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They’d both finished their meal and were sharing the tub of ice cream, a spoon each, giggling and play fighting with the spoons. Buffy was getting more than her fair share, Spike was ensuring that, his golden queen was looking scrawny and he knew what she was like: if she was upset, she’d stop eating, and the wankers upstairs hadn’t even noticed so he’d be the one to build her up again. It made him so made he wished he could rip their heads off, then Spike remembered what was happening to the said wankers at that very moment and grinned quietly to himself.

‘So why haven’t you lost it with me yet Pet? I was expecting at least a little bitching by now.’ Spike asked between mouthfuls of his ice cream. He was dipping his spoon in a blood sauce before licking the confection off completely, making sure it was clean before trying to get some more of the ice cream.

‘Spoons off, Mr, you’ve had blood on that and it’s going nowhere near my boys.’

‘Your boys?’ he did the eyebrow thing that always made her melt.

‘Ben and Jerry,’ she smiled at him, but he could smell her arousal and her heart was speeding up, every beat seemed to echo around his head. Buffy spooned a little, a very little, of the ice cream into a separate bowl and handed it to him.

‘You can poison that lot,’ she pointed, keeping the tub for herself.

‘You don’t want to share?’ He joked as he waved another spoonful of the blood and ice cream in her face.

‘That would be a NO,’ Buffy replied, fighting off his spoon and protecting her treasured tub.

After a few more minutes clowning, Buffy looked up at her lover.

‘After I took the potion, and I still don’t know why it didn’t kill me, I floated around the room for what seemed like weeks, and had time to think. I could hear them outside the door: Willow, Dawnie and Giles. Xander sort of gave up and left after a few days, he thought that he would be needed elsewhere, and just left… and the others, their thoughts were like they were shouting at me. I could see them clearly for the first time, and it hurt. Willow was angry at me for doing something for myself without her permission…permission, like she was my mother! Xander just thought that if I was dead he’d have no chance to screw me, and wished he’d managed it when he’d been taken over by the hyena spirit. I was so stupid, I honestly believed he hadn’t remembered a thing about that, and it had formed the basis of most of his fantasies. Dawnie was just full of herself, yes she was upset, but she still had thoughts about how it would affect her plans with The Immortal, and Giles was upset but more worried about what was happening to the other Slayers, and why I had done something so stupid…where ever I looked there was no real grief, and then I thought about you, staying in LA when you knew I loved you.’

‘I didn’t know, pet,’ he reached a hand across and took hers gently in his.

‘But I told you,’ Buffy started: she couldn’t believe he hadn’t believed her.

‘Yes I know you did luv, but I thought you were being kind to the dying man, didn’t think you meant it, and then I got to helping Angel, felt like I was wanted for me, not just my strength or fighting ability, but for me.’

‘And mom? What’s she doing here?’

‘Saving me and having a word with Dawn: seems she wasn’t too impressed with her youngest, and when she and Merrick pulled me out of the fight in LA I thought it was the First. She soon put me straight, then they said I was to come and wake you up…true love’s first shag. Seemed to work perfectly.’

Buffy looked at the mischief in his eyes and hit him, gently, on the arm…

‘Hardly the first shag, Spike!’

‘I wasn’t going to tell your mum that bit, was I? Too handy with an axe she is for me to be telling her I’d already sullied her daughter. Just think yourself lucky Buffy: in the original tale the girl woke up after giving birth to twins!!’

Buffy smiled at the vampire and took another spoonful of the ice cream, the tub seemed nearly empty, but she was getting full anyway.

‘How did you bring me back? And how come I wasn’t actually dead?’

‘I tasted the venom in your blood when I bit you and drew it out, and as for not dead, it was close enough for my liking: no pulse, no breath. Scared me it did, seeing you like that again.’

She could hear the pain in his voice. ‘I never want to see you like that again, Buffy; next time you try something this stupid I’ll kill you myself and then lie down and wait for dawn.’

‘That threat would sound more real-ish if you didn’t keep saving my ass and weren’t wearing the Gem of Amara,’ she smiled up, her green eyes beginning to lose the shadows that had haunted them.

‘You won’t see it again, Spike,’ Merrick said from the doorway. ‘The Powers didn’t realise that Willow had screwed up so badly when she cast the spell on the scythe releasing the essence of the Slayers because that’s not what she did. She tapped into the power of the scythe to release the power from Buffy: she’s been feeding power into all the potentials. It’s one of the reasons you’ve been so tired Buffy, why you felt there was no future for you.’

‘Why couldn’t I die?’ Buffy asked softly, but some of the pain seemed to have left her voice.

‘Because you’ve been claimed by the Aurleus line. You’ve been bitten by three of the masters of that line, and each time they bit you they claimed a piece of you, but you claimed a piece of them as well…and the third vampire was the doozy…Spike loved you so much with or without his soul.’ He looked towards the blond vampire who was squirming in his chair. ‘And he didn’t just drink from you, he revelled in being with you, when he um, urgh, um…’

‘Spit it out Merrick,’ Spike said, amusement dancing in his eyes at the old watcher’s discomfort. The man went quite red and refused to look at either Buffy or Spike…

‘When I what??’ Spike asked again. ‘Shagged her?’ he suggested.

