Chapter Text
He doesn’t really know how he lives now. Not that he can really be said to be living anyway. Either way, it hurts and he doesn’t like it. If it weren’t for the bloody chip in his head and his rarely admitted to love for the humans he’s surrounded himself with, he would’ve either given up the ghost or left a long time ago.
Instead his life is like this: he sleeps during the day unless there’s some respectable human type business he has to deal with, he patrols at night, fighting against his own kind, and he helps a sixteen year old girl with her homework. It’s a far cry from the life he used to have or ever imagined he would have. Still, it’s his life and it is what she would have wanted. His Slayer. He thinks so anyway and it’s not like he can just ask her.
They’ve time to grieve with demons and apocalypses in general being rather low during summer months for some reason. Spike highly doubts that it’s because the demons are going on vacation. The bloody Watcher had kicked it off back to England at the first available opportunity, though his checkbook makes regular appearances, and sometimes Spike envies him that freedom. But he’d made a promise and he keeps his promises. The wicca girls are living in Joyce’s old room now and he thinks Tara’s cooking might be the only thing keeping Dawn from complete nutrition deficiency. He really appreciates that bird more than he will ever say to her face.
Willow, on the other hand, she’s not handling this well, he can tell. He can tell because he’s not handling it well either. But she’s being bloody obvious about it while he takes his aggression out on demons and his tears out on Buffy’s grave. And he doesn’t ignore Dawn. Sometimes he feels like yelling at Red, but he knows that will only make her angry and skittish and Dawn uncomfortable. Being perceptive is not always a gift, he thinks to himself.
Still, something is going on with Willow, the whelp, and his girlfriend. They keep holding secret meetings and must think they’re awfully clever about hiding the fact. He snorts in derision at the thought. Willow drops remarks about spells she’s researching and Xander talks about how Buffy won’t like whatever Spike is doing, using the wrong tenses like it will somehow bring her back. He also guesses that they aren’t counting on how much Anya doesn’t care about keeping secrets. She hasn’t said it yet, but he’s banking she will. Then maybe the boy will stop acting like a complete twonk about Spike and the Slayer.
Spike doesn’t like to think about them. Just because he and Buffy had been dating when she died doesn’t really mean he’s gotten over any insecurities about how she must have felt about him. Sure she’d chosen to be with him, they’d had some great…some great…sex, but she’d never told him she loved him. He tells her all the time, even though she’s gone now. He has to talk to her, has to somehow assuage the guilt that flows through him whenever her name is mentioned.
Not that he says it that often. He and Dawn just say ‘her’ or ‘she’ whenever they have to mention her. He likes that about the Bit. He worries about her, wishes she could somehow get better, but he likes that she feels the same way he does. He doesn’t feel so alone. Though he really isn’t alone, not with Tara always buying him blood and smokes and Dawn constantly asking for his help and Veronica calling him every week wanting to make sure he hasn’t met the sun yet or some other misguided expression of friendship. That girl’s always way too nosy for her own good. He doesn’t admit that he appreciates it though. He can’t.
Right now he doesn’t have much time for appreciation or thought. The demons have startled to trickle back in, drawn back to the Hellmouth, and he’s finding it a bit hard to cope by himself. He’s more than capable, but like he’s always told his Slayer, numbers count. He has a lot of respect for her and how she’d managed to do this for five years. Granted, it’s like he also always told her, she had family and friends. What’s more she always had somebody supernatural backing her up, Angel or that other Slayer or him. Now he’s got a pathetic human, an ex-demon, a teenage girl, and two witches. True, Willow has one real kick to her, but she’s undisciplined and unfocused, grieving. He knows the feeling. He’s not suited for this kind of work. He’s a bloody vampire and he should be reveling in the Hellmouth, not guarding it.
Still he fights and doesn’t give up and at least it’s not boring. But it’s hard. What scares him is the fact that one day there will be too many demons and he doesn’t think he’ll mind. It might even be good to finally just let go. He’s not a Slayer, but he might just have a death wish.
