After the funeral the days started to bleed into one. Lost at sea wasn’t a strong enough metaphor anymore for where Buffy was, but she didn’t know how else to describe it. When she would let him Spike was her anchor, but the more time she spent with him the guiltier she felt; she knew she was taking and taking and still had no capacity to give.
Since the funeral she fought with Dawn every day about one thing or another. Giles was nowhere; the model of an absentee father except his absence wasn’t physical. In fact if Buffy had ever needed to check on him she knew exactly where he was; mentally and emotionally however was a different story.
As the next week went by Buffy forgot all about why her and Spike had come here in the first place. Spike had called his band and they’d decided to delay the album, it wasn’t guaranteed forever, but he gained a few extra weeks which gave her an excuse to forget about it. She wished she could feel guilty about that, but there was already too much on her plate.
She’d fallen into the role of housewife, cleaning up everyone’s mess. When Spike helped she shouted at him, and he eventually realised she wasn’t just doing it because it needed doing, but because she needed something to do. Even so it saddened him that Dawn and his father were taking advantage of her. He tried to speak to her about it, tried to, but every now and then she would shut off from him completely. Every time Dawn and Giles said anything negative to her she would feel it for days, but when he tried to say something of any kind it floated past her on the wind and never registered. There was only one time she let him intervene.
“Where are you going?” Buffy said catching Dawn on the landing.
“Back to my room.” she said quickly.
Walking towards her little sister Buffy decided it was enough, “You can’t stay in your room all day, Dawnie.”
Dawn avoided her eyes.
She did this all the time, started an argument with her out of the blue. She always had a reason, Buffy’s motive was to challenge, to make her face up to how unhealthy her behaviour was becoming. But she never knew how to start out properly, so it always became this.
Spike watched and remembered the times he’d tried to do the same to Buffy. It didn’t play as an argument for them, he hated to make the comparison but sometimes it was like talking to a ghost with her, he would get nothing back.
Buffy continued, “You haven’t left the house since the funeral. You have to go out sometime.”
“Why? You haven’t.” Dawn said bluntly.
“That’s different.” Buffy thought about it for a while, “I cook, I clean, I sort through mom’s things, deal with mom’s finances, deal with you.”
Dawn sulked not knowing what to say.
Buffy was taking the high ground, but in truth all the things she was doing were to keep her busy not the other way around. Luckily Dawn was too wrapped up in her own emotional avoidance to notice hers.
Spike shifted on the stairs and accidentally made them creak. Buffy saw him now out of the corner of her eye; she didn’t let his presence sway her. “Maybe you should think about going back to school.” she suggested, getting to the point.
Dawn pulled a face, “No way!”
“It might help,” she sighed, “make things feel more normal.”
Dawn scoffed at the idea again.
Buffy took a breath, “Look, Dawn. You have to go back eventually so maybe its better you go back by choice.”
“Or what?” Dawn said snidely, “You’ll make me go back?” She glared, “I’d like to see you try.” With that she disappeared into her room.
“Please will you talk to her?” she said defeated, still staring at the closed door.
He climbed the last few stairs and walked towards her. “I got it.” he said kissing her on the top of the head briefly before pushing his way slowly into Dawn’s room.
Buffy didn’t stay to listen, she was too exhausted. If she went to bed now she could get some sleep before Spike came up later. She left them to it.
Dawn didn’t even look up to acknowledge him, but he was pretty sure she knew who it was that had followed her in. It wasn’t fair, but if it had been Buffy she’d have told her to leave already, she wasn’t half as hard on him.
“Hey.” he said softly when he’d gotten far enough in on his own.
Dawn sat up in bed, but didn’t say anything, a sign she wouldn’t stop him if he came in all the way.
He shut the door a little.
“I guess you heard all that?” Dawn said snidely, her voice trembling, he couldn’t tell if it was with tears or anger, it was too dark to see her face properly from here.
“I did.” he admitted.
“Don’t know where she gets off telling me she’s gonna make me go back to school.”
He stepped forward, “I don’t think that’s what she meant.”
“Sounded like it.” she huffed again.
“Buffy’s just trying to do what’s best for you.” he sighed. “She just doesn’t know the best way to do that, and neither do I.”
