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Willow had been quiet and withdrawn the next morning, and despite her best efforts, Dawn couldn’t get her to open up about what she’d found out. Later in the day, Willow had spoken to Giles alone in his study, and had emerged even quieter and more thoughtful than she had gone in.

The two of them had cornered Dawn in the kitchen and Dawn had quailed under the disapproving look Giles had given her. “I will say no more about this other than…” He ran his hand over his hair. “You encouraged Willow to do something that was, to say the least, foolhardy. Neither of you has any idea what the consequences of your actions might have been. Have you no concern for your sister’s welfare? You are obsessed with this… this idiotic romantic fallacy about Spike, to the point you can no longer see reason.”

“It’s not a fallacy!” Dawn glared at Giles defiantly. “Buffy is entitled to her past. You have no right to keep it from her.”

“I’m not denying… “Giles sighed and pinched the bridge of his nose. “Yes, I’m sorry. I know you were doing what you thought best, but we cannot afford to take risks in this. Willow will return to the coven with the new information last night’s little escapade uncovered.” Willow gave Dawn a nervous smile. “And when she has thoroughly researched this and she is confident that there is no possibility of any damage to Buffy, then… we will discuss this again.”

Dawn nodded to Giles curtly and turned to Willow. “How long?”

“I’m not sure, Dawnie.” Willow gave a helpless shrug. “Few days, maybe?”

“OK.” Dawn folded her arms and set her lips. “I’ll wait.”

But the days passed and still there was no word from Willow. In London, life settled into something resembling a routine. There was work to be done with the Council, young slayers still to be sought out and supported, new watchers to appoint and the whole wisdom of ages to be reassembled and catalogued in the library.

Dawn and Buffy worked together, but they seemed uneasy in each other’s company, each watchful of the other and neither wanting to relive the conversation in the basement by mentioning the cause of their unease.

Buffy watched Dawn. She could sense her sister’s anger, the brittle disapproval behind the tight-lipped smiles, and although as time went on it faded somewhat, she knew she was still seriously out of favour. Part of her longed to talk to Dawn, to try and explain why she’d said what she had, how she’d felt about Spike. But deep down she knew she couldn’t, because in all honestly she didn’t understand it herself.

Dawn watched Buffy. She’d changed. She went about her Council business during the day calmly, cooked them improbable meals in the evening and curled up companionably enough on the sofa each evening to watch TV and mimic the accents in Eastenders. It was not that there was anything wrong Dawn could put her finger on, not really, just a lack of something – an essential bit of Buffyness that was missing. And she was looking tired – her eyes were dark-ringed despite her efforts with make-up, and she sometimes seemed almost overwhelmingly weary. Dawn would find her sitting alone in the kitchen, a rapidly cooling cup of coffee on the table in front of her, staring off into space. She would smile and shrug and say she was fine, but the look in her eyes told Dawn otherwise. So, despite her anger at her sister’s cruel words and what they had caused, Dawn worried about her.

Andrew watched them both and wished Spike would come back.

******

“We need to get Spike back,” Dawn said out of the blue. She and Andrew were breakfasting alone; Giles and Buffy had already left for an early morning meeting of the Watchers. Buffy had grinned and called it a “power breakfast,” but Giles had warned her that, as power breakfasts go, this would be a low wattage affair.

Andrew stopped rummaging through the cereal box in his search for the Spiderman toy and his face brightened. “I agree!”

Dawn stared off into the distance, a frown creasing her forehead. “When he was here – I mean, you saw how they were together. All with the snark and the secret glances and the fighting. You can’t tell me there wasn’t something there between them. And since he went, it’s like she’s just – I dunno, going through the motions. At least if he was here we might get some sort of real reaction from her.” She bit her lip. “One way or another. It would have to be better than this. But we’d best hide any wooden pointy objects, just in case.”

“It’ll be like a quest!” Andrew’s eyes shone. “We should give it a cool name…”

“No, we really shouldn’t.”