But not tonight. Tonight he’s fighting hard and he grins a little, relishing the violence. He doesn’t have to worry about protecting anybody else or getting anywhere. Tara’s got Dawn and the other three are off doing whatever it is they don’t want them to know about. Right now he couldn’t care less.
He ducks under a tree branch and hooks his leg behind the other vampire’s leg, making his head bang against it. The vamp’s not much more than a fledgling but Spike can tell there are other vamps out there tonight. Other fresh blood and his own is singing to put an end to it.
If he had a heartbeat it would be racing and sometimes he thinks that being alive would make the fight more brilliant. But, as it is, he has his fists and his fangs and he tears into the hordes of hell and it’s only in these moments that he feels right, that he doesn’t feel the bitter pain coursing through his veins instead of the stolen blood that actually does. But that’s all right, that’s fine. He’s Spike and this is what he does. Loves, fights, feels, joy and pain in every smile, soaked through with every tear.
He’s so busy fighting he almost doesn’t notice it when it happens. He’s fighting some sort of biker demons, avoiding the long chains they’re throwing at him, feeling the studs on their face tear through his knuckles. Their leader is tall and especially ugly and Spike can’t wait to rip his head off. He has his axe and he puts it to good use, chopping off heads and ducking blows, slamming elbows into noses, blood dripping down his face.
But then there’s energy, a massive throbbing in the air that stops them all in their tracks. It’s coming from her cemetery, flowing through the air, putting pressure on everything it passes. It feels wrong, like the world has been turned inside out and won’t be put back. Spike staggers back from the weight of it and the demons are silent, their taunts falling into silence. He lifts his head up to the sky and knows deep down in his bones that something is wrong. Willow has done something and he should have known better.
He’s running, striking down any demon that tries to get in his way, but they’re all running, too. They’re running from the cemetery, from whatever has happened, and he knows they’re right to run. Whatever has happened is bad and so are they, but there’s bad and then there’s just wrong, and demons are probably more sensitive to that than humans or even vampires.
He clears the cemetery wall and sees a demon on a bike gunning straight for him. He stands still and waits, his adrenaline pumping like mad, his impossible circulatory system doing its job without any apparent reason. The bike draws almost level and he steps aside, bringing his arm up, knocking the demon from the bike. It crashes and it’s only seconds before Spike is getting on it, tearing through Sunnydale, heading toward Revello Drive.
He should be figuring out what the wrong-ness is, trying to help Willow with whatever issues she’s venting through magic, but he doesn’t have time for that. He’s made strides, he cares about humans, he’s gone further than any vamp ever has, he guarantees, but he still doesn’t have the ability to choose the greater good, to care about all of humanity rather than just the few small people he’s given his loyalty to.
So he goes to Dawn, to Tara, to protect them, to get Tara’s knowledge, strength, and wisdom.
The house is dark when he gets there, but he figures that’s just Tara being smart.
“It’s just me,” he announces to the house as he steps inside the door.
“Spike?” Tara asks quietly, coming forward with a flashlight.
“Yeah,” he confirms. “You two all right?”
“W-we’re okay. The demons are looting the town, I guess your rep i-isn’t quite enough.”
“Looks like,” he says. “They’re not to the campus yet, gonna take you two there. You should be safer. I gotta suss out what’s happening.”
“What was that thing?” Dawn asks, her face appearing out of the gloom, and he doesn’t have to ask what she means by thing.
She clutches at his arm and he can’t help but be reminded how young she really is.
“Gotta figure it’s someone with big magic guns,” he says, exchanging looks with Tara over Dawn’s head.
She ducks her head and when she brings it back up, her face is steel.
“I’ll try and w-work out what it was, but you have to go and find her.”
“My thoughts exactly,” he says. “Let’s go before the party gets here, yeah?”
He drives in front of Tara driving Joyce’s jeep like a bloody escort and sees them safely to the dorms. He feels a little bit ridiculous. He gets them inside one of Tara’s friend’s dorm rooms and takes one of the emergency cell phones they’ve recently procured from her.
