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Reunions / Part 22

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Dawn found Spike sitting just inside an open doorway of the ground level warehouse, looking outside at the bright sunlight. He was smoking a cigarette and by the number of cigarette butts laying together on the floor he had been sitting there for awhile. She’d been searching for him for more than an hour, ever since he’d run off while she’d been talking to Buffy on the phone. She’d searched the lower level first and then started on the upper level. She was walking quietly when she spotted him, but she knew he’d detected her. Actually, he’d probably detected her as soon as she entered this part of the warehouse. So she knew he could have hidden from her if he’d wanted to and she would have never found him.

She didn’t say anything until she sat down next to him and folded her legs into a lotus position. When she did speak she kept her voice low, “Are you okay? I was getting worried about you.”

“I’m fine, Pet. Just needed to get away to do some thinking. Smoke to much when I’m thinking.” Spike looked over at Dawn and could tell she was holding back a snarky comment. “It’s the fags that smoke Luv, not my brain” he said as he tilted his head to one side slightly and cocked an eyebrow at her.

Dawn grinned at him and then scooted herself over until she was right next to him. She laced one of her arms with one of his, then bent her head so that it was laying across his shoulder. “It’s not as much fun as it use to be, thinking up little snarks to say to you, not when I don’t really mean them” Dawn said quietly as she let out a sigh of breath. “Remember back when we use to be able to say anything to each other and we knew we were just teasing.”

Spike let his head lean sideways until it rested up against Dawns. “You can still say anything you want, Pet. I’m not going to hold it against you.”

“Maybe not” Dawn said quietly, but with a tone of sadness in her voice. “That doesn’t mean I won’t hold it against myself though.” Spike thought he knew where Dawn was going with this conversation and didn’t want it to go there, but he knew she had to go there anyway. “I really am sorry, about that time, after you came back. I know I was mad at you and you’ve already said I had every right to be mad at you, but still, I wish I hadn’t said it.”

“Dawn, Luv” Spike said quietly, “if wish’s were penny’s I’d be a bloody millionaire. There are a lot of bad things I’ve done over my time, but that night, what I tried to do, I’d give anything to take that back. But I can’t do that you see, so I have to live with it, every day. When I came back and you were mad at me, I understood why you were mad, and you should understand that I wasn’t mad at you, or angry, or anything. I deserved your anger and you had every right to feel that way. I’m just sorry I let you down. You’ll never know how sorry I am.”

“Can we both just say were sorry, and try to forget it happened?” Dawn asked barely above a whisper.

“Yeah, we can Luv, but it doesn’t change what happened does it, and it’s not really the kind of thing that anybody ever really forgets, is it?” Spike said with a note of sadness in his voice that made Dawn want to cry for him.

“Well, maybe if we can’t forget, maybe we could just forgive?” Dawn asked with a small note of hope in her voice.

“There’s the salt in the wound, Pet” Spike said, his voice was choked with emotion. “You might find it in your heart to forgive me for what I did that night, but I’ll never be able to forgive myself.”

****

Giles, Faith and Robin all had things to do and decided to leave Buffy, Xander and Willow alone for awhile. When they left the apartment they took Kennedy with them to fill her in on what had been happening and where they were all going tonight. For a little over an hour the three friends cried a little, talked a little, but mostly they just held on to each other, basking in the presence of their mutual friendship and love for each other.

They were still sitting together talking quietly when Vi and Sara came through the front door. Vi needed to talk to Willow about some of the plans for the night and had a list of things she needed Willow to look over. Willow got up from the couch where they had all been sitting and started looking over the list while she talked to Vi. Sara stood next to Vi for a few moments then walked over to the couch and sat down next to Xander. As she sat down she lifted one of his arms and wrapped it around her shoulder and snuggled herself up close to him. Xander’s mouth had fallen open at first and then spread into a smile.

Buffy was still sitting on the couch next to Xander holding one of his hands. When Sara snuggled up to him, almost possessively, Buffy’s eyes widened with surprise and then a smile spread across her face as she tilted her head a little to one side and cocked an eyebrow at him. Xander, seeing the look, smiled back at her and shrugged his shoulders. Sara, sitting with her eyes closed, slipped one hand behind his back while the other slipped across his stomach to settle at his waist. She let a little sigh of contentment escape her lips as she rubbed he cheek against his chest.