“We’ll need supplies and possibly some cool things to wear. Questing doesn’t come cheap.” Andrew considered. “We’ll need a war chest.”

“I’ve got this.” Dawn reached into her pocket and pulled out a credit card. “Giles gave it to me so I could get any housekeeping stuff we needed.”

“He didn’t give me one!” Andrew pouted.

“No, really?” Dawn gave him a mocked surprised look. She looked at the card and sighed. “Thing is, I promised him faithfully I’d only use it for living expenses and nothing else. Hey, guess what?” She looked up at Andrew with a grin. “I lied! We should be able to get your ticket and some cash before Giles knows what’s happening.”

“Me?” Andrew’s eyes widened. “You want me to go after Spike?”

“No, but I don’t think we’ve got much choice. Buffy might buy you’ve gone off to visit relatives or something, but not me. So – you get to go hunt-the-Spike.” Dawn looked at him seriously. “And when you find him, you bring him home – whatever it takes.”

“Wow. It’s like a real mission.” Andrew said dreamily. “You’re like M… the Judi Dench one naturally… only… younger. Maybe I could get an exploding pen, and a lazer watch… and a gun.”

“Hello? Earth to 007? No gun. Just go find him. No heroics – you so aren’t built for it.”

“I know how to work a gun!” Andrew looked hurt. “Anyway, that’s OK. My hands are lethal weapons.”

“Yeah, right,” Dawn snorted. “How is the nose, by the way?”

Andrew was deep in fantasyland and refused to rise to the bait. “But where do I start? Hmm.” He narrowed his eyes thoughtfully. “Where would I go if I were a lean, handsome creature of the night with a cool leather jacket;, a lone-wolf vampyr, brave and true, my heart ripped asunder by the woman I love, the beautiful slayer of vampyrs…”

“I think that may take more imagination than even you are actually capable of.” Dawn bit her lip. “Only one place I can think of – only person who might know where he is, or might be able to track him down.” She turned to Andrew. “How do you fancy a trip to the city of Angel?”

******

In the over-heated meetings room on the second floor of the Council offices, Buffy struggled to suppress a yawn. She was trying to keep up with the graphs and figures that the terribly earnest woman was flashing up on the screen at an alarming rate, but she was finding it hard enough to stay awake, let alone concentrate. Her gaze was increasingly draw to the window, and she’d found that if she leaned nonchalantly back in her seat she could just about see the tops of the trees in Hyde Park through a gap in the buildings opposite. The sky above them was a cold, clear blue, full of the promise of a bright autumn day. Suddenly a walk in the park seemed a very attractive option; the thought of some grass under her feet and crisp cold air in her lungs made her sigh wistfully. She caught Giles’ frown and tried to refocus on the presentation. She was fighting a losing battle. Despite her efforts, her eyes grew steadily heavier and her brain grew steadily woollier. She fought back another yawn. She really needed to get a decent night’s sleep, no – really. But, she thought unhappily, there was little chance of that.

It was the nightmares. They were innocuous at first – no more than a confused memory of a dream that left her with a strange, unsettled feeling on waking which stayed with her into the morning. But as the days passed, the dreams became more vivid, the images more disturbing and bizarre, and she’d wake in a cold sweat to a memory of pain and fire and the fierce ache of loss, and although the confused images faded, the feelings stayed. She began to dread closing her eyes at night, to fear the onset of sleep. When she did sleep, she did so restlessly, waking in a tangle of sheets and blankets, her pillow on the floor beside her. And then there was the night she’d woken in the basement, curled up on Spike’s bed, its cover wet with her tears. She’d sat there, clutching his pillow, wide-eyed with fear at the terrifying thought that she was losing her mind.

And when she thought about it she had to admit that all of this – the nightmares and the sleepwalking – had started soon after Spike had gone. But why? She sighed, ignored Giles and gazed out at the clear blue sky. She gave in and let her weary brain wander where it pleased; and where it pleased seemed to be to a blond, blue-eyed vampire and the memory of the way he’d made her feel and the traitorous thought of just how much she missed him.





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