“Let me know what you find out, yeah?” he says briskly, leaving.
“Spike,” Dawn says, stopping him, “be careful. I have to get my poker winnings from you.”
He clutches her to him a little bit.
“No worries, Bit, I never forget my debts.”
Doesn’t mean he always pays them, but he never forgets them.
He leaves and takes the bike and he’d be lying to himself if he can’t spare a little time to be really happy with his new toy.
He drives back to the cemetery and finds the demons a little bit less frightened then they had been about half an hour ago. It both worries and reassures him. He slays every one of them that he comes across but he can’t find anything else. He doesn’t see any of the Scoobies wandering around the graves, but he’s working his way closer and closer to her grave and somehow it feels harder to fight with each step there.
His hearing is picking up the sounds of fighting and screaming and small explosions, though not as many as one would think if a town was being ransacked by demon bikers. The good people of Sunnydale were obviously keeping their heads down and their children safe. About the only thing they’re good at, he thinks derisively to himself.
There’s a loud ringing in his duster pocket and he answers the cell phone, grunting as he stakes a vamp who has clearly picked the wrong night to rise.
“’Lo?”
“Spike!” comes Tara’s desperate voice on the other end, “Dawn’s gone.”
“Gone where?” he asks, jerking his axe back from a demon’s chest.
“S-she ran off. I don’t know where. You have to f-find her.”
“I’ll come get you,” Spike says.
“No, just find her. I-I don’t know what possessed her. I came into the room and s-she was gone. There wasn’t a fight or anything. I’ll look around the campus.”
“Glinda,” Spike says, exasperated.
“I’ll be careful,” she tells him and then that little ironic tone he secretly loves comes into her voice. “I am a witch, you know.”
“Never forgot,” he says, already back to his bike and taking off.
He searches the town, killing demons, seeing no people he could even halfway call his friends. His worry amps and grows with every second that doesn’t see him finding Dawn. He goes to all her favorite spots, the Bronze, the mall; he even goes back to the tower, where both of them have sometimes found comfort in grief. She’s nowhere and Tara hasn’t called him back either. He goes back to the house, hoping Dawn’s had enough sense to go home and call one of them.
The demon danger is dying down. Something’s happened and they’re fleeing rather than rampaging. He doesn’t think it’s due to his skill alone even if he’s killed as many demons tonight as in practically all his long life before that. It makes him nervous and he wonders what thing Willow’s conjured to do something like that. It’s the only explanation that fits and that scares him.
The lights are on at the house and that makes him feel a bit better. He slips in the house, yelling for Dawn. He can hear her heartbeat upstairs and his relief is his only excuse for not noticing the second heartbeat.
“Why did you run off like that? I could rip your head off one handed and drink from your brain stem!” he yells.
Then there are feet on the stairs and he looks up and stops, just completely stops, because the world has stopped and everything is gone but that figure on the stairs. That’s the only thing that makes sense at this moment.
He can’t help but zero back to the last time they’d stood like this, them two. Her on the stairs and him looking up at her like he just can’t figure such a person out. She’s human and Slayer and see-through like a ghost, but he’s still never been able to fully figure her out. He thinks about how she asked him to take care of Dawn and how he promised her till the end of the world and how she’d kissed him and how he’d understood that was all she could give him at the moment.
He’s obviously progressed to full blown hallucinations now only she’s wearing different clothes and her knuckles are bruised and bloody.
And then it hits him.
It makes him mad. It makes him glad. It makes him everything at once.
“Spike,” Dawn’s soft voice cuts through his inner hemorrhaging and insanity, “look who it is.”
“What did she do?” is all he can breathe out.
“She's kind of- um...she's been through a lot with the...death. But I think she's okay.”
“Her hands,” he says quietly.
“Um, I was gonna fix 'em. I don't know how they got like that,” Dawn answered.
