior of the light, yada yada yada.  When she was through Dawn turned those big baby blues on her and simply said, “So you save people?”  It hadn’t really been a question then either.  Just a description of what Buffy did.  She saved people.

“Yah, I saved him.”

“Cause, that’s what you do.  Even if they don’t deserve it.”

That sent warning flares through Buffy’s psyche.  “You don’t think Angel deserves to be saved?”

“I didn’t say that,” she replied noncommittally, but she looked away.  Buffy knew Angel made Dawn uncomfortable, but she didn’t know why.  He never did anything inappropriate around her.  He would get a little quiet, but it wasn’t like he was a Chatty Cathy in the first place.  When she asked him about it, he said it was because he felt badly for scaring her the first time they met.  With the bumpies and everything.  Dawn assured her that wasn’t why.  She just said she didn’t like the way he looked at her.  It gave her the willies.  Buffy thought it was nonsense.  Angel was intense, that’s all.  He was still a predator, even with a soul.  But his soul made him one of the good guys.  He would never hurt Dawnie.

Spike didn’t have soul, and he hadn’t hurt Dawn either, but that didn’t mean he wouldn’t have eventually.  He sent the Order after her, knowing they would take out anyone who was in their way to get to her.  Point of fact the bitch who opened fire in the school.  In a school!  Surely, Spike had to of known that meant her family too.  That it meant Dawn.

She deflected his punch, slamming her elbow into his sternum.  He folded over with a whoosh, and she grabbed a fistful of hair, levering his face up.

“So what?” she raged.  “She could have died, Spike.”

Spike shoved his fist low into her gut, and she let go of his hair with a grunt.  He wrapped his hand around her throat with lightening fast agility.  He pulled her into his chest, anchoring her to his body with an unyielding arm around her waist.

“Slayer.  Why are you rantin’ at me like I’d give a rat’s arse?”  His tone was silky.  The din of the battle faded away until there was only the blue of his eyes, the violence in his tightly coiled body, and the laced threat in his voice.

She stopped struggling, allowing herself to be held by him.  Hurt at his callousness unfurled in her chest, and it infuriated her.  Why was she screaming at him like he should care?  He was a cold-blooded murderer on a mission to kill her.  A few stolen, awkward moments didn’t change that.

“Dunno.  I’m stupid I guess.”

Something flashed in his blue eyes and she cocked her head as if by changing her angle, she’d be able to decipher what it meant.

“Right, then.”  He shoved her away.  Drusilla screeched and the moment was lost.

“Spike was there.”  She tangled her fingers with Dawn’s.  She didn’t want to do this.  She really didn’t.  Dawn had a connection with Spike that Buffy couldn’t understand.  She was sure it was one-sided.  Dawn was a just a little girl.  She was impressionable, and Spike was charming in a bad boy kind of way.  He was all about adolescent rebellion, and sticking it to The Man, and all that crap that appealed to a twelve year-old constrained not only by the rules of society, but added compliance to the Slayer way of life.  Spike was Dawn’s rebellion, that’s all.

Except it wasn’t.  Buffy knew it wasn’t.  She could approach it as grown up as she liked, but Dawn’s acceptance of Spike went beyond preadolescent rebellion.  There was something there.  Buffy couldn’t put her finger on it, but she could feel it too.  A certain attraction.  Not sexual.  A world of no on the sexual.  More of an attraction one feels for family.  A sense of belonging.  Spike belonged to them.  And that was so wrong, Buffy wasn’t even sure where to find right again.

“Is he okay?”  Dawn’s eyes were big and shimmery in the moonlight, and not for the first time, Buffy wondered how she did that.  How she managed to look like some sad anime cat that made you want to gather her up, and hug her until it was all better again?  It wasn’t lost on Buffy that Dawn hadn’t asked the same question of Angel.  Whether it was because she figured Buffy save-age meant he made it out unscathed or she just didn’t care as much for Angel as she did Spike.

“We fought,” she hedged.

“You fought, Spike?”

Buffy wrapped her arm around Dawn’s thin shoulders.  “I know you don’t get this, but Spike and I are enemies.  He kills slayers.”  She didn’t know why she said that.  Maybe she thought it would make it easier if she could just get Dawn to understand how evil Spike was.  She knew it was useless though. 

“He’s not okay, is he?”  Buffy slumped.  Dawn was too smart for her own good.  There was no way Buffy was going to escape this.  She shouldn’t escape it.  She needed to own up to her responsibilities, and Dawn and Spike were hers.

“No, Dawnie.  He’s not.”  She gripped her sister’s hand tightly.  “He’s dead,” she whispered around the lump in her throat.

He launched her into a wall, whirling towards his lover.  As Buffy fought her way out the debris she felt a wave of shame.  She had been so absorbed in Spike she had completely forgotten about Angel.  She focused her shame into anger and she snatched up a silver censor, nearly engulfed in the fire Spike had set.  The metal chain burnt the palm of her hand as she swung it above her head.  She released it with unerring accuracy, striking Spike in the back of the head as he tried to escape with Dru in his arms.  She watched with a growing sense of horror as he was knocked into the huge pipe organ, already weakened by years of neglect and decay.  Spike struck the support strut and the entire weight of the mahogany frame and copper piping collapsed, burying them both under a half a ton of debris.

“You couldn’t save him?”  Buffy heard the waver of faith in Dawn’s voice and something cold slithered around in her chest.  For the first time she felt a mortifying sense of distance between them.  Dawn was pulling away from her, and to her shame, she knew she deserved it.

“I—“  Buffy closed her eyes. 

Buffy took a step towards the pile, intending on digging Spike out, but screams from behind stopped her.  Flames were leaping along the walls and thick black smoke was choking her.  There was no way to save him, and she had other people depending on her.

She hurried to Angel’s side, hauling him up, and supporting him on her shoulders.  She studiously kept her face averted from his speculative gaze, and she absolutely did not look back at the burning church as they poured out onto the dark street.

“No.  He wasn’t for me to save.”  She hugged Dawn close, but her sister was unyielding.

“But you save everyone.  I told Spike you save even those who don’t deserve it.  Why didn’t you save him?”

“I’m sorry, Dawn.  I really am.”

Dawn wrenched away from her, scooting off the bed.  “No.  I don’t think you are.  You saved Angel and left Spike.  But as long as you got what you wanted, right, Buffy?”  Dawn was standing beside the bed, her little hands knotted into tight fists.  Tears were streaming down her elfin face, dripping off the point of her chin. 

Buffy reached for her, intending to pull her down on her lap like she had when they were small.  Dawn dodged away, heading towards the door.

“You killed him!” she screeched.  “I’ll never forgive you.  Never!”  She ran out of the room, and Buffy launched after her, uncaring if they woke their mother.  She had to get to Dawn, explain to her, tell her she was sorry for all of it.

She reached Dawn’s door just as it slammed in her face.  Behind the thin wood she could hear her sister sobbing as if her heart was broken.  Buffy pressed her hot palms, and her flushed cheek against the cool wood.

“I’m sorry, Dawn.  I really am,” she whispered, but Dawn kept sobbing, and Buffy’s heart kept breaking.  She slid down the door, crumbling on the floor.  She realized she was crying too.  She was crying for her sister.  She was crying for all the badness her calling brought to her family.  But mostly, secretly, she was crying for the loss of Spike.

&&&&&&&

Spike awoke to total darkness.  And pain.  Intense, blinding, burning pain.  This is my punishment.  The thought drifted disjointedly through his agony-ridden mind.  Punishment for what?

“She could have died, Spike.”

Right.  The Slayer’s little sis.  The church.  Drusilla’s ritual.  An angry, self-righteous Slayer screaming at him for endangering Snack Size.

Spike tried to turn his head, but it felt like a million fire ants had taken up residence in his skull.  He closed his eyes against the darkness, inexplicably comforted when the complete blackness was of his own doing.  It gave him a sense of control.  He could tell he was laying on something hard.  He twitched his fingers, and he thought he felt the smooth planks of wood, but it was hard to tell through the searing pain shooting up his arm.

The base of his back was throbbing, and he desperately needed to relieve the pressure.  He bent his knee to push himself onto his side, but nothing happened.  His leg didn’t move.  His knee didn’t bend.  His toes didn’t twitch.  He wasn’t even sure if he had toes.  He couldn’t feel anything below his waist.  Nothing.

“Dru,” he gasped, panicked.

There was a scurrying, but it was too small to be anything other than a rat.  Other than that, there was no response to his call.

“Dru.”  Bloody hell, it hurt.  It felt like his lungs were on fire.  His throat was scorched and raw.  His jaw pinched and oozed when he opened his mouth.  He reminded himself not to breath.  To keep himself as still as possible.  But he needed to draw breath to yell.  He needed to yell to get help.  He didn’t want to be alone and helpless in the dark.  He desperately needed to know what happened.  He needed to know where his legs were.

“Anyone!”  His strangled yell was cut off by his gasp of agony.  Tears welled up behind his closed lids, seeping out of the corners of his eyes.  The liquid washed grit and ash from his eyes, scratching his corneas.  What a miserable, soddin’ way to die.

There was a scrapping sound.  Much larger than a rat.  He tensed, feeling vulnerable, and shamefully afraid.  He couldn’t defend himself.  Couldn’t do anything except lay there and wait to die.

Light guttered around the room.  Spike could see the dance of it behind his eyelids and hope surged in his chest.  He opened his eyes, blinking as shadows took shape.  He wasn’t blind!  Merciful heavens.  At least he could see!  He tilted his head to the side, clamping down his scream behind straight, white teeth.  His faithful minion Dalton was lighting candles at the nightstand beside his and Dru’s bed. He glanced down, realizing he lay on the broken down door just inside the room, strewn across it as if he had been discarded as so much refuse.

Thank the fucking gods, his legs were still there.

“Dalton,” he rasped.  His minion hurried over, a distressed look upon his scholarly face.  He fluttered about, his hands hovering over Spike, but not settling anywhere.

“I did not know if I should move you, Master.  I did not want to worsen your injuries.”

“What happened?”

“I do not rightly know.  Mistress brought you back in this condition.”  There was vague disapproval on Dalton’s face.  Spike ignored it.

“Where’s Dru?”

Dalton turned his face away, and the lenses of his glasses flashed in the candlelight.  “I’m not sure, Master.  She---she seems to have wandered off.”

Spike knew what Dalton left unsaid.  It was a bloody miracle she kept her senses about her long enough to get him back to the factory in the first place.  Now that she was restored to full strength she was more than likely dancing her way down the streets of the town, looking for something fresh to fuck and eat.  In her eagerness, she couldn’t even be bothered to walk the few feet to the bed and place him there.

“Help me onto the bed, Dalton.”

The man fluttered again, and Spike couldn’t help but to be reminded of Dru’s many pet sparrows.  The man’s anxiety was telling.

“Is it that bad?”  Spike whispered.

Dalton ducked his head, frowning at the floor.  “It’s not good, Master,” he said softly.  “I think your back may be broken.”

Spike felt his heart harden.  Fucking Slayer.  She did this.  His black goddess could be excused for her neglect.  She could barely care for herself, much less another.  But the Slayer.  She had willfully attacked him while his arms were full and his back was turned.  She was a coward, and she would pay for this newest humiliation.

“Woman.  Why are you rantin’ at me like I’d give a rat’s arse?” 

“Dunno.  I’m stupid I guess.”

Maybe he should start with Snack Size.  Killing the Slayer’s baby sis would destroy her.  It was stupid of her to assume he wouldn’t hurt the little girl, just because he had been merciful in the past.  He didn’t deserve the look of intense betrayal she directed at him.  It was her own damn fault for thinking he should care about the little half-brained twit.  He was a killer.  A vampire.  The Big Bloody Bad.

He’d suck down that sweet as sugar baby bint then he’d go for the Slayer.  ‘Coz he was the Slayer of Slayers.  It’s what he did.  Nothing could keep him down.  Not a broken back.  Not a neglectful paramour.  And sure as hell not a brassed off slayer.  He’d be back.  And when he was, they’d better watch themselves.

“Put me on the bed,” he ordered fiercely, and Dalton was driven to obey. 

His minion wedged his arms under his shoulders and knees, and try as he might, Spike couldn’t hold back the screams of agony that reverberated through the abandoned factory.  The last thing Spike was conscious of was being lifted in the air, and the searing burning that covered every inch of his flesh.  He felt himself being burned alive, and he had never been so thankful for the darkness to well up and swallow him whole.

Disclaimer:  I don’t own or profit from BtVS.

Spoilers: Surprise

A/N:  Thank you so much for your reviews.  You are all so generous.  I’m very happy that you are enjoying the story so far.  I know it’s lacking in Spawn interaction at the moment, but hang in there!  I’m planning some very lovely scenes soon.

Remember When

Chapter Five 

Buffy was having a Slayer dream.  She knew it was a Slayer dream, because of how the weight of the air lay on her skin, grounding her in the moment.  It was heavy with ozone and made the tiny hairs on her body stand on end.  Normal dreams always felt light and insubstantial, they flittered back and forth between various impossibilities.  Slayer dreams were weighted with possibility, while being littered with impracticalities.  It made it difficult to tell the difference between reality and dream.  Especially this particular dream, because frankly her upstairs hallway just didn’t open up into the Bronze, and it made her question her instincts.  The devil was in the details her mom liked to say. 

Willow with a monkey almost threw her.  That was kinda plausible.  Willow was just the kind of girl to have a French monkey whose pants had been thieved by a hippo.  Buffy just shrugged and turned away.  ‘Cause that’s just a whole barrel of monkeys she didn’t want to be involved in.  Heh, barrel of monkeys.

Buffy came to an alarmed standstill.  Besides the stage stood her sister in a cute green and white dress with knee socks and patent leather shoes.  Her hair was done up in two braids, and she looked to be only five or six.  Buffy took a step closer, the instinct to protect running rampant inside her chest.  The need to look after her little sister was a constant hum in the background of her mind, but the surge of protectiveness she felt while seeing her sister so young and vulnerable was almost shocking.  A spark ignited in her mind, screaming the imperative to place Dawn’s safety above all others.  To see her guarded against the monsters that wanted to take her away.  That wanted to squeeze her into a hole and twirl until her frail human body broke apart and the fragile light of her soul extinguished.

“I’m a gift,” Dawn chirped sweetly.

Spike rolled up next to Dawn in a black wheelchair with red accents.  She would have rolled her eyes at his flare if she weren’t so suddenly heartbroken.  Spike wasn’t family.  He was dead.  She killed him.

“A right shiny one, you are.”  He turned his head, meeting her gaze.  His face softened, as if he was sad for her.  “What about the Golden Rule, Slayer?”  His voice was gravely.  It sounded like he was trying to talk around a mouthful of grave dirt.

Buffy shook with the intensity of it.  Sweat beaded under her arms and along her spine, making her tank top cling uncomfortably to her skin.  It took her a minute to realize that the Dawn she was looking at was a replica of the family photo mom had on her nightstand.  It was a picture of the whole family, including their dad.  It had been taken when they still lived in L.A.  When they were still a happy family. 

Family.  Family was important.  Nothing should ever come before family.

“Huh?”  She frowned at him.  He took Dawn’s tiny hand in his big one.  He looked at Buffy like she disgusted him or maybe it was disappointment in his clouded blue eyes.  She opened her mouth to tell him to get away from her sister, but someone called her name from behind.

She turned around.  Angel stood at the edges of the crowd, and all thoughts of her sister and Spike were forgotten.  The love she felt for Angel crowed all other emotions to the edges of her consciousness, pushing it out of her mind until her thoughts were only filled with him.  She loved him with an intensity that was breathtaking.  She felt the responsibility of her calling strongly.  She was a hero.  A savior.  A guardian.  But for Angel she would give it all up in a heartbeat if he’d only ask.  She would easily sacrifice herself for him.

“It’s him or Snack Size,” Spike called.  She felt an elemental tug behind her heart.  She intuitively wanted to turn around and hurry back to Dawn.  Her little sister shouldn’t be out in public where she could be seen.  She started to pivot, but Angel smiled and her heart melted.  She floated towards him as if walking on air.  That’s how she always felt around him.  As if she was in a beautiful fairytale, made into reality as a reward for all her sacrifices as the Chosen One.

Drusilla glided in from the peripheral, looking beautiful and predatory in her black, gauzy dress.  Buffy panicked.  She raced towards her lover, calling out to him, but it was too late.  Drusilla plunged a wooden stake through Angel’s back with malicious glee.  Buffy reached for him, but as he disintegrated into dust her fingertips passed uselessly through his. 

Even as she awoke screaming, she was shoving her sheets in her mouth to stifle the sound.  She hunched around her blankets, hugging Mr. Gordo to her chest as she sobbed in agony.  She didn’t know what she would do if she lost Angel.  She loved him so much.  Until she met him, she had been so lonely in her calling.  Now she had someone who understood what it meant to be the Slayer.  Someone to occasionally help her, support her, and guide her when she felt lost.  She couldn’t lose him, she just couldn’t.

She calmed herself, forcing herself to reach back into the dream and analyze it with a Slayer’s rationality.  It was hard.  She had so many emotions swirling around her.  The ache in her chest at the thought of losing Angel was prominent, but there was also a tingle of breathless excitement.  If her dream was accurate, then Spike was alive.

Of course it was still a big possibility that he was dead too.  Not every aspect of a Slayer dream was prophetic.  He could merely be a symbol her subconscious used to remind her to look out for her family.  That was something she never needed to be reminded of though because it was always in the forefront of her mind.  Although, the urge to protect Dawn had been surprisingly vivid in her dream.

She threw back her heavy down comforter and silently made her way across the hall in stocking feet.  She eased open her sister’s bedroom door and crept inside, the Mickey Mouse nightlight casting the room in a faint bluish glow.  Dawn still slept with it even though she was almost a teenager.  Buffy frowned.  Dawn should have grown out of the need for a nightlight by now.  Buffy had stopped needing one when she was about nine or ten.

She sunk down on the edge of the bed, silently looking at her sleeping sister.  Dawn was curled up on her side, one hand tucked beneath her chin, her long brown hair tangled across her pillow.  She looked so grown up compared to her dream, yet so young and innocent at the same time.

Was the reason Dawn still needed a nightlight, because she knew monsters really were real?  That there were things that went bump in the night.  Adults were also so adamant in belying children’s fears.  Mom’s favorite consolation was that there was nothing in the dark that wasn’t there in the light.  But that was a lie.  Oh, it wasn’t a conscientious lie.  Her mom just didn’t know any better.  But her and Dawnie knew better.  There were things in the dark, that weren’t in the light.  Things like Spike.

Buffy smoothed a tangle of hair away from Dawn’s brow with a trembling hand.  Since she told Dawn about Spike’s death there had been a distance between them that Buffy felt acutely.  They had always been close.  Surprisingly so, given their age difference.  When mom first brought Dawn home from the hospital, Buffy had looked down at her and had known instantly that Dawn belonged to her.  Dawn was hers to protect, hers to love.  Now that love was endangered, because Dawn couldn’t forgive Buffy for Spike’s death.

What if Spike was alive?  What if her dream was a foretelling?  Did it mean she would have to fight Spike again?  Kill him again?  Could she live with telling her sister a second time that she killed her favorite vampire?  Worse, what if she hesitated while fighting Spike and he killed her?  Who would watch over Dawn then?

Buffy withdrew from her sister’s bed, reassured that she was still safe for the moment.  Her feelings swirling around Spike and her sister was ambiguous.  She needed to concentrate on something she could fight.  The real threat was Drusilla.   There was no doubt she was still alive and from her predatory actions in the dream she was completely restored to power, and gunning for Angel.  Drusilla couldn‘t have him though.  Angel was hers, she thought grimly as she entered her bedroom to dress in the gray light of the early dawn.  No one messed with what was hers.

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God, it still hurt everywhere.  The burns weren’t raw and seeping anymore, but blisters still covered most of his body.  He needed nourishment; he needed Sire’s blood.

Drusilla hummed as she swayed in the center of their bedroom.  She held Miss Edith to her chest, listening to whatever secrets the sodding doll whispered in her ear.

“Luv,” Spike croaked from the bed.  She either didn’t hear him or chose to ignore him.  “Dru,” he called louder, and she stopped swaying, pinning him with amber eyes.  He held out his hand, palm up, trying desperately to look like a lover beckoning his lady to bed, instead of an invalid begging for help.

She floated over to him, her midnight gossamer skirts billowing behind her.  When she was weakened she had been an ethereal beauty, at full strength she was a stunning, black goddess.  Her smile was cold as she placed her hand in his.  He was used to her iciness.  There had never been warmth between them.  Even love couldn’t warm dead flesh.

He brought her hand to his lips, kissing the back of her wrist.  He caressed her silken skin with light brushes of his chapped lips, slowly rotating her wrist until he could see the lines of her blue veins.  His demon rushed to the forefront, but he controlled the urge to sink his fangs into her.  She had been so flighty lately.  Refusing to let him feed, while ranting at him about pixies and sunshine.  He needed to coax her, caress her, convince her to nourish him.

Her other hand cupped his skull, her fingers furrowing through his hair.  Permission received, he sunk his fangs into her veins, his eyes rolling back as the sweet tang of her blood rushed into his mouth and down his throat.  The blood was just as cool as her body.  Warm blood only came from warm beings.  Living, breathing humans who heated their blood just by the benefit of a beating heart.  But Sire blood was sweet and sustaining.  It gave him strength and healed his wounds.  For the barest of moments he thought about what the Slayer’s blood must taste like.  Hot and thumping with power unimaginable.  It would heal him far faster than Sire blood.

Drusilla yanked her wrist away with a shriek, his fangs slicing furrows in her soft flesh.  He tried to hold onto her, but he was too weak.  He snarled with the loss of healing blood.  Just one sodding meal!  That’s all he was asking for.  To be healed so he could hunt on his own.  Why was it so impossible for her to care for him just a little?

