The first thing Dawn noticed when she opened her eyes was the privacy curtain.

It hadn’t been there when she’d gone to sleep.

She wasn’t exactly sure what time it was, but despite the light beyond the curtain, everything was still and hushed in that way you only get in the early morning.

The second thing she noticed was Spike’s boots – with Spike’s feet in them – splayed out on the floor alongside the bed.

Dawn gingerly leaned over the side to see him sitting up against the wall, eyes shut, duster spread over him like a blanket. Just as she was about to prod him awake, his eyes opened and his breathing stopped.

She let out an embarrassingly girly yip.

“‘Lo, Bit,” he said, his voice deep and gravelly with sleep.

Dawn cocked her head to one side, taking in his blood-flecked skin and the smell of cigarettes and alcohol on his breath. “She kick you out?”

Spike scowled. “No.”

“So why’re you sleeping on my floor?” Her eyes narrowed. “You stormed off in a huff, didn’t you?”

He rolled his eyes. “Why can’t you be all self-absorbed and oblivious like the other chits your age?”

Dawn shrugged. “Just special, is all.”

He laid his coat over his lap and moved forward so his arms were resting on the edge of the bed. He was keeping his distance, and it was confusing the hell out of Dawn.

Then she remembered that the last time she’d seen him she’d been crying and begging him not to kill her. “I’ve never been scared of you, you know,” she said. “I was just kinda woozy and I didn’t recognize your other face.”

“You see too much,” Spike whispered, reaching up to tuck a strand of hair behind her ear.

Dawn snorted. “Like you could ever hide how you feel.”

Spike frowned while his eyes danced. “You should be scared of me. ‘M a big nasty vampire.”

Dawn rolled her eyes. “I’m so scared I can hardly contain myself,” she deadpanned. “And in heels I tower over you, Mr Big Bad.”

“By a whopping half an inch! At most,” Spike said petulantly.

Dawn rolled her eyes and shifted over in the bed. “Come sit?”

He got up and draped his duster over the end of the bed, before starting a good-natured shoving war to get into position. It was such a familiar process that, despite the frenzy of movement, it soothed both of them. But it was more exertion than Dawn was ready for, and she was panting and seeing spots by the time they came to a stop.

“Shouldn’t’ve done that,” Spike said, worried. “Your little heart’s goin’ gangbusters.”

“It’s really gross when you do that, y’know,” Dawn wheezed, wrinkling her nose.

“So I should play human?”

“John was pretty good at it.”

Spike flicked her ear.

“Ow!” Dawn howled. She tried to tickle him, but she was weak and slow, and Spike had her arms pinned before she got anywhere near the right places.

“Ah-ah! You need to rest,” he said severely.

Dawn kept struggling for a while, glaring ferociously. But she really was exhausted, so after a token effort, she relaxed and let herself be held.

It was comforting to have the familiar Spike-smells of hair gel and smoke overlaying the hospital’s stench of antiseptic and bleach. Last year had taught her to share Buffy’s hatred of hospitals.

“Are you gonna burst into flames if they open the curtains?” Dawn asked muzzily as her eyes fluttered shut.

“Nah,” Spike said. She could hear the smile in his voice. “No windows.”

“They gonna make you leave if they find you here?”

“Pro’ly.”

Then Spike started petting her hair and she was asleep in seconds.

He fell asleep not long after, lulled by the steady thrum of Dawn’s heartbeat and the warmth of her body against his.

------------------------------------------

Tara’s eyes were scratchy and she felt light-headed and spacey from exhaustion. She hadn’t managed to sleep at all. Every time her head got quiet, she moved wrong and her back hurt enough to wake her up. Then by the time she got comfortable again, she was all keyed up and wakeful.

Even after boiling her skin lobster-red in the shower, she was cold, so she put on a dress that covered her almost completely, her fuzziest socks, and one of her warmer cardigans. Hoping coffee would at least make her warmer, if not more alert, Tara padded gingerly down the stairs.

The house was silent and still, except for the sound of Giles’ light snoring from the living room. But it was the perfect company: Tara knew she wasn’t alone, but didn’t actually have to interact with anyone.