“I do. Clawed her way out of a coffin, that's how. Isn't that right?” he asks Buffy softly.
“Yeah. That's...what I had to do.”
He can barely hear her and from Dawn’s expression she hasn’t been talking much.
“Done it myself,” he says, moving closer and looking at Buffy.
At a fully-physical-and-alive-and-in-front-of-him Buffy. He takes her hands gently and she looks at him, obviously unsure, but not moving back.
He smiles at her, trying to reassure her. Dawn babbles something about disinfectant and he lets her feel useful. She scampers upstairs, hair flying, and Spike takes a deep, unnecessary breath.
He leads Buffy toward the couch and sits her down, still holding her hands, examining her wounds. Her smell fills his nostrils and he tries not to inhale, not to allow himself to truly feel her. She’s not herself, she’s obviously traumatized and more likely to strike out like a wounded animal than let him have time to readjust to her presence. Besides, it’s not about him, is it?
“How long was I gone?”
Her voice startles him. He didn’t think she’d speak voluntarily yet.
“Hundred and forty-seven days yesterday,” he says, trying to smile nonchalantly and failing utterly. “Uh, hundred and forty-eight today. ‘Cept today doesn’t count, does it?” Buffy doesn't respond. He looks at her hands again, then back at her face. “How long was it for you...where you were?”
She pauses.
“Longer.”
She looks in his eyes and he almost doesn’t recognize her. There’s a pain and a loss so evident in her gaze that he reels back from it. But he keeps looking and after a few moments he can see a spark of his Slayer, hidden in the depths of fear and confusion. It gives him hope and he’s just about to feel like maybe it all worked out and somebody really is looking out for him when the door bangs open and the Scoobies Who Just Can’t Leave Sodding Well Enough Alone barge into the room.
Tara is with them, her phone to her ear, when she sees him and stops, putting it down. The beginning of a ring sounds through the air from his phone and then abruptly cuts off.
They don’t look surprised to see Buffy, not even Tara, and that confirms any remaining doubt he has on the matter. There is a moment of silence while they all look at each other and then Spike removes his hands from Buffy’s and stands up, moving to the other side of the room. He knows they don’t want him there and if it wasn’t for the fact that they’d just been resurrecting his bloody girlfriend, he might have just left and given in to the overwhelming emotions squirming beneath his skin.
“We were so worried,” Willow finally says.
Buffy looks blank and says nothing.
“Why’d you run off like that?” Xander asks.
Anya just looks at them and Tara looks to Spike.
“Did you find her?” Tara asks.
“Bit’s upstairs,” Spike says, going for calm. “Figure she saw big sis and dashed after her. They were here when I got here.”
Dawn comes downstairs then, disinfectant in one hand and a bandage in the other.
“Dawn, I was so worried!” Tara says, her tone sharper than normal.
Dawn flushes, and then turns defiant.
“It was Buffy.”
“Don’t you think I would have liked to have known that?” Tara asks, softer now.
Dawn looks down. Spike notices that Willow does as well.
“Sorry,” Dawn whispers.
Spike looks back to Buffy, he’s never looked away, and she is obviously about ready to fall apart in a not-really-alive-again-yet sort of way.
“Why don’t you take your sis upstairs,” he tells Dawn. “Bathroom’s more the place for such things. Gotta ask the Wonder Trio here some questions.”
Tara looks at him, indecision and pleading on her face, but she follows Dawn, leading a silent Buffy upstairs. Buffy’s silent acquiescence is all it really takes for the rage and worry to reach its boiling point.
Willow and Xander look after them, anxiety all over their faces.
“What the bloody hell were you thinking?” Spike says, after they’re gone, voice seething in anger.
“This is none of your business,” Xander says hotly.
“I see,” Spike says, rolling his eyes, “the bloke sleeping with the resurrected bird gets no say in the matter.”
Xander lurches forward but Anya puts her arm against his chest and holds him back.
“I told you Spike would be angry. That wasn’t a little love spell we just did, Xander.”