“Dru,” he gasped, hating the pleading in his voice.  She didn’t look back at him.  Her blood dripped unchecked onto the ground, forming scarlet rosettes.  She stared at the drops blankly.

“Blood roses.  That’s what we need for my party.  Blood roses strewn into the garlands.”  She floated out of the room, Spike seemingly forgotten in favor of her party.

Spike clenched his eyes shut, his shoulders curling away from the headboard where he was propped up in agony.  He heard movement in the room with him, and he opened his eyes hoping to see that Dru had returned to him.

Dalton walked out of the shadows, his eyes respectfully averted.  In his hands he held a brown paper bag.  Spike heaved a despairing sigh.  If it hadn’t been for Dalton he would have starved to death before now.

His minion pulled out a bottle of blood from the bag, and quietly went about pouring a goblet for Spike.

“This was all I could get at Willy’s.  The last of the money you gave me is gone.”  Spike accepted the glass with a nod.  Without being able to hunt, Spike had no way to obtain cash.  The last of his money had been used to buy himself human blood from Willy’s to help his healing.  Now that the money was gone, there would be no way for him to get blood, and he refused to ask any of the other minions for assistance.  They all suspected how weak he was, but if they knew for sure there would be nothing to stop them from killing him to take his place as master.  Not even fear of Drusilla.  They had all seen how little she thought of him.  It wasn’t that she didn’t love him of course.  It was that she’d never had to play nursemaid before.  She truly didn’t understand how weak Spike was and what he needed from her.  Her inability to understand looked like indifference to the rest of the minions, placing him into a tenuous position.

“I’m sorry I am such an unworthy minion, master,” Dalton said quietly.  Spike hazarded a glance at him from the corner of his eye.  The vampire was standing next to the bed, his head hung in shame.  Normally, Spike would send his minion out to bring him back a fresh kill to feed from, but Dalton had never been a very good vampire.  He was loyal.  He was intelligent.  But a crap vampire. The sod didn’t have the instincts to hunt humans.  He fed himself on dogs and cats and other such vermin. 

Dalton expected a scathing put down from his master, but all he received was silence.  It made him feel even lower.  His master was good to him.  Better than the mistress.  He knew his mistress was insane, but he still didn’t understand why she didn’t heal the master’s wounds.  Why she was so cold and uncaring.  He knew it was the way of vampires, but he knew his master was different.  Just like he was different.

“You’ll be taking delivery of the last piece two nights from now?”  Spike asked.

“Yes, master.”

“You remember what I told you.  Take delivery outside the Bronze.  Make sure you get her attention.  Drop it and run,” Spike ordered.

Dalton nodded, moving the bottle of blood closer to his master so he could reach it.  It was more to keep his hands busy than anything.  He was a fidgeter.  Especially when he was nervous or confused.

“Master, may I ask,” he paused waiting for Spike’s slight nod.  “Why are we helping the Slayer?”

“We aren’t helping her, you sod,” Spike snarled.  “We’re helping ourselves.  What the fuck do you think would happen to us if Big Blue burns all the humans away?  Think you and I are hungry now?  Just wait until there’s no humans to feed on.” For some reason whenever he imagined the Big Blue Smurf wrecking havoc on the humans, he thought of Snack Size.  She’d be one of the first to be burned up.  All that humanity seeping out of her would be like a bleedin’ beacon to something like the Judge.

Dalton nodded.  His master wasn’t like other vampires.  He thought about consequences, not just his immediate satisfaction.

“That bint can’t help, but be a champion.  She’ll take the arm far from here, and Big Blue will never get his coming out party.  Yeah?”  God.  He fucking hated her.  The self-righteous bitch.  If it wasn’t for her, he wouldn’t be in agony.  He wouldn’t be a cripple.  He wouldn’t be faced with reality of his lover’s disinterest.  Her inability to love him.  He shook his head.  Drusilla couldn’t help being what she was.  A true vampire.

“Yes, master.  I’ll do as you command.”

“Damn right you will.  And Dru’ll be none the wiser.  Just need to keep up the charade of wantin’ to end the world a while longer.”  Spike flashed fang, and Dalton backed away, his eyes lowered.  He heard about a blood delivery being made at the hospital.  Perhaps he could take a couple of other minions and get some blood for his master.  He needed to become a better vampire.  Not for himself, but for his master.  Because his master needed him, and it felt good to be needed.  Even if he was just a soulless vampire.

Disclaimer:  I don’t own or profit from BtVS

Spoilers: Innocence. 

A/N:  Not my best chapter.  I’m not very happy with it, but it’s not getting any better, no matter how much I stare at it.  This will be the last chapter for a while that does this jumping around malarkey.  For now on we are gonna find a scene and stick to it!

Remember When

Chapter Six

Buffy entered through the backdoor and stood silently in the empty kitchen.  The morning light was bright, swathing the room in a wash of yellow that was mocking in its cheeriness.  If her life was a proper Bronte novel then the world should be cloaked in storm clouds.  It seemed unfair that the sun chose to shine so brightly instead.  She cocked her head, listening intently.  There was no sound of running water in the upstairs bath or the slamming of drawers in her sister’s room.  She expected to come home to an interrogation, but the silence reminded her of her mother’s promise for a Saturday shopping trip at the mall, because she would be out of town for her birthday.  Dawn was safely ensconced at Kim’s; the third in the triumvirate of preadolescent hellions who included Dawn and Janice.   The house was blissfully empty.

Buffy’s clothes had an uncomfortable clingy feeling of partially dried material that only results from being left in a sodden heap on the floor all night.  Her giraffe print pants chaffed at her inner thighs and her blouse rucked up beneath her armpits.  She swept her matted, blonde hair away from her cheek, wiping morning grit from the corner of one eye.

She had experienced the most magical evening of her young life and instead of waking to the splendor of her lover’s handsome smile, she found herself abandoned and alone.  This was not the fairy tale she expected.  Abandonment wasn’t part of the fantasy.  There was no sense of female empowerment after being initiated into womanhood.  She was dulled.  Hurt.  And terribly frightened.

She passed through the room mechanically, making it as far as the stairs before she sank down in exhaustion.  She sat on the bottom step, her brow touching her knees as she wound her arms around her shins.  What happened?  Where was Angel?  Why had he left her?

Doesn’t he love me?

Tears were thick and hot behind her paper-thin eyelids, but she refused to spill them.  She recounted the evening, trying to understand where Angel may have possibly disappeared to after she fallen asleep in his bed. 

After they made love.

Could he have gone back to the factory?  Did he try to take on the Judge by himself?  Was he injured, waiting for her to rescue him?  Was he dead?

Her heart clenched, and a low moan lisped from between her tightly clenched teeth.  Surely, he wouldn’t be so stupid as to go back without her.  Yes, in the past he had disappeared for days at a time, but that was before.  Before they expressed their love to each other with such intimacy.

Perhaps he went back to protect her.  The judge was reanimated.  She and Angel had been at the factory last night and saw him with their own eyes.  Seen the Judge. 

Seen Spike.

Spike who was alive, and cocky, and nearly skeletal with hunger.  The ravages of his body as she spied him from the catwalk had muted the ecstatic thump in her chest.  The uneven palpitations of her heart had been so loud that Angel had cast her a bewildered glance, asking her if she was okay.  She merely nodded, unable to take her eyes from her mortal enemy.

He looked terrible.  His face was blistered and his skin was chalky.  Even from the catwalk she could see the emaciation of his body.  And the wheelchair.  Her dreams were true.  He was crippled.  She had done that to him. 

How could she kill him now? 

How could she not?

The evidence of his injuries made her question what other truths her dream revealed.  Her slayer dream had made one thing perfectly clear.  Family came first.  The intense feelings she manifested in her dream were a warning to watch out for Dawn, but it didn’t reveal from where the threat would come.  In the dream, Spike didn’t pose a threat, but he was physically close.  What if it was a warning?  A reminder that if she let her guard down, let a vampire get too close, her baby sister would end up a vamp treat. 

She had no doubt that once he was recovered, Spike would come for her.  It was his nature to hunt her.  Their nature to hunt each other.  He was the scorpion, but damned if she’d be the stupid frog.  She had to be smart.  She had to stay alive to protect Dawn.  To protect her family.  Angel was now included under the heading of family.  Spike wasn’t.  No matter the wonky feelings she had for him or how Dawn worshiped him.  

Spike wasn’t family.

It tortured her.  The thought of being Spike’s executioner aged her.  The knowledge he was alive and the ramifications of their next battle did so even more.  She didn’t want to kill him, but she would, if she had to.  Her relationship with Dawn was already under strain.  What would happen when she killed Spike a second time?  How much would Dawn hate her then?  The thought of being distant from her baby sister made her heart hurt in ways Angel missage couldn’t touch. 

The simple answer to her dilemma was to not reveal the truth about Spike.  If Dawn didn’t know, then she couldn’t condemn Buffy for killing him.  The very idea of lying by omission felt wrong.  It left a nasty, bitter taste in her mouth.  Buffy had secrets.  So many secrets they threatened to choke the life out her sometimes when she lay alone in her double-wide, virginal bed.  But secrets weren’t something she kept from Dawn.  Not normally.  Not for lack of trying, she thought ruefully.  Dawn had a way of wheedling the most tight-lipped of secrets from anyone.  But this time, Buffy couldn’t allow it.  She had to keep the secret of Spike’s resurrection to spare Dawn from further pain.  She had to do what was right.  She had to grow up.  She had to be mature.  Not just in body, but in mind.   

Buffy felt old.  Womanly.  But not in the lush, mature way she thought she would feel.  She expected to feel older the morning after her first sexual experience.  Sex in her mind equated maturity.  That somehow her experience would be reflected physically in the dips and curves in her body.  But it wasn’t true.  She felt used up, worn down and flattened out.  She felt like a forty year old divorcee who knew all the ins and outs of the miserableness of life.

She had grown quickly in the last few months since Halloween.  The teenage girl who wanted to be petite and feminine to impress a man no longer existed.  She felt even further from the bubblegum popping preteen she was before her calling.  There had been so many close calls, so many tragedies.  Giles told her the good guys were always stalwart and true and won in the end.  She asked for those lies, but now she wished she hadn’t.  They just underlined the essential truth.  Life is never fair.  Life is never easy. 

And now this.  This sense of loss.  The fear her lover was missing and hurt.  The insidious terror he never really loved her in the first place.  It both hardened and rendered her vulnerable.  She was a little girl in the body of a woman.  When she awoke alone she was left with some very hard, unanswerable questions.  The worse of which wasn’t ‘where is Angel?’  The worse question she had to ask herself was, ‘Can I live without him?’

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What a complete buggering cock up!  Those minions actually got the arm back from Angelus and the Slayer.  What in the bleeding hell use were they?  Now the great blue git was a real boy with all his parts and was only one devil-worshiping meditation away from using them.

Was it only last night the Slayer stood in his home, looking young and vulnerable in ridiculous giraffe print pants, goodness radiating from every pore like the sodding sun?  So bleeding young.  Barely a woman.  Still mostly a child.  Very nearly too old for Angelus.  It must have been the soul corked up his ass whispering forgotten rules of propriety in his depraved ear, telling the bogtrotter to wait until she was older.  Until she was a woman.  But Spike should have fucking known the reprobate wouldn’t wait until she was ripe.  As a woman she would have lost her attractiveness to him, even all souled up as he had been.  Angel, Angelus, Liam.  No matter his incarnation, he liked his women young.  Too young.

And now the previously souled up paragon had gone and popped that unripened cherry, releasing the bastard within. 

His family was together.  Reunited in bloodshed and depravity and everything nice.  They would paint the town red.  Maybe even all of North America.  Just like Europe a century before.  It would be beautiful.  It would be magical.  Spike could taste the blood pouring down his throat and he longed for it.  Longed for the days of unfettered freedom, strength and hedonistic pleasures.  The days before the miserableness his life had become.  Before cock-sucking Sunneyhell cursed him.

Drusilla’s wicked laughter trilled, followed by Angelus’ smooth baritone as they planned the assault on the mall.  Dread curled in Spike’s stomach. 

The bastard would hunt the Slayer, much like he had hunted Dru when she was human.  He would make a masterpiece out of her torment.  Her torture would be made worse by the deep-seated anger writhing inside Angelus for being made to feel something so exotic as love.  Before he was done the little slayer would cry a torrent of tears, and her blood would be made all the sweeter for it.  In the end, she would be their forth to replace the loss of Darla.

But what of the others caught in the crossfire?  The sweet.  The innocent.  Those with big blue eyes and pixie smiles?  Those whose youth was an aphrodisiac to the depraved.

Spike wheeled into small office used by the floor supervisor when the factory was in operation.  An old steel desk was overturned, and the metal, filing cabinet was missing most of its drawers.  He searched through the rubble, finding a water-stained yellow notepad and a business envelope with a cellophane window.  In the top drawer of the desk he found a stubby pencil lodged in the very back.

He wrote with forceful sweeps of his hand, his penmanship masculine, but oddly beautiful.  He folded the note and stuffed it in the envelope, handing it to Dalton who hovered near the door, waiting for instruction.

“You know what to do.  Don’t let anyone stop you.  Don’t get caught.  Don’t show your face until it’s done.”

Dalton nodded, his eyes locked on the floor in shame.  His master saved his eyes by convincing the Mistress to give him another chance.  He told him to take the minions to the docks to retrieve the Judge’s arm, but the implicit order was to fail.  His master made it clear that he did not want the Judge to be resurrected.  But none of the other minions listened to him.  He wasn’t a leader vamp.  He’s skills were more scholarly.  His master deserved someone better than a useless bookworm like him.

It would be a long while before he was back in his Master’s good graces.  He just hoped he wasn’t dead before that happened.  He shot a frightened glance at the new addition to their household as he scuttled along in the shadows.  The vampire was strong, vicious and bloodthirsty.  Everything a true vampire should be.  And in that regard, Dalton found him utterly terrifying.

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Buffy entered her room with zombie like detachment.  Her mother would be out of town for another few days and Dawn was still staying at Kim’s.  She was alone.  So completely and totally alone.

Her anguish consumed her.  She collapsed on the bed, curling into a ball to try and keep her body from shaking apart from the force of her grief.  She sobbed out a rhythm of betrayal and loss that etched an indelible scar of distrust on her heart.

Angel was gone.  In his place a monster named Angelus arose.  A monster who didn’t love her.  Couldn’t love her.  He was nothing but a demon.  There was no soul to temper it’s hate, or teach it right from wrong.  There was no soul left to love her.  And if there was one thing she knew for certain, it was that a soul was necessary for there to be love.

She huddled on her tear-soaked comforter, all of her pain and suffering exhausting her more than any battle. 

Another Slayer dream.  There should be a quota on how many Slayer dreams she had in a year, since they usually heralded an upcoming apocalypse.  Or loss.  Or death.  Or both.  The death and loss of a lover.  The resurrection of a demon. 

She almost turned and walked away into the whiteness that spread in an expanse behind her.  She wanted to revolt against her calling.  Against those faceless, nameless beings who danced her along like she was nothing more than a puppet for their amusement.  Buffy wondered if her life was an experiment to them.  If they were trying to find her breaking point.  An empirical study into how much she could shoulder before collapsing under the strain.

Buffy was of the mind that there should only be one apocalypse a year.  That seemed fair, since there was only one of her.  Well, there was Kendra.  She wondered if they had a lot of apocalypses in the Caribbean, and if the benefit of blue water, white beaches and balmy temperatures made up for it.

She rubbed her eyes against the bright sunlight, and trudged forward, her shoulders slumped.  She was absolutely defeated.  What was the point of going on?  Why would the Powers That Be even bother her with another dream?  She didn’t care anymore.  There was nothing left to fight for.  There was just no use.

The first thing she noticed was Spike.  Her body jerked with the overwhelming instinct to race over and cover him so he wouldn’t burst into flames.  But then she remembered—dream—right.  Perfectly safe for little vampires to be out in the sunlight.  He was out of his wheelchair, squatting before a small grave.  His hand was buried in the dark, newly turned soil.  He shifted, looking up at her with sad, distant eyes as the dirt fell through his fingers.  She tried to glance at the headstone, but her head refused to turn, and the image of it kept skipping out of her peripheral. 

She opened her mouth to ask Spike whose grave it was, but movement from the mourners, huddled together like a murder of crows, caught her attention.  Angel turned around, a greasy smile edging his lips.  Not Angel then.  Angelus. 

“You had to know what to see.”

Her brow crinkled.  Slayer dreams.  Why couldn’t they be clearer?  To the point.  Pointy even.  Like a stake. 

Jenny Calendar lifted her veil, and acute clarity starburst through her heart like a stake through a vampire’s chest.

Buffy launched herself off the bed, panting.  She was gonna kill the bitch.  It wouldn’t be pretty.  It wouldn’t be poignant.  She was going to hold that lying whore down and make her bleed.  She crossed the room to change her clothes when her bare foot landed on something crinkly.  She lifted her foot, frowning at the envelope stuck to her sole.  She peeled it off, her eyes narrowing at the single word written on the outside.

Slayer

Buffy’s gaze swiftly zeroed in on the open window in front of where the envelope had lain.  It would be easy for a vampire to slip it inside even without an invite to her home.  Just a little push and it would have floated right in.  She swept the room, seeing nothing dangerous, before leaning out the window to examine the tree and her backyard for intruders.  There was nothing.  The letter could have been left at anytime, including when she as passed out cold with mental exhaustion on her bed.

She retreated to the middle of her room and slowly opened the envelope to slide out the piece of yellow paper.  She carefully unfolded it and read.

Keep Snack Size inside.  He wants her and he will come for her.  Don’t let that happen.  Keep her safe.

Terror clenched her heart, nearly stopping it cold in her chest.  The note was unsigned, but Buffy didn’t need a name to know whom the letter was from.  She didn’t trust Spike.  He was a vampire.  He was big, bad and dangerous.  Someday soon they would have a confrontation with either him ending up dust in the wind or her broken and drained.  Yet, despite all that, something visceral tugged at Buffy’s guts.  The despair she felt only moments before sloughed off, and a hardened purpose took its place.  Spike wouldn’t lie to her.  Not about Dawn.  If he said she was in danger, then Buffy knew it to be true.

All these months, Dawn told her how Angel made her uncomfortable.  She hadn’t listened.  She shrugged it off with a smirk and teenage attitude.  Now all her little sister’s fears were justified.  Turns out she really was the stupid frog, but it was Angel who was the goddamn scorpion. 

If Angelus got ahold of Dawn---Buffy couldn’t even comprehend the notion of it.  She couldn’t allow it to happen.  She wouldn’t.  Dawn was hers to protect.  Her family.  And Buffy would do anything for family. 

Even kill love itself.

Disclaimer:  I don’t own or profit from BtVS

Spoilers:  Ted

A/N:  I wrote the next three chapters, only to confirm later that Ted took place earlier in the season before Innocence.  Well, that’s my total bad.  I thought about rewriting them, but decided I really liked the conflict he created.  So he stays.  Please, please, forgive the lapse in continuity.  Besides he’s such a douche.  I wish I could work it so Spike eats him.  Get started on that electro shock therapy a little early.  LOL.

A/N:  Got a sister?  Yeah.  This should bring sweet, sweet memories flooding back.  I’m still missing chunks of hair….the bitch.  And if my girls don’t cool it I’m going to ship them to Abu Dhabi, ‘cause mama needs a break….and a mojito.

Remember When

Chapter Seven

“I’m telling you, Will.  I think he’s starving.”

Dawn paused outside her sister’s barely cracked door.  She couldn’t see inside, but she had no problem hearing the muffled phone conversation.

“You didn’t see him.  He’s covered in burns, and his skin is all chalky.  He looked kinda skeletal.  I don’t think Dru is feeding him at all.  And then there’s the wheelchair.”

Dawn bit her lower lip and leaned closer, careful not to jar the door.  She knew from other eavesdropping escapades that Dru was some vamp hobiscuit.  Which meant this was Slayer business.  Dawn loved hearing Slayer business, especially when it was clear Buffy didn’t want her knowing about it.

“Yeah.  I think his back is broken or something.  I know I shouldn’t feel bad about it.  I mean, hello.  Evil Vampire.  But I kinda do.  He just looked so sick, Willow.”  Dawn was startled at the amount of sad longing in her sister’s voice.  Buffy was usually with the snark when talking about vamps.  Unless it was Angel.   Then it was all with the emo.

Dawn wondered whom they were talking about.  She knew Angel was all grrr now.  Buffy sat her down and they had a long, intense conversation about how Dawn wasn’t ever to trust Angel if she saw him.  She was to run, hide, scream and use all the dirty tricks in the book if he came for her.  Then Buffy stood her up and made her practice those dirty tricks until she whined with exhaustion.

The look in Buffy’s eyes really scared her.  Not because Angel was all with the scary, and the blood-drinking, and full time bumpies.  No, what scared Dawn was Buffy’s look of utter terror at the thought of Angel getting ahold of her.  It made something cold and slick slither around in her tight belly.  Angel was serious business because Buffy was scared, and Buffy was never, ever scared.

“There’re hold up in the old factory down on Cannery Street.  The one that used to bottle shampoo back in the 70’s.”

Dawn knew where that was.  All the kids used to dare each other to go inside.  That was until kids started not coming back out again.

“Yeah, I totally thought I was going to get tetanus just walking inside.”  Buffy giggled.  There was a pause, and then Buffy spoke so softly Dawn had to strain to hear.  “What am I going to do about Spike, Wills?  He’s in real bad shape.  I know he’s a vampire, but no one should be treated like that.  I-I just can’t go help him.  I can’t let my guard down, ‘cause I feel sorry for him.  I do that, and I end up a Slayer snacklet.  Besides, Angel---Angelus is there now.  I don’t think I’m up to fighting him just yet.”

