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Author's Chapter Notes:
thanks for all the wonderful reviews they really make the fingers type faster.
hope you all enjoy the next bit.
Buffy woke up in her own bed. Dawn was asleep by her side and Willow and Kennedy were snuggled up together on her sofa. She felt great. She’d had the best sleep she’d had in ages.

She looked around her room trying to remember why everyone was sleeping in her room. It seemed very strange. Sleep over it had to be a sleep over, they’d all fallen asleep talking.

Buffy grabbed her robe and went in search of coffee. Her head felt like it needed coffee. She didn’t even notice the ring on her finger. She wandered through the apartment towards the kitchen; it seemed she was first up and would have to make the coffee. Something she had learned to do although cooking was still a mystery to her: she had mastered the art of putting water in the coffee machine and turning on the switch. And she’d only forgotten to put coffee in twice. Buffy smiled at the thought. A whole new skill that didn’t involve weapons.

Rona and Viv hadn’t slept at all. They had patrolled into the night: a local cemetery had been a little busy and they had come home hyper. They had been fighting each other on the Xbox and hadn’t noticed the sun come up, but they did notice the smell of coffee and followed the aroma towards the newly brewed pot in the kitchen.

‘Morning Buffy,’ Rona said. ‘How are you feeling this morning after all the revelations?’

‘Huh?’ Came the confused reply.

‘Spike, the ring, Riley Finn? Ring any bells?’

‘And again I say, Huh?’ Buffy looked confused.

Viv and Rona looked at each other and nodded slowly.

‘Buffy,’ asked Viv, ‘where are Dawn, Kennedy and Willow?’

‘My room, looks like we had a sleepover.’

‘Well why don’t we make coffee and tea for all and go and have a little talk?’ Viv suggested.

Buffy looked at their faces. Obviously something was up but she was damned if she could remember anything unusual from the day before.

Buffy grabbed a tray, filled it with drinks and headed back upstairs to her room. Willow and Kennedy were just waking up; Dawn was nowhere to be seen. Buffy looked around the room.

‘Where’s Dawn?’

‘Bathroom,’ Kennedy mumbled, grabbing a welcome mug. She passed the cup of tea to Willow and sat back down on the couch.

‘What’s this all about? An intervention?’ Willow asked. ‘What have I done this time?’ She added with a smile.

Viv smiled and Rona laughed. ‘Nothing yet, but we need you to do a little spell when Dawn gets back.’

‘O…K…’ she said slowly, ‘but I need to know why.’

‘I can’t tell you yet, but it’s important, and it will be harder than it should, but please believe me, it’s important.’

Rona looked so worried that Willow felt her heart go out to the young slayer. Life had been tough for the girl and she rarely asked for anything.
Willow nodded and waited quietly until Dawn reappeared.

‘Right,’ Willow began, ‘what do you need me to do?’

‘Seal the room with wards then cast a spell to bring back hidden memories. You did a truth spell yesterday and we got hundreds of memories back; Viv and I can still remember them, but you four seem to have forgotten everything that happened. So whatever was stopping us remembering yesterday has come back.’

Willow concentrated for a second. Her hair turned white and she started shaking.

‘That was way harder than it should have been,’ she commented.

The memories hit her and Willow was mad. The spell reset itself every time they fell asleep and they had found it time after time only to forget all the details again the next morning. Someone was going to pay for messing with them.

‘Right, here we go. I’m breaking this once and for all. Buffy, I need the scythe; Dawn, I need a couple of spots of blood. I’m sure in a room inhabited with slayers one of them will have a knife.’ Rona smirked, reached into her boot and pulled out a slim knife with a mean looking blade and handed it to Dawn.

Dawn looked carefully at it.

‘It’s clean, I haven’t stabbed anyone with it without cleaning it afterwards,’ Rona added.

Buffy laid the scythe on Willow’s lap. The witch could feel the power running through it. It was a battery of good, white power and for the second time in her life she was tapping into it. The spell to free all the power of the slayers hadn’t even dented the enormous power contained within the weapon.

Dawn dropped a couple of specks of blood onto the blade and it glowed green before fading. The power spread up into Willow and she concentrated on freeing them all from the spell that had stripped them of their memories again.

She traced the spell backwards at the same time. It led towards Giles - and someone else. Someone evil, twisted, unclean. Willow could feel the mark of Eyghon burning deep on Giles, its tendrils running up and surrounding his heart and digging deep into his memories as well.

She fractured the spell carefully, ensuring that it looked like it was still in place if anyone looked. It would take a very powerful witch to even suspect there was a problem. She also stopped it reasserting itself every time they slept. This spell was ended on them, but not the others. They would need the cover if they were to find out what was happening.

Willow fell forward, her hair darkening to its normal red. Kennedy passed her the rest of her tea and Willow gave her beloved a weak smile.

Buffy was stunned: so many memories. So much love from Spike.

She thought about the first memory that had hit her again.

‘I love you,’ she had told him.

‘No you don’t pet, but thanks for saying it,’ Spike replied. They had been sitting watching videos with Dawn when Buffy finally said the words he had been longing to hear and when she said them he’d got a sleeping Dawn on his shoulder and a dozen other potentials were scattered about him. He had no way of getting to her.

When he’d said those words her heart fell until she saw the look on his face.
‘Oh you idiot, I do love you,’ she said again and again, and leapt on him, tickling him into submission. She had woken Dawn with her leap and Dawn had joined in with the tickle fest.

Spike had suddenly looked straight in Buffy’s eyes and seen nothing there but love. True and uncomplicated love. Spike had melted completely.
He had picked Buffy up and carried her down to the basement and his cot. They had made love sweetly and gently all night, but every time she whispered ‘I love you,’ he’d said ‘No you don’t, pet’. It had taken until dawn for him to allow her to say it and him to return the love in words and actions.

Buffy felt the tears on her face again. It had become their ‘thing’: one of them would say ‘I love you’ and the other would grin and say ‘No you don’t, but thanks for saying it,’ and when Sunnydale had collapsed Spike had believed her, he knew that she loved him, he was just answering in the way they always had between them.

There was even worse to come from her memories. Buffy could remember the happiness she felt when, 6 weeks after Sunnydale…

The tears came again. Dawn and Willow just held her tightly, giving her their love and unconditional support.

‘Can you talk sweetie?’ Asked Willow softly.

Buffy nodded, her eyes filling with tears again.

‘My baby, my baby,’ she sobbed.

‘What baby?’ Dawn’s voice was soft and gentle.

‘I was pregnant: after Sunnydale, I was pregnant and Giles gave me something to drink and I lost the baby. He just gave me a drink. I know there was something in it. I know there was something in it. And within a day I lost the baby.’

Willow was stunned. They had not believed that Giles could turn on Buffy, but this, this was horrendous. Willow’s deep faith in Gaia was shaken, all life was sacred, and to take an innocent life was despicable.

Rona and Viv didn’t know what to do. Dawn was crying, and although Rona was another Faith, tough and hard faced, she held the girl in her arms and rocked her. Viv wrapped a blanket around Willow and Buffy. They were both shaking from shock and the exertion of the spell.

Willow started talking.

‘I could feel that demon, the one that Ripper went crazy on.’

‘Ripper?’ Questioned Kennedy.
‘Giles, when he was younger, wasn’t our staid and tweed-wearing Giles, he was a rebel, and studied dark magic.’

‘Well it’s come back to bite him in the arse,’ Dawn pointed out. ‘Just like Spike said it does.’

‘Well we’ll make sure this bites him.’ Willow said, her eyes flashing dark for a second.





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