‘Um yes, that’s it, when you, um, and bit her, the um…’

‘Double penetration?’ Spike added helpfully, watching the man getting more and more uncomfortable.

‘Spike you’re a pig,’ Buffy told him as she watched the poor man squirm.

‘Oink oink… anyway you like pigs, you sleep with pigs… look at Mr Gordo!’ he laughed.

‘Yes, well; that on top of being brought out of heaven slightly changed, the cellular sunburn Tara told you about, it was your immortality shining through, you were an immortal creature, so Spike could hit you - amongst other things.’ Merrick continued, trying to ignore the banter going on between the two blonds.

‘You keep talking about Willow, but where is she?’ Buffy suddenly asked, realising that no-one had mentioned the witch at all. ‘Cause you told me about Giles and Dawnie and even Xander,’ she looked straight at Spike, ‘but no-one has mentioned Willow.’

‘She’s not here,’ Merrick told her as gently as he could. He had no desire to have Spike’s wish be brought down on his head.

‘She’s not dead, is she?’ Buffy put down the spoon she had been licking, which had been distracting Spike every time he looked at the magical things her tongue was doing.

‘No: no, not dead, quite the opposite in fact, when we looked into her heart we realised that she was incapable of feeling any remorse for her actions, she would take no responsibility at all, it seemed it was always someone else’s fault, so we gave her back her youth. She has become a baby again, and we have given her to a lovely woman who will raise her with a pure heart and surrounded by love, and fully trained in her gifts.’

Buffy went silent for a moment. ‘There was no help for her?’

‘Not as things stood, she just would not listen. She knew better than anyone else, and we couldn’t get through to her at all.’

‘I hope the others listen, ‘cause I wouldn’t want to be responsible for raising Giles or Xander!’ Buffy said, grinning at the thought of a baby Giles.

Merrick looked at his old charge. ‘I know things have been really hard for you Buffy, but they will get easier, honestly they will. And when your mother has finished with Dawn she will come down and talk to you and answer all your questions.’

Joyce looked at her youngest child and felt no pity. Dawn was lying on her bed crying silently, the tears rolling down her face and onto the pillow with nothing stopping them. Joyce picked up a magazine and made herself comfortable in the chair. She felt torn: one part of her wanted to comfort her child, the other part of her knew that Dawn had to face this trial and grow.

‘Mommy,’ a voice said from under the covers, ‘it hurts…’

‘I know it does Baby, but you have to work through it; the sooner you own up to your mistakes with your sister the sooner this will be over.’

‘Please make it stop,’ Dawn whimpered.

‘I can’t Dawnie, I can’t; and if I did, what would you learn? You would still try and manipulate her, use her love for you against her, like you did in Rome when you knew Angel and Spike were on their way. How could you set her up like that? I am quite ashamed of you.’

‘Morty said it was a joke…he just wanted to play a trick on Spike,’ she whined, ‘just a joke.’

‘So your new boyfriend wants you to play a cruel joke on your sister, and you go along with it, as though her feelings aren’t important…’ Joyce said in her driest voice, making Dawn feel very uncomfortable. She tried to think up an excuse that would work, but the pain in her chest got worse, as though it knew she was about to try and wriggle out of her guilt.

‘And can I ask what all the stealing was about? I brought you up better than that, Dawn Summers.’

‘You didn’t bring me up at all, it was all false, a load of memories shoved in your heads by a bunch of monks trying to hide me!’ Dawn sounded bitter as she ranted at her mother, and Joyce looked into the woman’s soul and saw the pain that she was in. Time to start dishing it back out.

‘Very well, if you are going to be difficult about this, yes the memories were false, but Buffy loved you enough to lay down her life for you, give up everything for you. And Spike, he took a beating that nearly killed him to protect you, so do you really think their love was false? They knew who you are, and who you were, and they still loved you enough to sacrifice everything to protect you. Was it duty or love that kept one of the scourge of Europe by your side all that summer when Buffy lay in the ground? No: it was love.’

The tears started down Dawn’s face again as she was made to feel Spike’s pain at losing Buffy; her cries and whimpers started to lessen after only a few hours and Joyce spent the time bathing her face with a cool cloth…when it was obviously easing, Joyce took a deep breath and let it out again.

‘What about when you threw her out of the house before the final battle, standing with Giles and against your own sister; really Dawn, that was just petty, you were told by the First that Buffy wouldn’t be with you, protecting you, in the final battle, and you believed her? How could you be so stupid?’

‘But it nearly came true, didn’t it?’ Dawn managed.

‘Only because you made it happen you silly child! Now you stay here and think about what you’ve done, and you can come back down when you’re really ready to apologise to your sister, and ready to make amends.’

Joyce turned and left the room without a backward glance, leaving Dawn sobbing her heart out on the bed.


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