Dawn was so angry she could stomp holes in the floor.  Buffy lied to her.  She told her that Spike was dead.  What a big, fat, honking lie!  He was alive.  Alive and hurt and Buffy wasn’t gonna do a darn thing about it.  First she tried to kill him, then she crippled him, and now she was gonna leave him to suffer.  Why?  ‘Cause he’s a vampire?  When was Buffy going to figure out that Spike was so much more than that?

“Little girls should be in bed,” a deep, masculine voice intoned from behind.  Dawn whirled around, clutching her copy of Charlotte’s Web to her chest protectively.

“Buffy was going to read to me,” Dawn stuttered.  She didn’t like her mom’s new boyfriend.  There was something definitely creepy about him.  Buffy assured her he wasn’t a vampire, which wasn’t as reassuring as you’d think.  At least, if he was a vamp, Buffy could dust him.

“I could read to you.”  He stepped closer, and Dawn backpedaled, expecting to hit the door.  Instead, she ran into something soft and warm.  Buffy wrapped her arms around her from behind, and she felt instant relief.

“It’s our sister time.  You know, girl talk and all that.”  Buffy’s tone was barely civil and Ted scowled at them.

“Not to late, you both have school in the morning.”  He turned to walk away, but Buffy’s words froze him.

“You aren’t our dad, you know.”

He looked at them, his broad teeth flashing white in the darkened hall.  Dawn sunk further into her sister’s embrace, totally wigged by his creepy smile.

“Not yet.”  He jauntily strode away, disappearing down the stairs to have cocktails with their mother.

“Creep,” Buffy muttered as she pulled Dawn into her bedroom and firmly closed the door.  The cordless handset was carelessly discarded in the center of her bed, and at the sight, Dawn felt all her goodwill towards her sister melt away.

Buffy wasn’t prepared for a missile smacking her square in the face.  She bent at the waist, cupping her nose as she glared at the copy of Charlotte’s Web at her feet.

“What was that for?” she snarled from behind her hands.

“You lied to me.  You’re a big, fat liar-pants.”  Dawn waited for Buffy to straighten, before knuckle punching her right in the boob.

“Y-oww!  You little brat!”  Buffy shoved her sister hard.  Thanks to all the bed was behind her.  Dawn landed on the mattress with a squawk.  “What’s your problem?” Buffy screeched.

Buffy ducked just in time to avoid getting thunked in the head with the cordless handset.  The phone sailed across the room and crashed into her vanity.  Glass tinkled as tiny perfume bottles, lipstick and pretty hair accessories exploded.  As Buffy straightened, she could smell the alcoholic stench of too much spilled perfume. 

Both girls froze in a moment of collective horror.  Mom was gonna kill them.  Thankfully the vanity mirror was intact.  Buffy slowly turned towards her sister, fully intending on going Terminator on her ass.

Dawn knelt in the center of the bed, her apple cheeks flushed a spotty red, and her hands were fisted along her thighs.  “You told me Spike was dead!” she accused.

Buffy stilled.  All her rage spiraled away, and in its place was a whopping helping of guilt.  What the crap?!  Could she not keep a secret from her sister for more than two seconds?  Sure, sneaking out of the house every night right under her mother’s nose, no problem.  Keeping the uber important secret of Spike’s resurrection from her sister?  Yeah, right!

“I thought he was dead,” Buffy said quietly.  She moved towards her sister, intent on pulling her into a comforting hug, only to have her heart hurt when Dawn scrambled towards the other side of the bed.  Standing with the buffer of the bed between them, Dawn hunted for more missiles to hurl off of Buffy’s nightstand.

“Oh, yeah?  When were you gonna tell me he’s alive?”

Buffy stopped in the middle of the room, her arms wrapped around herself in a lonely hug.  “I wasn’t,” she confessed.

Dawn stopped scrambling to look up at her with big, betrayed eyes.  “Why?” she sobbed.

Buffy flailed her hands, pacing in the small girly space.  “Don’t you get it, Dawn?  We’re enemies.  One day he’s either going to kill me or I’m gonna kill him.  I’m not ready to die yet, Dawnie.  I gotta look out for you.”

“Spike wouldn’t do that,” Dawn defended petulantly.

Buffy hardened.  Angelus’ grip on her heart tightened and squeezed, trying to wring all the love out of it.  “He’s a vampire.  He’ll do it.  And he’ll love every second of it.”

Dawn’s lower lip quivered, and Buffy’s belly clenched in response.  She felt sick.  She felt like she just ripped innocence a new one, then stomped it ragged on the ground.

“Girls!”  Buffy and Dawn jumped as their mother slammed into the room.  “What is going on in here?”  Ted loomed from behind, still obscured in the shadows of the hallway.

“Nothing,” the girls chimed together, unconsciously moving around the bed so they could stand together as a united front.  Joyce saw their action, and it settled her conscience somewhat.  Most of the time she felt like a failure of a mother.  She was unable to provide a father for her girls, she had almost no understanding of the mind of her oldest daughter, and was constantly shuffling her youngest off to other people’s homes while she went out of town to keep her small business afloat so she could feed and clothe them all.  She needed help, and Ted fulfilled that need, even if the girls didn’t like him.  He would grow on them.  He would be a good influence.

It was when she saw her girls standing together, even if it was united against her, that she felt some alleviation of her inner turmoil.  At least her girls had each other.  At least she raised them right in that regard.

“Who’s Spike?” Ted rumbled from behind.

The girls drew closer, clasping their hands.

“N-nobody,” Dawn stuttered.

 “He’s a dog,” Buffy added.  Seemed reasonable.  Spike was definitely a dog’s name.

Joyce lifted a brow.  “A dog,” she deadpanned.

“Yeah,” Dawn piped up.  “He, like, sniffs out evil doers and stuff.  Like a superhero dog.”

Both Buffy and Joyce looked at Dawn like she had gone insane, abet for different reasons.  Spike, a superhero?  As if.  Seeing the suspicion in the adults’ eyes, Buffy leapt to the forefront with seventeen years of deceiving authority figures under her belt.

“He’s a character in a series of books we’ve been reading.”

“Oh.”  Joyce was mollified.  “And why is it necessary to get into a screaming match over a character in a book?”

“Because Buffy told me he was dead!”  Dawn snarled, tossing her sister’s hand away.  “A-and I was really upset about it.”

Buffy propped her hands on her hips, and rounded on Dawn.  What the hell was the matter with her sister?  This thing with Spike was just unnatural.

“Why?  You only met—read-- him twice.”  Buffy could see the baffled look on her mother’s face from the corner of her eye.  “I mean we’ve only read two books in the series.  There’s no reason to be so attached.”

“Well, I’m attached.  You shouldn’ta told me he was dead.”

“I really thought he died--- in the last book we read,” Buffy finished lamely.

“Now, I find out he’s alive!”

“Well, you know fiction.  Nothing ever stays dead,” Buffy was darting little looks at her mother and Ted.  Dawn was going off the rails, and the cat or the erm…vampire, was going to be out of the bag.

“All right, that’s enough.  I can’t belief you two are fighting about some fictional character.  What are you?  Five?  Next you’ll be telling me Spongebob really does live in a pineapple under the sea.  Dawn, brush your teeth and go to bed.  Buffy clean up this mess,” Joyce pointed fiercely at the vanity; letting both the girls know that their destructiveness hadn’t gone unnoticed.  “Finish your homework and go to bed too.  I don’t want to hear another peep out of you two for the rest of the night.  Do I make myself clear?”

“Yes, Mom.”  They caroled, relieved there would be no further punishment for the destruction.  Thank Gawd the mirror hadn’t broke.

Joyce whirled to leave, nearly bumping into Ted who was still staring at the girls speculatively.  She felt a shiver slide down her spine, and she glanced over her shoulder to see what he was looking at.  Buffy and Dawn moved together again, their hands tightly clasped as they stared her boyfriend down.

“Let’s go finish our drinks downstairs, Ted.”  He shifted his gaze to her, his slow, easy smile spreading over his handsome face.

“That sounds great, Joyce.”  He offered his arm and escorted her downstairs.

When the adults were gone, Dawn jerked her hand away from Buffy and rounded on her.

“You thought Spike was dead.  Fine.  I get that.  But now what are you gonna do about it?”

“What do you mean?”  Buffy hedged.

Dawn propped her fists on her hips.  “I heard you say he’s all sick and stuff.  Someone needs to take care of him.”

Dawn’s words gallivanted Buffy into action.  Her hands flew up to enunciate her words, and her mean Slayer face was firmly in place.  “Oh no.  There will be no caring of the evil vampire.  That’s what his little nest is for.  I’m sure he’s got some vampy minions running around bringing him townies.  He just looks bad right now ‘cause he’s still healing.”

Dawn’s eyes narrowed.  “You said that hobiscuit wasn’t feeding him,” she reminded, using Buffy’s vocabulary to describe the female vampire who hung out with Spike.

“First of all, don’t use that kind of language.”  Buffy wagged her finger in front of her nose, and Dawn barely resisted the urge to snap at it.  “Secondly, it’s none of our business, but they’ve been together for like a hundred years.  I’m sure she’s taking care of him.  Now you need to go brush your teeth and go to bed before we get into more trouble.”

Dawn stomped her foot, and spun on her heel.  At the doorway, she glanced back at her sister who was standing in the center of the room, lost in thought.

“You know.  You told me that a Slayer’s job was to help people.  To save them.”

Buffy grimly looked her sister straight in the eye.  “That’s right.  I help people.  Not vampires.”

Dawn scrunched up her face.  “You’re just being stupid.”  The words were meant to be hurtful, but they sounded sad to both their ears.

After she brushed her teeth, Dawn crept quietly passed her sister’s room.  The door was firmly shut and the pop strains of Brittany could be heard as Buffy did her homework.  At the head of the stairs, she paused to listen to the soft murmurs of her mother and Ted as they talked over cocktails in the den.  Staying close to the wall, she tiptoed down the stairs, and edged around the doorway into the dining room.

While brushing her teeth, Dawn had come to a resolute decision.  It was risky.  Way risky.  Total lockdown, grounded till the first year of college, no dessert for life, risky.  Not to mention what Buffy would do if she got caught.  The key to success would be in the not getting caught.

Ted’s brown sport jacket hung over the back of the chair where he had placed it before dinner.  She darted sly glances over her shoulder, as she searched the pockets for his billfold.  She pulled two crisp twenties out of his wallet, before replacing it.  Then she crept to her mother’s purse and pulled out a ten and a five.  Quickly, before she got caught, she slid back up the stairs into her room.  She cracked open her piggybank and counted out eleven dollars and forty-eight cents.  It was every penny she had.  She knew in the morning, before school, she could sneak into Buffy’s room, and plunder her stash under her mattress.  At last count, her sister had thirty-four dollars.  All in all it was a pretty good haul.

Dawn hoped it was enough.

Disclaimer:  I don’t own or profit from BtVS.

Spoilers:  Ted

Remember When

Chapter Eight

Duh nuh nuh nuh, Batman!  Dawn bounced on the balls of her feet in time with the theme music in her head, before realizing that imitating a rubber ball wasn’t all that stealthy.  Okay, spending way too much time with the Xan man.  Dawn forced herself still, pressing against the exterior wall of the old shampoo factory.  This was such a bad idea.  If Buffy knew what she was doing, her seventeen year-old sister may actually die of a coronary.  Like, expire right on the spot.  One hand over her heart, the other waving in the air while gasping, ‘How could you be such a dummy, Dawn!’

She glanced up at the bright noonday sun.  At least it was in the middle of the day.  It had taken all the mediocre restraint in her gangly body to wait until the first bell before she snuck off campus.  She thought for sure one of those mythical truant officers everyone whispered about was going to pop up at any moment, flash a shiny badge, and haul her downtown to juvie where delinquents with tongue piercings and tattoos waited to flush her head in the toilet.

She realized she was bouncing again.  She’d make a horrible assassin.  Or spy.  Or secret, slayer sidekick.  Gawd, Buffy was going to murder her!  Shaking her head, she hunted for the fire escape.  She was almost three quarters around the building, and half way to peeing her pants in fear, before she found a rickety staircase kinda bolted into the brick wall.  It listed to the side, and she suspected it was missing more than a few bolts and the ones intact were rusted.

Oh, well.  In for a penny, in for a pound, mom always says.  She put down the Styrofoam cooler she bought at the butchers and leapt for the bottom rung.  Drat!  She hung from the rung, blowing uselessly in the wind.  The staircase didn’t extend like it did in the cop shows.  It must be rusted.  She let go, grimacing at her red-stained hands before wiping them on her jeans.  Great, Buffy was right.  She was going to get tetanus.

She scanned the alley until she found an old wooden crate.  It took all the strength in her skinny arms, and knobby little legs to push it over so it was directly beneath the rung.  She stopped every couple of minutes, throwing scared, quick glances over her shoulder.  The crate made a horrible scraping sound across the pavement every time she shoved.  She was making enough noise to wake the dead.  She just hoped it wasn’t enough to wake the undead.

She snatched up her cheap cooler, biting down on the canvas carry strap so her hands were free to scramble up onto the crate and onto the fire escape.  The rickety, metal stairs creaked and swayed under her weight.  One bolt snapped and they dropped a couple of inches beneath her feet.  She screamed through tightly clenched teeth, holding on to the thin metal rail for dear life.  When she didn’t die, she hustled to the top of the steps.  She reached the edge of the slanted roof with an audible sigh, and clambered off the death trap onto weather-warped tarring that sagged when she stepped on it. 

Vampires aren’t going to kill me.  This friggin’ building is!

Dawn swung the strap of the cooler over her shoulder, balancing the weight with her heavy backpack, and very carefully made her way to the domed skylights in the center of the roof.  The glass was caked with an inch of dirt, and what she suspected was pigeon poop.  Gross!  She pulled down the sleeve of her shirt so it covered her palm, and cleaned small spot.  She cupped her hands around her face to block out the sun, and pressed her nose to the glass to see inside. 

It was dark of course, and it made it hard to see, but she could make out a large cavernous room with a long table set in the middle.  All around the room she could see groupings of people lying on the floor or on ratty couches pushed up against the walls.  Not people she reminded herself.  Vampires.  They lounged like those nasty hyenas on Pride Rock after Scar took over.

She knew Spike wouldn’t be there.  He wasn’t a group snuggle kinda guy.  She pushed herself off the glass and moved lengthways down the building.  She made it to the far end without finding him.  Disappointment and desperation loomed inside her.  She already risked so much on this adventure.  She had stolen from her family.  From Ted.  She spent the money on blood.  She skipped out on school.  She risked her life, just coming here.  And now she couldn’t find him!  It wasn’t fair!

She sunk to the ground, bracing her back on the edge of the last skylight and pouted.  Maybe she should just go in the front door.  Real sneaky like.  All the vamps she seen so far were all tucked into beddie bye for the day.  They were all with the sleepies.  She could tiptoe in and take a peek into some of the rooms she couldn’t see.  Of course, that was stupid heaped on more stupid.  Knowing her luck she’d trip over Angelus and land neck first on his fangs.

She huffed, hauling herself up.  She wasn’t a quitter.  She was a Summers girl.  And Summers girls never quit.  She walked over to the edge of the roof, noticing a catwalk along the exterior wall.  She lowered herself down, carefully testing the structure to make sure it held her weight.  There were a lot of dirty windows, and she took her time checking them all.  On her third or forth peek, she finally found him.  At least she hoped it was him.  The room was very dark, but she could see an abandoned wheelchair.  Buffy said he was hurt.  Wheelchair bound in fact.  That’s why she was here.  Someone had to look after him.

She tested the windows and found they opened inward after a little heavy duty pushing.  She peaked inside, relieved to see that there was an old steel desk pushed up next to the wall only a few feet below.  She struggled onto a small lip, and quietly lowered the cooler.  The strap wasn’t long enough and she had to drop it the last few inches.  The soft Styrofoam didn’t make much noise, but her heavy backpack hit the desktop with a loud crash.  She winced, and scurried inside, hoping she wasn’t ending up someone’s lunchable.

She dropped to the floor in a crouch, hands defensively held in front of her like Buffy taught her.  A quick glance around showed no one else in the room, and except for the wheelchair and a couple of tables it was empty.  Which was weird.  If Spike was hurt shouldn’t the wheelchair be near to him so he could reach it when needed?

There was a faint trace of light coming from beneath a door on the other side of the room.  She picked up her stuff, and took a deep breath, before bravely (stupidly) marching towards it.

She very carefully opened the door, peeked inside, and lost all the breath she was holding.  The room was wreathed in candlelight.  Almost if the occupant of the room was as afraid of the dark as she.  It gave the room a soft golden glow, especially where the candles were clustered around the bed.  Where Spike lay sleeping.  Naked.  Well, mostly naked.  The red, shimmery sheets were rucked around his waist, but the rest of him was naked!  Omigod!  Cooties!  So gross.  Naked Spike.  Naked boy.  Naked boy, Spike.  Gag me!

She slipped into the room, glancing around to see if anyone else was there.  The edges of the room were draped in shadows since most of the light was centered around the bed.  She closed the door, and crossed to a sturdy, square table near the bed and put her bags on top.  She turned towards Spike, expecting him to be glaring at her.  Vampire!  Big, bad hunter.  He should be all with the growlies and the grrrs.

When she edged closer, Dawn realized why Spike was still asleep.  Buffy was right.  He was hurt.  Really, really hurt.  His face wasn’t so bad, but the rest of him was covered in raw, gag worthy burns, and he was so skinny she could count his rib bones.  He was all bruised up, and there were long, Freddie Krueger claw marks raked across his chest.  Like maybe he’d been in a fight.  ‘Cept he was all with the not being able to walk.  Hello!  Wheelchair.  Which meant no fighting. 

Which meant someone was beating him. 

Dawn’s heart hurt so bad, her back bowed.  She pressed her palms to her cheeks, her fingertips over her eyes.  Spike would be so mad if he saw her crying for him. 

She took a few deep breaths and wrangled her girly emotions under control.  She looked for a safe patch of skin to shake him awake.  She settled for poking him repeatedly in the shoulder while calling his name.

He came awake in a flurry of motion.  He wrapped his hand around her throat and yanked her forward until she draped awkwardly over his chest.  He shoved his face into hers, and for the first time Dawn got an up close and personal look at a vampire’s gameface.  She only had a peek at Angel’s when he vamped out in Buffy’s room, and that had been scary.  This was freaking terrifying.  She’d be screaming if she could draw breath, but his strong fingers were pressed with bruising force into her windpipe.  Her big eyes filled with tears and she whined deep in her chest.

All the sudden she was flying backwards.  She landed with a loud, painful thud on her rearend.  As she groaned, Spike struggled to sit up, using the strength of his arms to brace his back against the headboard.  When he saw who was in the room with him, he clutched the sheets to his chest like a blushing, virginal maid, and pinned her with furious blue eyes.

“What. The. Fuck?”  His rage and stupefaction were palpable things in the room.  He swept the area, frantically checking to see they were alone, before settling on her again.  “What are you doing here, Snack Size?”  The Slayer could have dropped naked in his lap and tittie danced and he wouldn’t have been more surprised.  What was the sprog doing here?  Where was the Slayer?  Was she just too damn stupid to understand the letter he sent her?  Why didn’t this brat have one of those soddin’ electric fence collars to keep her the house like a misbehavin’ dog?  Because, CLEARLY she needed one.

Dawn sprawled on the dirty floor, her gangly legs tangled up and her hand wrapped around her bruised throat.  She coughed to clear her airway, and she saw something flicker in Spike’s eyes.  If it was Buffy or her mom, she’d say it was concern, but it was Spike so….?

“Hi, Spike.”  She raised her hand limply in greeting.  Her voice was a little ragged, but it was no worse for wear.  She’d be alright in a few minutes.  She scrambled to her feet and stood next to the bed.

Spike leaned slightly away, the sheets still clutched to his chest.  “You need to go.”  His eyes flashed to the door, then back to her.  “Now!” he hissed.  Why the soddin’ hell did he even bother?  The sprog was lack-brained.  And that sister of hers.  Some Slayer.  Letting her little sister breeze right into a fucking vamp lair, practically begging to be eaten.  This must be a case of Darwinism.  Snack Size just wasn’t meant to survive to have offspring.

“But I brought you food.”  She turned away to retrieve the cooler and her bag.  “Buffy said you were real sick, and weren’t getting fed.”  She skipped back to the four-poster bed Spike reclined on.  She knelt beside him, pushing the cooler under the bed where it was hidden, but still accessible.  Then she opened her backpack and pulled out a brown paper bag.

“I bought too much blood to fit in the cooler, so you need to eat this first, before it goes bad.”  She opened the bag with a loud crumple and pulled out a quart of pig’s blood.  She popped off the lid, and for the first time since she retrieved her bags, she looked up at Spike.  She was only twelve, and she wasn’t overly familiar with the nuances of other people’s emotions, being primarily focused on her own, so it was a little hard for her to identify what she saw on Spike’s face.  She thought it looked like awe, but why would anyone look at her with awe?  She was just Dawnie.  She was nobody.  Buffy was the special one.

“Here,” she offered, subdued.

Silently, Spike took the plastic container from her, but he didn’t drink.  He just stared at her with fathomless blue eyes.

“Why did you do this, Snack Size?”  A strange disquiet settled over Spike.

Dawn blushed and fidgeted.  She couldn’t look at him anymore.  His gaze was too penetrating.  She traced nonsense in the dust on the floor with the toe of her shoe as she thought about what to say.

“Because no one else would.  I-I think Buffy wanted too, but she’s the Slayer.  It’s like---against some sort of moral code, I guess.”  Dawn frowned a moment, before her face hardened into resolute conviction.  “It shouldn’t matter.  People are supposed to help people who need it.  She’s just being stupid and a coward.”

“No, she’s not.  She’s bein’ smart.  I’m not people.  I’m a vampire.  I eat people.  I’ll eat your sister if I get the chance.  Just like she’ll stake me if she can.  It’s our nature.  It’s our dance.”