She went to the front doorway, now criss-crossed with police tape in lieu of a door. There was a splintery stump where the tree used to be, and the lawn was nothing but scorched earth. It hadn’t hit her until then just how lucky they’d been. Without the spell, the house would never have survived the fire.

Tara shivered, promising herself to re-do it as soon as Giles woke up, and reached underneath the tape to pick up the Sunnydale Gazette from the mat.

When she reached the kitchen, Tara raised every blind. She stopped and closed her eyes for a moment to drink in the warmth of the early morning sunshine, luxuriating in the guilty pleasure.

While she waited for the coffee to percolate, she opened the paper to the classifieds and started looking through the apartments for rent.

------------------------------------------

Miraculously, the male nurse who brought in Dawn’s breakfast just winked and left them to it. Dawn wondered – not for the first time – if Spike had a thrall he wasn’t telling anyone about.

She picked at her high-iron, sugar-free breakfast until she’d eaten more than she wanted but enough to shut Spike up. Putting down her tray, Dawn turned to the chair the nurse had brought for Spike ‘for appearances’ and said brightly, “So what’s gonna happen with you and Buffy now?”

“Always with the easy questions, hey?” Spike grumbled, putting his feet up on the bed.

“You’re not leaving again, are you?” Dawn said, covering the vulnerability of the question by shoving Spike’s feet off the bed.

“Never leave you, Bit,” Spike said quickly. “Who’d keep me on the straight an’ narrow?”

“But what if she really does kick you out?” Dawn hated herself a little bit for the whine she couldn’t quite keep from her voice.

“I’ll come visit.”

“What if she disinvites you again?”

Spike sighed. “‘Spect you’d come see me.”

“I’m not allowed in cemeteries.”

Spike snorted. “Since when’ve you done what you were told?”

“Hey! I do what I’m told plenty.”

“Oh yeah?” Spike ostentatiously coughed his next words: “Little Miss Five-Finger-Discount.”

Dawn froze. “You didn’t tell Buffy, did you?” she squeaked.

“Course not! Only ones who know your dirty l’il secret are me, Anya an’ every soddin’ shop-manager in the Sunnydale Mall.”

“Not every shop!” Dawn stopped. “And quit trying to distract me!” She reached over to slap his shoulder. Dropping back onto her pillows and looking suddenly much younger, she added quietly, “I know you were sleeping with her … before.”

He gave Dawn a long look. “Sleepin’, pet. Only sleepin’.”

“You were totally boinking yesterday,” Dawn said coldly. “It was loud.”

Spike winced. “Not discussin’ my sex life with you,” he said sulkily.

Dawn sniggered. “What, afraid you’ll damage my poor, innocent, young mind?”

“Yes!”

“You’ve spent hours telling me stories about all the people you and Drusilla gruesomely murdered yet you refuse to talk to me about sex?”

“Murder’s … educational!”

“And sex isn’t? I’m all teenaged and hormonal! And let me tell you, sex ed is woefully inadequate.”

“We live on a Hellmouth! I’m far more worried about you being eaten up than eaten out.” Spike clamped a hand over his mouth. “Fuck me,” he mumbled.

Dawn giggled. “I’ve been reading my sister’s Cosmos since I was twelve, Spike. Chill.”

“Cosmo?” He shuddered. “I’m a vampire and their take on ‘how to please your man’ scares me shitless.”

Dawn rolled her eyes. “You’re hardly the poster boy for safe, sane and consensual.”

“Am for long-lastin’.” He smirked.

“I can’t believe you read Cosmo. Wait – stop changing the subject!” Dawn whined. “This is serious.”

Spike dropped the smirk.

“Are you and Buffy together now?” Dawn asked.

After a pause, Spike said, firmly and quietly, “No.” He sounded subdued and tired.

“Dumb question,” Dawn muttered. “Like you’d even be here if you were.”

“What now?” Spike asked, genuinely puzzled.

Dawn made a guttural, frustrated noise. “Look, if you had to choose between me and Buffy, who would you pick?”