Buffy cocked her eye at Xander again and said with laughter in her voice, “I didn’t know you guys even knew each other.”

“Just met” Xander replied as he looked down at the top of Sara’s head as she continued to snuggle into his chest. “I think she thinks I’m her long lost teddy bear or something.”

“More like her catnip toy” Vi said from where she was standing. When Xander and Buffy looked up at her, Vi was smiling at them.

“Ah, she wouldn’t happen to be, ah, part demon, would she?” Xander asked with a touch of nervousness and a little laughter in his voice. “I’ve sort’a got a history with women who feel attracted to me. Usually when someone acts this way around me they either turn into a demon or a giant bug, and try to kill me.”

“Nah, not a demon” Vi said as she started to chuckle, “she’s just in heat.”

Sara’s eyes opened slightly at the comment and lifting her head from Xander’s chest she looked up at him and said in a low breathy voice, “I’m not a demon or a bug. I just like you and want to know you better, that’s all. Besides, you smell good.” Sara settled her cheek against Xander’s chest again and closed her eyes.

“Well drop an ice cube in your panties girl, we’ve got work to do, let‘s go” Vi told Sara, but still with a laughing and friendly tone in her voice. Sara let out a sigh and reluctantly unwrapped herself from around Xander and stood up. She then bent over Xander and gave him a quick soft kiss on the lips, then stood back up and joined Vi as she left the room. As they were going out the door Sara said to Vi’s back “Spoilsport!”

Once Vi and Sara left the room, Xander stretched back in his seat putting his hands behind his head, his feet up on the coffee table, and grinned at Buffy and Willow. “You think it’s the patch? Girls like the patch!” he said as his grin got even bigger. Willow and Buffy looked at him and then at each other, then they all burst out into laughter.

****

With forty-one of them going to Spike’s warehouse, forty-two if you counted Dawn who was already there, the decision had been made to rent another SUV, a special van for Angel and a medium sized U-Haul truck. The truck was for carrying food, soda and other items that Willow and the others had noticed that Spike and his kids could use. Getting the extra SUV and the U-Haul had been easy, the hard part had been finding a van that was setup to carry a wheelchair and had a ramp.

Sara had arranged for the extra SUV and the truck, but had struck-out finding a specially equipped van. Giles had ended up making about a dozen calls and eventually made an agreement with an agency that worked with the elderly and handicapped. Giles had agreed to rent the van at a lavishly inappropriate cost for a week, but had grumbled about it all afternoon. Especially after Sara told him that for half the cost she could have retro-fitted a regular van, if she’d had a day or two to work on it.

The plane Angel was coming in on was going to land just after sunset at an auxiliary airport just outside the city. Sara, because she was the best driver of all the slayers, was given the job of driving the van. When she tried to talk Xander into going with her Vi vetoed the idea and one of Faith’s slayers from Cleveland was assigned to go with her.

The ride out took a little over an hour and Sara got to the airport just as the sun was setting. A half hour later the special plane, which was owned by the Council, landed and taxied directly into a hanger where Sara was waiting. The plane was an old jet cargo carrier, but it was very well maintained. The Council used it mainly to haul artifacts that they collected around the world that wouldn’t be safe to ship through normal means. Sometimes it was also used to carry slayer teams to hotspots of demon activity. Giles had been extremely lucky that the plane had been available when he needed it to transport Angel to Los Angeles. Being a cargo plane primarily, one of it’s better features was that the back of the plane opened up and had a ramp for loading and off-loading cargo.

The plane had barely stopped inside the hanger when the back doors swung out and the ramp started lowering. A minute later Sara saw Angel at the top of the ramp in his wheelchair. Ruth was flanking him on one side while Conner was flanking him on the other. Nina was walking just behind the wheelchair at his back. Angel grabbed the wheel guides and started moving forward down the ramp. When the wheelchair started rolling to fast he used his large strong hands to slow it down and control it’s descent.

Angel could have used an electric wheelchair, he had the resources available to purchase one, but he had always refused. Since the loss of the use of his legs his pride wouldn’t let him take the easy way of getting around. After nearly seven years in his wheelchair, and daily workouts with heavy weights, his upper body strength was greater than it had been before his injury and he used it to his advantage. The funny thing, if you could call anything about his situation funny, was the fact that even though he couldn’t use his legs, the muscles hadn’t atrophied at all, they just didn’t work. Dozen’s of specialist, both medical and mystic had examined him over the years and no one had been able to repair the damage done to his spine. His spine had healed like all the other injuries to his body, but whatever damage had been done to it had not healed along with the bone and muscle.