Dawn kept her face averted.  She hated hearing what he was saying.  Grown-ups could be so stupid sometimes.  Once they got a dumb idea in their head they wouldn’t let it go.  Why couldn’t Buffy and Spike figure out what she already knew?  Spike belonged.

“Y-you’re my friend.”

Spike was silent, and she was afraid to look at him.  “We aren’t friends,” he replied coldly.  “I’m a vampire, and you’re lunch.”

Dawn popped up, fists on her hips, her cheeks blazing with temper.  “We are to friends,” she spat, completely unafraid of the vampire who threatened her.

“Are not!”

“Are too!”

“Are not!”

“Yes we are.  You’re nice to me.”

Spike’s jaw unhinged.  “Take that back.”  He was losing to a twelve year old.  He might as well cut off his wrinklies here and now.

Dawn folded her arms, and set her mouth mulishly.  “No.  You coulda killed me.  Coulda killed Buffy.  You helped me out when I needed it.  Now I’m helping you out.”

“Great.  Your debt’s paid.  Now get out!” he snarled.  This was all too unsettling.  He didn’t know how to handle the situation.  It was well outside his realm of understanding.  Vampires, as a rule, didn’t go around altruistically doing things for each other.  His own sire wouldn’t feed him.  He needed her to leave, and he needed her to do it now.  She was buggering his whole world up.

“You know, a thank you wouldn’t be out of order, especially since I got expelled for three days last month ‘cause of you!”

“What?” he spat.  “What the bugger did I do?”

“I took your advice and got back at Kristy.”

He cocked a scarred brow.  Baby bint started out in high dudgeon, but now she was hanging her head in shame.  Her sweet, candy smell was getting to him, and his stomach rumbled in hunger.  Fuck!  He hadn’t eaten a person in weeks.  He was starving.  Not just for blood, but for the thrill.  There was a certain taste to live food you couldn’t get from the tap.  All that fear and pheromones.  It was delicious.  He could hear her tiny, fluttery heartbeat and his fangs itched to bury themselves in her soft neck.  He growled low in his chest, and turned his attention to the rank concoction in the plastic container.  The vile crap she had risked her life to bring to him.  Because he needed it.  Because he was sick and hurt and….alone.  Christ!  He felt sick to his stomach and didn’t know why.

He drained the container and reached for more.

“Well, what did you do that was bad enough to warrant expulsion?”  Why did he keep having these inane conversations with this lack-brained, emotionally overcharged, twig of a little girl?  She should be leaving.  If he could walk he’d be shoving her out the door.  He should be eating her.  He took another gulp of pig’s blood.

Dawn shifted her weight, hugging her waist.  She was deeply ashamed by her actions.  Her mother had been stunned, and Buffy just shook her head, which was almost worse than the grounding she got.  Getting a rep for revenge like Spike suggested wasn’t how she thought it’d be.  None of the other kids at school respected her for it, and they whispered about her in class.  She just hoped it would blow over as soon as the newest scandal hit the small junior high.

“I wrote a letter to an older boy she likes and signed her name.”

“That doesn’t sound so bad.”  He abso-fucking-lutely wasn’t interested in pre-teen gossip.  He also did not watch soap operas.

“It may have been….sexy.”

“Sexy?”  Spike whipped his head around to glare at her.

Dawn flamed red, and Spike felt something like indigestion bubble in his gut.

“I may have said something about her wanting to meet him behind the bleachers to—you know.”

“No, I don’t know,” he said evenly.

“Give him a bj,” she blurted out quickly.

“What the buggering fuck do you know about blow jobs, Snack Size?  Who’s been educatin’ you?” he growled.  Some teenage boys were definitely going on the menu when he got his legs working again. 

There was a lingering sense of sorrow behind his breastbone.  Baby bint had done some growing since Halloween.  She had gone from having no clear understanding of what made a bad man bad to talking about blowjobs.  He’d seen the same loss of innocence in the Slayer over the last few months.  She was hardening before his very eyes.  Soft, joyful youth replaced with cold, flat maturity.  Soon Angelus would crush the last dregs of love from her, and she’d lose all her lollipops and gumdrops.

Dawn backed up, a tiny bit scared of his flashing yellow eyes.  “Nobody!” she squeaked.  “I am twelve and can read.  And hear.  And well, talk to other girls.”

Spike glared at her.  He wasn’t happy.  Why he wasn’t happy, he didn’t know.  It didn’t matter.  No boys better be sticking their paws up her skirt.  Period.  She was just a little baby bint.  Maybe he should have a talk with the Slayer about this.

“Anyways.  He like, totally, came on to her.”  She shifted, looking away.  “He might have scared her a bit.”  Dawn frowned.  “Not all guys are like that are they?”

“Like what?”  Spike asked, bewildered.

“You know.  Grabby.”

Spike’s frown could have scared the undead dead.  “No.  There’re men who are decent and respectful.  The majority, in fact.  But there’s a handful of wankers that give blokes a bad name.  It’s a good thing you know how to handle yourself.  Remember the lessons your sis taught you, and if anyone ever sticks their hand up your skirt you rip their fucking nuts off.”

Dawn swallowed.  “Umm.  Gee.  That’s---gees.  Graphic much, Spike?”

“Yeah, well.  You asked.  Now, we don’t have time to swap the shite.  You need to go!”  He hissed the last word through clenched teeth, and pointed towards the door.

“Not until you say thank you.”

Spike resisted the urge to gouge out his own eyes.  “Thank you.  Now get out.”

Dawn crossed her arms, stuck out her lip and tapped her toe.  Holy fuck, did she remind him of her sister. 

“What?” he snarled.

“I’m not going to hug you because you’re all ouchie and stuff.”

“Thank all that’s evil for small favors.”  I am absolutely not disappointed.

She edged closer to him, fishing around in the front pocket of her jeans.  “But you are my friend, Spike,” she continued as if he hadn’t spoken.  He was staring at her intent, little pixie face, trying to figure out what it was he felt in the hollow spot under his heart, when he noticed her wrapping something around his wrist.  He looked down at a black, woven bracelet with a zig zag of red through the center. 

He blinked.  What soddin’ hell is this?

From across the factory he heard a noise that froze him to the core. 

Angelus was awake.

“Dalton,” Spike barked.

A mousy man with thinning hair appeared out of the darkness.  Dawn hadn’t even known he was in the room with them.

“Take her and run.  Whatever you do don’t let Angelus get her.  Throw her into the soddin’ sunlight if you have too.”

Dawn whipped her head around to stare at Spike.  She never heard him sound so violently harsh.  She looked into his eyes and saw fear.  The same fear she seen in Buffy’s eyes when she told her to run if she ever saw Angel on the street.

She was staring so intently at Spike, she didn’t notice Dalton’s advance until he was picking her up and flinging her over his shoulder like she was a bag of rice.

“Hey!  Put me down!”  She pummeled her fists against his back, and even though Dalton was a weakling of a vampire, her struggles were barely a flicker to him.

“Shut up, Dawn.”  Her eyes widened.  Spike had never, not once, used her given name.  She immediately stilled.  “Just be quiet and let Dalton do his job.  Angelus is up, and I guarantee he’s already got your scent in his ugly snout.”

She clamped her lips shut, and nodded.  It was uncomfortable being slung over the boney man’s shoulder, but there was no way she was going to complain.  Just call her Mouse, she was gonna be so quiet.

Dalton was to the door, before Spike stopped him.  “Don’t fail me on this.”  An arc of understanding passed between servant and master.  Saving the girl was the only thing that mattered.  Finally, this was something he could do to make his master proud. 

Dalton met Spike’s eyes and stood a little straighter.  “Yes, master.”

Spike nodded, and Dalton felt something like love spread through his unbeating heart.

They slipped out the door, staying to the shadows as they moved at speeds that made Dawn’s head spin.  There was a loud, bestial roar behind them that made her bladder loosen, before her entire body seized up.  Pinpricks of sweat dotted her spine, and it felt like her skin wanted to crawl right off her bones.  She swept aside her long, brown hair with one hand, and twisted her head to see.

Angelus in full, snarling vamp face was chasing them down the corridor.  If she hadn’t know he was Angel she would never had recognized him.  This is what a true demon looks like, she thought to herself in horror.  His devil eyes glowed yellow in the dark, and his fangs dripped with strands of saliva.  He was so close she could smell blood on his fetid breath.  She would have screamed in terror if Dalton hadn’t put on another burst of speed that jogged the breath from her body.  She chanced another glance and Angelus grinned.  It was malicious and ugly and dirty.  It made her sick.  He reached out a clawed hand, and she knew in her heart, they weren’t going to make it.

We aren’t going to make it, thought Dalton in a panic.  I will once again fail my master.  I am a disappointment.  A disgrace.  A failure of the lowest caliber.  He could see the bright swathe of sunshine in front of them, and feel the hot heat of the monster in pursuit at his heels.  As soon as he skid to a stop at the shadow’s edge, Angelus would catch them.  The girl would be devoured and Dalton would be a dead man.  He knew with certainty, whether he failed or succeeded in his mission within moments he would be nothing more than dust.  Only he could decide how he died.  A failure whom no one mourned or an honored vassal who served his master well.  In Dalton’s mind there was no choice.  He sped up when he should have slowed down.

Dawn was shocked when they burst into the sunlight.  She thought for sure Angel was going to catch them, but instead of skidding to a stop at the edge of the shadows and throwing her outside, Dalton increased his speed.  They were deep into the afternoon sunlight when she noticed she was starting to burn. 

She screamed.

Suddenly she was thrown backwards into the air, landing several dozen yards from the immolating vampire.  His headlong rush placed her much farther from the entrance than if he had merely thrown her from the shadows, and she scuttled back even further.  His sacrifice gave her life and a chance to escape. 

“Run!” Dalton screamed.  She jolted to her feet, driven by the desperation in his voice.  She watched in horror as he burst into flame, his slight body falling to ash.  The last thing she saw was his beatific smile.

His ashes hadn’t even settled, when her horrified gaze trained through the gray haze to the figure behind him.  Angelus stood at the very edge of the shadows, his sulfuric eyes caressing her body.  He leered at her, his tongue flickering along the length of his fangs.  She was hypnotized, failing to notice how the shadows started to creep in as he cupped his hand over his crotch, his expression a terrifying mask of blissful lechery.

A/N:  I know Dalton is dead by now.  Burned up by the Judge.  But technically since we are messing with memories, it doesn’t really matter how he dies, just that he dies.  Besides every interaction that is centralized around Dawn is technically fake.  Okay, you caught me.  I’m rationalizing.  But hey, I like Dalton.  He was good little minion!vamp.  Besides just cause you’re a minion doesn’t mean you can’t be heroic.  We all deserve our moment!

Disclaimer:  I don’t own or profit from BtVS.

Remember When

Thanks so much to Obscurebookwyrm who has kindly agreed to take me to task for all my errors.  Her efforts will make reading more enjoyable for all of us!

Spoilers:  Ted

A/N:  I should mention that I actually like Joyce and sympathize with her.  I know it’s hard, especially early season Joyce.  She threw her daughter into a sanitarium and drank too much, but look.  If my fifteen year old daughter came home and said, “Hey Mom, I burned down the school gym because it was filled with vampires” I would think:

1)            My daughter is a creative genius, but not very bright if she thinks I’m going to swallow that whopper.

2)            I need to have her pee in a cup.  What’s the copay for rehab?

3)            She’s still going on about this?  Does she really believe in vampires?  Dammit, I knew I shouldn’t have dropped acid when I was pregnant!  I need to find a good therapist, STAT!

So you see, I think Joyce’s reaction was perfectly reasonable.  As for the drinking…  The woman just went through a divorce.  I drink just to make it through that damn seasonal choir crap at my kid’s school and quality time with the in-laws.  Her husband left her (reason unknown, but I can assume for a younger woman) with an unstable teenager who believes in vampires.  She had to move to a new city, start a new job, and has no adult friends.  I’d be drinking like a freakin’ fish.  I’d be surprised if she wasn’t on antidepressants.  Poor woman.

Chapter Nine

Buffy shifted her weight as the flow of kids out of Dawn’s junior high slowed to a trickle.  It wasn’t like Dawn to keep her waiting.  Especially during the winter when the shadows crept in earlier and vamps moved around easier.  She gnawed her lip, looking up and down the street.  The pick-up crush had lessened and there was only a smattering of parents left waiting for their children.

Buffy stepped off the curb where she usually waited for Dawn and sprinted across the street and up the steps to the junior high.  A quick survey showed Dawn’s classroom was empty and her locker abandoned.  To be thorough she checked the principal’s office.  Dawn had never been a troublemaker, but the incident last month with the note had thrown Buffy for a loop.  She irrevocably blamed Spike.  The menace was a horrible influence.

When it was clear Dawn wasn’t in school, Buffy loped down the street towards home, her mind racing faster than her legs.  It was broad daylight, but as she learned in the last few weeks Angelus could be diabolical in his planning.  Was it possible that he somehow got ahold of Dawn?  Was she his prisoner?  Was he torturing her? 

Was she dead?

The thought struck her as she reached her front yard, knocking her off balance.  She braced herself against the thick-trunked oak tree, her palm abrading on the rough bark.  She bent at the waist, one hand tucked into her kidneys as she dry-heaved at the image of her broken and bleeding sister lying on a dirty cement floor, Angelus crouched over her.

No!  Her sister wasn’t dead!  She would have felt it if something happened to her.  She would have!  They had a bond.  Something special between them.  Oh, God, Dawn!  Buffy dug deep, delving into her Slayer strength to control the panic rioting though her slight body.

She roughly swiped her forearm across her sweaty brow, chiding herself for wasting time.  If Dawn was out there somewhere, then she was relying on Buffy to find her and bring her home.  Resolute, Buffy pounded up the steps to her house, bursting inside, only to come up short like a dog on a choke chain.

Dawn was sitting on the couch, her thin, rayon windbreaker wrapped around her skinny little body, her hands trapped between her knees.  Dawn’s eyes flashed to hers, before hunching her shoulders against Joyce and Ted.

“What’s going on?”  Buffy cursed her breathlessness when she noticed Ted’s dark gaze flicker to her heaving chest.

“Your sister decided to cut school today,” her mother told her scathingly.  Joyce walked to the wet bar to pour herself a vodka and tonic.  Buffy eyed the clock on the wall.

“What?”  Buffy’s question was pointed at Dawn, but her little sister curled into herself more deeply.  Buffy took the time to really look at her.  There was something terribly wrong.  She could sense it.  Dawn didn’t look at anyone in the room.  She stared at the toes of her shoes with unnatural stillness.  When confronted with wrongdoing she usually was a spitfire of action as she vehemently denied any culpability, even if she was literally caught with her hand in the cookie jar.  Dawn’s silence was highly uncharacteristic, and deeply disturbing.

“I got a call from the school saying Dawn was absent today.  When I got home she was already here looking guilty as hell.”

Buffy drew closer to Dawn, and her sister lifted her head to meet her eyes.  Buffy caught her breath.  Anyone else looking on would only see a little girl upset at being caught out, but Buffy could see that something far more serious was going on.  Dawn was upset.  Deeply so.

“She was undoubtedly with those delinquents that frequent the mall.”  Ted explained with patient stoicism that set Buffy’s teeth on edge.

Buffy winged a finely arched brow at him.  “Why are you even here, Ted?”

Ted’s charming face darkened at her tone.  “I asked him here,” Joyce interjected.  “I needed help.  First the incident with the note, and now this.  She’s becoming a troublemaker just like you, Buffy.”  Joyce flung her empty hand into the air in a gesture of disgust.  “Who knows, maybe next she’ll burn down the school gym.”

Buffy inhaled sharply, hurt and betrayal stinging her chest.  She couldn’t see the horror on her mother’s face with tear-blurred eyes.

“Buffy, I’m so sorry.  I didn’t mean it.”

Buffy waved her away.  “Don’t worry, Joyce.  I’m sure you aren’t gonna hafta ship her off to the nuthouse like me.  Dawn isn’t like that and you know it.  She’s a good girl.”  Joyce winced at the venom and deep-seated betrayal in her eldest daughter’s voice.  She tried to move closer to comfort her, but Buffy stepped away, her back and shoulders impossibly straight.  Joyce sighed, knowing she had lost her.  Buffy was going to punish her for at least a week, and by the time they made up, Joyce would have an even higher, impossible-to-pay down balance on her Visa. 

She wished she could take the thoughtless words back.  It seemed all she ever did was drive a wedge between her and her eldest.  Ever since the Event as she started to think of it.  It had been the catalyst for the separation between mother and daughter.  Buffy had burnt down a gym.  A gym!  At fifteen, the court wanted to charge Buffy as an adult and send her to prison.  Not juvenile detention.  Prison!  They wanted to put her baby in jail with a bunch of hardened adult criminals.  The best the court-appointed attorney could do was admit Buffy for psychological evaluation.  Joyce had felt terrible about it, but not completely.  Whatever had been going on, whether it was drugs or just bad company, her daughter needed help, and Joyce hadn’t been equipped to give it.

Besides, it was better that Buffy was away.  Joyce knew Buffy hated her for it, but there was no reason for her daughter to witness the fights she and Hank had over the situation.  There was no reason for Buffy to hear what her father said about his eldest daughter in fits of rage.  It was bad enough that he chose then to leave them for that woman, but to blame it on Buffy?  He was a coward.  She eyed Ted, who stood by the corner of the couch, his face passive in the face of teenage outrage.  Perhaps this was a man she could rely on to help her with her daughters.  Because she needed help.  Desperately.  She set down her unfinished drink and braced herself.

“Buffy, please understand.  Behavior like this just escalates.  I think we both want what’s best for Dawn.”

“I hardly think skipping school qualifies as ‘behavior.’”  Buffy curled her fingers into air quotes while flashing her a dirty look filled to the brim with teenage loathing.

“When I returned home last night, I found forty dollars missing from my wallet, and your mother is missing fifteen from her purse,” Ted spouted smugly. 

Buffy rolled her eyes.  “What does that have to do with anything?”

“I think it’s evident she stole it, then went to the mall to spend the money.  If she would tell us the truth we could return the items and her punishment would be less severe.”

“I don’t think you have any right to talk about punishing my sister, Ted,” Buffy growled.

“She deserves a good hiding with a belt.  That’s what my father would have done.”

Dawn whimpered and instinctively Buffy moved closer to shield her.  If Ted thought he was going to touch Dawn he had another thing coming.  Human or not, Buffy would put him down with extreme prejudice.  Yeah, that’s right.  Too many action films with Xander.  Sheesh.

“Now, I don’t think that’s necessary.  I don’t believe in corporal punishment, Ted,” Joyce interceded, but Buffy sensed the feebleness in her mother’s tone.  There was something about Ted that made their mother weaker than normal.  He dominated her.  Infantilized her.  It made Buffy very edgy.

“And that is why your children are out of control, Joyce.  You asked me here for a reason.  They need to be taken in hand.”

“Dawn is not out of control,” Buffy hissed.  Boy howdy did she want to punch him in the nose.  She bet he’d be a real gusher.

“So you admit, you’re out of control,” Ted condescended.  Buffy had to look away before she did something she would ---well not so much regret as get her into a butt-load of trouble.

Buffy couldn’t believe Dawn would steal anything.  She was such a goody-two-shoes most of the time.  She dared a quick glance at her sister, shocked when she saw a guilty flush edging Dawn’s cheeks.  Along with the guilt was fear.  Buffy reacted on instinct.

“Dawn didn’t steal the money.  I did.”  Buffy stood up straighter, glaring at Ted and her mother, daring them to call her a liar.

“Buffy, how could you?”  Joyce exploded.  Her cheeks bloomed red as she glanced at her boyfriend.  Perhaps calling him wasn’t the best idea.  She hated that he was seeing this side of her children.  She was humiliated and had no idea what to do with Buffy.  How did one punish a teenager who sneered at your authority?  Joyce picked up her drink and took another gulp.

“She didn’t cut school either,” Buffy continued, ignoring her mother’s outburst.  “She wasn’t feeling well after you left and I told her to stay home.  I just forgot to tell the school.”

Joyce looked startled, but Buffy was watching Ted.  His cheeks flushed florid, and she could see anger brewing deep in his brown eyes.  He flicked his gaze to Dawn, then back to her.  He didn’t believe her for one second.  She lifted her chin and stood her ground.

“Dawn, go upstairs.”

“Buffy!”  Joyce reprimanded.  “You are not the parent here.”

Buffy pinned her mother with a censuring gaze.  “Well, Ted sure as hell isn’t.  And you…”  Buffy glanced at Joyce’s drink, the implied insult lingering between them.  “Dawn, go.”

Dawn scampered up the stairs without a second look.  Buffy folded her arms and waited for her punishment with stoicism that would do a Biblical martyr proud.

Hours later, Buffy’s voice was hoarse from screaming and Joyce was weeping in the living room, a cold compress held to the back of her neck by Ted.  A few times Buffy thought she was going to have to defend herself from Ted, but the overbearing man managed to keep his threats of corporal punishment just that.  Threats.  Buffy climbed the stairs wondering where she was going to come up with the money, by tomorrow, to replace what had been stolen.  She told Ted and her mother that she had put some stuff on layaway, so she didn’t have the cash right then.  The dark glimmer in Ted’s eyes told her he had some idea on how to get his money’s worth from her before tomorrow.  She shuddered.  How her mother became entangled with such a disgusting man, Buffy had no idea.

She opened the door to her bedroom, not at all surprised to find her sister huddled on the bed.  Buffy slammed her door shut, jolting Dawn out of restless sleep.  Buffy had some very choice words to say to her sister, starting with a list of chores she would be taking over to pay off the debt, Buffy just took on for her.  Buffy was surprised when the adolescent scampered off the bed and straight into her arms with a ragged sob.  She had come up here with the full intention of reaming her sister good, because Buffy intuitively knew that whatever Dawnie had gotten up to was of the very bad.  She closed her arms around her sister in a tight hug, only to stumbled back when Dawn let out an agonized groan of pain.  Buffy held her at arm’s length, prying open the oversized windbreaker Dawn was wearing.  Beneath it, Dawn was hiding the scorched, ragged remains of her clothing.