“Demon-girl’s right. That was full-blooded black magic, wasn’t it, Red?” Spike asks, without looking at her.
Willow’s quivering and defiant and all the things that make her someone he watches very carefully.
Evidently not carefully enough.
“I had to. Buffy was in trouble,” she says.
“You didn’t tell me,” Spike says tightly, barely holding in his anger. “I fought beside you all summer and you didn’t tell me. Then you gave no thought, no bloody thought at all to the consequences.” Now that the initial joy and confusion is gone, there’s only fear and anger to take their place. “You could’ve blown up the world. You could’ve brought her back a zombie. You sure as hell did something that we’ll all have to pay in blood for. The thing with magic, there’s always consequences. Always.”
“Come on, Spike,” Xander says, his animosity slipping a little, “you of all people should be psyched she’s back. Isn’t that all you need to feed your little deluded dreams?”
“What I want isn’t in question,” Spike said. “What you did is. When did I get to be the mature, responsible white hat of this crowd anyway? I’d want her back more than anything, but I’d never risk her to do it. Still, she’s here now and now we’re keeping her, no matter what it costs her. You’re pathetic wankers is what you lot are.”
He pushes past them, heading out the open door. Willow’s still defiant and trembling, the air around her crackling in magic. He can’t help but smell the blood staining her face and fingers and see the exhaustion that’s barely holding her bones together. It terrifies him.
He knows he should stay, should knock their heads together a bit, should comfort Tara and help Dawn, and somehow get through to the woman who used to be his Slayer but…he’s done. He’s reached the end of whatever rope he might have had. He’s about to fall apart himself. He’s starting to feel his injuries from the night spent fighting and his blood lust is beginning to take over, his reason failing, and emotions riding high.
He leans against his tree in her yard and closes his eyes for just one moment. He feels wet that is not blood running down his face and for just one second he is the saddest and happiest man alive.
But that can’t last and he takes his bike back to his crypt and guzzles three bags of blood, not bothering to heat or texturize them. He’s exhausted and hurt and dirty and he takes a shower, changing his clothes, bandaging up the worst of his injuries. The others will heal themselves before the night is over. All he really wants is to sleep and pretend like it didn’t happen. But he doesn’t really.
Instead he puts his duster back on; he’ll clean it later, and gets back on his bike and slips into her house before the sun rises. The demons have all gone so there’s no need to protect the town any longer. Sunnydale can clean itself up. The house is quiet. He finds Dawn sleeping in the hallway outside Buffy’s room and gently picks her up, carrying her to her room. He’s unsurprised to find Tara sleeping in Dawn’s bed with her. Dawn wakes up a bit as he puts her in her own bed.
“Is she really back, Spike?” she asks, hope and fear in her voice.
“Yeah, yeah, she is,” he answers.
“What does that mean?”
“That we gotta be better than our best,” he says, kissing her forehead and pulling the covers up over her. “Now you sleep. I’ll watch over her.”
He slips into Buffy’s room and knows she isn’t asleep. The whole room is filled with her, with the scent of her confusion, her exhaustion, her fear.
“It’s me, pet,” he says, stepping over to the bed slowly, not wanting to get the sharp point of a stick in an embarrassing place. “I’m just here if you need it. You can tell me to go.”
She doesn’t say anything but he can see her clearly, sitting against her headboard, staring at him. Her hands are bandaged now and he smells the sharp disinfectant. He doesn’t move, not wanting to pressure her or scare her.
“Why did you go?” she finally asks.
“Go?” he asks back.
“You never go,” she says slowly. “But when I came back downstairs you were gone.”
“Had to get cleaned up a bit,” he says lightly. “Spent a lot of the night doing your job as it were. But I was always coming back.”
“I know,” she says after a minute and then shifts down on the bed.
He takes it as an invitation and slips his duster off, sliding in next to her, gathering her in his arms. He almost bursts with the familiarity and joy of it.
“Sleep, love,” he says, “I got you.”
She holds him back.