When the wheelchair made the final bump off of the ramp, Sara opened the door and stepped out of the van where Angel could see her clearly. Sara noticed that when Angel recognized her he immediately started looking to see who the other person was in the van. When the other slayer got out of the van and he realized it wasn’t anyone he knew, Sara could see the disappointment on his face for just a moment, then it was gone. She knew who he had hoped to see, he’s hoped for Buffy, and felt badly for him but she didn’t let it show on her face. As he rolled up to the van Angel smiled at Sara and the other slayer and spoke to them briefly. Sara greeted Nina and Connor, and while they helped get Angel loaded into the van, she gave Ruth a hug in greeting.

Ruth was one of the “Inner Circle” slayers that had been at the Hellmouth when the “Sharing” had occurred. Like all of the survivors, slayers anyway, Ruth still looked like an eighteen year old girl instead of a twenty-six year old woman. Normally someone like Ruth, a Senior Slayer and a Member of the Council, wouldn’t be assigned to watch over Angel. But a year and a half earlier she had been badly injured and after healing and rehabilitation she had been assigned to Angel as light duty. She still walked with a slight limp from almost having her leg bitten off by a demon in Brazil. Once Angel was loaded and everyone else was seated, Sara started up the van and drove back to the city.

The drive back took almost an hour and a half because of traffic and most of it was in silence. At first Ruth had been full of questions about Spike and what he had been doing all these years and why hadn’t he ever contacted anyone to let them know he was alive. Sara shared the information she knew and talked about how Spike rescued orphans and protected the homeless from vampires and demons.

Angel had listen to the information Sara was sharing and didn’t say anything. When there was lull in the conversation, due to Sara having to deal with traffic, before anyone else could say anything or she resumed talking, he blurted out “Does he still hate me?”

Sara hesitated for several moments of silence before she answered. “Actually Angel, I don’t know how he feels about you. Until just a few days ago he thought you were dead.”

“What did he say when he found out” Angel asked, his voice was low, but you could hear the stress in it.

“From what I saw he didn’t say much of anything” Sara told him, “he just got up and went to bed.”

“That’s it? He went to bed? He didn‘t say anything?” Angel asked incredulously.

“Yeah, that’s it” Sara replied. She was a little surprised by Angels attitude and tone of voice so she added “What did you expect him to do, have a party, throw a fit, start crying?”

“Damn it, any of the three would be fine, at least I’d understand what’s going on” Angel snapped out. After several long moments of silence Angel took a deep breath and let it out slowly. “Look, I’m sorry for snapping at you Sara, it’s just that I’m worried. If Spike were happy or angry or sad or even all three at once, I could deal with that, but for him to feel nothing, that kind of shakes things up for me. That‘s not like Spike, not the Spike I know.”

“Angel, I’m not really the one to be talking to about these things. I don’t really have all the facts on Spike” Sara explained. “I’m not part of the Circle or on the Council so most of what I hear is second or third hand gossip. All I know is that when Willow told Spike you were alive I didn’t see him react in any way. Maybe he said something, maybe he did something I didn’t see, I don’t know. All I saw was him getting up and going to bed. But I do know that he won’t talk to anyone about you or Buffy. If anyone brings either one of you up he won’t talk to them about it.”

“Thanks Sara” Angel replied after a few moments of silence. “What you said, about Spike refusing to talk about me or Buffy, that’s kind of a problem for me. I don’t know what you know about Spike and me or how he felt about Buffy. But when he came back after the Hellmouth, I’m the one that convinced him to stay away from her. I knew that things were over between me and Buffy a long time before that time, but I was always trying to do things, or manipulate things, so that she would be happy. I wanted her to have a normal life. Having Spike in her life was not what I considered a happy or normal life, so I pretty much beat him over the head telling him the only way he could ever make Buffy happy was by staying out of her life. I don’t think Buffy’s ever forgiven me for that, not that I blame her. But if it turns out that the reason Spike hasn’t contacted Buffy for all these years is because of me, God, she’ll hate me.”

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