Buffy gasped, quickly and efficiently stripping her sister down to her Disney Princess underwear.  She gentled her touch when she saw that Dawn’s stomach and upper thighs were bright red and blistered with burns.

“What the hell, Dawn?!  What happened?”

Dawn buried her face in her hands and cried hard enough to make her thin shoulders shake.  Buffy gulped and did something she never had to do before.  She pulled out the first aid kit to tend to Dawn’s wounds for once, instead of the other way around.  She was gentle and methodical, uttering soothing sounds whenever her sister flinched away from her touch.  Eventually, all the wounds were salved and bandaged, and Dawn’s sobbing had eased to pitiful whimpers.

Buffy dragged the throw off the foot of her bed and settled it around her sister’s shoulders.  She sat back on her heels on the floor with Dawn perched at the end of the bed, reaching out to take her sister’s hand in her own.  Her little sister sniffed a couple of times, lifting her red-rimmed eyes to meet Buffy’s concerned gaze. 

“Now, tell me,” she prompted.  She sat perfectly still and listened in horror as the story unfolded.

When Dawn dried her tears and Buffy was no longer in danger of hyperventilating, she tentatively broke the silence in awed wonder.

“So let me get this straight.  You gave Spike a friendship bracelet?”

Dawn stared at her older sister, her lashes wet and spiked with tears.  “I tell you I almost died, and this is what you focus on?”

Buffy blinked.  “Right.  Never mind.  So the burns?”

“Are from when he ran out into the sunlight.  I was still on his shoulder when he started to burn.”  Dawn looked uncertain, her boney fists shoved between her legs.  “Why would he do that, Buffy?  Why would he die to protect me?”

“I-I don’t know,” Buffy answered honestly.  There was no logic to the minion’s actions.  No reason she could see.  Unless it was because his love for Spike was so great he would sacrifice himself.  But it couldn’t be love, could it?  Vampires couldn’t love.  So was it loyalty?  Honor?  Could vampires feel those emotions?  If they could feel honor and loyalty, then why not love?

And what about Spike?  Why would Spike risk a minion for Dawn’s safety?  He hadn’t ordered the minion to go all kamikaze and run out into the sun, but the vamp obviously interpreted Spike’s request to see to Dawn’s safety as a mission to be completed at all costs.  Why did the minion think Dawn’s safety was of utmost importance to Spike?  What was it about Spike that inspired such loyalty?  Was it just a vampire thing?  Minions were made to live and die for their masters.  Perhaps the minion wasn’t all that bright and interpreted Spike’s request in the severest manner possible.  Maybe she would drive herself crazy just thinking about it.

Buffy leaned forward on her toes, brushing her fingers across the bruises on her sister’s throat.

“So Spike had you and he just let you go?”

Dawn’s pixie face scrunched with confusion at her sister’s question.  “Yeah.  Why wouldn’t he?”

“He’s starving,” Buffy murmured quietly, searching Dawn’s gaze.

“Totally.  I coulda counted his ribs, Buffy.  He looked like those mangy dogs you see in alleyways.  All beat up and starving.  Ready to eat any little scrap.”

“Right.  Ready to eat anything.”

Dawn blinked at Buffy uncomprehendingly.  Buffy shook her head slowly and just stared at her sister.  How had Spike passed up such a prime opportunity for a living, breathing meal?  Was Dawn actually telling her that Spike chose to drink pig’s blood instead of the sweet-smelling little girl he literally had in his arms?

“What do you mean, beat up?”  Buffy asked, pushing away the enigma of Spike for later consideration when she was alone in her bed.

“Oh,” Dawn gushed.  “He’s all bruised and scratched.  Some of them are really deep.  Like someone took one of those gardening tools to him.  You know?”  Dawn hooked three fingers and clawed them through the air.

“A hand rake?”  Buffy offered.

“Yeah,” Dawn nodded enthusiastically, before her eyes darkened.  “How do you suppose that happened?”

Buffy thought about Dru’s blood-red nails and shrugged.  “I don’t know.  Maybe he fell down trying to get to his wheelchair or something.”

“I guess.”  Dawn was unconvinced.

Buffy stood up and pulled one of her old nightgowns from her bureau drawer.  Dawn lifted her arms like she had when they were little and Buffy used to get her ready for bed.  Buffy settled the nightgown around her sister, flipping Dawn’s long, brown hair out of the collar, and smoothing it with gentle hands.

“I have to patrol, but I want you to stay here tonight.”  Buffy told her while turning down the sheets to her bed.  Wordlessly, Dawn crawled beneath them.  It was still early, but she was exhausted.  She settled in, curling on her side when Buffy drew the blankets up to her shoulders.

Buffy pressed a kiss to her forehead, and for the first time since the factory, Dawn felt herself relax.  She was safe.  Buffy wouldn’t let anything hurt her.  Dawn’s eyes fluttered closed, and behind her lids she saw Angelus’ sulfuric gaze as he rubbed his hand between his legs.  Her eyes shot open and she gripped Buffy’s wrist before she could withdraw.

“You’ll be careful, won’t you?”

Buffy’s face softened, and she ran her fingers through Dawn’s hair.  “Of course.  I’m the most safest slayer ever.  I’m all about the safety.  I’ll wear a hardhat and an orange vest, even.”

Dawn snorted and Buffy smiled.

“I---“ Dawn wavered.  “I think Angel wants to do more than just make a meal out of me,” she whispered.

Buffy’s fingers tightened in her sister’s hair.  What to say?  Everything in the last few months seemed to circle back around to sex.  The worst kind.  Not the loving kind, but the hurtful, power-hungry kind.  Even the magical night she shared with Angel had been turned into something twisted and evil.  Maybe the horror movies had it right.  Have sex and get skewered by the bad guy.  What about sweet, virginal little Dawnie?  How did Buffy keep her safe?  How could she prevent her from growing up, and learning about all the badness circling around?

“You know, Spike’s never looked at me like Angel does.”

“No,” Buffy said.  Spike didn’t look at Dawn like she was a sexual creature.  He looked at Dawn like she was a little girl who needed to be protected.  And maybe lessons on hugging etiquette.  “Spike doesn’t look at me like that, either.”  What was with the twirl of disappointment low in her stomach?

“No.  He looks at you differently,” Dawn replied knowingly.

“How so?”

Dawn turned to look Buffy in the eyes.  “Like, maybe you make him sad somehow.  Or maybe he’s just sad on the inside.  I think he’s lonely.”

Buffy shook her head.  “He’s not lonely.  He has Dru.”

“Yeah,” Dawn’s expression was wise beyond her years.  “And he just happened to fall on a hand rake.”

Buffy swallowed around the rawness in her throat and looked away.  She started to get up, but Dawn’s hand tightened on her wrist.

“You can’t go to the factory, Buffy.”  Dawn’s voice was tight, sad and scared.

“Me! Dawn Summers, if you ever do something so completely boneheaded again I’ll….I’ll…”  Was it above board for big sisters to give little sisters butt-whoopin’s?

Dawn yanked her closer.  “I won’t.  I swear I won’t.  I learned my lesson.  It was a stupid, stupid thing I did.  I know that now, but Buffy, you can’t go either.”

“I wasn’t planning to,” Buffy replied softly, struck by the shadows of sadness and fear in her little sister’s big blue eyes.  When Buffy looked at her sister she saw a little girl, but when she gazed into her eyes she saw broken-hearted maturity that shouldn’t be there this young.

“Don’t do it,” Dawn whimpered.  “I don’t want you to die ever.”

Buffy leaned down and pressed her now clammy forehead to her sister’s.  Pinpricks of dread spread across her skin.

“I’m not gonna die, Dawnie,” Buffy vowed, trying her damndest to believe it.

“Then you better be able to kill Angel, ‘cause I don’t think he’s gonna stop until you’re dead.”

From the mouths of babes, thought Buffy.  “I know.  I can do it.  I can.”  She tried to convince herself.

Dawn’s fingers bit into Buffy’s wrist.  “Don’t go.  Not tonight.”

“I promise I won’t go to the factory tonight.”  Buffy pried her sister’s hand away and rose from her bedside.  She slid on her jacket and opened the window.

“Do you think Spike’s okay?”

Buffy perched on the windowsill, grimly staring out into starry night.  Angelus would be enraged at losing his prize.  A prize denied to him by Spike.

“Yeah, Dawnie.  I’m sure he’s fine,” Buffy lied.  “Vampire, remember?  They always land on their feet.”

She shoved off from the window and landed ten feet below on the soft grass.  She walked into the night, her back straight and her shoulders set.

Disclaimer:  I don’t own or profit from BtVS

Thank you so much to ObscureBookWyrm for helping me to make this readable.  She’s the best!

Spoilers:  Ted

A/N:  I swear, Ted wasn’t meant to loiter this long.  He keeps lingering like a pervert in a toy store.

A/N:  I never really approved of Joyce’s ‘freak out’ in Ted.  Family should always come first.  Men come and go, but you can’t get rid of your brats….Trust me, I’ve tried.  Besides, if you can’t rely on family to help you hide the bodies, then who can you rely on?

Thanks so much for your support.  Happy Reading to you all!

Remember When

Chapter Ten

Buffy didn’t keep her promise to Dawn.  For more than half the night she stood across from the factory on the rooftop of a neighboring building, watching, waiting and wondering.  Why had Spike done what he had?  Why not kill Dawn?  Why save her?  The minion’s sacrifice she wrote off as fanaticism.  There was no other way for her to explain its actions.  Vampires were not altruistic.  Her training expressly stated that soulless vampires couldn’t love.  They couldn’t experience loyalty or honor.  But obsession was part of their innate make-up.  Buffy only had to observe Angelus to prove theory as fact.  Spike’s minion was obviously obsessed with serving Spike and in his fanaticism he sacrificed himself.

There.  The explanation was nice, neat and stuffed in its perfectly labeled box.  And she absolutely was not conflicted about it in any way. 

But it still didn’t explain Spike.  Nothing ever seemed to explain Spike.  He smoked when he shouldn’t even breathe, he laughed with glee instead of screaming in rage, and he loved when there could only be hate festering inside him.  Buffy swallowed hard.  Buffy knew it was love, because she saw it in his eyes when she held a stake to Drusilla’s heart.  He loved a single woman for more than a hundred years.  Commitment like that took more than love.  It took honor and loyalty.  It took all those pretty, romantic, chivalrous words that the Council said vampires couldn’t experience. 

There was no nicely labeled box to stuff him into.  He just didn’t fit.  Part of her wanted to place him into the same box as Angelus.  It would be easy to explain his actions with Dawn as obsession with her.  To simply believe that Spike wanted Dawn sexually, only sending her away because he couldn’t perform, and didn’t want to share with his grandsire.  But she just knew that wasn’t true.  Spike was evil.  He was the embodiment of chaos, and bloodshed, murder and mayhem were his arts.  Yet, for of all of his wickedness, Spike was not a depraved pervert.  A dark knight?  Yes.  A warrior for evil?  Absolutely.  A bloodthirsty predator?  Undeniably.  But he wasn’t a bad man.

So, why!?  The question ran round and round her head until she was dizzy.  Why did he not drain Dawn when he had the chance?  Why did he save her?  Why?  Why?  Why?  She needed answers.  She needed to know why he was so different from other vampires.  Why he didn’t fit into a box.  Mostly, she needed to know why he could control his demon, when Angel couldn’t.

The waxing moon reached its zenith, and two figures stalked out of the factory, one grim with imposing purpose, the other twining and twirling in the moonlight.  Buffy watched until they were out of sight then counted thirty heartbeats before slinking from her hiding place.  It wasn’t hard to find the open window Dawn crawled through earlier.  She dropped down into the empty room, extending her senses.  Angelus and Drusilla were gone, but she could sense the signatures of several fledges about the factory.  There was one strong pulse of power near the center, where most of the fledges were clustered.  She knew innately it was Spike.  They had been hunting each other long enough to know the sensation of each other’s essences anywhere.  She wondered if he could sense her, and if he would alert the others.

She kept her senses open, tracking the fledges in case they started moving towards Spike’s quarters.  The door to his bedroom was wide-open, and as she neared the portal she could see dark smears of blood trailing over the threshold where it looked like someone had been forcibly dragged away.

She peered cautiously into the room.  Most of the candles were knocked over, leaving only a handful sputtering down to the wicks.  There was barely enough light to see that the room was empty.  She crept inside, softly closing the door behind her.  She swept up a thick pillar candle, lighting it on one of the guttering flames and taking it over to the bed. She quickly bent down, releasing a pent up breath when she saw the untouched Igloo cooler Dawn had left for Spike.

She pulled it out, and deposited fresh icepacks inside to keep the containers of blood cool.  She didn’t know if they were still fresh enough to eat, but it was the best she could do.  She replaced the cooler under the bed, and fished out two bottles of human blood she strong-armed from Willy earlier in the evening from her deep coat pockets.  She placed the bottles beside the cooler in the hopes that Spike would be able to find them on his own.

She braced her hand on the bed to pull herself from her knees, but instantly withdrew it when she felt something thick and sticky.  She looked at her palm, blanching at the dark, viscous stain on her skin.  Her eyes settled on the bed linens.  The red satin sheets were damp and dark in some places.  They were shredded into long strips and bunched near the foot, where it looked like there had been a struggle to pull someone off the bed.

Buffy pressed the back of her wrist to her eyes and swallowed hard.  She couldn’t think about what was happening to Spike right now.  How much pain was being inflicted on him.  A hot tear seared the corner of her eye and burned a path down her cheek.  She couldn’t think like that.  Spike was fine.  He always survived.  Always.  He was like a friggin’ cockroach.  No matter how many times you squashed him he just kept scurrying back.

She choked back her tears, jumping to her feet.  A quick search of the room revealed a cupboard with a set of linens inside.  They weren’t fancy silk ones, but they were soft and clean.  She stripped the filthy, bloodstained sheets off the bed, bundling them in a corner so she could take them out and throw them into a nearby dumpster.  She doubted Spike wanted the smell of his blood to linger in the air.

She made the bed, smoothing the sheets with brisk sweeps her grandmother taught her.  Soon his bed was clean and tight, and looking very comfortable.  She righted a small square table, a ladder-back chair, and all the candles.  She found his leather duster crumbled on the floor and she shook it out, placing it over the back of the chair where he could reach it easily.  She wanted to light the candles for him, but she didn’t know when he’d be brought back, and she didn’t want them to gutter like the others.  Once everything was righted, she blew out the remaining candles before they could cause a fire and carefully made her way out of the factory.  She knew she wouldn’t be back.  She had done all she could for Spike.  Now it was up to him to survive.

88888

Buffy quietly pried the window open, assuming Dawn closed it because she had become cold.  She eased into to the room with cat-like grace, easily using memory and moonlight to guide her.  She shed her jacket, tossing it over the vanity chair before turning towards her bed.

The covers were rumpled around Dawn’s narrow hips, exposing her torso, as she lay on her back in complete, unconscious abandon.  Her long, brown hair was raked out along her pillow, baring her face, long neck, and shoulders.  Her barely formed breasts were small mounds beneath the thin cotton of her nightgown.  She breathed and they pushed against the worn fabric.

Buffy’s eyes shifted to the shadows beyond the bed.  Dark forms were indistinct, but mostly familiar.  This was her bedroom, her safe haven from the world.  The one place she was sheltered both from the things she hunted every night and the very normal rigors of being a teenage girl.  Her room was where she retreated to when it all became too much.  She would crank up Britney, sing along to her bubble gum pop and forget everything.  She erased the world filled with vampires, her failed love affair, and her constant struggle to equalize her studying, grades and dodging Snyder with her calling to keep the balance between good and evil.

Except she wasn’t safe here: something or someone was there, in the shadows, waiting.

The darkness shifted, and a tall figure rose to stand beside Dawn.  Moonlight cut a swath across the bed, revealing Ted’s dark eyes and white, broad teeth.  Panic fluttered in her too tight tummy, forcing squirming eels up her throat.  The fear she felt was different than when she thought Dawn might be dead.  This fear was more visceral, more wrenching, forcing her breath between her parted lips in tiny, frantic inhalations.

Buffy told herself Dawn was a restless sleeper.  Her blankets were rucked around her waist from tossing and turning, not because someone dragged them to her hips.  Her hair was swept away from her face from rolling around, not because someone’s fingers raked it across her pillow to test its softness.  Her tender breasts wouldn’t hold the attention of the adult man who lurked silently beside the bed because that would be wrong.

Buffy tried to swallow, but her mouth was too dry.

As quickly as her panic came, it was burned away by a wave of fury so potent it threatened to burst from her skin in a fireball of targeted rage.  No one, but no one threatened her sister.  Certainly, not this horrible man who was trying to weasel his way into their lives by dominating their mother and pretending to care for their welfare.  Her long body grew taut, her tiny hands fisting along her thighs.  Her muscles were strung so tight her entire body quivered with the strain of standing motionless.

“I thought your mother and I were quite clear.  You are grounded, young lady.  I am very disappointed to find you sneaking in and out of the house like a common delinquent.”

“Buffy?”  Dawn’s sleepy voice was like a bullet to Buffy’s spine.  She straightened with alacrity, her eyes shooting to her sister’s supine form.

“Under the bed.  Now,” she ordered. 

Dawn didn’t hesitate.  There was a hollow thump as she hit the ground and rolled under the bed.  Buffy turned her attention to Ted, who watched the interchange with curious bemusement.  She could see that he never imagined Dawn would acquiesce so immediately to her commands, but then again, he had no idea how deep their relationship went.  He had no comprehension of the protocol Buffy drilled into Dawn’s head for the sole purpose of keeping her little sister safe from all threats, both inside the home and out. 

“Imagine how much I don’t care, Ted.”  Her voice was silky with underlying menace.  Images of Spike hunting her flashed through her mind.  They gave her strength.  They gave her a template on how to be a truly terrifying threat.  How to form her words, how to hold her body, how to tilt her head just so. 

Ted stalked around the foot of the bed, trying to intimidate her by his sheer masculinity and size.  However, Buffy was a girl who faced death on a nightly basis in the form of monsters far stronger than any human man.  She stood her ground, and glared him down.

“You had better care, little girl,” he growled.

“What I care about---” Her entire body canted forward, her pretty, pink lips stretched across her straight, even teeth in a vicious snarl.  “Is why you are in my bedroom, skulking around my baby sister like a peep show perv.”

“I don’t care for what you are insinuating.”

“Oh, I’m not insinuating anything, Ted,” she spat his name like it was a disease caught by deep-dicking whores.  “I’m saying.  And in a minute I’m gonna be screamin’ it from the top of my lungs.  You being in my room in the middle of the night oughta give Mom a little food for thought.”  Buffy ended her threat with a confident sneer, but she wasn’t so sure of her mother.  Joyce’s behavior of late had been more erratic that usual.  Buffy was used to their mother’s absenteeism in the wake of the divorce, but there had been something more vacant about her lately.  Even when she was in the room with them, she wasn’t really there.

Ted whipped his hand around her throat, his fingers pressing deep into her windpipe.  Buffy stared him down, letting him think he had the advantage for the moment.

“You can scream all you want, but no one will be coming for you or your sister.  Your mother’s had just a little too much to drink tonight, and is passed out cold.  Courtesy of these of course.”  Ted held up a beige medicine bottle and gave it a little shake.  Buffy could hear the rattle of tiny pills.  “You know, I think your mother has a small drinking problem.  I will have to rectify that once we are married.  No wife of mine is going to be a sloppy drunk.”

The rage vibrating through her body rushed in her veins, down her arms, and coalesced into her fists.  She didn’t realize she was throwing a punch until she felt his nose-bone snap beneath her knuckles.  She tried not to chuckle when she saw the blood.  She was right.  He was a gusher.

She knocked his hand away from her throat and stomped over to her door, wrenching it wide open.  “Get out, before I throw you out.”

Ted pivoted on his heel, dropping his hand away from his nose.  He glared at her.  The blood running over his lips and chin was wet, shiny and black in the shadows.

“You’ve been allowed to run wild for too long.  It’s time you were taught a lesson.”

His blunt fingers dropped to his waist, and Buffy could hear the snick of his belt buckle being undone.  Suddenly, rage was engulfed in panic.  An ice cold sweat broke out across her entire body.  He stepped forward and she countered with a step back into the hall.  She felt small and weak.  She felt like a little girl being stalked by a man.

“No,” she whispered through tight, bloodless lips.

He smiled.  His broad teeth were white in the moonlight.  The sound of leather sliding against fabric was deafening in the stillness of the settling house.  He followed her further into the hall, folding the belt in half and cracking it against his palm.  His movements mesmerized Buffy, her large, green eyes riveted by every action.  When the leather cracked against skin, she jolted back into herself.  She was no longer a weak little girl.  She was Buffy, the Vampire Slayer.

He reached out his hand, his wide palm and blunt fingers curling around her thin upper arm.  She was suddenly aware of how small she was.  She was a dainty, little thing, short in stature with small hands and feet, a narrow waist and barely there muscles.  So tiny, yet so, so strong.  Strong enough to defend herself from demons and vampires every night.  Strong enough to defend herself from this horrible man who thought he had the right to come into her home and threaten her family.

“No!” she repeated with ferocity.  Her hand snapped up, wrenching his wrist, grinding his thick bones together until he grunted and fell to his knees.  She slammed him with two quick jabs to the face, smiling when his cheekbone shattered.  She pulled back, intending on telling him exactly to which hell he could go, but the pause was enough for him to lurch forward.  He grappled her around the waist, his larger mass propelling her to the floor.  Buffy reacted on instinct.  She was a warrior.  A fighter.  She fought for her life each night, and the number one rule to survival was to never let them pin you down.