Spike stared at her, his eyes haunted. “Don’ joke about that.”

“Not live-or-die, moron! Like … I dunno, dinner with me or patrol with her.”

Spike shifted uncomfortably. “Can’t I do both?”

“Would you stop hanging out with me if she told you to?” Dawn pressed.

Spike opened his mouth to say ‘of course not’, but something held him back. “What is this?” he asked finally, slightly dazed.

“No matter what happens between you and Buffy, I lose.”

“What? I always thought you wanted us together.”

“Not so much post-sex-bot.”

Spike shifted around uncomfortably in his chair. “We’ve talked about that.”

Dawn shrugged. “I might’ve got past it if she hadn’t died.”

“And now?”

“When you’re around her, it’s like everything and everyone else just disappears. You stop seeing me.”

“Dawn—”

“I get it. You love her. But if she ever decides she wants you, where do I fit in? Who’s left to notice me? She barely notices me now.”

“Buffy loves you!”

“She sure doesn’t show it,” Dawn said sulkily.

Spike sighed. When he’d come to see Dawn at the hospital, he’d expected … comfort, maybe? Not this. He didn’t know how to deal with this. Love was supposed to make everything alright. It was supposed to be enough.

“Was it so bad?” he asked, finally. “When we were—” He wanted to say ‘when we were a family’, but he lost his nerve. “When we couldn’t remember?” he finished quietly.

“No,” Dawn said slowly. “But Buffy was actually happy and you were … secure instead of crazy-needy.” Dawn gave him a sardonic half-smile. “And we both know neither of those things are ever gonna happen in real life.”

“I am not crazy-needy.”

Dawn snorted and gave a fair imitation of Spike’s best ‘you’re an idiot’ look.

------------------------------------------

“Hello!” Xander called out. “Am I allowed to break through the tape?”

There was no answer, but Tara suddenly appeared in the hallway. “Hey, Xander.”

“You look like something the cat wouldn’t deign to drag in.”

“Gee, thanks,” Tara said, forcing out a small smile.

“You knew that was meant to be funny, right?” Xander said, suddenly nervous at Tara’s muted reaction.

He put down the equipment he’d been carrying and began a graceless war with the police tape to get through the door. After several false starts, Xander was hopping into the hallway, trying to remember if he’d ever been alone with Tara before. “So, uh, where’s the Willster?” he asked, a little breathlessly.

Tara went from parchment- to bone-white. “I d-d-d-don’t know.”

“Is she okay?” Xander asked, getting increasingly uncomfortable by how weird Tara was acting.

“Physically? Yeah.”

“Ookay.” Xander let the awkwardness build for a while. “So you gonna tell me what in the wide world of sports happened here last night?”

“The, um, Order of Tarkara?”

“Taraka? Of the bugs-in-the-basement variety?” Xander shuddered.

“Yeah. Them. Um, they’re after Spike.”

Xander whistled. “You stay home for one night….”

“Yeah,” Tara said, nodding sympathetically.

“So where is everybody?”

“Dawn’s in the hospital – d-did Anya tell you?”

Xander nodded. “Was gonna go visit later if she wasn’t home already.”

“Buffy’s still in her bedroom – asleep, I guess? Giles is in the shower.” Tara paused. “I don’t know where Spike is.”

“Maybe we got lucky and they dusted him!” Xander said, mostly joking. He waited for her to say more.

Tara just stared at her hands.

Finally, he said, “Where’s Willow, Tara? Seriously. You’re scaring me now.”

------------------------------------------

“Oh no!” Dawn said suddenly.

Spike sprang to attention. “What’s wrong?”

“It was the season premier of Dawson last night!” Dawn wailed.

He laughed.

Dawn threw a pillow at him.

“Oi!” Spike threw it back. “Machine was programmed to tape it ages ago.”

“Why didn’t you say so?” Dawn said sulkily. Looking happier, she said, “You think Pacey and Joey’ll get back together this season?”

Spike snorted. “She doesn’t love him. Why am I the only one who recognises this?”

