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Author's Chapter Notes:
so I have this little problem where I suck....that's why this update's late today; Satuday there wasn't an update because I've got some super fun virus thing (which, come to think of it, I could blame the drugs for that on me being late) but anyway, I hardly got out of bed Saturday and just couldn't manage updating--sorry.

Hopefully you can enjoythe delayed chapter :)
Chapter Six

“Right,” Spike scoffed, “Like I’m going to spend the night with the Slayer—bloody bint hates me or have you forgotten that little fact? I’m sure she was right keen on telling you what I did. Probably came home hollerin’ about how ole Spike here fancies himself in love with her, yeah?

Well I’ll have you know I’m bloody well not. Was a temporary lapse in—“

“William,” Joyce interrupted his tirade, “I’m a mother, I can tell when someone is lying.”

“Not when I am,” he protested almost for the sake of it more than anything. “I’ve had years and years of practice and I could trick the—“

“You love my daughter,” it was said simply and without judgment—he hadn’t expected that last part.

“Yeah, alright, fine, I do. Gonna stake me now?” he finally relaxed again, sitting more comfortably.

“Were you not listening?” Joyce sounded fed up. Best not to get mum upset.

“Was your…your…not hating me that threw me for a loop, sorry.”

“You are going to join Buffy, Dawn, and myself for dinner and at the end of the night you are going to tell me what has happened to my daughter and how to fix it.”

“What if I can’t—“

“You will tell me how to fix it,” she left no room for argument. Spike was going to tell her how to make her little girl better; it was her only option at the moment so it was sure as hell going to work.

“Right, well I’ll be there soon as the sun’s down. You just make sure Buffy doesn’t stake me. Can’t very well tell you anything as a pile of dust now can I?”

“You have nothing to worry about,” Joyce assured him as she left, not telling him that she wasn’t sure Buffy was capable of slaying anything right now much less the vampire with whom she was so evenly matched.



Imagine that, the Slayer’s mum had just asked him over to dinner. Spike tried to convince himself that it would be fun, that he could pretend it was some sort of ‘meet the family’ date with Buffy, but he knew better. Buffy was not going to want him there, not one bit. Besides, he’d already ‘met the family’.

Despite any misgivings he might have about the situation, Spike was going to do his damndest to show Buffy that he could be good dinner date material. Sure he hadn’t been on a typical date in…well, ever, but that was beside the point. Just because he hadn’t done it yet didn’t mean he didn’t know how to if he wanted to. And right now, he wanted to. He couldn’t take Buffy shutting him out of her life, quite literally, forever; and he certainly couldn’t stand by while Buffy’s ‘forever’ got shorter and shorter.

It was true, what he had said about her being different because she had friends and a family behind her as well as her Watcher. She also had him, whether or not she knew it. Now the support system the Slayer had just had to figure out how they were going to help save her.

Except, Spike still had no idea what was wrong with her; hopefully dinner would provide some answers.



“Dawn!” Usually it was Buffy yelling up the stairs at her sister, but this time it was their mother—Buffy couldn’t do it as she was fast asleep on the living room sofa.

It took less than fifteen seconds for Dawn to get downstairs to her mother.

“Yes?” Ever since her mother had developed her terrible and as yet unexplainable headaches and her sister had become basically incapacitated by her own headaches, Dawn was doing her best to be as helpful as she could be. Besides, being helpful kept her busy and being busy kept her from thinking too much and thinking too much led to her being scared, so not doing it was definitely of the good. It was hard to deal with her mother and her supposedly near invincible sister…Her mom wasn’t supposed to get sick and if she did Buffy was supposed to be there to do all this stuff…And if Buffy got sick—well Buffy wasn’t supposed to get sick! They were all keeping her in the dark, too—“Dawn’s too young”, “Dawn would never understand”, “Let’s wait until we know more”; didn’t they know she had eyes, she could see something was horribly wrong with her mother and her sister.

She could see it, she just couldn’t do anything about it so to avoid thinking about it she tried to do everything Joyce needed done, the second it needed done.

“Could you set the table for me, sweetie? And put out four places, we’re going to have a guest tonight.”

Dawn hoped it wasn’t going to be Giles joining them—or Xander; all the two of them had done since Buffy had really started to get sick was try to act like nothing was wrong. Xander made completely inappropriate jokes that weren’t even funny and only made her worry more and Giles tried to explain to her and her mother how it was some sort of Slayer thing and would sort itself out in only matter of days. Except he’d been saying that for weeks now and all it did was tell Dawn that Giles, the one who was supposed to be the one that understood the Slayer side of Buffy and what could possibly happen to her, had no idea what was wrong.

And it seemed to Dawn like none of them were really making any effort in figuring out what was wrong with Buffy. Her mother’s condition was a medically identifiable one—at least that was how it seemed since she was going to doctors and having all of the tests done—but Buffy’s…What was wrong with Buffy didn’t seem to fit any illness that Dawn knew of and Buffy was refusing to go to the hospital, so they hadn’t been able to find out anything that way.

They were all trying to stop Dawn from worrying and they were all making her worry more. She was the Key, made from Buffy…what if this was somehow her fault, like they’d taken something out of Buffy to make her? Or what if this was going to happen to her some day? Or maybe…If both her mother and sister, God forbid, were to die, what would happen to her? Would she go back to not existing? Be erased from everyone’s memories? Or would she just be an orphan, left for her father to deal with?

Somehow, Dawn wasn’t able to decide which of those options would be the worse one.

Maybe it’d be someone interesting—and new—for dinner and she’d be able to finally quit thinking about things that she didn’t really want to be thinking about.



TBC..........please review


and thank you to whoever nominated Silently Broken at the Love's Last Glimpse Awards, it's very much appreciated.....especially with this whole bug thing I've got going :)





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