She grabbed him by the forearms, tucked her feet into his waist and simultaneously thrust with her legs and pulled with her hands, hurling him over her head and straight down the stairs.  Buffy heard the snap before she could flip herself over to follow his descent.  It was a sound she was intimately familiar with.  She heard it most every night of her life.  The sound of fragile vertebra shattering.

Prone on the floor, she peered over the edge of the stairs.  Ted was sprawled in the foyer, his limbs boneless, his neck twisted awkwardly so his sightless eyes could glare at her.  Buffy’s breath hitched.  The thrumming beat of survival that had swept her along its deadly course trickled and died.  A new sense of panic rose up to overwhelm her.  It was filled with dread and guilt.  It was an acidy sickness in her belly that threatened to crawl its way up her throat and out her mouth in a wave of bile.

A human.  Buffy Summers, Vampire Slayer, has murdered a human.  It didn’t matter that he was an awful man.  It didn’t matter that he was a threat to her and her family.  What mattered was that she used her preternatural gifts of strength, speed, and agility on a man who couldn’t defend himself against her.  Even at his worst.  Even at his most evil.  Ted was no match against her.  She could have easily subdued him.  She could have simply forced him from her home.  Instead, she let anger and fear overwhelm her.  She killed him because she wanted to do so, and now she was a murderer.

“Buffy?”  Her mother called groggily from behind her.  It seemed the clamor of Ted being thrown to his death had been loud enough to rouse her from her drug-induced slumber.

“Buffy?”  Joyce stumbled closer, bending down to check her daughter for injuries.  “Did you trip?”

As she pressed her hand to Buffy’s shoulder, she glanced down the stairs.  Ted lay in a pool of moonlight, and there was no mistaking the dead stare of his eyes.

“Ted?”  Joyce gasped.  She hurried down the stairs, kneeling beside him.  She reached for him, but pulled back her hands at the last moment.  She glanced at him, then back to her daughter who was still staring down at the tableau in frozen horror.  In that moment, Joyce knew the worst of what she had feared since her daughter starting rebelling a year ago had come to pass.  Buffy’s recklessness had finally gotten someone killed.

“Oh, Buffy.  What have you done?”

Buffy’s haunted green eyes flicked to her mother, and Joyce could see the little girl she used to be.  She remembered how she used to laugh and dance around in her bright pink jumper, chasing butterflies at the park, so proud when she went down the big kid’s slide all by herself.  A lifetime ago her baby had been innocent and carefree.  And now… Now, she was a murderer.

“I didn’t mean it, Mommy.  I didn’t.”

Joyce felt older than her years.  What did I do wrong, she wondered.  Did I not love her enough?  Did I not pay enough attention?  Is this because of the divorce?  Or is it me?  Am I not enough of a presence in my girls’ lives?  Joyce glanced through the rounded entryway into the den.  She could just make out the corner of the wet bar.  Yes.  This was all her fault.  She had drowned her sorrows in liquor.  All of her anger towards Hank, all her depression at being thrown over for a younger woman, her loneliness, her need to have an adult in her life who understood and cared for her.  Her desire to be an autonomous person again, not just regulated to title of mother had been strong enough to overlook the flaws in the first man who had shown her real attention since her disaster of a marriage.  Instead of seeing to her girls, she left them to tend to themselves while she tried to immerse herself in a state of euphoric emptiness found in a vodka bottle and a mediocre male’s attention.

“I know, baby.  I know.”

She pulled herself off the ground, and slowly made her way to the phone to call the police.  She desperately wished she could go back in time and be a better mother, but now it was too late for Buffy.

The 911 operator’s voice was like knife blades across her skin.  Joyce could already hear the accusations against her daughter building.  She could imagine the detectives’ self-righteous sneers, the prosecutor’s cold-heartedness, and the public defender’s laissez-faire attitude.  Joyce couldn’t allow this to happen.  It wasn’t too late for her daughter.  It wasn’t.  She robotically gave the information to the woman and hung up the phone despite her protests.  She found Buffy and Dawn huddled together against the wall at the top of the stairs.  She knelt down in front of them, taking each of her daughters’ hands in hers.  Dawn’s blue eyes were wide and frightened as she silently begged her mother to somehow make it all better again.  Buffy’s watery green eyes screamed fear, guilt and remorse.  Joyce took a deep breath, and squeezed their hands reassuringly.

“When they get here, the only thing I want you to say is that he attacked you.”

“Mom, that’s exactly—“

Joyce hushed her.  “That’s all, Buffy.  Nothing more, nothing less.  You wait until the lawyer comes.  I’ll take care of everything.  Dawn, you say nothing.  You didn’t see anything; you didn’t hear anything.  Understand?”

“Yes, Mommy.”

Joyce’s penetrating glance fell on Buffy.  “Do you understand, Buffy?”

“Yes, Mommy,” Buffy whispered.

Joyce tugged her girls forward, engulfing them in her arms.  They hugged each other tight, not letting go, even when they heard the approaching sirens.

“Family first.  Right, girls?”

“Right,” they echoed.

When the police knocked on the door, the Summers women stood against them as a united front.

Disclaimer:  I don’t own or profit from BtVS.

A/N:  Let’s check up on Spike and his twisted family dynamic, shall we?  If the Summers clan motto is ‘Family First’, what do you suppose the Aurelius motto is?

Spoilers:  Passion

Remember When

Chapter Eleven

Spike landed face first on the bed and was instantly transported into the memory of Kent in summertime.  His bed smelled of English roses, sunshine, and his long forgotten home.  Longing curled inside his chest, so deep and tight that it threatened to squeeze the unlife from him.  For the barest of moments, his desires transformed and he no longer craved the concrete tastes of blood, sex and violence, but ached for the intangible and unobtainable.  He yearned for an unidentifiable something he was unworthy of having.  He closed his eyes, immersing himself in the sorrowing goodness the scent evoked as his arm was wrenched towards the wrought iron headboard, his wrist tightly encircled by cold metal.

“Daddy says you aren’t to leave.”  Drusilla nipped at his ear, her sharp fang slicing the cartilage.

Spike jerked away.  “Sod off, Dru.”  He had been tormented by his sire many times over the last century, but the burn of betrayal never seemed to lessen.  If he were a proper vampire, he would take pleasure in the pain she inflicted on him.  And to an extent, he did.  Whips and chains weren’t his particular fetish, but they had their enchantments.  It would be simpler if she only inflicted physical pain on him, rather than delighting in the emotional turmoil brought about by the games she played.  Her favorite was to watch her dark prince pine for her attentions while she clung to her daddy.  It gave her a fission of pleasure that sex couldn’t evoke.

Control.  It always came down to who had the power and who didn’t.  Drusilla was a beautiful woman, a deadly predator, and the queen of William’s heart, but she was forever trapped in the torment of her turning.  She always felt weak and victimized and in her desperation to claim a modicum of control she embraced the dark arts of manipulation her daddy inducted her into. 

The more Angelus abused her, the greater her revelry.  Not because she garnered physical pleasure from the degrading acts he forced on her, but because by embracing them, by giving herself over to fits of abandon, she reclaimed her sense of power – a wicked power that she delighted in inflicting on her childe, because she knew he would never turn on her.  Her dark prince would take all the abuses she heaped on him, letting her reconstruct her sense of self through the smidgeon of power she was allowed to claim for herself, because he loved her.  He loved her like the raven loved the moon and death loved the bloodless corpse.

“Uh oh.  Summers’ sunshine has been flitting through the winter’s shadows trying to burn all the lovely darkness away.”  Drusilla sing-songed from behind, raking bloody furrows down his naked back with her long fingernails.  He grunted against the pain, and buried his face deeper into the mattress.

“Daddy.  My Angel.  Come dance in the garden,” she called, her voice a knife blade through the echoing factory.

“Christ, Dru.  You’re shrill wench.  You’re startin’ to sound like Darla.”  Angelus leaned against the doorframe, watching his childer with a lazy smirk.

Dru swayed to absent music as she licked Spike’s blood from her fingers, a contented smile stretching her red lips.  “Oh, how I miss Grandmum.  We used to play the nastiest games.”

“Yes.  I remember.”  Angelus chuckled darkly, his fingers playing along his lower belly near his belt buckle.  Spike fought to hide his cringe.  The games his sires played were wicked and cruel, usually involving him in positions of submission.  He had no more energy for it.  After two days of torture, he was exhausted.  The pints of pig’s blood he consumed were now pooled on the factory floor, festering with larvae and buzzing with flies. 

All he wanted was for them to leave so he could sleep and dream of better times – a past where Angelus was safely tucked away behind his soul, and Spike never heard of accursed Sunnyhell.  He inhaled deeply.  Perhaps he would dream of Kent, its open, sundrenched meadows, and his mother’s melodious voice.

“The pixie and sunshine have danced through the garden and trampled all our weeds.”

Angelus sighed deeply, stepping further into the room.  His childe was beautiful, an amusing doll he loved to break over and over again, but egads could she be trying.

“What are you on about, Dru?”  He choked on the last word as he inhaled.  The fragrances of sweet innocence and honey-slick womanhood were redolent in the dingy room.

“Well, well.  William the Bloody Awful Vampire has groupies.  Isn’t that….sweet.”

“Don’t know what you’re nattering on about, mate.”  Spike denied.  Fucking Summers women.  Bad enough being punished for letting the baby bint go, but now the Slayer had to show up and flout her stench all over his sodding things.  They were just buggering up his unlife left and right.  Why did they keep coming here?  Were they set on killing him slow? Were they trying to keep their hands clean by inciting his family into torturing him to death?

Why do they tend to me so lovingly, a tiny, fractious voice questioned.  Spike drew his free hand beneath him, hiding the woven band still decorating his wrist.

Angelus ignored him and drew a deep breath.  “Smells fucking delicious in here.  The scents are so thick a vamp could practically sink his dick into them.”  He cut a sly glance to his childe who danced in circles while lighting candles.  “Or at least something a little more tight and wet.” 

“Play your soddin’ games elsewhere.  Leave me to rot in peace.”

Angelus chuckled, swooping Drusilla up into the air.  She squealed with delight, tilting her head back so her loose, dark hair twirled around her shoulders.  Angelus buried his face between her breasts, worrying back and forth like a dog with a bone.

“You know what my favorite game is, Dru?”

She wrapped her arms around his head, holding him close.  “Pokers and brands?”  Delight lit up her eyes as she thought about all the lovely designs her daddy could burn onto her flesh.

Angelus licked a long trail from her breastbone to her arching throat.  “Debauching the innocent.” He steadied her on her feet as he leered at her with yellow eyes.

“Oh!  I’m good at that game, Daddy!”  She clapped excitedly, bouncing on her toes.  “I played it so well when you and Grandmum fetched me home to be yours for eternity.”

“That you did,” Angelus rumbled, remembering the games he played with the innocent mortal girl before he turned her.  He caught her by her long hair, reeling her in.  “Now, my devil childe.  I want you to pretend you’re sweet, little Dawnie and I’ve finally got you in my evil clutches.”

Dru giggled and on the bed, Spike couldn’t help his recoil.  Spike knew exactly what Angelus would do if he ever got his hands on Snack Size.  He surely didn’t need an enactment, especially on his bed.

“Shall I scream the way little Anne did when you ripped her dress and spilt her milk?  You were such a bad daddy for making her cry.  She never ate cakes and honey again.”

“That would be perfect,” Angelus purred.  “Your little sister was a sweet bit of spun sugar.”  He leaned closer to Dru.  “Now, run!” he commanded with a roar.

Dru’s shrill scream was more of a squeal as she darted to and fro about the room trying to elude Angelus, who stalked her between the brass candelabras.  The candlelight sputtered, casting devil caricatures on the walls.  Unable to look directly at them, Spike watched as Angelus’ shadow puppet engulfed Drusilla’s willowy frame, swallowing her whole, until it seemed as if she no longer existed.

Angelus inhaled deeply, casting a sly glance at Spike who sulked on the bed.  “Mmm.  Dawn and Buffy all in one delicious potpourri.  I can’t wait to have them together in my bed.  Oh, the things I’ll make them do to me, to each other.  Always wanted sisters.”

He grasped Dru around the waist and launched her onto the bed next to Spike.  The crippled vampire struggled against the manacle locking him to the bed.  His thrashing scooted him to the edge and his lifeless legs tumbled to the ground with a hollow thump.  Spike lay half on half off the bed, his dead weight yanking hard on the sharp cuff, drawing beads of blood on the inside of his wrist.  The angle of his upper body forced his face towards the mattress, immersing him in the fragrances that were driving Angelus into a lustful fervor, effectively trapping Spike between the heaven of Buffy’s scent and the hell of watching his sires play their sick games.

Angelus straddled Drusilla’s struggling form, ripping open her velvet bodice.  He pinned her flailing arms, and stared thoughtfully at her small, dusky-tipped breasts.  He turned his leering gaze to Spike.

“What color nipples d’ya think Dawnie has?”  Angelus asked his grandchilde curiously.  “Perky little tits.  Barely formed crabapples.  Not yet ripe, but just right.”  Angelus’ eyes glassed over as he rutted his cock against Drusilla’s velvet covered thigh, his long sinuous tongue twirling around her erect nipple.

Spike turned away, laying his cheek flat on the coverlet and pressing his face into his arm.  He had a brief spark of a memory at hearing how some animals would chew their own paws off to escape traps.  The idea had its charms.

Next to him Drusilla squealed like a piglet being slaughtered.  “See how I touch her, Spike?  She likes the pre-show.  She likes the tease.  This is how you keep a woman like Drusilla satisfied.”  The sound of fabric rending echoed in the room.  “Gonna do this to that baby girl until she bleeds out of every one of her tight little holes.”

Drusilla gasped and arched into his touch.  “Oh, yes, Daddy.  Make it hurt.”

Angelus reeled back, an ugly snarl twisting his handsome features.  He slammed his ham hock fist into her small mouth, and red rain sprinkled onto Spike’s clean, white sheets.  “Do it right!” he screamed, spittle spattering the slender woman beneath him.

Spike whipped around, levering as much weight as he could on his forearms.  “Leave her alone, you sick bastard,” he snarled.  He never hated himself more than he did that moment.  He was a useless bag of meat and bone.  A soddin’ joke.  A crippled vampire who wasn’t man enough to protect his minions—his woman—to take care of his own.  Dalton died doing what Spike couldn’t, protecting the one human who had shown him a lick of kindness in hundred years and now his dark princess, his queen, was being degraded before his very eyes.  For over hundred years he served her faithfully, fulfilling her every desire while cherishing her without a soul, just as deeply as any man with a soul could, but when she needed him the most he failed her.

Angelus leaned to the side, wrapping his large, cool hand around the back of Spike’s neck.  His claws pierced Spike’s flesh, beading blood beneath his ear.  Angelus bent close, his breath feathering over the crippled man’s cheek.

“Such a pretty mouth you have, William.  You best keep it shut, unless you want me to stuff it full.”  Angelus trailed his hand down the weaker vampire’s face, prying his thumb under Spike’s lip to run the pad along the front of his teeth.

Spike yanked his head away, his range of motion severely limited by his shackles and disability.  “Fuck you.”

Angelus chuckled darkly.  “Oh, no, boy.  I’ll be doing the fucking.  Too bad you’re a cripple.  It’s no fun when you don’t squirm.”

He turned his attention back to the woman still pinned between his thighs.  She was watching him with unaccustomed stillness.  He shuddered as her dark, fey eyes seemed to pierce their way into the hollow that used to hold his soul.

“Now, Dru.  You’re supposed to play sweet and virginal.”  He dug his fingers into her bare breast, his claws drawing ruby rivulets of blood to trail down her exceedingly pale flesh.  “Scream like my Dawnie will.  Tell me how much it hurts.  Beg me to stop.  Cry some pretty little tears for me.”

Dru’s scream was more of a moan, and Angelus rolled his eyes in disgust.  He shoved her away, edging off the bed.  He had cracked his dolly a little too deeply during her turning and now she couldn’t play the games properly.  Oh, well.  Lesson learned.  He would practice restraint with Dawn.  He would take her right to the edge of breaking, before turning her.  That way he would have a sweet, screaming innocent for all eternity.

“The worst thing I ever did while souled was kill my beautiful bitch.  Darla could play this game with ease.”

Drusilla struck with the alacrity of a snake, wrapping her long legs around Angelus’ waist and yanking him atop her.

“I can do it, Daddy,” Drusilla pleaded desperately.  She had to please him.  She couldn’t live another century without his attention.  “Oh, please don’t hurt me, you evil man.  I’m as sweet as sugar water.  Pure as an angel.  I’ll just die if you touch me.”  Dru’s tone dropped into forced saccharine notes.

Angelus snorted.  “Good enough.  Now, scream for me.  Scream.”  He grunted the last word, ramming into her hard.  She screamed like she did the first time he fucked her all those centuries ago.

Spike wished he could rid himself of his hearing as easily as he did sight.  They grunted and groaned, squealing and screaming.  Angelus whispered all the dirty things he would do to Snack Size once he had her, and Dru cooed in delight.  Their games rocked the bed, rattling the old factory wall, and making it hard for Spike to keep his weight balanced on his torso so his shoulder and arm weren’t wrenched too badly.

Spike felt hot pricks of tears at the backs of his eyes.  He couldn’t figure out what made him more miserable: the fact Dru loved him so little she would disregard him so blatantly, or that he felt sick to his stomach at having to witness their games.  It was one thing to fuck her sire in another room, but it was another to do so right in front of Spike and in his bed, no less.  He had always known she belonged to her daddy, but at least she allowed him his delusion, if only to ensure his loyalty to her.  He supposed it wasn’t necessary now, with Darla no longer in the picture to distract Angelus away from her deranged charms.  For the first time in her unlife, Drusilla had Angelus’ complete and undivided attention, something that would surely change once Angelus brought the Slayer and Snack Size into the fold.  Spike knew when that happened, his dark princess would find her way back to him for the cold comfort he would unquestionably offer.  How could he not?  For all her cruelty he loved her unswervingly.

He disliked being reminded of what Angelus did to Dru when he first stalked and turned her.  He liked the idea of Angelus doing the same to Dawn even less.  And maybe that was the true source of his despair.  As a vampire he shouldn’t care what happened to the baby bint.  He should be reveling in it.  The thought of tasting her sweet virgin blood should be an aphrodisiac.  The idea of debauching her should be arousing.  The sick twist he felt in the bottom of his belly at the thought of Dawn being used so cruelly was just another example of how he wasn’t made right.  His sires had known from the get go that something wasn’t right about their newest fledgling childe, but Spike’s enthusiasm for the hunt distracted them.  They claimed his peculiarity was the consequence of being sired by a lunatic vampire, and he didn’t much disagree, but over the decades he had put more thought into it.

He was sure it might have something to do with the man he was before his turning.  He knew why Drusilla was as bloodthirsty and insane as she was.  She was made to be that well before her turning.  All of her sweetness and innocence were lost before she became a vampire, and all the remnants of her soul were happy to flee when death overtook her.  The demon that invaded her body made a right cozy nest in the empty hollow that used to house her soul.

Liam had always been a whoring bastard, and Darla was just a whore.  They were made for each other, really.  Their souls were already tarnished, blackening the housing with sin before the demon moved itself in.

But William had been a good man at his turning.  He hadn’t been prepared in the manner Drusilla had been.  When he walked into the mews a century ago, he hadn’t expected to meet his beautiful Angel of Death.  He hadn’t been ready to die.  He had his mother to care for, his estates to see to, people who relied on him.  Those responsibilities served to tether parts of William to the material plane, forced to share space with a demon. 

Oh, he was still a demon at the core.  But in his heart, William still lingered like a bad stench.  He loved his spot of violence, his bloodlust and just plain lust, but the fundamental problem was that he loved.  His ability to love violence, bloodshed, and – by all that was unholy – Drusilla, was the quintessence of his abnormality.

It was disgraceful.  Disgusting.  Freakish.  He was irrefutably a bloody awful vampire.

He felt Drusilla’s long fingers weave through his hair, urging him to tilt his head to look at her.  He blinked away his tears, meeting her dark, sorrowful eyes.

“Save me, dear, sweet William.  Save me,” she whispered softly, her entire body shuddering under Angelus’ forceful thrusts.

In the shine of her dark, glassy eyes he could see the reflection of the girl she used to be, before Angelus sank his fangs into her and shredded her world apart.  He imagined her flitting through the market streets, exclaiming over lengths of colorful ribbons with her sisters and mother.  The sweet, innocent girl who loved taking tea with her dollies, sneaking cakes with her sisters, receiving lemony kisses from her mother and adoring hugs from her father.  She was made eternally beautiful by Angelus’ corruption, allowing her to be a part of Spike’s life for more than a century.  She was everything he lived for, his black goddess, his deliciously wicked plum, but in moments like these he desperately wished she had lived and died in her time, unsullied by the monster she called Daddy.  If by some secret wish he could give her the peace of a mortal life, he would.  Even if meant he never existed as a vampire.

“I would have saved you, my love,” he pledged.

Her full lips curled into a soft smile before they parted in a venomous sneer.

“Bad dogs get no cake!”  She wrenched his head to the side, and tufts of platinum hair yanked free of his skull.  Her sickening laugh of pleasure trilled down Spike’s spine as she turned her attention to Daddy, playing the game of debauched innocent with zest. 

It was a game she wouldn’t be subject to if those soddin’ girls hadn’t traipsed la-de-da into his lair.  The sweet scent enfolding his bed became bitter slayer musk in his nostrils, grinding away at the traces of his humanity until his demonic capacity to hate flooded his veins.  He could trace his every misfortune back to the Summers clan.  His failure to kill the slayer bitch at the high school was because of her harridan of a mother’s interference.  His distraction during Halloween was because of the motor-mouthed little sister, and his utter soddin’ cockup with Ford was because he was reacting to the Slayer’s disgust over his supposed perversions.  That final one had been the beginning of the end for him and his dark princess. 

