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"Oh my god! I don’t believe this!"

Telling Dawn Spike isn’t dead – well any deader than we’ve ever known him to be, was harder than I could have imagined…

"I translated the whole friggen paragraph wrong!" Dawn whips her chocolate brown hair over her shoulders and tosses the French book in my direction. "Here, you take a crack at it. My brain’s refusing to register any kind of funny accent marks at this time."

Which is why four hours after having what, was possibly the most awkward conversation in Sprint history with Spike, I still haven’t told Dawn he’s kinda alive.

"Oh – no, no, no," I ease the book towards her, "French and I are un-mixy. In fact, my entire grasp of that language revolves around knowing ‘fromage’ is cheese, and telling you that a cow will touch you a week from Thursday." I pause, smiling thoughtfully, "I could probably tell you the cheese will touch you a week from Thursday, too…"

Dawn huffs, "Shi…" I give her a pretty good impression of the eye mom used to scare the crap out of me with and she quickly amends her choice of words. "Poop! I was going to say ‘poop’."

"Uh-huh." I grin.

"Besides, homework over the holidays is just wrong! It totally defeats the purpose of the word ‘holiday’." Dawn gives me this sarcastic grin that eerily resembles the one Spike never seems to stop sporting, complete with head tilt (so, this is what he was teaching my lil sis, that summer I was worm food – annoying Buffy-101). "Did I tell you how much I love private school?"

I shrug. "’S not my fault the courts forced dad to grow a conscience and he started generously doling out that back child support."

"If I get field hockey knees, I’m so killing him," she grumbles.

"I also didn’t tell you to take French and Spanish at the same time." I waggle my finger at Dawn and ‘tsk’, "Just because you can translate demon languages doesn’t mean you can ‘parle vouz’ with the best of them."

Dawnie ever-so elegantly gives me the finger, and mumbles a curse under her breath as she once again buries her face in that French book, and now I get to go back to wracking my brain for ways to break this news to her as gently as possible.

Maybe I should keep my mouth shut and let her find out when Spike’s on our doorstep in what can only be a matter of hours. The healthy sadist in me sees that situation rapt with comedy –

"Ugh! Why are they still teaching French! Don’t we hate the French?!"

"Just their fries and toast," I joke.

On the other hand, Dawn passing out or screaming at me with, a, pitch only dogs can hear – not as funny as previously thought.

But if I tell her now she’ll want answers to questions I don’t have. After gathering the wits to pick up the phone again (and listening to Angel and Spike argue over talking to me) -- my conversation with Spike must’ve lasted a full five seconds with him plainly saying: "I need to see you" and me managing to squeak out "ok" before hanging up. I don’t know the why or the how when it comes to him being back and honestly, I didn’t have the presence of mind to ask.

Andrew’s gone out to pick up to pick up dinner and Claire passed out on the living room couch right after I ended training for the day.

Dawnie’s smiling at me proudly pointing at the book. "I’ve got it! Ms. Dule wants to buy a sack of apples and I’m supposed to tell her that the grocery is all out of apples – I think. No, wait, maybe I’m the one who wants to buy the apples from Ms. Dule and she’s all out." She tilts the book in my direction. "That word is ‘apples’ isn’t it…?"

"Spike’s alive," I blurt without thinking (so much for gentleness).

She looks at me curiously and blinks.

"As dumb jokes go, that one’s not very funny, Buffy."

"It’s not – it’s not a joke." I take a deep breath and pull my lips in tight before adding, "He’s in LA. He’s coming here. I don’t know how it happened."

I’m prepared for anything – the high ‘doggy pitch’ scream, bear hugs, supreme denial, and even lots and lots of tears. The two of them have this bond that I can’t even begin to understand. I spot a box of Kleenex just to the right of me, and I put it in the middle of us. I can’t let her get weepy-face and wipe it all over that cashmere sweater (my cashmere sweater).

Dawn studies my face for what seems like an eternity and then smiles and gives a nod of her head. "Ok."

The moment feels almost anticlimactic compared to all of the situations my fevered imagination cooked up. And I’m glad.

"Ok," I say with a smile of my own.

Who needs a weepy, screaming Dawn anyway?

**

"What is the Populist party’s base of support, platform issues, and vision of the role of government?"

"You’re actually expecting an answer?!"

"Only, if you’re actually expecting to pass history – oh! Buffy, I’m sorry…!" Dawn shouts. Funny how it takes the me crashing into a tombstone to remind her we’re on a slay/study mission tonight – slay being the operative word…

"Roll!" Dawn announces and Claire drops the books as she scrambles to her feet. The, beefy vamp standing over me gets distracted by the call and turns to see my Slay-gal in training running towards him – Bingo.

"What the hell happened to only dealing with one!" he growls, still fixed on Claire and that gives me the window I need to do a sweep kick, knocking his legs out from under him. He hits the ground hard and I quickly toss my stake to Claire,

"You really gotta learn how to accept change," I pun and then get a mouth full of vampire dust for my troubles when Junior stakes him. Coughing, ‘Next Generation’ helps me to my feet and gives me a lopsided smile.

"Dawn’s rigorous with the studying, I’m sorry…"

"I could’ve taken him," I say dusting off my jacket. "The point is for you to make the kill. Knowing exactly where the heart is, so that there’s no mistakes – again."

"You can barely see that scar on Dawn’s neck – right Dawn?!"

Dawn tightens the scarf around her neck and gives Claire and I this withering look. "Yeah. Sure."

"Lets move onto the other side of the cemetery – things are pretty much dead, dead here." I take what has to be five steps before stopping so suddenly Dawn runs into the back of me.

"Thanks a lot for helping me add to my klutz-o-meter." I hear Dawn grumble but I ignore her (she was already off the charts on the klutz-o-whatever before tonight), and tilt my head in the direction of this crypt to the right of us and smile. "Since when did you get so lurky?!" I yell.

I can sense Dawn and Claire are exchanging those ‘what kind of drugs is she on?’ looks, but the moment Spike walks from behind the crypt, I look a little less like I’m tweaking on shrooms. I know Dawnie’s having some kind of ‘oh my god’ reaction to seeing him, and I’m sure Claire’s face holds a ‘who the fuck are you/wait you’re a vampire/why are we happy and not staking him?’ look, but I don’t see them – as horrible as that sounds.

Right now, it’s only Spike and I – and I get the feeling things are the same from his perspective too.

"Hangin’ out with your poofy ex," he yells back, smirking as he comes closer. "I haven’t quite picked up the power of broodin’ yet from Yoda – but give us a week or so, I’ll have it down."

"How did you…?"

"Find she who hangs out in cemeteries?" he chuckles. "I had the taxi driver take me to all of the graveyards in town. Only ten," Spike scoffs, "Sunnyhell had this place beat hands down."

(There’s so much I need to say, that I should say…) I find myself grinning. "Corporeal looks good on you, Spike."

Eh, there’s always time for that later.





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