“I should have known you’d take her side.” she whimpered, “I’m your little sister too, but she’s always been your favourite, right?”
Spike felt knocked off course for a second; he couldn’t deny it, not after everything. But now it was because Buffy wasn’t his sister anymore, she was his partner, and it didn’t mean he loved Dawn any less than before.
“Look nibblet.” he said sitting down on her bed, “You have to stop waging war on us all. We’re here for you, not against you.”
“Just get out, Spike.”
He stayed, sat there and repeated himself, but it was no good. Now he and Buffy had both failed to be there for Dawn. He’d never missed Joyce so much.
Later Spike went up to Buffy’s room, he wished he had better news for her, and he felt like he was radiating disappointment when he pushed her door open.
“Well?” she asked as he entered.
He shook his head, “Sorry, luv. She wouldn’t speak to me either.”
Buffy sighed, “I don’t know what to do, Spike.”
He pulled the covers away from the bed and slid in beside her, “I don’t know either anymore.”
Buffy said nothing back.
“Pet?” he called to her, wherever she’d escaped to in her mind he knew it was far away.
“Sorry.” she replied.
The next morning Buffy got up early, she raided the fridge and made pancakes from scratch, and then she made cereal after been reminded vividly that she couldn’t cook pancakes without setting off the smoke alarm in the kitchen.
It wasn’t long before she heard everyone in the house stir, but Dawn was the first to enter.
Buffy was busy frantically scrubbing burnt pancake mix off the pans. “Morning, Dawnie.” she said cheerfully. “I made cereal.”
“Whatever.” Dawn rolled her eyes and walked to the back door.
“And where do you think you’re going?” Buffy asked, noticing she didn’t have her school bag or anything else to give her the hope that they’d gotten through to her last night. She dropped the dish cloth and faced her arms folded.
“Why do you care?” Dawn shrugged, “You’re not my mother.” she said matter-of-factly, waiting a moment for Buffy to challenge her words and then opening the back door and heading out.
Buffy gritted her teeth. Dawn really needed to stop saying that to her.
Giles came in a moment later, “Buffy,” he said banging his empty bottle of bourbon down on the side a little too harshly as he lost his balance, not that he realised it in his state. “Dawn’sss going through a…a lot now; you shouldn’t be so h…harsh on her.”
Buffy ground her teeth again. “I’m not. I’ve been letting her off school because she said she couldn’t face going out. If she’s fine enough to go out, she can go to class…speaking of, when are you going back?”
Giles had been the librarian at Dawn’s school for a couple of years now. He seemed to enjoy his work; however he hadn’t even so much as rang the school to let them know what had happened. Another job Buffy had given in to doing.
Giles snatched up his bottle, threw it in the trash angrily and stomped past her to the back door. “Maybe Dawn’sss right.” he said harshly, “Maybe you should stop trying to be everyone’s m…mother, Buffy. We were f…fine before you came home; we don’t neeeeed you mollycoddling usss.”
She heard the back door slam shut for the second time that morning out of anger. Anger directed at her. She didn’t even know what mollycoddling meant, but they were right, she was trying to replace Joyce, she was trying to be everyone’s mother, and she was a miserable excuse for one.
She sank down in the middle of the kitchen, sat on the floor and cried. She didn’t even stop when she heard Spike come down, and the next thing she knew his strong arms were around her once more.
“I can’t do it, Spike. No matter what I do they both hate me!” she sobbed after telling him what happened.
“They don’t hate you, Buffy.” he said rubbing her arms, “They’re just hurting.”
She tried to calm down, but she couldn’t stop crying, for the first time nothing he was doing or saying was making her feel any better and that panicked her.
“Just breathe, Buffy.” he begged, noticing she was out of control.
Her chest was rising painfully as she tried to make her lungs fill with air. She was having a panic attack, and the more she thought about it the more she couldn’t breathe. She felt like everything was rushing right towards her and pulling away from her all at the same time, and she couldn’t grab hold of anything solid.
Spike held her. How could he challenge her, make her face up to things when she wasn’t even passed this stage yet?
He chanted her name, and the more he did it the more she found its constancy gave her the thing she needed to focus on.
“That’s it.” he said seeing the change in her.
“Just breathe.” he repeated, still stroking her arms.