She didn’t understand why he failed to kill the Slayer time and again.  With every failure he was less of a demon in her eyes.  He had to redeem himself.  He had to be the demon she needed him to be.  He had to prove and assert himself as a dominant male to gain back her respect.  It was the only way to save her from herself---to save her from Daddy.

The bed trembled and the tension on his wrist was released.  He blinked up at Dru, realizing his musings had protected him from their finale.  Angelus was gone, leaving him alone for once with his queen.  She gently lifted his naked body onto the bed, and spun away to search through his drawers.  He could tell by her vacant eyes and off key humming she was lost in her own thoughts.  He allowed her to dress him like a dolly, slipping jeans over his hips and drawing a tee shirt over his head.  He grimaced at the uncomfortable itchiness of his own skin.  Dried blood was flaking beneath his clothes, and he longed desperately for a bath, but it was something he knew he wouldn’t be receiving from his vacant princess.

He caught her by the wrist when she would spin away from him, drawing her onto the bed.  She didn’t resist.  She snuggled against his side, nuzzling the column of his neck, lapping away the old blood.

“Stay the night with me, luv,” he pleaded quietly.  He desperately needed her companionship.  He wanted to rekindle some spark of kinship between them.

“I must go with Daddy.  The air worries.  A birdie chirps her secrets from her nest of wires, an enemy seeking to destroy our happy home.”

“Not so happy, princess.”

“Shush.” He flinched as she lifted her pale hand, but she merely placed one long finger against his lips.  “Bad dogs don’t get to speak.”

She pressed a bloody kiss to his mouth, and he could taste their mixed essences.  Gracefully she eased off the bed and lifted him into his wheelchair.

“Now be a good boy, my Spike.  Don’t let the pixie and sunshine get you.  They’ll gobble you up and spit out your rotten pit.”

She swayed out of the room, unmindful of how Spike’s despairing eyes followed her.

Disclaimer:  I don’t own or profit from BtVS

Thanks ever so to Obscurebookwyrm for looking over the last few chapters.  All errors are completely my doing.  She’s a terrific beta.

A/N:  After the last chapter I realized that I should give, not warnings per se, but perhaps reassurances.  As an author, I know what I’m about to impart ruins the tension building in the story, and if you are comfortable so far, feel free to skip this and move on to the story.  However, if you are getting worried, and I know as a reader, I’d be getting worried that I was going to read something I could never unread, let me reassure you, there will not be any kiddie rape in this story.  Not gonna happen.  Period.  That being said, there will soon be a pretty disturbing chapter or two, but if we hold hands and take deep breaths I’m confident we’ll make it through to the other side, where spuffiness awaits us.

Spoilers:  Passion

Remember When

Chapter Twelve

For the first time in weeks he was full.  He’d been surprised when he found the undisturbed cooler of blood still under his bed after Angelus and Dru left the factory.  He’d been more shocked to find the two bottles of human blood slathered with slayer musk.

The pig’s blood in the cooler was a bit off, but it didn’t stop him from gulping it all down.  He would have drunk the human blood as well, if his stomach weren’t already bulging.  Instead, he slipped the bottles into the deep pockets of his duster.

It was past the witching hour and the factory was deserted.  All the minions were out hunting their dinner, and who knew what Angelus and Dru were up to---causing mayhem and bloodshed wherever, he was sure.

He tooled around the main room in the factory, cursing the disability that didn’t allow him to leave the building.  Without his legs he was easy prey.  Not just for the Slayer, but for other demons as well.  Anyone who wanted to kill him could, and there was fuck all he could do to stop them.  He was as helpless as a soddin’ child, incapable of protecting, feeding, or dressing himself.  Fuck, he couldn’t even bathe himself.  It was a good thing he didn’t have to shit like a human or he’d smell a hell of a lot worse right now.

He wanted to strike out at something, kick the walls down, tear at the foundations, rip the whole bloody world apart, but he couldn’t.  All he could do was sit on his arse like a wanker and whine about what he couldn’t do.

He neared a grouping of ratty couches where the fledges piled atop each other like a cackle of hyenas during the day.  There was a half bottle of Jack sitting on the floor and he swept it up as he rolled by.  He fucking hated himself.  He hated being forced to live off the scraps of fledges---forced to scavenge like a dog.

He took a swallow of the burning liquid only to spit it out when he tasted ashes from an extinguished cigarette.  He threw the bottle at the wall with a roar, his anger at his pathetic existence unappeased by shattering glass.

He spun his wheels, backing up so he could….what?  Return to his room?  The place stank of Angelus’ and Dru’s cum.  Worse, it smelled of the two little girls who were making his unlife pure, torturous misery.

He needed to find himself another place to sleep.  A room far from those noxious scents and even further from Angelus’ room and the sounds of the constant fuck-fest coming from within--except he didn’t have anyone to help him set up a new place.  Dalton was gone.  He sacrificed himself to the sun to keep the Bit safe.  Spike felt a speck of pride for the minion.  The useless sod finally did something right.  Finally found his purpose.  That’s all anyone could really ask in life, to find their purpose.

Spike used to have a purpose.  It was to love and protect his woman--to be the black knight to her wicked princess.  It was a role he was born to play, shaped by boyhood romps through forests while pretending to be Galahad, doting on his sick widow of a mother as an adult, and devouring the romantic poetics of Byron and Keats during every free moment.  William was only happy when he had someone to care for, someone to protect.  As sick and wrong and twisted as it was, he only flourished in an environment where he loved and was loved equally in return.  The problem with Drusilla was equality.  She cared for him, but she never loved him.  Not in the manner he craved.  Not in the manner William secretly thought he deserved.

He pushed forward, intending to scout out a new room, but was pulled up short.  He glanced down at his wheel.  Some electrical wiring from one of the many debris piles lying around the factory was tangled around his spokes.

“Bloody, buggering, fuck.”

He strained against the wheels, trying to roll away, but only spooled the wire tighter.  He leaned over at an awkward angle, careful not to overbalance himself.  The last thing he needed was for Angelus to find him helpless on the ground because he was a stupid git and tipped himself over.  He yanked at the wires, but they held fast.

“Well, fuck.”

He braced his elbow on the arm of the chair, and plunged his fingers through his hair.  The gel crackled and loosened.  There was no point in maintaining his image anyway.  Anyone who saw him would know immediately he was a pathetic excuse for a man.  There was no reason to continue this charade of unlife he was currently bumbling his way through.  Maybe he should wait for dawn and roll himself out into the sunlight?  Dru’d feel like shite then, wouldn’t she?  Make her regret her treatment of him good and proper.  Once her dark prince was gone, she’d have no one to take care of her, and she could whine and worry herself into madness without him.  Spike slumped in his chair.  Would she even miss him if he were gone?

His fingers tightened, and his skull tingled at the pressure.  If he concentrated hard enough he could almost imagine it was Dru tugging his hair in the throes of lovemaking.  His lovemaking, not that freak show Angelus made her enact.

Spike scrubbed his hand down his face.  What he needed was a pick-me-up.  Something young and fresh.  There was nothing like a delicious woman squirming on one’s lap while drinking her down to make a man feel like a demon again.  All hot and pumping.  Her blood feeding his starving cells with life-giving essence, not that animal rot he was forced to choke down.  Something that would fill his cock to near bursting.  Some blonde little chit, golden skin, lean muscle, high, tight tits and hazel eyes that would widen when he thrust his cock into her…

Spike jerked upright, eyes white at the edges with panic.  What the fuck!  I absolutely wasn’t imagining the Slayer!  She was just a little girl, barely older than Snack Size.  Killing her, yes.  Drinking her down, hell yes.  But no fucking.  Abso-fucking-lutely not!

Oh, God.  By all that’s unholy I’m turning into a soddin’ pervert like Peaches.

He glared at his hard-on until it wilted under his intense disgust.  This was it.  Rock bottom.  There was no way he could sink lower than this.  First he wasn’t man enough to take care of his woman, and now he was fantasizing about little girls like a buggering pedophile.

She’s seventeen.  More than old enough.  Older than most of the chits being married off when you were human, a seditious voice whispered tauntingly.

He growled, setting his jaw.  It didn’t matter, because he was going to kill the girl.  The Slayer and her entire family were the reason he was a miserable git in the first place.  She needed to pay in blood for all her wrongs against him.  Besides, once he presented her head to Drusilla, his princess would love him again.  She would turn her back on Angelus, forgetting about Daddy completely.  She would.

She would….

He pressed his fingers to his eyes, trying to stem the burn of tears he could feel forming.  Crying was useless.  It wouldn’t get him anything but grief when Angelus came back and smelled tears.  It was better to focus on the anger.  He needed to channel all his hate and rage towards the Slayer.  If he had a goal then it would be easy to focus on healing.  And he desperately needed a goal to focus on or he’d fall too easily into despair.

He straightened in his chair, shaking off his melancholia.  He needed to approach his situation with a renewed sense of purpose.  He wouldn’t allow himself to brood.  He would overcome this.  All of it.  The chair, his family, and this god-awful, unnatural predilection he had for the Summers clan.  He would overcome it all, and be the stronger for it.

He reached for the wires, freezing when something twanged along his senses.  Spike scented the man before he threw open the shuddering metal doors.  He smelled of rage, agony, and unwavering vengeance.

“Angelus!”  The empty factory echoed with his bellow.  “Come out, you bloody wanker.  I’ve got something I want to shove up your arse.”

“Bugger.”  Spike renewed his efforts to untangle his wheel from the debris.  The wires seemed to twine themselves insidiously around the spoke, thoroughly chaining him to the spot.  He glanced up to see the man skim the edges of the factory, squirting liquid onto the walls and ratty couches.  Spike identified the acrid stench of kerosene.

Spike tried to blend himself into the shadows, but he knew it was useless.  Soddin’ wheelchair stuck out like a white flag.  The man stilled, his eyes riveted on Spike.  Knowing he was well and truly trapped, Spike leaned back in his chair, waiting with seemingly lazy nonchalance.

The man approached slowly, as if knowing his prey couldn’t flee.  The Watcher, whom Spike had seen at the fringes of the Slayer’s circle throughout the months he hunted her, didn’t look like the man he used to be.  Gone was the bookish, well kempt scholar and in his place was roughened thug looking for a little payback painted in shades of red.

In his hands he held a bottle of lighter fluid and a baseball bat wrapped with torn linens.  Spike had seen enough mobs in his time to know an improvised torch when he saw one.  The Watcher stopped a few feet away, his eyes burning with an unquenchable rage.  His hair stood up in tousled tufts, as if he had tried to pull it out by the roots in order to assuage his grief.

Spike lounged in his chair, careful to keep his hands visible and seem as unthreatening as possible.  He wanted to light a cigarette to round out his Big Bad image, but self-preservation made him think twice as he kept one eye on the squeeze bottle that dripped liquid death from its tip.

“What’s got your tweeds all aflutter, mate?” 

Spike had more than just an inkling as to why the solemnly restrained Watcher had suddenly flown the coop, leaving living vengeance to take his place.  It was his experience that only grief could cause such outpourings of rage and agony together.  His mind flashed to Snack Size and the Slayer.  Had Angelus and Dru finally caught up to one of them?  Would he soon be in mourning as well?  Or would he be welcoming new family members to the clan?  The thought made his heart constrict.

They’re the enemy, he reminded himself.  Hadn’t he just resolved to rid himself of the Slayer, even if it meant cutting a swath through her meddling family to do so?  He shouldn’t have any thoughts of grieving, only of glee.

“The bastard killed her and left her for me to find.”  The Watcher heaved as if there wasn’t enough air in the whole world to relieve the constriction in his chest. 

Spike swallowed the burn in the back of his throat.  Not Snack Size then.  Angelus would never let such a tasty treat escape his grasp by outright killing her.  He certainly wouldn’t leave her for the Watcher to find.  If he had killed her, he would have laid her out all pretty and virginal in her bed or barring that, her front porch, where her mother and sister would find her.

That left Buffy.  Angelus hadn’t wanted to kill her either.  He wanted to claim her, just as much as he wanted the little one.  Sisters, he said.  A matched set in bed.  But the Slayer was a fighter.  She may have forced Angelus’ hand, leaving him no choice, but to kill or be killed.  Yes, that definitely sounded like his Slayer.  Never let them get you down.  Never let them get their fangs in you.  Wasn’t that the rule Snack Size imparted to him?  If you were still breathing, then you were still fighting.

His hands curled around the armrests of his chair, and when his claws scratched against metal, he realized he was vamped out.  He shook his head to rid himself of his demon, but it refused to be banished into the darkness along with his errant emotions.  He closed his eyes, hunching forward to make himself less of a threat.  The Watcher was one hand-flex away from ending Spike in a fireball of fury, and he couldn’t even rein in his own demon to save his life.

“The Slayer?”  Spike whispered through tight lips.  He refused to look at the man who towered over him.  He wanted to know the truth before he died.  He wondered if there was a crossroad in the afterlife where all souls were siphoned off to their destination, and if he would see the Slayer one last time before he took the long trip down.

“No.”

Spike exhaled in a gasp.  He hadn’t realized he was holding a pocket of air behind his heart.  His demon melted back, and he looked up at the man who watched him with curious impartiality.  Fuck!  He was such a wanker.  Why was he behaving like the worst kind of ponce?

It was the chair.  It had to be.  It made him weak.  It stole away everything that made him a man.  He might as well cut off his wrinklies and grow tits.  If he could just climb his way out, just walk again, he could reclaim his virility and kill the Slayer as he was meant to.  He was just reacting this way because he wanted to be the one to kill her.  So he could prove himself to Drusilla.  So he could show his family once and for all that he wasn’t useless.  That he wasn’t a perversion of his species.  He wasn’t a bloody awful vampire.  He was the Big Soddin’ Bad.

“My Jenny.  My love.”  The Watcher’s eyes clenched shut in pain.  “I loved her so much, but that didn’t stop me from punishing her, from blaming her for Angelus.  Better to blame her than my Slayer.”  The Watcher opened his eyes and pierced Spike with a look.  “You ever hurt anyone you love?”

Spike could barely swallow around the expanding ball of heat in his throat.  He wished vehemently to scream no, but he knew it wasn’t true.  He hurt his mother in the worst possible way.  He suspected he hurt Dru every time he behaved like a man instead of a monster.

“Of course not,” the Watcher scoffed, answering his own question before Spike had the chance.  “You’re a vampire.  You can’t love.”

“Oh, I love,” Spike spat.  “I’m soulless, not heartless.  I’ve loved for over a hundred years, and there’s one thing I know to be a fact.  We always hurt the ones we love.”

The Watcher’s face morphed into a twisted mask of sorrow and regret.  He hunched at the waist, moaning long and deep.  Time froze and for long moments they were immobile, Spike unnaturally still in his chair, the Watcher bent in half by his grief.  When time reasserted itself, the Watcher drew himself tall, all grief wiped from his face, until only vengeance remained.  He lifted his bat, soaking the rags wrapped around the tip with kerosene.  Spike tensed as he watched.  This was it.  He was going to die a big, flaming death.

“Buffy told me what you did for Dawn,” the Watcher said conversationally, like he was commenting on the fine weather.  “What has it been now?  Three opportunities to kill Dawn, and yet she lives.  Why?”

Something shifted inside of Spike and the despair he had kept at bay for decades surged forward.  He felt as confused as the Watcher sounded.  He had no reasonable explanation for his actions, other than what he had been told by his family for the entirety of his unlife.  He was a bloody awful vampire.

“Honestly?”  Spike asked, and the man nodded.  Curiosity pushed hints of Rupert past his Ripper persona.  “I don’t know.  I just…” Spike lifted his hand helplessly and his eyes cut away.  He was well and truly lost, and he had no clue on how to find himself again.  “It didn’t seem right.”

The man watched him stoically.  The factory creaked as it settled around them and the stench of kerosene was burning Spike’s sensitive nostrils.

“The Summers women are quite remarkable.  I have yet to meet someone who isn’t fundamentally affected by them.”  Giles intoned.

Well, that just brassed him the fuck off.  He was a master vampire, as in masterfully striking fear into the hearts of the innocent while painting entire villages red with blood.  He had been remorselessly terrorizing people for decades; they certainly did not affect him.  Especially not some flock of fluttering females bent on making him their group rehabilitation project.

“That’s not it at all.  I could give a good goddamn about any of those wretched women.  I just don’t like to nosh on babies.  Bad for the digestion,” he snarled.

The Watcher-man’s brow set itself into a vee and Spike didn’t like the look of it at all.  “That’s not what your histories indicated.”  If his tone were any icier it would have frozen Spike’s arse cheeks together.

Spike crossed his arms defensively, glancing away.  “Dru has a taste for the little ones.  Had to make her happy.”  Spike looked back at the man, his eyes narrowed maliciously.  “It’s what a man does for the woman he loves.  Keeps her happy.  Keeps her safe.”  Spike’s voice was silky as he went in for the kill.  Watcher-man didn’t keep his bird safe.  If Spike was going to die, then at least he was going to cause a little damage before thumbing the world goodbye.

The Watcher’s full mouth thinned and a white line throbbed at his temple.  “You’re not a man.  You are a demon.  A monster.  Just like him.”

Spike didn’t reply as the man pivoted on his heel to walk over to the banquet table.  He sprayed down the wood, tossing the empty bottle into the center.  He fished around his front pocket as he turned back to Spike.  He flipped open a silver lighter, similar to Spike’s, and the flame danced as the Watcher looked over at him.  Spike could have sworn the man’s eyes were yellow in the light.

“This is your one and only pass, vampire.”  He lit the end of the fabricated torch, and then threw the lighter into the center of the table where it instantly flamed into a wall of fire.

Spike didn’t have to be told twice.  He reached down, yanking frantically at the wires that imprisoned him.

“What’s this?  Company?  You should have rung ahead.  We would have set out appetizers.”  Angelus’ voice boomed from the open doorway.  Drusilla twittered, and Spike felt a sense of unease run down his spine.  The idea of two master vampires like Angelus and Drusilla being in any danger when facing a mere human was ludicrous, but there was something about the Watcher that set Spike’s teeth on edge.  He suspected physical weakness wouldn’t serve as a hindrance to the man.  His rage would give him all the strength he would need.

“Dru.  Quick.  Come help me,” he called.  He was somewhat surprised when she floated over to him, giving the Watcher a wide berth.  Then again, Dru always had a knack for feeling out situations, especially those fueled by human suffering.  She undoubtedly knew the Watcher was more dangerous than he seemed.

She freed him easily, and it only enforced his own feelings of inadequacy.  All that was pushed down as the Watcher roared and attacked.  He swung with viciousness that Spike thought only reserved for the soulless.  Flames leapt up the factory walls, the heat as intense as any hell dimension.  Spike’s skin itched as he remembered the last time he was caught in fire’s burning embrace.

The Watcher’s bat caught Angelus upside the head with enough force to make the master vampire stumble to his knees.

“God.  He’s going to kill him,” Spike gasped with awe.

The Watcher drew back for a downward swing, but Angelus countered with a boot to the man’s gut.  He flew across the room and skidded to a stop on the cement.

Drusilla clapped her hands in delight, bouncing on her toes.  Angelus flashed her a heroic grin that made Spike sick to his stomach.

Suddenly, the doors burst open and the Slayer was there, full of righteous fury.  Her blonde hair tousled, her cheeks flushed and her eyes sparkling with more than battle lust.  She was gorgeous.  Truly, the Valkyrie he compared her to at Halloween.

She zeroed in on Angelus with intensity that sent a shiver down Spike’s spine.  The girl was in a killing mood and he didn’t want his dark goddess anywhere in the Slayer’s vicinity.

“Time to go, luv.”  He clasped his hand over hers where it lay on his shoulder.  She didn’t respond and he gave her long fingers a tight squeeze.  She tore her worshipful gaze off Angelus and graced him with a look. “Time to go,” he repeated.

She glanced around the factory, flames reflecting in the dark glass of her eyes.  She gifted him with the fey smile he adored, and pushed him towards the back exit.  She took them across the street to hide in the shadows while waiting for Angelus.

It wasn’t long before the larger man exited the fire-engulfed building like a bat out of hell. He was smoking, and Spike wouldn’t be surprised if his coattails were on fire.  Dru broke away to swoon in Angelus’ arms.  Normally, Spike would be upset at having to be subjected to a display of their kissy-face, but his attention was riveted by the tableau across the street.

The Slayer and Watcher were on their knees on the pavement, the burning building casting them in orange, hellish light.  He could see their tears and despair etched on their faces.  The roar of the flames was too loud for him to hear their words, but it was unnecessary.  Grief doesn’t need words.  It’s written into every line of the body.

“That’s what human suffering looks like,” he whispered to himself.  “That’s what loss is.”

Disclaimer:  I don’t own or profit from Btvs.

A/N:  Look.  How many times does Spike have to say it?  He’s a vampire, dammit!

Thanks so much to ObscureBookWyrm for her wonderful editing skills.  All mistakes are due to my tweaking.

Spoilers:  I Only Have Eyes For You

Remember When

Chapter Thirteen

That bastard, Angelus, didn’t believe in love.  He thought it was an infection, a disease, an infestation to be scoured away.  Why complete arseholes like him managed to have so many women pining after them was a mystery that Spike had been trying to answer since before his turning.  It seemed the worse you treated a woman, the more she adored you.  Perhaps he should take a page from Angelus’ playbook and start treating Dru like dirt.  She clearly preferred it to his loving caresses, and who was he to say no to his dark princess?

He had long since begun to suspect that his touches only reminded Drusilla of what she lost in her turning.  A small part of her, the fragile, damaged girl cowering deep inside, craved the humanity he displayed towards her, but a larger part resented it.  He loved her, but she was incapable of reciprocating finer emotion, so she lashed out with unstable bouts of cruelty interspersed with cold affection. 