Dawn rolled her eyes. “I hope they have new angst this season. The whole love triangle thing is getting kinda old.”

------------------------------------------

By the time Tara had reached the part where there was a dead body in the hallway and Willow was running off into the night, Giles had joined them.

“How can you be sure it was Willow who did the memory spell?” Xander said. “She … she’s not like that.”

“She as good as admitted it,” Giles said quietly.

“She’s still Willow,” Tara said, far more confidently than she felt. “She … she’s just lost her way.”

Giles looked at her with undisguised pity. “Perhaps.”

Tara stared down at her hands. She didn’t want to be defending Willow. But she wasn’t ready to give up on her either.

“You’re wrong,” Xander said. “Willow wouldn’t do something like that for no reason. She must have had a reason.” He looked back and forth between Giles and Tara. “Right?”

“What possible reason could she have for erasing our memories?” Giles looked pointedly at Tara. “She’s out of control.”

“Are you g-going to b-b-b-bind her p-powers?”

Giles sighed. “I’m expecting a call tonight.”

“Wait, what with the what now?” Xander sputtered. “This is Willow we’re talking about. Bind her powers? That’s something we do to the things that go bumpy in the night. We don’t hurt people.”

“Binding her powers won’t be painful, Xander,” Giles said. “Think of it as a … a mystical restraint.”

“Are we talking about the same Willow here? ‘Cause the Willow I know would be in a world of pain if she couldn’t do magic anymore.”

“That’s k-kinda the p-problem,” Tara said quietly.

Xander really didn’t get it. What they’d done to Dawn the night they brought Buffy back still made him uncomfortable. But that was on all of them, even if it was Willow doing the spell. And it’s not like she hadn’t apologised! Xander knew how awful Willow still felt about it. What more was she supposed to do? “Willow hasn’t done anything that bad. I mean,” he turned guilty eyes to Giles, “we’ve all done worse than a memory spell before. Right?”

Giles sighed, realising quite how much Xander had missed the last few days.

“Have you even tried talking to her?” Xander asked.

“Tara did,” Giles said wearily. “But Willow erased her memory of the conversation.”

“Nuh-uh,” Xander said. “No way. Willow would never do that. Tara must’ve made a mistake.”

Tara shrunk further into her cardigan. She’d been afraid of this – that no one would believe her. They were Willow’s friends, after all. Why should they believe her?

“Tara is not mistaken,” Giles said sharply. Tara sat up a little straighter. “Willow has become a danger and she needs to be stopped. Before someone dies.”

“Before someone dies?” Xander laughed, high-pitched and nervous. “What’s wrong with you? Willow couldn’t take the guilt of breaking a crayon, for crying out loud! We’re her friends. Her family. She would never hurt us.”

Tara took a deep breath. Hearing Xander say the words she’d repeated to herself so many times, she finally realised that it didn’t matter what Willow would or would not do.

I am hurt. That’s what matters.

“She already has,” Tara said quietly and with full conviction.

------------------------------------------

The Buffy-bot lay naked and in pieces across a gleaming metal table: head, torso, two arms, two legs.

Her hair and the synthetic scalp it was attached to had been ripped off – too badly damaged by fire to be salvageable – leaving a wide strip of metal from her forehead to the tip of her spine. Her nose and lips had been bitten off, showing a combination of too-white teeth, too-tanned flesh and more dull grey metal. Her eye sockets were empty.

Something had tried to take the flesh off of her with a knife – perhaps a claw. Wide, even strips of scratched and gauged metal peeked through her perfectly tanned synthetic skin.

The bubblegum-pink nail polish that had once graced her fingers and toes was almost entirely chipped off, while the nails beneath it were broken into jagged edges. The only exception was her right arm, which had been burnt down to its dull grey skeleton from elbow to fingertips.

Warren Mears stroked his fingers gently over her chest, where her high, tight, breasts had been carved into bloodless ribbons.

“We’ll fix you right up, Baby,” he crooned. “New skin, new hair. Daddy’s gonna make you good as new.” He smiled down on his spoiled creation. “This really is the last time I let someone else play with my toys.”