The Judge said she had remnants of humanity, but those tattered shreds couldn’t form something as lasting and pure as love.  Love was supposed to be forever.  It was something to strive for, something to cherish and protect.  It was worth fighting for, and should never be given up on.  But Gods, he was so tired of fighting for something he would never have.  Here they were, all eternal and what not, but not eternally in love.  It just wasn’t right.  This wasn’t what he imagined when he said yes to Dru all those decades ago.

So, what exactly was he living his unlife for, if not for love?  Was he supposed to spend the next hundred, two hundred, five hundred years serving a loveless mistress?  Could he do that?  Could he continue such an existence?  And what would happen to him if he did?  Would a loveless unlife eventually crush the humanity from him, until he was the proper vampire his family expected him to be?

He rolled his head against the rough brick, his throat long and exposed as he squinted at the orange sky.  The sun was slung low on the horizon, and he estimated there was only a half hour of light before dusk, leaving him just enough time to feed and return to the mansion before his sires awoke from their deep, violence-sated sleep.  Angelus and Dru returned after their ‘vile kill’ and had fallen onto each like sharks in a feeding frenzy.  He hoped their stupor would prevent them from realizing he was sneaking out on shaky, barely healed legs to feed from his first living person in months.  He had traversed the sewers leading to the alleyways in downtown Sunnydale, desperately searching for a homeless person sleeping it off in the shadows, but no such luck.  Sunnydale had an unsurprising lack of homelessness.  Vagabonds avoided the town where they were sure to become two-legged meals in their first night.  The alleys were empty of everything except overflowing trash bins.  This last alley was ripe with rotten food from the deli next door.

He braced his back on the sooty brick, his toe tracing the clear-cut line between shadow and sunlight.  The west wall of the building cast a deep pool of darkness, allowing him to edge close to the lip of the alley where it emptied out onto the sidewalk.  If he was very lucky, and very fast, he could snare his prey before his hands burned too badly in the sunlight.

He heard the quick skip of footsteps, along with the steady beat of a healthy heart.  This was it – a proper meal.  He braced his feet slightly apart, bending his knees.  He closed his eyes, using his predator senses to hone in on his prey.  The heartbeat drew even with the alleyway and with vampiric sped, Spike struck.  He grabbed the tasty morsel by the arm, swinging her out of the sunlight in a wide arc, and cracking her temple hard on the bricks beside him.  He was on her in less than a full beat of her heart, sinking his fangs into the curve between her neck and shoulder.

Her scent hit him before her taste.  He almost recoiled before his fangs were fully embedded, but then liquid bliss shot into his mouth and the entirety of his heavy masculine weight fell on her, pinning her beneath him.

*~*~*

Buffy was trapped in the hell of her own thoughts as she hurried towards the ice-cream shop to pick up Dawn before the sun set.  She didn’t want her sister wandering alone around downtown at night, especially with the threat of Angelus lingering overhead.  She glanced at the heavy, sinking sun and quickened her steps.

The confrontation with Angel last night had been simultaneously traumatic and cathartic.  After all these months she still couldn’t understand how it was possible for Angel to just wake up one day and be utterly devoid of love for her.  Logically, she understood the absence of his soul stole away all his ability to love, but emotionally she couldn’t comprehend it.  Love was forever.  It was eternal.  It shouldn’t be regulated by something as transparent and unassuming as a soul, but it was.   Angel lost his soul and magically he no longer loved her.  He hadn’t the ability, the capacity, or the emotional wherewithal to do so.  Logically, it all seemed so simple.  No soul, no love.

Except…

There was Spike to consider: soulless, evil, bloodsucking, baby sister saving Spike.  The man who gave up bagging his third Slayer to keep Drusilla, his queen, his goddess, his reason for unliving, safe.  The demon who gave morally skewed advice to her little sister on how to deal with school bullies.  The vampire who controlled his hunger and sacrificed a minion to keep Dawn safe.

He was the source of her turmoil.  If it wasn’t for his actions she could easily acknowledge the Council’s view that vampires were incapable of love.  That knowledge would allow her to forgive Angel, and accept that Angelus was an irredeemable demon.  It would soothe the silent scream of agony that rent her soul every second of the day, because it would mean that Angel’s inability to love her wasn’t a choice, it was simply a symptom of soullessness.

So how was it that Spike could love and not Angelus?  Was it possible for the power of love to breach the barriers of soullessness?  And if so, why couldn’t Angel love her enough to tame the beast inside?  Was it because she wasn’t special enough?  Wasn’t she worth loving?

It was the same series of maddening questions that had spiraled around in her mind for months.  Giles’ reassurances that soulless vampires were incapable of loving had nearly soothed them into submission, and then Spike had done the unimaginable.  He had reined in his starving demon, practically had tea with Dawn to hear her tell it, and then saved her life by sacrificing his own minion.

It was inconceivable and something that even Giles in all his seeming omniscience couldn’t answer.

She was deep in her thoughts, unprepared when the assault came.  She was never attacked in the daylight.  The day was her time to be ‘just Buffy’, a normal girl who attended high school, suffered through torturously boring classes about economics, and giggled with her friends at lunch.  This is supposed to be my off time, she thought as she was swung out of the sunlight into the shadows, right before her temple cracked on the brick wall.

She almost didn’t feel the fangs pierce her neck.

She blinked away stars as her heels were kicked apart to keep her off balance and a heavy weight pinned her from behind.  She braced her palms, her bare flesh abrading on the brick, and tried to push herself off the wall.  Large, masculine hands covered hers, and strong arms forced pressure on the bends of her elbows, breaking her resistance.  She found herself focusing inanely on the chipped black paint on a flat, male thumbnail.

*~*~*

It had been a month since he scented her, since he smelled Kent in the summertime – a month of hating her while agonizingly training his legs to hold his weight.  A month of planning her bloody, painful demise.  He bit down hard, her blood flooding his mouth and going straight to his cock.  He hadn’t had sex in months, and hardly a proper wank.  His eyes rolled up at the thought of Buffy’s blood flooding his mouth while her tight heat strangled his cock.

Growling, Spike pressed his chest into her shoulders and canted his hips away from hers.  There was no way he was going to rub his cock against the ass of a little girl!  A little girl who is woman enough to yank the soul right out of a man.

He jerked and his fangs tore at her flesh.

“Ow.  Spike.”  Her voice was watery with tears.  She struggled against him, and he shifted his hips forward to pin her.  Fire erupted across his skin where their bodies met.  He adjusted his grip on her arm, his fingers dragging against something on her wrist.  His larger hand covered her smaller fist at the level of their eyes.  Their wrists lined up side-by-side and her slightly dingy, woven band of ivory with a zig zag of emerald shot through the center brushed against his nearly identical black and red band.  The bracelet he had yet to remove even though it had been weeks since it was wrapped around his wrist.  Even though it was a meaningless token from an irrelevant human child who should mean nothing more to him than a source of food. 

Dawn’s tear-stained face flashed before his eyes.

He yanked his fangs out of Buffy’s throat, pressing his ridged forehead to the hollow where her neck and shoulder met.  He panted hard, displacing her hair.

“You bit me.”  Her voice was sad and accusatory.  He swore he heard betrayal.

“I didn’t mean to.  I didn’t know it was you,” he defended stupidly before he could rein in his loose tongue.  He tightened his grip on her wrists, keeping his weight pressed evenly to pin her to the wall.  He didn’t want her to get away, but he wasn’t eating her either.  His rock-hard erection brushed against her heart-shaped arse.  What exactly was he supposed to be doing with her?

“You just thought I was your next meal.”  Her tone was like ice, cold, hard and heavy, crushing the life from his chest.  It jerked him out of the euphoria of tasting her blood.

“Christ,” he hissed, his demon melting away with a crunch of cartilage.  “I swear to all that’s unholy I will kill you.  I have to kill you.”  He sounded desperate.  He sounded like a man whose last hope hinged on the grace of God and who knew miracles weren’t for the likes of him.

He pressed his mouth against her wound, but his fangs didn’t drop.  He alternately sucked and lapped at the small holes.  He wasn’t feasting on her or healing her.  Fuck!  What the hell was he doing? 

Relishing her, came the unbidden thought.

“Spike, stop.”  Her voice was shaky, and a new scent hit him.  Arousal.  It was rich with vitality and power.  It was beyond any temptation he ever encountered before.

He traced the line of her neck with his nose, stopping to nuzzle her behind the ear.  “Slayer likes to be bitten,” he sing-songed with a breathy whisper.  “Baby likes to play in the dark.”

He could feel the unrelenting stiffness of her body from the top of his chest all the way to his crotch.  It didn’t stop him from fitting the length of his erection into the crease of her ass.

“Get off me, you pig!”

She tried to force herself off the wall, but he still had her arms tangled with his.  She stomped on his foot with true vindictive viciousness, but he just laughed.  He wore steel-toed boots for more than the extra weight behind his kicks.

He flattened his tongue against her vibrating flesh and lapped long and hard along the line of her shoulder.  He reached his bite and drew another deep pull.

“You really going to do this to me?  To Dawn?”

“Shut up,” he growled.  “I haven’t done a soddin’ thing to you.  Yet.”  He nipped her with blunt teeth.  “You little girls best remember what I am.”

“Oh, we know what you are, Spike.  You’re a monster,” she spat.

“And don’t you forget it!”  His body was tense with frustration.  If he was such a bloody monster why hadn’t he ripped out her throat yet?  And why did her accusation make him more brassed off than satisfied?  He’d been trying to tell these little girls for months that he was a monster, and now that it finally sunk in, he wanted to rip out his hair and howl.

“Spike!”

Spike leapt off Buffy with speed that was shocking.  He hadn’t even known he could move that fast.  Buffy spun off the wall, but instead of rushing out of the alley, she turned her back to fuss with the collar of her jacket.  He was oddly touched that she was trying to hide his bad behavior from Snack Size.

Wait!  Bad behavior?  Fucking vampire here!

It did beg the question as to why she was hiding it.  She couldn’t possibly be trying to protect him, which meant she was looking out for her little sister’s feelings.  A small projectile launched itself at his chest, rocking him back on his heels.  He told himself that he wrapped his arms around the little girl to steady their precarious stance, not because he missed the warmth of her small body.

“’Lo, Snack Size.”

“You’re walking!” Dawn beamed up at him and he blinked.  Had anyone since his human sisters ever looked up at him with such innocent enthusiasm?  “That’s so great.”

Her genuine pleasure at his recovery rocked him.  He had to keep it a secret from his own family for fear of the painful retribution it would bring.  As a cripple he was subject to degrading victimization, but at least there was veneer of shelter to it.  While unable to walk he wasn’t considered a threat.  And if he wasn’t a threat, then he didn’t need to be brutally subjugated by his sires in order to reassure themselves of his loyalty by breaking any hint of resistance in him.

But this family gloried in his recovery.  They were happy for him.  He cut his eyes to the blonde teenager.  Well, maybe only the one girl.  The other was looking pretty brassed off at the moment.

“Yeah, Bit.  All healed up.  Still a little shaky though.  Wouldn’t want to have a go with big sis.”

Suicidal, that.  Pointing out his weakness while the Slayer was standing right beside him, wearing his bite like a mark of possession.  The taste of her still coated his mouth, and he could feel the small sips he took working their magic through his ravaged body.  A few deep pulls of Slayer blood would heal him completely and give him added power.  The Slayer was truly a magnificent creature, right down to her DNA.  Spike couldn’t help gazing at her appreciatively, but Dawn was dismissive of her sister.  The young girl’s entire focus was on her best undead friend in all the world and she never noticed how Buffy was fussing with her hair, trying to cover the wound on her neck. 

“Now you can totally get away from that jerky-face Angel.  You shouldn’t have to stay with him.  He’s awful.  Hey!  Maybe you can stay with us.”

“Whah!”  Buffy jumped like a scalded cat, choking on her tongue, but Dawn continued to rattle on uninterrupted.

“You like should have totally seen it.  Angel was all ‘grrrr’ and chased us down the hall.”  The little girl made a snarly face and curled her hands like claws, but she dropped them quickly as she continued to prattle on, bouncing on the balls of her feet with excitement as she told her story. 

“I thought for sure he was gonna get us.  I was so scared I almost peed my pants.  I’ve never been that scared in my whole life, not even when Mom told me Buffy was in the hospital for crazy people.  And then he—he--- burst into flames and I didn’t know what to do.”  She sniffled, hastily swiping at her wet cheeks.  Dalton, the skinny, balding, unlikely hero, would always have a place in her heart.  “I was all burnt and blistered and trying to hide it from my mom, and Buffy was all ‘you’re such a dummy, Dawnie’ and I was all, ‘but Spike’s my friend’ and she was like, ‘don’t be stupid vampires can’t be emo’ and I was like ‘oh yah, then why’d his friend saved me.’  And you know what?  She couldn’t explain it, so you see, you totally have to come live with us, ‘cause you can’t stay there with crazy, fangy Angel.  I know he’s the one who beat you up.  Buffy’s gonna say no, ‘cause you’re totally in love with some vampy hobiscuit, but if you really love her I guess she can come, too.  But she has to promise to mind her manners.”

She took a deep breath, readying herself to launch into another run-on sentence, but she cast a quick glance at Buffy who was staring with dumbfounded horror and exhaled in a rush.  Buffy, stunned into near catatonia by Dawn’s insane word vomit, had forgotten that she was trying to hide Spike’s bite mark.  It was a vibrant, mottled red and purple against her pale skin.  Dawn squinted, canting towards her sister, before her head whipped around, her pigtails flying as her narrowed gaze lighted on Spike with preadolescent fury. 

Something sharp and heavy sunk deep into Spike’s guts.  As Snack Size rushed through the baffling arrangement of words that somehow denoted a sense of concern for his welfare, he was buffeted by a montage of emotions he was ill-equipped to process.  Amusement first, because damned if she wasn’t a cute little firecracker, her eyes lit up with excitement.  Then came guilt, concern and anger at all she suffered because of Angelus.  But the most bewildering of all was the warmth that spread from the vicinity of his unbeating heart, down his limbs, and into his fingers and toes, when he realized she genuinely cared for him.  He was dead certain that if asked right now if he was her friend, she would reply with an unequivocal and resounding ‘yes!’  And that was something to marvel at.  Because Spike, William the Bloody Awful Poet and Vampire had never, not once, while living or unliving, ever had a friend.

As quickly as the feeling blossomed it was gone, because he had already lost her before he knew what he had.

The little girl vibrated with uncharacteristic silence, as if the deluge of words dammed behind her tongue were churning to be freed.  The moment stretched into eternity.  As long as he had known her, the little girl had never been quiet for such an extended time. 

“You bit my sister?”  The words were barely a rush of air.  Her lower lip quivered and her big blue eyes were filled with so much hurt betrayal, Spike thought it might spill over and drown half of Main Street.

“Well, now.  Bit is such a dirty word.  Jus’ had a nibble is all.”  He shoved his hands in his duster pockets, resisting the urge to wave them in the negative.  He felt like a naughty schoolboy who’d been caught choking his pecker.

“You bit her?” she repeated forcefully.  As if she could make the truth disintegrate under the potency of her disapproval.

Her face screwed up and her cheeks flamed red.  Spike absently wondered if she was going to bawl like a two year old whose toy was taken away.  He shifted his weight, caught between the urge to beg forgiveness or run for the nearest sewer entrance.  He was unprepared for her swift kick, her hard-formed Mary Janes denting his shin.

“Ow!  Bloody, buggering fuck!”  He leapt back, hopping on one foot so he could massage the sharp pain.

Rage breathed fire inside his chest, spilling out of him in waves.  It was all so bloody unfair!  He should have snapped her neck Halloween night and been done with it.  Vampires were not supposed to have friends.  Vampires didn’t disappoint or betray people, because no one in their right mind ever trusted one.  She was just a foolish little child and he was an aged, master vampire.  He knew the right of things, and dammit, she would listen to him for once.  He bent slightly at the waist so he could look Snack Size in the eyes, spitting his words between tightly clenched teeth.

“Listen up, you stupid little brat, ‘cause I’m only goin’ say this one more time.  I’m.  A.   Soddin’.  Vampire!”  All the anger, insecurity and confusion he had felt since he landed in this miserable little town rushed to the forefront.  He threw back his head and roared the last word while in vamp face, his own fangs splitting his lip in his fury.

He didn’t see Buffy’s perfectly executed roundhouse that landed square in his chest, propelling him backwards into a cluster of garbage cans, creating enough racket to make normal denizens stop and look.  The Sunneydalers on Main Street merely walked a little faster, blinders firmly in place.  By the time he pulled himself out of the rancid refuse the two girls were standing deep in dazzling late afternoon sunlight, far from his reach where he crouched in the shadows.

They shared similar looks of despair and disappointment that only sisters could perfect.  He felt something inside him shrink and whimper.  It hurt deep inside where emotion had long since died.

“I’m the baddest of the bad.  A soulless bastard.”

He lashed out against the rubbish bins, tossing them against the sooty brick wall and smashing them over his knee.  He snarled, hissed and spat.  He raged like the demon he was.

Exhausted, he sank to his knees, his newly rejuvenated body still weak.  He lifted his head, his amber eyes meeting watery blue.

“Evil.”  He motioned to himself.  “Why don’t you chits get that?”

Dawn cowered in the sunlight, staring back at Spike in the shadows, just as she had done to another monster not so long ago.  Was that what Spike was?  A monster?  Someone---Something to be afraid of?  How could she have been so wrong?  How could she have distrusted her sister?  How could he not belong to them?

“You know…  When we thought you were dead, we cried for you.  Buffy sobbed about how sorry she was for killing you, and I totally blew her off.  When she refused to feed you, I called her stupid and told her you were our friend.  She told me sorry, but you were a vampire and not ours to help.  But you know what?  She has nothing to be sorry about.  You aren’t our friend.  You are a monster.”

The intensity of the pain her words caused made him want to vomit.  He had been subject to many expressions of horror, terror, sorrow and agony over the decades, but their look of betrayal struck him as the worst he had ever experienced.  He opened his mouth to say something, to defend himself, but there was nothing to be said.  He was a monster.

Buffy tugged Dawn away with one last sad glance and then they were gone.  The sunlight, framed between tall, listing buildings, remained empty.  He pressed his palm to the ridges on his forehead, his eyes clenched against the pain of his body inside and out.

“I’m a sodding vampire,” he hissed, but the only ones that heard him were the scurrying rats beneath the trash.

*~*~*

The girls ran down the street, their view swimming with tears.  Finally, Dawn could go no further.  She bent at the waist, her hands tucked to her aching sides as she shuddered with bone-wracking sobs.

“I’m sorry, Dawnie.  So sorry.”  Buffy stroked her sister’s long, brown hair, grieving with her.  They both felt as though they had lost something monumental.  Something completely irreplaceable.

“I don’t get it.  I don’t get it at all.”  Doubled over, Dawn panted into her knees.  Buffy swiped her eyes.  She needed to see her surroundings to make sure Dawn was safe, but she kept tearing up.  She felt her sister’s pain resonating in her own chest.

“He’s a vampire, Dawn.  You can’t trust them.  You can’t trust any of them.”

Emotionally and physically sapped, Dawn collapsed to her knees.  “Not even Angel?  I mean souled Angel.”

Buffy fell to her knees beside her.  They were on the side of the road, kneeling in the scrubby grass still wet from the sprinklers, and she didn’t care.  She didn’t care that her jeans were getting stained or that someone was going to see them.  All she cared about was her sister.

“I…”  What to say about Angel?  It would be so easy to say that he would never have betrayed her if he hadn’t lost his soul, but Dawn made a point.  Angel was a vampire, souled or not.  His true nature was just being repressed.  Suppressed.  Bottled up with a cork that could pop at any time.  The soul was just a lie, a cover for the truth.  Buffy reeled with the magnitude of her realization.

“You can’t trust them,” Buffy reiterated.

“How do you know?”

“What do you mean?”  Buffy flipped Dawn’s long pigtail over her shoulder, so she could see her sister’s profile.

“How do you know if anyone is ever telling the truth about themselves?  Not just vampires, but anyone.  The counselors at school are always going on about how actions are supposed to speak louder than words, but what about when actions are lies too?  I mean, Spike is always harping on how evil he is and how he’s a vampire, but until now his actions didn’t mesh with whole ‘grrr I’m the Big Bad’ thing he has going on.  What does that mean, Buffy?  How am I supposed to know who to trust?”

Dawn was looking up at her with big, wet eyes, begging for answers to unanswerable questions, and Buffy shattered.  She hunched forward, her hands cupped over her face.  She could feel true gut wrenching sobs building just beneath her breastbone, and she forced herself to take full breaths to fight them back down.  How did one know whom to trust?  Only a few months ago she would have trusted Angel with her life, and look how that turned out.  His inability to control his demon and love her despite his nature was the ultimate betrayal.  How does one prevent misplacement of their trust?  Was it all just some huge cosmic crapshoot?  Was life peppered with disappointment and heartache?  Buffy thought of their mother.  The man she promised to love and cherish for eternity left her for a younger woman, and she was so desperate to have someone in her life she let herself be fooled by a robot.  Was that the only example for them to follow?  That compromise was preferable to being alone and that eventually betrayal would rear its ugly head?

Buffy roughly scrubbed her eyes and dropped her hands so she could look at Dawn.  “I don’t know, Dawnie.  I’m still trying to figure it out myself.  Consistency maybe?  If people prove themselves trustworthy over and over, then you can trust them?”

“But for them to do that you already have to trust them.  How do you start to trust someone?  Should we even bother?”

Dawn’s words broke her heart.  Twelve years old and already jaded.

“Of course, we should.  You can’t have love without trust, and I don’t think life is worth living without love.  So no matter how much it hurts, we have to keep trusting.  We just gotta be wiser about it, is all.  No more vampires for either of us.  Cold turkey!”  She lifted her hand, pinky finger extended.  She smiled brightly, but she could feel it wobble around the edges.  Dawn returned a wan smile and gripped her pinky with hers.

“No more vampires,” she agreed.  “Cold turkey.”